Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I definitely would not be writing fanfictions on the computer, but gallivanting across the world signing autographs and winning numerous book awards. But seeing as I am writing fanfics on the computer and not signing any autographs, I clearly do not own HP.
Author comments: Well guys, all I have to say is that I really hope you like this story because it's really a difficult one to write, and kind of unconventional because stories about Blaise are more uncommon-but I really wanted space to characterize my own character, and she was the one to use! And yes, Blaise is a girl in the story. Not a guy. And she does fall in love… but with who, you'll have to read on and find out… Enjoy!
Finding Gray
"A chill goes through her, for she feels it in her bones, the future is now beginning. By the time it is over, it will be the past, and she doesn't want to be the only one left to tell their story."
-In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
Chapter One: Memories and Dreams
The girl was a piece of satin cloth, so delicate, so fragile, pure, simple, beautiful, elegant, innocent, and soft. The kind of satin that is worn once, or maybe a lucky two times, then by some accident is stained by an unfortunate spill or unexpected mark. The neat, silky white that had moved like waves marred by the raining of some disfigurement.
The girl was a clear blue sky, the kind one thinks is "perfect". No wisp of white, no path of gray or darkness sown into the ocean blue carpet. The blue sky that looks like a hard surface; however, when closely examined, seems to stretch beyond, until the analyzer questions whether or not their eyes will ever see the heavens. All of a sudden a cloud appears, and each cloud proceeding it seems darker than the previous. This continues until the sky is coated in a granite surface, and the heavens finally open up and the torrential downpour leaks onto the Earth.
The girl was a pure, white dove, with clean-colored feathers that gracefully molded into the air, seeming to glide on the air as a swan glides on water. She was the dove that was shot down by a fiery death that sliced through the air ominously and mercilessly. Maybe the dove was mistaken for a different creature, but all that matters in the end is that the bullet finds its home in the shape of a dove, taking the creature down and with it, her innocence.
The first time Blaise Zabini stepped into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she was just a simple girl who lived in a seemingly carefree world. However, this tranquil perspective faded away the second she stepped up to that clairvoyant hat…
"Zabini, Blaise," called a dour looking woman standing next to a weathered brown stool and a frayed black hat that looked like it had seen one too many years.
Blaise was jolted with nerves that ran, tingling up and down her spine and spreading through her feet and arms. What were the names of the four houses again? Blaise could not remember, and she was shaking in her shoes. She tremblingly stepped up to the hat and placed it apprehensively on her head.
"Well, this certainly is a mysterious batch we have today. Zabini… Zabini… hmm... That's a rather new name. I see that you have immense loyalty towards those you love- an excellent Hufflepuff quality. It is difficult to determine your past, it's very foggy… but wait! I see something…Ah, yes, this is very interesting. What I see is-"
The hat halted, and remained quiet.
"What? What do you see?" Blaise asked fervently in her head.
"That I cannot say, I now realize- it is for you to discover," was the laconic reply, and the hat's voice sounded sad, almost regretful and apologetic. "But now it makes sense, the loose ends have tied together and someday you will come to understand. Do not forget to remember your past."
"SLYTHERIN!" The hat boomed, but instead of being stopped by thunderous applause coming from the Slytherin table, the Sorting Hat's voice echoed and bounced off the cavernous walls. It continued resonating inside Blaise's head.
Hushed whispers slowly filled the Great Hall, creeping up on Blaise like ants making their way along the ground. Why wasn't anyone clapping? Why was no house cheering for her, why was nobody happy to have Blaise Zabini? She felt terrified, she wanted to go home, crawl in bed, and have her mother tell her everything was alright. Blaise just knew she was going to burst into tears, she felt the hard rock in her throat. What was wrong with her? Was this a nightmare? If so, why did it seem so long?
Just then the harsh looking teacher standing next to the stool took the hat off Blaise's head and helped her scoot down off of the chair.
"Slytherin table is over there," she said softly, pointing to Blaise's far left. Something told Blaise that this professor never spoke softly.
Blaise nodded, and agitatedly walked to her house table, shaking all the while.
When she got there, one look at the table and Blaise wanted to run away. Her toes itched with the longing to run far, as far away from the Slytherin house as possible. She didn't feel very well either, light-headed and dizzy, slightly nauseous. The people at the table of her new house looked like piranhas that just spotted new prey. They had a fascinating combination of anger and glee, just how Blaise imagined the villains in her favorite fairytales looked. She cautiously slipped onto the end of a bench, avoiding all of their eyes.
Mealtime was nothing short of lonely, terrifying, or tear-inducing. Even though Hogwarts food was delicious, Blaise would have given anything to be back home with her mother and father, eating sweet rolls and laughing at whatever show was on television. Blaise mainly kept her focus on her plate, trying to avoid the glittering eyes always turned towards her. One time she did look up, perhaps searching for a single kind face among the Slytherins.
Her eyes did not wander far when they spotted a boy that looked to be about her age. He had pale, blond hair and sharp features on a pointed face. As soon as she took his looks in, his face turned to catch hers. He was wearing a cruel smirk, and his eyes sparkled with malice when their eyes met. Blaise immediately turned away and focused on her plate once more, frightened at the look in that boy's eyes.
She was joined a minute later by the same boy, who stood leering over her, casting a shadow on her plate, thus making her turn around.
His eyes, upon further inspection, where a cool blue-grey, and they had an air about them that was vaguely familiar.
He held out his hand to her, a bright smirk drawn across his skin. She shook his hand.
"So you're a Slytherin also. Congratulations," he said without a trace of enthusiasm. "Hopefully you will soon learn your place in Slytherin, remember not to interfere with your superiors." This was said with a slightly tight squeeze of hands.
