Roommates

Twenty Three

Snape placed his papers down on his desk and stared at him in silence for a few seconds. "Excuse me?" he said slowly, danger building in his voice with every syllable.

Blaise took a deep breath and repeated his question "How did you first meet Lilithe?" Snape's eyes narrowed.

"I thought that I must have misheard, Zabini. Obviously I was wrong. What insane thought provoked you to even think of asking me such a thing?" Snape stared at Blaise, his face an emotionless mask.

The lack of emotion was what scared Blaise. If Snape had been angry, he would've known that it would have--eventually--turned out all right. But the sight of Snape sitting there impassively with his dark, cold eyes trained on him made Blaise break into a cold sweat. "Well, sir, I was in the library during Christmas break. I couldn't help but overhear a conversation between you and my sister and I wondered how you two had first met. And, um, if you met after becoming Death Eaters or if you became Death Eaters at the same time."

Snape rose slowly from his seat. "Why are you asking me this, Zabini? I was under the impression you were neutral in your... political... beliefs." He waved aside Blaise's attempt at answering, leaning across the table, black eyes starting to burn with cold fury. "And what, Mr. Zabini, makes you think that I'm not still a Death Eater?"

Blaise resisted the urge to lean backwards, away from Snape's very angry face, since he wasn't sure Snape was below biting people. "Well, sir, I asked Hermione about it-"

"So. Now Granger knows?" Snape said in low tones.

"I just asked her about you being a Death Eater!" Blaise protested, hoping Snape wasn't as good as reading a lie as he was reputed to be. "I never said anything about the conversation!" Deciding that he was in deep enough of a hole that he could venture a go at it, he continued to say, "Besides, sir, she's my sister and I would really like to know so my parents could be duly informed."

Snape glared at him. Blaise sighed inwardly. But only a small sigh, since he didn't know if he was out of the woods yet. "How do you know that they don't know already?" Snape asked, not letting his mask slip.

Blaise scratched his head. "Well, sir, though you and my father are good friends--I understand you went to Hogwarts together and were Housemates--Dad has never mentioned Lil being anything but slightly out of balance, which I already knew. If he had known Lil was a Death Eater, there would be many, many books in his library that would be under lock, key and spell. And there would be things he wouldn't speak of in front of her, like what he knows about what's going on with Dumbledore's group. Also, if he knew, he would never allow her to come to the Manor and then Mother would probably move to France with June and we'd be an 'estranged' family, since people like my parents don't get divorced."

"That's why you think I haven't told your parents?"

"That, and maybe Lilithe has some sort of spell on you to keep you from telling anyone that she's a Death Eater. The same one you probably have on her to keep her from telling everyone that you're a spy." The last part of what Blaise said was entirely a guess, but by the flicker that went over Snape's face assured him he was correct in his assumption.

"How did you know?" Snape asked. Blaise could see that, while this intrigued Snape, in no way had he forgotten his anger.

"Just a guess." Blaise shrugged.

"Any guess as to what spell?"

Blaise frowned. "We haven't done analyzing spells yet, but I have a knack for it, I think." After a few moments, he said, "I can't make it out completely, but I'll take a shot in the dark and say a Secrecy Charm."

"Bravo, Zabini," Snape said. He leaned back in his chair and glared at Blaise again. "Now get out."

Blaise prepared himself for the certain pain that would definitely follow his next statement. "No, sir."

"What did you say?" Snape asked, his voice once again low and dangerous.

Blaise felt three drops of sweat make their way down his face and fall off his chin before answering, "I said, no, sir. I came here to find out about my sister and I don't intend to leave until you tell me."

"You don't?" Snape gave him a dangerous look, as he hissed his question.

"No sir." Blaise gulped.

"Then you will rot here, Zabini. I don't intend to tell anyone anything about how I met your sister. And if you say anything about this discussion--or the others we've had--I'll personally see to it that you are not only stripped of your Head Boy status but also that you are punished in the old ways... Poor Mr. Filch has been so patient with the students, but I daresay he would love a chance to break out his chains before they rust completely away." He stood up and leaned close to Blaise's face. "Now. Get out."

Blaise nodded and turned around sharply and left. Once the door was closed behind him, he leaned up against it and started panting, sinking to the floor and wiping the sweat off of his face with his tie.

