Chapter 177 - Reconciliation — Words Unspoken
"Idiot!"
Snape slammed the door open. "I believe our troubles are already colorful enough without you garnishing the cake with a cherry, don't you?" His tone was frigid.
Praeris sat at the table reading a copy of Rare Magical Flora Illustrated, a cup of tea she'd brewed herself steaming at her elbow.
She shrugged, showing not the slightest trace of self-reflection. "Sir, he had it coming. I will never tolerate someone provoking me and walking away without a lesson — unless they happen to have more important value."
Snape's gaze turned dangerous. "By your logic, am I supposed to praise you?"
"I wouldn't dare, sir, I wouldn't dare." Praeris pushed a bottle of potion across the table. "The antidote. Give it to Harper later."
Praeris couldn't quite say when it had happened. Roughly around the time she independently developed the Limb Regrowth Potion, her relationship with the professor had undergone a subtle shift. She was no longer the good student who simply did as she was told.
The professor didn't seem to react much to this. As though it were only natural.
Gold-Gar Divine Water wasn't a particularly complex poison, and brewing an antidote wouldn't have taken Snape much time. But he didn't have that kind of time to spare. Better to spend 3 to 5 minutes warning his student, who appeared to be entering a rebellious phase.
The tricky thing about this potion was that it made the afflicted person smell absolutely unbearable. By now the entire Hospital Wing had become a gas chamber, and even Madam Pomfrey had to steel herself before setting foot inside.
This had brought the treatment process to a complete standstill.
The bigger problem was that there were other patients in the Hospital Wing, like the poisoned Weasley. As a result, Madam Pomfrey had no choice but to charge in and charge out again, over and over.
Praeris's little stunt wasn't just tormenting Harper. It was tormenting Madam Pomfrey too. Snape would bet that Praeris had barely experimented with Gold-Gar Divine Water at all, otherwise she wouldn't look so thoroughly at ease with herself.
And the antidote was pure torture on top of that. From what Snape could gauge, the therapeutic components accounted for only a fraction of the formula. The rest was dedicated to purging what had already been absorbed, primarily by making the patient expel it through diarrhea.
"Later?" Snape saw no necessity in that particular instruction.
Praeris glanced up with a guilty flicker. "I went to the trouble of making this potion — it would be a shame if it didn't get to have some effect!"
Snape let out a dissatisfied huff. "I wonder who you learned that from!"
"Heredity." Praeris extended one finger and pointed at a certain someone standing in front of her. "It's heredity, sir."
After all, why else would Professor Snape's Wolfsbane Potion taste so vile, and why else would it lose its effectiveness the moment sugar was added?
Praeris was the third most knowledgeable person in the world on the subject of Wolfsbane Potion. She knew perfectly well that the potion's unpleasant side effects were the professor's deliberate revenge.
Snape frowned. Sensing a challenge to his authority, he ordered Praeris to stay for detention. Her task: clean the entire office from top to bottom. No magic.
Honestly!
This is just how adults are.
Someone else puts pressure on them and they come take it out on the children.
Praeris leaned on her broom and thought it over. She had turned seventeen a few months ago. Which meant she technically, barely, counted as an adult herself.
Fine then.
This is just how middle-aged people are.
---
On the other side of the castle, Hermione and Harry rushed to the Hospital Wing the moment class let out, only to find it smelled like a troll had relieved itself in there.
It wasn't until Madam Pomfrey emerged carrying a greenish-blue potion and steered Harper toward the lavatory that the situation improved slightly.
The stench hadn't fully cleared, but Hermione and Harry couldn't wait. They hurried inside, fighting the urge to gag, and went to see Ron.
Nurse Barren told them kindly, "Weasley won't be waking for a while yet. You're welcome to wait outside. Madam Pomfrey says his family will arrive this evening."
"Urgh — thank you." Harry covered his mouth. "But this is when he needs us most — bleargh — we're his best friends!"
Hermione looked at Ron with open worry, her stomach tight with anxiety, her eyes stinging. She had even gone to discuss the matter with Praeris once. "Who do you think would want to kill Slughorn?"
"Could it be Voldemort?" Hermione had mused. "He wants to eliminate someone who might know the number of his Horcruxes!"
A fine idea. Praeris had given a perfunctory nod of agreement, though she knew the truth was otherwise.
