Author's Note: the characters of the Harry Potter novels are the property
of their creator, J.K. Rowling, and are used here without her knowledge
or permission. All other characters property of the author. 53,000 words.
January, 2002. Adult situations, mild sexual content and violence.
****************************************
Chapter Twelve – Midnight Rendezvous.
"That was just
nasty," Ron said as they rushed, late, to the Gryffindor table. "Snape
of all people. Yuck. I'd rather catch my parents doing it."
"Doing what?"
Hermione asked.
Ron's face went
as red as his hair. "Nothing," he mumbled.
Just then, dinner
was served. Harry and Ron had only just made it, and of course there was
no sign of the teachers they'd been spying on. Probably naked on Snape's
desk by now … Harry grimaced at the mental picture.
Conversation
at the table centered mainly around the health and well-being of Professor
McGonagall, who was not present either. True to their words, none of the
sixth-year boys voiced what they knew. Hermione, Harry saw, looked thoughtful
and secretive.
Later, as they
returned to the common room, Ron yawned and stretched, making an exaggerated
show of it. "I'm all-over aches from Magical Combat class. Going to get
a hot shower, and then bed."
"Hang on," Harry
protested. "What about tonight?"
"Tonight?" Hermione
marked her place in the book she'd just opened. "What's up tonight?"
"Oh, come on,"
groaned Ron. "Can't we sneak out some other time?"
"Will one of
you please tell me what's going on?" demanded Hermione sharply.
"It's Professor
Winterwind," Harry said. Seeing that suspicious tilt begin at her eyebrow
again, he hurried on. "She's approved an overnight pass someone in Slytherin,
and I want to know what they're up to. Did it without Snape's permission,
and everything."
"That's funny,"
she said. "As we were going in for dinner, I heard Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson
talking, all hushed, about some meeting tonight in the garden."
"Should have
known," Harry said, oddly disappointed – he'd expected better of Ophidia
Winterwind than to be in on anything with Malfoy, though there was no earthly
reason why he should have; she had been a Slytherin too, and if even Snape
didn't trust her …
"Well, I'm game,"
Hermione announced, closing her book entirely. "When do we go?"
"Huh?" said
Ron. "Who said you were going?"
"Who said I
wasn't? And never you mind anyway, Ron Weasley. You were just going on
about how worn out you were."
"I only want
to know what's happening," Harry said. "I can go alone if nobody else wants
to."
"I just said
I would, didn't I?" Hermione said.
"I'll pass,"
said Ron. "It's been too long a day already."
"We can't go
yet," Harry said to Hermione. "I don't think they'll head out while everyone
else is still up. Might as well get a little homework done first."
"Suit yourself,"
she said, returning to her book. "It's about time you started paying more
attention to your schoolwork."
"I get by."
"Getting by
won't amount to much when it's time for your O.W.L.s," she said.
"Well, g'night,
then," said Ron. They returned the sentiment and he wove a path through
the other Gryffindors, about half of whom were studying and the other half
of whom were playing either wizard chess or wizard war, a card game legacy
from the previous year.
"How's McGonagall?"
Harry asked after a while. "Lavender said you stayed with her through lunch,
but I didn't hear you say anything about it at dinner."
"She's upset,
and no wonder." Hermione looked somberly at him. "I suppose you know what
made her faint."
"Do you?"
"She told me."
"Dumbledore
doesn't want us talking about it. Word of honor and all."
"Yeah, same
here. I promised."
Somehow, although
the exchange didn't convey much in words, it conveyed a lot in meaning,
and Harry nodded, willing to leave it at that. He was surprised that Professor
McGonagall had confided in Hermione, for whether she was or wasn't teacher's
pet (as Lavender also said), it was still hardly the sort of thing one
might think a teacher would confess to a student.
"I'll tell you
one thing, though," she added in a whisper after a while. "He's going to
answer for it."
"Stratford?"
"Mm-hmm. Dumbledore
sent Hagrid to Hogsmeade, to bring him up here so they could give him a
good talking-to."
Harry remembered
Hagrid's absence from lunch, and the way he'd poked his head in to signal
Dumbledore. "Poor bloke. I don't envy him being caught between the lot
of them."
"Poor bloke
nothing! He deserves whatever he gets, the sneak. Using someone's personal,
private pictures like that. I hope Dumbledore has Hagrid pull his arms
off. See him use a camera then."
Such venom from
Hermione was unusual, and Harry wasn't sure what to say. He settled for
a noncommittal grunt and went back to his studies.
The common room
gradually emptied. Harry had gone upstairs at one point long enough to
get his Invisibility Cloak from his trunk – he kept it locked now, hating
to have to do it but knowing that if Ron gave in to temptation again, the
girls might kill him next time. Ron had already been snoring.
