"Bear with me," you say, as if this isn't the most amazing and flattering feedback I ever could have asked for.
I'm so glad you liked the story. I was dearly hoping, based on your prompts, that I was heading in the right direction (which just happens to be a very self-indulgent direction for me). I kind of love writing Easter egg stories where people so inclined can pick up hints here and there and make their own meaning.
It also delights me that he identifies Snape through his family resemblance to the sheep-breeding Princes.
Having roots in a small community myself, I've always liked the idea (which we miss out on a little in canon, as it's from Harry's POV) that wherever you go in the wizarding world, someone knows one of your relatives.
I love that Aberforth leaves him to it without a word, incurious and not presuming to jolly him out of it. And that he immediately seeks and finds confirmation of a bad omen.
I like to think that Aberforth is every bit as canny about people as his brother - but with a policy of non-interference, because when you interfere in people's lives, you end up responsible for whatever sticky end they inevitably come to.
This is one of the swiftest and best summings-up of Snape's accent change I've read. It's just right that this would be what spurs Aberforth to mockery, and it's even better that the mockery goes right over Snape's head; he really isn’t that experienced, certainly not in social niceties. His cleverness and social-climbing are weirdly naïve, which isn't at all the same thing as 'innocent.'
I've always been interested in how the Death Eaters really operated, and while I know there's a tendency to downplay Snape's culpability, I think 'naive' rather than 'innocent' is the perfect way to put it. I think Voldemort wanted followers, not a movement, and that a painfully class- and blood-conscious youth with anger and empathy issues would be easier to make use of than a legitimately suave evil genius. I like the idea of a young Snape who actually aspires to be worse than he is.
"One sloppy gobble and I'm yours for life. I've been pining away for you for a month, and now that it's past eleven and you look like a corpse, I plan to have my wicked way with you." Ahahaha, how could Snape not fall head over heels?
I maintain that young Snape might have turned out better with more sarcastic moderates as role modesl in his life.
The scene in which Snape takes refuge in the bath after the tragedy at Godric's Hollow is beautifully understated and heartwrenching. His overwhelming loneliness is terrible, and although Aberforth leaving him to his misery may be a kindness, the sense that he wouldn't interfere if the boy chose to kill himself is chilling. It suggests he knows Snape has done something worth killing himself for. Still, it's more respectful than Albus taking advantage of Snape's grief to manipulate him into service. (Excuse me while I sit here and grind my axe.)
Grind away. I think Aberforth knows a thing or two about not being able to live with yourself (and that the wrist he rubs against his hip just might be scarred) and is the sort of person to believe that making someone stay and suffer is, at worst, more cruel than letting them choose their end, and at best not something he's authorized to interfere with. This is obviously not the view of the author, but I think there's very little of Aberforth's life that doesn't exist in the shadow of what happened to his sister, or rather, in not knowing exactly what happened to her.