Act 0 Chapter IV: 8 of Wands
8 of Wands: Great haste, great hope, rapid advancement and rushed communications. Too much, too soon, too fast. Make the most of the momentum and try not to trip over your own feet.
"Benedetto."
Blaise startled violently at the sound of his true name. He hadn't heard it in years. It reached into his chest and tugged. He stopped short, in the middle of the tea parlor of Gamp Hall, and turned to look at Ma.
"Follow me." Italian flowed from her lips effortlessly, like she hadn't refused to speak it in years. Another thing he didn't realize he missed until he heard that perfect, melodic lilt washing over him.
She insisted on switching to English full time, something about learning through immersion. Apparently it's easier for children to learn another language, as their brains are naturally still developing and learning about the world around them. It worked, obviously. Didn't mean he liked it.
Ma didn't wait for a response before brushing past him. It took him a moment to pull himself out of his thoughts to even realize she had moved. He followed her on autopilot.
His feet moved before his mind noticed anything happened. He trailed her, a few paces behind, mind sluggishly reviewing the whirlwind of the past hour.
He followed her absently through the winding halls. The darkness felt heavy on his chest, trapping his racing heart under its oppressive silence. She stopped abruptly. He didn't notice until he collided face first with her shoulder.
She pulled out her wand, the dark wood gleaming in the moonlight. Was this the same one she bled for? Stained Signora Maria's white linens bloody while dragging them across a washboard? He didn't have much time to linger on these morbid thoughts, much more preoccupied with what she did with it.
With a swish and a flick, the bookshelf they stood in front of weightlessly slid to the side, revealing a dark staircase leading down into the bowels of the manor. He didn't even know there was a basement. How did she even find this place? Is this what she did when he was at Theo's or Draco's?
Her wand glowed with a gentle lumos as she led him down the stairs. The temperature dropped with every step they took. Goosebumps erupted over his skin, crawling up his arms and down his neck.
Finally, they reached the bottom of the stairs, which led into a large circular room. The stone walls were covered in a patchwork of moss. Their footsteps echoed in the empty space, no furniture or rugs to absorb the noise.
The trepidation that settled in his gut when they arrived grew from a stone to a brick. Ma turned to look at him, and tried to give a reassuring smile. It only made him more nervous.
"Uh, Ma? What are we doing here?" He asked, cursing his voice for cracking.
"We are celebrating the solstice, tesoro. Tonight, the darkest night of the year, holds great power. If one knows how to harness it, of course," she declared. "It is time you learned how."
His eyes widened. "How do you.." He trailed off hesitantly. She raised her eyebrow expectantly. He steeled his nerves, clenching his fist so she wouldn't notice it shaking.
"How do you harness this power, Ma?"
A smirk spread across her face. "We will be calling upon one of my patrons this evening. She will show you what you need to see."
He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat, threatening to choke him. "Do I know her?"
"In a way, yes. She was present when you were born, helped us conduct your rites of birth," she replied nonchalantly.
He perked up. "Is she like my godmother?" he asked. Ma's lips twitched, desperately trying to hold back a laugh.
"Yes, I guess you could say that."
How is it that she managed to confuse him even more with her answers? You'd think answers would clear things up, he mumbled under his breath resentfully.
Ma paid him no mind as she began preparing their space. He watched curiously as she approached a shelf carved into the stone walls, blending into the rest of the stone seamlessly. She removed seven pillar candles and floated them over to the center of the room with her. She placed them on the ground, in a wide circle around him. He looked down and was stunned to see there was something carved into the ground under his feet.
With a wave of her wand, all the candles flared to life. The flames reached unnaturally high, illuminating the space with an eerie flickering. He could now see that each candle was at the tip of a seven pointed star. Someone had spent quite a bit of time carving those deep grooves into the solid stone. It was far too worn, the edges softened by years of trampling, to be a recent addition.
Blaise watched his mother in mute confusion. Something was tugging at the edges of his memory, some deep familiarity, an unsettling nostalgia for a place he'd never been, arms he didn't remember wrapped around him.
Ma stopped in front of him, put both hands on his shoulders and gently steered him slightly to the left of center of the circle. She took up her spot across from him. The candles cast ominous shadows across her face. She took a long, assessing look at his face, nodded to herself, and began speaking.
"Tonight, we honor the Dark on the night it is strongest. I invite the dark inside, offer it quarter in my home and heart. The dark flows around and within me, I am enveloped in its velvety arms and obscured from my foes in its endless expanse."
