Detention. That's not a nice word when you think about it. Heavy and
loaded with tension and fear, that's what it was. Awful word, really.
Hated it, I did. I hated the concept even more. To sit in a room, or
walk around the grounds, and do the most menial jobs possible together
with the person you hated the most. What a way to punish people. Almost
outright torture, it was.
"Blaise, the fireplace hasn't done anything, so stop glaring at it." Pansy told me, amused, and broke me out of my thoughts.
"The fireplace hasn't, but Granger damn well has," I muttered, not turning away from the fire.
Pansy sat down next to me, and leaned forward. The anger of Granger landing me in detention was still burning hot, so I didn't even realise I was glaring at everyone around me. My jaws were aching, and I snapped out of whatever trance I had been in, realising I'd been gritting my teeth together to hard I could almost hear them crack.
"And what has the Supreme Queen of Know-It-Alls done now? She told you how dangerous coffee is to your health?" Pansy snorted.
"No. She got me in detention!" I snapped angrily, "The only thing I have to comfort myself with is that at least she got detention too."
"Detention? What did you two do? Duel in the corridors?"
"No. She slapped me, I caught her wrist, Vector thought we were fighting and gave us detention." I growled. The clock struck seven, and I scowled. "Time for detention, then. I'll see you afterwards, if I'm still alive."
Pansy sent me away with a snort and a shake of her head. Apparently it didn't bother her that I was going to my doom. Considering that it was a detention with Granger, my chances of coming back alive was about the same chances as an ice-cube stood in the sun. Gryffindors were scary when they were mad, Granger especially, and she didn't exactly have a good reason to be happy with me at the moment.
"If I die, I will make sure Granger comes to the funeral." I muttered to myself, walking down the corridor.
When I arrived to the Arithmancy classroom, Granger was already there, seated in front of Vector's desk. She didn't even turn her head when I came in, and since Vector wasn't there and couldn't tell me what to do, I took a seat as far from Granger as possible, at the back of the classroom with my back against the wall. Having nowhere else to look, I studied Granger's rigid back, trying to figure out why she'd hit me. She'd been angry when I told her about the ever on going game of Slytherin and Gryffindor, that I could understand, but why did she have to slap me? Bloody Gryffindors.
Vector came in, looking serious and carrying a few books. Unfortunately for me, they looked like Arithmancy books. We had missed the lesson, after all, so it would make sense that we had to make up for it in detention. It was just that right now, my head wasn't in it. In fact, my head was so far out of it that it could be without opening the window.
"Since you both missed class earlier today, you will complete the assignments here." Vector told us, "I will be back in two hours and collect the assignments."
Great. Numbers I couldn't make sense of, because I hadn't attended the lesson. Glancing up from the impossible numbers, I saw that Granger wasn't having any problems at all, or so it seemed. Quickly writing down random numbers as answers to the problem, I put down my quill and folded my hands over my chest. It was cold in the classroom, but that could of course be an effect of the fact that I was tired and already felt sick. I didn't have too much of a headache this time, but then it hadn't been that big of a breakdown. There was still an itch behind my right eye, and of course it was a headache, so I wasn't in a very good mood.
To the scribbling of Granger's quill, I drifted of to a comfortable, not- quite-there state, and stared at the desk. I would have to repeat all the focusing exercises, or I'd have a headache and random breakdowns for the rest of my life. Maybe, when detention was over, I could ask Lucas to help me. I hadn't talked to him since his shocking confession to me, so it might be a good time to do so. He seemed interested in my wandless magic anyway, so I figured it wouldn't bother him. Gradually, I became aware that the scribbling of Granger's quill had ceased, and I turned my head to look at her. She was staring at me silently.
"What?"
"You're not doing the assignment." She said accusingly.
"And how is this your problem?" I raised my eyebrow. "All I'm likely to get from it is a scolding and some homework. Should go well with the detention you've gotten me, don't you think?"
"I got you detention?" Ouch, that screech was ear-splitting. Note to self, never get Granger angry again. "You're the one who insulted me!"
Beneath my determination not to get annoyed with her again, I could feel the anger rising. Just before I was ready to snap, I put my hands up and glared at her, which forced her into silence. A split-second before I spoke, I noticed she was still wearing the Slytherin Cross, which would have made me smile, had the situation been another. It proved that even if she was mad at me, she'd taken the Cross as a serious gift.
"I've already thrown up once today because of you, I'm not doing it again." I said, and snapped my fingers to silence her when she tried to speak again, "And if you hadn't slapped me, Vector wouldn't have thought we were fighting, and we wouldn't be here. So don't accuse me of anything when you're just as guilty."
