Chapter 11: The Illicit Mead

The small, quick thrum of pulse still existed at the point where his fingers had rested. Her mind was quiet now, the physical intensity of the release giving way to the profound emotional exhaustion that had been building all week. She pushed herself up from the bed, the rough wool of her school robes having left uncomfortable creases on her skin. Sleeping in her clothes had never been a comfortable experience. The chamber felt too small, too silent, amplifying the noise that still roared inside her head. The memory of the physical interaction with Snape, the feeling of his body looming over her, the intense focus of his eyes, all of it held an unwelcome permanence.

She performed her morning routine automatically, moving through the necessary motions of washing and dressing for a Saturday. The familiar tasks offered no solace. The quiet of the common room was unbearable when she went downstairs. Only a few younger students were already there, hunched over breakfast or last-minute homework.

She walked out of the common room and started moving through the corridors. She knew she could not stay in the dormitory; the silence there felt like a trap, forcing her to confront the obsessive thoughts that revolved exclusively around Snape. She moved without conscious direction, pulling her normal, heavier Saturday robes around her, instinctively seeking the insulating protection that layers of thick wool provided. It was a familiar, perhaps subconscious effort to shield herself from the internal chaos, hoping the fabric could somehow absorb the raw vulnerability she felt after the previous night’s self-exposure.

The castle offered no refuge in its usual quiet spots. The library was too hushed, the perfect environment for uninterrupted, structured thought, which felt like an immediate threat. The window seats in the upper corridors were too isolating, offering only expansive views that encouraged introspection. She found herself moving toward the noise, drawn by the faint, distant sound of chatter and muffled music coming from the higher floors usually not used for anything. She needed a distraction, any external stimulus that would pull her focus away from the persistent reality of Snape and her alarming, complex reaction to him. The need was immediate and urgent, a desperate physical craving for anything that felt normal and impersonal.

She climbed two full flights of stairs, the noise growing slightly louder as she ascended. It was coming from an unused classroom on the sixth floor, one that students sometimes appropriated on weekend nights. She had been there before, long ago, during a few half-hearted end-of-term celebrations where the prefects had decided not to intervene for some reason. The familiarity was strangely comforting; it felt permissive, a place where rules frayed at the edges.

She arrived at the classroom door. It was slightly ajar, letting a narrow slice of yellowish light spill into the dark corridor. She paused, leaning against the cold stone of the wall, allowing herself a moment to simply observe the scene inside before committing to entry.

The room was crowded, filled with perhaps fifteen students from the sixth and seventh years. They were lounging casually, some stretched out on the long wooden desks turned sideways, others sitting unceremoniously on the dusty stone floor. Everyone wore off-duty robes, sweaters, or whatever they felt like, a mix of colours and textures replacing the mandatory black uniform. The air was thick and heavy with the smell of sweet, somewhat chemical alcohol and something else, something herbal and slightly acrid, clearly.

The noise inside was a careless, low murmur of shared secrets, too-loud laughter, and the distant melody of a student-charmed wireless playing Muggle music. The whole atmosphere felt loose and slightly abandoned.

A sixth-year Hufflepuff she vaguely knew from Advanced Charms was leaning against the doorframe, talking animatedly to someone inside. He noticed her hesitation.

“Hey,” he said, pushing himself off the frame and giving her a clumsy, lopsided grin. He walked toward her, holding a large, pewter tankard in his hand. “You look like you need to forget things happened. We have plenty to help you with it.”

“I’m fine,” she almost lied, pushing herself away from the wall. The simple act of saying it out loud felt like a betrayal of the truth. She clearly was not fine.

“Sure you are,” the Hufflepuff replied, his voice thick and overly friendly. He held the tankard out to her. It was full to the brim with something dark and frothy. “Magically enhanced mead, courtesy of a trip to Hogsmeade a few weeks ago.”

She looked at the drink, then back at the noise inside the room. Her Occlumency training made an immediate, cold pitch in her mind: stay sober, stay aware, maintain vigilance. This environment was inherently risky; intoxication meant porous mental barriers.

But the memory of the profound emptiness from the night before, the physical tremor that had taken hold when she realized the asymmetry of their conflict, instantly overrode the caution. She was exhausted from the constant internal battle. She needed the cloud, the simple relief of not being acutely sharp for a few hours.

“Thanks,” she managed, taking the tankard from him. The metal was cool against her palm, and the sweet, fermented smell was surprisingly appealing.

She lifted the tankard and took a large, reckless sip. The mead was powerfully sweet, almost thick, but it carried an immediate, sharp heat that spread quickly through her chest. It was followed by a startling lightness, a sudden softening of the edges of her anxiety. The cloud effect was immediate.

She took several more large sips in quick succession, needing to achieve full mental disengagement rapidly. The Hufflepuff smiled broadly, patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, and drifted back into the classroom.

The mead succeeded almost instantly in dragging her out of her own head. She found a space near a window where a small group was dissecting an inane joke about Professor Flitwick's chair height. Without conscious effort, she started listening, then provided commentary of her own. Her commentary was, apparently, surprisingly loud.

Soon, she was laughing too loudly herself, a giddy, slightly painful sound. The joke wasn't even good, but the mead had stripped away her internal editor. She felt almost weightless as she leaned forward, trying to emphasize a point about a third-year’s disastrous attempt at Levitation Charm. The stone floor beneath her feet seemed to shift slightly, providing a dizzying sensation that only added to the uncharacteristic lightness overtaking her. She was definitely wobbly; the walls of the classroom seemed to tilt.

She caught a second student’s eye, a Slytherin girl she had never spoken to, and offered a wide, entirely unreserved smile. The Slytherin returned a skeptical, raised-eyebrow look. This only made her laugh harder. She lifted the tankard again, discovering it was already half-empty.

The joke ended, the general noise level of the room dropped slightly for a minute, and in that momentary lull, the classroom door swung open silently. The movement was so unexpected that it drew every eye in the room.

Severus Snape stood in the doorway.

He was wearing his usual black teaching robes, which seemed to absorb all the weak light filtering from the candle sconces and student charms. His presence was not just a physical intrusion; it was an atmospheric shift. The chatter and muffled music died instantly, replaced by a deep, terrified silence that swallowed the entire room. The heady, thick air of mead and illicit herbs suddenly felt very thin.

Snape’s eyes, dark and flat, swept across the room with a lethal, immediate assessment.

“Five points from every House represented here,” he delivered, his voice cutting through the silence like a drawn knife. It was low, resonating perfectly in the newly quiet room. “And the rest shall be determined after I have identified every single offender.”

The reprimand accomplished its purpose: authority was asserted, and every student froze in various stages of panic and denial.

Snape’s initial sweep continued past the huddled, frightened students, past the overturned desks, and past the abandoned tankards. The sweep stopped abruptly when his gaze fixed on her.