Chapter Text
With Blaise's uncle's help, Harry and his best friend secured an invitation to the duelling tournament of Aeris.
They were very excited for it. They met the Heir of House Salvatore outside of the venue, and made the trip to an amphitheatre on the outskirts of Mispoli. It looked very much like what Harry expected a gladiator's fighting stage to look like, though the use of magic actually allowed more people to fit into the space without being forced to sit too far from the action. People were ushered into booths that made good use of wizard space to ensure the comfort of the audience along with practicality.
Aurelio Salvatore, Blaise's bodyguard for the day and the Heir's second cousin checked the room before allowing them to enter. His cousin Elia looked suitably impressed by the procedure, though impatient to get inside. When the organisers of the tournament found out that a member of the royal family would be attending, they upgraded their tickets immediately. Blaise made a face at the fuss, but he was too used to it to protest. Harry only put a commiserating hand on his shoulder and shuffled inside.
Plush armchairs materialised in the booth as soon as the door closed, and the table filled with snacks of all kinds. The curtains opened, giving them a view of the still empty amphitheatre. On the side, the program of the day was clearly outlined. Since it was the third to last round of the tournament, eight people would be competing, which Elia assured was more interesting than making the trip to only see the finale. Harry whole-heartedly agreed.
The English boy read the names written on the program, listening distractedly as the Mezzogiornese heir rattled off trivia about the duellists and their mentors. Three of them were local competitors, another came from Ethiopia — which didn't surprise Harry, he knew from Blaise that Ethiopia had long-standing relations with Mezzogiorno. His maternal grandmother even hailed from a prestigious House from the country —, two of them came from Northern Italy and another was an Irish woman.
"His mentor is Filius Flitwick," gushed Elia, "the former world duelling champion."
"That's our Charms professor," commented Blaise with a smirk.
Elia looked like he was about to faint from jealousy.
"I don't how Professor Flitwick finds the time to mentor anyone in duelling while he's working at Hogwarts," wondered Harry. "He's Head of his House and teaches all seven years. That makes two classes per year up to OWL years and then some more for the sixth and seventh years."
Charms being one of the most important subjects taught at Hogwarts, Harry wouldn't be surprised if there were too many students to cut down the number of classes even after weeding out those who failed their Charms OWLs.
Blaise also did the maths with a grimace of disgust.
"Twelve to fourteen classes of three hours per week, that makes thirty-six hours. That's not even counting the grading, patrols and the research he does on the side. It's insane. They have to be using time-turners."
Elia watched them with round eyes. "Are you saying you only have one teacher per subject?"
Harry shrugged, sitting down on one of the armchairs. It floated up to give him a better view of the arena.
"The Headmaster doesn't seem to think it's an issue."
The three boys chatted as they waited for the tournament to start. It took another half hour before things happened, and Harry was almost startled when two people apparated into the duelling circle set up in front of them. The air shimmered, and the decor changed. The arena covered itself in snow before it shifted into the ruins of a town square, a forest glade to settle into something that looked like a rocky terrain. Announcers introduced the two duellists, who bowed to each other before presenting their opponent their back and walking away in measured steps, their wands held parallel to their breastbone.
"It's randomised to avoid cheating," explained Elia. "Using your surroundings is an important skill in duelling, but if they know the environment in advance they can prepare for it, it's unfair. I would have enjoyed a more urban arena," added the duelling enthusiast with a sigh. "Rocks are a bit dull."
They waited in tense silence for the announcer to give the start of the duel.
"Now!"
Harry leaned forward. The two duellists abruptly turned. The one on the left, a stocky Mezzogiornese man with a crooked grin crouched down and cast a spell to entangle the other's legs. The one on the right, the Irish woman their Charms professor was mentoring pointed her wand towards the ground. In a flash, she was air-borne and aiming myriads of spells at her grounded opponent. She hopped and skipped like she was born for it, avoiding increasingly aggressive spellfire. It was impressive, but perhaps too cocky of her; she didn't seem to have noticed the Italian was placing magical markers in a circle around her while she was occupied dodging him. Harry couldn't tell how the man found the time to do so as the elements rained down on him, but he was curious to see what would happen.
"She has fae blood," remarked Blaise with delight. "But that's not going to help her."
Blaise was right. After a minute of stalemate, the Mezzogiornese duellist activated his trap. Harry didn't see what happened properly, but between one second and the next, the Irish woman was slammed to the ground.
It didn't deter her. While favouring her wand arm likely bruised by the abrupt descent, she simply switched hands and conjured a giant iridescent bubble, which engulfed her opponent.
"That has to be poisonous," murmured Harry.
Silently, Aurelio levitated a scroll in his lap. Harry blinked. He hadn't noticed those. As he tore his eyes away from the duel to look at what he was given, he whistled. The organisers had provided a self-updating list of all the spells used during the duel. He idly mused it must use the same principle as the Priori Incantatem spell. Unfortunately, the duel was too fast paced for him to have the time to properly check the list. He guessed that it was a skill people developed after watching a lot of duels, like how sports fans could always tell if a foul had occurred. He did make a note to take the scroll with him when they left.
