Disclaimer: I only own the heroine.

Chapter 5: Where All the Time Goes

"Faster Marlow! Do you want that bloody quaffle? Faster!" Draco barked orders over the slytherin practice like the tyrant captain he enjoyed being. I don't remember anything quite as exhilarating as going faster than any bird on that borrowed broomstick. Why I still hadn't gotten my own top of the line model with my millions is a mystery. I have been rather lazy in all other aspects of my life, maybe it has something to do with that.

I punched Moon in the side and took the quaffle into my possession. Who knew I could be so violent? I have pondered this and discovered that my corporate villain can easily manifest into physical viciousness.

Racing towards the goal, the actual point or context of my actions was lost. That is why when a bludger hit my broom and I hit the ground, I felt pure defeat.

"Cappar, aim better!" Draco shouted. I was surprised. This was the first time I hadn't had a rain of curses fall upon me. This time I had actually failed at something too. Curious, so very curious.

"Marlow, hurry up!" Ah there we go.

"Can you believe Oliver Wood made it to the pros?" Dean said while cleaning of his broom. The Gryffindors and a Slytherin were lounging on some forgotten steps leading outside from the castle.

Neville opened his mouth to respond but I beat him to it. "He's a stiff prick. Won't last too, long if you ask me."

"It doesn't matter if we ask you or not," Seamus said, preoccupied with throwing a quaffle up into the air, only to catch it again. "You never shut up."

I tapped some ash from my cigarette down the back of his shirt. "Ai!" he yelped. "Bloody hell!" he glared at me. "Stupid slytherin," he chucked the quaffle at my from close range.

Catching it with ease, I smirked with pleasure. "Bloody Irishman." I threw it back at him, hitting the boy in the face. He cursed.

"Oh don't you think you are just so bloody clever." Why do I hang around with people like this? Gryffindors, boys, closed-minded fuckwits, it is really a mystery why the entertain me.

"Why yes, I am clever," I blew smoke smugly into the air. "Just noticing?"

"I challenge you to a duel!" Seamus grabbed his broom—the equivalent of a sword.

"Why should I accept your offer?" I didn't show any signs of changing my relaxed position.

"Are you a coward?"

Next thing you know, I was up in the air with Longbottom, preparing to go against Thomas and Finnegan. "Alright," Thomas said, sitting up straight as a self-proclaimed referee. "First team to let's say… 10 goals. Rules are—"

"Nonexistent," I concluded. "It's quidditch. Now throw that damn ball." Dean sneered then tossed the ball up into the air.

Seamus was the first to grab it. He has had more experience on a broom than I. Frankly these teams were terribly unfair. I was surprised Neville didn't fall off his broom and here I am, chain smoking nervous wreck versus, well more average people. I chased down Seamus and shoved him just before he threw the quaffle to an unguarded goal (made of two or three tree branches).

With the quaffle now in my possession, I zoomed towards the target. I saw Dean bombing towards me just in time to chuck the ball to Longbottom. He caught it! Bloody miracle. Then Seamus tackled him.

"Fuck," I hung my head.

"How about a wager, Marlow?" Dean flew up beside me with a cocky little smirk.

"What type of wager?" My old love for meaningless schoolboy wagers was back in bloom.

"Win gets a go at the other team with any spell they want."

"That could be dangerous, Mr. Thomas," I said with a silky tone.

"Are you a coward?" there it was again! I snatched the quaffle and made for the goal. Easy goal.

"I believe that is one for our team," I flew past him with a cocky smirk.

So the battle raged on. Neville made considerable blunders, I wheezed, Thomas played well and Seamus was tackled by yours truly. In the end, because Longbottom can't play defense for chocolate frogs, we lost 6-10.

Dean and Seamus high-fived and looked all smug while they thought of what spell they could do to us. I wasn't too worried, though I was pissed that we lost. Afterall, these aren't exactly real risk takers we have on our hands here.

"Close your eyes," they said together, grinning maliciously. Neville complied easily—these were his dormmates after all, but I was more skeptical. "Turn around now, Marlow." I rolled my eyes and slowly turned.

Suddenly, I felt the spell hit my back. I sucked in a breathe, waiting for pain, puke or something else. But there was nothing. I turned, soon followed by Neville, prepared to call the two boys serious wankers. However, they were too busy falling over themselves with laughter.

