HP: TSH — Chapter 319 - Extra Arc: Praeris and Snape 2

Food is an intensely private thing. So is where a person lives.

When Praeris invited Snape to dinner, he hesitated for a fraction of a second. It wasn't that he had never eaten in public, or never shared a social meal, but in those situations, he was never quite at ease. He would instinctively police what he allowed himself to eat rather than what he actually wanted.

This time, it wasn't only Praeris. Draco Malfoy was there too. He had to decide: was this a social obligation, or something that would actually let him breathe?

In the end, he chose the latter.

Bringing Praeris to Spinner's End was a gamble. But he had been tempted, tempted by the possibility of something that could genuinely be called a normal human connection. Not the kind soaked in Tobias Snape's volatility. Not Eileen Prince's drifting, erratic distance. Something healthy. Stable. Worth trusting.

Standing at his own front door, Snape thought: Praeris's invitation at Southend-on-Sea had gone to his head. Her praise had clouded his judgment. He had made an irrational decision.

The Malfoys didn't care how run-down this house was. They didn't care about Snape's past, only his usefulness, only whether he could serve their ends.

But Praeris was different. Her abilities and her own history were more than enough to see straight through him, through that barren, pitiful past.

"What's wrong?" Praeris pulled her gaze from the door and looked at him, eyes carrying curiosity and mild puzzlement.

Snape said nothing. He opened the door, which was as good as opening his own chest and exposing the long-sealed, dusty heart underneath.

He sat and watched Praeris sweep her eyes across the sitting room, wondering how many layers this clever witch had already stripped away.

"Advances in Potion Research?" Praeris crossed to the bookshelf in a few quick strides. "You read my paper ages ago, didn't you? Neville wrote just the other day — said he'd gone and begged every single one of his grandmother's friends to vote on my behalf, to keep me out of Azkaban."

Snape gave a cold laugh. "It was never his place to plead for anyone. He'd do better to mind himself first."

Praeris rose onto her tiptoes to peer at the upper shelves. "Yes, well — he's been rather busy with his parents' rehabilitation."

"That is well done," Snape said, his tone even.

"Hmm?" Praeris lowered her heels back to the floor and looked at him. "What is?"

"The research into the Longbottoms' recovery," Snape said.

A smile crossed Praeris's face, a hint of pride she didn't bother to hide, and she said offhandedly, "Well. It depends on who taught him."

Snape's gaze followed her as she wandered through his home, curious and unhurried. But she never asked a single question that could be called intrusive. She was simply a student who had come to visit.

"Gobstones, Millicent loves these." Praeris pulled a set from the shelf: Eileen Prince's set. "I've never been able to get the hang of this game. Have you ever played, Severus?"

"I have no interest in it," Snape said. "Just as well that you can't play it. Don't waste time on things with no value."

Praeris held the box and turned to look at him. When she spoke, her tone was purely academic. "What counts as something with value?"

"Potions and magical research," Snape answered, as a professor answers a student's question. "Everything that brings power, wisdom, and expands the boundaries of what is possible."

Praeris put the box back on the shelf, came around, and settled onto the sofa. Snape chose the armchair. He summoned glasses and a bottle of wine from somewhere with his wand, almost no alcohol content to speak of.

"What about eating, then?" Praeris asked, without any particular aim. "Eating is for survival, but you don't mind a bit of bread pudding. In that moment, it isn't purely for survival anymore, is it?"

Snape fell silent. He studied her with a searching look, trying to work out what she was building toward.

"You know, I've read every book of yours at the school," Praeris said, taking a sip of the wine. It was sweet, just as she'd expected. "What value is there in a wizard reading Muggle books? Honestly, the thing I most loved doing in my early years — the thing with no value at all — was reading your annotations."

Snape had always known Praeris spent her spare time reading books he had once read. For reasons he couldn't quite name, he had allowed it. Perhaps, it was because his own soul had been longing for an outlet.

