Chapter 1
I had no idea how I got dragged into the current situation that I now found myself in. I mean, technically, I know how it happened. A bunch of the Gryffindor guys and girls practically begged me to join them for a night of fun, or at least thats what Dean Thomas had called it when he pulled me to my feet from my favorite armchair in the common room. I really had no desire for fun or anything remotely close to that. I was perfectly happy to brood in my chair and stare out the window, thank you very much.
Why did it seem that fate always kept me from doing whatever the hell I wanted to do? I had more than enough on my mind lately and I simply wanted time to sort out my thoughts. It didn't matter that my thoughts all revolved around one particular person, or at least thats why I forced myself to believe out of sheer frustration. I suppose it could all be chalked up to the fact that I was a typical, love-sick teenaged boy, but even that excuse didn't seem to convey the whole truth of the matter.
So it was that I found myself being dragged against my will out of the common room by Dean's arm around my shoulder. I had no idea where we were headed as I followed the group of seven boys and girls. All I knew was that it was out of the Gryffindor tower and on some lower level of Hogwarts. If I had truly been paying attention to the excited whispers of the group, perhaps I would have discovered what we were headed off to do, but my mind was well and truly focused on coming up with a valid excuse that would have allowed me to slip away from wherever we were heading. Unfortunately, nothing came to mind.
I had spent my first three years at Hogwarts doing my best to blend in to the shadows of the school, never standing out in any noticeable way, and that was by my choice alone. I had no desire to stick out and make a name for myself and that was what led me to remain with but one close friend, my best friend actually, Hermione Granger. She was just like me in almost every way possible, except for being a girl of course, and together, she and I made up the what the rest of Hogwarts called 'The Mopey Duo'.
It never bothered us, the unofficial title that the students teased us with, and we were perfectly happy to ignore their taunts and jeers, at least until the rumors started. Late in our second year, someone in the school had started the Hogwarts rumor mill abuzz with the false allegations that Hermione Granger and Harry Potter were together, as a romantic couple. Hermione took it well for the most part and did what she always did when things got tough; bury herself in the library and focus on studying. It was not as easy for me to deal with the rumors though. That was probably mostly due to the fact that I would have given anything for the rumor to be true.
From the very first moment that Hermione and I spent together, on the Hogwarts Express, on the way to our school for the very first time, I was smitten with the bushy-haired girl. She was an angel sent to Earth to make my already miserable life just a little bit less painful than it was. From that moment on, we were inseparable, at least until the summer holidays when she and I had to go our separate ways. The loss that I felt each summer was almost unbearable and it was only our constant letters back and forth to each other that kept my hope alive.
Since the start of our third year at Hogwarts, which was just a few months ago, I had a massive problem on my hands, one that kept me up at night till the wee hours of the morning. I was hopelessly in love with my best friend and she had no idea that I needed her like I needed air to breathe. It was becoming so bad that I had even started to distance myself from her when it became too hard not to grab her and snog her senseless.
"Oi! Potter? Did you hear me?" Dean called out while looking at me questioningly.
"Oh, uh, sorry. What?" I stammered sheepishly.
"We're here man. You ready to play a fun game?" He asked me with a grin.
I sighed and shrugged at him. "Not really, no. I appreciate you guys wanting to include me but I'm honestly not feeling up for fun tonight." I noticed that the entire group was stopped outside one of the well known abandoned classrooms on the fifth floor. No one had gone inside yet and every pair of eyes were on me now.
"Alright, I'll tell you what… if you go along with this for ten minutes and at the end of that time, if you're not having the best bloody time of your life, then I'll fork over twenty galleons to you. If you are, you owe me ten. Deal?" Dean asked with that same grin on his face.
I should have just said no and walked away but the idea did intrigue me. I definitely didn't need the money, I had plenty of that already from the inheritance that my dead parents had left me, but something about the way that Dean said "The best bloody time of my life" had me questioning whether I shouldn't at least find out what this "fun" was all about. In the end I sighed and nodded to him.
"Perfect, the game goes like this… you have to go into this room without your wand, spend one hour in there, and then you win. If after ten minutes you decided that you can't continue, we'll let you out and you'll be twenty galleons richer. There is nothing in that room that will harm you and the object of the game is simply to stay in the room for one hour. You ready?" Dean explained.
I smirked at him and raised one of my brows at him. "Whats the catch? There is no way that simply spending an hour in a dark classroom alone without a wand is the entire game."
