Chapter 163 - A Brand-New Sun

"We should call George and Fred over," Ron said, struck by sudden inspiration. "Let them handle these purple cabbages with magic!"

Ron's birthday was still months away, and Harry's was half a year off. Only then would either of them be legally allowed to use magic outside school.

BOOM!

The fireplace sounded, someone was using Floo Powder.

Harry and Ron both scrambled to their feet. They assumed it was Mr. Weasley coming home early, and were already thinking up questions about why he'd left work at this hour.

"Pra! Severus!"

Ms. Prim dropped her soup ladle and sprinted toward the fireplace, shrieking with excitement.

Praeris stepped out of the fireplace, locked onto her target immediately, crossed the distance in a few quick strides, and threw herself into Ms. Prim's arms.

"Oh — my — God." Ron stretched the words out and muttered under his breath. "Speak of the devil."

Just moments ago, Harry had been badmouthing both of them.

And now, here they were. Right in the kitchen.

Too creepy.

The corner of Harry's mouth twitched. "You can say that again."

MWAH! MWAH! MWAH!

Ms. Prim planted several heavy kisses on Praeris's face, then gently stroked her cheeks and arms. "Merlin! Darling, how have you gotten even thinner?"

Ron stood nearby, still hugging a purple cabbage, and muttered, "When we first got home, my mum did the exact same thing to Ginny Weasley."

Mrs. Weasley had been so busy fretting that she completely overlooked the muscle her youngest daughter had put on from Quidditch.

But Harry noticed that Praeris really was visibly thinner. It had been hard to tell at night, but in daylight there was no hiding it. Her pale, gaunt look was strikingly similar to Malfoy's, and it added another layer to the suspicions already turning over in Harry's mind.

"Severus, how did you manage to bring Pra here?" Ms. Prim waved Snape over without releasing Praeris. "Come sit! Have you had lunch? Can I get you something?"

It was already 4 in the afternoon, and Ms. Prim was still asking about lunch. She and Snape were clearly on closer terms than Harry would have expected.

That familiarity had roots. Snape had met Prim Purnell long before the Order of the Phoenix was re-established, had made a point, for certain reasons, of seeking her out once. From that meeting, a few shared secrets had taken root between them, things only the two of them kept.

Because of Praeris, Ms. Prim called Snape "Severus" without a second thought and extended him a warmth only marginally less doting than what she gave the girl herself.

Snape declined, politely and then less politely. It made no difference.

"Dumbledore approved it," Snape said, his face expressionless. "No to the food. Has he returned?"

Snape never ate at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. He always came and went in a hurry, as if unwilling to spend a single extra second inside these walls.

"Dumbledore didn't say when he'd be back." Ms. Prim still had both arms around Praeris. "Will you stay and wait for him?"

"No." Snape looked at Praeris. "Tell Dumbledore I'll come by tomorrow. Have him be prepared."

"That urgent?" Praeris pulled her head out of Ms. Prim's embrace. "Yes, sir."

Snape said nothing more. He turned and stepped back into the flames.

"Darling, have you eaten?" Ms. Prim asked Praeris.

Praeris shook her head once, and Ms. Prim immediately began scouring the kitchen for food, muttering the entire time about why Severus couldn't have stayed for even a bite.

Seeing Praeris, Harry suddenly remembered something. "Praeris, when is your birthday?"

Praeris gave him a cold look, glanced at the purple cabbages in his hands and on the table, and raised an eyebrow. A smile crossed her face. "Carry on, then!"

Praeris's real birthday was something she had no desire to recall. But the date officially on record was Christmas, and Christmas was still a few days away.

Right. Slughorn's Christmas party was before Christmas. That was perfectly normal; he would never do anything that cost effort without a guaranteed return. So Harry could forget about getting Praeris to magic away his cabbage problem.

This was the first time Ron had seen Praeris in action. Neither he nor Harry had said a word, yet Praeris had read exactly what Harry was angling for.

And so: Praeris sat happily at one end of the table eating a bacon-and-egg sandwich, while the two of them labored away at the other end. The contrast was stark.

Ms. Prim set the last plate in front of Praeris and said warmly, "I'll go call dear Winnie down. She'll be so pleased to know you're here."

