Chapter 3
Harry made it to the Gryffindor Common Room in no time and stepped through the portrait, scanning the area for Hermione.
"There she is," he thought and took a deep breath.
Hermione stood up when she saw 'Harry' enter the room. The common room wasn't very crowded…nothing but a few stragglers.
"Good…that will make this a bit easier," she thought with relief.
Harry walked over to where she stood and asked, "Hey, Hermione…Can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Sure… let's try again," she answered.
Harry didn't understand her reply but decided to just go with it.
"Can we sit on the couch?" he asked.
"Of course, where else?" she said with a smile and headed towards the couch.
Harry followed her with a confused look on his face.
"She's acting a little weird," he thought.
Hermione sat on the couch and patted the cushion right next to her with her hand to let him know exactly where she wanted him to sit.
He hesitated for a second as he looked at her. She was smiling up at him, but the space she wanted him to sit in was about ten inches wide and would sandwich him tightly between her and the arm of the couch, despite the fact that the whole rest of the couch was empty.
He looked at her and asked as he pointed to the spot, "There?"
''Harry,'" Hermione said, playfully rolling her eyes at him. To his surprise, she then grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down into the tiny space.
"Don't be silly," she said taking one of his hands into hers as soon as he was seated.
"Hermione...are you okay?" he asked this time. Not that he minded the sudden contact…
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"
"I don't know," Harry said unsurely. Sitting so close to her was going to make this much, much harder.
Hermione asked, "Now, what was it you wanted to talk about?"
Harry stared at her. 'Wow. This is going to be difficult," he thought.
He was definitely unnerved. The closeness to her, the smell of her perfume, and the way she was holding his hand had driven all coherent thought right out of his head. 'Well…I--uh, wanted to talk to you about...um….ah…" and then nothing.
She smiled to herself. She knew Ron. He would not have tried this again unless he was confident that he could do a better job this time, but her plan had worked; Ron was acting like the same stammering and stuttering goof he was the first time.
"Oh, 'Harry'," she breathed as she hugged his arm and leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Merlin, she's making me nuts." He could feel the softness of her breast against his arm and wow…
When she looked up at him, her face was inches from his. He was starting to sweat; he didn't know how much more of this he could take.
Hermione started twirling his hair with her finger and blowing it around with very soft breaths… right by his ear.
"That's it…limit reached!" Harry wildly thought as he shot up off the couch and out of her grasp. He just stood in front of her, looking down with wide eyes.
She tilted her head and smiled at him, a fairly evil smile if anyone wanted his opinion. Hermione stood up very slowly, not taking her eyes off him for a second. Harry actually put his hands up in front of him to protect himself and took a step back.
"Oh my God, she looks like she's stalking me!" he thought in a panic.
She walked slowly to him and stopped. Harry believed that Hermione was going to stay where she was so, he lowered his hands. Suddenly, she took an extra step closer to him. Harry actually let out a small startled manly squeak.
"Harry…let's not beat around the bush; we both know what we want to happen here," she said seductively.
"WHAT?"
Harry mouth dropped wide open.
This was not easy for Hermione, of course. Her heart was racing, but thank Merlin this was only Ron. It was still incredibly unnerving, but she knew she could never have done this to Harry-feeling the way she did about him.
"What the hell is going on?" Harry thought. He was almost scared of this vixen in front of him who just happened to look like Hermione Granger. But he knew that this was not his Hermione. He didn't know what to do or what to think.
Hermione took a deep breath.
"Here we go," she actually said aloud and she reached forward with both hands, grabbed the front of Harry's shirt, yanked him forcefully to her, and kissed him.
Hermione thought desperately as she felt her lips meet his, "Two seconds and let him go… then we'll be even, Ronald."
Harry's head was swimming; this was exactly what he wanted, but never in a million years could he have predicted the path that would lead him to this.
He was kissing Hermione-Hermione Granger, his best friend. Wow, her lips were so soft, her perfume was intoxicating, and the closeness of her was overwhelmingly stimulating. That was it…he just let go and embraced the moment.
