There are excerpts in this story, taken and slightly modified from my previous body of work. If you are interested in the source stories, the excerpts are labeled with the title of the source piece and the chapter from which it was taken. I have taken nothing from other writers. (Well, except the characters, etc belong to Jo, of course. But I'm only playing around for a bit and mean no copyright infringement.)
Hermione rushed along the corridor, stumbling now and then, face red and fingers anxiously gripping at the papers in her hands, pressing them tightly against her chest. Her eyes were wild, and her face was splotchy with anger and embarrassment and fear and an overwhelming sense of shame.
Half an hour earlier:
Hermione walked into the Library, intent on finding a book of fiction or poetry to pore over. It was the Saturday following her last NEWT exam, and she needed to unwind after all the stress of studying and exams. As she made the turn toward the proper section, she saw the head of messy black hair of her best friend, bent over and writing furiously on the Muggle loose-leaf paper with a normal everyday ink pen. She wondered what he could be writing on it, knowing it couldn't have been anything school-related, or it would have been on parchment using a quill and ink – and besides which, exams were all over.
"What's this, Harry?" she asked, walking up and looking over his shoulder.
He scrambled to turn the papers over in an effort to hide his work. "Oh, um, nothing. Nothing at all. Just reading notes for a project I've been working on."
"Reading notes? But there are no books." Her eyebrows furrowed and her lips curled up on one side. He had to be lying, but about what? Why would he lie?
He mumbled and stammered, making very little sense with few words actually making it past his lips, face growing hot and red, flushing to the tips of his ears, and that's when she saw it. It was backward, and the ink was faint when read through the paper from the other side, but it was clearly her name.
"Harry, why is my name in what you were writing?"
"Aw, damn." His head hit the tabletop with a loud thump, drawing a few idle looks from the other students gathered in the Library. "I give up," he muttered, and slid the papers across the table, where she picked them up and began reading. Her mouth formed an o-shape and a blush quickly overtook her face, moving down her neck.
"Oh, my," she whispered, continuing to skim through what was written on the paper.
"Harry Potter! What in the world is this?" She tore the pages out of her field of view and used them to fan her hot face furiously.
"Ever since you told me that stuff about yourself last week, I can't seem to get it out of my mind. These images just keep coming, and I can't stop it, so I thought if I just put it all down on paper and burned it after, it would help."
Her eyes narrowed, and she stopped fanning herself, instead rolling the sheaf of paper up and using it to point at him. "That is incredibly creepy, Harry, and a huge invasion of my privacy," she hissed out.
"Well I wasn't intending for you to see it! I didn't intend anyone to see it!"
"Harry… nobody else has seen this, have they?"
His eyes, the ones so often remarked upon as being those of his mother, veered from side to side, refusing to meet her own amber-hued gaze.
"Harry!" she yelled, drawing a sharp shushing and a look of warning from Madam Pince.
"I was working on a story – a different one – last night in bed, and…" his voice lowered and he stammered out, "Ronmaybesawitandreadit."
"Harry, if you have given away information this personal, this private, this sensitive to Ronald Weasley, the boy with less emotional range than anyone his age I've ever met, I swear to you that I will never, ever speak to you again."
"He doesn't know, Hermione, I swear!" His voice was raised, causing Madam Pince to shush them again, the look on her pointed face getting nastier at the repeated offense. "He just thinks they're idle fantasies and nothing more."
"THEY? There's more than one of these floating around?" Her embarrassment and shame turned to anger at the thought of people reading these … things about herself and … "Oh god," she thought to herself. "What if she got ahold of this?"
"Well, not really floating around. I have them all in my bag."
She was mortified. She was angry. She was seething, emotions high and easily read on her face, as she demanded, "Give them all to me. Right bloody now."
He started to reach for his bag, but hesitated. "But…"
"Do not test me right now, Harry. I am very close to pulling my wand on you, and I don't care who it was who actually defeated Voldemort last May, if you don't give me those stories this instant, I'm going to curse you to kingdom come."
He'd been friends with her long enough to recognize the seriousness of the threat, and with fear in his eyes, he grabbed up his bag from the floor beside his chair and pulled out a thick sheaf of papers, bound in sets with some thin twine in the holes, handing the stack over to her.
There were at least ten sets of the bound pages, not including the unbound one he'd been working on when she found him, and each set was several pages in length. She was horrified. "Are they all like this one?"
"Some are better. Some are worse. I'm sorry, Hermione. I just … I needed to get the never-ending stream of images out of my head, and this seemed like the best way. I'm sorry!"
