Theo was, as usual, observing the world from behind a book. Blaise knew that Theo did genuinely enjoy reading, and that there was something he was looking for in those books, but on many occasions he had caught Nott listening in to a conversation while pretending to read. This time, he looked like he was thinking. Blaise knew he would have much to think about. He walked right past Theo’s armchair and settled himself a few seats away from the other boy, taking out quills and parchment and pretending to work on Snape’s latest essay.
There was no reproach behind Theo’s gaze when their eyes met a half hour later. Blaise had decided that he would partner with Hannah Abbott in Dark Arts tomorrow and had written a short letter to his mother when Pansy came to sit next to him.
“I heard from Draco,” she said, as if Blaise had asked after him. Everyone in Slytherin house knew that she had been writing him a letter – possibly two – a day since she had arrived at Hogwarts to find that he was not here. Everyone also knew that Draco had never been genuinely interested in her, even before his family’s misfortunes began.
Blaise knew she was waiting for him to say something. Finally, she tired of waiting and thrust a piece of parchment under his nose.
“Read it!”
Dear Miss Parkinson,
I am very pleased to hear that you are doing so well at Hogwarts. You are a very intelligent young woman and your impeccable lineage only does you credit.
As for myself I am doing my best to regain the Dark Lord’s favor, just like your father is. I hope that we may meet soon. Write and tell me the date of your next Hogsmeade trip so that I can come to visit.
Yours respectfully,
Draco Malfoy
“Respectfully!” Pansy hissed, her voice rising with every syllable. “Doing well? When in blazes did I say I was doing well? This isn’t Draco, Blaise, what’s happened to him? Who’s writing this?”
“Pansy,” Blaise said, wishing she would keep her voice down. “Draco’s changed and-”
Pansy shook her head a little madly now. “We both know that Draco never ‘respected’ me and never will…who wrote this? Should I go?”
Blaise began to pack his books and parchment haphazardly into his bag. “Come with me, Pansy, we need to talk.”
She followed him all the way down to the dormitories and then stopped at the door. “Are you mad, Zabini?”
She looked a little scared and the image of her Imperiused face flashed before him. Blaise shook his head to clear it.
“Parkinson, you’re the one who asked me for advice and it was your ridiculously shrill voice that made it necessary to talk in private.”
“Your mother killed nine husbands-”
Blaise cut her off. “Seven, actually. Look, Parkinson, I’m even less interested in you than Draco was. You’re the last person in this castle that I have any desire of touching.”
“Who said anything about touching? And you share a dormitory with Goyle.” The last sentence was said in a whisper, as if saying it aloud made her nightmares more likely to come true. It was only then that Blaise understood how genuinely terrified she was.
“Fine,” he said, giving up. “Just go back to your own dormitory and I’ll try to talk to you on the grounds somewhere tomorrow or in Binns’ class.”
She did not seem to want to go back to the common room either. Blaise felt like an idiot, standing there, the door to the seventh year dormitory half-open, not knowing what to do.
Suddenly, as Theo approached down the hallway he understood what Snape had meant when he had spoken of each boy’s “abilities”.
Theo placed a gentle hand on Pansy’s shoulder and guided her into the dormitory, locking and warding the door against Goyle very loudly although Blaise knew he was excellent at non-verbal spells. Settling himself comfortably into the armchair that had replaced Draco’s bed, he opened his book and began to read as if nothing unusual was happening. Strangely enough, his presence had a calming effect on Pansy, who slid into a sitting position, with her back pressed against the cool dungeon wall.
Blaise refrained from pointing out that this position made her more vulnerable than she would have been if she had been sitting at one of the writing desks.
“Don’t go,” he said, taking a leaf from Theo’s book and pretending that their conversation had not been interrupted at all. “It must have been Draco’s mother who wrote that letter, but not of her own free will.”
“I know,” she breathed, “but what am I supposed to do. I have to write back, I’ve been writing everyday and I can’t just stop now when he’s actually replied.”
Blaise did not have an answer to this. It was clear that someone, probably the Dark Lord, had a plan for Pansy, and from the way her life had been going lately he had to conclude that its outcome would not be pleasant for her. At least she seemed calmer now.
“How does he do that?” she asked suddenly.
“Hmmm?”
“Theo, how does he do that calming thing?”
Blaise was brought out of his thoughts with a jerk. He had never really thought that it was magic; he had just assumed that Theo’s personality gave him a calming presence. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.
Having found another topic of conversation Pansy did not seem inclined to let it go. “People are starting to talk, you know. The Carrows won’t give him detention, but it’s becoming obvious that he’s keeping that Bones girl away from Goyle… and even when he’s paired with someone else he doesn’t really try.”
“He’s bored by it,” Blaise tried to sound nonchalant. “Theo’s intelligent, Pansy, and the Carrows’ brand of brute force and torture aren’t enough to keep him engaged.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “No, it’s more than that. People are saying he’s soft – that he might as well be a Hufflepuff. Millicent thinks he’s in love with Bones and Daphne told me that his mothe-”
A loud bang silenced Pansy as Theo thrust his book to the ground. “Don’t repeat it, Pansy, just don’t!”
“You heard her?”
“Yes,” Theo said. “Don’t.”
There was an awkward silence in which Pansy forced her attention back to Blaise. He knew how much of an effort that was for prying Pansy.
“What should I do?”
“The Hogsmeade weekend isn’t for another couple of weeks,” he said, an idea beginning to form in his mind. “Just write back to Draco and act naturally – I mean make it look like you’re excited and don’t let your nervousness come through. We’ll think of something by then.”
Pansy nodded solemnly and she squeezed his hand.
“Thanks, Blaise.”