Harry wrapped his arms around her, and for some reason, she actually struggled slightly for a second.
Then she relented.
He kissed her back, hard, and the kiss deepened, becoming much hungrier for the both of them.
Hermione was still holding onto his shirt, but she let go and slid her arms up until they were around Harry's neck. She was now running her fingers through his soft, unruly hair. His hands were caressing her back as he held her. Harry was utterly lost; he couldn't stop or get near enough to her. He pulled her even closer as he used his tongue to gently open her mouth and then, the explosion of sweetness as their tongues met almost made his knees buckle.
Hermione's mind had gone blank, she was no longer thinking about Ron or getting even, or that this wasn't actually Harry she was kissing. She was absolutely gone. She had daydreamed about a moment like this for more years than she cared to admit, but it was so much better for real. Better than she had ever imagined it could be. She was kissing Harry, well….actually they were snogging each other senseless!
And then suddenly, they both broke the kiss as their need for air had made it necessary.
They stood perfectly still for a moment, both of them blown away by what had just happened.
Finally, Hermione found her voice.
"Oh my God, Harry," she said collapsing into his chest. Harry's arms wrapped around her once more.
"Harry?" Her brain started to work again.
"RON!" Her mind screamed at her.
Hermione's eyes grew to the size of saucers, and she forced herself away from Harry as anger rose inside her. She pushed him away with all her might; he was propelled backwards over a chair and crashed to the floor.
"HOW DARE YOU, RONALD WEASLEY!" she screamed as her fury got the best of her.
Harry lay on the floor, stunned. One second, the girl he had spent the entire day dreaming about was wrapped in his arms after the most amazing kiss ever and then….she pulled away from him with a look of utter disgust on her face and threw him back with such force that he ended up on the floor. Next, Hermione screamed at him and called him.... Ron?
He had no idea what to think. But….he panicked and tried to scramble to his feet when he realized that she was looking around for her wand.
A second later, Hermione froze.
Harry stayed perfectly still, only turning his head to follow her gaze.
There with his mouth hanging open and a splattered cake on the floor next to each foot…was none other than Ronald Weasley.
Hermione's head turned from Ron to Harry then back to Ron… and finally, she broke the silence with a deafening scream.
Hermione was angry with herself.
"I can't believe I let myself get caught up like that. It was supposed to be a two second kiss...just to really drive it home to Ron that he should mind his own business. But then..."
"He looked like Harry…. and then when he drew me close, all I could smell was Harry's smell and the feel of Harry's arms around me and well….I guess.... My feelings for Harry took over."
"I'm such an idiot," she thought.
Then Ron came into her mind.
When Hermione realized who she had actually kissed, that's when she got upset. She had pushed him because she felt he had taken advantage of the situation. Yes, she may have started the kiss, but he was the one who had escalated it into a snogging session.
"Where's my wand!" she had wondered. She saw 'Harry" trying to get to his feet. "Oh no, you don't… you're not getting away from me, Ronald Weasley."
While looking for her wand, she had seen Ron standing by the portrait. He was not on the floor where she thought she had just pushed him. He was standing twenty feet away, frozen and with a look of horror on his face. She looked back at 'Harry' on the floor, and then back to Ron by the door, and screamed.
Ron had to give the Fat Lady the password three times before she would let him in.
"I can to talk with cake in my mouth," he grumpily retorted as he stepped into the common room. Ron glanced up…
…And his world shattered.
Standing in full sight were Harry and Hermione ….and they were snogging each other.
Big time.
That was probably the only sight in the world that could have made him drop his cakes…well, other than Voldemort wearing a grass skirt and doing the hula.
He couldn't move or speak or think. The two of them seemed to be lost in their own world.
At last, they stopped kissing, and then she pushed Harry to the floor and she screamed at him, "HOW DARE YOU, RONALD WEASLEY!"
"Oh crap," he thought. "She knows about the Polyjuice."
Now he was frozen in fear because she was looking for her wand, and he had only snapped out of his frozen state because of her bloodcurdling scream. It had actually made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
He had no other choice, no other option. Ron Weasley ran for his life for the second time in one day.