"You are not forgiven, Harry. Not yet, and depending on what's in here, possibly not ever." She leafed through a couple of the stories, her horror growing, and face flushing brighter and hotter at some of what she read. "I cannot believe you would do this. This is a gross violation of the trust I placed in you, and I am angry and disappointed."
His head thumped loudly on the table again. "I'm sorry," he mumbled again, voice muffled from his face pressing against the wooden tabletop.
"All right there, Hermione? Harry?" Ron's voice rang out cheerfully as he strode up to the table.
Hermione quickly cast a modified notice-me-not and disillusionment charm on the bundle of papers in her hands, hoping he hadn't seen them already. "Everything is quite alright, Ronald."
She risked looking at him and immediately wished she hadn't. There was a lecherous leer on his face as he raked his eyes down her body, evaluating whether or not what he'd read the night before was an accurate image of what she looked like under her robes. "If you'll excuse me." She turned and forced herself to walk steadily out of the Library. It was only after she cleared the doors and closed them behind her that she began to run. She needed to get to the Room of Requirement and finish seeing what her admissions the week before had wrought in her friend's mind.
She was nearly at her destination. She could see the tapestry which marked the location of the hidden door just ahead, and began slowing her pace. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and with her eyes closed, immediately ran into something, tripping and spilling the sheets and bundles of paper all over the floor.
"Oh, Merlin, I am so sor…" Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened. NO. In her haste, she'd inadvertently run into the very last person she wanted to see just then.
"No need to apologize, Miss Granger. It's neither the first nor last time I'll be run into whilst strolling through the corridors of this school." The clipped words spilled out of Headmistress McGonagall's mouth as she smiled down on Hermione's sprawled form.
Hermione scrambled from sitting on her bottom with limbs akimbo to her knees, gathering the papers as quickly as she could. She'd managed to knock a few loose parchments from McGonagall's hand as well, and she separated them with deft fingers, rolling the sheaves of paper again, trying to prevent her former teacher and current school administrator from accidentally seeing any of the words written there.
With everything gathered together into the separate stacks, and the loose-leaf papers tightly rolled, she stood and extended the parchment stack toward McGonagall, smiling at her. "I'm sorry, anyway, Professor. Here are your papers back."
McGonagall accepted them with a smile. "I sort of wish I didn't have to get them back." Her nose crinkled slightly, making Hermione's heart flip-flop in her chest. "It's only reports from various school departments to do with budgets and how well we're staying within them here at the end of term. It's all dreadfully boring to get through, but a Headmistress' job is never done."
Hermione laughed quietly, some of the tension in her frame going away. "I hope you manage to find some entertainment as you read through them. Perhaps there will be something interesting this time."
A soft laugh sputtered out of her thin lips. "I very much doubt that, Miss Granger, but thank you for the sentiment all the same."
"Of course, Professor, and I apologize again for inconveniencing you."
"It was no inconvenience at all. Good day, Miss Granger."
"Good day, Headmistress."
As soon as McGonagall cleared the next turn, Hermione sprinted the last few yards to the hidden door, closed her eyes and paced, thinking loudly that she needed a place to read and think for a while.
The door appeared, and in she went. The Room had provided her with a cozy room, fireplace flickering cheerfully, with comfortably squishy chairs on either side of it, a short oval-shaped table between them. There were tall bookshelves along the walls, and off to one side, it had provided a four-poster bed like the ones in her dormitory, but with a larger frame and mattress, draped with maroon velvet hangings and coverings with gold-braided trim. In a little niche underneath a tall window, there was a reading/writing desk, daylight spilling in from outside, the view looking out over the Black Lake, the lights and chimney-smoke of Hogsmeade Village off in the far distance past the lake.
She wasn't sure if that view was actually possible, given the location of the Room, but decided that she didn't care if the view was real or simulated, it was perfect.
She sat at the desk and spread the sheaves of paper out across its surface. There were numbers in the top left corner of each of the cover sheets, indicating the order in which they'd been written. Deciding to start at the beginning, she picked up the one with the number one circled, set it in front of her, and began reading.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-Excerpt from Story One (Uninvited Ch1)-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Her knuckles turn white as she applies pressure to the hand within her grasp, and she gasps with pleasure. "Please," she begs, needing completion. A moment later, a muffled scream heralds her release, and Hermione stands to press damp lips to her own, the fingers of her other hand still below, soothing her body through the aftershocks of climax. She can taste herself on Hermione's lips, but does not mind.
