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LAST TANGO IN PARIS Hermione awoke amid blue flannel sheets to a chilly, fog-grey morning. Severus was nowhere to be seen.
Huh, she thought, glancing around the room. Could have sworn this study didn’t have a bed in it last night. And that it wasn’t this big. And then: And he claims he’s no good at Transfiguration, the liar. No wonder he gave up his bedroom so readily.
But such ruminations were minutiae, given the bigger picture. She yawned, stretched, and snuggled back into her pillow with a small, satisfied sigh.
She felt good. She felt damn good.
In her head, Memory raised a warning finger, poking a hole in her pink cloud of afterglow: Jump-starting an old love affair is just going to confuse an already cloudy issue, Sal had said a few days previous. Before you go to him, first lay your ghosts to rest.
Oops, Hermione thought, then shrugged mentally. What does it matter when it happened? He loves me. He said so.
Speaking of which -- where is he?
Obviously she wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep anytime soon, no matter how comfortable this mattress. Sighing, she flung back the duvet and started looking for her clothes. They were in a neat pile on a chair near the desk, anchored by her wand; without really thinking about what she was doing, she gave it an absent twirl, swish-flicked, and murmured “Purgare!”
A Cleaning Charm, she knew automatically, and only afterward, surrounded by the faint baby-powder aroma of fabric softener, thought to wonder: had she covered that one with Sal, the other day? Or not?
It was beginning to be damn annoying that she couldn’t remember.
“Blue,” she said, almost severely, to the red button-down shirt on the chair – they had done colour changes, that much she was sure of – and smirked in satisfaction as the shirt obediently morphed from crimson to cornflower.
Good enough.
She threw on the clothes and went to go find him.
He was crouched over the kitchen stove, murmuring something into the ring of blue flame around one of the front burners. As she got a little closer, Hermione saw a tiny severe head sitting comfortably – if incongruously – atop the flame, and caught the glint of corporate silver hoops.
“Floo’s all right for most things,” Linchpin was saying, “but not secure enough for this. I think it’s important enough that you’d better come in to the office.”
Severus frowned and ran one long-fingered hand over his rather stubbly chin. “Isn’t the risk of being overheard just as great there?”
Linchpin sighed. “Point taken.” Her head swivelled to survey the kitchen. “Have you a proper hearth, at least? I don’t fancy trying to Floo through – through this.”
“There’s a fire in the parlor. Give me a moment and I’ll Unblock it for you.”
Her head withdrew, and he turned off the burner. Hermione cleared her throat from the doorway. “What was that all that about?”
He turned, half-startled, then – seeming to remember himself – gave her a slow, heavy-lidded smile. “Good morning.”
She felt colour rising to her face. “Good morning.”
He looked oddly gratified by this exchange, as if it’d gone off better than he’d expected. “Did you sleep well?”
“Fine.” She gestured toward the stove. “What did she want? Has she found something?”
A raised eyebrow. “Apparently. She’s coming over in a moment to tell us what it is. I was about to go and wake you.” He paused in the doorway to the parlor, stooped, and kissed her deliberately on the forehead. “Excuse me. I have to Unblock the fireplace.”
Wondering fingers on her brow – she might have expected last night’s heart-stopping sexuality from him, but not necessarily the little niceties of romance – she stepped automatically aside and let him pass.
**
“We have a name,” Linchpin said without preamble.
It was to her credit, Severus thought, that she managed to maintain full professional dignity while sitting cross-legged on the floor of a treehouse; if she’d thought it odd to Floo into an seemingly-isolated mountain cabin, only to tiptoe past the doorway of the only bedroom and out into the damp-dripping woods, she hadn’t indicated as much. “Don’t get too excited,” she added now. “He’s been dead for several hundred years. We think.”
Sal snorted. “What good does that do us, then?” he muttered, sounding surly. Severus thought he knew the reason for his old friend’s grumpiness-of-late, and it had little to do with unsuccessful book-hunting; close to half a century of goblin wars had left him naturally suspicious of Gringotts’ pointy-eared employees, and he’d been less than cheerful ever since they’d come back from Cairo the other day with news of their new alliance.
Linchpin looked down her pince-nez at him, her small close-set eyes steely. “I chose to think it rather valuable information,” she said coldly, then turned back toward Severus and Hermione. “My best researchers uncovered the name in the bank’s archives; it’s circumstantial, of course, but the mark used on the Nameless account isn’t particularly common, and it coincides with one he used on personal correspondence.” She looked half-disgusted, half-smug. “We’ve been telling people not to write down their identification runes for centuries, but do they ever listen? No.”
“What’s the name?” Hermione asked, but Sal had already floated resentfully around behind the goblin and was peering over her shoulder.
“Alain de Fondant,” he said, looking thoughtful. “That wouldn’t be the pirate, would it?”
Linchpin’s claws tightened reflexively on her paperwork. “The pirate, yes,” she agreed. Severus frowned.
“The name sounds familiar,” he said. “But I don’t remember why.”
