TITLE: Hate & Love - Chapter 1/?
CHAPTER: The Letter
AUTHOR: Teigra
E-MAIL: teigra_kefira@yahoo.com
PAIRING: Harry/Severus
SERIES: Backstory to 'White Tigers and Golden Dragons'
ARCHIVE: my diary, this archive and anywhere else that people want it, just ask first.
CLASSIFICATION: PG-13 (for now)
SUMMARY: Harry is saved from the Dursleys by Severus Snape
DISCLAIMER: I don't own them... She does *points to JKR* and I am making no money from this, I'm just enjoying sharing some of my own crazy ideas.
AUTHORS NOTE: I have a wonderful new beta reader who was wonderful enough to to go over this for me. [hugs Markus a whole lot] Thank you hun. You saved this thing from being the terror it was in grammar mistakes. I was working on 'White Tigers and Golden Dragons' (which needs to be fixed to fit this now) when I realized I needed a back story to an upcoming scene. This didn't turn out anything like I thought it would... yet once I started writing, it just wrote itself.

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Dear Professor Snape,

I'm writing this to you Professor because you are the only one who would truly understand and not judge me for what I'm about to say. If this seems broken, I'm sorry. I can only write this in secret and I don't know how long I have. If I'm discovered, this will never get to you.

If you are reading this, I didn't make it through this summer. I really tried to keep my chin up, to remember that I'm needed to win this ruddy war, but I couldn't take it any longer. It all started back at the end of forth year when Cedric died. I knew it was all my fault, no matter how many times I was told other wise. I told him to take the cup with me and I am the one that brought him to his death, even if I didn't know it at the time.

I should have known. I'm the one who has the dreams about Voldemort, I'm the one who knew something was wrong from the first day of the Tournament when my name came out of the bloody Goblet. I should have realized it was a trap. Instead I got someone I considered a friend killed, my godfather pushed into hunting down active Death Eaters, and you... you back into spying for Dumbledore, which could get you killed.

None of this would have happened if I had died way back when this all began, yet, time after time when my life has been in jeopardy, I've come away alive at the expense of someone else's life. My mom when I was a baby, Professor Quirrell in my first year, Ginny nearly died in my second year, Cedric in forth year and now Professor Trimble. I have four lives on my hands because I haven't stopped Voldemort yet and that doesn't even count the lives that I have seen snuffed out in my sleep and those taken by Death Eaters. I hold myself responsible for each of those as well. I should be able to do something.

If it hadn't been for the fact that I was finally allowed to go to Ron's last summer, I don't think I would have made it. You may not believe me, but life is hell here. It started to get better when I got my school letter for the first time, at least then the beatings stopped, but someone just thought they would be kind and let the Dursleys know what happened during the Third Task and Vernon has used that to his advantage ever since. And he is right, I am a murderer, I deserve everything that I have gotten and will get.

Last summer, the beatings started up again. Nothing too bad... nothing that wouldn't heal before school started or could be hidden under my robes. Between those and the nightly Voldemort dreams, I began to think that maybe it was my turn to join my parents. However, Mr Weasley came to get me the day before my fifteenth birthday, saving me. Literally.

My time with them lifted my spirits and I thought that I'd be able to make it threw the rest of the year.

I was wrong.

Every other night I was dreaming of Voldemort, when I wasn't under a dreamless sleep potion or just not sleeping at all. I know I should have gone to Dumbledore, but I couldn't take his sad looks any longer. I felt like I was letting him down when I couldn't give any more information than I could. I wasn't a spy for crying out loud. I was a child who was never allowed to have a childhood, I was an unwilling pawn in someone else's game. I never asked to be the saviour of the Wizarding World. I never asked to have this bloody scar, but I wouldn't wish this pain on anyone else. At least I am trained to take said pain.

Then I was nearly kidnapped, again. It was the last Hogsmeade weekend of the year and if it hadn't been for Professor Trimble, I would have been taken... again. Instead, because of his fast thinking, I am still alive and he was found three days later, dead. No one would tell me how he died, yet I know, how could I not, remember, I am connected to Voldemort, I got to enjoy the entire show, if you call that enjoying. If you recall, I spent all three of those days puking, screaming, crying and begging for it to stop. Yet, I couldn't do anything to help find him. They never showed where he was and kept him in a dark room.

That would have never happened if Voldemort had been allowed to take me. He would still be alive and his blood wouldn't be on my hands too.

And now I'm back in this hellhole. The place that I'm supposed to be safest because of the wards. Bull shit.

Vernon didn't start his normal behaviour of beating me until over a week ago, yet it seems like it has gone on forever. It's much worse than it was in previous years. I know that at least half of my ribs are broken and my left arm is totally useless right now.

And I also know, no one is coming to save me this year.

The day the beatings started, was the day I got the letter from Ron saying I wouldn't be able to go there this year. Vernon caught me reading it and what anger he had been holding in, was unleashed. He had been expecting me to leave, he had been acting good because one of the neighbours had caught sight of me last year, I thought he was going to kill me at first... and I welcomed it.

