Cupidity

fenriswolf

Rating: NC17
Genres: Romance, Humor
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 4
Published: 20/05/2004
Last Updated: 22/05/2004
Status: completed

In the years following his defeat of Voldemort, Harry Potter is acknowledged to be the most powerful wizard alive. Unfortunately, he's also in a REALLY bad mood. What happens when some unlikely allies decide to interfere in his love life? Brief mention of R/Hr, ends with H/Hr, R/L... FINAL CHAPTER: Rating increased to NC-17 to cover the final part, the missing scene from the end of Chapter Six. Just what was going on in Harry's room while Remuc and Narcissa were standing in the hallway?

Chapters

1. Part One

2. Part Two

3. Part Three

4. Part Four

5. Part Five

6. Part Six

7. Epilogue

8. author

9. The Naughty Bits!

1. Part One

Cupidity

By FenrisWolf

Part 1

~~~~~

It was decidedly odd. Hermione Granger was in all likelihood the safest, best-protected witch on the face of the earth, and she didn’t have a clue. It wasn’t because she was the most brilliant witch to graduate from Hogwarts in the last century, though that was a factor. It wasn’t that she had a large circle of powerful witches and wizards who called her friend and who would do anything for her, though that was also true. No, her safety resided in the fact that she was the best friend of the Boy Who’d Won.

Harry Potter was now almost universally accepted to be the most powerful wizard of the age. There were a few that felt he was the most powerful wizard of ANY age, but the majority of those who speculated on such matters were of the opinion that insulting Merlin was probably a Bad Idea, especially since those who were in a position to know about such things still weren’t sure if the old boy was really dead, or just faking it again.

Even so, that still left him with the currently unchallenged title of Supreme Badass of the Wizarding world, and it was the rare witch or wizard who would risk pissing him off. And since nothing was guaranteed to piss Harry Potter off faster than an attack on the woman he loved in (he thought) secret, the word was out: Touch Hermione Granger and you die.

That, unfortunately, was not, in and of itself, always enough to guarantee her safety. Even with the word out, there were wizards who did not recognize her on sight, and even among those who did, there were those too stupid to heed the well-intentioned warnings. Draco Malfoy, for example.

Malfoy had, by dint of living when both his father and Voldemort were slain, managed to move himself fairly high within the power circles of dark wizards, the ones who’d avoided the inevitable purges following Tom Riddle’s destruction. He even had real minions now, competent ones, in place of the pathetic Crabbe and Goyle of his school days. That they regularly proved their competency by ignoring his instructions (and thereby saving his ass) was something he chose to overlook.

Sadly, a knack for surviving when others fell did not automatically confer wisdom, a fact that was brought home sharply every time he decided to try yet another plan to Get Harry Potter by first Getting Hermione Granger. Given the nature of his obsession, it wasn’t all that surprising that most of said plans would have horrified a Mau Mau. Needless to say, every attempt by Draco to get approval for one of his plans was overruled, so his nemeses continued to breathe, and he continued to cultivate exotic fungi in his copious spare time. This was just as well, for the last time anyone had attacked Hermione, Harry’s reaction had made his attitude abundantly clear to the Dark community: hands off Granger.

It had been a simple mugging, a completely random act of street violence, and the only reason she had been a victim was because she was searching the shops in Knockturn Alley for a certain rare book. The mugger had gotten clean away with a handful of Galleons and a couple of parcels, and aside from a slightly torn robe and a bruised knee, she’d been none the worse for wear. Given how much worse the wear could have been, one might have thought that Harry would’ve settled for being relieved she was all right, and perhaps given her a stern lecture about travelling alone in dangerous places, both of which did happen. But once a concerned Ron had been summoned to look after his girlfriend, Harry had Apparated to Knockturn Alley.

Supreme Badasses do not hang onto their titles by being subtle. Anyone who’s ever sat through a Muggle action flick knows this, and by the time Harry was through in the Alley, they knew it too. There were three taverns in Knockturn that were known to the Ministry as being centers for most of the illegal activities that occurred there, and Harry visited each one in turn. His methods were extremely simple: Apparate into the middle of the main room, beat every single wizard there within an inch of his life, and then find one who was still semi-conscious and deliver the message.

“The Mugger. Hermione Granger. I want him.”

Harry was just finishing up with the third tavern when two wizards Apparated into the room, holding a struggling third one between them. Without saying a word they handed him over, along with Hermione’s stolen possessions. The two enforcers steadfastly refused to tell anyone what happened next, but the most observant amongst their fellows noted that they would become extremely nervous whenever they saw a cockroach…

At any rate, the Word had been delivered, and was quickly embraced by those in a position to make their wishes known within the Dark community. Though she never knew it, every time she went to Knockturn Alley or anyplace else even remotely shady, Hermione had an escort watching out for her. They were rarely needed, as the rank-and-file Dark wizards were, for the most part, every bit as much into self-preservation as their superiors, but the occasional drunk, moron, or git found themselves being dealt with quietly and efficiently. That included Malfoy, and his own minions soon became adept at stunning hexes and memory charms as they kept him from triggering another visit from the Boy Who Was Pissed.

It is extremely important that you, the reader, comprehend all this, because without that knowledge, you would never understand the events that followed directly on the heels of February 14th, 2005, a day that would, as far as Knockturn Alley was concerned, come to live in infamy…

~~~~~

The Inner Council of the Knockturn Lords of Evil was meeting in closed session to discuss the previous day’s disastrous events, and to formulate an appropriate response. Several of the members were being represented by proxies, two were present only be means of magical life support, and one seat remained empty while its potential heirs ‘discussed’ the succession.

The Big Bad of T.I.C.K.L.E. (formerly know as the High Wizard, he changed the nomenclature after becoming addicted to an American Muggle television series) glared around the chamber as he called the meeting to order. “I take it everyone here suffered similar setbacks to their business affairs yesterday?”

“You take it correctly, B.B.,” Rufio, his second-in-command and next younger brother, confirmed. “The reports are still coming in, but so far it looks like, overall, several million Galleons in lost revenue, at least a dozen of our operations raided, subverted, or destroyed, and scores of our best operatives are either awaiting trial or are already in Azkaban—and that’s not counting the ones who were stupid enough to resist,” he added, his eyes travelling over some of the more obviously injured members of the council.

“I don’t understand it,” Big Bad’s youngest brother and aide-de-camp complained. “How can one man, even Harry Potter, cause so much damage?”

“I can’t imagine, Matthias,” Rufio replied sarcastically. “Unless it has something to do with the fact that he heads up the Unspeakables, and has the authority to call up all the manpower he needs to stage a dozen raids at once?”

“That can’t be all of it, Rufio,” Big Bad interjected before his two brothers could really get going. “We expect a certain amount of grief every year around this time, given that Potter is usually as grouchy as a dragon with a sore tooth, but this was extreme, even for him. Do we have any intelligence as to what set him off?”

“Actually, we do,” the Supremely Underhanded Collector of Knowledge and Reconnaissance replied. “We have an operative in Potter’s outer office, and she overheard a meeting the week before between him and Ron Weasley.” The rest of the Council winced; everyone knew that, while Harry Potter really was a good friend with all the Weasleys and Ron in particular, being around the man who got to shag the woman Harry loved invariably put him in an incredibly foul mood, which was why he usually found an excuse to avoid him. Given that this meeting happened less than a week before what was supposed to be the most romantic day of the year, it wasn’t surprising that Potter had been desperate for a way to let off steam, hence the raids.

Several of the council members made comments in support of that theory but S.U.C.K.R. just shook his head. “I wish that were all it was, but the truth is actually much worse. The operative in question is relatively new, and didn’t understand just how important her information was, but trust me when I say that if I had known, I would have flashed a Code Red to all Council members.” He took a deep breath, and then let the other shoe drop. “Trixie overheard Weasley telling Potter that he was planning on proposing to Granger on Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, crap.”

~~~~~

The meeting rapidly went downhill from there. Even the thickest of the Council members knew that seeing Ron engaged to Hermione would make Harry Potter crazy with jealousy, and unfortunately they knew just how he was likely to go about working out his frustrations. About the most optimistic thing any of them could come up with was that they were in an election year, and the influx of graft, bribes and hush money would help alleviate the dent in their coffers that would be produced by a frustrated and morose Harry Potter.

It turned out to be the lowest ranking member of the Council who offered the first helpful suggestion of the day. “Say, why don’t we help Potter out of this mess? That way he’ll owe us instead of busting our chops all the time!”

Big Bad thought about it for a moment. “The idea does have merit,” he agreed somewhat portentously. “The question is, how would we go about it?”

Another member spoke up. “We could Kill Ron Weasley,” he offered, to immediate boos.

“So we’re going to get Potter together with his best friend by killing his OTHER best friend?” Rufio sneered. “Oh, that’s bloody brilliant!”

“No we can’t maim, hurt, kill, injure or kidnap Weasley,” Big Bad agreed. “It wouldn’t do us much good to get Potter and Granger together, only to have him after us for mussing up their friend—even if they’re really happier with him out of the way.”

“And we don’t want Granger after us, either,” another one piped up. “I’ve seen the books she likes to read. Potter may be powerful, but Granger is scary. Absolutely brilliant, but scary.”

One of the heavily bandaged Council members spoke up. “So what do we do? We can’t kill Weasley, that’s out. We can’t kill Granger, that’s out. And we sure as hell can’t kill Harry-Bloody-Potter! So what do we do?” He pounded the table with his fist and whimpered as the vibrations traveled up his arm. “We’re running out of options!”

“Then perhaps it’s time to explore other options,” a new voice interjected, and the Council’s eyes swiveled to come to rest on the lithe, female figure standing hipshot in the doorway.

“Cissy? What are you doing here?” Big Bad asked in surprise.

“I’m here to see your wife, ‘Reggie’,” the blond replied, her eyes narrowing. “And I’ve told you before: don’t call me ‘Cissy’!”

Big Bad flushed at the use of his proper name, and rolled his eyes. “Oh, well, pardon me, Nar-CISS-a,” he drawled, “or should I call you Mrs. Malfoy?”

Draco Malfoy’s mother narrowed her eyes and glared at her childhood friend’s husband. “Don’t get into a pissing contest with me, Reginald, you’ll lose. If you have to call me anything, call me Ms. Black; Draco can keep the Malfoy name and welcome to it, with Lucius gone it doesn’t mean anything to me.” She smiled nastily. “Now I believe you were discussing a problem with Potter and his friends?”

“Not that it’s any of your concern, but yes, we have a problem.” He grudgingly outlined it for her; Big Bad was an arrogant male chauvinist pig, but at least he was an intelligent pig. He knew how much Malfoy had relied on his Ravenclaw wife’s native cunning and wit, and the fact that she had advised against allying with Voldemort only increased her stature in the Council’s eyes. If she had any ideas as to how to proceed, they would listen.

“So that’s the situation in a nutshell,” he concluded. “Potter’s crankier than a Postal Owl on Circular Day, Weasley’s about set to drag Granger down the aisle, and Granger…well no one really knows what she thinks, she’s too damned closed-mouthed for that.” He watched as Narcissa’s expression settled into one of deep concentration.

After a couple of minutes he cleared his throat. “So, do you have any suggestions?” he asked when her eyes focused on his.

Narcissa, meanwhile, was mentally shaking her head. These were the criminal masterminds that ran the Dark side of the Wizarding world? No wonder her son was a complete naïf, if this was all he had for role models! Briefly she regretted choosing Lucius to father her son, since his own proclivities had dictated their social contacts, but one worked with what one was given…

“Yes, I believe I can suggest at least one course of action that offers a reasonably good chance of success,” Narcissa drawled, laughing at their expressions. “Honestly, Reginald, you should remember your Elementary Arithmancy. If you can’t make the equations add up to the results you need, add another variable.” She looked around expectantly, and then sighed at their blank faces. Better to have Potter indebted to her family, whatever Draco might wish, if this was what the opposition had to offer. “Have any of you ever heard of a woman named Luna Lovegood?”

~~~~~

“Bugger.”

Ronald Weasley was confused. This was not unusual; in fact, Ron spent a great part of his life confused about one thing or another, but his relationship with his best friends was one area where he’d thought he’d sorted things out well enough not to have that problem. Unfortunately for Ron, Fate, in the form of that redheaded Irish bastard Murphy, had other plans.

He wasn’t certain when things had started to go wrong, all he knew was that they were. Take Harry, for instance. If anybody had ever told him his best mate would be avoiding him, he would’ve told them to check themselves into the Nutter Ward at St. Mungo’s. That would’ve been before the last six months, when Harry started acting so weird. Of course if he were being honest, he’d have to admit that Harry had been acting…off…for a lot longer than that, but it was only in the last six months or so that it became so obvious that even Ron couldn’t miss it. He was always in a bad mood, for one thing, and for another, he always seemed to be too busy to get together with Ron and Hermione.

Ron had even been forced to pigeonhole Harry at work in order to tell him about his plans for Valentine’s Day. He’d hoped the news would cheer his friend up, but if anything, Harry was even grouchier than before. He’d practically run over that cute little secretary in his outer office (not that Ron noticed things like that) in his hurry to get away from Ron.

Then there was Hermione. She was the love of his life, they were absolutely magic together, and everyone said so. True, he didn’t understand what she was talking about half the time, and it was a bit annoying that she was completely indifferent to the single greatest invention in the history of the Wizarding world, but you put up with that sort of thing for your soulmate. However, he’d been a bit puzzled by her reaction to his proposal. She’d accepted, of course, it was the logical thing to do, the next step in their relationship, but he’d expected her to be more excited about the idea. He’d actually had to remind her to tell her parents the news. No, Hermione was definitely adding to his confusion.

And to top it all off, there’d been a number of odd encounters lately, brushes with an element that he normally avoided like the plague. One couldn’t play professional Quidditch without at least being aware that certain shady types did their best to influence the outcome of the matches, but Ron was too well known to be one of the ‘good guys’ for them to ever bother him. They still weren’t bothering him, at least not in the sense of, “lose the match by three goals or we’ll break your legs” bother, but he was sure they were watching him.

Knowing that the enforcers for the Knockturn Alley ‘gaming association’ were studying him would be enough to make anyone nervous, and Ron had been tempted to talk to Harry about it, but then Harry had been acting the prat, so that was out. He also thought about talking to Hermione about it, but since her reaction was likely to be “Well, why don’t you quit playing a silly game and get a real job?”, that was out. That meant it was up to Ron, using his own intellect and keen powers of observation, to figure out why he was suddenly so popular with a group of people who were the type that other people used to define words like ‘disreputable’, ‘untrustworthy’, and ‘downright scary’.

In other words, he was screwed.

It was while in this decidedly unsettled state of mind that Ron decided to improve his cognitive skills through the liberal application of Ogden’s Fire Whiskey, ‘The Panacea Of The Ages’, a process he undertook with great vigor at the favorite watering hole of the Chudley Cannons team, a Wizarding pub called “The Swozzled Frog”. Now the nice thing about drinking at the Frog was that it was owned by an ex-team member, which meant that the players could drown the sorrows of another losing season there without ever having to worry about a story being leaked to the press. The bad thing about drinking at the Frog was that the same owner was likely to be extremely accommodating to anything a current C.C. wanted to do, whether or not it was a good idea at the time.

Which was the only way Ron could explain waking up in bed with a pounding headache, a serious case of cottonmouth, and a naked blonde with pale, slightly protruding blue eyes.

“Good morning, Ronald,” she said dreamily as soon as she was sure he was awake.

“Luna? Luna Lovegood?” Ron groaned. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“Huh?” he replied, proving once again that if it were up to the male of the species, we never would have evolved speech.

“You asked what I thought I was doing, Ronald. I should think that was obvious. I’ve been doing you…several times,” she clarified. Her hand moved under the covers, and Ron flinched. “Oh good, it’s ready again.” Her head disappeared beneath the sheets, and Ron’s eyes quickly glazed over. His last coherent thought for the next few hours was, “Hermione is going to kill me….”

~~~~~

Big Bad glared at Narcissa’s smirking face, and then sighed. “All right, Narcissa, I admit it; you were right about Luna still carrying a torch for Ron Weasley, though why anyone as intelligent as she’s purported to be would want a Quaffle Jock is, quite frankly, beyond me.”

“That’s because you don’t understand intelligent women, Reginald,” Narcissa explained. She debated for a moment whether or not to enlighten him, and then mentally shrugged; it wouldn’t really matter in the long run… “Truly intelligent women look for one of two things in a potential mate. Either they want someone they can manipulate and control to their heart’s content, who won’t seriously interfere with their pursuits, or they want an equal partner, one who can challenge them and meet them on their own terms.”

Big Bad thought Narcissa’s words over, and wasn’t entirely happy with the conclusions he reached, considering that both he and his brothers were all married to Ravenclaws. However, lacking any firm evidence to the contrary, he decided to believe that his wife, at least, had chosen the second option. “That makes sense of why Luna would choose him,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean he won’t just treat as a quick shag and go back to Hermione, which would leave us right back where we started.”

Narcissa briefly closed her eyes, thinking not for the first time that the Sisterhood’s policy of pulling the strings instead of openly running the show was unnecessarily complicated, but one didn’t discard the teachings of Rowena Ravenclaw on a whim. Besides, even if she was smarter than 99.99% of the Ravenclaw Sisterhood, Granger was a Gryffindor, not a Sister, and hence, not deserving of the same loyalty. “Reginald, the point is that, now that Luna has set the hook and knows she has her sisters’ support, we can proceed to the next phase of the plan.”

“And that would be…?”

