Roman Holiday

Chapter Forty-One

Even from the top of the Astronomy Tower, Severus could hear the faint thumpa-thumpa of the bass backbeat. He’d heard it from as far away as the castle gates, actually, which was why he was up here instead of down there, sharing his new robes (black, like all his others, of course, but still, new) and his surprisingly satisfactory haircut with the blindly luminous stars and his old nocturnal companion the giant squid, who blew him a few appreciative bubbles and then disappeared again into the inky depths of the lake.

“Just a trim,” he’d snarled earlier that afternoon at the very matronly, suspiciously sunny proprietor (“Afternoon, luv - call me Esmé; they all do”) of the Wand and Razor. Lack of sleep, combined with the mere fact that he’d darkened the door of an establishment with a pink candy-striped awning, had put him in what was, even for him, an uncommonly vile mood. “No more than an inch off, under any circumstances. Understand?”

Her eyes had narrowed a bit at his murderous tone, but she’d nodded and pasted on a professional smile and cheerfully whisked him off to the nearest sink for a shampoo. He’d had just enough time to register the sensations of warm water and soapy fingers on his scalp - dear God, that felt good - before he felt his eyelids growing inexorably heavier.

Automatically, he tried to jerk upright, and was pressed, not-too-gently, back down into the basin.

“Relaxing, isn’t it?” Esmé said sympathetically, her soothing tone at odds with the practiced, matter-of-fact iron fingers presently raking his hair out by the roots. Strange, Severus thought dazedly, that such an inherently violent process should feel so blissful. “You’ve been keeping late hours, I’ll wager. Working too hard. You single wizards just don’t take good care of yourselves, do you?”

His intended retort was interrupted by a wide, embarrassing yawn. “That’s all right, dear,” she said kindly, sluicing more warm water over his hairline from a flexible metal hose. (She could have done that for an hour straight - it felt heavenly.) “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Just lie back and try to relax. Wouldn’t see me having to tell a witch these things,” she murmured pensively. “You men can’t see the forest for the trees. Don’t have the sense to come in out of the rain. Helpless as babies.”

Her thumb dug into a particularly sensitive spot below his right temple, making him see bright blue spots of relief when she finally eased her pressure. “You’re very tense, you know.”

Severus would have gone for his wand, at that.

If he’d had the willpower to move his arms.

It was when she draped a hot towel over his face that he finally surrendered. “One inch,” he managed to mumble through an insidious fog of womblike well-being. “No more.”

At that, his eyelids clanged shut.

All those sleepless nights were finally catching up with him.

**

He awoke to gentle treachery: his skin had been exfoliated, his facial DepiloCharm expertly renewed, his teeth subtly bleached (not quite to Lockhart standards, thank God), and his hair trimmed, dried, and brushed to a long-forgotten gleam.

“No extra charge,” his pink-smocked benefactress chirped, eyeing his bared teeth with a touch of nervousness. “You looked like you could use a little TLC, luv, so it’s on the house. Besides -“ this last was in an undertone, as she turned away to sweep up some stray bits of hair - “I always enjoy a bit of a challenge.”

Severus stonily ignored this well-meaning bit of humiliation and glared at the mirror, which purred seductively back at him and blew him a cheeky kiss. He looked better, he admitted reluctantly to himself. Relaxed. Well-rested.

Maybe even a bit younger.

But not, praise be, like he’d spent the afternoon in a salon.

Imagine Minerva finding out? He’d be hearing about it for decades.

**

He paid for his haircut, gave Esmé a ridiculously outlandish tip and then scowled at her until she hurriedly found pressing business in the back room, and slid furtively out into the street - after looking both ways first to make certain he wasn’t being observed. Though he’d never admit it, the whole experience had put him into an uncharacteristically mellow frame of mind, and the walk back to Hogwarts was quite a pleasant one, as the streets darkened and jack-o’-lanterns winked on in the windows of one house after another.

Be that as it may, there wasn’t enough goodwill in Scotland to make him turn his steps toward the Great Hall tonight. As long as the stage was occupied by those caterwauling infants who dared to call their howling, thumping gyrations music, he’d keep his own company.

Solitude had its drawbacks, but in this case it was definitely the preferable alternative.

He turned his attention now to the portable wireless set that he’d conjured out of a stray pebble, and muttered at it until it tuned in to the BBC. On Halloween night, Muggle public radio tended to be quite wizard-friendly, if a bit unimaginative. Severus fiddled with the reception, idly wondering what they’d be playing: Night on Bald Mountain? Danse Macabre? Sorcerer’s Apprentice? Or perhaps that rattly little xylophone bit from Carnival of the Animals?

A final, rebellious burst of chattering static, then silence. Severus sighed in irritation.

He was about to thump the little wireless into submission when the connection finally cleared and he heard it - not one of the old comforting Halloween chestnuts he’d expected, but the plaintive first strains of Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante défunte, spiraling sweetly out of the tiny speakers in a melodic silver thread of oboe and strings, and seeming to shame the distant bass below into abashed silence.

