See part one for disclaimers.
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Section 2:
Blaise watched as Hermione's eyes went distant and pouted in spite of himself. He hated when she ignored him. When even his pout failed to get her attention, he shrugged philosophically and set about rearranging the blanket she had cocooned herself within until it surrounded the two of them, its smallness forcing him to be plastered to her side: right where he wanted to be. He slid an arm around her shoulders and grinned when she instinctively cuddled in closer to him. He knew Hermione loved to snuggle and took advantage of that knowledge whenever he could, relishing the opportunity to settle her into his arms and enjoy the feel of her body against his. She felt warm and soft as always, and Blaise felt his body relax as the tension released from his shoulders and back. Always a Slytherin, he rarely let down his guard in public, but sitting in Grimmauld Place with Hermione in his arms, he felt sufficiently safe and at peace to let all his guards drop.
Even though he had been in love with her for the better part of a year and a half, it was still a pleasant novelty for Blaise to feel so peaceful and content being close to someone else. For most of his life, as far back as he could remember, he had never particularly liked being touched. His parents were sensible, practical, completely unemotional people who had always treated each other with the relaxed, informal camaraderie of business partners, and showered their only child with a sort of fond but distant amiability and a respect for his abilities that you might expect a senior partner in a powerful business to show a bright, capable junior associate.
Blaise had no doubt that his parents genuinely liked him. They appreciated his intelligence and keen wit, admired his success and prestige, and were happy to provide him with all the goods and services he required through his childhood to develop his mind and sharpen his skills. He liked them, as well. They were sufficiently intelligent and well-read to make for very pleasant company and sufficiently honorable for him to trust them not to hurt him deliberately.
They were, in their own fashion, good parents. Blaise had no doubt that they would have still have raised and sheltered him through his childhood and provided him with any services he required even if they hadn't like him, personally. They were good people and wouldn't have abandoned an innocent child to a life of penury or homelessness simply because they found his personality unamiable or unsuited to their own personal preferences. But the idea of loving their child, or each other, or any other living creature on earth with a passionate, emotional intensity, simply never occurred to them. They were friendly with their son, but they were never loving to him or to anyone else. Affection wasn't omitted through any malicious intent; they simply didn't know how to include it.
By the time hugs and kisses entered into his range of experience, their purpose was far from familial. He lost his virginity at the age of thirteen to a seventeen year old whore. She could not teach him anything about love she didn't feel or affection she didn't understand, but she could teach him everything a thirteen-year old boy could handle about the pleasure two bodies can experience through purely sensual touch. He learned that sex was good and enjoyable, in much the same way that chocolate and racing brooms and Christmas presents were good and enjoyable. He didn't equate the sexual act with love or affection, of course. Instead, he equated it simply with pleasure. The girl gave him a great deal of pleasure during those hot summer nights, and taught him a great deal of useful information about how to give her pleasure in return.
Every night they enjoyed together, after they were sweaty and spent, he would drop the agreed-upon amount into her money pouch, and she would gather her clothing and leave. Post-coital cuddling was never suggested by either party: he didn't know enough to suggest it, and she had no desire to spend time performing an activity for which she would not be paid. He was sixteen before he realized that "sleeping together" was not just a euphemism and that some couples actually shared a bed while they slept. The concept didn't interest him. Fortunately, his lovers were almost exclusively whores or Slytherins who fucked for pleasure and personal gain, (the difference being that Slytherins preferred a different currency to cash,) and who had little interest in sharing his bed after the act. When he completed his Hogwarts education at the age of eighteen, he was everything a Slytherin and a Zabini was supposed to be: attractive, intelligent, cunning, ambitious, professionally adept, sexually skilled, and emotionally vacant. And so he might have been for the rest of his life, if it hadn't been for the Order of the Phoenix, and Hermione.
Blaise's reasons for joining the Order were simple. His spying skills, which had been the main source of his pocket money during his Hogwarts days, had not been forgotten by his old clients/schoolmates. While vacationing in the south of France shortly after completing his Hogwarts education, some of his Slytherin acquaintances came calling, urging him to join the Death Eaters. Though Blaise had always kept his opinions on the Dark Lord largely to himself, they were, nonetheless, fully formed and well thought out. Blaise had long-since realized that he was too dispassionate to care about the fate of muggle-blooded wizards and witches and too rich and high born to benefit from alliance with Voldemort in a more pragmatic fashion. Even in the best case scenario, there was nothing Voldemort offered his followers that Blaise was interested in obtaining. Meanwhile, the worst case scenario meant that he could lose his life, his fortune, or his sanity in service to the dark wizard.
Unable to see the point of involving himself in a war where he had nothing to gain and a great deal to lose, he had told them he didn't want to choose sides. They had told him he didn't have a choice. His skills as a spy were too valuable to be wasted in war time. He had to pick one side or another. Blaise carefully weighed the pros and cons of each side, researching the two as thoroughly as he could to make a careful decision. When he discovered that Voldemort had the habit of using skin-melting hexes on spies who brought him bad news, he chose to join the Order.
