Roman Holiday

Chapter Twelve

“Fuckin’ A,” Draco murmured, and Hermione agreed: that seemed to be the prevailing sentiment at the moment.

“Cloak,” she snapped into his ear, and they fumbled the silvery folds out from beneath his arm and over their heads. “Steps,” she directed next, and they moved carefully out of the shadows to the steps of the palazzo directly across from their hotel. By now, moving in step was pretty much second nature. If they ever got out of this mess, Hermione thought, they could take up swing dancing.

She stared at the man across the street from them, the man who’d stamped Draco with his face and then left his son to deal with the aftermath of his own reputation. Anyone else who looked that angry would have been pacing or muttering; Lucius Malfoy simply stood leaning against the railing of the steps, still and deadly as a cobra.

“Snape must have gone to see him. But how’d he find us?” she whispered. Draco grimaced.

“Location charm, most likely,” he said into her ear. “It won’t give you a pinpoint, but it probably got him as far as this piazza.” Hermione groaned inwardly.

“We should have thought of better aliases,” she said grimly. “Longbottom? Bulstrode? How thick is that? Of course he knows it’s us.” She frowned with a new thought. “Draco? Does he know you’ve got the Invisibility Cloak?”

He gave a single, terse nod. “Gave it to me for my birthday last year. And I imagine he’s been up to the room already - he must know it’s missing.” He lifted one shoulder in a tight shrug. “We could probably get past him to get in, but we’ve got too much luggage to smuggle it all out again. He’s listening for us as much as he’s watching.”

Hermione hummed in agreement. “We’d better leave it, then,” she said. “At least for tonight. Find somewhere else to go.”

“Where? It’s two in the morning.” Draco glanced at her watch. “Three,” he corrected. His shoulders slumped. “You should take the cloak,” he said dully. “Get out of here. I can go stall him.”

She kissed him fiercely on the cheek. “No. GOD, no.”

“Got a better idea?”

“As a matter of fact …” She fished inside her neckline and drew out a glittering gold chain. From it dangled a key. “To Giulia’s flat,” she said. “I had a spare, and I only gave Signora Malione one.”

His lips twisted up. “Are you sure that the Sorting Hat shouldn’t have put you in Slytherin? That’s incredibly devious, Granger.”

She fixed him with a glare. “You’re one to talk, offering yourself up as a sacrifice so I can get away. Sure you shouldn’t have been a Gryffindor?”

He ignored this. “Isn’t moving to the flat going to just lead him there, right to us?”

Hermione shook her head. “It’s still technically in the Piazza di Spagna,” she said. “Just on the other side. If the location charm’s as general as you say, we should still show up as being in the same place. And Giulia’s last name isn’t Granger, so there’s nothing to connect that flat with the two of us.”

“Except your neighbor.”

“Who saw us moving out this morning, and will tell the world that we’re in Saigon.”

“Bangkok.”

“Whatever.”

“Okay.” He let his breath out in a long, almost-silent sigh. Maybe, just maybe, they could get away with this. “Let’s go.”

**

“God, I’m tired,” Hermione said. “Did we ever technically get to sleep last night?”

Draco collapsed on the bed next to her. “I think we may have dozed off around four-thirty or so. Still,” - and here he yawned - “it’s been a full day.”

“Mm. I’ll say.” She yawned herself, stretched, and let the fingers of her right hand entwine lazily with his. “Draco?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not going to be able to go home after this, are you?”

He closed his eyes, hard, against her sympathy. “Well, that depends.”

His thumb stroked over her knuckles, a little too hard for comfort, but she didn’t complain. “On what?”

He injected a deliberate note of sarcasm into his voice. “On whether my death wish wins out over my will to live.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, and rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “God. This is my fault.”

“No, it bloody well is NOT your fault,” he hissed. “Unless you somehow did a Summoning Charm on me from Lucerne without my knowing about it.” He rolled over on his side, so he could look her in the eyes. “I did this,” he said. “Me, Hermione. I decided to come see you, I lied to him about why, and I got myself here, all under my own steam. If anything, I’m the one putting YOU in danger.”

“But …”

“No. No buts.” He gave a self-disgusted laugh. “Besides, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I had to make this decision anyway. My seventeenth birthday’s in November. And if I don’t want to be a Death Eater, I probably won’t be able to go home for Christmas.” He shook his head. “I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t pull me out of school for this little stunt.”

“Dumbledore would let you come back anyway. He’d keep you safe.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Granger, you’re obviously mistaking me for the Golden Boy again. I doubt that Dumbledore’s charity extends to the son of a killer.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Hermione said. “Besides, I’d plead your case for you.”

He looked at her sharply, taking in the pale perfect skin, the sweet curve of her mouth, the way those topaz eyes shone with pure, unadulterated faith. Joan of Arc in go-go boots.

Granger, the Crusader. How had he managed to get himself adopted as her latest pet project?

His lip trembled, just once. “You would, huh?”