He was ultimately right; the Irish competitor won by attrition, her Mezzogiornese opponent succumbing to the slow-acting lethargy-inducing poison in the bubble. The announcer proclaimed her victory and Harry was startled when the soundproofing on the booth was temporarily lowered so they could hear the rest of the crowd's cheers.
Blaise and Elia turned to each other to animatedly discuss the duel, but Harry was still focused on the stage, where the two duellists were being examined by healers. When he checked the scroll, he noticed with a grin that the entire healing procedure was also being recorded.
Harry decided he loved duelling tournaments.
(Professor Flitwick's student unfortunately did not advance to the semi-finals, though she put up a good showing. Ezana Mamo Etefu from Ethiopia, Lazaria Nerone and Ciro Scelsi from Mezzogiorno, and Temistocle Sirianni from Northern Italy were the winners of the day. It took Blaise mentioning it at dinner for Harry to realise the lady Lazaria was Constantino Zabini's fiancée.)
The next week, Blaise and Harry were invited to tea at Marian Fata's home, where they spent the afternoon gossiping and comparing the curriculum of Hogwarts and that of Virgilio Nero. The next day, his best friend went alone on a date with the teenage girl and Harry took Armando and Dorotea Priore up on their offers to play some Quidditch on their private pitch. Both boys came back from their outings with windswept hair and satisfied smiles. Harry teased Blaise the whole evening. His best friend then took him sight-seeing over the course of multiple days.
During one memorable instance, all of Blaise's cousins took time out of their schedule to accompany them to see a play, which turned out to be dreadfully boring. They had fun picking it apart and Harry could see his best friend was delighted to spend more time with his normally busy family, who likely felt bad about their constant absence.
Blaise's mother arrived the morning after that, first paying respects to her brother's court and announcing the unfortunate passing of her last husband before she set out in search of her son, escorted by her niece Antea who gave her the latest news of the capital. She found them in the drawing room repurposed as Harry's room, startling them away from the homework they had decided to stop putting off as she opened the door with a flick of her wand.
Serafina Zabini was as intidimidating as her brother. She had the sharp beauty of a prowling tiger, both deadly and entrancing. His best friend resembled her greatly, from the sharpness of their cheekbones to the curve of their cupid's bow and the cat-like golden eyes he had come to associate with the Zabini family, but where Blaise's curls were tighter and his skin darker, her own hair fell in caramel waves along her back that matched the hue of her skin.
She introduced herself by giving a hand for Harry to kiss and smiling down at him.
"Henry, is that right?" she said kindly. "I've heard a lot about you."
"Harry Potter," he said, careful to keep his tone from seeming remonstrating. He didn't particularly care that she didn't remember his first name, though the shadow that passed in Blaise's eyes as she did so made him ache for his friend. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Your Highness. I've heard a lot as well."
She didn't blink, bypassing the momentary awkwardness with an artful nod and a turn of the head as her attention focused on her son. She clearly wasn't interested in small talk. She lowered herself down to look at Blaise, grasping his jaw with a gentle hand. Her nails, painted gold with moving red serpents dancing on them, looked very sharp but her gaze was tender.
"Hello, my love. I've missed you. I see the procedure has been a success. You look very handsome. Come, we have much to talk about."
She walked away with Harry's best friend without further acknowledgement. Blaise offered him an apologetic smile.
"I'll see you at dinner," he said and followed obediently, staring up at his mother with careful affection.
Antea tutted disapprovingly. "My apologies, Harry. Aunt Serafina is a little dismissive of people outside the family. She'll monopolise Blaise for a few days so you'll likely only see him in the mornings and at dinner. We can arrange an escort to take you to the city if you want to do more visits."
Harry smiled at her. It was only a little forced.
"Blaise warned me, it's no issue." That wasn't exactly true. Blaise hadn't invited a friend to the palace before, so he wouldn't have known to warn Harry about this exact scenario, but he had said that his mother was very selective with her attention. "I've asked Healer Alfieri if I can shadow him in the meantime and he's agreed. I'll be fine."
She eyed him consideringly before sighing. "Very well. I'll be going then. Have fun."
Left alone in the drawing room, Harry took a deep breath.
"I'll be fine."
Antea and her siblings watched the train-wreck from afar, biting their tongue to keep from saying a word.
Their aunt didn't mean to hurt her son, they knew it. It didn't stop it from happening.
Serafina had likely intended to correct course and properly focus on Blaise as she should have. She took him to mother-son outings, made sure to ask how he felt about his new height, the new timbre of his voice, the change to his brow and jawlines. She ran her hand through his hair with affection, and straightened his collar even when it wasn't crooked. She listened to him talk about his progress in class, praised his musings on magical theory and his insights on the differences between English society and Mezzogiorno.
Yet somehow she didn't seem to understand the unspoken plea in the emphasis he put on his friend's name.
"I think I'd enjoy trying a junior duelling tournament next year. That competition last week gave me the taste for it. It will require practice but I have people to train with. Harry is great at re-purposing mundane spells for duelling purposes. He's used a bandaging charm as a restraint before," he would say with beseeching eyes, almost begging his mother to ask his friend a single question.
