Dear reader,

Thank you for taking out time from your busy life to read this letter. I hope this will be the last time I write for fanfiction . net.

Over the course of fifteen monthes, I am grateful to have your love and support for letting me write, express myself and earn the courage to actually voice my thoughts. I am indebted to you for it.

But I also feel sorry that I have started to lose my patience with some or most of the readers who check my story as guests. In my opinion, one doesn't need two brains to understand what I am writing about. But somehow, people these days, have lost their thinking powers. They look but they don't see. They react but they don't take responsibility of their actions. They scream at others but they don't want to listen what the other party wants to say. Honestly, I am tired now and I have, therefore, decided to move my stories to a more secure place, where coward bullies won't be badgering me. But before I go into that topic, please allow me a few minutes to tell the circumstances in which I started writing The Poisoned Apple.

10th June, 2014. That night, I was bored to death and to get rid of it, I Googled 'Snape stories'. He is my most favorite character, as I believe my name implies. What came were some Snape and Hermione stories on ffnet. I frowned. Snape and Hermione? That meant it was a teacher-student relationship story. Feeling curious, I clicked on the one that had almost 1K reviews. It's called 'Not Only a Granger'. I read it just to see how the author was working with this unusual couple. I won't say it was bad; it wasn't something very rocking either. For me, it was a good time pass that night.

From that day, I kind of developed a hobby of reading fanfictions whenever I was feeling bored. After finishing almost all long ones about Snape and Hermione, I moved on to another pairing. Draco and Hermione, what is more popularly known to its fans as Dramione.

I already told my readers quite a few times that I am not a Dramione shipper. I never was, I never will be. This pair, in my opinion, won't work in the long run. Some says, 'opposites attract' but not for long. We are humans, not magnets where South and North Pole would be attracted to each other. The most natural question that follows this statement of mine is, if I am not a Dramione Shipper, why I write a story that is a Dramione? I have answer even to that.

As I said before, I moved to Dramione stories and within a short span of time read all the ones that tempted me. There were lots of fascinating plots. I, however, never read Isolation or Broken or the ones that are very famous. I was more interested in less known stories and I read them to see how the author was executing the plot. I love writing and I wasn't criticizing their work even though I didn't believe in the Dramione pairing. I was actually learning from them, trying to see how people write something that could capture someone's attention to make him or her to read it. While reading through these less known stories, I came across 'Absolution' by SqueakyPen. I read all the five chapters of it and then time kind of stopped for me.

I stared at the screen of my cell phone for a very long time wondering what I just read. Was that a story? What did the author had in her mind whiling writing it? What was she thinking when she wrote Draco as a serial rapist? Draco Malfoy, even though I don't like this character, is not a rapist. In fact, he can never be a rapist. Even the idea is absurd and humiliating. Voldemort? Yes. Greyback? Yes. Lucius? Yes. But Draco? No. He was only a bully, a very unpleasant character but he didn't have that thing, you know, to rape a woman. And who was it that he raped? Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her time. Draco couldn't kill Dumbledore. How could he rape Hermione?

After that, I stopped reading fanfictions but that plot somehow didn't leave my mind. Whenever I was alone, I would think about it, and ask myself, why? why? would a woman who claims that she understands that rape is nothing but a violent crime, wrote that story with that plot? Was it a way to make Draco and Hermione come closer? Was it a way to show Draco's redemption? That word is being overused these days, redemption. I didn't get an answer. The author, it seemed have discarded the story too. There was no way I could ask her and know.

So after several days of playing with that question, one fine morning, I sat down by my table and started writing The Poisoned Apple. I was determined now. I wasn't going to let this get away.

So, that was how TPA started and it is still going. I am aware that this story doesn't have the reviews I had wanted it to have but then again, I never wanted reviews for my personal glory. It was my first time publishing something and I asked for constructive criticism so that I could improve. I never asked anyone to praise my work. That story has nothing that is praiseworthy. I know it. My sole goal was, while writing it, to emphasize, to point out that rape was not a joke. I wrote every side of a woman's trauma who had been brutally raped: her fears, her insecurities, her attempts to move on, and her distrusts with men. I tried as much as I could. I don't know if it was enough but I tried and I will try my best.

Also, I never tried to make the rape look like someone (read Voldemort or senior Death Eaters) forced Draco to do it on Hermione so that the former could remorse and the latter forgave him, falling in love eventually. Forcing one to rape his classmate is physically and scientifically not possible. A man can't erect his phallus without any stimulation. He has to intend to do it, prepare him body to penetrate her forcibly.

But there was one flaw to it. Draco, I have already said, is not a rapist. I wasn't going to write it like a forced act too. So I took a way between. In TPA, he did it but he did it when he was uncontrollably angry, so much that he had no control over himself. This was applicable only, I repeat, only for Draco Malfoy, because I know that Rowling never wrote that character that way. For other rapists, I have just one sentence: I want to cut off their overlong members.

I know, I have taken a lot of your time by now and I will be short this time. I want to tell my readers why, despite not being a Dramione shipper, I write this very ugly story.

I write TPA to say that rape is not a joke; I write to say that don't write love stories, redemption stories based on it; I write it tell my readers to not appreciate stories with such plot, if they are women and understand what rape is. Because doing that is letting down and humiliating all the rape survivors who are out there. I am confident that any of my female readers will never fall in love with their rapists, should such incident ever occur to them. Then why read or write something that someone will hate to happen to her own life? Why be so ignorant? For Dramione fun? I am pretty sure there are thousands of other ways to write a Dramione but please don't use rape as a plot. It's just abominable.

Like my esteemed guest readers, I could have told all that to those writers too, left them a scathing review and showed them how big a man I am. I didn't do that. I am not a coward. I didn't come to ffnet for reviews or fame; no one even knows who I really am. Besides, those writers used their freedom of speech and I am using mine. Instead, I write my story and I knock on your conscience. I now leave a question to you. Have you heard me, did you get my message? Or was it all wasted? All those words and chapters?

With all these tall talks, I take leave from you, dear reader.

To the guest reviewer who finally made me take this step, I have these words: I don't care if my story is ugly (I know it already), or is in a bad need of a beta or my English sucks or my facts suck even more or that I don't check geography. I am not writing a thesis paper or making a documentary on weathers of Paris or Marseilles or number of students in Sorbonne. TPA is a fiction, not your Stephen Hawking's book on the creation of universe. If you have spite against my writing, be my guest (you already are a guest reader, anyway) and leave as much reviews as it pleases you. I will not delete them anymore. Besides, I am pretty sure you don't have the necessary brains to understand what I wrote about, what my real motive was. But I can say that cowards, those who don't have enough courage to log-In and contact me or leave a signed in review, have only one place: I .S ., those cowards who killed 153 unsuspecting people in Paris last night and showed the world what the big man they are. Coward guest reviewers have a bright future, in my opinion, in those coward terrorist gangs, happily hiding behind black masks and killing people in the name of religion and jihad. Jihad is not killing people. Jihad is killing the demon, the evil, inside.

From chapter 86, The Poisoned Apple will be updated in Archive of Our Own. As far as I know that site is free from this guest nuisances and requires a registration to review fictions. Those who are still interested to read it, you can find SeveranSnape there, she welcomes you there graciously. Those who are not, Au revoir. It's been a pleasant journey.

Thanks for reading till the end.

Regards,

Severan Snape.