Chapter 187 - All Sick — What Was Lost

For a moment, Hermione didn't know what to do.

She had discussed a similar question with Praeris back in third year, no one had the right to demand that a victim's family forgive.

Hermione took a deep breath. "You used a potion on Harry, didn't you?"

On the ground, Harry's eyes were clamped shut, both hands clutching his head, breathing ragged, face contorted in pain. He wouldn't stop groaning.

No one knew what kind of torment he was enduring.

No one knew what was playing out inside his mind.

"Despair Potion." Praeris answered without hesitation. "It makes a person feel immense pain."

Hermione looked up at her. "How can you just let Harry go?"

"Don't beg her! She won't let Harry go!" Ginny said, voice sharp with anger. "She wants Harry dead!"

Hermione hadn't begged Praeris. But Ron had started begging Ginny instead: "Stop talking, Ginny — keep going and our only hope is Snape taking the wrong medicine and accidentally saving Harry!"

The trio knew Praeris well by now, especially from sharing Potions together. When she was prepared, she could outperform the Half-Blood Prince at the same age.

Ron had long since concluded that nobody could handle Praeris except Snape and Slughorn. And Slughorn was genuinely useless. When Ron was poisoned, it had been Harry who shoved a Bezoar into his mouth, and only barely saved him.

Praeris looked at Hermione. Hermione looked at Praeris.

"I don't plan to beg you." Hermione's voice was quiet. "And I never will."

"Oh?" Praeris asked, sounding curious. "Then what do you plan to do?"

"I won't beg you, Praeris." Hermione said each word clearly. "Because I believe you won't actually try to kill Harry."

The wind moved through the trees with a low rustle. Underneath it, Harry's broken groans came and went.

Praeris made a short, tired, contemptuous sound. She reached into her cork-lined pouch, pulled out a small vial, and tossed it toward Hermione.

Hermione flinched and grabbed for it, hands scrambling, but Ron was already diving, hitting the ground and catching the vial before it could fall.

"Whoa." Ron lay flat on the grass and muttered to himself. "Perfect save."

"Save Harry first!" Hermione snatched the vial from his hand and ran.

Praeris called after her: "Oral!"

Hermione yanked the stopper out, but the pain had locked Harry's jaw shut. Ginny didn't hesitate, she grabbed Harry's jaw and forced his mouth open. Hermione shoved the vial's mouth inside before his teeth could close again.

Ron had just pushed himself off the ground when he saw what the two girls were doing and shuddered.

"Why isn't it working?" Ginny said, anxious, looking back at Praeris again and again.

Praeris drew an ornate pocket watch from her coat with easy, unhurried movements. She glanced at the three of them. "Do you know what time it is?"

She didn't wait for an answer. She simply started counting down.

"Ten. Nine. Eight." A pause. "Three. Two. One."

"Cough, cough, cough —"

Harry erupted into violent coughing. Slowly, his eyes cracked open.

Praeris smiled. "At this exact time yesterday, I was placing Draco on Barlon's stretcher."

Hermione, Ron, and Ginny all felt it land in their chests.

If casting the Patronus Charm meant reaching again and again for your happiest memories, then the Despair Potion was its natural predator.

Harry had endured more than 10 minutes he never wanted to revisit. He had been dreaming the entire time, surfacing from one nightmare only to sink into another. He thought he was awake, and then the memories crashed back and showed him he wasn't. Over and over.

Now he had truly been awake for several minutes, and he still couldn't fully trust it.

"I want —" Harry's voice came out rough. "To talk to Praeris. Alone."

Ron and Ginny's Quidditch practice was already long past ruined. The siblings exchanged a look and stayed. Hermione wasn't going anywhere either.

So this "private conversation" that wasn't really private began, with the three of them watching from a distance.

Praeris and Harry walked along the bank of the Black Lake. The back of Harry's shirt was soaked through with sweat. The wind hit him and he shivered.

Harry spoke first.

"I'm sorry."

A beat of silence.

"Thank you."

"Sorry?" Praeris let out a short, scornful sound. "I'm not the one who got hurt. What exactly are you apologizing to me for?"

