Chapter 49 - A Little Disappointment

Speaking of this, Praeris had never quite worked out one particular thing: they didn't start "Care of Magical Creatures" until third year, but they'd bought the textbook back in first. Why? And when they finally did take the course in third year, they didn't even use that book.

Still, whatever the reason, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them had more solid content and was far safer to handle than The Monster Book of Monsters. That was where Praeris had first read about Bowtruckles, though she only learned they were XX-rated after consulting the Ministry's official safety classification directory.

An overactive mind isn't always an advantage. Whenever Praeris focused on one problem, she'd unconsciously peel off a sliver of attention and direct it somewhere else entirely. Even while her main train of thought was busy absorbing information at a ferocious pace.

These tangents usually announced themselves with phrases like "Speaking of which," "On that note," "Actually," "Also," or "Then again."

If the answer lay in space, the only thing Praeris could suspect was Apparition. The kitchen house-elf Barney could Apparate, it was a house-elf's innate gift, no wand required.

But that raised another issue: there were places in the world where Apparition was impossible. Azkaban. Nurmengard. Hogwarts.

Praeris blinked when she reached that particular point in her reasoning. She couldn't quite fathom why her school appeared on the same list as Europe's two most notorious prisons.

It made the whole thing sound rather obvious: school is a prison, and students are serving time. Though honestly, the comparison wasn't far off. Their school even had its own guards. Dementors.

The other reason she ruled out Apparition was simpler: the magic required the caster to be at least seventeen. Hermione clearly didn't qualify.

That left only one explanation. Time.

So she found it: the Time-Turner, a strictly controlled Ministry artifact capable of time travel.

The moment she read about it, a question she couldn't shake loose surfaced in her mind. If a wizard used a Time-Turner to kill his own mother before she ever gave birth to him, that wizard would never exist. But if he never existed, who traveled back through time to kill her? How would she have died at all?

An overactive mind, again, is not always a good thing.

Fortunately, the Time-Turner wouldn't actually produce that problem. Without causing destructive harm to either the traveler or the timeline itself, the device could only carry a wizard back five hours at most.

So: if a wizard intended to travel back to before his own birth and kill his mother, he would arrive so weakened by the jump that he'd almost certainly be incapable of actually doing it. The paradox couldn't hold.

But there were still far too many things about the Time-Turner that Praeris couldn't make sense of. Like love, it defied all logic, yet it existed, and it produced unexpected consequences with startling regularity.

Dumbledore felt the same way.

The Hagrid situation had caused him a small measure of trouble. Trivial by the standards of everything else he managed, but trouble nonetheless.

Still, the world doesn't always show you its worst face. Good news arrives too, from time to time.

Dumbledore had received a gift from Silvanus Kettleburn, the retired Care of Magical Creatures professor. After learning what had happened to Buckbeak, Kettleburn had been furious, and genuinely worried about Hagrid.

So he sent a package to Dumbledore, asking that it be passed along to Hagrid to ease his wounded heart.

Hagrid, in turn, passed it straight back to Dumbledore. He felt too sad and guilty about burdening Dumbledore yet again to keep it. And truthfully, the main reason was that he couldn't make heads or tails of the book, so it wasn't much use to him anyway.

Dumbledore smiled and turned it over in his hands. Very clean, very old. The words on the cover had faded past legibility. Inside, the pages were dense with warm and gentle writing, every line threaded through with a quiet, devout love for the world.

Kettleburn's accompanying letter explained that the book had been given to him two years ago by a Slytherin girl. She'd told him it was the only precious thing she owned, and she wanted to trade it for an Occamy feather.

"What use would I have for a book? I'll admit, I can barely sit through reading one! But she said she wanted to use the feather to make an apology gift for a classmate — a dreamcatcher that would give people beautiful dreams. Merlin! I thought, if Occamy feathers aren't meant for something like that, what are they for? She was a lovely child."

"I don't remember her name. Ask me to remember the name of a magical creature and I'll have it in a heartbeat, but people's names — I'm hopeless. I do recall, though, that the ink letters on the second page looked like the initials of her name."

Dumbledore turned to the second page.

Two letters: P.P.

In a term that had given him very little to feel glad about, this was the one thing. Severus's little girl, beneath all that astonishing talent, carried a tender love for the world.

Of the four houses, Slytherin was the one that worried him most. Voldemort's shadow had fractured it, leaving behind problems that decades hadn't resolved.

That night, Praeris and Hermione resumed writing to each other. Hermione reached out first. When she realized they couldn't agree on the house question, she simply moved past it.

Stella had been right: no two people agree on everything. More often than not, you find common ground and leave the rest alone.

Praeris asked about the Time-Turner, and added a quiet note: You should know, even when you're using it, time doesn't stop for you. It still passes. Not that it matters much right now. You're still young.

Hermione's handwriting was a little unsteady at the start of her reply. Oh, I should have known. As long as something happens in plain sight, nothing stays hidden from you. But I promised Professor McGonagall I wouldn't tell anyone... I only use it for classes, of course. I hope you won't say anything.

Praeris promised she wouldn't. After that, the two of them traded their recent reading lists.

Hogwarts served omelets at breakfast that morning. Soft, tender, faintly sweet, in portions that were almost absurdly large. Praeris was fairly certain the house-elves had cracked 7 or 8 eggs into each one.

She was still happily working through hers when Millicent spoke up. "Prae, didn't you drop two classes? How come I feel like you're even harder to find than before?"

"You're too naive, Bulstrode," Draco said, with that particular edge in his voice. "Think about it. If she's in class, you can at least spot her there. If she's not in class and doing whatever she likes, you haven't got a chance of knowing where she is."

