Chapter 185 - The Education of Death

Cold gray-white clouds stretched across the sky beyond the windows. The Black Lake had been ruffled by the wind, water slapping against the cliff face and churning up thin lines of white foam. Inside the hospital wing, the wall torches had been lit, along with the crystal lamps that hung from the ceiling.

Excessive blood loss had left Draco unconscious, but it had also, unexpectedly, forced his strained nerves to let go. The relief didn't last. Before long he was frowning in his sleep again, as though something had found him there.

Praeris sat at his bedside for a long time, still as a statue with nothing behind its eyes. She had left only once, to fetch a vial of Dreamless Sleep Potion for Draco.

Within a single day, Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode each came twice. One came to look after Praeris's state of mind; the other brought bread. Praeris didn't touch it.

In the evening, Barren came to examine Draco and turned to Praeris with a worried frown. "Praeris, you should eat something. At least a little."

He got no response. Barren went to find his teacher, Madam Pomfrey.

Madam Pomfrey spoke to Praeris with quiet warmth. "I think he would want you to be the first face he sees when he wakes. You cannot collapse alongside him, Praeris."

By the time Barren returned, the paper that had wrapped the bread was in the bin.

From the corner of her eye, Praeris saw Barren's face light up. He was scribbling furiously in his notebook, almost certainly not about healing techniques.

Praeris had meant it when she said she regretted it. Sectumsempra was in the Half-Blood Prince's notebook. She'd had countless chances to stop Harry before any of this happened, and she hadn't taken a single one.

She had simply let her competitive drive run unchecked. All she had wanted was to defeat Harry, to win, to prove herself. She only moved when she could no longer stand it, when it touched Professor Snape's own work.

She turned the question on herself: did she bear no responsibility for what had happened to Draco?

A black robe drifted toward her like a ghost. Praeris raised her head slowly and looked in silence at her mentor. Her maternal cousin.

"Miss." Snape's voice was almost soft. "We need to talk. Tell me — what other trouble are you carrying?"

What trouble was she carrying?

Far too much. Three days and three nights wouldn't cover it.

RUMBLE,

The clouds that had been gathering all day finally made their move. A bolt of lightning split the sky's black curtain, and then the thunder rolled in, one peal chasing the next. Rain came with it, sweeping across in waves, hammering the windows, soaking the corridor outside the hospital wing.

In the amber flicker of the torches, half of Praeris's face was lit. The other half was dark. It was the same for Snape.

Snape spoke like a man conducting an interrogation. "Where did Potter learn that curse?"

"You know perfectly well." Praeris kept her head down.

"When did you find out?"

"Not long ago." She answered honestly.

"And where is the book?" His tone turned sharp with sarcasm. "I don't recall taking on an extra 'good student.'"

The words good student came out through his teeth.

"You didn't approve it. Professor Slughorn handed it out by mistake." Praeris said. "I got it back. It's in the bookcase, under Wuthering Heights."

"I really didn't see it, the two of you that close?" Snape's voice went cold. "I thought he was quite besotted with his stolen 'talent.' To think he would actually part with that book."

"I bear the name Prince, sir." Praeris's voice was nearly swallowed by the rain. "A Prince reclaiming the Prince's book, there is no more fitting logic than that."

Rain was flung off-balance by the wind, clattering over the railing and splashing into the corridor. It broke the exchange for a moment and covered the way those words had disrupted Snape's heartbeat.

Both of them stepped back. Regrouping.

Snape worked to keep the edge in his voice. "You admitted to him that you are my, relative?"

"No." Praeris said. "I told him that the 'Prince' in 'Half-Blood Prince' and my 'Prince' are no different in any essential way."

Snape couldn't tell whether what he felt was relief or something else. He only said, "Come. Dumbledore is waiting."

"No." Praeris refused without hesitation. "Sir, I don't intend to go. Not now —"

"Miss, you are not calm." Snape cut her off before she could finish. "You are throwing a tantrum."

"Yes." Praeris said, her face blank. "I am throwing a tantrum. Is that not allowed?"

"Draco is still lying there. He's not going anywhere, and neither is the trouble. What right do you have to forbid me this?"

Snape went abruptly silent. Like a television that had frozen mid-frame.

He hadn't expected this. He had assumed, reasonably, that Praeris was blinded by feeling, that love had gotten the better of her judgment. He had not expected that she had actually thought through the larger picture, coolly and carefully, even in the middle of losing her temper.

Was this how he had raised her?

Had he made this child weigh so many things even when she was furious?

"I'm sorry, Praeris." Snape finally spoke. And then he said something close to cruel. "No."

In the torchlit corridor, Snape walked ahead with long strides. Praeris followed slowly behind.

Unlike that morning, he didn't slow down to wait for the only child connected to him by blood. But he had no doubt she would keep pace.

He left a long stretch of corridor between them. Space for Praeris to process. Space for himself to pull his own emotions back under control.

Snape's black cloak was a distant shape in Praeris's dark eyes. She found herself turning his words over and over.

Ten minutes ago, he had said: "I'm sorry, Miss. I should not have stopped your revenge. At seventeen, I held grudges better than anyone."

"But, Miss." He had turned toward the curtain of rain, his voice dropping to something distant. "Things far more serious than what you saw today have happened before my eyes. Countless times."

"Every day, people fall. And I merely watched." He repeated it quietly, as if to himself. "Merely watched."

Praeris had seen ghosts, but she had never truly witnessed murder. The closest she had ever come to death was not Sylvia murdering Dimpole, it was a child at the convent who fell ill and died.

No matter how Sister Mayne punished Praeris, punishment had never been linked to death. So Praeris had only ever seen white coffins ringed with flowers.

