The morning light crept through the gaps in the curtains, no longer the silvery moonlight, but a warm, honey-colored dawn.
It sliced diagonally across the dormitory floor, illuminating the pair of black boots kicked askew at the foot of the bed and the heap of black school robes on the carpet.
Jerry was tickled awake.
It wasn't the itch of an insect bite on the skin, but a fuzzy, warm sensation starting from the tip of his nose and spreading across his entire face... the itch of downy fur.
Something was brushing across his face.
Sweeping from his left cheek to the bridge of his nose, then to his right cheek, and flicking back again.
It "whooshed" across his lips, the ends of the fur poking into his nostrils, grazing the sensitive mucous membrane inside.
"A-choo!"
A sneeze exploded from his nose, his head bouncing off the pillow.
The impact of the sneeze forced his eyelids open a crack, letting the honeyed morning light pour into his pupils, stinging his eyes into thin slits.
The fuzzy object swept over again.
This time it brushed his chin, the fur stroking upward from his jawline, past the corners of his mouth, his philtrum, and the tip of his nose...
Then that mass of fur paused on the tip of his nose, as if deliberately waiting for him to sneeze again.
Jerry's hand emerged from beneath the quilt, his five fingers snatching the fuzzy object.
It felt... fluffy, soft, and warm.
The texture was somewhere between cat fur and fox fur—coarser than a cat's, finer than a fox's.
The fur at the base was dense and short, growing longer and fluffier toward the end, with the very tip exploding into a ball of down like a dandelion.
A tail.
His fingers traced the fur toward the base... the hair went from fluffy to smooth, then to short fuzz hugging the skin.
Then his fingertips touched the junction where the tail met the body... the slightly protruding bone at the end of the coccyx.
The skin around the bone was covered in extremely fine down, feeling like a peach pit wrapped in velvet.
The body connected to the base of the tail was pressed tightly against his back.
Full, heavy orbs crushed against his shoulder blades.
Nipples brushed the skin of his back through the thin fabric of her nightgown, two hard points like small stones sewn into silk.
A thigh reached around his waist, resting on his hip bone.
Her knee was bent, her calf dangling in front of his thigh, her ankle bone rubbing against the inside of his knee.
The scent of amber and tuberose drifted down from above his nape.
It was mixed with the richer, musky undertone of a woman's body heat after a night's sleep.
Catherine's breath fanned against his neck, even and long.
The heat condensed into a small patch of damp mist on the protruding bone of his cervical vertebrae.
The tail twisted within his fingers.
Not to break free... but to rub.
The middle of the tail turned half a circle in his palm, the fur grinding through the gaps of his fingers like a cat showing its belly to its master.
The dandelion-like ball of fur at the tip squeezed through his fingers and slapped against his cheek with a patter.
The fur poked into his eyelashes, grazing the thin skin of his eyelids.
Jerry's eyes opened fully.
He tilted his head back slightly, the back of his skull bumping into Catherine's chin.
Her lips were slightly parted, warm breath spilling through the gaps of her teeth.
A trace of saliva from her sleep clung to her lower lip, glistening in the morning light.
The tail slipped from his fingers and "whooshed" to the other side, sweeping across his chest.
The fur brushed against his nipple... Jerry's abdominal muscles instinctively twitched.
The tail didn't stop.
It swept down from his chest, the fur grinding over the shallow grooves of his abs, over his navel, over the soft down above his pubic bone...
Then the ball at the tip of the tail slapped against his morning wood.
The meat-pillar had engorged to a full erection during sleep, propped up straight from his pubic bone.
The tip was completely exposed from the foreskin, swollen into a deep crimson.
The slit was slightly open, and a drop of transparent pre-cum seeped out.
It trickled slowly down the curve of the glans, pooling into a glistening puddle in the groove of the coronal ridge.
The tail's fur brushed against the side of the shaft, sweeping from base to tip.
The sensation of the hair on the engorged skin triggered a layer of fine goosebumps.
The bulging veins on the shaft throbbed as the fur passed over them.
The ball at the tip turned half a circle on the curve of the glans, the fur dipping into the pre-cum in the coronal ridge.
The ends of several hairs were stuck together by the viscous liquid, turning from fluffy to wet strands.
Catherine's breathing rhythm changed.
From the even, long breaths of sleep to something shallower, carrying a hint of a nasal tone...
She was awake, or rather, she had never been fully asleep.
The tail wrapped once around Jerry's meat-pillar.
The fuzzy tail coiled around the middle of the shaft, the down pressing against the engorged skin.
Body heat transmitted through the fur into the shaft.
The tail didn't tighten much, just coiling gently, like a fuzzy, living scarf wrapped around a scalding pole.
