Resolving

Eight

September passed quickly, as did most of October, and soon Blaise found himself in the last week of October, getting nearer and nearer to Halloween. On the Tuesday before it, he received a letter from his sister, Zel. It wasn't very long - uncharacteristic for Zel - but it told him to a letter soon. In case she requested a meeting, he went through his schedule and found he was free that Saturday - he'd taken up tutoring students a bit on those days, but somehow he managed to be free that night.

In the two months since his return to Hogwarts, Blaise had become the object of affection in many girls throughout the school, from fifth years to seventh. So far he hadn't had anyone approach him, but he'd walked in on several groups of giggling girls in the few minutes before classes.

The attention had dimmed somewhat in early October, however, when a sixth year Hufflepuff stumbled upon him one early morning when he was running around the grounds and she saw his burned elbow. Her face had gone completely slack, and she had stared open-mouthed, until he coughed discreetly and asked her if she was lost. She'd come out of it and blushed and mumbling a response, she fled. Two days later the story was all over the school and people stared at his arms wherever he went. Finally, he took off his over-robe during a class and rolled up his sleeve and showed it to his class. Then he pulled up his pants leg and revealed his burned knee, and told them all how he'd gotten them.

The whisperings stopped after that.

He'd been distracted almost completely for an entire month, however, thinking about the letter he'd found on his pillow that night in September. Not so distracted that he didn't teach his classes competently - and even provided tutoring for the Advanced Charms students, all eight of them, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Frankly, he was surprised that none of them had dropped out. The Advanced Charms he offered was heavily defense- and offense-based. Of course, there were other kinds of charms included in the curriculum - including various household and medically useful charms, and some of the more complicated spells, like the Disillusionment Charm. He'd also thought up an extra-credit year project: having the kids help him make an Invisibility Cloak.

Of course, those cloaks were very tricky to make and incredibly sensitive in their intervening stages from a normal cloak to enchanted cloak. He'd studied the theory of how to make one, but never actually gone through with it. However, this year was as good a time as any to do one, when he would be in one place for a fixed amount of time.

But all of this was just deterring from his mind the looming outcome of his situation with Louise. He almost forgot sometimes, key word being 'almost'. It was always lurking at the edge of his mind, about to pounce on his thoughts and shake loose his brain. He wished and dreaded the day the letter from Zel would arrive.

The day after, as the owls flew in and dropped letters, Blaise saw his sister's owl amongst them and watched as it flew past him, dropping a thin envelope in front of him before leaving.

He used his butter knife to slit it open and then, unconcernedly, dropped the envelope on the floor, ignoring Hermione's protests for the over-worked house elves. He unfolded the letter as fast as his fingers enabled him and read the terse sentences. The letter was from his sister, Zel, and she'd written thusly:

Blaise -

We've gone through all Muggle proceedings accordingly, and after two trips to the doctor, she's ascertained that she is, indeed, pregnant. I'll meet you in Hogsmeade at The Three Broomsticks on Halloween night. Eight o'clock.

Zel

His hands shook. The edges of the letter crumpled in his clenched fingers. He felt the blood drain from his head. He heard the rapidity of his breath. He stuffed the letter into his pocket and gripped the Head Table tightly, trying to do so unobtrusively, so that Snape or Hermione did not inquire about his current condition. Once he regained control over his breathing he almost rushed up to his office to sit down at his desk and soothe his nerves with Firewhiskey.

He had a child. True, it was probably only about an inch long or so, but he had a child. Living, heart-beating child. He'd known before that it was so, but to have it confirmed with hard evidence was still so Earth-shattering.

And now he had to deal with reality. He glimpsed over at Hermione. She was reading a sheaf of parchment and turning a delicate shade of rose. He squinted at the letter and then recognized the handwriting. He'd seen it for seven years and had even learned how to mimic it when rewriting reports for its creator. She was reading a letter from Draco.

Lips pressed together tightly, he stuffed his letter into his pocket and strived for a light, unconcerned tone when he said to Hermione, "Letter from Draco, then?"

Hermione looked over at him, coffee mug raised halfway to her lips. "Yes. How did you know?"

Blaise shrugged. "When you spend seven years reading - and redoing - someone's homework, you try to forget the sight of it. I bet you I could send you a letter and even sign his name perfectly and you'd never know it wasn't him."

She rolled her eyes. "When will you grow up, Blaise?" she said, sipping her coffee. "You say these things like you expect me to believe you."

He grinned. "Oh really?" Leaning back and thinking, he finally said, "May sixth, two thousand and one. 'Dear Hermione, I'm writing to you as I drink my coffee and stare over the Paris skyline. Last night I was reading Voltaire, and I couldn't help but remember our conversation about his works in front of the fire that one night, oh so long ago' - should I continue, or are you satisfied?"

Hermione's lips moved and her eyes were distant for a moment until she seemed to snap back into the present. "That was you?" she said, her voice quiet and shocked.

Blaise's grin, which had disappeared for the moment she had been in thought, returned. "I wasn't in Paris, but yes, it was me. I'd heard from Snape that Draco would be abroad and I knew he has a soft spot for Paris, so I figured it would be a safe chance to say that." He shrugged. "I wanted to write you, but I couldn't write you as myself; I'd be taking too great of a chance. Besides, I figured you'd realize it was me. After all, far as my knowledge goes, you've never discussed Voltaire in front of the fire with Draco."

The rose shade of Hermione's cheeks deepened. She stared at him for a while. "I can't believe I didn't figure it out," she said finally.

He shrugged, and finished his porridge. "Don't worry about it, Hermione. Obviously you weren't meant to. If you had been, then you would've remembered."

