Belated fic repost: "Puzzles and Paradise" (Hermione/Oliver, Hard R or so)
Title: Puzzles and Paradise
Pairing(s): Hermione/Oliver
Summary: Hermione hasn't ever been a fan of spontaneity, and this trip isn't starting out to change that, but when she runs into an old acquaintance, he seems to think maybe he can change her mind.
Rating: either hard R or barely NC17
Warnings: none
Author/Artist's notes: Written for Smutty_Claus 2009. The recipient, myownmuggle, asked for a bunch of things, some of which were exotic locations, rain, books, sexual tension that eventually gets resolved, stranded somewhere or adrift, which were the elements I (more or less) included here.
Puzzles and Paradise
"Be spontaneous, they said," Hermione muttered. "Be open to the possibilities. No planning, no fussing, and definitely no lists. Honestly. Boys."
She looked out at the pouring rain that hadn't let up in three and a half miserable days in this supposed island paradise (bloody ridiculous; if she wanted to see rain as a primary feature of her holiday, she might have simply remained at home and made judicious use of her windows, which were just as good at displaying spattering water-drops as these), and crossed her arms over her chest. She was never listening to them again. Neither of them. Shouldn't have done this time, because for all they were practically Aurors now (and that was equally ridiculous, now she thought about it; Aurors surely had to have some basic appreciation for the concept of planning, and here they were encouraging her to run off to just anywhere with no bloody idea what the major local features were, nor maps, guidebooks, or even a tiny jotted list of top five off-the-beaten-path attractions), they were clearly completely insane.
She started tapping her foot; it felt like the right thing to do as she tugged her arms tighter against her chest and scowled. Ron had even used a locating charm to check her for evidence of illicit planning, and Harry had given her a serious and heart-felt look, all big eyes that were counting on how he was still too thin after all this time, and told her he was worried she wasn't having any fun.
Fat lot of fun she was having now, for her trouble.
She watched one fat drop slide down the pane, which clearly was actually not even as good for watching horrible weather as the ones in her own sitting room, since apparently no one had bothered with a good impervious charm to keep the glass dry. "Spontaneous is really bloody overrated."
"I don't know about that," said a man's voice just behind her.
She whirled, grasping automatically for the wand she carried in her sleeve still, uncomfortable without it even in a mixed Wizarding and Muggle environment.
"Oi, easy," the man said. "Wasn't meaning to intrude, only, I quite like spontaneity and I hate to see its wonders missed by those who don't notice on their own."
"I'm quite certain I'm capable of making my own determination as to whether there are wonders to be noticed," Hermione said tightly. The man's accent placed him as a Scot, though it was soft, as though he'd been away for some time and assimilating into the patterns of speech around him. What she noticed about it, though, was that she found the familiarity more soothing than it ought to be, which made her wonder if he'd charmed his own voice, made it calm women, perhaps into visiting his quarters or some such. She glanced up and down him, and added, "I don't know why I should be looking for a spontaneity tour guide, in any case. I rather think that defeats the concept in its own right."
"You've not changed a bit, then, have ye?" The man grinned broadly. "I remember that tone from a very long time ago. You must have mastered self-righteousness by the time you were fourteen."
"I don't believe we've met." Hermione had ceased groping for the wand she probably didn't need. She was confident she was more than capable of holding off any creepy pervert without even a silent boost from it, in the relatively public setting of the common dining room despite that it was quiet with an hour and a half yet before tea time. Not that they served anything that much resembled tea here. She refolded her arms across her chest.
"Ah, and I'm crushed," he said. "No memory at all? Not even the tiniest wee flash of recollection? I'm told there was a common perception that I was rather dashing."
"And modest."
"Oi, didn't say it was my perception; only that I'd been told it." The man stuck out a hand. "Oliver Wood."
Hermione grimaced. "The Quidditch player," she said, voice lowered.
"So you do remember! Excellent, then we've something upon which to build." He shook the hand she finally grudgingly gave over, then turned. "Come on, there's a puzzle over here to be put together, and since you seem averse to the rain, I imagine you might like to set it to rights."
"I'm retired from puzzle-solving," Hermione said. She didn't know why her feet were following him, but scowling at the glass hadn't made her feel any better, and if she was going to sulk, she might as well do it sitting down. At least he gave her a focal point for her irritation.
The puzzle was quite large, consisting of several thousand pieces, and was the sort of activity that Hermione associated with elderly women at their local ladies' societies of whatever sort elderly ladies held. "I suppose it would be missing the point to simply arrange the pieces with a spell?" she asked, examining the box, which showed a somewhat stylized artist's rendering of exactly the sort of tropical paradise scene she'd expected to find here, with white-sand beach that went for miles (not that was fond of beaches; they were annoying sandy and smelled of fish), teeming flora, blooming in every (probably histamine-encouraging) color and shape, and amazing unusual wildlife (not that anything was exciting, after Buckbeak and the Gringott's dragon, but perhaps some small and cute interesting animals wouldn't have been so bad).
Liars.
"Course," he said promptly. He didn't seem to be bothered by the scene on the box. "Plus, it'd be cheating, and I imagine some of the guests might be a bit startled." He gathered a handful of luridly-colorful pieces that were surely part of the floral overabundance and handed them to her. "See what you can do with these."
She sighed and set them on the table, arranging them face-up and sorting by rough color in order to more quickly identify possible groups.
Not that the flowers on the box seemed to have any sort of order to them, so probably that was half pointless anyway. Still, after a few minutes she had several pairs and trios of pieces stuck together, and Oliver was working away at a section of beach. It wasn't entirely unpleasant.
"So, have you been here before?" he asked.
She looked up. "If I had, I would have known the brochures were utter bollocks. Sunny paradise, my arse." She pointed at the puzzle and then at the window. "I expected this, and got that. Which is why I was complaining about spontaneity--I've done spontaneous things before at least once or twice and they've always turn out ridiculous, but I think this one is the least what I wanted out of all of them."
He shrugged. "I don't know, it's kind of nice to be surprised sometimes."
"As I say, I've had more than my share of surprises."
"I suppose given all that rot with Voldemort's minion and the whatnot that followed you might have, at that. Have you had lunch yet?"
"Nominally." Hermione was a little startled he'd mentioned Voldemort directly and then dropped the subject, but she certainly wasn't about to revisit the topic on purpose.
"Nominally?"
"I ate a meal which purported to be lunch but which was in fact a desperately greasy fish filet of indeterminate origin and some perfectly textureless peas."
"Then we'll have to see about something better for tea."
She pulled a face. "Yesterday it was stale biscuits from a crinkly store-bought packet. And no milk for the tea."
"You just have to know how to talk to them," he said. "Might ye want me to go see if I can come up with something a bit more toward edible?"
Hermione regarded him suspiciously. She'd forgotten, in the past few minutes, that he'd initially come across as somewhat creepy, and started to relax, but why would a perfect--well, all right, a near-perfect--stranger go to any trouble for her tea? "What's in it for you?"
"Well, to start, I'm hoping for scones. Perhaps a sandwich, and what d'you think, some sort of fruit?"
She couldn't really argue with that. "And milk. For the tea."
"Of course." Oliver stood up. "You keep working on that. I'm off to charm the cook."
"You're not going to--"
He rolled his eyes. "Not like that. Er, actually, not like any bad implication you might have been seeing. I merely meant, I shall go be my exceptionally charming self and use the skills I learned wheedling my grandmother for another bit of pudding. See if you can get a ray of sunshine to come together." He pointed at the puzzle at her blank look, then turned and headed for, apparently, the kitchen.
She watched him go, then shrugged and set down the clump of bright orange blossoms in her hand. There were, actually, a couple of places where he'd got halfway from the sky to the sand, and the style of art did in fact show sunbeams as yellow-white rays shining down.
By the time he returned with a broad tray covered with wee plates--biscuits, scones, a pair of bacon and tomato sandwiches, and an array of tropical fruit slices around a teapot--she'd put together one long beam that touched down right at the edge of the jungle. He set one of the sandwich plates in front of her and sat down with the other. "They're out of ordinary tea," he said. "And while I suppose I could have done something about that, I don't think transfigured tea would be any better than the crap it came from."
"What kind of non-ordinary tea do they have?"
"Odd herbal things. Vanilla something. I elected to bring out some sort of green tea, rather than any of that."
Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Did you mention the problem so they can get more? While you were charming the trousers off the cook, I mean."
"The cook's duds couldn't be much more safe," he said with a chuckle. "Her name is Elena, by the way. I assume you haven't spoken with her. She reminds me of Professor Sprout."
"Professor Sprout is perfectly nice," Hermione said.
"She is," he agreed, "but I gather I have rather too many parts not in common with her."
"I beg your pardon?"
"She'd be more interested in, for instance, you." He shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich.
"Oh. Well, then I don't understand why you're more effective at charming the cook than I am."
"Were you trying to charm the cook?"
She scowled. "I can't say the concept occurred to me."
"Then there you have it. I'm sure had you been a little flirty--"
"Ew."
"What?"
"I rather loathe the notion of manipulating people like that."
"Ah, so you're usually surly to the doorman or the girl at the local greengrocer?"
"Of course not. I'm polite; there's no reason to be nasty, and if I am I can hardly blame either of them if they can't be arsed to jump up and get whatever I want immediately."
"So, in order to get good service, you're nice to the staff."
"No, because it's the decent thing. And it helps get good service."
"Same concept. It's not like I went in there threatening dire nastiness if she didn't come up with the goods."
"All right, I suppose I can accept that. Though still, I'd be dreadful at it. I've never been good with, um, girly things." She picked up a slice of unfamiliar fruit and nibbled. "Oh, this is lovely!"
He watched her for a moment, a smile playing on his lips.
"What?" she asked.
"I was going to say something corny about how I agree, lovely, but thought you might slap me or something."
"For enjoying fruit?"
"For commenting on how pretty your smile is. And don't say it's not."
She stared at him for several seconds, then picked up her cup again, hoping the heat in her cheeks wasn't as obvious to him as it felt to her. She was hardly a teenager, and she was being ridiculous. "Thanks," she muttered.
He gulped down the rest of his tea and took a pair of towels off the tray to wrap around scones and more fruit. "C'mon, it looks like it stopped raining at least a bit."
She glanced at the window, startled. "Oh! It has." She stood and was halfway to the door before she asked, "Where are we going?"
"Chasing the sun," he said.
He shoved the filled towels in a pocket (hopefully, after sealing them with wandless magic, she thought distractedly, but then, good weather would probably make up for crushed scones in any case), then opened the door and waved her out ahead of him.
--
"All right, now this is just completely odd," Hermione said, looking up at the clear blue sky. There wasn't a cloud to be seen nearly to the horizon over the water, although the area off over the jungle was still a bit gloomy. She glanced back at Oliver, who was following her toward the now brilliantly-sunny beach. "It can't be a coincidence."
He grimaced and stopped, balancing on one sandaled foot and dislodging a small rock from under the ball of his other. "The up side of dreadful weather," he said, "is that one can respectably wear boots."
