Title: Second Summer

Pairing: Ron/Harry

Rating: R

Summary: It's very hot at Hogwarts, and Harry can't sleep.  However, he manages it.  Eventually.  With some help from Ron.  (Underage yaoi)

Comments: Don't think about fics and ways you'd like to cool down when it's ninety degrees at night.  Just don't.  This fic, my first smutfic, is the reason why.  Believe me, you don't want this kind of plotbunny.

Disclaimer: All people, places, and things herein mentioned are the intellectual property of Ms. J. K. Rowling, with the exception of the book Subliminal Magic: When the Unconscious Mind Magically Affects Your Surroundings, which is the creation of Liana Goldenquill (the author of this fanfiction).  All text appearing below this notice is copyright-protected, ©, 2002 by Liana Goldenquill.

Final warning:  If this fic had been rated by the Motion Pictures Association of America, it would receive a rating of R.  This doesn't mean that I think it's unsuitable for persons under 17; it just means that some people do.  Also, it's probably a misdemeanor for you to read it if you're under seventeen, and it's probably a felony for me to let you read it if you're under seventeen, and I really don't want me or you to get in trouble with the government's rules about appropriateness.

Also, this is chanslash (to get technical, this is underage male-male homosexuality, not terribly graphic but still fairly so).  Some people have problems with that.  If you do, just hit the "Back" button, please.

dedicated to

Mieko Belle, because you know slash is best;

to tradescant, because your diaries are lovely, you're having some hard times now in the fandom, and this might cheer you up;

and

to AbacusTafai, who, as a one-hundred-percent heterosexual, would be utterly appalled to discover that his name was on anything like this, but who was the first of my RL friends to support me immediately, unconditionally, and without question when I came out as bisexual.

Hot, so hot . . . second summer in Scotland.  Striking when everyone had packed up, headed back to Hogwarts, gotten ready for the crisp bite of fall.  The summer, at normal temperatures, had been followed by a few very brief days of declining temperatures, during which all Hogwarts students had packed their robes and gone back to school.

            Had packed their thick, heavy, long-sleeved, ankle-length, black robes, and had gone back to a warm castle deep in the oppressive heat of false summer.

            The first week had been hellish.  The second week had been worse.  Rumors had spread that the new fashion was to wear nothing under one's robe.  And those who listened to such rumors nodded . . . and agreed . . . and, in some cases, made the rumor come true.

            Harry Potter hadn't been able, quite, to do that, although he'd certainly been able to appreciate the plights of those who had.  During classes, for example. 

The hot, humid greenhouses they'd been forced to enter in Professor Sprout's class, during the first week, were simply impossible.  She'd eventually been forced to capitulate; her class, currently involving many diagrams and notes, was now held in the back of a spare shed.  As for Care of Magical Creatures . . . well, everyone was more thankful than ever before that Hagrid had got rid of Norbert, the fire-breathing dragon.  Professor Hooch, mercifully, let them all buzz around on broomsticks in some shade, just to feel the breeze on their faces.  Still, awful Potions more than made up for it; somehow, Snape had decided to begin teaching two potions at once.  Slytherin students generally were told to make potions along the lines of Super-Cool, or Iced Appendages, while Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and especially Gryffindor students in the same class, often received assignments with names like Heat of Fiery Death.  Not very many people approved of the new division of labor, especially when one considered that Snape then stayed on the Slytherins' side of the classroom even more than normal.  And Professor Trelawney was simply insufferable, as she constantly went around telling people that she'd predicted the heat spell back in January of last year.

Headmaster Dumbledore, worse luck, hadn't listened to Trelawney's nonexistent predictions, so he hadn't made any preparations for excess heat.  Who would have expected it, after all?  Scotland, in the fall, was not supposed to be hot.  There ought to have been a crisp bite in the air, judging from past years.  Hogwarts, an enormous stone castle, should have been concentrating on heating problems at this time.  Instead, though, particularly clever students were concentrating how best to stay in the insulated, underground buttery all day.

Harry and Ron were beginning to believe that it sounded like a good idea to stay in a small, dark, wet, cramped room rather than going to class, yet Hermione persistently disagreed; well, if one could call it disagreeing.  "You wouldn't dare!" she'd exclaimed, utterly shocked, when they'd advanced the notion.  "It's so early in the year, and already you're trying to miss classes!  I don't know about the pair of you, I really don't.  Doesn't school mean anything to you?"

