Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.
Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Additionally, there's references to child abuse, abuse of authority, and references to xenophobic violence. Feel free to back out if need be.
Author's Note: So this ran away from me and I hate where I ended it, but I'm literally squeaking in under the deadline. As a head's up, I'm doing a double-genderbend again, and there's a blink & you miss it reference to my other double-genderbend fic Relative, which you do not have to read at all. A final reminder that "wix" is a gender-neutral term for a magical human and "wixen" is both the collective term and the adjective form.
Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 12); MC4A
Individual Challenges: Witches Coven 2; Rainbow Focus; More than England; Sapphic Bribery; Small Fry (x2); Point of Know Return; Love Language; Gryffindor MC; Slytherin MC; Lion's Moon & Shadow Bribery (Y); Creature People; Seeds; Shipmas; No Proof; By All Rites; Golden Times; Interesting Times; Old Shoes; The 3rd Rule; Advice from the Mug; Ethnic & Present (x2); Neurodivergent; Tiny Terror (x2) Rian-Russo Inversion; Flags & Ribbons; Gender Bender (x2); Letter of the Day; Setting Sail; Hold the Mayo; Long Haul; Yellow Ribbon (Y); Yellow Ribbon Redux; Two Cakes!
House: Hufflepuff
Assignment No.: Term 12 – Assignment 3
Subject (Task No.): Culinary Arts (Task#10: Write about something taking a long time.)
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Insane Prompt Challenge [275] (Blaise Zabini); 365 [29] (Bitter)
Other MC4A Challenges: Wi Bingo [2D] (Holly); Summer Big List (Bonfire)
Representation(s): Harry Potter/Blaise Zabini; Desi Potters; Autistic Harry Potter; Zabinis
Bonus Challenges: Fruit Fly; Second Verse (Over the Hills; Easy Zephyr; Civil Disobedience; Ariel's Temptation; Bog Beast; Where Angels Fear; Under the Bridge; Bad Beans; Professor's Torment; Hot Apple; Corvid Brain; Casper's House; Muck & Slime; Most Human Bean; Lovely Coconuts; Lock & Key; Clio's Conclusion; Unwanted Advice; Spinning Plates; Nontraditional; Persistence Still; Not a Lamp; Ladylike; Bechdel Test); Chorus (Toto's Tribute; Stitching Time; Mermaid; Jack's Jollies; Hot Stuff; Getting On; Sitting Hummingbird; Turtle-Duck; Abandoned Ship; Creature Feature; Unicorn; Larger than Life; A Long Dog; Tomorrow's Shade; Mouth of Babes; Fire Song; Peddling Pots; Fizzy Lemonade; Wabi Sabi)
Tertiary Bonus Challenges: T3 (Toad); SN (Rail; Spare); FR (satisfaction); O3 (Orator; Olivine); SS (Schooner; Shadow); SHoE (Sorority); AC (Sacrosanct; Tactile; Orchard); AD (Archery); Wings (Scintillate); DP (Yearn)
Word Count: 4681
(^^)
All I Ever Wanted
(^^)
Blaise had always had the dreams. That wasn't really the right word for it. The barely remembered scent of sage and mint haunted more than just her sleep. It lingered at the edges of her senses like a ghost of a memory that refused to be forgotten despite how long it had been.
"It is like that sometimes, sötnos," her mother told her once. The flames in the hearth had cast them both in a flickering mix of light and shadow. The heat warmed the holly garland hanging along the mantle. "It is in our natures as lorelai to protect our territories, and Magic will do what She can to aid us. That is where the hints come from, reinforced by every meeting we have with compatible magi, those who have the potential to be mates. Even before coming into our full inheritance, our magic knows what we will need and seeks a balance."
"What if I can't find them, Mama?" Blaise asked from her spot on her lap. Her lungs were full of the sweetness filling the air from the maple wood that made up their Solstice vigil fire. "What if someone else claims them before I can? Mama, what if they don't want me?"
