Chapter 41 - A Willing Surrender

"We'll go out for lunch, then head to Liberty's."

Winnie wanted to show Praeris every interesting thing she owned, which left the house a complete mess.

She raised an eyebrow at Praeris with a smug little grin. "See, this is where a tidying charm really earns its keep. Everything back in its place!"

Praeris looked up. All the jumbled items spun through the air, then settled neatly back where they belonged.

This was Winnie Brown. Outstanding Ravenclaw graduate, former reviewer for the Experimental Charms Committee. And the watcher sent by Dumbledore.

This was the gentle trap Praeris had walked into with her eyes open, and one of Dumbledore's open stratagems.

Praeris was interested in charms, but could you imagine a remarkable witch taking the initiative at a pub to share her charm-creation ideas with a first-year Hogwarts student? Praeris didn't think she had any particularly striking outward features. Nothing like, say, a lightning-bolt scar on her forehead.

Pies don't fall from the sky. And yet Winnie had picked her out right there in the Leaky Cauldron.

Ms. Primrose Pernell had no idea any of this was happening. But Praeris choosing to work at the beauty shop was, for Winnie, a genuinely lucky coincidence. Winnie didn't need to manufacture reasons to run into a little girl at the Leaky Cauldron every day; she only had to hang around at her good friend Ms. Prim's shop.

Prim would never turn her away. Put another way, Prim had a soft spot for every woman who walked through her door.

In that encounter with Malfoy Senior, Praeris had ruled out any connection between Winnie and the Slytherin faction. In their conversation on the first day of the holidays, she confirmed it: Winnie was Dumbledore's person.

She had suspected it for a while. She just needed the final proof.

It was almost too simple. The people who knew about the Board of Governors matter were: Malfoy Senior, the fence-sitting governors, and Dumbledore. That was the full list.

But Ms. Prim was right, living alongside women was a happy thing. Praeris had only herself to worry about, no family anywhere; she had never known what familial warmth felt like. Yet the beauty shop carried a faint glow of it all the same.

What was a home actually like?

She had a memory from the convent. A craft activity, all the children gathered together. One girl wasn't very bright, and she couldn't get her piece right no matter how many times she tried. Her mum and dad didn't show a moment's impatience. They simply sat with her, taking it apart and building it again, over and over, until the very last moment before the activity ended. They succeeded together.

Praeris had been seven years old when she watched that.

Three years later, when Praeris was ten, that same girl was preparing to leave for upper school. She still remembered the little "tiny nun" figurine, it wasn't actually a nun, but that was what they'd called it, waiting for them to finish. She told Praeris she had kept it all this time. The housekeeper had lost it once, and the two of them had dug through the rubbish bin together until they found it.

Love is staying by your side even when you're clumsy.

Ms. Prim put up with friends and staff who bickered and talked nonsense all day. She let her friend bounce around making a nuisance of herself. She let her staff slack off doing homework in the potions corner. She made afternoon tea for everyone, and she even sponsored the two of them on a shopping trip to London.

It was less a boss-and-employee relationship than something closer to a master and her apprentices. Or a mother and her children.

Praeris was greedy for that warmth. Even knowing Winnie had come because of Dumbledore.

Compared to Praeris, Dumbledore invested far more attention in Potter. Potter probably had someone watching over him too, it wouldn't be his Muggle aunt and uncle; a neighbour, most likely. Something like that.

So she had a small taste of the Boy Who Lived's special treatment after all. The difference was that Potter had no idea. With her, it was a willing surrender. It wasn't that she couldn't refuse Winnie. She simply chose to drown herself in Ms. Prim's gentle warmth.

Winnie led her to the wardrobe and leaned against the door, a finger biscuit dangling carelessly from her lips.

"Little Prae, you need to change into Muggle clothes. We can't go out in wizarding robes."

She pulled the wardrobe open. Inside was a dazzling array of clothing.

"Miss Winnie, is freelance writing really this profitable?"

She had been wanting to ask for a while. Winnie Brown's lifestyle was wildly disproportionate to her stated occupation. She had to have another source of income, or none of it added up.

Winnie paused, then burst out laughing. "Wizarding freelance writing earns so-so. But writing Muggle novels is very profitable. Muggles have so many physical and social constraints, it's as if their souls are penned up in a tiny patch of ground. Adult Muggles lose the rich imagination they had as children."

