The Incredible True Story of Two Witches in Love

"They're up to something, I'm sure of it," Harry said at breakfast the next morning.

"Pass the jam please, Ginny," said Hermione. Ginny handed her the dish and for a moment brushed her fingertips against Hermione's reaching hand. They smiled at each other across the table.

"You're right, they keep whispering and making odd gestures at us. It can't be good," said Ron.

Just then Goyle made a gesture, sticking his tongue between his middle and index fingers and wiggling it around. Malfoy snickered and Pansy Parkinson laughed, a high nasal sound.

"Just ignore them," said Hermione with a soft smile, tucking her hair behind her ears and taking a bite of toast. Hermione had sat with her back to the Slytherin table ever since Malfoy had called her a Mudblood during second year, so she couldn't see who was talking but she could hear the whispering and giggling from that section of the Great Hall.

She was somewhat worried, despite the happy butterflies in her stomach and the smile on her face. The memory of Ginny's eyes looking shyly up at her in the dark corridor was not enough to put the memory of her dream about the Dark Mark out of Hermione's mind. Why had Ginny been heading down the stairs to the Slytherin Dungeon, and where had she gotten the darker ingredients for the powder?

"I'm sure they're just trying to convince themselves that they're not about to lose at Quidditch," said Ginny, looking across the table at Hermione and licking jam off her fingers.

"You did put the playbook back in the....the place, Harry?" Ron asked, fidgeting. Harry gave him a hurt look. Ever since Ron had become Keeper in fifth year he had been working on a strategic playbook and insisted on a level of security which Harry had found excessive, and said so. Hermione could remember the fight they had once in the common room when Ron was explaining a particularly complicated play to Harry, who had a report due the next day, and Harry had begun shouting "It's Quidditch, Ron, Quidditch! This is NOT the INVASION of NORMANDY!" Ron had been reluctant to leave the playbook in Harry's hands ever since.

"Well," Ron continued, "you might have left it under that pile of stuff in the room. Or it could have been wrapped in the red sweater you lost."

"The playbook is safe, Ron." Harry said simply, "I saw it this morning when I put it back and my red sweater has been missing for almost a week now. I took it off during practice and put it on the ground and when I came back it was gone. It probably got blown into the lake or something. The playbook couldn't have been in it."

Hermione was sorry to hear that Harry had lost his red sweater, as it had always been her favourite. He often sat at the table in the common room playing chess with Ron, the sleeves and collar of his striped pyjamas poking out underneath the red wool. It was a look. It wasn't fashionable, but it was Harry.

Hermione heard Malfoy snicker behind her and she knew it had to be the confrontation at the Astronomy Tower they were talking about. Ginny was shooting murderous looks at the Slytherin table. Hermione shook her head forcefully at Ginny and random strands of curls in her hair bounced back and forth. Ginny sullenly pushed bits of scrambled egg around on her plate, but Hermione did not acknowledge her mood at the breakfast table.

Hermione passed the remainder of the day in a state of quiet exhilaration. Every so often Hermione would catch Ginny's eyes in the hall and her heart would leap. She would pick out the back of Ginny's head in a crowd and feel a sudden longing to run up and put her arms around Ginny. It amazed her that she could feel this way. It was so perfect. She felt she was gliding through time off the ground, as if she was on roller skates and the rest of the world was walking. She had a lover. The word seemed strange and awkward to her. It reminded her of some Muggle book she had heard of once, Lady Something-or-Other. Hermione sighed at the thought of all the books she would like to have read. Perhaps after she finished Hogwarts she could devote more time to reading the Muggle Classics.

The only thing that amazed her more than her love for Ginny was that Ron and Harry had failed to notice. If she had acted this way around a boy they would certainly have noticed right away and would probably have been both jealous and vigilant until either she broke it off or he went away. That's how it had been with Viktor. She might have thought they would be pleased, since he was a famous Quidditch player, but when they began dating he became public enemy number one. Both Harry and Ron would scowl when she mentioned his name. Of course she never did mention his name anymore since it reminded Harry of Fourth year and she didn't want to make Harry sad.

Things were different with Ginny. Hermione could have been flirting with Ginny so obviously that she made herself blush and Harry and Ron would just go on discussing Quidditch or Chess, or curses they would like to use on Professor Snape, completely oblivious.

