Sometimes when I wake very suddenly from a nightmare and it’s so early in the morning, I have too hard of a time getting back to sleep, and so I just accept that I’m awake now. Things have become easier since the end of the war, the nightmares are now fewer and farther between, and any loss of sleep meant very little now compared to even a year ago. Being back at Hogwarts to finish my education meant that I was able to relax and remain horizontal in my bed for at least a little while. I stared up at the canopy of my four-poster in contemplation, listening to the snores of my dormmates, and watching the light fill the room as the sun rises.
When there’s still an hour until breakfast I decide to get up and get myself dressed, anyway. It’s Monday, the start of a new school week, and despite not being as fresh as I’d hoped, I left the dormitory and made my way down the spiral staircase and into the Gryffindor common room. There were a few other early risers, but at least my favourite cushioned armchair over by the fireplace was free for me to sink into.
I sat there and waited for my friend, knowing that when he woke and saw my four-poster empty, he would know to come looking for me down here. Only, it wasn’t Ron who found me first, as I sat there and watched the students filter down each spiral staircase respectively, I caught a glimpse of a skirt and a pair of legs that I recognised instantly.
Hermione Granger appeared yawning and stretching but at least looking more awake and alert than I felt. I keep forgetting how different she looked to me now, considering everything that we’ve been through, going to hell and back together, spending all of that time on the run and seeing sides of her I wouldn’t normally see, and it became difficult not to notice all of those curves of hers that she otherwise had hidden under the heavy school cloaks we wore.
I could hear her voice in my head, telling me off for thinking about all of these indecent thoughts, but if she knew that I was having them, I wondered if real-life Hermione would be more understanding than that, perhaps even flattered to have the attention, but it had stopped me from saying anything about it all the same.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she spotted me, smiled, and made her way over to me. I swallowed hard nervously, the very reason why I had been reluctant to be around her on my own was because all I could picture now was that version Hermione, the one that could no longer hide those curves from me, no matter how many layers she wore.
“Good morning, Harry,” she said, and then her smile turned into a little frown, “did you have another nightmare? You look tired. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’m fine.”
It was not completely a lie. I had not really thought about what had woken me with such a start, but my dreams and visions had different meanings these days, with Voldemort dead and the connection with him lost, now I mostly dreamed about those that had been lost. She could see that I was nervous, though, restless, and maybe a little red in the eyes. She did not push the subject any further, normally she would in the past, sometimes even being insistent, but like I said, those times were gone now, and our focus shifted towards the house noticeboard over in the corner instead.
Quite a few students had begun to gather around it and point at something newly posted. We both made our way over to read what it said and saw that it was a Hogsmeade announcement. A trip into the town for third-years and up had been confirmed for next weekend and Hermione seemed somewhat pleased about this after she had got up on her tippy-toes next to me to read it.
“Oh, thank heavens,” she said with a sigh, “I was wondering when that would come around. There’s this new book out on Ancient Runes that I desperately want to get and I didn’t want to have to order it by owl post from Flourish and Blotts and pay the delivery fee if I didn’t have too—”
“We should go together, Hermione.”
I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I said it. As we had stood there reading the notice, the other students had dispersed, leaving us more or less alone, and the words had come out of my mouth at almost the precise moment the thought had popped into my head. When I had said this, she had turned her head to look at me, and that familiar, generous smile spread across her face in amusement.
“We always go together, Harry,” she said with a little laugh, “you and me and Ron—”
“No,” I said rather forcibly. I shook my head, she was quite taken aback by this, and she blinked at me. “Not Ron… I just want it to be the two of us. You, and me, alone.”
She raised her eyebrows at me in surprised. She then looked around, perhaps she thought I was playing some sort of joke on her or perhaps she thought Ron was there and I was playing a joke on him, but when it became clear to her that it was neither of those things and that I was completely serious, she looked back at me, surveyed me carefully, and bit her lip.
“Harry, when you say just the two of us, do you mean as a date?”
“I— er— um— I mean— I, uh— yeah.”
“I think I might like that,” she smiled at my awkwardness, reached for my hand, squeezed it, and made me look at her in question, “so long as you can promise me that you won’t be taking us to Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop?”
“What? Oh, Merlin no, definitely not!”
“Good. Then I look forward to it.”
She smiled again, her hand dropped away from mine just in time, after she looked sideways, I did too, and we saw that Ron had just appeared at the bottom of the boy’s staircase, it took him a moment to spot us, and then he came slouching over to us, acting as though we were waiting for him.