The ball at the tip hung below the head.
The wet strands dipped in pre-cum pressed against the edge of the coronal ridge.
As the tail slightly tightened and released, it rubbed back and forth across the surface of the tip.
Jerry's abdominal muscles tensed.
"...You're awake."
His voice was as raspy as sandpaper on wood.
A night of sleep had left a dry film on his vocal cords, making every word sound frayed.
Catherine's lips pressed against his nape, her front teeth gently nipping the protruding bone of his neck.
"Mmh!
Woken up by my little pervert master's big guy... it's been poking my waist..."
Her voice rolled from deep in her throat, carrying that post-wake-up hoarseness, half an octave lower than usual.
The end of her words trailed off lazily, like a cat that had just finished stretching on a sunlit windowsill.
The tail tightened once more around his meat-pillar.
The fur ground over every bulging vein on the shaft.
The sensation shifted from gentle to carrying a hint of friction...
The wet strands of fur were plastered to the glans, the pre-cum gluing hair and skin together.
As the tail moved, it produced an extremely faint, sticky squelch.
Catherine's tail uncoiled half a turn from the meat-pillar.
As the fur peeled away from the shaft, it made a sticky pop.
The pre-cum had turned several hairs into wet strings, pulling three or four glistening threads from the curve of the glans.
They quivered and snapped, falling onto Jerry's lower abdomen.
They soaked several pinhead-sized wet spots into the soft down there.
Catherine's hand reached around from his waist.
Her right hand, five fingers sliding down from the edge of his hip bone.
Her fingertips ground over the V-line of his groin.
Her finger pads brushed over the ring at the base that had been choked by the latex condom last night—the mark had faded from bright red to pale pink.
Her palm pressed against the underside of the shaft.
Catherine's fingers circled the shaft.
"Mmm... so hard..."
Her palm pushed a section from the middle of the shaft toward the tip.
The skin of her palm ground over every bulging vein on the surface.
The walls of the veins recessed slightly under the pressure of her palm and then snapped back.
It felt like grinding over a row of thin ropes buried beneath the skin.
Pre-cum continued to seep from the slit at the tip, trickling down the curve of the glans into the coronal ridge.
It was ground by the heel of her hand as she pushed up.
With a squish, the fluid was squeezed out from between her palm and the coronal ridge, splashing a few drops onto the inside of her wrist.
Catherine's palm retreated, from the tip to the middle, from the middle to the base.
Her fingertips brushed the pale pink mark at the root.
The heel of her hand ground over the downy hair above his pubic bone, already wet with pre-cum...
Then she pushed up again, from base to middle to tip.
Her palm ground over every inch of the engorged skin.
Pushing and pulling, the rhythm was as slow as kneading dough.
Squelch... squelch... squelch...
The pre-cum acted as lubrication between her palm and the shaft.
Every stroke brought out a wet water sound.
Fluid overflowed from between her fingers, trickling down the side of the shaft to the surface of the scrotum.
It left the wrinkled skin of the sac glistening.
The tail wasn't idle either.
The middle of the tail wrapped around Jerry's left thigh.
The fur pressed against the delicate skin of his inner thigh, coiling from above his knee to his groin.
The ball at the tip hung at the base of his thigh, brushing against the bottom of his scrotum.
The fur ground over the wrinkled skin of the sac.
With every rub, the two orbs inside the scrotum rolled slightly within the skin, pushing the shape of the sac from one side to the other.
Jerry's abdominal muscles tightened and released with the rhythm of her hand.
His breathing turned from raspy and steady to heavy and nasal.
The amplitude of his chest heaving increased, the shadows of his ribs alternating between deep and shallow in the morning light.
Catherine's chin rested on his shoulder, her cheek rubbing against his auricle.
Her hot breath poured into his ear canal.
"Little pervert master!"
Her palm stopped for a beat as it reached the tip.
Her palm covered the curve of the glans, her five fingers hooking the edge of the coronal ridge.
the lines of her palm ground over the slit at the tip, smearing the seeping pre-cum into a thin film that covered her entire palm.
"The O.W.L.s have been suspended."
Her palm turned half a circle on the tip.
Her palm lines ground over every inch of the engorged mucous membrane.
The pre-cum was ground into a foam of fine bubbles between her palm and the tip, making a squish-squish sound.
"What should we do now?"
Her palm slid back down the shaft, restarting the pushing rhythm...
This time it was a beat faster, her palm speed shifting from kneading dough to scrubbing a washboard.
Every time she pushed to the tip, the heel of her hand bumped against the coronal ridge—smack.
