Using one foot of parchment, please argue Mattimeo’s theory. Use real-life examples to support your argument.
Blaise quickly thumbed through his arithmancy book to look up Mattimeo’s theory. Ah! There it was, on page 65.
“If two objects magnetically attracted to each other are kept apart, those objects will not be fully functional.”
Real-life examples? What real-life example did he have of magnetic attraction being diverted?
He let out an impatient grunt and scanned the library for inspiration. At a far table Malfoy sat feeling similar frustration for his books. Though he appeared to be struggling with his Defense Against the Dark Arts homework. Which was odd, Blaise noted, as he couldn’t recall any. Then again, Malfoy had begun disappearing regularly and thus was falling behind in his schoolwork. At any rate, Malfoy seemed to have been ignoring the magnetic pulls of his bed for about a fortnight. If the dark circles under his eyes were any proper tools of measurement. And it did appear detrimental to him functioning. Too bad he couldn’t write about that.
Blaise flicked his gaze elsewhere in the library. Was the Mudblood Granger actually leaving the library without any books? Perhaps the apocalypse was closer at hand than he’d thought. Or maybe she was single-handedly disproving Mattimeo. Somehow Blaise doubted Vector would appreciate such an example, either.
His eyes had nearly completed the round of the library when the caught a glimpse of red hair. Unconsciously Blaise straightened in his chair and his pulse began to race. His body did seem to have a habit of dissolving whenever he saw Ginny. Maybe Mattimeo was right after all.
Not that it would do me any good, Blaise conceded. In the months after their momentary embrace, Ginny Weasley had avoided him like the plague. Well, she’d never really talked to him before anyway. Ginny was one of those popular girls who got along with everybody and didn’t care what some snobby Slytherin bookworm thought of her. Blaise had been surprised when she’d spoken to him on the train, that she’d even noticed he was there. Of course her comment came across as cheeky and cheered Slughorn. She seemed to have a natural gift at pleasing people. No matter how often Blaise watched her, he could never pinpoint that exact detail that made Ginny so personable. If he could, he would have attempted to duplicate it.
The only art of conversation he knew was the bits of small talk he had picked up from his mother. He had his own dry humor, but very few people seemed to understand it. This was just some sort of perverse wishful thinking. Ginny had never looked at him before, so there should be no reason that she should look for him now. Blaise, himself, had been too apprehensive to seek her out. That, and he was also trying to pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened.
After all, if news got out his house was liable to murder him.
In Slytherin, peer pressure was a tried and true technique. In his first year he’d learned the easy way that his money and lineage made him superior. His occasional slip in calling Muggle-borns “Mudbloods” was decent. The hard way, he’d learned to respect his “elders”. To stay away from anyone who associated with Muggle-borns, no Mudbloods, as well.
If he wanted to survive, he should forget all about Ginny. It was clear she had never felt anything for him. While she’d long ago dumped Thomas, she had recently begun going out with Harry Fuckwit Potter. Not that Blaise cared, or so he told himself.
Still there was no way Blaise could compete with that, nor should he attempt it.
He watched her nibble on her quill, eyes roving around the room until they caught the eyes of some Ravenclaw fifth-year. They seemed to silently communicate with their eyes for a second. Then the pale girl with long, straggly blonde hair picked up her books and moved over to Ginny’s table. It was amazing how she could pick up companions with just the glance of an eye. He continued to watch Ginny, trying to pry some clue as to how she managed to be so popular, but he could see nothing.
Idly, he twisted some of the feathers off his quill. Why was he holding a quill anyways? He didn’t need a quill to watch Ginny. He used quills for schoolwork. Schoolwork, wasn’t there an Arithmancy paper due tomorrow?
Fuck, Blaise realized. There was no way he was going to finish his homework tonight, at least not here.
Final exams were quickly approaching and Blaise was only able to study in short spurts of time. His study room of choice, the library, was almost always contaminated with Ginny’s presence. Blaise didn’t really care if her OWLs were this year, whenever she was around he couldn’t concentrate.
The fifth time he realized his eyes were focusing on Ginny and not his DADA essay, Blaise slammed his book shut in frustration. He roughly began shoving various odds and ends into his bag with abandon. He then angrily made his way to the library’s exit.
Had it not been the end of term, more people would have paid attention to his dramatic exit. Having breakdowns in the library so close to exams was fairly common. Blaise’s departure was fairly quiet in comparison to Magdela Wilmer who had burned her Potions book out of stress just last week.
With so many outbursts, it should therefore not have shaken him in the least when someone nearly brained him with One Thousand Magical Herbs And Fungi
“Oh shit!” came an agitated whisper to his right. “I’m so sorry”oh, it’s you.”
Blaise turned so that he was face-to-face with Ginny.
“Is this yours?” he held up the book and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Ginny’s face blanched of all color. “Yes,” she replied stiffly and made an attempt to retrieve her book. Blaise pulled the book just out of her reach.
“May I have my book back,” she snarled through clenched teeth.
“Perhaps,” Blaise pretended to contemplate the idea. “Having fun studying for your OWLs?”
“No, actually, and my day just got worse now that you’re here. Do me a favor by leaving?” Her tone was falsely friendly but the wand she had just drawn was not.
“Do you really want to hex me, Weasley? Then you’d best be careful that my friends don’t come around and nab you,” he stated rather anxiously. He was doing his best to keep a calm demeanor.
