Draco's Mudblood - Draco Malfoy Fan Fiction - *Year One*

Worth

Blaise Zambini stared at the man across the table.

He was a stout little man with a great fat moustache and squinty, piggy little eyes. His fingers looked like paper towel rolls and his third or fourth chin busted through the collar of his jumper. He had been picking at the croissant on his plate for several minutes, pushing it around with a look of mild disgust on his face, but as Mrs. Zambini reentered the dining hall he eagerly stuffed half into his mouth and grinned up at his wife.

Blaise let his nails dig into his palm and kept his eyes on his own food.

"Blaise, honey, you have to eat." Mrs. Blaise had one hand around her husband's shoulders and had her other hand on her cheek, looking at him in concern from the other side of the table. She seemed hundreds of miles away.

"I am, mother," he said, and picked up his spoon to swallow back some porridge. She smiled at him, appeased, and turned back to cradling and swooning over her husband.

This was her third one in Zambini's 11 years of life, not including Zambini's birth father. They were married the year prior on 21 August, his birthday, but Mrs. Zambini had been too caught up in her fourth overall marriage to do more than smile at him when he walked her down the aisle.

He dug his spoon into the sticky bowl of porridge and wondered how long this guy would last.

The fourth Mr. Zambini looked up to Blaise from his wife, as if just remembering he was there. "Are you excited for school, son?"

This wasn't the first time he'd called Blaise his son, but Blaise was too exhausted and stressed now to comment on it. "Yes. Ecstatic."

Mrs. Zambini scurried across the black tiled floor and flung her arms over her son's shoulders. Her peacock feather boa tickled his cheek. "Oh, look at you! My boy is getting so old. 11 years old now, look at you, going off to Hogwarts and everything... my son," her dark eyes glistened in the dimmed morning light that streamed through their black-stained full length windows in the dining hall.

Mr. Zambini stood abruptly and cleared his throat. "I'll give you two a moment while I go fetch the camera. How does that sound, deary?" He smiled, though it wasn't too noticeable from beneath his moustache.

Mrs. Zambini nodded eagerly and turned back to pinching Blaise's cheeks. When Mr. Zambini's footsteps no longer echoed off the tile in the dining hall, she dropped her hands and leaned into the chair beside Blaise, then reached into her pocket to reveal a cigarette. She was no longer the weepy, caring mother Mr. Zambini saw her as. "Light it for me, would you?"

He reached for his wand and, muttering the incantation he'd been taught the moment he could speak, lit the cigarette. His mother breathed deeply and watched the embers glow. "So," Blaise said, leaning back in his own chair. "How long's this one gonna last?"

Her eyes were cold. It ran in the family. "Watch it, son, that's your stepfather."

"My third one, to be exact. What's his name again? Eugene? Darrell?" He chose his words carefully. He knew it was Gerald, and instead listed the names of the first two stepdads of his. Mrs. Zambini looked murderous. "What? I was only curious. You don't seem to like him very much. Just wanted to know how much longer till he was gone."

Smoke curled from his mother's lips. "And what is that supposed to mean, Blaise Zambini?"

He shrugged. "Again, I'm only curious. Don't want to get too attached, do I? I mean, it's been a year already, so you're bound to-"

She reached down and stubbed out her cigarette centimetres from his fingers. "Before I'm bound to what?"

Before you're bound to kill him.

"Nothing, mother."

She magiced the cigarette away, but tendrils of smoke still surrounded her and the ash on the table still faintly shone with dying flame. She seemed to consider her next words very, very carefully. "There is nothing, Blaise, more important than what you can give and what you have, namely money. It won't buy you happiness, it will buy you so much more. We have all of this," she gestured to the dining hall, lined with stone statues flecked with real gold and priceless paintings and artefacts on dark bookshelves, "because of me. Your worth is only measured by what you can give and what you have."

With that, the blubbering Mr. Zambini shuffled back into the dining hall and positioned Blaise and his mother to take a photo. His mother turned the water works back on and smiled at the camera. Blaise remained stone.

What can I give? What do I have?

What am I worth?