When Blaise penetrated the Order headquarters and Dumbledore pulled out the Veritaserum, Blaise wasn't worried in the least. His motives might have been different from the rest of the Order, but the end purpose was still the same. Voldemort interfered with the life that Blaise wished to lead, therefore Blaise wanted Voldemort defeated. Working for the Order to obtain that end result would be mutually beneficial for both Blaise and the Order. Dumbledore, who was far less idealistic and far more pragmatic than some might have believed, took the opportunity presented to him and accepted Blaise into the Order. Moving him into the house had been a safety measure designed to protect him from his former housemates who didn't approve of his decision. Blaise's intention was to live there as long as he remained in danger from the Death Eaters, and then leave them all behind when the war was over so he could go back to the life he had always planned to lead. The thought that he might wish to stay after the dust had settled didn't even occur to him. He never expected to be actually influenced by the people he lived with. But then, he had never lived with Hermione Granger before.
He hadn't been an admirer of Hermione's in their school days. In fact, he hadn't paid much attention to her at all. Blaise didn't have enough interest in Voldemort's dealing to follow the heroics of the Golden Trio, and outside of Death Eater business, Gryffindors rarely factored into Slytherin house politics. Sharing a house with her, however, drew her quickly to his attention, and the more he looked at her, the more he liked what he saw. A Hermione Granger who had grown up quite a bit since school and wore skimpy muggle clothing when hanging about the house was a Hermione Granger he wouldn't mind getting to know.
The more he saw, the more thoroughly she intrigued him. Hermione was not the most aesthetically perfect woman he had ever seen, but she was, perhaps, the most unforgettable. She had a vibrancy to her, an intense energy radiating off of her skin that stood in stark contrast to the ice-cold, emotionless women he was accustomed to spending time with. Blaise realized with a tinge of shame that Hermione was more passionately committed to the happiness of house elves she'd rarely even seen than Blaise was to anything under the sun, excluding his own safety and comfort.
Hermione fought in the war not to save herself or even to protect her friends but because she truly, genuinely believed that Voldemort was wrong to use his powers against other people, and that it was her obligation as a human being to protect them and defeat their tormentor, using everything at her disposal up to and including her life. Her whole-hearted commitment to her beliefs shocked and bewildered Blaise. For someone who had spent his entire life taking the path of least resistance, the intensity with which Hermione cared about people whose lives didn't touch hers at all was honestly astonishing and surprisingly appealing. More than just appealing.
She was so beautiful when she was passionate about something. When she got to talking about house elf rights or the origins of the Order of the Phoenix or the work she wanted to do in mediwizardry when the war was over, her eyes would sparkle and her face would glow and she would practically vibrate with energy and enthusiasm. Blaise had always thought that he was being smart by not letting anything entrap him emotionally. As long as he didn't care about anything, he had no weaknesses that could be used against him. But as he watched Hermione and the way her passion for helping others made her light up, inside and out, he finally began to wonder what he missed out on by not allowing any passion in his life.
If Hermione's passion intrigued him, her gentleness positively entranced him. For the first time in his life, he saw what affection was really like. Hermione was a hands-on person by nature, and when she was with her friends, she could hardly keep her hands off of them. She was constantly ruffling Ron's hair or squeezing Harry's hand and she must have given the Patil girls and Justin twenty hugs a day on those occasions when she sensed they were hurting over their parents' deaths. Even the affection that she lavished on that orange pile of fat and fur she called a cat was more than Blaise had ever experienced in his life. The concept of non-sexual touching continued to confuse him, but he couldn't block out the unfamiliar longing to be touched so freely and affectionately. He felt too awkward to actively invite her touch, but as she became used to him, she began to touch him naturally and instinctively, the way she did with everyone, and he felt something inside him purr with pleasure whenever he felt the warmth of her touch.
His desire for her developed quickly and was instantly identifiable. His love came more gradually, and took him longer to figure out. Learning to love was new to him, and he had trouble recognizing the feelings within him. All he knew was that he suddenly had the overwhelming urge to please her. He brought home flowers he knew she liked, for no other reason than to see her smile. He snuck glimpses at the books she pored over and bought his own copies so he could discuss them with her. He started to take more risks in his assignments, showing more initiative to protect people even at the risk of endangering himself, just so he could see the look of admiration in her eyes when he made his report. He found himself taking steps with his life and his choices so that he could be someone she could be proud of. Loving her gave him something to believe in and his drive to earn her approval made him struggle to be a better man. By the time he finally acknowledged to himself that what he felt for her was love, he was ready to be the kind of man who'd be worthy of her love, in return.
He didn't expect it to make him famous. He fought for Hermione, and for the beliefs he had learned from her that made him feel that fighting was the right thing to do. He didn't do it for the notoriety, which is, perhaps, why the notoriety came. The wizarding world was desperate for heroes and the newspapers jumped at the opportunity Blaise represented. He was practically romance novel material: the Slytherin who saw the error of Voldemort's ways and became a hero for the Light Forces. His skill both as a spy and as leader of sudden, surprise attacks became widely publicized and stories entitled "Lightning Strikes Again" were matched in popularity only by stories about the Boy Who Lived, himself. Men stopped him in the street to shake his hand. Children stared and pointed and looked at him with a degree of awe he had always thought was reserved for Quidditch stars and action-book heroes. Women cried when they thanked him for what he had done. He was surprised both at just how good it made him feel to be viewed as a hero and a protector, and at just how determined it made him not to disappoint anyone in their belief in him.