"Oh, baby," she said, pressing a kiss against her forehead. The smell of wisteria and river moss wrapped around her in a comforting blanket. "Don't you worry even a bit. Even if one mate chooses another, there will always be others. A hint lingering like this doesn't mean anything."
Blaise looked into the flames as the winter winds whipped snow and sleet against the window. The howling of it echoed the surge of instincts in her chest. Those instincts scared her sometimes, like when a new wix decided to court her mother and Blaise wanted nothing more than to scratch their greedy eyes out. Yet the insistence of importance for whoever was the source of that sweet smell that haunted her dreams? That didn't scare her even a little teeny bit.
"They're mine," Blaise insisted, confident in the way of all six-year-olds. "I just need to find them again and let them know that."
(^^)
Harini knew better than to question her place in the Dursley family. It wasn't like she hadn't figured it out, even as young as she was. The Dursleys didn't like her any more than she liked them. They also weren't shy about letting her know that even though they let her stay there out of the goodness of their hearts (and the constant worry of what the neighbors would think if they just chucked her out), Harini was not and would never be a part of their family. Number Four was their home, and it would never be hers.
That was fine.
She didn't want to be a part of their stupid family. She didn't need birthday presents or hugs or anything. She certainly didn't need to be a part of their stupid family photos or even stupider Christmas parties like the one going on downstairs right then. She was just fine with staying in Dudley's second bedroom while Aunt Marge shared the good port with that horrid beast she called a dog. Harini didn't need their attention or affection or anything stupid like that.
Harini fought back a sniffle as she carefully stitched together the scraps of fabric that she had managed to save from Aunt Petunia's latest binning session. It wasn't worth crying over being locked away while the Dursleys had guests over to admire all the bundles of holly leaves that Harini had spent hours carefully arranging as Aunt Petunia glared and criticized. Pretending to not exist was much better than having to listen to Aunt Marge explain how it was a shame that Harini's mother had dirtied herself with a filthy Indian. If Harini thought about that for too long, she would start crying and not stop.
Turning the worn-out clothing into something to make her cupboard more comfortable was a better way to spend Christmas Eve, anyway. She didn't need to be treated like a family member. She knew she wasn't wanted, that she would never be wanted. She was the orphan who should have been drowned at birth like how Aunt Marge dealt with the puppies with bad blood.
Harini understood.
It hurt, and a lot more than she would ever be able to tell anyone, but really…
It was fine.
(^^)
Hogwarts had been built with more than just human magical children in mind. That knowledge had been deliberately lost to most of the British magical populace over the generations. Whereas once upon a time creature inheritances had been a matter of pride, opinion had shifted so that most families kept such things a secret in an obsessive need to appear purely magical human. With most creature types, this was a matter of protection more than shame.
Blaise had been trained from a young age that it was better to simply kill anyone trying to take her. She wasn't the only child sent into formal schooling with that training either. While lorelai were not as alluring as veela, the stereotype about all kinds of fey and nymphs was too strong to be broken by a couple hundred years of secrecy. Vampires and werewolves were often hunted, regardless of age, and would face more legal sanctions for defending themselves than their would-be murderers if reported.
But Hogwarts had been built as a sanctuary for all magical beings.
There were many hidden spaces designed with the needs of the creature students in mind, even if the kinds with similar needs often had to share. Hogwarts also had no qualms about rearranging herself to guide a student to where they needed to be. That feature had been added by Salazar Slytherin, of course. Who else would have been so paranoid about knowledge being lost or hidden? The devotion he had held to his Helga would never have let him not see her legacy through the length and breadth of time.
That was why Blaise was not surprised to find another person in the grotto space off of the docks under the castle. In the month since her arrival, Blaise had done a thorough exploration of the various water creature spaces. Then she had sought out (if only to lay eyes on them) those whose scents had been recent. None of them had been the girl curled into the shadow of a rock overhang near the water's edge. The holly bush growing beside the hollow made her almost impossible to see.
Not that Blaise would have expected to have found the scent of a fellow first-year among the old scents.
