Wild is the Wind

Wild is the Wind

Ginny always assumed that all Slytherins were egomaniacs driven by their proclivity toward evil and an overwhelming desire to Muggle-bash. But no one could really blame her for such an assumption. History, after all, had shown that Slytherin was the Hogwarts House of choice for so many people like that, and she was being brought up in a household that hero-worshipped Godric Gryffindor and his lion-hearted ways. Her family had long ago given up on any kind of reconciliation with the feud begun by Salazar's divergence so many years past.

Needless to say, it came as a bit of a shock to her when she met Blaise for the first time.

"Hello."

The voice was low: barely audible over the howling wind. Ginny stepped back from the balustrade, turning to see who had intruded upon her solitude, and there he was - tall, darkly handsome, with windswept hair falling in his eyes. He invoked faint memories she had of Tom Riddle.

Blaise Zabini had always struck her as one of those quiet Slytherin boys - the ones who sat in the back of the classroom and memorized who your friends were and what your habits included so that they could torture you with the details later. They were the boys who didn't look but observed, didn't talk but listened instead. They never participated in any class except on the rare occasion that the DADA teacher was giving a lesson on vampires or some other equally sinister subject. Their eyes were shaded and dangerous, and they sent shivers down your spine when their gaze focused upon you.

"What do you want?" she asked, irritated that he'd chosen to invade this place of privacy. The balcony they now occupied was her hiding spot as far as she was concerned. She wasn't aware that anyone else had even discovered its hidden door in the third floor hallway.

"I don't quite know yet," he replied in a drawl of cool indifference. Tom's image disappeared as she was reminded of another Slytherin; one with grey eyes and a permanent smirk. But the boy in front of her now had brown eyes, not grey, and they were flashing wickedly in the moonlight. If she hadn't been expecting to see it on his face, she might have shuddered at the predatory smile that suddenly warped his lips. Instead, she turned away from him and slipped a hand into her pocket, fingering the polished length of her wand.

"Are you afraid?" he asked, an unvoiced warning behind his words.

"Of you?" She closed her eyes and forced a laugh, reminding herself of her Gryffindor roots. This schoolboy was nothing she couldn't handle. "No. You can't do anything to me."

Because she wasn't looking at him, she missed the hesitation and fear that suddenly enveloped his face. He stepped close to her and whispered, "Are you cold?"

Taken aback by how near he'd come and more so by the way his tone had switched from threat to concern, she froze in defense, holding her breath and feeling unaccountably nervous.

"No," she said, her chattering teeth betraying that short statement.

"You're too proud," he insisted, and rested a warm hand on her exposed arm. "Even for a Gryffindor."

Gryffindor or not, she tore herself from his grasp and quickly crossed to the opposite side of the balcony. "Don't touch me," she hissed.

"But you are cold," he said, and was beside her again. "You've been out here for hours."

"Listen," she began, turning toward him to give him a piece of her mind. He lifted his eyebrows in askance as she broke off and stared at him.

"You're bleeding," she blurted, pointing at the rivulets of red blood trickling down in lines over his right hand from beneath the cover of his sleeve.

"Yes," he agreed calmly. He held up his stained hand and studied it through narrowed eyes. "I cut myself," he told her. He let the hand fall back to his side and stared at her, unblinking.

She stared back. "Accidentally?"

He looked for a moment as though he was thinking about this, and then shook his head.

"On purpose?" she whispered incredulously.

He tilted his head, then slowly nodded and pushed up his sleeve. A dark red gash had split the flesh on his wrist and his lower arm was flooded with the blood that freely pulsed from the new wound. Wide-eyed with shock, she reached out to touch him before she could stop herself. He shied away from her and shrank back against the wall of the tower, finally allowing her to see the dazed cast to his eyes, the ashen pallor to his skin. She glanced down at her own arm and found a crimson handprint there where he'd touched her, the ghostly red fingers curled around her white arm.

"Let me heal you," she said suddenly, instinct to help another human in distress overcoming her loathing of Slytherins. She took out her wand and approached him. "Please." She didn't make it a question.

He grabbed his wrist and cradled the wounded arm to his chest, a protective, animal-like growl emerging from deep in his throat. "Why?" he grated through his teeth. "You don't care about me."

"Call it pride," she chanced, repressing her shivers. It was quite cold now that she'd finally calmed down enough to notice. "I know I can heal it." And then, as an intended afterthought, "Death is not the answer to any of your problems."

