LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Thirty-Seven

She had only hesitated for a moment, back at the cabin, before popping open the lid of the Vanesca packet and thumbing out a single dose. The gel strip itself was a peculiar shade of greenish lavender, shot through with faintly glittering striata.

Pretty, she’d thought, and then snorted at herself for thinking it; after all, this little purple thumbnail of ephemera, according to the documents in her lap, was powerful enough to give her her life back.

You didn’t particularly like your life, remember? said a voice in her head, small and rusty with disuse. Went to great lengths to get rid of it, as I recall.

Well, yes, admitted its counterpart. But things were different then.

Different? How?

Well, for starters, said the second voice, a trifle defensively, I thought I was all alone.

Aren’t you?

A pause. No, said the second voice, smug now with reclaimed certainty. He loves me. He said so.

Hermione blinked. Well, she thought, good to get that straightened out, then.

And clinging to that last happy thought – he loves me – she stuck out her tongue, and carefully laid the strip of Vanesca atop it.

It tasted herbal, medicinal, unpleasant. She swallowed reflexively, half-gagging with the sharp green bite of the infusion’s rosemary topnote. A moment of dizziness, another – this one longer – of nausea.

And then the nausea cleared, and she remembered herself.

There was no physical sensation as such, just a silent Eureka Moment that shuddered through her psyche like a faraway earthquake. She sat for a stunned instant, as if pinned to her chair, then – unable to shake off the eerie sense of not belonging to her own body – reached over to the side table and palmed her wand.

Immediately she felt safer – and strangely, unnaturally calm. The room seemed to hold its breath as she scanned it, considering her options.

Finally, she focussed in on a spindly, sick-looking ficus tree next to the far window, in between a tapestried ottoman and the Edwardian writing-table where Sal did his crossword puzzle every morning. Most of the houseplants were thriving specimens of lush good health, but Sal had inadvertently walked through this one a few days ago, on his way in from the garden, and given it a mild case of frostbite from which it had yet to recover. "Arborius Reparo," Hermione murmured, and watched the furled leaves flare and lift. Her success left her flushed with satisfaction, but utterly unsurprised.

She hadn’t doubted for a second that it would work. It’d been months since she’d felt that certain – about anything.

It felt damn good.

The Vanesca binder was still open on her lap, the sample box she’d opened clutched in her left hand – the one not holding the wand. She started to slide it back into its plastic sleeve, then thought better of her impulse and pocketed it instead.

She needed to talk to Neville. And what she was about to tell him would require a bit of proof.

**

She was pretty sure that Snape would meet her at St. Mungo’s in the morning, if she asked him to – just a little side benefit of being back inside her own brain; her newly reclaimed self-knowledge, extensive as it was, paled in comparison to the mountain of tantalizing, contradictory things she’d just remembered about her old Potions Master. Not only that, but he’d tipped his hand the other night – in characteristic ungracious fashion, perhaps, but even his surliness was reassuring; better a grudging declaration, Hermione figured, than one too glib.

He loved her, and he’d loved her seven years ago, and he probably hadn’t ever stopped. And for once, there was nothing barring the way between them – no Draco, no murky teacher-student dynamic, no protestations of Innocence vs. Experience. No Bill now, either, unless you counted the memory of him.

Which possibly she should.

She sat dry-eyed in the big comfortable chair, summoned up the image of her laughing red-haired husband, and felt grief sweep through her like hard rain. A month ago, she’d buckled under its weight. Now, she grimly rode it out – and then sat white-knuckled in its aftermath, wondering how the very situation that she’d found unbearable that night beside the Seine should feel so different now.

I thought I was lost, then. But I had no idea how much more there was for me to lose.

Light-headed at the thought of her near miss with oblivion, flushed with purpose and an odd, cautious sort of … optimism, was it? Maybe … she put down her wand, banished thoughts of Severus Snape to the ‘Later’ category in her Upper Subconscious, and went to write him an explanatory note. Sal met her in the office doorway.

"Dinner’s ready," he said. She shook her head.

"Don’t have time. On my way to Paris."

"Paris?" He floated a couple of inches closer, frowning. "Whatever for? And how exactly were you planning to get there?" When she didn’t answer right away, only shot him a tired smile, his eyes widened.

"No." He peered into her face. "Yes." And then: "Really? How?"

"Let’s chalk it up to happy coincidence," Hermione said, fishing the packet of Vanesca out of her robes and holding it out to him. "Guess what my secret research project was all about?"

For being the complicated saga that it was, it didn’t take very long to fill him in. When she was finished, Sal whistled under his breath.

"Well," he said, "this trumps the stroganoff and the carrot cake. Go write your note – you’re right; Neville should be brought into the loop, and it’d might as well be sooner than later."

He looked positively luminous, lit from within by some deeply-banked, ghoulish excitement. You’re turned on by this, you old sneak, Hermione thought; you just love a mystery, don’t you? – and had to suppress a snicker at the immediate knowledge that she’d thought that exact same thing at least a hundred times before.

"You’re plotting something," she said. "What is it?"

Sal smirked.

"That you’re in need of a reconaissance man," he said, "and that I’m uniquely qualified for the job. "I’ll meet you at St. Mungo’s in the morning; in the meantime—" he cracked his knuckles and shot her a serene smile—"I’m going to pop off and rifle some papers, just to see what floats to the surface."

He may know his way around a cheese soufflé, Hermione thought a few moments later, ransacking Snape’s desk drawers for parchment and quill. But Betty Crocker he’s not.

