Dueling Hormones

As an apology for being absent so long, here's a little one-shot that I wrote just for fun. Hope you like it. Rated R for sexual references.

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Harry would never admit to anyone how much he truly enjoyed a good duel. For one thing, he didn't want to encourage Malfoy or any of the other Slytherin berks to assume that he was hoping for a real go. He also didn't want to hear another of Hermione's lectures about how testosterone seemed to negate any hope of an actual working brain. The biggest reason, however, was that he didn't want it to be known that he really, truly, severely needed to get shagged.

It had dawned on him early in life, thanks to Dudley and his gang, that violence was very often a good substitute for sex. And while Harry wasn't a naturally violent person, a mock duel was almost as good as a quick wank when he got really hard up. He wasn't sure exactly what caused this peculiar reaction but, unlike Hermione, he didn't have to understand the science to believe that it was completely true.

“You aren't getting tired, are you?” Hermione asked, watching as he bent to put his hands on his knees.

He shook his head. “I'm fine. I just need a moment.”

“Don't tell me I have better stamina than you,” she laughed.

“It has nothing to do with stamina,” he shot back, grinning. “I'm working twice as hard as you are.”

She gasped. “Excuse me? How on earth could you possibly think that?”

“I'm not even trying to hit you, Hermione,” he said. “The one spell that did hit you only did so because you stepped in front of it. So while you technically don't even have to dodge spells, just throw them, I have to do both.”

She narrowed her eyes, folding her arms across her chest and Harry suspected he was in for a proper row. Instead, she raised her chin. “You've been letting me off easy?”

He shrugged. “I didn't want to hurt you.”

She scoffed. “Harry Potter, that is the most sexist thing I've ever heard you say! I am just as capable as you of protecting myself, thank you very much. I don't need you or anyone else to go easy on me. If you want a proper duel, then you'd better stop thinking such ridiculous things and start aiming for me, or I'll jinx you in half!”

Harry grinned. “Don't get huffy, Hermione.”

“I'll show you huffy!” she snorted. “Straighten up and get ready.”

He faced off with her again, his wand still held loosely by his side. “I'm ready.”

Her first disarming spell was easy to duck, as was the jelly-leg jinx that she sent along after it. He hadn't intended to actually fire at her this round either, but when she sent a stinging hex (albeit a mild one) right across his backside, leaving a smoking tear along the back of his robes, he thought “What the hell?” His answering spell was a moderately powerful tarantella curse. She whirled out of the way and fired off a tongue-tying hex that very nearly caught him.

She was better than he was at non-verbal spells and he had to work just a bit harder to fire off his own spells without that split-second delay that his lack of focus seemed to cause. He was quicker on his feet, though, and managed to dodge her fairly well.

His best non-verbal spell was the Levicorpus and he didn't really consider the state of her attire before he fired it off. It caught her and in less than a second, Hermione was hanging upside down by one ankle, her robes dropping quickly to obscure her head and arms completely.

“Harry!” she shrieked, her voice muffled by a few layers of fabric. “Put me DOWN!”

He started to laugh at her irritation, until he realized that her robes weren't the only things that had slid out of place in her inverted position. Her pleated skirt had also succumbed to the inevitability of gravity and everything from her ankles to her knickers was in plain view.

Harry, being a red-blooded, rather horny male, couldn't pull his eyes off the sight before him. Hermione—his best friend, constant companion and always sensible advisor—was wearing black, lace knickers. Harry's mouth dropped open and he stared unabashedly. The panties, if they could be called that, looked more like they were made from the mesh bags that the Hogwart's Quidditch equipment was stored in than anything that was actually meant to be worn.

He gaped only a minute longer until she raised her hands and tried to push the skirt back into place. “Sorry!” Harry muttered, waving his wand to drop her and quickly shoving a cushion underneath her with his foot. She collapsed onto it in a jumble and pushed her hair back out of her face, sputtering angrily.

“What were you thinking?” she snapped, climbing quickly to her feet.

“I—I just didn't think about it. I'm sorry,” Harry repeated, turning away from her to keep his eyes from trailing back down to the skirt that was now covering his newest discovery. “I didn't mean—“

“Occumbopardus!” she cried and before he even had time to register the words, his pants had dropped to around his ankles.

He bellowed furiously, bending to pull them up again, but as soon as he did, she flicked her wand and flipped his robes up, leaving his briefs in plain view. “HEY!” he snapped. “Stop that!”

He managed to get his pants back up rather quickly and turned back to face her, irritated. She was smirking at him, one eyebrow raised. “Fair's fair.”

He snorted. “I didn't do that to you on purpose. It was an accident.”

“Yeah, so was mine,” she said with mock innocence. “Whoops.”

Harry blinked at her, his mind reeling. Hermione had just done something—rotten. Vengeful and a little cruel and, even he had to admit, pretty damned funny. “Do you really want to play that way?” he asked.

“You started it,” she pointed out.

“It was an accident,” he repeated. “What you did wasn't.”

“So you say. I still say it was. If you don't believe me, that's your own problem.” Her cheeks were still red, but there was a determined gleam in her eye. “Now, are we going to duel?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

They both got back into position and Hermione raised her wand. The first few spells she threw were simple and nothing unusual, so he started to think that her irritation had died off quickly. As he dodged a leg-locker jinx, however, she fired off another spell that he realized, a moment too late, was a slashing hex. It wasn't meant for skin however. This one was, apparently, meant for clothing only.