"That's only what you think," he muttered, lowering his eyes. She took advantage of the passive moment to dart forward and press her wand against his arm. He let out an involuntary cry of pain as she said the spell that immediately made the wound close in upon itself. Stepping back for fear that he'd lash out at her, she was immensely surprised when he looked down at his healed wrist, looked up at her, and then fainted dead away. No warning, just out cold like someone had hit him over the head with a cauldron.

She glanced around the balcony momentarily at a loss, and then dropped to her knees at his side. Sighing, she placed her wand against his temple and whispered, "Ennervate!" Blaise's eyes opened slowly, quite unlike the snap reaction the spell usually produced.

He blinked at her and coolly inquired what in the bloody name of Merlin she was doing.

She gaped. "Reviving you?" she tried with a frown. "You just..." She trailed off as he sat up and turned his wrist over, examining the lack of a source for the blood encrusted on his pale skin.

"Never mind," he said, removing the need for her to find her voice again. "I remember."

She shook her head in an effort to regain some form of conscious thought. "If you remember," she asked carefully, "than why did you do it?"

"Do what?" he replied, his dark eyes rising to meet hers. "Try to off myself?" She drew back from the menace in his tone. "You wouldn't understand."

"But I--" She started, frowning again.

"Stop," he said. "You wouldn't understand. You're a Gryffindor and, more than that, a Weasley, and I know the mindset of your type." He closed his eyes a moment, as if in pain, then thrust his arm out toward her. "Here, help me clean this up. I'm too exhausted to do any magic and I left my wand back in my room anyway."

Startled by this announcement, she nevertheless bent to help him. A loud voice of protest in her head was ridiculing her for doing what he wanted and acting like his house elf. Still, something about his demeanor made her want to help him even if he didn't appreciate it. She quickly removed one of his shoes and, before he could act on the confused light in his eyes and protest, she had it transfigured into a small basin and was conjuring up a bit of warm water. Tugging her handkerchief out of her pocket, she soaked it in the water and took hold of his arm, preparing to sponge off the blood covering it. Blaise openly stared at her, obviously surprised that she'd chosen to follow his orders. She stared back defiantly and set about cleaning him up.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked after a moment of awkward silence. She drew the bowl closer and submerged his hand in the water, scrubbing off the blood with her fingertips. He relaxed, and began to watch her work in apparent indifference, barely flinching when she decided to add some more hot water.

"Why not?" she retorted, annoyed that he wasn't at all rattled by everything that had taken place in the past ten minutes. "You asked me to."

He narrowed his eyes again. "But why help me at all?" he inquired.

"You obviously sought me out for some reason." She jumped when he abruptly laughed at her innocent comment.

"You Gryffindors," he remarked, smiling a bit in amusement. "You're all so arrogant."

At this, she couldn't help but echo his laughter. "Arrogant?" she repeated, rubbing his wrist more harshly than was probably needed. "If anyone in this school is arrogant, it's you, not us."

"Oh really?" He glanced sideways at her, giving her a strange look she found herself unable to interpret. "You think that's true?"

She widened her eyes incredulously. "Even you have to admit that's true. What about Slytherin pride?" His only reaction to that was to scoff.

"Pride is different than arrogance."

"Is that so?" She sat back on her heels, forgetting her task for a moment. "You people seem to make it one and the same. Why don't you enlighten me?" She meant it to be sarcastic, but somehow the words came out far more caustic.

"We are not arrogant," he said, biting off his words. "We're merely proud of who we are."

She let out a guffaw, not bothering to even try and stifle herself. "The offspring of Deatheaters?" she smirked. "That's some accomplishment to find pride in."

He glared at her. "You assume," he said, somehow managing to retain a perfect sincerity in his voice, "that so many lies are true."

"Give it a rest, Zabini. History's not based on lies, is it? For centuries your House has produced more Dark witches and wizards than any other -"

"More," he interjected sharply. "More; not all. And by no means is everyone in Slytherin related to said individuals." He fell silent for a moment, and she grimaced at his logic.

"I still don't see how this makes us the arrogant ones," she said at last, exasperated and searching for a way out of the unnerving conversation.

