Chapter 35

***

The little boy loved animals.

He'd always seemed to gravitate towards them, as if there was some sort of magnetic pull. They fascinated him -- they could be fluffy and soft like a cloud, or hard and shaped like a stick. They could emanate elaborate color, or simply be dull and plain. They might have wings, tails, multiple legs -- it didn't matter. He loved them all the same.

Later in life, whenever it crossed his mind, he supposed that his enjoyment of animals as a child stemmed from an issue rooted deep within him -- a very dark issue. He believed that the main reason why his younger self was so drawn to animals is because they had something that he didn't -- innocence. This was sad, of course, because he'd only been a child at the time, no older than six or seven. Yet his innocence had already been torn from him, and it had felt like flesh being ripped from his body. He was exposed, and vulnerable enough to be manipulated by the darkest parts of the world -- particularly by his mother, who wasn't like a mother at all, and who showed him no mercy in the cruel experiments she performed on him.

So when the boy found an owl in the woods behind his house one day, he was thrilled.

He'd been slowly picking his way through the tall trees, trying to put as much distance as he could between him and his mother, when he stumbled upon the magical creature. It was a tiny thing with dark feathers, and after a few moments, he realized one of its wings was bent at an odd angle -- broken. It seemed to be peering up at him with its big round eyes, asking for help. He was happy to oblige.

So the boy scooped the owl into his tiny arms with extreme care, and began the short journey back to his family's manor house.

He wanted to help this thing, heal it, so it could roam the skies and be free again. He was excited to do it.

However, he knew he couldn't let his mother find out. He was pretty certain that she wouldn't be too happy about an owl shacking up in her manor, and he did not wish to suffer additional punishment on top of the painful rituals that he was already subjected to.

But he wanted to do this, anyways. It'd only been five minutes, and he'd already grown fond of the owl. He couldn't just abandon it back in the woods. So he resolved that he would take care of it in secret, and keep it from his mother the best he could.

The boy was able to hide the owl from his mother for awhile.

He kept it in a birdcage in the corner of his bedroom -- one that you had to walk really far in to see. He lined the bottom of the cage with scraps of the Daily Prophet, and brought it dead mice that he found out amongst the trees. He took care of it the best he could for being a boy no older than seven.

He started to get attached to the owl -- too attached, perhaps, simply because there was no other being in his household that he could share a safe, loving connection with. Often times, after the light in his room had flickered off for the night, he stayed awake and sidled himself up next to the bird cage, talking to his owl about whatever crossed his young mind. He told it when he was upset. He told it when he was excited. Most of all, though, he told it when he was fearful. He was fearful a lot.

He even gave the creature a name: Butterbeer. This was a treat which he rather enjoyed, but could only have on the rarest of occasions.

But of course, this happy relationship wasn't to last.

After several weeks of having his pet, and hiding it successfully (or so he thought), from his mother, the boy began to grow confident that she would never find it.

As you might be able to guess, this wasn't the case.

"Blaise, darling." A sing-song voice called up to his room one day, somehow reeking of malevolence. "You must come downstairs. Several friends of ours are here, and they require you to test a new spell out on."

Blaise, who'd been slipping earthworms between the thin bars of his birdcage, shrank up like a spider at the sound of his mother's voice.

She always did this -- tried to make it seem as though the spells and experiments that she and her fellow witches wanted to perform on him would be painless and simple procedures. But he knew by now that that wasn't true. He knew that the women waiting downstairs for him were no friends of his.

He stayed silent, his small heart positively banging in his chest.

His bedroom door creaked open. His mother glided in like a dementor. She was dark-skinned like him, and so skinny that her bones stuck out of her skin like toothpicks.

"Blaise." She gazed down at him, her eyes devoid of any affection. Her voice was soft, but she spoke in a way that warned him of his immediate danger if he didn't obey her.

"I -- I don't want to." He said shakily.

Blaise's heart was hammering inside of him now, every inch of his skin burning up. He had never defied his mother before -- not once. Whenever she told him to come, he obliged like a scared puppy. He endured the pain, the confusion, the betrayal, because he was afraid of what would happen if he didn't. But right now, something was different. He had deliberately disobeyed his mother for the very first time, and his nerves were stretched razor-thin inside of him, because he had no idea what she was going to do about it.

