[HP] Can you be gentle with me

Damn it... she knew something was wrong.

She knows it!

It's not right... everything is wrong──

This time Tahlia suddenly didn't know where to get enough strength to surpass Nigel, and she stopped abruptly, not being dragged forward.

"Tahlia?"

"Tahlia?"

Two voices shouted at the same time.

Then the two people who made the sound were stunned, and then, the younger one gave the older man a vicious look, his eyes were full of displeasure at the older man calling his mother's name directly.

"...it's okay." Tahlia shook her head after a moment of silence. "Sorry...just thought of something—" She forced a smile. "Let's go."

Maybe what Snape said is right, she is indeed abnormal──the current self has no idea what she will do next, there is nothing wrong with her coming back here, but most of the time she has a kind of feeling that she has never left Illusion... It's like—it's as if all the memories in her head are mixed up now...

No, it's not just memories mixed together...

It should be said that they became difficult to access, just the memories of her time with Derek, and it took her a lot of energy to barely let them be swallowed up by other insignificant memories, or her time with Snape... she I can no longer distinguish what attitude I should use to interact with him now, sometimes Remus' persuasion will suddenly pop into my mind, and sometimes she doesn't know what's going on, as if nothing happened, but in fact they all happened at the same time ──

The more she thought about it, Tahlia felt her head hurt more, she shook her head, squeezed Nigel and held her hand. "Let's go."

In any case, she had to figure it out herself—

The children of the two houses in the second year could not help showing disbelief as soon as they entered the classroom at the sight of this war hero they hadn't had time to get to know at breakfast in Potions class.

Especially when they saw Nigel busy tidying up the parchment on the desk for the potions assistant teacher, talking and laughing with her, Merlin... They had never seen him with such a cheerful expression in the potions classroom──

However, all the shock and astonishment were instantly swallowed back into the stomach when the real Potions Professor walked into the classroom with a cold face. He didn't dare to block the entrance for a moment, and hurriedly positioned himself in his respective positions. Dare not take a breath.

To their surprise, the Potions professor didn't speak at the beginning of the class like last year, but stood behind the desk with an expression of keeping strangers away, and their Potions assistant, despite standing On one side of the table, it was the person who was speaking to them, and most importantly, she was smiling.

The students were almost moved to tears, after all, if Professor Snape was ignored, the teaching assistant who stood at the desk and gave them a warm smile was like bringing the dawn to their hellish potions classroom.

"I think today's potion shouldn't be too difficult for you..." Tahlia said softly, even though it was clearly heard by every student. "As long as you look carefully at the steps, there shouldn't be any major problems." She waved her hand towards the blackboard, on which the steps and precautions had already been written. "Don't worry too much... I will stay here all the time, if you have any questions, you can ask me at any time──"

"Are you really planning to kill You-Know-Who?" A voice suddenly interrupted Tahlia, who blinked and turned her head in the direction of the voice.

For a moment, the classroom, which had no conversation at all, became quieter. The eyes of the whole class were on Tahlia, and those eyes were so intense that she even noticed that she couldn't see anything.

For a while, after much thought, Tahlia said quietly. "It's true that it has something to do with me, but sometimes, you can't believe everything in the newspapers - the Dark Lord's failure will happen sooner or later, and we - not just me - just find ways to speed up the process That's all."

There was silence in the audience, and no one seemed to think that Tahlia would actually answer this extremely impolite question that was almost disrupting the class. In an instant, he tried to hide himself behind the potions table because of Snape's stern stare.

"But I don't think this is what you're curious about." After a moment, Tahlia spoke again after the silence. "Perhaps what you really want to know is about me... Is it really like what you see or hear through certain channels, so—how should I put it...just and awe-inspiring?" She chuckled One sound. "But I'm not." She shook her head slightly. "Many things are not what I want to do, but what I have to do."

Still silent.

"I never decided to kill the Dark Lord for the future of the wizarding world," Tahlia continued. "I'm only doing it because I don't want to disappoint the people who stood by me and helped me—" Then she laughed again. "The Dark Lord's failure was never due to my plan, but the result of various luck mixed together. I'm sorry to disappoint you."

Snape had been watching Tahlia silently.

After he gave the Ravenclaw male student a warning look, he kept staring at her, fearing that she would be reminded of some memory that would make her collapse...

but no.

She hides it too perfectly.

He looked at her plain explanation with a smile on her face, at her calm narration, and then at her urging the students to start making potions quickly. From the beginning to the end, he didn't say anything.

"I'll watch them." Then Snape heard her voice clearly talking to him.

he whispered. "I believe."

"The Daily Prophet is always a gossip," Tahlia said, tilting her head slightly, in a volume only the two of them could hear. "You know...they should really be lucky—"

Snape paused for a few seconds. "What's the meaning?"

"They should be thankful that Voldemort's presence threatens those I care about." Tahlia smiled, eyes staring straight ahead.

It was still black pupils that seemed to be covered by some thin curtain and turned a little dark gray.

Snape frowned.

"At the beginning, I really admired him." She added.

Snape didn't answer, his brow still furrowed tightly.

"Since I entered school, I have desperately tried to get all the knowledge of the wizarding world into my mind." Tahlia said slowly. "And then he appeared in front of me, dignified, knowledgeable, and elegantly spoken—" She paused, then turned to Snape. "It was everything I was longing for at that time. If it wasn't for—" she said, but suddenly closed her mouth, and she lowered her eyes.

