Chapter 4: What Have You Gotten Yourself Into?
Four weeks.
Harry Potter sighed as he floated lazily through the air on a borrowed Cleansweep Seven after the latest Quidditch practice, as opposed to dealing with one of the old and decrepit school brooms. It had been four weeks since Christmas and five weeks since Hermione left on the train to go home for the holidays.
She hadn't even looked at him that morning, and he could admit that had hurt him. He could also admit, that he missed her.
Not for her help with homework, as Ron as starting to, though there had been times in the past that her help had been invaluable. No, he missed her simply for her presence. Her solid loyalty and dependability. He missed the way she seemed to be able to offer support and encouragement, all without ever saying a word.
And he really missed her hugs.
Harry was more than smart enough, and aware enough, to realize that he had more than a few issues as a result of his upbringing. He didn't like it when people touched him, for one thing. So few times in his life had the touch of another person meant anything other than pain that it was difficult to understand that someone wanted to touch him for comfort, or simply to express their friendship in a physical way.
When Hermione hugged him, just before he'd stepped through that wall of black fire at the end of their first year, it was literally the first time that he could ever remember anyone actually hugging him. For some reason, his bushy-haired, beautiful best friend never caused the feelings that had him typically keeping his distance from others. Instead, she inspired an entirely different set of feelings. Feelings that he simultaneously found himself craving, even as they terrified him.
He wasn't quite certain what to do with the feelings that being near her created. All he knew was that he missed her, and he wanted her back. Which made everything more confusing, in light of the hurt he felt over her actions.
Frowning, he did a few loops on the broom, nowhere near as fast as his poor Nimbus could have done, but it was still a cathartic release for him to be in the air, away from the ground and all of his troubles.
Of course, eventually, he had to come back down to the ground and he did so just as the sun was beginning to set, plunging the grounds into a darkness lit only by way of candles and torchlight. He dropped into a dive, straightening out five feet above the ground and landed near the Gryffindor stands, easily dismounting the broom and slinging it over one shoulder to carry with him to the equipment shed where the team brooms were kept.
After dropping it off he changed out of his uniform, showered, and dressed in his warmest clothes before he left the locker rooms and started up toward the castle, head down, hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets.
He hadn't made it fifteen feet up the path when a sudden voice startled him.
"Harry?"
He was surprised enough that he jumped and spun around, already drawing his wand from where he kept it in his pocket before his brain caught up to his actions and he realized that he recognized the voice.
"Hermione?" he blurted out as she stepped out onto the path from where she'd been hidden within the deep shadows cast by the stands. "Merlin's pants, Hermione, you scared me half to death! What're you doing sneaking up on me like that?"
She winced, and he realized that his question might have come off a bit harsh, but he made no move to apologize and simply waited for her response.
"I'm sorry," she said, taking a step closer to him. "I didn't mean to startle you, but I need to talk to you, Harry. Please."
He hid a wince of his own with the ease of long practice, though he couldn't hide the look of hurt and anger that flashed across his face. She took another step toward him, her eyes bright in the torchlight, and reached out to place one hand on his arm.
"Please. We've been best friends for more than two years. You know I would never do anything to hurt you on purpose. Please, just give me a chance to explain and apologize before… before you shut me out, completely."
He couldn't stop the wince that time as she paraphrased his own words back at him, Intentionally, he was sure. But damn if it didn't work. The hard set to his jaw softened as he took in the open pain on her face and he sighed.
"Fine," he said, and crossed his arms over his chest, looking at her expectantly.
"Really?" she blurted out, surprised and thrilled, based on her reaction, and he nodded silently.
"You have to admit that it is possible that Black could have sent you that broom," she said, jumping quickly into her explanation. "In our first year Quirrell tried to get you thrown off your broom in your very first match. Second year, Dobby's bludger almost killed you. And this year…" She paused, tears glinting in her eyes and he started to feel more than a bit like a heel for how he'd been treating her. "This year I stood in the stands and watched you fall at least three-hundred feet. And I didn't do a damn thing to help you!"
Holy shit, he thought as his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline in surprise. Hermione Granger just cursed… sort of.
"I thought you were dead, Harry. I said it weeks ago, you're the most important person in my world, aside from my parents, and I was sure that you were dead." By that time her head was lowered and she'd wrapped her arms around her body, as if trying to hold herself together by sheer physical force and without any conscious thought on his part, he closed the last of the distance between them and pulled her body against his.
A relieved sounding sob escaped her, her arms moving to wrap tightly around him as she buried her face against his shoulder, her body shaking with suppressed sobs. It took her a few minutes to gather herself, to keep speaking, and when she did she didn't bother to lift her head from his shoulder, merely turning her face so that he would be able to hear her clearly.
"I was so relieved, when the Headmaster was able to save you," she muttered. "But I've just been so scared ever since, with everything that always seems to happen to you… I saw that broom and I just saw one more thing trying to take you from me and I… I just reacted… I guess."
While she talked, Harry's mind cast back to the days the previous year that he'd spent sitting beside her petrified form in the Hospital Wing, and how scared he'd felt for her. He couldn't help but understand, at least a little, how she must have felt in that moment. Her petrification had affected him in ways he hadn't imagined before. When he'd gone down into the Chamber, he hadn't gone to rescue Ginny. Oh, he wanted to save the girl, of course, his friends little sister. But his main desire, had been motivated more by revenge than anything else. Something had attacked his… his best friend, and he had been bound and determined to pay it back in kind.
If Hermione was ever hurt, or in danger, he honestly didn't think that there was much that he wouldn't do to save her or protect her, even if she hated him for it, he realized.