The splash of pre-cum from the impact sprayed onto her wrist, onto Jerry's abdomen, and onto the fabric of the quilt.
It soaked in as several dark, small round spots.
Jerry's hand emerged from under the quilt, reaching back to rest on the back of Catherine's head.
His fingers threaded into her hair, his pads kneading her scalp.
"The frontlines."
His voice was as raspy as a wooden board sanded down.
Every word carried a frayed edge and a breathy tone.
His Adam's apple rolled as he spoke, brushing against Catherine's lips pressed to his neck.
"I'm arranging for you to go to the frontlines."
Catherine's hand stopped.
Her palm was hooped around the middle of the shaft, her five fingers tightening.
Her fingernails bit into the skin of the shaft, pinching five shallow, crescent-shaped white marks into the engorged surface.
They turned red quickly once she let go.
"...The frontlines?"
Her chin lifted from his shoulder, her cheek leaving his auricle.
The stream of hot air into his ear was cut off.
"I haven't even graduated yet!"
Her voice jumped out of that lazy, post-sleep tone.
The pitch rose half an octave, carrying the sharpness of a student suddenly told they must turn in an assignment early—a mix of surprise and reluctance.
The tail uncoiled from Jerry's thigh and "whooshed" behind her.
The ball at the tip drew a sharp arc in the air, the fur bristling in a ring.
She looked like a cat that had just had its tail stepped on.
Jerry's fingers pressed against the back of her head.
His palm slid from the top of her head to the side.
His pads ground over the soft hair above her ear.
His thumb brushed her temple, drawing a small circle on the thin skin.
"It's just an exam."
His palm slid from the side of her head to the crown.
His palm covered the whorl of her hair, fingers threaded between the strands, kneading gently.
The movement was exactly like how he had kneaded the back of Hermione's head last night.
But the force was lighter, slower, carrying the patience of someone soothing a small animal.
"Once you get to the frontlines and earn military merit..."
His fingers kneaded another circle on her crown.
As his pads ground over her scalp, Catherine's shoulders instinctively relaxed a bit.
The bristling fur of her tail also dropped back down strand by strand, returning to a fluffy ball.
"...that old man Dumbledore won't be able to nag anymore."
Catherine's fingers loosened slightly on the shaft, shifting from a pinch to a loose grip.
Her palm pressed against the side of the shaft, her thumb unconsciously rubbing the surface.
Her pad ground over a bulging vein; the vein throbbed twice under her pressure.
"...What do I start as?"
"An intern."
"An intern?"
Her fingers tightened again, not a pinch this time... but a squeeze.
Five fingers gripped the shaft tight, the temperature of her palm and the shaft melting together at the contact.
Pre-cum was squeezed out from between her tightened fingers with a squish.
It trickled down the gap between her ring finger and pinky, dripping onto the quilt.
The tail bristled again.
The ball of fur went from fluffy to looking like a porcupine, every hair standing on end.
The middle of the tail lashed left and right in the air, "whoosh-whoosh-whoosh," fanning the air.
It made the layer of thin sweat on Jerry's back feel slightly chilled.
Jerry's palm pressed down on the top of her head, the force increasing slightly.
He was pushing down her bristling emotions.
"Starting as an intern is no disgrace."
His fingers slid from the top of her head to the back.
His pads pressed into the horizontal muscle band below the occipital bone.
That was the spot where neck muscles were most prone to tension...
Catherine's nape muscles were rock-hard under his touch, like a taut bowstring.
"The frontlines don't care about diplomas; they care about ability."
His fingers slid down from the back of her head, following her spine.
His fingertips ground over the skin of her neck, the dip between her shoulder blades, and the erector spinae muscles flanking the spine.
Then his fingers touched the base of the tail—that slightly protruding bone covered in velvet-like down.
His thumb pressed into the bone at the tail's base.
Catherine's waist went soft.
Her whole body collapsed an inch forward.
The pressure of her orbs against his shoulder blades intensified.
They overflowed more from the sides of his shoulders.
The nipples beneath the fabric rubbed against his skin, two hard points drawing short scratch marks on the inside of his shoulder blades.
Catherine's fingers spasmed around the shaft for a beat.
The muscles of her palm twitched, spraying a few drops of pre-cum from her fingers.
They landed on the quilt with a patter.
"Don't... don't press there..."
Catherine's voice was squeezed through her teeth, the end of her words trembling.
It was a moan mixed with annoyance and a numbing pleasure from having her sensitive spot struck.
The tail lashed violently twice next to his fingers, the fur sweeping over the back of his hand like a runaway brush.
Jerry's thumb didn't let go, kneading another circle on that bone.
His pad ground over the down-covered skin, feeling the contrast between the hardness of the coccyx and the softness of the surrounding muscle.
