Title: No More I Love You's

Rating: PG-16…

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or an of the characters or the song so sue me not for I have little except for this mind in my head.

Other things: …Based upon my other Blaise and Nott fics…except a different conclusion than the one that I'm planning.

Pairings: Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott

Author's Note: This is something related to another four fics, set post-war. (Will You Remember, Withering Away,Tenderhearted & Draining Rain). Arg, came out... morbid, I was reading Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories and this idea sprung into my head. The song, No More I Love You's by Annie Lennox came into it all by it's own. I was over halfway done writing this when the haunting lyrics danced into my skull and needed to be included. ;; An old song that I remember being one that my parents would play. As usual, for Auto. The number one Blaise and Nott fan that I know of asides from myself.

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/I used to be a lunatic from the gracious days
I used to feel woebegone and so restless nights
My aching heart would bleed for you to see./

Sometimes I'll see him. Out of the corner of my eye. A whimsical self-delusion, a wisp of what was and never will be again. Or perhaps that's just a decorative frame for the wandering of a mind. I've always been so certain about what occurs in my head. The only place I could trust before and now all that remains to support myself.

Beside my chair, kneeling on the floor, face tilted towards me and gone the second I turn to look. He always did have the bad habit of neglecting to stay in his own seat. Too far away, that space between one chair and the next, better to be on the floor and close. Where a hand could find an anchor, reassuring.

The carpeting was soft and thick, wall to wall for that reason.

It had been so picturesque. Too much. Nothing like that can last for very long. Everything fades away during the course of its own time. A sunset in its time is one of a kind, crimson, bloody once and never quite the same again. Precious but only vaguely memorable for the rest of the world.

A large white house.

"It's too large for us." A neutral enough comment accompanied by a mild frown.

"It won't be." And there's a hand gripping his.

"Yes, it will."

And now the house was haunted, not in the sense of a Nearly Headless Nick. Instead it brimmed with something more painful. Flickers of dreams, ducking and wafting, occasionally it felt as if he was the apparition. Peering off into a happily ever after. Including: the white house, the yards full of flowers and life, a child…or maybe children obtained one way or another, a couple, neither of the pair limps.

His cane is propped up against the fireplace. Nagging him, reminding how he hadn't done as he promised, what had been the point afterward? No places to go, no one to notice.

He hates the sight of it but can't rid himself of it.

"Smile for me." Arms resting in a loop about him starting from behind, elbows resting lightly on his shoulders and a face near his own.

"I don't smile, you should know that by now." He shut his eyes.

"You didn't even try." A voice in his ear.

A slight movement of lips. And even though he can't see it, he knows the other is rolling his eyes.

"That's not trying. That's what we would call grimacing."

It was nice how he'd become talkative, to hear his voice so often even if it meant speaking more on his own part.

By now he would be demonstrating how to do it, even though he knows that Nott isn't looking.

Except he can see how empty that space is currently and knows that it will always be. 'Should've moved away by now, to some small...whatever..'

/No one ever speaks about the monsters
I used to have demons in my room at night
Desire, despair, desire
So many monsters./

But there's so little to go by, to connect him. They had had three months and had the habit of putting off shopping. Too crowded and loud, let's give ourselves a couple more days to adjust.

Ventures to the super market had to occur occasionally. Food was necessary despite prejudices. Just like sleep. It was a fair exchange though it's easier to pretend to be asleep than to do the same with eating. Especially with how they sometimes slipped back into their old style.

A box of chocolates, which reminded of the days that had come long before with their little extra ingredient. All in good fun, as long Blaise kept his antics away from him. The cardboard was an irritatingly shimmering red.

"Seems we have a secret admirer." Hands, slightly eager opening the package, not bothering to read the card that had came with it. You could always appreciate it more after you've sampled the gift.

"I doubt it. Check the address, the post probably made a mistake."

"Shh, it's a late welcome to the neighborhood present then. We might as well eat them before they spoil."

"They won't go bad that quickly." He took no notice of his words as he scrutinized the box's contents before plucking out a piece. Carefully he separated the wrapper from it and glanced up at Nott, intending to share.

Strawberries work better than sweets that have the tendency to melt.

Blaise paused as he leaned forward, his mouth pursing and then frowning.

"What, a nasty flavor?" By now what remained of the chocolate was being discreetly spat into its wrapper. Eyebrows raised. "It couldn't have been that horrible.."

The silence was disturbingly familiar.

"Blaise?"

For the time he had, the last he wasted, he gazed, quietly as if he could know, feel his limbs go numb, digits first, spreading, and devouring. Solemn blue eyes full of what the mouth seemed unable to say, until the focus went away from them, glassy…glassy. The world tilting forward for both of them, one unable to change his course, the other instinct.

/No more I love you's
The language is leaving me.

No more I love you's
The language is leaving me in silence.
No more I love you's
Changes are shifting outside the words./

Of course he had done what he could. The ministry was there investigating before a bed could be prepared at St. Mungo's. (A place he'd vowed, to himself, never to return to. Yet there he was, arms full as he met faces that trailed him when he first left.)

Nothing to be done. It was fast acting. The antidote would have needed to be taken immediately. So sorry.

And he knew that in the darkness of their minds they blamed him. Perhaps he should have carried about a vial in his pocket for those just in case situations.

The card was signed by Neville Longbottom. A boy who would be a man by now, slain by another boy during the War. A casualty, a victim. The killer unpunished in a sense.

It didn't take all that long to figure out who had sent it since it could not actually be a gift from the dead. No, just the gift of death.

Seamus Finnigan.

Perfectly well intentioned. Maybe that was why he had gotten off so lightly. Just a foolish, angry Gryffindor who wanted justice and righteous. Felt that one death could make the difference and aided on by that wild Irish blood. Even has a lover, an artist.

Scold away, punishments were always unequal between the sides ever since school. And he hadn't meant to harm an innocent. He wasn't stricken by what it would do to Nott, something sinister barely a thread of it rejoiced. The little darkness in us all. Fairness, more than he had bargained for, but the sacrifice, that had bothered him, even if it was only a tainted soul.

Nott couldn't remember the funeral. Had he gone? Yes, must have. And seen the body still and quiet, dusted over and resting in a bed that would only fit one. Hands folded over and eyes shut.

Maybe it's been long enough and I've forgotten. That's all. When there's time or the energy I may visit. A short one to stare at the stone that replaced him and lie what I may on the patch of dirt before it.

The worst is at night when the bed echoes. And next to me there is nothing. Emptiness. Worse yet is when there's something to wrap an arm around, fleeting. Unlike the school days when it would be warm and back in the building of white, it would still be warm, except for the first time, the man had been chilled then, trailing the halls in a thin gown and how he had warmed him.

/And people are being real crazy
And you know what mommy?
Everybody was being real crazy
And the monsters are crazy.
There are monsters outside.

Outside the words./

Fin