Chapter 52 - The Patronus Charm

In the Potions classroom, sunlight streamed through the glass, illuminating the dust drifting in the air and casting Draco's shadow long across the floor.

Praeris walked slowly over to him and patted him on the shoulder. Her tone was gentle but firm.

"When we're young, there's always someone in our lives who sticks in our craw. A rival. That's not uncommon. But our lives, our worth — they're never determined by our rivals. They're determined by ourselves."

Draco's fist twitched. His fingers loosened, then gradually opened and relaxed.

Praeris rarely saw him this quiet. He always seemed arrogant, petulant, unreasonable — the type who never let go once he had the upper hand. He was like one of those bratty kids who talk loudly and show off on the bus, convinced they're drawing everyone's attention, when in reality everyone just finds them annoying.

The classroom was silent. Outside the castle, the occasional noise of first-years at Flying Lessons drifted in and faded.

Draco lay sprawled across the desk. Praeris sat beside him. The two of them stayed like that without a word, until she absolutely had to leave for her next class.

She picked up her satchel and was heading for the door when Draco's voice rang out behind her. Hoarse.

"Did you think I'd thank you? Spouting grand principles out of nowhere."

Praeris raised an eyebrow. "You didn't think I said all that for the sake of your thanks, did you?"

"Self-righteous," Draco muttered. "Long-winded."

"Have you finished your loser's declaration? I need to get to class."

"Hmph!"

Draco watched Praeris jog out and disappear down the corridor.

The day Sirius Black attacked Gryffindor Tower, after he'd overheard Praeris's words, he felt like he'd drunk apple-flavored soda. His heart went sour. Tiny bubbles fizzed and rose, and he couldn't shake the deep, uncomfortable feeling that settled in.

Crabbe and Goyle were muttering something about Sirius Black, buzzing like mosquitoes.

Theodore had been tossing and turning for ages. He finally snapped. "Hogwarts really ought to set up a prison, shackle both your mouths and lock you in it. Draco, are you seriously not going to do something about these two clacking scallops?"

Draco rolled over, turning his back to all of them. "Leave me alone. Their mouths are on their faces. Do I look like I have an off switch?"

"You should be used to it by now. Prince got to him again." Crabbe's voice was utterly unsurprised. "It's always like this."

Draco lay with his eyes open, staring at the carved patterns on the Great Hall's pillars. His mind was completely blank. He didn't know what he was supposed to be thinking, and he couldn't make sense of the strange feeling sitting in his chest.

He pressed a hand against it. He knew this wasn't the first time. It wasn't unfamiliar, either. Last Christmas Eve, talking with her in the corridor, he'd felt something just like this.

I'm just correcting a mistake, Draco thought.

She shouldn't be with Flint. That big-toothed, oversized oaf was graduating next year. Was she planning a long-distance relationship? And he was so much older than her. And he was as stupid as a troll — needed her tutoring every single day just to scrape through an OWL!

And she definitely shouldn't admire Potter. That disaster case. Cursed from the moment he was born. A coward too, fainting from Dementors. And he was — he was a Gryffindor!

The next day, Draco resolved to meddle one more time.

We're on the same side, he thought, perfectly justified. Professor Snape would surely agree. The professor had always been against puppy love.

He searched for Praeris for a long time and found nothing. She wasn't in her office. Not in the library. Not in the common room.

Bulstrode answered without missing a beat. "Gone to the Potions classroom, probably. Prae's been troubled lately. She's been researching a potion."

Greengrass clasped her hands together like she was making a wish. "She can research potions on her own already? That's brilliant. I hope after graduation Prae becomes a Potions Master like Professor Snape. Then I'll never have to worry about not being able to get my hands on what I need."

"I thought the point was that she's troubled?" Bulstrode said, unimpressed.

Greengrass just smiled. "We've never seen anything that can keep her troubled for long."

Draco had his answer. He didn't bring anyone along. He went to the Potions classroom on his own.

He would be deeply grateful for that decision later. He had never imagined their conversation would veer in that direction, just as he had never imagined he would lose control of his emotions like that.

