A/N: Ahoy, smuts ahead! As always, thank you isn't nearly enough for the wonderful reviews that have been rolling in, and if I haven't replied to you yet, I promise I will as soon as I can! Love you all. x
7 Years, 6 Months, 6 Days
Friday, 18 November, 2005
She started awake to the sound of a car speeding by outside, someone's hand on her hip… and her dark room was immediately spinning.
She flipped over so fast she almost hit him in the face. Him. Ron. Ron was alive. Staring back at her, eyes wide.
She burst immediately into tears, reaching up to hold his face in trembling hands, legs tangled in her twisted sheets.
"Ermynee?"
"I-I thought… thought I'd f-fallen asleep with someone…"
"Well…" He attempted a lopsided grin, clearly shocked by her outburst. "You did."
"Someone," she cried, dropping her forehead to his mouth and closing her eyes, "...someone else."
"Oh." His lips brushed her fringe, hot breath on her skin, and she felt his hand tangle in her hair as he loosely held the back of her head.
She slid one hand down from his face to his bare, warm chest, noting with mild alarm that his heart was racing.
"I frightened you."
"Interesting way to wake up," he quipped, in a muffled, sleepy voice, "but m'fine."
She quietly breathed for a moment as his pulse slowed, and a second car rushed by down below. The sounds of the city had never really bothered her - another mask to hide behind when she'd been crying herself to sleep. But she noticed it more now, noticed everything more, as if all her senses had been reawakened.
His skin smelled so warm, the only way to describe it, that sort of sleepy, cozy scent that made her feel safe. Colours seemed more vivid, myriad tones of copper and amber and ginger from freckles to shaggy hair to light stubble.
She finally lifted her head back to her half of the pillow they were sharing and stared at him.
"What time is it?" she asked blearily, almost instantly recognising what a silly question it was. He shrugged, smiling in an amused sort of way, and she felt her face warm a bit.
"Very late," he offered, "or… very early."
He lazily reached out to touch her side, evidently missing his mark a bit as his hand brushed high up her ribs. He swallowed and slid it around awkwardly to her back as she shivered. And she suddenly remembered that, somewhere in the tangled web of her half-formed, confusing dreams, she'd been feeling his hands on her, all over her skin, warm and gentle but urgent.
She so strongly recalled what it had been like, years ago, that longing, intense desire for him, staring too long at his hands in Keeper's gloves, a million tiny sparks through her veins when she'd meet crystal blue eyes. It had all rushed back when he'd returned, a flash flood, overwhelming her in the best way.
This was what it felt like to be happy. This was how it felt to be in love.
And all her fears now made so much sense, a tidal wave of perfect feeling she could only cling to blindly and beg and beg to never have ripped away from her again. Irrational thoughts of losing him - of losing everything - were so much easier to comprehend, now that she understood the difference between safe and lost.
"Hey…" he said scratchily, and she realised he must have noticed something changing in her expression, because his forehead was lightly creased and he was carefully watching her with sleepy, shimmering eyes.
But she didn't want to talk.
She pushed the front of her body against his and kissed him.
He must have wordlessly understood quite a lot of what she was thinking… or he was thinking the same things, because he responded eagerly, and his left hand, which had been quite tentative a moment ago, was now gathering her vest up her back, knuckles digging lightly into her spine. She straightened her legs to get closer, but then he gripped her tighter and tugged her on top of him as he rolled to his back, left hand spreading flat over her skin, right fingers sliding across her collarbone, slipping the thin strap of her vest off her shoulder.
She pressed her palms to the mattress, over his shoulders, and dragged her mouth away from his to sit up with the intention of removing her vest completely. But he followed her like a magnet, lips a breath apart as he sat up with her, until she was straddling his lap and his forearms were sliding up her back to hold her firmly against him, fingertips tangling in her hair. He kissed her again, very lightly shaking as she raked her nails along his scalp, down the back of his neck, forgetting about her vest.
She pressed herself down against his crotch… she could feel how much he wanted her, and she nearly desperately needed more. She reached down between her legs to touch him, mouths still attached, and a low growl rolled through him, vibrating between them. She'd never felt so connected to another person, so aware of each other that they didn't need to speak. But he reached for her knickers at the same moment that she separated from him to climb off his lap to remove them. And she happily let him do it for her, yanking them down and not even taking the time to push them off the bed before shoving his pants down his own legs and kicking them free. She grabbed his wrist the very second he was naked, pulling him toward her to cover her body as she collapsed to her back with her head at the foot of the bed, the quickest option. And he kissed her deeply, crushing her between his warm body and tangled blankets.
