Sun, Star, Cloud and Moon

It had started that summer. The meetings, the snogs, the soft words. Passionate embraces in a place nobody would ever discover them. In the dead of night they would sneak away and stay till dawn. They held each other's hands and watched the mist creep over them, sat still long enough for the dew to form silvery droplets on their entwined fingers, and he would watch as the sky turned from midnight-blue to twilight-indigo and then to morning-glory-lavender, peachy orange, buttercup-yellow and a pink the colour of his lover's lips. Then he held his breath as the sun poured over the horizon and everything was bleached out, gold-leafed photograph.

Nobody knew. Or at least he would very much like to think that nobody knew. It could be devastating if they did- what would his father say? Sneaking out at one in the morning to go snog on a Welsh hill? He felt sick just thinking of the look on his father's face if he ever saw-- while the sun, stars, and moon were all up together, the two of them, clinging to each other, his own silvery blonde hair and his lover's silky black. No. They must never be caught.

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Sun, Star, Cloud, and Moon:

Chapter 1

Hermione Granger had been a very intellectual child, even by Muggle standards. She read her first book at three-and-a-half, and by five had finished the Divine Comedy. When she was seven she was taken out of the British public school system because the other children didn't get on with her and she came home crying four days out of five, though generally this lead to writing long and dismal poems. At ten she won first place in a national poetry contest against people twice her age for her compostion "I Woke Up Hovering Above my Bed" (nonfiction, though nobody believed her). The next year she was accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where she was now, puzzling (for once) over a particularly nasty essay assigned by her Potions master.

"Hermione?" Harry Potter had just come through the portrait hole (Filthy Cnnnnniggit!) and found Hermione sitting in one of the squashy armchairs of the Gryffindor common room, her legs pulled under her and her hair hastily stuck through with a rather inky quill.

"Hmm?" She looked up and pulled the quill out.

"It's half past seven. Why don't you come down to dinner? The house-elves have cooked up an especially tasty looking treacle pudding, and Ron is goggling at--"

"Cho. Of course. Who else does he goggle at? Seamus?" She began twisting her hair up again.

"Well there was that time--"

"Gah!" The quill flew out of her fingers as she shuddered. "That is so disgusting."

Harry laughed, probably more than would have been possible without the help of some butterbeer. "Maybe just a little homophobic, aren't we? Eh, Herm?"

"Of course not. Just the mental image...eurgh."

He handed her the quill, still chuckling. "True. Here. Come along and have some supper."

Her intellectual side took over. "But-- Snape's essay--"

"Oh come on!" And he grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to him, his arms circling her waist. He looked down at her for a minute, holdering her hazel-brown gaze with his own emerald green, before drawing his lips ever so lightly over hers.

To Hermione, it was like Filibuster's Fireworks going off behind her eyes. He looked so good-- his black hair mussed as usual, though it certainly didn't look bad, his perfect slightly-angular face that was speckled with freckles from hours of Quidditch, his green eyes. And his scar. Like a lightning bolt. She felt like a lightning bolt just sparked through her brain.

"Okay," Hermione said somewhat breathlessly, "I'll go."

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