“Merlin, Granger, you don’t invite the help to dinner.”
“Is she really mad about that? Isn’t she normally that grumpy?”
“Yes, so stop grimacing, woman.”
“Don’t ‘woman’ me.”
All this, while their dad pulled out a chair for their mum with such a sappy face, and far from grimacing, their mum smiled rather too much, as if she’d been presented with a heroic gesture. Callie and Lia looked at each other and with completely bland faces agreed wordlessly that adults in general”and their parents in particular”were idiots.
Except for a handful of tortillas here and there and a remnant of pudding floating like a mini-iceberg in a silver dish, they’d put away almost everything on the table.
A jug of milk stood half-empty beside the bottle of wine. Milk that all of them had swallowed by the glass at one point or another when they spooned something too spicy into their mouths. In the living room, one of those breathy Christmas songs was playing. Hermione didn’t know they had a record player here, much less Christmas records. Pietro and Pierra apparently held much more sway than she realised. And those flatulent songs were apparently more soothing than she realised. And sitting there with both her girls was much more perfect than she already realised.
Not that it was entirely the stuff of fairy tales, even though the candlelight and the frolicking fireflies framed by the picture windows made the dinner almost dream-like; there had been awkward moments.
“She just started banging on my harpsichord one day,” Draco had said when both Hermione asked about Callie’s music, “and next thing I knew, she was learning faster than I could keep up with. So her grandmother got her a master and a piano.”
“Did you want to be a concert pianist back then?” Lia had said to her sister. “Because back then, I wanted to be a ‘plankster’. Uncle Fred convinced me it was the greatest profession in the world.”
And Callie had shaken her head and sipped from her glass, which Hermione had known by then was a telltale sign of the girl’s discomfort. Hermione had looked with mild alarm and rabid curiosity at Draco, who was blinking as if remembering something, his grin becoming a small smile with a tinge of ruefulness.
“Oi! Tell!” Lia had misread her sister’s unease and bounced in her seat with a big grin. “What was it? Did you want to be a princess? I did, too, you know, but then the princesses in Muggle stories turned out to be doormats so I””
“I wanted to be a sister.”
Little Drummer Boy had ended in a decrescendo so they’d still heard Callie’s whisper.
“Oh,” Lia had whispered back.
“I know. It’s so odd, right? But I remember””
“Me, too.”
“You, too?”
Lia had nodded. And Hermione had blinked her eyes fast and clenched at her serviette under the table to keep from lifting it, burying her face in it and bawling. Draco reached for her hand under the table and squeezed it, and then effectively diverted all three of them by asking if they wanted to see shark-feeding.
There was a vaguely interested and only slightly aghast, “Really?” from Lia and audible groans from Callie and Hermione. Conversation went smoothly since then, with Hermione listening and laughing at her girls’ antics more than talking, which was why she felt the need now to ‘contribute’.
“Your Nanas and Poppies know we’re here, right? They’re not looking for us right now?” Hermione said.
Callie and Lia shook their heads.
“The Poppies and Nanas are in bed by now,” said Lia.
“Uncles Fred and George will have told them,” said Callie.
“We’re really staying here until New Year’s?” Hermione said.
Callie and Lia nodded.
“That mistletoe hasn’t followed us here, by any chance, has it?” Draco said.
Callie and Lia burst into laughter. Hermione shot Draco a look. “What?” he said. “I thought we were interrogating them. I don’t really care about the frigging mistletoe. No. Right then, since we’re exploring tomorrow, we’d best get to bed.”
The girls fell to giggles again. Hermione forgot her mushy musings. Just what was so funny about going to bed?
Sleigh beds. The thing with sleigh beds was they strictly limited who could fit between the headboard and footboard. The two sleigh beds that had miraculously replaced his bed in his room were exactly five feet long, which was only a couple or so inches bigger than Callie and Lia lying down without having to put their shoulders up on their pillows. They snuggled down contentedly enough while Draco and Hermione stared.
Well, Hermione was staring. Draco was grinning.
“It seems we’d have the other bed in the other room to ourselves, then.” And then, just as casually, “You know, that black fruitcake proved Pierra and Pietro are wizards, because that thing has to be left for two days, and unless they served something they’d prepared for themselves, they magically aged that pud””
“Girls, listen to me,” Hermione, red to the roots of her hair, said after shooting Draco the glare she shot at people who were reported abusing their house-elves. His rambling hadn’t worked to distract her at all. “This is the silliest thing I’ve ever been subjected to. I can sleep with”I can go to bed with”I can share a bed with your father just fine, thank you, but I’d rather not. I’ve only had one night with both of you. I know you’re big girls now, but...And if you insist on staying in those beds, we’re cutting this holiday short and it will be all your fault””
“You don’t like the beds?”
Hermione sputtered soundlessly for several seconds before shutting her mouth and smiling sheepishly at Pietro, who had suddenly peered in at the door. Draco disguised his involuntary jump with a slap on his bare arm, even though because of the wards there weren’t any mosquitoes within a half mile radius of the villa.
“I made those beds,” said Pietro, smiling his I-just-might-stab-you-in-your-beds smile. “The other one was too big. Not cosy or safe for the girls.”
“Oh.” Hermione was red again. “They’re very nice beds, Pietro, thank you.”
“I hope you sleep well, girls. Good night.”
Hermione nodded at the blanket greeting. Draco poked his head out and followed Pietro’s shuffling walk, just to make sure the old fart was indeed walking, not popping in and out of places like a grizzled mushroom. When he turned back into the room, Hermione was bending over Callie, kissing her good night.
