Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling earns her credit. This is hers, scene manipulation is mine.
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Blue Eyes Dancing 1/1
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'Eyes of gentianellas azure, Staring, winking at the skies.'
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Hector in the Garden
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Alcohol. Oh, how it makes her laugh.
Hermione Granger is a crazy drunk. She is insane when she drinks, laughing like Lavender and Pavarti, touching everyone in intimate abandon. Secrets flow uncontrollably from her lips without the slightest prodding.
She tells Ron, 'I actually did snog Viktor Krum.' He turns beet red.
'I hate pink,' Hermione says gaily, watching Ginny's face fall.
'I really did help the twins perfect the Extendable Ears,' she whispers in Harry's ear.
'Hermione, that's not a secret, that's acknowledgement,' Harry says stonily.
She merely waves him off. 'Drink?'
Caught at the wrong moment, she can spill how she always keeps things that are precious to her under her pillow. She screams babbling noises at a drunk and howling Harry and Ron in much too loud a voice when they remind her of her fleeting infatuation for Lockhart. But the alcohol is doing a brilliant job at showing off her fun, feminine side, making her the classical extrovert that is her polar opposite.
How does she know this? Ginny so likes to tease.
On this particular night, initially, she does not mean to become intoxicated. However, by a strike of illogicality, she has convinced herself to be spontaneous and drink one of the more dangerous concoctions served at the bar, and another, and another. Soon the tables are cleared and moved and the dance floor is created. Hermione and her partying shoes are dancing the night away across the wooden floor, her clothes complimenting her brand new flamboyancy, and her wild laughter barely echoing over the pulsating music. An unknown dance partner comes too close and places his hands on her hips, but she does not pull away: she dances her dirtiest, like Baby from Dirty Dancing, and she can hear Johnny in her head saying, Don't put your heel down, don't put your heel down.
But the guy isn't Johnny and she isn't Baby and they aren't spiralling toward love. She makes sure to push him and his excitement hard enough to propel him hazardously toward the tables at the opportune moment of the end of the song. With each new faceless male, her ulterior motive remains unfulfilled. Her Johnny's still looking at everything but her.
Ginny has her eyes shining with nauseating love across to Harry, who is crowded around the other side of the bar with tequila and peer pressure. She sidles toward Hermione and drags her toward the tables, plonking Hermione down on a seat. The bookworm is almost falling off from chuckling at something in her head that should certainly not have her in side-splitting peals of hysterical laughter. For the wedding, because Hermione is a bridesmaid, Ginny shoves a drink in Hermione's hand and asks her what her favourite colour is.
Hermione stops and frowns, her face tight with thinking much too hard. Then, as if she had just solved a very difficult riddle, her face brightens and she yells that it is blue. 'Blue!' she cries, 'Not only the symbol for -hic- loyalty, excuse me, and intellect and consciousness, but blue is my favourite colour because it is the colour of his eyes!' While she cackles madly and hiccups into her hand, Hermione remains oblivious to Ginny's sudden, devious grin that should make her very, very wary.
'Blue eyes?' asks Ginny slyly. 'Blue eyes, Hermione?' She leans forward so eagerly her drink almost pours into her lap.
Hermione stares, bug-eyed, first at Ginny's manic matchmaking gaze and then into her swirling, unknown liquid. 'I… am…' she starts, speaking very slowly, hiccups again, still bug-eyed, 'drunk… Very, very… very… drunk.'
'Blue eyes?' Ginny is still asking. 'Blue?' Hermione places her drink on the table and gets up on her unsteady feet, the heels snapping at the wooden floor of the bar with each swaying step, teetering away from Ginny's screeches of, 'Hermione? Hermione! Blue eyes? Blue?'
Blue eyes like Fred Weasley's: Fred, George, but mostly Fred. The Johnny to Baby.
She clops through the doors and falls against the balcony. Hermione successfully ignores the couple snogging shamelessly in the shadowy corner. The wind cools her heated face and her blurring vision takes in the sight of the streets below. London taxies pull up every now and then to take in plastered partiers, a few people argue on the streets and couples are scattered in shadows, desperately in need of a room.
