LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Twenty-Two

When she woke for the second time, the sun was shining. And the dark-eyed man named Severus was sitting in the armchair next to her bed.

He was reading – something thick and dusty and bound in ancient, scarred green leather – and didn’t notice at first that her eyes were open. She took advantage of his preoccupation to study him covertly: did she know him, or didn’t she?

Hard to say.

He wasn’t handsome by any means – the nose was too beaky, the mouth too stern, the eyes so heavily shuttered that if she hadn’t seen that flash of furious disappointment in them last night, she’d have thought them to be verging on blank. Still, she found herself studying the lean angle of his jaw with hungry, inexplicable fascination. Wonder who he is. Wonder how he knows me.

She did remember this: it had been dark and cold. She’d fallen, and her cheek had felt the cool abrasion of stone, and somewhere above her a voice had been twittering, harsh and nasal, with vowels so lateral they’d might as well have been striped red, white and blue: Don’t get too close, Doug. She might … have something.

She would have taken offense at this, if she hadn’t been so utterly bewildered – where was she, exactly, and how had she gotten there? More pressingly, where was she supposed to go now?

She’d been falling deeper and deeper into the empty pit of her memory, trying to uncover her address, when he had come for her and carried her away. There’d been some more low-voiced, tense conversation after that, as well as a fair bit of jostling about against his shoulder – but none of that mattered, because wherever she was right now, whosever bed she was lying in, he’d brought her here, and she hadn’t had to decide.

She thought she might be half in love with him, for that reason alone.

The notion made her snicker, very softly, to herself, and he roused from his reverie at the sound, carefully marking his place in his book with a velvet ribbon and laying it aside on the nightstand. "Good morning," he said, turning toward her. "Did you sleep well?"

She nodded – actually, she had – and that strange panicky feeling she’d had of being chased by shadows last night had faded with the sunrise. "Very well. And you?"

He shrugged, as if sleep was the least of his worries, and looked her over with a speculative little crease between his eyebrows. "And you’re feeling all right?"

"Good as new," she assured him cheerfully, then bit her lip – perhaps that hadn’t been the best choice of words, under the circumstances. "A bit hungry, maybe."

"That, at least, I can fix," he murmured, that troubled look clearing a little but not disappearing entirely. "What do you take for breakfast?"

A flutter of anxiety, as she searched her mental database for food preferences and found it empty. "Oh, I’ll eat anything," she assured him breezily. He scowled at her as he rose from his chair.

"Indeed."

It sounded like a threat.

**

She took advantage of his absence to explore her surroundings. The room in which she’d slept was large and sunlit and panelled in some unvarnished pale wood – pine, probably – the colour of wheat fields. The chair he’d been sitting in, on the other hand, was so dark a hue that it looked almost black, polished to a high shine, and upholstered in cordovan leather; it looked as if it had been dragged into the room kicking and screaming from some other century altogether.

Its matching ottoman was on the other side of the room, by the door, and held a neatly folded pile of clothing she recognised as her own. Flipping back the duvet, she saw that she’d been favoured with the loan of pajamas – not hers, as the sleeves hung well past her fingertips. Who exactly had wrangled her into them, she wasn’t sure, but it was a fair guess that she hadn’t stepped into them under her own steam last night. And the ghost couldn’t have done it – could he?

That left Severus the Dark. A feathery little shiver unfurled in her stomach at the thought of those long slender fingers deftly doing up her buttons. She ignored it as she slid out of bed and went looking for the bath.

By the time she’d finished her shower and put her own clothes back on, he had returned with her invalid’s breakfast on a tray: mucilaginous oatmeal and weak herbal tea, enlivened marginally by a meticulously peeled and quartered navel orange and a lone multivitamin. As she had caught the distinct aromas of spiced toast and frying bacon from the next room, she privately thought herself rather hard done by; nevertheless, she ate what he’d brought her dutifully, pretending not to notice that he was watching her over the top of his coffee mug.

