The trip back to Hogwarts stood out as hazy in my mind. I couldn't remember
how we got back to King's Cross, and even if my life depended on it, I
couldn't have reminded myself of how I got back into the Common Room or my
dormitory. My head was aching again, for some unknown reason. On the way to
the Slytherin Common Room, I was sure I'd heard Lucas say something about a
spell, but I wasn't completely sure. Completely out of it and bone tired, I
collapsed on my bed and fell asleep, not even bothering to undress first.
Waking up several hours later, well into the night, I sat up. Bewildered and confused, not really knowing where I was before I had time to orientate myself, I looked around tiredly. Green drapes, four-poster bed, stone walls, had to be Hogwarts. Relaxing and stretching my back till it popped audibly, I crawled out of bed. It had been altogether too long since my last cup of coffee. Maybe everything would start to make sense after that. Maybe I'd wake up and realise I wasn't crazy, and that I hadn't broken down and everything hadn't exploded. Would be a nice thing, really, but I knew it wouldn't happen.
Scratching my neck and yawning hugely, I made my way downstairs. Bleary eyed, getting to the door was quite difficult. Waking up at four in the morning with a caffeine headache wasn't the best thing that ever happened to me. Of course, it wasn't all caffeine-headache. Could be a good bit of backlash from my breakdown as well. My head wasn't feeling fussy any more, so the spell Lucas had mentioned could be one he'd cast on me to keep my headache away.
Getting to and from the kitchen was quick work, and this time no one caught me. I brought the coffee back with me, and settled down at my desk, up in the dormitory. The fluttering light of the candle wasn't enough to wake anyone up; Draco had always been a heavy sleeper, at least at Hogwarts, and Crabbe and Goyle kept snoring like earthquakes. No fear of them waking up. I flipped through the pack of papers Linden had given to me. A slip of permission that I could show on the way in and out of the Ministry, because he'd said I'd need to come back, to train my wild magic. A note with the names of books he thought I needed to read. He'd sent a letter to Dumbledore, so I didn't have it. And so the most important of all; the little piece of paper that confirmed me as legally insane.
A nice, innocent piece of paper, with words that, if taken separately, were nice and innocent as well. But if read as a whole, they were rather frightening. It stated, quite simply, that I was insane. I was mad, had no control over my mind, over myself. A horrible thought, but there it was, black on white, stating that I was a nut case. What a nice thing to find out only a few weeks away from end-of-term. Nice thing to find out at any time. Burying my head in my hands, I concentrated on not having another breakdown. My emotional state was anything but stable, and Linden had mentioned something about great emotional shocks could trigger another attack. I didn't want Draco and the others to wake up to their drapes being ripped away and their beds torn apart.
"Better put these away," I whispered, and took all the papers and stuffed them under the floorboards, just underneath my desk, where I'd kept a lot of things secret over the years.
There was a lot of things down there. A blue thread. A piece of a glass marble I'd found on the stairs. Some ripped pages of an old diary, written by someone named Myrtle. A picture I'd found forgotten in a hallway last year, and kept out of wanting to have something that wasn't truly mine. It was a picture of Potter and Granger, probably taken by Weasley. At first, I'd thought about throwing it away, because it was Potter on it, but I'd changed my mind and kept it instead. There wasn't a real reason for it, just a feeling that it would be a nice keepsake.
It must have been taken on Christmas. Potter and Granger were still in their pyjamas, sitting on a bed with red and gold drapes. There was a pile of presents in front of them, wrapped in a wide variety of paper. Granger was smiling, looking at Potter, who was staring at the presents with the oddest expression on his face. The picture had been taken with a Muggle camera, so it wasn't moving, which made the picture even odder. Muggle cameras weren't supposed to work at Hogwarts with its high-level concentration of magic, but somehow it had, and had captured the odd expression on Potter's face. I'd never seen him look like that before, nor had I seen Granger smile quite like that. It was like looking into a frozen moment of someone else's life, a forbidden something that should have been kept personal, and away from my prying eyes. And I kept it under the floorboards, and didn't look at it. Just knowing it was there, and I could take it out at any time and look at it gave me a feeling of triumph. I'd taken a moment from their lives.
