Prompt: The Mirror - Write about someone looking into a mirror and reflecting on what they see.

Snape’s Reflection

(FAN FICTION)

The cracked glass of the mirror above the washbasin was dirty, choked with decades of dust and the yellowed grime of Cokeworth air. Severus stood before it, his knuckles raw and white where he gripped the edges of the porcelain sink.

Mudblood.

The word hung in the air of the cramped bathroom like an open wound, reeking of copper and shame. It was two hideous syllables, spat out in a moment of humiliation on the grass near the lake. But it wasn't the word itself that was rotting his mind from the inside out; it was the look that had followed it.

Lily hadn't looked at him with anger. She had looked at him with pity. And then, worse still, with complete, final indifference.

Severus leaned closer to the silvered glass. The figure staring back at him was pitiful. His dark hair hung in limp, greasy strands around a sallow, angular face. His nose was too hooked, his chest too narrow, his eyes dark pits surrounded by deep, purplish shadows of exhaustion. He looked like a corpse that had forgotten to stop walking.

Is this what she saw? He thought, his chest tightening until breathing felt like swallowing glass. Is this the creature she discarded?

He raised a hand, his long, ink-stained fingers trembling as he touched his own cheek in the reflection. The glass was ice-cold. He waited for the boy in the mirror to blink, but the reflection seemed to harden, its dark pupils dilating until they swallowed the irises completely.

A sinister thought, sharp and cold as a silver blade, slid into his consciousness.

You brought this upon yourself.

He stared deeper into the reflection, trying to find the boy who used to sit beneath the beech tree, sharing secrets about a magical world with a bright, red-haired girl. But that boy was gone. In his place stood something hollowed out—a shell begging for an identity, desperate to belong to anyone who would offer power instead of laughter.

The silence of the house pressed against his ears, heavy and suffocating. Downstairs, the muffled sound of his father’s drunken slurring drifted up through the floorboards, a relentless reminder of the blood he carried.

Severus pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the mirror.

She will never forgive you, the voice inside his head hissed, sounding terrifyingly like his own, yet stripped of all weakness. She has chosen them. The arrogant, glossy fools who mock you. You are nothing to her now.

When he pulled back, a smudge of sweat and oil remained on the glass. The reflection didn't look hurt anymore. The pain in the dark eyes was calcifying, turning into something dense, heavy, and dangerous. A faint, cruel composure settled over his sharp features.

If he could not have her light, he would master the dark. If he was to be a monster in her eyes, he would become a monster so formidable that no one -not Potter, not Black, not even Lily- could ever laugh at him again.

He drew his wand from his sleeve, the polished wood feeling heavy and reassuring in his palm. He didn't look at his hands. He kept his eyes locked on the reflection, watching as the boy in the mirror slowly ceased to be a victim and began the terrible, quiet transformation into a cold, sinister wizard.

I do not own the rights to this photo!

Kingdom Man Paul. (2025, July 5). Severus Snape: Suffering, Glory, and the Dark Side of Agape Love [Digital image/Blog post]. Medium. https://medium.com/illumination/severus-snape-suffering-glory-and-the-dark-side-of-agape-love-af1204917dee