The Bed

Hysterical Hystorian

Rating: R
Genres: Romance, Humor
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 6
Published: 01/03/2006
Last Updated: 01/03/2006
Status: completed

When Harry moves in with Hermione they contemplate...the furniture?

Chapters

1. The Bed

1. The Bed

*~*

From her angle on the bed, Hermione Granger was being treated to a most enjoyable view: black jeans surrounding slender hips and the gentle swells of a tight, dimpled arse. Now the black-jeaned hips turned to reveal – ahhh – an equally nicely clad, well-defined male package. She grinned wickedly in appreciation. Mmmm. I wonder what I can do to make that more…interesting?

The arse was back in view. Damn. Not that she didn’t enjoy this side of the jeans, but she was still contemplating how she could make the more interesting part of the package more…interesting.

“Hermione,” came slightly exasperated, mostly amused voice, “you’re making me feel like piece of meat.”

She giggled. Damn, I’ve been outted. “Sorry, darling, but I’ve been quite enjoying your meat, as it were.” Then, she broke into a gale of giggles.

Harry sat down on the bed beside her, forcing her to scoot over. She rolled over onto her back and threw her arms over her head with a contented sigh. She looked up at her best friend for the better part of ten years and boyfriend for the past six months--the boyfriend who was now giving her a heartbreakingly sweet smile.

She sighed. The reality of Harry’s moving in with her—finally!—had sent her into a giddy state. It was a foreign, yet utterly wonderful, feeling. “Tell me,” she said, returning his smile, “why didn’t you move in months ago?”

He turned and lay beside her, “Because it would’ve been scandalously too soon,” he said simply. He rolled onto his side and put his arm about her waist.

“Because--why? So that we would’ve gotten to know each other better? Given our friends more time to get used to seeing us as a couple?” Hermione lifted her face to peer into his eyes.

“Maybe.” Harry leaned in for a kiss, but she held up her hand to stop him. “Hermione, don’t take this so personally. I just—I just needed to be sure.”

“Oh. Well. That makes me feel loads better.” She looked at him harder, but he dropped his eyes as a fleeting sadness swept across his face. “Harry,” she said more softly now. “Tell me.”

He continued to avert his gaze, his jaw working as his mind searched for the right words. “I. This…,” he started. “I just couldn’t….”

“Harry,” she said again, as it all clicked into place, “as if you could ever hurt me.”

He raised his eyes, the emerald green shining. “But I could! I can!” He paused. “Christ, I did,” he said, his voice growing rough. “How--how could I live with myself if I blew this? If I made you unhappy again?” He stroked her cheek gently. “You—you’re my life. You made me who I am, and you’ve made me complete once again, Hermione Jane.” He kissed her quickly before she could protest. “I needed to be more whole to be with you. To be deserving of your love. I needed to be sure of that. I’m so sorry I left and hurt you.”

“Oh, Harry James,” she breathed, “you have nothing to apologize for. It’s all in the past.” She hugged him. After a while, she said quietly into his ear, “Don’t you know that I’m not me without you? Nothing you could do would ever drive me away. Never. After everything that’s happened, after all we’ve been through. After all this time. What’s past is past. We shall never think on it again.”

They embraced more tightly. Hermione always loved how he held her, a combination of desperate need with a loving protectiveness. Harry protected her through all their adventures together, just as she had covered him and gotten him out of more sticky situations than seemed humanly possible. But finding him again after he wandered the planet following his destruction of Voldemort was like reconnecting with a piece of her soul. It had taken her nearly three years to find him, and she wasn’t going to let him slip away. Not this time. Not ever.

She pulled back and gave him a bright smile. “Since you’re going to live here, I suppose we should get you a proper chest of drawers,” she said lightly, hoping to pull him out of his funk. “Boxes don’t go with the décor.”

“I suppose,” he returned, still deep in thought. Hermione gave him a sweet kiss on his forehead, then licked the silvery line of his scar. He made a humming noise, and then smiled. Her loving kisses never failed to bring him back from whatever dark place he traveled to. He lifted his face to hers, and with practiced ease, they kissed slowly, the heat of their passion growing. Soon, he was lost in her love, and he planted small kisses on her forehead, her eyebrow, her cheek, her nose, and now, her jaw and down her neck. Hermione pressed her body closely to his, encouraging him.

“Mmm,” he hummed as he nuzzled the sensitive skin beneath her ear. “Could we get something else?”

Hermione was beginning to lose focus as his flicked his tongue at her ear lobe. “What? What something else?”

“You know,” he said, blowing into her ear, “furniture.”

“What else could we possibly need?” She arched her neck to convince him to pay attention to a neglected spot further down.

“Well…” Kiss. “I’d like…” lick…"to get…” a small nip …”a bed.” He sucked at the skin along her collarbone.

She lapsed into silence as he nipped gently, but the declaration of the object of his desire spurred her to respond, though coherent thought was truly an effort. “Really? What’s wrong with this bed?” She reached down and stroked his hardening length through the black jeans, causing him to suck in his breath sharply.

“Nothing at all.” His right hand came from behind her head to work dexterously on the buttons of her blouse. “This is a very nice bed.” One side of her blouse flopped open. “As I recall, we’ve had spectacular—sizzling--sex on this bed.” His fingers traced the edge of her lacy bra, then circled the rising nub of her nipple, causing yet another shiver. He nudged her head back with his lips and covered her neck in butterfly-light kisses.

“Yes, we have,” she gasped. She worked her hand up under his t-shirt, scratching her nails over his ribs to the hard pebble of a nipple. Her effort was rewarded with a small twitch.

