If Blaise hadn't known better he would have believed Malfoy without question.
They were sitting in the Slytherin common room, Malfoy on the dark green couch by the fireplace. On the arm of the chair perched Pansy Parkinson, her pert little face turned towards Malfoy in pure adulation.
Malfoy was obviously enjoying himself. He sat casually in his makeshift throne. Around him on the other couches, and sitting on the floor by the fire, was an array of Slytherin students, all listening intently as Malfoy described his latest meeting with You-Know-Who.
Blaise seriously doubted him.
He seriously doubted that Draco Malfoy had actually sat and clinked a glass of wine with the Dark Lord in a toast to Harry Potter's future demise.
And how the idiots surrounding Malfoy had been duped by the obviously fictional tale Blaise didn't know.
With Dumbledore now banished from the castle, and the incompetent Ministry claiming the position of Hogwarts Headmaster through their disgusting pig of a replacement, Umbridge, Blaise was struggling to see a silver lining to the whole sorry saga.
He wasn't sure if the other houses were aware of just how fanatical a number of Slytherin students had become about the growing power of the Dark Lord. He supposed if anyone had actually listened to the sorting hat at the beginning of each year, and had actually attempted interhouse friendships, then circumstances might not have reached this state.
But as it was, Slytherins continued to be ignored by the Hogwarts majority and this had simply resulted in the strengthening of inter-Slytherin ties, and a growing hero-worship of known dark families such as the Malfoys.
Because, as the current war was shaping up, it seemed as if it would be families like the Malfoys who would end up on top.
Blaise himself remained true to his values, namely self-preservation. He was not going to publicly announce allegiance to anyone unless he was certain he was choosing the side on which he would live.
So he listened good-naturedly to Malfoy's boasts about his growing friendship with his master, and he deferred to Malfoy's opinions whenever differences arose, because if Malfoy really was going to get the upper hand then Blaise wasn't about to put himself out of favour, even if Malfoy was a total idiot.
The truth was, however, that Blaise failed to see how Malfoy could be so blind.
The Malfoys, like the Zabini's, were an old family. And their families honoured one thing, and one thing only - their status.
In the wizarding world status depended on a number of things, including money, political power, connections, and social standing. Every party, every friendship, every conversation was ultimately a means to achieving these goals. It was a way of perceiving the world that only someone who had been raised in such an environment could understand. From birth Blaise had learnt that everything that one did or said had a double meaning. There was what was said on the surface, and then there was the meaning underneath.
It made life so much more perilous, but also so much more interesting.
And in a world where war was a fingerbreadth away, it only made the game more fun.
"And now that my father has become...indisposed...I of course am invited to all the most exclusive events" drawled Malfoy.
Blaise rolled his eyes and continued reading his book on the Properties of Brazilian Underwater Fungi.
"And once He finally has a firm grasp of the Ministry of Magic, and that incompetent fool of a Minister is taken down a notch, I of course will be allowed to have my pick of the political ministries. I was thinking I might even nominate myself for Hogwarts, as obviously having someone so close to the wider student body would be such an advantage to our Lord in weeding out the unwanted and focusing on building up a greater Wizarding society than ever before."
Malfoy continued droning on and on about the ways in which he would be rewarded by the Dark Lord once he had taken power. Blaise kept glancing up at Malfoy, trying to read in his features whether Malfoy truly believed what he was saying.
Because surely anyone could see through such drivel?
If Malfoy truly thought his family was going to be granted luxuries and wealth and prestige through the rise of Voldemort then he had another thing coming.
It was a shame, really. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had always been really nice to Blaise. Overnight adventures with Draco at Malfoy manor had always been exhilarating, and Lucius would often set up elaborate obstacle courses for the boys, and even allow them to play dungeons and dragons in the Malfoy dungeons with real fire-breathing baby dragons (at least, Blaise thought they had seemed real to two seven year old boys - and Blaise had definitely had more than one shirt singed in their adventures).
The Malfoys, like the Zabini's, were present at all the social galas that were on the mandatory schedule for the influential members in their society. And Narcissa and Blaise's mother were friends who often spent weekends away in wizarding Paris shopping for clothes.
It seemed to Blaise that this desire to rise in society, the need for more money, more power, more things, was the underlining factor in all of this. The Dark Lord promised his followers everything. He promised them political power, he promised them fame and fortune and anything they desired. He let them think he would solve all their problems. He had a way of finding out dreams and promised them in abundance.
And the end result, thought Blaise, was that families like the Malfoys were duped into this faction of followers. They were sent to prison, made bankrupt through funding death eater activities, threatened and cajoled, and tortured by their 'master'.
And everything they had originally wished for, everything they had been promised, was thrown in their faces until dignified families like the Malfoys lost everything but their name, and found themselves licking the boots of a deranged monster.
There was no prestige in that.
And their greed for more would ultimately be their undoing.
Blaise would not let that happen to him.
He knew he needed to control his mother, but he also knew that she wouldn't have the wits to join the Dark Lord without his help, and Blaise did not intend to ever wear one of those masks.
He was his own man. He took pride in this fact, and would not let it go easily.
He would remain standing through everything that was on the horizon.
And he would not be alone.
Over the past few months he had begun to realise that. He had started to uncover feelings that he had unconsciously hidden within himself. Daphne had been his friend for as long as he could remember. They had shared their lives with each other.
She had been like the sister he never had.
Well, that was the way he had always thought about it at least. But now, over the past few months, things had been happening to him when he thought of her. He had started to notice the way her blonde hair sat just so on her collarbone. The way that whenever she drank her morning juice she always ended up with a millimetre or two of a juice moustache. The way that she bit her lip when she was puzzling over a homework question, and the way that she slightly bobbed her head when she had worked out the answer.
Yes, he had finally come to the realisation that maybe the feelings he held for Daphne weren't entirely the brotherly type. In fact, they were nothing of the brotherly sort.
And it killed him, because it meant that either he sat back and kept his distance, and watched her inevitably be stolen from him by some other boy, or he jumped in and told her his feelings and risked everything, risked their friendship, by admitting that he didn't want to be alone, that he wanted her.
Blaise lost himself in his musings as he watched the flickering logs in the common room fireplace, Malfoy still acting the braggart to his captive audience.
He honestly wasn't sure how he was going to handle the Daphne situation, but no matter what he intended to do everything in his power to keep her friendship, and to keep their families safe.
He gave a small smile. He knew he didn't have the same greed that the Malfoys were displaying, their greed would be their undoing.
He just hoped his greed wouldn't be his undoing too.