If Voldemort's reach could extend this far inside the school, he wouldn't have chosen Draco, a psychologically fragile pawn, to carry it out.
Praeris believed this was Draco's doing. The poison in the mead was likely what Narcissa had been occupied with over Christmas.
And Draco had sent the mead before their conversation. That was why he'd said Praeris couldn't stop him.
But she hadn't spoken the truth aloud.
Praeris had been turning one question over in her mind: whether she should tell the Order of the Phoenix about Draco's mission.
Right now she was walking a tightrope with a carrying pole across her shoulders, Draco on one end, the Order on the other. One wrong step and everything would collapse.
Emotionally, Praeris preferred to play dumb. Draco had kept her identity and her allegiance a secret out of love for her. How could she betray that?
Rationally, she ought to tip off Dumbledore. And the fact that the professor had already been warned perhaps hinted at Dumbledore's own veiled intentions.
On one hand, her conversation with Draco might not be enough to fully bring him back. She was no Odysseus. On the other hand, she had no desire to let Death Eaters into the school. That could cost students their lives. It could catch the Order completely off guard.
She held both ends of the pole and kept walking.
---
After all of it, the relationship between Draco and Praeris thawed considerably.
In Potions, Liam moved on instinct to sit next to Praeris.
Ever since Praeris and Draco's falling-out, the seating arrangement had settled into a fixed pattern: Praeris, Liam, Zabini, Theodore, and Draco.
Liam was an unremarkable student in Slytherin, and a half-blood. To make his life more comfortable, he never brought it up. He'd even blend into the crowds that harassed Muggle-born witches and wizards, shouting along with them when it felt necessary.
Liam often felt a quiet gratitude that Muggle-borns existed in the other houses. If they didn't, the extreme pure-bloods would surely turn their attention to an impure Slytherin like him. Sometimes he felt a flicker of resentment too, why, when he was clearly half-blood, did he have to end up in Slytherin of all places?
Praeris sat at the very top of the Slytherin hierarchy. That was simply fact.
What struck Liam as strange was that despite her formidable reputation, Praeris never brought up blood purity in actual conversation. She never went out of her way to make trouble for anyone.
The one subject Liam was decent at was Potions. Though if he was honest, he'd thrown himself into it initially to curry favor with Professor Snape, to avoid being punished.
The joke was that after six years, Professor Snape had never once spared a second glance at a middling, neither-here-nor-there student like him. Let alone bothered to punish him.
Sitting next to Praeris was genuinely pleasant. She didn't mind offering a word of guidance when someone asked, unless that someone was Zabini, who seemed to have a death wish.
Liam's backside hadn't even touched the seat when a pair of hands landed on his shoulder from behind. He turned slowly and found Draco Malfoy looking down at him from on high.
Malfoy's eyes dropped to him with that familiar languid ease. "Swap seats," he said, drawing out each word. "How about it?"
I'd bet anything he can't remember a single part of my name. Not surname, not given name.
Liam thought this with considerable bitterness, then silently grabbed his bag and vacated the seat.
Praeris caught it all with a sideways glance. The corner of her mouth moved. "Overbearing," she said quietly to Draco. "Liam didn't look particularly willing."
"Oh?" Draco settled into the seat. "I hardly see how that matters. You and I — to someone like him, is there any real difference?"
Praeris called Draco overbearing. But Praeris was hardly free of arrogance herself. She had never treated Liam as an equal, as someone of her own kind. The fact that she didn't make trouble for people was simply because she saw no point in doing so.
Compared to a genuine friend like Pansy, Praeris's apparent warmth toward Liam was nothing more than casually dispensing goodwill and collecting the favorable impressions of ordinary people. She had no intention of actually befriending him.
Draco would wager that Praeris remembered his name purely because her memory was exceptional.
The distinction between them was this: Praeris looked down from a position of power with something like gentleness. Draco looked down with sharp-edged contempt.
Praeris neither confirmed nor denied it. She didn't stop Draco from sitting beside her.
When Zabini arrived and saw the two of them together, he clicked his tongue with exaggerated wonder. "And here I hadn't gotten nearly enough of the drama between you two!"
"Then I truly feel sorry for you." Praeris said coolly. "Next time, we'll put up posters in advance."
Zabini shrugged. "I'll be watching."
