Chapter 173 - A Difficult Position

Flutter-flutter, flutter-flutter —

Eight in the evening, close to curfew, Praeris's owl beat its wings against the Gryffindor window and demanded, imperiously, that someone inside open it.

Hermione hurried to her feet, shoved the window open, and called its name: "Sage!"

Sage dropped a thick envelope and flew off without a shred of sentiment.

Harry's head swiveled to follow Sage's arrival, then swiveled again as she disappeared. Grasping for something to say, he offered, "She's called Sage? That is such a Praeris name."

Wasn't it, though? Beyond the herb, sage also meant wise one. Sage the plant played a unique role in both Potions and Divination.

Hermione ignored Harry's commentary on the owl and said flatly, "Harry, forget the owl. The moment has come to decide whether you get to keep the textbook."

The envelope Sage had delivered did not look like it held a single sheet of letter paper. It was thick enough to make Harry suspect Praeris had written an epic-length treatise — for the express purpose of cursing him out.

The mere thought of Praeris's tongue made Harry shiver.

These past few days, Harry had hoped Praeris would agree. Otherwise, that painstakingly crafted apology letter of his would have been a complete waste.

And yet he'd also hoped she wouldn't agree — this was already asking far too much of her. If Praeris didn't slap him across the face and call him shameless, that alone would count as remarkable self-restraint.

"Oh?" Hermione let out a sound of surprise.

When she opened the envelope, there was no parchment letter inside at all. Just a thick notebook. The actual letter was tucked between the pages.

Hermione opened the small envelope and scanned through it, taking in ten lines at a glance.

"What did she say?" Harry couldn't help standing up, craning his neck to see.

Hermione set the letter down with some gravity. "Harry, if you don't buckle down and study Potions properly, I will side with Talia in giving you a lesson."

Harry and Hermione had only counted on two outcomes: Praeris would agree to extend the loan of Advanced Potion-Making, or she wouldn't.

Praeris's decision fell into neither category.

She had, quite unexpectedly, hand-copied a complete set of her own notes to replace the Half-Blood Prince's annotations.

This notebook covered every key point and every experimental essential and improvement from Advanced Potion-Making. Praeris had even copied it all with her left hand.

As they both knew, during the lesson on the Reviving Awakening Potion, Praeris had for the first time subtly surpassed the results recorded in the Half-Blood Prince's notes from years ago.

When Harry and Hermione flipped to that chapter, the content of Praeris's notes was precisely the method she had used in that very lesson. That meant Praeris had given them her very latest results, holding nothing back.

Hearing Hermione's explanation, Harry's first reaction was not delight.

It was genuine, heartfelt shame.

Because of Snape, because of Draco Malfoy, Harry had more than once doubted Praeris's intentions. Even though Praeris always dispelled those doubts through her actions, his suspicion always clawed back up from the ashes.

And yet, faced with his repeated wavering, Praeris had always put the bigger picture first and never let herself be trapped by petty personal grievances.

It was only in this moment that Harry truly confronted his mistake. Truly recognized his own fault.

Dejectedly, he said, "I remember something Praeris told me once. That Dumbledore isn't merely a powerful man, but a leader who commands respect. And the difference between the two comes down to trust."

Praeris had told him Muggles called this the Pygmalion effect. Or the Rosenthal effect.

Dumbledore placed his judgment first, then extended his trust, and so his followers grew ever more loyal to his ideals. Voldemort held his subordinates in nothing but perpetual suspicion and vigilance, and so they walked on eggshells, their hearts quietly breeding doubt.

Whatever expectation a leader showed toward their subordinates, that was the direction the subordinates were most likely to grow.

If he kept doubting Praeris like this, Harry thought, sooner or later they would push her further and further away.

Something he had nearly forgotten surfaced in his mind. Praeris was a DA member too. She had even protected the DA's membership list, saving them from being forced to disband.

Seeing his despondent look, Hermione said, "Harry, this is a good thing."

"Listen." Hermione spoke with ease and confidence. "Without real self-reflection, there's no real progress. When I first came to Hogwarts, I believed completely in the school rules and stopped you from sneaking out at night. And in that process, you ended up safeguarding the Philosopher's Stone."

