Disclaimer: If you're stupid enough to think we invented these characters, there are probably more productive things you can do with your time than reading this story- like going back to third grade. If you're intelligent enough to distinguish between printed, bound brilliance of JK and our psychotic ramblings, carry on!
Boiling Hot
A Harry Potter Fanfic
"I think a few of mine have ruptured," said Fred in hollow voice.
"Mine haven't," said George, wincing. "They're throbbing like mad and …feel bigger if anything..."
"We can't go to Madame Pomfrey. It'll get back to Umbridge that we've been experimenting with frivolous magic, and, well..." Fred trailed off.
"What's that stuff Mione has Harry dunking his hand in every time he gets crosswise with Umbridge? Murtlap... essence?" mused George.
"Well, unless you want to sit in a bowl of the stuff-" Fred retorted darkly. "And it smells vile."
"Look. Let's just go back to the Common Room. Get a bit of sleep, maybe our butt-boils will have drained by the morning."
The heavy tome fell with a resounding thud to the flagstones below, jolting the exhausted brunette into wakefulness. "Wha-? Oh, Merlin, I fell asleep again!" she thought ruefully. She inspected the volume that had slipped out of her grasp. Spellman's Syllabary. It was no wonder she'd dozed off. Ancient Runes was so delightfully dry that it had the power even to banish Hermione Granger to sleep- though she'd never admit that to Ron.
She quietly collected the quills, parchment bits, and various other books that littered the study area she'd carved out for herself in the Common Room and tiptoed up the stone steps to the Fifth Year Girls' Dormitory.
She really hadn't meant to stay up quite so late- this would cut into her bedtime routine, especially if she wanted to get to bed before midnight. Brushing her teeth, she pondered what exactly she would do with the eleven different ancient rune verb tenses she had just learned. No matter, she thought to herself, putting her favorite nightgown on. The luxurious silk teddy felt sumptuous over her bare skin. She brought her hand up her side, lightly caressing her left breast and moaning at the sensation.
Snapping out of her reverie, she chuckled at her own foolishness. She made her way to bed and found a small knitted hat upon it. She couldn't believe that she'd forgotten to set out the house elves' hats! Quickly gathering the various colors of hats, she tossed on her summer robe, the sheer black Acromantula silk catching on the bedpost and nearly ripping as she hurried out the door. "Blast!" she thought to herself. "I really ought to be more careful, what with Hagrid out of the country, introducing Blast-Ended Skrewts to the Galapagos Islands.1 He's the only one with the temerity required to approach another spidey-hole and produce more Acromantula silk with which to repair my favorite, transparent nightie."
At the base of the stairs, she whispered "lumos" in order to chart a path around the pitch-black Common Room. Bringing it up to head-height, she muttered, "Oh, MY!" and promptly dropped her arsenal of woolly clothing.
For George Weasley was bent double, hands on his knees and eyes pinched tightly shut, as his brother moved his hand in a circular fashion all over his perfectly sculpted bum.
"I'm- I'm so sorry!" Hermione squeaked as both twins' eyes shot open and whipped around to face the intruding witch. "I didn't mean- I hope I haven't disturbed anything!" she breathed as she spun wildly around and attempted to flee to her dormitory.
Fred looked at George, an eyebrow raised. George looked at Fred and nodded decisively. The two redheads leapt over a few chintz armchairs, dodged the armful of clothing (which barely warranted the name) that Hermione had abandoned at the foot of the stairs, and clamped viselike on Hermione's wrists, halting her progress.
She hung her head shamefully. "I'm so, so sorry. I really had no idea anyone was still awake at this hour, and I promise I won't say anyth-" Her words were cut off midsentence as Fred clapped a large, manly palm over her mouth while George spun her around and marched her purposefully out of the Common Room.
Using a handy shortcut, the twins dragged her through a tapestry, a long tunnel and downstairs. They popped out directly in front of the Room of Requirement and after a brief check for Filch, they entered a large living room with a plush couch and several armchairs.
George flopped onto an ottoman, belly down and clutching his backside while Fred paced nervously in front of a flabbergasted Hermione. He opened and closed his mouth several times, making him look rather like a fish.
"You see," he started "we've got ourselves in a large predicament."
"Something that might make you fondle each other's bums?" inquired Hermione incredulously, "or is the predicament the result of the bum-fondling?"
"Just tell her the horrid backstory. All of it." moaned George, his voice muffled from the ottoman cushion while Fred glared at Hermione.
"Well." He began. "Our- situation- is somewhat related to, err..."
"Those bloody Skiving Snackboxes!" roared George, again into the ottoman cushion.
"I KNEW IT." Shrilled Hermione. "If the two of you hadn't been so blasted presumptuous to think that you could create impractical, illegal- not to mention, immoral- things- to help students cheat, or skive off perfectly useful classroom lectures, without enduring some kind of consequence- I mean, the dratted things aren't even Ministry-Approved-" she began, eyes flashing as she paced up and down in front of the woebegone redheads.
"Hermione-" interjected Fred as she continued her ranting. "Hermione!" George exclaimed, but failing as well to stifle the stream of castigation issuing from the mad witch's lips. "HERMIONE I LOVE YOU." bellowed Fred.
