Draco tossed the book at Blaise. "I've marked the relevant passage."
The other man opened the book and started to read, then looked up at Draco with a slowly growing fury.
"Exactly," said Draco. "It wasn't an accident."
Hermione stretched her feet out and grinned at the fairly dotty blonde woman she'd been dropped off with, like a child at a minder's, while Blaise went off to meet with someone in private. He and Draco had been on edge all day and, since she suspected asking questions would only get her more clever evasions coupled with pleas for time, she'd been just as happy to leave them to themselves. Prats.
They were fools if they thought she'd just sit around forever while they dithered and asked her to be patient about their collusion to keep her in the dark but she thought she could sit around today here in the window of this sunny café, soaking in light and heat and feeling lazily contented.
This woman – Luna – didn't trigger a single memory but she certainly knew a great tea shop and they were both currently digging into their puddings with childlike abandon.
"So you don't remember anything?" the woman asked again, obviously fascinated by the whole memory loss problem.
"Bits and pieces come back," Hermione said with a shrug, "but they tend not to be connected to anything."
"That's kind of wonderful," Luna said, grinning at her. "It's like a perfect, fresh slate to start your life over. Can't remember where the cat food is? Well, what do you expect, I've lost my memory. Forgot it was my day to take out the trash? Oh well."
"Ron was a bit unpleasant about it," Hermione reached across the table to get the pot and refill her tea cup even as she was charmed by Luna's wholly unexpected perspective. "Yelled at Blaise and Draco and all."
Luna shrugged. "Not like you'd remember this but there was the screaming match to end all screaming matches when Ron found out you were going to marry both of them. Called it immoral and disgusting and all sorts of things. In public. You had a few things to say to him. As I recall 'judgmental troglodyte' was a phrase you repeated more than once. You drew a crowd." She scraped at the edge of her plate where a dab of pudding had gone astray. "He can be a bit cruel but he doesn't mean it. He's just impulsive and let's his emotions run away with him. I always thought your brief fling with him was why you fell into Blaise's arms."
"Really?" Hermione leaned forward, fascinated to get an outsider's impression of her history.
"Well," Luna licked her fork. "Blaise adores you, of course, but he's not the sort to ever let his emotions get the best of him. I think he could face torture with little more than a snide remark and a raised eyebrow. Seeing that one lose control must be something."
"What makes you think I've seen him lose control?"
"You're waiting for the marriage? Or is it that you just haven't since your accident?" Luna looked fascinated again and Hermione had to think for a moment to realize what she meant and then she flushed, the red creeping up her neck and over her cheeks.
"Umm. No," she muttered. "Or rather, yes. Or. We have, I mean."
"Well then," Luna said cheerfully and Hermione started to laugh, probably the first moment of real mirth she'd had since she woken up.
"He is… yeah," she said, still red. "Definitely something." She took a sip of her tea to try to hide the embarrassment that still painted her face.
"How about Draco," Luna asked and Hermione nearly spit that tea out.
"Also something," she said, gasping for air.
"I always wondered," Luna said, her voice filled with mischief but also with the promise of friendship. "He certainly looks like all kinds of buried smolders just waiting to burst into flame but we weren't close, really, so I could never ask."
"I think we're close now," Hermione said, "or we certainly will be. If you want. I get the impression I'm not good at people. I mean, 'troglodyte' is a bit harsh, especially towards a man I apparently had a thing with on top of being best friends and all."
"You aren't great with people," Luna agreed. "Not really. But then, neither am I. You're abrasive and bossy and I'm generally considered vague. Plus, of course, your very public unconventional relationship makes people uncomfortable."
"Why?" Hermione asked, genuinely curious what the other woman thought but also more than a little tired of the judgment she'd gotten from both her Healer and her old friends.
"Jealous, probably," Luna said with serene poise.
"Fools," Hermione muttered. "If you think one man is hard to manage, you should try two. And me with a head injury." Luna laughed and they sat, then, and regarded each other with a growing sense of kinship across the table.
"I don't suppose we're already close enough to share details?" Luna asked and Hermione, with a grin, waved over the waitress to get a refill on the tea.
"So," she said, and they spent the next hour, heads tipped together over the cooling tea, comparing the techniques of the three men in their lives. When Blaise arrived at the café, ready to pick up Hermione, frustration in both his posture and eyes, he was greeted by Luna's nearly demented giggling at the sight of him. That made him wonder, perhaps too late, if he would live to regret his idea to reintroduce the two of them. Still, close friends other than Potter and Weasley had to be a net gain. Right?
. . . . . . . . . .
"So," Draco said as they all sat on the patio in the back of their flat, "let's go back to the name discussion, shall we? Now that you've agreed to marry us again – "
"Technically," Hermione cut him off, "I've only agreed to marry Blaise again." At his stricken look she almost immediately relented and pointed out the obvious. "You haven't asked."
He crossed his arms and glowered at her in the candlelight and the sky slowly dimmed. "I most certainly did. It was romantic, too. Roses. Strolling minstrels. Even a unicorn."
"Liar," she said, and held her wine glass out to Blaise who filled in.
"Do you remember?" he smirked at her and when she shook her head he said, "Then there were definitely unicorns."
"Oh, are we up to plural unicorns now?" Hermione asked and Blaise bit back a laugh as he watched the pair of them spar. "Next thing I know you'll have added some kind of flying cupid to the entire event, complete with a miniature bow and arrow set."
"You do remember!" Draco said and for a brief moment a look of absolute horror at the hideous, over-the-top possibilities of a Draco in full-on excess mode crossed her face until she saw the smirk he was trying to hide.
"You're just taking the piss," she muttered.
Blaise took pity on her. "Other than you were both naked at the time, as was I, it was a wholly conventional proposal. He got down on a knee and held out the ring and you looked at me and I nodded, and you squealed and then you said yes and then we started arguing about the names. An argument that continued for months and only stopped when you fell down the stairs."
"Names?" Hermione looked at him.
"You know, would you keep yours, hyphenate, take one of ours, what would we do. There are a lot of potential name combinations when you've got three people to deal with." Blaise took a sip from his own glass and grinned, waiting for the ongoing argument to continue. He'd long since decided he didn't care what the woman's name was as long as she was his; Draco, silly man, continued to hold on to a far more conservative view of the whole situation. Of course, Blaise's own mother changed her name every few years so he didn't have the same reverence for tradition that Draco couldn't quite shake off; Blaise hadn't even met his last few step-fathers before they'd died of old age, happy to the end. She was unique, his mother. Of course, unlike Draco's dreadful mother she also had no objection to his own romantic life. "Two men at once?" she'd mused when he'd told her about Hermione and Draco. "That's efficient of her; wish I'd thought of it."
"I don't see why anyone needs to change a name." Hermione interrupted his thoughts as she made a face. "So much work."
Draco slouched. "Here we go again."
"What?" She took a sip of her wine. "Why should we pick one name over another? That seems unfair. And hyphenating all three of them is just ridiculous."
"But I want to give you my name," he muttered in frustration. "Any other woman would be salivating at the prospect but no, I have to fall for the one woman in all of wizarding Britain who isn't impressed by my lineage."
"Hermione Malfoy," she said the name slowly, letting it roll around on her tongue.
"It sounds good doesn't – " Draco's teasing drawl was cut short when Blaise was suddenly yelling out a spell and yanking Hermione towards him, his sharp jerk dragging her down to the ground and scraping her knees across the flagstone as a heavy figurine from the roof toppled down and shattered, its descent only slightly slowed by the frantically cast spell, crushing the chair she'd been sitting in and spraying all of them with broken bits of concrete.
"What the fuck?" Draco looked at the broken gargoyle and then up at Blaise who had the shaking woman in his arms and was breathing hard.
. . . . . . . . . .
"That hurts," Hermione complained as Blaise dabbed the potion on the scrapes on her knees.
"I promise you," Draco said, squatting next to Blaise and staring at the bloody marks, "that I will distract you from the pain later. Right now we need to talk."
"You plan to – ouch!" she yanked her leg away from Blaise and glared at him.
"Hold still," he muttered. "I'm cleaning out all the little bits and getting this properly treated. Do you want scars?"
She clenched her jaw and grabbed Draco's hand as Blaise continued working. Draco flinched when she squeezed after a particularly painful bit and then said, "I think you've been cursed."
"What?"
Draco exhaled and glanced at Blaise. "I don't think your fall was an accident, I don't think this thing that just happened was an accident. I think you've been cursed."
Blaise was taping a large bandage to each knee as Draco continued. "It was the way Potter's house made you squirm. Out of nowhere you were more sensitive to dark magic residue and I thought that couldn't be good so I did some research."
"Where?" Hermione was ignoring Blaise now and was focused wholly on Draco.
"The Manor," he said, making a face. "I made nice to my mother for you and, frankly, I think I should get some kind of reward for that. Preferably something sexual that involves flexibility or maybe a blindfold and honey because visiting her is not on my top-ten list of things to do."
"A blindfold, you say?" Blaise stood up and held his hand out to Hermione who took it and cringed a bit as she rose.
"Still hurts," she muttered.
"Pain potion probably not a good idea because of the head injury," Blaise said, frowning at her. "You may just have to deal with it."
"Who would be wearing this hypothetical blindfold," Hermione asked, leaning on Blaise as he walked her back to the bedroom.
"You," Draco drawled, outrageous leer firmly in place.
"Well," she said, bending one knee back and forth, "I guess as long as I don't have to be the flexible one we could talk about that."
"Before we start talking about any kind of delightful way to end what, frankly, has been a most unpleasant afternoon and evening," Blaise said, "would you get her the book you showed me."
