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bzabini's journal
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Blaise A. Zabini's Journal  [[Parts of Hogwarts were seriously damaged during the seige of '98, but most of the damage has since been repaired. The Charms classroom looks more or less the same as it did when Flitwick taught there; the Quidditch pitch has been re-turfed, though the stands haven't been prepared. Research & Development offices run in the corridors where Snape used to practice potions. The Hufflepuff dorms have been rebuilt to house Lord's Army's troops; the windows Great Hall repaired, and in the old Herbology areas, the fields have been replanted, new glass put in the greenhouses, and herbs and plants for the Death Eater Healers are being raised in the long seed beds. The offensive against the Allied Ministry starts at dawn on the nineteenth. Blaise has received instructions to be standing in the southeast greenhouse two hours before dawn -- he isn't actually priveleged to know where Voldemort is, though he does know that the Dark Lord is somewhere on the Hogwarts grounds, so three hours before dawn, at three twenty in the morning, he collects his secretarial kit. His recording charms, his dictaquills, a pocketful of toffees to get him through the irritation of having to be around some of the senior Death Eaters, may they glue his jaws together so he won't have to bite his tongue through to keep from saying something and Blaise also picks up his three bodyguards, waiting just outside his office. Blaise doesn't actually know how to get to the Dark Lord. That's information guarded by Voldemort's inner circle of bodyguards and only the very highest echelons of Death Eaters. Even beyond that, though, Blaise has suspicions that Voldemort has hidden himself underneath a Fidelius charm with Bellatrix Lestrange as the Secret Keeper. Every time he's met the Dark Lord, even when he's been accompanying Mr. Malfoy, Lestrange has met them and guided them down -- Mr. Malfoy never makes a move to conduct himself down, and Blaise suspects that Bellatrix must secretly wipe the knowledge of Voldemort's location out of their heads afterwards because all Blaise knows is to wait for her in the ruins of the one green house that hasn't been repaired, the south east one. Even though it's August, it's been a cold month, and Blaise stamps his feet a little in the pre-dawn chill. The south east greenhouse actually used to be one of the nicest, and in the light of the moon, Blaise can pick out the details of the mosaic in the center of the floor. It looks like a sunburst, a compass, sketched out in gold with what must have been the four cardinal directions picked out in gold-trimmed tiles and mascots of the four houses of Hogwarts being the secondary ones. Leaves are growing all around, through the broken windows, and the plants that used to grow in the seed beds all dead from the cold with field plants growing in the potting dirt instead, and hidden in the middle of all that greenery are charms that will detect invisibility implements, Polyjuice, and other disguises. One of the bodyguards shifts uneasily. They all have the hoods of their Lord's Army robes up because of the cold, but Blaise thinks he sees a corner of pale skin and light-colored eyes around the hood. Sharp features. Neat little mouth. Blaise is reminded of the Ackerley family, though as far as he knows Mr. Ackerley was actually too dissolute to actually father any bastards. Blaise is just about to open his mouth and ask the bodyguard's name when the vines at the end of the greenhouse raise their heads and hiss and writhe back from the door they obscure to let Bellatrix Lestrange, Secret-Keeper for Voldemort, through. *** The next time Blaise steps through the door, it's blindly, stumbling. He's wearing dress shoes with smooth soles, so he goes sliding across the mosaic tiles, crashing through the pots of plants. Smoke follows him out of the little door, and the few panes of glass still left in the south-east greenhouse are shaking and crashing down through the air because the enchantment that held this greenhouse invisible from the eyes of strangers was linked to the Dark Lord's life. Voldemort had layers and layers of magical charms protecting his life, and now that he's dead, the integrity of the greenhouse is going too. Six or eight of the Lord's Army garrison at Hogwarts are just coming out of the corridor from the castle when Blaise runs into them. Blaise has to grab one of their shoulders to steady himself; blood is dripping down one side of his face, and he dropped his broken wand in the grass on the dead sprint from the greenhouse over to the castle. Later, he finds out that he has cracked ribs from a falling