Come Hither

Chapter 10

The Shocking Shag Shebang

"Finite Incantatem."

Harry blinked and shook his head as he sat up from the floor. He looked up to his two friends, who were wearing strange expressions on their faces. "Wha..." he croaked out dazedly. And then it all came rushing back to him. Contritely, he peeked out of his unruly fringe to Ron and Hermione, and the looks on their faces told him that they now knew he remembered. But they didn't look to be accusatory anyhow.

Looking around, he noticed that they were in exactly the same positions as they had been before he was Stupefied by Ron. So he might not have been out for too long. Maybe it wasn't too late to go and find out about Malfoy. What was wrong with him? He was still on about the Malfoy issue and here he had been out of control enough to be hexed by his best friends?!

Wearily getting up from the carpet floor, Harry made to the plush, scarlet couch in front of the hearth and plonked into it. His friends followed suit on either sides of him.

No-one spoke up for a few minutes. Harry didn't know if the silence was uncomfortable or not as he was knee-deep in his own guilt about his actions to think about that. What had come over him? How could he dare raise his wand to Hermione? To one of the people he loved, was supposed to protect? His head was resting on his one knee, hidden from view by his hands.

In the silent, still empty common room, although running water could be distantly heard somewhere, he apologized in a low, muffled voice.

"I'm sorry."

A few moments passed before he heard Hermione's voice. "It's okay, Harry."

Before any further exchange could take place, the first wandering soul walked into the common room. It was Ginny.

"Morning, everybody."

They all greeted her back, although Harry's words were barely audible. He heard the fourth year Weasley seat herself in a nearby couch. Even though he couldn't see what was going on, he could feel the tense silence.

Ron was first to make a move to clear the tension. "How's Dean?" he asked his sister.

Harry kept his head under his hands.

"He's alright."

More silence.

Shite.

"He's buggering Seamus."

Harry's head shot up involuntarily just as Ron started coughing. It became rather serious and eventually Ginny had to get up and slap him on the back a couple of times, all the while with an amused smile on her face.

Harry turned to Hermione, forgetting how ashamed he was of himself, and saw that she was laughing softly with a hand over her mouth. Their eyes met. They then joined each other in laughing at the red-head. That meant he was forgiven for his treacherous actions.

When Ron got himself under control, clearing his coarse throat a few times to check if it would work, he stood up. "I'm going to kill that bastard! Ginny, how can you let him cheat on you with- with- like...that?" He made vague hand gestures towards the fifth year boys' dormitory.

Ginny only smiled as she seated herself again, and then shrugged. "I can't really blame him."

Ron's eyes were nearly popping out of his head. "What do you mean you 'can't really blame him'! Is he not.... doing that to someone else?... Wait, I should be glad he's buggering someone else because that means he's not buggering you... Wait, that still doesn't make it right! You let him jump on anyone else like you two aren't involved?!" Harry thought he heard Ron also mutter something under about 'especially other boys'.

Ginny shook her head resolutely, dismissing the idea. The serious lack of emotion on her face said that she didn't mind too much. Harry had always admired how emotionally strong Ginny was. "Forget it, Ron. Think about it: Seamus had just confessed something very personal to him. Dean only wanted to help his friend, that's all."

This left silence in its wake.

Ron was frowning furiously at those words, royally confounded. And then his face broke into understanding, remembering Parvati's words. "Oh, he told Dean he was a fag."

"Ron," Hermione admonished.

Ginny nodded with a small smile on her lips.

Ron seemed wordless for a moment. "So, what, Seamus asked Dean if he could shag him in the arse?" His face screwed up in disgust. Harry was feeling quite uncomfortable as well.

"Ron," Hermione chastised reflexively again. Such crassness should be expected from him, really.

"Something like that," Ginny answered with a quirky curve of her lips. She seemed only amused by all of this rather than hurt.

"...And you're okay with it?"

Ginny sighed exasperatedly. "Yes, Ron, I'm okay with it. Dean is not going to leave me for him just because Seamus has a good arse on his back." Ron grimaced again and Harry blushed furiously. "If he did want to leave me, he would tell me face to face, or at least I expect him to." A stern glint flashed in her brown eyes.

It astounded Harry how emotionally mature Ginny was. Really, she was ahead of her years.

"Bloody hell." Ron plummeted into the couch, an awe-struck expression on his face.

