See part one for disclaimers.
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Section 4:
Careful not to move a muscle, Blaise concentrated his finely honed senses on the woman lying next to him, and let out a sigh of relief. Finally, she was asleep. He had, heavens be praised, shagged her far too thoroughly for her to attempt any pillow talk post-sex, but she had tossed and turned for a few minutes afterwards before she finally settled down to sleep. If she had lasted much longer, Blaise was certain his restraint would have snapped and he would have hexed her to sleep. If he couldn't pull away from her soon, he just might lose his mind. What on earth would inspire any woman to wear that much perfume? He had hoped she'd sweat some of it off during sex, but if anything, the smell seemed to be stronger than before. He wrinkled his nose in distaste as he realized how difficult it would be to get the smell out of his bedding. Yes, this was definitely the last time he brought a woman home.
It was also, not coincidentally, the first time. Despite the number of witches who had made it all too abundantly clear just how gratefully they would respond to an invitation into the house of both Blaise Zabini and Harry Potter, he always preferred to keep his home separate from his one-night stands. Home was Hermione; he didn't like seeing other witches in the place he associated with his love. But after his most recent experience, he had a whole, new, bottomless-bagful of reasons not to want to bring a witch home with him, and to be thankful that he never had before.
If he had been through this before, he would have realized that any woman he brought home would, more likely than not, pollute his sheets with cheap perfume and hog the blankets and make it completely impossible for him to sleep. Bloody nuisance, really, having to share his bed with practically a stranger. He didn't know how so many bachelors pulled it off successfully. How on earth was he supposed to sleep with someone he barely knew, much less trusted, lying next to him? And since this was his home and not hers, he couldn't just get dressed and sneak out the door while she slept, leaving nothing behind but a note, like he usually did. No, he had to stay, and share his bed and (he shuddered at the thought) deal with her in the morning. But first things first: she had tangled herself around him like devil's snare he absolutely had to get himself out of her arms.
Moving slowly and carefully, Blaise unwound her arms and legs from his body and shifted over and out of the bed. She stirred a bit in her sleep at the absence of his body pressed against hers and he held his breath while he waited to see if she would wake up or settle back into sleep. His lips quirked in a bit of a smile when she stopped shifting but he didn't release his held breath just yet; he still wasn't in the clear. Mustering all his considerable reserves of stealth and silence, he slipped out of his room, shutting the door extremely gently behind him. Finally free, he exhaled in relief as he leaned back against the door, feeling oddly as if he had escaped prison. Yes, he definitely wouldn't be asking anyone to come home with him again any time soon.
In his defense, he wouldn't have done it this time, only the woman said she shared a studio flat with a nurse who'd be coming home from a late shift at four in the morning. When she looked up at him from underneath long lashes and coyly asked whether he had a bedroom to himself at his house, it hadn't occurred to him to say no. He'd wanted her, and the sacrifice of a little of his privacy for one night seemed, at that point, a relatively small price for him to pay.
She had caught his eye practically from the moment he entered the bar. A spotlight couldn't have drawn his eyes faster than those loose, wild, golden curls spilling down her back in an achingly familiar waterfall, causing his breath to catch in his throat at the sight. The color was wrong, of course, but the length and the texture were just right, and he knew that he would use every trick in his book to make sure his hands were buried in those golden curls before the end of the night. She came the closest Blaise had ever seen (and he had certainly devoted plenty of time to looking) to hair just like Hermione's.
It was a long-standing habit of his to show preference to women who physically resembled Hermione. Even the most disinterested observer could tell that his tastes ran to witches who came closest to being curvy and petite with long, curly hair. Regardless of whether or not he would ever be able to be with Hermione, he still considered her the most desirable woman on the face of the planet. If he couldn't have her, he'd find the nearest substitute he could get. That way, in the darkness of the bedroom, he would, at least, be able to pretend.
Unfortunately for Blaise, the styles of the season demanded that witches be tall and slim, with perfectly straight hair. Those unfortunate witches who were born with short statures, rounded hips and curly hair embraced spells and enchantments to "improve" upon their natural appearance. Height and form were difficult to alter, especially for witches with limited skills at charms, but hair straightening potions were readily available, and Blaise had been hard pressed to find any accessible witch with the long, curly hair he ached to touch. This girl's hair caught Blaise's eye immediately and he approached her at the first available opportunity.
