Assignment #11 - Voodoo Magic: The Loa; Task #1 - Write about having to make a difficult choice. Written for the forum Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Challenges and Assignments).

Blaise snarls at Pansy, turning on his heel. "The hell, Pansy?" He asks, only just avoiding shouting. "You call me back for this merda?"

"Blaise, please, they need your help – I need your help. I can't do this alone," Pansy replies, raising her hands in a calming gesture. "Just think about it."

"I left all of this behind!" Blaise throws back, turning around and continuing his pacing. "I got out of the UK and returned to Italy to escape it all. I got out, Pansy. I don't want to get back in."

Pansy frowns, and reaches out, grabbing Blaise's arm as he stalks past and tugging him to a stop. The wizard swings around to face her, feet planted firmly in the ground. "Blaise, we became friends because you hated killing. Do you really want to leave these people, our friends, to the corrupted justice system of the United Kingdom?"

Blaise inhales sharply. "You should go," he says at last, lowly. Pansy steps back, a wounded expression on her face. "I'm here for another twenty-four hours. I'll see you before I go."

Shaking her head, Pansy turns, heading towards the door. "You're a bastard, Blaise," she shouts, slamming the door behind her.

The moment she's gone, Blaise sinks into an armchair, and covers his face with his hands. "Fanculo," he says quietly, the word muffled by his hands. There's nothing he can technically do to help. He doesn't even live in the United Kingdom anymore, let alone anywhere near Diagon Alley. He'd left – avoided all of that, on purpose. The moment the Dark Lord had been declared dead, he'd left for Italy; for a place that had never been home, despite his roots there.

It'd been only a month since he'd left, and he hadn't planned to come back – but Pansy had asked, and so he had come. After all, Pansy has been there for him for years, through his hatred of the Dementors that marked third year and had led to their friendship and various other crises. She knew him the best out of everyone.

Still, that doesn't make it enough – he won't give up everything just for Pansy; just for the other Slytherins who he hadn't been close with, but had grown up beside. The moment he could, Blaise had left his mother's lifestyle behind, gotten out of the mafia's crime and corruption. Although he hadn't cut his ties, he'd built himself a reputation that clung to him, years and months later. He still has favours in his pockets, debts that people owe him. And, if he really needs, he can throw his name around to grab attention and have people listen to him or ask his allies for their help.

But he doesn't want to – doesn't want to get back into the life. He'd grown up with the idea that murder was a fairly normal act, and the moral issues had only hit him when he'd started attending Hogwarts. He's changed and reshaped himself so many times he doesn't know where to begin. He's carved kindness into his skin, scarred it there, so it remains.

He's created himself someone who isn't close to his mother nor part of her acts. He hadn't helped when she had been dragged into a war on the Death Eaters side due to a marriage gone wrong. At sixteen – at age in Italy, he'd invested and bought farms and shops and fought a place in the industry for himself. From the earnings he'd gained, he'd made himself a life of his own.

And – despite it all – it comes back down to Hogwarts, to the place where he had decided to be more than what he was. Hogwarts, the castle that had never been a home because he has always walked on battlegrounds, and this one had been made of stone.

If he does as Pansy asks, he'll be opening himself up to more than one person, opening his house to people who may be friends but could just as easily be strangers or enemies. He's also returning to a life of crime – something he'd promised himself he wouldn't do.

Pushing himself out of the chair, Blaise sighs, frustrated, and returns to his pacing. He wants to do something – restless with a feeling he can't quite name, but has regardless. It's quiet, not quite peaceful and it's somewhat lonely. Starting to feel somewhat melancholy and wishing to avoid dwelling on Pansy's words, Blaise exits the room, and ends up in front of a single portrait containing two people; a flock of crows fly overhead.

The portrait is silent, as it always is, but Blaise meets the gazes of those in the painting. It's nothing like the paintings of Hogwarts, whose inhabitants gossip and whisper and shout – but also offer advice, alert students to trouble ahead, warn of first-years wandering about lost and alone.

"Fanculo," Blaise repeats. His swearing fails to drown out the words that circle in his head. Kindness isn't an innate part of him, but it's something hard that he's learnt himself, taken for himself. Hogwarts had taught him that, Slytherin had taught him that, Pansy had – with harsh words and cutting sentences and sharp makeup. But he had learnt, at Hogwarts, even if he hadn't loved Hogwarts.

The people in the portrait shift; the crows circle overhead, endless in their journey, unfaltering.

His final year in Hogwarts had been horrible, awful. As a Pureblood and a Slytherin, he had escaped the horror of the Death Eaters, but others hadn't and Blaise- he'd learnt kindness, and he practiced it. He could have left sometime during the year, taking passageways and blackmailing others to get out of Hogwarts, to get out of the United Kingdom – but he hadn't, and that's important. He'd decided against taking such actions.

The decision to remain hadn't been because Blaise looked out for his own skin and coated it with armour. It'd been because Blaise can list half a dozen healing spells off the top of his head, because magic can injure easier than it heals and Blaise had hated that fact. It's never really been about him, not about the kindness he wanted or the danger he wanted to avoid, the curses and hatred and murders.

It's because children that weren't him roamed Hogwarts' halls, and didn't know how to walk in a battlefield and come out unharmed. It's because he's used to adversity and danger. It's because the world didn't care if you were a child, it would take you and shatter you, leave you drowning in blood and covered in bruises.

It's because Blaise could help, and so he had decided to. And in the end, that's what it all comes down to, isn't it? He could help, and so he did.

Decision made, he grabs a winter robe and shrugs it on. Pansy will have returned home, and Blaise can easily travel there once outside his own wards. He doesn't have long until he must return to Italy, so he might as well discuss all the details with her.

And so, he goes, hating himself every step of the way, because this is the world he had chosen to leave behind, yet not regretting his decision because helping – that's a kindness, and he always wanted kindness as a child.