The truly odd thing was that the girl tucked away in the spot was none other than Harini Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived. What kind of creature blood ran in the Potter family? Blaise had a feeling that the creature communities would have passed that knowledge around, especially given Harini's celebrity status and how she had gotten it. Blaise knew how defensive all of them were of their young. Curiosity drew Blaise closer to the huddled form.
Harini was sleeping, curled into an impossibly tiny ball. She had dried tear tracks on her bronze cheek. Every so often, her breath would hitch and shutter. She was breathtakingly beautiful, even after having clearly cried herself to sleep. The urge to destroy whoever had caused the girl such misery bubbled up inside of Blaise like water from a spring and threatened to erupt like a geyser. The feeling unnerved her, as she had only ever felt that vicious instinct for her mother and her best friend Daphne Greengrass. Well, and the little half-blood that Daphne had adopted on the train, but that had been muted compared to this.
Then Blaise caught the edge of something that had haunted her for years: a distinct mixture of sage and mint. A new layer had been added, just a hint of bitter lemon now curling like a warning in cool herbal notes. Blaise settled on her knees just outside the hiding spot. Any thought about getting dirt on her robes was a distant concern compared to the surging need to rake her eyes over the other girl.
Harini was beautiful. She was everything that Blaise had never known to dream for. Blaise remembered how fearless she had been defending Neville Longbottom from the Malfoy heir's teasing. She remembered how graceful Harini had been in the air, like she had been born to soar above them. Most importantly, Blaise remembered how so many eyes from their fellow students were already lingering on the smallest Gryffindor first-year.
All of Blaise's old fears pushed forward. She wasn't the silly six-year-old that she had been. She knew that things didn't always work out with potential mates. Her own mother had lost so many due to the cruelty of magic and humankind. Competition for Harini's attention would be fierce, and the cultivated rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin did not work in Blaise's favor.
Not to mention the assumptions that came from her mother's well-known distaste for Albus Dumbledore.
Or how there was no telling if Harini had been led to the grotto due to her own creature inheritance or because to the potential mateship magic that bound them. If Harini was a creature herself, her instincts may lead her away from Blaise. Magic could be cruel that way, sometimes.
It all boiled down to any courtship having impossible odds.
Blaise's eyes traced the tear tracks on Harini's too-thin face and felt her resolve cement.
Impossible odds sounded just right for her ambition.
(^^)
Harini loved Hogwarts. She loved magic and how it explained so much of the odd things that had happened around her (even if that explanation came with the realization that if she had not had magic, there was a chance that Aunt Petunia might have actually cared about her). She loved how people were actually friendly to her for once—how Ron treated her like a sister with the other Weasley boys folding her into the family just as easily, how Neville seemed determined to continue defending her like she had on the train despite having been sorted into a different House. No one else came close to those two, but it was still a far cry from how everyone in Little Whinging treated her.
There were only a few exceptions to the general friendliness of Hogwarts. Snape seemed to share the Dursleys' opinion of her, especially with all his digs towards her father. Harini was not certain if it was the same issue that Aunt Marge had with him or some more personal history with her father, but in the end, Snape absolutely loathed her because of who her father was. The way the irascible man was quick to find fault in everything she did or that he imagined she had was too familiar to cause more than a dull echo of hurt. The hatred of a stranger had nothing on the hatred of the woman who had raised her, after all.
Draco Malfoy was another exception and one that did not make sense. The boy had wanted to be friends, to guide her through the intricacies of her return, whatever that had meant. Harini might have accepted his offer if he hadn't insulted both of her friends immediately before that. She was certain that Ron had been able to handle the insults about his family. The fact that he had been angry about them just proved that to Harini. It was the insults to Neville, her first defender, that had really cemented Harini's distaste, though. Where Ron had been angry, Neville had been resigned to just accept the cruel attacks, just like she had been when Ron had insisted that her name was a boy's. From the moment a similar jibe (made with the clear intention of cruelty and obviously with the knowledge that Ron had missed) had left Malfoy's lips, Harini had known she could never even pretend to be friends with such a person. Ever since Harini had rejected Malfoy's offer, the boy had gone out of his way to be cruel.
