[HP] Can you be gentle with me

"So... you were rejected?"

"Ah."

In the Gryffindor lounge, Harry carefully observed the black-haired boy who almost regarded their lounge as his own home, watched him pick up the biscuit on the table and threw it into his mouth with a natural expression, and responded to his question in a calm tone. talk.

That's weird... It's completely different from the look he was on the verge of crying in the Response Room a few days ago.

"Are you really Nigel?" Harry asked wordlessly, watching Nigel clean up the plate of cookies again. "Isn't someone pretending to be it?"

"What are you talking about..." Nigel turned his head suspiciously, glanced at Harry, and gave Harry a look of contempt in his eyes. "Are you expecting to see the expression I put on? It's only natural that such a plan would be rejected by Remus."

Harry wanted to cry but had no tears.

So didn't they all say that in the Room of Requirement back then?No school professor would agree to Nigel's original proposal...

"But he did say..." Nigel swallowed another biscuit happily. "He said he'd be happy to talk to me if I was missing any information—"

Harry opened his mouth for a full minute before he could close it.

Then he suddenly realized that he seemed to underestimate the entanglements between his fathers...

Seeing the black head in front of him that he had seen since he was a child and lowering his head again to seriously write on a piece of parchment, Harry immediately made a wise decision to shut up and end this topic.

So, Nigel's plan began with his own efforts—perhaps with Remus Lupine's advice—beginning.

As a result, Severus Snape, current Professor of Potions at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Head of Slytherin House, began to feel that it was becoming increasingly difficult to see Tahlia, or to talk to her, whenever he found The amount of time Tahlia spends alone is plummeting, and she's always surrounded by someone, whether it's a professor or a student at school.

It’s not that they won’t be able to see each other, after all, they are all in school, and Tahlia is his teaching assistant, of course they can see each other from time to time, but—how should I put it, he has seen Tahlia’s face, but only just , adding a few daily greetings at most, and before he wanted to go further and have other conversations with Tahlia, he would always be interrupted by various events.

──To be more precise, Nigel was always interrupted by various incidents.

As small as reminding Tahlia to go to the toilet, reminding Tahlia that it's time to eat, as large as—no, none of those reasons can be called a major event at all.

"I think that Nigel kid has been hiding something lately from me—I mean, letting you know—that he seems to be up to something."

Unexpectedly, at the moment of hearing Snape's serious and earnest words, Tahlia's sip of tea that she had just drank was spit out in an inelegant manner because of her loud laugh.

"Merlin... Severus—you said Nigel—what is he plotting?" Tahlia said this in a tone that was completely uncontrollable, as if trying to hold back a laugh. "And he... didn't let me know?"

Snape coughed uncomfortably, adjusted his sitting posture, and looked towards the door of Tahlia's office. After making sure that this conversation would not be interrupted by anyone—especially that kid Nigel—he did it again. Open your mouth. "I'm pretty sure, Tahlia."

"Why do you think that?" Tahlia asked slowly, word by word.

"Didn't you notice?" Snape's eyes widened slightly, but then he returned to his original serious expression. "I have to remind you, this is probably the longest conversation we've had these days──" Tahlia, who was about to refute when she caught a glimpse, continued to say what she was about to stop. "No, Tahlia, meeting me in the hallway discussing course content doesn't count as conversation I mean."

Tahlia silently closed her mouth, and followed Snape's example with a soft cough. "So... you mean—"

"You know what I mean," Snape said stiffly.

"What?" Tahlia blinked.

Snape pursed his lips, glanced towards the office door, and then slowly opened his mouth.

"Your expression makes me wonder if you've forgotten what I said before—"

"Trust me, Severus, if I'd forgotten what you said before, we wouldn't be talking here now." Tahlia interrupted Snape with a raised hand. "I mean, isn't it a big improvement that we don't hurt each other anymore? Don't you expect anything?"

"But──" Sanpe opened his mouth, but he swallowed the words after that.

What should he say?

That this is not what he had hoped for?That he's not actually satisfied with the 'big improvement' that Tahlia is talking about now?Or, yes, he was indeed looking forward to something, expecting the relationship between the two of them to progress beyond that of friends.

But then, he couldn't help thinking about what to say and what not to say, because almost as soon as Snape shut up, there was a knock on Tahlia's office door.

