All of her troubles had begun last night during a spontaneous game of Truth
or Dare in the Gryffindor Common Room. Parvati and Lavender had taken to
the game in fourth year, and the rest of the Gryffindors had never heard
the end of it. Hermione felt that it could only lead to trouble, but Ron
and Harry had broken her resolve by reminding her that she had finished her
assignments for the next month. After much repetition of, "You should have
finished your assignments as well, you two," they had convinced her to join
the game. Hermione had abandoned her patrol of the girl's dormitories and
sat in the circle with the rest of her classmates and the addition of
Ginny.
Hermione had been reluctant at first to join the game, and each time she was called upon she chose the innocuous truth. Eventually, though, she realized that she would end up in more trouble this way than by choosing dare. Within one hour she had already revealed such closely-guarded secrets as her short-lived crush on Dean, the time she had cheated on an Arithmancy quiz and the fact that she had actually denied Viktor Krum because she didn't want Ron to be angry with her.
Within the next hour, there was a marked change in Hermione's behavior. She had actually joined in the ridicule when Neville had admitted that he fancied Snape, and that's why he was always so flustered in Potions. Hermione even got Parvati to admit that she had snogged Ernie Macmillian, and forced Ron to kiss Harry as punishment when he had refused to lick Lavender's neck ("Hermione, honestly, I think you've become a little kinky," he had said, his ears and face redder than Luna Lovegood's radish earrings.).
Everyone was mildly stunned that Hermione had taken to the game so much, but no one more so than Ginny. She had sat down quietly in the circle so she wouldn't attract any attention, figuring that if Ron didn't notice her then he couldn't tell her she was too young to play. She was only one year younger than him, but since he had found out about Michael Corner, he had been playing the part of protective older brother.
Ginny had waited a turn in silence, opting to watch the antics of her friends and housemates. She was definitely learning more things tonight then she ever had at the Order meetings. When Ron called on her to choose truth or dare, she was slightly taken aback. She could take anything he dished out. She had spent more time with the twins than Ron had, and could most certainly hold her own in a silly muggle game.
"Dare," she ventured, feeling inconceivably brave. The last person to choose dare had been Lavender, who was currently looking very cross as she tried to un-knot the unnatural magenta hair that covered her head.
Was it just her, or had someone gasped? They all looked at her expectantly.
"Well, then, dear little sister. Why don't you..." Ron looked to Harry for support. Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Kiss Hermione on the mouth," he had concluded, looking triumphant.
The gasp she heard this time definitely wasn't in her head. It was no matter to Ginny, who felt herself an expert in the subject of kissing. It wasn't as if she'd never kissed a girl before, either. She'd never kissed anyone who looked as if they were about to be bowled over by the Knight Bus, though.
Hermione hadn't protested, but her indignation was obvious, and as Ginny crawled across the circle to Hermione, she found herself wanting to comfort Hermione, tell her everything would be OK, and that she wouldn't bite.
Hermione sat, stock-still, as Ginny lowered her lips tentatively. Their lips met and Ginny pulled away immediately, looking as though she'd just caught a very elusive snitch in the pouring rain.
"There, Ron. Didn't think I could do it?" Ginny smiled heartily and crawled back to her seat. Shock and awe crossed Ron's features.
Feeling suddenly devious, Ginny called on Hermione.
"Truth or dare?"
Hermione weighed her options carefully. The look on Ginny's face suggested that her dare would be ruthless. Truth, on the other hand, seemed to be a solid option. How bad could it be?
"Truth," Hermione offered confidently.
Ginny strikingly resembled Malfoy at that moment, a perverse smirk spreading across her features.
"Did you enjoy it?"
Hermione hastily weighed her options once again. She could lie: put Ginny down as easily as possible. She could pretend she didn't understand the question: that would only delay the inevitable. Or, she could tell the truth: "A kiss is a kiss no matter who it came from, right?" she rationalized. If a boy had given her a good kiss, she would have admitted it, so what harm could it do to tell the truth?
"Yes."
