The Boy Who Lived

Behold! The House of Potter

Blaise relaxed considerably in Narcissa's company as they greeted each other like old friends. He was finding it all a bit strange. Draco talked back in June about seeing Potter again after the war... and he had talked a lot. But Dray had always talked about Potter a lot. But this! And damn if Dray hadn't gone and slipped it into the conversation, all casual like, that he was soulmates with Potter and they'd bonded. And he'd thought Dray was as straight as an Escher staircase but he supposed that was all living up to Lucius's bloody ideals. He'd have to get the full story later.

And then there was Harry bloody Potter himself. Lord Potter, by all accounts, living in a fucking castle in the middle of somewhere, location undisclosed. Only he wasn't behaving like a lord any more than he'd behaved like the Chosen One at school. Sure, Dray and Pansy used to go on about his exploits and accuse him of riding his reputation but Blaise, well, Blaise liked to observe and he saw. He saw Potter didn't like the fame and the attention and everything that was thrown at him. Blaise knew he should have done more, said more, perhaps even defended Potter, but it was difficult for a half-blood in Slytherin House to speak up so it was easier to keep his head down. Just survive, as Potter put it. And by the time seventh year came around, well, all he could do is be there for Dray and watch his own back. Especially with those nutters, the Carrows, practically running a torture shit-show.

Then Dray, after the war, disappeared in on himself and threw himself into studying but both of them stayed in contact because now they knew they could be friends. And suddenly, at a time when he desperately needed it because money was running low and he'd be damned if he was going to go crawling to his mother for her support, up Dray pops with a lifeline.

And so, he found himself in a huge drawing room in the west wing of Potter's confusingly large castle, only Potter insisted on calling it a Hall. The room was really quite beautiful once you saw beyond the odd bits of furniture that were stacked up and the boxes. There were two huge ornate fireplaces and waist-high panelling and the rest was covered in damned great big green family tree tapestry along every wall which framed the windows and a large opening which led into what was clearly a room set within the base of a turret. Potter had loads of bloody turrets! It was a fucking castle!

He found himself staring at the tapestry, it went back to the tenth-century, of all things, according to Narcissa. And to think they used to rib Potter for his diluted and muddied blood status. His family was one of the oldest in existence. It went beyond the Peverells and they were the stuff of fairytales.

And here Blaise was, in the middle of it all, with Harry's Godson hanging on his arm as he tried sketching Harry so he could compile a study of the man before it came to do the final portrait. He found himself knocked sideways that Pansy was here too, somewhere, carrying out research with Hermione Granger and apparently bonded to Luna damned Lovegood. Merlin, if someone had told them this when they were at school they would have died laughing and carted the so-called seer off to the Janus Thickey Ward in St Mungo's. Blaise snorted lightly to himself; maybe he'd get to revisit his fifth-year crush on Ginny Weasley now he knew he wouldn't be stepping on Potter's toes. Then he could complete the whole laughable plot twist in their fates. Ms Weasley was, after all, extremely hot; he knew that from the magazine shoots the Holyhead Harpies' star chaser did every so often. Apparently, she was turning up tomorrow.

He also found it quite hard to believe that he was sitting with Narcissa, Andromeda Black and Minerva fucking McGonagall. He couldn't help chanting to himself, scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, witch's mummy, maw and gulf... He decided that, combined, they scared him more than his own mother. It appeared the three women had spent their morning trying to straighten the room though there were still boxes stacked about the place. Narcissa said the House-Elves had moved some of the excess furniture into the room that ran parallel with the library and the witches had levitated most of the remaining stuff into the turret area. Apparently, there was a Grand Piano in there, underneath it all. The only furniture that had been left in the room for the moment was arranged around the fireplace. A oversized sage-green velvet sofa that was so deep that the other two laughing as Andromeda complained and tried to inelegantly heave herself out of blancmange-like cushions. The sofa faced a matching oversized footstool. They'd also found, or at least transfigured, two chaise-armchairs, covered in an intriguing cream and green floral and dragon design. It was all bizarrely comfortable and homely, considering the size of the bloody place.