Then there was Hermione Granger. Harini was not certain what she had done to make the other girl decide she was a rival. She was sure that was why Hermione didn't like her in particular. Not that Hermione seemed to like anyone in their dorm. Lavender and Parvati weren't serious enough about their studies for Hermione, since they did their revising while going about their beauty routines or braiding each other's hair. Fae Dunbar was too much of a tomboy, constantly slacking off on homework in favor of adventures involving dirt. Hermione was content to merely make dismissive scoffs about all of them.
Yet Hermione seemed to actually hate how many of the professors would skip over her raised and waving hand to call on Harini. It was not even Harini's fault! A lot of them were only calling on Harini because of the whole Girl-Who-Lived nonsense. (Snape probably just wanted to embarrass her, to be honest, which was all the more reason to memorize the textbook and a growing list of related work. Maybe she was not as ambivalent about things as she tried to pretend.)
But old habits were hard to shake, and a lifetime of pretending to be dumber than Dudley meant that Harini did not like to show how much she knew about class subjects. Hermione was the exact opposite, desperately swotty and determined to show it off. Harini would have been more than glad to let her take the role of teacher's pet that she coveted. Yet Hermione treated her attempts to just step aside as great insults that required countering. The girl's waspish comments made Aunt Petunia seem the epitome of sweet kindness.
Yet the key difference between Hermione Granger and the likes of Snape and Malfoy was that there was escape from her. She was in every class. She was in the common room and Great Hall. She was in the dorm. And Harini was not used to that. Even at the Dursleys', she had her cupboard where none of them went.
Harini lasted a month before she had to find some place to hide, if only for just a few hours. Half-blinded by the tears she had refused to shed where anyone could possibly witness it, she had stumbled across a hidden space near the docks under the castle. She had then found the perfect hiding space beneath a rock overhang and neatly hidden from most angles by a flourishing holly bush.
Tucking herself into the hollow, she gave into the grief filling her. The silent sobs wracked her body as tears poured down her cheeks. It was cathartic to let out the torrent storming within her, like a cleansing fire burning away the dead underbrush so that new things had room to grow. She fell into an exhausted sleep.
Only to wake up with a pair of violet eyes watching her from a dark face. The other girl looked away when she saw that Harini had woken up, scanning the marshy grotto around them. It gave Harini time to look her own fill.
The girl had skin so dark it looked like the good garden soil. The light from the full moon moved across it in a reversal of how the Earth's did on the moon during the course of the month. In the weird way that she sometimes saw things, Harini could see the sparks of something more draped over the girl like an extra robe. Her dark hair had been twisted into an elaborate latticework for most of her head only to end with a riot of curls that made Harini's own curls appear tamed. It was like they had to make up for the control from the rest of the style.
It suited her.
And even more than she had wanted to keep Ron and Neville close after meeting them on the train, Harini wanted to be friends with this strange girl who unabashedly watched her sleeping. It was so intense that it ached. Two friends were already more than Harini had ever dared to have when she had been so lonely at the Dursleys'. A third would just be being greedy.
Harini still wanted to try.
The achy feeling in her chest quieted as those eyes settled on her again. The urge to keep the other girl close, to hide her away from those who would certainly want to steal her away, reared up. Out of hard-won experience, Harini pushed the urge away. It was a useless feeling that didn't matter. Harini wasn't allowed to keep things, not really and not for long.
And that was fine.
She would take whatever she got for however long she was allowed to have it. Such a beautiful girl wouldn't want to stay friends for long with Harini. No matter the roaring beast within demanding otherwise, she knew that she was always going to be the unwanted intrusion on things, the misfit who had to prove she could be useful just to stay for even a little while. The thought of losing this one person hurt worse than any snippy remark about her intelligence from Hermione or her parenthood from Snape.
Yet when Blaise introduced herself with a smile that made her eyes sparkly like amethysts, Harini felt something that she had never truly felt before. It was something bright and warm and soft all at the same time. It felt like coming inside after shoveling the driveway and front walk at the same time it felt like slipping under the quilts that she had made herself out of discarded clothes.
