[Fic] Nothing Like The Sun (2/12)
Dec. 26th, 2006 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeTitle: Be Still My Beating Heart
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Ginny, Blaise
Word Count: 3,004
Rating: PG
Summary: Blaise and Ginny have a very strange relationship. Album!Fic to Nothing Like The Sun
A/N: Slightly late Christmas present for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nopejr. Merry Christmas!
There wasn't enough room in the library for the two of them, him and his ego. Ginny rolled her eyes at the way he was staring at her, like he was so much better because he came from a Wizarding family that didn't consort with Mudbloods. But now that she thought about it, that was a good line. Not that bit, the bit about him and his ego. Too bad they weren't actually talking, she would have used it.
Ginny flushed a little at the thought. What was she doing, too bad they weren't actually talking. Either she was becoming like Ron, which was bad, taking any excuse to bait the Slytherins. Or worse, she was paying more attention to Blaise than he really deserved.
He slammed his books closed with an objectionable sound and stormed to the exit and Ginny realized she'd been staring. Stupid girl. Stupid little girl. He was just a boy, and a particularly nasty boy at that.
Ponytail flouncing, fingers tapping on her books. Study did not come easy for the rest of the afternoon.
The whole school had an atmosphere of tension that made it unlike any other year they had endured and enjoyed so far. Enjoyment wasn't in it this year, only endurance. The parties were gone, the easy jokes in the common rooms. The first years looked, for the first time since Ginny had been among them, genuinely terrified out of their minds. There were fewer of them this year, too, than there had been in a while. Parents were no longer convinced of the safety of Hogwarts with Dumbledore gone, and many had opted to keep their children at home where they felt they could watch over them more effectively.
Not, of course, that this was anything like true. Ginny had seen first-hand how Hogwarts could defend itself, no small thanks to Harry for that. She was still so proud of him, the way he had organized everyone. It showed, she hoped, in the way she looked at him even now that they were supposed to be broken up.
Supposed to be, that was a phrase. She wasn't sure what they were now. Separated, mostly for Harry's peace of mind, because everyone knew the short list of people for whom Harry would do just about anything. Whether or not they were formally together had nothing to do with anything. But if it made Harry feel better to keep her at that one bit of distance, if it helped him not to feel like he was shorting her a relationship or…
Ginny scowled, kicking the toe of her book along the stone floor. She could fool everyone but herself, and herself was reminding her in a sarcastic tone that she hated Harry for that. That she thought it was a stupid, selfish decision. Shorting her time, he was shorting both of them, giving in to the fear that they wouldn't both make it through these next few years and telling himself it was for a good reason. Bollocks to that.
"Having a good sulk?"
Ginny whirled, ready to do battle. It wasn't enough that he stalked her in the library, now he had to follow her out here, too?
"What do you want, Zabini?"
He shrugged. Grinned a nasty little Slytherin grin (that was mostly pretend, Ginny knew better) and stared at her as though she were dim. "The way you stalked out of that library…"
But then he stopped, and it took her a second before she realized the expression on his face was bewildered annoyance. He couldn't, she decided, come up with any excuse why he had been following her that wouldn't sound ridiculous coming from someone who had spent countless days tormenting her and her friends.
And on the heels of that thought…
No. Surely not.
"Piss off somewhere, Zabini," she turned so he wouldn't see how unsettled she was.
"Hey."
There was real protest in that one syllable. Both of them looked around to see who might be watching, who might catch them at a spontaneous and probably hormone-driven truce. Of course that was all it was. She was on the rebound from Harry and Zabini was at least sort of handsome in a scowling nasty kind of a way. And she was curious what he wanted.
"Look," he started to say, and again didn't seem to know what he wanted. "I just wanted to know…"
"Yes?"
She was enjoying this exchange of power almost as much as he wasn't. "You and Potter…"
"Blaise Zabini, are you asking me out on a date?"
"Forget it."
That had been too much for even his ego to bear. He turned and stormed down the hall as Ginny wept with silent laughter and tried to compose herself enough to go after him and apologize.
