Chapter 2: The Night
All characters are 18+.
Harry lay perfectly still on the hard floor, the whisper hanging in the dark. Hermione’s offer was a lifeline to decency, and part of him wanted to grasp it. The larger part was fixed on the faint rustle of Ginny’s sheets from the other side of the room, a sound that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.
“I’m fine,” he whispered back, the lie gritty in his throat.
“You’re not. I can hear you shifting. It sounds… painful.”
A soft click. The small bedside lamp on Ginny’s nightstand flickered on, casting a warm, intimate dome of light. Ginny was already sitting up, the thin strap of her camisole slipped down one arm. Her hair was a riot of copper over her shoulders. She looked from Harry, curled on the rug, to Hermione, a worried lump under her blankets.
“This is ridiculous,” Ginny declared, her voice no longer a whisper. “We’re all adults, we’re friends, and we’re acting like this is a cursed object. It’s a bed. Or rather,” she said, a sly smile forming, “they are two beds.”
She swung her legs out from under the covers. Her bare feet padded across the floorboards. She stood over Harry for a moment, her small, shapely toes level with his eyes, then stepped past him to the space between the two single beds. Hermione’s and her own.
“What are you doing?” Hermione asked, propping herself up on her elbows. The movement made the neck of her nightdress gape slightly, and Harry, from his low angle on the floor, saw the shadowed cleft between her breasts before she quickly gathered the fabric.
“Solving the problem,” Ginny said. She pulled her wand from the pocket of her discarded jeans. “A simple fusing charm. We learned it in Charms last year, for repairing furniture. We’ll push them together and make one proper double. Plenty of room for three if we’re… friendly.”
“Absolutely not!” Hermione hissed, sitting fully upright now. The cotton of her nightdress stretched tight across her chest, outlining the full, heavy curves. “Ginny, you cannot be serious. That’s… that’s beyond inappropriate.”
“Why?” Ginny turned, her gaze landing on Harry, then sliding back to Hermione. “Because we might accidentally touch? Grow up, Hermione. It’s for comfort, not a orgy. Unless,” she added, her eyes glinting, “you’re worried you won’t be able to control yourself.”
Hermione’s face flushed a deep scarlet. “That is not—I would never—Harry promised your mother!”
“And he will keep that promise,” Ginny said, her tone shifting to one of mock solemnity. “Harry Potter, the noble Chosen One, on his honor, will keep his hands to himself. Won’t you, Harry?”
All eyes were on him. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, his back against the wall. The idea was madness. A fused bed. The three of them, side by side. The heat of their bodies under one shared expanse of sheet. His promise to Molly felt like a fragile glass wall, and Ginny was a bird about to fly straight into it.
“It’s a bad idea,” he managed.
“It’s a great idea,” Ginny countered. “Or you spend the next week unable to walk straight. Your choice.” She didn’t wait for further argument. With a sharp, precise movement of her wand, she levitated her own bed, the iron frame groaning as it slid smoothly across the floor until its side met Hermione’s with a soft thump.
“Ferrumfigo!” Ginny incanted, tapping the joined headboards. A pulse of blue light shimmered where the metal met, welding it seamlessly into a single, wide frame.
The room felt different. The central piece of furniture now dominated it, a vast, inviting plain. The two separate sets of sheets and blankets looked suddenly silly, mismatched.
“There,” Ginny said, satisfied. She climbed onto the middle of the new, large bed, kneeling on the mattress. It dipped under her weight. “See? Space.” She bounced slightly, and the camisole, already loose, fluttered. The neckline drooped, and for a heart-stopping second, Harry saw the upper slopes of her small breasts, the pale, freckled skin almost glowing in the lamplight. He saw the beginning of the curve, the subtle shadow that hinted at the underside. But the crucial peaks remained hidden, taunting him from just beyond the fabric’s edge.
Hermione looked stricken. She was backed against her headboard, knees drawn up. “I don’t like this.”
