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Chapter 36 – All You Need it Love (bumpa, dumpa, dum)

All Hermione needed to feel better about her lot in life was a task to do, a means to do her task, and people around her to help her on her way. It also didn't hurt to have thousands of old books and parchments around her. She sighed and then inhaled deeply. There was nothing like the aroma of old parchment in the morning to get her blood tingling. Nothing came close to making Hermione feel as happy as she felt when she was surrounded by books except, perhaps, when she was sharing that experience with the people whom she loved.

For the last five days Hermione and the Vipers had been practically living in the Manor's enormous library searching for everything that they could on Thomas Connell and all (or any) of his dark curses. They went home each night to shower and sleep (and for her, to feed her cat, now permanently named Ringo) and then each morning they came back to the library to do more research.

It almost made her feel like 'the old' Hermione again. She felt useful. Needed. As if she had a purpose. Adrian was missing work to help her. Marcus was missing work AND was absent from Daphne to help her. Blaise was away from his nightclub, but Hermione didn't think that was a big hardship for him. Theo was away from his piano, which might have been hard on him, although she wasn't sure. Draco was in the bosom of his family – who were planning a big birthday party for him for the night after today, so he was happy as a clam to be here.

Hermione didn't mind being at the Manor as long as she didn't have to go anywhere near the main parlor, or Lucius or Narcissa.

And after five days of research, with an occasional dancing lesson thrown in to keep things lively, she finally found a small biography in an old book on Thomas Connell, the man who cursed the cave in Peru. All she needed was to tell the Vipers about the passage she found, oh – and she needed to make another list of tasks since they were close to finding a counter-curse.

So there she sat, all alone in a chair by the fireplace, with piles of books all around her, and she looked up at the men milling around the room. Biting her bottom lip to keep from smiling, she spied the five Vipers in various states of reading and research and she realized they were no longer doing this because she was their 'special project'. They were doing this for her. Because they loved her.

Every single one of them loved her.

And she loved them in return, each and every one of them, in one way or another.

How odd. She loved them all. Correction - she was IN love with them all. Still, she loved them differently, to be sure, but she knew in the deep recesses of her heart that she was IN love with each one of them. Her brain hadn't processed that concept yet, but her heart had already come to terms with it and was at peace with the notion.

If someone had told her months ago that she would have felt anything other than 'like to open disdain' for anymore than one or two of them, she would have laughed openly at that person. Now, months later, she was in love with five men, and she knew they were each in love with her, in different ways as well.

Did that make her debased? Was she wicked, perverse, or debauched for loving five men? She had already slept with four of them. That alone would make many people cringe and judge her as perverted. If she died at the end of this, and there was an afterlife, would she have to answer for this as a sin, or would she be heralded as a saint for her open heart full of love and joy?

She pushed the large book with the passage about Thomas Connell from her lap to the floor and looked across the room at Draco, who stood in the corner arguing with Marcus. Apparently they were fighting over the same book. Hermione silently laughed at the pair. What made these two argue more than the others? She wanted to know all of the Vipers' secrets.

Then she glanced over her right shoulder and she saw Adrian standing propped against a tall shelf, a book in his hand. His lips moved as he read. She did that sometimes, too. He was so smart, yet so bossy, judgmental and harsh sometimes – mostly on himself. Why was that? And there was a moment a few days ago, when he was teaching her the waltz, that she was certain he was going to kiss her, yet he didn't. He held back.

She didn't want him to hold back. She wanted him to kiss her. Sometimes she thought he was such an enigma – she couldn't figure him out. Other times she thought he was so much like her it was scary.

Tilting her head to the side, she swept her glare toward a table in the corner. Blaise was sitting in a chair, a large book open before him. Theo was leaning over his back, one hand on his shoulder. He was whispering something in the other man's ear. Blaise looked back at him and smiled, then nodded. These two men were obviously in love with each other, and in love with her, and she loved them back. If she was forced to pick only one to spend her lifetime with (short lifetime or long) it would be Theo, but why did she have to pick?

In some ways it was a familiar feeling; loving two men who loved each other, one in which she had felt all her life. She grew up loving both Harry and Ron, and they loved each other. But that was friendship. This was more. And even if some people thought it was wrong, she didn't. She couldn't. Love couldn't be wrong, could it?