The rest of the game had passed in a blur, with flashes of Neville's head stuck in the toilet and Dean and Harry having a grope in the linen closet. Everyone had found out that Parvati's biggest crush was Oliver Wood and that Dean had never been caught masturbating.
Ginny hadn't thought any more about her kiss with Hermione. She was rightfully more embarrassed by the admissions of both Dean and Seamus, who had admitted that they fancied her. She took a seat in a plush armchair by the fire and rubbed her tired eyes, unwilling to walk up the stairs to her dormitory.
"Brilliant, Ginny. Absolutely brilliant!" Seamus had exclaimed.
"Hm?"
"The kiss! Hermione! It was truly a wonderful performance. Really realistic. Kind of kinky, too," Seamus had exclaimed in one breath. He winked at her pervertedly.
"What are you talking about, Seamus? It was just a kiss," Ginny responded.
"Just a kiss? You must really be a graceful, then?"
"Course not. It's just a game, Seamus."
"Whatever you say!" Seamus jumped towards the boys' dorms.
Ginny's heterosexuality was a fact, something that didn't need thought nor questioning. Though Ginny had never technically asked, she simply knew that loads of her girl friends had kissed other girls. Everyone plays Truth or Dare, therefore everyone kisses someone of the same gender at some point in their life.
As she drifted to sleep, Ginny wondered if most girls really didn't kiss their friends on a regular basis.
In her room, Hermione was absently touching her lips as she stared at the ceiling of her four-poster, thinking about the kiss. Parvati and Lavender giggled as they perused a copy of Wizard's Quarterly on Parvati's bed, and they paid no mind to Hermione.
Hermione had never kissed a girl before, though she had to admit that it wasn't that different from kissing a boy. Lips were lips after all, but she was sure she had felt something different in the brief moment that her lips had connected with Ginny's. Ginny had smelled sweet and her lips had seemed to taste slightly of mint. Hermione thought hard. Ron's lips were always chapped and his hands always roamed. It was enjoyable, being with him, but it wasn't exciting, she concluded. Was it supposed to be? Did she want it to be? Ginny had only kissed her once, but Hermione was already pondering the possibilities that the one kiss had held.
Hermione drifted into a pleasant sleep.
When she woke up, Ginny's first thought was "Where the hell am I?" followed closely by, "Is Seamus anywhere near? This must be his fault. Why else would I be on a chair in the common room? I must have been molested!"
Rolling unceremoniously off the chair, she stood up and patted down her wild crimson hair. She stumbled up at least four flights of stairs, or had it been three? She climbed one more flight for good measure and opened the door. Noticing nothing amiss, she headed to her bed and threw open the curtains. What she found, though, wasn't a pile of books, parchment and Honeyduke's sweets strewn haphazardly across the unmade bed. Instead, she had opened the curtains to find an untidily sprawled Hermione with her skirt was twisted around her knees, socks askew, and her blouse halfway unbuttoned. Ginny gasped. What was Hermione doing in her bed dressed so indecently? Could that be why she had woken up in the chair? Had she an Hermione done...something else last night?
"No," Ginny reasoned with herself. She had woken up in the chair because she was too lazy to walk up the stairs to her dorm last night. That still didn't explain why there was a very attractively flushed Hermione lying in her bed, which seemed to be completely devoid of all of her personal belongings. Come to think of it...was that Parvati in the next four-poster? This is nonsense!
Ginny clambered out of the room before she woke any of the girls. She walked back down the stairs and opened the door into what she was sure was her dorm. The redhead didn't even open the curtains all the way before she dove in on top of all of her supplies. A book nudged her in the side uncomfortably. She pulled out the offending tome and tossed it onto the floor.
Ginny couldn't get Hermione out of her head. Those lips, legs and the undeniably attractive chest. She reasoned that there had to be a lot of gay wizards. After all, bestiality wasn't uncommon, so how bad could being queer really be?
If experimenting wasn't a problem, then the only one still left was the fact that Hermione most definitely wasn't. Ginny knew that Hermione would understand the situation if she presented her with some kind of statistics. Those were surely things a clever witch could understand. Ginny reckoned that facts were exactly what she needed to win Hermione's heart.
