Chapter 61 - Felix Felicis

Praeris's eyes were razor-sharp, locked onto Draco and holding until his skin crawled and his own gaze stopped cooperating.

He stopped meeting her eyes entirely. He turned toward the window instead, watching a cluster of daisies outside sway back and forth in the wind.

He wore the expression of someone who couldn't care less, and then his words came out a complete mess: "Hmph! You think I'm so poor I can't afford a hundred Galleons? That's absurd. Just because you're stingy doesn't mean you get to assume everyone else is too. Enough, stop staring — I'm writing to my father right now!"

Pfft.

"Hahaha — hahahaha!" Praeris laughed. First she covered her face, then she was doubled over clutching her stomach, completely unable to stop.

Draco stood bewildered, hands useless at his sides. "Isn't it time to stop, Praeris? Did you cast a Cheering Charm on yourself?"

Then he figured it out. She was purely laughing at him. The insufferable, impatient look slid back onto his face. "Look at yourself, Prince. How childish. I suppose you dragged me out here just to mock me, is that it?"

Praeris waved a hand, straightened up, and got her breathing under control.

Once she had, she folded her arms, leaned sideways against the pillar, and raised an eyebrow at him. "So. How do you think you won?"

Draco's face filled with disbelief. "You're that desperate for a thank-you from me?"

"Originally I wasn't. But if you're going to phrase it like that — then yes, I really am a bit desperate." The streak of mischief buried in Praeris's bones was simply impossible to contain.

"Thank you thank you thank you thank you! Are we done?"

Draco threw all of it out the window and rattled off a whole string of them. He'd probably never said that many thank-yous to anyone in his entire life. Most of the time, those words only served him for sarcasm and provocation.

"One more," Praeris pressed.

Draco flared. He crossed the distance between them in two quick strides. "Prince, do you think you're some kind of puppeteer and I'm your marionette? That whatever you want, I just have to do?"

Praeris blinked. Her long lashes cast a small shadow beneath her eyes. "You really should thank me. But this next one is for yourself, Draco."

"How do you think you won? Felix Felicis? I'm not the type who'd help you cheat. Using Felix Felicis during a match or an exam is against the rules."

Draco's fire went out. He opened his mouth. "But I — but at that time I —"

"You know how long it takes to brew a thumb-sized bottle of Felix Felicis?" Praeris said, unhurried. "At least six months. The only person I know who can make it is Professor Snape, and he's certainly not about to let me practice with Ashwinder eggshells."

Praeris stepped forward. Draco stepped back instinctively. She kept advancing. He kept retreating.

She had the look of someone whose prank had gone perfectly. "Draco, didn't the taste seem familiar? I dissolved the Fizzing Honeybees Millicent handed out at Halloween in water. That's it. That's the Felix Felicis you drank. I steeped it for quite a while, too — a few hours, probably."

Draco's expression was impossible to read. Shocked, yes, but there was clear relief underneath it, now that he knew the truth. Angry, maybe, except Praeris had already talked him into silence a minute ago.

He didn't know what to say. He only knew that he was being played, right there in the palm of this irredeemably wicked witch's hand.

Praeris continued. "You lost to Potter for more than one reason. Yes, you put all your attention on him, which meant you couldn't focus on finding the Golden Snitch, and it wasted time you could have spent training."

"But there's another reason. You weren't brave enough. That's not your fault, though. It's a common failing in Slytherin."

"When there's only a hair's breadth between you and Potter, external conditions stop mattering. What decides it is courage from within, whether you can throw yourself into it at the moment that counts."

Praeris extended one finger and pressed it to Draco's chest. "Draco. That fake Felix Felicis was courage I borrowed for you."

Slytherin boys' dormitory.

Draco lay half on the bed, his long legs dangling off the edge, feet flat on the floor. One hand pillowed behind his head, he stared at the thumb-sized potion vial hanging by the bed curtain.

It was bound with a silver chain, hanging lightly from his bedpost. Like a heart held up high.

Through the utterly empty bottle, he could almost hear her voice again, that wicked witch who took such pleasure in tormenting him.