When he eventually pushed up for a breath, she grasped his hand, dragging it down her body, over her bunched up vest which scarcely covered her breasts, her hardened nipples straining against taut fabric… moving his palm across her belly, between her legs. His breathing changed, shaky bursts through his mouth, and she gasped each inhale, cheeks burning, hair frizzing wildly around her face. He pushed her legs wider apart, and she found his consuming gaze, as unable to look away from those eyes now as she had been unable to stare into them for very long, years ago.
He could probably read her mind. Just then, she wasn't going to tell him what she wanted. It wasn't difficult to guess, but he'd always had to ask. To be sure. To move cautiously forward. They didn't want to be cautious, now.
The fingers of his right hand dug into her thigh while his left steadied his body above her, trembling. She reached between them, wrapped her own hand around him, finding the perfect position before he pushed forward and filled her, her fingers momentarily trapped between their joined bodies as she cried out, not even trying to mute the sound.
He pressed his forehead to hers, then kissed her again, tongues meeting, teeth lightly scraping. He moved faster than before, more frantic, lightly sweaty chest rubbing across her damp vest, shyness gone in the middle of the night in a room that was theirs instead of hers. In less than a minute, she was so close to an orgasm that she thought she could use her own hand for a few seconds and-
"Wait," he whispered, suddenly shaking quite noticeably. He breathed heavily against her mouth for a moment, frozen.
"What-"
"Wanna make this last," he slurred, closing his eyes.
She wanted to tell him not to stop now, but she was immediately distracted by his face, lashes lightly resting on his cheeks, a twitching muscle in his jaw, his hand fisting in her hair as he swallowed, neck moving gorgeously.
When he opened his eyes again, quite slowly, she smiled up at him. She made the tiniest adjustment underneath him, and he grinned, ducking to kiss her jaw as he moved slowly inside her now. But the change in tone wouldn't last, and she clenched around him, rubbing her inner thigh along his hip.
"Ah, fuuuck." His hand was thoroughly twisted up in her hair, but he managed to free it and stop moving again. "Got an idea."
She nodded deliriously, and he gripped her waist as he sat back on his knees, between her legs, pulling her toward him and filling her completely again. He moved his right hand to the spot she'd taught him the previous night, and she gasped.
"Tell me… if I'm doing this wrong," he breathed, looking slightly dizzy, but she just reached down to slide her fingers over the back of his left hand where it was still tightly holding onto her waist.
He had always learned quite quickly, when he was paying attention, when the subject interested him. He carefully watched her face, gaze eventually roaming down her nearly bare body.
"Give me your other hand," she breathed, staring at the sharp curves of his bony knuckles at her waist.
But, rather than do as she'd requested, he shoved his left hand up her body, under the vest still trying to cover her breasts, and he firmly rolled her nipple between two long fingers. A shaky moan exhaled from her open mouth.
"This what y'want?" he asked breathlessly, and she could sense the nervous hesitation in his assumption. She nodded quickly to reassure him, tilting her head back, angling herself more firmly and exactly against his hand still moving between her legs.
And then, quite abruptly, her breathy moans turned to a shaky cry, eyes snapping automatically shut as she trembled, nails of one hand digging into his arm while the other clenched in the tangled sheet underneath her. Pleasure coursed through her, and she wanted to see him, opening her eyes again quickly to stare up at his beautiful face in the dark. His own eyes widened as he watched her, lips slightly parted.
"Did you just-"
"Yeah, a bit," she actually giggled, horrified for a moment as she heard the sound escape her own mouth… but she quickly stopped caring as he crushed her lips with a delighted grin.
She'd not realised just how thin a grasp he'd had on his own control until he thrust exactly twice into her and groaned, sucking her bottom lip between both of his as he came inside her, muscles tight, her hands spreading across his shoulder blades as he dragged his mouth from her lips to her neck.
