Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, be they good, evil or somewhere in between. I don't own any of the locations, even the really creepy ones. All I own is the words I write, and the ideas that those words shape.
Author's Note: There has been much speculation as to who Blaise Zabini is, or whether or not he is important. He intrigues me. He isn't a character because he has never been described in the books, and I get an overwhelming urge to write him, because anything I say about him could be true. We just don't know. That's why I write him differently in every story he's in. So enjoy the secret thoughts of a reformed Death Eater as he languishes in a cell in Azkaban prison.
To forgive, divine
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
Is that true? Only one person ever truly forgave me for what I did, and she is dead. I know that now. When I was awaiting trial, I didn't know. I thought that she'd be there in Courtroom Ten, sitting in the stands waiting to plead for her reformed Death Eater. I didn't know that Draco, the biggest fool the forces of evil have ever known, had cut down my only hope of salvation moments before he died himself. I couldn't know that it was beyond the powers of the Minister, the Wizengamot and even the supposedly wise Dumbledore to forgive me for what I hadn't wanted to do.
If you must be divine to forgive, then she was divine. But I don't need an empty catchphrase to tell me that. I have a heart to do that for me. Not that the people who tried me would believe that. They couldn't get beyond the black tattoo on my forearm to see that there was truly a man inside, not a monster. If only I had confided in Dumbledore, gained his forgiveness, then I would have avoided this fate, as Snape did. But then I didn't love Dumbledore.
I loved her. Heaven help me, I loved her. And she forgave me everything. I've never killed anyone. I don't deny that I tortured people. I know that the Cruciatus curse is an Unforgivable, but I never drove anyone insane, or did damage that never healed. I never killed anyone's friend, or sister, or lover. Maybe she wouldn't have been able to forgive a murderer. But she could forgive a criminal. Even if I couldn't forgive myself for what I was, for what I had been.
I won't claim that it wasn't my fault. I won't claim that I was forced to do it. I can't lie and paint myself as the victim of manipulation. I knew exactly what I would have to do to get what I wanted, and decided that I could sacrifice my soul for a share of the Dark Lord's power. Except that he didn't share. We were servants. I don't claim that I wouldn't have tortured and killed for my own benefit, but I wouldn't lift a finger without knowing what was in it for me. Call me wicked, but Blaise Zabini is nobody's fool.
I told her all of this. She just listened and nodded and looked grave, like a Healer looking at a man with his chest blasted away. She knew I was a power-hungry torturing Dark wizard, but she thought she could help me. She always took on hopeless cases. But with me, she was right. I did change. I regret it now, what I did, but more than that I regret blindly believing them, letting them convince me that only purebloods are worth anything. She released me from that. The only person who wanted to know me and cared enough to listen was a Mudblood. That turned everything upside down for me. You can't keep on thinking someone is scum when they're the only one that's left to help you.
I fell in love with her, probably because I needed her. She wasn't beautiful, barely even pretty, but she was a goddess to me. Goddesses fall in love with mortals sometimes, I know, but I never thought that she could love a devil. And yet she did. She told me she did, and she would not lie. She knew that if she lied to me it would break me. Then there would be nothing to stop me giving in to my baser self. I am by nature easily corruptible. And while I would never have served the Dark Lord again, I might have done something worse.
What is it they say about Slytherins? Crafty, cunning and sly – but nowhere in the Sorting Hat's song did it say evil. Did we turn out this way because of the House we were in? Is that too much like blaming someone else for things that we brought on ourselves? Did I have to do what I did? Or did I choose to? Is it already preordained that one quarter of each year's eleven year old children will be proved to be irredeemably evil by a tattered old hat? Did I really have to accept that as inevitable?
I remember the trial. It wasn't fair. They treated me like a common murderer. The chains on the chair ensnared me as I sat down, and my soul filled with dread. And all the while, my eyes flickered around the courtroom, my heart sinking lower and lower every time I didn't see her face. I saw Harry Potter, the great hero, a cripple, as bitter and twisted now as anybody I've ever met. He is the champion of the Ministry, and he attends every single Death Eater trial, feeding off the satisfaction of seeing us condemned, vilified and sent to the Hell that is Azkaban. Exactly like he was at school, wanting to score over Slytherin at every opportunity. Except that now he's got yet another personal injury to feel bitter about and take out on us.
They didn't even want to look at me. They just wanted to cart me off to prison and get the next one in so they could do the same to them. So much for the justice that Hermione had believed in so fervently. Justice wasn't about to be extended to me, I could tell. They read the charges against me: fifteen recorded counts of using the Cruciatus curse. The weasel-faced undersecretary emphasised the word recorded, as if implying that I had committed other Unforgivables that no one knew about. I gritted my teeth. The accusations they levelled at me were true. But that was all. I know fifteen sounds like a lot, but I was with the Death Eaters for as long as I could stand, and yet that was all I did. I was a model of virtue compared to some of my former colleagues.
