Warning! I used a Time Turner to set the clock back to the beginning of the story.
(BZ) Vanagloria
Blaise had never thought of his life as an easy one, far from it.
He had been born in a wealthy wizarding family, but he had had to hide his true nature from childhood. He was good at it, but by the end of his first year at Hogwarts, he had come to realise he couldn't conceal himself behind a quiet bookish semblance all the time; he needed someone to share his secret with. It had taken him a while to actually find someone. Draco Malfoy hadn't been his first choice. He was candid about his allegiance and Blaise did not want to take sides, but sharing a detention makes the most improbable friends. They had helped each other throughout their teenage years; they had grown into better people together.
Blaise neared the shelves of Flourish and Blotts in a sort of mystic pilgrimage; he didn't know what he was looking for, but all unread books tempted him. He scanned their covers, trying to sort out by what subject they had been catalogued, but he felt his mind stray and could not focus. He could tell that someone was watching him.
He picked a random book, busying himself and buying time.
His father had taught him to lie low and study the enemy; tire them, learn their weakness. Blaise had always been reminded of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, whose unredeemable flaws led to their downfall. Bringing his father's teachings to the extreme: he would fall into the shadows and dissect the personalities of those around him. His mother often reprimanded him when he would come out of nowhere and give her a fright. Blaise thought it was what made him a Slytherin. His was an ingenious game of blending into the surroundings and watching unseen.
"Pascal! It's so good to see you!"
The accented voice of his sister brought a wave of relief over Blaise and he turned to greet her. It was her stare he had felt on his back then!
"Giulia!"
Blaise's younger sister looked nothing like him; her fair hair and dark complexion, mixed with a never-fading smile, gave her a livelier look than her brother. Giulia's gene pool seemed to have stemmed from their father's side of the family only, and Blaise thought he looked rather pale next to her.
"Come stai? Sei appena tornata?" [How are you? Did you just get back?]
Giulia giggled. "Yes, I just got back," she replied. "There's no need to test my Italian, you know."
"I thought you were getting better at it," he said.
"Infatti, ma dopo un'estate intera giù dai nonni, sono stufa!" [I am, but after a whole summer at Gran and Grandpa's, I'm sick of it!]
They exited the bookstore and started walking towards Florean Fortescue's. Giulia filled her brother in on their Italian family while he listened, taking in every small detail. He hadn't been to Italy in over a year and he missed his grandmother's culinary skills; he had learned everything he knew about cooking from her and had, in turn, educated Draco.
"I met this really cute boy," the young witch let slip as they rounded the corner. "Too bad he's a second-year."
Blaise still struggled to grasp the concept of Giulia being in her fourth year. She attended Beauxbatons, but even if it had been her choice, she had good and bad days about it. She dreaded the unpredictable English weather (something she didn't fail to comment on whenever she came to visit), but she hated having had to learn French ("As if trying to master Italian wasn't enough trouble").
"Oy, Malfoy-boy!"
She had spotted Draco Malfoy standing in front of Quality Quidditch Supplies. The blond boy walked over and they slipped inside the parlour together. Draco sat down next to Blaise and eyed Giulia with caution; he had no appreciation for her childlike mirth, quite the opposite really. Blaise had often wondered if his friend had some sort of only child syndrome, and what would have it been like to meet him if – Merlin forbid! – Lucius and Narcissa had ever produced a second heir.
They sipped their hot drinks, enjoying the quiet chatter around them. Blaise liked Diagon Alley; its narrowness forced wizards and witches to thrust, squeeze and crush one another, and behave accordingly. It was an exquisite opportunity to study people with different temperaments in an unwanted situation.
He had been looking at a couple of wizards who had bumped into each other and were now turning quite red in the face, when another kind of crimson hue caught his eye. He knew it at once to be the flaming mane of a Weasley. Ginevra Weasley.