piece of rubble in the cavein that started shortly after Potter died under Lucius Malfoy's wand -- apparently, there was just enough of the Dark Lord in Potter to keep the cave upright so long as Potter was alive, but when Lucius Avada Kedavra'd him, the roof started to go. Bellatrix Lestrange and Mr. Parkinson were holding a bubble of light up over the bodies, keeping the debris from the Lord's body until he could be moved properly. They had sent Blaise up to fetch help, and with his arm over his head to try and shield himself from the worst of the debris, Blaise had looked behind him once as he'd run up through the tunnels -- the circle of golden light around the three standing figures, the two figures lying on the ground, and the globe of silver light in the center, showing the Death Eaters destroying the Allied Ministry in London. "Potter is dead," Blaise pants, hands on his knees and trying to speak intelligibly through the blackness sliding down over his face and thickening the tongue in his mouth. One of the guards reaches a hand over to steady him just before his knees give out underneath him. There's a little bit of a celebratory murmur off to his right and up, but before it gets too far, Blaise holds up a hand. "So is the Dark Lord." The cheering dies away abruptly, and Blaise takes a shaky sort of breath and tries to figure out whether he has enough strength in his legs to stand up. He does, he thinks, especially when one of the crowd gives him a hand back up. Blaise stands up with one hand on the stones of Hogwarts and the other on a sixteen year old Death Eater in Lord's Army black. The cavern where Voldemort had lived for two years of the war is singing into dust beneath their feet; Blaise takes a breath, then says, in a voice that's only slightly shaking, "The Dark Lord is dead. Long live the Death Eaters."]] [[Although Blaise doesn't go back to his flat in Hogsmeade very often, he does go back to his formally-listed place of lodging on Tuesday night. It's a slow night, and Blaise is sick of sleeping with one arm scrunched against his body on the largest couch in the office. Blaise changes into his inside clothes, puts the lovebird into a little gilded cage by the armchair, then sets the two pictures that he's received in the mail on the mantlepiece and settles down to have some before-bed tea. He feeds the lovebird little pieces of scone through the bars, and the next morning, he posts the following packages. The next morning, he also goes to the mantlepiece, takes out the picture of the boy in the snow, and replaces it with a photograph of his seventh-year Slytherin class. Pansy, Draco, him, Crabbe, Goyle. Bulstrode with her arms crossed over her chest, Greingrass looking rather shy.]] ( Posted to Lisa Turpin by formal diplomatic owl. ) ( Posted to C Warrington in the regular speed internal packet. ) [[Blaise Zabini receives Warrington's letter late Monday afternoon from a speeded courier off the Hogwarts Express. Blaise is so irritated that he gets put off his supper and works until nine PM in a fit of righteous irritation, but it's not until Tuesday at three in the morning that he gets around to drafting a reply to C. ]] Dear Mr Warrington, If your charming friend Mr Pucey should ask you, his dear, dear friend in Intelligence about this, you ought to consider the enclosed while formulating your reply. I believe Ms Turpin is familiar with the enclosed information. I am sure she is grieving deeply for the death of the good Deputy Minister's wife and children, but Lisa is a rather supsicious person, given to leaping to conclusions without too much proof. I rather suspect that she already thinks that it was our work; we have been in correspondance, and it seems that she is indeed unshakeably of this opinion for no apparent reason, given the fact that we had absolutely nothing to do with this. Please be assured that in the future your opinion will continue to be valued. Mr Malfoy speaks well of your competence and loyalty, and I wish you the best of luck in your new duties. If you should have the chance to speak to Ms Parkinson, please convey my wishes for her speedy recovery. Sincerely, B Zabini [[Enclosed: a clipping out of the St Petersburg Voice about the rise of Georgian wizarding gangs in St Petersburg after the fall of the Muggle Soviet Empire and the subsequent warfare in the city that has splintered the Miasnikov ruling clan, driven the Agrons to the brink of extinction, and broken all the niceties of wizarding gang war. The paper itself has been charmed to stubbornly resist translation by C's usual, ink-particle rearrangement charms. Upon touch, however, a chipper female voice begins to read an English translation of the article aloud. The translation uses small, simple