Confrontation
It's been six days since Draco left, and Blaise thought it would get easier, but it doesn't. It's not that he wishes Draco would come back, because honestly, he doesn't think he should.
He misses Draco more than anything, but seeing what Draco had to deal with was disturbingly enlightening. Anyone would have dropped out, dealing with all of this.
He's not even the new prefect, that was Theo, but because word of their engagement had spread, the children seem to think he's just a knock-off Draco substitute. They flocked around him like startled deer, clinging to his robe hems. He had thought the constant crowd surrounding Draco was just his natural talent of being the centre of attention, but no.
That wasn't even to mention dealing with Potter.
It was genuinely infuriating, to put up with all of his staring. Blaise had no idea how Draco dealt with it. He was about two seconds away from walking over to the gryffindor table and pouring pumpkin juice into his lap.
The slytherin's have gone almost entirely underground, mostly giving up on classes. The older years ran study groups and distributed notes to the younger years so their grades didn't slip, but Snape was beginning to give them looks in the halls. Meals were mostly taken in the dungeons, Blaise and Theo having gone to the kitchens to convince the elves, which was no small task.
Pansy trains the younger years in curses, Theo trains them in defensive magic, and Blaise trains them in basic healing. None of them are experts, and they spend most days up in the common room reading up on their chosen areas, but none of them complain.
Draco trusted them to keep his house safe, and they were pathologically incapable of disappointing him.
As their group sits in the common room, one of these nights, they try to plan.
"We can't risk stepping on toes." Pansy said, scowling at a scroll from the restricted section of the library.
"No, we can't." Theo agreed, "All of this waiting is going to give me greys. If this keeps up I might be able to convince the fourth years I'm Draco's cousin."
Blaise snorted, the fourth years were especially distraught with Draco's disappearance, he supposed all that time he spent forcing them to make those "Potter Stinks" badges had resulted in some strange form of Stockholm Syndrome, "All we can do is wait. Though we should make sure the muggle-raised know the codes."
It was something every slytherin knew by the time they left Hogwarts, instilled by the pureblood children who had grown up talking in riddles. When your way of life was openly admonished, it became second nature. Most of them were obvious, like Draco's warning of 'keeping light' but there were some less clear ones that the half-bloods and muggle-borns would need explained.
"Right." Pansy said, "Should we start hiring tutors then?"
One of the more ambiguous codes, 'hiring tutors' meant starting to train in dark magic, or continuing it, in some cases. Blaise and Pansy were the best at it after Draco, but neither of them wanted to risk getting caught. Being accused of dark magic was one thing, it was a pretty common insult, but being caught actually doing it was an entire other. If any of them were found out, it would be an immediate expulsion.
But they were on their own now, and dark magic would be a useful skill in the coming months, when the fighting broke out.
"Maybe just divination." Blaise replied. They would take this slowly, hopefully, they had the time.
So Blaise kept going, pretending war wasn't looming over his shoulders, and doing his level best to piss off Potter.
Truly, Draco would be proud.
It seemed the less upset Blaise was, the more angry Potter got, which was very interesting, but also provided a good excuse to keep himself together. Spite had always been one of his greatest motivators, and he puts it to good use now, laughing and swanning about the castle like he hasn't a care in the world.
Nevermind that every time he looks to his left and Draco isn't there to tell him he's horrible, or scans the desks in class, trying to catch Draco's eye only to remember he's gone, Blaise feels a physical pain in his chest. It sits waiting for every slip, every moment in between dream and reality. It's like summer all over, waiting to hear that Draco's dead, thinking today would be the day he gets sent that black envelope.
But Potter wouldn't know any of that. Blaise doubts Potter even knows his name, in the mighty saviour's eyes, only one slytherin was worth even looking at.
Blaise didn't entirely blame him, if he had to spend the rest of his life staring at someone, he would pick Draco too.
Potter seems to finally snap one day, and Blaise finds himself cornered outside defence.
"Where is he?" Potter demands, like he had any right.
"Where is who?" Blaise replies, because really, he does love to be difficult.
Potter somehow gets angrier, magic cracking in the air around him, and Blaise spares a moment to think there had been something to Draco's ranting after all.
"Malfoy! I know he's up to something! I know he's a Death Eater!" Potter spat, and oh if he only really knew.
Blaise repressed the urge to snarl, Draco was out there risking his life, and here was the oh-so-great chosen one, sitting on his ass, "Why would I know? How do you even know he is up to something?" He grits out, polite as he can be at the moment.
