Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Two

Now she knew how Harry must have felt.

Gasping, she sat up in bed and groped for the switch on her lamp cord. With a soft click, Gram’s guest bedroom, the one Hermione had slept in on every overnight visit since she was four years old and tall enough to climb in and out of the bed by herself - rose walls, English Colonial furniture, a particularly lovely Aubusson in luminous shades of ivory and gold - came into reassuring focus.

Whatever scary bogeymen lurked underneath her eyelids, nothing bad could possibly happen to her in this room.

Hermione sank back against her pillows, still breathing hard, and turned a wary eye on the jade pendant, now glowing green against the white chenille bedspread. It took a few moments before she could bring herself to pick it up.

It was still warm from the clutch of her hand. But that sick, icy jolt of panic she’d felt just before waking didn’t resurface. Her heart rate began, slowly, to return to normal.

Just a dream, then.

But it had felt so real.

Ironically enough, it had started out happily, though slightly disconcerting - she’d had that feeling, peculiar to dreams, of being herself, but looking out through someone else’s eyes, as if she’d put on a strange character like a dress in a department store. Still, her character wasn’t so different from her; a young girl, slightly built, stepping out of a puddle of black robes and putting on lipstick and a pretty pair of sandals.

Dancing sandals. She’d been dancing, all by herself in the middle of someplace crowded - light and laughing and feeling free, away from that heavy black tangle of concealing fabric.

Lights on her skin, in a dapple of red and blue and silver sparkles. Fast music, buzzing through her body like a drug.

And then, danger - sensed, then seen - and the pleasure had faded to sick, cold fear. All bad dreams were like that, really; sweet floating dissociated fantasy, with the nightmare just around the corner.

She - the dream-Hermione, the Hermione-who-wasn’t - had run - a long sickening dash through dark streets, terror metallic just behind her teeth, feet so heavy, so slow, despite the frantic beat of her heart, the grinding ache at the back of her thighs. Black cloaks pursuing - rather like the Shadow, but not - broken-off pieces of the night itself, encircling, creeping ever closer.

Cornered, she’d turned to face them; had whispered, as the cudgels came up and she saw one rage-distorted face pop out of the darkness in front of the others, one short broken word that she’d never heard before, never seen - but that felt bitterly familiar on her tongue nevertheless, its sound and meaning still in her brain, even now that she was awake, as firmly and instantly as if it had Apparated in.

Abb’.

Daddy.

Reliving it, she shuddered, determinedly swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat, clutched Gram’s 300-count cotton-percale sheets with their eyelet edging just a little closer around her shoulders.

Granger, you are seriously fucked up.

Not only that, but she wasn’t even particularly deep: this didn’t take a doctorate in Jungian analysis to figure out, Hermione thought, scowling, or even one of those cheap dream analysis supermarket booklets that you could pick up in the checkout aisle.

Even Trelawney could have handled this one.

Those robes she’d stepped out of, for instance. Her school robes, of course - she’d left them behind in the dream, the same way she’d left Hogwarts in real life. The nightclub had to be Cairo, and the freedom it promised to deliver; the black-robed pursuers Voldemort and Malfoy - both trapped, for the moment, but still plotting, still in the picture.

And the vengeful, destroying man she’d called “Daddy” - the one meant to protect her, who’d betrayed her instead - who could that be, except for Cornelius Fudge?

As always, explaining it away made her feel a little better. She was still shaky, though - and there weren’t powers or principalities on the planet Earth who could make her close her eyes again tonight; she’d felt that scream like a physical blow, and she could swear that the statue …

Whatever. Swinging her feet from under the sheets and onto the Aubusson, she shook her head, stifled a yawn, and headed for the kitchen and Gram’s stash of Ghirardelli cocoa.

It was hard to believe, but it looked as if she’d have to leave England to get a good night’s sleep.

**

Her apartment building in Cairo wasn’t particularly picturesque - the affluent, professional-class suburb of Doqqi featured blocks upon blocks of functional but uninspired concrete slabs, dating from a period of late-twentieth-century architecture singularly lacking in imagination.

That was the outside.

Once you were past the security doors - one set modern glass, the other reinforced pine - the landscape changed entirely. Apparently, apartment-dwellers in the magical community didn’t content themselves with redecorating their rooms - the areas of connecting hallway adjoining their entrances took on the personality of their tenants, as well. Hermione’s apportioned section of hall (for the moment blank, as she hadn’t yet decorated) was adjoined on one side by a thick, ceiling-height blanket of trumpet-flower vines, from which she could have plucked real blossoms if she’d so chosen, and on the other by a constantly shifting seascape, over which the sun rose in the morning and set at dusk. Other sections of corridor she’d traversed so far had showcased talking paintings along the Hogwarts vein, discotheque-style strobes, an interactive chalkboard that reacted verbally to any comment placed upon it, and a six-foot section of barbed-wire fence, behind which a large dog patrolled, sniffing at the feet of passersby and growling.

