Reunion

The rest of fifth year passed oddly for Blake.

There were days where he could barely get out of bed, his mind on his mama and his heart with her as well. Then there were days where he had been determined and frantic to work hard for his OWLS, enter a career field to make her proud.

“I’d like to be a healer,” Blake told Professor Malfoy when he’d been called in for career advice.

Professor Malfoy gave him a kind smile and slid a brochure with a photo of a hospital on the front to him.

“I thought you might,” he said lightly. “Let’s see…” His grey eyes flicked over Blake’s grades and he nodded. “Your grades are great, Mister Reed, even with everything this year, your teachers all rave about your intelligence and your articulate essays.” He smiled kindly at Blake, “I wish you luck.”

Blake didn’t need luck- he had determination on his side.

Blake was going to cure muggle cancer.

Arty told him that his grandpa, Maddie’s dad, had tried before the war, but hadn’t been able to do it and Blake was determined to succeed where Mister Snape had failed.

There would be no more Opal’s, dead so young. Even for a muggle, 39 was a young age to die. And Blake knew the cigarettes drove it, the factories and their fumes drove it, the stress of being a struggling single parent drove it, but it didn’t matter.

If there was a cure for it, Blake would find it.

Or, rather, Blake and Arty.

Arty had decided that as he ‘had no idea what he wanted to do with life’ that curing cancer would be something brilliant that nobody in his family had done yet and decided to follow Blake to a healers program once they graduated.

“Grandmother Juliana will be disappointed, she wanted me to take a year off and travel with her after school,” Arty said the morning after the fifth years all had career advice with their heads. They’d all just finished discussing their future goals and Selena had pouted when Arty said he’d be joining Blake at St Mungo’s if they were accepted.

Blake was pretty sure that the son of the famous war hero, Minister of Magic, powerful wizard would never be denied, but he’d need to get top scores on his OWLS and NEWTS in his core classes to be accepted.

“Jake’s joining the aurors!” Maddie said eagerly, smiling brightly at her boyfriend. “I told Professor Longbottom that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, which my dad said is perfectly normal, but I think I’d like mind healing, like Counselor Remus.”

Jake smiled fondly at Maddie and tugged on a lock of her blue hair.

“You’d have to shut up for five minutes and let your patients talk, princess,” he teased her.

“Well I’m traveling with Grandmother Juliana,” Selena told them stubbornly. Her eyes got soft and wistful as she sighed, “I can’t wait to see the whole world.”

Blake and Arty exchanged rolls of their eyes and small smiles.

Selena was the dreamer to Arty’s realism. She saw the world in rose colored glasses while Arty was more cynical.

Blake preferred to see things as Arty did, but Selena’s romantic ideals of the world grew on him and he had to admit she wasn’t nearly as annoying as she used to be.

“Your sister is the most annoying person I have ever met,” Blake huffed on the second day of summer.

Blake hadn’t been sure what to expect when their fifth year drew to an end, but he’d been relieved when he received a visit from the Minister, asking if he’d like Harry and Fred to ‘take placement’ of him until he turned seventeen, keeping him from foster care like Jake supposedly was in with the Headmaster.

It was only supposedly because every time Blake saw Jake and Headmaster Black interact at school, the Headmaster seemed like an excited puppy and Jake seemed like the exasperated and patient parent. Counselor Remus was much more ‘foster parent-like’ than Headmaster Black, but even he seemed more childish when he saw Jake.

Maddie told Blake that the Black’s had always wanted a son ever since theirs passed away, killed in the war, and Arty said that Headmaster Black was ‘terribly immature’, so Blake just hoped Jake survived the summer with them. Blake and Jake had quite a bit in common; Jake never met his father either, he’d grown up rough and wild, alone in the muggle world before he’d been ‘kidnapped’ by the Headmaster and drug from the United States to England.

Blake had began to believe everyone related to Arty was a bit mad; which made Arty’s embarrassment over his monthly potion silly. Who cared if Arty had a disorder that made him moody when his father’s godfather kidnapped teenagers and supposedly the grandmother of his that Blake hadn’t met had killed nine husbands?

Arty was the most normal person in his family, in Blake’s very unbiased opinion.

Blake threw himself on the floor of the Potter’s sitting room by Arty’s feet and scowled up at his boyfriend. “Do you know where Selena has been all day?”

Arty continued to read the paper, his lips silently moving when he found something that interested him, an endearing habit of his.

“With Sirius,” Arty murmured, distracted by whatever he read.

“Exactly!” Blake said. “And do you know what Headmaster Black has?”

Arty didn’t look away from the paper, he merely raised a black brow to show he was waiting.

“Our OWLS scores,” Blake said irritably. He tilted his head back on Arty’s lap and waited for him to look down and notice him. “And she wouldn’t steal them for me,” he said petulantly with his lower lip stuck out.

Arty finally sat the paper down and sighed at Blake.

“Love, do you want to go break in the Headmaster’s office and steal our scores?”

“Yes, please.”

And so they did.

Arty borrowed a cloak from his father that made them entirely invisible and they floo’d from the Potter home to Professor Luna’s office.

“Hello, boys,” Professor Luna said airily, not even looking away from the board game she was playing with her and Professor Malfoy’s younger child, Scorpius. Blake had met the two Malfoy kids before, each time was as peculiar as the last. Their oldest child, Panda, was airy and spoke in a song-like voice that creeped Blake out. She also had a habit of staring at people with wide eyes while smiling, which was extremely spooky.

Arty swore she did it to mess with people, but if so, it worked.

Their son, Scorpius, wasn’t nearly as bad, but as he was a few years younger than Panda (maybe only seven to her nearly eleven?), Blake only ever saw blonde hair, silver eyes, and haughty expressions when he stormed around the corridors on occasion.

Blake thought growing up in Hogwarts would be brilliant, but Arty told him that both the Malfoy kids went to the Muggleborn Primary School during the year despite being purebloods. Apparently Scorpius’ godfather, Arty’s uncle Ron, was the Headmaster there. Further proof that blood type didn’t matter as much as knowing the right people did.

And everyone in Arty’s family was important. A hefty legacy for Arty and Selena to follow.

“Morning, Aunt Lue, Scorpy,” Arty said cheerfully from beneath the cloak. “We’re off to rob Grandpa Sirius.”

“The new password is ‘Jakey’!” Scorpius yelled after them as they left the room.

“Have fun,” Professor Luna added absently as she continued to closely scrutinize the game board.

The password had actually been Jakey, something Blake was sure Headmaster Black did just to embarrass his kid, and the boys were only hindered for a moment by a painting of the last Headmistress of Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall.

“It warms my heart to see Sirius being robbed by his students,” she said. She dabbed her eyes beneath her spectacles and smiled at them after Arty popped the cloak off their heads. “You remind me terribly of two other boys, full of mischief.”

“This is a rescue mission, ma’am,” Arty said seriously. “You see, Sirius has taken our scores hostage and said we can’t have them until August. I’m sure a witch of your brilliance can understand the importance of us rescuing the scores from his evil clutches.”

“Just like your fathers,” Professor McGonagall told Arty happily. “Go on then, they’re in his desk.”

Blake snagged his and Arty’s results, leaving Selena’s behind as punishment, while Arty left behind a few tricks and traps for Sirius at Professor McGonagall’s bequest.

They waited until they got back to Arty’s, climbing up to the flat part of his roof they liked to sit on occasionally, to open them.

“3… 2… go!”

Blake ripped his open and immediately scanned his scores.

