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.