Perfect Marks
By Rurouni Star

Four.

Upon waking, naturally, the first point of business was a groan.

Something shifted, on his eyes. Warm and wet. A cloth, likely, for one reason or another. His head was pounding. It gave a little painful jump, as he shifted, and someone tsked.

He was pushed back down, as he gave the attempt at rising.

"Not yet. You should really give it a few more minutes."

Blaise frowned. That voice – that bossy, clipped tone. It all came rushing back, and he gave another groan - this one laced with something between humiliation and unhappiness. "Damn it, Granger, let me up."

Hermione sighed, clearly disapproving. She was going by some sort of instructions, likely. God only knew which ones. He ignored the pounding in his head, and peeled the cloth from his eyes. The sudden light was staggering, somehow more light than usual. He could see her clearly; the frown that tugged lightly at her mouth, and the look of further irritation behind that.

"I did tell you," she asserted. "Any sort of stimulation of faculties is likely to be uncomfortable."

She sounded like a textbook. He could tell she was holding something back.

"All right," he said, understanding. "Out with it."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you talking about now?"

Blaise twitched a little as her voice rose, but stayed where he was. Where he was seemed to be a couch, probably somewhere in a back room of the library. "You're looking at me in that superior way of yours," he said. "You really want to say something to me, I'm sure. Some sort of 'I'm sorry, but you're somewhat pathetic'."

Hermione frowned. "I was not-"

"You were." He took satisfaction in her sudden discomfort. "However, if you'll recall, I was directly in front of the blasted thing."

Her frown deepened. "I was going to say no such-"

"You're not listening. You weren't going to, but you wanted to." There, he'd nearly recovered his dignity. Confusing the issue nearly always worked.

Hermione huffed, a hand on one hip. "Maybe I shouldn't have bothered, if you're going to be like this about it. Besides, you seem to have conveniently forgotten the fact that you were spying on me."

Blaise, currently resisting the urge to put a hand to his forehead, gave her a look that clearly said 'you're crazy'. "If I hadn't been there, you'd be dead now."

He'd honestly expected her to have a retort for this as well. In direct contrast to those expectations, though, she fell very suddenly silent.

It gave him a moment's pause of his own, while he examined the unexpected circumstances that had led to him gaining the upper hand. This was an inordinately strange thought, considering his forehead was still slightly damp.

"You really didn't realize?" he asked her.

Hermione swallowed, but didn't say anything.

"They make those books out of a couple score of mandrakes," he informed her, unconsciously searching for his wand. "The bonding agent is human blood, of course – for some reason it's a terribly good unguent, or else just stylish. Then, at some point-" He gestured vaguely. "-their death screams get free of the pages."

"That's-" Hermione gasped. "That's horrible!"

He nodded. "It's rare to see one, since they take so much preparation, but I know at least one Auror-"

"-killing a bunch of helpless creatures, just to- to- it's terrible! It's no wonder what Muggles think of us, considering the kinds of horrible things people keep doing-!"

Blaise didn't catch the rest. He was suddenly staring at her in an entirely new light. The changing of his attitude was a meticulous, carefully recorded process; it is broken down below for your convenience.

Firstly, Blaise opened up the little notebook in his head that had the words 'Hermione Granger' penned on the outside. The first page was short, with mostly faded words and very sketchy dates. It went something like this:

Circa 9 yrs ago: Some Gryffindor. May be Muggle. McGonagall loves her.

Then, below it, in slightly clearer handwriting of the mind:

Circa 8 yrs ago: Is Muggle. Beat every one of my marks. Every teacher loves her, bar Snape.

Largely, she fell off the little journal's map until his sixth year. There were a few comments there, followed by a rather sizable number of mental pages dating back to about a week prior. Currently, he added another little comment in a slightly messy cursive:

Today: I recant all mention of her intelligence. Granger is mad. Wide-eyed, Mandrake-hugging mad.

At some point during this sequence (which really didn't take quite so long as you might imagine) Hermione had actually stopped to give him a concerned look. As though he were the one that needed help.

"...are you all right, Zabini?"

He continued staring at her for a second. Me? he wanted to ask. What about you? When was your invitation to Mungo's psych ward lost in the mail? He suppressed the words instead, with what he thought to be admirable forbearance.

"Perhaps you ought to lie down a bit more," she said slowly, giving him a look over. "I'll go make some tea..."

Blaise felt himself pressed back into the little knitted pillow as she rose to her feet. He allowed it, in spite of the indignity, and even allowed the little damp cloth to be pressed back to his forehead.

He thought, for a bare moment, about sending an owl to Moody. This one's hopeless, he might say. And she refused anyway.

The thought disappeared, soon enough. Not only would Moody's response be appropriately scathing, but the idea behind it all was still as relevant as it had been before. And then there were debts, and long-held reasons, and other things entirely...

She was moving about behind him, clanging carefully through a cupboard of pots and pans, trying to find the teapot.

Blaise pressed a hand to his eyes and tried to dull the dim ache in his head. He caught a bleary vision in between of what looked like his wand, laying on the table next to him.

"You're still dead-set on being an independent?" he asked her. The tone was nonchalant, but it held a tiny scathing note in it; courtesy of the thought that she'd been masquerading as a genius, when really she was just an oblivious little sheep. Baa.

He heard the clank of the teapot, as she set it down. There was a pause, and he knew she was thinking hard. "I don't want Scrimgeour's protection," Hermione said after a second.

