As We Fall (Blaise Zabini Fanfiction)

Chapter 48

I loathe myself for not being the brave and noble heroine that these people think I am. The feeling spreads through my body like illness.

"The death eaters took someone I loved, too, you know." Mikey says. "My mom, when I was six. She was an auror -- always hated the dark arts and anything to do with them. She felt it was her personal responsibility to rid the world of bad people. Her ambition got the best of her, though. She just left home one night and never came back. It was one of You-Know-Who's bunch who did it -- a death eater named Augustus Rookwood. They were never able to pin him down for it, either, the bastard." 

I'm quiet for a moment as the weight of Mikey's story settles into me. 

"I'm sorry to hear that." I say. I really mean it. 

He offers me a small smile, but it doesn't hide the pain masked beneath it. "It's okay. I have my dad, still."

Mikey bids me goodnight when we reach one of several landings on a spiral marble staircase, which is lined by elongated windows on one side and residential doors on the other. 

I don't know which room belongs to Blaise, so I resign myself to the one Mikey showed me to. It's small, but comforting. I especially like the ovalar french window, through which that same milky moonlight leaks through, staining the walls and the floor. 

I decide that I can't help but like Mikey. Boyish energy seems to spill from him with liquidity, but it also serves as a durable, well-worn mask for deeper layers of hurt.  

As I lay in the foreign bed that night, I think of the pained smile he gave me. I think of how I felt its familiarity deep within me, reverberating in my chest and echoing in the spaces between my bones. 

***

The following morning, I'm pulled from sleep by the sound of a feeble knock at my door. I open it to find a house-elf waiting outside, balancing a tray of wobbling eggs, goat cheese, and crepes. When I plant a silver sickle into the elf's palms, intending to convey my gratitude, it bursts into a fit of sobs and scrambles back down the staircase. 

Further up the staircase, I hear the heavy sigh of a door as it's pulled open, followed by the hollow noise of footsteps descending the stairs, growing closer. 

My heart feels as though a fist has wrapped around it and squeezed tightly when Blaise appears around the wall. When he sees my head peeking out of the doorway, he falters. 

We stand there for a moment. Neither of us are sure just what to say to the other. 

"Talk to me." I blurt out. "Please."

It feels as though he's barely spoken to me, or even looked in my direction, in days. I can feel it happening -- his regression into his old self. The one that won't open up to me, that won't say more than a few words in my presence.

"And say what?" 

"Anything." I say. "Like how are you feeling?"

Blaise pulls his lower lip between his teeth. Still, he refuses to look at me. 

"Why won't you talk to me?" I try to keep my voice from trembling as it squeezes past the knot in my throat. 

He sighs, finally meeting my eyes. "I'm trying." 

His hand slides to the back of my head, his fingers weaving themselves in between strands of my hair. He guides my forehead to his lips, leaving a tender kiss from which warmth seems to blossom down into the rest of my body. 

Before I can get another word out, he takes off down the stairs. The moment is over, and the warmth settles into my bones and dies. 

I know he's struggling with all of this, maybe almost as much as I am. Having to see his mother again, especially when he knows the fate she's set in store for me, must feel impossible. But his emotions are wrapping him up, strangling him until his voice box is swollen. He won't, or can't, speak to me about any of it, and if he doesn't soon, then the gulf that's opened up between us is bound to grow wider. 

He's shutting down when I need him the most. 

My thoughts are interrupted by the third individual to appear in my doorway today. It's the slender-figured Ingrid. I remember that she's a professor at Beauxbatons, as well as head of the organization dedicated to helping me through this mess. 

"Zoe -- I'm sorry to be bothering you this early in the morning." She says. "I hope you managed to get some sleep, because your first training session with Vaughn begins in ten minutes."