"Some things in life have nothing to do with value," Praeris said, settling back comfortably against the sofa. Casual, conversational. "Severus, I've always believed that sometimes we form a connection with someone who doesn't bring us any practical value whatsoever, and yet they shape who we become."

When she had befriended Millicent Bulstrode, Millicent hadn't been able to offer Praeris any real practical value. That was Stella's kind of usefulness. But Millicent had shaped Praeris into the person Praeris was now.

And what about Lily? Maintaining a relationship with Lily had never helped Snape climb any higher. But her existence had made Snape who Snape was.

"Praeris — lecturing me?" Snape said. His tone wasn't severe.

Praeris didn't flinch. "Professionally, you're a professor, Severus. In life, you're not."

"A wizard's life is so long, survival matters, but after survival there's still living, isn't there?"

Snape despised anyone who meddled in his personal life or probed at the workings of his mind. But Praeris was different. He had opened this door himself and let her in, and she, for her part, respected the boundaries he set. She wasn't demanding that he change. She was simply showing him, Severus, there are more possibilities left in your life.

"All right, I'm just talking," Praeris said, laughing easily. "Other people still call me a workaholic, what right do I have to lecture anyone about living? After the hearing, I've been even less able to stop. If I can't bring Dumbledore back to consciousness, things won't be easy to put to rest."

"And you still know what trouble is?" Snape said, cold amusement in his voice.

"It is a bit of trouble," Praeris said. "But if Dumbledore doesn't wake up, who exactly are we going to collect that debt from..."

They went around the subject of Dumbledore's condition for a while. Then Praeris glanced at the sky and decided to head back "home." Stay any longer and Winnie would start making pointed remarks.

Snape didn't see her out. She Disapparated directly to Diagon Alley.

Over those few hours, Snape had never brought it up, and so Praeris had never once touched on his past, not even the fact that Eileen Prince shared a bloodline with her.

Praeris had never believed that Snape was someone who needed to be saved. That would be far too condescending. She herself had never sat waiting for anyone to save her either. Pity and sympathy were both forms of disrespect to people like them.

Accepting Praeris's presence had been Snape's own choice. Dumbledore had done nothing more than offer a suggestion. If Snape himself hadn't been willing, nothing Dumbledore said would have mattered. As it happened, even with Dumbledore's suggestion, Snape had never actually gone and raised a child.

Becoming a Death Eater had been Snape's own choice. Becoming a spy had been Snape's own choice. Even allowing Praeris into this house had been his own choice.

Praeris would venture to say that, knowing Snape's temperament, if she had done anything presumptuous, she'd have been thrown out on the spot, though she herself was simply not the sort to do such a thing.

And yet, if two people forever maintained polite, fixed distances with each other, they could never be called family. Could never be called close.

Being a spy had been a way of making up for something. But what came after? It was a frightening thing, losing your purpose.

Praeris was glad Snape still had his own work to pursue. But he was like a wire pulled too tight, unable to settle into the quiet that had followed the war.

All that she had said wasn't because she thought Snape would go and play Gobstones. The fact that he had kept the Gobstones was itself a signal: he permitted something valueless to exist beside him. Praeris had only wanted him to look at that clearly, and acknowledge it.

Praeris left. The house at Spinner's End was once again empty except for Snape.

He sat in the armchair, looking at the clear red liquid in his glass.

Tobias Snape had been a heavy drinker, prone to cursing at Eileen Prince and at Snape himself once the bottle was empty. Because of this, Severus had despised alcohol his whole life, until Lily died, and he, too, had turned to it for numbness. That period hadn't lasted long. He knew perfectly well that drinking did no good.

But at this moment, he lifted the glass and drained it in one swallow.

Perhaps this was something even Praeris could not have anticipated. Faced with Sylvia's sacrifice, Snape's first reaction had been anger, this foolish Gryffindor, who never listened, who was always doing something stupid, always acting on her own and doing things that didn't need doing.

