Pièce de Résistance (HP)
TITLE: Pièce de Résistance
RATING: R/NC-17
SUMMARY: It's taken a long time to wear down Hermione's resistance, but Ron is a very patient man.
NOTE: Written prior to the release of Deathly Hallows.
DISCLAIMER: J.K. Rowling owns the Harry Potter universe and everything it encompasses. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus derives no profit or material benefit therefrom.
Ron lay atop his rumpled, damp bedcovers, his heart beating rapidly, uncertain what had awakened him and frustrated that it had done so. It had been unrelentingly hot the past few nights, and, unable to cast a Cooling Charm that lasted longer than half an hour, he'd got little more than snatches of sleep here and there.
The woman lying next to him shifted and murmured in her sleep -- she didn't seem to suffer as much as he did -- and he caught a glimpse of her bare shoulder in the glow of a streetlamp. Ron grinned and rolled on his side, the better to see the way her skin glistened in the light. He'd finally managed to dismantle yet another layer of Hermione's resistance tonight. It had taken him years, but it was well worth the wait.
At first she'd balked about sex. The subject was one they'd argued about often, though never when Harry was in earshot. The three of them had been crisscrossing Britain for months in search of You-Know-Who's Horcruxes, danger snapping at their heels all the while. Ron didn't see the point in waiting; after so many years of dancing around his feelings for Hermione, and seeing the naked want in her eyes when she looked at him, to his mind the very idea of "resisting temptation" (as she put it) was pure bollocks. It damn near drove him mad, to have her just within reach, and yet be unable to touch her, but she held fast.
Then Harry had been gravely injured. You-Know-Who, knowing that Harry was up to something, risked restoring the connection between their minds to find out what. While he couldn't avoid revealing some of his own plans, he also found out that Harry knew what he'd done to his soul and was methodically destroying each fragment, one by one. You-Know-Who's fury was so great it drove Harry to his knees in agony, but once the connection had been severed he recovered with almost inhuman speed, invigorated by the knowledge that his greatest, most hated enemy knew he was now closer to death than he had ever been before.
Having successfully cheated death for so long, however, You-Know-Who wasn't about to give up without a fight. He sent Nagini to track and kill Harry. She nearly succeeded.
She was lying in wait when they came to the hiding place for Ravenclaw's candlestick, the last Horcrux but one, and struck at Harry as he pointed his wand to perform the spell that would destroy the fragment of soul it harbored. Ron shuddered at the memory: blood everywhere, Harry screaming in pain, Hermione screaming in horror, Nagini lunging again and again as Harry scrambled to elude her, his strength draining with each beat of his heart. Ron had stood there, frozen, thinking, "This is it. He's won. Harry's going to die, and he's the only chance we had." Then, as though possessed by a higher power, Ron had raised his wand and cast a Severing Charm on Nagini, separating her head from her body with one clean sweep of his arm.
Ron scooted closer to Hermione to kiss her shoulder, then ran his palm along the curve of her neck and down her arm. Her skin was warm and moist to the touch. He kissed her shoulder again and draped his arm over her waist to rest his hand against her bare stomach.
Nagini may have been dead, but there was still the Horcrux to destroy. Harry summoned the last reserves of his strength to cast the spell before collapsing into unconsciousness. Ron and Hermione then took him to Grimmauld Place, terrified that the strain of Side-Along Apparating would finish him off, but equally unwilling to risk any slower means of transport. Fortunately, both Lupin and Tonks were in residence, and between them, with Hermione's mind-boggling stockpile of knowledge, they were able to treat Harry's wounds well enough that his body could begin the healing process.
Exhausted and yet too keyed up to relax, Ron had stumbled into the first bedroom he came to, heedless of the dust and spiderwebs, and fell across the bed to stare up at the cracks in the ceiling plaster and wonder, not for the first time, if the nightmare would ever end. The creak of a floorboard and the slow squeak of a door being nudged open roused him from his thoughts and he raised his head to see Hermione standing in the doorway, the streaks of blood and grime and tears on her cheeks illuminated in the light of her wandtip. "Ron?" she'd said, her voice quavering.
"Hermione." And for the next hour or two, no other intelligible words passed between them.
