Praeris swore she had never expected anything worthwhile to come out of Malfoy's mouth.
Even her slightest movements could be easily detected by Dumbledore. She could not believe how "stealthy" Harry Potter's reckless little Save the Philosopher's Stone operation was supposed to be.
Everything at Hogwarts was under Dumbledore's control. Harry Potter's little adventure was surely no exception.
"Praeris." Gemma Farley patted her shoulder. "Professor Snape is looking for you."
Praeris... Praeris did not want to go.
Snape was hell-bent on sending her back to the orphanage. Walking in there now would be walking straight into a trap.
"Praeris?" Farley looked at her, puzzled. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. I'll go now."
Praeris had shaken her head more times this morning than she had the entire semester.
Outside the door to Snape's Potions office, she stared at the wooden door. For the first time, she felt a genuine desire not to go in.
But this was not something she could avoid just by not wanting to face it. She had not even reached out to push the door when it swung open on its own, startling her.
"Miss Praeris. Could the latch be broken, preventing you from entering? I imagine it cannot be that you are unwilling to see your professor." Snape's voice was cold.
Snape swept his cloak around and turned back toward his desk. Praeris followed him inside.
She did not know whether other people's minds wandered when they were nervous. Hers certainly did.
There was one thing she had never been able to figure out: Professor Snape never addressed her by her surname. At first he had called her "you." Later, he called her "Miss Praeris."
But with everyone else, even when Snape used "you," there was never a "Miss Pansy" or a "Miss Daphne", only "Miss Parkinson" and "Miss Greengrass."
Millicent thought she was overthinking it. "Maybe the professor just doesn't like calling you Miss Prince? It does sound a bit like Princess. I mean, Prince can mean prince or princeling, can't it?"
"Miss Praeris."
Speak of the devil. Professor Snape addressed her that way again.
"You will return to the orphanage obediently this summer and cause me no trouble," Snape said, his voice low and flat. "Correct?"
Even in daytime, even with 2 candles burning, the Potions office was dim. Certain ingredients on the shelves gave off a faint blue-green glow.
For the first time in her life, Praeris felt genuinely brave. She looked at the most intimidating teacher in the entire school and spoke words of refusal. "No. I won't go back."
Her tongue felt clumsy saying it. Her teeth were chattering.
"If your brain is not broken, you should remember you are not yet seventeen. If I understand correctly, your plan is to wander around, get spotted by the police, and be thrown into a care home. Correct?"
Snape spoke very fast. Like a hissing snake.
Praeris gathered her courage and said what she had prepared. Flustered, but coherent. "I can go to the Leaky Cauldron — just like before term started. I did perfectly well there. Tom will look after me, and I didn't cause you a single bit of trouble in those two weeks, did I? Tom can testify. I never left Diagon Alley at all. I barely even went downstairs!"
Snape gave her a cold look. "It seems I have been too lenient with you. You seem to think such arrangements can simply be repeated."
"No!" Praeris looked at him imploringly, searching for any trace of sympathy in his face.
"Professor, I don't know what my life was like before I was five. But after that, I had only one wish — to leave Maria Orphanage. When I washed clothes with bare hands in freezing water on winter nights. When I was punished and denied food, lying in bed with my stomach knotted so tight I couldn't sleep."
Praeris knew that no matter how reasonable a plan she laid out, it would never convince Professor Snape to let her stay. Reason alone would not reach him.
So she could only strip away the dignity she had barely managed to patch together over these past few months and expose that small, lowly self underneath. Lay it bare, and beg for a little sympathy.
"Professor, I used to tell myself the priest was right — that we shouldn't eat too much, that hunger keeps the mind sharp. But I know that was just self-hypnosis. I really wanted to eat. Very much. I wanted so badly not to go hungry. But I couldn't keep anything down. It wasn't that I didn't want to eat — the moment I ate even a little too much, I would vomit everything back up. Professor. I truly don't want to go back." Her voice dropped. "I'm begging you."
Snape said nothing. He looked at her for a long moment, expression unreadable, complicated in a way she could no longer parse.
Her mind was in complete chaos. She could not think anymore. She was running entirely on instinct.
She kept her eyes fixed on Professor Snape, her dark eyes reflecting his rigid face in the dim candlelight.
It felt like a century.
Finally, Professor Snape said, "I imagine you know what you ought to do. Stay in Diagon Alley. If I discover you wandering off even once,"
"I swear I won't!" Praeris said, the words coming out fast.
She did not feel it until she stepped out of the office. She was drenched in sweat. Her limbs were weak and trembling, nearly sending her to the floor.
She leaned back against the wall and breathed. Long, slow, deliberate. Trying to find solid ground.
"Ha."
"Haha."
"Hahaha."
