He's always loved strawberries, loved their colors, their textures, their smells, their flavors. Loved how sweet and tangy they could be, loved that they came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The different ways one could preserve or use strawberries, from strawberry jam to strawberry wine, has fascinated him for most of his life. But his favorite kind of strawberries were wild strawberries. Smaller than some of their kind, their determination to survive in the unforgiving circumstances they generally found themselves in has always inspired him.
He'd once asked his mother to plant those precious strawberries with the rest of the garden so he could enjoy them easily and frequently. She'd told him they wouldn't be wild anymore if she were to do so, and that he'd enjoy them more if they were a treat rather than the norm. Years later, he found he begrudgingly agreed.
Yes, he absolutely loved strawberries, and he loved the wild ones the most.
He often fondly looked back on the first time he saw her. She was smaller than the others, held herself with an air of stubborn determination, her bright yet dark green eyes reminding him of strawberry leaves, her hair the ripest strawberries in his mother's garden, red as only nature's plants can produce.
He decided then and there she was his Wild Strawberry. And it was most definitely a treat whenever he was able to see her.
A Slytherin couldn't be friends with or romantically involved with a Gryffindor, after all. It wasn't done.
He watched her from afar, her silent, unseen protector, doing his best to shield her from his housemates without being obvious about it. To do otherwise would be suicide.
He watched as she delt with unwanted fame, fairweather friends, the media, professors that either hated her or were out to kill her, watched as she struggled with depression after forth year, and watched as the trend seemed fit to continue on with the close of their fifth year. He hated that he couldn't do more to help his Wild Strawberry, but he was just a "slimy snake", and she the "Golden Girl of Gryffindor". They could never be together in any sense of the word so long as their society was as it was.
Life could be so unfair. Both to him, and his poor Strawberry.
He'd claimed a table near the far corner of the library back during his first year, and had held onto it ever since. Here, he studied, he plotted, he daydreamed, he doodled, and today was no different.
He'd studied for a bit, plotted a bit, he napped and he daydreamed, and then he doodled. Like many times before, his subject was his lovely Wild Strawberry, and this was by far his favorite. An ink sketch of her sitting beneath an oak tree reading, surrounded by bushes overgrown with wild strawberries, a basket sat next to her full to the brim with the red berries. There was a slight breeze that played lightly with her short red locks, her attention firmly directed at the book in her lap. It was done only in black and red ink, using two different quills to maintain the brightness and purity of the near priceless strawberry red ink.
He was just about done with it when he registered the presence, her presence, right beside him.
Her face was pale and drawn, her shoulders drooped and her uniform rumpled, green eyes dim and red hair limp, and he knew she was anything but alright. But when she saw his sketch, when she realized who he'd been drawing, her pale cheeks flushed, her green eyes brightened, her drooped shoulders straightening just slightly, and Blaise knew it was now or never.
"Would you like to sit?"
And she said yes.