Disclaimer: As always I own nothing but the original characters and the storyline. Thanks for reading.
Hugo, Slytherin Therapist
Given the amount of alcohol being consumed, not to mention the fact that they were in the lab where any number of cooking potions could go badly awry if exposed to even a drop of said liquor, Snape knew that if he were remotely sane he'd be more concerned with insuring that they weren't all blown to kingdom come or caught up in a wizarding duel than he was with his little emotional crisis. But he wasn't feeling particularly sane or logical at the moment, and Snape could only hope that the Lupin standing on the other side of Lily was a great deal more with it and in control than he was. Hoping that Lily would step in if either Dolohov or Hugo tried to do something stupid in their present states would be foolish, the twit was cheering them on after all as she and Teddy apparently had a bet going as to just how long the two would last. You'd think she was watching a bloody football or Quidditch game the way she was carrying on in between giving him worried and angry looks. Looks that insured his continued insanity as they reminded him again and again of what he now knew, threatening what little sanity Snape thought he had left.
He'd fallen for another stubborn, explosion causing redheaded Gryffindor. Merlin help him.
And yet, though it was in his very nature to think that way, Snape couldn't help but ignore the millions of reasons why this, this thing with this Lily would end the same way as his last brush with love had. Instead, he couldn't forget or stop the conversation he'd had with Lily about his past and her feeling for him from repeating over and over inside his head. Well, not really a conversation so much as her attempting to scream him into submission, but he'd never had anyone in his life confront him that way or really wanted to again. The Lily he'd grown up with had lectured and cried when he'd started on the dark path that had led him so far from her, giving up on him after a while and turning from him completely so that she might have killed him on the battlefield to protect her friends and Potter, while he would have never been able to do the same. For that matter, she'd turned away from him before he'd even done the things he was most ashamed of. The things the Lily who stood beside him now had known about before they'd even met for the first time when he'd still been in his portrait at Hogwarts. Many of the people he'd hurt the most with his past actions were individuals she called family or friend, yet she cared about him, had screamed that fact at him and continued to fight for him even when they hadn't had a previous bond to hold them together from the start like the one he'd had with her grandmother. This Lily had plenty of reasons to hate him, yet she held nothing he'd done against him. She forgave him for the part he'd had to play in her grandparents' murder, had outright called said grandfather names and been on his side when it came to the way James and his clique had treated him.
She was ever, it seemed, on his side.
He didn't know what to do or think about that.
The fact that the only one he felt comfortable discussing his current predicament with was presently engaged in a drinking contest didn't help either. He needed Hugo sober at the moment and given the amount of alcohol the Gryffindor had already consumed Snape figured it was going to be a while before the boy was up to giving him anything resembling decent advice. Though Hugo was proving to have an impressive head for alcohol, he'd give his friend that. If he hadn't watched the boy chug back the various kinds of liquor so effortlessly he'd think the boy had only just started drinking given how composed and with it the Gryffindor seemed at the moment.
The same could certainly not be said for the obviously well on his way to being fall down drunk Dolohov, who was probably only upright at the moment through sheer Slytherin stubbornness. Under normal circumstances Snape would have been amused, even though technically his house was being embarrassed at the moment to an extreme degree…but as it was he could only remain behind an indifferent mask for the sake of his own self-preservation.
An elbow connected with his side. "Quit looking so worried, he's beating the pants off of his Darling Dolohov."
"If pants start coming off we're intervening." Teddy's voice made it clear this wasn't open to negotiation. "And we should probably check their vitals so to speak soon, to make sure they aren't poisoning themselves. All three of us will end up as dead as the majority of my family tree if Hugo ends up in St. Mungos twice in one day."
"Quit your bloody yapping, you pansy arsed, Gryffindor." The words were very slurred, but Alexei point was made. "We're fine."
"Change that to just check Hugo out then." Was Teddy's new opinion after shooting the drunk Slytherin the middle finger, having never been a fan of either Alexei's family or the man himself.
Keeping her voice down Lily told both Snape and Teddy not to worry, Alexei was obviously on his last rope no matter what the idiot seemed to think. Then they could all get back to doing more important things after maybe taking some embarrassing pictures of Dolohov. Just so that they could look back on this for years to come…and maybe blackmail him a little if need be. Or just for fun.
"I'm not letting you do that last part." He and Dolohov were Slytherins, and that meant they stuck up for each other, especially when their opponents were Gryffindors. Especially then.
"Spoilsport."
"Evil witch."
"Slytherin."
"Gryffindor."
