Chapter 6: The Dare
Ginny’s sudden movement was a lightning strike, severing the static charge that had held them frozen. She stepped back, pulling Hermione with her by the wrist, breaking the contact that had scorched Harry’s skin. The cool air of the room rushed in where their bodies had been, a shocking reminder of the world outside this feverish triangle.
Harry staggered, his back still against the door, his breath ragged. The loss of Hermione’s warmth felt like a wound.
Ginny didn’t go far. She stopped beside her bed, her eyes gleaming in the lamplight. She still held Hermione’s wrist, her thumb stroking absent, possessive circles on the inside of her pulse point. Hermione looked dazed, her gaze unfocused, her lips slightly parted.
“All this talking,” Ginny said, her voice now clear and challenging, devoid of its earlier whisper. “All this feeling. It’s just noise, isn’t it?” She looked straight at Harry, at the evident, painful strain against his trousers. “You’re about to burst out of your skin. So show us.”
Harry’s brain short-circuited. “What?”
“You heard me. Pull it out. That hard cock you’ve been trying to hide from us all summer. Let’s see what’s causing all the trouble.”
“Ginny, you can’t be serious,” Hermione breathed, finding her voice. It was laced with a scandalized horror that didn’t quite mask a thread of raw curiosity. She tried to pull her wrist free, but Ginny’s grip tightened.
“I’m completely serious. He’s been imagining us. Spying on us. Now he’s standing there, in my room, about to combust. Enough imagination, Harry. Reality.”
Harry shook his head, a frantic, animal denial. His hands stayed frozen at his sides, clenched into fists. This was a line, bright and blazing. Crossing it meant there was no pretending, no going back to before. It meant betraying Ron, betraying Molly, betraying the friendships that were the foundation of his life.
“I… I can’t,” he choked out.
“Can’t?” Ginny mocked softly. “Or won’t? You were ready enough when she was pressed against you.” She gave Hermione’s wrist a little shake. “Look at him, Hermione. He’s terrified. Of us.”
Hermione’s eyes, wide and dark, finally focused on Harry’s face. He saw the conflict raging in them—the hurt from the pond, the intellectual outrage, but beneath it, that same unnameable hunger he felt reflected back at him. It was that glimpse of hunger that undid him more than Ginny’s taunts.
“This is wrong,” Hermione stated, but it sounded like a question. She turned her body away from Harry, presenting her profile, a study in defiance. “I’m leaving.”
But in turning, she presented the very view that had unhinged him hours earlier. The soft, worn cotton of her nightdress pulled taut across the full, perfect curve of her backside. The lamp light traced its generous shape, highlighting the deep shadow between her thighs, the way the fabric clung to her. It was an unconscious, devastating gesture. His gaze, helpless, locked onto it. The memory of water on bare skin fused with the present reality, and the last fragile thread of his restraint snapped with an almost audible twang.
A low, guttural sound escaped him. His hands, moving of their own volition, went to the button of his trousers. His fingers, clumsy and shaking, fumbled it open. The zip’s rasp was obscenely loud in the silent room.
Hermione went rigid, hearing it. She didn’t turn back.
Ginny watched, a slow smile spreading across her face, her breath coming quicker.
Harry pushed his trousers and boxers down in one rough, desperate motion. The cool air was a shock, then irrelevant as the heavy, aching weight of his erection sprung free. He was painfully, fully hard, the tip flushed and leaking. He stood there, exposed, vulnerable, burning with shame and a dizzying, overwhelming need.
Ginny let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Merlin, Harry,” she murmured, her eyes drinking him in. “No wonder you’ve been so jumpy. All that, just trapped in your pants.” Her gaze flicked to Hermione’s rigid back. “And you’re staring at her arse again. Right now. Even like this. You want to bury yourself in it, don’t you?”
Hermione flinched as if struck. Her head turned slightly, just enough to see Ginny’s expression. Then, slowly, as if against every ounce of her will, she began to turn around.
Harry couldn’t move. He was pinned, not by magic, but by the enormity of the moment. He saw the understanding dawn on her face before her eyes even reached his. She saw Ginny’s hungry look, heard the truth in her taunt. Her turn accelerated.
Her eyes, wide and shocked, swept from his face, down his chest, past his stomach, and then—
They stopped.
All the color drained from Hermione’s face, only to flood back in a searing crimson blush that swept from her cheeks down her neck, disappearing beneath the neckline of her nightdress. Her mouth fell open. A tiny, choked gasp escaped her.
She was looking, directly, at his cock.
It twitched under her gaze, a frantic, involuntary pulse. Her eyes snapped up to his, held. He saw no anger now. No intellectual outrage. He saw pure, undiluted shock, and beneath that, a deep, welling fascination. Her gaze dropped again, slower this time, tracing the length of him, the veins, the glistening tip. She licked her lips, a quick, nervous flicker.
The room held its breath.
Ginny, ever the catalyst, broke the silence. Her voice was a husky murmur. “Go on, Hermione. You’ve read the theory. Now the practical is right in front of you.”
Hermione didn’t look at Ginny. She only looked at Harry, her expression a battlefield of fear, curiosity, and a dawning, terrifying empathy. She saw his trembling, his shame, his desperate want. Her own hand, the one not held by Ginny, rose slowly, hovering in the air between them.
She didn’t speak. She just stared, and her hovering hand trembled, and the air crackled with the silent, screaming question.