The Annals of Terry Boot

There were incidents and accidents

There were hints and allegations

If you'll be my bodyguard

I can be your long lost pal

~Paul Simon, from "Call Me Al"

April 14th

7:45-Morning post.

Ooh, looky. A letter for me!

Dear Terry,

Meet me by the lake at nine o'clock tonight.

~Blaise

I glance up at the Slytherin table. Zabini's looking at me, but his face is as blank as whitewash.

I don't know how to look at him back. Maybe if I manage to shoot venomous glares while smiling innocently.

7:46-Find that physically impossible.

And makes me look stupid to boot.

Or stupid to Zabini. I'm Boot.

8:00-Called to Sinistra's office.

What have I done now?

She gives me a stern-yet-concerned look from across her desk and stands up. "Terry, what am I going to do with you?"

I shrug. "What did I do?"

"It's more what you haven't done."

Hurrah. Mind games. "What haven't I done?"

"According to our calculations, you're only in class about . . ." She glances at a sheet of parchment on her desk. "Only about fifty-nine percent of the time."

"Who calculated that?"

"Professor Snape."

I should have known. Only Prof Snape would try to make math more evil than it already is.

"And when was the last time you reported for prefect duty?"

Ugh. I knew I'd been forgetting something. "I don't know." But I'll bet the answer is on that parchment on her desk.

She glances at it again. "March first." Prof Sinistra shakes her head and sigh, looking just the littlest bit amused. "And yet you've managed to keep your marks up. They're not as high as they once were-" Of course not. I was once a shoe-in for Head Boy. But that was last year. "But your marks are at least decent."

And the obvious result of copying everyone else's homework while knowing I could have done better.

But decent nonetheless.

"Professor Binns told me about your report on Thrudgelmir the Couth. He said it displayed quite a lot of insight and the analytical capabilities of a person twice your age."

"Where is this going?"

"Be patient." Sinistra's always told me I had a mouth. Meaning I don't know when to shut up and listen.

"I just thought that if you told me, I'd know whether or not I wanted to go along."

"It sounds like the first assignment you've done since October that doesn't display the analytical qualities of, say, Anthony Goldstein."

Oh, merde. "I have Charms this morning. I don't want to be late."

She smiles slightly. "You're actually going to go to class?"

Of course not. It's going to be with the Gryffindors. That means Hermione and Finnigan, and Finnigan, and, you know . . . Seamus.

Who I will not flirt with. Because I have made the following conclusions:

Conclusion #1: Hermione likes Weasley a lot for some reason, and there's nothing I can do about it. Except freak Weasley out occasionally to amuse myself.

Conclusion #2: Zabini likes me a lot for a lot of reasons, none of which I'm sure of. And I think he's okay. He's not my knight in shining armour, but he's not short, fat, bald, or snaggle-toothed, and he probably showers on a regular basis. In short, he's perfectly acceptable and if he asks me to go out with him, I might just say yes. There's not much to lose.

Conclusion #3: But then if I decide he's a jerk and dump him, his family might come after me and break my legs and then throw me in the Thames. That's what Zabinis do.

Conclusion #4: Finnigan. Enough said.

8:14-Being accused of being a space cadet.

"Terry, are you listening?"

"Not really."

"I was telling you that Transfiguration is you best subject, so McGonagall suggests that you tutor another student for some extra credit."

"No thank you."

"At the last staff meeting, we calculated that you ought have well over a month and a half of detention coming to you for all the classes you've skipped. We'll let you tutor twice a week in lieu of that, if you choose."

A month and a half? Of de-ten-tion? Probably with Snape and Filch, with my luck. "I'll tutor." She smiles. "So who's the unlucky sap that'll be turning to me for guidance?"

She looks at that parchment yet again. "Another sixth year. His name is Seamus Finnigan."

No. Never in a million years.

"All right. When do I start?"

Conclusion #4 takes its toll.

12:31-Lunch.

Stuart Ackerly could use a few maturity pills. Really, his Terry-wears-eyeliner-and-lipstick jokes were never funny.

Anyway, he shouldn't talk. He's a splotchy little toothpick with hair.

12:32-Casually mention that fact.

"Stuart, you're a splotchy little toothpick with hair. And you can't dance. I've seen you at it. It's a bit like a cat caught in a revolving door while coughing up a hairball."

Declarations like that are one of the only joys I have left in this cruel world.

And tonight I tutor Finnigan. I could get out of it by hanging myself, but I would rather like to see what I look like when I grow up.

Maybe a bit like David Bowie . . .

12:33-Forehead-smacking.

I did not just think that . . .

Ugh. Yes, I did.

Well, we are both pale and thin . . .

And Finnigan likes us both.

God, I'd better not overthink this.

7:00-Waiting for Finnigan in the library.

I hate waiting for people, but I'm always doing it. I do a lot of things I hate. With a lot of people I hate.

Another glory of Me.

I filched Mandy's Transfiguration notes from the last five months. (That girl never throws anything away.)

I glance through them. I remember all this. I know it. I can do it-all of it.

Ha. Take that!

At least it won't be a case of the blind leading the clueless.

I wonder if Finnigan knows I'm his tutor.

"What are you humming?" Finnigan smiles all-too-knowingly.

I glare at him. "I wasn't humming," I lie.

"You were."

It was that Lady Stardust song. "You know perfectly well what I was humming. It's by your favourite god of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll." I sigh as he chuckles. "So you're crap at Transfiguration, I hear."

"I'm failing it." He states it frankly, with a shrug.

Oh. "So this will take a lot of time and work on my part?" I put time and work into Binns's report for Hermione and look where it got me. Here, in a room with Finnigan. If I put time and work into tutoring Finnigan, will I end up in the Owlery with Zabini?