Defense Against the Dark Arts: A

Potions: EE

Transfiguration: O

Charms: O

Herbology: EE

History of Magic: EE

Care of Magical Creatures: A

Arithmancy: A

Blake read his results once… twice… three times…

Then he promptly burst in to noisy and embarrassing tears.

“Eight OWLS,” Blake cried, waving his results for Arty. He couldn’t put in words what the overwhelming feeling in his chest was, but Arty did.

Arty pulled him in a tight hug and let Blake cry all over him.

“Opal would have been so proud,” Arty said softly.

She really would have.

Arty’s parents tried to make up for it. When Arty brazenly told them that they had robbed Headmaster Black, something they found truly hysterical, and the boys shared their eight OWLS each, the Potter’s threw a party to celebrate.

First they bribed the boys into going back and stealing Selena, Maddie, and Jake’s results, then they threw a huge party to celebrate all of their passing results.

And Blake, who thought that after nearly five years of friendship he had met all of Arty’s family, was exposed to even more people.

He met Molly Weasley, Fred’s mum, who hugged him and had apparently been the one sending him knitted jumpers at Christmas at Arty’s behest.

‘Everyone in the family gets a jumper,’ Arty said casually with a shrug.

He met Professor Malfoy’s parents and Maddie’s grandmother Andromeda.

The most interesting guests were the werewolves that came. Everyone at Hogwarts knew that Counselor Remus was a werewolf, but Blake had no idea that he ran a house for a family of them. They were definitely the most interesting of the bunch.

Except for one of them, a blonde woman with sharp eyes and a pinched expression every time she looked at Blake.

Blake tried to avoid her, but she cornered him in the kitchen just before the party officially started.

“What’s your name, kid?” she asked curtly, blocking the entrance back to the sitting room where Blake could hear Arty greeting his Grandmother Juliana and her son, another unbiological uncle of Arty’s that Blake hadn’t met yet.

Blake hadn’t been sure why the woman seemed to dislike him just on sight, but he politely offered her his hand anyway.

“Blake,” he said, “Blake Reed.”

The woman ignored his hand and cocked her head to the side.

“What’s your parents names, Blake?” she asked, stressing his name.

Blake felt a band around his chest, a tight reminder of Opal.

“Opal Reed,” he forced himself to say through a jaw clenched so tightly it was nearly painful.

“And your father?”

“Don’t know,” Blake said.

The woman’s eyes lit up and she smiled at him, a sharp and mean looking thing.

“Is that so?” she murmured. “Interesting.”

“Severely,” Blake drawled sarcastically. “Excuse me.”

Blake pushed past her, rudely, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t deserve it, and quickly walked past the packed sitting room and right out the front door. He didn’t need surrounded by people with well wishes in that moment, he needed air.

He needed Opal.

Blake sat on the Potter’s front porch, sightlessly looking out in the night, blinking away tears. He wasn’t sure how long it had taken until someone joined him, but he blinked back to awareness when someone sat in the matching wicker chair beside him.

“Arty’s looking for you,” Fred said, leaning back and relaxing with a drink in both hands. “Here, scotch and soda,” he said when Blake gave him a curious look. “The others are drinking, they’ve just transfigured their liquor to look like juice.” Fred’s lips twitched in a smile when Blake accepted the drink and tried a sip.

“I miss her so much,” Blake whispered after he took a few drinks of the burning liquor. He looked away from Fred, out to the tree line where his eyes could well with tears and nobody would be any wiser. “It’s like a hole in my chest that’ll never heal.”

“It won’t,” Fred said evenly. Blake glanced over at that bit of odd assurance and Fred merely shrugged a shoulder at him. “Do you want empty platitudes? I’ve got a book of them somewhere.”

Blake forced a smile in payment for the jest and then pulled his eyes back to the trees.

“I just want her back,” he said.

“Everyone always does, Blake.”

That summer was a mix of good times and bad.

The good times were all with Arty, the bad times came when Blake woke up and forgot he wasn’t at his home, just for a second, then reality crashed back in him.

Blake was grateful that the Potter’s let him stay there, but he was relieved when Maddie’s dad reached out to him, offering a part-time job helping run his shop. Arty took a job with his Papa, selling joke items at the store in Diagon Alley, Blake cleaned Mister Snape’s potion lab and sometimes manned the till.

Blake’s job was a peaceful quiet place to escape when the Potter’s house became too noisy. And Mister Snape paid good too, thirty galleons a week, a galleon an hour.

“Papa’s paying me half what you earn,” Arty grumbled when they got lunch together at the Leaky Cauldron on their breaks. “And everyone there is so loud.”

Blake grinned and stole some crisps off Arty’s plate, sticking his tongue out as he did.

“That sucks,” Blake told him genuinely. “At least you have Verityyy there to ogle.”

Arty blushed, as he always did when his papa’s pretty shopkeeper was mentioned.

“I’d rather ogle you,” he said with a wiggle of his brows. “Quit stealing my crisps, you’re the breadwinner now.”

Breadwinner or not, Harry and Fred still refused to let Blake buy his supplies for the upcoming school year. They said he was family, they were rich, get over it.

They also celebrated his birthday with a quiet dinner and cake, precisely the way that Blake used to celebrate with Opal.

Victoire sent Blake a gift, a photo of Opal with a wide smile and a beautiful scarf wrapped around her head inside a silver locket.

It was especially thoughtful because Blake hadn’t even liked Victoire much when they’d been at school together.

Sixth year brought Pandora Malfoy, Professor Malfoy and Luna’s daughter, to Hogwarts. She sorted in Ravenclaw, and Maddie was thrilled to have a Ravenclaw join their tight knit group.

Blake was less thrilled as ‘Panda’ creeped him out. She was kind, and apparently made friends with all the ghosts in the castle during her summers spent there, but she also said things like:

“Blake, your mother misses you.”

So Blake did his best to avoid her when they weren’t all eating together.

Sixth year also brought ‘Selena drama’, which was rather like a train wreck in the way that it made Blake wince, but he also couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Maddie came rushing in the Slytherin common room one night with her eyes wide and her chest heaving from how quickly she must have ran there.

“Arty!” she snapped, getting the attention of every student lounging around the comfortable room. Arty looked up curiously, but he and Blake were on their feet in an instant when they saw Maddie’s face. “Hospital Wing, it’s Selena.”

The boys rushed out, sprinting full force from the dungeons to the Hospital Wing. Arty had his wand in one hand, Blake’s hand in the other. His eyes were dark, concern and anger warring equally on his face.

“I told her to leave them alone,” he growled, referring to the Ravenclaw couple that Selena had been seeing. And by seeing, Blake had been exposed to a long story with far too many details when Selena explained how she was seeing two people secretly, both of them in a relationship. The plot twist to her drama was that the two people she had been seeing were in a relationship with each other.

Blake, Arty, Maddie, and even Jake and Panda had all warned Selena that it would end ugly, but Blake suspected that Selena liked a bit of danger and drama in her romance.

“Well at least nobody will mix you two up,” Blake told Arty when they entered the Hospital Wing and found Selena laid out on a bed, ugly purple sores across her puffy face.

Arty sighed and held his sisters hand loosely while he gazed down at the pathetic looking girl.

“Matthew and Jia?” Arty asked, scowling at Selena’s miserable nod. “Idiot,” he told her. He kissed her hand and then dropped it, turning to Blake with a hard look on his handsome face.

“Come on, let’s go find them.”

Panda, as creepy as she was, stood outside the Ravenclaw common room, humming and grinning.

“Hello, you guys want inside?” she asked when the boys approached with their wands drawn and faces grave.

