Summer of Enchantment
by Warviben
Summary: Harry is not dealing well with Sirius' death. Professor McGonagall is concerned enough about his mental health to approach the Headmaster. A surprising solution is proposed.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the basic premise of this story. I am making no money from this endeavor.
Warnings: This story contains detailed heterosexual liaisons. One of the characters is just under 16 in the beginning. If that disturbs you, please stop reading now.
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4 Truth
Harry was sitting at the breakfast table one Saturday morning two weeks into his stay here. He was dressed and waiting for Sera to finish up a few household chores before they decided what to do with their day. Harry suspected it would include a venture into the woods and perhaps some basketball, since most days did. Maybe they'd take a swim in the lake, or Sera would take him out in the rowboat again, and they'd take the fishing poles and pretend they knew how to fish. He'd swept the kitchen and dining room and offered to help her with her remaining chores, but she'd declined, and now he waited, impatient for her to appear. When she did, he was surprised when she bolted through the kitchen and out the door, muttering wildly, "It can't be! I must be going crazy!"
"Serafina!" he called, jumping to his feet and running after her. He didn't catch up to her, though, until they were beside the lake. She was breathing fast and pacing in circles, wringing her hands. She hadn't even dressed yet and was still wearing the t-shirt and shorts she wore as pajamas.
He approached her cautiously. "You run amazingly fast. Serafina? What's going on?"
She jumped back at the sound of his voice and backed away from him, her arms stretched in front of her, palms up, to stop him from getting closer. "Don't come near me!"
He stayed where he was, but he put his own hands up in a mirror of her gesture, beseeching her wordlessly to stop. What had happened?! "What's wrong?"
"I saw . . . But I couldn't have! My uncle . . . What are you two?!" she cried.
The queasy feeling in the pit of Harry's stomach now had nothing to do with the smile of a pretty girl. "What did you see?" he asked quietly, his brain frantically trying to remember what he'd been doing just before she'd freaked out. He'd just been sitting there, he was sure, waiting for her. He didn't have his wand and hadn't even been attempting anything magical.
Serafina was breathing in large gasps, trying to get her breath back. "I saw . . . I went down in the basement to do some laundry. I noticed the door to Uncle's room was open. I've never seen it open before. He keeps it locked, you know, when he's not in there."
Harry nodded. He knew this, and he knew why. He could see where this was going, and he wished he had Hermione's time turner so that he could take them back and prevent her from seeing what she'd apparently seen.
"So I snuck over and looked in 'cause I was curious, you know?" Her eyes widened. "Harry! The room is huge! Much bigger than it should be! There's no way the basement could hold a room that big! It goes on for miles! And it's like eight stories tall! But you know this! You've been in there! What is going on?!"
Harry let out the breath he'd been holding. She was exaggerating, just a little, but she was certainly right. The room Snape had made for himself was at least three times as large as the basement itself. What now? Should he tell her the truth? What would Snape do to him then? Should he suggest she speak with her uncle? What would Snape do to her then? Should he tell her it was her imagination, a trick of the lighting, a mirage?
He had just about decided to go with the latter option, to at least try to convince her that she hadn't seen what she'd seen and to warn Snape that he had to fix this, when she removed that option from the table.
"And that's not the worst of it," she said, and here is where the tears started. "While I was watching, Uncle . . . pointed at something across the room, and it . . . came to him. Just like floated across the room into his hand. Am I losing my mind, Harry?"
"Did Snape see you?" Harry needed to know. "Did he see you looking?"
"I don't think so," she said, "but I didn't stick around. I had to get out of there, had to get away from . . ." She looked as though she was heading back into hysterics.
"Okay," Harry said soothingly. "It's okay. Can we sit?"
She stared at him, no longer sure she could trust him, no longer sure even what he was.
He saw the mistrust in her eyes. "It's me, Sera. I'm not going to hurt you. Please. Sit down. I'll explain everything."
She sat carefully on the stump, and he sat next to her and took her hand. "What I'm about to tell you may be hard to understand, and I'll answer any questions that I can. This is going to change everything here, but I'm not sure exactly how. Ready?" he asked. When she nodded, he said, "Your uncle is a wizard."
He let that sit there for a moment. She waited, as though there should be more. A wizard? Like the Wizard of Oz? Did he teach Munchkins at this school? That thought struck her as absurdly funny for some reason, and she had to fight the urge to laugh. This was certainly not funny.
