Blaise's mother taught him the art of self preservation from the moment he could understand English. Actually, Blaise was pretty sure Berenice Zabini lectured on about self preservation as soon as he was placed in her arms at the hospital, newly born. Having not had the capacity to understand speech at the time, Blaise couldn't know for sure, but he felt certain his mother would have considered ramblings about survival of the fittest to be appropriate bedtime stories for a baby.

"You can't let anyone take you for a fool, Blaise," Berenice would tell her toddler son when the mood struck her. "People always want something from you. They'll play nice and tell you what you want to hear and when they've gotten what they want from you, they'll abandon you. You can't expect anyone but yourself to do what's best for you."

Berenice knew how to succeed using her looks. Her biggest strengths were her looks, intelligence, and cunning, and she had no problem using all three to get what she wanted. She manipulated and seduced men into giving her what she needed to provide for herself and her son. With the strengths Berenice was provided with, she became one of the most powerful witches in magical Europe no longer needing to associate herself with anymore rich and powerful men.

"The trick is to keep to yourself as much as possible," Berenice told Blaise. "You will inevitably make some enemies, but the best thing to do is to convince as many people as possible that you are on their side. People who make too many enemies always end up dead. There have been those with too much hubris who decide that they have enough skill and shrewdness to anger scores of powerful people. They always ended up taken down by the enemies they dismissed. Never anger someone enough that they want you dead if you can help it. If you do ever make such a mistake, find a way to permanently get rid of that person."

Blaise took what his mother said to heart. Maybe because she was his mother and as a child, that meant her words were gospel. Maybe because her words just made too much sense to her given his own observations throughout life. Either way, Blaise's beliefs formed out of his mother's beliefs, and he kept a suitable distance from all his housemates throughout his schooling.

It was easier in the earlier years of his schooling. His yearmates didn't care too much that he didn't want to associate with them much outside of the occasional greeting or short, meaningless conversations. None of them had a care in the world. They were all rich and connected children whose biggest responsibilities were getting grades that wouldn't completely embarrass their parents. They all had their power games, of course, trying to suss each other out to determine whose friendship might gain them the most in the future, but that was the extent of their attempts at acting like adults.

Blaise recognized the benefits to making friends, but he preferred keeping everyone on slightly friendly terms and hedging his bets on his dream to work in the Department of Mysteries. Blaise could only imagine all the secrets he could learn in the Department of Mysteries that would grant him power through knowledge. In his mind, knowledge afforded him the most opportunities for success. He excelled in his studies which made Blaise sure he could succeed in his dream.

In third year, Blaise did manage to form an acquaintanceship with a certain Padma Patil through their mutual interest in Arithmancy. They studied together often, and Blaise even let her ramble on about trivial subjects when he was in one of his more patient moods. Even that companionship ended in Blaise's sixth year.

Blaise's determination to skate easily through school having little to do with his schoolmates fell apart when Voldemort came back to power. Many Slytherin families had connections to Voldemort, and the whole house expected all Slytherins to throw in their support for Voldemort. During Voldemort's first reign, Berenice had managed to stay neutral by virtue of not being close enough to anyone for them to try and push her into joining the Death Eaters. If anyone asked, she threw in her support for Voldemort, but the truth was she didn't want anything to do with the dark lord. Berenice figured Voldemort would fall one day, and she didn't want to be linked to him when that happened.

In the midst of the ambitious next generation of Death Eaters, Blaise found it harder to completely stay out of the war. He truly wanted nothing to do with Voldemort. In his mind, aligning himself with a leader that didn't hesitate to murder his own followers at the tiniest slights was monumentally stupid. On the other hand, joining the opposition which consisted of those that would deny all evidence of Voldemort's return didn't seem particularly wise either. If Voldemort could come back from the dead unnoticed and proceed to take the steps necessary for victory also unnoticed, then Blaise didn't have much confidence in the rest of the wizarding world's ability to stop Voldemort. Even if he had thought Voldemort's defeat impending, Blaise wouldn't have felt safe going up against Voldemort while he lived in the Slytherin dorms.

