Harry Potter and the Slow Bloom Chapter 5:
Friends in Need of Friends
HP belong to me does not. Foolish you are if this you believe. Hmm.
Sorry for the non-updating of this chapter. I'm at university now and the network here blocks uploads to the web. Evil SysAdmin! I've had all kinds of hell from Uni and also a serious case of Writer's block. I've never written a scene of this kind before and it was particularly difficult for all sorts of reasons. Oh, that's right...Warning! Erotica ahead!
Please be nice and leave some reviews! – By the way, slippers, dressing gowns and pyjamas are the order of the day here. It is late, after all. And YES, our hero has started shaving. Well, once a week, anyway.
"Spells"
Thoughts
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Harry and Hermione looked on in shock as Ron's head snapped back and hit the closet. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he started twitching as though a current was running through him.
Hermione was first to act. She pulled him upright and started shaking him. "Ron! RON!" There was no response; Ron carried on twitching. She stared at her friend, panicked.
"God, Harry, what do we do?"
They glanced at each other.
"Pomfrey", they said simultaneously, and, each of them supporting the still-jerking Ron by an armpit, dragged him down the stairs and out of the now-deserted common room into the stone corridor. He was a dead weight.
"Wait! Hermione, this is daft! Mobillicorpus!" Ron half-walked, half-floated along guided by a panicking Harry. Hermione dashed ahead to the hospital wing, leaving disgruntled portraits in her wake. Gasping for breath as she entered, she nearly tripped over a house-elf who from the looks of things had been making beds.
"Miss Hermione?" She looked down. Patent leather shoes, odd socks, plus-fours, a muggle football shirt and a tea cosy. There was only one elf at Hogwarts who dressed like that. She fought to control her breath in the silvery half-light.
"Dobby! Get Madame Pomfrey! Ron's had some sort of seizure and it's urgent!" The words came out in a rush. As Dobby vanished in a green blur Harry came staggering over the threshold, a comatose Ron on his shoulder. His desperate eyes sought hers as he dragged him over.
"I messed up the spell, it wore off half-way up the stairs. Help me get him onto a bed, quick." He seemed shattered and at the end of some sort of emotional tether.
Together they heaved Ron onto the nearest bed. At that instant the gas lamps flared into life and Madam Pomfrey came striding through the door, Minerva McGonagall in her wake. Both of them were fully dressed and looked extremely worried. Ignoring Harry and Hermione, the matron leant over Ron, checking pupils and pulse. The fussing went on for a while, during which time McGonagall quietly took them over to one corner. Harry felt his stomach tighten.
"He just passed out?"
Harry felt that something was called for. Unwilling to reveal that he'd ignored Dumbledore's orders, he simply reiterated Ron's collapse. The teacher's eyes narrowed slightly and she simply nodded, the stern yet kindly look on her face unchanged. She cast a glance towards the bed, catching a nod and reassuring look from the matron in the process.
"Very well. Under the circumstances I think it best that you return to your dormitories." She raised an eyebrow to their unvoiced protests. "I have no doubt that Mr Weasley will be up and about soon. Good night, both of you." And with that she swept out of the room. Harry and Hermione walked over to Madam Pomfrey only to be gently shooed out with a "let him sleep" and a chocolate frog each.
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All was silent in the moonlit halls as the two weary and confused teenagers made their way back. Each mind was full of worries, and each mind felt the need for the company of the other. As they stepped through the portrait hole Harry realised that wherever this was going, this war, this...mess, right now his friends mattered more to him than ever, even if the barriers that he'd carefully, unconsciously built came crashing down around him. He was, he admitted to himself, tired and devastated. He thought he'd been ready to cope with things like this. Secrets and lies, double crosses, and loss. So much loss, so many lives wasted or wrenched from their intended courses... Love, too. He hadn't nearly been ready, he knew that now.
Blasted Cho, doing that to him. Bitch. BITCH! How had she dared? Didn't he have enough to cope with already? And now Hermione... oh, to hell with it. Who cared? He deserved her. He knew that his brain wasn't working correctly, but somehow it no longer mattered. He slumped onto the sofa in front of the fire, the soft material absorbing his weight. Weight... like the warm, comforting weight of Hermione's head against his chest. He suddenly realised that he missed it. He wanted it. Everything had gone to hell in these past few months and she'd been the one constant. Well, there was Ron. All right, but that's not the same.
