Part Four: Monsoon Season
Harry finished stripping off his dress shirt and plunked back down. “Well, I’m hot and I refuse to sit here stifling any longer. Besides, it’s not as if you’re seeing something you shouldn’t be. You have a father, I’m sure you’ve seen him without a shirt on.”
“Yes, but …” she stammered, still shielding her eyes. “But … Oh, all right fine.” Hermione lowered her hand, but still tried to look away from Harry’s direction. The sweat was practically pouring down her back now, trickling in between her breasts. She was going to start panting in a moment. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Harry look up to the thermometer on the wall above their heads.
“Thirty-one degrees, Hermione,” Harry intoned, his voice thick with smugness. “Sure you don’t want to lose that sweater?”
“No,” she huffed, but after a moment she tugged it over her head. She was only too aware that the undergarments she had chosen yesterday were not the most modest things she owned. She crossed her arms over her chest. As Harry smirked back at her, she snapped back with a loud, “Oh, shut it.”
He laughed again, but said nothing. Hermione rose to her feet and began pacing the building again, in determined search of something to do. In lieu of anything else, she started reciting charms and spell to herself, practicing the wand movements as she walked. But the pacing of the room was doing nothing to aid her in her quest to keep cool. Every now and then she swore under her breath and was rewarded with a chuckle from Harry.
After an hour, the temperature had risen another 7 degrees. She was certain that, had she tried, Harry could now have fried those eggs on her face, so high was her body temperature.
“All right,” she heard Harry roughly growl, “That’s it. I can’t stand it.”
Hermione instinctively looked over to Harry and instantly regretted it. She shrieked in horror, spinning away as she had caught a glimpse of Harry removing his black school pants. “Harry!” she called, an echo of her earlier horror, only gaining an octave in the pitch of her voice.
“Oh, I’m wearing boxer shorts,” he said irritably. “And it’s not as if it isn’t boiling in here, Hermione. I’m decently covered and it’ wretchedly hot. You’d probably stand to benefit in your mood if you took a leaf out of my book.”
Forgetting her scandalization, she spun back to him and glared, her eyes boring holes into his. “Absolutely not! Besides, all I’ve got on is my blouse and skirt!”
Harry shrugged nonchalantly. “I won’t look at you.”
Hermione stared at him as if he’d grown wings and flown around the room like Buckbeak. “You certainly can’t be seriously suggesting that I take off my top…”
Harry shrugged again. “It’ll make you more comfortable, I guarantee it.”
“It’s indecent,” she shrieked shrilly.
“Oh fuck all, Hermione,” he howled back, his voice gaining nearly the same loudness and pitch as hers. “You’re such a prude! You won’t even do something that will make you feel better! You’d rather stand there and whine about it than give yourself some relief!”
“I am not a prude!” she hollered back. They were standing toe-to-toe now, bellowing in each other’s faces and glaring hotly enough to melt steel.
“Prove it!” Harry yelled.
With a determined scowl, Hermione shouted back, “Fine!” and heaved at the buttons of her blouse. In one firm tug, they came free and, after some very angry tugging, she heaved her shirt into the corner of the greenhouse. After a moment of glowering at each other fiercely, Hermione saw Harry’s eyes begin to clear of their angry glaze. As they did, he took a large deliberate step away from her. It was a moment before her panting, livid breaths righted themselves and she realized just what they were doing with a deep flush of her cheeks.
Curling her arms about her chest, she tried to shield herself as best she could and took a step backwards away from Harry as well. She seated herself on the floor across from the desk against which Harry now leaned. Hermione drew her knees up close to her chest, trying to block as much of the expanse of her stomach and now-visible skimpy white cotton bra as possible. She must certainly be showing an absolutely indecent amount of skin, not to mention that the tight, clingy brassiere left little to the imagination. She hugged her knees closer.
Harry was leaning against the desk now, his head staring up at the roof of the building; no doubt he was avoiding glancing at her and trying to be as delicate as possible. She watched his eyelids flutter shut.
“I’m sorry I called you a prude,” he muttered at long last.
“S’all right,” she mumbled grudgingly.
“But I bet you””
“Can it, Harry,” she bit back irritably. “I have no desire to hear how right you are.”
He looked down at her then, a smirk on his face, and cocked his head to one side. “Then you don’t want to hear, I suppose, that I’ve just discovered that there’s an open window on that wall of the greenhouse over there?”
Forgetting her modesty, Hermione leapt to her feet and swung about in the direction Harry was pointing. There was indeed an open window on the flat wall of the greenhouse just across from them. But”
“It’s so high up,” Hermione sighed resignedly. “We’ll never reach it.”
“We could if you stood on my shoulders,” Harry mumbled, clearly thinking out loud.
“I dunno,” Hermione mumbled. She was still hanging on to her anger at his insults and smugness, but she desperately wanted to get out of this greenhouse as fast as possible. “All right, we’ll try it. But what if we can reach and I leap through? What about our things? And how will you get out?”
Harry looked around for a moment. “I’ll drag over that table and climb up. You can help me out.”
Hermione nodded determinedly and the two set about moving towards the open window. It was quite a job, clambering onto Harry’s back and, much to her dismay, she found that simply sitting on his shoulders would not be high enough. She would have to stand. “Are you certain you can hold me?” she asked hesitantly. “What if I hurt you?”
“Hermione, you’re barefoot and you’re not that heavy that I can’t stand it for a few minutes.”