"Why didn't you just talk to me?" he asked, finally coming out of his thoughts and back to the discussion at hand and she drew back in his arms to look at him with an expression on her face that clearly said she was wondering if he was an idiot.
"I did talk to you," she told him and after a few seconds of thought he sighed and shook his head.
"No. You tried to talk to me and Ron," he said, ruefully and a moment later he had to chuckle at the shocked look on her face. "I'm not a complete idiot, Hermione," he said in a lightly teasing tone. "I do get that Ron and I can sometimes bring out the worst in each other."
"So, in the future, talk to you alone, if at all possible?" she asked and he grinned and nodded his head. A moment later, his grin faded and he gave her a quick squeeze before he stepped back, deciding that he needed just a bit of space between them before they continued.
"I'm sorry I got the broom confiscated," she said. "I was just worried about you."
Harry bit back the urge to sigh again and raked one hand back through his hair in an unconscious, nervous gesture that he'd had for as long as he could remember. It would take some explanation before she would understand what his real issue with the whole thing had been, he realized. Explanation that he really didn't want to give. But this was Hermione, his best friend, he couldn't leave her with the wrong impression of why he'd been upset.
"I don't care, really, about the broom being confiscated," he admitted. "Not entirely… I mean, I've never owned anything that valuable before. But it's not about how much it cost so much as…" He blew out the sigh he'd held back before, frowning irritably. "Crap, I'm not saying this very well," he growled when he realized that he was rambling disjointedly instead of properly explaining how he felt.
"Why not just take a breath, and try again. I'll ask questions if I need to until you can get it all out?" she offered and he nodded, absently, and did just that.
Why was this so damn difficult? He wondered, annoyed with himself and his sudden lack of facility with the English language.
"Do you know what the first gift I remember receiving was?" he asked, not looking in her direction. A second later, he kept talking without waiting for her to try to respond. "Hedwig. Hagrid bought her for me for my eleventh birthday. First year, my relatives sent me a fifty-pence piece for Christmas. I'm pretty sure they only did that because they knew I couldn't actually spend it, here. It was just to taunt me.
"All of my clothes, aside from my school uniforms used to belong to my fat whale of a cousin. My glasses? My Aunt got them from a second hand bin, they're probably not even the right prescription. They always told me I wasn't worth having anything of my own. I wasn't worth anyone spending money on me. I'm not a particularly materialistic person, but… that broom just… it kind of felt like someone thought I was worth spending that kind of money on. It felt nice to think that there was someone that thought I was worth…" He shrugged, idly digging the toe of his ratty, tattered trainer into the dirt.
"If you'd talked to me about it, I would probably have agreed with you, and we could have gone to Professor McGonagall, together. But you went behind my back, and all I could think was that you felt I wasn't worth it either. I didn't deserve it-"
He suddenly grunted and staggered back several steps as a sobbing fourteen-year-old witch slammed into his midsection, latching onto him like a limpet.
"I w-would never th-think s-something like that," she stuttered brokenly, clinging tightly to him.
Harry couldn't really think of anything to say, so he kept silent and just hugged her back until she stopped crying and pulled back enough that she could look up at him with her red rimmed cinnamon colored eyes and he gently wiped a few tears from her cheeks.
"I must look a fright," she muttered, and backed away to dig out her handkerchief from one of her robe's pockets.
"You look beautiful," he disagreed, the words leaving his mouth before he even thought to try and hold them back and her cheeks slowly flushed a soft red in the dim light.
Mentally cursing himself for not keeping his big mouth shut, he awkwardly cleared his throat and gestured up toward the castle.
"We should get going," he said, hoping she wouldn't question what he'd said as he really didn't think he could give her a satisfactory answer to whatever she might ask. "It's cold out here, and I'm sick of being near those dementors."
She nodded, smiling brightly as she put away her handkerchief and hooked her arm through his.
"Didn't you say something about getting lessons on fighting them?" she asked as they walked slowly toward the castle.
"Yeah. Professor Lupin has been working on teaching me the Patronus Charm. Only had two lessons with him so far but I haven't managed much beyond a light mist."
"From what I've read, that's a really difficult charm. The fact that you've managed that much is pretty impressive, Harry," she pointed out and he shrugged.
"That's what the Professor said, too. But it doesn't really do me a lot of good if I can't keep them away from me next time they decide I might make a decent snack." He felt her stiffen against him and he grimaced, his face twisting into a pained expression. "Sorry," he muttered.
"That's okay… just, please don't talk about dying so… so casually. You know, there are people that would really miss you if you weren't around anymore."
"I'll try," he promised and she squeezed his arm where she still held it looped with hers.
They fell into a comfortable silence while the covered the last of the distance leading into the entrance hall and Harry hadn't felt so content since the day before Hermione'd left for the holidays when he'd finally gotten out of her what was causing her so much stress. He'd been beyond happy that she'd opened up to him, let him in on the secret of the Time Turner. The trust she showed him at times made him feel humble. After so long being told how worthless he was, it was difficult to imagine someone actually valuing him and his opinions.
He turned, starting for the Grand Staircase when a sudden tug on his arm brought him up short and he turned a confused look to the girl holding his arm.
She was fidgeting in place, her eyes directed at the ground for a moment before she finally looked at him, staring up through her eyelashes.
"I can't go to the Common Room," she said, quietly. "Not for another…" she glanced at her watch, "twenty-five minutes or so."
"Huh? Why not?" he asked, his confusion growing and she gave him a small grin before she reached up and pulled the chain for the Time Turner out of the neck of her robes, just enough for him to see it, before she let it fall back under her clothes.
