Dumbledore, Please Explain Your Twisted Logic!

Islander2

Story Summary:
Dumbledore is putting on a play about the four Hogwarts Founders. Does anyone get the parts they want? Of course not! Mayhem ensues, complete with comedy, romance, insanity, tragedy, Slut!Draco, Harry/Ginny spats, Macho!Ron with a twist, Smart!Goyle, and some very irate parents. Oh, and some nude wrestling, too. Cue the curtain! Slightly AU

Chapter 18 - Skinny Dipping

Chapter Summary:
As if Harry hasn't had enough nudity to deal with already, Ron insists they go skinny dipping. What's worse, they run into someone... or should I say sometwo? Or maybe even somethree...
Posted:
09/10/2008
Hits:
547


Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: In trying to keep this story somewhat British, I have measured the temperature in Centigrade. So when I say 5 degrees above freezing, I mean 41 degrees F, not 37 degrees F.

Chapter Eighteen

Skinny Dipping

If there was one thing that terrified Harry, it was the idea of Ron's reaction to the breakup. When Michael Corner had broken up with Ginny, Ron had put a dent in his head long and deep enough for him to stick his wand in it. When Dean got together with Ginny, Ron beat him, too, then beat him even harder when he ended it. Even Harry had gotten a couple roundhouses to the head when he took Ginny's virginity. "But she took my virginity, too!" Harry had argued at the time. "Why aren't you beating her up as well?" Naturally, the argument didn't work, just as it wouldn't work this time. Ron was going to pummel Harry to a pulp, no matter whose fault it was.

The raven-haired Gryffindor boy sat silently on his bed and shut the curtains, waiting as the sun went down and gradually left the room in darkness. After half-an-hour of waiting, Harry realized that Ginny probably wasn't going to run to Ron right after she broke up with her boyfriend, so Harry heaved a sigh and pulled out his Transfiguration text and began reading over a few chapters he had skipped last month.

A few minutes later the door to the dormitory opened, and Harry jumped a mile. As it turned out, it was only Seamus. Harry stayed silent behind the curtain, and Seamus rustled around the room quite a bit before he started making groaning noises, which was when Harry realized that he was obviously masturbating over some of his fetish magazines. Harry wrinkled his nose and tried to ignore the explicit sound effects that floated through his curtain, but he wasn't very successful. Thankfully, the ordeal was over in a few minutes, and Seamus left the room without ever knowing that someone had overheard him.

Thirty minutes later the door opened again, and Harry stifled a startled gasp. This time, however, it was only Neville. So Harry stayed behind his curtains and waited for his round-faced roommate to leave the room. Much to his chagrin, however, Neville got into his own bed and drew the curtains. For ten minutes there was no noise--actually, there was noise, but it was so quiet that Harry thought it was merely Neville shifting on his bed. But a little groan and a gasp from behind Longbottom's curtains was all Harry needed to hear before he realized that Neville, too, had been masturbating, though a lot more quietly than Seamus. Afterwards, Neville traipsed into the bathroom, and a few minutes later he too left the room. Harry tutted to himself and cursed the amount of distractions that filled the boys' dormitory.

At around 9:00 Harry put away his Transfiguration book and began writing an essay for Charms. At the same time, the door opened suddenly, and Harry left a blot at the top of his parchment the size of his fist. As it turned out, it was only Dean Thomas. Like Harry's other dorm mates, he also shut himself inside his four-poster bed. Harry tried to strain his ears to catch any signs of wayward noises. If he listened closely enough, he thought he could hear a grunt or the sound of slippage, but perhaps it was just his imagination. Whatever Dean was doing on his bed, he was out of the room in fifteen minutes as well, leaving Harry alone for the fourth time that evening.

As Harry finished up the essay, he began to grow sleepy. Welcoming the natural invitation to avoid facing Ron for another day, he let his head fall to his pillow even before could put the paper in his bag.

*********

"Harry! Harry!"

Hours later, Harry got a rude awakening as someone slipped through his bed curtains and shook him repeatedly on the shoulder while hissing into his ear.

"Harry!"

"What?" he groaned, rolling onto his Charms essay.

"Wake up, Harry."

"Ron?" Harry was suddenly wide awake, and in one second he had retreated against the headboard with his palms raised upward to shield the blows from Ron's fist.