Blaise bolted upright, a total look of disbelief painting his moon-bathed face. "Assumption!" he cried as she tried to get him to lie down again. He refused to be pushed back and gripped her arms instead, catching her gaze and forcing her to look at him. She stared, wide-eyed, as he continued his diatribe. "Arrogance is built from assumptions, Weasley. Like you - you assume that I sought you out with a purpose; you assume that I wanted your help; you assume that I made a mistake. And then, even worse, you assume that you can rectify that mistake!" She made a small sound of protest, but he silenced her with the severity of his gaze. "And why should you assume these things? You think that I wasn't aware of what I was doing? You think I don't know that it was the coward's way out? You think that because we Slytherins have expectations of how others should behave that we're conceited? Well, I'll let you in on a little secret that most Gryffindors never get to hear." He leaned close to her, their foreheads almost touching. Her whole world suddenly became focused on the dark intensity of his eyes. "You're wrong," he whispered. "All of your assumptions are wrong. And you're more arrogant in making them than any Slytherin that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing."

And that was that. He released her and drew away, leaning back against the balustrade without giving her a second look. She expected him to be brooding, or at least smug, but he only looked a bit distant, as though the whole matter somehow bored him, contrary to the passion he'd just exhibited.

"I..." She started to say that she was sorry he felt that way, but stopped herself before the words left her mouth. He was contemplating his wrist again, turning it this way and that in the moonlight and examining the pallid flesh. She took in a calming breath and lowered her eyes.

"Are you satisfied now?"

"What?" she said, startled by this abrupt and seemingly unrelated question.

"I said--" He was getting wound up again. "Are you satisfied now?"

"What do you mean? Satisfied with what?"

"With knowing why I did it!" he exclaimed. He tilted his head and squinted his eyes at her as though trying to see her from a long ways away. "Isn't that what you wanted to know from the beginning?"

She shook her head, trying to clear the confusion from her mind. "I don't... understand," she said slowly. "How do I now know why you tried to...?" Her words faded and her thoughts snapped into place.

"I didn't try, Weasley. I did. And for some reason, fate decided to torture me by having you interfere. Merlin only knows why." He looked up at the stars, but didn't shiver, even though a frigid gust of wind started up, tearing at his robes and dark hair, causing irreparable damage to his image of Slytherin perfection. Ginny suddenly saw him, this strange and twisted young man who looked so much like Tom once had - his body bound in lines of easy elegance, his voice speaking the words of poisoned poetry. But she'd never seen through the disguise in Tom. She'd never seen the temper flashing behind his dark eyes, a product of the cruelties of his childhood that screamed to be soothed. But here, with Blaise, she could identify all of this in him. She reached out to him and touched the side of his face with the tips of her fingers.

"Blaise," she said softly, unconsciously using his first name. She wondered if he could hear her with the wind keening so mournfully. "You think you've got everything figured out, don't you?"

He turned to her. "And I suppose you do?" he said, and his voice was flat and slightly wary.

She tried not to smile. "No. But I know enough not to think that this school contains all there is to life." She took her hand away and pushed it into one of her pockets, shivering. Blaise followed the movement, a small frown curving his mouth downward.

"What were your reasons, Blaise?" she asked, not unkindly.

His eyes met hers.

"My life," he said, still wary, and looking a bit unsure of why he was talking to her. "Is nothing to me."

She nodded, remembering the feeling, aware of the awful frustration and pain it brought. "Why not?" she replied.

"My parents don't care about anything I do," he responded after a mere second's hesitation, glancing away and looking out over the grounds of Hogwarts. "My brother expects me to be perfect, just like him. My friends are all the same. They don't care about anything but the expectations of their class." He closed his eyes, softly admitting more to himself than to her, "They're not truly my friends."

Ginny was fascinated by this outpouring, but she kept silent, waiting for him to go on. By this time though it didn't matter what she did. Now that Blaise had started, he found he couldn't stop.

"Half of the adults I meet are afraid of me because of the power behind my family's name; the other half is disgusted by our reputation and wants nothing to do with me. My teachers all remember my brother and are disappointed when I don't live up to his reputation. Professor Snape is always telling me that I'm too weak-minded for a Slytherin and that I don't deserve the title. Because of that, Malfoy won't let me be part of his inner circle, even though I'm the only seventh year boy who comes close to the level he operates on." The list went on and on in his mind. All of the things that held him back in life, every philosophy shoved down his throat, every expectation higher than the last... "I can't be serious about any girl I'm with," he continued. "At least, not the Slytherins because they only want power out of a relationship, and not anyone else because that'd only serve to make me more of an outsider."

"So you don't believe in Slytherin pride?" Ginny interrupted, cursing herself moments later for letting it slip out.