"And not get sand in one's …unmentionable areas," she said. They'd fallen into a pattern of meeting up at lunch and entertaining each other until tea, which they'd taken outside each day. She wasn't entirely sure in what way she was entertaining him, but he didn't seem to require anything of her other than general conversation, and was perfectly willing to discuss such things as the current state of the Ministry, the legal status of various breeds of magical creatures (all right, that, he didn't discuss so much as listen to), and Hogwarts inter-house conflict. His opinions didn't all match hers, but then, that would have made for boring discussion anyway, and he did have opinions about things other than Quidditch, which she was somewhat embarrassed to realize surprised her. Not all athletes, she reminded herself, were unable to consider anything but their sport; after all, Viktor had been reasonably able to discuss other things, language barrier notwithstanding.
Oliver dropped his foot back down and jogged a couple of steps to catch up. "Anyway, what canna be a coincidence? and I don't really think it's awful anywhere except in one's shorts, is it?"
At least now she had a bit of color to her face from all the walking they'd been doing in the past few days, so she supposed her blush, again absurd, was less obvious. "It gets in my hair quite badly," she said, as though this made any sense as an unmentionable area.
"I see. But that's not the part about coincidence?"
"Oh! Right. It can't be. The first day with the puzzle, I made one sunbeam, and we found that one little place, off the path, where it was truly nice. The next day, we'd made a lot more progress, and there was sunshine everywhere, and then the morning after that, the Willinghams' children were a bit overenthusiastic and knocked a large bit of that part out of the puzzle."
"All right, but I fail to see how that's coincidental to anything."
"No, it's not coincidental. Remember that day, there were only little patches of sunshine and we were back to terrible clouds. Yesterday that bit got fixed again and also I put most of the flowers together, and the sun came back out and everything bloomed."
"And this morning you finished the beach, and here we are."
"Exactly."
"And you think that the puzzle controls the weather."
"It sounds absurd, but my instincts for hidden magic are usually pretty good, I like to think."
Oliver looked as though he had something more to say, then thought better of it and spread out the blanket he was carrying, then sat down as she set down the basket she'd transfigured as a better means of carrying scones than towels. "Is this more the sort of holiday you'd hoped to have?"
"I wasn't expecting company," she said.
He blinked. "Er. Right, so, I could--"
"No, no." She put out a hand to stop him from actually getting up to go. "I meant, I wasn't expecting company, so it's not the sort of holiday I was expecting, but that's not all bad. And I suppose I never would have tried the magic puzzle, so either I'd still be moping in the rain."
"You'll need to test that hypothesis, you know."
"What, take the damned thing back apart?"
"I suppose, if you want to actually prove anything. Or at least, remove enough to leave sections incomplete. How badly undone was it when it got knocked about by the children?"
"Not totally. Pieces stayed together and just got taken out of the whole in bits and parts."
"Then it's not an enormous pain in the arse to play with and see, right? We could make it rainy again and stay in tomorrow. Well, or head over to the Wizarding side of the island and go flying in the rain."
Hermione shuddered. "I don't really fly."
"Missing out, but then, I guess that narrows the choices to stay in. Or muck about in boots on the ground." He leaned back on one elbow and poked through the basket, picking out, as he usually did, a scone. They seemed to be his favorite. "How long are you staying?"
"You're not going to try to convince me flying is brilliant and amazing and if I would just try it I would love it and on and on until the sun explodes and fries the planet?"
He shook his head. "Nope. Not that I'll complain if you want to go up and give it a whirl, but I get the feeling people have tried before, and you don't like it." He leaned rolled forward and whispered, "I don't like shellfish. I don't feel all that convincible about it."
She grinned. "Well, then I'll be in charge of the lobster while you go for a fly sometime. Oh, and I didn't answer. I'm here for at least another week, maybe two, and as I may have mentioned, I was supposed to be being spontaneous, so I don't have a return date, time, plan, or requirement."
"Oh, that is spontaneous," Oliver said. "Well done."
"It wasn't my idea, and there are no words in English for the extent to which it is not the way I usually operate, but I'm concluding it's maybe not all horrible."
"Spontaneity in general, or this holiday?"
She chewed on the inside of her lip. "Maybe both."
He finished his scone and sat up to pull his t-shirt over his head, then lay down on his stomach. "Excellent. Come on, you're wasting sunshine."
"It goes to waste if I sit upright rather than lying down?"
"Something like that. Plus, it's relaxing."
She leaned back on both hands and stretched her bare legs out before her, watching the waves wash in against the sand and periodically shifting to break off and nibble at a chunk of sandwich. After half an hour, she glanced over at him snoring on his belly and shrugged, then pulled out a rather trashy but entertaining paperback novel, pulled her shirt over her head, and rolled herself over to read.
--
"I wonder if this counts as being spontaneous," Hermione mused as she plucked out pieces in chunks. Tea time was approaching, and the experiment was underway.
"Considering you planned last night to perform this experiment?" Oliver shook his head. "Sorry. Probably not. However, I think you're doing quite well with the effort in general. Last night you even set your book down without finishing out the chapter."
She glanced over at him to see whether he was teasing, and while maybe he was, a little, it wasn't mean-spirited. "It's not exactly the sort of reading material for which one must pay a great deal of attention to every word, she said after a moment.
"Yes, but that doesn't mean you don't generally finish the chapter, am I right?"
She scowled. "Maybe."
"Oi, methodicalness is an excellent quality in many contexts. I wasn't laughing at you, just appreciating the effort to try new things."
"I haven't really thought of anything else good to try," she said. "Other than the aforementioned flying, which is still not at all my first choice."
He nodded and leaned forward to pull out a set of pieces which were the only remaining point of attachment between the bright sunshine and the ground, then stood and held out his hand. "Should we watch from the window or go outside to see?"
She shrugged. "I expect Elena already has our things made up."
"Have you been charming the cook, then?" His eyebrows went up, but his grin was warm.
"No, but I've been talking to her in the mornings, and helping out some with the mess from breakfast. Some of the guests here are rather slovenly."
"Such industrious application of new efforts. I think I like the new you."
"Shut it." Hermione put out her tongue, but he wasn't being patronizing, just poking at her a little. "In any case, I suppose we should go on out."
"We needn't go far, really. There's that little… shelter thing out that way," he said as they went out the front door. He had the basket, so she had their usual blanket.
"What shelter?" She looked around the side of the building. "Oh! There's a gazebo. I didn't even know that was there."
"I noticed it the day you got here. Or at least, the day I saw you here. Don't know what kind of shape it's in, though; I haven't seen anyone come all that near to it."
She looked up as the sky darkened rapidly and the first drops of rain spattered down. "Now seems like a good time to find out." She hurried along the dirt path, then started to run as the rain went from a sprinkle to a downpour.
Oliver, unsurprisingly, was the faster runner, so he passed her and jumped up the wooden steps, then stopped short in the arch before turning around and beckoning.
"Already running," she said as she felt a slight tingle cross her skin. "Oh!"
The threshold was clearly magical, and now that she was inside, it was apparent that the reason no one had approached the thing was that it held at least some magical misdirection charms.
"Did you know this was--"
"No, I'd definitely have mentioned." Oliver moved away from her along the open walls, which were lined with low padded benches and pillows formed into alcoves and sections of various sizes. There was clearly no glass keeping the weather out, but it was warm and neither wind nor rain came through. In the center, the roof rose to a peak of translucent colored glass (not that there was much light coming through it), and further toward the perimeter floated candles, currently dark but ready to be lit. There was an unadorned square table in the middle of the platform, plain wood polished smooth and spotlessly clean, though there were no chairs in sight.
"I wonder if there are rules," Hermione said.
"I'd think if there were, that might be the sort of thing the staff would warn against, and I did read the brochure before I came here. Not a mention, so I think we're probably safe." He came back toward her and set the basket on the table.
A smooth bench, of the same manufacture as the table, rose silently out of the floor on the far side. A moment later, a cushion matching those around the room appeared atop it.
"I wonder if it's like the Room of Requirement," Hermione said.
"Dunno, did you ask it for a bench?"
"No, but it seems logical that we'd want someplace to sit."
"It seems logical that unless we asked for a single bench, it would make two, though. Unless it doesn't know there are two of us, but I felt the magic when I came in, so it must."
"To the extent it 'knows' anything," she agreed. "It's likely not exactly entirely sentient, after all."
"No, I suppose not." He frowned, the picked the basket up.
The bench retracted.
"Perhaps it just assumes anyone who sets anything there will want to sit down?" Hermione set the blanket on the table, then watched as it unfolded and formed a tablecloth. The bench didn't reappear, but as soon as the table was covered, it moved, the floor ripping open ahead of it and reforming as it passed, until it settled into one of the smaller alcoves. "Or it just wants us to sit down next to each other," she added. "Maybe instead of a Room of Requirement it's a… hm. A porch of pushiness or something."
Oliver snorted. "Terrace of tenacity?"
"Oh, that's better. We should sit."
"Or temerity. Have we concluded the rain is definitely puzzle-related?"
"Definitely, no. Probably, yes." Hermione scooted behind one end of the table Oliver went around and sat behind the other, setting the basket down again and opening the lid.
The alcove corners curved in enough to push them together.
"Veranda of vexation?" Hermione said.
Oliver looked around and spoke to the air. "Oi, Nook of nosing in, if either of us decides getting closer together is something he or she wants to pursue, I imagine it'll start with that person, not with a bench with attitude."
Hermione chuckled when the alcove corners receded somewhat, though she noticed the seat didn't re-expand; they remained seated thigh-to-thigh.
Oliver didn't move away, so neither did she, and eventually it only felt right to lean back and watch the storm with his arm around her shoulders.
--
There really was no longer a question about the relationship between the puzzle and the weather, but Hermione continued to change the scene a bit each day, usually with Oliver's help.
"Do you think it's odd," she asked, nine days into her stay when she was creating rain at the beach after a sunny walk along the trail, "that no one else ever even approaches this table?"
"Except the Willinghams' children."
"True, but I think they more were running about and bounced off the table without even noticing it existed. I don't think they were in here on purpose."
"Ah. Well, I think we're the only magical guests," Oliver said. He'd just strolled over and glanced at the situation, then sat down beside her and started working to place more of the flowers and vines in the jungle. They'd never really completed that part, and Hermione wondered what the effect would be in the real world. "Perhaps no one else can see us."
Hermione looked around. They were in a section of the room which was, she supposed, rather set off from the main area. Perhaps he had a point. "It would make sense--if Muggles ever worked out that the puzzle controlled the weather, they might be a bit startled. What if more arrive? Wizards, not Muggles."
He glanced at her for a moment, then looked away. "Then I suppose my nefarious plans to seduce you right here in this room, unknown to people just on the other side of the sofa, will be thwarted."
"Your plans… you're teasing me."
"Only about the room," he said lightly. "I believe I've said before that plans weren't all bad."
"Did you intend to share this seduction plan with me before implementing it?"
He raised his eyebrows. "I think that might become troublesome, don't you? That is, if the plan is to seduce, isn't it sort of inherent in the activity that I persuade as we go? In which case prior notice seems awkward."
"Yes, but--"
"So no, I didn't plan to tell you, but it was the answer that came to mind when you asked the question." He leaned closer and used to fingers to tilt her chin up. "It's not synonymous with 'force,' you know. The point of seduction is to show you what you want, but if you don't want, then I couldn't possibly show you."
