A Honeymoon Interlude

 

 

And so, when we last left our heroes, they were being spirited away to a sumptuous two month honeymoon cruise aboard the Borealis, a luxury liner bound on a course around the globe.  No doubt, their trip has brought them to exciting ports of call and provided them ample time to be alone together in a profoundly romantic atmosphere.

 

Let’s see what they’re up to, shall we?

 

 

 

 

Hermione pressed her ear to the wall harder, squinting in concentration.  "They're bringing in more trunks!  Who are these people, the Rockefellers?"

 

"I doubt the Rockefellers travel on cruise ships, sweetheart.  They buy their own."

 

"Come over here, listen to this!"

 

Harry spared her a brief glance away from the book he was reading.  "I refuse to participate in this undignified display of eavesdropping."

 

"This from the man who actually did The Limbo last night."

 

"I can neither confirm nor deny reports of The Limbo."

 

"Ruth Weatherby from down the hall saw you.  You could have come with me and Vivian to the pool but nooooo, you had to let Jason drag you to the C Deck margarita party and get roped into doing the Limbo..."

 

"Hey, I'm not the one with my ear glued to a bulkhead here."

 

"Don't tell me you're not itching with curiosity."

 

"Itching is one thing, this is another.  Besides, we could just stroll on over and introduce ourselves."

 

Hermione left the wall and walked over to where Harry was sitting on the couch in the living room of their three-room suite.  She sat down on his lap facing him, straddling his legs.  Harry tossed his book aside and ran his hands around her waist.  She was wearing a bikini that left little to the imagination and a wraparound beach skirt.  The ship was docked in Fiji preparing to leave on its long trek across the Pacific Ocean where it would stop for two days in Hawaii before continuing on to San Francisco.  "It's been nice having our dinner table all to ourselves since the Palmers left," she murmured, her fingers playing in his hair.  He leaned his head back against the couch and looked up at her, his hands stroking the bare skin of her midsection.

 

Harry and Hermione were at the halfway point of their trip and had settled comfortably into their almost embarrassingly opulent cabin.  Their next-door neighbors since boarding had been the Palmers, a delightfully dotty middle-aged couple who had also been their dinner table companions.  They had filled mealtimes with colorful stories about their globetrotting lives and had made no secret that they were adopting their newlywed neighbors as honorary family members.  They had disembarked in Delhi a week ago after a tearful farewell full of promises to write and visit.  Today, new passengers were coming aboard and taking up residence in the Palmers' cabin and, presumably, at their dinner table.

 

"Yes, it has been nice," Harry said.  "We don't have to feel self-conscious about gazing adoringly at each other and feeding each other bites of lobster Newburg."

 

"Not that we've ever done either of those things at the dinner table."

 

"But if we did, we wouldn't have to feel self-conscious about it."

 

"Alas, it's all ending.   New dinner table buddies.  And very grand ones, from the number of trunks they've brought aboard."

 

"Wonder what they'll make of us?"

 

"Who knows.  I'm sure they'll pick one of the theories and run with it."  Both of them found endless amusement in the fact that they were the subject of much shipboard speculation.  On a trip like this where most people were in for the duration, the passengers were bound to form friendships, alliances, cliques and acquaintances.  Gossip was rampant.  Who was honeymooning (there were four couples not counting themselves), who was trying to save their marriages, who was on anniversary, who had secretly smuggled his mistress on board under his wife's nose (that gentleman was the object of much scorn).  There were few families aboard and almost no children, but there were a few groups of privileged young people enjoying holidays and some single young professionals on extended vacations.  The hookups were numerous and widely varied.  Harry and Hermione stuck to each other pretty tightly, pretending they didn't hear the plentiful gossip about them.  A handsome young British couple, just married, no evident professions, and yet wealthy enough to occupy one of the most expensive cabins aboard the ship for the longest cruise that this line offered. 

 

The most popular theory seemed to be that one or both of them was heir to some great fortune, though their names were not familiar...not here, anyway.  This was a Muggle ship but there was one other wizard couple on board.  Their first day on the ship they had shared a moment across the crowded dining room when the other couple (whose names they'd never learned) recognized them and just as quickly pretended they hadn't.  The two couples had steered clear of each other since, aware of how easy it would be to accidentally give away their natures.

 

Hermione began unbuttoning Harry's shirt.  "Cal Schiefelbein hit on me again today."

 

"With a name like Schiefelbein I'm amazed that chap has the self-esteem to hit on anyone," Harry replied, his voice sounding a little tight, no doubt as a result of the way Hermione was moving about on his lap.  He untied her wraparound skirt and flung it aside.  "What did you tell him?"

