As We Fall (Blaise Zabini Fanfiction)

Chapter 31

Zoe

It's a shockingly warm day for the middle of February.

The sky is a bright blue ribbon, the color of a summertime river. Although the sun hides behind a cluster of vague clouds, its warmth still manages to reach all the way down to my skin.

I'm standing on the Covered Bridge, which stretches from the clock tower to the courtyard. It's vast and wooden, overlooking a deep ravine filled with green forestry and pure streams. Blaise and I have taken to meeting here after I finish with Transfiguration, and he with Arithmancy. We walk across the bridge and through the courtyard to Charms or Herbology, depending on which class we have that day.

It'd been his idea at first; he'd asked me to meet him in the courtyard before Charms one day so I could look over his essay. Naturally, I'd agreed, because Charms is one of the few subjects that I excel at. Upon making it out to the busy courtyard, though, I'd been fascinated by the deep and earthy-green valley beneath the bridge, and Blaise only found me after he'd already been waiting for ten minutes. So, we'd started meeting on the bridge, instead.

"Hey." An upbeat voice calls from a few feet away, accompanied by the sound of heavy footsteps. My head snaps up. I hope it's who I think it is.

I smile when I see that I'm right. It's Blaise.

As he grows closer to me, a grin breaks out across his face -- something that he tries to bite back at first. I haven't seen him look this way -- happy -- since last term. Maybe ever. There's something glowing and lively about him that's infectious in the best ways.

He's been like this -- more upbeat -- for about a week now. His mood isn't nearly as unstable as it was at the beginning of term, and most of his cuts and bruises have faded. I still have so many questions about what happened to him over break, but I've decided to hold them in for now. Whatever it was, it seems like he's finally healing from it. I don't want to make things worse by bringing it back up.

The only reminder that something ever happened to Blaise is the jagged cut on his forearm that I spotted a few weeks ago in potions. The wound hasn't quite healed yet -- it's still red and blistering. I see flashes of it sometimes, when he reaches for his quill or runs his hand over his head and his sleeve rises up. I try to ignore it, though. He looks like he's doing better, and that's what matters.

We haven't talked much about what happened at the slug party, and I'm guessing it's because he thinks I don't remember it too well. But I do. I remember most of it as clear as day. Dancing with him to soft music, his arms wound around me. Laughing until I had to clutch my hands over my stomach, which was burning with pain. I know he hasn't forgotten about it, either -- I can see it in the way he looks at me sometimes. However, many late-night shots of firewhiskey made the rest of my memory of the night foggy and blurred, and I can only recall one other thing: him kissing me.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point, Blaise kissed me. I can't picture him in the moment, or where we were. Rather, I remember sensations -- the taste of his lips on mine, his fingers softly tangled into my hair. Nothing else.

It makes me wish I hadn't drank so much, because I want to remember every detail of that moment and never let it go.

***

Sleep doesn't come easily to me that night.

I've been having nightmares for months now. Before the dementor attack, they were about the mysterious person who lurked outside my dorm with a knife. Before that, they concerned Flint's vile behavior. Lately though, they've only gotten worse, and sleep is quickly slipping farther and farther out of my grasp.