Chapter 172 - Everyone Listen to Pansy!

Millicent had just botched her Apparition attempt and was sitting dazed on the floor.

She looked up at Daphne Greengrass, who had returned triumphant, and said: "This is the first time I've seen you actively provoke Gryffindor!"

"Did your brain turn to oatmeal while you were Apparating?" Daphne frowned, chin raised. "Gryffindor provoked us first!"

Daphne's ears hadn't been chewed off by rats. She had heard every word, loud and clear.

Praeris succeeded at Apparition because she was always that brilliant, she had always been that brilliant. It wasn't some laughable compensation prize. If you can't manage it yourself, don't sit there making excuses, OK?

But Daphne kept that thought to herself. She had no desire to watch that soft, silly "you're so kind" expression spread across Praeris's face.

Without having to trudge back and forth across the Great Hall practicing Apparition, Praeris found herself with a pocket of free time.

She sat on her bed reading a letter that had arrived by owl.

It was a thick roll of parchment, crammed dense with writing. Harry's handwriting wasn't particularly neat, which made the whole apology letter rather exhausting to work through.

The first half, roughly 70 or 80 percent of it, was Harry's apology and his account of his own psychology surrounding the "Half-Blood Prince" textbook.

The remaining 20 or 30 percent was Harry's request to keep using the textbook.

The whole thing was earnest in tone. Impassioned. Practically tearful.

Pfft, cough, cough!

Praeris couldn't help it.

She didn't believe for a second that Hermione hadn't helped write this. The envelope was obviously one Hermione had casually provided, it was still printed with Bulgarian roses, from the country where her boyfriend's Quidditch team was based.

But Praeris sincerely hoped that when Hermione helped Harry draft this apology letter, she could have drawn a little less inspiration from the great works of British literature.

Because this, this, this... this was far too overwrought.

Anyone who didn't know better would think Harry and Hermione had lifted a script from some West End theatre.

"Dear Prae — are you reading a letter? Can you help me practice Apparition later?"

Millicent came in from outside. The moment she walked through the door, she spotted Praeris holding several sheets of letter paper.

Praeris immediately flipped the pages face-inward and stuffed them back into the envelope.

"Of course," she said generously. "Let's go."

Millicent was steered out the door by Praeris. She glanced back and caught a glimpse of the envelope sitting on Praeris's bed. The pattern on it was... some kind of pink rose?

"So!" Millicent said to Pansy Parkinson, delighted. "Are Prae and Draco making up? Is that his apology letter?"

"Of course not!" Pansy clenched her fists, visibly anxious. "I've never seen Draco use an envelope like that. And besides — pink roses. Good heavens."

Without any special meaning attached, pink roses were usually given to young girls in the early stages of courtship. They often stood for first love.

Draco and Praeris had been circling each other for so long. All the cards were already on the table, what ambiguity was there left to have? And besides, neither of them had confessed anything. You couldn't even call it first love.

The alarm bells in Pansy Parkinson's head were deafening. Someone was trying to take advantage of her matchmaking project falling apart, sneaking in while the door was unguarded.

"Are you even listening!"

Pansy rolled her eyes, then turned and shot Draco a vicious glare. "Are you listening to me?" she said, voice shrill. "Do you have even a shred of crisis awareness? When Prae ends up with the pink-rose love-letter boy, you —"

She stopped herself.

Pansy looked at Draco properly, and it struck her how completely he had changed. His complexion was as pale as a vampire's. His face had gone sharp and hollow. He looked utterly haggard, and his expression was that permanent, distant look of someone turning something over and over in his mind.

Could a heartbreak really do this to a person?

Pansy sighed despite herself. "If you're this miserable, why don't you just make up with her?"

Draco kept that faraway look. A long moment passed before he said, slowly: "Perhaps... it's better for her this way."

Pansy laughed out loud, except it wasn't funny at all.

She had never expected that after all that silence, what Draco produced was something this stupid.

"I never knew you were such a selfless person!" she snapped. "You and your ridiculous stupidity can go to hell together!"

Pansy stormed off.

Every step rang out sharp and loud, her boot heels striking the floor with the full weight of her unspent fury.

Draco drifted in a daze to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. It wasn't until cold water hit his face that he actually registered what Pansy had been telling him.

