A/N: Written for the Song of the Week Mini-Competition #2 at the HPFC forum. I got the song "Just A Kiss" by Lady Antebellum, and the prompts grandeur, stained and twinkling. The pairing was also given. Many thanks to mew (mew-tsubaki) for the wonderful beta-job, and for the title which comes from the song with the same title by Alanis Morissette.

Precious Illusions

I'm caught up in this moment, caught up in your smile

They were sitting on the floor, and Blaise's back was aching an awful lot, but he didn't want her to move, so he endured, silently. Her eyes were caught on something outside the castle, perhaps the stars that shone through the window in front of them.

Sometimes, he hated her. He didn't want to have to hide like this, to have to lurk in the shadows as though what they were doing was wrong. It made him feel dirty, like some sort of monster that no one wanted to touch.

But, as it was she who had pledged that they shouldn't meet anytime besides the middle of the night, as it was she who had forced him not to tell anyone about them, maybe she was the monster, and he the seduced one. Maybe he was her victim; maybe she had lured him out here, to the loneliness and coldness disguised as warmth and devotion, only to be able to sink her teeth into him.

Or rather maybe not. Blaise felt his lips pull up in a half grin, and apparently Parvati had noticed, as well. "What?" she whispered, and she opened her eyes from where she had her head resting in his lap.

"Nothing," Blaise answered. "Or yes, something. Do we have to keep doing this? You know, hide? Do we really have to? No one would notice, I promise."

Parvati turned her head around, so their eyes no longer were meeting, and Blaise lifted his hand as if he was going to pull it through her hair, but he only let it hover a few seconds above her head before it slumped back against the floor.

They sat like that for a while, and Blaise wondered if everything was going to be destroyed now, if he finally had destroyed them, when she rose up so that she sat a little to the left of him. He pulled up his knees, and then, with the expression that she had lost her breath, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, deeper than before, hungrier than before.

:::::

it's hard to fight these feelings when it feels so hard to breathe

Blaise stood on the circular staircase and had his forehead leaning against the window. It was raining outside, and it felt as though it was raining inside of him. Too much happened, all the time, and he had thought he was much stronger than this. That he would be able to put his feelings away, when he needed to, that he'd be able not to care.

But today he had realized it was impossible.

Today he had burst out of the class room, green in the face and a hand covering his mouth.

Today, he felt weaker than he thought possible.

It was so odd, also. Why wouldn't he be able to look at someone being tortured without getting the urge to throw up? It was something that didn't make sense actually. He had seen people being hurt, seen people twisting in pain and shouting for their lives before.

He swallowed hard. It hadn't been her then. It hadn't been her eyes filled with tears, and it hadn't been her lips curled in pain, trying their hardest not to let a scream slip through but failing. It hadn't been her hand shaking against the floor as she lay there, unable to control it.

:::::

"So, Patil, what brings you here?" His lips were turned into his usual sneer, and Parvati regretted going there immediately. Or, not quite, but she liked to think she regretted it.

"Someone said you were here, and that you wanted to see me." She narrowed her eyes slightly, when he suddenly looked at her with something that resembled panic in his eyes.

"Who?"

"Someone," she shrugged, and she took a seat next to him by the table. They were in the Three Broomsticks, and the warmth that had greeted her when she had entered was now somewhere else, because his eyes looked as though they were full of icicles. She was fully aware that she had acted rather Slytherin-like in coming here and tricking him into believing that she thought he wanted to meet her.

But then again, maybe he could look through her. Maybe his eyes were as piercing as she had always found them. "All right, then," he answered, and he folded his hands underneath his chin, and she suddenly knew that he knew.

She exhaled slightly. They sat like that for a while, quiet, she looking at the ceiling and his gaze captured someplace elsewhere she didn't know. Then he grabbed her hand so that he pulled her close to him, so that he could whisper into her ear.

"I know why you came, but we shouldn't meet here. Here are way too many people and everyone knows us. Meet me behind Honeydukes."

He rose from the chair and pulled his coat around his shoulders, and she watched his broad shoulders walk through the door, a little bit prouder, held a little bit higher than they usually were.

She smiled.

:::::

His breaths rose from his mouth in plumes of vapor as he stood leaning against the wall, and his face was hidden beneath his cloak so he resembled something dark, something dangerous, but she didn't even hesitate.

She had knew it from that time she had lain panting on the floor, that moment Alecto had turned from her with her usual sweet voice, that moment she had looked up and found everyone staring down at the floor except for him. For he had been staring straight into her eyes, and his eyes hadn't been there. They had been on fire, but they hadn't been there.

