Disclaimer: This is so unnecessary. We all know that this isn't mine.
All warnings at bottom. Don't want to give anything away
"How time flies." Draco sighed dramatically. "It feels like Wednesday was just yesterday."
Without looking up from his work Blaise replied, "Its Thursday today you idiot. Yesterday was Wednesday. You should remember, you were complaining nonstop about how Hermione showed you up in Defense."
Lifting his quill to his mouth in thought, Blaise's face screwed up in disgust. Growling in annoyance he crumpled up the parchment and tossed it in the general direction of the fire. "Curses."
"…Did you just say curses!" Draco sniggered childishly while lounging further into the black sofa in the Slytherin common room. Blaise shot him a look but he ignored it completely.
A momentary silence fell over the deserted room, broken only by the scritch-scratching of Blaise's quill which echoed loudly off the gray stone walls. Between thoughts, Blaise glanced over at Draco and started feeling somewhat guilty. The blond lay across the sofa, sulking.
"Just give me a few more minutes. He'll be here any minute now to take my letter. And then… we can go to the kitchens." He smiled invisibly when Draco gave out a little whoop in the middle of his sulk.
An ear-splitting screech and several vicious scratch of talons against the window pane later, Diablo arrived. Affectionately named by Draco after the bird's bizarre propensity to appear suddenly when anyone mentioned it ("speak of the devil"), the bird flew into the room and rested for a millisecond on the edge of Blaise's desk before flying back out the window.
"What in Merlin's name!" Blaise was bewildered, his stark white enveloped reply in his outstretched hand. "Get back here you beast!" Tearing towards the door, literally knocking Draco off the couch, he ran to the window and pointed his wand at the rapidly disappearing bird.
"Get BACK HERE!" Mentally whispering Expelliarmus, he forcibly summoned Voldemort's messenger bird back inside the common room. Underestimating the dangerous combination of the bird's velocity and the strength of his curse, Blaise quickly found himself with a face full of feathers. Grabbing the bird by its not-so-scrawny neck he magically glued the letter to its talons and accidentally hitting it rather hard on the head.
"Thanks, but I prefer my parents' not mutilated." He muttered sarcastically before releasing the angry bird. Diablo dived once at his face but Blaise easily ducked, thanking the bird's predictability.
Without waiting to see the bird fly away he turned towards Draco and smiled impishly. "Whatcha doin' on the floor Drake? Pretending to be a tramp?"
Draco pretended to give the boy the evil-eye, "Just seeing what its like to be you, pretty boy."
Blaise scoffed, "Me, pretty boy? Look whose talking Nancy. I'm not the one who spends two hours preening myself before the mirror each morning."
"I do NOT PREEN!" he paused and added contemptuously, "And even if I do, it's more like five minutes."
"I never knew 6:00 to 6:35 constituted five minutes."
He picked up his badge from the desk and tucked it into his black slacks. Tossing his tie with his bag and unbuttoning the top few buttons of his white collared shirt, Blaise completed his transformation. One could tell the blatant contrast between before-the-bloody-bird-comes-to-take-his-letter-Blaise and mailman-has-come-and-gone-Blaise. Too bad the latter only came past nine at night.
Leaving the bag where it rested at the foot of Draco's current inhabitance, the armchair next to the dead plotted plant (the result of some first years experimenting with a few shady spells), Blaise didn't seem even the least bit worried. While Slytherins may be sly and cunning they knew enough to not mess with the Head Boy and the Prince of Slytherin, a title that Draco took very much pride in. After all, it wasn't easy to gain respect in the eyes of the Slytherin house, even if you were one of their own. Then again, it was more Draco's father than Draco who instilled that fear in the students who all heard grisly stories about the infamous Death Eater from their relatives (who were mostly Death Eaters themselves).
After following Blaise's aimless wanderings for a few minutes, Draco frowned and pointed out that he had promised that they could go to the kitchens.
"We're not supposed to go there. It's off limits." He replied matter-of-factly.
