Disclaimer: See 'All He Ever Wanted'.
Author's Note: Finished a while ago and finally getting around to posting this here. Intended to be a prequel, of sorts, to this series (hence its title, before H/Hr are even married). Enjoy!
Portrait of a Marriage
Foundations
Harry managed to wait until the dinner things were all cleared away and they were having a cup of tea before he finally asked, "Do you want to tell me what's wrong?"
He didn't need to ask the more basic question of whether there was something wrong. He knew there was something. He hadn't been Hermione's best friend for more than a decade and they hadn't been dating for nearly a year, without his having learned how to tell when something was bothering Hermione. He could read her mood and the expression in her eyes to within an inch now.
She'd been making a valiant effort to act as if there was nothing wrong and it had just been a normal, relatively uneventful day and it would probably have been enough to convince anyone else-but not him. He knew her too well, cared about her-no, that wasn't it-loved her too much. And he could tell there was something on her mind from the rather absent way in which she responded to him, from the slight frown that flickered across her face at times before she seemed to shake it off and glance at him as if to make sure he hadn't noticed. All of which was bothering him and worrying him.
She looked up at him, the faint trace of a frown that had been lingering over her face disappearing, to be replaced with a more serene expression-one which he didn't like to see because he knew it usually meant she was hiding something, when they were in public together. It was almost the first time in his memory that he'd seen this expression on her face when they were alone together and it bothered him. "It's nothing, Harry. Don't worry about it."
"Hermione." All he said was her name but there was a clear warning in it, mingled in with his growing concern.
"It's really nothing," she insisted.
"Tell me anyway."
"Harry, really, it's nothing."
"I really wish you'd stop saying that when it's clearly not true."
She shot him a look that at any other time might have made him stop but at the moment he was too worried, burgeoning irritation with her refusal to tell him what was wrong mixing in with his worry.
"Fine, there is something but I don't want to talk about it. Happy now?"
"Why don't you want to talk about it?"
"I just don't."
"I thought you could tell me anything. I'm your best friend and your boyfriend. We're sleeping together. Why can't you tell me what it is?" His voice softened, as did his eyes. "Anything that affects you affects me too, you know. I want to know when things are bothering you."
"Hello, Pot. Meet Mr. Kettle," Hermione responded rather caustically.
Harry had the grace to color a little. "I know, but I do tell you things now; you know I do. I trust you more than anyone else I know. Don't you trust me?"
"I do trust you, Harry," Hermione sighed, her tone softer than it had been until now. "But just because I trust you doesn't mean I have to tell you everything."
"But whatever this is, it's bothering you. I know it is and I do want to know when something's troubling you."
"Just stop it, Harry!" Hermione burst out, clearly having reached the end of her patience. "We may be sleeping together but I won't become just an appendage incapable of having any independent thoughts. I'm still in charge of my own mind."
"I'm not saying any differently. I just want to know what's wrong so I can try to help."
"If I wanted your help. I'd have asked for it! I'm not that stupid."
"I never said you were. Will you stop putting words in my mouth? For Merlin's sake, Hermione, I only want to know what's wrong so I can help you! Isn't that part of my job as your boyfriend, let alone your best friend?"
"It isn't when I don't want your help. All I want right now is for you to leave me alone! Is that too much to ask?"
"Fine! I'll leave you to your bloody precious privacy since that's what you want. Excuse me for worrying about you!"
"Fine."
"Good then."
Harry glowered at the table top and then at the ground and then over at the counter-top, avoiding looking at Hermione.
She finished her tea in tense silence and then sent her mug sailing over to the sink with an angry flick of her wand that made the mug leap into the air and fly into the sink with enough force it was a minor miracle that it didn't break. She set the dishes to being washed with another angry motion before stalking off to the sitting room and opening a book.
Harry grabbed a Firewhisky and followed, settling into the chair across the room from where she was, and opening the latest edition of Quidditch Weekly, where he sat glowering at the moving pictures on the pages and not comprehending one word out of every ten that he read.
Hermione ignored him- ostentatiously not commenting on his drinking Firewhisky on a weeknight (something he hardly ever did except when he was upset over something) and then went over to the corner of the room that served as her study where she pulled out some files she'd brought home and plunged into work with grim determination.
A tense silence reigned in the flat for the next few hours, unbroken except for the scratching sound of Hermione's quill on parchment and the sporadic sound of Harry turning a page of his magazine, more for show than because he was really reading, at least not to make any sense of what he read.