In fact, Hermione remembered with a smile, the last time they had stayed at the Burrow over the summer she had shared Ginny's bed. It was a twin four-poster with a pink quilt in a small room which seemed entirely covered in ripped-up back issues of Teen Witch Weekly with lurid true life stories: "My Brother Polyjuiced himself into Me and Shagged My Boyfriend!", "My Granddad Exploded!", "Never do THAT with your wand; One Girl's Nightmare Trip to the Diagon Clinic!" and "AVEDA Kedavara- This Spell Won't Kill You But It Will Make Your Hair Smell Delicious!".

The thought of sharing a bed with Ginny now made Hermione nervous and tingly all over. She knew, despite her best judgement and the knot of fear in her stomach, that she was going to try to see Ginny tonight. Creeping into her bed was not a good idea as the likelihood of getting caught in a room full of lightly sleeping sixth year girls was very high. Quickly, she penned a note to Ginny. "I need to see you!" wrote Hermione. "Meet me outside the Charms Classroom at Midnight. Write back if you can't make it. I love you! -Hermione." She drew a border around it and a little heart in the dot of the i in her name, for emphasis. She folded it into a small square and placed it under Ginny's pillow for her to find. Hermione thought about Ginny waiting for her in the darkened hallway outside the Charms Classroom, and the hours went by like days.

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It was very difficult for Ginny to get to sleep that night. She had brushed her teeth, slipped her nightgown on, combed her hair and climbed into bed when she felt the sharp corner of the folded note against her neck. She reached under the pillow and withdrew it. There was a moment when she was afraid the note would say that it was a mistake, that Hermione did not want her, or that she "had been doing a bit of research" and discovered some cure that did not involve the closeness of her body or the sweetness of her kiss. After hearing Hermione say I love you that would be intolerable.

Then she cast Lumos. The decorative script on the folded note was her own name in Hermione's hand with the capital G expressively large and the lower case letters tiny and exact. Over the i was a tiny heart and hearts and pentacles had been drawn in a frame around her name. Ginny practically tore the note open.

One glance at the clock told her it was several hours too early for her to meet Hermione and she was seized with frustration. "I will never live that long!" thought Ginny. She turned over and lay on her back looking up at the tapestry canopy of the bed. There were several soft lights still on in the dormitory, girls writing in their diaries or reading letters as they prepared for sleep, so it would be impossible for Ginny to anything about the arousal the letter had evoked in her. Ginny shivered in her nightgown as she remembered Hermione's kisses. Ever since last night, every place Hermione had touched her had come alive, so that she felt she had been given a new and unfamiliar body, one which looked the same but which had a heightened awareness of every sensation. Her clothes even felt different on. When she showered that morning she had been afraid that soap and water would wash away the new body, with its joyful awareness of itself, but it remained and now when she caught sight of herself in windows she was amazed that she still looked the same.

Ginny turned on her side so she could see the clock and pressed the letter to her lips, willing the hands to come together at midnight. At eleven thirty she couldn't stand it any longer. The clock seemed to have stopped it was moving so slowly and Ginny decided to wait for Hermione in the Charms Classroom.

On her way she passed the stairway to the Slytherin Dungeon and remembered how she had almost gone there after the powder had spilled on Hermione, to ask Malfoy for an antidote. Ginny silently thanked her intuition for the fear that had made her turn around and head to the library. Who knew what Malfoy would have wanted in exchange for an antidote, Ginny thought with a small shudder. He had seemed willing enough to go along with the original plan solely because it involved tricking Harry, and that had frightened Ginny but she knew that she would never be able to afford or even find most of the ingredients without someone who knew their way around the forked cobblestone streets of Knockturn Alley. Well, whatever he had planned for Harry wouldn't work now, thought Ginny with a smile, and besides if she hadn't gone to the library Hermione would not have kissed her there.

Lost in thought, Ginny made her way to the Charms classroom and found it already unlocked. The dimly lit lamps burned brighter as she entered. She walked idly up to the chalkboard. She could remember standing in front of that same chalkboard after lectures alone, writing her name and Harry's name next to each other, then her first name and Harry's last name, then Mrs followed by Harry's full name. She remembered these things clearly and they had not changed, but her love for Hermione had somehow layered itself over the other feelings without altering or diminishing them. Ginny picked up a piece of chalk and stood idly at the board. She heard the soft click of the door being pulled shut and turned around to find Hermione standing there.

