LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Nineteen

For the first half hour after he left,  Hermione didn't move.

After that, she started breaking dishes.

And finally, when muffled thumping from the ceiling indicated that her plate-throwing party had woken the upstairs neighbours, she curled up in the parlor chair, heedless of the shard-littered floor or the ugly, seeping gash in her left palm, and cried herself hoarse into a needlepoint pillow.

Cleo had been solicitous for the first act of this impromptu mad scene, but had retreated to the relative safety of the bedroom when crockery started to fly.  Maxie, on the other hand, watched the whole embarrassing débacle calmly from her stool by the piano, not offering either encouragement or censure.  It wasn't until Hermione's sobs died down to intermittent, exhausted hiccups that she finally spoke.

"Looks like that's been brewing for a while.  Feel any better?"

"Not really."  More ashamed of her tantrum than she cared to think about right now, Hermione wiped her eyes on the hapless pillow and fumbled for her wand.  "Reparo," she said dully, and watched the fragments of stoneware around her scurry to click themselves together so that she wouldn't have to meet Maxie's eyes.  "Just foolish.  And sick - I always give myself a tension headache when I cry."

Maxie studied her manicure.  When she spoke, her tone was deceptively casual.

"Ever get this mad at Bill, sugar?"

"No," Hermione said immediately, then reconsidered.  "Well, once.  Maybe.  Mostly we didn't fight."

Maxie hummed in agreement.  "Not much of a fighter, was he?"

"Not at all." 

Hermione tucked her feet under her and leaned her head back against the chair. "He couldn't stand it," she said softly.  "Neither of us could ... it just felt so awful."  A faint, unwilling smile of reminiscence curved her lips.  "Plus, Molly made us promise each other, the day before we got married, that we'd always make up our fights before we went to sleep.  She was pretty stern about it, too."

"His mama, she's a good person," Maxie said.  Hermione nodded fervently.

"I miss her." 

Just saying it made her want to cry again.

Three little words, encompassing a truth so great and terrible that she hadn't even realised it until she'd said  them, and by then it was too late, it had already been unleashed - and it felt awful, like a glacier was breaking loose inside her body, big chunks of ice tearing away from each other under a hot river of pent-up tears.  "I miss her so much.  And Arthur, and Ron and the twins,  and Harry and Ginny ..."  She swiped at her streaming eyes.  "And oh, Maxie, I m-miss my mum."

Four months of loss and grief and desolation were bubbling out of her, and she was powerless to stem the flow.  "She - she wanted to c-come to the funeral.  She and Dad.  And we'd already had it, and so I told her -" she gulped - "I told her not to come, and she cried.  She loved him so much.  And now ..."  She swiped gracelessly at her streaming eyes.  "And now she doesn't even remember me.  No one does; it's as if they're all dead, too.  And I never said g-goodbye.  To anyone.  No one told me it would be like this.  I didn't know, Maxie."

"What didn't you know, honey?"

"That it would feel so horrible," Hermione whispered miserably.  "That I'd miss them like I do.  That they mattered so much.  That I'd want so badly to take it back."

A pause, as she grappled for a tissue from the box on the side table; two honks, as she blew her nose, sniffed, then blew it again.  Maxie, in the meantime, was looking thoughtful.

"You could," she said.  "Take it back, I mean.  It's not irreversible, you know."

"I know." 

Hermione was silent for a moment.  "But what then?" she asked - quietly, as much to herself as to Maxie.  "Does that make it all better?  No.  It just means that I become a liability to everyone I love, yet again." 

Her voice, already rough from crying, cracked under the weight of her bitterness.  "Don't stand too close, don't say too much, don't stay the night ... because if you do, you just might walk through the wrong door at the wrong time and take a little piece of Death that's meant for me.  I can't go back to that.  Can't stand to have any more blood on my hands."

Her palm, in fact, was still bleeding, but she didn't notice.  "Can't go back," she repeated.  "And can't go on, either - can't seem to bury Hermione Granger, whoever the hell she still is, and get on with being Kate Billings.  So where does that leave me, Maxie?  Who does that leave me?  Paintings and ghosts and Severus-goddamn-Snape, that's who." 

She shook her head wearily.  "No offense."

"None taken." 

Maxie shrugged.  "I know where you're coming from, sugar.  I'm a good listener, maybe, but I can't do much for you in the three-dimensional hug department."  She tilted her handsome head to one side.  "But that does beg the question - why run off your Secret-Keeper, when he was offering you exactly what you've just told me that you want?  You don't really think he's a pervert, do you?"

"No," Hermione admitted.  "It isn't that."

"What, then?"

