Chapter 175 - This Is Called Respiratory Alkalosis

Though they were sealed inside an airtight room, Draco felt a draft. It brushed against his back and sent a chill through him.

He knew Praeris had an intellect beyond ordinary people. He just hadn't imagined that in front of her, he would be completely transparent.

What surprised him even more was how utterly direct she was. She gave him no room to prepare, no room to guard himself at all.

"Probably no one has ever told you this..." Draco said, his voice hollow. "You really are a domineering woman."

The corner of Praeris's mouth lifted. "Behind my back, I'm sure plenty have. But you're probably the only one who's said it to my face. After all... no one wants to find out what my retaliation feels like."

A thought surfaced in Draco, the same one he'd had when teaching Praeris to waltz: I brought this on myself.

Zabini had once said, never pick a girlfriend who's too clever. A charming, beautiful woman is worth loving. A bold, clever woman only becomes an obstacle.

Draco fired back with full conviction, "That just means you're afraid of her — and you don't have what it takes to make her protect you!"

Was Draco afraid of Praeris? Probably. If he hadn't felt it himself, he wouldn't have said something so accurate.

But he also enjoyed it, enjoyed having a star shine brilliantly at his side, enjoyed the pride that came with it, enjoyed being protected by her, enjoyed leaning on her reflected power to lord over others.

Still. It was a double-edged sword.

The moment this formidable woman turned those sharp eyes on him, Draco could do nothing but sweat.

He asked, defeated, "When did you find out?"

Praeris flicked her wand and pulled a chair toward her, tapped it once to clean it, then settled into it with easy indifference, fingers laced together on her knee.

"What does it matter when I found out?"

"Before I chose to expose this," Praeris continued, her tone level, "consider me completely ignorant. When I do choose to expose it, it will be sitting in plain sunlight for everyone to see."

Praeris was beginning to understand why capable people so often preferred to speak in riddles.

This deliberate mystification really is something. People actually fall for it.

Draco's mind went back to Zabini. After Zabini returned from the hospital wing, he'd said to Draco, "I never would have guessed — you actually have that much courage."

Draco had no idea what Zabini was on about, until Goyle told him: Praeris had retaliated against Zabini for running his mouth and getting on her nerves.

"I understand!" Draco said, irritated. "You don't like me making decisions for you. You like things in your own hands. But if I commit murder, are you going to follow me and commit murder too?"

"I certainly won't commit murder with you." Praeris said, calm as ever. "I will stop you."

Yes. Praeris would stop him.

Draco knew that perfectly well. It was exactly why he hadn't wanted her anywhere near this.

Before all of this, Praeris had always been indulgent toward him. That had changed with the Katie incident.

He thought back to not long ago, delivering the mead his mother had prepared to Slughorn, counting on Slughorn to pass it along to Dumbledore as a gift.

Narcissa had held Draco's hand, her gaze sharp and certain. "Slughorn has a habit of re-gifting. He's worked alongside Dumbledore for years, and Dumbledore is famously fond of sweets."

Draco looked at his mother. Then he looked down at the mead.

"Mother... what if Slughorn gives it to someone else?"

There had already been one Katie Bell.

"Isn't that fine?" Narcissa reached out and touched Draco's gaunt cheek, her eyes full of a pain she didn't try to hide. "Draco, Slughorn has thrown his lot in with Dumbledore. He'd likely only give the mead to someone on Dumbledore's side. That still counts as a merit."

"But what if it's a student?"

"Even better!" Narcissa said, unconcerned. "More trouble for Dumbledore."

Their only ally in the school was Severus. Narcissa hardly expected Severus to pick up a glass of poisoned wine and drink it down without a second thought.

So. Panicked parents and a Ministry already seeing enemies in every shadow, that would be more than enough to give Dumbledore a headache.

But now, Praeris had come to lay her cards on the table.

Draco couldn't help but wonder: had she already found out that he had a second attempt prepared?

If it was Praeris, nothing would surprise him.

"You can't stop me!" Draco shook his head and stepped backward, only to kick his own toolbox. He stopped. "I have to do this. For my father. For my mother. For my family."

The mead was already gone. The gears of the new plan were already turning. As long as Slughorn didn't shove the bottle to the bottom of a trunk, someone was going to pay with their life.

His mother's plan was so clean. And yet every time Draco thought about it, his heart raced, his mouth went dry, the sweat started, and the dread set in.

Narcissa knew Draco couldn't go through with it himself. So she had prepared the bottle personally. She told him, "Draco, all you did was deliver some wine. Mother put the poison in. Mother prepared the bottle. And you won't be the one putting it into the last person's hands. This has nothing to do with you. Nothing at all."

Nothing to do with him? Draco's heart pounded.

He hadn't bought the knife. He hadn't smeared the poison on the blade. He hadn't been the one to drive it into anyone's chest. But he was still the one who had handed it over.

On any normal day, teasing cats, stirring up trouble, scaring people, getting into fights, none of that was life or death. But this year, over and over again, he had done things that put people in the ground.

"Even if I can't stop you, I have to try." Praeris stood and walked toward him. She placed her hand on his shoulder. "Draco. You don't want to do this either, do you?"

Praeris had said she didn't want Draco making decisions for her.

So wasn't this exactly what she was doing to him? This was a mission tied to the fate of his entire family. What right did she have to interfere?

No. This wasn't the same thing.

If Draco had ever, from the deepest part of himself, taken pleasure in murder, Praeris never would have fallen in love with him in the first place.

It was precisely because she knew — clearly, completely, without any doubt, that Draco did not want this. That was why she had to stop him.

What drove Praeris to act was not only her own love for Draco. It was the part of Draco that was being torn apart from the inside.