Hermione smiled at Ginny and ran across the room to throw her arms around Ginny's shoulders and kiss her lips.

"You could say hello first," Ginny said teasingly. She hopped up onto the large wooden desk and sat there, swinging her legs.

"Hello," said Hermione between kisses as she climbed up onto the desk, forcing Ginny to lie back as Hermione moved forward until she was crouched on all fours above Ginny. Hermione's hair hung down around her face, brushing Ginny's cheeks and blocking out her view of the room like a dark veil. Ginny's legs and calves still dangled off the edge of the desk.

Hermione had put her clothes on to come downstairs. Ginny reached up and undid the clasp of Hermione's robes. She wriggled her fingers into the knotted gold and red tie around Hermione's neck, loosening it and pulling it off. Then she began with the white collared shirt. Hermione leaned in to kiss her. Keeping herself elevated over Ginny on her hands and knees, Hermione tipped forward so that they could kiss and Ginny could continue undressing her. She kissed with parted lips and Ginny could feel her fingers fumbling at the shirt when Hermione's tongue brushed the inside of her upper lip.

Hermione was looking at Ginny as if she could absorb Ginny through her eyes. Her kisses were becoming desperate and messy and their mouths slid smoothly over one another as each kiss melded into the next. Ginny slid her hands under Hermione's shirt and around her ribcage, feeling for the clasp of her bra, but she kept getting distracted by the kissing and the touch of Hermione's breasts against hers every time she leaned forward. To her surprise, Ginny found that years of undoing her own bra had not prepared her to unhook someone else's and their kissing was mixed with muffled laughter as she pulled at the clasp.

Hermione sat up until she was kneeling on the edge of the desk and unhooked her bra. She pulled the shirt off one sleeve at a time and then pushed the bra off and, after a moment's hesitation, dropped them on the floor. Ginny noticed that it was the same white cotton bra Hermione had been wearing the day the powder had spilled. She stared, mesmerized, as Hermione stripped over her.

When Hermione turned her head to undo the fastening of her grey wool skirt her hair fell in her eyes, hiding half her face and accentuating her unusual profile. Admiring her dark eyes with their fringed thick lashes, her round smiling cheeks and the exaggerated fullness of her lips over what remained of her overbite, Ginny wished she were better at coming up with compliments.

Even wearing nothing but her panties, with the rest of her uniform around her knees, Hermione didn't look like a picture in a magazine. She was definitely prettier than the pictures in the magazines her brothers sometimes tried to hide in the washroom. Hermione looked more like a girl from an old oil painting, like she should be asleep in an elegant room full of scarves and fruit.

"You're so beautiful." Ginny said. Hermione smiled.

"So are you." Hermione whispered, and Ginny felt tingling tracing over her skin when she saw that Hermione meant it.

Hermione leaned forward again and kissed the place where Ginny's collarbones met at the top of her nightgown. She slid down Ginny's body, kissing her through the thin cloth. Running her hands over Ginny's hips and down her belly, up to her breasts and then down again across the sides, Hermione's hands lightly trailed folds of the nightgown, pushing it up. Ginny tugged it over her head and felt it drop to the floor and the still air of the classroom over her naked skin.

Hermione slid off the desk and crouched next to it, her head between Ginny's hanging legs. She licked the inside of Ginny's thighs and Ginny laughed nervously. She could feel Hermione's breath up both thighs and between her legs. It was cold when Hermione breathed in, in the places she had licked, and it was warm when she breathed out. The room was suddenly very quiet, and the quiet was like a sound of its own. The desk was hard and Ginny could feel the narrow edge pressing into the backs of her thighs but she didn't dare move.

Hermione's tongue was unlike anything Ginny had ever felt. The intimacy of it was overwhelming. Every time Hermione paused, unsure or timid, Ginny felt her back arch involuntarily off the desk, struggling to bring her closer to Hermione's mouth. Every time Hermione's tongue flickered against the tender skin, Ginny felt as if she were an extension of Hermione's body which Hermione could move and control at will. Ginny could hear her own breath, ragged and broken. She wondered if she tasted bad, or smelled bad, like the dirty jokes always seemed to imply, but Hermione didn't stop.

