Disclaimer: This fanfiction is based on the characters and situations created by J.K. Rowling, and belongs to her, several publishers including but not limited Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, Carlsen Verlag and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made with this and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Summary: Harry is attacked and the only way Snape can save him is to turn him, forging an eternal bond. Meanwhile the world is still in turmoil after the defeat of Voldemort and even Hogwarts has become a battleground between light and dark with Draco caught in the middle. Vampire!Snape Vampire!Harry Slash SS/HP, eventual Vampire!Draco and SS/HP/DM.

Beta reader: Much thanks to Iriya!

Chapter 1- Attack

Theodore Nott waited patiently in the shadowed alcove down the hall from the Potions classroom. From where he stood he had a pretty good view of inside the classroom where Professor Snape was supervising detention. Scrunching up his sharp nose at the putrid smell wafting from the room, Nott checked his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. It was almost time.

Inside, the Potions Master glared balefully over the top of the Potions Journal Weekly he had been surreptitiously reading while keeping an eye on his student, one Harry Potter. The boy was simply hopeless. He had nearly destroyed his classroom with his blatant disregard for potions safety protocol, and blown up his cauldron. The resultant malodorous sludge and thick smoke covered the floor and coated the walls, so that even now, five days later, the potions classroom still faintly smelled of week old vomit. It was a debacle worthy of the perpetual catastrophe personified by the Longbottom boy.

Severus Snape took great pleasure that day in giving the Boy-Who-Lived the dressing down of his life, loudly and venomously in front of the whole class. He chuckled softly into his reading material as he recalled the delightfully vivid shade of red Potter had turned in his humiliation, being sentenced to two weeks of detention and responsible for the loss of fifty points from Gryffindor.

It was Friday night, the last night of his first week of detentions. Harry kneeled on his hands and knees, scrubbing- without magic- at the crusted grime that still remained on the floor from his potions accident. He shifted restlessly, the hard stone floors of the dungeons painful on his bony knees and his fingers growing red and raw from the nightly vigorous scrubbing. Since Monday, he spent his time in detention alternating between cleaning and throwing glares at his hated professor, who contented himself with throwing glares and insinuations about the abundance, or rather lack of, his intelligence right back.

Finally the professor rose from his seat behind his high wooden desk. "That's enough now, Potter," he spat. He gathered up his potions journal and a pile of corrected student's essays before he glared at the boy gingerly raising himself from the floor. "I will see you bright and early tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow? But, sir, tomorrow I have a Quidditch game!" Harry tried hard to reign in the suspiciously whiny tone of his voice.

"Well, you'd better find a good replacement, shouldn't you," Snape sneered.

Harry's shoulders drooped in resignation. "Yes, sir," He mumbled, gathering his cleaning supplies and putting them back in the broom cupboard.

Outside, Nott waited, a shiver of excitement raced up his spine. This is it. The time has finally come to take his revenge on the blasted "Chosen One". His muddy brown eyes narrowed in his thin, rabbity face as he watched Potter exit the potions classroom at last.

Nott had been waiting so long for this. He had been planning since the summer after his fifth year, always standing in the background, never giving anyone cause to pay him any mind. That was after the incident at the Department of Mysteries, and it was revealed that his father was a Death Eater when he was injured, captured, and imprisoned in Azkaban. Young Nott, never one for the spotlight anyway, knew to keep his head low if he ever wanted to exact his revenge. Keeping his mouth shut and staying away from the likes of Malfoy and his goons, who stupidly and blatantly proclaimed their affinity with the Dark forces, Nott was able to slip under the radar and avoid the attention being the son of a known Death Eater would bring.

He had not acted fast enough, however. The summer of his sixth year, the Dark Lord, in all his mercy, broke the Death Eaters out and they fought valiantly at his side at the Battle of Hogwarts. A pang went through him at the thought of his father, now a bumbling shell of a human, drifting around the bowels of Azkaban, having been one of the first to be given the Dementor's Kiss after Potter vanquished the Dark Lord.

And it was all Potter's fault.

Nott trembled in the shadows in an adrenalin fuelled euphoria, and followed silently behind Potter as he was dismissed. He slowly meandered down the hall, oblivious to Nott's presence. Carefully looking around, seeing no one else and knowing they were now far enough from the potions classroom to go undetected, Nott made his move. Stepping out of the shadows, he revealed himself and called out to the boy shuffling his feet ahead of him.

"Potter," he called quietly.