Shaking his head over both of them, as well as a little creeped out by the vibe he was getting from the two of them, Teddy shoved his hands deep in his pockets and focused his sole attention on the two men who were ignoring all of them to continue their little competition.
)
No one was surprised when, a few drinks later, Alexei's face hit the table and stayed down until Hugo got out of his chair and all but lunged over to lift the Slytherin's head up to make sure the boy hadn't hurt himself when his face had met wood. Alexei's face, he informed the others, was far too beautiful and lovely to be messed up due to a badly broken nose or chipped teeth. Not that those things couldn't be fixed with magic of course, but seeing his face marred even for a few minutes would make him want to cry. He was always overly emotional when he had had a lot to drink.
"But thankfully he's just unconscious. He didn't break his poor little nose."
All three of the spectators had to work hard not to laugh at Hugo's longwinded and not entirely sequential speech, only reining themselves in because they were aware of just how important Dolohov was to Hugo, as well as figuring that it would be for the best if they didn't say anything to set their sorta drunk loved one off, just in case.
"We definitely can't just take him home and leave him there, he needs supervision." Hugo announced after carefully rearranging the Slytherin's head so that he wouldn't be crushing his nose. "We should take him up to the house so that he can lie down and-Oh, we can use my bed!" Hugo's eyes actually lit up with excitement for a moment before dimming slightly as reality sank in. "Maybe not. He might cause a book avalanche when he wakes up, or trip and hurt himself on all my books when he gets up. I bet he's even more violent and likely to curse me when he's mad AND hung over."
Everyone wincing at the mental images their minds conjured up as to how Alexei might react in such a situation, Lily announced that Alexei would sleep off the booze on the couch. She'd even be willing to feed him provided he wasn't a complete and total arse when he woke up.
"And I'll watch over him until he wakes up." Brightening back up Hugo beamed at them, absolutely delighted with this turn of events. He'd get to watch Alexei while he slept after all.
"We'll watch over him." Snape tacked on, fairly sure that if Alexei woke up and found just Hugo watching him the results would not be pretty, especially since the other boy had lost the bet on top of everything else. Dolohovs had almost as much ego and pride as Blacks after all.
"Okay!" Punching a fist in the air Hugo told Snape to take one arm and he'd take the other. They'd let Lily and Teddy get back to their lolly creating.
"I don't know about this, you're partly drunk and Sev's got a few screws loose today..."
Telling Hugo to ignore her Snape gave Lily the best death glare he was up to aiming in her direction and then moved in to take Alexei's right arm, Hugo copying the action on the other side. Both men waving off Teddy's offer to assist them they headed out of the lab with Alexei between them.
Carrying the Slytherin by magic would have been easier, but Snape and Hugo were both in the mood to do something physical and Snape was smart enough to figure that Hugo just wanted the excuse to touch Alexei without risking severe bodily harm. So they wobbled and weaved a little, but they finally got into the house and managed to deposit Alexei onto the couch without causing him any physical damage as an added bonus.
Once they had Alexei's on the couch Hugo moved the table in front of the couch off to the side, and then promptly sat down on his bum with his elbows braced on his knees, his head in his hands as he beamed at the sight of Alexei's unconscious face. To say the boy was obviously thrilled beyond words to be so close to the Slytherin without getting yelled at for a change would be an understatement, drunk or not.
Shaking his head over the whole thing Snape took a seat nearby, feeling better now that he was away from Lily and could just think his thoughts without having to worry about someone catching on that there was something going on he really didn't want to talk about. Hugo was obviously lost in his happy Alexei world and there was no way Dolohov was going to-
"So what's wrong?" Hugo's voice cut through Snape's thoughts. "Something's definitely off about you, and I could tell Lily was worried earlier. Did you two have another confrontation?"
"How did you even notice through your alcohol haze?"
Hugo made a dismissive sound, glancing over to smile at him before turning his attention back to Alexei. "I have a high tolerance, like I said. It would take a lot more than what I just drank to put me under the table. And even when I am drunk I'm still much smarter than the average person, which is really irritating to some people, especially ones like Alexei. So what happened?"
To buy himself some time Snape asked if Hugo was sure that Alexei was actually unconscious and not just playing possum out of embarrassment. He did not want their conversation being overheard.
A considering look crossing his face, Hugo shifted up to his feet and then leaned over Alexei's prone body, whispering something into the Slytherin's ear that Snape couldn't catch from where he was sitting. When Alexei didn't so much as move a muscle Hugo assured him that there was no way the man was faking it.
