Chapter 64: A lot to think

After having a great night with Amelia where they both enjoyed their time together, he left Amelia sleeping peacefully and then left the Ravenclaw common room.

He thought about staying with her, but if anyone found out he could give Amelia a lot of trouble, so he decided to leave to prevent this from happening.

By now Slughorn's feast should have been over half an hour ago, after all the party invitation said it was until one o'clock.

As Severus made his way to his dormitory in Slytherin, he ran into a teacher.

When McGonagall met Severus outside the dormitory at half past one, he simply said that he had left Slughorn's feast late, he apologised and headed back to Slytherin.

One of the advantages of attending Slughorn's feast is that one can stay up past curfew and have a valid excuse...

Still, the party was until 1 o'clock, so the teacher deducted points anyway and if he wanted to claim anything he should do it with Slughorn.

So it was that with only ten points deducted, McGonagall left after warning him to hurry to his dormitory if he didn't want to lose any more house points.

For a moment, Severus wondered what McGonagall would be doing near Ravenclaw tower at half past one in the morning, but finding the remains of Slughorn's feast around, rubbish everywhere, food and drink, Severus knew that McGonagall had forcibly dispersed the people who had gathered here, the people who had gone to the feast and put them to sleep.

'There seems to have been more than one naughty boy tonight...'

'It seems that today the wardrobe Pandora spoke of had plenty of visitors...' Severus smirked at the thought.

As he walked back to his dormitory, he again crossed paths with an unexpected person...

Well..., two actually...

"Sev...?" said Lily with her green eyes wide as she came out of the bathroom and saw Severus out there.

He frowned slightly as he heard her call him out of the blue, it had been a while since she'd called him that... the only person who currently called him 'Sev' was Pandora.

"Huh?" Alice beside him looked confused as if she didn't believe Severus was really there.

The first thing Severus noticed was that the two of them were drunk, Alice and Lily were pale, their breaths were ragged, their eyes were red and inflamed and they were barely standing upright helping each other...

Though Alice clearly looked a little better than Lily, or at least she was more lucid.

Severus guessed that they had both been in the bathroom to avoid being discovered by Professor McGonagall.

'Hmm, two model students and drunk Gryffindor prefects outside the dormitories at half past one..., that would be asking for trouble' Severus thought with amusement but shook his head at the thought, he had no intention of exposing them.

Yes, the idea was interesting, but he wasn't that kind of person.

"Is it really you Sev?" said Lily as she walked wobbly and slowly towards him, causing Severus to frown again at how she called out to him again.

"This... Lily..., Lily wait a moment or you'll fall," Alice said nervously, but it was too late because as Lily moved towards him, she stumbled forward and began to fall forward.

Alice tried to move in time to grab her hand and hold it, but she couldn't reach it...

And Severus in front of Lily reflexively reached out and held his hands making Lily fall into his arms, he instantly noticed that her body temperature was quite low, it seems that she had taken a very strong drink if she ended up in this state.

"Hmm, oops...looks like I slipped," Lily laughed lightly.

'Wow, when you pulled out so much muscle, so... hard" she added as she lightly touched Severus' arms.

Severus looked at her with a raised eyebrow and realised that she was completely drunk, her entire behaviour was far too different from the Lily he remembered.

Still, he smelled the sweet fragrance coming off her body, and even though it was mixed with the smell of alcohol, it was still very pleasant.

She was also wearing a nice white dress with a green plaid coat that completely exposed her beautiful legs with thigh-high stockings fishnet fencenet lace white

Shaking his head and stopping thinking about those things, he ignored Lily who kept saying incoherent things, and stared at Alice.

Severus saw Alice give him a grateful look for helping Lily and at the same time give him an apologetic look for her behaviour.

"Sorry, it turns out that Professor Slughorn's liquor is stronger than we thought," said Alice embarrassed, not realising that she was admitting to drinking the Professor's and Head of Slytherin's alcohol, any other snake could do a lot of things with this information.

" S-So... well... Lily was the one who drank the most" she added smiling weakly, Alice was making a great effort to stay mostly conscious and on her feet, still she was saying things without thinking them through very well.

A clear example was that she was saying all this to Severus..., a Slytherin and Lily's former friend who was currently at odds with her.

"I kinda notice..." Severus replied lightly as Lily continued to say incoherent things next to him as she pressed herself closer to him.

It would be a lie if he said his heart wasn't beating fast enough at Lily's bold move to be pressing her body to his as she ran her hands over his muscles.

He knew that if he let go of her she would instantly fall back down and he actually thought about doing it, but it didn't feel right despite the awkward situation he was in...

Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that the feeling of her body next to his felt really good.

No..., he was just doing the 'right' thing.

"You know Sev, I'm glad you finally decided to take care of your hair, I always told you that with a little care it would look really good" Lily commented with a drunken grin as she began to shamelessly touch Severus' hair.

