Chapter 182 - Things Men Do

Draco and Crabbe walked away.

Praeris tucked her leisure book into her bag and fished out a battered copy of Advanced Potion-Making.

"This Book is the Property of the Half-Blood Prince"

Just as she'd expected. The professor's book.

She settled beneath the copper beech and turned the pages one by one, leafing through her mentor's youth.

She imagined this man — the closest thing to a father she had, grinding through his impoverished school years. Diligent. Patient. Building the reputation of Potions Master one careful step at a time.

She imagined him young and proud. Imagined him boldly marking up texts that were still treated as scripture today. Imagined the sheer confidence of it.

Praeris sat beneath that tree for a long, long time, working through every margin and corner of the book before she finally stood.

She was going to return it to its owner.

Saturday wasn't the most convenient day, but Professor Snape happened to be out.

Praeris pushed the door open without hesitation. The moment she confirmed the office was empty, she went straight to the bookcase, pulled out the novels stacked in front, and slid Advanced Potion-Making into the very back.

Then she replaced the novels one by one in their original positions, keeping only the Illustrated Guide to Precious Magical Plants she hadn't finished from last time.

"It's you?"

Snape's voice came from behind her.

Praeris had been just about to close the office door. She raised the book in her hand and gave it a small wave. "Sir, I haven't finished it yet."

"Inform me before you come next time." Snape swept a glance at the book.

"Sir," Praeris said, with a touch of amusement, "there isn't a second Barty Crouch Jr. in this school."

"But there are students who don't follow the rules." Snape said sardonically. "Isn't that so?"

Praeris knew he wasn't talking about her. He meant Harry's trio. She shrugged. "As you wish."

Snape moved past her into the office. Praeris headed upstairs, book tucked under her arm. A good book deserved a good teacher. She intended to drop in on Professor Sprout's private tutoring session.

She hadn't even reached the glasshouse when a hand shot out and yanked her into the bushes.

"Do you want to die?" Praeris said viciously to Harry. "I nearly blasted a hole through your stomach!"

"Shh!"

Harry held up a finger. With a rustling sound, he pulled a piece of parchment from his pocket, the Marauder's Map.

He unfolded it and shot back, "Looks like I should thank you for stopping in time. Otherwise I'd be back in the hospital wing."

"You deserve another trip!" Praeris said flatly.

"Look." Harry spread the parchment open and tilted it toward her. "Malfoy isn't on the map."

"Hm. And?"

"I think he's in the Room of Requirement." Harry said. "I've never seen the Room of Requirement show up on the map."

That was something Praeris hadn't known. If she had, her theories about Montague would have multiplied, and become harder to sort out.

"And?" she said, in a tone of complete indifference. "What does that have to do with me?"

"Not much." Harry said seriously. "But you didn't mock me for having a bad brain. That means my deduction isn't wrong."

Praeris looked at him.

What was going on inside this boy's head?

Who thought of something that strange, and that effective?

"Your mind works in genuinely unusual ways." Praeris let out a short "Heh." "Want me to congratulate you?"

"No." Harry's expression shifted. Something like sympathy crept in. "That's not what I wanted to say. But you have to swear you won't get angry after you hear it."

Praeris felt a faint premonition. "Why would I swear to that?"

"Then I won't say it." Harry replied immediately.

"I'll use Legilimency."

"I know Occlumency!" Harry's eyes went wide.

"I taught you — need you to remind me?" Praeris raised an eyebrow. "Am I to take it you're challenging me?"

Harry caught the eagerness in her voice and shook his head quickly.

He'd always felt, though he couldn't explain it, that Slytherins had some particular gift for Occlumency.

Harry was brave. He was strong in a fight. He also knew himself well enough.

A straight-up duel? He wouldn't fear Praeris at all. But Occlumency specifically, he had no desire to go head-to-head with an exceptional Slytherin student trained by the Head of Slytherin House, who also happened to be his own Occlumency teacher.

"Fine." Harry said. "I can at least trust you won't attack me. Right?"

"Not necessarily," Praeris answered honestly.

They stared at each other. Harry conceded first. "You know I've been watching Malfoy."

Praeris made a small sound of acknowledgment.

"Right before McLaggen split my head open — before the match." Harry said, thinking back. "I ran into Malfoy. He was with two girls. They seemed to be saying something to him, and one of them was very angry."

He checked Praeris's face. No sign of violence incoming. He continued. "After Malfoy finished mocking me, both of them followed him away."

Praeris went still. "Two girls. Was Pansy one of them?"

"No." Harry said. "None of your three Slytherin friends were there."

Praeris's eyes moved. "One was angry. Right?"

Harry nodded.

"And the other?"

Harry felt like he was standing at the edge of a storm. But he answered honestly. "She kept following behind Malfoy. Kept glancing at him."

The corner of Praeris's mouth lifted. Just briefly. Then it was gone. "Thank you, Harry. I understand."

"Are you..." Harry said carefully. "Are you alright?"

Harry was starting to suspect something was genuinely wrong with the world. Everyone around him lately was having romantic troubles.

"Perfectly fine." Praeris said easily. "He talked to two girls. So what?"

Harry didn't think that was quite right, coming from her.

He'd expected her to disappear at lightspeed, produce three bottles of poison, pour one down each of their throats, then gently close the eyes of the dead and murmur softly: "Forgiving you is God's business. Mine is sending you to meet Him."

That was Praeris. That was how she operated.

Harry left, bewildered. It wasn't until later, when he worked out who those two girls were, that he finally understood that strange little smile.

First floor, second floor, third floor. Fifth floor.

Praeris didn't go to the glasshouse. She drifted up to the eighth floor instead, and at the bend of the corridor she leaned out just enough to show one eye.

