Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling would never write anything so bad. Does this look like best-selling material?

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I lash out at them because it gives me joy.

Joy rarely enters my life. As a child I was lonely and terrified. As an adolescent, the butt of my classmates' jokes and pranks; as a young man, angry and vengeful beyond redemption. Happiness contrived to pass me by.

Immature? Childish? Yes, boyish pranks should not remain unforgiven after twenty years of life. I know - I know. But I am lonely... and in pain. Sometimes even immaturity is necessary to ward off the threatening darkness.

So I put my mind and tongue to work at causing others suffering. I have a well-functioning brain - I can see what words will poison, what actions will hurt the most. Never mind that these were my nearest and dearest; never mind that given the chance, they might help me raise myself above this sloughing mass of desperation. The pain is like a beast worrying at my soul, and it is all I can do to fend it off.

When a bare tenth of my barbed words are flung back at me I shriek and foam at the mouth because it hurts beyond bearing. To others it is hysteria, madness, psychosis. To me it is a leap of desperation that is the only lifeline to sanity.

Pitiful? I don't need your pity. This is the life I live and I know no other. My happiness is scrabbled, fleeting, off the backs of others' pain... but it is sufficient to keep me alive.

Like a drug it gives peace, provides joy; so I lash out again, and harvest my opiate.

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A/N: Yes, I know this version of Snape isn't too flattering. But sometimes harsh reality is more endearing ... and it's getting harder for me to think in terms of Severus as a savior, or saint in disguise, or whatever. Sometimes the gap between St. Severus and canon's Professor Snape is so large it's a jolt to go back to the original books. So here's his Nastiness, with a bit of a darker twist. Review, and tell me what you think!