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Dianthus Stories	By : icewomin Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female Views: 3134 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Eighteen �
Silent Lucidity

Dianthus wondered
if she should tell someone about Snape�s alarming behavior in the
storeroom. Certainly, she couldn�t tell
her roommates. She could just hear what
theyld sld say. �He made you put a ring
on? Was he asking you to marry him?� Or
perhaps from Martine, �Did you ask him to marry you?� The very thought of it made her face burn.

Perhaps she could
tell Dumbledore? She thought about this
idea that night, turning it over in her head after lights-out. She knew the Headmaster was determined to
keep Snape on staff � would he even believe her story? It sounded far-fetched even to her � a
teacher deliberately sabotaging a student�s work, simply to force a bizarre
private moment in the storeroom?

And what had that moment
in the storeroom been about, really?
Snape had practically forced her to put his ring on, and then had not
seemed happy upon seeing it on her finger.
In fact, he had seemed a little frightened, and that was what worried
her. Snape was arrogant, yes, and
sarcastic, and often hid behind a mask of boredom, but she had never seen him
frightened. It was this more than
anything that encouraged her to keep silent about the incident for the time
being. If Snape acted so strangely
again, she would see Dumbledore. Until
then, she would try to forget the whole thing.

She spent her
weekend working on a particularly nasty History of Magic Essay (Explain the
history and role of the Auror in modern Magical Law
Enforcement), and by Sunday was beginning to think that perhaps she had
overreacted. Obviously, if it was
important, he would inform the Headmaster himself, but since Snape didn�t show
up in the great hall all weekend, she couldn�t tell whether he approached
Dumbledore or not.

Snape�s absence
was itself a little unusual. He usually
inhaled his meals and left as soon as he could possibly could, but he generally
made an appearance of some sorts. None
of the other teachers seemed worried about it, or even to notice, though, so
she thought that it must be a rare, but accepted, occurrence.

Over the following
weeks, Potions turned into a sort of slow torture for Dianthus. Her potion was showing promise � but it needed to steep for twenty-one days
after she combined the aconite powder and dandelion weed with finely grated
burdock root, and boiled the pasty mixture in purified swamp water. She checked it at the beginning of each
class, and it was slowly reducing to a disgusting glutinous sludge that
occasionally burped a vile-smelling green gas � just as it should be doing,
according to her calculations. When it
was done, it would have the consistency of jelly, and be dark brown in color.

While it matured,
Snape kept her busy writing essay after essay in class. Initially, she had felt this was a bit
much. But when Jarlath
Ferrell , a tall redheaded Ravenclaw, needed to wait
one class for his potion to mellow (he was hoping to improve a well-known
muscle-building potion by adding cissus quadrangularis to it), Snape made him clean all the
cauldrons in the classroom by hand, and Dianthus stopped mentally cursing every
time he doled out another paper for her to write.

The main problem
for Dianthus was that Snape was unfailingly civilized toward her, but not much
else. He listened silently to her
appraisal of the potion�s progress, marking his grade book as she spoke. Then he gave her a topic and length
requirement for the day�s essay, and said nothing else to her. If she had a question on the essay
assignment, he answered her in as few words as possible. He refused to engage in conversation with
her, or discuss the promising behavior of her potion. He didn�t even bother to make cutting remarks
on her essays, writing only her grade at the top of each.

She watched him
surreptitiously as he meandered around the room, commenting idly on her
classmates� efforts and politely ignoring her presence. She felt as though she was being punished for
something, and she couldn�t think of anything she had done to deserve his cold
attitude toward her. She wanted him to
talk to her so bad it was like a physical ache.
His relentlessly cordial behavior made her feel far more intimidated
than his rudeness ever had, and that was so backward that she felt she was
going insane.

After four classes
had crawled by in this fashion, Dianthus felt she couldn�t bear it any
longer. She turned to her roommates for
advice. �Snape�s mad at me for
something,� she said morosely, as they were putting on their pajamas. The three girls hurried to her bed and sat
down next to her.

�Did you fuck up on
your potion?� asked Erin, looking concerned.