 

"I told him he better watch out because I have a very jealous husband.”  She bent and began kissing his neck.  “He laughed.  He said you didn’t look like much of a threat.  So I told him you know kung fu.”  Harry untied her bikini top and ran his hands up to her bared breasts.

 

"I do know kung fu."

 

"Yes, you certainly do," she whispered, the topic rapidly receding into irrelevance.

 

 

When they walked into the dining room for the late dinner seating they saw that their new neighbors were already seated.  They both paused for a moment to examine them.  "Well, at least they didn't sit on our side of the table," Hermione murmured.

 

"They do look rather grand," Harry said.  Their new tablemates were not young but neither were they old...probably mid-forties.  The man had a severe affect with a tanned Roman face and distinguished wings of gray at his temples.  The woman was not precisely beautiful but more what is usually called 'handsome,' impeccably dressed and turned out.  Hermione grasped Harry's fingers. 

 

"He looks familiar to me," she said.  "Do you recognize him?"

 

"No, I don't think so.  You know him?"

 

"I can't think how.  He just looks vaguely familiar.  Well...perhaps it'll come to me."  They walked into the dining room.  "Honestly, I'm a little intimidated.  They look so posh.  I feel like a poor relation."

 

"Just remember…we know kung fu."

 

She giggled a little, but felt better.  As they approached, their new neighbors looked up with warm, genuine smiles that made them both look a good deal less forbidding.  "Oh, you must be the Potters!" said the woman as her husband stood to shake Harry's hand.

 

"Hello, I'm Harry...this is my wife, Hermione."

 

"I'm Jillian Francisco, this is my husband Antonio."

 

After a flurry of handshakes and "pleased to meet you's" everyone was seated again.  "How long have you been aboard?" Genie asked.

 

"A month.  We boarded in Southampton."

 

"Are you going the full circuit?"

 

"Oh yes, back home again.”

 

“Where’s home?”

 

Hermione smiled mildly, wondering if Jillian had audited some of the ID’s interrogation classes.  “We live about an hour north of London.”

 

“I thought so,” Antonio said.  “Those lovely, cultured accents.”

 

“Where do you two hail from?” Harry asked, stirring cream into his coffee.

 

“Oh, we move around.  I suppose if you had to pin us down, we’d both say our real home is Florence.”  Jillian didn’t miss the glance that passed between them when she said this.  “What is it?”

 

“It’s nothing,” Hermione said, smiling.  “It’s just…Florence is  a very special place for us.”

 

“Really?  It’s a lovely old place, isn’t it?  Were you there long?”

 

“About two weeks,” Harry said.  “It was a sort of holiday.”  Hermione stifled a reaction at this completely inaccurate description of their stay in Florence the previous summer.

 

“Sadly, we haven’t been back in awhile,” Jillian said, her face tensing up for a moment.  She smiled again.  “We do spend an awful lot of time in Amsterdam these days.”

 

“I love Amsterdam,” Harry said.  “There’s so much energy there.”

 

“What do you do?” Hermione asked.  “It sounds like you travel a lot.”

 

“I’m in shipping,” Antonio said, his smile a little forced.  Hermione exchanged a barely perceptible glance with Harry; that response made her antenna quiver a little.  Whenever anyone was involved in illicit activities that netted them far more money than could be legitimately explained, they always deflected questions with a response like “I’m in shipping.”  It was vague and difficult to refute.  “And you?  What business are you in?” Antonio asked.  Sure, Hermione thought.  Change the subject.

 

To her amazement, Harry told them the truth.  “We work for the government,” he said.

 

“Oh?” Jillian said, affecting the appearance of interest.  “In what capacity?”

 

“Intelligence, actually,” Harry said, amazing Hermione even more.  Then again, these people were Muggles.  They could never connect them with anything remotely resembling their real work.  At Harry’s statement she saw the Franciscos’ interest jack up a notch.  They leaned forward a little.

 

“Really?” Jillian said, half under her breath.  “Do you mean…like spies?”

 

Hermione glanced at Harry, deciding to let him take point on this topic.  “Something like that,” he said, smiling a little.

 

“Do you carry a gun?” Jillian said in a conspiratorial whisper.

 

Harry laughed.  “Not to the dinner table.”

 

“I’m quite fascinated!” Jillian squealed.  “I suppose you can’t tell us anything specific.  Or you could, but then you’d have to kill us.”

 

“Ah, I see you’ve read our press kit,” Harry said dryly.  They laughed.