His eyes widened at the words flowing from her. The shadows in the corners of the room swirled sluggishly around their circle. They did not jump and flicker in response to the candle flames, not anymore.
"Nox, Nyx, Nuit, Mother of darkness, formless and primordial, of endless names and countless faces, I call upon you to join us."
The shadows became thick, liquid, sinuously winding around their circle, splashing against the invisible barrier around them. A rush of warmth swept over him.
"Take us under your wing once more. Fold us into your silken sky and cherish us like the stars that illuminate our path. Guide us with hands of moonlight and wind. Whisper to us in dreams."
Blaise heard faint whispers over his shoulder, but every time he swiveled to look it would come from somewhere new. Under his heel, the corner by the shelf, behind his mother, it ricocheted through the room with reckless abandon. The liquid night surrounding them churned violently.
The flames reached alarming heights, impossible for the size of the wick, and yet the room grew dimmer by the second. The encroaching shadows prowled around their pathetic little candles, snarling and ravenous.
"Te lo prometto mio sangue, che sarebbe sempre illeso con te." Blaise's heart was racing, the blood thrumming in his veins struggled against the confines of his body. He shivered violently, desperately trying to hold himself together. The candle flames licked the air erratically, struggling against the heavy emptiness threatening to engulf them.
"In love and in pain, we hold you sacrosanct." The whirling darkness grew frenzied, a tidal wave of pure night crashing against their circle and flattening the flimsy barrier the candles provided. The flames sputtered, helpless against the ancient energy swallowing them whole.
The whispering shadows rushed towards him with startling speed and gnashing teeth. He choked on a scream clawing its way through him, suffocated by the startling emptiness that replaced all the oxygen in the room. It surged down his throat, tearing it's way through his body. It nestled between his organs and vibrated his bones.
It wound its way into the very fiber of his being, burrowed into every atom, weaving thrumming threads of energy around his blood vessels, cradling his nervous system in its gentle hold.
Blaise was powerless to stop it.
It engulfed him in a hug so familiar it ached. The voices in the shadows caressed his ear, indistinguishable whispers comforting him as he gasped for air. It didn't speak in words, but he had no trouble understanding its promises of safety, protection, kindness, nurturing, love.
It reached into his chest and plucked, his heart stuttering under its attention.
He felt completely enveloped in this velvet darkness. He felt its adoration on his skin and its vicious glee in his teeth. It sunk into him as much as he sunk into it.
He held perfectly still, frozen in shock. What exactly does one do when the eldritch powers of darkness give you a hug?
Faint, apparently.
His knees grew weak, collapsing under the weight of their undertaking. The shadows cradled him on his way down, gently lowering him to the stone floor with the tenderness of a mother laying her newborn in a crib.
He kneeled, palms flat on the ground, trying to catch his breath. Blaise had no idea how long he sat there, struggling to calm down. His teeth chattered violently. He couldn't see anything but that suffocating black whirlwind.
Eventually, aeons later, his heart slowed, his hands stilled, his jaw went slack.
The angry hornets under his skin transmuted into lazily fluttering moths.
He strained his eyes to try to see anything in the all encompassing shadows. All he could make out were the sinuous threads winding around him slowing down, returning to their languid lapping.
They slid over each other like snakes around vines, tightening around him and holding him together as he fell apart in its embrace. It constricted around him, binding his ribs together when they threatened to burst open and release the writhing shadows flooding his lungs.
He closed his eyes and realized with a start that the darkness surrounding him was thicker, more impenetrable than the darkness behind his eyelids. He'd experienced darkness so complete he couldn't tell the difference between his eyes being opened and closed, but this was beyond that. This wasn't simply an absence of light.
Behind his closed eyes, he could see a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns shifting endlessly. A reflection of the swirling imperfections on the back of his eyeballs. When he opened them, though, there was nothing but the swirling shadows, each somehow darker than the last.
The abyss flooded their little stone room, stuffing it with a suffocating emptiness. How can a void be empty when it conceals everything that ever was?
He didn't know how long he sat there, bonelessly cradled in the embrace of something that didn't have arms, listening to sweet whispers from something that didn't have a mouth. His chest swelled with emotions he couldn't name.
Hot tears trickled down his face lazily. There was no one to impress here, no prying eyes followed him in the dark cocoon and judged his every movement.
Blaise was bursting at the seams. He couldn't contain it all in his feeble human body, and he wasn't willing to try anymore.
He welcomed complete dissolution and tumbled into the endless emptiness.
