Birds of a Feather

Chapter 1: Dragged to the Rescue Once Again

          The magic fades. It always does. This is a simple fact that most everyone has to learn at some point, yet it is sad. And it always seems to take everyone by surprise, no matter how many times they've encountered it. I am no exception to this.

          As I stood at the door to my own home, never feeling more like a stranger, while an unknown man yelled for healers, I was reminded of this fact. I might have called for someone as he was doing now, but I stayed frozen to the doormat that falsely proclaimed "Welcome!". Strangers swarmed in and out of my house, completely disregarding me as everyone always did. Yet I still stood glued to the doormat. Part of me wanted to walk inside. Begged to find out who was injured and pleaded with whatever God there may be that it wasn't my brother or my mother. The other part of me knew that nobody else was ever in that godforsaken house and wanted to stay on the doormat, where the bitter realization of the death of one of my final remaining family members would never strike me. I suppose another part of me wanted my feet to start and take me wherever they please, as long as it was away from this. That part of me wanted to turn and run for some sort of comfort that could never be found.

          But instead, I stood paralyzed, my eyes forcing themselves to focus on the stupid doormat that my mother had hated so. I can still remember her stumbling in drunk and kicking at the goddamned thing and complaining about the whole practice of doormats since they were always "fucking lies," in her words. I found that in the end, I agreed with her in that aspect. I had never found myself fully welcome in anyone's home no matter how kind their doormat may have been. I think doormats are just another practice that we as a society have created to make us feel better about ourselves.

          "Excuse me! Excuse me!" A voice screeched, attempting to move through the crowd of people that now surrounded my house. The person seemed to be anxious and slightly annoyed, a thought that I almost scoffed at. Their mother hadn't just died in a fight with aurors who had no right to be at their house, what did they have to be upset about? I had always hated that kind of thinking. We always put other down and believed ourselves above them, but I am sure that everyone has their struggles and in the wise words of Theodore Nott "Drowning at twenty feet below the surface isn't worse than drowning at ten feet below the surface. Drowning is still drowning." We belittled the struggles of others, turning them down and shoving them further if they ever asked for help and then were surprised and disappointed when they got to a point where nothing could help them and they were always stuck below the surface. I hated the fact that I too had fallen to this kind of thinking, but what was there to do about it? I had always struggled in controlling my thoughts, and I highly doubted I was going to suddenly learn now.

          A voice, I'm not sure if it was the same one or someone completely different, now asked "Are you Blaise Zabini?" I gave a silent nod, not bothering to look up and not having enough energy to go through all the work of normalizing my voice as I had learned to, even if it was just to say yes. "I have some bad news." The voice continued. I nodded once again to tell them to continue, an action that I had learned from my mother after watching her do it a million times as I grew up. "Your mother..." the voice trailed off for some time, as if trying to think of a way to say what they needed to "...and your brother..."

          "Are dead?" I asked, looking up solemnly at the person, who gave a mournful nod. I have never understood why we beat around the bush so much when it comes to death. Sugarcoating never made anyone less dead. In fact, I had felt as though it always made things much worse. For once I just wanted someone to be able to look at me and tell me that someone was dead. Just that. No 'I'm so sorry this happened', no careful phrases, no wishing it hadn't happened, and no praying. No amount of sorries ever brought a dead person back to life and therefore, were unnecessary.