His hand pressed reflexively against her stomach as the memory of that first coupling brought fresh life to his nether regions. He couldn't help nudging at her backside, but stayed the urge to let his hand trail southward.
After that night, even after Harry had recovered and rejoined them in the search for the final Horcrux, Hermione acknowledged that maybe Ron had been right all along, though she was always careful to keep Harry in the dark as much as possible. Harry wasn't fooled in the slightest, Ron knew, but he had the decency to let Hermione believe he had no idea what Ron and Hermione got up to when they were alone.
It took them another five months to locate and eliminate the final Horcrux. Ron should have known the quest would bring them full circle: You-Know-Who had secreted the sixth fraction of his soul in the award for special services to the school he'd been given years before, kept preserved in the Hogwarts trophy room. He remembered how he'd laughed bitterly when they realized it, thinking of the hours he'd spent polishing it during his second year.
There was a roll of thunder in the distance, and Ron thought the air smelled sharper, cleaner. He brushed Hermione's hair away from her ear to press a kiss against the tender skin there, breathing in the faint residue of the perfume she wore.
They had not had to wait long to complete the task they'd initially set out on, for You-Know-Who and his army were waiting when Harry, Ron, and Hermione emerged from the trophy room. Thus began a fierce battle that raged for hours, shaking Hogwarts to its very foundations. Ron tried not to think too much of the lives lost that day, including those of two of his brothers, Professor McGonagall, and Hagrid. What mattered most was that Harry had triumphed in the end.
Ron was so grateful to have made it through alive that he turned to Hermione, who had fought by his side the whole time, and said without thinking, "Marry me."
In true Hermione fashion she'd looked up at him with those limpid brown eyes and said, "No."
Of course, he'd known she hadn't really meant it, and was undeterred by her refusal, despite the logic and reasoning she threw in his path. After all, he had logic on his side too, namely the irrefutable argument that they were meant for each other, and had been ever since that day on the train when she informed him he had dirt on his nose. And while it may seem to the casual observer that she had won this battle -- three years after his proposal, they still remained unmarried -- Ron had every confidence that, in the end, he would prevail.
He was equally certain that she would eventually agree to live with him as well, though that might have to wait until they were married. He thought it was daft for both of them to continue paying rent on separate flats when she hardly used hers for more than as a place to store her books and clothes, but Hermione insisted.
What she had also insisted on at first, and he found equally mad, was not spending the night with him. She'd long ago given up any hesitation about sex, but after he first leased a bedsit above Quality Quidditch Supplies, then moved to a slightly larger walk-up around the corner from the Ministry of Magic after he'd been promoted, she adamantly refused to stay overnight. "It's improper, Ron," she said. "People will talk."
"So what? The only people who would talk about it already know we shag on a regular basis, so who cares if they see you leaving here in the morning instead of after dark?"
"I care. I don't want people thinking of me as a slag."
"Bloody hell, Hermione, no one's going to think you're a slag."
"Please don't swear, Ron."
They went back and forth over this for a year, until the first anniversary of You-Who-Know's defeat. There'd been a huge celebration with parades and speeches and banquets and more speeches and the unveiling of monuments in Godric's Hollow and Diagon Alley and yet more speeches, and by the time Ron and Hermione stumbled through the door to his flat long after midnight they were both too exhausted to remove their clothes, much less make love.
When he awoke, the late morning sun was streaming through the window beside Ron's bed. He reveled in the giddiness he felt at the realization he'd finally been able to spend an entire night with Hermione lying beside him in bed. The feeling didn't last long, however, because his bladder was full and his stomach empty, and his hope of bringing Hermione breakfast in bed (after a quick piss, of course, and maybe a swipe of the toothbrush) was dashed when her eyes flew open as he attempted to ease himself out of bed without waking her.
"Bugger," he said as she turned to look at him with sleep-dazed eyes.
"Ron?" she murmured, licking her lips. "Mm."
Ron watched her yawn and stretch, ignoring the pressing need to use the loo as he waited tensely for realization to hit. "What --" Her eyes widened. "Ron!" She sat up straight. "Bloody hell!"
