A/N: This is a little ficlet that comes out of a writing challenge that my dear friend CSG4Me and I are trying in order to get writing and get productive!
A little temporal background: This happens toward the beginning of The Chamber of Secrets, before the whole hullabaloo of the Chamber being opened occurs. I hope y'all enjoy!
The Right Words
When I heard the clock strike two, I snuck quietly from my bed, throwing my clothes from the day before back on. My dormmates were all snoring away; I desperately hoped none of them would wake up. They had in the past. I'd had to lie. No one was in the common room either. I'd had to lie there too – "I am a prefect. I have prefect duties to attend to." Well, that was fact. I am a prefect. But my duties at night were not prefect-related at all.
My feet tread the same stones as they did every night. Out of the portrait hole, down a flight of stairs, across two corridors, up two flights, fifth door from the right. I carefully opened the door and slipped inside.
She took my hand by way of a greeting and I pulled her toward me. We kissed, our tongues clashed, our bodies meshed. Through the meeting of our lips, we warred out the frustrations of the day and with our passion, our bodies, we de-stressed. After all, we sixth years had a lot of stress to deal with – NEWT classes are not easy.
We kissed like we wished we could during the daylight hours, like we wished we could all night.
I changed our position, pushing her against the chalkboard and trapping her with my arms there. My glasses were in the way. She ripped them off my face and threw them aside; I heard them shatter. I didn't mind. I would repair them later.
We kissed, touched, battled until we had no more fight in us. We sat on the teacher's desk, close together, legs intertwined, my arm around her shoulders.
"Hello, Percy," she whispered to me then.
"Hello yourself, Penny," I whispered back. I kissed her nose.
We spoke quietly of our days, reliving each moment apart as if we had been together all along.
"I had a dream of us last night," Penelope said, suddenly a little more withdrawn. "We were standing in the courtyard together, holding hands. We kissed. Everyone was there – our friends, our professors, complete strangers – and nobody cared that we were together. Nobody cared a whit," she finished.
"I think," she continued, "I think it's time to tell people, Percy. We can't live this secret forever," she urged.
My thoughts went to my family. What would they think? I couldn't bear their reactions. I loved the secrecy. The last thing I wanted was for my brothers to find out. I would be a laughingstock, just as any and all of my brothers were when they fell for girls. Fred and George would torment Penelope as well as me.
"I don't… I" I stammered, struggling with my thoughts. "Not yet. I think it would be a mistake to tell people right now."
I thought I had finally strung the right words together.
From the look on her face, they hadn't been the right words at all.