Chapter 186 - Praeris's Revenge

Dumbledore was still smiling, that same fond smile, though now his expression held something else, a quiet, inexplicable gratification. With a gentle stubbornness, he did the thing he had failed to do before: he reached across the table and moved the chocolate milk to Praeris's side.

Before she could refuse, he said, "Drink it. You'll have more strength to argue with me, won't you?"

It worked. Praeris accepted the steaming cup.

He watched her without any trace of displeasure at being talked back to. "Praeris, every person is complex. Not black and white. Myself included."

"In fact," Dumbledore said, still smiling, "you and Severus are both people I trust. One has prolonged this old and frail life of mine. The other is someone I dare entrust my very life to."

Praeris said calmly, "How novel."

Dumbledore did not seem bothered. "Many years ago, I found a small sapling about to wither. I placed it beneath a large tree without much thought, and discovered, to my surprise, that it grew up into the shade of that great tree — vigorous and full of life."

Praeris assumed he was talking about introducing her to Winnie and Ms. Prim. He was not. What Dumbledore actually meant was the conversation he had with Snape over a decade ago, when he persuaded him to accept Praeris.

"I admire you, child." Dumbledore said. "Among all these students, you are different. You are the only one who believes in me — but never obeys me."

Praeris held his gaze for a long moment, those bright blue eyes glinting in the light. Then she said, with perfect politeness, "Yes, sir, I indeed do not obey you. So — do you know what I intend to do when I leave here?"

Dumbledore smiled and nodded.

"You won't stop me?" Praeris asked.

"When you came here," he said, his tone easy and unhurried, "I already knew there was no need to stop you."

He raised his right hand toward her and gave a playful wink.

Praeris looked at him with entirely sincere eyes. "Has anyone ever told you that you are quite insufferable?"

Dumbledore laughed, full and warm. "When a man reaches this age and still hasn't died, he's bound to become an annoyance to the young, isn't he?"

Snape stood nearby, watching the two of them exchange riddle after riddle, and his mood was somewhere between irritable and resigned.

Every time Praeris said something outrageous, he had come close to stepping in, and every time, he had stopped himself.

He found himself thinking, reluctantly, that compared to how she treated Dumbledore right now, Praeris was normally far too respectful toward him.

Then, even more inexplicably, Praeris suddenly laughed. She stepped back twice, turned to Snape, and said, "Sir, there's nothing left here that requires my presence. I'll take my leave."

And with that, she left. She didn't look back once.

---

This was the second day of Malfoy's hospitalization, and Harry was suffering.

On the afternoon of the incident, Pansy Parkinson and Myrtle had already seen to it that every living soul in the castle knew, and, given Myrtle's particular reach, at least one dead one as well.

"You actually —" Hermione said, furious. "You promised you wouldn't use the Half-Blood Prince's book anymore!"

Harry's tone wasn't particularly gracious. "You know I returned that book ages ago!"

"Yes, you returned it!" Hermione said. "But you're still using the spells from it! I really don't want to say this, but you clearly know the Half-Blood Prince must be a powerful Slytherin, and you're still casting spells from his book!"

"You clearly didn't want to say it, but you said it anyway!" Harry shot back. "You yourself are close friends with exactly that kind of Slytherin, and you've had me learn plenty of her spells too!"

"I understand what you're getting at," Harry said, his voice going sharp. "You think any spell from a Slytherin's book is automatically a hex or dark magic, don't you?"

"You know perfectly well that's not what I mean, you're just trying to justify what you did!" Hermione's face had gone red all the way down her neck. "Under no circumstances should you use a spell when you don't know what it does. And you absolutely should not use it on a person!"

"I'm not justifying anything!" Harry said immediately. "And does the Half-Blood Prince have to be a Slytherin? Lady Purnell is a Hufflepuff!"

"It just so happened that the Half-Blood Prince wrote that one spell in the book, and I used it in a critical moment." The words came out of him fast. "None of us thought it would be dangerous. You know that if I had any idea what it was, I would never have used it on anyone, no matter how much I hated them!"

Deep down, Harry had been reluctant to give up that copy of Advanced Potion-Making.