When they looked down on me, chained and starving, and asked if I had anything to say in my defence, I said, simply, "I am not a Death Eater."
The Minister shook his head. "We can quite clearly see your mark, Mr Zabini. There is no denying the Dark Mark." And the people sitting high up on the benches of stone glared at me, despising me for a torturer and a liar.
"I do not deny it," I retorted. "I did not say that I never was one. I said that I am not one now."
"That is not the issue," said the Minister, gravely. "The issue is your usage of an Unforgivable curse."
I am no fool. I knew that wasn't true. He sat there and spoke as if some of the older Aurors had not used an Unforgivable themselves, as if his predecessor, Fudge, had not allowed them to kill without trial. The issue was not the curse. They wanted all of the Death Eaters packed away, out of their new world that they longed to create, a naïve little world without a reigning force of evil. I snorted. Some hope.
"What, then, is your defence for Severus Snape?" I asked, coldly, watching a ripple of murmurs spread around the room. I ignored everyone else, and glared at Dumbledore, who was looking at me with keen disappointment in his eyes. He hadn't wanted me to mention Snape. Had he thought that I would go down without a fight? Did he think that I wouldn't hold them all up as hypocrites if it increased my chances of walking free?
The Minister narrowed his eyes. "Professor Dumbledore has sworn to us that Snape was a valuable spy among the Death Eaters. He was not truly one of you. He may have committed evil acts but not with an evil intent."
I could not keep the scorn from my eyes and my voice. "Snape goes free because Dumbledore vouches for him!" I snapped. "Well, I have someone who will vouch for me too. I don't know if she is here. But I need her. She can clear me. Where is Hermione Granger?"
There was a collective intake of breath, and I felt something clutch at my heart. I looked into Potter's cruel emerald eyes and I knew. He was especially bitter today because he was mourning a new loss. "Very funny, Zabini," he hissed, venomously.
The Minister looked even less impressed, if such a thing were possible. "Miss Granger was murdered by one of your friends, one Draco Malfoy, as she and a small force tried to bring him in. He's dead, by the way. They couldn't take him alive." As if I cared that Draco was dead when I had lost her! I cried. They couldn't stop me. I sat in the chained chair and I cried my heart out. I cried till my nose bled and my head began to pound. I didn't know what any of them thought of me, and I didn't care. I had lost her, and I was lost myself.
Eventually they got the Medi-Wizards in. I suppose they thought they couldn't let me kill myself. But that was only so they could condemn me to living torment, and there was nobody left who could stop them. They continued the trial the next day and sentenced me to life, with a recommended minimum of 15 years. I'll be lucky if I last fifteen days. I screamed at them at the second trial. I screamed myself hoarse, saying that I loved her, that I had changed, that I regretted what I had done, that I had never killed, that I had never really hurt anyone. Eventually I screamed that I was sorry.
And I meant it. I was sorry. But Potter just looked at me, and said, "After all that's happened to us, to our world, you expect us to sit here and listen to people like you telling us you're sorry? You know what, Blaise? Sorry isn't good enough. Not now, and not from you."
Only she ever called me Blaise. She said it softly and sweetly, as if the name were a salve that she could use to heal my pain. Hearing it spoken so harshly by this soulless shell of a hero filled me with despair. Everything was finished for me now. What else could I say but sorry? Sorry had been good enough for her. It had made her want to help me, and in the end, saying sorry was enough to make her love me. But there was no one in that courtroom prepared to forgive a reformed rogue. No one accepted my apology. No one cared that I had lost the woman I loved. As a Death Eater, I must have forfeited my right to feel.
"It was good enough for her, Harry," I spat, as I was dragged away. I had the minor triumph of seeing him look slightly abashed, of watching the tears beginning to form in his eyes. It wasn't enough, though. One moment of vindictive pleasure won't keep a man going for long in this jail. It's the worst place in the world. I'd rather be writhing under one of the Dark Lord's Cruciatus curses that lying in this dungeon.
The worst thing was not that they believed I was guilty. I was guilty. But I had reformed. I renounced the Dark Lord. I showed my utter contempt for his values in the most emphatic way possible. I fell in love with a Mudblood, of all people. I wonder if Harry knows that I loved her more than life itself. Would he have been so callous if he had known? Would he have been worse? Was nine-tenths of his outrage mere jealousy?
Looking back, I should not have been surprised that they didn't forgive me. They could not forgive because it was impossible for them to forget. And if you need to be divine to forgive, it will be a very long time before I learn to forgive myself.