Hermione and the Afternoon Visitor

Hermione Granger pulled the collar of her coat closer up around her neck to keep out the snow that had begun to fall while she was in class. Clutching her books tighter to her chest, she quickened her steps hurrying across campus in an attempt to reach her residence hall before her nose froze.

"Of course my last class of the term would run late, and it would start to snow halfway through," she said to herself, thinking that now would be a really good time to be able to put a Warming Charm on her gloves and scarf. Unfortunately, being on a Muggle university campus meant that she had to do things the Muggle way for a while.

Crack!

Hermione looked up at the sound to see a familiar tall redhead appear out of nowhere several yards away, trying and totally failing to look casual and non-suspicious.

"Ron!" she hissed, running over to him. "What in heaven's name are you doing? You can't just... just Apparate in here like this! People saw you, you know!"

"Oh, they did?" said Ron, looking in the direction of a group of girls who were eyeing them oddly. He gave them an overenthusiastic wave, to which they responded by giggling and walking off. "See? No harm done!"

"But you shouldn't have!" she insisted, steering him in the direction of her residence hall. "What are you doing here, anyway? And for heaven's sake, where is your coat?"

Ron grinned. "Well, I know that me and Harry were going to come see you next week but I thought since it was the last day of term and all, your friends might be leaving and you'd be all lonely and stuff so I thought I'd surprise you! And, er... I don't have a Muggle coat, and I thought it wouldn't be good to wear my cloak, with Muggles around and all, might look a bit odd. It wasn't snowing in Ottery St. Catchpole so I thought I'd be okay with just an extra jumper."

"Oh, Ron, honestly, don't you ever think?" she huffed, pulling off her gloves. "Here, put these on at least. We've still got a ways to go."

"Hermione, your gloves aren't going to fit me. You've got these teeny little hands and mine are...well, not teeny."

"Just shush and put them on, they're charmed, okay?" said Hermione in a whisper, even though no one was even remotely within earshot. "They'll fit."

Ron pulled on Hermione's gloves, which did, indeed, stretch to fit. "Wicked!" he said, wiggling his fingers. "I should have known you'd put a charm on them like that to make them - "

"Will you hush?" Hermione hissed. "You can't say things like that! Don't you ever think?"

"Yeah, I do think, Hermione," he said, shuffling his feet through the light drifts. "I didn't wear my cloak 'cos it would look odd, didn't I?"

"True." She clasped her books tighter to her chest.

Her residence hall was indeed half deserted; most people had left as soon as their last class was over (or skipped their last class entirely, she was quite sure). The girl on duty at the desk raised an eyebrow as she passed, likely because Hermione rarely brought a boy into the hall even though her suitemates had boys over on a regular basis. What business is it of hers if my best friend wants to visit? Hermione thought irritably, as they walked through the lobby to the elevators.

"I'm on the fifth floor," she said to Ron, who was closer to the control panel.

Ron looked at the button covered panel and cleared his throat. "Fifth floor, Hermione Granger's room."

Hermione bit her lip to keep from laughing.

He scowled and tapped the small glass window where a red "G" for "ground floor" was clearly visible. "Oy, is anyone in there? Hello?"

Tap tap tap.

Ron turned to Hermione. "Er, Hermione? Should we go tell that girl at the desk that this elemvator thingy is broken?"

Hermione carefully avoided looking him in the eye, trying not to giggle. "It's not broken, Ron. You have to push the button for the floor you want."

"Hmph," said Ron. "Seems bloody inefficient to me!" He turned back to the control panel. "Okay, fifth floor... so...." He then proceeded to push all the buttons between the first and fifth floors.

She said a silent prayer of thanks that they were the only two in the elevator as it began to stop and open at every floor. "Next time, all you have to do is press the button for the floor you want. You don't have to push every one."

"If I don't push them all, how does the elemvator know how to get to the fifth floor?"

Hermione barely managed to contain her giggles as they stepped out onto the fifth floor and headed down the hallway to her room. "It just knows, Ron, trust me."

Her roommate had already apparently left, as there was only half the usual mess on that side of the room. Hermione switched on the lamp, put her books away, toed off her shoes and left them by the door, and hung her coat on its hook. Ron's jumper and hair were liberally coated in snow. "Here, Ron, let's get that snow off your clothes," she said, pulling her wand out of the hidden pocket she kept it in while at university.

"Do it the Muggle way," he said, shaking the snow out of his hair like a big ginger puppy.

"What? Why?"

"Because I want to know how you do things here. How you get by without doing things with magic."

"Well," said Hermione, pocketing her wand, "if clothes are wet, we just hang them to dry."

Ron blushed. "Er...."

