Many thanks to my betas, MPotter77 and ChocolateFrogsforBreakfast. Thanks also to Nancy, Jim, Carrie and Diana for their encouragement while I was writing this.
THE NEXT BEST THING
By Oh_Honestleigh
Part One
She'd never meant to do any of it.
She'd never meant to wander so far down Knockturn Alley during her lunch hour. When thunder pealed and lightning flashed, sending witches and wizards scattering toward the nearest shelter, she never would have thought to enter a sex shop; it was just the closest door, the easiest place to keep from getting soaked. She never thought, entering The Wicked Witch's Wand Shoppe, that something else would get soaked, that place in her knickers that sheltered her most private parts.
The witch behind the counter had smiled coyly at her, waving her wand to make row upon row of sex toys appear. Dildos allegedly shaped like Voldemort's penis, apparently aimed at Death Eater wannabes who wished to impale themselves on a flaming pencil. Cock rings with nubs that whirred and purred as they rubbed against a witch's clit. A soft, squishy pink tube called the Prosthetic Python Strangler; the counter witch said that it felt like a dozen lapping tongues when a wizard slid it over his erection. Whips, chains, and magical restraints. Books full of incantations to increase lubrication, enhance and extend erections, and even simulate the motion of tongues, lips and fingers on one's most intimate areas. Hermione Granger had never been in a Muggle sex shop, much less a magical one, and the wares displayed in this shop turned her on as nothing had in her young life, including living with two attractive young men -- her best friends, Ron Weasley and Harry Potter.
Ron was tall and broad-shouldered, with flaming ginger hair, copious freckles and brilliant blue eyes. During seventh year he had finally succumbed to the loopy charms of Luna Lovegood, and for the past three years, they'd been practically inseparable. When Ron finally realized his own attractiveness, he could have acted like God's gift to witches, but he was totally devoted to Luna and focused his physical energy on making her moan his name as often as possible. Hermione had always thought of Ron as the brother she never had, but she did sometimes envy the look of bliss on Luna's face when she left Ron's bedroom, walking funny, after a shag session that shook the walls of his room.
Why can't I be the one who's walking funny? she wondered. And why can't Harry be the one who makes me walk that way?
Harry. First he was The Boy Who Lived. Three years ago he'd become The Boy Who Defeated Voldemort. But in between, during their sixth year at Hogwarts, she'd realized he was the boy who'd claimed her heart. She had always cared about him, certainly since at least their third year. By the time she turned seventeen, she realized that she couldn't bear to be apart from him. At twenty-one, he was still on the thin side, and his black hair still stuck up at odd angles. But the skinny eleven-year-old boy of ten years ago had grown into a wiry young man, a few inches taller than Hermione (but still several inches shorter than Ron), with lightly sculpted pectorals, a flat belly and an arse that looked firm yet squeezable under his trousers. More than once Hermione had awoken from dreams in which she'd done much more than squeeze Harry's arse. She'd dreamed of drizzling chocolate sauce on those pecs, then licking it off his chest, down his flat belly all the way to the glorious cock she was sure lurked under his too-loose jeans. Then she would lick his cock from the root to the tip, swirling her tongue slowly as she cleaned the chocolate off. Harry would buck and shudder but always - in her dreams - managed to hold back until she enveloped him in her wet heat. Once firmly seated inside her, he would fuck her slow and hard for at least an hour, doing it in every position she'd ever seen in Playwitch magazine.
At least that was how it happened, with minor variations, in her frequent dreams. In reality, Harry slept in the next room, most of the time by himself, while Hermione slept alone in her room. Sometimes when Harry had brought a young witch home, Hermione leaned up against the wall connecting the two rooms and listened. During the three years she'd lived with him and Ron, Hermione had discovered that Harry didn't always cast a silencing charm. Whenever he forgot, she pressed her ear to the wall, her body balanced on her fingertips, her breath catching in her throat while she listened to the moans and sighs emanating from the other room. Sometimes she heard moans and sighs when she knew that no one was visiting Harry in his room. Shagging or wanking, it didn't matter; she'd be at the wall, listening and touching herself, biting her other hand to keep from crying out as her strokes quickened in time with Harry's noises.
'I've got to stop doing this,' she thought after she'd listened to Harry tossing off one summer morning. 'He's never thought of me that way, and he never will. Listening to him get off is wrong. I should find another outlet for my frustrations.'
Later that day, when the thunderstorm struck in Diagon Alley and she stumbled into the Wicked Witch's Wand Shoppe, Hermione took this as a sign that she really could find a different outlet than eavesdropping on Harry's sex life. So when the witch behind the counter pulled out a pearlescent wand about eight inches long, Hermione took it in her hands and examined it carefully.
