I'd like to add here my thanks to my lovely beta Stupidmuse hatesme

Chapter Eighteen - Where time and outward form would show it dead

Alone and in the middle of the night Severus Snape was staring into the fire; it was the only illumination that fed into the darkness. The silence was complete, bar the occasional pop or crackle from the wood, and the movements of Harry asleep on Egyptian cotton sheets in the other room.

He should be in there too, asleep. School began in….. about seven hours and he needed to be on his best form to meet the new rush of Slytherins, and see to the needs of the returning years. But instead he was sitting in front of the fire thinking about Harry Potter. He wasn't sure if it was safe for the boy to go back to classes; he was so damn submissive. Severus could cope with it, and he even guiltily liked it. It was so different from the obnoxious Potter he'd always seen. Which, he realised must have been a shield; destroying oneself wasn't normally a decision one came to overnight.

It had been easy to step into the position of master for Harry. Severus was not substitute father, as he was for many of his Slytherins, but something both darker and richer. The tension between them was there, just waiting to be acknowledged, and he wasn't going to let himself bow to it any time yet. At least, not until the boy was a little less broken.

But it was tempting, Merlin only knew how tempted he was by the boy-who-wouldn't-fucking-die. He wasn't sure if it was the eyes that had done him in, or the quiet nights on a beach, that didn't exist, inside his head that were oh so intimate. He'd done some research on those dreams and finally realised that they were real, some point after 3am when the book on sympathetic magic had finally been thrown at the wall in ceaseless irritation.

So Potter and he were connected. It was surprisingly easy to accept, and he wondered if the bond the sympathy created was working on his mind to make that so. He didn't much care as long as he had control over this relationship, and everything so far had pointed that way. He could be content; feed him up a little and Harry would be a stunner.

He settled back into the arm chair looking into the flames just letting his mind drift, school was only hours away he really should…. And that was as far as he got before sleep sucked him under.