He decided he could be chivalrous. “I can sleep in the divan downstairs. Or we could Transfigure the chaise in the master suite. Pietro wouldn’t know.” But he whispered that last bit, just in case.
Hermione looked up at him and smiled. And then she pointed her wand at their children.
Nothing happened, though Draco thought he heard Thalia snigger under her blanket.
“Well.” Hermione was wandless now and walking to the door, to him. “You don’t have to sleep in the divan or a Transfigured chaise. It’s all right.”
“Are you sure? I don’t think whatever spell you tried on the girls’ beds will work in the””
She still gave it a shot anyway. But the master suite remained the way it was, the bed one huge pile of white linen and silk”too huge, if you wanted to nitpick, and Draco was in a nitpicky mood”and the air redolent of something floral, fruity and chemical all at the same time. A perfume that was already making his eyelids lower languorously while the rest of him felt only more awake.
“What is that scent? Did you do that?”
She ignored him and went to the en suite. She emerged in her red nightgown. Draco was a little disappointed. Just a little. And he didn’t want to think of those negligees he’d bought her anyway, not with her damnable ink-champagne scent strangely amplified in the room, and not if he wanted to survive the night unscathed. Dammit. Cold shower.
Hermione was beginning to believe Draco’s theories about Pietro and Pierra. They had to have done something to this room. Only, why? All right, so they probably thought she and Draco were married. But the elderly twins didn’t strike her as people who’d bother to make the master bedroom so... so sensual. They were here with kids, for Merlin’s sake. It wasn’t a romantic holiday at all. But then, if she didn’t lay blame at their feet, there was the thought that Lucius and Narcissa meant their room to be like this, and Hermione didn’t want to go down that line of thought, especially as she was ensconced in their bed.
Draco had gone out and still hadn’t returned. Fine. Let him break his back in that divan.
After more futile attempts at Nox to extinguish the disconcertingly rosy-golden light stubbornly spotlighting the bed from an invisible source, Hermione fell asleep.
She realised she’d fallen asleep because she woke up. She had no idea how much time had passed, but enough that she was a little drowsy from sleep”yes, so drowsy she was a little slow on the uptake when she felt the bed dip too close to her and breathing blowing too close to the back of her neck.
She smelled wine in that breath. “Are you drunk?”
“No.” Draco exhaled a chuckle. “I’m not mad.”
But as if to contradict that statement, he draped his right arm over her waist and slid his left arm under her until his left hand could splay over her belly, which quivered under his touch. He locked his right arm with his left, and then he pulled her closer, he shifted closer, until there was no place for air between them, just warmth.
“Stop breathing on my hair.”
“Move it out of the way, will you? My hands are occupied.”
“You’re lying on it.”
Another soft chuckle as he shifted to free her. Hermione reached back and flicked her hair upward behind her.
“Do you have any idea how heavy this is? If I choke and die, people should scalp you for their own safety.”
It was her turn to puff out laughter. She reached back again and draped her hair over her neck and shoulder.
His chest made a rumble of disapproval. “How about you flip your hair in the same direction you did earlier, only higher this time so it doesn’t smother me?”
“How about you remove your person from me and””
In one swift move, he removed his arm and sent her breath stuttering when his fingers brushed her neck as he swung her hair away and up over both their heads, and then his arm was back, pulling her even closer this time, while he scooted lower on the pillow and ended up with his face buried in the skin left bare by the square neckline of her nightgown, his forehead pressed to her nape.
She’d never known the skin of her back to be that sensitive.
“Good night, Hermione.”
She could feel his smirk against her skin, making her want to elbow him. She wondered if he could hear her heart malfunctioning in her chest. She decided she didn’t care. She draped her arm on top of his and slid her fingers between his. His indrawn breath and sigh calmed her.
She was just about to fall asleep again when he began talking, his lips moving on the skin of her back.
“When you’re done being stupid and stubborn, I won’t be tamely holding you like this. There won’t be anything tame between us. I want to bite you just here.” He blew on the spot where her nape met her shoulders and Hermione had to stifle a gasp, wide-awake now. “But if I bite you once, I’ll want to bite you everywhere else. I want to bite and suckle and lick and taste. And when I do that, I’ll do it for hours and hours until I just about kill the both of us. Certainly not something to do when we’ve got a hike to do in the morning, hmm? You won’t be able to walk otherwise.”
Her heart was thudding in her chest. When she was done being stupid and stubborn? What was he getting at? And as for” It was several long eternities before she found breath to talk, and it was only to say, “You are drunk.”
He exhaled another soundless chuckle and kissed her again on her back.
Breathlessly, Hermione waited for him to talk again or... or do something. He didn’t. Her simultaneous relief and disappointment, and her indignation at his audacity, were almost suffocating. But she fell asleep to the soothing movement of his left hand stroking the silk over her belly.
Draco had gone to the house by the river in the mainland. If Hermione wanted her own room, he’d give it to her. They could all move there. Merlin knew he didn’t want to torture himself either.
He had Apparated to the foyer and blinked in confusion. By the moonlight coming in through the fanlight, he was in the right place”there was the Black crest etched onto one marble tile on the floor”and everything seemed to be in perfect order, except that the lamps had not flared to life at his arrival and, was that music coming from the drawing room?
The music wasn’t anything he’d heard before. Probably Muggle. Trumpety.
When he saw who was dancing to it, he halted and found himself scrambling for cover and peering through the leaves of the potted ficus stationed like a sentry to the right of the archway.