"Not as much as our lives," Harry had muttered sourly, wiping his forehead with his sleeve, but he'd caught Ginny looking at him, with that particular expression meaning 'I'd be happy to be locked all day in that small, cramped, sound-proofed room with you.'  Harry shuddered and looked away hastily, and had abandoned that line of thought.

Yet he'd noticed, as Hermione turned tail and walked away indignantly, her robe had blown backwards a bit, and underneath it, he'd viewed a grey skirt that he was certain was wool . . . a skirt that came down well past her knees—and woolen knee socks as well.  "No wonder she's in such a pet," Harry whispered to Ron, "she hasn't been in that Condition for two weeks solid, she's only far too hot.  Did you see that skirt?  Probably she didn't bring anything else."

Ron rolled his eyes.  "Daft," he agreed.  "And she's not sensible enough to tuck it up a bit, let alone . . . you know . . . listen to the rumor, and be a little cooler."  He sighed mockingly.  "Girls just haven't the sense you—and I—do."

Harry had managed to avoid blurting anything out, but he wondered what Ron meant by that last remark.  Surely Ron didn't think that he was naked under the standard black robe—did he?  Or—was Ron only wearing the robe?

This was too confusing, and Harry's brain was beginning to sweat, to bring the total up to 110% of his body.  Harry really didn't want to entertain thoughts of Ron's unclad body . . . not because it disgusted him, though he did feel uneasy.  Rather, it brought up feelings he wasn't quite used to having yet . . . not about males, anyway.  Cho Chang, yes; Lavender Brown, vaguely; Hermione, no; Ginny, no; guys, no.  Well, yes, really, but . . . no.

Harry had given himself a firm mental shake, and had admonished himself to keep thinking, as Hermione said, of studies.  Or, failing that, Quidditch.  Or, failing that, anything but various people naked beneath black robes that would curl in just this way and reveal exactly that creamy, freckle-dappled skin, and make those red, curly hairs something to stare at for a lifetime, like Medusa's victims who, enraptured by her beauty, didn't mind their fates.

Harry wasn't ready to feel that pounding heart, the quickening breaths, the short, sharp gasps, the sweat beading on his forehead—

Too late to avoid the latter, however.  Held firmly in the grasp of the false second summer, everyone was sweating, and tempers were rapidly shortening and becoming downright snappish.  Many couples and many friendships had already been broken, to reunite only when colder weather made a welcome return.  Parvati and Lavender were no longer speaking; neither were Hermione and Ginny, although Harry, in innocent self-importance, rather suspected that that had been a long time coming.  Even Crabbe and Goyle had been known to snipe, dim-wittedly, at each other, on several occasions—although, apparently, no harm had been done to their alliance.  Malfoy, more and more, began to outdistance the oafish pair in hallways or the Great Hall; not to seek anyone else's company, but simply to be left alone.

It seemed like the only pair in Gryffindor who were speaking were Harry and Ron, and Harry had no clue how that had happened.  He'd just been himself and said what he'd felt like saying, no matter how snappish . . . and yet, somehow the volatile Ron had never been upset, had never walked away or gone off unhappy or even stopped speaking to Harry.  Which, when one considered it, was nothing more than a miracle, considering Ron's normal temper.  If the heat made everyone else behave rudely, well, it was subduing Ron, turning him into a slight, damp, pale, and sweaty caricature of himself, perpetually looking up fanning-spells in, yes, the library.  Several times after Harry had snapped at Ron, he'd been able to see Ron about to retort, and then biting his lip forcibly.  Harry didn't know how Ron was able to control his temper, or why he'd bother.

Hermione was no longer speaking to the pair of them, although she wasn't not speaking to them.  They hadn't fought; she just spent more and more time in the library, and, even in the Great Hall or the Common Room, usually had her nose buried deep into a thick tome.  She did sit with them at meals (mercifully, cold meals), even then flicking pages in one book or another.  And Hermione would reply, although vaguely, if they asked her a question about herself or her classes.  She simply didn't seek out contact.  As the heat came, it simply seemed to melt away all human relationships, other than, of course but incomprehensibly, Harry and Ron's.

The days were bad; the days were hell, in Harry's modest estimation.