It was Selena’s fault for being so ridiculous, the boys agreed on that, but nobody could attack her and not expect retaliation either. It was an unspoken rule of the Potter twins that if someone messed with one of them, they messed with both of them.

And everyone knew that where Arty went, Blake went.

Panda answered a riddle to get them access to the common room, and Arty stood in the center of the bronze and blue room and looked around silently, gathering a lot of attention, until he found the two sixth years arguing in a corner.

“Hey!” Arty yelled at them and every person who hadn’t been looking at him, was then. “You fucked with my sister?”

Jia, a pretty and plain girl that played quidditch for Ravenclaw, turned and sneered at Arty, twisting her face into something ugly.

“Your sister fucked with my boyfriend,” she snapped.

“Heard he didn’t have much to brag about,” Blake drawled with a lazy grin when Matthew’s dark eyes snapped over to him. “What’s wrong, Matthew? Couldn’t remember the engorging charm to at least fake it? Here, let me refresh your memory.” Blake shot an engorgio at Matthew’s face, causing his nose to begin swelling up and the duel Blake knew Arty wanted to begin.

When they were done, Blake levitated Matthew and Arty levitated Jia’s unconscious and marked up bodies to drop them outside the Hospital Wing before they went to Professor Malfoy’s office to wait.

“Arty, Blake.” Professor Malfoy looked up from an essay he’d been marking with red ink. “How can I help you?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea,” Arty said cheekily. He pulled one of the wooden desk chairs across from Professor Malfoy out for Blake before taking the other.

Professor Malfoy sighed and then tapped his desk with his index finger, summoning up a tea tray from the kitchens.

“Who are we waiting on, boys?”

“Hmm…” Blake hummed and exchanged a smirk with Arty while Arty made them cups of tea. “Professor Luna or Headmaster Black, love?”

Arty stirred in two spoons of sugar (and Blake loved that Arty knew exactly how he took his tea) and slid the cup to Blake.

“5 galleons on it being the Headmaster, I’m thinking he’ll have to call Jia’s mother.”

Blake raised his cup to Arty with a grin. “Well she shouldn’t have called Selena a slag, hm? Stupid girl.”

“Stupid girl,” Arty agreed with a clink of his tea cup to Blake’s.

Professor Malfoy looked like he was regretting whatever decision led him to take a position teaching at Hogwarts, but they didn’t have to wait long.

And Arty made Blake pay up when they left the office an hour letter with three detentions each and a thirty point dock from Slytherin.

Not that detention with Professor Luna was much of a task, she just gave them a list of potions that needed brewing and left them to it each night.

“I would have done almost anything for a big family when I was a kid,” Blake said one night while they were serving detention and brewing Pepper-Up Potion. “Someone to back me up when I’d get in fights? It would have been amazing.”

Arty glanced over with interest at Blake’s admission. Blake didn’t have much of a childhood, so he didn’t talk about it. There was nothing dramatic or traumatic, just Blake and Opal struggling together. And Blake would never disrespect Opal’s memory by making it sound as if she had done anything other than her absolute best for him.

“You did show up with a mean right hook,” Arty said with a grin. “Get in many fights, love?”

“Tons.” Blake flashed a white and humorless smile at Arty. “A black boy in social housing with a single mum?” Blake tsk’d and stirred their potion. “Kids thought I was an easy target.”

“People really bullied you for your dad being a scumbag?” Arty demanded. “How is that fair?!”

Blake looked fondly over at Arty. The fumes from their potion had caused his hair to fall across his forehead in limp clumps. His eyes were indignant and Blake would bet that his fists were clenched at his sides.

Arty had never been bullied a day in his life. Blake’s best friend had been born with a sort of immunity to bullying. He was handsome, wealthy. His parents were famous and beloved figures in the magical community. Arty had all the right makings to have grown up as a privileged berk, but he still had a heart of gold.

“It isn’t,” Blake told him with a shrug. “Bullies rarely are.”

Arty scoffed and muttered a nasty comment under his breath that made Blake laugh.

“Do you ever think about him? Your father,” Arty explained when Blake looked confused. “Do you ever think about finding him?”

“No.”

“Never?”

Blake hesitated and bit his lower lip. He did think about it on occasion. He thought about finding Opal’s broken angel and finding out if he had any excuse at all for the way he used Opal. In the very deepest part of his heart, the part of his heart that ached with the loss of Opal, Blake wondered if his father would want to get to know each other. Blake didn’t need a dad, not anymore, but he wondered about the connection they might have.

“Sometimes,” Blake admitted softly. He took a vial from Arty and began pouring their finished potion in it. “If nothing else, it would be cathartic to hit him once.”

Arty laughed, delighted with the idea. “When you’re ready, I know how we can find him.”

Blake nearly dropped the vial he held as quickly as he whipped his head to gape at his smirking boyfriend.

“Oi! Potter! And you never told me?!”

Arty shrugged and plucked the vial from Blake’s hands. He replaced it with an empty one and gestured to the potion for Blake to fill it.

“We couldn’t do it until you were seventeen anyway,” Arty said blithely. “Plus I didn’t know if you wanted to find him.”

“Maybe,” Blake conceded. He leaned over to press a light kiss to Arty’s lips before he filled the next vial. “I love you.”

Arty’s returning smile was angelic. “And I you.”

Blake considered the matter for the remainder of the school year. Finding his father was terrifying in a way; putting himself out for the ultimate rejection? A small voice reminded him that Opal had wanted him to find her broken angel, but Blake didn’t know if the man would be resentful to have been found.

He might have been married when he shagged Opal. He might hate kids. He might be dead.

But Blake wouldn’t know unless he checked.

The night of Blake’s seventeenth birthday - the night he cried in front of the Potter’s when Arty’s parents gave him Fred’s watch, a traditional gift that men passed down in their family when boys became men - Blake told Arty his decision.

“Let’s find him,” he whispered beneath the blanket of darkness in Arty’s bedroom.

Arty, who had to be the cuddliest bloke in the universe, hummed against Blake’s bare chest.

“I thought we were getting tattoos tomorrow,” he grumbled.

Blake laughed at the reminder of their mutual desire to get tattoos once they’d reached adulthood.

“Afterward then,” Blake said easily.

Blake and Arty met up with Selena, Maddie, and Jake the next day to go get tattoos. The girls chickened out on the basis of their dad’s would kill them. Jake bragged that Sirius had given him the money for his. And Arty told Blake that since his dad got tattooed when he was seventeen, he didn’t think Harry had a lot of room to judge.

Maddie laughed herself to tears when the boys all got similar tattoos down their forearms, but it had been more of a coincidence than anything else.

Blake got ‘Reed’ in bold, dark green letters; a reminder of the woman who gave him her name and her love. Arty got ‘Potter’ in a blue font; acceptance of his heavy legacy and pride in his family. And Jake got ‘Black’ in a Gryffindor-red font; a celebration of his recent adoption.

It hurt like hell, but Blake loved it.

“And now you’ll never forget your names,” Selena said brightly with tears of laughter in her eyes while they went to get lunch together afterward. The tattoos had taken longer than Blake expected and they were all starving.

“Maybe Arty should have gotten Blake’s name tattooed on him so he didn’t forget they were dating again,” Jake smirked.

Arty howled and slapped Jake’s fresh tattoo.

“HE NEVER ASKED ME OUT!”

The next morning, Blake and Arty stood in Diagon Alley together, both tense and silent. Arty cupped Blake’s face with both hands and stared hard in his eyes.

“You’re sure?” he whispered. His thumbs, calloused from flying and brewing, swiped beneath Blake’s dry eyes so gently.