"Courage is borrowed. Skill isn't. Your sharp instincts at the critical moment, your flying speed, your technique for dodging Bludgers, you earned all of that through your own hard work. You found the Golden Snitch at the 60-minute mark, after all. That part was outside my plan."

"After you've said thank you to the great Praeris, say thank you to yourself as well. Young man, you've earned it."

Then she'd given him that sly grin, turned on her heel, and dashed off like a nimble fawn, leaving him alone in the corridor, his good hand pressed to his chest, staring at nothing while the wind blew past him for several long minutes.

"Draco, I'm hungry. When are we going to eat?" Goyle's low, rumbling voice broke through. His massive frame blocked the light overhead. "Where'd this empty bottle come from?"

Draco sat up sharply and raked a hand through his hair. "Don't touch it."

Nott's laughter drifted over from his side of the room. "Ah," he said, languid and knowing. "Spring."

"Huh? What spring?" Goyle asked, baffled.

"Let's go!" Draco said loudly. "Weren't you just saying you were hungry? What are you standing there for, you planning to fill yourself up on air?"

Theodore Nott laughed again, making no effort whatsoever to hide it.

By late May, the temperatures in the Scottish Highlands had begun to climb. The heat was arriving in earnest.

May at Hogwarts: the sky was a fresh, clear blue, and the clouds looked as if they'd drifted straight out of an oil painting. Sunlight hit the glass windows and bounced back bright and hard, like flames jumping at the bottom of a cauldron. The lawns were thick with vividly colored flowers, noisy with life, like the Quidditch pitch on match day.

The students were just as restless as the weather, frantic, half-alive, strangling under the weight of their upcoming finals.

By this point, even Stella, who loved to play more than anyone, had no choice but to live the same monk's existence as Praeris. She practically wanted to drown herself in an ocean of books. She read until she chewed her quill down to nothing and worked through practice problems until she'd clawed her hair into a bird's nest.

Well, Praeris only had the first part. The last two were exclusively Miss Stella in exam-prep mode.

Praeris propped her chin on one hand and turned a page with the other. "My dear Miss Stewart, if you'd spent half the time you put into chess, Gobstones, drinking, betting, and gossip on reviewing for your NEWTs, you wouldn't be this anxious right now."

Stella looked as if she were about to vomit her own soul out. "If I were as relentlessly hardworking as you every single day, what joy would be left in my school life!"

Praeris clapped. "Well said! As a reward, you can read Advanced Potion-Making a few more times."

Stella sometimes felt like a fishing net full of holes. The river of knowledge flowed through her brain and left not a single fish behind, only made her emptier and more thoroughly stupid than before.

"I am the way I am, and Aurora bears full responsibility!" Stella declared, shifting the blame without a trace of hesitation.

Praeris shook her head. "Don't go blaming Professor Sinistra for nothing. She bet on Gryffindor and lost a fortune, and you two made a mess of one of her star charts while you were drunk."

The alcohol in question being that bottle from Marcus's private collection, the one he'd sent as thanks for Stella.

That said, Stella's grades were still among the top in the upper years of Slytherin. That was often how it worked: the more capable someone was, the higher the bar they set for themselves, while ordinary people learned to muddle along.

Of course, if your life's goal was simply to muddle along, what separated that from genuine ease of mind? The sad part was that most people could manage neither, neither muddling through with any real conviction, nor losing themselves entirely in their studies. Millicent, for instance.

Though this year, she had genuinely come a long way.

Because Praeris couldn't go to Hogsmeade, Millicent had stayed behind with her more than once, and that company had helped her studies more than she might have expected. She no longer needed to pull some desperate last-minute miracle during finals week.

Not that she'd cleared any great bar. As for what Mrs. Bulstrode hoped for her, that remained a distant and uncertain horizon.

Compared to her classmates slowly dying under the pressure of finals week, Praeris had it considerably easier. She studied according to the schedule she'd laid out months ago, carried on with her own research, and stopped by the various professors to collect materials as comfortably as if she'd done it a thousand times.

On her way to see Professor Sprout, Praeris often ran into Crookshanks, that free-roaming Kneazle.

Crookshanks had always been impossible to predict, fond of wandering every corner of the school. But lately, he kept turning up around Praeris and making himself a nuisance.

