Taboo
By MorganRay
A Proud Hufflepuff

“It's kind of fun to do the impossible.”
~ Walt Disney ~

The sweet smell of cinnamon and the fresh, fragrant scent of pines mingled together in a little corner of the crowded room. A tiny Christmas tree was decorated with silver garland and swollen, bulbous ornaments. Next to it stood a twisting, bronze metal stand that supported three huge candles, which burned a cinnamon aroma that would’ve appealed to almost anyone. However, Blaise Zabini found the odor noxious, but a corner was a convenient place to hide.


‘I can’t believe this isn’t over,’ Blaise moaned mentally as he took another sip of fruit punch from the colorful glass decorated with holly and ornately wrapped presents. Blaise personally was under the impression Slughorn should’ve forgone the flamboyant cups and hired real entertainment. ‘What a great idea, Blaise, coming to Slughorn’s Christmas party,’ Blaise chided himself while he nibbled on the last of a soft, gooey ginger cookie.


The lanky, mocha skinned boy skulked in the corner, which kept him out of the passing glance of several groups of famous people strutting around the room. ‘I’ve seen them at my mum’s little galas. They’re just peacocks without feathers sticking out of their butts,’ Blaise thought dully as he tilted his head forward to allow some of the curly, raven tresses of hair to obscure him from someone his mum knew.


‘Did she teach you any good tricks?’ Pansy Parkinson mockingly inquired in the common room several days ago. Blaise scowled at the comment because he knew his mother’s reputation.


‘The princess of Slytherin’ was a title Pansy personally adopted for herself, but Blaise found it annoying. ‘Her family is broke, no prestige at all,’ Blaise recalled how the Parkinson family had squandered their inheritance. ‘The only throne she sits on is the one the house elves clean every night.’


‘Who’s the man of the week?’ Nott goaded Blaise constantly, too, trying to vex him into saying any piece of gossip that would attract people like maggots to raw meat. ‘He won’t get that satisfaction from me,’ Blaise steeled his mind against the smoldering anger toward his own housemates. However, in the shut up recesses of his mind, he loathed who his mother was.


‘Because she indirectly killed people?’ Blaise asked himself. ‘No, because she sleeps around with any man wanting pleasure who has galleons. It just so happens she’s married a couple,’ Blaise scornfully thought his mother.


‘Like your father,’ the thought crept unbidden into Blaise’s mind. ‘She killed him, too, you know, just to get some money,’ his mind hissed, and Blaise tried to block that thought, but his twisting innards told him the truth. ‘She got both of you a comfortable life at his expense,’ his conscious plagued him with these caustic thoughts.


‘At least I’m well off, now,’ Blaise tried to console himself, but it failed. ‘Draco was well off until recently,’ Blaise reminded himself as he remembered how he’d heard how the Malfoy family lost all their fortune recently. Draco’s father landed himself in Azkaban, and Draco’s influence and princely presence slowly diminished in the Slytherin house.


‘Maybe you’re finally seeing through that cocky bloke,’ Blaise reassured himself. ‘He’s just jealous of me, now, because Slughorn doesn’t favor him.’


‘What a fat moron,’ Draco grumbled about Slughorn after one of their first potion lessons. ‘I can’t believe he’s buying into Potter. He doesn’t realize who I am.’


‘Who you were, Draco,’ Blaise told himself as he walked back over to the punch bowl while no one approached the table. He dipped the glass ladle below the fuchsia ice-cream foam on the surface and filled the ladle with cranberry and raspberry flavored punch that bubbled like champagne.


‘They’re all jealous because they couldn’t come to this amazing party,’ Blaise thought sarcastically and grinned as he retreated back to his post in the corner.


‘You know, Blaise, I’ve been known to be a great conversationalist,’ Pansy shamelessly plugged for an invitation. ‘You’ve grown on me recently, and I heard you’re doing amazing in Potions this year.’


‘I’m not taking anyone,’ Blaise stiffly told Pansy, and her entire face wrinkled up in anger and frustration, Blaise thought she looked so much like a pug she’d start barking. The news washed through the Slytherin house in a day like a tidal wave that the only Slytherin that got an invitation to Slughorn’s over-hyped Christmas party thought himself too high and mighty to take a date.


‘Maybe he wanted to ask a guy,’ Blaise overheard Harper, the Slytherin Seeker, commenting to the Slytherin Quidditch team as they ambled toward practice last week.


‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted to do,’ Blaise thought blandly and rolled his eyes, even now, at that ridiculous comment. ‘What did I do to deserve this ridicule?’


‘You were born to her,’ that irksome voice in his mind murmured from the barred doors of his suppressed thoughts.


‘Just a little bit longer, and this will be over, and they’ll still be jealous,’ Blaise reassured himself as he watched a group of Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor students giggling and chatting gaily as they gorged themselves at the desert table before herding toward another part of the room. ‘The big attraction of the night, livestock grazing.’


‘At least this tree doesn’t talk,’ Blaise thought as he stared over at the tree that practically had become his date. He considered holding one of the tree’s branches like a hand. ‘Too juvenile,’ he decided, but a smirk crept into his eyes.


‘Maybe some more food, but no,’ Blaise mentally moaned as he watched a girl with thick, amber ringlets dart through the crowd towards the desert table. Hermione Granger seemed to sniff the air for a moment, as if trying to sense a predator nearby. ‘It does look like she’s being hunted,’ Blaise mused.


‘She’s sweating this one out. Good,’ Blaise thought spitefully of how Hermione constantly outshone him in every class. In Potions, it stung particularly hard, but the way she stole the spotlight in Arithmancy touched a sore nerve for Blaise, too. ‘Just a little rabbit being hunted by a fox,’ Blaise thought and felt his spirits lift at the idea of Hermione with rabbit ears.


Then, she snapped her head up and her huge, frantic gaze locked Blaise’s scornful stare. She’d caught him staring and a sudden feeling of nakedness overcame Blaise. Hermione seized the moment and scanned the room before darting over to the convenient niche behind the Christmas tree.


“What?” Blaise hissed. The shock caused his jaw to drop, so he looked like a frog trying to catch bugs.


“Stand in front of me,” Hermione muttered as she squirmed behind Blaise, while he stood immobile as if Hermione had shouted ‘Stupefy!’


“What?” Blaise seethed under his breath again as he regained his composure. “Why would I do that?”


“A minute or two, and I’ll go away,” Hermione mumbled as she shuffled half her body between the thorny pine needles and the rough, stone wall. All the while, she tugged as Blaise’s robes and tried to maneuver him in front of her like a circus performer walking the tightrope. If she failed now, Blaise realized, her pursuer would find her.


‘Free entertainment,’ Blaise mused as he tried to tug away from Hermione’s grasping as she grunted like a pregnant cow to squeeze behind the tree and coerce Blaise into moving. Suddenly, Hermione’s struggling ceased, and she hunkered down to stay concealed. Blaise eagerly scanned the room, ready to trumpet out the call where Hermione was, but his voice faltered the instant he saw her stalker.


‘Cormac McLaggen,’ Blaise processed this truth as he watched McLaggen elbow his hulking form through the crowd to the refreshment table. Blaise felt the very pit of his stomach burn and realized he was torn between helping the ogre McLaggen and humiliating the know-it-all Hermione.


As he watched McLaggen pile a tower of cookies onto a plate, Blaise remembered the first time he’d seen him. ‘It was at a banquet,’ Blaise recalled as McLaggen smashed an entire cookie into his mouth. ‘He ate like that then, too.’


The scene materialized in Blaise’s mind. It had been the week during vacation where his mum toted him along to visit her new flame, Tiberius, who was McLaggen’s uncle, and some other well-to-do wizards. The sprawling Welsh countryside around the vast manor where they’d spent the week couldn’t have been more picturesque, but Blaise recalled he’d been embittered as he’d walked into the dining room with it’s full wall windows and cherry paneling for the first time during the stay. He’d sat across from McLaggen and beside his mum at the first dinner, where proper conversation was the norm, but Blaise remembered he didn’t say much that evening.


The dining room had reminded Blaise of one of the huge halls where kings and knights would feast during medieval times. In fact it was so spacious that only the Great Hall could have surpassed its magnitude. The table looked made of white marble, and Blaise spent most of the evening suppressing his boredom and revulsion at his mum’s flirting with Tiberius.


After the initial meal, Blaise sunk farther into boredom, much like at the Christmas party. He’d dismissed himself to his room, which required going up several flights of stairs until he came to the highest floor in the building that was habitable. As Blaise ambled up the window staircase with its polished, oak banister, he’d slowly become aware of McLaggen trudging along behind him.