The world really had become a much more frightening and confusing place all of a sudden. Pansy had always been weak, but he had never expected to see her so frightened, and certainly not thankful. She stood to leave and Blaise indicated to Theo that he should undo the wards on the door, although he was perfectly capable of undoing them himself.
He watched the two as they stood side by side before the door. It seemed to Blaise that Theo was in even more trouble than Pansy and, if he played it right, their problems could be solved in one move. “Put those wards back up, mate.”
Theo began to do it without question. “Think locking Crabbe and Goyle out for a night might help my image?”
“Not really,” Blaise said, “but the memory charm I’m going to teach you will. Getting rid of them for a night is just an added benefit.”
“Memory charm?”
“For Pansy,” Blaise explained, rolling up his sleeves and getting his wand out.
“Whatever it is that you want me to appear to have done this time I’m going to have to actually live up to it.”
“We’ll work on that, too, when the time comes.”
They spent a half hour practicing the incantation and wand movements for a memory charm before Theo declared that they needed something living to practice on. He waved his wand and summoned a House Elf from the kitchens.
Blaise did not object – how could he? He fought to keep the rising feeling of nausea that was threatening to engulf him as he watched Theo practice the charm on the tiny creature.
“It’s not working,” Theo said in frustration minutes, or hours, or agonizing years later. Blaise stepped forward, holding his wand out, working to calm his breathing. Suddenly, he was nine again and his mother was staring down at him, furious.
Blaise shook in fear, rooted to the spot. He offered Mother’s wand back to her, wishing the ground could swallow him whole. He had seen her turn gigantic, powerful men into pathetic sobbing creatures. And now her wand was pointing at him. He was not sure if even stealing her wand made him deserve the pain she was going to make him feel.
Blaise shrunk in on himself and ducked his head, shamefully, waiting for the blow. She made him wait, and wait, and wait, and then her hand was under his chin and she was lifting his eyes up to hers. He tried to shrink from that gaze, but she held him firmly in place.
“Heal it!” she ordered.
“Wh-what?” Blaise was too shocked to be afraid now. He didn’t have a clear idea of how he had brought the house elf to this state in the first place. All he knew was that he had wanted to punish the stupid thing for not following his orders properly and ruining his new robes…and then he had his mother’s wand…and then he got carried away, and now… The House Elf was crying in pain, its face bruised and pimpled, a disgusting … something oozing out of the disfiguring boils he had given it.
“I’m not supposed to do magic when I haven’t been to Hogwarts yet,” he tried.
Aveline Zabini smirked back at him, reminding him why he should be afraid. “But you already have, my darling. Don’t worry; I won’t let the Azkaban guards take you away until you’ve finished healing the House Elf. You are also to do all the House Elf’s chores, and if you do something wrong you are to punish yourself or else I will do it for you with this powerful wand.”
“Blaise!” a distantly familiar voice was shaking him, but Blaise was trapped in that other world. He was trapped in his fear and pain. The disgusting taste of leftovers mixed with the soot and grease and dirt that had covered his hands after hours of House Elf work was still under his tongue. The growing desperation was still a part of him, as if even now after all these years the House Elf was lying before him, crying out in pain. The hot tears that flowed down his face could only be real.
Blaise knew that it was Theo who put his arms around him and guided him to his bed, but this truth was mingled with the memory of his Mother’s warm embrace.
“Never, ever use your power, or even threaten to use your power, on a creature that is weaker than you. Never, ever hurt someone that can’t defend themselves.”
He would never forget those words. Or the relief and happiness that had flooded him as she held his small hand in his large one and, together, healed the house-elf.
Blaise slowly came back to the present, becoming more and more aware of the soft pillow underneath his head and of Nott’s calming presence as he sat by his bedside reading another one of his books.
Eventually, when he was sure of himself, when he knew he would be strong enough to make some stupid excuse up and make it look real, he sat up. “I-”
“My mother was perfect.” Theo said shortly. “She was everything. He – my father – killed her because she preferred healing people to hurting them – even Muggles. I was very young. He didn’t know, but I saw him do it.”
Blaise closed his eyes. Theo – ever mysterious and removed – was offering this secret to him, because he had witnessed Blaise’s own weakness. Pansy and her gossiping friends were wrong. Theo Nott shouldn’t be in Hufflepuff, he should have been in bloody Gryffindor, opening up to a Slytherin, a Death Eater who was terrible at Occlumency. When he opened his eyes Blaise understood that what had passed between them had changed everything. He also understood that neither of them would speak of it out loud.
“Our gifts arrived a few minutes ago,” Theo said, throwing him a package. “I wanted to finish the chapter on combining spells and hexes before opening mine.”
Blaise grinned. “And are you finished now?”
They tore the seals open simultaneously. Something shiny dropped into Blaise lap. He lifted the delicate chain and examined the gold Slytherin snake that hung from it. Pushing it into a drawer Blaise turned to read the letter which expressed the Dark Lord’s pleasure with him and the certainty that he would do well in his next mission. It also said that a large sum of money had been deposited into his vault at Gringotts and that he would be moving into a new, more private dormitory the following morning.
Blaise frowned down at the words, wondering what this could mean. These gifts were obviously a test or trap of some sort, but he wasn’t sure how to interpret them.
“Is your broom fast?” Theo suddenly asked.
Blaise turned a puzzled face up to meet his friend’s gaze,
“Sure, international standard racing broom, why?”
“I’ve just been sent the most expensive broom on the market… apparently it’s waiting in the changing rooms… I think Quidditch is back on the Hogwarts menu, and somehow I don’t think I’m going to enjoy it.”
“Are you being moved to a new dormitory as well?” Blaise asked.
Theo shook his head. “But apparently I have a House Elf at my disposal now.”