For several lengthy, lazy seconds, he remained there, covering her, her entire focus back on the beat of his heart and the slowly-returning-to-normal breathing between them both. Finally, he lifted himself off of her, sitting back up on his knees as she slowly blinked up at him. He smiled in such a disbelieving way as he gently reached for her hand, and she sat up in front of him, watching as he wordlessly gathered her vest and lifted her arms for her. She laughed lightly as she slowly attempted to help him pull the thin fabric off over her head, tossing it aside, crawling after him to collapse at the top of the bed again.
There was so much feeling, everywhere. It came from inside, from her heart, from a dreamy night slowly painting the colours on grey canvas, from the way he looked at her. She could live in a single second, pause time and stay right there. But it took no time at all to drift away, encased in the warmth of his body and the cool, thin sheet he silently draped over them both.
She woke in a jumbled twist of bare limbs, her bedside alarm chiming in increasingly louder intervals, the Daily Prophet owl tapping her window, and a streak of pinkish morning light cutting through her sheer curtains. Pressing her lips together, she attempted to extricate her legs from Ron's, and he grunted in a disapproving way, in his sleep.
She sighed softly, a bloom of affection spreading through her at the sight of his long fingers wrapped loosely around her arm. Unfortunately, that feeling wasn't going to help her untangle her body from his and get out of bed in time for work. She couldn't reach her alarm or her wand, for that matter, both of which were resting on the bedside table across Ron's gorgeously freckled and very, very naked body…
She cleared her throat and tried to focus.
But she was far too easily distracted. As she lifted the sheet from her stomach and slid her foot out from between his shins, she got a full and well-lit view of the front of his body, copper hairs across his chest, thin stomach with the faintest definition of strong muscles, the curves of his hip bones, that thicker trail of hair that led down from his bellybutton…
She briefly closed her eyes before resuming her necessary escape by wiggling sideways toward the opposite side of the bed. He muttered something incomprehensible in his sleep, the tone of which was clearly that he'd much prefer her to return to her former position and fall back to sleep with him for the foreseeable future.
She reluctantly slid all the way out of bed, glancing back as he rolled partially over to his stomach, where she'd just been, and slid his arm underneath her pillow. She quietly made her way around the bed to her side table, shutting off her alarm, then picking up his shirt and pulling it on before letting the Daily Prophet owl in and paying him.
It was absurd, really, the things Ron could sleep through.
Leaving him to rest a bit longer, she went to take a shower, keeping the door open so she'd be able to hear him. She managed to convince herself that a less-than-five-minute shower had much more to do with how late she might be for work than it did the fact that she didn't want to be away from him…
She quickly returned to her room and dressed, picked up her wand to dry her hair… And then she had nothing left to do but go, so she walked back around the bed and climbed in, kneeling on the mattress beside him.
"Ron…" she whispered, lightly stroking her fingers through his hair.
No reply.
"Ron."
He made the tiniest of noises in the back of his throat and nuzzled his cheek into her pillow.
She playfully glared down at him and fisted her hand in his hair.
"Ron. Wake up."
His left eye opened, a small smile spread across his sleepy face, and she tried to maintain a semblance of seriousness as she let go of his hair.
"I've got to be at work in twenty minutes…" she explained, clearing her throat, "and you're naked."
"Hmm," he grinned, but she could see a light blush colouring the tips of his ears. "You sure you've got to work today?"
"I wouldn't, honestly," she said apologetically, "but I've got a report due on Monday, and I don't think anyone else in my department will know what to do-"
"Oi, I'm getting up," he interrupted, rolling over to his back, still grinning. "If you skived off two days in a row, I wouldn't know you anymore."
As they walked through the Ministry Atrium, holding hands, he replayed all the surreal feelings of the previous night… the way he'd woken so frantically to her gasping cries, the way she'd kissed him, how overwhelmed he had felt by being home. He'd always sensed that if he ever got the chance to really be with Hermione, it would change his entire perception of love. Not that he hadn't felt it anyway, before she'd kissed him that first time, years ago. But it had coexisted almost always with a twisted, sickening feeling of self-doubt, insecurity and fear. Actually being with her had been so much more incredible than everything he thought he knew. And to have that back again… It was like taking your first breath of crisp, fresh air after nearly drowning.
They found an empty lift, and he leaned against the back wall as she let go of him to press the button for her floor. He couldn't stop staring at her, the way her long hair brushed her back, her tongue darting out to lick the corner of her mouth, and merely the thought of watching her work made his stomach flutter with nostalgia. He'd spent all of fifth and the better part of sixth year at Hogwarts coming up with small excuses to sit closer, to lightly touch her leg, to lean over her shoulder to read something from the book in her lap. Now, he didn't have to hide what he was doing.