 

Antonio, who’d been very quiet so far, finally spoke up.  “So is this a working trip for you?” he asked.

 

God, I hope not, Hermione thought.  Harry smiled.  “I’m afraid your wife is right, Antonio.  I can’t go into any details.  But I can say that we are not by any stretch of the imagination ‘on duty.’”  He fixed Antonio with an unreadable stare for a few brief seconds before looking away.  

 

Hermione concentrated on her salad.  Harry was up to something.  She wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that they were being surreptitiously watched by a man and a woman she’d never seen before at a table across the room.  She wasn’t positive Harry had noticed, but their observers weren’t being exactly subtle about it. 

 

She took quick glances at Antonio and Jillian, who had to be the object of this new scrutiny.  If someone had wanted to observe her and Harry they would have had a full month to do so. 

 

“You came aboard at Fiji, then?” Harry was saying.

 

“Mm, yes,” Jillian said, sipping her wine.  “We spent the most divine two weeks there.”  Hermione doubted the veracity of that statement.  They were both pale as whipping cream, and if there was one thing difficult to avoid on Fiji, it was the sun.  “But we’re ready to move along, so we’re going to set up house in Antonio’s flat in New York.”

 

“Where are you from, Jillian?  Originally, I mean?” Hermione asked.

 

She hesitated just slightly.  “Oh, nowhere anyone’s ever heard of.  Just a little town in Arizona.”

 

“Really?  You don’t seem American to me.”

 

“I suppose not!  With all the places I’ve lived I’m amazed I can remember where I came from at all!”  She laughed, the dulcet bell-like tones of a practiced socializer.

 

“I must say we’ve heard a fair piece about you two already,” Antonio said, just as their waiter brought the main course.

 

“Oh, I’ve no doubt,” Harry said.  “I’m sure I don’t know what everyone finds so fascinating.”

 

“They say you’re quite skilled on the dance floor.”  He was smiling, a twinkle lurking in the corners of his eyes.  Hermione found herself warming more to Antonio than to Jillian.  He seemed more genuine.  She was nice enough, but it was clear she was accustomed to wearing a socially appropriate façade that lacked verisimilitude to a keen observer.

 

Harry colored slightly.  “I suppose that’s true.”

 

“I met a woman just before dinner who was very…what’s the word I’m looking for?  Effusive.  Went on and on about how we’d have to get the full story on you and report back to her.  What was her name again?”

 

Hermione laughed.  “Did she have a Southern accent thick enough to dunk your scones in?”

 

“Oh my, yes.  At first I actually thought it was fake.”

 

“That’s Patsy LaMont, our resident busybody.  She’s a widow, a genuine southern belle.  She’s taking this trip with a whole gaggle of tittering friends.  They’re…sort of omnipresent.  She’s never actually talked to us, but she’s done more than her fair share of talking about us.”

 

Jillian nodded knowingly.  “In that case, I think I’ll find her later and tell her I’ve found out that you’re Prince Charles’ illegitimate daughter traveling on the royal dime to keep you quiet.”

 

Harry chuckled.  “Well, that wouldn’t be much stranger than some of the stories we’ve heard about ourselves.”

 

“Why is everyone so curious, do you think?” Antonio asked.

 

“Who can say?” Harry went on.  “We’re young but obviously well-off and lead lives that allow us to take two months off.  We keep to ourselves, mostly, and we don’t offer up the story of our lives to every person we meet.”

 

“It’s that classic British reserve,” Jillian said.  “So private.”

 

You’d be private, too, if you were the most famous man in the world, Hermione thought.  “We have our reasons for keeping to ourselves,” she said aloud.

 

“But it is true that you’re on honeymoon?”

 

Hermione looked over at Harry.  He met her eyes and took her hand under the table.  “Yes, that’s true,” he said, smiling at her.  “That much, I’d gladly shout across the room.”

 

 

“Interesting dinner companions,” Harry finally said.  They were walking around the deck as they often did in the evening.  Until now, they’d been comfortably silent.

 

“Hmm,” she agreed.

 

A long pause.  “Much more going on there than with the Palmers.”

 

“Quite.”

 

Another pause.  “They’re being followed.”

 

“They weren’t in Fiji for two weeks, that’s for sure.”

 

“He isn’t in shipping.”

 

“And I think she’s British.”  He raised one eyebrow at her.  She shrugged.  “She said ‘flat’ instead of ‘apartment.’”

 

“She could have picked that up.”

 

“Why’d you tell them we were spies?”

