Author's Note: Next scene has Mature content and is just a tiny bit graphic
Chapter 22 - Illuminating
Hermione breathed in, Ron's lips still on hers. Her knees buckled under her as she leaned into him for support.
Ron kissed her deeper, the texture of her mouth sweet and exciting under his tongue. She was holding onto him, hands and fingers squeezing the skin on his back, wondering if this was perhaps another dream.
He didn't want to let go, but felt like he should.
Pulling away, he looked into her eyes as she slowly opened them. They were of a whole new different shade, full of lust and desire mingled with something else.
"This is not what I had planned exactly," he said, taking a step back. He needed her to know he wasn't just an uncontrollable man knocking down her door in the middle of the night. "I wanted to...I just wanted to talk."
"You start a talk with a hello, not with a kiss like that," she said. She looked so serious, her eyes fixed on his lips.
"It was long overdue from this morning," he said with a hint of a grin. One of his hands travelled to her neck, the other one found her hand. He noticed a tremor in her body and the skin on her neck was clammy.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
A shadow crept into her eyes. "I just had a nightmare," she whispered. "But I think it was a real memory, too." She said it with a pain and a touch of fear that crawled under his skin. Ron felt a lump in his throat as he drew her into his chest, kissing the top of her head.
"I'm sorry, this is probably the worst time I could've chosen to show up."
"No," she mumbled into his shirt, "it's the best."
"Do you want to talk about it? The dream?"
Hermione shook her head, her face still pressed into his t-shirt. Ron felt her shaking stop. She stood still in his arms as she took a deep breath and released it. The moment could easily have lasted forever, he thought, but he had to tell her, had to get the words out.
He still found himself a little shocked he was so close to her now. Back at The Burrow he had been in bed, sleep avoiding him by a mile. He had been only staring up at the ceiling, following the cracks in the wood, trying to make sense of his thoughts and oddly shaped regrets. He had had that sense of deja vu again, probably reminding him of how it had felt when he had abandoned Harry and Hermione in the woods – terrible, lonely and powerless. He had wished he could talk to her, reach out and rectify his mistakes, but she was out of reach.
That's when he had been propelled to his feet, overpowered by a strong sense of urgency to go and see them, or rather, her. What he would say he hadn't known. It was the middle of the night. He would probably have just slept outside her room on the couch and wait for the morning, but then he heard her move around in her room. Sleepless same as he was.
"I'm sorry for leaving today," he whispered into her hair. "I felt awful afterwards, couldn't sleep. We were both having a good time and I screwed it up. I just hated finding out like that."
"I know," she said, planting a kiss in the middle of his chest. Her tenderness made his head spin. He also realised that she was standing there in an oversized t-shirt that barely reached the top of her thighs. One of her shoulders was bare, silver in the moonlight.
"I need you to know that I don't want to be that kind of man, the one who walks away." He tipped her face up and noticed tears slipping down her cheeks. Before she could wipe them away, he bent down to kiss them.
"We're so lost, aren't we?" she said, laughing softly. "Worrying away and crying about things that are barely real."
"But they are real," he said, the tone steady and serious. "They matter. And I don't feel lost when I'm with you." It was nothing but the truth.
"I still feel like saying...'I don't even know you', but that just doesn't feel right any more, does it?" She lifted her head to look at him with wide eyes. "I just know now that I've always known you, I've always..." The words trailed off somewhere on the way, but it didn't matter. Ron knew what she meant.
He lowered his head and leaned his forehead against hers. The heat of her body made his own temperature rise. He felt like he was seeing her for the first time now, saw her bare, and he wanted to see more. His hand, slow and careful, slid down the side of her ribcage, stopped just an inch beneath her breast.
He waited for her to say anything, tell him to stop, and he was terrified of it, but she suddenly turned her body a little to the side so that his hand was now cupping her breast. He felt himself going immediately hard at the touch.
Hermione stood on tiptoe to bring her lips to his, taking hold of his face and drawing him into her. It was what she had wanted to do since last night on the hill, maybe even earlier. Being in his arms erased all those years of loneliness, of feeling lost and left behind in a world that had felt empty to her. The closeness of his body evoked in her a bold desire and a courageous passion.
She had always considered herself shy, averse to being vulnerable, but with Ron she didn't care. With Ron being vulnerable was being whole.
His lips travelled to her neck and she bent her head backwards. A moan escaped her lips, louder than she had intended. She turned him around and reached a hand behind her to close to door. Ron pushed her against it, taking out his wand and placing it under a silencing charm.