‘You mum sure enjoyed my uncle’s company. What a coincidence they have rooms beside each other,’ McLaggen remarked as he enlarged his steps and caught up to Blaise. Blaise knew what McLaggen’s comment meant immediately and steeled his mind against the insults he thought would come his way. However, he hadn’t been fully prepared for McLaggen’s type of abuse.


‘She can do what she wants,’ Blaise replied coolly. The boys kept walking until they reached the landing, but all Blaise remembered was how his gut began to smolder and burn while in McLaggen’s presence.


Then, McLaggen remarked smoothly, ‘Is it true she catered to some Mudblood trolley boy last week on the Knight Bus?’


‘He’d have more class than your uncle,’ Blaise spat, unable to control himself. Then, McLaggen yanked Blaise’s shirt collar and unmercifully pinned him against the wall. Blaise remembered flushing in frustration and embarrassment as he fought to free himself from McLaggen’s grasp.


‘Let me tell you something,’ McLaggen growled as he gave Blaise another slam against the wall. ‘My family has real connections with really important people. I’ve got more wealth and power than you’ve got in your little, tiny, shriveled testicles,’ Cormac mocked Blaise, who was unable to reach his wand and couldn’t perform a non-verbal spell.


‘My uncle isn’t stupid enough to marry your tramp mother. He’ll use her then pitch her, and you two get a free stay at our manor out of it, which is a pretty good deal for wizarding trash,’ McLaggen told Blaise as he raised him before letting him drop to the stairs. Blaise toppled down several steps before catching himself.


He remembered staring up at McLaggen’s sneering face through his mess of curly, ebony locks. The image of McLaggen taunting him seared a tender, vulnerable side of him, and it certainly didn’t help that McLaggen’s house happened to be Gryffindor.


‘She came with McLaggen,’ Blaise realized as the boy surveyed the surrounding area after liberally helping himself to more food and drink. For the first time, he felt a prick of pity for Hermione Granger. Blaise adverted his gaze in the opposite direction when McLaggen’s eyes fell upon him. Soon, McLaggen left the refreshment table and jostled his way through the elbow room only crowd.


“Nice date,” Blaise muttered under his breath so only Hermione could hear him. “Real class act.”


“Just don’t talk,” Hermione hissed as she stood up again and disentangled herself from the scratching tree branches. The little pine leaned, threatening to drop its festive fruit all over the floor. Blaise lunged and caught the tottering tree while Hermione extracted herself completely from its grasp. “I’m making a run for it.”


“You’ll never make it,” Blaise whispered matter-of-factly.


“Why not?” Hermione asked under her breath as she kept herself hidden behind Blaise while surveying the crowded room. Blaise, however, kept shifting his weight and taking a step to one side, and then another, making it difficult for Hermione to spot a potential threat.


“Stop that,” she seethed under her breath before acting reluctantly, “why won’t I make it?”


“Some one will point you out, and you’ll never get to your dorm before you’re caught,” Blaise replied in a silky voice as he continued to sway like he was onboard a ship during a storm.


“I’ll move fast,” Hermione hissed as she tensed herself to run.


“You’ll never make it out of the dungeons,” Blaise challenged Hermione, who paused for a moment before striding towards the door.


“I’ll take the quickest route, unless there’s a better way?” Hermione asked tentatively as she swept the room over with her eyes again. ‘Should I tell her?’ Blaise wondered as he stopped moving to peer over his shoulder at the humbled Hermione. ‘She doesn’t have all the answers now, does she? I could let him catch her, let her figure her way out of this one, but either way, I’ve helped someone from Gryffindor.’


“Everyone knows the main dungeons hallways,” Blaise continued hesitantly. “If . . . if you get out of the main halls . . . I’ll take you the rest of the way.”


“Can’t you just tell me how to go?” Hermione moaned at the thought of going anywhere with Blaise.


“You wouldn’t know what I was talking about,” he told her tersely as he scanned the room, also getting ready to bolt for the exit.


“Try me,” Hermione challenged in a steely voice.


“Not today,” Blaise grumbled as he yanked Hermione’s wrist. He didn’t need to, however, because she darted towards the door ahead of him, anxious to rid herself of the crowd. Hermione now drug Blaise along through the mob, and fought the compulsion to release her wrist from his grasp. However, because of the swarming, jostling crowd, he realized he needed to tighten his grip.