Blake looked at the great golden doors and wondered if he was sure about anything. Blake was a nobody, floating freely in the world with only a single blue-eyed attachment to keep him from floating away.

“Yeah,” Blake said with more confidence than he felt. He straightened himself up, squared his shoulders, and gave Arty a forced smirk and a quick kiss. “Wait here for me?” he asked.

Arty nodded and backed up to lean against the Gringott’s railing.

“I love you,” he drawled.

Blake winked at the last love in his life before he marched inside the bank to see if he could get the name of his mama’s broken angel.

Blake left the bank thirty minutes later, ten galleons lighter, with the name of his father in his pocket.

‘Blake’. ‘Blaise’.

Opal had been damn close when she named Blake after a man whose name she had only guessed at.

“Where now?” Arty asked, stepping up beside Blake and linking their hands in a move they’d done so often it was easier than breathing.

Blake looked over at Arty and felt a rush of affection so strong that he stumbled from it. Arty didn’t ask who it was, didn’t ask what Blake wanted to do with the information. He just asked where they were going; together.

But Blake needed to do the next part alone.

“Can I meet up with you later?” he asked. He cleared his throat, “Back at your house?”

Arty smiled so sweetly, always so open with Blake, and kissed him in a gesture so filled with understanding that Blake wanted to cry once more.

“Of course. Send me a patronus if you kill him,” he said; careless about the possibility that Blake would make himself a true orphan by the end of the day. “I love you.”

Blake pulled him back and kissed him hard.

“I love you,” he whispered back.

As soon as Arty disapparated, Blake checked the address in his pocket and curled his lip up at it.

Blaise Zabini-
3 Via Eldorado,
Napoli, Campania

Blake turned on his heel to go purchase a portkey and ignored the butterflies of trepidation in his stomach.

Ready or not, here I come, Dad.

Blake landed outside the address the bank gave him and his entire expression darkened.

While Blake grew up in a two bedroom flat paid for by the council, while Opal worked her beautiful fingers to the bones to provide for Blake, his god damned father lived in a beachside castle?

Blake stood on a paved walkway, the only thing separating the small and lush green front garden in front of the building his father lived in from the beach, and glared accusingly at the beautiful white brick building.

“This better be a bloody apartment building,” Blake muttered darkly before reaching out to open the gate for what seemed to lead to the front door. It only took that single touch to the shining black metal to dissuade Blake from that hope. A tingle went through his hands, magic reaching out to him. It must have approved at whatever it felt, because the gates opened and Blake made his way to the front door unfettered.

Blake inhaled slowly, letting the salty sea air clear his mind. Then he reached up and knocked firmly on the door.

He should have brought Arty. Standing in front of that door was the most terrifying thing Blake had ever done and he wasn’t ashamed to admit that he could use some of Arty’s confidence in that moment.

Then the door opened and Blake’s thoughts of Arty were washed away in favor of pure shock.

There he was- Opal’s broken angel. All Blake’s features, aside from his mama’s eyes and the lighter skin tone she gave him, were right in front of him.

Blake’s lazy smile, mirrored on an older, sharper, face.

And he didn’t look broken at all.

Which pissed Blake off so badly that his arms shook and he did the only thing he could think of, if he had even been thinking.

He pulled his fist back and punched Blaise Zabini in the nose hard enough to hear a satisfying crunch of bone.

“Bastard,” Blake snarled when Blaise merely knocked back a step and threw up a quick and wandless shield. “You’re fucking rich?!”

And handsome, it seemed. Even with the blood dripping from his nose to his loose white shirt, Blake could see that while Opal lost some of her beauty to the work of raising a child, the rest to cancer, Blaise didn’t lose a damn thing. He was still every bit the beautiful man that had so charmed Blake’s mama. The only mar on his looks was a scar that stretched from his left earlobe down the side of his neck, disappearing beneath his shirt.

Blake hoped it had hurt like hell.

Blaise Zabini stood inside what was obviously a posh foyer and healed his nose with a lazy snap of his fingers. His blood was gone with another wave of his hand and Blake despised him. Blaise didn’t speak for a long moment, he simply stood there and stared hard at Blake, trying to place him in his mind, before he sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Well this is rather dramatic,” he drawled. He gestured at Blake from his short braids down to his crappy trainers. “Let me guess, you’re a little Zabini?”

Blake curled his lip up in a hateful sneer. “This happen often?”

Blaise was unflappable, he smirked and released his shield, a shimmering purple thing, and stepped back up to the doorway.

“No, but with a jawline like that?” Blaise clicked his tongue. “Susan warned me this would happen one day.”

“Opal Reed,” Blake spat, fury filling him and causing his stomach to shake, “remember her?”

Blaise tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips. “Were we married?”

Blake clenched his hands in fists at his side once more.

“Do you not remember the names of all your exes?” he demanded. What kind of person was his father?!

“Only the memorable ones,” Blaise smirked. He leaned a shoulder against the door and looked at Blake’s eyes. And finally, finally, Blake saw some emotion in his father’s eyes. Not recognition, but unease.

“Opal Reed, August 20th, 2004,” Blake said, parroting a story as old as he was. “Muggle London, the Gilded Cage. Ring any bells?”

Blaise twisted his lips, Blake’s lips, and looked at a spot just above Blake’s eyes.

“Aah,” Blaise sighed and the tense lines of his body sagged. “The night of the Quidditch World Cup.” Blaise lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Canons verse Kuala Kempers.”

Blake wanted to hit him again for remembering the teams that played in a quidditch match nearly eighteen years ago, but not someone who shined as brightly as Opal.

“It was quite a terrible day,” Blaise said; an explanation, not an apology. He still didn’t meet Blake’s eyes full on. “Did your mother come to hit me too?”

“She’s dead,” Blake said, forcing the words out even without air in his lungs. Blaise’s face didn’t change much, just a minute softening of the tense lines around his eyes.

Blaise didn’t care.

Blaise wasn’t harboring a lifelong pining for Opal, a wistful wish for what could have been. He hadn’t left because there was something of absolute importance and forgotten his way back.

Opal was an easy lay and Blake a tragic accident.

If all of Blake’s pain wasn’t still aimed at the loss of his shining star, he was sure it would be a painful revelation. Instead, he suddenly felt drained. He had no reason to be there, he’d seen proof of what he’d always suspected. His father didn’t want him, his mother was gone.

But he had Arty. And, in a lesser way, he had Arty’s family who had always accepted Blake with open arms.

“Forget it,” Blake said, suddenly weary to his bones and ready to go curl up in bed with Arty. “This was a mistake.”

“Hold on.” Blaise’s hand shot out and fell just short of actually grabbing Blake’s shoulder when he turned away to leave. Blake paused for a moment, scowling when Blaise still refused to meet his eyes.

“You’re seventeen?” Blaise asked. Blake merely jerked his chin in a nod.

“Right, well…” Blaise wiped his hands down the side of his soft looking trousers. “You need a place to stay? Money?” He waved one hand grandly, “I’ve got plenty of both.”

Blake laughed, cold and mocking.

“I don’t need your pity offer,” he said flatly. It was too little too late. Opal didn’t work herself to an early grave for Blake to dishonor her by accepting help from her broken angel. Opal loved Arty, doted on him and accepted him so fully, it was less shameful to her memory to stay with him and his family than accepting help from the broken angel that didn’t bother to remember her.

“It’s not pity,” Blaise said with a raspy drawl that Blake presumed came naturally to him. “I’m behind on child support, aren’t I? You still in school?”

