When he'd come to Hogwarts almost five years ago, it hadn't stayed a secret for long, not with Harry's middle name and jet-black hair. Despite the last name of Potter that his mother had apparently insisted on, he was definitely a Snape. He was no less a Snape than Kenai was, his stupid half brother who was three months younger than he was. They had the same hair, the same face even. The only difference was that Kenai was taller, stronger, well fed, and well loved. Heaven forbid if Kenai should ever come to school in the rags Harry appeared in each September, covered in bruises and looking half starved. And Heaven forbid if their father should ever throw any look less than contempt towards Harry.

At first Harry had believed it was because he had been placed in Gryffindor, while Kenai had gone straight to Slytherin. To an eleven year old mind it seemed plausible that this could be the cause for his father to loath him enough to assign detention on his first day of class, or to ignore him at every other opportunity. Harry probably would have kept on believing it if it hadn't been for Kenai pointing out to him that his father had left Harry with the Dursleys for 11 years and would continue to leave him there regardless of house placement. ‘Do you really think if he cared he would let you walk around looking like that? I mean really, come on, there's holes in your elephant jeans and tape around your glasses. He's glad you don't have our last name. You may look like a Snape, but don't kid yourself. You'll never be one.' It had been a harsh awakening for Harry, and since that first time Kenai had talked to him, his eyes had been opened, and he had realized how right his brother was.

Harry had further punished himself that first year hoping that while their father hated him for some unknown reason, that his brother would not. At every opportunity Harry had worked hard to befriend Kenai, even sending him a gift at Christmas time. No such gift had been returned however, and at every turn Kenai took the chance to laugh at Harry, ridicule him, try to turn his friends against him, and even bully him in good measure with the other Slytherins in their year. Harry had never cried so much in his whole life as he had done in his first year at Hogwarts.

If he had thought it would get better for him in his second year, he had been wrong. When he'd beaten Kenai on the dueling platform at the first dueling club meeting, their father had come down hard on him, giving him detention each day after that for a month for one little reason or another. He didn't have his hair combed right, his tie wasn't straight, there was a rip in his second-hand robes, he had brewed a potion wrong... the list never ended. Never mind the fact that Kenai had access to potions to make his hair lie a little flatter, or the fact that Harry'd never had a father to show him how to properly do up a tie, or someone to pay for new robes, or a Potions Master to tutor him all summer long in potions.

At least he had his friends though. Ron and Hermione had been great, and he'd had a crush on Ginny since his second year when she'd come to school. Sometimes in the summer he was allowed to visit the Weasley's, and they doted on him as they did their other children. He was even lucky enough to be friends with some of the other Gryffindors like Neville and a Ravenclaw in Ginny's year named Luna. Not any of them were popular, not like Kenai and his crowd, but they had each other, and without them, Harry would have run away a long time ago, and never come back.

Harry sighed as the train rolled northward towards his fifth year of torment, and Hermione sat in the seat next to him fussing about his black eye.

"Forget it," he said, waving her away. "It's nothing."

"But doesn't it hurt? I'll bet the trolley lady sells ointment or bruise balm."

"Just forget it, ok Hermione? I don't have the money."

Ron gave him a sympathetic look. His family didn't have a lot of money to go around either. As it stood, Harry had just enough money from his mother's vault to get him through seventh year if he really stretched it and continued to buy second hand things. Thankfully this year he'd gotten some of his books from the Weasleys, since they had two sets of everything from Fred and George being the same year in school.

Hermione bit her lip and looked like she wanted to ask how it had happened, but didn't, and Harry was grateful. He didn't want to talk about the Dursleys or his wretched summer. Every night he'd dreamt of Voldemort in the graveyard, and every night he saw Cedric fall lifeless to the hard, cold earth once again. Every night there was a new punishment to pay for waking Uncle Vernon. Last night's punishment had been the black eye, and Harry wished that instead he could have just been made to sleep out in the shed again. At least the shed was bigger than his cupboard. It was colder, and there were spiders, but he didn't have to worry about screaming in his sleep in the dead of night and waking the house up.

