Chapter 171 - My cousin — Words Unspoken

Dumbledore had asked him to coax information out of Slughorn, and Slughorn was always praising him for inheriting Lily's talent.

To fulfill Dumbledore's request, Harry absolutely could not let Slughorn discover that his Potions talent was fabricated.

When Harry found out his father wasn't what he'd imagined, he told himself that at least his mother had been good. Slughorn's words gave Harry a sense of a close bond with Lily, and he cherished that feeling.

Harry would also occasionally think back to all those zeroes Snape had given him in class the year before, think of the Slytherins roaring with laughter and mocking him. Even Crabbe and Goyle had done worse than him. But only he had been given zeroes.

Just because Snape couldn't stand me, was that reason enough to destroy a student's confidence like that? Was this the pain Neville had been going through all along?

Back then, Harry had been a student barely past fifteen. He didn't think that was something a professor should do. How humiliated he had been, being publicly declared a zero.

The Half-Blood Prince's book had told Harry he was no fool when it came to Potions. Slughorn's praise made him feel that perhaps he did carry some of Lily's qualities, not just her eyes. And without any detailed explanation, just by glancing at the Half-Blood Prince's notes, Harry had made Snape's star pupil unable to sit still.

Even though his words hadn't come out well, Harry did agree with Hermione's view. Praeris was sharp-tongued, yes, but she was genuinely a kind and decent person. He shouldn't have gone after Praeris like that.

Otherwise, what difference was there between him and Snape, who had spent years grinding down him and Neville?

But Harry was torn. He was also greedily holding onto this feeling. After escaping Snape's shadow, the Half-Blood Prince and Slughorn had given him something he'd never had before: a real sense of achievement in Potions.

It's not that I'm no good at Potions. Switch my teacher to the Half-Blood Prince, and everything is completely different.

Just now, Praeris had stormed up to him, and Harry had been confused at first. But when Praeris said those things that misunderstood him, the same way the Daily Prophet did, his temper had spiked, and he'd said things he shouldn't have.

"Oh?" Praeris gave a low laugh. "By your logic, Gilderoy Lockhart was perfectly justified as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, was he? Even though all those experiences of his were stolen from other people — even though he never actually lived through any of those dangers himself — that's all fine, is it?"

In Praeris's eyes, what Harry was doing was no different from what Lockhart had done.

Lockhart had never gone through dangerous battles, and he hadn't obtained the consent of those who had. He'd cast Memory Charms on those witches and wizards, stolen their experiences, written books off their suffering, and gotten himself hired as a teacher.

Harry had likewise never done the same thinking, experimentation, and summarizing as the professor. He hadn't obtained the professor's consent either. And yet he'd walked straight in and used those results to pass himself off as a Potions prodigy.

Praeris's words hit Harry like plunging into ice water.

How deeply he had once despised someone like Lockhart, a fraud who stole others' achievements to show off, who preened with smug satisfaction. And now, he himself had made someone feel that he and Lockhart had something in common?

No. That wasn't what Harry had intended. He had thought the Half-Blood Prince's notes were a stroke of fortune. Like in Muggle mythology, how Cú Chulainn won the Gáe Bulg through bravery, Harry, too, had dared to try, and discovered that the notes were something special.

"No!" Harry clutched the hem of his robes, face flushing red. "I'm not —"

"I once told myself," Praeris said, circling around him as she spoke, her voice carrying a steady, pressing weight, "maybe Harry is actually digesting that knowledge — working through what he got from relying on someone else's work. So last class, I specifically watched your cauldron from a distance."

Last class, Slughorn had set an impromptu question. No answer to be found in the textbook.

If Harry had truly digested the textbook knowledge and the professor's previous notes, he would have been able to brew a potion sufficient to detoxify. Even if he'd only absorbed most of it, he should have produced something halfway decent, roughly what Hermione had managed.

But his cauldron. Praeris had glanced at it from across the room and never wanted to look a second time.

"You disappoint me." Praeris cast him a contemptuous look. "Even more than you did last year."