Harry glanced surreptitiously over at Hermione as she worked. She looked completely absorbed in her work and he knew that a casual observer would have thought she had forgotten entirely about the quarrel but he knew better. A slight frown creased her forehead and there was tension in every line of her frame and in the set of her lips, which he could see even from her profile.
He had a sudden memory of times when he'd lightly brushed his lips against the corner of her lips, kissing away the evidence of her worry or her irritation or her fatigue… He couldn't do that now. Every line of her pose was unwelcoming. His heart clenched, the last of his anger dying.
He supposed-no, he knew-he shouldn't have persisted as much as he had, shouldn't have insisted she tell him what was wrong as forcefully. Thinking about it now-more calmly-he should have known better. He knew Hermione, knew the streak of independence in her. She asked for help when she needed it but she tended to prefer to think things through, try to solve things herself, if at all possible.
Admittedly, he had some of that tendency in himself too, which was why he usually understood it in Hermione, but if there was one thing the War had taught him, it was that he really could not do everything alone. He knew he would never have survived past his first year, let alone anything after that, if it hadn't been for the help of Ron and Hermione and Professor Dumbledore; he'd never have been able to rescue Sirius in third year without Hermione or survive any of the tasks in his fourth year without her…
By now, turning to her, at least, was second nature to him. He tended not to like having to rely on anyone else but relying on her was different. He needed her, entirely aside from loving her.
But-he thought with a sudden pang of fear-he wasn't so sure that she needed him. She was capable enough and smart enough on her own that she could usually get through anything on her own.
In a flash of insight, Harry realized just why he had reacted so strongly to her not telling him about whatever was bothering her. Fear. He was afraid of losing her-not only because something might happen to her-but because he didn't know if she needed him the way he needed her. There was, somehow, in spite of everything, a little nagging fear deep in some corner of his heart that she might, some day, realize that she could do so much better, that she didn't really need him at all… (Certainly, she would be safer if she wasn't known to be his girlfriend and best friend. There were still times he thought that if he really loved her, he would push her away, refuse to let her near, lie to her so she'd believe he didn't care-but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He knew he wouldn't last very long without her; he needed her too much…)
He knew-he did know-that Hermione loved him. She'd told him she loved him and he believed her, not only because of her words (although he also knew she was too honest a person to lie about such a thing and too precise in her thinking to say so if she wasn't sure of it) but because of her actions. He felt it in her kiss and in her touch, in the small, absent-minded caresses she gave him, in the way she made his favorite tea without his having to ask for it, in the way she waited up for him on nights he came home late.
But for all that, he was still afraid that he might lose her, that she would stop loving him, that she didn't need him… Irrational, yes, and he could forget about it most of the time but sometimes-like tonight-it flared up again.
Why wouldn't she tell him what was bothering her? Why didn't she want him to know-or didn't she think he could help her or comfort her or whatever she needed? He loved her-could she possibly not know that he would do anything for her? He had a "saving people" thing, as she'd said years ago and with her, it was a thousand times more intense, the panic that gripped him whenever he thought of anything happening to her so strong as to be paralyzing. Didn't she know that? Why wouldn't she tell him what was wrong and let him help her, when he sometimes thought he would happily sell his soul to the devil if it would keep her always safe and happy?
Finally, the silence and his own fears became too much for him and he hastily stood up, tossing his now empty bottle of Firewhisky into the trash. He glanced over at Hermione, his lips opening to say something-he didn't know what-but something about her posture and her expression made what little courage he had at the moment shrivel up and any words he might have said died in his throat.
He suppressed a sigh as he went into their bedroom, mechanically going through the motions of getting ready for bed.
He lay in bed staring unseeingly up at the ceiling for what felt like years but was in reality not much more than an hour before he heard Hermione get up and put her work away.
He waited tensely but the moment he heard her step outside the door, sensed her nearness, he promptly closed his eyes in a futile attempt to pretend to be asleep. (He knew it wouldn't fool her; by now, she knew him well enough to know when he was really asleep and when he wasn't but at least, with his eyes closed, he couldn't see her face.)
He kept his eyes determinedly closed as he listened to the quiet sounds of her getting ready for bed, aware of a (rather ridiculous) pang of loss at how different this night was from the way their nights usually were.