"Blaise, are you all right?" Hermione asked, rushing up to him and feeling his forehead.

"The memory..." he gasped. "Is very...powerful. Took...all my...strength...to stay upright and conscious." He crawled along to sit up against the cool stone wall. "Very tired. Please...levitate me...to my room." His last few words came in an out rush along with a large gust of air before his head lolled forward as he slipped into unconsciousness.

Hermione kneeled by Blaise's sleeping body looking around frantically for a moment before whipping out her wand and muttering, "Wingardiom leviosa," and taking Blaise back to his bedroom that way.

~*~

Several hours later, Blaise woke with a start and a huge gasp for air, sitting up in his bed, clutching the blanket draped over him. Hermione, who had been sleeping in a chair a few feet away, opened her eyes sleepily, jumping up and rushed to Blaise's bedside, trying to get him to lie back down and be calm.

"Blaise, what's the matter?" Hermione asked, as she tried to push him back to a horizontal position.

"His memory..." Blaise said slowly, "it's so...powerful." He smiled a bit. "If it was food, it would be horseradish. Or Chinese mustard. But it does seem to explain Snape a bit more. Why he's such an awful bastard, for one thing."

"Really?" Hermione mused. "I thought that was just his personality type."

"Eh, he was a complete bastard anyway, but this..." He shuddered. "It's just, well, strong, is the only word for it, really."

"What happened to him?" Hermione asked softly.

Blaise took her hand and looked directly into her eyes. "I can't show you the entire thing right now, but I can show you a few flashes. And remember: it's just a memory, it won't really hurt. At least, I don't think it will." He closed his eyes for a moment and then looked back at her and suddenly Hermione was overcome with images of black-robed people surrounding Muggles, beating and raping and murdering while all the while laughing viciously at the prone forms. She saw the Dark Mark being burned onto her thin, sallow arm and heard the sound of burning. Then she saw Voldemort's sign being cast into the sky over a burning house with the smell of charring flesh wafting into her nose. A moment later, Blaise let go of her hand and breathed out, closing his eyes.

"That was terrible," Hermione said, rubbing her left forearm free of the phantom memory-pain. Blaise looked at her, his eyes open once again, and nodded. Hermione stared into his eyes, now darkened to a deep blue hue, much darker than the normal ice-blue that she was used to. "Blaise, your eyes," she breathed. He nodded.

"They change color for a bit after I use my so-called 'power'," he said, rubbing his now-closed eyes. "I'll explain more later. For now, I need to sleep." He pulled the sheets up close under his chin.

"Good night Blaise," Hermione said, kissing him lightly.

"G'night," he responded sleepily as she walked out of his room.

~*~

The next morning Blaise woke with a yawn and stretched out, the tips of his toes touching the end of his bed. He smiled at the sunlight that drifted in and was happy until he remembered what he'd done the previous night--and what Hermione would surely want him to show her in complete form. He shuddered then, the memory flashing back through his mind, the images flitting in front of his eyes. He had dreamed about them, he was sure, and what he'd dreamed wasn't pleasant.

The memory had started out with Snape as a poor, wandering Potions instructor with a grudge against James Potter. He'd been walking down Knockturn Alley when his old Housemate Lucius Malfoy had approached him with an offer: how would he, Severus Snape, like to join forces with a man who knew how he'd been wronged and would help him avenge himself. He'd accepted readily, thinking it would be something that would lead to him humiliating and harming James Potter in front of his friends and family. How he'd been wrong. He'd been sucked into the belief that Mudbloods and Half-bloods and Muggles were inferior--like animals. Harmful animals that needed to be put down. Immediately. He'd enjoyed it, the torture of countless Muggles, Half-Bloods, and what Voldemort--and his mouth piece, Lucius Malfoy--called 'Muggle-lovers'. He had been there at the Prewetts, torturing and killing every soul within their house. He had stalked a young girl who was hiding in a cabinet beneath the sink and dragged her out by her broken leg before slowly choking her to death.

That had happened about a year after he had joined the now-styled 'Death Eaters', which was the name Lord Voldemort had selected for his first 'chosen' followers. About a month after that he had met a then-sixteen Lilithe Zabini, fresh from her accelerated program at Beauxbaton, eager for the power she thought she lacked. Eaten up by jealousy of her sister who was gifted as she was, but in a different way. She thought that her gift was the weakest of all of them and craved power so she could prove once and for all that she was the most powerful of them all. Voldemort jumped at the chance of having a telepath amongst his Death Eaters and she had been initiated with little requirements.