It felt like everything was finally going to be fine.
(^^)
Finding Harini in the hidden spaces became a habit. In addition to the grotto under the castle, Blaise had found the girl in the room near the entrance to the Ravenclaw tower where the ceiling always looked like a thunderstorm, the fake forest room near the Hospital Wing, and the inverted fish bowl right below Slytherin. If more than three days went by without Blaise coming across Harini somewhere, there was always a good bet that checking the rumor mill would reveal that she had landed yet another detention with Snape. Blaise would then head directly to the grotto to either find Harini already there in the hollow behind the holly bushes or to have the girl arrive within short order.
Blaise was fairly certain that she was spending just as much time with Harini Potter as she was Daphne and Tracey or that Harini was spending with Neville and Ron. She would have loved the idea if it wasn't for how often Harini was visibly distressed when she arrived. Even worse, Harini continued to shy away from all of Blaise's attempts to comfort her.
That hurt more than Blaise would be able to admit even to herself. For all of her mother's pretty words about there always being other potential mates out there, Blaise knew that no one else would ever match the compatibility she had with Harini. The way their scents seemed to reach for each other, mixing together without a single touch being exchanged, felt like confirmation of every instinct that screamed for her to claim her mate so that everyone knew to stop hurting her.
Yet every time Blaise dared to raise her hand towards Harini, the girl would flinch away and suddenly find something to examine on the other side of the space. Blaise would give anything to be able to comfort Harini. She wanted to trace her fingers over the many tiny scars on her hands or the small one on her left cheekbone right below the corner of her eye. She wanted to curl around Harini like a blanket, to wrap her up and keep her warm until the day they died.
The desire to do so was so strong at times that Blaise felt like it was suffocating her. Blaise felt like if she didn't get to scent the girl soon, then she would literally die. It had only been a month since their first meeting. How could Mother Magic expect her to endure having her mate right in front of her and not touch?
Draco Malfoy had practically announced the news of Harini's latest detention when he had waltz into the Slytherin common room before the Halloween Feast. Blaise had known that Snape had it out for the smallest Gryffindor. It wasn't like that was a secret. The entire school knew that the Potions professor was obsessed with the Girl-Who-Lived. But to assign a detention during a school festivity?
Blaise slipped away with a glance towards the armchair near the window looking into the lake where Daphne was reading with Tracey on her lap. Daphne nodded when their eyes met before she pressed a kiss to the space behind Tracey's ear, no doubt conveying the message of Blaise's exit. The door slid back into place before Blaise could see how Tracey reacted.
Harini was already standing on the bottom step when Blaise arrived. Her eyes were focused on the water lapping against the shore's pebbles. Or at least, Blaise had thought they were until she had gotten close enough to see how unfocused they were.
"Don't you have detention?" Blaise asked gently. If she thought that Harini would finally allow it, she would have pulled the girl into a hug. Harini made the quiet humming sound that she always did when she was curious about something. Used to Harini's quirk of never directly asking questions, Blaise continued. "Malfoy sang like a rooster."
"Bet it's the only that he can," Harini murmured. The implied insult was weak compared to what Harini usually said about the boy. Her face looked pale, despite her sienna complexion. Blaise was starting to plot how to convince the girl to visit the Hospital Wing. At least in the Hospital Wing, she would be safe from whoever had put that morose look on her face. Blaise just knew that it must be due to Snape and his obsessive need to remind Harini of her fame and the ego he assumed she had due to it. As if she had heard Blaise's thoughts, Harini sighed and said, "I should get to that detention before Snape loses his mind."
"You don't actually have to go," Blaise suggested, suddenly unable to let the girl out of her sight. Something was wrong with Harini. She was slurring her words just a bit around the edges and each syllable sounded like it was being ripped from the abyss before she got it out. "You can just skip it."
"Snape will just issue more," Harini said. She shook her head hard enough to send her curls flaring out like dark flames. "And he'll take even more points."
