Chapter 167 - Christmas Pudding

After the last apology, Praeris no longer felt Harry's probing sidelong glances trailing her everywhere.

That was a relief. For someone as sensitive as her, Harry's attempts at subtle observation — which he clearly thought were invisible, had always grated on her nerves.

Even though she used to do the exact same thing to other people. Never mind. She was a hypocrite.

"My dear, can't you leave a few days later?"

Ms. Prim had a touch of separation anxiety, and for days she had been eating poorly and sleeping worse. She seemed to believe that once Praeris walked out the door, she would never see her again.

Praeris wished she could stay too. But she truly had to go. Fate pushes people forward, and a fledgling eagle cannot shelter in its nest from wind and rain forever.

She opened her arms and hugged them both, then walked to Professor Snape's side and, like him, grabbed a handful of Floo Powder and tossed it down.

The next second, the scene around her shifted to Professor Snape's cold, damp office.

Snape strode to his desk and said to her, without turning: "Miss. After this, you should have considerably more free time."

"So it would seem."

The burden of the Skele-Gro potion had been lifted, and with it, the vast majority of her hours had been freed. That much was true.

What she didn't understand was why Professor Snape was bringing it up.

"Miss, there are three things in this world that cannot be hidden." Snape turned around and looked at her steadily. "A cough, poverty, and love."

He knew the latter two with bone-deep intimacy.

Snape was not in the habit of discussing such things with anyone. But he did not want Praeris to come to understand that saying the way he had.

He had not forgotten the day she stood before him and humbled herself, pleading, quietly desperate, to avoid being sent back to the convent. Because of her poverty. Because of her shame.

That had given Snape some unusually different dreams.

Dreams without Lily. Without the guilt and remorse that flooded his mouth and nose like seawater, leaving him unable to breathe.

These dreams were about his barren childhood, his early years at school. Even in sleep, he could smell the damp air at Spinner's End, the fetid stench of rotting garbage. He could hear bottles clinking, a woman weeping in despair, a man roaring in fury.

After that day, Snape had prepaid two months of room and board for Praeris at the Leaky Cauldron.

All of that was the past now.

Snape had loved too, even if he believed that love was too ugly to be shown, too dirty to be borne, too base to be anything but laughable. Even so, he had genuinely, undeniably felt something real for another person.

And so, as someone who had lived through it, the feelings between Praeris and Draco were, to his eyes, as plain and simple to read as an ordinary student's potion work.

When Snape finished criticizing Potter, the Slytherins burst out laughing. Praeris let out a brief snicker with the rest of them, but her gaze drifted, without her meaning it to, toward Draco.

More telling still: when Snape tried to draw Draco's plan out of him, he found that Draco was mimicking Praeris's cadence and tone. Deliberate. Practiced. As if borrowing her manner of speaking would make him seem more certain, more convincing.

Did Draco genuinely believe that what made Praeris persuasive was her rhythm and tone of voice?

Of course, there was far more than that. Things both more obvious and more subtle than these.

Snape had no interest in involving himself in young people and their sticky-sweet entanglements. He let them get on with it, most of the time.

In short: love makes a person's gaze fall on the one they love without their control, and love makes a person take on their beloved's habits.

Praeris looked perfectly calm. "Sir, I don't understand what you mean."

"You should." Snape narrowed his eyes. His gaze was sharp. "For his family's sake, Draco is walking a path of self-destruction. He doesn't want me interfering with his plan — he thinks I'll steal his glory..."

Draco believed that killing Dumbledore, as the Dark Lord demanded, would make his life better. His family's misfortune was all tied to Dumbledore, in his mind.

But that was not how it worked.

Setting aside whether Draco could even kill a Dumbledore who had already broken the curse,

Premeditated murder could only ever bring one thing: the tearing of his own soul. He would be killing the person he used to be with his own hands.

If Draco were truly cruel, he would become as mad as the other Death Eaters.

And if there was even a trace of mercy or love left in him, the act of killing would torment his soul and cause him suffering.