"You're the one who said you wanted to do it the Muggle way!" she snapped, momentarily flustered. She'd never seen Ron anything less than fully dressed and the idea of it made her nervous.

"Yeah - yeah, I did."

She stepped closer to him, fingering the edge of his jumper. It was damp from the melted snow, and she could feel warmth radiating from underneath it.

"Er.. okay, so, where should I put it, after I take it off?" said Ron hoarsely.

"You can hang that on the back of my desk chair to dry," she said, turning away to dig in her closet. She emerged with a pair of jeans and a school sweatshirt for herself, and an extra blanket, which she handed to Ron. "I'm going to change too... you can, er, wrap up in that."

Hermione ducked into the adjoining bathroom to change before Ron could see how red her face was. What kind of person Apparates to see someone and doesn't wear a proper coat or bring a change of clothes or anything?, she thought, shoving her feet into her dry jeans. Honestly! He could catch pneumonia running around in the snow without a coat and sitting around in damp clothes. It would serve him right, too.

Ron was sitting crosslegged on the edge of her bed, wrapped up in her blanket. It was pink and fuzzy and clashed horribly with his face, which was bright red. One of his knees was sticking out from under his blanket and she felt her face burn again. It's his KNEE, for heaven's sake. Knees, you know, that joint between your hip and your ankle? We all have them!

She spread her clothes out on the back of her roommate's chair, and saw that Ron had not only taken off both his jumpers, but his jeans as well; they were damp with melted snow halfway up to the faded knees. She took an extraordnarily long time arranging her clothes on the back of the chair, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles and picking off imaginary fuzz, because as soon as she stopped she'd have to go sit beside him, and she'd never sat next to a Ron who was only wearing a blanket.

The bedsprings squeaked and she heard Ron get to his feet. "Look, I can go," he said in an uncomfortable sort of voice. "I'll just wait and come back next week with Harry, and I'll make sure we Apparate somewhere out of the way and bring proper coats and gloves and extra clothes and not talk to the elemvators or push all the buttons and stuff."

"No! Don't!" Hermione said, gripping the back of the chair tightly. "I - no, I don't want you to go."

"I just got the idea - that, well, I'm sort of annoying you and stuff and you wish I hadn't come."

Hermione shook her head, still not looking at him. "No, I'm glad you came."

"Okay then." Ron's voice sounded much closer this time.

Hermione swallowed hard. "Why did you come? I mean, why didn't you just wait till next week and come with Harry?"

Ron was quiet for a long time, and then she felt his hand, very tentatively, rest on her shoulder. "I couldn't wait till next week."

"Oh..." Her heart was pounding so hard it almost hurt, and she wasn't sure why.

"I mean, I missed you, and I wanted to see you, and when I thought about waiting another whole week to come up ... well, I didn't like it."

"You didn't?"

"No. I just had to see you." Another long silence. "And I thought that maybe something I wanted to do might not be good to do with Harry here."

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

Hermione took a deep breath. "And... what were you... wanting to do?"

Ron's hand tightened ever so slightly on her shoulder, and she turned around; his free hand went to her chin, tilting it upwards to look her in the eye, and she barely heard the soft swish of the blanket as it slid from his shoulders and hit the floor. It seemed like an achingly long time that he looked at her, his dark blue eyes locked with hers, his thumb lightly brushing her skin.

"This," he said, and very gently brought his lips to meet hers.

"Oh," she whispered, and the word felt funny with her lips touching his, so she decided not to say anything else and just kiss him back. Her hands seemed to have a mind of their own, going up around his shoulders, her fingers curling around the curve of his neck as if that were where they were supposed to be. She could feel his breath on her cheek, like a bit of his soul, mingling with hers, and she pulled him closer. He was so very warm and she wanted to kiss him again -

Ron suddenly broke away, flushing, and reached down for the blanket. "I'm sorry," he gasped, obviously just now realising he was standing there in nothing but his boxers.

Hermione closed the gap between them with a step and took the blanket from him, dropping it back to the floor. "No sorries," she said quietly. She reached up to brush her fingers over his cheek, over the freckles that she'd watched grow more numerous over the years, and down over his throat and across his collarbone. Her fingertips mapped out the unfamiliar territory of his body, and he let her, his eyes on her the entire time; the only sound in the room their increasingly laboured breathing.

"Hermione, I..." Ron's voice was slightly ragged, and he reached for the hem of her sweatshirt with shaky hands. She ceased her explorations long enough to let him pull it off, and then she shook her head to get her wayward hair out of her eyes.

