Usurper
When he was very young, when he really should have been too little to remember, Blaise's mother would hold him in her lap and tell him stories. She told him her mother was the sea and her father the sky. How she was born from seafoam and when she stepped out of the safety of her mother's arms and onto the coarse, ever-moving, ever-changing shores of Cyprus she was already the fairest of them all.
She told Blaise about her husband, an ugly, clever-fingered god who tried to curry her love and loyalty with jewelry and trinkets. How it wasn't enough. How he wasn't enough. Not even in the beginning. "I was never given a choice," she told Blaise, obvious to him then, even as a little, sheltered boy, that she was looking for sympathy. "My king told me I must marry him, so I did." Dark eyes fevered and half-crazed, she said, "But I didn't let it stop me. I took lovers by the thousands. Dozens a night. Any and all that caught my fancy I secreted away to corners hidden from the gazes of the others and pleasured them as only I, the goddess of love, could."
Blaise never said much when she told him tales about her many trysts. He just nodded and tried to pretend he wasn't disgusted by her waxing poetically about the many men she'd been with and how she made love to them. Sometimes, he didn't do as good a job as others. Those times, she'd call him a prude and accuse him of mortal priggishness before she sent him away from her to be cared for by the likes of their house elves. He never knew when she would return from her searches for "better" company – or if he'd have to welcome a new stepfather in addition to his mother home.
He couldn't say it didn't sting when she pushed him away, but as he grew older and she did it more and more, he grew numb to her mercurial treatment. In retrospect, he thought he could even understand her behavior. His mother wasn't the goddess of home and hearth or motherhood, but of love and pleasure and sensuality. She'd never been mother material to start with.
Given how his father and step-fathers ended up, Blaise just counted himself fortunate to have not tragically died before he reached adulthood most days.
-o-O-o-
The spring he turned seven, while running errands in Diagon Alley, his mother stopped them just before they were to step into her favorite boutique. She pointed at a man leaving the Alley's apothecary a few doors down. "Look at him," she said.
Blaise looked at him as all children who have yet to be taught how impolite it was to stare did. The man was sallow and his hair hung limply around his angular face with its too big hawkish nose. Lifting him into her arms (despite him really being too old for it) and hugging him close with deceptive affection, she whispered secretively, "He's one of my husband's."
His eyes didn't leave the man as he walked away; a frown pulling at the corner of Blaise's lips was the only indication he heard his mother's gossip at all. One of his? What did she mean? A worshiper? A receiver of his favor? A lover?
Mother appeared to know exactly what thoughts were running through Blaise's young mind as she explained, "He's a child of my husband. Though, I cannot say if he's a son or a grandson." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "Perhaps a great-grandson." The hand not holding him on her hip went for her wand. Idly, she twirled it between her fingers. "Such a bright thing he is. It never ceases to amaze me the propensity his wizard-begotten children have for spell-crafting." She finally pushed open the door of their destination. "They make such names for themselves. A few even weather time's erosion and are remembered in your mortal history books." His mother sighed a little. "Mores the pity they all live lives of strife despite their successes."
"Are they cursed?" asked he as they stepped into the over-stuffed shop.
She blinked at Blaise. "In their own ways, all the children of the gods and goddesses are," his mother replied before the boutique's owner hurried out of the back room to greet his mother like an old friend.
Blaise's mother put him down and followed the owner as she took her to the other side of the shop to show her the new designer boots they just got in from Italy. He, however, stayed rooted to his spot. If her husband's children never meet a happy end, what do Blaise's mother's children suffer?
He mulled it over in his mind for the rest of the day. Blaise thought about what kinds of things he did to be called naughty and other instances where his mother would yell at him and call him irksome. In spite of all of the consideration he put into trying to find out what his curse was, Blaise simply couldn't.
That night, as his mother tucked him in his bed and wished him a good night, Blaise questioned, "Mummy, what is my curse?"
For a moment, her face was blank. Then, a slow grin crept across her ruby-colored lips. She stroked his chin. "Why, we are never satisfied." She leaned in and placed a kiss upon his brow. He could smell the myrtle in her perfume. "You will always want more than what you have, my love."
Blaise felt tears building in his eyes. That did not sound so good to his ears. It sounded as if he would never be happy.
