Roman Holiday

Chapter Seventy

By the time she’d said her goodbyes to Areli and stepped over the Boston ivy into the conference-room fireplace, late on Saturday evening, Hermione was physically exhausted and running on pure adrenaline. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to get through the last few weeks of school, either.

She wanted to move.

Immediately.

Her guidebook had called Cairo the Mother of the World - a quote lifted directly from The Thousand and One Nights - and Hermione believed it. From the mud huts and the goats roaming through the alleyways, the tenth-century street markets, the dusty points of the Pyramids in the background - as the visiting Florence Nightingale had remarked, “boring holes in the sky” - to the crush of honking automobiles, the ubiquitous Golden Arches, and the towering blue-white slab of steel and mirrored glass that was the Cairo Sheraton, this city seemed less a dwelling place for real people and more a microcosm of civilisation itself.

This had been more than apparent during their bumpy taxicab ride north from the University to the nearby suburb of Zamalek and across the 15th of May Bridge, where they found themselves stuck in traffic halfway across, at a total standstill for a full twenty minutes, and Hermione - secretly rejoicing despite Areli’s mutters about a missed lunch reservation - was able to take in the glories of the Nile uninterrupted. Wide and placid and, for all its reputation for muddiness, a surprising shade of rich shimmering indigo, it was lined with pleasure yachts the size of hotels, hosts of smaller sailboats that Areli said were called feluccas, and humble pole barges manned by sun-wizened fishermen. Beyond the river, the modern skyscrapers of downtown battled for air space with the graceful minarets of Islamic Cairo’s ancient mosques.

Closer at hand were brightly painted billboards that Hermione thought almost worthy of Gauguin, so vibrant were their laughing-eyed, mustachioed men and their sleek, febrile women. Even the Arabic script splashed across the portraits seemed exotic, pointing out the virtues of some unknown product in intriguingly fluid whorls and dots that Hermione wanted to read with her fingers, like Braille.

And the people - people of all shapes and colours and sizes and ages, teeming together in solidly packed masses that were at once disparate and homogenous. Tourists and businessmen and peasants and nouveau riche, severe Western suits and ties toe-to-toe with flowing robes and elaborately knotted headscarves, with little boys in loincloths balancing baskets of eggs and oranges on their bicycle handlebars.

The din was amazing. The start-of-summer heat hung in the humid air like an almost-palpable veil of haze. And Hermione couldn’t stop staring.

“This place is incredible,” she said, half to herself, and Areli nodded in amused agreement.

“There are civilisations nearly as old in England,” she remarked wryly. “But none still living, I think.”

She gestured in resigned annoyance to the crush of traffic surrounding their hapless taxicab. “Here’s the downside,” she said, shrugging. “You can see immediately: such an ancient city is not engineered to cope with the … conveniences … of modernity.”

“It is crowded,” Hermione said. Areli laughed.

“It is insane, that’s what. The worst drivers on the planet. You don’t own an automobile, do you?”

Hermione shook her head.

“Good,” Areli said. “Don’t get one - not for this city.” She rolled her eyes. “Egyptians think using their headlights at night will deplete their batteries. The minute the sun goes down, the streets aren’t safe to walk - the drivers run at each other head-on, flashing their lights and honking their horns like teenagers playing chicken. It’s a menace.”

Hermione tried not to laugh and failed. “Public transportation?” she asked. “I saw a Metro sign - and there seem to be a lot of buses around.”

Areli shook her head. “Public transport is not either comfortable or reliable here,” she said, “and as a single Western woman, you shouldn’t get on a bus alone anyway.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suggest you get your Apparation license before you move - after the first few days, unless you’re just exploring without a time limit or a destination, you’ll find it’s quicker, cheaper and more convenient than anything else.”

By the time they’d crossed the bridge, crawled down the 27th of July Avenue in the increasingly-stifling heat of the taxi, and disembarked at L’Aubergine, Hermione could see her point - mind-numbing traffic here was the rule, not the exception. Areli slipped the driver a few Egyptian pound notes - “six of these to one British pound,” she informed Hermione; “there’s a branch of Gringotts here, of course, but for the most part you’ll want to keep Muggle money on hand” - and led the way into the café, which was dim and blessedly cool and smelt enticingly of ginger and cumin.