The woman surveyed him for a moment with pursed lips. She was so still that it looked as though she wasn't even breathing.

"Move over."

Blaise didn't move.

"Move over, my child."

Could it be -- ? No --

He'd been so secretive about his pet for so long. There was no possible way she could know. But somehow, she had to know -- there was no other explanation for why she'd asked him to move just now, because the bird cage containing his owl was hiding directly behind his back.

Dreadfully and slowly, the boy inched himself to the side and revealed what was behind him. He knew it -- she was going to be furious about this.

His mother stood for a moment, staring directly at the bird. She didn't appear to be angry, or even surprised.

Blaise flinched as she reached out a bony hand, plucking the cage off the floor by its metal handle. His skin was cold with sweat.

"Well." She said icily, holding the cage out. The owl squawked frantically inside it, as if it too knew that danger was coming. "If you refuse to let us test the spell out on you, then I suppose this will have to do for now."

She pointed her wand at the center of the cage, and shrieked out a sharp, piercing incantation.

There was a blast of electric purple light that seemed to illuminate every corner of the room for the briefest second. Then, the owl collapsed to the bottom of the cage, completely lifeless.

Blaise screamed.

It was high-pitched and full of terror, ripping its way out of him as though he could not possibly contain it, for he had just witnessed something a child should never see. He was paralyzed with horror, with fear, with heartbreak.

His mother, ignoring his agonized cries, examined the dead owl with mild interest. She rotated the cage slightly to view it from another angle.

"I knew about it the whole time, my little Blaise."

He sobbed on the floor -- a tiny, trembling ball.

"I saw you bring it into the house when you found it. I just chose not to say anything about it to you. Don't be silly -- a son can never keep a secret from his own mother."

"Perhaps if you hadn't attempted to disobey me, your little friend would still be alive." She said. "It's unfortunate -- that broken wing had almost healed, too."

She dropped the cage, and it clattered to the floor. Blaise trembled like a leaf as his mother whisked out of the room.

If only he'd done what his mother told him to do, this wouldn't have happened. He could've just gone downstairs, got the experiment over with, and dashed back up to the safety of his room as soon as it was over.

But no. He'd decided to take a risk, and it had backfired.

So he sat there, his arms locked around his knees like chains. Too scared to move, too scared to make a noise, too scared to do anything but cry.

***

Blaise

My skin prickles, and I feel icy inside as I think back on this moment.

I remember that day so vividly -- even though it was ten years ago, and even though I was just a kid when it happened. I remember what I'd been wearing, I remember the cold-blooded look on my mother's face, I even remember the taste of my own tears on my lips.

I try to avoid thinking about that day if I can. I lost part of myself that day-- a part which I feel I may never be able to get back. It's the day which something changed in me -- the day that I started to turn into the cold, hardened version of myself that I am now, because pretending like I didn't feel anything was far more preferable to the pain and fear I was experiencing.

It was the day that I realized I'll never have a choice. I'll never have control over what happens to me, and I'll never be able to say no. If I did, history would surely repeat itself, and my mother would just destroy something else I care about. Of course, ever since that day, I haven't allowed myself to care much about anything at all. I know she'd just find another way to ruin me, though, if I ever tried to refuse her again.

My problem now is that things have changed.

I don't have the same careless attitude that I used to -- I can't. I tried so hard not to care about Zoe when she came into my life, but I quickly realized that that wasn't going to happen. I care about her more than I've ever cared about anything else before. It feels as if it's my life's biggest goal, my heart's deepest desire, to protect this girl. If that means I have to go home and endure unimaginable torture every night for the rest of my life, then so be it. The pain of that would be nothing compared to the agony I'd experience if something ever happened to her.

The suggestion Zoe made to me a few weeks back flits through my mind, and I chuckle to myself bitterly.

Just stop going, she'd told me. Don't go home. Simply don't talk to my mother ever again.

God, I wish it were that easy. I wish I could believe that there was still hope for me to escape this hell. But it feels like I've been pitched down a never-ending black hole, and I'm spiraling downwards, gaining speed with every second that passes. I feel like I'll never stop falling.

I won't lie, though -- things aren't nearly as bad as they used to be. Not even as bad as they were at the beginning of the year.

