LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Twenty-Four

Neville Longbottom was worried.

It wasn’t just that he hadn’t seen Kate for three days, though that was unusual enough. It was that no one had seen her - or heard from her, for that matter. And though he’d never known her well at Hogwarts, they were good enough friends now for him to know that she had a relatively concrete schedule, and that she stuck to it like white on rice. It just wasn’t like her to disappear without letting someone know - if anything, she cultivated her friendships with the conscientious, half-worried affection of an orchid grower - and yet it appeared that she’d done just that.

Come to think of it, she’d been acting funny all week. First, she’d stood him up for their customary Thursday afternoon coffee, leaving a terse message on his voice mail that she was working late; then, she’d failed to stop by the Museum’s herb-stall at Les Halles on Saturday morning to buy her next week’s potion ingredients. To Neville, who knew quite well that she only bought enough for a week at a time, this was by far the more troubling of the two incidents.

And now it was Sunday afternoon, the time she usually stopped by the clinic to set up for Monday morning’s appointments, and Itmana had just called him at the Museum office on his mobile phone to ask if he’d seen her. Considering that she’d been carefully avoiding him, and he her, since their affair had ended in the middle of September, this spoke volumes about the level of her concern.

“It’s not like she’s scheduled to work today or anything,” she’d said, her no-nonsense words just failing to mask the note of worry in her tone. “But it’s odd. You haven’t seen her, either?”

“I haven’t,” Neville said, and heard Itmana sigh.

“You know, this is going to sound strange,” she said. “But do you know, I can’t even find her address? Or her telephone number at home. She’s got one of the clinic’s beepers, of course, but I’ve rung it about a gajillion times and she hasn’t rung me back. And I’ve just gone through Sylvie’s files, looking for her home number, and do you know, it’s all smeared? The oddest thing - the rest of the information is clear as church bells, but it’s as if someone spilled coffee on part of the page. I can’t make anything out. And she’s not in the city directory, either.” She paused. “You don’t happen to have her address, do you?”

Neville felt a cold finger of prescience slide down his spine. “I can narrow it down, at least,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “Don’t worry - I’ll go try and find her right now.”

Another sigh, this one relieved. “Thanks, Nev. Call me when you’ve found something?”

“I’ll call you even if I don’t,” he promised, and rang off.That icy feeling of dread was still fingering the back of his neck; he sat motionless at his desk for a moment, then slowly pulled out his wallet.

He’d asked her for her number, that was the thing. Ages ago. And she’d given it to him without a second thought, neatly jotted in pencil with her name at the top. When he’d taken it out of his wallet a few days later to call her, however, he hadn’t been able to read it - oh, the name Kate was clear enough, but the numbers had shifted into obscurity.

He’d kept it anyway - Merlin knew why. Now, he extracted it from his wallet and laid it carefully on the desk, face-up. It looked just as Itmana had described Kate’s employee-information form - coffee-stained beyond identification. But how, he wondered grimly, had it become stained, when it’d been safely tucked away in his hip pocket this whole time?

Magic, that was how. Stupid of him not to think of it before. He drew his wand and tapped the little card thoughtfully.

“Purgare,” he murmured, then frowned - the word ‘Kate’ had grown clearer, and the card itself whiter, but the stain hadn’t budged. Clearly, a Cleansing Charm wasn’t the ticket.

Hm. Clarification, maybe? “Chiarisca,” he tried, with no more result. “Riveli? Traduca?”

Ah. That last had done something, at least. He plucked a magnifying glass from the center drawer of his desk and peered closely at the card. The coffee-stain illusion had lifted, all right, but the numbers were no more readable; they were shifting on the page so quickly that Neville registered their movement mostly as a blur.

Holy crap, he thought, and swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure how she’d done it, or why for that matter, but the girl he knew as Kate Billings was hiding behind a clever, complex layer of magical wards. And that made her disappearance all the more worrisome. Tucking the card back in his wallet, he stood up and fumbled for his jacket.

He didn’t know who was looking for her, but he was going to try and get there first.

**

His Location Charm turned up blank, just as he’d half-suspected it would - either the wards she’d erected around herself had blocked it, or her location was Unplottable, he wasn’t sure which. Magical options exhausted, that left common sense. He turned right out of the Jardin des Plantes onto the Rue St.-Hilaire and headed toward the Latin Quartier, lower lip caught between his teeth.

