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Chapter Two—Blaise and Aradia

"Chin up, Blaise. Shoulders back. Never forget that we are walking into enemy territory."

"Yes, Mother."

Aradia Zabini watches her son with critical eyes as she finishes freeing the last of the soot from her dark purple robes. Honestly, Blaise is a good boy. He listens to her, he asks questions only when he really doesn't understand something, and he is more composed and calmer than ninety-nine percent of children his own age.

But Aradia is afraid that he will need to be perfect at Hogwarts, and that's not something she can be there to supervise.

"Are you sure that you wouldn't rather attend Durmstrang?" she asks for the sixth time. She has allies at Durmstrang who would watch over her son and send reports to her of anyone who was taking too much of an interest in Blaise. At Hogwarts she is simply a distant rumor of the terrifying, legendary Black Widow.

Not that she would have more allies if more people at Hogwarts knew the truth, not with the reason for her killings.

"No, Mother. Thank you for offering it, but I want to go to Hogwarts."

Aradia has to smile in spite of herself. She taught Blaise that polite mask and detached tone of voice. If he is now using them as weapons against her, that is something she should have anticipated. She reaches out and brushes a bit of soot from his shoulder, ignoring the stares they're getting from the plebians in the Leaky Cauldron. It could be for their expensive robes, her own beauty, or because someone recognizes the Black Widow.

It could be for their dark skin. When Aradia glances up at the watchers, however, they find something better to turn around and stare at.

"Into the Alley, now, Blaise," she murmurs. "And feel free to look for allies, but keep in mind that they may not be friends."

"Yes, Mother."

Blaise's chin is up and his shoulders back as they walk out the door of the Leaky Cauldron. Aradia can't help smiling again. He is so magnificent, her son. The vision of what she might have been, had she been born male. There is so little of his father in him.

And considering where his father ended up, that is all to the better.

"First stop is for your wand," Aradia tells him softly, and leads Blaise to Ollivander's. At least the wandmaker in Diagon Alley is first-rate.

"Wow! I have a vault in a bank!"

Harry is saying it partially for Artemis's benefit, even if she can't respond aloud right now, but he's also almost vibrating as he watches the goblin open the door to his trust vault. Hagrid is smiling at his excitement, and he explains about the coins to Harry, but Harry can hardly listen.

Gold and silver and bronze! Bright and shiny coins! Harry wonders how they're made and how people decided what the various amounts were. Maybe he can ask a goblin on the way up.

Except it turns out that they need to go to another vault to retrieve something small, and Harry is too busy trying to arrange the pouch of money to avoid Artemis's murmured complaints about it squashing her to remember to ask the goblin about the coins before they reach the surface again.

Harry is practically bouncing in place, eager to go to the next shop, but Hagrid clears his throat and asks apologetically, "Er, Harry, those carts…" He pulls at his collar. "Would you mind if I slipped away for a little pick-me-up?"

"Oh," Harry says, blinking at Hagrid. He's a little nervous at being on his own in Diagon Alley, but then he reminds himself that he has Artemis, and Hagrid said the Boy-Who-Lived completely defeated Voldemort, anyway. (Hagrid only said the name once, and with great reluctance). "Yeah, sure. I'm going to the wand shop, okay?"

"I'll find you there, then," Hagrid says with a chuckle. "Wands usually take a while to choose their wizard."

Harry shrugs, not bothered by that, and sets out in the direction of Hagrid's pointing arm before Hagrid turns in a different direction. He walks along, listening to Artemis and hissing back to her when he can, laughing at the displays of hats and brooms and books and glittering, spinning orbs in some of the windows. He has no idea what the orbs are for, but he wants to find out.

When he finds the wand shop and enters it, there's a boy and woman in front of him waiting. Harry nods to them and sit down on the chair near the entrance, looking around happily at the boxes of wands.

The boy is trying wand after wand. He waves them and nothing happens, or a whistling wind comes out and rattles the boxes on the shelves, which makes the wandmaker—Ollivander?—snatch it away. It makes Harry wonder if the same thing will happen when he has a wand in his hand, or not. He swings his legs and thinks about it and listens to Artemis's words about how the magic of the shop tickles her and daydreams of what he'll do when he has a wand.