"No, wait…" she said, chasing after him. "I'm sorry…"
Someone in Ravenclaw robes glanced at her, but Blaise was nowhere to be seen. Ginny frowned, a sense of dissatisfaction with the way things had turned out marring her triumph over one of their archenemies. But they weren't that anymore, were they? Maybe they never had been. Maybe it was just a distraction from the real enemy, an annoying side effect of being a teenager in a boarding school that, really, divided its students more than it ever unified them. At least until now.
Ginny wrapped the straps of her bag twice around her fists before turning and slowly walking away. Not yet. She wasn't ready to face that yet.
The staring contest continued on through dinner for three nights before anyone commented. Harry was clearly dying to ask what was going on, and just as clearly resisting the urge to say anything that might make him appear jealous.
That was probably for the best. Ginny would have had a hard time controlling what she said, let alone what she would have done if he'd been in smacking distance.
Honestly, did Harry even have the right to say anything about who she stared at or who she got stared at? They weren't dating anymore. He had broken it off with her, and however noble his reasons might have been he wasn't anything but her friend anymore. That gave him a certain amount of space to say things about who she chose to spend her time with but not that much.
"And anyway," she started, turning bright red as she realized what she'd been thinking. Anyway, it wasn't as though she and Blaise were doing anything.
Except colliding into each other. If she hadn't known better she would have sworn he had been waiting around the corner for her. Except he wasn't, hadn't been, had he. Of course not, his class was just down the hall in the opposite direction, and it would start soon.
There was no reason she should know a thing like that.
He caught her by the shoulders before she even realized she was falling, straightened her out again. His hands were warm, maybe sweaty, maybe too tight around her arms when they both stood and backed away before anyone could see.
"Watch where you're going."
"You watch where you're going."
Dialogue for the ages. They stood there, watching each other and Ginny thought she was panting a little more than angrily. The impulses she was having didn't bear… well, didn't bear having, let alone thinking about. Let alone acting on.
She turned and started to huff away before she could embarrass herself further. Or before she could push herself past the boundaries of her own understanding. One thing she didn't want to do, not now especially but never in her recollection, was to do something so stupid that she would never look back on it ever in her life without deep regret.
So she turned and stalked away before Blaise could do more than say something she didn't let herself hear in protest. Before he could grab her, and she had enough practice at dodging her brothers to dodge his outstretched hand. Whatever peace he wanted to make, it could wait. It could damn well wait until she had figured out what was going on and what she wanted to do about it.
The problem with Hogwarts being, well, Hogwarts, was that there were very few places they could go to talk without being discovered by other couples intent on the same thing. Except she was avoiding the idea of other couples, which implied that they were the same, and the idea of being intent on the same thing, because she was quite certain that nothing of the sort would happen.
That was not only circular logic, it was also fuzzy logic, and the kind of thinking that was bound to make her head hurt in short order.
It didn't make sense, but nothing about this made sense. Except maybe the idea of striking a truce with the Slytherins, in that, at least, she could see the point. Not many of the other Gryffindors could. Ginny had seen the argument coming long before Blaise, though, and she'd never spoken with Harry about it. Hermione, in whispers, Dean hadn't had much to say on the subject except how the Slytherins had bullied everyone on the Gryffindor side. Colin Creevy, of all people, was a staunch if silent ally. So at least she had some friends who would understand if she seemed to be going over to the dark side.
Rather than try to meet anywhere sneaky they met in one of the empty classrooms, Arithmancy. No one in Ginny's recollection had ever found Arithmancy alluring or exotic, and certainly no one would want to have an assignation in that classroom. They were pretty safe.
"All right. What do you want?" Fists on hips, her mother's look in her eye.
"What do I want? You're the one who called this little meeting, what do you want?"
"I want to know what you want." Ginny was stubborn, and she wasn't about to start blabbing all the strange ideas that were popping into her head. Besides, he'd started it. "You keep staring at me over meals, and in the library. You've been hanging about like you want something from me but you're too scared to admit it or ask, so I'm asking, what is it?"