When all was
quiet, Harry and Hermione slipped out of the portrait hole and covered
themselves with the cloak. They had to huddle very close together, and
Harry found himself exceedingly conscious of the strawberry scent of Hermione's
shampoo, and the occasional warm brush of her shoulder against his. It
made it hard for him to concentrate fully on their mission.
They worked
their careful way down the staircase. The Slytherins slept in a dungeon
dormitory, which probably contributed to their gloomy or mean ways. Being
closed away in the dark and the dank, with barely any windows and the whole
great oppressive weight of Hogwarts castle seeming to bear down on them
would do that to a person.
Harry didn't
know the exact way to the dungeon, but he and Hermione staked out a spot
where they'd have a good view of all the approaches. They didn't have to
wait long before two dark-cloaked shapes came stealthily down the corridor.
As they passed through a patch of moonlight falling in from a high arrowslit
of a window, Harry saw the white-blond hair of Draco Malfoy, as expected.
Draco and Pansy
eased open a side door and went out into the cool October night. Waiting
a few moments to give them a head start, but not too long lest they get
out of sight, Harry and Hermione followed.
The two of them,
barely visible against the blackness of the grounds and sky, chose a path
that went from shadow to shadow but otherwise headed steadily toward the
greenhouse. Harry was close enough to see Draco take out his wand and unlock
the door.
"The loft,"
Hermione whispered, her breath pleasantly tickling Harry's ear.
"Good idea."
They went around
back. The window-walls of the greenhouse were humid and fogged, the indistinct
shapes of plants pressing here and there against the glass. At the rear
of the long building was a ladder leading up to a door, which gave onto
a loft that ran half the length of the greenhouse. It was where Madame
Sprout kept sacks of fertilizer, spare pots and tools, and other brick-a-brack.
The ladder was
too narrow to let them climb together, so Hermione went first with Harry
right behind her. The Invisibility Cloak couldn't cover all of him. An
observer might have done a double-take at the sight of a pair of disembodied
legs going up one rung at a time.
Inside, the
air was warm and moist, redolent with the earthy, green smells of plant
life. The twinkleberry bush, from which Snape had gotten the fresh leaves
they'd been using in Potions that afternoon, shed a dim, shifting light
that cast everything else into monstrous shadows.
What with the
strange lighting and all, Harry almost walked right into Crabbe before
realizing that the hulking figure wasn't a stack of barrels draped with
a dropcloth. He froze, Hermione blundering into him, and put his hand over
her mouth before she could ask what was the matter.
Guiding her,
he inched away. There was Goyle, too … the pair of them lurking in the
dark like thugs in an alley. Not speaking. Not moving. Looking down with
identical greedy expressions and a sort of greasy gleam in their eyes.
Harry and Hermione
moved with painstaking silence as far from them as they could. If they
thought they could have gotten back out unnoticed, they would have gone,
but it was a clear wonder that neither of the brutes had heard them climbing
in. Whatever was going on below had fascinated them.
"Slower," said
Draco Malfoy from somewhere beneath them. "Yes. Like that."
Beneath the
translucent silkiness of the cloak, Hermione looked quizzically at Harry.
Together, they crept to the edge of the loft and peered down.
They couldn't
see Malfoy, but his shadow was cast onto the floor by the twinkleberry
bush. His shadow, and a short, somehow bent and bulgy one that Harry couldn't
identify. Then he understood. It was Pansy's shadow, and she was on her
knees. On her knees in front of Malfoy.
His guess was
confirmed a moment later with her peevish, whining voice. "You never do
me like this."
"So?" Malfoy
sounded annoyed.
"So it's not
very fair. I do it for you. It's supposed to be reciprocal."
Barely more
than breathing the words, Hermione said, "I think we made a mistake. This
has nothing to do with Professor Winterwind. This is …"
"Yeah," whispered
Harry, wrinkling his nose.
"How about a
shag, then?" suggested Malfoy with a sneer. "That's reciprocal."
"I don't know,
Draco," whined Pansy.
Crabbe and Goyle,
their tongues practically hanging out, leaned over to see better. If they
didn't watch out, they'd fall and crash right into the soil-filled planters
of henbane and cinquefoil. Harry would have bet anything that Malfoy knew
they were there, and Pansy didn't. A fresh dislike for Malfoy shot through
him. Not that anything low and disgusting from Malfoy could have surprised
him anymore.
"We have to
get out of here," hissed Hermione.
Harry couldn't
have agreed more. He would have sooner been back in the dungeon spying
on Snape.
"What's there
to know?" said Draco. "You're my girlfriend, aren't you?"
