“Arthur,” Molly greeted, coming to Arthur to kiss him as he entered the house. She heard her relief in her voice, even over just the one word. She'd been worrying all afternoon about Severus' little project, as well as about what to do with their own wayward son. “Welcome home.”

Arthur gave her a somewhat wary look as he put his battered briefcase down beside the door. “Something wrong, Molly?” he asked her.

Molly shook her head, but found herself smiling, her anxiety melting away. “All kinds of things, none of them really very serious,” she admitted. “But I do need to talk to you.”

“Alright,” Arthur told her easily. “Let's have some tea in the kitchen then, shall we?”

Tea. Of course. She had said it wasn't serious, hadn't she? And he'd just gotten home from work. He was tired, too. Besides that, she knew that her husband's way of taking a deep breath and slowing down to talk things over was helpful. But it was hard not to hurry him, and she fought not to ring her hands as he calmly found the teapot and the packet of tea and filled the pot with water before spelling the water to a boil and adding the tea. Leaving it to steep, he found their sugar jar and the milk and put them both directly on the table.

“I'm listening, Molly,” he told her, turning back to find a clean plate and open the biscuit tin.

He was, too, she knew. Still, she waited for him to sit, trying to absorb his calm. They were polar opposites, in this regard, but it really was good for her to try to do things at his pace, at least some of the time. When he was settled, she finally spoke. “Ronald is suspended from school,” she told him first.

He met her eyes. “Ah,” he said, with a slight smile. “What'd he do, then?”

Molly frowned, fretting. Arthur was most likely smiling for her sake, not wanting her to feel bad for bringing this to him when he'd just gotten home from work. But Arthur was so soft-hearted. He truly hated when one of their children was in trouble, and she usually didn't mention anything to him that happened while he was at work. This kind of thing was her job, usually. But this really was a whole-family affair, given the suspension.

“You remember the notice we got in August about the precautions taken to keep students away from the third floor corridor?” she asked.

Arthur abruptly set his mug of tea down on the table, clearly rattled. “They didn't,” he said.

“He did,” she told him matter-of-factly. “Not the twins, Ronald. Along with Harry, Hermione, and – you'll never guess – Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini. Apparently, they are long-time friends. I hadn't realized Ronald was capable of keeping a secret for that long.”

She frowned. Come to think of it, Ronald had three other siblings at Hogwarts, who must have known about the friendship, and equally had managed to keep it out of her knowledge. Even Percy. What else was going on at Hogwarts that she didn't know about?

“...anyway, they got all the way through, despite what sounds like some phenominally hard trials and high risk, at which point they all got caught at the end of the chamber and suspended. Ronald is upstairs.”

Arthur sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, overtly tired. “I'll speak to him,” he told her regretfully. “Do you want to bring him down here, or should I go up and talk to him privately?”

“Actually,” Molly told him hesitantly, “...there's more. I do want you to talk with him, but first-” she frowned and cut off, unsure quite what to say about the issue. Arthur gave her a questioning look, and she finally just decided to talk, and sort it out afterwards. “It's like this,” she told him. “I mentioned the other boy...Blaise Zabini. He's the child of Belladonna and Fernando Zabini, but his mother was imprisoned for killing, among others, his father. The boy's been living with the Luxanuses for two years.”

Arthur was listening patiently, but he clearly hadn't caught the thread yet, and Molly realized she was stalling. Not out of the fear that he'd veto the idea...but actually quite the opposite. She couldn't bring herself to refuse the boy – couldn't live with herself if she did – but she wasn't sure if she was ready for such a huge change to their family, so quickly.

Ronald really didn't understand how having him here for his suspension and for Easter was different than having him visit...but that hadn't really been what Severus had been looking for in talking to her. If it had been, Severus would've found a way for the boy to stay at Hogwarts, or visit the Grangers. He'd talked to her, specifically.

“...who've kicked him out,” she spat out finally. “And declared him blood-traitor. For refusing to give information about Harry and Severus at the time of the adoption. The boy's been homeless for months and didn't say a word. As it turns out, though, he's been good friends with Ron and Harry since the beginning of the school year. Severus came to me this afternoon asking if we'd take him in.”

She ran out of words, and just looked at her husband, willing him to have a different thought than she did.

Arthur looked at her, frowning, then closed his eyes and tipped his head back to think for a moment. Finally, he took a deep breath, and opened his eyes again. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. What else can we do?”

Molly looked at her husband, loving him enormously even as her heart thudded in her chest. “Arthur,” she said softly. “His mother is Belladonna Zabini. He's been raised by Death Eaters...”

He gave her a slight smile. “The boy's a blood traitor, Molly,” he said soothingly. “And he's only eleven years old. Who better is he really going to find?” He smiled more widely, abruptly seeming less tired. “Besides, are you really going to tell me the idea doesn't appeal to you? Blaise Zabini, raised by...well, us? You can't see the irony in that?”

Molly tried to frown, but it ended up teasing. “Arthur Weasley, we can not take the boy for the sake of some kind of a joke!” But she knew what he meant. They were the most famous family of blood traitors in all of wizardom. The idea really did have a lovely kind of...rightness.

She just...hadn't really planned for the amount of work involved in adopting and bonding with a damaged eleven-year-old child. She'd thought Severus was nuts, and now here she was...

“Alright,” she told her husband. “All right. I suppose...yes, all right.”

“Mr. Zabini.”

Blaise looked up from the Potions homework he'd unfolded neatly onto a common room table and met his head-of-house's serious gaze.

“Are you packed, Mr. Zabini?” the man asked.

“Yes, sir,” Blaise said steadily, indicating the trunk at his side. He was damned good at it by now, wasn't he? Fortunately the Luxanuses had provided him with new clothing only shortly before things blew up. He had good-quality, well-fitting clothing, his school books for the year, and enough galleons to buy the books and clothing for the next. They'd last. Hogwarts had been paid for in his father's will. All he needed for now was food and a bed. Maybe a desk.

Yeah, great. I have those things at Hogwarts. I decided that getting myself suspended was a good idea why? He'd been taken care of until at least Easter, before this. And he could've stayed at Hogwarts for the Easter holidays, surely. It was only two weeks. And then what, genius? What exactly was your plan for the summer? He'd've had to throw himself on Snape's mercy at that point, anyway.

Hey, the man owes me, he told himself firmly. Slytherins were not above a little guilt manipulation. Or straight up blackmail. Snape would probably not simply kill him. Kinda nice that that's not necessary though, isn't it? Perhaps getting himself suspended wasn't as stupid as it seemed.

“Come on then,” Snape told him. “Mrs. Weasley will be coming to pick you up in my office.”

“Mrs. Weasley?” Blaise asked. Hadn't Snape said he was going to stay with him? “Not that I mind,” he said quickly. “But-”

“Mrs. Weasley,” Snape repeated, indicating for him to grab his trunk. “I spoke to her about the possibility of you staying with her for the Easter holidays, and she agreed. Your friend Ronald asked if you could stay for your suspension, too, and she was kind enough to say you could come early.”

“I am grateful,” Blaise said carefully. Or at least I'm aware that I should be. At the moment, he couldn't manage to feel it. It was kind of her to take him for his suspension and Easter break. That gave him a place to go for the rest of the school year, so that the countdown on the amount of time Snape was willing to keep him didn't start until then. The best he could usually expect was about nine months. The Luxanuses had been the longest yet - almost two years.

But he was in school, now. He'd be mainly out from under foot. Maybe people would be willing to take him for longer, if he wasn't actually living in their homes for more than a couple weeks at a time? Summer is longer, though. And he was older, now. The 'cute' factor was well over with. But then he was cleverer, now. More useful. Certainly the Luxanuses hadn't minded him helping out, when he could. And now that he was learning more magic-

Yeah, great. I can kill a troll. I'm sure this Mrs. Weasley has all sorts of those around. But he could still damned well scrub. Not everybody had a house-elf. And the Weasleys are the last people I would expect to have the type of home to attract one. But then how were they paying for him? Three weeks, with four days off in the middle. It's just not that long, is all. But that pretty much confirmed that those three weeks were the best he could expect. Unless, maybe, he could work hard enough to actually earn his keep? He was almost old enough to get working papers.

His brain had wandered, and now Snape was staring at him, expression unreadable. The silence had gone on too long.

“Zabini-” he started. His tone was easier to read than his face.

“Don't,” Blaise cut him off sharply, then closed his eyes. Perfect kid, he reminded himself. He'd loosened up a little, since he'd lived with the Luxanuses for so long. He couldn't afford that sort of freedom now.

He'd already stepped in it, with this last suspension. He'd been somehow completely unable to care what happened to him, even knowing how dependent he was on Snape's good opinion, so now he had to play catch-up. But he was not going to be able to have the conversation Snape wanted without losing all pride.

“Your pardon,” he told Snape, making it as sincere as he could. “I would prefer not to talk about it, please.”

Snape's expression didn't change, but he nodded. “Very well, Mr. Zabini. Just come with me.”

So this is the son of Belladona Zabini, Molly thought, looking down at the boy. It wasn't hard to believe, looking at him. The high cheekbones, luminous dark skin, almond-shaped eyes, and striking gaze made her immediately think of the images in the papers when the beautiful murderess was finally arrested. The boy was a lot darker than his mother, but other than that, it was his mother that she saw. You're going to be a very pretty young man someday, she thought, surprised. If he'd manage to smile, anyway. Not that she could expect him to under the circumstances.

“Blaise, this is Molly Weasley,” Severus told the boy.

Blaise looked up, meeting her eyes squarely. “Blaise Zabini, Ma'am,” he said. “Thank you for receiving me.”

So formal. The boy sounded like a particularly stiff adult, not an eleven-year-old. She met his eyes in return and put as much warmth as she could into her smile and tone. “No trouble at all, Blaise. You are quite welcome in our home.”

She felt her brow crease as she observed the boy. Having greeted her properly, he focused his gaze politely on her face, keeping his expression vaguely pleasant and allowing her to look at him. And he's looking at my face, not my eyes. She was not the most imposing of figures, she was well aware, and nothing in what Ronald had told her of his friend had indicated this – caution. Well- maybe he had. Blaise is so serious lately. Worse than Harry, even, sometimes. Ronald was not usually given to understatement, but in this case...

By 'serious', he means scared stiff, she realized. Bless Ronald, to see a friend in trouble and think that the natural solution was to bring him home. She couldn't fix everything.

But it looked like Severus' evaluation would prove scarily accurate. He will be nothing if not polite, he'd said. If nothing else, he knows he has nowhere else to go.

But he'd also described the boy as another troublemaker like Harry, and the boy before her didn't look like he'd ever have the audacity to even raise his voice.

Merlin, poor child. How many times had he thanked people for taking him in, only to have them send him away again as soon as he'd settled? If he even allows himself to settle in, by now. Severus had not been able to tell her how many homes the boy had been through, but already she was thinking a lot.

It was a little soon, to tell him what Arthur and she had planned. Let him get to know them a little bit, first. But the instinct to try to reassure him was strong.

“It'll be okay, Blaise,” she told him gently. “We'll work this out.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he agreed politely.

“Call me Mrs. Weasley, dear,” she told him. She didn't quite want him calling her by her first name, but Mrs. Weasley was a little more personal, at least.

“Yes, Mrs. Weasley,” he answered obediently. It might as well have been ma'am. She kept her sigh purely internal. She'd known what they were committing to, at least in theory. It really shouldn't be a surprise that the boy was...cold.

“Alright dear,” she told him, taking his trunk and holding out an old wool cap. “Come on. It's a portkey. Just grab hold.”

She met eyes with Severus just before leaving, but he didn't seem to have anything to offer her beyond a vaguely helpless look. He'd done what he could – he'd sent the boy to her.

And why did everybody suddenly think she could fix everything? She was just one woman with a large family, trying to make ends meet. She could not assume the responsibility for every unwanted child in the wizarding world. Even if she were going to try, she had to admit, she would not normally have started with the only son of a Death Eater and the woman who would eventually murder him. Surely blood had something to do with how a child turned out? But he did choose our side, she told herself. Arthur was right. If the boy was truly a blood-traitor, he belonged with them. They'd manage somehow.

She felt the tug as the portkey took off, and then she was spinning off towards home.

They set down at the top of a hill, and Mrs. Weasley led him down a scraggly path through a thin stretch of woods and a field.

“Welcome to the Burrow, dear,” Mrs. Weasley told him when they finally got there.

The Burrow, Blaise thought. That's...apt. The place looked like nothing so much as a giant, teetering, communal birds nest – all unstable, piled-up layers of various mismatched materials probably gleaned magpie-like from somebody's scrap heap. Apparently chimneys had been on clearance – the structure had at least five of them, none of which matched.

How many people live here? he wondered, spotting a pile of rubber boots outside the front door. Surely that was at least four pairs? And what was with the cauldron tipped over on the lawn? Admittedly he didn't know Mrs. Weasley very well, but she didn't seem the type to simply throw refuse out the front door. If that is the front door. It was hard to tell, given the somewhat random placement of the windows everywhere.

“There's a jackalope living in the pot, dear,” Mrs. Weasley told him, apparently having noticed him looking. “I didn't have the heart to evict her, and now she's got a whole little brood in there. I know it looks terrible.”

“Don't worry about it,” Blaise said automatically, still taking the place in. That explained the pot – sort of - but what about the chickens pecking around the gardens? Were they food? Pets? This is about the strangest place I've ever stepped foot in, Blaise thought.

And tiny. How the hell was he going to stay out of the way of four people living here? But wait...two adult Weasleys, Ron, the twins...Percy. That was already six. And hadn't Ron mentioned a sister? And maybe an older brother, too? In Bulgaria, or somewhere like that? So at least seven, actually. The older brother probably didn't actually live here.

And for this week, at least, they're all at school. Except the younger sister, presumably. So for now, the two adults, Ron, and the younger sister. Ron, at least, wouldn't mind him being around. For now.

“You'll be upstairs, dear,” Mrs. Weasley told him. “In Ronald's room. He's got an extra bed. I haven't had a chance to ask any of the others if they'd mind you taking over their room. You can move in a day or two.”

Oh hell no. “No!” Blaise told her quickly. “No, it's okay. I'll be fine in with Ron, so long as he doesn't mind.”

“None of us mind, dear,” Mrs. Weasley told him, looking at him.

Not yet, Blaise thought. She pitied his position, but she obviously really couldn't keep him.

“Did you help him?”

Severus looked at Harry and frowned. Harry was standing just outside the door to his room, having clearly come out as soon as he'd heard the floo. Which could be construed as defiance. The boy had only just been grounded, and Severus sent him to his room for the afternoon while he went to talk to Mrs. Weasley.

But he knew Harry very well, by now, and this was to his knowledge the very first time Harry had ever left his room without permission after being sent there. The boy seemed to take the cracked-open door as some sort of sacred pact.

Which made it very unlikely that the boy was deliberately defying him now, especially given how much trouble he was in after exploring the 3rd-floor corridor with Zabini and the other 'Slythindors'. Most likely, Harry had simply forgotten about his restrictions as soon as Severus came home. He must've been really worried for his friend.

The fact remained, though, that he'd told Harry to stay in his room, and the boy had disobeyed. Harry was very, very grounded, and for very good reason. It wouldn't hurt to remind him of that, though it would scare him.

Severus kept his grimace off his face. He needed to push, a little. He now knew well enough how to avoid scaring Harry, but if he truly never scared the boy, Harry would never learn that there was nothing to fear. Severus had learned quickly that if he didn't find those opportunities, Harry was more than capable of doing so. His son seemed to need to destruction-test every possible scenario for things going wrong that he could think of. This was a very minor one. Yes, you really can mess up further, right now, and it still won't blow up in your face.

“You need to go back into your room,” Snape reminded the boy instead of answering his question.

As he'd somewhat expected, Harry froze, and looked at him with wide eyes. “I forgot!” he said immediately. “Sorry!” He headed back to his room, and, tellingly, shut the door completely. Another thing that the boy never willingly did. Harry couldn't bear to have that door closed, especially if he was in any kind of trouble. He had to know he could get out.

Severus sighed, and closed his eyes, once again fighting back the anger provoked by that closed door and its implied offer. Of course Harry would assume that he'd lost the privilege of having his door open. Of course he'd think Severus would use his fear to punish him. And this when the boy had already been his son for several months.

Destruction testing. He'd almost suspect the boy of setting up the situation on purpose, except that Harry was currently too freaked for that. It had been hard getting him to eat this morning. There was no way the boy would start something, now.

He wanted to follow the boy, but – “Better to be locked in than dragged out.” Harry had said that to him. He could never, ever, follow the boy into the room without asking first.

One thing at a time, he decided. Approaching the door quietly, he once again pulled it open, and called gently through the door. “I'm not angry, Harry,” he told the boy. “And yes, I did help Blaise. He is at home with the Weasleys.”

At first, Harry didn't answer, but Severus waited a bit to be sure he wasn't going to, and was rewarded. “Wh-what happened?” he asked softly.

“That is for him to tell you,” Snape told him. “But you were quite right that he needed help. He'll be alright, now.”

“Oh,” Harry said. There was a brief pause, again, but then he answered. “Good,” he said. “...thank you. I'm sorry I yelled at you.”

Severus frowned. Yelled at him? Oh. Yes, the boy had been angry with him, the night before, when Severus had initially focussed on the danger to Harry instead of on Blaise. “You are my first priority, Harry,” he told him firmly. “Always. But I will care for Blaise, too. Do not worry.”

Even to the point of taking the boy in himself, he realized. But he really hoped he didn't have to do that. Money would be tight, for one thing, and really, Blaise needed more concentration than he could give him, right now. Harry was still...damaged. Really damaged. He needed all that Severus could offer him.

The boy...watched her, Molly realized that first week. He barely said a word other than the basic polite pleasantries, but he watched everything, his gaze sharp and intelligent, evaluating. Also Ron and Arthur and Ginny, but especially her. It was a little...creepy, actually, and Ron kept giving him – and her - worried looks, but Molly realized after only three days what Blaise was doing.

Blaise had come home with her Tuesday evening. By Friday, the boy knew – to a tee – exactly what to do, when. When to wake up, when to come down to help set up for breakfast, how they worked the dish cleaning spell on the sink and where all the dishes went after they were clean and dry. He knew where all the cleaning supplies were kept, and was always quicker than her to get to them if there was any sort of a spill or mess after a meal. He was even pushing the laundry along, if she didn't get to it within five minutes of that finishing.

Most importantly, and most tellingly, he knew how to disappear, entirely, as soon as he ran out of tasks. It was like having a particularly shy house-elf. The only time she ever saw the boy was when he was cleaning something, or when Arthur read to Ginny in the evenings and the boy crept out to listen quietly in a doorway. He didn't even sit down.

And she. Did not. Like. it. No child should be that perfectly behaved. Especially not a child who was evidently a “trouble maker” at school. And he was evidently going on the assumption that she didn't actually want him there, which just wasn't true. She was nervous about it, sure, but part of her loved the crazy idea.

But what to do with the boy? She absolutely agreed with Arthur that they needed to commit to taking him, but she hadn't a clue how to pull him out of his shell! She'd never had a quiet child before. What if the boy was miserable, with them? What would they do, then?

Mrs. Weasley wasn't pleased, Blaise knew. He didn't know exactly why she wasn't pleased, but though she was very kind – and very inclined to touch him, which he really didn't mind, despite having no real idea what to do with it – he could not please her. She smiled at him to his face, sure, but her eyes creased into worried crow's feet every time she thought he wasn't looking. It wasn't the overblown pity he'd occasionally gotten from female relatives when he was little, either – it was something more genuine.

Which was probably a problem. Sure, she'd keep him for a little while out of pity, but if his presence was actually making her unhappy, he had to fix it or he'd be out again in a couple of months.

Problem was, he really didn't know how. He was doing everything he knew how to do. It had worked with the Luxanuses. They might've even kept him for real, if he hadn't suddenly found himself fighting on the wrong side. They'd even seemed to like him, or at least to like bragging to their friends about his mother's pureblood lineage.

Mrs. Weasley... well, she didn't dislike him, precisely, but he was making her unhappy. It really didn't matter why, nor did it matter that Ron was also worried or that Mr. Weasley tried to engage him in conversation and seemed blithely oblivious to Blaise's unwillingness to talk. If someone was going to get tired of his presence, it would be Mrs. Weasley, who was home all day and who wasn't, for some reason, satisfied with his efforts to get along.

Most likely, she wanted him to be more affectionate, or something. Unfortunately, Blaise was aware he'd largely lost that ability. He certainly couldn't fake it. Harry had figured it out, some, largely because Snape hadn't really expected it, and what Snape had expected he'd actually taught him. Just...grabbed him and taught him. It had been a freaking miracle of the type Blaise really couldn't expect for himself.

At any rate, it meant that Blaise probably couldn't expect much, this time. Blaise was a Death Eater's kid, raised by, if not always Death Eaters, at least not blood traitors. Molly Weasley's soul was so clean it squeaked. It was a good thing Blaise had Snape to fall back on, for awhile. Mrs. Weasley was just too...not a Death Eater. Way, way too not a Death Eater to want to keep Blaise for very long.

“Blaise, Ron, lunch!” Molly called up the stairs.

“COMING, MOM!” Ron shouted back, coming pounding down the stairs. Blaise came more quietly behind as he always did, slipping into the kitchen in Ron's shadow.

Lunch was leftovers from the pot roast she'd made the night before, one she suspected Blaise hadn't liked. Knowing that he would eat everything on his plate – no more, no less – she served him a smaller amount of the pot roast and several large slices of the bread to soak the sauce up with.

He gave her a slight smile. “Thank you,” he told her as he always did, looking at his plate.

She frowned. What was she going to do with the boy? Seven days he'd been there, now, and he barely spoke a word. She suspected he spoke more to Ron, when they were alone, but still. The boy ate what he was given, spoke when spoken to, insisted on doing all of his own laundry – as well as theirs, if she turned her back from it - and spent any time she or Arthur were in the house in Ron's room or outside.

And meanwhile the rubbish went out without her or Arthur having done it – before they'd even woken up – and the kitchen floor never seemed to get dirty. And she never saw him do it it was just done. The boy was worse than a house elf. You could talk to a house elf. This was like living with the ghost of a house elf.

And the boy was going back to school today. It was time to talk to him, so that he could think about things before the Easter holidays only a week away. She imagined he would accept – as Severus had said, the boy clearly knew he was running out of places to go – but she couldn't help but feel a vague – disappointment, or sadness. Melancholy. She'd hoped that they'd be able to take the boy in, and see that smile, see the...gratitude, the joy, even if the boy remained shy.

But the more she got to know the boy – she didn't even think he'd believe her, let alone understand that she really meant to make him part of the family. He wasn't just scared – though that, too, was evidently there – he was almost cold. He responded to affection by turning into a fair imitation of a wooden statue. Could he ever learn to really be a part of their warm, loud, boisterous family? She'd have to teach him, but how?

“Blaise,” Mr. Weasley called.

Surprised, Blaise turned his head to look at his hosts, standing nearby where they'd stopped to see Ron off. His friend had already left through the floo. They were headed back to Hogwarts. What could the Weasley adults have to say to him, now? Unless they had something to say about the Easter holidays?

But Mr. Weasley evidently intended for him to come back and talk to him. Blaise made sure his face and body showed nothing more than polite curiosity as he left his packed trunk by the floo to turn back to the waiting adults.

“Come talk to us,” Mrs. Weasley said softly.

“Yes, Mrs. Weasley,” Blaise told her.

Mr. Weasley smiled in response, but it looked strained, and then he and Mrs. Weasley turned away from Blaise to lead him back into the den.

Not good, Blaise thought. Not good at all.

This looked a lot like the requisite “we're really sorry, but we are (having-a-major-crisis/just-getting-too-old/just-not-the-right-place-for-you) explanation followed by the “my (sister/cousin/aunt/good friend) what's-her-name is the nicest woman...you'll be so happy there with her...” speech. Apparently, he was going to be staying with Snape for Easter after all.

How had he gotten things so wrong, so quickly? He'd never been kicked out after only a week, before.

But then, he'd never fit into a family quite so badly as he fit into this one. If he knew that, already, there was no reason it should come as a surprise that they did, too. There didn't really have to be any specific incident. And it wouldn't do to let the Weasleys think they'd hurt him. It wasn't their fault. He kept his face carefully clear of any emotion at all besides continued polite interest.

“Blaise,” Mrs. Weasley said, a slight smile on her face. “It's nothing bad, hon, I promise.”

Or...he thought he'd kept his emotions off his face. No, he was sure of it. His face was absolutely blank – he was politely at her disposal, that was all. There was nothing to see. So why did she feel the need to reassure him?

And as to it being 'nothing bad'...he was sure that was quite true. There was no reason to be at all hurt or disappointed that the Weasleys weren't going to have him for Easter when he'd already known that Mrs. Weasley didn't like him. Living with Snape would be just fine. For as long as it lasted, anyway. And as long as the man had waited Harry out, he'd probably be willing to deal with Blaise for quite a while. That wasn't awful.

He hoped Harry understood, though. His friend still didn't quite trust that Snape actually wanted him, so to ask him to still trust when Snape took Blaise in just as easily, and Blaise didn't cause any trouble... but nothing for it. He had to live somewhere, and Snape was all he could think of. Unless Mrs. Weasley had already come up with something for him. Come to think of it, she probably had – she wasn't the type to just dump him at the curb.

“It's like this, Blaise,” Mrs. Weasley started. “We wanted to give you a little bit of a chance to get to know us and see our house before we asked, but we didn't want to let it go too long, either. We know it's hard for you, not knowing where you're going next...”

Uh huh. Blaise tuned her out, not really needing the explanation so much as needing to know what response was expected afterward. He'd find out where he was going when he got there. But then Mrs. Weasley stopped speaking, and Blaise realized that she was done, a lot quicker than he'd expected. He'd thought she would babble. Most women did, when they were trying to impart bad news. What had her last words been? He mentally rewound the tape, and this time actually listened. “Adopt you, permanently.” Her last words had definitely been, “...adopt you, permanently.”

Blaise froze. He didn't have a memorized response, for that. It took him a couple of seconds to even understand what she was saying, then to confirm to himself that yes, he really was sure that that was what she'd said. And then he stared up into her warm brown eyes, disbelieving. She was smiling at him. Was she nuts?

She didn't like him. He knew this to be true. She smiled, she was kind, she tried to treat him like Ron but...he was not Ron, and she frowned at him when she thought he wasn't looking. She didn't dislike him, but he'd worked his butt off all week and he had yet to please her.

“You certainly don't have to answer right away,” she told him then, smile fading a little. This time, he looked down but listened carefully, trying to find the catch, the reasoning...something to give him a handle on this. But all Mrs. Weasley said was, “....and of course you'll come for Easter, regardless, but we thought you'd like a more permanent home, and we'd be very happy to have you...but you really don't have to, we won't be hurt...”

She was nervous, Blaise realized. Talking that fast, the pauses – now she was babbling. If he wasn't careful, he was going to lose this. And he couldn't afford to. It could've been absolute hell there and he'd've accepted, through sheer self-preservation. The fact that he had a friend, here, and that the Weasley parents were actually kind to him...

“N-no,” he said quickly, interrupting her. “I accept. Please. Thank you.”

He couldn't manage to smile, but Mrs. Weasley smiled hugely, and to his surprise it actually seemed genuine. “Wonderful,” she said. “Welcome to the family, Blaise.”

Really? Heart pounding, Blaise finally managed the beginnings of a smile. “T-thank you,” he said again.

Welcome to the family. Really? Like, really, really? But...why? He couldn't believe it enough to even know what to feel. The whole idea made absolutely no sense. Sure, he'd worked hard for it, but he'd been certain that she wasn't really happy with him. Why would she make that kind of a commitment when she didn't have to?

Harry, he thought firmly. Focus on Harry.

He was back at Hogwarts, having been put through the floo by a...really surprisingly happy Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Now his feet had found the way back to the dungeons, and most of the way to Snape's office. He needed to talk to Harry. He really didn't want to chicken out just because the Weasleys had thrown him a curve ball in the interim. And Harry would be with Snape.

The door to Snape's office was an imposing one, solid oak with just a small plaque to indicate where it led, and a magical lock that kept all but Snape out. Well, Blaise realized suddenly, all but Snape and apparently Harry, since he'd been able to burn the place out. But there was no way to know if anybody was even in the room, since there was no window or other indicator.

Steeling himself, Blaise lifted a hand and nervously used the knocker, tensing when the device rang out loud, seeming to echo on the stone walls of the dungeon corridor. There was no noise from inside, but in a couple of seconds, the professor opened the door to frown down at him.

“Mr. Zabini,” he greeted. His tone was surprisingly friendly, though he didn't smile. “Welcome back. I trust your time with the Weasleys went well?”

Blaise controlled his wince as his stomach took a sudden hard twist. Adopt you, permanently.

“Very, sir,” he told Snape as steadily as he could manage. “Thank you.”

He owed the man a lot more than that, he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to smile, or say anything else. To have not only found him someplace to go, but to find someone willing to commit to him like that, that fast – the man had worked a bloody miracle. He just wished he could be happy about it, instead of this – numb, sick feeling. But that was why he was focussing on his friend, first. Even if he felt like a robot – a robot wearing a Blaise suit and faking Blaise responses when Blaise really wasn't there in the room at all – he still owed it to Harry to apologize. And the only thing that could compare with losing his home would be to lose his best friend, especially now.

“May I speak to Harry?” he asked.

“He is grounded,” Snape told him forbiddingly.

But that wasn't – quite – a no. “...please?” he asked. “It's my fault...”

“Harry made his own decisions, Mr. Zabini,” Snape told him. It still sounded like a 'no'.

Blaise frowned. “That's not what you said at Halloween,” he reminded him.

Even the memory of it still made him flinch. The man had been angry, and even angrier that the Luxanuses hadn't punished him for it. Snape had even punished him himself, instead. But it was the scolding he'd gotten that was the worst. No one had ever spoken to him like that – not coldly, or cruelly, just – seriously. So very, very seriously. He'd be very happy not to have someone speak to him that way, again.

Come to think of it, he really didn't want to be having this conversation with Snape. He'd only meant to argue that he should be allowed to see Harry – or really, that Harry should be allowed to see him – but he'd definitely just reminded the man of Blaise's recent failings. Whatever Snape said now, Blaise knew he'd pushed Harry into trouble.

And Snape was staring at him, and there was a new intensity to his gaze. “True,” he said softly. “Just how much pressure did you put on my son this time, Mr. Zabini?”

Blaise looked down. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said.

“An answer, Mr. Zabini,” Snape demanded quietly.

Blaise winced, but looked up at him. “I told you it was my fault, sir,” he said, meeting Snape's eyes directly. “Did you not believe me?”

Snape just stared at him, his gaze still demanding. Blaise swallowed. “He really did refuse, sir,” he said softly. “He wouldn't have gone if I didn't threaten to go alone.”

Snape just kept looking at him, overtly listening and thinking, and Blaise finally looked away from his gaze. The man had done so much for him, and now – well, he certainly wasn't going to let Blaise in to see Harry, that was for sure. Not now, and maybe not ever. If there was one thing that was likely to get Snape angry, it was a threat to Harry. Blaise did not want to be in that category.

And yet the man had done so much for him, just the week before. He couldn't've written him off entirely, could he? The thought was a painful one, somehow. Snape was Harry's father, and yet...his opinion mattered. Really mattered. Blaise couldn't stand the way he was looking at him, now.

“Would you have gone alone, Mr. Zabini?” Snape asked next.

Blaise looked back up at him, surprised by the unexpected question. Then he winced. He'd been so, so stupid. And yet, somehow – if there were another chamber like it, he thought he might go check it out, now, just for the sake of the distraction. “Probably, sir,” he admitted.