The only thing was, the blows never came. Instead, Ron gave him a weird look and said, "What're you doing?"

"Just get it over with," Harry squeaked, squinting his eyes shut.

"Get what over with?" Ron said mildly.

"Beating me up," Harry replied faintly before he retreated even deeper into his pillow.

Ron's face dawned with comprehension. "Ah, so you've broken up with Ginny," he figured. "Finally." He swung his fist at Harry's head but stopped an inch away. "Ha ha, made you flinch."

"Wait, what do you mean by finally?" Harry said, his face wrinkling in confusion. "I don't get it--aren't you supposed to be mad at me?"

"I don't see why I should be mad," Ron replied, "except you did draw it waaaay out. That was mean of you: You should have broken it off a month ago when you two realized it wasn't working."

"But..." Harry stammered, slowly inching forward. "But aren't you going to beat me up or something? Don't you always do that?"

"Ah, that was a thing of the past," Ron said casually. "Ginny's a big girl; she doesn't need me policing her boyfriends. Though if you really want, I could ask her if she'd like me to beat you up."

"Oh Merlin, no!" Harry said quickly. "Right now she'd probably encourage you."

"Yeah, well," Ron huffed. "You did string it out rather painfully. It's no wonder she's so upset with you. I'd have socked you across the ear if I was her."

Harry managed a tiny smile through his wide, worried expression. "So... so everything's still cool? You aren't like mad at me or something?"

"Hey," Ron said, pummeling Harry's shoulder a little, "my relationships with you and Ginny aren't dependent on how you two get along. She's my sister, and you're my best friend. As long as you go back and apologize to her for being such a git, we'll get along fine."

"Yeah," Harry said hesitantly, not liking the idea of facing Ginny again. "Yeah, okay... So why did you wake me up in the first place, if it wasn't to beat the shit out of me?"

"Oh, I was going to go skinny dipping," Ron said brightly, "and I was looking for someone to join me."

For a long moment the room was silent. The snores from the other three boys seemed especially loud. A stray leaf blew flat across the window and whispered naggingly against the glass. And Harry sat in his bed and goggled at his best friend. "Ron!" he hissed. "Are you crazy? It's freezing outside!"

"Nah, it's actually pretty warm tonight--for November, that is. Five degrees above freezing."

"You're insane?" Harry whispered, keeping his voice down so as not to wake the others. "That's cold as hell!"

"And that makes no sense," Ron whispered back. "Hell is pretty damn anything but cold. Now stop being a baby and go with me. I'd be lonely going all by myself, and there's really no point if there's no one to share the crazy moment with."

"Hey, I've had my moments before, but I'm not that crazy," Harry said. "I take after Dumbledore in terms of magical power, not in terms of depraved senility."

"What's so senile about jumping in a lake at 2:00 in the morning?" Ron asked reasonably. "If anything, it proves how much of a man you are to brave the elements. You do want to prove you're brave, don't you?"

"I killed Voldemort!" Harry said loudly, and Ron shushed him. "You can't get much braver than that."

"Then this should be a walk in the park," Ron promised. "I mean, look at it logically: first there's jumping naked in a lake in late autumn at night, then there's the Cruciatus curse. Which one is worse?"

"Why does everyone assume that the Cruciatus is automatically the more painful option!" Harry lamented, throwing his hands in the air.

"Uh... because it is?" Ron said, laughing.

"But I took that Cruciatus curse for a reason!" Harry argued. "I was dueling with Voldemort over the fate of the Wizarding World, and I couldn't afford to fold under pain, even if it was worse than hell. If I hadn't been able to bear it, then we wouldn't be here now. Or worse, you'd all be his slaves, and Ginny and Hermione and Luna would have all been raped a thousand ways to the year 3000. But skinny dipping? There's no point to it! It's needless pain."

"Needless?" Ron scoffed. "No point? Harry, let's look at this from a proper angle: You never grew up in a proper home. You lucked out with the fucking Dursleys, and it's a wonder you didn't become a bitter young man after the way the treated you. Because of that, and because of the way my family treated you, you've always wanted a family of your own."

"Hey, now," Harry said uncomfortably, "your family's amazing. I love you all."

"I know that," Ron said. "But, as amazing as we undoubtedly are, we're not your flesh and blood. And I know you long for that. Don't think I haven't noticed the way your face glows every time you look at baby pictures! You want kids, and you want lots of them."

