Blaise didn't have another day off for almost a month, but when it happened again, he sat down to compose a letter to Tracey the evening before.

Tracey-
Would you like to meet me at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade tomorrow around ten? I know it is short notice, sorry about that. But I didn't know my day off was going to be tomorrow until today.
Blaise

He sent it off with some misgivings, which was strange in itself. He went to bed that night without having received an answer. The owl did return though, the next morning, soon after Blaise got up. Tracey's response did not feel, to him, like Tracey.

Blaise-
To be honest, I was planning to send you a refusal. I did have plans. But they were cancelled, so I guess I'll see you at ten.
-Tracey

He was at the Three Broomsticks before ten, and Tracey arrived promptly on the hour. Blaise was already sitting at a table slightly apart from the others and Tracey didn't see him immediately. As she looked around the pub, he studied her.

She had pulled her hair away from her face with a clip, but whether intentional or accidentally, several strands had escaped. She was dressed in a pretty white and lavender blouse, black jeans, heeled black leather boots, and a matching black leather jacket which she took off soon. She was, Blaise thought, very pretty.

Tracey saw him then and came over, sitting down across from him and smiling at him. "Hello, Blaise."

"Hey, Tracey," he said, returning the smile.

Madame Rosmerta came over. "And what will you two be wanting, then?"

"Oh, a pint of your oak-matured mead, I think," Tracey said.

"Same for me," Blaise decided. "Actually, how about you just bring us a bottle and two glasses?"

"All right then." Madame Rosmerta left again.

"That all right with you?" Blaise asked Tracey.

She smiled a little. "That's fine."

They did not speak again until Madame Rosmerta had brought the mead and glasses and went on her way again. Blaise tipped a generous amount of the honey-coloured liquid into both glasses, and then pushed one towards Tracey.

"Thank you," she said, her hand closing around the glass.

Blaise took a sip of his own drink. "So, how've you been?" he asked, more for the sake of saying something than any other reason.

"Okay," she replied simply. "How are you?"

Blaise shrugged. He wished she would talk. Like she used to. It had never been Blaise who had initiated their conversations.

Tracey suddenly lowered her glass and sighed. "Where have you been?" she asked directly.

"Well, I took my mother to America during the war, you know," Blaise began, relieved. "I didn't want to get involved. And then, two years later we came back, but I left soon, I went to Italy."

"Italy?" Tracey questioned, surprise and curiosity in her dark blue eyes. One hand toyed absently with her white pearl necklace.

"Yeah." Blaise hesitated for a second. "I went to find my father."

Again, Tracey showed surprise. "I guess I never really thought about your father," she admitted honestly. "I just always expected he was one of your mother's husbands."

Blaise wondered at the matter-of-fact way in which she referred to his mother's husbands. "He wasn't," he told Tracey. "I was born before she was married the first time. She met my father when she was on holiday in Italy…and I just happened."

Tracey laughed suddenly. "Zabini, yeah, I didn't really think about that either, but it's an Italian surname, isn't it?"

"Yeah, that's my dad's. His name is Luca Zabini."

Tracey looked intrigued. "So you found him, then."

Blaise nodded.

"Did you like him?"

He grinned suddenly. "Yeah, I did."

"What was he like?" she asked.

And Blaise told her. He told her all about Italy and Luca Zabini in much greater detail than he had told his mother, and then he told her everything he knew about his parents' time together.

Tracey was a really good person to talk to, he decided. She listened with the just the right amount of interest and interrupted the perfect amount of times.

But he was surprised at himself for talking so freely. It wasn't Blaise-like, and it did kind of disturb him.

They went for a walk, heading along the High Street, after he was done with his story. The December day was chilly and at first they walked in silence.

Blaise was the one who broke it. "What have you been doing?"

"I got a job at Gringotts not long after the end of the war. I wasn't sure it's what I want to do with my life-still am not, really. But it pays well and it gives me more freedom than some jobs would…and I do like it." She glanced at him. "So I suppose I'll stay there, at least until I find something I want more."

Blaise nodded. "Desk job?"

"Yeah," she said. "In some ways I think I kinda would like to work for the Daily Prophet or maybe Witch Weekly. Like a reporter."

Blaise looked at her. He could see Tracey as a reporter. "Maybe you should."

She smiled at him. "But none of the options open to me seem very appealing. Pansy is working for Witch Weekly, you know."

He nodded again. "You wouldn't like that?"

They had reached the Shrieking Shack. Tracey leaned on the fence and looked up at it while she replied.