“Right,” Blaise hissed in Hermione’s ear as he drew level with her when they exited the door. Blaise breathed deeply of the cool air outside the humid, cramped room. ‘That smells so great,’ he thought as he finally let go of Hermione’s arm and turned right.


“Left takes us out,” Hermione muttered in Blaise’s ear as he led her towards a fork in the hallway. “You’re taking me deeper into the dungeons.”


“I told you, it’s indirect, and nobody else will be down here tonight,” Blaise assured Hermione. ‘If she’d just quite questioning me, this would be great,’ he thought as they went to the right and then down several steps. The air became chilly as they entered the smaller corridor, and only a couple torches lined the walls. They cast a pall light across the pair as they journeyed forward in silence.


‘One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .six,’ Blasie counted the number of doors on his right mentally until he tugged open the sixth heavy, rough wooden door. The air that flowed out of the unused classroom brought a dampness with it that made Hermione shiver.


“How do you know this?” Hermione asked rigidly. ‘Why did I do this?’ he asked himself as he pulled out his wand and thought ‘Lumos.’ An instant later, Hermione’s wand cast another flickering white light into the shadows of the room, revealing a couple desks and dusty, barren shelves.


“I know you’ve sneaked around with Potter,” Blaise jibed Hermione. She stalked ahead of him and into the center of the damp room and held her wand up in the air to illuminate more of the darkness.


“Do you know where you’re going or not?” Hermione asked tartly. “It’s none of your business what I do and don’t do.”


“You hid behind me,” Blaise replied coolly as he walked over to one of the dusty shelves. He tapped the third shelf three times with his wand and watched the bottom three shelves slide away to reveal a crawl space that looked like a hole into the abyss.


“McLaggen wouldn’t have suspected me with a Slytherin,” Hermione replied stiffly as she stuck her wand into the tunnel, which was big enough for one person to crawl through at a time. “How did you find this?”


“I didn’t find this one,” Blaise responded as he got down on his knees and squeezed into the tiny hole in the wall. “Go in backwards and seal the entrance by tapping the shelf three times.”


“Good. I get to crawl backwards,” Hermione responded sourly as she slid, feet first, into the hole. She tapped the edge of the shelf three times and quickly pulled her arm and wand towards herself while the entrance slammed shut.


Blaise began to inch along with his wand held in his right hand. ‘At least I’m not back at that party,’ Blaise thought as he heard Hermione cough. ‘There is a lot of dust down here,’ Blaise realized as he thought of how dirty his robes were going to get from all this. ‘I’ll have to clean them before I see anyone else, or who knows what they’ll think.’


“How far?” Hermione asked in a strained voice. ‘Keep calm,’ Blaise told himself as he felt his insides simmer at the sound of Hermione’s irritating questions. He resolutely crawled along until he saw the end of the tunnel. He tapped his wand against the stone block in front of him three times, which moved it and let in a rush of frigid air.


“Cold,” Hermione mumbled as she climbed out after Blaise. She gasped as she looked around the small, damp room. The frail light from her wand illuminated sharp, glistening metal apexes like gleaming peaks in a mountain of shadow. “This is an actual torture chamber, isn’t it?”


“Yeah,” Blaise responded blandly as he turned and tapped the large stone into its rightful place. Hermione gazed around cautiously at the various pairs of shackles hanging on the wall, secretly glad there were no skeletons. “This is one of the old dungeons in the bottom of the castle,” Blaise continued to inform her as he ambled toward the daunting metal door that looked like it could’ve caged a troll.


“Can we get out? I read they locked off this part of the castle,” Hermione asked apprehensively as she eyed a huge mace that sat in the corner.


“Yeah,” Blaise told her nonchalantly as he muttered, “Alohomora! ”


The door creaked as it swung open on its hinges, and a shiver danced down Hermione’s spine. Blaise stepped over the threshold into the hallway. “Coming?” Blaise said, and his breath formed a hazy cloud in front of is face while he waited for Hermione.


“I just didn’t think you could get down here,” Hermione replied as she rubbed her arms with her hands to create friction so her body might stop shaking from the chilliness. “By the way, you didn’t say how you figured out to get into a restricted section of the school.”