He knew she lived around here - was fairly sure she’d even told him the name of her street, once upon a time. Hard to say whether it was the magic or his own less-than-photographic memory that kept him from recalling it now. But there’d been something else … something else she’d said. If only he could remember - ah. Ah, yes. Not the address, just a throwaway bit of conversation. They’d been talking about travel, as he recalled, and she’d said something about Rome: That city changed my life. Someday, I’ll go back. And then: The view from my terrace reminds me of the Colosseum. Makes me a little nostalgic sometimes.

For an old Roman garrison, Paris didn’t have too many telltale ruins left. Some statuary, yes, a couple of roomsful of artifacts in the Louvre, the crumbling remains of the Gallo-Roman baths in the Musée de Cluny. But the only place in Paris that Neville could possibly imagine as reminiscent of the Colosseum was the Arènes de Lutece, a scant couple of blocks away.

Bingo.

The Rue des Arènes was only a hundred metres or so up on his left. He broke into a jog.

**

It was a tiny street, shaped like a boomerang and taken up mostly along one whole side by the entrance to the park. What had been a crisp, cool day was now sliding into clear chilly evening, and the picnickers had mostly given up; the park was deserted except for a group of youngsters with skateboards - probably local - making the most of the last few moments of daylight and empty space before their mamans called them inside for the night. Neville stood at the top of the block of steps that led down to the ancient arena itself and cast a searching glance around. There couldn’t be that many apartments facing the park; probably the easiest way to narrow down his options was to take a stroll round the top perimeter and see how many terrace doors lay within his line of sight. Still, he hesitated - peering into windows wasn’t likely to ingratiate him with the local residents.

And then he saw her.

She was definitely a witch, and he’d have known that even if she hadn’t simply appeared from nowhere on the other side of the steps; energy and power rolled off her in waves he could feel even from this great distance. At first, he saw her only as a silhouette against the dying light - then, as she ran lightly down the steps, the details of her appearance came into greater focus: Egyptian-princess profile, waist-length fall of tiny braids, brief orange slip-dress barely encasing a body that made his mouth go dry. To the openly gaping teenage boys on the arena’s ground level, she must have looked like an Olympian goddess descending from the ether.

“Bonsoir,” she said, and they blinked at her as if star-struck. One of them, taller than the others, with a dark narrow face, took a bold step forward.

“Bonsoir.”

“Je recherche mon amie Kate Billings,” the goddess continued. ”La connaissez-vous?”

Neville, suddenly more suspicious than entranced, felt his hands fist inside his pockets. The tall boy thought for a moment, shrugged, then let his eyes drift down her body.

“Je ne la connais pas. Est-elle aussi jolie que vous êtes?”

His friends snickered. The goddess rolled her eyes.

“Vous ne pourriez pas me manipuler, mon fils,” she drawled, and Neville felt a smile tug the corners of his mouth despite himself at the teenager’s crestfallen expression. The group of boys, enjoying their ringleader’s humiliation in true Lord-of-the-Flies teenage fashion, laughed again. One of them - younger, smaller, blonder - shrugged and stepped forward hesitantly.

“I know a Kate,” he offered in slightly accented English. “She lives somewhere near me. I can't remember where. Maman might.” A mischievous look at his sulking friend. “And she is pretty.” He jerked his head in the direction of the street. “I have to go in for dinner soon anyway. I’ll ask.”

"Merci." She shot him a dazzling smile. "I'll be around."

The park was almost completely dark by now; with a last wistful look back, the boys began to drift off. Neville waited until the last one had disappeared, then strode purposefully toward her.

"It won't do you any good, you know," he said. "He won't remember; he isn't allowed to. And why are you looking for Kate, anyway? What do you want with her?"

She shifted, the fingers of one long elegant hand toying with her brief hemline. Ten to one she had a wand holster strapped to her thigh under that handkerchief of a dress, Neville thought, and tried desperately not to think about how heart-stoppingly sexy that was. Her eyes on him were cool and suspicious and just a teensy, flattering little bit appraising.

"Who are you?" she wanted to know. "And what do you mean, he's not allowed to remember?"

