A/N: Two chapters in one day; I am so awesome holy shit okay
Fair warning: there is smut in this chapter. It is my first time writing smut. Don't flame me. It is Fremione smut. This is not a Fremione fic, or at least not primarily a Fremione fic. You'll see. Also, it's not smut for the sake of being really sexy and pornographic, it's smut for the sake of being a plot point. Sorry. There'll be better stuff later on.
Fred's POV
George has already been paired off. He's with Katie, and we're waiting on Angelina's partner. It could be worse. Way worse. He's a mess though, and for the first time in ages he refuses to let me comfort him. He's in his room of our flat, trying to sleep. I don't know what to do with him anymore. I figure I'll let the dust settle and we'll just…we'll just see. We'll just wait for this to all be over.
It's 1:32 on Saturday morning. My clock will end on Monday, at thirty-four minutes and nineteen seconds past noon. A cauldron of random ingredients that will result in either a new product or a fatal explosion boils and bubbles on my cluttered desk. For some reason, sleep won't come. I'm lying in bed, out of sleeping potions, and nothing. My mind keeps racing, like it thinks something important is about to happen. And then, out of nowhere, my bedroom door opens and closes. I see the silhouette of a figure before everything is plunged into darkness again. Then the room is lit by the figure's wand and—
"Hermione?! What are you doing in here?"
She turns, casting Silencing and Locking Charms before walking toward me and sitting on my bed. Her eyes are bloodshot, her face tearstained and her hair curly and wild. Awkwardly, I rest a hand on her thin shoulder, unsure of what to do or what's wrong or why she's even here. Not that she's unwelcome or anything, just…I've never been good around emotional women. She sniffles and then finally speaks.
"Fred…I…look, very, very, very soon I am going to be thrown into a union with an unknown man."
"I haven't been unconscious for the past month, you know."
She smiles, very slightly. "This is very awkward, but I…look, you'll have to hear me out. I'm…I'm a virgin, and I—"
I can feel my eyes widen and she looks away, obviously embarrassed. A cloud of blush explodes across her cheeks. I stutter, searching for words until I can force a semi-coherent sentence from my gaping lips. "Hermione, are you…are you sure you want me? Of all people—"
"I trust you."
I stare at her, her endlessly deep brown eyes. "If you're sure."
She nods, suddenly confident in our eye contact. "I'm sure."
"Do you want me to ah…like, turn the lights off or like…I don't know what you want here…" I try awkwardly.
She waves her wand and room is dark again, a comfortable darkness. I push the blankets aside and wonder why I'm agreeing to sleep with my friend, a close friend, an almost sisterly friend. The whole situation is so abrupt and unexpected and frivolous, I almost want to laugh but I can't, not when I'm about to take Hermione's virginity. Suddenly I'm worried. I don't want to hurt her or make her regret anything.
But then…she's not like a sister to me. She's a brilliant, fiery woman with wild hair and a library crammed into her head. A woman who never got the chance to truly be a girl. A war heroine. A beautiful, strong, know-it-all war heroine with…with surprisingly firm breasts, apparently.
Her small hands trail nervously over my legs; I can tell she's going to be a timid virgin. No matter, I can do this without completely breaking her. I hope. I help her undress, undoing the clasp of her bra and tugging ineffectively at the waistband of her pyjama bottoms; she offers me little aid. Her hands roam my chest, tracing mindless circles over my torso. Almost like she's stalling for time.
"You don't have to do this to yourself," I say sincerely.
She shakes her head, sniffling a bit. "It's better this way."
But is it really? I want to stop her, send her back to her own bed and tell her she's not ready, or at least that it shouldn't be me. But then, there's always the chance…my heart leaps. There's always the chance, however slight, that we'll end up together. Her clock must be ending soon if she's here; maybe our countdowns are the same? I almost ask and then I remember that she wouldn't be able to tell me.
She leans down toward me and my eyes adjust to see the shadowy outlines of her face, just starting to fill out again. She came home from her hunt with hollowed cheeks and haunted eyes, and everything felt surreal and empty. No victory could put everything right again. I feel her soft, quick breaths just above my lips. She smells of peppermint and very faintly of ink; she chews her quills as she writes her endless documents. I've never kissed her before; I've never had a reason to. Not that I haven't thought about it, if nothing else it was idle curiosity. Her hands flatten against my chest and I cup her face in my palms, gently because she seems so incredibly fragile. Our first kiss is chaste and soft with the taste of mint from her waxy chapstick and salt lingering from her tears.
Our second kiss consumes with fiery desperation, and this is the result of every unspoken word that built up our friendship from the moment I woke up between her and George, bleeding and bandaged and half-dead beneath a castle wall, woke up to George in hysterics and her shouting frantic incantations. All of her fears and my anger and everything that's horribly wrong with this marriage law and this Ministry, it all gets turned inward and then collapses and we explode into this—into this. This tangling mess of limbs and blindsiding lust; when did she go from being Ron's swotty friend to being Hermione?
Her fingers trace the raised, grey scars on my chest and arms, in various stages of healing. And then finally, she moves off me and I hear the rustle of clothing. My mind reels. I am about to be Hermione's first. Yes, maybe she screwed up a lot of my experiments on first years; maybe she spent a lot of her time as a prefect confiscating joke products from me and George. But she is my bed. She is in my bed, naked. She is in my bed, naked, and my immature twenty-year-old mind is too full of hormones to process anything else. Fuck it; I'll worry about consequences in the morning. After I make her breakfast so I don't look like a bloody tosser.
"This is going to hurt, isn't it?" she asks abruptly.
"Be a Gryffindor about it," I joke, running my hands over her body. Her skin is soft, but I can feel ribs and hip bones jutting out. Mum would throw a fit if she realised how thin Hermione really was when she isn't hiding it under the jumpers she nicks from Harry and Ron. I don't want to push her along too fast, but I'm also not particularly enjoying trying to hold out. "Er…Hermione? Whenever you're ready."
She inhales deeply and says, in a shaky voice, "Now. Now is fine."
I nod and, steeling myself, gradually ease myself into her, inch by inch, until I feel her rip around me and she cries out. I swallow, steeling myself and staying completely still. It's the most difficult ten seconds of my life. But I've done this before, I remind myself. So I grit my teeth until she finally chokes out a "go."
"How bad is it?" I whisper as I start to move, a gentle rocking so she can adjust. Her eyes glint and gleam in the darkness, and I can see the pronounced parts of her face. The hollow cheekbones, small nose, lips pressed in a thin line.
"It's fading," she tells me softly. So I keep a steady pace until she rocks her hips against mine and soft little moans escape her lips and I know it's okay to speed up, even though she probably won't come no matter how long I hold off. I want her to, but no amount of determination is likely to make it happen. I'll just have to be as gentle as possible with her.
Her hands roam over me, skin against skin, and my fingers almost instinctively seek out her clit; I do what I can. "Fred…Fred I don't think it's going to happen…" she whimpers, as though reading my thoughts. My fingers tweak her nipples, but apparently it's just not going to happen this time.
"I'm sorry."
"No, no, it's not you. Most girls don't—"
I cut her off, fusing my mouth to hers with some deeply buried passion and I pray I'm not hurting her as my body starts with its spasms, some encompassing wave of pleasure, all the minutes built up to a minute of climax when the world turns into stars glittering behind my eyes. I only wish I could make it happen for her.
When I wake the next morning, she's still next to me.
I think it's the small things that matter.
"They've changed the rules, the disorganised idiots!" Harry groans, popping into the room. Hermione sits up, startled, and yanks the sheets over her chest.
"Hermione?!"
She groans. "Hi, Harry. Nice of you to drop by."
"What even—"
"When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much—"
"Fred!"
"When a crazy mommy slips a love potion into an unsuspecting daddy's drink—"
"Enough! What is it, Harry?" she prompts, staring daggers at me.
"They've started revising remaining pairings," he says. "The ones that have already met are stuck together, but apparently they're discarding the blood status restraints for the remaining unpaired. Also, a lot of people have relocated, so they might not have an even enough ratio to make everything work. It probably has something to do with who's left over."
"Wait, who's gone? Are people seriously leaving English jurisdiction because of this?"
"Well, yeah," Harry replies. There's a certain hesitance in his response, like he's surprised Hermione wouldn't think people would leave a country over a law that's unfair and invasive. "Lavender is gone, so are Seamus and Dean; those three went to Ireland. Hm...Alicia Spinnet, Tracey Davis, Susan Bones, Hannah Abbot, Theodore Nott, I had heard they left jurisdiction. A lot of others, too. I mean, it's not like there was a mass exodus or anything, but we did lose quite a few people. At this point the Ministry can't really afford to be as picky about who goes with who."
"But…but where did they all go?" I stammer. "And do they plan on coming back?"
Harry shrugs. "I'm assuming they will eventually. I mean, it's three years. Maybe they'll come back afterwards? I'm sure they're all communicating, connections and all."
"So can George switch to be with Angelina?"
Harry shakes his head sadly. "No. Maybe he can petition, but like Mr. Weasley said—"
"Yeah, I know, not a high priority, etc etc."
"Honestly I think it's rather cowardly of them," Hermione interjects disapprovingly. "I mean, I understand, but I don't think it's the right decision. I'm sure we can all get through it. It's only three years."
Harry shrugs again. I can see the desire for neutrality in his face, etched in the lines and scars on his skin. "I don't know. It doesn't really matter, honestly. If they can save themselves, then props to them, I guess. I'm, ah, going to go now…and uh…leave you guys to it." His voice is clumsy and awkward, but he shoots me a wink as he shuts the door behind himself.
Monday, 12:34 PM, Diagon Alley
I tried to comfort her. I really did. I tried so hard, but some part of me has just accepted that they broke her. The pairing broke her, and Malfoy is going to ruin her. I would give anything to switch with him, but I can't think of how to manipulate the Ministry.
And now I'm in Diagon Alley, searching for a familiar face. Or maybe an unfamiliar face. I guess we'll see.
And I'm the unlucky one: a stranger, or as good as. I know who she is, of course, but it's very much out of left field. She comes up to me with a look of befuddlement on her face. "Um…Fred?"
"Er, hi, Cho," I greet her. We pause awkwardly until we decide on a handshake, as though this was a business agreement. "This is…unexpected."
Anticlimactic, too, to be honest. She shrugs at me, but her face maintains the same expression of bewildered confusion.
"Well, I um...my family's waiting for everyone to be paired off before we all take care of paperwork. We have, what, another week to sign everything off?"
She nods in confirmation and opens her mouth as though she has something to add, but decides against whatever it is. "So, I suppose we can arrange to meet in a week or so?" she finally asks.
"Yeah, that should be fine. I'll owl."
She nods and we go our separate ways. This should be…interesting, I suppose.
A/N: I know, I know, it's a weird pairing. I don't even. I don't really know or care about Cho's blood status either, but then I changed details to make it not matter anymore because I didn't plan too far in advance and I was running out of characters to make everything work so then that happened and I'm sorry I didn't mean to be bad at what I do
In any case, there will be more smut as the story progresses (yay?) Like I said, I'm very new to writing smut so please give me advice or I won't get much better.