Chapter 111 - Praeris’s Memories — Heartbreak

"Draco won the championship for Slytherin two years ago, so they all backed him for captain." Pansy smiled. "I believe Draco can do it again this year... Prae, are you even listening?"

Praeris snapped back. "Oh. Right, yes, that's true."

"You weren't listening at all!" Pansy frowned.

Praeris pulled herself back and looked at Pansy. "I was thinking about something. Say it again?"

"I can't keep sticking my nose into whatever's happening between you and Draco." Pansy's voice dropped, worried. "But you're both important to me. If you're not just planning to play with him, you ought to put a little more heart into it."

Pansy normally would have said those words to the boy. But Praeris was truly extraordinary, she'd somehow managed to make Pansy more worried about Draco being the one getting played.

Confessing was the boy's job. Pansy believed that firmly, the same way she believed inviting someone to a dance was the boy's job.

Draco had never confessed, and Pansy had once been furious with him over it. "Where's that swagger you pull out every time you face Gryffindor?"

At the time, Draco had a large table in front of him, set up for his craftwork.

Lucius suspected he was frittering his ambition away on trinkets. Narcissa thought the hobby was far better than throwing himself around on a broomstick, best of all if it could make him forget Harry Potter's Firebolt. She was firmly against buying that thing.

Lucius considered it and found he agreed. "I can't imagine what kind of normal person would allow a student to ride a Firebolt. At that speed, sooner or later he'll fall off and break his neck, off to meet his Mudblood mother."

Back to the present. Draco was turning a lamb pendant over in his hands, studying it, brass base, smooth finish. The lamb stood for purity of heart, and the magic worked into it was meant to grant its wearer inner peace.

A fragile, useless piece of Light Magic. Draco couldn't put it down.

Praeris had told him she traded potions to get it from another witch.

Draco lifted his gaze from the pendant and stared absently toward the cloakroom.

There was a drawer in there. A row of lapel chains, one slot sitting empty. He'd never filled it.

"I thought you two," Draco said, lazily, "understood each other perfectly."

"Of course I know Praeris!" Pansy's voice went sharp. "Are you questioning our friendship?"

"Knowing someone and understanding them are two different things." Draco raised an eyebrow. "You can know a person inside and out and still not know what they're thinking."

When he said it, Pansy had a strange, brief illusion, for just a moment, she could have sworn she was looking at Praeris.

"So what you're saying is, you won't confess because you understand Prae!" Pansy's laugh was not a kind one. "What a fascinating argument. Isn't it!"

"More than once, I've been a single word away from saying it." He paused. "But I could feel she didn't want me to. She's playing dumb. And she wants me to play along."

Pansy thought that was completely absurd. Praeris didn't want Draco to confess, but she let him get close to her anyway.

That meant she only wanted to enjoy the feeling while it lasted, without taking responsibility for where it led.

Pansy had never once considered that possibility before.

After that conversation, she kept coming back to those words.

"I don't put my heart into him?" Praeris said.

Pansy looked at her. "Did you only hear that last part?"

Praeris went quiet.

A long moment passed.

"What do you think love is?" she asked.

"I don't know." Pansy's answer came simply. "Sometimes it makes me so happy I could die for someone. Sometimes it makes me so miserable I want to carve my heart out."

"No one should die for anyone." Praeris said. "Aren't Draco and I happy right now? Why think about the future? Is the future something we can be certain of, something we can count on staying the same?"

"I'm fifteen." Praeris said. "Even if I only promised Draco the time we have left at school, that's still 2 and a half years. One-sixth of my entire life."

"What if I change? What if Draco changes?" She kept going. "Then the promise becomes a shackle with no purpose. We'd only be together because of an agreement, because of obligation, not because of..."

"Love," Pansy said.

Praeris shook her head. "I'm not even sure I have that. But if we don't, then what's the point?"

Pansy looked thoughtful. "So you're worried Draco will change?"

"Why does it have to be Draco I'm worried about?"

Pansy studied her. "You really want to know what I think? Even if you changed, you'd just keep performing the play."