Without it, he couldn't brew the Felix Felicis he desperately needed. He couldn't save Ron. He had no hope of getting anything useful out of Slughorn.

Before sending the book away, Harry had spent days going through it, every page, every margin, every scrawl in the corners. It was the most carefully he had ever read it.

Sectumsempra had been in there.

So when Malfoy found him, when the two of them went at each other and Malfoy reached for something Unforgivable, Harry had flung out that spell almost without thinking. A spell he had never actually cast before. The results had been horrifying.

"Fine!" Hermione said through her teeth. "Say it was unintentional. But how are you going to face Praeris? You nearly killed her boyfriend with the Half-Blood Prince's spell!"

Harry's face went white as a ghost.

He remembered Praeris in the bathroom, the way she had almost moved against him, and that it was Snape who had stopped her.

"One dose of Felix Felicis takes six months to brew. She gave it to you without hesitation and didn't ask for anything in return." Hermione listed it out like a charge sheet. "She taught you Occlumency. She let you pass off the Half-Blood Prince's work as your own talent in Potions. She copied out an entire notebook with her left hand and gave it to you."

"Enough!" Ginny cut across her, voice hard. "Look at Harry. Do you honestly think he doesn't regret it?"

Ginny pressed on. "Malfoy was clearly about to use the Cruciatus Curse. If Harry had any other option, why would he reach for a spell he didn't even know? You should be glad Harry came out of it in one piece!"

Harry looked at Ginny, startled. He hadn't expected her to defend him like this. He knew it was entirely the wrong moment to feel anything like this, and yet, somewhere underneath everything else, there was the faintest flicker of happiness.

That small, guilty warmth tangled together with the regret and the dread, the whole mess of it as incoherent as one of Neville's potions.

---

By the next day, things had gotten worse.

It wasn't just Hermione anymore. The Slytherins mocked him at every turn, pointed and sneered. The Gryffindors were angry too, because of Harry's mistake, he was barred from the last Quidditch match of the year.

Now Ron was heading out to Quidditch practice, and Harry could only watch.

On the lawn in front of the castle, Ron patted his shoulder sympathetically. "Er, look on the bright side. What's done is done, isn't it?"

"Look on the bright side, is it?"

The voice came from behind them. Cold. Low. With an edge to it that made the back of Harry's neck prickle.

They spun around on instinct and stumbled back several steps as a waterspout erupted from the ground and began spinning with terrifying speed.

It moved fast. Within seconds it had swept Harry up into the middle of it. And it wasn't just Harry inside, stones and leaves from the grass were churning through the vortex with him, cracking against him from every direction.

Ron's mouth fell open. Then he snapped out of it. "Are you insane?" he shouted at Praeris.

"Thank you for your concern," Praeris said pleasantly. "My health is fine, at least rather better than my boyfriend's."

Ron looked from Harry, trapped and spinning, to Praeris, who hadn't even touched her wand. A Disarming Charm would be completely useless here.

"Harry!" Ron yanked his wand out. "Finite Incantatem!"

Praeris tilted the waterspout. It slid sideways, and Ron's spell missed cleanly. The evasive jerk sent Harry spinning harder, head reeling.

Inside the vortex, Harry was already past dizzy and well into the territory of genuinely about to be sick. His wand had been thrown out of his pocket and was tangled in with the branches and debris, completely beyond reach, no matter how he grabbed for it.

"Like the new spell, Harry?" Praeris's voice was conversational, almost warm. "It's the first spell I invented. Or rather, improved."

"The inspiration was a washing machine. Ahem, Ron, your father ought to find that interesting, shouldn't he? Stella says Mr. Weasley is very keen on Muggle appliances. Am I right?"

"Praeris!" Ron said desperately. "Harry didn't do it on purpose! He didn't know it was a hex, and Malfoy was about to use an Unforgivable on him. Harry was forced into it!"

"Well said!" Praeris began to applaud, slow and deliberate, drawing out each word. "What a coincidence. If someone hadn't used the Half-Blood Prince's spell to put another Prince's boyfriend in the hospital, how on earth would I have been forced into using this one?"