Her knees turn to jelly, and she begins to slide down the stone wall. Hermione catches her and holds her up, guiding them to the nearby bed. They tumble into the mattress, spent and exhausted, and fall quickly to sleep, closely twined together, words of love escaping with a sigh.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-Excerpt from Story Five (Foolish Games)-=-=-=-=-=-=-
She lowers her head and kisses Hermione again, pouring all her love into the motion of her lips and tongue, enjoying the breathy sounds her lips bring as they leave and trail down Hermione's neck and chest. She pays loving attention to her breasts for several minutes before moving lower. "Mine," she growls as she reaches her target, and uses her mouth and fingers together to bring Hermione to a towering peak, making her crash over it, tongue laving over her clit while her fingers are buried deep within, feeling the hard contractions as Hermione falls, screaming her name.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-Excerpt from Story Nine (Down With It Ch1)-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Her fingers move lower, nails scratching gently at the exposed skin of Hermione's lower belly, just above her glistening target. The warm scent emanating from the apex of her thighs is intoxicating, and her mouth waters with the need to taste from the source. She kneels in front and uses her hands to push the soft, smooth flesh of Hermione's thighs apart, leaning in and inhaling deeply, fingers squeezing involuntarily, leaving ten small bruises behind on the smooth skin and tight muscles.
She makes one long, slow swipe with her tongue, and Hermione collapses back onto the table, her arms no longer capable of keeping her upright.
Oh gods, she thinks, she tastes as good as she smells. She dives back in with abandon, her mouth and tongue working on Hermione's clit, two fingers driving into her tight, slick channel, thrusting in time with the movements of her tongue.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-Excerpt from Story Eleven (She Who Turns Time Ch11)-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hermione's lips don't stay still very long, moving on again, trailing down to the red mark at the base of her neck before moving ever on, nipping at her collarbone before going even lower, finally reaching the gentle swell of a breast. Her fingers clench tightly in the satin material of the sheets as Hermione's hot mouth covers the tight nipple of her left breast, sending swirls down to the tingling mass in her belly, making her back arch up from the sensations. When the cool air of the room rushes back over the hot flesh, she nearly cries out from the loss, but the heat simply moves to the other breast, giving it the same attention as its mate.
She can't stop the mewling noises from leaving her throat, thoroughly enjoying the feel of those hot lips and smooth tongue as they pay homage to each breast in turn before leaving, another trail of kisses leading lower across her stomach, tongue dipping briefly into her navel on its way down.
Hermione slips off the edge of the bed, kneeling on the floor, and pulls her several inches toward her, nudging at her knees so she can kneel between them. She can see the pink flesh in front of her darkening as blood begins to rush into it in response.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-End of Excerpts-=-=-=-=-=-=-
She got to the end of the eleventh and final completed story, and sat back in her chair. She thought Harry wasn't actually a terrible writer, although it was more than a little disturbing to think about him envisioning her in such compromising situations and being able to conjure up the words to write about it in such detail. Some were decidedly raunchier than others, and all of them paired her with the same partner.
When she'd admitted to Harry the week before that she was fairly certain she was into women and not men, he'd assured her that he would continue to be her friend no matter what. When she'd also said that she had a massive crush on a certain woman, and might very well be in love with her, he'd been a bit more shell-shocked, but after a few awkward minutes of silence, he said he could actually see it. It made sense to him, he'd said. She just didn't know with how much detail and clarity he could see it until she'd read through his works of short fiction.
She smirked to herself. At least she didn't need to worry about Harry not accepting her for who she was. She did wonder with whom he had found the experience to write his pornography. Despite a brief trial the previous summer while they'd all worked to restore Hogwarts, he and Ginny had split amicably, and she hadn't heard anything – either from him or from the active rumor mill – about him being with anyone else since then. However, this showed knowledge that he could not have obtained without at least a bit of experience of being with a girl.
She sighed and picked up the loose papers that formed the unfinished story Harry had been working on when she'd interrupted, and frowned to find a page missing. She scrambled around the room, flipping back through the rest of the bound pages she'd already read, and checked on and under every surface she could see, but could find the page nowhere. She was at a loss, and then with a single thought, every muscle in her body tensed up, and she breathed out, "NO," because there was only one other place it could be.
Chapter two is about half done and will be published in the next few days. Thank you to the ladies and gents of the HG/MM Fan Club group on Facebook (recently re-established as "The HG/MM Group (Take Two)" after it was randomly deleted) for both the idea and support. Y'all are marvelous. Special thanks to Jen (Sela McGrane) for help with the story title, and to SassyKinglet21 for being a great muse and friend.