“Oh yes,” Ginny gave a small chuckle. “Your friends. What friends? You don’t have any! And your pretending to doesn’t fool me! Always strutting around as though you were in good graces of your House’s bullies, you’re nothing more than a poser!”
“Well, we can’t all kiss our way into popularity,” Blaise snarled, chucking her book back to her. She caught it deftly with one hand, the other still holding her wand steady.
“And you’re a prime example of such failure,” she retorted.
Silently kicking himself for walking straight into that particular comeback, Blaise pointed his wand to her through his robe’s pocket. He silently cursed her book so that it burned her.
“Ow!” she yelped, dropping the book. This was the distraction Blaise needed to dash out of the library. She turned to fire a spell back at him only to discover Madam Pince, livid at the disruption, and Zabini nowhere.
After that confrontation, Blaise avoided the library altogether. It was altogether too infuriating the way Weasley could get under his skin, or into his head. He even had a bruise on his head from the book-chucking.
What was even more tiresome was the fact that she was right. Blaise didn’t really fit in with the rest of his House. He was not the talkative, charming, deceitful type that succeeded. Nor was he particularly adept at magic. In fact, were he to be compared to his classmates he imagined he would be right in the middle.
Most people had mistakenly interpreted Blaise’s silence as snobbery. Coupled with the fact that his mother flitted around the highest circles, people believed that he had powerful friends he believed more deserving than them. And there was comfort in having other’s consider you a threat.
Perhaps it was because he had grown so accustomed to the unspoken lie that Ginny’s accusations stung so deeply.
In truth, Blaise had no one. He was just shy, unsure of how to start a conversation without his mother prodding him into it.
The only reason he was acknowledged and respected by his house was because of his mother. She was a beautiful, charming, delightfully sinister witch about whom he knew all the boys in his house had harbored some sort of fantasy. As such a socialite she had seen to it that Blaise had mingled, at a very young age, with all his Pureblood peers.
However, his mother was also a motive for his exclusion. Being overly flirtatious by nature, his mother often emerged in snippets of conversation that Blaise overheard. Amoung his classmates, he learned that she was often the source of strife between wives and their husbands.
Regrettably now that he was paranoid of the library, Blaise had to seek solace in the Slytherin common room (he dreaded seeing Ginny in the halls, mealtimes caused enough inner turmoil as it was). The Slytherin common room could hardly be described as a peaceful place. It was a constant battleground for students to manipulate, exploit, backstab and otherwise practice social climbing strategies for the real world.
Inwardly cursing his petty schoolmates, Blaise settled in a plump leather chair far from the fire (and therefore attainable real-estate). He cast a minor heating charm upon it and tried to find a comfortable position as well as clear his mind of Ginny Weasley.
Unfortunately, attempting two impossible feats at the same time tends to result in the failure of both.
He wasn’t in the library, Ginny noted. Which was a good thing. Not that she really cared, not that she even spent one iota of thought on Blaise Zabini. It was just perfectly normal to note the absence of someone, right?
Especially if that someone happened to have more mood swings than she did. From cold and distant to pissy and offended to stoic and studious to amiable to very good snogger”
No! she lectured herself. Harry is the good snogger. You haven’t even really snogged Blaise, he just sort of…well, you weren’t really responding anyways. And even if you were, you hadn’t been in your right mind. Numb from all the water Myrtle poured on you. Brain cells a bit slow to react and all that twaddle…
She really should be concerned with the ingredients needed to brew the Draught of Peace. Unfortunately she couldn’t flip through One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi without thinking of Zabini. She cringed whenever she glimpsed the small dent in the binding and its implications.
Ginny wasn’t really in the habit of throwing books at people, she was much better at throwing hexes anyway. And of all the people she’d had to hit, it just had to be him. Probably seemed like some desperate plea for attention.
Just clear your mind, Gin, she thought to herself. Concentrate on the Draught of Peace. What are the primary ingredients? Moonstone and…Drat, had she forgotten again? She flicked through her Potions book. Hellebore syrup! But why? Wasn’t it poisonous? What were its properties?
She couldn’t remember This would mean she would have to page through that bloody book.
Get a hold of yourself! she scolded inwardly. There’s no need to be afraid of a book!
Having reassured herself of such, she paged through bracingly. Hellebore, poisonous, but apparently also purgative of evil. That made sense. Peace would require a removal of evil…
Kind of like the way she’d single-handedly managed to purge the library of Blaise Zabini…
Argh! Why did her thoughts keep turning back to him?
This is fantastic, just abso-bloody-lutely fantastic. My Potions OWL will go down the drain all because of Blaise Zabini.
Not that she could blame him for it, Ginny fully intended to never spend even a nano-second of thought on Zabini, she had dreamier boys to ponder. If she was going to be distracted from studying, it should at least be thoughts about Harry.
That cute, messy black hair…those piercing green eyes…strong, capable hands, Ginny could feel her face turn red even though she was looking at a very uninteresting page containing almost identical fungi.
Suddenly her brain showed her pictures of marbled colored hands slowly turning back to a deep, chocolate brown. Gentle hands that had carefully cupped her head before kissing her…
Double bugger and damn, Ginny grumbled to herself. It looked to be a long night of studying and pretending not to think about Blaise Zabini.
A/N: Short chapter, I know. My not-so-subtle satire on school work and exams in general. Please remember to review!