And Snape didn't even have to bother to think about who the person outside the door would be. Merlin, he naively thought that he could really not be disturbed by anyone tonight—Nigel, to be exact.

"Tahlia, please teach me—"

Snape pursed his lips again, staring stiffly at the black-haired boy who, in his eyes, jumped up and down in front of Tahlia almost in a demonstrative way. He spoke to Tahlia in an unusually innocent tone, and at this moment, Snape had to remind himself time and time again that the boy in front of him who dared to treat him like this was his own flesh and blood.

damn it……

"Nigel, let me remind you, it's getting late, and I think whatever pressing academic issues you have can be left for tomorrow, can't you?"

"This is at school, Professor, I thought we had already discussed what we should call each other." Nigel turned his head and replied coldly, the difference in tone even Tahlia couldn't pretend not to notice.

"Nigel—"

"And you know, as you say, that it's getting late, and I think that whatever you urgently need to discuss with my mother can be left for later, can't you?"

We have to say that we should be glad that Snape didn't have anything in his mouth at the moment, from the expression on which he gritted his teeth but couldn't say a word, we can know how displeased he is, no, it should be said to be angry.

But the young Mr. Snape deserves to be called by the Weasley twins the gold medal dedicated to avoiding death for Professor Snape. Facing such a furious Snape, Nigel didn't take it seriously at all, and took out a pile of it from his schoolbag The thick note was put on the table with a snap, and he began to read aloud what he wrote about the Unforgivable Curse in the note, completely ignoring the man beside him. "Tahlia, I've always wondered. There are more than one kind of spell in this world that are more eerie than the Unforgivable Curse, but why was there such a law specifically for these three spells?"

"Uh, well…" Tahlia blinked, then spoke, only to be interrupted by another voice.

"Because the casting conditions of these three spells are almost nonexistent compared to the more eerie spells you mentioned."

Nigel frowned, turning his head to stare at a man he knew had no good idea or thought of leaving here.

"Professor, I'm not asking you."

"But answering students' questions is a professor's duty, Mr. Snape." Snape said softly, curling the corners of his mouth. "Besides, your question is not difficult to answer, and the Unforgivable Curse is not difficult to cast—in comparison, it is not difficult to cast, which is one of the reasons why it caused such confusion in the first place. I don't think there's anything wrong with setting a standard for them specifically, compared to the Dark Arts."

Nigel didn't hide it, staring at Snape viciously, he didn't come here to hear the man answering his questions, although he did come to ask questions--ahem, the questions were just incidental, he came 100% It was to prevent Snape from having any chance of talking to Tahlia.

Yes, he did achieve it.

"Any more questions, Mr. Snape?" Snape said very slowly, then glanced at the clock on the wall. "Ah, or should I take back what I just said, obviously there is plenty of time for both of us, and I can't help but notice that your research on potions seems to have hit a bottleneck recently—"

"How do you know—" Nigel started, but then closed his mouth.

Oh yes, how could Snape not know, he has rarely appeared in potions class, yes, but he is still the instructor of the school's potions research society, of course Nigel can't be in ordinary potions class Something went wrong, the content of the Potions class at school is like a child's play for him now, but he is still stuck in a bottleneck, that's right, the research bottleneck in the club──

"In my opinion, Tahlia should not be able to completely resolve your doubts, Mr. Snape. I don't mean her lack of knowledge—it's her physical condition." Snape continued. "You are very aware of the dangers of potion research, but it is different from the potions in class that can basically be made without a brain. Are you really going to ask your blind mother to solve your doubts for you? Or more To be precise, let her research potions for you?"

Nigel's eyes widened, staring straight at Snape, then surreptitiously glanced at Tahlia, before staring back at Snape.

The silence lasted for a while, Nigel didn't know if it was because Snape had mentioned Tahlia's blindness, or if she was trying to preach to him about the way he spoke to Snape just now, and finally, he came to a conclusion.

In any case, solving his potion research problem and preventing Snape from chatting with Tahlia seemed to him to be something that could be done at the same time. At the same time, he could not think about how to explain his recent behavior to Tahlia for the time being, because just now Tahlia clearly noticed something.

Basically he didn't care that Snape found out about his plan, but Tahlia was more of a concern to him, and while she would eventually know that he was doing it for her own good, it would still be a hassle to explain.

Yes, he knew what he should do now.

"Professor Snape," Nigel said gravely, looking up. "I think your office would be a better place to talk."