Harry spun around in a whirl of robes, startled by the sudden presence. His green eyes, glinting in surprise, soon grew guarded when he saw who had crept up behind him. Though the boy standing before him had never made any move, nor spoken any word against him- at least to his knowledge, Harry could not forget his link to the Death Eaters. The simple fact that he was a Slytherin made him suspect enough, in Harry's mind, and the fact that he was slinking in the dark corridor was equally worrying.

"Nott," Harry answered coldly.

"There's something I need to tell you," the tall and lanky boy said, pushing his fingers through his thin, straw colored hair and darting his eyes around the corridor.

Harry narrowed his eyes at the Slytherin, taking in the nervous gestures. "What?"

Nott looked into his eyes pleadingly. "I have to tell you something, something serious. Something about-" he gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing in his scrawny throat. Here he lowered his voice to a whisper that had Harry straining to hear it. "Something about the recent Death Eater attacks."

"What is it?" Harry took a tentative step forward.

"Not here. This is Slytherin territory. We might be overheard. Follow me. There's a classroom at the end of the hall that no one uses anymore," with that he waved Harry to follow, turning on his heal and heading back the way Harry came and passed the potions classroom.

Not once did it occur to Harry to tell Nott to tell the Headmistress, or even Professor Snape, who could have made much better use of the information than he. The attacks, by poorly organized bands of the remaining fraction of Death Eaters still on the run and other like-minded sympathisers, who believed in the pureblood superiority rubbish but refused to serve Voldemort, on muggles and muggleborns were getting more numerous and more vicious each week. The Prophet was having a field day reporting their activities in gruesome detail. It never occurred to Harry to suspect the informant, after all who would know better than the Slytherin son of a Death Eater. Besides that, Harry was just as desperate as all the members of the Order to put a stop to the vile attacks on the innocent.

Harry sprinted to catch up to Nott who had disappeared around the corner and into a doorway. Harry pushed open the heavy oak door, which creaked in protest, having obviously not been used in quite a long time. Quietly, he shut it behind him, locking it and casting a silencing spell on it so no one could overhear Nott giving him information. He turned to his companion, surprised when he was met with a look of pure amusement on the boy's face. He stood there tapping his wand on the palm of his hand, grinning at him.

"Thanks, Potter. You did half my job for me," Nott's face twisted into a malicious smile.

Harry instantly knew he was the stupidest boy on the planet. When I get out of here, Hermione will never let this go. She'll claim it yet another instance of my "saving people thing" getting me into trouble.

Before Harry could open his mouth to respond, Nott had turned his wand on Harry. "Crucio."

Harry dropped to the stone floor screaming. His back arched and his muscles convulsed as pain ripped through his body. It felt as if his flesh was being torn from his bones and his nerves were on fire. His muscles ticked and flailed, as if he were being electrocuted, his arms, legs, and head slamming repeatedly on the stone floor. After what seemed like hours, Nott released the curse. Harry panted, his harsh breaths scraping against his throat, raw from screaming, and trembled with the after effects of the curse.

"Accio Potter's Wand," Nott drawled. Harry's wand flew from where he had deposited it in his back pocket. So stupid! I didn't even draw my wand, he thought.

Harry could do nothing but gaze up at his attacker, helpless on the cold stone floor of the abandoned classroom as Nott sneered down at him. "We are going to have fun tonight. I'm going to make you scream and beg for death for what you did to my father. Then you are going to pay with your life in honor of the Dark Lord!" he was screaming by the end of his announcement. "FLAGELLUM ARDENS!"

A bright, burning beam of fire emerged from the end of Nott's short Hornbeam wand. He swung it over his head and his face was alight with manic glee as he whipped it down. As the whip of fire lashed across his chest and flayed open his skin, Harry screamed in agony and realized that after all the trials of his youth and the defeat of Voldemort, he might finally meet his end at the hands of a fellow student.

HPSSHPSSHPSS

Severus' robes billowed behind him as he skulked around the corner. After he got rid of the Potter brat, he only had time for a single cup of coffee - bitter, black, and special ordered and owled in from Uganda; just how he liked it - before he had to start his shift on hall patrol. It was not his favourite thing to do, so when he was forced to make rounds through the corridors of the castle, he made it worth his while. The students caught out of their dormitories past curfew would never consider it again after Snape was through with them.

So it was that in the first few minutes after midnight, the usually cantankerous Potions professor prowled the halls, tired without the proper amount of coffee, fully irritated by dunderheaded students – like Potter!, and looking for one of the said students to vent his wrath upon. In the darkened and sparsely lit halls, the acrimonious professor was able to keep to the shadows, his black robes blending into the walls. His shoulder-length hair whipped from side to side as he searched the corridors, flying away from his face with the fast pace of his walk.