"Did you hear me?" Harry asked. "I said, your uncle is a wizard."
"I heard you," she said, choking on a laugh that could not be held back. "I'm just trying to decide whether to laugh or cry or simply go insane. A wizard?"
Harry nodded.
"A wizard?" she repeated.
Harry couldn't help it. He smiled, in spite of the situation. "Yes," he said simply.
"And what, exactly, is a wizard?"
"Someone who can do magic," Harry explained.
"You mean, like a witch?"
"Well, yes, except that he's not a girl," Harry clarified patiently.
"And you knew about this?"
Harry nodded.
"Because he told you?"
"Well, not in so many words. I just knew."
"How?"
"Because he teaches at the school."
Harry could see her making the connections now. She was almost there.
"He teaches at the school you go to?" she asked.
"Yes."
"So the school you go to is . . . is for wizards?"
"And for witches."
"Girls?"
Harry nodded, smiling again.
"So you're . . . you're a . . ."
"A wizard," Harry finished helpfully, nodding confirmation.
"You're a wizard?" Her eyes widened, and she pulled her hand away and slowly got to her feet. "Why are you here?" she asked, backing away until she was stopped by a tree at her back.
"I came here with your uncle. Some things have happened recently that made it important that I get away for a while." Harry remained seated, giving her time to come to terms with all he was telling her. He could tell she was frightened, and he didn't want to make it worse by crowding her. "Your uncle needed to come here to see to you, so I came along."
"Why did you need to get away?"
"That's a really long story," Harry said. He really didn't want to get into it now. She was afraid enough of him as it was. He didn't want to tell her about dark lords and death eaters and killing curses. Those things weren't supposed to exist here.
"Do you have some place else you need to be?" she asked pointedly, crossing her arms in front of her chest, her back still against the tree.
Harry sighed in resignation. All right. If she wanted to do this now, they'd do it now.
"Would you sit, please? I'd never hurt you, Sera. You must know that. And it is a rather long story."
She did know that he wouldn't hurt her, but she was scared of what he was telling her. She gathered up her courage and sat beside him again on the stump.
And so he told her.
"I'll start at the beginning. On my eleventh birthday, I discovered I was a wizard. Prior to that, I'd had no idea. A couple of times, weird things had happened, but I didn't know I had caused them, and I certainly had no reason to think I was anything out of the ordinary."
"How did you find out?" she asked.
"I started getting letters. Uncle Vernon wouldn't let me open them, but they just kept coming. Finally, he took us all away, just to keep me from seeing the letters. Hagrid found us and told me what I was. He works at the school. The letters were from Hogwarts telling me that I'd been accepted there. He told me a little bit about my parents and about Hogwarts."
"Hogwarts. That's your school?"
Harry nodded. "Hagrid took me shopping for my books and the stuff I'd need, and a month later, I went off to school. It was a little scary, but it felt like . . . home. I met my two best friends on the train to school that first day. I felt so naive. I hadn't even known magic existed before that summer, and here I was at a school for wizards. The classes were hard, but I felt like I belonged there. I'd never really felt like I'd belonged anywhere, you know?"
Sera nodded. She understood that feeling.
"I joined the quidditch team that first year and discovered that I was really good at flying."
"Hold on," Sera interrupted. "Quidditch?"
"It's a sport for wizards and witches. It's played on broomsticks. There are goals that you have to throw a ball through, and bewitched balls that try to knock you off your broom, and a little golden ball with wings called a snitch. The snitch is my responsibility. I'm a seeker. It's my job to find the snitch and catch it, which is very hard because it's small, like this." Harry showed her with his hand just how small the snitch was. "And it's very fast. But I'm good at it. It's really the first thing I've ever been good at.
"So things were going really well. My friends and I helped to stop a bad wizard from taking something that he could have used for evil purposes. And then I went back to the Dursleys for the summer, which was really depressing, but I got through it. Then, second year, when I returned to school, some bad stuff started happening. It's really hard to explain, but the same bad wizard had been destroyed years before, but he was trying to make a comeback. He'd hidden something in a secret chamber at school, and we helped to find it and destroy it."
Harry could tell from the confusion in Sera's eyes that he was doing a bad job of explaining most of this, but they didn't have a week for him to fill in all of the details, so he was skimming over what he thought was important. He plunged on.
