Roman Holiday

Chapter Nine

First things first, Hermione said, and Draco agreed with her. Now that she was out of Giulia’s apartment, he needed to switch hotels.

Just in case.

They found a quiet little pensione a block off the Spanish Steps, in between the Piazza Berberino and the Piazza di Spagna. Just around the corner from the apartment, and only a couple of blocks from the hotel. Still, a Lifting Charm would have come in handy. He said as much to Hermione, and almost got his head bitten off for his trouble.

“Right,” she said. “We’re on the lam from Snape, and you want to bring the Ministry swooping down on us? I’d rather not, thanks.” She winced as the handle of her suitcase dug into her palm and set it down heavily. “Thank God I packed light - I’ve got half of Giulia’s last-season closet in this bag. Probably saved her a trip to the Goodwill. If they have Goodwill in Rome.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he kept his mouth shut.

The pensione was a modest little building tucked between two larger ones. “Ah, studenti!” the owner beamed at them, and they nodded warily - yes, they were students. And - yes, indeed, Inglese. English. However did he guess?

Just to be on the safe side, they signed in as Neville Longbottom and Millicent Bulstrode, writing as illegibly as possible. The pensione’s desk pen was rather leaky, and Draco managed to obliterate most of both of their signatures with an artful sweep of the side of his hand.

Feeling rather pleased with himself, he declined the owner’s offer of a handkerchief. They lugged their bags up to the third-floor suite, dumped them in the middle of the floor, and were drawn immediately to the French doors opening to the terrace.

Terra-cotta tiles. Geraniums in pots. A little metal-and-glass table and two rickety iron-lace chairs. Beyond that, the Eternal City was spread out for them like some sumptuous buffet. “What do you want to do first?” Hermione asked him, and he shrugged.

“You’re the expert on this town,” he said. “I’m the tourist. You tell me.”

She nibbled the tip of her thumb thoughtfully. “Well, what kind of a tourist are you?” she asked. “What do you want to see? Great art? Great music? Graveyards? Battlefields? Or do you just want to get some coffee and watch the world walk by?”

He swept her a measuring look. “If I told you what I want, you wouldn’t believe me.”

That got her attention. “You’ll never know until you say it, will you?”

“True.” He picked at the spots of flaking ink on the side of his hand, met her eyes with a cymbal-crash of challenge. “What I want,” he said, “is to see something extraordinary. Something amazing. But that’s not all.”

She was starting to look amused. “What else?”

“Nothing magical,” he said. “Show me something made without a wand. Something unbelievable.”

The amusement vanished from her eyes, replaced by a look he couldn’t begin to fathom. “Okay,” she said. “But we’d better eat first. And bring the Invisibility Cloak.”

**

They boarded Giulia’s motorino and rode south and west to Vatican City. The dome of San Pietro cast a long shadow over the piazza; Hermione parked the moped and pulled Draco away from the church, toward the entrance to the Vatican Gardens.

They stopped at a sidewalk cart and bought lunch: big rectangular pieces of intaglio - thin crusty pizza that folded over on itself like a book - and ridiculously overpriced soda, and walked while they ate through a lush fairyland of flowers and gnarled old olive trees and gurgling water that fell, sparkling, into moss-guarded rock pools. Everywhere they looked, something sprang up to surprise them - an old stone wall, a bit of column or portico, an ancient marble curve of waist or thigh or shoulder. Hermione put the last bite of her pizza crust on what looked like a crumbling balcony railing, now twined with vines. The moment she moved away from it, a thin brown cat vaulted to the top of the rail, seized the crust, and flowed away into the flowerbeds without a backward look. Hermione laughed.

“The feral cats of Rome,” she said. “They’re a legend. Everyone feeds them. Look closely and you’ll see them everywhere.” She brushed her hands briskly on her skirt. “We’d better go back. It’s going to close in twenty minutes, and I want to slip in before then. You’re not going to believe this.”

“This,” of course, was the Sistine Chapel.

Hermione had been already, with Giulia, who sneered at Vatican City as a tourist trap and claimed she’d seen enough Michelangelo on T-shirts to last her whole life; why should she stand around rubbernecking at some dusty old ceiling when all of Rome waited to embrace her? Thus, it had been a short visit. Touristy or no, it was enthralling.

The idea of being there unseen, invisible to the human eye, while the crowds of camera-carrying, sunburned sightseers milled around like sheep? Pure intrigue.

The notion of cuddling up to Malfoy under the Invisibility Cloak wasn’t a bad one, either. Come to think of it.

