To See Beyond The Veil

Students crowded the narrow halls of the seventh floor of Hogwarts. Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors shouted to one another, laughing and joking. Amongst them, a more sinister crowd walked, quietly and disdainfully commenting to their nearby fellows. They were the Slytherins.

Whenever the Slytherins came near, the other students would scatter out of the way and avert their eyes. They would do anything to avoid a confrontation.

Just one student really observed and understood all of this. She walked among the Slytherins, but only a careful observer would notice that she rarely interacted with her housemates, and that they consciously ignored her.

Her long, dark hair flowed down her back and stood out dramatically against her pale skin. A black satchel hung over her left shoulder, and she clutched a velvet-bound book to her chest with both arms.

She didn't mind that no one liked her. She liked it that way. She worked to keep it that way.

"Blaise," said a blond-haired boy dropping back to walk beside her.

"Draco," she said quietly, looking straight ahead. She didn't have to see him to know that he wasn't looking at her. Draco was the only Slytherin whom Blaise tolerated on a basic level, and who returned the sentiment.

In general, Blaise was looked at with condescension by everyone in Hogwarts, but most specifically by her housemates. Just before Blaise entered Hogwarts, it became common knowledge that her father, Audric Zabini, had embezzled two-hundred thousand galleons from the Belgian branch of Gringotts for which he worked. During his trial, the knowledge that he had been a Death Eater had surfaced, and because he hadn't been convicted of any murders, Audric Zabini had been sentenced to a mere twenty-five years in Azkaban. Blaise generally regarded this as a highly insufficient punishment for her abusive father.

By the time Blaise was Sorted into Slytherin, the entire school knew her father was not only a criminal (that wouldn't have been particularly bothersome, given that many Hogwarts students had a parent who was a Death Eater), but that her family was in the midst of a financial rockslide. Blaise's life in Hogwarts had been hell from there.

"I need a favor." Blaise raised an eyebrow and looked at him, drawn out of her musings. She didn't have to crane her neck too far as she was only a bit shorter than he was - they were both tall and slender. Over the summer before their fifth year, Draco Malfoy had turned fifteen and grown immensely. Now in his sixth year, he was slender and perfectly proportioned - a flawless reflection of his formidable father. And it was far from a lie to say that Draco knew he was gorgeous.

"Most people pay for those," said Blaise in her low voice, turning her head to watch the steep stone stairs the Slytherin cluster was about to descend. Five full years in Hogwarts certainly didn't mean Blaise trusted the castle to keep her safe. She didn't have to look to see that he rolled his eyes, and it didn't take deep thinking to know he'd retort - In the true Malfoy spirit, thought Blaise scornfully.

"Ah, but we Malfoys are a ruthless brood," he countered in a soft, serious tone. "Besides, my dear, it is you who should be paying me. We both know that when it comes to sex, I am far superior-"

"-Slut," said Blaise half-heartedly, reduced to name-calling.

Draco grinned, at her vicariously. "Just tell Snape that I... Well, make up something extremely painful and tell him I'm in the hospital wing."

"Don't think nobody's noticed you're having an affair," said Blaise with disdain.

Draco gave a light shrug that Blaise knew was perfectly calculated to display the subtle muscle tones that every Seeker had. There wasn't a second that passed in which Draco wasn't considering his appearance. "It's the only time she's not in class - and Snape's the only professor who won't slaughter me if I miss class."

"Who is it?" asked Blaise, hoping to catch him unawares. "A Hufflepuff? A Gryffindor?"

"Your mum," snapped Draco, veering suddenly off toward a staircase on the right and taking the steps two at a time.

She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. It wasn't that she was nosy, that she cared, or that she'd do anything about Draco's suitor - it was just that pondering the mystery-person was far more interesting than reducing herself to the Slytherins' gossip, which would have been the other option.

Blaise figured his mysterious companion was a girl - it could have been a boy, but Draco swore he was heterosexual, and Blaise believed him. The girl could have been a particularly unintelligent Hufflepuff, but she didn't think Draco would stoop quite that low, even for good sex. So she studied the Gryffindors, looking for a female just random enough that even Draco wouldn't brag about.

The cluster of students came to the bottom of the stairwell, having gone down eight flights of stairs. It was considerably cooler in the dungeons, and Blaise wrapped her cloak tightly around her shoulders. All but four of the Slytherins split at the bottom of the stairs; the majority of the group was going to the common-room. The rest were going to Advanced Potions, a class only achieved by receiving an O.W.L. in potions, although sometimes Blaise wondered how certain people managed to enter the class.