Usually, they talked, mostly about inconsequential things, as they each prepared for bed. Sometimes, one of them would watch as the other undressed-usually with a half-teasing leer on his part, that always made her laugh-or one of them would help the other undress with the aid of kisses and caresses that almost always became more…
There was none of that tonight. No conversation, no teasing, no looks whether they were loving or lustful, and certainly no touching.
He was hyper-aware of the dip in the mattress as she got into bed and even more aware of the rush of cool air against his side that was not replaced by her warmth.
He cracked his eye-lids open to see that she was lying on her side, her back to him, close enough to the edge of the bed that she was almost in danger of falling off.
Funny, he'd never realized before that their bed was something like a mile wide.
He shut his eyes again on a half-sigh.
He wanted to say something-I'm sorry, don't leave me, I love you, good night-but his throat was tight and seemed to have forgotten how to function. He had the odd, rather irrational sense, of being poised on the brink of something and one word, one move, would upset the delicate balance of- of whatever-and send him hurtling off into darkness, or more accurately, angry words and reproaches and more choking fear.
And so he said nothing.
Hermione was unhappily conscious of the space between them on the bed, her lingering annoyance dissipating with every second to be replaced with regret.
She hated this, hated feeling like this, hated the distance between her and Harry, hated the tense silence, hated the knowledge that he was upset and it was because of her…
She didn't know why it felt somehow so much worse, so much harder to feel annoyed, with both of them lying on either side of the bed-and yet it did feel worse. Until now, they'd never yet been together in this bed without touching. Until now, this bed had never seen them not talking. Until now, they'd never gone to bed angry.
She felt, rather irrationally, as if some indefinable thing had been violated, the sanctity of this bed which had never been a part of any disagreements.
Oh they had had a few little tiffs, minor things always, that ended quickly and generally been laughed at soon after. This was the first major fight they'd had and it hurt. It almost caused her physical pain to lie here like this, separated from Harry both by the width of their bed and by the memory of their earlier quarrel.
She realized now, belatedly, that she had over-reacted.
She hadn't wanted to tell him-she was even annoyed at herself for reacting as strongly as it did, for letting such a relatively insignificant thing get to her the way she had-and since it wasn't anything he could do anything about, she didn't want to tell him. She had already decided from the moment she arrived home that she wouldn't mention it, had tried very hard to act entirely normally.
She supposed she ought to have known better than to think she could fool Harry for long. Even if she would have been able to fool him before, she couldn't now, not after this past year. He knew her too well-as she knew him.
For the first time though, that rather bothered her too. It should have been a good thing-it was a good thing-that he knew her so well but, somehow, at that moment, after what had happened, it bothered her.
It had been such a little thing really, had taken barely more than a minute. She'd paused while standing in the corridor of St. Mungo's re-checking something in the file she was holding and had overheard the words by accident and gotten the proverbial fate of eavesdroppers.
"Look, Mum," a girl who was maybe around eight, much too young to be in Hogwarts yet, had said in what was meant to be a whisper but carried easily in the quiet of St. Mungo's. "It's Harry Potter's girlfriend."
"So it is," the mother had answered. "I didn't know she worked in St. Mungo's."
"What's her name, Mum?"
"I can't remember. H- something, I think, not a common name. Henrietta, perhaps-no, that doesn't seem right either."
"I wish I could meet her. She knows Harry Potter, could tell us what he's like--"
At that moment, Hermione belatedly realized that she really had no business listening to this and had other things to be doing, besides, and had hurriedly moved on.
But the brief exchange had lingered in her mind.
She should have laughed it off, she supposed. After all, what did it matter if some rather silly people didn't quite remember her name or anything about her but that she was Harry's girlfriend? And yet… and yet, it did matter and it did bother her.
She had studied so hard, tried so hard, worked so hard in these past few years to get where she was. She was in line to become the youngest Head of a Division ever. To say nothing of the fact that she had, as Harry freely admitted, saved Harry's life and fought beside him for most of the War. And after all that, to that woman and her daughter, she was still only "Harry Potter's girlfriend", whose name they couldn't be bothered to remember.
She knew she was over-reacting to get so worked up over it but she couldn't help it. She didn't want to be reduced to a name-less 'Harry Potter's girlfriend'; that wasn't who she was. She was Hermione Granger, Healer at St. Mungo's, and being Harry's girlfriend didn't change that and she didn't want it to. She didn't want her entire life to become only about her being Harry's girlfriend.