"Then, in my third year, I learned that I had a godfather and that he might have been responsible for the deaths of my parents and that he had escaped prison to come and find me and kill me. It turned out that he wasn't responsible for my parents' deaths and that he'd broken out of prison to track down the person who was. He found him at Hogwarts, but he ended up getting away, and my godfather, Sirius, had to escape because there was no way to prove that he was innocent once Wormtail got away."
"Wormtail?" Sera repeated.
"Yes. That was a nickname." Explanations as to why he was called that could certainly wait until later. "During my fourth year, Hogwarts hosted the triwizard championship. Kids from two other schools came to Hogwarts, and one student from each school was supposed to be chosen to compete in the tournament. Only my name was chosen in addition to Cedric Diggory, who was supposed to be the Hogwarts champion. Someone had put my name into the competition. They told me I had to compete, even though I didn't want to and was supposed to be seventeen before I could enter. We had to compete at three different tasks. The first one was to get an egg away from a dragon . . ."
"A dragon?" Sera repeated, disbelief evident in her voice and on her face.
"Yes. A dragon. Scary creatures, dragons. The second task was to rescue something from the bottom of the lake, and the third was a maze. Whoever made it to the center of the maze first would find the Tri-Wizard cup, and they'd be the champion."
"And what did you win?"
"Eternal glory, the cup, and one thousand galleons."
"Galleons?"
"Wizard money. Never mind that now. Cedric and I helped each other and got to the center of the maze at the same time. We decided that we'd take the cup together, that we'd both be champions. But as soon as we grabbed it, we were . . . transported out of the maze and into a graveyard."
"Transported?" Sera asked. She was beginning to feel like an echo.
"Yes. The cup was a portkey, which is a magical object used to transport a group of people from one place to another. It had been bewitched by the same person who put my name into the competition, at the instruction of the evil wizard everyone thought had died."
"Wait a minute," she stopped him. "Does this guy have a name? So we don't have to keep referring to him as 'the evil wizard'?"
"Lord Voldemort."
Sera was one of the few people besides Dumbledore who hadn't flinched when Harry said that name. Of course, she had her reasons.
"Okay then." She nodded, satisfied. "Was he really a lord?"
"No. He just called himself that. Anyway, Lord Voldemort wanted me at the graveyard so that he could complete the ritual to come back to his human form. It was purely a mistake that Cedric got brought along. He had Cedric killed. He trapped me and used blood from my arm to make a potion that gave him back a human form. He was going to kill me then, but I managed to escape by grabbing the portkey and traveling back to school.
"I knew that Voldemort was back, but no one in a position of authority wanted to hear it because they were so afraid. They tried to make people think I was crazy or just looking for attention. They said the same things about Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts, who is the greatest wizard in the world and the only one Voldemort was ever afraid of. Dumbledore brought back together the Order of the Phoenix, which he had created the first time Voldemort was trying to seek power, to fight him again. During one of the battles, my godfather was killed. I was having a hard time dealing with all of that, and that's why it was decided that I should get away for a while."
Sera stared at him for a moment. She'd been willing to believe him when he'd said he was a wizard, that he could perform magic like pulling rabbits out of hats and escaping from a locked box at the bottom of a swimming pool, but then he'd come out with this fantastic story about dragons and broomsticks and evil people transporting innocent victims into graveyards. It was all too fantastic to be true. Wasn't it?
"Why you?" she finally asked.
"Why me what?" he asked.
"Why did this lord dude target you?"
Harry had to smile at hearing Voldemort referred to as a "dude".
"Well, that goes back to my parents and how they died. When I was a year old, Voldemort killed them and tried to kill me, too. My mother died trying to protect me, and that act of sacrifice gave me some kind of protection that no one had anticipated. When he tried to kill me, Voldemort's spell rebounded on him and nearly destroyed him. That's how I got this," Harry said, fingering his scar. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth, but Snape threatened me with bodily harm if I told you any of this stuff."
"But that doesn't really explain why he killed your parents and tried to kill you."
"Before I was born, a prophecy was made about Voldemort and me that said that one of us must kill the other. That's why he wants to kill me. I just found out about that recently, on the day Sirius died."
"So there's a really bad wizard out there, this Voldemort, that wants to kill you still? Based on this prophecy?"
"Yes. That's another reason I came here with your uncle. Because no one would think to look for me here."
"And why does my uncle dislike you so?" Because it was obvious he did. She didn't have any idea if this had anything to do with the story he was telling her, but she had been curious about it for a while.