As they approached their table - Areli nodding to one of the waiters as they passed - a familiar auburn head came into view; a moment later, Bill Weasley unfolded his tall slim body from the chair, and stood up to greet them. He was casually dressed in a blue chambray shirt, rolled up to the elbows, and a pair of fashionably baggy khaki pants, a bit sprung at the knees - as if he’d been gardening in them, or crawling through ancient tunnels á là Indiana Jones. His hair wasn’t in its accustomed ponytail today, but hanging loose to his shoulders. Apparently, Hermione thought, he’d also gotten some sun recently; that fair Weasley skin was touched with a light sheen of gold, and the ends of his hair were bleached to a very becoming shade of strawberry blond.

In other words, yum.

He nodded a friendly welcome to Areli, then let his eyes flick appreciatively over Hermione, his lips curving in a practiced, charming smile. He doesn’t recognise me, she realised with a jolt of satisfaction - glad she’d changed out of her Hogwarts uniform into that pretty green summer dress Gram had bought her before she went to Rome - and was compelled by her Inner Flirt to give him a saucy wink in return.

He looked momentarily startled by this - ha, thought Hermione - then recovered sufficiently to dial the charm up another notch.

Areli cleared her throat.

“Bill,” she said with mock severity, “stop flirting for a moment, if such a thing is possible, and greet an old lady properly, will you?”

“Areli, you’ll never be old,” Bill said, gallantly taking the hand she offered him and planting a genuinely affectionate kiss in the center of her palm. Hermione smiled to herself.

A rogue, no doubt about it.

But a nice rogue.

“That’s better,” Areli said with satisfaction, allowing him to pull out her chair for her and settling her napkin over her lap. “Bill, you and Hermione know each other already, I believe?”

His hazel eyes - more gold than Ron’s, less green, Hermione noticed - flicked abruptly back to hers, their good-natured acknowledgement mingling with delighted surprise and fresh appraisal. Touché, said that look; Hermione could almost see the wheels turning as he re-evaluated his position.

“Of course, I see it now,” he said finally, and raised his bottle of Stella lager in a wry toast. “Though you’ve pulled a bit of a Gigi since I saw you last, Hermione.” He took a long pull on the beer, then set the bottle back down with a rueful shake of his head. “You witches have enough advantages over us helpless wizards already,” he said, with a sly glance in Areli’s direction. “Not exactly sporting of you to turn from little girls to goddesses while we’ve got our backs turned, on top of it all.”

Another long, warm smile. Hermione felt her toes curl.

Oh, he was good at this.

Areli snorted into her water glass.

“Don’t mind him, Hermione,” she said, sending a wicked look across the table. “He’s gone native, I’m afraid. Egyptian men would rather flirt than eat - and when they’re in the position to do both things at once, I’m afraid they’re quite impossible.”

Hermione didn’t mind, and said as much. Later, after they’d eaten and backtracked south to Doqqi for a tour of Bill’s apartment - back-to-back with the one Hermione would be renting, the two units were, according to Areli, mirror images of one another - she couldn’t help but think this was rather like being back in Rome, the week prior to the Hogwarts Invasion.

She’d forgotten how much fun flirting could be - and how innocuously self-affirming; especially stacked up next to angsty, reproachful, Breaking-Up-Is-Hard-To-Do Draco and Snape’s intense but determinedly distant scrutiny. In comparison, this sly, frothy under-the-eyelashes exchange with Bill - who, she suspected, was a Valentino of the first water - felt like a refreshing spoonful of lemon sorbet on her tongue, after a too-heavy boiled dinner.

She could quite easily get used to the thought of borrowing sugar from him.

**

She spent the night in Areli’s palatial Garden City villa, breakfasted leisurely the next morning on the rooftop terrace with a distant-but-clear view of the Giza Pyramids, spent a fascinating hour tagging along after Areli through the Al-Khalil bazaar, then moved on to a tour of the Consortium itself, feeling rather like a novitiate-to-the-order let out on holiday. Even the hum of the Great Hall at dinner seemed muted, compared to this clattering big-city racket.

She liked it.