The nights were far worse, and beyond imagining.  Harry almost relished the early morning, reveling in the simple knowledge that it would be so many sheer hours (and each morning, they seemed never-ending) that stretched out before him before he had to go to bed again.

Because when Harry went to bed, he did not go to sleep—not anymore, not in this heat.  Harry tossed, and Harry turned, and Harry tangled himself in the bedclothes, and Harry experimented with spells supposed to cool him down, and Harry cursed himself and the heat and the false summer, but Harry did not sleep.

Last year, and as recently as the week before he'd returned—which hadn't been bad, actually, not in England; real summer had been tolerable, but not this mocked-up copy—Harry had had some experience with the specific reason why he wasn't sleeping, and in fact he'd become quite proficient at solving the problem.  Yet Harry didn't know how to solve the problem—how to relieve himself, if you will—in the heat wave.

By now, Harry was positive that he couldn't avoid making noise—

you know it, come on, now, louder, harder, say it now, oh—

so he had to be fairly discreet in his choice of locations.  Otherwise, some of the noise—well, all of it, really—could be extraordinarily embarrassing.

He'd tried the shower, but if it was cold enough to cool the body, it was simply painful, and if it was warm enough to be conducive to Harry's simple remedy, it was intolerable for his body.  And, really, the shower was the only place where splashing wouldn't be remarked on, where Harry would be blocked from others' sight, and where, most importantly, the noise—

moans, groans, whispering of a name, then louder, harder, stronger, always more, then not caring who heard, just having to say that name, say it again, louder, come on, more, louder, shout it now, oh

wouldn't be audible. 

When Harry couldn't sleep, he couldn't simply head into a shower stall in any case.  Wouldn't Dean, Seamus, Ron, and the rest be somewhat curious about a fairly long shower taken at midnight?  What if one of them woke?

And it wasn't exactly as though Harry could use his bed, either.  House-elves were forgiving and understanding, yes, but Harry had a feeling that if he presented them with a soiled sheet each day, especially in this heat, that understanding could evaporate quickly.  Not to mention, of course, that any noise he made, and Harry knew himself well enough to know that he would make noise—

oh, please, yes, stronger, say it, faster, louder, now, yes, the name, you know it, say it—

no matter what the circumstances were.

No, Harry had to grit his teeth and bear it, lying on his back, praying the sheets wouldn't wind too closely, wouldn't suddenly shift or slip, to cause a rush of sensations frightening in their intensity,  soon followed by a rush of embarrassment knowing he'd have to speak to the house-elves again about the laundry.  Most nights he managed to avoid it, yet he would remain awake until late battling his urges, which completely wore him out the next day.

This night was a night like any other, a Wednesday night during the third week since he'd been back at Hogwarts.  Lying on his back, trying desperately to close his eyes.  Trying not to visualize anyone, anyone specific, anyone, for example, in the same room, just a bed or two over.

Room, he tried to distract himself, I can hear them snoring; they can all sleep, so why can't I?

A sudden mental image, just a quick flash, of Ron in the same position and plight that he, Harry, was in.

Harry tossed his head, closed his eyes, and groaned.  And tried to concentrate on anything else.

His legs, tangled up in sweat-damp sheets, effectively trapped there.  The bedclothes seemed to press him tightly, hold him down oppressively.  They weighed stones more than any sheets had a right to . . . and this was just a simple, light cotton sheet with fluttering Snitches, wound only around legs and ankles.

Harry concentrated, trying to see if his legs could actually feel the Snitches' fluttering, or if the movements could be detected by eye alone.  Quite involuntarily, Harry felt—or imagined?—a similar flutter in the area of his groin.  He moaned, and nearly lost it all right then—

gasping, moaning, pleading with someone who wasn't there—

He realized he would never be able to sleep unless this painful pressure was eased, so as he laid there, Harry formed a small plan.

He slept nude; in this heat wave, most of Hogwarts did, and simply drew their bedcurtains closed.  While Harry realized that nearly all of his roommates had closed their bedcurtains upon retiring, he didn't want to run the risk of having one of them see him with his current problem.  So, cautiously, he reached around his curtain and grasped the first article of clothing he could lay hands on.