"Just that." Neville fought back the urge to flex his hard-won biceps. "And I might ask you the same question; I'm a close friend of Kate's, and I don't recall seeing you around anywhere."

"We're friends from school."

"Hogwarts?"

A flicker of surprise crossed her face. "Maybe. What's it to you?"

His wand was out and pressed to her throat before he knew he'd done it. "Liar."

Her fingers came up to pry at his. Those Nefertiti eyes were flashing like black fury; he'd managed to really piss her off. "Watch who you're calling a liar, Slick."

She smelt like his favourite, most exotic greenhouse -- an earthy, green, medicinal smell that had nothing to do with perfume. Neville wanted to fall to his knees and beg; instead, he sneered at her. "What other word do you have for it?" he demanded. "I was in the same year as Kate at Hogwarts, and you weren't one of my classmates -- you weren't even there at the same time. Believe me, I'd have remembered."

That got a low, husky laugh out of her. "Come to think of it, Slick," she said, "I'd have remembered you, too. But you misunderstand me. I never studied at Hogwarts. I teach there. I'm the new Potions Mistress. Kate and I met at university."

Neville stared at her, dumbstruck, then dropped his wand hand to his side. "Figures," he muttered, embarrassed. "If I'd known that you would come along after Snape left, I'd have Anti-Aged myself years ago. Of all the rotten luck ..."

"Not a fan, eh?" The goddess was looking distinctly more friendly now. "Well, you're one of the few. Wish you'd have a word with the Great Sour One on my behalf." She flopped down on the nearest step and crossed her legs at the ankle. "Joséphine Dessources, at your service. And you must be her friend from the Botanical Gardens, the plant expert. Longbottom, right?"

"Call me Neville." Cautiously relieved, he joined her on the step. "So -- you haven't seen Kate either, right?"

Joséphine made a dark sound of assent. "I'm just in town for the weekend," she said. "Last I saw of her, she was leaving Les Bains last night. Said she was tired, and that she'd see me at one o' clock at my hotel." She glanced at her watch. "That was six hours ago. Thought I'd better look her up. Got this far on the say-so of this postcard."

She held it out, and Neville took it curiously. It was a picture of the park on a sunny day; on the blank side, Kate had written, "My backyard. Don't hate me for my real estate."

"Let me guess," Neville said. "She wrote her number down for you, and you can't read it. Right?"

"Must've spilled something on it," Joséphine admitted. "How'd you know?"

"You didn't spill anything," Neville said, and dug out the card in his wallet. "Look at this. I thought it was a coffee stain, too, until I ran a Translating Charm on it."

Joséphine studied the rapidly shifting numbers on the card for a moment, then let out a low whistle. "Impressive," she said at last. "Looks like our friend Kate doesn't want to be found, doesn't it?" She passed the card back to him. "Odd, though. She wrote to me first. You think she acts like a girl who wants to hide?"

Neville considered this. "No," he said finally. "No, she doesn't. Not at all." He frowned, struck by a sudden new thought. "Think Kate is her real name?"

"The truth? Now that I think about it, no. I don't." Joséphine frowned. "And I bet she hates that. If she's hiding, I'll bet my last jar of Skrewtskin that she doesn't want to be."

They sat in contemplative silence in the falling dusk. Joséphine was the first to speak.

"Well," she said, "that blond kid must be a closer neighbour than he thinks, to remember her at all. I say we stake out his apartment building for suspicious-looking magical types. What do you think?"

Neville was peering up at the top of the arena.

"I think," he said, "that we've just been saved the trouble. Look at that, would you?"

Joséphine followed his gaze to the row of young fruit trees that marked the rim of the half-buried amphitheatre. There was just enough light still on the horizon to make out a shadowy dark figure emerging from their cover and slipping stealthily in the direction of the street.

"Snape," she said, sounding as bewildered as Neville felt. "What the hell is he doing here?"

"Not sure," Neville said grimly. Blood was roaring in his ears. "But one thing I do know: I've been wanting to jam a wand into that bastard's balls for more than half my life. The fact that this situation gives me reasonable leave to do just that is getting me a little bit hot." He glanced inquiringly over his shoulder. "Are you with me?"

Joséphine looked mildly surprised at his vehemence, then laughed. "Am I ever," she said. "Lead the way, Slick."

Wands out, mouths set in determined lines, they started to climb.

**