Blaise stiffens when another boy enters the shop. The last thing he wants is an audience for his continual stream of failures. At least one particular wand never lasts long before Ollivander whips it away, but it's embarrassing, to be failing so often.

But the boy doesn't even seem to be paying much attention to Blaise. He's peering up at the boxes on the shelves with bright eyes, and swinging his legs back and forth, and smiling now and then, probably at whatever thought goes through his mind. He has pale skin and black hair that cascades down his neck and green eyes.

"Do you want me to encourage him to leave?" Mother murmurs between one wand and another.

Blaise shakes his head. That would draw the kind of attention he's trying to avoid. And then he turns around and flicks another wand, this one of hawthorn with a phoenix feather for a core, and warmth surges up through his arm.

He smiles as golden sparks leap into the air, followed by silver ones. Ollivander smiles at him in turn. "Yes, yes, indeed, that wand has a preference for clever and stubborn masters, Mr. Zabini," he says. "I think you'll find that it serves you well."

Blaise nods fervently. He wants to do well. He wants to be great. At the moment, he's not sure what, specifically, he wants, other than that it'll probably involve Transfiguration. That's what he's best at.

Mother hands Ollivander the required Galleons, and Ollivander accepts them with a half-bow and then turns to the boy waiting on the chair. "Mr. Potter, do come up here. I have been waiting for you."

"Wow, you have?" the boy says with an air of utter unselfconsciousness, hopping off his chair. "Cool!" He smiles at Blaise. "Congratulations on finding your wand."

Blaise gapes at him before he can stop himself. The boy's last name is a wizarding one, but he doesn't act as though he's heard the rumors about the Zabinis at all, or even knows who Blaise is.

He just gives another nod at Blaise, in fact, and walks up to the front of the shop, where Ollivander is already directing his odd instrument to measure Potter's nose and arms and legs. Blaise walks out of the shop behind his mother, but he's looking over his shoulder.

Mother notices, of course. She always does. She puts a hand gently on Blaise's shoulder when they're out of the shop and in a somewhat sheltered side alley, and looks into his eyes for a long time.

"You want to meet him more closely, Blaise?"

Blaise nods, and adds, before she can ask him why, which he knows she will, "He didn't act as though he knew who I was, or care. But he also can't be Muggleborn, from his name and looking the way he does." He recalls the portrait of Henry Potter that hangs on Mother's study wall. It was made when he came to Italy as a young man, Mother told him. The tumble-down black hair on the boy in the shop did look a lot like the portrait's.

"Are you that concerned with blood status?"

"You were the one who told me that Muggleborn children are the ones more likely to carry racial prejudices into our world with them, Mother."

Mother evaluates him with quiet, cold eyes, and then smiles. "You use the lessons that I've taught you to make a good argument, Blaise. But I wonder if you noticed how the boy was dressed?"

Blaise hesitates. No, he didn't, in fact. He was looking more for hostility than that. He finally has to shake his head.

"He wore ragged clothes too big for him. And they did look Muggle. He might be pleasant enough on an initial encounter, but then disdain you when you speak to him at close quarters and for more than a few words. And I would not see you hurt."

Blaise waits, weighing his choices. And he knows that his choices are the ones that matter right now. Mother has provided him with valuable information, but if Blaise chooses to disregard that and wait for the boy to emerge from the shop so they can walk somewhere together, she won't interfere.

"Anybody could hurt me," Blaise says finally. "Anybody could need to be killed, you told me. I'm going to take a chance right now."

"All right." Mother bends over to kiss him on the forehead, a gesture of benediction that makes Blaise's skin tingle. "I will wait for you in the bookshop. Make sure that you touch your forehead if are in danger."

Blaise nods.

"Any kind of danger, Blaise. That includes emotional."