Her forwardness startled them both. Blaise opened his mouth to say something when Ginny burst out with it.
"And do you ever smile?"
He blinked at her and then did more than smile, he started laughing. Fearful, it was the kind of laugh that was too calm to be hysteria and too nervous to be honest humor, but it was a laugh.
"What's gotten into you, Ginny? You're acting like…"
"Ginny?"
He blinked. Laughter gone, just that arrogant annoyance back on his face, irritated at having to deal with her at all. "What?"
"You just called me Ginny."
He blinked again. Flushed. "Well, I can't exactly go around calling for Weasley all the time, now can I? You'd all turn up or something. I have to call you something, it's not…"
Her hand covered his with deliberate intimacy. It was apparent where this was going, and although she had her reservations about the advisability of dating a Slytherin, especially an arrogant, bullying Slytherin, especially Blaise, a few things stuck in her mind. He wasn't one of the old families with the Dark Mark on every Wizard or Witch as soon as they came of age. He didn't seem to be friends with Draco out of anything but necessity.
And, really, he had started it.
"Don't. Don't say it, don't do it unless you mean it. I won't be played with. I don't mind being a fool, but if you hurt me I'll hurt you back, and you won't like that."
He looked at her for a silent second, nodded. His face was flushed and heated, from anger, from embarrassment, even if it was from passion there was no way to tell which. Her hand felt too warm in his and then too cold in the next minute, both of their palms clammy with nervous sweat.
"Unless I'm wrong."
She added that at the end, as a little dig. It might have been unworthy of her, to offer … what she was offering and then pull it back like that, but she wasn't really pulling it back now was she? It was kind of like a question, asking if he meant it as much as she did. They were both risking a lot here, and not just in terms of friendships or reputations.
"I don't know." It was an honest answer, and he looked at her when he said it. He seemed to be trying to get rid of the arrogance that was habitual by now, she realized.
"All right. That's a start, anyway." Her mother would have been proud. Well, maybe not proud, she was dating a Slytherin, if you could call it dating. Somehow she didn't think they'd be holding hands in the halls or sneaking away to Hogsmeade for butterbear and cake.
He nodded. Had she said that out loud? No, he was agreeing that it was a start. Ginny took a breath because she had had words to say after that and then couldn't find them when she opened her mouth. He chuckled, a little. But it was trying not to be mean this time.
"How do we do this? I mean… I'm not going to accost you in the hallway, I'll get cursed by your friends."
Ginny snorted. "Not if I have anything to say about it. They can bloody well deal with my decisions about my life on my terms, and if they're going to do anything about it, it had better start with asking me first."
He laughed again. She looked over at him. "You really aren't afraid of anything."
"I'm afraid of lots of things. But not my friends."
His fingers tightened around hers and it took her a second to piece together some theories as to why. Maybe he didn't have any friends, not the way she did, although she thought that was more of a Slytherin stereotype than anything else. They had to have friends, didn't they? People they kind of trusted at least. People they were close to. Or maybe it was the idea of not being afraid of your friends, not being afraid to argue and contradict each other and stand up for what you thought was right. Taking what you wanted was more the purported Slytherin attitude. Standing up for what you thought was right, that was Hufflepuff. And Gryffindor.
"I don't plan on embarrassing you in public," he said after a moment. "I don't know how this works, if we're not supposed to be draped all over each other like some kind of…"
"Like Pansy and Draco?" she teased, with a smile that she hoped conveyed gentleness.
"Or Ron and… Lavender, wasn't it?" He smiled back. It was a start. Ginny laughed, and pulled a face.
"That's my brother for you. Doesn't have the guts to go talk to the girl he does like, so he goes around practically slobbering all over the girl he doesn't actually much care for. Mind you, it did work," she thought about that for a second. "Hermione was furious jealous."
"What about Potter?"