Harry rubbed his palm around the bedspread and jiggled his foot and tried to still the tremble in his lip. "Well, of course I want that!" he said. "But what the hell does that have to do with us going skinny dipping?"

"When you're surrounded by them," Ron said with deathly seriousness, "your kids and your grandkids, and they ask for a story, which will they like more? Hearing about you suffering under the Cruciatus or laughing over your mad skinny dipping escapade that took place past midnight on the verge of winter?"

Half a minute later, the two of them were heading down to the Common Room, completely naked--Ron had insisted they go nude from the get-go, thus adding to the element of the forbidden. Harry had agreed after much protesting, but even now he was still wondering why he let himself get into this situations.

"There's no one in the Common Room," Ron whispered gleefully as he peeked through the doorway at the bottom of the spiral staircase. "C'mon, let's make a dash for it!"

Harry shivered a little in the cool night air. "Are you sure you don't want me to pop back upstairs and get the Invisibility Cloak?"

"Don't be silly, mate," Ron laughed. "What kind of excitement in there in that?"

Harry was about to point out that the walk from the dormitory to the Common Room was too much excitement to handle already, but then he suddenly remembered that using the Invisibility Cloak would involve his naked body pressed up against the naked body of his best friend, so he kept his mouth shut.

Ron was the first to make the dash across the Common Room. Harry followed shortly after, his stomach squirming nervously as he felt the heat from the fireplace against his bare skin. He reached the portrait hole in four seconds flat, then hissed desperately at Ron, "Quick! Let's get out of here before someone comes downstairs to check out the noise!"

So they ducked out through the portrait hole and into the empty halls of Hogwarts. They had a view of a couple flights of stairs and a number of adjoining hallways, and while they saw no living being in any direction, the place still felt unnervingly alive. Most of the portraits were sleeping, but a stippled night owl flew down the walls, and a group of young vagrants played a game of poker in one grimy painting a couple yards down from Gryffindor Tower.

"Remind me again why we're doing this," Harry said grumpily as he took the stairs at quick clatter.

"For the heck of it, why else?" Ron replied. "Why do we need a reason for everything?"

"Well, I guess we don't," Harry said doubtfully, "but this is just... weird! You would've never done this before. A month ago, you'd have considered running through the halls of Hogwarts in the nude as an assault on your manhood."

"The only thing assaulting my manhood right now is these damned drafts!" Ron said, chuckling at himself as they found the staircase that led down to the Entrance Hall.

"I'm being serious here!" Harry groaned. "You've changed recently. You can't deny it."

"I have," Ron said, slowing his pace but not stopping.

Ever since Ron had given up his macho front, Harry and Ron recognized the change but never addressed it, preferring instead to come to an unspoken agreement that they were still best friends and that they'd remain so. But there was one question of burning curiosity that Harry just had to bring up. So he caught up with Ron, grabbed his shoulder, and stilled the both of them. "Ron," he said slowly and carefully, "are you gay?"

Ron looked directly into his best friend's eyes and said, easily but firmly, "No."

"You're not gay," Harry clarified, though there was still the hint of a question in his tone. "So this change in attitude isn't you coming out of the closet..."

"Depends on which closet you're talking about," Ron said. "No, I'm not in the homosexual closet, and I never have been. But for the longest time I was in another closet--a personality closet, I suppose you could call it."

"What does that even mean?" Harry asked intently.

Ron continued walking down the stairs, though this time his pace was unhurried. "Well... I was hiding behind a fake version of me because I was scared that people wouldn't appreciate my real personality. Growing up in a household of six boys, the idea of the manly man was highly revered in my family, at least among my dad and my brothers. I mean, Bill is a manly man--he breaks curses for a living, and he has a freakin' earring and long hair! Then there's Charlie, who works with dragons. Fred and George are totally wild and run a joke shop, which isn't the same type of manly as taming dragons, but it certainly is manly nonetheless, in a crazy sort of fashion. Even Percy... Well, he isn't exactly tough and 'manly,' but he is at least conventional and hard working. We spent all our childhoods being manly: We played Quidditch and wrestled and dared each other to do crazy things and belched and farted and made crude jokes. And you know what? It was fun--it really was."

"But..." Harry supplemented.