Every time Hermione found a place where Ginny cried out, she would lick it harder, until there was never a time when Ginny did not cry out. The room blurred, all of the lights were surrounded by haloes, and Ginny realized that she was crying. She felt suspended in her own body, frightened and relieved at the same time as she allowed Hermione to make her arch and cry independently of her own will. The room became a blurry bubble of light which grew until there was no room, no time, only Hermione's mouth and Ginny's fear and joy. When the shaking subsided Ginny felt Hermione climb up next to her.

"Are you alright?" Hermione asked, placing a finger against Ginny's cheek and wiping away tears. Ginny nodded weakly. "Hermione, do I taste like anything?" she asked softly. Hermione thought about. "Like a lemon drop. Sort of. Hard to describe. Nothing bad though," she added, seeing the look of concern on Ginny's face.

"Oh, really?" said Ginny, reaching between Hermione's legs. She watched Hermione's eyes go wide with surprise, then watched her mouth open in disbelief as Ginny withdrew her hand, brought two fingers to her lips, and sucked them.

Hermione closed her eyes.

"Please," she said.

"Please what?" Ginny asked wickedly.

"Ginny, please. I want you, I want you to go down on me." Hermione's voice ended in a whisper and her eyes were tightly shut. Ginny sat up halfway and wiggled down until she slid off the desk and knelt on the floor where Hermione had been. Hermione placed her hand on Ginny's head and stroked her hair. Ginny bit Hermione's knee and she gasped, breaking out into fits of giggles. Ginny looked up and could see Hermione biting her lip to stop laughing. Ginny kissed the knee where she had bitten it and continued, kissing up the inside of Hermione's thigh. Now that her face was very close, she began to notice a faint sweet smell, almost overly sweet. She was briefly angry, at the jokes, for leading her to believe that she would smell bad.

Ginny realized she didn't have any idea what to do, where to begin, but curiosity overcame her doubt and she began to lick in slow arcs, pressing up until she heard Hermione catch her breath and then slowly down to one side or another at various angles, listening to Hermione's gasps change pitch from high to low. It was like Hermione's body was a musical instrument, her instrument. Ginny felt powerful. She wanted to make Hermione feel the way she had felt no matter how long it took, but soon she found that she couldn't control herself either.

The feeling of power as Hermione's body flexed when Ginny wanted it to and surrendered when Ginny wanted it to was intoxicating. The soft skin of Hermione's thighs against her palms made her want the moment to last forever but she couldn't help going faster. The floor was cold and her knees hurt but they felt far away. Her eyes were closed and she felt almost dizzy with the cloying sweetness of Hermione's smell which became stronger with her arousal. Hermione had been wrong about the lemon drops, Ginny thought, it was something else, something she couldn't identify but she had been right that it was not unpleasant.

Was her own body this smooth, this irresistible, like living silk? Could it feel this good to someone else to be touching her? It couldn't be, thought Ginny, because if it were that wonderful to touch her everyone would want to, and as far as she knew no one did. Even Hermione, who loved her, was under a spell.

No, it had to be that Hermione was the only girl who felt this way, and that was why she was so special. She's special, thought Ginny with a thrill of desire, and she's mine. She took her mouth away from Hermione's body for a moment and listened as she pleaded wordlessly and tried to pull Ginny's head back towards her. When Hermione's hands closed so tightly on Ginny's hair that they were pulling it, when her legs pressed hard together so that Ginny could scarcely breathe and her whole form curved into trembling shudders, it felt like a victory.

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They lay on the hard wooden desk. Clothes and robes were scattered in a haphazard circle around them. Ginny was getting cold. The darkness outside the windows made them mirrors, reflecting a series of otherworldly prismatic images of herself and Hermione, curled into a glowing naked half moon at her side with one arm under Ginny's neck and the other hand idly stroking her opposite hip. Hermione's eyes were closed and she did not seem to mind the cold. Ginny swung her feet back and forth under the desk, watching the reflected girl's feet move in a hundred panes of glass. They moved, therefore they were real and they were her.