Darkly amused by this thought, she left the note on the desk, grabbed her jacket from the hook in the corner, and went to reclaim her wand from the parlor.

She couldn’t wait to Apparate again.

**

"Let me get this straight," Neville said, frowning. Clearly, Hermione thought, he’d decided she was insane; blinking and scruffy-haired, still yawning from being dragged out of bed, he wore the beleaguered, put-upon expression of a man determined, against all provocation, to remain reasonable. "You’ve suddenly got your memory back, thanks to some miracle potion you invented yourself – you’re hunting a mysterious band of international killers who tried to blow you up to stop you from marketing it – and you think you can use it to cure my parents?" He shook his head. "Kate, this isn’t making much sense."

Of course it’s not, she thought, irritated. Only one word in ten that I’m trying to say is getting past the Fidelius. This is nuts.

"Neville. Listen to me." Hermione put her hand on his arm. "There’s a lot about this that’s … um, that’s too complicated to get into right now," she said. "But this is the most crucial bit. Your mum and dad – I think they know something, something important."

"Like what?"

She sighed. "I don’t know. But the very day after Draco suggested them for my research – that’s when the accident happened. It can’t be a coincidence."

Neville frowned again. "Draco," he said slowly. "Wait a second. You mean Malfoy?"

"Of course, Malfoy," Hermione said, casting her gaze ceilingward. "The C.E.O. of St. Mungo’s. What other Draco do we know?" Not liking the mulish set of his jaw, she forged ahead without meeting his eyes. "The potion – the Vanesca – it worked on Lockhart. He thought it might help your mum and dad, t—"

"—Malfoy," he repeated, cutting her off. From the sour look on his face, Hermione guessed that the Redemption of Draco, wondrous as it had been, wasn’t a miracle Neville was prepared to accept. "That … swine. That pointy-chinned albino freak. No wonder your office got blown up; he was probably the one who lit the fuse."

Hermione hesitated. "No," she said. "He didn’t. I know."

"How do you know?"

"I just know, all right?" As explanations went, this one took the big blue ribbon for Lame and Unconvincing, but it was the best she was capable of, on the pitiable amount of sleep she’d managed in the last forty-eight hours. "Look, Neville, I know you and Draco didn’t get on at school—"

"—Didn’t get on? He and his goons tortured me for years!—"

"—but I find it impossible to believe that in all the time your parents have been at St. Mungo’s, you haven’t figured out that he’s on our side now," Hermione soldiered on. "And whether or not he’s involved with this doesn’t signify at the moment – the facts are that I was all set to find you and get permission to run some tests on your parents, and practically in the next heartbeat my office was lying in splinters all over greater Cairo and I was on the run."

She grabbed his hand and tugged until his eyes reluctantly met hers. "Haven’t you ever wondered why the Death-Eaters went after them, Neville? Don’t you think there’s probably more to it than just spite and bad luck?"

He blinked, then looked away.

"Maybe," he said, chewing on his lower lip. "But on the other hand, Kate – it’s my experience that bad luck and spite are usually enough." His normally-sweet face was still set in stubborn lines. "And yes, I know that Malfoy’s outwardly respectable now. But his father was too, remember, and look what he was up to all along."

"Draco isn’t Lucius," Hermione pointed out. Neville nodded.

"I know. But I’m still not sure I trust him to have my parents’ best interests at heart."

"It’s worth a try, I’d say."

This from Joséphine, sleep-sultry and looking like Afterglow Personified in a red satin dressing gown with marabou trim. Up till now, she’d been too preoccupied with the sample box of Vanesca to join in the conversation; now, she held one of the gel strips up to the light and peered through it thoughtfully, her dark eyes sharp and speculative despite her tumbled appearance. "Think about it, Slick," she said quietly without looking at him. "It’s been twenty years since it happened, and no one’s been able to cure them. No one’s even offered."

"I know," Neville said. "But—"

"So." Joséphine flicked him a deceptively casual glance. "For two decades, your mum’s been collecting bits of paper in a tin can. What do you care who’s involved with this experiment, if there’s a chance she might get better? How can it hurt her more than she’s already been hurt?"

Neville looked stricken, then considering. "I take your point," he said. Joséphine squeezed his hand across the table.

"Think about it, that’s all." She rubbed the strip of Vanesca between her thumb and forefinger, then sniffed the abraded surface critically.

"I expected magical ingredients," she said to Hermione. "But this is just a neutral base of herbs, isn’t it?"

Hermione nodded. "It’s all in the enchantments," she said. "A Suspension Charm –"

"Clever." Joséphine scraped the gel strip absently with her fingernail, then held the scraping to the light. "Triple-charmed. Unbelievable."

"Thanks."

"Designed for Obliviate, did you say?" She was prodding the remains of the strip with her wand now, her eyes intent on the series of small violet sparks rising from it. "How did you intend to modify it for Crucio?"

"I’m not sure," Hermione said, fascinated by the dexterity and offhanded skill apparent in this casual field diagnostic. "That’s why I need the X-rays – to find out what I’m dealing with."

She turned her attention to Neville, regretting once again the barrier of the Fidelius that prevented her from telling him everything. "I promise you," she said. "I’m on the level. I wouldn’t lie to you."

"I believe you," he said, grey eyes uncertain. "I’ve just got some questions, that’s all."

"Come to St. Mungo’s with me," Hermione said, "and I swear to you, you’ll understand everything once we get there."

**