"Of course,
but …"
"So are you
going to or not? I can always find some other girl who will."
"Don't say that,
Draco!"
"It's up to
you, Pansy. Make up your mind. I haven't got all night."
"Okay, then.
I will. But not here."
"Why not?" Now
Draco sounded fiendishly eager. "We'll just throw down those empty burlap
sacks …" at a swipe of his wand, a pile of them spilled over and spread
across the floor.
"Now," Harry
said, and began edging away.
But Crabbe and
Goyle, keen to see, had moved. They had the invisible Harry and Hermione
cornered against the rail of the loft, and to make matters worse, one of
Goyle's big feet was on the cloak.
He could see
Hermione's wide, alarmed eyes and tried to soothe her with a smile. He
couldn't even whisper because surely, as close as Crabbe and Goyle were,
it would be heard. Below, cloth rustled and Pansy mewled something about
not being sure she was ready for this.
"Too late now,"
said Draco. "Or do you want everyone to know what a tease you are?"
Harry thought
that if he yanked hard on the cloak, it might unbalance Goyle and make
him fall over the edge. But the risk of exposing some part of himself or
Hermione was too great. He suddenly knew that if they were found up here,
it would be the worst fight yet. There wouldn't just be hexes thrown back
and forth, but combat spells … and if he lost, Draco would probably kill
him outright.
But – and the
thought was so horrible his mind almost couldn't complete it – they might
have something else in mind for Hermione. The atmosphere in here was charged
with lust. He could all too easily imagine Draco giving Hermione to Crabbe
and Goyle, and in that instant he could have fried the lot of them on the
spot.
By the bleakly
horrified look in Hermione's eyes, much the same thoughts were going through
her head. Harry groped for her hand and squeezed it, trying to reassure
her. As long as they weren't discovered, they'd be all right. It just meant
having to stay where they were.
They could close
their eyes to the scene below, but they couldn't close their ears. It seemed
to take forever, though later, when Harry checked his watch, he found that
the entire session had lasted a mere matter of minutes. The wet slap of
flesh, Pansy's initial pained complaints that turned into encouraging groans
and gasps (and ended in a petulant bleat of complaint when Draco evidently
finished before she was done), Draco's own harsh commentary ("You like
that? Move your arse, bitch, there, that's the stuff. Oh, yes, you love
it, don't you, you little slut?") and the heavy breathing of Crabbe and
Goyle were awful to hear.
The worst part
was that, as gross as it was, there was something darkly exciting about
it. Harry's pulse was beating, his hands had gone sweaty, and lewd pictures
– like those from Cliffton Stratford's book, say – kept dancing through
his mind.
But finally,
it was over. Pansy apparently wanted to talk about it after, but Draco
didn't care to bother with conversation. They left, and moments later Crabbe
and Goyle went out via the ladder.
"Did you see
what they were doing?" said a pale and shaken Hermione once the greenhouse
was silent again.
"I didn't look.
Did you?"
"Not them.
Crabbe and Goyle." She looked like she might throw up. "They were … never
mind, it's too vile."
Harry could
guess. He'd heard those sounds too, the fleshy rubbing sounds of boys taking
matters into their own hands. It was a noise he was familiar with from
long nights in a dorm where five of them slept, and sometimes when one
thought all the others were asleep … but he wasn't about to tell any of
that to Hermione.
"Let's go,"
he said. "I need some air."
The air was
indeed very welcome. Crisp and cold with a hint of the nearing winter,
it seemed all the fresher after the damp and biological scents of the greenhouse.
At the bottom of the ladder, they stopped and drew deep breaths, the Invisibility
Cloak slung over Harry's shoulder.
"It wasn't them,"
Hermione finally said. "We were wrong. What a mistake, oh, I can't believe
they did that!"
"Doesn't surprise
me at all," said Harry. "Malfoy is scum."
"And that we
had to be right there hearing it …" She shuddered. "Let's walk for
a while, Harry, because if I tried to go back and sleep now, I'd probably
dream
of it."
They walked,
down by the lake which was inky and rippling whenever the giant squid surged
past. The water lapped at the shore. They passed Hagrid's cabin, its windows
dark but for the muted burnt-orange glow that told of banked coals. Fang
the boarhound was probably splayed out in front of the hearth, snoring
just as gustily as Ron had been.
Extending into
the lake was the dock where the Durmstrang ship had been moored during
the Triwizard Tournament. Harry and Hermione went out to the end of it
and sat, feet dangling.
"It's certainly
not like in the books," Hermione said pensively after several quiet minutes
had passed. Minutes in which her mind, like Harry's own, seemed to have
inevitably drifted to the scene they'd just witnessed.
"What do you
mean?"
"That. Sex.
Not much like I thought it would be."