Hermione scowled. "I know that, but I'm hardly the girl that is the focus of seduction plots, so I'm not entirely familiar with how they work." She pressed a group of six pieces into place at once and reached for another.
"No reason you shouldn't be," he said. He handed her a piece that went with the one in her hand. "Want to go see how the beach is in the rain?"
"Yes, but I also want to hear more about this seduction plan," she said. "Does it involve going and seeing how this meadow looks now that it's complete?" The puzzle's meadow was among and behind the first line of trees, and she thought it worked out to be past the gazebo and north of the inn, but it was difficult to be sure; other than general types of vegetation and scenery, there was no true one-to-one correspondence between the image and the reality.
"It might," he said. "Probably a lot less wet than the beach right now."
"Well, we could go look there, and come back later for our basket. It's earlier than we usually go," she pointed out.
He shrugged and took her hand as he stood. They walked out the door and past the gazebo, then on into the rather overgrown forest.
It wasn't a long walk, and to Hermione's surprise, the low branches along the path seemed to bend away from her on their own, making it easy to follow the somewhat disused trail into the bright meadow. It was, as in the picture, filled with flowers of every color and shape, some of them on bushes and others on tall stalks. She stopped to take in the sight, then turned. "Now this is the sort of thing I expected to see here in the first place." She stepped closer to a clump of deep red blooms that hung, bell-shaped, from a vine that clung to the trunk of one of the trees surrounding the clearing, and bent to smell it, then gasped as an itchy, full sensation exploded behind her eyes. "Oliver?" she croaked as she landed on her bum on the ground, unaware she had lost her balance in the first place. "I think… something happened." He voice sounded odd, and her forehead felt dry, hot, and sweaty.
"What--bugger, what in the world did you do?" He stood over her, then crouched and tipped her chin up. "Aye, something happened. What did it, then?"
She felt her eyes crossing, trying to focus on his mouth asking questions, but couldn't quite seem to stop it for a long moment before she was able to make a rather unsteady effort to look at the flowers she'd been admiring.
"This one?"
"What?"
He held up one of the flowers. "Was it this one?"
"It's pretty," she said. It wasn't what she meant to say at all, and she sounded drunk, or as though she'd landed in one of the temporal devices in the Department of Mysteries. "It. Yes. That. One." She felt her eyes crossing again trying to focus on the flower, and she looked up. "Sorry."
He shook his head and stood momentarily to shove the flower in his pocket, then dropped back down to pull her against him. "How's walking sound?"
She shook her head and groaned. "Ismupplable. Um. Bad."
"Figured. All right, up we go, then." He lifted her more easily than she would have expected and started back toward the inn as she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her head against his shoulder.
"No flying." This seemed critically important, though she was reasonably sure there was something missing about the concept.
"No, no flying. For one thing, I'd need a broom for that, but either way, if I take you flying, I'd rather you have the capacity to complain if you don't like it. Right now, I think you'd be a bit impaired."
"Kay. Why're you strong?" He was strong, the muscle of his shoulder under her ear firm and flexing with each step, and while she'd seen him shirtless half a dozen times, she'd never quite considered that his broad shoulders would be so solid.
He chuckled. "I think it might be to do with the flying. And the other associated things. No worries, I won't drop you."
"Good." She nuzzled in against his neck. "Drop 'd wake me."
She heard him answering, but couldn't be arsed to pay attention enough to answer, nor to object when he started moving faster.
--
Her position when she awoke was uncomfortable, but it only took a moment for her to realize that that was
Because he was propping her head to give her a drink. "What'ssat?" she asked, irritated to hear her words come out fuzzy as she slowly shifted into a more comfortable pose.
"Something to counteract the pollen of that flower," Oliver said. "How's your head?"
"Better. Foggy." She opened her eyes a crack and saw colorful streams of light coming from the peak of the roof. "Oh. Why are we here?"
"You were freaking me right out, and as I went by it occurred to me that if this place was manipulative enough to toss me in your lap, it might be up for helping me out by producing a fucking Floo. I couldn't be sure where locally would know about magical maladies, but there's a team healer--"
"That'd be me," said a gentle feminine voice behind her.
She turned, then closed her eyes again. "Ugh, dizzy. You're based near here?"
"Near may be a stretch, but Apparation was possible," said the woman. Her accent was American, a slow, low drawl Hermione thought sounded like someone with a wide bright smile in a film she'd seen long ago, and Hermione got the feeling that gentle tone aside, this person was unlikely to suffer fools gladly or tolerate sloppy work.
"Thanks," Hermione said. She turned slightly toward Oliver. "How'd you know it was magical?"
"Couldn't be sure, but most Muggle plant-responses don't act fast on wizards, if I correctly recall the content of my Herbology NEWT, so it seemed a fair wager."
"It's good he made that bet," the healer added. "That shit is bad news, and I'll be having a talk with the local Wizarding authorities. It should at the very least be posted as a hazard, and any idiot lets people wander around with it needs a swift kick."
"Uh, I'm glad for the bet too, then." Hermione frowned. "Should I feel like someone is dancing on my head still?"
"Should you?" asked the healer. "I'd say no, but it's a normal response to the situation. Here." She handed over three small vials. "One now, one at bedtime that you might not need, but just to be sure, and then if you feel hung over when you wake up, one in the morning. Some people clear the toxin a hell of a lot quicker than others, but if you're not feeling normal by noon tomorrow."
Hermione took the vials and set two beside her, the tried to uncork the third. After a moment, the wee lid twisted free, and she brought it to her lips immediately. "Thanks," she said after swallowing. "So, just for my information, what would have happened?"
"Like I said, bad shit." The healer was packing up her back, clearly preparing to leave. "I've seen long term neurological distress and myelin--um. Y'all don't interact much with the Muggles over your way, but the short version is that the brain and all the fibers that connect--"
"I'm Muggle-born," Hermione said. "I'm familiar with the words."
"Ah, good, then. Myelin-sheath damage is a bitch, and we're not much better at repairing it than the Muggles are. Now this particular cause, usually if it's caught within an hour or so, it's entirely reversible, and your friend here says that it was more on the order of fifteen minutes by the time he called for me, twenty by the time I got here. Still, if you find yourself experiencing tremors or anything else that seems to be neurological like weird streaky pains or flashing lights, you get your ass to the healer on the next island. Here." She scrawled on a card and handed that to Hermione, too. "Name and number; he's a decent guy and works both sides of the street so he can be contacted by Muggle or magical means."
Hermione nodded. "I'm sure I'll be fine, but I'll be on the lookout for problems."
"Me, too," Oliver said. He pointed at the bloom he'd brought with him. "D'you need that, and should I be concerned about having nicked it to bring out?"
"Probably not, though I'd wash the clothes you're both wearing promptly. And I'll take it with me, both for evidence and for disposal."
Oliver nodded, and the healer levitated the bloom into her bag, then closed it up and Apparated away. Oliver turned back to Hermione. "Well. So that was an adventure."
"Thanks. I don't really know what I'd have done--"
He waived a hand dismissively. "Oh, shut it. What was I to do, leave you there, Sleeping Beauty? Come on, you're going to want to get cleaned up, though I think we ought to go up the back stairs and avoid the whole healer-owner interaction."
"Ugh. Good point." She picked up the remaining two vials of potion or medicine or whatever Americans called it, then gathered herself to stand. "I'm still a little woozy."
Oliver nodded and reached toward her. "Walk or carry?"
"Merlin. I didn't mean please carry me; I'm not a child. Just, please help me not fall on my face?"
"I can do that." Oliver slid his arm around her waist and walked slowly. "For the record," he said as they stepped down off the gazebo platform, "the odds of me mistaking you for a child are quite low."
--
"You should go have supper," Hermione said. Oliver had helped her get the mud off her face and out of her hair, but then after she'd put herself to bed, he'd returned and pulled the stuffed chair nearer the bed, then plunked down and put his feet on the bed, crossed at the ankle, and set about entertaining her with ridiculous and clearly embellished Quidditch-league stories about rivalries and matches and absurd practical jokes gone wrong. As he wasn't dead serious about the topic, this was surprisingly non-annoying.
"Aw, I've worn out my welcome, have I?" He stood and pushed the chair back into place. "Should I bring you anything?"
"That's sweet, but really, I think I just need to sleep. I'd rather not still feel like this in the morning."
He nodded. "I'd rather you didn't, too." He shoved his feet back into the shoes he'd discarded before putting his feet on the bed. "I'll pop my head in when I come back up, though. In case you turn out to be insomniac."
"I doubt that will happen. No laughing if I'm snoring."
"Right." He went out and closed the door, and Hermione kicked off the blanket that would be too warm to sleep under and shed the pyjama bottoms that were good for walking around but terrible for sleeping. Knickers and the light top under only a sheet would be much better. She was asleep nearly immediately.
"Hermione?" She woke a bit puzzled, until Oliver said her name again. Then she felt his hand on her shoulder.
"Hmm?" She started to roll onto her back, then found he was sitting behind her where she was curled on her side. "Hi. What?"
"Sorry to wake you. I just noticed you didn't take the second dose of the potion." He held up the vial. "She said to take it at bedtime."
Hermione wormed her way upright, wincing when that made her head spin. "Thanks." She took the vial and uncorked it. "This smells horrible."
"It did the first time, too; you were just too unhappy to notice."
"Ugh. Now I want to go clean my teeth."
He stood to let her up out of the sheet. "Have they said anything to you?"
"Who?" She was most of the way to the adjacent washroom before she realized she was in her underwear, but if he wasn't commenting, then neither was she, and besides, it was a bit late to do anything about it now, as running back and leaping into the bed would be absurd. It was dim in the room anyway, so he probably wouldn't go deciding she was trying to proposition him.
"The staff. I mean, about the fact that they had a magical plant within their boundaries and all." The inn didn't technically own the entire island, but it was true that this afternoon's adventure had been well shy of the formal boundary, and when she thought about it, Hermione was a little surprised there had been no comment.
She rinsed her mouth and scrubbed at her teeth, then rinsed again. "Maybe they came up and I was asleep?"
"Or they just don't want to acknowledge any responsibility," he said with a scowl.
She crossed back to the bed and sat down. "I'm just glad you were with me. I imagine at some point I'd have ventured out and found them one way or another--they can't possibly just leave the island rainy all the time waiting for someone magical to up and notice, right?"
"True. Anyway, sorry to have woken you."
"No, it was necessary. Sorry to have spoiled your seduction plan, earlier." She squeezed her eyes shut. "And for saying that; apparently my tongue isn't in step with my brain."
He chuckled. "Your tongue is just fine. As far as I know, which I will admit is not so well as I had in mind by now. Not spoiled, though, just delayed. I'm assuming the potion hasn't made you so well as all that quite yet."
"Maybe not. That is, it did make me feel better, but it's hard to say whether that will last."
"Too bad; the knickers-and-shirt look is quite fetching, really."
She reached behind her and threw a pillow, which he caught easily. Of course he did; catching thrown objects was his job, most of the time. "Doesn't your season start soon?" she asked as he brought the pillow back and placed it behind her.
