Declaimer: Nothing's mine, as always!

Summary: The battle is over for now, yet one horcrux didn't get destroyed in it, although I tried very hard. Now it is up to you to destroy me, but will you manage?

A/N: a little warning, this is a little angsty, but not overly so – I'd like to have your opinion on the narrator and perspective I choose, as I've never written anything the like before!

Enjoy!

- Helpless -

I am lying on my stomach, my left leg bend, my arms stretched to the sides away from my body. Although it is warm in the room and the bed I'm lying on is soft, I shiver. I'm wearing nothing more than a cotton shirt which barely reaches my behind. I lift my head out of the pillow trying to see you, but all I see is the empty room, the shelves with books and little trinkets and the desk, your desk at which you are often sitting, working, while I'm lying here like I do now.

My skin erupts into goose bumps when your cool hand traces my spine up to my neck. I feel your fingers entwine themselves in my hair and you push me back down into the pillow, which smells familiar. Trying to change my position I fight a little against the leather restraints holding me down at my wrists.

You always make sure I'm comfortable, although the others taunt you for it. They call you soft and in love with a halfblood, until remembering that you are a halfblood yourself and then taunting you for that. Yet they know that your position in His ranks is safe and they can't reach you, can't touch you without bringing his wrath upon them. You don't grace their antics and insults with your attention and simply ignore them, which sometimes seems to drive them nuts. In those moments I fear what will happen to me were they to kill you.

You pull a soft cover over my half naked body and thread your long fingers through my unruly hair. I close my eyes.

In the beginning I was never able to appreciate it, when you did it. I couldn't relax under your care. Sometimes I still can't, but you aren't angry with me, you understand.

The night I went to the Dark Lord to get killed by his wand and give my friends enough time to reorganize the battle you were there, giving me strength with your strong gaze and a supportive nod of respect when no one else was looking. You held my gaze through the torture session I goaded them into to give my friends and the Light more time. And when I finally closed my eyes to receive the killing curse it was your gaze I felt on me.

Neither of us could have expected what happened that night. It was Malfoy running all the way back from the castle into the forest to tell his Lord that I was doing it on purpose, that I was a horcrux. How he figured it out is still beyond me and I couldn't ask him before the killing curse hit him instead, giving Voldemort the power over the elder wand.

Remembering the days that followed this horrible night I shiver again and your hand is there, stroking my hair until I relax back into the pillow. You never talk much when we're down here, although here is the only place were we are able to talk at all without too many prying ears.

After the Light had to flee the castle the Dark Lord took up residence in here. He thrust me into your hands to heal my body and keep me safe, until his new order was established.

I clearly remember the first day were I was conscious enough to understand what was happening around me again. You were feeding me with a spoon and I asked you to kill me. You threw the bowl of soup against a wall, hurling insults at me and saying that I had no right to ask that of you. Later you kind of apologised and told me in some whispers that the metal ring Voldemort had put around my right ankle wouldn't allow it. It would alert the megalomaniac to any lethal injury I obtained and that you didn't have access to basilisk's venom to do the job properly, for only the creator of a horcrux can destroy it without this venom.

You were so devastated and angry with yourself.

Those days were hard for both of us.

"Go to sleep, pet."

Now I like the word, at least when you use it. You say it like it means something nice, like - and I hate to admit it – my uncle called my aunt when he was in a good mood, his voice as warm and caring as it ever got. The times the Dark Lord says it, I hate it.

I get comfortable and close my eyes like instructed. Yet I don't sleep. Although yesterday has been tiring for me as I had to entertain the Inner Circle, meaning they taunted and tortured me while I had to play the perfect little slave to you, I'm not tired.

I know there is a new batch of potions waiting for me to test them in the afternoon; potions you had to brew and create by your master's orders. That is the reasons he left me with you after all, to be of assistance in your potions making, giving you ingredients and testing the vile concoctions he orders. Of course you are not allowed to endanger my life and he doesn't allow you to use anything from a basilisk in his paranoia. And right he is.