 

“I’m not sure,” he said, his voice thoughtful.  “I think because…something tells me they’re scared.  Could have been the way they were dressed.  Overdressed, you might say, with all their little signs of prosperity so prominently displayed.  Like they were armoring themselves in their material assets.”

 

“We’re jumping to a lot of conclusions based on nothing much,” she said, slipping her arm through his elbow.  She sighed.  “I don’t know, honey.  Do you think…well…”

 

“That we miss work and we’re trying to invent intrigue?” he said, the smile audible in his voice.

 

She chuckled.  “Something like that.”

 

“I don’t think so.  I sure didn’t invent Ike and Mike watching them from across the room.”

 

“So you did see them.”

 

“Pretty hard to miss.”

 

She thought for a moment.  “Did you…maybe want them to know that help was available if they needed it?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“But, Harry…what if they’re the bad guys?  What if they’re on the run, or hiding some illegal activities?”

 

“I don’t think so.  The man and woman watching them were very unprofessional.  Peering over their menus, taking the long way to the bathroom so they could pass our table…the woman actually used her compact to look over her shoulder.  Can you believe that?  They weren’t well-trained.  If it were some governmental agency watching them undercover they’d be a lot more subtle.  Those two were one step above the thugs Allegra likes to sic on us, and it’s a pretty small step.”  He shook his head.  “No, I have a feeling that if there’s bad things afoot that the Franciscos are on the receiving end of it.”  He glanced down at her.  “You thought you recognized him at first.  Do you still?”

 

She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I thought so, but I keep vacillating.  Maybe he just reminds me of someone.  Hard to say.”

 

Harry smiled.  “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”  He dropped her hand and slipped his arm around her shoulders.  “We’re supposed to be exchanging passionate gazes and licking chocolate off each other.  We’re supposed to be on vacation, for crying out loud.”

 

Hermione sighed.  “I don’t think people like us get vacations, Harry.  Not real ones, anyway.  It’s not as if we can shut down our minds to think only of pina coladas and the Baked Alaska at the midnight buffet.”

 

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could?”

 

She nodded.  “Besides, our wedding was perfect and beautiful, not to mention happily uninterrupted by inconvenient evil.  I think it’s a bit much to ask the fates for a peaceful honeymoon, too.”

 

 

Later that night, Hermione brushed her teeth at the sink in their tiny bathroom.  “I wonder what’s going on at home?” she asked through a mouthful of toothpaste.

 

She heard Harry sigh.  “Don’t know.  Don’t care.”  She glanced into the bedroom to see him lying flat on his back on the bed with his arms folded beneath his head.  He shrugged.  “I don’t want to think about home, or work, or the house, or anyone.  We’ll be back soon enough.”

 

“Do you think we ought to give anyone a heads-up about our Christmas surprise?  Maybe just Ron?”

 

“No!” he exclaimed, sitting up.  “The key word is ‘surprise!’  We can’t tell anyone, because…well, it wouldn’t be a surprise!”

 

She smiled.  “Yes, dear, I’m familiar with the concept.  But what if they’ve got all sorts of plans and we muck everything up when we appear out of nowhere?”

 

“What are the odds of that?  Christmases have been virtually the same for as long as I can recall, I can’t think of anything new they’d decide to do that we could possible ruin with our mere presence.”  He stood up and walked into the bathroom as Hermione rinsed out her mouth.  He slipped his arms around her waist and bent his head to kiss her neck.  Hermione sighed and leaned back against his chest, looking at their reflection in the mirror.  He looked up and met her eyes in the glass.  “It’ll be one month tomorrow,” he said softly.

 

“I know,” she said.

 

He smiled.  “Sick of me yet?”

 

She turned around in his arms and slid her hands up around his neck.  “Yes.  I can barely stand the sight of you.”

 

His mischievous smile fell away.  “Then shut your eyes,” he said, his voice almost a purr.

 

Hermione felt a shiver run up her spine at the quiet promises she detected behind his words.  She did as she was told and waited, eyes shut, her arms around Harry’s shoulders.  At first he just held her, his hands running up and down her back and underneath her nightgown.  She felt his lips on her brow, then her cheeks.  She tried to turn her head to find his lips with hers but he wasn’t cooperating, moving his head the other way to kiss her jawline and her nose.  She giggled a little.  “Cut it out,” she said.

 

“I thought you couldn’t stand me,” he whispered, his hands sliding down her back.  He drew her hips tightly to his.

 

“I can’t.  You’re insufferable,” she murmured, pressing herself against him.  She smirked a little.  “Although it sure feels like you still find me pretty appealing.”  He was kissing her neck now.  Hermione let her head fall backwards.  Harry wasn’t talking anymore.  He was through bantering.  He was directing all his energies towards making all the bones in her body melt into butter, something he was very good at.  Finally she could take no more.  She grasped his head and made him stay still so she could kiss him back.