She turned to face him as they waited to arrive on her floor.
"I've just got a few things to check on at my office first, then we can leave early for lunch and go to Diagon Alley to get you a new wand. I've got that report to finish this afternoon, and we'd better check in with Harry in case-" She abruptly stopped speaking, staring up at him. "What?"
"Nothing. I'm listening," he smiled, but she studied him carefully in silence before taking a step closer.
"This might have been a very bad idea," she finally said, slowly grinning back.
"What?"
"Bringing you to work with me." She rested her hands on his shoulders, pushed up to her toes, and kissed him, just as their lift jolted to a stop and announced their arrival.
"Lifts are way too fast," he muttered as she lowered herself back to her feet and laughed.
She took his hand and led him out the open doors, ignoring a few curious glances in the corridor from co-workers as they made their way back to a row of desks on the right and a wall of office doors on the left. She opened the third door and was about to lead him inside when a chipper voice called out.
"Morning, Hermione!"
Ron turned around to see a short woman with straight blonde hair and bright red lipstick walking toward them.
"Missed you yesterday," she added, glancing furtively between Ron and Hermione. "Are you feeling alright?"
"Wonderful, actually," Hermione said with a small smile. "Dawn, do you remember the wizard you told me about on Tuesday, the maniac who was running through the Atrium?"
Ron turned to raise a brow at Hermione, noticing with amusement that she was trying to stifle a grin.
"Well, sure I do," Dawn said slowly, forehead creasing as she suspiciously looked at Ron again. Hermione laid her hand on his arm.
"This is him."
Dawn's eyes widened sharply, and she gasped.
"No, it is not!"
"Yes, it is. This is Ron Weasley. We thought he was dead. But he's…" she paused to sniff, and Ron turned his full attention to her suddenly trembling bottom lip. "Well, he isn't dead, is he," she concluded with a shaky laugh.
"Good Lord!" Dawn shouted, eyes still wide. "Oh, I've got to tell Frankie about this… Do you need anything, Hermione? Either of you?"
Hermione shook her head as Dawn stared up at Ron, flustered and mildly apprehensive of him.
"Sorry if I scared you," he said. "Hadn't seen a bath or a razor in years."
Dawn laughed shrilly, shaking her head.
"Oh, I didn't see you. My friend did, and she will not believe this!"
Dawn turned quickly to rush away, presumably to find this Frankie person, Ron thought, as Hermione steered him quickly into her office and shut the door, leaning against it with a sigh.
"You okay?" he asked her.
"Mm hm. It just keeps… you know… hitting me. You're here."
Before he could reply, she crossed the small room to her desk and dropped her bag on the chair behind it.
"Oh," she said distractedly as she reached for a scroll on her desk, and Ron took a moment to glance around her tiny office.
Two full walls were stuffed with books, and boxes of files were stacked on either side of her desk. There was one extra chair in the corner to his right, but it was currently being used to house a box of quills and a neat stack of parchment sheets with an official looking department heading adorning the top.
"Harry's asking us to meet him already," Hermione said, holding the parchment she'd unrolled.
"Reckon he's got the date for the trial?" Ron considered in a mildly scratchy voice. He wasn't exactly worried - he was quite sure the outcome of the case would be in his favour - but the idea of being face to face with his captors again was slightly uncomfortable.
"Maybe. Should we go find out now?"
"Yeah, let's go."
Checking in with Harry turned into nearly three hours in the Auror offices, a good portion of which was spent with Hermione demanding to be allowed to attend the trial, which had been set for Tuesday morning. But, once the old files on Ron's 'murder' case were reopened in Clarke's office, Hermione was appeased by the indication that she would be called regardless, possibly to recount again what she'd seen that day, in light of the realisation that Ron was in fact alive and… relatively well. They'd finally left, around noon, heading into Diagon Alley.
"Have you been to Ollivander's since the war?" Ron asked as they walked past familiar yet updated shops, hand in hand.
"Once. Harry and I went by to check on him, but he'd managed quite well, actually. Got his shop repaired in a matter of weeks, he told us, in plenty of time for the new school term."
"Y'know…" but Ron paused, unsure if he should continue. He felt Hermione's gaze on his profile, and he wrinkled his nose. "My last wand's buried with the bloke you thought was me."
