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Part Three

"I saw the scar on his arm, Blaise. I know what that came from as much as you do."

Blaise turns to face his mother. Harry is asleep upstairs, exhausted from the Legilimency session today. He's exhausted by the sense that's slowly settling on him, too, Blaise knows, that Dumbledore must have known about the Horcrux and might have planned to have him kill himself.

But that's not what his mother wants to talk about now, so Blaise nods. "I know. There were rumors about what Slytherin's monster really was, in my second year. I see now that they were true."

"A basilisk. How did he survive a basilisk bite, Blaise?"

"I have no idea." Blaise sits down heavily on the bench that stands in the cool shade of the veranda and looks out at the sloping roofs below him. The sea gleams in the distance, and Blaise longs to be beside it, sitting on the beach and watching the waves run in. "I thought Harry was telling me most things."

"He does seem honest when we ask him to be." Mother sits down next to him, looking nearly as exhausted. Blaise gives her an anxious look, but she only smiles a little and shakes her head. "It's a migraine that will go away, dearest."

"But he keeps all these secrets he just never thinks to mention." Blaise swallows. "Mother, the Muggles he lived with abused him."

Mother only closes her eyes and nods. "I saw that much in his memories, Blaise. We kept him away from them this summer. You think that he will try to go back to them when he returns to Britain?"

"He can't."

Blaise makes the declaration, and he knows as he makes it that he's setting himself up for conflict with powerful enemies. Dumbledore and the people who follow Dumbledore want Harry to go back to that horrible place. Blaise doesn't know their reasons, but he knows he could listen to them and they wouldn't matter. Nothing matters next to the pain that Harry was forced to endure there.

And nothing matters next to the urgency of keeping Harry away from people who would do that to him—both the Muggles and the wizards who enabled the Muggles.

Mother is silent for a moment. Then she turns to face him and clasps his hand. Blaise looks down at their joined hands and remembers so well when there were only the two of them against the world, in his childhood, right after his father died and before Mother punished his murderers and inherited the wealth of the men she killed.

"I always said that I would support you and whoever you chose, Blaise. I mean that still. But we are going to have much more of a time with this than I thought when I believed you would fall in love with some sweet Italian boy and we might only face conflict based on the color of his skin."

Blaise smiles, looking down at his mother's fingers. She wears only a single ring, the mourning ring that she put on the night of his father's funeral. A spun braid of white gold and platinum, its stone is a ruby that Blaise knows symbolizes eternal love.

Someday, he is going to set a ring with a stone like that on Harry's finger. But his beloved is going to be alive.

"I know, Mother. I love you."

"And I you."

Harry takes a careful breath as he looks at the letter lying on the table in front of him. It came this morning, delivered by a tawny owl that Mrs. Zabini checked over carefully for spells before allowing the bird to drop off the message.

The writing on the outside of the envelope is Sirius's.

"Do you think he knew about the plan to get you to return to your relatives'?" Blaise asks casually from across the table.

I'll never know if I don't read it, Harry writes. But for all that, he doesn't reach across his plate of perfect baked fish for the letter.

The crushing realization that at least one person he trusted knew he was a Horcrux is settling deeper and deeper into his soul and bones with every passing day. What is he going to do if he finds out that Sirius knew? And lied to him about it? And was okay with Harry marching to his death, because Dumbledore said so?

Part of Harry protests violently that Sirius never would have let it go if he knew. But on the other hand, Harry doesn't actually know Sirius that well. They never got to spend much time together. Sirius was a member of the Order of the Phoenix in the first war. He's never actually done anything about Harry having to go back to the Dursleys. Sirius trusts Dumbledore.

Just the fact that Harry doesn't might be enough to drive a wedge between them.

"I'm here for you if he's a liar."

Harry glances up and nods at Blaise. "I know," he says, then writes it, and then he picks up the letter and manages to open it in spite of the way his hands tremble.

Dear Harry,

I don't know why you ran away like that. Isn't it enough to know that I wouldn't flinch when I heard you hissing? You could come to Grimmauld Place and no one would run away from you. I don't think even Ron flinches when he hears it now, does he?

I'm worried about you. It would be one thing if you ran away to stay with the Weasleys, but to do it with a Slytherin you just met and you've only been dating for a few months is something else. I don't think that your Zabini cast a spell on you, sine I know you can resist the Imperius Curse, but he must have told you something about Dumbledore that isn't true. The Headmaster would never hurt you.

Please write back to me, at least. And please consider coming back to Britain. I can't help you from so far away. I miss you.

Love,
Sirius.