Severus entered the familiar passageway that crossed the Entrance Hall, each step of his leather boots clapping over the well-worn stones that had seen the admittance of hundreds of thousands of witches and wizards for nearly a millennium. He gazed out of the large stain glass windows on either side of the large oak entrance doors and flanked by two suits of armor, to the view of the cobbled stone path that led to Hogsmeade. The wide path was flanked on the sides by the edge of the Forbidden Forest on the right. The Quidditch pitch lay just beyond Severus' field of vision on the opposite side. The cloudless night sky was alive with the twinkling of stars except for the part on the horizon that burned orange with the burning lights of Hogsmeade in the north.

Suddenly Severus came to a stop. Something, on the periphery of his senses, caught his attention. He stood frozen in place, holding his breath, trying to detect what had caught his attention. He half hoped it was the pitter-patter of children wandering the halls. He had had little luck on his "hunt" tonight. This was what made him a fearsome teacher; made his students believe he had eyes in the back of his head. His senses were acute, finely tuned to near perfection, able to detect things that normal people could not.

Just when he was about to give it up as his overtired brain at work, he heard it again; a "splat" noise. Was it Peeves, throwing unidentifiable substances around the halls again, in the distance? No, it sounded far too close for that. Could it be something dripping from the walls? He supposed it was possible.

He scanned the wide open Entrance Hall. In front of him was the Grand Staircase. It was wider at the bottom than the top and was lined by broad solid stone balustrades. The massive structure was the main access to the various floors and funnelled the students into the Great Hall. It was empty except for the sleeping portraits that lined its walls.

Opposite him was the corridor that contained the ground floor classrooms and led to the Entrance Courtyard. It was there that the supposedly legendary departure of the Weasley twins took place. He shuddered at the thought of those troublesome Weasleys, thankful that he only had one more year until he was done having to deal with the whole red-headed brood, outside of the Order at least.

He turned and surveyed the adjacent side of the room. It held the massive double doors that opened to the Great Hall. The great oak doors rose nearly to the high vaulted ceiling and came to an arched point at the top. Three wrought-iron bands ran across the heavy wood surface, from the three hinges and ended in points, pointing toward where the two doors came together. At the bottom of the doors, Severus noticed a dark pool of liquid.

He stepped closer. The liquid, appearing black in the sombre lighting of the flickering torches, was a small puddle, half of it disappearing under the door and into the Great Hall. As he neared the puddle, Severus' sensitive nose picked up a familiar metallic tang; blood. Standing in front of it, a drop of the blood dripped from above. Severus looked up to find the source.

His usual cold exterior melted away as his mouth dropped open in incredulity. There, hanging from the surface of the doors, was a body. Severus ripped himself back from underneath it to get a better look.

The body was stripped naked, revealing that it was a male. The boy, for he was obviously young, was stretched against the door revealing a short and undernourished frame, his ribs and hip bones clearly visible. He hung, magically by a Sticking charm, from the top of the doors by his wrists, which were tied together over his head. His pale skin, only visible on his hands and the rare clean patch on his body was nearly completely covered in drying blood and it matted in his dark hair. It was clear he had been tortured and beaten. One of his arms seemed longer than the other one, having been popped out of his shoulder socket, and one of his legs swung at an unnatural angle. Open wounds and gouges in the skin littered his chest, stomach, and thighs.

Severus' breath was stolen from him, with the ferocity of the violence. Yes, he had seen worse at Death Eater meetings, but he certainly never expected to see such viciousness here in the school. He stood gazing up at the sight before him for a few seconds before he was torn from his shock to an even greater level of horror. In the silence of the Entrance Hall, he made out a low gurgling sound from the body. Merlin, he's alive!

Severus snapped out of his daze and sprang into attention. There would be no time to go find someone to witness this and help him; he would have to get the boy down now. He knew, from the extensive medical training he needed to get his Potions Mastery, that the position the boy was in, his arms stretched above his head, was restricting his ability to expand his chest and breathe; that is, if he were not drowning in his own blood.

He took off his robe and laid it on the cold stone floor. "Finite," he incanted, whipping his wand over his head to unstick the body from the doors. He cast a Lightning charm on it as it fell. The body dropped and he barely caught it before it hit the ground. Lowering the boy to the floor, Severus gently laid him on his robes, careful not to jar his shattered limbs.

