Going Poof!!
Title: Going Poof
Author: shocolate
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Words: 4000
Rating: NC-17
Written for my beloved abigail89’s birthday - what a lovely year we have had, my pootle - you came and stayed with us - you cooked for us, and master button ate it - I took you to the British Library, and nearly killed you with swoon (not sure a doctor would accept Magna Carta as cause of death) - and we saw Equus and oh, it was lovely, and Alan Rickman was there, and *sigh*
For your birthday this year, magicofisis and I have asked lnalvgd for some prompts, which we will both attempt to include, and see how different our fics are…
Prompt words:
promiscuous
palms
ecstasy
labyrinth
giant squid
Phrase:
I can't seem to get enough of Dan's "I can do something truly disgusting with my tongue." It just fits perfectly with any smut fic!!
Unfortunately, and inexplicably, plot happened - you will just have to humour me!
Going Poof
****
I hope we’re grown-up enough that we can be friends with our exes.
Harry never has to see Cho, so that isn’t a problem; Lavender is a palmistry reader type thing, and always so smothered in shawls and fringed stuff that I can barely see her, and she is always looking at the beyond and doesn’t see me.
Ginny.
Well, Harry was gutted when she broke up with him - took it really personally and was even a bit odd with me, for a while. Things were awkward between them until the day Harry and I popped into the Burrow, to look all thin and hungry at my mum.
OK, we shouldn’t have followed those moans up to Ginny’s room, and I reckon Harry opened the door just to upset her, but it worked out for the best.
Yeah, I could have done without seeing my sister naked, breasts quivering, back arching as she straddled the mouth that was working industriously on her girly parts.
But Harry finally got what Hermione calls ‘closure’ and moved on. Apparently it made all the difference, and it’s nothing personal, to have been dumped by a lesbian, so we both watched as Ginny leant down and Luna spread her legs for her freckled fingers, moaning in ecstasy as they slid inside her.
Our other exes?
Just the one, really.
‘Cos I’d already bollocksed things up with Hermione, by then. She’d gone back to school, of course - she’s Hermione - and had been very supportive of me starting work at the Ministry, instead. I lived with Harry, at Grimmauld Place, and she popped down to London when she could - mature students who’d just saved the world being uncurfewable, and all that.
So, I really shouldn’t have got into a situation that was even borderline compromising, not when she could arrive at the house whenever she felt like it.
Harry reckons I shouldn’t have done it, anyway, even in a cave at the top of a mountain that was completely inaccessible without a top-level security clearance Ministry Portkey.
That it was the compromising position that was my mistake, not the doing it where Hermione could catch me.
But after a day of intense physical combat training, followed by a few drinks back at Grimmauld Place. A day of having my training partner slamming me onto the mat and writhing on top of me to pin me down.
Well.
I was… horny.
And he’s a good-looking bloke, Terry.
So, we’d showered at work and he’d come back with me for a few drinks, and Hermione and I were ‘saving ourselves’ and Terry licks his lips a lot, when they tingle after a few drinks.
So. When I leant across the kitchen table to get another beer, and Terry came up behind me and ground his You Know What against my arse, well, I was too startled and too horny and I let him, and his fingers slid round my hips and pulled me against him, and I pressed back and I liked it, and the fireplace flared and Hermione stepped through the Floo.
She looked stricken and furious and my mind was a blank and in an attempt not to say ‘well, we’re not having sex’, I heard myself saying “well, you don’t need my arse.”
Hermione’s eyes narrowed and Terry moved away and I stood up and braced myself for her attack, but she just turned on her heel and stepped back into the fire.
Terry adjusted his crotch and muttered something and Flooed home and I was still gormlessly staring at the flames when Harry whirled into sight. He knows me better than anyone and he finally managed to drag out of me what had happened, and he was not impressed, but I was so confused by my head being full of Terry’s You Know What that I didn’t object when Hermione broke things off.
Things between us, things, not You Know What things.
‘Course, my You Know What hadn’t really come between us.
Come.
Yes, well.
For the rest of the year I was briskly friendly to Terry at work, wanked briskly to images of Terry at home, and Hermione stopped visiting the house. I didn’t date, not when I was that confused and hadn’t been able to explain to anyone why Hermione had broken up with me, so I didn’t acquire any other exes to face by the time we were called to investigate the incident at Hogwarts.
Just Hermione.
Harry wasn’t exactly promiscuous, either, and has just one more ex.
Just Hermione.
Apparently - and they have explained this to me drunkenly and earnestly (respectively) on more than one occasion, and I can do without the diagrams - it is part of Harry’s infuriatingly noble thing.
They didn’t tell me they were seeing each other - some Gryffindors, they are - but even I noticed something was going on when I walked in on him wallowing in her breasts. Not that it’s noble to squeeze one breast while suckling hungrily on the other; the noble bit is that he claims he genuinely couldn’t be attracted to her while she was ‘mine’ in his head.
So, how could I object, after such a beautiful demonstration of his friendship?
Actually, having pretty much admitted to myself that I’d had a narrow escape from Hermione’s breasts… not that they are particularly dangerous, just that I probably would never have seen beyond them, to the glory of Harry’s arse… not that her boobs are so big that they block out the sun… not that I think the sun shines out of Harry’s arse.
Where was I?
Right.