"I know, but would you really want it back?" she asked uncomfortably.
"Reckon not…" he said, though it struck him that someone would soon have to identify the man buried in his place.
"Anyway, it was charred from the fire." She stopped for a moment and shook her head. "I still have nightmares from that day, but it wasn't even you."
"You mean you have since I've been back?" he asked, surprised. They'd hardly slept that first night, and the only interruption he'd sensed in her sleep the previous night had been that jolt when she'd thought she was with someone else...
"No, no, but recently," she clarified. "Maybe they'll go away now…"
"Hope so."
They'd reached Ollivander's shop, which was quite unsurprisingly empty, given the time of year. Ron opened the door and spotted Mr Ollivander at once, sorting through papers behind the front desk, looking a bit older than he had done, but otherwise quite well and definitely noticeably healthier than he'd been at Shell Cottage.
"Hello, Mr Ollivander," Hermione greeted as they approached the desk.
"Ah, Ms Granger, Mr Weasley." He adjusted his glasses and glanced between the two of them. "Come for repairs today, have you?"
"No," Hermione said, looking up at Ron.
"I need a new wand," Ron explained. "Long story, but mine's, uh, gone."
"Ah." Ollivander eyed him for a moment as if on the verge of asking questions, but it passed quickly, and he nodded. "Well, step closer and we'll see what we can do." He snapped his fingers and a familiar magical tape measure jumped to life, flitting around Ron and sliding under his arms.
Hermione watched, amused, as it stretched, recalibrated, and stretched some more to take in Ron's height.
"Hm, I do believe…" Ollivander began, pulling down a wand box as the tape measure curled up and collapsed to the desk. "Yes, let's try this one. Your last was made of willow, unicorn hair core, fourteen inches?"
"Yeah, that's it," Ron said, shaking his head in disbelief. "That's brilliant, you know, the way you can do that. How many wands have you sold, anyway? And you still remember the one you sold to me when I was thirteen."
"As you well know, Mr Weasley, every wand is destined for quite a unique journey," Ollivander said simply as he handed over the chosen wand to Ron.
But before Ron had even gotten a decent look at the wand in his hand, Ollivander shook his head and snatched it back.
"No, of course not," he said, to no one in particular.
Hermione exchanged a fascinated glance with Ron as Ollivander climbed up a rickety ladder and returned with a second wand, one that he clearly felt much more pleased to present.
"I suspect you'll find this one more agreeable," Ollivander said as he handed the wand to Ron.
At first, it felt strange and a bit cold, but it seemed to warm unnaturally fast as he held it up, inspecting it.
"Alder wood with a unicorn hair core, fourteen and a half inches," Ollivander remarked, watching with great interest as Ron cleared his throat.
"Lumos." The wand lit immediately, brighter even than his previous wand.
"How do you suppose you are with nonverbal magic?" Ollivander asked with that slightly unsettling smile of his, which made both Ron and Hermione blink across the desk at him.
"He's brilliant," Hermione said confidently. "Try something, Ron."
Nox.
The wand tip went dark, and he pointed it at the tape measure still resting quite still on the desk.
Accio-
He'd barely thought the word when the tape measure zoomed toward him, and he reacted just in time to catch it.
"Mr Weasley, I believe we've found your wand."
They stopped briefly to pick up some lunch, and Hermione had excitedly recalled how alderwood was considered one of the best options for strong nonverbal spellwork. She'd also made a quick list of all the additional things Ron might need, personal items that wouldn't be leftover from before he had gone. He hadn't had much of an opinion at all when she'd asked him if she'd left anything out, and she'd sadly assumed it was likely because he'd gone without a single thing for so long, locked up, that he wasn't used to needing much of anything…
They set off down the alley again, and she was mentally reciting her list to see if there was anything she'd overlooked.
"Hermione," Ron started, as he shoved the final huge bite of a sandwich into his mouth, "d'we really hav'ta do all th'shopping t'day?"
She glanced sideways at him and arched an eyebrow at his garbled words.
"I don't see why not. What's the point putting it off if we're already here?"
He swallowed and stalled following her into Flourish & Blotts, causing her to turn back mid-step and stare at him.
"I'd say this is the point," he argued, turning out his empty pockets.
"What, because you've been living in a dungeon for seven and a half years and haven't managed to make money at it?" She crossed her arms over her chest, and he sighed.