'Why not?' she mutters, just a touch too loud. 'Voldy's dead and we need a new threat. Why can't they go spread their Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea? She drops her heavy head back, holding onto the rail with straight arms, and shouts, 'STDs to the rescue!' at the top of her lungs. Hermione grins and cackles like a maniac. The couple scoff once and return to their sexual activities.
But then, a chuckle, the most infuriating chuckle on the planet, in the family, something that can be replicated by no other. That level of cocky arrogance is unique.
Hermione swivels around too fast and stares. Oh no, noooo, noo, no. Blue Eyes, Johnny, not George, stands there, looking as dashing as ever. She stares at him. Blue eyes, such a gorgeous, loyal blue, shine back. 'You're plastered,' Fred observes. Hermione notices his eyes flick, looking her over, nodding his approval, that slow grin spreading across his face. She focuses on his flaming hair, his nose and those eyes. Hermione will not stoop to his level. The couple vanish. Fred grins something wicked and their staring contest ends.
He lunges and snatches her waist in his arms, her hand captured in a waltz too close for platonic intentions. It feels like the stance of a tango that may only be successfully danced between passionate lovers. It's dirty dancing. It's Johnny and Baby. His freckled hand is warm, his flaming red hair brushing her cheek with each movement. Hermione can feel his smile when she stumbles and an earring drops. He bends to pick it up. Hermione forgets about it immediately and stumbles again before he laughs, the sound trickling into her ears, and catches her up in the sultry movements again. She tries not to hiccup or give herself away.
She feels loose, carefree with the alcohol pounding in her veins. His hips sway with hers, sometimes touching, sometimes so agonizingly close they are a mere brushing of bodies. She is Baby, he is Johnny. She did not know he danced so well. Their hips grind together, then their bodies are flush together and they almost are together.
It is not like dancing with a strange, red-blooded who she could not care less about. She does not have to make anyone jealous and her wits are, quite frankly, too zapped to comprehend how to proceed now that she has what she wants.
So they dance. Fred and Hermione dance on that balcony for minutes or hours, months or years, twirling and swaying and somehow staying on their feet even though Hermione is completely off her face and he is more than tipsy.
The dance ends with the music. But her head stays against his chest, her hands remain on his neck and his fingers are still splayed across her hips. The covert nature of the music gone, Hermione instantly realises that this isn't Jonny and Baby anymore, this is Fred and Hermione. That makes her gulp. Their heartbeats speed up.
The party has wound down and Hermione has almost extracted herself from his grasp before Fred takes her hand. He tugs once, those blue eyes imploring understanding, holding her captive. 'I must go,' Hermione says in a whisper, as if she is afraid to break the spell.
'Think you'll make it?' he asks, and there is a kiss to her knuckles that almost sends her into overdrive. 'You know, Apparition, alcohol and all.'
'Yes. Been home many times from London.' He nods and steps back, drops her hand, waiting for her to Apparate. Her eyes are bug-eyed again and he is looking at her in quiet amusement. She thinks that maybe she should say goodbye to Harry and Ron and starts forward. He stays her arm. 'They already went. There's no one left.'
'Oh,' Hermione says, laughing only slightly hysterically. 'No pressure then.
The alcohol is mocking her. That was not supposed to be said aloud. She thinks that maybe she could kiss him, snog him right here on this unknown balcony. Fred grins, that infuriating chuckle escaping his lips, and stares at her for a moment before he removes his hand. 'Good morning, Hermione,' he says, and vanishes without the slightest pop. She is left stunned.
Of course, she almost splinches herself and her ears bleed from the large crack. She falls onto her bed the moment she sets foot in her bedroom and, of course, she can not sleep. She groans, sits up gingerly and opens her curtains. Hermione slumps on the side of her bed, looking out the window at a rising sun through bleary, bloodshot eyes, her back concave and her cardigan slipping off her small shoulders. She is still dancing.
The knocking that appears on her front door is much too loud, repeated thunder cracks that cause her to wince with each repetition, plotting murder. Then, while she is attempting to stand - hauling her body up, momentarily suspended in the air in a sway, then crashing back to the mattress to resume her trance - the knocking ceases. Somehow, she can not summon the anger or betrayal of the breach of her privacy when the muggle lock is jimmied with an expert hand. She hears voices and then the boom of footsteps, then that infuriating chuckle echoing everywhere. All she can do is groan and wonder.
