Chapter 4: Reincarnation

Hermione woke up in a cold sweat, gasping at the dream she had just had. If she had suspected it in watching Rey and Poe make love, almost as if... she was reliving a memory... then seeing Harry's face appear quite unbidden made the hidden message, the suppressed desire, abundantly clear:

She was in love with her brother-in-law.

And more importantly, she had to tell him.

Flustered, Hermione hurriedly dressed herself, then dashed off a message to Cormac McLaggen, apologizing that she could not make their date and that she did not return whatever feelings he might have for her. Then, she stalked downstairs and poked her head in the fireplace, Floo-calling Harry's house in Godric's Hollow.

"Hey, Harry. Would you like to have dinner with me at my place tonight?" she asked, trying not to appear red from nervousness as she secretly admired his toned physique.

"Christmas dinner? With you? Sure, brilliant! How about 7:00?"

"Great! See you then." Exiting the fireplace, Hermione took a deep breath, willing herself to gather her courage over the next several hours. 7:00 PM couldn't come soon enough.

Harry arrived as the clock struck 7:00, and greeted his sister-in-law warmly. The pair sat down to a lovely Christmas dinner, accompanied by the Firewhiskey Harry had brought over. One glass soon became two... then three... then five...

It was nearing on 11:00 when a clearly tipsy Harry began searching for his coat. Drunk herself, the liquid filling her with Gryffindor courage, Hermione placed a hand on his arm, her brown eyes imploring.

"Stay," she murmured quietly.

The look Harry sent her was one that she did not recognize. But he dropped his coat on the sette. Behind his back, unseen by Hermione, he silently performed an incantation. Then his deep green eyes shifted upwards.

"Oh, look. Mistletoe."

Hermione followed his gaze, seeing the sprig suspended from the ceiling. Her brown eyes met green, and her quenched throat suddenly felt very dry indeed.

"Hermione." Harry's voice was low, almost a growl, the look in his irises hooded.

Hermione gulped. "Harry."

Laughingly, Harry smiled, and sweeping his best friend into a dip, he pressed his lips to hers. After several moments, Harry swung Hermione back onto her feet. She peered at him in amazement, and that's when she realized: she recognized him...

"It is you!" she gasped. Then, flinging an arm casually about his neck, she kissed him in return.

Merlin Almighty, she missed kissing. The sweetly foreign taste of a man's mouth, the melting feeling of warm, moist lips pressed to her own, the rasp of beard or stubble against smooth skin. Kissing a man in a sexual way as opposed to that puckered-lipped, funeral-cheek-kissing way that shouldn't be called "kissing."

This wasn't like her first kiss as a tremulous fifteen year old when she didn't know to angle her face just so to free her nose from Viktor's smothering cheek, didn't know what to do with his tongue in her mouth. It wasn't even like her first kiss with Ron. Ron's first kiss had made her want more and more and more even though she hadn't known what that more would be like.

With this first, she had behind her many pleasurable and varied years of experience at kissing, at lovemaking, at fucking. She had thought that wonder and delight at a mere kiss were behind her, too. She could be surprisingly content if this were the sum total of it, she thought, even as her nipples hardened and her quim throbbed with desire and foreknowledge of more. "Mmmhmmmmm..."

Her arms hung limply around his neck, forgotten, as he moulded her mouth with his own, one arm tightly around her waist, his other hand twined in her hair. He sucked and supped at her lips, nibbling the underside of her upper lip, pressing her lower lip between his lips and drawing it out slowly with the faintest scrape of teeth.

He released her and she wobbled a little, dazed. She couldn't breathe. She was going to die of suffocation right there with that vapid, star-struck look on her face. He was so close that she could feel warmth radiating from him, could smell the honey-scented Rioja on his breath.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she said, her voice flat. "I'm sorry, Harry. I'm… I'm…" She shook her hands out so they dangled from her wrists. "I'm mangling this, is what."

Harry appeared unfazed. "Maybe we should engage in... other activities."

Her knees wobbled and she nearly swooned. "All right," she whispered. And taking his hand, she guided him up the stairs...

"Oh no..."

"Oh yes..."

"Oh noooooo..."

"Oh yessss..."

"Mmmmm... Uhhhhh... Huhhh... Harry..."

The little bedroom was a mess. A belt here. A lacy bra there. A high heel on its side in one corner. On the mattress atop a creaking metal bed frame, a man and a woman undulated in heat.

They had staggered upstairs, furiously snogging. Off shucked the camelhair suit coat. Hermione's coat pooled on the floor. Hermione kicked off her one high heel, then its twin, as Harry's arms rummaged up and down her back.

"Un...unzip me, will you?" she panted. Still kissing her, Harry obeyed, and Hermione shimmied out of her dress, letting it collapse around her ankles. She made quick work of his belt buckle, threw down his trousers, and they had stumbled back, fallen, onto her bed.

Hermione's thighs instinctively squeezed around Harry's middle. Merlin, she hadn't had sex in so bloody long. She gasped, choked on air, as Harry penetrated her womanhood without mercy. She squirmed, prompting Harry to adjust himself inside her tight, hot core before he had begun thrusting furiously. His hands were tangled in her hair; his mouth was on the nipple of her breast. She groaned, arching her back into him, and he quickly mashed his mouth back to hers, his tongue slamming down her throat.

"Hmmm... Mmmmmm... Oh, Gods... Oh, Godric... Oh, Godric, yes, Harry!"

Harry gritted his teeth as he bore down. "Cum for me, love. Cum for me. You are so beautiful... Hermione..."

Hearing her name on his lips had made her come undone. "HARRY!" she screamed as she exploded all around him. Screamed until her throat was raw.

Now, in a tangle of limbs and skin and sheets, her lips still flush and swollen from kissing, Hermione gazed down at her new lover. A lover whom was the last person she would have expected it to be, despite how her... attraction for him had grown unconsciously these many months. They would continue to go out, see if this worked. And perhaps... one day soon... she would be married again. No longer feel lonely.

Pressing a light kiss to a sleeping Harry's lips, a spent and sore Hermione cuddled into his side and fell asleep.