King of the Universe

To clarify, I don’t come close to owning Harry Potter, and I’ve never met Miss Rowling. Also, this contains a few minor spoilers for book six, although they are situational, and this is ninety percent fiction of my own creation. That spoiler involves a chapter mid way though the book, which is where I am. I can probably pull it off to where you won’t spot it unless you’ve read it.

How can I justify such a gratuitous manipulation, trotting the characters about like whores at my whim? Cause I want Harry and Hermione together. I know Rowling would never do it, which is why I did, along with the others at portkey.org. Why is it so abruptly physical? Well, I digress. Emma Watson makes me randy. It begins after Gryffindor beats Slytherin in the first Quidditch of year six. The first few paragraphs are straight from the book, I hope introducing the setting this way isn’t discredited as copy infringement.

This is, I might add, my first attempt at fanfiction, so I suppose reviews would be appreciated. When I found out you had to have a sample, I sped it up and cut things short just to fill that quota, so tell me if I should continue or strike up a better scenario with less crying & more gratuitous dry humping?

Hippie

Sat July 30, 2005

Harry could not see Hermione at the Gryffindor celebration party, which was in full swing when he arrived. Renewed cheers and clapping greeted his appearance, and he was soon surrounded by a mob of people congratulating him. What with trying to shake off the Creevy brothers, who wanted a blow-by-blow match analysis, and the large group of girls that encircled him, laughing at his least amusing comments and batting their eyelids, it was some time before he could try and find Ron. At last, he extricated himself from Romilda Vane, who was hinting heavily that she would like to go to Slughorn’s Christmas party with him. As he was ducking toward the drinks table, he walked straight into Ginny, Arnold the Pygmy Puff riding on her shoulder and Crookshanks mewing hopefully at her heels.

“Looking for Ron?” she asked, smirking. “He’s over there, the filthy hypocrite.”

Harry looked into the corner she was indicating. There, in full view of the whole room, stood Ron wrapped so closely around Lavender Brown it was hard to tell whose hands were whose.

“It looks like he’s eating her face, doesn’t it?” said Ginny dispassionately. “But I suppose he’s got to refine his technique somehow. Good game, Harry.”

She patted him on the arm; Harry felt a swooping sensation in his stomach, but then she walked off the help herself to more butterbeer. Crookshanks trotted after her, his yellow eyes fixed on Arnold.

Harry turned away from Ron, who did not look like he would be surfacing soon, just as the portrait hole was closing. With a sinking feeling, he thought he saw a mane of bushy brown hair whipping out of sight.

He darted forward, sidestepped Romilda Vane again, and pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady. The corridor outside seemed to be deserted.

“Hermione?”

He found her in the first unlocked classroom he tried. She was sitting on the teacher’s desk, sobbing lightly into her sleeve. With a second sinking sensation he recalled other times he had been alone with crying girls. She hadn’t noticed him come in or she would’ve composed herself as rapidly as though she hadn’t been caught at all.

He knew just what she was crying about, at least, he thought he did. He assumed, quite correctly, that Hermione was still taken with Ron, but disgusted at his blatant display of his ignorance to that fact. If his stomach could sink any lower, it did. He caught himself thinking that he was, indeed, alone with Hermione. Whether she still fancied Viktor or not, she was taken enough with Ron to be this disappointed in his lack of interest. He was certain Ron was ignorant of her affection, but that didn’t make it right to –

“Harry?” she said with a bubble in her throat, looking over her shoulder for the first time. His chance to decide what to do lasted approximately two seconds. He faltered and said:

“Er – He’s being a bit of a showoff, isn’t he?” This seemed to cheer her up considerably, because she smiled toothily and chuckled once, sobbing no more. She pivoted her waist to face him, placing her hand on the desk and kicking it with her heels idly. She seemed downright cheerful, though her eyes and cheeks glittered with tears from the twilight twinkling through the windows.

She took a deep breath before saying airily, “Yeah.” She looked at him distantly for a moment before ceasing her swinging legs’ tirade against the desk. She turned to look ahead and took another noticeable breath. Was it just him, or was he paying too much attention to his own breathing? “I just don’t know,” she trailed off immediately, resign thick in her voice.

