And Us

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and accept no credit towards it. I am not J.K. Rowling nor any of her affiliates.

Warning: instances of bad language and angst (quite a bit)

Word Count (without a/n): 2,210

Prompts at the end

The first time he'd seen her, he'd thought she was the devil in disguise.

Wickedly beautiful in a tight red dress and shoes that would've made Dorothy jealous, she approached him with a drink and slight giggle and asked if he wanted to chat.

That was the night Blaise Zabini first learnt that Daphne Greengrass was dangerous.

With piercing blue eyes and a gaze that could melt stone, she could snap from seductive to plain old psycho in seconds.

It was safe to say Blaise should've stayed away.

But the devil can be temping and taunting and Blaise found himself falling, falling head over heels in love with Daphne Greengrass.

They were both privates in the army being trained up to fight Potter and his terrifying rebellion somewhere in the Northern Mountains but Daphne was always so much more than a soldier with a name tag.

She was fury, she was fire, she unleashed rages like hurricanes and wept tears of glass after hours when she thought nobody could see.

She wore clothes that hiked her up thighs and baggy sweatshirts that hid her figure and sometimes she wore makeup and sometimes she didn't but either way she was beautiful and Blaise couldn't help admiring her from afar.

Draco Malfoy, who had grown up with Daphne and her sister, said that she was a pleasant enough girl from a well-to-do background but with a temper so volatile even Potter and his army would tremble from her wrath.

"What are you waiting for, Blaise?" She'd always laugh, dancing up the quad with her hair loose and ignoring the orders being barked at them by her commander. "Life's too short to be so superior all the time. Here's some advice: lower your nose, look with your eyes, and come dance with me."

So Blaise did, shrugging off his overcoat and knowing the punishment for disobeying his Half-Colonel later, and he joined hands with Daphne Greengrass and whirled her around until they both felt sick.

Blaise always suspected she was hiding something.

At nights she would sneak into the toilets when nobody else was around and, once or twice, he saw slipping crackling pieces of paper in her bed linen.

He never pressed, never asked, he wasn't that sort of guy, but he was suspicious all the same, especially when he found a scrap of newspaper that had been stuck under her shoe that simply read DA.

Blaise didn't know what that meant but he hoped to God she wasn't doing something stupid that would upset Riddle.

Blaise had seen first hand (courtesy of stepfather number 4) what Riddle did to those who displeased him.

It was August when she first kissed him.

She'd gone missing from her daily training run and Blaise had been sent by the new Half-Colonel Lestrange to find her before dinner.

Blaise didn't dare disobey. Everyone was terrified of Bellatrix Lestrange.

He found her eventually, at the water's edge where their training compound overlapped the sea, sitting with her hands wrapped around her knees and her eyes fixed on some faraway point in the sky.

"It's me," Blaise said and leant against a rock. "Lestrange is after your blood."

"Fuck her." Daphne said with such feeling that Blaise glanced around, apprehensive, in case anyone had overheard.

"Stop being paranoid, Zabini. There are worse things at stake than being whipped by bloody Bella."

"Like what?" Blaise raised an eyebrow. Daphne turned back to the sea and didn't speak for a moment. When she did, it was with that taunting, teasing tone she always used when she wanted to avoid a subject.

"Grown up stuff," she drawled, pushing back flyaway strands of her hair. "You wouldn't understand, Blaise-y."

She was two months older than him and, boy, did she love to rub it in.

"Don't be so bleeding patronising," Blaise snapped. "If I go back and tell Lestrange that you missed half of your required run to reminisce by the waves, you're dead."

"You wouldn't." Daphne said calmly, standing up and dusting her trousers off.

"How do you know?" Blaise demanded but Daphne merely smiled.

"Because you love me, of course."

And she pressed her lips on to his, short and sweet and chaste but to Blaise, it was everything he'd ever wanted from her.

Three days after their first kiss, they received news that Potter and his army were hiding up in the mountains and that they should spring an ambush immediately, Riddle's exact orders.

