Disclaimer: I'm not muscling in on JK's turf - just gambolling on it, like a spring lamb, having fun working out the literary and psychological puzzles which she is having fun setting us
Lost and Found began life as an attempt to re-write the ending of this Darkfic:
Missing in Action (by Sheriff of Nottingham)
in order to give Snape a happier outcome. Be warned that it's very dark indeed. If you prefer not to read it, the plot of Missing in Action can be summarised as follows:
Some time subsequent to the Ministry battle at the end of OotP, The Daily Prophet published a story claiming that Snape was a Death Eater, and Dumbledore defended him, stating publicly that Snape was his agent (which would not in itself necessarily prevent Snape from continuing to spy on Voldemort, since Voldemort knows that Dumbledore thinks Snape is his agent, but it would arouse the suspicions of Snape's fellow Death Eaters). During a raid on Hogwarts by Death Eaters Snape disappears, and the Prophet takes this as proof that it had been right all along, and claims that Snape had master-minded the raid and then gone back to his true master. Harry is convinced that the Prophet is right but Dumbledore tells him angrily that when Lupin dropped out of sight for a month he didn't assume that Lupin had betrayed the Order, and if he wouldn't think it of Lupin he shouldn't think it of Snape.
Four months later, Snape's barely-living body is dumped in one of the Potions store-rooms to await discovery, burned with acid, missing his left arm and leg and his right leg below the knee, with the corners of his mouth slit right back to the jaw and his belly sliced open and breeding maggots. He has been silenced so that he could not scream or call for help, and has probably been lying there for a day or more. He is so weak and dazed with pain that the students and substitute-teacher who find him think they've found his mutilated corpse, and at first even Madam Pomfrey isn't sure he's still alive.
During his captivity he has been starved to the point of death and forced to remain awake and aware the whole time, and a gloating letter from Voldemort reveals that he has also been the sexual plaything of most of the Death Eaters (and also claims, in passing, that Snape had been Sirius's lover and had had to cope with his grief all alone). He has been magically-bound so that he can't be healed and no pain-killers will work on him, and (thanks to a spell invented for the purpose by Peter Pettigrew) so that he will remain alive no matter what is done to him - although the latter curse is wearing off. Much to Harry's horror and guilt, Pomfrey and Dumbledore can do nothing for Snape except keep him company, even though he is far too stunned by pain to appreciate it, and wait for him to die.
Missing in Action was written before the publication of The Half-Blood Prince, and the whole sequence is therefore AU. We have tried, however, to make Lost and Found compatible with the background revealed in HBP and DH. The story follows canon closely, therefore, except that it diverges from the main or JKR time-line just after the end of OotP, at the point at which Dumbledore puts on the cursed Peverell ring, during the summer between Harry's fifth and sixth years. He seeks Snape's help immediately, instead of delaying as we are shown that he did in Snape's memories in Deathly Hallows, and so Snape is able to extend his life by two years, not one. This renders the teaching of Harry and the preparations for Dumbledore’s death less urgent, so Dumbledore did not extract Snape’s promise to kill him at the end of Harry’s sixth year, and Snape was not made DADA teacher that year because he was not expected to leave Hogwarts at the end of the year.
The aftershocks of the Ministry raid among the Death Eaters were slightly different and Lucius did not fall so far from grace or end up in Azkaban for as long, so Draco was not made a Death Eater at sixteen or ordered to kill Dumbledore to punish Lucius (and this version of Lucius is both nastier and more genuinely forceful than the one in canon). Consequently Snape never had to take the Unbreakable Vow, and Draco did not smuggle Death Eaters into the school, so Snape was able to treat Dumbledore for the poison he had drunk in the cave. Because Draco did not take the Dark Mark in the summer between fifth and sixth years, there was no accidental poisoning of Ron, and therefore no sudden, warm reconciliation between him and Hermione. He has split from Lavender and he and Hermione are getting along OK-ish, but they aren't really dating.
Lost and Found picks up where Missing in Action ends, minus the final two paragraphs in which Snape actually dies, except that a rationale for Snape's initial capture has been worked in, and the dates have been changed slightly to have the story take place while Harry and co. are still at school, whereas the original seems to be set two years later. The Prophet article quoted in Missing in Action, and published two days after Snape's disappearance, says that Harry had "graduated" at the end of "last year", and that four years have passed since Voldemort "rose again". If graduation means finishing school then that would set the story in 1999, a year after the end of Harry's seventh year and four years after Voldemort's re-embodiment in 1995 at the end of GoF – which raises questions as to why Harry is apparently still at Hogwarts (although if he is eighteen and no longer a student that does explain him calling Dumbledore "Albus" in the story).
However, given all the progress Dumbledore makes with uncovering Horcruxes etc. during HBP, it seems unlikely that Voldemort would still be in such a position of power by 1999, and for plot reasons I needed Snape's return to happen early in Harry's seventh year, in 1997, placing the Death Eater raid at the end of Harry's sxth year, like the canonical one. Since graduation in the UK refers only to university I felt free to interpret the Prophet's Americanised application of this term to a British secondary school as referring to Harry's OWLs in 1996, not his NEWTs in 1998, since OWLs are when a wizard becomes qualified to use a wand outside school. That would then place Snape's capture and the Prophet's story at the end of Harry's sixth year, and would mean the paper was dating Voldemort's return from 1993. That could be an error by the paper, which is not known for its accuracy. In fact Voldemort returned to the Riddle House, in something resembling corporeal form, in summer 1994 after being sought out by Pettigrew in Albania, but we don't really know what he was doing in Albania between being forced out of Quirrel in 1992 and located by Pettigrew in summer 1994, so the Prophet may be guessing, or may even know something we don't.
For my own purposes, therefore, I'm assuming that the Daily Prophet accused Snape of being a Death Eater soon after the Ministry battle in summer 1996, when ex-Minister Fudge told one of their reporters about Snape showing him the Dark Mark. To prevent the Board of Governors from demanding Snape's resignation, Dumbledore countered this by saying publicly that Snape was his agent. This did not of itself end his career as a spy, since Voldemort has known all along that Dumbledore thinks Snape is his agent - he just thinks he's wrong. But it inflamed Bellatrix's suspicions and caused her to go digging. Snape stayed on as Potions master (since there was no reason to think he would be leaving in a year), and the raid during which he disappeared occurred in summer 1997, in place of the Flight of the Prince episode and a few days after he had successfully treated Albus for poisoning following the pendant-horcrux incident in the cave.
The first few chapters of Lost and Found are written mainly by me, whitehound, although including input from cecelle, aloe and Dyce. Thanks are especially due to cecelle for advice on the medical bits.
Later chapters, in which the growing friendship between Snape and Hermione becomes a major factor, are written collaboratively between myself and Dyce, with Dyce writing the great majority of Hermione's dialogue and also some of Snape's scenes, and still with some input from cecelle and aloe. Most of the Snape/Hermione dialogue in later chapters was written like an extempore play, with whitehound doing Snape's voice and Dyce doing Hermione, and then just letting the characters talk to each other and seeing where it took us, with only an occasional steer to keep the overall plot on track. From chapter #26 onwards, after Dyce quit fandom to concetrate on motherhood, the story is written solo by whitehound.
So, to recap, Snape has been dumped at Hogwarts after four miserable months of torture and sexual abuse, hideously injured and barely alive, unable to be healed or helped but also unable to die (at least for some hours to come). Harry, that expert lateral thinker, is having a crisis of guilt for having doubted him. Now read on.