"It is not so bad, my dear," Mother soothed. "You'll die a rich, successful, well-adventured man."
Still crying, he whimpered, "What if all I want is to die happy?"
She sighed. Not a tired sigh, or even a sad one. No, his mother sounded annoyed. Like when she found he had not eaten his carrots at dinner, but hidden them in the pockets of his trousers instead. "Happiness is for regular mortals, Blaise. Not for those who bleed half-ichor." Tone taking on a sharp, lecturing quality, she said to him, "You should be grateful to be my son. Not every child is so lucky as to be a demigod."
Blaise nodded, but he did not agree. He would gladly exchange his mother for a mortal if it meant he could die happy and satisfied with life. At the time, he was too young to understand, but his curse – the curse of Aphrodite – was already at work. He wanted more than money, power, and ichor. Blaise wanted joy.
-o-O-o-
Later on, when Blaise was quickly approaching ten and had come to accept joy would never be a lasting thing for him, he asked his mother if there were other demigods. Perhaps ones he could not only see, like that one man in Diagon Alley, but meet – if it wasn't too much trouble, of course. Yes, Blaise had companions in the children of the pureblood adults his mother socialized with, but it'd be nice to meet another demigod(dess). He could talk freely about his mother without fear of sounding mad as a hatter or like a liar.
His mother, preoccupied with preparing for her evening's date, hummed absently. "Of course there are," answered she. "There are usually a couple hundred of you at any given time." Sweeping in front of her full-length mirror to get a full look at the latest dress she was trying on (a sleek, curve-hugging black evening gown), she explained, "When we don mortal flesh, we usually end up at least with one or two offspring." Using the mirror's reflection to look at Blaise, she smiled with all of her orderly white teeth. "In spite of some of our best efforts to prevent such happenings."
Blaise left his mother to finish getting ready alone shortly thereafter. He was no longer interested in meeting other half-godlings like himself for the time being. Even if he was, Blaise wasn't sure his mother would help him find some – it would cut into her time looking for new and worthy lovers.
Later that night, after his family's house elf saw Blaise off to bed and he was curled into a ball beneath his duvet, he told himself his mother hadn't meant it. She didn't. She was just being mean for bothering her when she was getting ready for her date. Yes, that was all. Blaise was better off not dwelling on it. If his mother didn't want Blaise when he was born or even now she would have gotten rid of him – as she had with all of her husbands so far.
-o-O-o-
Early in his second year at Hogwarts Blaise finally gathered enough courage together to ask Professor Snape about his father. Under the pretense of wishing to understand why his latest essay received an E instead of an O, Blaise set up an appointment with the potions teacher. The sallow man didn't seem particularly pleased Blaise wanted to discuss his essay, but allowed it. Blaise had done this a few times in the past with no hidden agendas. He also truly did want to know what he'd done wrong on his essay. Blaise was never happy with anything less than perfect.
That afternoon, as Professor Snape wrapped up his explanation for Blaise, he asked, "Do you have any other questions, Mister Zabini?"
All previous plans suddenly out the window, Blaise blurted, "Did your father ever tell you how his mother threw him from a cliff because she couldn't stand the sight of him?"
Professor Snape stared at him. Bewildered. It was a strange expression on the man's face – especially since he'd only seen the likes of fury, distaste, agitation, and smug pleasure on his countenance before. Blaise wondered for a moment if his mother had been wrong (but she can't be. She's a goddess). Or perhaps the professor simply didn't know. If he only had one fourth part ichor or even an eighth running through his veins, the stories of Hephaestus may not have ever been told to him.
His mother once imparted to him in the past that descendants were quick to forget their histories or dismiss the stories as madness once a couple of generations past. More now than ever. Mother even told him she wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Blaise's own children (as if he'd ever want such a thing) thought he was having a laugh at their expense when he told them her stories and said she was Aphrodite. Honestly, Blaise agreed with this sentiment. Sometimes, even to him, the stories sounded a little outlandish.
(Though, why witches and wizards were so quick to dismiss tales puzzled him. They made the impossible happen every day in the eyes of the Muggles, why shouldn't there be others proving the impossible to their kind daily too?).
