Puzzle Pieces

Section 2:

As it turned out, the only problem I dealt with the following morning was how to make Draco scream as he came. I must admit, I loved being a seventh year. Yes, the work was more difficult than it had been in previous years, but it was also far more concentrated. Since each student took only the classes specifically related to their discipline, and since most of the work was to be performed through independent study and research performed outside of class, seventh years spent a surprisingly small amount of time actually in classrooms. On that particular day, I didn’t have class until after lunch, which meant that I could sleep until noon, if I wanted.

Normally, sleeping until noon was exactly what I would do, but with Theo in the hospital wing with a case of dragon pox that he caught Merlin knows where, and Greg and Vince in their remedial Charms class, Draco and I had the seventh year dorm to ourselves for the whole of the morning, a fact of which Draco saw fit to remind me by crawling naked into my bed after the others had left and waking me with a lubricated finger up my arse.

It had been three weeks since I had had him inside me, so naturally, it didn’t take long for me to wake up completely and repay his assiduous attentions. He shagged me first, on my bed. Then I shagged him in the shower. And when I took his cock in my mouth while ‘helping’ him get dressed after the shower, he slid down on the floor with me and attacked my erection just as hungrily with his mouth as I attacked his with mine. He gripped my body so tightly as he pulled me in to his mouth, I was sure he left bruises, which made me happier than any sane person should be at an injury. In addition, I was quite sure I left bruises on him, which pleased me as well. Yes, I’m possessive. Yes, I’d like to mark him openly so that everyone would know he was mine. But most of all, I wanted *him* to know that the marks were there. I wanted him to remember that I claimed him, that I loved him, and that he was mine as much as I was his, whether we could show it openly or not. And even though he didn’t say it, I knew that he felt the same way.

He did say he loved me, though. He shouted it, actually, as he came inside my mouth, pulling his lips away from my cock just long enough to gasp out the words before fastening them around me again, knowing that the declaration when I was already so close to cumming would be enough to send me over the edge. It did. It always did, ever since the first time he said it, when we made love for the first time. Limp and boneless as I was in the aftermath of a third bone-jarring orgasm, I summoned up enough energy to twist around and press my lips to his. We stayed like that in a haze of soft kisses and half-audible endearments, just loving each other, for as long as we could.

By the time we managed to pull ourselves together enough to get up and get dressed, we had to practically run to the Great Hall in order to catch the last of lunch. Draco had Theoretical Astronomy which meant he only had time to grab a sandwich and take it with him to eat on the way up to the tower, grumbling as he went about how ridiculous it was to have an astronomy class in the middle of the day. He wasn’t alone in his complaint. Seventh year students who took astronomy always complained about the impracticability of studying the movement of the planets when all you could see was the sun, but the simple truth was, the younger years really required supervision for their astronomy studies, and the tower was booked with their classes for all the evening hours. Seventh years were supposed to be able to handle their practical astronomy lessons on their own, and simply had theoretical lessons that took place during the day.

I had History of Magic, and knew that Professor Binns wouldn’t notice if I slipped into the lecture a few minutes late, meaning I had time not only to grab a quick sandwich for myself, but also to approach Professor McGonagall and ask for her if she could help me with my transfiguration problem.

It was almost worth the humiliation of having to ask the Gryffindor Head of House for help to see the look of shock mixed with tinges of fear decorating Professor McGonagall’s face as I approached her at breakfast. One thing is for certain: Professor McGonagall was every bit as pleased to see me leave her class at the end of fifth year as I was pleased to go.

After the boils-on-balls incident in fifth year, no student in Slytherin was willing to tutor me. With my grade in Transfiguration hanging on to Acceptable by a very thin thread, I approached the professor herself for some additional help. She agreed to meet with me during a mutual free period before dinner. Unfortunately, our meeting ran a bit long. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the damn snail to vanish. I couldn’t even get *part* of the snail to vanish. I was aggravated and frustrated and *hungry* on top of it, once the meeting started running into dinner time. And the more annoyed I got, the more I started cursing under my breath.

Italian was my first language, picked up in my infancy from the servants who raised me in my parents’ villa before I came to Hogwarts. Around my distant, emotionless parents, I learned to speak in flawless English, but they were rarely home and when they left on their inevitable travels, I slipped back into Italian. I still have the habit of dipping into Italian when I’m exceptionally annoyed. My affinity for Italian and, by association, for Latin is part of the reason I’m able to perform so well in school. I don’t have any exceptional degree of magical power, but I do have a strong understanding for what spells mean, and how they break down. It helps, usually, particularly in the non-wand based disciplines, like herbology and arithmancy where vocabulary is so important.

