The Locked Room
Chapter 4: Blood Lust
It wasn't easy for Hermione to determine whose hands were whose as Charlie's intertwined with her own and exploratory gestures commenced all over the two bodies cozily enclosed in Charlie's immense downtown flat. Since she couldn't determine what exactly she was feeling about this other than intensely aroused, she thought it best to put an end to the interview.
"Charlie…" she choked out from underneath his lips, still determinedly caressing her own. "I think we should stop," she managed to say at last. He stepped back and ran his fingers through his mess of curly hair.
"You're probably right, as usual," he said sighing. She watched as he took a few steps away from her, as if resisting temptation better through distance. Hermione wondered, as she traced Charlie's (appealing) outline, why she felt like she had just betrayed hundreds of people in kissing this man.
"I should probably go…" she said to the window, overlooking a deadened street.
"Hermione, I don't want you to go home thinking that I pressured you. I thought that's what you wanted. It's what I wanted, too." She wondered briefly if that was what she wanted, or what she needed. She had never really let her hormones get the better of her until that night. Viktor was rather a damp rag, and she was hesitant. Charlie wasn't Viktor, however; he was intelligent, charming, and could speak English perfectly. Hermione thought things became clearer at that moment.
"I just don't want to screw this up, Charlie. I think I could really care about you, but I don't want hasty impulses to jeopardize something special." Feeling like a first-rate prude, Hermione turned to pick up her bag, and then kissed Charlie on the cheek. "I guess I'll see you at work tomorrow," and with that, she apparated back to the flat.
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It had been a week without kisses for Hermione, and she was starting to feel the need for snogging again. However, this was an impossibility as all males insisted on avoiding her company. She couldn't figure out why exactly, but Charlie's distance might have been explained through her hasty departure the night of his party. They talked occasionally, but no more than work required. Harry had been spending more and more time out of the flat as Ron had taken to locking himself in his room for hours (possibly to avoid encounters with Hermione). The flat was a dismal place to be as none of its occupants were talking to one another. Ron chose to wallow in his misery, Hermione chose to suffer all her confusion by herself, and Harry just didn't want to live in an atmosphere so full of angst.
Hermione was distressed by what she had said to Charlie, especially as it resulted in their estrangement. So it was on that Wednesday afternoon that Hermione decided to take some sort of action.
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Ron noticed that the afternoon light had crept into his room, although he had vehemently shut all the blinds a few days ago after locking the windows and slamming his door shut. A single ray penetrated the gloom he had been laying around in for almost a week straight.
He came out three times a day for food and bathroom necessities, but other than that, he would rather sit in his cramped room and sulk. It might have dawned upon him once in that isolated week that his behavior was moderately to completely immature, but he didn't care. In fact, he took a sort of vindictive pleasure in the fact that his childish behavior would probably incite Hermione's wrath even more. If there was one thing that Ron always found enjoyable it was seeing how wonderful Hermione looked when she was angry. He hadn't noticed that he liked seeing her when she was in a tiff with him until fifth year at least, before that, arguing with Hermione was just a way to pass the time. But once he saw that her curly brown hair would crackle with electricity and her brown eyes would practically flame up when she was yelling at him, he began to pick fights with her just to watch this progress from composed Hermione, to on-fire Hermione.
If there was one thing he regretted the most from their Hogwarts days, it was that he had allowed Lavender Brown to sit with him that night after they had won the Quidditch match in their sixth year. What a mess that turned out to be. Sure, it was good to get in some snogging, but Merlin could she whine! Ron always blushed when he thought about the entire situation. Hermione was all he wanted, for as long as he could remember. That whole ordeal with Ginny telling him Hermione had snogged Vicky was what really initiated the Lavender Fiasco. Hermione wasn't like most girls, she had something that wasn't easy to describe.
Ron thought he loved her because she was his complete opposite. She was smart, and quick-thinking, and she had the answer to everything be it academic or otherwise. She didn't take three hours to get ready, she pulled her hair up into one of those messy buns and she was gorgeous. The best thing of all was that she didn't realize how smart she was. She was confident, of course, but she didn't have that innate smugness that some people have when they know they've got all the answers regardless of if they actually do or not.
Ron thought for a while longer about how he came to the decision that he loved her. It might have dawned upon him as early as last week when they were all at the Burrow and all the confusion about Hermione's date snowballed. He never considered that she would meet someone and go on dates. The only real jealousy he had to endure was that over Viktor Krum, although he had never realized it was full-blown jealousy until its object shifted onto this Charlie Perkins fellow. All in all, this job as an Unspeakable was completely wrong for Hermione. It was too dangerous, and you never knew who could be lurking around that Ministry. Take for example that bloke Rookwood who turned out to be a spy for Voldemort… the job wasn't safe! Ron thought that he would talk to Hermione about that when she came home. Of course she would have a fit, but that just made her even more attractive to him. The fact that he could get her that riled up was a source of supreme pride for Ron. She looked impassioned when she was mad at him, and he often had to turn away from her so that she wouldn't see how aroused that made him. No other girl could do that to him, he knew. Shaking his head in the gloom, he gazed at that light that punctured the black solemnity and sank back on to his bed. He had to get out of that room. He needed to talk to her, or at least to Harry.
Ron was in between jobs at the moment. He used to work part-time with Fred and George at the shop, but they got sick of him in a hurry. That was brotherly affection for you. He had asked for a job in the Ministry of Magical Games and Sports, and was just waiting for them to get back to him about it. If there was one thing Ron thought he could do, it was talk about Quidditch all day. Harry was in the midst of his training to be an Auror, although Ron was sure they would have taken him on board just to listen to him talk about the Second War and how he defeated Voldemort. Maybe Ron would go in to the Ministry after cleaning himself up a bit. Thinking about the competence of his two best friends had gotten him down. Ron ran his hands through his disgustingly long hair and thought he'd make a couple stops before going to visit them at work.