"Does this have a name?"
"It's called the Make Your Own Magic Wand."
"It's very pretty. What does it do?"
The sales witch's lips curved in a hint of a smile. "Whatever you want it to do. It can be short and thick, or long and slim, or" -- she smile broadly -- "as long and thick as you want. It can pound you hard and fast, or tease you slowly until you scream for release."
Hermione blushed at the descriptions. "Can it make me forget that the man I want to make love with doesn't fancy me at all?" she said ruefully.
"It can do much more than that," the sales witch declared. "It can make you feel as though you're having sex with whomever you most desire."
"How would it do that?"
The sales witch smiled. "You just think about the person you'd like to shag and what you'd like him to do to you."
Hermione blushed. I'll feel much less guilty with this than if I kept on eavesdropping against Harry's wall, she thought. "How much?"
"Twenty Galleons."
Her eyes widened. "That's a bit stiff."
"So is this wand, dearie. And worth every Knut. Believe me, I know. And it comes with a special Resizing Charm so that you can pop it in your handbag and take it along, then expand it whenever you need it."
Blushing again, Hermione said quickly, "I'll take it."
Leaving the shop with her new toy (conveniently shrunk to the size of a lipstick), Hermione noticed that the storm clouds had rolled away. The sun now shone brightly on Diagon Alley.
^*^*^*^
He'd never meant to do any of it.
In retrospect, he was surprised it had taken him so long.
When he'd moved into the terrace house in Muggle London and invited Ron and Hermione to join him, knew it would be hard to live there with her in the next bedroom, so very near and yet so very far away. He'd wanted her in his own bed since the end of sixth year, when he pieced together the jumble of feelings that engulfed him when she was struck down in the Department of Mysteries and he thought he'd almost lost her. But the timing was terribly wrong, even if she had wanted him back -- and he was sure she didn't. She'd never said anything, had she? Hermione was the most direct, assertive person he knew, and she'd never said she was interested in him as more than a friend. Back then, what Harry had needed most was her unwavering friendship and loyalty, and Ron's too. So he'd never allowed himself to think of Hermione as more than a friend. That would have complicated the relationship among the three of them -- and it would have given Voldemort a target Harry couldn't allow. He couldn't let Hermione know how he felt. He couldn't give her a chance either to reject or to reciprocate his feelings. He couldn't have stood the hurt if she'd said no -- or the panic if she'd said yes.
So like the emotional coward he was, he said nothing. Instead he let himself drift into occasional half-hearted relationships with girls who could never mean to him what Hermione meant.
First there was Ginny Weasley. That lasted about three months at school, during Harry's sixth year and Ginny's fifth. Harry was glad he'd never shagged Ginny; she was his best mate's sister, and he could only imagine Ron's wrath if he'd slept with her, then broken it off. No, it was best not to get emotionally involved with anyone. Besides, back then he was still getting used to girls' bodies, their lips and hips and thighs and sighs and ooh Harry you're such a good kisser, I love it when you slide your lips up my throat and swirl your tongue around my ear. Do that again, Harry. And if you're good I'll slip my hand in your pants and--
Harry was positively relieved when Ginny told him their relationship wasn't working out. He liked Ginny, but he'd never fancied her. He didn't want to become serious about anyone while Voldemort was still out there, hunting him. Dating was just too hard. It required emotions he couldn't conjure up, simply because they were already firmly anchored elsewhere. Besides, he was too busy training for his confrontation with the Evil S.O.B., as he'd taken to calling his nemesis. It was easier to be a lone wolf, taking comfort with his own hand when he needed to -- which allowed him to imagine someone else's hand doing those things to him.
And imagine it, he had, so many, many times.
When he was finally free to behave like other young men his age, he imagined it while visiting the bordello on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. He imagined it in Knockturn Alley, where prostitutes lined the brick walls like ants at a picnic. He imagined it when he finally started bringing young witches home with him after visits to the Wet Wizard, a Diagon Alley nightclub where the pretty girls jostled to see who would leave with The Boy Who Saved the Wizarding World.
No, he'd never meant to become a slut. And he'd certainly never meant to invade Hermione's privacy the way he had a few months earlier when he was doing the laundry.
"Harry, could you do me a favor today?" she asked offhandedly as she hurried to leave for work.
"Sure, Hermione. Name it."
"There's a basket of dirty laundry in my room, next to my dresser. Could you put them in the wash? Just do whatever's in there. Thanks so much," she finished, waving to him before she Disapparated.
