Intervention
By FenrisWolf
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AUTHOR'S NOTE - I don't own anything related to Harry Potter, JK Rowling does…darn it.
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Chapter Two - Making Plans
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Hermione listened to the staccato pattern of Luna's footsteps skipping down the stairs, her eyes still fixed on her friend's in the other bed. After a minute or two she gave herself a little shake and got to her feet, closing the door and then re-establishing the silencing charm. Returning to her bed she resumed her cross-legged pose and cleared her throat. "So, I guess we need to talk about this," she offered hesitantly.
"I guess so," Ginny agreed before lapsing back into silence. For a few minutes the only sounds in the room were those coming through the open window, the whisper of the light breeze through the nearby trees, the occasional snatch of birdsong, and the background drone of the insect life going about its business.
"Oh, bloody hell!" Ginny grumbled, swinging her legs off her bed and facing a startled Hermione. "We can dance around this for hours, getting nowhere, or we can be blunt as bollocks and sort this out quickly. Now me, I vote for bollocks. How about you?"
Hermione swallowed nervously, pushing an escaping tendril of her hair back behind her ear, her eyes darting around as she looked at everything other than the determined-sounding redhead sitting across from her. Her eyes' movement stilled as they came to rest on a photograph sitting on Ginny's nightstand. It was a picture of a much younger Harry and Ron, obviously snapped the summer before their second year at Hogwarts, before the events in the Chamber of Secrets cast their shadow on Harry's eyes, a shadow that would grow with each subsequent crisis. Hermione realized she wanted to see Harry's eyes with that sort of look in them again…whatever it took. "Bollocks," she said firmly, meeting Ginny's steady gaze with one of her own.
"Good!" her friend replied. "Now first off, we need to decide just what it is we're talking about here, right?"
Hermione looked puzzled. "But we already decided that, at least I thought we did. We're talking about somebody using, um, physical intimacy (she still couldn't just spit out the word 'sex' with any degree of comfort) to get through to Harry and make him open up about his feelings…aren't we?"
"We are," Ginny agreed, "but what happens after that?" Hermione continued to look puzzled, and Ginny sighed. "Herms, Harry isn't the kind of guy who's going to go for a 'fancy a shag?' sort of relationship. For one thing, he's Muggle raised like you, so he's probably got all sorts of silly hang-ups about sex, just like you do. But on top of that, he didn't have anything like the kind of affection from those Dursleys that you got from your parents. Merlin knows what kind of baggage those relatives have left him with, but it's pretty clear that at best he's going to have what Muggles call 'issues'. Whoever beds him is going to have to plan on being there for the long haul. Now, are you up for that?"
"Don't call me Herms," Hermione replied absently as she considered the redheaded girl's words. Of course she'd daydreamed about a life with Harry, a life after school and after the threat of Voldemort was gone. She was pretty sure every girl who fell in love had dreams like that. But Ginny was talking about deciding to make a lifetime commitment now, before she'd even spoken to Harry about her feelings, let alone acted on them as they were considering. "It's not supposed to be like this," she complained. "We should be dating, holding hands and kissing, maybe doing some serious snogging before any of this ever comes up. Now I'm talking about…having sex with Harry (there, she'd said it!) and I haven't even told him how I feel about him yet! It just doesn't make any sense…"
"Nope, it doesn't," Ginny agreed. "Then again, if it made sense we probably wouldn't be talking about Harry, would we? He seems to attract the strange and unusual like a lodestone; why should his sex life be any different?"
Hermione began to frown at her friend. "Gin, you haven't said what you think about the idea, either. I seem to recall you used to have quite the crush on Harry…"
"Merlin, don't remind me!" Ginny half moaned, half laughed. "I was sooo pathetic; I couldn't even talk around him for two years!" She wiped a couple of tears away, and then whispered, "You know, I almost wrote Lucius Malfoy a thank-you note for slipping me that diary? It was ruddy awful at the time, but in a weird way it sure cured me of my crush!" She smirked at the scandalized look on Hermione's face, and then turned serious. "Joking aside, Hermione, I care a lot about Harry. I'm certainly willing to do anything to see him happy, if you get my drift. I'm not even going to mention the Wizard's Debt I owe him for saving my life; Harry's just too darned decent not to get a shot at happiness, and if it took a lifetime commitment from me to manage that, I'd do it in a shot." She grinned suddenly. "It doesn't hurt that he's dead sexy with that messy black hair and those yummy green eyes, not to mention that tight little butt Quidditch has given him…"
"Ginny!" Hermione gasped, blushing bright red.
"Hey, take it easy, I'm just teasing…I think," she added slyly just as Hermione relaxed. "The point is, Herms," she continued, putting a bit of stress on the hated nickname, "that what I'm willing to do doesn't really matter, since there's someone much better for the job right in front of me." Ginny smiled softly as Hermione nervously twisted the bottom of her tee shirt. "You really are in love with him, aren't you?"