A man and a woman, both silver-haired, were swaying and side-stepping to the music, their arms around each other, heads close together. Both of them holding a glass of wine in one hand, wine that threatened to spill with every swing but never did.
“I love you so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” said the man, his voice deep enough to be heard over the music.
The woman snorted. “Is that the wine talking, or is it you?”
“Of course, it’s me, dearest heart. Talking to the wine.”
The woman laughed and slapped the man where her hand lay on his shoulder.
Who they were and why they were in his mother’s house, Draco did wonder, but foremost was his bewilderment at their intimacy and their ease and confidence in that intimacy. That friendship. Had they always been like this? Were they always like this? How did they come to this period of stepping on each other’s toes and laughing about it?
He left them without disturbing them, and back at the villa in Ambergris Caye, found himself pouring a glass of wine and raising it to those two ancient lovebirds. He drank, and then went upstairs feeling oddly bereft. And there Hermione was, looking so small in that bed, too small in proportion to how much of an anchor and harbour she was. To him. His.
His limbs moved almost involuntarily until he was wrapped and curled around her. He wanted to tell her about the aged sweethearts he came upon in the plantation, but instead other words and thoughts spilled out and he let them and listened to them at the same time, finding them disconcertingly true, promises he intended to keep, and she didn’t protest or pull away from him. He buried his face in that delicious spot between her shoulder blades and fell asleep smiling.
Her body was being replaced by flames as he watched, and he was doing nothing but watch, his broom continued on its course away from her, leaving her behind.
“Draco! Draco!”
He opened his eyes and was momentarily blinded by the dim, rosy light. His senses had to adjust first. No conflagration roaring in his ears and singeing his eyes. Hermione wasn’t burning. She was perfect, frowning down at him, her hair a fragrant curtain sheltering him.
His cheek was stinging.
“You have got to stop slapping me.” He cleared his throat. His voice hadn’t sounded right. Casually, he added, “I’ll tell the girls their mother’s abusive.”
Of course, this being Hermione, she wasn’t about to be distracted. “You were having a nightmare and you wouldn’t wake up. You nearly strangled me. Now, who’s abusive?” She smiled ruefully and rubbed the cheek she’d slapped. Draco couldn’t stop the small throaty noise that small touch triggered and he clutched her hand with both of his. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
He told her. Perhaps by telling her, he’d finally shake free of that recurrent, bewildering and horrifying image of abandoning her to Fiendfyre. He’d never done that and he’d never do that. He’d die first.
She nodded when he finished, and then generously did what would most bring him comfort, lying down beside him with her arm curled over his chest, her hand coming to rest on the side of his neck. She didn’t speak, didn’t explain, although he’d wager anything she had several interpretations of that nightmare.
Foremost of which was that it was probably his subconscious reproaching him for leaving her.
But he didn’t leave her, did he? It was she who left.
Sighing, he left that notion for another time and, locking her arms around Hermione, went back to sleep. It was that simple. He found he didn’t even have to dunk his whole body underwater any more, not with her there, effectively banishing all traces of the nightmare with one sweep of her arm over him.
When Hermione next woke, it was morning and she was alone in the bedroom. Draco had even tucked her ridiculously tightly under the covers. Where was he? What time was it? Weren’t they exploring today?
She’d just donned Draco’s dressing gown when Lia and Callie walked in. “About time! We’ve been waiting for you!”
The girls were dressed in matching khaki shorts and pastel blue shirts with so many pockets. Hermione assumed the one who’d spoken was Lia, because with their hair up under their safari hats and their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, they were identical to their boot laces.
Hermione gaped at them for a second and then went to the walk-in wardrobe. Her clothes were there, as well as Draco’s. Pietro and Pierra had been thorough. “Can you remove your hats and sunglasses, please? Why didn’t you wake me? Where’s your father?”
“Making breakfast.”
“Making breakfast?” Hermione was dubious.
“Pietro and Pierra are gone again.”
In quick order, Hermione got dressed. She’d already showered, so that was less time wasted. She emerged from the closet to find Callie and Lia making the bed, and then they bounced on top of it as a finishing touch. Hermione grinned.
“Let’s join your father, shall we? I want to smother you two with kisses.”
On the way downstairs, she said, “Should you really be in shorts? What if you fall or trip? You’d skin your legs. You’d be safer in trousers.”
“What if you fall or trip, Mum? You’d skin your legs. You’d be safer in trousers.”
Hermione flicked Lia’s hat for that cheek, and brown hair tumbled down, not blonde.
Callie had called her ‘Mum’.
“See, I told you she’d get all sappy about it,” said Lia.
Hermione threw an arm around each of her girls and laughed.
In the kitchen, Draco was indeed making breakfast. The pancakes and eggs were ‘crisp’. They came in on him jumping a yard away from the stove as the frying pan hissed and sputtered.
“I hate frying stuff,” he said as he looked at them. The smell of sausages rose in the air. “Should you be in shorts?”
“That’s what I just told them,” said Hermione.
“I didn’t mean the girls, I meant you.”
“Me? What’s wrong with my shorts?”
“Nothing,” said Draco, turning back to the pan and holding a pot lid as a shield. “But legs like that are dangerous to men.”
Hermione heard that perfectly audible mutter and was genuinely taken aback at the offhand compliment. “Why, thank you.”
The girls giggled.