"I'm currently sitting at one of the tables working on our Charms essay. I turned back two hours so that I could wait at the pitch for you after practice. I could see you from the tower window after the rest of the team had left and I wanted to make sure I got you alone, finally."
Harry blinked in surprise for a moment before a sly grin stole over his lips.
"It looks like I've been a bad influence on you, Miss Granger," he said. "Breaking the rules for personal gain like that…"
He laughed when she scowled at him and swatted his shoulder with her free hand.
"Well, what should we do until it's safe for you to go back to the Tower?" he asked after he got his laughter under control and noticed that she immediately became nervous and fidgety again.
"Well… I did have something else I needed to talk to you about," she admitted, slowly. "I didn't want to ask you today, though. I didn't want it to look like I only made up with you so I could ask you for a favor."
"You can always ask me anything, Hermione, you know that," he assured her, curious as to what she could possibly have to ask that had her looking so nervous.
"Don't say things like that, Harry. Not until you know what you're agreeing to."
She looked around, her hair swinging wildly and he leaned slightly to the side to avoid having it slap him in the face as she turned back.
"Look, let's find an empty classroom, first. I really don't want to discuss this out here in the entrance hall," she said and he nodded, leading her up the stairs and down a few corridors to where he knew there was an empty room that he'd previously cleaned of most of the dust and cobwebs.
By the time they entered the room, Hermione seemed even more nervous than she'd been before and he was really starting to worry. Just what could be so bad? He wondered.
With the door shut behind them she cast several silencing charms at it and then lead him to the front of the room where she sank into one of the student desks, her hands resting on the flat surface, fingers twisting together and he leaned back against the teachers desk, his arms crossed over his chest again as he waited for her to speak.
When she said nothing for several minutes he gently prompted her. "Hermione?"
She jumped in her seat, her eyes darting from where they'd been fixed on her hands to look into his eyes for a moment before she looked away again and took a deep breath, sitting up as straight as she could and looked him directly in the eye.
"I might have found something, Sir," she said. "As ordered."
His mouth dropped open, blinking several times in surprise before he found his voice.
"Something? What? Sir? … huh?" he managed before he cut off at the sound of her bursting into a fit of giggling.
Hermione Granger was giggling, like a girl? He shook his head, sure that he'd seen everything, now. Of course, he was well aware that Hermione was a girl, she just didn't tend to act giggly and such, like some girls did. Lavender and Parvati came immediately to mind.
"You ordered me to find something to help relieve the stress from my class load," she reminded him, grinning impishly for a moment. "Well… I think I might have found something that could help. I'm not certain but…" She trailed off and shrugged helplessly.
"That's great," he gushed, smiling happily. "What's the problem, though? Why aren't you sure?"
Slowly, her face turned a brilliant red and he found himself feeling even more flummoxed than he'd been a few moments before at her surprising reaction. She cleared her throat and he nearly jumped in surprise at the sudden sound.
"Well… it's… it's definitely outside of the norm," she said. "There are a few issues with it, actually. First… I'm not entirely certain it's what I'm looking for, really. I have some evidence that it might be, but it's not something I can know until I try. I've been… I was given some information that I started looking at on Christmas Day and since then I've rather… rather tentatively decided that it just might apply to me. The second problem is that I can't just try it to find out if this idea will actually help me."
"Why not?"
Her flush deepened and he could clearly see the color spreading down her neck and, idly, the thought occurred to him that he'd never seen her look more beautiful.
"Well, it's not something I can really do alone. It… it requires that I have a partner," she almost whispered, her eyes dropping back to her hands where they were twisted together on the desk.
"A partner?" He frowned for a moment, wondering why that was such a difficult thing when he remembered that Hermione didn't really spend much time with anyone other than him and Ron. "Well I'd be happy to try to help, and Ron would too, I'm sure, once we get him over the whole broom thing-"
"No!" she burst out, and that time he really did jump, startled by her vehement exclamation. "No," she repeated, quieter. "Ronald is absolutely not an option. This…" She let out a nervous laugh. "This requires a rather high level of trust and there's really only one person in the world that I trust enough to even bring this idea to, much less actually ask for help."
"Well, who is it?" he asked, hiding a hurt expression that she wouldn't ask him for help. It was his idea that she find some way to deal with her stress. He'd be happy to help her, if he could.
Hermione was silent for nearly a minute, her knuckles white she was clasping her hands together so tightly.
"Are we friends, again?" she asked suddenly in a small, timid voice that did not fit the girl that he knew.
"We were always friends, Hermione," he promised her. "I was just upset, but I never stopped being your friend, not really. I've… I've really missed you, these last few weeks. It's just not the same around here, without you."
A bright smile lit her face and her shoulders trembled visibly as she let out a shaky sigh.
"A part of me wanted to point out that this is all your fault, you know," she said, giving him another soft smile. "You told me to find something, so you should be the one to help me. But, I don't want you thinking that way at all. I don't want you helping me, unless youactually want to, and not out of a sense of obligation."
She stood and moved closer to him, pulling a shrunken book from her pocket that she restored to its original size with a tap of her wand. Coming to a stop in front of him she held the book in both hands, but didn't offer it to him.
"You are literally the only person in the world I would trust with this, Harry," she whispered, her eyes locked on his chest instead of looking at his face. "But… I need you to promise me. Promise me that… if you don't want to help me, if you're disgusted or bothered by this whole idea, you won't stop being my friend. I can't… I can't do this without you. Going to school here, dealing with all these people that don't care for me. I need you to still be my friend at the end of the day, or I won't be able to put up with it."