Near where the entrance to the Room of Requirement should have been, two girls stood by the wall. One was visibly irritated and restless. The other was half asleep on her feet.

Praeris smiled without making a sound.

So this was what Crabbe meant by "things men do."

She'd seen enough. She turned and walked away.

She'd taken only a few steps when she walked straight into someone.

"Tonks?" Praeris said, startled, her voice barely above a whisper. "What are you doing here?"

She pulled Tonks quickly into the girls' lavatory and looked at her. "What's wrong? You don't look well."

Tonks seemed dazed. The easy brightness she'd had at Christmas was gone. She'd lost a noticeable amount of weight.

"I remember you." Tonks's voice was low and flat. "You're Pernell's daughter. You invented the cheap Wolfsbane Potion."

"That's right." Praeris took a handkerchief from her pocket, wet it under the tap, and gently wiped Tonks's face. "Why are you at Hogwarts?"

"I came to find Dumbledore..." Tonks said, as if from somewhere far away.

"What do you need him for? I don't think he'll be at Hogwarts today."

Tonks didn't ask how Praeris knew. Praeris always knew.

"I thought Dumbledore might know something. I heard someone was hurt." Tonks said, her voice heavy with worry.

"Are you worried about Professor Lupin?"

Other people's impressions of Praeris were many things. Tonks's impression of her had always included one constant: cheap Wolfsbane Potion. Not because she cared about potions, she didn't. She cared about what the potion meant.

Praeris knew other things about Tonks, too. She knew that when Professor Lupin and Tonks had gone together to rescue Ms. Price, it was Professor Lupin who had held off Bellatrix alone. The way Tonks's face had looked when she talked about it was genuinely sweet.

At Christmas, when Professor Lupin came back, Tonks's gaze had kept drifting toward him. It was only when Molly Weasley started trying to set her up with Bill Weasley again that Tonks had made her escape from Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.

Tonks pressed her hands to her face and sank down, curling in on herself, exhausted and hurting. "I heard there was a werewolf attack..."

Praeris let out a quiet sigh. "I'm sorry, Tonks. I don't know how Professor Lupin is either. But..."

She reached into her bag and pulled out a tarot deck. She gestured for Tonks to draw three cards.

She didn't enjoy talking about fate. Didn't like the feeling of it. But Tonks was the one who had physically carried Ms. Price out of danger.

When someone was suffering, a little divination was at least a kind of comfort.

Tonks's hands trembled as she drew three cards: Eight of Swords reversed. Wheel of Fortune upright. Ten of Cups upright.

Praeris set aside the first two without a second look. Her eyes settled on the Ten of Cups. She blinked.

"You may not know this," she said quietly, "but the person who brought me into this world had a real gift for divination. I inherited a little of it."

"I think Professor Lupin is probably going to be fine."

Tonks shot to her feet and pulled Praeris into a hug.

Praeris patted her back gently. Her eyes stayed on the Ten of Cups still in her hand, a couple and their child, a rainbow arching overhead. The symbol of hope.

She saw it. She said nothing.

Some things, once spoken aloud, set a person on a fixed path. They stopped choosing. They just followed.

The third card was meant to represent the future, and the Ten of Cups was an exceptionally good card. Praeris thought it was possible, likely, even, that Tonks would find her way to Professor Lupin. That they might build something together. A family. That sense of having somewhere to belong.

But a rainbow was hope. It was also illusion. The Ten of Cups held both: the chance to cross every obstacle and reach the person you loved, and the quiet possibility of a beautiful dream coming apart.

Rainbows were beautiful. They were also brief.

Tonks hadn't asked about love. Praeris hoped she wouldn't let this card decide anything for her. That she'd make her own choice, clearly, on her own terms.

Not long after, the Apparition exam arrived.

Praeris had turned seventeen at Christmas and was eligible to sit. Draco was still about 2 months from adulthood and couldn't take it.

Lately, Draco had seemed unsettled. He spent every free moment with Praeris, and it always took Crabbe coming to find him before he'd finally drag himself to the Room of Requirement.

Praeris could feel it. His heart was swinging hard between two directions. Something in him wanted to stop, to simply stop. Something else kept reminding him what his family needed. The two pulled at each other without resolution.

The outcome was that he wouldn't go on his own. But the moment Crabbe showed up to push him, he went.

As for Crabbe, Crabbe had been done with this whole operation for a long time. But it was the Dark Lord's task, and watching Draco drag his feet made Crabbe's temper worse by the day.

"Are you unwilling to keep serving the Dark Lord?!" Crabbe snapped.

"Who said that?" Draco said slowly. "Aren't I about to go do exactly that?"

"Yeah, yeah," Goyle agreed.

"Every single time!" Crabbe said through his teeth. "Every time, we have to come and push you!"

Draco kept that same dead-eyed look. "You think I want this? Praeris's brain doesn't work like other people's. If I break up with her, she won't let it go. But if I stay with her and disappear every other day, she won't let that go either."

"Right, right," Goyle nodded.

"Right your head!" Crabbe's face was red with fury. "When are you going to finish this mission?! I don't want — I can't keep—"

Another meeting that ended badly.

Three people with three different motives, running a plan that none of them actually believed in.

On the morning of the Apparition exam, Draco stood outside the entrance hall and held Praeris like he was the one about to go in.

"It's fine." Praeris murmured against him. "It's just an exam. You'll be able to take it soon."

"Soon?" His voice was low, muffled somewhere in her hair. "I don't want soon. I want time to slow down. Slower than that."

Draco held on to her the way a man on a broken leg holds on to a crutch.

Now the crutch had somewhere to be.

And he wasn't sure he remembered how to walk without it.

➤ Next: The Apparition Exam