“Morning,” he said to us rather dolefully with a big yawn, his eyes flicking towards me, “I wondered where you’d got too.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said and he nodded in acknowledgement.
Ron turned his attention to Hermione, as it always seemed to do nowadays, ever since the three of us had returned to Hogwarts and it had become clear that any relationship that they might have started at the end of the war had fallen apart over the summer and they had reverted back to being friends again. It was a little awkward, Hermione had gone to Australia to find her parents, Ron had been grieving his brother Fred, and things just hadn’t worked out.
She was looking shyly at me now, I was unable to meet her gaze in that moment as I was trying not to look like I was hiding something from Ron, not that he would ever notice with his eyes on her.
“Is everything okay, Hermione?” Ron asked, getting her attention. “You look all red in the face and flustered.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine,” she lied, waving away the thought, “we were just looking at the noticeboard.”
Ron looked too.
“Hogsmeade next weekend? Brilliant!” He turned to look at me with a grin. “Just at the right time, too! I’ve been craving Fudge Flies for about a month now, and Filch confiscated my last pouch of Dungbombs the other day—”
“Why? What were you doing with them?” Hermione asked with alarm, she sounded unsure about whether she wanted to really know.
“Oh, um… it’s probably best if you don’t ask,” he said with a guilty look and a shrug of his shoulders, “anyway, is anyone else hungry, or just me? Let’s go down to breakfast, shall we?”
Ron started marching towards the portrait hole before either of us could answer or argue. However, as he led the way and I went to take a step, Hermione put her hand out in front of me to stop me in my tracks, and waited until our redheaded friend was out of earshot.
“You do know you’re going to have to tell him, right?” She asked me, once I had looked at her with raised eyebrows and she had smiled.
“I know,” I said with a sigh, nodding my head, “it’s not going to be an easy conversation to have, is all, considering the circumstances, the history…”
She continued to smile as she patted me lovingly on the shoulder.
“You’ll figure it out.”
She gestured for us to follow him and as we headed for the portrait hole, Ron’s head reappeared around the frame looking for us curiously.
“You coming?”
We made some silly excuse about Hermione dropping her bag and then we followed him the rest of the way to breakfast.
By the time Saturday had come around, I feared that I was in danger of losing both of my best friends today. Ron had not taken the news well that Hermione and I would be going to Hogsmeade alone together, without him, and on a date. He thought that I had been joking when I had pulled him aside after Quidditch practice on Tuesday evening to tell him, but once he had realised that I was being serious, he had stormed out of the locker rooms and he hadn’t spoken to me or sat next to me in class since.
I decided I wasn’t going to waste my energy trying to fix things with Ron when I had a date to worry about and put all of my attention into instead. Of course, my other fear was messing up on the date so much that Hermione would also stop talking to me and would stop sitting next to me in class, and I would be left with no one.
“Don’t be silly,” Ginny Weasley had said to me after Quidditch practice on the Thursday when I had confided in her (with Ron not talking to me, she had stepped in to fill the role, even though we had our own history to deal with), “Hermione has always had this ability to talk so highly of you Harry, whenever you would come up in our conversations, and even if you had done something she disapproved of. As long as you just be your gentlemanly self, she will have a great time with you, I guarantee it. And if you mess up, she will understand, don’t worry, she won’t stop talking to you if all that happens is the date doesn’t go the way you both intend it too.”
“Ron stopped talking to me.”
“Yeah, well, Ron’s an idiot,” Ginny said as she rolled her eyes, “he’s just jealous, you know what he’s like, he won’t admit it to me, but he’s still bitter that his relationship with Hermione fell through. It was never going to work, they fought way too much, different to the problems that you and I had, but the result is still the same because they weren’t meant to be. He’ll get over it.”
“You know, there was a time when you would have been jealous of me going on a date with someone else, so why the support?”
“Thankfully, that version of me is in the past, Harry,” Ginny said as she pushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled sideways at me knowingly, “unlike Ron, I have other interests, and won’t be attending Hogsmeade this weekend alone. Anyway, I’m happy for you, and for Hermione. Since we stopped going out, and I’ve watched you and her, I realised how better suited you two are for each other and I hope you both bring each other happiness.”
We hugged and I felt better after that. I felt more confident about the day that was coming. Hermione and I had agreed to meet in the common room early, head to breakfast, and then hopefully escape any awkwardness that might be brought on by the presence of Ron. When she came down that spiral staircase and I spotted her, she was a much more the Hermione I knew now, rather than the one that always used to hide from me.
