Adamson
The boy was not as quick as his circumstances required. Blaise knew it must mean that he was caught pretty tight in that vicious web now. The boy that strode into the empty classroom with wide-open, haunted eyes was just another Draco. Just another rich, pureblooded boy whose father wanted the perfect heir. Sometimes, Blaise felt the tiniest bit lucky that he didn’t even have a father.
The door was locked tight with a wave of his wand and Blaise turned his attention to the frightened boy. He levitated the sack with a swish and a flick and turned it upside down spilling the contents. A quick glance at the cover of the Transfiguration text before turning to the raised wand was all he needed to find out the boy’s first name. James.
Turning his own wand towards the boy Blaise attacked with a ruthlessness that even he was surprised at. James was on the ground in mere seconds, his hair green, his shoulder scratched and bleeding, and his bare left forearm exposed. That was all Blaise need to know so he left the room quickly and silently before taking off the Chameleon charm. It had worked very well in the dark of the unused classroom.
The boy was not marked, but it was clear he would soon be either Marked or dead. Blaise would need to watch that one. If there was another Death Eater in the school he knew that one of their main duties would be to watch Blaise.
………
Strangely enough, it wasn’t his first meeting with the Dark Lord or his increasing worry about Celeste that threatened to make him crack. It was the first Career Training exam. Numbers, Blaise decided, were evil inventions that Muggles used to drive each other mad. As he exited the classroom there was only one thought in his mind. He had to make sure the war ended soon, so that he wouldn’t have to go through much more of this. And he had more work from this stupid Career Training teacher (which wasn’t a teacher at all, but a pale-faced Gringott’s employee who had probably never seen the light of day since he started his calculations) than from all the rest of his classes put together.
The great hall was calm and comfortable. There were only sixth and seventh years here and they ate their dinners in relative silence. Longbottom was beaming and many of the Ravnclaws and Hufflepuffs seemed overjoyed. A few, like Adamson, wore tired frowns. Blaise cursed the boy in his mind, if he didn’t stop being obvious he would be suspected by one of the teachers, and then he wouldn’t last long.
Ginevra Weasely wore an irritated look as she stabbed at her food and gulped it down quickly. Apparently, the sight of so many happy people who thought they had found their place in life didn’t sit well with her either. She left the Great Hall quickly and Blaise took out his notebook to talk to Celeste. She would have just finished washing the dishes and putting the little Muggle children to bed now. He wondered if she would spend the next few hours studying like he knew he should.
Listen, Blaise, I don’t want you to be angry but I really need to know things….
Deciding that it was finally time for an explanation, although he really didn’t know what there was left to explain that was her business, he wrote “fine” and picked his things up to go to the library.
It turned out that she wanted to know more about Draco and his claim that the boy was his ‘friend’. Blaise’s face relaxed and he explained to the girl, as shortly as possible, that Draco was stuck between not being able to kill, living up to expectations, and protecting his mother from harm. He smiled as he read her frank response. She thought he was lucky to have a strong mother and a more morally acceptable task. The girl could find comfort and cheer in the strangest of things.
He had to end the conversation, though, when she told him that she was doing her ‘maths’ homework and began rambling about numbers and asking him if he had ever done problems like these in his school. Not today.
There were many students in the library tonight and he noticed the Weasel sitting at a table and conversing with Longbottom. He watched her as she wrote something up and then thanked the blundering boy with a big smile. Her fiery eyes and the letter in her hand told him that he needed to get to his dormitory before she tried that silly letter trick again. He had no doubt in his mind that she had found something out, something important enough to warrant another letter.
Her letter wasn’t the only one that arrived that night. An envelope with a very familiar seal was sitting waiting for him on his bed. He broke it open and a small chill ran up his spine as the small Dark Mark was ripped in half. It had only three words on it:
Catch Adamson now!
Blaise was not fool enough to waste a second. He strode purposefully out of the room and headed for the Hufflepuff Common Room Entrance. The boy fell at his feet when he found him before the Common Room door.
“Please,” he begged pathetically, breathlessly, “Please, you don’t understand how difficult this is…please, they killed my mother and…”
Blaise hoisted the bleeding boy up and slammed him against the wall. There was only one thing to do if he wanted to get himself out of this mess, and the boy’s sorry self-pity wasn’t going to stop him. He pulled his left sleeve up and exposed the dreaded Mark.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself you sorry excuse for a man!” Blaise spoke in a low, threatening voice, “Take the damn ring you snuck to Hogsmeade to buy and get in that Common Room. You pull her out of there by her hair if you have to and get her safely to the Gryffindor Tower, and Ginger will take care of you. Do you hear me? I’ll be watching you, and in fifteen minutes your chance is over and you’re both as good as dead at the Dark Lord’s feet.”
The boy didn’t stop to whimper now. He rushed into the Hufflepuff Common room, which Blaise had blasted open. It took him exactly ten minutes to convince his Mudblood sweetheart to follow him to safety and get up to the Gryffindor Common Room. Only another two minutes for Ginevra Weasley to get them to the Headmistress’s office. She was kicked out soon enough and told to make haste for the Gryffindor Common Room before anyone else knew she was involved.
Blaise knew from the nod of James’ head before he went in and Ginny’s small smile that his name would not be mentioned to the Headmistress or anyone else, at least not yet. So he took the envelope out of his pocket again and tipped it up dropping the small Portkey into his open palm.