"It's just helping out a friend." Ginny smirked at Ron, who scowled even more and crossed his arms.

Harry related the significance of that statement to his situation, feeling ashamed for his actions again.

"Helping out a friend," Ron muttered, "yeah, real mates, they are. It's not like Harry and I do-do-do..." Merlin, Ron was insufferable in the absolute entirety of the sense of the word. Harry looked down at the carpet, cheeks incandescent with heat; Ron was looking similarly flushed, turning a bright pink, which clashed horribly with the freckles and red hair. They didn't dare look at each other or at anything else. In order to save them from this moment of complete and utter embarrassment, Ron accused rather with exaggerated with disgust, "They're probably doing it right now up there!" and turned to the stairs, eyeing the dormitory door apprehensively.

And just then, as if on cue, a loud but quickly cut off moan sounded from the fifth year boys' dormitory.

Ron, Harry and Hermione gaped. Even Ginny's eyes widened, despite her nonchalant campaign.

Ron started spluttering, his eyes threatening to pop out of their sockets once more.

Hermione was sharing one of those girl looks with Ginny, and the both of them wearing awed smiles.

Harry... Harry felt a strange pang in his chest. That feeling one got when one saw a blue movie for the first time, or saw animals going at it, or discovered their parents doing it, or caught someone wanking. That feeling of one's naivety being violated like that, violating that innocent belief, that in the world there were things that happened, and sex was one of them. It was an awed, unsettling, intrigued feeling. Even though he had seen this type of sex in his mind, however disturbing it was, just knowing it was happening so close to him and to people he knew - Dean and Seamus - it violated a certain niche. It was strange and disconcerting all at the same time.

Maybe it was more about the sound, just the exact sound of the moan. Maybe the moan was the thing disturbing him. Another boy making sounds like that. What about a girl? What if Hermione made that sound? No, he didn't think it would be disturbing because girls are the species inclined to be soft in all aspects, thus making soft noises like that would be natural. But another boy, what sense did that make? Whoever was up there should have made grunting noises or something equally guttural. But he hadn't, he had released a soft, breathy, pleasure-riddled, almost beseeching moan. For another bloke to go down to such levels to do that... Just how good was he feeling? How much pleasure could sex give? What was sex like?! Harry was intrigued.

He swallowed a couple of times, trying to get things right in his mind again. He felt strange, like the world had become dirtier somehow. That sound wasn't going to go away anytime soon. It would haunt him until the day he died. Maybe that wasn't too far down the line.

"Well, they sound to be having fun."

"Hermione!" Ron screeched, absolutely scandalized.

Hermione only laughed at him.

Had Ron ever had sex? Had Hermione ever had sex? Had Ginny ever had sex? He looked at all of them. Suddenly they looked different, they looked... questionable, less innocent, more... perfidious, secretive, and enigmatic. What if he was the only virgin here? These questions ran through Harry's mind, having been inspired by 'the moan'. Now he was questioning everybody around him. Who had sex in this school? Everybody. And why did they do it? Because it felt amazing. That was the question of all questions. How amazing could it feel? Why did it feel so good? What happens? What does your body do? How does it react? Harry had absolutely no idea of it. He had no answers for his questions, not a single vestige of a clue. Merlin, he was totally clueless. What did sex feel like? Harry felt his prick give a thrust in his jeans.

"Ron, are you going to give Dean and Seamus any trouble?" Hermione asked in a soft, dangerous lilt. This could be taken as a polite warning.

Ron looked down petulantly, guilty as charged. "I'm not so sure about Dean," he harrumphed.

Ginny shook her head. "Leave him alone, Ron. He's not going to hurt me."

The redhead grumbled but didn't say anything further.

Harry looked up to the clock to see his that the time was just after half nine. Then he remembered he had a meeting with Dumbledore. His heartbeat suddenly spurred. Maybe he could ask Dumbledore about the letter, assuming Malfoy had divulged it to the man, of course. But if that was the case, Dumbledore probably wouldn't tell him anything about it, ever being the one to preserve anyone's confidence. Then he would just have to rant and rave at him until he got the truth out of him. Why was this so important to him anyway? Why was Malfoy's situation important to him enough to make him betray his friends like he just did, and to inspire so much curiosity? Because he saw what Malfoy went through and he didn't want him to have to go through that terrible experience again. Nobody deserved to.

