In Diagon Alley, Harry purchases a ring for Hermione, and things begin to go awry. Harry/Hermione and soon Draco/Ginny.
Chapter 01
Posted:
05/29/2003
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Author's Note:
Plot is not my friend. Send hate mail and threats (but never viruses) to [email protected]. If you review, I will reward you with extended loving.
Harry couldn't help but smile as he watched Hermione make her away around Diagon Alley, looking like a Muggle child in a candy store.
"Don't you see?" she said, weaving around fellow witches and wizards as she looked into all the windows, pressing her fingertips against the glass eagerly before turning and dashing to the next shop. "Next summer we can come here by ourselves, there won't be any school - we'll be able to do what we want, when we want - "
She stopped suddenly, peering into one of the many windows she had passed. Harry glanced up to look at the shop name. It was a jewellery shop, and one he had never noticed in his previous trips to Diagon Alley. Then again, he didn't often look at jewellery, so he was quite possibly guilty of simply overlooking it.
Hermione was staring at a ring cushioned on a plush blue pillow. It had a silvery band with a small, whitish jewel in the centre of a circle of what looked like diamonds. The round piece in the centre seemed to both suck light in and reflect it at the same time, shimmering many different colours against its pearly background.
"It looks terribly expensive," she said morosely, her eyes still glued in the same spot, "but do you think we could just go in and look at it? It's so elegant . . . "
He smiled, opening the door to the shop for her, and she immediately rushed to the counter.
"Excuse me," she said, pointing toward the ring, "how much is that ring in the window - the one on the blue pillow?"
The cashier casually named a sum - a very high sum, and Hermione's face fell.
"Hermione," Harry said, "why don't you try it on? That way you'll at least get to see how it looks on you."
She began to protest, but the man had already moved away from the counter and was returning with the squashy blue pillow, upturning it and dropping the ring into Hermione's hand.
She looked at Harry with uncertainty for a moment before slipping it on her left ring finger and almost immediately removing it.
"Wait!" he cried, grabbing her hand and replacing the ring.
"Oh, Harry, don't I look horrible in such ornate things - I'm too plain - " she said helplessly, trying to squirm away and get out of his grasp.
"Nonsense, he said directly, turning her hand back and forth in the light. "It looks beautiful." He turned to the man, who had moved behind the counter again. "How much did you say - never mind - I'll take it."
"Harry," she said again, weakly this time.
He pointed to a delicate silver chain in the glass counter-box. "I'll take that, too." The cashier removed it without saying a word and handed both items to Harry. "Thanks," he said, dumping a handful of Galleons onto the counter.
He fumbled with the clasp on the chain until he managed to get it open. He slipped the ring onto it and looped it around her neck, fastening the clasp again and releasing it. "Keep that under your robes," he advised, leaning close to speak confidentially. "Ron will absolutely bludgeon me if he knows I bought you a ring."
"Don't be silly, Harry, why would he do that?" For someone of such intelligence, Hermione was incredibly dense about social things - especially social things dealing with her two best friends who shared a common desire above all others: her. Harry and Ron were both too loyal to each other to openly vie for her attentions, of course, but they had made a pact during their fifth year that if Hermione ever chose one of them, the other would do his best not to interfere.
Harry, however, knew how temperamental Ron was, and had no urgent longing to find out how bad he was at "doing his best" at anything.
"It's a long story," he said finally. "Just let it suffice that he would kill me."
"Thank you, Harry," she smiled, squeezing him tightly around the middle. "It was sweet of you to buy this for me, so I won't tell Ron in exchange. We'll be sort-of even."
He shrugged, feeling self-conscious as his face began to heat. "It was nothing. Just think of it as a gift."
"Harry," Hermione laughed, "it is a gift."
"Yeah," he said. "Right, it is."
"Look, Harry!" she said gleefully, pointing toward the ice cream boutique down the street, where Ron was standing. "There he is now! Come on," she grinned, grabbing him by the wrist. "We'll go meet him."