Again, there was silence, as Snape studied him without speaking, and Blaise fought not to shuffle his feet. “Watch yourself, Mr. Zabini,” Snape told him finally. “I will be keeping a much closer eye on you from now on.”

Blaise shivered. Was that a promise, or a threat? But - “The Weasleys-” he started.

Snape's eyebrows rose on his forehead. “I do not believe they will object to my paying you a certain amount of special attention,” he answered. “If they do, I will simply make sure to inform them of any concerns I have. I would not have brought you to anyone I did not trust.”

Blaise didn't know what to say to that, and after a moment Snape continued, his voice very grave. “You've gone two months without support, Blaise – longer than that without a real family. It will not happen again. You are our responsibility, now, and neither I nor the Weasleys nor even Gregory Nott will forget it. You will either keep yourself out of trouble, or we will keep you out of it. Is that clear?”

Blaise stared at him. Oh. That was...quite the statement. He really didn't know what to do with that. Was it...reassuring? Frightening? Both? It certainly didn't sound like Snape was writing him off. Quite the opposite.

Blaise shook his head, head too full to contemplate that. “Y-yes sir,” he said uncertainly. There was a brief silence, and Blaise somehow found his courage again. “M-may I see Harry?” he asked again.

Snape studied his face. “Go think things over, Blaise,” he said finally. “I will allow him to take a break during his lunch and free periods tomorrow. I think you'll have better luck waiting to talk to him then.”

Go think things over. Great. Just what he wanted to do, right now.

But sure. Fine. He'd think things over. He needed a damned strategy, and he didn't have one already prepared for this scenario.

Was it really any different, though? Adoption was just a bunch of parchment with some legalese written on it. It'd make the Weasleys officially responsible for him for a time, but it was like a wedding – people romanticized it, sure, but it didn't actually do anything. You had some big ceremony somewhere with lots of serious language, and everybody pretended that it was this big beautiful permanent thing, but eventually they got sick of it and stopped pretending and the only thing in the way of a divorce was a bunch of pain-in-the-butt paperwork. Paperwork which could be easily nullified with more paperwork. Writing on paper that could literally burn away.

Still, though, the Weasleys were different. He'd never been in a household with other kids, for one thing, or one as poor, or with a Mrs. Weasley who gave him worried frowns when she thought he wasn't watching. He was always watching, and he knew she didn't like him. That was a problem.

“Permanently”. Certainly the woman thought she was keeping him. She was even setting it up to make it difficult for her to not keep him. Why do that, when she didn't like him?

She really was a very kind woman. No wonder her kids were all so loud and happy. The twins especially were absolutely fearless. No doubt the woman would actually try and rescue him.

Problem was, he really couldn't be like one of her kids. He just didn't have it in him to run around and make friends and do stupid shit and get into trouble anymore. He'd enjoyed that very briefly this year and it had been a monumental error. He should never have had anything to do with Snape, or Harry, once he figured out who they were. He should've stuck with Malfoy and Parkinson. Then he'd still have a home. Better miserable at school, with a home to go to, than happy at school and then this. What had he thought he was doing, making friends with Gryffindors?

Except those friendships were the only reason he had a home to go to, now. He'd run out of relatives after the Luxanuses, and they'd've probably got rid of him eventually anyway. Certainly they hadn't hesitated now. Besides, was he really worried about being friends with Gryffindors? He was about to be adopted by blood-traitors. He'd agreed to be adopted by blood-traitors. What had he been thinking, this year?

Except- that first day. He'd been sorted into Slytherin – no surprise there – and had quickly gone to his table and sat down, only to realize that his table-mate was Harry Potter. The Harry Potter. Who, like him, had thrown suspicious glances at everything and everyone, especially Draco Malfoy, who Blaise had equally decided was a potential threat, and their head-of-house, Severus Snape, whom Blaise had decided probably wasn't. Or, well, wasn't to the students, anyway. Blaise couldn't blame his house-mate, though – Snape had one hell of a reputation with Blaise's relatives, especially those who were actually Death Eaters, and the dark-haired man at the head table hadn't seemed to like Potter any better than Potter liked him.

He hadn't really expected to make friends at Hogwarts. He'd vaguely met Malfoy, Parkinson, Bulstrode, and even Nott before any of them had made it to Hogwarts. They'd all gone to the same big holiday parties and fundraisers and horse shows and picnics, but he'd known even then that he was not a good ally, passed around as he was and with his mother in Azkaban. He'd never be anyone important enough for Mr. Malfoy or Mrs. Parkinson to want their children to ally with early, and as such under their parent's eyes they'd never done more than shake hands and make polite noises.

Hogwarts was a great equalizer, in that respect – thrown together at school, you made your own allies who were useful while in school, even if they weren't on the list of friends your parents or guardians chose for you. Your guardians might not care for the relationship, but they were unlikely to actually object, either. So he'd expected that as long as he was useful while in school – smart, and perhaps willing to help his classmates cheat or at least stay out of trouble – he'd manage to find people to spend time with in school.

And then he'd met Harry. The absolute worst person to get to know, politically, but just like him. Smart, suspicious as all hell, and – unlike him, actually – completely unwilling to just 'get along' without a bloody good reason. Like a better reason than just avoiding getting beat up. Blaise still wished he had half that boy's courage. He'd been like a moth to Harry's flame.

He really should've known better. The next thing he'd known, Harry had deftly maneuvered all of his friends into a happy little group of five “Slythindors”, and Blaise had just gone along with the ride, and surprisingly quickly found himself hanging out in Gryffindor with a mudblood and not one, not two, but three Weasleys. Though really, he could've stopped at the fact that he'd been hanging out with Harry Potter. He had to have known that the Luxanuses would find out eventually. And yeah, he could've claimed to be building trust so he could use it later, but how long was that going to last, if the Luxanuses had wanted him to betray his friend early?

As it turned out, he knew exactly how long that would last. All of ten minutes. And he hadn't seen it coming, at all. He couldn't explain why he hadn't already told them, and then he still wouldn't tell him, and that was it. Over.

What had he been thinking? Of course the damned Luxanuses had gotten rid of him. He'd known that the primary reason they'd wanted him was to brag to their friends about his pureblood and Death Eater credentials. And now he'd be living with the blood-traitors. Adopted by the blood-traitors. His father was probably spinning in his grave.

Which was irrelevant, he reminded himself sharply. All that mattered, now, was survival. Not what his father would think of him, not what the Luxanuses thought of him, survival. Which meant what Mrs. Weasley thought of him. Purely.

Perfect kid. Except he really didn't know how to do that, with her. He'd done everything he knew how, and it wasn't enough. For a woman who seemed so kind, and so determined to make him happy, she was impossible to please.

But there was nothing he could do about that now. Right now, he needed to get back to his dorm and sleep. That was all. He could do that.

Somehow, Blaise got through the rest of the evening. He discovered at dinner that his classmates weren't speaking to him, but while it bothered him, some, it was also a relief – it mostly meant that they left him alone. He ate quickly, headed back to the dorm, made absolutely sure that all his work was done for the next day, and went to bed.

Once there, though, he found it difficult to sleep. There was a giant void in his mind labelled “adoption” that sent a bolt of unease straight to his stomach every time his thoughts started to stray, and got worse by measure that he tried not to think about it.

Finally, he stared at Theo's bunk above his head and concentrated on the list of things he needed to do the next day: Wake up. Get through his morning classes. Apologize to Harry. Get through his afternoon classes. Either avoid the Weasleys or at least make sure not to offend them. Stay out of trouble.

Nobody had any expectation of him beyond that, and the school was not going to be watching him and reporting minute points of his behavior back to Mrs. Weasley. Worrying about it was both irrational and pointless and he wasn't going to do it.

So. All he had to do was wake up on time, get through his classes, apologize to Harry, be polite to the Weasley brothers, and stay out of trouble. That was all. Wake up. Get through class. Apologize to Harry. Be polite to the Weasleys. Stay out of trouble. Wake up. Get through class. Apologize to Harry...

Somehow, eventually, he fell asleep.

Step one: go to class. Fortunately, his first class of the day was Charms, and the second was Defense Against the Dark Arts. Charms was relatively easy, and he was quickly coming to love their new Defense teacher. The class had been taken over temporarily by Dumbledore after Harry's first Quiddich game, Snape's two days of “medical leave”, and Quirrell's “retirement”, but just before Blaise's suspension Dumbledore had introduced them to their so-called 'permanent' teacher – a Hufflepuff named Fidel Fortissimus. And the man had a very different approach to the class than Quirrell had.

Last Monday – his first day as their teacher - the man hadn't had them use their wands or their books. He'd made them run. “Defense at your level,” he'd told them bluntly, “is not about the ability to fight, it's about the ability to get away. You will learn spells from me, but you will also move.”

Today, the knowledge that he had that class second was enough to motivate him to get out of bed and through Charms. This time Professor Fortissimus had them running an obstacle course, and casting, too, which was even more fun than the footraces last week had been. Professor Fortissimus gave them enough time after the class to go back to their dorms and shower before lunch, and Blaise found himself relatively relaxed getting out from under the hot water.

And then it was time for lunch, and step two: apologize to Harry. Which, given that he'd spent his morning Charms class avoiding his friend's gaze...Blaise quite suddenly remembered that despite his careful packing job last night, his Defense homework had somehow not gotten into his backpack. He'd better go find it and bring it to Professor Fortissimus. Right now.

Flitwick raised his eyebrows at Blaise's rudeness when he stood straight up at the bell, but fortunately just smiled and waved him out. Blaise ignored Malfoy's sneer on his way by and left the room ahead of the rest to race for his dorm.

Once upstairs in the quiet of his dorm, Blaise just sat on his bunk, somehow already exhausted from the day. He had to go back downstairs; he had to apologize to Harry. It might be his only chance, with Snape keeping him so close. Bending down, Blaise found one of the handles to his trunk and pulled it from under the bed. Of course, he couldn't get it far enough out from that angle to open it. He had learned that on multiple occasions, but somehow he always still tried. Huffing, he got off the bed and pulled it out to rummage around inside it, feeling a twinge in his stomach as he realized how uncharacteristically messy it was inside. Where had he put his homework? It had to be in his trunk, if it wasn't in his backpack...

It was in his backpack. Somehow he hadn't been able to find it half an hour ago, but it truly had to be in there. Shoving his trunk back under the bed, Blaise instead rummaged in his backpack again, eventually pulling his Defense homework out of the cover of his Transfiguration textbook. It was creased and crumpled around the edges of the book. Great. Why hadn't he put it away properly?

Slowing himself down, Blaise organized his whole backpack properly, and then pulled out his trunk to do the same, feeling his stomach twisting further by measure that the time passed and he ignored it. Eventually, his trunk was as neat as it could be, and Blaise hurriedly cast Tempus. 12:30. He had half an hour to eat, talk to Harry, and get to Transfigurations. He had to go. Now. Finally getting up, he grabbed his backpack and hurried down the stairs.

He had half an hour. He couldn't afford to dawdle. Fortunately, Harry was still in the lunchroom, but it was bloody hard to go ahead and enter the room, anyway. The Slythindors had all been home for suspension already when their classmates had noticed the night's lost house points, but even a week later the other students had not forgiven the five of them for the Ravenclaws' sudden lead. Even the Ravenclaws seemed angry, and had made themselves obnoxious all morning with their overblown gratitude in the hallways between classes. The Gryffindors and Slytherins were much worse – either snubbing them entirely or tripping them in the hallways. Only the Weasley twins seemed to be feeling at all forgiving for their stupid escapade in the third floor corridor. They'd punched his arm – hard enough to hurt – and made a wry comment to Blaise about not getting caught next time, and that was it.

Blaise didn't care much about the loss of points for his own sake, but the other Slytherins especially had managed to make breakfast thoroughly awful anyway. Nothing had gotten truly nasty – just very unfriendly – but the glares from people who usually liked him reasonably well, especially the older students, had been hard enough to take that he wouldn't have wanted to cross the Great Hall right now even if he'd been heading for Heaven itself. As it was – Harry was sitting alone and scowling down at his food, emphatically not happy with the world. Which did not bode at all well for how this conversation was going to go.

Maybe it can wait? he thought. But he didn't know if he'd get another chance to talk to Harry alone, and especially not if he didn't want to face Snape again. Which he emphatically didn't. But facing Harry might not be much better.

At least Harry was alone, though. It'd've been even worse trying to do this in front of Theodore and the others. He probably should apologize to them, too, but they'd come along with the idea much more readily and as such wouldn't be nearly as angry as Harry probably was.

Nothing for it. Forcing his shoulders back, Blaise braved the hard stares – and occasional feet - of his peers and he crossed the long expanse between the doorway and the Slytherin table. He made it without actually tripping, and finally sat down across from his friend.

Harry didn't even look up to see who was there.

“Hi, Harry,” Blaise said quietly. His throat felt dry, and Harry still didn't look at him, but started cutting a chunk off his chicken breast.

“C-can we talk?” Blaise tried again.

Harry forked up the chicken, put it in his mouth, and began to chew, still without looking up.

Blaise swallowed. Harry was not known for his easy-going or forgiving nature. He really hadn't expected him to just let this go. But he needed his friend. Theo and Ron and Hermione were great, but somehow they just weren't who he needed right now.

“Harry -” he tried again. “Please?” His desperation must've come out in his tone, and finally, finally Harry swallowed his food and looked up. But his expression was as furious as Blaise had ever seen it.

“Alright,” Harry said. “Talk, then.”

And then he just sat there, no longer eating, and waited, looking so much like Snape that it was terrifying.

Blaise closed his eyes, knowing his voice was going to shake if he spoke. “I'm sorry, alright?” he managed finally.

“For what?” Harry challenged. His eyes were like ice.

Blaise winced. This already wasn't going well. “Look,” he tried, “can we do this elsewhere, maybe? I don't want to get in trouble -” he cut off, realizing. He couldn't get in trouble. He must. Not. get into any trouble whatsoever. Ever.

“Oh, really,” Harry repeated. “You get me to steal potions from Snape and drag me down a damned trapdoor in the most dangerous part of the school and now you don't want to get into trouble. Bloody ironic, don't you think?”

Blaise hesitated, unsure what he could say. He needed to take this very, very carefully if his friend wasn't going to sock him one. He'd deserve it if Harry did, but the likelihood of that getting back to the Weasleys was high. He was going back to them in only four days, for the Easter Holidays. The thought did not make him feel any better.

But Harry was evidently waiting for a response, and finally Blaise tried again. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I know you're mad and I know that's my fault but I really, really can't afford to get into any trouble right now. You can be as mad as you want but just don't get me in trouble. Please?”

Harry just snorted. “Fucking hilarious,” he said coldly.

Blaise couldn't think of a single damned thing to say, and finally Harry gave him a sharp look. “Why?” he asked. “Or are you going to lie about that, too?”

Blaise winced. Shit. He'd told Harry everything was alright. After being really horrible to Harry when he'd done the same thing. He'd forgotten about that part.

“M-my au-” Blaise's stomach clenched, and abruptly he understood why Harry generally refused to talk about his parents by anything other than their last names. “...the Luxanuses kicked me out,” he told his friend finally.

Harry's eyes widened, but he didn't speak right away, and Blaise pushed on. “I'm staying with Ron's folks and they say they're going to keep me but-” he broke off. He really didn't want to explain, and Harry most likely understood anyway. That was why he so desperately needed him. But Harry still didn't say anything, and finally Blaise continued again.

“I'm sorry I got you in trouble and I'm really sorry I told you everything was okay when it wasn't,” he said. “I- I know that makes me a total hypocrite. But I really, really, need to stay out of trouble now or-” he cut off again, and this time didn't try again to keep on.

“Hmm,” Harry said coldly. “Let's see. You want to stay out of trouble, because you've got a brandy new family you never thought you could hope for and you're worried that the chance'll disappear again as fast as it came...” he trailed off, then shook his head. “Nope, don't get it.”

Blaise took a deep breath, but Harry just paused for a bit before continuing. “Oh hey, I have a great idea! Let's go have a picnic in the Forbidden Forest! We'll bring along the other three just to guarantee we'll get caught. It'll be great fun!”

Blaise took another breath, but Harry still wasn't done.

“Or how about we head into Hogsmeade, and hop on the Hogwarts Express for London? You can just go steal some potions from Snape and we can all go have a party with a bunch of Death Eaters! Maybe we'll go visit the Weasleys and explode a pot of Filbert's Famous Fumes in their backyard! It'll be great!”

Blaise's stomach clenched, and didn't loosen, but he didn't try to speak again. It was still obvious that Harry wasn't done, and Blaise knew him well enough to know that interrupting him really wouldn't help.

“I am grounded for two weeks,” Harry told him seriously. “I was suspended, which may as well have been a week solid of detention. I still have two hours of detention every night, and Snape says he's not still angry but I'm not that naive. He could barely speak to me Monday night. His face may as well have been set in concrete. And now you want my help to stay out of trouble? I ought to fucking frame you!”

Blaise shut his eyes. Harry had stopped ranting, finally, but his fury hadn't abated so much as he'd run out of things to say. And there went that. He'd known Harry had a vindictive streak a mile wide, but he'd never been on the wrong end of it before. He'd have to manage the coming days on his own, somehow.

“Alright, Harry,” he said softly. Swallowing, he got up from the bench. He hadn't even gotten as far as making himself a plate of food, let alone eating any of it. He was just turning for the door out when Harry made a sharp, frustrated sound through his teeth.

“Wait, Blaise,” his friend snapped out from behind him. Blaise stopped, and turned to face him warily.

“I didn't say I wouldn't help,” Harry continued, sounding frustrated, “I'm just-”

A week into a two-week-long grounding at home with an absolutely terrified Severus Snape. Blaise guessed that that was more the problem – Snape was unlikely to tell Harry he wasn't angry if it wasn't true – but he couldn't blame Harry for not knowing the difference. Harry might not admit it, but his friend was still physically afraid of Snape's displeasure, and now the other students were furious with him, too, and that was new. All because Blaise had pressured him into doing something stupid that he didn't want to do. Which Blaise understood completely. There really was no reason Harry shouldn't throw him under the bus. It'd be only fair.

But Blaise had apologized, and Harry was either going to accept that or not. There wasn't much else Blaise could do, now. And Harry had stopped him. Blaise just stood and waited, watching the emotions play over Harry's face.

“I'll think about it,” Harry finally told him.

Blaise nodded. “Thanks,” he said softly. But he wasn't going to try to eat, now. He picked up his backpack and left. Step Three: get through afternoon classes.And then he'd just hide out in the dorm for the rest of the evening. He couldn't get into trouble that way.

The next day was no better. Harry didn't fight him, but he also didn't seem to want anything to do with him. Eventually, Blaise figured out that it might not be intentional. Snape had allowed Harry to go out some on the one day, but the man's temper was short right now, even with the Slytherins, so the fact that Harry didn't come to lunch on Wednesday and didn't whisper or pass notes in class wasn't really a surprise. It might not even be because Harry was mad. And Blaise had asked that Harry not get him in trouble, so that made sense, too.

It was just miserable. By the end of the school day, Blaise couldn't stand it – absolutely everybody was furious with him, right now, and thoughts of the Weasley's supposed adoption fought to surface when there was nothing he could do about the issue and his stomach felt like it might twist itself apart every time Blaise was reminded of it. He wished he had someplace to hide that wasn't his dorm, but barring that, he needed to find somebody who at least understood, some. Which meant Harry. Even if his friend was just as furious with him as everybody else, he had to at least know.

When his last class got out, Blaise milled around in the hallways for awhile before finally clenching his jaw and heading directly for Snape's office, deep in the bowels of Hogwarts castle. Before, the knocker had been louder than expected, nearly startling him, but this time he remembered and used it more softly. As before, there was no sound from inside, but the door opened promptly to reveal his head-of-house.

“Mr. Zabini,” Snape greeted forbiddingly.

“Sir,” Blaise said shortly. It was the best he could do without showing his nerves. It was not being a good week, and while he'd faced up to the man before when he had to, today Snape's serious gaze killed any courage he still had. Could he see Harry? Of course he couldn't see Harry. Harry was confined to Snape's quarters because Blaise had put him in danger. What had he been thinking, to face Snape and try again?

But - “Do you have your homework assignments with you, Mr. Zabini?” Snape asked him.

Homework? “Y-yes, sir,” Blaise answered.

“Good,” the man said. “Come in.”

It was enough of a surprise that Blaise just stared at him for a second, but Snape opened the door wider and motioned him inside. Blaise looked down, but walked past him into the office. To his surprise, Harry was there, and not in Snape's quarters. He knelt on the floor behind – his trunk? What was Harry's trunk doing in Snape's office?

Harry frowned briefly at him, then looked to Snape questioningly.

“Mr. Zabini,” Snape said shortly. Blaise moved his gaze from Harry to him, then followed his head-of-house's extended finger to a smaller desk set up kitty-corner to the man's own. “Sit.”

Oh. It looked like talking with Harry was not going to be an option. But at least he wouldn't be alone. And the room was quiet, free of other students, and – actually he didn't want to talk, anyway. This was - perfect.

“Thank you, sir,” he offered quietly.

“You're welcome,” Snape told him.

Severus watched surreptitiously as Blaise settled down at Harry's desk and began digging through his backpack. So, so serious. And barely able to speak to Severus. He'd known that the boy held him in a certain awe, but just the other day the boy had managed to stand up to him enough to push to see Harry. Now-

Harry had told him the night before that the Weasleys had decided to adopt the boy, which Severus had not told him, so Blaise must know about it. Why was the boy so terrified, now?

Though Harry had gone through a similar period, Severus remembered. When he'd first said he'd wanted to adopt him, Harry had walked on eggshells around him for months, alternating between furiously angry and so careful Severus wanted to provoke him just to be sure his Harry was still in there. And to then be able to prove, yet again, that he wasn't going to somehow un-adopt him just because Harry was Harry.

The paperwork coming through had helped, but not enough. Harry was still really struggling. But he'd finally been getting more comfortable with him – comfortable enough, even, to prank him – and then Blaise had dragged him through the trapdoor on the third floor. Hopefully being grounded would prevent Harry from backsliding too far. Harry hated being grounded, but it actually seemed to calm him. Presumably because Harry couldn't decide Severus wanted nothing to do with him if Severus insisted on keeping him close all the time.

But that was Harry. This was Blaise. And the Blaise he knew was a much more confident type than Harry. This quiet, deferential child who came to his door and couldn't manage to speak to him was nothing like the Blaise he knew.

Harry was watching, too, he noticed. He was completely distracted from his Transfigurations work and was looking over his trunk at his friend, a frown on his face. Severus met his eyes, and pointed at the trunk. Harry glared at him, and Severus raised his eyebrows. Harry's expression changed immediately, and he looked pleadingly between Severus and his friend. But Severus couldn't do much more than he was doing, for Blaise. The last thing the boy would want right now was conversation with Severus. And Harry was still in trouble, and still behind on work from his suspension. Severus pointed again to the trunk.

Apparently Harry really was relaxing again, because that gained him another glare. And that was enough. Restraining himself from simply pointing to the corner – which would be a bit harsh, with Blaise here – Severus instead crooked a finger at his son. Harry glared even harder, and Severus restrained a sigh. Stubbornness and fear could be difficult to tell apart, with Harry.

“Harry,” Severus spoke up. “Come here.”

Until then, Blaise hadn't noticed anything amiss, but that got his attention, and he looked up. Severus focussed on Harry, who got up and finally did as he was told, coming to stand before Severus with a mutinous expression on his face. Severus silently cast Silencio, isolating their conversation from Blaise sitting at the other desk.

“Do you obey me, or do I send you to the corner?” he asked Harry softly.

“But-” Harry started.

“Choose,” Severus told him shortly.

“I didn't do anything!” Harry protested. “And Blaise-” His voice dropped even further as he said the name, clearly aware of his friend and not used to silencing spells.

“I will worry about Mr. Zabini,” Severus told him. “You will do your Transfiguration work. Is that clear?”

Harry just scowled at him, mute, and Severus restrained a sigh. There were times that Harry was willing to blow the building sky high if he couldn't find a way through the door. This was starting to look like one of those times. Let him, Severus reminded himself for the three-hundredth time since the adoption. If Harry was going to destruction-test everything, Severus just needed to pass those tests. Harry was calming, and Severus couldn't think of any other way through.

It was no surprise that Harry was struggling now, though. He'd had a really miserable week since he'd been suspended. Which was exactly what Severus had intended, and did not give Harry an excuse to disobey him now. “Choose, Mr. Potter,” Severus said softly. “And if you curse at me, I will take that as your choice.”

For a moment, Severus was on tenter hooks, meeting Harry's glare and waiting for him to make his decision. He was tempted to try and will Harry to choose one way or another, but an ethical Legilimens had to learn early on not to do that. As Harry had discovered, magic responded to your will. Silently pushing someone to do something was far too likely to actually work, whether he'd intended to use magic or not.

And Harry was trying not to blow up at him. Severus could see the effort. Perhaps he could help, some. “I will help Blaise, Harry. You have my word. But you are still grounded. Have you forgotten why?”

Harry just kept glaring, and Severus was losing patience. “I'll remind you, then,” Severus told him. “First there was the dog. But that was fine – as you pointed out, all you had to do was steal from me and the problem was easy to solve.” Harry's glare softened a little, at that, but the boy had asked for it, and Severus continued.

“The Devil's Snare wasn't your fault, of course; you didn't even know what was down there before you jumped down the hole.” He could hear the thick sarcasm in his own voice, his anger returning as he recalled the various traps that came after the Devil's Snare.

“Then there were the flying keys, the homicidal chess set, the troll, and the Draught of Living Death,” he continued, counting on his fingers. “By the time I figured out where you were and summoned the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall for help, you'd already miraculously survived all four of those, as well. I still don't know exactly how, as they were designed to kill or maim anyone who got past the dog and the plant alive.”

Harry's eyes were wide, and Severus finally let his tone soften as his anger faded. “I had been praying for a good half an hour that you were still rescuable when I finally found Mr. Zabini and Miss Granger in the last chamber, and even then I didn't know what state I'd find you in. I've told you before that I'd rather make you hate me than lose you. That has not changed.”

Harry blinked, and pursed his lips, but Severus didn't stop. “You're miserable right now,” he told his son. “I understand that, and I will make some allowances for it. But I very much hope that you remember how miserable you are right now the next time you're thinking about following a friend into something this foolish. I love you, and I forgive you, but I will not apologize for punishing you.”

He kept his tone gentle, even as he chose his words to bite. It seemed to do the trick...sort of. Instead of screaming at him, Harry swallowed, clenched his jaw, and turned sharply away from him and towards the wall.

Which could be an expression of anger, but - Harry's shoulders were shaking. Severus was sure Harry was trying to control his emotions – he always did – but that control was failing rapidly. Damn. He should've pulled Harry from the room, not just silenced the conversation. Particularly if he was going to be harsh enough to make the boy cry. Standing up out of the silenced area, Severus spoke briefly to Blaise, who was overtly ignoring their conversation. “I will return in just a moment.”

Gently gripping the back of Harry's neck, Severus walked him through the door into his potions laboratory and shut the door. Immediately, the boy's tears spilled over, and Severus adjusted his grip to pull Harry into his arms.

Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it you pathetic loser. I hate you. I hate you; I hate Snape; I hate this; I hate Blaise. I'm done. I'll...run away or something. He couldn't do this for another week. He just – couldn't.

But he'd been awful and Snape had been so mad and he just wanted it to be over but instead he'd made Snape mad at him again and there was nowhere on earth he'd rather be than the man's arms, right now. Gripping onto Severus' robes with both hands, he pushed his face hard into the man's torso as he felt the man's arms anchoring him there. He was tempted, horribly, to beg. Don't leave. I'll be good. Please don't leave. But that was pathetic.

“I'm s-sorry,” he managed to tell his father eventually.

“Shh,” Snape told him softly. “You earned yourself a scolding, that's all.”

“I'm horrible,” Harry told him.

Snape's arms tightened around him, but when he spoke he sounded faintly amused. “Would you feel better if I washed your mouth out?”

“No!” Harry said emphatically. He didn't think Snape was serious, but just on the off chance...

But Snape just snorted softly. “Then don't talk that way. You know better.”

“Hmm,” Harry told him dubiously. He did know better, but he still thought Snape's rules about how he talked were stupid. Who cared what he said about himself, if it was true?

Usually Snape wouldn't take 'hmm' for an answer, but today he just held Harry, and Harry just stayed put, gripping onto the front of the man's robes.

But there was something else that he didn't quite know how to deal with on his own, and finally Harry spoke up again, very quietly. “T-They kicked him out,” he told Snape. The words came out shaky, and Harry could feel more tears threatening just from saying it. He buried his head back in Snape's robes and stopped trying to talk.

Oh. Of course. And it hadn't even occurred to him why that might bother Harry. Somewhat. Possibly. Now he really did feel bad, for being harsh. He could've predicted that Harry would've gravitated to the other most damaged boy in the school to make friends. It was enough to make him check into the other three, just so there would be no more surprises.

But Blaise had been good for Harry. A lifesaver, even. He'd given up his home and family so that Harry could have his. Severus wouldn't forget it.

“The Weasleys took him in,” he emphasized to his son, unsure whether the boy was listening or not. “Permanently. He has a home now. He'll be hurting for awhile, but he'll be alright. Arthur and Molly will take very good care of him. Much better than the Luxanus' would've. You'll probably end up envying him, stuck with me with no siblings.”

Harry just gripped him harder, but somehow it told Severus he was listening. And he had an opportunity, here. They weren't, after all, only talking about Blaise. “I don't know Arthur all that well but I know Molly. They are very different than Blaise is used to, but he is safer now than he's ever been before. Molly will do everything in her power to see him do well. She was my first choice to take him. I am very pleased that she and Arthur have decided so quickly that they wanted to take him permanently, and I know that they did not make the decision lightly and they will not back down from it. Blaise has a family now. Forever. He will never have to move again.”

Blaise had told Harry about fathers, before, Severus remembered. Harry had told him. So Blaise knew about that, at least. “I know you don't really believe it, either,” Severus continued, “but you can at least remind Blaise of what I know. He has nothing more to worry about. He just needs to be himself. Molly and Arthur will make this work.”

Eventually, Harry and Snape came back in, and Harry went back to his work without a complaint or a glance in Blaise's direction. It was enough to make Blaise almost forget what he'd looked like when he left. Almost. Blaise wasn't dumb enough to not notice when his presence was causing a conflict. But Harry really did look okay, now, and Blaise focused back on his homework without too much trouble.

After awhile, Blaise ran out of work to do, and started doodling on the back of his History of Magic essay. That lasted all of about ten minutes before Snape got up to look over his shoulder.

“Evanesco that, Mr. Zabini,” he ordered shortly. Blaise obeyed, while Snape went to slowly peruse his bookshelves. By the time the Thestral had been completely removed from his history essay – and transferred to the back of an assignment that had already been graded and returned - Snape had come back and laid several books in a stack on Blaise's desk. One proved to be a thin volume of amusing spells, one was a book on potions theory, and the third was some kind of fiction. Not in a particularly silly mood, Blaise went for the potions book.

Sometime later, a quiet 'pop' alerted him to the presence of Harry's house-elf, Kallie.

“Dinner is being ready, Master Snape, sir,” the house-elf said. “Is Master Snape wanting Kallie to set a place for Master Blaise?”

Blaise had intended to leave and go to the Great Hall for dinner – much as he'd been dreading it and putting it off – but Snape didn't consult him. “Yes, please, Kallie,” he answered.

“Th-that's okay, sir,” Blaise started, “I can-”

Snape gave him a sharp, lingering look, keeping Blaise's gaze for a disconcertingly long time. “Do you wish to leave, Blaise?” he asked him.

