The Annals of Terry Boot

Oh no, love, you're not alone

No matter what or who you've been

No matter when or where you've seen

All the knives seem to lacerate your brain

I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain

You're not alone

~David Bowie, from "Rock-n-Roll Suicide"

April 29th

4:34--Waiting for Blaise on the front steps.

Two weeks seems like a very long time.

If I had to count the number of times I've said, "No, I'm not gay. I just happen to be going steady with another boy . . ."

But, really, would I have it any other way?

It's gotten to the point where we're no longer really a curiosity. Not since Justin Finch-Fletchley and Ernie Macmillian made it official . . . Which still creeps me out just the teeniest bit.

Besides, the seventh years have definitely been making Plans. Big Plans. With a capital P.

If only the rest of us knew what they were.

4:48--Already annoyed with Blaise.

And we haven't even gotten through dinner yet. Usually, if we have to disagree, it's on the validity of eclairs as a main source of sustenance.

I merely pointed out that school would be ending in June, and he said he was going to spend the summer in the family villa near Florence (apparently, it does exist) and I called him lucky, and he said he wasn't going to invite me to go along, so I said--

"Who says I wanted to go to a villa? It's probably warm and sunny, with beautiful neoclassical architecture and lots of Mediterranean food, and what do I need all that for?"

Blaise sighs. "I just can't tell my family about you."

"Can't you?" Then again, it's not like I was planning to break the news to Uncle anytime soon.

"Can we talk about this later? I wanted to ask you to a party. It must be the Italian in me."

"You're having a party? Is it your birthday?"

He goes very cold and blank. "Don't you remember? That was when Draco gave me that birthday gift you were so fascinated with."

I try to smile at him. "The party?" I prompt.

"The seventh years are planning it. It's going to be in . . . In the Room of Reckoning?" He frowns. "Something like that."

"Room of Requirement," I correct him. "Sure, I know the place." From all of Potter's DA meetings. From way back when all that seemed to matter.

"They've bought a lot of firewhiskey, mulled mead, vodka, butterbeer, you name it. It's a Sickle to get in--"

"I haven't got a Sickle."

'Then you're lucky your boyfriend is the heir to over twelve million Galleons. We could go to a party in Hong Kong if you wanted. Where was I? Oh, right: A Sickle to get in, sixth and seventh years only."

"And why do you want to go to a drinking party?"

He rolls his eyes. "Because I'm planning to seduce you, Terry. Because we're going to make passionate, drunken love."

I nod. "Right. That's what I thought."

"I want to go because Draco will go."

"And you want to make passionate, drunken love to him?"

Blaise purses his lips. "You're disgusting sometimes." I picture Blaise and Malfoy making drunken love in a pit of tapeworms. Yes. I really am disgusting. "You've never seen Draco drunk, have you?"

"Does he dance on tables?"

Blaise's eyebrows shoot up. "How did you know?"

Ew. Malfoy dancing on tables. "I didn't. And I don't want to see it."

"You don't want to see Draco Malfoy make an arse of himself in front of dozens of people?"

Well, when he puts it that way . . .

4:54--Blaise's head on my shoulder.

It's all quite cozy in a way, when he's not being all Slytherin-y.

I take his hand as a pair of third years go running down the front steps past us, shrieking about something childish.

His hand is so nice and warm, and I glance down at it, his fingers entwined in mine--mine with their chipped blue polish. Suddenly, a morbid curiosity takes hold of me and with my free hand, I gently push the sleeve of Blaise's robes back.

He shoves me away.

Bu not before I see the web of scars tracing his lean, sinewy arm.

Just as I thought.

Happy birthday, Blaise.

4:58--Wishing Blaise would say something.

Anything. From a normal person, you'd expect at least a "What the fuck did you do that for?"

He just stares at me, calmly and almost beatifically.

I refuse to look away.

"Well?" I challenge.

"Well," he repeats thoughtfully. "Now you know."

"I think I knew before," I confess.

"I know you did," Blaise says. And then . . . "Thank you."

April 30th

12:13--Looking for shapes in the clouds.

"Why, Blaise?"

He doesn't have to ask what I'm talking about.

"Because there was nothing else I could do."

"If I hadn't known, I would have said you were one of the most balanced, unemotional people I've met."

"That's the mask, Terry. You should know me better than that by now." He points up at the sky. "Look, it's a dragon. See its wings . . . ?"

"I still don't understand why." I roll over in the grass and look idly for a four-leaf clover.

"Why I should make a habit of razorblades and broken glass? Why I would do it, if I didn't want to die?" He sighs and props himself up on his elbows to kiss me on the neck. "I suppose I wanted to suffer privately. I suppose I didn't have anywhere to turn or anyone to turn to. Because people were my problem. My family. And myself . . ." He toys with a stand of my hair. "But you know what I hate, Madame Blue?"

"Draco Malfoy?"

"Aside from him."

"Well, then I have no idea."

"That I'm not going to tell my family about you."