"But, well... what I didn't like was when one of us did something that could be considered 'girly'--you know, helping Mum with the cooking or the cleaning, or playing dress-up with Ginny, or crying over anything at all--the others made it out to be an act deserving of endless ridicule. I made breakfast in bed for Mum and Dad once, and I put on an apron and everything, and for the rest of the day Fred and George kept offering to enroll me in Home Ec courses in the local secondary school."

"That... sucks," Harry said lamely, wishing he was better at comforting people than he was. "Your brothers shouldn't have done that."

"Ah, they all grew up," Ron said heavily. "They were only boys, after all. But then I was in Hogwarts surrounded by a hundred immature boys and girls, and once more I felt the pressure to conform to the male stereotypes. It wasn't bad most of the time--heck, I love playing Quidditch and grossing myself out over Bertie Bott's Every-Flavored Beans. But it really rankled when I had to quash my inner sensitivity and act boorish. In fact, to fit in with the other boys around here, I had to be kind of a dick."

"So I guess you got sick of it."

"Duh," Ron said, managing a chuckle. They had reached the Entrance Hall and were now heading for the double doors that led to the cold outside. "I was furious when Dumbledore made me do the makeup and Hufflepuff. I was already insecure about my masculinity, and I was afraid this would be the death blow on the very thing my family has valued since I was old enough to remember their faces. But as I got into the role, and as I discovered how gratifying it was to help Clifford gain some confidence, I finally realized that I'd be happier if I quit my macho front and braved whatever misconceptions people made of me. I know now that true masculinity comes from doing what you feel is right and not being ashamed about it, no matter what anybody thinks."

"Yeah, about that," Harry said sheepishly, "I didn't mean to assume things about you just because of the way you acted. I was just... well, curious. I mean, I would have been totally fine if you were gay, but I just wanted to know, just to be sure... Merlin, I'm screwing this up, aren't I?"

Ron laughed heartily, pulled open the doors, and pushed Harry out into the cold night air. "Worry not, Harry," he said. "It's all forgiven."

"Holy fucking Merlin!" Harry yelped as the frigid night air hit his skin. "Wanking raping ballsack! Ron, it's cold as frozen fuck! Why the hell did you want to do this?"

Ron skipped out into the open and shut the double doors behind him. He relished a shiver and said, "Man oh man, what a night! Doesn't this make you feel alive?"

"It makes me feel like I'm about to freeze to death!" Harry retorted, bending at the waist to get his chest closer to his knees. Ron ran down the path and plucked up a stick, then ran back up and whacked Harry across his protruding bottom.

"OW!" Harry shrieked. "Ooh, Ron, you're in for a world of hurt now!" And, picking up his own stick, he chased after his red-haired friend. They ran down the steep, rocky path that led through the grounds before they turned onto the grass and ran to the edge of the lake, hollering gleefully in the night. Neither one was particularly worried about someone coming out and finding them, as there were plenty of owls and wolves adding their own contributions to the night's noisy soundtrack. The odds of a teacher hearing their yelps and then actually trudging outdoors to find them were rather slim.

When they reached the beech tree by the edge of the lake, however, Harry and Ron were in for a rough shock. Someone stepped out of the shadows and turned to face them, whispering softly, "Well, well, well, what have we here?"

Harry froze in shock. Suddenly he was acutely aware of the cold night air against his bare penis and buttocks. Inwardly he groaned, and outwardly his face fell. He was hard-pressed to imagine any situation more embarrassing than being caught outdoors naked in the middle of the night--with another boy, no less. He was mentally counting the number of detentions it would take to appease such a breach in the rules, hoping desperately that this wouldn't lead to expulsion.

Then the person stepped out from the shadows, and everything changed. It was Luna Lovegood. She was dressed into a pale pink chemise cut low at the neckline and barely long enough to reach the middle of her thigh. It being a cold night and the nightgown being so thin, even single line of Luna's body stood out clearly beneath her garment. Her skin was covered in goosebumps, but if the cold affected her, she didn't seem to care. The smile that already graced her sweet face spread even wider as she gazed at Harry in his nakedness. He would have gladly fought Voldemort a second time in exchange for disappearing on the spot right now. The blush that inflamed his cheeks felt especially warm in contrast to the cold night air.

"Hi hi hi there, Luna," Ron trilled, utterly unfazed. "What're you doing out here?"