"What brought that on?"
"You catching the pillow."
"Oh, well. I could do more stunts, if you like."
His hand was still on the pillow beyond her, which meant he was reaching across her, so it was easy to reach up and catch his chin. She turned him to face her. "You're avoiding the question, aren't you?"
"Would that be a problem?"
She considered for a moment. "No, I just wondered whether you might be absent when I wake up one morning soon."
"Is my presence or absence usually of immediate concern for you on waking?" He straightened up away from her, but his attention so focused on her she found herself glancing away for a moment.
She sighed. "I don't even know how to answer that, or how I managed to bring it up, but I suppose the point of the question was, you've been all concerned and taking care of me all day, and we've essentially only just met."
"Not true; we've known each other since we were at school."
"Vaguely, but not well."
"Yes, but my point is we didn't meet for the first time a week ago, so it's really not like I've just developed some enormous… so I'm going to say relationship even though I suppose that's a bit big of a word, with someone I only just met. We don't know each other well, but there's some history, and we more or less know where to find each other, so it's not like an anonymous holiday shag--at which, I would point out, we would be failing rather desperately if it were the goal, since typically in that case I expect a week and a half is considered excessive."
Hermione shook her head and turned to stick her feet back under the sheet. "No, I agree this isn't anonymous, but were you hoping for a quick and easy anonymous holiday shag?"
"Uh." Oliver shrugged and sat down on the bed again, trapping her feet, his hip and thigh warm against hers through the sheet. "So there was a time I liked going on holiday somewhere I could play on the Quidditch thing. I wasn't anonymous, but they were, generally." He shrugged again. "This is not such a place, because that's not so appealing any more."
"Right. I shouldn't say this, but I get the feeling you think I'm going to condemn you for that. You do understand that Harry especially, but also Ron and I to probably a lesser degree, are familiar with the phenomenon? You know, let me buy you a drink, hey, don't I know you, mmm you smell so good…"
He blinked. "Oh. Wow. So were you looking for a quick and easy anonymous--"
"No. It didn't take very many iterations to work out that it wasn't particularly satisfying. For me, at least. Orgasms are fun, but I believe I've concluded that trust and continuity are better."
"No, not very," he said. "Satisfying, not the trust being better, I mean. But I think I was older than you by the time I came to see the value of knowing someone's name."
"You're not that much older than me now," she pointed out. She grinned. "So, now that I've shocked you by establishing we've equally slutty pasts--"
"Oi, I did not in any way call you a slut. I just--you blush about things, and that seems rather contrary to--shite. I did not just call you a slut, I don't think that, and the issue is entirely not relevant anyway."
"I know, both that you didn't say it and that it's not relevant, but as long as we were being confessional, I blush because I just do. I think it's my mother's fault for always whispering words like vagina. See, there I go again. And actually, I don't really use that word pejoratively--slut, not vagina, although not that one either--because God, the way it's used against women when it's never used against men… But that's not where I was going."
"Where were you going?"
"I was thinking that somehow this conversation took a turn, and I wondered if… now that we've established we're both not interested in quick and meaningless--and I may be assuming, but the fact that you've been hanging about all day today especially, but also all week, says something--I wondered if you were looking for a different sort of holiday encounter. In which case, if you didn't mind the blushing because while I am familiar with the fame phenomenon, I'm much less so with anything of greater duration, I think I would be immediately concerned as to your presence or absence first thing in the morning."
Oliver pursed his lips. "Tomorrow morning specifically, or more generally?"
"It's a bit difficult to say how much more generally, but I thought perhaps starting with tomorrow. When, as you may recall, I may require a trip to a healer in any case."
"Huh. Well, with magic, location isn't such a difficulty, but possibly I should mention I'm no longer much for traveling about anyway. Retired this spring."
"I see."
"Problem, is it?"
"No, but I agree it's important. And probably would increase the likelihood you'd remain present. Which is, evidently, also important."
"So this revelation came to you whilst you were sleeping and I was getting supper?"
"No, earlier; however, I was indisposed."
"I see." He frowned and leaned closer to her. "Are you still? Indisposed?"
"No."
"Good." He put his fingers under her chin and kissed her softly. When he pulled away, he asked, "Still no sign of illness?"
"No, but I suppose we ought to do further research." Her hand came around and spread wide on the back of his head, pulling him forward into another kiss, deeper and longer, her mouth opening to nip and suck at his lips and tongue until he put his hands down to either side of her and turned his body. She scooted down in the bed, pulling him with her, sliding her tongue into his mouth as her other hand ranged down his back.
Finally, he lifted away, licking his lips and panting. "Ye seem entirely well and I canna even tell it, how I want tae--"
"Heavens, I've sucked the, what, Glasgow? right onto your lips," she said with a grin.
He stopped, then laughed. "Wat, lass, ye want tae unnerstann me, d'ye, when I spake?"
"Oh, no, I think we're communicating fine," she said. "But I am, unfortunately, still a bit knackered."
"I should stay with you, then. See how you are when you wake."
"Make an assessment in the morning?"
"Exactly what I was thinking." He toed off his shoes and started to pull his shirt over his head. "I failed to relocate my pyjamas to your rooms."
"I think we might have to make do with knickers and a shirt. Unless you're shy."
"Maybe a bit, but I expect it'll all turn out well." He pulled the shirt over his head and folded it in half, then draped it over the back of the chair before unfastening his shorts.
--
Hermione wasn't really awake yet, though she wasn't fully asleep, either. The light coming in the window suggested it was early yet, and a sunny morning, but she was warm and comfortable, and once she'd recalled that it was Oliver's arm tossed over her, she'd felt lazy and not at all like getting up.
"Hung over?" he said as she lay there ignoring the rising sun.
"No, actually."
His arm tightened around her waist, which pulled her back against him. It was impossible not to notice he was half-hard against her arse, but he didn't seem particularly in a hurry to do anything about it, and a moment later his arm relaxed again. "Glad to hear it."
She glanced over her shoulder. "I should think so; I imagine you didn't want to spend the afternoon talking to a healer about me two days running. Not that you'd have been obligated to--"
"Didn't we already cover how we were looking for something other than a glancing and shallow sort of holiday shag?"
"Yes, but in the event, you still wouldn’t have been obligated."
"Aye, I suppose not. Which is just as well; doing things out of obligation alone really bites." He nuzzled against the point where her shoulder and neck met. "Speaking of, if it was just the potion talking, last night--"
"Only the part where I overshared perhaps more than was appropriate."
He laughed, his belly shuddering with it against her back. "I wasn't taking any potions, so I think you're all right there."
"You feel good." His hand was relaxed before her, a loose fist with the knuckles grazing the bed, and now he lifted it, fingers skimming the sheet so that it dipped toward her belly. She twisted as the weight of it rose off her, onto her back, and it resettled, splaying over her ribs. His hands were big and brown, the thumb just brushing the bottom of one breast as the first finger brushed the other. "I gather, as you didn't flee in the night, that you still mean to be here."
"Oh, very much." The thumb moved, stroking a tiny path back and forth, touching nothing explicitly sexual, but never the less hardening the nipple nearer him, never the less stoking heat between her thighs. She hadn't quite realized how much she wanted this until they'd started talking about it, but she'd noticed his hands and his shoulders, and she'd felt the impulse to touch. "You?"
Hermione didn't bother with a verbal answer, instead turning further into his arms and muttering a teeth-cleaning charm that wasn't as good as a toothbrush but would do.
He chuckled, but took the hint, kissing her slowly, thoroughly, that big hand tracing down over her hip and thigh. She gasped when he moved from her lips and sucked wet nibbles along her jaw and throat, out the line of her shoulder and down her back, lifting himself over her and rolling her again to shove up her t-shirt and kiss down her spine. A moment later he was grazing his teeth over one arse cheek, fingers sliding under the elastic of the leg-band and letting it snap back into place. "You're very inconveniently placed for me to touch you," she said, though considering the shivery tingle of each nip and suck at her skin, she wasn't exactly unhappy.
He kept moving downward, licking a wet stripe across the back of her knee, then placed his hands above her knees on the backs of her thighs and pressed up until his thumbs met between her legs.
She shuddered, her arse pushing back against his hands involuntarily. He chuckled and followed the path of his right palm with his tongue, then dropped down beside her and helped her twist around on her side, kicking with her at the sheet still tangled around their feet. As soon as she was free of it, she threw a knee over him and rolled him onto his back, straddling him for a moment and then shaking her head, realizing her knickers were still in the way. "Bit out of practice," she muttered ruefully, guiding his hand up her thigh to the elastic.
"Ah, but thankfully, we’re wizards," Oliver said. "We have banishment charms and the like."
"Point." She dropped forward to rest her elbows on his chest. "I don't suppose you have your wand in here to use one?"
"Course not, but ye have yours," he said. "Likely in arm's reach."
"True." She leaned over, gasping when he took the opportunity to curl upward and find a nipple with his teeth as she retrieved her wand. "Would have been easier to just get up and take off my knickers," she said.
"But less fun." He ran a thumb over the damp spot on her t-shirt, then dropped both hands down and pushed the whole thing up and over her head before returning to pressing his teeth gently in again.
She yelped and pulled away, but she was laughing, and between them they disentangled her wand from her shirt--"Bad planning," she observed--and stripped away everything else with one charm.
"This, on the other hand, looks to be a rather excellent plan," he said, his finger trailing down the center of her chest. "Wouldn’t you say?"
She sucked in her ticklish belly away from the scraping fingernail and nodded. "Better once we put it in motion."
"The plan?"
"Or anything else that seems relevant."
He shrugged and smoothed both hands down her sides to her hips. "As the lady commands," he said, lifting just enough to slide smoothly into her. "The lady is brilliant," he added with a grunt.
She frowned, flexing her hips forward until he groaned. "I've never really been the strategist," she said thoughtfully. "Perhaps I ought to try it more often. Or just faster."
His eyes widened as he nodded, breathless, and she put the latest plan into action.''
--
"Do you think we should go downstairs for lunch?" he asked, lying on his side on top of her sheets and trailing a finger in loose unplanned paths on her skin. His brown skin was bright with a light sheen of sweat still, reflecting the light of the window, though as the sun was nearly straight overhead, it was a blueish light now.
As though it had simply been waiting for the question, her stomach rumbled. "I suppose that answers that," she said. She rolled away and stood up quickly. "Do you think we can be responsible adults and share a shower?"
"Adults, definitely," he said with a chuckle. "What, now that a change of scenery has been suggested, you can't wait to escape?"
"Nothing like that." She picked up a comb off the chest of drawers and started the sometimes-ridiculous process of untangling her hair. "But I was thinking."
"Should I be concerned?"
She cast about for something harmless to throw, then waved a hand at him. "Shut it. No, I was thinking we ought to disassemble the puzzle."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Then it will be horrible out and we will have every possible reason to curl up in bed."
He rolled onto his belly and watched her wrestle with a difficult curl. "You know, I'm beginning to think you are, in fact, the one in charge of strategy."
She grinned and nodded toward the bath. "Shall we?"
I originally posted this at http://florahart.dreamwidth.org/1042333.html, and you are welcome to comment there. OpenID and/or anon comments are allowed.
