Prologue



I’ve always wondered if I was really meant to amount to anything. Not that it really matters; it’s just that everyone around me seems to really know what they’re doing. Draco was meant to follow in his father’s footsteps, Harry Potter was meant to defeat the Dark Lord. Me? I was an accident, a love child that came out of my mother’s relationship with her first husband.

For awhile, I thought I really did have a purpose. That Lisa Turpin made it seem as though I meant something to her, as if my purpose was to love her, and hers, to love me.

I suppose I thirsted to know where I was headed, and she…she was the thing that quenched that thirst. She knew exactly where she was headed, but didn’t obsess over it. Some Ravenclaw. I was secure around her; she was the one solid thing in my life.

I still remember the look in her eyes when I found her behind the door, listening in on the conversation Draco and I were having. When she told me she was leaving me, she wasn’t weepy or teary-eyed. She was incredibly angry and yet she didn’t look like she cared about leaving. The screaming and the yelling that followed was the most excruciating fight, verbal or physical, I’ve ever been in.

I was no longer of importance to anyone. I was no longer meant for anything.

And as I sit here, now, I’m numb. Numb to everything. I can’t hear Weasley telling me to watch where I’m going, I can’t feel the pain in my thumb I jabbed with a quill this morning.

I am Blaise Zabini, follower of Draco Malfoy, the person who doesn’t give a damn. I’ve learned to change myself to be the person I’m with, to always be near the top of the food chain. She and the Weasley girl were right. I do pose. But it is my way of life, and it gives me immunity, something they probably will never have. How can such an insignificant event have such an impact on me?

It isinsignificant, isn’t it?

No, I suppose not. Not if I’m feeling the aftershock with such sensitivity that walls are seemingly tumbling at my feet.

Maybe it was the fact that she was real, that she could see through my visages and see me. She never acted the way Parkinson did, or the younger Greengrass girl.

This whole affair with her was a horrible mistake. I got too caught up in the idea of her to see that it would never work. I tossed my original philosophy out the door when she came along. I burned every bridge I ever built when she was there. And now, here I am, stranded on the other side of the river with no tools or lumber.
OOO


I saw her between classes today. She was walking with Ginny Weasley, coincidentally. I know she pretended not to acknowledge my existence. My eyes were glued to her face the entire time, and her eyes, a beautiful, deep green, flitted to me sparingly, sending as big a glare as she could.

It was quite frightening, actually; her silver eyes, usually warm, no matter how upset she was, were steely and dull and her jaw was set in such a way that she appeared to be frowning.

It was amazing that she could pack so much anger (I say anger because she is not the type to hate) into such a fleeting expression. Even her thin body seemed to stop and become tense when she saw me.

She made me so angry, made me want to jump on her and start beating her with a stick.

No other person could make me so irate. Only her.

I’m more vexed at myself, though. I’m so furious that I let her in, that I showed her my vulnerability, and depended on her.

Life is just so much simpler when you watch out for yourself. You are your own best friend, but you are also your own liability.