For The Only Hope

by ausland

Dumbledore wouldn't have left trouble magnet Harry Potter defenseless for years at Hogwarts. At thirteen Hermione becomes his protector, working and training with Severus, giving up her childhood to ensure Harry's safety. As times passes, Severus becomes teacher, mentor, friend, and eventually lover. A story of spies, plots, and love. M in Part Three. Winner of SSHG Best WIP Award.

29. Author's Note: Plagiarism

My dear readers,

It has come to my attention that someone has made an attempt to plagiarize this story.

I am not sure how to handle this delicately- I am furious, shaking and furious that someone could do this. In case you were unaware, I have been working on this story for years. I just passed 400 pages and 230,000 words- the longest thing I have ever written. On here it's almost 200000 words- but this was not how I wanted to reach that milestone with you guys. It is the work of years and typing away in my rare spare time. It would have been easy to never write it, it would have been easy to never publish it. I almost didn't publish it, afraid of what would happen if I did.

And now someone has seen fit to take my story- that I am terribly proud of- and call it their own.

I have taken steps to report it and I contacted the 'author' to ask her to take it down. Thanks to the person who brought this to my attention- I'm not sure if you want to be publicly recognized or not, but thank you so, so much. I would never have caught it.

But. Now comes the question of what to do next.

There will be no update on Friday, first of all. I don't have Chapter 32 done anyway- and I don't feel like I'll be working on FTOH at all in the remainder of the week. I'm not sure at all when there will be a new update. I am disappointed and frustrated and- it's a sick kind of feeling, when you are helpless against others taking what is yours. But I am not taking this story down, or stopping to write entirely. I'm not going to punish those who like this story because someone was stupid.

It's strange- I've seen artists on tumblr furious about big companies stealing their work, and I've sympathized with them. Some of my favorite stories had this happen to them too, and I felt bad for the authors. But this- this is something I could not have imagined.

Y'all know I'm young. I'm a kid (kind of). Barely an adult. I've never dealt with anything like this before. Advice would be appreciated.

I worry that I'm over reacting, but... It is true that I almost never posted this story. It was going to be for me and me alone. I loved this pairing- but literally everyone else I knew was telling me how disgusting it was, how awful. The only person who understood was my cousin Gwen- she encouraged me to do this. I wanted to write a story to prove to all those people telling me it was awful that this could be sweet and loving and still strong and still the essence of this pairing- a snarky bastard and a woman who loves him.

So I'm upset.

I'm just rambling now, so I'm going to end this letter to my readers.

Thanks to those who support me. Thanks to those people- those lovely, lovely people- who review each chapter. Thanks to those who add and favorite it and follow it. Thank you for appreciating it.

And I'm sorry this happened.

Ausland