Hermione parted her legs slightly to draw him closer, sliding her right leg up his side. There was a breeze in the room again, rising out of nothing, cooling her feverish skin. Both their hair fluttered around their heads, as if they were rushing through air, losing gravity.
Sliding her hands beneath his shirt, Hermione pulled it over his head. Ron lifted her up, grabbing her buttocks as she wrapped her legs around him. Something else was stirring and rising within her, something driven by her want and by her love, it lit the inside of her eyes with a brilliant light.
"Ah," Ron yelped. He yanked his face back as if something had bitten him.
"What's wrong?" she asked worriedly. But then she saw it. A silver spark, there between their lips and gone the next moment. "Oh no," she whispered, but Ron got a determined look in his eyes and pressed his lips back atop hers. She didn't feel anything, just a ripple of energy passing between them. Ron shivered a little under her touch, but increased the pressure anyway.
Hermione opened her eyes and saw they were both illuminated by an incandescence of light that shone from somewhere within them both. For the first time she felt something tickle in the tips of her fingers, that feeling of power she had longed for when she had held a wand.
Ron noticed it too. It drove him crazy, in his head and between his legs. It brought them both to an edge none of them had expected.
Hermione fell back to her feet, breathing hard. She took her shirt off and wanted to move toward Ron, but he paused in the middle of the room, his hands on her shoulders, just drinking in her body, face, hair rippling in the breeze, everything.
Ron thought of all the reasons why he adored her – her strength and resilience, her courage to plunge into the unknown with him. The way she smiled and the way she looked when she was deep in thought. He was in love with her in more ways than one, with the Hermione he had met when waking up in the hospital, as well as the one his heart had recognized and known for years.
She reached out to him and pulled him down on the bed on top of her. She felt him rub himself against her, the weight of him sending her into a new dimension of bliss. She kissed him at the same time as she unzipped his pants and pushed them down his legs with her foot. Ron lifted himself off and put his lips down on her nipple, sending a wave of ecstasy run through her. He held her other breast with his hand, his thumb circling on the nipple, the rest of his fingers stroking the outline of her ribs.
Hermione's documents and letters rose from the floor in a whirlwind of paper and parchment, fluttering like birds about the room. As Ron put his hand between her legs and cupped her there, the candles on the bedside table and windowsills came to life and flickered back out.
Hermione lifted her back for him to pull down her knickers. She shifted her hips to grind against him. Ron shut his eyes and tried to steady himself, her eagerness threatening to make him come too soon. Hermione wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down. As he got inside her, his breath hitched at feeling the wet warmth of her, Hermione arched her back. Her eyes shut, breath caught in her lungs, her body, her mind, her soul finally coming alive.
Ron pushed himself into her. He heard his heart hammering in his ears. He sensed in her a power unlike anything he had felt before around other people. There was magic in the air, his own was reacting to it, feeling the power rise in him too.
The bed sheets flapped under their weight, as if desperate to get free. Hermione's hands were in his hair when the intensity of the pleasure overcame her. She let out the softest cry, clinging to him, lips on shoulder, nails in the skin. Ron soon followed, burying his face into her neck to stifle his moan bordering on a whimper. All the hovering objects froze in midair for only a split of second. Next moment the quills and ink bottles clattered to the floor as the paper descended slowly on top of them.
They were both breathing heavily, too far away to notice.
Moments later, though it could have been hours, Ron rolled to the side, paper crumpling underneath him.
"My notes!" Hermione said breathlessly, sitting up. She wiggled from under Ron, trying to gather all the scrolls and pieces of parchment that were now clinging to their damp bodies.
"This is not what I imagined when you mentioned you liked a bit of bedtime reading," Ron said with a smile, stroking her arm. "But I'm not complaining."
With care that was probably past being necessary, Hermione dropped all the paper back next to her bed. She looked around the mess on the floor, to the candles that she thought had been lit when they started.
She propped herself on her elbows and looked at Ron's outline in the dark. "What just happened?"
Ron reached an arm across her hip, pulling her close.
"You were...amazing, that's what happened. You are amazing," he whispered, his voice hoarse.
Hermione closed her eyes and smiled, lingering in her mind on the moments that had happened minutes ago. "So were you."
"No," Ron said, touching her cheek with the back of his fingers. His eyes shone in the dark. "You did something, with me, with the room, with the light."
He waited for a response, but there was only the sound of Hermione's steady breathing. She was asleep. Ron kissed her cheek and thought for a moment that if this, now, was real, maybe the memories and the past didn't even matter.
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