Chapter 6: Ron chooses Lavender's body
The Gryffindor common room felt like a held breath. Saturday morning sunlight streamed through the windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air, but the usual weekend languor was absent. Hermione sat rigidly at a table by the fire, a heavy tome on Arithmancy open but unread before her. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her quill.
Across the room, near the portrait hole, Ron stood with Lavender. His shoulders were hunched, his hands deep in his pockets. Hermione didn’t look, but she heard every strained syllable.
“We need to talk, Lav.”
“Oooh, serious talk?” Lavender’s voice was a bright, chirping thing, oblivious to the frost. “Is it about Hogsmeade later? I was thinking we could—”
“It’s about us.”
Hermoine allowed herself one glance. Ron’s profile was tense, his jaw working. Lavender’s bubbly smile had faltered, her painted lips forming a little ‘o’ of confusion. A hot, uncharitable surge of satisfaction tightened Hermione’s chest. He’s doing it. He actually is.
“Don’t look so pleased. You haven’t won yet.”
Harry slid into the chair opposite her, his expression unreadable. He had a copy of the Daily Prophet, but his eyes were on the scene unfolding.
“I’m not pleased,” Hermione hissed, forcing her gaze back to her book. The equations swam before her eyes. “I’m… observing.”
“You’re gloating. Internally. It’s loud.” Harry turned a page, the rustle of parchment deliberate. “Watch. She’s not going to take a public dismissal.”
As if on cue, Lavender’s voice climbed an octave, a thin wire of panic beneath the sugar. “What about us, Won-Won? We’re perfect!”
Ron mumbled something Hermione couldn’t catch. He shook his head, scuffing his shoe on the stone floor. Lavender’s hands fluttered, then settled on his arms. She leaned in, whispering urgently. Her body pressed against his, her impressive bust—clearly visible in a tight, low-cut pink sweater—deliberately moulding to his chest. It was a tactical manoeuvre. Hermione’s quill snapped.
“Told you,” Harry muttered.
Lavender took Ron’s hand, her expression now a masterpiece of wounded appeal. She pulled him, not towards the dormitories, but to a shadowed alcove behind a large tapestry of Godric Gryffindor. It was semi-private, but not silent. The murmur of their voices would carry.
Hermione’s breath caught. The pretense of studying was abandoned.
“She’s pulling him into a corner,” she whispered, horror and fascination warring within her.
“She’s pulling out the heavy artillery,” Harry corrected, his voice low and flat. “You showed him a glimpse of lace. A promise. She’s going to show him the whole ordnance depot. Bare. And she’s going to let him touch it.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“He’s eighteen. He’s confused. He’s got Lavender’s massive tits pushed in his face, begging him to stay. What do you think he’ll do?”
From the alcove, Lavender’s voice, thick with faux tears, drifted over. “...don’t you love me? Don’t you want this?”
There was a rustle of fabric. A sharp, tight gasp—Ron’s—that seemed to punch the air from the common room.
Hermione went very still. She knew that sound. It was the sound of a visual shock. Her mind, against her will, constructed the image: Lavender, tugging her sweater and the shirt beneath down in that shadowy space, letting the full, heavy weight of her breasts spill into Ron’s stunned view. They would be pale, perhaps with a dusting of freckles, the nipples likely pink and erect in the cool air. An offer. A bribe.
“See?” Harry’s voice was a scrape in her ear. “She wins. He’s looking right now. He’s comparing. And volume has a gravitational pull all its own.”
Hermione felt sick. Her own daring, calculated reveal in the library seemed childish, academic, next to this raw transaction. She had presented a theorem. Lavender was offering the solved, physical proof.
Ron’s voice, strangled and weak: “Lav, don’t…”
“Shh. Just look. They’re all yours. You always stare. Touch them. Go on.”
A long, unbearable silence followed. Hermione imagined his hand, trembling, reaching out. The warm, soft flesh yielding under his calloused fingers. The complete, easy availability of it. Her own breasts, constrained by a sensible bra and a high-collared blouse, felt suddenly like irrelevant, hidden things.
“He’s touching them right now,” Harry said, voicing her nightmare. “Comparing the heft. The way they fill his hands. Different than yours. Yours would be… neater. Perfect handfuls. All firmness and nerve. Hers are a sprawling landscape. He’s mapping it.”
“Stop it,” Hermione breathed.
“Why? You wanted him to choose. This is the choice. Is it the clever, challenging, perky tit he has to earn? Or the big, welcoming, obvious ones being shoved into his palms for free?”
Another rustle from the alcove. Lavender’s voice, smug now, a whispered purr. “That’s not all, Won-Won… look…”
Hermione’s eyes screwed shut. She didn’t need to see to know. The whisper of a skirt being lifted. The hot, silent offer of something more final, more base. A blatant, desperate gambit. See everything. Have everything. Just stay.
Harry let out a soft, humourless chuckle. “And there’s the knockout. She just showed him her pussy. Bare. In the Gryffindor common room. Game, set, and match to Brown.”
Hermione’s stomach twisted. The library, the buttons, it all seemed so distant, so hopelessly naive. She had played chess. Lavender had overturned the board.
“You tried logic,” Harry said, finally looking at her. His green eyes were hard. “She used biology. A more fundamental magic.”
The tapestry stirred. Ron emerged first. His face was a flaming red, his expression one of shell-shocked confusion. His eyes, wide and glazed, found Hermione’s for a second across the room. There was no victory in them. Only a profound, disoriented shame. He looked utterly lost.
Lavender followed, smoothing her skirt, a catlike smile of satisfaction on her lips. She looped her arm possessively through Ron’s, her breasts pressing against his elbow. She had him. She knew it.
Harry watched them head for the portrait hole, presumably for their Hogsmeade date that was now back on. He then turned his gaze fully to Hermione. She was pale, her lower lip caught between her teeth, all her intellectual composure shattered.
“So,” Harry said, leaning forward, his voice dropping to an intimate, crude murmur. “My reward for explaining the game you just lost. Let me see them. Properly. Not some library stunt. Just for me.”
Hermione blinked, the request so vulgar, so timed, it cut through her despair. She looked at him, really looked. At the hunger in his eyes that wasn’t just for her, but for the contest, for the spoils.
A cold clarity returned to her. She straightened her shoulders, the fabric of her blouse pulling tight across her chest. The outlines of her bra, the subtle, proud curves it contained, were just visible.
“No,” she said, her voice quiet but perfectly steady.
Harry’s eyebrow twitched. “No?”
“You don’t get a reward for explaining my failure.” She gathered her book, her movements precise. “And he’s not there to see it. So what’s the point?”
She stood, looking down at him, her expression unreadable. The firelight caught the fierce intelligence back in her eyes, banked but not extinguished. The game had changed. The stakes were clearer. She turned and walked towards the girls' dormitory, leaving Harry alone at the table, the ghost of a refused offer hanging in the air between them. The battle was lost. But as her footsteps faded on the stairs, the quiet, determined rhythm of them suggested the war was far from over.