Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin

Chapter 25: Interlude in Ibiza

18 December 1993
Poolside at the Hotel Grand Sol, Ibiza

Johnny took another sip of his mojito as he watched the parade of oiled and tanned girls slinking around in their bikinis as the sun dipped down over the Ibiza skyline towards the Mediterranean. While he was enjoying the view, Johnny increasingly found himself disappointed and depressed that so few of the young women were returning his glances. He was still good-looking and in excellent shape, but Johnny had just turned 31, and on Ibiza, 31 might as well have been a rotting corpse in the eyes of the club kids who came to experience the island's legendary decadence. While an unpleasant thought to consider, Johnny was forced to admit that it was a sentiment he probably shared when he was that young. Not that he personally had many memories to support such an assumption.

When Johnny was just 17 and living in America, he and his parents had been in a terrible car wreck. Johnny himself remembered nothing about the accident – unsurprising as the accident had caused significant brain damage and left him in a coma for two years. Luckily, he suffered almost no physical damage, but when he awoke two years later, he discovered that he'd lost all his memories from before the accident. In the twelve years since Johnny had never been able to recall anything from his pre-crash life. He'd been told a great deal, but he remembered nothing, and when he looked at pictures of his deceased parents, they were strangers for whom he felt not the tiniest connection. Well, except for gratitude, he supposed. Johnny's late parents, Richard and Jane Janosky of Kenosha, Wisconsin, had left him a sizeable inheritance after the accident, and other than his retrograde amnesia, he was perfectly healthy. Specifically, he was at that time a perfectly healthy 19-year-old with a multi-million-dollar trust fund to cover all his living expenses but no living relatives or friends to counsel him against moving to the party capital of Europe where he could drink cocktails by the pool and chase girls (and when he was sufficiently drunk or bored, boys) forever.

But that was twelve years ago, and after more than a decade of sex, drugs, and Eurotrash techno music, Johnny was becoming jaded. Life on Ibiza meant seeing humanity at its most alluring but also at its most vapid and banal, and at 31, Johnny had settled into a constant state of vague misanthropy. Not quite a feeling that he was better than anyone else. It was more like Johnny was average ... and most people still managed to be his inferiors. He knew that by this point he was simply wasting his time on Ibiza in the futile hope that someone on his level would walk through the door.

And then, someone did.

She was older than every other woman in the pool area by far. Hell, Johnny was pretty sure she was older than him, and he was probably the oldest person at the hotel who wasn't on staff. But somehow that only heightened her allure, because she was not only beautiful but confident. Supremely confident. And man could she fill out what was easily a $500 bathing suit. So much so that Johnny could only smirk as some of the more notorious studs around the pool moved towards her to offer a drink only to step aside slack-jawed at a haughty turn of her head. Johnny wondered what on earth a goddess like this could possibly want in a place like this. He was stunned when he finally realized it was him. As the woman moved gracefully towards his table, Johnny rose and pulled out a chair for her without really understanding the impulse. She smiled at him, and suddenly, he felt a strange quivering in his stomach. And also about twelve inches lower. Suddenly, Johnny was quite glad he'd rejected the local men's fashion of tight speedos in favor of baggy swimming trunks.

"You have good manners," she said in a lyrical voice. "I had despaired of finding anyone on this miserable island about whom that could be said."

Johnny smiled back with more confidence than he felt. He felt quite certain that she was out of his league, but fate had led her to him, it seemed, so he would do the best he could to get her into bed anyway. If nothing else, he was enjoying the jealous looks he was presently getting from all the other guys who'd been too intimidated to even speak to her.