He welcomed its ravenous devotion and let it consume him.
He forgot himself in that endless abyss.
Relaxed fully into its embrace.
Allowed it to soak into his skin.
Settle in his joints.
Crawl through his veins.
Tangle in his organs.
Burrow into his bones.
Ensconced in velvet shadows.
Devoured by the dark.
Blaise drifted awake. When had he fallen asleep? Furthermore, when had he gone to bed?
The first thing he noticed was the sunlight piercing his eyelids, and the headache threatening to pierce his cranium.
He groaned and rolled over, pulling the pillow over his head, only to have it snatched away.
"Wake up, Benedetto." Ma's commanding voice wrapped around his name and pulled him to consciousness gracelessly.
He was sat upright before he even opened his eyes. There was no arguing with her when she used that tone, no fighting the tug in his chest.
"Do you know what Benedetto means?" She asked. This time, there was no tug. His brow furrowed even further. She took that to mean he was confused, which was technically true, but not because of her question. She continued, regardless.
"As one word, Benedetto means blessed. As two seperate words, bene detto means well said."
"I know, Ma," he snapped, slipping back into Italian in frustration.
"True names hold power, Blaise," she said simply. His new name sounded odd surrounded by Italian.
"What does this have to do with anything? Why did you wake me up so early for a vocabulary lesson?" He was starting to get impatient. He didn't need a lesson on a language he spoke for most of his life, he needed answers.
"It's three in the afternoon." She replied, unamused.
He rolled his eyes. She fixed him in place with a stern glare, her eyes as brown and unyielding as oak. There was no malice behind it, but enough irritation that he stilled his tongue before more questions could tumble out.
"I had a late night," he replied, equally unamused. Blaise rubbed his eye blearily. He didn't even remember how he got into bed. He looked at her warily.
"So did I," she replied.
"How did it end? I don't remember anything after... the darkness," he asked hesitantly.
She smiled at him softly. "The ritual lasted until sunrise. Nothing happened, per se. We conducted a ritual of invitation, introduction and quiet contemplation in the company of the dark divine. When the sun rose, the darkness dissipated. You were rather unresponsive, so I carried you to bed."
He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.
Ma caught on to his train of thought, as usual. "You have nothing to be embarrassed of, carino. It is overwhelming, especially when you don't know what to expect. I reacted similarly to my first rite as well," she continued with a faraway look in her eyes.
"There's no way to prepare yourself for something like that, though. Any explanation pales in comparison, and it only serves to plant the seeds of disbelief. It is a tradition to go into your first ritual blind. I resented my mother for that, until it came time to try to explain it to you," she said with a snort.
"I learned to recognize the weight of our traditions. I hope I can teach you the same, give you the knowledge that has been passed down for millennia. Stretching back long before Catholicism overtook Italy, and even the Roman Empire before them, our family has maintained these traditions and passed them down in an unbroken line through the generations."
She picked up his confusion easily and explained without him needing to ask.
"When a child is born into our family, there are certain rites we perform to prepare them for the difficulties they will face. We consult the stars, the cards, the birds, the entrails, all these methods to contact the divine and determine what will serve the child best in their path." He nodded along, unsurprised. He was very familiar with divination. It was such a casual part of their daily life, he hardly noticed it any more.
"Then, we call upon our patrons to witness the birth, become acquainted with the child and give their blessings as they deem fit. These are what we call the rites of birth," she said simply, as if that meant something to him. He tilted his head, intrigued.
"You mentioned that last night," Blaise replied, as much a question as a statement.
She nodded. "I did. Nyx was present for them, as were a few other of our favored patrons. You are quite fortunate she took an interest in you, carino." She said with a smile.
"Who else was there? When I was born, I mean," he asked.
"Your father's patron, Fortuna, took an interest in you as well," Ma replied with a small smile.
"Of course, fortune wields a double edged sword." Ma's disposition quickly turned somber. "Being favored by a deity that works in chaos, manipulating chance for her own entertainment can be a heavy burden," she looked him up and down, "but you carry it well, tesoro. We always knew you were destined for great things."
"Of course, you were always going to be magical, there is no doubt about that considering your lineage. However, there are ways to... enhance that. Encourage certain traits, discourage certain others. We didn't know what the divine had in store for you, but we had a good idea of what you would need to handle it."
"Some people have a stronger connection than others. Sometimes it is hereditary, sometimes it is chance, and sometimes..." she trailed off, looking at him with an indecipherable expression.
"Sometimes, it is a gift." Goosebumps erupted over his arms.