Draco nodded and, pulling the book out of a drawer handed it over to Hermione as Blaise settled her back into their bed. She looked up at the man and he flipped the book to the marked page and she began to read. "This isn't exactly a diagnosis," she said after a bit and Draco nodded.
"But it's an explanation, and one we should get checked out."
"Dark curses can cause increased sensitivity to dark magical residue," she murmured, closing the book. "The horcrux was like that. Sort of."
Both men stopped and looked at her. "We took turns wearing it," she said, impatiently. "When we were in the woods. Ron, Harry and I. Before we figured out a way to destroy it. It made you… just awful. It brought out all the darkness inside you and magnified it."
"You remember?" Blaise said, very cautiously, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"I do," she said. Then she shook her head. "I did. Not everything, damn it. It was right there. I didn't even have to struggle to reach for it. I just knew, like a normal person. Now… just...it's just flashes. Maybe that's all it was but I wasn't trying so hard so it didn't seem odd. Yes, I remember the locket. I remember fighting. I remember struggling to stay sane when that thing was around my neck. Ron was… it hit him really hard."
"Not surprised," Blaise muttered.
"So…" Draco said, "You agree the way you reacted to Potter's place…"
"It makes sense," she admitted. "Your idea makes sense. If I had some kind of lingering curse on me it might react to the things in his place, interact with them in some way that made my skin crawl."
"It shouldn't have been possible for someone to curse her, though," Blaise said. "Even before we had that inscription added, her ring was not exactly free of protective spells."
"But she took it off," Draco said. "She took it off so we could have the extra layers added."
"And she fell within days of that."
Both men looked at one another over her head and Hermione could feel the gathering wave of their plotting glide along, picking up energy and purpose. "We need a curse breaker." Draco said it. His tone was absolutely flat and unyielding. "I don't know who cursed her, with what, or how but something is wrong."
"It's your mother," Blaise said and Draco's face got tight.
"We get her cleaned up first then we find the source. Unless you were trying to recommend my mother as a curse breaker, in which case I will have to remind you she has almost no practical skills other than entertaining and we can't get a dark curse off with a soiree or a fete or even a party for hundreds."
"'Unfortunate accident'" Blaise quoted. "Like a fall down the stairs, or being crushed by a toppled gargoyle? Too close to mommy's little snide remark for comfort, Draco."
"Curse breaker first," the man said again.
"Don't think I won't kill her."
"Do you want to reveal all your nasty little secrets right now?" Draco demanded. "Because if you don't then I suggest you shut up about your penchant for murder and stay focused on the task at hand: getting our fiancé uncursed before she's our unfortunately accidentally deceased fiancé."
There was a pause while both men glared at one another until Blaise said, backing down, "I happen to know a man in Italy who is very good."
"Excellent." Draco took the book out of Hermione's hands and put it down on the bedside table with not quite enough force to be considered 'slamming' but certainly more than was necessary. "Make the arrangements, will you?"
"I will," Blaise said.
"Do I get any input here?" Hermione asked and Blaise snorted.
"Is that a serious question?"
"No." Draco said. "You do not."
"I'm not sure I like your high-handed approach," Hermione muttered.
"Get used to it," Draco said. "Until you're pronounced curse-free you're going to see a lot of it."
"You don't get to just boss me…" Hermione trailed off her rather outraged protest when she saw the look in Draco's eyes. Implacable. Determined. And terrified. She looked over at Blaise who, even if his expression wavered a bit more, even if he seemed a bit more apologetic they were just taking over and making decisions and plans on her behalf, was clearly just as sure he'd end up getting his own way, was just as scared.
It really was the fear that did it. They were genuinely afraid.
"Well," she said. "I've always wanted to see Assisi."
"It's very nice," Blaise said, relaxing a bit. "The man I know is actually in Rome but after he's done with you we can head out and play tourist a bit."
Draco had turned and pulled something out of a drawer and tossed it to her. She put her hands up to shield her face and both men laughed. They laughed harder when she picked the scrap of fabric out of her lap and looked at Draco with an expression that couldn't quite decide if it were outrage or amusement.
"I did tell you I'd distract you from the pain in your knees," Draco drawled, "and I did mention a blindfold. If I'm going to be high-handed and bossy and have my wicked way with you, you might as well enjoy it."
"What about…" Hermione looked over at Blaise who cooed at her.
"I'll be right here, sweetheart."
"Oh," she said, swallowing hard as she looked from man to man. "Oh." She looked down at the blindfold in her hands and then up at them. "This is one of the benefits of dealing with both of you, isn't it?"
"Well," said Draco, taking the blindfold and gently fastening it into place. "Why don't you find out?"
. . . . . . . . . . .
A/N – Thank you, everyone, for following along on this little fic. As shameful as it is to admit it, your reviews inspire me to actually write instead of just staring idly at Facebook. But, really, those baby sloths… they're so cute!