She had always dressed nice when not in uniform. Today, she had on a flowery blouse underneath her woolly jumper, and she had a colourful scarf wrapped around her slender neck. She also wore pale-blue jeans and brown boots with straps across her ankles. But it was what she had done with her hair that made my lips part, the way she had somehow made it bushier and pop more, and she had a flower clip holding it in place as well.
When she spotted me staring, she beamed.
“Hello Harry,” she said as she came over to me, standing there nervously in the middle of the common room, “you look handsome—”
“I do?” I asked anxiously, unlike her I hadn’t dressed spectacularly or done anything different to my hair, but when she smiled at me, I understood that she was merely complimenting me in general, and that I should do the same. “I mean— thank you, you look very handsome too— sorry, pretty, you look very pretty…”
I trailed away, my face as red as a tomato, but she merely smirked at my awkwardness and patted my arm.
“Thank you,” she said as her cheeks reddened. “Shall we head down for breakfast, then?”
I nodded my head in agreement and we left the common room together. The walk downstairs was a little awkward, but otherwise normal. No one seemed to figure out that we were on our first date together, when usually we were always in each other’s company, anyway. Even to us it didn’t feel like a real date, not until we were walking down the slopes of the grounds after breakfast, and I had taken a chance by reaching for her hand and entwining her fingers with mine.
I knew that there were students behind us that would see it, including the Slytherin’s who had a knack for gossip and would let the entire school know in no time, but I did not care. The sideways look and smile that Hermione gave me when I did it was more than worth it, and we were in good spirits all the way down the hill to Hogsmeade and it helped that there was no sign of Ron to diminish the mood that we were in.
“Where do you want to go first?” I asked her as we made our way along the main street, still hand-in-hand, still surrounded by other students as we looked into each of the shop windows that we passed. “Honeydukes? Zonko’s Joke Shop? Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop?”
“Let’s not go somewhere that’s so busy,” she begged of me, as she tugged on my hand and pulled me into a narrow street that was empty. “I want to buy that Ancient Runes book I mentioned first and then we can have the rest of the day to do whatever we please.”
Down the narrow street there were a couple of houses buy only one shop, a bookstore named Tomes and Scrolls. It was a quaint little place, it did not see the foot traffic that perhaps the other shops did, but Hermione was one of its repeat customers, and there were even some Ravenclaw’s who spent their entire Hogsmeade trip lost in the stacks.
At that particular moment it looked empty, the two of us stepped inside, and it was only the owner who greeted us. He was an older looking wizard with greying hair, a bald spot, and glasses. He looked up from his paperwork, inclined his head silently, and after we had nodded our heads back at him, we then disappeared into the stacks of shelves together.
Hermione began to run her finger over the spines of the books in search of what she had come for, whilst I trailed along behind her, randomly reading the titles as I went, and allowing myself to be amused by them.
“Oh look!” Hermione said after a few minutes, and when she pulled from the shelf a book, I thought she had found what she was looking for, but no. “I’ve been wanting to get this book about Arithmancy for ages!”
She ran her hand over the cover of the book, slipped it open to check the price, gasped, and then handed it to me. I looked down at the title: Arithmancy and Numerology by the Numbers, then ran my hand over the cover of the book, and then checked inside for the price as well.
I nearly dropped the book in alarm.
“I thought the book you wanted to get was about Ancient Runes, Hermione?” I asked her, gripping the book in my hands firmly so that it wouldn’t drop, and then swallowing hard as I closed it.
“Yes, it is,” Hermione said, continuing to run her hand along the row, “aha! And here it is!”
She pulled yet another book down, ran her hand over the cover, checked the inside slip for the price, bit her lip, and then held it up to show me. The title of this book was A Whole New Look at Ancient Runes, and it was a very colourful cover with rainbow symbols all over it, something that I hadn’t quite expected when she had first told me about it.
“Oh damn,” Hermione said miserably, looking from the book in her hands to the one in my hands, and frowning, “I’ve just realised, I can’t afford both of them. I’m going to have to pick one of them, Harry. Come on, will you help me pick one? Arithmancy or Ancient Runes?”
It was my turn to look down at the book I was holding, then to the book Hermione was holding, and frown. I held out my free hand, she passed the second book to me, and then I looked down at them both, contemplating them for a moment, before looking back up at Hermione and smiling.
“Don’t worry, I’ll buy them both for you.”