Somehow Ron always managed to grow several inches over the summer; he towered over Harry, who towered over Hermione, but his height didn't inspire fear unless he meant it to. Ron could be terrifying when he wanted to be, but his presence was, overall, more gentle than it was commanding.
He still stood out in a crowd, several inches taller than almost everyone, and with his flaming red hair, he was difficult to miss.
The hug he gave Harry could have probably crushed his ribs, had Harry not gasped out, "Ron, Harry can't - breathe now."
"What, you're talking in third person now?" he asked, slapping Harry heavily on the back while the shorter boy tried to catch his breath.
"When the oxygen flow to my brain is suddenly cut off, I think it's understandable if I start to talk in third person," he said, waving Ron's hand away. "Excuse me while I regenerate my cells."
"Have you gotten your school supplies yet?" Hermione asked eagerly, thus changing the subject to her favourite - books. "Harry and I met up at the entrance. Lucky, huh?" She was beaming.
"Uh, no, actually - about the books," Ron said sheepishly, adding hopefully, "have you?"
Hermione shook her head. "I just did a little bit of window shopping on the way here. I'm sorry we took so long."
"Yeah, I'm sorry if we kept you waiting," Harry interjected, feeling left out of Starry Eye Ron's conversation with the Oblivious Hermione.
"It's fine," Ron said sleepily, gazing happily at Hermione, who was meandering off toward the school-related section of Diagon Alley.
"Ron," Harry hissed, elbowing the gangly redhead in the ribs perhaps a bit harder than was absolutely necessary, "your mouth is gaping open and I do believe that you've started to drool."
Ron blinked as if he was clearing his head of a fog or a light hail or, more than likely, a bloody snowstorm. Then he said simply, "Oh, right," and pulled his tongue back into his mouth before following Hermione down the cobbled street.
By the end of the day, Harry had clearly remembered why Ron frustrated him so much even though they were best friends. For every gape and gawk he made at Hermione, Harry wanted to hit him, stand him up straight and apologize properly, and then hit him again. What stopped him was the fact that Hermione would hit, kill, or worse yet dislike him if he did anything of the sort.
It was terribly maddening, really. Especially when Ron had made that completely obvious stare at Hermione's bum and hadn't moved for at least fifteen whole - he really had to stop thinking before it became a danger to his mental health.
Needless to say, when they reached the Burrow, Harry's jaw ached terribly from all the clenching and unclenching it had been doing, and he had a downright awful tic in his left eye.
Ginny disappeared whenever Harry was around, as usual. He always thought it was strange that even after he had saved her life during his second year, she ignored him.
Harry, of course, was as unaware of Ginny's feelings for him as Hermione was of both Ron's and Harry's poorly concealed sentiments.
"Ooh," Hermione said, leaning out the back door and staring into the lawn at the tables and chairs that the twins were setting up. "I'm starving."
"It's just sandwiches and sides, I think," Ron said, "but Mum makes some of the best roast beef sandwiches I've ever had. Unless you carry them all about London and they get all squashy and soggy."
Harry smiled. "Yeah, I'd suspect they wouldn't be so tasty by that point."
"Ron!" Molly called from the kitchen. "Get Fred and George and come here, please."
"Take over for us," Fred said as he walked through the door past Hermione and then past Harry, and he tossed a tablecloth into Harry's arms and grinned.
"'Kay," he said agreeably, and Hermione offered to assist him, a proposal which he accepted gratefully.
"It's very calm here, isn't it?" Hermione remarked as they stretched a tablecloth over one of the long tables. "I like it. It's really rather relaxing, and it makes me feel at home, you know?"
"I know," he smiled, tucking the edges of the cloth up under the table. "It's far better than - "
"Oh, no, Harry," Hermione interrupted him, grabbing his wrist.
He jerked his head up, slightly surprised. "What?"