I stuffed the papers under the floorboards, and got up. Four in the morning, altogether too early to get up, and altogether too late to go back to bed. There was no choice but to stay awake. Coffee surely helped, but I needed something with which to distract myself. Perhaps I would play chess, only there was no one to play with. Well, I could play with myself. I wandered downstairs and settled myself in at the chessboard. Slytherin had somehow gotten hold of one of the most beautiful chess-sets I had ever seen. The board wasn't just a board; it was a tabletop, a table used for nothing but chess. The pieces were beauty beyond compare. It just might be the distraction I needed to stay awake.
******'
"Blaise, where the hell have you been?"
"Why, are you always this cheerful in the morning, Agnes?"
"Only when idiots like you disappear for hours on end," She replied and settled herself in the chair opposite my own, across the chessboard. I looked up and managed a weak smile at her, which attempted to be innocent but failed as always. "So tell me, why were you gone yesterday?"
"Detention." I told her shortly, "Lucas had me going around the grounds helping Hagrid. Had to be out for hours. I didn't have to do anything special, just keep track of his drooling dog."
"Tough," Agnes wrinkled her nose.
I smiled slightly, but didn't lift my eyes from the board again. Since I'd been unable to fall asleep again, I'd kept myself entertained by playing chess, with myself, and it was going quite well. I'd won about half of the games. Losing to oneself could seem a bit strange, considering I played both contestants, but I had played myself into quite a few corners. Agnes studied me as I moved the pieces about, and raised her eyebrow. Apparently playing chess on my lonesome wasn't considered healthy in her eyes.
"So, have you been keeping everything straight while I was gone? No vicious in-House quarrels? No breaking of Weasley noses?" I asked, moving to take a pawn.
"Nothing," She shook her head almost sadly.
"Nothing? Nothing at all?" I raised my eyebrow, and she nodded, "Do you expect me to believe that in the four days I haven't been all here, the Slytherins have been sitting around being nice to each other? Go tell your bed-time stories to someone else, alright?"
"Of course we haven't been nice," Agnes protested, insulted that I could even suggest such a thing, "We aren't turning into saints, Blaise. We've merely not caused as much trouble as usual. What do you take us for? Gryffindors?"
"No, I never would take you for a Gryffindor, Agnes," I shook my head and snorted, "You're a Slytherin to the core, something you should be damn proud of. No, Gryffindors aren't worth the trouble. The only one who seems to know how to spell civility in that House is Granger, and that's only because she's read the dictionary in her spare time."
"She's been looking at you a lot lately, though," Agnes grinned evilly, "You gotten yourself an admirer you haven't told us about?"
"Not hardly," I snorted.
We exchanged a few more insults, a few more pleasantries, before she left to see if Theo had woken up yet. After winning the game I was playing, I put the pieces back in their original positions and leaned back in the chair. So Granger had been watching me. Interesting. I'd noticed that she'd watched me a bit, and scribbled furiously while doing so, but if Agnes, who nearly never was around me noticed, it had to be more than that. She'd been watching me, for no apparent reason, since the duel with Potter and Moon's disappearance. It was time to find that reason out. Stalking was definitely an option, but after I'd gotten myself some breakfast, and if Dumbledore had gotten the letter, a meeting with him.
*****'
The password to Dumledore's office turned out to be something I'd never heard of before. Sounded like some obscure Muggle candy. I counted the steps on my way up, just to put off the inevitable. Dumbledore didn't like me, I knew that. He didn't like any Slytherin, and me much less since I'd gotten into a fight with a Gryffindor. Hopefully, the letter Linden had written to him, and the coffee I'd drank would make it all better. Or at least seemingly better. The headache had faded somewhat, so that at least wasn't a worry any more. I reached the top of the stairs, and held up my hand to knock on the door, when Dumbledore called for me to enter.
"Why, come in Mr Zabini." He sounded horribly cheerful.
Dumbeldore's office was without a doubt the strangest place I'd been in, including the Department of Mysteries. Silver things with spindly legs seemed to occupy every flat space, and the walls were lined with paintings. The rug on the floor was nothing short of psychedelic, and the perch in the corner held an incredibly ugly bird. Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, smiling widely. Creepy, that man was. I settled down in the chair in front of the desk, and stayed silent.
"How are you feeling?"
"Other than a headache, I'm fine," I shrugged awkwardly. "I'm the resident madman, but I'm fine."
"Ah. I always thought that title belonged to me," Dumbledore's eyes twinkled when he spoke, "But the time has come to hand it over. Mr Helling wrote to me and told me about your little problem. He believes you need training for it, though exactly what led him to believe that he doesn't say, but that might be because he is a bit absent-minded in his writing. Would you please explain to me what happened to make Professor Lucas so suspicious?"
