"Praeris, you know we don't think that way. Ron just hopes our secret won't get out," Hermione said quickly.
Ron couldn't understand it. "Why are you explaining anything to her? Do you expect a Slytherin not to cause us trouble? Or do you actually think she can help us?"
"Enough. Close your mouth." Hermione said it one word at a time.
Praeris felt the provocation land. This Gryffindor had a sharp tongue, but Praeris was not someone who backed down. "Aha. Yes. The three of you can't even track down one person named Flamel, and yet you think I'm just as ignorant as you are."
"If you had even a passing knowledge of alchemy, you'd know its greatest practitioner: Nicolas Flamel. A very famous wizard, and on quite good terms with Dumbledore. If you knew even a little French, you'd know that Flamel is a French surname. And in France, there is virtually no other wizard bearing that name who comes close to his reputation."
"The fact that you went looking for Flamel through the library tells me he is definitely not some obscure nobody."
Harry, Hermione, and Ron stood frozen, unable to believe what they'd just heard.
"And lastly, you should be thanking Draco. He's collected a great many books on alchemy. It's a small hobby of his."*
Praeris turned and walked away without a backward glance.
What? You ask whether any of that helped Gryffindor? Please. They're at school. What could they possibly do that had anything to do with Nicolas Flamel? And even if something came of it, with their level of intelligence, Praeris couldn't imagine them stirring up much of anything.
As Christmas approached, Hogwarts broke for the holidays. Students always spent a day or two playing around before heading home to their families.
Pansy went to the common room to cheer Malfoy on. He was plotting how to irritate Potter.
Daphne and Millicent were playing Gobstones. Each side had 15 stones. Before the match, an area was marked out, and any stone knocked outside the boundary went to the opponent. Whoever lost all their stones first lost the game. When it was over, the winning stones would spit a foul liquid at the loser.
Millicent had nothing but raw force. She knocked the opponent's stones out of bounds regularly, but she knocked her own out just as often. She went down fast.
"Oh, Merlin. I'm done. This is no fun at all." Millicent reached over and poked at Praeris. "Prae, darling, come win it back for me."
Daphne waved her hands immediately. "No. I am not playing against Prae. I'd lose for certain." She tilted her head. "Prae, what are you looking at?"
"The snowmen." Praeris's voice was soft. "Christmas and snowmen are a perfect match. There's actually a creature called a Yeti. Fifteen feet tall. Long white fur. Attacks and eats anything it comes across." She paused. "It's snowing, Daphne."
"Ah!" Daphne startled hard.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha." Praeris was terrible. She doubled over laughing. "Don't be frightened. They live in Tibet. Scotland doesn't have any."
Daphne shot her a look. "You are absolutely full of mischief."
Christmas is the day of the Lord's birth. At the convent, it was the greatest holiday of the year. Mass began at the stroke of midnight, and a host of activities followed — the Holy Infant procession among them.
Praeris couldn't sleep. Of course she couldn't sleep.
It wasn't that she was used to staying awake through the night's celebrations. It was that Christmas was the day her parents had abandoned her.
It was difficult to explain. She had been 5 years old when it happened, yet she remembered nothing of what came before. The story, as she'd been told it, went like this: Mr. Matthew, the gentleman who had a certain ambiguous closeness with Sister Mayne, found her tucked in a corner and went running for Father Dorin. The kind priest gave her warm water and cold medicine, and only after the Christmas festivities wound down did he go looking for the police.
But no family on Tulip Street had lost a child. Neither had anyone from farther away.
The people at the convent concluded that her parents had likely taken advantage of the thick holiday crowds to slip her away in the chaos and leave her there.
Father Dorin was quiet for a long while. Then he said: "She came to us at Christmas, and we are St. Mary's Convent. Perhaps this is the Lord's gift to us. Let her stay."
Her parents had left her almost nothing. The only thing they left was 2 words, embroidered into her clothing: Praeris Prince.
That name became one of the reasons she was set apart. Everyone else at the convent was surnamed Joseph. She was Prince.
Did my parents ever love me?
Why did they abandon me?
Did they ever, even once, regret it?