She abruptly stopped, bug-eyed. "I- I don't know what-" she whispered.
"Kidding. No, but seriously. I definitely love your spellwork, which could be dead useful to George and I here." continued Fred, jabbing his thumb at his brother, who still lay prone with both palms clasped to his rear.
"George and me." Hermione quietly corrected.
"Will you help us?" Fred pleaded. George took that moment to lift his head from the plush cushion and adopt a look of such abject contrition that Hermione felt her heart begin to melt in the twins' favor.
"We've learned our lesson, truly we have!" "We'll never try unapproved magic upon ourselves- or any other volunteers!" "We'll stop leading first-years away from the path of Righteousness and Studiousness!" "We'll stop trying to slip Canary Creams into your morning porridge!" chimed the twins in earnest.
"All right, all RIGHT." muttered Hermione, throwing her hands up in surrender. "Merlin." She had tried to hold out as long as she possibly could, but she had to admit that in the interest of full disclosure, she really was no match for the warm brown puppy eyes of the twins. "Just- tell me what's wrong."
Fred's expression immediately became guarded. "Uh. Well, Mione, you can cure boils, right?"
"Because Fred and I seem to have, erm, mysteriously developed some on- on our thighs..." George continued.
"All right. Drop your pants, boys, and I'll see what I can do." replied Hermione, rolling up the lace sleeves of her frivolous little robe.
The twins gingerly removed their Quidditch pants, revealing surprisingly unblemished thighs, which puzzled Hermione exceedingly. At her confused expression, George huffed, "The buttocks. THE BOILS ARE ON OUR BUTTOCKS!"
Hermione promptly dissolved into a fit of giggles, unable to contain her mirth at their unfortunate position. Wiping away tears, she demanded to see the boils in question. Perhaps rather insensitively, she simply waved her wand and divested the twins of their boxers.
They both shrieked and jumped into the air, attempting to cover their wands. "Hermione, the least you could do is warn a fellow!" Fred said in a much higher voice than usual.
"Yes I suppose so," she agreed, still too gleeful at the twins' humiliation. After muttering several spells and much prodding, which produced several odd glowing lights, she murmured "Ah!" and relieved the twins of their burdensome boils.
"Thank you, kindest witch in the land-"
"most thoughtful, generous, and caring lass-"
"to bestow upon us this gift"
"of curing my ass." finished George, grinning from a mixture of relief and his newfound identity as a regular poet laureate.
Fred spun Hermione around to look her in the eye. "Really, Mione. We appreciate it." he told her sincerely, before enveloping her in a great bear hug.
"Eeep!" she squeaked. "You're- you're not wearing any underwear!"
"Mmm." he murmured into her soft brown locks. "Neither are you." he whispered, his voice acquiring a husky tone as he skimmed his palms up the backs of her thighs and onto her own delightfully smooth buttocks. "Believe me, I could feel them through this flimsy little thing you call a nightgown," he chuckled softly.
Hermione shoved herself away from Fred- and right into George's arms. "You know, Freddo," George began calmly, his soft tone belying the strength with which he kept Hermione in his arms despite her struggles, "Resplendent as our poetry was, I'm not sure it's quite enough to convey the depth of gratitude that we feel towards our Hermione here."
"I'm not your Herm-" she exclaimed before being cut off by Fred.
"No, you know what, George? I just think you may be right. Here we have everything- an opportune moment and an opportune room charmed to give us all a manner of opportune things to enable us to truly express our thanks-"
"So what do you say, Hermione?" murmured George, tightening his arms about her as his hands began to draw maddening little circles about her stomach. "Will you let us give you a real thank you?"
Hermione looked up at Fred's smoldering eyes as he approached her- and knew that even if she'd wanted to resist the twins' advances, it would have been folly even to try. "Well- I suppose..." she whispered. "But only if you're very, very good..."
"Oh," Fred chuckled. "Actually, about that- I am reasonably certain that I speak for my brother as well as myself when I say that we both solemnly swear that we are up to no good," he finished, as he reached forward to grab Hermione out of his brother's arms and bend her backwards in a swooping kiss.
Hermione lost herself in the swirl of passion that was at the heart of Fred's kiss. Unbidden, soft moans rose to her lips as Fred's tongue darted out almost questioningly. She was dimly aware of George kneeling at her feet, trailing one palm up her smooth calf and pressing his burning mouth to her inner thigh. She opened her mouth to Fred's expert kisses, and he plunged his tongue in, tasting her for the first time and reveling in the experience. She realized that she'd somehow transitioned to George's favorite ottoman, and was reclining back as Fred dipped a hand lower and lazily began to circle her breast.
"Circe!" breathed Hermione as she became acutely aware of George pushing her silk nightgown up about her hips. Fred had spoken truly; Hermione was not wearing panties of any sort.