Bill’s wall featured a jazz combo; piano, bass, drums, and a languid, Ella-Fitzgeraldesque lead singer named Maxine, who would occasionally belt out a tune for an appropriately entranced listener, but who spent the rest of her time flirting with the pianist, massaging her corns, and counting her tips. Hermione, who hadn’t seen much of Bill - or anyone else, for that matter - during her first few days in town (she wasn’t due at the Consortium until the following Monday), decided that the combo was as likely a source of information as any of her eccentric neighbours, and took a midnight stroll over to the other side of the apartment building her first Friday night in residence, bearing chocolate-chip cookies for the band and a bottle of nail polish (Desert Passion) for Maxine.

It turned out to be a good move.

“Aren’t you the sweetest little thing since soda pop?” Maxine said, studying the little pink bottle with a practiced eye. “Pretty color. Suits me. But then, they all do.” She turned her scrutiny upon Hermione. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Hermione Granger.” Hermione extended her hand, and was surprised to find Maxine’s soft and quite realistically human, though a bit cool to the touch. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Call me Maxie.” She jerked her head toward the pianist. “This is Dave. Man on the skins is Lester. Bass player doesn’t talk, so we don’t know his name. Hasn’t said a word for four years. Mostly, he just sleeps.”

Indeed, he was drowsing against the side of his battered old instrument. Hermione wrinkled her brow.

“It must be hard on you, being stuck in the wall all the time,” she ventured. Maxie shrugged.

“We’ve all got our cross in life to bear. You’re from England, aren’t you?” At Hermione’s nod, she rolled her eyes slyly toward Bill’s door. “Saw you the other day, taking the tour. How do you know our boy Bill?”

“I don’t really know him at all, except to speak to,” Hermione said. “I went to school with his younger brothers and sister - we’re quite good friends, Ron and Ginny and I. And I’ve spent a couple of weeks with his family, during summer vacations.”

Maxine hummed. “His mama, she’s a good person,” she said. “You ask me, Mr. Footloose-and-Fancy-Free could stand to spend some time with a woman of sense. Maybe then he wouldn’t need to go digging around in the dirt quite so much.”

This last was directed over Hermione’s shoulder; startled, she glanced backwards and was slightly embarrassed to discover Bill himself behind her, decidedly dusty in a battered safari jacket and another pair of khakis with a series of three parallel horizontal rips bisecting one thigh. He set down the rucksack he was carrying with a dull thunk, nodded at Hermione, and gave Maxie a tired-but-flirtatious grin.

“Who needs a woman of sense, when you give me more than I can handle?” he asked. Maxie raised a contemptuous eyebrow.

“There you go,” she said darkly, “making fun of good advice. Out till all hours, playing tag with things that try to take chunks out of your scrawny worthless ass. It’d serve you right if something did, some day.”

“Aw, Maxie.” He sent her a mournful puppy-dog look. “You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I, though.” She scowled. “Least you could do is stop gallivanting around with belly dancers and take this girl out to dinner.”

At this, Hermione laughed out loud. “Belly dancers?”

Bill rolled his eyes. “I’m admitting nothing,” he said, “that would bring my mother swooping down upon me, should the news become public.”

He muttered an Unlocking Charm at his door, then stooped to pick up his rucksack again, wincing a little as it grazed the injured thigh. “As for dinner, I’d like nothing more - I’ve been hanging out with a camel, eating stale bread and beef jerky for the last three days - but I don’t think I’m up to an outing tonight.” He gave her a comical look. “I’m too smelly, for one thing.”

“That’s okay,” Hermione said, then gave him a more careful once-over.

He looked like hell. Strange, how sexy that was - dirt, dishevelment, and all, she still wouldn’t kick him off her couch in the middle of the night.

Even if he did smell like a camel.

“Um …” she began, then broke off. He looked inquiring.

“Yes?”

“Well, if you don’t want to go out to eat -“ she said. “I mean, it’s a little late to find a table now, right?”

Bill brightened.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, “that you’re offering to cook. I’d trade you every Duke Ellington CD I own, in exchange for one decent omelette.”

Hermione grinned. “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “Just come on over. After you’ve showered.”

“Honey, I knew as soon as I saw you that you were a smart cookie,” said Maxie as soon as the door was closed behind him. “But I haven’t seen a girl move in that fast since FloJo ran the hundred-yard dash.” She shook her head admiringly. “You are good.”

“Vive la weekend,” Hermione said, winking, and slipped off down the hall to beat some eggs.

Her night was looking up.

**