Chapter 13: The Profound Absence

She woke up with a dry, metallic taste in her mouth and a low, painful throb behind her eyes. The stone wall of the dormitory felt uncomfortably cold against her back, which meant she had somehow managed to fall asleep leaning against the wall near the concealed entrance to the common room. Disorientation was her first conscious thought, closely followed by a wave of sharp, internal shame. The shame was physical, sitting heavy in her stomach.

She eased herself into a sitting position, her robes wrinkled and dusty. The common room was completely empty, which meant it was likely the quiet hours before dawn. Light filtered dimly through the high Gothic windows, painting the room in deep, shifting shadows.

She pressed her temples, trying to force coherence back into the jumbled, fragmented mess of the previous night. The mead had functioned exactly as intended for a while, dissolving the rigid walls of her self-control and providing an exhilarating, reckless freedom. She recalled the laughter, the warmth of the illicit drink, the sudden, paralyzing arrival of Snape, and the ensuing scramble of frightened students.

The memory started to stabilize around the moment he grabbed her wrist, his grip firm and impersonal. He pulled her out of the room, forcing her to match his long strides through the dark, quiet corridors. She remembered the suffocating intensity of his silence and the way the world seemed to narrow down to the pressure of his fingers against her pulse point.

There were snatches of conversation: her drunken, nonsensical attempts to justify herself, the sharp burst of laughter she couldn't suppress, and his low, dangerous commands. She remembered him yanking her close to his side, the brief, unsettling friction of his body against hers, and the rush of unfamiliar heat it caused.

The clarity vanished when they reached the corridor outside her Tower entrance. The memories dissolved into a thick, alcoholic haze, leaving only emotional residue. She felt the heavy weight of his disapproval, the specific, tailored disappointment that somehow felt worse than any formal reprimand.

She remembered the silence, the way he stood over her, utterly poised, preparing to deliver the final judgment. His mouth had opened, and she had moved.

The details of that final action were maddeningly elusive. She knew she had moved toward him. She knew a line had been crossed, a boundary erased. She remembered the shocking vulnerability of his profile as he stood there, rigid with professional integrity.

There was no concrete memory. No taste, no texture, no sound. It was an absence defined only by the sudden, panicked burst of adrenaline she felt moments later when the tapestry swung shut behind her.

Had she said something unforgivable? Had she done something truly humiliating?

When she finally moved, stretching the soreness out of her joints, she carefully touched the spot where he had pressed her arm, searching for clues, for bruising, for anything physical that might help confirm or deny the boundaries she feared she had violated. She found nothing but the normal, dull ache of a hangover.

Sunday passed in a blur, with several questions left unanswered. Monday arrived, and as she dressed in her school robes, the silver earring on her left ear felt hot against her skin.

Breakfast was a strictly utilitarian affair. She sat alone, meticulously avoiding eye contact, focused entirely on the toast and strong tea, trying to project an aura of studious sobriety. The Great Hall was full, a loud, cheerful contrast to the emotional wreckage she carried inside.

Her first real test came with her double Potions class that afternoon. She approached the classroom with disciplined trepidation. The dungeon corridor was perpetually darker than the rest of the castle, amplifying the sense of isolation.

She slipped into her usual seat. Before the lesson began, she made sure her work station was immaculate, arranged by rules of exact order that would not invite his criticism. Her posture was straight, shoulders back, projecting an image of the seventh-year student she was supposed to be: mature, focused, and utterly in control.

Snape swept into the room precisely on time, his robes billowing dramatically. He initiated the lesson without the customary pause, plunging immediately into the complex instructions for an advanced Potion of Restoration.

She observed him with acute concentration, trying to gauge his mood. His face was a closed mask, perhaps even more guarded than usual. His movements were precise, efficient, and entirely focused on the instruction.

He began his slow, deliberate circuit of the desks. His presence usually caused a subtle but pervasive tension in the air, a sense of immediate potential judgment. Today, the tension seemed to have been refined, concentrated.

When he reached the middle of the room, she subtly braced herself, ready to meet his gaze, ready for the scathing comment, the public acknowledgment of her failure of character, even a pointed deduction of points. Any of those responses would have been familiar, transactional.

