Disclaimer: Sadly, none of these Characters belong to me, they belong to the truly wonderful J.K Rowling…and the game isn't mine either. It's a game that's been around for years.
Authors Notes: This is based on a situation that happened with a good friend of mine not very long ago, although it didn't end as nicely as this did. Hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Spin The Bottle.
"Who wants to play Spin the Bottle?"
Lavender sat up excitedly from her purple, saggy sleeping bag, an eager smile plastered all over her bright face. The others groaned loudly. Lavender and Parvati had successfully managed to persuade them all into having a '6th year sleepover', making them all bring down sleeping bags and blankets from their dorms and spend the evening together. So far, they had had two food fights, two rounds of 21 dares, a round of secret telling, in which no ones secrets got told, and three frantic pillow fights, in which the boys refused to give up until eventually everyone was lying panting on the floor, with Harry stood up and laughing at them all, his Quidditch training giving him the advantage over everyone else. Professor McGonagall had surprisingly allowed them to have food and butterbeer from the kitchens, as long as they cleaned up after themselves and cast a silencing charm on the common room so as not to wake the other years, and Dean and Seamus had managed to smuggle in some firewhiskey, so they were all quite tipsy, but having a good time none the less.
The boys turned over in their sleeping bags, Harry being the only one in blankets pulled them exasperatedly over his head. Lavender and Parvati had been pushing them forcefully all night to have at least one round of Spin the Bottle, claiming that it's what everyone did at slumber parties. However the boys were all slightly reluctant to give in straight away; Parvati and Lavender had been shooting sneaky, furtive glances at each other, and that could only mean that they were plotting something. However, due to Lavenders constant badgering and their slight intoxication, they gave in, dejectedly forming a circle in the middle of the common room.
"That's better," chirruped Lavender, the eager, excited smile still plastered all over her face. "Now, who has the bottle? Mione?"
Hermione sighed and leaned over to pick up an empty butterbeer bottle of the floor, wearing the same weary look as the lads. With a sigh and a small smile she handed the bottle to Parvati, who immediately grabbed it and plonked it down in the middle of the circle.
"Right. Okay, who's snogging who first?"
She made to spin the bottle, but was interrupted by shouts of indignation from the boys. Sighing exasperatedly, she peered up at them, to see them with inquiring looks on their faces.
"Who said anything about snogging? I thought this was the 'truth-or-dare' kind of spin the bottle?" piped up Ron, who was seconded by grunts of agreement by the boys.
Giggling, Parvati and Lavender glanced wickedly at each other, earning an eye-rolling expression from Hermione. Obviously, they had something planned in case a situation such like this arose. The boys gave each other worried glances as Parvati turned back to them, a daring smile on her pretty face.
"What's the matter?" She asked, slightly seductively. "You scared? We won't bite you know… at least not hard."
'Ouch,' thought Harry. 'She really knows how to hurt a guys pride.'
A murmur of mumbles from the boys told them a quiet 'no' and they smiled. Satisfied, Parvati nodded primly and gave the bottle a hard shove. It spun around the circle, the boys watching it with bated breath, the girls eagerly awaiting it's result. Finally it stopped. On Neville.
"Oh, no…" Neville gulped as Dean clapped him on the shoulder, a sombre look written across his face, as if someone had died. Parvati, Lavender and even Hermione giggled at this over exaggerated lack of eagerness. With an amused smile, Parvati Shoved the bottle again.
"And he will be snogging…" The bottle stopped abruptly at: "Lavender!"
Neville's face turned a multitude of reds, purples, pinks, and even green before it paled completely as Lavender crawled up to him eagerly on all fours. Glancing around at the boys for support and finding only sincere, sombre faces, he gulped once more as Lavender claimed his lips.
Surprisingly enough, there were whoops from everyone, even Hermione who had clearly shown her dislike of this game from siding with the boys in their show of reluctance to play. She sat back and laughed, catching Harry's eye and grinning, clearly very amused. Harry grinned back as there was one last whoop from Dean as Neville and Lavender separated. Satisfied, Lavender crawled back into place, leaving a very flustered Neville with a shy grin on his crimson face.
As the game progressed, the kisses and snogs got a lot more unconventional. If the bottle were to land on two people from the same gender, then the forfeit would be a peck on the lips, no matter what gender they were, not like a full blown snog when it landed on a boy and a girl. Obviously this didn't go down too well with the boys, their manly pride seriously under threat, but with yet another blow to the ego from Lavender, they agreed.
In light of this, nearly everybody had kissed (or snogged) everyone else at least once, Harry was the first to give Ron an extremely reluctant peck on the lips, eyes tightly shut. He'd already snogged Lavender and Parvati, and kissed Seamus, Dean and Neville who all had equally high scores. The only person he hadn't kissed was Hermione.
Either Lavender or Parvati hadn't noticed this, or the kept their usually open mouths shut. However, they kept sneaking oddly furtive glances at each other, then at Harry and Hermione, which gave Harry the impression that they must have noticed something. This made him very nervous. Everyone knew that a plan from Parvati and Lavender was not necessarily a good one.
"Okay, who's next?" Ron picked up the bottle with a dopey, drunk grin. He'd had a bit too much firewhisky and was beginning to really get into the game, despite his earlier protests. He span the bottle round forcefully, it gathered a good speed, then slowed… and landed on Harry.