"Besides admiring Harry's breaktakingly naked form?" Luna said. Harry whimpered a little and considered covering his privates with his hands, but then he realized that the damage was already done: Luna knew what his penis looked like, and he couldn't reverse that. It was best just to take it like a man and not look like a humiliated pussy. "I originally came out here to air my armpits and to kill any stray Wizarding Lice that might be on my body. They can't survive temperatures below 10 degrees Centigrade."

"But Wizarding Lice is really, really rare for anyone over the age of ten," Ron said, frowning at her.

"Extra precautions never hurt," Luna replied, wagging her finger at Ron. "I'm glad to see you two are doing the same thing."

"Actually," Ron said, "we came out here to skinny dip in the lake. Want to join us?"

"Sure!" Luna crowed, her face glowing. "Let me just take off my chemise."

And, before Harry had time to properly process what was happening, she slipped the garment off over her head and let it fall to the ground.

Harry's brain exploded. Or at least, that's what it felt like. The moment the image of her naked body transmitted itself to his brain, he lost control of his own body. His jaw dropped and his eyes bugged, and his penis immediately began to harden.

How to describe Luna? She was brilliant. Today's play practice had been a tantalizing teaser of something more to come, but this--the real deal--was far better than Harry could have imagined. Luna's breasts were even more wondrous than her bra had hinted: they were not too large and not too small, but a size in between that looked like a perfect fit for Harry's twitching hands. Though it came as no surprise that Luna's nipples were hard--after all, thanks to the night air, so were Ron's and Harry's--it was no less of a turn-on for the raven-haired Gryffindor. These breasts curved gently around the gently muscled line that divided her stomach down the middle and led down to the last remaining mystery her body had to offer. Harry's gaze dropped down to this mystery and surveyed it with wide eyes, imagining it involved in various erotic situations.

What really completed Luna's beauty, though, was who she was. Harry wasn't just staring at a naked woman as he had been with his porn. Here, he was staring at a beautiful naked body that adorned the outside of a young woman with a lively personality that was far better than any boob or vagina. Between those two breasts beat a heart that sustained the looniest person--and the most attractive--that Harry had ever met. It was the sight of her awesome nakedness that filled Harry's penis and prostate with a tingling excitement, but it was the realization of her perfect self that connected his member to his heart and filled it with such a joy that he felt weightless.

Any thoughts that Harry's penis was entertaining in terms of a full-blown erection, however, were sadly shattered when Ron grabbed him around the stomach and hurled him into the lake. "In you get!" he said gleefully as Harry wailed in shock. Then he sprinted gleefully into the shallows, followed closely by Luna.

"Th-thanks a f-f-fucking lot, Ron!" Harry spluttered through a mouthful of icy lake water.

"No problem," Ron returned gloatingly. "Whoooooo, this water's ice!"

"Y-you think?" Harry chattered. It wasn't an eloquent response, but the water seemed to have short circuited the currents to his brain.

"I can feel the lice dying as we speak," Luna said, submerging herself slowly. For ten seconds she even dunked her head under, leaving ripples that hung in the moonlit water. Then she resurfaced, her skin glacially smooth with wetness. She smiled sweetly at Harry and let herself fall into the water so that she was floating on her back. Harry watched, enraptured, as her naked body shifted itself constantly in order to keep her on top of the water.

"Hey Harry, what's caught your interest over there?" Ron called from the shallows. He kicked forward and swam out to meet them.

"Why couldn't w-we have waited 'til summer?" Harry whined.

"That's what I call redirection," Ron said smugly. "Luna, I think Harry likes what he sees!"

"I'm glad to hear that," Luna replied from her floating position. "Tell him I like what I see, too."

"She says I'm sexy," Ron told Harry.

Harry snorted and splashed his best friend. "Tosser!" Ron retaliated with a swipe of his hand against the surface of the lake, and thus the water battle begun. They volleyed back and forth for quite some time as Luna circled them serenely on her back.

Of course, this frolicking didn't last for long. It was only five degrees above freezing, after all, and none of them wanted to catch hypothermia. So, five minutes later, Harry waded to the shore and got out, followed reluctantly by Ron and Luna.

Last Christmas Remus Lupin had given Harry a gift to prepare him for the final battle. It was an invisible wand holster that attached itself to the wrist and kept his wand safely locked inside until Harry gave his hand a special little flick. He had found it indispensable in the months leading up to the battle, and it was furthermore a creature comfort in that he never had to worry about losing his wand the way he did during the Quidditch World Cup. He wore this holster now, and he summoned his wand into his hand, upon which he immediately cast a Drying Charm on himself.