I honestly didn’t mind them being together. Much. Except for the whole Harry wallowing in breasts thing. Hermione justifies it to me as Harry’s mother issues, and points out how much Ginny looks like his mum, but I don’t want to go there.
Suffice it to say, they’d broken up, too - with much earnest explanation and, apparently, diagrams - by the time me and Harry qualified after our two year, fast track training, and that was it, exeswise.
The actual me and Harry getting together bit actually did involve a cave at the top of a mountain that was completely inaccessible without a top-level security clearance Ministry Portkey.
With Harry’s eyes glowing in the firelight and Harry’s collarbone calling to me and Harry’s patience snapping and him pouncing and pushing our jeans down and off and me swearing loudly as he sprawled between my legs and aligned our cocks and desperately thrust against me until we saw stars.
Followed by me cutting my hair brutally short, accidentally explaining that it was so I didn’t look like his mum, trying to laugh it off at the sight of his baffled and slightly scared face, and growing it out again.
So.
There we were.
Me and my Harry.
Partners.
And partners at work, and dispatched up to Hogwarts to see Professor Longbottom.
Not Neville
Hence the ex-facing.
Hermione had married Neville about a year after she split up with Harry, and she teaches Transfiguration and I can only assume Nev likes things to be explained using diagrams, and I try not to picture it too closely.
So, we Apparated to Hogsmeade and rushed up to the castle and she brittly, yet calmly, explained what had happened.
Neville had gone down to the lake, before breakfast, and had not returned to the castle; there were signs of a struggle on the muddy shore, and a Hufflepuff fifth year, who refused to say what she was doing down by the lake so early, had seen a merman dragging something into the water.
Hermione was all inaccessible briskness as she told us, and we knew better than to attempt to comfort her. We stripped down to our boxers, cast Bubblehead Charms on each other, and dived in. Deeper and deeper we swam, avoiding banks of weeds and the lurking Grindylows, until I followed Harry down the ‘street’ of the mervillage.
I’d been in an enchanted sleep, until my Harry rescued me, last time I’d been down here, and I looked around with interest, through the distortion of my bubble. Blurred faces peered through windows at us, and the shadow of the giant squid fell across as us he swam over the village. Harry swam resolutely on, through a gap between two buildings and emerged into the central square; the huge statue that I had been tied to dominated the open space, and what looked like the entire Mergamot were lined up, waiting for us.
Harry drew himself upright and started to gesticulate at the eerie figures, but the chief gestured sharply for us to follow him and swam around to the far side of the statue. There, a tunnel led down and under the tail of the figure, disappearing into the darkness. Harry narrowed his eyes at the merman and then nodded sharply and, beckoning for me to follow him, moved towards the hole.
I caught his arm and shook my head. He sighed visibly, within his bubble and raised an eyebrow. I frowned. He rolled his eyes. I shook my head again. He nodded firmly.
I followed him into the passageway.
He lit his wand and led me through the narrow tunnel, slanting downwards and then levelling and running under the mervillage, back the way we had come. After a few minutes, we started climbing, and finally broke through the surface of the water into a pitch-black cave. We popped our bubbles and raised our lit wands to take a look around. There, tied in wet ropes and writhing wetly, was Neville.
We rushed to his side and held our lit wands over his face. We were expecting something much worse than the anger snapping in his eyes and sagged with relief as we severed his bonds.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded, sitting up and rubbing his wrists.
“What happened?” Harry asked, in super sexy focussed Auror mode.
OK, I wasn’t supposed to notice how sexy it was, not during a mission, but I’m only human and he’d been just that focussed, just the night before, staring into my eyes as he entered me, my hand wrapped round my wedding tackle, his palms pressed to the backs of my knees, as he spread me open for him.
Right. Dangerous mission.
“What happened?” he asked Neville.
“I was collecting quillwort and the mermen grabbed me,” Neville said. “They sometimes come to the surface that early, they sometimes have some Brittle Waternymph for me, so I bent closer and they grabbed me. I tried to break free, but they forced Gillyweed into my mouth and I gave up struggling for freedom when I started struggling to breathe.” He stood up and Harry steadied him with an arm round his back as he swayed and blinked. “I flopped into the water and they bound my arms and dragged me down to their village - Harry, they’re cultivating Water Hemlock outside some of those houses, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Nev, I wouldn’t recognise Water Hemlock if I tripped over it.”
“Right,” Neville said, “well, they dragged me through that tunnel, pushed me up onto the bank, and left me in the dark. How did you find me here, anyway?”
“You didn’t return to school and Hermione raised the alarm,” I said. “A Hufflepuff said they’d seen you struggling, down by the bank, ‘though they wouldn’t say what they were doing down by the lake at six in the morning…”
“Pullman?” Neville interrupted.
“What?”
“Wilhelmina Pullman?”
“Yeah…”
“She’s seeing a boy in Slytherin,” Neville said. “They meet by the lake, or in greenhouse six.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Well, no wonder she keeps that a secret.”
Neville tutted.
Hermione is certainly rubbing off on him. Not like that. Well, yes, like that, they’re married, after all, so, I assume like that, but I really don’t want to think about it, it’s bad enough I know she was the first person to suck my bloke’s cock.
Sometimes I can’t stop myself staring at her lips and she catches me and blushes and gives me a sad ‘yes, you were my first love, too, and sometimes I remember our kisses’ smile, and I give her a smile in return, which I’m quite sure she reads as ‘ah, we were so young and innocent’, but which really says ‘no, I’m not thinking about that, I’m picturing you giving Harry a blowjob.’
