A one-shot for the 34 stories, 106 reviews challenge on the HPFC forum.
Round One: Sixth Option: Severus Snape/Blaise Zabini father-son fic.
Zabini's POV (he is the You). The beginning is about his mother, in case this isn't really clear.
Dedicated for Thanatos Angelos Girl, for being my first reader, and overall a lovely one =)
She tells you on a Christmas Eve, her voice slurred and her pretty head drunken, and at first you dismiss the revelation as some weird fantasy, a baroque idea only she could ever conceive. She tells you slumped over a lavish sofa, giggling a bit tragically the way no one else does, so that with a sudden surge of pity and overwhelming affection that you keep carefully concealed, you roll your eyes and say she's had too much to drink, again. She says she knows and only laughs harder, until it sounds almost like she's crying, and then she sleeps like an exhausted child, and you watch her, silent, a guardian. You always were the adult of the two.
A few days later you find yourself without a stepfather again, but you can't bring yourself to mind, since she always remembers to be cautious anyway, somehow. What a child she is, tricky and irresponsible, needy and generous and selfish all at the same time, with no moral sense whatsoever.
You know her – you love her. She is your best friend, in a way, and no man has ever managed to sneak his way into this bizarre, unbalanced, eerily strong relationship of yours – no man ever will.
But still, you know her, and you know she is most honest when drunk. And so uncertainty swells up in your chest, a feeling you most despise. So you ponder, with that sharp, keen, analytical mind of yours – and despite yourself, elements are being piled up, circling round and round in your head. After a while you can scarcely think of anything else – and then you come back to the castle, and lose all ability to sleep.
You resent it, but you've always had that tendency to notice and analyse everything, dissecate, ponder, interpret. You've always been exceedingly cunning, sarcastic, quiet and of course, rightfully arrogant – a Slytherin through and through, pureblooded without a doubt, beautiful and vain like your mother is, but that keenest, overly active mind does have to come from somewhere else. Go figure. By now you only wish you could appease the endless cacophony of disturbing elements in your mind. Every detail, every reasoning seems to lead you deeper in towards the thing you never wanted to hear, never mind admit, until it becomes impossible to deny it any longer. How you wish you could refute common sense as you stalk the corridors, tormented by thoughts. How you wish you could have a simple mind, a normal life.
It doesn't make sense anymore, nothing does, but you begin to accept anyway.
Every day, at every moment, everytime you turn around you seem to run into him. You always have for five years now, sure – Severus Snape stalking the dungeons, somber and stern-looking, shadow among the shadows – but now something feels twisted and wrong in that simple fact, in the silent existence of him, omnipresent in your universe. You become unbearably alert, jumping at the whooshing sound of his cloak, clumsy in Potions for the very first time in your life, and your friends ask, bemused, what the hell is wrong with you. You remain evasive, a fine art in which you are skilled. But his eyes are following you – and God, does it make you edgy. It makes you jumpy, you who just abhor losing control – and you resent him so much, for being a misunderstood genius with dark dark eyes and a cynical mind, so much like you on so many points, for making you believe too much and yet evading certainty, always elusive, always a walking riddle of a man, damn him. You, the evasive and cryptic young snake, are aching for the truth, for a confrontation – how ludicrous, how pitiful, how Gryffindor.
You decide that all of this, it's driving you crazy, but you might as well go with the flow.
So you angst away the year, furious and fiery and frustrated, without the answers you're so desperately yearning for. You resent your mother, yourself, that pitiful house of stupid little kids that was supposed to be your second family for God's sake – and most importantly, that man – that cool, snarky, elusive shadow of a man you had instantly liked back in first year, smirking at his cutting comments and pondering his rare and ever-so-brief words of wisdom to his Slytherins.
Always remain alert. Do not get in trouble. Be cleverer than your foe. Be conscious of what you're worth. Not less. Not more. Keep your enemies close. Learn when to look brave, and when to run.
It feels like you're letting him down as you gradually lose control. Façades slip and you appear in split seconds before shutting down again, a tormented, angry young man, a truth-thirsty lost soul, a little boy without a father. You snap and cause scenes, you lose your cool, and one day Severus Snape coldly gives you detention.
"Tomorrow at eight in my office, Zabini."
You don't sleep that night, and go through the day in a daze. Nobody knows you anymore – your friends never were the brightest, only Nott could perhaps see, but he doesn't give a damn, and you know Pansy, when she's not worrying about her precious boyfriend, entertains herself gossiping about secret, sexy you and a somber story of heartbreak, perhaps Ginny Weasley, who knows – and she's always been so stupid you never knew whether to laugh or scream at her anyway, so you really don't care at all, let the crowds believe. Your stupid so-called friends don't matter anymore and neither does your social status in the Slytherin circle and neither will whatever they'll find to say about your mother's next wedding, you're just beyond caring now, see?