The shock of hearing her curse almost made him lose control of his bladder. He recovered in time to barely avoid being knocked down as she hurtled out of bed, the elegant knot her hair had been done up in last night in disarray and her dress robes rumpled in such a way it would be obvious to anyone who saw her that she'd slept in them, and began a frenzied search for her shoes. "Bloody, bloody hell!" she wailed as Ron stood there in stupefied awe.
As she pushed past him to look under his bed for the third time, he grabbed her arm, spun her around, and kissed her. When he released her, he had to grab her arm again to keep her from toppling over; apparently she'd managed to find one of her shoes.
"What was that for?" she asked, bringing her fingers up to her swollen lips.
He grinned. "You can swear all you want, but you can't undo the fact that you spent the night here." She began to splutter, but he silenced her by pressing his fingers over her mouth. "Stop it, Hermione. It's after ten o'clock in the morning, it's a beautiful day, neither one of us has to go to work, and there's nothing I want more than to spend the whole day with you.
"Now --" He removed his hand from her mouth, paused long enough to see if she was going to attempt to argue, then pointed towards the loo. "Now, I'm going to take a piss before I burst, brush my teeth to get the taste of day-old Firewhisky out of my mouth, and shower. I won't be gone longer than ten minutes. When I come out, you'd best still be here."
"But --" she started. He tried to silence her again, but she side-stepped him. "Can't I at least go home to freshen up and change my clothes?" She looked ruefully at her bedraggled dress robes.
"No," Ron said with determination. "We'll go after I've showered and dressed. We'll go together, so all our nosy neighbors can see that Hermione Granger spent the night with Ron Weasley."
"If we went by Floo --"
"No, Hermione. We'll walk down to the street and Apparate." He bent forward to kiss her cheek. "I'm not letting you wiggle out of this. What's done is done, and I'm not about to let you act like it's something to be ashamed of."
He could tell she wanted to argue. If she had done, years of experience enabled him to guess in advance what she would say. Amazingly, though, she gave in, lowering herself to sit on the edge of his bed. "All right, I'll wait."
"That's my girl." He smiled at her. "I won't be long, promise."
Years of experience should have taught Ron that she wouldn't give in quite so easily, that Hermione always had an ace up her sleeve. Consequently, he was caught completely off guard -- though nonetheless delighted beyond words -- when, five minutes later, she joined him in the shower.
Lighting streaked the sky and thunder rumbled again, closer this time. Hermione sighed in her sleep and rolled on to her back. The bedsheet that had been partially covering her slipped down to reveal her breasts in the streetlamp's incandescence. Ron groaned at the sight. Hermione's breasts were nothing new to him, but to have her lying in his bed, sound asleep, without a stitch of clothing on? That was a novelty.
It was the final chink in her armor, so to speak. She'd given in on everything else -- their still-pending cohabitation and marriage notwithstanding -- but nothing he said or did could convince her not to dress again after they'd had sex. He'd even tried making love to her multiple times in the course of a night, grumbling all the while about the time wasted in removing her clothes yet again, but she was stubborn and put them back on each time they finished.
Most of the time it was nothing more than knickers and a T-shirt. She was as likely to wear one of his shirts as hers, which he rather liked, and after one bout of vigorous sex she couldn't find her panties and so nicked a pair of his shorts from the dresser, which he thought was so damn sexy he had to peel them right off and make love to her again, but to him it was the principle of the thing. He slept starkers all the time, even on the rare nights when Hermione didn't stay over, and couldn't for the life of him understand why any decent, reasonable person wouldn't want to do likewise. But then, this was Hermione, who put a fresh spin on indecency.
A breeze that carried the scent of rain wafted through the open window, raising goosepimples on Hermione's torso. Ron groaned again and smoothed his hand up her stomach to cup the underside of a breast, feeling the slight dampness that had gathered there.
In the end, it was the heat that broke her resolve. Britain had been caught in the grip of an intense heat wave all summer, and in the heart of the city, with all the tall buildings and people and motorcars, the temperature was as much as fifteen degrees higher than in the countryside. Even the best Cooling Charms were woefully inadequate. Unnecessary physical exertion of any sort was unthinkable, though Ron and Hermione agreed that there was one general type of exertion they weren't prepared to completely give up. They just tried to do it with as little movement as possible, which nonetheless made for some interesting and intense sensations that left Ron drenched with perspiration and feeling as though he'd just been molested by a succubus.
