A/N: Hi there! It's your usually unobtrusive authoress! Before we begin, I have to attend to a bit of housekeeping. Firstly, remember that obscure corner of the globe that I mentioned in the disclaimer as my home? Well, I will soon be temporarily relocating to somewhere even more remote, so much so that I won't have access to internet or computers. This means that there will be no updates to this story for about two months. The good news is that the chapter you are about to read is extra-long to try to make up for that. So please enjoy and let me know your reactions!

Speaking of reviews, that brings me to my second point. I have my own ideas about my writing - what works and what doesn't. But I want to compare that with what you think. So I have a favour to ask you. As you read this, could you please make mental notes of what you like AND what you don't like, and the reasons for your feeling this way? (That last bit is very important - if your reaction is just, "I like it!" or "This is awful!", I have no idea what I'm doing right or wrong.) Then please let me know your notes in a review. I know it takes some time to write a review like this, but I would be sooooooo thankful if you did that for me. Please don't shy away from mentioning weak points. I won't be hurt if you say it nicely. Everything has room for improvement. And of course, if you don't have the time or inclination to write a review like this, I still appreciate quick reviews, too.

And now, without further interruptions, we return you to your regularly scheduled chapter!


Of the few passions that stirred Blaise Zabini to the core of his being, one was cuisine. Cuisine was an art form of the highest kind, one that could only be truly appreciated by persons with finely developed sensibilities in taste. The best cuisine was, of course, Italian. Nothing could compare to the tang of vine-ripened tomatoes, the pungency of aged cheeses, the smooth richness of olive oil, the multiple heady notes of vintage wine. Of all Italian cuisine, the pre-eminent kind was from his home province of Sardegna. Juicy porceddu, smoky malloreddus, minty culingioni, and hearty panada were among the finest dishes in the world. And of all Sardegnian dishes, Blaise's favourite was the best dessert mankind had ever created, sebadas. When he had been attending Hogwarts, his house-elves had been under strict orders to send him a batch the first of every month. He used to take his package down to the kitchen, where he would carefully warm the fritters to just the right temperature before smothering them with pure, golden honey from La Maddalena. They had never tasted exactly as they ought - there was no equalling that just-fried taste fresh out of the pot - but they were far better than any of the dishes he had to suffer through in the dining hall. He would sit in the kitchen savouring his sebadas, smug in the knowledge that there was one person at least in that miserable school who could discern excellent cooking when it stared them in the face.

Blaise had not enjoyed a good meal - let alone seen a sebada - since he had joined the Order. No one here appreciated food like they should. They were all too dull to realise that some of life's chief enjoyments came from the perfect combination of delectable flavours and that even a war with the Dark Lord should not stand in the way of their enjoyment of such. Not that he had tried to convince them otherwise. Blaise had swallowed hastily contrived dinners on the run like everyone else and had politely endured Mrs Weasley's cooking for months without a murmur. True, she was puzzled about why he ate so little compared to her own boys, but she seemed to have decided he had a naturally light appetite. She had never suspected he privately thought her cooking could be bested by the mess that would result if a poltergeist went on the rampage in her kitchen. Meanwhile, Blaise's mind became more and more fixated on tagliatelle, pane carasau, and especially sebadas. He had never gone this long without sebadas before, and every time the first of the month rolled around, his craving intensified tenfold. It was at the point where he couldn't go for an hour without envisioning a hot plate of fresh sebadas dripping with honey. What made it all the worse was the fact that he probably wasn't going to have the opportunity to feast on sebadas until the end of the war. Considering the rate at which Potter and company were discovering whatever it was that they thought necessary for the Dark Lord's demise, Blaise figured his chances of surviving until then were small.

