LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Fourteen

The answer, as it turned out, was 'just enough'.

The clinic was a simple storefront marked with a modest sign, but the waiting room Hermione found when she stepped through the door was comfortable and scrupulously clean, presided over by a gimlet-eyed, dour-lipped gargoyle of a receptionist from a desk that faced the windows. The corner opposite the door, as if to cancel out the Gargoyle’s grim expression, was stocked with brightly painted wooden toys and a low bookcase full of children's books; some coffee-skinned toddlers were happily stacking blocks while their parents chatted and kept an eye on them from the nearby phalanx of chairs.

Despite the relative earliness of the hour, the room was nearly full. Hermione, flushing a little under the weight of so many curious eyes, gripped her letter more tightly and approached the receptionist's desk.

"Bonjour, madame," she said, feeling rather as if she were about to ask Madam Pince for extra borrowing privileges. "Je m'appelle Kate Billings. Je voudrais parler á Docteur Fayed, s'il-vous-plaít."

The Gargoyle didn't look up from her filing.

"Doctor Fayed is busy," she said in flat, unaccented English which made it painfully clear that Hermione hadn't been fooling anyone with her careful schoolgirl French. "If you want to see her, you'll have to wait your turn."

"Oh. But I'm not here for treatment," Hermione persisted, taken a bit aback by her dismissive tone. "I'm the new doctor. I have a note of introduction from her uncle. I'm supposed to start work today."

The Gargoyle looked unimpressed.

"Mademoiselle," she said coldly, "I don't care if you’re the Duchess of Windsor, you have a note from Jacques Chirac himself, and you're here to paper the walls in gold leaf. Doctor Fayed will see you when she's finished with her patients, and not a minute before." Face fixed in a permanent bureaucrat's scowl, she yanked open a file drawer and grudgingly produced a photocopied form. "Here. You can fill this out while you're waiting."

The old Hermione would have protested. The new Hermione, recognising a lost cause when she encountered one and lacking the psychic energy for the battle of wits that dealing with it would have required, merely shrugged and took the paper.

"Thank you," she said inanely, and was about to claim a seat when the door next to the desk opened and a man walked in.

He was tall and dark and more good-looking in his Western-style casual clothes than Hermione had remembered him. Granted, her view might have been coloured by the circumstances under which they'd met – the first time she'd seen him, he'd sworn at her and knocked her down, and during the subsequent glimpses she’d caught over the next few days, he'd been stricken and white-lipped, twisting his hands together like a reprimanded child under the subtle torment of the Contrition Curse.

Now, however, he looked cheerful and full of purpose, and he smiled when he caught Hermione's eye.

"Bonjour, mademoiselle," he said, after a quick assessing glance at her bare ring hand, and raised one enquiring, elegant brow. "Forgive the intrusion, but you look very familiar to me. Have we met?"

So charming! Who’s he, and what did he do with that racist, elitist pig who bloodied my lip? Caught off guard, Hermione hesitated, then noticed the fulminating look the Gargoyle was sending her way and thought – why not?

"Actually," she said, "we have. I'm rather well-acquainted with your uncle. He was a mentor of mine while I was studying medicine in Alexandria."

Technically, this was a lie. So – naturally – he believed it immediately.

"Ah, of course," he said, and brightened even further. "You'd be Dr. Billings, then. My uncle's written to say you'd be coming." He bent charmingly over the hand she’d offered him to shake and brushed it with his lips. "He mentioned that we'd met as well, come to think of it. I should be shot at sunrise for forgetting a face like yours."

"Don't take it personally," Hermione said, feeling a hot blush beginning to ride her cheeks, and made a mental note to practice her Paeniteo at the next available opportunity; if these were the results one got from it, it was well worth the price of the bandwidth. "I'm used to it by now. It happens a lot."

He swept her with an admiring glance. "Impossible," he said gallantly; "I'll never believe it." He turned to the Gargoyle. "Sylvie, this is Dr. Billings. She's here as Dr. Fayed's new associate. Dr. Billings, the incomparable Sylvie. We'd be lost without her."

"A pleasure," Hermione said weakly, and extended her hand across the desk. The Gargoyle regarded it sourly but made no move to touch it.

"Likewise."

"Sylvie will see to your paperwork," Khaled said – plucking the form blithely from Hermione's other hand and returning it to the desk, oblivious of the Gargoyle’s deepening scowl. "Let me show you around. Yasmine's swamped this morning; one of the nurse-practitioners is out with the 'flu, and we've been overwhelmed all week. She'll probably want to put you to work immediately."

At last, a purpose in life.

"That's fine," Hermione said, hoping she didn't appear too eager, and preceded Khaled through the door he held open for her. Beyond it was a short grey-carpeted corridor lined with lilac-painted doors. One of these was ajar; Khaled knocked softly, then pushed it farther open.

"Doctor Fayed?" he said. "Do you have a moment?"

A brief exchange in rapid Arabic, a moment's pause, and Itmana emerged into the corridor, trim and brisk-looking in a white lab coat over blue jeans, her thick black hair cut close to her head in a sleek, chic cap.

"What is it?" she said, sounding impatient, then frowned as she noticed Hermione. "Are you the med student they promised me last week from the British Hospital? Because you were supposed to be here three days ago."