She'd managed to push it to the back of her mind for the next hour or so until she was done with work but she didn't forget it. She didn't want to mention it to Harry because it really wasn't important and she didn't want to bother him with something so trivial, especially when she knew he'd be upset on her behalf and probably blame himself too, since he was very good at that.
She was annoyed at herself, as it was, for making such a big deal out of it-but it seemed to feed directly into something that had rather bothered her when she and Harry had first gotten involved. She had wondered-and rather feared-if she could keep her independence as Harry's girlfriend.
A large factor in her break-up with Ron had been a feeling that she was being stifled somehow; Ron always wanted her to be around, always expected that her entire life would revolve solely around him, and she hadn't been able to live like that. She couldn't be like Mrs. Weasley.
Harry didn't expect or want her to be another Mrs. Weasley but she'd found, too, that with Harry, it was so easy to let him become her entire life. Every once in a while, she realized, with a moment of dismay, just how necessary he'd become to her. She knew she couldn't sleep without him in bed next to her, knew no day ever felt complete without being able to see him, talk to him… He had become as necessary to her happiness as the air she breathed and it frightened her, sometimes, when she thought about it.
But she didn't think of it often because she was so happy with him, loved him so much, and it was hard to fear anything that made her so happy.
If he ever left her, if anything ever happened to him, she didn't know if she could cope and that sort of vulnerability, of dependence, scared her. She was losing herself in him…
And to hear that woman and her daughter refer to her only as 'Harry Potter's girlfriend' had almost seemed like evidence of it, as if she'd ceased to be herself and had become only Harry's girlfriend, an appendage, not complete without him.
~
Hermione awoke from a rather uneasy sleep to find that she was nestled next to Harry, as if even her subconscious recognized how unnatural it felt to be at odds with Harry.
She relaxed against him with a half-sigh and somehow, in that quiet hour just before dawn, it was much easier to admit to herself that she was being an idiot.
Why should she invest so much significance in what two complete strangers said? They didn't know her, hadn't meant anything by it. And as for losing herself in Harry-wasn't it possible that she was thinking of it in entirely the wrong way? She suddenly remembered something Harry had said to her once, after she had half-teasingly said something about how brave he was: "That's because of you. I don't know how you do it but you make me braver than I am." She had smiled and kissed him and said nothing more but she thought of his words now and thought, too, that it was the same for her. It always had been that way. He made her braver too-and stronger, smarter, simply better than she was without him. It wasn't about losing herself; it was about gaining something, becoming a better version of herself because of him. And what was to fear in that?
Harry stirred beside her and that one restless motion was enough, after a year of sleeping beside him, to tell her that dreams were disturbing his sleep.
Quick as the thought, she had turned on a light and bent over him, shaking him gently. "Harry. Harry, come on, love, wake up."
He jerked awake with a half-gasp, his eyes wide and shadowed with a vulnerability which she hadn't seen in months.
He blinked, his gaze focusing on her face. And he just said her name, "Hermione," in a rough whisper before his arms closed forcefully around her, pulling her tightly against him. He held her as if he was drowning and she was his life-saver.
Her heart clenched from sympathy and regret as she returned his embrace, brushing soft, reassuring kisses against his neck, his cheek, his earlobe, anywhere she could reach.
"Hermione, I'm sorry. Don't leave me."
She tightened her arms around him, pressing her lips to his cheek. "No, never," she promised soothingly.
She drew back just so she could find her lips with hers, pressing a kiss to his lips.
His response was immediate and heated, his arms locking tightly around her, his lips and tongue parting her lips insistently. He kissed her with a desperation, an intensity, she hadn't felt from him in a long while, kissed her as if it was the last time and he wanted to imprint the memory of him on her.
Oh Harry… Some part of her mind and heart wondered what he feared, what was fueling his desperation, but even as she wondered, she dismissed the question. It wasn't the time for that; she could find out later. Right now, all that mattered was him, reassuring him with her body that she was there and she wasn't going anywhere.
She kissed him back, her hands cupping his face, returned his passion with her own, kissed him with all the strength of her love and her loyalty. And every kiss was a silent apology for their argument, for over-reacting, for acting as if she expected him to treat her differently than she did him because she would have persisted too, would have insisted he tell her the problem-as she did, when she could tell something was bothering him.
His legs tangled with hers, his hands hot and greedy as they moved over her body until she gasped against his mouth and she felt the familiar liquid warmth of desire flood her body.
