Roman Holiday

Chapter Thirty-Three

Hermione had seen a lot of strange things lately. Many of them she’d seen today, as a matter of fact.

That being the case, the realization that she could still be surprised came as a bit of a relief. She’d begun to worry about premature cynicism.

At some point during her brief absence, the Great Gryffindor-Slytherin Divide had been breached. Hermione wasn’t sure if this had more to do with her disappearance, or her lengthy Personal Affairs update with Harry in the library this morning. Whichever it was, the Unthinkable Had Happened: Mssrs. Potter and Malfoy were presently both sitting on her bed, cross-legged under the canopy, with nary a scowl or sneer traded for the past three-quarters of an hour.

Of course, this could have been because their mouths were gaping open in shock.

“Salazar Slytherin,” Harry said thoughtfully at last, breaking the long, awed silence that followed Hermione’s recitation. Then: “That bastard. Why didn’t he come stop the damn basilisk himself, if he’s been around all this time?”

“I think Fred and George already asked him that,” Hermione said. “He implied that there was a logical explanation for it, but I didn’t pry. You might ask them, the next time you need to stock up on Canary Creams.”

Harry snorted.

Draco, who had been staring into space, seemed to shake himself back into the present. He looked dazed.

“Hermione,” he said. “Do you think he told you everything he knows?” Hermione shrugged.

“Not sure,” she said. “God knows he was happy enough to talk; take him a Glenn Gould album and a copy of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and he’ll probably let you read his diary.”

She studied her fingernails, her forehead creased. “Maybe we should pay him another visit, come to think of it. He might be able to tell something about the curse just by looking at the mark on your neck; after all, he invented the thing.” She yawned. “Not tonight, though. I’ve had enough rabbiting around in sub-dungeons for one day.”

At that, Harry bolted upright. “Snape,” he said. Hermione shot him a curious look.

“Is our Potions professor,” she supplied. “What about him?”

“He’s the only other person who knows you were missing today.” He frowned suddenly with a new thought. “You had me really worried, Hermione - otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten near Snape with a ten-foot pole. Did you rip your robes when you went through the trapdoor?”

“Rip my robes?” Hermione scanned her front, puzzled. “No. Why?”

“Because,” Draco said, “when Harry went looking for you after lunch, he found your books outside Snape’s office and a ripped-up robe on the floor of the Potions classroom. We just assumed it was yours, and Snape seemed to think that was a reasonable guess. He’s probably given you up for dead by now; the three of us even spent half an hour trying to coax information out of that map, but you didn’t show up on it.”

Hermione spared a few moments for hysterical reflection on the subject of Harry, Draco and Snape huddled over the Marauders’ Map. Her curiosity for the details of this montage bordered on the morbid.

“Did it insult him?” she asked, and Harry shook his head regretfully.

“No. More’s the pity.” He sighed. “I did have to give away the password in his presence, however.”

“The sun will come up tomorrow,” Hermione said smugly, ignoring his look of reproach. “You know,” she mused, “those must have been Pansy’s robes.”

They both looked at her, baffled. “Pansy?” asked Harry. “Parkinson? What does she have to do with this?”

Hermione had honestly forgotten about the Parkinson-Avery conversation she’d overheard this morning - Slytherin’s ghost was a bigger headline, after all. Still, she figured now was as good a time as any to put it on the table. Draco looked amused by the thought of Pansy snogging Avery, but disturbed by the content of their verbal preliminaries.

“Christmas,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder …”

“I tend to think not,” Hermione said firmly. “Slytherin said Voldemort would go for as big a body count as possible, and that he’d choose his targets carefully. That says ‘graduation’ to me, don’t you agree?”

“Could be.” Draco didn’t look convinced. “In any case, Snape ought to know about it,” he said, and flushed a little at their curious looks. “I told him everything,” he said, looking more than a bit guilty. “Right after your little stunt in the library with the Swiss army knife. Well, I had to tell someone.”

Hmm, Hermione thought. So - Snape had known about that, then, even before the incident with the Illuminata. Was that why he’d been so strangely nice, when she’d showed up late for their meeting?

Things to ponder.

She stole a peek under her lashes at Draco, who had leaned back against one of the bedposts and was studying her quite brazenly with a curiously intent look on his face, as if he intended to commit her to memory. Their eyes caught and held; she flushed, but didn’t look away.

