The Life and Times of a Girl Named Blaise Zabini

Chapter 8

Notation: [...] means the words are being spoken in Elvish

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Blaise Green nee Zabini, aka Elessario, loved school. She liked learning new things. She was also a major morning person, provided she hadn't been going without sleep for too long. This meant that Pansy Parkinson, lazy slug whether she'd been sleeping good, bad, little, or a butt-load, was even more annoyed by her presence.

Now, mind you, that was in Blaise's Ice Queen days, when she was playing a part in her day-to-day life. Now that Blaise was determined to be herself and damn the consequences, because, well, life sucked as it was with Voldemort and the Death Eaters on the loose, her attitude was 'why give them the satisfaction of knowing they were making people's days worse by dampening the mood?'.

As a result, the Perky Meter jumped up to ten times normal, aka what was normal for Blaise during the holidays, and Pansy was miserable. Millicent Bulstrode seemed torn between disturbed shock and wanting to join in on the perkiness at seeing Blaise acting so...well, human. Which was really ironic, considering the fact that Blaise was just about the most non-human person in the school outside of the house elves.

Blaise had gotten up extra early for three reasons: less of a crowd in the bathroom, minimizing Pansy whining time, and because she woke up at four in the morning, having replenished her need for REM sleep. And she got an excellent recipe for twice-baked potatoes from Abel.

Mmm, cheese...

Anyway, Blaise had forgone her usual high bun of hair in favor of something a bit more comfy, which could be altered to get it out of her way quickly and easily. Considering just how long Blaise's hair was (down to a few inches below her waist), that achievement was rather impressive.

She wore it down, with the front locks of hair woven into braids and pulled back to keep it out of her face, and a random lock of hair woven into small braids here and there within her wavy/curly mane, green glass pony beads covering the small elastic bands that tied them off. Pull it all back and weave a loose braid, and it not only would keep stray hair from getting into her potions, but it would also serve as a fail-safe for covering the most obvious of her elven attributes should the unlikely occur and her glamour spell fail.

Add her school uniform and robes, black ankle-boots replacing her black Mary- Janes from last year, and she was feeling pretty darn Elf-spiffy. ~_^

Of course, this was all after her habitual morning run around the lake that she took just after waking up every day that she didn't feel a driving need to sleep a lot. Wouldn't want to become the world's first pudgy Elf, after all!

"Good mornin', good mor-nin'! It's great to stay up late good mornin', good mornin', to you!"

Blaise's impromptu bout of singing broke through Pansy's last defenses as she woke up snarling, her thrown pillow belting Millicent in the face as Blaise dodged it and skipped out their dorm's door, the larger Slytherin girl having just stepped back in after her shower.

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"Dee-dee-duh-dee! How the heck are ya this lovely September morning, oh bestest of best bosom buddy of mine!" Blaise chirped as she tackled Draco from behind, her arms going around his shoulders and her legs around his waist, piggy-back style.

"B! Get your bloody great lump of an arse off of me! It's too damn early!" Draco snarled sleepily at his friend, doing his best to dislodge her, but she'd spent the summer training, and was holding on like a...tight-holding clingy-thing.

"Nope! You're all muscle-y and tall, and I'm gonna take advantage of it as long as I can. Mush! Onward to brekkus!"

They spent the walk to the dining hall like that, squabbling playfully and alternating between Draco trying to dislodge Blaise, Draco knocking Blaise off, and Blaise walking calmly beside him until she had a chance to jump up again. The high point in the trip was when Draco got fed up and tried to make Blaise piggy-back *him*, but she ended up flipping him around and tossing him up on her shoulder, carrying him the rest of the way, and that was what the few teachers who were already in the hall saw as they entered.

"B, put me down, damnit! Everybody'll see!"

"What everybody? 'S only the profs, you ninny; we're early. Hi Professor Snape! Will we be having oodles of fun-ness in class today, or tomorrow?" Blaise inquired of her favorite teacher, who seemed to be stuck between laughing outright at their antics and questioning his star pupil's sanity. If Lucius Malfoy got wind of this sort of thing, there would be hell to pay, most likely.