"What are you trying to say?" Snape spat out after a while.

"Did you stop hating me because of my last behavior?" Tahlia asked flatly. "Because I stood on the side of justice, killed Voldemort, and successfully avenged Lily──?"

Snape pursed his lips together, and forced out a word. "No."

"Why is that?" Tahlia asked, with a look on her face that seemed to pause.She had been thinking about this question for a while, but she had never been able to come up with an answer.

Snape was completely silent. He didn't know why, because of Tahlia's question, his mood plummeted instantly. He wasn't sure if it was because Tahlia never believed the real reason why he would change like this, or because she still treated herself like this. general negative attitude.

This led to Snape not being able to react in time when the accident happened.

First there was a loud sound of something being dissolved, followed by a pungent stench.

Tahlia was stunned for a moment, then hastily drew out her wand and took a few steps forward. The next second, the potion splashed by the explosion was completely covered by an invisible barrier.

solved?

Tahlia held up her wand in a daze, she had no way of knowing what was going on, and she couldn't be sure if she had succeeded in preventing the potions from harming the students...

But soon, Snape's roar accompanied by the wailing of the students pierced into his ear like a slap in the face.

oh shit...

"Fool!" Snape yelled, and angrily passed Tahlia, who was still standing still, and hurried forward to wave his wand, spraying several streams of water on two of the students standing by the cauldron. "Didn't think that even such a simple procedure would be a disaster for you guys, ten points from Hufflepuff! Now, get off to the medical wing before you blow up this classroom!"

The two students were shaking, not knowing whether it was because of Snape's growl or because their skin started to blister from being splashed by the potion, and walked away sobbing.

And Tahlia was still standing in front of the classroom with an ugly expression.

Snape couldn't fail to notice her reaction, and said in a low voice after telling the students to continue the lesson before returning to the desk. "You are not responsible for their stupidity."

Tahlia opened her mouth, but couldn't utter a word for a while.

"But it's my job to protect them, and you want me to—"

"The truth is, if you hadn't got that barrier out, more people would have been hurt." Snape interrupted the still dazed woman. "You have managed to accurately cover the cauldron with the barrier, I can't ask you to control the area──" This is simply difficult for others.

Even for a person with normal eyes, it is difficult to make the barrier into a spherical shape to accurately cover the crucible in such a short period of time, not to mention the size of the sphere must be controlled──

Even if those two Hufflepuffs were particularly unlucky, they happened to be standing within the range of Tahlia's barrier spell, and were sprayed all over by the potion that was also wrapped in it.

"I guess it takes practice," he said quietly.

Tahlia trembled a bit, then nodded slowly, even so, her complexion was still very bad.

Staring at Tahlia for a while, Snape decided not to bring up the topic again, and sent her back to her office after the class was over with the excuse of asking her to take a good rest.

As for the question he should have answered... because of what?

Snape watched in silence as Tahlia closed the door still a little dejected, and went back to the Potions classroom by himself.

What reason is needed?

Snape walked to the front of the classroom with big strides, turned around neatly, and glanced coldly at the students who were sitting down the stage one after another, very nice, freshmen, rash, freshmen who didn't understand anything.

Just to drive myself crazy──

Resisting the urge to curse the person who made the damn schedule, Snape grimaced and started the lesson.

What he didn't know was that instead of resting in the office as he asked, Tahlia groped her way to the Room of Requirement on the eighth floor by herself.

It's not that she deliberately didn't keep the agreement, but that she really didn't want to waste time on rest.

Snape was right, she had to practice.

Otherwise, what's the use of her coming back here?If she couldn't even stop the students from getting hurt in the classroom, what would she come back for?

I closed my eyes and thought about it, walked back and forth three times, and then pushed open the door on the wall that appeared on request.

Yes, she needs practice.

This, then, caused Snape to arrive at Tahlia's office just before dinner time, only to find that there was no one there.

Although he didn't expect to be able to order Tahlia to do anything, in her current situation, running around the castle by herself is very worrying... Snape stood in the doorway with a dark face, thinking about him. Whether to wait here or set out to find someone, obviously the latter would not help the situation at all, considering that the castle was damn complicated.

──Maybe she just wandered around for a while and didn't go anywhere at all.

Damn.

Snape was irritated to find that he couldn't calm down now, he could hardly control himself to look back and forth and hoped to see that familiar figure appearing around the corner in the next second.

But he just stood there, until it was past dinner time, and he still couldn't see Tahlia.

After the initial fretful worry, Snape was getting a little angry now.Does she really think this castle is her garden?

The sudden sound of footsteps broke the silence, reaching Snape's ears.

He turned his head almost instantly, and saw the woman who occupied almost all of his thoughts just now, walking slowly and cautiously, leaning on the wall step by step.

Snape stepped forward quickly, the originally clean footsteps joined by another person, and became chaotic, echoing in the corridor at night, giving people a very disturbing feeling.

"Maybe you can tell me." Snape didn't wait for the stunned woman to speak after hearing his footsteps, grabbed her by the arm, and the words that came out of his mouth were almost approaching the roar of questioning, he couldn't suppress his heart at all He was so flustered, all his emotions were mixed together, and even he couldn't control his own tone. "Where did you go?"