She would stand at the edge of the gathered crowd, mourning alongside the other children, watching the departed return to the Lord's embrace.

She had asked him, in the tone she used when seeking instruction: "Sir, I thought this was not your first time facing death."

It was something she had never been able to understand. It was also something she had worked hard to learn in her second year, how to grieve for a stranger.

She could not bear for anyone close to her to die. That was simple.

But before those children at the convent died, Father Dorin had shared no particular bond with them. Some he had known only by name.

And yet, when they died, everything changed. Father Dorin would weep for them. He would reproach himself for not doing enough, for not letting them finish their journey through the mortal world before returning to the Lord's embrace.

What Praeris found most incomprehensible was that this grief was genuine. It came from somewhere real in him. And Sister Mayne, even when a child she'd disliked was the one who died, would also shed real tears.

As though the moment a person died, she became worthy of everyone's sorrow.

If I died.

Would they grieve for me too?

Even those who once tormented me in every way they could think of?

Professor Snape was not new to war. Over a decade ago he had already been in Voldemort's service, a trusted hand in Voldemort's eyes.

So why, after all this time, had he begun to grieve for strangers? Why could he not keep his composure in front of Praeris, and could only turn his face toward the rain?

Praeris didn't know that this was the very question Snape was asking himself.

How could a wizard who had seen death so many times, who had mastered so many Dark spells, who had once served the darkness and helped bring about death, feel pain over a stranger dying in front of him?

"Miss, this is what war is." Snape spoke with his back to her. "Murder does not disappear simply because it does not happen in front of you. It is fair, fair to the point of cruelty, and cruel because it comes so easily."

Snape had never been this deliberate with her before. His voice had slowed, gentled. "Perhaps it is not your professor who falls, but someone else's professor. Perhaps it is not your loved one who dies, but someone else's loved one. Perhaps it is not your beloved who is murdered, but someone else's beloved."

He drew a slow breath and turned back to face her. "Perhaps it is not you who dies, but any other self. Someone as young as you. As talented as you. As intelligent as you. Someone who — just like you — cares for their own family. Their own beloved."

Snape had never spoken so much to Praeris in one stretch. He always defaulted to assuming she would grasp things without being told. But on the subject of death, he showed a patience she had never seen from him before.

Praeris looked into Snape's black eyes. So similar to her own, and yet older. Harder-earned.

The same black eyes. The same black hair. Similar talent, similar misfortune, and a thread of shared blood running through different bodies. Snape stood at the far end of the corridor in the rain. Praeris, where she stood, was dry.

She asked quietly: "Sir, did anyone tell these things to the seventeen-year-old Severus Snape? Did anyone teach him this?"

BOOM,

The rain came down harder. Snape's cloak was soaked through, plastered against his body. Even so, he made no move toward Praeris, toward the dry ground where she stood.

"Regrettably, Miss." Snape said. "At that time, he had nothing at all."

Until fate made him understand it the only way it was willing to teach him, through living it.

What this mismatched pair of teacher and student said to each other after that, Praeris didn't continue recalling.

She had been thoroughly convinced. Convinced to set aside her revenge, at least for now.

It wasn't the logic that convinced her. It was the emotion behind it, real and moving, coming from a mentor who was not, by nature, any good at showing what he felt.

Praeris thought: perhaps Professor Snape hadn't only told her these hard-won truths to make her give up the Death Eaters' plans. Perhaps it was also for the student standing in front of him. Perhaps it was also for the young Severus he had once been.

The cloak had been dried by magic. It billowed with Snape's strides, caught by the wind, a black banner leading the way.

"I'm truly glad you were still willing to come before me at a time like this." Dumbledore smiled. "Child, how about a cup of hot chocolate?"

"Thank you." Praeris said, her tone perfectly polite. "I don't need it to manage my emotions."

Dumbledore was not the least bit embarrassed to have his usual soothing trick called out. He said, with affectionate warmth, "Praeris, be kind to your emotions. They are a lovely friend. Sometimes we need them to grow stronger. It's only that they can become a little mischievous now and then."

Praeris blinked. "Is it because of me that your schedule has become so free?"

Ahem,

Snape couldn't help it. He coughed.

Who on earth had taught her to say the most impolite things in the most polite voice?

Dumbledore burst out laughing. "I believe so. Thank you, Praeris!"

"You're welcome." Praeris accepted this without a flicker of embarrassment. "I'm actually a little surprised you still remember that."

After a round of thoroughly cordial verbal sparring, Dumbledore returned to the matter at hand. "Severus tells me you have something to share with me. Is that right?"

"The Vanishing Cabinet." Praeris said plainly. "The Weasley twins shoved Montague inside it, and that led Draco to discover a passage between Hogwarts and the outside world."

"It belongs neither to Hogwarts nor to the outside world, it sits between the two. The fortunate thing is that it's broken." Praeris laid it out with clean precision. "The unfortunate thing is that Draco has considerable talent in alchemy."

And so Draco had staked everything on murdering Dumbledore to make up for his father's failure, and on destroying Hogwarts's protections to earn his standing. The former was the task he had been given. The latter was what he had taken on himself. What tormented him was that he found the former beyond him, and found himself unable to go through with the latter.

"For this —" Praeris lowered her eyes. "He has suffered greatly."

Dumbledore was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed. "And you, Praeris?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Have you also suffered greatly for him?" Dumbledore said gently. "These past months, your heart has not been at ease either, has it?"

Praeris looked at him with something she couldn't quite name. "Headmaster Dumbledore, why is it that you are always so cruel when others need forgiveness, and so understanding when others have already made up their minds?"

➤ Next: Praeris's Revenge