�No,� Dianthus
shrugged, running a hand over her face.
�That�s going great. But he�s
being far too nice to me in class.�

Melanie
giggled. �And that means he�s mad at
you?�

Dianthus rolled
her eyes. �Yes, apparently it does. I don�t know what I did, though, and I can�t
ask him, obviously.�

�Why not?�
demanded Martine. �You�ve got a right to
know it if you�ve done something wrong.�

�Owl him,� Erin
and Melanie said together.

�No,� replied
Dianthus flatly. �I�m not going to
fucking owl him.�

�Well, just ask
him after class, then,� said Martine, reasonably.

Dianthus shook her
head. �I don�t want people to start
talking again.�

�Oh, tosh,� scoffed Erin. �That is such old news, Di. You�re his student, for pity�s sake. You have every right to ask him questions.�

�It�s true,�
echoed Melanie, and Martine nodded her head vigorously.

Dianthus eyed
Martine. �Do you think he�s acting weird with me in class?�

Martine scrunched
her eyes shut and considered the question.
�Yeah, now you mention it, I do.
He likes to cut you down � well, he likes to cut all of us down, doesn�t
he? But he hasn�t said jack shit to you
lately. Of course, you�ve been writing
all those essays while your potion soaks, so maybe he hasn�t had a chance to
bite your head off?�

�There you go,
mate,� said Erin, �he�s just waiting �til you�re back on
the active list to start in on you.�

�But if it worries
you,� said Melanie hesitantly, �I think you should talk to him, Di. You don�t want to let it linger � he might
start grading you down for something you don�t even know you�re doing.�

�Well, that�s
something to look forward to,� muttered Dianthus glumly, as her roommates rose
from her bed. �We�ll see what he does
next class.�

Even with the
mystery of Snape�s icy civility eating away at her, Dianthus still looked
forward to the end of her potion�s maturation period. After all, she still had her research to
consider, even if Snape no longer seemed as interested as she thought he had
been. In fact, she felt that getting to
the next level with her potion was going to be among her best birthday presents
that year.

She was certainly
looking forward to sneaking up to the Astronomy Tower and having a nip of Old
Ogden�s on the night of her birthday, but adding the shredded fringetree bark
in class two days later, and monitoring the results, would be pretty damned
fine. �You have a warped sense of fun,
mate,� said Erin, when she told her roommates this at
breakfast on the twenty-fifth.

She hoped, too,
although she didn�t tell her roommates, that some progress on the potion would
break the ice with Snape, and that he would start behaving normally toward her
again.

But Snape was in a
spectacularly foul mood during class on her birthday. He spent the period sweeping ominously around
the classroom, giving Dianthus� seat a wide berth the entire time. She was the only one he left alone,
though: he pounced instantly and
viciously on the real and imagined infractions of the other unfortunate
students. He took ten points from
Ravenclaw when Jenny White spilled frog�s brains on her table, and another five
points when she burst into hysterical sobs.
It took the combined efforts of Jarlath
Farrell and Martine to calm Jenny down before Snape could make it a round twenty.

Worse than his
openly avoiding apphinghing her, Snape even went so far as to silently give
Dianthus a note stating the topic and length of her essay after she�d reported
on her maturing potion. He stared
stonily at her as she goggled at the parchment, and after a moment she turned
disconsolately away from him. She
couldn�t believe he eli eliminating even this small bit of interaction. By the end of the period, she was so desperately
unhappy that she decided to confront him.

She dawdled over
collecting her things as her emotionally pummeled classmates rushed gratefully
from the hell that Snape had inflicted on them.
Steeling herself, she motioned for Martine to go ahead without her. Martine nodded once, and signaled that she
would wait in the hall, and Dianthus approached Snape�s desk, panting slightly
in her anxiety. He continued
deliberately scratching notes in his grade book, and didn�t even look up when
she timidly cleared her throat.

�Class has ended,
Miss Brandywine,� he said coolly.

She bit her bottom
lip and tried to think of how best to approach the question. �Have I � have I offended you in some way,
Professor?� she asked hesitantly.

His hand stopped
moving, but he did not raise his head.
�No,� he said, sounding uninterested.
His grip tightened almost imperceptibly around the quill, though, and
this heartened her just a little.

�Then may I ask
why you�re acting as if I don�t exist?�

�I am sorry you�re
unhappy with my teaching methods,� he replied smoothly. �Perhaps you should take your complaint to
the Headmaster.� He began writing again,
as if to declare the subject cl.
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