A movement in the corner of the glass caught Ginny's eye. One of the doors of the tall cabinet opposite them swung gently open, as if the wind had caught it, but there was no draft in the classroom. Ginny tore her eyes from the reflections and looked across at the open cupboard. Leaning against the side wall, half revealed by the slowly opening door, was a thin figure in Slytherin robes. His pale blond hair was aggressively slicked back until it looked polished and hard. The washed out blue of his eyes and the childlike roundness of his mouth gave his face a quality of emotional transparency, so that every mood seemed to show right through it despite its owner's best efforts to keep his expression unreadable.

At this moment it looked amused and superior. Ginny watched as Draco Malfoy slowly unfolded his arms from his chest and began to applaud. His applause was slow and sarcastic and faded away into silence as he stepped out of the tall door, his expensive black robes dragging at his ankles. Ginny thought numbly of the already open door, the dimly lit lamps, and the fact that Malfoy was Head Boy and had keys to classrooms too.

He had probably been spying on her since that night at the Astronomy Tower. The shock of seeing him standing there faded and was replaced with concern, not for herself but for Hermione. Ginny knew Malfoy would take any chance to humiliate Hermione since he couldn't stand being second in the class after a Muggle-born girl. The fact that he knew hurting her feelings would also hurt Harry didn't help either.

"Brava, brava," said Malfoy. "Quite a show. Reminds me of the summer I convinced Father to send me to Amsterdam to study the lost moving landscape of Van Gogh. Not that Van Gogh painted moving landscapes, of course, but that was what made it such a spectacular coup."

Hermione got up off the desk. Her eyes were flashing with fury and she strode across the room. For a moment she managed to look more confident naked than Malfoy did fully clothed. However, when she tried to slap his face he casually caught her by the wrist with one hand and backhanded her with the other so hard that she fell to the floor with a look of pain and shock and his handprint across her face in white and red.

"Never," he said softly, "touch me."

"You could be expelled for striking me," said Hermione proudly from the floor.

"You could be expelled for using Dark Magic," he replied, "or didn't your low class lesbian girlfriend tell you where she got the ingredients?" His smile slowly crept back onto his face. "I wonder what your parents would think of your extracurricular activities. I wonder what Potter would think." He paused for effect. Hermione didn't answer. She was staring at the hem of Malfoy's robe. He looked at her, then at Ginny.

"You will give me the passwords to Gryffindor Tower. You will make sure I always have the password or I will make sure you are both expelled for use of the Dark Arts."

"Then you'll be expelled too!" Ginny shouted. She wanted to run to Hermione and heal her cheek, cover her so that Malfoy's scorching gaze couldn't see her naked and blindly staring from the floor.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that Weasley," Malfoy said, "you see it isn't illegal to own those ingredients, only to use them."

"I'll bet your father wrote that law!"

"As a matter of fact, your father wrote that law, Weasley, but I don't think it will do you much good. Meet me here on Friday at noon to tell me the password. I'll be leaving now, as if I see another freckle I will be forced to put out my eyes with a spork. And put some clothes on, Granger, no one wants to see filth like you naked." Malfoy turned, the heavy hem of his cloak swirling after him, and walked out of the classroom.

Ginny ran to Hermione and knelt next to her.

"I'm so sorry," she said, pulling Hermione to her feet.

"His cloak," said Hermione absently, "there was something on it."

"You won't get expelled, I'll make sure of that," Ginny insisted. "I'll go to Dumbledore and tell him it was all my fault."

Hermione looked up into Ginny's eyes. "It's okay," she said, putting a hand on Ginny's shoulder. "I think," Hermione said hesitantly, "I think I have a plan. We'll need Harry's Invisibility Cloak, and you will need to meet me somewhere tomorrow so we can use the Time turner to go back together to Malfoy's study period. And I need a camera. Can you do that?"

"I might be able to borrow Colin's camera, but what..."

"I'll tell you tomorrow. Right now we have to leave in case Malfoy changes his mind and decides not to give us any time."

Ginny nodded. They dressed quickly and snuck back up to the Tower together. Ginny tried to ask Hermione several times about the plan, but Hermione just held a finger to her lips and looked around as if she expected every shadow to be a Slytherin. Ginny resigned herself to not knowing that night, but as her fear of Malfoy subsided her anger grew. Whatever Hermione is planning, Ginny thought, it had better be good or I will curse him so badly that I will be expelled anyway.