Chapter 44 - Third Year

Praeris had seen a lot of poor people.

She was willing to bet that no one else in this room had seen as many as she had. Not even the wizards who had started out poor themselves.

The convent held relief drives regularly. The people who came were all sorts: the bankrupt, the homeless, those who couldn't work anymore, widows dragging along three or four children. Fallen people, every one of them.

But even among the fallen, there were differences. Some, despite having nothing, still kept themselves clean. They made the most of whatever little they had, carried themselves with a kind of forward-leaning energy.

There was one widow who patched her clothes like everyone else. But she'd take needle and thread and embroider flowers over every patch, so the mending looked like decoration. She never let her poverty show if she could help it.

People like her rarely needed to come back to the convent after a few years.

Professor Lupin was not like that.

He was meeting his students for the first time, and he'd still shown up in robes that were practically falling apart. He looked unwell. His face was young enough, but his hair had already gone white at the edges.

People like him weren't just struggling with material hardship. Praeris reached that conclusion without effort. There was something else, a wearing down of the soul.

He had been through things. Perhaps many things. Whatever they were, they had eaten away at his hope for the future, bit by bit.

Lupin. The lupine flower. And the lupine's meaning, in the language of flowers, was bitterness.

The whole chain of thought took about a second.

She let her gaze drift to the staff table and caught something unexpected: their Head of House, his face entirely unguarded. The expression there was hatred. Naked, uncontrolled hatred.

Professor Snape was a reserved man. Especially in rooms that contained Dumbledore, or Praeris. He seemed to have registered something particular about her, and he was careful, in her presence, not to let too much show.

Right now he appeared to have forgotten that entirely. He was fixed on the new professor with a stare that made no effort at concealment.

Praeris found this very interesting. She just doubted she'd have time this term to look into it further.

Then Dumbledore announced that Hagrid would be taking over Care of Magical Creatures.

The Gryffindors erupted into applause. The Slytherins looked at each other.

"I'm regretting signing up for that class," Pansy Parkinson said flatly.

"Truly anyone can be a teacher these days," Draco said, with a short, contemptuous laugh.

Praeris said, with genuine surprise, "Isn't that always been true? Gilderoy Lockhart was our teacher."

Several Slytherins choked.

Lockhart had been exposed at the end of last year. He'd been hit by his own Memory Charm, forgotten everything he'd done, and lost his post along with every false honor he'd accumulated.

False was false. No quantity of lies could change that.

Whatever the students thought of the new teachers, the start-of-term feast arrived on schedule.

Marcus clapped Terence on the shoulder. Terence nodded, got up, and made his way to the far end of the table where the first-years were sitting, to go over a few things with them.

Terence had been on Marcus's Quidditch team once. Now he was Marcus's successor.

---

The next morning, Praeris walked to the Great Hall at her usual time. Her bag was stuffed full, bulging with homework and textbooks.

Draco was giving them a theatrical account of how Potter had fainted on the train, arms waving, acting it out like he'd had a front-row seat.

Pansy Parkinson was keeping up her end beautifully. She'd moved on from Draco romantically, but the straight-man reflex was thoroughly ingrained.

"No! His nerve is the size of a rat's?" Pansy said, laughing.

Draco was walking backwards, facing them. "I'd say less than that. Maybe the size of what a rat leaves behind. Oh — look. Cowardly Potter, right on time. Want to see the reenactment?"

He immediately dropped into an exaggerated faint. The Slytherins laughed.

Praeris didn't understand what was funny. The performance wasn't remotely convincing. No sweating, no pallor, no dilated pupils. His breathing hadn't even changed.

Potter's expression had gone ugly. He looked about ready to lunge forward. Granger caught his arm. "Don't. He's not worth it. Just leave it —"

Granger's eyes found Praeris, who was standing beside Draco. Praeris looked back at her evenly. Her expression didn't move.