Anyway, it was in Italian that I cursed under my breath as I paced McGonagall’s classroom on that memorable evening. To this day, I’m still not sure quite which spell I used. I’ve certainly never been able to recreate it. But it must have been reasonably close to the Latin phrase for some term of explosive, since by the time the dust settled in the classroom, two windows had shattered, three desks were splintered into toothpicks, scorch marks stained the floor, and the slime of half a dozen slugs coated McGonagall head to toe, dripping slowly onto the floor. McGonagall kept an admirable hold on her temper. Her voice did not rise into a shout even when slime started dripping off the tip of her nose. She simply told me, quietly and calmly, that she had had quite enough of tutoring for the day.

For the rest of the term, while Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors continued their practical applications in Transfiguration class, Slytherins were almost exclusively assigned essays. No explanation was given… unless you consider the way that McGonagall would turn white and involuntarily glance over at me whenever anyone asked if we’d be working on the spells in class to be an explanation.

I passed the rest of the course with an Exceeds Expectations, managed to avoid embarrassing myself at the Transfiguration O.W.L. (after cramming with next to no sleep for a solid week) and left Transfiguration behind with nary a sigh of regret. I dare say McGonagall went out and bought herself a celebratory drink when informed that Blaise Zabini would not be on her class rolls ever again. No wonder, then, that she looked a bit wary when I approached her at breakfast.

“Mr. Zabini,” she stated crisply when she could no longer deny that I was headed to her and not another teacher. “How may I help you?”

Please understand that in general, I’m considered one of the least malicious students in Slytherin. I do not practice hexes on small children or animals when non-sentient targets are as readily available. I have never lethally poisoned anyone deliberately. I have never driven anyone to suicide, so far as I know. I have never used any debilitating or disfiguring hex that took longer than a month to wear off. And I have never involved myself in the deflowering competition that provides the major source of amusement in the Slytherin dormitory. But any Slytherin with even the slightest allowance of natural venom would be unable to prevent himself from enjoying the look on McGonagall’s face at the next words out of my mouth.

“I was hoping, Professor, that you’d be able to tutor me through a transfiguration problem I’m having,” I stated in my most innocent of tones. I had had a great deal of practice with this particular voice, (I had discovered at some point midway through fifth year that it was enough to make Draco go instantly hard,) and knew how to use it to its best effect. (Mercifully, it did not appear to have the same effect on the venerable Professor McGonagall as it did on my lover).

She didn’t go white so much as she went very nearly silvery and transparent. For a moment, I thought the shock might have killed her. Fortunately, however, she rallied. It only took a quarter of an hour and several glasses of water before she was able to speak coherently again.

“I’m afraid my schedule is rather full this term, Mr. Zabini,” she managed at last. “I daresay one of your housemates could help you. Have you consulted with Mr. Malfoy on his availability? He’s the top Slytherin in my class.”

“Yes, Professor, but I’m afraid he said that his schedule was too full, as well.” He also said, when I pulled out the puppy eyes that morning and tried once again to convince him to help me, that the only way he was willing to play with my wand was if the final result left us both sweaty, sated and covered in cum instead of frustrated, nerve-strained and covered in boils. Wisely though, I refrained from mentioning this to McGonagall. I had already nearly given the woman a heart attack just by asking her for help. She wasn’t as young as she used to be; another shock might finish her off, and then where would I be with my problem?

“Perhaps you had best speak with the Head Girl, then,” McGonagall suggested. “She has a free period after lunch tomorrow that she generally devotes to tutoring. She should be able to provide assistance.”

I frowned at the thought and opened my mouth to protest, but McGonagall turned quickly to Professor Sprout who was seated next to her, and struck up a rather frantic conversation, designed, I’m certain, to convince me just to walk away. It worked. I certainly wasn’t about to make a scene, demanding that McGonagall help me. But the thought of asking Hermione Granger for help rankled more than a little.

I adore Draco, honestly I do, but he has single-handedly made it *very* difficult for any Gryffindor to let a Slytherin get any closer to them than opposite sides of the Hogwarts Lake. And no Gryffindor was more jealously guarded than Hermione Granger. The Gryffindors were proud of their Head Girl, and rightfully so. Not only was she the brightest witch Hogwarts has seen in a century or so, but she was part of the legendary Golden Trio that represented hope and light and all that other rot to not just Hogwarts, but the wizarding world as a whole. There was no denying that Potter and Weasley were fiercely protective of her, and the younger Gryffindors tended to follow her around like she was some sort of holy figure. If any Slytherin tried to approach, they were sent off with a flea in their ear (and not always metaphorically) in a large hurry. Asking her for help would be… difficult.