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Marie Chang had grown up in London, and was often considered as the Supreme Drama Queen and Know-It-All amongst her extensive acquaintance. The Changs were an excessively attractive family. Her cousin Cho was known as one of the prettiest girls at Hogwarts a few years ago, and she herself was deemed the exotic beauty at Beauxbatons, where her parents had sent her after they realized how coarse Hogwarts truly was. Fleur Delacour had been one of her closest friends. She heard she was going to marry a red-headed man from a poor family. Marie could only assume he was very attractive, otherwise it was unlikely Fleur would have gone for him in the first place.
Once she had moved back to England, Marie had gotten herself a spacious apartment in the respectable moneyed part of London, and started work at the Ministry in the most respected department where she could really challenge herself. Although she had a trust fund, Marie still chose to work because she couldn't bear to be idle. Her mind wandered too much for it to be unoccupied with something serious. Her studies had been her life, and she graduated at the top of her class, even when those classes were entirely conducted in French. Because she was so devoted to academia, romance had never played even a minor role in her life until she had returned to England and settled into her work. She felt exceedingly comfortable in her work, and naturally became the leader in their department, despite the other Unspeakables' reluctance to follow her, and instead hang on to that frizzy-haired girl, Hermione Granger.
Marie could not encounter such a person as Hermione Granger and not do some research on her. It turned out that she was similar to Marie herself in that she had also graduated at the top of her class. However, Hermione Granger was Muggle-born, middle class, not terribly pretty, and could only speak a minimal amount of French. Marie couldn't exactly tell why she felt so uneasy about Hermione, as the two couldn't compare beyond their knowledge of magic, but knew that she needed to keep an eye on her all the same.
It was lunch hour, but Marie only allowed herself thirty minutes because she liked to stay on top of the day's assignment just in case they should fall behind schedule or something of the like. She marched up the hallways in her best high heels and flowing skirt, feeling more competent than usual mainly because something had slowed Hermione Granger down lately. Not human enough to care much for Granger's plight, she whistled a little under her breath in contentedness as the staff went their separate ways to take their break. She reached the mezzanine when something (or rather, someone) stopped her in her tracks.
He was casually dressed, but looked wonderful all the same, from his sneakers to his slightly unbuttoned polo shirt. His red hair fell in soft curls, looking exceedingly well-groomed as though it had just been cut, and he stuck his awkward hands in his pockets as he waited for an elevator. As she stared at him, something happened to Marie that had never happened before: her heart began to race, her head was swimming, and she thought she could feel herself beginning to perspire (something she only did when exercising and not admittedly then). Without realizing it, her feet began to move in his direction. What was this feeling? she asked herself. A smile almost spread across her face as she drew nearer to him. She never smiled except when it was called-for, socially. It was then that she followed him into the elevator, and before she knew what she was doing, she introduced herself and found out that this paragon's name was Ron Weasley.
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Hermione peeked out of her office door where she had abandoned all pursuits concerned with actual work and not daydreaming about Charlie's lips. She had decided to lie in wait there until he walked by, then she would just grab him. It was perfectly innocent of course; she just wanted to talk to him in private about what had happened that night.
A few minutes later, Hermione was rewarded as Charlie strolled down the office corridor, engrossed in a book. Hermione allowed herself one admiring sigh before lunging out into the hall, hooking him by the sleeve of his shirt, and dragging him into her office with considerable deftness.
Five minutes later, they were necking.
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Ron thought the elevator was uncommonly hot today as this Marie girl, apparent relation to Cho, attempted to make conversation with him as he started to feel that he would have very much preferred taking the stairs. The girl was rather pretty, but knowing she was related to Cho, and probably had the same genetic tear duct problem of working too well, Ron wasn't interested. Besides, his heart was too full of Hermione much to care about any other woman at the moment. He thought he would go and look in on Harry first, just to ask his advice one more time before he waited for Hermione to come out of the office, knowing she always skipped the first half of her lunch hour. Ron was musing on all of this when an odd sentence reverberated in the air of the confined elevator, forcing him to look up and ask if this pretty girl would repeat herself.
"What was that?"
"I said: did you want to go out with me some time?" Marie turned a delicate shade of rosy pink as she said it the second time.
"Well I… don't really think so. I'm pretty busy, you see," he stammered, being nothing of the kind.
"Oh, I understand," she said but looked downtrodden all the same.
It was a relief for Ron to reach Harry's floor, but when he arrived at his desk, it was empty and the "Out to Lunch" sign was glaring at him. Suddenly furious that Harry wasn't there to comfort him in his time of extreme embarrassment, but not admitting it, Ron stormed back into the elevator and rode it back down to the Department of Mysteries level. The grilles slid open, and Marie was standing there, looking a little crumpled. Ron only had to dwell on her disappointment for a few seconds because just then, two people came out of the door, holding hands, and kissing every few paces. When they came into focus, Ron recognized it was Hermione, and presumably Charlie as well. Only letting his anger and jealousy overpower him for a moment, he quickly grabbed Marie by her slender wrist and pulled her back into the elevator. Ron thought he caught a glimpse of Hermione's stunned face before the grilles slid shut again, and they were hoisted back up to the main level.
A/N: Hehehe… cliffhangers are amusing. Next chapter should be up soon because my muse has returned to me apparently. Thanks for reviewing to those of you who did, keep it up!