WHO: Blaise and Isabella Zabini WHAT: Blaise reflects on the path he’s started on WHERE: Zabini Manor, Somerset WHEN: Early evening RATING: PG-13, language STATUS: Complete NOTES: Flashbacks in italics
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Blaise stared moodily into the murky green depths of his drink, watching his distorted reflection glare back at him from the glass. It blinked at him once, and then threw up its hands and walked off, leaving just the swirling absinthe to gaze at. Mother had thought that having glasses made from the same material as wizard mirrors would be amusing, but Blaise found it depressing and tacky at the moment. He closed his eyes and took a large gulp, letting the dizzying feeling that went with the drink suffuse his body. It had been ages since he’d drunk alone, considering there had been no shortage of company to share drinks and beds with back on the continent. Why in Hades had he even left? It wasn’t as though Britain was all that welcoming anymore. No wonder his trips abroad had gotten longer and longer each time he left. If things didn’t work out with Mother’s plans, he probably would leave and never come back.
“Never come back,” he repeated aloud to the empty parlour, liking the sound of the statement. Merlin, he would love to just leave for good right now. He wasn’t sure if all this was the best idea anymore. Making plans, talking about propaganda and reforms and seizures of power, those were all well and good, but now…
Now there were people dead. And the nameless Muggleborn were nothing, necessary prunings to trim away the excess of their society. One must cut away dead branches to allow a dying tree the chance to grow again, as Mother had said in her first owl to him outlining her ideas and her desire for him to come home. It was very true, of course, and they were doing what was necessary, certainly. Yet… Granger. She hadn’t been awful, for a Mudblood. Intelligent, capable certainly. He’d never been able to bring himself to completely hate her, because it was nice to see someone else in school who’d been able to grasp Carnlock’s Principal of Transcendental Calculus without using one of those ridiculous cheating calculators that some shops sold. And then Theo had gone and married her.
“Fuck,” he muttered, glaring at nothing. Theo. He hadn’t wanted this for him, no matter how angry at him he still was after all these years. And Mother had known that, damn her. She’d been so calm about it too, when he’d found out.
“This was our target?” Blaise had snapped, bursting into Isabella’s chambers with a copy of the Prophet clenched in one hand. She’d been at her mirror, of course, and she held up one graceful hand to quiet him. Over her shoulder he had seen swirling images that didn’t have any coherent flow that he could discern, but they had seemed to make sense to her. She’d watched them intently for a few more moments, making little notes in a tiny black book as she did, and then she touched the surface of the mirror. It went dark at first, and then the blackness had faded into the reflection of her face, gazing thoughtfully at him.
He’d wordlessly held out the paper to her, but she’d made no move to take it from him. “This is precisely why I didn’t tell you, my darling,” was her explanation, as simple and vague as anything Mother ever said. “You need to learn some detachment.”
For some reason that little rebuke had been the straw that broke the dam, as it were. “Detachment, Mother? She was married to Theo! She went to school with me! Yes, she was a Mudblood, she was inferior, but I didn’t want to kill her!”
“You didn’t kill her, Blaise,” Isabella had replied calmly. “A servant did. And even if it had been you, you knew when we started this that we were going to have to take drastic measures to start things moving again. The Mudblood girl was one of the icons of this new age, married to a Pureblooded boy who never should have even touched her. She needed to go, dearest. You know this.”
And everything of course had made sense, but he hadn’t wanted reason for once in his life. He’d just wanted to not have to see the headline in the paper proclaiming Granger’s death and know that he’d helped kill her. He’d just sunk to his knees on the floor in front of Mother, overwhelmed. There’d been a moment of silence, then the brush of silk on the carpet before she’d gathered him up in her arms like he was still a child.
“Hush now,” she’d whispered. “I need you to help me, Blaise. It should be painful, healing always is. It always hurts, my dear boy. I’m glad that you can still hurt about it. But it mustn’t stop us, you understand? We cannot stop now.”
“We cannot stop now,” he whispered to his glass. His reflection peeked around a non-existent corner to look at him, and nodded at him. Mother was right, of course. Healing did hurt, and this was necessary healing. It was right that it hurt; otherwise it would mean that he wasn’t alive. Perhaps that had been why Voldemort had screwed it all up. He’d stopped hurting when he did the necessary things, and so he’d lost sight of what he was supposed to be doing. Mother wouldn’t lose sight. He’d make sure of it.
Sighing, he downed the rest of the drink and then set the glass aside. He didn’t want to see his reflection staring back at him anymore. The damn thing always looked so judgmental. Besides, Mother probably needed some help with one or another of her schemes, and it’d be better if he was there to keep things in perspective. He’d make sure that she never stopped hurting too.