LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Thirty-Eight

He woke up gradually these days, which was a luxury he’d never afforded himself before – even as a small child too young for Hogwarts, he could remember opening his eyes into startling, immediately lucid clarity, zero to sixty in a flat split second. That he felt fuzzy right now, that the stain of pink dawn through his closed eyelids made him want to pull the covers over his head and disappear underneath them, seemed like a good sign.

And then he smelled coffee.

"You’re late," said the Love of His Life in dulcet tones, and made sure he’d opened one eye and knew that the mug was two inches from his nose before she adroitly snatched it away again. "In fact, you’ve never been so late. You’ve set a new standard for lateness."

"Urrrrrgggh," Draco said, and frowned blearily up at her. She was damp from the shower and dressed for work in a two-piece suit of charcoal-grey wool, her long golden curls twisted savagely into a French knot but already starting to escape from it as they dried. By mid-afternoon, he knew, they’d have worked their way free entirely, and she’d have resorted to pulling them back in a heavy ponytail – not exactly conducive to the severe corporate image she was after, and she kept threatening to cut them off, but so far she hadn’t done it. Draco wasn’t sure whether this was due to his begging, or merely because it suited her nefarious purposes to look more cute and cuddly than she really was.

Some women would have complained about being underestimated at work. Gabrielle merely took advantage of it.

Another one of the million reasons he adored her.

"Coffee," he said hopefully, opening the other eye. She went on as if she hadn’t noticed.

"You could write a book on lateness, that’s how late you are. Confessions of a Modern Hibernator." She took a sip of the coffee, stepping adroitly back just as he made a calculated lunge for the mug. "Ah-ah-ah. Rip Van Malfoy: How I Slept Through My Twenties. Not a sip until you’ve got both feet on the floor."

Feigning obedience, he swung his legs out of bed, then ignored the coffee cup she set down on the nightstand and went for her instead, grabbing her at mid-thigh level and falling back on the bed, triumphant, with her sprawled on top of him. True to her nature, she didn’t even squeak in protest, just adjusted her position and grinned down at him.

"I’m not going to kiss you until you’ve brushed your teeth, you know," she said, and then put the lie to that statement by applying her lips to his earlobe. She smelt of soap and cinnamon toothpaste. She was going to have to put her hair back up again.

She was a better wake-up call than coffee any day.

Draco tangled one hand in the unruly mass of curls at her nape and rolled with her. His free hand was already making free with the buttons of her blouse. "So," he said, his words muffled by the deep, pale curve of her neck. "How late am I, exactly?"

Gabrielle gasped and arched up into his searching fingers. "Um. Not too late. Come to think of it."

Generalities were unlike her. Suspicious, he stopped kissing her throat long enough to crane his head toward the clock radio on the nightstand. "How late," he inquired, "is ‘not too late’?"

She’d hiked her skirt up to her waist, grasped him with small but certain fingers. The diamond solitaire on the fourth finger of her left hand caught a stray beam of morning sun and flashed a rainbow in his face. "Does it matter?"

She was too good at this, Draco thought, and sank back into the pillows as she pushed him over on his back again and threw one leg over his hips. The warm dry fingers stroking his cock gave him a last friendly squeeze of encouragement, then withdrew. The next moment, he was in paradise.

"No," he said on a half-sigh, and pulled her down against him. "No, I suppose it doesn’t."

Behind his head, the time changed over to 7:00. But the alarm didn’t sound.

She’d thought of everything.

**

After that, he figured his day could only go downhill. From the look on his secretary’s face when he Apparated into her office, he was afraid he was right.

"You have visitors, Mr. Malfoy," she said, using the same tone of voice for visitors that she might have ordinarily reserved for rampaging sewer trolls. Draco raised one eyebrow.

"Did they say who they were? What they wanted?"

Bettina – grey of hair, straight of back, possessed of a retired husband, a meek-voiced son named Anthony, a daughter-in-law to whom she referred as That Tramp, and six beloved, much-petted grandchildren – shook her head. "They’re in your office," she said, lips held in a flat, disapproving line. "They said you’d know them when you saw them."

A surreptitious peek through the window leading to his inner sanctum confirmed this as a true statement – mostly. Draco sighed, and felt his orgasm-induced Extraordinary Good Mood morph into a sort of wary incredulity.

Snape. And Slytherin. That much was figurable, though what they wanted at St. Mungo’s, or with him, he’d be hard-pressed to say. But who were the two women with them? And – he peeked again, ducked back against the wall, rubbed his eyes –was that Longbottom? What was he doing in there?

Surreal. He turned back toward Bettina, not bothering to hide his puzzled frown. "They didn’t say anything to you?"

"The ghost," Bettina said, "was here when I arrived. Inside the office. I caught him looking through the filing cabinet." Her eyes narrowed. "I’ll wager he didn’t expect me here an hour before opening – now, did he?"

