Plumbing **** Of all the things to show me how I felt about Harry and Hermione, who would have suspected the plumbing?
Not their plumbing, although, really, who’d choose a mysterious plughole, complete with that weird, slimy hair that builds up in the pipes, over a nice, firm, smooth showerhead, that you can grip, complete with a hot spray?
Hermione’s plughole was blocked, the other day, and she poured some Muggle potion down it, to break up the slime… no, her actual plughole, in the sink in her bathroom… and she wondered why I couldn’t stop laughing.
I didn’t tell her, just stammered something about bathroom fittings. She doesn’t know we split up over bathroom fittings.
Right.
It started innocently enough: Harry decided to remodel Grimmauld Place, after the war. The three of us were living there – separate bedrooms, me and Hermione had decided not to go there until she finished school – and he decided we needed more bathrooms.
Hermione was on the floor above us, and next to the original bathroom, and she was to get a new bath, new shower, toilet, strange French anti-toilet thing… lovely.
Between my room and Harry’s had been the hot water tank thing come linen closet, and he decided to have it enlarged, knock through a door from each bedroom and replumb it to turn it into a shower come loo, so we didn’t have to interrupt Hermione’s ablutions.
A very practical idea, and not one that made me think about polishing his… shower head. We’d always shared a shower… not shared shared, just had joint use of.
Anyway, my first plumbing related gay twinge happened because Harry got carried away with his good idea and ripped out all the plumbing at the same time, leaving us without so much as a toilet in the house.
I suppose we could have stayed at the Burrow – Hermione had sighed heavily and gone to stay with her parents – but me and Harry had taken a room at the Leaky, while the building work was finished.
And that is where Seamus caught us. Not shagging; Seamus caught us in the pub, with a manly pint and a bathroom fittings catalogue.
Plumbing and Seamus turned out to be a deadly combination.
He’d initially taken the piss out of the Chosen One choosing tiles, but Harry was unflappable about finally having the chance to even do such normal stuff and he didn’t rise to the bait.
Seamus took the catalogue and flicked through it, for ammunition; but, once you’ve been dead, you don’t get embarrassed about buying shower curtains.
“So,” Seamus said. “This is the sink you’re going for?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “We don’t have that much room, with a door in each side wall; shower, loo, small sink.”
“D’you really need the sink, though?” Seamus asked innocently.
“Yes,” Harry said. “According to Hermione and Mrs Weasley, anyway, and I’m not gonna discuss washing my hands after I pee, with either of them, ever again.”
I expected Seamus to make some remark about Harry peeing with Hermione or my mum, but he had a different target.
“But why buy this sink,” he said, “when you’ve got Ron?”
Harry raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“How is Harry supposed to use me as a sink?” I asked.
“This sink,” Seamus said, “claims to be self-rimming – but I thought that’s what Harry has you for.”
Seamus smirked evilly and Harry laughed happily and I had a sudden, unexpected, startling, unforeseen, surprising, vivid, explicit image of bending Harry over his self-rimming sink.
I managed to blink the image away but, by the end of the evening, when I followed Harry up to our room, all I could think about was his arse.
Me and Hermione hadn't gone any further than a few kisses, what with the time she'd spent in Australia, hunting down her parents, and what with her wanting to take things slowly, what with her going back to school. So we'd decided to put things on hold, for a year.
Harry had pissed himself, laughing, when I told him.
Anyway, this left my fantasy life as having-to-make-do-with-images-from-wank-mags as it had been before I'd kissed her, as I had no idea what Hermione's bits and pieces looked like.
But now, as Harry grabbed a towel and a toothbrush and wandered down the landing towards the bathroom, I had a problem.
I had an aching cock, an urge to fantasise about Harry as I wanked and a naked Harry in the shower.
And I knew what Harry looked like, naked.
Previously, seeing Harry naked had meant no more to me than a something to be stepped around, in the dorm; his arse nothing more than a target to flick my towel at, in the changing rooms, after Quidditch.
