Chapter 126 - Blood Thorns

Spring in Scotland. Moisture hung in the air, thick and green-scented. As the ice and snow melted, the Black Lake rose until it nearly lapped against the windows of the Potions office.

Yes, Professor Snape's office was in the dungeons. Half the time, the windows sat submerged beneath the lake. The other half, they got barely any sunlight.

A bunch of fresh-cut yellow daffodils stood on the mantelpiece, kept alive in a glass bottle of water, carrying a breath of spring into the room.

Snape scolded Praeris for using a potion vial as a flower vase, then frowned because he didn't recognize the vial at all, and finally remembered that he ought to be throwing the whole thing out of his office.

"In spring, they sell fresh-cut yellow daffodils on the streets of London," Praeris said, reminiscing. "Some fools actually pay for them. A small bunch goes for a pound — about 3.4 Sickles."

Snape gave a cold laugh. "And I suppose you think yourself cleverer than they are?"

Not wasting that money, was that something to be proud of?

"No. Quite the opposite. I nearly became one of those fools myself." Praeris shook her head. "The nun in the kitchen told me that a lady on the next street kept yellow daffodils in her house, and she'd taken in four children. At the time, I thought — perhaps you would like yellow daffodils too."

Snape felt deeply uncomfortable, as though insects were crawling over his skin. He would far rather face outright malice than this unfamiliar kindness.

"You think I bought them? No, I didn't." Praeris smiled. "You've seen garlic scapes before, haven't you? I took the money you'd given me to buy flowers, and the vendor showed me unbloomed yellow daffodils. They looked exactly like garlic scapes."

Praeris, not yet ten years old, had stared at the unbloomed daffodils and firmly decided they were garlic scapes. So no matter what the flower vendor shouted after her, she waved her hands and ran, never once looking back.

Snape's mouth twitched. "Foolish."

"Yes. Utterly foolish." Praeris gave a rueful smile. "Looking back now — even if I had bought them, I had no way to get them to you."

Snape had Praeris's address, but Praeris did not have his. Even if she had bought the daffodils, where would she have sent them?

But at the time, that question hadn't crossed her mind at all. She had only wanted to buy a bunch of yellow daffodils for the Half-Blood Prince.

Snape refused to let the sentimentality go any further. "If there's nothing else, you may leave."

He did not reject the yellow daffodils. He only wanted her to stop talking. Compared to the daffodils, Praeris herself was the real weapon against him.

"There is something, sir." The preamble was over. "There are yellow daffodils near the Forbidden Forest — Harry and the others told me. And then there's his Occlumency lessons. You've resolved not to continue teaching him, haven't you?"

Snape's face darkened in an instant, like stormclouds massing before a tempest. "Did he send you, what did he tell you!"

"Harry said nothing." Praeris shook her head. "He doesn't want to continue the lessons. He also told me not to come to you."

Snape's expression turned uglier still. He had forgotten something very important.

He had forbidden Harry Potter from speaking of those matters. But even if Potter said nothing,

"Feeling proud of yourself, are we, Miss Prince?" Snape's face twisted into a sneer. "After all these years of receiving gifts, it's finally your turn to hand out charity, is that it?"

Sympathy? Pity? Or something else entirely?

Snape's face was ashen. The mere thought of someone pitying him made him feel sick to his stomach, like he'd just downed a full bottle of Skele-Gro.

"No, sir. I came on my own." Praeris shook her head, her voice steady. "I wouldn't dare claim to understand you. But I have absolute faith in your reason."

Severus Snape was a man of extraordinary endurance, not easily shaken.

If something could enrage Snape enough to throw his own plans into disarray, to disregard even his promise to Dumbledore, then whatever that thing was, its weight, its severity, had to be extraordinary.

Praeris said gently, "So I know you must be having a difficult time right now. But I won't probe any further into this matter. Just as you have never pried into my past."

Given Snape's position, if he had ever wanted to know, the matter of the Williams family would have been effortlessly within his reach. Yet he had never sought it. He looked only at the present. He taught Praeris and never looked back.