In matters such as these, timing was always of the essence. Simply walking up to the girl when she was surrounded by her cronies and lackeys would have been tantamount to suicide. I had to catch her when she was alone. In one respect, I was rather lucky: Gryffindor’s Quidditch team had the field reserved right after dinner. That meant that Granger’s staunchest defenders, Potter, Weasley, and other Weasley, would be out of the picture. Granger, not surprisingly, headed straight for the library after finishing her dinner. When I followed her there, I found that once again, fortune had favored the devious, and the Head Girl was alone with her books.

Now all I needed to figure out was what to say. As best I could remember, Granger and I had never spoken. Ever. This was not as unusual as it might sound. I’d say that at least half of the students in our year, possibly more, had never spoken to me, either. There were only two or three outside of Slytherin who ever held a conversation with me lasting longer than thirty seconds or so. Gryffindors in particular, not terribly surprisingly, kept their distance. So in spite of the fact that Granger was Head Girl and ostensibly in charge of the whole of the student body, in addition to being a seventh year who had shared classes with me since we were eleven years old, I couldn’t remember a single occasion where we had spoken to each other. It simply never came up. I had no strong proof that she even knew who I was. That might play in my favor, of course. If she didn’t know me, she had no *specific* reason to hate me. But it could work against me as well, if she followed the time-honored Gryffindor mindset that the only good Slytherin was a hexed-into-immobility Slytherin. Well, there was only one way to tell.

I moved toward her with most deliberate caution. Even though I didn’t know much about Granger personally, it was clear from the most cursory of glances at her and at her surroundings that there were dangers inherent in interrupting a studying Head Girl. She appeared to be quite grimly entrenched in a very large book and everyone in the library was giving her a *very* clear berth; it had to be for a reason. Silently cursing McGonagall (if she wanted to get out of tutoring me so badly, the least she could have done was make my appointment for me!) I approached.

“Granger,” I managed to say, hoping against hope that my voice sounded less squeaky outside my head than it did within it.

She looked up with a frown of annoyance that melted into surprise when she saw who was standing in front of her.

“Er… I’m, um…” I stammered.

“I know who you are, Zabini,” she replied calmly with a surprising lack of animosity, flustering me still further. “Was there something you wanted?”

“I need your help,” I finally blurted out. A single, raised eyebrow was my only answer.

“Transfiguration has always been my weak point,” I continued, “and if I can’t get the rabbit’s foot flowering plant ready by Friday, I’ll get zero credit in Potions.” She was in Potions with me, so I knew that she would understand my predicament. “Professor McGonagall thought you might be able to tutor me. She said you have a free period after lunch tomorrow. So do I. Could we work on it then?”

Both eyebrows went up at this statement.

“Is that a no, then?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just… I would have thought that you’d prefer to go to Malfoy instead of me. He’s ranked in the top ten percent in Transfiguration.”

“You’re ranked in the top one percent,” I answered. “And besides, Malfoy has tried tutoring me before and it… didn’t end well. There’s no one else in Slytherin I can ask. So will you help me, or not?”

She tilted her head slightly to the side, consideringly. “Okay,” she said, a moment later. “There’s an empty classroom at the end of the Charms corridor, next to the portrait of Bertram the Befuddled. That’s where I usually do my tutoring. I’ll meet you after lunch.” With that said, she returned her attention to her book.

I waited a minute to see if anything else was forthcoming. It appeared that nothing was. Hesitant as I was to interrupt her again, I wanted to be certain we were quite finished before walking away. It had seemed far too easy. Surely, there was something more.

“Is that… all, then?” I asked hesitatingly.

When she looked up this time, I could tell she was surprised I was still standing there. “Was there something else you needed?” she asked politely.

I shook my head.

“Do you have any burning desire to discuss the weather, or anyone’s health?”

She couldn’t possibly be joking with me, could she? No. Not possible. Everyone knows that Gryffindors don’t have any sense of humor, especially when they’re dealing with Slytherins. I shook my head.

“Then I suppose that’s all.”

How could that be all? How could a Gryffindor agree to help a Slytherin and not set any ground rules? Not coerce any promises that I wouldn’t attack her or hurt her? Not make any threats enforcing my good behavior? Not even ask why on earth she should help me when I’d never done a thing for her? How was it possible that all I had to do was ask, and she would say yes?

Bewilderment at the unaccountable Gryffindor kept me frozen in place for a few moments, but when Granger did not look up again, I gradually collected myself enough to walk away.


End Section 2