He stopped two paces from her desk. He was addressing the entire class, correcting a general error in the preparation of Sopophorous Beans. His voice was low, laced with professional contempt for the collective incompetence, but it held no personal inflection directed at her.

She waited. He lingered for perhaps ten seconds.

His dark eyes skimmed over her desk, assessing her neatly organized ingredients and the gentle, slow simmer of her cauldron. Then his gaze continued past her, sweeping the next row of students. His eyes did not connect with hers. He did not pause.

Was he deliberately ignoring her existence?

She stirred her potion, her hand trembling slightly despite her best effort to maintain stillness. The absence of his censure was infinitely worse than any criticism could have been.

The rest of the lesson continued in this manner. He returned once more to the back of the room, drawn by a particularly thick cloud of sulfurous smoke emanating from a nearby desk. He dealt with the student swiftly and harshly, deducting thirty points for attempted sabotage.

As he finished the correction, he turned and walked directly toward her, his path forcing him to pass within inches of her arm. She stopped stirring the cauldron, waiting for the contact, the inevitable correction, the veiled threat. She held her breath.

He passed her without a flicker of acknowledgment. It was a complete professional erasure.

Classes continued throughout the week. Every time their paths crossed, in the corridor, at the entrance to the Great Hall, during shared staff announcements, the result was the same. He maintained an impossible, rigid professionalism, a colder, more impenetrable boundary than she had ever witnessed from him before. He did not engage in the subtle emotional warfare they usually conducted.

She found herself focusing entirely on this distance, obsessively replaying the events of the previous Saturday night. Was this aloofness the punishment for the mead? The lack of eye contact. Was this his way of communicating the severity of her transgression?

She had lost the privilege of his attention. It wasn't the disgust she had feared after the initial Occlumency intrusion; this was something far darker.

She began to question her most basic memories of their interaction. Had she imagined the connection? Had the earring, the private lessons, the intense focus on her mental landscape, all been misinterpreted by a desperate illusion?

The silence was destabilizing. She preferred his open hostility. At least hostility was a form of engagement, a confirmation that she existed in his sphere of critical attention.

Occlumency lessons, therefore, became her single, desperate focus. They were scheduled for Thursday evening, and she clung to this upcoming appointment as the moment of truth. She yearned for the small room, the controlled environment, the required intimacy of the mental conflict. It was the only place where he allowed the boundaries to thin, however minimally, however violently. She could apologize properly there, explain the mead, plead for the return of his customary contempt.

She began to prepare on Wednesday, spending her free hours in a remote corner of the library, practicing her mental defenses. She reinforced the inner walls, polishing the smooth, featureless surface of her mental landscape. She ensured the compartments were locked, eliminating any trace of the reckless emotion that had led to the disaster. She was determined to present a fortress, a symbol of remorse and restored discipline.

Thursday arrived with a low, oppressive sky. She navigated the day in a haze of anticipation, forcing herself through classes, unable to focus truly on anything but the clock. She skipped dinner, fearing that any food would compromise the cool, empty stillness she desperately needed for the lesson.

At seven-thirty, half an hour before the scheduled session, she was sitting alone in the common room, reviewing a complicated runic translation, an exercise in pure mental discipline. She heard the soft sound of the portrait hole opening and looked up, expecting to see a prefect or a returning student.

It was a first-year student, looking flustered and holding a small, tightly folded piece of parchment. He scanned the room nervously until he saw her.

"Seventh-year? The Potions Master needs you to read this," the boy whispered through his chattering teeth, clearly terrified of his messenger duties. He practically thrust the note at her and scuttled away toward the boys' dormitories without waiting for a reply.

Her stomach plummeted. Snape never sent notes through students, especially not for scheduled private lessons. This was not his protocol. Every previous communication, except the earring package, had been delivered via house elf or directly in person.

She took the parchment. It was heavy, dark paper, sealed with the precise, intimidating wax seal of the Potions Master. She broke the wax carefully, unfolding the note.

The handwriting was starkly familiar: neat, aggressive, and undeniably conveying rigid control. The message was excruciatingly brief.