As it were, Blaise tried to convince his housemates he was with them even as he continued avoiding involvement. It wasn't too hard to stay out of the war. School children weren't expected to do much outside of spreading the word to those that might be sympathetic to the cause. Blaise increased the amount of anti-mudblood rhetoric that came out of his mouth, ingratiated himself more to his housemates, and hoped for the war to end soon. Padma ended her friendship with Blaise when he failed to condemn Voldemort's side of the war.

What the idiots in his house couldn't understand was that the war was currently the most dangerous thing to their ambitions. Blaise didn't know what they hoped to gain from the war. They already had money and connections. All the war did was risk their lives and their stations. Blaise didn't know how his fellow Slytherins couldn't see how much they would fall in life if Voldemort fell and they were caught supporting him.

For Blaise's and Berenice's part, they didn't receive any fallout from Voldemort's demise having never participated in the war. Blaise was able to continue with his original life plan, passing his NEWTs with exceptional grades and get a job in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. The Department of Mysteries wouldn't come until he passed the appropriate tests and proved himself capable of properly handling the unknown. It was on the job that Blaise started his journey into the worst possible situation for a self preservationist.

It started with a typical call in; just a standard unexpected explosion in a bumbling wizard's house. Blaise headed over to the scene expecting to find an errant erumpet horn or something of similar nature. It was surprising how many witches and wizards would keep explosive items in their house with the idea that they would never be careless enough to let it explode. Blaise had a lot of cases involving people like that.

When Blaise arrived at the scene, he cast spells to check for any remaining dangers. Finding nothing, he motioned to his team, and they proceeded forward, carefully picking through the wreckage for the cause of the explosion. Only twenty minutes passed when one of the searchers called out, "I found something!"

Blaise didn't look over immediately. His focus was occupied by a small object he found buried under a pile of splintered wood. Surreptitiously, he picked up the item and stashed it in his deep pocket. One never knew when a time turner might turn out to be handy.

Having successfully stolen the time turner without detection, Blaise gathered around with his other coworkers. A witch by the name of Liana Ainsworth stood in front of a charred and partially melted muggle radio. Ah, another common magical accident. Some magical persons liked the novelty of owning a quaint muggle object without even knowing the potential dangers or how to protect from those dangers. Electricity acted poorly to magic, and if exposed to enough magic, an electrical object could explode. Blaise thought anyone stupid enough and with poor enough taste to decorate their house with muggle items deserved to have their house demolished.

After another boring day of investigating and smoothing over people's idiocies, Blaise returned to his house. Despite living alone, Blaise's house had two stories and three bedrooms. He refused to suffer the indignity of residing in a small home. Blaise trudged up to the bedroom he preferred and carefully placed his time turner in a chest protected by spells. He couldn't risk anyone else getting their hands on that or accidentally setting it off. He'd seen enough of arrogant people that thought they would never stumble into a dangerous device to never make that mistake himself.

In the following days, Blaise put the time turner out of his mind. Unless he found a need for the thing, he had no reason to think of it. He only came across the time turner again when he went back into his secure chest to retrieve some polyjuice potion. He had a plan figured out to get the answers for his upcoming test. When possible, a Slytherin always cheated.

As Blaise reached in to grab his vial of polyjuice, the doorbell rang. Jerking his hand back in shock, Blaise jostled the time turner and that's when he noticed something wrong with it. Ignoring the doorbell for the time being, Blaise carefully picked up the time turner to examine it better. The screw on the ring was coming loose which shouldn't be possible without some tampering. That meant that the previous owner had been messing with the time turner, not surprising for someone that thought owning an electrical object in a magical atmosphere was a good idea. Blaise supposed he himself was an idiot for not noticing the loose screw previously. Blaise cursed as the doorbell rang again. Didn't the person know that no answer meant they should go away not ring the bell again?

With as much caution as possible, Blaise lay the defective timeturner on his bureau and headed downstairs to answer the door. The further he walked, the dizzier he felt. His mind staggered in time with his legs and he grasped onto the railing of the stairs tightly. He needed to sit down or he'd fall. Blaise hardly had time to register that he was in the process of passing out before he fell into the emptiness of unconsciousness.