Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Thirty-Two

"So," Draco asked. "Why did you do it?"

They were alone in Elysium, and Gabrielle figured that all things considered, she'd gotten off fairly lightly in the aftermath of her Grand Misadventure. Most of her smooth re-entry into Everyday Hogwarts Existence, she owed to Mssrs. Lupin and Black, who were, thankfully, themselves familiar with and sympathetic to the desire for illicit nocturnal wanderings. They'd been amazingly decent about the whole thing - hadn't turned her in, hadn't even really scolded her much . . . beyond a sort of perfunctory lecture that Gabrielle figured they thought they had to give her, Lupin being a former professor and all.

Getting back into the castle had been easier than she'd dared imagine. She'd trailed them right through the front doors, draped in Invisibility, then - as Professor McGonagall stood up sleepily to greet Black and Lupin from where she'd apparently been waiting for them in the Entrance Hall - Gabrielle had promptly slipped off to her room to catch a much-needed hour or so of sleep before breakfast. Her roommates, once they were up, had been curious - you were out late last night, weren't you? - but, though they were patently incredulous of her excuse (that she'd fallen asleep while studying in the library), neither did they seem to suspect that she'd left the castle altogether. Apart from one raised eyebrow from the Headmaster at breakfast, which had given her a moment's pause, no one else appeared to have missed her at all.

So - safe, then. Except that her curiosity over the missing book, paired with the thought of what Wronski might say about their conversation on Draco's next visit home, had compelled her to spill the whole thing to him, beginning to end. It seemed to go well; he appeared more disbelieving than upset.

"Christ, Gabrielle," he'd said. "Do you know how many booby-traps there are in that house? You're lucky you aren't dead." He frowned. "And how did you get past the Chinese Fireball, anyway?"

Chinese Fireball? Gabrielle shrugged.

"Don't know," she said. "Never saw it." She bit her lip thoughtfully. "Wronski said that there've been troops of Aurors through, during the past few weeks. Maybe everything was deactivated by the time I got there."

"Maybe." Draco didn't look convinced. "How was he?"

"Who, Wronski?" Gabrielle made a face. "Rude and condescending, mostly. He tried to get me to read your journal."

Draco snorted. "I bet he did."

Gabrielle peered at him sideways - he didn't look too concerned, which was odd. From what she knew of people with journals - mainly Fleur - they tended to get quite possessive about the contents. Gabrielle herself, of course, kept hers in code. But other people . . . well . . .

"I didn't, you know," she said. "Read it, I mean."

"I know," he said calmly, then grinned at her. "If you had, you'd be about four inches tall and covered in blue spots. I laid some serious wards on that journal, and Wronski knows it - it was rude of him even to suggest it. He gets bored up there all by himself." He sucked his teeth, apparently consumed by a new thought. "And while we're talking about wards, tell me this: how did you manage to avoid all of Fath - um, Lucius's watch-elves?"

"Watch-elves?" Gabrielle shook her head. "I didn't see any house-elves at all. Watch or otherwise."

"Huh." Draco leaned back on his pillow. "Well, that settles that, then. If you didn't see them, it's because they aren't there. And if they aren't there, then it's a sure bet that he isn't, either. Left to his own devices, I doubt he can boil water. He's probably taken them with him, wherever he's gone." His eyes narrowed. "Probably he's taken the book, too. If it's as valuable as Lupin seems to think it is."

"Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

"Maybe." Draco stared into the fire for a long minute. "So - why did you do it, anyway?"

Good question. "I'm not quite sure," Gabrielle said finally, after a moment's reflection. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose."

At his disbelieving snort, she spread her hands helplessly. "Well, it did. And I wanted to do something to help."

That got a smile out of him, one of the thin wry one-sided lip-curls that she found so charming. "Something to help, eh? That's very sweet of you."

Gabrielle wrinkled her nose at him - she didn't care for the way he'd said the word sweet. "It is, isn't it?"

He laughed, then subsided into silence. They sat side-by-side on the chaise, staring into the leaping flames. Then: "Gabrielle?"

She shot him a wary sideways glance. "Oui?"

He tipped up her chin with one elegant forefinger. Gray eyes met china-blue. "Pull a stunt like that again," he said, "and I'll shave your pretty little head while you sleep. Got it?"

"Loud and clear." She grinned at him, relieved. "You don't happen to have any popcorn left in here, do you?"

Grumbling, head carefully averted to hide his smile, he got up to look.

**

It was strange.

Up until they'd Apparated to her door, the air between them had been as tense and charged as the eye of a hurricane. But the minute the door had closed behind them, the moment she'd gone into his arms, all that tension had melted away from her on a warm red tide of relief.