Then Pansy stepped in front of her, pulling Praeris behind her own back. "Oi! Something to look at, Potter? The Dementors are coming! Wooooo!"

Granger steered Potter away. Pansy was still holding Praeris's hand.

Millicent Bulstrode's voice came in, tight with worry. "What happened?"

Praeris shook her head. "Millie. Nothing happened. Granger didn't do anything. Pansy, you can let go."

"You think I did that for you?" Pansy huffed. "I'd mock Potter with or without you."

"I know," Praeris said.

Pansy's mood curdled. She scraped her chair back with a sharp screech and dropped into it heavily.

Of course Praeris knew. Pansy Parkinson would mock Potter regardless. That had never been in question.

Pansy went with the current. She always had. And Slytherin was very good at providing a current to go with.

She'd followed Draco's lead when she liked him. She'd kept following it after she stopped. The person she'd moved on to still resembled him. Whatever Draco did, she did. Whatever the Slytherins did, she did. The pattern ran that deep.

She was deeply insecure. So she had chosen the path that felt safest: be like everyone else, and stay on that path no matter what, until someone tapped her on the shoulder and told her she'd gone wrong.

Draco, showing rare social awareness, noticed Pansy's sulk. "Don't sit there looking like a puffer fish. How about I do the Potter faint again, just for you?"

Pansy had been holding out for Praeris to notice, but Draco got there first and she completely dissolved. She grabbed her bag and threw it at him. "You idiot!"

"Well, there's nothing to be done. I don't have anything funnier." Draco spread his hands wide. "What do you say, Praeris? You caused this. You should be the one to fix it."

Praeris thought about that for a moment.

But stepping in front of someone, pulling them behind you, that wasn't Pansy's instinct. Was it?

Praeris swallowed a piece of sausage and met Pansy's eyes. "Of course. Pansy — thank you. Honestly, standing behind you felt really good."

Pansy's face went red instantly. "Who said I was angry? Stop it, both of you. Eat. Prae's got a completely packed day and we're wasting time —"

Yes. Praeris's schedule today was entirely full. And it wasn't just today. She'd be running between classrooms all day for quite a long stretch of the term.

Professor Snape had summoned her to his office about it last term.

"What exactly are you attempting to do?" He gave her a thin, contemptuous smile. "Perhaps I should conclude that you want to be a replica of Granger. In which case you're still missing the bushy hair and the compulsive need to educate people."

Praeris kept her gaze down and answered evenly. "Professor, I have no interest in comparing myself to anyone. I have the ability, and I am unwilling to miss out on new knowledge. My schedule has no conflicts, and I am capable of seeing it through."

"New knowledge." Snape raised an eyebrow. "Such as achieving a perfect score on one of Lockhart's personality quizzes? Your timetable reads like an act of self-harm. And after you have burned through enormous amounts of time, you will find that what you've gained is about as useful as knowing Lockhart's favorite color."

The corners of Praeris's mouth twitched. If Draco had said that, he would have left the room with a head in six colors. But this was one of the teachers she actually respected.

She took a breath. "You're not wrong, Professor. But you know that many teachers here have real ability, including the four Heads of House. Some courses may not suit me. Some teaching styles may be unusual. But I can only make that judgment after I've experienced them myself. If your concern is a loss of assistance,"

"How entertaining." He cut her off without pause. "Am I to understand that work I've sustained for over a decade will collapse next term for want of a third-year student? Or have you developed a rather elevated sense of your own importance?"

"No, Professor, that is absolutely not what I meant." She meant she could come in on weekends.

"That is genuinely reassuring." His expression didn't shift a fraction. "Your professor would like you to abandon this plan before he is obliged to visit Madam Pomfrey on behalf of an overextended student."

"But —"

"Before Halloween, I expect a proposal on my desk for dropping two courses."

In the end, after considerable back-and-forth, Praeris had held her ground long enough that Professor Snape accepted her plan on a provisional basis. Though he made it clear he expected it to collapse before Halloween.