 

Eventually they made it to the bedroom of their suite.  They didn’t speak as they undressed each other and crawled up onto the bed.  Hermione gladly allowed all her thoughts to fly from her, until one which was new and strange flew back and made itself known.  She paused and drew away.

 

Harry cocked his head.  “What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing, just…I just realized something.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“When we make love, you never…well, you never tell me what you want.”

 

“Should I?”

 

“Of course!  That’s only fair, isn’t it?”

 

He sat up, frowning, the sheets pooling in his lap.  “I don’t know.  I never thought about it.”  He shrugged, smiling down at her.  “I guess I never wanted anything that we weren’t already doing.”

 

“That can’t possibly be true.  There has to be something you’d like to do, or that you’d like me to do, that we haven’t done.”

 

“I’m not so sure.  We’ve done lots of stuff,” he said, smirking.

 

Hermione leaned her head on her elbow.  “But…don’t you have any fantasies?  Naughty little scenarios?”

 

“Why?”

 

She rolled her eyes.  “We’re supposed to share that stuff.  If you tell me, I might…you know, do them for you.”

 

“You’ve never told me about any of your naughty little scenarios.”

 

“I don’t really have any.”

 

“Then why do you assume that I do?”

 

“Because you’re a man!  Women like stability, we’re not so into roleplaying, generally.  Men like variety, they always have little secret desires!  Men are supposed to want to pretend their wives are nurses and they’re the naughty patients, or that they’re burglars who sneak in through a window and find the innocent spinster in her sexy lingerie…”  She couldn’t go on, because Harry was laughing.

 

“Good grief, is that what men do?  How silly.  Takes some of the spontaneity away if you need a bloody script and props for sex, doesn’t it?  Why impose such awful complications on something so simple?”  He lay back down again and drew her close.  “Of course I have fantasies.  Mostly they’re about you.  I won’t lie to you, some aren’t.  Of course you know my hopeless crush on Elizabeth Hurley.”

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

“But really and truly, if you want to know what I want…well, look in the mirror.  I have a beautiful, sexy wife who just told me she can’t wait to fulfill my every secret desire.  I’ve got everything I could possibly want.”

 

 

The deck chairs situated along the port side railing on B Deck were an ideal position for spying, Hermione reflected as she settled herself in.  From this vantage point you could see most of the main thoroughfare of the ship’s upper decks spread out before you, and people had to walk past you to get to most of the dining rooms.  She had a perfect view of the pool across the deck without being too obvious about it.

 

She arranged her book open on her lap and adjusted her dark glasses.  Sometimes the old tricks really were the best.  Where would spies like herself be without dark glasses?  She tried to imagine life as an intelligence operative trying to work in a world where you could never hide where your eyes were looking.  Awful thought.

 

Jillian and Antonio were lounging by the pool, sipping colorful drinks which were periodically replenished by the waiters who floated about and seemed to have a nearly telepathic ability to sense when one of their passengers needed attention.  Hermione had wondered several times if the crew had to attend some sort of special school to learn how to anticipate everyone’s every need.

 

As if he’d just been waiting around the corner for her to sit down, a porter appeared out of nowhere and placed a small table next to her chair with her favorite fruity drink on it.  “There you are, Mrs. Granger,” he said with a smile.

 

“Thanks,” she said.  How they remembered everyone’s favorite beverages she’d never know.  With skills like that, they’d probably make decent spies themselves.

 

Hermione sipped her drink and watched Jillian and Antonio while her fingers automatically turned the pages of her book every few minutes.  They seemed blissfully oblivious to the fact that their babysitters from the night before were watching them from the A Deck promenade above.  They were being extremely obvious about it.  When Antonio got up to stretch his legs, the man actually leaned over the railing to watch him leave.  They weren’t even making the slightest attempt to feign some other activity, conversation, for example.  It offended Hermione’s sense of professionalism that anyone even remotely connected to the spying industry could be so amateurish.

 

After an hour or so she hadn’t seen or learned anything new except what brand of sunscreen Jillian used.  She was just considering packing it in and hitting the pool herself when a shadow fell across her torso.

 

“D’you mind if I sit down, hon?” said the shadow in a thickly accented Southern voice.

 

Hermione looked up, shading her eyes with one hand.  It was…oh drat, she couldn’t remember the woman’s name.  It was one of Patsy LaMont’s little disciples, the one with the bottle-red hair and the little rose tattoo on her bicep.  She tried and failed to think quickly of an excuse.  “Umm…please.  Be my guest.”