Little boy, you want to know who your father is.
So you go to this detention with your heart in your throat, and Snape coolly makes you scrub cauldron bottoms.
"Don't you have anything to say to me, Sir?" you call through the room after one hour or two, led to boldness by the silence of which you couldn't take another second, led to madness by his cold, deep black eyes that bore straight into your own, and then – looked away.
"What is it you think I should want to say, Zabini?" he drawls. "You are here to be punished after all."
"Sir, I am well aware of my flaws," you speak through gritted teeth, on a breath that feels stuck in your throat, "but I was... hoping... you would be benevolent enough to provide me with a piece of advise."
"What about?" comes his sharp reply.
"Life, Sir," you say, daring in a bout of despair, "or perhaps family?"
He stares at you for the longest time, and you wordlessly stare back, a fierce prayer in your head and eyes.
"Family, really," he says, "what could possibly make you think I should be the one to provide advise about family? I after all have none."
Before you can respond he continues:
"However, I do have a slight idea. And my idea, Mr Zabini, is that one should not rely on family in life. One should have the courage and the mental strength to be themselves, for themselves and themselves alone. In the end, Mr Zabini, you will be alone and in the shadows, even more than you are now. Do not let it excessively trouble you."
His eyes deep into yours, ever-so-slightly he nods.
You know now that this is all you're going to get.
"Thank you, Sir," you say with the desperate hope of keeping the agony out of your voice. You look down and scrub in silence, until he sees fit to dismiss you.
"This will be enough, Mr Zabini. Good night," he says, but when you're almost out the door he adds in a hissing whisper:
"You have a keen and brilliant mind. Do not let anything confuse and lead you astray. Ever."
And with that you shut the door.
You are quiet for a long, long time afterwards. You eat and sleep and go to class but the look in your eyes is slightly glassy and the gossips only get more intense, Ginny fucking Weasley being with Harry Potter and all that, people wonder where you stand. You don't stand and that's what the fools don't get, you just walk forward in a straight line, having decided not to think, or you might perhaps collapse. Heaven forbid.
Till a special night of June you remain this way, and then you end up shaken awake and torn out of your bed and told that Albus Dumbledore is dead and Severus Snape killed him. You can only think that you'll never see your father again, and guess what, you just break down – but in a way it's fine, since he's not there to see, and you'll only have been the only Slytherin bawling over the headmaster's decease or so they believe, it surely does earn you a few funny looks but all in all no big deal. Slytherins don't ask questions.
You go on living as a war takes its place, far away from you in many ways, though it's sort of happening right under your nose, but that is a matter of point of view and you have a knack for picking the right way of seeing things: the one which will allow you to carry on, no matter what. A choice between what is right and what is easy, the fools say, but you don't see where your choice is and so, very logically, you don't make one. You're not really harming anyone with that philosophy, it's actually rather peace-making, but when you're told to torture the kids who got detention you just do it, full stop. Someone else would have done it anyway, see if you care. You get that amazing distance with your own life, and as a means of entertainment you watch Malfoy grow paler and thinner and weaker day by day with a cool, almost experimental gaze – poor thing. You even come to regret you've missed the beginning of the process, so very interesting what real violence can do to bratty little bullies. Distance, really, does it all.
Distance is the way you can define yourself by now, and you don't let anything confuse or lead you astray, oh no you don't. The shadows, the aloneness don't trouble you, in fact you happen to find them rather restful. You still see your father after all, way less often, but you know better than to seek ways to get him alone. After all, it could only bring little good. The man has things to deal with – but you really don't, and you want it to remain this way. It wouldn't do for the Carrows to discover your little connection, though you really doubt they would have the wit to do so. You are a free electron in this war, you realize, related to no side – all the better. So you keep your head low, crawl your way through the year, and everybody leaves you alone. That's the beautiful thing in a war, people all have things to deal with, and they deal with them among themselves – if you're not foolish enough to end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, it really becomes a cosy period to live in, for those who only wish that, to be left alone.
After the war you are left alone as well, since it is what you've always wished, isn't it now? Alone with a more and more careless mother, and the memory of a father who really never was one, despite the rants of Saint Potter The Saviour who keeps claiming that Severus Snape was such a good good man after all, and how he always loved his mum till the very end – winning little bastard. You grit your teeth as what you thought you knew is torn away from you, and damn was it little already – and well, your father loved a Mudblood, protected her offspring, and didn't care at all about his own pureblooded one, why that's just perfect. You thought you were strong, you now see that you were only numb, and too young to truly understand the damned depth of Severus Snape's cryptic advise. In the end, Blaise Zabini, you were led astray, and now you're groping in the shadows. That painful lucidity, it's all you've got left of him.
You decide never to have children.