The Beginning
Blaise hurried out of the room clutching his forearm. He pushed past the cloaked figures absently, no longer caring about anything but the need to get home now that he had been ‘dismissed’.
“Very well, Zabini,” the hiss echoed around the room, “You may leave now.”
He pushed past a particularly thin-looking Death Eater, trying hard to concentrate on anything, anything but the singeing, searing pain. He allowed his eyes to hover around the room and tried to take in his surroundings. It was no use.
“No contact at all…you must not be suspected."
He stumbled on a rock on the floor of the dark tunnel. Steadying himself against the wall of the tunnel he kept walking, eyes firmly planted on the ground that he could not see. Swallowing hard, Blaise tried to remember his mother’s words before she had let him go. Soothing, calm words. But all he could recall was that sickening phrase from their argument.
“Master is a bitter word to say." It echoed through his head again and again. And all he could see before him was the disgusting earth. He could still smell the filthy mud-stained floor.
“Yes, my Lord,” he spoke into the earth through clenched teeth.
Blaise halted abruptly as the foul taste filled his mouth. Throbbing arm forgotten, he stepped back from the mess and tried to hold back the remaining contents of his stomach to no avail. He spat on the floor quickly trying to clean the taste out and stepped over the mess in a hurry. But then again the disgusting taste had nothing to do with his breakfast in the first place.
He finally felt the air lighten around him and lifted his gaze. The exit was not far ahead. He quickened his pace and walked through the door in a hurry, pushing past another one of them and completely ignoring the “guard” and the procedure that was supposed to be followed.
Paying absolutely no attention to the shouts he fixed his mind on his destination and tried to remember how long it had taken him to get here from the nearest safe apparition point on his way to – to this. He did notice the pair of feet that fell into step with his, at least that’s what he told himself afterwards. The words, however, caught him by surprise.
“Need help, Zabini?” he would recognize that drawl anywhere. Hell, no! His mind screamed at him with a newly awakened indignance. A pride that had chosen this bloody moment out of all that had happened tonight to protest. No, that wasn’t entirely true, but he didn’t have a reason to hold it back anymore. Not now. Not for him.
He stopped in his tracks and brought his eyes to the other boy’s deadened, haunted ones, resigned to the inevitable. He tried to come up with a way to answer. Ignoring him would mean that Blaise had been mistaken in offering his fellow Slytherin his help in the first place. Blaise had not been mistaken. The only things he ever did came after clear, careful calculation. He couldn’t have been mistaken.
But then again, admitting the truth behind his own echoed words would mean his pride. His lips curled into a wry, half-amused, half-bitter smile. Pride? It really was indecent to have any of that left by the time he got home. He looked down at it again. He looked down at the small black mark branded into his arm, the mark that bound him to a master. That’s what they were, he thought, cattle. Shaking his head a little to clear his mind he looked back up at the other boy.
“I’m in the same place you were last year…Draco,” he decided, “The same place.”
He was irritated to hear so much feeling behind his own words. Which just proved he needed something to help him regain his old collected demeanor, who better than his own favorite Malfoy?
Draco was shocked. Blaise could read it in his eyes. And rightly so, after all, it wasn’t everyday you witnessed such a – revelation from Slytherin’s Shadow as they called him. Deciding that the damage had already been done, Blaise lifted his right hand from its position on his left forearm and stretched it out in front of the boy in a gesture that was stranger to both of them.
Draco finally lifted his hand from his side and allowed Blaise to grasp it in his firm handshake. At that moment Blaise was certain that the other boy would never come to understand this voluntary shelving of pride on his part. He wasn’t entirely sure he understood it himself. But he never did something without being absolutely sure that he wanted to do it, whether he fully comprehended the reasons was a different matter altogether.
They began to walk again simultaneously, each avoiding the other’s gaze, but their feet falling into perfect step once more.
“You’re indebted to me now, you know, Zabini,” Draco finally broke the silence. Blaise chose to ignore the statement and kept on walking purposefully forward, already cursing himself in his mind. He could almost see the smirk on the other boy’s face.
“Which means you’ll have to pay up pretty soon,” Draco continued, his amusement now evident in his voice, “I want the Cup, Zabini, for Slytherin. I want you to kick Gryffindor arse.”
“What makes you think I can play, Malfoy,” Blaise answered.
“Please, Zabini, even you could slaughter them on that pitch- you think Potty’s going back? They’re nothing without him, Potty and his bloody fan club…”
“I can’t,” Blaise said nonchalantly, interrupting the other boy before he had a chance to go on and on about Potter, and his followers, and his elaborate cheating schemes that involved various Professors, “It would be too suspicious.”
“Suspicious! Zabini, you’ll be lucky if there’s seven Slytherins left his year, it would be suspicious if you didn’t play.”
It was amazing how they managed an entire conversation without once alluding to war, family, tasks, or any other serious topic for that matter. Not that Quidditch wouldn’t have been serious enough about a year ago.
Blaise soon found himself standing before the gates and staring at them absently. This was quite an interesting predicament. As if he needed it right now. He had resigned himself to having to explain in detail what he had gone through before being able to get his rest, but he had forgotten that he would have to go through it twice, and that he would have to choose whom to go see first. And then afterwards explain to the other one that he hadn’t meant anything by it at all.
Suddenly he threw his stifling cloak off and brought his fingers to his mouth emitting a long shrill whistle. It was a good thing Thunder was around this time, he had no idea what he would have done if he hadn’t heard the familiar beat of the horse’s hooves.
“Good boy,” he said mounting the black horse. He dug his hands into the soft, velvety mane as Thunder set off across the grassy fields. They could both wait.
He needed to feel the wind slapping his face once more. He needed to feel the freedom once more. Regrets and worries could not touch him when he was gliding across the green earth like the wind itself. Fear and hesitation could not plague him when his heart was beating in rhythm with Thunder’s hooves. But most of all, anger had no place in his soul as it was bared to the wind and the sun and the horse he was riding.
He had been doing this so long that he did not need to give orders or to steer the horse. In the short space of time that he had he and the horse were one. They flew across the fields and at that moment Blaise Zabini had no desire to be anywhere else in the world. At that moment he did not want greatness or glory or – anything.