Lestrange was positively glowing with terrifying excitement and she worked her troops harder than ever, determined to beat Potter and prove to Riddle that she was competent enough to rule by his side.

The day before they were shipped out to the battleground, Daphne cornered Blaise in a stairwell, hidden and secluded, and for the first time, Blaise could see panic flickering in her blue eyes.

"She knows." She hissed and Blaise searched her gaze frantically.

"Who knows? Who knows what?" He asked and she brought her finger to her lips.

"Shut up! If we're caught, she's going to hand me over to Riddle."

Blaise felt physically sick. What, in God's name, had Daphne done to deserve Riddle's wrath?

"Christ, Daph, what- what do expect me to do?"

Daphne's breathing was fast and panicked.

"Don't you ever-" she said and then stopped. "Don't you ever think that we're fighting for the wrong side?"

Blaise couldn't believe his ears. Daphne Greengrass; staunchly loyal to Riddle and his army, always quick to retort that she couldn't wait for the time when they would bring down Potter; was saying things that, if overheard, would get her publicly executed.

"I don't know what you mean." He said coldly and he saw the desperation wash over her face.

"Please, Blaise, don't choose now to let your family's loyalties decide your own. Come on, you must know it, the way Riddle rules- he's a dictator- Lestrange's punishments- inventive and unusually cruel- no free speech- what sort of world are we living in?"

Blaise couldn't reply.

"Don't corrupt me with your pathetic beliefs of treason." He said icily and watched her face drop.

"What are you waiting for here, Blaise?" She whispered. "What are you expecting to find in this place?"

There was the sound of heels in the corridor and Daphne took off, leaving Blaise with a pounding heart and a confession from Daphne Greengrass that he should take directly to Lestrange but couldn't because, dammit, he was in love with the blonde haired, dangerous Miss Greengrass.

It would get him killed one day, that he was sure of.

He didn't speak to her on the boat over.

Draco said that she seemed more nervous than usual, constantly fidgeting, and Pansy Parkinson reported that Daphne had been furious when it turned out that Astoria had been going through her things.

With a sickeningly suspicion in his stomach, Blaise thought he knew what was going on here.

Potter had been tipped off.

The moment Blaise and his troops stepped off the boat, there was the click of a gun and they all spun to see a tall, dark haired boy with that familiar lighting bolt scar pointing a gun with steady hands at Lestrange's throat.

"Don't do anything stupid," Potter said calmly, signifying for his troops to drop their weapons. "We don't want war. We only want Riddle dead, not the innocent troops he's brainwashed to believe in his dictatorship."

"How did you know we were coming?" Lestrange seethed, seeming completely unperturbed that a gun was trained at her jugular.

Potter didn't break his gaze.

"That is on a need to know basis."

"Aha!" Lestrange shrieked, her yell ear splitting over the roar of the waves, and half the battalion flinched. "I knew it! I knew she was spying on us! I knew there was something funny about the bitch!"

With dread pooling in his stomach, Blaise spun to see Daphne turn a sickening shade of white as she stepped forward.

"Yes, I've been spying on you," she said and Blaise noticed that her voice shook a little. "So, that good will prevail and we can wipe all evil from the face of the earth."

"How fucking poetic." Lestrange sneered. "Shame those words will be your last."

With that, she kicked out, striking Potter across the face and startling him, causing him to drop the gun and step back, his cry echoing over the crowd's screams.

"Only harm who you have to!"

The battle began; a furious frenzy of terrifying canon fire and petrifying shrieks and, for a moment, Blaise stood stock still, terrified and unsure of what to do.

"Blaise!"

Suddenly, Daphne was screaming at him across the battlefield and she was running back towards him - no, don't, go back, watch out, Daphne, God, no-

There was a loud crack as a gunshot rang through the air and, all of a sudden, Daphne had collapsed in the snow, blood blossoming like a destructive rose across the white flakes.

"The traitor is dead!" Bellatrix crowed gleefully, her face demented and insane, and Blaise felt hot, furious anger bubble up inside of him.