Ginny couldn't imagine for several minutes what he could mean, and then when she realized her face went bright, bright red from having forgotten. See, she told herself. This isn't such a bad idea after all.
"You let me deal with Harry," she sighed. "I'll just point out that you're not a Death Eater and, by comparison, that's a lot."
Blaise snorted. "He's a Gryffindor. We're arch-enemies, remember?"
"No you're not," she snapped. "You're not my arch enemy, I'm not yours, and this whole stupid Houses against Houses thing is just that, stupid! We've got a real enemy out there, now. One who won't hesitate to torture or kill us if he thinks it'll do him any good, and if either of you so much as twitches the tip of a wand in each other's direction so help me…"
His hand covered her mouth for just long enough that she started to wonder why. What was coming next. The possibilities stopped her tirade more than the hand over her mouth, the crashing, tumbling thoughts and her breath tightening a band around her chest and stopping her heart in its beat. Was he? No. He wasn't. Maybe.
He dropped his hand and she could breathe again, but now she was too distracted to remember what she'd been going on about.
"I'll talk to Harry," she said after a long moment. "And you should start coming to the DA meetings with me. If we ever have them again…"
DA. Dumbledore's Army. And he was dead.
"I'm sorry about…" Blaise said, as though he'd had something to do with it. Ginny shook his head.
"It's all right. If we don't have the meetings, we can practice together. You should really learn how to defend yourself better than … at least that way if my idiot brother corners you in the hall you can do something about it."
There didn't seem to be much more to say, after that. A few stolen moments at lunch and class was about to start, and she was hungry. Tired and hungry. Focus on that, rather than the new fact that you're whatevering a Slytherin boy. Blaise Zabini.
"I'll see you at dinner, yeah?" he asked. It was a start.
"Yeah." She smiled shyly at him, the kind of smile she had until just that moment reserved for Harry or Lupin or some other man or boy she admired. It softened both of them, made their holding hands seem a little more natural. "See you at dinner."
"Okay."
He left first, a retreat. She took a second to catch her breath and lean in the doorway afterwards, wondering what they had just started.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Ginny, Blaise
Word Count: 3,004
Rating: PG
Summary: Blaise and Ginny have a very strange relationship. Album!Fic to Nothing Like The Sun
A/N: Slightly late Christmas present for
nopejr. Merry Christmas! There wasn't enough room in the library for the two of them, him and his ego. Ginny rolled her eyes at the way he was staring at her, like he was so much better because he came from a Wizarding family that didn't consort with Mudbloods. But now that she thought about it, that was a good line. Not that bit, the bit about him and his ego. Too bad they weren't actually talking, she would have used it.
Ginny flushed a little at the thought. What was she doing, too bad they weren't actually talking. Either she was becoming like Ron, which was bad, taking any excuse to bait the Slytherins. Or worse, she was paying more attention to Blaise than he really deserved.
He slammed his books closed with an objectionable sound and stormed to the exit and Ginny realized she'd been staring. Stupid girl. Stupid little girl. He was just a boy, and a particularly nasty boy at that.
Ponytail flouncing, fingers tapping on her books. Study did not come easy for the rest of the afternoon.
The whole school had an atmosphere of tension that made it unlike any other year they had endured and enjoyed so far. Enjoyment wasn't in it this year, only endurance. The parties were gone, the easy jokes in the common rooms. The first years looked, for the first time since Ginny had been among them, genuinely terrified out of their minds. There were fewer of them this year, too, than there had been in a while. Parents were no longer convinced of the safety of Hogwarts with Dumbledore gone, and many had opted to keep their children at home where they felt they could watch over them more effectively.
Not, of course, that this was anything like true. Ginny had seen first-hand how Hogwarts could defend itself, no small thanks to Harry for that. She was still so proud of him, the way he had organized everyone. It showed, she hoped, in the way she looked at him even now that they were supposed to be broken up.
