Disclaimer: See Part 1.
Author's Note: I hope you all enjoy this part as much as you did the first.
A Summer Fling
Part 2: On Falling-Into Love, and Other Things
"Race you to the water," Ron yelled over his shoulder and set off at a run across the beach, while Harry and Hermione looked at each other and mutually decided to walk.
"Oof!" Ron tripped over a stray piece of seaweed and landed face-down in the sand.
A pretty blond who had been walking nearby hurried over and bent over Ron as he rolled over, sitting up. "Well, that wasn't at all impressive," Ron muttered sardonically to himself.
"Est-ce que vous allez bien?" She asked.
Ron blinked. "What? Yeah, I'm fine," he assured her, scrambling to his feet, guessing from her tone and expression what she'd asked. "Merci," he added awkwardly.
"Ah, vous êtes anglais!" the girl exclaimed.
At that moment, Harry and Hermione came hurrying over. "Ron, you okay?" Harry asked.
The girl glanced at Harry and Hermione, paused, looked again and then exclaimed in slightly-accented English, "You are Harry Potter!"
Harry shifted, a flash of discomfort crossing his face as always happened when a stranger knew who he was, one hand automatically going up in a futile attempt to flatten his fringe to cover his scar. He supposed it was just his luck that they run into a witch at this mostly Muggle beach.
"Er, yeah," Harry confirmed.
The girl looked back at Ron. "Then you must be Ron Weasley!"
Ron beamed, looking thrilled that she had heard of him. "Yeah. Yeah, I am," he answered quickly.
The girl turned to Hermione. "And you are Hermione Granger, yes?"
Hermione nodded with a slight, polite smile.
"I am Monique de Beauharnaise. I went to Beauxbatons with Fleur, who is married to your brother, Bill," she added, turning to Ron. "My sister is close friends with Gabrielle, Fleur's little sister, and Gabrielle has mentioned you several times," she continued, addressing Harry now. "Gabrielle has never forgotten what you did in the lake."
Harry colored, remembering his silliness at the 2nd Task with some embarrassment. "It was nothing," he said quickly.
Monique smiled. "Fleur and Gabrielle did not think so." She turned to Ron. "How is your brother? We heard he was badly hurt a while ago. Is he better now?"
Ron sobered a little at the mention of Bill, who, although he had fortunately not been turned into a werewolf, still bore the disfiguring scars, although Bill managed to be quite cheerful still, all things considered. "Yes, he is better," Ron answered truthfully.
"Oh, good," Monique smiled. "We knew Fleur must have been very worried. She loves him very much."
"Yeah, we know," Ron said, managing a smile. All of the Weasleys had grown very fond of Fleur in the last year, with the exception of Ginny who still persisted in calling Fleur "Phlegm" when Fleur was not around, although she was careful to be very friendly to Fleur when Fleur was present.
"And you are here on vacation?"
"Yes," Ron answered and was going to continue by mentioning Harry's birthday but Harry caught his eye and shook his head ever so slightly and Ron understood. "We all decided a trip to the beach was a good idea and so here we are," he finished instead.
Harry relaxed slightly. He was sure Monique was very nice; she was certainly pretty and he could see in the way Ron was smiling at her that Ron, at least, was eager to further the acquaintance, but he would rather that people not know about his birthday. His idea of a perfect birthday, at this point, was spending the day with only the people he cared about most, that is, with Ron and Hermione.
"I have come here often so if you ever need help finding anything, come ask. I must return to my friends. They will be wondering where I have gone. It was very nice to meet you."
"I'll walk you back to where your friends are," Ron offered impulsively.
Monique looked pleasantly surprised. "Oh, you do not need to."
"I want to," Ron insisted, smiling at her. He glanced at Harry and Hermione. "If it's okay with you two," he added belatedly.
"It's fine. We'll stay around here," Harry grinned, having caught Ron's glance that told him Ron wanted to have the chance to get to know Monique better. "Good to meet you, Monique. Say hi to Gabrielle when you next talk to her."
"I will. Have fun today," she nodded and smiled at Harry and Hermione before turning to Ron. "My friends are down that way," she said, pointing.
With a small wave, Ron set off walking beside Monique in the direction in which she had pointed.
Hermione laughed softly. "If all of Monique's friends look like she does, Ron isn't going to want to leave them." She cast a sideways glance at Harry. "Wouldn't you like to meet her friends too? They're probably all beautiful, I'd imagine."
Harry threw her a quick smile, thinking of the way she looked in her bikini, and found himself blurting out unthinkingly, "I'm already with the prettiest girl on the beach."
