Title: Not a Mistake
Characters/Pairings: Harry/Hermione
Rating: Adult
Summary: Events transpire after too much wine that change Harry and Hermione's relationship, but Harry knows it's not a mistake. He just has to convince Hermione now.
Word Count: 3300
Beta: None so please excuse an errors.
juju84 prompt: Not a mistake
The light hurts her eyes. Hermione cringes as she immediately closes them again. Her head is pounding, and she feels like something might have crawled into her mouth and died. There had been far too much wine last night if she feels this bloody awful in the morning. She’s not one to overindulge, ever, so she doesn’t have experience with hangovers. There is a potion that can help with the symptoms, but it isn’t one she keeps around the house since she’s never needed it before. That means she’ll have to try to remember the Muggle method of dealing with drinking too much. Water and two aspirin, she thinks, both of which mean having to open her eyes and actually get out of bed.
There’s a noise beside her that startles her. When she realizes she isn’t alone, she squeaks and moves quickly, misjudging the distance between herself and the side of the bed. She tumbles onto the floor with the sheet wrapping around her as she flails around. When she lands, she lets out an oomph because the floor is hard and her bum is probably going to bruise. There’s noise from the bed then a head appears over the edge of the bed and all she can see is messy black hair. Then Harry’s face comes into focus, and he’s staring down at her looking just as confused as she feels.
“You alright?” he asks, wincing at the loud sound. He lowers his voice. “My head hurts.”
“We drank too much,” she whispers, trying to sort through her memories to figure out why Harry is sharing her bed instead of either using the guest bed or just returning to his own place last night.
“You’re naked,” Harry murmurs, staring at her breasts after several attempts at looking at her face instead.
She squeaks again and moves the sheet over her. “What did we do last night?”
“Uh,” Harry starts to answer before he trails off. “I think we got naked. I’m not wearing anything, either.” He clears his throat and moves around a bit. “I’m clean, and the sheets are spotless. I mean, if we, um, had sex, we cleaned up after ourselves, at least?”
“We didn’t have sex,” she says quickly, rubbing her head as she counts to ten. “I’d feel it if we’d done that.”
“Oh. Right.” He blinks down at her. “Why would we get naked if we weren’t going to have sex?”
“I don’t know, Harry!” She winces at how shrill her voice is and the way it makes her head throb. “There are other things that can be done naked besides penetration. Perhaps we did something else.”
“Merlin, I hope not. I’d hate to have done something when we were pissed and not able to remember it,” Harry mutters. He suddenly smiles. “Wait. I seem to remember complaining about the flat being too hot? You weren’t able to keep your wand steady to strengthen the cooling charms, so maybe that’s why we’re naked.”
“I seem to remember something about that,” she agrees, hating the way the alcohol has clouded her memories. She reaches up to touch her lips, which are tender and a little sore. Glancing up, she sees that Harry is staring at her mouth. “We, uh.”
“Snogged. A lot.” Harry nods slowly. “I’m starting to remember more. That’s also why we got naked. You’re gonna have to do a cleaning charm on the sofa, I think. That’s why the bed’s clean. We were, um in the sitting room. It was too warm, and you couldn’t do the charm, and it was making you mad, and you’re bloody gorgeous when you’re flushed and angry at something other than me and I’d been drinking wine so I felt particularly brave and I reached over and kissed you and, well, naked happened.”
Hermione can feel warmth spreading over her cheeks. “That’s right. You used your fingers and your mouth. That’s why I don’t…well, this is rather awkward,” she admits, wanting to cover her face at the realization that she and Harry had snogged each other rotten last night and that orgasms had also been involved. At least she’s starting to remember last night more clearly, but she isn’t sure if it wouldn’t have been better if neither of them had remembered.
“I feel asleep before we could have sex. Formally.” Harry rubs his hand over his eyes. “I seem to remember making some bold promises about pleasing you and making you cry out my name that couldn’t happen due to the sleeping thing. Bugger it all. You’re right. This is awkward as hell.”
“It’s fine, Harry. It was just a mistake caused by too much wine and possibly loneliness.” Hermione knows it’s safer to blame the wine and being lonely than admit that she’s had non-friendly feelings for Harry for several years but has been too scared to do anything about them.
Harry drops his hand and gives her a look that makes it impossible to move, or even breathe for a moment. “It was not a mistake, Hermione.” He frowns down at her. “I’ve wanted to do that for bloody ever, but I guess I needed to drink a whole bloody bottle of wine to get the nerve. Face the Dark Lord? Easy. Head the auror division at age 17? Okay. Tell my best friend that my feelings have changed and I no longer see her as my sister? Forget it. I’d rather face Voldemort again than admit to that, it seems.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she says. She isn’t going to get her hopes up when they’re hung-over and still trying to remember everything that happened last night. “We need to sober up before discussing this.”
“I’m dealing with a hangover, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sober,” he says, moving off the bed to sit beside her on the floor. He wraps her blanket around his waist, but she still gets a glimpse of his naked body during the move, which makes her blush because she notices a bite on his collarbone that could have only come from her. He’s not wearing his spectacles, and his eyes seem even greener than normal as he stares at her. “We’re talking about this now, when you’re too hung-over to think so quickly and might be more honest for it.”