Using his hand as leverage, she pulled him closer and kissed him quickly across the table.
Ginny leaned farther out of her window, squinting her eyes, trying to see if Hermione had just done what she thought she had done. She had just kissed Harry full on the mouth. Ginny turned and clomped down the stairs as fast as she could.
"Ron!" she hissed, beckoning him over to the stairs. "Harry," she said quietly, "and Hermione. In the backyard. Kissing." To her utter disgust, her brother laughed at her.
"That's absurd," he chuckled.
"I just saw them!" she said furiously, gesturing at the door.
He shook his head and took her by the arm. "Let's go take a look, shall we?"
This was pointless. Ron knew as well as she did that if Harry and Hermione had been kissing in the back they would not have gone on with it for very long. Neither of them were idiots. Ron had an incredibly poor sense of logic if he thought that Ginny didn't know what he was doing.
"See?" he said simply, speaking through his smile as they walked outside. He smiled at Ginny, ignoring her smouldering glare.
"We were about to come inside," Hermione said, and Ginny noticed that her gaze lingered on Harry (who was looking rather shocked) before it turned to Ron. "We've finished setting the table."
The remainder of the evening passed without too much excitement, and Harry found himself growing more tired with every move he made. Unfortunately, as soon as his head made contact with his pillow, he found that he could not, no matter how many times he tossed and turned, fall asleep. Ron, on the other hand, seemed to have had no problem with it, his even breathing sounding far louder to Harry than he knew it was.
Yes, he was dreadfully sleepy, but he couldn't stop thinking about Hermione's rather unexpected kiss. Had she meant it? Had he responded in the proper way? Why, for the love of God, had she chosen that moment out of all others?
While he was still mulling over that single event, the door to Ron's room swung open. He could tell by the long hair that it was either Ginny or Hermione that was leaning into the room.
"Ginny?" he whispered. "Ron's asleep."
"It's not Ginny," Hermione said, her voice equally low in volume. "I'm not looking for Ron. I wanted to know if you'd like to come for a walk with me." She paused. "I'd like to talk to you, if it's all right. If you're tired, we can go tomorrow night . . . "
Harry sat up and put on his glasses and rolled into a standing position, leaning over Hermione's shoulder to peek down the darkened hall. "Is everybody asleep?" Hermione shrugged and nodded. "Let's go," he said, moving past her and reaching back to grab her hand.
Hermione quietly closed the front door, covering her mouth to muffle a laugh as she took Harry's hand back into hers. Then they ran until Harry feared that his lungs were going to cease to work, and they both collapsed into the grass and laughed, and Harry felt for just a moment that this was what a child must feel like after disobeying his mum. He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, drawing his hand over his nose and his mouth to refresh himself.
"Harry," Hermione said, still a soft giggle in her voice, "we're friends, right? I mean, we've always been friends. And," she said, rolling over and folding her arms over his chest and resting her chin against them, "we'll always be friends. No matter what happens, or what decisions we make, isn't that right?"
He smiled. "Of course. You and me and Ron, we're the best of friends. All of Hogwarts knows it - even the Slytherins, you can ask anyone."
"But what about us?" she pouted. "Just the two of us - you know, not including Ron. What are we?"
"The two of us," he repeated slowly. "The two of us are . . . " he frowned. "Am I supposed to be judging our relationship before or after you kissed me today?"
Hermione frowned. "Does it matter?"
"Of course it matters!" he said. "I mean, was that an 'oh, Harry, you're such a good friend' kiss or was it an 'oh, Harry, I'd absolutely love to snog you senseless' kiss? It matters. That's . . . I mean, it's sort of a turning point, depending on what kind of kiss it was."
"Isn't it only a turning point if it was a snoggy sort of kiss?"
"Hermione," he sighed, "just answer the bloody question."
"Would you mind if I kissed you again?"
Harry blinked. "Well, ah. I suppose not."
