Sunglasses and a Fedora

He stood out in the rain, holding his worn fedora to his chest. Ever since childhood had he loved the rain, when his Nonna had told him tales of how rain droplets were wishes that people sent to the heavens that made the clouds grey, and swell, until they dropped the wishes back onto the heads of the wishers in a silent answer. He used to love watching the small spheres of water splash onto his bare skin and gather into little streams that trickled down his arm, getting caught in his shirt. It had always served well to calm him through his childhood living at his Nonna's vinyard in Italy, and still suceeded in doing so well into his years spent at Hogwarts and even thereafter. Whether he be in the traditional Italian home of his family, or hidden behind a thick window at the ancient castle where he recieved his schooling- it would always calm him..

When he had been an Unmentionable, he refused to take missions unless he could get himself caught in a rainstorm before hand.He needed something calming before the stress of his missions could even manifest in his thoughts, and it always appeared to help him perform his tasks with ease and thouroughness. His boss had always been lenient with him, allowing him to refuse missions if there were no signs of rain in the near future. But it wouldn't last forever. There had been only one mission that he had performed, or attempted to, without a calming rain shower before. That was his last.

Certain... things transpired in the mission, and other certain things had acted as catalysts to further the damage of more things that had come afterwards. He had done something wrong- for the first time he had done something wrong. And it was bad enough for him to actually quit. But, he didn't really have a choice. He couldn't ignore the shit he had gotten himself into, so he had fled. He then knew that his chances to enjoy rain would be few and far between. Life went downhill, but there is always a leveling of land at the end. He was determined to find it.

At first he had just quit his job at the Ministry, but that wasn't enough. Curious things had started happening at his home, as well as the home of his friends. So he cut off all contact to them, in hopes that the problem would leave them. His hopes became reality, but things became worse at his own home. Things started to go missing in his flat, other vandalized, others still had been completely and utterly destroyed. Then his friends, old schoolmates and ex-collegues, started coming to visit- wanting explanations for his sudden absense, so he had to flee once more. He sucessfully cut all of his ties to wizarding civilization, and set out into the world. Months after his departure, he had realized what was happening. A game had started. A game that could only be finished with someone's death. He refused to be the dying, but he couldn't deny it.

He- Blaise Zabini- was being hunted. No one else knew- no one else probably even cared. He had dug his own grave by taking the mission, and now he was carving his own headstone just in case. All he had left to do now was run. Run away from everything and everyone he had once known. He couldn't risk endangering anyone else, so he would make sure he wouldn't. The game had just begun, but not by his own choice.