“You what?”
I had turned away from her and began walking back along the row of shelves towards the front before she had been able to react. She hurried after me, I could hear the way her feet shuffled in a panic that she’d hesitated, and I could tell there was worry in her voice when she spoke to me.
“Harry, no, please, I couldn’t ask you to—”
“You don’t have to ask me to, I’m doing it anyway, it’s my pleasure.”
“I’ll pay you back—”
“You’ll do no such thing, Hermione,” I said in my best authoritative voice possible, putting the books down on the front counter with a thud and making the owner of the shop look up from his paperwork, “I want today to be a memorable occasion, so I am going to buy these books for you, and that’s the end of the conversation, okay?”
For a brief moment, Hermione looked like she had wanted to argue with me, but then she just beamed as I spilled the sufficient number of Galleons onto the counter and the owner slipped the books into a brown paper bag and handed them over to a very giddy looking Hermione. The moment we had stepped back outside, she had stopped me in the middle of the street, and wrapped her arms around me in a big bear hug.
“Thank you, Harry.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You know,” she said as we broke from our embrace and she looked curiously into to bag, “at the very least I might have expected you to buy me a Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks for out date, maybe two, but not books, Harry… not expensive leatherbound books!”
“You’re worth it,” I said with unusual confidence, “and I will be buying you that drink, too. Do you want to go there next or is there something else you want to do?”
“There is actually a couple of other places I want to go too before then if you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
I wanted to buy everything else that Hermione looked at that day, I was in that kind of a mood, like the new quill from Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop, the fresh parchment from the post office, and then, all the Salt Water Taffy she could carry out of Honeydukes. Buying her the books, though, meant hat her purse was still full enough to purchase most of it for herself, but I was still insistent on being the one to buy us the Butterbeers at the end of the day.
The Three Broomsticks was at its fullest when we arrived and we got by far the most stares on our date so far. Perhaps it was the exclusion of Ron from our trio that made everyone sit up and take notice, or the fact that we were still holding hands after all this time, or that for the first time on our date, after I had found us a spare table in the back corner and had fetched us each a hot mug of Butterbeer, that Hermione kissed me on the cheek in thanks, and we both went red in the face.
After a time, the crowd around us lost interest, went back to their own private conversations, and it allowed us to start our own.
“I’ve had a lovely time today, Harry,” she said to me with a small smile, her face still a little flushed from kissing me.
“I’ve had a great time too,” I said with relief, “I’m just thankful I didn’t mess the day up and ruin our friendship too.”
“Why would you ruin our—?”
“Just ask Ron.”
Hermione pursed her lips but said nothing. As she took a sip from her mug, I could tell that I had said the wrong thing by mentioning Ron, so I decided to change the topic of conversation for the better.
“Why don’t you tell me about the books, Hermione?”
I gestured towards the brown paper bag now sitting on the table and her face lit up like a little child on Christmas morning. She began to go on one of her famous spiels, in great detail, describing everything about the books that I had purchased for her. An hour or so later, after we had each gone through three Butterbeers at least, and Hermione had spent the time conversing with me about the books, the weeks she spent searching for her parents in Australia, and what she wants to do after graduating, we decided to call it quits and leave when we had both started hiccupping as we talked.
I had been with a tipsy Hermione Granger after a couple of Butterbeers before, but it was a bit different when it was just the two of us, and she allowed herself to become quite handsy, much more than I was used too. She was light-headed, not drunk or abbreviated, but she was still acting outside of what I might have considered normal for her, especially when I felt her hand on my arse.
“You’ve been so good to me today, Harry,” she whispered to me with her arm around my back and her head on my shoulder, “I don’t want this day or date to ever end.”
“Unfortunately, it has too, Hermione, and it’s getting late.”
“I know and it is unfortunate,” she said as she kissed my cheek and her hand on my lower back threatened to go lower again, “but can’t we just go somewhere private and do something silly?”
“Like what?”
“Kiss!”
“Hermione, are you sure that’s what you want? You’re a little tipsy—”
“I’ve had a couple of Butterbeers, so what? So have you!” She shrugged her shoulders and kissed my cheek again, trying to win me over. “I didn’t need the drinks to know that I’ve been eyeing you up all day, Harry Potter. Buying me the books, that was just the clincher! Now, be a good boy, do as I say, and come with me… this way…”
I felt like I had no say in the situation and no choice but to go with her as she took me by the hand and led me off the beaten path that everyone was taking back to Hogwarts. Hermione may have been a little unlike her usual self, but it was not the Butterbeer that had taken control of the situation, it was her, and she had an agenda. We were inside the grounds of the castle, but were now skirting along the edge of the forest, past Hagrid’s Hut, and towards the lake, where it was much quieter.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked her with some concern.