"D'you think
about it?" Here was something that hadn't really occurred to him. He knew
boys did, sure, nearly all the time once they turned fifteen or so, but
girls?
"Sure, I do,"
Hermione said, with a giggle that was half a sigh. "I've read all about
it."
"What did you
call them? Spanky-governess books?"
This time, the
giggle was only a quarter-sigh. "Not those. Well, not just those.
Medical books. Anatomy. Things like that. And my mother reads a lot of
romance novels. You know the sort?"
"Yeah," said
Harry. He'd seen them before. Covers with pictures of women whose dresses
seemed about to slide off their bosoms, men with no shirts and pants so
tight you could have counted the coins in their pockets. "Aunt Petunia
reads them sometimes. But I didn't think there was anything in them except
kissing, and then it's the end of the chapter."
"Some of them,"
Hermione said. "But some are racy, really racy. Though not as much as those
horrid letters in Squire magazine, the ones that always start out
'Dear Squire, I never thought this would happen to me …' and go
on to tell about twin blondes or something."
Harry was absolutely
flabbergasted. "You read Squire?"
"No! Ick, why
would I?"
"Then how do
you know --?"
"Well, I did
see a copy once. The cartoons were kind of funny, actually. But all that
stuff, the books, those letters … I think they just give everyone the wrong
idea. False expectations. I know when I was a little girl, I always used
to daydream about what my first kiss would be like, and look how that turned
--"
She stopped,
coughed, and found the piling at the end of the dock suddenly of great
fascination. Harry was flabbergasted again. And jealous, far more than
he ever would have suspected.
"Was it Viktor
Krum?"
"It's really
not all that --"
"Did you go
and visit him that summer? I thought you decided not to!"
"I didn't! My
parents weren't about to let their fourteen-year-old daughter go off to
Bulgaria to meet some eighteen-year-old. It's not as bad as if I'd wanted
to run off with a middle-aged man I'd met over the Internet --" as they
were both Muggle-raised, she knew he'd know what she meant by that, "—but
they still said no."
"When … was
it at the dance?" He didn't know why he was torturing himself like this.
Hermione sighed
a sigh that was no giggle at all. "It was just before he left. No big deal.
It wasn't at all like I thought it would be. He was scratchy with stubble
and his lips were too wet and his nose nearly dislocated mine."
Oddly, or perhaps
not, this pleased Harry. "Well, what did you think it would be like?"
"The way it
is in the books, I guess." She gazed off across the rippling black water.
"That I'd be standing there with a handsome boy, and he'd gently take me
by the shoulders or the upper arms and turn me toward him. That I'd see
it first in his eyes, the intention in his eyes. And then he'd touch me
under the chin and raise my face toward his as he leaned in. It would be
gentle at first, his lips just brushing on mine, but then we'd be overcome
and he'd pull me close as I put my arms around his neck …"
She broke off,
laughing. "Oh, stop, listen to me, I sound silly. Never mind. We'd better
go back before we're missed."
"Probably should."
Harry got up, and as Hermione stood up too, he couldn't help himself.
He took her
gently by the shoulders and turned her toward him. She looked up, puzzled,
and then must have read it in his eyes, the intention in his eyes, because
hers widened with comprehension. He touched her under the chin and tipped
up her face, and brushed his lips tenderly on hers.
The sensation
was electrifying. Harry trembled, suddenly wanting to crush her against
him and seal her mouth with a deep and exploring kiss. If he did, she'd
probably slap him and push him into the lake to cool off –
He was just
thinking that when Hermione, with a soft cry, threw her arms around his
neck. Startled, he took a step back and they both almost went into the
lake, but he recovered and pulled her close and kissed her just as deeply,
just as exploringly, as he'd wanted to. The breeze blew her hair in feathery
wisps against his face.
They parted
slowly, unsteadily. Harry could not believe what he'd just done, nor how
much he'd liked it. Worth a slap, if she decided to slap. Worth a dunk
in the lake, even worth the pneumonia that would surely result.
"Oh," Hermione
said in a small, stunned way.
"Was that …
was that all right?" Harry wasn't sure if he was asking her opinion on
the quality of the kiss or whether it was all right he'd presumed to do
it at all, but either way, her only answer was a starry-eyed nod.
Out in the lake,
the squid surfaced with a splash, and they both reacted like people wakened
abruptly from a dream. All at once it was hard to look at Hermione, and
Harry's face felt hot. His lips still tingled.
"We, um, we
should go back," he said in a hoarse voice that was barely his own.
"Right," she
said in a voice that was similarly light-years from her usual.
They said nothing
more, perhaps because neither of them quite trusted themselves to speak,
as they left the dock and headed for the castle.
** |