A Connection of minds

Chapter 1: The Clock

  There was next to no noise in the dungeons, more specifically, Professor Snape's quarters. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire in the rather old and ornate fireplace, the scratching of a quill on some poor, unsuspecting student's essay and the occasional ruffling of parchment as another is selected and a subsequent child's dreams are crushed.

  Snape was indeed so extremely focused on the task at hand that he failed to notice the missing noise in his quiet chambers.

  It was rather late when the final parchment lay, marked, on his desk, which had about as much colour as his robes. This would be the moment when any normal human would have yawned, gotten up and retired for the night. But, as most of the people who know him will tell you, Severus Snape didn't really fit into that category as he was anything but normal. He did, however, put down his quill, stopper his pot of red ink that often showed up in first years' nightmares and glanced up from where he sat to look at the time.

  Only to notice that his clock was not where it usually was. In fact, As Snape's eyes glided across the dim room, it was nowhere to be seen. The black matte wood clock was missing from its spot on the wall. He lay back in his chair, crossed his arms and tried to think, in the many years that he had taught at Hogwarts, when he had ever even so much as touched the thing. He had certainly never taken it down. He tried to think of why it could possibly have been removed.

  After a few minutes of intense concentration, he gave up and decided to give it some serious thought after his classes tomorrow. And he was going to need all the strength he could get as they were going to announce the Triwizard Tournament Champions at breakfast the next morning. Therefore his students were sure to be utterly useless and brain-dead after all the excitement that someone was definitely going to severely harm themselves and their classmates in that days potions lessons.

  Well, somewhat more useless and brain-dead then they usually were, anyway.

  Despite the missing clock, the professor had quite nice quarters. He was currently in his living room where he did most of his work, it was where he sat by the fire, reading a good book and sipping, very rarely, some hot chocolate. It was where he wrote his papers on his discoveries in his area of potions, and where he read his fellow dark arts enthusiast's findings and breakthroughs.

  His favorite black armchair was accompanied by a similar seating accommodation as well as a matching couch. He had a rather large black and white fireplace that, as mentioned before, had carvings all around the edge and a big grey hearth rug that went up to the back of his couch that was still incredibly soft after all the years. The walls, worn from the centuries of supporting the massive castle, were hung with tapestries with soft grey and green depictions of God knew what, the Slytherin banner and the place where his darn clock use to hang.

  Oh, and the bookshelves.

  The whole back wall was dedicated to books. They ranged from the usual things you'd expect from the severe potions master to the complete of William Shakespeare. He had everything under the sun, if the Sun was small, white and only came out at night. While he did sometimes need to venture out to Hogwarts' impressive library, usually the restricted section, for some of the more obscure or old books, but he did pride himself on his collection.

  Well, not knowing the time, Snape had to go with his internal clock. And it was telling him that it was quite late and right now was a really good time to sleep. So, he got up from his desk and traveled across the darkened living room with long strides, passing the suspiciously empty clock-less spot on the wall, toward his equally dark bedroom to pass out for a few hours.

  In the Gryffindor tower, the sleeping form of Harry Potter rolled over and, rather strangely, dreamt about time.