"But my dear Head Boy. Since when has that ever stopped us before?" They exchanged freakishly identical grins and did an about-turn to head to the kitchens.
When they tickled the pear and pulled open the door they found that they were not the only ones who had the same idea. If it couldn't get any worse, it had to be … the Dream Team, or at least part of it.
The Weaselette and Scarhead, as Draco eloquently put it, were sitting on one of the loveseats sipping something in large mugs. At first they thought the two were on a late night date. Though it seemed that the atmosphere couldn't be any less romantic so they threw that idea out the window, drowned it in the lake, and let the Whomping Willow beat it to death.
Both of the Gryffs looked up and scowled upon seeing them… or maybe it was just upon seeing Malfoy. Now that Blaise thought about it, it seemed that the Dream Trio…er Quartet, really didn't pay any attention to the rest of the Slytherin house. Instead they focused all their hatred on Draco, who didn't mind the attention at all. That was Draco for you.
The boy in intense scrutiny gave them his perfected sneer (practice does make perfect) and headed to the other side of the kitchen.
Potter called out sharply, "What do you think you're doing here?"
Draco didn't even bother sparing Potter the time of his day to answer the idiotic question so Blaise chimed in sarcastically, "The same thing you are Potter. Getting something to eat."
The red-head lifted up her cup and retorted, "Drinking."
Blaise lifted an eyebrow and gave her an aloof look, "Like I really care."
She flushed and turned back to Potter. Then, joining Draco who was perched on one of the stools near a counter Blaise ordered up some fresh treacle tart with cut strawberries on the side. He had contemplated asking for diced blueberries but then figured that it would take too long and the house-elves would throw themselves noisily against the wall for failing them. No, that was definitely something you saved for Sunday mornings.
"Have you ever wondered why there are so many chairs around here?" Draco gestured around him. "I mean, no one is supposed to come here anyway."
"Yeah," he muttered distractedly. "Hey Drake, how much longer do you think this will last?"
Immediately knowing what Blaise was talking about out of the million possible things the vague statement could have referred to Draco answered frankly, "I'm surprised that it has lasted as long as it has already. Daddy must really want you."
Blaise scowled but Draco simply tilted his head toward the two Gryffindors who were obviously eavesdropping on their conversation.
He smirked, "It must be something inside of you he wants. Cuz it sure as hell isn't your looks."
Blaise gave him the you've-got-to-be-kidding look, it was Draco's standard joke. "Is that the best you got?"
Deciding that there was never a better time than now to go back to Blaise's original question, Draco hastily steered the subject away from insults. "You really think that they aren't going to get hurt? You're so bloody naïve… You have to prepare yourself for the high likelihood that they aren't going to make it out of this unscathed. When he wants something he doesn't rest until he gets it."
Blaise peeked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of Potter's startlingly green eyes. "I don't know how Potter does it? I mean, Voldemort wants him dead and he still goes around acting like it's no big deal."
Draco scoffed, "That's because Potter is so overrated. Everyone pities him because he's a bloody orphan but what they choose NOT to see is that it actually makes him one up on Voldemort. I mean, Voldemort literally has no leverage over him outside of Hogwarts because Potter's life is Hogwarts."
He grinned at an impressed Blaise. "Why do you think the Dark Lord took your parents? It's because otherwise you have no reason to be afraid of him."
"You know, that's got to be the most brilliant thing I've ever heard you say."
Draco just smirked.
By this time, they had finished their food and were leaving. Draco gave the two Gryffindors the best glare he could while Blaise followed behind him, hands stuffed casually in his pockets.
Ginny's eyes followed the two boys out the door, carefully and very consciously taking in every detail of their appearance and attitude. They were, after all, two of the most wanted bachelors in the school, or so Parvati and Lavendar told her. Personally, she couldn't decide which character was more appealing: the resident bad boy or Zabini, the cool and mysterious charmer. She had to admit though; there was something different about Zabini lately. He was less aloof than last year and more… well, real.
