Jewel of the Nile

Chapter Forty

If Hermione had had her druthers, she would have dragged the whole story out of Farouk, right then and there. As it turned out, however, her curiosity had to take a back seat for the majority of the afternoon, as Itmana’s parents arrived in short order from Jordan and – amid piles of sodden tissues, fortified by an apparently Bottomless pot of strong mint tea – the whole story came out … the left-wing collegiate protest group, Itmana’s role in the demonstration, Khaled’s confrontation of her, her subsequent Flight Into Egypt.

About the more recent events of the past two weeks, not much was said – the bruises on Itmana’s face spoke for themselves, apparently – and Khaled, for his part, wasn’t talking. White-lipped and trembling with self-castigation, he seemed barely able to sit in the same room with his little sister. Just once, Hermione caught his eyes – and had to look away from the awful, pleading bleakness in them. Messy business, contrition, Farouk had said, just a few minutes previous; for that sentence alone, he could have taken home the Academy Award for Understatement, Hermione thought now, and shuddered.

For his own part, Farouk had removed himself from center stage in this family melodrama, after giving Khaled’s shoulder a comforting squeeze in passing, and had installed himself unobtrusively in a corner, where he was surveying the goings-on with a faint, enigmatic smile. Hermione, who had herself slipped away to a comfortable wingbacked chair just outside the door in the next room, studied him curiously – slight stature, mild eyes, beard neatly-groomed and streaked with salt-and-pepper – and tried, not wholly successfully, to picture him as a young man.

Somehow she’d conjured up, from the strong penmanship and practiced sentiment of the brief note which had accompanied the gift of the Priestess, a very different image indeed: a tall dark flashing-eyed paragon of Rudolph-Valentino fantasy, someone who looked very much (come to think of it) like Khaled. Imagining her sensually elegant grandmother – film-goddess looks, stacks of newspaper clippings, the press-pampered darling of the High Art crowd – swapping spit with the understated, dreamy-eyed young mystic that Farouk must have been, back then … well, that was a bit more of a stretch.

But then, Gram had married Grandad, who had looked less like Rudolph Valentino – or any other movie star, for that matter – than he did that cheery-faced little claymation elf on the Christmas specials, the one that wanted to be a dentist and hung round with disconsolate reindeer. And to be honest, Hermione supposed that to look at a man, you could never tell.

Insert sweaty-palmed, shaky-kneed thought of Snape here.

Oh, boy. Been a while since we’ve tried that, hasn’t it?

But to her surprise, Hermione noticed – as if from a great distance – that the scowling, sneering snapshot which popped into her head didn’t carry its customary-as-of-late baggage with it.

No memory of the Killing Curse. No sick pea-soup-green edge of physical nausea.

Huh.

Frowning, she poised her mental spade and dug a little deeper, until she flipped up a memory of Snape – the real Snape – as she’d last seen him … belted into that dark green damask dressing-gown he seemed to favour so much, eyeing her balefully and drinking himself the glass of fizzy water that he’d conjured up for her, and that she’d rejected.

Whatever I want for you, you impossible little troublemaker, it’s the best.

Funny how when she thought about it, just now, that single exasperated sentence started to sound a whole lot less like Aren’t you young and foolish, and a whole lot more like I care about you. Typical Snape, couching even his declarations in such vague terms that it took a month and a half and two sharp blows to the head to figure them out. And compared to Bill’s easy compliments, of course – you’re your own category, you’re the It Girl – they still weren’t much.

Or then again, maybe they were a lot more. Hard to say.

Okay. This is an odd moment for an epiphany, Granger. Focus on the task at hand, will you?

She turned her attention back to the faintly smiling enigma in the corner that was Farouk, and tried once again to see him through her grandmother’s eyes. She wasn’t sure that it worked. But it did make her miss Gram terribly – not for the first time – and long for simpler days … when nothing had been on the agenda except for tea parties with the good china, the sparkle of jewels, and the profound, matchless comfort of hearing a beloved story retold for the hundredth time.

Hermione sighed, suddenly a bit sniffly herself, and closed her eyes against the happy sight of the family reunion in the next room.

Apparation License or no, sometimes England seemed very far away indeed.

**

"So," Gabrielle asked. "Are you going?"

Draco, who knew all too well what event she was referencing in that oh-so-casual question, schooled his features into an appropriate look of blank surprise, and peered at her over the top of his Runes homework. "Going where?" he asked.

Gabrielle threw an eraser at him.

