ubi amor, ibi dolor
Everything goes swimmingly.
Blair returns for her fourth year at Hogwarts in a pleasurable haze. She settles into a routine quickly enough - go to classes, hold court at the Slytherin Common Room, and saunter over to the Gryffindor table to annoy Sirius on occasion. And then, only then, does she sneak out to obscure areas of the castle to rendezvous with Daniel.
Cissa, who sometimes catches her humming, looks askance at her. “Why are you so radiant, Blair? You can tell me, you know.” She holds out a reassuring hand. Blair only smiles, lost in thought.
Her professors, always eager to sing her praises, are even more effusive. “Your magic is flourishing, Miss Black,” Professor Flitwick announces jovially. “Keep doing what you’re doing!” He winks. Perhaps he, too, practices the old ways.
Reg, her darling twin, looks at her as if he’s trying to figure her out. Mercifully, he asks her no questions.
Every evening, she runs into Dan’s arms, content to be with him in secret.
-
Everything goes swimmingly, for the most part.
Dan suddenly tries to corner in her public - at the Great Hall, in the library, in the hallways between classes. Blair always shrugs him off. “What are you doing, Humphrey?” she hisses. She once gives him a derisive glare that convinces even Dan that she abhors him.
“Why must you be so dismissive of me in public?” Dan asks her. “We were friends too before we dated, you know.”
“I know, Daniel,” she sighs. “But you’ve been mooning over me in public.” She smiles, trying to be more sympathetic. “Just don’t do that, alright?”
Dan fixes her with a look. “What if I want to?”
-
Everything goes swimmingly, until it doesn’t.
“I don’t want to be with you anymore,” Dan tells her one night.
Blair doesn’t believe him. “Daniel - what? Why?”
“I’m so tired of being your secret, Blair.”
Blair is indignant. “And what do you want me to do, Humphrey? Insult my centuries-old bloodline and flaunt our relationship in my parents’ faces?”
Dan raises his voice. “Insult your bloodline, Blair? Is that what you think of me? As some sort of stain on your family’s name?”
Blair looks at him. She actually doesn’t think that, not anymore, but old habits die hard. “No, but not now, okay?”
Dan sighs.
“Anyway,” she says in a dismissive tone, “Why are you being so serious? We’re just 14. It’s not like we’re getting married anyway.”
She knows this is the wrong thing to say the minute she says it.
“I see.” Daniel stands up. “I don’t think I can even be friends with you right now, Blair.”
He walks away. Blair refuses to swallow her pride and follow him.
-
Dan ignores her for the rest of the year. The Slytherin crowd does not find it suspicious, chalking it up to the pureblood princess having insulted their only muggleborn. They’re not wrong, Blair thinks ruefully to herself.
She doesn’t cry and she reassures herself that she is the same as ever.
Cissa looks at her quizzically. Reg holds out a comforting hand more often than usual. Blair spends most of her time in the library, reinforcing her knowledge on magical lore.
She learns occlumency just so she can clear her mind to sleep.