Chapter 65 - Summer Vacation Letters

Winnie tilted her head back, staring at the streetlamp overhead. Her hand slipped into her trench coat pocket on instinct. Only when her fingers found nothing did she remember, the last time she'd had a cigarette was thirteen years ago.

When Praeris was happy to tuck her mind away and play along, you could drink sodas, play cards, talk about nothing. No effort required.

But if she decided to find the cracks in you, it didn't matter how solid your armor was. She would find a way to break it.

The wind moved through the street and seemed to freeze in the silence. Winnie was waiting for a verdict that hadn't come down yet.

Was it because she'd refused to listen and accepted the Dark Lord's invitation anyway? Was it because her stubbornness had cost her those critical years of her friend's life?

Something crawled in her throat like an ant. She wanted to speak. The words wouldn't come.

Praeris said, without any particular weight, "Let's go. Ms. Prim is waiting for us."

"Don't you hate us?" Winnie heard herself say.

Praeris shook her head. "Mademoiselle, what does any of this have to do with you? Because you once had a friend like me, because that bond ran deep — you've decided you owe me something? Even a blood curse only reaches the family's descendants."

"If doing something would make you feel better, then forget it ever happened. I've lived well these past years. I've become someone I can tolerate. I don't need anyone's pity, and I don't need people getting the wrong idea that I'm some tragic case."

Winnie opened her mouth. All the things she hadn't said settled into a single exhale. "Alright — I mean, I will. Prae, can I ask you one thing?"

"What?"

"Do you hate her?"

Praeris took off her hat and held it against her chest. "No, Mademoiselle," she said quietly. "I didn't hate her then. I don't hate her now. If no one brings it up, I don't think about her at all."

"Mademoiselle Winnie, the only person responsible for our fate is ourselves. If you keep looking back while you're walking, you'll walk straight into a streetlamp." A beat. "Don't you think?"

Diagon Alley. Primpernelle's Beautifying Potions.

DING-A-LING,

"You're later than I expected. Did you take the bus?"

Ms. Prim reached under the counter and produced two cups. She filled Winnie's skull mug with juice and poured steaming black tea into Prae's.

Winnie drained half her juice in one go and let out a long breath. "How is any of that my fault? London buses are useless, and the Knight Bus drives like a feral old woman on a sugar rush. Honestly, I should've just driven — we came back so late that Old Tom thought I'd kidnapped the kid. The injustice of it!"

"My dear, everyone agrees your driving is quite capable of putting Ernie Prang out of a job." Ms. Prim pressed a hand over her smile. "But you do have to admit it looks a little suspicious. You go to pick up a child and don't come back until after dark."

Winnie whistled — guiltily, and picked the newspaper up off the counter. "So what's the news today? Let me have a look."

Ms. Prim's expression softened into something quieter. She shook her head. "Pettigrew escaped."

"The Ministry seems to have boarded a train going the wrong direction." Winnie didn't bother softening her contempt for her former employer. "Hand someone over to the Ministry and Azkaban, and what exactly is the difference from just letting them walk?"

Ms. Prim topped up Winnie's juice. "We have to give Pettigrew some credit. He stayed hidden for years and somehow slipped into Hogwarts to do it. After the Sirius Black disaster, Fudge already had no face left. Slipping away in the middle of all that — that took something."

Praeris wrapped both hands around her teacup and leaned in, working through the Daily Prophet article line by line. "Getting into Hogwarts isn't a skill. The school is a sieve right now. Anyone could walk through."

The Pettigrew matter could wait. Catching criminals was the Ministry's job, and when the Ministry failed, there was always Dumbledore. Praeris had her own problems, specifically, Professor Snape's relentless, force-feeding approach to her education.

In third year, Praeris had finished replicating the Wolfsbane Potion and completed her research on a budget version. The Cheap Wolfsbane wasn't as effective as Damocles's original, but there were always werewolves who couldn't afford the real thing, and they were grateful for whatever they could get.