Blaise kept himself from swallowing, and held Snape's gaze as the man seemed to want. But did Snape want him to stay, or no? Probably not. Harry was evidently having a hard day – at least partly because of Blaise - and while it was the safest he'd felt in days, and Blaise could feel his heart rate increase just at the thought of leaving it, he had already been in Snape's hair for way too long that day.

“Yes, please,” he answered.

To his surprise, far from showing any hint of relief, Snape's gaze sharpened even further. “Do not lie to me, Mr. Zabini,” he said shortly. He broke eye contact with Blaise to instead look back at Kallie. “Three, Kallie,” he told the elf.

To Blaise's surprise, Harry gave him a small, humor-filled smile. Blaise wasn't sure if he was laughing at Blaise, or at Snape, but it was a friendly expression, and Blaise managed to smile a bit back, even as his heart raced after Snape's sharpness. The man could bloody well read minds. And Blaise had evidently angered him with his...fib. Perfectly normal polite social lie.

“Sorry, sir,” he said softly.

“Do it again and I'll punish you,” Snape responded shortly. “Now come eat.”

Oof. This must be what Harry felt like. Note to self: do not lie to Death Eater spies. Even for said obstinate, interfering Death Eater's own bleedin' benefit. The man was infuriating.

“Yes, sir,” Blaise said softly.

Snape finally kicked Blaise out at curfew – through his potions lab and office and directly into the Slytherin common room without use of the castle corridors. How that was even possible given that as far as Blaise knew all of the teachers' quarters were on a completely different floor from Snape's office and the Slytherin common room - but then that was Hogwarts, for you. The stairways changed. For all Blaise knew, the hallways did, too.

“I will expect you back here tomorrow after class, Mr. Zabini,” Snape said by way of a goodbye.

Heck of an invitation, that. But Blaise wasn't going to cross him, now, and he really didn't mind. “Yes, sir,” he said softly.

The next morning Blaise woke up before his alarm spell, but determinedly rolled over and went back to sleep. The alarm actually went off forty-five minutes later, but after turning it off Blaise found himself staring at the bunk above him. Two days. The thought made his stomach churn, which didn't make getting out of bed any easier. Class, he reminded himself. He couldn't afford to miss class. He could afford to miss breakfast, though, and he really had no interest in eating anyway. That was all the excuse his brain needed to fall right back asleep.

“Blaise,” he heard next. “Blaise, wake up! You'll be late for potions!”

Shit. Blaise sat up fast, to see Theo standing next to his bed with wide eyes.

“You missed breakfast!” he said urgently. “It's already 7:45!”

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Blaise threw his robes on without a care for Theo watching. He could only pray Snape hadn't noticed his absence from breakfast. If he was late for potions – but then, what would change, really? He pretty much had detention anyway. The thought relaxed him, marginally. He had to get through his classes, then go to Snape's office, to do his homework and eat dinner. He'd probably run out of homework again, so he'd bring his own book to read, or something. That was all for today. Classes, then Snape's quarters, where absolutely nothing was expected of him other than studying. He could do that.

He made it on time to Potions, managed to pay enough attention to make a passable – though definitely not wonderful - potion, and got to History of Magic. Finally, he could afford to tune out entirely, only coming to his senses when Binns stopped talking and everybody started streaming out. Somehow, he'd taken notes – and also drawn quite extensive sketches in the margins of his parchment - though he didn't really remember doing either. He followed his classmates out of the classroom, vaguely intending to grab a snack from the Great Hall and head back to his dorm with it, but to his surprise the Slytherin prefect Quintus Stone was standing right outside the door. Blaise started past him, but the fifth-year spoke up shortly.

“Zabini.”

Blaise stopped, and stepped out of the way of the other students before turning towards the prefect. What'd I do? It was unusual for the prefects to have much to do with them outside of the dorm or the Great Hall, and while he knew Harry had tangled with them a couple of times, Blaise himself never had. Blaise gave Stone a puzzled look and waited for him to explain.

“I'm to make sure you eat,” the fifth-year explained.

“Make sure I eat?” Blaise repeated. “Why?”

Stone shrugged. “Ask Snape. He said to come find you and make you come to the Great Hall and eat.”

Blaise growled lightly. “I'm not Harry,” he complained.

The prefect raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to argue with him?”

Tempting. But no. No trouble. To anyone. Ever. “...no,” Blaise answered.

“Well, then, come on,” Stone told him, motioning with his head in the direction of the Great Hall.

“You're going to escort me?” Blaise asked him.

The prefect snorted lightly. “After the three of you – including Potter, mind - managed to sneak past me and end up on the third floor last week? You bet I'm going to escort you. Hell, I'll spoon feed you if I have to.”

“I was just going to grab something and go,” Blaise explained.

“Yes, and I was just going tell Snape I did a half-assed job,” Stone answered shortly. “No way. Come on, Firstie. Nobody'll try anything if I'm with you. They probably won't even glare.”

“Probably,” Blaise repeated, following him towards the Great Hall.

“Are you trying to claim you don't deserve it?” Stone asked, looking down at him as they walked. “You guys single-handedly lost us the House Cup. It's amazing we were doing as well as we were, given Potter and Malfoy's usual behavior, but you guys settled the question for sure.”

“Sorry,” Blaise said. He actually was – he really hadn't expected his classmates to care quite so much, and he really hadn't intended to let his personal problems shit all over his peers – but he couldn't even put enough energy into his voice to sound contrite.

There must've been something in his voice, though, because Stone frowned. “Why is Snape so hung up about you eating, anyway?”

“I just asked you that,” Blaise pointed out.

Stone shrugged. “Somehow in all this trouble, you ended up on his shortlist, and just behind Potter, at that. You'd know better than me what happened to put you there.”

True, Blaise realized. He did know what had happened. Not that he'd tell Stone. “I didn't even know Snape had a 'short list' other than Harry,” Blaise answered.

“Oh yeah,” Stone answered. “Several, actually. You're on one of the 'good' lists, though, so I wouldn't worry. But then, I've never seen Severus latch on to a first-year like he has Potter and you. He's insane about Potter, and now he's watching how much you eat? What happened?”

Blaise shrugged. “Harry happened, I guess,” he answered. “Who else is on these 'lists'?”

“Hmm...” Stone started. “Well, me, actually, and sometimes Rosalind. In seventh year - Manson and Pierce, though I'm not exactly sure what list they're on and I'm pretty sure I don't want to know – nobody in sixth other than Rosalind, unless you want to count Marcus Flint...”

Blaise winced. “...yeah, let's not. I don't think that's the kind of shortlist I want to be on. Who else?”

“Umm...oh – Adrian Pucey, in third. Other third years...oh! Oddly enough, the Weasley twins. At this point I think he's probably on a first-name basis with their mother, from the number of times he or McGonagall has sent them home for a 'chat', but sometimes I think Snape likes a good nemesis.”

Blaise gave him an incredulous look. “Seriously? Fred and George?”

Stone grinned. “I know, crazy, right? But they're apparently bloody geniuses in Potions, at least for third-years, and especially since the thing with Flint, and how they conceded the victory to Slytherin House...I guess he's made an exception. Same goes for your Weasley, I guess, and maybe Granger though I haven't seen much evidence of it 'cause she never gets in trouble. Which brings us to the other first years on the list – Potter, Nott, and you. Though you and Potter are exceptional. I've never seen him worry about what one of us eats before, leastwise not outside of Quiddich matches.”

He paused and gave Blaise a questioning glance, but the last thing Blaise needed was additional attention and questions.

“Which 'list' are you on?” Blaise asked, hoping the question would distract him.

Stone smiled. “Same as you and Potter, just lower down – the 'take-a-step-out-of-line-and-you're-dead' list. The ones he punishes personally instead of taking points. Which you will want to avoid, trust me. He'll make you redo your schoolwork, too, if he doesn't like the grade you got. He'll even do that for other professors, including ones who won't grade your work a second time.”

“Great,” Blaise commented, drawing the word out long. “I've always wanted to be special.” But they were outside the doors to the Great Hall, now. Rolling his eyes – more at his suddenly very 'involved' Head-of-House than at his prefect – Blaise followed Stone into the Great Hall.

Under Stone's annoyingly watchful gaze, Blaise made himself a fish sandwich and forced himself to eat it. To his surprise and pleasure, he was joined at the table five minutes later by Harry, who was evidently still not talking to him but no longer avoiding him entirely. Or, Blaise correctly in his own head, he'd just been cooped up by Snape before, and now had been allowed out. Harry mostly didn't avoid people when he was angry – that was more Weasley's style. Though he didn't usually just not talk to him, either. Harry was anything but passive-aggressive. More aggressive-aggressive. It was a miracle his friend hadn't hit him...or deliberately gotten him in trouble.

But then, that wasn't fair. Harry didn't betray his friends, no matter how angry he was. And from Harry's perspective, getting a friend in trouble with an adult would be an unimaginable betrayal. Which is exactly how I manipulated him into going down the trapdoor with me, he realized. Damn. He really hadn't needed to feel worse, today. But still, it was unusual that Harry wasn't talking to him.

He'd rather speak to him in private, but with Harry this grounded, he wasn't going to get a chance. “Harry,” he said softly. “Talk to me?” It came out more pleading than he really wanted, but Harry did look at him.

“I'm not mad,” he told him in a whisper. Stone could probably hear them, but there wasn't much either of them could do about it. “You wanted me not to get you in trouble.”

“How are you going to get me in trouble by talking to me at lunch?” Blaise asked him.

It at least earned him a smile. “I'd manage,” he said softly.

Blaise smiled back as much as he could. “True,” he said softly.

He didn't quite believe Harry's explanation, but he did believe that his friend wasn't angry with him anymore. Which helped. Two days.

Somehow, he managed to get through the rest of his classes that day. At the end of the day, though, Blaise found himself hesitating on where to go. Snape had made it clear that he was to come to his office after classes were over for the day, and Blaise's classes were over, now. Did Snape really want him hanging out in his office all the time, though? Especially with Harry having such a hard time?

Probably not. Maybe Blaise should give him an hour or two, just to be safe. He didn't quite dare disobey after the man's reaction to Blaise claiming he wanted to do dinner in the Great Hall, but he could...hedge it, a little. Give the man what time he could and still fulfill the letter of his demand. Blaise let his feet take him back to the dorm, and curled up with his homework in his common room.

It took about fifteen minutes before Blaise became aware of a presence nearby, and Blaise felt his stomach drop as he looked up at his scowling Head-of-House.

“Come, Zabini,” the man said shortly.

Blaise didn't dare disobey, and followed his Head-of-House through a discrete door to one side of the Common Room and directly into Snape's office. Harry was already there, set up in the same spot as he'd been yesterday, working on whatever was going on with his trunk. This time, though, instead of pointing Blaise to the desk he'd worked at last night, Snape turned and gazed directly into Blaise's eyes.

“I told you to come here after classes. Did you misunderstand my instructions, Mr. Zabini?”

Well, no, but wasn't it a little above-and-beyond to actually demand that Blaise come to his office after class when he hadn't done anything wrong?

Not that he expected Snape to care, though, Blaise realized. He'd done exactly this to Harry, and Stone had seemed familiar with it, too. Snape had even told Blaise that he was going to be keeping a closer eye on him. Apparently, this was the 'shortlist' Stone had been talking about. The “take-a-step-out-of-line-and-you're-dead” shortlist on which Blaise was supposedly entry #2. Stone had tried to warn him.

Snape's gaze was intense, but Blaise managed to hold it and answer. “No, sir,” he said. He'd learned better than to lie to his Head-of-House yesterday. He'd never actually tried it, before that.

“Then why did you disobey me?” the man demanded.

Blaise nearly winced, but held his face still. Snape had been angrier with him before, but it hadn't felt quite so...personal.

“I did not wish to bother you, sir,” Blaise answered him respectfully. He canted his eyes over to Harry. He was unwilling to say anything with his friend listening in, but Snape would probably catch his meaning.

“So you disobeyed me for my own good,” Snape said, staring down at Blaise in a way that made him shiver. “I see.”

And then, awfully, he just stood there, staring down at Blaise. He fought to maintain the man's gaze, desperately trying to think of what he was supposed to say or do to appease the man.

“I said what I meant, Mr. Zabini,” Snape said at last. “I wanted you to come here after class. It is not your business what will 'bother' me, or what Harry needs. I am the adult. It is your business to obey me. Is that understood?”

Blaise swallowed hard but didn't allow himself to stammer. “Yes, sir,” he said. His voice came out quiet, but even.

Still, Snape stared, as if he would scan Blaise's brain, or turn him to stone like a basilisk could.

“I am not pleased, Mr. Zabini,” he said. “Sit at the desk. You will be writing lines, this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir,” Blaise told him, obeying quickly. A moment later, Snape placed a piece of parchment and a quill in front of him.

“Fifty times, Zabini,” Snape told him, “And neatly, or you will do it over.”

At the top of the parchment was written, “It is not my job to take care of adults. It is their job to take care of me. I will obey my Head-of-House.”

Staring at the line, Zabini felt bitterness grab him by the throat. Their job to take care of him? Really? What kind of bullshit was that? His father was dead. Long dead. His mother was in prison. Who, exactly, was supposed to be taking care of him? The Luxanises, maybe? Or before that, Carolyn Luxanus' second cousin, Mrs. Caulter?

If it was supposed to be adults' job to take care of him, they weren't doing a very good job. Sure, Snape took care of him, especially recently, but – but something in him clamped down on the anger at the thought. Snape did take care of him, as much as he could, and of the rest of the house, too. Even if he hadn't been on the supposed 'short list', Snape had earned his trust. It wasn't fair to curse him out, even in his head. But Snape was the last adult in the world who actually still cared about him. He just hadn't wanted to cause the man any trouble, and instead Snape was mad at him. It didn't feel fair.

But he couldn't afford to be at odds with him, anyway. “Yes, sir,” Blaise said softly.

To his surprise, the man laid a gentle hand on his head before returning to his own desk. The sympathy nearly brought Blaise to tears. Two days. More like one and a half, even – a day plus two nights. The tension was horrible.

Once again, Blaise spent the entire evening with his friend and his Head-of-House. When his lines were done, he did his homework, and by the time his homework was done, it was dinnertime. As before, Snape didn't even ask whether he wanted to stay for dinner – and this time neither did Kallie. She just came and said dinner was ready, and Blaise followed Snape and Harry back into Snape's quarters to eat it. After dinner, Snape brought out a game of wizard's chess, and Blaise worked on teaching Harry how to play until his Head-of-House sent him back to his dorm to sleep.

“I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast, Mr. Zabini,” Snape told him by way of a goodbye.

After this afternoon, Blaise couldn't take it as anything other than a command. “Yes, sir,” he said softly.

One day. The Hogwarts Express would bring everybody back to King's Cross the next morning.

Maybe he could run away, Blaise mused as he stared at the bunk above him. If he was going to end up homeless eventually, why wait for the Weasleys to get tired of him, first? What if he didn't like them, either?

Adopt you, permanently. Yeah, right. Like that was actually going to happen. Sure, Mrs. Weasley was a really nice person to even try, but she wasn't even family, or related to family. In fact, she would probably see every member of his family in prison, if she could. Not that he really blamed her. He was pretty sure his mother's cousin had killed a pair of Prewetts in the so-called First Voldemort War. For all he knew, the man had killed one of Mrs. Weasleys siblings. Which would not help his case with her at all.

If she even actually adopted him in the first place, he realized suddenly with another wash of acid to his stomach. These things took time, and she'd had a week to get cold feet. Who knew if she'd even tell him, or if she'd just...not invite him back. When he'd gone to live with the Luxanises, the first thing he'd known about it was when a strange woman picked him up from school one day. He hadn't even realized what had happened until he realized that all of his belongings were already in the new house. Mrs. Luxanis had been kind about it, but all she'd been able to tell him was that her cousin wanted to get married. Which she naturally couldn't do with him around. He even understood...sort of. It just wasn't relevant.

But the Luxanises had had him thinking he was actually going to stay. They'd seemed to enjoy him. They'd wanted people to meet him. They'd praised his good manners and his intelligence. His good looks. Mister Luxanis had liked to brag about his mother's family – Bellatrix Lestrange, Narcissa Malfoy, and Blaise's mother Belladonna, still in Azkaban for murdering her husbands, but a Black nonetheless, and a well-respected member of Voldemort's inner circle, as well. Sure, Blaise wasn't a pureblood himself, but his mother was, and a Black, besides. And had he mentioned how Blaise was related to the Black family? Mrs. Luxanus had liked to weep over the sad story of her cousin's imprisonment, and how they tried to honer her by raising Blaise as she would've liked. Never mind his father, also a Death Eater, and one of the ones she'd murdered. He was apparently far enough down the Death Eater ranks to be utterly forgettable.

He'd disgraced all of them. Which didn't matter. His mother probably didn't know about it, and his father could toss and turn all he wanted, it wouldn't bring him back to life. It did. not. matter.

But it would matter to Mrs. Weasley, and for a very different reason. All that long and proud Black lineage, his mother in prison, his father dead at her hands, both of them Death Eaters...his best bet with her was probably to keep his nose very clean, and stay out of the way when other people came to visit. She wouldn't want her friends to see and recognize him for who he was. Good thing his father had been so dark – his facial features looked just like hers, or so he'd been told, but the comparative darkness of his skin covered some of it. His father had been a Death Eater, too, but a relatively obscure one.

His alarm had gone off more than fifteen minutes ago. He could hear the other Slytherin first-years chatting and brushing their teeth and getting into the showers, as well as the second-years scuffling around on the floor above. If Blaise missed breakfast Snape would come find him. He'd made that very clear. Blaise didn't want to face his Head-of-House if the man had to come up into the dorm to drag him out of bed. He had to get up, today. And soon. Everybody else was nearly ready.

Well, everybody other than Crabbe and Goyle, probably. They were allowed to skip breakfast without personal attention from their Head of House. They didn't even seem to ever bathe, and they ate cakes sent by their parents for breakfast instead of ever going to the Great Hall. They tended to arrive in class both late and sloppy. By lunchtime, Stone or Lebeaux had caught up to them and sent them back to the dorm to neaten up, but Snape himself didn't do anything about it that Blaise could see.

Not that Blaise actually envied them that, but still...it was annoying, now. He'd've skipped the whole day, today, if he could've gotten away with it, and instead – he just had to get up, and he was still staring at the slats of the bunk above him.

Finally, Theo's head moved into Blaise's field of vision as he leaned down from the bunk above, as usual already dressed before he came down from his bunk. “You getting up?” he asked anxiously.

“...yeah,” Blaise managed, finally rolling to his feet. “Thanks.”

“What's wrong?” Theo asked him. “Where've you been the last couple of days?”

Conveniently, that gave Blaise a choice between the two questions. “Detention, sorta,” he answered Theo. “Snape's been keeping me close all week.”

“Oh,” Theo said. Probably guessing that it was because of the trouble Blaise had gotten them all into, he didn't ask why. Instead, he frowned. “Why's that so bad?”

“Why is detention with Snape solid for two days a bad thing?” Blaise asked him incredulously. “Do you need to ask?”

“Yes. Or, well, no,” Theo asked, “it's just...you're acting kinda weird...”

Weird. Yeah, he probably was. But Theo was still staring at him over the edge of the bunk, brow furrowed, and he finally spoke up again.

“What's wrong? You're acting kinda like Harry does.” He sounded confused, and Blaise realized what he was really saying. Blaise had realized early on that he and Harry had a lot in common, but until recently Blaise had acted close enough to 'normal' that Theo hadn't picked up on it. But you'd have to be a brick to not notice that Harry had his issues.

Blaise looked at his friend soberly. Of all times for Theo to develop some maturity. One of the best things about Theo was his total cluelessness when the world was blowing up. He'd pull pranks and die his hair weird colors in the middle of a typhoon, not because he was trying to cheer anyone up, but because he hadn't noticed the storm in the first place. And he was so happy just to have friends that he really didn't get mad or ask a lot of questions when they did strange things. Given the other tempers going around their little 'Slythindor' group, that was refreshing.

But other than Harry, Theo was in the best position to notice anything going on with Blaise. Blaise could hide it from Ron and Hermione. They were wisely sticking to the Gryffindor table for now, what with both Slytherin and Gryffindor being so angry with them, so they hadn't noticed Blaise's frequent absences this week. But this was the second day in a row it was Theo who made sure Blaise got to class on time in the morning. Blaise owed him...something.

“I-” but he couldn't think of anything he could say. It was like the words stuck in his throat, an intangible barrier that he could choose to push past, but that would hurt.

But Theo was just waiting, his head a little to the side, confusion on his face. Maybe Blaise could get the words out if he tried a bit of a back-door approach. “Snape is...taking care of me right now, sort of,” he managed. “I went to live with the Weasleys for the suspension...” he paused for a moment to control his voice, then continued. “And they say they're going to adopt me. I'm just really...stressed.”

Theo's eyes went wide. “What happened with your guardians?” he asked immediately. “Weren't you living with Malfoy's aunt?”

“First cousin once removed,” Blaise clarified roughly. “Our mothers' mutual first cousin. She called me her nephew, though, and I think Malfoy calls her our aunt, too.”

Theo just waited, and finally Blaise looked away, and found his voice again. “...they found out about Harry and Snape,” he answered Theo softly. “I hadn't told them.”

And that was it – he'd pushed the barrier too far. His throat seized up, and the tears started to leak out of his eyes even as he tried to fight them back. He sat on the bed and covered his face, vainly trying to hide the emotion from his friend.

There was a shuffle and a thud as Theo clambered down from the top bunk, and then the mattress beside him sagged as his friend sat by his side. He didn't say anything, for a bit, but eventually Blaise got himself a little more under control, and Theo spoke again. “My Da said not to ever talk about them, not with anybody,” he told Blaise. “He got really really serious about it. But he wouldn't-” he cut off.

Blaise took a deep breath, trying to stop the rest of the tears and think about what Theo was saying. No, Theo's Dad wouldn't disown Theo for sharing – or not sharing – news about Snape's adoption of Harry. But it was the other part of Theo's statement that was interesting. My Da said not to ever talk about them, not with anybody. He got really serious about it. Was Mr. Nott protecting Snape? Blaise felt himself frown as he thought about it. Theo's Da was playing a dangerous game, if that was so. Especially if he was trying to get Theo to be discreet. Maybe Theo just meant that his father didn't want to hear about Snape because he was a traitor? It didn't seem likely, though – Theo would know the difference.

Blaise wiped his face roughly with his hands. The distraction had been enough to help him stop the tears, and as soon as his face was clear of them he sat up to look at Theo. “You probably shouldn't tell anyone that, either,” he told Theo softly, glad for the change in topic. “Your Da could get in big trouble.”

For once, Theo was entirely serious. “I know,” he said. “He said if anything happened, I should go to Snape. I have a portkey and everything. But you already know.”

Not about Mr. Nott, he hadn't, but Theo was right that Blaise wasn't a danger to his father. It sounded like Theo actually knew a lot more than Blaise had given him credit for. Which could explain the sudden maturity. It made Blaise unaccountably sad. But Theo had to know. “Don't talk about your Da, either,” he told Theo. “I mean, you could, with Harry or I, but if anybody else overheard-” And they were currently sitting in the middle of the Slytherin boys' dorm. It was too loud in the room for anyone to overhear them, but... “We shouldn't talk about it here,” he finished.

“True,” Theo said. “Come to breakfast?”

Blaise snorted. “I don't have a choice,” he told his friend, the words coming much more freely now that the more serious secret was told. “Snape ordered me.”

Theo widened his eyes. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Blaise said. “Stone says I'm on his 'take-a-step-out-of-line-and-you're-dead' list. He made me write lines yesterday because he told me to come spend time in his office after class and I delayed for fifteen minutes.”

“Wow,” Theo said. “What'd you do?”

“Delayed for fifteen minutes?” Blaise suggested.

Theo gave him an irritated look. That clearly wasn't what he meant. Blaise shook his head at him. “No idea,” he said. To his surprise, he felt enough better to smile at his friend. “Maybe Harry's right. The man's evil.”

Somehow, he managed to get to his morning classes on time, though the momentary lightness he'd achieved through talking to Theo before and during breakfast went away quickly. His stomach seemed to slowly fill with lead as the morning's double Potions class inched onward. The concentration that a really good potion required just didn't seem worth the effort, at the moment, and his usual desire to please his Head-of-House was running pretty thin, too. Theo and Harry's willingness to screw around in Snape's class was starting to make much more sense.

Somewhere along the line, somebody floated something into Blaise's cauldron that made it smoke and smell like fermenting grass. He wouldn't have dared to sabotage the potion, himself, but the putrid green mess bubbling in his cauldron was oddly satisfying, and for once he neither tried to fix it nor looked around to figure out who had ruined it. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for everyone in the class, as Malfoy's hair promptly turned a lurid pink. Harry may as well've signed it.

“Malfoy, Potter, and Zabini, stay after class,” Snape intoned.

Damnit. Hadn't he asked Harry to keep him out of trouble?

“Sorry,” his friend muttered. “Didn't think you'd be in trouble, too.”

Fair. Why was he in trouble? Blaise hadn't even looked at Malfoy.

At the end of the class period, Blaise brought the ruined potion up to Snape for inspection. Snape gave Blaise a frown before he'd even looked at the little vial, but nonetheless dutifully pulled off the stopper, swirled the mess in the vial to see its color and consistency, and waved a hand over the open top to waft waft the fumes towards his nose. When he was done, he fixed Blaise with a serious look.

“Did you not realize it was just dittany that he threw in, Blaise?” he asked.

Blaise just shrugged. Snape frowned even deeper – usually Blaise prided himself on the best potions in the class - but turned to his grade book and marked him an “Acceptable”. Blaise thought that was it, but Snape spoke up quietly.

“I know Mr. Malfoy sabotaged this, Mr. Zabini, but I also know you're more than capable of fixing it. I am disappointed that you did not try. Come to my office after classes for detention. In the meantime, I will see you at lunch.”

Detention? For not attempting to fix a potion that somebody else had mucked with? That was so unfair! Blaise gave the Potions master a glare before he caught himself and looked down.

“Yes, sir,” he said meekly. When Blaise turned to leave, though, Snape stopped him with a hand. Blaise paused, and Snape picked something up from his desk and handed it to him.

“This came for you,” he said.

Blaise reached out to take it, and found a slip of worn parchment, rolled up and sealed with wax.

“Thank you, sir,” Blaise told his Head-of-House carefully.

This time when he turned, Snape didn't stop him. Harry and Malfoy were standing side by side beside Snape's desk, waiting for their classmates to clear out, and Harry grimaced apologetically at him as he passed. Blaise managed a small smile in return.

Right outside the classroom, Blaise stepped to one side to get out of the way and stopped to slit the wax seal on the note.

Blaise, dear, it said,

Go ahead and take the Hogwarts Express to King's Cross Station tomorrow morning. I'll meet you and your brothers at the platform nine and three quarters when you arrive. - Mum.

His brothers, huh? And 'Mum'. He probably should've felt relieved – at least she hadn't changed her mind. Instead the words just tightened his stomach further. He didn't want to hurt her, but if she was hoping he'd actually be family she should've adopted someone capable of it. He was going to come as a terrible disappointment.

His feet started heading back to his dorm before he remembered. I'll see you at lunch. And Snape would mean it, too. Damn his Head-of-House. He did not need looking after. But he wouldn't put it past Snape to tell the Weasleys that Blaise wasn't eating, especially if he had ordered Blaise to do so. The greasy git had already given Blaise a detention for no f-ing reason. Grimacing, Blaise followed his housemates to the Great Hall, dodging the feet that somehow ended up in his way as he passed by.

Lunch, DADA, Herbology. The classes past in a blur, and then it was time for his detention. This time, Blaise knew well enough to head straight for Snape's office. He took just a moment outside the door to school his expression to a polite blank, and used the knocker. When Snape opened the door, though, Blaise found himself fighting a scowl, and looked at the ground instead.

“You are not required to be happy with me, Mr. Zabini,” Snape told him. “Come in.”

Blaise obeyed, and looked around for his friend. At first, he thought he wasn't there – Harry's trunk was still on the floor but Harry wasn't with it – and then he found him, and winced. Harry was standing in the corner of Snape's office, facing the junction between the two walls. Knowing Harry, he'd guess that the other boy was not at all happy about it. He'd probably be even less happy that Blaise had seen him there. Come to think of it, Blaise wasn't particularly happy about it, either. It was...awkward.

Not really knowing how to respond, Blaise instead looked at the room for clues of what he was supposed to do. Apparently, he was going to be brewing – perhaps to redo the potion from this afternoon?

But Snape had gone to sit behind his desk, and this was detention. Blaise took his cue from his Head-of-House and headed to stand in front of his desk.

“So?” Snape asked him immediately. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Blaise looked down, schooling his expression as well as he could.

“And look at me, Mr. Zabini,” Snape immediately added.

Blaise scowled, cleared the expression as well as he could, and met his Head-of-House's eyes squarely. He knew that the man must see his annoyance, but it was the best he could do in his current mood. To his surprise, the man's gaze was gentle.

“Did you truly have anywhere else you wanted to be, Blaise?” he asked first.

That was far too perceptive for Blaise's tastes, but he wouldn't lie. He shook his head just a touch, abruptly feeling much more tired and disheartened than angry.

“Your potions have been truly exemplary this year, even in the last few months,” Snape told him next. “If I can, I'd have you get through this without losing ground.”

For a moment, he was warmed by the praise, but he shook it off. The man was an idiot if he thought that what Blaise was really going to be worrying about, right now, was Potions. Good f-ing luck. Even if he had felt capable of focusing on them, right now, he was never going to be a Potions Master. The only way you could achieve that was by taking an apprenticeship. Most Potions Masters were on the Death Eater side. Even if he somehow did manage to find one willing to take him on, his materials and test fees and everything else would cost far more than Blaise could afford. Any dream he'd held of being a Potions Master had left with the Luxanuses.

And being a Potions Master was the only way to make Potions knowledge worth anything. Even NEWT-level Potions Mastery was only useful for minor household salves and fever droughts – worth doing if you were staying home with kids on a tight budget, but nothing you could really make a career out of by itself. Why on earth should he care about Potions, now?

Except...he did still care about his Potions, and he really didn't mind the chance to fix his. He just hadn't much felt like it, today, and then Snape had scolded him on top of it. Which was totally unfair.

And he shouldn't say anything, but - “You didn't call it 'detention' because you meant to praise me,” Blaise told his friend's father resentfully.

“No,” Snape told him, suddenly stern. “That was because you did not try today at all. You're capable of far better than you worked today and you know it.”

“You marked it an 'Acceptable'!” Blaise protested.

“Yes,” Snape answered, “because it was and at least in my grading I will treat every student the same. But you can do better and you chose not to, so now you will brew it again, properly.”

Frustrated, Blaise was ready to argue back again, but finally clamped his lips shut. What was he doing? Sure, he'd argued with Snape in the past, but did he really think he could get away with it, now? What was he going to do, if Snape decided to call the Weasleys? He'd already called the Luxanuses twice that year!

Biting back his frustration, Blaise forced his gaze down. “Yes, sir,” he said softly.

Severus looked down at his young student, surprised by the sudden change in his demeanor. That was twice in ten minutes the boy had abruptly stopped arguing with him when he clearly wanted to. He was trying to control his expressions, too, which was...less unusual, come to think of it. The boy argued with him, usually, but there had always been an adultish sort of dignity to his demeanor when he did it. And a very adult – too adult - sense of the way the world worked.

And now - it had been a relief, to hear Blaise arguing with him again, but apparently he'd just gotten the boy frustrated enough to forget himself. Blaise was still bound and determined not to offend. Hopefully Molly would be able to break through it, given time; Severus was nearly certain that Blaise's sudden good behavior was directed at her and Arthur, and not at him.