words of one syllable or less. The translation cannot be interrupted once started.]] [[The Lord's Army is divided into Intelligence and Field Operations, and there are subdivisions between both of those, as well as a reasonably efficient beaurocracy of human and non-human office workers supporting these. However, the very highest echelons of Death Eaters aren't formally organized. It may be a hold-over from the fact that the Death Eaters began as a circle of Tom Riddle's old school chums, but Lucius Malfoy doesn't have much of a formal position in the Death Eater organizations even though he is undisputedly the highest-ranking member of the Death Eaters, second only to Lord Voldemort. He holds a seat on the Lord's Army senior staff board, as well as some hereditary titles associated with traditional work that his family has doen for wizarding society, but he's generally known among Death Eaters as Mr Malfoy or Lucius. Similarly, Blaise holds the position of "Mr Malfoy's personal assistant." He arranges Mr Malfoy's schedule and makes sure that Lucius has all the little luxuries that he has grown used to. Blaise also runs public relations for Mr Malfoy personally, coordinates diplomatic meetings between Mr Malfoy and foreign heads of state, and approves releases by the Lord's Army public relations department, to which he's formally assigned as an adjunct but really exercises almost complete control of. On Saturday afternoon, Blaise is idly revising a statement by the Lord's Army public relations department condemning assasination of non-combatants as a method of conducting war. It emphasizes Pansy Parkinson's role as an analyst and reseacher and the fact that she was protected by bodyguards. Blaise considers including the fact that she was pregnant at the time of the attack -- he has her medical records sitting in front of him, right next to a carefully read report on the murder of Deputy Minister's family in their beds in St Petersburg in retaliation for the attempt against Pansy Parkinson. Although Mr Malfoy usually doesn't take too much of an interest in day to day operations, he not only approved the request for an assasination but also suggested that the operatives burn the building complex after the assasination; the specially assigned operatives did one better, though, and dragged the smallest child of the Deputy Minister out into the street and Incendio'd him there, in the snow, after they burned the rest of his family to death. The word that the St Petersburg police hear is that the Deputy Minister's family was executed by a Russian gang to which they owed money. The intimation is that the Deputy Minister paid a substantial amount of money for his family to be smuggled into the country, money that he didn't have, and when he failed to pay, the gangsters took the chance for an abject lesson.. These last two ideas were Blaise Zabini's contributions. He's fond of Pansy and remembers how their time at Hogwarts together, as well as the parties he attended at her mother's house, not to mention how pleased Draco was when she accepted his proposal. Blaise sends her a floral arrangement from Mr Malfoy, but he also sends her a second, less expensive box of white lilies in Slytherin green tissue paper and a short, sympathetic note.]] [[Blaise receives Lisa's present late on the afternoon of the 14th. He doesn't do anything with the bird immediately, and leaves the package next to the office Red-E-Kopy. After sleeping on matters for a night and asking Mr Malfoy about it, he comes in to work on Saturday with a solid silver hairpin that has a shaft carved with the names of prominent Slytherins through the centuries. The green-eyed snake at the head of the shaft hisses and nips the fingers of the non-pureblooded. Blaise ties the hairpin to the bird's leg with a green ribbon and a stickcharm, then takes it up to the top of the Owlery and sets it loose for Lisa. Fifteen minutes later, when the bird is a speck on the horizon, Blaise looses one of Lucius Malfoy's trained falcons after it, then goes downstairs to have breakfast.]] [[filtered for Lisa]] Lisa, As I mentioned to you a few days ago, I'm in London now. I took the early Express into King's Cross, and then I spent all day at Gringott's. Have they always been this paranoid? I'm very sorry that we couldn't meet for lunch in London. I had almost been hoping to see you in the lobby of the Galleon, but I suppose pressing engagements kept you away. It's a good thing they have twenty-four hour kitchen service, and they'll even deliver alcohol. Enjoy your dog-free streets. Ever, Blaise Zabini ( The hounds leave London. ) [[ After the conquest of Hogwarts, Lucius Malfoy took over the Headmaster's Office at Hogwarts. He had the gargoyle replaced with a