LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Twenty-Three

Why she believed him, she didn’t know, because the story seemed outlandish, unspeakable, cobbled together from the disjunct remainders of a thousand sensationalist genres. But believe him she did – that flat, almost irritated delivery wasn’t the discourse of a man desperate to convince, which made it all the more convincing.

And then, she just couldn’t imagine him telling lies.

Still, bits of his monologue sent her eyebrows skyrocketing. She’d been a witch? Enough for pause even there. But then – she’d been to witch school, what passed for witch university, she’d gone up against some kind of Evil Witch Überführer and won, she’d become so well-known for her controversial medical inventions that she’d had to go into metaphysical hiding from a cadre of magical assassins?

Unbelievable.

And sort of cool, too, if she thought about it from the right angle.

For every question she had – and they were legion – he, and the voluble ghost Sal, had an army of backup details … so many, in fact, that Hermione felt overwhelmed by information. Photos from the album littered the surface of the duvet: here were her best friends zooming around on broomsticks after a strange, sunken-looking ball; here was an assortment of redheads in front of a pyramid, one of whom she’d allegedly married; here was an enormous shaggy brown bear of a man, hugging her younger self and wiping an errant tear from one of his kindly beetle-black eyes.

She shuffled through the loose photos again until she came to the one of Bill Weasley with his Head Boy badge. "This is the one?" she queried, and Severus nodded.

She stared at the picture again, frowning. "How long were we married?"

He sighed impatiently – she’d asked this question before. "Four years."

"And he died. He was murdered."

"Yes."

The boy in the photo shot her a warm, flirtatious smile, and winked. Hermione studied him for another minute, then set the photo aside with a shake of her head.

"I can’t remember."

Severus the Dark made an unpleasant sound in his sinuses. "Not surprising," he said sharply, "considering the lengths to which you went to rid yourself of the memory."

Hermione frowned at him.

"Look," she said. "I understand that this Memory Charm thing wasn’t exactly a stroke of genius on my part. But if I was as torn up by the whole thing as you say I was, you’re being considerably less than sympathetic."

"It wasn’t worthy of you," he said, a bit sulkily. She frowned again.

"Funny you should say that. It implies that you thought highly of me, and so far you’ll pardon me if I don’t see too much evidence of that."

He blinked, and she got the distinct impression that she’d surprised him. "Then you don’t remember much about me, either," he said finally. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"That rather goes without saying, don’t you think? Get over yourself. And while we’re on the topic, here’s one more question: why you?"

Sal, whose pale grey eyes had been flicking back and forth during this verbal volley as if he was watching table tennis, cleared his throat meaningfully—"I’ll just be getting the luncheon ready, then, shall I?—" and floated hastily toward the hall. Neither Hermione or Severus paid his exit the least attention.

"What do you mean, why me?"

"This protection thing," she said impatiently. "Me going into hiding. The Fidelius Whatchamacally. Why you?"

He swallowed. "Why not?"

Hermione gestured toward the stacks of photographs at her knees. "Why not the black-haired boy with the scar, if he’s so powerful as you say? He was supposed to be my best friend, right? Why not the Headmaster?" She met his eyes and held them challengingly. "I mean, I know you tutored me in Potions, but what makes you so special? There’s not a single picture of you in this book, nor does anything you or Sal have told me indicate that we were especially close. So how did you get picked to be my Secret-Keeper?"

He looked reluctant. "I haven’t told you everything—"

"—A-ha!—"

A repressive glare. "—but I suppose there’s no avoiding it, now you’ve asked." He looked angry and embarrassed in equal parts. "You’re quite right – there were literally dozens of people to whom you were closer than you were to me, in many respects. Potter and the Headmaster among them." He dropped his gaze. "But you and I were—are—linked. In ways you and they aren’t."

Her eyes widened as she pondered the implications of this. "Linked," she repeated.

"Yes."

"Lovers, you mean."

The muscle underneath his right eye twitched violently. "Briefly. Intermittently." He sighed. "Yes."

Hermione studied him with renewed interest. "You don’t seem very happy about it."

"Nor would you, if you knew the details." When she didn’t react to this, but continued to gaze at him expectantly, he cursed under his breath and dug in his pocket. "I was going to save this for later, but we’d might as well get it over with now. Do you recognise this substance?"

She studied the little phial of pearl-coloured liquid curiously. "No. What is it?"

"It’s Illuminata," he said. "It’s a potion from the Middle Italian Baroque, lost for many years under obscurity and heavy encryption. You cracked the code near the beginning of your sixth year at Hogwarts; if you were doubting your magical or intellectual capacities before, this should reassure you. It was a remarkable accomplishment."

Why did she get the distinct impression that he’d not told her that before? "Thanks," she said. "What does it do?"

