Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Thirty-One

"So," Bill said. "What are you in the mood for?"

Not four minutes into their walk, he'd captured her hand casually in his. His thumb was playing lightly over her knuckles. Hermione felt dizzy.

"What are my options?"

He considered this. "Well, do you want to be a tourist tonight? Or do you want to go native?"

They were stopped at an intersection, waiting for a momentary break in the relentless traffic. Her hand was still caught possessively in his; he was looking at her full-on, speculatively and with admiration, as if she were the most intriguing book on the shelf. Bizarre, Hermione thought, and shivered a little - surreal, even, that not twenty-four hours ago, she'd been in the process of barely sidestepping death.

And now she was out for a stroll with Sex-On-Fins Weasley, with nothing more pressing to do or decide than tonight's menu. Downright unnatural, that - not least of all because she was liking it: the pleasant night air, her hand in his, the warm way his eyes met hers with a spark of unfettered approval as she said, "Oh, native, I think - after all, I'm hardly a tourist anymore, am I?"

Almost, she thought as they crossed the street and turned west toward downtown and Garden City, as if she'd left angsty, weepy Hermione behind, back in the apartment - where the giant serpent had curved hissing down from the ceiling; where Trelawney had cupped her bruised cheek and fought her way up to her knees; where Sal's repeated curses had chipped away at the Barrier Charm, leaving sulfur in the air; where a frightened wizard had flaked away into ashes. As if she'd peeled away all those layers of guilt and fatigue and fear and hopeless unspoken love, to reveal a younger, happier girl still untouched within them.

Madison, Bill called her, and that's how she felt, walking down this street with him. However improbable it was, she felt lighter somehow, and pretty - as pretty and sunlit as Darryl Hannah herself, carefree and laughing and flying on wheels, a clear-eyed fantasy nymph just ahead of the young god who pursued her.

The middle of the photograph. A whisker away from Camelot. The only girl in the world.

Knowing it wasn't real didn't subtract from its allure. Even a fantasy you'll never have is beautiful, while you're dreaming it; the shiniest word of all, in any language, is ‘maybe'.

For just tonight, Hermione prayed, let me not be sad.

**

"What are you going to do, Severus?" Sybil asked, and got a black look for her trouble.

"If I knew," he said darkly, "I'd be doing it, and not sitting here with my thumb up my arse, considering my options. Obviously." He curled his lip at her. "And can't you change back into your … normal self?"

She lifted one shapely mocha-latte shoulder in a consummately offhand shrug. "That one's no more real than this. Beats me what I'm really supposed to look like."

"You could check a yearbook," he suggested waspishly. "In fact, why don't you go do that, instead of hanging around here staring at me?"

Sybil decided to try candor. "I'm under orders," she said. "Dumbledore's orders, to be exact. I'm supposed to make sure you don't go off and do anything stupid."

At that, he snarled into his teacup. "Not like you could stop me, if I had a mind to."

"You go on thinking that, if it makes you feel better," she said pleasantly, and felt a second's triumph when he growled again.

The triumph didn't last, though; it was no fun scoring points off an emotional cripple. "Listen, Severus," she said, and despite his warning grumble, put one hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. "Nothing you could have done about it - this isn't even remotely your fault. We still don't know exactly why he picked your body to hide out in, out of all the others he could have snatched. Stupid bad luck, that's all."

"Bad luck?" His eyes came up to meet hers, so wounded that they seemed to bleed. "Bad luck? I don't believe in bad luck. Someone knew."

"Knew?"

"Knew, or guessed," he said, and shook off her hand from his shoulder with a fatalistic shrug. "That we were involved, she and I. That if it came to a face-to-face, she wouldn't protect herself, bloody noble Gryffindor that she is. Goddamn it."

He set down his teacup and brought his hands up to his face, digging his fingers into the soft spots at his temples. "Tell me - just try and tell me that's not my fault - for keeping it going, when I should have ended it once and for all once she left for Cairo."

"Seems to me that sort of thing takes two," Sybil commented. Severus grunted.

"Barely eighteen years old and she's supposed to know her own mind? Even you're sensible enough to know it doesn't work that way."

"Whether she knows her own mind or not," Sybil said tartly, "that's hardly kept her from making it up, now, has it?"

"Hmph." He rolled his eyes darkly, apparently to acknowledge her point. "That doesn't matter. I should have been strong enough to send her away. I could have gotten her killed."

"So why didn't you?" This candor thing had gotten her this far - and Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Surly was uncharacteristically predisposed toward True Confessions at the moment; Sybil decided to keep it going. "Are you in love with her?"

