Lexi Layyer my only weakness*hp fanfic*

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"...Lola?"

I look up wearily, half-blinded by tears, to see Blaise standing at the top of the stairs, frowning at me.

Blaise… for some reason seeing him just makes me cry harder.

He’s at my side within seconds. He takes the steps two at a time until he’s sat down beside me, then he places two hands on my shoulders and turns me so I’m sat opposite him. I determinedly blink away the tears and suddenly my eyes are meeting two deep brown ones.

“…Lola,” he says in not much more of a whisper, but there’s a firmness there, too, “…what happened to you?”

Arranged marriage, I try to say, but I can’t. I just choke on the words as they lump up in my throat.

“Was it your father, Lola?” he continues, his eyes boring into mine, like he’s trying to telepathically work out what’s wrong seeing as I seem to be incapable of using my voice. “Did he hurt you? Was he torturing you?”

If you count arranged marriage as torture, I try to say. Which I do. This feels like torture. Only it’s never-ending. A life sentence.

…But it might just be with him.

I just can’t squash the idea that it could be with Blaise. It would just make sense as to why Voldemort was keen to make sure to order that Blaise be taken down from being locked up in the attic days before he starved to death, whilst he didn’t seem to care about Draco. And, in fact, why Blaise is here at all. I just have this weird feeling it’s all been planned.

And I don’t know how I feel about that. On one hand, Blaise isn’t Draco. He’s pretty much my best friend now, and he gets me, you know? But I’m not in love with him and I don’t look at him in the same way I look at Draco. But, on the other hand, having an arranged marriage to Blaise would, in some way, be all right. I know him and I love him and we get on so well and I’d certainly be happier with him than with a total stranger, which is what the other option could be. If I could just – if I could be married to Blaise on paper, but still be with Draco… that’s the only way I can see myself turning this mess into some kind of good thing.

…Either way, I have to tell him. Blaise, I mean, not Draco. I can’t face telling him just yet. But if anyone will know what to do, it’ll be Blaise. And he’s good at calming me down, which I definitely need right now… it’s his eyes, I think. They’re calming.

“…I’m getting married, Blaise,” I blurt out, so quickly that the words tumble over each other so they barely makes sense.

But looking at how Blaise’s eyes widen in horror and how his eyebrows crumple into a deep frown means he’s understood. He’s shaking his head and his grip on my shoulders gets a little tighter.

“…What?” he says, and then, “no…”

I nod and then my eyes start welling up again. “…It’s Voldemort,” I murmur, my voice cracking. “He says he’s arranging a marriage for me.”

“With who?” he says at once. “Draco?”

“No, not Draco,” I scoff as I wipe away the fresh tears. “I think he’s the last person it’d be with.”

“Then who?” he demands, his voice suddenly becoming urgent.

“I don’t know,” I say and I feel like crying again. Keep calm, Lola… “it could be anyone. I have a feeling he won’t tell me until he absolutely has to – but he said it would be the ‘last person I expected’.”

I wait for him to start spurting words of reassurance; to stroke my hair and to tell me that I didn’t have anything to worry about, that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – or, better still, for him and everything around us to fade away and for me to suddenly wake up in my bed in the Ravenclaw dormitory at Hogwarts to realize this was all this horrible dream.