Chapter Five - To Touch Upon a Delicate Topic
Hermione marched into the common room, her head held high and a proud smile on her lips. She wasted no time in moving over to where Harry was, grouped in front of the fire with Ron, Ginny and Neville, in the semi-circle of their favorite armchairs. Harry and Neville looked up as she came near.
"Well, it's taken a few days, but I've finally worked out a plan, Harry," Hermione said, and moved to hand him the calendar she'd drawn up.
Harry hastily rose from the armchair and all but knocked it over in his haste to grab the sheaf of paper before anyone else could see its contents. "Excuse us," Harry muttered to the other three and steered Hermione by the upper arm to a quieter corner by the windows.
"Hermione," he said after looking around for possible listeners, "I know that you've decided this is merely an academic quest, but perhaps it would be best if we kept our studies to ourselves, all right?"
"Of course, Harry," Hermione said brusquely, but her cheeks pinkened as she spoke. "Now, as you'll see-" she pointed to the schedule of lessons, "-I've worked out a time for everything. A week per subject grouping. And as we're a bit pressed for time, given everything I think we should include in our study, we'll have to start with a bit of a lesson tonight - just preliminary stuff, really - and then proceed onto the next week's lessons tomorrow. We did say that Sunday was the best day to start each new lesson, didn't we?"
Harry hadn't answered. Actually, it was Hermione who had decided pretty much everything, but he didn't fancy starting a row just to point that out. He did recognize that there didn't seem to be any other sensible approach to the matter, but it still made him a bit nervous. After a moment he remembered that she'd asked him a question and he managed to nod. He looked down again at the small, neat handwriting that Hermione had used to lay out their plan for the next nine weeks.
1. 21 October - Week I: Non-sexual touch/contact
2. 22 October - Week II: Closed-mouthed kissing
3. 29 October - Week III: open-mouthed, tongue kissing/"making out"
4. 5 November - Week IV: Over-the-clothes touching/fondling
5. 12 November - Week V: Mutual Masturbation/sexual exhibition
6. 19 November - Week VI: Under-the-clothes/skin-on-skin touching, Partner-based hand stimulation - Harry receive
7. 26 November - Week VII: Under-the-clothes/skin-on-skin touching, Partner-based hand stimulation - Hermione receive
8. 3 December - Week VIII: Oral sex
9. 10 December - Week IX: Intercourse
10. 22 December - Final Group Meeting; discussion of findings
Harry's stomach felt as if it had dropped away completely and suddenly thought he might die from sheer embarrassment. "I don't know how you can be so normal about all of this," he said weakly. "It doesn't make you nervous even a little?"
Hermione opened her mouth, but Harry cut her off.
"Never mind," he said, raising a hand and sighing. "I know, I know … think of it as a school project; I trust you … blah blah blah …"
Hermione's mouth pinched tightly shut and she bit her lip to keep back and angry tirade. After a few deep breaths, she calmly replied, "Now, as I said, we have to cover a bit of ground right away. I planned it so we'd have an extra week or so at the end to-" For the first time, Harry saw a tick of nervousness in her face, "perfect things, if need be. So I'd like to get started right away. Are you busy this evening?"
Harry looked quickly towards the fireplace where Ron, Ginny and Neville were now trying desperately to pretend they weren't interested in what the two had been talking about so secretly for so long. Harry looked back at the list, and wondered if he'd make it through Saturday night without worry if he didn't agree to meet her.
"No, I'm not busy," he said at last. "It's probably safest to meet in the Room of Requirement, right?"
Hermione nodded. "But I don't think we should dart away just yet; it would arouse a lot of suspicion. Maybe in an hour or two? When more people have gone to dinner?"
Harry tried to pretend his stomach hadn't dropped away again when she used the word "arouse." He nodded and looked at his watch. "It's 5:30 now … let's say we'll meet at 7:30, after dinner."
"Right then," Hermione said brightly and practically bounded away towards the fireplace and pulled up a chair next to Ginny. Harry leaned back against the window sill for a moment and watched her as she talked animatedly with his fire-haired ex-girlfriend. This might just be the stupidest thing he'd ever agreed to.
*****
Harry thought he might have to stop in a bathroom to throw up more than once on his way to the Room of Requirement. It was just … odd. The whole situation. First of all, the idea of doing anything like what was planned with Hermione was just strange. He reasoned with himself that teenagers did this sort of thing all the time, and that it was really nothing all that unusual. In fact, tonight's lesson on hand-holding and cuddling and that sort of thing was even far below what he'd had experience with himself. He'd gotten quite a bit further than just hand-holding with Ginny. So why did it bother him so much then?