After waking up from the most beautiful, contented, happiest, wrong dreams he had ever had, his memories of the mission and its aftermath assailed him like unexpected ice water being dashed over his head. His quietly satisfied feeling fled before the knowledge that he had just managed to completely humiliate himself. Everything that had occurred since he had entered the vault in the Office of Aurors - every emotion, action, thought, touch, taste, and smell - was seared on his memory. How he felt about Hermione Granger was something he had never begun to work out. He had always shoved that particular thorny issue to the outlying expanse of his mind where ideas should go to die and coped by avoiding her as much as possible. And now not only she, but Molly and the identical idiots and probably everyone else in the Order knew that his mind sometimes exhibited the infuriating tendency to wander where she was concerned. Under the influence of Resolutio Interiora, his mind could apparently wander a whole lot - it had shot out of the constraints of logic like a racehorse out of the gate and torn straight down the path to ruin. Mentally replaying the events of the mortifying episode proved too painful for Blaise, producing a feeling akin to what he might feel if he tried to slowly saw off each of his extremities. This feeling crystallised into the fierce conviction that Blaise could not think about Hermione Granger until he had first been fortified by a good plate of sebadas.

Coincidentally enough, this goal was obtainable. On his latest trip to pick up Polyjuice samples from the Order's dealer in a Mancunian dry cleaning shop, he had walked by a bookshop displaying a hideous blue book in its front window. And he had kept walking, because there was no way he would ever be interested in a Muggle book with a cover featuring cutesy nautical symbols, a ridiculous depiction of a pastoral Italian couple, and an unappetising Muggle picture of conchiglie ai carciofi. All that rot was headlined by the blaring title, The Cooking of the Sardinians: Sweet Flavours From Wild Lands and Sea Horizons. It was a mark of his desperation that he eventually not only backtracked, but also entered the store, flipped through the book, disdainfully perused its sebadas recipe, and finally made his first Muggle purchase with flimsy Muggle currency. He had since transfigured the cover to a decent black leather, with the words Battle Tactics Employed in Russia's Wizarding War of 1815 emblazoned in silver on the front.

If that had been a mark of his desperation, today was a sign that he was grasping at the last straws of his sanity. It was his first day out of bed since the mission, and Blaise could be found in the Weasley kitchen gripping his black book and hunting down ingredients with the determination of a Hungarian Horntail on the trail of fresh blood. The look on his face forbade anyone from interfering with him, and consequently everyone seemed to be giving the kitchen a wide berth. Not that his facial expression would have helped him much if any of the Weasley clan thought he had infringed on Granger's honour or been anything less than a faithful mission partner. He could just picture them all in here now, holding him down and relieving him of his manhood as a warning to ensure that he would tread carefully where she was concerned. But there was no sign of ginger hair anywhere, so whatever Granger had told them must have been a rather edited account.

It was pathetic that the Weasleys were too poor to maintain house-elves. There was no reason why Blaise should have to do his own cooking if he wanted a special recipe. He was a guest in their house, not to mention he had just risked his life to save their son. True, Ron had ended up being nowhere near the Ministry, but nobody had known that at the beginning of the mission.

Yes, Blaise Zabini had indeed reached a new low. He had never thought his life would come to this - risking his life for the redheaded runt and Saint Potter, doing his own cooking, and…thinking the Muggle-born looked sexy when she was pounding someone with her fists. (Who would have thought Granger had it in her? Apparently Malfoy hadn't been exaggerating when he had groused endlessly about his nose in their third year.) But enough of that. Why didn't the Weasleys have any pecorino? They had absolutely no appreciation for the different varieties of cheese.

Blaise needed pecorino - a sebada wouldn't be a sebada without it - yet all that he found in the kitchen were the usual tired cheeses. He did find some parmesan, which before today he would never have dreamed of putting in a sebada. But at this point he felt he would be happy to see a sebada in any form, even if it was the sorriest excuse for a sebada that was ever misbegotten by men or elves.