She was nattering away with another witch. The archive that was Blaise's mind skipped right ahead to Hermione Granger, but he frowned and re-examined the evidence before him. He couldn't be sure it was her because she didn't fit her usual criteria; her trademark bushy hair was still there, but it was darker, almost as dark as his own. She looked taller too. Blaise's frown deepened when she tilted her head towards the Weasley girl and he caught a glimpse of her face. There it was. Granger's customary focused expression, and one couldn't mistake the amount of books unrelated to their classes in her arms. He nodded; satisfied his classification system hadn't been thrown off by a mere change of appearance.
He averted his gaze and met Giulia's gleeful eyes.
"Tell me, Draco, has Pascal got himself a girlfriend yet?" she asked as her usually innocent smile morphed into a smirk.
"No, though I did try to hook him up with Bulstrode last year, but it didn't work."
"She was already taken," Blaise explained, attempting to defend himself.
As much of a good friend Millicent was, she was better off with the other guy; Blaise couldn't stand competition in the least.
Giulia laughed. Blaise frowned, gulped down the remainders of his coffee, gasped looking at the ghost of a watch on his wrist and suggested she set off at once to get to the nearest Floo fireplace.
"Eager to be left alone, are you?" Giulia teased. "So be it, I'm leaving, I expect you'll Apparate home after me."
He nodded, distracted, and handed her coat; she pouted in jest, but then kissed him on the cheek.
"No funny business," she warned, and walked off.
Blaise groaned at his sister's back. No funny business. That was code for don't-you-dare-morph-anywhere-in-public-or-you'll-be-grounded-for-a-week.
His mother loved both her husband and her firstborn very much. It was a factual truth registered in Blaise's mind-archive. In the past, however, she had had trouble coping with the reality of their nature.
"The word angel might throw you off, but don't let it mess with you head, your kind has nothing to do with religious angels, do you understand me?"
She wasn't fond of the terminology; angel-shifter sounded religious, in her opinion, so she usually preferred the less known designation of alatum. The alati then, ordinary wizards with angel-like attributes: wings. Blaise's tiny feathery appendixes had sprouted on his back around his second birthday, and hadn't stopped growing since. The gene was hereditary, shared by all newborn boys in the family.
Blaise's father had been the one to teach him how to properly take off and land, but his grandfather had educated him on the history of the alati, stressing the difference between them and the angels of religion.
Yet, Blaise loved theology. He had read all he could find on the subject, archived everything away in his brain and formulated theories of his own. He understood he was different from the creatures in the Paradiso of the Divine Comedy; he wasn't one of God's messengers. However, his nature was both a blessing and a curse; every first night of the month, Blaise had to morph. Worse than being a werewolf, in his opinion. It was an itch that he couldn't soothe and nothing worked, except soaring the skies before his self-control loosened and his feathers started falling off.
He hadn't been pleased to discover that Hogwarts term always started on September 1st.
"Pascal!"
Pascal. It had been Giulia's idea of a joke – her brother and the renowned philosopher sharing names – but it had stuck; it didn't help matters than the Italian translation of the name was a farcical Pasquale.
He dodged one of his sister's bear hugs and stepped into the entrance as his mother walked into the room.
"Dinner's almost ready," she said with a smile. "Oh, you brought Draco, how delightful."
As they all moved into the dining hall, Blaise admired the grand paintings that hung in the hallways of his grandmother's house – as he always did. The faces of his ancestors looked at him with pride, for the most part, but there were the occasional catcalls from the more radical wizards and witches. A stern look from Blaise's grandmother though, and even those fell silent.
As far as he knew, Mémé Aude had grown up in the sumptuous family home in France and she had moved to Britain only after the death of her husband, Sébastien Lestrange. Being related to a family like that made Blaise's blood curl, but knowing his grandfather had never adhered to the ideas of the Death Eaters in toto made him feel a bit better.
"O' for Morgaine's sake!" Mémé Aude exclaimed, "Can't you disguise those zings, Alberto? We're eating!"
His father rolled his eyes, but hid his wings and apologised to his mother-in-law.
Landing on the grass, he reached behind him with one hand and stroked his feathered appendixes. The pleasure he got from the caress was cut short by Draco's voice.
"Your sister is stalking me," his friend said with a shudder.