~~~~~

2. Part Two

Part 2

~~~~~

Harry stalked from the Apparation point towards the building that held Hermione’s apartment, his face expressionless as he wrestled with his emotions. He felt whipsawed by all the different directions he was being pulled; elation that Hermione needed him, self-loathing for feeling that elation, fear for his friend Ron who was missing, anger at anyone who might have hurt him, and a guilty feeling of gratitude as well that his best friend was, at least temporarily, out of the picture.

He set aside his jumbled feelings as soon as he reached the apartment building’s lobby; soon enough to hash them out after Ron was returned safe and sound. In the meantime, Ron’s fiancée needed Harry to be strong for her, a task he would never shirk or stint.

He crossed to the security desk, presenting his wand to the wizard stationed there. “Hello, George. Harry Potter to see Hermione Granger,” he said, just as if he wasn’t visiting her every other week.

George accepted Harry’s wand and performed the same identification charm the Ministry used. The apartment building catered to high profile personages, people who, for one reason or another, needed a greater than average level of protection, either from an intrusive public or more sinister threats. The security desk and the charms it performed was just the first layer in a series of defenses that were the equal of anything Harry had seen since his days at Hogwarts.

At first Hermione hadn’t been terribly thrilled when Harry had arranged accommodations for her, but after he allowed her to see just how concerned he was for her safety, she’d finally relented. Now that Ron had been kidnapped, he was glad he’d taken the extra effort to make sure that at least one of his closest friends had the safest home possible. Harry had shamelessly traded on his notoriety to secure a penthouse apartment for his friend, and had sworn the building manager to bloodthirsty oaths of death and dismemberment if he ever let slip the little fact that Harry was covering over half the rent out of his own pocket. He knew that if she ever found out she’d be absolutely livid, but he was willing to risk having Hermione mad at him if it kept her even a little bit safer.

Once past the security desk, Harry used the internal portkeys to arrive at Hermione’s floor; in an arrangement resembling a Muggle elevator a series of numbered handles served to connect the floors of the apartment building, with each floor linked to a similar portkey chamber. It was faster than using the stairs, even if the nagging pulling sensation of the portkey spell left some people queasy. A quick swallow or two settled his stomach, and a few seconds later he was knocking on her door.

”Just a minute!” his friend’s voice called out to him, and a few seconds later the door cracked open and an eye peeked through. “Harry! What are you doing here?” Hermione asked in a shocked tone of voice, the door opening a bit further as her eyes widened and, oddly, she blushed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t Floo first, Hermione, but this is important,” he replied. “Can I come in?” He put his hand to the door, but to his surprise she held it against him.

“NO! I mean—just give me a second, all right?” She pushed the door shut, leaving a perplexed Harry standing in the hall. A few moments later she called out, “Okay, Harry, you can come in!”

He pushed the door open in time to see Hermione returning from her bedroom, her hands busy tying the belt of a long bathrobe around her waist. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting; what did you need to talk to me about?” she asked a bit breathlessly.

Harry’s eyes darted around the penthouse a bit suspiciously. Nothing seemed out of place, though there was an odd couch-like affair on one side of the room he didn’t remember seeing before. “Are we alone, Hermione?” he asked, his eyes glancing towards the bedroom door.

“What do you mean, Harry, of course we’re—Oh!” She blushed furiously and glared at him. “Harry James Potter, you get your mind out of the gutter! I am not…entertaining anyone! And even if I was, what business would it be of yours?”

Harry matched her glare for glare. “It’s my business if you’re cheating on my best friend and your fiancé,” he shot back, feeling a twinge of satisfaction as she went pale. “Yes, he told me; he let me know the week before that he was going to ask you. So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit suspicious to find you in your bathrobe at this time of day, especially when you keep me waiting outside your door, and since I know Ron can’t be here.”

“There’s a perfectly good explanation,” she replied huffily, “and what do you mean, you know Ron can’t be here? Since when do you even bother to keep track of where we are?” She couldn’t keep just a touch of bitterness from her voice, but he missed it as his thoughts returned to the reason for his visit.

“Damn it, I didn’t want to tell you this way…Hermione, Ron’s been kidnapped.” He waited for her to lose it at the thought of her beloved in danger, bracing himself to calm her down so they could get on with saving their friend.

To say her reaction was not what Harry had expected would have been an understatement of the highest degree. She didn’t collapse in fear, or burst out in tears, she got…angry. “Oh, that—that—I’ve told him and told him to be more careful! Harry, I’m so sorry, you have enough to worry about without having to look after us as well!”

Harry found himself in the very odd position of trying to calm Hermione’s temper, rather than the other way around, which was far more common. “Hermione, I’m sure it wasn’t Ron’s fault, these things happen—“

“You sit down, Harry, we can keep talking while I get dressed,” she declared, shooing him towards the sofa while she returned to her bedroom. “And don’t apologize for him! Honestly, there are times when he drives me absolutely mad! He knows there are still supporters of Tom Riddle on the loose (like Harry, she refused to give their dead nemesis even the token respect of his pretentious alias). We have so much to thank you for; I don’t think it’s too much to ask of us to at least try to make your job a bit easier by watching out for ourselves.”

Harry mumbled a noncommittal response, his thoughts distracted by the occasional glimpses of creamy flesh he was getting though Hermione’s open bedroom door. Besides, he did think Hermione calling Ron cavalier about his safety was a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

When she came back into the living room a couple of minutes later, a pair of black hi-top Doc Martens in one hand, he called her on it. “I seem to recall someone getting into trouble in Knockturn Alley,” he mentioned as she sat down and began lacing up the sturdy footwear.

She glanced up and he flushed at the glimpse of cleavage that was visible from that angle. “Yes, and believe me, Ron gave me plenty of grief over that, too! I’ve been far more cautious since then, though I think I should hardly be held responsible for being the victim of a random mugging.”

She finished tying her boots and stood up, and Harry took a moment to appreciate her outfit. In addition to the Doc Martens she was wearing a pair of low-rise black parachute pants, a dark maroon tank top that left her midriff bare, and a silver-studded black leather jacket that was comfortably scuffed and worn. She looked relaxed and dangerous and sexy as hell, and he stomped firmly on any subsequent thoughts that tried to follow after that.

Her hands moved to her hair as she swept it back into a loose, messy ponytail, the movement causing her top to rise up even further, exposing more of her stomach. Harry’s eyes were drawn irresistibly to the expanse of bare flesh, and he noticed with a start that at some time in the not too distant past Hermione had had her navel pierced. ‘Ron will kill me, Ron will kill me, screw that, Hermione will kill me,’ he kept repeating to himself as he tore his gaze away from her, missing the speculative gleam in his friend’s eyes.

“So, do we have any clue as to who the kidnappers are?” she asked, drawing his mind back to the business at hand.

“Huh? Oh, um, yeah, actually I have a pretty good idea,” Harry admitted, pulling the Owl he’d received from the pocket of his robes. Hermione arched one eyebrow as she unfolded the note, then rolled her eyes as she read:

Potty;

The Weasel is my prisoner. Bring the mudblood to the Sign of the Guzzling Grimm by 12:00 noon if you ever want to see him again.

signed,

Anonymous

“’Anonymous?’” Hermione asked incredulously. “The note’s written on his personal stationery, for Merlin’s sake!” Sure enough, across the top of the note was printed ‘From the Desk of Draco Malfoy, God’s Gift To Women’.

Harry shrugged. “No one ever said Malfoy was terribly bright,” he admitted, “and at least with him involved we don’t have to worry too much about having dangerous and unstoppable forces of darkness arrayed against us.”

“No, just silly and incompetent forces of darkness. But it’s embarassing,” she complained. “If Ron had to be kidnapped, it should’ve been by someone who was actually a threat, not the Ferret Boy.”

“Let’s not get overconfident,” Harry cautioned. “Malfoy’s pretty much a joke, but he might still have some contacts with his father’s old cronies. There’s a few of them who would be at least a little dicier proposition.”

Hermione just snorted. “Honestly, Harry, if any of them were involved, do you think for a moment they would have let him send a demand like that? At the very least they would have made him use a blank piece of paper!”

Harry couldn’t think of a single way to refute her logic, so he just smiled as best he could and said, “Well, let’s go rescue the prat from the git so you can get on with your wedding plans; after all, you wouldn’t want to have to go to all the trouble of canceling all the registries, would you?”

“No, we wouldn’t want to have to do that,” she mumbled as she followed him out the door.

~~~~~

It was no surprise that the Guzzling Grimm was one of the three Knockturn Alley taverns that Harry had visited during the mugger incident. What was a surprise was that the tavernkeeper didn’t seem at all unhappy to see Harry again, a fact that would have made him suspicious under other circumstances. Fortunately for the proprietor, Harry was too busy glaring at any wizard who even glanced at Hermione to notice any unusual behavior being directed his way.

“Mister Potter, sir! What an honor to have you in my humble establishment! How may I help you?” the man beamed.

Harry finished surreptitiously casting a blinding hex at a tablefull of wizards who had wolfwhistled when Hermione walked in and nodded at the cheerful man. “We’re looking for a couple of friends who were supposed to meet us here, a blond and a redhead. You might have recognized the redhead, he’s the Keeper for the Cannons.”

“Oh, yes! They arrived several hours ago. Didn’t know they were expecting anyone, the blonde seemed awfully concerned about their privacy. Top of the stairs, the room at the end of the hall.” He watched as Harry and Hermione hurried up the stairs, and then went to the fireplace and tossed in a handful of Floo powder. “Malfoy Manor!” he called, and then stuck his head into the green flames. “They showed up just like you said, Miz Black,” he reported. “We should hear the explosion any time now…”

Meanwhile, at the end of the corridor, Harry and Hermione listened carefully at the door indicated, trying to hear if they had the right room or not. Suddenly there came the unmistakable sound of their friend moaning in pain. “Step back!” Harry hissed, readying one dragonhide-booted foot to smash the door. The boots were favorites of his; the heels were enchanted to shatter every locking spell known to the Unspeakables, and had an enhancement charm to magnify the force of any kick he applied to a solid surface. The sight of a supposedly secure door being literally blown off its hinges by a kick had disoriented more than one dark wizard, and Harry saw no reason that Malfoy would be any exception.

The foot struck, the door exploded inward with a satisfying crash, and Harry rushed in after, wand raised to save his friend from whatever torture was being inflicted on him. What he didn’t expect to see was the image that would be burned onto his retinas for some time to come.

Ron, lying naked, his hands gripping the bedposts. Wearing a pointy hat, half-moon spectacles, and a long, fake white beard. And with an equally naked blonde straddling his hips and riding him for all she was worth. “Oh, Professor,” she was crying, and he could have gone without hearing that, either.

The sound of a female voice screeching in rage reminded Harry that he wasn’t alone, and he managed to fling his arms around Hermione before she could launch herself at her prone and helpless fiancé. “Ronald Weasley, how could you?” she shrilled, and Harry winced as the struggling hellcat in his arms pummeled him mercilessly in her efforts to break free. The blonde’s head whipped around, tossing her hair back with a smile, and if anything Hermione’s voice became shriller. “And with Luna Lovegood? You swore you didn’t fancy her! You prat! You git! You unbelievable wanker! You—You—!” Harry felt her movements change, and instinctively pinioned her arms before she could raise her wand. “Harry! Let me go! I’ll hex his Johnson off! I’ll shrivel his walnuts into raisins! I’ll—“ she proceeded to enumerate all the various things she was going to do to her unfaithful intended, most of which should have been impossible even with magic, and Harry found himself tremendously grateful that she’d never been this mad at him.

Meanwhile the target of her invective was looking extremely green as the nature of her graphically inventive threats went home. “Hermione, love, I can explain…” he pleaded, struggling to extricate himself from Luna’s embrace, who was being extremely uncooperative.

Hermione suddenly stopped her struggles and calmly spoke. “You can let go now, Harry.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, and something in her expression must have reassured him, as he relaxed his grip. She smiled her thanks and turned back to her thoroughly terrified fiancé. Without saying a word, she twisted off her engagement ring, held it up between two fingers, and for the first time in her life consciously performed wandless magic. “Incendio!” With a flare the diamond shattered. Hermione tossed the blackened scrap of gold towards the bed, and then turned away. “Let’s get out of here.”

~~~~~

Big Bad rubbed his hands gleefully at the reports that came in from the Guzzling Grimm. Not only had Harry Potter not rained fire and destruction on the premises, he’d actually been observed to have a small smile on his face as he left. True, Hermione Granger had been radiating enough pure rage to fuel a dozen bonfires, but Narcissa had assured him it was the kind of anger that burned itself out quickly, not the type that festered and made trouble for years. Yes, indeed, it seemed like Narcissa’s plans were going to work out nicely. He’d have to do something nice for her in return…

~~~~~

Harry had escorted the silent Hermione back to her apartment, with part of his attention focused on her, and the rest on his own confused emotions. He knew he was furious with Ron for hurting her, and sad for Hermione that she had been forced to learn about his betrayal in such a blunt manner, but why the hell was he happy? Was he such a terrible person that he wanted his friends to be as miserable as he was, or was it something else? Was it, perhaps, that he knew that Ron wasn’t right for Hermione, and this had saved them from making a terrible mistake?

Was it, perhaps, that he thought he knew who would be right for her?

Hermione was sufficiently distraught that Harry chose to use his authority as an Unspeakable to override the apartment building’s wards and Apparated them directly to her floor’s portkey chamber, bypassing the security desk and any curious onlookers they might have met. He escorted her to her apartment, and was about to give her some privacy when she asked, “Could you stay for a while, Harry? I…don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Anything you need, Hermione, you know you only have to ask,” he replied softly, and followed her into her apartment. He took a seat in the living room and waited while she went into her bedroom to change.

A few minutes later she returned to the living room, clad in the comfortable, forest green workout clothes he’d given her the previous Christmas after he’d discovered she’d taken up jogging. It was her favorite outfit for just lounging around her apartment; every time she wore it, the green color and soft fabric made her feel like Harry was hugging her. Now she sat on the couch next to him and slowly leaned back into his arms, her eyes staring off into space as he just held her in companionable silence.

After about a half an hour, she spoke into the stillness, startling Harry out of the light doze he’d slipped into while holding her. “Harry, am I a terrible person?”

“Of course not; why would you think that?” he replied.

“Then why aren’t I more upset with Ron? Why do I feel…relieved?”

“Do you? Feel relieved, that is?” he asked, an odd sensation turning over in the pit of his stomach.

“Yes, I do!” Hermione replied, her voice filled with frustration. “And I can’t understand it! If I loved Ron, I should be miserable, but if I don’t love him, why did I accept his proposal in the first place? It’s not logical!”

Harry sighed; for such an intelligent witch, his friend could be incredibly thick at times. “Hermione, I’m the last person to claim to be any kind of authority on emotions, but even I know you can’t always apply logic to the way you feel about people.” He held her tight when he felt her tensing up, refusing to let her escape before he had his say. “You love Ron, and were used to having him around all the time. Even though you had your differences, you had enough memories in common that you felt comfortable with him, comfortable enough to take him into your bed.” She was really beginning to try to get loose, but he had one more thing to say. “Isn’t it possible that you confused loving Ron with being in love with him, and the reason you’re relieved is that your heart knew this, even if your head didn’t?”

Hermione twisted around in his arms, staring at him in open amazement. “Harry, that’s…that’s brilliant! That’s exactly what I felt!”

He shrugged, flushing slightly. It wasn’t often that he managed to outthink his extremely intelligent friend, and he was enjoying the experience. “Maybe that should be my next career; Harry Potter, The Love Doctor.” He grinned as she broke into giggles and finally let her escape his arms.

Several hours later they were enjoying a relaxing meal of Szechwan take-out and a bottle of properly heated sake, when a chime announced the arrival of a special delivery postal Owl. Hermione rose and retrieved the letter, returning to the table before opening it. “It’s from Ron,” she said unnecessarily.

Harry smiled encouragingly. “At least he had the sense not to come in person.”

“I suppose,” Hermione agreed, and broke the seal, quickly scanning its contents.

“Well?” he prompted when she remained silent a little longer than he liked.

“Hmm? Oh, it’s about what I expected. He’s dreadfully sorry for what happened, swears he never meant to hurt my feelings that way, and hopes that someday I’ll be able to forgive him. Oh, and he uses a lot of adjectives and adverbs I didn’t think he knew to describe himself and his behavior. It’s quite impressive, really.”

Harry looked down at his hands; he was surprised to see he had them tightly clenched, and with an effort forced himself to relax. “Does that mean…are you…I mean…” He took a deep breath and tried to meet her eyes, which were looking at him with a quizzical expression. “Are you going to give him another chance?” The very idea appalled him, but she had agreed to marry Ron, something he never would have believed could happen. Who knew what sort of crazy notions she might get?

Hermione looked startled at his question, and then to his complete and utter horror, began to look thoughtful. “Well, he did apologize, and I suppose there could be some kind of explanation…” She trailed off as Harry started looking ready to explode, and burst out laughing. “Oh, Harry, you should see your face! Of course I’m not going to give him another chance, you twit! I should never have given him one chance, as you so ably pointed out.”

Harry sagged back in his chair, staring at the chortling madwoman sitting across from him. “Do you go around giving everyone you know heart attacks, or am I just the lucky one?” he asked half-seriously.

“You’re just too easy, Harry, and much too serious. Perhaps if you’d try to have a bit more fun in life, I wouldn’t need to go to such extreme measures,” Hermione replied with a smirk.

“Seriously, I will forgive Ron eventually, but only after he has groveled far more effectively. A single letter just won’t do, he didn’t even send flowers or chocolates with it. And besides, I want to be sure and be there when Molly and Ginny let him have it. They should be spokespeople for the Howlers service, they really should.”

Harry just smiled and chuckled at the impish sense of humor Hermione was displaying, a side of her personality she’d kept carefully under wraps throughout most of their time at Hogwarts. He knew she’d been the mastermind behind a couple of brilliant pranks the Gryffindor girls had played on the boys during seventh year, but the only reason he’d found out was that she’d asked to borrow his invisibility cloak and the Marauder’s Map to pull them.

He’d agreed on two conditions; the first, that he be exempt from whatever prank they pulled, and two, that he be allowed to help. Since Hermione had never removed the charm that made the staircase to the girl’s dorm recognize Harry as ‘one of the girls’, he was given honorary status and included in the plotting, an experience that opened his eyes to just how dangerous and cunning the female of the species could be.

While all this was going though his mind Hermione moved back to the living room, settling on the couch with a sigh. Harry came over and sat down next to her, his gaze wandering idly over the room before coming to rest on the odd couch he’d noticed that morning, which in turn reminded him of something else. “Say, Hermione, I was wondering…”

“Yes, Harry?”

“Well, don’t hit me or anything, but this morning when I showed up here, I got the oddest impression that you were…well…”

“Well, what, Harry?” she asked, and Harry noticed that a blush was rising up her cheeks.

“Um, well…that you were…naked…” He winced and waited for her to bite his head off, but to his complete surprise she not only didn’t give him holy hell, she was actually blushing a brilliant red. “Hermione, you weren’t naked…were you?”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Harry,” she said a bit defensively. “A couple of the girls at work were talking about vacationing in France this summer, and I was just getting a head start on my tan.” She gestured at the odd couch, and a brilliant patch of sunlight enveloped it. “That’s a Wizard Tanning Bed, it produces an even tan without the harmful effects of UV rays that the Muggle beds produce.”

“But why were you naked?” Harry wanted to know, still confused.

“Do you have to keep saying it that way?” she asked crossly.

“I don’t know any other way to say it,” he replied defensively. “After all you were the one who was naked.”

“So I was naked!” she finally exploded. “There’s nothing wrong with that, the human body is a perfectly natural thing! If you absolutely must know, my friends were talking about going to St. Tropez, and I wanted to be ready in case that’s where we settled on going!”

“Waitaminute, I know that name…isn’t that where they have a…a nude beach?” Harry asked, his voice cracking just a bit.

“They have a clothing optional beach, Harry, that’s not the same thing,” Hermione temporized, but he was not about to let her off the hook that easily.

“But if it’s optional, why were you—?” he gestured at the bed. “You were really thinking about…doing that?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, Harry Potter, but yes, I was, and I am!” Her eyes flashed as she raised her chin and glared at him. “I have nothing to be ashamed of, no matter what you might think!”

Harry wasn’t about to tell her, but he agreed with her 100%; she had nothing to be ashamed of in that department. In fact, Harry was quite sure the idea of Hermione proving that she has nothing to be ashamed of, and in front of thousands of randy Frenchmen, was going to cause him far too many sleepless night as it was. He couldn’t very well blind the entire male population of France (well, he could, but it probably would be bad for tourism, or some other such rot that would earn him a lecture from the Ministry).

Unable to think of a decent response that wouldn’t dig him in deeper than he already was, Harry mumbled, “Sorry, Hermione,” and got up off the couch.

Some of the fire left Hermione’s eyes when she saw his contrition; she never could stay mad at him very long, especially when he had that scolded puppy look going. “It’s all right, Harry, I guess I’m just feeling a bit sensitive right now. And that’s the sort of response I expected from Ron, not you.”

“S’okay, Hermione,” he replied, his expression a bit more natural, even if it was a tad forced. “It just caught me by surprise, is all. It shouldn’t, I guess; I know that nothing scares you, but the idea of going out in public like that, with all my ‘bits’ hanging out…well, I think I’d rather fight another Tom Riddle.” He did a fair job of faking a yawn and headed towards the door, and out of that very uncomfortable conversation. “It’s late, and you probably need your rest after today; I know I do, at any rate.” He stifled another yawn, a real one this time. “I think I’ll probably sleep to noon, myself.” After a shower. A long shower. A long, COLD shower.

Hermione nodded abstractedly, her mind suddenly occupied with vision of Harry on the beach with all hits ‘bits’ hanging out. “You’re right, Harry, a good night’s sleep is what we both need.” After a shower. A long shower. A long, COLD…well, you get the idea…

~~~~~

3. Part Three

Part 3

~~~~~

Narcissa set aside the report that S.U.C.K.R. had prepared for her with a small smile of satisfaction. She hadn’t been too sure when she forged the ransom note that she wasn’t laying it on a bit thick, but apparently such sophomoric behavior was so in keeping with her son’s reputation that the recipients hadn’t even questioned the source. It was more than a bit depressing to think that her contribution to the Wizarding gene pool currently resided in such a shallow puddle, but she was still young enough to correct that little problem…

However, that was a worry for another day. Until such time as she could take care of that concern, she had to protect the offspring she currently possessed, which meant continuing with what Big Bad had taken to calling Operation Cupid.