It all came back to Hermione. It was the fact that he'd be doing it all with Hermione. And though Ron seemed not to have noticed she was a female until fourth year, Harry had certainly noticed and thought that he treated her accordingly. He had never really stopped to consider Hermione having sex and things - the thought was too strange to entertain - but it wasn't as if he considered her incapable. The plain matter of the fact was that he just couldn't imagine Hermione Granger doing all that groping and kissing sort of stuff. Hermione was just not the sort of girl who did any of those sorts of things. She was too … good, maybe. Smart, perhaps. She was above all that nonsense.
He found that he was sweating lightly as he walked down the hall and scrubbed his hands across his face and the back of his neck as he moved. He really had to get a grip on himself. Whatever he thought of Hermione and whether or not she should be shagging people, he had to get used to the idea that she would be shagging him in a matter of weeks. It was just the only thing to be done, really. And if he couldn't even stop fidgeting at the idea of holding her hand, how was he ever to manage other things?
"Stop it," he said out loud, looking down at his shaky fingers. "It's just Hermione, and it's just holding and cuddling and that sort of thing. She's hugged you before, this is no different."
A few deep breaths outside the door to the Room of Requirement settled his stomach enough that he didn't feel he was going to make a fool of himself. He just couldn't seem to get a hold of why he was so nervous about this whole thing. It was just Hermione, after all.
He walked inside, his hands still sweating just a tad, but his heartbeat slowed from a gallop to a steady trot. He could handle this. He could handle Hermione Granger, thank you very much.
*****
"See? Not so bad," Hermione said gently as they sat on the sofa towards the back of the room. Harry was smiling - awkwardly and a bit nervously, but he was smiling - and Hermione squeezed his hand just a little bit.
"It's just your hand, Hermione. We've touched before. No big deal."
Harry's voice cracked just a tiny bit as he said it, but as Hermione had not acknowledged that fact, Harry allowed himself to lean back against the couch. Hermione followed suit. Sensing that the whole thing made him jumpy for reasons she could not discern, Hermione tried a different route. She started talking easily about her day, engaging Harry in discussions about a few class assignments, a laughing invective about the quality of the lamb chops for dinner, asking him more about Quidditch practice for the day. As Harry began to focus more on the conversation, the easy back and forth about the events of the day and classes for tomorrow, she felt his hand relax within hers. He had been wound as tightly as a coiled bedspring when he came in, but as he sank into a typical conversation between the two friends, she felt him ease with the situation. At several points in the conversation, he even raised their joined hands and used hers to gesture pointedly in his story about Quidditch. Hermione smiled. Perhaps she wasn't as 'girly' as Lavender or Parvati or even Ginny, but woman's intuition was not entirely foreign to her.
A draft swept the room with a gust of air outside, and Hermione shivered. Without pausing in her comments on his story, Hermione inched closer to Harry and, seemingly without thought, Harry laced an arm over her shoulder. They talked for another few minutes or so before Harry seemed to realize what had happened. His arm stiffened against her shoulder, but, to Hermione's satisfaction, he did not remove it. Harry kept talking, a little stiffly now and his arm tense.
When his conversation dropped off, Hermione looked up into his face and said, "See how easy that was? Nothing to be afraid of. As natural as anything, right?"
Harry nodded but couldn't seem to make himself relax. The problem was that it had been easy. Perhaps a little too easy. This was Hermione after all. And when she curled herself against his chest - if Harry hadn't known this was Hermione, he would have used the word "snuggle;" Hermione Granger just didn't "snuggle" Harry Potter - he found it all too easy to just let his arm wrap underneath hers, his finger absently stroking her elbow.
"Easy," he said quietly. "You're right."
Hermione's heart was pounding wildly, mostly because she felt Harry's skip nervously within his chest, underneath her hands. She sat up a little. "I know that this is a little strange, Harry. It's okay if you're not entirely comfortable with it."
At a note of something in her voice, he didn't know what but it was something different, Harry turned slightly to look at her without removing his arm from her shoulder. "It's not," Harry started uncertainly. "It's not that I'm uncomfortable with you, Hermione; it's just that this isn't anything that I'd imagined we'd ever be doing. I mean, not the touching and the hand-holding and things. That's the easy part. It's the … other stuff, you know."