"Did you refuse to answer one of questions?" Blaise asked. "That's about the only reason she'd do that." He concealed his wings and stared at his friend. "She doesn't fancy you."
Draco glanced behind him.
"Who cares if she fancies me! Just get her off my case!"
"What is she so desperate to find out?" Blaise insisted.
"'Is it true'," Draco began in a poor imitation of Giulia's voice, "'that Harry Potter is in your year? I can't believe Pascal never told me! You must introduce me! I heard he's beaten a dragon, is that true?'" He coughed. "Shall I continue?"
"I get the picture, thanks."
"She just annoys the hell out of me," Draco said. "Would you mind terribly if I were to strangle her?"
They heard a soft chuckle and spun around to check who it was; they were both dreading it'd turn out to be Giulia, but it was Blaise's grandmother instead. She approached them with a house-elf trailing after her.
"I waz explaining to Juju 'ow I want my rozez tended to," she said in her cadenced timbre. "And I overheard your tête-à-tête," she frowned. "Did I say zat right, Blaise? Can you use zat in Eenglish?"
"Yes, Mémé."
The witch turned to the house-elf and dismissed him with a final warning not to trample on her gladioli while minding the roses.
"Walk with me boys," Mémé Aude said, offering her arm to her grandson. "Did you know your great-grandfather built zis 'ouse, Draco?"
"No, ma'am, I did not."
"It waz supposed to be a present for your aunt Bellatrix," she went on. "But I guess she never cared for it, and it's better zat we are using it."
They strolled about the huge park surrounding the house for a while, immersed in their own thoughts.
Blaise recalled the day he had heard his father scheme with his grandfather against the Dark Lord; he had stepped in and asked to be part of the plan, contrary to what he had always claimed he'd do when faced with the situation. Remain neutral. But then he had met Draco, and things had started to change.
Aside from him, nobody knew Blaise's secret.
He was grateful for one thing: as only males could inherit the gene, Giulia would always be safe, she wasn't valuable. Draco had tried to make him see the fallacy of his reasoning, but he had turned a deaf ear.
"Speak of the devil..."
Blaise smirked and pointed at his sister, walking across the lawn to reach them.
"Salut, Mémé," Giulia said once close enough. "Oh, don't look at me like that," she snarled at the look on Draco's face. "I came to tell you Mum wants to have tea all together."
Giulia, like an Israeli platoon, didn't stop until she had accomplished her mission.
"Malfoy, have you got a girlfriend?" she asked over her cup of tea.
Blaise was curious to see how far his sister was willing to go on nagging Draco, who, at the moment, looked embarrassed. He muttered a negative response, but for the examination to be already over, it would have been far too easy.
"Weren't you and Pansy going out last year?"
Draco choked on his drink. "I dumped her two years ago," he said and glanced at his friend.
He was doomed and he knew it, but there was nothing Blaise could do about it. Draco took a moment to collect himself and then looked the young witch in the eye.
"Oh," Giulia's tone was mocking. "How come?" she asked. "Someone –"
"She was nosy, capricious and bloody clinging," Draco interrupted. "That's why I broke up with her."
Giulia hammered on.
"I think she went after somebody else," she said. "She can't have been faring well after the War, and what better way to ensure you're back into everyone's graces than being the hero's girlfriend?"
Blaise smirked; his little sister knew her stuff. The hint was also too big to be missed even by the inattentive ear of Mémé Aude, and their parents.
"Potter already has a girlfriend," he lied.
Draco and Blaise, and possibly the adults in the room, knew for a fact that wasn't true, but Giulia did not read the Daily Prophet.
"No, he doesn't."
But she did read Witch Weekly.
"Why are we discussing 'Arry Potter's love-life?" Mémé Aude asked, marking the end of the discussion.
Giulia smiled a wicked smile and shrugged. She had however instilled a question in her brother's head; in Blaise's mind-archive, Draco was known for his flings (uncountable), but how to explain why he had yet to replace his ex-girlfriend. Pansy had been his longest relationship to date; had the war affected him that much?
[1] vanagloria, vanagloriae: vainglory, or narcissism in Latin.
