shocfix (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} shocfix) wrote,@ 2001-03-08 01:00:00 |
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For Both of Them - H/R/Hr - NC-17
Title : For Both of Them
Author :shocfix
Threesome : Harry/Ron/Hermione
Words : 3800
Rating : NC-17
Written for themagical_menage Threesome FQF.
The challenge : 2. The spell won't work unless there are three partners!
Thanks, as always, to my adorable partner in crime,magicofisis, for keeping the three of them in line, and showering me with commas!
For Both of Them
****
It was the Easter hols in year seven when Hermione came into our dorm with her arms full of books, parchments and folders. Well, it was even more full than usual. I exchanged a look with Harry, but he just shrugged, so we abandoned our game of chess and went to sit on my bed.
“Harry,” she said, spreading out her work on his bed. “I have been researching the Blood Magic that protected you at your aunt’s house.” Harry snorted, but settled down when she raised an eyebrow at him. I knew what he meant, though. OK, he was protected from Death Eaters, but that was about it. He’d have been better off staying with me, at least we take care of him properly.
“It hasn’t been effective this year; ever since your birthday you no longer consider their house as your home.” A level four pointed glare headed off any more derisive noises from either of us, “and once you leave school and are outside the protection that Hogwarts gives you, then you are going to be in danger.”
“I wonder what that feels like,” Harry muttered, but let her continue talking.
“The sacrifices your father and mother made were completely spontaneous, because they loved you more than their lives, and with them dead, the only lingering protection was in your mother’s blood.”
“A bright ray of sunshine, this one,” I muttered to Harry.
“No, Ronald, I am just explaining where I started from in my research.” She flicked through her pile of parchment and drew out a long scroll. “While it would be possible to recreate the protection if someone else died for you, that isn’t really what I was hoping for. I think that if, say, Ron died to protect you, you would then be safe at The Burrow, but I hope that that won’t be necessary.”
“Thanks,” I muttered and Harry nudged me with his elbow.
“So,” Hermione continued. “What we’d ideally like to achieve is a Harry who can have a home of his own and the Blood Magic protection of those who love him.” She looked up at us. We looked at each other, shrugged and nodded, trying to hide the fact that we had absolutely no idea where she was headed with this.
“Well,” she went on. “I then thought about other kinds of love and other kinds of sacrifice.”
“If you’re asking me if I love him enough to give up the Cannons, you can stop right now,” I interrupted and got a level three filthy look in return, but a snigger from Harry, so it was worth it.
“And I am confident that we could get a flat together, the three of us, and then that would be Harry’s new home,” she paused and looked at Harry, quizzically.
“Yeah, that’d be brilliant,” he murmured. “But not if it puts you in danger.”
She waved that away, airily. “Then there is a way that we could recreate the protection you need. There is something that Ron and I could do, that would show how much we love you.”
Harry’s eyebrows raised. “Um,” he said and turned to look at me. I shrugged.
“Um, Hermione,” I said. “What exactly are we talking about here?”
“Love,” she said, simply.
Surely she couldn’t mean… well, I was an eighteen-year-old bloke, so of course it was all I thought of, but surely not Hermione. “Are you saying that you’d seduce me to protect Harry?” I joked, trying to puncture the oppressive atmosphere that had suddenly sprung up in the room.
Harry snorted again but Hermione just held her chin high and, through a blush, said “Not just you, Ron.”
“Hermione!” I gasped. “You’re really talking about having sex?”
Her jaw tightened, ominously. “No, Ron, not just sex. Having sex with Lavender wouldn’t protect him, in fact I could see him needing protection! I’m talking about love. This is ancient magic. Sharing our first time together, loving each other, would join our Magic together.”
“You and me?” I asked, not quite believing the conversation I was having, and I could see Harry looking from one to the other of us out of the corner of my eye.
“Yes,” she whispered. “You and me.”
I swallowed, nervously, and tried hard to think of this objectively. The girl of my dreams was offering herself to me. Which was excellent. But, the thing is, we were supposed to be doing this for Harry.
“But how does that help Harry?” I asked, and felt him tense up beside me.
“Because I would then go to Harry, and offer him the sacrifice we made to each other, and as it’s his first time too, it would feed the bond we’d created.” Her eyes flicked to Harry as she spoke.
Ah. I would have my dream come true, but then I would have to share it with Harry. Well, as my best mate, there is nothing I wouldn’t share with him - if I had anything to share.
“OK,” I nodded.
“No!” Harry burst out, and we both flinched. “You can’t do that for me. It’s, it’s horrible.”