The research carried genuine weight. Improving life for a marginalized group. Real humanitarian value.

On the strength of it, Snape had assigned her a summer project: write up the papers on both the Cheap Wolfsbane and the Venomous Tentacula Growth Potion, send them to him for review as soon as possible. He would support her in getting them published.

Imitation was the floor. Discovery and creation were the actual work.

Then there was the rest of the summer task list he'd drawn up.

After he'd stopped hiding who he was, there was no longer any point in pretending. She wasn't an idiot. She was cooperative. He wasn't about to waste that, so the list was long.

Praeris had no choice but to quit the summer jobs she'd held for two years running. There was simply no other way to get through everything.

The good news was she didn't need to work for money anymore.

Not because Professor Snape was covering her expenses. He might have been willing. She wasn't.

He'd told her himself: he could teach a student how to bottle fame, brew glory. And beyond the reputation, potions brought money.

With enough skill, raw herbs became potions worth several times their weight. The rarer the brew, the harder to replicate, the better the results, the higher the price.

She was still an apprentice, but the Cheap Wolfsbane, the Venomous Tentacula Growth Potion, and a handful of other difficult brews already brought in a steady income.

No wonder Professor Snape had doubled her Galleons three years running. He genuinely didn't care about the cost.

"Prae. Are you back to skipping meals like you did before Hogwarts? Irregular eating is bad for you."

Old Tom's disapproval was clear on his face. He tipped another fried egg onto her plate without asking.

Praeris swallowed a mouthful of bread and washed it down with unsweetened black tea. "It can't be helped. When you're deep in something, time moves like a Zouwu."

A child who wouldn't study was a problem. A child who studied too much, apparently, was also a problem.

At some point Winnie and Old Tom had a murmured conference about it. The next day Winnie sat down across from her and said, through gritted teeth, "Some of your assignments don't need any equipment. Do they."

"Some of them, yes." Praeris looked up, blank. "Why?"

Winnie drew herself up with great moral authority. "Young people who stay cooped in their rooms grow into moldy mushrooms, not tall trees. Starting today, you bring your work and come write at a Muggle café with me."

Adults could be so childish sometimes. Just deciding things.

Praeris couldn't argue her way out of it, so she reached a compromise with herself: research in the mornings and evenings, café in the afternoons, coffee, fresh air, and incidentally making sure Winnie actually met her deadlines.

The side effect was that her meals became regular for the first time in years. Breakfast when she woke up. Lunch before they left. Afternoon tea at the café. Dinner when they got home.

Supervising Winnie, though, was not an easy assignment. She was exactly the type of writer that made editors lose sleep, constitutionally incapable of sustained focus.

Winnie had a system. Step one: order coffee, write two lines. Step two: pick up the menu, order a small dessert as a reward, squeeze out two more lines. Step three: finish the cake, stare into the middle distance, and declare she was collecting material by watching the café and the people walking by outside.

When Winnie couldn't produce anything, she made sure Praeris couldn't either. She would pester her with cheerful shamelessness, apparently having forgotten she was supposed to be the adult in the room, until Praeris finally ran out of patience and shut her down.

Praeris herself was unbothered by the location. Writing was writing, wherever she happened to be sitting.

She brought nothing but parchment and a quill. Her textbooks were already memorized, she could pull up anything she needed on demand. If she was revising a paper, she needed even less.

They were opposites. Praeris would finish in a clean burst while Winnie was still across the table drumming her fingers, tapping the wood, or deep in conversation with Muggle housewives she'd somehow befriended.

"Yes, exactly, this is my student." Winnie would smile warmly at them. "I'm a private tutor. English Literature."

The ladies were always delighted. They'd start chatting with this shameless fraud of a writer about their children's schoolwork, and within ten minutes the conversation would have drifted to their dull, balding, paunchy husbands and the neighbor whose lawn was an eyesore.

If Winnie really got going, the lady she was talking to might leave the café having quietly accelerated into the next chapter of her life. Specifically: divorce proceedings.