That seemed to stun her, before she glared at me and turned back to her parchment, writing silently. An icy silence settled in the room, and I returned to staring at my nails and focusing my less than organized magic. It wasn't until half an hour or so later that I realised I'd told her about my vomiting session. I didn't look at her, because that would mean speaking to her, but I wondered to myself how she'd taken that piece of news. Hopefully, she hadn't noticed, but with my luck and it being Granger, she had, and then she could blackmail me if she wanted to. Not that she would; she was a Gryffindor, but if that Slytherin Cross influenced her, she might.
And that wasn't a comforting thought.
'
Vector returned to find us still as silent as she left us. After a lecture I didn't pay the slightest attention to, she let us off, and I walked away as quick as I could. Lucas' office wasn't far from the Arithmancy classroom, which was a setback, because I needed to think. After my snappish reply, Granger had been quiet. Too quiet almost, and when we left, she'd given me this odd sort of look that I wasn't sure I liked. But, since she took off for her Common Room immediately, I had no chance of spending time contemplating the expression on her face. One day, when things slowed down a bit, maybe I could sit down and try to figure out what she was up to. But not now.
Lucas's door was open, and light spilled out in the hallway. It was no use knocking, since he'd probably know it was me anyway. In the empty corridor, my footfalls echoed loudly to my ears, and no doubt he had already heard me. I hadn't gotten further than putting a hand on the door-handle when he spoke.
"Come on in, Zabini. How was detention?"
"As could be expected." I shrugged and let myself in and sat down in a chair. "No screaming fits, no end of the world, no bloody battles. Quite silent, as detentions go."
"Tell me, why did you even have detention?" Lucas leaned back from the book he had been studying, and I noticed he was wearing glasses. Thin, silver- rimmed glasses, which looked out of place on him.
"Long story there." I sighed and rolled my eyes, "As all long stories, it starts with magic, and lately, Granger. I managed my first bit of wandless transfiguration today. I made a medal of some bent needles, which was incidentally the reason why I got detention."
"Transfiguration? That is rather advanced, Zabini." He looked immensely worried for some reason. "Are you sure you aren't testing your control too much?"
"Well, yes, I did test it too much, because afterwards, I had a fight with Granger, and I threw up a bit and some thing started flying. Is there any way for me to just shut down these powers, to stop having breakdowns?" I might have sounded careless, but my situation was nothing short of frightening, and not only was I hazard to myself, but to others as well.
"There is only one way to shut down the magic would make you a Squib, and you don't want that, I might guess." Lucas looked troubled. "These are serious things we're dealing with, Zabini. If you lose any semblance of control over it, it will run wild and may become a force strong enough to pose a serious threat not only to yourself and your immediate surroundings, but also to the whole school, maybe even Hogsmeade. Imagine the strife you would cause. You have seen but a fraction of the power you can unleash if your barriers break."
"I could break the walls of Hogwarts?" I must have sounded ridiculous, because I could hear my voice squeak like a mouse. "But, but that's impossible!"
"No, it's not. I've done my homework." Lucas waved towards the heaps of books on his desk dismissively. "Since I started suspecting you were capable of wandless magic, I've searched the library with every spare moment I had, I've exhausted every resource I have on the area, and what I've come up with isn't something that pleases me. It appears I've forgotten more about it than I should have allowed myself to. Few wizards and witches over the years have been capable of wandless magic. A few of them have it latently, a passive and weak form. They can sometimes do things without pronouncing the spell exactly right. But a fraction of them are powerful, extremely powerful in their wandless magic. The signs which separate one from the other are clear, and you have shown several of them."
"What are they?" I insisted.
"The mood swings, the addiction to something, in you case coffee, the wide discrepancy in eye or hair colour. Your eyes are a clear example of that." I blinked as Lucas waved towards my eyes. His eye-colour was of course because of his practise of Dark Arts. "But that's hardly the matter. What does matter though, is what will happen if you cannot chain down your magic. There are records here," He picked up a parchment, "Of Merlin himself, who had great capacity for wandless magic. He once almost levelled a mountain because he lost control. A witch from Mongolia created quite a hassle once, while having a breakdown; the crater in the desert is still there, though made unplottable. And still, the wizard at the top of the list, mentioned most times in the books I've read, is worse. Far worse."