While in general the absence of this barrier could only prove an added bonus to most red-blooded males - wizarding or no - this proved somewhat a damper to the mood, both twins coming to the unfortunate realization that without the added resistance of panties - no matter how lacy or insubstantial - the approximate time of their impromptu seduction would be drastically reduced. And Fred and George were, for all their misleading tendencies, first and foremost gentlemen. Well, first and foremost they were wizards. Second they were pranksters of no little prowess. And thirdly they were gentlemen. And no gentleman would ever dream of swooping down upon a lady in less than five minutes. Which, at the prodigious pace things were currently progressing at, was rapidly emerging as a distinct possibility.
Without even the necessity of speech, both brothers drew back for a moment, taking stock of the situation. Hermione, her brain not unpleasantly bemused by the sweeping arrival of copious amounts of hormones, was at first unable to process this alarming and, indeed, unwelcome development. "Oh Fred." She moaned, lightly gyrating upon the ottoman. "Oh George."
Rather to her disadvantage - depending on one's point view, of course - Hermione, adorable but, alas, inexperienced, had not in her arsenal of sensual manoeuvers the power to gyrate without looking a bit like she had perhaps swallowed a bit of fever fudge and was in the midst of fever-induced hallucinations. The twins exchanged looks, for the first time perhaps questioning the wisdom of this chance encounter in the Room of Requirement. After all, now happily healed, it was entirely rational to let Hermione stumble back to her room and comfort her repressed libido with the fashioning of copious, if hideous, knitted hats.
This, of course, was a fate too horrible for Fred and George to long consider. After all, they were gentlemen, and no wizard gentleman would ever leave a lady in such a predicament. If Hermione, currently watching them anxiously with an expression similar to a house elf considering the prospect of unwanted freedom, could really be considered a lady after her heady response to their amorous overtures.
"Right-o." Fred shot George a calculating look. "Shall we handle this like Marietta Edgecombe, then?"
George was squinting a little at Hermione. "I suppose there is really no alternative...Although I feel a bit worse about this than the Edgecombe piece of work. She was plain frightening when she got all worked up. Hermione...well, she's a bit pathetic."
Fred nodded sympathetically. "Really, it's not like our lamentably insensitive brother is ever going to get around to it for another two or three years. Assuming even that there is some sort of cataclysmic world-ending threat - "
" - And Ron's been a total arse while she's been an angel..."
They paused.
"Actually, that's not entirely unlikely." Fred mused.
"But beside the point. Are we really going to go for the portable daydream now?"
"It's the only gentlemanly thing to do, George."
"Alright then. Accio Portable Daydream#" There was a soft whooshing sound and Fred reached out a hand to deftly snatch the petal pink box from midair. Hermione, not privy to their whispered conversation, looked half dubious and half excited. She had calmed down a little, a very little, and had somewhat straightened from her reclined position into something more like sitting upright. "What is that."
"Just a little extra excitement for the evening." George told her smoothly, as his brother quickly opened the box. Something like a soft, rosy cloud floated out. The scent of rose petals drifted over the scent of the fireplace like a trace of muggle perfume. Fred and George had agreed that it was a bit old-fashioned, when magical scents were all the rage now, but it seemed to have exactly the right effect upon Hermione, used to the prosaic odors of the muggle world. "Mmhmm, that smells divine." She murmured flirtatiously, batting her eyelids at the twins. "This won't take much imagination." Fred muttered to George under his breath, and with that sensitive, romantic comment, threw the nimbus of rosy fog over Hermione. Immediately, her eyes glazed over. A small, dreamy smile stole across her lips. Then she fell back limp onto the ottoman, lost in the wonderful world of the portable daydream.
"How long is it supposed to last again?"
"Err..." Fred tried to remember. " An hour, I think. Maybe two. Plenty for our purposes. C'mon, lets slip away before we find out."
In years to come, the night was never mentioned again between the three of them. Hermione was too embarrassed, and Fred and George too polite. It seemed so improbable to the rest of the world as to challenge even the most lurid of imaginations. Ginny occasionally got an inkling of something unusual - especially when Hermione broke down into racking sobs at Fred's funeral - but was tactful enough to neglect mentioning it afterwards. Indeed, perhaps the only fruitful outcome of the evening was Ron's pleasant surprise when Hermione first approached him wearing a silk teddy... and no panties. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his genetic matrix was cued a certain predilection for exactly that sort of thing; the same taste which had emerged in force some years earlier, unbeknownst to him, in his twin brothers. Hermione only smiled. Not for nothing was she the cleverest witch in her year. But she almost choked when Ron leaned in close, and in an unexpectedly intelligent move learned from his "Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches" book, murmured, "You look boiling hot in that, Hermione. Completely."
He couldn't understand why, for the first time ever, one of his well-placed comments not only fell flat, but failed entirely in its objective to charm.
2. Wizarding © Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, 1996
1 An extremely curious program aired on the Muggle news station of BBC not four weeks later, in which a perplexed reporter spoke at length about an upsurge in the number of flame-ravaged penguin carcasses being found by scientists on the Islands, which indicated the rise of some fearsome predator that had yet to be identified. The reporter, a young, pretty and not overly intelligent young woman by the name of Maggie, had absolutely no clue that at the very moment she was speaking, she was being upstaged by one such scientist running across the scene behind her, screaming "Help me, help me! Oh God they breathe fire!" And trailing a plume of smoke from his charred lab coat.