"It shows whatever it touches in its best light," he said. "It has healing properties, too, though we’re not yet sure what its limits are. Here."

He inverted the tiny phial over his forefinger, then reached out and dabbed the drop of luminous fluid over the abrasion on her right cheekbone. Hermione felt the sting of the scrape ease, and put her hand up curiously to feel the cut. It was gone.

Wow.

She took the phial back from him and held it up to the light. "What else does it do?"

"It’s what you’d call a multipurpose," he said. He wasn’t looking at her. Her eyebrows shot up in sudden realisation.

"It’s an aphrodisiac?"

"No." There were bright spots of flush in his cheeks. "Yes. I mean, sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

He looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet, which was probably indeed the case. "In its brewing stage only," he said tightly. "I was your … advisor … on the project. We were unaware of its … incendiary properties."

"Huh." Her lips curved up, ever so slightly, at the corners; she had the feeling that he was hardly ever flustered, but it looked rather good on him. "Cradle-robber."

At that, his head came up sharply. "I hardly think – I assure you – I mean, that was hardly the intent—"

"Oh, relax." Hermione’s impression of her own life thus far was climbing steadily – a bit bizarre, maybe, and of course very sad about the handsome redhead in the Head Boy picture, but on the other hand, it beat out stenography and a flatful of cats by a long shot. "So," she said. "What ended it?"

He rubbed one hand over his eyes. "There wasn’t much to end," he said, his voice tired. "A handful of encounters, no matter how explosive, doesn’t make a relationship. And you and I, even setting the age difference aside, were hardly compatible at that point. You were well rid of me."

"I dumped you?" Somehow she couldn’t imagine that.

He shook his head. "I ended it. Because you should have, and you wouldn’t."

"Oh."

Curiouser and curiouser. Hermione hadn’t satisfied her prying instincts on this topic, not by a long shot, but something about the set of his mouth told her she shouldn’t press him further, at least not now. Probably it was easier to get the scoop from the ghost anyway – he seemed to like to talk. She glanced back at the thimbleful of glass-encased Illuminata in her hand. "So," she said brightly. "Does this miracle potion bring back memory?"

He scowled. "It’s possible. There’s no definitive research on the subject. Though under the circumstances, I wonder if you really want your memory restored."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Think about it," he snapped. "You’ve been crying yourself to sleep for the last four and a half months. Twenty-four hours ago, you were bordering on suicidal – in fact, let’s take out the ‘bordering’, considering how wrong Memory Charms can go if you’re not in a proper state to perform them, and believe me, you weren’t and you knew it, too." He scowled at her. "You didn’t seem to think then that your skills and knowledge outweighed the demands of your personal misery, which on a certain level is understandable but on another makes me want to wring your neck. I never suspected that the Hermione Granger I knew would take the easy way out; you’re a disappointment to your own brain."

He pushed himself off the foot of the bed, where he’d been sitting, and began to pace. "I suppose it never occurred to you," he said, "that you were the only living person who still remembered exactly what it was that had pissed them off in the first place?"

"Who?"

"The Knights of the Golden Wand," he spat. "The group that ordered your execution in the first place. Some research project of yours set them off – they wanted it stopped so badly that they’d kill you to make it go away. Four months, and you never started it up again? Four months, and you never thought of revenge? Four months, and you killed your only chance at real retribution with a single ill-considered charm?"

He stopped suddenly and turned toward her, his face so austerely, bitterly sad that it caught her breath. "I expected anger from you," he said softly. "I never expected you to keep your pain to yourself. How very Slytherin of me – and how very Gryffindor of you."

She wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but the look in his eyes went straight to her heart. "I mustn’t have been so much of a researcher," she said shakily, "if I never wrote it down."

His breath caught at that. "What?"

"Well, you know," she said, toying nervously with the edge of the duvet. "If it was so important, wouldn’t I have kept paperwork on it somewhere? Somewhere else, I mean? Rather careless of me, don’t you think?"

He had gone very still and very white. "Rather," he said slowly. "And rather uncharacteristic, at that. I hadn’t thought of that."

The tense silence that followed was broken by cheery whistling from the hall, followed by a levitating platter of sandwiches and accompanying pitcher of lemonade. "Lunch!" Sal announced from the doorway, settling their intended repast on the bedside table and tucking away his shadowy wand in a pocket of his robes. "How do you feel about BLTs, young lady? English bacon. And beefsteak tomatoes all the way from the Garden State. Severus stepped out especially this morning."

"Sounds lovely," Hermione said. Severus, breaking out of his reverie, turned around to blink at her.

"Mm," he agreed absently – then, apparently making up his mind about something: "How do you feel?"

She exchanged a wary glance with Sal. "All right. Why?"

"Hurry up and eat, then," he said, and poured her a glass of lemonade. "We’ve got work to do this afternoon."

**