Hoai-Tran Bui

USATODAY

"Always."

It's a word that gained so much more clarity and tragedy after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows revealed that the nefarious Professor Severus Snape was actually serving a nobler cause: protecting Harry from Voldemort out of love for Snape's childhood friend Lily Evans.

It was a reveal that stunned many and turned Snape into the most tragic character in the series -- even more so now with Alan Rickman's recent passing.

But Snape's backstory was a secret motivation known by few outside of Rowling and Rickman up until the reveal in the seventh book and the eighth movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. In a 2011 interview with RTÉ, Rickman said that Rowling told him a cryptic piece of information about Snape's character early on, but he kept a tight lid on what that was, even from the directors and producers.

"She gave me one little piece of information, which I always said I would never share with anybody and never have, and never will. It wasn't a plot point, or crucial in any tangible way, but it was crucial to me as a piece of information that made me travel down that road rather than that one or that one or that one."

But Rowling finally revealed what that piece of information she gave to Rickman was, after a fan asked her on Twitter.

Crying yet? Us too.

And if you're not, just watch the whole of Snape's story in chronological order below and be ready for the tears.

The Mothership remembers Alan Rickman