She could always find the crack in a wall of iron. Pry it open without a word of warning. Peer inside. Then close it with disdain and say: "So your heart is full of this filth. Ugh."

How could a person like that exist?

And yet, a voice inside Draco said: is what she said wrong?

He gave a bitter laugh. That was exactly the problem. She was too right. Damn right. Those words struck a bell deep in his chest, and the toll of it jolted him awake from the sleep he'd been pretending to have.

Praeris Prince. You really are a detestable person.

Praeris had no idea someone was cursing her name in his head. She was sitting in one of Professor Snape's Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons. The professor had skipped ahead in the syllabus and gone straight to the chapter on werewolves.

Good, Praeris thought. It should have been done long ago.

If there was a dangerous creature somewhere in this school that could potentially attack students, then students ought to learn how to defend against it. Not pin their hopes on the creature being able to restrain itself.

Being able to restrain oneself mattered too. But who could guarantee it would always hold?

The next day was Saturday. The rain came down hard.

The sky was a solid dark mass, and the downpour hammered against the Great Hall's windows in heavy, relentless waves. It felt like a Thunderbird was circling somewhere overhead, summoning lightning and storms, making the rain denser and the wind fiercer than any ordinary weather had a right to be.

After lunch, the Slytherins were buzzing about the Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff match scheduled for that afternoon. They were smug about it. Switching opponents had been the right call, they said, and even the sky was cooperating.

Praeris frowned. "In rain this heavy, they're still playing? Do they think there are too many students who've lived too long?"

"That's Quidditch," Millicent told her. "Weather is part of the game. Winning in bad conditions is its own kind of skill."

"Which is exactly why I hate Quidditch." Praeris bit viciously into a biscuit. "It's a completely insane sport."

No classes on the weekend, which meant she had to pay back every debt she'd accumulated this week. Unanswered letters. Homework. Extra assignments.

Praeris often felt a particular kind of absurdity creep over her.

Why did everyone around her seem so idle they were practically growing mold, while she was out here like Sisyphus, busy every single day, and when she actually stopped to look at what she'd done, it amounted to nothing more than pushing the rock a little further up the hill.

Today, as usual, she started with her letters. The first was a family letter from Miss Winnie, though most of the content was really Lady Pru speaking through her, reminding Praeris not to live carelessly at school, not to study so hard she forgot to eat.

She now had two mothers, it seemed. Professor Sprout at school. Lady Pru in Diagon Alley.

Praeris, like every child who has ever received this kind of letter, solemnly swore she would study hard, eat properly, and get along with her classmates.

The second letter was from Hermione. She wanted to know if there were any books on taming Kneazles, or anything that analyzed Kneazle behavior.

Hermione had written: I know I shouldn't place demands on a little kitten. Mischief is his nature. Wanting to eat mice is his nature too. He's just a cat, what can he possibly understand? But I'm truly at my wit's end. He keeps staring at Ron's rat Scabbers, trying to eat him. He even sneaks into the boys' dormitory in the middle of the night!

That was only part of it. Hermione had written considerably more.

Praeris picked up her quill and wrote back: I'm sorry, I don't speak cat either. Nina is a good girl. Doesn't eat mice. Likes corn and sweet potatoes. A simple, no-fuss little cat. I believe the library has "How to Get Along with Your Magical Pet." But I should warn you, that book isn't very useful. It actually had the nerve to say that little cats like Nina are typical dimwits.

Which, honestly. Nina wouldn't touch fish. She was particular about her cat food. But she was absolutely devoted to gnawing on corn. Millicent had initially assumed she liked sweet things, only to discover she had exactly two loves in this world: corn and sweet potatoes.

Praeris remembered poking Nina at the time. "Are you a pig? Little piggy cat!"

She also remembered that the book had included a method for testing a cat's intelligence. Millicent had tried it, gotten the result that Nina wasn't especially bright, and descended into helpless, furious denial.

Praeris picked up her quill again and continued: Rather than trying to understand Crookshanks's hobbies, don't you think that rat has lived rather too long? I've never heard of a rat living this long, unless it's some kind of magical creature. And magical creatures are rarely harmless. Even Bowtruckles will reach out and attack a Muggle's eyes the moment their tree is threatened.