"I don't need anything, so why-"
"Of course you do," she countered sharply.
"I really don't. I'm already living at your flat right now for free, and-"
"Oh my God, you've been back two days!"
A witch carrying several large bags of shopping approached the storefront, and Ron tugged Hermione's hand gently to pull her out of the doorway. He led them past the shop's windows to a stretch of blank brick wall, and she thought she probably should have seen this coming - money was always a bit of a sore spot - but wasn't this different? He hadn't fought her when she'd bought his wand, though she knew he'd try to pay her back as soon as he could.
"I'm not saying I won't let you help," he resumed quietly, "but I don't need quills and new trainers and all this rubbish."
"It's not rubbish," she sniffed weakly.
His thumb absentmindedly brushed across the back of her hand.
"What's up?" he asked cryptically, except she surprised herself by understanding him almost immediately.
"I don't know. I… I suppose it's the same as I said before… I want to feel like I'm helping, and this is all I can do."
"What?" A small, incredulous laugh escaped him, and he moved closer to the wall as more shoppers passed quickly by. "You've given me everything. That's why there's nothing I need, yeah?"
"What do you mean?"
"I was gonna die trying to get back to you. Now I'm standing here holding your hand and my trunk's in your bedroom."
"Ours."
"Yeah, exactly."
She stared up at him for a long moment. She hadn't even considered it before, but her apparent need to give him tangible things was just part of the process of fully accepting, honestly believing that he was truly there to stay. She had to learn to trust what was right in front of her. And she had to learn to trust that when she closed her eyes or turned her back, he wouldn't vanish.
"At least let me get you your own toothbrush," she offered softly.
"Yeah, alright," he laughed.
They'd returned to the Ministry by half one, and they'd mostly avoided her co-workers as she'd closed them in her office. She'd cleared off her extra chair for Ron, made them tea, and buried herself in a mountain of research for her most pressing report.
She felt it almost immediately, a deep familiarity sitting there with him, doing her work while he flipped through her notes. She had never thought so directly about it before, existing in their school days as an unconscious, natural thing. But it had been such a significant part of how she had worked, for so many years, and now, to have that again… It was alarmingly apparent just how much of an effort she'd had to make, every day, to ignore reality.
For a while, she got lost in what she was doing, filling out Ministry paperwork, supporting her claims with triple the necessary sources. But, as she paused to open a fresh inkwell, it became apparent in her periphery that Ron had given up distractions and was openly watching her. She looked up to find his eyes, startled by the difference between his sixth year gaze darting away, leaving her to wonder if she'd completely imagined him staring… and now, with all of that stripped away, letting her see the raw truth.
She studied the gently aged features of his wonderful face, feeling frizzy tendrils of her hair tickling her cheeks, having broken free from the messy bun she'd tied up at lunch. And he was staring right back at her with something that could only be described as longing. Without a word, she organised the parchment and books on her desk, slid them to the far left edge, chewed her bottom lip as she felt her heart beat faster.
She heard him breathe deeply, saw him rest his hands on the edge of her desk. How quickly they could go from the familiarity of years to frantically wanting each other. If only she'd told him when they were sixteen, what might have happened? What rules could they have broken?
He stood at the same time she did, leaning across her desk, grabbing her face and kissing her. The tips of her fingers disappeared in his hair at the nape of his neck, his thumbs extended up her cheeks, and her teeth dug into his lower lip. He felt her body moving closer, hardly aware of what she was doing until she had climbed on top of her desk and he had to tilt his head slightly back to keep kissing her.
"Wait, wait," she panted against his mouth, reaching for her wand, aiming it over his shoulder. He moved out of the way to the side of her desk as she locked and silenced the room, tossing her wand to her chair and grabbing his shirt collar as she scooted to the edge of her desk, on her knees.
He tilted his head back again as she looped her arms around his neck and pressed the front of her body to his. His right hand yanked her top free from her skirt in the back, fingers roaming up warm skin, the bony ridges of her spine. She was beautiful, she was perfect, she wasn't eating enough. His mum would fix that.
He grinned against her open mouth, her tongue ran along his upper lip, and she clawed at the back of his shirt, pulling it up til he had to lean away from her to rip it over his head and drop it to the floor. She began unbuttoning her shirt from the top, so he started at the bottom to meet her in the middle.