Harry shook his head. "I won't apologize to Malfoy. Praeris, I'm only apologizing to you."

"I stumbled into Malfoy's secret by accident and we fought." Harry's voice was still weak. "It started as a mutual brawl, but then things changed."

Malfoy had thrown half a Cruciatus Curse at him. Before that, Harry had been thinking about Sectumsempra. So at the critical moment, when he needed something, that was what came out.

"Yesterday I kept telling myself it wasn't my fault." Harry said. "Ginny believed I had no choice. I kept saying the same thing to myself." He paused. "Admitting you were wrong is hard."

Praeris sneered and threw his words back at him. "No choice!"

"I did have a choice." Harry's brow furrowed, something uncomfortable moving across his face. "I learned the Disarming Charm in Dueling Club. I could have used it. I didn't."

When people make mistakes, they reach for reasons. They build cases for themselves. As if having a reason can make the mistake acceptable.

Praeris said nothing.

"A person who kills can't make excuses for having killed," Harry said. "A person who injures can't make excuses for having injured. So I accept it. I accept your retaliation."

Under the Despair Potion, Harry had seen everything that hurt him and everything he was afraid of. He had understood, with complete clarity, that no matter what excuses Peter Pettigrew had made, he had still sold Harry's parents out.

If Harry believed he would never forgive Peter Pettigrew, then he could accept Praeris's anger.

"But at the same time, Praeris." Harry's voice steadied. "I will not apologize to Malfoy. Because he cast an Unforgivable on me. He just didn't succeed."

Praeris turned around sharply. Across the distance, Ginny and Ron shot to their feet.

But after turning, Praeris did nothing. She only stared at Harry, something unsteady moving in her eyes.

A long silence.

"I regret it," Praeris said at last. "This wasn't worth anything."

"If I hadn't retaliated against you, you would never have let yourself forget nearly killing Draco in that bathroom." Her expression was dark. "But I tormented you. I got the revenge I wanted. And in doing so, I let you off the hook."

When someone with any conscience at all has done something wrong, they don't want the victim's family to forgive them kindly. They want to be hit.

Dumbledore hadn't lived more than 100 years for nothing. He knew Praeris would keep her revenge within limits. He had deliberately let her act, because he had been waiting for exactly this moment.

Courage isn't only about facing danger. It's also about the honesty to face what you've done.

What Harry did was probably better than even Dumbledore had anticipated. He looked directly at the day he made his mistake. He apologized for what deserved an apology. He didn't bow his head for what didn't.

Harry Potter told other people he was "Dumbledore's man through and through." But Dumbledore had been just as meticulous in everything he arranged for Harry.

A textbook calculation. Dumbledore knew exactly what kind of person Praeris was. He knew exactly what kind of person Harry was.

So leveraging this became a simple matter. A few words, and everything fell into place on its own.

In one move, Dumbledore had completed Harry's education and Praeris's appeasement. Praeris got her revenge. Harry got growth and a measure of peace with himself.

After this, Praeris had done everything she needed to do. There was no reason left to keep her anger on Harry. She was still a high-value asset in the Order of the Phoenix's camp.

Dumbledore was still Dumbledore.

Praeris hated that she could see all of this. If she were even a little less sharp, she'd have nothing right now but the clean satisfaction of revenge.

The pity was that she was 17, not 70.

Cleverness came easily to her. True wisdom was something else, it needed years to settle into.

Harry looked down. He could feel it too: waking from the Despair Potion, something in his chest actually was lighter.

"So I thank you, Praeris." He said it honestly.

Everything clicked. Praeris thought, jaw tight, no wonder Harry had followed "I'm sorry" with "thank you."

This guy wasn't actually stupid. Just stubborn.

Praeris gave him a polite smile. "You give me too much credit, Harry."

Harry felt an ominous prickling at the back of his neck.

Praeris not smiling was frightening. Praeris smiling was worse.

"It is an honor, for myself and the Half-Blood Prince, to offer rare spells and over a hundred pages of handwritten notes to the savior of the wizarding world." Her posture was humble, her tone perfectly sincere. "How could we possibly presume to restrict how the great and celebrated Harry Potter chooses to use them? Isn't that right?"