She picked up another piece of parchment, chuckling at the comments made by her Sister, Luna. Apparently the young woman was well pleased with Ronald Weasley, both for his malleability and his stamina. She foresaw no difficulties in maintaining her hold on his attentions, and actually thanked her older Sister for her help in making ‘her dreams come true’.

Narcissa’s right eyebrow crept up at that; she hadn’t realized that in plotting one love match, she’d be furthering another, but apparently Luna Lovegood really was in love with the youngest of the Weasley brothers. Well, it took all kinds, and she would probably be far better for him than Granger ever would have been, anyway. The Hermione Granger Narcissa knew from the Sisterhood’s intelligence reports was far too impatient with stupidity to make many allowances for the shortcomings of a partner, and given the thick stack of documentation of some of their very public quarrels, she had passed her threshold with Weasley long ago.

Interestingly, there seemed to be no similar reports of rows between Hermione and Harry Potter. Of course, up to now they had not been romantically involved, and it might be that once sexual tension was added to the mix such fights might surface, but somehow she had a hunch that if they did, they would be both rare in occurrence and spectacular in their intensity.

She sighed and set the reports aside; time enough for idle speculations after her plans had come to fruition. Phase One, breaking up Ron and Hermione, was clearly a complete success. Phase Two, getting Harry and Hermione to admit their feelings for one another, was going to take a bit more finesse. She idly tapped her quill against her teeth, and then nodded. Time to see about introducing a couple more variables…

~~~~~

Hermione wandered though her favorite store in Diagon Alley, a smile on her face as the smells of paper and parchment, ink and binding glue, made the stress drain from her shoulders. There might be a larger selection of books in a Wizarding library, but anything she found at Flourish and Blott’s she could purchase and keep, a definite plus for a chronic bibliophile like herself (Hi, I’m Hermione Granger, and I have a three-book-a-day habit). Nor did the fact that the store now had a catalog set up to access Muggle books as well help either her addiction or her Gringotts account.

Still, as vices went, there certainly were worse ones to have, she thought as she gently ran her hand across a row of books, the leather bindings sending a shiver up her spine… “Addictive, aren’t they?” a soft tenor voice asked her.

Hermione turned around and found herself staring up into a pair of the blackest eyes she had ever seen, set within heavy eyelids, beneath heavy black eyebrows and wavy black hair, and framed by an olive-toned, Mediterranean complexion. “Eep,” she said intelligently.

“I could not help noticing the pleasure you took in the feel of a fine book beneath your hands,” he continued, his gaze boring into hers, his voice carrying a faint accent she couldn’t quite place. “It is rare indeed to see such a love of knowledge combined with great beauty, and I told myself I would always regret it if I did not introduce myself.” He reached out and took her hand in his, raising the back of it to his lips. “Forgive my forwardness; I am Feyd bin Yusef, a traveler from a far land, and you, fair lady, have enslaved me…”

~~~~~

Harry raised his wand and checked the passages in front of him for signs of use. One of the Unspeakables’ more reliable informants had passed on the word that a cabal of Dark wizards was trying to raise enough power to threaten the peace of Wizarding society. They apparently had somehow managed to get their hands on something called ‘The Necronomicon’, and were planning on using it to contact some sort of elemental beings called ‘The Old Ones’. Whether or not they could pull it off was irrelevant, as the attempt called for some poor souls to suffer unending torment, a prospect Harry was sworn to prevent.

‘Someday,’ he thought grumpily as he pushed past another collection of torn and tattered cobwebs, ‘I’m going to confront a Dark wizard who’s trying to raise power by playing with puppies and eating Danish pastries, and I’m going to pass out in shock.’

His reverie was interrupted as the faint sound of chanting reached his ears. “Oogga Chaka, Oogga Chaka, Oogga Oogga Oogga Chaka…” the voices repeated over and over again. Harry spotted torchlight flickering in the direction the chants were echoing from, and increased his pace.

A few moments later Harry found himself standing in the mouth of a passageway that opened on the wall of a large, torch lit chamber. Below him the circular room was occupied by a graphically phallic statue of enormous proportions, a circle of figures cloaked and hooded in scarlet robes, and a central altar with a scantily clad sacrifice bound and gagged in its center. Between the altar and the statue’s most outstanding ‘attributes’ stood the person who had to be the high priest of the ceremony, an evil, wavy-bladed dagger raised over his head as he chanted:

Jeg stanser ikke dette følelseen,

Dyp inne i meg,

Pike som De akkurat forstår ikke,

Hva De gjør til meg!

Harry didn’t understand the words, but whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. “Expelliarmus!” he shouted, disarming the leader, followed by “Stupefy!”, the stunning curse sweeping across the entire chamber and dropping the Dark wizards in their tracks.

With the immediate threat removed, Harry looked for a way down into the chamber and found a narrow staircase, little more than a ledge, which spiraled down to the bottom. He fired a summoning charm back up the passageway to call the rest of his team, and then made his way to the altar and the prisoner chained there.

That she was both young and female did not surprise him; Dark wizards were a horny lot, and always seemed to require the presence of at least one nubile victim to make their plots complete. What did surprise him was her extreme beauty, far beyond what he was used to seeing in intended sacrificial victims. She had long, straight, blue-black hair and pale, milk-white skin. Through the thin piece of gauze that was her only covering he could see round, firm breasts with small, pink nipples, a narrow waist and flat stomach, and flaring hips that led to long, shapely legs and dainty feet. A thatch of blue-black curls concealed her sex, and all in all, she was probably the most perfectly formed female Harry had ever seen.

‘And probably doesn’t have a brain in her head,’ Harry cynically thought. In his experience, extreme beauty and intelligence were a rare combination (Hermione, he felt, was the exception that proved the rule). Not that beautiful women didn’t have minds, they just rarely seemed to bother using them. He looked around for something to cover her, and found the robe she had probably worn to the chamber pooled at the foot of the altar. He draped it over her, and as he tucked it around her neck, Harry suddenly found himself staring into a pair of incredible, violet eyes that sparkled with gratitude.

~~~~~

Her name was Monica MacDermott. She was the only daughter of an old Wizarding family from northern Scotland, one with ties to families in France. She’d been educated at Beauxbatons, which was why Harry had never met her during his school days. She was six years younger than he was, and had been vacationing in Edinburgh when agents of the cabal of wizards Harry had captured kidnapped her off the street. She was charming, vivacious and intelligent, and Harry was quite sure that she could probably have her choice of young wizards. In point of fact, if he were not already madly in love with his best friend, he probably would have been one of them, which made his current situation all that much more awkward.

Monica, it seemed, was terrified that the remaining members of the cabal, part of whom Harry had already captured, would kidnap her again and complete their ritual. They had apparently already performed some sort of ceremony that marked her as an intended ‘bride’ for the Old Ones, and had informed her that once so marked they could not select another lest they offend the very beings they were trying to invoke. Nor would she consider being placed in protective custody; two of the wizards captured in the chamber had bragged about being lower level Ministry employees, and Monica was certain that given the chance, other moles within the government would snatch her away.

The only person she felt safe with was Harry; he was the one who had rescued her, he was the wizard who had defeated Voldemort, and she was sure he was the only person powerful enough to give the Dark wizards who wanted her pause.

Which was why she was currently asleep in his guest room, while he completed his reports in his den and tried very hard not to think about the nubile young woman resting less than thirty feet from where he sat. It didn’t help his peace of mind that he’d been living like a monk for years; ever since he finally admitted to himself how he felt about Hermione, the idea of having sex with anyone else seemed too much like cheating on her.

Nor did it help his peace of mind that the Unspeakables’ research department was actually familiar with the ‘betrothal’ ritual that had been performed on Monica, and knew how to break it. All someone had to do was relieve her of the ‘burden’ of her virginity, and she’d be perfectly safe. Somehow Harry had neglected to inform her of this, probably because he suspected just who she would want to perform that service for her.

Harry was startled out of his reverie by the sound of someone knocking on his front door. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece above the den’s fireplace and frowned; it was close to ten o’clock at night, far later than he normally expected anyone to come calling on him, especially unannounced. It couldn’t be an enemy; none of the wards had twinged, but still…

When he opened the front door he was surprised to find Hermione standing there, her expression a bit nervous. He was a bit more surprised to see that she was wearing a very nice, very tight, very short, black cocktail dress, and that her hair and makeup were both fixed with great care. And he was even more surprised to see that she was standing there with a complete stranger, a very handsome stranger, who had his arm around Hermione’s shoulders, and was smiling with entirely too many teeth.

Harry hated him already.

“Hi, Harry; I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Feyd bin Yusef. He’s in town on business for the Egyptian branch of Gringotts, and asked me to introduce you…” her voice trailed off as she noticed Harry’s expression.

Harry mentally shook himself and smiled tightly. “Certainly, any friend of Hermione’s…won’t you come in?” he asked, stepping aside.

“Ah, you are too kind,” Feyd replied, urging Hermione through the door. “I met the delightful Miss Granger today at Flourish and Blotts’, and she agreed to take pity on a poor stranger in your beautiful city, and provide me with companionship at dinner.” He turned his toothy, megawatt smile towards her and Harry seethed as she blushed. They just met today, and she was getting dressed up like this to see him?

Harry surreptitiously studied Hermione’s date as they all moved into the living room. There was something about the guy that twigged the instincts honed by years of battling dark wizards. It went beyond the way the stranger had glommed onto his best friend (Harry was constantly amazed that so few wizards actually hit on Hermione, given how attractive she was); if anything, it was the feeling that Feyd’s attentions towards her seemed somewhat…forced. He decided a little judicial snooping was in order.

“So, Feyd” Harry said after they were all comfortably seated, “if you work for the Egyptian branch of Gringotts, you must know Bill Weasley, right?” Was that a flicker of nervousness in his eyes?

“Yes, Bill, a very fine fellow,” Feyd agreed. “A true gentleman, and a pleasure to work with.”

“Still, it’s a shame to see him losing all his hair when he’s so young,” Harry replied, baiting his trap; unlike his father, Bill still had a full head of hair, including the ubiquitous pony tail that drove his mum crazy.

“True, we can all not be so blessed by fortune,” Feyd acknowledged, running one hand through his own thick hair. Aha!

Before Harry could pounce on the obvious falsehood, a sleepy voice spoke from the hallway. “Harry, do we have company?”

Hermione’s head whipped about at the sound of the unfamiliar female voice, her eyes narrowing at the sight of the slender, disheveled, gorgeous girl standing in the doorway of the living room, her long, bare legs sticking out from under one of Harry’s shirts. “Who are you?” she asked abruptly, not noticing the harsh tone in her voice.

Harry noticed it though, and mentally shifted gears; given that Hermione had shown up on his doorstep with a strange man in tow, he wasn’t feeling too charitable. “This is Monica,” he replied coolly. “She had a little trouble with some Dark wizards, and is staying here for a few days while we sort it out.”

Monica strolled over and leaned on the back of the chair where Harry sat, her hands resting on Harry’s shoulders in a manner that Hermione thought was entirely too familiar. “Harry, you didn’t introduce our guests, that’s very rude.” Hermione gritted her teeth. Our guests?

“Sorry, Monica,” Harry replied, unconsciously covering one of Monica’s hands with his own. What the devil was the matter with Hermione’s eyes? For a second there, they looked…green? “This is Hermione Granger, and a friend of hers, Fred ben Useless.”

“Feyd bin Yusef,” Hermione growled back at him.

Harry waved unconcernedly. “Whatever.”

“So, Harmony, have you known Harry long?” Monica asked huskily, leaning a bit further forward, her breasts brushing the top of Harry’s head through the fabric of her shirt.

Hermione gaped at her. No one who lived in the Wizarding world for any length of time could not know just who Hermione was in relationship to Harry Potter, which meant the bitch was deliberately yanking her chain. Still, she wasn’t going to give the little strumpet the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her. “That’s Her-my-own-e, and I’ve known Harry since we were 11 years old and we met on the Hogwarts Express.”

“Oh you’re that Hermione!” Monica said brightly. “I’m so sorry, it’s just that I expected someone who looked much…younger, you know, more like Harry.”

That tears it!

With a screech Hermione launched herself off the couch, going directly over Harry’s head in her need to reach the hussy who’d been pawing her Harry.

Harry yelped as his chair tipped over and the two clawing, spitting wildcats yowled and fought on the floor behind him, tufts of hair and pieces of fabric flying in every direction. By the time he righted himself and assessed the situation both women were in tattered rags, making it abundantly clear that while Hermione favored red lace, French cut panties and peek-a-boo bras, Monica preferred to sleep au naturel. The part of his mind not mesmerized by writhing attractive female bodies also noted that bin Yusef was making no efforts to intervene in the struggle, and was strangely detached for a heterosexual male who supposedly found at least one of the figures on the floor attractive.

After a moment of indecision, during which the struggling pair wreaked even more havoc on their wardrobes and the bric-a-brac, Harry pulled his wand and muttered, “Fantasio!” Instantly a half-dozen anthropomorphized brooms materialized around the women, each holding buckets of ice water, buckets that were promptly upended. Hermione and Monica screamed in outrage and separated, the brooms and their buckets vanished, and Harry was left with two very angry, and very wet, witches.

Hermione looked more than ready to pick up right where she’d been before their dousing, but before she could get going Harry pounced, lifting her from the floor and bundling her up in his cloak, a move that served to eliminate the distraction of an entirely-too-close-to-naked-Hermione from his thoughts, while at the same time restraining her from turning her fury on him. It didn’t keep her from landing several elbows in his midsection, and her wet hair lashed him across the face, knocking his glasses askew, but at least the hampering material deflected her heel just enough to avoid any damage to his family jewels. “Hermione, calm down, I’m sorry, all right?” he pleaded to little effect.

While Harry’s arms were busy with a wet and struggling Hermione, Feyd slipped forward and provided a similar service for Monica, throwing his cloak around her and sweeping her up in his arms before quickly depositing her in one of the chairs. She thrashed about for a second, adjusting the folds of cloth around her, and then glared at her host and the hissing and spitting wildcat he was restraining with difficulty. “So that’s the way it is,” she snarled when she heard Harry’s apology to Hermione. “She attacks me for no good reason, I get battered and bruised and half drowned, and she gets the apology?”

Monica jumped to her feet, her hands holding Feyd’s cloak tightly around herself. “I know when I’ve been insulted, Mister Hero-of-the-Wizarding-World! I’d rather be kidnapped by Dark wizards and offered up to their icky gods than spend one more second under this roof!” She turned to Hermione’s escort and asked in a more pleasant tone of voice, “Mr. bin Yusef, you seem to be a gentlewizard; may a witch in distress impose on your good character for succor in her time of need?”

Feyd, being no fool, flashed his best smile, which was very good indeed. “Of course, dear lady, I would be honored to serve in such a capacity.” He looked over at Harry holding onto his friend and sniffed. “All the more so because I was deceived earlier into believing the woman I was escorting was a lady.”

Harry and Hermione stared in dumfounded amazement as the door to his house swung shut behind Feyd and Monica. Harry finally set her down, and they slowly made their way to the couch, neither of them noticing the small squelching noises the soaked carpeting made. As they sat, Hermione unconsciously leaned against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. They stared into the flickering embers of the fireplace, their thoughts, unbeknownst to each other, following similar paths.

Finally it was Hermione who spoke. “Harry, what the bloody hell just happened?

~~~~~

Feyd and Monica made it far enough past Harry’s wards to safely Apparate, and once they arrived at their destination, both promptly collapsed in laughter.

“Oh, my, that was fun!” Monica gasped, hanging onto Feyd’s arm until her giggles subsided.

“Too, right, Julie!” Feyd replied, his megawatt charmer smile replaced by a much more natural grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed an assignment so much. Shame it was such a quick job, though. I hardly had time to get warmed up…”

“Don’t talk to me about ‘warmed up’, David!” Julie, formerly known as Monica, mock-growled. “You weren’t the one chained to a cold stone slab in an even colder dungeon, wearing nothing more than a scarf while a bunch of guys you hardly knew, dressed in wardrobe department castoffs, got to stare at your ‘bits’!” She snorted. “Thank Merlin Narcissa has a sense of humor, though it was a bitch trying to keep a straight face during the ‘ritual’.” She related just what the ‘Dark wizards’ had been chanting and David, formerly known as Feyd, guffawed.

“Muggle music for a dark ritual? I’m surprised she didn’t use Ozzy or Alice Cooper!”

Julie frowned. “Narcissa is far too subtle a person to be that obvious; just because this isn’t one of her regular operations doesn’t mean she’s going to lower her standards.”

David sighed. “I know, I know; I just feel a bit odd, being so obvious. We normally don’t even let the marks know they are marks, let alone leave enough clues around to paint them a picture…”

“Narcissa knows what she’s doing,” Julie temporized, though secretly she agreed with David. Neither of them had been terribly happy to be selected for the parts they’d just played, but their mentor and patron had been adamant. The overall success of the operation hinged on either Harry or Hermione, or preferably both of them, not only figuring out they were being played, but why they were being played. If anything went wrong, the two of them were going to have to disappear or lay low for a very long time, and only the promise of an extremely large financial reward had convinced the pair to participate.

Narcissa had explained it all to them patiently when she laid out her plans. “It’s quite simple; anyone with half a brain knows that Potter is in love with Granger, and has been for years. The evidence about Granger’s feelings about Potter is less obvious, at least to T.I.C.K.L.E.’s analysts, but I’ve seen enough to believe she returns his affections.

“Now, as to the reasons neither of them have acted on their feelings, well, there are several possibilities, but they all pretty much boil down to the two of them being too thick about how they feel to admit it, either to themselves or each other. That being the case, subtle isn’t going to work. We’re going to have to metaphorically bash them in the head with a bludger, which is where you two come in…”

~~~~~

Narcissa smiled as her two best agents entered her office. “None the worse for wear, I see,” she remarked, as they settled into the chairs opposite her desk.

“Speak for yourself,” Julie grumbled, wincing a bit. “Getting into a full-out catfight with Granger wasn’t part of the original plan, and she’s stronger than she looks. On top of that, what she lacks in training she makes up for with enthusiasm.”

Their host’s eyes sparkled with merriment. “Oh, my, I suppose it’s too much to hope for that Potter got to see your little dispute?”

“Ringside seat,” David interjected, amused. “He was the one who broke it up, which is why Julie is looking a bit…damp.” He described Harry’s method for ending the fight, and Narcissa found herself fighting back the giggles at the flustered look on Julie’s face.

“Just like a man to get a kick out of watching a catfight,” Julie muttered, making her companion chuckle.

“You misunderstand us, Julie,” he scolded. “We don’t enjoy watching the fight itself, just the…side effects,” he drawled, gesturing in a general way towards her robe and the tattered shirt it concealed.

Narcissa cleared her throat before they could take their bantering any further. “I take it, then, that you feel the plan achieved its objectives?”

David rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, it’s not our usual sort of caper, but given the parameters you outlined, I’d have to say yes,” and Julie nodded as he continued. “I thought Potter was going to blow my head clean off when I walked in with Granger, and he was already verbally going for the jugular when Julie strolled in.”

“Granger wasn’t too happy to see me, either.” She smirked a bit. “It didn’t hurt that I’d disposed of that flannel nightdress Harry gave me and put on one of his shirts instead…”

“I’d wondered about that,” David remarked. “Nice move, that…”

Julie smiled an acknowledgement of his compliment and continued, “She took one look at me and I could see the claws come out; it didn’t take much prodding to push her over the edge, though I admit I didn’t expect her to actually attack me.”

“Hell hath no fury…” David murmured, but subsided when Julie shot him a glare.

“If I can finish…Potter broke the fight up, but it was Granger he grabbed, not me, and I heard him apologizing to her. I’d say they’ve both been nudged, and if nothing interferes with the process, they should draw the right conclusions.”

Narcissa nodded, though inwardly she still had her reservations. Potter and Granger had been in denial for years, that much was clear, and it might take more than one good push for them to wake up and smell the roses. She’d have to arrange for some of her operatives to keep an eye on them and watch for signs one way or the other. In the meantime, she needed to let these two know their efforts on this very unusual assignment were appreciated.

She smiled her second-best smile, the one she saved for subordinates whose efforts had especially pleased her, and said, “You’ve both done an outstanding piece of work. Your payments have been deposited in your Gringotts accounts, and I’d recommend taking a vacation out of the country for at least a month or so, somewhere on the Continent perhaps, or the Americas. Preferably someplace Potter can’t find you if he decides to go looking. It would be a shame if, after your superior efforts, some chance encounter caused everything to unravel.” She made sure the tone of voice she used reflected genuine concern, not a threat, and was rewarded by the relaxed expressions on her operatives’ faces.

“Actually, I have just the place,” David interjected. “Julie, would you care to join me for some skiing and hot chocolate in the Swiss Alps? I own a small chalet, and there’s more than enough room for two…”

“A charming suggestion, David,” Julie agreed with a smile. “Narcissa, you’ll let us know if you need us for anything else?” she asked as a formality.

“You two go enjoy yourselves, you’ve earned it,” their employer replied, waving expansively. “Between the success of Phase One and Phase Two, I believe we’re well on the way to a successful conclusion. If those two are as smart as I think they are, the wheels are already starting to turn…”

~~~~~

4. Part Four

A/N – Glad to see people are enjoying this! It’s my first attempt at a multipart fic, and at writing a pretty much straight humor piece. I do have this more or less finished: there will be two more chapters after this one, and then an epilogue. Unlike the other pieces I’ve written, which were all one-shots, this one may have sequels. I’ve certainly thought of some ideas, anyway.