Resignedly, Hermione used the wall as a steadying tool and rose to her feet, tottering uncertainly. Harry had turned strangely so that he was facing away from the wall and she was facing towards it, and as such, kept asking her about the positioning of where they were standing.
“Are you near it yet? Do I need to move more?” Harry was rummaging around uncertainly and Hermione felt her balance waning.
“Stay still for heaven’s sake and let me see if I can reach?” she snapped.
In a moment of sheer mischievousness, Harry looked upwards and chimed, “Cute knickers you’ve got there, Miss Smarty Pants.”
Hermione barely thought about what she was doing when she shrieked in horror and wrenched her hands quickly away from the sill to clap them about her and clamp her skirt to her legs. The sudden shift in weight sent Harry wobbling and at last, as he could not regain his balance, he went sprawling to the ground. Hermione wildly grasped at the first thing that came to her hands on the wall so as to gain a little steadiness, but as the first thing under her fingers was the nozzle for the sprinkler system, it afforded little stability and came lose in her hand, rewarding her with a face full of warm water. In shock, she threw up her hands to shield her face and ended up tumbling onto the floor in a heap.
She heard a deep groan from beneath her and she realized that she had been sprawled directly onto Harry, who was laying still, flat on his back. She struggled for a moment, wiggling over him as she tried to right herself. Harry was still cringing and groaning from the unpleasant impact with the floor and clapped his hands onto both of her thighs.
“Stop wriggling will you? It’s hurting me,” he said quickly.
Hermione lie still and blushed as she realized how embarrassing this whole affair was turning out to be. She quickly pushed up into a sitting position over his waist. “Are you all right?” she asked quickly. When she got no response, merely his staring up at her, she asked again, “Harry, are you all right?”
With a strange glaze to his face, Hermione watched him bring a hand up and trail it across her throat. She watched him, almost as if it were not her body he was touching, as he ran a hand through one of her long curls, now escaping from the tie and dripping a wet trail across her chest. Her cheeks burned as his hand moved down to gingerly touch the white bra, now nearly transparent from the water.
“Ah …erm,” she stammered incoherently.
Harry raised his hand to her and pressed a finger across her lips. Without even stopping to question what she was doing, as she always did, Hermione shifted positions so that she was more comfortably straddling Harry’s waist and bent down to him. With only a breath’s hesitation, she pressed her lips against his.
Harry responded in kind by brushing his tongue over her lower lip, asking entrance and receiving it. Her breath caught in her chest as his arms curled around her back, pressing her closer. She could feel the warmth of his stomach rising and falling between her legs, his breath quickening as she deepened the kiss. After a moment, he wrenched his lips away and kissed the sweet skin along the curve of her jaw.
“Harry,” she murmured into his hair. “Harry …”
“Harry!” came a surprised voice from over her shoulder.
“Hermione!” came another voice, distinctly female.
Hermione rocketed away from Harry as fast as she possibly could and clutched the nearest thing “ one of the large leaves of a potted plant “ across her chest. Her cheeks were abloom with color as Neville and Ginny stared back, nonplussed from the doorway, a key dangling from Neville’s unclenching fist.
“What in the”?” Ginny got out before Hermione heard herself start to stammer.
“Door … locked … we … locked … window …” She was gibbering now, pointing vaguely to each location of the greenhouse as she talked about it.
“You know,” Neville said with a growing smirk, “I don’t think I want to know actually.”
Hermione fell silent quickly, and Harry just smirked.
“How long have”” Ginny began, dropping the hold that Hermione suddenly noticed she had on Neville’s other hand, “Have you been in here since yesterday?”
The two nodded.
“Well, we tried to get out the window, you see,” Hermione explained, “but we weren’t tall enough to reach…”
Neville started to giggle. “Why didn’t you just use a levitation charm?”
Hermione looked at Harry, aghast. Harry slapped his forehead.
“Some pair of magical geniuses you are,” Ginny laughed.
*****
A few minutes later, when Neville and Ginny had turned their backs to discretely allow them to untangle and redress, Hermione looked to Harry and sighed. “You know,” she spoke sadly, “I never did find my bracelet.”
“You were locked in here all that time for a bracelet?” Ginny asked.
“Well, you see,” Hermione began, blushing, “Harry gave it to me for my birthday and … well it is rather special and …”
Ginny smiled serenely as both Harry and Hermione blushed, and then she gently reached for Neville’s hand again, which he gave (but not without blushing of his own). Harry and Hermione followed the two out of the greenhouse, Hermione’s bag over Harry’s shoulder. When he was sure the other two weren’t looking, Harry laced a hand around Hermione’s waist and stuffed it companionably in the outside pocket of her robes. After a moment of a staring at his furrowed brow, Hermione couldn’t figure out why Harry was now rummaging in her pocket.
“Hermione …”
“What?” she asked incredulously.
“Your bracelet …”
“What?” she said, more insistent.
“It was in your pocket the whole time,” Harry finished.
“WHAT?!”
Neville and Ginny jumped as they walked a few feet ahead, Hermione’s hollered words echoing off the trees of the Forbidden Forest, followed shortly by Harry’s laughter.
A/N - Thank You all for reading and reviewing sorry its a bit short but if you enjoyed this story then you should read my next one it is going to be longer I'm working on it atm and so far im up to chapter 57 hope you enjoy it when it gets approved.
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Two Terrifically Trapped Gryffindors. by Fenixaze
Chapter Notes: A/N - Here it is, the fourth and final installment! Hope you enjoyed it !