AN. There will be drama and betrayal. Dirty secrets will come out, and our heroine's beliefs and hopes will be royally screwed. Love, however, will prevail, I can promise you that much. Please, be aware of major, and I mean that, major angst. Huge thank you to my friend Glorioux, alpha Quilter and beta Dany.

Also, just as usual, in its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, blah, blah, blah, this work is only intended to be transformative commentary and all that jazz. Still no profit is being made from this work.

Supremacy

Wake to see – your true emancipation is a fantasy.*

Prologue or Friends with Benefits

Tick, tick, tick: the mechanical sound seemed annoyingly loud and nauseatingly soulless, though it did at least fill the silence with something. The fact that he couldn't sleep didn't surprise him in the slightest. He had foreseen that he wouldn't be able simply to close his eyes and let go. It wasn't going to work, not tonight, not here, and not with her in his arms.

He had selfishly kept her awake for hours, trying to prolong that elusive moment of ecstasy as long as possible. Time, however, had easily won this round. The witch, whom he had completely worn out, had eventually succumbed to exhaustion and dozed off, unwittingly leaving him to a tete-a-tete with that murderously slow ticking of the clock on the wall and his thoughts. Having been caught in his own trap, he braced himself for a sleepless night.

For as long as he could remember, Blaise Zabini had fancied himself a clever wizard, but now, as he lay in her bed, he wasn't certain any more. Doubts, those foul, bloodthirsty, nocturnal beasts, sensed his vulnerability and crawled from every dark corner of his mind, clearly hoping for a feast. No armour could shield him against their sharp teeth, except, maybe, the first rosy glint of dawn. Alas, sunrise was still a few hours away, and that meant absolutely no escape for now.

He wasn't pleased with himself, to put it mildly. He had known that it would be trouble even before the first kiss, and yet he had stubbornly, or, better yet, insanely, decided to continue. It had been a bloody train wreck waiting to occur, and still he had deliberately let it come to this. The knowledge that all of it was happening only because she had had one drink over her limit hadn't stopped him. Even the fear of losing her friendship had caused no more than a mere millisecond of hesitation. The blunt truth was that he had deliberately taken advantage of her: he hadn't stopped her from drinking that last glass of champagne, nor had he stopped her when she kissed him.

Blaise suppressed the urge to look for a nice way to put it, because there wasn't any: he had taken advantage of the one girl who meant the world to him. Apparently, he was neither a gentleman nor a clever wizard. On the contrary, he was an egoistic fool, and, even worse, an egoistic fool in love. Moreover, he couldn't bring himself to regret what he had done, even for a moment. Consequences be damned! He had been given a chance, and he had taken it. Frankly, he had been too far gone to care. Her body had been warm and soft against his; her heavy, tangled curls had covered his chest; her skin had shimmered softly in the moonlight, and she had been his. Yes, for those few hours, she had been his, and that was what mattered. Come morning or mayhem, he would always have this night embossed in his mind and heart.

Of course, he still had enough wit to understand that, in the morning, nothing would stop her from leaving him, definitely not his pathetic feelings for her. She would forget about him in a trice, eager to live her life, pursue her dreams, and fulfil her hopes. Tomorrow, he would watch her go, telling himself over and over again that, after all, they could never have had a future, that they came from different worlds and wanted different things from life. He would remind himself that he was just an arrogant, indifferent aristocrat, who couldn't be bothered with such a trivial thing as the fate of the world around him, while she was right at the opposite extreme, with her heart always ready to care about everyone and everything, just not about him: not, at least, the way he wanted her to care. And he would try his best not to dwell on how perfectly, despite all their differences, they had been suited to each other.

All of it would certainly come tomorrow, and he wasn't so idiotic as to hope that the ending would be as pleasurable as the start. For now, however, there was that comforting tickling in his ears, the soothing breathing of a sleeping girl, the scent of jasmine in his nostrils, and a false sense of content.

Tick, tick, tick: time once again defeated him, and the amber fire of dawn took him by surprise. The witch in his arms stirred, marking the beginning of the end. Instinctively, he tightened his grip on her, not ready to let her go just yet, needing just a few more hours, minutes, seconds with her. Pensively, he gazed at his useless wand. Regrettably, no amount of magic could keep time from passing or the sun from rising.