I used to feel torn down with dread whenever my mother owled me to come home. My lungs felt like they were filled with tar, and my body felt so heavy that I could barely move. I would go home, and I'd try to go to a different place in my mind as my mother and her group bewitched me, twisted me, tormented me body and soul for as long as they felt they needed to. And then, battered and bruised, I would take my broom and fly back to Hogwarts as fast as I could.

It was hard to tell what was actually worse -- the torture itself, or the feeling I got when it was over.

I'd make it back to the castle and have to drag myself down to the dorms in the dead of night, trying my best to hold together my cracked and broken pieces for just a little bit longer. I'd collapse on my bed and lay there for hours, sometimes bleeding all the way into the morning. Occasionally, I'd even cry. Not from fear or sorrow -- no, I was used to those. But from exhaustion, from frustration that what my mother did to me was so horrible that I hadn't slept in years, and was forced to brew a potion that would keep me awake at night.

I sat there and dealt with the aftermath every time, wondering how the hell I was going to make myself seem normal in classes the next day.

But when I leave for my mother's house now, I don't dread coming back to Hogwarts anymore. Because now, I know I won't be alone. When I get back, no matter how beaten down I am, the one thing I care about more than anything else in the world will be waiting for me.

Yes -- I've started telling Zoe when my mother has owled me to come back home. For the most part, I do it because she insists on being there when I get back. She stays up into the early hours of the morning waiting for me to arrive, and when I finally do, I find her perched on the edge of my bed, sitting stiff as leather. She'll sit me back against my pillows, press a cold washcloth to the back of my neck, and begin cleaning the blood away from my wounds. She rarely speaks -- just works me over in silence, refusing to look me in the eyes.

One of these nights, I return to the castle with a particularly bloody gash above my collarbone.

Zoe tries not to make a big deal out of it, but I don't miss the way her eyes bulge when I stumble into the room.

"You need to sit down." She says shakily, ushering me onto my bed the moment I break through the door. My gash is searing with pain, and my entire body is racked with nausea from the long flight home.

I moan, my body drenched in sweat. I can't stand this feeling anymore.

"Here, take my hand. This isn't going to feel good."

Zoe slips onto the bed next to me, holding a small phial. It's filled to the brim with a clear and suspicious liquid.

"What is that -- ?"

"Shhh. Just take my hand." Her voice is soft and convincing. It puts me in a sort of trance -- I feel like I'll do anything she asks of me when I hear it. I curl my hand around hers without thinking twice.

Zoe uncaps the stopper, and pours the liquid onto a dry rag with a quivering hand. Then, she presses it to my wound.

Instantly, I feel like I'm on fire. The sensation is horrible -- searing, acidic agony, as though something is eating away at my skin. I grit my teeth, trying with all my might not to yell or scream, and squeeze the hand she'd given me as tight as possible, unable to control myself in my flurry of pain.

The burning ceases. I slowly open my eyes, which had been screwed tightly shut. She'd taken the rag off.

I touch my fingers to the area where the gash had been. It's no longer there. The blood, the ripped up skin -- they've all seemed to disappear, to heal miraculously like they'd never been there at all.

I look up at Zoe, astonished. "How did you do that?"

She shakes the empty phial, offering a small but anxious smile. "I've taught myself a few things lately. You know, to help you."

I try to smile, but the corner of my mouth only twitches weakly. "Well, I ought to keep you around then, don't I?"

She laughs at my joke at first, but it sounds forced. Then, her smile vanishes. Her face starts crimping up. She turns her head down towards her lap, suddenly trying to hide from me.

"Hey," I say, moving a bit of hair away from her face. "What's wrong?"

She only shakes her head. Something wet drips off of her chin and onto my lap.

I slide a hand beneath her head, turning it up towards me.

She's crying.

"Zoe..." My voice is breathless as I realize what's going on.

She sniffles loudly, and wipes the tears from beneath her eyes with the heel of her hand.

"I'm sorry." She says shakily. "It's just hard -- " gulp " -- for me to see you like this."

My heart crumbles as I look at her.

I remember the first time she'd cried in front of me. I'd said something stupid -- something that hurt her, even though I hadn't meant it to. I'd gone into complete panic mode. My mental alarm was blaring, and I'd felt like the world's biggest dick. But that feeling is nothing compared to what I feel now.