Easing himself up on his arm, Ron leaned over Hermione to trace his tongue around the pale pink areola closest to him, simultaneously sliding his hand down past her navel and in between her thighs, where the humidity, unlike the air outside, was deliciously inviting.
He smiled when she moaned and shifted in her sleep, unconsciously spreading her legs. He couldn't have done this half so easily if she'd decided, as she had done all those other nights, to get dressed before allowing herself to drift off to sleep. But after several nights in a row of oppressive, unbroken heat and humidity, tonight she'd finally given in to reason. "I feel like I'm in a sauna," she'd complained as she'd climbed off of him to collapse, tired, sweaty, and yet sated, beside him. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."
She had rolled over then to reach for her knickers, where they'd been flung on the floor. When she turned back, she was winded. Ron watched in amusement and barely concealed hope as she'd studied the knot of cotton held before her, her lower lip protruding the way it tended to when she was coming to a difficult decision. Finally she sighed, wadded them up, and threw them across the room. "I don't care; it's just too damn hot to wear clothes," she said.
Ron had been so overjoyed, if he hadn't been in need of a few more minutes to recover, he would have tackled her right then. Instead he'd pulled her to him -- ignoring the way the perspiration made their skin stick together -- and kissed her until they were both panting for air.
She'd smiled at him when she lay back down beside him, her hand resting lightly on his chest. "You're hopeless, do you realize?"
He laughed. "Hermione," he said, "when it comes to you, I am only ever hopeful."
There was a loud crack of thunder outside, and suddenly the heavens opened, releasing much-needed rain in a downpour. Hermione's eyes had opened at the sound, and the first thing she saw was Ron's face as he leaned in for a kiss.
Her lips curved in a languid, sultry smile when he drew back so he could lift himself over her and cradle his hips between her thighs. "Hi," she said, bringing up her arms to clasp her hands behind his neck.
"Hi," he replied, and began to move as the drumbeat of rain on hot roofs and pavement drowned out the sounds of increasingly exuberant lovemaking.
RATING: R/NC-17
SUMMARY: It's taken a long time to wear down Hermione's resistance, but Ron is a very patient man.
NOTE: Written prior to the release of Deathly Hallows.
DISCLAIMER: J.K. Rowling owns the Harry Potter universe and everything it encompasses. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus derives no profit or material benefit therefrom.
Ron lay atop his rumpled, damp bedcovers, his heart beating rapidly, uncertain what had awakened him and frustrated that it had done so. It had been unrelentingly hot the past few nights, and, unable to cast a Cooling Charm that lasted longer than half an hour, he'd got little more than snatches of sleep here and there.
The woman lying next to him shifted and murmured in her sleep -- she didn't seem to suffer as much as he did -- and he caught a glimpse of her bare shoulder in the glow of a streetlamp. Ron grinned and rolled on his side, the better to see the way her skin glistened in the light. He'd finally managed to dismantle yet another layer of Hermione's resistance tonight. It had taken him years, but it was well worth the wait.
At first she'd balked about sex. The subject was one they'd argued about often, though never when Harry was in earshot. The three of them had been crisscrossing Britain for months in search of You-Know-Who's Horcruxes, danger snapping at their heels all the while. Ron didn't see the point in waiting; after so many years of dancing around his feelings for Hermione, and seeing the naked want in her eyes when she looked at him, to his mind the very idea of "resisting temptation" (as she put it) was pure bollocks. It damn near drove him mad, to have her just within reach, and yet be unable to touch her, but she held fast.
Then Harry had been gravely injured. You-Know-Who, knowing that Harry was up to something, risked restoring the connection between their minds to find out what. While he couldn't avoid revealing some of his own plans, he also found out that Harry knew what he'd done to his soul and was methodically destroying each fragment, one by one. You-Know-Who's fury was so great it drove Harry to his knees in agony, but once the connection had been severed he recovered with almost inhuman speed, invigorated by the knowledge that his greatest, most hated enemy knew he was now closer to death than he had ever been before.