Hermione looked offended. “I know you’re not in love with me, Harry, but I thought you loved me. I didn’t think it would be that awful.”
“No, not the,” he gestured wildly. “Not being with you. The fact that the two of you are so crazy about each other…”
“Harry!” I gasped.
“Oh, this is not the moment to deny it, Ron! You’ve been mad about her for years, and you’ve never said anything, neither of you have, and I know a large part of that is because of me, and I am selfish enough to need that, to go along with that. But you can’t finally get together for me – that’s just wrong.”
“Well, maybe it’s just the catalyst we needed,” Hermione murmured.
I looked over at her and met her eyes. “Yeah,” I whispered. “Hermione, I do, um, I am. Yeah. Crazy about you.”
“Then you’ll do it?” she asked.
“Hey, isn’t anyone listening to me?” Harry complained.
“I’ll do it,” I said and smiled and watched her smile back at me.
“Hello?” shouted Harry.
“Harry,” she said, in a very reasonable tone of voice. “We want to help you. To protect you.”
“Yes, but…”
“If it came down to it, in battle, we’d sacrifice our lives to protect you,” I pointed out, taking hold of his wrist.
“Yeah, I know, and me for you,” he murmured, looking down at my hand and covering it with his own. “But to share this with me?”
“Yes,” Hermione said.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “Anything. I’d share anything with you.”
Harry sighed deeply.
“Actually, it’s a good thing you said that,” Hermione interrupted the Moment.
“What?” I frowned.
“Sharing this with Harry. Because, to complete the bond we’d created, you would have to take Harry our sacrifice too.”
“As in?”
“As in make love to him,” she stated plainly.
I snatched my hand back from his arm. “Have you gone insane?” I asked.
“You just said you’d do anything for him!”
“Yeah, but not shag him! Haven’t you been listening, you stupid cow, I’m in love with you!” I leapt to my feet and turned to leave.
“Well, you’ve got a wonderful way of showing it!” Hermione grabbed my arm and spun me back to face her.
“What, because I won’t let Harry fuck me?”
Hermione slapped my face. Hard. “This is not about fucking,” she hissed. “This is about the three of us loving each other. The spell needs the three of us to love each other. It needs all three of us to make love to each other.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Hermione,” I said. “But I can’t do that.”
And I turned and fled the room.
****
I hadn’t needed to look at Harry to know how he’d react to her bombshell.
Hermione may be scarily clever; she may know where to look up anything that has ever been written. But she doesn’t always know about people.
And she doesn’t know what happened one night in sixth year.
I can just picture the look on Harry’s face as Hermione and I argued about me screwing him, because I have seen it before. I saw it the night Hagrid died. The night Harry came to me and told me he was in love with me.
I mean, if nothing else, he knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t cope very well with the declaration. But he had just lost yet another person close to him, and he had some idea that I should know, in case it either put me in danger, or he died without ever having said the words. To anyone.
He had never told anyone he loved them.
Except me.
And I had had no idea what to say to him. I had stammered helplessly until he broke in and said, “I know, you’re mad for Hermione. I just wanted you to know.”
And we hadn’t mentioned it since.
It had driven me crazy. How could he just ignore it like that? OK, I never told Hermione how I felt, but I think she probably knew. It was a sort of unmentioned agreement that there wasn’t time for anything like that. That we had to be there for Harry.
But he went straight back to being my Best Friend.
I’m not saying I’d have done anything about it. It had never occurred to me. I’ve never looked at a bloke like that. I’m mad about Hermione. But he just turned it off like that. And now what had she done?
She’d told us we had to shag. No, sorry, not shag. We had to Make Love. She must be insane. But she doesn’t know about his, um, thing. She doesn’t know that he really would be Making Love, while I would be thinking “Oh, I’m so sorry, Harry!”
Oh fuck.
It would protect him. It would give him a home and keep him safe.
And if I didn’t go back in there, I would be jeopardising that. I would be risking his life. All because I know how much it would mean to him. Because I didn’t want to hurt him.
I was fucked either way.
I had to hurt him to keep him safe.
I was going to kill Hermione.
****
I slunk back into the room, closed the door and leant against it.
Harry and Hermione were still sitting on my bed. Harry was talking in a low voice and Hermione was stroking his hair and nodding silently. I wondered which one was justifying my behaviour to the other.
Probably both.
I cleared my throat. They both looked up.
They both started talking, but I cut through the babble. “I’ll do it,” I said and there was utter silence.