"Hermione, short of murdering people for sport, I don't think there's much you could do that would make me stop being your friend. You're the most important person in my world, too, you know," he said, carefully, fully aware that she seemed to be hanging on the edge of something precarious. Any negative reaction from him right now would be disastrous, and he wouldn't know what to do, or how to help her, until she gave him some more information.
The stupid hat wanted to put you in Slytherin, he thought. This is the time to act like you could have done well there. Don't act without thinking, like you usually do.
Wordlessly she held the book out to him and he carefully took it from her, glancing down at the slim volume's grey cover to read the title. 'The Culture and Economics of Ancient Mesopotamia'.
"I charmed the cover to show something different," she explained at his dumbfounded expression. "This book… you can't let anyonesee this, Harry. It's not… it's not anything bad, not really, though it is very misunderstood, and I'm really not sure how wizards and witches might view it. It would, at the very minimum, be extremely embarrassing if anyone found out that I had something like this."
"I promise."
She nodded, giving him a slightly shaky smile.
"I need you to read this, for me. Read the whole thing. After you do that, come find me, and we'll discuss it."
Without waiting for a response she leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before she turned and practically fled the room, vanishing out into the hall in the briefest of moments.
Completely bewildered by her behavior he looked down at the book and opened the front cover, his eyes growing wide as they finally landed on the book's real title.
'The Philosophy of Dominance and Submission'
Beneath the title was a picture of a man dressed in black boots, trousers, and dress shirt, sitting in a wooden, straight backed chair. Kneeling on the ground next to his right knee was a clearly naked woman, shown in profile, her arms cuffed behind her back with her head resting on the man's right thigh, his hand resting on her hair, as if he was petting her.
"Oooohh… what the hell have you gotten yourself into, this time, Potter?" he muttered.
#####
Hermione frowned at the parchment in front of her, not really seeing the runic array she was supposed to be translating. Somehow, this whole concept of finding a way to help her deal with her stress was actually causing her more stress than she'd been under when just dealing with her extra heavy class load. On the plus side, in the two days since she'd made up with Harry they'd managed to get Ron on board as well, so she had her friends back, and that was one piece of worry that was no longer in her life.
Of course, in those two days, Harry had managed to behave as if almost nothing at all had changed between them. Aside from a few strange looks he'd given her that first night when he had come back to the Common Room with no sign of the book she'd given him, there'd been nothing.
They attended the classes that they had together. They ate their meals together, again, something she was extremely grateful for as she hadn't realized just how much she'd missed the steady presence of her two friends. Even with Ron's terrible table manners, she wasn't nearly as upset by it as she used to be. (Though that didn't stop her from correcting him whenever he tried to speak with his mouth stuffed like a chipmunk's)
But this nerve wracking waiting for Harry to react, in some way, to the book, was really starting to get to her. She hadn't once seen him with it. Hadn't seen it since she left him in that empty classroom. Really, she reasoned, she shouldn't have just left him there, but she had been so embarrassed and so nervous about his reaction that she hadn't been able to make herself stay. Plus, she really did want him to get through the whole book before they discussed it. That particular volume had been highly informative in ways the other three had not. It was also centered more toward the understanding of the Dom and would give Harry a much better grounding in what could be expected of him, should he choose to help her.
Her mind started to drift, Ron's voice, droning on about Quidditch from where he sat in a seat to her right, receded into background noise as she lost herself in a brief daydream. Harry stood before her, calm and confident and the look on his face sent a shiver through her body. As much as she might profess to still being a little unsure of her submissive streak, she was sure that he was the only person that could likely get her to submit to him. The trust and respect she had for him… she could far more easily imagine doing almost anything he demanded of her where with anyone else, she would balk.
The morning after giving Harry the book she'd lain in bed, hands dancing across her body as she replayed a dream she'd had of Harry completely dominating her. Her sleeping mind had conjured one graphic image after another of her, performing various degrading and dehumanizing activities, all of them at Harry's strict command. Some of them she'd read about in the three books she still had, and at the time, she'd thought them disgusting, or something she'd be extremely unlikely to willingly do. But in her dream, she'd been so willing, eager, and had even enjoyed something that she couldn't imagine viewing as anything other than sickening. When she woke, she had been so wet that the sheet under her had a darkened patch from the leaking evidence of her arousal.
The thing that bothered her was that she wasn't certain if her extreme arousal had been a result of the idea of being controlled by Harry, or if it had been a reaction to the debasement she'd been willingly subjected to during her dream. And she wouldn't be able to find out, if she even had the courage to try, unless Harry agreed to what she wanted.
"You okay, Hermione?"
Blinking in surprise as she was drawn from her thoughts, again, she turned her head to look at Ron, who was staring at her with some small measure of concern in his expression.
"What?" she asked, once she found that she was completely unable to conjure up any memory of what he might have said.
"I asked if you were okay," he repeated himself. "You've been sitting there for ten minutes, just staring into space and frowning."
"Oh…" She shook her head and looked back down at her parchment again. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was just thinking about this array here and I guess I got distracted."
Ron's concerned expression lessened, but didn't go away entirely. He'd been the most vocal, earlier in the year at her, seemingly, impossible class schedule, and though Harry had since stopped bringing it up, their redheaded friend still questioned what was going on.
"Maybe you should take a break?" he suggested and a moment later his jaw dropped open when she sighed and nodded her head.
"Maybe you're right," she said as she started packing her books and supplies together. "I think I'm going to take a walk. Let Harry know, if you see him?" she asked the last after she'd packed her bag and slung the strap over one shoulder, glancing at him with a single arched brow until he nodded, a dumbfounded expression still etched on his freckled face.