Pairing(s): Hermione/Oliver
Summary: Hermione hasn't ever been a fan of spontaneity, and this trip isn't starting out to change that, but when she runs into an old acquaintance, he seems to think maybe he can change her mind.
Rating: either hard R or barely NC17
Warnings: none
Author/Artist's notes: Written for Smutty_Claus 2009. The recipient, myownmuggle, asked for a bunch of things, some of which were exotic locations, rain, books, sexual tension that eventually gets resolved, stranded somewhere or adrift, which were the elements I (more or less) included here.
Puzzles and Paradise
"Be spontaneous, they said," Hermione muttered. "Be open to the possibilities. No planning, no fussing, and definitely no lists. Honestly. Boys."
She looked out at the pouring rain that hadn't let up in three and a half miserable days in this supposed island paradise (bloody ridiculous; if she wanted to see rain as a primary feature of her holiday, she might have simply remained at home and made judicious use of her windows, which were just as good at displaying spattering water-drops as these), and crossed her arms over her chest. She was never listening to them again. Neither of them. Shouldn't have done this time, because for all they were practically Aurors now (and that was equally ridiculous, now she thought about it; Aurors surely had to have some basic appreciation for the concept of planning, and here they were encouraging her to run off to just anywhere with no bloody idea what the major local features were, nor maps, guidebooks, or even a tiny jotted list of top five off-the-beaten-path attractions), they were clearly completely insane.
She started tapping her foot; it felt like the right thing to do as she tugged her arms tighter against her chest and scowled. Ron had even used a locating charm to check her for evidence of illicit planning, and Harry had given her a serious and heart-felt look, all big eyes that were counting on how he was still too thin after all this time, and told her he was worried she wasn't having any fun.
Fat lot of fun she was having now, for her trouble.
She watched one fat drop slide down the pane, which clearly was actually not even as good for watching horrible weather as the ones in her own sitting room, since apparently no one had bothered with a good impervious charm to keep the glass dry. "Spontaneous is really bloody overrated."
"I don't know about that," said a man's voice just behind her.
She whirled, grasping automatically for the wand she carried in her sleeve still, uncomfortable without it even in a mixed Wizarding and Muggle environment.
"Oi, easy," the man said. "Wasn't meaning to intrude, only, I quite like spontaneity and I hate to see its wonders missed by those who don't notice on their own."
"I'm quite certain I'm capable of making my own determination as to whether there are wonders to be noticed," Hermione said tightly. The man's accent placed him as a Scot, though it was soft, as though he'd been away for some time and assimilating into the patterns of speech around him. What she noticed about it, though, was that she found the familiarity more soothing than it ought to be, which made her wonder if he'd charmed his own voice, made it calm women, perhaps into visiting his quarters or some such. She glanced up and down him, and added, "I don't know why I should be looking for a spontaneity tour guide, in any case. I rather think that defeats the concept in its own right."
"You've not changed a bit, then, have ye?" The man grinned broadly. "I remember that tone from a very long time ago. You must have mastered self-righteousness by the time you were fourteen."
"I don't believe we've met." Hermione had ceased groping for the wand she probably didn't need. She was confident she was more than capable of holding off any creepy pervert without even a silent boost from it, in the relatively public setting of the common dining room despite that it was quiet with an hour and a half yet before tea time. Not that they served anything that much resembled tea here. She refolded her arms across her chest.
"Ah, and I'm crushed," he said. "No memory at all? Not even the tiniest wee flash of recollection? I'm told there was a common perception that I was rather dashing."
"And modest."
"Oi, didn't say it was my perception; only that I'd been told it." The man stuck out a hand. "Oliver Wood."
Hermione grimaced. "The Quidditch player," she said, voice lowered.
"So you do remember! Excellent, then we've something upon which to build." He shook the hand she finally grudgingly gave over, then turned. "Come on, there's a puzzle over here to be put together, and since you seem averse to the rain, I imagine you might like to set it to rights."
"I'm retired from puzzle-solving," Hermione said. She didn't know why her feet were following him, but scowling at the glass hadn't made her feel any better, and if she was going to sulk, she might as well do it sitting down. At least he gave her a focal point for her irritation.
The puzzle was quite large, consisting of several thousand pieces, and was the sort of activity that Hermione associated with elderly women at their local ladies' societies of whatever sort elderly ladies held. "I suppose it would be missing the point to simply arrange the pieces with a spell?" she asked, examining the box, which showed a somewhat stylized artist's rendering of exactly the sort of tropical paradise scene she'd expected to find here, with white-sand beach that went for miles (not that was fond of beaches; they were annoying sandy and smelled of fish), teeming flora, blooming in every (probably histamine-encouraging) color and shape, and amazing unusual wildlife (not that anything was exciting, after Buckbeak and the Gringott's dragon, but perhaps some small and cute interesting animals wouldn't have been so bad).
Liars.
"Course," he said promptly. He didn't seem to be bothered by the scene on the box. "Plus, it'd be cheating, and I imagine some of the guests might be a bit startled." He gathered a handful of luridly-colorful pieces that were surely part of the floral overabundance and handed them to her. "See what you can do with these."
She sighed and set them on the table, arranging them face-up and sorting by rough color in order to more quickly identify possible groups.
Not that the flowers on the box seemed to have any sort of order to them, so probably that was half pointless anyway. Still, after a few minutes she had several pairs and trios of pieces stuck together, and Oliver was working away at a section of beach. It wasn't entirely unpleasant.
"So, have you been here before?" he asked.
She looked up. "If I had, I would have known the brochures were utter bollocks. Sunny paradise, my arse." She pointed at the puzzle and then at the window. "I expected this, and got that. Which is why I was complaining about spontaneity--I've done spontaneous things before at least once or twice and they've always turn out ridiculous, but I think this one is the least what I wanted out of all of them."
He shrugged. "I don't know, it's kind of nice to be surprised sometimes."
"As I say, I've had more than my share of surprises."
"I suppose given all that rot with Voldemort's minion and the whatnot that followed you might have, at that. Have you had lunch yet?"
"Nominally." Hermione was a little startled he'd mentioned Voldemort directly and then dropped the subject, but she certainly wasn't about to revisit the topic on purpose.
"Nominally?"
"I ate a meal which purported to be lunch but which was in fact a desperately greasy fish filet of indeterminate origin and some perfectly textureless peas."
"Then we'll have to see about something better for tea."
She pulled a face. "Yesterday it was stale biscuits from a crinkly store-bought packet. And no milk for the tea."
"You just have to know how to talk to them," he said. "Might ye want me to go see if I can come up with something a bit more toward edible?"
Hermione regarded him suspiciously. She'd forgotten, in the past few minutes, that he'd initially come across as somewhat creepy, and started to relax, but why would a perfect--well, all right, a near-perfect--stranger go to any trouble for her tea? "What's in it for you?"
"Well, to start, I'm hoping for scones. Perhaps a sandwich, and what d'you think, some sort of fruit?"
She couldn't really argue with that. "And milk. For the tea."
"Of course." Oliver stood up. "You keep working on that. I'm off to charm the cook."
"You're not going to--"
He rolled his eyes. "Not like that. Er, actually, not like any bad implication you might have been seeing. I merely meant, I shall go be my exceptionally charming self and use the skills I learned wheedling my grandmother for another bit of pudding. See if you can get a ray of sunshine to come together." He pointed at the puzzle at her blank look, then turned and headed for, apparently, the kitchen.
She watched him go, then shrugged and set down the clump of bright orange blossoms in her hand. There were, actually, a couple of places where he'd got halfway from the sky to the sand, and the style of art did in fact show sunbeams as yellow-white rays shining down.
By the time he returned with a broad tray covered with wee plates--biscuits, scones, a pair of bacon and tomato sandwiches, and an array of tropical fruit slices around a teapot--she'd put together one long beam that touched down right at the edge of the jungle. He set one of the sandwich plates in front of her and sat down with the other. "They're out of ordinary tea," he said. "And while I suppose I could have done something about that, I don't think transfigured tea would be any better than the crap it came from."
"What kind of non-ordinary tea do they have?"
"Odd herbal things. Vanilla something. I elected to bring out some sort of green tea, rather than any of that."
Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Did you mention the problem so they can get more? While you were charming the trousers off the cook, I mean."
"The cook's duds couldn't be much more safe," he said with a chuckle. "Her name is Elena, by the way. I assume you haven't spoken with her. She reminds me of Professor Sprout."
"Professor Sprout is perfectly nice," Hermione said.
"She is," he agreed, "but I gather I have rather too many parts not in common with her."
"I beg your pardon?"
"She'd be more interested in, for instance, you." He shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich.
"Oh. Well, then I don't understand why you're more effective at charming the cook than I am."
"Were you trying to charm the cook?"
She scowled. "I can't say the concept occurred to me."
"Then there you have it. I'm sure had you been a little flirty--"
"Ew."
"What?"
"I rather loathe the notion of manipulating people like that."
"Ah, so you're usually surly to the doorman or the girl at the local greengrocer?"
"Of course not. I'm polite; there's no reason to be nasty, and if I am I can hardly blame either of them if they can't be arsed to jump up and get whatever I want immediately."
"So, in order to get good service, you're nice to the staff."
"No, because it's the decent thing. And it helps get good service."
"Same concept. It's not like I went in there threatening dire nastiness if she didn't come up with the goods."
"All right, I suppose I can accept that. Though still, I'd be dreadful at it. I've never been good with, um, girly things." She picked up a slice of unfamiliar fruit and nibbled. "Oh, this is lovely!"
He watched her for a moment, a smile playing on his lips.
"What?" she asked.
"I was going to say something corny about how I agree, lovely, but thought you might slap me or something."
"For enjoying fruit?"
"For commenting on how pretty your smile is. And don't say it's not."
She stared at him for several seconds, then picked up her cup again, hoping the heat in her cheeks wasn't as obvious to him as it felt to her. She was hardly a teenager, and she was being ridiculous. "Thanks," she muttered.
He gulped down the rest of his tea and took a pair of towels off the tray to wrap around scones and more fruit. "C'mon, it looks like it stopped raining at least a bit."
She glanced at the window, startled. "Oh! It has." She stood and was halfway to the door before she asked, "Where are we going?"
"Chasing the sun," he said.
He shoved the filled towels in a pocket (hopefully, after sealing them with wandless magic, she thought distractedly, but then, good weather would probably make up for crushed scones in any case), then opened the door and waved her out ahead of him.
--
"All right, now this is just completely odd," Hermione said, looking up at the clear blue sky. There wasn't a cloud to be seen nearly to the horizon over the water, although the area off over the jungle was still a bit gloomy. She glanced back at Oliver, who was following her toward the now brilliantly-sunny beach. "It can't be a coincidence."
He grimaced and stopped, balancing on one sandaled foot and dislodging a small rock from under the ball of his other. "The up side of dreadful weather," he said, "is that one can respectably wear boots."