This silent scrutiny continued even after she’d gulped the bitter dregs of her tea and pushed away the tray. She squirmed uncomfortably, casting about for conversation.

"The other man," she said finally. "The ghost. Sal, I think it was. He told me that your name is Severus."

He nodded, but didn’t elaborate. She frowned – she’d have to be a bit bolder, apparently, if she wanted to pry information out of him.

"Last night, you called me Hermione. Is that my real name?"

At this, he drew a quick breath, then closed his eyes as if something pained him. "So you really don’t remember," he murmured to himself, then opened his eyes to meet hers. "It’s yours," he said, "if you still want it."

"If I still want it?" She frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

A flash of pique crossed his face, more quickly hidden but no less disconcerting than the anger she’d seen from him last night. "I mean," he said, the words clipped, "that you seemed to find yourself well rid of it last night. I’d think carefully before claiming it again."

She didn’t know why he was angry, but she wasn’t going to ask, either – her curiosity didn’t extend that far. "It’s sort of … old-fashioned, isn’t it?" she mused, in an attempt to lighten the mood, and was gratified when he let out a startled, rusty laugh.

"Oh, I don’t know. To some, I suppose."

He sent her another searching look, his momentary mirth faded now to what looked curiously like regret. "Speaking for myself, I always thought it was rather lovely."

Oh, Hermione thought, surprised, and then: Exactly how well do we know each other, anyway?

She might have gained the courage to ask that question aloud, given another minute to regroup; as it was, he’d already turned away, seemingly regretting his admission.

"While you were asleep," he said, twisting back toward her with a slim leather-bound book in his hands, "Sal and I took the liberty of obtaining a series of photographs designed to stimulate your memory. You may or may not recognise any of the people and places in these pictures, but it may be worthwhile to go through them, regardless." He passed her the book. "Do you feel up to the task?"

She nodded, and he reached over to turn back the front cover. "This one," he said. "Do you know these people?"

It was a picture of three children, two boys and a girl, about twelve or thirteen years old by her guess. "This is me, isn’t it?" she asked, stabbing her forefinger toward the short pale girl with the overabundance of bushy brown hair. He nodded.

"It is. How did you know?"

She almost lied, just to please him, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. "Bathroom mirror," she confessed. "I’m about twice this old again, and my hair’s different, but my face is the same."

"Ah." If he was disappointed, his carefully modulated tone didn’t betray it. "And the others?"

She studied the two boys in the photo – one tall and thin, with bushy red hair and freckles, the other small and slight, his forehead marked under his mop of black hair by a curious jagged cut. She’d already figured out that it was more or less hopeless to search for names in her empty-echoing head, but she tried anyway before giving up with a shrug. "No. Sorry."

"Does it pain you to look at them?" he inquired. She shook her head.

"No. Nothing hurts. It’s just very … blank and white, on the inside." She tried for a smile. "Feels like an empty flat, like a room without any furniture."

He didn’t smile back. "Try the next one."

She already knew that it was no use. But it seemed so important to him that she turned the page anyway.

**

He couldn’t watch this anymore.

Severus schooled his features savagely into blankness and forced himself to focus on the wall behind her head. Beside him, Hermione turned to a photograph of Hogwarts under heavy snowfall and let out a quiet sigh of surprised pleasure. He wanted to snatch the album from her hands and burn it to ashes.

He and Sal had been up all night, and the photo album was the best plan they’d been able to come up with, short of trying a Reverse-Obliviate that might do more harm than good. It had been a faint hope, but it had been hope, and now it was dashed. She’d looked right at Potter and Weasley, her childhood confidantes, and hadn’t known them; she’d turned blithely past a photograph of the man who’d been her husband without so much as a hum of appreciation.