You play a mind fucking game; outwardly treating me like a slave, using me with harsh indifference, if not outright displayed hate, while treating me like a pet when we are alone, healing my injuries, caring for my wellbeing beyond my body.

I open my eyes when your deep voice whispers near my head "Stop overworking that little brain of yours, pet. Go to sleep."

Amidst all the vile concoctions you had to force down my throat over the months you found time to create one for my eyesight, so that I am now able to see you without glasses aiding me. Your dark eyes are hard in your request; you expect obedience in everything from me. And most times I am able to, nowadays.

It took some time to get used to obeying. I have never been good with rules but most of all the torture, fighting and my life at the Dursley's made trust in other people hard for me. I had to learn through actions, your actions, how to trust.

I can feel your impatience with me when your fingers close my eyes. You murmur something about me using all your potions – a sarcastic remark I came to recognise as your own sort of humour – and hold a cloth doused with sleeping potion under my mouth and nose. I don't fight you, not in this. I am very familiar with the smell of flowers and forests. It lulls me slowly into a very deep slumber.

And something akin to a smile is tucking on your lips as you watch me drift away into dreamland.

HPSS

I awake on my back in your workroom. The black cotton shirt is gone and it is cool in here. I can see you bent over a cauldron, lost in its bubbling. As always my arms and legs are secured to the padded table in the corner of the room. As this room is open for anyone and just a door from the corridors of the dungeons you treat me like is expected of you, meaning you don't pay attention to me aside from when you need me. We aren't in here too often, only when you need me officially to test something, so I can stand it. Needless to say, I hate your big laboratory.

There is a knock on the door.

I close my eyes again to feign ignorance in sleep while you open. It is McNair.

"The Lord wishes to speak with you after dinner, Snape. And you are supposed to bring him."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. Here is the list with requested potions for the coming month."

The door closes. It doesn't take long for you to approach me with a cup in hand. The bitter smell reaches my nostrils. Your face is a mask of cool indifference but deep in your eyes, which I have come to read very well, I can see a spark of sorrow and anger.

I sneer in your direction and face away from you, like a defiant little boy. I know it makes it easier on you if I fight a little. You put the cup down and force the gag into my mouth, holding it open.

I hate this peace of metal! Coughing I swallow the potion, glaring at you for good measure.

The room is monitored. We never know if there is someone watching us interact.

You make the restraints grip me harder and pull me flat against the table. With a cold smile you watch the affects start slowly. My skin erupts into goose bumps and I shiver violently. After a while I feel like I will freeze to death. My teeth clatter and my heart beats frantically. I cough to get air into my system. You watch like a scientist watching an experiment. And this is nothing more. Just an experiment with a new potion. You even make notes and take my temperature.

I don't really believe my eyes as the spell shows that I am merely half a degree beneath the usual score.

When every muscle in my body is hurting from the tremors and I am near begging to be released you give me the antidote and again write some notes into your notebook.

You leave me lying here utterly exhausted, my mind wandering while you start cleaning your workspace.

I drift into half awareness, thinking about the little I know of the war outside the castle. The Light isn't defeated yet, still, the ministry and school are overrun and there is no government aside from the dark rule. You confirmed my questions about my friends with one simple sentence, stating that they have all escaped and are on the run. And after hours of me begging you down in your private quarters you promised to tell me if any of them was caught. We haven't talked much about them, seeing as there is nothing we can do from inside this madness.

HPSS

After three hours in the Dark Lord's company we both collapse in your living room, you on the couch and I at your feet. He hasn't tortured either of us much, more talked about war strategies and taunted me with threats about what he would do to my friends as soon as he got hold of them.

I learned not to get too riled up emotionally at his words the hard way.

The point of your wand is tapping my naked shoulder and my black baggy cotton shirt appears on my skin. It is one of yours, the one you gave me the very first evening as your guinea pig.