Hermione blushed. "Oh, Harry, really! That's sweet of you to say but you and I both know it's not true. I'm nowhere near as pretty as most of the girls here."
No, you're-perfect, Harry thought but didn't say. "I don't know where you get the idea that you're not pretty, Hermione," he said instead, and then changed the subject by adding, "Anyway, I'd rather spend time with my best friend than go meet a whole lot of strangers."
She smiled at him and they continued walking, their feet sinking into the warm sand, while Harry fought to keep his gaze from studying the lines of her body. Her cover-up was loose and flowed around her but he remembered all too well, the image burned into his brain, the way she looked in her bikini.
He steadfastly kept his gaze fixed away from her, using every ounce of will-power in his body, when she shrugged out of her cover-up and he took off his t-shirt and his glasses.
"Oh, for some Gillyweed," he joked lightly and half-seriously, trying to distract himself. "It must be fun to swim like a fish in the ocean."
"I'm sure. When my parents took me to swimming pools when I was little, I always used to pretend it was the ocean instead, that I was diving for deep-sea treasure or something like that."
He smiled, fascinated at this glimpse into Hermione's childhood before Hogwarts. Somehow, he had never thought that Hermione would have played pretend-and yet, he was somehow not surprised. After all, she must have read so much about things like deep-sea treasures from sunken ships; it was no wonder that Hermione, as curious as she was, would want to see such things for herself. "Is that why you learned to swim?" he asked.
"Yes." She paused and then asked, "Harry, how did you learn to swim? I can't imagine that your aunt and uncle would have ever given you swimming lessons."
His smile faded somewhat at the mention of the Dursleys, a shadow crossing his face for a fleeting moment. "No, they didn't. I went with them to the public pools when they took Dudley, though, when they couldn't find someone to watch me. But I basically taught myself to swim, after Dudley and his friends nearly drowned me one day."
Her sharp intake of breath punctuated his succinct explanation. "They tried to drown you? Why didn't anyone stop them?"
He glanced at her, feeling his heart warm at the indignation and the sympathy in her voice and her expression. "Oh, it wasn't on purpose, not really; they just thought it was really funny to push me under water and hold me down but they usually let me up before too long because people would notice. But one time, the pool wasn't that busy and they decided to keep me under water longer… I thought I was going to die but then next thing I knew, I found myself free and gulping in air while Dudley and his friends howled in pain. I- er- I had lost control of magic and apparently, that time, it made my skin feel really burning hot all of a sudden so they let me go. They didn't try again after that, but I taught myself to swim anyway, just in case." He didn't mention the fact that Dudley had, of course, told the story to his parents and Harry had been promptly shoved into the closet under the stairs and kept there with no food for the next day as a punishment for "more funny stuff happening."
Hermione slipped her hand into his. "I'm sorry," she said softly.
And, looking at her, he felt the bleakness of his mood from thinking about those years with the Dursleys dissipate. He managed a smile, wanting to banish the sad look in her eyes. "It's okay and, anyway, it was a long time ago and there was no real harm done," he shrugged dismissively.
"It's not okay," Hermione contradicted sharply, her eyes flashing with anger. "I can't believe-your own cousin and your aunt and uncle! They deserve to be thrown into Azkaban for the way they treated you!"
Her face was slightly flushed with emotion, her expression so indignant that, for a moment, Harry could even feel a brief moment of pity for the Dursleys if Hermione ever had her way, even as he felt his heart warm from her anger on his behalf. And, oddly enough, it was that moment of seeing her so angry on his behalf, for his sake, her eyes warm with concern and with sympathy for something that had happened a decade ago, that broke through all his denial. His brain captured the moment like a snapshot-and he knew. I want her. I love her.
Wait. He-he-what?
He was in love with her.
For a fleeting second, his entire body- no, the entire universe- stilled, as he tried to absorb the stunning truth.
He was in love with Hermione.
Yes. Certainty-and an odd sense of peace, of rightness-settled over him like a blanket. Of course… This was Hermione, his best friend, the person who had been with him for everything, who had never let him down, who understood him even without words… The girl he felt he could happily look at forever, the girl he wanted with everything in him…
"Harry?"
The sound of her voice brought him back to reality to see a slight frown furrowing her brow.
"Is something wrong? You just… stopped and got this odd expression on your face."
I just realized I love you, he thought, but instead he managed a smile, mentally shaking off this new preoccupation with his recognition of his feelings for Hermione. "Let's go swim," he suggested instead.
She smiled, her face lighting up and chasing away the frown of concern. "Okay."
His throat was dry, his mind stripped clear of anything even approaching a coherent thought.