She hung behind the remaining cluster of Slytherins so she wouldn't have to talk to one of them. Blaise was told by her head-of-house on a regular basis that it wasn't healthy to be anti-social. She, of course, maintained that if Professor Snape's only conversation option was to simper with Pansy Parkinson, he'd be anti-social as well.

Blaise turned into the back door of the dimly lit potions dungeon and set her satchel on the desk she usually occupied in the back of the room - it was her favorite because all the desks in the front were filled, and she could sit by herself. Remembering her conversation with Draco, Blaise walked briskly up the center isle between the desks (Slytherins on the right; Gryffindors on the left, though there was no seating order).

She stopped at Professor Snape's desk, where he sat, bent over a stack of papers. Those don't look like exams, thought Blaise, before Snape realized she was there and overtly crossed his arms over them. "What do you need, Miss Zabini?"

"Professor, Draco told me to relay to you his deepest regrets that he'll miss this lesson, and that he has suffered a bowel obstruction and has been in the hospital wing since this morning, unable to get out of bed."

Professor Snape stared at her for a moment; his piercing brown eyes would have unnerved anyone who wasn't a Slytherin. Blaise, however, was a Slytherin, and therefore adept at lying. She stared back at him expressionlessly. The professor was obviously weighing what she had just saidn

"Thank you, Miss Zabini. You may return to your desk."

Blaise turned and went to her seat, walking between the rows of apprehensive students - Snape was the only professor in Hogwarts who demanded respect and got it. No one in their right mind would so much as open a Sugar Quill in his class - the room was deathly quiet, and as Blaise sat down, Snape stood up and strode to the center of the classroom.

"Pass your essays on the functions of Langjuice and Eramole to the front of your row," he said in a bored tone, glaring at Neville Longbottom as the boy fumbled for his parchment that was apparently buried somewhere in the bowels of his book bag. Nobody had any idea how Longbottom had managed to get into Advanced Potions. Blaise had overheard other students discussing it, and her own personal sentiment was that Snape pitied Longbottom. She reasoned this was probably because the professor felt guilty about whatever part he had played in the torture of Frank and Alice Longbottom - Blaise wasn't unaware that her potions professor had been (and still was, as far as she knew) a Death Eater.

Had Blaise been the type of person to feel pity, she would have felt sorry for Neville Longbottom. As the other students his age had progressed through puberty and matured into "normal" adults, Longbottom seemed to be perpetually uncoordinated. Blaise found his awkwardness amusing, to say the least. She memorized the features of his face to herself as she passed her essay forward.

Snape walked along the desks in the front of the room, picking up the essays. When he had them, he set them on his desk, and Longbottom ran up timidly to hand his to the professor. Snape raised an eyebrow at him, and the Slytherins laughed as Longbottom turned around and hurried back to his seat. They laughed even harder when he stumbled over the leg of his desk - even Snape smirked. Blaise opened her velvet book to a marbled sheet of cream parchment with a half-completed picture drawn on it.

Holding a graphite quill she kept tucked into the book, she began to put a face on the second figure on the page - the first one was herself. The picture was going to be graphic when it was finished, but that was how all of her artwork looked.

"For the next month," began Snape, "I am assigning you a project that will require skill and determination - therefore, I have partnered students in a way that will challenge every one of you."

Blaise barely heard any of this, as she drew blood seeping from Neville's neck, drawn from a dagger in her hand.

"I want each pair to design a potion that both feel would be beneficial to the magical community. The cost and rarity of the ingredients mean nothing - this is simply hypothetical. Fifty percent of the credit you receive from this will be from the ingredients and preparation directions. I'll look to see that the ingredients are compatible, can achieve the desired goal, and that the preparation of the potion is feasible. Twenty percent of the credit will be from a seventy centimeter essay - done in pairs, not respectively - on how the magical world will benefit from your potion. Ten percent of the credit will be for neatness and organization, ten percent will be for a fifty centimeter essay on how you chose your ingredients and made your procedure, and the final ten percent for the effort you put forth in working with your partner."

Blaise chewed on the end of her quill and wondered about the best way to get Longbottom's pug-nose onto parchment as the dungeon was immediately filled with apprehensive whispers.

Snape ignored the side comments and said loudly over the voices, receiving instant silence, "Partners are..." He paused to pick up a list on a piece of parchment off his desk and began to read off of it. "Potter and Parkinson."

Pansy looked as if she were trying to hold back a grin of relief, as she could now clearly slack off on this project and make Potter do it all, but was uncertain about whether to be open about it, as it was generally a bad thing to be paired with a Gryffindor.

Blaise was a sadist. She decided to draw the look on Potter's face on the next page in her book. Potter was of an average height and skinny, still wearing the same black-rimmed glasses and sloppy haircut that he'd had since his first year. He wasn't handsome, but could have anyone in Hogwarts for a date simply because of his rekindled respected and awed status. That alone was reason enough for Blaise to hate him - everything else could be supplied by the other Slytherins and the more conservative students.

