Chapter 15: The Allure
The chill in the History of Magic classroom had little to do with the spectral professor droning at the front. It was the kind of cold that came from severed connections and hostile silence. Harry sat alone at a desk near the back, an island in a sea of whispering students. The usual buzz of boredom was replaced by something sharper, more focused. He could feel the glances, hot and needling, on the back of his neck.
Hermione sat rigidly three rows ahead, her posture so perfect it looked painful. She was staring directly at Professor Binns as he floated through a lecture on the Goblin Wars of 1612, but her eyes were unseeing, glassy. She’d swapped her usual sweaters for a higher-necked blouse, buttoned to the throat. Ginny, beside her, was a coiled spring, her quill gripped so tightly her knuckles were white. Ron was absent. Again.
Two rows to Harry’s left, Seamus Finnegan leaned across the aisle, his voice a low, conspiratorial grumble.
“Alright, Potter?”
Harry grunted, not looking up from his blank parchment.
“Come on,” Seamus pressed, a grin in his voice. “Half the tower’s talking. The other half is just jealous they weren’t there.”
Cormac McLaggen, sitting behind Seamus, leaned forward, his broad frame casting a shadow. “Seriously. Spare us the details. We’re dying here.”
Harry finally looked at them. Their faces weren’t cruel, not like Lavender’s had been. They were hungry with a base, gossipy curiosity. It was a different kind of power, cheap and sticky, but it was something to grasp. He felt the hollow ache in his chest throb, and he filled it with bravado.
“What’s to tell?” Harry said, his voice carrying just enough to make Hermione’s shoulders stiffen. “They were out. I saw them.”
“But what were they like?” Cormac insisted, his voice dropping. “Weasley’s got that firecracker thing going on. They match that?”
Harry glanced toward Ginny. Her head tilted a fraction, a predator hearing its name. He looked back at Cormac.
“Perfect handfuls,” Harry said, the words crude and deliberate. “Small. Pale. Freckled just like the rest of her. Pink tips. Really… pert. Like they were surprised to be out in the open.”
A snigger rippled through the small group of listening boys. Dean Thomas, sitting several seats ahead, slammed his book shut. He didn’t turn around.
“And Granger’s?” Seamus asked, his eyes flicking to her rigid back. “Always figured she’d bind them up with library tape.”
Hermione’s quill snapped with a tiny, crisp snap. She didn’t move.
A dark, thrilling heat spread through Harry. This was punishment, for her, for Ginny, for himself. This was the only language that felt true anymore.
“One was enough to get the idea,” he said, louder now. He watched the edge of Hermione’s ear turn scarlet. “Bigger than Ginny’s. So fucking perky. Like they defied gravity. Just this perfect, soft curve. And the nipple… a deeper pink. Like a rose. Bookish on the outside, but Christ, her tits are a proper revelation.”
The classroom air thickened. Parvati and Lavender, several seats over, stared at him in open disgust. But other boys were listening, rapt. Binns continued, oblivious, discussing weaponized troll leg bones.
Hermione’s breath hitched, a barely audible sound swallowed by the ghost’s lecture. She felt the weight of every imagined stare like a physical touch. The vulgar words painted a picture in the air, a gross, public violation. And yet, beneath the molten shame, a traitorous wire of heat sparked in her abdomen.
Bookish on the outside.
A proper revelation.
The phrases looped in her mind. They were vile. Objectifying. They reduced her to a body part. But they also held a shocking, illicit charge. For so long, she’d been the brain, the voice of reason, the one in the sensible jumper. To be seen, even through this filthy lens, as something possessing a secret, desirable physicality… it unmoored her. The heat spread, a slow, unwelcome thaw between her legs. She squeezed her thighs together under the desk, horrified at her own body’s betrayal.
Ginny’s hand found hers under the table, a brief, fierce squeeze of solidarity. But even that felt distant.
“Which one did you see?” Cormac breathed, utterly absorbed. “Left or right?”
“Right,” Harry said instantly, the image seared into his memory. “The right one. Just… perfect. Makes you wonder what the left looks like. Symmetry, you know?”
A loud, shuddering sigh came from Hermione’s direction. She stood up abruptly, gathering her books with clumsy, loud motions.
“Professor,” she said, her voice strangled. “I feel unwell. May I be excused?”
Binns blinked slowly, peering at her as if from a great distance. “Eh? The Treaty of 1614 is particularly relevant to… oh, very well. Dismissed.”
She all but fled, the door swinging shut with a soft thud that echoed in the sudden quiet she left behind.
The spell was broken. Ginny turned her head slowly and looked directly at Harry. Her expression wasn’t fiery anger anymore. It was cold, assessing disappointment, as if she were examining a strange, pathetic creature. It was worse than any slap.
Harry’s vulgar smile faded. The cheap power evaporated, leaving the taste of ash in his mouth. He’d wanted a reaction, and he’d gotten one. He’d seen the furious blush on her neck, the tremble in her hands. He’d also seen, in the moment before she fled, the glint of unshed tears. And deep down, in a place he refused to acknowledge, he knew a part of him had wanted to plant that seed in her, that dark, thrilling knowledge that under all the books and bossy orders, she had a body that could silence a room.
The bell rang. Students shuffled out, the whispers now a steady river around him. He didn’t move.
Cormac clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “Cheers, Potter. Some of us live vicariously.”
Harry said nothing. He stared at the empty space where Hermione had sat. The ghost of her arousal, mirrored by his own, hung in the air, tangled irrevocably with the cruelty that spawned it. He had stripped her bare in front of everyone, again. And the most haunting part, the part that coiled cold in his gut, was the terrifying sense that a piece of her, a secret, hidden piece, had liked it.