"I snapped. I'd been stressed and worn out since my duelling class, and after spending time in the hospital wing and not quite recovered, a bit of anger was all it took to make my control snap in half." I stared at my feet, "I sort of demolished Professor Lucas's office completely. Madame Pomfrey wasn't happy with me, but she couldn't throw me out of the infirmary since I hadn't been flying in the rain. And I told L – Professor Lucas that I'd been having a headache for quite some time, and then he went really close-mouthed and refused to tell me anything. The day I was released from the hospital wing, he dragged me off to London and the Department of Mysteries, and Linden confirmed I was insane."
Aware that I was rambling, I snapped my mouth shut. Dumbledore twinkled at me, and smiled. I was incredibly nervous, and I always rumbled when I was nervous. The Headmaster had always succeeded in making me off-balance, and now was no different.
"He might have phrased it that way, but you aren't insane, Mr Zabini." Dumbledore shook his head, "You've merely lost control over your magic. Your mind is perfectly fine, I can assure you of that."
"You haven't been in it, I hear," I mumbled, just catching myself before I rolled my eyes.
"Mr Helling has asked me to give you permission to visit them again, to train your magic." Dumbledore went on as if he hadn't heard me, "You will be going back there in a week. Mr Helling will send someone to pick you up at King's Cross."
The twinkling was going to make me nauseous one day. Nodding, I stood up, deciding I was done with the meeting. There wasn't really anything left for him to say. Dumbledore didn't stop me, so I nodded goodbye and walked out of the office. Next stop on my list was finding Granger and watching her to see if she was watching me. First thing I had to do was to find out where she was. Stopping by the library might be a good thing.
*******'
I hadn't meant for it to go that far.
Watching Granger was simply done because I wanted to find out why she was watching me. Finding an empty table in a deserted part of the library was done because I wanted a place to sit where I wouldn't be bothered by others. Staring at her over the top of a book was just a good way of not getting detected. The staring was just done to see if she watched me.
I spent two days doing nothing but sit in that library. I learned everything there was to know about Hermione Granger, everything that was possible to learn through looking at her. After three days, with lessons squeezed in somewhere, I could tell if she was happy or not just by looking at her face. After four, I'd learned that she gestured wildly when she was annoyed or angry. Weasley had made a fool of himself as usual, and she snapped at him. After five, Millicent and Agnes came looking for me. I got away with the excuse that I needed to study for Arithmancy, which none of them took.
The time wasn't only spent watching Granger. Even though most of it was, I was actively trying not to think about my insanity. No matter what Dumbledore said, I sure felt insane. Watching Granger just distracted me, that was all. Watching her wasn't really important; I only did it to keep tabs on her. I could stop any time I had to, but by the sixth day, it had become a habit, and a fascination. A habit, because Granger was reliable like clockwork. A fascination because it amazed me that Granger never noticed what I was doing.
More than once during those six days, I had to concentrate on my book, staring so hard at it that the letters blurred, because she watched me. It would start the same way each time. She would glance up from her work and casually glance over to where I was sitting, and move her quill from her homework to a separate parchment and either scribble something down or cross something out. Every once in a while, just to scare her, I looked up, as if by coincidence and met her eyes. She would look away immediately, and I would return to my book for a while before watching her again. The constant little game of who-caught-who kept her on her toes.
Lucas came looking for me after dinner on Friday. I'd spent all day after lessons avoiding Millicent and Draco, who were pestering me about my seemingly endless quest for Arithmancy books, and conveniently ending up in the library because of it. Granger was there on time, just like the blessed clockwork she ran like, and I spent an hour and a half watching her from behind the shelves before Lucas found me.
"Zabini, it's time for you to go now," He said. "The train leaves in fifteen minutes. You do remember you're going to London today, right?"
"Back to the madhouse then," I sighed, "Do you think they've found the coffee machine yet?"
"Not likely; none of them are very keen on coffee, except maybe Anja, and that's when she can't find her cigarettes." Lucas shrugged and steered me towards the large double-doors of the library.
"Millie and Agnes and Draco and Theo will wonder where I am," I pointed out, rambling and sounding like a child while trying to look over my shoulder without being too obvious about why.