Supposed to be, that was a phrase. She wasn't sure what they were now. Separated, mostly for Harry's peace of mind, because everyone knew the short list of people for whom Harry would do just about anything. Whether or not they were formally together had nothing to do with anything. But if it made Harry feel better to keep her at that one bit of distance, if it helped him not to feel like he was shorting her a relationship or…
Ginny scowled, kicking the toe of her book along the stone floor. She could fool everyone but herself, and herself was reminding her in a sarcastic tone that she hated Harry for that. That she thought it was a stupid, selfish decision. Shorting her time, he was shorting both of them, giving in to the fear that they wouldn't both make it through these next few years and telling himself it was for a good reason. Bollocks to that.
"Having a good sulk?"
Ginny whirled, ready to do battle. It wasn't enough that he stalked her in the library, now he had to follow her out here, too?
"What do you want, Zabini?"
He shrugged. Grinned a nasty little Slytherin grin (that was mostly pretend, Ginny knew better) and stared at her as though she were dim. "The way you stalked out of that library…"
But then he stopped, and it took her a second before she realized the expression on his face was bewildered annoyance. He couldn't, she decided, come up with any excuse why he had been following her that wouldn't sound ridiculous coming from someone who had spent countless days tormenting her and her friends.
And on the heels of that thought…
No. Surely not.
"Piss off somewhere, Zabini," she turned so he wouldn't see how unsettled she was.
"Hey."
There was real protest in that one syllable. Both of them looked around to see who might be watching, who might catch them at a spontaneous and probably hormone-driven truce. Of course that was all it was. She was on the rebound from Harry and Zabini was at least sort of handsome in a scowling nasty kind of a way. And she was curious what he wanted.
"Look," he started to say, and again didn't seem to know what he wanted. "I just wanted to know…"
"Yes?"
She was enjoying this exchange of power almost as much as he wasn't. "You and Potter…"
"Blaise Zabini, are you asking me out on a date?"
"Forget it."
That had been too much for even his ego to bear. He turned and stormed down the hall as Ginny wept with silent laughter and tried to compose herself enough to go after him and apologize.
"No, wait…" she said, chasing after him. "I'm sorry…"
Someone in Ravenclaw robes glanced at her, but Blaise was nowhere to be seen. Ginny frowned, a sense of dissatisfaction with the way things had turned out marring her triumph over one of their archenemies. But they weren't that anymore, were they? Maybe they never had been. Maybe it was just a distraction from the real enemy, an annoying side effect of being a teenager in a boarding school that, really, divided its students more than it ever unified them. At least until now.
Ginny wrapped the straps of her bag twice around her fists before turning and slowly walking away. Not yet. She wasn't ready to face that yet.
The staring contest continued on through dinner for three nights before anyone commented. Harry was clearly dying to ask what was going on, and just as clearly resisting the urge to say anything that might make him appear jealous.
That was probably for the best. Ginny would have had a hard time controlling what she said, let alone what she would have done if he'd been in smacking distance.
Honestly, did Harry even have the right to say anything about who she stared at or who she got stared at? They weren't dating anymore. He had broken it off with her, and however noble his reasons might have been he wasn't anything but her friend anymore. That gave him a certain amount of space to say things about who she chose to spend her time with but not that much.
"And anyway," she started, turning bright red as she realized what she'd been thinking. Anyway, it wasn't as though she and Blaise were doing anything.
Except colliding into each other. If she hadn't known better she would have sworn he had been waiting around the corner for her. Except he wasn't, hadn't been, had he. Of course not, his class was just down the hall in the opposite direction, and it would start soon.
There was no reason she should know a thing like that.
He caught her by the shoulders before she even realized she was falling, straightened her out again. His hands were warm, maybe sweaty, maybe too tight around her arms when they both stood and backed away before anyone could see.
"Watch where you're going."
"You watch where you're going."
Dialogue for the ages. They stood there, watching each other and Ginny thought she was panting a little more than angrily. The impulses she was having didn't bear… well, didn't bear having, let alone thinking about. Let alone acting on.