Having successfully cheated death for so long, however, You-Know-Who wasn't about to give up without a fight. He sent Nagini to track and kill Harry. She nearly succeeded.
She was lying in wait when they came to the hiding place for Ravenclaw's candlestick, the last Horcrux but one, and struck at Harry as he pointed his wand to perform the spell that would destroy the fragment of soul it harbored. Ron shuddered at the memory: blood everywhere, Harry screaming in pain, Hermione screaming in horror, Nagini lunging again and again as Harry scrambled to elude her, his strength draining with each beat of his heart. Ron had stood there, frozen, thinking, "This is it. He's won. Harry's going to die, and he's the only chance we had." Then, as though possessed by a higher power, Ron had raised his wand and cast a Severing Charm on Nagini, separating her head from her body with one clean sweep of his arm.
Ron scooted closer to Hermione to kiss her shoulder, then ran his palm along the curve of her neck and down her arm. Her skin was warm and moist to the touch. He kissed her shoulder again and draped his arm over her waist to rest his hand against her bare stomach.
Nagini may have been dead, but there was still the Horcrux to destroy. Harry summoned the last reserves of his strength to cast the spell before collapsing into unconsciousness. Ron and Hermione then took him to Grimmauld Place, terrified that the strain of Side-Along Apparating would finish him off, but equally unwilling to risk any slower means of transport. Fortunately, both Lupin and Tonks were in residence, and between them, with Hermione's mind-boggling stockpile of knowledge, they were able to treat Harry's wounds well enough that his body could begin the healing process.
Exhausted and yet too keyed up to relax, Ron had stumbled into the first bedroom he came to, heedless of the dust and spiderwebs, and fell across the bed to stare up at the cracks in the ceiling plaster and wonder, not for the first time, if the nightmare would ever end. The creak of a floorboard and the slow squeak of a door being nudged open roused him from his thoughts and he raised his head to see Hermione standing in the doorway, the streaks of blood and grime and tears on her cheeks illuminated in the light of her wandtip. "Ron?" she'd said, her voice quavering.
"Hermione." And for the next hour or two, no other intelligible words passed between them.
His hand pressed reflexively against her stomach as the memory of that first coupling brought fresh life to his nether regions. He couldn't help nudging at her backside, but stayed the urge to let his hand trail southward.
After that night, even after Harry had recovered and rejoined them in the search for the final Horcrux, Hermione acknowledged that maybe Ron had been right all along, though she was always careful to keep Harry in the dark as much as possible. Harry wasn't fooled in the slightest, Ron knew, but he had the decency to let Hermione believe he had no idea what Ron and Hermione got up to when they were alone.
It took them another five months to locate and eliminate the final Horcrux. Ron should have known the quest would bring them full circle: You-Know-Who had secreted the sixth fraction of his soul in the award for special services to the school he'd been given years before, kept preserved in the Hogwarts trophy room. He remembered how he'd laughed bitterly when they realized it, thinking of the hours he'd spent polishing it during his second year.
There was a roll of thunder in the distance, and Ron thought the air smelled sharper, cleaner. He brushed Hermione's hair away from her ear to press a kiss against the tender skin there, breathing in the faint residue of the perfume she wore.
They had not had to wait long to complete the task they'd initially set out on, for You-Know-Who and his army were waiting when Harry, Ron, and Hermione emerged from the trophy room. Thus began a fierce battle that raged for hours, shaking Hogwarts to its very foundations. Ron tried not to think too much of the lives lost that day, including those of two of his brothers, Professor McGonagall, and Hagrid. What mattered most was that Harry had triumphed in the end.
Ron was so grateful to have made it through alive that he turned to Hermione, who had fought by his side the whole time, and said without thinking, "Marry me."
In true Hermione fashion she'd looked up at him with those limpid brown eyes and said, "No."
Of course, he'd known she hadn't really meant it, and was undeterred by her refusal, despite the logic and reasoning she threw in his path. After all, he had logic on his side too, namely the irrefutable argument that they were meant for each other, and had been ever since that day on the train when she informed him he had dirt on his nose. And while it may seem to the casual observer that she had won this battle -- three years after his proposal, they still remained unmarried -- Ron had every confidence that, in the end, he would prevail.