Blaise goggled at her, and she almost laughed at the look on his face. "Didn't you hear anything I just said, Weasley?" he demanded. "My life is nothing because none of it is real. How can I have pride in something I'm not sure I believe in? How can I be sure about anything when everything has always been forced on me, told to me, held up to me?"

"Sorry," she said. "I suppose you're right. It's just--"

"Damn right, I'm right! There you go again on another arrogance trip. You talk like I don't know anything, like I never see anything..."

"Well, you just said as much!" she fumed, angered by his hypocrisy.

"I... No, I didn't. I said I didn't know who I am, not who everyone else is." He folded his arms tight against his chest and glared at her. She glared right back.

"I don't know where you get off telling me you know who everyone else is, Zabini. If you don't know who you are, how can you know who anyone else is?"

He smirked suddenly, and she, unsettled by the abrupt change in demeanor, took a step back. The smirk turned into a leer as he raised his chin and stated, "I know who you are."

"Oh, you do, do you?" she said, trying to recover herself by wrapping her robes tighter about her torso and imitating the haughty look on his face.

"Of course, I do," he replied, moving toward her, his leer somewhat maniacal. "You're the youngest of seven children, the only daughter of the most impoverished pureblood family in the wizarding world. You wear your brothers' hand-me-down robes, study from their worn-out textbooks, and try to pretend that it doesn't bother you when they tease you and scare away boys that you fancy. Your parents are overprotective. You don't have any best friends. You hang about Potter and his gang because you don't know where else to fit in, and even they don't have the heart to fully welcome you. You read books in the hallways. You go out of your way to avoid Slytherins. You make good grades but nobody notices. When you do speak up, you always have something worthwhile to say, but people still seem to forget that it was you who came up with the good idea."

"Is that all?" Ginny asked a bit shakily when it seemed he'd finished.

"No," he said, unfolding his arms and letting the leer slip from his face. "You stand up to people. You defend your friends and almost everyone else that you see needs help. Your roommates rely on you to listen to them and offer needed advice. You watch everyone in the school and almost always know first when something is going to go wrong." He paused, and looked at her, forcing her to look back at him. "You still like to write, despite what happened six years ago today."

She closed her eyes, forcing back tears, and whispered, "How do you know all that?"

"I just know people is all," he replied simply, handing her an explanation without explaining. She opened her eyes to see him step up to the balustrade and lean against the carved stone. He pushed the hair out of his eyes and blinked at her slowly, something odd and shining beneath the surface of those two dark orbs.

"If you know me so well," she said, voice wavering despite herself, "Then why is it so hard to know yourself? You just told me that you can't have pride in something you're not sure you believe in; if you've only just figured this out, Blaise, you have to give yourself time to know yourself." She took a deep breath and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. "If you don't give yourself that chance, than I don't see any good reason for me to not kill myself either."

"You!" he said, and his shoulders tensed forward. "You have a life! You have people who love you, who want to know what you do each day, who--"

"Stop," Ginny commanded. She calmly took the perplexed Slytherin's hands in hers. "You also have a life, Blaise Zabini. But you have to live it. You have to make your own life. For yourself. I went through hell and back during my first and second years at this school, and I did not learn that lesson just to have someone else within my influence succumb to it. If you think you don't have someone who loves you, well... You do."

Blaise looked somewhat terrified. Ginny congratulated herself on getting through that speech without balking or breaking down. The lesson she spoke of had not proved an easy one to learn. But out of it, she gained a better understanding of how beautiful life truly was. And she'd only been thirteen when she got over it. This young man, this seventeen-year old boy, should be in the midst of figuring life out, for Merlin's sake. What else is a teenager supposed to do?

"I don't," he said, so softly she barely heard him.

"You do," she maintained forcefully. On impulse, she added, "I'll love you, Blaise. I'll be your friend. I will ask you what you've done each and every day if that's what you think you're missing."

He stared at her.

"You think I'm not serious?" She made a decision within her mind. "I'm more serious than you know. You can't know, considering you've mentioned nothing yet about Gryffindor stubbornness, not to mention Weasley hard-headedness."

He narrowed his eyes. "Why the change? Why help a Slytherin? Why help me?" he asked suspiciously.

She sighed. "Because you were honest with me. You've just been more of a friend to me than anyone else I know."

He still didn't believe her. "But we're strangers, Weasley. This is the first time in our lives that we've ever talked together."