And so things progressed without improvement, but he was a man with his mind made up. Nothing was going to stand in his way, even if he did have to hand-massage a pound of flour, three eggs, seven ounces of water, a pinch of salt, and one-and-three-quarters ounces of butter together. He certainly hoped these Muggle authors Paolo Prada and Vanda Ricciuti knew how to write a recipe better than they knew how to design a book cover. At least they sounded Italian. He would never have even considered the book if it had been written by an Agnes Smith or some other Brit. Still, he was going to be very put out with them if this was all for naught. He was making a mess of a perfectly decent shirt (well, it wasn't like he was about to wear an apron), and the dough was somehow working its way up to his elbows.

He was still in the same situation ten minutes later, only now he was cursing the dough, Muggle authors (even if they were Italian), poor wizarding families who didn't keep house-elves, and the Dark Lord himself, when he heard a slight noise behind him. He whirled around, dusting the floor with the flour that fell from his hands, and saw Granger standing uncertainly in the doorway. Great, so now his horrendous week was complete. Was she somehow insensitive to the irate vibrations that were surrounding this kitchen and warning everyone to stay away?

"Hi," she said hesitantly, her arms crossed protectively in front of her.

He glared at her. He couldn't deal with her right now. "Hi," he grudgingly answered.

She stepped into the kitchen tentatively, looking nervous. Well, she should be. He needed to be alone, and here she was violating his makeshift sanctum. What had happened to all her supposed brains? Didn't Resolutio Interiora ring any bells? He knew she had researched it. Granger simply would not have not researched it. So she knew his secrets, now. But no, that wasn't enough. She couldn't just leave them in peace. Apparently she needed to talk about it. How exactly like a female.

Her eyes took in the half-formed dough, the shirt with globs of dough hanging from it, the flour to his elbows, the mess that was Molly's kitchen, but she said nothing about it. Instead, she crossed the room until she was standing about a metre away and said almost shyly, "Zabini, I have two things to say to you."

He quirked an eyebrow and turned back to kneading the dough, acting as if he were utterly competent at the menial task. Which, of course, he was not. "Oh?"

"Yes." She sighed before straightening. He watched her nonchalantly out of the corner of his eye and resolutely ignored the taut nerves that her presence was inspiring. "Firstly, I just wanted to say…" She bit her lip before continuing. "You saved me in the Aurors' vault and both of us again later, and I want to say thank you. I know you didn't want to go, but your bravery made the mission a success. I couldn't have done it without you." She said the word "bravery" carefully, as if she weren't sure how he would react. Truth be told, he didn't know how to react to Granger's using an absurd, Gryffindor-tainted word to describe him. He glanced at her and glanced back at the dough. She was completely omitting the part where they had fought about the best course of action concerning the vault. Did he not get a, "I'm sorry, Zabini you were right and I was wrong" out of this? Because he certainly knew he deserved one.

"And secondly," she continued, "I need to apologise." Ah, so here it was. He stopped kneading and turned to face her so he could forever remember the look on Granger's face as she said it. She watched him narrowly before plunging ahead. "I've been arrogant and prejudiced, and I completely misjudged you. When I looked at you, I only ever saw 'Slytherin' and not the person you are. And that was wrong. Your associations don't define you. Your choices do, and I've seen you make some exemplary ones. You proved yourself on this trip, and I was wrong to doubt you. I'm sorry."

Blaise was astounded. Granger was calling herself arrogant and prejudiced (weren't those usually words she reserved for him?) and apologising for it? She frowned slightly, waiting for him to say something, but his brain was still stuck at, "I completely misjudged you." She apparently decided she could expect no more than his stunned silence and continued, "And I was wondering if maybe we could start over? Could we put all this bias behind us and just be two people with a common cause? I think…" She looked down uncomfortably. "I think that if we could manage to treat each other with respect, we could even be friends." She was darting hesitant glances up at him every now and then before returning her eyes to the floor. "I think there's a lot we could learn from each other."