The week continued in this vein. Draco made breakfast and then took them everywhere in Belize. He was familiar enough with the whole country that they didn’t have to take the golf cart or a boat or Muggle air transport to go from place to place. He turned their hats into Portkeys, and by Lia’s request, took Lia by Side-Along. By the third time they did so, she was no longer throwing up. By the fifth, she no longer had to clutch at Draco afterward but walked on as if nothing happened, which made father and daughter rather unbearably smug while Hermione and Callie patted their hair and clothes back into order.
That Boxing Day, they went to Boca de Bruja in the mainland. It was only a pit stop and they didn’t explore the magical district just yet though, because from there, they joined a ‘Ropes Tour’, which Hermione found out was the Wizarding equivalent of Muggle zip-lining. Instead of pulleys and counterweight, the ‘ropes’ were operated solely by magic, and of course, gravity. The slight discomfort in zip-lining was nonexistent, because you could Transfigure your harness into a chair. Enchantments were simply put in place to conceal such cheating. You could stop your chair if you wanted so you could take in the view, and you could even change the direction you’d go, but there was no controlling the speed with which your chair flew on the suspended rope, and Hermione and the girls shrieked by turns.
Just before the last ‘line’, they had to hike through a cave marvellous in its stalactites and stalagmites and undisturbed, protected Mayan artefacts, and cross a narrow bridge hanging over a river a couple hundred feet below.
Draco put Lia ahead of him, and then told Hermione to come after Callie, but changed his mind when he saw Hermione’s face.
“It’s safe. It’s just prudent to have an adult behind a kid, in case the kid”Never mind, look, they can both go ahead and we’ll follow. It’s safe. Too safe it’s almost boring. I’ll take you in the Muggle tour next. That’s more exciting. You could really die.”
Hermione glared at his joke and shook her head. “Do we really have to cross this thing? Aren’t we done yet?”
“When we cross this and the zip, we’re done. It’s the last line. And then we’ll be back where we started.”
Squaring her shoulders and clutching the hand Draco offered, Hermione stepped onto the bridge. It swung a little and Draco and the girls laughed when Hermione squealed.
“Keep your eyes in front of you and keep walking!”
The girls obeyed, still giggling.
“They call this the kissing bridge.”
“What?”
“My hand is numb. Ease up a little. The Muggles use this bridge, too, and they say the adrenaline from being suspended so high makes the Muggles fall in love or some such twaddle. Of course, those already in love simply go randy and snog.”
“Twaddle is right. You”you dangled me over a cliff once. I didn’t fall in love with you, did I?”
“Didn’t you?”
Hermione let go of his hand so she could slap his arm and erase the smirk on his face. “I did not. Ugh!”
He just laughed, doubling over melodramatically and causing the bridge to swing again, and Hermione to cling to his hand again. “Maybe you did. You were so violent afterward.”
“Your logic is warped.”
And just like that, they’d crossed the bridge. Hermione wanted to kiss the ground. Instead, she kissed Callie and Lia. On the last rope, none of them wanted their harnesses Transfigured. The girls went side by side, on their bellies, so that it was like flying on wings, and Hermione, reminding herself that the ropes were enchanted, consented to go ‘twin’ with ‘her husband’, too, which was what the guide presumed Draco to be.
Going this way was exhilarating. Hermione was just beginning to feel happily giddy about it when they suddenly halted. They were only halfway through the line. Hermione breathed a stream of profanity as she heard the ropes strain at their combined weight.
“What’s happening? Why did we stop? What are you laughing at, you great baboon?”
“Your face,” Draco said in between sniggers. “Merlin, calm down.”
Hermione calmed down. But every second they remained stationary slashed at the cloak of calm she was trying to don. “The girls will be terrified waiting for us and wondering what’s happened to us!”
“No, they won’t.” Draco was infuriatingly calm, as if he wasn’t dangling on an overtaxed system of ropes with nothing but air between them and the rocks of the river two hundred feet below. He put an arm around her, careful so as not to jostle the ropes. “Hey. We’re fine. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying!” Hermione angrily wiped her eyes and gulped the bile rising in her throat. She was pathetic. But she couldn’t stand this. This was worse than flying on a broom. Gods, she couldn’t even stop her eyes from contemplating and imagining her fall because she was facing it, the sheer drop. When she was upright on solid ground again, she was going to sue Ropes Tour. “Can we get down somehow?”
“Hey!”
Hermione jumped and the ropes groaned. Draco tightened his arm around her.
“Hey!” the disembodied voice repeated, amplified all around them, reverberating through the jungle. “What are you folks doing? It’s the Kissing Bridge! Get on with it before you fall to your deaths.”
“WHAT?”
Draco and Hermione looked at each other.
“The Kissing Bridge? I thought it was the bridge.”
“You mean they stopped this thing so we could kiss””
“We’ve never had to kiss here before!”
“”and if we don’t kiss, we’d fall?”
“I don’t””
It took some clever squirming and craning of her neck, but she reached him easily enough and her lips slid over and between his nicely enough, and then there was an embarrassingly loud sound of applause and they were moving again, but she missed the view, because Draco had slid his hand from her waist to her neck and kept hold, and he rubbed and nibbled at her lips until their helmets bumped onto the platform.
“Wow. Did you see that?” said Callie.
“No, I didn’t,” said Lia, blithely.
Hermione, cheeks burning, busied herself removing her harnesses. The guide at the platform looked nonplussed that she and Draco had been lip-locked, so she couldn’t berate the poor innocent man.
Photographs of the entire tour were available. She noticed most of their peers declining the photos. They were probably astronomically expensive, but of course, Draco bought them all. There were thankfully no photos of the kiss, though why there weren’t confused Hermione a little.