What had happened over the summer to make the calm and collected Blaise Zabini, now Blaise Green, to shatter her well-kept persona of calm collectiveness so openly and cheerfully? The mere fact that she'd disowned her father was enough to make Severus Snape hope that the brightest and most talented of his pupils could well make it through life without being sucked into the darkness that was claiming so many of her classmates. Her continued mutual friendship with Draco Malfoy also let him hope that the boy might well escape his father's grasping hold on his life. They could prove to be the beginning of a new breed of Snakes, that would restore the honor and reputation of House Slytherin to it's one-time glory, before Voldemort had tainted what it was to be Slytherin.

Meanwhile, Blaise had finally set Draco back on the ground, and they'd settled into their customary seats at Slytherin house's table.

Already making headway on devouring their breakfast, both picked up their time-tables from the stack in the middle of the table, perusing them so they would know what books to retrieve from their dorm rooms before heading off to classes.

Blaise's sudden outburst startled the teachers who were at-table, including Severus.

"YES! S-LEVEL POTIONS AND CHARMS! LIFE IS GOOD!"

Snape smiled slightly to himself. Yes, this year would most certainly be interesting.

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Ten hours later...

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"..." Blaise was staring at the sheet of parchment in front of her, contemplating the half-finished mini essay that was her Charms homework, due on Wednesday.

Ginny, who had joined Blaise and Draco in doing what homework they could before dinner in the library, looked up at her new friend. Both Blaise and Draco had offered their more advanced knowledge to the young Gryffindor to help her with her work, and, after a few quick discussions regarding the assignments and the holes in Ginny's knowledge, they had settled into quiet work, only occasionally punctuated by a quiet murmur from one or the other regarding questions and their answers. Blaise had been staring at her essay for a good ten minutes, and Ginny was a bit worried. The first half of the essay had been written with relative ease on the older girl's part, but now Ginny wondered what had stopped her friend's progress.

Draco, having noticed Ginny's lack of progress within the last few minutes, looked up to see what was wrong. Frowning, he reached across the table and prodded Blaise with one finger.

"B? You awake in there?"

Blinking, Blaise looked up from her paper, stared into each of her friends' eyes, and said, "This whole no technology thing this school has sucks."

Seeing confusion on the others' faces, she explained, "Well, if tech worked here, then we could use computers, and I'd get my papers written a heck of a lot faster, what with me being a faster typist than a writer."

Understanding dawned in both faces across from her, and Ginny said, "I've heard my dad talking about those computer things, but why would it be faster to write your papers with one of those then by hand, Blaise?"

Blaise sighed, then said, "Well, think about it. When you write, it takes time to write each letter in each word, even if it's only a fraction of a second, right?"

Nods from the others.

"So, with a computer, all you have to do to make a letter appear is push a little button. That takes a lot less time and effort than writing out each letter, and it takes less effort to correct mistakes, too. Not to mention that if something happens and your essay or whatever gets trashed, instead of having to re-write the entire thing, all you have to do is go back into the computer, open the right file, and print up a new copy!" Blaise then looked back at her sheet of parchment, scowled, and said, "I swear, before I graduate I'll figure out a way to make my lap-top computer run on magic so I can use it here!"

That said, Blaise returned to writing her essay, and the silence was only occasionally broken by questions, answers, and random statements that developed into animated conversations, until dinner time.

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It was round about mid October, and life was good. Blaise and Draco were both doing well in their classes, despite Draco's various encounters with Gryffindor's Dream Team. Ginny was pointedly ignoring Ron's efforts to make her stop spending time with her new friends, and was staying remarkably afloat despite the increased workload her professors were burdening her with, as she would be taking her O.W.L.s this year, a state which she happily attributed to Blaise and Draco's efforts.

Meanwhile, Blaise was taking S-classes, or Specialty (AN: I think that's what it stands for. I'm a Californian, I'm basing a lot of this part on what I learned after reading book five, though I'm not including it in my cannon, and on a particular fic that was written by a British person, so I figure they would know. Bai-bai!) classes, in Potions, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Arithmancy. She was planning, however, on only writing S-papers for Potions and Defense in Seventh Year for her N.E.W.T.s. Blaise's already-planned main point for her D.A.D.A. paper would be that it took more than wand-waving and a butt- load of power to vanquish the forces of Darkness, and that unarmed self- defense should be a required course for magical institutions. Fencing would be good, too.