"Really." Draco whistled under his breath. "And?"

"And I threatened to call the Ministry and have him exorcised." She sniffed. "That’s when the others showed up. One of them – the man with the dark hair – was most rude. I’m not at all sure I shouldn’t call the Ministry, Mr. Malfoy."

"Um." Draco closed his eyes, thought longingly of his vacation – still three weeks away, and not getting closer fast enough to suit him – then wearily opened them again. "Don’t call yet, all right? I’ll try to sort it out."

Downhill, he thought, and headed for the door. Definitely downhill.

**

If he was confused before entering the room, what he felt ten minutes after sitting down at the table would have qualified him for a private ward on the Fourth Floor. "One more time," he said to Snape, and was surprised to see Snape turn on the young woman he’d introduced as Kate.

"Do you see?" he snapped at her. "It’s no use."

Draco, accustomed to seeing recipients of that tone and look turn the colour of pistachio pudding and quail in their boots, wasn’t prepared to see this Kate – ah, Billings, was it? – tilt her chin at a more pugnacious angle and stare Snape down. "Try again," she hissed at him. "If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and we’ll move on to Plan B. But let’s try to avoid that, shall we?"

"If what doesn’t work?" Draco wondered aloud, and Joséphine Dessources – Hogwarts’ new Potions Mistress – laughed.

"Don’t mind them," she said. "Lovers’ quarrel."

Draco’s eyes popped.

Lovers’ quarrel? Excuse me? Since when has Snape been getting laid?

What’s going on here?

He sent Neville a hard look. There’d never been any love lost between them, granted, but on the other hand, neither had Longbottom ever been known to lie. Slytherin common-room gossip had him pegged as too stupid – whether or not that was true, Draco had never quite figured out. "Longbottom," he said. "Explain to me what this is about, will you? I’m lost."

"The bottom line is this," Neville said. "Kate thinks she might be on the trail of some new treatment that can cure my parents. She wants to run some tests – Muggle tests – on them, and I’ve agreed to let her do it."

He regarded Draco warily. "We’re telling you about it first because Kate needs to move them, temporarily, to a Muggle hospital in order to perform the tests. And—" he swallowed once, nervously—"because no one else can know about it. It has to be a secret from the rest of the staff."

"Secret," Draco repeated. "See, that’s the part I don’t understand. Why does that matter?"

"It matters," Kate Billings said sharply, "because the last time you and I spoke about running tests on the Longbottoms, an extremist group found out about it, blew up my laboratory and killed my husband. We’re trying not to have that happen again."

"What?" Draco shook his head, unsure of whether to be angry or just incredulous. "The last time we spoke? What last time we spoke?"

Angry was winning – which was good, because it felt better to be angry than to be confused. "I’ve never seen you before in my life. I’ve never spoken to you in my life. Before nine o’ clock this morning, I didn’t know you existed. What the hell are you talking about?"

"She’s talking about these," said Sal from his seat in the corner of the room, and floated a stack of documents down the table toward Draco with a wave of his wand. "From your files," he said. "You’ll find the pertinent memos in the Longbottom and Lockhart folders." A faint smile. "Thought you might need a bit of convincing; that’s why I showed up early."

Draco caught the stack of papers and shuffled through them, teeth caught on his upper lip. "These? They’re all blurry," he said, frowning at them. "They must be bad copies. I can’t read a word of this."

"It’s proof," Sal insisted. Draco smiled thinly.

"Not if I can’t read it, it’s not."

More whispering, at this, between Snape and Ms. Billings – his head shaking emphatically, her hands tracing the air in small tense circles, like well-trained doves. "Look," she said finally, loud enough for Draco to hear her. "I’m aware that it’s dangerous – who knows that better than I do? But it’s worth it – we’re onto something here, and if the cover’s blown it’s blown; I can handle myself now. Just do it, all right?"

She turned toward Draco, eyes still sparking with argument and intention. She’s right, he thought fuzzily; I have seen her before.

But where?

"The fact is," she said, "My name isn’t Kate Billings at all."

"Really?" He shook his head, puzzled – vaguely aware on a certain level that Neville and Joséphine looked as thrown by this as he did. "Then who are you?"

A sigh from Snape, and then he stood up – face pale and set, eyes burning out of the black holes of their sockets like dark lamps, like visionary’s torches. He had Kate by the shoulders, Draco noticed, in a grip far too firm to be quite comfortable, and wondered why she didn’t flinch away – why she didn’t look surprised.

"Hermione," Snape said, and the lights seemed to flicker in response to his voice. He took another deep breath.

"Hermione Granger. That’s who she is."

Draco’s mouth fell open.

Downhill, he thought for the third time that morning. Definitely downhill.

And then, everyone started to talk at once.

**