Of course, by and large, the school had settled down since Potter and his friends' mysterious absence for a night at the end of their fifth year and the subsequent arrival of the Dark Lord, who had been surprisingly nonviolent since his revival. Blaise, though, had noticed something odd, but not entirely unexpected: Potter had been strangely subdued since the start of the term.

"Malfoy and Nott," droned Snape, seemingly oblivious to the nervous chatter that had commenced in the classroom. Ouch, thought Blaise, But at least Draco's ego won't drop because he's with a Gryffindor. Theodore Nott was the other student whose presence Blaise couldn't understand in Advanced Potions. He was a small boy with thick, short brown hair and a dotting of freckles across his face. Nott was always fairly quiet, but just yesterday Blaise had seen him beat up a first-year Hufflepuff with a disturbing ferocity. Snape looked up from the parchment in Nott's direction and said, "Perhaps you can inform Mr. Malfoy of this assignment later tonight?"

Nott nodded, and Snape continued. "Longbottom and Durham."

They'll fail, thought Blaise matter-of-factly. Longbottom was no good by any means, but Destinie Durham, a sixth-year Slytherin, although smart, was certainly not the type to apply herself. Though Longbottom may finally lose his virginity, Blaise mused.

By now she had figured out that Snape wasn't actually partnering them between houses, but was picking on his least favorite students. Blaise paled - more than usual, anyway. He doesn't really like me. Please don't let me be with that bitch, Granger...or, worse, with Weasley. Goodbye, Advanced Potions N.E.W.T

Snape wasn't done yet, though. "Where's Granger?"

"She said she was going to be late," said Ron Weasley, balancing his chair on the back two legs to look at Snape. He had gained a lot of confidence recently - before his fifth year, he wouldn't have dreamed of looking Snape in the eye.

Ron Weasley had undergone an incredible change over the last two years. Apparently, he had solved his compensation syndrome (Blaise knew quite well that he felt inferior and overshadowed in his family - she paid attention to everyone). He was far from being an overachiever like his brother, Percy, but he wasn't as mischievous as his twin brothers, Fred and George. Ron had apparently strived to be more unique in his family and to break all stereotypes about Prefects.

His hair changed color at least once a week - right now it was bright green and sloppily gelled, not to mention that he had a pierced ear and eyebrow. He was the Keeper for the Gryffindor Quidditch team as of his fifth year, and the Gryffindor Quidditch captain as of the start of his sixth year (it was no secret that Weasley only held the position because Potter had refused it.) Though he was good at Keeping, Weasley didn't have the Keeper's characteristic stocky build. He was tall and lanky, having finally grown into his limbs, and was far from being ugly, though he wasn't classically handsome.

Snape rolled his eyes. "That says a lot, Weasley. Granger can partner up with Longbottom and Durham. Five points from Gryffindor for speaking without being asked to. Five more for...not using all four legs of your chair - sit down, Weasley." Snape had been irritable a lot lately, so no one was surprised at the irrational loss of points, and Weasley wisely shut up, setting his chair gently down on the floor. Last week at the beginning of the term, Snape had even taken points from Slytherin at the Sorting Ceremony because Draco had called Granger a Mudblood.

So me and Weasley, thought Blaise, just as Snape read the last two names on the list. Weasley will fuck the whole project up. And I may kill him before we're through. As she thought this, she looked over to where Weasley was sitting next to Potter. Potter was muttering something in his ear, and Weasley was laughing.

"Move to sit with your partners; the tentative date for completion is the fifth of October - I'll confirm it when I see how progressive you are." Snape suddenly looked haggard and worn, and he sat down at his desk. Blaise noticed him getting the large stack of papers out of a drawer, but then realized that she had to sit with Weasley.

He was eying her warily from where he sat with Potter - no, not anymore, Potter had moved to sit with Parkinson. She glared back at Weasley, and finally he rolled his eyes, stood up, collected his things, and walked to the back of the dim room to her desk. He towered over her desk for a moment, and Blaise silently moved over so he could sit down next to her.

When it became apparent that they were both terribly uncomfortable and Weasley wasn't going to start with a plan, Blaise sighed and pulled a scroll of thin, cheap parchment out of her satchel. "Where do we start?" she asked in a low tone; nobody else was being loud, and she saw no reason to be obnoxious - she liked silence.

Weasley shrugged. "Wherever you want." He looked repulsed by the fact that he had to sit in the vicinity of a Slytherin - Blaise felt the same way about the green-haired Gryffindor.