With a wave over her shoulder, she left the Library and made her way back to the Tower where she dropped off her bag on her bed and then went back out, slowly meandering her way through the halls toward the first floor, her thoughts far away from where her body was physically located.
She was passing through a corridor on the first floor when she nearly let out a shriek as a hand suddenly grabbed her arm and she felt herself being pulled down the hall and around a corner. Only the fact that she couldn't see the person that had grabbed her stopped her from immediately screaming her head off.
"Harry?" she gasped out and then fell silent when a sharp shushing sound echoed from the air in front of her.
Obediently, she kept her peace, walking quickly to keep up with the force of the pull on her arm until they reached a familiar door. The handle turned, seemingly by itself, and the door was thrown open in complete silence as the hand pulled her through the door which then swung shut behind her. A loud click echoed through the empty classroom where she'd talked to Harry the other day as the door locked and then Harry was there, throwing off his father's invisibility cloak as he cast a solid dozen silencing charms at the door, windows, and the floor, walls, and ceiling.
With that done, he stowed his wand in his pocket, tucked a familiar looking, tattered piece of parchment inside his robes and then rounded on her, his eyes blazing brightly.
"Is this some kind of joke?" he demanded. "Seriously. Is this a prank? Your idea of getting back at me for being an idiot over the broom?"
"What?" she exclaimed. "No, of course not, Harry."
"Are you sure? Because that's the only way I can see any of this making any kind of sense at all. There's no way the Hermione I know would even consider something like this!"
"The Hermione you know is a neurotic basket case who is so stressed she's losing her damned mind!" she snapped back, rocking him back on his heels with the force of her shout. "You said it yourself. I can't keep going on like this, Harry. I need help. I need your help."
Harry slowly sank into one of the empty seats, staring at her as if seeing her for the first time.
"But… but this is… Hermione there has got to be something else. How can you…" He trailed off, his jaw working soundlessly a couple times before snapping shut with an audible click and he let out a long sigh, propping his elbows on the desk in front of him as he dropped his head into his hands. "I don't understand," he finally said in a much calmer tone. "Please. Can you help me understand? I don't know what you want here, Hermione. I don't know how I can help you with this."
Okay, that was not quite the reaction she might have expected from him. Probably not too far off what she expected, but still, different.
"Did you read the book?" she asked and he shot her a glare.
"Of course I read the book," he said. "Why do you think I'm in such a state?"
"And?" she asked, her stomach twisting into knots while she waited for the negative response.
"And what?" he asked. "Just reading that book doesn't tell me much of anything except you want my help, but not how you think I can help. There's two parts to play, but I don't know who you think would play which role."
This was the moment of truth, she realized, to say aloud what she'd only thought for the last couple of weeks. Taking a deep breath and doing her best to steady her nerves, she looked her friend directly in his expressive green eyes and said, as calmly as she could, "Harry, I want you to help me forget the stress and worries I've put on myself by agreeing to… sessions, where you will control me and my actions. I want… I think I want to submit myself to your control-"
"You think," he said, cutting her off. "You don't know. How could you even consider something like this if you don't know? How could you think that I could do something like this with you?" he demanded, shooting to his feet and taking two quick, almost angry, strides toward her.
She tried to mask the hurt she felt and focused on answering him, instead.
"Well, I know I'm not particularly pretty, but I would hope you don't find me repulsive, at least," she muttered, looking down at the floor.
"W-what?" he stammered. "Hermione, I told you just the other day that you're beautiful, but what does that have to do with anything?"
"Well… I figured… you were just so insistent that you couldn't understand how I thought you could do this with me…" tears prickled at her eyes and she fought them back. "I guess you'd prefer someone better looking but-"
"Your looks have nothing to do with anything, Hermione!"
"I'm not an idiot, Harry!" she shot back, lifting her head to glare at him. "I'm a buck toothed, bushy-haired, insufferable, know-it-all. I know there's prettier girls at this school and-"
She was cut off, abruptly, when he stormed up to her, wrapped his arms tightly around her body, and suddenly his mouth was crashing against hers. For a moment, her eyes went wide in shock, then slowly fluttered closed as the seconds ticked by. Her hands clutched at his shoulders as his right hand moved up her back, tangling in her hair just at the base of her skull, holding her head still as he kissed her.
As kisses went, it was rough, it was a little awkward, and neither of them really did much, inexperienced as they both were. But in the moment, Hermione didn't care in the slightest, as, for the first time in she didn't know how long, her brain simply shut down. Every thought seemed to flee from her mind leaving blissful silence and physical sensation behind to fill the void.
Then, he was pulling away from her and her eyes slowly opened to see a flushed, contrite expression on his face.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, slowly untangling his fingers from her hair as he stepped back from her. "I shouldn't have just done that. I… I'm sorry…"
For several moments, she couldn't respond to him as her overloaded mind slowly kicked back into gear. She realized that she felt flushed. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her breath coming fast and hard and she was reasonably certain that she was in the process of soaking through her knickers, again, right there in front of him.
Her flush suddenly darkened considerably as that particular realization kicked into sharp relief.
"It's okay," she whispered. "I-I… I didn't mind at all."
They stood there, awkwardly, for several moments before Hermione took a deep breath and cleared her throat.
"Ca-can we… can we just sit, and talk, calmly?" she asked, gesturing to the empty chairs that took up a third of the space in the room. "Please?"
Harry nodded, refusing to look at her and made his way over to sit in the same chair he'd dropped into earlier as Hermione moved to take a seat next to him, turning the chair so that she was facing him.
"I just don't like it," he muttered. "It just… it all just reminds me too much of..."
"The Dursleys."
