LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Twenty

It wasn’t as much fun as she’d thought it would be.

Hermione, feeling itchy and exposed in the black Lycra minidress Joséphine had charmed her into, pulled irritably at one of its cutout shoulders and scanned her surroundings dubiously from her corner by the bar. Les Bains - once a bathhouse in the grandest of nineteenth-century traditions, now one of Paris’ trendiest and most outré of nightclubs - was packed to the gills with people and rocking on its foundations with the force of the world-pop technobeat reverberating from the clusters of strategically placed speakers. Now that she thought about it, it looked and sounded a bit like the clubs she’d frequented in Rome, first with Giulia and then, later, with Draco.

And - as she recalled - she’d enjoyed that experience thoroughly. So why wasn’t she having a good time now?

Because it’s no fun getting hit on if you’re not interested, the Voice of Reason informed her frostily. Because you don’t really belong here anymore. Because there isn’t any bloody point to it.

“Bonsoir, cherie,” someone murmured at her left shoulder - the third time so far she’d been thus accosted. “Ça va?”

She flicked him a quick glance - a man she didn’t know, wearing tight PVC pants and too much black eyeliner - then looked away, embarrassed. Her two previous admirers had taken her lack of reply as a hint and faded into the jostling, gyrating throng; this time, however, she wasn’t so fortunate.

“V’lez vous danser?” he persisted - then, with a leer: “Baiser?” Hermione shook her head, embarrassment flaring into annoyance as he muscled in a little closer and continued to stare at her.

“Va te faire foutre,” she said, summoning up the most insulting French she knew and delivering it with a sneer worthy of a street punk from the Goutte d’Or. Her would-be Romeo flushed.

“Je t’emmerde,” he spat, already half-turned to go. “Quelle allemeuse!”

Well, that summed it up nicely. Hermione took another sip of her seltzer - now gone warm and flat from the suffocating heat in the room - and sighed.

If I really was Kate Billings, I’d have said yes. Or I’d be over there shaking it right next to Joséphine, and would have avoided the whole thing.

But I’m not her. And I don’t want this - at least, I don’t think I do.

As if summoned by the thought of her name, Joséphine appeared from the centre of the crowd, her glittering skin damp with perspiration. One hand held a plastic cup of what looked like rum and Coke; the other was towing in its wake one of the darkly beautiful, indolent-looking young men who seemed to populate every street corner in Paris. He was wearing Joséphine’s dog-collar around his neck.

“Hi,” Joséphine said breathlessly, tipping her head toward the dance floor. “This is crazy, isn’t it? How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Hermione said, leaning in closer to make herself heard over the din. “Just had a visitation from a truly scary incarnation of Captain Latex. Told him to fuck off and got called a cock-teaser for my trouble.” She cast a glance at Joséphine’s companion. “Looks like you’ve had better luck.”

“His name’s Marc,” Joséphine informed her, draining the remains of her cocktail. “Dishy, isn’t he? Great dancer, too. Come on - come join us.”

Hermione hesitated, then shook her head. “No thanks,” she said. “I’d rather watch.”

“Kinky.”

“Ha, ha, ha. Not that kind of watching.” Hermione, sensing the opportunity for a graceful early exit, rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Go ahead - you know, do your thing, don’t worry about me. I’ve had a long week; I’m going to call it a night. I’ll meet you for lunch at your hotel tomorrow, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re a sweetheart.” Joséphine leaned forward and gave her a friendly buss on the cheek. “One o’ clock, okay? No earlier.”

“Have fun.”

She watched Joséphine tow her pretty boy back to the dance floor with a touch of wistfulness, then set her half-empty seltzer back on the bar and surreptitiously hauled her Spandex in the direction of her knees.

Had enough. Time to go.

Part of her, the deep-down still-young part of her that had boogied till dawn at a Roman discothèque and loved every minute of it was disappointed. The rest of her was guardedly sympathetic, even as it shoved itself resolutely through the crush of bodies.

Sure, this wasn’t her scene - and any move that took her away from Captain Latex, in her opinion, was bound to be a good one. Even Pretty-Boy Marc wasn’t really her style. But how nice it would be, she thought, to have him as an escape - to be Joséphine or someone like her - to have problems you could get away from, problems that didn’t keep following you around no matter where you went, like angry strays demanding to be fed.

How nice to lose yourself in someone else’s arms, someone else’s lips. How depressing that she’d stood there for an hour and a half and turned down all her takers without a second thought.

