Chapter 183 - The Apparition Exam

"Go on." Praeris gently pulled Draco's hand down. "Wait for me."

Draco, who had seemed so clingy a moment before, took two steps back the instant she lowered his hand, gave her a small wave, and headed off toward the classroom.

Praeris nodded calmly and watched him go.

Had Draco really transformed into a clinging vine that wouldn't let her go? No. Thinking that would be a serious mistake.

Hugs release oxytocin. Oxytocin lowers cortisol. It eases anxiety and tension. Fine, it was simply that Draco was still too young.

A burden that should never have landed on his shoulders had been forced onto them anyway, grinding him down through cycles of psychological torment until he was fragile, prone to breaking, and fraying at the edges.

Who still remembered that not long ago he was just a willful, bad-tempered boy? Who still remembered that he was, even now, still a minor?

Don't compare the pressure she and Harry carried to Draco's pain. Suffering was not a competition.

Draco had hugged Praeris simply because he was anxious inside, and there happened to be someone who cared about him.

A child with no one to care for him has no choice but to dry his own tears. Only a child who has someone's warmth dares to show his weakness.

Praeris turned and walked toward the Great Hall.

---

The Apparition exam didn't require much thought on her part. The problem was that her name sat near the very end of the list, so she had nothing to do but sit in the waiting area and doze.

The students who'd been tested early weren't much better off. Anyone who passed was required to stay put, no coming and going, no distracting the candidates still waiting their turn.

Hermione finished with her examiner and spotted Praeris half-asleep in a corner. She quietly changed course, bypassed Ron entirely, and sat down beside Praeris instead.

"Harry's planning to use Felix Felicis today," Hermione said under her breath. "Try his luck."

"Good." Praeris didn't open her eyes, but her hand under her cloak curled into a fist. "Watch him. Don't let him drink too much. He finished an entire bottle last time, didn't he?"

During the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Harry had been terrified his luck wouldn't hold, that he'd miss his chance to save Sirius Black. So he drank the whole bottle in one go.

The result was Harry at his most insufferably fearless, charging around like a soldier in a suicide squad who'd decided he had nothing to lose. The DA had stared at him in baffled amazement.

Hermione's theory: tasting Felix Felicis that first time was exactly why Harry, faced with the possibility of winning another bottle, hadn't hesitated for a second before trying those handwritten notes in the Half-Blood Prince's old textbook.

"Aren't you going back?" Praeris asked quietly.

Hermione glanced at Ron's back from across the room and said, easy as breathing, "I'll head over now. See you next time."

Praeris blinked.

So that was that. Whatever had once flickered between Hermione and Ron was thoroughly extinguished.

If Hermione still had feelings she couldn't put into words, she could never be this unbothered. Unfinished love was hesitation. It was clumsiness, a hand that reaches out and then pulls back, a conscience that quietly stings. Hermione had none of that.

When the hall had nearly emptied and the handful of students left had nothing better to do than watch, Praeris finally walked up to the examiner.

"This is absurd." Susan Bones stared. "Prince finished that fast?"

Seamus, who had taken a verbal hit from Daphne last time and apparently learned nothing from it, said, "I wouldn't be surprised if she started practicing Apparition on the first day of term."

Ron, who had failed because he left an eyebrow behind, was in a thoroughly gloomy mood.

But when he heard Seamus, he looked up and said, with unexpected calm, "Hasn't Prince always been like this?"

"Seamus, you weren't there for Potions. Prince, Harry, and Hermione pulled every bit of Slughorn's attention between the three of them. The rest of us?" Ron spread his hands. "Small fry. Totally invisible."

---

Out in the corridor, Hermione turned to Ron and said, "I can't believe you just defended Praeris. A Slytherin."

Ron looked down at his shoes. "Hold the front page," he muttered. "Ron Weasley recognizes his own allies. Someone owl the Daily Prophet."

Hermione gave him a withering look. Then, against her better judgment, she laughed.

Seeing her back to her usual self made something loosen in Ron's chest.

The past few weeks had been a mess. Ron kept pestering Harry about Hermione and Krum. Lavender kept finding Harry to talk about Ron. Harry had been caught squarely in the middle and was nearly at his wit's end.

He'd finally snapped at Ron: "Whatever's going on with Hermione, she's our friend first. Just like no matter who I date, you'd still be my brother."

Harry said it with a faint guilty conscience nagging at him. He said it anyway.

"You're right..." Ron said, deflated. Then his eyes went wide. "Hang on — you heard all of that?"

Whatever they said to each other after that, Harry had no desire to revisit.

But somewhere in Hermione's string of calm, matter-of-fact use of the word "friend," something had shifted for Ron. He'd thought about things he'd never thought about before. He'd looked his own feelings in the face.

He liked Hermione. That was real. His relationship with Lavender had been reckless from the start. Hermione hadn't cared who he had feelings for, she'd disapproved of the carelessness. That distinction had sent him down to a crushing, one-sided defeat against Krum without Krum ever knowing a competition existed.

The only silver lining: at least they were still friends.

Ron touched his cheek without thinking.

Two days ago, Lavender had slapped him for telling the truth.

SMACK!

"So my love is just cheap to you? You think because I'm not clever enough, not famous enough, you can call me over and wave me away whenever you like? Use me as a stepping stone to chase someone else?"

"You're wrong, Ron Weasley!"

"I am warm and kind and generous and I am pretty, and I am braver than you — because I went after the person I actually wanted. That person was you. The past you."

"And now? We're done."

"Rude, arrogant, fickle, and a coward. That's what you are. I actually regret it — I regret being moved by the courage you showed on that Quidditch pitch, because it turns out that was the only courage you have."

"Losing me is the biggest loss of your life."

"The one decent thing you've done — standing here today and admitting it — don't think that's a compliment. It's just that I couldn't find anything else worth saying."