Blaise's eyebrows furrowed. This seemed like more than a mother's prideful bragging. She did plenty of that, too, getting into backhanded contests with Lady Malfoy over their accomplishments, which gave him a strong familiarity with that tone. This, however, is not that tone.
"You, my beloved Benedetto, were lucky enough to receive a threefold blessing upon your birth. One from me, one from your father, and one from your Nonna." He nodded along, wishing she would get to the good part already.
"Mine was quite a clever pun, if I may say so myself," she did indeed say so herself, quite smugly to boot. He rolled his eyes. She sniffed primly. Nobody appreciated her jokes in this house.
"Sempre bene detto. Always well said. You, more than most, will have an easy grasp on language, an inherent eloquence, an intuitive understanding of what does, and what doesn't, need to be said. I believe it's part of why you picked up English so quickly," she mused. He hummed thoughtfully.
"That was a gift from Mercurius," Her gaze met his heavily, before she cleared her throat and looked out the window.
"You probably know him as Mercury, though." He nodded, that sounded much more familiar. She continued, answering questions he didn't need to verbalize.
"They aren't terribly picky about what you call them. Over the centuries, they have spread their influence through so many regions, cultures, and languages, that they've accepted the mutable nature of human perception. They called this practice the interpretatio romana. Different lenses to view the same entity."
"I believe it's how they've survived and remained powerful for so long. The gods of the Mediterranean are flexible enough to work with you in whatever capacity your human mind can comprehend and language your tongue can speak."
He nodded along, but she was not fooled. This was well over his poor aching head. She sighed before tucking one curl behind her ear.
"Your father blessed you with good timing, courtesy of Fortuna," she continued. Blaise raised his eyebrows at this. "That may sound trite, but you will find that having time and circumstance on your side, aligning in apparent coincidences that add up to something greater, is quite the boon. I am sure you've noticed that you find yourself ideally positioned at pivotal moments," she said knowingly.
Oh, she definitely knew about his eavesdropping. A flush creeped up his neck as he realized this. He was, once more, deeply thankful his skin was too dark to notice anything short of a raging blush. She continued regardless.
"And finally, your Nonna gave you the gift of perception, with Providentia's blessing. You will see what you need to see, even if you don't understand why. You will notice small things many will overlook, things that seem trivial or inconsequential, things that will confuse you at first. You will have all the puzzle pieces, but never see the picture you are trying to assemble," she said with a sigh.
"This makes you a seer, not a prophet." Blaise didn't know the difference, but knew he didn't need to ask when she got to lecturing like this.
"A seer notices everything they need to observe to deduce the correct conclusion, whether that's in the physical, astral, or dream realm is up to the gods. They give you all the clues, but none of the answers. You will, and probably have, found yourself with vivid memories of minor occurrences that grow to be deeply consequential." He shrugged and nodded. No use denying it if she already knew.
"A prophet is the opposite. They have the answers, with no clues or memory of how they reached it. Most of them cannot remember their prophecies. Some of them can channel this in their daily life, understanding consequences on an intuitive level, but they have the added handicap of being incapable of explaining it to others. It is intuition, the diametric opposite of logic. There is no way to logically string together a reason, not to someone who doesn't have implicit faith in your abilities. It is a lonely life, Benedetto, one that she would not wish upon you despite its benefits." She lost herself in thought for a moment, yet again.
"As you know, your Nonna specializes in divination. She was given the blessing of prophecy, so she does not need divination to receive the messages. She uses divinatory methods to deliver the messages she could never verbalize coherently."
"I do not take to it quite as easily, but these skills tend to skip a generation." Ma sighed.
"She knew you would be in tune with the divine; enough to contact it, to have the ability to understand its vague communications on a daily basis. She made sure that you would never be burdened with prophecy." She trailed off, looking out the window completely lost in thought.
Blaise watched the robins flitting past the window as he waited for her to gather herself. Whatever she was thinking of, she clearly did not want to share.
His patience was rewarded. She heaved a great sigh before continuing.
"When my mother prophesied at your rites of birth, I had never guessed the death of your father would be the first domino to fall."
Air hissed through his teeth as he gasped. She never mentioned Pa.
"It set off a chain of events that have led us here. Whatever the divine has in store for you, it couldn't be achieved at home, no matter how desperately we may wish to remain in our comfortable little niche."
Blaise was stunned for a moment. He began to speak, but his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again.
"What, exactly... happened to him? All I know is that he left one day for a fishing trip and never came back. I assumed it was a storm, but..." his voice trailed off to a whisper at the end. It was still too painful, even after 3 years, but he had to know.