The same way Praeris kept doing all those things she didn't actually want to do.

"The human heart is unfathomable." Praeris looked up at the fish drifting past outside the window. "Like these fish. Before they flick their tails, you have no idea which way they'll go. There's no predicting it..."

Southend-on-Sea.

In Praeris's memory, the place was all endless blue, wide open sea, the long pier stretching out over the water, and the sea breeze lifting Sylvia's skirt hem.

She didn't remember much. But she remembered Sylvia standing on the boardwalk, both hands on the railing, watching the ships come home.

"Mama."

Polaris Syl William wedged her head between two railing posts.

"Is Papa coming home today?"

Sylvia said softly, "No."

"Why?" Praeris shifted, propping her arms on the railing, swinging like she was on a playground bar, toes still touching the ground.

"No reason," Sylvia said.

Praeris's mother Sylvia was pregnant. A month ago, Papa Deeple had announced, without much warning, that he needed to go away for a while.

"Deep." Sylvia's brow was furrowed. "Can't you wait? I keep feeling uneasy."

Deeple was holding his daughter, swinging her arms wide, making airplane sounds. "Why? Syl, this is a real opportunity. And I have a feeling, I can feel it this time. I'm going to capture something extraordinary. You'll see my photos in the papers!"

Deeple was an astrophotographer. He chased the sun, chased the moon, chased the stars, chased beauty billions of light-years away that no one had named yet.

"But I'm pregnant!" Sylvia yanked at her own hair, agitated. "You're at ease leaving me here alone?"

"What if I have my mother come?" Deeple sidestepped the question entirely. "She's retired, she has time. Please, Syl, the planetary movements this year are different. I can feel it. An opportunity is right in front of me. The Lord has given me this chance. It may never come again."

"I..." Sylvia pressed her hand to her chest, head down. "I don't want that."

Deeple set Praeris gently on her feet. "Poby, can you go to your room? Mama and Papa need to talk."

Praeris walked toward the stairs, glancing back with every step. Deeple waved at her, it's alright, go on.

Upstairs, Praeris lay flat on the floor at the top of the landing, listening.

"Syl, you can't keep doing this." Deeple's sigh carried a fraying edge. "The 2 years around when Poby was born, I didn't go anywhere. I stayed. I was here for all of it. It wasn't until she was a little older that we all went to the North Pole together. I didn't take a single photo those 2 years."

His footsteps moved below, back and forth. "And now you want me to stay in Southend-on-Sea again. You've been through a pregnancy before. Sophia will be here to look after you. You can't ask me to stop for another 2 years."

"Did I get pregnant alone?" Sylvia's voice rose, sharp. "Is this child only mine? If I weren't pregnant, I could go with you. I wouldn't have to ask you to stay at all."

"It was an accident — neither of us planned for this —" Deeple's tone shifted, pleading. "Syl, I'll be quick. I'll come back as soon as I can. You said we could both chase what we loved. Didn't you say that?"

The argument eventually ran out of steam.

Sylvia was standing at the top of the stairs.

Praeris was still there, holding her stuffed bear.

"Eavesdropping?" Sylvia said.

Praeris's eyes went wide.

"Don't copy tricks from the television." Sylvia's voice was calm. "You can hear everything from right where you're standing."

"Is Papa going to take photos?" Praeris asked.

Sylvia sighed. She folded herself onto the fabric sofa, her long hair pulled into a tangle from all the times she'd grabbed at it. "He can go wherever he wants."

Praeris clasped her hands behind her back, walked over, and held out her closed fist. "Mama. Don't be sad."

She opened her hand.

A forsythia blossom sat in her palm, the kind that only bloomed in spring.

Sylvia slapped her hand away. She crushed the flower in her fist, ground it to nothing, then snapped her head toward the stairway.

She stared at it until she was sure Deeple hadn't come up. Then she turned back to Praeris, voice pressed low and fierce.

"Praeris William. What did Mama tell you. Have I not said it clearly enough? When Papa is home, you do not do things like this."