The thought that he wanted to know what the Gryffindor had just said to try and get a reaction out of the other boy came and quickly went. Snape didn't doubt for a moment he probably really didn't want to know. It was also on the tip of his tongue to lie as he'd never lied before, and for him that was really, really saying something, but he wasn't completely without common sense either, and Snape knew that Hugo really was the only person he could talk to about this in the whole world. The only friend he really had, since things with Lily were too complicated for words.
So instead he took a moment to gather his courage and then admitted the truth. "My patronus wasn't a doe. It was a bird."
Head turning so that their eyes met as Hugo returned to his early position, there was understanding in Hugo's as the Gryffindor processed the implications of what had just been revealed to him. "Does she know?"
"No."
"Okay then. I won't say anything to her. What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know."
)
Since he was pretty sure the change in patronus had pretty solidly rocked his friend's world, and not necessarily in a good way, Hugo had no intention of forcing the other man to talk about his feelings or tell him what he thought he should and shouldn't do. If Severus wanted his advice than his friend would ask, and when he did Hugo would do his best to subtly steer the man in the right direction. Slytherins, in his experience, were much easier to handle if they thought that everything they did was their own idea. Manipulating them into doing what you wanted them to do and making them think it was what they wanted to wasn't always easy, but doable if you studied the Slytherin in question long enough. Of course he'd been studying Alexei for years without a whole lot of luck, but he was still hopeful that one of these days he'd get his way. And have his way with the Slytherin, period. But that was a thought for another time even though the other man was stretched out in front of him like an offering from the gods.
He was just so yummy looking, Hugo thought with a dreamy little sigh, his gaze naturally gravitating back to his favorite Slytherin's face.
"Why don't you try and get over him? He's made it pretty clear he'll fight you tooth and nail even if he were to fancy you sometime down the road."
"Well, in the words of Pablo Neruda, '"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this'. In other words…love isn't something that can be so easily controlled or explained. It happens and if we're really lucky it's returned. And when you're lucky enough to love someone, well I've always felt it's wrong to not take care of it even if you're the only one. He would never say it, but I hope on some level my feelings for Alexei make him happy." A thought occurring to him Hugo turned back to look at Severus. "Is my love a burden for you?"
The flush that climbed over Severus's cheekbones would have made Hugo grin under other circumstances, but this was serious so he simply smiled and waited patiently for his friend to answer.
"No. It's not…a burden."
"Good."
As Hugo watched Severus came over to stand at his side, surprising him when he knelt on the floor so that they were both watching over the still sleeping Slytherin together. But Hugo was happy for the company, and reached over to take his friend's hand in his, giving it a friendly squeeze of affection before letting go again since Severus could only take so much affection in one sitting.
"I don't know what to do now."
Hugo shook his head, marveling as always at the peculiarities of the average human being. "You don't have to do anything, Severus. Just move at your own pace and be open to the possibilities ahead. You already know that she cares about you too, and that's the biggest hurdle when it comes to love as it is."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't make sense to you because you think that you're unlovable. You don't get the fact that you're fine just the way you are. She cares about you now, even though you've been plenty nasty to her over the last few months you've been with us. People who think they need to change to get someone to love them are missing the whole point. You want someone to love you for you, warts and all. And people don't really change anyway, not who they really are, so it's all pretend when they try to be someone else anyway."
Seeing the expression Snape made Hugo sighed and shook his head again. "You're a good person who made mistakes. I didn't mean that in a bad way. Heck, the things you're probably ashamed of doing in the past were mostly a result of you pretending to be someone other than who you really were. At your core you're a very, very good person, I'm sure of it. And good people make mistakes just as often as bad people."
"I thought you believed in everyone?"
"I believe we can choose to be better than we are in small ways." Unable to control himself anymore Hugo reached out to stroke Alexei's hair, smiling in dumb pleasure as the silky strands ran through his fingers. "He has such nice hair, doesn't he?"
"I'll take your word for it."
Chuckling, Hugo picked up where he'd left off earlier. "When you love someone you do little things for them and show them you love them that way. Like how Al and Scorpius both tolerate the other's families even though they don't want to, or how we refrain from gagging my cousin Molly and Uncle Percy when they get into a rant about whatever they're working on at the Ministry no matter how much they tempt us. We all have quirks and do things the people who love us don't like, but so long as we try not to annoy the heck out of each other too much, love isn't that hard to nurture and maintain."
The look Snape gave him made it clear the Slytherin still didn't get it, but Hugo hoped that in time it would sink in.
Eventually.
Slytherin heads could be unbelievably hard.