She didn't covet one man over the other. She didn't worry that their love for the other might eclipsed their love for her. Six months ago she might have thought differently, but now she realized all she needed was love. Love was all she needed. Even if she only had a few months left.

Without hesitation, or forethought basically, she broke the quiet of the giant room by asking, "Do you all love each other?"

Adrian looked at her first, but then the others turned from their spots and stared at her. "Why do you ask?" Adrian inquired.

"I was sitting here, thinking about love, that's all. I wondered if you all loved each other. I love Harry and Ron. They love each other. Do you love each other?"

Marcus stepped forward slightly, although the room was massive, and he was still a far distance from her. He continued walking until he was close enough to her so that he didn't have to shout, and he said, "Do you want to know if we love each other as friends, brothers, or something more, little cub?"

Draco walked closer as well, and then plopped down on a stool on the opposite side of the fireplace. Blaise remained in his chair at the table, but turned his chair around. Theo stayed at Blaise's back, his hand gripping the back of the other man's chair.

"No, well, yes," she fumbled. "Let me start over." She took a fortifying breath, moved a few of the books away from in front of her seat with her feet and stood. "I guess what I'm trying to say, or ask rather, is that, do any of you have feelings for each other that go beyond feelings of Viperness?"

Draco and Adrian laughed. "Viperness?" Adrian asked. "Are you making up words?"

Marcus walked ever nearer, not laughing, not smiling. "Why are you asking this?" he regarded, his eyes partly closed, head cocked to the side.

She licked her dry lips, clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides. "I'm asking because I have an announcement."

"Damn girl can't keep to one subject," Draco retorted.

Blaise stood and said, "Shove it, Malfoy. Let her speak." He walked closer, all the while aware that Theo had taken his previous seat. "Before you make your announcement, love, let me answer your question. I love Theo Nott. I've been in love with him since I was about 12 years old. I knew it was more than just friendship at that time, but I thought my feelings were wrong, or bad, so I never told anyone for a long time. I also thought, at one time, that I was in love with one of the other Vipers."

Taking a few more steps, he stopped in front of Hermione. "At age fourteen, I told my mother that I like both girls and boys. I asked her if something was wrong with me. Being my mother, and loving me no matter what, thinking I was the best thing since the invention of the broom, she said I was perfect. I was made the way I was supposed to be made. I should love whomever, or whatever, I wanted to love."

He looked over at Marcus, then back to Hermione. "About that time, Theo was beaten pretty badly by his father for admitting to having a crush on a Mudblood. I can't remember, you we tell you about that?"

Hermione stood stoically, waiting. "Yes, go on."

Draco interrupted with, "We all know that, what does it have to do with your story?"

Marcus took over. "Astoria learned from Daphne, who learned from me, that Theo had a crush on you. She told Theo's dad, who beat him until he couldn't walk. I was sixteen or so, perhaps almost seventeen. Almost as big as I am now. I went to Mr. Nott and without magic I demanded retribution on the man with my fists."

Theo jumped up from his chair to stand on Marcus' other side. He turned to Marcus, then back toward Draco and Hermione.

Marcus admitted, "What all of you don't know is, there's more to that grotesque little story. It was during the same truth session that I told Daphne about Blaise. She told Astoria all about that, too."

"You never told us that," Adrian said.

Marcus looked down at the ground, then back at Adrian. "How could I? It would have crushed Blaise."

"Did Astoria tell anyone?" Hermione asked. "I mean, Blaise didn't have a father to tell, and his mother already knew, so who could she tell?"

Draco cleared his throat. "She told my father, who told me."

Hermione whipped around to Draco, as did the rest of them, save for Blaise and Marcus. "I've known about Blaise since that time, but I didn't care, and I didn't tell anyone. He was my best mate. My father threatened Astoria, and told her if she ever told anyone, what he assumed was a lie, about Blaise, he would punish her. She was afraid, of course, I mean, he's Lucius Malfoy. She kept quiet."

Hermione processed this information for approximately a minute and then said, "All of these tidbits aside, what does it have to do with my question?"

