#a ship name that is not thlaise because i refuse to use that

[hephaestiions]

So, just saw you mention Blaise/Theo in one of your asks—talk to me about your feelings on them? It’s a ship I just saw some fanart of, and I’m intrigued™️ ❤️

@shealwaysreads bella you really should not have asked (even though i am very glad you did), because i have many feelings and they’re all mostly angst because i only sometimes headcanon theo living past the age of eighteen. but have some very general, broad thoughts on them that have nothing to do with death or being eighteen or anything that isn’t a very soft (or about as soft as hogwarts slytherins get anyway) friends to lovers situation:  

by the time blaise is an eleven year old sitting with an old mouldy hat on top of his head that bellows slytherin after telling him– quite mortifyingly– that he’d do rather well in hufflepuff, he has a lot of rules about living life. some of them are his mother’s– sharp smile and sharper nails and don’t let any of them get too close darling, it never works that way. some of them are survival– you learn after coming too close to death one too many times with too many men who see a little boy with a penchant for adventure as more of a hindrance to a life of leisure with his mother than anything else. and some of them are just him– make acquaintances easily, but make friends only with the people you can afford to care about forever. smile, never laugh, they don’t need to see the way you look when you aren’t faking it. life is a dinner table and you are the host.  

except theo careens into his life with a glass of pumpkin juice he wasn’t keeping an eye on because he was trying to split his attention between a book and the hem of his too long robes that he wrote to father to get fixed, but father said he didn’t have time, and really how much time could it possibly take and oh– blaise! oh, i’m sorry, i didn’t see you there, oh–! and blaise is rushing to simultaneously clean off pumpkin juice and reassure this anxious boy with fidgety hands who keeps looking at his face and then looking away as though he expects to be punched and is a little awestruck by the fact that he isn’t being punched. 

and blaise’s manual of rules to navigate the high, treacherous seas of life is drowned in pumpkin juice and childish adoration that blossoms over the years into a kind of unconditional love that he tries to keep hidden but can’t because it spills like the ink from the spare quill he keeps around because theo chews all of his. blaise is all sharp and all smiles and all sarcasm and witty banter when he’s twelve, when he’s thirteen, when he’s fourteen, when he’s fiftee– blaise, blaise! theo is in the upstairs bathroom, i think he hurt his spine– blaise? and someone no one in the slytherin common room has ever met emerges from beneath the facade, painted with panic and love and a bizarre sort of genuineness that leaves everyone feeling uncomfortable. 

have you ever heard the only exception by paramore? think of it as their theme song. 

they finally get together when pansy has enough of it towards the end of fifth year and takes them both by the arm and shoves them into the bathroom and leaves them there for four hours to ‘sort their shit out’. theo begins to apologise– i don’t know what’s gotten into her– and blaise waves it off– it’s pansy, whatever it is has been in there for a while now. and they sit on the tiled floor and stare at each other for a while and burst into laughter. they laugh and they laugh and they laugh until it hurts too much. and then blaise asks him what he’s thinking and theo says, as if on autopilot, all my thoughts quiet when i’m with you and then blinks, confused, as though he really hadn’t intended to say any of that and then one thing leads to another and they’re kissing, sprawled and awkward and uncomfortable against the wooden bathroom door. 

i actually have less thoughts about theo, and i think that’s actually a pretty accurate representation of his personality in general. blaise is a sword, he has mastered the art of taking up space while remaining immaculately sharp. theo on the other hand... theo is a paintbrush. capable of creating worlds of wonder but a little worn down and weary himself. he is– he’s my little tragedy. i imagine him to be this artistically inclined, quiet boy with a sharp tongue and softness where no one expects there to be any. as the years pass and his father's presence in his life as a tangible influence rather than a distant concept strengthens, the art is leached from him little by little. the smiles bleed away and the softer side is lost under an avalanche of panic and grief when his mother dies and his father starts regularly disappearing for meetings with– with fucking voldemort.

he becomes surlier, someone all his friends flinch away from on his bad days. blaise can only stand on the sidelines and watch because nothing he can do will actually bleed into that dark part of theo's heart that has been tainted by the darkness of his father's words and convictions. theo used to play quidditch but he gives it up in sixth year because his right ankle is too weak from the crucios his father aimed at his legs when theo said in a fit of rage, you don't inspire anything in me except the urge to run as far away from this godforsaken prison as possible. he can't stand on it and the only time he allows himself to cry about it is when blaise finds out and kisses the arch of his foot and says, i will carry you where you can't walk.

i had no actual plan for this answer because i got a little too excited about sharing my thoughts on theo and blaise so it’s going to end at this abrupt juncture, but i have thousands of more words about them in sixth year after theo takes the mark and post-war (some with mcd, some without) that i will not pack into a single tumblr post to spare us all <3 

anyway, if you ever feel like reading 2.6k of E rated Theo/Blaise hurt/comfort in sixth year then here you go. 

thank you so very much for asking and letting me ramble for this long about these boys, it means the world <33