They went swimming in a nearby lagoon and then went to dinner in their damp, gritty glory at the patio of the pub in Boca de Bruja. The girls wanted to have another go at the Ropes before they went back to England, and Draco and Hermione argued a bit whether to go again or not. In the end, Hermione won, and they planned the rest of their holiday while noshing on soursop ice cream. Mayan magic was almost as good as Egyptian. It was going to be lovely, so long as they didn’t dangle from ropes again.
Although of course, that kiss hadn’t been that bad.
“What are you blushing for?” Draco murmured beside her, smiling and bumping his knee to hers.
“I’m not blushing. Am I blushing? It’s nothing. Ice cream headache.”
Provided they didn’t annoy him again and made him forget, he’d thank his parents for this. Draco smiled at his fly bobbing in the water, not seeing it, but reliving the last few days.
He’d taken his girls all over Belize. It was a poor country, but if you knew where to go, you were surrounded by verdant flora and soul-stirring Mayan relics, some of them still humming with ancient magic. Callie and Lia were hilarious. They fairly bounced with energy all day until they crossed the threshold of the house again at night, and then they flopped where they stood and had to be carried to their beds.
Pietro and Pierra continued to be absent.
Hermione continued to be... well, perhaps she was purposely torturing him and not being kind at all in letting him cuddle her every night? Kind, my arse. He didn’t want her to be kind either. But he’d take what he could get. What he dared getting, that was.
Tomorrow, it would be New Year’s Eve, and then it would be their last day here. They’d had enormous fun. Everything had almost been new to him, too, because he was experiencing the place with his girls. The Great Blue Hole had seemed bluer, Xunantunich had seemed more majestic and today, the Actun Tunichil Muknal had been rather romantic, if you discounted having a rapt audience of skeletons while Hermione ranted about suing their guide for not warning them about traps in the cave, and while Draco silenced that ranting effectively by pulling Hermione close and pressing his lips to her crimson forehead.
Truth be told, he hadn’t heard of or experienced traps in the ATM before. He’d have to talk to Lia and Callie about this, although he doubted his eleven-year-olds could manage to charm a stone wall to enclose their parents in a damp and dim alcove.
“Your parents are in England, right?” said Hermione, clutching at the back of his shirt and completely unaware of what she was doing to him talking into his chest like that. “They’re not here and abetting this in a twisted manner of spoiling their grandchildren who are bent on”” She sighed and didn’t finish that. Draco chuckled.
Whoever he’d seen in the plantation weren’t his parents. He doubted they’d disguise themselves like that. Or dance like that. “They’re in England.” He couldn’t help letting his hand follow the curve of her spine and rest on that dip just before another elegant curve began. “Father had a rather spectacular falling out with Pierra last time they saw each other.”
“I saw her in the market this morning while you and the girls slept in. She said I remind her of Druella Rosier.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I don’t remember my Grandmother Black. Nor have I heard of her called ‘Druella Rosier’. It was always Ella Black. She had brown hair.” He touched Hermione’s. “But the similarities stop there. Pierra’s such an odd duck.”
“Odd duck is right, because when I greeted her and before deigning to condescend to me with that Druella Rosier remark, she stared at me as though she’d never seen me before.”
“Old age. Did you ask her why she and her brother had abandoned us?”
“No, she walked away before I could. She made me feel like she was Marie Antoinette and I was ‘that creature’ she only spoke to to please Louis the Fifteenth.”
Several moments of silence passed, a silence broken only by the sound of water dripping somewhere. Draco threaded his fingers in the ends of Hermione’s hair and she leaned on him more. “Draco, you’re not the one sending me those roses, are you?”
“No.” Draco scowled. The sender wasn’t a student, but someone with a good grasp of magic because the roses continually bypassed the villa’s wards and popped wherever Hermione was, and as though to underline his thought, a rose materialised just then. They both ignored it.
“You can let me go now,” said Hermione.
“You can step away any time.” Draco grinned. He hadn’t moved an inch. Neither had she.
He didn’t know how long they’d stood there with him leaning on a wall covered in centuries’ worth of dust, dirt and lime, and her leaning on him, her cheek resting on his chest. The silence soon became the silence of a library table shared between Hogwarts students and Slytherins, that first year after the war. Slightly awkward and determinedly maintained.
And just when Draco had been about to speak, there was a distinct, low rumble, and Hermione disentangled herself from him and went away. The stone wall had disappeared. Disappointment and relief had warred inside him. And then delight had won out when Hermione came back and pulled him by the hand with an exasperated look.
“Hermione?”
Draco was shaken out of his musings by that strange voice calling Hermione’s name. Judging by how she bumped into him, Hermione had been just as surprised. She even dropped her rod. Lia picked it up, scowling at the new arrival.
It was late in the afternoon, nearing dusk. The water was like glass. The four of them weren’t the only ones on the beach who had cast flies. Belize was an angler’s paradise, and Draco had gotten them all licenses, although Lia and Callie refused to fish and made Draco and Hermione promise they’d release whatever they caught. Fat chance of that if a bonefish bit. He was going to take pictures first.
But now this”who on earth was this old fart?
“Julius! What are you doing here?”
“Fancy seeing you here,” said Julius. He was carrying rented gear and it looked like he’d been at it all day already and with nothing to show for it. But his eyes lit up as he looked at Hermione. “I thought it would be a lonely holiday for me.” Was he delivering a line? Draco ducked his head and tried not to laugh. Julius was as old as Pietro. If not older. “And would you look at that. There they are.”