Occlumency Session: Cancelled until further notice. Recommence schedule TBA.

The signature was a simple, imperious 'S'.

She reread the two sentences three times, seeking a hidden code, a deeper meaning, an explanation layered beneath the formal language. There was none. It was a functional, abrupt statement of fact, devoid of warmth or courtesy.

The sudden cancellation felt like a physical blow. The anticipated moment of clarification, the chance to understand the profound shift in their interaction, had been eliminated entirely. He had simply cut off the channel of communication.

She stood slowly, carefully setting the note down on the small table next to her parchment. Her hands were starting to shake.

The stability of the lessons, the routine of discipline, had become the unlikely anchor for her final year. They were the scheduled moments where she could reliably find the charged proximity she craved, the intense, dangerous focus that confirmed her existence in his world. Without them, the year stretched out into a meaningless expanse of coursework and professional distance.

She realized, with a sudden, devastating clarity, that he was ensuring the distance was absolute. The suspension of the lessons was not an oversight or a temporary scheduling conflict.

She tried to rationalize it. Perhaps the mead incident had indeed convinced him that she was too volatile, too risky to continue training. Perhaps he needed time to re-evaluate the liability she posed, a liability he had already acknowledged in the corridors.

The subsequent days were a blur of intense internal monitoring. She became hyperaware of her conduct, driven by the realization that she had failed in a moment she couldn't even consciously recall.

She began to micro-manage her behavior around him:

In class, she moved with deliberate, practiced stillness. When answering questions, her voice was pitched precisely, loud enough to be heard, low enough to avoid drawing unnecessary attention. She maintained precise eye contact when he addressed the class, but dropped her gaze naturally the moment his attention drifted elsewhere, mimicking the perfect, deferential student.

She avoided the corridors he frequented. She changed her route to the library, took detours around the dungeons, and began timing her entries and exits precisely to minimize the chance of accidental encounters.

Every action was governed by a profound, internalized question: What did I do?

The shame was no longer an emotional weight; it was a driving force behind her extreme caution. She needed to be flawless. She needed to erase the memory of the reckless, drunken girl who had dared to touch him. She needed to prove that the professional student, the one he had tried so hard to mentor, was still present and recoverable.

Even with Elliot Vane, she was careful. When he approached her in the library to discuss their shared Charms essay, she lowered her voice and kept the interaction brief, formal, and strictly academic. She didn't need Snape to see her with her guard down again, even if the strictures of her Occlumency discipline were now irrelevant. The fear of his disapproval, rendered suddenly invisible, was a more effective warden than any spoken command.

Three days after the cancellation notice, she was in the Transfiguration courtyard, waiting for her next class. She saw Snape crossing the stone quadrangle, heading toward the main entrance. He was moving with his customary swift grace, a dark figure against the grey sky.

She immediately froze, positioning herself behind a stone column, allowing the stream of other students to obscure her. She watched him pass, a practiced, non-academic observation.

He did not look left or right. His profile was sharp, severe, and focused entirely on his destination. He was a man with a purpose that did not involve her.

She noticed, with a spike of panic, that her heart rate had accelerated significantly, a deep, heavy thump against her ribs. She was having a physical reaction to his presence, even at a distance, concealed behind masonry, after days of enforced non-interaction. The chemical truth remained untouched by her mental discipline.

The intensity of her self-monitoring, the constant performance of flawless control, reached an exhausting peak. It was a desperate attempt to correct a transgression she could not name, the physical evidence of a reckless moment she could not recall.

She understood that the current situation was a direct result of her moment of drunken anarchy. It was her failure to maintain control that had caused this absolute, chilling retreat. It didn't matter that the incident was blurred and the final action was mysterious. The gap in her memory was confirmation enough that she had committed a grave offense against his boundaries. The severity of his current absence confirmed the scale of her reckless deed.

She stood behind the column, the cold stone pressing against her spine, contemplating the profound distance he had established. The suspension of the lessons, the professional erasure, the refusal to even make eye contact. Everything pointed to the same painful conclusion. Whatever she had done in that hallway while under the influence of mead mattered enough for him to retreat entirely. He was closing the door she did not remember opening.