His hollowed-out frame. The dark circles carved under his eyes. His fraying emotions. The heaviness that radiated off him, dense and unrelenting, a weight of melancholy and suffering that called out to her without words.

Praeris felt him trembling. She looked up at him and spoke softly. "Draco. This frightens you, doesn't it?"

Her hand moved from his shoulder to his arm. His breathing came faster.

"Are you falling apart? Are you in pain? Do you hate what you're doing to innocent people? Are you being eaten alive by it?"

"Draco, I know you. You're not someone who does these things. At your core, in the deepest part of you, you are kind. You have compassion. You have love." Praeris closed her eyes. "Beasts kill by instinct — it's just survival. Mercy is something only a human heart carries. That isn't weakness. There is nothing shameful about it. Draco, it only means you still have your humanity."

She said it quietly, with no urgency at all.

"Hold me. Alright?"

Draco lifted his arms from where they hung at his sides. One hand curled around the back of Praeris's neck. The other wound tightly around her back. He pressed his face into the hollow of her shoulder, and his whole body shook.

"You can cry, Draco." Her voice was barely above a murmur, careful, as though too much force might shatter him. "It's only me here. With me, you can cry."

A sound came out of him, low and muffled and trapped, like a large creature caught in a net it couldn't escape. He coiled around her like a snake, like dodder vines wrapped around their host, and yet also like a drowning man seizing the only thing keeping him above water.

Deep in Draco's soul, there was a dark hole. It fed on every bit of torment and pain that passed through him, expanding without pause, hollowing itself into something bottomless. That abyss was waiting. Waiting for a key called sin to unlock the door to something he could not come back from.

That sin would be a deliberate murder of an innocent person.

Praeris felt her shoulder grow warm.

Draco's warmth.

The warmth of tears.

Or perhaps the warmth of grief and suffering given a body.

Praeris would never shelter a cold-blooded killer in her heart. Yet when faced with what had happened to Katie, she had not torn herself open and removed him.

Not only because the murder had failed.

Failure could simply mean poor execution.

More because of the anguish that seeped through Draco without his permission, the quiet suffering of a boy crushed under a mission soaked in blood.

Draco cried for a long time, as though trying to empty out everything he had swallowed over the course of the year. Praeris stroked his back and patted it gently, the way you would soothe a small child.

She had experience with that. The convent took in abandoned infants. When a baby cried with no obvious physical need, stroking slowly from the upper spine down, or picking her up and gently patting her back, was usually enough to quiet her.

Praeris's mind drifted, as it was prone to do. Draco really had been crying for a while. Could he outlast Moaning Myrtle in a crying contest?

She considered it, then let the thought go. No need to get competitive about something like that. The dead deserved their dignity.

She supposed she ought to be sad herself. Or at least match the atmosphere.

But Praeris wasn't built for sustained emotion. Even now, comforting Draco, that was simply her tolerance toward him, nothing more.

When emotions arise, solve the problem that caused them. If the problem can't be solved, solve the person who created the problem.

Just as Praeris was running through the logic of deal with Voldemort and his Horcruxes and everything resolves itself, Draco slowly lifted his head.

She looked at him. Her gaze was completely still, and something in that stillness steadied him.

Draco drew a long breath. Closed his eyes. Opened them. Then reached to his neck and pulled out a necklace. Hanging from the chain were two rings, interlocked.

She had no idea how he managed it, but with a single touch, he slipped one of the rings free and held it out to her.

Praeris tilted her head, puzzled.

His hand was still trembling, the emotional outburst had probably wrung him dry. His expression, though, was completely serious.

"Praeris," Draco asked, "will you take this ring and allow me to kiss you?"

Praeris looked down at the ring. On the inner band, two letters were engraved: D.M.

"No," Praeris said, composed.

Draco went still. "What?"

"No." She repeated it clearly. "Draco, I said no."

Then she reached into her pocket, drew out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the tears still drying on his face.

"Why do you want to kiss me right now?" Her tone was soft. "Is it because of the comfort I just gave you?"

"If that's why, I can't accept your invitation." She said it without any edge to it. "From where I stand, that would be taking advantage of your vulnerability. From yours, it would be far too careless."

"I don't want our first kiss to happen under circumstances like these."

Draco felt the sting of it, the impulsiveness, the ring he had prepared long before this moment and pulled out anyway on a stupid whim. He always ended up looking like a child in front of her. She was barely a few months older than him.

"But this is the moment I love you most." Draco took her hand and pressed it flat against his chest. "Feel that. It's racing. It wants you to be my girlfriend."

Praeris replied, even-keeled, "If it gets any faster, Muggle medicine has a name for that. It's called palpitations. I would tell you that you've developed respiratory alkalosis."

This was perhaps the moment Draco hated Muggles the most.

Praeris must have sensed his deflation. She said, and meant it, "Draco, I can't be your girlfriend. Not right now, at least. Because you don't truly know me."

"I don't think that's true." Draco didn't like hearing it one bit. "I've known you for six years. Not six months. Not six days."

Praeris looked at him with a settled, patient expression, the kind reserved for someone making an argument they hadn't thought through.

"Fine." Draco threw his hands up. "Tell me then. Where exactly don't I know you? I'd love to hear your insights on this."

"Just as you never told me you were a Death Eater," Praeris said, in the same tone someone might use to discuss the weather, "I never told you that I am resolved to support Dumbledore."

The words landed.

Draco's eyes went wide, so wide that Praeris thought of a Mooncalf.

What she hadn't expected was what he asked first.

"Then when you stop me — is it because I want to kill Dumbledore? Or because I want to kill Dumbledore?"

The weight of the first sat on "I." The weight of the second sat on "Dumbledore."

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