"Love." His head came up at that, to stare at a point beyond her left shoulder. "What's that, besides a word you can't say out loud?"

"She told Mikhail she loved you. I heard her say it."

His jaw trembled; his eyes glassed over for just a second. Then he looked angry.

"Well, of course she did," he said, and to Sybil's utter shock, picked up his half-full bone-china teacup and shattered it against the opposite wall. "Of course she did - it's just like her; whatever she thinks comes out through her eyes, and usually through her mouth, and she thinks it's supposed to change things. Like love can stop a bullet. Stop a curse."

He shook his head numbly, his lank dark hair whipping his neck and the sides of his face. "Like truth and honour stand for anything. Like the world's not dark enough to kill innocence. Like she's bloody invincible, like she can argue with the Fates and come out on top, and who am I to talk because she did, she did the same thing with bloody sodding Death that she did with me, that's twice now, and didn't I try, didn't I try to send her away to save her, to save her soul?"

He took a long shuddering breath. "And what's going to happen when it doesn't work, next time? What's going to be left for -"

Me, he was going to say - Sybil saw it forming on his mouth, saw the terrible desolation in his eyes and the tears that glassed them over, that looked like they'd freeze her fingers if she touched them. What's going to be left for me?

She didn't think she could bear it if he managed to finish that sentence.

And so she kissed him.

He froze under her mouth for just a second, stiffened and strained away from her, like a wild animal wary of kindness. She could feel the nerves in him, could feel the long taut tendons of his body, tight as bridge suspension, poised to snap with the next frost. He said something under her lips that she didn't quite catch, something garbled - half-protest, half-plea.

"Shhh," she said, and brought up her hand to stroke his face. "Shhh - it's all right."

"It's not all right. It's not." He was beyond weeping, beyond grief, in some terrible frozen world of recrimination that stretched his skin over his bones like a death mask. Sybil wound her hands into his hair, aching and helpless with the need to comfort.

She'd helped to cause this terrible predicament, in a way. Shouldn't she do her part to heal it?

And then, she'd wanted him for so long.

"Don't talk," she whispered against his mouth. "Don't think. I've got you."

"Oh, God." For one long instant, he tore himself away, fixed that terrible glittering gaze on hers. "I'll regret this, and so will you," he predicted - cold as January, so bleak that Sybil shivered despite her excitement, despite her heating blood and the traitorous pulse between her legs … pounding with the knowledge that he wasn't a fraud, that this was the long-anticipated Real Thing.

And then he kissed her back, and she forgot to be afraid.

**

"Is it good?" Bill demanded from across the table. He had a chunk of lamb from his kabob speared and held aloft on his fork; in the dim light from the restaurant's oil lamps, he looked like a Celtic prince, gorging himself by firelight on the spoils of the day's hunt. Hermione nodded.

"It's excellent."

"Let me try it. No, not the couscous - I've had that a million times. That eggplant thing."

Hermione scooped up a forkful of the dish in question - smoked baby eggplants, puréed with roasted garlic and cardamom to a silky consistency that made her mouth purr - and offered him the fork. Bill shook his head.

"My hands are full. Feed me."

She snickered. "You're such a flirt."

"And you love it." He sampled the eggplant, made a face of mock-ecstasy that had Hermione giggling. "Oh, yeah."

She felt drunk, but she wasn't - that deep-red liquid in her glass was pomegranate juice, flavored with honey and orange flowers and Merlin knew what else, but it wasn't hooch in any case - nearly every other woman in the restaurant (all Egyptian; when Bill said native, he meant native) was drinking the same concoction. And Muslims were teetotalers.

She took another swallow, glorying in the marriage of fruit and spice on her tongue, and had barely set her glass down when Bill was holding out a piece of grilled lamb on his fingers. "Here, Madison. Turnabout's fair play."

Delicately she took it from him with her teeth, then - possessed by some evil djinni, no doubt - let her tongue lap suggestively at his fingertips. His eyes flared darker, and he didn't move his hand away, not even when she finished nibbling the morsel of lamb and moved on to his fingers.

"Jesus, Madison. You keep doing that, we're going to get arrested."

"You said something about dancing," she murmured. "Earlier. Do you remember?"

"Remember? Hell, I don't even remember my name." Shakily, he withdrew his hand, but kept those hot golden eyes fixed straight on hers. "You want to dance?"

Hermione shifted her thighs together under the table, felt her nipples tug erect with a sudden jolt of electricity. He wasn't talking about the cha-cha, not by a long shot - and they both knew it.

You want to dance?

"Yeah," she heard herself say, nearly swooning with anticipation, with long-held tension released. "Yeah. I think I do."

**