Chapter 223 - Couldn't Do It

Professor Snape was not the kind of fool who would eat the same loss twice. Or three times. Knowing full well what the Sword of Gryffindor meant, there was no way he wouldn't guard against it.

These people had been treating the storage room like a self-service buffet, and they'd already succeeded in blocking the road for anyone who came after them. The whole operation was nothing but wasted effort, DA rushing headlong into punishment for absolutely nothing.

Since Hermione had asked Ginny to come to her, she'd said what needed to be said. It was the least she owed Hermione's trust, and it spared Professor Snape a bit of unnecessary trouble.

"Of course I know!" Ginny said. Her expression was resolute. "But we can't just decide something can't be done and then not do it. We can't beat You-Know-Who either — does that mean we should just give up without even trying?"

That made Praeris look at Ginny with something like new respect.

"Besides," Ginny muttered, "it's not like we're guaranteed to fail."

Praeris decided to take that new respect back. Ginny was still a naive little girl. She shook her head, speechless. "As long as you're happy."

"That's not good enough." Ginny pressed her advantage, switching to provocation. "Since you think our idea isn't good enough, it sounds like you have a better one?"

Praeris couldn't help a flash of genuine surprise. "Miss Weasley, that's far too crude. If I could actually fall for that, why would you trust a method from someone so easily manipulated? That would be the same as walking to your own death."

"Even the worst idea has something worth salvaging," Ginny said stubbornly. "And if you can't find anything worth salvaging, at least it serves the purpose of elimination."

That sounded utterly unreasonable. But if you chewed on it carefully, you could actually find a grain of sense in it, it just wasn't very applicable when directed at Praeris.

"Don't bother, Miss Weasley." Praeris gave a helpless, rueful smile. "You're dealing with my mentor, after all. The most I can do is keep you from suffering catastrophic bad luck. How could I possibly scheme and plan on your behalf?"

"I can only give you two pieces of advice. First: it's best not to do this at all. Second: if you absolutely must — that method you used last time to lure Umbridge away was far too clumsy. Try something different."

Praeris actually caught a flicker of embarrassment on Ginny's face. She was genuinely stunned for a moment. Could it be that these people, having already experienced one clear failure, were actually planning to use that same trick again?

To put it bluntly, it made one wonder whether pure-blood inbreeding had genuinely rotted the children's brains.

Even though that insult lumped Draco in along with the rest, Praeris had no intention of revising her opinion. She thought the theory was absolutely sound. All pure-bloods, please take your seats accordingly and examine whether you routinely made mistakes this monumentally stupid.

"Of course we won't do that!" Ginny cleared her throat. "Speaking of which — since we're planning to re-establish DA, do you want to come back and join us —"

"No need." Praeris refused without a heartbeat's hesitation. "I've never participated in a single one of your training sessions. I've barely taken part in any of your activities. Talia was nothing but a false line of ink on a scrap of parchment from the very beginning. Let her stay a silent shadow."

Ginny looked like she didn't quite accept that. Just as Praeris was about to say something to dispel the notion, Ginny spoke first.

"Praeris, thank you." Her voice was sincere. "I'm not an ungrateful person. DA and I both remember what you've done."

"No matter what changes might come — for whatever reason — I won't forget what you've given. I'll do my best to fight down my instincts and trust you. And I won't exclude Talia from DA."

She stepped back twice, turned, and left.

Moaning Myrtle drifted in hazily from outside the lavatory and asked with great curiosity, "What did that violent girl want with you?"

"Violent?" Praeris asked.

Myrtle pursed her lips. "Four or five years ago, that girl hit me with a notebook. It was absolutely outrageous!"

Ah. That incident.

Praeris said with a sigh, "Myrtle, why do you think people never choose the best and most correct path?"

"That must be because they had no other choice." Myrtle's tears began plopping down again, steady as rain, as she spoke. "People always ask me, Myrtle, oh Myrtle! Hornby bullied you, so why didn't you fight back? Why didn't you curse him? Those people mocked me for being a coward, just like Hornby did!"

"At first, I couldn't figure it out either. Yes... why wouldn't I fight back? Why could I only ever cry? If I'd had the courage to take revenge on Hornby while I was still alive, maybe I wouldn't have had to die!"