She threw every last one of the red tulips she'd carefully chosen straight at him. Then she turned and ran, crying and furious.

Ron stood there holding the battered, wilted flowers, his cheek still burning. It took a long time before he registered the strange feeling turning over in his chest.

He thought Lavender, screaming at him with her eyes blazing, had been the most brilliant she had ever looked.

The two days since had been guilt, straight through. He wanted to check on her. He was afraid of seeing her eyes still red. And whenever he got within a few feet of Hermione, Lavender's gaze found him like a blade.

Harry, a graduate of Praeris's unofficial lessons in reading people, had offered his diagnosis: "Lavender probably thinks you're trying to get in between Hermione and Krum."

Hence the glaring at Ron. Not at Hermione.

---

The next morning, Praeris was up early.

That was just how she was. Even bad news she preferred to meet head-on, first in line, the type who would show up early even to her own funeral.

She stepped out of the dormitory and ran straight into Meryl, who looked like she'd just come in from outside. Her eyes lit up the moment she saw Praeris.

"Praeris. Professor Snape is looking for you."

Bad news, then. Harry had succeeded.

Praeris let out a slow breath and nodded. "I see. Thank you."

Meryl grinned. "Don't look so grim. When has Professor Snape ever actually punished you?"

"He has, actually," Praeris said, mildly surprised anyone thought otherwise. "But that's not really the issue."

She'd planned to skip breakfast and go straight to Snape's office. She made it as far as the common room door before Draco's arm came around her.

"What's wrong?" she asked quietly. "Why aren't you saying anything?"

Draco said nothing. He just held on, both arms wrapped around her like he was trying to anchor himself, as if there was something in this embrace he needed, courage, or whatever else it might be called.

Praeris didn't know what had happened to him.

Whatever it was, it might have been an avalanche inside him. But all anyone could see from the outside, even Praeris, were the few scattered snowflakes that drifted out.

At Hogwarts, she had spent half her time learning to respect other people's privacy, and the other half deciding, case by case, whether to cross the line she'd drawn for herself.

She had spent a long time after that learning not just to analyze a person, the psychological reading, the pattern recognition, but to actually feel them. Something quieter. Something closer.

But now, with the person she loved standing right in front of her, those two things fought each other. Respecting the boundary or crossing it. Psychology and something harder to name, tangled and pulling in opposite directions, until she couldn't see Draco clearly at all.

Maybe she was just too close.

There was a distance too far to see clearly, and a distance too close to see clearly either.

"Draco. Listen to me." Praeris worked her hand free from his arms and wrapped it around him instead. "When someone finally accepts that they really are a bad person, they feel relieved."

She kept her voice steady, one hand moving slowly across his shoulder. "The reason you're suffering is that even after everything you've done, none of it was something you were willing to do."

"Whatever you're planning." She paused. "I'm sorry, but I would rather watch you hurt like this than see you accept a version of yourself that was never really you."

"I'll stay with you. For as long as you need me."

Draco's pain lived in that specific knot: he didn't dare, didn't want, and wasn't willing to do what he'd been made to do. Yet he had no choice.

Two failed attempts at murder had shaken him completely out of whatever story he'd been telling himself. He understood now that he couldn't do it. Couldn't carry out the "mission."

If he ever felt better about any of it, that would be the proof, that he'd made peace with the version of himself that had plotted to kill, that he'd accepted himself as a Death Eater in full.

Draco still said nothing. Not a word, not a single tear.

A long time passed. Long enough that Praeris's legs went numb. Long enough that she suspected Professor Snape was already at the edge of his patience. Finally, Draco spoke.

"I'm fine." His voice came out rough. "What were you going to do?"

"Professor Snape is looking for me." Praeris didn't let him redirect her. "Are you actually fine?"

Draco managed a thin smile. "Didn't I just say so. That worried about me?"

She looked up into his eyes and held his gaze for a long moment.

"I can't help it," she said.

A beat of silence.

"Good. As long as you're fine."

She pulled herself back from the edge of pressing further. She did not reach for the door he had bolted shut.

Growing up was its own kind of pain, the kind Praeris knew from the dull muscle ache of growing taller, the way your body protests every inch it gains.

Ever since taking up Quidditch she'd known she wasn't built for it. No natural balance, and her muscles always complaining. She'd spent half her time in Diagon Alley walking into things, collecting bruises from corners and doorframes and her own two feet.

How many bruises would Draco have to collect before he grew through this?

She didn't know.

There was something in the way men worked, when they liked someone, they wanted to show strength. Not weakness. It was wired in, somewhere deep.

If a man let a woman see his vulnerability over and over, one of two things was true: either it wasn't really his vulnerability, or the woman was his mother.

Praeris saw Draco's refusal clearly. She closed that particular eye inside herself as gently as she could.

She turned and walked toward the dungeons. Draco turned and walked the other way.

---

"I think Miss Meryl might want to pay a visit to the hospital wing," Snape said, with the particular brand of dry venom he reserved for moments like this. "Otherwise, taking more than half an hour to walk from the entrance hall to the common room is rather concerning, wouldn't you say?"

Praeris didn't take the bait. "Dumbledore has decided to move forward with his plan?"

She said it like a statement.

"You anticipated this, it seems." Snape studied her, his voice even. "He asked me to inform you."

Praeris frowned. "That's all?"

"That's all."

She turned it over in her mind, and something didn't sit right. At the very least, the number of Horcruxes was a problem, a significant one.

Dumbledore hadn't asked to see her. He hadn't told her how many Horcruxes there were.

Which meant Dumbledore had already identified each one. He didn't need her help.

And it also meant that if Praeris ever learned the number, she would find something in it she was never supposed to find.

➤ Next: Accident in the Bathroom