At one point in time, he would have placed bets that she wasn't the sort of person to shag her boyfriend on top of her desk, at the bloody Ministry, at three o'clock in the afternoon. But their hands met at her last button, and she laughed, letting him do it. They pushed her top down her arms, she dropped it to the floor, and his gaze locked on her thin, satin bra before she untucked her legs and draped them off the edge of her desk, on either side of his waist. And this was really happening.
He cupped her face in his hands again, bending his knees a bit and ducking down slightly to reach her lips now, a more familiar posture. Their nearly naked upper bodies collided, and he pushed his hips firmly against the edge of her desk, groaning, while she reached for his belt.
"Near the top of the list, I think," he muttered as she broke away the tiniest distance to breathe.
"What?" she exhaled, the clanging of metal and soft sounds of his zipper mingling with heavy, uneven breaths and his short laugh, realising how incomprehensible his words were.
"Fantasies," he clarified, staring at her swollen, parted lips. "Hogwarts bed, Prefect's bath, library, tabletop… Desktop counts."
"Library?" she grinned, sliding her hand down his stomach and into his pants.
"Fucking hell." His eyes slipped shut. "Yeah. S'what I wouldda done with the Room of Requirement your seventh year…"
"You never finished school. We could go back and tick off your list," she teased as he opened his eyes again and crushed her mouth with laughter, rubbing his hands up her bare thighs, bunching her skirt up to her waist.
His fingers curled over the waistband of her knickers, noticing how tiny they were, a bit of lacy something around the edges… He wanted to actually see what he was touching, but he abandoned the thought almost immediately as she lifted her arse for him to pull them off of her, down her legs, over her shoes to the floor.
He licked his lips and attacked her neck, blissfully closing his eyes. Her nails dug into his shoulder blades as she tilted her head further back, and he sucked a spot just below her ear until he realised he was leaving a mark. An apology was making its way up his raspy throat, but he was once again waylaid completely when she shoved his trousers and pants down and tugged him tightly between her legs with her heels on the backs of his thighs.
"My Hogwarts bed, Quidditch lockers, the pond at the Burrow," she slurred as he pressed the tip of his nearly painful erection to her wet centre.
"Shit, those are good."
"Ron…"
"Yeah," he moaned in response as he thrust inside her.
She gasped and arched to press her chest tighter against his, and he felt so overwhelmed by how fucking incredible it was to be joined with her that he leaned forward and spread his large hands across her back, and she collapsed to lie down. As much as he'd wanted to make it perfect for her every time, he'd spent nearly two hours watching her bite her lip in concentration, ringlets of hair falling down from her bun to frame her lightly flushed face, and now her skin was burning, clenching around him as he drove into her, pushing her body up the desk.
He leaned back and gripped her hips, tugging her to the edge of the desk again, and her heels locked around his waist. She reached out for him, and he let go of her waist to grab both of her hands, squeezing them maybe a bit too tight.
"Can't-" He shook his head, blindly attempting to resurface from feverish pleasure.
"Don't stop," she commanded in a heart-stoppingly firm voice, and that was his final breaking point. He let go of her hands, covered her body with his own again, buried his left hand in her hair, and nipped lightly at the red spot he'd made on her neck, eyes squeezing shut.
"Ermynee," he growled against her skin, pulsing inside her as she breathed hotly into his ear, whispering words he couldn't make out.
Her chest moved dramatically as she breathed under the weight of his body, and he relaxed his back and arms as his pulse slowed.
He really didn't want to move, but he could tell that the edge of her desk was digging into her thighs, and she finally shifted underneath him. He lifted his face from her neck, skin flushed and lips parted. But then he raised an arching brow, taking a moment to comprehend what he was seeing, just over her head.
"What?" she asked, twisting slightly to look up, though she'd never be able to see what he could from her angle.
Realisation dawned, and his lips curled up into an apologetic grin.
"Uh…" He leaned back and untangled his left hand from her hair… Three of his fingers were stained black. "Sorry."
He watched her figure it out, as he had done, and she gasped, sitting up quickly and tugging at her hair, now completely chaotically released from the elastic that had been trying to hold it together. Glancing sharply back to the desktop, she spotted her inkwell lying on its side, a black puddle across her desk, soaking through a blank sheet of parchment.
"Fuck, your notes."