"But Mama." Praeris didn't understand. "You're unhappy."

Sylvia closed her eyes. The pain on her face left no room for anger. "Poby. Mama is begging you. Please don't."

Praeris didn't understand.

Everything about Papa, Mama already knew it all. But they had this extraordinary power, and Mama refused to let Papa see it. Why?

Ships came and went in the harbor. Sylvia's belly grew. She turned away Deeple's mother Sophia when she offered to come, and spent the rest of the pregnancy in the Southend-on-Sea house with only Praeris for company.

The one good thing about Papa being away was that Praeris could let her magic run loose.

The bad things were harder to count.

Once, Praeris came downstairs in the middle of the night for water and found Mama sitting on the sofa in the dark, crying over the family photo.

Once, Sylvia took a single bite of food, then spent the next half hour hunched over the toilet. When it was over, she started crying again.

And another time, Mama tore the photo into small pieces, then found her wand and pressed them back together.

"Can't we call Papa home?" Praeris asked.

Sylvia shook her head, hollowed out. "No."

"But Mama. You're unhappy."

Sylvia looked out the window at the beach, at the sea, for a long time. "We can't ask a bird not to fly."

Every day Praeris walked with Sylvia to the pier's boardwalk. Every time, Sylvia already knew whether Deeple would be coming back.

She went anyway.

Finally, one day, Sylvia didn't go to the pier.

That evening, Deeple pushed open the door.

"Surprise!" He was travel-worn and windburned, grinning, arms thrown wide. "Poby! Give Papa a hug!"

"Papa, you're filthy!" But Praeris ran to him. She was glad he was back. Sylvia would be glad too, she was sure of it.

Deeple pulled her into a tight hug. "That's right, I'm filthy, and now you are too — Syl, did you see the coverage? Our team's coverage! I captured Baily's Beads! I wasn't the first, not even close — but I actually did it. I actually captured Baily's Beads!"

He was still talking, half to himself, shaking his head in wonder. "What do you think about naming the second one Bailey? The baby brought me luck. I'm sure of it."

"Deeple William." Sylvia's voice was flat as stone. "Is that what you came home to tell me? You don't care whether I suffered while you were gone. You don't care whether I was miserable. You don't care what condition my body is in. All you have is Baily's Beads."

"I'm trying to share something wonderful with you!" Deeple's confusion was genuine. "We used to be like this, I was about to ask after you, I just hadn't gotten there yet, and you're already throwing cold water on everything?"

Sylvia opened her mouth. Something in her face collapsed quietly. "What do you mean you hadn't gotten there yet. What do you mean cold water. Do you care about me at all?"

"If I didn't care about you, the first thing I would have done off that ship wouldn't have been coming straight home!" Deeple pressed his fingers to his temple. "You're right, I'm sorry, it's my fault. You're pregnant, you're miserable, I shouldn't have led with that. But why didn't you let Sophia come? You're here alone, what if something had happened?"

"Do you even care whether something happens to me?" The mockery in Sylvia's voice was tired. "I thought all you had eyes for was Baily's Beads."

"Stop doing that!" Deeple's frustration finally cracked through. "Capturing Baily's Beads was the greatest thing that's happened to me, why do you keep throwing it in my face like a weapon?"

Deeple coming home didn't change anything.

The Williams kept fighting.

At first, Deeple would send Praeris upstairs before the arguments started. At first, he gave ground again and again, apologizing, making concessions for Sylvia's sake.

But later, fights broke out without warning, over nothing that mattered. Even the good memories, the happy ones, the ones that used to mean something, became ammunition.

Nobody sent Praeris upstairs anymore.

Deeple was breathing hard, chest heaving, and when he finally spoke, the words came out like something thrown. "Fine. My fault. All my fault. The biggest mistake of my life was ever knowing you."

Sylvia stared at him. "What did you just say?"

Then she doubled over, both hands pressing against her stomach.

"Syl!" Deeple's voice broke. "Syl — are you alright?"

➤ Next: Out of Control