ethrosdemon ||| Harry Potter

War: Antebellum II
by ethrosdemon
naturallycalm@yahoo.com

Crocuses and amaryllis smothered the western slope of the lawn the first time she kissed Ron. His robes disgarded for a pallet keeping grass stains off his shirt, sleeves rolled up past his elbow, he sucked the end of a well-worn quill and worked over Potion equations.

Late-afternoon sun pumped through Weasley veins, copper and gold, rosey and fully warm. Hermione watched Ron in his natural environment. His hair grown too long since his last visit to the Burrow, falling along the nape of his neck, around his ear. Eyes cast down, his eyelashes rested against his cheek, each fine hair curling and dappled differently from its brothers.

She watched him like that, his rumpled school shirt turned creamy instead of white in the fading light. His freckles faded past his face, his neck and shoulders covered in larger, darker, fewer moles. The lack of tidiness had allowed his hair to creep over the mole behind his ear, the one shaped like an old-fashioned artist's palette. As she traced through her mind over the map of Ron's moles and freckles, she decided the time was long past when she deserved to know them with a sense besides sight.

Her body hovered over him, her fingers pushed back his hair, before he ever reacted. So used was he to her in the vicinity of him, no reaction was necessary until her tongue traced her favorite mole.

**

That same week, Harry kissed her in the sallow, pooling light of the library. This came only after months of touches that moved from seemingly casual to pointedly deliberate. She became accustomed to his weight at her side, his hand on her arm, his glasses tangling in her hair. When the kisses came, they felt already half-known and tasted like belonging.

Harry existed in a bubble of his own making, a world where anything extraneous to his perspective was annulled. He often enlarged it, snatching people out of their daily lives and forcing them into his. Two Ravenclaw third-years stumbled into Hermione's study area, and the rumors started that day //her robes off her shoulders, her shirt gaping open, her breasts exposed over the top of her bra; his glasses crushed under his elbow, his tie undone and twisted in her fingers, his eyes wide-open and glazed// followed them well past graduation. She assumed it was the Ravenclaw third years, because by that time, she was well into Harry's world and never saw anyone but him until dinnertime when Ron came to fetch them.



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