Draco was taking S-classes in Potions, D.A.D.A., and Ancient Runes, with S-papers for Potions and D.A.D.A. planed for as well. Both friends were planning on becoming Aurors, but Blaise thought that being a teacher might be interesting as well. But only after Voldemort's arse had been thoroughly kicked, of course.

Ah, yes: good classes, good friends, good times. Now all Blaise needed was to get Draco to get his arse into gear about asking Ginny out.

Unfortunately, fate intervened regarding Blaise's ever-so-neat-and-tidy plans...

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Blaise and Draco were walking down the Charms corridor, having been forced to take a detour on their way from DADA to dinner by a randomly-shifted staircase. Their conversation was rather animated, and were cheerfully debating which charms, curses, hexes, and jinxes would serve an Auror best in certain situations. Their progress was halted, however, by the sudden exodus of Gryffindor's Fifth Year Charms class into the hall. The two Slytherins waited, having noted which class it was, and hoping to get their redheaded friend's opinion on their topic of discussion.

They didn't have to wait long.

"Blaise! Malfoy! Professor Flitwick just showed us the neatest thing!"

"If it's a severed head, I'm going to be rather upset," Draco drawled in an oddly quipping sort of manner. Blaise snickered, knowing that there was one severed head in particular she wouldn't mind seeing. Orpheus had been writing lately, though they usually wrote to each other in Greek. It wasn't that he couldn't speak English, which would be rather pathetic, considering her cousin was more than two thousand years old, but rather that it would take anybody who intercepted their missives a bit longer to understand them, thus discouraging idle pranksters and mail-thieves, most of which probably resided in the Slytherin dormitories.

"Bite me, Malfoy," Ginny quipped back sweetly, though she faltered slightly at the slight glimpse she caught of Draco's rather disturbingly hungry look in her direction, and barely shoved down her impulse to blush when she managed to hear him murmur, "Oh, there's nothing I'd like to do better at the moment." Neither of them saw the happy look on Blaise's face, her quick eyes having caught the mutual looks and reactions, as well as her elf-sharp ears having picked up Draco's comment, despite the fact that Ginny was in between her and Draco at the moment.

Blaise coughed into her hand. "You were saying, Ginji?"

Ginny collected herself, then beamed at her friends, saying, "Professor Flitwick taught us about glamour magic; you know, for disguising things?"

Draco nodded slightly, "I think he mentioned something about it last year, but he got sick and he ended up not having enough time to cover it and still get in all of our O.W.L.-required work, so we ended up having to skip it, because it's not required. Something about not many people having an aptitude for it."

Blaise nodded, smiling slightly. "Yeah, I ended up going to a family member to learn how to do that," she said. She knew why glamour magic, or glamourie, or whatever you wanted to call it (A.N.: My theory is that Sailor Moon's Disguise Pen works with glamourie. "MOON DISGUISE MAGIC POWER! Turn me into a witch!" *pow!* "...NOT GLENDA, DANGIT!") was such a rare talent among humans. You had to have a certain amount of Elf blood in your family tree, close enough to you. People with only a drop or two (this is a figure of speech, naturally) of Elven blood couldn't cast glamourie, but they could see through it. Like calls out to like, and all that jazz. Legolas theorized that in a few more generations there wouldn't be any more mostly-human spellcasters who could use glamourie. Still plenty who could see through it, but none who could use it themselves. This meant that, somewhere way back when before the Sundering, as Blaise's father referred to when the world changed, the different continents forming, some ancestor to the Weasley family had a bit of Elfy hanky-panky-ness.

Eew...

Ginny looked at the older girl, delighted surprise on her face. "You can cast glamour too, Blaise? That is so cool! I mean, what are the odds of two of us being so close in age, much less living in the same country! Professor Flitwick says he was the only one at Hogwarts all of his seven years when he was a student."

Blaise smiled. She knew there was a reason beyond Tiny Person Initial Cuteness that made her feel at home around the diminutive professor. Maybe he was part Hobbit or something, too. She knew the Shire had been placed under magical protection by Gandalf, only accessible by those who knew of its existence and meant no harm. Unfortunately, her father had long since lost track of the entrance, so he didn't know if there were still Hobbits in the world. Blaise hoped there were. But, now that she was thinking about it, if Flitwick were part Hobbit, which would attest to his lack of stature (though he could, she supposed, simply be a run- of-the-mill midget), and he was definitely part Elf, did he have particularly hairy feet? Because she was pretty sure they weren't unusually large, especially when compared to his body.