Hermione smiled. "Then that makes the two of us more than friends, doesn't it? I mean, if you wouldn't mind me kissing you and I'd actually like to kiss you, that means there's something more."
Harry stared at her, dumbfounded. "That means there's been something more for years now - on my side, anyway," he added quickly. "I don't presume that you . . . God, I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore," he laughed.
"I'm so glad," she said, clinging fast to him. "I thought that if I spent enough time around you that you'd eventually notice me, but I thought I'd realise it when you did."
"Years," Harry said, his voice soft with wonder. "There have been so many years that I could have been with you like this. Do you think it's been a waste of our time?"
Hermione shook her head briefly and propped herself up on her elbows, leaning forward to press her lips against his. "I think we can make up for it," she said. "I also think," she said, kissing him again, "that we should start now."
Harry found himself wondering how exactly Hermione had learned to kiss, but then realised that he didn't really care, it was a minor issue because the truly important thing was that he was feeling very, very tingly and he was fairly sure that this certain tingling sensation was a bad thing given the circumstances.
Suddenly, he made the connexion between the quickening of his heartbeat and Hermione's hand, which had undone the tie strings of his pyjamas and was sliding beneath the elastic waistband.
He managed to choke out the word "wait," relieved when Hermione removed her hand and leaned back. As he moved to support himself with a hand, he had to swallow hard, trying to force himself to ignore Hermione's state of undress. "What if someone finds out?" he asked, knowing that it sounded like a petty excuse.
"Harry," she said logically, "how would anyone find out? Nobody's going to come out here at night except us. We're seventeen years old, Harry, we're not children anymore. It's only natural," she added, and she sounded like she knew what she was talking about. It was natural, wasn't it? Desire was part of human nature. It was an innate emotion.
With the moon behind her, Hermione was almost nothing more than a silhouette framed in white. He could make out her pyjama top well enough to tell that it was unbuttoned, could see the smooth skin of her stomach, and his gaze travelled upward. "Are you cold?" he asked, sliding an arm around her middle to pull her back to him.
"Keep me warm, Harry," Hermione breathed as he slid her top from her shoulders.
Yes, Harry decided as Hermione's mouth opened easily under his, this was most certainly a natural thing. His sudden pang of absolute need to be a part of her was, he feared, about to drive him mad. Their positions had somehow been reversed while he was thinking so that his body was arched over hers, pinning her neatly under him. He couldn't remember rolling over, but it wasn't all that important when he tried to think about it . . .
"You're sure?" he asked, partly for reassurance and partly to make sure that it was Hermione he had been kissing after all, and not some phantom, some illusion of the girl that he had wanted this way for so long.
Her answer was to kiss him frantically until he was breathless, pulling him so tight against her that he was afraid he would smother her.
"Is that a 'yes'?" he inquired, panting for breath.
Hermione's response was verbal this time, and the single word had more of an effect on him than any one word he could remember, despite its simplicity. "Yes," she said, a sapphire intimation moving to add colour to the night.
***
Ginny yawned, stretching her arms above her head. "Hermione?" she whispered, fumbling for her wand to shed some light. "Hermione," she said louder, "do you have your wand? I can't find - " then her fingers found her wand in the dark, and she grasped it, muttering Lumos quickly.
She frowned. Hermione was staying in her rooms, but she was gone, her blankets seemingly thrown to the floor in a hurry. Ginny's door was still ajar, and she slipped through it, making her way quickly to Ron's room, shielding the wandlight with her hand so as to not wake anyone else in the house.
"Ron!" she hissed, shining the light in his face. "Wake up. Wake up!"
"Urgh," he said in weak protest, his voice blurry with sleep as he sat up, rubbing his eyes. "What is it?"
"Harry and Hermione are gone," she said, shining her wandlight over Harry's bedding to prove it. "I told you they were together," she hissed, gritting her teeth. "You didn't believe me. I told you."