He hitched up his trousers to his waist and rather comically walked up between her chair and her desk to snatch her pile of paperwork and books up in his arms, seconds before her spilled ink would surely have soaked into them. His trousers slid back down his thin legs, and her fiercely flushed face watched him with grateful amusement. He dropped the lot to her chair and attempted to properly fasten his belt, trying to avoid touching anything with his three ink-stained fingers as she hopped off her desk and tugged her skirt down over her thighs.
"Here," she offered, smiling. She moved his hands away from his belt and successfully fastened it for him, pulling a bit too tight.
"Oi!"
"Sorry," she grinned, licking her lips as she let go. She retrieved her wand from her chair and turned to face the settled pool of ink. "I think you saved everything important."
"Yeah, except your hair," he pointed out, tilting his head to survey the black stain in her curls.
She swished her wand at her desk and the ink disappeared, siphoning off the blank parchment as well. He had a quick flashback to her saving an essay for him at school after an ink spill, and he smiled euphorically, still feeling a bit shaky in the best way from shagging her.
"C'mere."
She turned to face him again and stepped closer, and he was briefly distracted by the slight visibility of her hardened nipples through her thin bra. He cleared his throat and rested a hand on her shoulder, turning her slightly away from him and retrieving his wand from his back pocket, aiming for the stain. He couldn't be sure he'd removed it all at a quick glance, but the idea of showering together later was far more appealing than performing flawless magic, so he shrugged and she gathered her hair into a ponytail as he searched the floor for the rest of their clothes.
As if timed perfectly not to interrupt them, for the first time in recorded history he was sure, someone knocked on her office door just as she'd finished buttoning her top. She flicked her wand to unlock and unsilence the room as Ron resumed his place in the chair opposite her desk and tried to look like he'd been there awhile…
Hermione opened the door to reveal Harry standing on the other side.
"Oh hi, Harry! Come in!"
Ron tried hard not to snigger at the overly chipper tone she had adopted, noting that Harry wasn't buying it either. Fortunately, he didn't mention it…
"Charlie's arriving tonight," Harry announced, glancing over at Ron. "Ginny flooed a few minutes ago."
"Oh, cheers. You alright going back to the Burrow, Hermione?"
"Of course," she smiled, moving her notes and books from her chair to her desktop and settling back to her work.
"Don't forget your knickers," Harry muttered with a badly concealed grin as he darted back out of her office, and Hermione's face turned scarlet as she caught sight of the red lacy things Ron had forgotten on the floor.
It had taken all his willpower not to pester her for the remaining two and a half hours she'd spent actually trying to get shit done. But by six o'clock, they were Apparating straight to the Burrow, almost instantly spotting Charlie by the front porch.
"Bloody unbelievable," he called out as they approached, clapping his arms tightly around Ron and shaking his head as he laughed.
Dinner was loud and boisterous, exactly as expected with nine Weasleys and their families under one roof again. But, by the time the final rays of sunlight were fading below the horizon, Ron managed to lead Hermione quietly outside with him, not even trying to find an excuse to want her with him, everywhere. She sat on the front steps, and he twirled his new wand between his fingers, thinking of the happiest memories he could. The most amazing realisation came when he couldn't decide which to select from nearly every single moment since he'd been back. He focused, at last, on a simple one, sleepily brushing his fingers through Hermione's hair as he'd held her while she'd slept the previous night.
"Expecto Patronum."
His Jack Russell emerged happily and flitted through the air in an excited circle.
"This wand's brilliant," he concluded, as Hermione walked quietly up beside him, touching his arm and lifting her own wand as she closed her eyes, smiling.
"Expecto Patronum."
Her otter danced free, and they watched as Ron's terrier chased it several metres in one direction before skidding and turning to continue following it the opposite way. Ron thought back to his memories of the first days they'd been able to produce them, trying to recall their behaviour then. But it was so much more clear to him now, what it all meant, as his Patronus continued to playfully chase Hermione's through the cool night air.
"Reckon they planned this?" he asked quietly, as Hermione linked her arm with his and nodded, sniffing lightly.
"We were sixteen, Ron," she said hoarsely, and he smiled down at her, understanding. They'd said it many times before, a marker of the age where things had really been noticeably different. But, just then, nearly a decade later, it seemed almost unbelievable.
"Knew what I wanted before then, y'know," he said, more sure than he'd ever been of anything.
"So did I."