“You don’t have to like it. You just have to sleep.” Ginny flopped down on her back, right in the center, arms spread. “Come on, Harry. Up you get. Floor time is over.”
His legs moved without his conscious command. He stood, his joints protesting. The bed was a siren’s call. He could smell Ginny’s lavender scent and the cleaner, bookish smell of Hermione’s sheets, all mingling together.
“I’ll stay on the edge,” he said, his voice low. “And I won’t… I’ll stay on my side.”
“Such a gentleman,” Ginny purred, rolling onto her side to face Hermione, her back now to the center. “You take the other edge, Hermione. We’ll put the savior of the wizarding world in the middle. For safety.”
“No!” both Harry and Hermione said in unison.
Ginny laughed, the sound rich and warm. “Fine. Suit yourselves. I’m in the middle then. I’m not afraid.” She pulled the blanket up to her waist, leaving her camisole-clad back exposed. The line of her spine was a delicate curve down to the swell of her hips where the sheet covered her.
Hermione, after a long, tense moment, slowly uncurled. She slid down, lying rigid on her far edge of the fused bed, her back to Ginny. She pulled her blanket up to her chin, a fortress against the night.
Harry, on Ginny’s other side, lay down atop the covers, still fully clothed. He kept a careful six inches between his body and hers. The lamp went out again, this time by Ginny’s wandless command.
The darkness was absolute, but now it was filled with a new, overwhelming awareness. He could feel the faint heat radiating from Ginny’s body. He could hear her breathing, slow and even. He could hear the faster, shallower breaths from Hermione on her other side.
Minutes stretched. The house was silent. His body was a rod of tension, every nerve ending focused on the space between his arm and Ginny’s back.
Then she moved.
It was a small, sleepy shift, a sigh escaping her lips as she settled. Her back pressed lightly against his upper arm. The thin silk of her camisole was nothing. He could feel the warmth of her skin, the shape of her shoulder blade. He held his breath.
Another shift. This one more deliberate. She rolled onto her back, her arm brushing his. Her hand, warm and small, came to rest on his forearm, which was crossed tightly over his own chest. She didn’t move it.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Her fingers traced a faint, idle pattern on his sleeve.
On her other side, Hermione was motionless, but her breathing had hitched. She was listening.
Ginny’s hand slid lower, down to his wrist. Her pinky finger hooked under his cuff, touching his skin. A bolt of pure heat shot up his arm. She was awake. She was doing this on purpose.
“Ginny,” he whispered, a warning and a plea.
“Hmm?” she murmured, her voice thick with false sleep. “Cold.” She shifted again, turning towards him this time. In the dark, her face was a pale oval close to his. Her breath fanned his cheek. Her body aligned with his, and through the layers of clothing and thin silk, he felt the impossible soft pressure of one small, perfect breast against his bicep. The shape was unmistakable—a firm, gentle weight. His whole world narrowed to that single point of contact.
He was drowning. The promise, the room, Hermione a foot away—it all melted into a haze of want. His hand, trapped under hers, twitched.
A louder rustle came from Hermione’s side. A frustrated, angry turn. The springs squeaked.
The sound was a bucket of cold water. Harry jerked his arm back as if burned, rolling away onto his far edge, nearly tumbling off the bed.
Ginny let out a soft, low chuckle in the dark. “Goodnight, Harry,” she whispered, the words dripping with satisfied mischief.
He didn’t answer. He lay facing the wall, his body aching with a different, sharper pain than the floor had provided. He had felt it. The shape, the reality of her. And it had been a calculated move in a game he didn’t know how to play. Behind him, he heard the steady rhythm of Ginny’s breathing slip into the easy cadence of actual sleep, while from Hermione’s side of the vast, fused bed, there came only a long, silent, wakeful tension. The spell was holding the beds together, but it was doing nothing to bridge the chasm widening between the three of them.