LAST TANGO IN PARIS
Chapter Seven

Oh, some spells were more complex than others – there was no denying that. But what she'd noticed most, as a first-year student of magic alighting for the first time from the enchanted rowboats, was a lack of formality in the art of spellcasting. From the reading she'd done beforehand – as much as possible from Diagon Alley, her textbooks and as much more supplemental reading as she could carry away, but also plenty from the Muggle bookstore down the street from her parents' office – she’d expected a more rarefied atmosphere, more sigils and runes and pentagrams, more chanting and candlelight and mystery.

What a frightened little girl she'd been, that first day on the train ... nattering on about the ‘simple spells’ she'd tried at home, when in reality her wand had never been out of the box. She'd been more surprised than either Harry or Ron had been when that Oculus Reparo had really worked – was that really all there was to it? shouldn’t it have been harder than that? – and it had taken her almost the whole term before she got used to the everyday banality of most of it. Magic was supposed to be noble, after all, exalted ... not this casual, taken-for-granted mishmash of Dungbombs and Leg-Lockers and Fizzing Whizzbees.

And even then, long after she'd finally figured it out – that in a place like this, even the extraordinary became, eventually, the mundane – she’d kept hoping in her most secret soul of souls, at the start of each successive term, that there really was more to it than this – that this would be the year when they'd finally stop beating round the bush and start the real magic. The ceremonial circles, the chalices, the libations and incantations and bacchanalia.

Dark rooms and golden vessels. Altered planes of existence.

It had never happened. She'd stopped expecting it to, eventually ... real life, after all, hadn't left much room for adolescent dreams of High Drama.

Ironic, that: now that she’d given it up as a lost cause, she was finally getting the grand ritual she’d longed for. And she couldn’t have cared less.

She would have gone back to Oculus Reparo in a heartbeat, if it would have meant a reversal of the past six weeks. Give me back my husband, she'd silently petitioned the ceiling, night after night in her darkened room, and I'll never pick up a wand again. I swear it.

But Death didn't bargain with mortals, and so Bill was gone, truly and irrevocably, as if he’d plucked the wrong card off a Monopoly board – go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. No higher court. No appeal – and how Hermione had looked for one, a loophole, a snag in the cosmos that could have sent him back to her … pacing the halls of the house they’d remodelled together, hands clutching and reclutching the lapels of his most-beloved chambray shirt, the one she’d found draped over the side of the hamper and couldn’t bear to launder because it still smelled like him. Halfway through the week that followed the immolation ceremony, just before the Weasleys’ departure from Cairo, she had even approached her father-in-law and asked, in a trembling voice pitched too low for Molly to overhear, about the possibility of borrowing a Time-Turner from the Ministry ... only to be completely undone by the mingled grief and understanding in his kind hazel eyes.

"Oh, Hermione," he'd said. "If we could, don't you think we already would have? It's against every law we have, to use magic to meddle with the dead." His lips had trembled, but his gaze stayed steady. "And for the best, too. Some things are meant to be beyond us."

He'd looked so beaten at this last that Hermione hadn't had the heart to argue with him ... she'd simply nodded and turned away, the better to ponder the mysteries of life in the wizarding world – and to wonder, not without a touch of bitterness, exactly what other Cardinal Rules Dumbledore had encouraged them to break as schoolchildren, in the interests of winning the war against Voldemort.

Voldemort. Now there was a name no one had heard in awhile.

In a way, Hermione wished she was still dealing with him; Dark Lord or no, he would still have been easier to fight -- easier to hate -- than this shadowy faceless conglomerate she didn't know, that could by virtue of its anonymity conceal itself anywhere, in anyone. Frightening to think that they had come so close, that they'd been in her office amid her things, that strange careless hands had swept Bill's framed picture off her desk, to make room for the plastic explosive ... and that try as she might, she still couldn't think of anyone she knew who would bear her so great a grudge.

Maybe that was the point -- after all, it wouldn't be the first time, or the last, that ignorance and reluctance to change teamed up to coin another sad photo caption, to sell another paper.

But that didn't make Hermione feel any better.

She sighed now and turned back from her guest-room tower window to the bed, where the house-elf on laundry detail had laid out her robes for the ceremony. Even by wizarding standards, they were strange clothes ... a thin white chemise, adorned at the bodice with a double row of ornamental buttons and fastening up the front with a series of small cotton-cord loops, and a navy-blue open-in-front outer robe that fit her passably in every respect except one – the long loose sleeves which hung a half-metre past her fingertips and had, so far at least, resisted every Hemming Charm she'd thrown at them.

Evidently they had some significance within the ritual, she decided finally, and let them be.