"No! I have been learning from it, just not the Potions parts!" Harry lifted his head, voice rising. "I got zeroes in Snape's class, but when I read the Half-Blood Prince's book I get praised by Slughorn! That's because Snape's teaching style doesn't suit me!"

The Potions weren't what drew him anyway. It was the spells, the clever, interesting spells scrawled in the margins.

"The Half-Blood Prince?" Praeris paused.

A few seconds passed. Then something seemed to click. She covered her face and burst out laughing. "Sorry, Potter, I can't help it, this is too funny. Why don't you think about it. What's my surname?"

What was Praeris's surname?

Prince.

And a moment before she started laughing, she had repeated those exact words: the Half-Blood Prince.

"Prince?" Harry's face went blank. He said it slowly, as if the word were unfamiliar. "The Half-Blood Prince?"

Praeris shrugged, putting a deliberate stress on "Prince." "Do I still need to explain? The Half-Blood Prince is the Half-Blood Prince. Yes, what I mean is, the Half-Blood Prince is my cousin."

The word "cousin" covered a wide range. A first cousin once removed was still "cousin," but so were second cousins, and more distant relatives besides. Harry didn't know exactly what relationship Praeris meant. But her meaning wasn't hard to follow.

The Half-Blood Prince. Half Prince blood.

Harry felt it rise from somewhere deep, a hot, genuine shame.

So this was what he'd been doing.

Using a book that belonged to Praeris's family. Using it to strike at Praeris. He hadn't truly absorbed the Half-Blood Prince's knowledge and made it his own. He'd just used it to feed something inside himself. Some need. Some hunger he hadn't wanted to look at too closely.

"I," The flush drained from Harry's face. He went pale. The words came fast. "Praeris! This is my fault. I'm sorry. I'll return the Half-Blood Prince's book to you!"

And then he turned and ran without looking back, as though a Basilisk were chasing him.

Or rather, this was worse than a Basilisk. If he'd run into a Basilisk, he wouldn't have run at all.

The February wind off the Scottish Highlands hit Praeris across the face and scattered the loose hair at her temples. Slowly, the sharp edge of it all faded, and she came back to herself.

Seeking out Harry today had not been a wise decision. It wasn't safe here. The timing was wrong.

But. There might have been better moments, there wouldn't have been a faster one. In a satisfaction that was almost cruel, she had released something she'd been holding down for a long time.

Harry had originally set out to track down Malfoy. He came back without having seen Malfoy once. Hermione looked up at him, breathless, expression in pieces, and couldn't make sense of any of it.

"Weren't you looking for Malfoy?" Hermione asked quietly. "Did something happen?"

Harry dropped himself heavily into the sofa across from her and shook his head, staring at nothing. "No, Hermione. I think I've done something wrong. The Half-Blood Prince is Praeris's relative."

Snape was a professor Praeris respected. Harry couldn't say to her what Snape made him feel, but he could say it to Hermione.

He left out his thoughts about James. He didn't approve of what James had done, but he couldn't bring himself to speak ill of his dead father in front of her.

"I didn't realize..." Hermione felt a pang for him. "I didn't know you'd been carrying last year's things all this time."

Snape's teaching style wasn't something just anyone could take.

Even Praeris, if her potion-making in class fell slightly below her usual standard, it wouldn't cost her points, but she would still receive a harsh public dressing-down.

Malfoy, of course, was the sole exception to all of that.

It had to be said: Hermione thought both Slughorn and Praeris were better suited to teaching than Snape was. Snape ought to run a small seminar, teaching only the students he'd personally selected and approved. Or simply not teach at all, and go do Potions research instead.

What Hermione didn't know was that Snape thought the same thing. He would have been perfectly happy to teach like the Alchemy professor, upper-year students only, mature minds, skills up to standard.

Preferably upper-year Defence Against the Dark Arts. That, Snape would have genuinely enjoyed.

In fifth year, Harry had been juggling everything at once: Dumbledore driven out of the school, the DA on the run, Umbridge's iron grip, a public that thought he was a liar. And on top of all of it, Snape had publicly given him zeroes and let the class laugh at him. Hermione understood why Harry still hadn't let it go.