"That's great, love. Tell me more about the tournament," she would reply obliviously, eager to hear more about her son and completely dismissing him in the process.
She wasn't ignoring Harry. She would greet him when she saw him and wasn't especially rude or unwelcoming. She simply acted like he was someone else's pet. He wasn't her concern or worth knowing at all, and to find her son pay attention to him was quaint and admirable but entirely beneath her notice.
And poor Harry, more reserved than Blaise and obviously bearing mental scars from his upbringing, bore this with as much grace as a pre-teen could muster. If his smile was a little fixed when Serafina interrupted his and Blaise's conversation at the dinner table with inquiries that, while related, excluded him from it, no one made mention of it. Antea found it admirable that the smile was there at all.
When Antea complained to her father, he gave her a pained smile.
"We already interfered last year. If I do so again now it will set a precedent. Serafina will figure it out."
The Principe's second child conceded the point.
"I hope she'll figure it out before Blaise starts growing teeth. He was hoping to spend time with his best friend and mother both, and she acts like speaking to a twelve-year-old she isn't related to for more than a minute at a time will give her dragonpox."
After discussing it with her younger sister, Antea resolved to at least make the situation less uncomfortable. At lunch on the fourth day since her aunt's return, she turned to Harry and asked after his cousin.
"How is the lovely Gemma?"
Harry gave her a shy smile. The boy was positively darling, she understood why Blaise liked him so much. It probably also had a lot to do with the sheer chaos that seemed to accompany him. Antea was of the opinion that her cousin would probably be dreadfully bored if he didn't have to contend with House feuds, magical creatures and school politics, and although Blaise wasn't the type to involve himself directly, his more introverted friend had the sense of justice that brought people like him naturally into the thick of things
That wasn't a bad thing. A bored Zabini was a terrible thing.
She just hoped they wouldn't put themselves in the kind of trouble no one could come back from.
"She's doing great. She and Terence are working on getting Achilles — that was the boy you helped, I don't know if you remember him — settled. He'll be attending muggle school soon."
"I remember. Were there any news from his birth family?"
Antea had done some research on Britain after she came back from performing the ritual and figured out that the island was even more of a cesspit than she had even come to expect. A little unpleasantness was expected after the rise and fall of a recent Dark Lord, but finding out that most of the bigoted factions of their nobility all dabbled in torture curses and repression made her feel some type of way. The Principality of Mezzogiorno was full of intrigues and the Northern Duchies of Italy never really stopped sending assassins their way, but they didn't ooze malevolence like some of Britain's nobility did.
No, the enemies of the court were generally either ambitious or self-righteous, few of them actually thought to do things for the sake of cruelty.
"They've been quiet so far. But our social circles don't really interact, we wouldn't have had any reason to meet any of them. That will probably change when Gemma takes her grandfather's seat on the Wizengamot. I know she's planned to accompany House Fawley's steward for the next sessions to acclimate. She's too young still, but she'll be seventeen next year."
"You have to choose a proxy as well," reminded Blaise, turning away from his mother. "The Carrows might go to them. The Matriarch already made contact with Theo's father."
Serafina was listening intently, apparently interested in what their guest had to say now that someone else had engaged him. Not that this was the first time they had done so in the past few days, but Antea supposed political intrigue would always catch her aunt's attention better than small talk.
"A feuding family?" Serafina asked her son who brightened from the show of interest. Judging by the way her aunt's expression had turned calculating, she had noticed the reaction.
"The Fawleys have been feuding with the Carrows since the last British Wizarding Wars. Amycus and Alecto Carrow were Death Eaters — though they haven't been convicted and have spent the last twelve years searching for ways to resurrect Voldemort. They launched an attack on our capital city's main wizarding street, which killed Marian Fawley, the Head's daughter along with dozens of other people. House Fawley made a Vow of Enmity following the incident, but it hasn't been reciprocated, so it's not a complete feud. Yet."
Judging by his expression, Harry didn't expect it to last. Antea agreed with him. As soon as they had definitive proof that their squib scion was taken by House Fawley, the feud would start and it would only end in blood.
"And how are they related to you?" she asked Harry.
"My paternal grandmother was a Fawley and I'm currently a ward of the family."
"You're an orphan."
Antea winced, but Harry took it with grace and placed a discrete hand on Blaise's arm to stop him from snapping at his mother.
"My parents were tortured to insanity during the war, your Highness," he said dully. "They're permanent residents of the permanent spell damage ward of St Mungo's."
Serafina's expression softened in sympathy.
"I see. My condolences."
Antea restrained herself from jumping as actual lightning coursed down Harry's arm until it reached the tip of his finger that rested on the table. The tablecloth caught fire, which Lazzaro put out with a frantic wave of his wand.
"Thank you but my parents are not dead, your Highness, I do not need condolences," the boy bit out. "My apologies for my lack of control."
"Look at the time," said Blaise with a cheery smile, his eyes burning with resentment. "Harry and I were supposed to meet Armando, Dorotea and Elia for a Quidditch game. We don't want to be late," he added with a fake grimace, ignoring his almost full plate and pretending he had never made plans with his mother. "That would be rude, wouldn't it?"