The Annals of Terry Boot

So do not talk to me of love,

I'm not a fool with starry eyes

. . . I have loved too many men

With hatred burning in my breast.

I do not like you or your brother,

I do not like the life I live,

But I am me . . .

And what I give, I choose to give!

~from "It's All the Same" from "Man of La Mancha"

March 27th

2:00-Happy Easter hols.

I walk into B+B's, fully hoping that Uncle will be either not here or mysteriously dead.

No such luck.

The only bright spot is that now I don't have to spend all my energy avoiding everyone on my Big Big List of People to Avoid. I just have to avoid Uncle Ernest.

And that takes plenty of energy.

To start with, he gives me a nice welcome-home smack upside the head and a snarled, "Get upstairs and stop annoying my customers!"

I want to ask, "What customers?"

Uncle is, however, the only person I've seemed to learn when to keep quiet around. Maybe if Prof Snape started hitting me too . . .

The rooms above the shop still smell of firewhiskey. I'm afraid that if I light a match, the air might burst into flames.

Uncle's banging around downstairs. I glance out the dingy window into Knockturn Alley itself and spot Theodore Nott with one of his slimy uncles approaching our door. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

I strike a match against my bedpost and fumble through my pockets for a crumpled paper bag. The match's flame reaches my fingertips as I try to open the bag one-handed, and I blow it out, cursing. Open the bag. Four joints. Nott'll bum a couple off me. He always does. Payment for him not telling Uncle that I smoke them.

I strike a new match and light one.

The bell on the shop door tinkles downstairs and I hear Uncle putting on his jovial voice. "Lay it on thick," I mutter. "They'll never buy it anyway."

I listen harder. Nott's saying something about "schoolmates" and "good friends" and "pop upstairs a minute to see me" and all the old unnecessary waltz. Uncle knows exactly what's going on. But he won't say anything. It helps business.

I hate him.

I hate them all.

Nott's in the doorway before I'm half-done smoking. He's tall and thin, like a bean plant with acne. His face sort of looks like volcanic rock, I think.

I'd really rather not touch it.

"Hand it over," he says.

"This is my last one," I lie.

He plucks the joint straight out of my hand and takes a long drag. Handing it back, he says, "Like hell it is, you little liar. Come on, or I'll tell sweet Uncle Burke down there and you can come back to Hogwarts with a nice black eye to explain to Sinistra."

I look everywhere but Nott. If I can't see him, I can't punch him. If I can't punch him, I can't hurt him. I couldn't hurt him anyway . . . I couldn't hurt any of them.

I toss the paper bag to him, still avoiding his eyes. "Take two. Those're my last three."

He sniffs and sets one of the joints on my night table, putting the bag with the other two in his pocket. "Pathetic. Put that one out now. You can't ignore me. You're trying to."

"My uncle knows what's going on." I don't know what made me say that. Like Nott cares if he knows.

He sneers. "So what if he does? Never been one to care, has he? Put it out. I give them ten minutes downstairs, maybe twelve."

I obey, sighing inwardly. He didn't get anything out of it. Look at him. Do I want to think that this sleazy greaseball excuse for a person actually found all this pleasant? It's Nott's little power trip and if it keeps everything quieter, he's bloody welcome to it. "What'll it be this time, Theodore?" I ask, trying to smile. It's part of the unspoken deal--I have to pretend to like all this. "You've only got ten minutes."

Ten fucking minutes.

He's clean enough, though. Thank God. A little heavy snogging, sure. Maybe try to feel me up through my clothes a bit.

As long as the Notts keep buying their goods from Uncle.

2:45-Alone again naturally.

Thank God.

Thank God it's only the Slytherins. And thank God that they hate all the other Houses and wouldn't tell them anything.

Especially if it meant admitting to all this.

It's all part of the unspoken pact: They come in and snog me, I let them, they buy something from Uncle, and we all pretend nothing ever happened.

Malfoy, for all the times his father brought him by, only actually ventured upstairs once. I think it might have been symbolic for him, like a rite of passage, and now he seems to believe it gives him some sort of hold over me.

He proved he wasn't wrong.

I think of Hermione. Pathetic, really. Like a prisoner sitting in the dank of his cell or a shivering soldier crouched in his trench, thinking of the only girl he might have ever loved, an angel-faced paragon spotted in an ice-cream parlour or a church fete.

She's probably with Weasley right now, sharing a banana split or feeding ducks at a pond. Or making passionate love for all I care.

At any rate, she's probably not in a bare, grimy room over a Knockturn Alley shop, trying to get high off her last joint and trying even harder not to think of herself.

Damnit, for that, I'd date Weasley.

And I don't even fancy other boys. As I'm sure I've said.

I imagine what she'd say if she could see me right now, or half an hour earlier with Nott, but can't come up with anything positive. So I find myself imagining what Seamus would say.

If Anthony and Michael found out, they would stop speaking to me. I knew that much.

I couldn't picture Seamus doing the same. I'd always suspected he had a thing for befriending outcasts.

A bit like St. Jude--patron of lost causes.

Not that I'd need his friendship, even if he offered it.

Which he hadn't. Not really . . .

May 29th

9:30-The moon is risen and all good children are in bed.

So ends another day in paradise.