Pulling the clothes over her head, she studied herself critically in the mirror and sighed. The unbuttoned, dishevelled I'm-wearing-his-clothes-today look was all very well for a quiet Saturday morning in the lab, but it wasn't exactly how she wanted to face Severus Snape for the first time in six years. In the ill-fitting robe, her complexion washed out by the dark blue colour and her arms all but swimming in excess fabric, she felt about as capable and self-possessed as a six-year-old clumping around in her mother's shoes … whereas he, she had no doubt, would be as cool and ascetic a presence as ever.

He had been at Hogwarts for nearly a week, and Hermione had managed, for the most part, to avoid him. As large as the castle was, this had still taken some doing – more than once, she’d eaten in the kitchens, rather than risk sharing his table – and on one occasion, she’d seen him walk into the library in just barely enough time to slide her book off the table and slip behind some convenient shelves.

"Why don’t you want to talk to him?" Sal had asked over the chessboard two nights ago, and Hermione had only shrugged.

"I don’t really know," she said. "It’s not just him, if that’s any consolation. I’ve been avoiding most everybody I know. It helps me keep my head clear." She shrugged. "If you hadn’t come floating through my bedroom wall, I’d probably be avoiding you, too."

An understanding nod, then a few moments’ silence while Sal studied the board. "Bishop to row five," he said finally, and then leaned back in his chair. "You sure your head needs to be clear just now?"

Just the tone of his voice – gentle, absent of judgment – had tears starting to Hermione’s eyes. "Don’t start, Sal," she said wearily, and swiped at her eyes. "No, I’m not sure. Of anything. But seeing anyone who knew me then … knew him … makes me think about it. And it’s so much easier right now when I don’t have to." She stared at the chessboard, struggling to make out the pieces with blurred vision. "Pawn to bishop five," she said, and Sal’s bishop glared at her.

"You know he’s letting you win, right?" it croaked, then submitted with elaborate patience as Hermione’s pawn took off its head. Hermione’s lip trembled again.

"See?" she said. "Everyone’s so … nice. Unnaturally so. Do you know, even Peeves brought me flowers from the greenhouse the other day? Peeves!"

Wordlessly, Sal dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and held it out, looking a little nonplussed when Hermione’s fingers slid right through it. "Sorry," he said. "It gets harder and harder for me to remember I’m a ghost." He pointed his wand at her dressing-table and floated a box of tissues over to her. "If it helps," he said, gaze tactfully averted as she blew her nose, "I don’t think Severus has ever sent a woman flowers in his life. And he’s probably not likely to start now."

"No," she admitted. "But seeing him’s worse than seeing anyone else, regardless."

"Why?"

Hermione hesitated. "Because the thought of even talking to him feels … disloyal," she said finally. "That’s why."

Sal raised an eyebrow. "You’ve had an owl from Draco," he pointed out mildly. "Did you feel the same way about that?"

Hermione shook her head. "No. But that’s different."

"How so?"

Hermione knew exactly where the difference lay – in the pea-sized diamond solitaire on Gabrielle Delacour’s small capable hand. Hard to feel guilty about an owl from Draco when she and Bill had had dinner with them, just a year ago – Draco, the new CEO of St. Mungo’s, deep in talk of renovations and reform, and Gabrielle, her spot at Oxford assured, her cottage by the sea a fantasy no longer. Just about the only bone of contention between them had been the lack of a wedding date – she wants her picture on the cover of Forbes first, Draco had said dryly – and as long as that dinner had lasted, reminiscence and laughter long after the cognac was gone, after the dessert plates were empty, there hadn’t been so much as a buzz of leftover chemistry.

As it should be, she’d thought at the time. Hard to explain that to Sal, though – that Draco was safe because she knew she didn’t want him, and that Snape was dangerous because she was afraid she still might … but more than that, even, because she would have chosen him first, all those years ago, if he’d given her the choice.

Awful feeling, that, a sizzling acid burn of guilt over the evisceration of her grief, like being eaten from the inside. Helpless, a breath away from sobbing, she dug her teeth savagely into her lower lip and tipped over her king.

"I’m sorry, Sal," she said tightly. "You’re being very kind, but I just can’t talk to you right now."

After that encounter – a painful reminder of just exactly how close she was to the edge – she hadn’t left Gryffindor Tower. Now, she ran a brush mechanically through her hair, raised her wand to administer an Anti-Red charm to her eyes, and let it drop again … at this point, cosmetics were superfluous, and her hand was shaking too hard to continue anyway. She slid her feet into a pair of ballet flats and set her jaw.

By this time tomorrow, she’d probably still want to avoid Severus Snape. And he’d be the only living wizard on the planet who’d know how to find her.

Head high, teeth gritted, she headed for the door.

**