"As if you don’t know," she sniffed. "The Halloween ball, you nitwit. Who’s the lucky girl?"

"I haven’t asked anyone," Draco said, picking up the fallen eraser and idly Transfiguring it into a zebra finch. When he let it go, it flew straight onto the end of Gabrielle’s quill and perched there, ruffling its feathers and cheeping at him in an irritated fashion.

"Are you going to?"

He actually hadn’t planned on it. But she didn’t need to know that. "I hadn’t decided," he said. "Why? Do you want to go? We can, if you want."

Gabrielle wrinkled her nose at him.

"First of all, thank you oh-so-very-much, but I can find my own date, if I want one," she said pointedly. "It’s not as if I haven’t already had offers, you know."

At this, Draco grinned. "Really," he said. "From whom?"

"None of your business." She stroked the finch’s head with one dainty fingertip. "I turned them down, anyway. There’s no need to make their humiliation public."

"Big of you."

"Oh, shut up." She tossed her head. "Can we get back to the main point, please?"

"I’d be delighted to," Draco said amiably. "Except that you never got to it in the first place."

Gabrielle fixed him with her most imperious glare. If she’d been six inches taller, it might have been quite unsettling – as it was, she looked like a slightly deranged version of Smurfette.

Except that she wasn’t blue, of course.

"I happen to know," she said in tones of exaggerated patience, "that the Headmaster has engaged a live band for the occasion." Ever the literalist, she hesitated. "Well, not live exactly. But close enough. They’re a glam-rock vampire group – call themselves ‘Bite Me’. Heard of them?"

"Can’t say I have." Draco raised one eyebrow. "You?"

Gabrielle permitted herself a delicate shudder. "Bits. Here and there. My roommates always have the wireless blaring."

"Is this the main point?"

"Not quite yet." She rolled her eyes and heaved a long-suffering sigh. "The point, if you’re going to be rude and badger me about it, is this: they happen to be a popular band, though how that came about is honestly beyond my comprehension, and the whole castle’s going to be at the dance, regardless of whether or not they have a date."

Draco shrugged. "So?"

"So I think it’ll be a perfect opportunity to slip away and go looking for your father. And don’t you try to tell me, Draco Malfoy, that you don’t know where he is, because you’ve already as much as admitted that you do."

"I don’t recall saying anything of the sort."

"Then your memory’s even worse than I’d supposed," she retorted. "I remember."

"Figures." Draco scowled down at his textbook.

"Why are you so obsessed with finding him, anyway?" he wanted to know. "You don’t even know the man. I, on the other hand, do know him, and believe me – if I never saw him again, it’d be too soon."

"That’s precisely why we should find him," Gabrielle pointed out. "So you never do have to see him again. Better we find him on our terms, instead of his."

When in doubt, distract. Draco thought fast.

"Are you sure you don’t want to go to the dance, instead?" He sent her a sly look through his lashes. "You could be my date. I could have flowers delivered to you that day in History of Magic class, along with some romantic little notion in French that no one else could read. Your roommates would be jealous for years."

"My roommates," Gabrielle said with asperity, "would say the same thing I’m about to: that the whole idea is ridiculous. How on earth would we manage to dance, when you’re two feet taller than I am? It’s absurd." She slanted him a severe look. "And if I wanted to go to the dance, I would have already accepted when Dennis Creevey asked me; he, at least, had the good courtesy to bring me some moonflowers and get down on one knee."

Draco snorted. "Dennis Creevey? You’re lucky those flowers didn’t squirt water in your face." He frowned. "And since when did grovelling become standard-issue for dance invitations? One would think he’d have had a bit more pride."

"Where I’m concerned," Gabrielle said loftily, "grovelling is standard-issue for everybody. And don’t change the subject. Are we going to do this, or not?"

Um. Not. "Why should we?"

"So you can put it behind you," she said softly, all her arrogance melted into a rare moment of sudden, clear-eyed sincerity. "Aren’t you tired of waking up worried?"

He was, actually.

But she didn’t need to know that.

Maybe – just maybe – going after Lucius wasn’t such a bad idea.

"Who says I’m worried?" Draco demanded, and summoned his best bad-boy sneer. "If I were you, princess, I’d be worried about keeping up with me."

She looked skeptical. "So you’ll do it?"

Draco hesitated, then nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "I’ll see your expedition – and raise you a rare book and a convicted felon."

Her face lit up. "Excellent."

That settled, they turned back to their homework.

**