She fixed him with a long, appraising look. She fiddled nervously with her ring. She heaved another great sigh before continuing. He'd never heard her sound quite so tired.
"I suppose you're old enough to know now..." she trailed off, silently debating herself on that statement.
He nodded vigorously. "I need to know, Ma," he butted in before she could reconsider.
She examined his face, and evidently found what she was looking for. She sat up straighter and steeled herself.
"Your father was a good man. He may have done some questionable things, but it was always in the name of providing for and protecting our family," she began apprehensively. Blaise's stomach sank. It was an odd disclaimer for a fisherman who got caught in a storm.
"You must understand carino, fishing isn't exactly a lucrative career. Neither is underselling your talents in healing to the townspeople," she said with a derisive snort.
"Those were our official occupations, but they mostly served to launder our reputations. We had to keep up appearances to remain safe, to keep flying under the radar, to avoid detection by the muggles we lived with as well as law enforcement," she coughed delicately at the end of this statement, as if to brush off the fact that they had something to hide from the cops. He didn't let her.
Blaise stared at her in disbelief. "What exactly were you two doing that you had to hide from the government? Tax fraud?"
She chuckled at that. "Well, yes, that too. We couldn't exactly declare most of our earnings."
He looked at her expectantly. She looked at him cautiously.
"Well?" Blaise asked, getting impatient.
She pursed her lips, before mumbling, "Potions."
"Potions?"
"Yes, Benedetto, potions. I'm sure you noticed the cauldron was always full," she said, not waiting for a response. "I brewed potions, and he ferried them to the buyers. Any inspectors never looked too far past the mountains of stinking fish," she said with a wry smirk.
"Inspectors? Why would you need to hide healing potions from inspectors?" He asked, completely baffled.
She laughed. A single short, sharp "Ha!"
She looked at him, that wry smirk spreading to crinkle the corners of her eyes.
"Tesoro, my dear, sweet, naive son, I think you forget that I have a past stretching long before we settled down to raise you," she said, mirth dancing in her eyes.
"I may not be certified by some overpriced institution, but you'd do well to remember that I am a potions master. There are far more recipes in my repertoire than healing potions mild enough to work on muggles," she said with a small chuckle.
"Like what?" he asked, anxious to speed this along. Ma was way too good at sidestepping questions, he thought with a huff.
She looked at him, taking in his naive trust one last time before shattering it entirely.
"Like poisons, tesoro. Or drugs. Potions with expensive, controlled ingredients and finicky brewing processes, that the rich and the desperate will dig deep in their pockets to obtain, with an extra tip for discretion," she said matter of factly.
Blaise stared at his mother, gobsmacked. He felt like he saw her for the first time. The worry lines on her forehead, swollen bags carved under her eyes, calloused hands, the burn scars on her arms, magical injuries that couldn't be erased even with her exceptional potions. The signs of a long, difficult life.
"So were you, uh, like, a... drug dealer?" He asked hesitantly. He wasn't sure if her laugh was a relief.
"Nothing so crass, carino, no. We didn't stand in a shady alleyway wearing a trenchcoat luring children into addictions," she said with a snort. "But for those who already had them," she stopped to consider her words carefully. He waited patiently.
"Addiction, after all, is one of the strongest vectors of control. Addiction and fear. And we happened to cater to the addicted and the fearful, so we were never short on clientele. We just saw a demand for things we were capable of providing, and calculated the rewards would be worth the risks."
"Sometimes, though, with how it ended... I reconsider that." She admitted ruefully. She shook the macabre thoughts out of her head.
"Your father had some advantageous acquaintances with rather unsavory people from his youth." Blaise's stomach turned. He didn't want to ask what happened to Pa, not anymore.
He had just assumed he drowned, but, well, unsavory acquaintances buying illegal products didn't exactly strike him as the kind and merciful type. His imagination was more than enough, especially knowing that there wasn't a body to bury. Having the facts would only lead him to fill in the blanks with grisly imagery in horrific detail.
"They would make requests that he would pass on to me," she explained with a clinical detachment.
"Your father would acquire the ingredients from other acquaintances, sneak them home under mountains of bass and anchovies, and pass them on to me. I would brew what they requested, and he would make sure it got to them. He organized meetings at docks, handed off a crate of my hard work, collected the money, and caught a few fish on his way back home for the alibi," she said with a shrug, as if it was a casual Tuesday afternoon occurrence.
