This is my first attempt at a Harry Potter fanfic. My apologies if yet another "Snape saves Harry" fanfic bores you.

This chapter is really a prologue, which hopefully excuses its short length. The chapters after this should be much longer.

When Harry was four, he saw an orca whale on television playing with its food. It had tossed a seal pup up in the air and thrown it to another whale, playing a lethal game of catch before ripping it to pieces minutes later. The camera had zoomed in on the killer whale's head and the blood-red water. And Harry, watching with morbid fascination, saw, and recognized, the enjoyment, the marvel, the pure fun the whale was having at the young seal's expense deep in its eyes. The narrator had later said that the behavior was instinct, merely an impulse, that the orca had not known what it was doing, or why. But Harry knew better. He had seen that look in his uncle's eyes. And, from what young Harry had experienced before, his uncle had known exactly what he was doing.

Harry, being of the age that he said whatever he thought, padded over to his uncle, and told him politely that he was a whale. He hadn't meant it that way, of course, even though his uncle was the size of one. His uncle just hadn't understood that Harry wanted to tell him that he acted like a bloodthirsty animal. Looking back on it now, Harry couldn't remember what happened afterwards. He only could recall his uncle standing over him, laughing, as he gave him the "whale look". That's what four-year-old Harry called it.

That look was burnt into his corneas.

It was the last thing that he had seen before the Dursley's had left him to die.

Hedwig was gone, courtesy of Aunt Marge's dog; Harry was forced to watch as the canine ripped her throat open, blood and feathers flying everywhere, which he had had to clean up. His wand had been thrown in the wood chipper along with his books, photo album, and clothes. Then everything had been burned. Harry was made to do it. He had sworn that he heard his mother scream when the flames had licked her picture.

His aunt had finally found a way to control his unruly hair, exactly a week after he had left Hogwarts. She had taken the leftover gasoline and matches and burned his hair off. Dudley had filmed Harry as he had been released from his uncle's grasp after Aunt Petunia had lowered the flaming match onto his hair. They all had laughed as he wildly ran into the house. Harry hadn't heard their laughs. He couldn't, over his screams.

There was no mirror in the shed that he was chained up in. He couldn't see the angry blisters that adorned his scalp. He couldn't see the obviously broken legs that lay at unnatural angles underneath him. He couldn't see the festering lashes on his back, which had become reacquainted with his uncle's belt. He couldn't see the blood dripping in time with his heart from his mangled hands; one had gotten caught in the wood chipper after he had desperately tried to grab his wand, and the other had gone the way of Hedwig.

But he was strangely almost ecstatic that he lay in darkness. He would have certainly thrown up if had seen his injuries, and he knew without a doubt that loosing the only food in his stomach would mean death. His stomach no longer pained him. It had been too long.

The rusty chain cut into his neck as his back arched. Voldemort was calling. He couldn't help the whimpers that forced their way out of his raw throat. Neither could he stop the tears of pain that ran down his bloody and pus-stained cheeks of their own accord. He cursed under his breath around the moans. He knew that he couldn't waste his body's precious supply of water.

He wanted to survive. He yearned to prove the Dursleys wrong, that he was strong enough to stay alive. But this battle was one he was losing. Badly.

As another surge of pain rivaling the Cruatious plowed into Harry, his hands involuntarily jerked upwards to claw at his scar as he had done so many times before. He screamed as his wrists made contact milliseconds later with the shackles that were bolted onto the pus-covered slab of wood that he lay on.

Time didn't exist as he screamed until he could scream no more. And then he simply convulsed. Harry didn't realize he was silently sobbing until he felt the absence of wetness on his cheeks after his ducts had been dried out.

His heart had never felt so empty. And yet his heart had never felt so heavy.

And this is how Snape found him.

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