"Okay," he replied, blowing out a breath as she disappeared. Ron was off training with the Ballycastle Bats, where he was playing reserve keeper, so it was just Harry and Hermione in the house right then. Harry was glad Ron wasn't there, because his best mate probably would have noticed Harry's face burning in embarrassment at the thought of doing Hermione's laundry.
'I'm being stupid,' he thought as he finished his breakfast. 'It's just her clothes, after all.' He found the wicker basket exactly where Hermione said it would be, and took it into the kitchen so he could put her clothes in the washing machine. As he stuffed clothes into the washer, he noticed that Hermione's load of laundry wasn't quite what he'd expected. Mixed in among the various jeans and tee shirts were several items that had to be her undergarments.
What he saw made him light-headed: Silky blue knickers and a matching bra. A lacy white thong. Several pair of cotton knickers with innocuous designs (which rather disappointed him, compared to the other items). Eyes wide, Harry watched as his hands moved inexorably to manipulate his best friend's undergarments. He spread the bra across his hands, noting that the cups stretched from the heel of his hand almost to the tip of his middle finger. The other boys in his dorm had often said that when it came to breasts, boobs, baps, chebs, knockers, tits, etc., anything more than a handful was wasted. Feeling the silky material against his palms, he imagined Hermione's body filling the cups, his own hands palming her breasts through one of her tee shirts. Then he imagined his hands wandering under that tee shirt and under that bra, his fingers sliding across the soft skin until they reached her nipples.
That was exactly the wrong thing for him to think. In less time than it took for I shouldn't be doing this to cross his mind, Harry's cock was hard and straining at his zipper. When all the blood had left his brain, all his common sense exited too. Putting the bra down, he picked up the thong, peered through the openings -- and sniffed the thin strip of fabric that, he thought excitedly, had nestled between Hermione's arse cheeks and probably even touched her pussy.
"Sweet Jesus, I know you exist now," he moaned as he inhaled the intimate scent of his female best friend. His best friend whom he'd desired for the past four years. His best friend who paid no attention to his maleness. His best friend whom he wanted to shag senseless that very moment. If his cock had possessed hands, it would have undone his flies right then, poked its head out of his jeans and looked for something to pump into. But it didn't, so Harry did. He swiped his hand through the still-dry load of washing and dredged up the silky blue knickers. Holding the thong against his nostrils, he unzipped his jeans, pulled out his aching cock and pumped into the knickers, his thrusts growing more fevered as he banged harder and harder into the side of the washing machine.
'Just another sniff,' he thought over and over as the knickers caressed his swollen skin, gliding over it like fairy wings until Harry spun out of control and came all over the front of the washer. He staggered backward for a moment, then realized that sniffing and wanking into Hermione's undergarments had given him one of the best orgasms he'd had in the three years since he'd started fucking. It certainly ranked in his top ten wanks of all time. Sniffing her knickers was wrong, he knew that much. Unless, of course, she'd given him permission - and she'd never do that. 'Because she just doesn't think of me that way,' he reasoned sadly. Stuffing his half-hard cock back into his pants, Harry zipped up his jeans, tossed the knickers and the thong back into the washer, muttered a quick scouring charm and started the washing machine.
The next time Harry did his own laundry, he told Hermione he'd be happy to wash her clothes too.
"Well, if you're sure it's no bother," she said warily. "I don't want to impose on you, Harry. Just because you're not working outside the house doesn't mean that Ron and I should treat you like a house-elf."
Harry shrugged, hoping he could curb his enthusiasm. "No bother at all, Hermione. You're paying more than your share of the rent; I want to do something to make that up to you." He paused, hoping that his rationale had sold her.
Smiling, Hermione touched his arm, sending an electric shock down to his groin. "Thank you, Harry. That's very kind of you."
Harry hoped she didn't notice the boner growing in his jeans. "No problem. Don't you have a staff meeting in a few minutes?" he said, looking at the kitchen clock, hoping she'd leave soon so he could have his way with her blue silk bra…or perhaps the red silk boy shorts…
"Oh, that's not for fifteen minutes. I can Apparate to work, silly. I'll just separate the clothes for you," she said, as she returned to the kitchen with her wicker laundry basket.
"No, that's all right," Harry shot back, worried she would pull out the delicates and put them in the washer herself before he had a chance to do his sniff-and-wank routine. "Don't be late on my account. You know, I'm an old hand at separating laundry. I did it all the time at the Dursleys'." 'Little does she know what my hand has been doing with her laundry lately,' he mused as his jeans got tighter.