He drew his gun, aimed, and took fire.

With a horrible thump, Lestrange keeled over onto the floor, a bullet hole straight through her temple.

The gun fell from Blaise's hand and he dropped to the ground beside Daphne, a small spark of hope igniting inside of him when he saw the gentle rise and fall of her chest.

It was then that he saw the wound.

Embedded in her stomach with ruby blood gushing everywhere, Blaise knew with awful certainty that she wouldn't survive the next couple of minutes.

"Blaise?" She managed to whisper, her eyelids flickering beneath the layer of snow beginning to settle on her lashes. "Blaise?"

"Yes? Daph?" Blaise scrambled to shield her from the battle raging around them but it didn't seem to matter; they were trapped in their own little bubble of Daphne&Blaise and it was a story which would be extinguished by morning.

"I'm here, I'm here, don't worry."

"I'm dying, aren't I?" Daphne croaked and let out a tiny laugh which appeared to hurt her as much as the hole in her abdomen. "God, that's ironic. Not-" she drew in breath sharply. "Not so invincible anymore, huh?"

Blaise couldn't see; tears and snow and his own blood were distorting his vision and he scrabbled for her hand, shaking her.

"God, you're so stupid, Daph, you know that? So stupid; why did you come back for me? You could've left, disappeared and lived, but you're too bloody stubborn- why did you come back for me?"

Daphne smiled slightly, her eyes beginning to close.

"Because I love you, silly."

And in even in death, Daphne Greengrass managed to be patronising, but all Blaise could think of was that hot August evening she'd first kissed him and how that would be the last time - the only time - he would ever feel her lips on his.

"Don't do this now, Daph," Blaise said, on his knees, holding her hand, and sobbing.

"Don't make me regret the time we lost."

"But you should," Daphne mumbled, her breaths becoming slower and slower and Blaise knew that this was the end.

Daphne Greengrass would die a traitor's death alone in the snow because she was brave enough to stand up to all the things Blaise had once seen as good.

"You should," Daphne managed to continue and, it was as if the battle had ceased, for Blaise couldn't hear anything else except her voice. "Mourn me and feel remorse and then remind yourself that life is too short to live like you do, Zabini. Don't wait. Don't lie on your deathbed and think 'what was I waiting for?', okay?"

"Stop, Daph, please stop," Blaise said, his voice thick with tears and anger. "God, you're so fucking annoying, you know that? Full of shitty cliches and metaphors and now you're dying in the snow because you weren't selfish enough to leave me-" he was crying into her hair by that point.

Daphne smiled weakly, a dying gesture.

"Remember me." She said and suddenly she wasn't breathing anymore and Blaise was screaming her name in a devastated voice that just sounded broken and he felt horrible, horrible grief creeping up on him like a devil on his shoulder.

"Daphne!"

Someone dropped to the snow beside Blaise and the private looked with shock to see Potter kneeling by Daphne's body, blood gushing from his cheek and tears shining in his eyes.

"She's dead, isn't she?" Potter said and bit his lip. "She was my friend,"

And his voice sounded broken too.

"You're Blaise?" He turned to face Zabini, who nodded.

"She spoke about you a lot," Potter whispered. "If it's any comfort and I know it isn't. I've known loss, Zabini. Trust me. You can either let it twist you up from the inside or you can fight it and survive."

Blaise looked up from Daphne's body, now lifeless and bleeding into the pale flakes.

"Riddle?" He uttered. "You want him dead?"

Potter nodded.

Blaise took a deep breath and released Daphne Greengrass' hand.

"Then, I want to join you."

Written for:

Camp Potter, Tie Dye Station:

Poncho - 2k words (it's a little over!)

Pink - "What are you waiting for?"

Blue - Blaise/Daphne

Yellow - soldier!au

Hogwarts, Sophie's Tearoom:

Fondant Fancy - terrified (word)

Hope you all enjoyed. Reviews would make my day!

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you all have a wonderful day/night! Xx