Whether We Wear Masks

He never meant to speak to her.

He stumbles across her, where she is standing- hiding?- in a corner of the room during the Slug Club party. Her dark brown eyes are wary as she scans the room.

"Oh, sorry," she says as he bumps into her.

"Whatever," he says flippantly, staring down at the small, thin gir-Mudblood. She looks at him for a moment, then chooses to roll her eyes and go back to watching the room.

He decides to have some fun. His definition of it, anyways.

"Get out of my way," he says with an arrogance that only generations of wealth can breed.

"When the moon turns green," she says blithely, as if she's not scared at all. And considering the stories Blaise has heard about Hermione Granger, she may very well not be. However, this is not going to stop Blaise Zabini, fourth richest student in the school and pure-blooded to boot.

"I said-"

"I heard what you said," she snaps. "However, the last time I checked, this is a free country, and there's no rules about having to make way for great big gits like yourself." She sniffs, and then proceeds to ignore him.

This will not do.

"Get out of my WAY!" he orders, and puts a hand on her shoulder to push her forcefully. "Stupid little mudblood-"

His words are cut short as she trips him, and he tumbles to the ground.

"Narcissistic, bigoted moron," she says coolly.

"Dirty-blooded, bushy-haired bitch," he responds in kind.

"Better dirty-blooded than empty-headed," she says without missing a beat.

"Who the hell do you think he are?!" he demands angrily, getting to his feet and towering over her. His vengeful glare is matched by her flat-eyed stare.

"I think I'm me, last time I checked," she says, as if they were equals.

"You'll get yours," he seethes, wishing for nothing more than to slap her across the face.

"I'm sure I will," she says flatly.

"All you mudbloods will," he continues, smiling in a rather unpleasant fashion.

"As if I haven't heard that thread a million and one times," she says wryly, a half-smile curling on the left side of her face. "Really, Blaise, if you're going to threaten me, do try to use something original. Having my life threatened no longer holds the charm it once did."

"Don't sully my name with your muddy lips, bitch," he mutters, ready to abandon stately dignity for the chance to somehow physically assault her. "You and your kind-"

"We belong to the same kind, idiot," she says, and now there is a hint of fire reflecting on the sheen of her voice.

"No," he says in a gravelly sort of voice. "I'm better than you. I'm a wizard, I BELONG here."

"One would think," she says, heat starting to filter through more strongly, "that after saving the Wizarding World several times, I would have earned my place here."

"Saved it?" he snorts. "Your kind is ruining it."

"Are we?" she asks. "You and I, Blaise, we're ruining the Wizarding World?"

"Not we, mudblood," he says. "You."

"Yet we're both still magical, still human, still mortal." She leans against the wall, flames flickering in her voice, her eyes, her very being. "We're both still very much alike, Blaise Zabini, and in the end, we build this world together. Whether you like it or not."

"Your kind will be the ruination of us all," he seethes. "You will taint our blood, pollute our culture, infect our very way of life-"

"Do you listen to the Wizarding Wireless?" she asks suddenly. Blaise blinks, taken aback.

"Of course I do," he snarls. "What kind of moronic question is that?"

"How did you get to Hogwarts this year, Blaise?"

He grinds his teeth in frustration. "By the Hogwarts Express, of course."

"I don't suppose you ever visit the loo?" she queries politely, and Blaise wants to scream.

"YES!" he whispers harshly. "Stop trying to ignore the obvious, it's-"

"So you listen to a Muggle invention," she breaks in, stabbing the air in his general direction. "You come to Hogwarts on a Muggle vehicle, and you use a very, very Muggle way to relieve yourself." She smirks in a manner so reminiscent of Malfoy. "And yet you act as if Muggles- and their magical offspring- are less than the Wizarding World, when Muggles have brought you some of the most basic things in your life."

"They run off magic," he says, choosing to ignore her point. "They're magical. Muggleborns don't bring us anything but problems. Your kind can't possibly understand what it's like to be raised as a wizard, you couldn't possibly raise your child like a witch, and-"

"You sound like a Death Eater," she says softly, "trying to rationalise an irrational fear and hatred."

"So what if I do?" he demands. "They have a point. Muggleborns and Muggles don't belong in the magical world. They're nothing like wizards and witches, don't know the culture, don't know anything about us! We have nothing in common with them."

He leans in closer, smiling maliciously.

"I'd be proud to be a Death Eater," he whispers in a low voice. "Proud to take up their cause, proud to cleanse the world of your filth and your kind, proud to eradicate anything remotely Muggle in our worl-" "You know," she snaps, interrupting him, "there's a group much like yours in the Muggle World, across the pond in the United States."

"Is that so?" he answers with vengeful bemusement, wondering what the shrilly Mudblood could possibly mean.

"Oh, yes," she says acidly, glaring at him with a fury only the purest of our kind know. "Yes, there are. Only they hunt something entirely different."

"And what might that be, pray tell?" he says smoothly, dangerously, smirking.

She takes his hand suddenly, firm white fingers crushing his palm.

"People with skin this colour," she growls, and his eyes widen, because he's never heard of that sort of hunting before. She lets his hand go, but he still feels the burn of her indignation.

She turns to go, but before she disappears back into the crowd, she says, "And the funny thing is, they wear masks too."

He watches her as she walks away.

His world has just been turned upside down.

He corners her again, a few days after the party.

"You were lying," he says harshly. "I went to the library, and there was nothing of the sort in there."

"You overgrown dumbass," she says bluntly, and his face grows hot. "Of course there isn't; a wizarding library isn't likely to have books on Muggle hategroups, particularly terrorist ones from another country, are they?"

