Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Forty-Five

"Mr. Potter! Miss Weasley!"

Harry and Ginny exchanged exasperated glances and stopped in their tracks.

It was the day before Halloween, a Hogsmeade Saturday, and though Gabrielle wasn’t allowed into Hogsmeade and the rest of them—Harry, Ginny, Draco, Ron—had intended to stay at the castle to keep her company, Minerva McGonagall clearly had other ideas.

"Potter!" she barked again, catching sight of Harry and Ginny headed out of the Great Hall and toward the stairs to the library, the opposite direction from the front doors. "Miss Weasley! A word, if you would!"

What followed this was a crisp soundtrack of gentle fuming—‘lovely day’, and ‘cooping yourselves up’, and ‘enjoy the weather while it lasts’—accompanied by a surprisingly firm grip on their arms, propelling them out the door. Ron was already outside, looking dejected and vaguely defiant; at the sight of them, he brightened.

"You too?" He rolled his eyes at McGonagall’s back. "What’s she on about, anyway?"

"Probably," Ginny said, "she figured we were on our way up to Gryffindor Tower to … um, take advantage of the quiet." She shrugged. "She’s been very anti-snog lately; I’ve no idea why. Susan and Terry lost twenty House points apiece when she caught them necking in Greenhouse Three last week."

Ron glanced darkly at her. "When it comes to you," he said, "I can’t say I disapprove of that policy."

Ginny cast her eyes heavenward. "I’m hardly in nappies anymore, Ron."

"But I remember when you were."

"Hmph." She exchanged a wicked glance with Harry. "Well, I remember when you …"

Ron clapped his hand over her mouth.

"Okay, okay," he said hastily. "Never mind all that. Let’s just go, all right? Sooner we get there, the sooner we can get back."

It was ironic, Harry thought, that after years of using the Honeydukes tunnel to sneak out of Hogwarts, they should finally be called upon to use it to sneak back in. But even that thought, bizarre and circular as it was, wasn’t enough to distract him from mentally reliving the events of a few nights previous. Come to think of it, he’d been able to think of little else since it happened.

I know your secrets, she’d whispered. I know what you want. And he’d been too far gone to refute her claim.

But now, in the light of day, something about those words made him wonder – some trick of inflection, some familiar shadow-vowel or other, tugging at the locked trunks of his memory and prompting: don’t I know you? Over and over he relived the encounter, puzzling over what he remembered of the Mystery Woman’s features: elfin pointed face, messy bedhead spike of hair, sulky mouth with a touch of cruelty curving it up at one corner.

No, he’d never seen her before. But damn it, there was something – and if he could only take a closer look …

"Long as I’m here," Ron said, breaking unwittingly into Harry’s rêverie, "I might as well stop in and see the twins. You two coming?"

"Sure," Ginny said, but Harry was already unthreading his arm from hers.

"In a minute," he said, and jerked his head toward the sign for WizardWares on the other side of the street. "I need to pick up a couple of things."

Ron and Ginny regarded him skeptically.

"Housewares?" Ron said, incredulous. "What, are you taking up S.P.E.W. again? No one goes into that store but old people and house-elves. What do you want in there?"

"I just need to pick up a couple of things," Harry repeated stubbornly—and, when Ginny made a move to follow him, shook his head. "No, don’t come with me, I’ll only be a minute. I’ll meet you back at the twins’ shop."

Inside the dusty storefront of WizardWares, he was less sure of himself. Bucketsful of Madam Scower’s Powerful Powder … an army of enchanted sweeping-brooms … laundry detergent, floor wax, boot-polish … useful on a certain level, sure, but on the other hand, not exactly what he was looking for.

Would it even be here?

"Can I help you?" creaked an old voice. Harry spun around to see an ancient wizard in a blue stockboy’s apron, leaning on a push-broom and beaming beneficently at him.

"Uh … I’m not sure." Harry, less sure of himself by the moment, shrugged. "I’m probably in the wrong place," he offered. "It doesn’t look like you have the sort of thing I need …"

"You’ll never know until you ask, will you?"

True, that. Harry shrugged again.

"Okay, then," he said, and took a deep breath. "You wouldn’t happen to have a Pensieve lying about, would you?"

**

Hermione was furious.