I'll be meeting him by the lake in an hour, anyway. If I'm obedient.

Damn Zabini.

"You don't need to put any time and work into me if you don't want," Seamus says. "It's just one class. My mam might kill me, but Da'll probably overlook it. He left school when he was fifteen, so he's just happy I'm staying around to get an education."

"Finnigan, can I ask an irrelevant question?"

"Sure. They're my favourite kind."

"If you're Head Boy, you can get almost any job you want after graduating, right? Even one in, say, New York City? Because, you know, you'll have 'Head Boy at Hogwarts' on your resume . . ."

Shrugging, Finnigan replies, "Sure, but I'm never going to be Head Boy."

I want to snap, "No, you idiot. I am." But I don't.

As of now, I have a new goal in life: ESCAPE.

"All right, Finnigan, enough small talk. Where should I start?"

"At the very beginning."

The beginning? This is going to take a long time. "All right, then. We'll start with turning hair ribbons to tapeworms . . ."

And who knows? Someday we might work up to turning thesauruses into dinosaurs.

Ha. Ha.

9:00-Run from library to lake.

The night sky stretches above a lawn flooded with light from a thousand castle windows.

And there's Zabini, smoking a cigarette and giving a group of first years very dark looks as they play blindman's bluff.

I watch him put the cigarette to his lips and inhale, and I find myself running the tip of my tongue over my own lips. I bite my tongue hard and remind myself that I've made out with Zabini about a million times against my will and never got a thing out of it, so I cannot go thinking his lips are sexy now.

Oh, but they are . . .

Zabini spots me and flicks the cigarette away. "Boot?"

I tell myself that he just littered and litterbugs do not have sex appeal. It doesn't work. "Can I kill myself, Zabini?" I ask, my voice sounding kind of weak and melty. Like an ice cream.

"No," he says sharply.

I draw back. "All right. I was only joking."

His expression softens. "Shall we go to the other side of the lake, where we won't be distracted by a mob of shrieking first years?"

Fine by me.

9:12-Other side of the lake.

"You start," Blaise orders, his voice empty.

"Why me?"

"Because we expected me to, didn't we?"

He's right. That way, I could hear what was going on in that twisted head of his and then say, "Right, well, that's very interesting. I'll get back to you with my opinion."

Leave it Zabini to keep me from taking the easy way out.

I take a deep breath. "I just want to know what you meant the other night. You know when you said what you, er, said. That might be simplifying but that's the gist of it. And I can't really tell you what I think because I have no fucking idea what's going on." He doesn't say anything, so I continue with, "And then you tell Prof Snape we had been together that night, but . . ." I realize that if Zabini hadn't beaten me to it, I would have said the same thing, if only because I would find it incredibly funny.

Especially if it were Stuart Ackerly. That would be hilarious.

"That's it?"

I shrug. "Yeah. Basically. You arranged this meeting; I didn't."

"You aren't going to bring your uncle's into this?"

"No. Unless you bring yours." Whatever that was supposed to mean. At any rate, I'm at school, so I refuse to think about, hear about, or talk about home.

Not even Zabini could make me.

He shrugs. "Then there's not much to say, because I'm not-"

"The type to wear your heart on your sleeve?" I finish for him. He nods. "I didn't think so." I glance at him, suddenly reminded of Malfoy's "birthday gift." Yet again. "Speaking of heart-on-your-sleeve, do you remember when I asked you what Malfoy gave you, that night when-?"

"Yes." Zabini gives me a look as if to say, "Why must you keep bringing this up?"

"I was just wanted to say that I already knew what it was. Anthony told me. So there really wasn't any point-I mean, I was being a complete-" I can't quite bring myself to say "jerk." I had just felt that, when dealing with Zabini, I should use whatever I was given.

"You belated honesty is appreciated," he says drily, watching the first years run about giggling.

I watch a pair of fifth years attempt a full-on face-suck and fight the urge to go over and give them instructions.

I'm practically an expert, after all.

(Don't think about home, don't think about home, don't think about . . .)

"You have no further questions on that matter?" Zabini asks, in the manner of a wearily polite store clerk showing me a steel-enforced cauldron.

"I'm not going to ask any more question I already know the answer to. Or suspect the answer. Waste of time, don't you think?" I try my saucy smile on him. After comparing the two in the mirror, I've decided it's much more successful than the winsome one I'd tried on Hermione.

It makes me look less like a sociopath.

He doesn't answer.

Correction: He does answer, but it's in what seems to have become the typical Zabini response.

Putting one hand on the back of my neck and the other in the small of my back, he gives that sort-of-tender, completely confusing kiss.

I suppose this is my cue to say: "Damn it, Zabini, what was that for?"

But all I can manage is, "The first years saw that."

"Not the Hufflepuff. He's blindfolded."

I sigh, then laugh a bit. "Poor kid. Should we tell him to take it off so he can watch us do it again?"

He half-smiles in return. "If I tell you I like you, will you answer this time?"

"Probably."

"What might you say?"

"Something along the lines of, 'No duh.'"

He arches an eyebrow. "All right. Terry Boot, I like you."

"No duh," I answer.

He waits patiently.

Why can't he let me off the hook just this once?

Then again, why can't I just say, "Blaise Zabini, I like you too?"

Maybe because I don't. Not really. He's got a couple of good points, I guess, but he's not . . . He's not Finnigan.

Oh, hell. Finnigan. What's the point in even thinking about that?

"I-" I take a deep breath.

When you come to the edge of a cliff, you might as well jump.

"I like you too, Blaise Zabini."

Just don't look down.