"And not get sand in one's …unmentionable areas," she said. They'd fallen into a pattern of meeting up at lunch and entertaining each other until tea, which they'd taken outside each day. She wasn't entirely sure in what way she was entertaining him, but he didn't seem to require anything of her other than general conversation, and was perfectly willing to discuss such things as the current state of the Ministry, the legal status of various breeds of magical creatures (all right, that, he didn't discuss so much as listen to), and Hogwarts inter-house conflict. His opinions didn't all match hers, but then, that would have made for boring discussion anyway, and he did have opinions about things other than Quidditch, which she was somewhat embarrassed to realize surprised her. Not all athletes, she reminded herself, were unable to consider anything but their sport; after all, Viktor had been reasonably able to discuss other things, language barrier notwithstanding.
Oliver dropped his foot back down and jogged a couple of steps to catch up. "Anyway, what canna be a coincidence? and I don't really think it's awful anywhere except in one's shorts, is it?"
At least now she had a bit of color to her face from all the walking they'd been doing in the past few days, so she supposed her blush, again absurd, was less obvious. "It gets in my hair quite badly," she said, as though this made any sense as an unmentionable area.
"I see. But that's not the part about coincidence?"
"Oh! Right. It can't be. The first day with the puzzle, I made one sunbeam, and we found that one little place, off the path, where it was truly nice. The next day, we'd made a lot more progress, and there was sunshine everywhere, and then the morning after that, the Willinghams' children were a bit overenthusiastic and knocked a large bit of that part out of the puzzle."
"All right, but I fail to see how that's coincidental to anything."
"No, it's not coincidental. Remember that day, there were only little patches of sunshine and we were back to terrible clouds. Yesterday that bit got fixed again and also I put most of the flowers together, and the sun came back out and everything bloomed."
"And this morning you finished the beach, and here we are."
"Exactly."
"And you think that the puzzle controls the weather."
"It sounds absurd, but my instincts for hidden magic are usually pretty good, I like to think."
Oliver looked as though he had something more to say, then thought better of it and spread out the blanket he was carrying, then sat down as she set down the basket she'd transfigured as a better means of carrying scones than towels. "Is this more the sort of holiday you'd hoped to have?"
"I wasn't expecting company," she said.
He blinked. "Er. Right, so, I could--"
"No, no." She put out a hand to stop him from actually getting up to go. "I meant, I wasn't expecting company, so it's not the sort of holiday I was expecting, but that's not all bad. And I suppose I never would have tried the magic puzzle, so either I'd still be moping in the rain."
"You'll need to test that hypothesis, you know."
"What, take the damned thing back apart?"
"I suppose, if you want to actually prove anything. Or at least, remove enough to leave sections incomplete. How badly undone was it when it got knocked about by the children?"
"Not totally. Pieces stayed together and just got taken out of the whole in bits and parts."
"Then it's not an enormous pain in the arse to play with and see, right? We could make it rainy again and stay in tomorrow. Well, or head over to the Wizarding side of the island and go flying in the rain."
Hermione shuddered. "I don't really fly."
"Missing out, but then, I guess that narrows the choices to stay in. Or muck about in boots on the ground." He leaned back on one elbow and poked through the basket, picking out, as he usually did, a scone. They seemed to be his favorite. "How long are you staying?"
"You're not going to try to convince me flying is brilliant and amazing and if I would just try it I would love it and on and on until the sun explodes and fries the planet?"
He shook his head. "Nope. Not that I'll complain if you want to go up and give it a whirl, but I get the feeling people have tried before, and you don't like it." He leaned rolled forward and whispered, "I don't like shellfish. I don't feel all that convincible about it."
She grinned. "Well, then I'll be in charge of the lobster while you go for a fly sometime. Oh, and I didn't answer. I'm here for at least another week, maybe two, and as I may have mentioned, I was supposed to be being spontaneous, so I don't have a return date, time, plan, or requirement."
"Oh, that is spontaneous," Oliver said. "Well done."
"It wasn't my idea, and there are no words in English for the extent to which it is not the way I usually operate, but I'm concluding it's maybe not all horrible."
"Spontaneity in general, or this holiday?"
She chewed on the inside of her lip. "Maybe both."
He finished his scone and sat up to pull his t-shirt over his head, then lay down on his stomach. "Excellent. Come on, you're wasting sunshine."
"It goes to waste if I sit upright rather than lying down?"
"Something like that. Plus, it's relaxing."
She leaned back on both hands and stretched her bare legs out before her, watching the waves wash in against the sand and periodically shifting to break off and nibble at a chunk of sandwich. After half an hour, she glanced over at him snoring on his belly and shrugged, then pulled out a rather trashy but entertaining paperback novel, pulled her shirt over her head, and rolled herself over to read.
--
"I wonder if this counts as being spontaneous," Hermione mused as she plucked out pieces in chunks. Tea time was approaching, and the experiment was underway.
"Considering you planned last night to perform this experiment?" Oliver shook his head. "Sorry. Probably not. However, I think you're doing quite well with the effort in general. Last night you even set your book down without finishing out the chapter."
She glanced over at him to see whether he was teasing, and while maybe he was, a little, it wasn't mean-spirited. "It's not exactly the sort of reading material for which one must pay a great deal of attention to every word, she said after a moment.
"Yes, but that doesn't mean you don't generally finish the chapter, am I right?"
She scowled. "Maybe."
"Oi, methodicalness is an excellent quality in many contexts. I wasn't laughing at you, just appreciating the effort to try new things."
"I haven't really thought of anything else good to try," she said. "Other than the aforementioned flying, which is still not at all my first choice."
He nodded and leaned forward to pull out a set of pieces which were the only remaining point of attachment between the bright sunshine and the ground, then stood and held out his hand. "Should we watch from the window or go outside to see?"
She shrugged. "I expect Elena already has our things made up."
"Have you been charming the cook, then?" His eyebrows went up, but his grin was warm.
"No, but I've been talking to her in the mornings, and helping out some with the mess from breakfast. Some of the guests here are rather slovenly."
"Such industrious application of new efforts. I think I like the new you."
"Shut it." Hermione put out her tongue, but he wasn't being patronizing, just poking at her a little. "In any case, I suppose we should go on out."
"We needn't go far, really. There's that little… shelter thing out that way," he said as they went out the front door. He had the basket, so she had their usual blanket.
"What shelter?" She looked around the side of the building. "Oh! There's a gazebo. I didn't even know that was there."
"I noticed it the day you got here. Or at least, the day I saw you here. Don't know what kind of shape it's in, though; I haven't seen anyone come all that near to it."
She looked up as the sky darkened rapidly and the first drops of rain spattered down. "Now seems like a good time to find out." She hurried along the dirt path, then started to run as the rain went from a sprinkle to a downpour.
Oliver, unsurprisingly, was the faster runner, so he passed her and jumped up the wooden steps, then stopped short in the arch before turning around and beckoning.
"Already running," she said as she felt a slight tingle cross her skin. "Oh!"
The threshold was clearly magical, and now that she was inside, it was apparent that the reason no one had approached the thing was that it held at least some magical misdirection charms.
"Did you know this was--"
"No, I'd definitely have mentioned." Oliver moved away from her along the open walls, which were lined with low padded benches and pillows formed into alcoves and sections of various sizes. There was clearly no glass keeping the weather out, but it was warm and neither wind nor rain came through. In the center, the roof rose to a peak of translucent colored glass (not that there was much light coming through it), and further toward the perimeter floated candles, currently dark but ready to be lit. There was an unadorned square table in the middle of the platform, plain wood polished smooth and spotlessly clean, though there were no chairs in sight.
"I wonder if there are rules," Hermione said.
"I'd think if there were, that might be the sort of thing the staff would warn against, and I did read the brochure before I came here. Not a mention, so I think we're probably safe." He came back toward her and set the basket on the table.
A smooth bench, of the same manufacture as the table, rose silently out of the floor on the far side. A moment later, a cushion matching those around the room appeared atop it.
"I wonder if it's like the Room of Requirement," Hermione said.
"Dunno, did you ask it for a bench?"
"No, but it seems logical that we'd want someplace to sit."
"It seems logical that unless we asked for a single bench, it would make two, though. Unless it doesn't know there are two of us, but I felt the magic when I came in, so it must."
"To the extent it 'knows' anything," she agreed. "It's likely not exactly entirely sentient, after all."
"No, I suppose not." He frowned, the picked the basket up.
The bench retracted.
"Perhaps it just assumes anyone who sets anything there will want to sit down?" Hermione set the blanket on the table, then watched as it unfolded and formed a tablecloth. The bench didn't reappear, but as soon as the table was covered, it moved, the floor ripping open ahead of it and reforming as it passed, until it settled into one of the smaller alcoves. "Or it just wants us to sit down next to each other," she added. "Maybe instead of a Room of Requirement it's a… hm. A porch of pushiness or something."
Oliver snorted. "Terrace of tenacity?"
"Oh, that's better. We should sit."
"Or temerity. Have we concluded the rain is definitely puzzle-related?"
"Definitely, no. Probably, yes." Hermione scooted behind one end of the table Oliver went around and sat behind the other, setting the basket down again and opening the lid.
The alcove corners curved in enough to push them together.
"Veranda of vexation?" Hermione said.
Oliver looked around and spoke to the air. "Oi, Nook of nosing in, if either of us decides getting closer together is something he or she wants to pursue, I imagine it'll start with that person, not with a bench with attitude."
Hermione chuckled when the alcove corners receded somewhat, though she noticed the seat didn't re-expand; they remained seated thigh-to-thigh.
Oliver didn't move away, so neither did she, and eventually it only felt right to lean back and watch the storm with his arm around her shoulders.
--
There really was no longer a question about the relationship between the puzzle and the weather, but Hermione continued to change the scene a bit each day, usually with Oliver's help.
"Do you think it's odd," she asked, nine days into her stay when she was creating rain at the beach after a sunny walk along the trail, "that no one else ever even approaches this table?"
"Except the Willinghams' children."
"True, but I think they more were running about and bounced off the table without even noticing it existed. I don't think they were in here on purpose."
"Ah. Well, I think we're the only magical guests," Oliver said. He'd just strolled over and glanced at the situation, then sat down beside her and started working to place more of the flowers and vines in the jungle. They'd never really completed that part, and Hermione wondered what the effect would be in the real world. "Perhaps no one else can see us."
Hermione looked around. They were in a section of the room which was, she supposed, rather set off from the main area. Perhaps he had a point. "It would make sense--if Muggles ever worked out that the puzzle controlled the weather, they might be a bit startled. What if more arrive? Wizards, not Muggles."
He glanced at her for a moment, then looked away. "Then I suppose my nefarious plans to seduce you right here in this room, unknown to people just on the other side of the sofa, will be thwarted."
"Your plans… you're teasing me."
"Only about the room," he said lightly. "I believe I've said before that plans weren't all bad."
"Did you intend to share this seduction plan with me before implementing it?"
He raised his eyebrows. "I think that might become troublesome, don't you? That is, if the plan is to seduce, isn't it sort of inherent in the activity that I persuade as we go? In which case prior notice seems awkward."
"Yes, but--"
"So no, I didn't plan to tell you, but it was the answer that came to mind when you asked the question." He leaned closer and used to fingers to tilt her chin up. "It's not synonymous with 'force,' you know. The point of seduction is to show you what you want, but if you don't want, then I couldn't possibly show you."