He knew she was watching him as he got up and left the table, striding - and he heard a few sighs over that; damn, the girls had gone back to being dreamy over him - out of the Great Hall and up the stairs to his classroom.

That day the classes went on and on until he could almost have left and run around the castle a few times and come back without having missed a word of his student's answers. At least, that's how he felt. When his day finally ended, he was sitting at his desk, head flat on top of his volumes of scrawled notes, hands pressed down on his neck.

His moment of peace was then, of course, interrupted. McGonagall had come in, somewhat silently, and rapped impatiently on his desk. It made him to jerk up and overbalance, which in turn caused him to tip back in his chair and almost fall over.

Blaise returned her crabby expression and said, "Yes, Headmistress?"

She pursed her lips at him and ignored his tone. "I believe that you never did complete the particular... assignment... that Professor Dumbledore gave you during your last year of school."

His mind was a blank for a moment before it dawned on him what she was speaking of. "Oh. That. Well, no, I never did. I rather assumed Hermione had gotten it all figured out."

McGonagall sniffed. And in that sniff was five years of disapproval of Blaise and most likely all his actions leading up to his decision to leave England after the War. "She tried. She got only so far before coming to a - how can I put it? Ah - an impasse of sorts with the investigations."

Blaise felt his eyebrows rise high into his forehead. "Hermione couldn't solve it? You are aware of whom I'm speaking of, aren't you? Hermione Granger, slightly on the short side, bushy hair, full of opinions?"

"Yes, professor, I am quite aware of who Professor Granger is," McGonagall said, her voice rather wearily annoyed. "And no, she could not finish her investigations."

"That... That's quite a thing, isn't it," Blaise said, amusement splashed all over his face. McGonagall sighed. "Not," he continued on hurriedly, "that she didn't try her very hardest, of course. I don't doubt that. But I wonder why you think I could continue with these 'investigations' when she couldn't."

McGonagall sighed and pulled a spare chair over to the desk. "When the castle was rebuilt after the final battle in the War, Hermione finished off her schooling and then began to work on the mystery during her spare time while teaching Transfiguration - which I had stopped teaching when I assumed my position as Headmistress. Everything progressed steadily until around two years ago when she came to me and said she could not continue her search any longer. 'The way is blocked,' she said.

"I said to her, 'What do you mean the way is blocked?' She replied, 'Exactly as I said. I can't go any further.' After a few more questions she eventually admitted that she had, indeed, found the room that she believed would provide the missing pieces to the puzzle. When I asked her why she had not gained access to it, she said that it was guarded by a portrait, not unlike the way into the Gryffindor chambers are guarded by a portrait. However, this portrait did not demand a password." McGonagall paused there, and Blaise waited until he couldn't stand it.

"What did this portrait demand?" he asked, eager to hear the answer.

McGonagall's voice was rather thoughtful as she answered; he had never heard her speak such. "I've never even heard of a guard-portrait asking for anything of this nature. I've never heard of them asking for anything but a password." Blaise sighed, irritated. This snapped her out of her reverie. "This portrait asked for blood, Blaise. Hermione said there was a tiny basin beside the portrait, and so she pricked her finger and squeezed a few drops out into the basin. Once it hit the bottom, she said, it disappeared and the portrait said immediately, 'You are not of them,' and wouldn't allow her in."

"So," Blaise mused, "this portrait is looking for a certain blood type. Does it mean literally, blood type? Or heritage?"

A grim smile appeared on McGonagall's face. "That is exactly what Hermione thought. She spent months looking through the hallway that leads to the portrait and finally, under a frame of a miniature of a woman - which must have been around four hundred years old, she said - there was a name."

"And the name was...?" Blaise watched McGonagall carefully.

"It was faded. And barely legible. She couldn't make out the first name, but the second was much easier, she said." McGonagall looked into his eyes as she said, "It was an old spelling of 'Zabini', Blaise."

~*~

Halloween night Blaise was walking towards Hogsmeade village around the time the feast was starting at Hogwarts. He had been nervous all day, to the point of his students asking him if he was all right during his tutoring sessions.

In all actuality, he was completely in control, but the stress of the whole situation - especially what he knew that was to come - was affecting his concentration. But he would be better now.

The actual dinner with Zel did not last long. They discussed what would happen with Louise during the pregnancy and, of course, the settlement for the divorce and the papers concerning child custody.

But always, the knowledge of the future his ancestress Loren's crystal ball had shown him loomed over top his entire life. He knew what would happen. There was no avoiding it. All he could do was prepare for it.

Knowing your future is, in a way, almost as daunting as it being a mystery to you. After all, it's your future. There's no avoiding it. You can't go down another path just to get out of the ending because - that's the tricky thing about futures - no matter what path you take, they all lead to the same place in the center of the maze that is life. Thus Blaise found himself sitting late on Halloween night with only his bottle of Firewhiskey for comfort, looking at a tiny ultrasound print-off.

The next day he rose early and went to the passageway McGonagall had mentioned in their discussions. It was rather hard to get to; obviously the builders of the castle hadn't really wanted anyone to come here.

He reached the dead end and saw the little basin embedded in the wall and pulled out the pen-knife he'd brought with him. Eyeing the portrait for a moment, he sliced his forearm, reopening an old scar. Blood flowed into the basin.

The figure in the portrait moved and a second later the blood vanished. The figure in the portrait - he couldn't tell if it was male or female as the subject had been painted mostly in shadow - looked at him and said, "You are one. But you aren't the one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Blaise asked, annoyed.

"It means," the figure said, "you cannot enter. But the next one will."