Harry sighs and puts the letter down. It's not any different than he expected, really. He knows Sirius loves him, but Harry can't trust him as long as he's reporting to Dumbledore. And who knows how long he's going to do that? Who knows what kinds of things he would tell Dumbledore if Harry was foolish enough to write back to him without some kind of filter?

"May I see?"

Just the fact that Blaise asks puts him leagues ahead of some of the competition. Harry nods and pushes the letter across the table to Blaise.

Blaise reads it in silence, and then glances at Harry for permission again before he gives it to his mother. Blaise holds Harry's wrist tightly, but Mrs. Zabini swears aloud and drops the letter. "Such mealy-mouthed promises," she murmurs. "I don't think that your godfather knows where his ultimate loyalty should lie. And he distrusts Blaise because of his House? I had thought most adults, even in Britain, discarded such concerns once they graduated from Hogwarts."

Harry thinks about trying to explain the whole complicated situation around Sirius, but even the thought makes him tired. He only writes down, He spent a long time in Azkaban. I think that sort of broke his mind.

"Or froze his sense of time. Yes, that would make sense. Exposure to Dementors is of no use to anyone except those who want to avoid making the hard decisions." Mrs. Zabini leans across the table. "You may write whatever you like back to him, Harry. But I'll ask that you not use one of our owls. We'll take you to a postal service that has anonymous birds. Too much chance that someone of Dumbledore's caliber might be able to use magic to trace one of our owls back to us."

Harry shudders. That would be horrible, he writes.

"Yes. But it will not happen." Mrs. Zabini exchanges a look with Blaise that Harry doesn't understand. "And in the meantime, we will step up your Legilimency sessions. I would like to make sure that the Horcrux is gone completely before you fall under Dumbledore's purview again."

"I want to hear about the basilisk."

Harry starts. He and Blaise have been lying in the garden for hours, charms on their skin to prevent it from burning, and simply soaking in the sunlight and the soft, rustling atmosphere around them. Harry loves the villa, the way that shaded places loom around sudden corners, and how many vines fill the garden, and the luscious smell of grapes, but what he might love most of all—besides the Zabinis—is the weather.

Harry turns on his side, somewhat disarranging the blanket that Blaise spread beneath him before he'd allow Harry to lie down. Harry tried to tell him in writing he was used to harder things than the soft dirt of the garden, but that only made Blaise angry, so Harry stopped. Now, he blinks.

"Wondering how I found out?" Blaise gestures at Harry's arms, bare to the shoulder in the shirt that Harry's wearing. "That's a scar from a basilisk, Harry. We had an ancestor who faced one down, and left a detailed statue with the mark reproduced exactly. I want to know about it, and I want to know how you survived."

Harry scowls at him.

Blaise tilts his body towards him without rising off his own blanket. His face is so soft and intense that Harry would glance away if he could, but he seems caught in place. He can do nothing but stare, and Blaise reaches up to brush Harry's wild hair back behind his ear. He kisses Harry once before continuing.

"I want to know everything about you. I want to have everything about you. I won't be satisfied with less. I want to keep you. There's not going to be any shadowed corner of your soul where you have to keep secrets from me."

I might want secrets, Harry manages to write down, dazedly, on the scrap of parchment that Mrs. Zabini enchanted to follow him around. His words are jagged and rip through the paper because he's trying to write on the dirt.

Blaise still manages to read them by adjusting the angle of his head a little. "Then you can have them. But you don't have to keep things secret for fear of frightening me away, or any other reason." He traces the shell of Harry's ear with his fingers this time, and Harry shivers and presses his lower body into the blanket so that Blaise can't see the result of his simple touches. "You're mine. Everything about you, I accept. Every part of you, I want to know."

I love you, Harry mouths, and watches Blaise's dark eyes brighten.

"I love you, too. But I think you still owe me a story of how you survived a basilisk bite."

It takes more than one sheet of parchment, and even more than one quill, when the one Harry has breaks because he's pressing so hard. But the whole time, Blaise lies beside him, his arm draped over Harry's shoulder, encouraging him with sharp angry hisses of breath and his whispers of, "The bastards."

When Harry finishes, Blaise is silent, his head on Harry's shoulder, his arms clasped tightly around him. Then he says, "We need to increase your lessons."

Harry blinks. What? He doesn't get a chance to write it down before Blaise seems to sense what he's thinking and shakes his head.

"Not lessons in Legilimency. But you could have died before I—before I even got to know you. I could have been here without you." Blaise's voice is thickening with emotion, the Italian accent that Harry doesn't usually notice coming out in force. "I could have lived my life through without finding someone to love."

Harry simply stares. He doesn't believe that Blaise would ever spend his life alone. He's too handsome, too witty, too everything.