“Well—“ Linchpin began, but Sal beat her to it.
“Fascinating story,” he said – “do allow me, won’t you?”
The goblin nodded reluctantly. Sal smiled.
“The de Fondants were an old Norman wizarding family,” he said. “Alain’s father – Bertrand, I believe it was – was only the latest in a long line of court magicians, which was nice work if you could get it. Meant interacting with the Muggles, of course, which most of us had stopped by then – but the money and the perks were worth it, if you didn’t mind a certain amount of inherent risk. Bertrand de Fondant was the favoured necromancer of one of the French princes – I forget which one exactly. Married one of the Devereaux girls, I believe. Had one son – that’s Alain.” He shot a challenging glance at the frowning goblin opposite him. “How’m I doing so far?”
Linchpin pursed her lips. “Go on.”
“Well, Alain was being groomed for the trade,” Sal continued, winking at Hermione. “Had things turned out differently, he would most likely have been a court magician just like his father. But Bertrand was a Templar knight – there were more than a few of us, you know, in the Order; too much money and power tied up in it to resist completely – and the Templars were heavily into piracy at that point. One of them, another undercover wizard, asked to take on Alain as his cabin boy, and Bertrand agreed.”
Hermione, who had been silent up to this point, shifted back against the bookshelf and wrapped both hands around her blue-jeaned knees. Severus tried not to notice how this movement played up the inner curve of her thighs in the snug denim, and failed miserably.
“What happened then?”
“Two things, really,” Sal said. “One, he got a taste for the piracy business and liked it; started to work his way up through the ranks after his original term of apprenticeship was up. Wasn’t such a bad job, being a Templar pirate – they were a pretty democratic lot, all told – and besides, having magical ability just sweetened the pot. Rumour had it that before Alain docked for the last time, he’d figured out how to Apparate not only himself, but his entire ship. Made a pile of money at it, whether it’s true or not.” He lifted a pale, shaggy eyebrow. “And then, King Philip lowered the boom on the Templar movement, and Bertrand got caught in the scuffle.”
“You mean--?” Hermione was wide-eyed, caught up in the story. Sal nodded grimly.
“Tortured and executed,” he said. “Tout de suite. Had a real grudge against Muggles after that, I’ll wager.” He jerked his ghostly head toward Linchpin. “Or isn’t that where all this is headed?”
“Not a bad guess,” Linchpin said neutrally, and shuffled the papers on her lap. “Shortly after Bertrand’s death, our records show simultaneous withdrawals from Alain de Fondant’s private accounts and deposits to the Nameless account marked with the symbol I showed you earlier, in matching amounts.”
“Circumstantial,” Sal muttered. Linchpin fixed him with a look.
“Less so,” she said, “the higher the numbers go. And these were rather high, even by today’s standards.” She adjusted her spectacles with one clear-lacquered claw before continuing. “Not long after that, the same Nameless account began funneling money to a number of pureblood-supremacist groups. One of them, a select international cabal of pureblood wizards calling themselves Les Choix, corresponded with de Fondant via this anonymous account more regularly than did the others; our research seems to indicate that he may have possibly been a member, or even in a position of leadership within the group.”
“Les Choix,” Hermione said thoughtfully. “Are they the same thing as the Knights of the Golden Wand, then?”
Linchpin shook her head. “That’s what’s interesting,” she said. “Les Choix closed their account with us at nearly the same time that Alain de Fondant withdrew the considerable personal funds remaining to him.” She slanted a wry glance at Sal. “I imagine Mr. Slytherin can take the tale from here.”
“Not much to tell,” Sal said, but his pale eyes were alight with reminiscence. “Mystery of the century, though, that’s for sure.”
Severus, who knew Sal’s Storyteller Face when he saw it, hid a smile with the pretense of a yawn. “Well?” he inquired, in tones carefully modulated for the proper level of ennui. Sal grinned at him.
“King Philip of France,” he said, “declared the Order of the Templars to be heretics in January of 1308, at which point all their property – far exceeding his own, might I add; the Templars were the principal financiers of all Europe for centuries – became the property of the Church and Crown. Along with the landownings and armies and such, there was the fabled gold of the Paris Treasury, which Philip made a play for but never found.” He leaned back, unwittingly floating a few inches off the floor as he became more involved in his story. “The Muggles have all sorts of wild theories about what might possibly have happened to all the money. None of them true, of course. In reality, the Templars got wind of the impending disaster and all the gold was handed over to de Fondant, who was to put it on a ship and get it out of Europe.”
“Three guesses as to what happened,” Severus murmured sardonically. Hermione, who had been wrapped up in the story, jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Take the money and run,” she said softly, then looked surprised at herself. Sal nodded.
“Exactly.”
Hermione looked at Linchpin. “And it never showed up again?”
“Not at Gringotts,” Linchpin said drily. “All three of them disappeared within the same day – de Fondant, Les Choix, and the gold. And none have been heard from since.”
**
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