As warned, the Poet and the Novelist were a bit touchy, during their brief encounter, and anxious to regain their solitude. Friedrich von Fluegel, however, was another matter entirely. A somewhat myopic young wizard with ink-stained fingers and a clean-shaven head, he talked eagerly - if incomprehensibly - about his recent advances in Arithmantic theory, and loaded her down with a heavy roll of parchment for Snape, whom he remembered with apparent fondness (“Oh, yes - charming fellow, charming!”).

More to Snape than meets the eye, Hermione thought - not for the first time - and, swallowing her curiosity, Reduced the parchment for easier transport, stuck it in her pocket, and followed Areli out into the next corridor.

The archaeology team was out on location, and the expert on runes Deep In Meditation - according to the scribbled note on her door - and therefore, Not To Be Bothered. The Congolese duo, however, happened to be in town on furlough - a tall rawboned wizard burned to leather by the African sun, who smiled briefly in greeting and returned immediately to transcribing his notes into a sleek silver laptop, and a thin, intense little witch - “call me Camilla; everyone does” - who took Hermione’s right hand in her scrawny claw, scrutinised the palm intently, then pulled her to her feet and over to a table piled with drums.

“Pick one,” she said firmly, and Hermione - after casting a hesitant eye over the assortment - pointed to a beautiful instrument made of engraved nickel and shaped rather like an egg cup; a deep narrow bowl, set on top of an even narrower cylinder. Camilla nodded with satisfaction, picked up an elaborately hand-painted wooden drum of the same shape, pulled her chair over to face Hermione’s, and showed her how to settle the drum between her knees.

“Echo me,” she said, and flicked her hand in a quick deft twist so that the side of her right thumb struck the drumhead near the edge. Hermione followed suit, a little more clumsily. Again, Camilla repeated the motion, and again, until Hermione could do it perfectly.

“Now. Add this.” That thumb-flick, followed by a quick slap with the fingers of the same hand in a more central location. Flick-slap. Flick-slap. “Good.”

Flick-slap-thunk: that was the fingers of the opposite hand, and it took a little more time to master. But they weren’t done yet - oh, no, now it was flick-thunk-slap-thunk, and to her surprise Hermione felt a sort of internal tug, as her rhythm settled into a slow groove; as if her body was asking her to speed up, to deepen her strokes.

Flick-thunk-slap-thunk. Flick-thunk-slap-thunk.

Flickita-thunkita-slapslap-thunkita. Flickita-flickita-flickita-thunk.

Slapslap-flickita-thunkita-slapita-flickithunka-flickithunka-flickithunka-flickithunka …

She wasn’t quite sure how long it went on, except that Camilla was no longer playing, and somehow her hands were finding agility and knowledge outside her brain, finding pleasure and glory and ultimate satiation in that flickitathunkita- flickitathunkita- flickitathunkita- flickitathunkita. And then she opened her eyes - how had they closed? She didn’t remember closing them - and looked down … and nearly shrieked with astonishment.

A warm silvery light was rising from the head of the drum.

As if in a trance, Hermione took her hands away, and watched the silver fade into the air around it like a wisp of vapor. Hesitantly, she put her hands back on the drum.

Flickita-thunkita. Flickita-thunkita.

Another curl of silver, rising like steam between her fingers.

“Wow,” she said faintly, and - grasping the drum carefully - put it to one side. Areli was looking down at her, beaming. Camilla looked satisfied but grim.

“Power,” she said. “Determination, and perfectionism, and care … but above all, power.” She shot Hermione a canny glance, startlingly blue in her faded face.

“Be careful what you turn your hand to,” she said. “Whatever it is, you’re bound to succeed.”

**

And now she was stepping out of the fireplace into her own bedroom, so overstimulated by the events of the past two days that the inside of her head was bright with it, like a caffeine headache - and underneath that, bone-tired and weary enough to weep.

She dropped her suitcase, kicked off her shoes, brought nerveless hands to the buttons of her robes. And gasped as she felt hands seize her shoulders.

“Where the hell have you been?” a voice demanded, and Hermione closed her eyes in a silent prayer for strength.

“Draco,” she said, and smiled wanly up into his angry face. “Nice to see you, too.” **