"Because I look like my father."
Sera looked at him. That wasn't an answer.
Harry wasn't very proud of this part, and he looked down at his hands while he told this bit. "Your uncle and my father went to school together. My father was . . . somewhat of a bully when it came to your uncle. He picked on him. And, understandably I guess, Snape resented it. And since I look so much like my dad, I guess it just reminds him of that time when he felt so helpless. But I know what it's like to be bullied, and I . . . well, I just understand how he feels."
When he finished, he looked up. He'd told her the basics anyway of everything there was to tell, and he wondered what she thought now. "It's getting late," he said when she didn't speak. "Maybe we should head back."
He stood up and offered her his hand. She hesitated, but then slipped her own into his. "This is all so very unreal," she said as they started back along the path. "It seems like something you'd read in a book, a very long book. Or maybe see in a movie. Or a series of movies. But you're telling me that there are witches and wizards in England and that some of them are really bad. And they can do magic. And there are schools and whole communities of people like that. And that they look just as normal as you and me, but they're really not. I just don't know if I can believe it all. Are you sure you're not making it all up?"
"Why would I make something like this up? And you saw the basement," Harry pointed out.
"And the floating thing," she remembered. It seemed as though that had happened weeks ago now.
They walked quietly for a time, Sera grappling with what she had perceived as reality until today, Harry unwilling to interrupt her thoughts.
When they reached the turn that would reveal the house to them, Sera pulled her hand from his. "I've decided that I don't believe you, Harry Potter. I don't know how to explain what I saw today, and I don't know why you would make up a story like this, but I just don't believe that it could be true. There must be another explanation for what I saw."
Harry was stunned. Hours ago, he would have given anything not to have to bring this part of his world to her. But now that he'd told her everything, it was suddenly urgent that she believe him.
"But you've got to believe it!" he spluttered. "It's the truth!"
"I don't think I can. It's just too fantastic. Dragons. And flying broomsticks. And portals, or whatever you called them. I suppose you have werewolves and vampires in your world, too?" she asked rhetorically, resuming her walk to the house, this time two steps ahead of him.
Harry nodded, but she didn't see him. What now? he wondered. Maybe he had to show her, make her understand, make her believe. When they entered the kitchen, Harry said, "Wait here."
He ran to his room, retrieved his wand, and returned to her. He took a butter knife from the drawer, pointed his wand at it, and said, "Orchideous."
From the end of the knife sprouted blue and pink flowers, and Harry handed them to her. Sera's mouth dropped open.
From behind him, Harry heard a voice, barely controlling its fury, say, "Have you gone completely mad?"
Harry closed his eyes briefly, gathering courage, then slowly turned to face Snape. Before he could say a word, Snape was on him, grabbing his arm and forcing him up against the wall. "I told you what would happen! You've flouted the rules for the very last time, Potter! Have you any idea of the consequences of performing magic in front of unsuspecting Muggles? If Dumbledore doesn't expel you, finally, for this, I may just have to see to your punishment myself!"
"Stop, Uncle!" Sera cried, frightened of what Snape might do to Harry.
"Be quiet!" Snape snapped at her, not even bothering to look her way. He finally had Potter right where he wanted him. He was going to see to it that the boy didn't slither his way out of the just punishment for this crime. His anger blinded him to anything else.
"I will not be quiet!" Sera shouted. "Harry, tell him!"
"Why?" Harry spit, his fear at the look in Snape's eyes driving his adrenalin through the ceiling. "He won't listen to me. He never does! He made up his mind about me long before I was even born!"
Snape grabbed hold of Harry even tighter, prepared to shake some sense into this boy if it was the last thing he did.
"It wasn't him!" Sera screamed, crying and pounding her fists on Snape's arm, trying to make him let go of Harry. "It wasn't him that told me! It was you!"
That got through to Snape, and he looked down at Harry. "You left the door open. She saw you," Harry told him quietly.
Snape let go of Harry, and Harry rubbed his arm where Snape had been holding him in a vise-like grip. He'd have bruises tomorrow, for sure.
"I saw you," Sera confirmed, gulping for air. "I saw your workshop. I saw you . . ." she looked to Harry for the correct way to describe what she saw.
"She saw you summon something," Harry said, still watching Snape warily and rubbing his arm, pressing himself hard against the wall to get as far away from Snape as possible, wishing Snape would back away.