And now Hermione was finding out something she hadn't known, something that had never occurred to her before now: sex could be funny.

She wasn't quite sure how it had started, who had inadvertently found the first ticklish spot and decided, at the resulting muffled giggle, to pursue the matter to its logical conclusion. But it was all-out war now - rolling, kicking, shrieking with laughter and grappling for the upper hand - and how they'd managed to get naked in the process was anybody's guess, but there you go. She'd found a pillow under her hands, purely by chance, and had smacked him with it without really thinking; "ha," he'd panted - "two can play at that game - " and now, even Cleo had gotten into the act, leaping like a small exultant gazelle among the flying feathers that drifted over the sides of the bed and down to the floor.

Hermione was laughing so hard her stomach hurt, so hard that she couldn't breathe. "Stop - stop - I surrender," she wheezed, and collapsed back onto the bed. Bill followed suit.

"You surrender, huh?"

He had slid over her, braced on his elbows, long red-gold hair out of its leather thong and falling down on either side of his narrow pirate's face like shiny disheveled curtains. He was out of breath, and a little bit sweaty, and - Hermione realised, as he shifted his weight - definitely, improbably aroused.

More surprisingly yet, she thought foggily, she was, too.

"Yeah," she said softly, and squirmed her hips slightly to one side to give him more direct access. Bill sucked in his breath.

"Babies," he said raggedly, his eyes squinched closed. He was exhaling through his teeth, rather as if he had a leg cramp. "Not to spoil the mood, Madison, but are you - "

"No worries," Hermione assured him. He looked relieved.

"Okay."

He brushed his mouth against hers. Hermione felt his hand slide deftly between their sweaty, slippery bodies - down, down and then oohhhhhhhhh in a fiddly twiddling motion at Strategic Point A that made her yelp and arch against him as her heels slid obligingly apart on the damp cotton sheets. Bill clucked approvingly.

"That's it," he murmured, his hazel eyes intent; "nice and easy, nice and slow . . . Christ, you're wet. Easy, now - easy, gorgeous, no hurries . . . "

No hurries? Was he insane?

"There you go. There you are. God, you're stunning." This, against her mouth, as his thumb continued its skillful fiddle against her clit and his cock eased its way into her another couple of millimetres, as slowly and carefully as if she were Austrian crystal and not steaming, impatient flesh and blood. "Just a little more. A little more. Oh, that's amazing."

Hermione felt her teeth grind together. She twisted underneath him, hands in slippery claws against his shoulders, pelvis poised in mid-wiggle, unsure of whether to aim first for his cock or for those maddening slow-twirling fingers. "Hurry," she panted, and heard him laugh.

"Are you kidding?" He eased himself back, then drove into her again with a practiced wriggle of the hips - to-the-hilt-all-the-way-oh-God-yes-oh-yesyesyes - that made her see stars. "When I've waited this long to get to where I am? Not a chance."

His thumb didn't stop its hypnotic, gentle north-south guitar-pick journeyings, not even when she squealed and made a halfhearted grab for his wrist. "Nice try," he murmured, and captured her fingers with his free hand so he could bring them to his lips. "You go ahead and grab this one, Madison. I'll still be here when you get back."

**

Bill was holding on by a thread. But he intended to keep right on holding.

Forget objectivity. Forget flirtation. Forget caution and reason and sanity - put on the blue suede shoes and hop the midnight train to Georgia, because it had finally, finally happened.

Hermione Granger was horizontal with him, after forty acres and a hundred sweaty nights of lonely fantasies on the subject. And he was damn well going to make it last.

Something was wrong, of course. Something had happened, while he'd been in Mexico. Why else would she have met him at the door with a bloody meat cleaver, strung out on adrenaline and jazzed for battle? Why else would she have gone so suddenly dazed and . . . well, for lack of a better word, lost, at the thought of a friendly dinner out?

Apprehension in the clear brown eyes. Another layer of secrets behind that cool mountain-lake exterior, something weary and sad and Billie-Holiday hopeless that made him want to take her apart from the outside in like a broken watch, made him want to peel off her oh-so-careful defenses and scour away the sadness and put her back together again.

Well, he couldn't do that, and he was smart enough to know it. Neurosis was a TV dinner for one - try to share it, and neither of you ended up happy. But he could distract her, couldn't he?

Pin her between his cock and his fingers and send her into slack-jawed free-fall. Flood her with pleasure. Trap her into momentary happiness.

Make her believe.

She shuddered underneath him, her eyes rolled up into her head, mewing in her throat like a baby bat. Bill tightened his hold on her small capable hand and started to move again.

"Hold on, baby," he muttered. "You haven't seen anything yet."

He was a patient man. He could wait for what he wanted.

**