Harry, taking what must’ve seemed like would-be causal strides, crossed the distance between them and sat on the desk next to her just a hair closer than usual. She was hunched over her lap, so he leaned back, bracing his weight on his arms outstretched behind him. Her feet dangled adorably an inch above the floor while his were planted firmly. He realized he was too close when Hermione shifted her weight away from him.

He frowned. He shouldn’t even think this way, let alone act on such thoughts. He felt suddenly indignant; what made Ron so special? Would she shy away from him if he had come to comfort her instead? Flashing memories of his history with the two of them brought him to conclusions he didn’t want to visit; betraying Ron and Hermione’s friendships were the only options he faced unless he changed tactics quickly.

Again his thoughts were interrupted as she shifted her weight back in his direction with another resolved sigh. Her leg was too close to his; it was making him think about too many things at once, so when she spoke up, it took him several seconds to digest her meaning when she said, “It’s not what you think.”

He promptly managed a, “Wuh?” before remembering the last time she’d spoken. “Oh. No?” he asked weakly. She smiled with equal enthusiasm.

“It’s not Lavender – or Ron for that matter.” This fact also took him a while to swallow. He made a quick inquisitive noise when she refused to go on, and repositioned his slick palms to hold himself up. She looked straight at him, and he felt the features of his face tug deliberately to make him look his handsomest. The result was probably too strained to look like anything but squinting, and he quickly abandoned the attempt and returned focus to his ever obtrusive breathing.

She seemed to be at a loss for words as Harry returned her stare. Any vanity in his eyes evaporated when hers changed from watery to resolute. She didn’t pucker her lips, but the face she made, so similar to Cho’s right before she kissed him under the mistletoe, was a kiss-me face if he’d ever seen one. She looked down and away as quickly as Harry had decided to make his move.

She fiddled with her thumbs in her lap and watched them most intently. Harry got the feeling that he was king of the universe. He hadn’t shown any interest, but she had. He thought she had. With his fourth stomach cramp of the evening, he found himself in Ron’s shoes. This might’ve been how he’d feel, if he suspected Hermione’s affections. He tried thinking of any incident he could recall in which Hermione had shown any kind of affection towards Ron or himself.

In a play of extreme effort more complex than anything in Quidditch, he slid closer to Hermione. He could feel her back rising and falling against his arm, but she didn’t make to move away. To his great surprise and guilty pleasure, she inched closer to him without a glance. Their thighs were pressed together, lo and behold, and he felt her working to breathe with his arm crisply mushed into her back.

Harry’s mind was in overdrive. If hers was, she was showing no signs of strain. She looked downright pacified as she tried to rub the dampness from her face with the back of her hands. He seemed to be prodding through his memory like a pensive, searching desperately in vain for any memory of wanting to be this close to Hermione before.

His mental image of Cho looked like a blathering toddler, her pretty face contorted and unpleasant. As a matter of fact, Hermione was gorgeous; so ridiculously beautiful, in fact, that Harry suddenly wished he had something poetically comforting to say to match her glow. She craned her head slightly to nestle it under Harry’s chin, and with great effort to conceal his glee, he shut his eyes and leaned his head back to let her do so. The smile that worked its way around his face dimpled his cheeks severely as he let his eyelids observe the ceiling.

She made a small movement with her head and seemed to snuggle into him even more; any abashed separation of their bodies vanished. His doubt vanished too, along with the guilty mental images and consequences that clouded his vision moments ago. Of course it was alright. If Ron liked Hermione, he had had six years to confess it. The pang of guilt that tried to remind Harry that until five minutes ago he wouldn’t dream of Hermione this way fled from his mind. He was indeed, king of the universe. He hooked his arm around her back so that it came to rest acutely against her opposite side.

He sat up level with her and pulled her into a brief one-armed embrace, her neck finding new support when their foreheads pressed together. You’re not serious, he thought as wave after wave of tingly anticipation washed over him, You can’t be serious…

She spoke with a much different voice, one that was quiet and cozy, not at all like the one with which she said, It’s not Lavender or Ron; perhaps it was the warmth coming from her mouth which was perched succulently within sight. It glistens, he thought in a stupor as her lips stayed parted before and after speaking:

“I’m just jealous.”