Anyway.
“So,” I told Neville, “me and Harry took the call and came up to debrief your wife and she took us down to the lake and we dived in.”
“But how did you find me?”
“The mermen brought us here,” Harry said.
“But why?” Neville said indignantly.
“They must have taken you to make someone come and rescue you,” I said.
“So, I’m just the bait in a trap?” Neville asked.
“I don’t think so,” Harry said slowly. “I think there must be something down here that they want us to sort out.”
We all looked at each other. Neville was wet and wandless, me and Harry were wet and wearing only boxer shorts.
We looked around the dark and empty cave.
“Ah, well,” Neville said. “We’ve faced worse.”
“You’re not coming with us,” Harry said firmly. “You’re unarmed.”
“I was unarmed when I faced Voldemort,” Neville said, looking him straight in the eye.
“With us where, anyway?” I asked.
Harry lifted his lit wand and it blazed up, showing us the cave and the dark, moist tunnel that led into the wall pretty much opposite the underwater entrance.
“So,” Harry said, “further back, towards the school.”
“Home, sweet home,” Neville said.
“Right,” Harry said. “Nev, you take up the rear.”
Neville raised a how-d’you-expect-me-to-ignore-such-a-bent-straight-line eyebrow and I sniggered.
Harry tutted and I tried not to think of Hermione rubbing off on him, and he entered the tunnel and I tried not to think of him entering her tunnel, and it was dark and the walls were moist and there were mysterious crevasses and dripping noises, and I bit my tongue to stop myself saying something ridiculously inappropriate about Neville’s wife.
“I’ve got your rear covered, Harry,” I whispered.
The tunnel widened and climbed and a labyrinth of side passages joined and crossed it and I was wondering if it was the right moment for a ‘back passage’ joke, when Harry stopped suddenly and I ploughed into him, from behind.
But not in a good way.
I left my hand against his back, anyway. Harry has a gorgeous back, although I do wonder if I only think so because I know that the line down the middle of his back turns into the crack of his perfect arse.
I wish I could ask someone who hasn’t squeezed that arse for an unbiased opinion of his back. I looked sideways at Neville, but didn’t ask him - not because the moment was inappropriate, but because his wife has squeezed that arse.
“Dead end,” Harry muttered, unaware of my internal arse monologue, except in the sense that he was used to my base state consisting of an internal arse monologue.
The monologue being internal, of course, because my monologues about being inside his arse were usually more along the lines of ‘FuckHarryHotTightFuckGonnaComeHarry.’
We watched him run his hands over the stone wall, in front of us. I shivered. Having stopped climbing, I became aware of how cold it was in the damp stone tunnel, and that we were standing there in wet clothes.
Not too many of them.
“Possibly not the moment to mention this,” I murmured. “But we’re sure this is something we can sort out in wet boxer shorts, yeah?”
Harry shrugged and interesting muscles moved in his gorgeous back and I decided I liked doing missions in just wet boxer shorts.
Suddenly there was a stony click and the wall swung back towards us.
We peered out, through the circular opening; we seemed to be at the end of a long chamber, tall pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, topped with statues, level with our position, near the arched roof.
In the distance, flickering candlelight surrounded something on the floor.
Following Harry, we climbed down intricate rock carvings until we were close enough to the ground to drop the rest of the way. We landed between giant stone feet.
Looking up, I realised we had climbed out of the mouth and down the beard of Salazar Slytherin.
I shuddered and turned on my heel, looking down the Chamber.
Picking our way past the endless pairs of ribs of the giant snake skeleton, past the dark stain on the floor, where blood had bubbled out of Hufflepuff’s cup when Hermione had destroyed the Horcrux - I looked over at Neville and his jaw was set and his eyes were wide - past the faded stains where Harry had destroyed the snake and the diary.
And, as we passed between the first pair of pillars, we saw what was surrounded by flickering candles.
The almost mummified body of Severus Snape lay on a glass platform, fat green candles set in sockets in the glass, a green silk banner covering him from shoulders to toes.
I could see how this would freak out the mermen, ‘though not how they’d known it was here.
Harry’s shoulders tensed and I placed a comforting hand at the small of his back. Snape’s body had been missing from the Shack, by the time someone went down to collect it, and rumours had persisted that he hadn’t died.
We knew differently.
The three of us had seen him die, even if we could not guess who had taken his body.
Until now.
Until we looked into the shadows, past the pool of candlelight, and into a pale face, almost as gaunt as the long dead Snape.
Draco Malfoy’s hair was long and limp, his eyes were glazed, his robes were greasy and filthy and I muttered “oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Shush,” Harry murmured.
Malfoy started and raised his eyes, running them up Harry’s body so deliberately that goosebumps prickled Harry’s skin as they passed and I shuddered.
“Ah, the Chosen One, my nemesis,” he hissed, his tongue flickering creepily, tasting the air.
“Hardly, Snake Boy,” I scoffed. “Harry has always had bigger problems to deal with. Why don’t you go home to mummy?”
“His mother is dead,” Harry said flatly.
Malfoy flinched, his tongue darting out again.
“Who told you that?” he demanded.
“Andromeda Tonks,” Harry said.
“My beloved aunt,” Malfoy spat. “You’re helping her raise my halfbreed cousin; you’re living in the Black house; you destroyed all our lives; you killed Severus.”