Enough chatter. On with the show!

~~~~~

Part 4

~~~~~

Harry stared at the report lying open on the desk in front of him and felt the headache he’d been fighting all week start to rear its head once again. ‘Back, Beast,’ he thought at it, using the same mental exercises he’d practiced while learning Occlumency, and felt it crawl back into its lair.

Meanwhile, the report that had triggered the headache didn’t seem like it was going anywhere. According to the Department of Magical Records, Monica MacDermott was a first year student at Beauxbatons, and while she did indeed have black hair and a fair complexion, it would be many years before she affected the pulse of any decent wizard.

On the other hand, Feyd bin Yusef did work for the Egyptian branch of Gringotts. The only problem was, he’d worked for them for over 100 years, and the Wizarding photo included with the report showed a hunched over, dried up prune of a man who could give ugly lessons to a horde of goblins.

The other reports were even more disheartening. The group of ‘Dark wizards’ who were supposed to be sacrificing Monica claimed to be a Glee Club who met in the dungeons because of the wonderful acoustics. The so-called ritual was some godawful Muggle song, and the copy of the Necronomicon was a cheap knockoff available from a hundred sources in both the Wizarding and Muggle worlds. The Department of Mysteries was quite adamant about that, especially since the real thing hadn’t been allowed out of its spellbound iron chest in over a century. They’d checked, just to make sure—nothing like having a bunch of Chthons running around loose to really make your day chthuck—since not only had the star witness for the prosecution vanished, but technically didn’t even exist, when a high-priced defense attorney with connections in Knockturn Alley had shown up and demanded their release, the justice division had no alternative but to comply.

All in all, it made for a lot of red tape, a lot of wheels spinning fruitlessly, and a lot of bad feeling, but to what purpose Harry couldn’t begin to imagine. Someone was going to a lot of effort to yank his chain, but for what reason? And why involve Hermione in it? Certainly, he worried about her, and kept an eye out for her, and, all right, he admitted it, was absolutely and positively madly in love with her, but what did that have to do with—

Harry’s train of thought completely derailed as several things occurred to him at once. First, after several years in a casual, boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, Ron had proposed to Hermione. Next, less than two weeks later, and after years of complete indifference to the red-headed Gryffindor, Luna Lovegood had seduced Ron; not only seduced, but completely captivated him, if his shamefaced confession was any indication. Immediately after that, a very well executed forgery (Draco, for a wonder, actually had an alibi that stuck) of a kidnap note had arrived on Harry’s desk, which led to Harry and Hermione walking in on Ron and Luna in flagrante delecto, as the saying went, terminating Ron’s engagement with Hermione in a rather spectacular fashion.

Scarcely a week later the Unspeakables had received the bogus tip-off about the Dark wizards, and Harry had been suckered into succoring a bogus damsel in distress, one sufficiently clingy (and attractive, he had to admit) that he, in his all too well known hero mode, had offered her shelter. At the same time an impossibly handsome and charming stranger had put the moves on Hermione when she was still vulnerable from her breakup with Ron, all of which had led to that spectacular scene in Harry’s living room. Exit Clingy Damsel and Dashing Stranger, stage left, leaving Harry and Hermione trying to sort out their suddenly jumbled emotions.

Was that what this was all about, he wondered? Was this all some incredibly convoluted, Machiavellian attempt by someone to set Harry and Hermione up? And what was he going to do about it if it was?

~~~~~

Hermione stared out the window of her office at the grounds of Stonehenge University, and tried to make sense of the events of the past few weeks, and of her behavior. What had happened to the cool, collected Research Fellow, and when had this hormone-driven banshee who got into catfights on her best friend’s living room floor supplanted her?

She flushed crimson as the memory washed over her again; her blind rage at the little floozy that seemed to have slipped so effortlessly into Harry’s life, her desperate need to claw the smug expression off her face…it was so completely out of character for her, she never let her emotions get the better of her, and yet lately, every time she turned around it seemed she was turning into the heroine of a bad romance novel.

When had it begun, she wondered. There had to have been a trigger, some event that brought this side of her to the surface…an image rose unbidden to the surface of her thoughts; Ron on bended knee, presenting her with a small black box, its lid raised to display the ring with its diamond solitaire nestled within. With a start she realized for the first time that her emotions at that moment were not those of a woman faced with what was supposed to be a pivotal moment in her life. Her long-time boyfriend, the man she’d thought she loved, was asking her to make their commitment permanent in the most official way possible, and she’d been…sad?

That was it, she hadn’t been shocked, or ecstatic, or any of a dozen other cliché emotions that a woman was supposed to be feeling at that moment, she’d been sad. The man who loved her was asking her to marry him, and somehow, subconsciously she’d realized what Harry had pointed out later on, that while she loved Ron, she wasn’t in love with him, and what’s more, never had been.

Hermione rose from her desk and went to the tall cabinet on the wall behind her, removing a snifter and the bottle of champagne cognac Fleur had given her during her vacation the previous summer, when she and Ron had gone to visit her and Bill at Fleur’s family home in southern France. When she felt like a drink she preferred Muggle types of alcohol, though she did still enjoy an occasional butterbeer. She poured two fingers of the amber liquid into the snifter and swirled it around, letting the body heat of her hands warm the liquid through the fine crystal. She wandered back to the window, staring out at the moors, the fine cognac sliding down her throat like hot silk, the warmth of it spreading outward from her stomach.

She loved Ron, but wasn’t in love with him. That explained the sadness, but it didn’t explain her other reactions. She’d been shocked, surprised, and yes, hurt when she saw him with Luna, but why enraged? She tried to recall just what she had been feeling, and briefly wished she had a Pensieve so that she could study her reactions from the outside, but it hadn’t been that long ago. She reconstructed the day in her mind, from the moment Harry had interrupted her tanning session (and she blushed again at that) to the instant before Harry had kicked in the door, when she had suddenly recognized just what sort of moans Ron was making, and what Harry was about to see—

Her thoughts stuttered to a stop. That was it; that was the determining factor. She’d been furious because Ron was humiliating her in front of Harry, that after so many years of being there for her, of listening to her bitch about Ron’s occasional cluelessness and insensitivity, Harry was going to see incontrovertible proof that she’d been wasting her time in a relationship with their mutual friend. But why did it matter so much?

“Oh, no,” she muttered to herself. “No, no, no, no, no…”

She remembered Harry calming her down back at her apartment, remembered how safe she’d felt, how comforted. Remembered how surprised she’d been at his sudden insight into what she’d been feeling for Ron. She remembered spending the next several days in a sort of haze, unable to sort out all her feelings, remembered going out shopping to take her mind off things, and going to her favorite store, where she’d met the person who’d introduced himself as Feyd bin Yusef (She didn’t have access to all the reports on Harry’s desk, but she’d twigged enough to the oddities of their ‘date’ to at least confirm that he had been an imposter).

She remembered being flattered by the attention, and had spent several hours discussing a dozen topics about which they were both knowledgeable, as well as some of the books they both wanted to read if they could ever track down copies. That led to a discussion about some of the places they’d both gone to try and find such books, and some of their more spectacular successes and failures.

By this time they were sitting at a small table in the espresso bar Flourish and Blotts’ had added for the younger crowd, and their conversation had wandered to their schooling, and their friends, and when she had admitted that yes, she was that Hermione Granger (and honestly, how many could there be?) Feyd had expressed a desire to someday meet the famous Harry Potter. And that was when Hermione had suggested dinner, and dropping in on Harry afterwards when she knew he’d be at home.

Hermione still wasn’t sure why she had dug out her Little Black Dress; the one Ginny had forced her to buy years ago when she had been shocked to discover that her brother’s girlfriend didn’t have a single ‘take-me-home-and-fuck-me’ outfit to her name. She’d reflected wryly at the time that Ginny’s name for the lethal bit of skintight black fabric was completely apt, but Ron had been so apoplectic over the way other men were looking at her she’d never worn it again.

She’d worn it for her dinner with Feyd, though, and his eyes had certainly lit up when he saw it, but now, looking back, she realized that once again, it wasn’t Feyd’s reaction that interested her.

It was Harry’s.

Somehow Hermione ended up sitting back at her desk, her head in her hands. Now, after the fact, she could admit it to herself, she’d wanted to get a rise out of Harry, and to show him that, just because Ron was a stupid, unfaithful git, other men still found her attractive. As near as she could remember, it was working, too. Harry’s expression had gone from surprise at their unannounced arrival, to wide-eyed appreciation of her dress, and from there to an apparent immediate dislike of her escort. Recalling his remarks, she was somewhat miffed to realize that he had twigged to something being snarky about Feyd before she had, but before Harry had been able to pursue his concerns, she’d come out of the bedrooms wearing his shirt.

She blushed again as she recalled her own reaction to the unexpected presence of the impossibly attractive young witch. She didn’t want to admit to being that shallow, but she’d put an incredible amount of effort into her appearance that night, more than she could recall having done since the Yule Ball in fourth year, and she knew now it had all been for Harry’s benefit. She hadn’t been consciously aware of it at the time, but having her efforts so effortlessly overshadowed (she thought) had stung her pride, and the girl’s casual cattiness had been the last straw.

The catfight that followed was something of a blur, at least until the moment she was inundated under what seemed to be around a hundred gallons of ice water, but then Harry’s arms and cloak had been around her, and Monica and Feyd had left, leaving Harry and Hermione in an uncomfortable silence.

She’d been too shaky to Apparate of Floo home, so Harry had given her a set of his pyjamas and sent her to bed in his room, taking the guest room for himself. She’d woken up in the early dawn, taken one look at her ruined dress before borrowing his cloak, and had slipped out and returned home without speaking to him, too mortified by her behavior to face him. And now, a week later, after sending monosyllabic replies to his half-dozen worried owls, she’d finally figured out what was going on: she was in love with Harry.

Which begged the question: how did he feel about her?

~~~~~

Ron was tiredly changing out of his quidditch robes after another grueling training session with the Cannons when the knock sounded on the door of his new apartment. He wasn’t expecting Luna until later that evening, and as far as he knew, aside from his mum and Gred and Forge, no one had his new address as yet. Which meant that it came as quite a shock when he saw the green eyes and messy black hair of his best friend waiting when he opened the door. “Hullo, Harry…”

“Hey, Ron,” Harry replied, sounding uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Um…you got a minute?”

“Sure, mate, all the time you need,” surprised and pleased to see his long-time friend. He stood aside and gestured for him to enter. “As Gred says, it’s not home, but it’s much.”

Harry looked around the apartment curiously. Ron had moved shortly after his breakup with Hermione, and this was his first visit to his friend’s new digs. The ‘much’ appellation seemed to fit; the apartment wasn’t in the most fashionable part of Diagon Alley, but it was well-maintained and spacious, and he could see several homey touches of a somewhat odd variety that bespoke of the influence of Ron’s new girlfriend. He peered at a wizarding photo on the mantelpiece that showed Luna and a middle-aged man with a strong family resemblance standing next to a very odd-looking creature, even for people used to seeing everything from acromantulas to thestrals. “Is that…?”

“The Crumple-Horned Snorkack, yeah; Luna and her dad finally tracked one down last winter. Finland, not Norway.”

“Wow, so she isn’t crazy,” Harry marveled, and then flushed at his thoughtless remark. “Sorry…”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Ron smiled, waving away Harry’s apology. “She is crazy, but in a good way, you know?”

Harry chuckled. “Yeah, I know, which means she should be perfect for you.” He peered at his friend, who was blushing fiercely. “Seriously, Ron, I’ve been a bit worried; are you…okay…with everything that’s happened?”

Ron shook his head. “It’s really strange, Harry, but I am. It’s like someone just hit me in the back of the head a good smack and woke me up, you know?” He looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry about hurting Hermione, though. How’s she doing, do you know? Have you seen her?” he asked, looking up at his friend.

Harry rubbed his neck. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about; some really weird shit’s been happening, and I think it concerns all of us. Nothing dangerous, at least I don’t think so,” he hastened to add at Ron’s alarmed expression, “but definitely weird.” He gave Ron a quick rundown of recent events, and finished up with, “And I hate to say it, but it looks like Luna might be involved, too, at least if my suspicions as to what’s going on are anywhere close to spot on.” He waited for his friend to explode in defense of his new love, and was stunned by the response he received instead.

Ron’s alarmed expression had changed to one of chagrin. “Um, Harry, I don’t really know how to tell you but…well…I kind of know what’s been happening. Not the details,” he hastened to add as Harry’s eyes darkened with the beginnings of anger, “Luna confessed a couple of days after you and Hermione, um, ‘interrupted’ us.”

“Confessed to what?” Harry growled through clenched teeth at his possibly soon-to-be-a-newt best friend.

“Well, she didn’t have too many specifics, but she said that…uh, Harry, mate, would you mind not looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re going to turn me into a newt?”

“You’ll get better.”

“Yeah, but I can’t tell you what Luna told me if I’m all slimy and icky.”

“All right,” Harry grated, “I won’t make you any slimier…at least not until after you’ve told me what it is you know. If I don’t like it, though, all bets are off.”

Ron chuckled a bit nervously, unsure whether or not Harry was joking; for that matter, Harry wasn’t sure if Harry was joking.

“Um, anyway, you know that bad mood you’ve been in for a while now? And you remember how you told me once how you always felt more relaxed after you’d busted the heads of a few Dark wizards? Well, according to Luna, some of the bustees were getting tired of, how did she put it, ‘getting pounded on just so you could get your mad off’? Not only that, they figured they knew the reason you were so grouchy, and decided to do something about it.”

Ron took a quick peek to see if he was about to discover newtdom, and continued. “Seems they figured you weren’t happy because you thought ‘Mione and I weren’t right for each other.” Harry blushed and looked away, which Ron took as a good sign. “Seems that for some reason they figured you might be right, so they decided to help us ‘wake up and smell the firewhiskey’, but in a way that wouldn’t have you down on their necks for messing with your friends. That’s where Luna came in.”

“And the rest?” Harry asked quietly, still not looking at his friend.

“That’s a bit dicier,” Ron admitted. “Luna wasn’t involved with any of the other bits, but what it boiled down to was…don’t newt me, Harry…someone thinks that the reason you don’t fancy seeing ‘Mione and me together isthatyoufancyheryourself,” he got out in a rush, wincing as he expected to suddenly develop a fondness for crickets. When no slime was forthcoming, he looked closer at his friend, who was standing there with his shoulders slumped. “You do, don’t you?” he asked, still surprised despite was Luna had said. “You fancy Hermione.”

Harry sighed and nodded. “Yes, I fancy her; have for years, Ron, since before we left Hogwarts.”

“Bloody hell, Harry! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What the hell was I supposed to say, Ron?” Harry snapped. “Say, Hermione, I know you love Ron, but how about a shag? Oh, and you don’t mind if I paint an even bigger target on your back for Riddle and his flunkies, do you?” He just shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to either of you, Ron. Growing up with the Dursleys might have left me clueless about how normal people act, especially when they care about each other, but even I know you don’t treat your friends that way.

“Besides, you were already in enough danger just from being my friends. Even if I thought there was a chance that Hermione…felt that way, I wouldn’t have said anything until after the danger was past, and I never saw anything to show that she thought of me as anything but a brother. So I kept my trap shut, and did my best to make sure you two were safe.”

“And now?” Ron pressed. “What about now, Harry?”

“Now…I just don’t know,” Harry admitted. “That’s partly why I came to see you, to find out how you felt about all this.” He finally met his friend’s eyes. “I don’t just ‘fancy’ her, Ron, I’m in love with her. And I’m terrified.”

It was Ron’s turn to look surprised. “Terrified? You? Of what?”

“Of what she feels for me, if she feels anything,” Harry sighed, “Of how she’ll feel about what’s been happening, how knowing that someone’s been playing with our emotions will affect what she thinks about trying to make something happen between us.”

Ron was quiet for a few seconds, and then answered carefully. “First off, don’t worry about how I feel. Oh, you were right, I would have been royally pissed if you’d just waltzed in and taken her away from me, but that’s not what happened, is it? Face it, mate, whoever cooked this up saved Hermione and me from making a HUGE mistake. I won’t say I was crazy about the way some parts of their plan turned out, like you kicking the door in and giving me a heart attack—“

“At least you don’t have the vision of your best mate shagging while dressed up as Dumbledore burned in your brain.”

Ron grinned. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, mate. And you’re right, you are clueless, not to mention blind as a bat. You honestly never noticed?”

“Noticed what?” Harry asked suspiciously.

“That Hermione fancies you?”

~~~~~

Hermione was snapped out her thoughts by the sound of small knuckles rapping on the frame of the door to her office. “All ready to go, Hermione?” her friend, Grace, a tall, willowy blond, asked brightly.

“Go? Go where?” Hermione replied somewhat blankly.

“Vacation, Granger, remember?” Grace answered, rolling her eyes at her friend. “You know, the four of us, the beach, sun, eye candy? You said you wanted to get away from thinking for a while?”

Hermione started as she remembered. St. Tropez, reservations at the Tahiti, the tanning bed in her apartment, and Harry showing up while she was tanning…Harry… “Right! Sorry, a lot on my mind. When do we leave again?”

Grace laughed. “Merlin, you do need a vacation! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this scatter-brained. We’re supposed to leave as soon as your friend Ginny gets off work and Apparates here to meet us. You are all packed, aren’t you?”

“Just a few things to pick up at home,” she dissembled smoothly; after all, how long did it take to pack some toiletries, hers cosmetics bag, and a handful of bikinis? Anything else she needed she could pick up there.

“Good! I’ll round up Marcy and meet you downstairs in the lounge at 5:00. We can leave from there and be at the hotel in time for dinner and cocktails…especially the cocktails,” Grace grinned wickedly before disappearing out the door.

Hermione shook her head. Her friends Grace and Marcy were as smart as they came and were a treat to work with, but both women went out of their way to dispel the smart girl=bookworm image, and were determined that Hermione do the same, especially now that, for the first time since they’d met her, she was sans boyfriend. It was Marcy who had insisted on St. Tropez and its clothing optional beach, an idea that still made Hermione blush. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to Harry, but she wasn’t brave enough to go ‘the full Monty’. However, the bikinis she’d bought for the trip were much skimpier than anything she’d ever worn before, hence the need she’d felt for the tanning bed. A thong bikini with significantly less than a square foot of fabric to its name did not go well with tan lines…

She’d been a bit surprised when Ginny had accepted her invitation to come along and offer ‘moral support’. She was still playing semi-pro quidditch and working in her brothers’ joke shop in the off-season, but something had been bothering her. When Hermione had Flooed her about the trip she’d leapt at the idea.

She glanced at the clock and sighed. 3:00, time enough to Apparate home and pick up her things, and still be back in time to meet Ginny before joining her co-workers. Not enough time to sort out her feelings about anything else, but maybe lying on the beach in the warm sun might be just the place to do that…

~~~~~

He’d been home for hours and he still didn’t know what he was going to do.