Dean nodded. "Thats true, man. The real object of the game is to figure out who is in the room with you. Someone is already inside but you won't be able to tell who it is with the whole dark room thing. I promise it's not a professor or a bully, Harry," he said while holding up his hands to stop my protest. "You simply need to figure out who the person is and they aren't allowed to speak to you. Sound easy enough?"
I nodded and handed over my wand. "You had better have that twenty galleons, Dean," I said with a huff.
"And you had better be prepared to hand over ten galleons to me, Harry. Good luck!" Dean said as he opened the solid wood door to the classroom.
I entered the room slowly, trying to will my eyes to see anything in the room, but there was only darkness and it got worse once Dean closed the door. I had hoped that this abandoned classroom would be one of the ones that at least had exterior windows but I had no such luck. It was an interior room with absolutely no light source whatsoever.
"Uh, hello?" I called out. Nothing happened and I nearly facepalmed myself when I remembered the rules of the game. The other person wasn't allowed to speak.
I took a few steps forward and promptly bumped into something solid. I felt around with my hands and I almost immediately recognized the familiar feel of a professor's desk. I ran my hand along the edge of the desk as I took a few steps forward, confirming its size and shape. I sat down on top of the desk and focused on the one thing that I could use; my ears.
In the eerie silence I could hear the faintest sound of breathing coming from somewhere in the room. It confirmed for me that there was indeed someone else in the room with me. As a small amount of fear started to grow in me, I did the one thing that probably made the least bit of sense considering the rules of the game.
"I'm really sorry about this, whoever you are. I don't usually get suckered into playing pointless games like this. Tonight just wasn't my lucky night I guess," I said morosely to the unknown person. Only more silence greeted me in return.
I felt so stupid, sitting on some random desk, talking to some random person. Whatever this dumb game was, I was only prepared to stay the required ten minutes, then I'd happily walk out of here twenty galleons richer.
"You don't need to worry about me. I'm only giving this ten minutes so I can win a bet with Dean Thomas and then I'll be out of your hair," I said to the darkness.
I waited patiently as I counted the minutes in my mind. By my best guess I had already spent two minutes in the room and I started from there. As each minute ticked by, I grew less fearful of the person in the room with me, especially considering that absolutely nothing had happened so far. When I was down to my last two minutes I started to grow excited.
"Two minutes left and then I'll go," I called out.
Something happened as soon as I ended my words. A faint noise reached my ears. Someone moved in the room. I reached for my wand in my pocket, only to jam my hand into emptiness. I had forgotten that I had foolishly surrendered my wand at the start of this damned pointless game. I listened intently, frozen in place on the desk, but the noise had stopped. I stood up from the desk and walked back the way I came. My hand reached the wooden door and I felt around for the doorknob. The door didn't seem to have one.
I scrambled, running my hands all over the door, trying in vain to find the bloody doorknob that simply wasn't there. I pounded on the door but nothing happened. No one opened the door and no voice called out to me.
"This isn't funny, Dean! Open the bloody door!" I growled out in panic and frustration.
Silence. No laughing Dean on the other side of the door. No one was laughing; not other girls and boys that had come along, no one. It was just me and my unknown partner in this stupid game and now my fear had grown to epic proportions, especially when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I spun around to lash out and defend myself from my attacker, but the person's hand had disappeared as quickly as it had touched me, my wildly flailing hands hitting nothing but air.
"Okay, enough of this! I'm done with this damn game! Someone let me out of her!" I shouted.
Two hands softly grabbed mine, holding them firmly, and oddly enough, silently reassuring me that they held no ill will towards me. The hands started to move in unison, sliding slowly and softly up my forearms, and then across the biceps. The small hands stopped once they reached my shoulders.
"I… I…" I stopped talking when I remembered that the person couldn't speak to me. Instead I reached out my hands to the person, finding a shirt in my grasp. I ran my hands upwards and immediately yanked my hands back as I reached a small set of bumps in the person's shirt.
"Shit! I'm… I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were a… a girl. I thought you would be a…" I stopped speaking again when the hands left my shoulders and reached down to take my hands.
The unknown girl placed my hands back on her chest and held them there quite firmly, even when I tried to protest weakly by tugging my hands away with a half-hearted attempt. She pressed my hands to her chest tighter, silently telling me to keep them there. I nodded my head uselessly in the darkness. Her hands ran along my arms and to my own chest.
"You… you don't have to do this," I whispered.