Severus sighed. Perhaps he was being overly harsh. He really wasn't surprised that Blaise was having trouble concentrating on his schoolwork, today. But Blaise was usually a perfect Potions student: meticulous, observant, and patient. Today, he'd been sloppy, even before Malfoy had floated the dittany into his cauldron. Severus couldn't help but think that Blaise had deliberately expressed his anger with his Head-of-House by acting up in his class. Well, as much as he could without actually getting himself in trouble, anyway. A mediocre potion was a pretty poor effort, as far as 'acting up' went. As inured as he was to Harry, Severus wouldn't have even noticed if he hadn't been observing Blaise so closely lately.

But then, that was why he was watching so carefully. Giving him detention for behaving strangely probably wasn't quite fair, but again, he was used to Harry. If Harry was behaving strangely, he needed to be on top of it quickly, or his son would be popping in on the Dursleys within the half hour. Blaise was different, but somehow Severus still didn't want him off somewhere in Hogwarts on his own. He wanted him in his office.

It had worked perfectly well yesterday just to order Blaise to his office without any particular explanation. The detention, in that sense, was unnecessary. But he was displeased that Blaise had chosen his class to act up in. Blaise usually put a lot of careful effort into his potions, and seemed to genuinely care how they turned out. For him to allow one to be destroyed – and he was pretty sure that part was directed at him. He was not going to allow that.

But Blaise was standing in front of him, head down but shoulders tense. It was a very unnatural posture, for him – unlike Harry, Blaise rarely struggled to meet his eyes, even when he was in trouble, or apologizing.

“Look at me, Blaise.” As he said it, he realized that he'd already asked that. Blaise was clearly not responding according to his own inclination, but he was equally not obeying what Severus had expressly told him to do. Perhaps this was what someone else had expected of him, at some point. Not the Luxanus', either – Severus had seen how they treated Blaise, and there was no way they expected the boy to show this particular kind of deference. Odd. But then, who knew what sort of inconsistent expectations different households had held for Blaise over time?

Blaise did look up at his request, and though his expression was very nearly blank, there was something about the set of his shoulders and jaw that told Severus a different story. He looked...frustrated. Which made sense. Severus had been on his case quite a bit this week. And it went with the arguing from before.

“I realize that this has not been an easy week, Zabini,” Snape told him next. His tone was softer than before, and Blaise found he preferred the harsh...sort of. He hated earning Snape's censure, but the sympathy right now was going to make him cry. And he was supposed to maintain eye contact, which meant he couldn't hide. Struggling, he clenched his jaw, hard, and swallowed around a growing lump in his throat.

“You're going to be alright, Blaise,” Snape told him. His gaze was intense, and the soft tone was as serious as Blaise had ever heard it. “I promise you, you'll be alright. The Weasleys are very kind, and I know that Mrs. Weasley is very happy that you accepted her offer to adopt you. And you can always come to me if you need any sort of help.”

Right. He'd never heard his Head-of-House being this...kind. But the man was wrong. Mrs. Weasley wasn't the problem, Blaise was. And he'd be nearly as much a problem for Snape – and especially Harry – as he was for Mrs. Weasley.

But neither Snape's words nor this line of thinking were helping at all. The lump in his throat felt gigantic, like he'd swallowed an ice cube and it had got stuck and wasn't melting. If he tried to speak now, he'd lose all control.

Snape frowned fiercely, for a moment, and Blaise thought he'd somehow angered him, but then Snape stood up and came around his desk. Before Blaise really understood what was happening, he found himself pressed into the man's chest.

And that did it. Blaise's throat seized up entirely, and the tears came. He managed to keep nearly silent, but his muscles seemed to seize up all over his body, and he felt himself shaking with it. Even worse, he was leaking tears and probably snot all over the man's robes. Snape just held him, without speaking, holding his head and rubbing his back gently as Blaise tried and failed to stop his tears.

He was an idiot, Severus reflected, holding his eleven-year-old student tightly. The boy had been at school for four days, and in his office for all four. He knew he was terrible with children but how had he not done this before? It had taken him a long time to hold Harry, too, though – a lot longer than this. Neither of the two of them gave any indication that they wanted the contact.

It was very different from holding Harry. Like Harry, Blaise did not hug back, but usually if Harry got to this point, he'd just cry, openly and honestly, clinging to Severus' robes. In fact, the crying had come first – it had taken that before Severus had finally gotten the bright idea to actually hold him.

Blaise, though - Blaise was stiff in his arms, and taking forcedly even, slow breaths through his nose instead of gasping or even opening his mouth at all, and he had turned his face into Severus' robes to muffle the sound further. His whole body was shaking with the effort, but Harry was right across the room and hadn't turned around. Harry tried not to let anyone see him cry, but once he'd started, he made no effort to keep quiet. Blaise not only tried, he succeeded.

Could Molly fix this? He'd known Blaise was too serious, and he'd known the boy needed a home, but this – this was as bad as Harry's behavior, in its own way. The boy was sobbing his guts out and he was silent.

“You have nothing more to hide, Blaise,” Severus told him very quietly, rubbing his back a little more firmly. “Just cry.”

His rubbing pushed the boy a little more firmly into him, which broke up some of the stiffness, and Blaise gave a very quiet gasp against his robes. The shaking eased some as he did it, but very quickly afterward the boy pushed away, his face once again a complete mask.

“Blaise-” Severus said.

Blaise met his gaze squarely, a very adult sort of determination in his eyes. It was like hitting a brick wall; not a good look, in a child, and Severus did not have to be a legilimens to tell what he meant. Severus hesitated, for a moment, but decided not to push. Perhaps the Weasleys could work on those boundaries, but it wasn't Severus' place to do so.

“Alright,” he said reluctantly. “Go brew, then.”

Finally. Snape was kind, but sympathy was the very last thing he needed. He'd managed – barely – to regain his composure, but it would not last if the man touched him again. Blaise kept his face blank and turned to head for the potions kit and set up his brazier. The first part of brewing was always nearly the same, and Blaise had already made this one that morning. He went through the ingredients prep and brazier set-up nearly on autopilot, his mind elsewhere.

He'd managed to control his expression while facing Snape, but now his cheeks burned with shame. Snape had found him a place to stay; had provided a place to spend his afternoons and evenings in peace. That did not give Blaise license to snot all over him. Merlin, what must the man think of him? He could see the effort the man was putting in, even if it was annoying; why couldn't he just take what he was given and accept it? Everything was fine. Snape had made everything fine. He had a place to go, now, at least through the school year and probably the summer. Yeah, he'd moved again. So what?

But - one night. Roughly 18 hours, and he'd be on the Hogwarts Express, headed 'home' to the Weasleys. 24 hours, and he'd be there. The very thought turned his stomach. And as for anything beyond that – No. No, he was not going there. Not even close.

Picking up the large chunk of gargaginger root, he held it to his nose and let the sharp spice of it clear his sinuses and his thinking. It made his nose run, but at least served to snap him back to the present. If this potion wasn't perfect- well. He really didn't know what Snape would do, at this point. Best case, the man would just raise an eyebrow, or make him do it over again. Worst case – Blaise winced. The man would at least scold him. Worst case, he'd want to talk again - in that new, gentle way of his that made Blaise feel like he was some sort of porcelain doll – too fragile to even scold properly. Blaise didn't think he could take any more of that, at the moment.

If he could just brew potions all night, that would be good. For now, he'd just concentrate on this one. Right now, that was grating the gargaginger. He was supposed to wear gloves for this, but Snape wasn't looking, and the stuff wasn't dangerous. It just stung, and Blaise really didn't care.

The potion took nearly two hours to brew. At some point, Snape called Harry out of the corner, and spoke to him quietly before setting him up to continue work on his trunk. Best guess, Harry was altering it in some way, probably for his Transfigurations tutoring. It wasn't the first time McGonagall had had him working on some sort of a practical project, and the trunk was a different color from the last time Blaise had seen it. Harry was too good at color, now, to make that the actual project, though – it looked like maybe Harry was altering the space inside it. He wished he could ask – if Harry really was transfiguring the internals of a magical object, that was impressive as Hell. Not that Harry would care.

Harry was being bizarrely well-behaved. His friend would usually be spitting mad, by now, and Snape would usually be wearing pink robes and a tiara – or stuck by his feet to the floor. Blaise had never seen Harry actually hurt anyone – or, well, not with magic, at least - but he'd equally never seen him quite this cooperative. He'd seen the momentary argument the two had had on Wednesday – but Snape had somehow managed to diffuse it, and Harry had come back into the room and quietly done as Snape had been asking. Ever since Harry had said Snape was adopting him, the boy had been – weird. Alternating between totally unwilling to get in trouble, and furiously angry and deliberately attacking Snape, specifically. This week, though, was unreal. And sure, Blaise had asked Harry not to get him in trouble, but until Malfoy had messed with Blaise's potion, Harry had started reminding him of Hermione, he was being so good.

Thank you, Harry, Blaise thought suddenly. That had to be hard on him.

Damnit, he could not mess with Harry's relationship with Snape. Couldn't do it. But when the Weasleys got sick of him, Snape was the only resource Blaise had left. What the hell was he going to do? What other recourse did he have?

Mr. Nott. Snape had mentioned him, before - You are our responsibility, now, and neither I nor the Weasleys nor even Gregory Nott will forget it. In the moment, Mr. Nott's name had surprised him a little, but he'd had other things on his mind. He was a little surprised, too, that he'd remembered it, but the conversation with Theo that morning had brought the man back to mind. He was 90% sure that Mr. Nott wouldn't harm him, blood-traitor or no, which meant that the man might be willing to help him.

The thought was at least somewhat reassuring. He at least had something to try, if things got bad.

When. When things got bad. The Weasleys weren't going to last, and he'd need another option. It was nice to have one that didn't involve Snape. He'd go to Nott, first. Decision made, Blaise concentrated back on his potion.

The train whistled, loud next to his ear. He needed to get on. Today. Now. Oh, Merlin but he didn't want to. Nothing bad is going to happen today, idiot, he told himself sharply. What was his problem, that Mrs. Weasley was too nice to him?

“Yo Blaise, you coming?” Blaise turned his head quickly, and saw Ron waving at him from a window of the train. “Ride with us!”

“Sure!” he called back brightly. Relax, damnit. They're your friends. In any other circumstances, he'd've been happy to ride the train with Ron and Theo and Hermione. He'd already done it twice before, at Christmastime. It had been fun. Not quite the same as hanging out with Harry there – he stayed at Hogwarts for the holidays – but fun nonetheless. He'd played chess with Ron, and various study games with Hermione. He'd beat her at Potions; she'd trounced him at Charms. Theo had tried out a new spell and managed to give Ron's king and queen Santa hats instead of crowns. They'd all had a good laugh as the two minuscule monarchs had stomped off in a huff and refused to play until they were removed. He'd used some of the spending money that the Luxanuses had given him for Christmas to buy them all pumpkin pasties from the trolley.

Now – now he needed to be perfect. He couldn't afford to tick off Ron, and he was headed to go live with him. And yeah, Mrs. Weasley was nice, but if he didn't find a way to actually please her, he was stuck hoping that Theo could manage to hide him from his father, or that Nott Senior both wouldn't kill him and knew a Death Eater family who not only wouldn't kill him but would actually take him in. At risk to their own lives, nonetheless. It was a plan 'B', sure, but not a good one.

Despite his trepidation, though, his feet just followed on habit towards the train, and he soon found himself ensconced with his friends. With the buffer of Hermione and Theo there, he was even able to act normally towards Ron, and almost forget where they were headed. Ron trounced him in chess, which was normal, and Hermione actually got a point off him in Potions knowledge, which wasn't. Nobody seemed to actually find it odd, though - it just earned him some good-natured ribbing and made Hermione unbearably smug for a moment or two. He also wasn't willing to spend any money on food, this time, but again nobody noticed – Hermione had thought ahead and got Harry's house-elf to make them sandwiches, and Theo bought them all cauldron cakes and pumpkin juice to go with them.

In what felt like no time at all, it was evening, and the train whistled and screeched to a stop at King's Cross Station, London.

Molly watched as Blaise followed Ronald out of the train, falling quietly into place behind Ronald's much more energetic stride. She waved, and Ronald waved back cheerily with his free hand and sped up, winding through the crowd of students to reach her. Blaise sped up, too, trailing in his wake, but as usual he didn't look at her. He didn't even seem to be looking at Ronald, but rather watching the end of Ron's trunk to know where to go. She was distracted from watching him by another glimpse of red hair - Fred and George had caught sight of her, too, and were pushing towards her from further away down the platform, dragging their own battered trunks. That left only Percy, but he wouldn't even be out of the train, yet. He always wanted his belongings packed up just right, and then as a prefect he had to check the train for stragglers before it left.

This was it, she knew. Two weeks at home with Blaise as her son. Or, well, legally he wasn't yet, but that didn't matter; she knew what was what. It was his willingness to be so, and her willingness to take him, that made him her son, not a certificate on parchment, however many official seals the Ministry attached to it. Well, his expressed willingness, anyway. She wasn't sure Blaise knew what he'd agreed to, or how serious she was about it.

Molly frowned, fretting. She really didn't know Blaise at all, yet, but it didn't matter: he was hers, now, and she'd go to the ends of the earth for him. Still, it would be so nice if she already knew what to do!

“Hiya, Mum!”

She looked up at the raucous call to see the twins still twenty feet down the platform and dragging their trunks behind them. The enthusiasm of their greeting made her smile. They hadn't quite managed to get it in sync that time. Sometimes it was positively uncanny, how they could choose to be either perfectly in sync or very carefully not speak over one another at all, depending on their mood. Today, they were just loud.

“Hello, boys,” she told them when they were closer. She ought to have scolded – imagine shouting across the whole crowd for her! - but she was just too happy to see them. By then, Ron had gotten to her, too, and repeated the twins' enthusiastic “Hiya, Mum!”

Blaise greeted her last, and much more softly. “Hello, Mrs. Weasley.”

“Hello, dear,” she told him warmly, automatically matching his quieter tone. “I'm so glad you're here.”

“Thank you,” he said. It was said with his usual quiet courtesy – not exactly insincere, but just...politely thanking her for lying to him. She found herself vaguely hurt, and did her best to breathe it away. The boy barely knew her, and his last family had kicked him out only a few months ago. It should not surprise her that he hadn't warmed up to her in the week since they'd offered to adopt him.

They all needed to wait a bit on the platform for Percy, and while Fred, George, and Ronald all chattered with each other and her and called goodbye to friends on the platform as they left, Blaise just stood, unmoving and unspeaking, politely watching the crowd or listening to the others talk. He caught her watching him, once, and looked at the ground. Unable to help it, she reached for him, running a gentle hand over his hair. It earned her brief eye contact, and what she could guess was a blush, but if anything the boy tensed up even further.

Finally, Percy got off the train from the nearest car. Unlike the twins, he waited until he was well within speaking distance before greeting her.

“Hello, Mother,” he told her. She smiled at him and refrained from shaking her head at the stiff dignity he displayed. She knew he was as glad to see her as the twins were, but Percy couldn't bear to be fourteen years old. He was absolutely determined to seem older, and as a result he came off more like he was wearing his father's shoes and finding them uncomfortable: Arthur himself wasn't nearly that stiff, even when he was working.

And that was everybody. She turned and headed off of the platform, welcoming the sound of her five youngest sons chattering and dragging their trunks around her as they headed for the station's parking area.

And here was yet another oddity about the Weasleys, Blaise realized: they had one of those contraptions the Muggles used to get around in. A bit like the vehicles the older students used to travel to the castle instead of the boats, only without the Thestrals to pull it. And the Weasley's version flew, which had to be illegal. He wasn't going to sneer at Ron's family, even if they hadn't been kind enough to take him in, but he was starting to feel like he'd entered a foreign country, rather than just a new household. Who on earth was tinkering illegally with Muggle objects? And why? Were the Weasleys somehow unaware of the fact that Kings Cross Station had a Floo system? True, you had to wait for it, and it was smoky with the passage of so many students at the same time, but surely that was better than illegally modifying a Muggle vehicle and then flying it over the countryside?

But then, this was Mrs. Weasley, who left a kitchen cauldron rusting on her front lawn rather than evict a bunch of antler bunnies. He really couldn't predict what these people would do.

The rest of the day passed unbearably slowly. They got to the Weasleys house in the early evening, greeted Arthur, ate dinner in the Weasleys' usual noisy, highly social manner – much more noisy and social now that it was eight of them instead of five – and then cleaned up and retired to the Weasley's living room until around eleven o'clock, when Mrs. Weasley finally they insisted they all go to bed.

Blaise would've happily headed up long before then – really, he'd've preferred to eat dinner in his room, read a book, and go to bed without talking to anybody at all - but he knew better than to make it too obvious how little fun he was having when the rest of the family were so clearly enjoying being together after the months apart.

The twins teased constantly and mercilessly, telling jokes and playing pranks on everybody and tugging Ginny's hair every time they passed behind her, and Ron talked a mile a minute, sitting next to Mr. Weasley on the battered couch and updating him about everything that had happened at Hogwarts since Christmas, while Mr. Weasley listened and asked questions and at least acted as if he was genuinely interested in the answers. Mrs. Weasley seemed to mostly sit back in her sagging armchair to knit and watch and listen, but she got up occasionally to bring in tea and biscuits or a tin of fudge, and she positively radiated contentment the entire evening from cooking dinner straight through bedtime. Even Percy unbent enough to sit on the floor and play a game of Exploding Snap with his little sister, who was probably the happiest of the bunch that her brothers were home.

It was the first time Blaise had ever seen the whole group together, and it was unbelievable. Just - beyond overwhelming. Who on earth had this many kids? Who on earth wanted this many kids? Yet he'd never met a group of people so damned loudly happy in his life! There are more, he remembered. A couple of older brothers, at least. One worked with dragons, he thought, possibly somewhere in Eastern Europe. And there was at least one more, too, though he couldn't remember a thing about him. What did they think of their mother's little project?

The whole warm, loud, happy evening was so foreign – so utterly impossible to either understand or imitate - that Blaise felt like he was watching from inside a fishbowl: in the room, but not really part of what was going on. It wasn't that the family ignored him, either – Mr. Weasley once again did his best to engage him in conversation, Fred roped him into a game of Wizard's Chess, and Mrs. Weasley smiled every time she looked at him and touched his head or back gently every time she came close. When he didn't immediately take a biscuit, she brought him his own little plate with two of them, and then later did the same with the fudge. But while they evidently wanted him to be there – or at least certainly wanted him to feel welcome – the sense of distance and vagueness never really went away. He just hoped it wasn't as obvious as his reticence about the food had evidently been.

Finally, though, Mrs. Weasley sent them all off to bed, serenely unbothered by the complaints she got and pointing out that she had let them all stay up an hour late as it was. Blaise absently noted the ten o'clock bedtime and waited for someone else to head up the stairs before him, trying not to make it too obvious that that was what he was doing. He didn't want to be the first to leave the room, or to enter the private areas of the house. Percy headed upstairs first, and Blaise followed him. Still, he lingered in the bathroom for a bit, waiting for Ron before entering his bedroom. There were too many people in the house for him to feel comfortable taking up the upstairs bathroom for long, though, and he was grateful that Ron didn't linger too long.

When they were both in bed, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley came in to say goodnight. Mr. Weasley mostly just stuck his head in to look at both of them. “Goodnight, boys,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Dad,” Ron answered.

“Goodnight Mr. Weasley,” Blaise said. It tightened his stomach even further, hearing now obvious it was that he had not called the man 'Dad' immediately after Ron had, but Mr. Weasley just pulled his head back out of the room and headed down the hall.

Mrs. Weasley came next, and kissed Ron's forehead, then came and kissed Blaise's just the same. He'd mostly expected it, and though he didn't exactly mind, it was the best he could do not to flinch from sheer discomfort. It was like any other time she touched him, but even more intense - how was he supposed to react to her affection? Was he doing something wrong and didn't know it?

“Welcome to the family, dear,” she whispered before she left. “We're so glad you're here.” He thanked her again, but couldn't come up with much else to say, and just stared at the ceiling when she finally left, feeling his heart race in his chest.

“...you said yes, didn't you?” Ron asked after a bit.

Surprised, and unsure of Ron's reaction, Blaise didn't answer right away, and finally Ron spoke again, sounding nervous himself.

“I'm...not really allowed to ask, and I didn't want to pressure you anyway, only I'm dying to know, and that sounded like...”

“...yeah,” Blaise told him, heart in his throat. “...I said yes.” He'd wondered why none of the Weasleys had said anything that week. Surely Mrs. Weasley would've told them something.

“I'm glad,” Ron told him.

“...thanks,” Blaise answered roughly. He wasn't quite sure he believed him, or if it would last if he did, but it helped that Ron at least wanted to be happy about it.

“You'll be a way better brother than Percy, anyhow,” Ron told him.

Blaise gave a short laugh. Poor Percy. Blaise couldn't quite blame the others for ribbing him, but it was constant. It was amazing Percy hadn't hexed them all. “Hey, don't forget he let the twins kidnap him that one time,” he told him.

He could hear Ron's smile in his voice. “True. That was wicked.” He paused for a bit, then said. “You'll still be better, though. I can't wait to see what you and the twins get up to.”

The words surprised him, and then Blaise realized, and laughed again. He and the twins had had a good time, back when Harry had recruited them into playing pranks on Snape. And Stone had told him about Fred and George's interest in Potions. Ron was right about the kind of trouble the three of them could get into together. Blaise would look forward to it, too...if he could possibly imagine having anything to do with the twins' antics, now. He couldn't have done it, then, if he hadn't known that the Luxanuses wouldn't care. He had to be more careful, now.

But the humor had relaxed him some, anyway. And Ron was right that he normally got along well with Fred and George. Brothers, he remembered. Mrs. Weasley had referred to them as his brothers. Ron seemed to expect the same. “Bet you'd've preferred Hermione, though,” he told Ron finally.

“Are you kidding?” Ron asked. “Hermione as my sister? I'd never be allowed to procrastinate again! Sure, she's cool enough in small doses, but I wouldn't hitch myself to her for the rest of my life for anything. You're way more fun.”

Surprised by the unexpected vehemence of Ron's response, as well as the reference to the “rest of his life”, Blaise didn't answer for a moment. Finally Ron spoke up again.

“Seriously, Blaise,” he said with an uncharacteristic gravity. “Welcome to the family. I'm really really glad to have another brother, and I'm glad it's you. I was the one that convinced Mum to take you in in the first place, though I didn't know she'd go so far as to adopt you.”

Oh. He'd thought it was just Snape. Sure, Ron was a friend, but not as close as Ron was to...well any of the other four Slythindors, really. He'd've understood Theo or Harry wanting him as a brother, or maybe even Hermione – like Theo, she didn't have any siblings and the two of them at least kept each other good company with their schoolwork - but Ron? Ron already had five brothers, and he and Ron probably would've been at constant wand-point if not for Harry. As it was, Harry and Ron were at near-constant wand-point...or, well, at least mutual sulks and avoidance and the occasional minor fistfight. Harry sometimes forgot he was a wizard, when he got mad enough. But Ron could be in the middle of a massive fight with Harry and still defend him vehemently the moment somebody else so much as looked at him sideways. Gryffindors were weird that way.

Apparently, that crazy loyalty extended to Blaise, as well. Warmed by the revelation, Blaise said the only thing he could think of. “...thank you. Really. You're a lifesaver.”

“No problem,” Ron told him awkwardly. “...goodnight.”

“'night,” Blaise answered.

The next morning, Blaise woke up and immediately pulled his pocket-watch from under the pillow. It was one of the ones whose alarms only the bearer could hear, but he shut it off anyway before he crept out of bed silently to head downstairs.

At the bottom of the steps he looked around a bit to reassure himself that nobody had been up to light the oil lamps, yet, and relaxed a little bit as he confirmed that yes, the household was still asleep. Mrs. Weasley generally got up around 6:15. That gave him roughly forty minutes to clean up the kitchen from last night before he needed to get back upstairs and either fall back asleep or – if she saw him - pretend to be just getting up. She'd have to be grateful, otherwise, which would be awkward.

The dishes were clean, but hadn't been put away last night, and despite the family clean-up the night before there were several plates and cups on the countertops and scattered in the living room that he needed to deal with. As silently as he could manage, Blaise got the clean dishes out of the sink and put them away, guessing for a couple of things and quietly leaving out the one big soup cauldron he really couldn't find a place for. Then he just as silently cleared the countertops and family room of dishware and loaded the sink again. He couldn't run the dish-cleaning spell without at least some noise, so he left it and worked on setting the family room to rights, instead, and then running the mangle in the scullery. It, at least, ran silently.

He held his breath when he heard someone get out of bed and head to the bathroom upstairs, and it occurred to him that Mrs. Weasley might no longer be the earliest riser in the house. Fred and George might get up in order to set up some sort of prank, or Percy to study, or something.

The living room was as neat as he could make it, and the kitchen counters and table wanted only a quick scourgify, which he couldn't do since he wasn't in school. He could've used SprayGify on them, instead, but they'd been dirty before everybody arrived, and he didn't want to imply that Mrs. Weasley wasn't a good housekeeper. Besides which, not everybody liked using SprayGify on food surfaces. One of his mother's aunts had claimed it made any food with tomato in it break out in stripes. He couldn't remember which aunt, though, and there was a serious difference in reliability between the two. He could use the SprayGify on the owl's perch by the back door, but he was out of time – perhaps tomorrow, if Mrs. Weasley hadn't already done it.

The toilet flushed upstairs, and two minutes later Blaise crept carefully back up the creaky staircase, and went back to bed. Exhausted from a late, restless night and the early wakeup, he fell asleep almost instantly.

Her kitchen had been cleaned up. Mrs. Weasley surveyed the nearly empty sink and the one remaining clean pot, and moved to peek into the family room. Her suspicions were totally confirmed, and she found herself putting her hands on her hips. When had the boy managed it? He'd either gotten out of bed last night after everybody was asleep, or this morning before anybody had woken up. Which meant the boy had had a maximum – absolute maximum – of six hours of uninterrupted sleep.

She was going to have to speak to him. This was already way too much of a habit, and now that he was going to be hers it was her responsibility to break him of it. Imagine, an eleven-year-old getting out of bed when everybody was asleep in order to clean! And on his first day home, no less!

Well, not in her house.

Usually her morning routine involved putting the kitchen back to rights, but today that just meant a quick Spraygify on the countertops and owl perch and running the dish cleaning spell on the sink. As perturbed as she was about Blaise's cleaning, it gave her time to make a particularly elaborate celebratory breakfast for Easter, and the boys' first day home. She didn't know Blaise's favorite breakfast foods, yet – she'd watched, but he really just ate whatever didn't require anything to be passed to him.

She'd actually asked him about his preferred breakfast foods, when he'd been with them for his suspension, but all she'd been able to get out of him was a slight smile and a polite, “I like a lot of things.” She'd even pushed a little, and the boy had given her a very generic list of things one might choose to make for breakfast – all things that she'd already made for him before she asked. Getting any information out of the boy was like pulling teeth.

But the others' varied preferences would provide plenty of things for him to choose from, and hopefully if she put it buffet-style on the countertop he'd actually manage to take what he wanted. She'd watch and see.

She'd made the Easter simnel bread and hot cross buns last night, but this morning she felt like making a real feast, and she had everything she needed to do just that.

So, to work. Arthur preferred poached eggs on toast. Fred preferred bacon, George sausage. A ton of it. Percy wouldn't want to admit it, but he wanted banana pancakes, drenched in chocolate syrup the same as he'd done when he was seven. He was the only one that ate it, and he always blushed to see it on the table, but the smile he'd give her for it was worth the effort.

Ronald shared Arthur's love of poached eggs, but she'd give him the ones that got cooked a little more than Arthur typically preferred. He also shared Fred's love of bacon. Ginny mostly just wanted a variety, which cooking for her father and brothers provided. Still, Molly put out two varieties of jam for her instead of just one. And mounds and mounds of plain white toast for Arthur and Ginny and Fred to pile things on.

By the time she called 'breakfast', Arthur, Percy, and Ginny were already downstairs, having woken up and followed the smell of bacon straight into the kitchen. Percy was already dressed for church. It made him look quite out of place next to his pajama-clad father and sister. Ronald came down next, with Blaise following, as usual, in his shadow. Blaise, too, had dressed, though evidently he hadn't been aware that he needed formal clothing. Probably a good thing, actually – church wasn't until after lunch. She'd need to let him know what Easter was going to look like, she realized. Holidays at unfamiliar houses could be stressful. Last to come down were the twins, promptly enough, but the look on George's face made her faintly suspicious anyway.

“Hey, sausage!” George enthused. “Thanks, Mum!”

Molly smiled, letting go of her suspicion for the moment. She could put out a feast, or just George's sausage, and he'd react exactly the same way, and eat exactly the same thing. Sausage. Just sausage. Plus more sausage. Goodness was she happy her boys were finally home!

The breakfast table was crowded, but surprisingly quiet for a meal for eight people. Things got rowdy again as everybody finished eating, and they chatted and teased each other while she and Arthur and Percy finished eating. Blaise had already finished, having not spoken the entire meal. He'd chosen the cross buns, along with a small amount of bacon once it became clear that there was extra. When everyone was done, she got up and started clearing up, and everyone followed her lead.

They got things more-or-less cleaned up before Ginny quite suddenly shrieked and jumped, tugging at her shirt until a good-sized ice-cube fell out from underneath it. She managed to catch it as it fell, and lobbed it at Fred, who raised a hand to fend it off. The ice cube hit his arm and bounced, hitting the floor and skidding to a rest against Molly's left foot. She put both hands on her hips to glare at them, and Fred gave her a sheepish look in return. Ginny didn't even try to look repentant.

“Alright, everybody,” she said. “Out.”

“Hey, I didn't-” George started.

“Put a snake in somebody's bed?” Molly asked him pointedly. She knew her son.

George drew himself up, clasping one hand to his thin chest in mock affront. “A snake, you say? In someone's bedchambers? Foul accusation! And by my own dear mother, to boot.” He paused for a moment before abruptly lowering the arm and speaking up quite primly. “Thomas is a slow worm,” he informed her.

Molly closed her eyes, but she couldn't close her ears.

“A slow worm?” Arthur repeated, his tone echoing her own feelings. “You put a slow worm in somebody's bed?”

“Isn't that a kind of snake?” Ginny asked her brother. Unlike her father, she sounded delighted. Evidently the likelihood that it might be in her bed hadn't concerned her in the slightest. Which was why George wouldn't have chosen her bed to put it in. In all likelihood, “Thomas” was comfortably ensconced in Arthur and Molly's room.

“Anguis fragilis,” Percy told his sister matter-of-factly. “A legless lizard, not a snake. You can tell because they have eyelids.” There was just the barest shade of wry humor in his usual pompous tone. It was a bad day, when even Percy sided with the twins in their mischief. It had been happening more and more frequently, of late.

“Out!” she repeated, opening her eyes to give them all a good glare.

George looked surprised. “You don't want me to get Thomas out of your bed first?” he asked.

Molly felt her eyebrows rise and her mouth fall open, but George was already shooting up the stairs, his father pursuing close behind.

“I'm going, I'm going!” she heard George exclaim. “No need to-” she heard what she thought was probably a swat, but knowing Arthur, it hadn't been a hard one – more Arthur participating in George's joke than any attempt to punish it. It made her smile, hands still on her hips. Slow worm or not, she couldn't feel much but joy this morning. And if George had meant anybody any harm by his prank, he wouldn't've used a slow worm. She was the one who'd taught him his love of creepy crawlies, after all. Not that she particularly wanted to find one in her bed.

The rest of the family had trooped obediently outside, but Blaise had held back a little, stacking up the plates on the countertop, and only now was starting towards the door. It reminded her of her original mission, and she shook the thoughts of slow worms out of her head. They weren't the important thing, here. “Blaise,” she called.