Her memory was gone – and along with it, all remaining vestiges of the strong, confident young woman who Severus had loved. The girl she’d left in her place – smiling, tremulous, eager to please – was a poor substitute indeed; he wanted to take her by her pretty shoulders and shake her until that damp mink aureole of Corinthian curls fell out of her vacuous little head. Don’t you know what you’ve done? he wanted to demand. You were supposed to be invincible, unshakable, the light that wouldn’t die. You’re a Gryffindor, for Merlin’s sake.

Guilt kept him silent – guilt stronger than his anger, guilt heavy on his tongue like a mouthful of blood. If she’d failed, he had just as surely failed her.

I was to have been the keeper of her flame, he’d told Sal last night, too tightly-wound and miserable to sleep. And I let it go out. I might as well have put a knife through her heart.

"I don’t know any of these people," she said now, laying the book aside and looking up at him uncertainly. Severus swallowed hard.

"The castle," he said carefully. "Does it seem familiar to you? Like a place you might have visited?"

She shook her head. "None of this looks familiar at all," she said. "There are lots of pictures of those two boys, though. They must have been friends of mine."

"Friends? You were inseparable for six years," he said – sharply, without thinking. She paled.

"Will they be worried about me?"

He shook his head. "You needn’t worry on their account," he said, searching for a suitable explanation when she shot him a questioning look. "You were … estranged."

"Oh."

She was quiet for a moment. "What about the – the others? In the other photos?"

"The same," he said coldly, and dropped his eyes to the duvet so he wouldn’t see her lips tremble.

"Everyone?"

She sounded so lost that he thought his chest would explode. "Everyone except for me."

"Oh."

From the corner of his eye, he saw her reach for the album again, then let her hand drop just shy of its mark. "I suppose," she said slowly, "that it’s lucky for me that you found me, then."

He couldn’t take it anymore.

"Oh, yes, you’re ever so fortunate," he snarled, hating himself even before her eyes widened and brimmed. "They’re envying you to the ends of the earth, lucky girl that you are to be saddled with a Galahad like me. Ever so chivalrous of me not to have left you lying mindless in the streets of Paris. They’ll be shipping me my medal any minute now."

He ended his outburst to find her staring at him speculatively. "What?" he snapped, and she shrugged.

"I thought at first that you were angry with me," she said. "But it’s yourself you’re angry with. Why?"

"Because I didn’t see it coming until it was too late." He glared at her. "And don’t let yourself off the hook so quickly. Just because I despise myself right now doesn’t mean I don’t despise you, too."

She blinked. "Despise me?" Her tone was more curious than hurt. "Why? What did I do?"

Severus took a deep breath, his anger suddenly eclipsed by a sick sort of weariness. "You haven’t asked, he said, "how you came to lose your memory."

"Oh. I didn’t imagine that you knew." She frowned. "Do you?"

"Yes. But it’s difficult to explain." At a loss, he spied her wand lying on the nightstand and held it out to her. "Do you know what this is?"

She ran one hand through her curls, bewildered. "It’s a stick."

Severus closed his eyes and prayed for strength. "It’s a wand," he corrected. "A magic wand. To be specific, it’s your magic wand."

She blinked again. "That would make me …"

"A witch. Too true." He returned the wand to the nightstand. "Ring any bells, does it?"

She shook her head. "Not so far. But I don’t see what my being a witch has to do with my memory loss."

He stared at her for a moment, more heartened than frustrated – that cool, equivocal little voice had reminded him just now very much of the Original Hermione. "You did it to yourself," he said softly. "You’re under a Memory Charm that you yourself performed. That’s why you can’t remember who you are."

Her eyebrows shot up; he’d managed to shock her. "Why would I do that?"

"That’s a longer story still."

Her chin came up sharply. "I have the time."

Good point, Severus thought, cheered slightly by her steady voice, her determined logic in the face of the unexplainable. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there’s more of you left in there than I’d thought.

He pulled his chair a little closer to the bed, took a deep breath, and began.

**