He pressed his fingers to the blood soaked neck, checking for a pulse. The heartbeat was nearly non-existent, moments from stopping altogether. The gurgling was there, his attempts at breathing coming much too infrequently and too shallow to do much good. Severus lifted his head to his face, preparing to attempt to clear the boy's airway. Upon coming face to face with the boy, however, he froze. For the second time in as many minutes, Severus Snape lost all sense of himself with the power of his shock. Though the face had been as battered as the rest of his body, and his glasses were nowhere in sight, the victim could be easily identified by the distinct lightening bolt scar that peaked from underneath blood matted black hair. Before him lay the boy that has been the bane of his existence and the object of his sworn protection, Harry Bloody Potter.

Under a coat of blood spilling from his mouth, his lips were blue due to lack of oxygen. The distinctive rat's nest the boy called hair was saturated and weighed down with his own blood, his face was now made up of a pattern of swollen bruises and open cuts, disfiguring him to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. Now that he was closer to the body, Severus could see his chest, back, and legs were littered with lash marks, the wounds burned into the flesh as if the whip was on fire. What little unmarked skin that was left was carved with words. Down his right thigh "Chosen One" was cut into the flesh. On his stomach, a crude drawing of the Dark Mark was burned into the skin. Most telling of all, across his boney chest "The Dark Lord's Memory Lives On" was carved with angry gouges.

Severus barely noticed any of this in the heat of the moment. What caught his eye were the normally piercing green eyes- Lily's eyes, now clouded over, half lidded and unblinking. Unfocused and blank, they seemed to be looking right at him.

Another gurgling breath, this one noticeably shallower than the last, focused Severus' attention back to the matter at hand. Alarm went through him when Potter didn't take another breath. He bent down and pressed his ear to the boy's chest again. The heart was only beating sparingly, but it was still going. It wouldn't for long, however, seconds only. Severus cursed the fact that you couldn't use Apparition inside the castle wards; he would never make it to the hospital wing in time. Harry Potter was going to die, unless Severus did something drastic.

I'm so sorry Lily. I've failed you!

Severus wrapped his arms around the limp body, picking it up and cradling it against his chest. Potter's head rolled to the side, exposing his thin pale neck. Severus ran his tongue over the back of his teeth as he felt them shift and his canines elongate into his blood teeth. Quickly, before the boy's heart stopped beating, he bit into the boy's neck, piercing his skin with ease and penetrating the jugular. He sucked and drank what little remaining blood there was in the boy. Most of it had made its way out of him and coated his body and the floor, but it was still slow going. Severus usually had the help of a rapidly beating heart to help circulate the blood to his mouth, but sucking it out would have to do.

Hurriedly, he raked his sharp teeth over his wrist, probably doing more damage than was strictly necessary in his efforts to be swift, cutting open a deep wound and allowing the blood to flow. Before Potter's heart had the chance to take its final beat, Severus pressed the weeping wound to the boy's mouth. The blood pooled in his mouth, until Severus stroked his throat, working it down.

After a minute of this, Severus withdrew his shredded wrist and waited. Seconds passed, seeming like hours, panic rising in the Potions professor's chest. Suddenly a small gurgling breath was heard, and then another. Relief washed over him like a bucket of ice water poured over his head. Once again, he pressed his fingers to the boy's neck, listening for the heart beat. It sounded distinctly stronger than before.

Knowing the boy could still succumb to his devastating injuries if they weren't treated soon, Severus gathered the Boy-Who-Lived in his arms, wrapping him in his now soiled robes. He ran through the corridors, hoping he was not jostling the young man's broken bones, but knowing it would not matter if he did not make it to the hospital wing in time.

Running up the Grand Staircase and down the twisting hallway, he finally burst through the infirmary doors.

"Poppy!" he yelled, panting from his run and the effort to keep upright after the loss of blood. He set the broken body carefully on the nearest bed, all the while bellowing for the nurse.

Madam Pomfrey bustled out of her living quarters that connected to the ward. "My goodness, Severus! What's going on?" she questioned, before catching a glimpse of the bloody mess on the bed. "Dear Merlin! Goodness gracious! What happened?" she exclaimed, quickly getting into healer mode and digging out her wand from her robe pocket.

"We need to clear his airway," the Professor explained. The mediwitch twirled her wand over the boy's mouth and nose, drawing out the blood from his lungs and airways. It was drawn to the tip of the wand like a magnet and then dropped to the bed and the floor with a splash.