He could always do this to her, arouse her so easily and so quickly, and it never mattered how familiar his touch was, how many times he'd caressed her before, she always reacted to his touch, burned at his touch.
But there was something different about his touches now. They were more desperate, more needy, possessive, as if he needed to reassure himself that she was really there, that he was touching her-and she felt a surge of sympathy and understanding mingle with her arousal.
And she knew what he needed.
There were times when he was the one to take the initiative in loving her, seducing her, pleasuring her-usually, it was both of them, together, sharing their bodies and their pleasure and their passion. Tonight, right then, he needed it to be her.
She cupped his face between her hands as she kissed him with every ounce of emotion in her, pouring all her love and all her loyalty and all her regret into the kiss, shifting her body above his until the hardness of his erection through his pyjamas was cradled against her. And knew he understood, sensed it, in the tenderness of his touch and in his response to her. She loved that about him, that with him, in this realm especially, no words were necessary.
She only ended the kiss when they were both breathing hard, their bodies hot and straining against each other, pyjamas twisted beneath exploring, caressing hands.
She sat up, making quick work of her pyjamas, before moving on to him.
His eyes opened, almost black in the dim light, burning up at her, and his hands moved to tug at his shirt but she stopped him with a word and her hand on his. "Don't."
She bent and brushed her lips against his, let him feel her now-bare breasts pressed against his still-clothed chest. "I'll do it," she breathed against his lips.
She pushed his shirt up slowly, pausing to kiss and caress every inch of skin she revealed, up his flat stomach and then his chest, aware of every gasp, every moan, every twitch of his body under her touch.
She only paused, briefly, to tug his shirt up off over his head and then she returned to what she'd been doing.
She loved his body (as she'd once told him teasingly, after deliberately letting her gaze wander up and down the length of him, and he'd grinned, responding, "well, you know I can never hear that enough.") His shoulders, a little broader than they had been, his chest, his flat stomach, he wasn't overly muscled but he was fit and trim and... and beautiful… Perhaps not exactly Greek god material but she didn't want perfection anyway. She just wanted him...
She knew his body, knew every sensitive spot and she found every one, loving his sharp intake of breath, loving the heat of him, the strength of him, the sensitiveness of his body under her hands. She flicked her tongue against his flat nipples, hearing his strangled groan, swirled her tongue lightly around it and then gently, let her teeth graze it and he hissed, his entire body jerking. She repeated the process on his other nipple, deliberately and systematically pleasuring him as only she could do.
His hands had been caressing her body, moving over her back and her hips and up to her breasts and then down again but her touch had distracted him, stopped him, until his hands simply rested on her body, lightly, not holding her in place but just so that every movement she made had him caressing her, sending fresh floods of heat through her body, the familiar hollow ache beginning deep inside her.
Oh yes, she wanted him. How she wanted him!
She pushed his pyjama bottoms down, taking his boxers with them, and he obligingly lifted his hips so she could strip them off him.
She took her time moving back up his body, half-teasingly caressing his legs, until she reached his thighs. She trailed her lips lightly along his taut, hot skin, letting her body brush against him provocatively, until he groaned, his hips shifting impatiently.
She caressed his thighs, leaving a trail of soft kisses along the inside of one thigh and then the other, deliberately ignoring the part of his body that was so prominently begging for attention. He moaned. "God, Hermione!" She paused, looking up at him along the length of his body. "Please," he gasped.
And then she touched him, lightly at first, her fingers just running up the length of him, measuring his passion with a feather-light caress even as his hips shifted, straining towards her.
Then finally, finally, she touched him with her lips and tongue. She licked delicately up the length of him, pausing to drop a quick kiss on the tip of his erection, and he cried out.
She paused for one fleeting second, looking up at him, thankful for the single light and the moonlight filtering in through the curtains, allowing her to see his face, his expression. He looked… she felt a shiver go through her, adding to the wetness pooling between her thighs, at the look on his face. The expression on his face- his eyes closed, his head thrown back- was a cross between agony and ecstasy, as if he was seeing a new world, a beautiful landscape of passion and pleasure. God, she loved seeing him like this, loved knowing she could bring him to this point, give him this pleasure. The thought drifted through her lust-clouded mind: he was hers. Not just at that moment, not just because of this sensual connection between them, but for always, in every way, he was hers. Perhaps it was something in the utterly raw, naked sensuality of his expression, no barriers, no masks, it was only him, his body, his heart, hers for the taking.