As it happened, there was still genuine love in Draco's heart. That was precisely why he had pushed Praeris away. He did not want her to see the wicked shape of what he was doing.

Praeris went quiet. The silence settled over everything, pervasive as air, and just as capable of closing around a throat.

"Miss." Snape's voice was low. "A line you yourself once said: avoidance solves nothing."

It was still the Christmas holiday. The underground corridors were nearly empty.

The words echoed in Praeris's mind and left her breathless, a wave of nausea rising in her chest without reason.

Professor Snape knew her very well. He had looked straight through the avoidance she had been practicing all this time, and named it.

She knew. She had known the whole time. She was running from something, and lying to herself about it.

Dumbledore was a very convenient excuse. He and Harry played a crucial role in the coming war.

As long as she still carried the weight of saving Dumbledore's life, she could cast everything else aside. She could bury herself in the Skele-Gro research and not think about anything else. Not have to.

She knew what this was. An innate protective mechanism of the brain, the one that steers a person toward comfort instead of forcing them to face pain.

And Draco?

The moment she thought about confronting what lay between them, the moment she thought about all the love he had once held for her, love that might now be permanently replaced by disgust, by hatred, she could not make herself look at it.

Reality was cruel. Just when you thought you might become a dashing, brilliant figure in the drama of your own life, it made you wretched and sorrowful and heartbroken instead.

As if suffering truly made a person whole, rather than twisting them and leaving them broken.

Praeris had said time and again that she was waiting for Draco. Waiting for him to accept his own identity. Waiting for him to understand that you could not drive a knife of words into the people who loved you.

But even if he truly came to accept it? Even if he genuinely understood?

He still would not come looking for her.

She knew this clearly.

As long as Draco did not want her to see his wicked side, then no matter how much he was suffering in that moment, he would not come back to face her. That was simply how it was.

Praeris smiled. Bitter.

Say what you will, why did the two of them have to share such a damned mutual understanding? Even the way they turned their backs on each other and ran. They did it in exactly the same way.

She stopped at the entrance to the Slytherin common room and realized she still didn't know the new password. That only made her mood worse.

Even this wretched door had to make things difficult for her.

It was only at moments like this that she remembered she had just turned exactly seventeen, squarely in the middle of an adolescence that was laughably immature.

"Praeris, what are you doing just standing there?" Daphne asked, puzzled.

Praeris cursed herself inwardly. She had grown so careless that she hadn't even noticed someone appear behind her.

She took a step back. "Merry Christmas, Daffy. I just got back and don't know the password yet."

Daphne spoke without thinking, the words tumbling straight out: "You actually have a home?"

Praeris stared at her, face carrying a clear expression of do you even hear what you're saying.

"What else did you expect?" Praeris's eyes went wide. "That I sprouted from the soil, grew up drinking rainwater and sunbathing, and can just be yanked out of the ground one at a time?"

Daphne realized she had said the wrong thing and looked toward the common room door in a panic, nearly biting her own tongue: "Determi — Determination!"

"I'm truly sorry." Daphne was flustered. "I did see your gift still sitting unwrapped in the dormitory... but what I actually meant was, I've never seen anyone sign your Hogsmeade permission form. And I've never seen you go home for the holidays..."

All told, it had been 5 and a half years. Praeris had never once gone home for Christmas, never received an Easter egg from family, and her Hogsmeade permission form had always been left blank.

The other three girls had long since assumed that something had happened to Praeris's family. That she was an orphan.

That was why they never asked. Why they were always happy to bring her snacks from Hogsmeade and share their Easter eggs with her.

Slytherins all had very sharp tongues. They were arrogant. They were unreasonable. Daphne knew this, and the more she turned it over in her mind, the worse she felt, but she firmly told herself: she had not sunk to the level of deliberately poking at a good friend's wounds.

"Your guess is right." Praeris shrugged. "I don't have any immediate family left, but I still have one or two extended relatives."

"One or two" meant one, as far as Praeris was concerned. Professor Snape was her mother's cousin. That counted as extended family.

Though in truth there should have been two, Praeris did not know that.