Your hands seek out my neck and you start massaging me into relaxation.

I feel your hands stroking over my scars from punishments. Although you made potions to fix my skin they are still there, light and silvery thin. I don't know how you feel about them. Sometimes you are staring at them with something akin to satisfaction. I think this is because you made certain only you made them. Others never use a whip or a ruler on me. And you don't often, either, only when I am fighting back publicly during one of our seldom outings.

You are fair in your punishments at home, as I've come to silently call your living quarters. You spank me with your bare hand to break down my emotional stubbornness, which sometimes still gets the better of me. You never withheld food, or take away my privileges and I'm grateful for that. Strangely those punishments, as the Dursleys had used, seem much crueller to me.

I lean against your leg and look back up at you, when you let your tired hands fall down into your lap. Your black eyes are warm and the firelight is reflected in them.

Our views of each other have changed a great deal; it is something I often ponder when getting bored. I still don't know much about you; I don't know what happened between you and Dumbledore, only that you somehow didn't betray the Light side. After all, how would this fit together with your support of me and the astonished respect I could see in your eyes the moment I gave myself over to my enemy to die?

Your eyes drift downward to the metal ring preventing anyone from harming me lethally. I sometimes wonder if you'd really kill me, were you able to. Would you kill us both?

I know that you are still working on how to get the horcrux within me destroyed without killing me. Do you do it because this is the easier solution compared to working around Voldemort's protection of my miserable life or do you do it because you perhaps want me to stay alive?

I'm not brave enough to ask you, fearing your answer might be practical and not emotionally driven, which I find myself hoping for, stupid as it may be. I wonder if I'm finally losing it, thinking about your feelings for me. Is it only guilt, making you act like you care? No, I can't think that.

I realise that you are smiling down at me, an unusual picture which I cherish. It's not often that you allow your guards down as much and show such openness.

"One can see every emotion on that face of yours, pet" you state with what I think is affection in your voice. I feel like crawling up onto the sofa and snuggling against you, but I don't trust my legs to move me. It's not that I'm bodily weak or incapable – you keep me trained and flexible with an hour of running and exercising every morning. But I'm not allowed and I don't wish to destroy the moment by getting you angry. You are still deathly precise with your beloved rules.

I have come to understand your need for order. Without order and strict rules to abide by one leaves space for faults and faltering. Spontaneity leaves room for mistakes whereas plans can be made as foolproof as possible. That you treat me like you are supposed to – at least in the wider interpretation, still in the bounds allowing you to explain any differing from the expected reasonably to your master – is a way of keeping both of us safe and sane. This way it is far easier to slip into the behaviours we are supposed to show the world; there is no rollercoaster ride for our emotions, either.

"Come, time to sleep."

I follow you into your bedroom, where you use the shower first. I kneel on the thick soft carpet, which hasn't been here my first time in your bathroom, and wait for you to finish.

In the beginning I was utterly horrified of the notion to be naked around you, more so when I suddenly found myself naked around you being naked. Now I can smile about my shyness. You never had such a problem, or if you had, you hid it very well.

I hurry in washing myself, knowing you want to settle for the night. When I step out of the shower you grab me with a big towel and dry me, then you shove a fresh shirt over my head and carry me like I weigh nothing for you. And I don't in comparison. I haven't grown since my sixth year and still only reach your chest. On top of my shortness I am lean and only thanks to your training have some muscles to call my own.

You put me in my place, in your bed on the right side at the wall and lift my head to fasten the collar around my neck. It is made of soft brown leather and chained to the wall. I know it is ordered by the Dark Lord that I be chained down for the night, yet somehow I don't think that he envisioned something like this, leaving me room to sleep like I fancy.

I bring myself under the covers and you whisper 'nox', then a soft 'goodnight, pet'.

"Goodnight, master" I silently whisper back and close my eyes. Damn, I certainly got easily used to this arrangement.

HPSS