Harry guessed from the feel and texture that it was just one of his black day robes.  It would be perfect for his purpose, though; large, covering, and yet open in the front.  He only had to make it as far as the boys' WC, anyway, where he would . . . he would . . . he would come to some solution.  Probably involving the toilet, and possibly something to bite against the cries that would come, unbidden, to his lips—

oh, please, yes, now, so close, just say it, say it and you know you'll come, just, oh—

although he'd used his upper arm in the past and it would most likely serve well enough again.

Slowly trying to disentangle himself from the bedclothes, Harry sat up, groaning slightly, and managed to draw on the black robe.  Sliding through the bedcurtains where they met, Harry was able to put his feet on the floor, to take one shuffling step and then another in the direction of the WC down the hall.

Past his roommates' beds—Dean, Seamus, Lee, and—well, time enough to think of that later—

and to say it, say it now, oh, yes—

and out the door of their shared bedroom.  Down the boys' hall, thankful there were no stairs he'd have to use, and into the bathroom at the end, the robe chafing his sensitized skin at each step, always bringing him just a little closer.

Once inside the WC's door, Harry seriously doubted his ability to go any farther.  He sagged against the outside of a toilet cubicle, moaning slightly as the outer door sagged closed.

The interior of the WC was lit only by a faint, sourceless yellow glimmering; a wizard's nightlight that illuminated the cubicles, the row of sinks, and the showers at the far end.  And a shadow that emerged and grew.

It loomed before Harry, who, sagging against the thin wall like an overcooked noodle and caught up in his private reverie of oh, yes, pleases, didn't notice at all.

And then the figure, still mysteriously clothed in shadows, sank to its knees and sat back on its haunches, folding its tall frame to a compact version.  It brushed Harry's robe open in the front, and slowly, gently took Harry in its mouth.

Harry noticed then; he couldn't fail to, as the shadow first had to remove Harry's hand, which fell back to the apparition's shoulder, then, when joined by its fellow, continued up to the other person's hair, where it clenched in time with Harry's sighs and pleading.  Aloud, of course, for Harry knew he could never be quiet.

Harry felt the tempo build, and his hands, like cats' paws, contracted and released in the hair of the person who had been there for Harry, who had known his habits and had waited for Harry to enter the bathroom.  "Oh, more," Harry gasped, nearly senseless with building pleasure.  "Oh, faster, oh, now, it's got to be!"

Yet the shadow said nothing at all and made no noise, other than the moist, wet sounds of its suckling mouth.  It wrapped its arms around Harry, pulling him closer, and clenched long-fingered hands tightly around Harry's buttocks, under the black robe.

Harry began to thrust into the other's open mouth, moaning and groaning and speaking the whole time.  "Harder—say it!  Now, more, yes, oh, I want it—"

And as Harry exploded to find an orgasm with a partner, one unlike any other he'd ever had, not only in its formation but in its intensity, Harry blurted out what he'd blurted out for nearly a year now, what he'd been terrified to let anyone else hear.  "Oh, Ron, yes—"

An eternal moment after Harry came, he was alone in the room, as the figure had exited when Harry was really in no shape to notice.

It was unexpectedly cold and empty, and although Harry should have been drowsing in post-coital sleep, he was wide awake.  He shuddered once or twice and blinked a few times, then walked over to one of the mirrors and passed a hand across his face, disbelieving what had just happen.  As Harry did so, he noticed something caught in his fingers, scraping gently across his face.

Gently he teased it away, and tried to bring it closer to the dim lighting.  A hair of some sort, it had obviously wound up in his fingers when they'd been buried in the apparition's scalp.  Harry found it near-impossible to divine the color, and cursed himself for leaving his wand in the dormitory room.  The yellow light, even if it hadn't been so faint, distorted all colors, too.  Yet as he twisted it gently from side to side, he saw some small glints of what was probably orangey-gold.  Could the base color be red?  The second Harry thought of that, he was positive he was correct, and positive that he knew who the other figure had been.

Not Ginny, who was far shorter than Harry was, and whose hair was far longer than the mysterious fellatrix'.  Not Fred or George, who had graduated last year, and who had always been too busy to pay any attention to Harry save when he was momentarily amusing.  No, it had been the one Weasley who could make, and had made, Harry's dreams come true.

Ron.

Harry, clutching his black robe closed in front, went back down the hall to his room, slowly.  Not because he was physically uncomfortable, as he had been before, but because he was uneasy, unsure of what to do.

