Page Turner

A/N: I have not forgotten you! I've started a new job, though, and I am very busy, so I may need some help feeding my muse. Please, please review!


Chapter Five

In Which Lust Dominates


Draco flounced into her shop the next morning as soon as she opened the door. “Your Shakespeare is the most overrated trash-writer I’ve ever come across,” he announced. “I want the next one on your list.”

“The next on what list?” Hermione asked serenely, while contemplating a world in which Draco Malfoy could flounce.

“Your Muggle reading list. Shakespeare just got all his magic all wrong; I want to see someone who got it right, if your Muggle literature is so great.”

Hermione rolled her eyes at Draco’s retreating back. He had strode single-mindedly to her stacks and was pulling out one book after another, reading the dust jacket blurb and putting each back with an audible huff. She decided if he didn’t realize he was in the true crime aisle in the next five minutes, she would point him in the right direction then. Instead, she grabbed her mug from the cash wrap and took a scalding sip.

“I’ve got coffee brewed,” she offered when his five minutes were up and he’d moved on to cookbooks.

He was on her in a heartbeat.

“Coffee?! What do you mean, you’ve got coffee brewing?”

“Coffee. Hot and delicious. Goes drip, drip, through the percolator. Coffee. Early morning manna. This isn’t rocket science, Draco. Do you want some, or what?”

“Rocket science? Isn’t that where Muggles shoot things into outer—never mind. The point isn’t whether I want coffee, Hermione. The point is, you’re pregnant. You aren’t to have it.”

Hermione, of course, bristled. “Oh?” she said mildly. She took another large gulp of her drink, and smirked when Draco sputtered. “Decaf, moron. Want some?”

“Oh. Erm. Well, then, in that case, I suppose that would be acceptable,” he managed.

“How very magnanimous of you. Asshole.” But Hermione nevertheless headed into the back room and returned with a steaming cup. They spent a few less than intolerable moments drinking in silence.

Finally, Draco said, “I’ve found everything you’ve got here on the Zodiac Killer and the Mediterranean Diet. But I want magic. Magic done right.”

Hermione thought about that for a long minute, sipping too-strong coffee. “Well, normally I’d recommend Tolkien, but that’s magic done well, not magic done true to reality. Maybe the Grimm Brothers? How do you feel about children’s stories? Some of them are remarkably comparable to Beedle the Bard’s Tales.” But Draco just lifted one side of his upper lip in disgust.

“No? Well, then, I guess. . . Marlowe? Yes. I think Marlowe. Faustus. I’ve got it right. . . here,” she said, pulling the more expensive, canvas-bound edition from a shelf. “This one contains both Text A and Text B, which is really the only way to examine the play if you want a full understanding of it, as scholars are unsure which is the more correct version. It’s in blank verse and prose, like Shakespeare, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty with the metre. This is based on a Muggle legend of a man who sells his—“

“If you tell me what happens,” Draco said drily, “I won’t need to read it.”

If a muscle clenched in her jaw, Hermione didn’t let him see it. Instead, she bustled around the cash wrap and rung up his sale. Tucking the receipt into the book, and the book into the bag, she held the package out to him. “Thank you for stopping by The Page Turner; we hope to see you again soon. Have a nice day!”

But Draco wasn’t in front of the register to take the bag. He was next to her, plucking the bag from her fingertips and setting it on the floor.

“Are you—How are you?” he asked.

She’d be better with leaded coffee and some personal space, she thought. “Fine.”

“I mean, how are you, really? Are you feeling well? Is there anything you need? Have you noticed anything . . . happening?” His hand fluttered once, in the general direction of her own, but picked up a paperback on the counter instead. He flipped the pages quickly, the same zipping motion used in cartoon books to make the character perform some simple task.

“I’m fine,” she said, baffled. “I’m suffering from caffeine withdrawal, but other than that, I feel great, actually. And it’s too soon to notice anything happening.”

“Oh. That is logical, I suspect. But you will let me know when things do start happening?”

“Sure. I guess I can do that.” It was easy enough to promise, Hermione decided, and easy enough to let go of if he chose to walk away from this.

“Good.” His hand wavered again before his eyes steeled. In an instant, Draco’s hand grasped her chin and his lips crushed hers. She tasted like Chapstik and bad coffee, and he wanted to devour her whole. Stunned, Hermione let it happen. Her bones had gone rigid with shock, but her insides slid loose and hung low. After a moment—a long, hot, epically steamy one—Draco stepped back.

“Hoo,” Hermione said.

Draco’s swollen lips glided into a small smile as he let her take stock of what had just occurred. Eventually, he broke the silence.

“Hermione. I think I mean to have you again.” And with his book, he left.

********

“Oh boy,” Ginny panted. “Hoo.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Hermione explained. “It defied any description but an exclamation.”

Luna piped in, “I recommend having him again right back.” The three women laughed.