Tick, tick, tick: soon daylight filled the room with unbearably bright, morning glow. Blaise was instantly aware that she had awoken, and, by the time her chocolate irises found his, he was prepared, his imperturbable façade already in place. He felt her stiffen, and heard her draw a sharp breath. A dark pink blush flamed in her cheeks, and she managed a shaky: "Blaise?"

He flashed her his best toothy smile, and murmured, as light-heartedly as he could manage: "Morning, Granger," though his traitorous, possessive arms still kept her in his embrace.

"Did we?" she inquired, blushing even more, though not trying to disentangle herself from him.

"Yep, we did, Granger. We have finally done it: we have lived up to the expectations of the masses! They have been talking about it for four years, and now it's official: we are friends with benefits," he declared brightly, and was rewarded with such a look of horror on Hermione's face that he couldn't quite decide if it was insulting or downright funny.

"Oh, God!" she whispered. "I'll never drink again, I swear." Then she focused her accusatory stare on him. "You were supposed to hold it better than I. You promised!"

"Sorry, darling," he drawled nonchalantly. "It was our last night at Uni, and I lost it. I can't be always perfect, and you should have known that champagne is not a food group. Then again, there's nothing wrong with disgusting, drunken sex with your best Uni friend."

At this, she actually snorted, swatted his shoulder, and exclaimed: "Bastard!" Then she added, blushing slightly again: "Was it really disgusting?"

He buried his face in her hair and whispered, letting his real feelings seep through just a bit: "Relax, Granger. It was marvellous; you were brilliant as always." With difficulty, he willed his arms to let go of the curly-haired witch, and, lifting her gently from his chest, he set her on the pillow and kissed her freckled nose. "I don't really remember much, though," he lied. "We were both pretty pissed." Then he swiftly rolled off the bed, and, saying: "I need the loo. Now," dashed through the narrow doorway and slammed the door behind him.

In the porcelain sanctuary of the bathroom, he hoped that the icy water would calm him, and it did. He felt much better after a shower, and, more important, he was ready to face her again. When he emerged, she was still in the bed, waiting for him and watching him intently. With a purposeful spring in his steps, he went to the corner where he had carelessly abandoned his trousers last night, and put them on, deliberately looking everywhere but at her.

"Blaise," she called, her voice gentle and with an apparent lingering hint of concern. "Are you all right?"

Blaise groaned inwardly: the last thing he needed was for her to worry about him. "Don't be silly, witch! I am peachy, absolutely, utterly, bloody brilliant," he answered quickly, maybe too quickly to be believable. "We are finally free! We have our whole lives ahead of us!" He found his shoes under the bed and his shirt under the chair, and fixed all his attention on the little mother-of-pearl buttons, painstakingly closing them one by one.

"But we are still friends, aren't we?" Hermione's barely audible whisper forced him finally to look at her. She was biting her bottom lip and looking at him with something dangerously resembling longing.

Rapidly crossing the room, he cupped her face and muttered: "Honestly, Granger, you can be so thick, sometimes. Of course we are: you won't get rid of me that easily. I fully intend to take advantage of our relationship when you become highly important and powerful. I may even blackmail you." He chuckled and kissed her, and something that had been intended to be just a quick peck on the lips accidentally turned into a long, hard and passionate kiss, definitely not the sort that friends would have shared.

Next minute, he let go of her, turned on his heel, and walked out of the room, throwing a parting phrase over his shoulder: "You'd better get going, girl! Or you are going to miss graduation." A sudden frantic rustling and the hurried sound of bare feet on the floor behind him made him pause, and he suddenly hoped, silly and illogical though it was, that she would stop him from leaving. The opening and closing of the bathroom door banished this fantasy at once, and he left.

Once outside, he stopped and stared at her window for a while. He knew that he wouldn't go to the ceremony. He simply couldn't bear to see her again. And even though he managed to come up with a dozen reasons why it was the right thing to do, it still looked suspiciously like running away from her, or, more precisely, from himself.

*Muse/Supremacy

Here we go, my darlings, a new story for your consideration. Please, let me know what you think. Thank you