Blaise Zabini + his relationship with his mother


She'd always told him not to get attached. Not to the house — there would be another, once they moved. Not to his friends — sometimes people changed, and it was best to have a way out. Certainly not to ideas. Ideas were mutable and disposable.

Blaise was eight years old when his mother knelt, took his hand, and said, "The more quickly you're willing to abandon something, the safer you are." He nodded, though of course he didn't understand yet. Sometimes you only understand things after you have lived them repeatedly.

It was the summer before his seventh year when they moved to the heart of London, into a flat his mother had designed herself. It had cost a fortune, as his mother had commissioned it to be built on top of a luxury Muggle apartment building. (A pointed comment, Blaise had no doubt, on how above Muggles they were in every sense.)

Finagling the construction had been a matter of extreme delicacy, and had threatened the Statute of Secrecy a grand total of twenty-six times. The fines had increased each time. It didn't matter. Money didn't matter.

You couldn't access the apartment from the building itself. They had a private entrance in the complex's courtyard, buried in a yew tree. With three taps of the wand and a simple incantation, the side of the tree folded inward, and with three steps into the darkness, the visitor emerged twenty stories up, in that perpetually sunlit penthouse. The windows had been charmed for perpetual sunlight. Blaise's mother couldn't stand the rain.

The most terrifying thing about Gia Zabini was how airily she got her way. Faced with obstacles, she waited with a patient smile until someone made them melt before her. Faced with any contrary opinion, she laughed and fluttered a manicured hand. When she sighed sweetly and lowered her voice, that was when the opposition knew they were — to put it delicately — fucked.

Blaise's mother was one for breezes and chiffon, for delicate crystal sculptures, for beauty that was fragile rather than durable. Their House Elves had a hard time keeping every inch of the sprawling, beautiful apartment clean.

Blaise knew to the marrow of his bones that his mother was better than everybody else in the world. Nobody was as sharp, as competent, as ruthless. She'd been investigated seven times for the disappearances of her ex-husbands, and seven times, she had emerged with her head held high and her record spotless.

The last ex-husband had been a tall, cool charmer of a man, director of the Cleansweep company. He'd lasted five years. Blaise knew better than to ask what had happened to him. The last time he'd asked about one of the dead men, he had been six years old. His mother had sighed sweetly and lowered her voice, and told him to go to his room.

She didn't let him out for two days. When he finally came out, she asked him if he understood, and he nodded.

In his early Hogwarts years, they'd learned about blood curses in History of Magic. Nobody else had listened to Professor Binns droning on, but Blaise had paid rapt attention to the idea of cursed bloodlines. Maybe Mum didn't kill those men, he privately thought. Maybe she had simply been cursed — cursed not to be able to hold onto anything or anybody. Cursed to lose every man she loved, maybe.

That notion faded, though, as the years passed. Not everything could be explained by dark magic. His mother certainly couldn't be. Her disdain was a type of magic all its own, not so much dark as uncontestable, like the shriveling of leaves in late October.


Gia accompanied Blaise to King's Cross on September 1st for the start of his seventh year. At the station, she had a brief, friendly conversation with Alecto Carrow. Blaise sloped down the train into a compartment with his fellow Slytherins, whom he tolerated with just enough good grace to ensure that he could network with them later in life if need be.

It wasn't that he disliked them. He admired Pansy's conviction, and found Draco amusing, once in a while. But they weren't like him. He was not an adolescent, like the other Hogwarts students. He'd been forced to grow up more quickly.

Others, of course, interpreted this differently. "Do you ever get bored of being such a stuck-up git?" said Seamus Finnigan to him, once, loudly. Blaise just curled his lip in response.

He kept himself detached throughout seventh year. Not just from the foolish resistance efforts some of the Gryffindors were putting up, but from the simpering sweetness of his fellow Slytherins toward the Carrows. Trying to endear himself to them was an unnecessary expenditure of effort, a stupid power play doomed to fail. His time would be better spent elsewhere, on test results and mastering difficult spellwork. Measurable results of his own competence.

In April, for his eighteenth birthday, his mother sent him his usual package — two books, a box of sweets, and a letter. In the letter, she told him she'd contacted Alecto, ensuring that he would be one of the few students allowed to stay at Hogwarts over Easter holidays.

Blaise had spent holidays at Hogwarts before. In fifth year, his mother had arranged for him to meet with someone at Hogsmeade over Christmas break. This woman was the chief importer of Class B Inorganic Tradeable Materials: she dealt in curls of stone from the Whistling Well, twice-dipped Anti-Temporal Sands from the Mariana Trench, curdled shrieks from High-Wind Wailers. He still had her information. She'd told him to owl her anytime, when he was eventually seeking a job.

His mother spared no expense when it came to making connections for him. She never expected him to get any less than top marks, though. "The best way to achieve your goals is to make sure you're capable of them," she would say lightly. "Get complacent, get underhanded, and — well, you might as well throw those wishes away."

So Blaise stayed at school for Easter again, buckled down, and studied. Fewer students returned after break than before; the place was turning into an empty shell.

When given the ultimatum — stay at Hogwarts for the battle, or leave — he felt almost triumphant. Finally, he could prove he'd learned his lessons well, that he didn't let attachments get in the way of his goals. He left without question and without sentimentality.

He Apparated back to London and made for home, ideas bouncing around his head. Maybe he and his mother could Floo down to their summer home in Spain, in case the battle spread, or in case there was an unfavorable outcome. After all, Gia Zabini had given sizable amounts of money toward the Dark Lord's cause. Not easy to trace, but not impossible.

Blaise tapped on the yew tree three times and took three steps into the trunk.

He emerged in their apartment and knew instantly that something was wrong.

A fine sheen of dust lay over the glass tables, clung to the chiffon curtains. A light drizzle collapsed outside the windows, unmasked by charms or false sunlight. The magnificent mirror that hung over the dining room table was folded forward, revealing an empty safe: the Gringotts key was gone.

Blaise was the last man his mother would ever dispose of.

He supposed she'd disappeared out of self-preservation. Cut her losses from the Dark Lord's cause. Blaise was grateful, in a way — grateful that she'd done it this way, vanishing, clearly exonerating him from blame. Grateful, certainly, that she hadn't killed him. Grateful that she'd left him to make his life alone.

He walked slowly to the cabinet and poured himself a drink. It was hundred-year-old Firewhisky, cured over dragonflame. Sipping the amber liquid, he walked through the eerily silent house, through the arboretum with the gracefully drooping Listless Zinnias. He stopped in the bedroom with the arched golden ceiling that his mother had left empty.

Looking at her neatly made bed, he didn't feel surprised. He barely even allowed himself disappointment, let alone sadness. The more willing he was to abandon all that, the safer he would be.

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fin


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-Speech