Sitting on the sofa, he stared at the screen while she settled herself on her bed. Looking up at her, he silently asked if she was ready with a raise of one perfect eyebrow.
Slowly she nodded.
"Ready"
"The first one on the list is Hotel NH Collection Venezia Palazzo Barocci" he glanced at her to see her close her eyes and shake her head.
"No." she whispered.
He scrolled down.
"Ok…..how about The Gritti Palace, Venice...looks rather beatiful, it's got…."
She cut him off.
"No" she muttered, hands clasped tight round a pillow she was clutching to her chest.
He scrolled down some more, searching without really knowing what he was to avoid or why.
"Well what about Baglioni Hotel Luna?" he asked, looking at her hopefully.
She smile at him, and he noted that was the first time she had smiled quite like that since the night she woke him screaming.
"Yes" she dropped the pillow to the bed and stood up.
"Sure?" he enquired, hand poised over the book icon.
"It has Luna in the name! Of course I would remember if I stayed their before" she chuckled, moving over to the dresser to start packing.
Malfoy watched her move, uncertain whether she was aware of the snippet of information that she had just unwittingly provided him with as to what the issue with booking hotels was. His calculating Slytherin mind working quickly, he piece together her behaviour when they fought, the way she swore at him in a multitude of languages and the resistance towards booking certain hotels. He thought back to when Harry had briefed him about the assignment and the way he had clearly wanted to tell him something about her. His mind rolled back further to the first meal he shared with Harry and Ginny one depressing Sunday when Harry had flood to Draco's apartment and found him staring at the wall drinking Firewhiskey, surrounded by empty bottles. Harry had sobered him up at taken him to Grimmauld Place and Ginny had fed him until he felt warm and full and loved. That was the beginning of their friendship, the thought as he reminisced. He remembered picking up a postcard from the French Rivera and asking her why Hermione was writing to her about a guy named Pierre. Ginny had laughed at Draco's assumption that he had been her beau.
"The guy's 64!" she cried, laughing so hard she cried. He runs a cafe she visits every day".
Ginny then told her Hermione was away. Finding where she fits in life. That was how she put it.
Like a wizard chess master his tactical mind analysed which route to take the conversation down.
"Granger?…" he started, eyes not leaving the screen as he casually scrolled through the pictures on the hotel website.
"Hmmm" came her reply as she busied herself with emptying the bottom draw of the dresser.
"Are you aware that when you are stressed you lapse into other languages?" he asked, stealing a sidelong glance at her while appearing engrossed in scrutinising the Facebook page for the hotel.
"Do I?" she asked nonchalantly, getting those flimsy little cream silk blouses out that drove his mind over the edge with desire out of the closet opposite her bed.
"Mmmhumm" he replied, trying not to think of how alluring they made her decolatage as he closed the laptop.
"Well I guess anything's possible in high pressure situations, especially since I happen to be fluent in most European languages" she continued moving about the room.
He watched her in silence, waiting for the right moment.
"And I had a Great Aunt who was Dutch but she always spoke English. My whole life English, so I didn't know she was Dutch. Until I was 9 and her sister died and she would be speaking to my Mum and would lapse into long tracts of Dutch and I wouldn't have a clue what she was saying." she continued her rambling as she tossed kitten heels into the suitcase and he tried not to think of her slender calves. His cock had other ideas.
"So what language do I lapse into when I am stressed then?" she asked, heading into the bathroom to grab her toiletries.
"All of them" he stated, matter of factly.
She screwed up her face in derision as she came out of the bathroom.
"Don't be ridiculous" she sighed, dumping the items in her arms onto the bed to sort through what she had used up and pack what remained.
"I'm not" he chuckled, "I've been keeping a list" and with that he pulled out said list and waved it at her.
"Give me that!" she scoffed, grabbing the parchment he was taunting her with, a smirk on his face.
English.
French.
Italian.
Spanish.