"I don't know, really. But they're not at all low on staff-or reporters, so I don't know if it would be a good time to try to start."

"You could send stuff in just to try," Blaise heard himself suggesting.

Tracey looked at him and then she smiled. "Maybe I should. It's not like I have to quit my Gringotts job to write something for Witch Weekly, is it?"

It wasn't really a question and Blaise didn't bother to answer.

"Have you ever been inside?" Tracey asked in an abrupt subject change, gesturing towards the Shrieking Shack.

"No," Blaise said. "The entrances are all sealed, aren't they?"

"Not anymore," Tracey told him. "During the Battle of Hogwarts the Dark Lord blasted open the door and was in here for a while." She hesitated, her hand at her throat, and then added, "Snape was killed in here."

Blaise looked a little startled. "Who killed him?"

"The Dark Lord," Tracey said.

"But I thought Snape was right in his inner circle. Why'd he kill him?" Blaise had a feeling being out of the country when he had been had caused him to miss out on learning a lot of things.

"Snape was a spy for Dumbledore," Tracey explained patiently. "Potter told everyone after it was all over. Apparently Snape was totally in love with Potter's mum, Lily Evans Potter, and when the Dark Lord killed her Snape switched sides. Only I don't think the Dark Lord knew that…" She frowned. "I'm not quite sure why he killed him, really."

Blaise looked back at the Shrieking Shack. "Did they leave it open so people can get in it?"

"Well they put a new door on," Tracey replied. "But they didn't seal it shut. So people can get in now but a lot of the time they don't. Scared to, mostly. You know how it's always been said to be so haunted? Just got worse now. They say Snape haunts it. But I don't believe that really. Can you imagine Snape as a ghost?"

Blaise considered this. "I'd rather not."

Tracey laughed. "Me either. Besides I don't think he would spend his time here."

"Have you been in it?" Blaise wondered.

Tracey nodded. "Once, a couple years ago," she said. "A group of us went in-Pansy, Terence and Daphne, and I think Adrian Pucey was with us too."

"You wanna go in now?" Blaise suggested.

Tracey hesitated, then shrugged and nodded. "Sure, why not?" She gave the house another look. "I don't know if I believe that it's haunted, really, but I wouldn't wanna go in alone very much and you couldn't pay me to go in after dark."

"Not even with me?" Blaise asked, a sudden grin lifting one corner of his mouth.

Tracey wrinkled her nose at him. "Maybe with you," she conceded. "But I'd rather go in the daylight."

"All right," he agreed, still grinning. "It seems pretty daylight right now. Come on."

They climbed over the fence and went up to the front door. Blaise tried to open it; it was locked so he used his wand on it. It swung open and he stepped inside, Tracey right behind him.

It didn't look as if it was regularly visited. There was a thick layer of dust on floor of the shadowy hallway. They walked on it somewhat cautiously. The whole shack, they found out, was in a state of sad disrepair and very, very dusty. The first room they went into was a prime example of the rest of this house.

"You know, Blaise, this is sort of creepy," Tracey said, staring at the stains on the floor. "That looks kind of like...blood."

Blaise had to agree. "Ghosts don't bleed," he pointed out. "There definitely used to be something else in here." He looked around at the furniture, every piece of which was damaged. "Something not very cheerful, by the looks of things."

Tracey shivered a little, moving a little closer to Blaise. "It didn't seem quite this-this frightening, last time."

The windows were all boarded up and the room was very gloomy. Blaise felt Tracey brush against him a little and glanced back at her. She looked scared. He smiled a little at her.

"D'you wanna go through the rest of it?"

She shrugged. "Sure, if you want to."

Blaise grinned again and led her out of the room. Almost all of the doors were shut and they only looked briefly into the rooms, most of which rather resembled the first room with boarded up windows, peeling wallpaper, broken furniture, stained floors, and a great deal of dust. Blaise, on closer examination, noticed that though the furniture was very beat up, it did not appear to be worn the way normal furniture might have been.

"It doesn't look like anyone ever lived in here," he observed to Tracey. "I mean, it's all furnished and everything but under all the breaks and scratches the furniture looks about new."

Tracey looked at Blaise as if she was a little worried about his sanity. "The furniture," she told him, "looks ancient."

"It doesn't look like people sat on it a lot," Blaise argued.

Tracey laughed then. "If you say so. I can't tell what might have happened to it before this."