He froze on his way out, and turned around. She expected him to show some anxiety, or confusion – perhaps some tiredness from his short night - but all she got was his perpetual polite interest, like he was a bank clerk facing his next client.

“Ma'am?” he asked her.

“When did you clean up?” she asked him.

He flushed, and looked down. “This morning, Ma'am,” he told her. “I got up early.”

Right. Because every child naturally woke up in the dark and decided to use the 'unexpected' free time to creep downstairs and clean the kitchen. Molly found herself almost angry with him.

“You're family, now, Blaise,” she told him gently. “We didn't offer to adopt a house-elf, we offered to adopt a son. You don't need to be cleaning up after us and doing our laundry.”

“I don't mind, Ma'am,” he told her, sounding a bit strained.

“I do,” she told him. “Taking care of you and the others is my job, not yours. And you need your sleep. You'll have chores same as the others, but you really don't need to earn your place here. I'll tell you if there's something I want you to do for me.”

“I'll tell you if there's something I want you to do for me.”

“Yes, Ma'am,” Blaise answered automatically. “...thank you.”

It was the complete opposite of what he meant, but he couldn't afford to let his annoyance show. So taking care of him was her job, was it? For exactly how long? And how, exactly, was it worse to make him earn his place, rather than to pretend not to and then get rid of him when he wasn't worth the trouble?

She was staring into his face, and he gave her a carefully questioning look, as if he didn't understand her probing. He did, more or less. She wanted more of a reaction than he'd given her. Was he supposed to act like he believed her, though? Probably, but his temper really wouldn't allow it, at the moment. It was best if he just didn't give her any clues at all.

Damnit, she'd been displeased enough with him when he was more-or-less earning his keep! Now she wanted him to stop? The woman was worse than Snape! And Snape wasn't the one who was supposed to actually keep him for any period of time!

“Alright,” she said, sounding a bit reluctant. “I also wanted to let you know how today was going to go, since it's Easter. It's about the same every year – we do a big breakfast like this morning, then a smaller lunch, and we go to the latest afternoon church service. We'll leave for that around 2, then come back after and those who want to will dye easter eggs. Tonight will be our normal small dinner. Tomorrow your oldest brothers Charlie and Bill are coming, so we're holding off the big fancy Easter dinner until then. I'm keeping their visit a bit of a surprise from the others, but I thought you'd prefer to know ahead of time.”

That, at least, was helpful. Holidays completely trashed any knowledge he had of how a household worked and what the routine was that he needed to fit into. Now he at least knew something. He needed to be clean and dressed in nice clothes by 2PM. He actually liked church reasonably well, though he'd only been a couple of times when he was smaller. It didn't require much from him other than standing and sitting at the right times. He didn't have the right responses memorized, of course, but he could just mouth things and nobody noticed.

“Thank you,” he told her. “...that's helpful.” It was hard, giving her even that level of information – what if it sounded like he was telling her what to do? - but that kind of instruction was exactly what he needed to not mess things up later, so it was worth the risk.

“Alright,” she said again. “Go on out and play, then.”

She didn't seem satisfied, but that was a dismissal if he'd ever heard one.

Go play. Right. But at least leaving people alone was something he was good at.

He did go and watch a little as the game was getting set up, but even if his broom hadn't been under his bed in Ron's room, he didn't even know what the game was, as they were still apparently deciding on the rules. Just watching made his stomach twist even tighter than it had been when he got up that morning. He'd barely managed to eat breakfast, as it was. Though the cross buns had helped. He liked sweet stuff.

No. He'd just go for a walk, and get out of all of their hair for awhile. Back by two, he remembered. Or, well, back in time to leave by two. He'd set an alarm on his pocket-watch.

Sandwich makings, fresh vegetable sticks, and pitchers of pumpkin juice and water out on the table, Molly called everyone in from outside. Halfway through the morning, she'd realized that she'd sent them all out to play in their pajamas, but she hadn't had the heart to pull them all in again when they were having so much fun. Even Percy had taken part in whatever flying game they were playing, and that despite a light, chilly April drizzle that came up halfway through the game. He was getting his church clothes filthy doing it, but that was what magic was for. She'd put extra powder in the clothes-cauldron before lunch and it would get the job done on time.

Only Blaise had apparently sat the game out. She had looked for him about an hour ago, but apparently, he'd found a hiding spot somewhere, probably with one of his schoolbooks. She didn't like that – she'd hoped he'd spend some time getting to know his brothers - but she'd decided not to worry about it, for the moment.

But then only five came in at her call, and all of them redheads.

Their clothes and hair were soaked through from the rain, though they didn't seem any less cheerful for it. Where was Blaise?

“Go upstairs and clean up, guys,” she told them. “Lunch can wait for a bit.”

They trooped off, and she put on a pot of tea before heading outside to call again for Blaise. Still there was no answer. Wondering if he'd come back inside and she'd just missed him, she went up to the top of the stairs and called down the hallway. “Blaise?” There was no answer, and she started to get worried. Surely Blaise would've come, if he'd heard her? Where was the boy?

She should check the clock, she realized. She'd had it modified just that week to reflect the newest family member. It hadn't been a cheap alteration, but she liked seeing his name up there with the others. Heading into the living room, she looked at the clock hand with Blaise's name on it.

“Out and about,” the clock indicated. But not “lost,” despite the fact that he hadn't come to her call, and not “mortal peril”, either. So, that was good, she supposed. On further reflection, though, that meant that he had left the yard without permission, and now he either had some sort of minor injury that prevented him from returning, had gone far enough away not to hear her, or had actually chosen not to come to her call. Whichever it was, she wasn't best pleased. She'd have to speak to him. Again.

Gently, she reminded herself. The boy had only just gotten here. He just didn't know the rules, yet. He knows where the pie server goes in the kitchen, though, she remembered.

Nothing for it but to wait, though, at least for the moment. The boy was well and truly gone. Sighing, she went back to the kitchen and joined the rest of her now clean and dry children at the table. Percy had changed into his school uniform, she saw – about the least formal he ever got when he wasn't sleeping.

The teenager frowned as she got to the table. “Where's Blaise?” he asked her, reaching for the bread she'd put out.

Molly grimaced. “I was hoping one of you knew,” she answered. She looked around the table. “Do any of you know where Blaise may have gone?” she asked them. She especially looked to Ronald, but he shook his head. “He came out after us, and was sort of watching for a bit, but then he wasn't there. I thought he went back inside...”

She shook her head at him. “Maybe he got lost?” he tried.

“The clock just says 'out and about',” she told him.

“...oh,” Ron said.

There was a brief silence, and finally Molly decided to break it. There was no sense in them worrying, too, after all. It was a safe enough neighborhood, and she didn't mind her children wandering some. Provided she knew where they'd gone. “So what was the game you guys were playing?” she asked them.

“We're calling it “Squiddich,” Fred told her proudly. “It's like Quiddich, but the Quaffle is a pickled squid, and the goal is to hit the Keeper with it.”

Well that got her attention. “Where in Merlin's name did you get ahold of a pickled squid?” she asked him.

George's smile was somehow both sheepish and proud, and his answer almost sounded like a question: “Potions?”

“George Weasley!” she yelled.

Blaise paused at the top of a hill looking down on the house, hesitant. Being outside felt better. Way better. Nobody to worry about pleasing or displeasing, no need to control his expressions, no need to be grateful to anyone or pretend to feel anything in particular. Nothing but clouds and trees and cold water and mud.

Very cold water, and a lot of mud. From a light drizzle, it had started to really rain, but Blaise had never gotten to the point of wanting to go in. Or at least, not into the Burrow. If he'd been back at Hogwarts, he'd've been in hours ago. He was wet, exhausted, starving hungry, and freezing cold. Miserable. And still he wasn't looking forward to going back inside.

At some point, he would have to. He'd meant to stay out for a good long time and give Mrs. Weasley time to celebrate with her own kids, but he was starting to worry about whether she'd mind that he'd missed lunch. Or at least, feel obligated to pretend to mind, which was about the same thing. He'd told himself she wouldn't – she hadn't told him a time to be back other than for church - but the worry hadn't made going back any more enticing. And he needed to get in in time to get clean and ready for church.

How to get in, though? He was soaked, and needed to not get Mrs. Weasley's floor wet or muddy. Ideally, she wouldn't even see him this wet and disheveled, but that was likely impossible.

Too bad he couldn't do what Harry did, and just think hard about how he'd like to be dry now, please. If he used his wand, he'd be caught for sure.

Or, well, if that law ever actually got enforced, anyway. He'd used his wand before in magical households, and never actually gotten in trouble for it. But then, that was when he was younger, and the ministry probably hadn't known he even had a wand, let alone two. His father's old untraceable one was very expensive and highly illegal, so he mostly kept it hidden in his trunk. The other one he did carry, but he was too far away from the Weasley household to risk using it. Especially for something like this.

Damn. He hadn't wanted to come home, and he'd wanted to give Mrs. Weasley a break from him. He hadn't thought about the problem of coming back wet.

Nothing for it – he needed to go in sometime, and the rain showed no signs of letting up. If Mrs. Weasley wasn't in the kitchen, he might be able to get through it and to the scullery without her noticing. He could remove some of his outerwear and at least run it through the mangle before it dripped on the floor.

“There you are!”

Blaise froze just inside the kitchen door, registering the annoyance in Mrs. Weasley's tone. Uh oh. That was probably the loudest and sharpest she'd ever spoken to him. Usually he just got quiet frowns when she looked at him – not anger. What had he done so wrong, though? Was he late? Was she that bothered by the mud?

“Where have you been all morning? You missed lunch!”

Ah. Lunch. So she did mind. “I went for a walk,” Blaise explained, careful not to sound defensive. He was dripping on her floor, but he knew better than to go anywhere without her permission, now.

“For three HOURS?” she asked him.

“...yeah,” Blaise told her. He was freezing cold, and dripping mud on her floor, and she was worried about him missing lunch? Then he mentally shook himself. He sounded sullen, and it didn't matter how tired and wet and cold he was, he couldn't afford it.

“Yes, Ma'am,” he amended, standing up straight and speaking more respectfully.

“NO!” she bellowed.

Blaise felt his eyes widen at the noise, and his heart rate increase. Shit. He'd really actually angered her. But nobody had ever minded him giving them space, before. True, he'd mostly stayed indoors, but Mrs. Weasley had sent him out! What did she want?

She seemed to calm, after the brief outburst. “Not without telling me where you're going, and not without coming back for lunch,” she told him more softly.

Coming back...but... that was the whole point! And he was tired and wet and cold and hungry from a short night and a very long time outdoors in not-so-nice weather, and it was just a couple of hours ago that she'd told him she didn't want him to clean anything. Now she wanted him to bother her every time he wanted to go out, when the entire point of going out was to not bother her? What was he supposed to do?

But it wouldn't do to have her realize that he was angry with her, too. He certainly had no right to be. He took a slow breath, swallowed, and forced himself to speak calmly and respectfully.

“I'm sorry, Ma'am,” he said. He supposed he actually was, if it actually bothered her this much. He certainly hadn't intended to anger her. But how was he supposed to please this woman? She couldn't possibly actually want him underfoot! She was so palpably happy to spend time with her kids – didn't she want him to leave her to it and not get in the way?

“And you're soaking wet,” Mrs. Weasley said next, her face and tone suddenly softening. “Go on upstairs, take a shower, change into nice clothes for church, and bring your wet and dirty laundry down for me to put in the cauldron. I'll have a sandwich and some soup ready for you when you're ready for it.”

Blaise looked up from the ground to stare at her. He'd gotten up miserably early in the morning in order to clean her kitchen...so she'd grabbed him immediately after breakfast to tell him not to. So instead he'd tried giving her time to herself with her own kids...and so now she was actually mad at him. Sort of. Except instead of sending him away, she was going to do extra laundry for him and make an extra meal since he'd missed one.

Unexpectedly and irrationally furious, he found it was all he could do not to stomp on the stairs on the way up to the shower.

Upstairs, take a shower, change his clothes. Check, check, and check. Now came the 'bring his laundry down' and then the 'tea and soup'. Right.

But there was no way he was letting her do his laundry for him just because he'd been stupid enough not to bring an umbrella to go outside. Sure, he'd bring the laundry down – he didn't want it dripping on Ron's floor, after all - but he could do it himself. And Ron's, too, while he was at it.

He went down the stairs and peered around the corner into the kitchen just as Mrs. Weasley turned away from the hearth with a large kettle and walked across the kitchen to pour the hot water into the chipped yellow tea-pot she'd placed on the table. The sugar was already out, along with a small pot of milk and an as-yet empty plate. There was a cauldron of what smelled like tomato soup bubbling over the fire, and a small bowl set next to it on the counter.

She'd meant it about the soup and sandwich, then. And she was making tea, too. Silly woman. He was not going to die from having gotten a little wet.

Somehow, the sight hurt his heart anyway, though. There was such a – warmth – to Mrs. Weasley. Such a willingness to care for people. The answering ache in his chest as he watched her try it on him was nearly unbearable. The problem was, he wanted the “care” she spoke of – the affection and ease she so clearly had with her sons, the trouble she went to to make everyone's favorite breakfast. Even if he couldn't really have that, he did at least want to stay. Ron's words to him the night before, calling him his brother - Blaise shut the feelings down as tight as he could. Yes, he wanted to stay. Which meant he could not allow her to take on extra work because of him. So her stubbornness about it was just damned annoying.

But at the moment Mrs. Weasley was back at the stove and occupied with stirring the soup, her back safely to him. He tiptoed quickly across the kitchen and into the scullery, dropping his clothes – along with a pile of others, equally muddy, that had been left in the wicker basket in Ron's room, and another small pile that had been on the floor of the scullery - into Cassandra's Colossal Clothes-Washing Cauldron and carefully measuring out the smallest amount of powder necessary to get it started. The stuff wasn't expensive – at least not on the budgets he'd previously dealt with – but he wasn't about to waste anything belonging to the Weasleys.

The small, stupid defiance – such as it was - provoked an oddly satisfied feeling, and Blaise found himself thinking of Harry. His friend's defiant attitude always had made sense to him, but now he was actually finding it tempting. Too bad his “defiance” had to limit itself to doing the laundry when Mrs. Weasley told him not to. He wasn't about to do something she'd actually mind. She “didn't want him to earn his keep”, which really meant that she wanted to pretend he wasn't. It was up to him to provide the plausible deniability. Which was annoying, and made his job harder, but at least made it unlikely she'd be cruel to him.

When he looked back into the kitchen, Mrs. Weasley was still at the stove, serving up soup, and he snuck back over and stood where he'd initially come in before making any noise to alert Mrs. Weasley to his presence.

Or, well, he didn't think he'd made any noise, but he got all the way back to the doorway only to have Mrs. Weasley speak without turning around.

“Nice try.”

Huh?

She set the soup-bowl down on the counter with a distinct clunk and turned around. Then she leaned over to take a quick, pointed glance into the scullery, presumably confirming that the cauldron was working, and finally turned back to him and put her hands on her hips. Did the woman have eyes on the back of her head?

“Well?” she asked him sharply.

Well, what? Blaise found himself wondering. So he'd gone ahead and done his own laundry, and put some of theirs in with it. Was she really going to have a problem with that?

“You told me to bring my laundry down,” he told her. He held back a wince at his own tone. He'd intended the words to express confusion. Instead, they'd come out stubborn. His arms were even crossed. Somewhere in the last two days he'd clearly gone completely insane.
“Yes, I told you to bring your laundry down,” Mrs. Weasley told him. “I also told you that I was going to do it.”

Yeah, and?

“It's my own laundry,” he told her shortly. And nearly winced again. What had possessed him? Two days. Not even. One night he'd been in her house and he was arguing with her? But was she seriously upset with him for doing his own laundry?

“And I told you to let me do it,” she told him again. “Usually, yes, you'd be responsible for your own laundry, but today I told you to bring it down for me to do. Just as I told you this morning that I would tell you what chores I wanted you to do for me. If you didn't know what I meant, you wouldn't have waited until my back was turned.”

That wasn't true, Blaise thought. He hadn't wanted her to see him cleaning before, either. That's why he'd had to get up at the crack of dawn in order to do it.

But she was right that he was defying her, however pathetically. He was just surprised that she knew that. And that she minded. That wasn't at all how this was supposed to go. He'd given her every excuse to turn a blind eye, after all.

But the very last thing he could do was express that. That would give away the whole game. Just because she wasn't playing right didn't mean he could afford not to.

“Yes, Ma'am,” he said, finally throttling down his anger. “Sorry, Ma'am.”

Molly looked down at Blaise, taking in the tense posture, the careful lack of eye contact, the overtly respectful language. And yet the boy had deliberately disobeyed her, and what was she to make of him disappearing for so long? How had he managed to pick up exactly where the pie server went in the kitchen drawers, and not that he was expected to come to lunch? Sure, Ronald had been grounded to his room the whole time they'd been home a week ago, and Blaise had followed his lead, but they'd always done lunch as a family, anyway. She was truly at a loss.

“Blaise,” she asked more gently. “Would you tell me what's going on, here? If I didn't know better, I'd say you were deliberately disobeying me.”

It wasn't a question that Blaise could answer with a simple, “yes, Ma'am,” or “Sorry, Ma'am,” and abruptly Molly realized that she had hardly ever gotten him to say anything more than that. Certainly she'd never managed a real conversation with him. Everything she knew about him beyond his usual stiff courtesy came from Ronald's description of him, and a bit from the conversation with Severus.

“He’s the…other influence…that is encouraging Ronald to cause trouble,” Severus had told her. “He’s good friends with my son as well, and with Gregory Nott’s boy Theodore.”

Ronald's description had given her a much fuller picture, though she'd had to read between the lines, some.

“He’s a good guy, mum, and he’s real nice to Harry, and he’s real smart – smart as Hermione, even, and he killed the troll and he didn’t mean to lead us all down the trapdoor, and I mean Theo and I were totally in on it too, even Hermione was. Harry was the only one who really didn’t want to go. But he’s not a Death Eater, Mum. He’s really not. He likes Harry too much for that. He wouldn’t let anybody hurt him. ‘N maybe Hermione, too. She’s the only one as smart as him in the whole class. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you we were friends but he’s nice and Theo’s nice too and it’s not his fault his folks are Death Eaters!”

So in other words, he was the tacit leader of their little group, he was best friends with Harry, he was smart and good in school, he was kind to Ron and Hermione despite the fact that by rights they should've been enemies, even Ronald understood that he was meant to be a Death Eater, he'd killed the troll and not just incapacitated it – which most likely meant he'd used a spell that was not taught or approved for use at Hogwarts - and he'd used his leadership of the little group to get them all to go check out a part of the school that the Headmaster had explicitly warned them all away from at the beginning of the school year.

“Sounds like a pile of trouble,” Molly had said to Severus.

“He will be nothing but polite,” Severus had told her. “If nothing else, he knows he has nowhere else to go.”

Both Ronald and Severus had described Blaise as “too serious,” which had been totally confirmed. But she hadn't yet seen anything of the boy who would cause any trouble at all, or lead his friends anywhere, let alone into a forbidden part of the school. Well...hadn't seen it until, possibly, now, when he had either misunderstood or entirely ignored her instructions not to try and earn his keep. Up to her to figure out which it was.

He hadn't answered her question, either – he just stood there before her, staring at the ground.
“Blaise?” she said as gently as she could. “I want an answer, dear. At least try.”

“I'm sorry,” Blaise told her.

Which was still not an answer. Was he being shy, or stubborn, or both? “Is there something you need to apologize for?” she asked him.

“I'm sorry I displeased you,” Blaise answered shortly. He sounded so adult it was terrifying. How could he be her child, if he didn't even sound like a child at all? “I didn't intend to.”

She still didn't know whether he had actually knowingly disobeyed her, she noticed. Or why he'd been gone so long that morning. “Do you know why I am angry with you?” she asked him.

“...no, Ma'am,” he admitted finally.

And yet he apologized. Not a bad policy, for a child speaking to an adult, but somehow, this felt different. And how could he not know why she was angry? She'd already scolded him a bit when he came in, and now he'd disobeyed her again! And she really couldn't figure out what he was feeling without seeing his face.

“Look at me, Blaise,” she said.

He tensed, but didn't immediately obey, and she finally spoke again. “Blaise,” she said, “look at me.”

That time he looked up immediately, and his expression took her aback. She'd expected the same deference and timidity that he'd expressed with his words and tone, but apparently that was an act, because something in his dark gaze and the set of his mouth communicated something entirely different. Her newest son was not at all happy with her, at the moment.

Oddly enough, she was relieved to see it. It made so much more sense, somehow, even if the boy wasn't really expressing it.

“I see,” she told him. “Well that's different, then. You want to tell me what you're so angry about?”

His eyes widened, then, and the anger was quickly replaced by panic. “I'm sorry!” he told her. For that moment, he looked and sounded like the child he was, but then he looked down at the ground again. Still, she'd seen what she'd seen, and it encouraged her.

“I was right, then,” she told him. “You didn't mishear me about the laundry, you didn't like the order and you disobeyed. Is that about right?”

She should've recognized it earlier, she realized suddenly. Just because none of her redheads would be determined enough to clean that they'd ignore her explicit instructions didn't mean Blaise wouldn't. And seen in that light, the boy had been quietly ignoring instructions he didn't like or agree with for as long as she'd known him. How many times had she told him he didn't have to be cleaning, that first week? Twice a day? More? He'd ignored her entirely, but been polite enough about it that she'd taken this long to see the stubbornness in it.

Blaise didn't answer, but his shoulders were tight again, and this time she was more able to see the anger in that tension. The boy was anxious, to be sure, and he was genuinely trying to be good, in his own way, but he clearly had his own ideas about how his relationship with them was going to go and nothing she'd said had changed his mind one iota.

But she'd pushed enough to make him angry, at least. He was quiet, yes, but there was evidently quite a lot of steam underneath that cork.

And really, of course there was! He was eleven years old, and he'd been behaving like a house-elf for the entire time she'd known him! No wonder he'd fled the house the first chance he got!

Scolding wasn't going to help, much as she wanted to. She wasn't going to scold him for having the wrong idea of what 'good' meant. At least, not at first. If he remained stubborn, though...

“You know you're allowed to be angry with me?” she asked him.

The eye contact she got at that was very brief, but she could pick up on his surprise, anyway.

“I know I'm pushing you, hon,” she told him. “I can see how much you want to be helpful. You do still have to obey me, though.”

But his soup was going to get cold, if she didn't either feed him or put it back over the fire. And he didn't have much time to eat before they needed to leave.

“Come sit down and drink your soup,” she told him next. “I'll get you your sandwich.”

He gave her a brief, smoldering look, at that, but he quietly did as he was told while she grabbed the plate off the table to serve the piping hot – and slightly singed - cheese sandwich with it.

“Here you are, Honey,” she told him, rubbing a hand down his back. He stiffened at the contact, as he usually did, but he'd have to cope with her touching him. She was starting to think that if she stopped showing him love just because he seemed uncomfortable, they'd never make any progress at all. Hopefully he'd believe the touch more than he evidently believed anything she was trying to tell him.

Once he'd started eating, she got herself her own teacup and sat down at the table across from him. “You evidently don't know what the rules are, here, so I'll be explicit,” she told him. He looked up, and stopped eating to listen.

“Eat, Honey,” she told him. “You don't need to talk, just listen and eat.”

He looked at her for a bit, reading her face, then finally nodded just a touch and focused back on his soup. She almost smiled at the odd sense of accomplishment it gave her. If nothing else, she was pleased to see him eat. From the way the boy was going at it, he was starving. Not that she was surprised, after the hours the boy had spent outside in the rain.

“Just listen and eat.” Well, that was at least an explicit instruction that she seemed to actually mean. Grateful for the excuse, Blaise kept his eyes fixed on his food as he listened for whatever the woman had to say. He was in deep enough, already, that he didn't want to miss anything important or have her pick up on any more disrespect.

“First off, you don't miss mealtimes without asking me first,” she told him. “Nor do you leave the yard without telling me where you're going and when you'll be back.”

That had the distinct tone of a rebuke. Blaise was quite aware that he'd screwed that one up, and he cringed his shoulders a bit in acknowledgment, hoping she'd let it go. He hadn't been scolded by anyone other than Snape for a long time, but that was enough to know he didn't like it. He didn't really know what to do other than apologize, though, and he'd already done that.

“Look at me?” Mrs. Weasley asked him.

Oh. He didn't much like that, either. Still, he'd learned only minutes ago that she really did mean it. He swallowed his bite of soup, and looked up at her as asked. Fortunately, this time, he was able to keep his emotions off his face. Not that he knew exactly what emotions were there. His temper had died as soon as he realized she'd seen it.

“Sorry, Ma'am,” he told her, again.

She was starting to hate that phrase – and that look. How on earth could she break through it?

“I didn't tell you,” she told him gently. You should have known. How was it that the boy honestly thought it was acceptable to disappear for three hours without even telling her he was leaving?

“If you do get permission,” she told him next, “and it starts raining like that, you come home. You may not spend hours out in the soaking wet and cold like that.”

He cringed his shoulders a little, again, like she was telling him off. Which, actually...she sort of was. What did the boy mean, staying out in the weather like that?!

It was like a lightbulb went on in her head, then. That was basic, basic self-preservation. She had to tell him to come in out of the April rain, as if it were some kind of rule. Surely he'd wanted to come back in?

Probably, he had. Certainly he should have. And yet he hadn't. It went right along with getting up at 5:30 in the morning in order to clean her kitchen. He didn't do it because he wanted to, he'd evidently done it because he thought it was what somebody else wanted – probably what she wanted. And this even though she'd explicitly told him it wasn't.

Molly huffed out a breath, frustrated. She'd told Blaise over and over that he was welcome, and he evidently hadn't believed a word she'd said. He still honestly thought she'd prefer him wait out in the cold rain while the rest of them ate lunch! How could she make him believe her?

“Honey, you are not a burden,” she told him. “We want you here, and we want you to be happy. We don't want you trying to earn your keep or stay out of our way; we want you to be part of the family!”

Blaise kept his head down as she spoke, thinking furiously. This was not good. Not good at all. Bad enough that she was upset with him for being out for that long, now she was finally explicitly telling him what she wanted of him – or at least, what she thought she wanted - and it wasn't something he could do.

“Be happy”? “Be part of the family”? What was the woman playing at? Did she not realize who he was?

I am a Death Eater's son, woman! he thought furiously. What on earth do you expect of me? He could do polite. He could work hard. He could keep his damned trap shut so she didn't realize the kind of viper that she'd invited into her nest. He could not do all that and pretend to be like Ron or the Twins or - Heaven forbid - Percy at the same time.

Perhaps...perhaps it would be better if he just told her. There was absolutely no way the adoption was going to work, anyway, and this...farce...was killing him. One day here, and already he was exhausted. And screwing up anyway. If she just kept him for the next two weeks, he could see about spending the summer with the Notts. Or, if that didn't work, then...well, somewhere else. At any rate he'd rather just sort it out now, than have her trying to mother him any longer, or let Ron keep thinking that Blaise was going to be his brother.

“I can't, Ma'am,” he told her finally. It was a dull sort of relief, to just tell the truth. He didn't even have to control his voice – the words came out completely toneless without him willing it.

“What do you mean, Honey?” she asked him. “What can't you do?”

Arthur came back into the room as she asked the question, dressed in slightly nicer robes than his usual faded and patched daywear. He looked briefly at the two of them, then quietly set about making himself tea, evidently deciding not to interrupt.

“I can't be a part of your family,” Blaise gritted out to both of them, irrationally irritated by Mrs. Weasley's endearment. “I can't be like your kids. I'm sorry, but I can't do it.”

There was a long, awful silence, as he waited for them to find a gentle way to agree with him. Hopefully, one of them would start talking about their great-aunt Mildred, or something – somebody else he could stay with for awhile. Or someplace.

Please, please just find me an orphanage, he thought dully. Anything's got to be better than this trainwreck. He was so, so sick of moving; of finding yet one more place where he was less permanent than the furniture. Or, in this case, the cut flowers. Certainly a glass of carnations would last longer. It always was the most idealistic women that managed him for the shortest time – that was why he'd been so determined to be of use. He really couldn't be anything more than a good servant, and he wasn't going to try.

It was the first time he'd tried just saying that, though. It was a relief. At least now Mrs. Weasley would understand. He didn't want to hurt her, but she'd been singularly obtuse, thus far. I can't be like your kids. I'm sorry.

“That's alright,” Mrs. Weasley told him finally. “You don't have to.”

Finally. She understood. Now hopefully-

“We don't want you to be like them,” she told him them. “We want you to be like you. You don't have to grow red hair and talk too loudly to be one of us.”

Oh. Well scratch that idea. She didn't get it, after all. Damned obstinate Gryffindors. Did he have to spell it out? Maybe he did. Certainly Ronald had enough obtuse moments, maybe his mother was the same.

“I am a Slytherin, Ma'am,” he told her. “Everybody in my family is a Slytherin and a pureblood and a Death Eater, because if you're not, you're not family. You think you want me to be myself, but myself is a member of the 'Noble and Most Ancient' House of Black. There are exactly three types of Blacks: imprisoned Death Eaters, wrongly acquitted Death Eaters, and the occasional charred hole in the fabric of the family tapestries.”

“Like you,” Mrs. Weasley interrupted him gently.

The short phrase punched into his diatribe like a fist to the stomach – the brutality of the two words shocking in light of Mrs. Weasley's usual warmth. He hadn't realized. How had he not realized? How did she know, when he hadn't thought of it? Now who's obtuse? he asked himself savagely. You idiot. You complete useless clod. How could you not realize? How could that possibly hurt this badly, now? It'd been months!

“Like me,” he confirmed shortly. The words came out sharp, which was the best he could do in terms of politeness at the moment. She was right. He was burned out. Of course he was burned out.

“And like us,” Mr. Weasley pointed out casually, his back still to them as he made his tea. It was the first time the man had spoken at all, and he said it as if it was no big deal at all.

The words came as an equal shock, though of a different sort. Just another thing that really should've occurred to him on his own. Arthur Weasley, son of Cedrella Black, burned out of the family tree for marrying Septimus Weasley. And his wife, Molly Weasley, née Molly Prewett. He'd seen her father's burned-out spot with his own eyes. The whole family tree from him down was on the list of enemies Grandfather had made him memorize when he was eight. No wonder Mrs. Weasley had felt so comfortable pointing out that his name was charred out, too.

Not that that really made it easier to hear. This was the end of the Zabini bloodline, right here. He was now nothing more to his entire family than a small black flaw on an already spotty tapestry. None of his children would be on it at all. In two months he'd somehow managed to avoid thinking about it enough that it'd never occurred to him what 'blood traitor' really meant. Grandfather, he remembered with a pang. Father. They'd probably disown him as quickly as the Luxanuses had. Who the hell was he, now?

Whatever Mr. Weasley said, he wasn't anything like them. Mr. Weasley's mother had been burned out. He'd never been a Death Eater, and neither had Mrs. Weasley. They even went to church, for goodness' sake. Mrs. Weasley probably spent the time thinking pretty thoughts about love and forgiveness. And sunshine and rainbows and pretty little ponies. Not like him, memorizing lists of enemies at the age of eight at the knee of a man who'd once been one of the Dark Lord's trusted schoolmates. He'd known then that he was going to be a Death Eater. Did they really still think that his new blood traitor status made him an innocent?

“My family has killed members of yours,” he pointed out to Mrs. Weasley, frustrated. How was she still not getting this? “I've been learning ward-breaking and dark spells since before I could read. My mother and my Aunt are together in Azkaban. Knowing my Aunt, they're probably throwing formal tea functions for the dementors. My father-” but there, his words failed, and he shook his head and pushed on to the main point.