“Yes, my girls. You know Lia, and this is Callie.”
“This is our dad,” said Lia, making Draco look up. Julius held out his hand while Hermione introduced him as the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, but Draco shrugged and motioned to his occupied hands. Julius nodded and waded clumsily into the shallows, making everyone within a mile turn and scowl at him for disturbing the water. The old fart stationed himself near Draco, to Draco’s disgust. He immediately kept his breathing shallow to avoid the whiff of sunburn and sweat and unwashed hair and clothes. No wonder the man couldn’t catch anything.
“Right, well, we’ll leave you to it,” said Hermione, and she was back in the sand and several yards away before Draco could stop her. “The girls and I will see to dinner.”
“I’m invited, I hope?” said Julius.
Again, Draco looked up, this time in surprise at the man’s impudence”did he plan to shower at the villa and borrow Draco’s clothes?”and Hermione’s eyes flew to his. He frowned at what he saw there. She didn’t like her boss intruding on them. That wasn’t like her. He’d thought she’d say, ‘Yes, of course.’
But before he could say anything, she went ahead and said, “Yes, of course.”
Lia and Callie expelled breath.
As soon as they’d gone and just as Draco was steeling himself for whatever remark Julius was about to make about Malfoys, however, Julius gave Draco a nod and then went back to the beach, muttering about changing his clothes.
“I’ll find you here, won’t I, so you can take me with you to your house?”
He was a presumptuous son of a”
“Yes, of course,” Draco echoed Hermione, straight-faced.
Julius nodded again.
He did a lot of nodding, but he seemed surprised when Draco led him to the villa just a short walk’s distance from where they’d cast their lines in San Pedro.
“This house isn’t in the Ministry records,” he said soon after seating himself in the dining room.
Draco, who had been astonished at the complexity of the dishes on the table, turned his astonishment to the old fart.
“Why should it be?” asked Hermione with a touch of asperity. “This is Belize, not Britain, and the Malfoys had been fined enough to retire to their other properties in perfect privacy and anonymity if they wish, like the rest of us.”
Julius back-pedalled fast. He waved airily. “And I’ve apparently grown so used to knowing who owns what. Forgive me.”
Hermione didn’t. She was a gracious hostess, but you had to be dead not to detect the frostiness in her manner, and Julius soon thanked them and departed without waiting for dessert. A fruit salad heavy with sweetened cream. Draco and the girls carried conversation by themselves. Pietro and Pierra were back, judging by the cuisine they’d just sampled, but the two didn’t make an appearance.
Draco wondered if he should dare ask about the turn in Hermione’s mood, but she spoke about it herself as they lay side by side in bed that night.
He was trying to wean himself from their closeness”McGonagall would blow an artery once they were back at Hogwarts and he decided he couldn’t sleep without holding the Charms professor in his arms”so he was lying perfectly rigidly on his side of the bed, determined not to even face Hermione and let her unadorned beauty ensnare him again, but she went to his side, and curled both hands around his arm. Their bodies didn’t touch except for where she held him, but Draco felt engulfed and completely encircled, and it was a monumental struggle not to turn on his side and pull her to him. Instead, he listened to her.
“I hope to Merlin he just happened to be here for the holidays, not looking for me. From his slip, I have a feeling he knows about your house in the mainland and he was surprised we’re here and not there.”
“Why would he look for you? You’ve resigned your position in his department, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but he’s been pestering me about that. He wants me to return, he wants me to look after this or that. Circe. He even asked for that ‘date’ and he said he’d stop badgering me after that, but no, did you hear him at dinner?”
“He was your date that weekend Callie got her... er, you-know-what?”
She chuckled. “Her menses. You can say it, Draco. You’re the father of two girls.”
“Yes, well, he was your date?” Unbelievable.
“If you call a two-day conference with bureaucrat-types a date. I don’t know why he even attended that thing, except he seemed””
“What?”
“Ugh, never mind. It doesn’t bear thinking about. He always used to treat me like a daughter but””
“”but now he’s flirting with you.”
“Maybe he just misses me. Maybe it’s some sort of andropause. Ugh,” Hermione said again, and left it at that.
Ugh, indeed, thought Draco, and since she had shattered his resolve, he added ‘To hell with it’ and went ahead and snuggled, ignoring his minuscule bewilderment over whatever the dickens ‘andropause’ was.
As if they hadn’t done enough mischief meddling with the beds upstairs, Pietro and Pierra installed a wrestling mat in the backyard. A sumo wrestling mat two inches thick and fifteen feet in diameter, complete with ridiculous sumo suits and headgear made of foam. Hermione could only stare. Lia and Callie were delighted and went at it without even eating breakfast.
“Not hungry!”
“Still bloated from last night!”
They said that while fastening each other’s Velcro on the back. And then in their place stood unrecognisable lumps of hardened cake batter with red and blue tips, laughing fit to kill at each other’s appearance and bouncing off each other and the walls until they finally spilled out the door to the patio and to that mat.
“You’ve run out of places to visit, no? So we thought to help you,” said Pietro, emerging from somewhere. He had to have come from somewhere. He didn’t pop silently beside her and Draco. Hermione hid her surprise. “The girls don’t like fishing anyway.”
She nodded her head. It seemed safe enough. She only wondered whether Pietro and Pierra spied on them or whether they talked to the girls, and if they did, when they did so, because they seemed to come-and-cook-and-install-beds-and-go without asking for permission or being seen.