He stayed there, watching Hermione clear up a few of her books from the tables, willing her to come over.
She moved about the room, quietly collecting her things. God know what had happened to Ron. She was tired and drained and needed comfort. She'd seen Harry nearly lose his cool as he dragged their friend across the threshold of the hospital wing. The last few hours had proved almost too much for both of them, she knew. Ron can wait. I wonder how he felt...
She paused in her motions and looked around, drawn by a sense of tension in the air. She knew she was being watched. She tensed, books poised in her arms, red dressing-gown rumpled as she registered the sight in front of her. Shadows and half-light criss-crossed the room, masking every edge and corner.
Harry was curled up in the corner of a sofa watching her. His hair flopped in front of his eyes, and they burned amber and green in the firelight. He looked feral, wild. Something inside her jumped at the sight and she couldn't look away.
He blinked, his eyes simultaneously full of pain and desire. She dropped the books and they slid to the ground un-noticed. She moved closer, taking a few small steps at a time, never for a moment breaking eye-contact. She could feel every hair of the scarlet rug under her now-bare feet. Time slowed, and her thoughts ran like treacle.
He doesn't care any more, does he? About his walls, about Sirius... . He wants to forget.
What on earth was I thinking, not telling him? He said that I wouldn't have to hide any more... wait,
he was the one who was hiding. For all that time...
I'd want to forget too.
I know I love him. So what am I waiting for?
This is going to make everything complicated.
I don't care any more.
She stepped lightly over rug, the thin, wispy tendrils slightly tickling her feet as she closed the distance between her and the sofa. She felt as though her head was full of air, and she wasn't entirely sure of what she wanted. Maybe it was better to give in to her baser urges and just kiss him senseless. Maybe she'd better just...
Too late, she realised that she'd taken the last few steps and had ended up in the opposite corner to Harry. He turned and looked at her, his eyes wide behind his glasses. His suddenly strange mood had snapped as he'd watched her walk towards him like a weightless, drifting snake, leaving him taut and shaking inside.
Blinking, he reached up with one hand and unhooked his glasses from behind his ears. He deposited them carefully on a small table beside the sofa. It was a defence mechanism. He knew that were he to look her in the face with perfect vision right now he'd clam up and be unable to utter a single word.
As his world blurred he concentrated on the slightly fuzzy outlines of her face, feeling a little more relaxed. It was better like this, to look without really seeing. He could talk to her and not feel scrutinised.
She shifted, unsure of what had just happened. Some subtle rule seemed to have been changed. Harry without glasses was...strange. It had been deliberate. Was he really that scared to look her in the face after what had transpired in the hospital wing? They'd ended up acknowledging their feelings for each other, certainly, but...
Damn. To blazes with all the dancing around. It was time to test the waters. Gently, though.
He shifted as she had, and found himself touching her at the ankle.
"Do you think he'll be all right?" he asked.
She smiled at him, a slightly tired smile that was tinged with something that was suddenly making him feel very...uncomfortable indeed.
"He'll be fine."
There was something about the way she said it. He felt his brain kick him, hard. Something was sorely amiss here.
"What about you, Harry?"
Uh oh.
"Tired." Not knowing where it would lead, he slid a little lower into the sofa. Unseen, her eyes flared.
"Harry...?" Her voice was laced with honey... It was doing strange things to his stomach...
"Mmm?"
"Never mind Ron."
She slid over to him and took him by the shoulders, turning his back towards her as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
"Wha – what are you...?"
"Shhhh, Harry. Relax. You need this."
With that, she slowly squeezed his collarbones, feeling the contours of the muscles underneath his nightgown. She silently gave thanks to whichever god it was that looked down upon Quidditch players. His muscles stood out from his thin form. They were incredibly taut, a testament to the great strain, both physical and mental, that Harry had been under since the start of term. He was so very tense...
Sighing inwardly, she lifted his gown from his back, sliding the thick scarlet silk over his shoulders and letting it drape between them, the material shimmering in the watery moonlight. His T-shirt was loose around his chest, but getting it off would be a problem... Not letting her movements disturb her rhythm, she moved her hand to her wand that she'd slipped into a loop of her gown and quietly whispered "Diffindo".
The cotton coiled away from his shoulders like living smoke. He gasped as air hit his stomach and chest, tensed his muscles as he felt his last layer of protection float from him.
What... the...hell?
"Hermione! What the hell...?!"