Hermione scowled. "I know that, but I'm hardly the girl that is the focus of seduction plots, so I'm not entirely familiar with how they work." She pressed a group of six pieces into place at once and reached for another.
"No reason you shouldn't be," he said. He handed her a piece that went with the one in her hand. "Want to go see how the beach is in the rain?"
"Yes, but I also want to hear more about this seduction plan," she said. "Does it involve going and seeing how this meadow looks now that it's complete?" The puzzle's meadow was among and behind the first line of trees, and she thought it worked out to be past the gazebo and north of the inn, but it was difficult to be sure; other than general types of vegetation and scenery, there was no true one-to-one correspondence between the image and the reality.
"It might," he said. "Probably a lot less wet than the beach right now."
"Well, we could go look there, and come back later for our basket. It's earlier than we usually go," she pointed out.
He shrugged and took her hand as he stood. They walked out the door and past the gazebo, then on into the rather overgrown forest.
It wasn't a long walk, and to Hermione's surprise, the low branches along the path seemed to bend away from her on their own, making it easy to follow the somewhat disused trail into the bright meadow. It was, as in the picture, filled with flowers of every color and shape, some of them on bushes and others on tall stalks. She stopped to take in the sight, then turned. "Now this is the sort of thing I expected to see here in the first place." She stepped closer to a clump of deep red blooms that hung, bell-shaped, from a vine that clung to the trunk of one of the trees surrounding the clearing, and bent to smell it, then gasped as an itchy, full sensation exploded behind her eyes. "Oliver?" she croaked as she landed on her bum on the ground, unaware she had lost her balance in the first place. "I think… something happened." He voice sounded odd, and her forehead felt dry, hot, and sweaty.
"What--bugger, what in the world did you do?" He stood over her, then crouched and tipped her chin up. "Aye, something happened. What did it, then?"
She felt her eyes crossing, trying to focus on his mouth asking questions, but couldn't quite seem to stop it for a long moment before she was able to make a rather unsteady effort to look at the flowers she'd been admiring.
"This one?"
"What?"
He held up one of the flowers. "Was it this one?"
"It's pretty," she said. It wasn't what she meant to say at all, and she sounded drunk, or as though she'd landed in one of the temporal devices in the Department of Mysteries. "It. Yes. That. One." She felt her eyes crossing again trying to focus on the flower, and she looked up. "Sorry."
He shook his head and stood momentarily to shove the flower in his pocket, then dropped back down to pull her against him. "How's walking sound?"
She shook her head and groaned. "Ismupplable. Um. Bad."
"Figured. All right, up we go, then." He lifted her more easily than she would have expected and started back toward the inn as she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her head against his shoulder.
"No flying." This seemed critically important, though she was reasonably sure there was something missing about the concept.
"No, no flying. For one thing, I'd need a broom for that, but either way, if I take you flying, I'd rather you have the capacity to complain if you don't like it. Right now, I think you'd be a bit impaired."
"Kay. Why're you strong?" He was strong, the muscle of his shoulder under her ear firm and flexing with each step, and while she'd seen him shirtless half a dozen times, she'd never quite considered that his broad shoulders would be so solid.
He chuckled. "I think it might be to do with the flying. And the other associated things. No worries, I won't drop you."
"Good." She nuzzled in against his neck. "Drop 'd wake me."
She heard him answering, but couldn't be arsed to pay attention enough to answer, nor to object when he started moving faster.
--
Her position when she awoke was uncomfortable, but it only took a moment for her to realize that that was
Because he was propping her head to give her a drink. "What'ssat?" she asked, irritated to hear her words come out fuzzy as she slowly shifted into a more comfortable pose.
"Something to counteract the pollen of that flower," Oliver said. "How's your head?"
"Better. Foggy." She opened her eyes a crack and saw colorful streams of light coming from the peak of the roof. "Oh. Why are we here?"
"You were freaking me right out, and as I went by it occurred to me that if this place was manipulative enough to toss me in your lap, it might be up for helping me out by producing a fucking Floo. I couldn't be sure where locally would know about magical maladies, but there's a team healer--"
"That'd be me," said a gentle feminine voice behind her.
She turned, then closed her eyes again. "Ugh, dizzy. You're based near here?"
"Near may be a stretch, but Apparation was possible," said the woman. Her accent was American, a slow, low drawl Hermione thought sounded like someone with a wide bright smile in a film she'd seen long ago, and Hermione got the feeling that gentle tone aside, this person was unlikely to suffer fools gladly or tolerate sloppy work.
"Thanks," Hermione said. She turned slightly toward Oliver. "How'd you know it was magical?"
"Couldn't be sure, but most Muggle plant-responses don't act fast on wizards, if I correctly recall the content of my Herbology NEWT, so it seemed a fair wager."
"It's good he made that bet," the healer added. "That shit is bad news, and I'll be having a talk with the local Wizarding authorities. It should at the very least be posted as a hazard, and any idiot lets people wander around with it needs a swift kick."
"Uh, I'm glad for the bet too, then." Hermione frowned. "Should I feel like someone is dancing on my head still?"
"Should you?" asked the healer. "I'd say no, but it's a normal response to the situation. Here." She handed over three small vials. "One now, one at bedtime that you might not need, but just to be sure, and then if you feel hung over when you wake up, one in the morning. Some people clear the toxin a hell of a lot quicker than others, but if you're not feeling normal by noon tomorrow."
Hermione took the vials and set two beside her, the tried to uncork the third. After a moment, the wee lid twisted free, and she brought it to her lips immediately. "Thanks," she said after swallowing. "So, just for my information, what would have happened?"
"Like I said, bad shit." The healer was packing up her back, clearly preparing to leave. "I've seen long term neurological distress and myelin--um. Y'all don't interact much with the Muggles over your way, but the short version is that the brain and all the fibers that connect--"
"I'm Muggle-born," Hermione said. "I'm familiar with the words."
"Ah, good, then. Myelin-sheath damage is a bitch, and we're not much better at repairing it than the Muggles are. Now this particular cause, usually if it's caught within an hour or so, it's entirely reversible, and your friend here says that it was more on the order of fifteen minutes by the time he called for me, twenty by the time I got here. Still, if you find yourself experiencing tremors or anything else that seems to be neurological like weird streaky pains or flashing lights, you get your ass to the healer on the next island. Here." She scrawled on a card and handed that to Hermione, too. "Name and number; he's a decent guy and works both sides of the street so he can be contacted by Muggle or magical means."
Hermione nodded. "I'm sure I'll be fine, but I'll be on the lookout for problems."
"Me, too," Oliver said. He pointed at the bloom he'd brought with him. "D'you need that, and should I be concerned about having nicked it to bring out?"
"Probably not, though I'd wash the clothes you're both wearing promptly. And I'll take it with me, both for evidence and for disposal."
Oliver nodded, and the healer levitated the bloom into her bag, then closed it up and Apparated away. Oliver turned back to Hermione. "Well. So that was an adventure."
"Thanks. I don't really know what I'd have done--"
He waived a hand dismissively. "Oh, shut it. What was I to do, leave you there, Sleeping Beauty? Come on, you're going to want to get cleaned up, though I think we ought to go up the back stairs and avoid the whole healer-owner interaction."
"Ugh. Good point." She picked up the remaining two vials of potion or medicine or whatever Americans called it, then gathered herself to stand. "I'm still a little woozy."
Oliver nodded and reached toward her. "Walk or carry?"
"Merlin. I didn't mean please carry me; I'm not a child. Just, please help me not fall on my face?"
"I can do that." Oliver slid his arm around her waist and walked slowly. "For the record," he said as they stepped down off the gazebo platform, "the odds of me mistaking you for a child are quite low."
--
"You should go have supper," Hermione said. Oliver had helped her get the mud off her face and out of her hair, but then after she'd put herself to bed, he'd returned and pulled the stuffed chair nearer the bed, then plunked down and put his feet on the bed, crossed at the ankle, and set about entertaining her with ridiculous and clearly embellished Quidditch-league stories about rivalries and matches and absurd practical jokes gone wrong. As he wasn't dead serious about the topic, this was surprisingly non-annoying.
"Aw, I've worn out my welcome, have I?" He stood and pushed the chair back into place. "Should I bring you anything?"
"That's sweet, but really, I think I just need to sleep. I'd rather not still feel like this in the morning."
He nodded. "I'd rather you didn't, too." He shoved his feet back into the shoes he'd discarded before putting his feet on the bed. "I'll pop my head in when I come back up, though. In case you turn out to be insomniac."
"I doubt that will happen. No laughing if I'm snoring."
"Right." He went out and closed the door, and Hermione kicked off the blanket that would be too warm to sleep under and shed the pyjama bottoms that were good for walking around but terrible for sleeping. Knickers and the light top under only a sheet would be much better. She was asleep nearly immediately.
"Hermione?" She woke a bit puzzled, until Oliver said her name again. Then she felt his hand on her shoulder.
"Hmm?" She started to roll onto her back, then found he was sitting behind her where she was curled on her side. "Hi. What?"
"Sorry to wake you. I just noticed you didn't take the second dose of the potion." He held up the vial. "She said to take it at bedtime."
Hermione wormed her way upright, wincing when that made her head spin. "Thanks." She took the vial and uncorked it. "This smells horrible."
"It did the first time, too; you were just too unhappy to notice."
"Ugh. Now I want to go clean my teeth."
He stood to let her up out of the sheet. "Have they said anything to you?"
"Who?" She was most of the way to the adjacent washroom before she realized she was in her underwear, but if he wasn't commenting, then neither was she, and besides, it was a bit late to do anything about it now, as running back and leaping into the bed would be absurd. It was dim in the room anyway, so he probably wouldn't go deciding she was trying to proposition him.
"The staff. I mean, about the fact that they had a magical plant within their boundaries and all." The inn didn't technically own the entire island, but it was true that this afternoon's adventure had been well shy of the formal boundary, and when she thought about it, Hermione was a little surprised there had been no comment.
She rinsed her mouth and scrubbed at her teeth, then rinsed again. "Maybe they came up and I was asleep?"
"Or they just don't want to acknowledge any responsibility," he said with a scowl.
She crossed back to the bed and sat down. "I'm just glad you were with me. I imagine at some point I'd have ventured out and found them one way or another--they can't possibly just leave the island rainy all the time waiting for someone magical to up and notice, right?"
"True. Anyway, sorry to have woken you."
"No, it was necessary. Sorry to have spoiled your seduction plan, earlier." She squeezed her eyes shut. "And for saying that; apparently my tongue isn't in step with my brain."
He chuckled. "Your tongue is just fine. As far as I know, which I will admit is not so well as I had in mind by now. Not spoiled, though, just delayed. I'm assuming the potion hasn't made you so well as all that quite yet."
"Maybe not. That is, it did make me feel better, but it's hard to say whether that will last."
"Too bad; the knickers-and-shirt look is quite fetching, really."
She reached behind her and threw a pillow, which he caught easily. Of course he did; catching thrown objects was his job, most of the time. "Doesn't your season start soon?" she asked as he brought the pillow back and placed it behind her.
"What brought that on?"