Her expression softening, Hermione reached up and touched Harry's cheek. Between her palm lying on his skin and the blood pooling in his groin, Harry suddenly felt a bit weak in the knees. "Just go to work, Hermione," he said softly, his eyelids fluttering closed.
When he opened them a moment later, Hermione had the oddest look on her face. "Okay, I'll see you later," she replied just as softly. "Thanks again."
Then she did something she'd done only twice before. She kissed him on the cheek.
^*^*^*^
Hermione had not failed to notice that Harry had become quite solicitous lately, but in a very odd way. He had suddenly -- about two months earlier -- decided that he would do Hermione's laundry for her as well as his own. This didn't bother her, except that she really didn't want him putting her laundry away. If he wanted to do all the steps up to and including putting the folded clothes in her laundry basket, that was fine. But she lived in terror that he would open her delicates drawer -- because that was where she kept her collection of sex toys, including Harry Junior, the magical vibrator she'd bought at the Wicked Witch's Wand Shoppe.
The sales witch hadn't been kidding; this particular vibrator was worth every Knut of its twenty-Galleon price. Hermione remembered her excitement the night she brought it home. She'd tucked it carefully into the back of the drawer, right next to the tube of lubricant she normally used with her other sex toys. After dinner, when Harry asked if she wanted to watch a film with him and Ron on the telly, she feigned a headache, retiring to her room so she could break in her new toy. Hermione was still technically a virgin, but she'd explored her body for several years with a variety of toys, all of them bought from Muggle mail-order houses. In fact, she'd blushed and said "No" when her healer at St. Mungo's asked if she'd ever had sex. Unlike Harry, who seemed to bring a new woman into his bed at least every six weeks, Hermione had let a few young men go only so far and no farther. She couldn't have sex with someone she didn't care about deeply; it just wasn't in her emotional makeup…She wanted to make love with someone she loved. So if she couldn't have Harry's cock inside her, she'd have the next best thing.
As it turned out, Harry Junior was, indeed, the next best thing to having Harry Potter inside her.
After removing her jeans and tee shirt, Hermione stripped out of her bra and knickers, lay on top of the covers and remembered what the sales witch told her about how to make the vibrator work.
"What does it do?"
"Whatever you want it to do. It can be short and thick, or long and slim, or as long and thick as you want. It can pound you hard and fast, or tease you slowly until you scream for release."
A tiny instruction card came with the vibrator. "Lie back and visualise the man you'd like to shag. Imagine him naked and hard. Keep him in your mind's eye until your vibrator activates."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. 'Sounds too easy to be true.' Still, it couldn't hurt to try. She lay back on her bed and visualised Harry in the swimming costume he'd worn at the Burrow earlier that summer. Despite having just come out of the cool water of the pond, he had an obvious hard-on and blushed when she glanced in that direction. Next she did a mental Evanesco and Harry was standing naked in her mind, his cock at full staff, jutting proudly from a nest of black curls. The sight of this in her mind's eye made Hermione blush deeply. As she continued to imagine Harry's naked body, the vibrator trembled, then the surface became wiggly and almost fluid-looking. A few seconds later, what she held in her hand resembled Harry's hard, naked cock, just as she'd imagined it, down to every ridge and vein -- with one major exception. Instead of a normal head, the head of this cock looked like a miniature version of Harry's head, including the glasses.
"Bloody hell," she muttered. "Now what?" She continued read the instructions. "Your vibrator should now resemble certain features of your lust object's anatomy. Next, speak the name of your beloved and tell the vibrator what you want it to do. Your vibrator will shut off when you stop thinking about the object of your desire."
Hermione stared at the mini-Harry-head on Harry Junior. The hair was messy yet soft and silky, just as she'd imagined Harry's hair must be, if she ever got to run her fingers through it. The tiny nose, chin and green eyes looked just like Harry's. And Harry Junior's head even had a little pink tongue poking out through tiny lips. Taking a deep breath, she held Harry Junior lightly in her hand, parted her external folds and said, "Lick me, Harry."
The vibrator sprang to life, twisting and shuddering in her hand. Putting the little head as close as she dared to her clitoris, she almost jumped off the bed when the tiny tongue began stroking. In and out, up and down, swirling in circles, the tiny tongue flicked and darted, until very soon Hermione was as wet and loose as she'd ever been. Pushing her knees up, she let them fall to her sides, said, "Fuck me, Harry" and plunged the vibrator inside herself. She was barely holding onto it now, but Harry Junior seemed to know what to do.