Blake stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded. “I am,” he said shortly. “I start my seventh year in September.”

Blaise nodded and looked Blake over again.

“Gryffindor?” he guessed. He smirked when Blake raised a disbelieving brow. “You did show up at my doorway and punch me in the face, you can see where I’d get the idea.”

“Slytherin,” Blake said. He narrowed his eyes. “You went to Hogwarts?”

Blaise hummed. “I did,” he said. “Slytherin as well. Is Draco still your Head of House?”

Blake laughed again, loudly that time, disbelievingly.

“You don’t ask my fucking name, you don’t invite me inside your fucking,” Blake flicked his fingers irritably at the opulent home, “mansion to talk, but you want to know my Head of House?”

Where the hell did he get off? Blake was glad that his mama raised him, because God knew that Blaise Zabini was a self-centered ass.

The self-centered ass himself stood up straight and turned so he could wave his arm toward the foyer.

“Oh, much wanted and darling son of mine, won’t you come in?” he drawled so sarcastically it was like a knife straight to Blake’s chest. “And kindly tell me your name so I can decide if I need to hunt Draco and Neville down to murder them or not. It will hurt, but they’ll deserve it, trust me.”

Blake stood there, stunned and freezing despite the sunshine covering the scene in ironic cheerful light. It was… surprisingly painful to be told so bluntly that he wasn’t wanted by his own father. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, and Blake hadn’t been raised with a lack of love, but it still felt like a slap in the face.

“It’s nothing personal,” Blaise said after a moment of thick silence, apparently taking note of Blake’s shock. “I just never wanted kids, you see. I’m not exactly father material.”

An understatement of the extreme.

“It’s Blake,” Blake told him in a soft and tiny voice he never used. “Blake Reed.”

Blaise offered his hand out in a smooth motion.

“I’d say I’m pleased to meet you, but we both know that’s a lie,” he said, truthful if not reassuring. “You could come inside, tell me about your life, or we can go on as we have- perfectly ignorant to each others existence.”

Blake looked down at the hand offered to him and then up to Blaise’s face, staring hard until Blaise reluctantly dragged his eyes up to meet Blake’s.

Blake wondered what about his eyes so discomforted Blaise- it certainly wasn’t the memory of Opal, who Blaise didn’t even seem to remember. Something did though, because Blake saw a tiny flinch in Blaise’s lips when he looked dead-on at the son he unknowingly fathered.

“I want you to remember when I’ve eclipsed you in every way possible that you chose to remain ‘perfectly ignorant’ to my existence,” Blake said calmly. He drew himself up tall, just as tall as Blaise, and raised his chin arrogantly. “When you read about the Healer who cured cancer for muggles, I want you to remember that you get no credit, none. Opal Reed,” he stressed his mama’s name, “gets all the credit.”

Blaise listened to Blake’s impulsive rant and had a glimmer of unneeded approval in his honey colored eyes.

“I wish you luck then, Blake Reed,” Blaise said evenly. “I generally try and stay out of England, too many bad memories and grey skies, but perhaps I’ll write sometime.”

Blake shook his head and grabbed the portkey from his pocket.

“Perhaps I’ll read it if you do.”

Blake activated his portkey and went to find the only home he had left, the one in Arty’s arms.

“Fuck him, love,” Arty whispered that night when they laid on the roof together and Blake told Arty a brief recap of meeting his father. He didn’t tell Arty his name or address, Arty looked entirely too much like Harry when he asked for it and as much as Blaise Zabini was disappointing, Blake figured he didn’t deserve death for the crime of not wanting a child he never knew about.

“When we’re the most respected healers in history, you’ll give a speech about Opal and how she made you the man you are,” Arty said. They laid side-by-side on the Potter’s rooftop, both with their outside hands under their heads and their other hands linked between them. Blake had stared at the stars, so clear out in the country, while he talked, but he moved his eyes to Arty when he felt him watching him.

Arty’s eyes were difficult to see in the dark, but Blake knew they’d be as blue as the ocean outside his father’s home. Arty’s eyes darkened when he was mad, the color of a storm promising to wreck havoc on the world, and lightened when he was upset. And if Blake was upset, Arty would be upset.

“That’s what I told him,” Blake said quietly. “I told him he got no credit, and he said maybe he’ll write me.”

Arty curled his lip up in a sneer.

“Maybe we’ll read it.”

Blake turned his face back to the sky. ‘We’ll’, Arty said. Blake didn’t have his mama anymore, and he’d never had a father to begin with, but Arty was there.

“I told him that too,” Blake said with a soft smile.

The rest of the summer passed quickly, a blur of whirlwind that was the normal at the Potter home. Blake was grateful for the distractions the never ending guests and friends there provided, but he longed for the quiet evenings spent with his mama in their flat so starkly different from Arty’s family’s home.

Returning to Hogwarts for their seventh year was a blessing and a curse.

Blake was ready to finish his year strong; obtain his NEWTS, apply for a position at St Mungo’s, but he’d hoped his mama would be there to congratulate him when he did.

He sat on the train with Arty sprawled across his lap, Maddie and Jake across from them, and Selena on the floor with a complex list of all sixth and seventh years within the castle. With the return of the Triwizard Tournament that year, being hosted in Hogwarts for the first time since Arty’s dad won the contest, they were discussing who all would be entering and who would be most likely to win.

“I can’t enter,” Maddie said regretfully when Selena asked her about it. “I wanted to, but—”

“But her daddy said no,” Jake smirked. He cuddled Maddie in his side and kissed the top of her head of blue hair. “Right, princess?”

Maddie scowled, but nodded.

“He did,” she said. “He said that he nearly died of a stroke when Bubby was in it and told me I’m absolutely not allowed to enter.”

“Which works for me because Sirius told me I should enter and I’m going to,” Jake said smugly. “You all can cheer me on when I’m chosen.”

Blake and Arty exchanged amused smirks. They’d discussed the tournament at length ever since their third year. There was no chance that Jake Black was stealing their chance to be chosen.

“Good luck,” Blake quipped to Jake, “you’ll need it.”

“Oh, no.” Selena looked up from the parchment she’d been scribbling on and blinked at Arty. “You’re not entering.”

“I am,” Arty said carelessly. He conjured and dissipated golden colored stars in the palm of his hand with a lazy confidence in his magic that had Blake’s gaze darkening. He opened his palm, showing a star, closed it, opened his palm, no star.

“Blake?” Selena asked.

Blake wiggled his eyebrows at Selena. “You have to ask?”

Selena tucked her hair behind her ear and narrowed her eyes at Blake and Arty both.

“Good luck then, boys,” she sniffed haughtily. “Because I’m entering as well.”

Arty scoffed, “May the best wizard win.”

Arty was singing a whole different tune when Headmaster Black brought out the Triwizard Cup on the day the other schools arrived.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said at dinner, his eyes continuously flicking to the goblet in front of the Head Table. “Blake, we’ve got NEWTS this year and we need to send in our applications to St Mungo’s. It’s not a good time to enter the contest.”

Blake quirked a curious brow at him.

“You trying to talk me out of it, Potter?” he grinned. “Worried I’ll be chosen?”

“Yes,” Arty said bluntly, giving Blake his full attention. “And Grandpa Sev said Dad almost died, and, no offense, but if my dad nearly died in it then you will too and I don’t want us to compete.”

Arty was lucky that his dad was the most powerful and famous wizard in the world or Blake would have been offended. Instead, he was touched and determined.

“I’m entering,” he said. “And I’m winning.”

“You’re just doing this to prove something to a man who doesn’t give a damn about your life,” Arty said that night.