"I . . . I must apologize, then, Potter, for jumping to conclusions," Snape said, his eyes failing to meet Harry's, and he finally took a step backward. "Miss Mallory, I'll speak with you in the basement. Alone."
"No. I want Harry present." How did she know he wasn't going to make her simply disappear or turn her into a toad if he got her alone down there?
"Suit yourself," Snape said, looking from one of them to the other, wondering if there was more here than met the eye. "Shall we sit?"
Serafina went first. Harry, unable to quell completely the fear Snape's behavior had occasioned, stayed pressed against the wall until Snape had proceeded him into the living room, unwilling to turn his back on him.
After they were seated, Snape asked, "What has he told you?"
"He . . . he told me you were a wizard. And that he's a wizard. And that he met you at a school for wizards and witches. And that there are lots of wizards and witches running around merry old England, some of them good, some of them not so much."
"That is correct," Snape said, with a slight nod of his head. "Though there are witches and wizards everywhere, not just in England."
"Here, too?" she asked, her voice squeaking.
"Yes. You must understand, though, Miss Mallory, that secrecy is of the utmost importance. You cannot tell anyone what you know. It could be . . . disastrous. For all of us."
"Oh, I won't," she assured him, meaning it. "Who would believe me? I didn't really believe it myself, even after what I'd seen. That's why Harry . . . did that thing with the flowers."
"Yes, well, that wasn't perhaps the most advisable thing to do, under the circumstances," Snape offered with a scowl in Harry's direction.
"Can I ask you a question?"
Snape eyed her, wary, then nodded.
"Was my mother a witch?"
"Your mother . . . your mother should have been. For reasons that no one knows, she did not possess any magical abilities. That happens occasionally in wizarding families. Just as Muggle families can, from time to time, produce offspring who have these abilities. No one knows why."
"So my mother was just a . . . regular person?"
Snape nodded. "Yes. We call non-magical people 'Muggles'". He hoped she didn't get into this any deeper, forcing him to reveal how their mother had treated Sacilia when it had become evident what she was.
But Sera was heading in a different direction. "Is it possible for that type of thing to skip a generation?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, is it possible that I'm a . . . that I'm a witch?"
Snape studied her over his long nose. He didn't know the answer to this question. Perhaps there had been studies performed, but if so, he'd never read them. "I don't know," he admitted. "But if you were, you would have noticed magical ability long before now. The ability to perform magic begins to show itself by around the time one starts school. By age eleven, the ability is pronounced enough to necessitate training, which is where Hogwarts comes in."
"So I'm not? A witch, I mean."
"It would appear not."
"Oh." Serafina was disappointed. Maybe if she'd shared this connection with her uncle, he would have felt more compelled to stay here with her, or at least take her with him when he returned to his home. She'd just given him one more reason to turn his back on her.
Harry knew what she was thinking and feeling, but he remained quietly sitting in the corner, trying to be forgotten. He had some questions of his own, though, and since Snape appeared to be in an information-sharing mood, perhaps now was the time to broach them. He waited, to see if Serafina had any more questions, and when she didn't speak, he jumped into the silence.
"You said there are wizards and witches here as well. Do they have some sort of governing body, like our Ministry of Magic?"
Snape nodded. "They do. It is with their approval and permission that we are here, although they do not know all of our circumstances." Harry understood that this meant they did not know that they were playing host to The Boy Who Lived.
"So before, when I did that spell . . . am I going to get into trouble?"
Snape sighed. Always worried about himself, this one. "They allow their young wizards and witches to perform magic at home beginning at age fifteen, as well as at school. If they knew that you did it, they wouldn't care. Which is not to say that you are free to use magic in the community at large, should you venture into it. I trust that is understood."
Harry nodded, though Snape's back was to him and he could not see this gesture. They seemed to communicate a little better when they weren't looking at one another. Harry guessed that had something to do with the fact that he looked so much like his father. "And when I was doing spells as part of my school work, they didn't care about that, because they don't have the same restriction on under-age magic that we do," he guessed.
"That is correct."
"Are there any of us, close by?"
"I didn't inquire." It hadn't been his intention to come here and become part of a community of wizards and witches. He had hoped to stay here quietly during the summer months and figure out what to do with his niece. He hoped that was still possible. But another thought did occur to him. "It occurs to me, Miss Mallory, now that you know the truth, there is no reason you cannot join us in the basement classroom. Doing your own summer course work."
