Birds of a Feather

Chapter 2: Learning Not to be Offended

          Oh my god. That was the only thought that was able to get through my thick head as the aurors surrounding my house pulled my parents away. And then Oh fuck, what am I going to do? I paced slightly as people began peppering me with questions, which I decided not to answer. I wasn't allowed to, my mom had made sure that I knew of this rule. She had made me run over it a million times over until I could probably recite it in my sleep. She cared a lot about rules, probably more than she cared about me. But that was not the issue at hand. The issue was that my parents were just arrested, which they deserved, don't get me wrong, but I had never been without them. Well, that's not quite true. They had both left a lot and I had lived with the Malfoys for a while as my parents were one of many teen parents, and had both needed to finish Hogwarts before they could worry about a kid. But regardless of whether I had or hadn't been away from them before, they were still gone and I was still unprepared for that.

          Odd, they prepared me for every situation except for in the case of their arrest. I even had very strict instructions about what to do if they disappeared, but that was assuming that they had been forced to run away and could not take me with them, though now I suppose that this was probably more a matter of would not could, because they could've pulled me from Hogwarts whenever they liked, they had constantly reminded me of this fact. It was in fact, a rather common threat, though the most common one was probably putting me up for adoption, though they never directly said that they would, simply that they could at any point, which I guess was true, for both circumstances. But now I couldn't worry about whether them leaving me behind was a matter of could or would, I needed to worry about myself. About whether the aurors were going to take me to Azkaban with them or not. All of them floated past me, besides of course the ones who were questioning me and even those ones had begun to leave, having given up hope that I would have anything to give them.

          But then I saw a familiar face. Or two familiar faces, though one was much more welcome than the other. I pushed past all of the aurors that flanked me, completely forgetting about the healer that had been working to fix my arm, yanking it free of her grasp and sending a jolting pain through it, though I barely noticed. "Blaise!" I yelled, throwing my arms out and pulling him into them as soon as he was close enough to. He scrunched up his face the way that he always did when receiving hugs since they seemed to be among his seven circles of hell, but still smiled at my safety.

          "Weasley, what are you doing here?" I asked, once I was satisfied with the torture I had just put my friend through. As I spoke, I felt the healer press into my arm once again, apparently having dealt with this too much to worry about slightly disrespectful or slightly stupid victims of some sort of injury.

          "My dad told me something happened at the Parkinson house...I figured you wanted some comfort from one of your friends and would rather die than go to the Malfoy manor again." he responded with an almost snarky tone, but I took what I would get.

          "Worried about me, are you Weasley?" I said in a sweet, almost flirty tone, before dropping the act and saying "You don't have to, I'm stronger than the crust of our Earth." I jokingly flexed as if to prove this, when I was reminded that my arm was injured, and winced, reaching for my elbow.

          "Has anyone ever told you how stupid you are?" Blaise asked, his voice deep and angry-sounding as always, though I could hear the slight hint of endearment, which given his lack of expression, was enough to prove how much he cared for me.

          "Believe it or not, people have." I responded, placing my hands over where my hips should have been, though mine were still flat as always. Weasley gave a chuckle, most likely at the sheer unexpectedness of my statement, though Blaise rolled his eyes, having long since gotten used to my antics.