Title: Truth Is

Chapter: 11

Summary: Blaise and Hermione haven't spoken to one another in three years, suddenly they are once more apart of each other's life. When you think you can't hurt any worse, and you think your hope can never be revived, love shows up and makes a fool of you. Not HBP Compatable

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author notes: Not HBP Compatable! The Zabini family order might be a little difficult so here it is from oldest to youngest: Antonia, Sienna, Niccolo, Blaise, Michele (Ponounced: Me- Qay-Lay) Marco. I apologize to all the Anti-Victoria reader's out there, I prefer my characters to actually have a soul. I couldn't help but to try to redeem her.


"Truth Is"


Chapter 11

(Two Weeks Later: Cartagena, Spain)

Blaise watched him closely, a new emotion settling at the pit of his stomach, it seemed that the eight years between he and his younger brother were almost none existent. He remembered, vividly, the shy ten-year-old in tears the year he graduated and had decided to enter the war fresh out of Hogwarts, his heart swelled with ideals and causes. It had been ten years, he sighed with discontent, where had the years gone? He watched Marco Manuel Zabini with new interest, where had this man come from?

This tall, dark, charming, young man hadn't been there when, three years into the war, their older brother, Niccolo had been tortured and killed. Blaise could vividly remember the thirteen-year-old taking a semester off from Hogwarts and not saying much to anyone. Niccolo had been the first boy of six children, with two older sisters, every Zabini son after him would worship him and follow him unto the end. And follow him they did, Blaise squeezed his eyes shut as the memory of his brother, Michele, accosted him.

The third son of the Zabini clan had been well into his tenure at Sicily's own Palermo School of Wizarding when the school closed because of the war and he had decided to enter the war, just as his older brothers did. Michele had entered the war just as it began to have a clear cut winning side but he had been caught at the wrong end of a dark curse, no Mediwizard could ever determined how he died. Those were the hardest years of his life, he lost two blood brothers, his oldest brother and one of his younger brothers, and more comrades and friends than one could imagine, and how his youngest brother had come out seemingly unscathed was nothing short of a miracle.

Marco was the youngest of the Zabini clan, now fresh out of Hogwarts and two years into his Mediwizard training in Spain, he was the only child in his family to not have seen the horrors of The Great War first hand but he had felt each loss just a strongly as everyone else. Blaise was grateful for the time in Spain, he had seen his brother very little since he had began following his political dreams. Marco looked very much like their older sisters, Antonia and Sienna, with his lean frame, statuesque build, honey brown eyes, and thick chestnut hair, it had been a look that Blaise had always envied. Blaise and his, now deceased brothers, had all taken after their father with their dark hair and eyes, a distinctly Mediterranean look now adored by women world wide, yet Blaise could remember growing up envying his brother's European features.

"I'm glad you came, Blaise," Marco said, as he joined his brother at the patio table.

"I'm glad I came too, Marc," Blaise replied, looking at his youngest brother trying to not to tune into the flashbacks, "I was just thinking about how long its been since we've all been together."

"It's been a long time, huh," Marco stated, fully aware of whom his brother spoke of, "mother finally went down to the mausoleum to visit them. I thought she would never forgive them . . . or you."

Blaise chuckled at the thought of his mother, she had been so angry at her sons for going to war that she refused to speak to any of them while they were gone. And Cara Zabini had grown angrier when Niccolo and Michele died, she cried for weeks and only asked why her sons wouldn't come home to her. Then her grief had been escalated tenfold when Blaise and Hermione broke-up, it seemed her second son was dead-set on ruining her family. "She never could stay angry at us. How is she?"

"Sick," Marco answered simply, twisting the simple gold band on his middle finger, "she's recovering from a nasty bug and she misses you terribly. Father allowed her to come visit Amara and I last month and all she could talk about when she could see her whole family together again."

"She will," Blaise replied, feeling the tug at his heart. Who was he to break his mother's heart. "I promise she will have all of us under the same roof again, one day soon."

"How's Hermione? Father told us that she was working with you," Marco asked. He and Hermione had, had a connection since the first time Blaise had brought a freshly seventeen-year-old Hermione to his family's Tuscany home for holiday.

"She's . . . good," he answered, not exactly sure what to say about the woman he had loved for so long it seemed impossible to conjure any time of his life without her.