"So?" Blaise asked with a casualness she didn't truly feel. Harini blinked at her in confusion. "It's just points. They don't actually mean anything. All they get is a meaningless trophy gets displayed in the office of the winner's Head of House for the next year and the Great Hall gets decorated in the House's colors at the end of the year feast." She forced herself to grin. "What can they really do if the students decide to stop playing the game?"
"They could expel me," Harini whispered. "Hermione may be a swot, but she wasn't wrong when she said that being expelled was worse than being killed."
"I get the feeling that there's a story there," Blaise said with all the carefulness of handling an Ashwinder. Suddenly, the annoying wannabe teacher's pet seemed a lot nuttier than Blaise had previously given her credit for. "But why do you think being expelled is possibly worse than death?"
Harini looked back out over the water. The silence stretched on for long enough that Blaise was certain that she wasn't going to answer. Her sense of something being horribly wrong grew.
"Harini?"
"I was going to sit with Neville during the feast," Harini said in a voice empty of all emotion. "Ron was going to come, too. Neville was certain that the first year Hufflepuffs wouldn't mind. It sounded like it would be fun. Snape overheard us making the plans and gave me detention."
"Just you?"
"Yeah," Harini confirmed. Her voice had a spark of feeling in it again, but it was anger and guilt. Blaise suddenly wanted to rip Snape into little pieces. "He said I was disrespecting the day the most. He's right, of course. I didn't even think about what day it was. I didn't even know when they had died until this past summer. I shouldn't be thinking about having fun on this particular day."
"Harini," Blaise asked cautiously, "why did you only learn the date this summer?"
"My aunt doesn't like magic or anything about it."
Something in Blaise froze at the simply spoke sentence. Harini said it like it was nothing, but it still made Blaise feel cold. Her mother had created an organization that worked with magical children who were raised or being raised in the Muggle world. Claudia Zabini never mentioned specific names or incidents but neither had she ever hid how bad it sometimes got. Maybe it was a coincidence that Harini had used the euphemism that described the most common reason for Muggles hurting wixen. Maybe Blaise was wrong about the conclusion she was now making.
Then the ice within her began to fissure as the protective rage made itself known.
"Come with me," Blaise ordered on a whim. Harini hesitated only a moment before following Blaise away from the grotto that seemed to be her preference. Blaise suppressed the urge to reach for her hand until they had reached their designation. Only then did Blaise take both of Harini's hands in hers for the first time and walked backwards into the room.
Immediately after they cleared the door, flames burst into life around the edges of room as in a wide bowl in the center of the room. Harini startled but her grip on Blaise's hands tightened instead of letting go. Her green eyes sparked with life again as the flames flickered and danced around them. In fact, it was the most animated that Blaise had ever seen Harini look, as if she was finally awake when she had previously been only sleepwalking.
It was as breathtaking as watching her fly.
"It's beautiful," Harini breathed. She dropped one hand to reach out for the nearest patch. Blaise's breath caught for an entirely different reason.
Magically generated fire rarely cared about how it was supposed to behave. It was especially contrary when it was designed to interact with people who would benefit from burning, such as those with a creature inheritance based on fire. Blaise had still found no hints at what the Potters could be. Fire-based creatures rarely attended any of the wixen schools due to the more volatile natures of their magic. That same instability made a lot of them incompatible with humans that didn't already have creature blood, which just increased their rarity.
Harini kept reaching for the fire as if entranced. Time seemed to slow down around them. Everything was suddenly taking forever to happen despite how it couldn't actually be. The flames leapt from the balefire to engulf Harini's hand, transforming from a natural color to a mixture of purples and blues. In the eternity of a second, the tiny girl was enflamed.
Harini continued to hold onto Blaise through it all.
The flames did nothing more than give Blaise's skin delicate kitten-licks.
"Yeah," Blaise agreed once she had remembered how to breathe, "absolutely beautiful."
Harini smiled for the first time since Blaise had found her that afternoon. Blaise felt like she could soar without any need for a broom or wings. It felt like she had been waiting her entire life just to see that particular smile.
It was worth it.