"I think Professor Snape was putting on an act for Professor Umbridge." Hermione reached over and hugged him. "You know what his position is. If he'd treated you well, how would Voldemort ever have believed in his loyalty?"

Harry almost argued back on instinct. But he thought about what he'd done this term, and his mouth stayed shut.

He understood Praeris completely. If someone used something of Lily's to lord it over him, he wouldn't have taken it well either.

"Harry, it wasn't intentional, but you recognized what you'd done wrong." Hermione spoke carefully, picking each word. "And it was rushed, but you apologized."

Harry buried his face in his hands. "Please stop saying 'but' so many times."

That got a laugh out of Hermione.

Alright. She believed he'd genuinely learned his lesson.

"But Harry," She paused at his groan. "Even though I've been pushing you to come clean to Talia, I didn't know back then that the Half-Blood Prince was her relative." Hermione's expression was torn. "You're right. We do still need to keep the Half-Blood Prince's notes a while longer, until we get the memory about the Horcruxes out of Slughorn."

"You're actually saying that?" Harry stared at her. "You're allowing this?"

Hermione. Where are your principles.

Hermione looked down. "I know. It's wrong."

She had once been someone who followed rules without question. But that had gradually shifted into something else, flipping through the rulebook for loopholes, finding the exact line where punishment stopped. After Umbridge, after watching someone weaponize rules against people, Hermione's understanding of them had become more flexible. Which in practice meant: she followed the rules she believed in.

And in her view, what they were doing was making things difficult for Praeris, who had helped them more than once. So this had to be Praeris's choice. Without her agreement, it simply shouldn't be done.

Harry thought Hermione was about to back down completely.

Then she lifted her head.

"Harry!" The fighting spirit was back in her eyes. "Come on. Let's write Talia and her Half-Blood Prince a proper, sincere letter of apology. And then lay out exactly why we still need to borrow the textbook."

"What if she doesn't agree?" Harry asked, uneasy.

He wouldn't put it past Hermione to make him grovel in front of Praeris, tears and everything.

Hermione picked her textbook back up, matter-of-fact. "Then we think of something else! She's already given us so many ways to get Professor Slughorn to open up. We can't keep asking too much of her."

Harry scratched his head. "Her methods sound good, but they're complicated. If nothing else works, maybe I drink some Felix Felicis. It might help me actually use those techniques right."

Praeris's methods, in a word, were very Praeris. They fit her. They suited someone who could, when she chose to, let every small detail fall into focus just by paying attention. Harry couldn't do that. Human emotions were too unpredictable, too changeable. He might just need a little luck to get Slughorn to open up.

But then he thought about how he'd won that Felix Felicis, and something in him went uncomfortable and quiet.

If he could avoid it, he'd rather try something else first. He didn't want anyone thinking of him the way they thought of Lockhart. Not again.

The one genuinely interesting thing in the days that followed was Apparition class.

The Quidditch players, the ones who'd practically grown up on broomsticks, got nowhere in Apparition. All that skill in the air, and it counted for nothing on the ground.

Praeris, who had been visibly nervous and tentative in Flying class, had an entirely different day of it. She crossed from one end of the Great Hall to the other after only a handful of attempts. A complete and total victory.

"Maybe it's compensation," Seamus said, rubbing his head where he'd walked into something. "If you're terrible at Quidditch, you've got to get something good in Apparition."

Daphne usually kept out of house rivalries. She held her pure-blood views without needing to perform them.

This time, though, she turned on Seamus with her chin up. "Wow, brilliant logic. If you're so terrible at Apparition, why aren't you out there winning glory for Gryffindor on the Quidditch team? A hidden talent, clearly. Such a waste."

"You haven't learned Apparition either!" Seamus shot back.

Daphne raised an eyebrow. She covered her mouth. "At least I know my limits."

"And you —" She pointed at him, her expression pure mockery. "Ha. Ha ha ha."

➤ Next: Everyone Listen to Pansy!