Blaise grinned as they headed back down the stairs and out the door. He locked it again behind them and they climbed the fence, pausing to look back at the Shrieking Shack.

"That was fun," Blaise remarked. He was feeling happy, which he found strange simply because happiness wasn't something that came his way often. He wasn't chronically depressed or anything; he just mostly was calm and rather pessimistic, with occasional swings into dark moods. But he liked the feeling of being happy and he grinned at Tracey's answering grimace.

"What, you don't think it was?" he asked her.

She had to smile. "I've had better times," she said. "But I suppose it was kind of fun."

He laughed as they headed back down the hill and Tracey realized how seldom she had heard Blaise laugh without a note of bitterness in his voice, even in the early years of Hogwarts.

After that Blaise always asked Tracey out on his days off, and often when she said yes they spent most of the day together. But apparently Tracey, unlike him, had a life outside her job and Blaise Zabini. Sometimes she was working and every so often she had other plans. Blaise didn't mind when she was working but somehow it never failed to annoy him when she had other plans. This feeling grew stronger rather than lessening the oftener it happened. He felt, Blaise realized, slightly possessive-as if Tracey had no right to make plans that didn't include him and took her away from him. He knew this was ridiculous; they might be dating but he didn't own her and he had no right to expect her to have no life other than him, especially considering that before several months ago he hadn't had any contact with her for years, and even now he scarcely saw her oftener than once a month. He wasn't even sure he really wanted her to not have a life, but still, he was starting to want badly to spend more time with her, and he hated being denied that pleasure especially as he could only seldom ask for it. Blaise wasn't really aware of it, but he rather associated being happy with being with Tracey, because she had that effect on him. Still, he knew there was such a thing as taking things too fast and for that reason he was always calmly accepting of her saying she had other plans and so far had only twice taken her out to eat after he came off work, which was always rather late.

He had thought he knew Tracey rather well; he had gone to school with her for six and a half years and she had been one of the few people he might have called his friend; but now he couldn't help thinking he hadn't ever really known her at all. There was a great deal more to Tracey Davis than he had ever known. And some of it was quite superficial stuff, such as who her family was.

Blaise had known she was half-blood and that she lived with her mother but he had never known anything about her father and it wasn't until the third time they spent the day together that Tracey told him that she didn't know much about her father either. He had been a Muggle and he had raped her mother, in the summer before her fifth year at Hogwarts. Her mother's older brother had gone after him in a mad fury and earned himself a life in Azkaban for his pains. Tracey had never known this uncle, who had died a few years earlier. Her mother had never married; she shared a house with her younger brother who was not married either.

Tracey told him this story matter-of-factly, and then waited patiently for his response. Blaise really did not know what to say.

"I never guessed," he told her honestly. "I mean, I just reckoned you'd had an easy childhood-you were always so cheerful. Still are."

The corners of Tracey's mouth lifted. "Well, you know, Blaise, I did have an easy childhood. Mum and my uncle took good care of me and I was always loved."

Blaise looked thoughtfully at her. "When did you find out about who your dad was?"

"Mum never lied to me about it," Tracey told him. "But I didn't find out until I was fourteen. I asked when I was younger of course, but my mother told me it wasn't a happy story and she would tell me when I was fourteen. So the day after my fourteenth birthday, she did. I was really upset at first."

"But you seem to be okay with it now?" It came out sounding like a question.

"Well…" Tracey looked away, out over the Muggle park they were in because she had wanted to come. "I don't know. I still hate thinking that I was created from something like that. And how much it hurt my mother, both physically and otherwise… But she told me often that I am the best thing that ever happened to her and if erasing that happening meant erasing me she wouldn't want to do it, and I know she loves me a lot. But, you know, Blaise, I like existing. So maybe I'm not completely sorry I can't make so it didn't happen." She looked at him. "Though if somehow my father could have been a decent man who would've married my mother instead of doing it like that-that would have been better. But as it is…" She shrugged. "You know, Blaise, I think I've been very lucky. Even if I never had a dad, I've always had my uncle who is a lot better than some girls' real father."

Blaise nodded, watching Tracey with some wonder. She held his gaze for a moment and then dropped her eyes. Maybe some of his thoughts showed in his face because her cheeks were faintly pink.

"They'd like to meet you, you know," she told him a little abruptly. "My mother and uncle I mean."

Blaise scowled. Then he scowled again as Tracey laughed at him.

"Oh come on, Blaise, it's not that bad!" She knocked on the door of the small house and then opened it without waiting for an answer.