Blaise was scared now, and she tried to remove her hand from his tight grip. He noticed this and looked down at their clasped hands. Blaise watched his eyes travel from their hands to her wrist.
The boy's eyes widened a fraction and he looked up at her with probing, searching eyes. Blaise turned red and looked away. She had always been ashamed of her scar. Her parents told her she got it as a child after having a nasty accident with a knife, but it seemed odd that one should receive a perfect straight line spanning the length of one's wrist, and a small "x" intersecting the line at it's dead center. Blaise had always been slightly suspicious about where she got it.
The smirk on the boys face had been wiped off as if by an eraser. He was slightly pale, and had stopped pumping her hand.
"I'm Draco Malfoy," was all he said, before turning and walking off.
She walked down the descending stone stairs, her hands shivering as the cold stone railing dug into her flesh, freezing her body. There was a man at the bottom of the steps and next to him a young boy, who appeared to be pleading with the man for something. The man yelled, but she could not hear what he said; he raised his wand towards the little boy, but she had no idea what spell came out, because not only was there no sound, there was a flash of blue-grey eyes, and the stairs she had been standing on formed a slide, and she was sliding downwards and further downwards. When the slide stopped, she was crashing through air. The crashing stopped.
She was suspended in mid air.
And before she had time to revel in this mystery…
A hand reaches down to pull her up, she doesn't know where to, but she grabs it anyway. The boy is freckled with hair like a bloodred sun and his eyes are a sea of emotions. All of a sudden, there is another flash and she is on a cold, tone floor again, only she is holding someone's hand. She squeezes the hand, it doesn't squeeze back. The palm is really cold and she knows the person is dead. When she looks down at her wrist, her scar is gone, it's dead, it's been erased, what's happened to it?
There is a blood-curdling scream, and it won't stop. It's turning colder and colder and the air is leaving her body, though she doesn't know why. The scream isn't stopping, she is at freezing point, and then she realizes that she is the one screaming. She hears voices calling someone's name. Wait. It's her name.
Then she sees the beautiful eyes again, the ones that are swimming in emotions, the eyes belonging to the boy with bloodred hair as bright as the sun with freckles smattering his pale skin.
She leans towards him.
Then she sees her dead parents.
Blaise was jolted awake, her heart thundering like the pounding of a hundred horse hooves. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, and she felt like she couldn't breathe, she was so hot.
It was then she was aware of her surroundings. Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Blustrode were sitting on her bed, looking terrified through and through.
"Blaise, what happened?" Pansy looked at her with concern etched in her face.
"You were screaming for about five minutes straight!" Millicent told her. "We were about to go wake Draco."
Blaise was still out of breath. "I…I just had a nightmare."
Pansy and Millicent just nodded. When you were a Slytherin, you did not ask questions about deep and personal issues. It was not only tactful, it was logical and way to avoid cutting memories and hurt.
"I'm fine now," Blaise added.
"Alright then," Pansy said, handing her a glass of water. "Good-night," and with a final worried glance towards Blaise, she walked to her own bed.
"Are you sure you're fine?" Millicent asked. "I mean, you look like death."
"Yes, yes, I'll be fine. I just need to settle down."
With that, Millicent walked off also.
Blaise tried to calm herself. She tried to cool herself down from the heat that would not leave her body. She did not want to go to sleep again, was so afraid she would see her parents again, afraid she would be haunted by the two people she loved more than all the world.
She decided to take a walk, if not around the school, then at least down to the common room. Blaise slid out of her bed and placed her feet in her slippers. Leaving the dormitory, she closed the door with a soft chink.
When she had first arrived at Hogwarts, Blaise did not see how the Slytherin common room could be in any way comforting. It had a harsh interior, decorated in sinister greens and thawing silvers. But, like everything else about the Slytherin house, the common room grew on her. The colors became warmer and the acute edges softened, beginning to feel obtusely comfortable.
Slytherins were always seen as evil and power-hungry. Blaise was neither of those; she was not sure why she was placed in a house like Slytherin as opposed to Hufflepuff. Blaise was kind and maybe too soft to belong in her house. However, she did know that many Slytherins were often misunderstood. Just as Gryffindors believed Slytherins were everything that is bad, Slytherins had been hurt by Gryffindors in the past. Blaise was saddened by the void between the two houses, because it hindered the blossoming of what could have been powerful leaders at Hogwarts. But prejudice goes deeper than just black and white, fire and ice; it is an idea that turns into a belief, and a belief so strong that nobody can persuade an individual against it.
The common room fire was low, and the crackling of wood inside it had a calming effect on Blaise. She sat in one of the rich, green armchairs and stared into the fire.
Who was that red-haired boy she saw in her dreams? And what about the man and the little boy? Who was the dead person whose hand was colder than ice? Blaise always had dreams like these, nightmares that woke her up sweating and screaming. They had started five years ago, and since then she either had no dreams or nightmares. Almost all of the characters in these nightmares were unrecognizable or unfamiliar. Maybe people from her shrouded past or people she had yet to meet. Who knew?
It was when she got nostalgic that Blaise found herself questioning. There was this blank space in her childhood that she could never figure out. Maybe everyone had it, Blaise did not know, but this space seemed transparent. She knew something was there, yet she couldn't see what it was, despite the clarity. It felt all wrong, and Blaise had never liked it.
Remembering her childhood was like rolling dice, because she never knew how she would react to it. Tonight though, as memories of hot apple cider and storytime filled her brain, and the aftertaste of cookies and milk was fresh in her mouth, Blaise snuggled into the armchair, and surrendered to sleep…
Reviews would definitely be good! I'm going to try and update this story once a week on a regular basis, and I'll get back to you next week about what day it'll usually be on. Thanks!! Review, because it makes me feel all happy inside!