These were words to which Harry instantly perceived the weight attached. They stayed that way for what seemed like a minute, lulling their heads together, their unfocused eyes discerning only one of their blurred partners’, feeling the heat from each other’s exhales. Then he kissed her. Far from a friendly gesture to her cheek or being followed by a brisk hug and fare-thee-well, he pulled her lip between his frankly with a slick motion, and she didn’t object one bit.

She made a mousey noise as she apparently gave up her concealed efforts not to fling her arms around him. He noshed and tugged and pulled her lips around between his painstakingly, while six years of friendly memories were replaced by a singularly satisfying kiss. She pulled his body tight to hers, and abandoned the kiss to bury her face in his neck.

It was over as quickly as it started, he thought with almost palpable disappointment, but for his next surprise he found her lips on his throat and collar, working diligently it seemed, to take him from defeated to enticed inside two seconds.

He rubbed her back warmly, happily letting her work off her aggression. Was it really so bad? So laughable that they might be together? She must’ve come to the opposite conclusion in her skepticism, because she backed away from his neck with another misty-eyed weak smile. Harry didn’t know what to do. For the first time since he’d learned he was a wizard, the importance of that reality sank into the back of his mind. The Dark Lord was in a bad movie. Cho was a cow. Hermione now began kissing him harder than he’d kissed her.

Harry was supreme ruler of the universe and beyond. She was trembling into his kisses, making an obvious job of stifling her verbose enthusiasm. Her eyes were closed, and he let his eyelids drift shut blearily too.

How could this have happened so suddenly? Smack. How could he ever look at her the same? Did he want to? Squelch. Did he want to risk saying anything? Would he say the right thing? Smootch.

His mind was hopelessly brimming with questions, but he managed to get side tracked when she slipped her tongue causally into their nonverbal conversation.

Did she practice this on Viktor? Was this affection out of loneliness? Dare he assume anything beyond what he knew for certain? All he knew for certain was that Hermione’s lips were better than anything in Honeyduke’s. That, and her tongue was as arousing flirting with his as it had been toying at his neck.

The voices yelling questions in his mind seemed quieter with every second their lips were together. As his heart steadily marched up into his throat, he seemed to see the pair of them from the outside; his eyes were shut, but he knew her face so well that it was vivid in his mind’s eye. For a fleeting moment, he wanted Ron to see. Hermione moved her hands widely from around his chest to hang limply from his neck, not abashed about making clear snogging noises or muffled murmurs of approval.

To make the silence more bearable, he punctuated it with his own affectionate mumbling, albeit surprised while hers remained thick and sultry. If he had ever enjoyed himself more, he couldn’t imagine when. He had an unmovable, completely happy memory for spell-casting now. He was flying, and no broom would ever come close after this.

Harry cradled her tightly, wrapping her up in his arms to transfer all the thoughts of affection that were bombarding his mind. She was full of the same blind sort of emotion. He could tell by the way her chest rose and fell as rapidly as his heart was going. Was her mind full of questions? Was he perhaps a silver medal; second place? As if she read his mind, she held his jaw in her hands with her fingers resting lazily behind his ears and in his hair, causing guilty affection to well up in him. How could he be skeptical right now? He felt selfish from every angle except to give into her, which wasn’t exactly difficult.

The room had grown dark when they separated enough to try to focus their eyes. His lips were numb and sore, and he was certain she had bit him in several places. He let their foreheads touch momentarily, sharing quick pecks between stuttered laughter. What was funny wasn’t important, nor was their entire history of perfect platonic friendship. It all slid easily out of focus when his eyes were open, looking right into hers from not an inch away, and her breath blew heavily over his lip.

What’s she going to doing now? he almost wondered aloud. It wasn’t as though it had never crossed his mind in the preceding minutes, and in fact he had to choke the thought away several times when his gut gave a distinctive lurch, but in this moment he thought he was having a dream. He was having a wonderful dream, one that he would certainly never mention to either of his friends.