The pale and bleak expression on his face told me I'd better listen up. No matter how I tried though, I couldn't imagine how anything I could do with my magic could be worse than levelling mountains and blowing gigantic craters in the Mongolian desert. My imagination blocked out the images after that. Hogwarts as a smoking ruin was a bit too much to stomach just yet.
"His name was San Urloki. It means The Bloodstained in a language which is now dead. No one now knows his true name, he earned the name he's known by after the event which lead to his death. Because no one could help him control his raging magic, it slowly drive him to the edge of sanity. Somehow, he managed to cling to that thin thread that held him standing on the razors edge. From the records of him, I believe that what kept him there was his strong bonds to his twin sister. However, because he was so strong, other wizards believed him dangerous and thought he would attempt to seek to claim power that did not rightly belong to him. To prevent this, they tried to kill him and his family."
"Why kill his family?" I ventured, not at all liking the sound of the guy's name. "If they killed him, he'd be out of the world and they'd be rid of him."
"You must understand this was long ago, and there was such a thing as blood debts. If they let the family live, they had to pay for that by killing someone in their own family. If they killed the whole family, no one could demand a blood debt. But, I am digressing. They killed the whole family, with the help of San's younger brother. His name has been lost to historians, but he's not important. San had been away, but when he returned, and discovered the bodies of his family, something snapped inside him. He chased down his brother, knowing somehow he was a part of it, and slew him. For that, San was later called Kinslayer." As Lucas spoke, I wished I could just close my ears and stop listening. The tale was spiralling ever deeper into depression and black death. "Over the killers of his beloved family, he swore and oath, an oath not to rest until they all lay dead before him. With his twin sister's death, his last bond to humanity and sanity had been broken, and his magic went steadily more and more out of control. After a year, he found his family's murderers."
"And what did he do then?" By now, I was completely caught up in the story, and didn't care that it directly related to me and really should be frightening.
"The history books refer to it as Final Strike. They say it lit up the sky like sunrise." The smile on his face was both frightening and somehow sad, which for me to notice had to be a lot. I'm rather immune to other people's sorrows. "It's the most powerful thing done my magic to date."
"How powerful?"
"Ever wonder how Atlantis sank?"
The frank reply had me stumped for a moment, mouth hanging open, words on the way out but never getting there. When I finally spoke, it wasn't the words I'd intended that came out.
"But Atlantis sank ten thousand years ago; there's barely any records left of it, and certainly no names!" I protested wildly, not wanting to believe wandless magic could do something like that.
"He didn't sink Atlantis, but the force of the Final Strike was powerful enough to bring down the island on which he and his family's murderers were standing. The nameless island disappeared beneath the waves, and neither San nor the killers were ever seen again by mortal man." Lucas's face suddenly turned serious. "He was powerful enough to take an island beneath the ocean with him. He does remind me of you, sometimes."
"What was is obsession?" The seriousness of Lucas's story had frightened me more than I'd ever admit to anyone, but I needed to know what this blood- chilling man had in common with me, of all people.
"Numbers, and riddles." Lucas shrugged. "He would spend days devising riddles for his sister, and was absolutely fascinated by numbers. Those numbers, the obsession with riddles and the patterns of mathematics became his doom, in the end. His predictability allowed the killers to know where he was, where his family was. However, the day they were springing the attack, something disturbed his routines, and he was late. That one breaking of patterns threw him off that razor's edge."
Silence descended for a while, as I watched the pictures Lucas had woven unfold before me. Through hundreds of years lost to time, worn by lies and historians who could not tell fact from fiction, the story of San Urloki still rang too clear. Too much of his story related to mine for me to be comfortable. The dependence on family members, the death of them, the absolute rage when he was deprived of something he craved. I heard Lucas move behind his desk, but I didn't look up. My mind was racing somewhere along the edge of a razor.
"What are you doing, Zabini?"
"Looking down." I replied, even though I was staring at the ceiling.
"Your brain must have been damaged during your last breakdown. Downwards would be the floor." Lucas pointed out logically.
"Logic has no place in my world, and since you have to crush my illusions, I'd better go now. Curfew was up an hour ago." I got up from my chair and walked to the door. "Oh, and one more thing." I turned halfway out the door. "I won't walk a razor's edge, Professor, I'll fucking dance on it."
When I shut the door, I thought I could hear him chuckle.
'
The next day dawned all too bright for my tastes. The only place to take refuge was under the covers, but Draco ruined that but rudely interrupting my last minute sleep, jumping in my bed with his elbow first. It hit my ribs entirely too hard, and after ending up in a headlock he did apologize. Might have been the threat of throwing him out the window that did it. For some reason, I was bone tired, even after consummating three cups of coffee. The first lesson was Charms, which unfortunately meant that I once again had to be in the same room as a bunch of Gryffindors, which invariably included Granger.