Sera's shoulders fell. Finally, her bluff had been called. Now she'd have to spend her summer doing school work. How sucky was that?
"If you have no further questions, Miss Mallory," Snape continued. "I suggest that we move forward from here as best we can. I don't know how much Potter told you about why he accompanied me, but he is here to get caught up on neglected school work himself and to get him away from those who would wish him harm. I have my own work to do here. Life will be . . . smoother if we all focus on our respective responsibilities."
Serafina nodded sadly. Apparently, no part of why he'd come here actually had anything to do with her. She was simply a convenient place for the two of them to spend a few weeks away from school. "Okay. Fine then. I'll start lunch."
She jumped to her feet and went quickly into the kitchen.
"Git," Harry muttered under his breath. Couldn't Snape see how much he had just hurt her?
"I'll be in the basement," Snape announced, and he stood and moved out of the room.
Harry waited until Sera had gathered and started to wash vegetables. He took a carrot from her hand and began to wash it himself. She wiped her hands on a towel and looked at him, tears threatening behind her large dark eyes. What he wouldn't give to take away the pain he saw there!
"Are you all right?" he asked quietly.
"Sure," she said bitterly. "Why wouldn't I be, after that moving declaration of love from the only relative I have left in this world?"
"Don't give up on him yet," Harry said. "He's a hard case. No one knows that more than I do. But I think, deep down, there's a decent person just waiting for the chance to make the right decision for once in his life."
"Do you really think so?"
Harry didn't, but he couldn't destroy the hope that had sprung into her eyes at his words. "I do," he said. He reached out and brushed a tear from her cheek. "Don't give up hope."
She smiled at him through her tears and set to work.
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After supper and after Snape had retired to his basement office, Harry pulled Sera out of the house and down to their favorite spot. They walked without talking, each busy with their own thoughts, Sera sorting out all that she had learned and Harry wondering how the revelation would change them. The evening was warm and sultry, as nights could be in this part of the world in late June. When they arrived at the lake and seated themselves in their customary spot, Harry put an arm around Serafina and pulled her close. She slid down so that she lay with her head in his lap, her eyes closed, and Harry removed her cap and brushed back the hair from her forehead.
"This doesn't change anything between us, you know," he told her.
She looked up and him, but didn't speak.
"Are you afraid of me?" he asked.
"I'm not afraid of you. I'm a little afraid of what you are," she confessed.
"I can control what I am, Sera. It's not like I've got magic shooting out of my fingers at odd moments."
She closed her eyes again and sighed. Wizard or not, she couldn't help how she felt about him. The attraction had gotten stronger every day, the bond deepened with every moment they spent together. "Do you have a girlfriend . . . back there?"
Harry thought of Cho Chang. He'd thought he loved Cho, but he knew now that what he'd felt for her had been a boy's infatuation with a pretty girl. The kiss he'd shared with her had been nice, but it would have been much nicer if she hadn't been crying, and it had never led to any deepening of his feelings. And he had found her ever so hard to talk to. Not like Sera, whom he'd felt like telling his life story to ten minutes after he'd met her, and whom he had poured his grief out on five minutes after that.
"No," he finally said. "There was a girl I liked, but I'm not sure I could have called her a girlfriend. We went on one date. I never felt for her anything like what I feel for you."
Sera sighed again, and a satisfied smile graced her lips. Harry admired her, drinking her in while she wasn't looking. Her breasts made the most pleasing mound in her tank top, and she curved in such a nice way down to her hips, her flat stomach showing just a bit between her shirt and the shorts she wore. Harry was suddenly possessed by the strongest desire to run his hands over her, and he curled them into fists to keep himself from doing just that.
He thought now was probably the best opportunity he was going to get for their first kiss, and he leaned forward slightly until his lips touched hers. He didn't press, simply touched her lips, until her eyes opened. They stared into one another's eyes, Harry seeking permission to increase contact. Sera reached a hand up to the back of his head and pulled him down so that his mouth smashed against hers, and the kiss quickly grew in intensity until it threatened to devour both of them.
They kissed this way for many minutes, their tongues dueling, until the need for air drove them apart. Both of them breathing as though they'd run a marathon, they stared in amazement at one another.