Daphne did not dare ask how Christmas had been. She wished she could go back a few minutes, bite off her own tongue, and swallow it whole, so she would never have said something so hurtful.

Daphne's tongue was firmly under her own lock and key after that. But Praeris had not actually felt hurt.

She knew Daphne hadn't meant it.

Back in the dormitory, Praeris unwrapped her Christmas presents one by one. The last one was from Draco.

A miniature doll, pudding-shaped, that would warm with a touch of magic and stay that way for hours.

Praeris always ate a pudding after dinner.

Draco. You've already made up your mind to push me away. So why do you keep knocking on my door?

She thought he was being very unreasonable.

He had resolved to push her away, yet he still sent a gift. Still made sure she knew he remembered she felt the cold. Still made sure she knew he remembered the pudding after dinner.

He wanted to run away from her. But he kept turning back to look, letting her know he was reluctant to let go.

Praeris sighed and stuffed the pudding into her pocket alongside the rest.

For a moment, her pockets were quite full. The two-way mirror, the pocket watch, and the pudding.

Draco accounted for two-thirds.

Too unreasonable.

The next day, Pansy and Millicent came back.

Pansy had seen Jacob once over the holiday and returned with several large boxes and several large bags of Nuremberg gingerbread, Black Forest ham, and every variety of chocolate and sweets imaginable.

"The Statute of Secrecy is too much of a hassle. Jacob came by train." Pansy said, laughing. "Muggle customs opened his suitcase, and it was packed with nothing but food!"

The Statute of Secrecy required wizards crossing national borders to avoid being seen by Muggles. Now with Scrimgeour running the Ministry and enforcement tightened to an almost unbearable degree, Jacob had simply taken the Muggle route into England.

Millicent, meanwhile, seemed irritable. She propped her chin in her hand, chewing on a sweet. "I'm about to graduate, and my aunt wants to pull strings and get me into Durmstrang to finish my studies."

"Why?"

"Can wizarding schools even do transfers?"

The first was Pansy and Daphne. The second was Praeris.

Millicent shrugged. "With the right connections and enough money, donate some equipment and facilities, and they can absolutely make an exception."

Karkaroff was done for, and many people were still unfamiliar with Durmstrang's new headmaster. Berika Bulstrode was clearly not among them.

"Aunt Becky says the Dark Lord and Dumbledore are going to come to blows sooner or later, and Hogwarts is no longer safe." Millicent said with a troubled look. "I'm pureblood, but who knows what the Dark Lord and my mother might get up to?"

"You mean you don't want to go?" Praeris asked.

Millicent shook her head. "Right, I'm not going. I'm about to graduate anyway, aren't I? And Dumbledore is still alive —"

"Cough, cough, cough!" Pansy coughed furiously, signaling Millicent to stop.

They were Slytherins. Who knew if there were Death Eater children on the other side of the wall?

Praeris was lying on her bed reading. Pansy crept quietly up onto it: "Praeris, have you and Draco made up yet?"

Praeris lifted the blanket to let her in. "My dear Miss Pansy. You have asked this many times. No."

"I don't understand." Pansy, just like Nina burrowing into Millicent's bed, made herself at home in Praeris's arms. "You both like each other. So why torture each other? What if you keep fighting and Draco ends up falling for someone else?"

"Then I'll chop him up," Praeris said coldly.

Pansy's eyes went wide as a startled cat's. "Actually chop him up?"

"Never mind." Praeris said, unhurried. "No chopping."

Pansy had barely exhaled when she heard Praeris continue: "Don't want to ruin that face of his. Poison him instead — leave the body intact. Let me think about which potion would work best..."

"No no no no." Pansy said in horror. "Praeris, actually, thinking about it more carefully — Draco is so arrogant, how could he just go and fall for someone else? He won't. He absolutely won't!"

Praeris burst out laughing and patted Pansy on the back. "Pansy, what's the rush? I was joking."

Pansy did not think she was joking. She thought the idea sounded entirely too feasible.

Draco: danger.

➤ Next: Tears