With one slash, his white school shirt was ripped from his right shoulder, down across his chest to his left hip. He stopped, gaping. “What the hell was that?”

“An accident,” Hermione said, one eyebrow raised. “Complete accident. Terribly sorry.”

He frowned. “You ripped my shirt.”

“It would appear so, yes.”

Harry picked at the torn edges, then bent to pick up the severed bottom half of his Gryffindor tie. “Thanks, Hermione. I don't know how to fix this, you know.”

Hermione shrugged. “We're in the middle of a duel. Fix it later.”

She raised her wand again and stared at him expectantly. His mind was racing. Twice, she'd hit him with something that was both unexpected and a little mean. He really hadn't meant to flip her upside down, or at least he hadn't meant for her skirt to come up. It had just been an accident. For whatever reason, though, she was taking it personally.

“Hermione—“

She continued to stare at him. There was a rosy tint to her cheeks, a sparkle in her eye and her breath was coming rather quickly. It looked like—Holy Queen Mother, she was actually enjoying this. It wasn't simply revenge. She was actually enjoying being mean.

“Don't back out on me now, Harry,” she said, her lips quirking. “You wanted to duel. Give me a duel.”

He raised his wand hesitantly, taking a deep breath. “Fine.”

She threw the first spell and he ducked it easily, almost too easily. The next three spells she cast were of the same, vague quality. It was almost as though she wasn't really trying. That couldn't be the case, he knew. Hermione would never just—

He was too distracted to realize that she had been purposely hemming him in. Each spell she cast was meant to force him into the middle of an invisible circle. And when he'd gotten there, and couldn't go anywhere else, she laid it on him.

The same slashing spell as before, this one was aimed at his legs. His robe and the trousers beneath were cut jaggedly just above his knees. They dropped to his feet and he tripped, stumbling as he tried to free himself.

“What is with you?” he snapped. “Why do you keep going after my clothes?”

She shrugged, waving her wand negligently. “Accident.”

He sighed, staring at his ruined uniform. “What spell is that, anyway?”

“Why?”

“I'm going to have to fix these. I would like to know what spell to blame it on.”

She hesitated, then said, “Atterotela.”

He muttered the words to himself, extricating his feet from what was left of his trousers. “Where did you learn it?”

“Parvati used it once when she was trying to design a new outfit.”

“Nice,” Harry said, shaking his head. “How do I fix it?”

She smiled slightly. “I guess you'll have to learn to sew.”

Now, he was angry. “It can't be fixed?”

“I don't know. You could ask Mrs. Weasley, but then you'd have to tell her how it happened.”

Without thinking about it, Harry cast a spell out of pure irritation. The rip in her shirt mirrored the one in his, with one significant difference. Through the tear in her clothing, Harry could see what was left of a bra. A bra that had, at one time, matched her black lace knickers. Now, one side of it was sliced cleanly through and Harry could see a great deal of soft, pink skin poking through the hole.

Hermione shrieked, pulling what was left of her robes together. “HARRY!” she howled. “What were you thinking?”

He started to apologize, but found that he couldn't really speak. His mind was too busy trying to record the memory of what he'd seen. It was only a small bit, an innocent bit really, of skin, but he had just seen Hermione's breast.

She had turned away from him and was obviously trying to fix her shirt. He could hear her muttering what he was certain were curses. Some little part of him felt extremely guilty, but there was a much greater part that felt vindicated. She'd started it, after all.

He didn't feel quite so confident, though, when she turned back to look at him. Her eyes were blazing and her teeth were bared. She looked absolutely feral in that moment. “You will pay for that, Harry Potter! I will make sure you pay for it!”

She turned toward the door and started to walk out, and Harry reacted on pure instinct. He wasn't sure that he could cast a summoning spell on a person, but he tried anyway. To his surprise, Hermione jerked to a stop and then started to slide backward across the floor. He didn't consider that he wasn't trying to summon something small, like a book. Something the size of a person, ever a smaller person like Hermione, would have infinitely more kinetic energy than a book.

She hit him with the force of a train, knocking them both backward. His head smacked the stone floor with enough force to make his vision go black and the weight of Hermione's body drove the breath from his lungs.

He lay as still as he could, trying to blink his eyes back into focus and gasping air into his lungs. When the black finally faded, he looked up to see Hermione leaning over him. “Are you all right?” she asked, almost grudgingly.

He started to nod, wincing. “I think so. Are you?”

She still looked angry, but with everything she'd just been through, she also looked a complete mess. Her hair, which was never exactly under control anyway, was falling in messy curls all around her face. She was still blushing and there was a sulky, irritated look in her eyes. It hit Harry at that moment that she was, undeniably, gorgeous. He'd never noticed it before, or he had but hadn't taken the time to think about it. Either way, he couldn't deny it now.

“You should lie still for—“ Hermione started, but Harry cut her off quickly. He didn't know why he did it, but it felt like the right thing to do. He put his hand, rather roughly on the back of her head and pulled her mouth down to his.

She froze as soon as their lips met, so their kiss was one-sided for a while. Then, just as Harry was thinking he should let go of her before she got angry, he heard her let out a tiny little sigh. Her lips parted and she kissed him back. Then, slowly, she let her weight rest against him.

He smiled against her mouth, holding her as tightly as he could. He didn't think about what would happen when the kiss ended, or what it even meant. The only thing he thought about, other than the feel of her lips on his, was just how very much he loved a good duel.

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