Hermione's eyes widened as Ginny's calm question dumped her innermost feelings out on the floor between them. "Love him?" she squeaked. "I never said-I mean, how did you know that…I mean, um…oh, bollocks!" she wailed, for once unable to find the words she needed so desperately.
"Hermione, it's all right," Ginny soothed, giggling a little at her friend's discomfiture. "It's not like it's any big surprise, is it?" She smiled at the shocked look on the other girl's face. "What? Everyone in Gryffindor has been waiting for you two to get together for two years; well, except for a few diehards who are crazy enough to think all that bickering means you fancy my brother. But anyone who really knows you two can see how you both feel."
"Both?" Hermione asked hesitantly. "You mean, you think Harry feels…" She found herself shaking her head. "No, why should he think that way about me? He spent most of the last two years fancying Cho, not me."
"And we all saw how well that turned out," Ginny scoffed. "I'm not saying Harry can't be a complete prat; he is a boy, after all. Just because he feels something for you, it doesn't mean he knows he feels it." She smiled at Hermione's disbelieving stare. "Hermione, you and I both know that just about the only boys Harry's age who have a clue when it comes to their emotions are Beaters for the other team. With Harry, it's pretty much a given that you have to make the first move, just because you two started out as friends. When you throw in all his baggage from Tom, those Muggles and what happened to Sirius…well, Luna is probably right, it'll take you jumping him to get him to wake up."
Hermione felt a twisting in her stomach as Ginny's words sunk in. "I'm scared, Gin. What if he doesn't want me? What if he thinks I'm a tramp, or I just want him for his money or because he's famous? What if-?"
"Whoa, whoa!" Ginny interrupted before Hermione could work herself into a full-blown panic attack. "Don't let's go borrowing trouble, we have enough to go around as it is. First off, if we do this right, him wanting you is going to be the least of your worries. Second, short of shagging Malfoy in the middle of the Great Hall, Harry could never think of you as a tramp! And third, you've been his friend for what, five years? When have you ever been impressed by his money or his fame? He knows you, Hermione; even now, when his head's messed up, he still knows who you are."
"Are you sure, Ginny?" Hermione asked, hating how pathetically hopeful she sounded. "I admit I have feelings…no, that I love Harry," she said firmly, acknowledging out loud what she'd only admitted in her heart, "and that I want to be with him, but that doesn't mean I'm the best thing for him. I don't want to make matters worse instead of better."
"Trust me on this one, Hermione," Ginny replied with equal firmness. "You are precisely what Harry needs; anyone else who tried would come in a poor second. All you need is a little self-confidence, and a good plan of attack." She hopped from her bed and headed for the door of her room. "Now let's get Luna back in here and figure out just how we're going to pull this off…"
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A few minutes later Ginny returned with the Ravenclaw girl in tow, muttering under her breath as she entered their room, "I don't know what the bloody hell she sees in him…" Closing the door, she turned on Luna and said with a certain amount of asperity, "I know you fancy my git of a brother, but could you tone it down a bit, at least while you're in my house? I play with that chess set, too, you know."
Luna shrugged nonchalantly, ignoring the curious looks she was receiving from Hermione. "I don't understand what you're complaining about, Ginny; your brother's hands were sticky from all those chocolate frogs he was eating. I was just cleaning off the pieces before putting them away."
"Licking the knights and sucking on the bishops is not cleaning them," Ginny replied repressively, earning another shrug from Luna, although a very observant person might have caught the smirk playing around the corners of the blond girl's mouth.
Hermione shook her head, deciding that Luna's flirtation techniques definitely fell, like the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, into the category labeled Things It Was Better Not To Think About. Instead she asked, "We were going to work out a plan?"
Luna's mood brightened significantly. "Oh, did you two come to a decision? Are you going to share him between you?"
"No, no sharing," Hermione said firmly, wanting to quell any ideas along those lines before they developed.
"Are you sure?" Luna pressed. "Because there are some interesting references to Druidic practices that emphasized such arrangements, not to mention a number of Tantric scrolls that would apply…"
"We're sure," Ginny answered, reinforcing Hermione's statement. "No sharing; even if we were all willing, and we aren't, I don't think Harry's in the right frame of mind to make that sort of decision."
"Hmmm, you're probably right," Luna finally agreed. "Harry is a bit rocky, at that. Still, you could keep it in mind for later, after he gets used to the idea of regularly having sex." With that matter settled, she moved on. "So which of you is it going to be? Hermione, I suppose?"
"Told you," Ginny murmured to her blushing friend. To Luna she continued, "Yes, it's going to be Hermione. The trick is going to be to catch him when his guard is down, and where Hermione can approach him without fear of being interrupted. It also has to be a time and place where he can't just bolt as soon as she makes a move. Any ideas?"
The three girls all slipped deep into thought as they mused on the best way to go about deflowering their unsuspecting target. Finally Ginny snapped her fingers and exclaimed, "I think I've got it! How about…" Their voices dropped to a conspiratorial whisper as they laid their plans into the night.
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Next Time: Taking The Plunge