"It's hard to explain."  Her cut had begun to clot; nervously, she scraped at the edges of the new scab.  "But mostly I think it's a case of too little, too late."

"Sorry?"

Hermione pulled a face.  "There was a time," she elaborated, "and not so long ago, either, when I would have given anything to have that from him - and not like this, not out of neediness or loneliness.  I would have chosen him.  Over anyone else.  Over the world.  And he didn't want me." 

She set her jaw hard against tears; it was one thing to cry because she didn't have a mother anymore, but she'd wept enough over Severus Snape, and that ship had long since sailed. 

"Or rather, he did.  But not enough to change anything, or give up anything, or make a declaration, or admit that he had feelings for me.  He might as well have picked me up and dumped me into Bill Weasley's bed kicking and screaming.  That's how much I wanted to stay, and how much he wanted me to go."

The cut was bleeding again, which seemed an oddly fitting accompaniment to her monologue.  Hermione imagined these memories to be just like that - a long-infected sore, oozing out poison now that she'd finally ripped off its crust.  "So I went," she said defiantly.  "I went running to Bill, and I never looked back.  And I loved him - I did, more than anything, more than I thought I could.  But I didn't love him f-first—" here, her voice faltered -"and now he's gone, and I keep thinking:  what if I hadn't chosen him?  What if I hadn't let Snape run me off?  Because if I hadn't married Bill, he'd still be—"

"—Gonna give yourself an aneurysm if you don't stop 'what-if'-ing," Maxie said sharply.  "It's not your fault Bill's dead.  Don't throw acid on the memory of your marriage like that - you loved each other and it didn't last forever, that's all.  You think he would blame you?  He was happy every minute he had you." 

At Hermione's stricken look, her voice gentled.  "Not your fault," she said again.  "And not Snape's either, though I can see why you'd be tempted to lay at least some of the blame at his door.  You're both innocents in this."

"Innocent," Hermione repeated, and laughed - a bitter, hard little sound like china shattering on stone.  "Somehow, I don't think that word applies.  To either of us."

"That," Maxie said, "is where you're wrong."

They fell to silence, and waited for the sun to rise.

**

Given Hermione's current mood, Joséphine Dessources' arrival in Paris on the following Friday afternoon was a welcome pick-me-up.  I'm getting a hotel, she'd written, so I don't wear out my welcome.  And so I can accommodate my queue of inevitable shagging partners without being a pest.  It's been entirely too long since I got laid - so polish up your dancing shoes and make us some reservations.  I'm warning you now that I've been under Minerva-Rule far too long for my own sanity; don't be surprised if I eat my salad with my fingers and pass wind in public until my internal equilibrium reasserts itself.

Heh, Hermione thought, cheered by the letter's saucy good humour, and went to look through her closet. 

There wasn't much there; she'd left all of her dressy Muggle clothes in Cairo, along with the contents of the house.  The house itself was already sold - Hermione had put it on the market at the same time she went in to see Linchpin and change over the name on her accounts - and she honestly didn't have any idea where their personal items were … everything had been packed up while she was at Hogwarts, courtesy of the Malfoy house-elves, and put into storage.  And while she wore Muggle clothes every day in Paris, she'd more or less adopted Itmana's uniform of lab-coat-over-blue-jeans.

Well, she hadn't gotten top Transfiguration marks for nothing, she decided, and took out her wand.  The result was a knee-length linen sheath in basic black, dressed down by way of a white cashmere sweater tied round her shoulders.  She added shoes and a bag, poked in pearl studs, and admired her reflection - not bad, not bad at all.

That sense of self-satisfaction lasted until she saw Joséphine, sitting at the bar of La Bilboquet with a parasol-topped daiquiri in hand.  Hogwarts' Potions Mistress was wearing a cherry-red leather minidress and a generous coating of body glitter and very little else, unless you counted the spike-heeled sandals and the lip gloss.  Her headdress of braids was twisted up atop her head and secured with a studded red leather dog collar; a handful of hopeful admirers were eyeing her over their drinks, gathering courage for an approach.

I look like the Queen Mum, Hermione thought, wide-eyed, then squared her shoulders.  Oh, well - too late for reinvention now.

"Hey," she said, touching Joséphine's shoulder and sliding onto the free bar stool next to her.  "How are you?  Sorry, I didn't get the dominatrix memo."

"Kate.  Sweetie."  With a naughty wink, her friend drew her into an embrace.  "Just feeding the fantasy vibe.  Don't panic," she murmured as she pressed first one cheek, then the other to Hermione's, then gave her - to Hermione's intense surprise - a not-so-brief kiss on the lips before drawing back.  "There's a table of Japanese businessmen over there with a serious case of lesbian fetish."  She looked Hermione up and down.  "Just come from the cotillion, did we?"