"Gin?" Harry broke in, completely oblivious to her musings.
She turned her head to Harry and studied him for a second. He wasn't so bad looking either…but he was no Malfoy or Zabini either. "Yeah Harry?"
It was eleven and they still hadn't bothered to return to their dormitory. Currently they were lounging around in the corridor in front of the lake; Draco leaning against the statue of Barnaby the Barmy and Blaise perched comfortably on the windowsill overlooking the grounds.
"Blaise, I'm bored." Draco mumbled, making faces intermittently. He was practicing his scowl of course… and his sneer and smirk.
"Well I said that we could go and sleep but you were the one-"
Draco interrupted, rolling his eyes, "I said I was bored, not sleepy. Tell me a story."
There was a pause. "Excuse me?" Blaise twisted his head away from the window pane where he was playing with his breath, creating condensation on the glass.
"I said tell me a story, something happy." Draco said decisively. "You're the one with the happy…" Draco stopped short, deciding that Blaise did NOT have a happy life right now. "stories."
"Alright, one happy story." Blaise rested his head against the cool stone wall. He stared at Draco disconcerting until the Slytherin shifted in place. Squinting one eye and raising the other eyebrow, Blaise closely resembled Barnaby. Needless to say, Draco told him as such.
Blaise rolled his eyes. "Perfect, that was exactly what I was going for."
"Tell me one of you snow-planking stories or whatever."
"Snow-boarding."
"Yeah, whatever." He rejoined impatiently. "Come on it's getting late. I want this story before McGonagall catches us here after curfew."
"But technically we're allowed to be out here. You're a prefect and I'm head boy; we could say that we were patrolling."
"But that is besides the point. Technically we could do a lot of things, but do we do them? No." Draco explained exasperatedly.
"But why don't we?" he said, starting to get excited.
"Why don't we what? Go patrolling, that's the worst idea I've ever heard."
"No idiot. Why don't we do the things that we could technically do but we really aren't supposed to do anyway?" Blaise rushed on without a breath. "I mean technically there is no rule against dying Dumbledore's beard neon green or painting the gargoyle in front of Headmaster's office hot pink!"
Draco stared wide-eyed at his hysterically elated friend. "What are you smoking?" he muttered without thinking.
Blaise answered honestly, "Nothing. BUT the question is how do you know that phrase? It's muggle." He shot Draco a sneaky look who immediately looked ashamed and mumbled something under his breath.
"Because I can't imagine Lucius or Narcissa using muggle slang around the house."
To Blaise's great surprise and dread Draco's downcast facade did an about-face and smirked, "I said some Hufflepuff chick did. Not that she's a muggle-born."
Blaise paused, wondering why Draco was smiling as though he was one up on Blaise. "You realize that's not a compliment." He added hesitantly, really asking himself if he wanted to know the answer.
"Really? That's odd because she said it when I-"
"NO! Never mind, pretend I never asked." Blaise stuck his hands up in disgust. Draco was quite adept in describing things in vivid details that no one really cared to know. Of course, he only did this because it got under Blaise's skin.
Draco laughed but continued anyway, "- asked her to copy her homework essay for me for Care of Magical Creatures, the most bogus class that every existed apart from Divination. But, since we decided to forget that this conversation just happened we must go back several minutes where we left off with you telling me a story."
"You know, I should just let you tell me once and for all so that you will stop holding your story over my head."
"And do what, corrupt you!" Draco said in mock horrification, he actually was never planning to tell Blaise the story. On that point, he never had a story to tell anyway.
Blaise rolled his eyes for the tenth time that evening. "Oh please. I'm not all that innocent."
"You mean…"
He smirked, "We all can here Goyle talk in his sleep."
"For a second there I thought…" Draco let out a rather fake sigh of relief. "It's funny, that's the only time that I can actually understand what the brute is saying."
"Poor Goyle, it's the only time that he can get a piece of the action." Blaise sighed over dramatically.