Harry jerked, just before sitting, and his head snapped around toward her, his stare suddenly focused and intent and she couldn't hold back a grimace as her mind caught up to her mouth and she realized what exactly she'd just let slip.
One thing was for certain, she knew. No matter how the rest of this discussion went, whether Harry would agree to help her or not, the relationship that they shared, had just been changed, irrevocably.
#####
Two different streams of thought ran through Harry's head as he slowly took his seat, his gaze fixed wholly on his best friend, a beautiful girl that he could privately admit to harboring more than simply friendly feelings toward.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. How could you just kiss her like that you bloody moron! She's likely going to hate you now.
The words echoed in the back of his mind, anxious terror warring with glee over the fact that he'd finally kissed her!
Drowning out that mixture of anxious anticipation and elation, however, was a far more pressing concern.
Fuck! She knows! How does she know? How much does she know? What does she really know, and what do I do about it?
It was his turn to clear his throat, trying to move the lump that he could suddenly feel lodged there, before he was sure he could speak clearly.
"What was that about the Dursleys?" he asked, privately thrilled that he hadn't stuttered at all.
Hermione shifted nervously in her seat, her eyes directed at the surface of the desk in front of her.
"I could hear you," she whispered, so quietly that he almost didn't hear her from the distance of only a few feet away.
"What do you mean?"
"When I was petrified, last year," she said, her voice stronger but her eyes still kept down. I could hear you when you'd come in and talk to me. It was… it was terrifying, being frozen like that. I couldn't move or see or feel or even smell anything, but I was still awake, I was still aware, trapped inside my own body and I could hear what was going on around me. I'm pretty sure I would have gone mad if it hadn't been for you coming by and spending so much time talking to me.
"Your voice kept me sane. You told me about our classes and what was going on in the school. How some people had decided you couldn't have been the Heir since I was attacked and it was well known how close of friends we are. But… well, I guess you ran out of things to say about classes and school. Mostly late at night, when you would sneak back into the Hospital Wing, you'd talk about your life, growing up. How your aunt and uncle and your cousin treated you. I know what they did wasn't too physical, but the emotional abuse and the neglect. I know about all of it."
Harry said nothing for some time. He merely sat there, still as a statue, staring at her with the most intense expression she'd ever seen on his face before for the few seconds that she dared to look up at him before her eyes darted away again. Finally he let out a long sigh and seemed to deflate, hunching down in his seat like a house of cards, collapsing in on itself.
"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked. "Why didn't you tell me, after you woke up?"
She shrugged, self-consciously. "It just… it seemed like such a personal, private thing. I mean… Harry, you've never talked about your home life. Other than the other day when you said how they told you you weren't worth anything, you've always been very silent about it. I just… I thought you might be upset, or embarrassed if you knew I could hear you. I didn't want to make you uncomfortable… so, I decided it was just a secret I would have to keep, for you. I knew something so personal about you, but I wasn't going to tell anyone, or talk about it with you, unless you brought it up first."
He was nodding his head thoughtfully as she spoke and decided she had a point by the time she was finished. "When I was sitting there, talking to you… I don't know. I guess I almost hoped you could hear me?" He shrugged, picking at the surface of the desk in front of him with his thumbnail. "I've never talked about it before, and with you petrified… I guess it was easier to talk to you when I didn't have to worry about how you'd react. If I saw any pity I don't think I could have handled that."
"It's not pity to be sad for someone you care about that's had a hard time of things," she pointed out and he shrugged again.
"Well, I'll admit I certainly felt better after saying it all out loud, finally. And… I guess I'm glad that you know. Actually… that should make this a lot easier to explain," he said, suddenly sitting up straighter in his seat again, his shoulders back and his head high, chin level with the ground. As he moved, she instinctively looked up at him, her breath catching slightly in her throat.
Reaching into his robes, he pulled out the book she'd given him and set it gently on the desk in front of him, resting his left hand flat on the cover.
"Do you understand why I might have a problem with something like this?" he asked, softly. "This… this is abusive, Hermione. Controlling people? Punishing someone for speaking out of turn or not following an order properly? Some of these punishments are just barbaric, too. Why would… why would you possibly think that you could actually want something like this? And with what you know about my home life, how could you think I would be capable of treating you like that? You, of all people?"
He watched as she chewed on her bottom lip for a few moments, thinking carefully before she responded and he tried, very hard, to push away the memory of how her lips had felt when he'd kissed her.
"Let me take those in reverse," she finally said. "Why do I think you could do it? Because there's a distinct difference between what happened to you, and what I'm asking you to… to do to me," she hesitated a moment near the end, her face flushing a bright red as she looked down again before her eyes darted back up, as if she was forcing herself to meet his gaze. "That's something else to address in a moment," she muttered, almost absently. "Anyway, the difference is choice, Harry. You didn't have a choice in what happened. You couldn't stop or avoid how you were treated and the reason they treated you that way was to hurt you, to break you down.
"In this case I'm asking you, I… I really do think I want you to do this, with me, and… to me. It's my choice to give you that control. It's my decision to let you do what you want to me."
Harry was pretty sure that his face was as red as hers and he suddenly chuckled as a ludicrous thought popped into his head, causing her to give him a strange look which he tried to wave away.
"Just a silly thought. I'll make you a bet, first one of us to spontaneously combust from embarrassment loses," he chortled and his grin slowly grew into a wide smile as she gaped at him for a moment before she burst out giggling again.
"Stop it, Harry," she attempted to admonish him, but it would have worked better if she hadn't been smiling. "This is a serious discussion and it's going to be difficult enough as it is."
Eventually, they had themselves under enough control for Hermione to continue.
