Chapter 3: The Tease
The sandwiches were thick with roast beef and sharp mustard, the crisps were salty, and the lemonade was so cold it made their teeth ache. But for Harry, the meal sat in his stomach like a stone. He could feel the weight of Ginny’s knowing look from across the makeshift picnic blanket, and the memory of Hermione’s fingers brushing his under the water was a live wire in his mind. He chewed mechanically, laughing when he was supposed to, nodding along to Bill’s story about a Romanian dragon, all while operating on a five-second delay.
“Right, you lot,” Molly’s voice cut through the chatter, hands on her hips. “No dripping all over my clean floors. You’ll shower off the pool charms before you set one foot inside.”
George groaned. “Mum, it’s magically clean water!”
“And you’re magically about to lose pudding privileges,” she said archly. “Fred, George, you set it up. You’re the architects.”
With exaggerated sighs, the twins conjured a sturdy wooden stall at the edge of the garden, near the broom shed. It was simple: four walls, a slatted floor, a charmed showerhead, and a curtain that, Harry noticed with a jump in his pulse, seemed a bit less opaque than it should be.
“Ladies first,” Fred announced with a flourish. “Age before beauty, which means Hermione, then Ginny, then the rest of us ugly trolls.”
Hermione hesitated, clutching her towel around her. “Can’t we just use the bathroom?”
“Pipe’s jinxed from Ron’s attempt to make it a ketchup fountain last week,” Arthur said apologetically, not looking up from his sandwich. “This is more efficient.”
Ginny stood, stretching with a feline grace that made Ron look away, coughing. “Oh, don’t be such a prune, Hermione. It’s just water.” She shot a glance at Harry, a flicker of challenge. “We won’t peek.”
Harry busied himself with gathering plates, his face hot.
Hermione disappeared into the stall. The curtain snicked shut. A moment later, the sound of water pattering on wood filled the air, a steady, intimate rhythm that seemed to drown out all other sound. Harry stared fixedly at a knot in the pine of the garden table. He counted the grooves. He listened to Charlie discuss Quidditch league reforms.
But his mind was in the stall. The curve of Hermione’s spine he’d seen in the one-piece. The way the water would slick her hair down her back. The private, unguarded version of her he’d only ever imagined. A version without books, without plans, just skin and steam.
It was a stupid, treacherous thought. He hated himself for it. But his body hummed with a curious, aching tension.
The water stopped. He heard the rustle of a towel, the soft sigh he knew was Hermione’s. The curtain opened a crack and she slipped out, wrapped from chest to knee, her hair in a dark, damp turban. She looked clean-scrubbed and pink, her eyes avoiding everyone’s as she hurried towards the house.
“My turn,” Ginny announced, and sauntered over. She didn’t bother with a modest crack in the curtain. She pulled it halfway open, hung her towel on a hook inside where it was clearly visible, and then shut it with a definitive swish. The message was as clear as the charmed water: I have nothing to hide.
The boys fell into a strained, joking silence. The shower started again. Harry tried to block out the sounds, the faint shadow-play on the thin fabric. Ron was talking about the Chudley Cannons. Harry heard none of it.
Ginny emerged minutes later, her hair dripping water onto her simple tank top, shorts slung low on her hips. She smelled of clean soap and something floral. “All yours, boys,” she said, her eyes skating over Harry with a smirk.
One by one, the Weasley men went. Bill, then Charlie, then a boisterous Fred and George together (“Water conservation!”), then Ron, who came out complaining the water had gone cold.
Finally, it was Harry’s turn. The inside of the stall was humid, fragrant with the ghost of their soaps—Ginny’s wildflowers, Hermione’s simpler, crisper scent. He stripped quickly, the cool air a shock on his skin. He turned the charmed tap and the water cascaded down, blissfully hot. He let it sluice over his head, trying to wash the afternoon’s confusion away. He scrubbed at his scalp, eyes closed.
A gust of wind rattled the stall.
He heard it first—a soft, startled gasp from just outside the curtain. His eyes flew open.
The wind had caught the edge of the curtain, blowing it out and away from the wall, creating a gap of about six inches. And through that gap, framed perfectly, was Hermione.
She was bent over, rummaging in her beaded bag which she must have left on a nearby stool. Towel forgotten. Fully, completely naked. The afternoon sun caught the graceful line of her back, the dip at the base of her spine, the soft, perfect curve of her bare backside. Water from her hair dripped onto her shoulder and traced a path down. She was utterly unaware, frowning slightly in concentration.
Time stopped. Air left his lungs. Every detail burned itself into his brain: the subtle mole just above her hip, the smooth plane of her skin, the way her muscles shifted under the surface as she moved. It was the most profoundly beautiful and private thing he had ever seen.
Then, as if sensing the weight of his gaze, she froze. Her head turned slowly, her eyes widening in horror as they met his through the gap.
He jerked back as if scalded, yanking the curtain closed with a force that rattled the whole stall. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. Shame, hot and corrosive, flooded him, followed by a gut-deep pang of longing so acute it felt like illness.
“Harry?” Her voice was small, trembling on the other side of the wood.
“I’m— It was the wind,” he stammered, the words thick and stupid. “The curtain blew open. I didn’t— I wasn’t—”
Silence. A terrible, crushing silence. Then the sound of rapid footsteps retreating towards the house.
He turned the water to cold and stood under the brutal spray until his skin was numb, trying to freeze the image out of his mind, trying to freeze himself solid. It was no use. It was seared in there forever.
He dressed with clumsy fingers and stepped out into the empty garden. The others had gone inside. The sun felt accusing.
He walked into the Burrow, the cozy chaos of the living room feeling like a courtroom. Hermione was curled in an armchair, a book open but unread on her lap. She was dressed now, in jeans and a jumper despite the heat, arms wrapped tightly around herself. She wouldn’t look at him.
Ron was oblivious, arguing with the twins over a pack of Exploding Snap. Ginny was watching from the sofa, her sharp eyes missing nothing. She saw Harry’s ashen face, saw Hermione’s rigid posture, the red rims of her eyes.
“All clean, Harry?” Ginny asked, her voice deceptively light.
“Yeah,” he croaked.
Hermione flinched at the sound of his voice.
Ginny’s gaze narrowed. She looked from Harry’s guilty, stricken expression to Hermione’s defensive curl. A slow understanding dawned on her face, cold and clear. The playful tease vanished, replaced by something harder, more assessing.
She uncurled herself from the sofa and walked to Hermione’s chair, perching on the arm. She placed a hand on Hermione’s shoulder, a gesture of solidarity that felt, to Harry, like a territorial mark.
“Everything okay, ‘Mione?” Ginny asked, her voice soft but carrying across the room. Her eyes, however, remained fixed on Harry, challenging him, daring him to explain.
Harry stood frozen in the doorway, the scent of lavender and guilt clinging to him, knowing nothing was okay, and that the fragile peace of the Burrow had just shattered around a glimpse of skin and a curtain blown open by the wind.