---
After class, Draco walked beside Praeris, one hand hooked around the strap of his bag.
He kept his gaze low and said quietly, "I don't think I can give you a definite answer anytime soon."
"I never expected you to." Praeris said. "I didn't tell you the truth to force you into a decision, did I?"
Draco was quiet for a moment. Then: "I sent the mead before that day."
"I know." Praeris's voice was steady. "Weasley suffered for it, but he's alive. He'll recover."
"Don't tell me you think I feel guilty about hurting Weasley." Draco scoffed.
"No." Praeris tilted her head slightly to look at him. "I'm telling you that you haven't truly harmed anyone."
Draco turned his face away. For a moment he was like Echo in the mountains, wordless, struck silent.
Praeris's pull lay in the gentleness that surfaced, sometimes, beneath the cold exterior. Anyone fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of that warmth would find themselves wondering if there was something particular about them that had drawn it out.
"Draco!"
Crabbe and Goyle came jogging up from behind. Both of them cast a sideways glance at Praeris, the kind meant to be subtle and wasn't.
Goyle said, in what he clearly imagined was a pointed tone, "Didn't you say you were going to join us for..."
Crabbe looked at Praeris and stretched his mouth into something resembling a smile. "Praeris, we need to borrow Draco. We have some... man-to-man business to take care of."
Praeris watched their performance with one eyebrow raised. She shifted her gaze to Draco. "Man-to-man," she said, the faint edge of amusement in it, "business?"
Those two idiots. What kind of excuse was that.
Draco felt a sudden spike of irritation directed entirely at the corridor floor. Why wasn't there a crack anywhere for him to disappear into?
He shot Crabbe and Goyle a sharp look, then turned back to Praeris. "Er. Right. This wouldn't interest you. We'll be off."
The whole situation was genuinely impossible to put into words. Praeris already knew exactly what he was doing. And yet here he was, keeping up the performance anyway.
The three of them walked away. Crabbe's face had gone dark. "Draco, you should have kept the cold war going! Get your brain out of women's chests and use it for five seconds, these gossipy girls might figure out what we're doing!"
Ha.
Did he think they'd only figure it out after the cold war ended?
Even when Draco had been actively avoiding Praeris, she had already seen through the whole thing.
"I should have?" Draco's voice had gone flat with impatience, something sharper underneath it. "You're going to talk about Praeris behind her back like that, haven't you had enough? How many times do I have to say it? This is my mission. I don't think you're in any position to tell me how to handle it."
Goyle stepped in between them. "It's not without its advantages, though. I mean, we might even be able to get Praeris to brew the Polyjuice Potion for us!"
Crabbe turned on Goyle with a vicious look. "You've gone soft in the head from playing a girl for too long! You're actually making plans around this!"
---
Not long after, Hermione was furious enough to curse someone, looking wretchedly at Harry's swollen head.
McLaggen, that absolute idiot. Since when did a Keeper smash the Seeker's skull?
And now both her friends were laid out neatly in the Hospital Wing, side by side. Neither of them would be lonely, at least.
"Er, we'll both be fine soon!" Harry endured the dizziness to comfort a miserable Hermione. "Madam Pomfrey will have us good as new... I think McLaggen was jealous of me, personally. He made my head look the size of a gnome's."
Gnomes had heads grotesquely large for their bodies.
Hermione burst out laughing despite herself.
Seeing her expression finally lift, both Harry and Ron let out a quiet breath of relief. Neither of them doubted that moments ago she had been genuinely considering what it would take to do McLaggen in.
"Won-Won!" Lavender came running in with an enormous bunch of tulips, calling out with undisguised feeling. "I'm so lucky, I finally caught you awake! Are you happy? I've come to see you!"
Harry immediately felt his head spin worse. Ron looked distinctly uncomfortable, and couldn't stop himself from glancing at Hermione.
That one glance was all it took. Lavender followed it, and found Hermione sitting at the foot of Harry's bed. Her expression curdled.
Hermione didn't miss a beat. She looked at Lavender with complete composure. "There's a vase over there. I imagine you'll find it useful."
"Thanks!" Lavender's tone had an edge to it. "I think I have eyes of my own!"
She marched over to the vase, thrust the tulips in, then carried the whole arrangement to Ron's bedside and set it down with a decisive thud.
➤ Next: Ron and Hermione