"But we wizards are different. We've seen a different world. Even just lightly adapting our own lives reads to them as wildly imaginative."

"I thought," Praeris said, surprised, "the Statute of Secrecy —"

"As long as you don't write in anything real, the Ministry turns a blind eye." Winnie was entirely unbothered. "Hogwarts is in the Scottish Highlands, for instance. You can say it's tucked in the Mourne Mountains of Northern Ireland instead."

She patted Praeris on the shoulder. "Right. Pick whatever you like!"

Without thinking, Praeris reached for a long black shirt-dress. Winnie pressed her hand down.

"Oh! We're going out shopping! I thought you were heading to Sunday service!"

Praeris watched Winnie rummage through the wardrobe and couldn't help herself. "Miss Winnie, does it really matter what I wear? We're going shopping, not walking a runway."

"Of course it does." Winnie's voice came from somewhere inside the wardrobe. "How many summers do your student years have? Only seven."

Winnie emerged holding an armful of clothes. She smiled, and there was something bittersweet in it.

"When I was little, I thought those summers were endless. Sometimes I couldn't find anything fun to do and just felt bored out of my mind. But then a certain summer passed, and everything at school felt different. Everyone carried something hidden inside them, like a fire waiting to burn all the quiet, ordinary happiness to ash."

"After that, I knew. Summers like the ones before — calm, easy, untouched — weren't coming back. So, little Prae: don't sleepwalk through your youth. Treat every moment that might make you happy like it could be the last one you'll ever have. Be fully present for it."

"Because when you look back years from now, you don't want to realise your youth ended on some forgettable, stifling summer's day when you weren't even paying attention."

Praeris took the clothes from her arms and said quietly, "I thought you'd pick something bright for me. Bold colours."

"And you'd have refused to put it on even if your life depended on it!" Winnie said, completely matter-of-fact. "Do I look that daft, little Prae?"

This Miss Winnie Brown was a genuinely odd creature. Sometimes she was childish enough to make you laugh. Sometimes she was as composed as a career politician, which, to be fair, she had once been, working for the Ministry. And sometimes, without warning, she let something heavy slip through.

The outfit Winnie had chosen for Praeris was conservative by most standards, but not without shape. A white V-neck blouse with half-length lantern sleeves on top; grey-brown checked cropped trousers on the bottom. The overall look leaned androgynous.

Winnie was taller, so what read as half-length sleeves and cropped trousers on her sat exactly right on Praeris.

"I knew from the start someone like you would suit these," Winnie said, leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed.

Praeris looked up curiously. "What kind of person am I?"

"The kind who lives by their wits," Winnie said.

Praeris set the hat on her head and smiled. "I like that."

Winnie took her to Liberty's. "I prefer it to Harrods. Harrods' floors are too small, a bit cramped, and you lose yourself in there before long."

Liberty's sat on Regent Street, selling jewellery, accessories, perfume, women's clothing, and fabric.

Some of the pieces here were older than Dumbledore. One shopkeeper leaned toward Praeris and said, "Child, this necklace is two hundred years old."

His tone was as if the necklace were a person.

Winnie was not the least bit lazy about shopping. She swept through floor after floor with the energy of someone who had never heard of tired. She didn't buy much, but everything she chose was distinctive.

"Muggles may not have much imagination," she said, "but their designs are beautiful."

When they finally stepped outside, Winnie pulled a large box of chocolates from her bag. "Here. Children should have something sweet."

They were a souvenir from the ground floor. Winnie had lingered there for quite a while, and Praeris had assumed she was craving something for herself.

"I was only here to keep you company..." Praeris said.

Winnie's smile was radiant. "Hush money. Don't go back and tell Prim I bought another pile of useless things. Do you fancy Italian?"

Praeris was about to answer when a familiar voice cut through the crowd.

"Prince! Is that you? Are you Prince?"

She turned. A round-faced girl in a spaghetti-strap maxi dress was staring at her. It took Praeris a full moment to place her.

Sophia Joseph.

"Prince, you look completely different!" Sophia said, astonished. "I thought you'd gone off to school. Sister Mayne said you were taken in by that pitch-black teacher."