"Mercy! How is he still alive?" Madam Pomfrey inquired, aghast at the amount of blood. The Potions Master did not answer her. Once it appeared that no more blood would come out, she turned to face him. The mediwitch knew him well enough to be able to see the weary and slightly guilty look in his eye through his usual mask. "Severus?"

He sighed, sitting tiredly on the bed next to them. The adrenalin rush from the discovery had faded and he was more tired now than before. It was a hard question to answer, but he was glad she did not ask who it was. Obviously she did not immediately recognise Potter and could not see the scar under the matting of bloodied hair. He would do nothing to inform her unless he had to. He knew how fond she had grown of the boy, with his frequent visits, and she would surely be horrified to find out just who's life she was working so hard to save. "He was dying and he wasn't going to make it to the infirmary. I-I turned him."

Pomfrey gasped. "Merlin!" She turned back to the unconscious boy who was breathing much easier, though still not well. Seeing the broken body in front of her she pushed her shock away and cast a diagnostic spell. A long piece of parchment appeared over him and the nurse grabbed it scanning the sheet for the worst and most life threatening injuries. Discovering the ribs puncturing his lung and the shattered spleen, she got to work on the internal injuries, waving her wand and muttering a near constant stream of incantations.

Severus, still catching his breath and swaying a bit from blood loss on the bed, licked at his wounded wrist. After a few laps, it began to mend, the torn flesh pulling together and the skin sealing closed, leaving only a shiny pink scar that would disappear in a few days.

Once that was done, he rushed over to the fireplace and, throwing in a pinch of powder, fire-called the new Headmistress, urging her to come to the hospital wing immediately. In silence, except for the murmured spell casting, the two worked on the boy's profuse injuries, waving their wands in tandem in intricate patterns and pouring potions into him.

The flare of the Floo signaled the arrival of the Headmistress. Still bedecked in the day's tartan robes, she made her way to the Potions Master's side. Upon seeing the beaten body on the bed, she stopped short and gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth, "Oh, my! What on Earth happened here?"

Severus turned to McGonagall with troubled eyes. Madame Pomfrey continued to administer salves and potions as she answered for him. "Severus just brought him in. The poor dear has clearly been beaten and tortured. When he arrived he was drowning in his own blood and bleeding internally. His left lung was pierced by one of his six broken ribs. His right tibia is shattered and his pelvis is cracked. His right humerus is dislocated from the shoulder, and there are multiple deep tissue bruises on his stomach and back, as if he was kicked repeatedly. There is also clear evidence of torture, burning, whipping, and gouging of the skin and flesh," she paused in her ministrations and took a shaky breath, "The poor dear is lucky to be alive."

McGonagall slowly approached the bedside to gaze upon the still bloody youth. She surveyed the words engraved in his flesh with growing alarm, zeroing in on the wound on his thigh, "Chosen One". Holding her breath, she flicked her gaze up to the blood and tear streaked face and recognized the boy who was like a grandson to her. "Great Merlin!" her eyes glistened with unshed tears as she turned to her Potions Master. "Severus, what happened?"

Severus gulped and worked to place his hardened mask firmly in place, erasing all emotion from his face. Seeing his once stern professor and now friendly colleague in this much pain was hard and he was not just a little fearful of what her reaction would be to his actions. He steeled himself and told the woman of the discovery. The Headmistress' shoulders sagged when she heard of the Potter boy strung up like meat in the Entrance Hall.

Then Severus paused and continued. "Minerva, the boy was one heart beat away from death, so I… I turned him." Severus waited, bracing himself for the inevitable explosion of screams and crying. He felt a warm hand slid onto his shoulder and looked up into sad sage green eyes.

"Now Severus, there was no other path you could have chosen. You saved his life, and that is what matters," the Headmistress said kindly, visibly trying to control her emotions. "Indeed, you have taken a great risk, exposing your condition to the world, even though knowledge of it could cause you immeasurable amounts of trouble. I thank you, Severus."

"But, Minerva… I've turned the Boy-Who-Lived into a vampire and bound him to me for eternity! How can that be ok?"Severus exclaimed, his mask falling away and revealing his worry.

Madam Pomfrey, who was listening intently to the story, tutting and murmuring incantations, gasped loudly at the news of who her patient was. "This is Mr. Potter?" she cried.

With the volume of her exclamation, no one heard the astonished gasp that came from the forgotten patient bedded on the other side of the room.

A/N: Other than the actual Harry Potter books, this story would not be possible with out the amazing information at Harry Potter Wikia and the Harry Potter Lexicon. Most of the spells I made up with the help of a Latin translator and my imagination.