A/N: *Edited 17/04/18*
Chapter 10: New assignments and stripped encounters
Ginny hadn't been that surprised when McGonagall got in touch with her before she'd even managed to contact the Headmistress herself to convince her that it was all one big mistake. Now, every plan of getting rid of Blaise as an assignment partner had been effectively abandoned by McGonagall's request. There was really no backing out now.
Ginny had yet to convey the news of their assignment to Blaise (she hadn't seen him since that botched-up Sunday in the Prefects' Bathroom), but apparently she had to work fast because McGonagall had requested that the trip to the Shrieking Shack – for some reason – should be executed before everyone went home for the holidays.
Nothing to set in the Christmas spirits like a trip to a spooky, old house to relive the tale of a wrongly condemned man spending 12 years in Azkaban only to fight werewolves, Dementors and death sentences when he escaped!
She grunted and looked helplessly down at the note from the Headmistress in her hand.
Right. How would you break this to a person who maybe enjoys the Christmas days the least of all and convince him to go to the Shrieking Shack with you, his least favorite person at the moment?
But again: it wasn't like she was the one who was being difficult! If he wasn't so darn proud and stubborn, he would make everything a lot easier … such as approaching him with such a harmless thing as – as this!
Argh! You're making too much of a deal out of this!
She wrung the note in her hand and stormed out of her quarters towards the Great Hall in search of the tall, dark-skinned and present bane of her existence, hoping to get the matter over and done with as quickly as possible.
His presence unfortunately proved absent from the Great Hall so she turned, scowling, towards the direction of the library, trying to think of all the places they used to run into each other. She gave a snort. Sort of ironic that when she actually needed to run into that soddin' Slytherin, he was playing hide-and-seek! And what would you know; he wasn't in the library either!
Where the fuck is he?!
She seethed and made a row of oblivious, chatty Second Year girls tumble like dominos when she rounded the corner of the main entrance, blasting through their shrieked surprise and trotted towards the outskirts of the Quidditch pitch where the locker rooms lay. When she finally reached her destination, she was about to burst.
Which she more or less did.
Right through the door to the boys' locker room and into a steamy room filled with half-naked males!
It's surprised occupants whipped their heads towards the blistering red-head standing by the entrance as she scanned the room for a certain snake with a glare that promised death to anyone that dared to interfere. Unfazed by their state of undress (she did grow up with six older brothers), she growled when she was unsuccessful in spotting him through the steam and tall heads, opting for her second choice of 'people-searching'.
"ZABINI!" she roared and as if out of the blue – or more like fog – a familiar set of wide, towel-clad shoulders on a tall body appeared, calmly swaggering round the corner of the showers and stopped in the middle of the room of astonished Quidditch players.
Blaise lifted a dark eyebrow in mock-question at her appearance, his usual lazy, superior smirk in place. And it was only then that she realized he, too, was buck-ass naked.
Gulping and blinking, she quickly averted her eyes in embarrassment, glad that the steam and anger seeping through her excused the heightened color on her cheeks. Why did his state of undress bother her so? It wasn't like she hadn't seen him naked before.
"Well, Weasley. Here we are again," he drawled with a leer, clearly amused by the déjà vu situation – even more so by their added audience. "What brings you to these parts of the woods, pray tell? Other than seizing every opportunity to catch me with my pants down, of course," he grinned, joined by a few snickers around him.
Ugh, he's unbelievable! Mocking her in front of his half-naked team mates! They, on the other hand, seemed less brazen than him and had covered themselves by now. Then again: She had just burst in through the door to the boys' locker room while they were dressing. Not that she'd really thought her plan through. Not that she'd had any plan to begin with. She just sort of went with it. Nice and mature, as usual, she thought dryly to herself, regretting ever stepping into the room.
"I – uhm," she stammered, angry embarrassment cursing in her veins as she tried looking anywhere but him, even though there wasn't exactly less 'naked material' to look at in the crowded room.
His smirk grew as he languidly egged her on. "Yes?"
Temper flaring, she burst out, "Oh, sod it, Zabini!", swiveling her hard gaze back at his smug, damp face where his eyebrows rose to amused heights. "I simply need to talk to you! It's urgent and you were no-damn-where to be found so I just opted for my last conclusion, thinking you'd be in here, doing the hula-hoop with your mates, yeah?!"
She prayed she didn't sound or look too desperate, playing it off with an exasperated attitude which she used to deal with her brothers. Crossing her arms across her chest, she whipped her gaze haughtily away, her jaw ticking as she internally begged he would take a hint and not humiliate both of them any further.