Wow, Granger sure knew how to blindside him. Had she somehow fallen from the roof of the Burrow and landed on her head while he had been recovering? He could think of no other way to explain her obvious amnesia. She seemed to have completely forgotten the fact that he was afflicted with a reluctant fancy for her. The small detail that he had grabbed her and kissed her could not have just slipped her mind. He had been dreading the next time he would see her, knowing she would come armed with several libraries' worth of information on Resolutio Interiora and would be upset, to say the least, that its effect on him caused him to kiss her. But no, here she was standing quietly and suggesting they be friends. Oh, yes, Blaise, why don't we be friends? Doesn't that sound like a marvellous idea? We could share our favourite books and form an organisation together to improve the public image of Slytherins! Have that heart-to-heart I've been needing that would be way over the heads of my wanker friends! Yes, why don't we?

The silence stretched out awkwardly. She was starting to look a bit crestfallen. "Granger, are you feeling all right?" Blaise asked. "The brain requires a considerable period of time to recover equilibrium after being subjected to certain specialised forms of torture, which I think you underwent. And I don't think three days is quite enough…"

She gave him a sharp look. "I'm fine, Zabini, thank you. I know what I'm saying, and I know it may seem uncharacteristic of me, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I know I've treated you shoddily since you joined the Order, all right? And I can be woman enough to admit when I'm wrong. So I really am sorry, and I want to start over with you."

His mind darted about searching for other explanations for her behaviour and came up empty. "I'm not the sort of person you could be friends with, Granger."

"You let me be the judge of that," she answered dismissively. "You might think you have me pinned down, but you'd be wrong." Blaise highly doubted that, but remained silent.

Now was the perfect time to bring up some business he'd known he would have to discuss with her, but he resisted. He toyed with the idea of letting it go unaddressed and knew it wouldn't do. He forced himself to speak up. "Granger?"

"You can call me Hermione. I think you've earned it."

He ignored her daft syrupiness and went on. "About the Forest of Dean…" He rubbed his neck with his hand, only to find he had just given himself a lovely coating of buttery flour. He dropped his hand to his side again. "I'm sorry for…about what happened. I would never do… I would never have just grabbed you like that…"

"Oh, that's all right, Zabini," she interrupted cheerily. "I understand."

His mind blanked. "You do?"

"Yes," she said, using her wand to clean the flour from his neck. He was so dazed that he let her do it. "I know it's difficult trying to adjust to a less emotionally expressive culture, and I don't hold it against you."

What in the world was she talking about? "Er, all right… I just want you to know that I really am sorry."

"Sure, Zabini," she said placidly. "Now then, can I help you in here?"

He glanced down at his floury hands in mild confusion, gradually remembering what he was in the kitchen for. "That's all right, Grang - er, Herm - uh, no, don't touch that!"

She was leaning over to read from his open cookbook on the counter. "Sebadas?" she read aloud. "Never heard of them. Where'd you find this book? I didn't know Mrs Weasley -" She had been closing the book and stopped speaking now that she could see its cover. His reaction time was so delayed by his lingering shock that he didn't move quickly enough to stop her. Hermione was looking down at the words "Battle Tactics Employed in Russia's Wizarding War of 1815", her brow puckered thoughtfully. Oh, blast it all! He watched her with misgiving, waiting to hear what she would say.

Finally she looked up, a dimple in her left cheek betraying her suppressed smile. "You know, Zabini, Russia didn't have a wizarding war in 1815. The Hebelsteins didn't even think about an uprising until at least twenty years later."

"Of course there was a war in 1815," Blaise retorted, peeved. "Who said anything about the Hebelsteins?"

"But the Hebelsteins were the gatekeepers for eleven generations. There wouldn't have been a war without their support, and they weren't interested in rebellion until thirty years later."

"What would the Hogwarts teachers say if they found out their golden student didn't pay any attention in Professor Binns' class?" reprimanded Blaise. "Don't you remember anything about taxes on house-elves sparking a rather obscure little war?"

Granger had been ready to snap at him over the Binns remark, but apparently she was giving this fresh leaf idea a serious go. She had restrained herself and was now frowning in reflection. "Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Grischa Hebelstein's half-daughter Vassilia married that radical nobleman, what's his name…"

"Baron Soronov."