Once the door was opened and Harry was halfway to his bed, though, he had an idea.  Although it was still hot, he'd become almost unaware of it.  In fact, the heat no longer seemed quite so oppressive.  Could the second summer finally be going away?

Harry parted the bedcurtains of the bed he knew was Ron's, and slowly sat on the bed inside, shedding the black work robe as he did so, and pulling the curtains closed behind him.

A patently false snore, which caught in the middle, issued from somewhere in the dark of the bed, but Harry wasn't fooled.

"Oh, Ron," he whispered, "yes"—unconsciously duplicating the words he'd used before.  Harry slid a hand across to where it encountered bare shoulder.  And although Harry was still uneasy about it, he lay down next to Ron.

A pause, during which the other boy seemed to have trouble breathing.  "Harry, you know I'm awake, don't you," he stated in a whisper.

"And I know . . . it was you," Harry said, nodding slowly although Ron couldn't see it in the darkness.  "And . . . well. . . ."

"Harry, if you didn't like it, you only have to say so," Ron told the other boy miserably.

"No—I did—"

"And if you did like it," said Ron, tone changing entirely to one of excitement and glee, "then you'll see that words—"

"Aren't necessary?" asked Harry, finally attempting to lay a hand on Ron's bare chest.

"Are highly overrated," Ron gasped, as Harry found the courage to trace the path Ron had traced in the bathroom, and as both boys discovered that it was possible for them to be like the second summer: hot again.

But if one of the boys' viewpoints on words had changed, an impartial observer would say it certainly had to be Ron's.  For when he was brought to the edge, words—and his clenching hands—were what he used; one phrase in particular: "Harry, yes, now, Harry!"

And when it was finished, and both were sticky with sweat and other fluids, and they had realized that they had been quite loud and the other boys were no longer snoring—well, Ron and Harry curled up, heads on each other's shoulder, and fell fast asleep, for the first time since second summer had begun.

The odd thing is that, touching each other, they didn't mind the heat.  In fact, by morning, chill breezes had begun to penetrate through the open windows and percolate through the bedcurtains, so much so that one of the boys had pulled up Ron's bedclothes to cover them both.

When the pair dressed that morning, although it was downright cold by then, as autumn should be, each dressed himself according to the rumor—nude beneath the mandated black robes.

At breakfast, Dumbledore made an announcement: "As I'm sure you've noticed, it would appear that the front has finally broken.  Professor Trelawney assures me that I am not jinxing myself when I tell you that the weather has returned to normal for this time of year, and will continue normally.  The cause of the second summer, well—"  The headmaster shrugged.  "The faculty had thought it best not to alarm you, but there had been some suspicions that the unseasonable weather had been created by Voldemort.  We are fortunate, however, that we can all see the dire impact of weather magic.  Its consequences are unknown, and now we've seen that not even Voldemort would dare to use it.  I'm sure Professor Binns can elucidate some of the consequences of weather magic's use in history, if you'd care to approach him.  And finally, I'm glad to inform you that we will be returning to your regularly scheduled classes, which means back in the greenhouse and back to Quidditch practice."

Ron ran his foot up Harry's bare leg, under the dining table where it wouldn't be seen, and although Harry's face stiffened a little and one of his hands disappeared beneath the table, no outsider would have noticed anything.

Hermione removed her nose from the giant tome that had become her main refuge over the past three weeks.  "There," she sighed with a great air of finality; she clapped it shut, and as it fell, cover-up, on the table, anyone looking would have been able to read the title:

Subliminal Magic: When the Unconscious Mind Magically Affects Your Surroundings.

Unless an observer had magical vision, however, they would not have been able to look back to the Burrow.  To zoom in another notch—Ron's bedroom.  Another—his bed.  Another—beneath the bed, a copy of the same book, well-read, and with many portions circled.

Author's note:

This is probably the fastest I've ever written a fanfiction, and it's certainly, hands-down, the smuttiest I've ever written one.  I think it didn't turn out that bad, although a good amount of the dialogue sounds positively idiotic.  Try saying Harry's lines aloud when you're in that mood, though, and you'll realize it's actually pretty realistic.

I just have one question: With all this equal-rights stuff, why does my dictionary have 'fellatrix' and not 'irrumator'?  There had better be a good explanation.