“Harper and Montague found the passage in the classroom last year,” Blaise responded mildly while he trudged through the underground corridor, which was considerably more narrow than the hallways in the rest of the school. ‘I still get a bit claustrophobic down here,’ Blaise realized irritably. The hallway was too narrow for two people to walk side by side. ‘Tonight, that works, because I don’t have to walk with her,’ Blaise told himself as he reached a dungeon door that was already propped slightly ajar.


“Last year, did they? Funny thing that the Inquisitorial Squad didn’t come breathing down their necks,” Hermione responded caustically.


“So, how is the Forbidden Forest?” Blaise dodged Hermione’s verbal bullet casually as he stepped into the other cell, whose centerpiece was an Iron Maiden. Hermione paused while the pale wand light cast a ghostly effigy over the still glistening spikes.


“Let’s go,” Hermione’s voice steadied, but she’d lost her bravado. ‘Good,’ Blaise thought smugly as he chose to walk right beside the Iron Maiden as he strode to the other side of the room. With only three lazy taps against the wall, the enormous stones rearranged themselves to reveal a steep staircase.


“Let’s go,” Blaise mocked Hermione’s last anxious words as he began to climb. With his wand outstretched into the unknown darkness, Blaise braced himself against the clammy walls with his other hand. His fingers groped the slimy, putrid mold growing across the rough contours of the stone. ‘The surface is coming soon,’ Blaise told himself as he breathed in the rancid air in this tunnel.


“Who found this last year?” Hermione muttered as she tried not to retch on the stale air.


“I did,” Blaise responded while he exhaled, trying to conserve the air he had to hold in his lungs.


“Great place,” Hermione grumbled. ‘It was quite a find,’ Blaise mentally fumed at Hermione’s insult. ‘I found this before Harper or Montague found their precious crawl hole,’ Blaise reminded himself mostly to soothe his ego, which Hermione liberally chiseled with her verbal pick ax.


“Here,” Blaise told Hermione as he tapped the wall five times. The smaller bricks crunched and gnashed against each other to form another opening, and fresh, air, uncontaminated with mold, met Blaise’s sweaty face. Hermione inhaled in one gasping breath as if she’d been under water, and Blaise walked into the empty classroom.


“Tap the wall five times,” Blaise commanded Hermione as he wiped his face with the grimy sleeve of his robe. “Scourgify, ” Blaise muttered as he swiped his wand across his clothes and face.


“Scourgify” Hermione repeated the spell so the two of them appeared to have just strolled down a hallway instead of finagling through a dungeon labyrinth.


“Take a left and you’ll know where you are,” Blaise instructed Hermione, who went to exit the room, but spun around on her heels the moment before she touched the knob.


“Um . . . don’t tell anyone about this,” Hermione hesitantly asked Blaise, who just cocked his eyebrows. ‘Tell? Is she kidding? I’d get laughed out of Hogwarts,’ Blaise thought incredulously, but then another tantalizing thought occurred to him. ‘I could tell about her and McLaggen . . .’


“Embarrassed to have my help?” Blaise retorted as he concocted a scenario where he reiterated how Hermione had cowered behind him to escape McLaggen.


“I just don’t what it publicized,” Hermione snapped. “You did your part.”


“Flattered to be your shield,” Blaise seethed under his breath. “At least I’m not desperate.”


“Desperate!” Hermione shouted and gaped with shock. Her usually calculating features rearranged themselves like she’d just stolen a cookie from the coveted cookie jar and denied she’d held it the entire time.


“Yes,” Blaise replied silkily. ‘What a look,’ Blaise captured the image in his mental scrapbook. ‘I want to pull that one out when she’s being smug in Potions.’


“At least I’m not indecisive and asked somebody,” Hermione goaded Blaise, but he just shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I’d rather be alone,’ Blaise assured himself. ‘It’s better that way.’


“Think what you want,” Blaise told Hermione. She shot him a disdainful look as she turned towards the heavy, oaken door. As her hand went to fling the door open, it suddenly convulsed and swung inward, which caused Hermione to stagger back into the room.


“What?” Hermione gasped as McLaggen’s form blocked most of the light from the torches in the corridor.


‘What a nightmare!’ Blaise’s mind reeled in panic and disgust as McLaggen lumbered into the room.