Slowly, Sera sat up, her eyes never leaving his. She leaned close and trailed kisses along his jaw line toward his ear. Harry arched his neck, allowing her better access, and her lips traced along his carotid artery, where she pressed her tongue to his pulse, pounding beneath her touch. When she reached his collarbone, she sank her teeth gently into the skin at the point where his neck met his shoulder, and Harry groaned softly, allowing his head to loll back. Sera's other hand caressed his opposite cheek until she turned his head toward her to seek his mouth once again. Harry's hand played with the bottom of her tank top, wanting to explore beneath but somehow holding back.
Another searing kiss followed, leaving them both breathless. Finally, Harry pulled away from her. "Sera, we should probably stop."
"Do you want to stop?" she asked.
"Hell, no," he gasped, trying valiantly not to look down at his lap and draw her attention there. The honesty of this statement was brutally apparent and making him flush in embarrassment. "But we can't . . ." He'd never felt this way before, like he wasn't in complete control of his emotions and his own body. He could see just what a short road it was between kissing her like he had been and laying her on the forest floor and taking her, right here, right now. It scared him a bit, this loss of control. If she touched him now, he wasn't sure he'd be able to resist her.
Sera sensed this and dropped her hands into her own lap. Keeping them there required a strength she hadn't known she possessed. "I'm sorry. I got a little carried away."
She wasn't far enough away for him to feel safe yet, but he said, "It's okay. I liked it." He looked down at her, and he couldn't help it. He had to taste her again. Her mouth tasted like every wonderful thing he'd ever eaten, all rolled into one. Sera curled her hands into fists to keep herself from touching him in places she'd never willingly touched another human being before. This time, when Harry broke away from her, he stood up and moved several feet away. "You frighten me," he said.
"I frighten you? Which one of us has the ability to turn the other into an armadillo?"
Harry laughed a little too loudly, releasing some of the sexual tension he was feeling. "You just turned me into someone I don't recognize, someone who only wants one thing. And that's a little scary."
"But what if we want the same thing?" she reasoned.
Harry took a calming breath as he felt most of the remaining desire drain from his body. He didn't think he'd ever lose it completely, but he at least had it down to a manageable level. "I'm only fifteen, Sera. And you're just sixteen. I want to make sure we're both ready for this step before we take it. If we take it. I don't want to make love to you for the first time in the woods on the ground, like a couple of animals."
"And where exactly do you want to make love to me for the first time, Mr. Potter?" she asked, looking at him coyly from beneath her long lashes.
"I dunno," he admitted. "But if it happens, I want it to be special. Not like this."
Sera sighed. He was probably right – well, half right. This probably wasn't the time, although this was her favorite place on earth, and she couldn't imagine a better place for her first time with Harry. "You'll be sixteen soon," she said brightly and she stood up beside him, ready to head back to the house.
He smiled in acknowledgment and took her hand. "I think it might be a good idea if we didn't kiss again. I might not be able to stop myself next time."
"You mean, we can't do this?" She stepped into his personal space and leaned forward to kiss him. Though they were both making an effort to keep their hands by their sides, their bodies were pressed as tightly together as they could get, and Sera shivered when she felt his ardent erection respond to her proximity. He realized that their hands, still clutched together, were just below where her shorts ended, and if he let go her hand, he could slide a hand under her shorts, up over her firm round bottom . . . he stopped himself from finishing that thought, and after kissing her soundly, he pushed her away. "Bad girl," he chided.
She let go of his hand – she wasn't sure she could touch him right now and not throw herself onto him, drag him to the ground, and have her way with him. "Well, if you need a way to cool down, you could always think about Uncle catching us doing that," she said as they resumed walking again.
That was a chilling, sobering thought, indeed. "That would work," he said simply. And it had. He no longer felt like throwing Sera to the ground and pouncing on top of her like a feral dog.
"Oh! Speaking of Uncle and birthdays, do you know when his birthday is?"
"I have no idea," Harry said honestly, and even more honestly, he didn't care.
"Well, I think we should pick a date and just celebrate it. What should we get him?"
"I could disappear for a week," Harry offered. "That'd be bound to cheer him up."
"That's not very practical. I'd have to go with you. We can have a party and everything. We just have to figure out a really great gift," Sera persisted. "I want to get on his good side."
"He doesn't seem like the party and gift type, exactly. And I'm not sure he has a good side.
"Maybe I'll get him some new clothes. Something that's not black. I've never seen anyone wear black all the time like that. Is he some kind of Goth dude or what?"
"Goth dude," Harry said with an amused snort. "Yeah, that's Snape all right."
"Well, think about it. You know him better than I do."
"Unfortunately," Harry agreed.