"I wish I could see her," Marco said, with a grin, "she wouldn't recognize me. I know Amara would love her, they probably could talk medicine and history for hours."

Amara Xanthopoulos was Marco's girlfriend of two years, they had met his first year in Mediwizard training and had been inseparable since. Blaise nodded, seeing many similarities in the Grecian Island native and his Hermione, the one he had so callously thrown away years before. "Marco?"

"Yea?" his brother answered, after he had conjured up two glasses of pumpkin juice.

"Don't ever let anything get in the way of what you feel toward Amara," Blaise warned his younger brother, the look in his eye saying all that needed to be said, "nothing."

"Like you did with Hermione," Marco retorted, his light brown eyes full of sympathy for his only living brother.

Blaise nodded, before taking a drink from his glass, his eyes tuning into the early morning sky. "Niccolo would kill me if he knew how horribly I've handle this. He would've hated Victoria and still kept post with Hermione, I know he would have, he always knew what was best for me. Sometimes I wonder . . . "

Marco bit his lip, the loss of his most beloved brother still fresh although it was little more than a decade ago. "What?"

"Sometimes I wonder," he began, a small sigh interrupting the flow of his words, "if Niccolo had made it would any of this have happened."

"What could Nic have changed if you were already hell-bent on . . ." Marco began but stopped suddenly as he began to think his words over in his head, deeming them unfit to be spoken just yet.

"Go on," Blaise urged his brother, quietly, "go on say it: if I were already hell-bent on ruining my life. Nic could have changed everything, he could have made me see reason. He always saw disasters coming when it came to us and I'm sure he would've have seen this one coming."

Marco nodded, speaking softly, almost to himself, "We'll never know, will we. So how are you going to fix this?"


Supreme Mugwump Chandler Balfour sat behind his desk, his reading spectacles sitting dangerously on the tip of his pointed nose as he skimmed over the report that was given to him. Hermione bit her lip as she noted the thickness of his white hair and the thin line that consisted of his lips, she noted, quickly, to tread lightly because he didn't appear happy. Just as she noted her boss' disposition he laid the paper down with a soft thump and an irritated growl.

"Miss Granger," he began, his tone even and calm yet full of fire, "you are the finest Negotiations Specialist that the Confederation has ever had. So might I inquire why so many things in that report were handled so horribly?"

"I have no excuses, sir," she replied, contritely, "although I will say things were handled brazenly because that was the option we had left."

Mugwump Balfour frowned, linking his fingers together, before he spoke, "My dear, I do believe you mean that. How I raged when I caught wind of the ties the new Minister was attempting to forge with Brazil, subsequently Carlo Santiago. I just never imagined that Santiago would become an enemy of the state, let alone the world. How will I look into my ambassador's faces once we go to trial? Genocide, who would have ever thought that Santiago would go for genocide?"

"That's how Zabini felt when all this came to light," Hermione remarked, watching the emotions float across her boss' face, "he had no idea the operation that Santiago had been covering while he was making nice with the man. Sir, after all that we went through with the war I thought the moment Zabini saw Santiago he would kill him but he handled it better than anyone I knew would."

"My dear," he began, looking across his desk at the attractive young woman, with her hair sweeping across her shoulders and her face glowing with constant exposure to the sun, he heart swelling as her similarity to a woman he had known years before grew, "he handled it better than I could have. After a lifetime filled with Grindelwald and Voldemort, Carlo Santiago is a villain I can live without. Ten years of peace to be interrupted by a bitter thief, it is quite an unbearable thought for me, Miss Granger."

"Sir," Hermione began, quickly weighing her words before speaking to the man who had quickly followed Dumbledore as her mentor, whom she fondly adored, "you will handle him as need be very soon."

"How I wish I could destroy him, child," Balfour replied, his voice even and deadly, the edge sending chills down Hermione's spine.

"His time is coming soon," she tried to be reassuring, "soon he will no longer be a threat."

"Did he really think he could live up to the standards set by Grindelwald? Or even Voldemort? Those men reigned by crude mental manipulation not just brute force and brash emotion, Carlo Santiago never stood a chance," he said, as he stood and walked over the window that took up an entire wall of his office.

