A Means of Survival – Chapter 12 – Fless

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Chapter 12 – Fless

Blaise Zabini wasn’t an inherently evil person. He’d even tell you that himself, provided you’d found the right truth serum to coax it out of him.

His parents, however, were an entirely different story.

Blaise had spent most of his life in fear of reprisal from his mum and subsequently whichever man he was currently supposed to refer to as “Dad.”

Both of his “parents” would take from each other until each had little to give, and then there’d be a huge fight, his mum would cry, and before he knew it, they’d be moving again.

Sometimes the men would take from him as well, and he gave, because he was afraid of what would happen if he did not.

Like Ron Weasley, he was mighty sick and tired of living his life in constant fear. He was tired of having no one to trust, and he was tired of giving a damn about things that he couldn’t change.

He had lied when he had said the first three tries were free. They were all free; the upper level Slytherin boys gave that stuff out practically like candy, with only a few set-in stone requirements regarding the use thereof.

Blaise figured that they got their payment from its Maker, but even he was wrong about that.

…

One of the side-effects that the initial users of Fless were not told about was the nearly savage boost it put on one’s libido.

Blaise knew that in order to use Fless, you had to have a “partner in crime,” as one of the muggle borns had jokingly referred to it as. That’s why he had been in the infirmary initially; he’d been scoping Draco out as a potential partner. Obviously, that hadn’t turned out quite like he’d hoped. However, at least he hadn’t had his time completely wasted.

He’d never thought much of Ron Weasley as someone who might have potential. But after hearing about, and then later sneaking a peak of what was left of Lockhart’s classroom, his views had begun changing. Plus, the spirit that he’d seen shining out of Ron’s eyes there in his hospital bed had been almost too exciting to take calmly. The boy was angry. He didn’t know why, but more importantly, he didn’t know anyone else who knew why either. The boy could keep a secret; that was for sure.

Furthermore, he’d been interested in Fless. His want had been clearly written across his face.

…

Fless didn’t give you power, it largely just made you indifferent to power.

All of those little nitpicky details of life that got in your way when you were trying to do anything just simply faded away, allowing you to focus more clearly than you ever had in your entire life. Users of Fless noticed a change in their academic habits almost immediately.

Their need to sleep diminished exponentially along with those fears of doing badly on papers that frequently kept young promising students from finishing their work. Given their greatly increased work time combined with a far more highly focused mind, homework troubles soon became a thing of the past as they quickly caught up and surpassed their peers in written work alone.

If the users of Fless could find a way to maintain their addiction levels to those early days, then Fless could potentially become an accepted form of boosting academic prowess.

Unfortunately, although many had tried, the longest one could maintain on those basic levels was a few weeks at most.

In drastic comparison to that, the common average was a week—or less.

The Creator of Fless and its dealers counted on that. They didn’t get their dividends in cash, but instead received a far more base kind of payment.

Furthermore, other than dying, there were only two ways to get out of using Fless: Your partner could die, which usually resulted in some kind of year long psychosis for the surviving one, or you could both come off of it—and then, only willingly—at the same time.

Provided there was someone to remind the users of Fless to sleep and eat and do their homework, then it was possible to survive and then even graduate while in the complete throes of addiction.

The people who carried that role were often known as “Faints;” a reference to their sacred brethren, the Saints.

…

True to his word, Blaise caught up with Ron the next day after breakfast. He had watched Ron pick endlessly at his breakfast; slowly growing more annoyed by the minute at the way the boy was just mutilating his food.

Blaise, like Harry, had a finer appreciation for the simplicities of food than some of the students of Hogwarts. As a child, he ate when his mother ate, which frequently wasn’t all that often when she was between husbands or boyfriends, or if she was on a drinking binge. Therefore, as he had gotten older, he had learned how to get food when he needed it, and by the age of 6, he was—like Harry, but for different reasons—a pretty decent cook. His mother didn’t care about him snitching food, as long as she didn’t have to cook or clean up after. Essentially, that was her problem, as far as he was concerned.

Simply put, she didn’t give a damn unless it directly involved her.

…

But finally, Ron had finished tearing up the perfectly edible, as well as tasty, food before him, and he had begun wandering out of the Great Hall. Blaise saw him look over at the Slytherin table frequently, but had luckily for them both, made no overt motions towards them. Blaise waited until after he saw the tall red haired boy leave the room before following him, covertly. He noticed that the Granger girl was still at the table, unhurriedly working on a bowl of cereal, while the Potter boy was nowhere to be found. He might have taken breakfast in the infirmary with Snape, given his behaviors of late, or he might have been more seriously injured than anyone had known.

It didn’t matter; the Potter boy was of no concern to Blaise. He wanted Ron. And for once in his life, he planned on getting what he wanted.

“Psst,” he said while walking past the taller boy.

Ron looked down and jerked his head in an obscure nod towards him.

“Got a minute?” Blaise asked calmly.

“Many,” Ron answered. It was a cheeky answer, but somehow Blaise could tell the other boy’s heart wasn’t in it.

Ron’s eyes were bloodshot, and there dark circles under his eyes. His clothes, while not being the best quality, had always fit him. Now, they seemed to hang a bit loosely on him; just another indication to Blaise that Ron was deeply troubled about something.

“Follow me to the loo.” Blaise said simply, nodding his head towards a side hallway in the direction of a lesser used boy’s bathroom.