“Why are you doing this, Harry?” she asks quietly, shifting around and tugging the sheet more firmly around her. “If you remember last night, you have to know what I said.”
“Did you mean it or was it the wine talking?” he asks, reaching over to place his hand on hers, stopping her from twisting the sheet around her fingers.
“If it had just been the wine, I wouldn’t be sitting here naked with my best friend.” She sighs and turns her hand so that their palms are pressed together. She looks into his eyes and smiles wryly. “I’ve loved you since we were kids, and I’ve been in love with you for the last couple of years.”
Harry licks his lips and tightens his grip on her hand. “September 19, 1999.” He shrugs a shoulder. “All the bloody nines make it easy to remember. You’re twentieth birthday. You and Ron had broken it off several months prior, and I took you to Barcelona for the weekend, and your birthday was a Sunday. I took you to some bookstore, and then we walked around everywhere. It was dusk, cause the sun was setting, and I remember looking at you and thinking you were the most amazing person I’ve ever met and that Ron was so stupid for letting you go.” He clears his throat and ducks his head, and she can see his cheeks are flushed. “I wanted to kiss you. And I knew then that you weren’t like my sister at all, but something even more. Only you didn’t notice the change or anything. You hugged me and kissed my cheek and we stayed up all night looking at the stars.”
“That was almost five years ago, Harry,” she whispers, rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb. Any doubts she might have had are gone because there’s no way Harry’s going to go on like that if he isn’t being sincere. It’s really rather romantic, which is something she’s never thought would appeal to her but she’s been wrong because it makes her heart hurt, in a good way, to hear him talk like this. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not nearly as brave as people claim,” he confides, shrugging his shoulder again as he raises his head to look at her. “Wasn’t joking about facing Voldemort again being easier than admitting how I felt. I didn’t want to lose you if you didn’t feel the same. I thought it might go away or that maybe I was just letting the foreign location sweep me off my feet, but it only got worse when we were back here.”
“I don’t remember a date or the details,” she says. “I just know that one moment, you’re my best friend, and the next, I’m thinking about what it would be like to kiss you. I stopped dating because I was constantly comparing them to you, and it just seemed pointless when I didn’t want any of them. After Ron and I dated, we were able to go back to being friends, but you know it took us a bit to reach that point, and I just wasn’t going to risk my friendship with you by telling you about my feelings. You haven’t really dated anyone since things with Ginny didn’t work out, so I thought you might still be pining after her or just wanted to be on your own for a while.”
“There’s only one woman I’ve been pining over,” he says. “Some Gryffindors we are. Bloody shameful to our house. Not brave enough to deal with feelings, and we waste years that we could have been dating and being naked together.”
“You can’t think of it as wasting years,” she points out. “Maybe we needed to grow up more before we figured this out. The good thing is that we’ve figured it out now, and we can do something about it without wasting more time.”
“So, are you sober enough to decide whether you want to make a go of it or not?” He reaches over to touch her cheek. “I’d like to kiss you without being under the influence of wine.”
Hermione smiles. “I’m sober enough. I’m interested, Harry. Of course I am. And I’d like that. The kiss, that is.”
“Good. I want you so much, Hermione.” Harry leans forward to brush their lips together. Hermione moves her hand behind his head, gripping his messy hair with her fingers as she returns the kiss. She licks at his lips, and he parts them, tongue flicking out then curling around hers. The kiss deepens, his hands moving through her hair and down her bare back.
She gasps at the feeling of his warm fingers against her skin, and he takes advantage of her surprise by taking control of the kiss, moving her down to the floor. When she’s lying down, he crawls over her and keeps kissing her. No wonder her lips were so tender this morning. He seems to love kissing, which isn’t something she’s going to complain about. She likes it, too. Harry moves his hand up and down her side, slowing shifting the sheet away so he can touch her without the material in the way. Not one to be left behind, she moves her free hand down his back, shoving at the blanket so she can touch his bare skin.
“If we don’t stop now, I don’t think I’ll be able to,” he murmurs against her lips. He shifts slightly, rolling his hips so she can feel his erection press against her. He kisses her chin and her nose and her cheeks before nuzzling his face against her neck, still rocking his hips lazily against her, which seems to be making him harder and it’s definitely arousing her.
“Then we won’t stop,” she whispers, smiling when he raises his head to look down at her. She uses her foot to drag the blanket off of his back, moving her hand down to caress his arse cheek. “I seem to recall quite a few promises being made last night, after all.”
“Merlin, woman. You can’t hold me to those right now. I’m not going to last long at all once I finally get inside you, and we’re hung-over,” he says, grinning down at her as he tugs her sheet away from her breasts. “I’ll keep those promises later, when I’m able to focus on something more than this need to bury myself inside you and not let go.”
“You’d better get me off before you come,” she warns, raising her hips so he can adjust the sheet and get access to all the necessary parts for what they’re doing. “Or I promise that I’ll hex you, and, unlike charming Gryffindor boys, I keep my promises.”