He was equally certain that she would eventually agree to live with him as well, though that might have to wait until they were married. He thought it was daft for both of them to continue paying rent on separate flats when she hardly used hers for more than as a place to store her books and clothes, but Hermione insisted.
What she had also insisted on at first, and he found equally mad, was not spending the night with him. She'd long ago given up any hesitation about sex, but after he first leased a bedsit above Quality Quidditch Supplies, then moved to a slightly larger walk-up around the corner from the Ministry of Magic after he'd been promoted, she adamantly refused to stay overnight. "It's improper, Ron," she said. "People will talk."
"So what? The only people who would talk about it already know we shag on a regular basis, so who cares if they see you leaving here in the morning instead of after dark?"
"I care. I don't want people thinking of me as a slag."
"Bloody hell, Hermione, no one's going to think you're a slag."
"Please don't swear, Ron."
They went back and forth over this for a year, until the first anniversary of You-Who-Know's defeat. There'd been a huge celebration with parades and speeches and banquets and more speeches and the unveiling of monuments in Godric's Hollow and Diagon Alley and yet more speeches, and by the time Ron and Hermione stumbled through the door to his flat long after midnight they were both too exhausted to remove their clothes, much less make love.
When he awoke, the late morning sun was streaming through the window beside Ron's bed. He reveled in the giddiness he felt at the realization he'd finally been able to spend an entire night with Hermione lying beside him in bed. The feeling didn't last long, however, because his bladder was full and his stomach empty, and his hope of bringing Hermione breakfast in bed (after a quick piss, of course, and maybe a swipe of the toothbrush) was dashed when her eyes flew open as he attempted to ease himself out of bed without waking her.
"Bugger," he said as she turned to look at him with sleep-dazed eyes.
"Ron?" she murmured, licking her lips. "Mm."
Ron watched her yawn and stretch, ignoring the pressing need to use the loo as he waited tensely for realization to hit. "What --" Her eyes widened. "Ron!" She sat up straight. "Bloody hell!"
The shock of hearing her curse almost made him lose control of his bladder. He recovered in time to barely avoid being knocked down as she hurtled out of bed, the elegant knot her hair had been done up in last night in disarray and her dress robes rumpled in such a way it would be obvious to anyone who saw her that she'd slept in them, and began a frenzied search for her shoes. "Bloody, bloody hell!" she wailed as Ron stood there in stupefied awe.
As she pushed past him to look under his bed for the third time, he grabbed her arm, spun her around, and kissed her. When he released her, he had to grab her arm again to keep her from toppling over; apparently she'd managed to find one of her shoes.
"What was that for?" she asked, bringing her fingers up to her swollen lips.
He grinned. "You can swear all you want, but you can't undo the fact that you spent the night here." She began to splutter, but he silenced her by pressing his fingers over her mouth. "Stop it, Hermione. It's after ten o'clock in the morning, it's a beautiful day, neither one of us has to go to work, and there's nothing I want more than to spend the whole day with you.
"Now --" He removed his hand from her mouth, paused long enough to see if she was going to attempt to argue, then pointed towards the loo. "Now, I'm going to take a piss before I burst, brush my teeth to get the taste of day-old Firewhisky out of my mouth, and shower. I won't be gone longer than ten minutes. When I come out, you'd best still be here."
"But --" she started. He tried to silence her again, but she side-stepped him. "Can't I at least go home to freshen up and change my clothes?" She looked ruefully at her bedraggled dress robes.
"No," Ron said with determination. "We'll go after I've showered and dressed. We'll go together, so all our nosy neighbors can see that Hermione Granger spent the night with Ron Weasley."
"If we went by Floo --"
"No, Hermione. We'll walk down to the street and Apparate." He bent forward to kiss her cheek. "I'm not letting you wiggle out of this. What's done is done, and I'm not about to let you act like it's something to be ashamed of."
He could tell she wanted to argue. If she had done, years of experience enabled him to guess in advance what she would say. Amazingly, though, she gave in, lowering herself to sit on the edge of his bed. "All right, I'll wait."
"That's my girl." He smiled at her. "I won't be long, promise."