Hermione had no reply to his statement, she, as well as her entire generation, knew that there would never be a mortal man to ever live up to terror created by Lord Voldemort. Balfour turned to her, his professionalism now regained, "How many men are being prosecuted with him?"

"Three," Hermione answered swiftly, "they have all been found to be staunch supporters of Santiago's supposed cause."

"Do any of them have counsel or any of the unnecessary riffraff?" He asked, while taking his seat at his desk.

"At this moment," she began searching her memory, opening up the report that lay in her lap, "they have none that I know of."

"Well," Mugwump Balfour replied, his lips in a tight thin line and eyes narrowed, "Miss Granger, this is where your job comes in. I need you to find out when they get counsel and began negotiating with them, if you have to offer some small time deal that we know they won't take, and find out what trumped up defense the ICW will have to deal with come trial time."

"Yes, sir."


Victoria frowned as she felt a broad shoulder brush against her, interrupting her train of thought. She placed her glass down and glared at the man, she had chosen the end of the bar for a reason, she wanted complete and utter privacy while she pondered the mess her life was in. She tried to think of a polite way to ask him to move, watching him silently as the bartender made him a drink, yet she remained quiet, he looked familiar. She had never been near the man before but could spot the evident pedigree and mesmerizing brown eyes anywhere after all the magazine covers he had graced. Victoria watched him as he took a long gaze into his glass before he drank the entire thing and then asked for another.

She turned to him, sticking her hand out for him to take as she spoke, her gentle Texas accent forcing him to take notice, "I do believe we've never formally met, I'm Victoria Carrington."

He raised an eyebrow, a slight grin working at the corner of his mouth, he knew exactly who she was. He took her hand as his eyes did a quick once over of her feminine frame and picturesque features, she was undeniably an aesthetic beauty. "It's a pleasure, Ian Knight."

"I thought that's who you were," she remarked as she reclaimed her hand and picked up her glass.

Ian smiled, chancing another glance at her as he swirled the brown liquid around in his cup. "I knew who you were the moment I entered the room. So I took a chance and grabbed this seat before some other lucky bloke did."

"So you really are a charmer," Victoria replied, with a smile.

Ian chuckled, retorting with a serious tone, "You really aren't as vapid as the paper's say you are."

Victoria was far from insulted, instead she gave a sincere chuckle and said, "Which is exactly why most of your European publications are always on the chopping board for slander."

"Beautiful and smart," Ian replied, before taking a short sip from him glass. It had been a long morning and an even longer few weeks. It had seemed the more stress his relationship came under the more he fought to maintain it but the faster it seemed to slip between his fingers. That morning Hermione had departed from the their room angry, they had another fight to cap off the massive argument they had the night before. To think this was all for love.

"So is your Hermione," she retorted, her blue eyes lowering in some unspoken emotion that Ian couldn't completely read.

He knew there was a lot of emotion in his struggling relationship with Hermione but the pain sitting behind the gleam in her blue eyes was a whole new territory. "That she is. You know, I would like to know what makes your eyes dim like that."

"What?" Victoria asked, not realizing that she was showing Ian the side few people in the world even realized she had. She looked up at the man seeing exactly what it was that made it so hard for Hermione to leave him, his kindness, his hearts capacity for compassion, it was etched all over his face.

"When you spoke Hermione's name your eyes became so sad," he answered, not realizing he was enchanting the young woman, "I was just wondering why."

"Well," she began quietly, her eyes not leaving her cup but for a moment to glance at the man, "I'm sure its no secret but my fian -- Blaise, Blaise, has never seen in me all the things he saw in her. And only now did I realize that I honestly wanted him to . . . love me."

"So the breakup is eminent?" Ian asked, carefully.

Victoria chuckled sarcastically, her hurt masking itself in anger. "It should have taken place a long time ago but he wants nothing but good press right now and, as usual, I complied."

"You deserve more, Victoria," he said, not really knowing what more to say, "every woman does."

Victoria sighed, her eyes finally comfort in the friendliness of Ian's stare. "To think, I was only a child when I started this dangerous game but I've grown so much because of it. I don't think I'll ever see anything the same way again."

"Is that really so bad?" Ian asked, raising his eyebrows, not totally understanding what kept him in conversation with woman who had caused Hermione so much pain. Yet he couldn't fight the nagging thought that Victoria had no power to cause Hermione any pain, only Blaise could do that.