Hermione stared at the spot where the real Ronald Weasley had stood. She realized that she had made a mistake-a very, very BIG mistake. The Harry she had just kissed-snogged for Merlin's sake-was actually the real Harry.
Hermione was mortified; she couldn't even look at him. She whipped around and ran up to her dorm as fast as her legs could carry her. Harry called after her, but there was no way she was stopping. She burst through her bedroom, bolted straight into the loo, and locked the door.
"Oh my God…Oh my God, I can't believe I just did that….with Harry!" she muttered mortifyingly, trying desperately to keep herself from hyperventilating.
There was a knock on the door.
"If that's Harry, please go away," she said miserably through the door.
"It's me; Lavender…what's going on?"
"Nothing…I'm fine, thank you," Hermione said as she paced back and forth in the small loo.
Lavender turned to Parvati who was standing next to her.
"I don't know what happened, but it must have been really good," she smiled despite the fact that Hermione was cooped up in the small room and was obviously not thinking the same thing. "I have to go find out!"
Lavender ran down the stairs to see if anyone knew what had happened to her roommate.
Hermione was staying put in the loo, and at present, she couldn't think of anything that would make her come out.
Harry still stood in the center of the room, staring at the spot on the stairs where Hermione had last been. He was at a complete loss.
He had just lived through probably the weirdest five minutes of his life, and for him to be able to say that…well, that was saying something. He had no idea what to think about what had just transpired. He looked around the common room; there were a pair of fourth years in the corner and fifth year girl whose name he couldn't remember. Unsurprisingly, they were staring unabashed at him.
Harry groaned. His lips still tingled from their kiss; he could smell her perfume on his shirt. He heard footsteps on the stairs to the girl's dorm, and he looked up hopefully, but it was only Lavender. She saw him and made a beeline right for him.
"Harry, what happened?" she asked when she reached him.
"I have no clue," he admitted as he shrugged and shook his head. He dropped, numbly, onto the couch.
Lavender reached out and gently touched his arm.
"Harry…maybe I can help?"
He just sat and watched the stairs. "Where is she?'
"She's locked herself in our loo. If you want me to try to help…please, Harry, what happened?"
"I don't know…I honestly don't," Harry repeated as he pulled away from her and headed for the portrait exit.
"Wow, this must have been either really good…or really, really bad," Lavender muttered to herself.
She looked around and noticed the fifth year girl. She shrugged, and went over, hopefully, to get the scoop.
Lavender came back up into the girls' dorm, blew right past Parvati, and went straight to the loo door.
"Hermione, please let me in; I want to help you."
Her plea met silence. Parvati gestured to her best friend, trying to get her to spill the details. Lavender waved a hand at her; there were more important matters to discuss.
"I heard what happened…I think?" she tried again.
Again, silence.
"Come on," Lavender begged, sounding desperate, "Hermione, you need to talk to someone!"
Now, out of all the capable people to talk to, Lavender was not at the very top of the list but....
After about thirty seconds, there was a click and the door opened a crack.
Lavender slid into the room and closed the door.
"Lock it, please," she heard Hermione say.
"Okay…sure." Lavender wanted Hermione to feel comfortable so she did as she was told.
Hermione sat on the edge of the tub, her face as white as a ghost.
"One of the girls downstairs told me what she saw, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Lavender immediately said. She saw that Hermione was trying not to listen.
"By the way, Harry asked about you."
"He did?" Hermione asked with a slight twinge of hope. Then she added quickly, "Is he okay?"
"He didn't look too good when I saw him. Should I tell you what I heard?" Lavender asked.
"I would really rather you didn't… but go ahead," Hermione sighed, defeated.
Lavender went over and sat across from Hermione. "You ready?"
"No," Hermione whispered with her hands over her face as she shook her head.
"Okay…what's her name said that to her, it looked like you were coming on to Harry big-time…and then he got up and you walked over to him and grabbed him and kissed him….by the way she said it was a really hot kiss."
Hermione whimpered through her fingers.