 

The woman spread her towel and plopped down beside Hermione.  “Isn’t it just the peachiest day ever?  I swear I could just sit here on one of these chairs for days and days of course I’d burn to a crisp before too long you know the women in my family all have such fair skin we just burn before you can even blink if we don’t absolutely smother ourselves in SPF 60 and my land aren’t you getting a nice tan there yourself!”

 

Hermione blinked.  “Thank you.”  She wasn’t sure how to react. 

 

The woman held out her hand.  “I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced, honey.  I’m Gina,” she said.

 

Hermione shook her hand, a little wary.  “I’m Hermione.”

 

“Oh, of course you are, such a beautiful name it is too, and you’re British, aren’t you, and don’t you just have the most gorgeous accent I ever heard I could just sit here and listen to you talk all the livelong day!”

 

With effort, Hermione held herself back from what might have been a rude comment on this woman’s willingness to let Hermione get a word in edgewise in her supposedly gorgeous accent.  She just smiled.  “Thank you.”

 

“I know we haven’t really ever had the chance to chat between ourselves but I saw you sitting here and I thought I’d just sit right down and introduce myself and maybe we could get ourselves good and acquainted!”

 

Hermione smiled.  “Lost the toss, did you?”  She nodded her head down the deck where Patsy and the rest of their cadre were sitting in a loose huddle around a bridge table, very ostentatiously not watching their little missionary’s success at making first contact with Hermione.  She’d known it was only a matter of time before curiosity got the better of Patsy and she sent someone to get the full scoop on her and Harry and report back to the troops.

 

Gina wilted a little.  “Oh…well…I suppose you might…”  She giggled abruptly.  “You must just think we’re as silly as anything.”

 

“Of course not,” Hermione said, feeling a bit guilty for her snappishness.  What had this woman ever done to her, after all?  She set her book down.  “I’m pleased to meet you, Gina.”

 

Gina leaned closer.  “You’re just so mysterious, you’ll have to forgive us if we’re curious.”

 

“Well, let there be no further mystery,” Hermione said, weary of the entire persona.  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

 

“Oh, your affairs are none of my business, I’m sure,” Gina said, making her token protest.

 

“On a trip this long on a ship this size, there’s not much private business, is there?”  Hermione said.

 

“Isn’t that the truth!  My Lord, I never saw such a shipload of busybodies and isn’t talk just the cheapest you’ve ever seen and the stories that go around I declare I just don’t know what to think half the time I mean you never do know what’s true and what’s just a baldfaced lie!”

 

“No, you never do.”

 

Gina looked around, smiling vaguely as if contemplating what to say next.  She brightened and pointed across towards the pool.  “Oh, isn’t that your husband over there?” she said.

 

Hermione followed her gaze and saw Harry talking to David and Gloria Wrightmire, a couple from California with whom they’d become friendly.  When she had come up to the deck Harry had gone instead to the gym and had evidently just returned; he looked a little sweaty and had a towel over one shoulder.  “Yes, that’s him.”  She smiled to herself.  Yep, that’s my husband.  Great Merlin’s ghost, I’m still getting used to that.  Amazing that I actually have one.

 

“What’s his name again?  I swear I heard it once but I declare I can never remember anyone’s name to save my life I’m not sure I’d remember my own if it wasn’t on my driver’s license.”

 

Hermione grinned.  Gina’s run-on sentence conversational style was nothing if not entertaining.  “His name’s Harry.”

 

“And what does he do for a living?”

 

She reminded herself that this woman came from a culture that still asked what your husband did for a living and not what you yourself did.  “He works for the government.  So do I.  Actually, we work in the same department.”

 

“How interesting!  So you met at work, then?”

 

“Oh, no.  I’ve known Harry since I was eleven.  We met at school.”

 

“School sweethearts!” Gina exclaimed, clapping her hands.  Hermione marveled at her enthusiasm.  The poor woman must be starved for entertainment if the story of my life is so enthralling, she thought.  “How perfectly romantic!”

 

“We weren’t school sweethearts,” Hermione explained, wondering if she ought to start keeping track of how many times she told this same tired old story.  “We were best friends.  We weren’t…uh, sweethearts…until about two years ago.”

 

“But that’s even better!  You were lifelong friends, and then suddenly you looked at each other and saw your true love!”

 

Hermione laughed.  “You’ve seen too many movies, I think.”

