Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived in a cupboard. And he was all alone, and no one wanted him.

This boy grew up under the epithet of Freak - for a time, he even believed that was his name. He was raised with work and neglect, and the belief that he was unworthy ever of love. He was raised with fists and shouts and the dark of a cupboard.

His life is defined by the slamming of a cupboard door, lit by the light of a single bulb that flickers but somehow never goes out.

This boy is like that light bulb. He will waver and flicker, but he will never quite go out. It is poignant and metaphoric, and the boy soldiers on because he is the hero in this fairytale and that's what heroes do.

The hero of this tale suffers. He suffers for ten years but we do not hear each detail, his adoring public, just the details of his triumph, because we don't want to hear in detail that our hero has suffered, it is enough to know that he has. It makes him all the more a hero. We forget, often, that this hero is a child.

Then one day, the boy is whisked away from a world which hates him and hides him in a cupboard with a light bulb on the verge of going out, and into a world where he is revered and exalted, and held out in the open under a spotlight that will never fade.

Brave new world.

For a short time this world of wonder and magic, of giants and dragons; this fairytale world of omniscient headmasters and boy heroes and a larger than life, dyed-in-the-wool villain, is beautiful. Scary and intimidating at times, but awe-inspiring, fantastic, idealistic.

In this brave new world, he is placed in the House of Heroes, and there is, of course, a House of Villains, the antithesis of all he fights.

And this is good and right and concrete, because this is a fairytale and there is no room for Grey.

They even have the correct symbols - lions for the Heroes, who are good and brave and righteous, and snakes for the Villains, who are cunning and cruel and slippery.

(And these villains are only children but so's our hero, so we overlook that)

But then it all gets messed up.

The head of the House of Villains is a wholly confusing, morally ambiguous man. But he is cruel and sharp-tongued, so we will all hate him for upsetting our hero. Except that he saves our hero. Except that he protects our hero.

We hate him because he acknowledges that our hero is a child. Just a child, with sellotaped glasses and knobbly knees and messy hair. A child who looks out with innocence and naivety and hope for this brave new world.

Instead of finding this endearing, like the rest of us (how pure he must be, to still be so innocent!), Severus Snape knows this will get the boy killed.

So he keeps our hero grounded. Keeps him from getting too lost in the fairytale.

He is cruel and sharp-tongued, and he uses this to his advantage. He is willing to let the boy hate him, willing to be the Bad Guy, as long as the boy stays aware that the fairytale has its holes.

Severus Snape is happy for it to continue this way, to save the boy in secret, and this routine works well for four and a half years.

But then he must teach the boy to block his mind from the Real Bad Guy.

When he looks into Harry Potter's mind, he is given an insight that throws his world off kilter.

Several people know that their hero was raised in a cupboard. Snape knows that he never left it.

He can no longer offer help from a distance. He offers help in subtle ways at first, then more directly. Harry Potter, being the hero and pure of heart, accepts these changes, admittedly a little warily at first, but with an open, willing heart. They start to have conversations, strained at first, then becoming more comfortable.

Without either of them realising it, they begin to like each other.

The fairytale explodes.

The hero and the antagonist are friends.

It's Wrong. This is not to happen.

But Harry Potter is still the Hero, so he fights the Villain and wins. But the fairytale has gone wrong and it kills the hero too. Harry Potter lies dying on the battlefield, in the arms of Severus Snape. The golden boy of the House of Heroes dies held gently in the arms of the head of the House of Villains.

Their hero dies, and he is built back up into a great hero, a superhuman, someone of newspaper articles and chapters in books. He cannot be brought back down, cannot be changed back from paper and print into the child he was, the child with broken glasses and knobbly knees and messy hair, the child that looked at the brave new world with wide eyes, the child who dared befriend a man of Grey, and dared step out of the fairytale role and opened his eyes to a world of neither Black nor White, but a rainbow of Grey.

Once upon a time, there was an unloved boy who lived in a cupboard. The boy was taken by a giant to a world of magic and he stopped the monsters and beat the bad guy and saved the day.

Once upon a time.