"Like I was saying, the difference is choice, and I choose you. I trust you not to abuse the control I would voluntarily give to you. But don't think that I give you control and just stop having any choice at all."
Harry frowned at that. "But isn't that kind of the point? You say I could do what I want to you. Doesn't that mean you don't have a choice?"
"Harry if you decided to do something, and if I asked you to stop, would you ignore me and just keep doing whatever it was you wanted?" she asked him, patiently.
He shook his head, sharply. "No!" he blurted out then suddenly paused, understanding clicking into place. "Oh… I think I get it. That's why you need someone you trust. So… even though you've given over that control to someone else, they still need to stop whatever if you really want it to stop."
"And there's no one I would trust more than you," she added, nodding her head.
He considered that carefully for a moment longer before pointing out, what he saw, as another flaw in her argument. "But you keep saying you 'think' you want to. You don't know for sure. How can you even consider something like this without knowing?"
"Well… I've got a few ideas that tell me I might be more submissive than I thought I was," she admitted, then smiled when he made a scoffing sound. "Just being submissive doesn't mean letting anyone control you," she said. "If I am, really, only someone I trusted and respected could ever get me to submit to them in that way."
Harry was reasonably certain his face was going to be red for the rest of the day. The book had given some rather explicit examples of submission, and without his conscious will, he couldn't help but picture Hermione in a few of those situations, but suddenly, in his head, she was doing them at his command and he had to resist the sudden urge to shift in his seat as his slacks became distinctly uncomfortable.
"Again, you don't know if you are," he pointed out, attempting to distract himself.
"And I can't know, not absolutely for certain, without trying. I can imagine and I can think about it all day, if I wanted. But without experiencing it, I can't know for certain. Though…" She trailed off, the light blush that had been staining her cheeks suddenly darkening considerably and he found himself intensely curious to know just what had caused that reaction. "I think I can honestly say that… with you… with you I could. And I believe I'd enjoy it, a lot."
"What makes you say that?"
"Oh, Harry!" she blurted out, suddenly burying her face in her hands. "It's embarrassing," she muttered, her voice muffled but still understandable.
"Well, I'm sorry," he said, in a fairly stern tone. "I don't want to embarrass you, but if you think you're going to convince me that this is something you really want then you need to be honest with me. Right now, Hermione."
Hermione suddenly froze in her seat, her entire body going stock still for a moment before a visible shudder passed through her and she let out a long, shaky breath that had Harry arching one brow, curiously, at her reaction.
"It's because of things like that," she finally burst out, sitting up to look at him, her face still red and she her breathing was a little heavier. "Dammit, Harry, you just did it, and you have no idea how hot that was. You were just… commanding, right now. And after you kissed me earlier, holding me and physically controlling me the way you did, my knickers are practically soaked through already! I've had weeks of thinking about this and picturing what it'd be like to let someone control me and I get so completely wet when it's you doing that controlling in my head. I moan your name when I'm touching myself in bed at night and I can't stop dreaming about you-" She cut off suddenly, her eyes going wide and both her hands came up to slap over her mouth for a moment.
"Oh, fuck!" she squeaked out from behind her hands. "Did I actually just say all that out loud?"
Wide eyed himself, and completely silent, Harry could only nod his head, finally giving into the urge to shift in his seat in an effort to relieve some of the pressure that a very pressing erection was causing in his school slacks.
"Language… Miss Granger," he whispered, almost absently.
With a defeated sounding groan, she slumped over in her seat, folding her arms on the desk in front of her as she buried her face in her arms. Her wild mane of hair spilled over the sides, hiding most of her arms behind a tumbling curtain of brown curls.
"Can we please chalk that all up to a moment of temporary insanity and forget that I said anything?" she asked through her arms as he recovered from the shock of what she'd just said to him.
"I don't think so," he replied and she groaned again. "But we can put it aside for a moment. There's still a lot I don't understand here."
Putting aside what she'd just said was really not something he wanted to do, but at the same time he could understand that the discussion they were having was important and needed to be finished before they could move forward in any way.
When she finally lifted her head, some minutes later, her face and neck were still a bright red and she couldn't seem to look in his direction, but at least she looked ready to continue talking.
"So, I'm reasonably positive I could submit to you," she mumbled and he nodded.
"Okay," he muttered, his brow furrowed in thought as he tried to force his mind to task. "Okay, I get… I get what you mean about choice. That makes a certain sense, honestly. And I guess I understand why you think you might be s-submissive and could… with me… that is to say…" He trailed off and rubbed a hand over his face in frustration.
"I think I understand why you could think that," he finally said. "What I don't get, now, is why you'd want to. What's the point? How is… this," he tapped the book that still sat on the desk in front of him, "supposed to help with you being so stressed from class?"
"From what I understand, it's about not having to worry about decisions, in a way. That's simplistic, but essentially correct," she started to explain, her blush receding slightly as she appeared to lose herself in her element, explaining something to someone that didn't understand. "With you in control, for sessions that we would agree on before hand, I can just… just stop worrying about classes and the expectations people have of me. My parents, my professors, even my own expectations. I can stop being 'me' and just focus on being… well… whatever it is you want me to be.
"You tell me what to do. You tell me how to behave, how to act, and all I have to worry about is following orders. It's… it's simple. In one of the other books I have, there are letters and essays written by subs about why they choose to submit and that was something one of them said. When being a sub she got to stop worrying about all the stress in her life and could just 'be'. Just exist in the moment without everything hanging over her head. I… I don't honestly know if that will work. Though… oh crap, and here we're right back to it." She blushed again but squared her shoulders and pushed onward. "When you kissed me, for a few moments I just… I stopped thinking. I stopped worrying about how you were going to take all this, or if you'd agree, or think I was just a disgusting slut, or-or-or anything else.
