Roommates

Twenty

Blaise's Secret: Part One

Later that day, Hermione sat on her couch in the living room of her and Blaise's chambers twiddling a quill between her fingers, thinking about what Lavender had said about Blaise and Daphne Greengrass. True, this was only rumor and she couldn't base her entire trust in Parvati and Lavender, seeing as how they were the Gryffindor gossips, but she felt a certain grain of truth in their statement. After all, she was sure that they hadn't lied to her about anything before. At least, not something on this big of a scale.

She brought the end of the quill to her mouth and started to chew nervously. Supposing this was true, and Blaise had been dating Daphne for two years before she broke up with him last summer before they came back to school. What would Daphne's response be to her, Hermione, when they had their next session? The fact that the Head Boy and Girl came back from Christmas holidays dating was common knowledge; Hermione had heard people whispering about it as she walked through the hallways.

Being Head Girl in what was essentially a large private academy had catapulted Hermione to her own sort of fame among the students. It wasn't that she would be in the papers or even get the sort of attention Harry got, but more of the hallway and bathroom whispers as she walked by or washed her hands. And now that she was dating one of the prominent Slytherin power figures, there was more talk about her than normal.

Hermione's chain of thought was disturbed by the dinner bell and she sighed, placing her quill on the table before walking to the Great Hall by herself, so lost in thoughts about her relationship and where it was going that, when she crossed to the Gryffindor table, she missed Blaise's jovial wave. She reached Harry and Ron and slid into a seat beside them, quietly waiting for the food to appear.

While she was eating, she glanced over at the Slytherin table to see a slight girl with large and round dark eyes sitting next to a tall, lanky boy who was hunched over his food, his mess of brown hair extending in all directions. The girl was staring in Hermione's direction unblinkingly, eating without looking down. It was rather eerie and made Hermione shiver a bit before she looked back down at her food, determined to ignore Daphne's gaze until she was finished. She gave the younger girl a pointed look as she started out of the Great Hall, headed for the Library for the second time that day, and didn't notice Blaise's odd frown as he looked between Hermione and Daphne while they both walked away.

Hermione had been in the back of the Charms section for five minutes before Daphne walked in soundlessly, sitting in the seat opposite her.

"Hello, Daphne," Hermione said, trying to remain calm even though she privately admitted that the younger girl was good at making her nervous.

"Hello, Hermione," Daphne said, folding her hands in her lap. "How's Blaise?"

Hermione accidentally let a large drop of ink escape her quill as she started in her seat when the younger girl startled her with the unexpected question. "He's fine," she told Daphne, glancing up for a moment to look at her. "And how is Theodore?"

"Theo is fine," Daphne said. She looked rather uncomfortable for a moment before blurting out, "Look, do you want to keep tutoring me, or what? Because I've got better things to do if you're just going to be freaked out that I dated your boyfriend."

Hermione was taken aback for a moment, but she collected herself quickly. "No, Daphne, I'm fine. I just thought you might be a bit, well, odd about me dating Blaise."

"No, it's fine," Daphne said. She paused. "So... Thursday? Like normal?"

Hermione flipped through her schedule book. "Yes, Thursday's good." Daphne started to walk away. "Wait, Daphne, could I ask you something?" Daphne turned around and nodded. "Why did you and Blaise break up?"

Daphne's face, which had been a bit pink, suddenly went far paler than normal. "I- I don't think that would be a good thing for me to tell you, Hermione," she stammered. "You should just ask Blaise." She fled as soon as the last syllable came out of her mouth and Hermione sat in her chair, frowning into space, wondering why Daphne wouldn't want to tell her.

Two hours later Hermione made her way back her chambers, tired from all her studying and craving a cup of tea and a hot bath. And, a classic novel. However, when she went through the portrait and entered the living room, she was greeted by the sight of a small, romantic, candlelit table on which there was a tray of dessert. Blaise sat at the opposite end of the table, smiling at her until she met his eyes, when his smile faltered for a moment and a crinkle of disappointment appeared between his eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked, going to scoot the chair back for her. She ignored the chair and picked up a plate of pie and a fork.

"Blaise," Hermione replied, examining the ice cream and chocolates that came with the pie, "I'm tired, sorry. I'm going to bed. See you in the morning. This was a lovely thought, though. Perhaps another time?" She gave him a light, cold, fish-like kiss on the cheek before going into her room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

Setting the plate down carefully on her desk, she walked calmly over to her bed, lay down and pressed her face into a pillow, letting out a long and loud scream. A moment later there was a knock on the door and Blaise's voice asked, "Are you okay?" a bit frantically.

Hermione padded over to the door and opened it a crack, replying, "It's called primal scream therapy, Blaise. I find it very helpful. Good night."

Blaise walked away, feeling somewhat cheated. He had gone to an extreme amount of effort getting all of this done--he didn't even asked the house-elves for help!--and Hermione just ignored it and went to bed. He sat down at the table and brought his runic charm necklace out, looking at it and turning it round and round. Finally, he undid the clasp and took the necklace off. Immediately, his hand went to his temple and he winced momentarily. He looked towards Hermione's room and squinted, as if zooming in on something. A second later, he shook his head and gave up, putting the necklace back on and sighing, relieved. Since Hermione didn't want to spend time together that night, he'd just have to go to bed. So he got up and went to his room, closing the door quietly behind him.

