Chapter 9: Confession
The tower room held the close, familiar scent of wool blankets, broom polish, and boy. Darkness pressed against the leaded windows, but Harry’s four-poster was a world unto itself, sealed tight by heavy crimson curtains. A faint, silvery Lumos hovered near his pillow, casting dancing shadows.
He was on his back, the sheets tangled around his hips. His eyes were closed, but he didn’t need them. The image was burned onto the back of his lids, sharper than any photograph.
The jumper bunching. The shuddering breath. The clasp.
His hand moved under the covers, a slow, sure rhythm. The friction was good, but the memory was everything. It poured through him, hot and thick as syrup.
The bra falling. Not a dramatic drop. A soft, soundless surrender to gravity. Then—
Her tits. Hermione’s tits. Uncovered.
His mind’s eye traced them, not as a whole, but in exquisite, catalogued details. The full, creamy weight of them. The way they’d swayed, just slightly, with her panicked tremor. The pale, smooth skin that looked so soft he could have sunk his face into it. And the nipples. Small, tight, darker than the surrounding flesh, pebbled into perfect, enticing points. The firelight had gilded the upper curves, leaving the undersides and the deep shadow of her cleavage a mystery. That contrast—the seen and the hinted-at—drove him wild.
He imagined his hands there. Not groping, but lifting, weighing their soft heft. Would they spill through his fingers? His thumb brushed his own tip, a rough, swift circle, imagining brushing over that tight peak. A low groan escaped his clenched teeth.
He’d done this three times since returning from the common room. Each time, the climax had been a shuddering, draining eruption that left him hollow for five minutes before the image—her wide, trusting eyes, her bare chest—came swimming back, more potent than before. It was a compulsion. He was mining the memory for every drop of sensation, and the vein seemed infinitely deep.
“Are they okay?” she’d whispered.
“They’re fucking perfect.”
His hips bucked off the mattress. The sheets were damp. He didn’t care. This time was slower, drawn-out, a deliberate torture. He was back in the armchair, and she was standing there, and she wasn’t covering up. She was stepping closer. Letting him look until his eyes ached.
A sharp, gasping breath came from the next bed. The rhythm of Ron’s snoring hitched, stopped, then resumed with a wet snort.
Harry froze, his fist stilling. The fantasy shimmered, threatened to dissolve. He waited, listening to the steady, oblivious sounds of his sleeping roommates—Seamus’s mumbling, Dean’s deep sighs. He let the silence settle back into his curtains.
He started again, but the spell was frayed. The urgency returned, rougher now. He chased it, chasing the vanishing high of the first few times. It was quicker now, a desperate, mechanical climb. He bit his lip, stifling the sound as the tension coiled, snapped, and left him sprawled and sticky in the dark. A brief, empty calm.
Then, like a tide, the memory rolled back in.
“Blimey, Harry. You look like death warmed over.”
Ron’s voice cut through the fog at breakfast. Harry blinked, dragging his focus from the hypnotic swirl of milk in his porridge. He’d been seeing shapes in it—curves, shadows.
“Didn’t sleep much,” Harry mumbled, stabbing a sausage.
“Yeah, no kidding.” Ron shoved a forkful of egg into his mouth, speaking around it. “Heard you… rustling about. All night. You ill or something?”
Across the table, Hermione was pointedly reading The Daily Prophet, her neck flushed crimson. She hadn’t made eye contact with him once.
“No. Just… restless.”
Ron leaned in, his voice dropping. “Is it… you-know… the stuff with Malfoy? The cabinet?” His concern was genuine, laced with the constant, low-grade anxiety of their clandestine mission for Dumbledore.
For a second, Harry almost seized the excuse. It was noble. It was believable. But the secret in his gut, the vivid, guilty, thrilling secret, was too big. It pressed against his teeth. And Ron was his best friend. They’d shared everything—fears, dangers, triumphs. Why not this? This ugly, magnificent, selfish thing?
He put his fork down. The Great Hall’s noise seemed to recede, muffled by the pounding in his ears.
“It’s not that.” Harry kept his eyes on his plate. “It’s… something else.”
Ron waited, chewing slowly.
Harry took a breath. “You know how Hermione’s been… weird about you and Lavender?”
Ron’s ears went pink. “Yeah. Bit naggy, really.”
“She came to me last night. In the common room. She was… upset.” Harry chanced a glance. Ron’s brows were drawn together in confused irritation. “She thinks you don’t fancy her because she’s… you know. Not… physical enough.”
Ron’s confusion deepened. “What’s that got to do with you not sleeping?”
This was the ledge. Harry stepped off. “She asked me… she asked me if she was… unattractive. Like, really asked. To prove a point, she… Merlin, Ron. She showed me.”
Ron froze. A bit of sausage fell from his fork. “Showed you what?”
“Her tits, Ron.” The words were blunt, heavy stones dropped between them. “She took her jumper off. Her bra. She stood there and she showed me her naked tits.”
The color drained from Ron’s face, then flooded back in a violent, freckle-dotted wave. His mouth hung open. His eyes darted, instinctively, to Hermione, then back to Harry, wide with a storm of emotions—shock, disbelief, a fierce, burning jealousy, and a flicker of something darkly understanding.
“She… you…” Ron couldn’t form a sentence. He just stared.
“She wanted to know if they were okay. If they were… good enough. To get your attention.” The confession was pouring out now, a toxic relief. “And I told her. I told her they were perfect. Because they are, Ron. They’re fucking incredible. Full and… and soft-looking and just… perfect.”
He was describing them to Ron. He was making Ron see them. The power of it was almost as heady as the memory itself.
Ron finally found his voice, a strangled whisper. “You’re having me on.”
“I’m not. I swear on my broom.” Harry leaned closer, the secret bonding them in a wicked, intimate pact. “That’s why I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I’ve been wanking all night, thinking about it. About her. About your girlfriend’s best friend’s tits, just… right there.”
He saw the exact moment the information truly processed in Ron’s brain. The jealousy warred with a hungry, voyeuristic curiosity. Ron’s eyes glazed over for a second. He was picturing it too. Harry could see him trying. The lanky git had probably tried a thousand times himself, and now Harry was giving him the blueprint.
“She really… showed you?” Ron’s voice was thick.
“Yeah.”
“And you… you’ve been…”
“Constantly.”
They sat in silence. The clamor of the hall surged back—clattering plates, shouted jokes, the flutter of owl wings. It felt like they were in a silent, transparent bubble. Ron stared at his plate, his ears flaming.
“Don’t tell her I told you,” Harry said, the final stitch in their conspiracy. “She’d kill me. And don’t… don’t be a prick to her about it. She’s vulnerable.”
Ron just nodded, dazed. He looked up, his gaze drifting back across the table to Hermione, who was now sipping pumpkin juice, her brow furrowed at an article. He was seeing her differently. The baggy cardigan she wore was no longer just a cardigan. It was a curtain, hiding what Harry had seen. What he now knew was there.
Harry watched Ron watch her. A twisted, satisfied heat bloomed in his chest. He’d shared the secret, but he hadn’t given it away. He still owned the memory, the first, shocking vision. He’d just planted a seed in Ron’s mind, a seed that would grow into a restless, hungry thing.
He scooped up a mouthful of cold porridge. His body was tired, sated, but his mind was already circling back, ready to revisit the treasure vault once more. The vault was his, but now, he’d given Ron a key to peer through the lock. The thought was unsettling, electric, and it coiled in his gut alongside the spent desire, a new kind of tension waiting for nightfall.