Professor Sprout even teased her about it. "It seems this Kneazle thinks he's found one of his own kind."

Praeris protested immediately. "No, Professor. Absolutely not. I have no interest in becoming Granger's pet."

Professor Sprout laughed until she had to wipe her eyes.

In truth, Praeris suspected he was just there for the food.

He would beg from her, and not in small amounts. But unlike what Granger said, he had no real interest in rats and wouldn't touch raw food, he wanted human food instead.

Crookshanks never ate in front of Praeris. He would take whatever she gave him and go find somewhere private to eat it alone.

According to How to Care for Your Magical Creatures, a pet that won't eat in front of its wizard lacks a sense of security.

Praeris read that line, frowned deeply, and concluded once again that this was a thoroughly nonsensical book.

Even so, she kept feeding him. She asked Barney for some boiled meat with just a pinch of salt.

She'd always thought small cats shouldn't have too many human seasonings, and they shouldn't overeat, either, unlike a certain Crookshanks.

On that note, the bad cat Nina deserved to be sternly criticized. That child had grown so preposterously picky that she now demanded corn every single day. Her owner Millie had stepped in, limiting her to one index-finger-joint's worth of corn per day.

"Crookshanks!" Praeris called out. "You can't eat that. That's a potion!"

She swatted his prying paws away and pulled the basket shut. "This medicine is for treating human bodies. Magical creatures can't have it."

This was Crookshanks's other flaw, beyond his well-known love of chasing rats. He was always intensely interested in Praeris's potion basket, it didn't matter whether it was herbs or brewed potions, he wanted to investigate all of it.

Praeris looked him dead in the eye. "Steal from my basket one more time, and I will report you to Granger."

This had no effect. Crookshanks was incorrigible, and he kept finding moments to pilfer things while Praeris was talking with Professor Sprout. In the end, he actually made off with a bottle.

Praeris wrote to Granger to apologize, asked her to bring Crookshanks in for a check-up, and promised to take responsibility for his health.

Granger wrote back quickly. Crookshanks was perfectly lively, she said, and she hadn't found any potion on him. He probably hadn't drunk it at all, just dropped it somewhere.

Professor Sprout looked worried. "Perhaps you should write to Silvanus. Ask whether there are any risks if a Kneazle drinks a potion meant for wizards."

"I'm genuinely afraid Professor Kettleburn will stake what's left of his old body on coming back to Hogwarts just to give me a lecture," Praeris said, with the long-suffering face of someone who had thought this through.

Fortunately, not long after, Crookshanks turned up again, lively and bouncing, demanding meat as if nothing had happened. Praeris's conscience, which had been thudding uncomfortably ever since, finally went quiet.

It was almost funny. For a while she'd half-convinced herself that Crookshanks was in the business of reverse-feeding some other human "pet", hence begging cooked meat from her and making off with potions made for people.

But that was absurd.

What student at Hogwarts was going without food or clothing, falling ill and skipping Madam Pomfrey's, and quietly drinking stolen potions instead?

Crookshanks was probably just a strange and inexplicable Kneazle. Even Granger, his own owner, couldn't make sense of him. Right?

No matter how desperately the students wished otherwise, final exams arrived. Unavoidable, like death.

Exam week was called exam week because it genuinely lasted the entire week.

Praeris performed just as she had in the previous two years. She'd taken one more elective than most of her classmates, and it didn't matter, she finished every exam brilliantly.

Professor Snape had been right. Dropping two courses that weren't strictly necessary had given her the space to learn everything she needed while keeping her schedule well within her control.

Among all the exams, only Defense Against the Dark Arts came as a genuine surprise.

Defense Against the Dark Arts, and yes, this was funny, it was the first time they had ever sat a practical Defense Against the Dark Arts exam. Of course it felt new.

Students were required to wade through a Grindylow's "bath" (technically a pond, but the Slytherins had their own name for it), pick their way through the pitted, burrow-riddled territory of the Red Caps, work their way past the Hinkypunks doing their best to lead everyone astray, and finally face down a brand-new Boggart.

➤ Next: Praeris's Boggart