"Shhh... trust me, Harry. Just trust me" Her voice was soft and warm, and it soothed away his tension. After all, this was his friend... maybe more than that now, but still his friend.
She paused before the plunge.
At least I saw it coming.
We'll forget together.
He yelped a kind of half-hearted exclamation as her hands shifted to his chest. She started stroking him, her movements slow and languorous. He was smooth and hairless, the hardness of his muscles offset by his warmth of his soft skin. As he sighed in resignation and pleasure, she felt a rising sense of contentment steal into her muscles.
Wow... what have I been missing? He's...perfect.
He's my friend
He's more than that now
She curled her hands towards Harry's chest, scratching him lightly, leaving red tracery on his smooth skin. He shuddered, gasping at the faint pain, at the prickling feeling that followed in the wake of the scarlet marks. He arched his back in pleasure, feeling his muscles tense underneath him. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as she crossed her arms across his chest and pressed herself into him, her core molten against the small of his back and her head draped on his shoulder.
"Feels... good."
"Mmhmm?"
"Yeah."
"How good?" She purred.
"Like..."
"Magic."
"What did you do to me?"
"What needed to be done."
"...I don't know what to say to that."
"Then say nothing. Forget." She smiled as she said it, as he turned within her grasp and held her close.
I've got him.
"Focus on me, Harry."
She slipped her arms out of her gown and let the fluid material pool beneath her. Her thin top was stretched, barely hiding the treasure beneath. Harry gasped softly as she reached for her wand again, her eyes locked on his, smiling.
He gaze turned inquisitive as she felt a hand impede her progress. Harry picked up her wand from where it had fallen on the sofa and smiled at her.
"My turn."
He touched the tip of it to the bottom of the flimsy fabric and whispered "Separo", drawing it up past her stomach, between her breasts and up to her collar in a slow, smooth movement.
She tilted her head back as she felt the warm air from the smouldering fire wash over her skin, her top cut cleanly in half where the wand had passed, still clinging to her chest. She could tell what was coming next.
I want this...
Harry lowered his head to her waist, his hair tickling the exposed line of her stomach. He nuzzled up the line of the rendered material, displacing it to either side as he did so. She felt his tongue against the skin of her abdomen and moaned gutturally in pleasure as he swept slow swathes up and across her torso. He came to the rise of her breasts, noting the cherry flush upon her pale skin.
Don't stop now, Harry.
Ever so gently, he took the loose material between his teeth and slid it over her to, the tip of his nose brushing her hardened nipple as her breath hitched in her throat. The slight stubble on his cheeks tickled her as he brought his head back across to do the same thing to her other side, and her hands curled around his shoulder blades in pleasure.
She silently sucked in a breath and gave thanks for a second time that night as he latched his mouth onto her nipple, alternately licking and softly biting the sensitive nub of flesh, tracing slow circles around it with his tongue.
He's so gentle... Oh, my...
"Don't stop, Harry. Don't stop," she begged. She felt her own glow, her own heat rise from her as
he lifted his head and shifted slightly in her embrace, moving his attention to her other breast as his hands came up and around her sides to where his mouth had previously been.
And suddenly, she couldn't take it any more. Tensing herself, she slid her body underneath his and he suddenly found himself looking down upon her face to face, her soft chestnut curls spread out below him, a feral smile upon her face and a look in her eye that said mine.
The kiss was electric, a slow and sensuous meeting of lips as each tried to meld with the other completely. Their tongues danced slowly, briefly as breath mingled with breath and sent them both hurtling on the crest of a wave into a place without thought. Mouth captured mouth as they settled into a rhythm, two breathing as one, each filling the lungs of the other with hot, life-giving breath from their very cores.
Hermione held on to the feeling of weightlessness as her world shrunk to pure sensation, aware only of Harry's weight and warmth upon her, of the liquid feeling of searing skin on skin.
I knew it.
He's amazing.
Don't let this stop.
After all, it was so easy to forget where the boundaries lay...
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The fire burned lower, matching the dwindling passion of the two friends. All was heavy and quiet once more as the logs shifted in the grate, sending up a shower of dull sparks. Hermione shifted and groaned, her torso glistening in the firelight as she twisted in Harry's arms and stared into his eyes.
"Harry?"
"Mmm?" he growled, a tired and happy smile flitting across his face. It was a long time since she'd seen that.
"I think I love you."
"I... love you too." There was wonder in his voice as she kissed him softly. And after that, there was, for a while, silence.