Ginny sat a secluded table in a far corner of the library, hunkered over various tomes, all about one subject: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender matters. She would have thought they would be four separate topics, but these books suggested that all four were linked. At least they were in the muggle world. Ginny's problem was finding anything about gay witches. Someone had to have written a book!
She opened a volume entitled The Joy of Gay Sex. She was bombarded with images of men doing unspeakable things to each other, contorted into strange positions, and...could it be instructions to go with each picture? What surprised her more than descriptions and instructions were the scribbles she noticed in the margins.
'Meet me in the locker room after practice. -G' 'Astronomy Tower at midnight. -D' and possibly most disturbingly... 'The dungeons, 8:00 sharp. -SS'
How had anyone known whom the messages were for? Did they engage in orgies? Ginny slammed the book shut so hard that dust seemed to fly into every corner of the library. Madam Pince gave her an extremely dour glare.
As Ginny reached for another book, she noticed someone quietly sit down at her table. Her head snapped up, "Who–!"
"Just me, Ginny. Hannah thought I'd be able to find you in here. Said you had some research to do," answered Hermione as she sat down in the chair next to Ginny.
Ginny swiped some of the books off the table, "Yeah. Some research."
"What are you looking up? I'll help," Hermione offered.
"Oh, just something for History of Magic. Nothing, really."
"You've certainly got a lot of books. Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, noticing The Joy of Gay Sex. "What are you researching gay sex for?"
"Well, no reason really. Thought it was something I might need to know about." Ginny fiddled with her hands.
"Ah."
The girls sat in awkwardly charged silence.
One moment Ginny's leg had met with Hermione's as she shifted position, and the next thing they knew Ginny was leaning forward, he chair balancing on two legs and their lips were meeting for the second time. Such a tentative exploration of Hermione's lips was nothing she had ever experienced with Ron, and the sensation of riding Buckbeak was resting firmly in the pit of her stomach. Another lurch coursed through her gut as Ginny ventured to probe her lips with a soft tongue that tasted slightly of pumpkin juice.
"Ahem!"
The two sprung apart blushing immensely to find Seamus standing over them. Without saying a word, he picked up The Book and hauled it out of the library.
Ginny and Hermione shared a laugh and leaned Ginny her chair towards Hermione once more.
Hermione had been reluctant at first to join the game, and each time she was called upon she chose the innocuous truth. Eventually, though, she realized that she would end up in more trouble this way than by choosing dare. Within one hour she had already revealed such closely-guarded secrets as her short-lived crush on Dean, the time she had cheated on an Arithmancy quiz and the fact that she had actually denied Viktor Krum because she didn't want Ron to be angry with her.
Within the next hour, there was a marked change in Hermione's behavior. She had actually joined in the ridicule when Neville had admitted that he fancied Snape, and that's why he was always so flustered in Potions. Hermione even got Parvati to admit that she had snogged Ernie Macmillian, and forced Ron to kiss Harry as punishment when he had refused to lick Lavender's neck ("Hermione, honestly, I think you've become a little kinky," he had said, his ears and face redder than Luna Lovegood's radish earrings.).
Everyone was mildly stunned that Hermione had taken to the game so much, but no one more so than Ginny. She had sat down quietly in the circle so she wouldn't attract any attention, figuring that if Ron didn't notice her then he couldn't tell her she was too young to play. She was only one year younger than him, but since he had found out about Michael Corner, he had been playing the part of protective older brother.
Ginny had waited a turn in silence, opting to watch the antics of her friends and housemates. She was definitely learning more things tonight then she ever had at the Order meetings. When Ron called on her to choose truth or dare, she was slightly taken aback. She could take anything he dished out. She had spent more time with the twins than Ron had, and could most certainly hold her own in a silly muggle game.
"Dare," she ventured, feeling inconceivably brave. The last person to choose dare had been Lavender, who was currently looking very cross as she tried to un-knot the unnatural magenta hair that covered her head.
Was it just her, or had someone gasped? They all looked at her expectantly.