Annoying, that is. Wherever there's Gryffindors, there's Granger, and wherever there's class, there's Gryffindors. Stupid, utterly horrible rule, but that's the way it is. Millicent all but dragged me to class, while I was complaining about my bruised ribs. Draco would pay later when I'd woken up properly. Everything seemed slow and boring, but it was shaping up to be a rather normal day, after all. Charms class went without mishap, and Transfiguration was a breeze. We were doing the exact same thing I'd done with the Slytherin Cross. A few times, I had difficulties remembering how to use my wand to do transfigurations. One spell without a wand seemed to form a habit, a habit harder to break than wand-ship. Making up new words when I ran out of usable vocabulary seemed to be a habit too. Wand-ship. What would be next? A word for the sound of falling snow? Somehow, I managed to conceal my few slips from McGonagall's hawks-eyes. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I could see someone watching me, and I was pretty much convinced it was Granger.
That girl just got more and more scary for every day that went by. The detention hadn't exactly helped things up; it only got me more annoyed with her. But now, after Lucas's story about the Urloki man, it seemed far off. It seemed as if it was a week ago, instead of six hours. My memory was getting hazy around the edges, at least memories from the past few days. All that stood out was the Slytherin Cross and Lucas's story.
It felt as if I was running too fast, heading for a rather nasty fall. Everything had happened so fast the past months that my mind hadn't had time to catch up. I really needed to slow down, but I never had time to do that. As soon as I had come to term with one thing, the world threw something else at me, so I was constantly trying to wind down and sleep my way to less stress. Unfortunately, it wasn't working. Maybe the only way to handle these things was to keep up the breakneck pace. If I slowed down, things would start coming down around my ears.
Lunch was a quiet affair. I didn't register too much, being sleep deprived and too caught up in other things to bother concentrating on anything else than chewing my food before swallowing. It would have continued that way, if Agnes hadn't started talking next to me, apparently to me, in a very odd voice. It sounded as if she was shocked and surprised, something which I wasn't used to in Agnes Lestrange, one of the most balanced and calm people in the world.
"Has anyone been watching the Gryffindors today?" She asked quietly.
"Nope. Granger's been watching me though," I answered while working my way through a ham and cheese pie. "Can't say they've done too much to earn any attention either."
"Granger has." Agnes nodded towards the bushy haired object of our conversation. "Haven't you seen the brooch she's wearing?"
"Brooch? Since when does Granger wear jewellery?" Millicent turned her head discreetly to watch the Gryffindor in question. "She's a no-nonsense girl, unlike Brown and the Gryffindor Patil."
"Well, what surprises me more than the fact that she's wearing it is what the brooch looks like." Agnes explained. "It's at least one snake, might be two. Isn't there and unwritten rule that no one but the member of a House is allowed to wear the House emblem? And besides, Gryffindors go out of their way not to be associated with snakes. She's wearing it as if she's done it since she was born. Has someone manipulated Granger's brain?"
"She's wearing the snakes?" I looked up sharply at Granger.
Agnes had been correct in her observations; Granger was sitting there in the middle of everything gold and red, wearing the Slytherin Cross I'd made. None of the Gryffindors, except Thomas and the little Weasley seemed to have even noticed she was wearing it, and everyone but those two ignored Granger. Potter looked like he wanted to be somewhere else and didn't even glance at Granger, and Weasley looked largely embarrassed at the whole thing. They still hadn't gotten over their quarrel, it seemed. Good for them. Quarrels among enemies was nothing but beneficial for us, and Slytherin needed every advantage we could get.
"You knew about those?" Agnes questioned.
"Of course. I made them." I sputtered, not thinking about what I had said before it was spoken.
"You gave Granger jewellery? You fancy her?" Millicent snorted.
"No!" I spat, "I wanted to see if she'd actually wear it, and she did. I pointed that out, and ended up in detention because of her reaction. She shouldn't be wearing it now; she's supposed to be hating it. Why do all my plans end up in pieces?"
"Because they aren't plans, they're wild ideas." Agnes shrugged. "As your plans go, this one sound fascinating, and good even, but you've forgotten one important factor."
"And what's that?" I grumbled.
"Granger's a girl."
Agnes smiled mysteriously at me, and left the table. I sat there for a while, staring at my pie, puzzling over girls and their strange ways, before giving in and eating again. Girls were too much trouble to be worrying about at this time of day.