His eyes flicked down to Snape’s leathery face, his eyes flooding with unnatural light as he reached out and touched the dead cheek.
“How did I destroy your life, Malfoy?” Harry asked wearily. “I remember saving it, on more than one occasion.”
Malfoy ignored this.
“Severus wasted his entire life protecting you, and you left him there,” he spat.
“I was busy,” Harry said flatly. “We went back for his body, and it was gone.”
“My father took him,” Malfoy said. “And I brought him down here…”
“How?” I interrupted, because that was really annoying me.
Malfoy flicked an irritated look at me.
“Through the Lake,” Malfoy muttered, and at least that explained the mermen being aware and irritated by the turn of events.
“I heard what you told the Dark Lord,” Malfoy said to Harry. “I was the owner of the world’s most powerful wand, and you stole it from me.”
Malfoy spread his empty hands and gazed down at them.
I snorted.
“Yeah,” I said, “the world would be a much better place if you owned the Death Stick.”
“I want my wand back, Potter,” Malfoy whispered, hauling himself to his feet, his head cocked to one side, his tongue flickering, his eyes flat.
“Very scary, Mr I-can-do-something-truly-disgusting-with-my-tongue,” I said. “Who do you think you’re scaring, here? Harry and Neville have both killed a snake, already. I think it’s my turn.”
“Ron,” Harry chided gently.
“So,” Malfoy said, ignoring me and stepping nearer to the body stretched out between them. “All I have to do is disarm you, Potter, and I win back my wand.”
“That wand is somewhere safe, Malfoy,” Harry sighed. “You are not going to find I, even if you disarm me, which you won’t.”
Malfoy cackled and stepped closer and his greasy, dirty robes brushed against one of the fat, green candles and a sheet of flame erupted between us, engulfing him.
Harry moved fastest, but not fast enough, his Augmenti dousing the flames to reveal a burnt face frozen in a ghostly cackle.
Neville swore and looked away and Harry covered the fresh body with the green banner that covered Professor Snape and we edged past the crime scene and followed the chamber to its entrance, and the tunnel beyond it.
We clambered over the rock fall where Lockhart had brought down the roof of the tunnel, through the gap I’d enlarged when I brought Hermione down to the Chamber.
We stopped beneath the pipe leading up to the girls’ bathroom and Harry sent his Patronus up to Hermione, letting her know where we were.
“So,” Neville said, peering up the pipe. “How d’we get out of here? What’s up the top of this thing?”
“A sink that only speaks Parseltongue,” Harry said bleakly.
“So,” Neville said, “we levitate you up the pipe and you give it the old…” He hissed loudly.
“Nope,” Harry said. “All that’s gone: poof.”
“You can’t speak Parseltongue because you’re gay?” Neville asked, one quizzical eyebrow raised.
“Very funny,” Harry said. “Everything Riddle left inside me is gone. But Ron…”
“No, Harry, I can’t,” I protested. “It was a total fluke.”
Harry tutted and raised his wand.
I braced myself and tried not to squeak too girlishly as they both Wingardium Leviosad me up the pipe.
It took seven attempts and my head being slammed repeatedly against the ceiling, but the sink finally slid aside and I hauled myself up onto the bathroom floor, to find a flustered Transfiguration professor waiting for us.
“Where’s Neville?” she asked, hauling me to my feet.
“I’m fine,” I said. “A bit cold, that’s all.”
She hit me.
“Where is my husband, you unprofessional idiot?”
“He’s fine, Hermione,” I said. “He and Harry are down below; they sent me up to do my fake Parseltongue trick.”
She shoved me out of the way and conjured a great deal of rope, which she secured to the u-bend of the sink and threw down to rescue our men.
Neville appeared first, and was smothered in kisses; Harry good naturedly put up with the same from me, and Hermione bustled us all off to the hospital wing to be checked over.
Dressed and thanked and packed off back to London, we reported in at work, telling the department where to find the bodies, before returning home, to Grimmauld Place.
“How could he still be jealous about all this?” Harry asked me, miserably, gesturing around the drawing room. “Did he ever even set foot in the bloody house?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Look at how he obsessed about the wand thing - thought the world owed him a living - never tried to do anything for himself, did he?”
Harry grunted.
“Hey,” I said. “We did the right thing, and Hermione has her bloke back, and it made me realise something.”
“Yeah?” Harry said.
“Yeah.” I slung an arm round his shoulders and hugged him. “I really wish turning gay hadn’t stopped you being able to speak Parseltongue.”
“Idiot.”
“How sexy would it be if you could remember how to tell my arse to ‘open’ in Parseltongue,” I murmured, pushing his robes down his arms and sinking my teeth into his neck.
He snorted, tipping back his head for me and fumbling with the clasps of my robes.
“It’d be brilliant,” I insisted, letting him strip off my clothes and push me face down on the couch.
He tutted and his slicked fingers slid between my cheeks.
“None of this time consuming finger work,” I continued, trying not to whimper as he stretched me.
“Have you lost your mind?” he muttered before leaning forward and adding his tongue.
“Ah, you win,” I moaned. “I’m glad you’re a poof - p for poof, yes, please, Harry.”
“Will you shut up?” he complained.
“Don’t stop,” I whined. “No p for Parseltongue, not anymore - now it’s p for poof - now it’s just arse ‘n’ tongue.”