Praeris covered her face and crouched down against the wall. She could not tell whether she was crying or laughing.
Some Slytherins said she was arrogant, that she used her brains to look down on everyone around her. Other Slytherins said, "Well, that's just how smart people are."
In truth, she was arrogant. She had the audacity to put on a performance in front of the famously brilliant Snape himself, and trick him into feeling sorry for her.
The most powerful lie in the world is one you also tell yourself.
In reality, she had long since stopped caring about everything she had endured at Maria Orphanage. It had left her with serious physical damage, that was true. But she would never spend her whole life drowning in the tragedies of the past.
The act only worked because she made herself believe it first. Believe that she was still afraid. Still trapped in that suffering. Still that little girl trudging through the snow, one foot sinking deep, one foot barely finding purchase, with nothing left but a prayer for the Lord's mercy.
Only by convincing herself could she convince Snape.
She had been building toward this ever since exams ended.
"Praeris" knew Snape would send her back to the orphanage. But "she" had refused to think about it, as though not thinking about it could make it not happen.
"Praeris" had once imagined that she had earned Snape's approval. After all, she had completed every task he set her. She had even achieved seven O's and one E.
But in the end, she still had to throw away her self-respect. Expose her own wretchedness. Trade it for a shred of his sympathy and buy herself a little freedom.
In the end, Praeris had perfectly played the role of "Praeris" and achieved her goal.
This battle had cost her too much.
She drifted back to the Slytherin common room like a ghost and collapsed onto her bed. She lay there the entire afternoon, unable to move at all.
At the Slytherin table.
"Where's that one?" Malfoy asked suddenly.
Crabbe looked blank. "Who?"
"Our one-sickle-at-a-time young lady." Malfoy's tone was thoroughly mocking.
Millicent rolled her eyes. "Please. She just finds you annoying. Purely and simply."
Malfoy sneered. "Oh, Bulstrode, you haven't gone and lost her again, have you? We'd better go find Marcus to fish her out!"
Millicent finally understood why Praeris found Malfoy so exhausting. Who went around dredging up old scores every single day?
Malfoy was like a housewife ten years into a marriage who still brooded over the one year her husband forgot Valentine's Day chocolates.
"She's not feeling well," Millicent said, not bothering with anything else. "She's lying down in the dormitory. Don't worry, no troll is going to come bursting out of it."
Millicent packed up some bread and headed back. When she reached the dormitory, Praeris was in exactly the same position she had been in that afternoon. She had not moved an inch.
"Prae, are you alright?" Millicent said, worry creeping into her voice. "I brought you some pound cake and milk. Do you want any?"
Praeris had just woken up. Her head felt heavy and throbbed with a dull ache. Her face felt dry and tight.
The aftermath was worse than she had expected. She had pushed a little too hard. It seemed she had cried at some point, she just had no memory of it.
"I don't want to eat anything." She paused. Millicent would worry. "Just give me the milk."
Praeris drank the milk and sank back into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
Two days later, the end-of-year feast arrived.
Marcus was delighted. Potter had missed the final Quidditch match, and Ravenclaw had absolutely routed Gryffindor. Then there was the hundred-and-fifty-point deduction on top of that.
Slytherin was far ahead, a hundred and eighty points clear of last-place Gryffindor. The Great Hall was already draped in Slytherin banners and green-and-silver decorations.
"This is what Slytherin deserves," Malfoy said, chin raised. "Even if Potter had played. Even if Gryffindor had beaten Ravenclaw. We still would not have lost. Not to mention he might not have won anyway, I'll say it plainly, his earlier wins were pure luck."
Pansy nodded along. "Draco's right. Our victory was inevitable. Prince, can you please stop looking like a corpse? We didn't lose."
Praeris did not care what Pansy said. She did not care what most people said. At the moment, aside from the people who actually knew who she was, no one had the power to hurt her.
Had Professor Snape hurt her? Perhaps not. Even though performing that day had made her feel so wretched and sick she'd wanted to crawl out of her own skin, she genuinely did not want to expose her past in front of anyone. It felt like having her skin peeled open. Her heart pulled out for strangers to examine.
She was an orphan. She had painful memories. None of that was false. But all of it was in the past. And she could even use those things, leverage them, to help herself escape.
Everything that had ever happened to her should, or at least could, be made to serve her present.
Then the Great Hall went quiet. Every head turned in one direction.
Harry Potter had arrived.
He walked in and the room stilled, the way a room only stills for someone standing in a spotlight they were born for.
The Slytherins went quiet for a beat, then erupted back into noise, trading every rumor and legend attached to Potter's name.
"It really does make you envious," Millicent said quietly. "He just stands there, and he's already a legend."
➤ Next: The Year-End Feast