Here it is, my first story written for a challenge. Enjoy:
Chapter One
He couldn't believe he was doing it. Still doing it, in fact. The whole thing still seemed strange to him. But he loved it.
Blaise Zabini walked quickly up the stairs from the dungeons. The entire school was dark, but he didn't light his wand. Getting caught by one of the patrolling aurors would not only get him weeks of detention for being out of bed at this time, but it would also give away his secret. He'd lasted this long, and wasn't planning on getting caught now.
He crossed the entrance hall and quickly mounted the marble staircase up to the second floor. He paused and listened for a moment before smugly proceeding.
Ten minutes later, he stood outside the door of an unused classroom down the charms corridor. His bravado failed him as he looked at the closed door, and he found himself saying, please let her be there, please let her be there, over and over to himself in his head.
He reached forward a trembling hand and pushed the door open.
And there she was.
She was sitting with her back to the door, on one of the desks clustered in the center of the room. She was still wearing her school robes, but her black hair was out of its usual braid, and hanging free down her back. Its wavy lengths were shining in the light of a candle she had lit, and had levitated so that it would hang in the air beside her.
She was so perfect, so beautiful, Blaise thought as she turned around to smile at him. How had he gone sixteen years without her?
Parvati sat perched on a desk in the empty classroom, listening hard in case any of the aurors or corridor patrol should pass. She'd lit a candle, but it made her nervous, wondering if the flickering light could be noticed from outside. She was about to get up and put it out when she heard footsteps. She froze, at first suspecting she had been caught. She listened, and heard them pause outside the door. Her heart started to race, and she knew it wasn't because she thought she was about to be caught. It's him, it must be him, she thought, feeling the heat rise to her face.
Someone pushed the door open, and he walked in. It was him.
He stood and looked at her for a moment, closing the door quietly behind him. Tingling with fear and excitement, Parvati broke the silence.
"Hello, Blaise." She said, smiling at him.
She still could hardly believe that she was here, with him, together. He was amazing, he really was.
"Hello, Parvati." Blaise said, and Parvati could tell by his expression that he felt frustrated by the lack of eloquence in the word. That was one of the things about him, that she could tell exactly what he was thinking from his every expression.
Parvati giggled, then quickly stifled the sound. She turned around on the desk so that she was facing Blaise, and he started walking to her.
"How are you doing?" she began, then before he had time to answer, she added "You didn't have any trouble getting here?"
"No. Did you?" he asked.
"Oh no, not at all." Parvati said, watching him sit down on another desk so that he could face her.
Blaise was silent. Parvati wondered whatever could be bothering him. He looked like he felt awkward with her, and it made her nervous. She hadn't felt like that around him for the last four weeks. She remembered the first time they had met in secret, and how strange it had felt then. Frightening. To be alone with an almost stranger, despite her attraction to him, and to be out at night, where getting caught would not only get them detention, but end the privacy of their little affair. Parvati didn't mind that much, but she knew Blaise would. He had confessed that he was terrified by the idea already. His whole house would hate him, and torment him endlessly.
But it had gone smoothly that first night, when they had just sat and talked, almost into the morning, then slipped back to their dormitories. And that night had been followed by others, just like it. Blaise would pass Parvati a scrap of parchment with a location written on it, and they would meet there at midnight. Sometimes Parvati would do the same, only Blaise generally didn't like her locations as much. In fact, tonight had been her idea.
"Is something bothering you?" she asked Blaise, twisting her hands in her lap.
Blaise had been looking a little absently past her at the wall, but now turned his dark eyes on Parvati.
"No."
Parvati was not usually offended by his shortness, but tonight she was taken aback. She was about to ask him if he didn't want to be there tonight, and would rather her just go back to her dormitory, when he spoke.
"Nothing has really been bothering me. I've just been thinking." he looked at her again, and he seemed to be making up his mind about something.
"What've you been thinking about?" Parvati asked, relieved that he had finally said something, and didn't seem angry.
"Just things." he said. He reached forward and took Parvati's hands out of her lap and held them, gently and carefully, as if he thought she might wrench them away.
Parvati looked at him in astonishment. She was pleased, beyond pleased, with the contact, but it was certainly strange. Blaise almost never touched her. In the corridors during the day, when they pretended not to know each other, they were never near each other. But even when they were alone, and concerned only with the other, they never embraced, or held hands. It wasn't that it was rude, or chaste, just that it wasn't something they did.
"What sort of things?" Parvati asked, a little tingling starting to take place in her stomach again.
"All kind of things." Blaise answered her quietly. Then he stood up resolutely, pulling Parvati up by her hands. Parvati had just enough time to say "Blaise?" before he closed the step between them and kissed her.
Blaise had a harder time keeping quiet on the way back to his dormitory than he had when he was leaving it. He and Parvati had left the classroom in opposite directions, both grinning like idiots.
Despite how appealing he was to girls, Blaise had never found a girl that he found appealing. There were some attractive ones, but nothing like Parvati. Not even her sister, the girl from Ravenclaw. No, Parvati was something of her own. Something that he wanted.
It hadn't been his first kiss. He'd kissed other girls, to make his mother happy. She didn't really care what sort of romance he was in, but wanted to be sure that the family looks weren't going to waste. But this wasn't like those other fleeting pecks by enamored girls. He shivered, remembering Parvati's arms wrapped around his neck, and her soft mouth on his. There was nothing, he thought, nothing that could ruin his night now.
But he was wrong.
When he had whispered the password to the stone wall, and it had moved aside to reveal the entrance to the Slytherin dormitories, Blaise breathed a sigh of relief. He had made it back again, and tonight had been so much more important than all of the other nights.
He took a step towards the fire, which was just a pile of flickering coals now, but suddenly froze where he stood.
"Hello, Blaise," someone said, their smooth, arrogant voice rising from one of the leather armchairs by the fireplace.
Draco Malfoy stood up, his pointed face contorted in a triumphant grin.
"My, you're out late. What were you doing? I hope it was important."
Blaise had a powerful urge to hex Malfoy into a million pieces, but if he went for his wand, he knew Malfoy would do the same, and a full scale duel in the common room did not seem the way to end this quietly.
Blaise's mind worked quickly. The most believable story was that he had been meeting someone, because it was true. But Malfoy was sure to know if any of the other Slytherins were out, and even if he didn't, if he checked later he would find that no one had been out. Blaise had no friends in this house, he had never thought he would need them. But now he found that he would have given a lot to have someone lie for him.
"I was out." he said shortly, "I felt like a walk."
"At one o'clock in the morning?" Malfoy said skeptically.
"Yes. I couldn't sleep, and Crabbe snores." This last was true. Crabbe was a horrible roommate. But he had been for six years, and Blaise had never been caught leaving the dormitory in the middle of the night before.
He stood perfectly still, forcing himself to breath normally, and not to think of what the outcome would be if Malfoy decided he didn't like Blaise's story.
Blaise could see that the comment about Crabbe had done him good. Malfoy was thinking, his mind working over the situation. Blaise relaxed slightly. The only thing Malfoy could prove was that he had been out after hours. He had no way of knowing what Blaise had been doing.
"Fine. You can have it this once. But if I catch you again, you'll have detention." Malfoy said sourly.
Blaise nodded disdainfully, not daring to speak, and turned and went through the passage to their dormitory.
That's chapter one, hope you liked, hope you'll review. Thanks, and now you can go read chapter two.