"What is so bloody funny?" I looked at Neville when I received no answer. The clutz looked as though he was stifling a laugh. "You bloody wankers," I growled out of frustration and flew up to a particularly clear window.

I screamed bloody murder.

You know, one would think I am lucky to have hair after all the weird shit that happens to it. Neon red and back again was murder. Now from black to brown, frizzy and hideous. I was working on a cigarette, musing over my situation when Blaise arrived in the common room.

"What in hell's name did you do to your hair!"

"I lost a friendly match of quidditch," I said flatly.

"That's not friendly, mate that's a bloody crime."

"Oh shut up," I snarled, chucking a pillow at him.

Blaise caught it and grinned. "Your aim is getting better."

"Shut your mouth, you bloody wanton."

My slytherin friend (if you want to use that noun) sat down beside me and lit up one of his obscene cigarette substitutes (the harder substance). I glanced over at him, taking in his features. He looked nearly sedated. He was in another universe and continuing to find ways to get in deeper. He had an air about him of defeat.

"You're so fucking pathetic."

"Excuse me?" he said lazily turning to me. He didn't sound the least bit shocked.

"You are a sorry excuse for a human, Blaise. Go slit your wrists and save us all the trouble of watching your slow dragging existence."

That got his attention. He jerked upright and looked at me in a mix of surprise and anger. "Watch where you step, Marlow."

"Oh shut up you git," I snapped, smacking the blunt from his hand. "To you my name very well isn't Marlow. This well of self-pity you have dug for yourself is disgusting and will come to an end now."

"Who are you to act like my mother," he sputtered with reddening cheeks. It was obvious he didn't know what to make of this situation. Had I been rational, or really thinking, I would have been in the same position. However, I wasn't rational at the time, I was being uncharacteristically honest and responsible.

"Who are you to act like a self-destructive git?"

"You don't know what you're saying," he took a quite puff of his drug.

I smacked it out of his mouth. "Oh yes I bloody do." I grabbed his chin roughly and forced him to look at me. "Look at me Blaise Zabini." When he still held his eyes adverted I tightened my grip. "Now!" that brought the eye contact I wanted.

We stayed in that bruising position for god-knows-how-long then I started to talk without even thinking about what I was saying. "What's your name?"

"Blaise Zabini," the words barely climbed out of his throat.

"Are you scared?" no response..

"What you fear?" no response.

"Are you happy like this?" It was there. It was right there that the real Blaise broke through. Had I been thinking I would have better prepared for what was to come, but we already know thoughts were a thing of the past. This applied for the both of us. Why else would Blaise have thrown himself at me so hard that I broke a vase when hit the coffee table? While else would we have bruised our lips together in an action that lacked emotions associated with its nature but contained all the important elements at the same time?

We clawed at eachother. We shoved eachother. We rolled, we kissed, we bit, we bled. This trance of utter animalistic confession was finally broken when the back of my head somehow came down on the edge of the stairs. I yelped and the two of us fell still. I could feel the sticky goo running down my neck. Blaise, who was on top of me, reached his slender fingers around to touch it. Upon feeling that I was very much alive, and he was too by association, he collapsed, silently sobbing into my chest.

It was roughly around this time that my sense of logic caught up with me and oh what a blow. I was at one instant contemplating that perhaps Blaise and I had engaged in sexual intercourse (to say it scientifically doesn't make me hurl) because there was just no other way this situation could have come around.

I strained my neck and looked over Blaise's seemingly ginormous trembling form. The common room was a mess. Really. Vases were shattered, furniture tosses, disheveled carpet, plants on the ground. I really was becoming a lunatic.

"Come on," I said in a more compassionate voice than I had intended. When he didn't respond I repeated myself and nudged him. He rolled off of me like a ragdoll. Blaise's cheeks were tearstained and he showed now signs of stopping the waterworks. So to save my friend from disgrace and the public ridicule of an empty room, I hauled him up to my dorm.

Blaise slept in my bed that night. I was in it for a while but eventually took the floor. Sure it was uncomfortable and sure, he soaked my shirt with his tears while I just stroked his hair, and sure I was in a very awkward positional emotionally and certainly in no place to be handing out advice but at least . . . he wasn't alone anymore and he knew that.