“Nag nag.” He laughs softly, rubbing their noses together as he reaches down with one of his hands to start stroking between her legs. She’s already wet, but he gets her wetter, using his long fingers to get her even more ready for him. He moves his mouth lower, licking at her breasts and sucking on her nipples while his fingers drive her crazy. “You have amazing tits,” he murmurs, leering at her when she smacks at his head.
“Harry James Potter, you shouldn’t say such things.” She bites her lip to keep from laughing when he sulks in an exaggerated way.
“But it’s true. I’m just being honest.” He kisses one of her nipples as he slides another finger inside her. “Besides, you’ve told me that I shouldn’t be afraid of saying what I feel, remember?”
“I do remember,” she admits. She lightly scratches her nails up and down his spine. “I think I’m ready now, Harry. Stop teasing and just fuck me.”
Harry gapes at her for a moment before he recovers. “Hermione Jane Granger, you shouldn’t say such things!” He kisses her before she can answer, and she helps him get into position, stroking his cock a few times until he’s gripping her wrist and warning about coming too soon if she keeps it up. When he pushes inside, she arches her back off the floor and groans at the feeling of being stretched. He’s thicker than either of her previous lovers, though not as long as one of them. She takes a moment to adjust to him, but she’s soon rolling her hips and wrapping her legs around him, urging him to move faster and deeper. It’s not like she’s going to break, after all. He seems to understand what she wants without her even having to say it, and she just watches his face as they fuck right there on the floor beside her bed.
He seems to have taken her threat to heart because he’s rubbing at her clit and driving into her hard just the way she likes it when she’s ready to come. He feels so good, and she leans forward to suck on his neck, wanting to leave a mark. When he grips her hip and starts moving faster, she reaches down and guides his finger to the right spot to give her the friction she needs. It doesn’t take long once he’s focused his attention on the perfect spot for her to come. She’s still trembling from her orgasm when he sinks deep inside and grunts, his hips making shallow thrusts until he finally stops moving and kisses her again.
“That was…” She moves her fingers over his sweaty forehead and smiles.
“Yeah, it was,” he agrees, not even waiting for her to finish. “Though I just realized that we did this on the floor when there’s a perfectly good bed right there.”
“We’ll use the bed next time,” she says. “But you’ll have to massage my back later if I’m sore after this.”
“My knees will probably be sore. You don’t have to massage them, though. I won’t whinge,” he promises, ducking his head down to kiss her again. “You wanna take a shower or just want me to grab a flannel?”
“Shower is probably better.” She stretches after he stands up, taking a moment to get a thorough look at him. She smirks when he catches her staring. “You’ve got a lovely cock.”
“Hermione!” Harry runs his fingers through his hair, mussing it up even more, and she can see him blushing faintly.
“What? You can compliment my tits but I can’t give you a compliment? That’s a double-standard.” She takes his hand and lets him help her stand up. “You know how I feel about equality, Harry.”
“You’re cheeky.” He shakes his head before grinning. “I like it. I just have to get used to it. I didn’t really know what to expect if we ever did this.”
“There’s plenty of time for both of us to get used to each other when it comes to intimate matters,” she says, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead. “I’m looking forward to learning this side of you, too.”
“Me too.” He kisses her again, which gives further credence to her theory about him having a thing about kissing.
“We should shower then get some food. We barely ate last night compared to the amount of wine we consumed,” she says, rubbing her arse where she expects it to bruise from falling earlier. “You know, my head doesn’t hurt like it did when I first woke up.”
“Really?” Harry slowly smiles. “Guess we’ve found something that works just as well as a hangover potion, huh?”
“I, for one, don’t intend to get so drunk I experience a hangover just to test that,” she tells him. “So don’t get any silly ideas.”
“My ideas aren’t silly. After all, I’m the one who brought the wine,” he points out. “And, yes, hangovers are bad, but sex is smashing. Fortunately, we don’t need one to have the other.”
“No, we don’t, and, yes, sex is smashing.” Hermione picks up the blanket and sheet, tossing them on the bed. She’ll do laundry later. Something tells her the bed clothes will need washed even more by the time they finish exploring this new aspect of their relationship. “We should go to dinner and maybe see a film at the cinema next week.”
“After work, maybe Wednesday? I know Monday and Tuesday are usually busier days for you, but things generally calm down by mid-week. Things have been relatively calm in the office lately, so I shouldn’t have anything come up,” he says, reaching out to take her hand. He turns her to face him and smiles. “Will you go out with me Wednesday night?”
“Of course,” she says, smiling up at him. “Do we need to keep it private for now?”
“I want to talk to Ron first,” Harry says. “He won’t care, but I want him to hear it from me so there’s no awkwardness, then I plan to take out an advert in the Daily Prophet to tell everyone that you’ve chosen me, so I don’t think privacy is a big concern.”
“You will do no such thing,” she mutters, rolling her eyes at his ridiculousness. He just grins at her before tugging her towards the bathroom. “Harry. I’m serious. No adverts or anything in the bloody newspaper! Harry, stop ignoring me. What are you doing? Kissing me isn’t going to make relent on this.” He isn’t listening to her, and she’s too busy returning the kiss to continue scolding him.
End