Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Forty-Eight

"Weasley! Are you coming?"

Bill, in the process of filing away the day’s notes in his shoulder satchel, shook his head without looking up. "Not tonight. You go on without me."

"Weasley." Nigel "Nibs" Bowling-Thompson, Gringotts’ point-person in Johannesburg and an old chum of Bill’s from the nine-month new-hire training they’d all gone through together in London prior to being assigned, clapped Bill on the back and jerked his head meaningfully toward the heavily guarded gate leading out of the mine. "You haven’t been into Jo’burg with us even one night so far. You’re going to shrivel up and die if you don’t have some fun soon."

"It’s not really my scene," Bill said, buckling the straps of the satchel closed with what he hoped was an air of finality. Nigel rolled his eyes.

"Oh, and this is?"

He gestured down the hill toward the southernmost edge of Soweto, a close-packed huddle of makeshift shacks perched precariously on raw-scraped dirt foundations. As it wasn’t yet November, the earth was still hard-packed and dry, with children playing in the narrow lanes and scrawny chickens pecking hopefully in the tiny barren yards; by next month at this time, Bill knew, the miserable little huts would be knee-deep in rainy-season muck, and the lone Red Cross clinic which served the health-care needs of all of Soweto’s mining families would be overwhelmed with its yearly inundation of dysentery victims. It was hard to believe that the erudite, cosmopolitan Johannesburg was less than 20 kilometers away – it seemed like another world altogether.

"This," he rejoined, suddenly weary of good-natured double-speak, "is precisely why Johannesburg isn’t my scene. How you lot can go out and club-crawl after looking at this all day is completely beyond me. I feel guilty just Apparating into my hotel room."

Nibs looked astonished – and just the slightest bit reproachful.

"I say, Weasley. That’s very heavy of you." He nudged Bill determinedly toward the gate again. "’S not as if we caused it, after all – it’s a Muggle problem, now, isn’t it?" At Bill’s dark look, he shrugged apologetically. "Well, we needn’t go sousing with the others, if you’d rather not. But at least come into town and let me spot you dinner, just this once. We haven’t had the chance to catch up on this trip."

Bill started to refuse, then took a harder look at Nigel’s bewildered expression and relented. "Well," he said, nodding reluctantly. "Dinner, then. But just dinner."

"Right."

They dined on steak and the trimmings, smack in the middle of Newtown, Johannesburg’s old downtown district … and hadn’t even gotten through the soup course before Nigel steered the talk to women.

"So," he said, sipping his single-malt scotch and settling back into his chair. "Who’s the lucky girl these days? And is she suitably grateful for her induction into Harem Weasley?"

Bill flushed.

"I’ve slowed down a bit, Nibsy," he demurred, toying with his Parker House roll. "Not that the rumours were ever indicative of reality – I’m afraid I never quite deserved my reputation." He raised one eyebrow. "How about you? Has Gloria made your mind up for you yet?"

"Gloria," Nigel said sourly, "is ‘discovering her mystic roots’ in a wizarding ashram in Tibet. I saw the catalogue – it’s like a day spa with chanting, run by some daft old codger in a fringed robe who calls himself Lama Po." He shrugged. "Presumably the engagement’s still on … neither of us have broken it off officially, anyway. But I haven’t seen her since March. For all I know, she’s been eaten by a yak."

He glugged at his Scotch again and brightened. "Lots of pretty things out and about in these parts, though; it’s not as if Gloria’s my only option."

This was familiar territory. Bill sipped at his glass of Evian and offered Nigel a nod that, were its recipient intoxicated enough, might have been taken for encouragement. "Of course not."

"Got a piece on the side tucked away for nearly two months," Nibs continued dreamily. "Gorgeous creature named Kim. Muggle, of course. All legs and eyes. Little tennis ball of a bum. Mother doesn’t know, naturally."

Bill spooned up some consommé and wisely refrained from comment … Nigel’s tastes for young black Muggle mistresses were by now as much a given as his on-again, off-again betrothal to the flighty, tempestuous Gloria, and the continued behind-the-scenes machinations of his snobbish pureblood mother only made the situation worse. Not for the first time, Bill raised silent-but-heartfelt thanks to Whoever Might Be Listening Up There, that Arthur and Molly Weasley were exactly who they were.

"So – how about it?" Nibs demanded again. "Is there a girl, or isn’t there?"