So now, as soon as he looked up from the ground and their eyes met once more, she threw one glance backwards, and then she didn't look at anything but him. He caught her around her arms, and she thought he would say something, but he didn't.

He just hovered, as though on a broomstick, trying to decide if he should go for the Snitch, then his lips met hers, and judging by the smug look on them afterwards, he had indeed caught the Snitch.

:::::

I've never opened up to anyone

Suddenly she pulled away her lips from his and leaned backwards. Blaise realized his back was aching even more than before now from sitting on the cold stone floor and having her weight in his lap, too.

"We can't tell," she whispered and looked down while her hands moved about in his hair, never stopping, never hesitating. "We'd get killed. You'd get killed."

"I wouldn't."

"You would," she looked up so that her eyes now met his. "If we did this in public, everyone would find out, and he would most definitely find out. And he'll kill you. It doesn't matter if you're not officially on his side; you're much too acquainted with everyone for it not to be a big deal hooking up with a D.A. member."

"But…" He leaned forward so that his forehead bumped into her shoulder.

"No buts, Blaise. How hard is it to get? And why can't we keep doing what we're doing now, what's the problem?" She suddenly rose from the floor and wrinkled her forehead. "I don't get it, Blaise." Then, after smoothing her skirt, she hastened away.

He stayed, thinking of how this parting was different from those they had had before. They had all been just as fast, but there was still a little voice in his head that said so sweetly that this time was different. He didn't want to listen to that, though, so he walked back to his dormitory and tried to empty his brain of thoughts.

:::::

so hard to hold back when I'm holding you in my arms

The second time they'd met, it had been even more of a rush. After notes sent in the middle of the night and some very good acting that neither had looked at or acknowledged more than usual, they had decided to see each other in the classroom next to Flitwick's, the one that was more of a dump than anything else.

And it was hard,trying not to notice each other for a whole week, when their lips had been burning with memories of that little backstreet in Hogsmeade, hearts stained with something they didn't know what to call, or rather didn't dare to name "love"—it was all hazy.

Their hands grasped after each other even before they could reach each other, and they didn't even say more than two silent "hello"s, before their lips crashed against the other's and sufficiently stopped all speech for the night.

She would still blush when she thought of that night.

:::::

It had been easy to come to an understanding that they simply couldn't wait so long between their meetings, so the next time was on a Wednesday and it was no more than two days later.

"So, how's your day been?" For some reason, it was much more awkward when the sun was still up, he thought. It wasn't as easy just to grab her around her shoulders and kiss her, as he had wanted. And it would have made his mum proud, seeing how politely he chatted with her.

"Fine." She raised her eyebrows, almost invisibly so, but he noticed and it made him happy.

"Yours?"

"Good," he answered. Then they sat like that, underneath a tree close to the lake, where they knew no one would come, and where they knew it was about to start to rain any moment, so they would have to hunch together underneath the umbrella she had brought.

The moment she would open that umbrella with eyes clearly trying to hide their excitement would always be stored in his mind, always.

:::::

just a touch of the fire burning so bright

"Parvati, hey, come," he said from nowhere, and he pulled her with him without saying anything else. She hadn't time to stop him either, because she was busy frantically looking around herself if someone noticed them. And being overwhelmed by the feeling of his fingers grasping around her arm again was equally distracting, because she had missed that feeling, that feeling that someone needed her, needed her desperately as someone who craved water.

"What is it, Blaise?" she then asked when they stopped and he had let go of her, and it finally hit her that they hadn't spoken for three weeks.

"I can't do this anymore. Parvati…," he began, and his eyes weren't twinkling and they weren't shining with love and they weren't sparkling like diamonds. But then again, had they ever been doing that? Hadn't they always been the black holes that dragged everything into them and kept it there? "I miss you too much, I…I…"

"I've missed you, too." She didn't know where that had come from, or why she had said it. It was true, but she hadn't planned on letting him know—not so fast, at least.

"You have?" But the way his lips twitched a little bit, almost nothing at all, but still a little bit, made her happy she had said it.

She nodded back. "But, Blaise, we can't…I mean, I don't want to risk…"

He took one step forward and shook his head. "I know. I'm sorry. It is too dangerous, we'll just keep, you know, doing what we did first?"

She nodded and took the hand he had raised in the air and now looked as though he didn't know where to put.

As he grasped a little tighter around her fingers, she noticed they were standing in one of the towers so that they could look out at the lake, the mountains, and the way the sun's beams bathed everything in a golden shimmer. She was at war and so was he, but the world's grandeur and his fingers pressed against hers told her another story.

so baby, I'm all right with just a kiss goodnight