Hermione started saying something about love and friendship, but I was looking at Harry. His heart was in his eyes and I felt just awful. I nodded towards Hermione. Had he told her? He shook his head abruptly.
OK, if he wasn’t going to mention it, then neither was I; I just hoped that that wouldn’t affect the spell.
Hermione held her hand out to me. “Well, shall we?” she asked quietly.
“What, now?” I squeaked.
“Well, no time like the present,” she said briskly. “I have everything we’ll need.” Harry rolled his eyes and I sniggered and thought actually, you may be surprised to find out that you really don’t have what he needs, but I managed a somber expression when she looked over at me and I crossed the room and stood by the bed.
“Why don’t you both get undressed while I get everything ready?” she asked, and getting to her feet and drawing Harry up with her, she gave us each a peck on the cheek and crossed to her pile of things on Harry’s bed.
Shaking my head in bewilderment, I reached over my shoulder and dragged my sweater off over my head. A kiss on the cheek. That was as intimate as we had ever been. Four times in my life she had kissed me on the cheek, and now I was supposed to make love to her. With Harry watching. Merlin, she was insane.
By the time I was undressed down to my boxers, I looked up to see that Hermione had somehow widened my bed – which was supposed to be impossible, to discourage this sort of thing.
Harry was standing watching her bustle around the room. He too had stripped down to his boxers and as I looked at him I was struck with a powerful feeling of love. Maybe not quite the love he wanted, but looking at how thin he was, at the sight of his wrist bones, so slender that I could snap them with my bare hands, I had never felt more protective of him.
Yes, I did love him. And I would take care of him. That was my job.
We both watched Hermione lighting candles and muttering spells over them, then she briskly stripped down to her bra and pants and brought a purple potion over to us.
“Hold out your left hands,” she ordered, and when we complied, she stabbed our ring fingers with a large needle and squeezed a drop each of our blood into the vial. Once her drop of blood was added to the mixture, it frothed and turned a deep red.
She took a sip and passed it to me. I took a sip and held it out to Harry. He looked from me to Hermione and back again and shrugged helplessly. “Here,” I whispered and pressed the vial into his unresisting hand. He raised it to his lips and drank.
Hermione took a deep breath and I couldn’t help watch the rise and fall of her breasts, covered, as they were, in just a wisp of white cotton. Then she held out her hands, we each took one and she climbed onto my bed, pulling us up with her.
Something in the potion was making me feel a bit dizzy, and when Hermione collapsed back onto my pillows I lay down with her and pressed my face into her neck. Her hands were on me and my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t tell if that was because of the potion or the near naked girl beside me.
“Hermione,” I whispered against her throat and pressed a kiss against the beating pulse fluttering there.
“Yes,” she whispered, “now.” And she tangled her hands in my hair and pulled my face up to hers.
Her parted lips were glistening in the candlelight and I groaned as I covered them with my own. I heard Harry gasp as he watched us kiss, and there was a part of my brain that was still clear enough to realise what he’d be feeling, watching us together.
But, Merlin, we were together. I was kissing Hermione, and I was touching Hermione, and pretty soon we were naked. And, although I was doing my best to do the right thing and make sure I pleased Hermione, she was getting impatient and muttering a lubricating spell and suddenly I was inside Hermione. And it was better than I’d dreamed. It was so hot and tight and she was moving under me – why had I never realised she would be moving and thrusting up against me?
Because no one has a good enough imagination to imagine this! I was moaning aloud, and she was whispering against my neck and then I heard Harry moan, too and god, that added something to the experience! It really shouldn’t have made it hotter, but it did, and I was embarrassingly aware of how my arse must look, thrusting down between her legs, and that Harry was looking at it, and I tried to concentrate on the beautiful girl writhing beneath me, but suddenly all I could think of was Harry, and how this must look to him, and it brought tears to my eyes, and I wished I could make things right for him.
And, of course, at that moment Hermione opened her eyes and looked up at me, and saw me crying, and gave me way more credit than I deserved, because she reached up and touched my face, and whispered, “Oh, Ron!” as if the tears were for her, and I just felt even worse.
So I dropped my face against her neck and I gasped her name and closed my eyes and thrust harder and harder until I saw stars and poured myself into her.
And it was good. It was. It was amazing. It probably would have been better without an audience. But then she kissed my ear and shoved at me and I rolled off of her and covered my eyes with my forearm as I felt her turn away from me and towards Harry.
I couldn’t watch, but I heard her low murmur of encouragement and I felt the mattress shift as he climbed on top of her and my heart ached, and I couldn’t even tell you who of the three of us it was aching for.