There was a drunken cheer and Ron picked up the bottle again, giving it another good sharp push. It seemed to take forever to slow down and even before it reached it's destination, Harry's stomach filled with dread. Hermione.
She was the one person he was not looking forward to kissing, afraid of the possibility that he might enjoy it. Hermione was a very special person to him, he didn't want to ruin that by developing feeling for her. The one he already had were enough to say that this wasn't a good idea.
From the reluctant look on her face, Harry assumed she was thinking the same as him. However there was another drunken cheer and loud encouraging shouts from the rest of the party. Looking up at Hermione, he tried to silently communicate through his eyes an apology, until her deep, pretty brown eyes gently closed and their lips met softly for the first time.
'Wow…' was Harry's first thought.
It started off looking chaste, a friendly kiss between two good friends, but the feeling that it was giving them both was incredible. They seemed to be glued at the lips, invisible sparks of chemistry holding them together. Hearing the whoops and claps from the others, the kiss grew deeper, more intense and emotional. Soon they forgot they had an audience as the continued, the kiss meaning more than a drunken game of spin the bottle. It became more sensual as Harry pulled Hermione closer while she wrapped long soft arms affectionately around his neck. They didn't even notice the cheers dying down as they continued to embrace each other, their feelings bursting from within them in silent confession.
"Uh… You two? You two?! You can stop now!"
They paid no notice to Lavender's remarks as they continued to kiss each other as deeply as possible. It took three loud cough, five rude remarks from Parvati, Ron and Lavender and a bottle being thrown at them before they finally separated, blushing from head to toe. They look fondly at each other before turning back to the shocked audience.
"Merlin, you two! That was some display!" piped up Seamus, his dry Irish accent hinting some amusement. "There something you wanna tell us?"
There were agreeing nods and murmurs from the others as both Harry and Hermione glowed a deep scarlet, and gave each other a swift searching look.
"Um… nothing?" replied Harry, though he wasn't 100% sure of the answer, and he hoped that his tone would show that to Hermione. He looked over at the others, who were all wearing serious but pleased faces, quite a task considering they were all mostly completely drunk. Harry and Hermione were the two most sober ones.
Ron was surveying them briskly, as though thinking about their situation in a detailed and sensible manner. The look didn't suit him.
"I think you two need to talk," he mumbled finally, a drunken air about his voice. He earned himself nods of agreement from the boys, and surprised looks from the girls. Ron rarely came out with good advice, it just wasn't him. Maybe he only gave good advice when drunk?
Overcoming their shock from Ron suddenly becoming the Gryffindor 'Agony Uncle', Lavender and Parvati exchanged determined looks and jumped to their feet, ready to act. Alarmed looks flitted across Harry and Hermione's faces as they moved swiftly in front, taking their shoulders and turning them 360º . With a swift knowing nod to each other, they frog marched Harry and Hermione to the portrait hole like soldiers.
"Come on… out."
"Yeah and don't come back until you've talked it through!"
"I wanna see you two kissing like mad when you come back in, or else!"
"And we want to know every single detail!"
Shoving the roughly outside the portrait hole, they turned quickly, Lavender throwing them both a friendly wink before disappearing back into the common room, leaving Harry and Hermione standing outside in their nightclothes, looking distinctly ruffled. They gave each other an exasperated look, before they slid into smiles and laughter.
"Well, that was unexpected… Still, I suppose you can always count on Lavender and Parvati to complicate things…" remarked Hermione, a faint red tinge lining her pretty face.
"Yeah, though I didn't know they had such a hard grip. I'm sure I've got claw marks on my arm now… I feel like such a wimp…"
They both laughed nervously, none of them really wanting to get to the point and confront their feelings. A long silence came, in which Harry was having an inward war with his feelings. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by Hermione.
"Harry, what happened in there?"
'Straight to the point…' thought Harry, a pink tinge now creeping along his own pale cheeks. 'Maybe she's been around Parvati and Lavender too long…'
"I, er… don't know…" he replied, not really able to voice how he felt about the whole situation. Finally, he gulped down the massive lump in his throat and said quietly; "But I'd like to find out…"
Hermione smiled shyly, turning a dark shade of pink, highlighting her pretty face and neck. She stepped forward a little and Harry suddenly felt the long, empty stone corridor getting warmer.
"I don't want this to mean nothing…" she said, her deep chocolate eyes boring into Harry's, who felt like his knees were about to give way. "I don't want this to be just drunken teenage hormones and a game of spin the bottle. I don't' know how much firewhisky you've had, but I'm sober enough to know what I want to say… If you get my drift…"
Harry grabbed Hermione's smooth, soft hand gently with his own, and smiled genuinely at her. His knees seemed to be keeping steady, which gave him the strength to carry on with his sentence.
"And I'm sober enough to know what I want."
And with that he kissed her, forgetting all the chaste shyness that their first kiss had contained. This one grew instantly passionate and intense from the moment their lips touched. Their passion and need grew with every tender touch of the hair to every soft caress of their backs, every kiss more emotional and more incredible than the last. They shared a great deal of sweet kisses before pulling apart, breathless and smiling.
"Do you really want to go back in there?" Harry panted, a wide grin across his face.
"No, not really." Hermione's eye twinkled with mischief and her grin grew wider, as did Harry's.
"I hear the Astronomy Towers nice at night." Harry grinned cheekily which Hermione returned as he took her hand and they ran off to the Astronomy Tower, to play their own version of Spin the Bottle.