"You thought right. And you look very different from before too."

Praeris said it without the slightest hesitation. Dumbledore knew better than anyone where she had come from, so there was nothing to hide in front of Winnie.

Sophia lifted her chin proudly. "A believer offered me a job. I can read and write, so she brought me on as a clerk at her company."

"You're fourteen," Praeris said flatly. She was a minor.

Sophia was completely unbothered. "I look old enough. People can marry at sixteen — am I supposed to stay in the convent forever? I have no interest in becoming a nun."

"Don't you want to go to school?" Praeris asked.

She remembered Sister Mayne fighting for schooling opportunities for Sophia and Fiona more times than she could count.

Sophia gave her a look. "Not everyone has your luck. Is this your teacher?"

Winnie, standing just behind Praeris, gave Sophia a little wave. "That's right. I teach art."

"Sister Mayne would be so gratified to see you," Sophia said. Her voice had changed entirely from how she used to sound in the convent.

Praeris smiled. "Are you talking about you and Fiona too?"

"You've misunderstood her," Sophia said quickly. "She'd be happy for any of us, as long as we're doing well. Any child at all."

Praeris had no desire to argue the point. She didn't bring up what Mayne had said in front of her to the professor.

After they said goodbye to Sophia, Winnie was already scanning the menu when she spoke. "I never imagined you grew up in the Muggle world. That can't have been easy for you in Slytherin."

Praeris shook her head. "It's been fine, actually. Apart from you and a handful of teachers, no one knows anything about my background. You'll keep that between us, won't you? Slytherin has half-bloods too. We might trade barbs internally, but there's no real ostracising. It's never been like that."

She was genuinely a little surprised Winnie didn't know her background. Had Dumbledore told her nothing at all?

"I understand," Winnie said, suppressing a smile. "All the bullying happens externally. Against Gryffindor."

"Sounds like it was the same in your day," Praeris said.

Winnie shook her head. "In our day it was more like open warfare. The Gryffindors back then were nothing like yours are now. I remember once — first or second year, I think — hearing that a Gryffindor had strung a Slytherin student upside down from a tree."

Praeris blinked. "That's completely out of line. Current Slytherins mostly just run their mouths."

"It really was too much. Even my Gryffindor friends couldn't watch." Winnie's expression went somewhere distant. "Let's not talk about that."

Praeris caught it. Whoever those Gryffindor friends were, the memories attached to them weren't easy. She let it go.

They were back in Diagon Alley before dark.

Praeris had half-expected to run into someone from the past. She just hadn't expected to feel nothing at all when it happened. Those convent memories, the ones she couldn't bear to look at, had gone light as dandelion seeds. One breath of wind, and they simply drifted away.

The days that followed were exactly what Winnie had promised: monotonous, tedious, and long. Praeris finished her homework quickly, including the extra assignments Professor Snape had prepared.

Millicent wrote back. She'd had another fight with her mum, but: "I won't stop loving you again."

Praeris read the line twice. It was the first time she had ever felt she didn't quite understand English.

Pansy wrote too. She had gotten Praeris's address from Millicent.

She said she was over Draco. Her family had gone travelling and she had fallen for a Norwegian wizard, supposedly a Durmstrang student.

"His eyes are as grey as a rainy London day, his hair is brilliant gold like sunlight, and when he smiles it's like London finally getting a sunny afternoon!"

Grey eyes. Blond hair. Praeris bit her lip. Was Pansy eating a substitute meal? What exactly was the right response when one of your friends started eating another friend's substitute meal?

"You woke me up. That's exactly what my feelings are like. I just need to like someone, to enjoy the process of liking them. What boys think about it? That really doesn't matter."

Praeris sat with that for a moment. She had apparently wasted a fair amount of energy worrying about Pansy's love life. The girl had already shot from pure-hearted romantic straight to the opposite extreme.

Daphne's letter came last. She said her younger sister would be starting at Hogwarts this year. Astoria.

"Honestly, I don't like her," Daphne wrote. "She's Mummy's perfect little darling, always sweet, always obedient, always delicate about everything. But I know she's more rebellious than anyone. She was born into our family, and she actually thinks Muggle-born witches and wizards are perfectly fine."

➤ Next: Ravenclaw Internal Circulation