She turned and started to huff away before she could embarrass herself further. Or before she could push herself past the boundaries of her own understanding. One thing she didn't want to do, not now especially but never in her recollection, was to do something so stupid that she would never look back on it ever in her life without deep regret.
So she turned and stalked away before Blaise could do more than say something she didn't let herself hear in protest. Before he could grab her, and she had enough practice at dodging her brothers to dodge his outstretched hand. Whatever peace he wanted to make, it could wait. It could damn well wait until she had figured out what was going on and what she wanted to do about it.
The problem with Hogwarts being, well, Hogwarts, was that there were very few places they could go to talk without being discovered by other couples intent on the same thing. Except she was avoiding the idea of other couples, which implied that they were the same, and the idea of being intent on the same thing, because she was quite certain that nothing of the sort would happen.
That was not only circular logic, it was also fuzzy logic, and the kind of thinking that was bound to make her head hurt in short order.
It didn't make sense, but nothing about this made sense. Except maybe the idea of striking a truce with the Slytherins, in that, at least, she could see the point. Not many of the other Gryffindors could. Ginny had seen the argument coming long before Blaise, though, and she'd never spoken with Harry about it. Hermione, in whispers, Dean hadn't had much to say on the subject except how the Slytherins had bullied everyone on the Gryffindor side. Colin Creevy, of all people, was a staunch if silent ally. So at least she had some friends who would understand if she seemed to be going over to the dark side.
Rather than try to meet anywhere sneaky they met in one of the empty classrooms, Arithmancy. No one in Ginny's recollection had ever found Arithmancy alluring or exotic, and certainly no one would want to have an assignation in that classroom. They were pretty safe.
"All right. What do you want?" Fists on hips, her mother's look in her eye.
"What do I want? You're the one who called this little meeting, what do you want?"
"I want to know what you want." Ginny was stubborn, and she wasn't about to start blabbing all the strange ideas that were popping into her head. Besides, he'd started it. "You keep staring at me over meals, and in the library. You've been hanging about like you want something from me but you're too scared to admit it or ask, so I'm asking, what is it?"
Her forwardness startled them both. Blaise opened his mouth to say something when Ginny burst out with it.
"And do you ever smile?"
He blinked at her and then did more than smile, he started laughing. Fearful, it was the kind of laugh that was too calm to be hysteria and too nervous to be honest humor, but it was a laugh.
"What's gotten into you, Ginny? You're acting like…"
"Ginny?"
He blinked. Laughter gone, just that arrogant annoyance back on his face, irritated at having to deal with her at all. "What?"
"You just called me Ginny."
He blinked again. Flushed. "Well, I can't exactly go around calling for Weasley all the time, now can I? You'd all turn up or something. I have to call you something, it's not…"
Her hand covered his with deliberate intimacy. It was apparent where this was going, and although she had her reservations about the advisability of dating a Slytherin, especially an arrogant, bullying Slytherin, especially Blaise, a few things stuck in her mind. He wasn't one of the old families with the Dark Mark on every Wizard or Witch as soon as they came of age. He didn't seem to be friends with Draco out of anything but necessity.
And, really, he had started it.
"Don't. Don't say it, don't do it unless you mean it. I won't be played with. I don't mind being a fool, but if you hurt me I'll hurt you back, and you won't like that."
He looked at her for a silent second, nodded. His face was flushed and heated, from anger, from embarrassment, even if it was from passion there was no way to tell which. Her hand felt too warm in his and then too cold in the next minute, both of their palms clammy with nervous sweat.
"Unless I'm wrong."
She added that at the end, as a little dig. It might have been unworthy of her, to offer … what she was offering and then pull it back like that, but she wasn't really pulling it back now was she? It was kind of like a question, asking if he meant it as much as she did. They were both risking a lot here, and not just in terms of friendships or reputations.
"I don't know." It was an honest answer, and he looked at her when he said it. He seemed to be trying to get rid of the arrogance that was habitual by now, she realized.