Someone had written Praeris a love letter.

A pink-rose envelope.

Thick sheets of letter paper.

His first reaction was: it's fine.

It's fine... while he was doing what he was doing, how could he drag Praeris down alongside him?

It's fine... the impression he'd leave her with would be those old days, easy, bright, uncomplicated.

It's fine...

To hell with fine.

He wasn't fine at all.

Draco scooped up handful after handful of water and threw it onto his face. His cuffs soaked through. The front of his shirt went translucent, hinting at the skin beneath.

Something scorching and searing and ugly was boiling in his chest, bubbling up from some deep place, twisting into something he couldn't name. It was the devil's own brew, poured straight off the coals and onto his heart, burning through the numbness his cursed mission had packed around it.

Draco believed in Praeris. Genuinely, completely believed in her. He believed she loved him the same way he loved her.

The pink-rose love letter was not Praeris's fault. He was certain of that.

Praeris was wonderful. It was only natural that people would love her. He would never condemn a flower for blooming just because bees gathered around it.

But it still felt like swallowing glass.

There was a fire burning in him, loud and insistent, demanding he forget his mission for just a moment, forget all the things he was supposedly doing for her own good, and go back to her.

All those days of avoiding her, and it had never once felt like he might lose her. Maybe that was blind confidence. Maybe it was self-deception.

The only time a sliver of real unease had crept in was when he heard that Harper, Harper, of all people, who had absolutely no self-awareness, had invited Praeris somewhere.

When Filch caught him that night, what crossed his mind wasn't detention. It was that he could get himself into Slughorn's party. Check whether Praeris had been taken in by Harper.

He even regretted letting Harper take his spot as Slytherin's Seeker. Did Harper actually think that by replacing him on a broomstick, he could replace him as a person?

Then he'd seen Praeris defend him. Without hesitation. Without prompting.

His heart had dropped back into place, steady and settled.

The fragrance of the pink rose was reaching toward Praeris. But its thorn had pricked Draco's hand, and for the first time, he understood with a cold clarity that he could actually lose her.

Praeris had no idea that her apology letter had been passed from one mouth to the next, quietly reshaping itself into a love letter somewhere she couldn't see, and that it had managed to get under Draco's skin.

In fact, Praeris was busy weighing whether to grant Harry and Hermione's request.

At its core, the book belonged to the Half-Blood Prince. Only Professor Snape himself had the right to decide what happened to it.

Even as Professor Snape's cousin once removed. Even as a student he had acknowledged. Praeris had no business making that decision over his head.

Before all of this, her original plan had been simple: retrieve the book, tuck it quietly into the back of a bookshelf, and say nothing. She still didn't want the professor to know it had ever happened.

The Half-Blood Prince's identity was his private history. Anyone who connected that name to the professor would also learn that he was a half-blood, that Prince was Eileen's surname, and that Praeris and the professor were related.

Praeris didn't care personally about that connection being known. But she understood why he'd kept it buried. It was protection. His version of it.

Look at how things worked: Lucius Malfoy had failed, and Draco was made to carry the consequences. The professor was doing something dangerous, and he had chosen to do it alone. No connections that could be threatened. No one who could be dragged in alongside him.

And Praeris didn't want Harry to know the Half-Blood Prince was Professor Snape, either. That would be unpleasant for everyone involved.

She sighed.

Fine. Think more, do more. She truly had the toiling fate of a house-elf.

Praeris opened her copy of Advanced Potion-Making, the one Stella had given her.

A few weeks ago, during her drawn-out long-distance sparring match with the sixth-year professor, she had worked through every page of the textbook again. Now she picked up her quill and, writing with her left hand, noted down every remaining topic, every key point, every observation that corresponded to each potion experiment.

If Harry needed to fool Slughorn by posing as a potions prodigy, he could use her notes.

As for herself?

What she was writing down now was already the past. Going forward, Praeris was confident she could always outpace her previous self. Better. Stronger. She always did.

Millicent was murmuring to Pansy Parkinson again: "Today Prae sent out a letter too. Really thick..."

Pansy had her chin resting on the table, watching the little magical nutcracker Jacob had given her walk stiffly one direction, then stiffly back.