Oh that pissed him right off, and Blaise delights in it for a moment. At least someone else was feeling it, the aching wrongness of Draco not being at Hogwarts, but then Potter grabs Blasie by the shoulders, and he's back to being just plain angry.
"I know-" Potter starts, but Blaise is done with this.
"You don't know a damn thing, Potter." He spits the name like a curse, "If you miss him so much, why don't you go find him? Hm?" He smiles, all sugary sweet, "At least he's doing something. What are you doing, Potter?"
"I don't-" He tries, but this has been sitting under Blaise's skin for days, and if it's not blown off soon, he's going to combust.
"You think he didn't notice? That I didn't notice? The way you stalk him? You're obsessed, Potter, and it's pathetic."
Potter rears backwards, and punches Blaise straight in the face.
His head cracks back, hitting the stone wall of the castle and bouncing, so Blaise picks up his knee, and slams it directly into Potter's crotch.
No one could say Blaise Zabini didn't give as good as he got.
Somehow, this ends up with Potter and him rolling on the castle floor, kicking and spitting and punching, until he feels slim but surprisingly strong hands pulling him up and away.
"Honestly Blaise! He's gone less than a week!" Pansy hisses, but Blaise doesn't hear her, his eyes still locked onto Potter. Slowly, he smiles, then spits a hunk of blood right near Potter's beat up shoes.
"You know where to find me if you want a rematch, Potter." He calls over Pansy's shoulder. Potter looks just as ready to restart, struggling in the Weasel's grip, but he too is dragged away, until it's just Blaise and Pansy.
When they get back to the dungeons, she shoves him into his room, casting a silencing charm before locking it.
She spins on him, snarling, "What were you thinking!" She screams, right into his face. He flinches at the noise, but stays silent, she'll be going for a while.
"I mean honestly! Are you an animal? Are you trying to get the other's crucified? Think of what they'll do to you when they find out you've laid a hand on him!" She's spitting mad by now, pacing back and forth while Blaise sits on Draco's empty bed.
"I can't-" Her voice cracks, "I can't lose you, too."
All of his anger is gone at once, and he feels himself sink.
"I'm sorry, Pans. I just-" He dragged a hand across his face, "I tried. So hard. But he just kept going, and I-" He feels the stinging burn of tears behind his eyes, and doesn't even make a cursory effort to repress them.
"They don't know him. Not like we do. They don't care, they're glad. And I thought it was over-" His breathing picks up, lost under everything he'd kept buried, "He's supposed to be ok, he's not supposed to-"
It had been easier, over the summer with his mother, because she had known Draco just as well as Blaise, loved Draco just as well as Blaise.
Pansy comes forward, pulling him into her, "I know, love, I know." She sniffles, just as angry, "He was supposed to be untouchable."
Because he was. Draco had always been a lighthouse, guiding them all home. He was their tower, standing tall in the face of anything and everything. Even in fifth year, when The Dark Lord was undeniably back, Draco had just ran his hands through their hair and told them that it would be alright. That he would take care of it. And then the bastard had taken care of it, he'd gone and taken the mark so none of them would have too. Insisting none of them join him. He came back paranoid and terrified, but still ready to soothe them, still letting them cling to him, giving them the same, cocky, arrogant grin and telling them it was not so hard, really.
Blaise hated him at that moment, as much as he could, which was not at all.
Without him, they would all have fallen too, dropping into their families ideology one by one till they drowned. He could still hear him discouraging Vince and Greg from following him.
"You can't. It has to be me." He said, digging at a speck of dust beneath his nail.
"But why?" Greg had asked, still unused to a Draco that wouldn't let him follow.
"Tell you what, I'll do it, and then I can tell you if it's worth it, alright?" He had smiled that brilliant smile, the one perfectly designed to make you want to let him win, and that had been that.
"I wish he would have let us help." He said, but again, he was lying. Draco wouldn't accept help, not ever, if he did, he wouldn't be Draco.
It was a blessing, and a curse, that he was so strong. All of that carefully cultivated arrogance turned inward. He would still get angry at Blaise sometimes, when he tried to lighten the load, it was one of the biggest indicators something was seriously wrong this year, that he let Blaise bring him coffee and walk him to class.
They didn't truly fight much, too used to each other to do much more than snipe and banter, but it always hurt when they did, usually a combination of Blaise's mean streak and Draco's over-inflated sense of duty.
But he would kill, a thousand times over, to argue with Draco right now. What he would give to scream and rage at his perfect pointy face, to see him slip into that familiar cold mask and sneer and hiss.
But he also knew, on some level, that what Draco was doing was necessary.
What he truly hated, was that once again, Draco was saving him, and leaving Blaise behind in the process.