But then he whispered “Hermione, I can’t” and he sounded scared and I took my arm away from my face and looked at them, and he was propped up on his elbows on either side of her, and he was looking at her with such panic on his face that I couldn’t help reaching for his hand. His fingers twined in mine, behind her head, where she couldn’t see, and his eyes barely flickered towards me, before focusing on her face again and then he pressed a kiss to her forehead. Harry dropped his face into the pillow between Hermione’s head and mine and he settled lower between her parted thighs and I closed my eyes again.
I held his hand for the whole time he made love to her, and I could hear her whispering that it’ll be OK, and I could feel his eyes on me, but kept mine closed.
And when I felt his fingers tighten painfully around mine, I squeezed back and heard him groan deep in his throat as he came inside her, and I wondered when my life had become so strange.
Harry let go of my hand and rolled away from me, to Hermione’s far side, and I could hear them both breathing hard. And I thought about what was coming next.
Hermione sat up and turned and knelt between us. She looked from Harry to me and took our hands. “I love you both,” she whispered. “It’ll be OK, really.”
I sat up and ran my free hand through her sweaty hair. “I love you, too,” I said.
Harry sat up, too. “Ron, I, I, please. You can’t.” He looked wildly between us.
“It’s OK,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on Hermione.
“But, I, I, um, don’t even know which way round you mean us to,” Harry whispered to Hermione and he gestured vaguely at me.
Even Hermione flushed slightly. “Well, you’ve had your first time ‘taking’ someone, so it’ll have to be Ron who…”
“Fine,” I interrupted, squeezing her hand hard.
I finally looked at Harry and he swiftly looked down and away and flushed. I let go of Hermione’s hand and moved closer to him. She released his hand, too, and I grasped it in mine. “It’s fine, Harry,” I said, pushing him back and lying down beside him. “We’ll be just fine.”
His eyes were impossibly wide and green and vulnerable, and I wanted so much for this to be what he wanted, what he needed, even apart from Hermione’s spell, and I reached out with trembling fingers to brush the hair back from his face.
“Ron?” he whispered.
“Hush,” I whispered back, and pushing out of my mind the fact that Hermione was watching us, and that I was in love with her, and that I had always wanted us to somehow get together, I leant down and kissed him.
Hermione gasped. She was a bright girl, she knew what to expect from two guys being made to do something they didn’t want to. And she knew how intimate it was to kiss someone. And she knew that Harry hadn’t kissed her.
I would have to repair things with her later.
Because now I was running my hand down Harry’s body and he was trembling and whimpering into my mouth and I kissed him harder and knelt between his parted legs. Whispering the lubrication charm I nudged at his thigh with my knee and he pulled his legs back and apart and locked eyes with me as I slid inside him.
He gasped and his eyelids fluttered and his head tipped back on the pillow and his hands closed on my arms, fingers digging hard into the muscles as I withdrew and thrust back into him. I buried my face in his neck and bit hard on his collarbone and he groaned and thrust his hips back at me and I felt his erection pressing against my belly and I took my weight on one arm and wrapped my other hand around his cock.
He cried out as I stroked him, and it only took another couple of thrusts of my hips and my hand until we both came, me deep inside him and him into my palm, and I felt rather than heard his lips shape my name against my cheek.
I knelt up and let him drop his legs and I rested my forehead on his chest until my heartbeat was under control, and then I slipped from his body and his arms and collapsed onto my back.
Hermione was kneeling beside me, her arms wrapped around herself, watching us lying there with our chests heaving.
“Did it work?” I asked her. “The spell? Did it work?”
She reached for her wand and muttered yet another spell I didn’t know and I gasped as something surged through my body.
“Yes,” she whispered. “It worked. We did it.”
Harry still hadn’t said a word; he lay with his face turned away from us.
“I didn’t know,” Hermione said. “Harry, I didn’t know.”
He shrugged one shoulder at her.
“Ron?” she asked.
“I knew,” I muttered. “That’s why I… It’s OK. Are you OK?” I reached out my hand and she grasped it.
“I’m. Yes. I’m OK. Harry?”
Harry finally turned back to face us. His eyes were glinting in the candle light and he drew a shaky breath, looking at our joint hands. “Yes,” he whispered. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I ground out, grabbing him by the neck with my free hand and pulling him to me, where he clung and buried his face in my shoulder. “That’s why we’re here, Harry. Worrying about you is what we do.”
And Hermione lay down and burrowed into my neck from the other side and they clasped hands, fingers interlaced, and placed them on my chest. Over my heart. Which beat for both of them.