Marcus looked at Blaise again. Blaise nodded toward Marcus, with a small, slight, but obvious nod. Marcus walked right up to Hermione, took her hand, and admitted, "The reason I told Daphne these things, back when I was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, wasn't just because I wanted to share idle gossip with her. I told her because she…" He stopped.

Blaise stepped even closer and placed his arm around Marcus. "It was because Marcus was my first."

"Your first what?" Hermione asked quite innocently and seriously, even as Adrian gasped in the background, Draco expressed himself with an eloquent, "Fuck me," and Theo was heard to say, "No."

Marcus was still holding Hermione's hands. He smiled, that crooked smile of his, with his now perfectly, straight white teeth, and he said, "Blaise and I have a past, little cub. His first time with a male was with me."

She fell backwards into her chair, even though he still held her hands. Marcus knelt before her. "Isn't that what you wanted to know?"

She nodded, but said nothing.

"If that's true, why did you tell Daphne about Theo though? I've always wanted to know," Adrian expressed.

Marcus went down on one knee, placed his arm across Hermione's lap, and turned his head toward Adrian. "I was young and stupid. She caught Blaise and me, and so to deflect some of my guilt and shame, I told her about Theo. I never in a million years thought she would tell her sister, but she was angry with me, so she did. She told Astoria about me and Blaise and about Theo's crush. It was my fault that Astoria told Nott senior that Theo had a crush on Granger. Merlin, it was innocent, compared to what I did, and he was punished."

Marcus stood, turned around, and saw Theo, halfway across the room again, sitting in a chair at the table, looking lost and forlorn. "Your sin was so much less than mine, and yet I made it out like it was worse, and you were punished for it. I was so angry, mostly at myself. That's the main reason why I beat the shite out of your father that day."

"I don't care," Theo said in a raspy voice. "I only care that you did it, and I'm glad, because he never beat me again after that."

"I believe that's because my father and some of the other Death Eater's also made it plain that if he did, he'd be sorry," Draco explained, standing from the footstool. "So, let me get this straight, if I can, since there aren't many straight things in this bloody room." He pointed to Blaise. "You and him! Seriously! He was your first! You once told me Penelope Clearwater was your first!"

"She was my first girl, at the same age, fourteen," Blaise said, a slight smile on his face. "She was seventeen. Ah…it was heaven."

"But you and the human muscle over there?" Draco asked again. "I mean, seriously? You couldn't pick someone else?" Then he walked up to Marcus, who was standing to the right of Hermione's chair, "And you!" he pointed, "You weren't all that in school. You were good in sports, I'll give you that, and tall and you had muscles, but you had terrible marks, and bad teeth back then, with a terrible disposition, and I can't fathom why he'd pick you!"

Adrian snorted, "You almost seem jealous, Malfoy."

"Of course I'm jealous! Blaise and I have been best mates, along with Theo, since we were in nappies! If he wanted his first time to be with a bloke, he could have asked me. I would have said no, but still!"

Suddenly, Hermione laughed. She had to laugh. It was all so extreme. She looked across the room at Theo, and he was smiling, too. "What about you, Mr. Nott?" she asked. The room fell into a hushed silence.

"What about me?" he asked back.

"Yes. What about you," she repeated. "Do you love any of the Vipers as more than mere friends?"

"I thought it was obvious," he returned, standing finally to join all the others around her chair. He shouldered past Blaise and Marcus to stand directly in front of her. "I love you, Hermione Granger. Right or wrong, whatever that means. I love you; or rather I'm in love with you. And yes, I'm certain that in one way or another I'm probably in love with each and every one of these men." He shook his head, as if clearing his thoughts, and continued, "I don't know what that means. I don't know if that's perverted or immoral, but you asked us a question, and you deserve an answer."

"Gee," she murmured low. "I was just thinking almost the same thing."

He reached for her hands, pulled her to stand in front of him and said, "Now make your announcement."

Biting her bottom lip again, she took a deep breath, smiled and said, "I think the cure for this curse is love. As asinine as that sounds, I believe all you need is love. Now, I think I found out something about Thomas Connell, and we need to make 'a list' to write down our plan of action."

Draco sat back down on the footstool and said, "Damn girl is delirious if she wants to make ANOTHER list."