And so she did. She knew how to touch him, how to draw out and enhance his pleasure. She made love to him with her mouth and her lips and her tongue, lavishing the most erotic pleasures on him with every ounce of knowledge and emotion in her.
He was hers-and with every kiss, every lick, every touch of her tongue and her lips, she made sure he knew it until his breath was coming in harsh gasps, his hands twisting in the sheets, and she knew he was on the edge.
It was only then that she drew back, trailing her lips up his body, as she shifted, straddling him wantonly, knowing he could feel the slick wetness between her thighs resting so close to his erection.
She kissed him, deeply, luxuriously, let him taste himself on her lips and tongue, until his hands came up to cup her cheeks, his fingers tangling with her hair, and the kiss exploded, his lips and tongue taking hers with a voracious hunger and she felt a thrill deep inside her at this evidence of just how much he wanted her.
One of his hands slid down to her shoulder and then around to cup her breast, making her gasp into his mouth, and arch into his touch.
She shifted, her body pushing, straining against him instinctively, in a blind search for what she needed and then she felt it, just the tip of his body finding her, sliding into her, and she cried out, breaking off the kiss.
She sat up just enough so she could guide herself down, lowering herself onto him with one swift move with the knowledge that came from nearly a year of loving him, until he was completely inside her.
He let out a sharp hiss of breath that was half a gasp, her name, "Hermione," escaping him, roughened into something more like 2 syllables than its usual 4.
She lowered her lips to his. "Harry," she breathed against his lips and something in her tone made his very name a promise.
This-all of this-was for him, to tell him that she loved him and would never leave him. And on the thought, she made a quick decision.
She shifted above him, circling her hips, until he groaned, his fingers digging into her skin, and then she tightened her thighs, rolling over and tugging him with her until she was lying on her back under him, their bodies still joined.
She wiggled a little, feeling her body mold itself to his in this new position, as it always did, a low hum of pleasure escaping her as this new position pushed him even deeper into her.
She opened her eyes to look up at him, saw him staring at her, and knew he understood. She had made him hers earlier; now he could make her his.
He lowered his lips to hers, kissing her, his tongue plunging into her mouth, as his hips began to move. Her arms and legs wrapped around him, urging him closer to her, wanting more of him, all of him.
His hips thrust faster and she welcomed it, loved the feeling of him inside her, stretching her, possessing her, and then with a last gasp, he stiffened and shuddered and she felt a flood of warmth from his release before he collapsed on top of her.
She wrapped her arms around him, her body softening under his. She loved to feel the weight of him on her, loved this feeling as if he was imprinting his body on hers…
She didn't know how long it was before he lifted his head. "I'm sor--"
She cut him off with a kiss. "Don't," she told him quickly. "Besides," she added huskily against his ear, "I'm next."
And she was.
His soft, brief laugh was swallowed by her mouth as he kissed her, open-mouthed and passionate, his hands moving to cup her breasts, caressing, kneading, shaping.
He bent and took one hard nipple into his mouth, licking it, laving it with his tongue before he sucked it into his mouth, and she moaned, feeling that gentle tugging send fresh shards of sensation, bright and clear, shivering through her body to pool in the center of her. She was beyond thought, beyond emotion, beyond everything but pure physical sensation. Sensation that flooded through her with every tug of his mouth, every touch of his tongue, on her sensitized skin, intensified with every brush and shift of his body against hers, hot and hard and searing.
One hand lowered to touch her where they were still joined and she gasped sharply, writhing against him, her fingers digging into his skin, as she felt the wave of sensation, of pleasure, building, cresting, inside her, until his finger caressed her wet, swollen flesh once, twice, and the wave broke. Reality- the entire world- fractured around her; nothing and no one existed beyond their entwined bodies, where he was buried inside her. She convulsed around him, under him, with a cry and he tightened his arms around her, swallowing her cry with his mouth.
He kissed her hard, deeply, with enough lingering force that his weight pushed her deeper into the bed and something inside her tightened and burst in a fresh explosion of bliss.
She clung to him, let the tidal wave of pleasure sweep through them, around them, until they drifted, slowly, back to earth.
He brushed his lips against hers, lightly, with so much tenderness her heart melted inside her, and she returned the kiss with all the love she felt.
He ended their kiss slowly, with almost palpable reluctance. "I'm sorry about rushing things," he said again.