Title : For Both of Them
Author :
shocfixThreesome : Harry/Ron/Hermione
Words : 3800
Rating : NC-17
Written for the
magical_menage Threesome FQF.The challenge : 2. The spell won't work unless there are three partners!
Thanks, as always, to my adorable partner in crime,
magicofisis, for keeping the three of them in line, and showering me with commas! For Both of Them
****
It was the Easter hols in year seven when Hermione came into our dorm with her arms full of books, parchments and folders. Well, it was even more full than usual. I exchanged a look with Harry, but he just shrugged, so we abandoned our game of chess and went to sit on my bed.
“Harry,” she said, spreading out her work on his bed. “I have been researching the Blood Magic that protected you at your aunt’s house.” Harry snorted, but settled down when she raised an eyebrow at him. I knew what he meant, though. OK, he was protected from Death Eaters, but that was about it. He’d have been better off staying with me, at least we take care of him properly.
“It hasn’t been effective this year; ever since your birthday you no longer consider their house as your home.” A level four pointed glare headed off any more derisive noises from either of us, “and once you leave school and are outside the protection that Hogwarts gives you, then you are going to be in danger.”
“I wonder what that feels like,” Harry muttered, but let her continue talking.
“The sacrifices your father and mother made were completely spontaneous, because they loved you more than their lives, and with them dead, the only lingering protection was in your mother’s blood.”
“A bright ray of sunshine, this one,” I muttered to Harry.
“No, Ronald, I am just explaining where I started from in my research.” She flicked through her pile of parchment and drew out a long scroll. “While it would be possible to recreate the protection if someone else died for you, that isn’t really what I was hoping for. I think that if, say, Ron died to protect you, you would then be safe at The Burrow, but I hope that that won’t be necessary.”
“Thanks,” I muttered and Harry nudged me with his elbow.
“So,” Hermione continued. “What we’d ideally like to achieve is a Harry who can have a home of his own and the Blood Magic protection of those who love him.” She looked up at us. We looked at each other, shrugged and nodded, trying to hide the fact that we had absolutely no idea where she was headed with this.
“Well,” she went on. “I then thought about other kinds of love and other kinds of sacrifice.”
“If you’re asking me if I love him enough to give up the Cannons, you can stop right now,” I interrupted and got a level three filthy look in return, but a snigger from Harry, so it was worth it.
“And I am confident that we could get a flat together, the three of us, and then that would be Harry’s new home,” she paused and looked at Harry, quizzically.
“Yeah, that’d be brilliant,” he murmured. “But not if it puts you in danger.”
She waved that away, airily. “Then there is a way that we could recreate the protection you need. There is something that Ron and I could do, that would show how much we love you.”
Harry’s eyebrows raised. “Um,” he said and turned to look at me. I shrugged.
“Um, Hermione,” I said. “What exactly are we talking about here?”
“Love,” she said, simply.
Surely she couldn’t mean… well, I was an eighteen-year-old bloke, so of course it was all I thought of, but surely not Hermione. “Are you saying that you’d seduce me to protect Harry?” I joked, trying to puncture the oppressive atmosphere that had suddenly sprung up in the room.
Harry snorted again but Hermione just held her chin high and, through a blush, said “Not just you, Ron.”
“Hermione!” I gasped. “You’re really talking about having sex?”
Her jaw tightened, ominously. “No, Ron, not just sex. Having sex with Lavender wouldn’t protect him, in fact I could see him needing protection! I’m talking about love. This is ancient magic. Sharing our first time together, loving each other, would join our Magic together.”
“You and me?” I asked, not quite believing the conversation I was having, and I could see Harry looking from one to the other of us out of the corner of my eye.
“Yes,” she whispered. “You and me.”
I swallowed, nervously, and tried hard to think of this objectively. The girl of my dreams was offering herself to me. Which was excellent. But, the thing is, we were supposed to be doing this for Harry.
“But how does that help Harry?” I asked, and felt him tense up beside me.
“Because I would then go to Harry, and offer him the sacrifice we made to each other, and as it’s his first time too, it would feed the bond we’d created.” Her eyes flicked to Harry as she spoke.
Ah. I would have my dream come true, but then I would have to share it with Harry. Well, as my best mate, there is nothing I wouldn’t share with him - if I had anything to share.
“OK,” I nodded.
“No!” Harry burst out, and we both flinched. “You can’t do that for me. It’s, it’s horrible.”