“My hormones are so far in overdrive, I may have to,” Hermione giggled.

“Her hormones are so far in overdrive, I think I’m gonna barf,” Ron put in, while Harry just cringed greenly. The women laughed harder.

Sobering, Hermione brought up the topic for which she had called this get-together.

“Has anyone here ever read Lust’s Dominion?” she asked. “Also called, The Lascivious Queen.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, Hermione!” Harry burst out. “I know your hormones are pregnancy crazy, but could you stop thinking about sex for one minute?!” Ginny cracked up into a new fit of giggles.

“No, no, Harry, it’s a book,” Hermione explained. “Not a trashy how-to based on the Kama Sutra, but a proper one. Possibly written by Thomas Dekker.”

Ron wanted to know, “Is that some Muggle writer? It’s not anyone I’ve ever heard of.”

Hermione nodded an affirmation. “But not a particularly famous one. The book was written around 1600, published in 1657, and really not much is known for certain about its origins. And not too many people know it, since it’s a solid work, but not the best example of English Renaissance literature.”

Shaking his head, Harry chuckled, “How would anyone know that?”

“Well, it’s been attributed to Christopher Marlowe in the past, though that is just incorrect because of course, Marlowe died in 1593, seven years before Lust’s Dominion was written, though that play was first called The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy.” Harry looked at her as if to say, “You have just proven my point. No one would know that.”

Hermione huffed and opened the book from the Tube to the title page. It read:

The Tragic Tale of the Prince of Fez
Ch. Morl.

Five pairs of eyes gazed upon the page, four with utter incomprehension.

“Don’t you see?” Hermione exclaimed.

“We see just fine. What the hell are we doing, looking at some moldy old book?” Ron asked.

“Maybe there’s some kind of spell hiding what we are supposed to be seeing, like on your Marauder’s Map, Harry,” Luna thought.

Hermione insisted, “There isn’t any spell!”

“Oh,” Luna said. “In that case, this makes no sense at all.”

Hermione looked to Ginny in exasperation. “Sorry,” her friend had to admit. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Illiterate people,” Hermione groused. “Do I have to explain everything? “Lust’s Dominion has been attributed to Marley, because it is written very much in his style. But it was written after his death, so he cannot be the author. But this book, The Prince of Fez, is the same tale, written about a decade before Marlowe died, and whole sections of this text are almost identical to passages from Lust’s Dominion. And look, right here, it says The Prince of Fez is written by a Ch. Morl. Well, Christopher Marlowe is once referred to in contemporary writing as Ch. Marl., and it’s a well-known fact that he not infrequently spelled his last name Morley. Do you understand what this may mean?”

“You have another boring, moldy old book?” Ron suggested.

Giving in, she thwapped him upside the head. “It means,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “that we may have just discovered the link between Marlowe and Lust’s Dominion. It means we’ve discovered a missing text!”

Beat.

“So…?” Ginny prompted.

“So, it’s a huge thing in the literary scholarship world,” Harry finally understood. “And there is no ‘we’ about it. The credit is all yours, Hermione. Once you publish your findings, you’ll be as famous in the Muggle world as you are in the wizarding one.”

Hermione tactfully did not mention that news of Harry Potter’s escapades had long ago leaked to the Muggle world, albeit fictively, and they were all famous in both worlds. She stuck to, “I think I’ll write under a pseudonym, nonetheless.”

“What concerns me,” Harry continued, “Is how you came to be in possession of the book. How did that man know you would be on that particular train, unless he were following you? And who is he?”

“And who is the woman he wanted to keep the book from?” Ron added.

Hermione nodded. “Those questions are exactly why I wanted to bring this up to you all first.”

Ginny noted, “It’s not a lot of information to go on, though, is it? I say don’t worry too much about all that until you’ve completed all the research on the manuscript that you no doubt intend to do, and are getting ready to publish your findings. Maybe something will surface by then. And maybe it’ll turn out that it was just some crazy guy with an invaluable book. Stranger things have happened.”

“Stranger things,” Luna murmured.

“So you recommend the all talk and no action method?” Harry asked, disappointed. Being an Auror was bland compared to his travails in school, and no one could blame him if he occasionally wished for a true foe and some deadly dueling.

“Mm. I have a better idea for action,” Ginny purred. Hauling Harry by the hand, Ginny quickly vacated the premises. Ron smirked, causing Luna to glint, and soon they were very politely (on Luna’s end, at least), kicking Hermione out of their flat.

At home, Hermione decided it was as good a time as any to begin choosing things to put into storage to make room for baby things. It would give her mind a rest from the manuscript, as well as the episode with Draco that morning.

All my friends are shagging, and I’m going to listen to a book on tape, Hermione realized. All talk, and no action.

But since Draco would undoubtedly return soon to tell her what a terrible play Doctor Faustus way, she needed to listen to it again, so as to be in tip top debating shape. All talk, indeed.