I draw back. "I thought you said you can't."

"I did. It was an accidental lie. What I meant was that I'm afraid to." He gives me a careful sidelong glance, as if gauging my reaction to see if I realized the full weight of that confession.

I did.

"It's because, Terry . . . It's because then I'd have to tell them about me, and I don't know what will happen to me then. I'm supposed to take over. And the leader of a crime family can't be--"

"Homosexual?" I finish.

He nods.

"Then it seems to me that your problem is solved!" Really, I am a genius. I suppose that's why I'm in Ravenclaw. "Tell them you're gay, take me to your summer villa, and thereby get out of having to join the family business. It's the best of all worlds, don't you think?"

He shakes his head. "I wish it were that simple."

But it isn't.

It never is.

"I don't want to be another Jhonen, Terry."

"What the hell's a Jhonen?"

"He's my uncle's son. He was supposed to be next in line. But he ran off with some androgynous fairy-boy Muggle from Manchester." Blaise looks very bitter at the memory.

"Hey," I say, trying to sound light and upbeat. "At least I'm an androgynous fairy-boy Pureblood from Knockturn Alley."

Blaise sighs. "Would that I were. Would that I were a Boot."

"You want to be me? You think I've got it easier than you?"

"In some ways, yes. Yes, you do . . ." He looks at me, both pleading and defiant. "You know what I want? I want drafty rooms and leaky plumbing! I want empty pockets and a name worth dirt, Boot! Then, that way, whatever you are, whatever you become, no-one will be disappointed--"

"You think I can do whatever I want because I was born a Boot? Let me tell you, Blaise, I can't do anything. I don't have any freedom, I have to do what my fucking uncle wants me to. If not him, then someone else. I'm a Boot, Blaise! I have to lick the shoes of people like you just to breathe in this world."

"What about me? You think I have everything, don't you?"

"No, but you're pretty damn close."

"I have to take my uncle's place when he dies. I have to run the family business and do you think I want to? I don't."

"But I sure bet the money is nice," I sneer.

"Money isn't important."

"It is if you've never had any!"

"God, I wish you trade places with me and see how right you are, Boot. It isn't important to me because I do have it. I do--I have everything. And I don't care and I don't want it. But it's so easy to take it anyway. To go along and live off the silver spoon earned for me by making money off people like . . ."

"People like what? Don't be shy, Zabini, you can say it. People like me."

"Well, you smoke mar--"

"Don't say it."

"Why not? You do."

"Yeah, I did." I realize there's no point in asking how he found out. He's a Zabini, after all.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, did you get it from Pat Harrison?"

"How did you know?"

Blaise laughs shortly. "He works for us. Don't you see? It's not that I find it all immoral. I don't care. I just . . ." He frowns, as if stuck.

"You want to trade places with me, Blaise?" I sigh. "You want to be me? You want to hate going home, knowing that all your life is is getting smacked around, getting stoned, getting sold to leering boys like a two-penny whore by your own uncle, for Chrissakes? And then going back to school and pretending everything's just fine? You think that's easy to do?"

"Two-penny whore? You? You on your gleaming white pedestal? The rest of us aren't fit to touch you--"

"What are you on about? Not fit to touch me? You think I've never been touched? Do you want to know what I've done? You should take this all down and publish it in a magazine article about the horrors and depravity of modern youth. I could tell you about a very memorable afternoon spent with Draco Malfoy, for starters."

"What did you--?"

"We did a hell of a lot more than you and I have ever done, that's for sure. But maybe that's only because you were too afraid of me seeing your cuts."

He doesn't seem to have heard me. "Terry, are you a virgin?"

"Well, I didn't lose it to Malfoy, if that's what you're asking."

"It isn't."

"Yes, Blaise, I am. But barely. And it's sure not because I was saving myself for you."

"Now you're just being spiteful."

"Yes, but it was true." I'm not sure what just happened. All I know is that I want to be mad at him but can't find a reason. "So . . . What are you going to wear to this drinking party tomorrow night?"

"You still want to go?"

I shrug. "You don't?"

He looks a bit haughty. "That's not important. I don't want to--What was it? Make you ave to do what everyone else tells you to?"

I nod, disgruntled. "At least you were listening."

"But of course, Madame Blue, but of course. I always listen to you."

I peck him on the cheek.

Maybe I'm wearing myself too thin. Maybe staying up all hours of the night to do the homework I'd put off during the day would make me snap. But if I did all my studying during the day, I might get a decent night's sleep, but I wouldn't see Blaise.

And Seamus is improving beyond recognition. Just two nights ago, he turned Weasley's owl into a billiard ball. I think I'm ridiculously proud of myself for that.

I might be a Boot, but I'm going to make damn sure that I'm the best Boot that ever was.

But it strikes me that I'm nearly more Burke than Boot. Boot was just my creep drunk father's surname. I was birthed by a Burke and, for the past four years, I've been raised by one.

Either way, I'm Knockturn Alley scum.

But very good-looking scum, if I do say so myself.