Author: shocolate
Pairing: Harry/Ron
Words: 4000
Rating: NC-17
Written for my beloved abigail89’s birthday - what a lovely year we have had, my pootle - you came and stayed with us - you cooked for us, and master button ate it - I took you to the British Library, and nearly killed you with swoon (not sure a doctor would accept Magna Carta as cause of death) - and we saw Equus and oh, it was lovely, and Alan Rickman was there, and *sigh*
For your birthday this year, magicofisis and I have asked lnalvgd for some prompts, which we will both attempt to include, and see how different our fics are…
Prompt words:
promiscuous
palms
ecstasy
labyrinth
giant squid
Phrase:
I can't seem to get enough of Dan's "I can do something truly disgusting with my tongue." It just fits perfectly with any smut fic!!
Unfortunately, and inexplicably, plot happened - you will just have to humour me!
Going Poof
****
I hope we’re grown-up enough that we can be friends with our exes.
Harry never has to see Cho, so that isn’t a problem; Lavender is a palmistry reader type thing, and always so smothered in shawls and fringed stuff that I can barely see her, and she is always looking at the beyond and doesn’t see me.
Ginny.
Well, Harry was gutted when she broke up with him - took it really personally and was even a bit odd with me, for a while. Things were awkward between them until the day Harry and I popped into the Burrow, to look all thin and hungry at my mum.
OK, we shouldn’t have followed those moans up to Ginny’s room, and I reckon Harry opened the door just to upset her, but it worked out for the best.
Yeah, I could have done without seeing my sister naked, breasts quivering, back arching as she straddled the mouth that was working industriously on her girly parts.
But Harry finally got what Hermione calls ‘closure’ and moved on. Apparently it made all the difference, and it’s nothing personal, to have been dumped by a lesbian, so we both watched as Ginny leant down and Luna spread her legs for her freckled fingers, moaning in ecstasy as they slid inside her.
Our other exes?
Just the one, really.
‘Cos I’d already bollocksed things up with Hermione, by then. She’d gone back to school, of course - she’s Hermione - and had been very supportive of me starting work at the Ministry, instead. I lived with Harry, at Grimmauld Place, and she popped down to London when she could - mature students who’d just saved the world being uncurfewable, and all that.
So, I really shouldn’t have got into a situation that was even borderline compromising, not when she could arrive at the house whenever she felt like it.
Harry reckons I shouldn’t have done it, anyway, even in a cave at the top of a mountain that was completely inaccessible without a top-level security clearance Ministry Portkey.
That it was the compromising position that was my mistake, not the doing it where Hermione could catch me.
But after a day of intense physical combat training, followed by a few drinks back at Grimmauld Place. A day of having my training partner slamming me onto the mat and writhing on top of me to pin me down.
Well.
I was… horny.
And he’s a good-looking bloke, Terry.
So, we’d showered at work and he’d come back with me for a few drinks, and Hermione and I were ‘saving ourselves’ and Terry licks his lips a lot, when they tingle after a few drinks.
So. When I leant across the kitchen table to get another beer, and Terry came up behind me and ground his You Know What against my arse, well, I was too startled and too horny and I let him, and his fingers slid round my hips and pulled me against him, and I pressed back and I liked it, and the fireplace flared and Hermione stepped through the Floo.
She looked stricken and furious and my mind was a blank and in an attempt not to say ‘well, we’re not having sex’, I heard myself saying “well, you don’t need my arse.”
Hermione’s eyes narrowed and Terry moved away and I stood up and braced myself for her attack, but she just turned on her heel and stepped back into the fire.
Terry adjusted his crotch and muttered something and Flooed home and I was still gormlessly staring at the flames when Harry whirled into sight. He knows me better than anyone and he finally managed to drag out of me what had happened, and he was not impressed, but I was so confused by my head being full of Terry’s You Know What that I didn’t object when Hermione broke things off.
Things between us, things, not You Know What things.
‘Course, my You Know What hadn’t really come between us.
Come.
Yes, well.
For the rest of the year I was briskly friendly to Terry at work, wanked briskly to images of Terry at home, and Hermione stopped visiting the house. I didn’t date, not when I was that confused and hadn’t been able to explain to anyone why Hermione had broken up with me, so I didn’t acquire any other exes to face by the time we were called to investigate the incident at Hogwarts.
Just Hermione.
Harry wasn’t exactly promiscuous, either, and has just one more ex.
Just Hermione.
Apparently - and they have explained this to me drunkenly and earnestly (respectively) on more than one occasion, and I can do without the diagrams - it is part of Harry’s infuriatingly noble thing.
They didn’t tell me they were seeing each other - some Gryffindors, they are - but even I noticed something was going on when I walked in on him wallowing in her breasts. Not that it’s noble to squeeze one breast while suckling hungrily on the other; the noble bit is that he claims he genuinely couldn’t be attracted to her while she was ‘mine’ in his head.
So, how could I object, after such a beautiful demonstration of his friendship?
Actually, having pretty much admitted to myself that I’d had a narrow escape from Hermione’s breasts… not that they are particularly dangerous, just that I probably would never have seen beyond them, to the glory of Harry’s arse… not that her boobs are so big that they block out the sun… not that I think the sun shines out of Harry’s arse.
Where was I?
Right.
