Boundless as the Dark

Part II.

There were worse fates, she decided, than doing for a living what one loved. She tapped the nib of her quill against the rim of the inkbottle idly and shook her head to take herself out of another daydream. There were worse fates than being a successful twenty-three-year-old with an unhealthy passion for shoes.

A woman in a suit bumped her head with her handbag as she went past, but Hermione didn't respond when the woman absently apologized for it, and to be sure, she didn't even notice the blow. The only thing the incident did was make a single word surface in Hermione's mind. Immediately she knew it was the last substance missing from her project at work. Like any situation where one simply knows, she knew, and she tore off the first page from her tablet and furiously began scribbling on the second, pausing only to reink her pen twice in the ensuing quarter hour.

When her fit of inspiration passed, she gathered up her things and bought another iced latte to go as she left. Outside, Diagon Alley was lively but by no means crowded. It was a frightfully hot day. She had on sleeveless robes that only hit her at calf level, cool green in color, and a white tank on underneath. The heat and its accompanying humidity had rendered her hair incorrigible and she banished it into a messy bun that was only slightly smaller in diameter than her whole head.

She walked quickly and barely paused to sidestep when coming head-on at people in the street. As she walked, taking only idle care not to spill her drink all over herself or anyone else, she found that her eyes kept straying to the left into the flow of people from the other direction. She had caught herself doing that for a few years, always searching for that face in the crowd. It never happened. She knew she was quite insane for it, but ever since she was the one to walk away from whatever it was he had been offering, there hadn't been a speck of him seen in London. She asked after him sometimes. Never often enough to be obvious, and usually of people too caught up in other things to notice her interest.

Then, on that day her chemical epiphany happened, she passed him by on the street. His hair had gotten longer. He was a bit stockier than the last time she saw him, in a toga with ruined wax wings, although she supposed it could very well be all muscle. He smiled a greeting at her and she promptly spilled her coffee all over his gorgeous blue dress shirt. It really was in surprise, but really, all in all, it wasn't a failed gesture. It got his attention, at least. Attention's attention in any form.

After apologizing three times in the process of trying desperately to quell the flip-flop in her stomach, she offered to let him up to her flat above Malkin's to clean up, since she had done the coffee dumping. At first he refused, but upon looking at the state of his excellent Muggle outfit, he acquiesced and found himself being led through the throng one block down to the edifice of the modiste's shop.

"The staircase to my flat is just inside the shop doors," she explained, and then apologized again. She was surprised to find that it wasn't any easier to talk to him fully dressed than it was in three coats of makeup and a corset. He didn't seem any more interested in her general presence now than he ever had.

She tried not to stare at his backside too much as he climbed the stairs ahead of her. She was content to look at her own feet on the way up, mainly because she was afraid she might miss a step and trip and land on her chin, and only a little bit because she was following Blaise Zabini up a staircase to her flat and she wasn't even drunk. And really, his arse was nice, all round and shapely. But she didn't look.

The keys fought with her, of course, and only let her win when she threatened to go and get a whole new lock. "It's a tricky bugger. Ron has been telling me to replace it since I've lived here, but you know... that requires so much effort," she explained to him, taking some pride in the fact her voice didn't come out nervous at all. He nodded absently, already unbuttoning his shirt and trying to blot the coffee out with his hands.

"The bath's the second door to the right on the hall," she said, pointing. "I'll see if I can't find you some shirt to wear, and then-- I swear I'm very good at getting out stains, you'll see." He disappeared into the hallway and she sagged back against the front door in relief.

"I've just been fired," he called to her from the bathroom a few minutes later, as she dug in her closet for a shirt Draco or one of the Weasley brothers might have left behind some night he had stayed over after a night of drunken carousing about London. She pulled out the first man-sized thing she found, although it was a somewhat shrunken, Draco-sized tee that said 'Hail King Weasley' on it in small, rather feminine letters. Zabini appeared to have filled out at the shoulders in the five years since she had last seen him. It might not fit.

She frowned as she walked around the corner into the bathroom, connected to her room. "What did you--" she stopped when she saw him. He hadn't just taken off the ruined shirt. His undershirt was gone, and his black trousers, too, all lying in a heap at his feet. There was just something wrong with the world that she should have all six feet and three inches of Blaise Zabini and his deep tan standing in her bathroom in nothing more than tight, dark blue boxer briefs. Entirely embarrassed, she turned immediately around and stammered an apology. Any other man and she would laugh her head off and hand him the shirt. "You're naked," she said. She didn't even curse herself for sounding oh, so intelligent. Her brain seemed to have ceased normal functioning capacity.

"Well, not technically," he said, shrugging. Noticing her discomfort, he added, "It's all right," he said. She pressed her hands to her face and fought the combined urge to scream and laugh until her stomach hurt. "No, really. I'm used to being like this in front of people. It isn't embarrassing or anything."