Harry had been floored when his friend dropped the bombshell about Hermione’s purported feelings for a certain Boy-Who-Lived. When he pressed him for details, Ron had admitted that he couldn’t prove that’s how she felt, that he’d suspected for years that she’d had those feelings, but that for some reason had been denying them to herself. “Face it, Harry,” he’d said with a touch of exasperation when he’d insisted once again that their mutual friend didn’t think about him that way, “when she came down in her dress robes for the Yule Ball in our fourth year, it was your reaction she was watching for, not mine. Sure, she was mad at both of us for being prats and waiting until the last second to ask her, but it was you she kept checking on at the ball itself, not me.”

“So why didn’t she ever let on how she felt?” Harry had demanded.

“You’re asking me that, me, the poster child for insensitive gits?” Ron chuckled. “Mind you, now that I’ve thought about it I have my suspicions, but nothing I’m brave enough to say out loud. Right or wrong, ‘Mione’d kill me if she knew I’d been discussing the whys and wherefores of her feelings about you. It’ll be bad enough when she finds out I’ve said this much.”

Harry suddenly eyed him narrowly. “Ron,” he asked with a warning tone, “how long have you suspected, really?”

Ron looked away first. “Damn, I was afraid you’d ask me that. Look, I never knew, all right? Not for certain. And I’ll admit it; I didn’t want to know. I don’t like to remember what a prat I was at times in school, especially where you were concerned. It makes me feel pretty damned small when I think that maybe I convinced myself that Hermione and I were some kind of soulmates just so there would be one thing where I came in first.”

“Hermione isn’t a prize, Ron,” Harry said coldly.

“I know that now, Harry, I’m just trying to fess up to maybe not knowing it back at Hogwarts! Don’t I get some credit for that, at least?” Ron asked exasperatedly, running a hand through his close-cropped hair.

Harry sighed; Ron was right, what mattered was what happened now, not might-have-beens that served no purpose other than to twist one’s guts into knots. “So what do I do?”

“Just talk to her, Harry,” Ron replied patiently. “And whatever you do, don’t lie to her, about anything. ‘Mione might get mad at you for keeping quiet so long, she might yell, or throw things, or give you the silent treatment—all things she’s done to me over the years, I might add—but eventually she’ll get over it. What she won’t forgive, or ever get over, is dishonesty. I don’t know if it’s a side effect of always being Library Girl, but she sees the truth as something…sacred, I guess, which would making lying sacrilege.” He clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder and gave him a shake. “Just tell her the truth.”

~~~~~

So here he was, trying to figure out how to approach telling his best friend that he thought of her as more than a friend, and that he had felt that way for years. And he didn’t know if what he’d learned from Ron was going to make that easier, or harder. Easier because the fear of rejection was lessened, the fear that she would look at him pityingly, or worse, uncomfortably, before going through the eviscerating ritual of ‘letting him down easy’. Harder because now he had hope, and hope meant lowering the barriers he’d worked so hard to build around his deepest feelings, barriers that had become instinctual since those awful days before Riddle’s defeat.

‘Well, no time like the present,’ he thought to himself. He glanced at the wall clock, one of a set of three that had been a gift from Professor Dumbledore after they graduated. It had three faces; one each for him, Ron and Hermione, and like the famous Weasley Grandfather clock, each face had a hand that shifted from destination to destination to indicate where the person was, and a smaller hand indicating their general condition. Right now, for example, both his and Ron’s location hands were on ‘Home’, while their condition hands read respectively ‘confused and tired’ for him, and ‘getting better’ for Ron. He snorted and wondered if the clock had briefly manifested the word ‘newt’ when Harry had made good his threat, though just for a minute.

He looked to the face that monitored Hermione and wasn’t terribly surprised to see that hers also read ‘confused and tired’, but her position hand was flashing ‘travelling’, and it was moving not towards work or home, but towards ‘vacation’. He groaned, remembering Hermione’s references to going on a trip with some of her female colleagues from work, where was it? He suddenly remembered; St. Tropez, and he blushed as he recalled her statements about not being ashamed of her ‘bits’, and his own reaction to the images that engendered.

Now he’d have to wait until she got back to talk to her—

His fireplace flared green and an excited, bespectacled face appeared in the flames. “Chief! We finally got them!”

Harry sighed at the boisterous nature of the Unspeakables’ head of research and development. He was young for his position, which underscored his brilliance, but he had some personality quirks that took getting used to. One of them was the name he insisted people use for him, a joke that only the Muggleborns caught, and not always them. “What, precisely, did we ‘get’, Q?” Harry asked.

“The new disguise charms, the Tactile Chains!” Harry’s attention perked up. One thing he appreciated was the need for good disguises in his line of work, especially when one’s face was as well known as his. Polyjuice potion was of limited usefulness because of its extremely short duration, but the new Tactile Charms had promise. They consisted of a simple gold chain worn around the neck, and they could be set to alter a whole range of features, eyes, hair, facial features, basically anything above the neck was fair game. What’s more, the changes not only looked real, but unlike a simple illusion spell, they felt real. And since no potion was involved, the effect lasted for as long as you wore the chain. It didn’t alter the rest of the body, and Harry knew that eventually the Darksiders would come up with a counter, but for now the charms would offer a distinct advantage.

A thought occurred to Harry, and a gleam appeared in his eyes. “Say, Q, you wouldn’t be looking for someone to field test those, would you?”

~~~~~

A/N – That’s it for this chapter. I won’t make the posting of further chapters conditional on receiving reviews, but they sure do make my day. Let me know what you think!

5. Part Five

~~~~~

Part 5

~~~~~

Narcissa looked up at her agent and sighed. “You’re positive of your facts?” she asked one more time.

“Yes, Ms. Black,” the little wizard standing before her desk affirmed. “According to what her secretary told us, Ms. Granger and three of her friends—her female friends—went on vacation together, to somewhere on the coast of France. She didn’t know any definite plans, but two of the witches involved, Grace Adamson and Marcy Brighton, both have reputations for somewhat…casual attitudes towards relationships.”

“Wonderful,” she muttered. And the plan was going so well, too. All it should have taken was one more little push and Granger and Potter would have been together, she was sure of it, but how the devil was she going to arrange the shove if she didn’t know where one of the intended targets was staying? “I don’t suppose there’s any word on Mr. Potter’s activities, either,” she asked without much interest.

The answer surprised her. “We actually caught a break there, ma’am. According to the secretary, Potter flooed Granger’s office looking for her not a half an hour after they all left; supposedly he was quite put out to have missed her.”

Narcissa’s attitude took an upswing. If Potter was actively looking for her, he had resources she couldn’t touch to apply to the task. For that matter, he might already know where she was going…a question occurred to her. “You mentioned three friends travelling with Ms. Granger, but only named two. Do we know who the third one is?”

The agent checked his notes. “A friend of hers from Hogwarts, Ginevra Weasley.”

She felt the sudden stab of a headache. ‘Minions…’ she thought with a silent groan. “Caleb.”

“Yes, Ms. Black?”

“What is the goal of ‘Operation Cupid’?”

“To arrange a relationship between Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, Ms. Black,” he replied confidently.

“And to whom was Ms. Granger just recently engaged at the beginning of the operation, Caleb?”

“She was engaged to Ronald…uh…” he paled.

“Weasley, Caleb, Ronald Weasley, brother of Ginevra, or as she prefers, Ginny Weasley.” Narcissa smiled, and Caleb turned a sickly shade of green at the sight of it. “Now, don’t you think the little item that Granger was vacationing with the sister of her ex-fiancé might be of concern to the operation?”

“Yes, Ms. Black, I’m very sorry, Ms. Black, I promise it won’t happen again, Ms.—”

“Get out.”

The minion got, and she sighed. The problem was, she had no idea if this was just a minor snafu or a first-class fubar, and no way to find out unless by some miracle they tracked down where Granger was vacationing and managed to get some observers in place.

The sound of a throat clearing pulled her out of her reverie and she looked up to see one of her contacts in the Sisterhood standing in the doorway. “Yes, Celeste? Good news, I hope? We could certainly use some…”

Celeste’s face lit up with a huge smile. “The very best, Narcissa. S.U.C.K.R. copied his latest intelligence from Potter’s personal secretary to us. Seems he informed his staff that he was taking a week of personal time, and then asked Trixie to obtain reservations for him at a hotel on the coast of France; in St. Tropez, to be exact!”

Narcissa’s dour expression metamorphosized into a huge smile. “That’s wonderful news!”

Celeste grinned wickedly. “It gets better! Trixie knew we were trying to keep track of Potter’s movements, and planted a tracking charm on his cloak. So long as the person accessing it harbors no ill intent towards him, his own protections won’t negate it.”

Narcissa was both surprised and pleased; operatives who showed intelligent initiative were exceedingly rare. “Has the Sisterhood expressed its appreciation?”

Celeste nodded. “I’ve already offered to sponsor her, and arranged that all the time she’s spent on the current operation will apply towards her initiate period. She seems very grateful to be considered worthy, and has already passed along the spells to access the particular tracking charm she used. Because of the low power necessary to conceal the charm from security sweeps, its range is limited, but our trackers will be able to pick him up once he gets to St. Tropez.”

“Ex-cellent...” Narcissa breathed as she steepled her fingers.

~~~~~

Hermione sat on the edge of her bed in their hotel room and grimaced; as far as she was concerned, to date the vacation had been something of a total loss. Grace and Marcy were having the time of their lives, of course, spending afternoons on the beach and partying or clubbing every night. Half the time they didn’t make it back to their shared rooms until sometime the following morning, though at least they’d been considerate enough not to drag any of their shag buddies back with them.

Ginny was also enjoying herself, though not with the carefree abandon of her other friends. Not surprisingly, given her firecracker personality, she’d been the only one of the four to fully embrace the ‘clothing optional’ aspect of their stay, and spent most of each day on the beach completely au natural, socializing with a younger crowd of naturists who were vacationing there. What surprised Hermione a bit was how completely relaxed they all were with their nudity, and that while it was obvious that the male (and a few of the female) contingent of the nudists found Ginny’s lithe, firm, Quidditch toned figure to be extremely attractive, there was nothing lewd or smutty about the looks they gave her, just…appreciative.

Hermione’s good times were far more subdued. She enjoyed sunning on the beach, though she was still too modest to take things as far as Ginny regularly did. Grace and Marcy gigglingly had tried going completely buff a couple of times, but she just couldn’t do it. Not that she was a prude, the virtually nonexistent, emerald green thong bikini she did wear was proof of that, but wearing even that little bit of fabric increased her self-confidence, which in turn made it far easier to ignore or decline the occasional offers her lush figure attracted.

“Are you almost ready, Hermione?” a voice called, and she looked up as the youngest Weasley stuck her head into the room. She noticed the pensive look on her friend’s face and approached the bed, sitting down next to her. “What’s the matter, thinking about my prat of a brother again?”

“Not…exactly,” she temporized. Ginny knew of the breakup, but not of the subsequent events that had plagued both Harry and Hermione, and she didn’t know how to approach the subject. She certainly didn’t know how to go about telling her of her sudden awareness of her feelings for Harry, or the confusion they brought with them.

“You’re not thinking about giving him another chance, are you? Because he doesn’t deserve one! Hermione, you’re the one who deserves something so much better—” She stuttered to a stop when her friend raised her hand.

“No, we’re not getting back together. For one, he’s happy with Luna, really happy, and apparently she is, too. And for the other, well…Ginny, try not to be too mad, but I think maybe I’m…I’m falling in love with someone else.”

Ginny’s eyes widened for a second, and then to Hermione’s complete surprise, she squealed from happiness. “Reeeally?” she squeed, a huge smile on her face. “Mione, that’s fantastic! Do I know him? Did you meet him at work? Who is he?”

Hermione looked at her in utter shock as she bounced on the bed. “You’re not mad?” she asked, stunned.

“Mad? No, why should I be mad? I think it’s great!”

“But, I just broke up with Ron…”

Ginny sighed. “Honestly Hermione, I never was too happy about the two of you being together,” she admitted to her friend’s complete surprise. “My brother’s a nice guy and all, but he really wasn’t right for you. You need someone who can meet you on equal terms, a partner, and Ron is just, I don’t know, too Ron to ever manage that. You don’t need my blessing, but here it is anyway; go for it, girl!”

The two friends laughed and hugged, both a bit teary-eyed. After a minute Ginny eased out of the embrace and asked, “So, who is he? You didn’t answer my question.”

Hermione flushed and looked down at her hands. “H~~~P~~~r,” she mumbled.

Ginny’s eyes lit up. Did her friend just say what she thought she did? “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” she teased.

Hermione sighed. “Harry Potter,” she admitted, waiting with some trepidation for the reaction. She wasn’t disappointed.

“SquEEEEEEEEE! Hermione! Finally, it took you long enough!” Ginny shrieked, throwing her arms around her friend.

“Ginny—air—” Hermione gasped. When her friend relaxed her strangle hold she asked, “You’re not jealous? And what do you mean, ‘finally’?”

“Jealous? Oh, you mean my crush!” Ginny blushed for a moment, and then smiled. “I got over that ages ago, Hermione, once I realized I wasn’t the one who could make him happy. And I mean you finally noticed that the perfect man for you, not to mention one of the best catches in the world, has been right next to you, pining away,” Ginny replied, giggling a little at her friend’s stunned expression,

Hermione stared at her friend, blushing furiously. “Wh—what? ‘Pining away’? What do you know about Harry?”

“What everyone but you knows, apparently, that he’s been in love with you for years!” She frowned when Hermione shook her head in bewilderment. “Mione, why do you think he’s never had a serious girlfriend, let alone gotten married? Why do you think he was always there to try and keep you happy by forcing Ron to toe the line? Merlin, I don’t think he’s even had a date for the last four years, and that’s not for a lack of witches lining up to take a crack at him. The man’s mad about you!”

“I don’t believe it, why didn’t he ever say anything?” Hermione whispered.

Ginny snorted. “What was he going to say, ‘I know you love Ron, but fancy a shag?’ He loves you both too much to pull a rotten stunt like that; especially as long as he thought you two were happy together.”

Hermione bit her lip. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough not to notice,” she admitted.

“I hate to say it, but it was kind of a relief to see that there was something at which you weren’t perfect,” Ginny laughed, chortling as her friend stuck her tongue out at her. “Well, it’s true; it’s kind of intimidating having the smartest witch in the world as your best friend.”

“I bow before your superior knowledge of the male of the species, oh Wise One,” Hermione retorted snippily. “Please, enlighten this unworthy one from your fount of knowledge.”

“That’s easy, Hermione,” Ginny replied, suddenly serious. “Just tell him the truth.”

“But I don’t know what the truth is,” Hermione moaned, collapsing back across the covers. “I have these feelings fluttering around whenever I think about him, feelings I never even noticed before, or if I did, I just wrote them off to friendship. I thought I was in love with Ron and that was a mistake; what if this is, too?”

Ginny reached over and took her friend’s hand. “Just talk to him, Hermione, let him know how you feel, what you feel, and if it happens, it happens. Just one word of warning,” she cautioned, squeezing her friend’s hand firmly.

“What’s that?” Hermione asked, sensing Ginny’s serious mood.

“Don’t tell him you love him if you don’t mean it. If you don’t love him, well, it’ll hurt but I think he’ll get over it eventually, especially once he has a chance to get his feelings out in the open. But if you tell him you love him and then change your mind…I think it would destroy him.”

The two friends sat in silence for a few moments, but the Weasley personality was too volatile to let Ginny stay serious for any extended length of time. “All right, enough doom and gloom!” she cried, tugging on Hermione’s hand. “We still have several days’ vacation, and you are not going to spend it cooped up in here. Time to hit the beach!”

“I don’t know…” Hermione hesitated. Now that she had admitted out loud that she had feelings for Harry, it felt a bit dishonest to be thinking about beachcrawling with her friends.

Ginny shook her head in exasperation. “Just because you’re not interested in buying, Mione, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy window-shopping, and you have to admit there’s been some spectacular ‘merchandise’ on display. Now, come on!”

~~~~~

Harry stood in front of the mirror in his hotel room and told himself, for around the 100th time, “Right, you can do this.”

The surveillance division of the Unspeakables had confirmed at which hotel Hermione had booked reservations, and Harry had, with a bit of effort, obtained accommodations on the same floor. Upon arriving a stealthily proffered 100 Euro note had elicited from the concierge the knowledge that while their evening schedule seemed to vary wildly, every day Hermione and her friends spent from around 2:00PM until sunset on the beach.

The clothing optional beach.

Harry sighed and fingered the chain of the Tactile Charm once again. He’d been very pleased with the effects, to all senses both Muggle and magical he now appeared to have pale blue eyes and shoulder-length, wavy, sun-bleached blond hair. He hadn’t bothered to change his overall bone structure, but the telltale scar was gone.

His gaze traveled down the rest of his reflection. As promised, the charm was only strong enough to affect his facial characteristics, so for the rest he was reliant on what nature had given him. Fortunately for his already nervous stomach, what nature had given him wasn’t too bad, and he’d kept in shape. Being a powerful wizard wasn’t much good if you were too out of breath from a long chase to cast a spell.

He looked at the skimpy black Speedos he was currently wearing and sighed. He really, really wasn’t looking forward to walking around starkers, but this was going to be difficult enough without having any perceived advantages. Psychologically there was a world of difference between wearing something that left little to the imagination, and wearing nothing, that left nothing to the imagination.

Besides, if Hermione could do it, so could he.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Harry stripped off the Speedos and then stood stock still, trying to get used to the idea of walking out on the beach. “Steady, old man,” he told himself. “You’re Harry Bloody Potter, you can do anything you put your mind to. Where’s the British spirit, stiff upper lip and all that?”

Twitch.

Damn, never think the word ‘stiff’ when you’re staring at yourself naked in the mirror. Self-control, that’s the ticket. Think disgusting thoughts. Snape. Snape in drag. Snape in a white chiffon tutu, performing Swan Lake.

Ah, that did the trick.

After taking a minute to make sure his self control wasn’t about to slip, Harry picked up the terrycloth robe the hotel provided so that guests could travel from their rooms to the beach without flashing those people who weren’t prepared for that much glory. The rear of the hotel’s lobby had a set of glass doors that opened out onto a broad, shaded veranda, from which a wide set of shallow steps led down to the beach proper. At the foot of the steps was a kiosk where the guests could check their robes and receive a small pouch to wear around their necks for the room keys and other small valuables.