'
Ending Notes; And Blaise's left alone with his thoughts once again. I do that too much to him, I fear.
"Blaise, the fireplace hasn't done anything, so stop glaring at it." Pansy told me, amused, and broke me out of my thoughts.
"The fireplace hasn't, but Granger damn well has," I muttered, not turning away from the fire.
Pansy sat down next to me, and leaned forward. The anger of Granger landing me in detention was still burning hot, so I didn't even realise I was glaring at everyone around me. My jaws were aching, and I snapped out of whatever trance I had been in, realising I'd been gritting my teeth together to hard I could almost hear them crack.
"And what has the Supreme Queen of Know-It-Alls done now? She told you how dangerous coffee is to your health?" Pansy snorted.
"No. She got me in detention!" I snapped angrily, "The only thing I have to comfort myself with is that at least she got detention too."
"Detention? What did you two do? Duel in the corridors?"
"No. She slapped me, I caught her wrist, Vector thought we were fighting and gave us detention." I growled. The clock struck seven, and I scowled. "Time for detention, then. I'll see you afterwards, if I'm still alive."
Pansy sent me away with a snort and a shake of her head. Apparently it didn't bother her that I was going to my doom. Considering that it was a detention with Granger, my chances of coming back alive was about the same chances as an ice-cube stood in the sun. Gryffindors were scary when they were mad, Granger especially, and she didn't exactly have a good reason to be happy with me at the moment.
"If I die, I will make sure Granger comes to the funeral." I muttered to myself, walking down the corridor.
When I arrived to the Arithmancy classroom, Granger was already there, seated in front of Vector's desk. She didn't even turn her head when I came in, and since Vector wasn't there and couldn't tell me what to do, I took a seat as far from Granger as possible, at the back of the classroom with my back against the wall. Having nowhere else to look, I studied Granger's rigid back, trying to figure out why she'd hit me. She'd been angry when I told her about the ever on going game of Slytherin and Gryffindor, that I could understand, but why did she have to slap me? Bloody Gryffindors.
Vector came in, looking serious and carrying a few books. Unfortunately for me, they looked like Arithmancy books. We had missed the lesson, after all, so it would make sense that we had to make up for it in detention. It was just that right now, my head wasn't in it. In fact, my head was so far out of it that it could be without opening the window.
"Since you both missed class earlier today, you will complete the assignments here." Vector told us, "I will be back in two hours and collect the assignments."
Great. Numbers I couldn't make sense of, because I hadn't attended the lesson. Glancing up from the impossible numbers, I saw that Granger wasn't having any problems at all, or so it seemed. Quickly writing down random numbers as answers to the problem, I put down my quill and folded my hands over my chest. It was cold in the classroom, but that could of course be an effect of the fact that I was tired and already felt sick. I didn't have too much of a headache this time, but then it hadn't been that big of a breakdown. There was still an itch behind my right eye, and of course it was a headache, so I wasn't in a very good mood.
To the scribbling of Granger's quill, I drifted of to a comfortable, not- quite-there state, and stared at the desk. I would have to repeat all the focusing exercises, or I'd have a headache and random breakdowns for the rest of my life. Maybe, when detention was over, I could ask Lucas to help me. I hadn't talked to him since his shocking confession to me, so it might be a good time to do so. He seemed interested in my wandless magic anyway, so I figured it wouldn't bother him. Gradually, I became aware that the scribbling of Granger's quill had ceased, and I turned my head to look at her. She was staring at me silently.
"What?"
"You're not doing the assignment." She said accusingly.
"And how is this your problem?" I raised my eyebrow. "All I'm likely to get from it is a scolding and some homework. Should go well with the detention you've gotten me, don't you think?"
"I got you detention?" Ouch, that screech was ear-splitting. Note to self, never get Granger angry again. "You're the one who insulted me!"
Beneath my determination not to get annoyed with her again, I could feel the anger rising. Just before I was ready to snap, I put my hands up and glared at her, which forced her into silence. A split-second before I spoke, I noticed she was still wearing the Slytherin Cross, which would have made me smile, had the situation been another. It proved that even if she was mad at me, she'd taken the Cross as a serious gift.
"I've already thrown up once today because of you, I'm not doing it again." I said, and snapped my fingers to silence her when she tried to speak again, "And if you hadn't slapped me, Vector wouldn't have thought we were fighting, and we wouldn't be here. So don't accuse me of anything when you're just as guilty."