"You catching the pillow."
"Oh, well. I could do more stunts, if you like."
His hand was still on the pillow beyond her, which meant he was reaching across her, so it was easy to reach up and catch his chin. She turned him to face her. "You're avoiding the question, aren't you?"
"Would that be a problem?"
She considered for a moment. "No, I just wondered whether you might be absent when I wake up one morning soon."
"Is my presence or absence usually of immediate concern for you on waking?" He straightened up away from her, but his attention so focused on her she found herself glancing away for a moment.
She sighed. "I don't even know how to answer that, or how I managed to bring it up, but I suppose the point of the question was, you've been all concerned and taking care of me all day, and we've essentially only just met."
"Not true; we've known each other since we were at school."
"Vaguely, but not well."
"Yes, but my point is we didn't meet for the first time a week ago, so it's really not like I've just developed some enormous… so I'm going to say relationship even though I suppose that's a bit big of a word, with someone I only just met. We don't know each other well, but there's some history, and we more or less know where to find each other, so it's not like an anonymous holiday shag--at which, I would point out, we would be failing rather desperately if it were the goal, since typically in that case I expect a week and a half is considered excessive."
Hermione shook her head and turned to stick her feet back under the sheet. "No, I agree this isn't anonymous, but were you hoping for a quick and easy anonymous holiday shag?"
"Uh." Oliver shrugged and sat down on the bed again, trapping her feet, his hip and thigh warm against hers through the sheet. "So there was a time I liked going on holiday somewhere I could play on the Quidditch thing. I wasn't anonymous, but they were, generally." He shrugged again. "This is not such a place, because that's not so appealing any more."
"Right. I shouldn't say this, but I get the feeling you think I'm going to condemn you for that. You do understand that Harry especially, but also Ron and I to probably a lesser degree, are familiar with the phenomenon? You know, let me buy you a drink, hey, don't I know you, mmm you smell so good…"
He blinked. "Oh. Wow. So were you looking for a quick and easy anonymous--"
"No. It didn't take very many iterations to work out that it wasn't particularly satisfying. For me, at least. Orgasms are fun, but I believe I've concluded that trust and continuity are better."
"No, not very," he said. "Satisfying, not the trust being better, I mean. But I think I was older than you by the time I came to see the value of knowing someone's name."
"You're not that much older than me now," she pointed out. She grinned. "So, now that I've shocked you by establishing we've equally slutty pasts--"
"Oi, I did not in any way call you a slut. I just--you blush about things, and that seems rather contrary to--shite. I did not just call you a slut, I don't think that, and the issue is entirely not relevant anyway."
"I know, both that you didn't say it and that it's not relevant, but as long as we were being confessional, I blush because I just do. I think it's my mother's fault for always whispering words like vagina. See, there I go again. And actually, I don't really use that word pejoratively--slut, not vagina, although not that one either--because God, the way it's used against women when it's never used against men… But that's not where I was going."
"Where were you going?"
"I was thinking that somehow this conversation took a turn, and I wondered if… now that we've established we're both not interested in quick and meaningless--and I may be assuming, but the fact that you've been hanging about all day today especially, but also all week, says something--I wondered if you were looking for a different sort of holiday encounter. In which case, if you didn't mind the blushing because while I am familiar with the fame phenomenon, I'm much less so with anything of greater duration, I think I would be immediately concerned as to your presence or absence first thing in the morning."
Oliver pursed his lips. "Tomorrow morning specifically, or more generally?"
"It's a bit difficult to say how much more generally, but I thought perhaps starting with tomorrow. When, as you may recall, I may require a trip to a healer in any case."
"Huh. Well, with magic, location isn't such a difficulty, but possibly I should mention I'm no longer much for traveling about anyway. Retired this spring."
"I see."
"Problem, is it?"
"No, but I agree it's important. And probably would increase the likelihood you'd remain present. Which is, evidently, also important."
"So this revelation came to you whilst you were sleeping and I was getting supper?"
"No, earlier; however, I was indisposed."
"I see." He frowned and leaned closer to her. "Are you still? Indisposed?"
"No."
"Good." He put his fingers under her chin and kissed her softly. When he pulled away, he asked, "Still no sign of illness?"
"No, but I suppose we ought to do further research." Her hand came around and spread wide on the back of his head, pulling him forward into another kiss, deeper and longer, her mouth opening to nip and suck at his lips and tongue until he put his hands down to either side of her and turned his body. She scooted down in the bed, pulling him with her, sliding her tongue into his mouth as her other hand ranged down his back.
Finally, he lifted away, licking his lips and panting. "Ye seem entirely well and I canna even tell it, how I want tae--"
"Heavens, I've sucked the, what, Glasgow? right onto your lips," she said with a grin.
He stopped, then laughed. "Wat, lass, ye want tae unnerstann me, d'ye, when I spake?"
"Oh, no, I think we're communicating fine," she said. "But I am, unfortunately, still a bit knackered."
"I should stay with you, then. See how you are when you wake."
"Make an assessment in the morning?"
"Exactly what I was thinking." He toed off his shoes and started to pull his shirt over his head. "I failed to relocate my pyjamas to your rooms."
"I think we might have to make do with knickers and a shirt. Unless you're shy."
"Maybe a bit, but I expect it'll all turn out well." He pulled the shirt over his head and folded it in half, then draped it over the back of the chair before unfastening his shorts.
--
Hermione wasn't really awake yet, though she wasn't fully asleep, either. The light coming in the window suggested it was early yet, and a sunny morning, but she was warm and comfortable, and once she'd recalled that it was Oliver's arm tossed over her, she'd felt lazy and not at all like getting up.
"Hung over?" he said as she lay there ignoring the rising sun.
"No, actually."
His arm tightened around her waist, which pulled her back against him. It was impossible not to notice he was half-hard against her arse, but he didn't seem particularly in a hurry to do anything about it, and a moment later his arm relaxed again. "Glad to hear it."
She glanced over her shoulder. "I should think so; I imagine you didn't want to spend the afternoon talking to a healer about me two days running. Not that you'd have been obligated to--"
"Didn't we already cover how we were looking for something other than a glancing and shallow sort of holiday shag?"
"Yes, but in the event, you still wouldn’t have been obligated."
"Aye, I suppose not. Which is just as well; doing things out of obligation alone really bites." He nuzzled against the point where her shoulder and neck met. "Speaking of, if it was just the potion talking, last night--"
"Only the part where I overshared perhaps more than was appropriate."
He laughed, his belly shuddering with it against her back. "I wasn't taking any potions, so I think you're all right there."
"You feel good." His hand was relaxed before her, a loose fist with the knuckles grazing the bed, and now he lifted it, fingers skimming the sheet so that it dipped toward her belly. She twisted as the weight of it rose off her, onto her back, and it resettled, splaying over her ribs. His hands were big and brown, the thumb just brushing the bottom of one breast as the first finger brushed the other. "I gather, as you didn't flee in the night, that you still mean to be here."
"Oh, very much." The thumb moved, stroking a tiny path back and forth, touching nothing explicitly sexual, but never the less hardening the nipple nearer him, never the less stoking heat between her thighs. She hadn't quite realized how much she wanted this until they'd started talking about it, but she'd noticed his hands and his shoulders, and she'd felt the impulse to touch. "You?"
Hermione didn't bother with a verbal answer, instead turning further into his arms and muttering a teeth-cleaning charm that wasn't as good as a toothbrush but would do.
He chuckled, but took the hint, kissing her slowly, thoroughly, that big hand tracing down over her hip and thigh. She gasped when he moved from her lips and sucked wet nibbles along her jaw and throat, out the line of her shoulder and down her back, lifting himself over her and rolling her again to shove up her t-shirt and kiss down her spine. A moment later he was grazing his teeth over one arse cheek, fingers sliding under the elastic of the leg-band and letting it snap back into place. "You're very inconveniently placed for me to touch you," she said, though considering the shivery tingle of each nip and suck at her skin, she wasn't exactly unhappy.
He kept moving downward, licking a wet stripe across the back of her knee, then placed his hands above her knees on the backs of her thighs and pressed up until his thumbs met between her legs.
She shuddered, her arse pushing back against his hands involuntarily. He chuckled and followed the path of his right palm with his tongue, then dropped down beside her and helped her twist around on her side, kicking with her at the sheet still tangled around their feet. As soon as she was free of it, she threw a knee over him and rolled him onto his back, straddling him for a moment and then shaking her head, realizing her knickers were still in the way. "Bit out of practice," she muttered ruefully, guiding his hand up her thigh to the elastic.
"Ah, but thankfully, we’re wizards," Oliver said. "We have banishment charms and the like."
"Point." She dropped forward to rest her elbows on his chest. "I don't suppose you have your wand in here to use one?"
"Course not, but ye have yours," he said. "Likely in arm's reach."
"True." She leaned over, gasping when he took the opportunity to curl upward and find a nipple with his teeth as she retrieved her wand. "Would have been easier to just get up and take off my knickers," she said.
"But less fun." He ran a thumb over the damp spot on her t-shirt, then dropped both hands down and pushed the whole thing up and over her head before returning to pressing his teeth gently in again.
She yelped and pulled away, but she was laughing, and between them they disentangled her wand from her shirt--"Bad planning," she observed--and stripped away everything else with one charm.
"This, on the other hand, looks to be a rather excellent plan," he said, his finger trailing down the center of her chest. "Wouldn’t you say?"
She sucked in her ticklish belly away from the scraping fingernail and nodded. "Better once we put it in motion."
"The plan?"
"Or anything else that seems relevant."
He shrugged and smoothed both hands down her sides to her hips. "As the lady commands," he said, lifting just enough to slide smoothly into her. "The lady is brilliant," he added with a grunt.
She frowned, flexing her hips forward until he groaned. "I've never really been the strategist," she said thoughtfully. "Perhaps I ought to try it more often. Or just faster."
His eyes widened as he nodded, breathless, and she put the latest plan into action.''
--
"Do you think we should go downstairs for lunch?" he asked, lying on his side on top of her sheets and trailing a finger in loose unplanned paths on her skin. His brown skin was bright with a light sheen of sweat still, reflecting the light of the window, though as the sun was nearly straight overhead, it was a blueish light now.
As though it had simply been waiting for the question, her stomach rumbled. "I suppose that answers that," she said. She rolled away and stood up quickly. "Do you think we can be responsible adults and share a shower?"
"Adults, definitely," he said with a chuckle. "What, now that a change of scenery has been suggested, you can't wait to escape?"
"Nothing like that." She picked up a comb off the chest of drawers and started the sometimes-ridiculous process of untangling her hair. "But I was thinking."
"Should I be concerned?"
She cast about for something harmless to throw, then waved a hand at him. "Shut it. No, I was thinking we ought to disassemble the puzzle."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Then it will be horrible out and we will have every possible reason to curl up in bed."
He rolled onto his belly and watched her wrestle with a difficult curl. "You know, I'm beginning to think you are, in fact, the one in charge of strategy."
She grinned and nodded toward the bath. "Shall we?"
I originally posted this at http://florahart.dreamwidth.org/1042333.html, and you are welcome to comment there. OpenID and/or anon comments are allowed.