“You don't want me, Ma'am,” he told her bluntly. “I no more belong in this house with this family than a barracuda belongs in the hen house with the baby chickens.”

He nearly winced as the words came out, suddenly realizing the implied insult. He hadn't intended it to sound so scornful, though in truth the family's warm happy familiness grated on him.

But Mrs. Weasley just relaxed in her seat, forearms resting on the table. “So we'll need to get you some water,” she answered.

He stared at her, completely derailed by the seemingly nonsensical statement. Mrs. Weasley didn't look in the least embarrassed by her statement, but the words at least sounded completely insane.

“W-water-” he repeated. He truly had no idea what she meant.

“Well I can see that you're upset, Blaise,” Mrs. Weasley told him warmly, “and I know that we're different than you're used to and you don't know what to do, but after all you're not telling me anything I didn't already know. We knew all that, already. We decided to adopt you anyway.”

He stared at her. Well, of course, she knew all that, in theory, but-

“We'll make it work,” Mrs. Weasley continued easily. “The current problem is apparently you needing to learn how to live with a bunch of noisy fluffy helpless baby birds. So...water. We'll help you figure it out.”

Blaise nearly winced again as Mrs. Weasley adopted his analogy and made it as vivid as she possibly could. She'd clearly heard the implied insult, but she didn't seem particularly bothered by the comparison – in fact she seemed amused. But then she wasn't reacting to anything correctly. Water. For the barracuda. Seriously? She's related to Fred and George after all, he realized.

“It's going to take a little while, Honey,” she told him more gently. “You've got a lot to learn and it's going to be hard in the meantime. We know that, and we'll teach you. For the moment, all you need to be doing is letting us help.”

Blaise stared at her. That sounded...almost sane. Almost. Snape had done similarly with Harry – still was doing, really – and it had worked. Nobody other than perhaps Harry himself would deny that he was Snape's son, now. His very difficult son, but his son nonetheless. But that was Snape. Snape had the Dark Mark himself; had, himself, come back from a very dark place. It made sense that he understood Harry's – and perhaps Blaise's - “issues”. But warm, pink, plump Mrs. Weasley with her brood of boisterous redheads and baby jackalopes? No way!

“So,” Mrs. Weasley continued determinedly. “We'll start with some basic rules.” She lifted her right forefinger as she continued.

“First, no going out without permission, like I said, and if you're miserable outside, you come in. No more disappearing because you think you're somehow in the way or we don't want you here. And no more cleaning, either, unless I explicitly ask it of you.” She'd put up a second finger for 'no more cleaning'. Apparently 'come in out of the rain' and 'no more disappearing' didn't merit their own fingers.

No going out without permission. No disappearing. No cleaning. Blaise swallowed. This was not at all how he'd thought this would go. And he was starting to think that it was very much not good. He really didn't know how to answer her, either.

Or, well, actually, he did. He'd been given an instruction. It was a very simple equation.

“Yes, ma'am,” he told her neutrally.

Mrs. Weasley gave him a bit of a look, at that, but whatever her objection to 'yes, ma'am,' she let it go. She wasn't kicking him out, he realized. He'd said everything he could think of to get her to understand why she should and she still wasn't. That should've helped, really, but at the moment he was still reeling from the shock. No going out without permission, he reminded himself firmly, memorizing it. No disappearing. No cleaning.

“For the moment, that means just stick with keeping your room neat and helping clean up after meals with the others,” she told him.

“Yes, ma'am,” he answered. That part was so obvious he didn't bother to try and remember it.

She held up a third finger. “Don't miss meals,” she told him. A fourth finger went up, and she continued. “Ron's room is yours, too, but don't go into any other bedrooms without their owner's permission. Bedtime is at ten, except on special occasions. You're to stay in bed except to go to the bathroom or get a glass of water.”

Bedtime was apparently rule number five, and the next finger to go up was the forefinger of her other hand. DO disappear at ten PM, and stay disappeared. Once again, the rule about not entering bedrooms was so obvious as to be useless.

“No fighting or being otherwise unkind to your siblings,” she continued, “and no roughhousing in the house. In general, anything noisy, messy, disruptive, or destructive happens outside.”

She paused with the six fingers still up, and asked. “Questions so far?”

Yeah, Blaise thought. Which asylum did you escape from, and how soon are the wardens going to catch up to you? Did she seriously expect him to roughhouse?

“No, Ma'am,” he told her.

“Good,” she told him. Then she frowned, briefly, and spoke again.

“Eat, Honey,” she told him. “It's okay.”

He didn't know what, exactly, was supposed to be 'okay', but he did understand that she was waiting for him to eat before she continued.

“Yes, Ma'am,” he told her, and spooned up another bite of soup.

“Good,” she told him. He looked up briefly, in time to see her lift a seventh finger and wiggle it in the air. “Use common sense. That means don't do anything you suspect we'd disapprove of, stay out of any foreseeable trouble or danger, and come to me or to Arthur for help if anything strikes you as dangerous. Or go to a teacher, if it's at school, of course. And of course you should comply with school rules as well, when you go back.”

She didn't hold up an eighth finger for the school rules, Blaise noticed irrelevantly. Did that come under 'common sense', then, or had she lost count at seven? He was pretty sure she'd missed counting a couple of the rules in between, too.

Stop it, he admonished himself. She was driving him crazy, but she was providing him a home. There was no call to get snarky with her. Stay out of trouble.

Eight rules. Or really, four that he actually needed to pay attention to and specifically remember. Stay in the house, come down for meals, go to bed at ten, and don't clean. Brilliant. He'd just spend the next two weeks in Ron's room, then. And then go back to keeping his nose clean at school with Snape breathing down his neck. Not much different than he had been, really, though he'd miss going out. And the actual rule against cleaning was a disaster.

“Blaise?” she said then.

She'd evidently ended her matter-of-fact if somewhat miscounted list, and was back to being gentle. But that tone meant she wanted him to look at her. He obeyed.

Her face was, as usual, kind and earnest. “The bad thing that happens if you disobey, is you get punished. We will never send you away, even temporarily. There is never any need to hide out in the rain.”

Right. And doing so had evidently made everything a thousand times worse. He'd somehow managed to push her into making cleaning actually against the rules. He could disobey a vaguely worded statement that he “didn't need to earn his keep.” He could not disobey an explicit instruction not to clean outside of prescribed circumstances, complete with threats of punishment for disobedience. Or certainly, he could not get caught doing so, and he didn't know how he could clean anything and have it go unnoticed. Or why he would, come to think of it. No good earning his keep if Mrs. Weasley didn't even know he was doing so.

No more cleaning, unless I explicitly ask it of you. Apparently Mrs. Weasley and Snape were on a page – they both somehow had it in for him, all of a sudden. And he was starting to think that Mrs. Weasley would be the worse of the two. Besides just not allowing him to earn his keep, she'd narrowed his acceptable living area to Ron's eight foot square bedroom, and even that he'd be sharing with Ron. He could only hope it didn't drive Ron nuts. At this rate he'd be out faster than the dirty dishwater.

And yes, he knew that she didn't intend to confine him to Ron's room. She just still intended for him to somehow magically become family – another of her noisy, disorderly Gryffindors. She'd somehow totally missed the part where he told her that that was something he could not do. Even if he wanted to “do” family, he hadn't the first clue how!

Except, she hadn't missed it. She just thought she had a plan. It's going to take a little while, honey. You've got a lot to learn and it's going to be hard in the meantime. We know that, and we'll teach you. For the moment, all you need to be doing is letting us help.

Ugh. If only he could believe that! He'd do anything- but he cut off the thought. No, no, and no. It was not possible, and he was not going to spend time imagining all of the wonders of family life two weeks before he went back to Hogwarts and Mrs. Weasley finally realized how much better off she was without him. Not. Happening.

But at least he was no longer so dangerously angry with her, and it sounded like he hadn't totally burned his bridges, yet. It was time for him to go figure out yet another strategy to get her to keep him, other than the utterly impossible one she kept suggesting. Or perhaps another strategy to get her to kick him out, since apparently that was his new plan 'B'. Why, exactly, had he tried that?

“We need to leave, Molly,” Arthur spoke up quietly.

She sighed, but nodded. “Think about it, Hon,” she told him.

Molly leaned on the doorway from the kitchen, watching Blaise and noting how he'd found a place crouched against the wall where Arthur and the other children could barely see him. There was space on the love seat next to Percy, but as usual Blaise was making himself as utterly unobtrusive and untouchable as possible. He'd seemed to relax a little at church, but then he'd consented to paint exactly one egg after they got home before cutting out as early as possible afterward, and spending the rest of the afternoon in his room. She'd called him down for dinner, and he'd come promptly, as usual eaten exactly what he was given – including exactly one roll when she insisted – and then gone upstairs again. Apparently he hadn't been able to resist Arthur's reading time, though – he'd crept down again as he'd done every evening of his suspension, and practically hid in his spot by the wall.

Arthur probably knew he was there as well as she did, but he was more patient than she was. The boy hadn't, to the best of her observation, believed a word she'd said to him that afternoon, and if he kept behaving like this, he never would. Basic human bonding behavior just wasn't in this kid's vocabulary. Or at least, not the family stuff. He'd evidently managed to make some friends at school, and even to get Severus very staunchly on his side. But Blaise was showing absolutely no inclination to actually get to know anyone here, or especially to be known. That had to stop.

Patience, she told herself anyway. Patience. She'd talk to Arthur, but after all Blaise had only been there for a day, this time. Bill and Charlie hadn't even met him, yet. None of the children other than Bill and Charlie even knew that Blaise had accepted, because she'd told them not to ask when she and Arthur had first informed them of the plan to adopt the boy. She'd made sure they understood how important it was that Blaise make his decision with as little pressure as possible, and then she'd wanted to wait for Bill and Charlie to come home so they could celebrate properly, together.

So. She couldn't possibly expect the boy to have settled in at all, yet. Still, though, she only had two weeks before the children all went back to Hogwarts. The situation really wasn't ideal, and if Blaise didn't start bonding by then -

Then he'll have to stay, she realized suddenly, relaxing a little at the thought. He wouldn't be the only school-aged wizard who studied magic at home. She'd need a letter from Dumbledore agreeing that it was necessary, but that shouldn't be a problem. Good, she concluded. If she had to, she'd do that. No problem. She didn't want to, if she didn't have to, but family was far more important than school, right now.

Sleeping in was wonderful, but Blaise only managed to sleep until about 6:30 before he was awake enough that his stomach started to tighten up. Pretty quickly, he wanted a distraction, and got up as quietly as he could manage. Fortunately, Ron slept like a log, and he was able to pull his clothing and schoolbooks out of his trunk without disturbing him. In the process, he found the Thestrel sketch he'd started in Snape's office days before. He tried working on it, for a bit, but his stomach didn't loosen at all.

No cleaning, he remembered. No missing meals. No going out without permission.

He had two hours to kill before he had to be down for breakfast, and he knew from experience that Ron would be asleep until Mrs. Weasley called up the ten-minute warning. If drawing wasn't enough of a distraction, schoolwork wasn't going to be, either. Through Ron's window, the sun was just barely under the horizon, leaving the whole world a hazy, misty, pinkish-grey. Warm enough that there was mist, and no frost. Beautiful.

The window let out directly onto a flattish part of the otherwise steeply-sloping roof, and the only other window that looked out on the same roof was on the same floor. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley slept in the Master bedroom one floor down, and on the other side of the house, and neither of them would be awake just yet. They couldn't see or hear anything that happened on this side and this floor.

Harry would've been out the window and on that roof in a heartbeat. It took Blaise two.

Once on the roof, Blaise became suddenly aware that Ron's room was on the fifth floor – in the attic, really. Getting down was going to be a challenge, but Blaise didn't hesitate. Heading away from where he knew the master bedroom was, Blaise found lower and lower parts of the roof, and then a tree growing close to the house. It had a branch at the right height...if he hung down. A bit of a scramble and a short drop later, and Blaise was free. He set his watch for eight AM and headed out.

...well, shit. He was an idiot. The ability to climb down a tree did not immediately imply the ability to climb up it. He'd heard that coming down was supposed to be harder, but in this case...he couldn't jump high enough to reach the branch he'd dropped down from. Unless he stole the cooking cauldron from Mrs. Weasley's damned jackalopes, he was stuck. And the cauldron was probably too short to help, anyway. He was in trouble. What the hell was I thinking? he thought suddenly. Why would he take that kind of a risk, just to take a walk at six thirty in the morning? He was seriously going insane, and now he was well and truly screwed.

He was still contemplating the issue and getting up his courage for a try at sneaking in the front door when he heard the creaking slide of a window opening. He looked up, startled – he'd checked carefully for any sort of movement in the windows before he even approached his tree – and saw Fred poking his head out of a second-floor window.

“Pssst!” Fred called. Blaise met eyes with him for a moment, then Fred ducked his head back in, and came out again with a rope ladder in his hands. He flopped it out over the windowsill as Blaise watched.

“Come on!” Fred called softly. “You wanna get caught? I heard what Mum told you!”

Blaise grinned up at him, relieved and somehow wonderfully happy for the help. Brothers, he remembered. It was nice to pretend, and for just a moment, he gave into the temptation. Brothers. Lots of them. What would that be like?

The next moment, George stuck his head out the same window, crowding his twin against the frame.

“Come on!” he hissed. “Do you have any idea how dead you'll be if Mum knows you snuck out?” This time, Blaise didn't hesitate. He clambered up the ladder and got inside just as Mrs. Weasley started calling everyone down for breakfast.

“Where were you?” Ron asked him when they were alone later. “I woke up and you weren't there.”

Blaise hesitated. Would Ron tell on him? No way. He could see Percy telling on him, if he found out, but not Ron.

“I went out for a walk,” Blaise said. “I'd've been back sooner but I couldn't get back in. Fred and George had to help me. Did you know the twins have a ladder tied in their window? They threw it out for me.”

Ron grinned. “Yeah I knew,” he said. “They won't always let me use it, though. They must like you.”

Blaise grinned back, warmed despite himself at the thought. “Nah,” he said anyway. “I'm just new. Probably tomorrow they won't let me.”

Ron snorted. “They love that thing,” he said. “Just like Dad with his funny gadgets from work. Mum probably should've put them on the fifth floor, 'stead of me.”

“Nah,” Blaise said again, still smiling. “Then they'd have five floors of ladder, rather than just one, and they'd break their necks.”

“Boys!” Mrs. Weasley called from downstairs. “Come down, please!”

Blaise startled guiltily at the call, then remembered that he was where he was supposed to be. She'd never know he'd been out unless Ron or one of the twins let it slip.

“Huh,” Ron commented. “Wonder what she wants?”

Bill and Charlie? Blaise wondered privately. But Mrs. Weasley had wanted it to be a surprise. He just shrugged, and followed Ron down the stairs.

“Bill!” Ron shouted exuberantly, barreling into his brother's slim chest.

“Hiya, Ron!” Bill answered. There was no hesitation at all in the arms he threw around his younger brother, and the strength of the hug practically picked Ron up from the floor. Ginny he actually did pick up, and she clasped her legs around his waist and clung like a monkey for her hug, seemingly completely unaware that she was supposed to be too old for that. Even Percy hugged his older brother, though as usual his joy was more reserved.

Blaise didn't quite know what he'd expected, but Bill Weasley wasn't it. He was at least twenty years old, and tall, with hair just long enough to be tied into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck. He had one ear pierced, with a small gold hoop in it. Blaise suspected that Mrs. Weasley didn't like that, but at the moment she was too thrilled at him being home to notice. A moment later, she turned to Blaise, and smilingly took his arm to pull him towards the newcomer.

“Bill, this is Blaise. Blaise, your oldest brother Bill,” she said. She sounded pleased as punch.

Blaise felt his eyes widen a little as she presented him. Somehow, it sounded more like she was showing Blaise to Bill than the other way around – like she wanted to show him off. He'd seen the behavior from the Luxanuses, but he couldn't fathom why Mrs. Weasley would do it. He'd never figured out what to do, in this scenario, so he just stood still and let them look at him, like he'd done meeting Mrs. Weasley for the first time.

“Hello, little brother,” Bill told him. “I'm glad to meet you.”

Blaise felt his breathing catch, and he met Bill's eyes despite himself. The man hadn't seemed surprised to hear Mrs. Weasley tell Blaise that Bill was his brother – and he hadn't hesitated to confirm it, either. Apparently, Mrs. Weasley had told Bill he was being adopted. His throat constricted a little at the thought, and he took a slow, deep breath. Pretending a little was one thing, but hearing a complete stranger call him brother-

“'Little brother'?” he heard one of the twins echo. “Of course she'd tell him first!”

“Oh, as if you didn't guess,” Mrs. Weasley answered him.

So she'd definitely told him, then. And this 'brother' obviously had no more objections than Ron did.

Older brothers were really not something Blaise knew what to do with. He'd never previously been in a family that had any other kids, at all. Everybody he'd lived with previously had been somehow related to him, and Death Eaters for the most part wanted as few children around as possible: enough, maybe, to get an heir, but not enough to even make replacement. The families who already had a child – really just the Malfoys – had no interest in adding another.

We're going to die out, in a generation, he realized suddenly. Malfoy and he were the only children among four sisters and four grandparents. None of the other lines of Blacks had any children of their generation, and neither of them even bore the Black family name. Regulus Black was dead, and Sirius was in Azkaban for life. So much for the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

The Weasleys certainly didn't have that problem, and yet Mrs. Weasley was still pretending she wanted one more. And this oldest son of hers was calling him brother. Little brother. And Fred and George were rescuing him from his own folly, and Ron was willingly sharing his room and calling him brother, too. The whole family was crazy.

What did one do with ten-years-older men who claimed you as their brother at the first meeting? Bill smiled as Blaise stared, and it was the same smile as Mrs. Weasley gave him, sometimes – compassionate, and faintly worried. Like he was a sick puppy they'd picked up off the street. Blaise twisted his lips a little and hoped it looked like a smile.

This was why Bill was here, he realized, feeling his heart pound in his chest. Bill and Charlie were here for Easter, but Bill had already known what was going on when he'd arrived – he'd expected this introduction. Mrs. Weasley had called her oldest sons home to meet him. For all he knew, they'd taken off work in order to do it. What must they think of him? Did they know where he'd come from?

And he was just – staring, Blaise realized. He hadn't even returned the greeting. “Hello,” Blaise managed. “...Thank you.”

'Nice to meet you' would've been a lie. 'Panicked' was closer. There was no way Mrs. Weasley was going to let him just spend the day in Ron's room, now. He could hear his own blood pounding in his ears, and took another deep breath, hoping to quiet it.

“You get a hug, too,” Bill informed him finally. He stepped forward, and did as he'd warned.

As usual, Blaise couldn't return his hug, and was grateful that the darkness of his skin made his blush unnoticeable.

Bill smiled teasingly. “You'll get used to it, around here,” he told Blaise.

“Bill!” Mrs. Weasley scolded. “Have you never heard of a little tact?”

“Nope,” Bill told her. “And I get to hug my siblings. It's the rules.”

Mrs. Weasley maintained her glare for all of half a second before she gave up and beamed at her oldest son, clearly absolutely thrilled at his words. As before, Blaise felt like he was watching through the slightly uneven glass of a fishbowl, listening to the conversation through inches of water. There, yet somehow – separate. Just a pair of eyes watching other people move and talk and hearing himself respond.

How on earth was Mrs. Weasley going to extricate herself from this situation, now? Now everybody knew that Blaise was being adopted, she was presumably working on the paperwork, her oldest sons had come home specifically to meet their “little brother”, and Bill at least was evidently as determined as she was to make him family. Where was her contingency plan? Did she have no notion that she and Arthur might want to back out of this thing?

No, she doesn't, he realized. She really, actually doesn't. She has no 'Plan B', at all. Had it really never occurred to the woman that she might want to try out the idea, first? See how it would go; see how he would fit into the family?

She really, actually, meant to keep him, he realized with a shock. No matter what. She'd honestly made that much of a commitment, on purpose, without even knowing him. He couldn't- he didn't-

Everybody's attention was on Bill. As quietly as he could, Blaise extricated himself from the happy crowd and went into the house...and left straight out the back door. He was running before he even got off the landing.

Bill watched his new little brother carefully, noticing as he turned and quietly escaped the crowd, face absolutely still. He hoped he hadn't scared the poor kid too badly. They were a pretty overwhelming sort of family, even for adults to visit, and Blaise didn't even seem like a normal child. Mum had warned him, some. He is very shy, at least with Arthur and I, she'd said in the letter asking him to take leave from work and come home. I think he's friendly with Ron and the Twins, when we're not around, but he seems to avoid your father and me as much as he can. He hadn't expected the boy to take one look at him and flee, though.

“Mum?”

They all looked up at the word, going abruptly silent. There was just something in Percy's tone that alerted them. Percy was standing in the doorway to the house, uncertainty unusually obvious in his posture. He'd said 'Mum' instead of his usual over-dignified 'Mother', Bill realized.

“I was coming out of the bathroom and I saw-” he cut off, clearly unsure about what he was reporting. “Did Blaise ask to go on a walk, or something? Only, he just headed out the back door, and-” He cut off again. “Mum, I think he's run off,” he managed finally. “He was moving fast, and he didn't even see me and I think- he really didn't look happy...”

He'd fled, Bill realized in an instant. Really, actually fled. He'd just thought the boy had gone into the house to hide for a bit. “Am I that scary?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“No,” Mum told him softly. “He's just that scared. I talked to him yesterday about not acting like a house-elf...” she trailed off, and Bill realized that she was sheet white behind her freckles, her entire face drawn down in horror and fear.

Blaise had fled, Molly realized, guilt-stricken. She'd pushed him into actually running away.

“Do we go after him?” Bill asked her.

Did they go after him? She was frozen, her heart pounding so hard in her chest it was as loud as her oldest son's voice. Did they go after him?

“N-no,” she said finally, speaking over the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. The calm tone felt monstrously false – like it was somebody else's voice. Her son. Her son had run from her. “I don't want to be chasing him down if he's already running.”

“What if he doesn't come back, though?”

That was Percy, she realized, his voice devoid of its usual pomposity. It was unusual for him to sound at all worried, especially about something that wasn't school-related. It made him sound very young.

“He doesn't have anywhere else he can go,” Molly told him, calming some at the truth in her own words. “If the clock says he's lost, we can go find him, but as long as he knows where he is and he's not in danger, we need to give him some time to calm down and come back on his own.”

“Didn't you say he's a recent blood-traitor?” Bill asked her. “What if-?”

“He's on foot,” Molly told him. “He can't apparate, so he can't get anywhere really dangerous to him. I'll go after him in a half-hour or so if he hasn't returned by then.”

The sense of animal panic eventually died down, and Blaise found himself on his knees, panting and sweating with exertion and fear. He'd run. Like a hunted animal. He was in the middle of some woods. Abruptly, his stomach heaved, and he leaned forward just in time to throw up all over the dry leaves and moss instead of his knees. He spat out as much as he could, but he had no water with him. Nor any other supplies other than his wand. The traceable one. He was an idiot.

Where did he go, now? Back? His head swam and his stomach heaved again at the thought, but mercifully he didn't actually throw up this time. He couldn't go back. No way could he go back to that house full of people and Mrs. Weasley and her rules. Not after having run away in blatant defiance of all of them. There was no way she wouldn't've noticed his absence, by now. He couldn't go back.

Fortunately, while she didn't have a plan 'B', he did.

But he'd need his stuff. He couldn't just leave it all behind and expect Mr. Nott to purchase new clothing and school books for him on top of everything else. It was already iffy that the man would help him at all.

The very thought of going back made him want to throw up again, and he took a deep breath to try to calm down. Not now. NOT now.

Tonight, he realized. The Weasleys didn't lock the back door at night. He could sneak back in, get his stuff, and then leave. He didn't have to face the family again.

Merlin, but he was horrible. He was going to throw everything they offered him back in their faces for no reason he could rationally discern. He was a coward...and an idiot. Was he really going to burn out his one contingency plan without anybody actually making him leave? Whatever Mrs. Weasley did, she wasn't going to kick him out for this. Not this soon after having introduced him to her oldest son and told the others she was going to adopt him. If nothing else, that would be far too embarrassing for her.

But she was going to end up not wanting him, even if she didn't actually kick him out.

But was that really worse than her actually doing so? He was taken care of, here! What was so horrible about a roof over his head and plenty of food and kind treatment? Why the panic? If Mrs. Weasley thought she was keeping him, so much the better!

There was no point in his going further away. He was probably already a couple of miles from the Burrow, it wasn't like they were going to stumble into him. If he went further, it would just make it more difficult to come back for his stuff. Really, he ought to head back while he still had a rough sense of the direction he'd come from. If he lost that, he'd be sunk.

For a moment, he was frozen with indecision, but the smell of his own sick finally forced him to his feet. Still, he just stood. It made no sense to go further away, but he couldn't make his feet turn him around, either.

But he was not just going to stand here over a pile of his own sick-up. No way, no how. Shaking his head, he walked another mile or so away from the house before finally making himself stop. It was going to be lame enough going without any food or water until evening if he didn't exhaust himself going further away than necessary.

She couldn't find him, Molly realized with increasing worry. She had nothing to track him with, no notion of what direction he'd gone in...she'd walked a mile straight out from the back door, calling all the time, and there'd been no answer. None at all. And a mile out, the circle was just getting too large to search properly, even with all of them and magic. The boy wasn't even of her blood, to search for him that way.

He'd missed lunch, again, she realized. Or lunchtime, at least. She hadn't actually prepared a real lunch, today, nor had anybody asked for it. Everybody had fanned out looking for Blaise.

Should she have chased him down while it was still possible? What if he didn't come back? Where could he go, with no supplies, not even food and water? How could she find him?

The clock had never shown 'lost', so wherever Blaise was, he still didn't intend to come home. He'd truly cleared off. Again.

Damn that clock. It was really only marginally useful, more of a sentimental novelty than a survival tool. “Run away from home” wasn't a category she'd thought to tell the clockmaker to include, even though “prison” and “mortal peril” had both occurred to her, what with the twins getting into trouble since they could walk. Oddly enough, the clock wasn't showing “traveling,” either, so it didn't seem the boy was really going anywhere, either. Or, at least, not anywhere the clock understood as “traveling.” The thing could be a bit odd and arbitrary in its choices, even between the categories she had thought to include.

And Blaise was off somewhere in the woods, neither 'lost' nor 'home' nor 'traveling'. Just 'out and about,' exactly like he'd gone on a walk again. She hoped that meant he would come home on his own, but she'd keep looking anyway. It seemed irrational, but she couldn't just sit around and pretend like everything was normal, either.

One hour. Two hours. Dinner. Bedtime. Where was he? Molly had gone out to call, Arthur had gone out to call, they'd all walked out looking, they'd finally come in to eat, then they'd gone out again. The worst part was, Molly's useless clock still didn't say 'lost'. Wherever the boy was, he was probably still staying out deliberately. He'd truly run away from them.

Molly had called him at work when the boy had only been gone half an hour. He'd explained to his boss and the man had told him to go home. But he felt useless. He'd been friendly with Blaise, both during his detention and since he'd been home for Easter break, but he'd had to work, too. The family couldn't afford for him to take off, even to get to know his own son. All he'd ever gotten out of the boy was brief, polite answers before the boy somehow pulled a third party into the conversation and then escaped from it himself. He managed to not come off prickly, or angry, or anything – just incredibly elusive and impossible to get to know.

Molly had finally got more out of him yesterday before church, Arthur remembered. It had seemed like such progress, finally, like they'd gotten the smallest little toehold. He could finally understand some of why the boy was so determined not to get to know them. You don't want me, Ma'am. Like Molly was a little child who thought she wanted a pet monkey and didn't realize how much trouble it would be.

Arthur had hoped that the boy would relax some, enough to have some fun and show his real personality and very likely get into normal eleven-year-old boy trouble with the rest of his siblings. Molly had told him about the early morning cleaning, and how the boy had shown some resistance when she'd forbidden it – the first thing he'd shown other than respect and stiff obedience since they'd met him. It had given Arthur some hope that something, at least, was going on in the boy's head. That something was changing.

And then he'd run away. What on earth had they done to scare the boy so badly? Was being asked not to act like a house-elf and to let them show him how to join in family activities really that bad?

He'd had hope, when Blaise had finally showed a little anger at Molly's insistence that they actually wanted him. He'd finally actually told them why he didn't think the adoption would work. Molly had promised they'd teach them. He'd thought the boy had even listened to her. Who knew what Blaise really thought of it, though. Arthur still didn't think the boy believed them. After all, he'd promptly cleared off, which violated at least two of the rules Molly had listed.

Which is further evidence that he doesn't intend to return, Arthur realized with a sudden chill. The boy had been absolutely determined, so far, not to be trouble, and Molly had made it impossible for Blaise not to realize that leaving without permission before lunch and not returning for hours was 'trouble'. He had to be calm, by now, and he still hadn't returned. It was definitely starting to look like he wasn't going to.

Bill was outside wandering the woods, somewhere, though he had to know that there was far too much area to search, especially if Blaise hid from him or continued to move away. Molly had sent the other children to bed, though she was showing no signs of going to bed herself. It was full dark out already, and she was sensible enough to realize that if she hadn't found him during the day, she wasn't going to be able to now. But she was still going outside at intervals to call for him, apparently hoping that wherever he was hiding, he could hear her. Arthur doubted it. Still, he'd stay up with her and pray. It at least made him feel like he was doing something.

“Molly,” he told her when she came back in. “We need to plan what to do tomorrow.”

She looked at him, and frowned. “Tomorrow?” she asked him.

“I was thinking I would go in as soon as they're open and file a missing persons report,” he told her gently.

“The ministry...” she answered, her voice shaking a little. “What will they do, if they find him, when he doesn't want to come back?”

The pain in her voice was obvious. “He's under age,” Arthur told her. “And we've been granted temporary guardianship pending the adoption. The aurors will bring him back here.”

“Aurors?” Molly protested. “He's not a criminal! And I don't know where he thinks he's going, but if he truly doesn't want to be here...I don't want them to force him back if he doesn't want to come...”

“He is eleven years old,” Arthur answered her gravely. “He does not have the right to choose. We didn't technically need to ask him before starting the adoption paperwork.”

Molly gave him a pained look, and he spoke again, trying to reassure her. “He did agree, Molly. He's just scared right now. You heard what he said, before. He does not believe that we really want him here.”

Molly snorted lightly. “No,” she said. “He believes us that we want him right now, he just thinks that that'll go away once we actually get to know him.”

Arthur managed to lift his lips at that, but he was aware that it was a very strained sort of smile. “He had a good try trying to convince us, didn't he?” he told her. “And yet he still failed to tell us anything about himself, only a little about his family life. He might not realize it yet, but he is one of us. We just need to convince him.”

“Even against his will?” Molly demanded.

“If necessary,” Arthur told her. “He is our son. He does not get to decide not to be, especially when he has nowhere else to go. If he doesn't come back on his own, we'll ask for aurors, and maybe ask some of the old Order for help. I doubt that they'll actually have to actually drag him back – just track him down.”

Molly winced at the word 'drag', but nodded sadly. They were silent, for a moment, but then she spoke up again, her voice sounding defeated. “He's really not going to come home, is he?” she said.

No, he's not. It was almost tempting, to just decide that there was no hope. Then, at least, this awful waiting would be over. But that was neither rational nor virtuous.

“We'll see,” Arthur told his wife. “Perhaps in the dark and cold of the night, he will change his mind.”

Molly sighed. “I'll just keep calling, then,” she told him.

Arthur watched her walk out, indecisive. The boy was much more likely to come back for Molly, than for him, and two of them calling wouldn't help more than just one. It was better to just sit, and wait, and plan, and pray.