Alice who saw this from the outside turned a little red as the image the two were giving was quite intimate with Lily leaning on him while looking at him and touching his hair... the only thing missing was for them to start kissing to complete the image.

"Yeah... right..., well, I should get back to my dormitory, so..." began Severus already thinking of leaving quickly, he didn't want to tolerate a drunk Lily, he preferred the conscious Lily who still stayed away from him...

With a drunk Lily, he couldn't do much since she wasn't aware of her actions... yes, nothing he could say to her would do any good now, so the best thing to do was to just leave.

"Wait!, this..., can you help us return, please..., just... just to the corridor that leads to Gryffindor..." asked Alice with some hope in her eyes, she thought that maybe he would sympathize with them a little, although she doubted it, after all since the beginning of Hogwarts Severus had been ignoring Lily completely, something that used to be completely the other way..., but she had to try.

"You know, it's on the way to Slytherin so you wouldn't deviate too much... it's just a few more steps..., please," she added trying to be convincing, but her words sounded more like a beg.

Alice knew that the two of them alone would take a long time to get to Gryffindor and in that time some professor might find them and that would get them into a lot of trouble..., she didn't even want to imagine the consequences as not only would there be a massive loss of points for her house, there would also be a proper punishment.

Of course, she hadn't thought through who she was asking to help them, but at this point, Alice had no choice but to ask him for help.

Severus sighed, not knowing what to do, he didn't dislike Alice, in fact, if he remember correctly, she was the one who treated Snape the best, she even supported him more than once when he had problems with Potter and Black..., she didn't like the pranks they played on Snape and she used to say it..., although she didn't like Snape's methods of revenge either.

But it was undeniable that she was a good person.

As for Lily... he just wanted to keep her away..., something he was doing rather poorly at the moment.

Severus looked at Lily who was completely leaning against him as she kept saying a lot of embarrassing things that she surely had no conscience about, he just shook his head and decided to ignore her completely as she kept talking and he focused on Alice who at least was conscious.

" Let's go, McGonagall isn't far away so we'd better not delay any longer," Severus said suddenly taking the decision that it wouldn't be too much trouble to help a little, you could say that this was payback to Alice for supporting Snape when most in Gryffindor only saw him as a vicious and annoying snake.

And no..., it had nothing to do with the fact that the feeling of Lily in his arms was nice...

Alice was very surprised when she heard him say that since she hadn't had such high hopes that he would agree to help them, but it was a great relief...

She smiled in gratitude and gave him a quick nod as Lily continued to make rather... strange comments, which Alice was sure she would regret later... luckily she saw that Severus seemed to be ignoring Lily almost entirely.

Alice was repeatedly embarrassed along the way as she listened to her friend say some very embarrassing things to Severus, she could only glance at Severus in apology, while he just continued to ignore Lily completely and focus only on her.

With Severus' help, the two of them reached the corridor leading to the Gryffindor common room fairly quickly, Alice thanked him repeatedly and then peeled Lily away from Severus with some difficulty.

Lily moaned and seemed very reluctant to let go of him, but drunk as she was she had little strength to resist, so she finally gave in and let go of Severus...

But before letting go completely she stretched her head forward slightly and quickly planted her full lips on half of Severus' cheek and the other half of her lips kissed his lips...

yes, it was something strange...

...a half kiss maybe?

It was only for a second because the instant she kissed him, she pulled back and now Alice was holding her.

Severus stood still for a moment not understanding what the hell happened, he didn't react..., no, his body didn't react, he saw her approach and he could have dodged her but his body didn't want him to do this..., it was strange and annoying, but the feeling of the warm kiss overcame his discomfort.

'Since when can a simple kiss make me forget everything?' wondered Severus with a frown unable to believe what was happening, although if he remembered correctly when Padme used to kiss him she also managed to make him forget everything for a moment.

'Hell, it wasn't even really a kiss' he groaned inwardly unable to believe this.

Alice looked at Severus strangely as she didn't know what had happened, but she watched as he stood completely frozen and lost in thought.

'This... wow, he went like this for a simple kiss on the cheek..., hmm but Lily used to tease him by giving him kisses on the cheek...' thought Alice confused since she didn't notice that Lily actually half kissed Severus, but instantly she remembered that Severus always reacted like this when Lily kissed his cheeks so it wasn't strange that he still reacted like this for the same thing...

'It seems that as much as he ignores her now... he still has feelings for her, Merlin, they're both in the same situation' sighed Alice, she gave a last thanks to Severus and left together with Lily to their common room.

Severus finally reacted and just shook his head and went back to his dormitory before McGonagall arrived.

He may not have cared about the Slytherin points, but he didn't want to get into any more trouble either.

Tonight he would have a lot to think about, though he really hoped he could sleep without thinking about anything else for the night.

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Well my dear readers, here is the 6 chapter left of this week.

I hope you like it, good luck to all of you.