"My name's not Scrimgeour," he told her. "And I'm not half so ugly."

"First," said Hermione, in a contrary sort of voice, "You're a paid employee of the Ministry-"

"Not well," Blaise supplied, but she only continued louder.

"-and secondly, whether or not you are attractive is beside the point. And a matter of opinion."

Now that was hitting below the belt.

"My face isn't criss-crossed in scars, at least," he told her, lifting the edge of the cloth to glance back at her. "The only person that beats Scrimgeour out in the 'human quilt' department is Moody."

Hermione gave a little 'hmph', which meant she had no ready response for him. He could see her back as she ducked and stretched, looking through the cabinets for tea. The pencil in her hair was well on its way to a suicide plunge; wisps were already coming loose in a hundred dozen places. She followed her wordless declaration with a slight hop, as she tried to reach the top shelf for an unopened package of Earl Grey. She wasn't terribly short for a girl – in fact, if it hadn't been for her natural presence, she'd be quite physically unnoticeable in every way. It was really her intelligence and determination that set her apart, and that...

He sighed, as she gave another jump at the tea. "Accio."

The little box flew through the air, to land squarely in his palm. Blaise sat up again, offering it out while he rubbed at a temple with his other hand.

Hermione looked at him with a sort of horror on her face that he'd only seen a few times before. It was the expression she wore only when she'd been one-upped.

"You're very intelligent," he told her flatly. "Possibly a genius." She blinked as he tossed the box at her, and hurriedly went to catch it. "But you have no common sense - not a whit."

He could tell that she desperately wanted to prove him wrong. He'd long observed that need in her; the knee-jerk response whenever anyone told her she was less than perfect at something. But the fact that her mouth didn't open, and her eyes darted to the floor – it meant that she was taking a look at herself. That she could find no way to refute it.

"...well?" he asked. It was brutal to press the matter, he knew, but the bluntness was necessary. Sparing her feelings wasn't something he was terribly worried about for the moment.

Hermione hesitated, her eyes still on the ground.

"I'm fine on my own," she said. But he heard, this time, the tiny note of capitulation in her voice. It was a last token resistance.

"You're vulnerable on your own," he told her. "And the worst thing you could do at this point would be to refuse free help."

She lifted her eyes, and he saw that she wasn't quite beaten down. "What kind of help?" she asked, with a hint of defiance. "What exactly does this help entail, Mr. Zabini?"

He pulled the cloth from his forehead entirely as he sat up, dropping it on the table and picking up his wand. His mouth turned up very slightly.

"Why don't we discuss that, Miss Granger?"

0-0-0-0-0

The conversation that followed was lengthy, and surprisingly amenable. Up until the end, at which point he had a pot of tea upended on his head.

It wasn't exactly lukewarm. He had to do his best not to wince.

"Excuse me," Hermione said hotly. "Perhaps my hand slipped." It was followed by a harsh clang, as she threw the pot toward the opposite wall and stormed out of the room.

Blaise flicked a drop from the hair that hung in his face.

"All right," he murmured, a smile tugging at his lips. "You've got no common sense, and I don't know how to leave well enough alone."

It was his fault, of course. He'd expected her to react badly to the thought of him staying in the house, but she probably wouldn't have done the tea had he not made a suggestive-sounding comment about Harry and Ron having done it before.

Good-natured teasing had been a bit much for her. Probably because, as she'd said, his sense of humor was horrible.

With a sigh and a shrug, he levitated the teapot into the back sink and did his best to clean up the couch. For himself, he was admittedly stumped. Scourgify did unfortunate things to the affected skin, while Evanesco was hell on clothing. He finally did a simple charm to dry the worst off, and resigned himself to smelling strongly of bergamot for the rest of the day.

Hermione was already packing up her book bag as he dragged himself out of the back room. The burned book was still set on top of the desk, tiny wisps of smoke curling up from its pages. He was glad she hadn't gotten rid of it yet. It would make things a bit easier.

Blaise reached past her to pick up the book bag, throwing it over one shoulder. She gave him a furious, suspicious look, which was entirely correct in its suppositions. Books were as good as hostages to Hermione Granger.

"Settled, then?" he asked, as though he hadn't just had a teapot dumped on him.

She snatched at the bag, but he pulled it out of her way. "I'm protecting your books," he told her with a serious tone. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to..." A glance. "A Treatise on The Longterm Effects of Repeated Bonemending." He had to hold down the heavy sigh. She was nowhere near training to be a Mediwitch. Why?

"You wouldn't dare," she told him.

He glanced innocuously over at the smoking book. "Oh goodness. You've forgotten to clean that up, Granger." With a wave of his wand, it flared again, and disappeared.

She stared at the little scorch mark on the desk – all that was left of the Mandrake book.

When she didn't reply, he hefted the bag up a bit more. "Horrible waste of a book," he added.

Her eyes narrowed.

She picked up her wand.

"Don't you get any ideas about that Treatise," Hermione hissed.

He raised his eyebrows. "I won't steal your book. I'm not interested in something whose title is longer than a return address." Then, with a slight pause. "Were you wanting to actually eat something before you go home?"

She flushed. "You're not- I would rather eat dinner with a-"

"Mandrake?"

He could feel his good cheer returning already.

Her eyes narrowed again. He ignored them, and stepped past her, for the door.

When at first she didn't follow, he shook his head, and glanced back. "You'll follow me to Knockturn Alley, but not to a restaurant?"

Hermione muttered something very unflattering under her breath, and began to stomp after him.