“This way. Just so we’re hidden from view behind a row of these trees.”
I wasn’t completely sure what it was she had instore for me, but perhaps I should have known better. I had expected that maybe she had wanted to kiss me on the lips in private, amongst the trees and away from prying eyes. I did not, however, expect her to threw aside both of our bags (as well as the expensive books), push me forcibly up against a tree, and then start making out with me like she was a girl possessed.
“What’s got into you, Hermione?” I tried to ask her as I attempted to pull away from the kiss to breathe, only for a moment, but she wasn’t letting me.
She didn’t answer my question, the kiss just grew fiercer, and her hands began to wander even more. I was unsure about what I should be doing in return, I was keeping my hands steady on her shoulders as she kissed me and touched me, but after a while, it was not enough for her.
“I want you to touch me, Harry,” she said with conviction as she bit her lip and narrowed her eyes at me.
“Oh, are you sure?”
“Very sure.”
I went red in the face at the thought, but she didn’t even notice, because she flipped us so that now she was the one with her back to the tree, and when she looked down, I did too, and saw that she was beginning to unbutton the front of her jeans. I had never been more flummoxed watching something unfold in front of me in all my life. She was all of a sudden unbuttoned and unzipped and it was like she had opened herself up to me and was asking me to reach my hand inside and feel the warmth that was waiting for me between her legs.
Hermione pulled me back towards her and resumed fiercely kissing me and it felt like she was telling me to put my hands down her pants without her actually saying it. I couldn’t help but keep thinking about the number of Butterbeer’s that she’d had, and I wondered if she would still have been this keen and this open to this sort of activity without them, and whether she would regret allowing me to do this to her when she woke up tomorrow morning.
Then, she stopped letting me think.
“What are you waiting for?” Hermione hissed at me, I had no answer, she reached for my hand, plunged it into her pants herself, and she threw her head back in response to my touch, allowing me to kiss her neck as my fingers began to wriggle in further and explore.
She was wet to touch. It felt like her arousal had been festering all day, I was able to slip my index finger inside of her with ease, but it was clear that she wanted more than that – that she needed more than that – so when I slithered a second finger in, she cried out my name in thanks, wrapped her arms around my neck, told me to get to work, and pulled me back in for another kiss.
I could feel the walls of her vagina clamping down around my fingers, she felt so warm and velvety, I tried to be as gentle with my actions as I could, I had never done anything remotely like this before, not with Ginny, not with Cho, with them it had only ever been about kissing. With Hermione, it was different, we were closer, we knew each other better, she knew what she wanted, she knew how to get what she wanted from me, and I was only too happy to oblige. I must have been doing something right, in any case, for her to continually moan my name and kiss me like she was.
“Deeper, Harry, and faster,” she whispered to me, I was unsure if I could comply with those orders, but I tried my best and she seemed to respond well, “yes, please, more… I’m close!”
I could feel it. I could literally feel her heat on my fingers as she approached her climax. I held onto her the best that I could, I began to feel my fingers cramping as I picked up the speed and made one final push towards the finish line for her.
“Oh—my—goodness, Harry! Fuck!”
I was surprised when it was over. Hermione had very clearly, very openly had her orgasm, but she made no mess. My fingers we wet, sure, her underwear was now very damp, and I could still feel her heat and smell her arousal, but there was no need for a clean up like there would be for me. I was worried, maybe for only a moment, that I hadn’t done it the right way, that my fingering technique had left a lot to be desired.
That was when I realised, Hermione looked completely satisfied, and now that it was done, she was zipping up and buttoning up her jeans back into place, like nothing had ever happened, and it was over.
“Thank you for that, Harry,” she said afterwards with a kiss on my cheek and a brush of her hand through my hair, “thank you for being nothing short of a perfect gentleman on our first date.”
“Um… you’re welcome,” I said, I was slightly taken aback again as she brought me into another hug, and we stayed there like that for some time, enjoying the peaceful tranquillity of our first intimate moment together.
Once it started becoming too cold for us to continue standing there, I wrapped my arm around her, brought her close to keep her warm, and we made our way back to the castle, with the evidence of what we had done still lingering on the fingers of my right hand.