"Later, I started thinking about my relationship with rules. I learned to work toward our goals while trying not to break them where I could. Or..." Hermione smiled slightly, "if you don't get caught, it doesn't count as breaking them."

"And then Umbridge came along with all those laughable regulations. Look — who cared?" Hermione shrugged. "Gradually, I stopped simply obeying whatever rules the outside world handed me. Inside myself, there is also a set of my own rules. Those are called principles."

Hermione rose composedly and began to pace, her arms spreading slightly at her sides. "Harry, I hold my principles up against whatever rules we're faced with, and then I decide what I ought to do, what I can do, and what I cannot do."

"There is a goal in my heart. I know that, when the time comes, I will have to break certain rules to truly reach it." Hermione's eyes sparkled. "Over these years, in the process of making mistakes, I've learned to coexist with rules, to understand them — and grown because of it."

"Making mistakes isn't something to fear, Harry." She said it earnestly. "What matters is whether you can turn those mistakes into a mirror. See your own shortcomings, and in correcting them, remake yourself."

"Look." Hermione smiled. "You now understand one of the sources of the respect Dumbledore commands. And that is trust. This lesson was taught to you by Praeris and Dumbledore together. Can you put it into practice?"

Harry faintly sensed it then. Whether in Hermione, Praeris, or Dumbledore, there existed some common quality — the very thing that made these people shine.

And in this moment, Hermione radiated a light that Harry found almost piercing. It burned away the fog of confusion in his chest.

Yes. Now that he had found where his mistake lay, hadn't this very thing become a good thing?

From this moment on, learn to trust Praeris. This unusual companion, this strange partner. From this moment on... Harry's gaze drifted slowly toward that thick notebook, and a dull gloom settled over him.

Fine. From this moment on, he had to seriously study Potions, and stop letting Praeris stab him in the heart and declare him the next Lockhart.

He picked up Praeris's notebook and said weakly, "I can! But Potions might not cooperate..."

At those words, Hermione's rare gentleness vanished instantly. "No. You can."

Think about it. Harry had crammed spells before the Triwizard Tournament. Why couldn't he cram some Potions now?

Hermione believed Harry was, in fact, clever. His talent for Potions, while not equal to Praeris's, was certainly there.

Because if someone like Crabbe or Goyle had picked up the Half-Blood Prince's book and tried to follow the notes step by step, they probably still wouldn't have gotten it right...

The next day, in class.

Praeris sensed Draco Malfoy's gaze landing on her from time to time. But the moment she shifted, Draco snatched it back.

The moment class ended, Draco hurried out as usual. Then he heard familiar footsteps behind him.

Familiar. Yes, of course they were familiar.

He didn't try to shake her off. He knew that when Praeris set her mind on something, nothing could stop her.

So he stopped.

The weather was still miserable. No rain, but the fog was thick. Looking out, the distance was a murky wash of blue, green, and grayish white, like a piece of jade with poor clarity and a poor base.

That faint trace of green was likely the first wild grass of spring, looking thin and outnumbered against the open hillside.

"Why didn't you get new robes made over Christmas?" Praeris said softly. "That set just hangs on you."

Draco went still. His lowered eyes lifted slowly, his eyelids trembling.

In the two minutes it had taken to walk to the terrace, he had imagined every possible thing Praeris might say. Some version of urging him back from the wrong path. Some version of telling him not to keep walking a road with no way out.

All of that had turned to paint smeared across his face.

Like a pitiful clown.

Praeris hadn't said a single direct word of concern. Yet every word was laden with worry for him. She ached at how thin he'd grown. She was worried his Christmas had gone poorly. She was wondering whether something had changed in his family, puzzled as to why Narcissa hadn't noticed his robes no longer fit.

All at once, every word he had sharpened into a knife couldn't make it out of his mouth. Draco crammed them into a lump and forced them back down his own throat, where they lodged and stabbed, and he couldn't speak at all.

After a long moment, he finally said, "My mother... she hasn't been in the best spirits. She preferred I stay home."