That seemed to stun her, before she glared at me and turned back to her parchment, writing silently. An icy silence settled in the room, and I returned to staring at my nails and focusing my less than organized magic. It wasn't until half an hour or so later that I realised I'd told her about my vomiting session. I didn't look at her, because that would mean speaking to her, but I wondered to myself how she'd taken that piece of news. Hopefully, she hadn't noticed, but with my luck and it being Granger, she had, and then she could blackmail me if she wanted to. Not that she would; she was a Gryffindor, but if that Slytherin Cross influenced her, she might.
And that wasn't a comforting thought.
'
Vector returned to find us still as silent as she left us. After a lecture I didn't pay the slightest attention to, she let us off, and I walked away as quick as I could. Lucas' office wasn't far from the Arithmancy classroom, which was a setback, because I needed to think. After my snappish reply, Granger had been quiet. Too quiet almost, and when we left, she'd given me this odd sort of look that I wasn't sure I liked. But, since she took off for her Common Room immediately, I had no chance of spending time contemplating the expression on her face. One day, when things slowed down a bit, maybe I could sit down and try to figure out what she was up to. But not now.
Lucas's door was open, and light spilled out in the hallway. It was no use knocking, since he'd probably know it was me anyway. In the empty corridor, my footfalls echoed loudly to my ears, and no doubt he had already heard me. I hadn't gotten further than putting a hand on the door-handle when he spoke.
"Come on in, Zabini. How was detention?"
"As could be expected." I shrugged and let myself in and sat down in a chair. "No screaming fits, no end of the world, no bloody battles. Quite silent, as detentions go."
"Tell me, why did you even have detention?" Lucas leaned back from the book he had been studying, and I noticed he was wearing glasses. Thin, silver- rimmed glasses, which looked out of place on him.
"Long story there." I sighed and rolled my eyes, "As all long stories, it starts with magic, and lately, Granger. I managed my first bit of wandless transfiguration today. I made a medal of some bent needles, which was incidentally the reason why I got detention."
"Transfiguration? That is rather advanced, Zabini." He looked immensely worried for some reason. "Are you sure you aren't testing your control too much?"
"Well, yes, I did test it too much, because afterwards, I had a fight with Granger, and I threw up a bit and some thing started flying. Is there any way for me to just shut down these powers, to stop having breakdowns?" I might have sounded careless, but my situation was nothing short of frightening, and not only was I hazard to myself, but to others as well.
"There is only one way to shut down the magic would make you a Squib, and you don't want that, I might guess." Lucas looked troubled. "These are serious things we're dealing with, Zabini. If you lose any semblance of control over it, it will run wild and may become a force strong enough to pose a serious threat not only to yourself and your immediate surroundings, but also to the whole school, maybe even Hogsmeade. Imagine the strife you would cause. You have seen but a fraction of the power you can unleash if your barriers break."
"I could break the walls of Hogwarts?" I must have sounded ridiculous, because I could hear my voice squeak like a mouse. "But, but that's impossible!"
"No, it's not. I've done my homework." Lucas waved towards the heaps of books on his desk dismissively. "Since I started suspecting you were capable of wandless magic, I've searched the library with every spare moment I had, I've exhausted every resource I have on the area, and what I've come up with isn't something that pleases me. It appears I've forgotten more about it than I should have allowed myself to. Few wizards and witches over the years have been capable of wandless magic. A few of them have it latently, a passive and weak form. They can sometimes do things without pronouncing the spell exactly right. But a fraction of them are powerful, extremely powerful in their wandless magic. The signs which separate one from the other are clear, and you have shown several of them."
"What are they?" I insisted.
"The mood swings, the addiction to something, in you case coffee, the wide discrepancy in eye or hair colour. Your eyes are a clear example of that." I blinked as Lucas waved towards my eyes. His eye-colour was of course because of his practise of Dark Arts. "But that's hardly the matter. What does matter though, is what will happen if you cannot chain down your magic. There are records here," He picked up a parchment, "Of Merlin himself, who had great capacity for wandless magic. He once almost levelled a mountain because he lost control. A witch from Mongolia created quite a hassle once, while having a breakdown; the crater in the desert is still there, though made unplottable. And still, the wizard at the top of the list, mentioned most times in the books I've read, is worse. Far worse."
The pale and bleak expression on his face told me I'd better listen up. No matter how I tried though, I couldn't imagine how anything I could do with my magic could be worse than levelling mountains and blowing gigantic craters in the Mongolian desert. My imagination blocked out the images after that. Hogwarts as a smoking ruin was a bit too much to stomach just yet.
