Soft // Blaise Zabini

Chapter 14.

Espen didn't know why he was feeling so....actually, he didn't know what he was feeling. Scared? Jumpy? Worried, maybe? Whatever it was, he didn't understand why it was there. All that was happening was that Blaise was sat next to him, writing down the hard-to-understand parts of the lesson in English and then writing the Norwegian underneath, highlighting the important words to learn. But every so often Blaise's left elbow would bump into his right one and his muscles would tense up. Only for a second and not enough to be noticeable to anyone not looking for it, but it was there and Espen didn't get it! He thought he was comfortable with Blaise, he was so sure of it but now? Apparently not.

Once in a while he would turn to him and ask if he was still following and every time, Espen gave a variation of 'meh' - shaking a horizontal hand, a 'mostly', even just an oddly pitched noise that everyone knew meant 'I don't know'. He didn't know why that was either! He was just a big ball of 'I don't know' today. Perhaps it was just his brain trying to adjust to its new surrounding, it was only his second actually day after all.

Espen snapped himself back into focus, he had completely zoned out for just short of 5 minutes. He thanked the universe that he had Blaise taking notes too. Espen was writing notes of his own, of course, he wasn't leaving it all to Blaise. That would be incredibly selfish of him. However, his own notes were missing chunks and if anyone for some reason needed to copy them, good luck to them because it was all in cursive Norwegian with doodles he didn't remember drawing around the sides.

Quills were actually really fun to write with, he found. At his old school they just used regular fountain pens. But the feather was nice, he caught himself tapping the tip of his nose with it as he thought many times.

He was trying to concentrate, he really was, but it was proving harder than he anticipated.

"Did you get that last part?" Blaise whispered. Espen realised that he hadn't retained any information from the past few minutes so he shook his head, no.
"Well, I have it in English but I'm not sure what some of it is in Norwegian." Blaise's face showed nothing but his dark eyes looked almost ashamed. Not quite, but almost.

Espen smiled, "I will find it out later."

"You sure? I can do it if you want, I just need a dictionary from the library and I've got no homework to do tonight."

Espen politely declined, "I am okay."

They weren't speaking loud but a Ravenclaw in front of them turned and shushed them both with a scowl on her face. Blaise gave her a death glare. She turned back around with a huff. If Espen was in her place, he would've turned around too. Blaise's glare made him scared and it wasn't even directed at him.

Espen had to look away, the scene making him feel uncomfortable. He liked it when everyone was happy, not burning holes into each other with their eyes. He ended up looking at his other friends who were across the classroom. Ginny was keeping an eye on Blaise, not noticeable unless you were looking for it. Her lips pressed into a thin line when she saw the sour look still on the Slytherin's face. Espen shifted to Luna instead, at least she was happy. She was happily scribbling away on her parchment paper with a dreamy look on her face. She was doing the same thing as Blaise, writing out most of the class in Norwegian, except she wasn't writing the English first. She was clearly more fluent than Blaise, if only by a little bit. Willow was leaning on her curled fist, her knuckles pushing one side of her glasses up too high but she didn't seem to mind. She looked like she could fall asleep at any moment and wouldn't give a fuck. Espen snickered lightly at the girl he called his best friend.

Blaise followed Espen's eyes, the expression on his own face dissolving back into it's usual, stoic form, and almost smiled at the sight of a girl he barely knew. He mentally scolded himself, what was so funny about someone being tired? Nothing. He turned back to his work - Espen's work - and went over it, checking for mistakes. He realised that he had written his own name at the top out of habit so he crossed it out and wrote Espen's name underneath it. He hesitated, thinking about how to spell Espen's last name.

Hattersted? Hattasted? Hattastad? He thought to himself. He pictured Espen saying it in his head when they were first introduced to each other.

"Hello, my name is Espen Hattestad."

Hattestad. That was it.

Thankfully, Espen hadn't noticed his struggle, too busy looking at his friends to notice. That would've been embarrassing.

The rest of the lesson went smoothly. Espen's own notes were mostly correct, a few mistranslations had appeared on the 20cm of notes he had written on his roll of parchment paper but other than that he did fine.

Blaise ripped his 1m of parchment (50cm per language) off at the bottom and folded it up, handing it to Espen with a look that wasn't a smile but it was significantly more inviting than the look he gives other people. The way Espen grinned, laughter lines showing under his baby blue eyes and dimples popping up that Blaise hadn't seen before, made Blaise thankful for his dark complexion that hid the way his cheeks warmed up against his will. He kept himself composed even though he was internally kicking himself in the shin for getting worked up over nothing.