The Annals of Terry Boot

Long nights, impossible odds

Keeping my back to the wall:

If it takes all that to be just what I am . . .

Keeping my mind on a better life,

When happiness is only a heartbeat away.

Paradise, can it be all I heard it was?

I close my eyes and maybe I'm already there.

~Tommy Shaw (Styx), from "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)"

April 15th

6:46-Wake up.

Anthony's tangling himself in his tie again.

"Good morning, Anthony. Trying to strangle yourself?"

He shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Morning, Terry," he replies shortly. "I heard a couple of the first years talking in the Common Room last night before you got back."

Ohh. "And what did the squeaking little midgets say?"

He shrugs, looking uncomfortable with the whole thing. "Something about you and a Slytherin down by the lake."

"And what was I doing with said Slytherin?"

Anthony goes bright pink. I love it.

"Anthony, you're a prude. What was I doing?"

"You mean you don't know?" He looks at his hands, his feet, the ceiling, finally at me. "For God's sake, Terry! A boy! It wouldn't be so bad if you weren't-" He turns pink again. "If you weren't, um, engaging publicly in intimate, um, activities with a member of the same sex."

"Is that what it translates to in legal jargon?" I rejoin. God, he's make a great lawyer if stopped blushing and mumbling. "Look, are you really too ashamed to say straight out that I was seen Frenching Blaise Zabini by the lake?" He nods. I groan. "Where's Michael?"

"Breakfast. I think he wants to avoid you." Anthony is trying to look apologetic.

Avoid me? What. A. Bastard. "If it's any consolation," I offer, "you can tell him it wasn't the first time."

"You mean you've been going out with Blaise Zabini and you didn't tell me?" Anthony looks hurt.

"Did I ever say I was 'going out' with him?"

"But I assumed that to be kissing a person, you'd be-"

"Anthony, that might be how it worked in Jane Austen, but this is the real world. Anyway, it's only as of last night that I've been officially 'going out' with him." My real world, anyway. And I wouldn't have told Anthony anyway. He can keep a secret like a funnel can hold water.

But now that Blaise has decided it's all right to snog me in front of innocent children, I think it's all right to tell Anthony Goldstein, the town crier of Ravenclaw Tower, all about it.

I'll give it 'til eleven this morning for the news of our more-then-friends status to be all over the school.

More than friends-because we were never actually friends in the first place.

6:56-Eyeliner. Lipstick.

Oh, how I hate the word "boyfriend."

I suppose I'll just have to go get Blaise all lipsticky.

7:06-Run into Blaise outside the Great Hall.

He bears pastries. "I thought I might meet you. Hungry?"

Have I ever eaten breakfast? "Yeah, a bit."

"You're lying." But he looks pleased enough about it.

I grin. "Of course. I'm making myself agreeable. I've never been able to do that without stretching the truth a bit."

"You could always take after me," Blaise offers, through a mouthful of jammy pastry. "Be perfectly honest and disagree with everyone."

I would if I were a Zabini. But I'm a Boot, so it's sadly out of the question, although I give it my best shot.

Which is why I need to ESCAPE.

"Would you believe I did all my own homework last night?" I ask Blaise.

He shrugs. "You didn't before?"

I shake my head. "But now I've decided to be Head Boy."

He laughs. He thinks I'm joking. Maybe chaps with blue hair aren't supposed to be Head Boy. "Whatever you say-"

"Don't call me 'Madame Blue' again." I glare at him.

He shrugs and licks pastry filling off his fingers. "I just didn't know you were so into school."

"I am now."

He arches one elegant eyebrow. "And may I ask why?"

"Because I figure that being Head Boy is kind of impressive and might get me a good job in New York City or something."

"Or anywhere else far, far away from Knockturn Alley?" He half-smiles at my look of surprise. "Terry, you're easier to read than a book."

So is Blaise, if that book were written in Russian and scattered in shredded bits all over the continent. "So you don't have any ambitions, then?"

Blaise looks a bit smug. "I don't need them. I've got my future set."

"Joining the family business, are you?" Must be nice not having to think. Must be nice to be born with money and protection and your whole future all mapped out.

"You don't need to sound bitter!"

"I'm not! But you ought to try being me and see how you feel."

Blaise gives me his best wide-eyed innocent look. Somehow it fails miserably. Maybe it's the Slytherin in him. "Are we having our first lovers' quarrel?"

"Oh, shut up." But I smile, sort of.