An explosion of light and smoke cut off Hermione’s and Draco’s laughter at the girls’ wrestling. Pierra had set up a box camera and, judging by the woman’s look of satisfaction, had captured Callie grappling Lia by the waist in retaliation to Lia’s earlier win. Another loud puff, and that was a photo of Lia gleefully landing belly first on Callie.
“What about you two? Why don’t you try? It’s enormous fun.”
Hermione stared at Pietro and imagined the old man sumo wrestling with his equally old sister, wearing the suits with those printed nipples. She choked on her hastily stifled laughter. Draco thumped her on the back with one hand and handed her an adult-sized suit with the other. It was heavy! How on earth would she be able to move in that thing? Draco had already stepped into his and was pulling it up and around his body. Hermione had no choice but to follow, giggling now. She was giggling so hard that Draco thumped her again, this time on the stomach. She barely felt it and that made her giggle more, doubling over as much as the suit allowed, which wasn’t much.
“You”you look ridiculous!” Hermione was still giggling as they waddled outside after Pietro and Pierra snapped their Velcros. The headgear shaped like wrestler updo’s hugged their faces securely, and every time Hermione stopped giggling, one look at Draco’s face made her start again.
“So do you, Granger.”
Hermione raised her doughy arms and yelled, “Banzai!”
And without further warning, she tackled him onto the mat.
“That’s not on! Get off! We’re supposed to circle each other first, you daft cow!”
“Like you’d play by the rules, Slytherin ferret,” Hermione said in between laughter.
He didn’t reply. Hermione squinted down at him. Draco was absolutely still, staring at her.
“Are you hurt?”
He still didn’t reply. The blinding morning sunlight was full on his face now that Hermione had moved off a little but he wasn’t even squinting. His eyes merely followed her. When Hermione tried to push off him so she could look him over, he held fast. She looked around to ask for Callie and Lia’s help, but the girls were gone. Hermione saw the glass door to the dining room sliding shut. Great. Should she yell for Pietro and Pierra?
“Draco, stop staring at me like that.” It was broad daylight, for Merlin’s sake. And he was”gods, those were bedroom eyes. Hermione blushed to the roots of her hair. “What are you playing at? Draco!” She slapped him lightly on the cheek.
She got to her feet and moved back a step, still watching him to see if he was injured but mainly watching him because she had a feeling he’d pounce if she didn’t. He wobbled to his feet and immediately lurched forward like a puppet on a string, a string bound to Hermione. When she moved right, he moved left. When she stepped to the left, he stepped to the right. And still with those bedroom eyes. Hermione was sweating buckets inside her sumo suit.
She stopped shuffling from side to side and just stepped backward. Her wand was somewhere in the grass. Somehow, summoning it while still on the mat felt dangerous, like Draco was a wild animal and sudden movement would be fatal.
Her plans of ever so slowly and carefully bending down to pick up her wand came to naught when she realised she’d been circling the mat, not crossing it. She should have reached the edge by now, but she remained in the perimeter. And when she tried to sidle to the grass, her foot only came down on vinyl-covered foam.
In the dining room, Callie and Lia stared at Pietro and Pierra wheezing and coughing their lungs off in laughter, watching their mum and dad wrestling on the mat. Their dad had finally tackled their mum, and seemed to be intent on kissing her, and though their mum had nowhere to go and seemed resigned now after almost a quarter of an hour’s worth of dodging and running in circles, their dad simply couldn’t reach her lips, what with all that padding between them. They flopped one on top of the other like fish out of water.
The girls had only stopped giggling themselves. They exchanged anxious looks while hiccoughing. Should they offer water to their housekeepers, who were now bent double, clutching each other and still cackling?
“That’s”that’s it, I think,” said Pierra, gasping.
“Yeah, turn it off now,” said Pietro, coughing and making a ‘whee-hee-hee’ postscript that set Callie and Lia giggling again. They couldn’t stop even when they saw Pierra pointing a wand toward their parents.
Their dad paused in his flopping, and then immediately got off their mum, as fast as all that foam would allow. He extended both enormous arms and helped their mum up. They were both distinctly red in the face.
In the dining room, Pietro and Pierra winked at Callie and Lia. Seemingly out of nowhere, Pierra produced a box tied with purple and orange ribbon and handed it to the girls.
“This is not a bribe for your silence. Nope. This is a belated Yule present from your favourite uncles and your grandfather. The one with hair.”
It only took one, two, three seconds, and then Lia and Callie were both goggly-eyed, staring at Pietro and Pierra, big box forgotten. But the big box reclaimed their attention fast. From inside came the unmistakable sound of mewing.
“How do you plan to keep him?”
“Cats are allowed at school, Mum.”
“Yes, but--”
What happens when term ends in June, when you go to your separate homes? Draco shot Hermione a look. She gave him a small conciliatory nod and instead of continuing her question, bent down and petted the sleek, black kitten. They were getting good at this silent communication thing. They could discuss summer when summer came. In the meantime, there was nothing stopping their girls from having a pet.
Just as there was nothing stopping him from asking Hermione to end all this nonsense and just marry him.
Except this holiday in Belize had been too perfect to ruin with another botched proposal.
“Got everything?”
“Yep. Where’s Leon?”
“Sent him home with enough merchandise to make his wife and kids happy. They’ll believe he’d been to Peru.”
“Good. Don’t forget to remind us about making Remembrance less illegal.”
“Sure,” George made a note on a clipboard. “ ‘Make Remembrance less like planting false memories in subject.’ That was a happy, useful defect though. Just in time, too.”