Her eyes were glazed over with lust, a glint in her eye that left no question of her motive.

It was in this moment, while Harry nervously contemplated all possible escape routes, consequences, and ridiculous sexy scenarios, one of which was about to take place, that Ron and Lavender burst in the room. Harry slid off the desk and all four parties seemed frozen, but Lavender shied out of the room homily after a few seconds of pleasantly surprised observation.

Hermione sank into Harry’s arms, which he reluctantly, bewilderedly, wrapped around her. Ron looked from Hermione’s back to Harry’s face with a pitiful look of defeat. His rosy cheeks, spattered so often with a smile in Harry’s good graces, were hot with anger or disappointment or something else he couldn’t discern. It was hard to say who felt more put out and embarrassed, as Hermione tugged him around in place so that her form was hidden from Ron in Harry’s clothes. This put Harry’s back to the extremely flustered Ronald, who promptly scoffed, swore loudly, and could be assumed to be grabbing Lavender Brown outside the door to usher her down the hall.

“Do you love Ron?” he asked abruptly, every one of his suspicions returning like a sharp blow to the head. He didn’t recognizing his own voice in the least. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but he felt like the underdog when she said quickly:

“I love – no.”

“You love who?” Harry implored in that unrecognizable voice, pressing every ounce of his luck. He would rather do it now than wonder henceforth, he decided, though only after the question escaped him. She made a stuttered attempt to look at him but couldn’t seem to, her face scrunched tighter than ever in tears, so she looked at the floor while her eyes grew narrow and blurred, and her cheeks became heart shaped, her quivering lips pursed oddly.

Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen a more sudden, frank and pungent silent confession as this one. He sank back onto the desk when she regained herself in front of him, her arms crossed. She still looked shaken, her own lip was receiving the bites now, and she shifted back and forth uneasily.

Harry reached out to pull her into a hug, but she backed away quickly. He wanted an innocent hug, he could’ve even gotten that before tonight. His alarm must’ve registered on his face, because when she recognized it, her features drew up into that pitiful puffy expression. At this she flung herself into his still open arms and hugged him so tightly he thought surely she was trying to murder him.

“Do you love me, Hermione?” he inquired softly, still hearing his questions from far away, staring ahead into space as she loosened her grip and stayed buried in his embrace. It seemed like something he would never say; the tone of his question reminded him of a doctor’s soft response to survivor’s guilt, like they’d been in a horrible accident and Harry was dead. After several painful, wrenching seconds, she nodded slowly into his chest. She stopped crying, leaned out of his hug and dabbed her eyes on her robe.

How could this happen this way, he wondered, why did the girls who fell for Harry always cry before his affection? Why couldn’t it be a happy encounter? Anger at Ron welled up, but he forced it aside. It wasn’t the most important subject at the moment.

Questions filled his mind again, rank and file. Why did Hermione wait until now to divulge this supposedly long-lived attraction? Did she decide he was a good kisser and make up her mind in that moment, or did she genuinely deeply love Harry, not atop years of friendship, but along with it? The thought that he might’ve stepped up and asked her this point blank years ago occurred to him with a stinging feeling of loss. Then there was the possibility she had concluded that she loved Harry inside the past minute.

To answer his question without a prompt, she craned her neck over his shoulder and kissed the back of his neck. He found he could do the same comfortably and did, rubbing her back freely, letting her robe catch and pull with his movement. She loved him. How he doubted it seconds ago was irrelevant. She was madly in love with him, because he was King of the Universe.

With little effort, they found each others lips inviting, and kissed happily, stirring the simmering emotions and excitement in the air back to a boil. Minutes found them latched onto one another at the lips, their air more determined and vigorous.

It was pitch dark outside when they made their way, hands joined greasily, to the common room. Everyone had gone to sleep, including Ron. They lingered downstairs, none too eager to retreat to their separate beds. She curled around him with all her weight in his lap and they fell asleep, all degree of separation, nervousness, or notions of doubt completely dispersed by the evening’s recreation. Hermione loved Harry Potter, and it was certainly not the last he’d see of this side of her, if he could help it.