Praeris shook her head and pulled out the letters she had to answer.

Millicent was fighting with her mother again. Regular as water. Mrs. Bulstrode had recently become consumed by what she called the Return of the Dark Lord, she claimed her tattoo had started giving off faint heat, that she could feel it, that the Master was on the verge of reclaiming his throne, and that when he did, she would finally be able to pursue the heights of the Dark Arts again.

Millicent's response: St. Mungo's not having a psychiatric ward was a violation of basic human decency. Wizards with serious mental problems were far more common than anyone admitted.

Pansy was growing tired of handsome young Jakob from Germany. She didn't know if all German men were like this, but Jakob was a stubborn, contrary mule. In letters he was all fire. In person he went cold. If Pansy matched his energy and leaned in, she looked undignified. If she stayed as cool as he was, the two of them might as well have been performing a silent film.

The worst of it: once, Pansy dressed up carefully, went to meet him, and Jakob took her on a hiking circuit through the mountains, round and round, followed by a two-hour lakeside walk.

He probably thought it was romantic.

Pansy just had sore legs.

Praeris shook her head. After Draco, Pansy had somehow ended up biting into a piece of German hardtack.

Daphne had just finished venting. Her younger sister Astoria had made a Hufflepuff friend, a Muggle-born girl.

Astoria thought her sister was overreacting. "Daph! I've never told you who to be friends with. You could give me a little room, couldn't you?"

Daphne wrote: Millicent says girls this age all think being different from their family is cool, and Lia is the same way. But I'm genuinely furious. She's swallowed all that nonsense, she's making these questionable friends, she's betraying our bloodline.

The handwriting pressed deep into the page. You could feel it.

Praeris shook her head. She'd never imagined she'd be the one having the most peaceful summer. Close relationships really were the single greatest obstacle to a happy life.

Oh. She'd almost forgotten, there was also the disreputable "tutor" currently playing with her fingers across the table.

Come to think of it, the one actually having the best time was probably Draco.

Draco hadn't gone out at all yet. He was home repairing a magical violin, apparently some item his ancestor had picked up on a whim, never used, and which had spent long enough gathering dust to qualify as genuine junk.

His letters had a way of letting you picture exactly how he looked while writing them. That particular tilt of his chin. That drawl. I tracked down quite a lot of references. You know my family has relevant books. I restored the violin, and it should soon be able to play itself. This wasn't especially difficult for me. I didn't expend much effort, honestly.

The only issue is, I believe it may genuinely belong in the storage room with the rest of the rubbish. The sound is awful. Grating. An absolute waste of my valuable time. I suspect its creator built it specifically to assault the ears of any wizard unfortunate enough to hear it.

The letter was signed at the bottom: D.M.

Praeris was quiet for a moment. Then she picked up her quill.

Draco, I'm not certain what your restoration process involved. But I hope you replaced the strings with appropriate ones, reinforced the sound post, and adjusted the bridge., P.P.

The letter went out. Half a month passed with no reply.

When Draco finally wrote back, he made no mention of the violin whatsoever. He had apparently moved on entirely. He wrote about a magical tea set he'd repaired, it could add water, brew, and pour entirely on its own, which he found very convenient.

Praeris mocked him without mercy, and without any need to be in the same room. She would have bet anything that the violin restoration had gone wrong somewhere and he simply couldn't bring himself to admit it.

At the very bottom of the stack was Professor Snape's letter. His handwriting was small and dense, a neat round hand, every line precisely spaced.

The reply took her paper apart without sympathy. School essays were one thing. Papers for publication were another. If Praeris still wanted to publish, she was to scrap the draft and start over immediately, following the detailed requirements he'd enclosed.

Praeris tipped her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. The wheel turns: she mocked Draco, Snape criticized her. If only Draco had the nerve to criticize Professor Snape in return, the three of them would form a perfect Slytherin cycle, completely self-contained.

➤ Next: The Uninvited Guest