"And see how successful it's been! I stopped you from killing yourself, and you saved me from my own tortured thoughts. And we haven't killed each other since. All things considered, I'd say that's a pretty good track record for the--" She glanced down at her wristwatch. "--hour in which we've known each other."

"I don't know, Weasley. I'm not too sure about you being my friend."

"Well, Blaise," she said, deliberately stressing his name. "I don't think I can trust your word if you tell me you won't kill yourself."

He raised an eyebrow. "This is idiotic. I'm not having this conversation with you." He turned to go back into the school.

"Whoa, wait a minute!" She grabbed his arm to stop him, giving him a pained look. "You can't leave. I just promised myself I'd try and be friends with you."

"I'm not responsible for any guilt you place upon yourself, Weasley," Blaise spat, sick of her and her eternally optimistic attitude. "Now, let me go."

"But I..." Her brown eyes, so much lighter then his own, took on a bright sheen. "Fine. If you really want to waste every opportunity you might have, I guess it's really not worth it. I just..." She released his arm and slumped against the wall. "I thought I might be able to help you, to show you that you're wrong about the world. It's not all that bad, you know." She looked up at him, and he could see she was fighting back her tears from earlier again. "But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're right about the arrogance thing. Maybe I just think there's going to be more when I get out of this place. I guess I can't know. No one... has ever... told me." She broke off, crying now. She didn't go into hysterics, or even sobs, she just cried, still looking up at him and refusing to wipe the tears away. It physically pained him to see her so unashamedly weeping that he knelt by her side and took one of her hands in his. She just looked so alienated.

"I don't know if there's more... Ginny." He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall beside her. "No one has ever told me either."

They sat together for awhile. Ginny couldn't stop crying. She wasn't so sure about her convictions anymore. Blaise had seriously disrupted her confidence.

"Blaise," she said at last, and she took her hand from his grasp to smooth the tears from her cheeks. "What if we just try? What's the worst that could happen?"

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "You mean if we tried to go on?"

She nodded, eyes red, cheeks wet. "If we tried to go on together," she whispered, almost afraid to mention her promise again. She really wanted to help him. All she could see in him was herself, lost and alone, without anyone to understand, and she couldn't bear for anyone to feel as she had. As she was feeling again...

He studied her face, seeing the anguish there, an echo of his own. What if she was right? And he'd never know without taking the chance... "We could end up hating each other. We could drive each other to homicide, never mind suicide," he warned.

She tried to laugh and couldn't.

"I suppose," he said, hardly believing the words coming out of his mouth. "I suppose we could. Yeah, what's the worst that could happen?" What was the worst that could happen? Things couldn't get much worse than they already were. And he ached for some release.

She touched his wrist, and then laid her open hand on his knee. "Not much," she murmured. He could see the calluses on the insides of her fingers from writing too much.

"I know something," he announced suddenly, "that could mean the end of this."

"What's that?" she asked, alarmed.

"You could be a bad kisser," he replied.

"What?" she said in bewilderment. "What does that have anything to do with--"

Blaise took the chance. He cut her off with a slender finger against her lips. Her eyes met his in confusion, and then faint understanding. He pulled his hand away and she gave him the ghost of a smile. Then they leaned together and their lips met.

It wasn't an outstanding kiss. There was no blaze of passion, no electric intensity. But Ginny was highly aware of Blaise's hands pulling her toward him, and she lifted her arms around his neck, settling comfortably against him. It was pleasant. It felt nice. It was something to live for.

They separated and Blaise frowned.

"Was I that bad?" Ginny asked, feeling somewhat cynical about the whole thing.

"No. it's just..."

"Just what?"

"I'm not sure how I'm gonna get used to calling you 'Ginny' from now on. It's too plebian."

Ginny laughed, the first real laugh she'd had all evening. The wind gusted up again, lifting her red hair and making it stream out behind her. Blaise thought she might be the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen as she replied.

"You can always call me Virginia."

Love me, love me, love me, love me say you do

Let me fly away with you

For my love is like the wind

And wild is the wind

Wild is the wind

Give me more than one caress

Satisfy this hungriness

Let the wind blow through your heart

Oh wild is the wind

Wild is the wind

You touch me

I hear the sound of mandolins

You kiss me

With your kiss my life begins

You're spring to me

All things to me

Don't you know you're life itself

Like the leaf clings to the tree

Oh my darling cling to me

For we're like creatures of the wind

And wild is the wind

Wild is the wind