pair of double wooden doors with the Death Eater insignia in silver, the turning staircase straightened and frozen in place, and the portraits of all pro-Gryffindor Headmasters replaced with those of prominent purebloods of appropriate political persuasion. Instead of a password like Lemondrop, there are four bodyguards that stand on either side of the staircase, as well as Blaise, who has an office made out of what used to be the second floor hallway. Blaise can usually be found in the office at almost any time of the day, but tonight, he is out in the courtyard, going over Mr. Malfoy's black coach, making last minute checks to ensure that it's prepared the way Mr. Malfoy has ordered it and that the twelve Lord's Army men who will be escorting him on the Port out to the meeting place are gathered and presentable. Most important, he makes sure that the lines of the Port-spell are drawn widely enough to include the hearse that will be following Mr. Malfoy's coach. The captain of the bodyguards does not know where they'll be going or what they're doing with the Minister 10 PM on a Tuesday night. It's a body swap of some sort, he figures, but he has no idea exactly who is in the coffin. He asks Zabini about it just as the grand double doors of Hogwarts open, spilling light into the courtyard, and Mr. Malfoy starts down the steps. "Nobody important," Blaise replies, smiling and pulling out the folio of documents he has prepared for Mr. Malfoy. "Just Potter's pet mudblood." ]] ( OOC: Explanation ) [[One of Mr. Malfoy's Christmas presents to Blaise was a sterling-silver in/out correspondance tray. It's been charmed to magically accomodate anything that anybody would ever drop into it, and it also has a locking filter so that any unauthorized person who tries to go digging through the mail finds that their hand gets stuck to the silver surfaces. Despite Blaise's best efforts, he hasn't figured out exactly how to set the filters up. When he comes back from lunch, he founds a rather irritated looking Death Eater security guard with his hand stuck to the side of the box. Blaise smirks, but he almost gets stuck himself trying to convince the correspondance tray to let him go. Once the guard leaves, Blaise opens the package that the guard delivered and nearly gets stuck to the correspondance box again in surprise. Later that afternoon, he puts together a package for Lisa containing - sixteen toffee wrappers - green and white pencils with the Malfoy insignia in foil - a pewter model of Hogwarts. It's one of a large though limited-edition line struck on the third anniversary of Voldemort taking Hogwarts. This model comes with a unique identifying number of 1223b. - a hand-written ticket good for a free lunch Madame Villier's Tea Shoppe. Blaise has written There's a tea shop(pe) adjacent to the spa shop(pe.) I actually think that the tea place was first, so if you ever make it into Hogwarts, drop by and we'll have tea together. -- Blaise [[The Malfoy family fortune comes from investments in a wide variety of wizarding firms on both sides of the wizarding conflict, ranging from a Hogsmeade real estate business to a concern that sells components of the abandoned English Quidditch stadiums to new South American teams. Lucius Malfoy has no idea of the extent of his holdings. Nobody does except for the exceptionally devoted and well-paid goblin accountant at Gringott's from his father. The one thing that Ghrlkka -- known to his close human clients as St. John -- can't handle is public relations which is why Blaise spends Sunday morning chewing through Wizarding contract law and a huge thesauraus in order to come up with something accurate, pleasant, and absolving Mr. Malfoy of legal responsibility should something particularly nasty come up. The report of a full-scale engagement between unprovoked Lord's Army soldiers and defending Order operatives crosses his desk at 10 AM. Lisa Turpin comes into his office at 10:12 AM. Blaise loses the footrace down to the conference room as the mousy boy from Turpin's staff is Muggleborn and runs cross-country in his spare time, and he gets down there in time to meet Mr. Malfoy's raised, amused brows. The Ministry people leave the second formal negotiations are over at 4:30 PM on Sunday afternoon, but Mr. Malfoy laughs himself into near tears when it turns out that the "engagement on the moor" was actually a pub brawl. One of the Order operatives was so drunk that he even lined up on the wrong side of the room. "I always knew that having mud in your blood softened the brain," Mr. Malfoy says to Blaise that night, over brandy and Turkish cigarettes. "It rather looks like the Minister's going to be eating his foot too."]] |
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