"His name was San Urloki. It means The Bloodstained in a language which is now dead. No one now knows his true name, he earned the name he's known by after the event which lead to his death. Because no one could help him control his raging magic, it slowly drive him to the edge of sanity. Somehow, he managed to cling to that thin thread that held him standing on the razors edge. From the records of him, I believe that what kept him there was his strong bonds to his twin sister. However, because he was so strong, other wizards believed him dangerous and thought he would attempt to seek to claim power that did not rightly belong to him. To prevent this, they tried to kill him and his family."
"Why kill his family?" I ventured, not at all liking the sound of the guy's name. "If they killed him, he'd be out of the world and they'd be rid of him."
"You must understand this was long ago, and there was such a thing as blood debts. If they let the family live, they had to pay for that by killing someone in their own family. If they killed the whole family, no one could demand a blood debt. But, I am digressing. They killed the whole family, with the help of San's younger brother. His name has been lost to historians, but he's not important. San had been away, but when he returned, and discovered the bodies of his family, something snapped inside him. He chased down his brother, knowing somehow he was a part of it, and slew him. For that, San was later called Kinslayer." As Lucas spoke, I wished I could just close my ears and stop listening. The tale was spiralling ever deeper into depression and black death. "Over the killers of his beloved family, he swore and oath, an oath not to rest until they all lay dead before him. With his twin sister's death, his last bond to humanity and sanity had been broken, and his magic went steadily more and more out of control. After a year, he found his family's murderers."
"And what did he do then?" By now, I was completely caught up in the story, and didn't care that it directly related to me and really should be frightening.
"The history books refer to it as Final Strike. They say it lit up the sky like sunrise." The smile on his face was both frightening and somehow sad, which for me to notice had to be a lot. I'm rather immune to other people's sorrows. "It's the most powerful thing done my magic to date."
"How powerful?"
"Ever wonder how Atlantis sank?"
The frank reply had me stumped for a moment, mouth hanging open, words on the way out but never getting there. When I finally spoke, it wasn't the words I'd intended that came out.
"But Atlantis sank ten thousand years ago; there's barely any records left of it, and certainly no names!" I protested wildly, not wanting to believe wandless magic could do something like that.
"He didn't sink Atlantis, but the force of the Final Strike was powerful enough to bring down the island on which he and his family's murderers were standing. The nameless island disappeared beneath the waves, and neither San nor the killers were ever seen again by mortal man." Lucas's face suddenly turned serious. "He was powerful enough to take an island beneath the ocean with him. He does remind me of you, sometimes."
"What was is obsession?" The seriousness of Lucas's story had frightened me more than I'd ever admit to anyone, but I needed to know what this blood- chilling man had in common with me, of all people.
"Numbers, and riddles." Lucas shrugged. "He would spend days devising riddles for his sister, and was absolutely fascinated by numbers. Those numbers, the obsession with riddles and the patterns of mathematics became his doom, in the end. His predictability allowed the killers to know where he was, where his family was. However, the day they were springing the attack, something disturbed his routines, and he was late. That one breaking of patterns threw him off that razor's edge."
Silence descended for a while, as I watched the pictures Lucas had woven unfold before me. Through hundreds of years lost to time, worn by lies and historians who could not tell fact from fiction, the story of San Urloki still rang too clear. Too much of his story related to mine for me to be comfortable. The dependence on family members, the death of them, the absolute rage when he was deprived of something he craved. I heard Lucas move behind his desk, but I didn't look up. My mind was racing somewhere along the edge of a razor.
"What are you doing, Zabini?"
"Looking down." I replied, even though I was staring at the ceiling.
"Your brain must have been damaged during your last breakdown. Downwards would be the floor." Lucas pointed out logically.
"Logic has no place in my world, and since you have to crush my illusions, I'd better go now. Curfew was up an hour ago." I got up from my chair and walked to the door. "Oh, and one more thing." I turned halfway out the door. "I won't walk a razor's edge, Professor, I'll fucking dance on it."
When I shut the door, I thought I could hear him chuckle.
'
The next day dawned all too bright for my tastes. The only place to take refuge was under the covers, but Draco ruined that but rudely interrupting my last minute sleep, jumping in my bed with his elbow first. It hit my ribs entirely too hard, and after ending up in a headlock he did apologize. Might have been the threat of throwing him out the window that did it. For some reason, I was bone tired, even after consummating three cups of coffee. The first lesson was Charms, which unfortunately meant that I once again had to be in the same room as a bunch of Gryffindors, which invariably included Granger.