It was a matter of a moment’s work for Harry to drop off his robe and sandals in return for the pouch and a claim chit, and a brief description of Hermione to the kiosk attendant (along with a 20 Euro note) confirmed that she and her friends were indeed on the beach, and in which direction they had gone after arriving. ‘Gryffindor bravery, boyo,’ Harry thought to himself, and started walking across the warm sand.

~~~~~

The four women in question were relaxing about a hundred yards down the beach, occupying a patch of sand they had staked out as their ‘turf’ the day they arrived. Grace and Marcy were laying on their stomachs, working at evening out their tans as much as possible. They weren’t feeling daring enough to go totally bare this time, but between their skimpy thong bikini bottoms and the absence of a top, they were as close to it as was possible without going ‘all the way’.

Ginny and Hermione were side-by-side in a couple of low beach chairs, their legs stretched out on the warm sand. In deference to her friends Ginny had donned her bikini bottom today, but she was as gloriously topless as Grace and Marcy. In her case, though, there really was no effort to eliminate tan lines, as the pale Weasley complexion simply did not tan. As Ginny had complained to Hermione at the beginning of the trip, her skin went from white to lobster to one enormous sea of freckles. Now a dusting of freckles across the nose is endearing, and a scattering of them above the breasts is intriguing, but a veritable ocean of freckles is just ridiculous. So Ginny dealt with the problem in the same way a Muggle would, by applying sunblock, though instead of using a messy lotion she was able to use a charm. Exposure to the sun wouldn’t darken her skin, but it did give her a kind of glow, and she had never felt (or looked) more attractive.

Hermione, however, still wore both pieces of her admittedly skimpy bikini. The bits of fabric and string might only supply an illusion of modesty, but it was an illusion she clung to. Besides, the appearance of modesty it created meant that the more predatory males on the beach passed her over in favor of hitting on her more liberal (and it was to be hoped, libertine) friends, a situation that suited her just fine.

So it was that the four of them continued to enjoy the warm sun, with Ginny and Hermione chatting amiably while Grace and Marcy enjoyed the scenery, oohing and giggling whenever a particularly nice piece of eye candy wandered by.

“O, my, God, I think I’m in love,” Grace moaned for what must have been the tenth time that afternoon. “Girls, don’t look now, but MAJOR stud approaching from nine o’clock!”

Three sets of eyes shifted behind their sunglasses to join a fourth, and Hermione grudgingly admitted that Grace had a point. The specimen approaching from the direction of the hotel certainly was one of the finest examples of the masculine gender she’d seen so far. He had wavy, shoulder-length blond hair and pale, were they blue? eyes. She judged he was about two meters tall, weighing around 13 stone, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of a gymnast or swimmer. He clearly took good care of himself, but wasn’t one of those overmuscled, narcissistic bodybuilder types. His pale complexion suggested he wasn’t a regular at the beach scene, but he was striding along as if being bare-ass naked in public was the most natural thing in the world.

Hermione’s gaze unconsciously traveled downwards as the Adonis approached, past the sharply defined pecs and washboard abs, and onward to—

“Eep!”

Ginny tore her gaze away, looking over at her friend as Hermione clutched convulsively at her arm. “What’s the matter?” she asked, concerned at her friend’s suddenly pale face.

“That’s Harry!” Hermione squeaked.

Ginny glanced back at the object of their attention. Yes, he was the right height and general build, but there was nothing that screamed ‘Harry’ at her. She supposed he could be using a disguise spell, but then how had Hermione spotted him? She looked back at her friend, her eyes narrowing as she realized just where Hermione’s gaze was riveted. “Mione,” she hissed, “just what makes you think that’s Harry?”

“Birthmark…”

Ginny followed Hermione’s gaze and her eyes widened. Sure enough, there was indeed a birthmark, oddly enough shaped something like a snitch. The only problem was it happened to be decorating, and apparently identifying, the Adonis’s very impressive ‘equipment’…

~~~~~

Flashback

It was the middle of August, the summer following the Trio’s sixth year at Hogwarts. Harry and Hermione had joined their friend Ron at the Burrow, and were enjoying a last few weeks of freedom before returning to school.

While not public about it, Hermione and Ron were more or less officially a couple. It had begun towards the end of Sixth term, and had to date produced some very satisfactory snog sessions, as well as a few tentative explorations of a more serious nature.

When Hermione had first Noticed Boys, sometime towards the end of her second year at Hogwarts, she’d done what she always did when faced with a new and fascinating subject; she’d hit the books. While there was very little in the magical library at Hogwarts, the Muggle library near her home had a large selection on the topic, including a number of volumes in the adult section that normally wouldn’t be available to the average 13-year-old girl. Hermione, however, was not and never had been ‘average’, and her blindingly precocious intelligence had convinced the librarians to grant her adult status at a very early age. Consequently, by the time she was ready to start doing field research to complement the empirical knowledge she’d acquired, Hermione had a good working knowledge of the basic differences between men and women, as well as of the mechanics involved.

Ronald Weasley, her titular boyfriend, was in all respects typical of the breed. In other words, he didn’t notice Girls Were Different until something smacked him in the back of the head with a two-by-four. In his case, it was seeing Hermione coming downstairs in her dress robes for the Yule Ball their fourth year. And again like most boys, he didn’t make his first move until Hermione subtly convinced him it was a good idea. She wasn’t quite certain if he was what she wanted for a permanent relationship, but he was good practice, and with a bit of training would do quite nicely as a steady beau.

The summer had been pleasant enough, with Hermione arriving to stay at the Burrow the week before Harry’s birthday, and Harry arriving the day of. It had taken Harry the better part of his sixth year to finally come to terms with Sirius’ death, but now he was very much his old self, as cheerful as any young man could be who had the darkest wizard on the face of the planet thirsting for his blood.

On this particular day Harry and Ron had gone off to practice some one-on-one Quidditch, more to hone Ron’s Keeper’s skills than anything else. Hermione’s general indifference to all things Quidditch related didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the nice weather, and she’d followed them out to the pitch and settled under a nearby tree with one of her secret vices, a trashy Muggle romance novel. The foliage kept her concealed from the air, and while she could hear them laughing and talking, she only caught occasional glimpses of them through the leaves.

After a couple of hours of strenuous flying the day grew too warm for the boys to continue, even with the breeze generated by zooming around in the air. “What do you say to a quick dip in the lake, mate?” Ron called out.

Harry sounded a bit doubtful. “Shouldn’t we be getting back to the Burrow? Your mum’s going to be ticked we skipped lunch, and Hermione will be looking for us.”

“Whatever happened the bravest student at Hogwarts?” Ron hooted. “Willing to face down You-Know-Who, but afraid of my mum?”

“Ron, you’re afraid of your mum,” Harry pointed out logically.

“Dead right I am,” Ron agreed, “and with good reason. Mum’s got sons to spare, but only one she’s adopted. Stuff that would get me turned into a garden gnome she’ll let you do without batting an eye.” He turned his broom in the direction of the small lake hidden within the stand of forest. “You coming?”

Hermione watched as her two friends drifted off across the forest, and then darted through the trees. She knew she could have called out to them and joined them, but she wasn’t interested in going swimming. She was reasonably happy with the changes her body was going through, but not happy enough to expose them in a swimming hole wearing only a bra and knickers.

That, however, did not mean she wasn’t interested in getting a better look at the changes Ron had been experiencing, not to mention Harry. Both boys had shot up over the previous year as well as begun to fill out, but wizard robes left far too much to a girl’s imagination. She wanted to engage in a little impartial investigation (well, sort of impartial) without having to deal with the distractions Ron would be glad to provide. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity to observe not just one, but two healthy examples of the gender that had her hormones twitching, and she wasn’t going to miss it.

She’d guessed that it would take her long enough to get through the woods on foot that the boys would either already be stripped down to their boxers and in the water, or close to it. She was half-right; they were stripped down and about to plunge in, but the boxers were nowhere in sight, What was in sight were two sets of firm, tight butt cheeks, mooning her cheerfully as their owners dashed into the water.

Hermione leaned back against a tree, feeling a bit dazed as she listened to her friends whooping and splashing in the lake. After a couple of minutes she realized that she was risking missing a golden opportunity to add some empirical datum to the theoretical knowledge she’d acquired at the library. She worked her way stealthily through the undergrowth, making sure she didn’t reveal her presence to her friends, until she found a vantage point close to their piled clothing where she could see without being seen.

The first to emerge was Ron, laughing at something Harry had said as he made his way carefully across the pebbly lakeside. The place Hermione had chosen was less than five meters away, and with her boyfriend standing in the direct sunlight using his robes to towel himself down, there was nothing she couldn’t see.

His last growth spurt had left him lean and gangly, but he was already starting to add muscle to his just shy of two meters of height. He was absolutely covered with freckles from head to toe, a condition Hermione found slightly off-putting, and she blushed as she realized that the Weasley red hair was apparently a universal condition.

Finally she focused her attention on what was euphemistically referred to as his ‘endowment’, at least in the racier romance novels. She was both flustered and pleased to realize that he was above average in that department, at least according to what she had been led to expect from her research. Of course she wouldn’t be certain until she observed him under what she clinically thought as ‘controlled conditions’, something she had already decided would happen before the end of their seventh year. Something she now looked forward to with much greater anticipation.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Harry splashing ashore, and as her attention shifted she felt her mouth drop open and her face blush. He was a few inches short of his friend’s height, though a bit broader in the shoulders. His muscular development was also behind Ron’s, no doubt the result of the starvation rations his relatives restricted him to every summer, but he was still looking better than she’d expected. That, however, was not what was making her skin flush and her toes curl.

If Ron was above average, Harry could only be described as gifted. The size of him had Hermione almost mesmerized, and the thought of what his excited state must be like started a tingle in the pit of her stomach and made her weak at the knees. The idea of trying to accommodate him both thrilled and terrified her; surely there was no way that was ever going to fit there…

Suddenly she snapped herself out of her trancelike state; why the blazes was she even thinking about Harry that way? He wasn’t her boyfriend, Ron was, and any interest she had in Harry’s dimensions should be strictly for comparison’s sake, and nothing else. She took one last regretful look, and her eyes narrowed, and then widened.

Harry had a birthmark. That in and of itself was not unusual; Hermione had one as well, a cloverleaf shaped one on her…well, never mind. The point was, many people had them, but Harry’s had two things going for it to make it memorable. Number one was its shape; the first thing that popped into Hermione’s mind when she saw it was that it looked just like the Snitch that Harry always captured as a seeker. Number two was its location; it decorated his foreskin, and Hermione said a little word of thanks that British medical practice had never wholeheartedly embraced the practice of circumcision.

Hermione twitched as she realized that the boys were finished toweling off and were beginning to dress. She needed to get moving if she was going to beat them back to the Burrow and avoid any awkward questions as to where she’d spent her afternoon. She eased her way back through the brush, and once she was far enough away, set out at a jog that beat them back to the Weasley homestead with time to spare.

She never told Ron of her adventure of course, not even after she had followed through with her plans to fill out her research with some ‘hands on’ experience. If she had, she also might have had to explain just why it was that after that day, and on many occasions thereafter, for the first time in her life Hermione dreamed of catching the Snitch…

~~~~~

6. Part Six

~~~~~

Part 6

~~~~~

“Hermione, snap out of it!” Ginny hissed.

Her attention drawn back from her memories of the first time she’d seen Harrys’ ‘snitch’, Hermione glanced over and smiled slightly at her friend’s worried expression.

Ginny relaxed; she could wait until later to get the story of just how her friend knew that Harry sported such a unique method of identification, but for the moment… “He’s obviously here looking for you,” she whispered, “and furthermore, he thinks he’s in disguise. I’m not 100% sure what his game is, but right now you have the advantage. Here’s what you do…”

~~~~~

Harry looked around in exasperation. So far he’d fended off three friendly overtures, two blatant offers, and most frightening of all, one marriage proposal, and still he hadn’t located Hermione. How many drop-dead gorgeous, bushy-haired, buck-naked women could there be on this beach?

He was about to keep moving when a flash of red hair caught his attention. Glancing over, he spotted Hermione’s coworkers, Grace and Marcy, staring at him with naked lust in their eyes. To the far left, sitting with her back braced against a beach chair, was the source of the flash of red hair, Ginny Weasley, with far more Ginny on display than Harry could ever remember seeing, and that included their brief attempt at dating after they both were out of Hogwarts.

His gaze shifted to the fourth person of the group, the one seated next to his friend’s sister (right, Harry, remember that, sister) and all thought of the other women left his conscious mind. She was tanned, she was glorious, she had a mass of wavy brown hair that picked up copper highlights in the bright sunshine…oh, damn.

She wasn’t naked.

The emerald green bikini she was wearing covered next to nothing, and left next to nothing to the imagination, but that was enough to make Harry nervous. There was a world of difference between being nearly naked and being completely naked. Harry had steeled himself to approach his friend when they were both on even footing in the nudity department, but how was he supposed to walk up to her now? What would she think of her best friend walking up to her with his John Thomas waving in the breeze?

Speaking of breezes, a freshening bit of wind tossed a lock of blond hair across his eyes, and Harry suddenly relaxed. He’d forgotten the Tactile Chain he was wearing, and that as far as Hermione knew, he was just another stranger on the beach. He could go back to his room, take off the chain, put on some trunks and return, and no one would be the wiser. Crisis solved!

But so long as he was in disguise, he had to at least say hello, as boldly as possible. His pranking heritage demanded that he see her reaction as a very naked (and he admitted with a refreshing lack of false modesty, very well endowed) stranger made a pass at her.

As nonchalantly as he could manage, he approached the four women, ignoring the frankly hungry looks of two of them and the oddly amused expression of the third, focusing his attention on the fourth person, namely Hermione.

“Och, why are four such lovely lasses as yuirselves alone this foine day?” he asked in a very bad Scottish accent (contrary to popular belief, it is very hard for a Brit to fake a Scottish accent; you generally have to be American to carry it off). “Surely there must be some braw, strapping lads aboot to take care of you?”

“Oh, no, we’re quite alone,” Ginny piped up before Grace or Marcy could react to the obvious pick-up attempt. “Grace, Marcy and I,” she said, gesturing to the two prone girls licking their lips, “are meeting some boys, but that’s not until much later,” she added, deliberately leaving Hermione’s name out of the list, an omission Harry immediately pounced upon.

“Well, an it sounds as if yuir friends are weel taken care of, perhaps yew might fancy a dip in the ocean?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at Hermione and secretly looking forward to whatever devastating putdown his friend would use on the annoying twit he was portraying.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t see the evil gleam in her eyes behind her dark glasses. “Sure!” she chirped, enjoying the stunned expression that appeared on Harry’s face, not to mention Grace’s and Marcy’s. She ignored Ginny’s smothered chuckle as she bounced to her feet. “Just give me a sec,” she asked, and turned to the snickering redhead. “Gin, can you watch my things? I don’t want to get them all wet.” With two swift tugs and a delicious wriggle, the emerald bikini joined her sunglasses on the beach chair.

His stunned expression turned to one that was decidedly poleaxed as she jogged towards the waterline, a process that did delightful things to her body. After a second he shook himself out of his trance and ran after her, splashing into the surf just as she dove headfirst into a low curler. Harry looked around anxiously until she porpoised out of the water, throwing her head back and arching her body like a tautly drawn bow, Her thick hair casting a spray of water that caught the sunlight and refracted it into a rainbow of sparkles. He stared as the seawater sheeted across her breasts, at the rivulets and miniature falls that formed as it cascaded around and over her erect nipples. “Lord, you’re beautiful,” he breathed; not realizing his voice was loud enough for her to hear him speak.

Hermione shivered as a feeling like electricity coursed through her, her skin tingling as she realized the power she held over her friend, the one she hoped and prayed would soon be so much more. They were waist deep in the ocean, the swells gently rocking them, as she moved closer to him. She smiled up into his glassy-eyed stare as she laid her hands on his chest, and then stood up on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the lips. “You don’t look so bad yourself…Harry,” she whispered before ducking away from the embrace he’d tried to give her.

This time Harry didn’t allow his shock to freeze him, and she yipped as his arms snaked around her and pulled her close. “Hermione? You knew it was me?”

“Yes, Harry, I knew; I recognized you almost at once,” she replied, holding herself still in his arms as the waves washed around them.

“But how?” he asked with amazement. “The Tactile Chains are flawless; I should know, I had to sign off on all the Galleons that were spent testing them.”

She buried her face against his chest, and he could feel the heat of her blush against his skin. “It’s a very effective charm, Harry,” she admitted, “but it doesn’t provide much of a disguise if someone can spot you because of certain…unique characteristics.” When he didn’t reply she clarified, “I recognized your birthmark; no wonder you’re so good at catching the Snitch, you caught it before you were born!”

Now it was Harry’s turn to blush furiously; he’d forgotten about the damned thing. Suddenly something occurred to him. “Hermione, how is it that you know about my birthmark? More importantly, how long have you known?”

“Since before Seventh year,” she admitted. She smiled at his shocked expression. “I promise to explain later, but right now I think we need to…um…have a talk?” She looked up into his face with a hopeful expression and he nodded.

“You’re right, we do, about a lot of things; some of it things I should have said a long time ago.” He frowned slightly. “I don’t think I fancy having that conversation while standing on a public beach. Besides,” he smirked, “much longer like this and I won’t be capable of coherent thought…”

She blushed a bit as she realized that she could feel the reason for his distraction pressing against her stomach like a cat begging to be stroked. “Do you want to meet back at my room?” she asked to take her mind off of petting things.

Harry shook his head. “I have a room as well; that way we won’t have to worry about your friends disturbing us. Why don’t you head back and I’ll meet you in the lobby in a few minutes.”

Hermione frowned. “Why don’t you just come with me?”

“Because, Mione, I’m not about to get out of the water until I get control of my ‘problem’,” he replied, nudging her to prove his point. “And after that little stunt with your bikini, imagining Snape in a tutu may not be able to do the job.”

She faked a gagging noise. “Harry, that’s disgusting! Why would you…oh, I get it,” she nodded, finally catching on. She considered for a minute. “If that’s not enough, you could try imagine Snape and Malfoy reenacting the balcony scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet’,” she suggested helpfully, and he shuddered.

“Oh, thanks a lot, I may be scarred for life.” He released her from his embrace as she laughed and splashed away from him.

“See you soon,” she called back over her shoulder as she walked up the beach, her lack of clothing no longer a concern.

~~~~~

Narcissa looked up as her assistant barged into her office, a worried look on her face. “Trouble?” she asked.

Celeste hesitated, and then nodded. The only thing her employer hated more than bad new was an employee who held off relaying bad news. People who did that had a tendency to experience the effects of extremely unpleasant and difficult to reverse curses. “We just received a report from St. Tropez; our operatives tracked Potter to the resort, and then lost him. Not surprising if the tracking charm is on his robes, as he’s hardly going to be wearing those to the beach. Problem one, no one’s seen him on the beach, and he’s rather hard to miss. Problem two, and this is the real pisser; the operative watching Granger says she was just picked up by some blond beach bum, and has gone back to his hotel room in a bathrobe and nothing else, as far as she could tell.”

“Damnit,” Narcissa muttered. She was vaguely disappointed in Hermione’s behavior, and more than a bit chuffed to see her plan starting to fall apart. “I’m going myself,” she decided. “Get me the Apparation coordinates, and arrange for one of our operatives to meet me when I arrive. I’ll want an up-to-the-minute briefing as soon as I get there.”

~~~~~

Harry pushed the door to his room closed with a soft click, and then cast locking and silencing charms with his wand. He wasn’t entirely sure where this was going to lead, but whatever happened he didn’t want any interruptions. He took the charmed necklace off and dropped it on the dresser, feeling his features rapidly returning to normal, his eyesight taking on its familiar blurriness as his hair morphed back to its usual spiky black locks.

Hermione stood by the window looking out at the ocean, the knee length burgundy terrycloth robe wrapped warmly around her. She heard Harry moving across the room towards her, and turned to face him. “So…”

“So…” Harry replied intelligently. They stood, staring into each other’s eyes, and suddenly Hermione felt a wave of irritation wash over her as she realized just how familiar the whole situation was. Childhood friends, exotic locale, unresolved feelings, it was all right out of the pages of one of those trashy romance novels she was addicted to. All it needed was for him to say—

“Hermione, there’s something I need to tell you…”

‘Oh, good grief,’ she thought to herself, and held up her hand, cutting him off in mid-declaration. “Harry, don’t, all right? Just…don’t.” She sighed at the hurt look on his face, shaking her head. “I mean, honestly, Harry, how much more cliché can we get here? Heaving bosoms and chiseled pecs, one step short of naked in a bedroom? All you have to do is put that charm back on and grow out that long, wavy blond hair again, and we could pose for the cover of Gilderoy Lockheart’s next bodice ripper!”

Harry’s hurt look was replaced by one of irritation. “It’s not like that, Hermione, there’s more going on than you’re aware of; that’s why I couldn’t wait until you returned from vacation to talk to you.”

“Oh, wait, let me guess, all the things that have been happening, Ron and Luna, Feyd, that little tramp wearing your shirt—”

“I didn’t give it to her, she just took it,” Harry said defensively, and she shook her head.

“Whatever, Harry! I suppose you’re going to tell me that it was all part of some huge, convoluted, nefarious plot to get us to finally notice each other!” She waited for him to get embarrassed and deny it, but he just stared at her expressionlessly. “Harry? This is the point where you’re supposed to call me a hysterical fool…Harry?” He just kept staring at her, and she finally figured out why. “Oh, My, GOD,” she moaned, collapsing on the couch, her head in her hands. “This can not be happening!”