She wasn’t aware that the room had fallen into deep silence until Harry broke it by clearing his throat.

“Well,” he said, a bit too briskly. “I’ll just … um … I’ll just run down to the dungeons, then, why don’t I? And tell him you’re all right.” He cast a glance at Draco. “Shall I pass on the Parkinson-Avery thing, too? Or do you want to do that yourself?”

Draco looked surprised and slightly gratified at this. “If it’s no trouble …” he began. Harry made a slashing motion with his hand to cut him off.

“No trouble.” He backed toward the door. “Well, then. See you at breakfast tomorrow, Hermione?”

“Good night, Harry,” she said, grateful beyond words for his tact.

As much as she’d dreaded being alone with Draco for the last few days, it seemed, at the moment, to be a very good idea.

**

He was so pale in the dim light that he almost shone. Sir Galahad meets Rutger Hauer, Hermione thought, and warded the door. “Hi,” she said, turning back to him.

“Hi.” He still had that odd, almost hungry look on his face.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, and he shook his head slowly.

“An hour ago,” he said softly, “everything was wrong. Now? Nothing. And that’s the scariest feeling in the world, you know it?”

Hermione didn’t know what to say to that. She bit her lip and tried not to fidget.

That, she thought, had been one baby step away from a Declaration. Which was a problem.

If she let him heap her with hearts and flowers tonight, and he found out about her indiscretion with Snape later, he’d never forgive her. And rightly so. Bad enough that she’d slept with him, last night, and hadn’t said anything.

The look in his eyes told her that she couldn’t stall him much longer. She was going to have to come clean.

Besides, secrets weren’t in her nature. Despite all recent evidence to the contrary.

“Wait,” she said, more loudly than she’d intended, and flushed in shame at the harsh sound of it. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she muttered, eyes on her lap. “I - that is, we - it, well you see …”

“Hermione,” he said. “Look at me, will you?”

She did. He was thin and solemn and intense, and looked as much like Lucius Malfoy as ever. Oddly enough, that steady gray gaze now made her think not of his father, but of Salazar Slytherin.

“Don’t say anything,” he said. “Just listen. I know about the Illuminata - Potter spilled it; he thought you’d told me already.”

“Oh,” Hermione said. “But - that’s not what …” He held up a hand to stop her.

“I know about the rest of it, too,” he said, and managed a hint of his old smirk when her eyes widened. “Snape’s pretty closemouthed, you know. But a three-year-old could have figured him out today - he was frantic. What I didn’t surmise on my own, I managed to weasel out of Harry.”

Oh, Jesus. It was hitting the fan now, wasn’t it? Hermione tasted bile on the back of her tongue. “Draco,” she managed to croak, and then her throat closed.

Funny how she could feel so guilty and so relieved at the same time. It barely registered that he didn’t look angry.

“Listen, Hermione,” he said. “You’re not going to get guilt over this from me. Potter told me; it was a reaction with the potion. And considering that I’m looking like the primary beneficiary, I’m not going to hold it against you. You’re going to try to mix the Illuminata with that Armoring Fluid we’ve been studying, right?”

Hermione nodded wordlessly. Draco’s lips twisted.

“’Protect the light, and you kill the darkness’,” he said reflectively. “Harry liked that quote so much, he wrote it down for me.” His eyes were unreadable. “I’m sort of fond of it myself; no one’s ever referred to me in terms like those before. As if I’m something valuable, something to be sheltered.” His eyes darkened. “Something good.”

Hermione swallowed hard. “Draco -“

“No, let me finish,” he said. “God knows I’m probably breaking all the International Codes of Male Behaviour to tell you this, but I think we need to clear the air. That goddamned map of Potter’s was our best and last hope, this afternoon. When he tapped it, and your name didn’t show up on it, I thought I’d die.”

He laughed humorlessly. “And now you’re back in one piece, and all I can think is that I’d better tell you how I feel before you disappear again.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Draco … “

“Shut up,” he said, and moved a little closer to her. “You think I need to hear the words right now? You think I’m going to get huffy because you haven’t made up your mind yet? That’s bollocks.”