Once in the bathroom, Blaise waved him over next to the sinks, which were hidden behind the main curvature of the doorway. Blaise stealthily set a magical trip wire which would buy them at least a couple of extra seconds of warning should anyone approach. It was at least a fourth year trick that he’d learned from a friend two years before ever stepping foot in Hogwarts.

Ron’s eyes, which had been looking at him dully, suddenly lit up at he turned back to look at him.

“I don’t want to insult your intelligence by telling you that if you get caught, you were never here, got it?” Blaise said, going over the formalities with a bored face. He was acting the part, but he was eyeing Ron very seriously, and from the look in the other boy’s eyes, he felt that he had gotten his message suitably across.

“Now,” he said, pulling the starter vials from inside of one of the many hidden pockets of his robe, “for the initial three doses, we gotta be together when we—ah—partake.” He said, handing Ron a small vial of green powder that was barely as long as the length of his thumb.

“That’s it?” The other boy asked, incredulously looking at the tiny things that Blaise was holding in his open palm.

“One for you, one for me,” Blaise said, nodding.

“What’s it taste like?” Ron asked warily, clearly not sure if it was even ingested.

“They say it’s sweet, but they also say that it’s unlike anything else. So I don’t know,” Blaise said, shrugging mildly. He looked away from the other boy for a moment before looking back at him, his dark eyes abruptly blazing with want.

“Well,” Ron said, “let’s do it.” He said with his eyes fixed on Blaise’s.

“Take it, but don’t open it yet.” Blaise instructed him, holding his hand out.

“’Kay,” Ron said, lifting a shaky hand over to his own. Blaise noted without much surprise that Ron’s fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

They both had a vial and now it was just a matter of time before they took that final leap into the unknown.

“When you pour it in your mouth, hold it on your tongue and keep your eyes locked on mine until you feel something happen. Then swallow and we’ll see what happens from there,” Blaise said, trying to appear cocky, but feeling that he was probably failing miserably.

“I’ll count to three, and then we’ll open and pour at the roughly the same time, ‘kay?” He asked quickly, fearing that the other boy might chicken out.

“Got it,” Ron said quietly.

“Ready?” Blaise asked, not really waiting for an answer before starting the count. “Okay then. 1 . . . 2 . . .,” he glanced quickly at Ron before saying the next digit, “3.”

…

Ron’s world had been completely flushed down the toilet when he had woken up that morning only to discover Harry asleep on top of Snape in the infirmary. He’d even asked Madam Pomfrey about it; completely sure that she had just somehow missed it in the night and would quickly put a stop to the hideous aberrance that very moment.

And then the world had shifted around him at hearing her response. Instead of seeing a problem with the situation, she had just clucked a bit at him, before merely laughing gaily at him about how he ought not to be bothering his pretty little head about inconsequential things. She actually had the gall to tell him that it was nice for Harry and Snape to get along after previously suffering so much sniping and mistrust between them before now, and went on to say that she was actually rather proud of them both for working things out.

Proud?

He had thought about telling her how he’d like to work it out with Snape with a fist through his overlarge nose, but had thought better of it at the last second.

Then he had been forced to hold his tongue once more when she had suggested having him eat breakfast there beside the disgustingness that was his best friend and the man who had made their lives hell. Plus, he wasn’t sure if he could stand to look him in the eye, even now. Snape hadn’t yet mentioned the whole, finding him in the hall after Draco had done bad stuff to him thing, but he still wouldn’t put it past the bastard to try something sneaky.

By the time he had gotten to the Great Hall, he was completely sick of everything that his second year was turning out to be, and had just wanted to be around his dorm mates for some regular ol’ normalness.

Well, Hermione had been eating cereal, but that had been just about the only normal thing about it.

She, she, of all people there, had lectured him about having better self-control in the classroom. She had said all of that horse wallop to him after cursing their classmate and a professor with a curse of her own creation!

He’d tried pointing out all the mayhem she had caused in the past week, but she hadn’t even tried to listen to him about anything.

So then he figured that he’d bring up the whole nasty Harry sleeping on top of Snape business. Since she had always hated him too, he figured that would be at least one topic that they could discuss safely.

Nope. She had told him that she thought it was fucking nice that Harry finally had someone to depend on like that. Oh yeah? And what about him? What was he?

“You wouldn’t understand,” she had said demurely, completely ignoring his feelings on the matter. After all, Snape had actually been pretty nice as of late, and really he shouldn’t judge him so much on petty details.

Yeah, like Snape finding him naked in the hallway with Draco’s cum still running down his leg. That’s what he had really wanted to say, but had known then that she would have tried to turn it all back against him, or try to claim that he was trying to take away from what had happened to her.

The whole conversation had made him sick to his stomach. He was losing Hermione and Harry to the man who had saved them. After Draco had left him to rot, he would have preferred to have been allowed to do so. He hadn’t wanted to be saved; he wasn’t worth it.

And with that knowledge firmly entrenched in his gut, he wasn’t even sure if he even wanted to fight to keep them as friends. Sure, he could keep up the act; he could go through the motions and all, but he really didn’t think there was any hope for getting back what they had had before.

So when Zabini had gotten to “3,” and they’d popped the tops off of their vials, he had been doubt-free as he had poured the unknown concoction into his mouth.

Then, for a second there, before the drug had started working, he had truly experienced what lack of fear really was all about. And he had reveled in the experience.