She reached out and gave it a mean flick. It toppled over onto its back. She watched it lie there for a moment, then sat up straight.

Pansy propped her elbows on the table, cradled her head in her hands, and said in a high, cutting voice: "Then let her send it. I wish our Prae and her pink-rose boy every happiness. As for Draco — let him be alone for the rest of his life."

"What pink rose?"

A voice from directly behind them.

Millicent and Pansy locked up like something had jammed in their gears. They turned their heads around, slowly, stiffly.

It was Praeris.

After she heard their explanation, Praeris nearly laughed herself off the bench.

Pink-rose boy?

Pink-rose love letter?

It was pink roses, yes, Bulgarian roses. It was a thick letter, yes, Harry's apology letter. The "pink-rose boy" in their version of events was either Viktor Krum or Harry Potter, and Praeris had no interest in either of them.

Praeris kept her face straight. This was an opportunity.

She skirted around the two little gossips, strolled to an empty seat, and sat down at her leisure. "Oh, that," she said, drawing it out. "Someone poured their heart into writing it. Shouldn't I give it a proper read? Whatever else you want to say about it, the feeling was genuine."

Genuine? It had practically come flooding out over the edges.

Harry had written the first draft himself. Too plain, too blunt. Hermione sent it back.

Editor Granger was not satisfied. Harry was instructed to start over from scratch, no restrictions on form, but it absolutely had to be emotionally resonant.

Harry chewed the shaft of his quill down to something with teeth marks before finally producing a rough draft that qualified as an apology letter.

Hermione was still not satisfied. She thought about it, had her family owl over several novels with confession and repentance plotlines, and required Harry to read them carefully.

Harry submitted a third draft. Editor Granger then proceeded to mark it up for punctuation, word choice, and spelling errors.

Harry genuinely regretted it. He regretted provoking both of them, Hermione and Praeris.

One was already a devil. Put them together and you had something worse.

Millicent quietly lit a candle for Draco in her heart.

At this rate, Draco might end up sitting at the losers' table alongside Miles Bletchley.

Pansy Parkinson took a slow breath. When she turned to Praeris, her expression was serious.

"Prae. Listen to me. If you genuinely like this pink-rose boy —" She paused. "Please don't worry about what I think."

"I've known Draco for nearly as long as I've been alive. He has been my friend since childhood. That is true." Pansy's face didn't waver. "But you are also a friend I care about with everything I have."

A pause. A long one.

"I want you to be happy. But the hand holding yours... doesn't have to be Draco's."

Millicent's mouth fell open.

Before Draco and Praeris had gotten together, Pansy Parkinson had worked tirelessly to push them toward each other. When they fought, Pansy had run herself ragged trying to fix it, making no secret of how much she wanted them to reconcile.

And yet now, now that Praeris was actually softening toward someone else, Pansy could stand there and say something that overturned every single thing she had done before.

Millicent had always known Pansy loved them. Every time any of them put their foot in their mouth, Pansy was already moving to stop the damage. Even when Jacob came from abroad to visit, he had to bring snacks for the whole group or Pansy would never let him hear the end of it.

Everyone knew Pansy loved her friends.

Nobody had realized Pansy loved them like this.

Praeris blinked. Her eyes had gone a little red. She felt a pang of regret for what she'd just said. It had only been a small bait — a way to nudge Draco out of hiding, and instead she had drawn out something real from Pansy. Something that hadn't been meant for a trick at all.

Praeris reached out and pulled Pansy into a hug. Her voice came out rough. "No. I do care what you think, Pansy."

She wrapped both arms around Pansy's back, rested her chin on Pansy's shoulder, her face pressed close against Pansy's cheek and neck.

They were so close they could feel the warmth of each other's skin. The faint vibration of each other's voice.

Praeris said:

"Love matters."

"But I love you too, Pansy."

"So you matter too."

From the days they couldn't stand each other, picking fights in corridors, to reluctant friendship, and now this. Held together, for real.

It struck Praeris only now, hazily, how much had happened between them. How many twists and wrong turns. A road no less winding than whatever was happening between her and Draco.

Right now, she only wanted to hold on.

Draco could wait.

➤ Next: A Difficult Position