Hermione, blushing pink to her hairline, rolled her eyes.  "Well, you know me," she said lamely.  "Always the conservative one."

Not true, whispered her subconscious.  You flashed a bit of thigh, too, back in the day.

Way back in the day, you mean.  Twenty-five-year-old widows shouldn't try to squeeze into the same skirts they wore when they were seventeen.

"Conservative?"  Joséphine laughed.  "I seem to remember that you had your moments.  Come on, drink up.  I'm buying."

"Un kir, s'il-vous-pläit," Hermione said to the curious bartender, and wriggled her way more firmly onto the barstool.  "So - how's Hogwarts?"

"The students are fine."  Joséphine drained her daiquiri, tapped her glass to signal for a refill, and crossed one bare shapely thigh over the other, causing two students in black turtlenecks on the other side of the room to slump back in their chairs and raise her a toast.  "The job is fine.  Madame Haggis, on the other hand, is unbearable."

"You don't mean McGonagall."

"Who else would fit that awful name?  Ah, merci beaucoup."   She sucked pensively at the toothpick-tip of her new daiquiri's paper umbrella.  "Not a day goes by," she said, "that I'm not taken to task by that woman.  And over silly things."

Hermione sipped at her kir.  "Such as?"

"Oh, you name it, I've been dressed down for it.  Sunbathing on the lawn.  Wearing shorts under my robes.  Braiding ribbons into Albus's beard - when he's the one who wanted me to do it in the first place!"  She shrugged and took a gulp of her drink.  "None of which," she said, "compares to what happened in Hogsmeade a couple of months ago."

"Really."  Hermione snickered at the dark look on her friend's face.  "Do tell."

"Well."  Joséphine twirled the little umbrella absently in her fingers.  "I don't know if they were around when you were there.  But there's a shop in Hogsmeade, called ‘Weasley's Wizard Wheezes'.  Sells joke wands, trick candy, that sort of thing.  You know it?"

Hermione felt a clutch in her chest.  "I know it," she said.  "Fred and George Weasley were two years ahead of me in school."

"Ah.  Well, then, you'll understand."  Another shrug.  "Admittedly, they're a bit younger than I am.  But they were never my students, now, were they?  And they're most definitely of age."

Hermione choked on her kir. 

"Are you meaning to tell me," she spluttered when she finally could speak again, "that you slept with the Weasley twins?  Both of them?"

"Well - given the chance, wouldn't you?"  Joséphine lifted her eyebrows in the parody of a reasonable expression.  "It's not every day that a girl gets to double her pleasure … now, is it?"  She sipped at her drink.  "It's not as if we didn't know each other - I've been working there for three years now.  Was a consultant, in fact, on a couple of their newest projects.  And then, they've both been so down lately."

There was that clutch again.  Hermione leaned forward, trying not to seem too eager at the promise of news.  "Down?"

"Oh, didn't you hear?  Very sad, actually.  Their older brother died in a freak accident earlier this summer.  He lived in Cairo, I think."

Hermione swallowed hard.  "Freak accident?"

"They're saying it was Muggle terrorists," Joséphine said.  "That he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Too bad, really."

"Did he leave anyone behind?"  Hermione knew it was a bad idea to ask, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.  "Any … family?"

Joséphine looked puzzled.  "Well, his parents and his brothers and sister," she said.  "Big family, the Weasleys - you probably remember.  But I don't think he was seeing anyone at the time, no.  Word is that he was a cursebreaker.  Longtime bachelor."

She leaned one elbow on the bar.  "Anyway, I thought they could do with some cheering up - and Merlin knows how the Great Haggis found out, but she did.  It's a wonder I wasn't booted out on ethics charges."

"A wonder," Hermione repeated numbly.  Joséphine gave her a sharp look.

"You okay, sweetie?  You're looking a little pale."

"Hm?  No.  Fine.  I'm fine."

"Looks like you could use some fresh air."  Joséphine slid off the stool and stretched theatrically, which had the dual effect of sending her already-brief hemline sliding north and causing the nearby table of Japanese executives to spill their drinks.  "Come on," she said.  "Aren't we going discothéquing?"

"You tell me," Hermione said, fighting for composure.  "Are we?"

"You bet your derrière, sweetheart.  I haven't seen a real city in months - it's a real soul-sucker, that job."  Joséphine plucked a wad of euros from her glitter-slathered cleavage, peeled off a couple, and tossed them on the bar.  "Come on," she said again.  "Let's find the loo before we go, so I can fix you up a bit.  We're never going to get past the bouncers at Les Bains with you looking like that."

Managing a wan smile, Hermione clutched her bag more firmly and followed her.

**