Feeling a fool, he apologized. "I'm sorry, sir. I meant Hephaestus's mother, not your father's mother. He's the Greek god of volcanoes and blacksmiths. It's a fascinating story, and he's a fascinating god. He was so poorly treated by his family, cuckolded by his wife, and made fun of by the other gods… Yet he was one of the most important of all. He made them their weapons. How would the war gods like Ares and Athena have survived battle without him and the weapons he made them?"
Snape blinked black, fire-forged eyes at him. "Yes, how would they?" he murmured in a speculative tone, rather than the mocking one Blaise had expected. Shuffling aside some of the essays on his desk, the man asked, "However, discussing Greek myth is not what this meeting was for, Mister Zabini. Have I answered all your questions on your essay and why it is an E instead of an O?"
He nodded. "Yes, Professor. Thank you."
-o-O-o-
Blaise never brought it up again. Snape never prodded either. Sometimes, though, when they'd meet to discuss Blaise's essays or the results from an exam so he could know what to do better (why was his work never good enough for this man?), there'd be a lapse in their conversation. The professor would look in those moments as if he wanted to say something, but he never did.
As for Blaise, he was torn between gratefulness and disappointment. Grateful he wouldn't have to try and explain things and end up sounding like a dunderhead, but disappointed he had no one to commiserate with about demigod troubles.
He always came away from his sessions from Snape feeling alone.
-o-O-o-
Once Blaise started to become interested in others in a romantic sense, he found being a demigod didn't truly offer much in the way of advantages for him. He was handsome, yes. Being the goddess of beauty's son did that for you. Which also made a lot of girls (and lads) turn their heads. Sometimes, he fancied he wasn't all that different from a Veela. He was alluring and when it suited him, and he could be charming. Blaise could also be quite terrifying when it so struck him – or so he'd been told, anyway.
Even so, he still didn't always get the girl or lad despite his best efforts.
His mother laughed at him for this. Sometimes, it was more mocking than genuinely amused.
Blaise pretended not to notice – as he often did whenever his mother was being more cruel than loving.
-o-O-o-
War did not suit him any more than it suited his mother. However, while she grumbled to herself about Athena and Ares having a field day with Nike waiting in the wings as she packed her trunks for Italy, Blaise could only watch. He was not allowed to leave. Going to Hogwarts was mandatory and the last thing he needed was the kind of trouble that would come with up and leaving Britain altogether.
While she was levitating things into one of her trunks, Blaise put a hand on his mother's arm. "Stay," he begged, "please."
She stared at him, her dark eyes inscrutable. Finally, she took her arm back and continued packing. "I have no place in war, Blaise."
"And you think I do?" he returned, angry.
She pressed her ruby-lips into a little more than a red slash and said nothing.
Shortly thereafter, from one of their home's upper windows, he watched his mother stroll down the rose-bush lined path to the estate's gate. He stared at her back and silently pleaded for his mother to glance up at him. Pretend she cared even just a little that she was leaving him behind to face potential death alone. But, instead, all Blaise saw was the wind rustle her cascade of curls before she disapparated to wherever her next destination was.
Blaise was hardly seventeen and he was all alone in the world without a soul in existence who loved him.
The incongruity of his situation was not lost on him.
-o-O-o-
When the war was over, Blaise lost the ability to sleep through the night and gained puckered scars running criss-cross up one arm and a glass eye. Witches and wizards still thought him attractive, yet it was now in a rugged, imperfect way. A human sort of handsome, rather than a godly kind. Blaise liked it. He might have ichor running through him, but finally, the mortal side of him was prevailing.
He imagined his mother would weep if she saw how marred he was. She'd placed such importance on appearance. Almost as much as she had on love.
(Maybe she wouldn't weep at all. She'd been a hypocrite once before, why not again?)
-o-O-o-
Blaise did not stay in Britain after the war. But he didn't go to France, where his mother now resided, either. Instead, he decided to travel the world and see if he couldn't meet other demigods. Like he had wanted to since he was a little boy.
He had some luck with his venture. A year and a half after the war, in Germany, he met a red-haired son of Thor. The man was loud with a hot temper and he collected battle axes. Blaise quickly found it was a bad mix and he didn't stick around long enough to add more scars to his collection.