"You know, that sounds wrong coming from your mouth. What would sound good is a nice snowboarding story."
"Okay here goes. So Julian and I were in this resort in like mid-December for this-"
"Hey! Where is Julian now anyway?" Draco interrupted suddenly.
Blaise sighed, "Yeah I know what your thinking, but he's on a mission right now. There is no way I can contact him. Besides, I'm pretty sure my mail is being intercepted anyway."
"Too bad, do continue."
"Yeah, so we were in the resort that was hosting this little dinky competition. We didn't want all this big hype and everything so Julian magically altered our appearances. Last time he forgot and we had to spend the whole weekend signing autographs and standing for pictures. So anyway, I see he's done a pretty good job for himself so, stupidly, I let him do me too."
Flashback +
The young Blaise nodded up at his cousin who immediately tapped him on the head with his wand. Magic sparkled over him leaving him with shoulder-length blonde hair and feeling generally…different. Before he could contest the color choice they were interrupted.
"Will all contestants please step forward for registration please?" A voice shouted over the intercom, however because of horrible feedback all they could here was a bunch of garble. Abandoning the mike, the person in charge waved around his around his arms to get everyone's attention and then directed them towards the registration desks.
Julian and Blaise made their way through the confused crowd, managing to avoid standing in a tedious line. Julian rapped on the desk to awake the sleeping worker, "Hey, I'd like to register my sibling here for the competition."
"Yeah, well does your sibling have a name?" the lady snapped irritably upon catching sight of the enormous crowd.
"Blaise Smith." Julian said smoothly, squeezing Blaise on the shoulder so that he would keep quiet.
"Alright Smith, pin this number to your shirt and wait till the announcer says it's your turn."
At this moment the announcer attempted to use the mike again. Loud feedback blasted through the air and the crowd visibly cringed. "Sorry. Hey! It's working." The loud feedback resumed. "Or at least it was." The announcer turned his back to the crowd and shouted to the technician, "No don't touch that wire. It's the blue, I mean purple one. It's right there! Just push that one in and pull the other one out!"
The technician stood up and made a rude gesture, "Let me do my effing job will ya!"
The announcer turned around meekly but then shrugged his shoulders, trying to act indifferent.
Julian murmured thanks to the lady at registration and steered Blaise towards open space. Blaise sat down on the cool snow and kicked off his sneakers. Pulling on his thick socks he carefully adjusted it so that they fit perfectly; bunched up socks equals painful blisters. Lacing up his boots and stepping his left foot into its bindings, Blaise stood up from the ground and dusted the snow off his back.
Julian took a few steps back and stared at Blaise for a few seconds, smirking.
"What!"
Julian just shook his head and motioned for Blaise to join the line. "Nothing, I'll see you at the finish line."
Blaise shook his head and turned his concentration towards the mountain. He pulled his board with his foot toward the four-person lift and waited for a family to go. Kicking himself down the ramp he situated himself so that he'd be sitting in the middle of the oncoming chair. Suddenly two other snowboarders skidded their way to join him.
"Hey, mind if we join you?" one of the boys asked politely even though they had already joined him.
"Um, sure." Blaise muttered suspiciously, wary of their enormous smiles. The two boys seated on either side of him exchanged looks and smiled at him again.
"So… you snowboard?" the one to his left with brown hair asked as nonchalantly as he could. Blaise just gave him a look and stared pointedly at the snowboard attached to his own feet.
"Yes, that would be an accurate conclusion." He said sarcastically.
Obviously the boy didn't notice the sarcasm and just nodded his head as though he was impressed with himself. "Yeah I could just tell."
"…" Blaise stared blankly at the boy before turning to look questioningly at the other as though waiting for him to spout out something obvious as well.
The boy to his right look a little older and sighed tiredly, "You'll have to excuse him. My brother just finds you to be very cute."