English.
Dutch.
English.
FERRET-OBVIOUSLY ENGLISH.
Farsi? NEW. NOT EUROPEAN.
Spanish.
Portuguese.
Italian.
Italian.
Italian.
English.
English.
Russian.
Russian.
Russian.
German.
Polish.
Parseltongue?! WTAF?
Italian.
Long speech in Italian. Thank Merlin she is nowhere near Blaise.
Silence. THANK MERLIN FOR THAT.
"When did you write that?!" she enquired, her eyes wide in amazement as she stared at the list.
"Paris. At the height of our rowing your ability to colourfully insult me in a multitude of languages was on par. We argued less in Berlin. Things have been different here." He casually explained, not wanting her to focus too much on the other night.
He thought back to then and his cock twitched rather inappropriately at the memory of a scantily clad Granger curled up tight against his bare chest as he comforted her. He swore he deserved an Order of Merlin, 1st Class for his restraint given the proximity and the lack of fabric between the two.
She scrutinised the parchment carefully, before handing it back to him and continuing with her packing.
"So…" he started "how come you are so fluent?" he asked, picking up the copy of De Profeet, the Dutch edition of The Prophet, that was on the coffee table.
"Oh you know me" she casually replied, "send me to a European city with a phrase book and I come home fluent" she chuckled, waving her hands theatrically.
He frowned. She was clearly avoiding something and he was no closer to figuring why she practically had an apoplectic fit when they looked at hotels.
"So if you know all those languages, you must have visited a lot of cities" he pressed, trying to find out more but hoping it wouldn't trigger a row.
"Mmmhumm" came her reply as she threw the last of her empty Lancôme bottles in the bin.
"When was that?" he casually asked, peering over the top of the newspaper.
"Oh after the war, I was going to go back to Hogwarts actually, but one minute I was at King's Cross Station and the next I was running to the tube station to catch the tube to Victoria so we could board the Gatwick Express" she was smiling at the memory.
"Who is we?" he quietly wondered.
She laughed "I had nothing with me because I had already put my trunk on the train, just my passport which I always carried with me for ID and a muggle credit card- luckily I had transferred most of my Gringgots savings including the money the Ministry gave me to my muggle bank which was set up to automatically pay off my credit card. And Ron said pick a flight any flight and we will get on it. The next thing I knew I was handing over my credit card to the receptionist at Grand Hôtel du Palais Royal!" she giggled, still unable to believe that she, Hermione Granger, planner of all the plans each time Harry and Ron found themselves fighting against the forces of evil, had just jumped on a plane with no plan. It had been liberating.
At the mention of Ron, Malfoy scowled, but it was the mention of the name of the hotel that caused the piece to slot into his mind. He thought back to the night round her house, before they left London and how she had dropped a plate in the kitchen, it smashing as it hit the flagstone flooring, the moment he called out the name of the hotel. With that one piece of information he knew enough to understand her emotional meltdowns and possibly why they had rowed more than in Paris than anywhere else.
She had been avoiding anywhere she had been with Weasley.
He put down the paper, watching her humming away to herself as she zipped up the suitcase, blissfully unaware that his Slytherin mind pieced it all together. Not wanting to spoil her mood by triggering more trauma for her, he pressed no further with that tact.
Standing up, he grabbed her suitcase for her and hauled it off the bed.
"There's just one thing I don't get though, Granger" he mused out loud as they walked out into the hallway, two suitcases in tow.
"Oh? What's that? She said, rumaging through her purse for the room key.
"How is it you know parseltounge?" he enquired, completely baffled as it was a very rare gift to be a parselmouth and he knew she wasn't one.
"Oh!" she muttered, slotting the card into the door and locking it "Harry talks in his sleep."
She walked the couple of yards to the elevator and pressed the button.
Malfoy remained rooted to the spot in stunned silence for a moment, before turning to Granger
"I'm sorry, what did you just say?"