Hermione looked offended. “I know you’re not in love with me, Harry, but I thought you loved me. I didn’t think it would be that awful.”
“No, not the,” he gestured wildly. “Not being with you. The fact that the two of you are so crazy about each other…”
“Harry!” I gasped.
“Oh, this is not the moment to deny it, Ron! You’ve been mad about her for years, and you’ve never said anything, neither of you have, and I know a large part of that is because of me, and I am selfish enough to need that, to go along with that. But you can’t finally get together for me – that’s just wrong.”
“Well, maybe it’s just the catalyst we needed,” Hermione murmured.
I looked over at her and met her eyes. “Yeah,” I whispered. “Hermione, I do, um, I am. Yeah. Crazy about you.”
“Then you’ll do it?” she asked.
“Hey, isn’t anyone listening to me?” Harry complained.
“I’ll do it,” I said and smiled and watched her smile back at me.
“Hello?” shouted Harry.
“Harry,” she said, in a very reasonable tone of voice. “We want to help you. To protect you.”
“Yes, but…”
“If it came down to it, in battle, we’d sacrifice our lives to protect you,” I pointed out, taking hold of his wrist.
“Yeah, I know, and me for you,” he murmured, looking down at my hand and covering it with his own. “But to share this with me?”
“Yes,” Hermione said.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “Anything. I’d share anything with you.”
Harry sighed deeply.
“Actually, it’s a good thing you said that,” Hermione interrupted the Moment.
“What?” I frowned.
“Sharing this with Harry. Because, to complete the bond we’d created, you would have to take Harry our sacrifice too.”
“As in?”
“As in make love to him,” she stated plainly.
I snatched my hand back from his arm. “Have you gone insane?” I asked.
“You just said you’d do anything for him!”
“Yeah, but not shag him! Haven’t you been listening, you stupid cow, I’m in love with you!” I leapt to my feet and turned to leave.
“Well, you’ve got a wonderful way of showing it!” Hermione grabbed my arm and spun me back to face her.
“What, because I won’t let Harry fuck me?”
Hermione slapped my face. Hard. “This is not about fucking,” she hissed. “This is about the three of us loving each other. The spell needs the three of us to love each other. It needs all three of us to make love to each other.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Hermione,” I said. “But I can’t do that.”
And I turned and fled the room.
****
I hadn’t needed to look at Harry to know how he’d react to her bombshell.
Hermione may be scarily clever; she may know where to look up anything that has ever been written. But she doesn’t always know about people.
And she doesn’t know what happened one night in sixth year.
I can just picture the look on Harry’s face as Hermione and I argued about me screwing him, because I have seen it before. I saw it the night Hagrid died. The night Harry came to me and told me he was in love with me.
I mean, if nothing else, he knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t cope very well with the declaration. But he had just lost yet another person close to him, and he had some idea that I should know, in case it either put me in danger, or he died without ever having said the words. To anyone.
He had never told anyone he loved them.
Except me.
And I had had no idea what to say to him. I had stammered helplessly until he broke in and said, “I know, you’re mad for Hermione. I just wanted you to know.”
And we hadn’t mentioned it since.
It had driven me crazy. How could he just ignore it like that? OK, I never told Hermione how I felt, but I think she probably knew. It was a sort of unmentioned agreement that there wasn’t time for anything like that. That we had to be there for Harry.
But he went straight back to being my Best Friend.
I’m not saying I’d have done anything about it. It had never occurred to me. I’ve never looked at a bloke like that. I’m mad about Hermione. But he just turned it off like that. And now what had she done?
She’d told us we had to shag. No, sorry, not shag. We had to Make Love. She must be insane. But she doesn’t know about his, um, thing. She doesn’t know that he really would be Making Love, while I would be thinking “Oh, I’m so sorry, Harry!”
Oh fuck.
It would protect him. It would give him a home and keep him safe.
And if I didn’t go back in there, I would be jeopardising that. I would be risking his life. All because I know how much it would mean to him. Because I didn’t want to hurt him.
I was fucked either way.
I had to hurt him to keep him safe.
I was going to kill Hermione.
****
I slunk back into the room, closed the door and leant against it.
Harry and Hermione were still sitting on my bed. Harry was talking in a low voice and Hermione was stroking his hair and nodding silently. I wondered which one was justifying my behaviour to the other.
Probably both.
I cleared my throat. They both looked up.
They both started talking, but I cut through the babble. “I’ll do it,” I said and there was utter silence.
Hermione started saying something about love and friendship, but I was looking at Harry. His heart was in his eyes and I felt just awful. I nodded towards Hermione. Had he told her? He shook his head abruptly.
