[HP] Can you be gentle with me

"Are you still planning to continue asking me to think about it?"

Snape watched Tahlia quietly.

At this moment, her face was calm, but the sadness radiating from her body made him unable to ignore it.

And Snape didn't know which emotion he was in more of now... hopelessness that Tahlia had fallen in love with someone else... or regret that he made her think about everything again—

Does he really need to continue?

"No." Snape said. "I've thought enough."

Tahlia nodded almost imperceptibly. "Then, I shouldn't hear you continue to inquire about anything in the future?"

Snape paused for a moment. "That's right." He said. "Enough is enough," he said again.

The corners of Tahlia's mouth curled up slightly.

"Thank you."

"No." Snape shook his head slightly, and slowly extended a hand. "I'm the one to say thank you…" Tahlia grabbed his arm. "I have to thank you," he said, and the next second, Apparated, taking Tahlia with him.

In the following time, the two began to prepare their plan tacitly.

Harry was disappointed that Tahlia had only been substituting temporarily for over a week, he had thought Tahlia would continue teaching them potions.

Before we knew it, Halloween decorations started to hang up in the school, and at this moment, Harry and Draco suddenly realized that they hadn't seen Tahlia anywhere in the school except the hall for a long time.It seemed that she only barely showed up at meal times, and spent the rest of the time alone in her office.

At the moment, he, Draco, and Ron, who had been dragged by him, were sitting in the library, with several books spread out on the table in front of them.

"Harry, I still don't understand why you insist on finishing your homework so early..." Ron complained, sighing while looking out the window at the sunny weather.

"Are you trying to put off your homework until the last minute?" Harry asked casually, but his mind wasn't really on it, he kept thinking about going to see Tahlia.While speaking, he wrote the last word on his hand and drew a period, then picked up the roll of parchment and scanned it with satisfaction before speaking to Draco. "We must see her this weekend." He said seriously. "What do you think?"

"Of course!" Draco nodded. "We—"

"Hey, what are you talking about?" A voice interrupted what Draco was about to say, and the two turned their heads away. Unspeakably awkward, only Harry happily moved the few books that had just been piled on the chair beside him, and called for someone to come and sit down.

"Hermione──" he said with a smile. "Where have you been?"

Hermione came bouncing around. "I'm at Professor Watson's." She said, not noticing the dull expressions of several people, she sat down and took out several books. "You..." Then he faintly realized something was wrong. "What happened?"

"No." Harry shook his head hastily, pretending to be calm. "Where did you say you were just now?"

"Professor Watson's." Hermione replied naturally, and after a while, added another sentence. "It should be said that I am in her office, but Professor Watson is not."

"Tahlia isn't there?" Draco blurted out with a strange expression, and turned his face away stiffly.

Hermione frowned slightly, but she didn't express anything, just shrugged. "I don't have much chance to talk to her. I met Nigel on the road today, and he happened to have some interesting books in his hand..."

"I see." Harry smiled. "Hermione, you'd be a great Ravenclaw, you know that?"

"The Sorting Hat told me that too." Hermione said briskly, and quickly opened the book. The quill in her hand was already soaked in ink. After thinking for a while, she picked up the pen and wrote the first word on the parchment. . "But in the end he sorted me into Gryffindor!"

Harry didn't say anything else, only a feeling of déjà vu.

"Wait." He suddenly thought of something. "You said you met Nigel?" Nigel probably wouldn't be walking around in the hallway casually, he had already lent him the invisibility cloak, Nigel would wear a cloak wherever he went ... "How did you meet Nigel?"

Hermione froze for a few seconds. "Huh?" It took a while to react. "Oh, you asked that..." She coughed lightly. "Actually, I ran into him by accident...it's not my fault, you know—he has...you know, he has that magical thing, I didn't see him—" She looked guilty. "Hmm... I think I also caused some of his small bottles containing some potion to fall to the ground and shatter..."

"Oh..." Harry was stunned for a moment, and his expression became a little weird the next second.

"What's the matter?" Hermione couldn't help but wondered, it was normal for Draco to act weird, after all he always looked that way every time she joined their conversation, but Harry was very unusual.

"...It's really nothing." Harry shrugged, and returned his attention to his parchment, continuing to inspect his finished thesis. "It's just that I thought Nigel would lose his temper because the potion he worked so hard to make was gone." It should be said that Nigel would only lose his temper with them because of the potion, not only him, but even his favorite Sirius had already experienced it... When Tahlia told him this, he couldn't help laughing, and Nigel who was on the side threw a pillow at them in embarrassment and then rushed back to the room to hide.

"Oh, my God!" Hermione exclaimed, not noticing that Draco's expression went stiff again. "So I broke the potion he made himself?" She blinked. "what do I do?"

"Nothing." Harry shrugged again. "Anyway, I don't think he minds—"

"But that's several bottles!" Hermione raised her voice a bit, causing Mrs. Pince who was passing by to give her a low voice. "Well, I mean..." She lowered her voice. "Look, the first scabies potion we made - it took us a while, and it had to be a long time of total concentration!" She tore at her hair in chagrin. "And I actually lost all his hard work at once...God knows how much he spent on it──"

"Hermione, calm down." Ron said with a headache. "Harry has said he doesn't mind... do you think Nigel is really that vengeful?"

"of course not."