I honestly didn’t mind them being together. Much. Except for the whole Harry wallowing in breasts thing. Hermione justifies it to me as Harry’s mother issues, and points out how much Ginny looks like his mum, but I don’t want to go there.
Suffice it to say, they’d broken up, too - with much earnest explanation and, apparently, diagrams - by the time me and Harry qualified after our two year, fast track training, and that was it, exeswise.
The actual me and Harry getting together bit actually did involve a cave at the top of a mountain that was completely inaccessible without a top-level security clearance Ministry Portkey.
With Harry’s eyes glowing in the firelight and Harry’s collarbone calling to me and Harry’s patience snapping and him pouncing and pushing our jeans down and off and me swearing loudly as he sprawled between my legs and aligned our cocks and desperately thrust against me until we saw stars.
Followed by me cutting my hair brutally short, accidentally explaining that it was so I didn’t look like his mum, trying to laugh it off at the sight of his baffled and slightly scared face, and growing it out again.
So.
There we were.
Me and my Harry.
Partners.
And partners at work, and dispatched up to Hogwarts to see Professor Longbottom.
Not Neville
Hence the ex-facing.
Hermione had married Neville about a year after she split up with Harry, and she teaches Transfiguration and I can only assume Nev likes things to be explained using diagrams, and I try not to picture it too closely.
So, we Apparated to Hogsmeade and rushed up to the castle and she brittly, yet calmly, explained what had happened.
Neville had gone down to the lake, before breakfast, and had not returned to the castle; there were signs of a struggle on the muddy shore, and a Hufflepuff fifth year, who refused to say what she was doing down by the lake so early, had seen a merman dragging something into the water.
Hermione was all inaccessible briskness as she told us, and we knew better than to attempt to comfort her. We stripped down to our boxers, cast Bubblehead Charms on each other, and dived in. Deeper and deeper we swam, avoiding banks of weeds and the lurking Grindylows, until I followed Harry down the ‘street’ of the mervillage.
I’d been in an enchanted sleep, until my Harry rescued me, last time I’d been down here, and I looked around with interest, through the distortion of my bubble. Blurred faces peered through windows at us, and the shadow of the giant squid fell across as us he swam over the village. Harry swam resolutely on, through a gap between two buildings and emerged into the central square; the huge statue that I had been tied to dominated the open space, and what looked like the entire Mergamot were lined up, waiting for us.
Harry drew himself upright and started to gesticulate at the eerie figures, but the chief gestured sharply for us to follow him and swam around to the far side of the statue. There, a tunnel led down and under the tail of the figure, disappearing into the darkness. Harry narrowed his eyes at the merman and then nodded sharply and, beckoning for me to follow him, moved towards the hole.
I caught his arm and shook my head. He sighed visibly, within his bubble and raised an eyebrow. I frowned. He rolled his eyes. I shook my head again. He nodded firmly.
I followed him into the passageway.
He lit his wand and led me through the narrow tunnel, slanting downwards and then levelling and running under the mervillage, back the way we had come. After a few minutes, we started climbing, and finally broke through the surface of the water into a pitch-black cave. We popped our bubbles and raised our lit wands to take a look around. There, tied in wet ropes and writhing wetly, was Neville.
We rushed to his side and held our lit wands over his face. We were expecting something much worse than the anger snapping in his eyes and sagged with relief as we severed his bonds.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded, sitting up and rubbing his wrists.
“What happened?” Harry asked, in super sexy focussed Auror mode.
OK, I wasn’t supposed to notice how sexy it was, not during a mission, but I’m only human and he’d been just that focussed, just the night before, staring into my eyes as he entered me, my hand wrapped round my wedding tackle, his palms pressed to the backs of my knees, as he spread me open for him.
Right. Dangerous mission.
“What happened?” he asked Neville.
“I was collecting quillwort and the mermen grabbed me,” Neville said. “They sometimes come to the surface that early, they sometimes have some Brittle Waternymph for me, so I bent closer and they grabbed me. I tried to break free, but they forced Gillyweed into my mouth and I gave up struggling for freedom when I started struggling to breathe.” He stood up and Harry steadied him with an arm round his back as he swayed and blinked. “I flopped into the water and they bound my arms and dragged me down to their village - Harry, they’re cultivating Water Hemlock outside some of those houses, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Nev, I wouldn’t recognise Water Hemlock if I tripped over it.”
“Right,” Neville said, “well, they dragged me through that tunnel, pushed me up onto the bank, and left me in the dark. How did you find me here, anyway?”
“You didn’t return to school and Hermione raised the alarm,” I said. “A Hufflepuff said they’d seen you struggling, down by the bank, ‘though they wouldn’t say what they were doing down by the lake at six in the morning…”
“Pullman?” Neville interrupted.
“What?”
“Wilhelmina Pullman?”
“Yeah…”
“She’s seeing a boy in Slytherin,” Neville said. “They meet by the lake, or in greenhouse six.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Well, no wonder she keeps that a secret.”
Neville tutted.
Hermione is certainly rubbing off on him. Not like that. Well, yes, like that, they’re married, after all, so, I assume like that, but I really don’t want to think about it, it’s bad enough I know she was the first person to suck my bloke’s cock.
Sometimes I can’t stop myself staring at her lips and she catches me and blushes and gives me a sad ‘yes, you were my first love, too, and sometimes I remember our kisses’ smile, and I give her a smile in return, which I’m quite sure she reads as ‘ah, we were so young and innocent’, but which really says ‘no, I’m not thinking about that, I’m picturing you giving Harry a blowjob.’