"Sure thing, Weasley. You are in need of me and I always abide a lady's needs." He did a theatrical bow and his mates around him snickered at his innuendo-laced antics.
She'd had about enough.
"Cut the crap, Zabini, and get a move on! I don't have all day for you and your mates to stand about and choke on your own testosterone-inflated egos, though I imagine it would be a highly entertaining sight. I'll be outside."
And on that acid note, she turned around and walked out, slamming the door behind her.
X
"Damn, that Weasley girl has got a mouth! And balls!" Bigsby hollered with laughter from the back, slapping his thighs.
"Not to mention looks," someone snickered lewdly.
"I'm weirdly turned on right now and I would totally tap that if she wasn't scary as shite when pissed off," Dawson murmured from the sideline, gazing dazedly towards the slammed door.
"Huh, yeah, that temper sure is as much a mood stirrer as it is a mood killer," Wizley commented dryly beside him, continuing to pull on his clothes, and shot a glance at the wizard who was still standing in the middle of the room. "Hey, Blaise?"
"Hm?" Blaise hadn't pulled his eyes from the back of the door to the locker room.
"You know what trouble you are walking into, don't you, mate? 'Cause there's a whole lot of trouble in that one."
Blaise merely nodded absent-mindedly, not really paying attention to the continued murmur around him as he went to his locker to put on his clothes.
X
"Finally!" Ginny threw up her arms in an exasperated manner when she saw him emerge. "And they say girls spent all their time in the bathroom! What did you do? Melt the mirror with pure vanity?" Crossing her arms, she gave him a dramatic once-over. "And you're clothed! Blimey, Zabini, is this going to be a common occurrence? Don't you think you'll disappoint the ladies?" she sneered sarcastically.
He raised an eyebrow. "Gee, Weasley. Are you always this bitchy or is it just my lucky day?"
Her silent reply came as a glare that could melt pillars and she turned with a huff, starting to walk towards the school in angry strides. Not sure whether to follow or not, he was too curious to why she had burst heedlessly into the boys' locker room like that. Clearly, something was up.
He stepped up beside her, easily matching her quick steps with his long legs.
"So," he prodded, carefully making his tone come off equally indifferent and placid. "You wanted to talk to me? Something urgent you said?"
Ginny slowed down her steps somewhat, the anger rolling off her tense shoulders. Not deigning him a look, she thrust out McGonagall's letter to him as they continued towards the entrance.
"What's this? A letter of pardon?" he inquired with amused sarcasm that earned him another brown-eyed glare.
"A letter from the Headmistress," she grumbled as they turned a corner. "Requesting us to give a student tour 'round the Shrieking Shack before Christmas."
Blaise raised his eyebrows to disbelieving heights for the third time that day. "The Shrieking Shack?" He quickly glanced over the details in the letter, his face distorting as he took in the words. "Oh, bloody hell! Don't tell me we'd have to relay the tale of soddin' Sirius Black to a bunch of First Years?!" he exclaimed, thrusting the letter back into her hands in dramatic disgust.
"Well, I'm telling you," she muttered, feeling just as unwilling about the whole affair.
The glare he gave her screamed 'This is all your fault!'.
"What the hell did you do, Weasley, to get us such a stinker job? Colluding with Longbottom in the greenhouses again, have we? Setting the Astronomy Tower on fire like one of your dimwit brothers or with one of their juvenile contraptions?"
She stopped in her trail, blistering at his accusations.
"Hey! I'm as little at fault here as you are! And stop talking about my friends and family like that!" She gave him a withering look that he returned in silence, before she finally threw up her hands in admittance. "It's just – it's McGonagall, alright?! She happened to be in need of someone to do a show-and-tell of Black's story to the First Years so that they didn't run around concocting false rumors of what happened. And don't ask me why, but you and I happened to be the first ones that came to her mind. Not like I could stop it. You know how insisting she can be without being it." She shot him a knowing glare.
Ignoring it, he answered with an incredulous look. "But they learn all about that in class. I don't see what we can do any better when it comes to getting it into their small brains that what happened in the past, with Black, was bad?"
"As I said," Ginny sighed, grinding her teeth in irritation, "McGonagall thought it best if we could tell them the story and show them the place where it happened – in order to get it better 'into their small brains' as you so eloquently put it."
He huffed in displeasure but didn't fight the subject further. There was not much they could do.
"Yeah, you and me both, mister," Ginny scowled as she turned to walk on.