"Well, then, dear little sister. Why don't you..." Ron looked to Harry for support. Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Kiss Hermione on the mouth," he had concluded, looking triumphant.
The gasp she heard this time definitely wasn't in her head. It was no matter to Ginny, who felt herself an expert in the subject of kissing. It wasn't as if she'd never kissed a girl before, either. She'd never kissed anyone who looked as if they were about to be bowled over by the Knight Bus, though.
Hermione hadn't protested, but her indignation was obvious, and as Ginny crawled across the circle to Hermione, she found herself wanting to comfort Hermione, tell her everything would be OK, and that she wouldn't bite.
Hermione sat, stock-still, as Ginny lowered her lips tentatively. Their lips met and Ginny pulled away immediately, looking as though she'd just caught a very elusive snitch in the pouring rain.
"There, Ron. Didn't think I could do it?" Ginny smiled heartily and crawled back to her seat. Shock and awe crossed Ron's features.
Feeling suddenly devious, Ginny called on Hermione.
"Truth or dare?"
Hermione weighed her options carefully. The look on Ginny's face suggested that her dare would be ruthless. Truth, on the other hand, seemed to be a solid option. How bad could it be?
"Truth," Hermione offered confidently.
Ginny strikingly resembled Malfoy at that moment, a perverse smirk spreading across her features.
"Did you enjoy it?"
Hermione hastily weighed her options once again. She could lie: put Ginny down as easily as possible. She could pretend she didn't understand the question: that would only delay the inevitable. Or, she could tell the truth: "A kiss is a kiss no matter who it came from, right?" she rationalized. If a boy had given her a good kiss, she would have admitted it, so what harm could it do to tell the truth?
"Yes."
The rest of the game had passed in a blur, with flashes of Neville's head stuck in the toilet and Dean and Harry having a grope in the linen closet. Everyone had found out that Parvati's biggest crush was Oliver Wood and that Dean had never been caught masturbating.
Ginny hadn't thought any more about her kiss with Hermione. She was rightfully more embarrassed by the admissions of both Dean and Seamus, who had admitted that they fancied her. She took a seat in a plush armchair by the fire and rubbed her tired eyes, unwilling to walk up the stairs to her dormitory.
"Brilliant, Ginny. Absolutely brilliant!" Seamus had exclaimed.
"Hm?"
"The kiss! Hermione! It was truly a wonderful performance. Really realistic. Kind of kinky, too," Seamus had exclaimed in one breath. He winked at her pervertedly.
"What are you talking about, Seamus? It was just a kiss," Ginny responded.
"Just a kiss? You must really be a graceful, then?"
"Course not. It's just a game, Seamus."
"Whatever you say!" Seamus jumped towards the boys' dorms.
Ginny's heterosexuality was a fact, something that didn't need thought nor questioning. Though Ginny had never technically asked, she simply knew that loads of her girl friends had kissed other girls. Everyone plays Truth or Dare, therefore everyone kisses someone of the same gender at some point in their life.
As she drifted to sleep, Ginny wondered if most girls really didn't kiss their friends on a regular basis.
In her room, Hermione was absently touching her lips as she stared at the ceiling of her four-poster, thinking about the kiss. Parvati and Lavender giggled as they perused a copy of Wizard's Quarterly on Parvati's bed, and they paid no mind to Hermione.
Hermione had never kissed a girl before, though she had to admit that it wasn't that different from kissing a boy. Lips were lips after all, but she was sure she had felt something different in the brief moment that her lips had connected with Ginny's. Ginny had smelled sweet and her lips had seemed to taste slightly of mint. Hermione thought hard. Ron's lips were always chapped and his hands always roamed. It was enjoyable, being with him, but it wasn't exciting, she concluded. Was it supposed to be? Did she want it to be? Ginny had only kissed her once, but Hermione was already pondering the possibilities that the one kiss had held.
Hermione drifted into a pleasant sleep.
When she woke up, Ginny's first thought was "Where the hell am I?" followed closely by, "Is Seamus anywhere near? This must be his fault. Why else would I be on a chair in the common room? I must have been molested!"