Yet somehow, as little time as he'd spent with the boy, he knew his fear was nearly as strong as Molly's. The image of Blaise quietly sitting against the wall, refusing to even sit on the couch with them, but listening just the same, seemed seared into his brain. His son. This was his son, wandering in the woods for hours and hours. Still not lost – or no more lost than he was at home, at any rate. Either the boy had an amazing sense of direction, he wasn't moving, or he'd found his way into town.

If he'd gotten to town and had been carrying a few coins, the boy could be anywhere, by now. Molly was right that he'd've had to apparate, to get anywhere in ten minutes, but it had been hours, now.

But the town was miles away, and Blaise had never seen it. The clock would've showed lost. Which meant that the boy was still in the woods, somewhere. That really didn't feel any better.

They weren't going to find him, now. The boy would have to come home on his own. But it was looking less and less likely that he would do so.

“BLAAISE!” he heard, then. He winced. Poor Molly. He could hear her exhaustion in her voice, and still she called and called. The likelihood that the boy would come home was getting smaller by the hour, but he couldn't help but hope, too, that Blaise would hear Molly's calling and come home.

“BLAAISE!” He could hear the loud, drawn-out call before he could even see the house.

“BLAISE?”

Blaise stopped as he got to the edge of the woods, and saw Mrs. Weasley's dumpy figure in the back yard, backlit by the lamp that hung next to the door. She was calling. It was a little past three in the morning, and she was calling. Probably, she'd been doing it all night. He hadn't even expected her to still be awake.

How was he going to get his stuff, if she was still awake and looking for him? Damnit, woman, don't you give up? He wasn't her son.

“BLAAAISE! Come home, son! Please?”

Blaise winced. He was starting to feel like he'd done something bad, to make her sound like that. But – was she seriously still calling him?

“BLAAISE!”

Blaise swallowed. What was he going to do? He couldn't leave without his stuff, he couldn't sneak past her to get it... and she was still calling him.

He couldn't go back. He couldn't. He'd broken all of her rules, he was a Death Eater's son...

“BLAISE? Come on, Blaise! Come home.”

Finally, Mrs. Weasley turned, and went back inside, but somehow he thought she'd be out and calling him again, if he waited too long before returning.

Blaise felt his stomach clench. He was insane. He could not seriously go back. She'd be furious with him. But she won't kick you out. Not if she's calling like that. If he did go back, though – somehow, it felt like a big, big deal. He couldn't go back, and then leave again tomorrow. Not with Mrs. Weasley calling him like that.

He could not seriously be thinking about going back. But he couldn't exactly get his stuff now, either. What could he do?

Somehow, he got his feet to start moving – just short, tentative little strides, at first, then a slightly faster creep, but he didn't have far to go, and soon he found himself standing in front of the back door, heart in his throat.

She didn't know he was there, yet. He could still leave, worry about how to get his stuff later... he lifted a hand, and knocked, probably too softly for her to even hear it, but he couldn't make himself knock again. He was stuck staring at his feet, unwilling to look up lest she open the door. Nothing. Stomach clenching even tighter, Blaise forced himself to step forward again and knock harder. This time, he heard footsteps from inside, and he stepped back as the door swung open.

“Blaise,” Mrs. Weasley whispered. Then louder, elated - “Blaise!”

She came out to him, and Blaise found himself enclosed in her arms, pressed tightly into her chest as she hugged him.

“Blaise,” she said again. “Oh, Blaise, thank God.”

He'd come back! Molly thought. She couldn't hardly believe it. Hours and hours she'd been calling, and now finally-!

“Oh, you are in so much trouble, young man,” she told him fiercely, not loosening her hug at all.

“Srry,” she heard indistinctly. She was smothering him, but she couldn't seem to let go. Finally, she transferred her hold to his shoulders, and pushed him back to look at him. Instantly, his gaze went to the floor.

“No,” she told him directly. “Look at me.”

His shoulders hunched, and for the first time he openly disobeyed her, shaking his head just slightly in refusal.

“Don't you tell me no,” she told him warmly. “You're in plenty enough trouble as it is. Look at me, Blaise.”

Finally, he did, and his gaze was wide open and terrified before he quickly looked down again. It was the most open expression he'd ever shown her.

“Oh, Blaise,” she said, her temper dying down. She pulled him into a hug again, this time more gently. “My son,” she told him softly. “Oh, my son. Thank God.”

This...Blaise didn't know what to do with this, though the feeling that he'd done something bad was growing worse by the minute. Mrs. Weasley was crying. Holding him, and crying. It wasn't the first time he'd disappeared from a house, and nobody had ever reacted like this before. What did he do now? He felt like a lump, just standing there while she cried on him, but he truly had no idea what he was supposed to do. My son. She was calling him her son.

It took long minutes, but finally Mrs. Weasley let him go. Or, well, for a moment Blaise thought she had, but a moment later she was holding onto him again. She gripped both of Blaise's upper arms, this time, holding him away from her as she looked him over. A moment or two later, she transferred her grip to one of his wrists and began towing him with her into the house. Like a naughty two-year-old.

“Arthur!” she called, loud in the darkened house. “Arthur, Arthur he's here! He came home! Come and see!”

Mr. Weasley was up, too? Didn't he have work in the morning? But the man came to the door of the mudroom at the summons, and Blaise saw his mouth open briefly in surprise to see him...and then his whole upper body loosened and slumped for a moment, almost like he was in pain, or suddenly exhausted. He closed his eyes as he did it, and even reached a hand up to rub them, but when he opened his eyes again, his gaze was penetrating, direct on Blaise's, like he could read Blaise's thoughts through his pupils.

“What made you change your mind?” he asked. His tone wasn't exactly angry, but it was brisk and businesslike. He meant for Blaise to answer.

Blaise stared at him, for a moment, confused, and then realized what Mr. Weasley meant. But how did the man know?

After experience with Snape, Blaise didn't dare lie to him. Not with the way the man was staring into his face. Mr. Weasley had clearly realized that Blaise hadn't intended to return, and he wanted to know why he had. Blaise picked his words with care.

“I- I didn't, really,” he admitted, ashamed. “I just needed my things. But then I heard-” but he cut off, there, and looked down. They'd understand what he meant, but somehow it felt way too personal to speak of, or admit to. She had called for him, but he still didn't quite know why. There was no reason why it should've had an effect on him. It was hard to even admit that he'd heard her calling. My son.

“You were still awake,” he said quickly. “I couldn't-”

“So you're planning on leaving again, then?” Mr. Weasley demanded.

Damn. That wasn't what he'd meant, but he could see how Mr. Weasley could assume that. If he'd just come back for his things, he'd leave again. He could still do it.

“I-” he started. But there was nothing he could say to that. Mrs. Weasley had been calling – she clearly wanted him to come home and wouldn't want him to leave again – or at least, now right now - but what did Mr. Weasley think?

“Allow me to make one thing very, very clear to you, Blaise,” Mr. Weasley said seriously, staring down at him. “You are not permitted to run away like that. Ever. You are a very lucky young man that you came back on your own because I would have been very displeased to have to come find you or to have you brought back here by the aurors. And I would have found you, eventually. You are a part of this family whether you like it or not and somehow I would have found you and brought you back. Is that clear?”

Blaise swallowed. That...was not at all what he expected. Though for once he knew what was expected of him. “Y-yes, sir,” he said softly.

“We will mostly talk about this tomorrow,” Mr. Weasley continued, “but know that you are in very deep trouble and if it happens again, either while you are at Hogwarts or while you are home, you will very much regret it. And if you do run away again some time in the future and come to your senses, you will want to be very, very prompt about coming back before I have to come after you. I will come after you, and I will not be pleased. You. Are. our. Son, and you are to stay here where we can look after you. Am I understood?”

“Y-yes sir,” Blaise said again, flinching. Even Snape hadn't managed to tell him off quite this effectively. But – you are our son. You are to stay here where we can look after you. Damn, but that hurt. The thing was, he actually felt like their son, a little, at the moment. Like...he'd merely misbehaved, and he was in trouble, like any of their other children would be. But that was a fantasy he couldn't afford to indulge. No matter what they said, he wasn't really one of theirs.

“Good,” Mr. Weasley told him. “Then it is time for bed.”

“Dinner,” Mrs. Weasley corrected sharply. “You missed two meals today, Blaise. Go upstairs and get into your pajamas, then come get dinner.”

The way she said it, you'd think that missing two meals was a crime worthy of capital punishment, and he'd just been sentenced. He believed her that she actually was mad at him, but she was somehow singularly bad at showing it. At least to him. He knew Ron was never confused. Still, at the moment Mr. Weasley was a lot scarier, and Blaise was just happy for the excuse to leave the kitchen.

He shot a hesitant look at Mr. Weasley, who'd told him to go to bed, but Mrs. Weasley spoke up again.

“Quickly, please,” she added then. “It is already very late.”

And Mr. Weasley nodded confirmation, which relieved the tension.

“Yes, Ma'am,” Blaise said.

“Call me Mum, dear,” she told him gently. “I know it doesn't feel right just yet, but please call me Mum.”

He stared at her, but he didn't dare refuse. “Mum,” he said softly. He'd never used the word to anyone else, and it felt distinctly strange on his tongue. He turned his back on her and headed quickly up the stairs.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The rest of the evening was vaguely hideous. He snuck up the stairs and into the bedroom as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake Ron, but it was a lost cause. As soon as the door creaked open, Ron rolled over to turn on his lamp, then turned to look at him.

“You're back!” he exclaimed. “Where'd you go?”

“Umm...no time,” Blaise told him. “Your Mum said to hurry, and your Da is pretty mad.”

Ron's eyes went wide. “Merlin,” he said softly. “They are going to kill you. Don't worry, mate, I'll arrange a real nice funeral service for you. I'll write the eulogy myself – or better yet, have Hermione write it. What do you want on your headstone? Can I have your broom?”

But Blaise really wasn't in the mood to joke, and he had no time anyway. He changed into his pajamas as quickly as possible, not daring to dawdle. But he needed information, he realized.

“Your Da is mad,” he told Ron instead. “Do you know what he's likely to do?”

“Depends,” Ron answered. “Last time – well you saw, I was stuck in my room the whole week. But it's different for each of us. Sucks, though, I'll tell you that. Mum'll yell, and she gets mad easier, but it's Dad that'll really make you regret it, if you do make him angry.”

“I'll bet,” Blaise agreed. That wasn't nearly as much information as he'd hoped for, but he was out of time. Pajama-clad and barefoot, he turned towards the door.

“You'll want slippers,” Ron told him. “The kitchen floor's cold at night, and Mum doesn't like us being up in bare feet. Take mine if you don't have any.”

Good to know. He didn't have slippers, but Ron's were on the floor between the two beds. Blaise slipped them on and finally moved to the door to head downstairs.

He was just heading out of the room when Ron spoke up behind him. “They're your Mum and Dad too, you know.”

So they keep telling me. Fortunately, Blaise was already mostly out the door, and didn't need to answer.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Pajamas, check, slippers, check...next came 'come get dinner'. Wonderful.

But nothing for it. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley definitely weren't going to kick him out – at least not at the moment - but he didn't really care to find out what they would do, if he annoyed them further.

He got downstairs, but lingered at the entrance to the kitchen, not really sure where to go once he went in. Mrs. Weasley was at the stove, preparing, at his best guess, his death-by-tomato-soup-and-cheese-sandwich. If she thought that was a punishment, she was sorely mistaken, but he couldn't honestly believe that. That was just Mrs. Weasley. Somehow, she must've figured out that he liked it, and so prepared it now when she was furious with him. As an especial torture a la Madame Weasley, he was to eat it in his pajamas. He'd eaten in his pajamas before, but always furtively – getting up in the middle of the night to raid the icebox or beg someone's house-elves for leftovers. Never had he done so when the lady of the house was going to actually see him.

Mr. Weasley was seated at the table, now, and he looked up just as Blaise's gaze rested on him.

“Come on, then,” Mr. Weasley told him. “Come sit. We won't bite.”

Right. Still, he'd been given a definite instruction. Feeling awkward, Blaise came and sat in the chair Mr. Weasley had indicated, avoiding his gaze by staring at the very plain table-top. It was surely obvious that that was what he was doing, but he really couldn't bring himself to meet anyone's eyes. He'd come back. They'd let him come back. What happened, now?

Arthur watched as Blaise perched on his chair, completely quiet and barely moving. Barely breathing, even, as if even the room to fully inflate his lungs was not to be taken for granted. Molly placed the food in front of him, and set a gentle hand on his shoulder as she moved away. The boy thanked her softly as she put the food down but visibly flinched at the physical contact and waited until she moved away before tentatively starting to eat. It almost made him want to shake the boy – to somehow snap him out of it. Were they such monsters, that Blaise needed to ensure that they really intended for him to eat the food they'd placed in front of him? Did he think that after calling for so many hours, Molly didn't really mean it that he was welcome here?

Relax, damnit! he thought. Just bloody well relax. We're not going to begrudge you the air in your lungs.

Perhaps somebody had, he thought. Molly had said that Blaise had been through several different homes. Who knew what had caused the boy to lose his home in the past? Molly's tack of telling the boy explicitly what would and would not get him into trouble seemed like a good one, though now that the boy had broken those rules it was more complicated. How did you punish a child who was already this frightened? Did you punish a child for breaking rules out of this kind of fear?

Yes. Sort of. Molly had pointed out when Blaise was upstairs that in some ways this was a blessing – she had the perfect excuse to keep the boy very, very close to her with very, very explicit instructions about where he was supposed to be at all times. Hopefully, if there was no way the boy could get it wrong, he'd relax a bit better. And it would look, on the outside, like they were punishing him. And Blaise would probably even see it as a punishment himself, though perhaps not the one he was expecting. Certainly their other children would see it as harsh enough. Which was important. Blaise already really didn't feel like one of their brood. As different as he was – as much different handling as he did genuinely need – it wouldn't do to let anyone think that he was somehow in a different category from their other children; somehow not 'theirs' enough to be punished with the others as needed.

Though at this point, he would welcome a little misbehavior. They couldn't prove that they were really keeping him no matter what if he refused to even test them. Running away in sheer terror wasn't exactly his preferred form of misbehavior, but he'd take what they could get, right now. Blaise had broken the rules, so they had a chance to show him what happened when they were displeased with him. They'd work with what they had.

Blaise ate quickly, neatly, and silently. It put Arthur in mind briefly of the Last Supper – the Israelites taking a quick meal of lamb and unleavened bread before fleeing Egypt. It was hard not to try and reassure him, but he doubted that it would actually help. Right now, it would just point out that they were bothered by his nervousness. The boy couldn't exactly relax on purpose.

Blaise ate quickly, not really feeling hungry but wanting out from under the Weasleys' worried stares. Soon, the food was gone, and he sat quietly with his hands very still in his lap, waiting for an instruction.

Molly gave a deep sigh before she spoke, and she sounded tired. “Alright, Blaise,” she said. “Go on up to bed, now. We'll talk more tomorrow.”

Thank goodness for explicit instructions. “Yes, Ma'am,” he told her.

“Mum, honey,” she corrected him softly.

Blaise nearly flinched, but kept it off his face. “...Mum,” he repeated obediently. “...Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, son,” Mr. Weasley said.

It took him a long time to fall asleep, and it felt like only a second later that he heard Mrs. Weasley's call up the stairs. For once, he'd slept as late as Ron.

“Alright, boys!” she shouted. “It's eight o'clock! Rise and shine!”

“I'M NOT A BOY!” Ginny bellowed back from the first floor.

“YOU'RE ALREADY AWAKE!” Molly replied, just as loud.

It was a ritual they went through every morning, Blaise had learned. Or, every morning when there were enough of them there to merit Molly bellowing up the stairs for her boys, anyway. Presumably it changed when all the boys were at school and Ginny was the only one home. It was strangely pleasant to wake up to, despite the noise. There was so much good feeling in the silly ritual – always exactly the same – between mother and daughter.

This morning, though...call me Mum, dear. He couldn't go downstairs. He just...couldn't. And had Mrs. Weasley said eight o'clock? Usually it was seven. Usually, she hasn't stayed up all night calling for you, he reminded himself. It didn't make him feel any better.

“Breakfast in ten!” Mrs. Weasley called last.

Ron woke up to his mother's calling and greeted him blearily before heading for the bathroom down the hall. He'd clean his teeth and wash his face and very likely go straight down in his pajamas, Blaise knew.

Blaise sat on the edge of his mattress with his bare feet on the floor, gripping onto the sheets of his bed with both hands. The window beckoned, but he didn't have time for a walk – and, realistically, he couldn't trust himself to come back again a second time. Not this morning, at any rate. We'll talk more, tomorrow.

She wouldn't've made him call her 'mum' if she was planning on kicking him out after all. Somehow the thought didn't help in the slightest. Finally Blaise pulled his feet off the floor and lay back down under the covers, this time pulling them over his head. He couldn't really fall back asleep, but he managed a light doze, focussing vaguely on lists of potions ingredients and an old daydream or two until Mrs. Weasley called again up the stairs.

“Breakfast!”

The call woke him up from his doze, and he uncovered himself and sat up again, feeling his heart pounding. Breakfast. With Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Bill and Ron and the others... or the window out onto the roof. The forest.

And homelessness and possible starvation, he reminded himself sharply. Not to mention how bloody ungrateful that would be. An image came to his mind of Mrs. Weasley, calling and calling and calling... he could not run away again. He would not.

Call me Mum, dear.

His heart beat was loud in his ears, and it was all he could do to just stay on his bed. He had to go down, though. He had to. Any moment now, he would get up, and go downstairs, and get breakfast. Just...any moment now. Just as soon as his heart slowed a little. He wasn't even dressed yet and it was time to go down.

He just had to go. He had to. But he was just sitting there, somehow, his stomach twisting itself in knots all the time. Surely, surely it was better to just go?

He didn't know how long he sat frozen, but eventually, there was a quiet knock, and then the door opened. It was Mrs. Weasley, and he was on his feet in a moment, an apology springing to his lips.

“Sorry!” he said quickly, shaken. “I'm coming. I was just – Sorry. I'm coming.”

“Shhhh,” she said softly. Like he was some kind of wild animal. “It's fine, hon. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I'm fine,” he assured her. “Sorry.” He started moving past her, ready to go down the stairs to join the others, but Mrs. Weasley took his arm to stop him.

“Wait, hon,” she told him. “It's alright.”

“I'm fine,” Blaise told her, trying again to move towards the door. “Sorry.”

She didn't release his arm. “Wait, hon,” she told him more firmly.

He stopped, and controlled his expression ruthlessly. “Yes, ma'am,” he told her. He fell silent, then, standing quietly as she held his arm. She tugged, and he followed, realizing too late that she was pulling him into her arms. But that was all she did, for a moment – just held him, like she had the night before, this time without speaking. He held obediently still, hoping she couldn't feel his heart beating against her as he could. Belatedly, he realized that he was so stiff he was shaking, and tried pulling away. She held on, silent but insistent, and gradually he realized that he could hear her heartbeat, so much slower than his.

Finally, she did speak up, and her voice was quiet and matter-of-fact.

“Yes, you broke rules and scared us yesterday, and yes, we're going to talk about that,” she told him quietly. “We're not going to pretend that it didn't happen. But nothing awful is going to happen, and you don't have to come down if you don't want to. I'll bring you some breakfast up. If you want to come down later, you may, and you'll stay with me in the kitchen while I do some cooking before lunch. Or if not, you can stay here, and I will come and sit with you, instead.”

“N-no,” Blaise told her, looking up suddenly. “You don't have to do that – I'll come down. I was just-” but he couldn't come up with any excuse whatsoever, and she didn't give him time to.

“You're grounded anyway, honey,” she told him gently. “You can spend time with me in the kitchen downstairs, or you can spend time with me up here, but you're going to have breakfast and you're not going to be allowed to be by yourself.”

Blaise tugged away to look at her, appalled. “N-no,” he told her. “Y-you-” you cannot possibly spend that much time in here with just me! And with Bill home, no less. He got the impression from Ron that neither he nor Charlie came home, much. But how to word that to her without it sounding like he was protesting the punishment? “You should spend time with Bill and the rest,” he managed finally, looking down again.

“The rest of the family will be just fine,” Molly told him, pulling him back into her embrace and putting her head on top of his. “I want to spend time with you, today.”

Finally, she loosened her hold, but only tugged him down to sit on the bed right next to her, her arm around his shoulder.

“M-mum,” he protested.

“I know, hon,” she said. “I know this is hard.”

Blaise looked at her, startled. Did she? Could she?

She smiled at him, and he realized he'd met her eyes. He looked down.

You can spend time with me in the kitchen downstairs, or you can spend time with me up here, but you're going to have breakfast and you're not going to be allowed to be by yourself. Oh, God.

“M-mum,” he protested again.

“Shhh,” she told him softly. “Just try and calm down a little, alright? I'm not going to make you go anywhere.”

No, she was just going to come in here. Before he realized it, he'd made a frustrated sound, and Mrs. Weasley chuckled. “I know, dear,” she said. “I'm annoying. I've been told.”

He had no right to be mad at her this morning. “N-no,” he protested blindly. But she was annoying, and he didn't think he could make the lie sound sincere right now.

“Annoying,” Mrs. Weasley told him firmly. “And mean, and scary, and crazy, and hopefully just a tiny bit attractive. But if not, that's okay, too. I'll just keep being annoying and maybe you'll eventually realize that it's okay to not always like me, and it's also okay to like me. But that can take as long as you like. For the moment, just take a deep breath and try and relax a little bit. ”

Who was this woman who could read his mind?

“You know I'm scared, too?” she told him. “You're my son, and I love you, and I want so badly for you to know that and I don't know how to convince you. But that's okay. It's going to take some time, but that's okay. You'll figure it out. But you won't figure it out if you keep running away from me. So I'm going to keep being annoying.”

He was stiff under her arm, he realized, but she was relaxed, her body soft against his. She was stroking his shoulder with her thumb.

She had no right to be so damned gentle when she was being so...unreasonable! She wanted to punish him, fine, but surely she could just confine him to his room, or something. Carefully, he tried moving away from her.

“No, Blaise,” she told him gently, hand momentarily tightening on his shoulder to prevent him.

Blaise felt his breath hitch. “Ma'am-” he said softly.

“Mum,” she corrected gently.

He tried again to move away, and again she held him. “No, Blaise,” she told him again. “You're alright.”

Of course he was alright. Or at least he would be, if she'd just let him go. This time, his attempt to move away was more overt, and Mrs. Weasley's tone changed to one of warning. “Blaise,” she chided him.

“I can't!” he told her. It came out angry, that time, and he twisted, finally managing to actually get out of her hold.

She moved, too, though, and caught him, and next thing he knew she was hugging him tightly, pushing his head gently into her chest like she had before.

He kicked her in the shin. Just – pulled his leg back and kicked her. Not particularly hard, he realized, but too hard to be mistaken for anything else. Appalled, he froze again. “Sorry,” he told her quickly. Oh God oh God... “I'm sorry, Ma'am, I'm so sorry...”

“Mum,” she told him firmly, cutting into his litany.

His breath hitched. “...Mum,” he whispered, horrified. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.”

“You didn't plan to, I'm sure,” Mrs. Weasley told him, pulling back to hold him at arm's length and look at him. Her voice was full of a surprising warmth and humor. “But that was far too well-aimed for you to have really not meant to. You're madder than a wet hen, aren't you? On top of being terrified, anyway. I'm rather pleased, really.”

He was too shocked to remember not to look up, and her face confirmed her words as she smiled down at him. “You've allowed me to see more of you in the last ten minutes than you have since I first met you,” she told him. “Once you're not quite so terrified of me we'll talk about not kicking, but for the moment I'd welcome an honest paddy.”

Mrs. Weasley, Blaise reflected for what felt like the thousandth time, was nuts.

“So,” she told him. “Go nuts. I want to hear all about how much you hate my house, and my clothes, and my hair, and my food, and the stupid jackalopes living in the front garden. Let me have it.”

Blaise just stared at her. She was seriously insane.

“No?” she told him.

Mutely, he shook his head, eyes very wide.

“Okay, then,” she said, her eyes direct on his. “How about this: 'Mum, I want really, really badly to run away again, and you being here is not helping. Please do shove off and leave me alone.”

Blaise swallowed, and looked away from her. She knew. How could she know?

“We're not going to let you run, Hon,” she told him more gently. “And we're not going to let you hide here all alone, either. I'm sorry that you don't like that. Since you did run, you're going to be grounded for awhile. Which means you're to be within arm's reach of either Arthur or me at all times. To make matters worse, I love you, and you scared me, so I am going to hug you, and I'm not going to ask your permission. But you can be as mad about that as you like.”

This – this could not be happening. This was a nightmare. “I'm sorry,” he found himself telling her. It came out pleading.

“It's not really a punishment, Hon,” she told him softly. “I just know how scared you are and I can't take the risk that you run again.”

“I came back!” he found himself arguing.

“Barely,” she told him gently.

She knew that, too. How much had he said, last night? He didn't have a response, either.

Grounded. Even Snape hadn't punished him this harshly. Or...not exactly harshly, but... so pointedly. Even he could see the logic – you ran away, now you get to stay really really close. Which was about the worst outcome he could think of. Other than maybe being asked to leave, but – on a certain axis, worse even than that.

“I won't run again,” he told her nervously. “I promise.”

“I'm glad,” she told him. But didn't say that she would leave him alone. “Ma'am...” he protested.

“Mum,” she told him firmly.

Angry, he kept his body stiff and didn't answer her.

Blaise was still stiff and silent in her arms, but this time he was angry with her. And showing it. Molly could've cheered. “Good boy,” she told him, gently rubbing his shoulder. “You're doing great, honey. It's alright. You're doing just right.”

Just right? Really? He was seething, and he knew she could see it, and so she was going to praise him?

“Leave. me. alone,” he growled at her.

“Sorry, Hon,” she told him. “That's not an option, today.”

He just stayed stiff, fighting. She just kept stroking his shoulder. Annoyingly, it felt nice.

After a bit, she started to talk again. “I know, hon. I know you hate this. But you need a mother something terrible, and this is the only way I know to see that you get one.”

The sympathy grated. “I'm fine,” he told her, twitching his shoulder irritably.

“You're not, and no one expects you to be,” she answered. Worse, she just kept holding him, and just kept rubbing.

“You can't hold me forever,” he pointed out.

“Five minutes,” she told him. “Five minutes, and I'll let you go.”

That...helped. A little. Sort of.

“...fine,” he said stiffly.

Finally letting go of him – with one arm, at least – she cast numerare, and a five-minute count appeared on the opposite wall and started ticking down.

“If I sit down with you, will you stay put this time?” she asked him next.

Do I have a choice? But there was no way he was saying that, even if she did seem to want him to be mad at her. He just stayed stiff in her arms.

“That was a real question, Hon,” she told him, not loosening her grip. “Will you stay with me if I sit down?”

Yes, Ma'am. Just say, 'Yes, Ma'am.' How hard is it? But she wanted him to call her 'Mum'. He was not going to let her fool him into calling her 'Mum' only to then get kicked out again.

“Do I have a choice?” he asked her. So apparently, there was a way he was saying that. Because he was seriously going insane.

“Of course you do,” she told him seriously. “You always have a choice. You can kick and scream for the next five minutes, or you can sit quietly, or you can sit stiffly and show me how very angry you are with me right now. You can curse me out, out loud or in your head, or you could work with me and try to learn what I'm trying to teach you. You could even try hexing me, though I doubt you'd manage it.Whatever you choose, though, I am going to hold you, just as I would've when you were this upset as an infant, if I'd been there.”

That... “You weren't,” he pointed out harshly. And I'm not.

“I know,” she answered. “I'm sorry. You can be mad at me for that, too, if you like. But I'm here now, and I'm staying.”

Once again, he found himself without words. That wasn't what he'd meant. Really, it wasn't. But what did he mean?

“And you're staying, too,” she told him softly. “No more running.”

Blaise found himself swallowing hard, at that, suddenly feeling genuinely guilty, instead of merely angry or scared. He didn't really know what to offer her, though. The only way he'd ever managed to please her was to kick her in the shin, and he wasn't going to do that again...

But...he was starting to get...some inkling...of what she wanted. And there was one thing he thought he could just – barely – manage. It was bloody hard to get out, though. He felt like he'd said it a thousand times already that morning and yet this time...felt different.

You are our son. You are to stay here where we can look after you.

Call me Mum, dear.

Hello, little brother.

Welcome to the family. I'm really really glad to have another brother, and I'm glad it's you.

I'm here now, and I'm staying. And you're staying, too. No more running.

“...sorry, Mum,” he managed.

It came out almost inaudible, and his heart raced and his stomach churned just from saying it, but he knew she'd heard by the way her grip on him tightened just a little in response.

“Thank you,” she answered simply. “Now, if I sit down, will you stay?”

A sort of muffled, frustrated sound came out of Blaise's throat, and he felt himself blush. “You're bloody annoying,” he told her.

He heard himself say it with a shock, and flinched hard, but she gave a surprised sort of laugh. “I know,” she said. “Your brothers think so, too. You'll get used to it.”

Blaise sat stiffly in her arms for nearly the entire five minutes before he even started to soften. But she'd promised, and she let him go with one last squeeze as soon as the Numerus charm indicated 'zero'. Sorry, mum. It had sounded...different, that time - not nearly as rote – and she felt her heart warm every time she thought of it. Progress, at last. Just a little, but real. He'd called her mum, and almost sounded like he knew what that meant.

“Good boy,” she told him softly as she let him go. “Thank you. Now, would you like to come down to the kitchen with me, or shall I go and bring your breakfast up?”

Blaise let out a muffled, but real groan, at that, and Molly found herself grinning at him. “I like taking care of you, Blaise,” she told him. “You'll just have to get used to it. So, which will it be?”

As usual, Blaise didn't meet her eyes, and this time he shrugged. Molly could practically watch the shields come back up with the gesture. Nope, access denied. Blaise Zabini does not voice opinions to nosy old biddies who want to Do Him Good. But after Blaise's disappearance, she was done backing off and not interfering.

“That won't do, Blaise,” she told him gently. “I'm perfectly happy to do either but you've got to pick one. Flip a coin if you have to, I don't care, but choose one.”

It broke the ice, somewhat – enough that she got a brief look under lowering brows. That simmering anger, again. This one was going to be trouble, once he let himself go. He will be nothing if not polite, Severus had said. Well, she wasn't having that. She'd take an angry son over a polite stranger, any day. She just looked down at Blaise, and waited.

There was something in his movements, as he bent over to open his trunk and find a knut; a defiance that hadn't been there, before. He flipped his coin and it came up Wands. “I'll come down,” he told her, face impassive.

For all she knew, the coin had been entirely for show, and this was actually his preference, but she couldn't tell. Certainly the boy was making his opinion of her known. Should she remind him that that was actually the goal?

“Wonderful,” she told him cheerfully, ignoring the provocation. “Come on, then.”

Blaise followed Mrs. Weasley silently, reminding himself sharply to pack it in. Just because she was being bloody annoying – and deliberately so – did not give him license to snarl at her. He'd given this woman a hell of a day yesterday. He really didn't need to make things worse today. It's her own fault if she had a hell of a day, some devil in him responded. She didn't have to keep calling like that. She could've just as well spent the day with her family and gone to bed and I'd've been out of her hair by morning. It's her own fault if she's tired, now.

When they got downstairs, Mr. Weasley was in the kitchen, peaceably tidying up from breakfast alongside Ron. Percy was there, too, dressed in his usual stiff style and seemingly working on something at the end of the table. Mr. Weasley was still dressed in his sleep clothes, a set of undignified striped pajamas worthy of a six-year-old, paired with a short, worn tweed dressing gown. A sense of foreboding hit Blaise's stomach hard. Mr. Weasley should've been headed to work, already. Why was he still here?