Hermione nodded. "I know, Harry. It's odd because we've been best friends for so long and our relationship has always been so different from this sort of thing. I know it's strange. Well, I won't tell you to ignore the fact that we're friends, because that's what's going to make us able to share these sorts of things, but maybe …."
For a moment, Hermione trailed off to collect her thoughts, and then she stood up suddenly and positioned herself standing in front of Harry at the couch. She offered him both of her hands to raise him to standing. When he stood, she pulled him closer to the fireplace and took a step away from him, breaking contact between their hands for the first time in almost an hour.
"I want you to look at me, Harry. I want you to look at me and not see Hermione that you met on the train when you were eleven and who has been beside you for all the stupid, crashing things you and Ron have gotten yourselves into for the last seven years. I want you to look at me - really look - and see Hermione Jane Granger, who's an 18 year-old young woman who wants to know more about sex and who's asked you to be her first lover."
Harry's heart seemed to have stopped, but he suddenly knew what she was asking. "Then you should look at me, too, Hermione. And you should look past Harry who you've had to fish out of trouble too many times and who's copied your homework and who's going to need your help to either protect or perish soon." His voice caught oddly at this last, but Harry seemed determined to brush it away as Hermione's face pinched with worry. "Forget all that. And just see Harry James Potter, a 17 year-old man who's scared and curious, whom you've asked to be your first lover. And who accepted."
For a moment, neither moved a hair. The room was still but for the crackle of the fireplace which heated their skin now and took the chill from the room. In that long moment that neither moved, Harry's eyes were locked to Hermione's, trying to decipher that language, so very foreign, that he saw in her eyes. But then his gaze moved across her face, took in her pale skin; the warm brown eyes themselves; her nose, long and turned up at the end; the heavy pink lips that covered white teeth, no longer too large in proportion. He took in the curve of her jaw, the long line of her thin neck, her broad but softly-rounded shoulders. Long fingers. Her figure and features were an odd jumbled of the parents he'd met a few times: her arms, nose and legs maybe a bit too long, like her father; her feet and shoulders maybe a bit too wide, like her mother; and with a hiccup in his throat he let his gaze drift across her hips and breasts, maybe just a touch too small for her frame. Hermione could not be called beautiful, really, but for the first time he saw what was there, and felt his face flush, his pulse quicken, and his heart stick in his throat. He took a step closer to her.
Hermione felt just the littlest bit dizzy as Harry approached her. Her gaze roamed across his form when he took his eyes from hers, and she saw, clearly maybe for the first time, what Ginny had talked about all those years back. Harry was not tall; he could never be called that, really. But he stood nearly a head above her, and his form was sleek underneath his clothing. He really was the perfect build for a Seeker: his frame was small but sturdy, broad-set shoulders and small hips, and with none of the gangly disproportion of most boys his age, none of the absurdly large feet or fingers. Nothing on Harry seemed out of place or order. His skin was pale and just the smallest bit pink, his eyes as clear as emeralds, and deep. He had a strong jaw and strong shoulders for all of his smaller build. She gazed down and smiled. Soft hands. She remembered, with a pleasant shiver, how soft they had felt against her palm, her shoulder. His legs were nicely muscled but not bulky and she was sure his chest would be the same, the tale of hours spent on his broomstick. She blushed as her eyes returned to his face and she wondered at the feel of those thin pink lips. What else had Ginny been right about?
When he moved forward and brought her into his arms, Hermione felt as if she'd been waiting for that moment all her life. She relaxed into his caress, smiling as his hands glided along her back. She raised her own and let them skim up across his arms, lacing around his neck and allowing one to droop down his shoulders, the other moving up into his hair. She did not have to fight to keep her breath slow and steady. It really did seem natural. So easy that when Harry's head dipped to move his face into the hollow of her throat, she did not even have to think to glide her gaze up and place her forehead against his shoulders.
Harry was very nearly overwhelmed. It was easy. Again he thought perhaps far too easy, but when Hermione's hand threaded gently into the wild tangle of his black waves, it seemed like the rightest thing in the world to drop his head to her shoulder and breathe in deep the scent of her skin. He didn't even feel himself skitter at all when her lips pressed gently against his shoulder. He unconsciously moved up to nuzzle his nose against her ear, and the smell of her hair filled his head, completing whatever spell had settled upon them both. It was nearly another hour before either of them thought to untangle their limbs and walk back to the common room, and when they moved back towards Gryffindor Tower, Harry's hand no longer shook as it took Hermione's.