Or perhaps, he just couldn’t hear it for the buzzing in his ears.

In the sudden stillness, Severus felt his lips tremble.

Pavane for a Dead Princess. He hadn’t heard it in years now, but it took him back instantly to everything in his life he’d ever loved and lost: childhood, innocence, romance, friends.

One lovely woman, dead too young.

And now, this night, in this tower, he felt the ragged shreds of his composure - and with them, the brittle existence he’d patched together so painstakingly - slipping away from him on a melancholy stream of melody.

God, it made his chest ache. For an instant, his hand hovered over the little radio - one flick of his wrist, and it would be dashed to bits on the flagstones below - then he turned blindly away, hands fisted at his sides. Staring out across the ramparts as if he could call back the past, he started, shook his head to clear it, and took a second, incredulous look.

A genuine princess - living, not dead - was walking his way.

**

She appeared at the top of the stairs, a vision in glowing Botticelli gold, and stopped short as if she’d never seen him before. “Why aren’t you down with the others?” he started to say, out of force of habit, but stopped before the words were out of his mouth. This shimmering, lush creature, gilded from her shining curls to her dainty slippers, didn’t belong down there in the mosh pit, any more than he did.

Of course, she didn’t really belong with him, either. But it was getting harder and harder for him to remember that.

A light breeze ruffled her hair and molded that liquid-metal gown even closer to her body. She leaned indolently in the doorway and studied him with intent copper eyes, seemingly content to keep her silence. There was something dangerous about her deceptively casual stance, something in her steady unblinking gaze that made him think of a small golden panther.

As if he were prey, and she the predator, wondering what he’d taste like.

At that thought, he felt himself flush. Their eyes met and held.

She took a step toward him, glimmering and molten as the heart of flame. She took another.

And, quite silently and completely unexpectedly, went straight into his arms.

**

Hermione didn’t know what she was doing, or why for that matter, except that it suddenly seemed necessary.

She’d left her lover dirty-dancing in the arms of another woman, without a backward glance. She’d stepped out into the cool dew-sprinkled night, drawn to the Astronomy Tower first by the promise of silence, and then by a shivering thread of a tune that wound its way down to the ground like a floating feather. She’d seen his profile against the dark turrets of the balcony - proud, unapologetic, defiant, like an emperor in exile, like a captain going down with his ship.

Typical, she’d thought, lips curled in dark amusement.

And she’d climbed the long stone spiral of the steps, fully intending to cajole him down from the tower and back to the feast.

But now that she was up there with him, he merely looked pale and haunted, half-sick with some old grief and at the same time strangely, wanly handsome - a beautiful specter of himself, a romantic young suicide ghost. At the sight of her, he backed another step toward the edge of the balcony, hands half-spread as if to ward her off.

Frightened, almost, Hermione thought, and glitter-eyed with something that might have been tears … or perhaps just desire.

Either way, he wouldn’t want her to see it.

So she stepped forward, and offered him the only comfort she was pretty sure he’d take.

He was tall, so tall that even in her high-heeled dancing sandals she could tuck her entire head under his chin. His heart beat beneath her cheek, strong and sure and just unsteadily enough to flood her with protectiveness. His skin smelled faintly of almonds, and she wondered why she’d never noticed that before.

Too much lemon in the air, probably.

She linked her fingers at the back of his neck and felt his arms slide around her in return, but hesitantly, as if she’d break if he held her too roughly.

“Hermione …” he whispered, and she shook her head against his shoulder.

“Shhh.”

They didn’t speak again. The sweet wild music played on, and she thought she felt him shudder once, but then his pulse slowed and steadied and he gathered her into him more closely yet, pressing what might have been a kiss into the top of her head and rocking her chastely against him like a child.

There’d never been anything that was at once less about sex and so much about it, Hermione thought, shivering against the leashed danger of his body. Misunderstanding the reason for her trembling, he wrapped her tightly into the long full folds of his cloak. Hermione didn’t bother to correct him.

Oh, the sweet furnace of his tall, taut body.

Oh, the heart-wrenching adoration in Draco’s grey eyes.

One wrong step now, and she’d fall so hard she’d never get up again. An inch the other way, and she’d push one of her partners off the same precipice.

Oh God oh God oh God, she thought, and shivered once more in the Potions Master’s arms. There was no way all three of them were walking out of this mess heart-whole.

Best to stay put, then.

As long as she possibly could.

**

When she finally drew back, it was to glance at her watch.

“I have to go,” she said. “I’ll be late.”

He didn’t ask after the nature of her appointment, just nodded and took a step back himself.

“Good night, Hermione,” he said, and she paused halfway through the tower doorway to look back at him, her hazel eyes searching and just a bit defiant.

“Good night, Severus,” she said finally. “Sleep well.”

He watched her emerge from the tower doors and run lightly across the grounds toward the main entrance of the castle. Behind him, the forgotten wireless was halfway into Danse Macabre.

“Not a chance,” he murmured to himself, and gathered his cloak around him for the long solitary walk back to his chambers.