"No….I mean like really hot….like 'if no one was around, you two would have been shagging on the common room floor' hot!"
"Oh my God…Is that supposed to make me feel better?! I'm going to have to transfer to Beauxbaton. I can't stay here; there is no way I can face him!" Hermione cried when she finally took her hands away from her face. Then she was quiet for a moment, only looking up to say, in barely above a whisper:
"It was my first real kiss."
"What?" Lavender exclaimed with a shocked expression.
"What about Krum?" she asked, but Hermione just shook her head.
"Wow," Lavender remarked. "First kiss huh….It's always the quiet ones."
Lavender regrouped and continued.
"Okay….here is where it gets confusing. So, you guys had this amazing kiss, and then you knocked him down and called him Ron. Then you screamed and ran away? That part I don't get. Is there any truth in that?"
Hermione looked up at Lavender.
"Actually…..in a weird way, it's all sort of true." Seeing her roommate's shocked expression, Hermione took a deep breath and slowly began to tell the tale.
She started with Snape's class and with Ron offering to dump their cauldrons, continuing on to the weird talk with Harry. She then recounted her odd conversation with Luna and told Lavender all the specifics about what had just happened in the common room.
When Hermione was completely finished, Lavender finally spoke, choosing her words carefully.
"So…the bottom line in of all that craziness is that you're in love with Harry!"
"What? No…that's not it at all-well, maybe I am, but that's irrelevant!" Hermione looked as if she was about to burst into tears. "How can I ever face him? I threw myself at him; I've totally embarrassed myself! I've probably ruined our friendship. I'm sure he thinks I'm totally bonkers. Why would he ever speak to me again-let alone ever even consider dating me?" Hermione said in one long breath as she ranted her way around the room.
"I think you're wrong," Lavender simply said. "I think fancies you too." Then she added quickly, "Not that I believed him, but he did mention that thing about your eyes in Snape's class."
"That's a very subtle thing, you know; that isn't something you notice about someone if you're not interested!" she reasoned.
"Do you really think so?" Hermione asked tentatively.
Lavender nodded confidently. "You need to talk to Harry."
Ron was by the lake again, essentially for the same reason as yesterday. But this time he felt worse. He felt really bad-- about his best friends kissing, about his part in it, about trying to trick Hermione-just about…. everything.
He felt a tiny hand on his shoulder and turned to see Luna standing beside him.
He sighed.
"You told her, didn't you?" he finally asked as he turned and looked back out over the lake.
"What, Ron?" The blond Ravenclaw answered.
"You told her it was me…and not Harry."
"Yes Ron….I didn't know I shouldn't. Besides, not telling the truth is no way to start a relationship-if that's what you were trying to do."
"I'd tell you the truth if you asked me," she added smiling at him.
Luna waited.
"May I sit down?"
"Sure, go ahead," he replied with a sigh.
"You know, Ronald… if what they are saying in the castle about Harry and Hermione is true, there was nothing you could have done to stop it. Auras don't lie; any Nargle could tell you that."
He took a deep breath and then turned to her and asked, trying not to sound annoyed, "What are you doing here, Luna?"
"Well…I thought you'd be upset so I wanted to try to cheer you up." She replied, giving him a genuine and sweet smile.
He looked at her and shook his head, but he couldn't help himself.
He smiled back.
The two of them just continued to sit together, not saying a word as they looked out at the lake. Every time Ron looked over at her, she'd smile back at him and…. it did make him feel better.
Harry sat in the bleachers that surrounded the Quidditch pitch.
"What now?" he thought. "I kissed Hermione…Ron will never forgive me for that. Not after I swore to him yesterday that there was nothing between us. And Hermione…man, what can I do about her. She must hate me; she looked so angry."
Never, in all the years he'd known her, had Hermione directed such a look towards him. It made him feel as if he had betrayed her trust somehow, as if he'd done something totally unforgivable.
Harry suddenly frowned, tilting his head to the side. "Why did she call me Ron? Did she want to kiss Ron?"
He shook his head, frustrated.
