We met in first year. He was the very last student sorted. I had no idea who he was, and it didn't really matter to me. Draco was my primary target for anything and everything. I took little notice of anyone else, except perhaps Daphne. I spoke to Tracey perhaps once or twice, but ceased to after learning what she was. I had a one track mind in those first few years. My sole objective was to please Draco, to seal the deal that our parents had once thought a good idea. But it never came around. Draco was off in his own little world all the time, and I just wasn't meant to be a part of it.
Blaise was...different. He was quieter than Draco, and even really Theodore, a boy I knew about, but never truly conversed with. I never really talked to him until our fifth year. He was in the library, watching Hannah Abbott have a hissy fit about O.W.L.s and picking up every book she could find to take out. I was looking for someone to help me study for History of Magic. I noticed a book on his table that was open and placed face down onto the table so he wouldn't lose his place. I looked at my own arms. We had the same book. I vaugely recalled him being present in class, he generally sat towards the back and just worked and took notes. He was easily missed by the unobservant. I decided to try my luck with him.
It happened the day of Dumbledore's funeral, a little over a year later.. For the most part, we were leaving. Tracey was a half-blood, we knew, and unlikely to go. Crabbe and Goyle had been removed from school by their fathers'. In the end, the list had become focused on myself, Blaise, Draco, Theodore, and Daphne. We had figured this out easily. We five showed by far the most prospect. But Draco was gone come the day. Daphne left the dorm early and wasn't seen again until we met at the pre-arranged spot for our final departure. Theodore was spotted in the library before the funeral, and then he became lost in the crowd. Blaise and I met each other in the common room. He had a smirk as he walked over to me. We spoke quietly, as there were other students present. We discovered that we were both leaving, as had been predicted. We had been having little conversations since that day the year before when he had helped me with History of Magic, making it possible for me to pass my O.W.L. They had for the most part been restricted to the information we received through our parents about You-Know-Who But that day we spoke of Draco's sudden departure and what we thought may happen. We left that night.
It had all seemed less painful, less dramatic through the stories and the letters. We noticed Theodore's dissapperance, and word came that he had stayed behind. He was little more than another enemy to us. Like so much of our past classmates were. For some reason that we never truly discovered, we were constantly partnered with one another for our various tasks, unless it had to be done alone. But while it remained a mystery, it strengthened the bond we had. We had been students together, friends, and as time went by, something a little more. We did more than just talking, we realized everything we had in common, from our devotion to the Dark Lord, to our dislike of toffee. We were no longer the awkward teenagers we had been at school. We had power. We were exactly where we wanted to be. And it only brought us closer.
Until Hannah Abbott stepped in. I never quite understood what she stood for. She was a Hufflepuff. Nothing more. She and her uppity friend Ernie MacMillan. I had never liked either. But my dislike of Hannah has esclated since Hogwarts. Quickly. It all occured one seemingly simple day. Blaise and I had managed so far, in the few months of the major war, to stay fatally unharmed. Neither of us had sustained any real damage. Not like others. We had a battle to fight. And so we went. Everything seemed so easy. Go, fight, return. But he didn't return. Odd, really, how war changes us. In past years, I never would have thought Hannah capable of an unforgivable. Now I know better.
No one else will ever know why he did it. No one else will ever know. But the facts, they all know. Without him, I would not be alive. It inspires true fear among many of the Death Eaters, that a former Hogwarts student was his end. It even scares me. But I will have revenge upon Hannah Abbott. Even if he took the hit for me, she killed him. It ate away at a part of me when he flung himself in front of me. I never knew I had any sort of good in me, anything that contradicted my destiny, until that day. I suppose he brought it into me, as he took it away. But after that day, I was the undisputed Death Eater, the most loyal among my year, if not of the Hogwarts runaways.
Funny, how a war changes children.