 

“I’m a sucker for a good love story, honey.  Lord knows we can all use a little more romance in our lives!”

 

“What about you?  Are you married?”

 

Gina made a dismissive hand gesture.  “Oh, sure.  He had good breeding and money and I had a twenty-one-inch waist and our parents liked each other.”

 

Hermione sat up, horrified.  “You had an arranged marriage?”  She was incredulous.  She didn’t think that sort of thing went on in America.

 

Gina laughed.  “Oh my Lord, no!  But it might as well have been.  I came out in society when I was sixteen, and I was well brought up to get married and keep house and family for some respectable and well-monied man, and that’s what I did.”  She sighed.  “Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband.  He’s a good man, as husbands go.  My children are grown and gone and he and I don’t have much to say to each other.”  She shrugged as if this were just a fact of life.  “The point of our marriage was to have a family and the prettiest house on the block.  I was pregnant a month after our wedding.  Now that it’s just us again…well, I can hardly remember what we used to talk about.”

 

Hermione looked down at her book, troubled.  She couldn’t imagine not being able to talk to Harry.  She thought about some future time when their kids were grown and gone and they were alone again and saw each other as strangers…but that could never happen.  Not to them.  “That’s awful,” she said. 

 

“It’s not so awful.  I have my own life.  I have my friends and my clubs and my volunteer work and now I have a grandchild, too.”

 

“That’s good, but…I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t close to my husband.”

 

“It’s different for you now,” Gina said.  “In my day, that’s just the way things were done.”

 

Hermione shifted to look at her.  “Really?  I was under the impression that in your part of the world, people have always married for love.”

 

“Oh, my stars!” Gina said, laughing.  “Of course we do, honey.  It’s just…love needs a little help, don’t you think?”

 

Hermione thought a moment.  “No, actually.  It’s everything else that needs help.  Sometimes I feel like my relationship with my husband is the only thing that’s working right.”

 

Gina smiled at her, a geniune smile.  “Then you’re lucky.”

“Yes, I am.”

 

Gina looked away again.  “For more than one reason.  He is a handsome thing, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

 

Hermione grinned.  “I don’t mind when people tell the truth.”

 

As if he could sense them talking about him, Harry broke away from the Wrightmires and walked over to them.  He took a seat on Hermione’s other side.  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said, smiling politely at Gina.  He turned a more genuine smile to Hermione and bent to kiss her cheek.  “Soaking up some rays?”

 

“Harry, this is Gina,” she said.  “Gina, this is my husband, Harry.”

 

“So nice to meet you!” Gina said, shaking his hand across Hermione’s stomach.

 

“Gina and I were just talking,” she said, tossing him a significant glance.  She saw his eyes flick to the table where Patsy and her posse were huddling and knew he understood.

 

“Looks like you were enjoying the scenery,” he said, nodding his head slightly in the direction of Jillian and Antonio’s two minders on the upper deck.

 

She sighed.  “Unfortunately, it all looks the same after awhile.”

 

 

Hermione arched her back and exhaled, her eyes and her mind both pleasantly unfocused.  Lying nude among the bed’s silky sheets was itself a sensual experience, but when you added the always erotic feeling of Harry’s bare skin against her own, it didn’t take much to buoy her into a state of relaxed arousal.  I’m being repaid for all the trouble and trauma of my life, she thought.  With interest.

 

It had been years…no, it had been forever…since she’d had nothing to worry about.  She wasn’t worried about her grades, or her job, or her family, or her house, or her friends.  Most significantly, she wasn’t worried about Harry, except to wonder how long she could hold out under his ministrations before he had her screaming at the ceiling.

 

They’d had their ups and downs in bed, like anyone else.  There had a been a few agonizing weeks at the beginning when Harry had been oddly convinced that she really enjoyed being licked in various places and she’d still been too shy to correct this extremely erroneous assumption.  There had been one memorable occasion when she’d fallen asleep while he was making love to her, an incident he had never (and would never, she was certain) let her live down.  Once, she had lost her balance with her mouth around a rather delicate part of Harry’s anatomy and had scraped him a good one with her teeth.  She had felt horrible…not only because of what she’d done but because while he was moaning in pain in the bathroom she was in the bedroom faking coughing fits so he wouldn’t know she was laughing.

 

These mishaps aside, she was privately smug over the quality of her sex life and absolutely certain that no one else, certainly no other woman she knew, was getting it as well as she was.  This, she kept to herself.  No reason to make all the other girls jealous.