“As opposed to you wanting to enter to prove you’re better than a man who loves you?” Blake countered with.

Arty sighed and bit his lip for a moment before grinning weakly. “We’ve got daddy issues, love.”

“Maybe,” Blake agreed. “Fuck it though.”

“Fuck it,” Arty said happily.

“Please don’t,” Arty whispered the next morning when Blake approached the cup with his slip of paper in hand. “Please, love, please.”

Blake didn’t want to upset Arty, but he just imagined how proud Mama would have been, how Blaise Zabini would feel seeing his son win the Triwizard Tournament, and he stepped forward and dropped his name in the goblet.

“It won’t matter,” Selena sang when she stepped up with Jake, both of them holding their own slips of paper. “He won’t be chosen, Arthur. Because I,” she dropped her paper in, “will be.”

Arty scowled more fiercely than ever before and he snapped his fingers, conjuring a scrap of parchment and quill. He laid the parchment against Blake’s back, ignoring the grin on his boyfriends face, and scribbled his name.

“I’m only doing this to keep you from dying,” Arty snapped just before dropping his entry in. “Idiots, all of you.”

“You love them,” Maddie laughed. “Come on, Arty, let’s go be superior when you’re the one stuck in the death tournament, hmm?”

Arty had tried to give Blake the cold shoulder that night when they were once again wrapped around each other in Blake’s bed, but Blake tickled his sides and kissed his nose until he melted in Blake’s arms.

“I hope you aren’t chosen,” Arty whispered. “I don’t- I don’t want you to be hurt.”

Blake cuddled him close and buried his face in Arty’s untamable black hair.

“I hope you’re not chosen either, love.” He kissed Arty’s head and grinned. “Because I want to be.”

Arty’s wish had been ignored- Blake’s had been granted.

“Blake Reed!” Headmaster Black called, sending the Great Hall in the loudest cheers of the night yet. Blake’s shock, and muted joy, was pushed off by excitement when Arty grabbed him by his tie, snogged him hard and fast in front of everyone, then pushed him to his feet.

“You fucking idiot,” he said. His eyes were warm despite the frown on his lips. “Go.”

So Blake went.

And he found out that he wouldn’t find out the first task until the day off.

And then he found out that of all the parties Slytherin had thrown over the years, a party for their own champion was the best one yet.

He also discovered that Arty’s ‘I’m angry at you for being selected and worried about you for being selected’ shagging was perhaps the best yet as well.

The next morning, when Blake got a letter congratulating him from Arty’s dads, he skipped off first period Arithmancy to cry in the loo.

Opal would have been so proud. Terrified, but so proud.

It had been Jake who found him.

“Nerves?” he asked simply when he strolled in the loo, took a single look at Blake’s face, then propped himself up on the sink. He reached in his robe pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Too cold to go outside,” he said, as if that explained why he was smoking in the loo of all places.

“So…” Jake blew out a circle of smoke while Blake hastily washed his face in the sink and applied a cooling charm to reduce the puffiness that gave away his tears. “Champion regrets or… dead mom trauma?”

Blake was so startled by the way Jake said it, just casual and easy, like it wasn’t the worst heartache of Blake’s life, that he laughed.

“Dead mom trauma?” he asked. He splashed his face with water once more, pushed his braids back, and then leaned against the sink beside where Jake sat.

“I assume some people cry over their dead parents,” Jake drawled. He offered Blake a cigarette that Blake turned down, they killed Opal, he wasn’t interested.

“Not you though?” Blake asked with a lazy smirk.

Jake smirked right back at him. “Bingo, champ.”

Blake stood there with Jake long enough for Jake to eventually vanish his cigarette butt with a tap of his wand. Blake freshened the air, erasing any proof that Jake had been smoking in there.

“I met my father this summer,” Blake told him impulsively once they’d finished hiding the evidence.

Jake had turned to the sink, smoothing his blonde hair back. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. He sucks.”

Jake grinned and hopped off the sink, stretched his arms over his head then gestured to the door.

“They always do, man.”

“Eat or I’ll kill you,” Arty snapped the morning of the first task. He was pale, as pale as Blake had ever seen him. In fact, Blake thought Arty was more stressed over the task than he was.

“Yes, sir,” Blake winked. He added a few sausages to his plate and chewed them loudly enough to irritate Arty.

Maddie’s hair was an interesting shade of green - either support for Blake or she was going to sick up - and she shook her head at him.

“Aren’t you scared?” she asked. “Just think, if you die then someone else will cure cancer.”

“It’ll be me and I won’t credit you at all in my speeches,” Arty scowled. He refilled Blake’s pumpkin juice then pouted. “And I’ll go out with Amber, probably marry her and have a dozen kids.”

Blake laughed at Arty’s declaration and leaned over to kiss him once.

“Name one after me, will you?”

Blake stood in the middle of the quidditch pitch two hours later, his envelope held high, while the stands screamed and cheered for him.

It was exhilarating.

The deep gouge the demiguise left in Blake’s side was burning, he might even faint from blood loss, but he did it.

He even got a respectable 42; full points from the Minister who didn’t care to play favorites it seemed, full points from the Vice Minister who was staring oddly at him from the where the judges sat, eight from Headmaster Black, and seven from both the foreign headmasters.

“Excuse me.” The Vice Minister of Magic, Arty’s aunt Susan, stepped in the tent where Blake was being patched up by the matron and fussed over by Arty. Susan smiled at Blake and held up a camera. “Blake, may I take a photo?”

“Uh…” Blake grimaced at his bloodied and bandaged side. “I’d rather this not be in the papers, actually, ma’am.”

Vice Minister Weasley smirked and raised her camera.

“It’s not,” she said. “Say cheese, Blake.”

Blake got a letter from Blaise Zabini a few mornings later. A pretty white owl delivered it at breakfast and Blake froze when he saw the writing on the front.

“Come on,” Arty said, recognizing Blake’s sudden trepidation. He got up, snagged the plate of scones right beneath Jake’s hand, and waited for Blake. “Let’s go read it somewhere private.”

Blake held the letter and felt curiously blank while they walked down to the dungeons, returning to their empty common room.

“Are we reading it or burning it?” Arty asked once they sat on the leather sofa in front of the dimly burning fireplace.

Blake took a deep breath then ripped open the envelope.

“Reading it,” he said. “Give me a moment, love.”

Blake,
I heard you entered the Triwizard Tournament and scored well in the first task. Congratulations. I’m beginning to suspect you may be a Gryffindor at heart with courage like that, I certainly never would have entered when I was a student.
I’m in Jamaica right now, traveling for work. Perhaps if I make it back before the third task, I’ll come watch. Unless you would rather I didn’t. It was a dull show when I was a student, I hope Sirius has found a way to liven it up.
Good luck.
-B.Z.

Blake reread it and scoffed.

“He said good luck,” he told Arty flatly. Blake crumpled the letter in his hand and tossed it in the fireplace. “I think he also called me stupid, maybe.”

Arty scowled. “Did he really?”

“He said I seem like a Gryffindor,” Blake said with a shrug.

“Same difference really,” Arty nodded. “What a bastard.”

A bastard Blaise might be, but Blake still found himself penning a reply the night before the Yule Ball.

Mister Zabini,
Thank you for your very warmly intended congratulations. I apologize for the delay in a response, I wasn’t sure if I would write back or not. Apparently I’m just brash enough to do so.
If you want to come watch the third task, I can’t stop you. I’m afraid my family section will probably be overflowing will all the relatives I definitely have, so you’ll have to sit in the stands as we’re complete strangers.
Have the holiday you deserve,
-Blake Reed

***

Selena had decided to skip the Yule Ball to spend the holiday at home, but Arty had been happy enough to spend the break with Blake at Hogwarts.