Years of experience should have taught Ron that she wouldn't give in quite so easily, that Hermione always had an ace up her sleeve. Consequently, he was caught completely off guard -- though nonetheless delighted beyond words -- when, five minutes later, she joined him in the shower.
Lighting streaked the sky and thunder rumbled again, closer this time. Hermione sighed in her sleep and rolled on to her back. The bedsheet that had been partially covering her slipped down to reveal her breasts in the streetlamp's incandescence. Ron groaned at the sight. Hermione's breasts were nothing new to him, but to have her lying in his bed, sound asleep, without a stitch of clothing on? That was a novelty.
It was the final chink in her armor, so to speak. She'd given in on everything else -- their still-pending cohabitation and marriage notwithstanding -- but nothing he said or did could convince her not to dress again after they'd had sex. He'd even tried making love to her multiple times in the course of a night, grumbling all the while about the time wasted in removing her clothes yet again, but she was stubborn and put them back on each time they finished.
Most of the time it was nothing more than knickers and a T-shirt. She was as likely to wear one of his shirts as hers, which he rather liked, and after one bout of vigorous sex she couldn't find her panties and so nicked a pair of his shorts from the dresser, which he thought was so damn sexy he had to peel them right off and make love to her again, but to him it was the principle of the thing. He slept starkers all the time, even on the rare nights when Hermione didn't stay over, and couldn't for the life of him understand why any decent, reasonable person wouldn't want to do likewise. But then, this was Hermione, who put a fresh spin on indecency.
A breeze that carried the scent of rain wafted through the open window, raising goosepimples on Hermione's torso. Ron groaned again and smoothed his hand up her stomach to cup the underside of a breast, feeling the slight dampness that had gathered there.
In the end, it was the heat that broke her resolve. Britain had been caught in the grip of an intense heat wave all summer, and in the heart of the city, with all the tall buildings and people and motorcars, the temperature was as much as fifteen degrees higher than in the countryside. Even the best Cooling Charms were woefully inadequate. Unnecessary physical exertion of any sort was unthinkable, though Ron and Hermione agreed that there was one general type of exertion they weren't prepared to completely give up. They just tried to do it with as little movement as possible, which nonetheless made for some interesting and intense sensations that left Ron drenched with perspiration and feeling as though he'd just been molested by a succubus.
Easing himself up on his arm, Ron leaned over Hermione to trace his tongue around the pale pink areola closest to him, simultaneously sliding his hand down past her navel and in between her thighs, where the humidity, unlike the air outside, was deliciously inviting.
He smiled when she moaned and shifted in her sleep, unconsciously spreading her legs. He couldn't have done this half so easily if she'd decided, as she had done all those other nights, to get dressed before allowing herself to drift off to sleep. But after several nights in a row of oppressive, unbroken heat and humidity, tonight she'd finally given in to reason. "I feel like I'm in a sauna," she'd complained as she'd climbed off of him to collapse, tired, sweaty, and yet sated, beside him. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."
She had rolled over then to reach for her knickers, where they'd been flung on the floor. When she turned back, she was winded. Ron watched in amusement and barely concealed hope as she'd studied the knot of cotton held before her, her lower lip protruding the way it tended to when she was coming to a difficult decision. Finally she sighed, wadded them up, and threw them across the room. "I don't care; it's just too damn hot to wear clothes," she said.
Ron had been so overjoyed, if he hadn't been in need of a few more minutes to recover, he would have tackled her right then. Instead he'd pulled her to him -- ignoring the way the perspiration made their skin stick together -- and kissed her until they were both panting for air.
She'd smiled at him when she lay back down beside him, her hand resting lightly on his chest. "You're hopeless, do you realize?"
He laughed. "Hermione," he said, "when it comes to you, I am only ever hopeful."
There was a loud crack of thunder outside, and suddenly the heavens opened, releasing much-needed rain in a downpour. Hermione's eyes had opened at the sound, and the first thing she saw was Ron's face as he leaned in for a kiss.
Her lips curved in a languid, sultry smile when he drew back so he could lift himself over her and cradle his hips between her thighs. "Hi," she said, bringing up her arms to clasp her hands behind his neck.
"Hi," he replied, and began to move as the drumbeat of rain on hot roofs and pavement drowned out the sounds of increasingly exuberant lovemaking.