While traveling through Central Asia a couple of years later he encountered one of Kali's daughters on her own world tour. She was several shades darker than Blaise and held an affinity for flowers. Blaise was left with a bitter taste in his mouth when she showed him her pride and joy – a rose bush almost as old as she in her hometown. While she was far better company than Thor's son, and Blaise even stayed around a time, he eventually left, unable to stand how she filled their home with roses of all varieties.
In America, of all places, he stumbled across Anansi's daughter, Nya. When you looked out of the corner of your eye, you could mistake her long limbs for spider legs. Every inch of her of her was a pale, milky white hue. From her skin, to her hair, to her eyes. At night, when they went to Muggle Clubs, she became almost translucent and Blaise swore he could see the ichor churning with the mortal blood in her veins.
Blaise loved her. She loved his stories. His mother's stories. The stories of his mother's husbands and all the other stories of the gods and goddesses that he knew. He told them sparingly and managed to stretch their romance out over the better part of a decade. When he finally ran out of stories to tell Nya, she placed a white hand on his black cheek and said, "I think it's time you go back home."
He didn't fight Nya; he always knew this day would come.
A week later, Blaise stepped foot on British soil for the first time in twenty years.
-o-O-o-
Just after a year of being back in Britain, Blaise bumped into a little boy while doing business in Knockturn Alley. He stared at the child. He was a scrawny thing with a choppy, sable fringe. Behind that fringe was a pair of black, fire-forged eyes.
But this boy was no son of Hephaestus.
"Trenton!" growled a man a few paces ahead of them.
The child, Trenton, looked in the direction of the large man calling him. He glanced once more at Blaise with a meaningful glint to his eyes before scampering over to the man, who Blaise could only assume was his father. It'd been so long and Blaise hardly recognized anyone these days. But he thought the man might have been a boy he once knew a few years below him at Hogwarts.
Silently, he watched the way the man's hand wrapped around the back of Trenton's neck.
It spoke of nothing good.
When Blaise returned home, he wrote to an old classmate he knew worked at Hogwarts about the opening for a new potions professor. He was going to be there, waiting for Trenton, or whoever he might be, when the boy managed to make it to Hogwarts. Blaise had to know how he did it.
-o-O-o-
Four years later, Trenton, Trenton Flint, (fuck, the Flints) walked quickly to the small stool sat in front of the Great Hall. Deputy Headmaster Neville Longbottom placed the Sorting Hat on his head and the whole Hall waited with excitement and anxiety warring on their faces for the hat to shout its decision. It took a moment, but as Blaise expected, Trenton was sorted into Slytherin.
A week later, Blaise felt it was time for them to speak one-on-one. As he wrapped up his lesson with the first year Slytherins and Gryffindors, he requested the boy stay after class. The child sat as still as any statue in his seat as his classmates filed out of the classroom a couple of minutes later, whispering, rabbiting, about why Professor Zabini could possibly want Flint to stay behind. He wasn't anything interesting. He hardly even spoke!
He beckoned Trenton into his office and plied him with tea and treacle tart until his shoulders loosened. When the boy was in as amicable a mood as he was going to get him, Blaise asked:
"How did you do it? How did you become a god?"
Black, fire-forged eyes appeared to glow red-hot behind their sable fringe.
-O-
"I cut off his hands."
"His hands?"
-o-O-o-
On a whim a summer later, Blaise wooed a fellow professor and married him. In small ways, the man reminded Blaise of Nya. They were similarly slim-limbed and the shade of his long, white-blonde hair was identical with his love's in the right light. He liked to dance too and Blaise loved that about him.
In other ways, he was entirely different. He didn't care for Blaise's stories. He thought most silly and a few he outright scoffed at. Often, he put his hands over Blaise's moving lips and said, "Can't you be quiet a moment, Blaise? Can't you just enjoy being together?"
When his husband did such things, Blaise was reminded of his mother. How she hated his talking too – though it was his questions and ponderings that enraged her so when he was a lad. In the end, it was too close for comfort.
By the next summer, Blaise was a widower.
-O-
"Yes."
"I don't understand."
-o-O-o-
While they took tea together in Blaise's office one spring afternoon, he asked, "What's it like?"
Trenton paused in adding sugar to his tea and cocked his head. "To be a god, you mean?"
"Yes."
He brought his hands back to his lap and folded them over each other. Quietly, at a slow, considerate pace, he answered, "Sometimes I'll hear a whisper or a plea, and it's up to me to decide if I do something or not."