Harry sat down next to her and draped one arm around her shoulders, holding her close as she relaxed against him. “Well, oddly enough, aside from the ‘nefarious’ bit, you’re probably not too far off.” He chuckled at her disbelieving stare, and then outlined everything he’d learned to date, including Ron’s revelations about Luna’s knowledge of ‘The Plan’.

When he finished she eyed him skeptically. “And you actually believe all this…this…”

“‘Codswallop?’” Harry offered helpfully.

“For lack of a better term, yes,” Hermione agreed, and he shrugged.

“It fits the facts; after all, nothing that happened was actually threatening to either of us. Annoying, even embarassing, but not threatening. Hardly the activities of a Dark cabal bent on our demise…”

“True,” she admitted grudgingly, and then sighed. “I just suppose it’s hard to imagine Luna being mixed up with a bunch of Knockturn Alley hooligans; it’s so out of character for her…”

“Hmmm, well, I think perhaps something Ron said might shed a little light on that.” At Hermione’s questioning look he continued, “He said that Luna told him that she didn’t make a move until her ‘sister’ gave her the go-ahead, and that until then she’d contented herself with just, um, ‘pining after Ronald from afar’ was the phrase I believe she used.” He laughed at the queasy expression that flitted across Hermione’s face. “The point is, Luna is an only child, a fact that didn’t occur to me until later. So if the sister she was referring to wasn’t her blood kin, then she might very well have been—”

Hermione gasped. “The Ravenclaw Sisterhood! Of course they would have helped her, they make most Muggle sororities look like knitting circles.” She frowned a bit. “I don’t know why they’d be allied with wizards from Knockturn Alley, though.”

“Ah, that’s where my brilliant deductive powers come in to play,” Harry grinned, laughing as Hermione stuck her tongue out at him. “Also the little matter of being the head of the Unspeakables, which gives me access to all sorts of intelligence. What very few people are aware of is that a large percentage of successful Wizarding businessmen have Ravenclaw wives, those that weren’t Ravenclaws themselves. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the same holds true among the movers and shakers in Knockturn Alley.”

“And Ravenclaws would certainly, even if not officially members of the Sisterhood, stick together,” Hermione marveled, and then chuckled. “Well, that makes me feel a bit better. I shudder to think what might have happened if a bunch of grey-haired Dark wizards were the ones in charge of manipulating our love lives.” She paused for a minute. “Speaking of which…” she sighed. “I guess we do need to talk, don’t we?”

“Can I go first?” Harry asked, interrupting her. She began to feel the telltale butterflies fluttering in her stomach, and nodded.

Instead of immediately speaking, he stood and paced back and forth, finally ending beside the fireplace, his profile turned towards her as he stared into space. “I think it’s always been there,” he said at last. “I’m absolutely sure it was after that night in the girl’s bathroom when we faced the troll, and then you actually lied to McGonagall to take the blame, but it may have started even earlier. I know it sounds trite, but I think it happened the moment I saw you on the train, when you were looking for Neville’s toad.

“Of course, I had no bloody clue what it was for the longest time. Boys aren’t supposed to, you know, and growing up with Vernon, Petunia and Dudley left me even less prepared than most to understand what I was feeling. Thank Merlin I had a year with my parents before Riddle murdered them; I might not have any conscious memories, but somewhere down inside I must have some recollection of what it was like to feel love.”

He ignored Hermione’s slight gasp and kept talking. “Little things added up; you coming along when we went after the Philosopher’s Stone, seeing you lying in the hospital wing after the Basilisk had petrified you, you helping me to save Buckbeak and Sirius…and then when Crouch slipped my name into the Goblet of Fire, and everyone else, even Ron, thought I’d done it, you believed me.”

He finally looked at her, and her heart skipped as he smiled. “That was when I first figured out I didn’t think of you as just a friend,” he said softly. “And then Victor asked you to the Ball, and you came down those stairs looking so damned beautiful, I think I went a little crazy. At least I hope I did, because it would help explain what a complete prat I was the following year.”

He held up a hand before she could object. “Please, Hermione, don’t try and deny it, I’ve had too much time to think about it since then. Sure, there were a lot of other things going on, but I contributed more than my fair share to the mix. And what snapped me out of it, even more than losing Sirius as awful as that was, was almost losing you.”

Harry glanced over and caught a glimpse of the stunned expression on Hermione’s face, the suspicious glistening of her eyes, but he couldn’t think about that too much, not if he wanted to get through this. “You probably remember the first few weeks of that summer better than I do. I know I was still in shock when I returned to Privet Drive, and the Order had put such a fright into my aunt and uncle that they left me strictly alone. That all changed the week before my birthday. I realized two things; first, that I was in love with you, and second, that I had to hide it from everyone, even you. Anything else would have just been too dangerous.”

All the emotions of that time came surging back, and for a moment he couldn’t speak as he wrestled them back under control. “That summer, and the year that followed…that had to be the single hardest time of my life. I know that I hurt you and Ron when I became so distant, but I had to Hermione, I just…had to. I needed you so much, and I knew that if I let you in at all, I wouldn’t be able to hide anything from you. So instead I dove into preparing myself to meet Riddle.

“I don’t have to tell you what happened next; I pushed you away as carefully as I could, hard enough to make you keep your distance, but not so hard that you would suspect my real motives. I wasn’t lying when I said I was too busy for trips to Hogsmeade, or to worry about Quidditch, or anything that might distract me from getting ready. I was actually glad when you and Ron became a couple; it distanced you from me and made both of you less of a target, and anything that made you safer was fine by me…”

Hermione’s mind was racing as Harry finally told her the truth about their last two years at Hogwarts; the WHOLE truth, not just the carefully edited version that he had apparently fabricated for the sole purpose of protecting her. As he outlined the steps he’d taken, the façade of indifference he’d assumed, the secret training he’d undergone, and she found herself becoming more and more furious with him. How dare he? How DARE he make decisions about their lives without consulting her? How any times did she have to prove herself before he got it through his thick, male chauvinistic head that he did not have the right to make such choices on his own? How could he claim to love her, and then do something like this?

Harry’s monologue had moved on to describing their seventh year, and as he talked, she saw the guilt on his face as he confessed what he’d done. She suddenly realized that he’d known exactly how she would feel about his behavior, and he’d gone ahead anyway, not because he didn’t care about her feelings but because he couldn’t do anything else and still be Harry Potter. Faced with a choice between (as he saw it) being selfish and risking her life, or doing everything in his power to keep her safe even if she ended up hating him for it, he’d opted for her safety. He’d let her go because he couldn’t lose her, and in the twisted logic of Harry’s life, it made perfect sense.

That still didn’t mean she wasn’t going to flay him alive when it came her turn to talk…

~~~~~

Despite his outwardly calm appearance, Harry was well aware that he had an extremely brassed off Hermione on his hands. He’d both expected and dreaded just that situation, and had been ever since he realized he’d actually survived his final confrontation with Riddle. He’d never admitted it to anyone, but one of the things that had made it possible to accept the likelihood that he and Voldemort would take each other out was that it meant he wouldn’t have to explain his actions to her. Yet here he was, just as he’d always feared, confessing to the one thing guaranteed to infuriate her; treating her as less than an equal. Inwardly he sighed and vowed that, if he lived through the next few minutes, to make a votary offering at the Temple of Eris in Diagon Alley; it probably wouldn’t help, but getting the Goddess of Chaos to intervene with her brother Murphy couldn’t hurt, either.

He didn’t realize he’s stopped talking until Hermione prompted him. “So that covers everything up through graduation. You never did tell me exactly what happened when you faced Riddle afterwards.”

Harry grimaced; he’d been dreading revealing this last bit most of all. “There’s not that much more to tell, Hermione; you already know most of it. The Scroll of Thoth, the summoning of Osiris, Voldemort’s ka being banished forever, all of that. I even remember you visiting me at St. Mungos when I was recuperating…”

“Yes, and I remember you chasing me off and telling me not to bother you!” she replied hotly. “Then you disappeared for a year, a whole year without a single letter! If Dumbledore hadn’t sworn to me that you were all right I would have gone mad!”

Harry sighed. “I know; I’d say I’m sorry again, but how often can I do that before it sounds meaningless to you?”

“You’re not even close.”

“All right then. I—am—sorry. I’m sorry I lied to you, I’m sorry I kept you ignorant of what was happening, I’m sorry I never told you my true feelings…but I’m not sorry you’re safe. I will never be sorry for that.”

“Better,” she replied. “So where were you?”

“After the first week I was transferred to a convalescent home, where I spent the next six months rebuilding my magical strength.” At her shocked expression he shrugged. “Riding on Ra’s Sun Barge and having your ka weighed on the Scales of Judgement really takes it out of you.

“After that, I took the Auror’s tests, and then entered the Unspeakables’ training system. Six months later I graduated. I did look you up then, you’ll remember, but by then you and Ron were firmly together, and I didn’t want to get in the way. The rest you know, except, perhaps, for this; I love you, Hermione.”

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed, peripherally aware of Harry seated nervously at the table waiting for her reaction. So many conflicting feelings were running through her right now, humiliation that she hadn’t realized what he was doing all those years, annoyance that he’d kept so much from her, and anger for the way he kept making decisions that affected both their lives without consulting her. Underlying it all was the new realization of just how much she loved him, but if anything, loving him and knowing he loved her in return just made so much of it worse. For love without trust was nothing more than a weed with shallow roots, doomed to wither at the first frost. Something like that. Whatever.

Finally she spoke. “I love you, too, Harry.” she said, and watched as his eyes brightened with relief. Her next words came as a shock. “The maddening thing is, I think I have been all along; I just never allowed myself to become aware of it. I was the bushy-haired bookworm, Plain Jane Granger, and you were Harry Potter. Why would you even notice me? Besides, I saw how uncomfortable Ginny’s crush made you our second year, and I decided right then I would never do anything to make you regret your friendship with me. Looking back, I can see now that I didn’t think of you as just a friend, but I’d done such a good job of convincing myself nothing like that was possible, I wasn’t even consciously aware of my real feelings. Part of me is still waiting to wake up and discover this is all just a dream, and that you didn’t just tell me something I now know I’ve always wanted to hear.

“However,” she continued, “if you can’t set aside this hero complex of yours where we’re concerned, if you can’t stop charging off and making decisions that affect both of us—BOTH of us, Harry! —then I don’t think loving each other is going to be enough.” She saw the stricken look on his features and sighed. “I know you meant well, you always mean well, but sometimes good intentions aren’t enough. Just because you’re the most powerful wizard in the world doesn’t mean you have any more say in our relationship than I have.”

Harry fastened on her last words like a drowning man. “A relationship? Is that what we have now, Hermione?”

She smiled shyly. “I think we may have the start of one Harry; we’re both awfully strong-willed, it’s going to take a lot of work, but yes, I think we just might.”

He nodded, relieved. For a terrible moment he’d been afraid she was going to reject him outright, but if she was willing to give him a chance… “We’ll take it as slow as you want, Hermione; I’ve waited too long for this to bollix it up now.” He rose to his feet and turned towards the door. “Let me escort you back to your room; maybe we could talk some more over dinner?”

She looked at his back, dumfounded. He really was an incredible idiot where women were concerned. Well, at least she thought she knew one quick way to give him a clue what the correct behavior was at a moment like this. “Harry?”

He turned around and stared. Hermione stood next to the bed, her eyes burning, her robe pooled on the floor around her feet. Her feet were braced slightly apart, her hands rubbing nervously down her bare hips. She was biting her lower lip, and the expression on her face could only be described as wanton. Any lingering doubts he had about her intentions were driven out by her next words.

“Screw dinner; what I want isn’t on the menu...”

~~~~~

Narcissa checked the note in her hands and frowned. She’d made it to the hotel in record time, but was at a bit of a loss as to her next actions. Her operatives still hadn’t seen Potter, and had lost track of Granger when she returned to the hotel. She wasn’t with her friends or in her room, or in any of the public areas of the establishment. So either she’d left the hotel entirely without being spotted (unlikely), or she was in one of the rooms with the piece of blond beefcake she’d met (unfortunately likely).

Needless to say, that didn’t bode well for The Plan, but failure was not something she readily accepted, and desperate times called for desperate measures. Which was why she was at that moment standing outside the door to Harry Potter’s rooms, intending to explain everything to him in a last-ditch effort to keep The Plan in motion. Unfortunately, Harry was not responding to her repeated knocks, and a surreptitious charm had revealed the silencing and locking charms on the door. No doubt he was catching a few winks before tracking down Granger, but if he waited that long, it might be too late.

With a small moue of annoyance she slipped her wand out of its holster and made ready to break the charms on the door. Before she could utter the first words of the spell, a voice spoke in her ear. “I really would advise against that.”

Narcissa whirled, her wand at the ready, to see a lined face with salt-and-pepper hair appear from under the hood of an invisibility cloak. The face was oddly familiar, but it wasn’t until she’d mentally subtracted its careworn signs of age that she recognized it. “Remus? Remus Lupin?”

He smiled as he slipped the rest of the cloak off his shoulders. “Hello, Narcissa. It’s good to see you looking so well.”

“Thank you,” she replied, feeling oddly self-conscious. “I’d say the same, but you’d know I was lying,” she replied wryly. When news of his affliction finally became public knowledge, Narcissa had castigated herself for missing the signs during their school days. Now, decades later, the toll his lycanthropy was taking on him was even more visible.

He laughed softly, taking no offense at her honesty, which he found strangely refreshing. “Ever the diplomat; good to see that marriage hasn’t slowed you down.”

“I pride myself that whenever Chronos comes calling, I scratch his eyes out before kicking him in the family jewels,” she said with a touch of hauteur. “Now, was there a specific reason you stopped me from speaking to Mr. Potter? I assure you, it is concerning a matter of great interest to him.”

“I sincerely doubt that anything you might say would be of much interest to him at the moment,” Remus chuckled, cocking his head in an attitude of listening. He suddenly blushed furiously. “And at the moment, I don’t believe he and Hermione would appreciate any…ah…interruptions…”

For the first time in years Narcissa was surprised into an openmouthed expression of surprise. ‘Of course,’ she thought as her mouth snapped shut, ‘his enhanced senses can hear though the charm. Wait a minute, did he just say what I thought he said?’ She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Remus, but it sounded like you said…”

“Harry and Hermione, as if you didn’t know,” he added. “Thank you, by the way.”

Narcissa saw no point in denying it; Remus had been one of the sharpest of the Gryffindors of his day, and she’d heard nothing to indicate that time or circumstances had dulled his wits. Her eyes narrowed in thought. “The beach bum was Harry?”

“Ah, so that’s what brought you here,” he smiled, and then flushed a bit as his ears twitched. “Would you care to continue this conversation over a drink in the bar? I really would rather not stand hear and listen to…” he gestured towards the door.

Narcissa’s eyes widened as a faint sound made it through the silencing charm. Merlin, if she could hear them past the spell— “Say no more, I quite agree. We can talk over old times, and reminisce about missed opportunities…” Linking her arm through his, they wandered off to renew an old acquaintance, while behind them two lovers explored a new reality.

~~~~~

7. Epilogue

~~~~~

Epilogue Part I

~~~~~

She sat in the small booth in the darkest corner of the nightclub, nursing her Flaming martini and watching the couples slowdancing center stage. Ever since it had opened as an alternative to the far more traditional Wizarding pubs, Enchantments was the place to see and be seen among the fashionable younger crowd of wizards and witches. The reservation list for the restaurant section of the establishment read like a Who’s Who of the Wizarding world, and the attached nightclub had a queue every night that would have done the Muggles’ Studio 54 proud, even in its heyday.

Of course, just like at the Muggle versions of such establishments, if you were on the ‘A’ list you didn’t wait in queues, you just walked up to the doorman and were granted admittance. Said list might vary a bit from week to week and from establishment to establishment, but there were certain people who would always be on it, and it was a fairly safe bet that the top name on every list of that nature had to be Harry Potter (if for no other reason than no one was stupid enough to piss him off).

Narcissa smiled as the song ended and the results of her matchmaking efforts returned to their table. Wizarding fashions had changed a bit over the last few years; the destruction of Voldemort and his Death Eaters had shifted public sentiment away from anti-Muggle prejudices, and fashion trends echoed this change in attitude. The overall look was still woefully out of date compared with Muggle styles, but fashionable witches and wizards now looked like they’d stepped out of the 19th century, not the 15th. Of course those who regularly switched between the Wizarding and Muggle worlds often blurred the line between the two, but tonight they were wearing Wizard couture, and Narcissa had to admit the fashions suited them. Tapered tailcoats, skintight breeches and high top leather boots displayed Harry and Ron’s toned bodies to good effect, and Luna and Hermione’s tight bodiced, Empire waisted gowns flowed around them like smoke, both daring and demure.

Her musings were interrupted as her dinner companion returned to his chair. “See something interesting on the dance floor?” Remus asked, a small smile on his face.

“Just allowing myself a moment of self-congratulation for a job well done,” she admitted, returning her date’s smile. If anyone had told her six months ago that she would be dating the man she had secretly crushed on in school, she would have laughed in their face—well, no, knowing her she would have smiled politely and then destroyed their lives as soon as their back was turned, but she was trying to move away from that sort of behavior.

The odd thing was, Narcissa realized she really was very happy. Remus’s quiet competence and calm self-assurance were such a counterpoint to her deceased husband’s personality that any comparison was ludicrous. His dry sense of humor was completely free of the sadistic streak that had marked all of Lucius Malfoy’s amusements, and not for the first time she found herself wondering what her life would have been like if she had followed her heart and not her head all those years ago.

She knew that the curse of lycanthropy, both the disease and the social stigma that went with it, had destroyed the spirit of many a man and woman. Her own research had revealed a suicide rate of well over 75% within the first ten years of infection, yet Remus not only had not succumbed to the depression that went hand-in-hand with his curse, he had risen above it, finding a tranquility that helped him restrain the beast within. Even more than that, wrestling his own demons had given him an insight into the problems others faced that few men had, and she found her own pain lessening under his calm influence.

Her reverie was interrupted when a strong, callused hand covered her own. “Are you all right, Narcissa?” he asked, honest concern coloring his voice. “You looked so sad just then.”

Shaking off her mood, she turned her hand in his and covered it with her other, giving his a gentle squeeze. “Just thoughtful, my friend. So many changes since our days at Hogwarts. I think now, though, it might be time to put away old memories…”

“And perhaps, begin to make some new ones?” he asked, raising her hand to his lips and brushing them across her knuckles.

Narcissa realized she was blushing, and a genuine smile appeared on her face. She felt younger than she had in years, and for the first time in far longer than she could remember, she truly had the hope of something more than just existing. “Perhaps, indeed,” she whispered in return.

~~~~~

Hermione looked around the table at her lover and their friends and felt the warm glow of contentment rising again. It was hard at times to remember what it had been like before she and Harry had finally admitted to the love they felt for one another. “It’s not just a river in Egypt,” she murmured to herself as she thought of all the years it had taken her to realize her true feelings for the man sitting beside her. Hearing her voice but not her words, he quirked an eyebrow and gave her hand a squeeze before leaning over to brush his lips across her cheek.

This particular evening Harry and Hermione had arrived on a double date with their recently married best friend, Ron, and his wife, Luna, to celebrate their return from their honeymoon. Harry had spent a fair amount of time while they were gone snickering over some of the postcards they received, for the newlyweds had had very different ideas about what made a proper vacation. Luna had insisted on vetting their itinerary, and every romantic locale they visited had perforce included a stopover to search the local wildlife sanctuaries for one or more of the odd creatures for which The Quibbler was always searching. Harry wasn’t sure which had been funnier, the frustration in his friend’s notes at the time they were wasting when they should have been pursuing more traditional honeymoon activities (like shagging each other’s brains out), or the horror he’d expressed the time they actually found one of the creatures, in this case a Blush-Bottomed Badger Beetle.

Both Harry and Hermione had been pleasantly surprised by what a good match their friends had made. It could have been an unmitigated disaster between Ron’s Weasley temper and Luna’s somewhat tenuous grasp on reality, but instead they complemented each other. Luna restrained and calmed Ron’s more volatile tendencies, and Ron helped her focus on the real world. They were both still a couple of flakes, but they were clearly very happy flakes.