Annoying, that is. Wherever there's Gryffindors, there's Granger, and wherever there's class, there's Gryffindors. Stupid, utterly horrible rule, but that's the way it is. Millicent all but dragged me to class, while I was complaining about my bruised ribs. Draco would pay later when I'd woken up properly. Everything seemed slow and boring, but it was shaping up to be a rather normal day, after all. Charms class went without mishap, and Transfiguration was a breeze. We were doing the exact same thing I'd done with the Slytherin Cross. A few times, I had difficulties remembering how to use my wand to do transfigurations. One spell without a wand seemed to form a habit, a habit harder to break than wand-ship. Making up new words when I ran out of usable vocabulary seemed to be a habit too. Wand-ship. What would be next? A word for the sound of falling snow? Somehow, I managed to conceal my few slips from McGonagall's hawks-eyes. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I could see someone watching me, and I was pretty much convinced it was Granger.
That girl just got more and more scary for every day that went by. The detention hadn't exactly helped things up; it only got me more annoyed with her. But now, after Lucas's story about the Urloki man, it seemed far off. It seemed as if it was a week ago, instead of six hours. My memory was getting hazy around the edges, at least memories from the past few days. All that stood out was the Slytherin Cross and Lucas's story.
It felt as if I was running too fast, heading for a rather nasty fall. Everything had happened so fast the past months that my mind hadn't had time to catch up. I really needed to slow down, but I never had time to do that. As soon as I had come to term with one thing, the world threw something else at me, so I was constantly trying to wind down and sleep my way to less stress. Unfortunately, it wasn't working. Maybe the only way to handle these things was to keep up the breakneck pace. If I slowed down, things would start coming down around my ears.
Lunch was a quiet affair. I didn't register too much, being sleep deprived and too caught up in other things to bother concentrating on anything else than chewing my food before swallowing. It would have continued that way, if Agnes hadn't started talking next to me, apparently to me, in a very odd voice. It sounded as if she was shocked and surprised, something which I wasn't used to in Agnes Lestrange, one of the most balanced and calm people in the world.
"Has anyone been watching the Gryffindors today?" She asked quietly.
"Nope. Granger's been watching me though," I answered while working my way through a ham and cheese pie. "Can't say they've done too much to earn any attention either."
"Granger has." Agnes nodded towards the bushy haired object of our conversation. "Haven't you seen the brooch she's wearing?"
"Brooch? Since when does Granger wear jewellery?" Millicent turned her head discreetly to watch the Gryffindor in question. "She's a no-nonsense girl, unlike Brown and the Gryffindor Patil."
"Well, what surprises me more than the fact that she's wearing it is what the brooch looks like." Agnes explained. "It's at least one snake, might be two. Isn't there and unwritten rule that no one but the member of a House is allowed to wear the House emblem? And besides, Gryffindors go out of their way not to be associated with snakes. She's wearing it as if she's done it since she was born. Has someone manipulated Granger's brain?"
"She's wearing the snakes?" I looked up sharply at Granger.
Agnes had been correct in her observations; Granger was sitting there in the middle of everything gold and red, wearing the Slytherin Cross I'd made. None of the Gryffindors, except Thomas and the little Weasley seemed to have even noticed she was wearing it, and everyone but those two ignored Granger. Potter looked like he wanted to be somewhere else and didn't even glance at Granger, and Weasley looked largely embarrassed at the whole thing. They still hadn't gotten over their quarrel, it seemed. Good for them. Quarrels among enemies was nothing but beneficial for us, and Slytherin needed every advantage we could get.
"You knew about those?" Agnes questioned.
"Of course. I made them." I sputtered, not thinking about what I had said before it was spoken.
"You gave Granger jewellery? You fancy her?" Millicent snorted.
"No!" I spat, "I wanted to see if she'd actually wear it, and she did. I pointed that out, and ended up in detention because of her reaction. She shouldn't be wearing it now; she's supposed to be hating it. Why do all my plans end up in pieces?"
"Because they aren't plans, they're wild ideas." Agnes shrugged. "As your plans go, this one sound fascinating, and good even, but you've forgotten one important factor."
"And what's that?" I grumbled.
"Granger's a girl."
Agnes smiled mysteriously at me, and left the table. I sat there for a while, staring at my pie, puzzling over girls and their strange ways, before giving in and eating again. Girls were too much trouble to be worrying about at this time of day.
'
Ending Notes; And Blaise's left alone with his thoughts once again. I do that too much to him, I fear.