It was like a short fishbone caught sideways in Harry's throat. Not sharp enough to draw blood. Just impossible to ignore.

Seeing his expression, Praeris was finally satisfied. Chasing someone down like she wanted to kill him had been a little childish, she supposed.

But it had felt good enough.

Revenge was always about feeling good. Who cared about childish?

Praeris let her smile turn wicked, the corner of her mouth curling up, and turned to go.

"Praeris!" Harry called after her. "I — I didn't think of it that way! I'll admit it! I've always had prejudices against Slytherin, I know that..."

Praeris had no desire to hear any more of this. She privately did not want Harry to untangle every knot inside himself in a single conversation.

She thought it, and she acted on it, stepping forward immediately to keep walking, cutting him off by sheer movement.

"How interesting, Harry," she said, perfectly calm. "You seem to think an apology wipes everything clean. If apologies worked that way, what would we need the police and Aurors for?"

"No!" Harry moved quickly to catch up. "Even if it doesn't fix anything, I still owe you an apology — Hermione was right. You gave me Felix Felicis. You taught me Occlumency. You copied out those notes. But it's more than that, Praeris!"

"You hid the DA list! And you were in the DA too, weren't you? You wrote to Hermione early on, giving us strategies and advice." Harry wasn't stopping. "You taught us spells on parchment. You did everything you could to help us save Ginny, back when we had no connection at all..."

Praeris couldn't stand it. She walked faster.

These were things she had done out of necessity or for her own reasons. Why was Harry Potter talking about her like she was the Virgin Mary?

But Harry wouldn't let it go. The situation had reversed entirely: from Praeris hunting Harry down for revenge to Harry Potter hunting Praeris down to apologize.

"Have you had enough?" she snapped, rounding on him. "Am I your priest now? Are you addicted to confessing to me? Did you even pray and make a donation first? Those were all things I did when my brain stopped working, I don't need you cataloguing them for me!"

"Not enough!" Harry had talked himself half-breathless, but he pushed on. "You destroyed two Horcruxes, didn't you? Praeris, you're our true companion. Sometimes you just don't say it nicely, that's all..."

"You're sick." Praeris stared at him with pure venom and delivered her verdict. "You and Dumbledore are both sick."

She pointed a finger at him. "Stay right there. Don't follow me. Or I'll remind you exactly why the Slytherins respect me."

Harry stopped. But he said: "You wouldn't do that, would you? You'll repay tooth for tooth, but you wouldn't come after me just because I'm apologizing to you. Right?"

Harry's heart was full of remorse, and that was exactly the outcome Praeris had wanted.

But the process had been deeply, deeply wrong.

Stabbing someone brought the clean thrill of revenge. Having that person turn around and stab themselves, over and over, wasn't cathartic. It was like running into an escaped patient on a Sunday afternoon.

For once, Praeris genuinely could not work out what Dumbledore was thinking.

Dumbledore had cast her and Professor Snape in the role of villains, and then gone and told Harry she had destroyed Horcruxes?

She only hoped Dumbledore hadn't told anyone she had once saved his life.

She wanted to grab him by the front of his robes and ask: "So you're telling me, someone who helped destroy two of Voldemort's Horcruxes turned around and sided with the man who killed you. Is that your position?"

"When I use this tone with you, it doesn't mean I have a question. It means you have a problem."

From where Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were watching, none of it made sense.

Harry had come back to himself, and he wasn't angry, not even a little. If anything, he seemed to be chasing Praeris down, saying who knew what.

Ron scratched his head. "Am I seeing this right? Is Harry actually going after Praeris?"

"Let's hope Praeris doesn't lose her temper." Hermione's voice was tight with worry. "At that distance, Harry's completely on his own."

Ginny, standing apart from the two of them, bit her lip. She didn't look happy.

Praeris left Harry standing where he was and walked straight toward the castle. She had already taken too long. Draco was still waiting for her in the Hospital Wing.

➤ Next: I Stood Up for You