Myrtle had originally quite enjoyed being a ghost. She could take revenge on Hornby however she pleased. She'd scared him into fleeing in a blind panic. How satisfying!

But after she'd gotten to know Baron, Myrtle stopped wanting to be dead. She always thought: if she were still alive, she could have grown up alongside Baron. From that thought sprouted a long tangle of others, if only this, if only that, maybe I wouldn't have had to die.

Myrtle had completely overlooked the fact that if she were still alive, she'd be old enough to be Baron's grandmother by now.

"But later I figured it out!" Myrtle clasped her hands together over her chest, crying and beaming with righteous conviction at the same time. "Because I couldn't do it!"

Yes. It was that simple.

Not resisting was the method that preserved the greatest strength, but the DA members couldn't do it. Defecting to Voldemort was the easiest road upward, but Praeris couldn't do that either. Continuing to serve Voldemort was the surest path to status and survival, but Professor Snape couldn't do that either.

Trace it all back to the root, and every choice not made came down to three words: I couldn't do it.

"Thank you, Myrtle." Praeris smiled at her. "I understand now."

Myrtle didn't grasp what Praeris had understood. She said, very sadly, "Praeris understands, but Myrtle still doesn't understand. Myrtle doesn't understand what Praeris has understood. How truly sad!"

With that, Myrtle flew mournfully up toward the ceiling, then shot at tremendous speed straight down into the toilet bowl, sending up a magnificent spray of water.

The moment Ginny was out the door, Praeris turned right around and reported everything to Professor Snape. Betrayal, without the slightest hesitation.

Trust her? Then they'd made a colossal mistake.

Six years on, and Praeris informed with a perfectly clear conscience. No shame at all, quite the opposite. She felt rather proud, and was even planning to reward herself with a stolen day of pure rest, thinking about absolutely nothing.

"Hmph." Snape sneered. "Utterly foolish beyond belief."

Then he curled his lip and said to Praeris, "Well done. Keep watching these grass-brained fools. I want to see just how rich their imaginations can be."

Praeris opened her mouth. She wanted to say something, hesitated for a moment, and then said it anyway. "Sir. Amycus Carrow is torturing Muggle-born students in class."

Snape went silent. He closed his eyes. Beneath the lids, his eyeballs still quivered faintly.

A long moment passed.

He opened his eyes.

"I know."

Praeris understood all at once.

Professor Snape was headmaster now. How could he not know what Amycus was doing right under his nose?

But knowing, what use was knowing?

Perhaps that, too, was simply another entry on the long list of things a powerless man could do nothing about.

Snape asked suddenly, "You're not going to ask me what happened to that student?"

Praeris thought of Draco's words and shook her head. "No, sir. I already know the answer."

If the wizard had come out of it safely, Snape would never have asked. Since he hadn't been saved, Praeris would rather not know who he was, or how it had ended.

After the first week, Alecto Carrow apparently felt her workload wasn't full enough. She announced that starting immediately, all students were required to attend Muggle Studies.

In the past, almost no Slytherin would voluntarily choose the course. So Praeris had to get her information from Baron.

"Basically, it's just insulting things about Muggles, 'filthy and dangerous,' 'like animals,' that sort." Baron stole a moment between duties to talk with Praeris. "In my view, there's no real difference between Muggles and wizards in terms of physical structure. Except that we can use magic and they can't. We don't even have reproductive isolation."

"Watch what you say." Praeris raised one finger to her lips, then felt her mind start moving on its own. "Wizards don't have reproductive isolation with trolls or Veela either, you little rascal, you've led me completely off track!"

Baron gave a smile that was bashful and just slightly mischievous. But his good humor didn't last long. He sighed and turned toward the doors of the Hospital Wing. "Praeris, more and more students are being brought in here."

That was exactly why Praeris had come.

To understand what the Carrow siblings and DA were doing, you only had to look at how they punished students, and what students were being punished for.

Praeris was certain the Carrows' methods were not anything as mild as detention.

"Some students disagreed with what Alecto was saying in Muggle Studies and raised their hands to object." Baron recalled the injured students he'd seen, his eyes heavy with sorrow. "She put them in detention. The ones who pushed back harder were hit with the Cruciatus Curse."