"The kiss…Merlin, that was an awesome kiss," he thought as he allowed himself to smile a little. "Did it not mean anything to her? She seemed to be into it too…well, right up until she knocked me down."
"Who am I supposed to talk to? I can't talk to Ron…or Hermione," Harry finally whispered out loud. He sat for a minute, quietly thinking.
"Yes, you can you idiot!"
"What?" The damn voice in his head was back.
"Talk to Hermione," urged the voice, "pretend like nothing happened, and do it now."
"I don't know if I can!" Harry told the voice.
He continued, "You were there….you saw her knock me down and call me Ron, didn't you?"
"Yeah….I also saw her give you a tonsillectomy!"
"Hey!" Harry expressed angrily.
"Okay, okay….but you plucked up the courage once…. so….do it again."
"This voice is maddening," Harry thought, but it did have a point.
"Fine," he sighed out loud, "I'll do it….I'm scared… but I'll do it."
"Do what?" asked a familiar voice from behind him.
Harry turned, and there stood Hermione.
Two months had passed since Snape's Potions class, and all had been forgiven. The friends were sitting in the common room together. Harry sat on the couch with one arm on the arm rest and his other arm draped casually over his girlfriend's shoulder. Hermione smiled up at her boyfriend, tucked in tight against him. She had her legs up on the couch beside her and was listening carefully to Ron.
"No, really....something about the Nargles saying the symmetry of the cosmic aura convergence of red and yellow," he said waving his finger back and forth between himself and Luna, his girlfriend. "Making orange," he added lifting a few hairs on his head to show them the color.
"Supposed to be a good sign or something," Ron finished with a shrug.
Harry and Hermione looked at each other and then burst into laughter, and after a look towards Luna, Ron joined in. Luna wasn't quite sure what they all found so funny, but her boyfriend was happy, so she was happy.
As the friend continued talking, a question concerning the castle came up to which Hermione replied, "No, it's definitely in there. I'll just go get Hogwarts, A History and be right back," and she got up off the couch to do just that. Harry grabbed her hand before she could get away and pulled her down onto his lap.
"Oh, no you don't! You need to stay right here," he said. "I'd like to see the Hermione who attacked me on 'Polyjuice Day'".
"But Harry, I just--" Before she could finish her protest, he was kissing her. When they had finally finished their mind-blowing snog, she said to him, "Harry, will you please stop calling it that?"
"What?" he questioned.
"Polyjuice Day," Hermione replied and crinkled her nose.
"Are you kidding? I'm lobbying to make it a national holiday! The best day in the life of 'The Boy Who Lived," Harry said, smiling sweetly at her. "I think it has a real chance."
"You're such an idiot, you know that?"
"Can I see that girl again?" he asked with a shy smile.
"Well...she may be around later," she said, throwing her arms around his neck. Giving him a mischievous smirk, Hermione leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "When we're alone."
"But for right now, you'll have to settle for me."
"If I must," Harry replied, sighing with mock disappointment. Hermione smacked his shoulder and feigned outrage. But then Harry leaned over and kissed her and after a second of pouting, she responded enthusiastically.
"Bloody hell…can you give it a rest? Please…For Merlin's sake, I'm happy for you guys, but you're making me sick," Ron complained. "And--I agree with her," he said, pointing at Hermione and then crossing his arms. "No Polyjuice Day!"
"Because of that damn potion," Ron continued, "I'm subjected to this mush nonstop." He then held his hands out to show Luna the intertwined Harry and Hermione.
"Don't knock it until you've tried it," Harry mumbled as he nuzzled Hermione's neck, making her giggle. He then winked at Luna who blushed deeply.
"That potion changed my life for the better," Harry said as he hugged his girlfriend tightly while kissing her neck some more.
"Yours too, you stupid git," he added and nodded towards Luna.
"Personally, Ronald, I think Harry and Hermione make a very sweet couple," Luna commented as she finally entered the conversation.
"Thank you, Luna," Harry and Hermione said in unison.
Ron just rolled his eyes before draping his arm over his girlfriend's shoulder.