"From the sport?" she asked. She turned and was very careful to keep her eyes locked on his, and not stray lower to admire what muscles Quidditch playing had wrought, or more specifically, the bulge at the front of his briefs.

He grinned. His teeth were dreadfully white against the brown of his skin. "Yes," he confirmed. "Too many years of being forced to drop trow. Too many years of being prodded by trainers and coaches and Sports Healers. And anyway, I'm Mr. February on the league calendar." His hands had been at his hips, arms akimbo. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck with his right hand, and that spoiled the whole thing for Hermione. All the self control she'd had in not gaping at him like a schoolgirl galloped right out the front door of the flat.

Finally, she just looked at the floor and started to laugh. "Please tell me you think this is funny," she said.

"Well, aside from the fate of my shirt, I'd say it's vaguely amusing." He flashed her a smile and took the tee shirt from her, pulling it over his head in one fell swoop. She had been right. It was just too small. It left about an inch and a half of skin bare above the white elastic of his underwear and clung to his chest and upper arms most obscenely. He bit his lip and looked down. "Yes, so I'm thinking that this isn't going to work. I'm having some nasty images of late-eighties gay clubs in Muggle Glasgow," he said, pulling it back off. And no, she didn't ogle the smooth way his back muscles moved as he bent over slightly to do it. Not at all. And why, exactly, did men always seem to back out of their shirts? Women didn't do that. "Have you anything else?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Fine, go pick out your own shirt. Next door down the hall. I'll get to working on the coffee marks." She picked up the heap of his clothes and spread out the blue shirt on the counter to examine the stain. It wasn't that bad. It would outsmart a simple cleansing charm but some Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Mess Cleaner would certainly zap what that left behind.

He was gone for a few minutes before he called, "Why do I have a feeling half of these clothes belonged to Draco Malfoy at one point?"

"Because he stays here every time he and Ron have a spat. His 'wardrobe is so extensive'-- his words, not mine-- that he claims he can afford to keep a whole arsenal at each of his friends' flats. I don't care as long as it doesn't encroach on my space for my shoes."

Zabini added solemnly: "I do believe that there is a rather large mass of his clothes at my flat as well. I can't imagine why I let him do it."

"He's perfect for Ron," she agreed, on her knees and digging around under the sink for her bottle of Mrs. Skower's

"You have an awfully large collection of shoes here, Granger. Some of these cost more than I make in a month." --an obvious fabrication. He was a half-million a year player. Or, had been. -- And anyway, how dare he knock her shoe collection? He was the one in his skivvies.

"A-ha!" she about shouted when she located the cleaning potion in an old dishpan full of washcloths and the several bottles with just the last dregs of shampoo. She smacked her head on the top of the cupboard door as she tried to stand. Zabini reappeared in the doorway just in time to see her slumped against the wall opposite the sink, one hand pressed to the back of her head, a bottle of the infallible cleaning potion in the other hand. He seemed to have found a relatively clean, if stained, medium green tee shirt that would have comfortably fit Hagrid, but he hadn't found any kind of bottom. His legs were devilishly hairy. She frowned at his selection. "Um, that's my favorite sleep shirt," she explained.

He threw his hands into the air. "It's just for a few minutes! Unless, of course, you'd rather I walk around in nothing but my tight, blue--"

"That's quite all right," voicing exactly the opposite of what she wanted. He gave her a knowing grin and it occurred to her that maybe her tone had been a mite too forceful. In any case, she considered herself too old to blush, and to avoid it she changed the subject. "So, what's gotten you fired?"

He sighed. "I was Keeper for the Arrows, you know. I was a damned good one, too."

"Wait a minute. You didn't play at Hogwarts, did you?" she interrupted. She had always been crap at listening to other people's narratives. It irked Ron to no end. He tended to be long-winded. "I'd have noticed if you'd played at Hogwarts."

"No," he said, grinning knowingly again. "I was too wrapped up in my school work. And then, two years after we left school, I was playing some stupid scrimmage game with Ron and Draco up at Draco's house in Bath with a few other school chums and I must've impressed Oliver Wood because he gave me his agent's card. The rest... history." He wrinkled his nose. "Damn it, I don't want to be unemployed, Granger. It's scary."

She gave him her usual sympathetic look. It was generally reserved for Draco when he swept into her flat half in tears because of his latest fight with her occasionally heartless best friend. "I know," she said, even though she really didn't. She'd been snapped up right out of Hogwarts.

He seemed aware of this. "No, you don't. That's all right. Sympathy's different from empathy and I'm not picky." He smiled again. He was awfully smiley considering he was the one in his underwear in her flat, and that he'd just been let go from one of the cushiest jobs in the Wizarding World. "So what is it that Hermione Granger puts her great brain to daily?"