Anyway.
“So,” I told Neville, “me and Harry took the call and came up to debrief your wife and she took us down to the lake and we dived in.”
“But how did you find me?”
“The mermen brought us here,” Harry said.
“But why?” Neville said indignantly.
“They must have taken you to make someone come and rescue you,” I said.
“So, I’m just the bait in a trap?” Neville asked.
“I don’t think so,” Harry said slowly. “I think there must be something down here that they want us to sort out.”
We all looked at each other. Neville was wet and wandless, me and Harry were wet and wearing only boxer shorts.
We looked around the dark and empty cave.
“Ah, well,” Neville said. “We’ve faced worse.”
“You’re not coming with us,” Harry said firmly. “You’re unarmed.”
“I was unarmed when I faced Voldemort,” Neville said, looking him straight in the eye.
“With us where, anyway?” I asked.
Harry lifted his lit wand and it blazed up, showing us the cave and the dark, moist tunnel that led into the wall pretty much opposite the underwater entrance.
“So,” Harry said, “further back, towards the school.”
“Home, sweet home,” Neville said.
“Right,” Harry said. “Nev, you take up the rear.”
Neville raised a how-d’you-expect-me-to-ignore-such-a-bent-straight-line eyebrow and I sniggered.
Harry tutted and I tried not to think of Hermione rubbing off on him, and he entered the tunnel and I tried not to think of him entering her tunnel, and it was dark and the walls were moist and there were mysterious crevasses and dripping noises, and I bit my tongue to stop myself saying something ridiculously inappropriate about Neville’s wife.
“I’ve got your rear covered, Harry,” I whispered.
The tunnel widened and climbed and a labyrinth of side passages joined and crossed it and I was wondering if it was the right moment for a ‘back passage’ joke, when Harry stopped suddenly and I ploughed into him, from behind.
But not in a good way.
I left my hand against his back, anyway. Harry has a gorgeous back, although I do wonder if I only think so because I know that the line down the middle of his back turns into the crack of his perfect arse.
I wish I could ask someone who hasn’t squeezed that arse for an unbiased opinion of his back. I looked sideways at Neville, but didn’t ask him - not because the moment was inappropriate, but because his wife has squeezed that arse.
“Dead end,” Harry muttered, unaware of my internal arse monologue, except in the sense that he was used to my base state consisting of an internal arse monologue.
The monologue being internal, of course, because my monologues about being inside his arse were usually more along the lines of ‘FuckHarryHotTightFuckGonnaComeHarry.’
We watched him run his hands over the stone wall, in front of us. I shivered. Having stopped climbing, I became aware of how cold it was in the damp stone tunnel, and that we were standing there in wet clothes.
Not too many of them.
“Possibly not the moment to mention this,” I murmured. “But we’re sure this is something we can sort out in wet boxer shorts, yeah?”
Harry shrugged and interesting muscles moved in his gorgeous back and I decided I liked doing missions in just wet boxer shorts.
Suddenly there was a stony click and the wall swung back towards us.
We peered out, through the circular opening; we seemed to be at the end of a long chamber, tall pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, topped with statues, level with our position, near the arched roof.
In the distance, flickering candlelight surrounded something on the floor.
Following Harry, we climbed down intricate rock carvings until we were close enough to the ground to drop the rest of the way. We landed between giant stone feet.
Looking up, I realised we had climbed out of the mouth and down the beard of Salazar Slytherin.
I shuddered and turned on my heel, looking down the Chamber.
Picking our way past the endless pairs of ribs of the giant snake skeleton, past the dark stain on the floor, where blood had bubbled out of Hufflepuff’s cup when Hermione had destroyed the Horcrux - I looked over at Neville and his jaw was set and his eyes were wide - past the faded stains where Harry had destroyed the snake and the diary.
And, as we passed between the first pair of pillars, we saw what was surrounded by flickering candles.
The almost mummified body of Severus Snape lay on a glass platform, fat green candles set in sockets in the glass, a green silk banner covering him from shoulders to toes.
I could see how this would freak out the mermen, ‘though not how they’d known it was here.
Harry’s shoulders tensed and I placed a comforting hand at the small of his back. Snape’s body had been missing from the Shack, by the time someone went down to collect it, and rumours had persisted that he hadn’t died.
We knew differently.
The three of us had seen him die, even if we could not guess who had taken his body.
Until now.
Until we looked into the shadows, past the pool of candlelight, and into a pale face, almost as gaunt as the long dead Snape.
Draco Malfoy’s hair was long and limp, his eyes were glazed, his robes were greasy and filthy and I muttered “oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Shush,” Harry murmured.
Malfoy started and raised his eyes, running them up Harry’s body so deliberately that goosebumps prickled Harry’s skin as they passed and I shuddered.
“Ah, the Chosen One, my nemesis,” he hissed, his tongue flickering creepily, tasting the air.
“Hardly, Snake Boy,” I scoffed. “Harry has always had bigger problems to deal with. Why don’t you go home to mummy?”
“His mother is dead,” Harry said flatly.
Malfoy flinched, his tongue darting out again.
“Who told you that?” he demanded.
“Andromeda Tonks,” Harry said.
“My beloved aunt,” Malfoy spat. “You’re helping her raise my halfbreed cousin; you’re living in the Black house; you destroyed all our lives; you killed Severus.”