Granger was still sitting at her table, but was following us with disapproving eyes. I raised my eyebrow at her, and she glared before looking down again. Lucas shut the doors, just as I saw her ink-stained hand travel from her homework to that parchment, quill held high. The thud of the library doors falling closed had never sounded so deep before.
"I'll give them a sufficient excuse." Lucas assured me, "If you don't go now, you'll miss the train."
One last look at the library doors, and I turned to go. Each step brought me farther away from a habit I'd formed over seven days, a habit which ha kept me from going down in flames again, and now I was going back to re- face it. Which was nothing short of ridiculous. My Granger-watching-habit shouldn't be what kept me from losing it. Playing chess with Agnes, insulting Millicent and hitting Gaspar over the head with something heavy and blunt should.
The train-ride was a blur. Some foreigner next to me kept asking me about London, not giving up even after I gave him the almighty glare of death. After a few failed attempts, I pretended to be mute and deaf. Still didn't work. Giving up completely, I pretended to fall asleep. That worked, but only because we were ten minutes away from King's Cross. I did fall asleep for about two minutes, and awoke with memories of a strange dream involving red eyes, laughter and a cat. Shaking it off, I made my way off the train, followed by a gaggle of what I presumed was tourists. They were speaking Japanese, and pointing at everything they saw.
"Zabini!" A voice with an all too familiar Scottish accent called out.
Basil was standing by the entrance, waving for me. He was wearing the most ludicrous ensemble of clothing, Muggle or wizard, known to man. It was eye- blinding. It was horrible. It was tartan and plaid and electric blue. It looked as if he'd dressed in the dark, drunk, using the left-over clothing from a particularly wild masquerade, which had included clowns with boxing gloves, flying Scotsmen and Albus Dumbledore. It made me want to vomit. How he ever got from the Ministry to King's Cross without being arrested for breaking all laws of fashion was beyond my comprehension.
"I will ask this only once, and only because I've a morbid curiosity that is going to kill me one day," I said, holding up my hand to stave off any further talking, "What possessed you to dress like that?"
"This was all that was left in the clean-clothing pile," Basil shrugged, "Anja stole the only clean black shirt yesterday, so I had to take this. It isn't too bad, is it?"
"You just keep telling yourself that," I managed weakly.
Basil mumbled something, and suddenly he was holding my robes. In my school uniform, sweater, trousers, shoes and tie, I made a much saner and less head aching impression than he did. In only my school uniform, I could pass for a Muggle school boy. Detachedly, I wondered why Lucas in all his wisdom hadn't come up with that idea. Maybe he just wanted to show off his magic or something. But then again, even in only my uniform, we would have made quite the picture, what with both of us being taller than average and both of us having odd coloured eyes.
"Come on then; Linden hates when I'm late." Basil pointed towards the entrance and stepped through suddenly.
The Muggles pointed and laughed at Basil, who took it rather well, if he even noticed. He seemed preoccupied, and was counting something on his fingers, talking under his breath the whole time. The walk to the Ministry seemed shorter, and going down in the phone booth wasn't as exciting as it had been a week ago. The Ministry was still as busy, though I noticed something strange on our way to the Department; all visitors lined up before a desk behind which a bored-looking wizard sat. He took their wands and weighed them before giving them back and writing something down. I didn't have to do that. Odd.
"Two days, no, three before the next time," Basil mumbled distractedly, "Give or take a few hours. That makes fifteen."
I raised my eyebrow. It seemed all Department of Mysteries-employees had their oddities. Linden was absent minded, Anja sarcastic and cynic, and Basil counted a lot and wore eye-blinding clothing. And chased the coffee machine. For a split-second, I wondered how the coffee machine had gotten lost in the first place; it couldn't just have gotten up and walked away, could it?
The other people around us were giving Basil some strange looks. Couldn't blame them, really. The man was wearing an electric blue poncho and a kilt after all. The man who had been there last Friday, the Slavic looking one, was there this time too. He watched Basil and me with something akin to amusement, and shook his head several times, muttering in what sounded like Russian. I resisted the urge to smack Basil over the head when he started humming on an old Celestina Warbeck hit that my mother loved, and forced myself to remain calm. The Ministry employed a lot of strange people these days.
Take that guy by the door for example. His hair looked as if it hadn't seen water since the last monsoon, and to call his clothing rags would be an insult to rags world-wide. And yet the pin that proclaimed him as a member of the Department for Regulation of Magical Creatures shone brightly on his chest. Basil looked tame by comparison. No wonder things were going down-hill for the Ministry these days. I shook my head and stared at the ceiling, waiting for us to reach our floor and the doors to open. It was going to be a long day.