"Terrorists?" he echoes. "Yes," she snaps peevishly. "Terrorists. People who use violence to terrorise the general populace at large."

She looks around, makes sure no one is watching, and looks him in the eye.

"Meet me in the library at nine thirty tonight," she says sharply, "in the wizarding law section. I'll show you some stuff there."

She trots off, and Blaise doesn't feel any more comfortable in the knowledge she has once again imparted on him then he did a few nights ago.

Blaise feels sick.

Hermione has brought books, and pictures.

He sees a burning cross. Vaguely, he remembers that crosses are a symbol of a popular Muggle religion.

It's what's next to that picture that makes his stomach turn.

A picture of man, with skin the same colour as is. Hanging. Flogged. Burnt.

Hermione stares at Blaise dispassionately.

Around the man is a group of men, in sheets. With smooth masks on their faces. Like the Death Eaters.

They had killed the man, tortured him.

"Over something he had no control over," she says neutrally. "His parentage."

He looks at her, irrationally hoping that the target of his anger would somehow enlighten him, make it okay for him to believe what he believed before.

Hermione just continues to eye him. Then, on a piece of paper, she jots down a few lines.

"This is my address, to my house," she says blankly. "Come over during the holidays. I'll have more to show you."

Blaise's mind is spinning and spinning.

Hermione's house is not what he thought it would be like.

It's fairly small, in downtown London. The city is grey and white on Christmas Eve, but inside the house is a riot of colour, warmth and light. Pictures adorn the walls, much like his own.

He's sitting on a couch, large, squishy, and very comfortable. Hermione's parents have stepped out, and now she is serving him hot cocoa with marshmallows.

But that's not why he's here.

She leads him to her room, which is neat, and done in shades of soft spring green.

"Green?" he asks in amusement, and she shrugs.

"Green is the colour of life," she says. Blaise has nothing to say to that.

She points to her bed, where more glossy photos lay. He leans over in curiosity to look.

Five minutes later, he's bent over her toilet, with Hermione supporting him and stroking his head.

"What?" he gasps, tears from both the vomit and from the memories of the picture streaming from his face. "What.. was that?"

"That's a lot of things," she says soothingly, and Blaise allows the comfort of her cold hand to cool his blazing forehead. "That's Auschwitz. That's slavery. That's World War One. That's the rape of Nanking. That's Irish children who were killed because they had one Protestant parent and one Catholic parent. That's civil war in Africa, in America, all over the world. That's the bombing of Hiroshima. That's a soldier being hacked to pieces with an axe."

She smoothes her hand up and down his back. "That's terror," she whispers. "That's ancient, irrational, inhuman hatred and anger."

His tears flow freely into the now clean toilet.

She lets him cry for a while, lets the horror leak out of his eyes and stomach as the memories surge back and he is sick again.

"I'm...." he's trying to say he's sorry, but he can't find the words. Sorry doesn't cover it, because amid the pictures of Muggle horror, there are pictures of ancient Wizarding raids and 'cleansing' squads identical to the Death Eaters. Sorry isn't enough.

When he's finished being ill, she brings him back to her room. Blaise averts his eyes as she puts the pictures in a box, under the bed, away from him. She pulls out another box, and he hears Hermione drawing more pictures out.

"Look," she says softly, but he's afraid to. "Look," she insists, and he finds that he must.

Now he's staring at a picture with a lake with a thousand little paper birds.

"This is from Japan," she says. "They're origami cranes, made in the memory of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." She places that picture on a nearby stand, and now Blaise is staring at a photograph of people rebuilding.

"This is people in Mississippi, building a church that the Ku Klux Klan burnt down," she smiles, and he can only stare in wonder. "And this," she continues, pulling out another picture, "is the picture of Catholics and Protestants holding vigil and promising to maintain peace after the children were killed."

One by one, Hermione goes through a handful of pictures, all hopeful and showing Blaise that redemption is not a lost art, nor merely a daydream from those who have only recently learnt that they are from from forgiving grace.

"There is no black and white, Blaise," she says as she puts the last picture, the destruction of a wall in Germany, down. "We're merely human. That's all that counts, in the end." She sits on her edge of her bed, her face carefully arranged to be neutral.

"The only question that remains for us now," she says resolutely, and Blaise feels the fierce heat dancing in her voice, "is whether we wish to wear masks, or not. I," she continues, "do not."

Blaise looks at her feet, her hands, anything but her face.

A thousand years of self-sustaining hatred in the form of 'knowledge' has just been yanked out from under Blaise's feet, and he has every right to be confused.

"I...." he says, trailing off lamely.

She gets up, crosses over to him, tilts his head up with one hand.

"You don't have to say you're sorry," she says firmly, but kindly, and Blaise understands now that she did not say this to him, show all this to him, in order to punish him. "Sorry doesn't mean much in the scheme of things, especially with the way the world is today."

Blaise nods mutely, waiting for her to finish.

"You don't have to apologise, because this isn't your fault. You didn't cause this hatred, and even in the end, you didn't perpetuate it that much." She hesitates, not sure of what to say next, but he holds his large, dark hands around her slim pale one, willing her to go on.

"You don't have to do anything," she continues. "You never had to. You never had to come here, listen to me, and you don't have to take my word for anything." He nods, waiting for the rest.

She bites her lip.

"All you have to do," she says, "is realise is that it is wrong. That is the first step. After that, it's up to you."

He looks away, studying the intricate gold-leaf pattern on her bedspread. He lets everything soak in again, feels his stomach roil, feels his mind calm.

He returns his gaze to her, and puts one hand on her shoulder for assurance.

"Tell me what I can do to help," he says.

They sit on the bed, above the pictures of hatred.

And begin to formulate a plan.