She shrugged, it was the most untrained thing he had ever seen her do in public, when she finally spoke, her voice was soft, almost broken, "People are always saying that change is a good thing. But all they are really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all, has happened."

"You honestly loved him, eh?" he quirked, never having thought before this very moment that whatever it was that banded Victoria Carrington to Blaise Zabini was anything akin to love.

Victoria found the shock in his voice to be slightly hilarious. She knew he wouldn't be the only person in the world to be surprised by that announcement. She smiled, a genuine smile, holding back her laughter, she remarked, "It's a shock, isn't it?"


My Dearest Hermione,

Your letter came as the greatest surprise but a welcome one. I have not heard from you in years but I took such great joy in reading your letter. I completely understand your reasons and your convictions for putting such distance between yourself and the Zabini clan; yet, I take such joy in your remembering our great friendship. To believe that it has been three years since we have spoken is very difficult for me.

Oh, I have so much to say yet I don't want to burden your owl with pages and pages of parchment. Father told me about your brief meeting in April, how I wished I could have been there but I'm sure the intimacy was lost with the situation that had forced the meeting. Mother is slowly recovering from an awful bug that had her bedridden for close to three months. She misses Blaise terribly and I truly wish, for her sake, that his business would send him to Italy soon, minus Victoria Carrington.

However, that is off the subject, on with the family news. Antonia and Montigilio have just recently celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary, he built her a new estate out on the island of Sardinia, it is massive and all together gorgeous. Octavian is the splitting image of Montigilio, they decided to send him to Hogwarts and therefore Maria was also sent there, he's fourteen and I know you wouldn't recognize the thirteen-year-old Maria, she looks so much like mother. Angelo and I are doing quite well, we still reside on his family's estate outside of Florence. My Claudio and Santo are eagerly awaiting their school year, I never thought I'd see the day when my boys were a year aways from leaving me. It's a sorrowful thought and that makes me realize that my Luciana is already seven and is wondering what kind of a wand she'll get. Oh, Hermione, one day you'll see how painful it is to have them grow-up on you. Oh, do let me stop before I ruin the ink with my silly tears. Alessandria has finally remarried, she married a German diplomat two summers ago, but she brings young Niccolo, who is nine-years-old now, to visit often and we always talk fondly of his father. Ah, and father's pride and joy, Marco is in Spain now, has been for two years enduring Mediwizard training. You should stop by and visit I'm sure he'd adore the very sight of you. Hermione, our entire family misses you with such heartfelt fervor.

I found it rather peculiar that my brother wished to keep that petulant harpy around when she was neither wanted not needed but I have realized that my little brother has been trying to keep up a facade. I don't know exactly why my brother fell into the hole that he did but I do know that he regrets ever losing you. We've always been especially close and I've probably been the one person in the world to know, even three years ago, that he would never marry Victoria. Oh, Hermione, how do I make penance for the mistakes my brother has made? I'm sure he'd be mortified if he knew that I was attempting to petition you on his behalf but I do believe that you are the only woman for him.

If my previous words are any indication, I'm not a big supporter of your relationship with the Knight heir. I would be if it was something that made you truly happy and I don't care how many legitmate literary publications you two appear on I will never be convinced that he truly makes you happy. Hermione, don't let the past fool you, even after all the heartache, you and he have the possibility of real happiness together. You two love each other, I've known that since the first day I met you, eleven years ago, you have always loved my brother for who he was. That's why my mother and I admired you, you knew the worst things about my brother and treasured him more for them. Now that you know the worst thing that he is capable of and the deepest darkest piece of him you are finally free. You are free to love him completely, totally, with no fear. There is finally nothing that you don't know about him and it's okay.

Well, I must end this letter now, I am supposed to accompanying Angelo and his mother, Mariana Traversini, to some banquet hosted by the Italian Ministry. I cannot wait to see you, I do hope it won't be too much longer, I'm only five years from forty I do wish to see you before then. Ah, I know you are soon to see thirty and I do wish to be able to have you around for both our milestones.

All my love,

Sienna Octavia Zabini Traversini

P. S. Do not allow your pain to allow you to skip out on real love. It's too difficult to decipher these days just to throw away.