“Good thing you stayed,” Blake murmured to Arty while they spun elegantly around the dance floor at the ball. Arty looked as amazing at seventeen as he had the first time they kissed all those years ago, and Blake wondered if they had the sort of love to last forever.

“Yeah?” Arty smiled against Blake’s shoulder where he had his head resting. “Who would you have brought if I left you alone?”

Blake dipped Arty down, just to hear him yelp at the abrupt move he still effortlessly made look graceful. He pulled him back up with a bright smile.

“Panda,” he lied effortlessly. “We’re rather close friends, you know.”

Arty laughed, a rich and warm laugh that Blake could never hear enough of.

“Don’t make me kill little Panda,” he grinned. “Uncle Ron will kill me, on his goddaughters behalf, then Dad will kill him, it’ll be very messy, love.”

Blake glanced up at the Head Table where Arty’s parents sat, staring in each others eyes with soppy and nostalgic looks on their faces. He felt a wave of wistfulness overcome him - Blake wanted that. He wouldn’t settle for less.

“If I win, will you move in with me after we graduate?”

Arty, with all his years of dance lessons and his unflappable facade, frozen in place and stared at Blake with unconcealed shock.

“Truly?” he asked.

Blake nodded and mentally crossed his fingers. He smiled as dazzlingly as he could, “Truly.”

Arty whooped, drawing more than one curious set of eyes to them, and threw his arms around Blake’s neck and squeezed tightly.

“I’ll move in with you even if you lose,” he said in a gushing and uncharacteristic manner. “We can rent Uncle George’s old flat! I know the owners, I think I can get us a good deal on it.”

Blake smiled down at Arty and suddenly it was he who felt pity for Arty’s parents. They might be in love, but they weren’t best friends, not like Blake and Arty were.

And best friends were forever.

The second task came and Blake managed to scrape by, though he didn’t score as highly as he wanted.

“Imagine being selected as champion then pouting because you’re only in second,” Selena laughed at Blake during the after party. “Come on, champion, come dance with me!”

Dancing with Selena wasn’t as good as dancing with Arty, but Blake had a few drinks of firewhisky and cut loose with his friends and classmates. He looked around the room that night, at the others that were dancing and laughing and celebrating and knew that when he graduated, he would miss moments like that more than anything.

***

Blake,
Congratulations on the second task. I’ve been reliably informed that you performed well. It had been a hostage rescue back when I was a student, I’m unsurprised that the Minister refused to allow a similar theme again. I was in England briefly for the holidays, visiting old friends and catching up. I thought about reaching out and seeing if you would be amenable to getting dinner together, but you seemed to have gotten your bravery from your mother.
I wouldn’t dream of sitting in your very crowded family section, I believe that would raise more questions than I care to answer at present, but I will try to be there for the third task.
-B.Z.

***

“This tournament is a sham and I hate this school,” Arty hissed when Blake told him what the final task was. “An arena full of creatures, traps, and the other champions? It’s a death trap!”

“And the fire breathing skrewts,” Panda hummed as she plopped down on the other side of Arty and smiled at them all. “Don’t forget those. Daddy’s very excited to bring them back.”

Blake, Arty, Selena, Jake, and Maddie all turned as one to blink at what just became Blake’s newest favorite student.

“Panda,” Blake smiled as charmingly as he could while he slid Panda a plate full of desserts, “let’s talk, darling.”

By the time the third task approached, Blake knew almost every creature that would be included and he promised to buy Panda her own pet owl if he won.

“You’re not scared?” Arty asked Blake the morning of.

Blake tried to shake his head, but he answered truthfully. “A bit, yeah.”

“Don’t be.” Arty squeezed Blake’s hand tightly. “I believe in you.”

And that rejuvenated Blake’s confidence almost as much as the family section of the stands filled him with joy.

It seemed as if Arty, who had heard Blake admit one night how hard it would be to see the empty stands and imagine Opal there, had reached out to his entire family to attend. Which, all of them who weren’t either judges or professors for the task, did.

Victoire was there with Rose, Victoire had an engagement ring on her hand and the two witches were beaming while they waved at him. Arty’s Uncle Theo and his wife Hermione. Maddie’s parents; Mister and Mrs Snape. Arty’s Uncle Ron, his wife, and their three kids. Victoire’s parents were there, Fred’s twin brother George and his wife, even Vice Minister Weasley’s husband and Arty’s Grandmum Molly were in attendance.

“You…” Blake was stunned as all those people who so irritated him over the summers waved and smiled and cheered when he entered the field with Arty. “You did this?” he asked, choking up.

“No. I merely reminded them when the task was and they chose to come,” Arty said with a casual shrug, as if it hadn’t been the most thoughtful thing he’d ever done. “Grandmother Juliana couldn’t come, but she said she hopes to meet you soon.”

Blake swooped Arty up in his arms, spinning him, and snogged him passionately before sitting him back down on the ground.

“You mad man,” he said fondly, caught up in the moment. “Marry me.”

“Blake!” Arty yelped at smacked Blake’s shoulder, a smile lighting up his handsome face. “Don’t ask me now, you prat! Win the bloody tournament first!”

“First place and you say yes?” Blake asked, his blood bubbling like champagne and what he suspected would be a permanent smile on his lips.

“Third place and I marry Amy Sanderson,” Arty smirked.

“Done,” Blake laughed. He kissed Arty again and stared happily in his eyes. “I love you, see you soon.”

“Don’t die, idiot.”

In the very back of the stands, only a moment before the blasting sound started the third task, Blake spotted Blaise Zabini. Blaise raised his hand, Blake nodded, then he entered the arena to fight for the golden cup.

It was the hardest work Blake had ever done. Harder than his OWLS or his NEWTS or either of the first two tasks. Dodging and defeating magical creatures while dueling his fellow champions in an effort to be the last one standing and win the cup? It should have been impossible.

Blake credited Arty and the way he made sure Blake went in the arena full of love and hope for the future and excitement when he stood there, the golden cup held high, the stands filled with screams, the Triwizard Champion.

And the first thing that Blake purchased with his winnings had been a simple silver band engraved with the infinity symbol that he knew represented his entire relationship with Arty from the day they met.

Just like their entire relationship thus far - the ring slid on Arty’s finger easily and Blake knew it would be there forever.

“We have to be there in five minutes!” Arty told Blake, rolling his eyes when he saw him trying to braid the back of his hair. “Move over, let me.”

Blake smiled in the bathroom mirror of the flat they’d been sharing for the past few months and winked at Arty when he caught his eye.

“Looking handsome, love,” he said with a coy flatter of his lashes. “We could skip the party, stay home, open that wine your cousin sent us.”

Arty grinned while his fingers made quick work of Blake’s hair, but he shook his head.

“And deprive my dad the opportunity to fawn over us right in Selena’s face?” Arty tsk’d. “Never.”

That was fair, as Selena had been insufferable ever since leaving to travel with her grandmother. They had gotten three owls just in the first week she had been in Spain, all gushing over the beaches and the culture and the men.

Blake had laughed at her letters, but felt no jealousy. He had everything he had ever wished for, minus the one person he would always want to see his accomplishments. He and Arty moved in the flat above Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes two weeks after graduating, just days before getting their NEWTS scores and acceptance letters to the Healers program at St Mungo’s.