"Yeah it is," Blaise muttered quietly as he followed her over the threshold.

"Tracey?" A woman had come into the hall.

"Hey Mum," Tracey said, returning the hug which her mother was bestowing on her. "And this is Blaise Zabini. Blaise, this is my mum, Ms. Davis."

Blaise shook hands with Tracey's mother, who looked at him keenly and then smiled.

"Hello, Blaise," she said warmly. "It's a pleasure meeting you."

"The pleasure's all mine." Blaise gave her one of his well-practiced smiles. He had learned early on how to be charming; he just often chose not to bother with it.

She beamed back at him as a man joined them, which filled the small front hall rather full.

"Hey, Tate." He kissed Tracey's forehead before turning his gaze towards Blaise.

"Hi, Uncle Marc." She smiled and then turned to Blaise. "Blaise, this is my uncle, Marc Davis."

Blaise shook hands with Tracey's uncle, meeting his eyes steadily. Though he wasn't the one who had gone to Azkaban for avenging his sister, Blaise thought he looked as if he might follow in his older brother's footsteps if anyone harmed Tracey. His face was neither friendly nor unfriendly, but carefully calculating.

"Let's go on in, shall we?" Ms. Davis suggested.

They accordingly headed out into the kitchen, where Ms. Davis resumed her dinner preparations and Tracey went to help her. Blaise wished she wouldn't; being left alone with Marc Davis seemed like a recipe for awkward silence to him. But the older man joined his sister and niece in the kitchen, apparently quite at home there.

Blaise paused in the doorway, watching the three of them. They looked very much like a family. They worked together comfortably, and they looked rather alike; all three of them were tall and fair. Blaise thought Tracey might look something like her mother in about twenty years, except Tracey had a bit of fire in her that Ms. Davis seemed utterly lacking in and somehow it made a great deal of difference.

Tracey looked up and laughed. "You don't have to stand in the doorway, Blaise. Sit down." She gestured towards the table. "The food is just about ready anyway."

She sent a stack of china plates and cutlery towards the table, causing it to set itself. Blaise went and sat down, avoiding the crystal goblets now soaring over to arrange themselves neatly by every place setting.

"Could you light those candles, Blaise?" Tracey called, turning back to the food preparations.

"Sure," Blaise responded, pulling out his wand.

After the meal Tracey persuaded Blaise to play wizard's chess with her, and then with her uncle, while her mother looked on. Marc Davis was very good at chess and he had taught his niece, but Blaise wasn't too shabby at it either, and because he was Blaise, did his absolute best to win at least as much as he lost.

They left a little after nine, walking down the street a little way in silence. Blaise didn't feel willing to give Tracey up yet, especially as he didn't feel he had properly had her this evening.

"You want to go get ice cream?" he suggested.

Tracey looked surprised and then smiled. "Sure."

He grabbed her arm and Apparated them to Diagon Alley. They walked down the street to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. They sat and after a moment a young witch came over to take their order. Blaise frowned after her as she went inside to fetch their ice cream.

"Where's Fortescue?"

Tracey looked away, one hand reaching up to play with her necklace, which Blaise had learned was something she did when she was uncomfortable.

"Don't tell me he got killed too," he said, so she wouldn't have to.

Tracey looked at him. "Yeah…he did. He got kidnapped and then they murdered him. I never found out why."

"Who's the bird?" Blaise asked, gesturing towards the young woman who was bringing them their ice creams now.

Tracey waited to answer until she was gone again. "She's Florean Fortescue's niece, I think," she explained.

He nodded and suddenly frowned. "I feel like a bit of a tosser."

She raised her eyebrows. "Why?"

Blaise looked away from her wide dark blue eyes. "Because I went to America like…"

Tracey, with that uncanny ability she had of understanding what Blaise meant without him explaining it, nodded. "I glad you did," she told him.

Blaise appreciated that she didn't feel the need to finish his sentence; he would rather not hear it put into words anyway.

"Why?" he asked, unable to see why she would be.

"If you would have stayed you would've had to pick a side… And if you would've picked the side that won you would have had trouble during the war and if you would've picked the side that lost you would've had trouble after."

"What about you?" Blaise asked. "You stayed."

"Yeah but… I'm a girl, and I was part of Pansy's gang. So everyone just imagined I agreed with Pansy, like they always did. But after it was all over… Well Potter's side isn't as vicious as the Dark Lord's was and it mattered to them that I had never done anything for the other side. I don't think it would have been that easy for you."