He had been at her initiation and watched as Voldemort had put the Mark onto her pure, creamy white forearm and as she had accepted it with closed eyes, seeming to relish the pain that came with the ritual and sometime during the rite he had felt completely drawn to her, as if an unbreakable cord was tying them together. Her eyes opened once during the ritual and when they did, she looked up, straight into his eyes and smiled so very slightly.

After the ritual, she had come over to him and introduced herself, which wasn't something Death Eaters normally did. Usually you knew whoever had brought you in and whoever you had brought in, but you did not approach and talk to another member. But this dark-haired beauty, so consumed with darkness, had dared risk Voldemort's displeasure and come to him, of all people. Much to his surprise, he'd been assigned as her Mentor, to teach her the ways of the Death Eaters, of Voldemort, and he'd learned more and more of both her inner and outer beauty. After a few months of getting to know one another, they became lovers, teaching one another instead of him just being the teacher.

But about two years before Harry Potter destroyed Lord Voldemort, something in him changed. It started during a "raid" at a Muggle orphanage. He was about to kill a eight-year-old girl when he looked into her eyes, really looked into the little girl's eyes, and saw the inquisitive, unknowing and, most of all, innocent stare of the girl meet his. She looked human. So, he had been lied to, then. Muggles weren't animals that had to be put down. He hid the girl, unable to kill her, and reported all the children were dead. Lilithe, however, knew he was lying and was about to report him to Voldemort when he cast the Secrecy Charm, preventing her from telling anyone about it.

The day after that he went back to the orphanage and took the girl away, traveling to Hogwarts, a place he had sworn never to return to, and to speak with the only person he thought could help: Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore had helped him hide the girl, away from where the Death Eaters would ever find her--in exchange for something he wanted. A spy in the ranks of the Death Eaters. At that point in time, Snape had been in the Inner Circle, a trusted friend of Lucius Malfoy and a trusted servant of Voldemort's. He had accepted the deal, realizing that helping Dumbledore was the "right" thing to do.

When they had learned of Voldemort's demise, Lilithe had come to him from her new lover's--who was Avery, the cruel bastard--home to speak with him. She told him she knew he was a spy and that she would tell Lucius, provoking him to cast another Secrecy Charm on her. She then cast one on him, knowing he was a friend of her father's and would tell him she was a Death Eater.

After that, when he would watch her actions from afar, he privately thought that the jealousy that she had had when she first joined had deepened after the birth of her more powerfully telepathic younger brother, and then had quadrupled when her youngest sister was born with empathic abilities. But she had an emotional tie to her youngest sister so all of her hate and jealousy and feelings of inferiority focused on her one-year-old brother. It didn't help that Lilithe's father was obviously doting on Blaise and Zel while ignoring her and her June more than he should.

The incident of Claire Greengrass's death had happened about five and a half years after Voldemort's downfall. Lucius Malfoy, who at that time was still convinced that the Dark Lord would be returning, demanded that Death Eaters have 'loyalty' tests periodically. They would be assigned a target to kill, and if they did not succeed, they were tortured. He and Lilithe had been assigned Claire and he had to get drunk before he could go after her, torturing her as he had. That he had actually killed her, he couldn't believe it still. He and Lilithe had been drunk enough that they had forgotten their falling-out and had returned to his house and worked off their high on each other until they fell asleep from exhaustion. The morning after they had stared at each other in disgust before Lilithe Apparated away, back to Avery.

Shortly after that she moved to Italy and became a professor at the Isola.

But what had haunted Snape for years and years was that Claire Greengrass, the girl he had tortured and laughed at before he had killed her and left her in front of her parent's house, had been the little girl he had rescued from the orphanage so many years before. Dumbledore had told him that when he had reported back, hungover from the night before, trying to remember what he'd done. As Albus asked him if he had known about it, he had remembered everything - the look in the girl's eyes as she died, staring up at him like that, would remain imprinted on his mind forever, seared into his brain, not letting him go another day without remembering the horribleness of it.

And, as Blaise reflected on this memory, lying in his bed and rubbing it from his eyes, he decided it was better not to show it to Hermione.