 

She had no idea where Harry had come up with some of the things he’d contributed to their physical relations; frankly, it wasn’t something she enjoyed contemplating.  The inescapable fact that he’d probably picked up a good many techniques from Allegra gave her the creeps.  She couldn’t think about her and her former relationship with Harry; if she did, it started to feel as if the woman was still around and in their bed, and that way lie madness.

 

Hermione sighed and looked down at the top of her husband’s head as he kissed his way down her stomach, his hands caressing her skin and leaving trails of warmth in their wake.  She reached down and laced her fingers through his.  He looked up at her, pillowing his chin on her stomach, his eyes radiating his particular brand of soft sexual energy.  He kissed her fingers.  “I love you,” he whispered.  “Do you know I’ve never said that to anyone but you?”

 

She smiled.  “I didn’t know that.”

 

He nodded.  “I never wanted to say it unless I was really sure it was true.”

 

“You never loved anyone else?  I know, I know you’ve said that before, but…honestly, Harry.  We’re married now, I know you love me, it’s really okay if you’ve felt that way about someone else.  You can tell me the truth.”

 

He slid up and lay next to her, their limbs intertwined, his face pillowed on her hair.  “The truth?  The truth is that I was yours before I knew what that meant.  I could look around, I could let myself try other women on for size, but…I had to come back in the end.  I had to come home to you and just pray that you loved me back.”

 

She stroked her hand down his face.  “What if I hadn’t?”

 

“I try not to think about that.”

 

They lay there together for a few quiet moments.  “I waited for us for a long time,” she finally whispered.  “Without knowing what I was waiting for.”

 

He nodded.  “Me, too.”

 

She leaned forward and kissed him.  His arms went around her and he kissed her back, resuming his previous pathway down her stomach.  As he slid down the bed Hermione’s eyes fell shut and she let the sensations course up and down her body.  She was reminded of the most memorable times she and Harry had made love.  Their first time, so passionate, so unexpected, so achingly right and perfect.  Under the open sky at Hogwarts on the ground where they’d thought Ron’s lifeblood had run from his body.  At the Marquis in Florence, the first time after a long estrangement.

 

Florence.  Her memories of their time there were some of her most painful and also some of her most treasured.  Harry’s face as he shouted at her in that deserted plaza.  The feeling of him beneath her as they went through their strained and emotionless couplings in the hotel.  That first sight of him in Wainwright’s house as she lay near death, how glad she’d been to see him, how much he’d seemed like a mirage…

 

Abruptly, Hermione’s eyes snapped wide open and she gasped sharply.  Harry paused and looked up.  “What?” he said.  “What’s wrong?”

 

She sat up and pushed him away.  “Oh God!”  She jumped off the bed and walked in a circle, not for any reason, but merely because she had to walk somewhere, anywhere.

 

Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed and watched her, his face concerned.  “Hermione, what is it?”

 

She stopped and faced him.  “Harry…I remember where I’ve seen Antonio Francisco before.”

 

“Where?”

 

She took a deep breath.  “I didn’t see him.  Only his picture.  Patrick Wainwright had it.”  At the mention of Wainwright’s name she saw Harry’s face shift and harden.  “He had several pictures…he dropped them on the hallway floor and I helped him pick them up.”  She put a hand to her forehead.  “One of the other pictures was of a man who ended up dead a week later, executed by the D’Agostinos.”

 

Harry stood up, slowly.  “Are you saying that…the D’Agostinos have a contract out on Jillian and Antonio?”

 

“It makes sense!  They’re on the run!  Those two people watching them, they must be foot soldiers in the family!”  She shook her head.  “But…Jillian and Antonio are Muggles!  Why would the wizard mob care about a few Muggles?”

 

“Oh, they might care,” Harry said.  “D’Agostino doesn’t limit his options.  He’s been known to use Muggles for money laundering or to obtain supplies and information.  Even if Antonio never did anything for him, he might have witnessed something or learned something that would make him dangerous to the family.”  His eyes were shifting now, she could almost see the wheels turning in his head.  “It does explain a few things.”

 

“It’s a miracle they’ve survived this long if they’ve been targeted,” Hermione said.  “They don’t waste any time when they’ve decided to get rid of somebody.”

“What do you think we should do?”

 

“Well, we’ve got to help them!” she exclaimed.  “We could…I don’t know what we could do, actually.  But we have to do something!”

 

Harry was chewing on his thumbnail, thinking.  “First we need to get the truth.”  He grabbed his pants.  “Come on, let’s make a neighborly call.”

 

“No,” she said, holding him back.  “I think first we ought to take a closer look at their babysitters.”

 

 

The ship was scheduled to dock the next day in Hawaii.  The Franciscos had