By the same token, even though Harry Potter's cracks were glaringly obvious, even though there were countless threads she could have followed to piece together what had really happened between them, Praeris would not so much as glance at them. That was her respect for Professor Snape.

Yellow daffodils symbolize respect.

As she grew older, Praeris had gradually come to understand: most people carry a forbidden zone inside themselves.

For people like her and Snape, to pry into that forbidden zone was like having someone push open the door while you were on the toilet, or burst into your room while you slept naked. An intrusion at your most vulnerable. A profound rudeness.

The only person in the world who can truly free someone is that person themselves. Everyone else is just scratching an itch through a boot. To mouth those hollow, painless words about doing what's best for someone, to force your way into another person's forbidden zone, that is the height of condescension.

Snape fell silent again.

When he was in a good mood, he saw Praeris as his younger self. When he was in a bad mood, Praeris was her mother, that woman who loved wielding her gifts to offend people, or she was the arrogant, cowardly, and indecisive Brown.

The facts had proven him completely, disastrously wrong.

Praeris was Praeris.

She was not him in his weaker days. She was not Sylvia Prince. And she was certainly not Winnie Brown.

"Tell me," Snape said, his tone softening slightly. "What you intend to do."

That evening, Hermione relayed to Harry that Praeris had gone to practice Legilimency. Not long after, Harry would be heading back to the Potions office for "remedial lessons" once more.

As for the fact that Praeris would soon be teaching him Occlumency, Harry's feelings about that were complicated.

It was like a tiny splinter of wood lodged in his chest. The wound was small. But it was there.

Every time he thought back to that day, it was like running into a Dementor. He simply could not make himself feel happy. Not because Snape had lost his temper at him. Not because Snape had grabbed something and hurled it across the room. But because of...

What his father had done.

No matter how hard he tried, Harry could not convince himself.

He could not tell himself his father's actions were excusable. He could not tell himself that Snape had deserved it.

He knew too well. He understood too well what it felt like to be publicly humiliated. That was exactly what he himself had been going through all these years.

That bullying had come from Snape, from Slytherin, from Malfoy, from Umbridge, from his cousin and his aunt and uncle, and on and on and on.

Harry had once loathed Snape so deeply. Even after Dumbledore placed his trust in the man, Harry had never let go of his suspicions, because Snape was a bad person who was always tormenting him.

But the same torment. Humiliation even worse than anything Harry had suffered. It had once fallen on Snape.

And the one who had done it was Harry's father. The father he had idolized. The father he had once been so proud of. James Potter.

Harry could find no excuse to absolve him. How desperately he wanted to talk to Sirius, to get a different answer from his godfather, or even the smallest alternative reason, anything that might let his conscience breathe a little.

But he knew. There was almost no chance of that.

And there was no use saying that his father's actions had nothing to do with him. Wasn't the very reason Snape hated him because of his father?

Some of the force Harry had once used to hate Snape drained away. He found that he could no longer look at Snape through the same eyes as before.

Did Prince know about this? She was so sharp, did she know Harry had stolen a look at her mentor's memories? Did she know what Harry's father had done to him?

Maybe Prince would come to regret it. Regret having taught Harry Occlumency. Regret having helped them at all, as a Slytherin.

"I'll make her regret it sooner or later!"

In her heart, Bella cursed with everything she had. Out loud, her voice rang with mockery. "Well, look who it is! Isn't this the rising star of spell research, Winnie Brown?"

Winnie kept walking, face cold, not sparing Lestrange so much as a glance. She had no time for that madwoman.

Bellatrix Lestrange envied Winnie. She would never admit it.

Voldemort had taught Bella many Dark spells, and Bella had gladly prostrated herself at his feet and become his servant.

Everything had been going perfectly, until that little slut Winnie appeared and immediately became Voldemort's student.

It was like this: many people knew of Dumbledore's student Newt Scamander. He had fought in the struggle against Grindelwald and was celebrated as both a hero and a Magizoologist.

Perhaps Dumbledore's repeated refusals to give Voldemort a position had stung him enough that he decided he ought to have a student of his own.

