Spinner's End
Somewhere in England. Somewhere in one of those run-down industrial towns, that only resemble a shadow of their glorious past during the 19th century. Somewhere in one of those rotten industrial quarters with its dilapidated factory buildings, closed-down winding towers and scrap heaps, full of machines that are overgrown by weed. Somewhere in the middle of wretchedness between squalid council houses, with unemployed muggles, that are already drunk early in the morning, and drug addicts on shabby park benches, unconcernedly fixing, knowing there is no policeman coming along anyway, somewhere here lives one of the most genius wizards of our time - Severus Snape.
Spinner's End, that's the name of the street with its holey, dirty surface. Muggles living here truly are at the end of the line. There's nothing beneath this. All that's left from former spinning companies and cloth mills, where the street's name came from, are ruins. Through the old industrial district the stinking cesspool of a river, polluted by rubbish and toxic effluents, ponderously meanders. Low brick houses humble themselves right and left of the dirty street, some of them inhabited, others half-decayed with broken windows and rooftops full of holes. And like a memorial of transience, a huge factory's chimney towers above the muggle's houses and sinister sheds. Cold, black and numb, a skeleton made of stone. If one goes up all Spinner's End, one will reach Snape's house, where the other houses end. It is the last house of the street.
On the inside, Snape's home is not that down-and-out as the neighbourhood and its inhabitants, but, for the Professor's rarely visiting guests, the sight again and again offers an amazing contrast to Hogwarts' splendour and dignity, in which Severus Snape spends most of the year.
Coming in through the low entrance, one finds oneself immediately in a small living room. All round, the walls are blocked by bookcases, the few pieces of furniture consist of an old wooden table, a worn-through armchair and a sofa, which is just as poultry. A candle's stump in the small ceiling light is, apart from the low window, the only source of light.
To strangers, the living room seems to be the only room in Snape's house, because the Potions master, loving the secret so much, has hidden all passages behind his bookcases, maybe for protection against muggle burglars. One of these secret doors, which can only be opened by magic, leads into a back room, another one to some old wooden stairs, that leads up to the top floor.
This is where Peter Pettigrew alias 'Wormtail' used to live for a while, who had been, by the Dark Lord, unwillingly ordered to Snape's house, where he had been treated like a domestic servant by Voldemort's right hand.