"There is," Bill admitted, and thought longingly of the sleeping face on its Alexandrian pillow that he’d had to leave without kissing awake. Just to look at her, soft and safe and warm and Sleeping-Beauty gorgeous through her misty shroud of mosquito netting, had made his breath catch in his throat.

"I knew it. And?" Nibs, by now teetering on the edge between gentle inebriation and out-right drunkenness, leaned forward expectantly. "Details, man. Details! Is she just a piece of fluff? Or are you smitten?"

Hermione, fluffy? Bill had to smile at that.

"Smitten," he said, after a moment’s pause. Nibs cackled.

"Smitten, eh?"

"Very smitten. Very very."

After all, it was the truth.

**

Hermione raised the phial of clear greenish liquid to the light, and peered through the glass into its contents with interest.

"Ichor," she said, turning the phial round in her fingers. "The blood of the gods – no wonder you couldn’t find it in Hogsmeade." She glanced mischievously in Snape’s direction. "Or is this the other kind of ichor?"

He rolled his eyes. "You’ve been taking The Age of Fable far too seriously, haven’t you, Miss Granger? Regardless of what Mr. Bulfinch had to say about it, there is only one useful magical kind of ichor, and this is it." A challenging pause. "Which you’d know, if you’d done the extra reading I assigned last year."

"Dragon pus, then?" Hermione ventured. Snape looked pained, then nodded.

"Dragon pus, yes. Though that particular way of putting it lacks a certain … poetry."

"Drawn from the wounds of a dragon in flight," Hermione recited sing-song, "into a magically-treated mortar, made of basalt and brought from the bottom of the sea. Distilled with rainwater and rose petals by moonlight. Transported by …"

"Yes, well." Snape glared at her. "No need to sound so flippant; it’s an incredibly dangerous process, which is why it’s so rare. Speaking of which, do stop twirling it about like that – not only would it eat right through those inquisitive little fingers of yours if you gave it the opportunity, but that phial alone is worth more than this villa."

"To replace, that is," he added as her eyes went wide – the extra reading she’d done hadn’t said anything about what it cost. "This bit came free of charge. Albus made a call to Charlie Weasley."

Hermione nodded in sudden realisation. "Oh. So you weren’t really in Alexandria today, were you?"

"Romania." Snape looked sardonic. "Mr. Weasley asked me to tell you to ‘keep his big brother in line’."

Hermione flushed. "Oh – really?"

"Really. And before you start sputtering denials," he said, looking more satisfied with himself than he had any right to, "you’d might as well know that it’s common knowledge. Bill made the nature of your relationship clear to Albus the night of your kidnapping – he was apparently too distraught to do otherwise. And—" here, he grimaced—"Albus is utterly incapable of keeping … ahem, happy news, to himself."

"Oh." Hermione averted her eyes. "I see."

"Hermione." His voice was gentler now. "You weren’t meant to look so embarrassed. I’m teasing you."

She turned baffled eyes up at him. "But don’t you …? I mean, aren’t you …?"

"Angry? No." Snape shrugged, his face carefully averted. "How could I be, when I’m seeing someone else at the moment, as well?"

Hermione’s skin went hot, then cold.

"You are?" she blurted out. "Who?"

"It appears," he said thoughtfully, "that there’s more to Professor Trelawney than meets the eye. Something you found out before I did, I fear."

"Trelawney?" Hermione repeated, disbelieving.

Unspoken: But she … but she …

But she knew I was in love with you.

That bitch.

"Oh," she said in a small voice. "Oh, I see."

"Hermione," he said again, looking uncharacteristically unsure of himself. Anxious, even – I must look like I’m going to cry, Hermione thought, and concentrated on the phial of ichor with a determination that made her head ache. "You made the right decision. He’s a better match for you than I’ll ever be."

"Right," Hermione said, and dug her teeth viciously into her lower lip. "Right. Of course."

She forced herself to smile up at him. "We should get started," she said, and tipped her head meaningfully toward the stack of books at the end of the table. "Didn’t you say there was a table of reactions somewhere?"

"What? Oh. Yes." Snape looked uncertain, then relieved. "Not the green notebook, the black. Toward the middle, I think."

Hermione reached for the notebook and began to flip pages with an unsteady hand. Beneath her gaze, Snape’s strongly slanted handwriting blurred into a film of grey; it took all her concentration to stop the first tear from falling.

When it rains, it pours. Problem is, I’ve left my umbrella back in Cairo.

"Did you find it?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Yes. I found it."

Gritting her teeth, she blinked back the traitorous tears and began to read.

**