******'
Ending Notes; Blaise does get around with some strange people, eh? Hopefully, this will make more sense later.
Waking up several hours later, well into the night, I sat up. Bewildered and confused, not really knowing where I was before I had time to orientate myself, I looked around tiredly. Green drapes, four-poster bed, stone walls, had to be Hogwarts. Relaxing and stretching my back till it popped audibly, I crawled out of bed. It had been altogether too long since my last cup of coffee. Maybe everything would start to make sense after that. Maybe I'd wake up and realise I wasn't crazy, and that I hadn't broken down and everything hadn't exploded. Would be a nice thing, really, but I knew it wouldn't happen.
Scratching my neck and yawning hugely, I made my way downstairs. Bleary eyed, getting to the door was quite difficult. Waking up at four in the morning with a caffeine headache wasn't the best thing that ever happened to me. Of course, it wasn't all caffeine-headache. Could be a good bit of backlash from my breakdown as well. My head wasn't feeling fussy any more, so the spell Lucas had mentioned could be one he'd cast on me to keep my headache away.
Getting to and from the kitchen was quick work, and this time no one caught me. I brought the coffee back with me, and settled down at my desk, up in the dormitory. The fluttering light of the candle wasn't enough to wake anyone up; Draco had always been a heavy sleeper, at least at Hogwarts, and Crabbe and Goyle kept snoring like earthquakes. No fear of them waking up. I flipped through the pack of papers Linden had given to me. A slip of permission that I could show on the way in and out of the Ministry, because he'd said I'd need to come back, to train my wild magic. A note with the names of books he thought I needed to read. He'd sent a letter to Dumbledore, so I didn't have it. And so the most important of all; the little piece of paper that confirmed me as legally insane.
A nice, innocent piece of paper, with words that, if taken separately, were nice and innocent as well. But if read as a whole, they were rather frightening. It stated, quite simply, that I was insane. I was mad, had no control over my mind, over myself. A horrible thought, but there it was, black on white, stating that I was a nut case. What a nice thing to find out only a few weeks away from end-of-term. Nice thing to find out at any time. Burying my head in my hands, I concentrated on not having another breakdown. My emotional state was anything but stable, and Linden had mentioned something about great emotional shocks could trigger another attack. I didn't want Draco and the others to wake up to their drapes being ripped away and their beds torn apart.
"Better put these away," I whispered, and took all the papers and stuffed them under the floorboards, just underneath my desk, where I'd kept a lot of things secret over the years.
There was a lot of things down there. A blue thread. A piece of a glass marble I'd found on the stairs. Some ripped pages of an old diary, written by someone named Myrtle. A picture I'd found forgotten in a hallway last year, and kept out of wanting to have something that wasn't truly mine. It was a picture of Potter and Granger, probably taken by Weasley. At first, I'd thought about throwing it away, because it was Potter on it, but I'd changed my mind and kept it instead. There wasn't a real reason for it, just a feeling that it would be a nice keepsake.
It must have been taken on Christmas. Potter and Granger were still in their pyjamas, sitting on a bed with red and gold drapes. There was a pile of presents in front of them, wrapped in a wide variety of paper. Granger was smiling, looking at Potter, who was staring at the presents with the oddest expression on his face. The picture had been taken with a Muggle camera, so it wasn't moving, which made the picture even odder. Muggle cameras weren't supposed to work at Hogwarts with its high-level concentration of magic, but somehow it had, and had captured the odd expression on Potter's face. I'd never seen him look like that before, nor had I seen Granger smile quite like that. It was like looking into a frozen moment of someone else's life, a forbidden something that should have been kept personal, and away from my prying eyes. And I kept it under the floorboards, and didn't look at it. Just knowing it was there, and I could take it out at any time and look at it gave me a feeling of triumph. I'd taken a moment from their lives.
I stuffed the papers under the floorboards, and got up. Four in the morning, altogether too early to get up, and altogether too late to go back to bed. There was no choice but to stay awake. Coffee surely helped, but I needed something with which to distract myself. Perhaps I would play chess, only there was no one to play with. Well, I could play with myself. I wandered downstairs and settled myself in at the chessboard. Slytherin had somehow gotten hold of one of the most beautiful chess-sets I had ever seen. The board wasn't just a board; it was a tabletop, a table used for nothing but chess. The pieces were beauty beyond compare. It just might be the distraction I needed to stay awake.