He grabbed her hands with both of his. “I’m a ticking time bomb,” he said. “I’ve got a little piece of Death, carved into the back of my neck, and let’s be honest - neither of us are sure what’s going to happen next. Stacked up against that, do you think I care about bloody Snape? Do you really think it matters? I’m in love with you, Hermione, and all I want to know is this: do you want to be with me?”

They were knee-to-knee in the middle of the bed, separated by a bare inch of space that shimmered between them like the portal to an alternate universe. Easy to cross over. Impossible to return, once you’d taken the step through.

For a final instant, the last vestiges of Hermione the Maiden trembled indecisively on the threshold. Go to him now, that cautious little girl whispered, and nothing might be contained, or logical, or entirely safe, ever again.

Stay, the rest of her replied, and you’re not worthy to call yourself a Gryffindor. Lock yourself away and call that safe? What good does it do you?

Not such a hard decision, after all, really.

She flung herself across those interminable millimeters of space and buried herself in his arms.

**

Sex got better with practice. Hermione supposed it was like anything else.

She could still remember the tense excitement of the first time - the half-avid, half-embarrassed way they’d looked at each other, the thrill of nerve endings under the touch of unfamiliar hands. The knowledge that they were About To Do It, that they’d never be untouched or untried or virginal again.

But this was so much better that there really wasn’t a comparison.

She was lying with her lover, whose touch and breath and body and lips she knew, who stroked her with ever-more-knowing hands, who ferreted out her secrets with the care and curiosity of an archaeologist. Her fingers fluttered over the planes of his shoulders like horses running home across familiar fields. The sounds in his throat were the same ones that she heard in her dreams.

And maybe it was that they’d already figured out how they fit together, maybe it was the relief of finally having surrendered the secret, maybe it was the borrowed blood in their bodies, beating out synchronicity like village drums, beyond the boundaries and barriers of skin and space. Hermione didn’t know, and she didn’t care.

He held her open, and he brought her up, and he sent her over, and he did the whole thing again and again - oh God, that her whole life could be boiled down to this one delicious act of rising and rising and rising again to burst. And against her skin, against her breasts and her collarbones and the insides of her thighs, she felt his lips like the sweet sting of tiny tattoo needles, moving in silent passionate declarations.

In - in - in - her blood clamored for it and her arms reached for it and the cradle of her body bowed out and around to accept it, the weight of the man, the disheveled-silk hair, the panting and the bitten lips and the cries and the rocking, rocking, rocking of him inside her like the delicious bloody scratch of an itch. Come closer, she thought, locking her ankles around his back - closer, and fast, and hard, and why do all those silly magazines obsess about taking it slow when it’s obviously like being hit by a train?

But oh Jesus, oh Jesus, she shouldn’t have even thought about that, she’d jinxed it for sure, because it was slow now, he’d pulled out of that wonderful, terrible tailspin and … oh God, was he touching her feet? Hands around her ankles, lifting lifting lifting, and in he came again to a tight, long new stretch, his allegro assai cut to half time so she could feel every advance, every retreat in brilliant Technicolor slo-mo, his thumbs dug maddeningly into her arches and his face a death-mask of sweaty concentration.

“No more,” she pleaded. Too much, too much, it had to end and soon, because if it didn’t there’d be nothing left of her but ashes and a smile. “Please, please, please …” this her mantra, her chanted entreaty in time with some practiced squirming to help him along, and please God let it be working because in about two seconds she was going to bloody well go up in smoke.

And then, fast and hard, oh yes, just like she’d asked for, just like she wanted, the spin spin spin of stuck wheels finally lurching victorious out of the rut onto the open road. She latched onto him with nails and teeth, and felt the large muscles of his body gather and convulse in a final, desperate lunge for the finish line.

**

“Good thing you put that Silencing Charm on the door,” Draco commented sleepily. “McGonagall would have been in here investigating a murder, else.”

Hermione chuckled drowsily and pulled his arm more firmly into the curve of her waist. There was nothing like being turned inside out at warp speed to make a girl appreciate her flannel sheets. And if anything had died tonight, it was the last of her reserve.

Watch out, Draco Malfoy, she thought, her brain already numbing with sleep. The next time you’re in the mood to make a Declaration, you might just get one in return.

Thank God she could sleep in tomorrow.

**