"Fine," said Blaise, taking charge. "We brainstorm on things the magical community can get from a potion." Weasley nodded and appeared to think, although Blaise felt that one could never be sure about that. Since he said nothing, she said, "Are we going to have a material potion? Or a useful one, like Veritaserum?"

It wasn't common knowledge that Blaise, if she had the motivation, would have intelligence to rival Granger's. Actually, Blaise had refused the Prefect position on the basis that she had never met a Prefect she didn't despise, before the badge had been given to Parkinson.

Weasley shrugged again. "I doubt we could agree on a 'useful' one."

Blaise stared at him until he shifted uncomfortably. "I think we could." Aside from being contrary for the hell of it, Blaise wasn't as fascist as many of her Slytherin fellows. She was too ambitious to waste time selecting her position in the War - in the past year, everyone had stopped pretending it didn't exist. When she was finished with her formal education, she planned to find some way to be more powerful than Voldemort or Dumbledore or Cornelius Fudge. She'd start with becoming an Auror, though, maybe spying for Voldemort along the way, maybe spying for Fudge and Dumbledore.

Weasley probably wouldn't have responded, but Blaise would never know because just then, Hermione Granger rushed into the classroom, looking flustered and red-faced, presumably from a long run down numerous flights of stairs. Granger hadn't changed much since her first year - she still had bushy hair and was devotedly bookish. She was short and, although not childishly skinny, was thin enough to be considered petite. She was neither stunningly beautiful nor horrendously ugly, and, to her credit, Granger honestly seemed not to care whether people saw her either way.

The door banged shut behind her, and the entire class looked up, including Snape, who glared at her. "Ah. Granger - you're with Durham and Longbottom. Now that you have enraptured our attention, where were you?"

Granger did deserve credit for a good recovery, considering she had no idea what Snape was talking about. She gave Weasley a curious look out of the corner of her eye, until she saw Potter sitting with Parkinson; Blaise saw Granger cover her mouth with her hand in an attempt not to laugh at Potter. "I was helping Professor Sprout repot the Cavisally plants," said Granger. "She wrote me a note..." She strode briskly up the isle and handed Snape a small, folded piece of paper.

In that second, Blaise's vision split in half, and half again, and again, and again... She could see Granger giving Snape the note and Snape taking points from Gryffindor - but no, he was sending her back out with the same note, then he was ignoring her, than he was asking her a question about the papers he was so secretive about, then he was braining Granger with a book, then he was...

Possible scenarios ran through Blaise's mind, always changing, some bizarre, some realistic, all different reactions Snape and Granger could have to one another. The world was spinning...she was rocking; she was crying...she was falling...she grabbed at something to right herself, missed, and she slumped to the ground... She was still conscious; she closed her eyes to make the scenes stop; they played out on different levels on the backs of her eyelids. She knew she screamed as she watched, mesmerized, as different shades of black filtered through the scenes in a huge spiral, until all she saw was black.

When Blaise cracked an eye open tentatively, the first thing she was aware of was the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Then she knew that she was exhausted, and all she wanted was to sleep. Someone had grabbed her wrist and was feeling for her pulse; she jerked her arm away and hit the offender, irritated. Let me sleep, she thought petulantly.

"Zabini!"

Blaise winced in response to the loud voice and tried hard to focus with her open eye. When that proved rather difficult, she opened the other one, and the faces of Snape, Weasley, Durham, and Longbottom swam into view. She licked the blood from her lips dumbly, thinking, Why, yes, that's me.

"What happened?"

The voice registered as Snape's, and Blaise realized he was the one who had taken her pulse, and wondered if he'd take points from Slytherin because she'd hit him. What did happen? she wondered, and managed to say, "I don't know..." Her voice trailed off, and she closed her eyes again to sleep.

"Are you hurt?"

"M-hmm," she mumbled, wishing everyone would go away so she could rest in peace. She felt like she had Apparated to the moon in one go: utterly and completely exhausted, both physically and mentally.

"Can you walk?" asked Snape.

"...Sleep..." murmured Blaise, as the dungeon floor seemed quite desirable at the moment.

"Get up," he said. She thought some very offensive things, but managed to struggle to her feet, unconsciously grappling Durham for a prop. Blaise saw Snape look around the room and followed his gaze to Granger, who was standing by his desk looking stunned. "Granger!" he snapped. "Watch the class until I get back."

Blaise stupidly pondered this. It makes sense to leave the class with her; she's a better Prefect than that damned Weasley. I hope he dies. I wish I could sleep...

She was vaguely aware of Professor Snape half-dragging her to the hospital wing, and she could hazily remember Madame Pomfrey questioning Snape as to what had happened to her. Finally, Blaise was allowed to lie down on a stiff, starched bed, and she fell asleep immediately.