My face has almost fallen into my porridge about oh, five times. I am so bloody tired. I've had about ten hours of sleep this entire week. Not only do the teachers expect me to write these worthless essays (that certainly do not help your right a merger), not only am I expected to do that mountain of work sent to me from the office, not only am I supposed to work my bloody arse off for some ruddy sport, I am now also responsible for the emotional restabilization of Blaise Zabini, oh and I have to give to each of these activities. You think when you grow up and become the big bad boss you are going to be able to control everything that comes through your net of duties. Oh, that's a knee-slapper right there.

Kill me. Someone pull avada kavera right now. Oh god, gotta go to potions.

I threw out all of Blaise's marijuana. I tossed his room and threw out all his destructive material accumulated over seven months time. It looks like he lives in an abbey now but that is better than what there was before. You know, back at the beginning of the year, I would have never thought of doing something like this. I would find the idea of going out of my way for someone preposterous, no matter who that person was. Fuck and look at me now. I am like mother Teresa. Except I think she kept her wits about her more often than I do. I feel like such a flaming idiot nowadays.

"Wake up, Marlow," Theo snapped, crunching my toes.

"Ow!" I jumped slightly.

"You almost fell into the bloody potion," Draco scolded. "Idiot." I elbowed him in reply.

Snape had the brilliant idea of forming groups and I dunno where he got the idea but somehow decided to put us together. It wasn't as awful as I was anticipating. This was probably because I was two steps from dead and not all there.

"Marlow, we aren't your bloody slaves," Draco snapped at me, shoving some ingredients into my hands. "Now do your own bloody work!"

"Are you sure that's a good idea, mate," Theo said a little too late. I had already dumped the jar and royally fucked the potion.

Snape just rubbed his temples and turned to torture some hufflepuffs.

"Dumbass," Draco snarled.

It wasn't until I was rested that I realized how normal that situation had been. It's significance was wasted at the moment.

One night, maybe a week later, I was stood up by Mr. Harry Potter. Our habitual quidditch sessions were engrained into my schedule; they were so mundane that my blood boiled when this routine had been disrupted. My ears were turning purple as I stormed off the pitch dressed like a fucking fruit in men's quidditch gear.

Thanks to a couple roaming second years, I found wonderboy's location easily. He was seething in the Gryffindor locker rooms. However, I was more concerned with my own anger, rather than his evident reason for forgetting me. "Forget something, Potter?" I snarled in the doorway with my arms folded across my chest. He didn't respond and I nearly burst a blood vessel. "Hey wonderboy, I'm talking to you!" still no response. I marched over to him and grabbed his shoulder.

Before I could get a word out he smacked my hand away. "Can't you take a bloody hint!"

"You prick!" I shoved him against the lockers. No one talks to me like that. In hindsight, I was an extremely self-centered teenager but then again, show me someone who wasn't at that age.

Harry once again smacked my hands away from him and straightened himself up in a manner that only made his commotion worse. "You're all the bloody same," he snapped. "I bet you pointed her out didn't you! Told him every little detail for how he could rip my heart out! Misery loves company doesn't it."

"What the fuck are you talking, you self-absorbed prick?"

"I was the chosen one," he said, his tone of voice changing in a manner that reflected change of target. "I was the boy who lived and evidently because of it I am too weak of a male to keep away Draco Malfoy's claws."

I snorted, "You make him sound like an evil lord or something."

"He got into her pants when it took me weeks, months of dating and compliments and, and—I was her childhood crush for the sake of merlin! He rips her away from all that like she's just something he can buy with his sodding family fortune!"

I shrugged my shoulders, "Maybe she is." His distress had calmed my own flusteredness.

"You're missing the point!"

"Oh am I?" I cocked an eyebrow. "Enlighten me, wonderboy."

"I might as well become a fucking monk," he shouted. "I'm too sensitive she says. Well, I think it's a goddamn miracle that after all the shit I've been through I not a bloody looney. I'm not passionate enough! I'm not—" I tuned out after that. It's alright to analyze yourself but this was ridiculous.

"Stop bloody lying to yourself."

"No!" he screamed like a spoiled child. "You don't understand."