Every Christmas Eve, small Praeris would let her mind drift to those questions during Mass. She carried them for years, until she grew up, and stopped asking them altogether.
It's useless, the grown-up Praeris thought. What has happened cannot be undone. She had lived through too much to ever find her way back to when she was still loved.
The next morning, Praeris slept in. By the time she woke, Pansy and the others were already deep into unwrapping gifts. Praeris was genuinely surprised to find a small pile waiting at the corner of her own bed. She tucked her loose hair behind her ear and crouched down to look.
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Millicent, who knew her best, gave her a book. Daphne gave a bottle of magical perfume — each press released a burst of color and shape, different every time. Pansy gave a large pure cashmere shawl. Malfoy gave a tin of American magical whistle sweets, the kind you could blow into to produce the calls of different magical creatures. Stella gave a Portuguese cork bag, charmed to hold far more than its size suggested. There were odds and ends from teachers and classmates besides, too many to name individually.
Praeris had the easy side of it, because she genuinely had no money. The nuns at the convent had taught all the girls to sew, so she'd gathered up the small coin purses, hair ribbons, and handkerchiefs she'd made over the years and given them out.
The nuns taught sewing for a few reasons. First, for the convent itself — the black dress Snape had seen Praeris wearing on the train was one she'd made herself. Second, to give the girls a useful skill, something to occupy their hands and serve them later in life. Third, for charity sales, the proceeds going to help the poor and support the children in the convent's care.
That third reason was really just incidental. The sales never brought in much, but it was a way of connecting with the faithful.
"You actually made this by hand!" Millicent said, holding up the hair ribbon and staring at it. "How do I use it? I've never used one."
Praeris smiled. "Ask it. Just say: 'Hey, Jenny, what should Millicent's hair look like today?'"
The ribbon, reworked by Praeris, lifted into the air. It drifted over Millicent's head and began to move through her hair, weaving itself in with careful precision.
"Oh, this is wonderful!" Millicent turned back and forth in front of the mirror, deeply satisfied. "Now I don't have to deal with my hair in the mornings."
"You still need to brush it. If it's too tangled, Jenny gets cross," Praeris said, heading off that line of thinking before it could take root.
"Have you gotten through all your gifts?" Millicent asked.
Praeris shook her head. "Not yet. There's one with no name on it."
To Miss Prince,
May you have a happy Christmas.
The Half-Blood Prince
It was the only letter Praeris ever received during those years, year after year. The sender always tucked in a little British currency with each one. The envelope bore nothing on its surface. The paper was ordinary white, the kind found anywhere. Every word on it had been typed by typewriter.
When she was small, Praeris had let herself wonder. Could the sender be a relative? Someone connected to her? They were Prince, and she was Prince. "The Half-Blood Prince" could even be read as someone with half of "Prince" blood in their veins.
No one had ever been able to answer that question, just like the letter itself — mysterious, and entirely unchanged across all those years.
This year, the British pounds had become Galleons. Whoever it was, they knew her circumstances intimately.
"Ahh, Draco is really just too..." Pansy cradled her face in her hands. "He gave me an entire box of chocolates. I cannot finish all of this."
Between a boy and a girl, chocolate always carried a slightly different meaning — even if Malfoy was still only a first-year.
Pansy had been quietly making her fondness for Draco Malfoy known, though she couldn't have said herself exactly why she liked him.
Being the first girl in the dormitory to have her heart wake up, if a touch earlier than was strictly normal — she was naturally not going to escape her roommates' teasing.
"I can help you eat them," Millicent said, one hand on her hip. "I have always been a person who loves to help. If you're worried about not finishing them, I am more than happy to take that burden off you."
Pansy's expression dropped. She turned away from Millicent entirely. "Daphne. Draco gave me chocolate."
"Isn't it just because you like chocolate?" Millicent said, genuinely baffled.
Pansy let out a long breath. "Millicent Bulstrode. Did you absolutely have to learn that from Prince?"
Praeris, thoroughly ambushed, turned around with a puzzled look. "Learn what from me?"
Millicent burst out laughing. "Bluntness! Precious, precious bluntness, ha ha ha ha!"