"Yes, Mother," Blaise says, and he means it enough for her to tell he means it, because she pulls back with a pleased smile and practically floats down the center of Diagon Alley. Blaise watches the way people turn their heads, not just their eyes, to follow her, and sees the looks of longing and astonishment and fear on their faces. It's a game he plays while he waits for the Potter boy to emerge, trying to see the people he thinks know his mother for Aradia Zabini and those who simply sense her magical power.

He plays it as long as she's in sight, and then turns his attention to the wand in his hand and spins his wrist, smiling as more sparks spill to the ground. He really is a wizard now, and no one can deny that.

"You are a tricky customer, aren't you, Mr. Potter?"

Harry doesn't think he is. He thinks it's taken him less time than the black boy with the hawthorn wand did. But he doesn't know how long that boy was in there before Harry and Artemis came in, either.

"Try this, now," Ollivander says, and his eyes shine as he holds out a box with a slim wand. Harry plucks the wand from the box, and jumps. There's a whole torrent of heat running up his arm to his shoulder. He stares at the wand in astonishment. It's like his boulder has melted out of his stomach and taken up residence in this stick.

"That is the one," Artemis says happily from beneath his shirt.

Ollivander shoots Harry a quick glance. Harry coughs and waves his wand so that blue sparks shower out of it. He laughs when they explode in a wheel shape like a firework before they disappear. "What's the wand made of, sir?"

"Ebony, this one," Ollivander says. His eyes are still fastened unblinkingly on Harry's shirt sleeve, although Artemis is actually coiled around his waist right now. "And a rather unusual core."

"What's the core, sir?"

"Two tail hairs from a unicorn foal, woven around each other," Ollivander murmurs. "I had a devil of a time getting them away from the foal, even though it wanted to give them to me, what with the mare around."

"So you usually take tail hairs from adult unicorns?" Harry thinks that sounds fascinating. He pulls out the Galleons to pay Ollivander, and waits a minute for the man to look away from his shirt sleeve and take the money.

"Yes, indeed," Ollivander says. He's smiling and looks calm now, but also as though he knows something Harry doesn't. "It is a long time since I made that wand, Mr. Potter. But it requires an open-minded and curious wielder, and there are not as many of those as there used to be."

Harry wonders if that's a hint about his Parseltongue, if Ollivander knows about it. But he isn't brave enough to just ask, not when Hagrid told him about how Parselmouths are despised. He just nods a little. "Thanks, sir. That's a nice compliment."

Ollivander closes his eyes for a second, as if thinking about something else. But then he sighs and waves Harry on. "You should go conduct your shopping, Mr. Potter. I think you are late for an important appointment."

Harry isn't sure about that, but on the other hand, Hagrid did promise to meet him at Ollivander's and he's not here yet. Harry steps out of the shop with one more nod for the wandmaker. Maybe Hagrid was worried about fitting inside.

"Hullo."

The boy who bought the hawthorn wand is waiting outside. Harry smiles at him, a little relieved that the boy's mother isn't with him. She's more than a bit intimidating. "Hello. Are you waiting for someone? Have you seen a giant man around? He's the groundkeeper at Hogwarts and he brought me here, but I don't know where he is now."

The boy blinks, slowly, as if he's puzzled about Harry's questions, but shrugs and says, "I haven't seen him. I wanted to wait for you to come out because you didn't act upset when you saw me."

"Oh. Should I have?" There are so many things about the magical world that Harry doesn't know.

The boy shakes his head a little. "My name is Blaise Zabini. My mother is Aradia Zabini. She's…fairly famous as someone who's killed several of her husbands."

He seems to be braced for something. Harry peers at him. "And people don't like you because they don't like her?"

Zabini nods.

"Well, that's not fair," Harry says fiercely. "My aunt didn't like my mum and she took out whatever grudge she had against her on me, and lied about her, too! She said my mum was a Muggle who died in a car crash. I never knew that she was a witch until today. Er, last night." Then he realizes that he's just talking about himself and not asking about Zabini, and adds hastily, "If you want me to leave you alone, I will."