One of Uncle's blows has started a bruise across my ribs. Come the morning and it'll be a real beauty. I hate the way he's been looking at me, as if he might rape me any moment.

The same look I've gotten from Nott, from Flint, from all the others . . .

He's still downstairs. Uncle, I mean. The shop doesn't exactly have set operating hours, so either he or Borgin is always clomping about, all hours of the day and night.

I hate Borgin.

But that's to be expected. I seem to hate a lot of people. Perhaps I should make a list, lest I forget who I hate and why:

MALFOY-For so many reasons that I'd have to start a Reasons I Hate Malfoy List to fit them all. The closet incident at the start of the month cinches it, though.

UNCLE-Do I need a why? His eyes look squishy in his head and he never shaves but still hasn't managed to grow a proper beard; it's all dirty and scratchy and patchy and I hate his meaty huge hands and the way they flex into fists when his squishy eyes see me.

NOTT-For similar reasons to Malfoy, but without the closet and with really bad skin.

BORGIN-For liking Uncle and for the Incident.

SNAPE-For being slimy and cruel and unpleasant. And for being marginally more pleasant than everyone else on this list. I'm starting to notice a Slytherin trend here . . . and to the think that the Hat considered putting me there.

FLINT AND THE OTHER KNOCKTURN BOYS-For similar reasons as Nott and Malfoy. Also because I have trouble telling them apart.

SEAMUS-Merely because I keep feeling he has an ulterior motive. Either that or he's unnaturally nice. Either way, it's creepy.

9:45-The ominous jangling sound of a late-night customer.

Doesn't concern me. My crowd would never venture onto Knockturn Alley after dark. Unless, of course, we're talking about . . .

My God. It is.

Blaise Zabini.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing specifically atrocious about him in himself. He swings by every time I'm home and doesn't play games with Uncle either. I mean, he doesn't lie--I can hear him downstairs:

"Mr. Burke, my uncle requests another pair of poisoned thumbscrews and I myself wish to purchase five Sickles' worth of dried blood. And the Hand of Glory." The last item was added as an afterthought, to ensure his shopping list was suitably impressive. "While you package it, I'll be upstairs with your nephew. In half an hour, I'll return to pay you."

Uncle grunts some variety of leching consent and Zabini's footsteps come nearer, up the stairs, down the hall. Only he would be this bold. Only he would walk around feeling this invincible in the Knockturn moonlight.

It's who he is--The nephew of the patriarch of the most powerful wizarding crime family in Britain. No-one would dare lay a finger on Blaise Zabini.

He pushes my door open. "Boot."

"Zabini."

We regard each other. He slight and quiet, with dark hair, freckles, and thin arms that look weak but could really snap a man's spine in two with only a reasonable amount of effort. He's wearing elegant black dress robes with long narrow sleeves embroidered in a deadly nightshade motif.

I had been on my bed, examining the bruise on my ribs.

"Do I get to put a shirt on, Zabini?"

He studies me through half-closed eyes. "What would happen if I ask you to take it off again?"

"You never order me to do anything."

"I don't need to. You aren't wearing any makeup." I couldn't tell if the two statements were related; his tone was too flat to tell.

"My apologies," I reply sarcastically, crossing my arms across my chest and leaning back against the headboard.

"Really, Boot, sometimes you're almost like a girl." He sits beside me on the bed and kisses me once, almost tenderly. I think he pretends I'm someone else most of the time. Someone he might have actually loved. Someone who wouldn't let him do this. "Nott told me about your uncle."

"What about him?"

He touches the bruise on my side. "Not that I hadn't suspected."

I glare at him. "Why do you come up her so often? I think you've long since proven your point."

Zabini smiles, the cold Slytherin predatory smile. On him, it isn't an act. Maybe that should scare me, but it doesn't. "I don't have a point, actually. Maybe I just like it."

It's never scared me because he isn't trying to prove anything.

He just fancies boys. Not me. Just boys. Maybe Malfoy or something. He pretends I'm Malfoy, maybe . . .

The image makes me shudder, and he says, "It's not you I like. Don't worry about that, and don't try to believe I'm your friend. Although . . ." He touches my bruise again and I smack his hand away. "I might be closer to friendship than some people."

"Fuck it, Zabini. You're wasting your precious half-hour."

"I can take as long as I want." He puts his hands on my shoulders. "Your uncle won't come upstairs. He knows who I am."

I feel a question pressing to get out of me, and true to form, I blurt it out without thinking. "Do you have a thing for Malfoy by any chance?"

He draws back, scowling.

"I was just wondering." I shrug and take a hand mirror of my night table to apply my purple lipstick.

"I hate him."

Zabini's voice comes out in a hiss like ice, or a scream trying not to escape.

"Join the club." A Slytherin hating another Slytherin? It takes something major for an animosity of that kind: a murder, a blackmail scheme, a stolen girlfriend . . .

Or boyfriend, as Zabini's case may be.

"You're different at school," Zabini observes.

"So are you. There you wouldn't give me the time of day."

He sighs impatiently. "I already told you I wasn't your friend."

Oh, right. Somehow, I had wanted to forget that . . .

"Come on, Boot, you're wasting time."

Damn Zabini. Of all the people I could choose not to hate, why do I have to choose someone I should hate?

Why couldn't I choose Finnigan?