She nodded, her eyes never leaving his.

“Well, that settles it,” he whispered. “If I were him, I’d never be able to deny you anything.”

Without seeming to move, they met in the middle of the bed. Every nerve ending in his body was on red alert, but when he kissed her, it spun out and held like honey pooling out of a jar, sweet on sweet. New angles, new depth, new hunger, but slow slow slow, the electric instant stretching and expanding until he thought his heart would burst with the intensity of her mouth on his. Kissing in slo-mo, like a fantasy, like a wet dream.

Hermione’s skin. Hermione’s scent. The buttery feel of her under his hands, like silk, like French-milled soap. The way she moved against him, slow and languorous and whimpering and then, as the first punch of gut-deep want hit her, too, tight little grinding circles with her hips that took him to a whole new level of mind-blowing need.

She pulled away from him, and he thought he’d die, but then her hands went to the hem of her skirt and crossed and lifted and there she was, gleaming in the yellow light like everything he’d ever wanted, wrapped up in one soft smooth package. Her eyes flicked to the boots for an instant before she decided they weren’t worth the trouble, and then she was back against him, pulling at his clothes and snuggling in for the perfect fit, the shock of skin on skin that made them both wriggle and gasp, once he was naked too.

He wanted to touch her everywhere at once, this golden-gleaming nymph in his arms. Needed to touch her, to affirm those pale hills and soft grottoes and figure out just why she moaned and twitched when he put his mouth on her neck. Where was she salty, where was she sweet, where were the magic buttons that turned her liquid in his embrace and made her rub purring against him?

And what was it about her that made it so easy to throw the rest of the world away?

She rolled him onto his back and flowed over him like water, her capable little hands running tramlines of electricity up his inner arms to his wrists and holding him there, hands over his head. Her fingers snaked into his, and she smiled down at him, his own personal benevolent sex goddess. She was straddling him, nudging at his cock with the wettest, warmest part of her, rubbing the outsides of his calves with the butter-smooth leather of her boots.

Any minute now he’d wake up to sticky sheets and a pounding headache. Any minute now she’d disappear.

“Help me out here,” she whispered. “I’m a little new at this. Does it hurt?”

“What?”

“Pansy,” she said, a trifle impatiently. “Did it hurt Pansy?”

He shook his head. “I never did this with Pansy.”

She closed her eyes for a second. “Oh. Well … good.”

If something didn’t happen soon, he’d die. “Hermione,” he murmured. “You’re doing fine. Just keep going, okay? Please?”

She bit her lip, nodded, and sank down on him. His eyes shot open in shock. She let go of his hands, and they stared at each other for a solid, unmoving minute.

“Oh, God,” she said, and gave him an experimental squeeze. “Oh, God.”

“You okay?”

She nodded.

He swallowed hard. “You think it’d be okay if I … um, moved a little?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was a dry whisper. “Yeah, I think so.”

The next minute, he had her underneath him. Don’t blow it, Malfoy, he thought savagely. Don’t lose your cool.

She’s wrapped around you like white on rice, but don’t rush things.

Not … too … fast.

He propped himself up on shaking arms and began to thrust.

**

It doesn’t hurt, Hermione thought. Oh, God, does it ever not hurt.

He was above her, pinning her down, his face set with effort and concentration and something that looked suspiciously like pain. Muttering something to himself.

Moving in and out of her in a measured, deliberate way that made her want to scream.

So this was sex. This striving together, this deep inside scratch of an itch that you didn’t even know you had until the long silken scrape pulled it out of you, wanting and wanting and clutching and God, the way her body could close around that … club … of his, making the pull longer and more tortuous, the next invasion sharper and deeper and better and ohJesusohJesusohJesusohshitshitSHIT ….

Didn’t he feel it, too? Didn’t he want to stop fucking around, pardon the pun, and just BURY himself?

“Hurry,” she sobbed, and clutched at his back with impetuous, raking fingernails. “For God’s sake, HURRY …”

And then he was slamming into her, restraint forgotten, self-control discarded, arms around her and cheek against her forehead and maybe she couldn’t breathe but who the fuck cared about oxygen, after all, when there was this descent into madness, this glorious free fall, this fast, furious trip to the end of the world?

She wrapped her arms around his neck and let herself explode.

**

It was a long time before he spoke, and when he did, it wasn’t what she expected to hear.

“Hermione?”

“Mm.”

“Think Dumbledore would let us stay at Hogwarts for the rest of vacation?”

She started to frown, then laughed instead. He scowled, but didn’t open his eyes.

“What?”

“It was good for me too, Malfoy,” she said. “Jesus. And people tell me that I think too much.”

He gave up the scowl and snickered. “Sorry.”

“Let’s get some sleep, okay? Plenty of time to worry in the morning.”

He reached over and flicked off the lamp. “You’re amazing,” he said quietly into the dark.

She kissed his forehead. “Yeah. You too.”

They fell asleep holding hands.

TBC