Professor, please don't blame them, harm them or let anyone know. I could have stopped it, but I deserved every kick, punch and slap.

I am sorry I wasn't the student you wanted me to be. I tried my hardest to live up to your expectations. I got ten OWL's and my grades were only a few points below Hermione and Draco.

I want you to know, I am not my father and I am not perfect. I grew up differently from him. He knew about magic and grew up with it all around him, where as, I didn't find out about it until my eleventh birthday. My father had an easy life, where I have had to work for everything I have ever gotten. I wish I had grown up with my family, with said easy life, but instead I grew up starving and with broken bones. No I am not my father, I am Harry, just Harry.

I'm going to end this now, as the hour chimes my sixteenth birthday. Please let Dumbledore know that I don't blame him for the crap I've gone through. He didn't know and I never told.

Let Sirius know that I love him and that I know he will be free someday.

And Professor, please know that I respect you and love you. You are the only one that hasn't treated me like a celebrity in all the years I've known you. I don't know why, but in the last year I've come to understand you better, more than you would think and I realized that fine line between hate and love. I realized that I never did hate you. I just didn't know how to understand you when I met you back in my first year. Now I know it's not really anger that you were throwing at me. Well, at least not all the time. I don't understand it really, but there has been something between us since the first moment I met you.

Oh shit, I hear movement in the hall. Professor, I would never take my life, but if I don't make it back to school this year, it wasn't their fault. They couldn't help themselves.

Harry Potter

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It's been three days since I went to pick the boy up, three days since I found him laying in a bloody mass on the floor, three days since the portkey took us to this dungeon and three days since I read that letter. That letter which has forever burned itself into my memory.

I wouldn't have even gone to the boys place if the wards hadn't started to weaken around it. I thought he must have been the cause of them starting to fall, but I had no idea. I had expected to have to go and tell the boy off for making me give up my summer for him. Instead, I have spent the last three days trying to save his life. I don't think even Dumbledore understands the wards around this boys home is fed by his life force. That's what keeps him safe when he's away from Hogwarts, at least, safe from my master. And I would have never known if those muggles hadn't almost killed him.

I arrived there seven days after the boy's birthday, five years and seven days from the first moment I saw him in the Apothecary with Hagrid. I knew... knew from the first moment I had laid eyes on him, I had found my soul mate. The only person who could make me complete and he was about to start his first year. Of course I knew who it was, Dumbledore had had the audacity to ask me to pick the child up, until I reminded the dense man what would happen if my former colleagues saw me with the child. So Hagrid got the coveted job of playing babysitter for the day. However, I couldn't help myself by being there to see the one person who would one day set me free. He looked like an angel and I had to make him hate me. For both our sakes.

If I had know what he was going home to, what he had come from, I would have never tried so hard to get him expelled. I didn't realize that he didn't have a family who loved him. Who would? James and Lily were two of the kindest people I knew back in school, who would have know that Lily's family would be so... different.

And even though I tried to make him hate me, he never really did. I know that now. He thought he was dying, he thought they were killing him, so he admitted it, in this letter. This letter that has changed my entire view of him.

I haven't yet told Dumbledore about what I found at the Dursleys. I can't. I can't even send him a note to tell him we have gotten here all right, if you consider this all right. We're stuck here with only each others company until September 1st and with no contact with the outside world.

At least the old man had the foresight to have my laboratory sent to where ever we are. At least I can still make every thing that is necessary to care for Potter. I'm sure that these walls will start to close in on me once the boy finally wakes up, but right now, my lab is too far away from his side.

I've thought about moving his bed into the lab so that I could work and keep an eye on him, but I don't want to move him too much. When I first got him here, he had several broken bones, internal bleeding, a punctured lung, a concussion, several minor injuries that I haven't looked at yet because I've been more concerned with the major ones and he is severely malnourished. By the time I found him, it was too late to simply fix much of it by magic quickly and I have had to spend hours forcing potions down his throat and casting spells to quicken his natural healing processes. I'm sure he was quite grateful to be unconscious when I forced the Skele-Gro into him, after removing all the broken bones.

I'm not all that worried about the internal bleeding any longer. I've taken care of as much of that as I possibly could with spells and potoins. It should finish healing on its own in a couple of days.

What I am still worried about is the concussion. I don't know exactly how long he's been out. Has it only been three days, or since he wrote this letter ten days ago?

He was scared when he wrote those last few lines. Couldn't help themselves? Everyone can help themselves, it's not that hard. Even Macnair never killed without orders, though he did enjoy the torture. No, those muggles went too far this time.

I could just tell the boys homicidal godfather what the muggles did to him and that would be the end of that problem. However, Harry would never forgive me. He asked that I tell no one.

No, right now they don't even remember the fact that Harry, the *Boy*, had even been there this summer. I want to know where to find them when I get out of here. If I had let them keep their memories, I'm sure I'd never be able to find them again. Maybe I can talk the boy into letting me play with them for a bit. Nothing lasting, but something they would remember... forever.

Come on boy, wake up. You've slept long enough. I need to know you're all right.

Maybe if I go work on another potion, the time will pass faster. Seems like a watched Potter never wakens.