DISCLAIMER: I do not own the characters of Harry Potter. They belong to the illustrious JK Rowling.

SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED

"Snow White." Her voice is soft and low as she crosses the common room, a lazy smile stretching across her face. She has been out. . .the odor of her latest clandestine meeting clinging to her, a heady perfume. She sits next to me, hair aflame, wild look in her eye as she drags a finger suggestively across the arm of the couch.

"Rose Red." I reply, and perhaps I see a shiver of apprehension as my tone bites across her. She knows I hate her trysts, her little flings with the male population. But it is to me that she returns, time and again, and it is to me that she belongs. "I have been waiting for you."

She allows her head to loll to the side, a dark red mark marring her beautiful skin. I draw in a breath, how could she?!

"I see. . ." My voice is cool, distant, and she winces. "That you have allowed someone to mark you." Perhaps I am being too jealous, but I cannot help it. She is mine, and I don't like others to play with what is mine. She knows this, but I allow her these little indiscretions because I know she will return.

"It was an accident." She leans forward, her whispered words a silky purr that causes my hair to stand on end. "I didn't want it to happen, but he was insistent. Forgive me?"

How could I do anything but? She knows, knows just by looking at me that I am completely hers, as much as I know she is completely mine. "Yes." I try to keep the tremor from my voice, but I'm not as successful as I hope, and her answer is a throaty laugh that causes me to squirm a little.

"That's my girl." She crawls across the couch toward me, tugging sharply on a tendril of my hair that has somehow escaped from it's plait. Damned infernal bushiness. "Were you waiting long?"

I simply shake my head, words escaping me. Know-it-all indeed. But then again, she knows how to play me, she has always known how to play me. It is something she learned from our days of innocent touches and trailing kisses. And I like it. I like to have her control me.

"Hermione. . ." She breathes my name and I shiver, she NEVER says my name anymore, I am just her Snow White. "Hermione, love, why do you tease and tempt me so?"

The question hangs in the air as I ponder my answer. I didn't realize I was. "Ginny, I—"

"Don't speak." She lays her head in my lap, and I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, I know that I am hooked. "Will you hold me?"

I comply, pulling her up to me and wrapping my arms about her frame, resting my chin on top of her head. I don't remember how it all started, it was like, one day, we were friends, and the next, I belonged to her so wholly and completely, I forgot myself.

"Snow White?" Her voice is plaintive and needy as she looks up at me, doe eyed and innocent. I corrupted her with my love. "He says he loves me. . ."

I know who she speaks of. Harry. I say nothing, allowing her to continue, though a tiny stab of jealous fear pricks at my heart. To lose her now would destroy me.

"But. . .I can't." She sits up suddenly, "As much as I care for him, I can't." She turns, gazing at me shyly through her lashes. "Because my heart belongs to another. Perhaps. . . if I outed myself to him, he would understand."

I suck in a hissing breath. That would mean that someone would know of us, of our feelings for each other. I am equal parts elation and hesitancy. What if he doesn't understand? What if he holds me and our friendship in contempt because the normalcy I worked so hard to maintain would be gone.

She leans back against me. "I would only do so with your permission of course."

What should I do? I still say nothing, allowing it all to compute. Here I am, holding the sister of one of my best friends, my lover, my equal in all things. What if our world that we constructed so precariously, comes crashing down around our ears? What if. . .

She stops my train of thought by dragging a finger up my leg. I shiver. And suddenly, my decision is made. I am hers willingly, by my own choice, as she is mine. Secrecy will only last so long. I see the looks Neville gives me when he sees me. I know that he knows, but I also know he won't tell. I am in love, and I don't care if anyone is disgusted by my choice of mate.

"Hermione?" Again she uses my name, my sweet girl.

"Yes, tell him."

XXX

"So, you and Ginny?"

I had been expecting something of the sort, it amazed me that he had waited weeks before approaching me about it. He doesn't seem too hurt, more or less intrigued and relieved.

"Yes, Ginny and I."

That's all that needs to be said. He ponders this for a moment, and I stiffen. I knew it, he is disgusted by us. . .

"Could I watch sometime?" He gives me a crooked smile.

I hit him with a pillow, and the tenseness of the moment is forgotten in a rough and tumble tussle.

XXX

"Snow White." She smiles up at me from our entanglement of limbs, running a thumb across my cheek. "I love you so."

"As I do you, Rosey-Red, as I do you."