Now that he had remembered about the meeting, he couldn't wait for ten o'clock, even though there were about twenty-five minutes to go. What could he do to occupy his mind?

He got up from the couch and made for the dormitory.

"Where are you going, Harry?" he heard Hermione's query from behind.

"I'm just going to get a book to read." Useless Magic to be precise. If the book had such things as Combinations Spells, surely there were other interesting things in there as well.

Belatedly, he remembered what had just happened up there in that dormitory. The moan. His steps faltered embarrassedly on the stairs. He turned around and saw Ron, Hermione, and Ginny giving him strange looks.

"You, reading on a Sunday?" Hermione deadpanned with a raise of an eyebrow.

Harry flushed a deep crimson. Horrified, he said, "It's not like that! I'm not going up there to see what's going on!" They were having sex, that's what was going on, as simple as that. And honestly, he hadn't decided to go up there for that. He really just wanted to idly go over the book.

Seeing their faces unchanging in their scepticism, Harry turned around and stomped all the way up into the dormitory in indignation. When he entered, he caught just a glimpse of Dean's naked dark-skinned arse before it delved behind the privacy of his own curtains. This really drove home the fact that they had been having sex beyond a doubt. That disconcerting, violating pang hit him in his chest again. Sex. It was a strange thing, and disturbingly intriguing.

Trying to banish the images and their connotations away, Harry made for his trunk, opened the lid and took out the relatively thin, green hard-cover book, and walked out right after, feeling that the room was soiled somehow. It would never be the same again. Sex was violating to a naive virgin. It sounded terrifying, enigmatic and enthralling all at the same time.

Harry came down the stairs, brandishing the book, not overtly so but enough that they took notice that he really had gone up there to just get the book. Ron saw what he was holding and stood up to sit next to him.

Hermione looked over to them. "What are you looking for exactly?" she asked.

Harry shrugged. "Nothing in particular, just looking over it." He shot another glance at the clock.

"What's that?" Ginny asked, referring to the book, seeing it for the first time.

"Useless Magic: A Collection of the Most Marginal, Mundane Magic Imaginable," answered Hermione. She had caught Harry glancing at the clock. Boy was Harry an enigma. She was getting tired of having to always solve him. "Weren't you supposed to meet Dumbledore at eight today?" she asked.

Harry shook his head. "Postponed to ten o'clock." He looked up at the clock again and back to the book.

"Why?" Hermione inquired.

What to say? How on earth could he begin to answer that?

He shrugged his shoulders as he paged through. Ron didn't mind.

While the girls talked all on their own, he and Ron were mentally cataloguing every new spell they learnt, no matter how trivial. One never knew. Nail-Clipping and Superficial Perforating Charms could come in handy one day.

It seemed time wasn't on his side - the minute hand was moving so slowly. Harry watched as it struck 09:34, 09:37, 09:39, 09:41, 09:45 (Yes!), 09:45, 09:45, 09:45, 09:46... At 09:46, Hermione appeared to decide she had had enough of seeing Harry's head looking up to the clock and down again at the book only seconds apart, dragging him out of the common room without a word and quietly ambled beside him in a deliberately slow pace to the headmaster's office. It was a little awkward between them but not too much, though.

Harry felt Hermione deserved at least part of the truth; he had threatened the girl with his bloody wand.

"Draco is suffering badly, and I suspect he's going to suffer again tonight, that's why I needed to go to Dumbledore's office and find out about the letter he got this morning."

Hermione looked a little taken aback by the unsolicited confession. "Is You-Know-Who torturing him in your visions?" she asked tentatively to the best of her knowledge.

Harry gave a wan smile. "Something like that."

"Harry," she said cautiously, "what do you think you could do if the letter was what you're thinking it is?"

Harry had to think about that. What could he do? Maybe Dumbledore was organizing a sanctuary for Draco so he wouldn't have to return to that sick bastard. But he, a fifth year Hogwarts student, a mere teenager possessing no special authority or power... what could he do?

He didn't answer Hermione; he didn't have an answer.

Taking this silence as a bad omen, Hermione steered the conversation to more open matters, and they talked lightly and amicably until they finally reached the golden phoenix gargoyle close to the stroke of ten. Harry bade Hermione bye as she turned around to go back to Gryffindor Tower.