"All right. That's a start, anyway." Her mother would have been proud. Well, maybe not proud, she was dating a Slytherin, if you could call it dating. Somehow she didn't think they'd be holding hands in the halls or sneaking away to Hogsmeade for butterbear and cake.
He nodded. Had she said that out loud? No, he was agreeing that it was a start. Ginny took a breath because she had had words to say after that and then couldn't find them when she opened her mouth. He chuckled, a little. But it was trying not to be mean this time.
"How do we do this? I mean… I'm not going to accost you in the hallway, I'll get cursed by your friends."
Ginny snorted. "Not if I have anything to say about it. They can bloody well deal with my decisions about my life on my terms, and if they're going to do anything about it, it had better start with asking me first."
He laughed again. She looked over at him. "You really aren't afraid of anything."
"I'm afraid of lots of things. But not my friends."
His fingers tightened around hers and it took her a second to piece together some theories as to why. Maybe he didn't have any friends, not the way she did, although she thought that was more of a Slytherin stereotype than anything else. They had to have friends, didn't they? People they kind of trusted at least. People they were close to. Or maybe it was the idea of not being afraid of your friends, not being afraid to argue and contradict each other and stand up for what you thought was right. Taking what you wanted was more the purported Slytherin attitude. Standing up for what you thought was right, that was Hufflepuff. And Gryffindor.
"I don't plan on embarrassing you in public," he said after a moment. "I don't know how this works, if we're not supposed to be draped all over each other like some kind of…"
"Like Pansy and Draco?" she teased, with a smile that she hoped conveyed gentleness.
"Or Ron and… Lavender, wasn't it?" He smiled back. It was a start. Ginny laughed, and pulled a face.
"That's my brother for you. Doesn't have the guts to go talk to the girl he does like, so he goes around practically slobbering all over the girl he doesn't actually much care for. Mind you, it did work," she thought about that for a second. "Hermione was furious jealous."
"What about Potter?"
Ginny couldn't imagine for several minutes what he could mean, and then when she realized her face went bright, bright red from having forgotten. See, she told herself. This isn't such a bad idea after all.
"You let me deal with Harry," she sighed. "I'll just point out that you're not a Death Eater and, by comparison, that's a lot."
Blaise snorted. "He's a Gryffindor. We're arch-enemies, remember?"
"No you're not," she snapped. "You're not my arch enemy, I'm not yours, and this whole stupid Houses against Houses thing is just that, stupid! We've got a real enemy out there, now. One who won't hesitate to torture or kill us if he thinks it'll do him any good, and if either of you so much as twitches the tip of a wand in each other's direction so help me…"
His hand covered her mouth for just long enough that she started to wonder why. What was coming next. The possibilities stopped her tirade more than the hand over her mouth, the crashing, tumbling thoughts and her breath tightening a band around her chest and stopping her heart in its beat. Was he? No. He wasn't. Maybe.
He dropped his hand and she could breathe again, but now she was too distracted to remember what she'd been going on about.
"I'll talk to Harry," she said after a long moment. "And you should start coming to the DA meetings with me. If we ever have them again…"
DA. Dumbledore's Army. And he was dead.
"I'm sorry about…" Blaise said, as though he'd had something to do with it. Ginny shook his head.
"It's all right. If we don't have the meetings, we can practice together. You should really learn how to defend yourself better than … at least that way if my idiot brother corners you in the hall you can do something about it."
There didn't seem to be much more to say, after that. A few stolen moments at lunch and class was about to start, and she was hungry. Tired and hungry. Focus on that, rather than the new fact that you're whatevering a Slytherin boy. Blaise Zabini.
"I'll see you at dinner, yeah?" he asked. It was a start.
"Yeah." She smiled shyly at him, the kind of smile she had until just that moment reserved for Harry or Lupin or some other man or boy she admired. It softened both of them, made their holding hands seem a little more natural. "See you at dinner."
"Okay."
He left first, a retreat. She took a second to catch her breath and lean in the doorway afterwards, wondering what they had just started.