How I hate the word "boyfriend."

The concept, however, is starting to hold a definite appeal.

7:15-Outside my Charms classroom.

Blaise's Muggle Studies is down the hall, so he hangs about for awhile.

"It doesn't hurt that New York City sounds exciting and glamourous," he's musing. "Then again, I suppose London would, if you weren't from London."

"I'm not from London. I'm from Knockturn Alley. And you're Italian or something, I suppose?" For all I know, the rest of London is exciting and glamourous. I've never seen it.

"Sort of. The Zabinis are Italian originally, of course. But my mother's French." He shrugs. "So that's that. But I'm from London." He smiles a bit. "With a townhouse in Paris and the family villa outside of Florence."

I want to sneer, "Poor little rich boy." And then maybe poke him in the eye. "So, if I remember correctly, both sides of your family did pretty poorly in the Muggle's Second World War, one side being Fascist and the other being taken over by the Nazi Germans three seconds after the war started?"

He looks suitably impressed. "I didn't know you knew any Muggle history, Terry." So he thinks I'm ignorant? Great. He's just asking for that eye-poking. "Anyway, have you ever met any Italians? We're into life and parties and we're not Fascists."

"You're into life and parties?"

"Well," he says reasonably, "I'm only half Italian. The rest of me is French. And you know the French. They can be kind of . . . Well, kind of French."

I roll my eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, you know, you tell a Frenchman to do something, and he'll say, 'Well, I'm not going to. I'm going to have a sandwich.'"

He's lost me completely. "Blaise, I think you're stark raving bonkers."

"But you like my freckles?"

"I love your freckles."

He beams. "That's good, because I hate them."

Class starts in seven minutes. Just enough time to get him satisfactorily lipsticky . . .

7:29-Wiping off my smeary lipstick with Anthony's handkerchief.

It's plaid. He won't notice.

I think I've gone irretrievably nuts. At the very least, I've stopped caring what everyone else thinks of me.

Probably because I don't know what I think myself.

12:01-Eclairs and Blaise.

Not a bad combination, all things considered.

Seamus is sitting at the Gryffindor table with Longbottom and Potter. I've got to tutor him again tonight. And he's a hopeless case-couldn't turn a pin into a needle if his life depended on it.

He glances in my general direction. I look at the ceiling. (It's raining outside . . .)

Blaise and I are at the Ravenclaw table because we firgured it was still to early to risk getting brutally murdered by Slytherins.

Ravenclaws are much more likely to just sit and look resentful.

Which is why I'm determined to keep the small talk as questionable as possible. Anthony and Blaise seem to be having a contest to see which one can blush the most.

Anthony is definitely redder, but Blaise, for what may be the first time in his life, looks awkward, as if he's hoping his chicken and carrots might swallow him whole.

He wins.

I break off mid-sentence and say, "Hey, Blaise?"

He looks at me and I kiss him.

The table goes silent.

Finally, Loony Lovegood whispers, "Ooh, do that again."

It would seem that for once she's the only one with a full grasp of reality.

7:00-Meet Seamus in the library.

"Okay, I think I can do the hair ribbon thing," he tells me. "I practised on Lavender's all night." I picture her trying to tie her hair up in giant tapeworms. Ugh. If she pulled to bows too tight, the tapeworms would probably rip and ooze tapewormy innards on her head. "So do you want to see it?"

Not anymore. "Yeah, show it to me." (Head Boy. You're doing this to be Head Boy. And to avoid a month and a half of Hell with Snape and Flich.)

Seamus drops a green silk ribbon onto one of the library tables and points his wand at it. "Dipylidium caninum!"

7:04-Fighting off a very angry tapeworm.

I finally manage to get it off my neck and hold it still long enough to Transfigure it back into a hair ribbon. But for some reason, it ends up being covered in pink plastics daisies.

Probably the tackiest Transfiguration in the whole history of Turning Intestinal Parasites into Hair Accessories.

"Well, that's wonderful, Seamus," I say, not quite lying.

He smiles, but looks inquisitive. "So . . . Um, what's the story with Blaise Zabini?"

What does he care? "You mean Anthony hasn't told everyone yet?"

"Nope. But I was only curious."

"Then ask Blaise about it. I want to teach you how to turn a bucket into a trout."

Why don't I want to tell Seamus that I'm going out with Blaise? It's not as if I . . .

It shouldn't be as if I fancied him.