A voice suddenly came from the side. They were startled, and turned their heads in a daze, but saw nothing.

"Nigel!" Draco growled. "You shouldn't be running around, Tahlia said—"

"I know what she said, Draco." The voice sounded unspeakably cheerful, even though they hadn't even seen him. "But Hermione forgot to take her notebook."

"Oh..." Hermione replied in a daze, and then continued to be dazed to see a book with a dark red cover appear out of nowhere on the table. "Thanks."

"No." Nigel's voice continued. "But I gotta go first, Tahlia said she'd be back before dinner—"

"Did she tell you where she went?" Harry blurted out. "She doesn't seem to be in her office much lately?"

Even though Nigel was wearing an invisibility cloak, several people still clearly felt that Nigel froze instantly after hearing Harry's words.

"Nigel?" Ron asked tentatively.

"It's okay." Nigel's voice was dry. "She didn't tell me, but I know she didn't leave school... If she was going to leave school, she would have told me."

"You mean, she's been at school all this time?" Harry asked confused. "But where is she—"

"I do not know."

Nigel really didn't know, but looking at the confused faces in front of him, he couldn't help but continue talking. "I really don't know, maybe she is studying something somewhere in the school that we don't know──" He smiled wryly, although he knew that they couldn't see him now. "That's it... I will tell her that you will come to see us this weekend, goodbye." After speaking, he left in a hurry without giving them any chance to ask questions.

Otherwise, what else can we do? Nigel himself wondered where Tahlia went after being away from the office for so long, and even though it was a big castle, he couldn't think of any place that would attract Tahlia to spend most of the day there.

What he didn't know was that although he hadn't figured out where Tahlia was, he had guessed her purpose.

Tahlia had indeed been studying in hiding, with Snape—it should be said, Snape when there was no class.

He could only come to the Room of Requirement when the hall was empty, and the rest of the time, Tahlia stayed here alone, trying her best to find all the records and data about Azkaban, including the dementors.

"Tahlia, you should go back."

"It's not that time yet, Snape." Without looking up, Tahlia continued to read the document in front of her, jotting down key points on the parchment beside her.

Snape frowned slightly, and glanced at the clock on the wall. "I have to remind you, you've been here for eight full hours, and you haven't even eaten lunch..."

"I'm not hungry."

Snape finally couldn't help it, stood up abruptly, stepped forward and grabbed Tahlia's book, forcefully ignoring the stare she gave him. "You should know we still have plenty of time."

"Not as much as we thought." Tahlia glared at him. "It's going to be Halloween in a blink of an eye. According to our original plan, we should have started to study the defense measures set up by the Ministry of Magic there, but look what we are doing now?" She swept away irritably. The pile of parchment that was pressed under her hand just now. "There's simply not enough documentation, Snape! We can't even find out the exact location of Azkaban!"

"You should calm down," Snape said flatly. "It's almost two months until Christmas—"

"Only two months!" Tahlia growled. "How are we going to get those bastards out if we don't even know where the damn place is at that time?"

Snape was speechless.

She was right, they have made no progress at all, even after such a long time, even though they have searched all the relevant books in the school──

"What did Black say?"

Tahlia didn't answer right away, just shook her head, then sighed, stood up slowly, picked up all the parchments scattered on the ground just now, folded them neatly, and then opened her mouth. "They don't know the exact location either, Severus."

Snape froze in place for a moment.

Severus?

She called him... Severus?

"They all passed through the portkeys set by the Ministry." Tahlia, completely unaware of Snape's anomaly, continued on her own. "I thought I told you already..."

"Obviously you didn't," Snape said dryly. "This is the first time I've heard you mention..."

"Sorry, I probably forgot." Tahlia said casually, moving her eyes back and forth, trying to find something out of the still messy pile of parchment.After a while, he looked up suspiciously because he didn't get a response from Snape. "What are you doing?"

What should he say?

Tahlia had called him by name, he was sure, absolutely.

"Nothing." Snape forced an almost imperceptible smile. "It's just that I noticed that there was a very important word in your words just now."

"What?" Tahlia raised an eyebrow. "What did I miss?"

"Portkey."

"Portkey?" Tahlia kept the same expression, and then she shook her head. "I know what you're thinking, Snape...but it won't work."

Snape's face fell, not because Tahlia had vetoed his idea, but because he'd discovered that she'd referred to him back to his last name.

That sound just now, was she really just blurting it out?

"The portkey must have been moved directly to the base where the Aurors were stationed, and you want us to try and get one, but that won't work." Tahlia continued, this time in more detail, exactly what Snape had in mind. think.

"I know what you're trying to say, too, Tahlia," Snape said slowly. "You want to say that once we move over, we will appear directly in front of Auror, and our whole plan has a very important premise──"

"Try to get it done without alarming anyone," Tahlia finished for him. "So we can't do that, we can't touch Auror."

"But that's the only way," Snape said quietly.

Tahlia fell silent.

What Snape said was not wrong at all, they didn't have much time left, and if they couldn't find the location of Azkaban, there was no need to mention the following things...

"Assuming you're right, Snape." Tahlia stared straight at him. "Where are we going to get that Portkey?" Of course it was impossible to ask Sirius to give it to them, she'd caused him enough trouble...

"Obviously, isn't it?" Snape raised one eyebrow, waiting for Tahlia to follow suit before moving on.

"Let's steal one."