A lie, Praeris thought.

His body told her that. It wasn't because Narcissa was in poor spirits that she had failed to notice the issue with Draco's robe size.

It seemed Narcissa had been very busy over Christmas. Busy helping her son figure out how to kill Dumbledore, or busy trying to keep him safe in the attempt. The latter had already been entrusted to Professor Snape. So it must have been the former.

Praeris's mind turned over automatically. One second was all it took.

But the moment she thought about what Draco was facing, it felt as though cement had been poured into her chest, solid and immovable. Her usually sharp mind turned to mush. She had no idea what to do.

Reason and emotion waged a fierce battle inside her head.

Reason told her she had to stop Draco. Otherwise, what lay ahead for him was an abyss.

Emotion told her that even if it was an abyss, it was a road Draco had no choice but to walk. She herself would stake everything for her own family. What right did she have to stop him from doing the same?

Being too close to a situation means more than just losing the view. It means that even when you can see clearly, emotion and identity shackle your hands.

If Praeris were just any other person, and had never cared about Draco the way she did, she could go to the Room of Requirement right now and smash that wretched cabinet to pieces.

...Ah. Yes. She knew perfectly well.

The same person through whom Draco had discovered the Vanishing Cabinet was the same person through whom Praeris had discovered it: Montague.

Just as the Sorting Hat demanded: unity. Praeris received information from both Slytherin and Gryffindor simultaneously, and from that, glimpsed the truth.

Last year, she had already considered the possibility that Apparition was involved somehow. Hermione had also walked her through Harry's suspicions in detail, about Draco and the attempt on Katie Bell.

In the course of that, Hermione mentioned that Harry had overheard Draco's conversation with Borgin, confirming that Draco was indeed, as Praeris had suspected, engaged in some activity that required his so-called toolkit.

Praeris had initially imagined two possibilities: he was making something, or repairing something. Hermione let her know it was the latter. Draco had asked Borgin how to repair it.

At first, Praeris had fallen into a misconception. She assumed Draco was repairing this object in order to kill Dumbledore.

But that didn't add up. If repairing it was enough to kill Dumbledore, why was he also going to the trouble of using the necklace? That meant the object's purpose wasn't to kill Dumbledore at all. It had some other function.

The greatest threat to Voldemort was Hogwarts. Inside it were his two greatest problems: Dumbledore and Harry. If Draco were acting to deal with Harry... there were no signs of that.

Then that left only Hogwarts itself. This object could give Voldemort a way to breach Hogwarts's protections: destroy them, or bypass them entirely.

Her own words from before surfaced immediately in her mind: "If Montague can't be found in the school, that can only mean Montague isn't in the school."

How had Montague left the school and come back, and even managed to use Apparition from inside Hogwarts?

That was exactly it. By bypassing it.

Yes. That was the strange part. According to Hermione, Draco had asked Borgin how to repair it, said he couldn't bring it to Borgin, and yet wanted Borgin to look after the one he already had. Montague was nowhere to be found in the school and then suddenly reappeared.

This was a pair. One piece at Borgin's, one piece at Hogwarts. Between them, some magical connection existed that made them a single entity.

That way, the object was both inside Hogwarts and not inside Hogwarts, and it bypassed the prohibition on Apparition within the school entirely.

Montague had stumbled into one end but couldn't come out of the other, because the Hogwarts end was broken. So Draco had to repair it.

At the time, Praeris had wondered whether Montague, riding high as a member of the Inquisitorial Squad, had made an enemy.

So she had quietly asked Hermione whether she knew anything about what had happened to him.

Hermione had been apologetic. She knew. It was the Weasley twins who had stuffed him into the Vanishing Cabinet on the second floor.

Ah. The Vanishing Cabinet. So that was it.

The Vanishing Cabinet didn't make things vanish. It simply transferred them to the other cabinet in the pair.

Having learned the truth, Praeris would rather have remained ignorant. She could not sit by and watch Draco repair the Vanishing Cabinet and let Death Eaters into Hogwarts. And she had no idea how to stop Draco from destroying himself, or how to save his father.

➤ Next: Clear as Day