"Um. Actually," Hermione began, then closed her mouth again as Khaled interrupted smoothly.

"This is Kate Billings, Itmana," he said in a low voice. "We both met her at the fundraiser in Alexandria last summer, remember? Uncle Farouk wrote a letter telling us she was coming."

Itmana's creamy forehead creased, then resmoothed itself. "Oh, thank goodness," she said, and turned back to Hermione with an outstretched hand and an apologetic smile.

"Sorry to be abrupt. We've been unbearably short-staffed; you couldn't have picked a better time to show up. It's lovely to meet you again." She scanned Hermione's business suit anxiously. "Oh, crap. Are you just here for an interview today? Or can I put you to work?"

"I'd love to get started," Hermione said truthfully. Itmana beamed.

"Oh, good. Call me Yasmine; my uncle explained all that, right? We're keeping a very low profile. Security reasons." She jerked her head over her shoulder. "My patient's waiting on me. Khal—that is, Zarif—will show you around and get you settled into an examining room. I'll fill you in on everything else after we break for dinner. Welcome aboard."

Hermione grinned as Itmana disappeared into the examining room. Khaled raised one eyebrow.

"She's amusing, sah? And a little scattered. But a very good doctor, I assure you."

"It's not that," Hermione murmured, but kept the rest of her thought to herself: She hasn't changed one bit.

For some reason, this made her feel better.

**

She'd given a bit of thought over the last few days as to how she was going to pull off posing as a Muggle doctor. Between the efforts of Madam Pomfrey and Snape, she'd picked up a fair bit of practical training in medipotions, and she knew her healing spells just as well as anyone else who'd been through six years of Charms with Filius Flitwick. But beyond her biological and chemical pre-med lab work, what she knew about non-magical healing wouldn't get her through a weekend of CPR training, let alone a charade of this magnitude and scope.

Worrisome, this. But hardly insurmountable. She followed Khaled around the tiny space, nodding and smiling at what seemed to be the right moments and filing away as much information as possible in the meantime: patient files, supplies, small locked-room pharmacy in what had probably been a broom closet before the clinic moved in.

"Are you ready?" he asked finally, after installing her in the little examining room next to Itmana’s. She gulped.

"Sure."

Five minutes later, her first patient came into the room.

He was wiry and small-boned, probably fifteen or sixteen years old. His left arm was held against his skinny torso by a makeshift sling, his thin face creased in pain and apprehension. He didn’t have a file, and declined to start one; Hermione figured he just didn’t want to give her his name.

"Cassé?" she inquired, gesturing toward the injured arm. He nodded.

"Oui, madame."

That was about as far as they were going to get in French, Hermione decided, and switched over to Arabic. "How did it happen?" she asked, and he shook his head shyly; either he couldn't say, or he simply didn't want to.

Par for the course, she thought, and gestured for him to come nearer.

"Let’s see your arm," she directed, carefully sliding the knotted end of the sling off his skinny shoulder to reveal the rest of a faded, none-too-clean tee shirt, and gently ran her hands down the length of his bare, discoloured forearm, feeling instinctively for the break. In the few moments she’d had in between Khaled’s departure from the room and the patient’s arrival, she'd implemented Secret Weapon Number One: a Replica of her wand she’d Charmed into the shape of a latex glove. Presently, she was wearing it on her right hand. As it neared the fracture, it sent a faint buzz singing up her arm.

OK. Here goes nothing.

She clasped the injured area gently, eyeballing the angle of his arm to make sure it was properly aligned, and muttered the appropriate Healing Charm in an undertone, hoping he'd take the unfamiliar word for something she was saying to herself in English. The glove vibrated again, but the boy didn't flinch. Under her hand, the bone reknit with a barely audible click.

Yes, Hermione thought, triumphant – now how easy was that? – and took a step back.

"Is it broken?" the boy asked again, his eyes apprehensive. Hermione shook her head.

"No. Just sprained," she told him, and could have groaned when his eyebrows shot up in disbelief.

"Sprained? That’s all?"

"Mm." Half-panicked, she cast about for something suitably technical to say and came up blank. "Go easy on it for a few days," she finished lamely. "Keep it elevated. Ice wouldn’t hurt."

Her patient looked unconvinced.

Cautiously, he clenched and unclenched his fist, then looked at her wide-eyed. "You fixed it." Hermione, rattled, bit her lip.

"That’s what doctors do," she said, and pasted on a brilliant toothpaste smile. "You should be all set. Come back in a few days if it’s still uncomfortable. You’re fine."

Clearly, he didn't believe her, but the borrowed white lab coat she wore carried enough built-in authority that he simply nodded. "Merci, madame," he said, and sidled out, looking more nervous, if possible, than he had on his way in. Once he was gone, Hermione swallowed hard.

Oops.

You were a better liar when you were eleven.

Good thing there were no windows in this room. The reception desk was probably being dive-bombed this very instant by indignant owls from the French Ministry of Magic ... and if there was such a thing as poetic justice in the world, one of them would see fit to take a dump in the Gargoyle's bouffant.

Heh.

Unaccountably, maliciously cheered by the mental image this summoned, Hermione readjusted her gloves and poked her head resolutely into the corridor.

"Next," she called to Khaled, and set her jaw at a more stubborn angle.

She'd get the hang of this yet.

**