She slumps further. The pink of the clouds has changed to orange and the orange to yellow, everything slowing shifting to that loyal blue. Blue eyes are staring at her through the haze.
'Do…' she swallows, still staring in hard concentration at the floor. Her finger rises slowly and she shakes it once before it must fall. 'Do not speak. No noise.'
Enjoying the show, Fred zips his lips with his fingers, not quite literally, bends down to remove his boots and creeps in silence toward her. He reaches into his cloak and pulls out her earring, placing it on the bedside table. She smiles and he frowns.
Hermione stares through her hooded eyes and protests as he bends to remove her shoes. 'Noooo,' she whines. 'I can do it. I can. Me. '
Fred shakes his head, his red hair swaying. She places her hand heavily on his head and pushes him away. Then she leans down to do it herself, but the buckle is doubling, then tripling, then gaining more and more friends to torture her with. She groans again and lets him, feeling pathetic and drunk and pathetically drunk. His eyes catch hers, glee waltzing in their twinkle, and she mutters something scathing but sadly incomprehensible. Another groan or moan.
Her spiky shoes thud on the floor and she winces with the assault. He kneels higher, his knees skimming her legs as he reaches to remove her cardigan. She leans her chest against his head. 'That's what you want, is it? Huh?' she drawls into his hair, a lazy smile on her face as she smells his scent. 'Right here, right now? We can do that, honey. Just a good ol' shag between you and me.'
Wisely, Fred does not answer, merely raises his eyebrows and takes a noticeable pause in his actions. His fingers brush her arms right from her shoulder to her fingertips and she shivers, as if cold. Hermione sees his smiles. 'Prat,' she mutters.
That twinkle in his dancing, azure eyes speaks volumes.
She is still leaning against him, his head full of flaming red hair increasingly appearing to be a lovely pillow to sleep on. She takes hold of his shirt unintentionally in her heavy fingers, twisting it around while her eyes drift off. She attempts to bite her tongue but it escapes through the haze. 'You're a bloody Johnny and I'm a bloody Baby and we're gonna keep dancing, right?'
Then there are hands under her knees and he is slipping her inside her covers. 'Ugh. Shut up,' she mutters to herself. She groans and moans and whines little sounds she will never admit to when sober while she is being tucked into bed like a child by someone less than two years older than her. Hermione clutches her pillow in her hands and opens her eyes when Fred begins to leave.
'Wait,' she whispers, her mouth suddenly dry. She clutches his shirt collar and brings him closer with insistent tugs and pauses, unsure of what to do, wondering if she can put him under her pillow and take him out, to look at, to examine and wonder about.
She closes her eyes, a chore to open them again, and raises her hand, tiredly skimming it across his skin because she can not seem to find the strength to lift it further. Her fingers trace the corners of his eyes and she smiles something brilliant. 'Lovely eyes,' Hermione purrs. She looks in those eyes, blue eyes that make her love blue, those blue eyes the colour of the sky and infinity. That blue is the colour of his soul, and that is why she likes blue the most. 'You gonna be this Baby's Johnny?'
They are looking at her, for the first time, without mischief or jokes, but with a subdued seriousness for the situation that makes her wonder if the colour changed or just the mood.
Her hand falls away to lie on the blankets and she turns into the pillow, curling up and screwing her eyes tight. Why did you say that? Why? Wave goodbye to Blue Eyes! The sun is blinding her and his blue eyes are binding her and she just wants to forget that she ruined her chances.
Then there are lips pressed to her temple and a voice in her ear. 'Here is the answer to your question: I like your eyes too, Hermione.' His voice lowers and his breath becomes hot rather than cool. 'This is no prank. I fancy you and I dare say you fancy me too. How's Wednesday evening, Baby?'
Hermione smiles and, with a last kiss to her temple and a caress to her wild hair, he is gone like a murmur of a dream. A small chuckle escapes her before she sleeps.
Alcohol. Oh, how it makes her laugh.
Fin.
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Comments are appreciated. Thank you for reading.
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