Now, with only a week before they’d be swamped with studies, Arty’s parents were throwing them an engagement party. And, according to Arty, everyone would be there. Even Selena and the mysterious murderous grandmother. As much as Blake would prefer to continue to celebrate in peace with Arty, he would never truly skip an event with the people who gave him such a large and truly mad family.

“Done,” Arty declared. He proudly inspected his work then threw himself on Blake’s back, driving a startled laugh from Blake. “To the party!”

Blake dutifully carried his giggling fiancé on his back clear from their bathroom to the floo. They exited, Arty still on Blake’s back, to choruses of cheers and laughter from Arty’s family and the people that Blake was irreversibly fond of.

“My baby boy! All grown up!” Fred rushed to them and then grabbed Blake in a hug, earning a roll of eyes from his actual son. “Oh, Blakey, I knew you’d be a Weasley one day!”

“We are Potter’s,” Harry said, swatting Fred’s shoulder after Fred released Blake. He didn’t hug Blake, but he did smile warmly at Blake and Arty both. “I should have known you’d get engaged right out of school,” he told Arty. “Just like your damn Papa you are.”

“I believe it was you who wed Frederick the very first day you were old enough to,” Mister Snape drawled at his son. He offered Blake a handshake and a small smile. “Congratulations, I apologize for your misfortune in romantic choices.”

“Ha, ha,” Arty scowled. “You’re hilarious, Grandpa. Oh! Blake! There’s Grandmother Juliana, come on. She’s been dying to meet you!”

Blake let himself be drug from the sitting room to the dining room where a woman with wild black curls sat talking with Vice Minister Weasley and a man with cropped black hair and his back to Blake.

“Grandmother!” Arty was beaming at the woman who looked up and immediately locked eyes with Blake, a greeting dead on her tongue. She was beautiful, that much was obvious. A sharp jawline, angular eyes that looked as if they missed nothing, and brows arched high. “This is—”

The man sitting across from Arty’s grandmother spun around, his smile immediately turning into a look of shock.

“Blake?”

“Blaise?!”

“Er…” Arty looked between Blake and Blaise for a moment while they silently gaped at each other with Juliana and Vice Minister Weasley watching on. “Hold on…”

“Blaise Nembiko Zabini, you have ten seconds to tell me who this is before I drag my nails through your eyes,” Juliana hissed, her eyes trained on Blake’s as if she were already fully aware of who he was.

Blaise got to his feet and Blake backed up a few steps, caught entirely off guard by the confrontation at what was meant to be a celebration with his fiancé’s family.

Vice Minister Weasley took a sip of her wine after lifting the glass to Blaise.

“I told you so, darling,” she sang brightly. “Surprise.”

Blaise spun around and pointed a finger at Arty’s Aunt Susan. “You knew?!” he demanded. “You knew that Arty’s fiancé was my son?!”

Juliana jumped to her feet and slammed a hand on the table. “YOU KNEW I HAD A GRANDSON AND NEVER TOLD ME?!”

Arty took one glance at Blake’s rapidly paling face and lifted his chin before tapping Blaise on the shoulder.

“Uncle Blaise?”

Blaise turned a wild expression to Arty and Arty smiled sweetly at him.

“Sorry, but I did make a promise to my best friend.” Arty pulled his left hand back and the swung it forward, punching Blaise in the nose as hard as he could and attracting the rest of the guests to the dining room. “Bastard.”

Harry and Fred pushed their way in the dining room and Blake heard someone, maybe Maddie’s dad, mutter “I knew it,” but he turned on his heel and ran from the room.

He didn’t stop until he reached Arty’s room, full of half-packed boxes, and crawled out the window, climbing up to the roof where there was air.

Once the image came clear - Arty’s (thankfully unbiological) uncle that lived in Italy, the one that only visited during holidays and the school year. The grandmother that Blake hadn’t met before; the one with nine dead ex-husbands and a son who didn’t remember the name of the woman he accidentally impregnated - Blake could do nothing but laugh.

He sat on the roof and laughed until his hysterical giggles turned to sobs at the tragic irony.

Opal, who would have gave anything to see Blake graduate and get engaged, wasn’t there to celebrate, but Blaise Zabini who didn’t even want him was.

“WHY?!” Blake screamed in the void, his face soaked from tears during what was meant to be a joyous occasion. “WHY, GOD?!”

“I would hardly claim to be God, if you believe in such a fantastical and patriarchal ideal, though you could come inside, and I could attempt to answer whatever question you have, Tesoro.”

Blake turned and looked over his shoulder and saw Juliana Zabini, his grandmother watching him from Arty’s window with an indecipherable expression.

“I won’t climb on the roof, I have a dreadful fear of heights,” she said. She had a soft voice, something musical that Blake hadn’t expected. “Come, I won’t bite.”

Blake wiped his face on his suit sleeve and lifted a sardonic brow at her. “Will you kill me?”

Juliana twisted her lips in the same smirk that Blake saw in the mirror every day. “Do I stand to inherit a great fortune or title from your death?”

Blake laughed bitterly, “Not at all.”

“Then you are quite safe with me,” she said simply. “Come.”

Blake didn’t know why he did; perhaps it was the soft look in Juliana’s eyes, but he did. He crawled back through the window and slumped down on the chair by Arty’s old desk, the furniture they left behind when they moved. Juliana sat on the foot of Arty’s bed and crossed her ankles gracefully.

“I have heard a great deal of you,” she said. She had an exotic accent to her tone, one likely born of the travels Arty and Selena described of hers. “My Arthur is entirely enamored by you. I can see why, you look much like your father. My Amore, despite his flaws, is a beautiful man.”

“Arty’s my best friend,” Blake said firmly, ignoring her reminder that she found Blaise as beautiful as Opal had. “He’s always been there for me.”

Juliana hummed and smiled when she stared hard in Blake’s eyes - the same thing Blaise saw that made him so uneasy merely amused her for some reason. “What is your name, Tesero?

“It’s Blake,” Blake told her waspishly. He conjured a handkerchief and cleaned his face, turning his head politely when he blew his nose. “Blake Reed, ma’am, not Torso.”

Juliana smiled at him, and she was rather beautiful. “Tesoro means treasure,” she explained in her even and lilting voice. “I have always desired grandchildren and my Amore has always denied me. Arthur and Selena have been the lights of my life, until now.”

Blake snorted weakly and dropped his eyes to his hands that twisted the soiled handkerchief, betraying his inner anxious state.

“Your son,” Blake spat the relationship between her and Blaise like an accusation, “doesn’t want me around, I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for a grandson-in-law when I marry Arty.”

Juliana let out a tinkling laugh and stood up. She walked over and disappeared Blake’s handkerchief, drawing his eyes to her perfectly amused face.

“My Tesoro, I have never been denied a thing in my life, I will not be now.” She offered a hand with perfectly manicured nails to Blake. “Come, I wish to hear everything about you, my grandson, my tesoro. And you must call me Grandmother, of course.”

Blake hesitated. He looked up at Juliana’s serene face, her slanted eyes, her warm smile. And it was mad, because Juliana looked like the glorious night to Opal’s shining morning, but he thought he saw a spark in her eyes that reminded him of his sorely missed mama.

“Okay,” he said. He accepted her hand, moving it to his arm politely after he made his way to his feet. “Where should I start?”

Juliana led him to the bedroom door, back downstairs where the mayhem had first broken out, and smiled lovingly at him.

“You should start in the beginning,” she told him. “The very beginning, darling.”

Blake took a deep breath and walked beside his grandmother.

“The earliest memory I have is being left with a babysitter while my mama went to work…”