Ick! Fuzzy Furry Flitwick Feet! The image, it burns! BURNS! KYAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

...Whatever.

"Anyway, apparently Merope Casterton's mum can cast it, because when I used the Seeing True charm, I found out that Merope's got this massive, hairy mole on her chin. Oh, and I made everybody think Colin's hair had turned mauve."

The trio having moved into the main part of the castle as they walked and talked, Draco smirked upon spying several small groups of their classmates, either making their way into the Hall for dinner, or standing around, chatting. Waving his hand in the general direction of the other groups, he said, "See if anybody else is hiding something, Weasley. This could be amusing."

Blaise snickered at the idea. She already knew that Pansy Parkinson wore a glamour medallion to hide her occasional break-out of pimples, having checked during the summer when they ran into each other in Diagon Alley.

Ginny brought out her wand, pointing at herself and saying some sort of spell that sounded to Blaise like a bastardization of ancient Elvish and Latin. If there were two languages that were never meant to mingle, it was most certainly those two. Rotten Romans...

As Ginny's gaze began absent-mindedly roaming over their classmates, picking out the occasional signature for a glamour medallion and the like, as well as whatever the magic was supposed to hide, relaying the information in quiet murmurs to her friends to keep others from overhearing, Blaise felt a sudden jolt of realization.

With Ginny's spell in effect, the redhead's Elven blood was being brought to the forefront, which meant that she would be able to see through Blaise's own disguise ridiculously easily. Which meant that Blaise's cover would be blown, particularly if Ginny and Draco didn't feel like keeping it a secret. One word to the Ministry, and she'd be expelled and her wand snapped, because she counted as a magical creature rather than a human, which was retarded in her mind. Sure, she wasn't human, but that didn't make her less of a sentient being. She was half Endless, dangit! Her father was one of the First-born! She had seniority, damnit! Not that having her wand snapped would effect her ability to use magic, but it was the principle of the thing...

If Ginny and Draco couldn't keep a secret, the Balrog dooky would *REALLY* hit the proverbial fan.

Keeping her back to her friends, Blaise started forward. "You know, guys, we really could do this later," 'How about never?' "And, I'm a hit bungry- I mean, a bit hungry! So, umm, yeah, dinner! Dinner is good! And I really need to do some studying for my Arithmancy test that's on Friday, so I guess after dinner I'll see you tomorrow, so, umm, bye!"

Blaise had *almost* made it to the door when she heard Ginny gasp ever- so-lightly. The Slytherin froze, turning her head just enough to see her friends' faces.

Ginny had a look of utter shock, on her face, with a bit of awe as well. Draco was just confused, and was already trying to pester Ginny into telling him what she could see.

Sighing, Blaise turned around, facing her rather distant kinswoman directly, and raised one eyebrow questioningly. Would Ginny tell?

The Gryffindor shook her head a tiny bit. No, she wouldn't tell. For now, at least.

Blaise nodded, then strode up beside her friends with a confidence she wasn't quite certain of, and whispered in their ears, "I'll tell you tomorrow night. Meet me halfway down the Charms corridor at Midnight; there're lots of statues and stuff to hide behind, and Filch doesn't patrol it often. I promise I'll answer any questions either of you have, if I can."

Ginny opened her mouth to protest, but Blaise interrupted with, "Look, your curiosity and my continued scholastic career aren't the only things at stake. There are other people who have to be consulted before I let out any of my deep-dark secrets."

Draco snorted, and retorted, "Like you'd have any deep-dark secrets, Stoat."

Blaise just stared at him, her dark eyes borring into his silver- gray ones. He finally blinked, and she said, "You wouldn't believe how deep, though not really all that dark. My secrets are only ever given out on a need-to-know basis, Ferret. *I* only entered the need- to-know category this summer. Now," she said, her face taking on a more cheerful visage, "I really am hungry, and I really do need to study for that Arithmancy test, particularly if I want top score for my class."