Title: Isn't one really. And no, that's not the title.

Author: Cepheus Parallax **E-mail the Author!**

Rating: PG for one possibly objectionable word

Summary: Blaise is definitely not staring at the littlest Weasley. Because ... because ... well, funnily enough, he can think of more reasons to be staring at her rather than reasons to be stopping.

On the rare occasion that Blaise's line of vision ventures past the Slytherin table, past snotty Draco talking about "his father"-this or "Potter and Weasley"-that, past Crabbe and Goyle rolling their eyes and looking bored, he finds it lands, more often than not, on a Gryffindor. And it, more often than not, doesn't move for awhile.

Now, it's not that he's actually - quiet, now, Draco might hear you - looking to Gryffindor with something less than animosity these days. Or anything like that. Because that's not what he's doing. And he certainly doesn't feel anything the least bit akin to liking towards the little whelp.

Because he's a Slytherin and she's a Gryffindor and that's that.

At least she's not a mudblood, he thinks. He doesn't know if he'd be able to stand it if she were. If she were a mudblood then that would be a sure sign of his insanity. Not that he doesn't already know about it.

She comes from a notoriously pure Wizarding family, he thinks. That's a good thing. They may well be muggle-lovers but none of them have dared to take a muggle spouse yet and it doesn't look like they will anytime soon. Blaise thinks it would be a damn shame to waste such an old Wizarding family on a mudblood marriage.

There, he thinks. He's rationalised his looking her by Slytherin viewpoints. Now that that's out of the way - he's a little more free to think.

She's ... well ... well. To be perfectly honest, Weasley is different.

That amuses him, because he's seen how she treats her little Ravenclaw friend, the one that everyone thinks is crazy, the one she makes fun of because she sticks out like a sore thumb - well, Weasley doesn't really fit in either, so Blaise doesn't thinks she's in a position to speak.

Firstly, she's got that red hair. That obnoxiously (teasingly!) red hair that is the calling card of all Weasleys the world over. That alone makes her stick out in a crowd.

Then there's her eyes. For some reason genetics chose her and her alone to carry recessive alleles and she's got these pretty baby blues. All her brothers had brown; well, all the ones that Blaise saw, anyway.

So Weasley, really, may be a Gryffindor but - but she's different, because she's - dare he use the word, 'special'.

Oh. And she's a girl.

He's definitely noticed that. Hogwarts robes may hide curves but - well, Blaise is used to watching people and he can hazard a rough guess. The way people move. The way their hips swing when they walk. The way her ankles are positioned with each step, slight angle to the outside, how her long arms hang loosely mid-thigh ...

Alright, so it's not so much that Blaise watches people as that Blaise watches her. Guilty as charged. He grins into his plate of French toast ... so he doesn't see her look directly his way with a quizzical expression.

And he doesn't see that calculating grin that's "planning something".

And he certainly isn't expecting her when she's waiting for him after Arithmancy that day.

He stares at her. She, coolly, bravely, stares back. And they pretty much play the staring game until Crabbe brushes past him roughly, knocking him forward and breaking the glance. By the time he opens his eyes again she's laughing at him.

She, a Weasley, is laughing at him. The Draco Malfoy in him is screaming how wrong this is and how quickly he should be putting her in her rightful place - but he ignores it and inwardly laughs at how silly it sounds.

He cracks a friendly smile and that makes her stop laughing. She and her friends push past him to get to class but she turns her head to look at him as she takes her seat. Are you for real? she asks.

His reply is enigmatic: Why not find out and see for yourself?

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