A/N: This has seven chapters total and I'm going to try to post one per week so we'll see how that goes! This isn't meant to be great literature, just something fluffy and sweet and entertaining (and maybe funny?). I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of these characters and I'm not making any money from this.
Chapter 1 - The Promise
There was no such thing as privacy at the Burrow; it was the sort of house where if the inhabitants wouldn't rat you out for trying to steal five minutes alone, the house itself would. The floorboards creaked, the hinges on the doors squeaked, and the walls were paper thin. Molly Weasley, additionally, had a rather inconvenient habit of barging into her children's rooms under the guise of bringing clean laundry or offering snacks, but we all knew she wanted to make sure everybody was fully clothed at all times. And so, being eighteen and newly in love and with a fresh lease on life, Ron and I found ourselves going on quite a few 'picnics' that summer. In the most technical definition of the term, they were picnics. There would always be a blanket and a basket filled with food and we would traipse to the far end of his family's Quidditch pitch and set ourselves up a little place to spend the afternoon. It was just that drinking pumpkin juice in the sunlight wasn't exactly what motivated us.
"Did you put on sun potion?" I asked, observing the redness on the back on Ron's neck. We'd finished lunch a while ago and were casually snacking on grapes, watching the skies to make sure Harry and Ginny didn't fly over us.
"I did, I'm just ginger," he replied. "Summers are not very kind to me, I'm not like you. You get a nice tan and you can wear your little skirts and look all sexy and I'm just… red and sweaty."
"I brought some with me, I think you need more," I determined as I fished out the jar in my beaded bag. "Come here."
Ron scooted across the blanket and I knelt behind him, rubbing the cream over the back of his neck. For good measure, I slipped my fingers under the collar of his shirt to ensure that no sliver of skin was left unprotected when he suddenly grasped the fabric and yanked the thing from his torso.
"It's just hot out," he explained, and I had to agree that the temperature had risen by a few degrees at the sight of all of that bare skin. Of course I'd seen him without his shirt before, swimming in the pond, and you can't live in a tent with someone for months without seeing them in various states of undress, but it still sort of made my breath hitch in my throat.
"That's fine." I kissed his cheek and smoothed more sun potion over his shoulders and back, shamelessly feeling his muscles as I went.
"You should probably do my front, too," Ron grinned, rotating to face me.
"Definitely," I agreed, because even though the whole thing felt like the opening to a tacky pornographic film, I wasn't going to miss out on this chance. My hands were just running down his chest, which was starting to fill out after months of malnutrition, when he leaned forward and caught my lips with his.
The jar of sun potion was forgotten as I tipped onto my back, pulling him on top of me. The gray vest top I wore inched up my torso just enough that a tiny stripe of the skin on my stomach was pressed against his. They always ended up like this, the picnics, with some heated snogging before we would try to regain our composure and return to his house with tousled hair and swollen lips. It was just our only way to spend any quality time alone together without the risk of his parents interrupting us and we had to take advantage of every second. In less than four weeks, after all, I'd be returning to Hogwarts and opportunities to even see Ron would be slim to none.
So I had to appreciate the moment while it was happening, his weight pressing me into the blanket and his lips, sweet and sticky from the grapes, pressing against mine over and over again, our tongues tangling.
"I wasn't done," I whispered between kisses, my hands on his shoulders. "You're going to burn."
"Worth it," he smiled back, descending on me again and skimming a hand up my torso. "Hermione," he breathed as I bent one knee so that my floral skirt fell up my thigh. "I love you."
"I love you too."
His hand was on my breast now, cupping it softly through the fabric of my top, as his kisses grew ever more passionate. He was starting to worry about it too, my impending departure for the Scottish Highlands. I always knew he loved me, but he'd been telling me more and more lately and doing things like stealing kisses when he thought nobody was looking and holding my hand under the table. There were exactly twenty-four days until I left and I felt determined to savor each and every one of them.
I raked my fingers through his hair, finding it damp with sweat, as his hips aligned perfectly with mine. Something long and firm dug into my thigh and against my better judgment I found myself grinding into him, arching my back so there was hardly an inch of us that wasn't flush together. Ron's hand ran up my thigh, disappearing beneath my skirt, and soon his fingers met with the cotton fabric of my knickers. Boldly they slipped underneath, his palm cradling my bare hip, before he curled his fingers around the material and began to draw them down.
"Wait, Ron," I gasped, sitting up a bit as he yanked his hand back like I had burned him. "We - we should stop."
"Right," he said quickly, shaking his head like a dog trying to clear its ears of water. "Yeah."
"It's not that I don't want to." I had thought about it countless times, what his touch would be like in more intimate regions of my body, and in that instant I was positively aching to feel him, but logic had to reign supreme. One of us had to keep a clear head and it likely wasn't going to be him. I sat up and adjusted my clothing back into place as he scrambled to his knees.
"Okay," he nodded with a bright red face. "It's fine, it's - yeah. I'm sorry."
"No, don't be sorry," I said. "I just think it'll make it so much more difficult when I leave, don't you?"
"I s'pose."
"I mean, if we start doing - that - I don't think we'll want to stop, will we?"
"What do you mean by 'that'?"
"Sex," I whispered even though nobody else was around.
"I wasn't trying to have sex with you just now," Ron rushed to say, "I just sort of wanted to - I mean, I don't get me wrong, I do want to, but-"
"So do I."
"But…" His fingers laced between mine. "But you just told me to stop."
"I just don't think we should do it right now since I'll be leaving so soon. I think it'll just make it much more difficult so I think…" I steeled myself. "I think we should wait until I'm done at Hogwarts."
"That's ten months away."
"I know but then we'll be able to be together all the time."
Ron blinked, then shrugged. "Okay."
"That's it?"
"Well, yeah, I'm not going to argue," he replied. "If you're not really ready then I don't want to - I mean, it's fine. Lately I'm just happy to be with you at all."
"Really?"
"Yes," he nodded, ducking his head forward to touch our lips lightly together. "I waited seven years for you already, what's one more?"
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