"Just today, a fourth-year Gryffindor." Baron turned his face to the side. "Luckily, Carrow didn't sustain the curse. He suffered, but it shouldn't leave any lasting damage."

Potions to help with this, Praeris didn't even need to start from scratch. St. Mungo's had come out of the last war with some practical medicines already developed for exactly this, even if they could only help patients who hadn't sustained permanent psychological damage from the Cruciatus Curse.

Some visions of the future began to surface in her mind. If the war ended, perhaps she and Professor Snape could work together to develop a potion for treating Cruciatus damage properly.

It sounded incredibly difficult. Borderline fanciful, even. But who cared? She'd already produced a limb-regeneration potion. As Ginny had said, just because something can't be done, that means you don't even try?

Since Alecto had started using the Cruciatus Curse on students, Praeris guessed that Dumbledore's Army would make their move today or tomorrow.

Sure enough, right in the middle of her first Muggle Studies class, the sound of explosions came rolling down the corridor.

BOOM. Boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom.

Alecto abandoned the students on the spot and ran out. The class jolted awake from its collective stupor and rushed to the doorway, craning their necks to see.

Praeris stood among the crowd with her arms folded. They had blown up the new regulations posted in the corridors, along with the portraits of the Carrow siblings and Professor Snape.

She knew she ought to look angry. She arranged her face accordingly. But she was surprised to find she didn't feel it, not genuinely.

Rationally speaking, there was no way they could have spared Professor Snape's portrait. Quite the opposite. If they'd blown up every portrait except his, that would have been the real problem.

With Alecto gone chasing troublemakers, the rest of the class was effectively free.

This Professor Carrow was truly not cut out for education. She was like a village woman raising chickens, grabbing each one by the neck, tipping its head back, and ramming feed straight down its throat, never once minding whether the chicken choked.

Alecto had tried to give a lecture at the start, but her words held no real power to incite anything. Her gestures made up for it somewhat, sweeping back and forth through the air like someone playing an accordion. For the better part of the lesson, what little momentum the class had came entirely from the blood-purist students cooperating with her.

Crabbe, Goyle, Daphne, all of them were like high-desire people paired with a low-ability partner, putting every ounce of effort into performing looks of passionate conviction to satisfy the professor's vanity.

It was genuinely hard on them.

Faced with such poor response, Alecto abandoned any pretense of structure and simply let herself go. She said whatever came to mind, cursing Muggles and Muggle-borns like a fishwife shrieking in a market square, trying to win through sheer volume, as though she believed that if she said it often enough the students would eventually be brainwashed into agreement.

Dumbledore's Army's first act of resistance had, at the very least, liberated Praeris from that particular stretch of mental vacancy. Not that she harbored any illusions about the timing, they had chosen this moment purely because both Carrows happened to be in class and couldn't respond in time.

After class, Filch was in the corridor with a broom, sweeping up the shattered glass from the blasted picture frames.

Praeris stepped out from the crowd and picked up Professor Snape's portrait.

Filch looked up full of fury, ready to curse someone out, then saw it was Praeris. He let out two awkward laughs. "Headmaster Snape sent you?"

Praeris could hear the passing crowd murmuring behind her back. She ignored all of it.

"Mr. Filch," she asked, quite calmly, "may I use magic to repair it?"

Filch's cloudy eyes swiveled in their sockets. He bared a mouthful of yellow teeth in a grin. "Well, if Professor Snape sent you to help, then I suppose it's not against the rules."

Praeris did not explain that Professor Snape hadn't sent her anywhere. She simply raised her wand and gave it a gentle wave. "Reparo."

The shattered glass on the floor crawled back up onto the frame as if time were running in reverse. Snape's portrait snapped back to pristine condition, as though it had never been touched.

Praeris nodded with satisfaction, handed the portrait to Filch, and said, "There. I'll be off now."

Filch stared. "Prince! There are still other portraits and the school regulations here!"

"Students aren't allowed to perform magic in the corridors," Praeris said, looking genuinely astonished. "One exception is already quite generous, I can't go pushing my luck on top of that. That really wouldn't be proper, Mr. Filch. Do take the trouble to find some new glass for the rest."

As for a full restoration charm covering everything at once, well, it wouldn't be all that strange if Praeris simply couldn't recall one right at this particular moment, would it?

➤ Next: Murdering a Silver Arrow Frog