Praeris nodded.

The moment Ms. Prim was gone, Harry asked, "How did Dumbledore agree to let you come to the Order of the Phoenix?"

Praeris took her time wiping her mouth before answering. "Probably because Ms. Prim missed me."

Harry thought: more like you missed Ms. Prim.

"And Snape — Professor Snape," Harry said, nearly biting his tongue on the correction, "what does he want Dumbledore to prepare for?"

"You're much more polite these days. Keep it up." Praeris took a sip of milk, composed herself. "Now, about the purple cabbages — what shape do you want them? Just like that?"

Harry did not consider himself an idiot.

"You're changing the subject!" he said immediately.

But Ron lit up. "That would be brilliant! I've been shredding these things so long I'm about to turn into one. But your birthday hasn't come yet, has it?"

Praeris tilted her head. A smile crept to the corner of her mouth. "Here."

Ron's knife flew straight out of his hand and into the air. A purple cabbage rose up and spun at high speed beneath the blade, like a Bludger sent into a wild whirl.

Ten, maybe 20 seconds. The cabbage met its end.

Throughout all of this, Praeris was cutting her sausage with a knife and fork, not even looking up.

Harry fought to drag the conversation back on track.

It was hopeless. Ron had decided he was going to slay every last cabbage before Ms. Prim returned, and he threw himself entirely into cheering Praeris on.

There was no wedging a topic between the Purple Cabbage Warrior Goddess and her devoted fan.

Ron leaned over and whispered to Harry, "Questions will still be there later. I really cannot face these cabbage monsters for one more second."

Praeris timed it perfectly.

Just as Winnie and Ms. Prim reached the ground floor, the last purple cabbage was done.

"Pra!"

Winnie looked like she'd just woken from a nap, still in her pajamas, hair in a mess.

This was the first time Praeris had seen Winnie since the incident with Ms. Prim. Perhaps it is always like this between people who love each other. They looked at each other across the kitchen, and as their eyes met, tears ran down both their faces.

Harry and Ron couldn't take it. They mumbled something about the cabbages being finished and slipped quietly out of the kitchen.

Winnie chattered through a string of questions she had long since gotten answers to from other people: "Dumbledore says you got twelve O's on your OWLs? Snape says you invented a Spirit Potion and plan to become a potioneer at St. Mungo's..."

The summer had kept them apart. Winnie had still been ill then, and the Death Eaters had been hunting her with a thirst for revenge. It had taken until today for them to finally be in the same room.

Praeris answered every question without holding back.

"You're incredible," Praeris said, and she meant it. "I heard you gave Bellatrix Lestrange a thorough thrashing, and she spent ages recovering."

Praeris couldn't care less whether Bellatrix was Draco's aunt. By her own reckoning, Winnie was half an aunt to her too. Stack Ms. Prim and Sylvia together and Winnie was a full aunt.

Not that kinship worked as simple arithmetic.

"That woman's magic hit me several times as well," Winnie said through gritted teeth. "Laid me up for months."

Dark magic grew stronger on negative emotion. The fuel it ran on was hatred, grief, rage, the darker the better.

Bella was nowhere near Winnie's level in technique or breadth of magic. But in raw power of the Dark Arts, she outstripped Winnie by a wide margin. That madwoman's curses were devastatingly destructive. Saving Winnie had taken tremendous effort from the Healers at St. Mungo's.

Winnie was not the kind of person who reported only the good news. She discussed the damage the Dark Arts had done to her with Praeris openly, with considerable academic enthusiasm, and earned herself several pointed glares from Ms. Prim.

"Oh — come on!" Winnie stretched the words out. "Prim, we're doing research!"

Research into the Dark Arts, but still.

Ginny Weasley was startled when she came downstairs. She did not understand what Praeris Prince was doing in the house.

Harry and Ron spent considerable effort explaining: Praeris was Ms. Prim's daughter, Winnie's student. And while they were at it, Ginny Weasley needed to keep this quiet.

Before today, neither of them could have imagined finding themselves vouching for a Slytherin's identity, or asking a fellow Gryffindor to keep her secrets.

The whole thing was absurd.