"Yes, and together they stirred up the proletariat to demand relief from her father, and it ended in a five-day battle at the Russian Ministry of Magic. Right?" She beamed.

"Six days, Granger."

"Six days, then. But I would hardly call that a war."

"I never said it was a large war. But it was a war, and it set the precedent for the Russian Wizarding Civil War of the latter half of the century. So its influence makes up for its length. Besides, the book is only about two hundred pages, so obviously it would be chronicling the tactics of a small war."

"But it's not chronicling any war tactics at all," she pointed out. "So its length needn't be a clue."

"Of course it's a clue," he argued. "It's not like I'm an ignorant first year who would assign the first famous war that came to mind to a book whose length didn't correspond."

"Granted," conceded Hermione, and then, exasperatingly, she smiled. She flipped open the book again and read the sebada recipe. He considered telling her to sod off but decided to ignore her instead. He was just deciding his dough was a lost cause and glaring at it in frustration when she looked up. She glanced at the dough, then at him, and said, "So, have you ever done this before?"

"What?" Blaise asked, hoping his stubborn obtuseness would discourage her. Of course he hadn't done this before. Cooking was for house-elves (or women, if there were no house-elves available).

"Cooked," she clarified. Her unaffected cheeriness was starting to give him a headache. He glared sidelong at her.

"I haven't done it much either," Granger continued, as if he had just given her a decent answer, "but I think your problem may be that you don't know how to measure ingredients properly."

Forget that about a headache developing. Blaise had one already, pulsing in his left temple. He wavered between his pride and his desire for sebadas. Sebadas won out, and he grudgingly made room for her at the counter. Hermione put on an apron and pulled back her lively hair while Blaise disposed of the dough. Then Hermione showed him how to measure ingredients, making sure not to pack anything down and levelling off everything with the flat side of a knife. Blaise couldn't exactly tell her to go away after that, so she stayed all the way through. While they waited for a half an hour for the dough to sit, Blaise suffered through Granger's gruelling attempts to get to know him. What did he like to do? What were his favourite books? What were his favourite school subjects? He gave the most oblique answers possible. She tried to encourage him by answering the questions as they applied to herself. Merlin, for being a bright girl, Granger could not take a hint.

Later, as they were forming the sebadas, Blaise looked over at Hermione's capable hands managing the dough and noticed a flash of black on her left wrist. He had observed it before in the months since he had joined the Order, but he had never gotten close enough to see what it was. Curious, he continued to watch her hands out of the corner of his eye. The black appeared to be ink, which stretched in a thin column of writing from her palm far down her wrist. As she reached out for a dough circle to finish her sebada, he reached out and deftly caught her left hand in his own. He flipped her hand over and concentrated on the writing as Hermione raised surprised eyes to him but held still. On her hand was written:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

He released her hand when he finished reading, deep in thought.

"You could have just asked, you know," Hermione said quietly, the slightest trace of reprimand in her voice.

"Did you write that?" Blaise asked.

"No. It's a poem written in the late 1800's called 'Invictus'."

Invictus - undefeated, invincible. Blaise returned to shaping the sebadas. He had just glimpsed a hidden aspect of Hermione, a side which he found somewhat depressing. It was strong, but it was joyless - unlike the persistent cheerfulness she had recently been flaunting. It brought him back to the moment he had crept up on the Auror in the vault. Blaise had visually followed the direction of the Auror's wand to Hermione, cringing on the floor, her face contorted with pain but no sound leaving her lips. He had been swept away by a torrent of wrath and hatred toward the man who could treat her that way, and he had not shown him any kindness. "I'm sorry," said Blaise shortly.

"I don't mind your seeing it," Hermione said. "If I wanted to hide it, I would have disillusioned it. I just don't like being manhandled." She turned back to working the dough and spoke calmly, as if she were used to telling him secrets about herself. "My whole life, I've written down quotes I like in notebooks. Since I don't have my books anymore, my notebooks are all I have to read if I want to revisit my old favourites. I open them up every once in awhile when I have a moment, just to remember who I am and where I've been and where I want to go."