OK, if he wasn’t going to mention it, then neither was I; I just hoped that that wouldn’t affect the spell.
Hermione held her hand out to me. “Well, shall we?” she asked quietly.
“What, now?” I squeaked.
“Well, no time like the present,” she said briskly. “I have everything we’ll need.” Harry rolled his eyes and I sniggered and thought actually, you may be surprised to find out that you really don’t have what he needs, but I managed a somber expression when she looked over at me and I crossed the room and stood by the bed.
“Why don’t you both get undressed while I get everything ready?” she asked, and getting to her feet and drawing Harry up with her, she gave us each a peck on the cheek and crossed to her pile of things on Harry’s bed.
Shaking my head in bewilderment, I reached over my shoulder and dragged my sweater off over my head. A kiss on the cheek. That was as intimate as we had ever been. Four times in my life she had kissed me on the cheek, and now I was supposed to make love to her. With Harry watching. Merlin, she was insane.
By the time I was undressed down to my boxers, I looked up to see that Hermione had somehow widened my bed – which was supposed to be impossible, to discourage this sort of thing.
Harry was standing watching her bustle around the room. He too had stripped down to his boxers and as I looked at him I was struck with a powerful feeling of love. Maybe not quite the love he wanted, but looking at how thin he was, at the sight of his wrist bones, so slender that I could snap them with my bare hands, I had never felt more protective of him.
Yes, I did love him. And I would take care of him. That was my job.
We both watched Hermione lighting candles and muttering spells over them, then she briskly stripped down to her bra and pants and brought a purple potion over to us.
“Hold out your left hands,” she ordered, and when we complied, she stabbed our ring fingers with a large needle and squeezed a drop each of our blood into the vial. Once her drop of blood was added to the mixture, it frothed and turned a deep red.
She took a sip and passed it to me. I took a sip and held it out to Harry. He looked from me to Hermione and back again and shrugged helplessly. “Here,” I whispered and pressed the vial into his unresisting hand. He raised it to his lips and drank.
Hermione took a deep breath and I couldn’t help watch the rise and fall of her breasts, covered, as they were, in just a wisp of white cotton. Then she held out her hands, we each took one and she climbed onto my bed, pulling us up with her.
Something in the potion was making me feel a bit dizzy, and when Hermione collapsed back onto my pillows I lay down with her and pressed my face into her neck. Her hands were on me and my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t tell if that was because of the potion or the near naked girl beside me.
“Hermione,” I whispered against her throat and pressed a kiss against the beating pulse fluttering there.
“Yes,” she whispered, “now.” And she tangled her hands in my hair and pulled my face up to hers.
Her parted lips were glistening in the candlelight and I groaned as I covered them with my own. I heard Harry gasp as he watched us kiss, and there was a part of my brain that was still clear enough to realise what he’d be feeling, watching us together.
But, Merlin, we were together. I was kissing Hermione, and I was touching Hermione, and pretty soon we were naked. And, although I was doing my best to do the right thing and make sure I pleased Hermione, she was getting impatient and muttering a lubricating spell and suddenly I was inside Hermione. And it was better than I’d dreamed. It was so hot and tight and she was moving under me – why had I never realised she would be moving and thrusting up against me?
Because no one has a good enough imagination to imagine this! I was moaning aloud, and she was whispering against my neck and then I heard Harry moan, too and god, that added something to the experience! It really shouldn’t have made it hotter, but it did, and I was embarrassingly aware of how my arse must look, thrusting down between her legs, and that Harry was looking at it, and I tried to concentrate on the beautiful girl writhing beneath me, but suddenly all I could think of was Harry, and how this must look to him, and it brought tears to my eyes, and I wished I could make things right for him.
And, of course, at that moment Hermione opened her eyes and looked up at me, and saw me crying, and gave me way more credit than I deserved, because she reached up and touched my face, and whispered, “Oh, Ron!” as if the tears were for her, and I just felt even worse.
So I dropped my face against her neck and I gasped her name and closed my eyes and thrust harder and harder until I saw stars and poured myself into her.
And it was good. It was. It was amazing. It probably would have been better without an audience. But then she kissed my ear and shoved at me and I rolled off of her and covered my eyes with my forearm as I felt her turn away from me and towards Harry.
I couldn’t watch, but I heard her low murmur of encouragement and I felt the mattress shift as he climbed on top of her and my heart ached, and I couldn’t even tell you who of the three of us it was aching for.