She put her finger on his lips to stop him. "Do you hear me complaining?"
"No, but--"
"Besides," she went on, interrupting him as if she hadn't heard his answer, "I take it as a compliment. I was the one who pushed you over the edge."
He half-smiled against her finger that still rested lightly against his lips and then lightly, teasingly, nipped at it. "Well, that's true. Okay, it's all your fault that I couldn't wait."
She smiled and he bent and kissed her again, lingering this time, savoring the familiar warmth and heat of her mouth, the taste of her.
She melted into his kiss, as she always did, and knew, deep in her heart and soul, that she always would melt at his touch. She was his… Body, heart and soul, she belonged to him and she always would…
He finally ended the kiss with a sigh, drawing back and holding her gaze with his. "I love you," he whispered.
"I love you too and I'm sorry about earlier. I over-reacted and it was stupid of me."
"You're never stupid."
She smiled slightly but shook her head a little. "No, it was stupid. I shouldn't have let it get to me the way I did. I just happened to overhear a mother and daughter talking and-God, this is going to sound lame-they didn't remember my name. They just knew me as Harry Potter's girlfriend but they didn't remember my name."
He stiffened a little at the phrase "Harry Potter's girlfriend." "I'm sorry."
She sensed his withdrawal, more an emotional one than a physical one, and tightened her arms around him. "Harry, no, it wasn't that. It's not that I mind people knowing that I'm yours; you know that. I don't even know exactly why it bothered me so much except that it made me feel like all I've done at St. Mungo's, even all I did at Hogwarts, didn't matter and--"
"It mattered," he interrupted her. "It all matters. You're brilliant and everyone knows it and anyone with any sense probably wonders what someone like you is doing with me when you could have someone better."
"Harry, don't be silly."
"I'm not."
She caught her breath a little, a touch of unease entering her. "Harry, you don't really wonder that, do you?"
"No," he said too quickly and she almost flinched, feeling a fresh wave of guilt. She thought she knew him so well-she did know him so well-why hadn't she realized that he might still feel some doubt about this, about her? She knew how deep-seated his insecurities were, thanks in large part to his worthless relatives.
"Oh, Harry…"
She pushed on his shoulder, rolling them over (again) until she could look down at him, trying to let him see all her sincerity in her eyes, hear it in her tone that was firm, forceful, rather than loving. "Harry, I Love You. You are the first, last, and only love of my life." Her voice softened, became tender. "I'm yours and I always will be." She bent her head and kissed him softly, lingeringly. "Trust me," she whispered against his lips.
"I do."
She smiled slightly, seeing the clear bright green of his eyes, all the shadows gone. "Good. Besides," she added teasingly, "you're mine and if you think I'm letting you go, you can think again."
He smiled. "Good." His smile faded as he fixed her with an intense look. "I want you to promise me that you'll tell me when something is bothering you, let me help you."
She met his eyes. "Harry, I love you, I trust you, and you do help me more than you'll ever know but I can't promise that I'll tell you every little thing. if it's something I can take care of on my own, you have to expect that I will. I'm not helpless and I won't act as if I am."
"I know you're not helpless; it's one of the things I love about you. But I want to be there for you. I want to help you the way you've always helped me."
"You will; you do help me. I know you'll always be there for me. I trust you." He opened his mouth to respond and she continued on, "And you have to trust that I'll tell you what's bothering me when I'm ready to talk about it. Sometimes I just need to think things through on my own before I talk about it."
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then sighed. "I guess I can understand that. And I do trust you."
"Thank you," she whispered softly against his lips, brushing a kiss, two kisses, against his lips. She deepened the kiss as he made a soft sound in the back of his throat, his hands sliding up her back to tangle in her hair, holding her head in place.
And as always, she felt a spark of heat inside her at his kiss, his touch, his body against hers. Deliberately, she slid her hand down his body until she was touching him, feeling his immediate reaction.
He broke their kiss on a sharp gasp. "Hermione…"
She smiled down at him. "I think we have some more making up to do, don't you?"
He smiled and then rolled them over with one quick motion, making her gasp and then laugh softly. "I like the way you think."
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
He cut off her teasing question with a kiss, sinking into it, sinking into her, her warmth, her softness, her passion, and all the generosity of her sensuality, all thoughts vanishing except for two words that lingered a little longer than the others, encapsulating all he felt for her.
Mine. Forever…
~The End~