"The Sorting Hat would be moved to tears by our inter-house solidarity," Harry said, with a wry twist to his mouth. "Not that she looks moved in the slightest. I'd bet everything she has no intention of telling me what Snape is planning."

"Wow!" Ron said, making a production of it. "Guess what! You'd win that bet! Too bad no one's giving out prizes."

"I also think Dumbledore isn't coming back," Harry added. "Has he been here even once since that first day?"

Dumbledore was impossibly busy. He had barely appeared at Hogwarts during term, and now even less so.

Ron gave a wry smile. "Well, no reward for being right, but no punishment for being wrong, so."

Dumbledore walked through the door.

Praeris was on her feet immediately. "Headmaster Dumbledore!"

Dumbledore came in looking travel-worn. He said cheerfully, "I'm happy for you, Praeris. It seems you're having a fine Christmas holiday."

"Thanks to you, sir." Praeris smiled. "And I'm happy for you as well. You're going to have a rather special holiday too."

"Oh?" Dumbledore's blue eyes sparkled behind his spectacles. "I can hardly wait to hear what news you've brought me!"

Dumbledore and Praeris went upstairs to the second floor alone. No one else was invited.

Ron looked at Harry and mimed tiptoeing and pressing an ear to a wall.

Harry dropped onto the sofa with a deeply unhappy expression. "No, Ron. When one of the people in that room is Praeris, we won't hear so much as a fly buzzing inside it."

"To keep out rude, nosy people, like you!" Harry added in a nasal, mocking imitation of her voice.

Ron burst out laughing. "You should have told me about her ages ago! Honestly, is she always like this? Completely airtight?"

"Worse." Harry spread his hands. "Prince is basically... take a piece of Hermione, a piece of Snape, a piece of Winnie, stitch them together, oh, and I nearly forgot, throw in a piece of Malfoy."

"That is genuinely terrifying," Ron said, and gave a full-body shudder.

The terrifying Praeris was, at that moment, very carefully extracting a potion bottle from the small Portuguese cork bag she carried.

It was wrapped in a towel. She unwrapped it slowly. Inside, a sinister black-green liquid sat in the vial, faintly wrong in the way it caught the light.

"I have Harry to thank for this," Praeris said, without any hesitation. "I hope you won't hesitate once you hear it, sir. We used Basilisk venom."

"How extraordinary." Dumbledore stared at the bottle, his gaze fixed and intent. "The very thing that did not kill us will, in the end, help us."

"Professor Snape intends the treatment to take place tomorrow." Praeris slowed her words deliberately. "Are you prepared to live?"

What a thing to make Voldemort jealous of.

The one thing Voldemort had spent his entire life chasing, simply living, and others spoke of it as something to be cast aside.

Dumbledore said, with quiet meaning, "Praeris. I rather thought you had already worked out exactly how to handle this old man."

Praeris laughed, full and unguarded, then made a great show of wiping two tears from the corners of her eyes.

"Sir, I can't help it. I'm still too young to understand the torment in your heart." Her voice was gentle. "But often, the reasons people call a reason to live are also an excellent reason to die. And what people say is a reason they must die, that is often an excellent reason to live."

Dumbledore had poured all his strength into racing ahead of Harry, working to destroy the Horcruxes in his place. He had confessed to Harry those moments when his resolve had wavered. And after learning the shape of his own death, he had found time in that relentless schedule, again and again, to sit with Harry and teach him.

If anything could make Dumbledore choose to stay in this world a little longer, the only answer was Harry. Or perhaps everything Harry stood for.

"Why not look forward to tomorrow?" Praeris said softly. "Life is misfortune, sir. That is absolutely true. But tomorrow, tomorrow, the sun will still rise, the same as it always has. And it will be a brand-new sun."

Was she speaking only of the sun?

She didn't say.

Perhaps it was the sun. Perhaps it was more than the sun. But it was brand-new, and it held every possibility, and it would be brilliant.

Dumbledore looked at her with great affection and smiled. "Praeris, I cannot help but marvel at each day's brand-new sun. It always brings me something I didn't expect."

"You and Severus..." Dumbledore took off his spectacles and wiped them with his sleeve. "You have already walked 99 steps through untold hardship."

"I can hardly be stingy about taking the last one."

➤ Next: Truth and Accusations