I feel actual physical pain as I look at her -- like somehow, my feelings are intertwined with hers. It's pain far worse than any kind of torture my mother could inflict on me. It makes me forget about everything else that's happened tonight.

I reach out, taking hold of her body and lifting her onto my lap. My arms form a cradle around her as I pull her to my chest, feeling like I'm protecting her from everything bad in the world.

"Don't you say that." I whisper. I press my lips to the top of her head. The action comes naturally to me, despite the fact that I've never done it to another girl before.

I hate the fact that my situation is causing her pain, too. I'm beginning to question whether I should've told her in the first place. It would've been much easier for her if I'd just continued to let her be oblivious about the whole thing. But I realize that that wasn't, and never would've been possible. She cared too much about me to let it go -- to simply stop asking me what was wrong.

My heart skips a beat.

She cares about me. It amazes me. I feel dizzy when I think about it.

It hurts her so much to see me in pain that it brought her to tears. It astonishes me to think that someone could ever care about me like that.

She realized how much I needed her even before I did. And now that she's here with me, I'm not sure how I was ever able to do this alone -- not just alone, but without her. Now, I can't imagine coming back to an empty dorm room after a long night at home. She's the one person I don't have to put on a front for anymore -- the one person who I can truly be myself around.

Falling for her is the easiest thing I've ever done. Yet at the same time, it's absolutely terrifying. I look at her, and I forget how to walk, how to talk, even how to breathe. My heart beats for her. I've never cared about anyone like this before, and I sure as hell don't understand how she still cares about me after everything I've put her through. I truly don't understand how she can still see good in me, even after I've shown her my most dark and twisted parts.

I know if it'd been anyone else who'd tried to intervene in my life, I'd have pushed them away, or acted like so much of a dick that they would've abandoned me on their own. But not with Zoe.

She makes me weak -- in my knees, in my heart, in my mind.

Just when I think I can't do this anymore, she proves to me that I can.

***

Zoe

It's a cold, dry morning in the dungeons.

Professor Slughorn has given us a relatively simple potion to brew today, but I can't seem to stay focused on it.

A few nights ago, I'd cried in Blaise's arms when I'd realized just how much pain he was in, and then felt extremely guilty afterwards.

I'd tried to hide it from him at first. I'd turned my head down and commanded myself over and over again in my mind: you will not cry, you will not cry, you will not cry. But Blaise had already figured it out, and it'd been too late. He took me into his arms, held me to him as tightly as possible, and refused to let me go for the rest of the night.

It made me feel ashamed.

I was supposed to be the one helping him, being strong for him, healing him, and I'd broken down into tears the moment I'd seen him in pain. It shook me to my core to watch him like that, and it ripped apart my heart, but I didn't want him to know that. I didn't want him to have to comfort me -- that wasn't how it was supposed to go.

So last night, when he told me his mother had ordered him to come home again, I reported to his room and stationed myself on his bed.

I was determined to be much more strong for him this time. I waited for hours, time creeping by as slowly as it could, and tried not to think about what was happening to him at that very moment. Not once did I move -- not even an inch. I wondered, with a fear so strong that it tortured me, just how bad his injuries would be this time. And for one dreadful second, the very worst crossed my mind:

Would he even make it back alive this time? Or would his mother's experiments finally become too much for his body to handle?

But I pushed that thought to the back of my head as soon as it happened. I wouldn't allow myself to think like that. I had to believe that he'd come back.

I had no other choice.

I cross my legs on top of my stool, returning to the present moment, and fold into myself with a shiver. 

Blaise glances at me stonily out of the corner of his eyes.

"You're cold." He notes.

"Yeah." I hug myself tighter. "It's freezing down here."

He doesn't respond anymore, but continues to twist his ladle through the contents of his cauldron. There's a slight warmth emitting from his potion, and I lean in just a tad, hoping that my cold skin will absorb some of it.

"Back up." Blaise snaps. "I can't focus when you're hovering over my shoulder like that."

I blink, taken aback.

He's aggravated with me. This is news to me, because I haven't done anything wrong.

Nevertheless, I recline in my stool, shrinking away from him and the comforting heat of his potion.

"Do you want me to do anything?" I ask, twiddling with my fingers beneath the table. I feel useless right now -- he's been doing all of the work since class began.