Blaise's eyes bulged but managed to keep his jaw from falling to the ground (which wasn't that hard as the ground was some 200 feet below them. He shot the brown haired boy a startled look. Was the boy… gay? It's wasn't like there was anything wrong with that, but…still, he had never seen a gay as young as the boy beside him. "Um thanks?" he said nervously, anxiously waiting for the lift ride to end.
The boy to the left glared at the boy on the right and hopped off the chair, landing face-first. Scooting away on his board Blaise quickly got as far from the two as physically possible.
Slipping his helmet over his head he gave a thumbs up to the announcer and took a deep breathe. Tilting his body forward he immediately jumped off the little ledge and shot his way through the flat course in record-time. It was surprising how fast you could go when you wanted to avoid someone.
His sharply turned his board to the left and descended into the shallow half-pipe. Improvising as he went along, Blaise managed to put together a couple of 180's, fakies and cripplers. Exiting the half-pipe without a flaw he swerved up the first and only jump where he pulled off a clean inversion with plenty of air. Landing slightly off balance on a pile of snow he stuck out one hand to steady himself. No problem.
After a few rails and a stretch of flat course Blaise zoomed passed the finish line. The crowd clapped politely even though it was obvious that they hadn't seen him go at all. He wasn't surprised, they were all parents of the contestants who were readying their cameras for their son or daughter.
"Hey Blaise! Over here!" Julian cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. Blaise unbuckled his boot from the board and unclipped the short leash. Propping the board up in front of him, he turned around in search of the loud voice calling his name.
"Hey girl! Wait up!"
Blaise whirled around and upon catching sight of the brown-haired boy he quickly tucked his board under his arm, literally running toward Julian. He dumped his gear on the ground and slapped Julian high-five.
"You lost balance up there." He said as though disappointed.
"Aw, come off it. I'm still going to win anyway." Blaise rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
"Cocky aren't we." Julian chided playfully. Glancing over Blaise's head he noticed the two boys waiting impatiently nearby. "You got yourself a fan club already? Really Blaise you have to control yourself."
Blaise stiffened and took a step closer, "Oh crap. Can we please go now?"
"Why? They look pretty friendly to me…" Julian said slyly, letting on that he knew what was going on.
Narrowing his eyes, Blaise stuck out his hand. "Give me a mirror."
Julian winked and magically (of course) pulled one out of his pocket. He held it in front of him as someone would do to a dog and waved it mockingly. "Why? Don't you trust me?"
"No!" Blaise whipped out his hand and stared at himself in the mirror, mouth opening in horror. He sputtered for a moment and then throwing down the mirror he gave Julian the meanest glare he could muster. When it didn't affect Julian, who was bent double in laughter, Blaise tackled the much taller man to the snow.
"You turned me into a bloody girl!" he-… she whispered angrily.
Julian smirked and pulled Blaise up, "Now cutie-pie, don't you be like that. Besides, I think your friends want to talk to you."
Blaise didn't take his eyes off his hands, which looked decidedly more feminine than he had realized before.
"Aw, don't worry. You're not really a girl. It's just an illusion."
Blaise let out a mock sigh of relief. "Gee, that makes me feel sooo much better."
Julian smiled winningly, "Glad to be of service. Now don't be mean and go talk to your friends." He shoved the female Blaise toward the two boys.
"Have fun honey!" Julian said cheerfully.
Blaise glared again at him but walked reluctantly off. This was going to be a long day.
"So let me get this straight? He made you look like a girl." Draco said in disbelief.
"Yeah, for the whole day. According to him, there was not counter-charm." Blaise said smirking.
Draco scoffed then outright laughed. "But there is a counter-charm."
"Yes genius. I know that now." He rolled his eyes. "Alright, enough laughing. I'm going to bed."
Blaise shoved him off of Barnaby. "Come on let's go."
Warning: Insinuated slash. (accidentally of course)
Leave a review if you liked the chapter (next one won't be as fluffy. I couldn't give you like all action stuff. It wouldn't make sense.) Toodles!
