**Author's Note: Yeah, I'm slow, and I'm way sorry. If I could express in words how awfully hectic my life has been lately, I would. For once, however, I'm speechless. Much love and thanks for everyone's patience, and I'm trying really hard to drop back into my regular swing of things. Go, read!**
CHAPTER FIFTEEN- Taking a Trip
It was tentative and new, long-awaited and potentially perfect, but no matter how much both Harry and Hermione had wanted one another's attention, having it meant nothing in the shadow of their friends' absence.
Days stretched into weeks, the headmaster was seen less and less, and the inevitable rumors concerning Dumbledore's sanity-or lack thereof-were beginning to fly from house to house of the mammoth school of magic.
Harry had borne it all quietly, listening to Hermione's theories and conjectures about where Ron and Ginny had gone, supporting her when she needed it, playing devil's advocate and disagreeing with her now and again when she seemed to need it. He had comforted her more than once simply by being there, had stood by her side when she'd made a valiant effort to interrogate Minerva McGonagall-and gotten nothing more than a sharp rebuke.
But Harry had been quiet for so long, he hadn't had time to speak his own mind.
He was in the middle of Potions class, notably missing not only his best mate, but also his ceaseless tormentor, when he slammed down his quill in a moment of long-restrained pique. He'd had a snide remark to make to Ron-
And Ron wasn't there.
"I won't do it!" he shouted suddenly, making the remaining students turn and gape at him.
Professor Snape, unruffled as ever, turned cool eyes and an arched eyebrow at his least favorite boy wonder. "One would almost care to ask what you were referring to, Potter, if one thought you did anything worth pondering." Despite his cool demeanor, however, the potions master was taken aback by the outburst.
Lately it seemed as though the whole of Hogwarts, lessened though it was, had gone mad.
Harry wended his way through the dungeon classroom, his eyes narrowed at the black-clad Snape, his voice now pitched too low for his classmates to hear.
"I lost my godfather because no one would tell me what was going on," Harry said through clenched teeth, suddenly certain he had a right to know what was happening. In the end, they'd put it all on his shoulders, so for now they should tell him what in the blazes was going on. "I think I've waited enough." He'd been patient, right up until the moment he'd looked at Snape and heard in his memories the former Death Eater goading Sirius into action.
"If you are at all interested in saving your own vainglorious hide," Snape said, his voice low and dangerous, "I advise you to stop this nonsense and return to your place at once." Then, in a louder tone-"Twenty-five points from Gryffindor."
"Harry," Hermione finally hissed, shaken from her shocked silence by the decrease in points.
Her voice turned his attention, his bright jade eyes turning to her, pinning her to the spot in a brilliant flash of mingled anger and grief, and her breath caught in her throat.
He was magnificent.
And she was in love with him.
Clenching her teeth in an effort to lace up her suddenly unraveled nerves, she widened her eyes at him, wanting nothing more than for him to return to his seat, and remarkably, he did.
It was her turn to comfort him.
And from his spot in the front of the classroom, Severus Snape rubbed the bridge of his beakish nose and wondered how much more they would all have to take before Dumbledore called a halt to his fool's pursuit.
Surely fabled house unity was not worth this unrest.
~~~
"Where are we going?"
She hated that petulant note in her voice, the whiny tone, but she couldn't help it. Things weren't precisely going the way she'd thought they would. She certainly didn't think she'd ever end up in his car, wearing his clothes. It was just… weird. And now, Gen thought, the man who had only moments before shown desire in his eyes, in the leisurely stroke of a finger, was ignoring her.
"Why don't you just sit back and enjoy the scenery instead of flapping your jaw at me?" Drake asked before he could stop himself. Her skirt had ridden up around her knees, and his coat now reached the exact same spot on her thighs as the tartan skirt she wore. The combination was giving him a bloody headache, and her pointed little questions weren't going to help that any.
"Oh, cram it up your-" Gen started, turning in her seat with fire flashing in her eyes.
And then he slammed on the brakes, sending her jerking forward.
"No bickering, princess," he said without looking over at her, slamming back on the gas with the same aplomb that had brought them to a halt. When she stared at him acidly, he flicked his eyes over at her. "Your rule, love, not mine."
"It was a reasonable question, you bloody tyrant," Gen started, but she was finding it hard to concentrate. His jacket smelled like him even though he rarely ever bothered to put on the requisite uniform article, and every time she shifted, it was like he was covering her.
She worried at her lip in an unconscious gesture of apprehension, and gasped when Drake reached across the car, put his hand to her face, and squeezed her cheeks, forcefully forming her mouth into a moue more laughable than kissable.
"No biting your damned lips," he said, taking his eyes off the road to shoot her one dangerous glance. "For someone who's supposed to be intelligent, Wesley, you listen very shoddily."
"Oh, really?" she managed, slapping his hand away from her face. "For someone so self-righteous, you listen fairly poorly yourself. No touching, dammit."
There was a pause, short and tense, and they both spoke at once, exasperated tones identical.
"No bickering!"
Neither of them saw the humor in the exchange.
He parked in front of an apartment building and looked over at her. "We're here," he said unnecessarily, smarmily pointing out the obvious in lieu of insulting her, shaking her, or kissing her senseless. "After you."
"A flat?" she looked up at the posh, brightly-lit apartment building, then back at him with wide eyes. "You've a flat?"
"Not exactly," Drake said, taking out the key he'd lifted from his father's cabinet between bouts with his hair and bloody awful hallucinations of her that morning. What good was it to own scads of property if you never used any of it and if no one was renting it? "You might say it's on loan."
Bad idea, she told herself, warning bells going off in her mind. Alone with him in a flat was even worse than alone with him in a bedroom. Where on earth would they tutor that wasn't dangerous?
The kitchen would surely have counters, the den a sofa, beds in the bedrooms.
Could they possibly tutor in the bathroom? Nothing sexy about that, she guessed.
But as he walked ahead of her and began working his key in the door, Gen sighed. It wasn't the rooms that were the problem. It was that they were both clearly unbalanced.
That particular tidbit had been not-so-helpfully edited out of her Mum's many speeches on the topic of sex. No one had ever mentioned that it made you brainless and idiotic and completely unable to focus.
And really, Gen thought grumpily, shoving her book into Drake's back as he lagged a bit on the stairs, the end result really hadn't been all that good.
The gasp that came from her lips was an involuntary reaction to her own memories combined with the shock of the flat. It was... ordinary. She'd expected it to be posh, showy, all of the things she'd seen Drake himself as. But it was ordinary and cozy, and damn it all, it seemed comfortable.
It would be easy to miss the danger in all that comfort.
Drake watched her step inside, sliding the sunglasses to the top of his head with an air of detachment he didn't feel. He hadn't really realized how badly he'd wanted her on neutral ground, how much he wanted to remove the things that spoke of their differences.
If he was going to seduce her, really and truly seduce her, it would have to be in a place like this.
If he was going to possess her before she possessed him, it would have to be here.