Now?
Now I had a problem.
By the time we moved back home, I'd had a fortnight of swiftly wanking while Harry was out of the room, followed by a brisk cold shower, when he returned. Obviously, I pictured Harry tossing off in the shower, while I did it, and obviously I stepped into the shower after him and scrinched up my toes at the thought of his come splattering on those tiles and swirling away, down the drain.
I gave the sink a filthy look as I brushed my teeth.
Bloody plumbing.
Bloody Seamus.
The first thing I did, when we got home, was break up with Hermione. I was ridiculously grown up about it and told her it was because I was in love with Harry. I don't know if she was more surprised at the news, or that I'd admitted it, but she was ridiculously supportive about it, buying me all sorts of Muggle books on the subject and leaving for school with a massive hug and a kiss on my cheek.
Harry wasn't nearly as calm about things and flatly refused to believe either of us that Hermione wasn't heartbroken; he didn't realise I'd fallen for the only person she could never be jealous of.
I'd been Harry's first.
With Hermione away at school, the bathroom between my room and Harry's lurked like a spider, spinning fantasies of naked Harry to trap me in. I offered to use Hermione's bathroom, but he told me not to be ridiculous and we shared and he showered, behind me, as I brushed my teeth at the self-rimming sink and tried hard not to picture him and I was a nervous wreck.
Things blew up one Tuesday, in mid November. I'd had ten weeks of being with Harry night and day, listening to him shower and running a fingertip around the rim of the bloody sink. That evening we were both bruised and aching after an afternoon of physical training and, of course, we were partners and we'd spent hours slamming each other against the floor and straddling each other and I was still amazed that I was being paid to pin Harry beneath me, when I'd pay good money for the chance. I had never needed a wank more and I listened at my door to our bathroom and couldn't hear running water and thought I'd beat Harry into the shower and take care of things.
I opened the door.
I was wrong.
Harry was naked. Harry was bent over the self-rimming sink, his face buried in the crook of the arm that curled round the taps. Harry's feet were planted far apart. Harry was tugging vigorously on his cock.
Harry was whimpering my name.
It took two steps to cross the room and kneel behind him.
"Ron?" he gasped as I parted his cheeks.
"Hush," I breathed as I leant forward.
Harry clung to our self-rimming sink as I licked him, his whole body shaking as I pressed inside him and he pushed back into my face and forward into his hand.
With a yell ripped from his throat, he came, whirling around and falling to his knees and grabbing my face and kissing me as his cock spat between us. He ground against me, sucking hard on my tongue and groaning at what he tasted on it.
Finally sitting back on his heels, gloriously flushed and sweaty and naked, he peered up at me, vulnerable wide eyes not hidden behind his glasses.
"Since when?" he breathed. "I mean... you do... right? You... are? You're not... just being... helpful?"
I snorted.
"How helpful d'you think I am?" I demanded.
"Then... you... since...?"
"Yes, I do, and since Seamus took the piss about bathroom fittings and I broke up with Hermione," I admitted.
"What?" he asked.
“What?”
“You broke up with Hermione because Seamus made a rimming joke?”
He looked indignant and flushed and sweaty and naked.
“I broke up with Hermione because I have thought of nothing else since Seamus made a rimming joke,” I said. “And I told her why.”
He gurgled.
“Not the joke,” I protested. “Just that I was...” I nodded and gestured vaguely, between us, “...with someone else.”
“Oh.”
“And that’s why she forgave me.”
“What’s why?”
“Because it’s you.”
“Oh,” he breathed. “Me too.”
“You too... with me?” I asked.
“With you,” he confirmed. “But also the sink fetish.”
“We’ll have to thank Seamus,” I said, reaching for him.
“I’ve thought of sending him some cocktail glasses,” he said, sprawling naked in my arms, “and some rimming sugar.”