~*~

The next morning Hermione tiptoed out of her room to use the bathroom and then snuck out of the chambers, ignoring the Founder's portrait where Godric was telling her not to be so afraid of conflict. 'What are you, a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff?' That remark got him a glare from Helga, and a poke from Rowena. Hermione didn't notice this, as she was already halfway down to the Great Hall. It was empty when she reached it, and she began pacing the length of Gryffindor table, muttering to herself about how she should ask Blaise about his and Daphne's breakup.

But when Blaise came into the Great Hall twenty minutes later, rubbing his temples and murmuring to himself, he glanced at her and immediately swerved from her direction and went to sit at the farthest end of the Slytherin table from her, his back to her. She frowned at the back of his head and sat in her chair, anxiously tapping her knife against the table. The murmurings from Blaise grew louder and louder until he stood up and yelled at the only other Slytherins at his table, two third-years sitting at the other end, before stomping out of the Hall angrily.

Hermione tried to talk to him all day, but he was avoiding her, she could tell. She would walk into a room and he'd melt out of the other door, barely a glimpse in the corner of her eye. She finally gave up after dinner ended and went to the library. As she walked through the potions section, looking for something that would help her with Snape's latest assignment, she heard her boyfriend's voice on the other side of the aisle. She stood still, breathing quietly, trying to hear what he was saying.

"-didn't tell her, did you?" Hermione heard Blaise say, sounding a bit frantic.

"Of course not!" said the voice of Daphne Greengrass. "I knew you wouldn't want her to know, unless you told her yourself. It's too important, I know."

Hermione heard Blaise sigh. "Sorry for thinking you'd tell her," she heard him say. "It's just...just that I don't want it and...and I hate that I can't control it."

Hermione couldn't stand it any longer. She marched around the shelves and demanded rather loudly, "Can't control what, Blaise Zabini?"

Blaise whirled around guiltily and Daphne turned white. "It's not your business, Hermione," he warned. "Not at all. It's between me and Daphne."

"What's between you and Daphne?" Hermione asked, suspicions going in and around her mind like a tornado. "Not a..." she gulped, "not a...baby, Blaise. Please, tell me not a baby."

"A baby?" Blaise's expression twisted from guilty to puzzled. "No, why would you think that, Hermione?"

"You said, 'between me and Daphne', so I suppose I just jumped to conclusions," Hermione replied, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers, blushing out of embarrassment.

Blaise sighed and rubbed his forehead in a slightly defeated manner. "Daph," he said to the pale girl behind him, "you can go. I'll explain. Don't worry."

"All right," Daphne said. "I'll see you in the common room tonight?"

"Yes. Theo and I have got a Gobstones tournament going on this week," he told her. "Go on, I'll see you."

"Right. Good luck," she added, walking away quickly.

Blaise rubbed his forehead again, pacing, trying to think of how to phrase what he had to say. "Hermione...you have to understand something before I tell you what I'm going to tell you...." He looked at Hermione and she nodded, biting her lip in anticipation of the worst. "Daphne and I are just friends. We broke up because, well, something happened that was very...unfortunate." He sat down in a chair by a nearby fireplace and motioned for Hermione to sit. "There's something quite different about me, Hermione. In some ways I'm quite like Lilithe. This necklace-" he picked the runic charm necklace from out under his shirt, "-is not entirely used to block her out. It's also used to block thoughts from coming into my mind."

Hermione blinked at him. "What?" she asked.

Blaise sighed again. "I'm a mind reader, too, Hermione. Just in a different way. Thoughts just spill into my head without me being willing to read them. I've been like this since I was three. It's why Lilithe dislikes me--she had to work on her ability to read minds at will. Before she did, she would only occasionally be able to hear thoughts. Of course, she had mastered it only a few years before I was born. But thoughts would just come to me and that irritated her for some reason. However, as a three-year-old, I couldn't understand why my older sister would continually be as mean and nasty to me as she could possibly be without physically harming me."

He paused for a moment and then went on, "Anyway, Dad decided to send me to Hogwarts so I would be out of Lilithe's way. I don't think I ever mentioned this to you--she's a professor at Isola. She teaches their version of combined Divination and Mind Reading. A lot of students who go to Isola are mind readers. They like the mind readers to try and read the minds of the instructors during the exam--never mind it's cheating; they think that it's being resourceful." He scoffed and tipped back in his chair. "But I couldn't help hearing the instructor's thoughts; they mixed up with my own frantic ones and so I used them, unable to tell his from mine. So, consequently, I got a perfect score on my examinations. Isola knew right away what I was. They said I'd be perfect for their accelerated mind reading program; Dad knew what that meant: Lil as my teacher. And he knew that she'd make my life hell because before I came along she was their pet mind reader. So he politely declined and they cut him off from using their library, which was a mistake because he never returns library books; a quarter of his books in the 'History of Magical Cultures' section of our library in Italy were originally theirs.

"And that's my secret," he told her, putting his chair back on all fours.

"But not what's between you and Daphne," Hermione pointed out, still twisting her hair between her fingers.

Blaise smirked a bit. "Hermione, I just told you a secret very few people--outside my family, of course--know. I would think you'd be happy to overanalyze this before you go worrying about what's between Daph and me. Though, to be fair, it does include Snape," he added.

"Snape?" Hermione asked, leaning forward. "What about Snape?"

"Oh, would you look at the time?" Blaise said, glancing down at his watch. "It's been thirty minutes. I've got to be getting down to the common room." He went over and kissed Hermione's head. "See you."

"What about Snape?" she called after him. Blaise just turned and grinned at her before waving and disappearing towards the door.