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Slytherin Solidarity Summary: The journal of Blaise Zabini falls open, revealing the story of the last Slytherins before the great battle begins. A house broken and torn from the inside, and the greatest of loves – lost to the ages. Pairings: Blaise/Hermione Category: Darkfic/drama/romance Rating: R Disclaimer: A non-profit adoration of J.K. Rowling’s characters. No money is being made by this endeavour and characters, places and curses remain the property of J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Books, Warner Brothers and all those other profiteering bigwigs. Author's Note, A Forward: Obviously those of you who stand slightly cleverer than the rest have surmised that these aren't journals per se - in my spare time I write Harry Potter fanfiction without any shame. What is to follow is an experimental novel I'm working on for 'The Dark Arts' at fictionalley.org. Slytherin Solidarity Prologue: The Manifesto of Mr. Blaise Zabini --- The unravelling began as the first russet and gold leaves began to fall in the year nineteen hundred and ninety seven, crisped as the weather turned cool and the students of Hogwarts School donned their scarves and pulled their cloaks up the shield them from the sudden chill of an early autumn. There is no once upon a time, for this is no fairy tale, rather, this was the beginning of the end as I’ve learned to see it in the years since the Fall. My full name is Blaise Domani Luciano Zabini; I am twenty two years old, an Italian by birth but English by rearing. My father, mother, and I left our country when I was still a very small child, and my two sisters had not even been as much as a twinkle in my father’s eye. In our household as children, we were taught in the way of our ancestors – the Strega Tradition, passed on through the Italian bloodlines reaching further back in history than the renaissance. True, the name Zabini finds itself entwined with the Medici and the Borgia, these days I find it almost amusing to shrug off our dark past in the face of those who question how and why we came to subtle influence in the Wizarding world. But even so, these purveyors of the myth of ruthless ambition really had no idea just how persuasive my ancestors were. Our family’s browned and dust-covered collection of poison recipes astounds me still, sometimes. If you have found these memoirs then perchance you will find offered here the explanation that has eluded many, even those that survived the last battle. What I address here, however, is not that fateful day in the summer of the year I turned eighteen. In fact, at that time I had boarded a boat with the few treasures I stole from the ruins of Zabini manor and had set sail to Sicily, to find and care for my Grandmother and cousins who would undoubtedly feel the backlash of the greatest battle our world had ever seen. By then, my entire family was slaughtered, my friendships destroyed, and darkness had come to reign. By then, the magical world had realized it shouldered its hopes on the gradually breaking back of someone who was no more than a teenager with a rare streak of luck. Harry Potter, I knew him well. A slight boy, clad in spectacles and clothing that were forever too large, possessing both a physical reminder of his lot in life and the immense pressure of a race slowly going mad, turning rotten from the inside out like an apple with a worm eating away at the white flesh near the core. I think about him every now and then, and I think about her. But alas, this is not his tale and I do not wish to engage myself in thoughts about the war, I’ve spent far too many a sleepless and lonely night in hiding, living amidst the rats and the scum of this vile planet to care any longer about a battle fought between a madman who lusted for power above all else, and a boy of seventeen who could barely tie his shoes properly half the time. It was not my fight, I chose for it not to be – and thus, I am to blame for much suffering. My weakness laid the foundations, and from there we crumbled. I remember the Gryffindors well. I recall my sweet undoing, my untimely demise in the face of propriety, my broken honour. She ruined it all, and yet I loved her with every fetid breath I took. I remember the faces of my housemates, the hollowed look in Ted Nott’s eyes before he took his last breath, Millicent’s broken body lying in the cavernous halls of our dungeon realm on the cold stone floor between the brocaded green bed hangings, Pansy and Tracey clutching at each other as they cried with black cascades of tears streaming, and Draco – proud, stern Draco Malfoy, calm as death before the storm hit. There are days when I miss them so much it aches merely to breathe. Let me begin then, this sordid tale, at the start of it all for my broken circle of friends and I, in our seventh year in the college of magic known then and now as Hogwarts.
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