By the end of the war, the metamorphosis was complete. Gone was the cold, emotionless boy who regarded war as an inconvenience to his scheduled life. In his place was a warm, affectionate man who had earned not only admiration from society for his selfless acts of bravery, but also a deep and abiding friendship from a handful of people he truly cared about. Heading the list of those friends was Hermione Granger, who he adored with a passion that grew every day. Blaise was pleased with his life. He had a job he enjoyed working as an Auror, coworkers he respected, superiors he admired, a comfortable home and true friends to take the edge off whenever life got hard. He was very nearly perfectly happy. All he needed was for Hermione to fall in love with him. It had happened for all the rest of his friends, and he couldn't help but feel that it was his and Hermione's turn to find their happily ever after, together.
When the war ended, it was all the tensions in the wizarding world had a massive, collective release. All the things everyone had been too scared to do during the war, they were finally able to tackle. Most especially, everyone finally felt they could commit to the relationships they had formed. Blaise attended more weddings in the six month period directly following the war than he had in the six years previous. When the dust settled, Ron had married Luna, Neville had married Ginny, Justin had married Parvati, Remus had married Tonks and, in a move that surprised everyone, Mundungus had married Rosmerta. (Everyone privately agreed that the poor lately was selling herself woefully short, but it was obvious that Mundungus admired her nearly as much as he feared her, and with her experience dealing with men who had an overdeveloped fondness for firewhiskey, they knew that she would be able to keep him in line with an efficiency and thoroughness not even Dumbledore could have managed.)
Harry and Padma were dating (Harry always did have a thing for dark-haired Ravenclaws) but had decided to hold off on getting engaged until Padma had a chance to take the Ancient Runes Masters program at Anticocorre University in Milan. They had agreed that they'd both be free to see other people while they were apart... but that didn't stop Padma from apparating back to London practically every weekend to shag Harry senseless. Since Hermione, Harry and Blaise were the only unmarried members of the old gang left in London, Harry insisted that Hermione and Blaise continue to live in Grimmauld Place. It didn't take much convincing. Blaise would have been willing to live on a park bench if it meant that he could stay close to Hermione.
With nearly all their friends married and Harry next door to engaged, Blaise and Hermione were paired up to spend time together fairly often simply by default since neither of them were involved in any serious relationships. Blaise, with his new-found celebrity (and his already committed heart), was the king of one night stands and Hermione, for some unaccountable reason, never seemed to go out with a wizard more than two or three times. The reason, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Blaise did everything in his power to intimidate any poor fool who dared ask Hermione out on a date. No, it was pure chance that Blaise and Hermione always seemed to end up alone together.
Sadly, taking advantage of the situation to develop something beyond friendship seemed to be the absolute last thing on Hermione's mind. Her behavior to him was so appallingly sisterly that it damn near broke his heart. He knew he had been slotted in her mind simply as a friend, and had no idea how he could go about getting her to view him as a possible lover. If he had loved her less, Blaise might have pursued her, courted her, actively worked to win her over. But loving her made him feel amazingly awkward and shy. He had never cared so much about anyone in his life, and he was terrified that he would say or do something wrong and ruin the best thing he had in his life. He wanted so badly to be able to give her everything she needed, but he just didn't know how. And then one night while he was pining over Hermione to the tune of a bottle of firewhiskey, a girl recognized him from the newspaper articles and approached to ask if she could buy a drink for one of England's heroes. He accepted.
His friends teased him about it. With all of them married or nearly married, the men seemed to live vicariously through him and constantly pestered him for stories about his wild, bachelor life. His one-night stands became nearly legendary in their group and they took him out to bars just to watch him in action. They had watched so often that they all knew his game of seduction by heart. Blaise rarely initiated a conversation, but it seemed like every bar they visited, there was always a pretty girl who found some excuse to come over to 'thank' or 'congratulate' the 'hero of the war.' The rest of the gang would shake their heads wisely and snicker into their beers as they announced that Lightning was about to strike, again.
And strike he did. The girls were more than willing, they were eager to take a legend into their bed, and the physical intimacy took his mind off of his longing for Hermione for a few hours. And so Blaise drifted into the habit of a string of one-night stands while he pined for Hermione and waited for her to love him.
Blaise sighed as he snuggled just a little closer to her, breathing in her scent and relishing the feel of her body pressed against his. He allowed himself to get a bit lost in his own thoughts as he imagined what it would be like if they were lovers, and he could hold her like this every night. Smiling at the pleasant fantasy, Blaise cuddled himself as close to Hermione as he could get, absorbing her warmth and her sweetness and her softness and the sheer pleasure of being near her for as long as he could.