They ducked behind a clump of olive trees, near the entrance to the garden, and pulled it on. Walking was a bit awkward at first - Draco wasn’t used to sharing - but once Hermione’d pulled his arm around her waist and gotten them into step (outside feet first, then inside feet together), they were in business.

She turned her head slightly toward him as they slipped past the tour guide into the nave of the chapel. “Look up,” she hissed in his ear, and carefully, so that the hood of the cloak wouldn’t fall, they tilted their faces toward the ceiling together.

“Oh,” he said, and she saw his Adam’s apple bob in reaction. “Oh, Jesus, Hermione. Someone painted this?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. He shook his head.

“By themselves? Without a wand?”

“Yeah.”

He took a few steps backward, farther into the chapel, and swiveled in his spot, dragging Hermione with him. “No broomstick,” he said wonderingly. “No flying carpet.”

“Scaffold,” she supplied. “Four years, flat on his back, dripping paint into his eyes. His assistants said he was so tired he’d fall asleep with his boots on.”

Draco shook his head. “Four years.”

“Yeah.”

She was so near, he thought. So soft and warm and fragrant and female. His arm fit around her waist as if magnetized there. Her hair smelled like apples and brushed against his face like silk. If he had four years to do anything he liked, he’d spend a good bit of them getting his fingers tangled up in that hair.

They were in the very center of a crowded room, surrounded by tired sightseers and apathetic tour guides and perhaps a few faithful worshipers at the altar of Art, distinguished by their ink-stained fingers and sketch pads and the frustrated glares they directed at the loud-voiced tourists.

They were wrapped in shadows, in silence. They were completely alone.

“Granger,” he said, and the word slipped from him like a caress. Her eyes jerked up to his.

“Yes?” It wasn’t really a question.

“I’ve been lying awake for a year and a half now, thinking about this,” he murmured. “You make me ache for you. You make me doubt myself.”

“Oh …”

Soft little exhalation. Surprise? Acknowledgement? Dismay? He didn’t know, but he felt it, that sweet puff of air, powered by her intention, and it melted the last of his reserve.

He bent his head, and saw her close her eyes in welcome.

“Ow!”

They went tumbling, just managing with the last of their concentration to keep the Invisibility Cloak pulled over them. Hermione landed on top of Draco and twisted her head to look at where they’d just been standing.

“What the -“ A balding, portly man in Bermuda shorts and a tightly stretched polo shirt that just barely contained his belly was staring around him, looking angry and bewildered. His Nikon bounced against his stomach with every move. “Who did that?”

Draco and Hermione were barely a foot away from him. If he stepped back, he’d trip over her outstretched leg. Slowly, slowly, she drew her knee up toward her body, realizing as she did so that Draco was on his back, she was straddling him, and that despite their precarious situation, he was enjoying himself thoroughly.

Bermuda Shorts caught sight of a distracted-looking art student standing a few feet away and stomped over to him belligerently. A heated exchange turned into an argument, turned into a scuffle. Five more minutes and a couple of tour guides, and the Sistine Chapel would have an International Incident on its hands.

“Get up,” Hermione hissed, and the two of them, clutching at the cloak, scrambled to their feet. “Let’s get out of here!”

They got as far as the entrance nave. People were streaming by, back to their hotels and their tour buses, talking about dinner and concerts and what time their planes were leaving.

They didn’t hear any of it.

“Keep quiet,” he hissed, and then he kissed her, the kind of kiss that made her want to dive into him and swallow him whole, all at the same time. Hot and forceful and every good kind of scary there was. Like it wouldn’t ever stop. Like the world would end if it did.

He bore her back against the wall, one of the few parts of it that wasn’t covered in fresco, and plastered his body up against hers. God, she kissed like a siren, all soft and yielding and whimpers in her throat and great rolling body tremors, the heat of her like some secret Amazonian forest glade, like July sun turning the rain on the grass into instant steam. He humped against her and felt her spread her legs instinctively, slide her heels a couple of inches apart and clamp onto his hips with her hands to steady herself. He stifled a groan.

“Tutto è andato, Francesca?” one of the tour guides called from inside the chapel.

“Si.” Francesca was a little closer. “Sto andando bloccare i portelli. Ciao, bella.”

“Ciao, cara.”

Hermione stiffened in his arms, pushed him back slightly. “Malfoy,” she said. “We’ve got to hurry. They’re locking up.”

He thought it would kill him to pull away. “Okay then,” he growled. “Let’s go.”

Not caring about the sound of their feet on the stone floor, the puzzled look of the guard, they gathered the Invisibility Cloak around themselves more tightly and bolted for the exit.

Their unfinished business was going to have to wait just a little bit longer.

TBC