Author's note: so, if our calculations are correct (which they'd better be!) this story will be 17 chapters long. that means that you have a few more yet.
anyway, not much to say about this chapter. tamara's in the right kind of mood again, so hopefully you will be getting some more tonight. hope you appreciate it. (hint hint review!) actually, you've all been very good about reviewing, and for that i thank you. -bows to kind reviewers- this chapter is dedicated to used romance, who is a wonderful person and a very loyal fan. thanks so much!
Disclaimer: all i own is the story and far, far too much music...
--kyra

12. In which things get awkward

Blaise awoke in the morning with a massive headache and a guilty conscience. His brain insisted that something was very off, but the rest of him couldn't quite figure out what it could be. Something to do with words best left unsaid…

He rolled over to find an empty bed. Something in his mind clicked at that, and he groaned. He promptly groaned again as the sound hit his oddly tender skull. That brought a few things back. Last night. Drunk. Truth or dare. Oh shit! He suddenly felt much less inclined to get out of bed and face life. Especially any part of life that contained Weasley. Yes, certainly nothing dealing with Weasley.

Still, he should probably get out of bed, at least. He'd heard something about walking in the rain or something along those lines to get rid of the hangover. Or maybe that was taking a cold shower. Or maybe that was supposed to prevent the hangover. He couldn't remember, nor did he care to attempt. Mental gymnastics, hell, mental anything was way beyond him. It was all he could do to remember who he was.

Come to think of it, he should probably give that another try, just to make sure. Who was he? Blaise Lucas Zabini, only son (as far as he knew) of Syd Madonna Zabini Prewett Malfoy Rosier… he didn't even really know the rest. He could have thought of them all if he'd concentrated hard, but he was in no condition to concentrate, nor did he really care. His mother's many husbands, all of pure and rich families, were of absolutely no interest to him.

Okay, so he knew who he was. Now for something harder. Um… actually, thinking of something harder was hard in itself. He'd come back to that. What else? Coffee. That might help. How had Potter done it? He didn't know, and he didn't have any wish to try and think about it. Fine, no coffee then. Surely just water wouldn't be too hard, would it?

It was. Not only did Weasley immediately vacate the kitchen the moment Blaise appeared – looking no better than Blaise felt, to Blaise's secret pleasure – but the muggle sink stubbornly refused to work. Too out of it to realize he was turning the tap in the wrong direction, he pulled out his wand and just conjured up the blasted stuff. Who cared about anti-magic wards, anyway? Well, actually, he probably should care, but he had too much of a headache to care about anything but getting it stopped.

It finally faded some time around mid-afternoon, leaving him pain free, if not in a better mood. Weasley still refused to make an appearance, and Blaise decided he was happy about that. Dealing with the redhead would probably be more than he could reasonably be expected to cope with.

They avoided each other for most of the next week, during which time Blaise found out exactly how small the house really was. It might seem big at first, but when two people couldn't stay in it without crossing paths, something was up. He found himself wishing he was back at his own house. There, at least, they would have had plenty of places to go without running into each other. Then again, had they been at his house, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to run into Weasley. All things considered, he would probably rather have had what little time he had managed to get than none at all. Something was better than nothing, though not much. They forgot to mention that when you ceased having said something, you had memories instead, which were, in many cases, worse than having nothing.

Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. Once again employing his hard-won skills at lock picking – no one but Blaise knew how he'd learned, and he intended to keep it that way – he slipped out of the house into the field beyond. He deliberately didn't relock the door, vaguely hoping that Weasley would follow. The other boy seemed in need of a good bit of tension-relieving exercise.

He hadn't brought his broom. Unlike Draco, he didn't worship his broomstick, and he certainly didn't fly it for pleasure. There were other, easier ways of relieving stress. He walked swiftly through the slightly damp grass, relieved it wasn't actively raining, and made his way away from the house. Once he'd reached a suitable place, he glanced behind him. Weasley hadn't followed. Good. It was all very well to hope that Weasley would get out of the house, but Blaise certainly didn't want the other boy following him.

He pulled out his wand, eyed a tree branch, and spoke a soft spell under his breath. A focused jet of blue light shot out of the tip and neatly cut the branch off the tree. Blaise summoned it, eyeing his work with a critical eye. Sloppy, he decided, examining the jagged cut with distaste. He was getting lazy. He hadn't had the opportunity to practice this particular spell for ages, and it showed.

As he practiced, his mind wandered down a well beaten path ending, as he'd known it would, with Weasley. He couldn't forget about the blasted Gryffindor, not even when he was alone. Those brown eyes haunted him every minute of the day, and, now that they weren't speaking again, it seemed even more common to catch himself thinking about the redhead. Blaise wasn't sure if it was his subconscious' way of telling him that it had liked talking to Weasley, or just his deranged imagination acting up again, and he didn't care. The point was that he didn't really want to spend his days mooning over Weasley. Mooning over unattainable boys was something his mother and, to an extent, Draco indulged themselves in, not Blaise. Blaise was the down-to-Earth one, the one who knew what he wanted and how to get it and didn't take no for an answer.

Except this time, he didn't know how to get it. He knew what he wanted – that was simple enough – but he had no clue how to get there. He'd probably ruined all his chances, anyway. Who wants to know that they're being secretly lusted after by a boy they hate? Well, actually, Blaise could name a few, but he'd rather not think about them. There were boys in Slytherin who were seriously messed up that way. But Blaise wasn't one of them, and he was fairly certain Weasley wasn't either.

The thing to do, he thought, as he examined yet another shorn-off tree branch, was to forget about the whole thing. To just pretend it never happened. Better yet, to find a time turner and make it so that it never had happened. Though, if he were to do that, then it wouldn't be necessary to go back in time, which would then mean that it would happen, which would necessitate the journey back, which would make the journey meaningless, which would… he stopped trying to rationalize. He would only drive himself mad doing that. So, pretend it never happened. Well, that was all very well, but how would he go about doing that? The obvious answer was to do just that, and never mention it, but Weasley had to agree as well. So what to do…?

By the time he finally quit for the day, he'd come up with a plan.