Her gaze focused on Ron and Luna’s intertwined hands and shuddered inwardly at the thought of the terrible mistake she’d almost made. Would she have actually gone through with the wedding? She knew she’d already been having doubts, but she was honest enough to acknowledge that her stubborn streak might very well have carried her all the way down the aisle. Now she could admit that she and Ron had never been right for one another, and it was equally obvious that he and Luna were.

As Luna’s head bent towards her husband to whisper something in his ear, the candlelight reflected in brilliant flashes of crimson from her earrings. Hermione snorted as she remembered her first glimpse of Luna’s eclectic jewelry, a taste to which she still clung. These days, however, she didn’t have to fashion her own. Louis Comfort Tiffany hallmarked her butterbeer cap necklace, and her sparkling radish earrings, fashioned of rubies and red enamel over 18k gold, had come from the workshops of Carl Fabergé. Both had been engagement gifts, Ron’s way of telling her how much he loved her, quirks and all, and with his lucrative contract as Keeper for the Chudley Cannons money was no longer an object. Luna’s face had lit with pleasure when she opened the jewelry cases, and she wore the outré ensemble at every opportunity.

Her attention was brought back to their conversation when Ron spoke to Harry. “So, mate, when do you plan on making an honest woman out of Hermione, here? Not getting cold feet, are you?”

Hermione frowned as Harry blushed. “Ron, you know Harry and I don’t need all that folderol. We love each other, and that’s all that really matters.”

“Kidding, kidding!” Ron laughed. “But you should know that Mum’s not going to give up any time soon. With Sis making it abundantly clear that she’s not getting married anytime soon, she’s looking at you for a chance to plan her ‘daughter’s’ wedding.”

Hermione grimaced slightly. To everyone’s surprise and her mother’s dismay, Ginny had announced that, after a couple of years of night classes to bring her NEWT scores up to par, she was entering the Auror training program. Any kind of a permanent relationship was not in her plans for the foreseeable future. After a huge row that had left jangled nerves and hurt feelings on both sides, Molly and Ginny had reached a sort of détente over her decision. In the meantime, as Ron had observed, Molly had started hinting broadly that she would be willing help Hermione put together her wedding, since her own mother had no experience in arranging such matters in the Wizarding world. So far the hints had been fairly mild, but she was well aware that in time they would no doubt become far more insistent, a prospect to which she was not looking forward.

Harry deftly turned the conversation to other topics, and for a while they shared anecdotes about their daily lives, with Ron and Luna talking about some of the places they’d gone on their honeymoon, and Harry and Hermione detailing some of the more amusing reactions to them publicly becoming a couple.

The music playing on the dance floor changed to a familiar tune, and Harry quickly rose and offered Hermione his hand. She smiled and joined him, missing the glance that passed between her friends before Harry led her to the dance floor.

It must have been cold there in my shadow,
to never have sunlight on your face.
You were content to let me shine, that's your way,
you always walked a step behind.

Hermione remembered the first time she and Harry had danced to this piece of music. In deference to the mix of Muggleborn and purebloods, the Graduation Ball had played music from both worlds, and this piece had come on as Harry asked her to dance. She was familiar with it from her own upbringing, and she’d realized from the way Harry was mouthing the words that he was, too.

So I was the one with all the glory,
while you were the one with all the strength.
A beautiful face without a name -- for so long,
a beautiful smile to hide the pain.

Did you ever know that you're my hero,
and ev'rything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
'cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

As they’d continued to dance, she’d had the strangest feeling he was trying to tell her something. Merlin, how could she have been so blind to what was right in front of her?

It might have appeared to go unnoticed,
but I've got it all here in my heart.
I want you to know I know the truth, of course I know it,
I would be nothing with out you.

Did you ever know that you're my hero,
and ev'rything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
'cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

There had been several occasions over the years in between where they’d danced together, and in retrospect, Hermione realized that every time they had, at some point while they’d danced the song had played. Now, looking back, she realized Harry had been telling her something, the only way he could at the time. It had been their song, long before she’d understood that there was a ‘them’ to have a song.

Fly, fly, fly away,
you let me fly so high.
Oh, fly, fly,
so high against the sky, so high I almost touch the sky.
Thank you, thank you, thank God for you,
the wind beneath my wings.*

As the music died way, she felt tears running down her cheeks, and realized Harry’s cheeks were wet as well. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to dance with you to that for real,” he whispered, and Hermione’s eyes flew wide with shock as he slowly sank to one knee on the dance floor, in front of the whole room.

“Growing up the way I did, I never learned what real love was supposed to be. It’s only blind luck, or perhaps divine intervention, that I didn’t turn into some crazed psychopath. But while the Dursleys taught me what love wasn’t, I still had no clue what love was – until I met you.

“From the moment we met on the train that first year, you taught me the truth of what real love means, from the trust that builds between true friends to the passion that grows between true lovers. I’m not complete without you, Hermione. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without the strength your love, your courage, and your friendship gave me. Will you make me complete, forever? Will you be my wife?”

“YES! Oh, Harry, Yes!” she cried, flinging her arms around his neck before covering his face with kisses. He rose to his feet, lifting her in his embrace, a huge smile on his face, and then leaned down and kissed her deeply. When they both came up for air he supported her until her knees stopped wobbling, and the removed a small velvet box from an inner jacket pocket. He opened the lid and she gasped at the sight of the platinum and diamond band set with a large, oval cut emerald. With trembling fingers he removed it from the box and slipped it on her finger amid the cheers, whistles and applause of the other patrons as they realized what was happening.

~~~~~

Narcissa watched the scene in front of her and was amazed when she realized that tears were running down her cheeks. Tears? She hadn’t allowed herself to cry in years, not since the morning after her wedding, and yet she was blubbering like a schoolgirl reading a romance novel. What on earth had gotten in to her?

“Narcissa? I know I said it before, but…thank you.”

Her attention returned to her date. “For what?” she asked a bit waspishly, embarrassed to have him see her lose control that way.

“For them, for making this happen, whatever your reasons. After all they went through they deserve their happiness. So, thank you.”

“Oh, well, I suppose you’re welcome,” she replied as she blotted her tears away, feeling a bit flustered at the sincerity in his voice.

Remus laughed softly, and rose as the music began playing again. “Ms. Black, may I have the honor of this dance?”

She smiled as she took his hand and rose. “The honor is all mine, Mr. Lupin,” she replied as he led her out on the floor, and perhaps, into the future.

~~~~~

Epilogue Part II

~~~~~

Big Bad sat at his desk and read the reports with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Operation Cupid had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Not only had Granger cured Potter’s eternal bad mood, now that they were engaged planning for the wedding and subsequent honeymoon were likely to keep him distracted for over a year, more than enough time for T.I.C.K.L.E. to recoup their earlier losses. They would still have to keep a low profile on some of their operations, but many of those had been red ink propositions for decades; when all was said and done, things like strong-arm intimidation and murder for hire didn’t pay well enough to counterbalance the bad PR they generated. He didn’t feel too bad about shutting some of those down, especially when their other businesses were going so well.

Some of his analysts were suggesting that there was a possibility that Potter might retire to raise a family, an idea that made Big Bad and his associates positively drool. So long as he headed the Unspeakables, their attempts to re-establish their influence within the Ministries met with repeated failure, as he showed an almost prescient ability to ferret out corruption. If he retired, many doors that had been shut for years might begin to inch open again…

His daydreams evaporated as S.U.C.K.R. barged into his office without knocking, his face white as a sheet. “We have a problem,” he said unnecessarily, and extended a rolled-up parchment.

Big Bad frowned as he scanned the document. It was an application for the Auror Training Program. He skipped past all the minutiae and scanned the applicant’s desired goals. They stated a desire to pursue a career investigating organized crime activities within the Wizarding community, with an eye towards weeding out the graft and corruption that crippled the political system. At the bottom, signed in an extremely neat, legible hand, was the name of the applicant: Hermione Granger née Potter.

Big Bad’s and S.U.C.K.R.’s eyes met across his desk, and the same thought passed through both their minds: the most intelligent witch in the last century was joining forces with the most powerful wizard in the last millennium, and T.I.C.K.L.E. was sitting in the cross-hairs.

The moment his gibbering panic eased enough for him to move, Big Bad jerked into action. Racing to the fireplace, he flung a handful of Floo Powder into the coals, and then screamed into the roar of green flames.

“Nar-CISS-A!!!”

~The End (and this time I mean it!)~

*Lyrics to ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ copyright Bette Midler

~~~~~

Author’s Notes: There you have it. I know this chapter was more heavily weighted towards fluff than humor, but I can suppress my inner romantic only so long and then he bursts forth, scattering rose petals and schmaltzy endings as he goes. Besides, Harry and Hermione deserve it…lucky bugger…

I want to thank everyone for the wonderful reviews, and the reception my efforts have received. I admit I had a lot of fun writing it, so much that I hate to see it end. So, for those who have suggested it, I do plan on at least two, and perhaps more sequels. One will lead up to and cover the wedding and honeymoon; another will cover the developing relationship between Narcissa and Remus. I may also do a piece on Ron and Luna’s honeymoon, I haven’t decided yet.

And before anyone complains about the missing bedroom scene, when I started this I was only posting on FictionAlley, whose rating stops at R. I didn’t want to write the scene unless I could go full-bore, so I left it hanging, as it were. I plan on writing an NC-17 version of the end of chapter six, and will post it as a separate story. Give me around a week; I want to do a good job on it.

This story was sparked by an idea I had for a much longer, more serious work I’m still outlining, called ‘The enemy of my enemy’. If I can hammer out the plotline to the point where I feel it’s worth the effort (as in, not redundant to something I’ve seen done elsewhere), it will be my first try at a novel-length fic.

That’s it for now. I do have other pieces in progress or completed, and most of them will eventually appear here. For those who liked the humor in Cupidity, I have a story posted on www.restrictedsection.org called ‘With Three You Get Egg Roll’. It violates some of portkey’s rules, so it won’t appear here. It is primarily H/Hr, so take a look if you like.

Thanks again. Harry and Hermione Forever!

8. author

AUTHOR’S NOTE -- AN UPDATE: I’ve had a couple of reviewers question the use of the name Ginevra instead of Virginia, and the last one was quite snarky about it. www.jkrowling.com, her OFFICIAL website, lists that as her correct name. As for the use of Tiffany and Faberge, I’ll accept the criticism that it should have been Tiffany & Co., but the use of Faberge was deliberate, not ‘name dropping’. The man was considered to be a ‘wizard’ of the jeweler’s art, no reason he couldn’t be a real wizard and still active in the Wizarding community long after his supposed death. That’s called artistic license. As for the two pieces being incompatible, that was the whole POINT. He was as I said, demonstrating his love and acceptance of her, INCLUDING his quirks. She liked to wear tacky jewelry. He spent a fortune, but didn’t try to change her. THAT’S what love is about.

And when the hell did I have Ginevra in the room with her brother and naked women? I wrote the story and I don’t remember that.

As for the crack about ‘getting my facts right’, if I was submitting professionally for publication, I’d worry about it. This is fanfic. Not only that, it is a short, satirical humor piece.

And lastly, if you want to flame me, go ahead, but have the balls to admit it, don’t weasel around it by calling it constructive criticism, not unless you have YOUR facts straight. Not to mention leave your address so I could have sent this privately. Sheesh.

9. The Naughty Bits!

Cupidity - The Naughty Bits

by FenrisWolf

Author’s Note – As promised, here is the missing, NC-17 scene from the end of Chapter Six. This is only my second attempt at writing something quite so explicit, so I hope it meets up with people’s expectations. They do say the imagination is the most potent of all sexual organs.

For those who might wonder just how Harry and Hermione became such sexual beings, I have tried to maintain the standards defined by that great film, ‘Revenge of the Nerds’: “All jocks think about is sports; all nerds think about is sex…” Despite Quidditch and trouncing the Dark Tosser*, Harry is far more of a nerd than a jock, and as for Hermione, well, was there ever a bookworm who wasn’t a nerd?

~~~~~

The Naughty Bits

~~~~~

Harry fastened on her last words like a drowning man. "A relationship? Is that what we have now, Hermione?"

She smiled shyly. "I think we may have the start of one Harry; we're both awfully strong-willed, it's going to take a lot of work, but yes, I think we just might."

He nodded, relieved. For a terrible moment he'd been afraid she was going to reject him outright, but if she was willing to give him a chance... "We'll take it as slow as you want, Hermione; I've waited too long for this to bollix it up now." He rose to his feet and turned towards the door. "Let me escort you back to your room; maybe we could talk some more over dinner?"

She looked at his back, dumfounded. He really was an incredible idiot where women were concerned. Well, at least she thought she knew one quick way to give him a clue what the correct behavior was at a moment like this. "Harry?"

He turned around and stared. Hermione stood next to the bed, her eyes burning, her robe pooled on the floor around her feet. Her feet were braced slightly apart, her hands rubbing nervously down her bare hips. She was biting her lower lip, and the expression on her face could only be described as wanton. Any lingering doubts he had about her intentions were driven out by her next words.

"Screw dinner; what I want isn't on the menu..."

~~~~~

Harry’s mind blanked for a moment; the next thing he was aware of he was entwined with Hermione, his robe beside hers on the floor, his hands buried in her hair as his lips crushed her, their tongues thrusting hungrily at each other, fighting to explore every bit of each other’s mouths. She moaned as her body molded itself to his, her hardened nipples burning against his skin like hot coals as his erection pressed against her firm stomach, her nails clawing his back as his hands caressed and kneaded the cheeks of her ass, his mouth moving down the column of her neck to nuzzle in the hollow of her throat as her hands wrapped around the base of his rock-hard shaft, his fingers probing and caressing the folds of her sex that was hot and wet and beckoning the shivers running through her making her knees tremble as he found the swollen bud of her clitoris and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger and her legs locked around his hips and she screamed his name and he shouted hers as he THRUST into her and she was so hot and tight and he was hard and thick and filled her as she’d never been filled before and he couldn’t think and all she could do was feel and they ground against each other and lost themselves and found themselves as the sensations washed over them and they cried OUT as the world disintegrated and they were finally, completely, whole….

~~~~~

When the universe returned they found themselves tangled on Harry’s bed, their intertwined bodies salty with perspiration. He realized that the only slightly softened length of his shaft was still resting within Hermione’s warm sex, but when he moved to withdraw she held him close and began peppering small kisses and bites along his neck and his shoulders, while her nails drew lazy circles across his chest and stomach. His lips sought out hers, capturing them tenderly, his tongue playful and loving. He felt himself stiffening within her, and rolled over so he could brace his weight above her, looking down into her eyes as he slowly began to move within her in long strokes, withdrawing almost completely before sliding all the way back into her tight embrace. Each time he sheathed himself in her body her eyes closed in pleasure, her teeth biting her lower lip as she arched her neck. He shifted his weight to free one hand and reached between them, and she gasped as his fingers once again found the small nubbin that was sending waves of pleasure coursing through her.

Hermione’s hands began to roam as well, one kneading her own breasts, pulling at her sensitive nipples as the other cradled the heavy sac at the base of his manhood. Her grasp shifted to the thick shaft and it was his turn to arch his neck and have his eyes roll back as she began to stroke him in counterpoint to his thrusts into her sex. Harry felt the shudders begin to roll over Hermione, felt her walls tightening about him as her orgasm took her over the top again. He fought for control and held himself still within her until her muscles relaxed enough to allow him to move again without hurting her, and then began again, increasing his tempo as he felt himself rising to his own peak. His orgasm struck and he cried out as he spilled within her, and the sensation of his spasms as his seed flooded within her carried Hermione along with him…

~~~~~

Once again, after what could have been a few minutes or a lifetime, reality emerged from their post-coital haze. Hermione’s eyes drifted open and focused on the face of her lover, and her breath caught at the open expression of love in his eyes. She reached out and gently brushed the wetness from his cheek before seeking out his hand and bringing his fingers to her lips. “Finally,” she whispered, smiling up at him. “Tell me, why did we wait so long?”

“Because I’m a prat, and a git, and too damned stupid to know a good thing when it’s right in front of me,” he replied seriously, and she giggled.

“Just you remember that the next time you feel yourself going all noble and self-sacrificing, and we’ll be just fine,” she said firmly, and then winced as soreness twinged within her. She wasn’t in any serious pain, but Harry was every bit as large as she’d remembered, and it was going to take her a little while to get used to him.

Harry noticed her slight grimace and frowned. It was all well and good to be well hung, but he’d learned when first experimenting back at Hogwarts that there were drawbacks to being so ‘blessed’, especially for any partner who wasn’t used to him. He’d tried to be careful, but their first coupling had been too frenzied after years of pent-up frustration, and he was afraid he’d hurt her, the very last thing he ever wanted to do.

Fortunately for them both, Harry was every bit as adept at wandless magic as he’d always been, and the simple healing charm he cast quickly soothed away the soreness between Hermione’s legs. Unfortunately, at least as far as Hermione felt about things, the charm couldn’t differentiate between the uncomfortable sensations that were the results of her body learning to accommodate her new lover’s dimensions, and the pleasant soreness that was the lingering aftermath of a really great shag. She felt a pout coming on as those feelings faded as well, and then a wicked gleam appeared in her eyes. Since he was responsible for her losing those pleasant aches and pains, he could bloody well make sure he replaced them, and as soon as possible…

Harry smiled, his eyes drifting closed as he felt Hermione relax and snuggle close to him, but the pleasant drowsiness didn’t last very long. The snuggle was quickly evolving into something much more energetic, and he groaned as her mouth began to work its way down his chest. “Hermione…” he moaned as her teeth grazed over his nipple, her nails teasing the one currently being ignored by her mouth.

“Hmmmm?” she mumbled, her tongue currently being too busy to waste time on silly things like enunciation. Her mouth trailed its way southward, and he gasped, his hands tangling in her hair as her lips parted over his rapidly stiffening erection, her tongue expertly rolling back his foreskin and flicking away the drop of precum forming at the head of his shaft.

Rapidly coming to the conclusion that what was good for the goose was good for the gander, Harry shifted position and began exploring Hermione’s body with his own mouth. His tongue parted her already moist folds, drinking in the musky sweetness of her fluids, lapping at the delicate, pink pearl that lay within. Hermione moaned around the head of his shaft, her hands caressing and stroking what her mouth couldn’t accommodate. The vibrations from her muffled cries sent waves of pleasure through his arousal, and Harry fought for control as his body tried to climax yet again. He wanted them to reach their peak together, and he focused on bringing her to the edge while holding himself back as long as possible.

The sensations Harry was creating were rapidly overwhelming Hermione’s reason, and the small portion of her mind that was still rational thanked the Hundred Little Gods for her lover’s skills, however he had acquired them. She felt herself teetering on the edge of another mind-shattering orgasm, and intensified her own ministrations, determined to bring about Harry’s release at the same time. Suddenly Harry’s fingers joined his tongue, plunging into her sex while his mouth suckled on her clit, pushing her over the top. She cried out around the hardened flesh filling her mouth, and it broke his control, his seed flooding her mouth as she swallowed the saltiness that was his essence…

~~~~~

This time their exhaustion was real, and they slept for several hours before awakening in each other’s arms to make slow, gentle love once more. Their initial hunger sated, Harry was careful to take it slow, giving Hermione plenty of time to get used to him, and the tingling aftereffects were everything she could hope for.

Ginny, Grace and Marcy never did see their friend the rest of their vacation, a fact her two co-workers teased Hermione about mercilessly when they returned to their jobs. But no matter how hard they tried, they never managed to elicit any details from her. She just listened with a mysterious smile on her face, her fingers idly toying with the 18k gold Snitch-shaped pendant she’d acquired somewhere along the way…

~~~~~

*A tip of the hat to Jeconais, and the great fic “This Means War!” on www.fanfiction.net, the first time I recall seeing MoldyShorts referred to as ‘The Dark Tosser’. Even though it’s H/G, it’s still excellent, and I heartily recommend it.