The Undoing of Blaise Zabini

This is the beginning of something, Blaise.

The words ran in ever tightening circles in the confines of the Slytherin's head as he walked the halls of Hogwarts. Blaise had moved through the following days in less of a stupor than he had previously allowed himself to delve into. He sat there as untouched as ever, seeing everything and yet looking at nothing. Occasionally his tongue would dart out and touch the dark spot on his lip, a thick scab after a few days of healing. The corners of Blaise's mouth twitched painfully.

There were students of every house filing past him now, all moving toward the Great Hall for their Thursday morning breakfast. Blaise lingered back, hiding his gaunt form in the shadowed doorway as fellow Slytherins joined the crowd. He had no wish to converse with them this morning. On the whole, the students were subdued. Their faces were saddened, and when they spoke it was in hushed voices. For a moment Blaise spared a thought to this unusual occurrence, but was stopped as the door he had been pressed against opened.

"You look lost, Zabini."

The voice belonged to tall, a pale-faced witch with a cold smile. Millicent Bulstrode looked down at Blaise, a rope of inky hair ran over one of her broad shoulders.

"Everyone looks miserable, don't they?" the witch observed as Blaise turned back to watch the other students. Millicent was one of the few Slytherins that he did not entirely distrust. "Their faces are all droopy. You never realise how plain some of these witches are until they stop smiling." Blaise felt the smirk through her words.

Whatever could be said about the only Bulstrode daughter, it certainly was not that she was unsightly; indeed she was very beautiful if you were not intimidated by her tall, muscular frame.

The corners of Blaise's mouth twitched, and the scab on his lip lifted.

"You're bleeding," Millicent noted casually as she turned to leave. "You should eat something, Zabini. You're becoming too easy to spot."

Blaise didn't move as the witch moved passed him into the great trail of sad-faced students. He turned his attention back to the door that Millicent had appeared from, slipping inside it when the corridor was momentarily empty. The doorway opened into an empty storeroom, used by previous Potions' Masters. Now it was a link down to the lower dungeons, bypassing many staircases and cutting the walking time almost exactly in half. Blaise had used this route for almost six years and had not once run into anyone else, bar Millicent, who had been the one to show it to him in the first place. Even so, Blaise pressed close to the cool stone wall as he walked and kept the silence.

His fingers trailed in between the stones, moving this way and that as the wall decided. The mortar grated against his fingertips, sending a shower of tiny pink shocks up into his hand. Blaise paused in his journey and pulled his hand free of the wall, studying it in the half-light. It looked no different than it had a month ago, although the bones and ligaments were more pronounced through the thin layers of skin. Yet his fingers now tingled, and his palms grated roughly against one another as he dusted them. His fringe tickled his forehead and cheeks, and it stung when the wind whipped it about.

Blaise resumed his walking and slipped into the corridor at the far end of the storage room without being seen. He made his way back to the Slytherin dormitories, perching on the edge of his icy bed and rubbing his neck. Even through his cloak, Blaise could feel the definition of his collarbones. Experimentally, he ran his fingers along them, feeling the bone end sharply at his shoulders. His vertebrae grated against one another as Blaise turned his head to stare at the pale reflection of himself in the mirror that adorned the room's far wall. Slowly he rose to his feet and walked toward his icy self.

The boy in the mirror looked back at Blaise with dark eyes. The boy's skin was almost translucent, his cheekbones more angular than he remembered. It was as if the boy had been starved, and when Blaise thought over his meals, he realised that the boy had not eaten a complete meal since he had seen Ginevra Weasley at the lakeshore- days ago.

"So you do eat."

Blaise glanced away from his sandwich to the unlaced boots standing before him. A wave of crimson fluttered into his vision as Ginevra crouched down in front of his rock, her boots crunching in the shale. The witch pulled her cloak tightly about her.

"Did anyone give you a copy of the paper?" Ginevra asked, wafting a wad of grey papers in front of Blaise's nose.

Blaise placed his sandwich on his knee before opening the paper. He glanced over the pages before a name caught his attention and he stopped. The article certainly explained a lot of the carious behaviour.

"Are you ok?" Ginevra asked as Blaise folded the paper back up and handed it back to her. "You look ill, Blaise." The witch reached forward and placed her gloved hand over his.

Blaise stood up abruptly, knocking Ginevra backward into the sharp shoreline rocks. She stared up at him, confusion and hurt in her eyes. Blaise stared right back at her, his body rigid from the shock of her touch. He turned on his heel and tore across the grounds to the castle. Blood thudded in his ears. Icy air parched his throat. Blaise continued to run. His chest constricted and burned until he choked. Stars danced before his eyes as he opened the familiar door and threw himself inside. The door slid closed silently, cutting all light from the small shelved room.