The hands continued their journey across my chest, feeling my rather uninspiring and awkward teenaged body, before they rose to my neck and then to the sides of my face. I felt the hands tugging on me, drawing my closer to her. I felt a hot breath on my face just before a soft pair of lips gently pressed against mine.
My useless eyes flickered shut and I melted into my very first kiss. Her lips started to move against mine, encouraging me to move with her, and I sighed softly as I kissed the stranger back. I felt her lips part and her tongue gently moved the length of my upper lip, teasing me, silently begging for entrance to my mouth. I acquiesced and just as soon as my mouth opened slightly, the tongue shot into my mouth, starting a tiny dance with my own.
I wasn't even aware that my hands were still pressed firmly against her chest, nor that we were slowly moving backwards, deeper into the room. I was lost completely into the passionate kiss that only grew more hungry and frantic as time went on. It wasn't until the kiss broke and the girl pulled back completely from my grasp that I remembered that I was still in a dark room.
I heard… something that I couldn't place; some strange noise that sounded like fluttering but at the same time, wasn't fluttering. I focused on catching my breath for a moment but I had almost no time before the girl returned to me, leaning in and pressing her lips against mine again. The kiss returned almost immediately to its previous feverish pace and my hands immediately went back to their prior place on her chest. Her very naked chest.
I drew my hands back and staggered away from the girl as if I had been electrocuted only for her to reach out and tug me back to her body a second later. She kissed me again and pressed my hands back to her uncovered chest with more force this time. I was literally smashing her breasts with the palms of my hands but she didn't seem to care. Her tongue battled for dominance with mine and my hands slowly started to move in silent exploration, seemingly of their own free will.
Over the next many countless minutes, we continued to stand in the darkness, kissing each other with absolute unabashed hunger. Things came to a screeching halt when my hands finally left her breasts and started to wander towards her hips. Her very bare hips that had no clothing on them. I pulled away from her and sighed.
"Stop. I… I can't do this. I… I'm in love with someone else. It wouldn't be fair to her…" I said with a broken voice. I continued to back away slowly as my words came tumbling out of me. "She doesn't know… but I'm in love with her. I have been since I first met her on the train. She's perfect, my Hermi… uh, her… she is everything that I've ever wanted but I'm too much of a bloody chicken to tell her. Its not like I can just go up to her and tell her that I love her. What kind of psychopath does that when she literally has no clue that I even like her as more than just a friend? Sorry… but I have to go. I'm sorry again."
My back hit the wall and I started to feel for the door again. I didn't care if I had to rip it from the hinges, I was getting out of here! Just as my hands finally felt the familiar wood of the door, I paused at the sound of crying. Shit. I should have known better than to expect a smooth escape.
"Listen, I'm really sorry for this. I know it wasn't fair of me to allow this to go on for as long…" I stopped as the gentle hands once again grasped my shoulders. I winced as her hands once again found mine. She raised my hands up but instead of landing on her breasts, my hands found her face.
I could feel her tears on her wet face. Her hair that framed her face…
No… it couldn't be…
"Her… Hermione?"
"Yes," she whispered softly.
In that moment I felt scared. So bloody scared. What had been the purpose of this sick, twisted game? To make me feel my best friend up? To get me to kiss her unknowingly? To…
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew what the purpose was. It had been a setup from the beginning. This whole game was to get me to admit my feelings for her, to her. The only thing I didn't know was why she was naked.
"Why, Hermione? Why would you agree to this game? Why would you do the things we did?" I asked with a sigh.
She took a step forward and leaned in to kiss me again. It only lasted a brief moment before she pulled away and rested her forehead against mine. "Because I was tired, Harry. Tired of waiting for you to tell me that you love me. I couldn't get you to tell me no matter how hard I hinted that I love you too," she said softly.
"You love me?" I whispered in shock.
"I do, you oblivious idiot," she giggled. "As you said earlier, it was love at first sight, and it was for me too."
"Merlin! I'm so sorry, Mione. I…"
"Shhhh… its fine, my love. I know and now you know. We can move forward with that. Now are you just going to stand there in the darkness or can we move over to the bed that I've been trying to steer us towards for the last hour?"
"Bbb… bed?" I stammered.
"Yes, Harry. A bed. I want you, love. I want all of you. Make love to me, Harry. Make me yours forever," She whispered directly into my ear.
I felt myself being tugged forwards in the darkness again, this time I was more than willing to follow her. As we fell into the bed together, I had no doubt that I would be making Hermione mine tonight. I also had no doubt that I now owed Dean Thomas ten galleons.