Rolling unceremoniously off the chair, she stood up and patted down her wild crimson hair. She stumbled up at least four flights of stairs, or had it been three? She climbed one more flight for good measure and opened the door. Noticing nothing amiss, she headed to her bed and threw open the curtains. What she found, though, wasn't a pile of books, parchment and Honeyduke's sweets strewn haphazardly across the unmade bed. Instead, she had opened the curtains to find an untidily sprawled Hermione with her skirt was twisted around her knees, socks askew, and her blouse halfway unbuttoned. Ginny gasped. What was Hermione doing in her bed dressed so indecently? Could that be why she had woken up in the chair? Had she an Hermione done...something else last night?
"No," Ginny reasoned with herself. She had woken up in the chair because she was too lazy to walk up the stairs to her dorm last night. That still didn't explain why there was a very attractively flushed Hermione lying in her bed, which seemed to be completely devoid of all of her personal belongings. Come to think of it...was that Parvati in the next four-poster? This is nonsense!
Ginny clambered out of the room before she woke any of the girls. She walked back down the stairs and opened the door into what she was sure was her dorm. The redhead didn't even open the curtains all the way before she dove in on top of all of her supplies. A book nudged her in the side uncomfortably. She pulled out the offending tome and tossed it onto the floor.
Ginny couldn't get Hermione out of her head. Those lips, legs and the undeniably attractive chest. She reasoned that there had to be a lot of gay wizards. After all, bestiality wasn't uncommon, so how bad could being queer really be?
If experimenting wasn't a problem, then the only one still left was the fact that Hermione most definitely wasn't. Ginny knew that Hermione would understand the situation if she presented her with some kind of statistics. Those were surely things a clever witch could understand. Ginny reckoned that facts were exactly what she needed to win Hermione's heart.
Ginny sat a secluded table in a far corner of the library, hunkered over various tomes, all about one subject: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender matters. She would have thought they would be four separate topics, but these books suggested that all four were linked. At least they were in the muggle world. Ginny's problem was finding anything about gay witches. Someone had to have written a book!
She opened a volume entitled The Joy of Gay Sex. She was bombarded with images of men doing unspeakable things to each other, contorted into strange positions, and...could it be instructions to go with each picture? What surprised her more than descriptions and instructions were the scribbles she noticed in the margins.
'Meet me in the locker room after practice. -G' 'Astronomy Tower at midnight. -D' and possibly most disturbingly... 'The dungeons, 8:00 sharp. -SS'
How had anyone known whom the messages were for? Did they engage in orgies? Ginny slammed the book shut so hard that dust seemed to fly into every corner of the library. Madam Pince gave her an extremely dour glare.
As Ginny reached for another book, she noticed someone quietly sit down at her table. Her head snapped up, "Who–!"
"Just me, Ginny. Hannah thought I'd be able to find you in here. Said you had some research to do," answered Hermione as she sat down in the chair next to Ginny.
Ginny swiped some of the books off the table, "Yeah. Some research."
"What are you looking up? I'll help," Hermione offered.
"Oh, just something for History of Magic. Nothing, really."
"You've certainly got a lot of books. Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, noticing The Joy of Gay Sex. "What are you researching gay sex for?"
"Well, no reason really. Thought it was something I might need to know about." Ginny fiddled with her hands.
"Ah."
The girls sat in awkwardly charged silence.
One moment Ginny's leg had met with Hermione's as she shifted position, and the next thing they knew Ginny was leaning forward, he chair balancing on two legs and their lips were meeting for the second time. Such a tentative exploration of Hermione's lips was nothing she had ever experienced with Ron, and the sensation of riding Buckbeak was resting firmly in the pit of her stomach. Another lurch coursed through her gut as Ginny ventured to probe her lips with a soft tongue that tasted slightly of pumpkin juice.
"Ahem!"
The two sprung apart blushing immensely to find Seamus standing over them. Without saying a word, he picked up The Book and hauled it out of the library.
Ginny and Hermione shared a laugh and leaned Ginny her chair towards Hermione once more.