Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

13: what happens in the common stays in the common room I

He collapsed onto the sofa when she stormed out of the room and he and Theo trade wary glances. His nervousness only increases when Potter comes back ten minutes before curfew with a small mischievous smile on her face. When she came to sit next to him she seemed more relaxed than she had in weeks, since her first confrontation with Malfoy even and Blaise worried over just what she had done to calm the violence that rested within her.

And then they all hear the news that Cormac Mcglaggen was in the hospital wing. A charm backfired and removed all the bones in his fingers, nasty business it was. When the boy spots Eliza in the hall that night he paled like he's seen the devil himself and Blaise honestly has no idea how to feel.

He'd never had a father to care about him, never known who he even was. And his mother loved him but his mother loved a lot of things, loved a lot of different men which usually meant Blaise was at the back of a very long line. She loved him in the way one loved a family pet, he got treats for good behaviour but other than that was left to be forgotten.

But this girl, this tiny slip of a thing, had taken one look at his bloodied face and had decided to send someone to the hospital wing in retaliation, and damn if that just didn't make him kind of want to cry. But instead of admitting that he returned to his favourite pastime of annoying Theo. Emotional hearts to heart could wait.

~

"What do you want for Yule?" Eliza asked one day as they relax in the commons "I've never done this whole present thing before"

Blaise stopped from where he was trying to finish his defence essay and traded worried glances with Theo. This isn't the first time Eliza had brought up her less than stellar home situation. When Blaise had first learnt about the orphanage he had had to stop himself from marching straight up to Dumbledore and punching him in his crooked nose like a feral eleven year old muggle.

"What do you mean Eliza?" Theo asked in hopes that this time she would offer up more than 'the orphanage is horrible' or 'one time I broke a kid's leg because he tried to break into my room'

Interesting pieces of information but not quite what he was looking for.

"I've never had anyone to buy presents for, or vice versa" she said as if that wasn't one of the most heart-breaking things he had ever heard.

"We'd be happy with anything you get us Eliza" Blaise said encouragingly. Eliza obviously doesn't understand what she's said is absolutely heart-breaking and Blaise resolves to get her the best present he can.

He's glad he did when he receives his own. The wolf off his house crest stares out at him proudly, standing sentry on his bed side table.

One of his mother's husbands had been suffocated in the night. He knows this because he had seen it. He had been 7 at the time.

The little wolf makes him feel safer than he had in years.

~

Theo felt like he was going to have an aneurysm because Eliza just won't stop asking questions. Not even normal questions, all questions were highly complex and on illegal topics which seemed to be Eliza's forte. Theo coped with it all the best he could. Which is to say he doesn't cope very well at all. He and Blaise have taken to throwing Eliza at Fawley and running while they still could.

Eliza wasn't just full of questions about dubious areas of magic however, she seemed to have made it her mission to know everything about he and Blaise that she could. The day she asked about Theo's mother he got up out of the common room and walked away. Luckily, Eliza wasn't offended. She sat next to him on the sofa that night and held his hand softly in her own.