"Well said, Draco." Praeris shrugged, smiling. "Pity I'm not a professor. I'd give Slytherin ten points."

According to Praeris's own observations, a shrug often accompanied a lie. And no, she wasn't sorry at all. She was simply helping herself to Draco's inconvenience by borrowing a teacher's tone.

Draco was displeased. He changed the subject.

His recent obsessions were two things: badmouthing Professor Lupin at every opportunity, mocking him loudly for being poor and shabby, and the upcoming Hogsmeade trip.

Praeris had no interest in either. She'd already settled things with Lupin in her own way, and she was hardly in a position to look down on someone for being poor. As for Hogsmeade, she couldn't go.

Honestly. How did he always manage to stumble directly onto her sore spots without even trying?

"Draco's right," Daphne said. "We can go just before Halloween. I'm planning to stop by Gladrags Wizardwear — I heard their wool socks are really good."

"Prae, let's go to Honeydukes together!" Millicent turned to Praeris, delighted. "I want coconut ice!"

Praeris shook her head. "I probably won't be going to Hogsmeade."

"Why?!" Pansy and Millicent said at the same time.

"I can't get a signature." Praeris said it plainly. "No signature, no Hogsmeade. You know the professors won't bend the rules on something like this."

The table went quiet. Draco offered an idea, and it was a terrible one. "Just forge a signature. How would the professors ever know whether your guardian actually signed it? I'll be your guardian."

Praeris looked at him. "My guardian. In your dreams. Forget it — there's no forging anything. The professor knows exactly what my situation is."

Professor Snape was the one who had brought her into the wizarding world. He knew perfectly well she hadn't gone back to the monastery over the summer, and that sending an owl to Father Dorin was out of the question. There was no way to get his permission.

For that matter, Father Dorin still didn't know she'd become a witch. He'd never heard of Hogsmeade.

Praeris propped her chin on one hand. "It's fine," she said, unhurried. "I'm happy enough at Hogwarts. You all have fun. Bring me back something, and I'll be perfectly satisfied."

Millicent stared at her with enormous, pitying eyes, having clearly imagined something dramatic, and said with great feeling, "Prae — I'll bring you so many snacks. Sweets, desserts, I'm going to need a bigger bag."

"Millicent," Pansy said. "Are you planning to go wholesale?"

Millicent patted her chest, thoroughly self-satisfied. "Just you wait, Prae. I'll make it so you won't even notice you didn't go."

"All right, all right." Praeris probably couldn't have described her own expression in that moment. "Whatever you like, just bring one of each so I can taste them."

Draco looked at her face. Something flickered across his, and he redirected the conversation before it could settle. "Right, Halloween's almost here. Bound to be all kinds of new sweets out. Actually, let's make a bet. I think something big happens this Halloween too."

"Why do you think that, Draco?" Pansy asked, perfectly on cue.

"Why else?" Millicent said breezily. "Our Miss Praeris has already mapped out the pattern: first year a troll, second year the Chamber of Secrets, third year there'll be something new. It's not even worth betting on. No novelty."

"But what could possibly happen this year?"

Pansy couldn't picture it. "We're completely surrounded by Dementors. Nothing can get through."

Goyle let out a loud laugh. "Who knows? Maybe Potter tries to get to Hogsmeade and faints on the road from the Dementors!"

Draco, with his usual tireless enthusiasm, launched into an impression of Potter collapsing, which sent Pansy into fits.

Praeris frowned. He was so childish. They were well into term now, was he really still not bored of this?

On the eve of Halloween, Remus Lupin sat with his office door open, waiting for Snape to arrive. The full moon was coming again.

Coming back to Hogwarts had been a good thing, in its way. The place held some of the few genuinely happy stretches of his life, though there had been no shortage of darkness woven through them too.

Then again, from the moment he became a werewolf, his life had been mostly overcast.

The Slytherin girl, he remembered her clearly enough. Prince. The same surname as a Gryffindor junior he'd once known. She had surprised him in their first lesson.

And perhaps, if he was honest with himself, something more than surprise.

When the Boggart had taken the shape of the moon, Lupin had assumed it was confused and moved to dispatch it. But Prince had beaten him to it, transformed it into a scattering of crushed sugar candy on the floor.

That wasn't his Boggart. It was hers.

As a werewolf, Lupin understood better than anyone what it meant for someone's Boggart to be the moon. What normal teenager feared the moon?

Yet this girl, thin as she was, pale-complexioned, had faint color in her cheeks and her lips. When she'd argued with Malfoy, she'd done so with energy to spare, not the slightest sign of weakness.

Was it possible? A werewolf, untormented by transformations, living and studying in ordinary good health.

Lupin knew this wasn't the time to be thinking about that. His concern was the student's welfare, and he'd made that clear to Snape.

Only Lupin knew what was actually beating quietly beneath all of it. That secret, persistent hope for a normal life.

Snape's first reaction had been a cold laugh, the way someone reacts to a particularly ridiculous joke. Then he'd sent Lupin away.

Lupin could admit it was probably ridiculous. Maybe the girl was simply afraid of the moon. Muggles had their own strange legends about it, moon-bats and worse.

But whether it was genuine concern for a student, or something less noble that he didn't care to name, he decided to find Snape again.

Just to confirm the girl was safe. That's what he told himself.

As it turned out, he was standing outside the Potions office when the door opened and the girl herself walked out, arms loaded with a tall stack of parchment.

After she left, he went in. He received Snape's customary cold commentary, and also his answer: the girl was not a werewolf.

That was a good thing. It was genuinely a good thing.

He was just...

He was just a little disappointed, that's all.

Same as it had been for the past 20 or 30 years.

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