Electricity or Musings on ‘Love’

A fic in the Physical-universe

By Mara202

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters. This fic has just been written for the fun of it, I'm not making any money for it. So please don't sue.

Pairings: Blaise/Harry (boy!Blaise, of course :p )

Warnings/classifications: geekiness, humour, weirdness, rambling, AU, slight HBP spoilers.

Author's notes: After Gravitation, this is the second one-shot in the Physical-universe. It doesn’t have anything to do with Gravitation though. It’s not a sequel or anything like that.

This fic was inspired by the start of my second year Physics and some random weirdness. And of course the discussions at teh loffly HMS Potent Serpent, at FictionAlley Park.

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Blaise Zabini, first year student Maths and Physics, was sitting in the Maths common room, pondering the meaning of life. OK, that is not exactly true: he was pondering the laws of physics and the concept of ‘love’.

Blaise had always regarded ‘love’ as a mere result of raging hormones and acquired behaviour. In his opinion, people had relationships, married, and reproduced only because everyone did it -- in other words, they wanted to be ‘normal’ -- and because they couldn’t control their own hormones. And thus, Blaise had decided that he wouldn’t, even if only to spite others.

His mother’s definition of ‘love’ was also slightly unusual. She saw ‘love’ as something that could be used to get richer. Nevertheless, her first steps on the path of ‘love’ had been the conventional ones, her definition hadn’t changed until she discovered how easy it was to manipulate other people by use of ‘love’.

But that was not what he was pondering at this moment, he had done that often enough. No, he was thinking about the laws of physics, more specifically, electromagnetism.

Opposites attract: positively charged particles attract negatively charged particles, and the north pole of one magnet attracted the south pole of another magnet. And he had heard people say that it holds true for people as well. He had never paid particular attention to those people, he had simply assumed it was another delusion, like ‘love’.

But ever since he had started his study, things had changed. For the first time in the eighteen years his life counted, he had trouble repressing his ‘raging hormones’ and he feared that he might eventually even throw his life motto ‘non toccarmi’ overboard.

The first time he had touched Harry had been a very shocking experience -- literally. It hadn’t been more than an accidental brush, but it literally gave him an electric shock. Of course that could be physically explained, and he had, in those days of confusion and denial, actually calculated the amount of electric charge that could be transferred that way.

He had been terribly confused, and of course it didn’t help in the least that they were partnered up in Experimental Physics, and he thus had to work in close proximity of the green-eyed Physics student.

Blaise was sure it couldn’t be acquired behaviour, since he had avoided acquiring those horrible habits ever since he was a little kid. And he had always been able to control his hormones. Would that mean that his definition of ‘love’ was wrong?

It was a terrible few weeks for Blaise; one side wanting to become ‘normal’ and bask in acquired behaviour and raging hormones, his other side screaming that ‘love’ didn’t exist, was merely an illusion for those not able to see the truth.

But what annoyed him the most, was that his friends seemed to regard his problem as ‘funny’.

“So who is it, Blaise?” Daphne Greengrass, one of his fellow Maths students and one of his best friends, asked amusedly. “You act like a lovesick teen.”

“I. Am. Not.” he said through gritted teeth. “There is no such thing as love, only hormones, and I am not going to let those dictate my life!”

“Whatever you say, sweetie. Just keep on denying if that makes you feel better.” Both she and Theo -- the traitor! -- laughed and Blaise glared.

“Maybe it’s Potter,” Theo said casually to Daphne. “They’re so adorably nervous around each other.” They snickered.

Blaise felt the strong urge to bang his head against something, and his 1400+ pages book University Physics on his desk was the unlucky victim.

Theo and Daphne exchanged startled looks. Eventually Theo said tentatively: “This really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

The only answer they got was a miserable groan.

“What’s so bad about being normal anyway?” Daphne asked. “Theo and I rather enjoy it.” She smirked.

“It’s not, I guess,” Blaise finally answered. “It’s just that I can’t just erase eighteen years of conditioning!”

“I have an idea, mate,” Theo said, patting his friend on the back, “You’re going with us to Hogsmeade tonight, and then we’re going to reformat your hard drive.”

XxX

That evening, at the trendy club Rosmerta’s in Hogsmeade, Theo and Daphne took care that Blaise got intoxicated as soon as possible, thus effectively removing the offending programming from his system, at least temporarily.

Later, Blaise could not remember how the hell he had ended up kissing Harry Potter. What he did know -- although he still denied the existence of ‘love’ --, was that being ‘normal’ could actually be quite nice...

End

XxX

:coughs: OK, this fic probably pictured Blaise rather uhm... different. :grins sheepishly:

Please review if you liked it! (Or if you didn’t, but please keep it polite!) You get a virtual chocolate chip cookie if you do!

Additional author’s rambling: this fic was supposed to contain some rambling about gravitational attraction between two objects (or persons, in this case) and electric attraction, which is a lot stronger. But somehow it doesn’t. Ah well... Gravitation dealt with gravity enough. :p

‘Non toccarmi’ is Italian for ‘Don’t touch me’ by the way. Well, if it was his life motto, it would explain why he was so ‘hard to please’, since he wouldn’t let anyone get close to him. :shrugs: