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Neville didn't know how long Harry would be missing for, so as curfew came and his friend still wasn't back, he made sure he was the first person to go up to the dorm that evening and he pulled Harry's bedcurtains shut and sealed them with a spell so the others would think that he'd gone to bed early, perhaps while they were still at dinner. It wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny, anyone who touched the curtains would realise they didn't feel like they'd been spelled by Harry but Dean and Seamus shouldn't have a reason to come over to Harry's part of the dorm at all, let alone to try to open his curtains and check if he were there. Hopefully if Ron tried to check on Harry, he'd remember Neville scolding Hermione at dinner and keep it to himself.
-o0o-
In the Hufflepuff dorms, Hannah was also the first of the sixth year girls to come upstairs, though this was out of worry that her friend had been so upset by the results of the testing that she'd skipped dinner and gone to bed to cry in private. Hannah wondered what had gone wrong. Seeing the empty bed Hannah decided to spell the curtains shut so their friends wouldn't ask where Susan was. She grabbed a book and went back down to the common room to wait for her friend.
-o0o-
Harry woke the next morning feeling warm and strangely content. It was the first night in months he'd managed to sleep through without nightmares. It took him a few moments to realise he wasn't alone and wasn't in his own bed in the dorm for the memories of the night before to surface. He didn't remember their being a quilt over them last night so one of them must have wished for it in their sleep.
He realised his hand was cupping Susan's breast, which felt fantastic and he held it for a moment enjoying the sensation in his hand before he woke up a bit more and the thought crossed his mind that he shouldn't be doing that and was lucky Susan was still sleeping and not awake to tell him off. He moved it to her stomach in the hope she wouldn't be too upset with him, but couldn't bring himself to move away from her completely and lay there enjoying being spooned behind her while she slept. Her skirt was bunched up around her waist but other than that he was pressed against her skin from her chest to her knees.
Harry was surprised to suddenly feel embarrassed as Susan began to stir, he didn't think he should feel embarrassed at doing what they'd had to do, and he hadn't been embarrassed when he first woke up. Yeah it was going to be a bit awkward once Susan woke up but they'd agreed that this was the best thing to do for both of them. He also became aware of an odd soreness somewhere down in his groin area. Thinking about it for a moment he realised he wasn't actually all that embarrassed and had no reason to feel sore all of a sudden, and he could feel a hand on his stomach move slightly as he moved his own on Susan's skin. The emotions and sensations had to be coming from Susan, he could feel her emotions and body as well as his own now she was awake. He wondered if she could feel his too.
"Good morning. How are you feeling?" He asked. He regretted having hurt her, and it was now obvious that it must have hurt a great deal to still be sore.
Unfortunately, Susan could feel his regret without understanding the cause of it, and it increased her own feelings of mortification. She blushed and covered her face with her hands.
"There's no need to be embarrassed" Harry said. "I can feel the extra magic moving around me. Can you feel it?"
Susan looked surprised. "I can feel my magic has grown, and I can feel your magic inside me too, it feels different than mine. I must have gotten a bigger boost from you than you did from me."
Harry evaluated the feel of his magic, and Susan felt the regret fade, replaced by curiosity. "Oh yes, I can feel your magic too. It feels content, gentle, much calmer than my magic is," he said struggling to describe what he was feeling.
"Your magic feels protective, strong and unsettled and slightly wild, very different to mine," Susan replied.
"Yeah, yours feels different too, it feels kind of nice, welcome somehow," Harry admitted.
Susan chuckled, "I know what you mean. Yeah, I guess that's as good a description as anything else."
-o0o-
"It's really nice to wake up with someone, I can see why people would want to get married to have this everyday for the rest of their lives," Harry said.
"Then why were you feeling regret when I woke up?" Susan asked confused.
Harry blushed, "As you woke I could feel that you were sore down there from what we did and I was sorry that I'd hurt you," he replied apologetically.
"It's okay Harry, the books said it was inevitable. You were as gentle as you could be. I think it could've been a lot worse," Susan said. "Did you like it."
"It was great, both the sex last night and the cuddling this morning," Harry admitted, blushing.
Susan blushed but admitted to herself that other than the embarrassment, it was nice to wake up being held like that. Especially in a castle that was always a little cold at night.
"Yes I hope the wizard that I marry likes to cuddle like this, but most wizards don't seem very affectionate with their wives," Susan said pessimistically.
"I've never seen my Aunt and Uncle cuddle, but then they wouldn't in front of me. Mr Weasley seems fond of Mrs Weasley but I've never seen them cuddle either but maybe that's only in front of other people. Some sort of pureblood custom I don't understand. Neither of us knows much about what wizards are like with their families." Harry offered. "I'd marry you and cuddle you every night if you wanted me to. I guess I'm not much of a catch though, the guy with the insane dark shite determined to kill him."
"Are you kidding?" Susan asked incredulously. "You're the sole heir of an ancient and most noble house, actually two ancient and most noble houses, though I don't think many people know you're the Black heir, you'd be one of the most eligible boys at Hogwarts for that reason alone, more than half the girls at Hogwarts would say yes if you invited them to Hogsmeade. Not to mention being well manners and respectful of witches, quite good looking, a quidditch star, smart and magically strong and a really nice guy and Auntie told me about the excitement and relief across the country when you vanquished He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Names as a baby. You probably have dozens, if not hundreds, of betrothal contract offers waiting in your vault for you to come of age. Probably the only reason you're not already betrothed is because it's a Potter tradition to wait until the child comes of age to let them have a choice in which contract offer to accept. It's well known that your family have set it up so it has to be that way. Even if your magical guardian wanted to accept a contract for you, he or she shouldn't have been able to."
"Thank Merlin for that since I think Dumbledore is my magical guardian! Do you have a betrothal contract?" Harry asked.
"I'm in the same boat as you when it comes to my estate. My aunt's a great guardian but she's only a Bones by marriage, and her husband, my uncle was Dad's younger brother and he was killed before my parents so he was never the head of the family, Dad was. Nobody can get into the family vault until I come of age. She knows Dad received some betrothal offers for me which are in the vault, and that he made some as well not specifically for me but for his future children as well, but he never told her if he'd accepted one of them or knew that one of the offers he had made had been accepted, and it's possible someone has accepted an offer he made after they were killed. As repulsive as it sounds, the contract would've become a lot more attractive after my parents were killed, once the groom's family knew that I should inherit the entire estate because my parents couldn't produce a son and I have no cousins near enough to have a greater claim," Susan replied thinking about her own situation.
"That's a horrible way to think," Harry gasped.
"It's true though, if I'd had a brother, then he would inherit the position of Head of house Bones, the house itself, most of the money and the Wizengamot seat, and I'd only have whatever dowry my parents had stipulated in the contract. So while my parents were both alive I was only the heir presumptive because there was always the expectation that they would have more children and possibly a son. Perhaps I'll be lucky and Mum and Dad wrote the offers in a way that more than one of the offers could be provisionally accepted and I'll get a choice," Susan said miserably.
"So, you could already be engaged. Will he attack me for taking his fiancée's virginity do you think?" Harry said trying to make light of the surprisingly hurtful information he'd just been so casually given. He didn't want to think about why it hurt to think that Susan who he'd only known casually until yesterday could be already betrothed to be married. He was sure he hadn't had a crush on Susan before they'd unblocked their magic.
Susan laughed. "Betrothed, not engaged, there is a difference but even if I am, I wouldn't tell him who it was, but he couldn't sue you for taking my virginity because there's no way either of us could have known about the betrothal and if a betrothal exists surely he or his Head of House should have contacted me about it by now if he expected me not to date anyone else. Not to mention who in their right mind would duel the boy who is famous for fighting you-know-who to a standstill in the ministry of magic as a fifteen year old."
"Dumbledore did have to step in and rescue me you know" Harry said modestly.
"Yes but next to nobody else has lived long enough to be rescued, and you rescued yourself in fourth year," Susan reminded him.
"Yeah, not really, the ghosts of the people he killed last helped me," Harry replied. "Who do you think your parents would've wanted you to marry enough to sign a betrothal contract?"
"I don't know, Harry. My parents died more than a year before the end of the war so it's possible even if my father signed a contract the wizard I'm betrothed to didn't survive either," Susan said quietly.
"Or it could be that he's an orphan like us and can't get to see the contracts until he turn's seventeen either. You could be betrothed to Neville" Harry said teasingly in spite of the pang this idea gave him.
"No, my Aunt said that his father announced he was going against the family traditions and would let his son choose which contract to accept when he came of age, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if you both do have an offer from my father, my parents were friends with both of your parents," Susan said blushing.
He decided to be completely honest. If he could feel her emotions the chances were she already knew how he was feeling. "It hurts to think you could be betrothed to someone else, but it didn't yesterday when we talked about what sort of person you wanted to marry and I'm sure I didn't have a crush on you before we did this. Do you think that's the bond Pomfrey and McGonagall warned us about?"
"I think it might be, I think that's what is making us feel everything the other person feels, what are we going to do?" Susan asked.
"I feel like I want to ask you to be my girlfriend, but then I think about all the reasons I haven't asked anyone out on a date and they seem even more important with you. I don't want to put you in danger, I feel really protective of you, it's more than just not wanting to put you at risk because of me, I feel like I need to make sure you're safe," Harry said.
"Is the bond also pushing you to be more open and honest than you would otherwise?" Susan asked.
Harry frowned thoughtfully, "I don't think so, I just figured that if I could feel your embarrassment when you woke up and you could feel my regret for hurting you, then you could probably feel everything else I'm feeling too, so I might as well tell you about why I'm feeling that way, so we don't misunderstand each other again. We don't know each other very well and I don't feel like I've got anything to lose by being honest. We weren't great friends yesterday and I didn't go into this with you hoping for a girlfriend or new best friend but we've got this weird connection that we're going to have to learn to deal with unless it goes away, and with my luck it probably won't. On the other hand, it kind of hurts just to think that you could decide to avoid me and ignore the bond and hope it goes away, and telling you how I feel about that seems like the best way to move forward together."
Susan blushed. "You weren't embarrassed, waking up naked with me?" she asked.
"No really, I mean I would be if you wanted to pull down the blanket and have a good look, though I guess I'd deserve it after last night, but until you woke up I was more concentrating on how nice it felt to have someone to cuddle and the fact it was the first time in months I'd slept the whole night without a nightmare," Harry said, as embarrassed now as she'd been earlier.
"I would have nightmares about him too, if I'd been through what you have," she tried to reassure him.
"We better get up, people will be looking for us, we missed dinner and we're almost late for breakfast," Harry said as his stomach growled at the thought of food.
Susan was about to tease him about it when her stomach growled too. "It's morning!" Susan cried out in horror, having just noticed. "We've been missing all night! Will your friends have noticed you missing?" she asked. "Oh, what am I talking about, of course they will have. Will they say anything?"
"Yeah, we have been," Harry said jumping out of bed and hurriedly pulling on his clothes without thinking about his nudity or whether Susan was looking. Once he was dressed, Harry looked at her red face, "Ron and Hermione will have noticed I was missing, probably long before dinner time last night, I'm not sure what they'd do. If they knew where I was and what I was doing, they would've covered for me but we didn't expect to be missing overnight so I didn't warn them. Normally they'd try to find me themselves before reporting me missing, but the last time they saw me was in the hospital wing before the testing. They probably would've tried to visit me there, or ask Madam Pomfrey. If Pomfrey told them I wasn't there they would've started to worry and might have gone to McGonagall. There's plenty of people who'd like to see me handed over to Voldemort, even here in the castle, so concern for my safety would override Hermione's hesitation about not wanting to get me into trouble. If that's all they did it will be okay because McGonagall knows what happened yesterday and she knows me well enough to know I wouldn't wait if I'd made my mind up who to ask. The real problem is if she and Ron argued about what to do before going to McGonagall, he tends to lose track of who's around him when they're arguing and honestly she isn't much better once he's pissed her off," Harry said.
"And what about the rest of your dorm mates? Will they notice you've been gone? Will they say anything?" Susan asked.
"My dorm mates will have noticed that I didn't wake them up during the night. They've forbidden me from silencing the curtains in case one of my nightmares is actually a vision and I need to get help or pass a message to someone quickly, like the night my vision of Mr Weasley being bitten by Voldemort's snake allowed him to be found in time to save his life. Neville's one of my dorm mates so he will have guessed why I wasn't there, I doubt he would have said anything though, especially about you. He might have tried to cover but he's not a very good liar, not that it will matter much. My dorm mates have a pact not to talk about my private life so they'll probably ask me about it next time we're alone but they wouldn't have said anything to just anyone. What about your friends? Will they have kept quiet about you staying out all night? Will they have covered for you?"
"I don't know, I've never broken curfew before so they're going to be worried, but if they went to Madam Pomfrey or Madam Sprout they would know what happened and might have made excuses for me. They must know that it isn't in our best interests to have this known," Susan said anxiously.
"We shouldn't have fallen asleep like that. I'm sorry Susan," Harry said sincerely.
"It was my fault too Harry" Susan said blushing. "And it was probably the magic. Neither of us would've just fallen asleep together. I remember waking up for a minute after the block released but I couldn't have stayed awake even if I had remembered how important it was to get back to the dorms."
"Yeah, me too. Breakfast is about to start if we hurry we can be there when it does. That should placate our friends," Harry said.
"That also puts us in the great hall when our friends find us. Where the whole school will hear them if they question us, and unlike your dorm mates I don't think mine would realise that they shouldn't ask. I don't think that's a very good idea," Susan pointed out.
"Well then you better run to get into the common room and hopefully up to the dorm before someone sees you but I think it's too late for that. Someone will notice you coming in. What are you going to tell them. The library isn't open this early on a Saturday. Hopefully everyone's sleeping in, it's actually still pretty early," Harry said.
"I'll say I woke up with stomach pains and went to Madam Pomfrey for a potion," Susan said blushing. "They'll assume I mean a women's issue and not ask me anymore. It won't work for you, and it doesn't explain why we're wearing our school robes."
Harry blushed at that and tried not to think about what he'd read about women's issues in the book the night before. "I have another way to get back through the common room," he admitted.
Susan managed to transfigure her school robe into a dressing gown and slip back into the Hufflepuff dorms as she expected. The excuse she gave the few seventh years in the common room worked as she said it would and it was only Hannah that had noticed her absence the night before.
She found her bed curtains sealed shut and when she opened them found Hannah in her bed, obviously having fallen asleep waiting for her.
"Where have you been? It's light out already!" Hannah exclaimed quietly, waking as Susan climbed on the bed and sealed the curtains to change her clothes.
"This is Scotland it's light out by four am at this time of year," Susan replied quietly as she sealed and silenced her curtains so they could talk in private.
Hannah cast a tempest. "You liar, it's not that early. Breakfast has started. You've been gone all night. Were you kept in the hospital wing? It isn't like Madam Pomfrey to let a patient out before breakfast? Was something seriously wrong with your scans?" she asked anxiously.
"Nothing's wrong, it's fine now," Susan replied ambiguously, grabbing clean clothes, undoing her transfiguration on her uniform and getting dressed.
"Did something go wrong. You disappeared after the scans. I was afraid that they'd found your Mum or Dad put a block on your magic," Hannah said.
"I don't have a block on my magic," Susan said lying a little. She didn't have a block on her magic anymore, and she trusted Hannah but she didn't want her to put two and two together and realise who she'd been with if she heard the rumours of Harry been missing last night as well. That was gossip too exciting not to talk about and while she trusted her friend not to spread the news on purpose, she wasn't always as careful as she should be to make sure nobody could overhear them.
"Well, I was first to come up to the dorms last night and I sealed your curtains and told the others that you'd gone to bed early with a bit of a headache so I don't think anyone else noticed," Hannah said practically.
"Thanks Hannah, I owe you one," Susan said gratefully.
"Sue! What went wrong with the testing. I thought at first you must have had a block on your magic but then that wouldn't be a reason for them to keep you all night," Hannah asked anxiously.
"I had an unexpected allergic reaction to the animagus revealing potion," Susan said giving her carefully prepared lie. Thankfully the tests had revealed that animagus was going to be one of the gifts she had the potential for when her magic was unblocked.
"Oh, you're so lucky! What's your form?" Hannah gushed thoroughly distracted.
"I don't know. My reaction to the potion was immediate and so violent that I didn't go into the trance," Susan replied, making a mental note to go and ask for the potion on her own now her magic was unblocked.
"What are you going to do? Can they alter the potion so you can try again?" Hannah asked.
"I don't know, maybe. Maybe it was just a bad batch. It's a wonder more people weren't sick. I'm not allergic to any of the ingredients that should've been in it," Susan replied a little guiltily. "There must be another way though."
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed and those who followed or favourited this story for your support.