They continued uphill in silence and Ginny felt the tension being replaced by another as she remembered how awkwardly they'd parted the last time they saw each other; the whole reason for her desperate banshee-jump on him in the showers, in the first place! She cringed as she thought about it now. She needed to mend that former bridge before going into the Shrieking Shack with him. That much was certain.
"Listen, Blaise, about –," she started then stopped, not sure how to begin. Every stubborn instinct in her told her she wasn't the one who should be apologizing first, but with a mighty force of will she quenched those voices.
"What's wrong with your face, Red?" Blaise peered down at her with something close to repulsed apprehension as if he thought she was going to turn into a Polyjuiced Umbridge at any second.
"I – uhm – about the other day – I–," Merlin, why is this so hard?!
He stared skeptically at her for a bit, then something seemed to dawn on him. Apparently he took the hint of where she was going – and what she was failing so miserably at.
He scratched his neck. "Look," he sighed, "I get that you're still pissed off about how we left things last time, but I think we're both equally at fault. You know we are," he contested calmly when he saw her protesting look. "We are like two poles that keep clashing despite the fact that we want the same thing."
Thing? What thing?
Ginny opened her mouth in instinctive protest to some obscure, hidden insult within those words but looking into his suddenly serious face, she faltered. Her gaze flickered away from his all too intense and confusing gaze, damning the heat that suddenly rose to her face and her dry throat, almost not daring to ask.
"Oh? And what thing is that?" She cringed. It sounded so pathetic in her ears.
"You know what."
He said it so softly, almost formed as a question accompanied by his curious look, that she barely heard it.
Huh?
What could he possibly mean? 'Poles clashing'? 'Wanting things'? Had she unconsciously egged him on at some point that could be misunderstood in any way?!
She wracked her brain, coming up with nothing but their 'less than clothed'-bathroom-slash-locker room encounters. Not her proudest moments, she admitted. But that couldn't be it… right?! He despised her as much as she despised him! Though, he had had that predatory look in his eyes both times… but that could as easily be mistaken with smug arrogance and, well, hello! It's Blaise Zabini; Hogwarts' official player numero uno, we're talking about here! He's cold smugness incarnated; a born predator and womanizer. No female specimen could see herself safe in his presence.
However, now – if this was flirting then it seemed utterly unlike him! And what was it with the implications that she wanted – whatever he wanted, too..? Ugh! Couldn't he just make up his mind? It was damn frustrating being stared at like that; as if she knew the answer to the whole damn universe!
She gulped, trying desperately to think of anything than what her treacherous mind concocted under his gaze. She didn't dare meeting it.
"Uhm, conjuring a Patronus?" she tried half-imploring, half-hoping that that was what he meant and not what she thought it meant.
A new, painfully strained silence stretched between them. She could practically hear a pin drop somewhere.
"Yeah. Conjuring a Patronus," he finally said, slowly, as if tasting the words and surprised at finding the taste bitter. He stared stiffly ahead in a weird, absent-minded fashion. Whatever guard he had momentarily taken down, it was certainly back at full force.
Ginny seriously couldn't figure this boy out!
And did she note a hint of disappointment in his voice? And why was she feeling disappointed herself? Disappointed that he, for once, hadn't mocked or contested her?
An unknown feeling swirled inside her, inflating the bubble of self-conflicted emotions surrounding her relationship with him until she felt it close to bursting. Of what and why, she couldn't tell. She wasn't even sure she wanted to know.
The awkward silence persisted; as if both of them desperately were trying to find a way to pick up the cue but only came up short, snapping their mouths shut.
Eventually the clearing of his throat made them both flinch, and they realized they had reached the Entrance Hall where students were now shuffling to and fro in larger groups in time for dinner in the Great Hall.
Simultaneously stopping and awkwardly turning towards each other, Blaise spoke first.
"Listen, Weasley–," he halted momentarily as if unsure of what to say then cleared his throat again. She didn't think she could ever get use to the sight of a wavering Blaise. "Maybe we should check out the place first, huh? See how we might plan the tour so that we don't have to stay there too long and risk scaring the kids too witless to go home for Christmas, yeah?"
A bunch of Fifth Years went close by them, shooting them curious glances which suddenly made him right himself into his usual, bored swagger.
"Sounds fine by me," she shrugged, slightly distracted.
Blaise seemed relieved by her curt reply, giving a final nod as if anxious to get it over with or simply to get away from her. She couldn't really tell anymore.
"Good. Meet me outside by the Stone Circle, Tuesday after lunch. I know a short cut."
And before she had time to respond he was gone, disappeared into the now crowded, noisy Great Hall and once again left her standing open-mouthed and bewildered.
Bloody Slytherin!