******'
"Blaise, where the hell have you been?"
"Why, are you always this cheerful in the morning, Agnes?"
"Only when idiots like you disappear for hours on end," She replied and settled herself in the chair opposite my own, across the chessboard. I looked up and managed a weak smile at her, which attempted to be innocent but failed as always. "So tell me, why were you gone yesterday?"
"Detention." I told her shortly, "Lucas had me going around the grounds helping Hagrid. Had to be out for hours. I didn't have to do anything special, just keep track of his drooling dog."
"Tough," Agnes wrinkled her nose.
I smiled slightly, but didn't lift my eyes from the board again. Since I'd been unable to fall asleep again, I'd kept myself entertained by playing chess, with myself, and it was going quite well. I'd won about half of the games. Losing to oneself could seem a bit strange, considering I played both contestants, but I had played myself into quite a few corners. Agnes studied me as I moved the pieces about, and raised her eyebrow. Apparently playing chess on my lonesome wasn't considered healthy in her eyes.
"So, have you been keeping everything straight while I was gone? No vicious in-House quarrels? No breaking of Weasley noses?" I asked, moving to take a pawn.
"Nothing," She shook her head almost sadly.
"Nothing? Nothing at all?" I raised my eyebrow, and she nodded, "Do you expect me to believe that in the four days I haven't been all here, the Slytherins have been sitting around being nice to each other? Go tell your bed-time stories to someone else, alright?"
"Of course we haven't been nice," Agnes protested, insulted that I could even suggest such a thing, "We aren't turning into saints, Blaise. We've merely not caused as much trouble as usual. What do you take us for? Gryffindors?"
"No, I never would take you for a Gryffindor, Agnes," I shook my head and snorted, "You're a Slytherin to the core, something you should be damn proud of. No, Gryffindors aren't worth the trouble. The only one who seems to know how to spell civility in that House is Granger, and that's only because she's read the dictionary in her spare time."
"She's been looking at you a lot lately, though," Agnes grinned evilly, "You gotten yourself an admirer you haven't told us about?"
"Not hardly," I snorted.
We exchanged a few more insults, a few more pleasantries, before she left to see if Theo had woken up yet. After winning the game I was playing, I put the pieces back in their original positions and leaned back in the chair. So Granger had been watching me. Interesting. I'd noticed that she'd watched me a bit, and scribbled furiously while doing so, but if Agnes, who nearly never was around me noticed, it had to be more than that. She'd been watching me, for no apparent reason, since the duel with Potter and Moon's disappearance. It was time to find that reason out. Stalking was definitely an option, but after I'd gotten myself some breakfast, and if Dumbledore had gotten the letter, a meeting with him.
*****'
The password to Dumledore's office turned out to be something I'd never heard of before. Sounded like some obscure Muggle candy. I counted the steps on my way up, just to put off the inevitable. Dumbledore didn't like me, I knew that. He didn't like any Slytherin, and me much less since I'd gotten into a fight with a Gryffindor. Hopefully, the letter Linden had written to him, and the coffee I'd drank would make it all better. Or at least seemingly better. The headache had faded somewhat, so that at least wasn't a worry any more. I reached the top of the stairs, and held up my hand to knock on the door, when Dumbledore called for me to enter.
"Why, come in Mr Zabini." He sounded horribly cheerful.
Dumbeldore's office was without a doubt the strangest place I'd been in, including the Department of Mysteries. Silver things with spindly legs seemed to occupy every flat space, and the walls were lined with paintings. The rug on the floor was nothing short of psychedelic, and the perch in the corner held an incredibly ugly bird. Dumbledore was sitting behind his desk, smiling widely. Creepy, that man was. I settled down in the chair in front of the desk, and stayed silent.
"How are you feeling?"
"Other than a headache, I'm fine," I shrugged awkwardly. "I'm the resident madman, but I'm fine."
"Ah. I always thought that title belonged to me," Dumbledore's eyes twinkled when he spoke, "But the time has come to hand it over. Mr Helling wrote to me and told me about your little problem. He believes you need training for it, though exactly what led him to believe that he doesn't say, but that might be because he is a bit absent-minded in his writing. Would you please explain to me what happened to make Professor Lucas so suspicious?"