"Oh yes I do," I said pushing his back up against the lockers. "You're a soddling little Gryffindork with mudblood friends and one big sob story that no one gives a shit about now that the wizarding world has used you up like the fairy you are."

"Watch your mouth," he snarled. Has this happened before or is it just me?

"You're such a pansy, Potter," I said with a demeaning flip of my hair. "I bet you are intimidated by the likes of girls; even me in men's quidditch gear. Actually, I just saw one of your dorm mates today, Finnegan. Looked like quidditch had done him good, more than I can say for you," I put my face close to his once again to add intensity to my words. "Harry, can you do anything at all."

He exploded. I am not kidding, the thought that maybe I had overdone it occurred to me just as I was slammed up against the lockers, on the opposite side of the room. Have you ever been torn apart? Have you ever had so much happen to you at one time that you are rendered an object? It was like I was watching it all in third person. My rationality was somewhere else, my ability to move was long gone, my words were on vacation and all I could do was hold my eyes open and hope it wouldn't hurt.

Good boys often surprise you. I am sure you are familiar with the time I first recognized Harry Potter as a sexual being but this was something completely different. I was out of control, for the first time in any of my sexual experiences had I no control over the situation. This was right up there on the list of Most Scariest Moments of My Life. Never mind that it was Harry Potter, never mind that I had initiated it with a simple principal to prove, I was being dominated in the worst way.

Then, just as I had closed my eyes and prepared for the worst of it (the best in all other circumstances), it all stopped. I thought time had stopped it was that still. The courage found me somehow and I turned my head to look up at Harry.

He was staring at me as though I was a dead and bleeding corpse. "Oh merlin," he chocked out before rolling over and burying his face in his hands. "Dear god."

It took me a couple of moments before I could begin to get myself together. The sound of Harry's breathing filled the room as I inspected the damage done. It was impressive. This of course, is said with my current perspective. At the moment I was pleasantly numb. When I was as together as I was going to be, I leaned back against the lockers and basked in my numbness.

"So, no quidditch tonight then," I broke the silence an eternity later.

"You must hate me."

"Not yet, but I doubt I will."

"How can you be so calm after I nearly—"

"The universe won't permit the two of us from being in hysterics at the same time."

"I am in shock, I am not a sissy."

"No, most certainly not," my laugh was full of holes and a bit painful to the ears right at that moment.

"Oh god," he repeated, rubbing his eyes and face as though he could rub out the reality of the situation. "Why did you do that, Xandra? How could you have just sat there and taken it? God, what if I hadn't stopped, what if . . ."

I somewhere found a cigarette and lit up. "Look don't be so hard on yourself, I provoked you. Technically I was asking for it."

"No one asks for that," he replied grimly.

I regarded him for a moment before I asked with my own bit of grimness, "Could you please cheer up a bit?" He gave me a look like I was crazy. I nudged his cheek with my free hand. "Look on the bright side, you aren't a limp-dick pansy." He gave a feeble laugh and made an effort to stop sulking.

"Draco really got to you, huh?" I searched for a cigarette to give him.

"I guess so," Harry said, accepting the cigarette without enthusiasm.

"He does it to build up his own self-esteem," I analyzed outloud.

"Pretty low, if you ask me."

"It's like smoking. If you try it once and don't like it, you never do it again. If you try it once and really do like it, well there is no real reason to stop."

"Very philosophical."

"I have a lot of time." I stopped for a moment and decided to change that, "Actually, I lied. I really have no time. I don't know where I think about these things. I have no idea where the time goes."

He chuckled and brushed some hairs out of my face. "Sorry about forgetting the quidditch."

"Psh, trivial matter, don't give it a second thought."

"You were mighty pissed for a trivial matter."

"Lost in the moment," this subject was making me uncomfortable.

"I'll make it up to you tomorrow night then," he looked at me with a sentimental greatfulness that made me shiver.

"As you like," I replied, shifting uncomfortably.

Suddenly the look in his eyes died and he said flatly, "What happened to your hair?"

Author's Note: Ah another chapter up for you darling readers. Hope it didn't seem too random, I felt a bit disoriented while writing it. To be perfectly honest I find myself approaching a writer's block so cross your fingers for me. I really appreciate feedback, as always. Until the next installment!