Although Leon ‘lost in the elimination round’, he was still thrilled that he’d been picked to compete, even if he didn’t meet any of the other star chefs and was only required to cook Belizean cuisine in a kitchen assigned to him. All in all, except for Leon’s wife almost filing a Missing Person report with the police, no harm done. They’d given the wife a note from her husband saying he’d been summoned by the prestigious Iron Chef school to join the contest being held in Peru that year. The wife had been dubious, but now her husband was back, and she could ascertain now that he hadn’t gone to ‘some woman’.
Poor Leon. He’d spent most of his time asleep in the housekeeper’s suite anyway, because Fred and George had to trail Draco and Hermione and the girls, bribing their way to making the holiday a giggle-fest for Lia and Callie.
Ropes Tour’s proprietor had been reluctant, but caved in when Fred and George assured him Hermione would transfer litigation to Fred and George if she found out they were behind it.
“When we’ve fixed it, we can try it out again,” said Fred, grinning devilishly.
“On Draco and Hermione?”
“On Draco and Hermione. Make them remember what they should remember. We”they”were so close that time in ATM! Merlin, I can’t believe our Goldfish Bowl has that auditory defect. How did we miss that?”
“Because we always tried it out during Lee’s parties?”
“Right, right. Let me make a note about that.” Fred took the clipboard from George and scribbled. When he was done, he looked up, sniggering. “But the Wrestling Mat is perfect, isn’t it?”
“Definitely ready for a test-run at home. Let’s plonk Percy and Penny on it.”
On this, their last day, they’d all agreed on a boating picnic. They’d packed a huge hamper with half the contents of the pantry, not bothering to do much more than fry potatoes and boil eggs (Pietro and Pierra had disappeared soon after bestowing that kitten). They were going home now after a shopping spree in Boca de Bruja in which Lia and Callie had to be stopped from spending all their remaining money on their new cat. The evening was balmy, although marred by the reek and smoke of firecrackers. It was several hours yet to midnight, but so many were exploding already. They’d stopped getting startled long ago. Hermione expected the noise now and was even delighted when she caught the orange blaze the firecrackers left behind in the sky.
Draco was quite adept at driving golf carts and yachts, for someone who’d been raised as he was. Then again, perhaps he’d been taught to operate these distinctly Muggle machines the same way he’d been taught to drive a car. It was a manly thing, rather than a Muggle thing.
Very manly. Or maybe it was just him, standing at the wheel wearing a shirt the same colour as the deepening dusk. His hair stood out, the ends visibly curling over his collar.
He looked back at that moment and caught her studying him. He quirked an eyebrow, and then turned back to steering them carefully from the river and back to the Caribbean.
It took too bloody long. That was his constant complaint about Muggle transportation. It was comfortable but it took too much time. He was antsy about time these days, time that wasn’t spent with his girls. Technically, he was with them right now, but he begrudged the attention he had to direct to navigating rather than to his girls. When would they get past the Drowned Cayes and reach open water?
Lia and Callie were in the galley, fattening their kitten, or maybe plotting something dastardly. Draco and Hermione had seen that rising orange building in Boca de Bruja. Callie and Lia had been strangely unsurprised about it. Draco could only hope to Merlin those Weasley twins weren’t here, or if they were, wouldn’t make contact until they were all back in England.
Hermione was”he quickly turned his head back to the Caribbean. Hermione was sitting just behind him, wearing cream, the exact same shade he’d made her wear all those years ago.
She was quite breathtaking.
As though reading his thoughts, she came over and, suddenly, he was no longer short of breath, but taking in lungful upon lungful of the subtle sweetness of her perfume.
“Still disturbed about Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes expanding to Belize?”
Draco laughed, and almost of their own volition, his arm slipped around her waist. She leaned into his side and it was”not heavenly, for that was trite and he had no idea what heaven felt like”it was like coming home and falling into bed. A blissful sensation.
In thanks, he kissed her temple. And then she really, literally took his breath away by angling her head and offering her lips to his. Gods, he seized that offer. But gently. Until now, he still kicked himself for the rough and unrestrained manner he had first made love to her. He had tried to make up for that, and would continue to make up for that for always. So he slid his lips against hers and rubbed and stroked and caressed until she made a soft noise in her throat and opened her mouth to sigh into him. He loved it when she did that. Surrendered to him completely. He pulled her deeper into his arms. She was pressed between him and the helm and he pressed even closer. It was pure instinct and need, no room for space between them, no room for questions or doubts in their minds.
She had curled her fingers on his chest; he could feel her nails through the fabric of his shirt, could feel her trembling against him. Most of all, he could feel her. Warmth and deliciousness. And he couldn’t get enough. One of his hands cupped her elbow and the other climbed from her waist to her neck. He tugged at her earlobe and played with the modest ear stud there. He wanted to kiss her there and remove that ear stud with his teeth and tongue. Instead, he sucked and bit on her lips and tongue, and it was a more than satisfying alternative. She made another lovely soft noise and an answering rumble came from his chest. He rested his hand on her shoulder and cupped her neck and cheek that way as they parted and shared breaths.
She was the one clinging to him, both her arms around his neck, but the look in her eyes made him feel just as weak. His hand cupping her elbow slid around her waist and his other hand slipped to her nape, pulling her in a hug until her face was pressed to his chest. He leaned his cheek against her hair and sighed.
Whatever happens now”and he had a feeling more things were in store to happen first”they’d always have Belize.