Professor Sprout had been gentler about it. "I know you're a very clever girl, but do think it over carefully. The load really is too heavy. For some subjects, self-study would get you to the same O.W.L. result. And Severus isn't always easy to read, but he does care about his students, in his way."

So Praeris arrived at the first day of term already running.

Her earliest elective was Study of Ancient Runes, taught by Professor Babbling. The class used a reference text called the Rune Dictionary.

Runes were a script Muggles had abandoned long ago. Wizards still used them: carved onto objects, sealed with blood, used to activate magic.

The symbols were abstract, and several looked nearly identical. The numbers five and eight, for instance, both resembled spiders, one with five legs, one with two. The number one looked like a unicorn. The number six looked like a lizard.

The meanings ran deeper than the shapes. The lizard, for example, was the number six because the lizard was a creature that could only survive 6 hours away from fire. The symbol carried the thing it named.

Draco had taken the class too. He was interested in ancient runic manuscripts, the magical kind. More precisely, he wanted to read some of the old texts himself.

The problem was Professor Babbling. She talked without stopping, as though she had never once been thirsty in her life. If that sounded like a virtue, it wasn't. Her thinking scattered constantly, veering off several miles in the wrong direction and never quite returning.

She also spoke as if she had something in her mouth. So you had to sift through the muffled tone and the sheer volume of irrelevant information to find anything worth learning.

For Praeris, it was a genuine test. She had to actively filter. Her brain had to work to throw out the noise.

Draco propped his head up on one hand. "I really want to tell her that eating in class is not allowed."

Praeris shot him a look. "Her words are already packed in solid. Are you volunteering to fill in whatever gaps are left?"

Draco drew a cross in the air in front of his mouth. Muted. He was irreverent by nature and liked to push at things, but he knew exactly what would actually irritate Praeris. Interrupting her while she was trying to think was the line he didn't cross.

The other new elective was Arithmancy, taught by Professor Vector.

Arithmancy was grounded in numerology. Vector's position was that numbers had something like spirit to them, and that Arithmancy was a serious, disciplined method of reading the future through numerical patterns.

Wizards believed names carried magic. Name-based Arithmancy was the foundational form. More complex methods existed beyond it.

Praeris didn't believe in any of this. Vague, mystical, unverifiable, it wasn't her territory. Her conversation with the Sorting Hat on her first night had already established that.

Still, after class, she couldn't quite resist running the numbers on herself. The result came back as 274.

The reading said she was communicative, imaginative, and creative. It also said she was deeply conflicted, because two was the number of contradiction.

Praeris gave an approving nod. Yes. She was exactly that reasonable. The contradiction part, she couldn't see it. Moving on.

The heart number described her inner self as intelligent and perceptive. It also described a pessimistic streak, a tendency toward sarcasm, and a lack of security.

Praeris went quiet for a moment.

Then she set that half aside with the same stubborn resolve as before. She was simply a clever girl. That was all.

The social number said she came across as extremely diligent. It also said she displayed considerable stubbornness.

She stood up and looked down at the Arithmancy textbook with undisguised contempt.

As expected. Divination was imprecise by nature. These interpretations were so broad they could fit almost anyone. She could learn the system. That didn't mean she had to believe it.

Between those two classes was Transfiguration. This lesson was more advanced than anything they'd done before. Professor McGonagall transformed herself into a tabby cat in front of them.

She called it Animagus. A witch or wizard who could take animal form was an Animagus.

It was, in all honesty, extraordinarily difficult. The challenge wasn't technical or intellectual. It was that the process couldn't be interrupted at any point. One interruption, and you went back to the beginning. Every time, back to the previous step.

By the time Praeris got through her 3 morning classes, she was ready to eat.

The kitchens had made Irish stew. The lamb had been cooked until it was falling apart, soft and rich. In winter, a bowl of it would have felt like a gift. On a rainy day like this, it was close enough.

➤ Next: Hippogriff — Words Unspoken