She added a few lines at the end about exchanging study notes on werewolves, since they both had papers to write on the subject.

"Worth celebrating!"

The students who'd gone to watch the Quidditch match came back looking elated.

Pansy had gone too. She'd worn a raincoat, but her lower half was soaked through anyway. She ducked back to the dormitory to change before joining them, towel draped over her head.

"The rain was tremendous. I couldn't see the Golden Snitch. Couldn't see the players. I genuinely couldn't tell if I was watching a Quidditch match or just watching it rain."

"Just before the match ended, Dementors appeared on the pitch. Potter fell right out of the sky. Just like Draco always said — total coward. Absolutely terrified of Dementors."

"But Diggory was sharp. He snatched the Golden Snitch in the chaos and took the win. I'm so glad Draco wasn't in this match. His arm still isn't better — if he'd been the one to fall from the sky, I can't even bear to think about it!"

Praeris had her doubts about those last two sentences. Draco's arm had healed ages ago.

But she couldn't argue with the rest of it. The injured party wasn't a Slytherin. For a house as fiercely united as theirs, that was genuinely worth celebrating.

As for the Dementors, they fed on a person's most positive emotions and drew out their worst memories. Praeris didn't think it was cowardice that made Potter fall. More likely, his worst memories ran so deep that he simply had no defense against them.

If I encountered a Dementor, what would I see?

She couldn't help turning the question over. She no longer hated what had happened at the orphanage. So now, what was her worst thing?

She was still inside that thought when she realized she was already standing outside Professor Snape's office, holding her lower-grade version of the Wolfsbane Potion.

Lower-grade. Meaning the overall quality was severely inferior to the original.

Damocles's Wolfsbane Potion allowed a werewolf to retain their reason during the full moon and not harm others.

Praeris's two lower-grade versions each achieved half of that. The first let the werewolf keep their reason, but the effect lasted only 1 hour. The second could last the full night, but offered neither reason nor consciousness.

The second version still produced a transformation. The werewolf would be completely comatose throughout. And if someone found them in that state, they wouldn't even have the ability to flee.

Some might ask: when facing a werewolf, isn't it the ordinary person who should be running? Not necessarily. Werewolves have to run too. An ordinary person's first reaction to discovering a werewolf isn't always to flee. It might be to strike first, before the werewolf can hurt them. Which meant that for a comatose werewolf, the one in mortal danger would actually be the werewolf itself.

Under the dim yellow light of the office, Snape listened to both of her experimental approaches and operational procedures in full. Then he identified every mistake she had made in the process, incisively and without mercy, and gave her his criticism and suggestions for improvement.

Compared to how he assessed her work, his criticism of Potter and the others was a light drizzle.

Snape gave a cold laugh. "Take your garbage back with you. Don't let me see it again. If you wish to repay your professor, then after graduation, the best thing you could do for me is never tell anyone you studied under me. That would be repayment enough."

Praeris paid no attention to what he said.

He always said one thing and meant another. He cursed and grumbled his way through everything that needed doing, and he did all of it anyway.

"Understood," Praeris said. "I'll bring back the improved version. But, Professor..."

"Speak."

"In a book about dark magical creatures, I came across a spell called the Patronus Charm. It's said to defend against Dementor attacks. But I also read that it can only be cast by someone with a pure heart. The dark wizard Raczidian was once devoured by maggots when he attempted it."

"What are you trying to say?"

"How do I determine whether I can use it?"

Snape looked at her calmly. "Did you think that studying the Dark Arts means you must be judged impure of heart? By that reasoning, certain wizards respected by a great many people would also be unable to cast the Patronus Charm. That is not what you should be worrying about. What you should be concerned with is whether you can actually learn it."

"Then how do I find a happy memory?"

Praeris's brow was tightly furrowed. She seemed to be neither in enough pain, nor in possession of much happiness.

Snape said: "Miss Prince, that depends on you. Did you think I was omnipotent? You already know the incantation. The rest you must find within yourself, within your memories."

➤ Next: The Happiest Memory