His eyes flicked down to Snape’s leathery face, his eyes flooding with unnatural light as he reached out and touched the dead cheek.
“How did I destroy your life, Malfoy?” Harry asked wearily. “I remember saving it, on more than one occasion.”
Malfoy ignored this.
“Severus wasted his entire life protecting you, and you left him there,” he spat.
“I was busy,” Harry said flatly. “We went back for his body, and it was gone.”
“My father took him,” Malfoy said. “And I brought him down here…”
“How?” I interrupted, because that was really annoying me.
Malfoy flicked an irritated look at me.
“Through the Lake,” Malfoy muttered, and at least that explained the mermen being aware and irritated by the turn of events.
“I heard what you told the Dark Lord,” Malfoy said to Harry. “I was the owner of the world’s most powerful wand, and you stole it from me.”
Malfoy spread his empty hands and gazed down at them.
I snorted.
“Yeah,” I said, “the world would be a much better place if you owned the Death Stick.”
“I want my wand back, Potter,” Malfoy whispered, hauling himself to his feet, his head cocked to one side, his tongue flickering, his eyes flat.
“Very scary, Mr I-can-do-something-truly-disgusting-with-my-tongue,” I said. “Who do you think you’re scaring, here? Harry and Neville have both killed a snake, already. I think it’s my turn.”
“Ron,” Harry chided gently.
“So,” Malfoy said, ignoring me and stepping nearer to the body stretched out between them. “All I have to do is disarm you, Potter, and I win back my wand.”
“That wand is somewhere safe, Malfoy,” Harry sighed. “You are not going to find I, even if you disarm me, which you won’t.”
Malfoy cackled and stepped closer and his greasy, dirty robes brushed against one of the fat, green candles and a sheet of flame erupted between us, engulfing him.
Harry moved fastest, but not fast enough, his Augmenti dousing the flames to reveal a burnt face frozen in a ghostly cackle.
Neville swore and looked away and Harry covered the fresh body with the green banner that covered Professor Snape and we edged past the crime scene and followed the chamber to its entrance, and the tunnel beyond it.
We clambered over the rock fall where Lockhart had brought down the roof of the tunnel, through the gap I’d enlarged when I brought Hermione down to the Chamber.
We stopped beneath the pipe leading up to the girls’ bathroom and Harry sent his Patronus up to Hermione, letting her know where we were.
“So,” Neville said, peering up the pipe. “How d’we get out of here? What’s up the top of this thing?”
“A sink that only speaks Parseltongue,” Harry said bleakly.
“So,” Neville said, “we levitate you up the pipe and you give it the old…” He hissed loudly.
“Nope,” Harry said. “All that’s gone: poof.”
“You can’t speak Parseltongue because you’re gay?” Neville asked, one quizzical eyebrow raised.
“Very funny,” Harry said. “Everything Riddle left inside me is gone. But Ron…”
“No, Harry, I can’t,” I protested. “It was a total fluke.”
Harry tutted and raised his wand.
I braced myself and tried not to squeak too girlishly as they both Wingardium Leviosad me up the pipe.
It took seven attempts and my head being slammed repeatedly against the ceiling, but the sink finally slid aside and I hauled myself up onto the bathroom floor, to find a flustered Transfiguration professor waiting for us.
“Where’s Neville?” she asked, hauling me to my feet.
“I’m fine,” I said. “A bit cold, that’s all.”
She hit me.
“Where is my husband, you unprofessional idiot?”
“He’s fine, Hermione,” I said. “He and Harry are down below; they sent me up to do my fake Parseltongue trick.”
She shoved me out of the way and conjured a great deal of rope, which she secured to the u-bend of the sink and threw down to rescue our men.
Neville appeared first, and was smothered in kisses; Harry good naturedly put up with the same from me, and Hermione bustled us all off to the hospital wing to be checked over.
Dressed and thanked and packed off back to London, we reported in at work, telling the department where to find the bodies, before returning home, to Grimmauld Place.
“How could he still be jealous about all this?” Harry asked me, miserably, gesturing around the drawing room. “Did he ever even set foot in the bloody house?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Look at how he obsessed about the wand thing - thought the world owed him a living - never tried to do anything for himself, did he?”
Harry grunted.
“Hey,” I said. “We did the right thing, and Hermione has her bloke back, and it made me realise something.”
“Yeah?” Harry said.
“Yeah.” I slung an arm round his shoulders and hugged him. “I really wish turning gay hadn’t stopped you being able to speak Parseltongue.”
“Idiot.”
“How sexy would it be if you could remember how to tell my arse to ‘open’ in Parseltongue,” I murmured, pushing his robes down his arms and sinking my teeth into his neck.
He snorted, tipping back his head for me and fumbling with the clasps of my robes.
“It’d be brilliant,” I insisted, letting him strip off my clothes and push me face down on the couch.
He tutted and his slicked fingers slid between my cheeks.
“None of this time consuming finger work,” I continued, trying not to whimper as he stretched me.
“Have you lost your mind?” he muttered before leaning forward and adding his tongue.
“Ah, you win,” I moaned. “I’m glad you’re a poof - p for poof, yes, please, Harry.”
“Will you shut up?” he complained.
“Don’t stop,” I whined. “No p for Parseltongue, not anymore - now it’s p for poof - now it’s just arse ‘n’ tongue.”