"Hey, cast one for me, too," Ron said, traipsing up to Harry drenched in water. "I forgot my wand back at the dorm."

"Luna first," Harry said, grinning twistedly. And he cast the charm for Luna while Ron pretended to sulk on the cold grass.

"That was very sweet of you, Harry," Luna said as she gathered up her chemise. It looked miniscule in her palm; Harry wondered how it had ever fit over her head, much less around her body.

A second later they all began the trek back to the castle, dry but still cold. They took the pathway at a run, not stopping until they were back in the relative warmth of the Entrance Hall. There they huffed and chattered their teeth, out of breath and reeling from the difference in temperature.

"Holy fucking Merlin!" Ron laughed breathlessly. "How's that for a midnight adventure?"

Harry bent double and clutched the stitch in his side. He didn't want to admit that he actually had a blast. Sure, it was cold as fuck, and sure it was embarrassing when Luna first ran into them, but it was most definitely an experience--a painful one, but one that Harry would tell his kids and grandkids years down the road. Damn, was Ron a canny bastard! As for Luna, Harry was prepared to send in a request to the Vatican to make her the Patron Saint of Nudity.

They headed up the stairs, puffing heavily as their tired lungs got even more exercise. Then, when they reached the third floor, something horrible happened. Harry was the first on the landing, and he had just stepped into the hallway when he noticed that someone was already in the hallway: someone with a lantern and a decidedly adult appearance. He gasped and dove quickly back into the stairwell, causing Ron and Luna to run into him.

"What the--" Ron began, but Harry shushed him.

"I saw you!" the adult cried. It was Professor McGonagall. "Harry Potter, that was you. Come on out!"

Harry moaned in agony, clutching desperately at his private places. Damn fucking damn, why did he always run into professors at the worst possible moments? He considered running back down the way he came until he heard the Transfigurations professor speak again. "Stop hiding, Harry, you're only making it worse for yourself!"

Luna tossed Harry her chemise and winked. Harry moaned again, realizing the choice that lay before him: appear in front of McGonagall naked, or appear in front of her in Luna's scant nightware. He chose the latter route in a heartbeat, cramming his head through the neckline of the skimpy garment.

There were many problems with Luna's chemise. First of all, as small as it looked on Luna, it was even smaller on Harry. There was barely breathing room for the the blonde Ravenclaw, but for him it was like a second skin. Every dip and curve in his muscles etched itself into the satin, leaving nothing to the imagination. Especially noticeable were his nipples, which were still hard from being outside for over a quarter of an hour. Harry marveled that they hadn't already poked a hole through the filmy material. Worse still was this: Though the nightgown had come down to the middle of Luna's thigh, Harry was considerably taller in the chest, and thus he hardly got coverage past his hips. If he stretched the material as far as it would go, it barely cleared the tip of his ballsack, though to achieve this his penis crammed itself desperately against the bottom of the chemise, leaving nothing to the imagination. Harry could even see where the skin wrinkled around the head. To complete the fiasco, the chemise was a pale pink. It looked drop dead sexy on Luna Lovegood, but on Harry it looked... well... gay. Or, to be more politically correct, transvestite. Which for him was actually worse.

"Harry James Potter, you show yourself immediately!" McGonagall barked sternly. Her footsteps pattered down the hall, coming ever closer to the staircase upon which the three students hid.

"Professor?" Harry said, stumbling strategically into the hallway. "Wh--what the--?"

McGonagall came to a dead stop, flabbergasted at the vision that assaulted her senses. Her healthy cheeks drained white, then suddenly flushed brilliantly. Her knees knocked together, and her mouth formed a perfect O, from which emanated a matching, "Oh!" For a full fifteen seconds all she could do was goggle at Harry, who blushed a magnificent red that clashed with the pink nightie. He would never be able to look Professor McGonagall in the eye again. Never. Fucking. Ever.

"Harry Potter," she finally whispered faintly. "What are you doing." She seemed too faint to voice her phrase as a question.

"Uh," Harry stammered, racking his brain for an excuse, "sleepwalking."

"You're wearing a chemise," she said, clutching at her breast. In her other hand she gripped a mug, unaware of the fact that she had tipped it so that tea leaked down the side and dripped on the floor.

