Chapter 17: Consequences
The silence after the library had been a living thing for weeks. It wasn’t an absence of sound, but a dense, unspoken weight that filled the common room, the corridors, the spaces between words during meals. Ron and Hermione were a unit now. A fact. They walked with their shoulders touching, spoke in low, private tones, and exchanged looks that held the ghost of that night—a shared secret that shut everyone else out, especially Harry.
It was torture of the most exquisite kind.
Every glance at Hermione was now filtered through the memory of her naked, of Ron’s hands on her, of the sounds she’d made. Harry’s desire, far from being sated by his explosive release, had been honed into a constant, aching edge. He watched her constantly. He studied the way her new robes—noticeably less baggy than her old ones—draped over her curves. The top button of her blouse was often undone, revealing a tantalizing V of smooth skin. She’d charmed her hair sleeker, too. It still bushed out, but it shone, and she’d catch it in a clasp at the nape of her neck, leaving her throat exposed.
She was dressing for Ron. The knowledge was a hot needle in Harry’s gut.
They were in the library again, but this time it was daylight, and it was just the three of them supposedly studying for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Ron and Hermione shared a table, their chairs pulled close. Harry sat opposite, a fortress of textbooks between him and the vision of Hermione leaning over a parchment, the neckline of her blouse gaping open as she wrote.
He couldn’t see a nipple, not quite. But he could see the soft, shadowed valley between her breasts, the gentle swell of their inner curves. His mouth went dry. His textbook, ‘Confronting the Faceless’, lay unopened.
“So, you see,” Hermione was saying, her voice focused, “the key to identifying a Boggart’s true form isn’t just the laughter, it’s the momentary fluctuation in the corporeal manifestation before the Ridikkulus charm takes hold. It’s in Advanced Transfiguration Today, Volume…”
“Sounds boring,” Ron muttered, his arm slung over the back of Hermione’s chair, his fingers absently toying with a strand of her hair. He wasn’t looking at the book. He was looking at the side of her face, at her lips. He looked proprietorial. Satisfied.
Harry’s jaw tightened. He remembered those lips, swollen and wet.
“It’s not boring, it’s crucial,” Hermione chided, but she leaned into Ron’s touch, a faint smile playing on her mouth. She glanced up, and her eyes met Harry’s. He didn’t look away fast enough. He saw her register where his gaze had been fixed—on the open neck of her blouse. A faint pink tinged her cheeks. She subtly straightened, pulling the fabric a little closer together with her free hand.
The gesture, the denial, sent a spike of frustrated arousal straight through him.
“Can I borrow your quill, Hermione?” Harry asked, his voice rougher than he intended.
“Hmm? Oh,