Something about that statement struck him. "So you wrote that down before the war?"

"Yes, I transcribed it when I was at Hogwarts."

Blaise was baffled. What could possibly have driven Hermione to identify with that poem at Hogwarts? She had always seemed…well, not exactly carefree, but not as if she were dealing with the weight of the world. Someone had to be in a dark place to relate to that poem.

"Anyway," Hermione continued, "nowadays, when I find something that I really want to remember, I'll write it down on my hands. I never know when I'm going to be called away on a mission or if we'll be attacked or something, and I want to be able to look at it when I don't have my notebooks with me."

"Did you have that on your hand the day of the mission?" he asked.

"No. I usually just disillusion the writing if I don't want anyone to see it. But when I go on missions I don't want to have any identifying information on me, and that poem was written by a Muggle."

Blaise nodded once, understanding what was unsaid. "Oh."

They finished forming the sebadas in something nearing comfortable silence. Then they fried the pastries in hot oil, a task both found difficult. Hermione kept asking him if the sebadas looked like they were done, but Blaise couldn't tell under all that oil. They ruined quite a few before they managed to create something resembling a cooked sebada. They were both tired by the time they sat down at the Weasley's kitchen table, armed with a jar of honey. With high anticipation, Blaise fastidiously drizzled the honey over his sebadas. Hermione watched him closely as he bit into the fritter and chewed meditatively. Well, it didn't taste like any sebada he had ever had, but somehow his disappointment wasn't as keen as it might have been.

"How is it?" asked Hermione.

"It needs pecorino. It's not good, but it's not awful, either. Just don't think all sebadas are like this."

Hermione started dripping honey onto her own sebadas. "How much do I put on?"

"It depends on how much you want. I'd use a little more."

She poured out some more before taking a bite and wrinkling her nose a little. "It's…interesting," she said finally.

"You ought to try the ones from Sardegna before you make up your mind about them."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you mind my asking why you wanted to make these?"

Her tone and look were gently inviting, demanding nothing. He knew that he could decline an answer without offending her. Yet somehow, perhaps because she had explained about the writing on her hand, Blaise did not decline. He suddenly found himself haltingly telling her about times which, though not quite happy, were better than the present. Earlier times, when he had learned to be alone and even found a sort of comfort in it. Walking to the beach when the moon was full, sitting by the sea and watching the tide come in. Standing in his father's old room staring at the possessions of a man he did not know. Reading in an easy chair in the Zabini library while opera played on the wireless. Eating sebadas in an empty dining room overlooking the sea, the taste of honey on his tongue and shearwaters wheeling outside on an ocean breeze. Times when he had learned to value pleasure and beauty where he could find it - in music, in books, in cuisine, in nature. Things he had never spoken of before. And though he couldn't express what he meant, he felt that underneath all the faltering sentences, Hermione understood.

Later, when they were cleaning up their mess, Blaise said, "You know, Granger, this doesn't repay the life debt you owe me."

Her head whipped toward him, and she exclaimed, "I don't owe you a life debt!"

"Yes, you do. Remember how I saved your life at least once?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking, you did. But I would have had to be in immediate mortal danger for a life debt to have formed," Hermione said indignantly. "Both times the threat was distant. They wouldn't have just killed me right then. They needed my information!"

"There are differences of opinions on whether you needed to have been in immediate danger. In my book, you owe me at least one life debt."

"I should count myself fortunate that your book doesn't list two!" she retorted.

"You never know, it might. We'll have to see."

With a tone that was more like friendly banter than anger, she spat, "Insufferable git!"


A/N: Chapter title taken from the same-titled song as sung by Frank Sinatra, the man with the voice you could fall in love with (well, at least I could). "Invictus" was written by William Ernest Henley.

Thank you to everyone who has come this far with me, and thank you in advance for your reviews! See you in a few months!