But then he whispered “Hermione, I can’t” and he sounded scared and I took my arm away from my face and looked at them, and he was propped up on his elbows on either side of her, and he was looking at her with such panic on his face that I couldn’t help reaching for his hand. His fingers twined in mine, behind her head, where she couldn’t see, and his eyes barely flickered towards me, before focusing on her face again and then he pressed a kiss to her forehead. Harry dropped his face into the pillow between Hermione’s head and mine and he settled lower between her parted thighs and I closed my eyes again.
I held his hand for the whole time he made love to her, and I could hear her whispering that it’ll be OK, and I could feel his eyes on me, but kept mine closed.
And when I felt his fingers tighten painfully around mine, I squeezed back and heard him groan deep in his throat as he came inside her, and I wondered when my life had become so strange.
Harry let go of my hand and rolled away from me, to Hermione’s far side, and I could hear them both breathing hard. And I thought about what was coming next.
Hermione sat up and turned and knelt between us. She looked from Harry to me and took our hands. “I love you both,” she whispered. “It’ll be OK, really.”
I sat up and ran my free hand through her sweaty hair. “I love you, too,” I said.
Harry sat up, too. “Ron, I, I, please. You can’t.” He looked wildly between us.
“It’s OK,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on Hermione.
“But, I, I, um, don’t even know which way round you mean us to,” Harry whispered to Hermione and he gestured vaguely at me.
Even Hermione flushed slightly. “Well, you’ve had your first time ‘taking’ someone, so it’ll have to be Ron who…”
“Fine,” I interrupted, squeezing her hand hard.
I finally looked at Harry and he swiftly looked down and away and flushed. I let go of Hermione’s hand and moved closer to him. She released his hand, too, and I grasped it in mine. “It’s fine, Harry,” I said, pushing him back and lying down beside him. “We’ll be just fine.”
His eyes were impossibly wide and green and vulnerable, and I wanted so much for this to be what he wanted, what he needed, even apart from Hermione’s spell, and I reached out with trembling fingers to brush the hair back from his face.
“Ron?” he whispered.
“Hush,” I whispered back, and pushing out of my mind the fact that Hermione was watching us, and that I was in love with her, and that I had always wanted us to somehow get together, I leant down and kissed him.
Hermione gasped. She was a bright girl, she knew what to expect from two guys being made to do something they didn’t want to. And she knew how intimate it was to kiss someone. And she knew that Harry hadn’t kissed her.
I would have to repair things with her later.
Because now I was running my hand down Harry’s body and he was trembling and whimpering into my mouth and I kissed him harder and knelt between his parted legs. Whispering the lubrication charm I nudged at his thigh with my knee and he pulled his legs back and apart and locked eyes with me as I slid inside him.
He gasped and his eyelids fluttered and his head tipped back on the pillow and his hands closed on my arms, fingers digging hard into the muscles as I withdrew and thrust back into him. I buried my face in his neck and bit hard on his collarbone and he groaned and thrust his hips back at me and I felt his erection pressing against my belly and I took my weight on one arm and wrapped my other hand around his cock.
He cried out as I stroked him, and it only took another couple of thrusts of my hips and my hand until we both came, me deep inside him and him into my palm, and I felt rather than heard his lips shape my name against my cheek.
I knelt up and let him drop his legs and I rested my forehead on his chest until my heartbeat was under control, and then I slipped from his body and his arms and collapsed onto my back.
Hermione was kneeling beside me, her arms wrapped around herself, watching us lying there with our chests heaving.
“Did it work?” I asked her. “The spell? Did it work?”
She reached for her wand and muttered yet another spell I didn’t know and I gasped as something surged through my body.
“Yes,” she whispered. “It worked. We did it.”
Harry still hadn’t said a word; he lay with his face turned away from us.
“I didn’t know,” Hermione said. “Harry, I didn’t know.”
He shrugged one shoulder at her.
“Ron?” she asked.
“I knew,” I muttered. “That’s why I… It’s OK. Are you OK?” I reached out my hand and she grasped it.
“I’m. Yes. I’m OK. Harry?”
Harry finally turned back to face us. His eyes were glinting in the candle light and he drew a shaky breath, looking at our joint hands. “Yes,” he whispered. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I ground out, grabbing him by the neck with my free hand and pulling him to me, where he clung and buried his face in my shoulder. “That’s why we’re here, Harry. Worrying about you is what we do.”
And Hermione lay down and burrowed into my neck from the other side and they clasped hands, fingers interlaced, and placed them on my chest. Over my heart. Which beat for both of them.