Rediscovering Reality

You didn't do anything

"Explain. Quickly." I said staring at his shocked face. 

Blaise was caught off guard, face stuck in a stunned expression as his brain reeled and tried to catch up to it. 

"Explain. Now." I raged again. The anger seeping into my calm voice. 

"I....." His eyebrows furrowed downward as he tried to find the words. 

"Tell me right now you are not betraying my trust." 

I had never seen Blaise like this. Not in school, though we didn't know each other well then, and definitely not in the past months while i had grown close to him as family. 

He was never at a loss for words, not like this. He always had a way of putting his words and thoughts together, it seemed to be a trait of the children raised in Pureblood households. The ability to talk even if you knew nothing about the subject at all. 

The ability to talk as if your word was law even if you had nothing to say at all.

But now.... Blaise was a mouse caught in a trap and no amount of wit was going to get him out of it. Only the truth would do that. 

He took a final deep breath, and closed his eyes. When he spoke he spoke so quickly i almost didn't catch what he said.

"I didn't do anything i promise. It's nothing! She has two pictures of me near Knockturn Alley. I was trying to get some of the shops down there to stop selling stuff claiming it was old Death Eater stuff. One of the shops.... they say they have death eater masks worn by our parents." 

Suddenly my blood ran like ice. I had pushed the fact that my parents were Death Eaters so far back in my brain i hadn't even realized that they had probably worn robes and masks and cast a dark mark spell. It horrified me..... for half a second i felt a cavern open in my chest. 

No... they were my parents and they did things in the past but they are better people. They only did what they had to do to protect Blaise... and me. 

"I knew you were going to make an announcement soon. I just... i didn't want anything they had done. Anything i had done..." He was looking at the floor now, hopeless, "I know it was reckless and stupid. They weren't even the real masks because Mum and Dad they burned them. Melted them down and put the cursed stuff who the hell knows where. I should've just left it. I should have just left it. But the other morning when you made that annoucment.... a ripple went out in the dark arts market. Suddenly this shop owner was willing to play this up for the press...." He was rambling and gasping for some sort of explanation for what he had done but there wasn't one. 

But suddenly it made sense. His panic the other morning. Worrying that i was missing. He thought he had angered someone enough to make them come after me.  I was an already vulnerable target but now.... now he had pushed someone. He thought it was his fault. 

"I couldn't have lived if i had been the reason you were hurt. I had to do it once and i don't think," He finally moved his eyes away from the floor and to me, "I don't think i could do it again.... I don't know what ... I'm just so.... I'm sorry Mari." His sentences were broken but i understood what he meant. 

I closed the space between us and took him off guard by hugging him tightly, "Next time.... next time you tell me okay? You tell me, you tell mum and dad, you tell us and we figure this out together as a family. You understand that?" 

He didn't respond verbally, only gave a nod and a slightly relieved sigh. 

"Her biggest leverage is those photos, right?" I said once i had pulled away. 

"Yes... they look pretty bad, me coming out of Knockturn Alley, hood up and all. Alone it wouldn't be much. But with the suspicion around the family already. It makes it look like im nefarious." He rolled his eyes at the situation, and he was right to. The press could take nothing and make it into something.