"Let me," said Ron, and he brushed her hair back, touching her as though she were made of glass and could shatter with the slightest pressure. When his lips followed his fingers, kissing gently along her hairline, his hands cradling her face, she closed her eyes and wondered why it had taken them so long to realise this. Why had it taken them so long to realise that they could make each other feel this way?

Ron's hands were skimming over the fabric of her bra now, tentatively, as if he were asking permission, and she reached behind to undo the clasp as if to give him the permission he was too shy to ask for.

She couldn't stop touching him; gliding her fingers over his skin was almost as wonderful as the way he was touching her. He was soft and warm and yet very solid, which did not surprise her. Ron had always been the solid one, the one that she and Harry could lean on when they needed to, although she had not really admitted this to herself until now. It seemed an eternity that they stood there, discovering each other's secret places and ticklish spots, things that made the other close their eyes or suck in a breath in a way that said to do it again.

Ron's fingers dipped under the waistband of her jeans as he fiddled with the button, and his knuckles brushed against her belly. Her jeans suddenly felt very hot and uncomfortable and she almost whimpered with the need to have them off, and quickly. No sooner had she helped him push them off her hips and wriggled out of them did he catch her by the waist and stagger backwards to her narrow bed, half falling, half sprawling onto it.

"Whoops," said Ron, grinning up at her. "There's a bed here."

"Indeed there is," said Hermione. "Whatever shall we do with it?" She felt bold, reckless, and totally devoid of logic, and knelt between his thighs, sliding her hands slowly upward till they disappeared under the hem of his boxers.

Ron closed his eyes. "I'm sure... we can... find something..." he panted.

Hermione wasn't entirely sure what she was doing, but she had a pretty good idea of how things could work. She hooked her fingers in the waistband of his boxers and pulled them off, sliding her own knickers off as well, and stretched out on top of him. Their difference in height was hardly noticeable like this; they seemed to fit in every possible way that mattered. She could feel him, hot and pulsing against her belly, and the thought made her dizzy; she dropped her head to his shoulder, pressing a kiss into his neck.

Ron rubbed her back with slow, gentle movements, trying to reassure her even though she could feel his nervousness in his hands. "Hermione... this... you... I want this more than anything right now, but if you say no, it's fine, we can stop..."

She raised her head to look at him, tracing his lower lip with her finger. "If we stop, I'll die," she whispered.

He didn't answer. Instead he flipped her over onto her back so quickly she thought he must have used magic, kissing her until she was breathless, his hands exploring the last bits of her body he hadn't reached before.

"Oh, Ron," she moaned, when his fingers dipped between her thighs, followed by several other rather incoherent sounds she didn't even recognise as coming from her own throat.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked, eyes round with concern.

"No, but I'll be hurting you if you stop," she gasped.

He chuckled and went back to what he was doing, and when his fingers were joined a minute later by his lips she almost forgot how to breathe.

It was the most maddening and exhilirating sensation she'd ever experienced; and her mind drifted back to fourth year Defence Against the Dark Arts, when the fake Professor Moody had put the Imperius Curse on each of them in turn to see if they could fight it. It was that same weightless, curiously blissful feeling, but with a sense of a surge underneath, like she were riding a wave into the shore and waiting for it to break, to crash and burst in a shower of sparks.

She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think; her whole universe had condensed down to this moment, this feeling, swirling around and around and then exploding through her whole body with what seemed like a tremendous crash.

"Shh..." said Ron - he had moved up beside her again and put his arms around her, holding her carefully. "Shhh..."

Her senses were still reeling, but she could feel him pressed against her thigh, and she wanted him to feel the way she'd just felt, so she pulled him atop her again and kissed him. He groaned against her lips, shaking slightly as he returned her kiss, and then broke off for a moment to reach for his wand.

"Sorry," he said, looking sheepish, "but I'm not trusting this to...er... Muggle stuff."

"Oh no, definitely not."

Ron stumbled slightly over the slippery vowels of the contraceptive charm and then tossed his wand aside again. "I don't want to hurt you," he said.

"I know."

It did hurt, for a moment anyway, but it didn't matter; she held him close to her and they moved together like they'd done this a million times before. Hermione suspected this was because they knew each other so well in every other way but this, and because of that it felt right. It felt right and natural, and Hermione held Ron as he'd held her earlier when it was over.

"Hermione..." He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, his hand resting on her hip.

She had an inkling of what he was going to say, but she didn't want to hear it; something fierce and huge and terrifying had welled up in her chest and she didn't want to complicate the moment with words. She put a finger to his lips.

"Shh, don't talk."

Ron reached up and covered her hand with his, moving her finger from his lips and resting his forehead against hers.

"I won't say it then," he whispered. "But you know I do. I reckon I always have."