Zabini blinks again, a few times. Then he says, "No. Actually…I'm going to Hogwarts because I want to, but I live in Italy, and I've met relatively few of the people who'll be going to school with us. What's your name? Could we—would you want to spend some time going to the shops with me for our school supplies?"

"Oh, yes!" Harry says eagerly. "My name's Harry Potter, but I grew up in the Muggle world because my mum was Muggleborn and my aunt and uncle are the only relatives I have left. Er, my cousin, too. But the point is, I haven't met anyone, either." He reaches out to shake Zabini's hand.

Zabini freezes for a second, and Harry does, too. He wonders if he's done something wrong according to Italian customs. He doesn't know much about Italy except that it's where spaghetti comes from, so he wouldn't know this, either.

"It's all right," Zabini says, apparently reading Harry's mind. (Can you do that in the magical world?) "It's just that not many people want to shake my hand, either. They think I could poison them like my mother." He shakes Harry's hand and steps back with a faint smile. "Come on, then, Potter."

"I like him," Artemis announces from inside Harry's shirt. "He seems sensible. And his mother must be a great huntress. Ask him if he knows stories about hunting."

Harry can't do that until a more natural point comes up in the conversation, so he just smiles and says, "Sure thing, Zabini."

Being with Potter is unexpectedly easy.

Potter wants to ask about everything in the shops, and seems touchingly certain that Blaise will have an answer. He listens intently to the little stories Blaise tells about living in Italy and living with his mother, and doesn't ask whether she really killed her husbands, even. When they're in Madam Malkin's and getting their robes done, Blaise lowers his voice so he can ask why.

Potter considers him in silence, his head on one side, and only turns when one of the assistants nudges at him with a pin. "I assumed it was a secret," he says at last. "I have my own secrets. I didn't want to pressure you to speak about yours."

Blaise blinks. It's the most understanding he's run into since he first started grasping what his mother's reputation meant. "But don't you want to know?" Potter has certainly shown enough curiosity about everything else.

"Well, sort of, yes," Potter says, and shrugs. The assistant witch hisses at him, and he flushes. "But like I said, I assumed it was a secret, one you wanted to keep. And it's rude to just ask about something like that." He sounds vaguely scandalized.

Blaise smiles again. "She does kill them."

"Oh." Potter visibly thinks about it, standing on one leg without complaint when the witch who's fitting him for robes tells him he has to. "Huh."

"Huh?"

"I've never met anyone like your mum before, Zabini. It's not like I have a lot of experience."

The name "Zabini" makes the witch working on Blaise freeze. Blaise looks down at her with nothing on his face at all—a mask he had to perfect when he went outside the cities for the first time with his mother—and she bows her head and gets back to work. Blaise sniffs and looks back at Potter. "No one else has ever had that reaction."

Potter grins a little. "Well, like I said, I'm new to the magical world."

Yes, you are, Blaise thinks, and he has more than one meaning.

When they leave the robe shop, Harry wearing one of his new robes because Zabini said it would be a good idea, Zabini steers them firmly towards the apothecary. But he keeps glancing at Harry, and Harry doesn't think his implied question is about Potions ingredients.

"What do you want to ask me?" Harry asks.

Zabini starts. "Well, you'll never be a Slytherin," he mutters.

"What's that?"

Zabini blinks this time, but otherwise takes the question in stride. "One of the four Houses at Hogwarts. They're based on different types of values and personality. Slytherin is the house of subtlety, cunning, ambition."

"No, that's not me," Harry agrees. He wants to ask what the others are, but Zabini is going on with the question that Harry wanted him to just ask, turning them so that they're standing between the apothecary and a cobbler's next to it and people probably won't overhear them.

"What's your secret, then?"

Harry considers Zabini carefully. He isn't running, and if he has a mum who kills people—which Harry still doesn't know his own feelings about—then he probably won't be that upset about Parseltongue, no matter how evil it is.

"Artemis, come out," Harry hisses.

Artemis immediately sticks her head out of his pocket and wriggles in the way that she does when trying to get water off her scales. "Well, finally!"