"I'm going to train you in defensive magic. Spells that are more common in Italy, spells that your enemies would be less likely to know the counters to." Blaise kisses his ear. "And we're going to go to some of the shops and look for rarer books. Who knows, we might even find something on Parselmouths. There are books banned in Britain that are available here."

I can't read Italian, Harry manages to write, while his brain spins.

"Don't worry. I'll translate for you."

Blaise manages to make even that sound like a dirty promise. Harry shivers and leans in for a kiss, and Blaise is more than happy to oblige.

"Now I have the end of it."

Harry mops literal sweat from his brow and leans back from Mrs. Zabini. They're at the small table in the garden, and Blaise has mango juice and potions waiting for them as usual. Harry swallows the Restorative Draught and waits for the world to stop spinning before he writes down, What do you mean?

"Picture the Horcrux as like a rope, extending through your head and down the back of your mind into the distance, reaching towards Voldemort." Mrs. Zabini takes a long gulp of mango juice, and Harry imitates her once the taste of the potion is no longer making his mouth sting. "It doesn't look at all the way you might expect a living Horcrux to look. I am convinced that is one reason Voldemort does not know what it is. He probably thinks it a connection forged by Dark Arts. He knew it existed, enough to tie the Parseltongue curse to it, but not to identify it."

Harry shivers. Thank God for that, he writes.

Mrs. Zabini nods, while Blaise leans more heavily on Harry, as if he wants to shove him off the bench. "But I have one end of the rope, and I have maintained my grip on it despite its attempts to shake me off when I am reaching towards it with Legilimency. Now we can pull."

How are we going to do that?

"I'm so glad that you asked." Mrs. Zabini's smile is grim and sad, but Harry finds that he doesn't mind, not if they're finally on the verge of getting rid of this terrible curse. "We are going to make sure that you have a comfortable place to lie, rather like a hospital room in our villa. Then we are going to pull on the rope, and keep pulling until it unravels."

"But you know what usually destroys Horcruxes, Mother." Blaise has gone still. "Basilisk venom and Fiendfyre. We're not going to subject Harry to either of those."

"No," Mrs. Zabini says calmly, which fills Harry with relief for a stress he didn't even realize he was experiencing. "But this Horcrux is unusual not only in the way it is bound to a living being, but also in its shape. I do not think that Voldemort crafted it that way on purpose. He may even have distorted its shape further with the Parseltongue curse."

Blaise's eyes widen. "Which means it's weakened. And easier to destroy."

"Yes." Mrs. Zabini pats Harry's shoulder, and then reaches up and ruffles his hair. It's a gesture that's finally stopped bringing stupid tears to his eyes, which never should have been there in the first place, because it's just a gesture. "Would you be able to begin the removal soon, Harry? It will require you to be rested, not hungry, and able to nearly fall asleep in my presence."

I trust you that much now, Harry writes.

Mrs. Zabini stares him in the eye, although Harry is exhausted enough that he can't tell if she's touching his mind with Legilimency or not. Then she exchanges a glance with Blaise. "No," she says slowly. "Not right now. I think that we'll wait a few days. That way, we can make sure that you sleep well if you have a bad night tonight, and we can fill you as full of food as possible."

"And we can have a few days together," Blaise says, while his arm seems to get heavier on Harry's shoulder than ever.

Harry glances at him. But we have days together all the time? He wants to say it, but he doesn't want to write it, because then Mrs. Zabini would see it, and he doesn't—he just feels weird about her seeing it.

Mrs. Zabini gets up and moves a few steps away from the table and turns her back, though. So Harry writes down the question and twists the parchment around for Blaise to see.

Blaise murmurs to him, "We have another villa near the coast that Mother doesn't visit often because it reminds her too much of Father. We can go there, the two of us, for the days before the removal. We can sleep as much as we like, eat as much as we like, and swim in the ocean. And—do those things that I'm too shy to do much of with Mother in the same house."

Harry feels his eyes widen and his heart begin to pound with excitement. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yes, he wants that. He's wanted that for a while. But Blaise was holding back, and the only thing Harry could think of was that he wanted to wait until the Horcrux was gone.

He didn't dare ask, in case the answer was something else and a lot more disappointing. But now that he knows what the problem is—

He reaches out and holds Blaise's wrist hard, the way Blaise does so often to him. He does it with his left hand, so he can keep his right hand free to scribble down, I'd love to do that. I'd love to go away with you.

"It's something else you never thought you'd get to do, isn't it."

Blaise's voice is grieved. Harry kisses the middle of his forehead, the same place that the lightning bolt scar would be if Blaise had one, and just shakes his own head. He doesn't want sadness right now. He leans his head on Blaise's shoulder so both of them can see the parchment at once as he writes, I know, but you keep expanding my vision of what's possible.

Blaise, finally, smiles.