Harry had been forced into it. That much was true. But that apparently did not mean Praeris had to sit quietly and do nothing.

"Weasley," she said pleasantly, "do you know what a washing machine does? It cleans things. Clothes, blankets, pillows, whatever needs washing. When you steal something that belongs to someone else and use it to cause harm, it tends to get your hands dirty."

Ron had never seen wandless magic done like this in his life. Outside of Praeris, maybe only Dumbledore could manage it.

He tried everything he could think of. Attacking Praeris directly wasn't an option, the waterspout was operating independently. It wouldn't stop unless Praeris stopped it herself.

What Ron had no way of knowing was that the fearsome waterspout had started its life as Winnie's household magic. Which, incidentally, was the kind of magic that ran itself without anyone having to stand over it and watch.

In the end, Ron had no choice. He bolted for the castle to get help.

The moment he disappeared through the doors, Praeris tilted her head. The waterspout slowed.

Harry, fighting through the dizzy wreckage of it all, finally managed to close his fingers around his wand. "Finite Incantatem."

He dropped first. Then everything else: branches, pebbles, leaves, all of it raining down onto him and the grass in a clatter of small, indignant impacts.

Harry braced his hands against the lawn and retched violently, bringing up everything he had eaten the night before.

Oh. Right. He hadn't eaten anything the night before.

That would explain why he was already down to stomach acid.

Behind him, Praeris walked over at an unhurried pace. She reached into her soft leather pouch, drew out a small bottle, pulled the cork, and poured it over him.

Then she didn't leave. She settled herself on a large nearby rock, propped her chin in both hands, and looked at nothing in particular.

For a little while, Harry's retching was just from the vertigo. Then something shifted. His expression crumpled into something rawer, something agonized. He started murmuring, fragmented, disjointed, as though he were wide awake and drowning in a nightmare at the same time.

"Praeris!"

Hermione was already shouting as she ran.

A few minutes earlier, Ron had burst through the door of the Gryffindor common room like a charging bull, breathing hard. "Praeris swept Harry up!" he told Hermione.

"What do you mean, swept up?" Hermione had stared at him. She briefly wondered whether she had somehow lost the ability to understand English.

"Like a clothes-washing machine." Ron was practically bouncing with agitation. "Just, come on! You'll see when you get there!"

Ginny was already on her feet. "I'm coming."

Ron grabbed Hermione and ran.

By the time the three of them made it to the lawn, there was no washing-machine magic to be seen. Just Harry, curled on the grass, writhing and groaning.

They rushed over. Ginny raised her wand the moment she spotted Praeris. "Prince! What have you done to Harry!"

Praeris glanced at her sidelong from the rock, looking down with a cool, unhurried gaze. "Miss Weasley. I suggest you put your wand down."

Ginny fired the Bat-Bogey Hex without hesitating. Both Hermione and Ron sucked in a breath: "Ginny!"

The bats never reached Praeris. They hit a wall of flames and burned to ash, and behind the dying fire, Praeris was standing with her wand drawn. Half a second later, Ginny's wand spun out of her grip and landed in the grass.

Praeris stood on the rock, eyes lowered, and looked at all of them with a cold, still expression.

"Everyone stop!" Hermione snapped at Ron and Ginny. Then she turned to Praeris, her voice dropping, softening into something closer to a plea. "Praeris, Harry's been given detention. He's been banned from the Quidditch match."

Praeris nodded. "Thank you for the good news."

Hermione let out a careful breath. "Harry's already been punished... can you let it go?"

"No." Praeris returned to that courteous, measured tone. "If I stabbed Harry, would you consider detention and a ban from Potions a fair equivalent?"

Hermione hesitated. Shook her head.

"But you've already — swept him up?" she said.

"That's not enough." Praeris said it simply, without heat. "Not nearly enough. In this world, only I get to give Draco a hard time. No one else."

At the root of it, the one she should be taking revenge on was Voldemort.

Also at the root of it, Voldemort had already been on the receiving end of her work. She had, directly or indirectly, destroyed 2 Horcruxes. She had also kept his greatest enemy alive.

➤ Next: All Sick — What Was Lost