“What?” McLaggen asked densely, and his jaw slackened and fell open while his huge, round eyes scanned between the Slytherin boy and the Gryffindor girl. “Were you snogging Z-Zabini?”


“What?” Blaise blurted in his moment of absolute, mind numbing shock.


“Stupefy! ” Hermione hissed before Blaise or McLaggen could react. With his face stiffened in look of troll like stupidity, McLaggen’s body tottered before crashing with a thump against the stone floor.


“Obli . . .” Hermione began the spell, but Blaise raised his wand and countered her.


“Not today,” Blaise hissed as Hermione’s frantic eyes surveyed him apprehensively. “I’m not going to be used by you.”


“You’ll tell somebody,” Hermione seethed in frustration as her gaze flitted between McLaggen’s unconscious body and Blaise’s attentive form. ‘If she thinks I’m going to let her wipe my mind . . .’ Blaise rallied himself to spring even if Hermione did so much as twitch.


“What do you think would happen to my reputation?” Blaise questioned Hermione. ‘I better talk her down,’ Blaise thought grudgingly. ‘She might do something really rash next.’ “Think about it, Granger. Would I’ve helped you if I actually liked McLaggen?”


“I stunned somebody from my own house,” Hermione said while she focused completely on Blaise, but the ferocious defensiveness faded from her hazel eyes. “You aren’t going to report me for stunning McLaggen?”


“I would’ve done it myself,” Blaise replied to Hermione, and his lips twitched upwards into a ghost of a genuine smile. Hermione surveyed Blaise skeptically before lowering her wand a couple inches.


“No broom closet rumors?” Hermione asked Blaise tentatively as he dropped his wand a couple inches, too.


“You can hate somebody from your house. It’s not forbidden,” Blaise told Hermione, and she dropped her wand completely. Blaise relaxed his arm and let his wand fall to his side, too. Hermione pointed her wand at McLaggen’s body and levitated it into a shadowy corner, where his body clunked against the stones.


‘Satisfying,’ Blaise smirked as he stepped into the fully light hallway. ‘I’ll store that memory away for future use or blackmail.’


“Don’t tell,” Hermione pleaded as she closed the heavy door behind her. Blaise met her hazel eyes and found an honest supplication in them. ‘She’s really let her guard down,’ Blaise realized the damage he could do. ‘All I have to say is Hermione and McLaggen were snogging, and she stunned him out of shock when I found them snogging.’


“If you don’t,” Blaise paused as he considered pledging secrecy. ‘She did stun McLaggen,’ Blaise realized how he’d failed at the same task when McLaggen threatened him. “If you don’t, I won’t.”


“I wish I knew how to do an Unbreakable Vow,” Hermione sighed wistfully.


“Glad to know my word is appreciated,” Blaise retorted as he spun around on his heels and began to purposefully stride down the hallway. ‘What an arrogant Mudblood,’ Blaise fumed mentally at Hermione’s ungratefulness while he continued to walk away from her.


Soon, Blaise realized he didn’t hear Hermione’s footsteps. ‘Why isn’t she walking away?’ Blaise pondered as he resolutely kept heading down the hallways towards the Slytherin common room. He felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle when he understood she was watching him leave her.


‘Why does this matter so much? Why won’t she leave?’ Blaise wondered as he forced himself to keep moving forward instead of going back and saying something to her. ‘Why do I want to talk to her?’ Blaise asked himself, surprised that he did want to speak to Hermione again. ‘What would I say? Thank you?’


Just then, the sound of clicking heals echoed in the corridor. Blaise felt the frantic moments pass as Hermione strode off to her own common room. ‘Thank you,’ Blaise mused over the words as he continued to march himself to his own common room before he became distracted. ‘Thank you.’


‘Thank you for saving me from boredom,’ Blaise realized as he reached the entrance to the Slytherin common room. He paused before the entrance and stared blankly at the wall. ‘She saved me from myself,’ Blaise’s revelation caused him to remained transfixed where he stood.


‘What did I do? Did I really enjoy helping her?’ Blaise questioned the very foundation of his principles. ‘Maybe we helped each other, in a way,’ he thought as he became aware of voices coming down the hallway towards him, and Blaise didn’t feel like dealing with anyone else tonight.


‘I won’t be able to say that to her,’ Blaise chided himself as he muttered the password, “Salazar.” With that utterance, Blaise entered back into the domain of Slytherin.