For her, it was. For him, it turned his entire perception of his parents on its head.
He stared at her for a long moment. She looked back at him, deceptively serene eyes considering how her hands were shaking as she fiddled with her necklace. She usually wasn't one to show her nerves, he thought absently.
She always harangued him about the need for control over your actions and nervous habits. He understood why, now. If you have something to hide, you better get good at hiding.
There were so many things he wanted to say, so many questions he wanted to ask, but one silly thought pushed to the forefront of his mind and fell off his tongue before he could reconsider.
"Huh... guess that's why we were so poor after he passed away, isn't it?"
That pulled a startled laugh from her. He smiled, glad to have broken the tension hanging heavily between them. The memory of that one cashier's eyes full of pity and disgust as they counted change on the counter for flour and salt still haunted him.
"Yes, well," she composed herself, "my skills don't mean much if I can't get the potions to the buyers."
He nodded thoughtfully. "Are you going to continue the, uh, family business?" He trailed off as she chuckled again.
"No, I don't believe so. I don't exactly need to anymore," she said with a sharp smile, gesturing to the opulent room they sat in. It was honestly entirely unnecessary for a twelve year old boy, but hey, he wouldn't complain.
He rolled his eyes, but he couldn't hide his curiosity as he stared at her.
"Would you... teach me?" He asked, his voice shakily nervous.
She breathed in sharply through her nose, scrutinizing him mercilessly.
"Why?"
He rubbed the back of his head, feeling the fuzzy velcro of his close cropped hair, trying to gather his thoughts.
"If you want to get in this business, tesoro, you must learn to hide your nerves better," she snapped. He gulped and quickly pulled his hand back down to rest on his lap. Blaise resisted the urge to trace the patterns in the brocade duvet.
She looked at him expectantly. Blaise steeled himself before looking up to meet her eye, the same shade of chocolate brown as his, but with years of sorrow and hardship tightening the corners and hardening her stare.
"I want to know things everyone else doesn't." Blaise began, knowing that was the core of all his ambitions. "I want to have skills they desperately need. I want to be the only person they can reach out to for that. I want to know their secrets, their deepest desires that they can hide from everyone except the person providing it. And, if I must, I want to be able to use it against them if they turn on me." His answer tumbled out of him before he could think it through, and yet he found himself agreeing with every word.
Ma smiled at him; a cold, cruel, sharp smile bloomed like blood seeping into a bandage. He couldn't help the shudder that ripped through him.
It was not a kind smile, and she was not a kind woman. Blaise had no delusions about that, not anymore. She loved deeply, fiercely, ruthlessly, but that did not make her kind.
He saw the woman who brewed poisons while he napped in the other room behind that smile. The woman who healed children because it made her look good, treated the townspeople because it explained the cauldron perpetually bubbling in the spare room. The woman who lost her beloved, barely allowed herself to finish grieving before she married a man for what she could gain from him; disposing of him at her earliest convenience so she could reel another one in.
He saw her, and she watched him truly see her for the first time. It was disconcerting. Something monumental shifted between them in that moment.
"It is a dangerous life, carino," she said. What she didn't need to say, what he heard implicitly in her warning, was an agreement.
He nodded. "I know. I don't need to live it just because I know how to, but I need to know how in case I end up living it one day."
She hummed thoughtfully, as if that wasn't the most circular logic he could come up with.
"Yes, I suppose you're right. Your name carries weight in certain circles, weight that could drag you down if you don't know how to carry it," she mused.
Blaise reeled in his shock. He shouldn't be surprised by that, not really, but the implications of Pa being a smuggler had yet to truly catch up to him. He didn't mean that he'd go call up whoever was responsible for Pa's death, but that was clearly her first thought. She wasn't wrong, though. Sooner or later, he was bound to run into someone. He vowed he would be ready when that day came.
He quickly schooled his features, trying to take Ma's advice to keep his reactions in check. She caught that, and nodded approvingly.
"You won't have to worry about that for a while, not here. His influence was limited in England, most of his business was in Spain, Morocco and Tunisia, with the occasional trips to France, Greece and Egypt. He rarely crossed the strait of Gibraltar. Perhaps one day you might run into a travelling acquaintance of his in Knockturn, but you will be prepared by the time you can walk into those establishments," she reassured him.
His eyes lit up. "So, does that mean you'll prepare me?"
A mischievous grin stretched across his face, despite his attempts to keep himself in check.
She rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her amusement. "Of course, carino. I could never throw you to the wolves without arming you first."