"Yeah -- I want you to be quiet so I can actually get this shit done. Can you do that? Or is that too much for you to handle?"

The last part of his sentence is added on in a sickeningly condescending tone that makes me want to slap him. But I decide to repress my anger, stuffing it all into an exasperated sigh. He's been through a lot lately.

Like last night. Blaise had come back from his mother's house particularly late. He'd staggered through the door, bloodied and purpled and looking as though he was hanging on by a thread. I'd fixed him up as usual, but I'm starting to think that the weight of going home to his mother every night is having a really sour effect on his mood. That could be the only explanation for why he's being such a dick to me -- right? Because he hasn't been this rude to me in months.

Against my better judgment, I decide to speak up again.

"Just let me do something, Blaise. If you try to do it all yourself, we're not going to be done in time."

His head snaps towards me.

For a moment, he looks very, very much as though he wants to say something to me -- something I can tell won't be nice. His lips are folded in on each other, his eyes looking venomous.

"Fine." He finally agrees, but clearly only to shut me up. He reaches into his bag and bitterly hands me a silver knife. "Take this, and chop up the fluxweed. Try not to screw it up -- if you can manage that."

I pluck the knife from him, suppressing yet another wave of hot anger.

At this point, purposefully messing up the task he's given me is starting to sound very tempting. He deserves it -- he's reverting back to his old, cold self so quickly that it's giving me whiplash. I understand he's going through a lot -- and I mean a lot -- but I support him through it in every way I can. If he's going to take out all of his pent-up anger on someone, it certainly shouldn't be me.

I force the blade down onto the fluxweed, digging an accidental groove into my cutting board. Across the table, Goyle throws me an inquisitive look. I give a small shake of my head -- a warning. He's better off not trying to insert himself between Blaise and I right now.

Slide, thunk. Slide, thunk.

The heat in my chest is expanding, smoking, the longer I think about Blaise's words to me. It unfurls down my arms and into my hands and fingers. I'm gripping the knife like an umbrella in a rainstorm, and the noise produced by my fierce fluxweed-cutting is so loud that Pansy and Draco have started to stare from the table behind us.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Blaise's sharp voice pierces the air.

My knife clatters to the cutting board as I look up at him. He's not stirring the potion anymore -- he's staring at me in a way that makes my blood boil.

"Cutting this. Like you told me to."

"Yeah, well I didn't tell you to cut it like a troll, did I?" He hisses. He snatches the cutting board from me, like I'm a toddler whose been caught doing something naughty. "Are you really this stupid? Or can't you actually do something right for once in your life?"

My teeth are grinding, a whirl of emotion rising  up in my chest.

"I tutored you for four goddamn months, Zoe, and somehow, you still don't know how to do the most basic shit -- "

"Shut up." I cut him off.

He pauses.

"What did you say?"

"I told you," I continue, trying to keep my voice from trembling, "to shut it, Zabini."

I haven't called him this in months.

Blaise's features twist into a look of enraged confusion.

"I know you're going through a lot right now, but you do not get to take it out on me like this."

His eyes go dark. It's almost as if I can see the smoke coming out of his ears. Crabbe and Goyle are staring at us now, frozen with shock, but I hardly notice them, or anyone else besides the boy in front of me.

"Have you thought about the fact that maybe you're just a fuck-up, and I'm not taking shit out on you?" Blaise says. "If you'd stop thinking you were so perfect all the time, you might be able to see that."

I scoff in disbelief.

"This isn't you Blaise. You haven't acted like this to me in months."

"Well, I've got a lot of catching up to do, then." He spits.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I say heatedly. "I stay up for hours at night waiting for you to get back to the castle, and I spend even longer taking care of you once you do. This is how you're planning on thanking me for all of that?"

"I never asked you to do any that."

Despite his words, the look in his eyes has drastically changed. He looks almost uncertain of himself now.

Still, I know he's not going to give up this fight -- and what he's said has hurt me all the same.

"Well, consider me gone then." I say icily.

It's at that moment that the end-of-class bell rings. I snap my eyes away from his, wasting no time in shoving my books messily into my bag and racing for the door, leaving Blaise, along with our mess of a potion, behind me.

The last place I want to be right now is near him.

***