Yanvalou
AN: Written for a drabble request by Lucia De Medici.
The steady beating of drums filled his dreams.
Blaise opened his eyes before daybreak, the scent of heady smoke and the sweat of dancers lingering from memory before he realized he was in his own bed, and the only scent was the salty breeze drifting through the open windows.
He pushed the covers aside and went to the windows with the intention of closing them, but stopped when he saw his mother standing on the terrace below, dressed in white and humming to herself. She looked up at him, sunlight accentuating the high cheekbones he'd inherited.
Her hips swayed to the beat of music he could remember rather than hear, and the sweet smile of triumph told him all he needed to know about the fate of the latest fool who'd thought to conquer his mother. They were always charmed by her undeniable beauty and the husky, tainted French she spoke, despite not having lived in her native Haiti since childhood.
"Blaise, mon fils!" she cried.
Blaise remembered prayers offered to the ancestors and the Loa, sanctioned in words and proven through motion. Images of serpents and writhing bodies (pleasure and dance and ecstatic religious fervor, with the undercurrent of death pain betrayal and abandonment) flashed before his eyes, watching his mother offer praise to gods he wasn't sure existed and ancestors he didn't think worthy of praise.
"It's a beautiful day," she continued, spreading her arms wide and spinning like a child. "A lovely, new day."
Blaise disagreed.
School was an entirely different universe.
The hazy, languid days of summer faded from memory as the chill of Scottish winter set deep in his bones, and Blaise listened to his dorm mates's childish bragging of power and brutality.
When Draco spoke (of hidden truths and blatant lies, as he showed his adeptness at subterfuge, but lack of discretion) of his father's rank with the Dark Lord, Blaise felt relaxed under the tendrils of superiority that tainted his psyche.
He knew who was truly powerful. He knew things that would make the untried, unproven Draco Malfoy understand that slinking around Knockturn Alley was no accomplishment.
Blaise knew the shadowed, treacherous paths to power had little to do with Unforgivable curses and dark artifacts.
In the depths of the night, Blaise would slip out of his room and follow the pulse of drums (that might not be there at all, but only pulse in his brain when the soft chant of his mother's voice splits the darkness like an angry spirit) to the gazebo, where low beams are hung with fragrant flowers and draped in fluttering cloths, creating an ethereal sanctuary.
His mother would be found chanting and mixing ingredients together in the center, kneeling in her white robes. Her voice would raise, speaking the names of the Loa and invoking their power as she mixed a chalky potion he recognized from childhood nightmares.
The last person she had used this powder on had been dead already, her third husband, middle-aged and beady-eyed, who had died without acknowledging his wife in his will. Blaise had been young, too young for what he witnessed, but he remembered the scraping of the mausoleum lid in the graveyard stillness. He remembered the empty, expressionless eyes sunken into flesh that had already begun to grey, and he remembered the commanding, fearless tone of his mother's voice as she instructed the man to change his legal documents and spell them back so no suspicion would lie on her.
He looked at the quantity of powder she had produced, and wondered how many wizards it would turn into the same soulless, obedient slaves.
When the Dark Lord wished for the Inferi to rise against the Wizarding World, Blaise knew who would bring them forth from their cold graves.
The wizard who brought forth the Inferi from their graves controlled their actions.
The witch who used her generations-old knowledge to raise the dead at the command of a Dark Lord for whom she refused to bear the Mark lived in a near-constant state of fear.
Blaise hated seeing his mother look around, paranoid when in times past she would be content, frightened when fear had never before held her captive.
"Run," he suggested, hating the sight of apprehension on her features as the mail owl swooped near. "Go to Haiti. Hide in a shanty and pray to the Loa and be safe."
His beautiful mother had grown too fond of infamy and wealth to abandon her empire.
"He won't let you live," Blaise pleaded. "One mistake..."
He'd seen his friends's hollow-eyed looks when infallible, vaunted parents fell from grace. He'd seen the growing terror forming in Draco Malfoy's eyes before he disappeared. He did not underestimate the power these people held.
"I am content here," his mother said smoothly. Left unspoken was her confidence in her indispensability, in her complete and utter faith that her abilities were unmatched by anyone who was more easily cowed by the Dark Lord's power.
Blaise knew better, but was unable to change her mind.