Even death, Snape had thought, was his own business. He didn't need a weakling who couldn't even look after herself to pay a price on his behalf. This wasn't a kindness. It was a debt forcibly imposed in blood. He would rather Sylvia had spent her entire life in Azkaban than come out and make a mess of things.

But when Shill collapsed, and that faint "I'm sorry" dissolved into the air, Snape's anger dissolved with it.

Snape hadn't witnessed Lily's death. Hadn't even seen her body. He had only been told of it afterward. That great, unwavering love had been for Harry Potter. Snape had been nothing more than an accomplice in its undoing.

Before all of this, the only person he had truly seen was Eileen Prince.

Eileen Prince had cared for Tobias Snape more than she had ever cared for her own son. She had gradually lost her ability to perform magic in a marriage that wore her down to nothing, silent, weak, powerless. A mother with nothing left to give.

Shill had killed Dipple William with her own hands for the sake of her child. She was braver than Eileen Prince. In her very last moments, when she had nearly lost all personal will, she had still summoned every last scrap of her strength and thrown herself forward, whether it was for Snape or for her own daughter, she was still braver than Eileen Prince.

It was a terrible thing to sit with. Snape had gone silent for a very long time after. He had taken the impact of something he had no name for.

The chilling truth was this: Shill had chosen him, without hesitation and without looking back. Whatever her true motivation, objectively she had died for Snape, and she had been given the chance to live.

In this world that had been so cruel to him, there had still been someone willing to die for him.

Snape believed that if Praeris had known Sylvia still retained her individual will, she would have eventually found a way to save her mother's life. But dead was dead. There was no other possibility.

Sylvia was dead. She had found her release.

But Snape would never find his release again.

That genuine bond of kinship he had never possessed before, the instant he touched it, it trapped him. It made him regard Praeris as his own responsibility, without his even realizing it.

But Praeris had refused that. In this regard, she was too much like him, making her own choices and bearing her own consequences.

Snape needed no one to save him. He would save himself. Praeris needed no one to save her either. She would save herself, as she had done a thousand times over, pulling herself out of danger by her own hand.

Because they were alike, Snape admired her.

Because they were not alike enough, they could keep walking forward together.

Snape picked up the Gobstones box from the table and set it back on the shelf.

Even given another hundred chances, he would never play Gobstones.

But tonight, he decided to read the sections of the Daily Prophet he had been skipping over.

He brewed a cup of hot tea, took out the tin of biscuits Purnell had made, the ones Praeris had brought him, and settled in with the paper.

"The Truth Behind Alexander Shafiq's Accusation Against Praeris — The Real Reason: Jealousy."

"Due to Praeris's exceptional talent, she had surpassed Senior Healers within only a few years and was treating Dumbledore independently, while Shafiq had long since passed his prime with no new achievements to his name. A wizard jealous of a witch's accomplishments. A senior jealous of a junior's. Workplace bullying in the wizarding world is an issue that demands our attention..."

Hmph. The Malfoys had paid for this one.

"Edinburgh secondary school locked-room ghost incident, reports of a female student found hanged in the storeroom, followed by frequent unexplained sounds afterward. Following investigation by the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, no ghosts or magical traces were found in the storeroom. It transpired that students had been sneaking inside to court each other, and had spread rumors that the sound of wind whistling through a gap in the storeroom wall was the crying of a ghost."

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Snape held the newspaper and gave a cold laugh.

Who exactly had been daydreaming in his Potions class?

And who had been mooning over someone in his Defence Against the Dark Arts class?

Whoever it was, clearly hadn't been doing enough homework. Add another foot or two to the Defence Against the Dark Arts essay, that ought to cure it.

Snape couldn't bear to read any further. He tossed the paper aside and sat wondering why on earth he had chosen, at this hour of the night, to torment himself.

➤ Next: Extra: The Slytherin Trip to China