Harry looks up to see that Zabini is staring at him with his mouth slightly open. That's better than running away screaming, though, so Harry smiles tentatively at him. "I'm a Parselmouth," he says. "Artemis is my friend. But Hagrid, who brought me here, said that Parseltongue was evil, so I have to hide it."

"It's…" Zabini seems at a loss for words for a long moment. Then he says, "Well, Parseltongue isn't well-regarded, mostly because the last British Dark Lord was one. And so was Salazar Slytherin, the founder of Slytherin House, who wanted to kill Muggleborns."

Harry wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to kill people."

"I want to kill mice," Artemis says. "Does that count?"

Harry snorts at her and faces Zabini. "Are you going to be able to live with this?"

"Yes," Zabini says, and then he smiles. "Hell, Potter, this is fantastic."

"Why did Hagrid tell me it was horrible, then?"

"I told you about the associations. But being able to speak to snakes is just brilliant." Zabini's hand hovers over Artemis. "Where did you get her? Can I pet her?"

"I found her in the garden one day," Harry says, not feeling up to admitting that Artemis showed up because of his magic. That might be a little too weird. "And let me check. Artemis, do you mind if he pets you?"

"I understood his question, you know." Artemis slaps the inside of his wrist with a stinging tail as she looks up at Zabini. "Yes, as long as he touches me gently."

"As long as you're gentle," Harry tells Zabini, who looks a little offended for a moment that Harry might think he wouldn't be gentle. He reaches out and runs a hand down Artemis's scales. She murmurs and curls closer to Harry, but doesn't try to get away from Zabini's stroking hand.

"She feels so soft," Zabini murmurs.

"Yes, she does," Harry says, and smiles.

"And do you know what kind of snake she is?" Zabini looks up at Harry with eyes that seem just as bright and interested in Artemis as Harry's ever been.

"No, but she's magical. Muggles can't see her. And they can't hear me speaking Parseltongue, either," Harry thinks to add, because Zabini might be wondering how Harry could have concealed his secret in the Muggle world.

"Huh, I never knew they couldn't hear that," Zabini says, still running his hand gently down Artemis's back. "But it's a magical language, so I suppose it would make sense that they couldn't."

He looks up and smiles at Harry. He's maybe the second person Harry can remember really doing that, after Hagrid. "Thank you for telling me."

"You're welcome," Harry says, and knows he doesn't have to ask Zabini again to keep it a secret. Zabini is the sort of person who knows how to do that.

"Blaise?"

It's Zabini's mother, coming up behind them so suddenly it makes Harry start a little. But not Zabini. He only pulls his hand back from Artemis with a small smile to Harry and turns around. "Mother. This is Harry Potter."

Mrs. Zabini's eyes widen, but Harry isn't sure why. Maybe Zabini doesn't usually introduce his friends to her? Or maybe it's Artemis, who's pulling back into Harry's pocket? "Is he really?" she murmurs, and holds out her hand.

Harry takes it and shakes it. He supposes wizards and witches don't have customs different from the usual with that, and neither do people in Italy, because no one tells him he's wrong, and he's pretty sure that Zabini would. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Zabini," he murmurs.

Mrs. Zabini looks at her son again, and then says slowly, "Perhaps you would like to come book shopping with us, Mr. Potter?"

"Sure," Harry agrees happily. He was looking forward to the bookshop, and Hagrid isn't in sight yet, although Artemis has slid back under his shirt, and maybe Zabini and his mother can tell him what kinds of books to get that would have information like the Houses in Hogwarts and the history of Parseltongue. "Zabini, do you want to get our Potions ingredients now or later?"

"The apothecary first, then, since we are so close," Mrs. Zabini decides, and leads them in that direction. Harry walks along happily, feeling like he's floating, with Zabini close to him and talking quietly about the other Houses, which are apparently Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw.

He has a human friend, one who doesn't think his first friend is someone to run away from. It's pretty awesome.

"He has warm hands," Artemis tells him in approval.

As far as Harry's concerned, that's permission to be good friends with Blaise Zabini for the rest of their lives.