"My mind just went silent. All I could focus on was you, and how I felt. It was… it was amazing, honestly. I can't remember the last time I was just completely calm like that, without anything pressing down on me."
Harry was thinking, hard, his arms crossed over his chest, head down, and his eyes closed as his mind turned over all of the, rather startling, information he'd just recieved.
It was obvious enough that she was sincere in this. This was something she wanted to try, and he couldn't honestly say it wasn't at least partly his fault, sending her off looking for an outlet for the stress she was putting on herself. If she wasn't going to drop any of her classes in order to lighten her workload, she needed something else. She needed a release. But why him? She said she trusted him, and he'd seen that trust before, the way she willingly followed him into stupid and dangerous situations. She showed that she trusted him in so many ways.
The closeness they shared, as friends… he couldn't imagine it with anyone else and this… what she was suggesting… they'd obviously be getting a lot closer than they already were. But, could he do it? Could he be with her, like that? He almost snorted out a laugh at the ridiculous thought. You've touched yourself while thinking of her plenty of times, Potter, he reminded himself. Yes, being that close to her wasn't going to be a problem but… what did that make them? There were still a lot of questions, a lot of details that would need to be worked out. It wasn't a simple matter of just deciding 'sure, let's do it' and things would just fall into place with no effort or any kind of change to their relationship.
From what he understood, there was a distinct responsibility that she was laying on his shoulders with this request. Was he up to that? Could he take responsibility for her and not hurt her, or screw everything up? But, then again, he'd have her to help him. They would both be learning together, they'd likely both make mistakes, and he knew Hermione, she wouldn't hold a mistake against him, as long as he learned and improved.
You've already decided what you want to do, stupid, so do it already! No more excuses, this is the chance you've been waiting for so just ask her! His own voice echoed inside his head and he finally opened his eyes and lifted his chin to look at Hermione, who was watching him, anxiously. She was practically shaking in her seat, her muscles coiled and tense, her knuckles white where she was gripping the edge of the desk in front of her.
"You really think this… doing this could help you?" he asked and she nodded rapidly.
"I think it could help you, too," she said, which caught him slightly off guard.
"How do you mean?"
"You've had so little in your life that you can actually control. I just… it seems to me that you learning to find more of that confidence in controlling me, might help you find some more control just in your life. You wouldn't just be helping me, we'd be helping each other."
That was certainly an angle he hadn't considered, and after a brief moment to think it over, he couldn't see where she might be wrong in that regard. He finally nodded his head, as if affirming a thought, or a decision, and he stood, moving from where he was across from her to pull over a chair and sit next to her, turning even as she did in her own seat so they were facing each other.
He lifted one shaking hand and tucked a few stray curls of her wild hair behind her left ear.
"I think I understand," he finally said in a very soft tone. "I… I don't think I understand all of it, but I think I get enough. But, aside from a lot of details that would need to be worked out… I think I would need one more thing, before I could agree to try. No promises to continue, but… at least try."
The elation on her face fell, just slightly, as he added a caveat.
"What is it?" she asked.
"This…" He blushed harder than ever but refused to look away from her, holding her gaze with his own as he plucked up every last bit of Gryffindor courage that he had in order to continue. "This is… or can be rather… um, rather sexual," he muttered and almost cracked a grin when her face matched his for color.
"Y-yes, it would be. That's… that's part of what I want to eventually move toward. Maybe not right at first, but-"
She stopped talking when he placed a finger on her lips, frowning slightly. "I'm trying to say something here, Hermione," he said in an admonishing tone and she ducked her head slightly.
"Sorry."
"Like I said, this is… sexual and intimate. I don't… I don't think it's something I could do with a friend. As close as we are and as much as I care about you… I just can't picture us just being friends if we do this."
She looked confused for a moment before her entire face suddenly brightened and a broad grin spread across her lips.
"What if… what if we were more than friends?" she asked, a hopeful sounding tone in her voice.
With his heart in his throat and his pulse pounding in his ears he leaned a little closer to her, noting with some far part of his mind how the tip of her tongue darted out briefly to wet her lips.
"I'd be much more comfortable doing this with someone I could call my girlfriend," he managed to say without fumbling or stuttering in the slightest.
"I would be extremely happy if you called me your girlfriend," she whispered and he finally leaned forward to close the last of the distance between them for a soft kiss. It was a completely different experience than their first kiss had been. More emotional, less physical, but no less enjoyable in the slightest, and when he pulled back, several long seconds later, he couldn't stop the broad grin that spread across his face.
"Okay," he said, once she'd opened her eyes and had focused her attention again. "I think we can give this a try, if you're sure it will help and if this is absolutely what you want."
"I think it will, Harry. I can't say one hundred percent, yet, but I really think it will and I absolutely want to try."
He studied her carefully for a moment, searching for any hint that she might be exaggerating or perhaps stretching the truth, even a little. But eventually, he was satisfied with her answer and leaned back in his seat, slowly reaching out to take her hand. Her smaller hand slid into his, squeezing gently for a moment as she gave him another bright smile.
"Okay," he said again, feeling much better about the entire idea than he had when he'd first entered the room but he knew he still had a lot to learn if he wanted to avoid hurting her. "So we're going to do this. But first, I think I need to read those other books that you have. I've got a lot of catching up to do."
Hermione smiled at him shyly, and it looked like she was both pleased and surprised at her own good fortune to Harry. He couldn't help but return his own carefree grin. Well Potter, if you were going to get yourself into something... at least it was something good.