My God…
He had thought that seeing Hermione simply standing in her bikini was the sexiest thing he had ever seen.
He'd been wrong.
He was looking at the sexiest thing he had ever seen now.
Hermione when she was wet and in her bikini was ten- no, a hundred- times sexier than anything he had ever seen before.
He didn't know what it was about seeing the droplets of water on her skin. Or no, he did. It was that they seemed to taunt him, making him wish desperately that he could lick every drop off her skin…
To say nothing of the fact that the sunlight was striking some of the drops of water, making them glisten and sparkle like diamonds-and they seemed strategically placed to ensure that he lost what little remained of his brain cells, drawing all his attention down to the curves of her breasts, the indent of her waist, the flare of her hips, and that spot where her legs began…
And her bikini when it was wet… He hadn't thought it could possibly reveal more but he'd been wrong about that too. When the fabric was wet, it seemed to cling to her body until it looked as if it had been painted on, emphasizing even more every line of her figure…
He was no longer aware of the slight chill of the water or of the sound of the waves crashing into the shore or of the sound of people's voices and laughter around them. He wasn't aware of anything except this need, this compulsion, to touch her, to feel her skin…
He wanted to touch her so badly… Needed to touch her… Needed her like she was food, water, and oxygen all rolled into one.
Without his having made a conscious decision, he found himself walking towards her, closing the distance between them, wading through the thigh-high water.
He saw the way her laughing smile of enjoyment faded, the way her lips parted, the way her eyes widened slightly, and saw, too, with a flare of excitement, the flicker of awareness in her eyes. And for the first time, in some small part of his mind, it registered that she wasn't looking at him like he was her best friend; she was looking at him like a man…
He stumbled slightly, his hands finding their way to her waist, holding her, and he couldn't help the flare of heat inside him on touching her bared skin for the first time, even in such a simple, relatively platonic way.
"Harry…" she breathed, her eyes wide with some surprise and dilated with the beginnings of attraction, of arousal.
And he knew he should say something, anything, to try to tell her why he was suddenly doing this, looking at her like this, touching her… He should say something to tell her that this was only the start of what he wanted to do with her and to her…
But what could he say? His mind floundered, casting around for some words, any words, he could say… "You're… so beautiful…" he finally settled for saying, his voice husky.
Two spots of color appeared in her cheeks.
"You're… the sexiest woman in the world…" he continued on, finally blurting out what he'd wanted to tell her since that moment yesterday when he had first seen her in her bikini.
Her flush deepened but she shook her head slightly, in automatic, instinctive denial. "No…" she protested, but the breathlessness of her voice almost belied the word.
"Yes, you are." He found himself moving slowly, deeper into the water, until it came up above his waist, and gently tugged, bringing her with him, until he could press his hips against hers, knowing she could feel the hardness of his burgeoning arousal against her.
He felt dazed, as if he were in some sort of dream- or a fantasy-and some part of him couldn't believe he was doing this, didn't know how he was managing to do this, didn't know where he got the courage or the nerve or the recklessness to do this. He just knew he had to; he had to touch her, had to tell her she was beautiful, had to do this…
She gasped slightly at the feeling of him pressed against her under the water, unmistakable desire flaring in her eyes and her expression, and she touched him for the first time, rather tentatively, her hands just resting on his chest. And he knew she could feel the way his heart was pounding, saw the slight smile in her eyes and the increased confidence of her touch as she slowly slid her arms around his neck.
"Should I show you just how beautiful I think you are?" he rasped out-and it was almost as if there was someone else, something else, inside him, encouraging him to blurt out these things and act like- well, act like he knew what he was doing and there wasn't a large part of him quaking with apprehension and nervousness and uncertainty.
"Yes," she breathed-and it was, he decided, the most beautiful word he had ever heard.
His heart promptly started hammering even faster in his chest.
She wanted him too. She wanted him. He supposed that there might be a more beautiful three words in the English language but he couldn't for the life of him imagine what they could be. She wanted him.
He bent his head to kiss her when a wave abruptly crashed into them, splashing their faces, making them break apart from surprise, the spell that had held them both broken. And then he saw Ron's familiar figure approaching from the beach.
He shifted uncomfortably, trying to will away his arousal and mentally resolving not to move out of the water until he had succeeded.
He looked at Hermione, seeing her blush, and felt another flash of heat inside him and reached out to lace his fingers with hers, squeezing them quickly, hoping the meager caress would convey just how much he wanted her. "Later," he promised softly, his voice husky.
Her blush deepened and he couldn't miss the desire in her eyes. "Later…"
God, he had no idea how he was going to survive the rest of the day…
To be continued…