"I'm a researcher for NeuroBrew," she said, wishing that she was something more exciting. For probably the first time she found herself regretting not going into Auror training when Ron rushed headlong into it, claiming it was all he wanted to do. Harry had been completely burned out from the good versus evil crap and had simply disappeared from the country for some time, but nobody blamed him. She had been likewise drained from all the fighting, and when Snape had recommended her, Head Girl Granger, for an entry-level position at the leading pharmaceutical potions firm in Britain, she'd fairly leapt at the chance. It paid too much for a single witch living in London, but she did love to go spend money on pretty shoes she would probably never wear.

He perked up. "They make nice potions to keep you awake, don't they?" She stopped scrubbing for a moment to give him a 'what-the-hell?' look. "You know, stimulants. What's it called? My coach-- er, my ex-coach, had a standing order for the stuff. It's blue and it makes you really, really awake?"

"Ah, you're talking about our version of the Adrenaline Infusion. I helped develop that." She pulled out her wand and said some complicated spell he didn't quite catch and the damp mess of cleaning potion as well as the remaining coffee stain vanished. She presented him with his shirt and beamed. "Thank me later."

He stared at it in wonder for a moment, bent down to kiss her on the cheek, and left the room again, presumably to change back out of her shirt. Of course, he didn't seem to have realized that the rest of the clothes he had unnecessarily shed were still in a pile on the floor in the bathroom until he was already in her bedroom, and then they were summoned with a vaguely embarrassed-sounding "Accio!" Later, he met her in the kitchen fully dressed. "I'm sorry," he said almost sadly. "My brain seems to have disconnected from the rest of me since... you know."

"Yes, except I don't," she said, taking a sip of orange juice from the glass she poured just as he entered the sunny room. "What exactly happened?"

"Well, the Arrows have the second best record in the league, after Puddlemere who always trounces everyone because they have the most money to pay for the best players, which we all agree isn't bloody fair. Puddlemere doesn't even count, really. They always win, so we just ignore them. Could I have a spot of that?" he indicated her glass and she gestured towards the icebox behind him, indicating he continue with his story. She just wanted to listen to his amazing voice, but she would have sooner died than admit it. The fact remained Quidditch talk bored her like nothing else. Not for lack of understanding but because it was just so damn uninteresting. "So, anyway, they tossed me out because I'm 'too old to play Keeper,' apparently, although I don't see how my being almost twenty-four has anything to do with that. Wood's --what?-- three years older than me. He still plays. And McCormack played until she was almost forty. I'm not old."

"No, you're not." Her overdeveloped sense of injustice was firing up. She should have been a lawyer. "If you're old, then I'm old, and I know I'm not."

"I also royally fucked up in my last match. We lost to the Cannons of all teams by about four hundred points."

She smiled. "I did hear about that. Ron fairly glowed for ages. Draco and I were ready to impale ourselves on something to get away from it..." she trailed off. "Oh, please. Don't look at me like that. Get your mind out of the gutter."

"Then don't say 'impale' in the same breath as 'Ron' and 'Draco.'"

"You couldn't resist, could you?" she said dryly.

"I would be disappointing literally thousands of Slytherins before me," he said gravely, nodding.

She changed the subject back to the one at hand. "So they canned you for losing a Quidditch match?"

He set the glass down with a clunk. "It wasn't just some Quidditch match, Granger. The Chudley Cannons beat us. They win exactly one match every six years, and that's usually against some American team who comes over thinking they're great and mighty and goes home with their tails between their legs."

"So this is you with your tail between your legs-- and so help me Merlin if you try to make a disgusting joke to get out of this I will spill something caustic on you." His eyes gleamed naughtily but he kept his mouth shut. "I promise you. I have all sorts of nasty chemicals around this flat. Hazard of the job, you understand."

"Oh, yes, of course," he replied sportingly, even though it had just caught up to him that she really was making fun of him more than anything else.

"So... they sacked you because you lost to the Cannons. Is that what I'm to get out of all of this?"

"Yes," he said, beginning to sound exasperated. She was beginning to think she liked him better in his underwear, because at least then she could look at him and that made up for what was apparently now lacking. She didn't like to be forced into reevaluating her opinions of people to lower levels. At school she'd always rather respected him as having quite a mind locked up inside his quiet head, and then the last time they spoke he stunned her practically stupid with his brilliant Icarus costume and his quick-on-the-uptake responses. But now she was reeling from some pathetically weak conversation from the run-of-the-mill Quidditch jock and she sincerely didn't understand. The Body Snatchers seemed to have swapped his brain with that of someone far less worthy. She started to laugh but she doubted he would even get the joke.

"Enjoy that party, Zabini," she said cryptically and disappeared into the bowels of her flat, leaving him to depart of is own accord.