"There are people who pray to you?" Blaise inquired, shocked. It seemed insane to him that anyone would pray to the dead, loathed Severus Snape for anything. He'd not been a giving man in life – unless you listened to Harry Potter. Then the man was a fucking saint who died for everyone so Voldemort would not win.
"Not exactly," Trenton answered, lips pursed as if he knew exactly what it was Blaise was thinking – and he didn't like it either. "Severus Snape will never be a god, but he is remembered and will continue to be." Splaying his hands, he gestured for Blaise as he explained, "On occasion, people will think of him. Usually when they are spell-crafting or brewing a potion."
Blaise frowned, still not sure he followed. "And what? You give them answers and ideas?"
The lad nodded slightly. "Of a sort." He was quiet a few seconds, lips slowly stretching into a line as he searched for the right words. "It's more like I nudge their creations in a positive, successful direction."
He shook his head and reached for another slice of treacle tart from the platter sitting between them. "That's mad."
Trenton's mouth abruptly twisted into a smirk. "Very," said the lad, sounding more pleased and amused than truly sympathetic to Blaise's plight.
-O-
"He was a creator. Without hands, he was one no more. I wanted to break him."
"You never planned to become a god, did you?"
-o-O-o-
Shortly before his fiftieth birthday, Blaise reached out to his mother.
It didn't take her long to write back.
Through letters, they exchanged stories from their lives over the past thirty years. Blaise told her about the things he saw in Germany, Indonesia, and all of the other places he visited. He wrote about being a professor and what shits teenagers were. A few times, he even talked about his dead husband. Blaise didn't mention Trenton or Nya.
His mother filled her letters with the gossip of her new social circles. She talked about this and that improvement she'd made on their estate in France and then a little of her latest husband. He'd been ill lately; she wasn't sure how much longer he'd be around. She didn't mention, let alone apologize for, how she abandoned him all those years ago.
Blaise didn't know if he should feel bitter or relieved by how little she had changed.
A couple of months later, she wrote to tell him of her husband's passing and funeral. It was a beautiful affair and he was sure to be missed. In the same paragraph, his mother invited him to her home in Spain for Christmas. It wouldn't be a very festive Christmas, she informed him (she was in mourning), but his mother would appreciate having company for the holiday all the same.
Blaise smiled when he sent his reply.
-O-
"No, I can't say I did. All I wanted was to avenge my mother; whom he abandoned as his family abandoned him."
"I plan to become a god."
-o-O-o-
He stared out the long, slim window to the right of his desk. The sky was gray. Tapping an absent pattern on his knee, Blaise predicted snowfall wasn't far off. Perhaps tonight or early the next morning. He frowned to himself. Tomorrow his students were going to pay him little attention, their eyes on the fresh white expanses outside and heads too full of thoughts of snowball fights, snowmen, and the coming Christmas holidays for potions theory. Blaise turned in his chair to look out over his all but empty classroom.
In the far left corner, in the second to last desk sat Trenton Flint. They were not particularly close, even after all that they had shared with one another over the years, but they enjoyed each other's company all the same. Perhaps in a few years when Blaise was no longer Trenton's professor they could become mates. When they were finally equals rather than a god and his teacher.
"Do you regret it?" asked Blaise, breaking the comfortable quiet of the classroom.
Trenton, no longer a little boy hiding behind his fringe, but a teenager built like a chaser with an uncomfortable intensity about him, set aside his quill and put his chin in his hands. He stared at Blaise over his Ancient Runes essay and returned, "Will my answer change your mind?"
Blaise shifted uneasily in his chair. Would it? He sighed after a moment. "No."
-O-
"Cheers."
-o-O-o-
She lifted a shaking, ruby-stained hand away from her heart. Staring up at Blaise with dark, betrayed eyes she asked, "Why?"
"Don't you know?" he mocked. Grinning at the old, dying goddess, he hissed, "We always want more."
She died, lips parted. Her final words never spoken aloud.
Blaise didn't feel anything but victorious. Now, he would have all the time in the world to achieve his greatest desire – the chance to die a happy man.
Thoughts on this little AU? I know it's a bit out-there, but I hope you all still found it kind of enjoyable to read.
Thank you guys very much for reading!
p.s. happy Halloween :)