Chapter 2
March 2001 at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
"They're just jealous" Blaise said, putting his arm around Daphne's shoulder where they sat on a bench outside the castle.
That morning Daphne had found out that all the girls in her year, with the exception of the Slytherin girls, were planning a sleepover party in the coming summer break.
Daphne had never been to a sleepover party. She knew it was a muggle tradition she had heard the muggleborn students in the other houses talk about, but in her world one simply did not host parties with dozens of underage girls overnight. She had certainly had friends to spend the night at her home, but never more than one or two. And it seemed like such a fun idea, with Natalie - the muggle Ravenclaw who was hosting the party - describing pillow fights and 'movies' and dancing and chocolate.
The thing that stung the most, though, was that Natalie had so pointedly excluded only the Slytherins. It wasn't Daphne's fault she was in the house of the serpent.
It was one of the things that infuriated Daphne. She hated the way everyone seemed to come to Hogwarts with some sort of innate prejudice against her house, yet had the audacity to constantly call the Slytherin's bigoted...it was so blatantly hypocritical.
When she had been placed in Slytherin's Daphne had been delighted. She was terribly excited about being in the same house as her father had been, and had been proud that the sorting hat found her ambitious...for she had always been taught that ambition was a good quality.
Yet it only took a few days before she realised that others might not see it that way.
It wasn't long before she had resigned herself to the glances of the other students. That look students would get in their eyes once their eyes found the Slytherin emblem on her robes.
After all, as one Gryffindor had put it, there never was a bad witch or wizard that didn't come out of the Slytherin house. Still, Hufflepuff loyalty hadn't stopped Martin Bell from cheating on Geraldine Brooking last week.
So Blaise was right, in a way. She really was jealous. Jealous that she missed out because, as a Slytherin, everyone assumed she hated muggles.
She didn't understand muggles, but she certainly didn't hate them. In fact she thought that muggles were quite ingenious with the ways they worked around their disability.
Although there were some wizards that wholeheartedly supported the idea of pureblood superiority, Daphne recognised people like Hermione Granger were proof that muggleborn magic was no different.
And the people who threatened the death of magic should wizards be allowed to marry muggles, well, did she really need to point out the flaws in that logic?
That said, she unequivocally believed in maintaining the purity of bloodlines. She would never let herself marry someone below her class, and the fact was that in wizarding society muggles were not amongst the well-established families. She would most likely marry a pureblood simply because it was the pureblood families that tended to be the highest ranking.
She would marry an ordinary wizard over an unknown muggle, a pureblood wizard over an ordinary wizard, and the muggle King of England above all.
It really boiled down to simple mathematics and the laws of social hierarchy.
June 2001: Zabini Country Estate
Once holidays started Daphne could still feel the sting of exclusion, and despite herself she found herself envying those girls for being so automatically accepted by each other.
She had been surprised earlier by an invitation from the Zabinis to stay with them, and thought it a perfect opportunity to take her mind away from less pleasant thoughts.
Daphne arrived to the smell of roast chicken. Blaise had grown up to be very self-sufficient due to his flighty mother. One of his secret pleasures was to cook. He was quite masterful with the spellwork of the kitchen, and seemed to have an innate ability to mix flavours and textures in the dishes he created. Daphne herself couldn't do much more in the kitchen than flip pancakes, and even then her wandwork tended to result in some very interesting mid-air pancake acrobatics.
She smiled at Blaise, and removed her jacket as she looked around for his mother.
"She's meeting up with a friend" said Blaise, and Daphne could hear the imaginary quotations in his voice.
Daphne nodded and took a seat on one of the large comfortable couches in the room.
She nodded towards a pile of pillows that were heaped on the floor at the other end of the room, and looked at Blaise questioningly.
"I'll tell you later" he smiled.
Through dinner Blaise and Daphne traded the stories they had heard since school had broken up. It had been a traumatic end to the year. Cedric Diggory had been killed during the last task of the Triwizard Tournament, and a crazed Potter had returned screaming about death eaters.
It had been awful. No one really knew what had happened and that made it all the worse. Some people thought Potter might be right, that You-Know-Who really was back from the dead. Others seemed to think he and Diggory had ended up somewhere and had dueled to the death.
Daphne and Blaise, both part of pureblooded families, had heard many rumours since they left Hogwarts. And the rumours that were floating around did not bear good news for the future. There were dark whisperings of death eater activity, and quiet murmurs of someone reforming the old movements. Daphne knew her family would most likely try to stay neutral, as they had in the last war. Yet Daphne had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that if the war was to happen again, that the luxury of being 'Switzerland' might not be so straightforward.
She just hoped she came out the other side unscathed.
After dinner Blaise smiled, and Daphne could see he was bubbling with excitement about something despite his stony cool facade. Only she could read Blaise so well, and where others might see only the serene and composed son of the Zabini family, Daphne could see the grin he was trying to suppress.
He led her into the family room and, with a wave of his wand and a flourish of his hands he banished a sheet that was hanging down one wall.
On the wall was an enourmous empty picture frame.
Daphne raised an eyebrow. Surely she was missing something.
Blaise grinned.
"I know you were upset about missing out on the muggle sleep thing, so I asked around the muggleborns at school about what happens...and I've got the perfect muggle sleepover planned for you tonight Miss Greengrass" he said.
Daphne laughed. Trust Blaise to think of something so completely...perfect.
"What's with the frame then?" she asked.
"Well, apparently muggles all sit around and watch moving pictures" he explained.
"They're supposed to be telling stories in pictures on their telivisters".
Daphne laughed, and Blaise pushed her over to the big couch and made her sit down. Then he grabbed a big fluffy blanket and draped it over them both before making himself comfortable in the burrows of the couch.
With another flick of his wand a photo appeared within the frame.
Daphne laughed.
On the wall was now a huge blown up version of one of her baby photos. In it she was not more than three months old, with big brown eyes and a completely bald head. The baby giggled and smiled and lifted its hands towards the camera.
"I didn't really know what story to tell, so I thought I'd just put on pictures of us growing up" he said, and Daphne noticed that he suddenly seemed quite self-conscious about the entire thing.
"I think its wonderful. Thankyou Blaise" she said, and she moved her hand to hold his, then, without giving herself time to rethink her next movement she slid across the couch to sit next to him, her hand in his and her head on his shoulder.
She couldn't help but feel like there was more taking place right now that she could understand.
Blaise stretched his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into him, and then with his other hand he flicked his wand again.
A series of baby pictures followed, of both Blaise and Daphne growing up. Daphne laughed as the pictures showed the aging of the two of them. Many of the photos captured moments both comical and adorable. She particularly liked the one where she and Blaise were playing a life-sized chess board and Blaise jumped two squares while distracting her by pointing at a kneazle, then check-mating her only three moves later.
She pinched him when he laughed next to her.
The night was a wonderful surprise, thought Daphne as she lay in the bed in the guest room and watched the stars on the ceiling swirling around on a background of navy blue.
And as her sleepy eyes began to get heavier and heavier, Daphne couldn't help but feel the lingering warmth of Blaise safely pressed against her side.