"Harderfasterharderfasterharderfaster," she repeated as the vibrator plunged in and out, its pace quickening until suddenly every nerve in her body exploded and she came in a gush on her bedspread.
"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" she screamed, shuddering as her orgasm resolved.
Ten seconds later, there was a hard knock on her bedroom door. "Hermione, are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?" Harry stood outside in the hallway, an edge of anxiety in his voice.
Panicking, Hermione jumped up off the bed, her mind suddenly miles away from the amazing orgasm Harry Junior had given her.
Now Ron's voice came through the door. "Hermione, did you hear Harry? Are you okay?"
The vibrator, she noticed, had returned to its normal pearlescent appearance. Tucking it inside her dresser, Hermione quickly threw on a long sleep shirt. As she opened the door, she tried to look calm even though her heart was pounding and her legs felt like jelly.
"I'm okay," she assured them. Perhaps that truth would make up for the lies she was about to tell. "Really. I'm fine. I fell asleep. I must have had a nightmare, because when I woke up I was screaming."
"You want some warm milk? I can charm some for you," Ron said solicitously.
"No, that's okay. I'm just going to try to go back to sleep now."
Harry looked askance at her. "Are you sure? It's only half-past nine."
"Really, Harry, I'm very tired. I'm going to go back to sleep. Thank you both for being so…concerned."
Ron reached down and ruffled her hair. "You're our best friend. You started screaming for no apparent reason. Of course we were concerned. Night, Hermione."
In her embarrassment, Hermione couldn't meet Harry's eyes. She felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder, where it lingered for a moment.
"I don't like that you're having nightmares," he said softly. "If you have any more that make you scream, please talk to me. Maybe I can…help you. Good night, Hermione." He gave her shoulder a little squeeze then pulled away. Though she couldn't see his eyes, she could tell he was staring at her, and the heat of his gaze made her blush.
'The only way you could help me,' she thought, 'would be to do what that vibrator was doing to me.' "Thanks, Harry. Maybe I will."
As Harry and Ron went back to the living room, Hermione closed the door and leaned against it in relief. From then on, she always used a silencing charm.
^*^*^*^
Ron soon went off on an extended tour with the Ballycastle Bats. This was good for Hermione because she now had a three-week respite from watching Luna stumble out of Ron's bedroom with a goofy grin on her face. It was also bad for Hermione because now she was now alone in the house with just Crookshanks, Hedwig, Harry Junior and Harry Potter himself. Since Crookshanks and Hedwig were out of the question, and she would never get the chance to make love to Harry Potter, she would just have to fuck herself with Harry Junior more often. She discovered that her Make Your Own Magic Wand was very aptly named. Once shrunk, Harry Junior could be carried quite easily in the pocket of her jeans or her Ministry robes, which made it easy to have a quick wank just about anywhere she could shut the door and be alone.
Meanwhile, the real Harry noticed that Hermione seemed different somehow. She was no longer as moody and irritable as she had been a few weeks earlier. At the same time, though, she also kept to herself more and was spending less and less time in the common areas of the house, where he could see her, talk to her and (he hoped) smell her, and increasingly more time holed up in her room. This was impinging seriously on Harry's sex life, as he had to make sure she was out of the house before he could rummage through her basket of dirty laundry.
Harry thought he'd actually been very patient. He had tried to wait for Hermione to ask him to do her laundry, but after a while he really couldn't. She might go more than a week without needing to have laundry done. That was completely unacceptable. He'd become accustomed to sniffing her knickers while he tossed off. Lately, if he tried to wank without getting a whiff of her juices, he couldn't get off. It didn't matter how he touched himself; not even the Prosthetic Python Strangler he'd got as a gag gift from Ron would get him off unless he was smelling Hermione's soiled knickers. He wasn't asking for much, just one or two pair of knickers bearing the faintest pussy stains (though he had noticed that the more fragrant the knickers, the harder he came). If he couldn't make love to the real Hermione Granger, he would just have to do the next best thing -- bleed his dragon while his sense of smell feasted on her decidedly female scent. If he got to feel something soft and silky against his cock while he wanked, so much the better. He knew he could launder and return her undergarments before she cottoned on.
Hermione had noticed something too. Harry was no longer bringing young witches home with him. In fact, as far as she knew, Harry hadn't been out on the town in at least two months. He'd suddenly become quite the homebody, as well as taking on even more chores in the house. In addition to doing everyone's laundry, he was emptying the dustbins in all the bedrooms, sometimes more than once a week. He was also…she must be imagining this…looking at her differently. There was something in his eyes she'd never seen before. If she didn't know better, she might think it was lust.
^*^*^*^
To be continued…