The trouble was, it didn’t do any good – though she knew exactly who she was angry with, and why, neither could she lay all the blame at his door, as she would have liked to do. Logic, she reflected – not for the first time – was a curse; it wasn’t helping the situation any, and it was getting in the way of her sulk. And though she’d tossed from side to side for most of the night, pounding her pillow and swearing silently at the ceiling and even, for a few very bad moments, weeping, none of that was making her feel any better. Even the tears, therapeutic as they were claimed to be, only made her eyes burn and her throat close, until even they were dried up and all that was left was a hard, hopeless ache that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many glasses of water she conjured out of thin air.

Christ, what a mess.

It wasn’t the danger, considerable as that seemed to be. It wasn’t the added sexual element of Snape, either – in the few days they’d been cohabiting Farouk’s Alexandrian villa, he’d done as much to ignore her as humanly possible. Apparently he’d really meant those last scathing words of his, the last thing she remembered before she stormed out of his Hogwarts chambers: We don’t belong together, Hermione, and chances are we never will. Before this can happen again, I need to get a life. And you need to grow up.

Oh, how that stung, even now. Especially now, trembling as she was on the far edge of what was, after all, nothing but a temper tantrum.

But damn it, she had the right. Didn’t she?

Hermione flopped over on her back and stared up at the whitewashed plaster of the ceiling. In the moonlight coming through the windows, filtered through the fine mesh of her mosquito netting, it seemed as luminous and faroff as starshine.

I thought I was lucky.

Oh, yes. That was it – that was the Essential Kernel of Truth, the heartbreaking crux of the matter: ever since her acceptance letter from Hogwarts seven years ago, ever since before, she’d believed wholeheartedly that her life was charmed. To be clever, to be brilliant, to be a witch – to discover, finally, that on top of all her other blessings that she was pretty, too, and powerful … well. Wasn’t that luck, the most astounding good fortune in the world?

It had to be, because there was no other explanation for it. How many times had she heard her mother sigh into the telephone, "I just don’t know where she gets it?"

Hmph.

It wasn’t luck at all, Hermione thought, and had to grit her teeth against another wave of self-pity. I was … set up.

Set up. By that calm, placidly smiling graybeard three doors down who’d at the very least palmed off his murderous family curio on the unsuspecting Gram, and who’d at the very most palmed off on her much more than that. Hermione thought of smiling, urbane Peter Granger – probably, at this very moment, settling down with his pretty wife and his down pillows and his CD of Mozart string quartets – and then of sweet old Grandad, sneaking her biscuits from the tin in the kitchen and nodding off over the Sunday paper in his leather club chair. Once she’d sung him a song, something she’d learned in nursery school about ducklings and mud puddles, and that’s what he’d called her from then on: duckling. And her father: ah, Papa Duck! Grandad would say, and wink at Hermione. And how are things on your side of the pond?

Papa Duck? Hermione ground her teeth bitterly. Papa Cuckoo, more like. And no way to prove or disprove it, either – that was the most maddening thing of all.

Except for her. Circumstantial evidence, to be certain … but having a wizard for a father certainly improved Peter Granger’s chances of fathering a witch; that was just simple genetics. And if so – if Farouk al-Hussein was indeed her grandfather – then that meant she’d been fucked from the beginning, that it was only a matter of time before the Jade Priestess wormed its way out of Gram’s library safe and into her hands.

A curse. Not a blessing.

And then – if that was the case – then wasn’t the Jade Priestess enough to deal with? Shouldn’t she, merely in the name of cosmic balance, have been spared the assassination attempts, the kidnappings, the thugs lying in wait in alleyways? The lovers-who-weren’t-lovers? The cold-eyed enemies with familiar faces who touched her with hate in their hands and death in their hearts?

Quit whining. You could be Harry, after all.

True. But Harry doesn’t have to be the Boy-Who-Lived anymore; Voldemort’s holding down staff-meeting memos and keeping the Hula Dancer company.

Yeah. But that doesn’t bring Harry’s parents back to life.

See, there it was again – that unassailable logic that refused to let her wallow, even momentarily, in unadulterated self-pity. Hermione sighed, pushed back the mosquito netting, and swung her feet over the side of the bed.

If she wasn’t going to get any sleeping done, she’d might as well read.

**