Daphne laughed just as hard. "Pansy, she did it on purpose. She was winding you up."
The Slytherin girls' dormitory erupted into cheerful chaos.
Praeris sat on her bed and watched Pansy grab Millicent and swat her, not quite hard enough to actually hurt, while Millicent swatted back just as uselessly. The two of them went at each other like that for a good while, perfectly content.
Praeris found herself thinking that she was starting to like Christmas. Right now, she didn't need to observe anyone. The warmth reached her on its own, from the gifts piled at the corner of her bed, or from that one letter hammered out on a typewriter.
Hogwarts went on Christmas break. The girls all went home. Only Praeris stayed behind in the dungeons. The teachers hadn't gone anywhere either, though, most of Hogwarts' staff were solitary, unmarried.
"Is this some kind of curse, like the one on the Defense Against the Dark Arts post? Is that why none of the Hogwarts teachers have husbands or wives?" Millicent had once asked.
It really did seem like it might be.
Though, wizarding marriages were mostly loose arrangements to begin with, not bound by any legal obligation. When in love, they were together. When the love ended, they didn't bother keeping up the pretense. So Hogwarts' situation was not exactly unusual. Madam Puddifoot, for example, had been through 3 husbands, each love more passionate than the last, which was precisely why she still believed in romance and welcomed young couples to come and sit in her tea shop.
Praeris had a full Christmas holiday.
The Slytherin common room had long black leather sofas. The cupboards held silver tea sets, and Marcus and the others had stocked them with tea, coffee beans, sugar cubes, granulated sugar, and whatever local specialties students had brought back from past holidays.
In terms of comfort and leisure, Slytherin had everyone else thoroughly beat. Brew a pot of tea, settle into a sofa, and a Slytherin could sit there the entire day without any particular complaint.
But Praeris didn't do that. She went to the library instead, to finish what she'd started.
The magical world had 11 schools. Of the ones closest to London: Hogwarts in Britain, Durmstrang in Scandinavia, and Beauxbatons in France.
From the extensive reading she'd done previously, Praeris knew that each school recruited young witches and wizards from within its surrounding region. Hogwarts, for instance, covered the British Isles.
Praeris had been abandoned in London. Most people didn't travel far to leave a child behind. And since "the Half-Blood Prince" clearly kept up with her circumstances, it was very likely that her parents or relatives had attended one of those 3 schools.
The library held traces. Certain books recorded students who had passed through them. "The History and Victories of Hogwarts Quidditch Teams" listed players' names. Student association records were another source: the Hogwarts History Research Society, the Hogwarts Wizard Chess Club, and others.
What Praeris was looking for were people surnamed Prince, within the last 50 years. Previously, she had found several: Eileen Prince, Ryan Prince, Sylvia Prince, Anna Prince.
Eileen was the earliest, a Slytherin, president of the Gobstones Club. Ryan came a few years after her, a Ravenclaw, a member of the Wizard Chess Club. Sylvia appeared over a decade ago, a Gryffindor, president of the Muggle Studies Association. Anna was from 4 years back, a Ravenclaw Quidditch Beater.
This visit was to fill in the gaps.
"The Half-Blood Prince" sounded more like a man, but Ryan Prince's name had appeared in the obituary column of the Daily Prophet, confirmed dead at Death Eater hands over a decade ago. And that same obituary had revealed his connection to Sylvia: she was his daughter.
Anna, 4 years ago, had gone on to work as a sports journalist for the South American Sports Gazette.
Anna Prince, somewhere in South America, was ruled out. Ryan, dead for years, was ruled out. Eileen, older still, was ruled out. That left Sylvia as the most suspicious.
A day later, Praeris found her. The source was the Magical Law Enforcement Squad. Sylvia had been arrested for attacking Muggles and was imprisoned in Azkaban.
Death Eaters attacked Muggles and Muggle-born wizards. Ryan had died at their hands. And yet Sylvia had done exactly what Death Eaters did, attacked Muggles herself.
Looking at this history, Praeris felt as though she were trying to read without her glasses. Shapes and shadows, blurred and indistinct, refusing to resolve into anything clear.
➤ Next: The Cruel Truth