"I snapped. I'd been stressed and worn out since my duelling class, and after spending time in the hospital wing and not quite recovered, a bit of anger was all it took to make my control snap in half." I stared at my feet, "I sort of demolished Professor Lucas's office completely. Madame Pomfrey wasn't happy with me, but she couldn't throw me out of the infirmary since I hadn't been flying in the rain. And I told L – Professor Lucas that I'd been having a headache for quite some time, and then he went really close-mouthed and refused to tell me anything. The day I was released from the hospital wing, he dragged me off to London and the Department of Mysteries, and Linden confirmed I was insane."
Aware that I was rambling, I snapped my mouth shut. Dumbledore twinkled at me, and smiled. I was incredibly nervous, and I always rumbled when I was nervous. The Headmaster had always succeeded in making me off-balance, and now was no different.
"He might have phrased it that way, but you aren't insane, Mr Zabini." Dumbledore shook his head, "You've merely lost control over your magic. Your mind is perfectly fine, I can assure you of that."
"You haven't been in it, I hear," I mumbled, just catching myself before I rolled my eyes.
"Mr Helling has asked me to give you permission to visit them again, to train your magic." Dumbledore went on as if he hadn't heard me, "You will be going back there in a week. Mr Helling will send someone to pick you up at King's Cross."
The twinkling was going to make me nauseous one day. Nodding, I stood up, deciding I was done with the meeting. There wasn't really anything left for him to say. Dumbledore didn't stop me, so I nodded goodbye and walked out of the office. Next stop on my list was finding Granger and watching her to see if she was watching me. First thing I had to do was to find out where she was. Stopping by the library might be a good thing.
*******'
I hadn't meant for it to go that far.
Watching Granger was simply done because I wanted to find out why she was watching me. Finding an empty table in a deserted part of the library was done because I wanted a place to sit where I wouldn't be bothered by others. Staring at her over the top of a book was just a good way of not getting detected. The staring was just done to see if she watched me.
I spent two days doing nothing but sit in that library. I learned everything there was to know about Hermione Granger, everything that was possible to learn through looking at her. After three days, with lessons squeezed in somewhere, I could tell if she was happy or not just by looking at her face. After four, I'd learned that she gestured wildly when she was annoyed or angry. Weasley had made a fool of himself as usual, and she snapped at him. After five, Millicent and Agnes came looking for me. I got away with the excuse that I needed to study for Arithmancy, which none of them took.
The time wasn't only spent watching Granger. Even though most of it was, I was actively trying not to think about my insanity. No matter what Dumbledore said, I sure felt insane. Watching Granger just distracted me, that was all. Watching her wasn't really important; I only did it to keep tabs on her. I could stop any time I had to, but by the sixth day, it had become a habit, and a fascination. A habit, because Granger was reliable like clockwork. A fascination because it amazed me that Granger never noticed what I was doing.
More than once during those six days, I had to concentrate on my book, staring so hard at it that the letters blurred, because she watched me. It would start the same way each time. She would glance up from her work and casually glance over to where I was sitting, and move her quill from her homework to a separate parchment and either scribble something down or cross something out. Every once in a while, just to scare her, I looked up, as if by coincidence and met her eyes. She would look away immediately, and I would return to my book for a while before watching her again. The constant little game of who-caught-who kept her on her toes.
Lucas came looking for me after dinner on Friday. I'd spent all day after lessons avoiding Millicent and Draco, who were pestering me about my seemingly endless quest for Arithmancy books, and conveniently ending up in the library because of it. Granger was there on time, just like the blessed clockwork she ran like, and I spent an hour and a half watching her from behind the shelves before Lucas found me.
"Zabini, it's time for you to go now," He said. "The train leaves in fifteen minutes. You do remember you're going to London today, right?"
"Back to the madhouse then," I sighed, "Do you think they've found the coffee machine yet?"
"Not likely; none of them are very keen on coffee, except maybe Anja, and that's when she can't find her cigarettes." Lucas shrugged and steered me towards the large double-doors of the library.
"Millie and Agnes and Draco and Theo will wonder where I am," I pointed out, rambling and sounding like a child while trying to look over my shoulder without being too obvious about why.
Granger was still sitting at her table, but was following us with disapproving eyes. I raised my eyebrow at her, and she glared before looking down again. Lucas shut the doors, just as I saw her ink-stained hand travel from her homework to that parchment, quill held high. The thud of the library doors falling closed had never sounded so deep before.
"I'll give them a sufficient excuse." Lucas assured me, "If you don't go now, you'll miss the train."