The truth was (she realised as she wound her way through the dancers, past the plunging pool in which a small crowd of lunatics were ruining their haute couture, and out into the cool quiet night), that though the desire for sexual release became a more acute physical craving with every night she spent alone, the thought of sleeping with a stranger was even more repugnant than that of celibacy. She still held the memory of her last night with Bill, gripped like a jewel in her closed hand - how, then, could she settle for drunken groping with the first Philippe or Henri who propositioned her?

Moonlight, warm breeze, bruised flowers - could there be anything more romantic? She’d fairly held her breath as he slid over her, crushing the petals between them and releasing the scent into the humid air.

And then, just as his lips dipped the final inch of empty space to touch hers, they’d discovered the biting ants.

Half an hour later, after they’d stripped the bed, fumigated the bedroom with a Cleansing Charm, and showered, they’d gotten back to their unfinished business - giggling, playful, pinching each other in ticklish places and no longer much inclined toward the pretty words they’d started out with. No doubt if they’d known it was the last time, Hermione thought, it would have been different; as it was, it had been sharp and quick and breathless - horseplay as foreplay - and as she recalled, neither of them had said very much at all.

Except for their goodnight ritual, of course: love you, love you too, sleepy mumbled words to drift off by. She’d thought nothing of them at the time. Now, they were still haunting her.

She ducked into a darkened doorway and pulled out her wand. “Finite Incantatem,” she said - the spike heels Joséphine had charmed her into were a bit much, for a walk this long - and sighed with relief as her cramped toes relaxed into the roomier confines of her comfortable old loafers. Freed of her cotillion pearls, her crevice-breaching Spandex, she slid her hands into the pockets of her blue jeans and headed for home.

She wished she could slip back into her old life half so easily.

Love you. Love you too.

That was what had held her back tonight, she decided. Not the noise, not the crowd, not the slick Eurotrashy boys, not even the Voice of Reason shrieking maidenly warnings in her ears. A few simple words, rather, that she’d heard every night for six years, and that she feared she’d never hear again.

Dangerous argument, that, and one that had cropped up in her thoughts a hundred times since last week’s Snape-induced breakdown. I thought, the Voice of Reason said firmly, that we’d agreed not to talk about this.

You may have agreed. I didn’t. The Daredevil paused meaningfully. Well? No dead husband, no dark past, a job you like, people who like you. What do you say?

Somehow, she’d reached the bridge. She gripped the railing and looked down at the Seine, reflecting back the lights of the city like a shifting black mirror. Her thoughts were as dark as the inky water, and moving twice as fast.

Think about it. No one would miss you. No one would even know you’d gone. And it’s such an easy charm, Obliviate is.

Definitely easier, Hermione thought, than either of her alternatives. Reversing the Fidelius put everyone she cared about in the at-risk category - something she, having now experienced one loss, wasn’t emotionally prepared to do. And going on as she was was beginning to feel like tempting madness.

But Obliviate …

Sensing her wavering, the Daredevil pressed its advantage. You could walk away from all of it. You could fall in love. You could be happy again.

One word, and you’d have a whole fresh start. Aren’t you even tempted?

Hermione clung to the railing of the bridge, her head whirling.

Tempted? Hell yes, she was tempted. No more pain, no more tears, no more breaking dishes and crying to portraits and walking home alone in the dark? Sounded like a good deal to her.

And all she’d have to give in exchange was a name no one else remembered.

Bill’s dead. You’re alive. Why torture yourself? What can you change?

She was crying by now, but didn’t notice. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

You hate Memory Charms. You promised you’d never perform another one - remember?

That was a long time ago.

A promise is a promise.

Fuck promises - decide! Is your life worth keeping, or isn’t it?

That was the million-euro question - the one that had been lurking in her subconscious ever since she got to Paris, the one she hadn’t been able to ask until now. And now that it had finally dug its way up to the surface, she felt paralysed by it, choked by it, able only to clutch at the bridge rail and cry into the Seine - salt water falling into fresh, whether for Bill or for herself she didn’t quite know.

Maxie would know what to say, but Maxie was a ten-minutes’ walk away - too far, when she’d sunk to her knees, when Apparation meant a near-certain splinch and even pulling herself back up to her feet seemed an insurmountable task. Somewhere in the back of her head, she heard people passing, was distantly aware of their curious glances. No one stopped.

She shifted and heard the whisper of latex in the inside pocket of her lab coat, a glove-wand left over from the day’s work. Too easy to pull it out, too easy to snap it on and feel the tingle of it worm up to her elbow.

One word only … and so much easier to say it than to drag herself to her feet, to carry herself through another lonely night of grief. Her gloved fingers slid up to her face, fluttered at her temples.

Easy. So easy.

And if she hated herself for giving up, it was - after all - only for a moment.

“Goodbye, Bill,” she murmured - then, almost as an afterthought: “Goodbye, Hermione.”

**