“How much can you possibly care for your friend, Mr Weasley?” Of all the questions the redhead’s deceased potions master might ask him, this, Severus could tell, was the one Weasley least expected.

“My friend?” was the boy’s gormless reply. “Harry?” he added in response to the professor’s sneer.

“Mr Weasley, recall for me, if you would, the last time you have enjoyed the company of a sober Mr Potter.”

“Harry’s had a rough time of it what with the muggles, the prophecy, Sirius, the headmaster—it’s not wrong that he should want to have some fun now that he did what he had to do.”

“Fun. Does Mr Potter appear to you to be having fun, Mr Weasley? The young man I saw sprawled on the dining table was unable to comprehend the events unfolding around him, much less enjoy them. When do you think Mr Potter has fun? Is it while spending the first eight hours of the day drinking himself to stupor or afterwards, vomiting all over the belongings of his deceased godfather?”

“He doesn’t,” Weasley interjected defensively.

“Doesn’t what, Mr Weasley? Doesn’t vomit? I assure you, much to my annoyance, he does. I often spend hours in this room with nothing but the sounds of your young friend retching to keep me entertained.”

“Well, if he disgusts you so much, why don’t you just pop back to the Headmistress’s office and stay there?”

“And leave him to die should he asphyxiate on the contents of his own stomach? Yes, Mr Weasley, that is a marvelous idea. I only wish you had shown this aptitude in you school days.”

The young man in front of Severus had the good grace to look ashamed. “Sir, I meant earlier that he doesn’t drink all day. He goes to work. He’s an unspeakable.”

“And where, Mr Weasley, did you learn this little bit of drivel? Witch Weekly?”

“Hermione. She said that Harry must be one. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“No, Mr Weasley. The only thing that is unspeakable is the deplorable state of degradation the savior of the wizarding world has been allowed to sink to all under the cover of a polite fiction solicitously supplied by your fiancé!”

“Sir?” The young man, it seemed, had managed to lose the thread of the conversation and was very near unraveling the potions master’s sanity.

“Let me be a clear as possible so there is no misunderstanding. Mr Potter is not an unspeakable. He is a drunk at best. Your friend drinks himself silly upstairs and stumbles down to the living room almost accidentally once a day. Those with the sense to see the truth of the matter have not approached him because the boy is sacrosanct. Those close to him, like you, are too blinded by the glaring light of his touted virtue or else your own stupidity to see Mr Potter for what he has become. So, Mr Weasley, let me return to the question at hand. How much do you care for Mr Potter? Because if you care for him at all, you will cease hiding behind Granger’s ready excuses and use the common sense Albus claims you were born with.”

“What should I do?” Severus smiled at that. If only young Mr Weasley had been this ready for direction in potions class.

“What you should do, Mr Weasley, is retrieve Potter’s invisibility cloak from the trunk in his bedroom. Drape the cloak over my frame and place me in his room preferably out of the way of anything wet and without Potter’s knowledge.” The last, Severus observed to himself, should be easy to manage, even for Weasley: Everything that has transpired these last five years has been without Mr Potter’s knowledge.

Weasley stood quietly for a moment. “I imagine you are right. Someone needs to help Harry. You have been helping him for so long; it might as well be you this time too.”

Mr Weasley’s loyalty to Potter being put to good use for a change instead of mischief and harebrained schemes—and it only took eighteen years.  Minerva will be beside herself.