Her name was Nellie, and she worked at the Chudley Cannons stadium in concessions, no doubt selling Every Flavor Beans and Fizzing Popcorn to the masses with a smile on her face. Or maybe her name was Shelley and she was a groupie who liked to attend the Cannons' practice sessions? Truth be told, Blaise hadn't been paying much attention, deciding early on that it was a better use of his time to focus on playing with her hair while she chattered away in the bar. Her voice was high pitched and a bit grating, but her hair was soft and he concentrated on that, allowing the irritation of her voice to blend with the background noise of the bar.
She got pleasantly quiet when he started nuzzling her hair, enjoying the feel of it against his face as he pressed soft kisses to her neck. She did not, in fact, speak again until he whispered the suggestion in her ear that they take this back to her place. She told him about her roommate and turned in his arms to press her body more closely against his as she asked about the privacy of his room. His hands slid into her hair at that moment and with his eyes closed, a petite, curvaceous body pressed against his and those soft, thick curls wrapped around his hands, there was no way on earth he was going to tell her no.
But if she thought that hair and a figure like Hermione's was enough for him to let her use him as a life-size teddy bear all night long, she had another thing coming. Hermione always saw to it that the guest rooms were kept clean in case they had unexpected company; he could crash in one of them for the rest of the night. But first, he thought with a grimace of distaste, he needed a glass of water. He felt like he could still taste that perfume in the back of his throat.
His eyes brightened when he saw the light coming from the kitchen. He knew it was Hermione. Harry's eyelids started drooping around ten o'clock and it took a Herculean effort and a large cup of coffee for him to remain awake past midnight, but Blaise and Hermione were both inveterate night owls and had spent many a night talking about anything and everything over a pot of tea. Blaise most definitely wasn't the type to be easily rattled; his heart rate had remained steady that evening even when Shelly (Nellie?) had started undressing, giving him a slow and deliberate strip-tease; but his heart started pounding as he headed down the stairs at the thought of spending a few hours just talking and laughing with Hermione.
And then his heart felt like it stopped completely when he got close enough to hear the sound of her crying. Not just crying, she was sobbing, like she had cried out all her energy but couldn't stop the tears from coming. Blaise wanted to run down those stairs, gather her in his arms and kiss away every single tear. He wanted to find out whoever it was who had made her cry, and hex him into pieces. He wanted to give her anything, everything in the world that could make her happy so that she'd never cry again. But he couldn't even go into the kitchen and ask her what was wrong since a hand reached out to snake around his arm before he got to the bottom of the steps and a high pitched, grating voice echoed through the stairwell.
"What are you doing out of bed, love?" she asked, probably trying to sound seductive as she wrapped herself around him again. Blaise grimaced, but before he had a chance to reply, Hermione appeared at the foot of the stairs.
"Is someone th—" Hermione started to ask, but her voice faltered off when she caught sight of a rather shell-shocked looking Blaise draped with a girl trying to attach herself to him with both arms, both legs, and a very adventurous tongue. "Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry," she managed to say after a long pause. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything."
"Hermione, no!" Blaise exclaimed, trying, with little success, to detach the leech-like girl from his body. "You're not interrupting anything."
"That's right," the girl contributed cheerfully. "Shagging on wooden stairs is bloody awkward." Blaise stopped his attempts to make her let go as he simply stared at her in shock, amazed that anyone could be so tactless and oblivious, all at once. The girl, blissfully unaware, continued: "We were just going to head back to bed anyway, isn't that right, lover?"
Blaise opened his mouth to answer, but the girl, apparently thinking that Blaise was warming up to her again since he had stopped trying to remove her, grew more adventurous, slipping a deft hand inside his boxers to grope him. Blaise, caught completely off-guard, could only manage to make a shocked, terribly unmanly squeaking sound instead of the response he had intended.
Hermione didn't wait to him to elaborate as she rushed up the stairs, hurtling past them and managing to get herself inside her room with the door closed before Blaise even managed to extract Nellie's hand out of his boxers.
With a snarl of annoyance, he finally managed to grab her wrist and pull it free. If he expected that to discourage her, he was in for a great disappointment.
"Oooh, you want to play rough?" she purred, taking the increasingly angry look on his face as confirmation. "I like that game," she simpered, running her tongue seductively over the hand that held her wrist in a death grip. Pulling away from him, she darted up to the top of the stairs. "Come and get me, big boy," she teased before giggling and rushing toward his bedroom.
Blaise growled and headed for the bedroom. Oh, he'd get her, alright. He'd get her out of his hair and out of his house, and then he'd find out what was wrong with his Hermione, and then he'd get a can of paint and paint on his wall in letters a meter tall each that he would never, never bring a woman home with him again.