One last look at the library doors, and I turned to go. Each step brought me farther away from a habit I'd formed over seven days, a habit which ha kept me from going down in flames again, and now I was going back to re- face it. Which was nothing short of ridiculous. My Granger-watching-habit shouldn't be what kept me from losing it. Playing chess with Agnes, insulting Millicent and hitting Gaspar over the head with something heavy and blunt should.
The train-ride was a blur. Some foreigner next to me kept asking me about London, not giving up even after I gave him the almighty glare of death. After a few failed attempts, I pretended to be mute and deaf. Still didn't work. Giving up completely, I pretended to fall asleep. That worked, but only because we were ten minutes away from King's Cross. I did fall asleep for about two minutes, and awoke with memories of a strange dream involving red eyes, laughter and a cat. Shaking it off, I made my way off the train, followed by a gaggle of what I presumed was tourists. They were speaking Japanese, and pointing at everything they saw.
"Zabini!" A voice with an all too familiar Scottish accent called out.
Basil was standing by the entrance, waving for me. He was wearing the most ludicrous ensemble of clothing, Muggle or wizard, known to man. It was eye- blinding. It was horrible. It was tartan and plaid and electric blue. It looked as if he'd dressed in the dark, drunk, using the left-over clothing from a particularly wild masquerade, which had included clowns with boxing gloves, flying Scotsmen and Albus Dumbledore. It made me want to vomit. How he ever got from the Ministry to King's Cross without being arrested for breaking all laws of fashion was beyond my comprehension.
"I will ask this only once, and only because I've a morbid curiosity that is going to kill me one day," I said, holding up my hand to stave off any further talking, "What possessed you to dress like that?"
"This was all that was left in the clean-clothing pile," Basil shrugged, "Anja stole the only clean black shirt yesterday, so I had to take this. It isn't too bad, is it?"
"You just keep telling yourself that," I managed weakly.
Basil mumbled something, and suddenly he was holding my robes. In my school uniform, sweater, trousers, shoes and tie, I made a much saner and less head aching impression than he did. In only my school uniform, I could pass for a Muggle school boy. Detachedly, I wondered why Lucas in all his wisdom hadn't come up with that idea. Maybe he just wanted to show off his magic or something. But then again, even in only my uniform, we would have made quite the picture, what with both of us being taller than average and both of us having odd coloured eyes.
"Come on then; Linden hates when I'm late." Basil pointed towards the entrance and stepped through suddenly.
The Muggles pointed and laughed at Basil, who took it rather well, if he even noticed. He seemed preoccupied, and was counting something on his fingers, talking under his breath the whole time. The walk to the Ministry seemed shorter, and going down in the phone booth wasn't as exciting as it had been a week ago. The Ministry was still as busy, though I noticed something strange on our way to the Department; all visitors lined up before a desk behind which a bored-looking wizard sat. He took their wands and weighed them before giving them back and writing something down. I didn't have to do that. Odd.
"Two days, no, three before the next time," Basil mumbled distractedly, "Give or take a few hours. That makes fifteen."
I raised my eyebrow. It seemed all Department of Mysteries-employees had their oddities. Linden was absent minded, Anja sarcastic and cynic, and Basil counted a lot and wore eye-blinding clothing. And chased the coffee machine. For a split-second, I wondered how the coffee machine had gotten lost in the first place; it couldn't just have gotten up and walked away, could it?
The other people around us were giving Basil some strange looks. Couldn't blame them, really. The man was wearing an electric blue poncho and a kilt after all. The man who had been there last Friday, the Slavic looking one, was there this time too. He watched Basil and me with something akin to amusement, and shook his head several times, muttering in what sounded like Russian. I resisted the urge to smack Basil over the head when he started humming on an old Celestina Warbeck hit that my mother loved, and forced myself to remain calm. The Ministry employed a lot of strange people these days.
Take that guy by the door for example. His hair looked as if it hadn't seen water since the last monsoon, and to call his clothing rags would be an insult to rags world-wide. And yet the pin that proclaimed him as a member of the Department for Regulation of Magical Creatures shone brightly on his chest. Basil looked tame by comparison. No wonder things were going down-hill for the Ministry these days. I shook my head and stared at the ceiling, waiting for us to reach our floor and the doors to open. It was going to be a long day.
******'
Ending Notes; Blaise does get around with some strange people, eh? Hopefully, this will make more sense later.