Harry Potter and the Snog Aftermath

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Harry was singing. Maybe not fully singing, because he did not know all the words to "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love," but he knew a few here and there. He had picked up enough of the melody over the years, at least, to be able to hum along loudly, mumbling where there should have been lyrics

Comments

[honestlyrubbish]

Hermione was already at the end of her wits. The party had started out nicely enough, a fair number of people worming themselves over to Hermione's quiet corner outside of the Compound, carrying pleasant conversations until Eduardo had even been capable of coaxing Hermione to the dance floor. While she had been engaging what looked to many others like some sort of ritualistic dance (a healing one, perhaps, given that neither could rest their weight evenly on both feet), Ron had found her at last, and carried such a strong scent of liquor on him that she had immediately excused herself from the party with many embarrassed apologies, steering Ron toward their hut and hoping that a hangover the next morning would teach him a fair lesson. The fact that he refused to listen to her admonishments, and instead prattled on and on about certain Quidditch moves and how she needed to see how much he'd mastered, only wore Hermione's patience down until she blocked herself off a space in the corner of the common room, waiting for Harry to come home

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"Wasn't a lot of speaking going on," Harry sniggered behind his hand, though that wasn't strictly true. They had spoken a little bit before the kissing had started, but it had been drunken talk, not very well-thought out statements on Harry's part. Mostly just establishing out loud that they liked each other, not anything beyond that.

"She is lovely though," Harry sighed contentedly, leaning back in his chair with his head tilted back. "It was lovely. It was amazing."

[sixthhandlion]

He noticed Hermione's frown deepen and frowned a bit himself, trying to work through what he'd done now. It seemed like no matter what he did, he was mucking things up with Hermione. But through the haze of alcohol, he couldn't quite focus on trying to work it out long enough to figure out what he'd done wrong, and before he knew it, he was focusing on what Harry had said.

"So you just snogged her and came home?" Ron asked, and even in his inebriated state knew that wasn't a good idea. Maybe it'd taken him ages to finally ask Hermione out, but by now, he knew that if you didn't ask out a girl you liked, someone else might beat you to it.

"Tell us you at least asked her out."

[honestlyrubbish]

Her nose immediately wrinkled at Harry's comment. Not that a great deal of talking generally went on during kissing sessions- Hermione knew that much from that brief period in fourth year with Viktor, or again that horrid evening in sixth year when she'd stupidly invited Cormac to Slug Club festivities- but that didn't mean that she wanted to picture it, or picture what else Harry might have had on his mind at the time. She pressed the palm of her hand to her eyes, mouth seemingly incapable of deciding whether it wanted to smile or to frown, twitching in the meantime.

When Ron spoke up again, she found herself surprised at the question, and more than happy to follow that line of questioning. Tilting her head, she nodded, encouraging Harry to answer. "Yes, Harry, did you ask Kate out at all? Not that I think she's a very presumptuous girl- I had quite the opposite impression, actually- but a kiss suggests that she likes you, maybe she'd hoping for something more. And if you like her as well, I see no reason not to grasp at the

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Now both of them were looking at him as though he'd done something wrong. Not use of the full name wrong, but obviously he had made some kind of error. He wracked his muddled brains for some fragmented memory of the evening that would satisfy them, but all of them were blurry with whiskey or of Kate kissing him.

"We... agreed that we should spend more time together?" he tried, wincing even as the words came out. That wasn't right, was it? Well, it was what had happened, Harry was pretty sure, but was that what was supposed to have happened?

[sixthhandlion]

"Maybe that's good enough," Ron said, trying to be hopeful, but the look on his face likely let on that he wasn't terribly convinced. He sipped at his water and looked at Hermione, hoping she'd back him up. "'Spend time together's' the same thing as a date, right?"

If they'd been snogging each other, then maybe it was. Of course, there was the chance Kate had been as drunk as Harry was and wouldn't even remember doing it in the first place, but Ron knew better than to bring up that possibility.

[honestlyrubbish]

It wouldn't have been hard to offer words of comfort, and all things considered, with Harry and Ron both being as inebriated as they were, there probably wasn't much point in scolding them, or trying to show them the fallacies in their logic. But Hermione was rarely a girl who went along with the easiest course of action, finding herself unable to get Harry's hopes up even so shortly after he'd wandered into their hut, singing. Her nose wrinkled, slight exasperation showing on her face. "Honestly, Ron," she sighed, tilting her head. "If we're using that as our standard, then the two of us must have been dating for years already

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Harry managed to muffle something of a snort at Hermione's first comment, pretending instead to be coughing as though his water had gone down the wrong pipe. They sort of had been dating for years, only neither of them had known it, in Harry's mind.

"Well of course she's fond of me," he pointed out with the same goofy grin as he had worn when first entering the hut. "She kissed me. That's-- I mean, she wouldn't have kissed me if she didn't want to do something. ...Right?"

Now a different kind of worry took Harry, not so strong as before. Before he had worried he had done wrong by Kate somehow, not done what she wanted. Now he worried that maybe Kate had done wrong by Harry.

Only then he remembered the snogging and decided in the moment that there was nothing wrong by that, even if it never happened again.