Right up until Voldemort's disappearance, Bella had been trapped in that same miserable state: hating Winnie, unable to kill her. She could not understand it. The slut didn't even dare kill anyone, what use could she possibly be to their master?

After Voldemort's fall, Bella's first thought was to search for him. She refused to believe he was simply gone. Her second thought was to hunt Winnie down and make that damned traitor pay.

Their master had given her so much trust. And she had extended her hand to Dumbledore!

Unfortunately, Bella was captured precisely while hunting Winnie. Winnie had used herself as bait, drawing out Bella and several other Death Eaters and letting the Aurors take them all in one sweep.

In other words, Bella's capture was partly Winnie's doing, which was also why certain members of the Order of the Phoenix found it easier to accept Winnie than to accept Snape.

After Azkaban, the first thing Bella did once she had her wand back was try to kill that treacherous, two-faced slut. But her master would not allow it.

In a dim room.

"Bella, my loyal servant." Voldemort gestured for her to rise. "My foolish student cannot die just yet. She has certain unique uses, she has set obstacles in place for me, guarding a precious treasure."

Wrapped around Hufflepuff's golden cup were blood-red thorns. Anyone who tried to touch it would be struck by a vicious curse, bleeding without stop until death.

It was an extraordinarily obscure, terrifying, and masterfully constructed spell. Good intentions or ill, it made no difference. Before it, everyone bled to death and became a desiccated husk.

The most ingenious part was what the Northern European witch who had taught Winnie the spell had said: the spell's creator had bound it so that only a witch could learn the curse, and only a witch could learn the counter-curse.

With the Northern European witch still insisting that "this is not a curse, this is love," Voldemort had demanded Winnie immediately undergo the woman's trial and master the curse.

A witch, perfect. No matter how brilliant Dumbledore's methods, he would be unable to lift this.

And among witches, whose breadth and mastery of spellwork could surpass Winnie's? Perhaps the Smith sisters, far away in America.

But even they might not know this particular obscure curse.

So he divided the guardianship of the cup in two. Winnie laid the curse. Then the cup was placed inside a box and entrusted to Bella for safekeeping.

"Loyalty, yes, loyalty!" Bella's face went crimson. She clutched her face and shrieked. "As long as it serves the master, of course I'll endure her!"

The moment she stepped out of the room, Bella saw that ungrateful woman.

More than a decade had passed, and she was still as radiant as ever. While she, Bellatrix, had become a madwoman.

Yes. The sacrifices she had made for her master. She had made them willingly.

But why. Why was Winnie Brown so lucky? To become the master's student, to live through a dozen peaceful postwar years, and then to return to his side so easily after his resurrection.

She hadn't paid any price at all. It was too unfair!

After treating Winnie to a fresh round of scorn, Bella stormed out and walked straight into that pig-stupid Dolly Burst.

Mrs. Burst looked thoroughly disgusted. "Me? I'm off to complete the task the master gave me, obviously, feeding a down-and-out female rabbit."

Dolly Burst would much rather be doing something meaningful. Killing Order of the Phoenix members, perhaps, or hunting Aurors. Anything but delivering meals to a prisoner.

Bella's eyes went wide. She seized Mrs. Burst by the shoulders. "You mean — that slut Brown's —"

"Correct." Mrs. Burst frowned. "The moment anyone mentions Brown, you lose your mind."

Dolly Burst had completely forgotten she was exactly the same way.

"I see you don't look too thrilled about this task." Bella's mind was sharper in that moment than it had been in years. "As it happens, I have no assignment right now..."

Mrs. Burst narrowed her eyes. A shrewd glint flickered through them. "Oh? What are you suggesting? You've got some nerve."

"Don't you, want Brown to pay the price?" Bella showed her teeth in a wide, unhinged grin, the skin around her face twitching.

Just picturing it, Winnie discovering the truth and falling apart, sent both their hearts hammering. Blood surging. Pulses racing.

Mrs. Burst rolled her eyes and let the smile drop from her face. "Oh, goodness. What's this, my stomach seems to be troubling me all of a sudden. The task of bringing food to Pernell, I'll leave that entirely to you, Bellatrix."

➤ Next: Occlumency Instruction