And Blaise had been giving Mrs. Weasley trouble all morning. If he'd known Mr. Weasley was still here, he'd've never come downstairs. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'll be good. I swear. But Mr. Weasley didn't even know yet that he'd been rude. That was left for Mrs. Weasley to tell him.

“Good morning, sir,” he greeted.

“Good morning, Blaise,” Mr. Weasley returned. To Blaise's considerable surprise, his tone was warm.

But Blaise's stomach didn't settle.

Allow me to make one thing very, very clear to you, Blaise. You are not permitted to run away like that. Ever. You are a very lucky young man that you came back on your own because I would have been very displeased to have to come find you or to have you brought back here by the aurors. And I would have found you, eventually. You are a part of this family whether you like it or not and somehow I would have found you and brought you back. Is that clear?

We will mostly talk about this tomorrow, but know that you are in very deep trouble and if it happens again, either while you are at Hogwarts or while you are home, you will very much regret it. And if you do run away again some time in the future and come to your senses, you will want to be very, very prompt about coming back before I have to come after you. I will come after you, and I will not be pleased. You. Are. our. Son, and you are to stay here where we can look after you. Am I understood?

We will mostly talk about this tomorrow, Mr. Weasley had said. It was tomorrow. And Blaise had kicked Mrs. Weasley. And...you are our son.

Mum'll yell, and she gets mad easier, but it's Dad that'll really make you regret it, if you do make him angry.

“Sit down, son,” Mr. Weasley told him softly.

Numbly, Blaise obeyed, and then waited, staring at the table, for what happened next.

When did I turn into the bogey monster? Arthur wondered. Blaise had slammed to a halt at the sight of him, before easing up and saying good morning in that so-courteous tone of his. Evidently, Molly had not warned him, and Blaise was not at all happy to see him there. Not that he particularly expected Blaise to be happy about much of anything, this morning. The boy had only barely talked himself into coming back.

“I already told him he's grounded,” Molly informed him.

And the boy was evidently absolutely terrified. How to reassure him? What to say?

“Here, honey,” Molly told Blaise, putting a leftover cross bun in front of him on a plate. “Eat.”

Blaise didn't look enthused, but at the instruction he began to slowly rip a small piece off of the cross bun, and put it in his mouth.

The tension was going to kill him, and Ron and Percy were barely moving, looking from him to Blaise and evidently not knowing what to do. Arthur could only imagine how Blaise felt. What was the boy waiting for?

“We're not angry with you, hon,” Molly told him softly.

Ah. Yes. He'd told the boy that he would scold him more today. Hence the leery look he got when Molly said they weren't angry. Was the boy that worried just about getting scolded, though? It seemed unlikely.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Blaise told him hesitantly. “I didn't mean to be trouble. I won't do it again.”

That was as good a start as any. Taking a deep breath, Arthur spoke quietly but firmly. “Good,” he said. “You worried us. It is dangerous for you out there, Blaise. Severus is distinctly unpopular right now and I suspect that you are, too. We cannot keep you safe if you do not stay with us, here.”

“Yes, sir,” Blaise told him, looking at the table.

But there was still more that needed to be said. “Molly's told you you're grounded,” Arthur continued, controlling his tone as best he could, “so I won't go over that, again, but I expect you to be on your best behavior and by that I don't mean polite and quiet, I mean actually cooperating with learning how to be a member of this family.”

He was angry, he realized. He hadn't been so worried since the fall of the He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, and Molly had been terrified. It was difficult to speak of it with a calm tone, so soon after so much fear.

Gently, he reminded himself, looking at Blaise's stiff posture. He's scared, too, and you're the grownup. “Until we say otherwise, I want you to stay with Molly, or with me, or with your siblings if we allow it which probably won't be right away. And from now on I want you to try. I know you're scared and I know that will be hard but that's enough, now. No more pretending that you're a guest at a hotel, you are our son and you're going to work with us on that.”

“He did very well with me this morning, Arthur,” Mrs. Weasley conciliated.

He'd done well? The hell?

Blaise stared at the woman, grateful for the help but unable not to react to the blatant lie. But Mrs. Weasley met his eyes, her expression utterly sincere. “I mean it, Blaise. You did well. I really do want you to show me what you're feeling, even when you're mad at me. I am very pleased.”

Mr. Weasley had stopped scolding him, though, for which Blaise could only be grateful. And a moment later he actually spoke up, and the words were unreal. “Well done, Blaise!” Arthur told him, his tone suddenly warm.

Arthur watched Blaise's face, amused. Reading between the lines, Blaise had had a bit of a strop with Molly when she'd gone to bring him down. Which was very good news, this morning.

“Better than just disappearing, anyway,” Ron grumbled.

Blaise visibly stiffened, and his face went absolutely blank. Which was the expression he'd had the day before, just before he'd fled.

“Ronald,” Arthur tried. They should've waited to talk to Blaise until Ron and Percy had gone outside. Too late now. Poor Blaise. Ron was the only one he even trusted, here.

“What?” Ron said. “He doesn't say a damned thing to any of us, won't even tell us what the hell we did that was so bloody wrong, and then disappears all night, and now we're all supposed to be just chuffed that he deigned to come back? Good luck!”

Ron stood up, and was prepared to leave, but Arthur called him back. “Ronald,” he said sharply.

“What?” Ron demanded.

“He is grounded to the house for the remainder of his Easter break. Would you punish him more, or will you forgive him?”

“Not exactly my decision, is it?” Ron asked angrily. “He's back and you're not even mad.”

“It is our decision how and when to punish him,” Arthur told him gravely. “You know perfectly well that we don't always treat each of you exactly the same. But it is your decision whether to help us help him. You are the one of us that he knows the best.”

“Yeah, like I can do any good,” Ron said. His tone was still distinctly grumpy, but calmer. “What am I supposed to do, go with him? He didn't even tell me he was leaving.”

Still, he'd sat back down, and he seemed at least a little mollified, so Arthur just let him stew for a bit. It only took about two minutes for Ron to speak up again.

“You really grounded him for the whole break?”

“To within reach of Molly or I, yes,” Arthur told him.

Ron's eyes widened in horror. “You mean he's got to be supervised all the time?!”

“Yes,” Molly answered.

Ron's mouth dropped open. “But – but that's not fair! You wouldn't do that to the rest of us!”

“The rest of you wouldn't need it,” Arthur told him, hiding his relief. He'd thought that would do the trick. Poor Blaise really didn't need Ron angry with him, too. “As you pointed out, he disappeared on us, and he knew when he did it that that was against the rules.”

“Yeah, but he's already going nuts with all of us in the house even when he does get to go out! And now Bill and Charlie are here and he's trying to be so bloody perfect and he's supposed to do all that without ever even getting a break?”

Arthur hid his smile. Ron was good at people, despite his temper and lack of basic tact. Blaise would not be happy that Ron had seen through him so easily, but that was helpful.

Molly smiled, and looked at Blaise to include him in the conversation. “No, he's not,” she said, mostly to their newest son. “He's supposed to lose his temper and snarl and kick me. Which he's already doing admirably.”

At that, Ron finally turned to Blaise. “You – you kicked her?!” he asked.

Blaise shot Arthur a quick look, but nodded just slightly at his brother.

“Bloody hell,” Ron said to Blaise, the ghost of a smile hovering on his lips. “You're bonkers. You're even more bonkers than Harry is.”

“At least I didn't set anything on fire,” Blaise said to him in an undertone.

Arthur blinked. Set anything on fire? He'd gathered from Ronald that Harry was a bit of a troublemaker, but fire?

“No fires,” he said firmly, pointing a finger at Blaise with a smile.

“And yet kicking Mum is totally okay,” Ron retorted, good humor evidently restored. “Bloody bonkers, you are.”

Blaise watched the whole interaction, mind a whirl. So he was supposed to be kicking Mrs. Weasley, was he? He was tempted to tell Ron exactly who was bonkers, here, but he couldn't really say that in front of his parents. And...Arthur now knew that he'd kicked Mrs. Weasley, but the man hadn't reacted...yet. Instead he was...teasing. At best guess, the fire thing was teasing. Mr. Weasley couldn't seriously think that Blaise would set his house on fire?

“Ronald,” Mrs. Weasley said then. “That's enough of the language, please.”

It was mildly said, but Ronald cringed theatrically. “Sorry, Mum,” he said.

“And I believe you owe your brother an apology,” Mr. Weasley added “If you're angry with him you talk to him, not to me in front of him.”

Ron shot Blaise a look. “Sorry,” he said. It came out a little resentful, but Blaise really couldn't blame him. What were the Weasleys doing, making Ron apologize to Blaise? Not that Blaise could really see that he'd done anything to Ron, but unless he missed his guess, Mrs. Weasley had called for him almost all night, and Mr. Weasley had missed work today. And then he'd been rude to Mrs. Weasley on top of it. Which was apparently what she wanted, for some reason.

But Mr. Weasley was looking at him, now. “I take it you gave your mum some trouble this morning?” he asked mildly.

Blaise met his eyes, feeling his heart race in his chest and fighting to keep it off his face. “Yes, sir,” he said carefully.

“And what did she do about it?” Arthur asked him.

Blaise felt his face burn, and was as usual glad that it didn't show. He looked down at the table. “Nothing,” he said. “Sir.”

He could hear Mr. Weasley's smile in his voice. “I highly doubt that. Was she angry?”

“No,” Blaise admitted to the table top.

“We'd be a pretty poor couple if I was angry over something that she was pleased with, wouldn't we?” Mr. Weasley said. “Not to mention our children wouldn't be nearly so relaxed.”

Blaise just watched him, waiting for him to get to the point. Though...the Weasley kids were...relaxed, as Mr. Weasley said. They didn't act like they didn't know what the rules were...

“So what did Molly do, hmm?” Mr. Weasley asked him. “Did she yell at you?”

“No, sir,” Blaise told him. Quite the opposite. And yet a lot harder to deal with.

“Did she spank you?” Mr. Weasley asked just as mildly.

Blaise nearly flinched. His grandfather had done that, once...ages ago. Back when people had cared what Blaise did beyond staying out of the way. People other than danged Mrs. Weasley, who had... held him. “...no, sir,” Blaise admitted.

“Well?” Mr. Weasley asked him. “What did she do, then?”

Nothing for it, though Blaise's face felt like it might go up in flames. “She...held me,” Blaise told him finally, unable to hide his displeasure.

Ronald snorted inelegantly, evidently finding this hilarious and Blaise found himself shooting his friend – brother? - a glare before he remembered not to.

“What?” Ron asked him. “I told you she's your Mum now, didn't I? And you already knew she was a hugger.”

Yeah, like that made any sense. And like Ron could've gotten away with kicking his mother.

“Do I get to kick you now, too?” Ron asked Mrs. Weasley curiously, apparently having the same thought.

“Not on your life,” Mr. Weasley answered him. Then looked at Blaise. “To clarify, Blaise, you are not permitted to kick or hit or curse in this household. We will make allowances for you right now, because we're pleased that you're letting us see that you're upset, but in the long run, that will change.”

“Yes, sir,” Blaise answered him. Really? He wasn't allowed to physically assault family members? What a concept!

“However,” Mr. Weasley said, holding up a finger. Something in his tone made Blaise look up quickly to meet his eyes. “We would much prefer you do any of those things than that you run. You do not run away. Not ever. You run from us again and trust me you will think this grounding is a cakewalk. Is that understood?”

Blaise swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said softly. He believed him, and right now he just wanted Mr. Weasley to stop speaking to him in that tone. He'd rather Snape be mad, right about now. Mum'll yell, and she gets mad easier, but it's Dad that'll really make you regret it, if you do make him angry. No kidding.

Mr. Weasley was still looking at him, and finally Mrs. Weasley spoke up. “Arthur,” she said softly. “He was scared.”

Mr. Weasley sighed, but looked away from Blaise to look at his wife. “I know, Molly,” he said, his voice softening. “But he cannot run from us like that. It's not safe.”

“He also needs to feel safe to come back if he does run,” Mrs. Weasley countered.

Mr. Weasley looked at him, and Blaise's mouth popped open of its own accord. “I will,” he promised rashly. Then cursed himself. That was quite possibly a lie, and besides that he sounded like a five year old. I'll be good! I promise!

Mr. Weasley smiled. “You had better,” he told him. “But alright. I'll stop scolding.”

What followed was one of the strangest days in Blaise's immediate memory. Ron and Percy both eventually went out, but Blaise knew better than to follow them. He stayed with Mrs. Weasley, who started some water to boil in a cauldron before handing Blaise some sort of root vegetable and a knife.

“Roughly one inch cubes, please,” she told him.

Roughly? One inch meant one inch, didn't it?

He knew his work was slow, but he made one inch cubes, and Mrs. Weasley smiled at him. “No wonder Severus is so fond of you. Child after his own heart, aren't you?”

Snape was fond of him? Though Stone had said the same thing: I've never seen Severus latch on to a first-year like he has Potter and you.

The idea that he could be in even the same category as Harry, to Snape, was patently ridiculous, and yet here Mrs. Weasley thought the man was 'fond' of him. Sure, the man was breathing down his neck lately, but...fond? Though he could definitely trust Snape to be most obnoxious to the people he most liked.

...fond. It was a...surprisingly pleasant thought, though that wasn't the only emotion making his heart rate speed up. And he hadn't a clue what to respond to Mrs. Weasley. Fortunately, she didn't seem to expect it, and simply took the cubes from him and put them to one side. Even better, she came back with a pile of potatoes and two bowls.

“Grate these for me?” she asked. “The smaller bowl is for the peels, and the bigger one for the potatoes.” She ruffled his hair as she turned away, and he managed not to flinch.

And so it went, as Mrs. Weasley apparently made some sort of stew, and he immersed himself in peeling, slicing, grating, cubing, and grinding, while Mrs. Weasley bustled around at various tasks, and petted his hair or squeezed his shoulder every time she passed. Eventually, he expected it enough to stop flinching.

After an hour or so of that, the vegetables were on the countertop, waiting to join the meat and spices in the slowly simmering cauldron. At which point Mrs. Weasley dug out a different cauldron, a whole bunch of different ingredients, and a Potions book.

“Make this one for me?” she asked him.

Blaise looked, and saw to his surprise that it was a minor plant-growth potion, and to his relief that it was a relatively basic one.

“Ask me for help if you need it, hon,” she told him.

Like hell he would, but he wasn't going to tell her that. Once again, he immersed himself, and after an unknown amount of time, Mrs. Weasley gave him a second cross-bun, which he ate absently with one hand while he stirred the cauldron with the other. Snape would've had a cow, but evidently Mrs. Weasley was more relaxed, at least about this potion. None of the ingredients were particularly toxic.

Shortly after he finished the bun, the potion was finished, and Blaise got to work funneling it into a big glass bottle that Mrs. Weasley provided him.

“Well done, Blaise!” she told him when she saw the color in the bottle. “You have a lot more patience for this stuff than I do. Mine are always a bit sloppy.”

Blaise warmed despite himself at the praise, but found he couldn't meet her eyes.

“Thank you,” he managed.

He never quite knew what to say to her, when she got all...nice. He could believe that Mrs. Weasley's potions were 'sloppy', though. Ron's were atrocious. Odd that Fred and George were the potions whizzes in the family. They didn't seem to have the kind of diligence and attention to detail that Snape was always lecturing them about. He could see them having a lot of curiosity and creativity, though, so perhaps that motivated them to be patient, too.

Mrs. Weasley laid a hand on his arm as she picked up the bottle and capped it with a spray attachment.

“You're welcome. It's quite true. Do you like potions, then?” she asked over her shoulder as she set the spray bottle on the floor beside the door. Presumably it belonged in the shed outside – the safest place to store potions if you didn't have a warded cupboard. This one was probably meant for outside use, too, so the shed would also be convenient.

Blaise shrugged a little, and Mrs. Weasley turned back to look at him. “Well?” she asked. “Do you?”

Oh. “...yeah,” he said softly. But she seemed to want to make conversation, and one word answers were not adequate. “...and defense,” he said grudgingly. “....and charms.”

“Good combination,” she commented. “Do you want to be an auror, then?”

An auror? Him? He'd never even considered it. Umm...Death Eater kid, remember?

But she hadn't accepted his non-answer before, and Blaise plucked up his courage again to answer her. “...potions master,” he muttered. Like that was going to happen. He might as well wish to be a healer.

“Oh!” she said, seeming not to notice how grumpy his reply had sounded. “That's wonderful. I think Fred and George might want to go in for potions, too, if they had the patience for it. That requires a lot more schooling than they'll probably be willing to do. Ronald said you were a good student, though. Do you like school?”

Oh, come on! Was she not going to stop? “Some,” he admitted.

And so it went. For what felt like hours. If Blaise shrugged, or otherwise didn't answer, Mrs. Weasley either just looked at him and waited, or repeated the question, with a gentle tone that told Blaise that she knew exactly how annoying she was being and exactly how little he wanted to talk to her.

Finally, Blaise just couldn't stand it anymore, and when she stared at him, he stared right back, heart racing but determined. So, she thought she wanted him to get mad at her? Fine. He was done with the 'chatting', and she couldn't make him. After a bit of a stand off, Mrs. Weasley gave him a slow smile.

“Repeat after me,” she told him. “Please, may I be excused?”

Excused? Wasn't he required to be with her? He gave her a frown.

“Just try it, hon,” she insisted. “Please, may I be excused?”

It felt dumb as heck, but it was an explicit instruction. “Please, may I be excused?” he said to the table.

“Good boy,” she told him. “And no, you may not, because you are grounded. But you may go upstairs to your room and bring down something you would like to do for the next couple of hours. I'll stop bothering you for awhile.”

Oh. Well that was alright, then. Hesitantly, Blaise got up from the table, covertly watching for Mrs. Weasley's reaction as he eased out of the room. But she just watched him expectantly, and he finally escaped, speeding up as soon as he got out from under her eye. He slowed again when he got to the stairs, taking care to skip the two creaky steps and walk quietly as he got upstairs. It wouldn't do for her to hear him stomping around or running.

Molly sighed, listening as Blaise headed up the creaky steps. He'd already memorized which ones creaked, of course. Patience. But she wanted him to relax now, not over weeks and months. The poor boy was walking on eggshells, even still. Though he had relaxed a little bit when he was cooking and brewing, she remembered. She'd have to have him do a lot of it, just to get him used to feeling safe in her presence. But as much as he'd tried to hide it, his relief at being given even the shortest break was obvious. It was definitely time for her to let him rest.

He came down again promptly, with a notebook, a stick of Ink-out, and a quill. Curious, she watched covertly as he opened the notebook and pulled out a sheet of parchment that was stuffed between the pages. To her surprise, it wasn't a letter or a homework assignment, but a drawing. A rather good one, actually, at least for an eleven-year-old.

It's a thestrel, she realized with a shock. The boy could see them. Of course he can, she realized. It really shouldn't be a surprise. It was just that the boy was so young.

Whom did he watch die? she wondered. She knew that the boy's mother had killed his father – had he witnessed it? Not that she was about to ask. In fact, that was enough watching. It wouldn't do for the boy to notice her reaction.

So...dinner. Tonight was their belated Easter dinner, since Charlie hadn't arrived until this morning and none of them had been in the mood for celebrating anyway with Blaise off in the woods. So...fancy. Or at least complicated and tasty. She and Blaise had set up everyone's favorite stew. It would cook for the rest of the afternoon. The rolls had to wait for later or they'd be stone cold by dinner. Besides, it was nearly lunchtime. She'd start the last of the tomato soup to heat up, and make some cheese sandwiches. She knew Blaise liked them.

Blaise settled down to his drawing, but his hand shook too much to add anything to it. Damned crazy woman. Couldn't she just leave him alone? And now he'd defied her, and she'd...rewarded him. Ron was right. The woman was bloody bonkers.

And he wanted to go away. He'd gotten to Ron's bedroom, grabbed his drawing stuff, and found himself sitting on the bed, longing to just stay there. But Mrs. Weasley had made her expectations very plain, and he'd finally forced himself up and back downstairs. And he wanted to cry. And it wasn't even lunchtime yet. He had another week and a half of this before he could finally go back to school.

Finally, he gave up on his drawing, and just lay his head on his arms, unable for the moment to care what Mrs. Weasley thought of it. At least she couldn't see his expression, that way. And other than a gentle squeeze on his shoulder, she mercifully let him alone.

The 'Squaffle' hit Arthur square in the face, filling his nostrils with the...bracing...smell of pickled squid, and he heard Ginny and Charlie cheer. He could hardly believe Charlie was even up, after the night he'd had: sometime after Percy had come out to say that Blaise had fled, an owl had arrived from Charlie explaining that his portkey had malfunctioned and dropped him off a hundred miles in the wrong direction. He'd arrived very early this morning and gone straight to bed for a couple hours. And yet he'd joined them for breakfast and then drawn Ginny and the twins outside to play in the yard. Charlie's energy store had very nearly landed him a job playing professional Quiddich, and here he was, playing 'Squiddich' with his siblings on probably four hours of sleep.

Then again, Arthur hadn't gotten much sleep either, and here he was – nodding off on his broom and getting hit in the face with a pickled squid. But poor Blaise really wouldn't be able to handle all of them inside the house at once, so Arthur had consented to take part in the twins' lunacy straight after his conversation with Blaise. Between him and Charlie, whom he suspected was complicit though he couldn't possibly know all of what was going on, they'd managed to pull all five of the younger kids out of the house so Molly could concentrate on Blaise. Bill was still soundly asleep, having come in just after Molly had sent Blaise to bed.

Hurling the stinking, rubbery cephalopod to Ronald, Arthur concentrated back on the game.

Oh yay. Another Weasley. Let joy be unconfined. This one was a shorter and stockier than Bill, and sweaty and dirty and...oddly sour-smelling... from whatever game the others had been playing outside.

He got up from the kitchen table to greet the bigger boy more properly, and Mrs. Weasley came to stand beside him, wrapping one arm firmly around his left shoulder.

“Charlie, this is Blaise,” she said. “Blaise, your brother Charlie.”

Blaise grimly offered his hand to shake. “Blaise Zabini,” he said.

“Hello Blaise,” Charlie answered with a smile. “Welcome.” His tone was friendly enough, but his gaze was...assessing, somehow. Not quite as warm as Bill's had been.

Well at least somebody gets it, Blaise thought. Nobody likes a snake in the henhouse. “Thank you,” Blaise said mechanically.

Mrs. Weasley's hand around him was somehow acutely annoying, at the moment, but he didn't dare shrug it off. Public displays of sod off weren't exactly a good way to endear yourself to your hostess.

What exactly did one say to a younger brother you'd just met, knowing that he'd run away just the night before? Did you mention it? Did you not mention it?

Poor kid. Mum had a grip on him, not that Charlie really blamed her. As he watched, Blaise made a small gesture to pull away from her, and she loosened her grip a little, but only to rub the spot where her hand rested. That got more of a reaction, and the boy glanced up at her. To Charlie's considerable surprise, it was almost a glare. Mum evidently caught it, and gave the evidently rather irritable kid a very warm smile. The boy's glare deepened even further, and Mum kissed his head.

What on earth? Mum wasn't usually that easy going about that kind of behavior.

“Mum,” the boy growled.

She beamed at him, and the boy abruptly looked away from her, no longer looking irritable at all. He's terrified, Charlie realized suddenly. And Mum knew it. She was also evidently absolutely smitten with him.

He'd been a bit unsure, when Mum had announced her decision to adopt some Death Eater classmate of Ron's. He knew his Mum had a big heart, but he didn't want to see it broken. All Mum had been able to say about the boy was that he was a friend of Ron's, and that he'd defended Harry Potter and lost his home over it. She'd only even personally known the kid for a week when she'd written him to say he had a new brother and to please come home for awhile if he could.

But then Percy had filled him in that morning about Blaise running the night before, and Ron had asked him – uncharacteristically sober and direct – to please, please be nice to his friend. Like Charlie was normally in the habit of bullying eleven-year-olds. Watching now, though, he could understand Ron's worry, and Mum's absolute determination. Poor kid. By 'nice', Ron had evidently actually meant 'gentle.' And as Charlie understood it, the boy had fled just minutes after meeting Bill for the first time.

So what the hell did one say?

“That one's a lost cause,” he told the boy wryly, referring to his obvious discomfort with their Mum's coddling. “Have you met her baby jackalopes yet?”

It got him eye contact, and maybe the faintest hint of a smile, but no answer.

Mum gave him a grateful smile for the humor.

“It is not my fault Mrs. Antler Bunny decided to nest in my best stock pot,” she told him.

“How did your best stock pot even end up in the yard in the first place?” Charlie asked her.

“Ask your brothers,” Mum told him. “First thing I knew, the jackalope was already stuffing it full of fluff. Fred and George were already back at school.”

“We were making a potion,” Fred told her, coming in from outside after Charlie.

“In my stock pot?!” Mum exclaimed. “That one was for cooking, Fred! For the thousandth time, stock pots are for food, not potions! We have a cauldron for that!”

“Yeah, but it's too big and heavy,” George explained, coming in with Fred.

“Besides,” Fred said. “Evidently, stock pots are for antler bunnies.”

“Yes, well you two owe me a new one,” she told them roundly. “Twelve quarts, spelled to heat evenly and quickly, and dipped in UnAlterable Elixir, if you please.”

Charlie winced. That wasn't going to be cheap. The twins' faces fell. “But Mum!” Fred protested. “It's fine! It'll still be useable-”

“Not for food it won't!” Mum retorted, raising her voice. “You know perfectly well it's not safe to cook in a pot once it's been used for potions. I'll take it out of your allowance until it's paid for and if you know what's good for you, you'll help me find a good used one.”

“It wasn't a dangerous potion!” George argued.

“Not another word, George Weasley!” Mum shouted. “You're lucky I'm not taking a hairbrush to the both of your sorry behinds! I happened to like that pot, and this isn't even the first one you've ruined, it was just the nicest.”

“But-” Fred started.

Mum released her hold on Blaise and turned to him, hands on her hips. “Yes?” she asked, eyes blazing.

“Sorry, Mum,” Fred answered quickly.

Then Mum turned to George. “Sorry, Mum,” he answered.

“And don't you even think about it, Blaise Zabini!” she snapped suddenly.

Huh? Looking around, Charlie saw Blaise at the door out of the kitchen. Somehow, he'd edged away without anyone noticing. Anyone except Mum, apparently.

Blaise froze and turned around. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

“Come here,” Mrs. Weasley told him.

Heart in his throat, Blaise obeyed. For a moment, she looked severe, but then she quite abruptly softened.

“You,” she told him with a point, “are grounded. Had you forgotten?”

Blaise opened his mouth, but hadn't a clue what to say. No, he hadn't forgotten, and he didn't think she'd believe him if he said he did. But he couldn't bring himself to admit that he remembered, either.

“I didn't think so,” Mrs. Weasley told him. “It just seemed worth the risk because I was yelling, hmm?”

Something like that? House guests did not stick around for family quarrels. But grounded... whatever-he-was's... evidently did. Or didn't, and then apparently got told off for it.

“What did I tell you?” she asked him.

And then waited. She actually expected him to answer that. Ugh, this was horrible.

“I'm supposed to... stay with you,” he managed, feeling horribly embarrassed. He'd broken the rules. Again. That wasn't usually something he did, ever, but then he'd never been so tempted to, before. Mrs. Weasley's rules were different. But then, he was having one hell of a day, and she'd not only been holding onto him, she'd been doing it in front of people so they could all stare at his undeserving, ungrateful self, and he was tired, and for goodness' sake nobody hung around while a parent was scolding their children!

“Yes,” she told him. “You're supposed to stay with me. So what were you doing, then?”

Oh, come on! “I was leaving,” he said. Duh. But he'd let his annoyance show in his voice.

“You were yelling, Mum,” someone spoke up pleadingly. To his surprise, it was Percy. Blaise hadn't even realized that he'd come in.

“Yes, I realize that,” Mrs. Weasley answered him. But her voice had softened a little further when she spoke again.

“I'm sorry I scared you, Blaise, but this is not the first time we've talked about you disappearing. You can go stand in the corner please. Everyone else, go get cleaned up. Lunch will be in twenty minutes and I don't want anyone to smell of that squid.”

Everybody else filed out. Unsure quite what to do – he'd seen Harry be subjected to this treatment, but he'd hardly ever even been punished, himself - Blaise hesitated until Mrs. Weasley gently gripped him by the shoulders and pushed him in front of her until he was standing in a corner of the kitchen between the oven and the wall. There she let him go with a squeeze, and returned to preparing lunch and setting the table.

And Blaise stared at the wall, unable to do anything else. He understood why Harry didn't like this. It felt – strange. Vulnerable, with Mrs. Weasley behind him and just the wall in front. He found himself oddly tempted to kick the wall. Mrs. Weasley would probably be delighted.

Actually, if this morning was anything to go by, she actually would be. Tentatively, Blaise tried it. It made very little sound on the hard plaster, and Blaise found himself doing it again, a bit harder. Still no response from Mrs. Weasley. But it was...satisfying... actually. He was pretty sure Snape wouldn't've put up with it, but Mrs. Weasley evidently would. And it wasn't like he had anything better to do.

Eventually, Mrs. Weasley gave a soft chuckle. “Alright, Blaise,” she said. “Come on out.”

Tentatively, he turned to face her, and found her regarding him warmly, her hands on her hips.

“So did you have fun beating up my nice innocent wall?” she asked him.

Blaise could feel himself blush, and looked at her face, unsure. She smiled. “No, I would not normally allow that,” she confirmed. “You're supposed to be being quiet and penitent, but then that's what you do when you're not in trouble so I suppose this was actually you being good, wasn't it?”

Umm... maybe? Thoroughly confused, with himself and with her, Blaise looked at the floor. A moment later, he found himself wrapped in her arms for the thousandth time that day.

“Good boy,” she told him. “You're learning. I'm so proud of you.”

Okay so...yes, she was definitely pleased. So that was...good. “You could reward me by not hugging me?” Blaise suggested.

As he'd hoped, she laughed... and held him tighter.

Blaise was quiet through lunch, and ate only half his sandwich, but Molly decided to let him be. The poor boy was stressed enough without her fussing about what he ate or forcing him to actively participate in their boisterous family meals. He was at least watching and listening, and he did eat at least some. She'd make sure to get him a snack later and he'd be alright.

The more she watched him, though, the more she noticed how tired he looked.

“Mum?” Ron asked when they started cleaning up. “Can Blaise come play after lunch? Please?”

Blaise shot her a truly desperate look. And not one that was pleading to be allowed, either. She gave him a smile back.

“Maybe tomorrow, dear,” she told Ron.

“But it's Easter, Mom!” Fred protested. “Charlie and Bill are both here and Dad's home and...” he trailed off as she shook her head.

“And there are far too many of you and he didn't sleep last night and he's exhausted. If he wakes up later and wants to I'll allow it but right now he's going to take a nap and get some time to himself.”

Ron argued for a bit more after that, but Mrs. Weasley was firm, and finally the whole group trooped back outside. Most of the time Mrs. Weasley's near-legilimancy was annoying, but just now he could've kissed her. Well...not really. Just the thought made him just about jump out of his skin, actually.

“...thank you,” he told her instead.

“You're welcome, honey,” she told him. “I'm serious about the nap, though. Go lie on the couch. I won't bother you for a couple of hours.”

Molly couldn't help it – she managed to stay physically out of the living room...mostly...but she peeked her head in from time to time to check on her newest son. He fell asleep almost immediately, long lashes lying peacefully over high cheekbones and soft brown cheeks. Such a beautiful child; it was inconceivable to her that nobody had wanted him. They'd made progress today, finally. She could feel it. All day she'd treasured the memory of those two words: “Sorry, Mum.” And kicking the wall...so very carefully. Her son. Hers, now. The surge of protectiveness took her by surprise, a sudden fierce determination that no one was going to hurt this boy again. Not ever. He was going to be safe, now.