“Before I dispense with our clothes and we demonstrate yet again some of that spectacular sex, let me say this,” Harry pinched her nipple, then expertly undid the clasp of her bra. As it fell away, he dipped his head and drew the rosy areole into his mouth, flicking his tongue forcefully over it.

Hermione’s brain melted, but she struggled to say, “Harry, why do we need a new bed?” She groaned as he bit gently on the nipple. “Tell me now, because I’m not going to be able to process anything you say if you keep this up,” she moaned, arching into his mouth.

All of a sudden, he let go and kissed her breast. Then, he raised his eyes to hers. “I’d like for us to get a bed together. I know this is a nice one, but it’s your bed, the bed you grew up in.” He laid his head beside hers on the pillow, never breaking eye contact. He bit his lower lip in that nervous way he had. “It’s the bed of your childhood. I—I want to have a bed that only we’ve ever slept in. It’ll be the bed that only we’ve made love in. The bed that I hope…I hope, maybe, we’ll conceive our children in.” He blushed and brought his hand to her cheek.

She stared at him, and quickly her eyes swam in tears. “Harry,” she began, her voice breaking a little, “oh, Harry. I had no idea you felt this way. But it’s just a piece of furniture. I don’t ascribe any history or feeling or personality to it. It’s utilitarian. It’s just…a bed.”

Then, the thought hit her-- Harry never had anything to call his own, never had anything that was just his. The bed of his childhood was a narrow cot, and then, a broken down twin. Even his four-poster at Hogwarts wasn’t truly his. Now all he wanted was a chance to build a life with something that would be of his choosing, something that he would associate with her, with their love, their life together.

She touched his face reverently as she realized what he was telling her, and smiled. “Of course. It’s a wonderful idea.”

She rolled over and sat up, rehooking her bra and started to button up her blouse. Harry looked at her, his mouth hanging open. “Wait! I didn’t mean right this second!”

“There’s no time like the present,” Hermione said briskly. “Come on! Hand me my robes.” She held out her hand for him to give her the navy blues robes she favoured that were laid haphazardly across the foot of the bed. “We might even get lucky and be able to bring it home with us. We’ll have a brand new bed to sleep in tonight.” She sat to put her shoes on.

“But…” he protested weakly, as he sat up, dazed, and picked up her robes. “What about…? You’re just going to…leave me hanging?”

“For the moment. But think how good it’ll be in our bed.” She waggled her eyebrows at him suggestively as she took and pulled on the robes he held before her.

“But….” And he stood up, mumbling.

*~*

“This was a nice idea,” Hermione said as Harry unshrunk their new furniture. The mattress proved to be a bit tricky: it flew out of the compressed state with an audible SPROOIIING, surprising the now-elderly Crookshanks, who hissed and limped off into the hall. Harry laughed as he caught the wobbling mattress and levitated it with ease onto the box springs. Hermione busied herself with manoeuvering the chest of drawers into place along the wall. The bed, like the chest, was made of dark red cherry with tall, slender posts carved with a simple, twisting Celtic chain.

“I can’t believe you went for a canopy,” she said as she unpackaged the gauzy fabric and fitted it over the frame. The side fell on Harry’s head, and he gave a surprised “Oof!” as the creamy fabric covered him.

“I loved the Hogwarts four-poster. It made me feel warm and safe, even if I wasn’t sleeping,” he said. “But we don’t have to close the sides.” He paused to look around the room that held her things, and now, his. He always loved being in Hermione’s bedroom precisely because it was Hermione’s. “I feel safe here,” he concluded softly, gazing at her.

“Well it’s a lot more safe and certainly cleaner than that bachelor pad you were living in with all those other guys. I had to clean the loo every time I was over there,” she chided. Harry had moved in with Ron and Neville for a while after his return to England. She unfolded sheets and tossed him the corner of the contour. They tucked and smoothed sheets, blankets, and finally, a fluffy navy and cream duvet.

“No,” he said, as he tossed pillows against the headboard, “it’s home because you’re here. You’re all I’ve ever needed or wanted.”

Hermione surveyed their new bed with new linens, and then looked at Harry, who gifted her with a most indescribably wondrous and loving gaze. She climbed onto the bed and held out her hand in entreaty. “Come home, Harry.”

Gratefully, he joined her and embraced her, and for a long while they stayed that way, kneeling on their bed in a tight hug. He rubbed his cheek along the silky smooth skin of her face, and then his lips found hers, and then his tongue found its way into her heavenly mouth. The kiss was long, unhurried, deep. She tasted of everything he found satisfying in the world. If it came down to choosing between Hermione’s kisses and food, the kisses would win every time. They nourished his body, they watered his soul, they infused him with life itself.

Slowly, they melted into each other and onto the bed. Instead of slowly removing their clothes, Harry tried a banishing charm, which acted erratically in his distracted state. One leg of his trousers ended up tangled around his foot, and her knickers flew across the room, landing on the head of the still grumpy Crookshanks. They laughed softly at their clumsiness, but breathless with mirth and passion, they resumed their silent kissing. Within moments, he rolled on top of her--lovingly, reverently--and with ease, she welcomed him between her legs. He entered her swiftly, both releasing contented sighs as they found their hearts’ desire. Completion came forcefully and quickly, each gasping in delight.

“I love you,” he murmured as they came down from their flight of fancy.

“And I love you,” she said, snuggling comfortably into the home that were his arms. “Welcome to your home.”

For a long while, they said nothing, enjoying the warmth and fading passion. “I am home now, aren’t I?” Harry breathed quietly into her hair. “I’m home. With you.”

*~*