When Ron finally got Hermione off of the subject of Harry's health by involving her in a discussion on Transfiguration (which Harry was grateful for), Harry pulled out his tattered old journal. Taped in the front cover was a single worn picture of his mother holding him as a newborn baby, with a small, tired smile on her face. Severus was beside her, also with a smile, but Harry tried not to look at him as he opened the journal each day to write. There was no, dear journal nonsense, as some people often wrote. No, these were pages filled with the words he could never say to his secret father. They went all the way back to his first year. Hermione had given him the journal for Christmas and told him he could write everything down if he wanted. It was really the only thing that helped.

Perusing over old entries, he noted how his demeanor had changed across the pages from year to year. His first year ramblings were filled with idle excitement over learning magic and being in a new place, and about trying to become friends with Kenai. Enough of that nonsense. He flipped to his second year, and snorted at the hopeful words he found there. ‘Maybe someday I can do something to finally make you proud of me... I bet Kenai will like me then too.'

By his third year he had been less optimistic and had taken to writing about the different ways in which Kenai had found to torture him, and begun asking questions such as, ‘What was my mum like? Why didn't you stay together? Why do you hate me so much?'

And then there had been last year. It was hard having your own father and brother hate you. Add most of the school to that and it made up for the most miserable year yet. He had begun to pretend that his father was really reading the letters and offering him comfort, and had written all the things in there that he wanted to be comforted for. His last entry had been the night Cedric had died. ‘I need you more than anything, and you're not here. Why aren't you here?'

Harry unclipped the Muggle pen from the inside of the journal where he always kept it, and put the date on a new page. He wanted to write about his nightmares... even about how he had missed writing in the journal over the summer, but could not bring himself to talk about the last night of the Tri-Wizard tournament. Instead, he felt angry about the black eye, and decided to write about that.

‘Dear Dad. Bet you didn't know that they beat me at that rotten house where you sentenced me to. What would you do if I obliviated Kenai's memory and switched bodies with him with Polyjuice? Then he'd be the one living in a cupboard under the stairs, doing chores all day in the hot sun and getting a black eye for having nightmares in the night.'

The train began to slow, and Harry looked out the dark window. They were pulling into Hogsmead. Clipping the pen back to the journal, he stood and put on his robes over his Muggle clothes and stuck his wand in his back pocket.

Somehow he got separated from Ron and Hermione on the busy platform in the cool, damp air, and ended up missing the carriage they were on. He ended up instead on a carriage with Draco Malfoy, another straggler who'd missed a carriage with his group of friends.

As the carriage jumped and began to move forward, Draco eyed him carefully, especially his black eye. After a good five minutes of silence, he asked, "Why do you keep coming back?"

Harry frowned. Draco had never been nice to him, but he didn't run in the same group that Kenai did, despite being in the same year and house. He had also never been quite as bad to Harry as Kenai had been, and Harry considered his answer to him carefully.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know how you can stay with them being the way they are to you... Kenai and... your dad I mean." Draco gave another meaningful look to Harry's black eye and Harry looked away momentarily.

"They didn't do that."

"But they left you where somebody did it."

"Well where the hell am I supposed to go?" Harry suddenly bit out. In his third year he'd secretly applied to Durmstrang and gotten accepted, but within the acceptance letter was a note saying that he needed a parent or guardian to officially enroll him. The Dursley's would never do it, and neither would Severus Snape.

"I was just curious was all," Draco said, and turned away for the rest of the trip up the dark drive.

When they had finally reached the stone steps to the Entrance Hall, the last ones to arrive, Harry climbed carefully off of the carriage, not wanting to aggravate any of his other new injuries, and made his way up the stairs. Before he could make it inside however, a shadow fell over him from the bright light spilling out. He looked up and paled.

"Fighting were we Potter? Best schedule a detention for tonight. Go and find Mr. Filch while your peers are at the feast." His father strode away, not even looking back as Harry's shoulders slumped forward. This would have been his first real meal in almost two weeks.

Later that night, after three hours of grueling detention, which consisted of cleaning the boy's loo on three floors, Harry dropped onto his four-poster in Gryffindor tower. Thoughts of sleep filled his weary mind, but thoughts of hate filled it also, and he pulled the journal and pen from his robe pocket.

‘Bet you didn't know I applied and got accepted to Durmstrang in my third year, did you dad? I just wanted to get away from you.

P.S. I hate you.'

Then he promptly fell asleep, drifting into nightmares of Cedric being murdered again and again, because Harry had messed up and taken the cup with him.