"Yeah," Harry said, his palms growing sweaty. He wiped them on the chemise, only to realize too late that a millimeter of the head of his penis peeked out from underneath the hem. "I, uh... that's what I, er, wear to bed."

"You must be freezing," McGonagall said, her eyes dilating slightly. "Get back to bed. Go ask Hermione about sleepwalking patterns--I don't want you catch the flu."

At this invitation, Harry legged it. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, away from his professor and up towards his dormitory. Along the way he ripped the chemise off over his head, realizing it had been a horrible mistake to wear it. Upon hindsight, he would have infinitely preferred that McGonagall catch him naked. Then, at least, she would think he slept in the buff, instead of in a negligee! Oh holy Merlin, he'd never live this one down!

In five minutes he was at the portrait hole. "Arsus gangrenus!" he wheezed at the Fat Lady.

"Oh my!" the Fat Lady said appreciatively. "What have you been doing out so late?" She had been asleep when Ron and Harry had left.

"Never mind, just let me in!" Harry snarled at her. "Arsus gangrenus! Arsus gangrenus!"

"Patience, you sexy beast," the Fat Lady said, peeved. "Let me just... admire... your... form... for one second longer!" she drew out her speech so as to prolong her pleasure (and Harry's embarrassment).

"Arsus fucking gangrenus!" Harry hissed.

"All right, all right!" she huffed, slowly swinging back on her hinges. Harry clambered through, followed a second later by Ron, who appeared from another route.

"That was wild, mate!" Ron said, slapping Harry congratulatorily on the back. "What'd McGonagall do to--"

They stopped short. For Harry, the night's misfortunes were not yet over, because the Common Room was no longer empty, either. Hermione sat in an armchair by the fire, staring up at them from the book she'd been reading.

Ron didn't see this as a misfortune, however. He traipsed jovially over to Hermione and said, "Hey, I didn't know you were still awake!"

"I was in the library working on my Arithmancy project," Hermione said. She furrowed her brow and surveyed her two naked friends. Harry whimpered and clutched the chemise to his penis. "What've you two been up to?"

"Skinny dipping!" Ron said excitedly, flopping into the armchair across from her. "Out in the lake in weather five degrees above freezing! It was crazy!"

"Oh," Hermione said softly, looking disappointed. "You could've invited me, you know."

"I thought you were asleep," Ron said, "and let's face it: you really need your rest! How long have you been working on that project exactly?"

"Harry, stop being a baby and get over here!" Hermione called over towards the portrait hole. "Believe it or not, I'm well aware of the fact you have a penis. Sorry, Ron. This project's driving me up the wall, now that you ask. If only I could find some time to drop by Professor Vector's for help, but I can't, thanks to the play!"

Harry scuttled over to an armchair beside Ron and sank into it, immediately drawing his knees forward to shield his penis. Hermione rolled her eyes. "Where did you get that chemise, Harry?" she asked him.

"This?" Harry stammered. "Oh, er... it's Luna's."

Hermione clapped her hands together gleefully and closed her book. "Oh Harry, I'm so glad to hear that! You must tell me all about it!"

And so Ron and Harry told her everything. Then they spent the rest of the night rehashing their best nighttime escapades with Hermione. They knew that next morning they'd be as exhausted as all fuck out, but for some reason they just couldn't stop talking.

It was all just as well. In Harry's experience, some of the best conversations, just like some of the best adventures, happened when every sensible person had long gone to sleep.

A/N: I've noticed something really funny. On ffnet, my story stats allow me to see the amount of hits for this fic, as a whole or broken down by chapter. As a general rule, the number of hits follow a downward trajectory as the chapters progress. But for Chapter 13, in which Draco and Neville wrestle nude, the hit count takes a huge jump! Either people love Draco, male nude wrestling, or both!

I'm in college now, by the way, and it is seriously a dream! I could go on about all the wonders I'm encountering, but what really matters to you guys is what my college schedule does to my fanfiction writing. Good news: I have two or three times the amount of free time I did last school year. I will definitely get the chance to write regularly, and chapters should come without huge breaks in between. We're also closing in on the final quarter of the story, so that'll speed things along, too.

Thanks once again to my beta, Lisa725! And remember to leave a review, however short. If don't have any energy to write anything more than "Hi," then do just that.