"You have something others don't."
"Go to the frontlines and let your merit speak for you."
"Once you've built up enough seniority, when you return, no one will be able to stop you."
Catherine's breathing slowly settled from the frantic pace.
The lashing of the tail changed from violent to slow, then to a gentle, side-to-side sway.
The fur dropped from its porcupine state back to a fluffy ball.
Her fingers loosened around the shaft, shifting back to a loose grip.
Her palm pressed against the side, her thumb rubbing back and forth over a vein.
The rhythm was as slow as stroking a dozing cat.
"Fine, an intern it is."
Her chin rested back on his shoulder, her cheek rubbing his auricle.
The hot air she exhaled poured into his ear again, carrying a lingering, feverish heat from her earlier emotional shift.
"But little pervert master... you have to write me a recommendation letter."
Her palm restarted the pushing and pulling rhythm.
From the base to the tip, from the tip back to the base.
Her palm ground over every inch of the shaft's skin.
The pre-cum was ground into an even lubricating film between her palm and the shaft.
The squelch, squelch, squelch water sounds echoed in the morning light, intertwining with the faint birdsong from outside.
The tail wrapped back around his thigh, the fur pressing against the delicate skin of his inner thigh.
The ball at the tip hung at the bottom of the scrotum, rubbing against the wrinkled sac.
Every rub brought out an extremely light rustle.
The speed of her palm's movement accelerated bit by bit.
From kneading dough to scrubbing a washboard.
From scrubbing a washboard to an even faster, rhythmic pumping.
The smack of her palm grinding over the coronal ridge grew denser and denser.
The volume of pre-cum overflowing from her fingers increased.
It trickled down the shaft, over the scrotum, over the root of his thighs, and into the quilt fabric.
It soaked in as a large, dark wet patch.
Jerry's abdominal muscles tightened into an iron plate.
The shadows of his ribs recessed deeply and snapped back with his frantic breathing.
His spine arched into a curve, the back of his head pressing into the pillow.
The muscles of his neck tightened into two thick ropes.
His Adam's apple rolled up and down with his rapid swallowing.
Catherine's palm felt the shaft start to throb uncontrollably in her hand...
The frequency of the pulsations shifted from heart-synced to something faster and denser, like a drumming rhythm.
The thickness of the shaft expanded another size within her fingers.
The veins bulged to their absolute limit, the walls feeling like a row of strings about to snap beneath her palm.
Her palm pushed to the position of the head, covering it...
The shaft gave a violent throb.
Scalding, thick liquid erupted from the tip.
The first stream slammed directly into her palm with a smack.
The impact of the liquid pushed her hand up an inch.
The milky-white viscous substance sprayed out from between her fingers.
It splashed onto Jerry's abdomen, onto the quilt, and onto the inside of her own wrist.
The second stream surged out immediately after.
Her hand was pushed aside, the glans revealed beneath her palm.
The tip was pointing toward the ceiling, the opening gaping wide.
A pillar of milky-white liquid erupted from the slit, tracing a parabola in the morning light.
It flew nearly a foot high before scattering into droplets in the air.
Patter, patter—they fell back onto Jerry's chest, pooling into a small puddle in the hollow of his collarbone.
The third stream, the fourth, the fifth...
The fluid was like a miniature geyser, surging out from the tip stream after stream.
The interval between each stream grew shorter and shorter.
From one second to half a second, then to a nearly continuous eruption.
The milky-white viscous substance flew everywhere from the very top of the glans.
It splashed on his chest, his belly, his thighs.
It splashed on Catherine's fingers, her wrist, her forearm.
It splashed on the quilt fabric, on the corner of the pillow...
The morning light from the curtains hit the droplets flying in the air, making them glisten like a miniature, milky-white fireworks display.
Catherine's fingers circled the shaft again, squeezing from base to tip.
She was squeezing the residual liquid inside the shaft out bit by bit... squish, squish.
With every squeeze, a small stream of thick liquid surged from the tip.
It trickled down the curve of the head, past the coronal ridge, past her fingers, and into the gaps between them.
The tail tightened a circle around his thigh.
The fur pressed against the patch of skin on his inner thigh soaked with pre-cum and sweat.
The ball at the tip rubbed against the bottom of his scrotum, turning the droplets there into a patch of wet fur.
Jerry's abdominal muscles relaxed after the final spasm.
His whole body collapsed an inch into the mattress.
His spine returned from its arch to a flat position, the back of his head sinking into the pillow's depression.
His eyes were half-open, pupils shrunk to tiny dots in the morning light.
His lips were slightly parted, his breathing returning bit by bit from frantic to long and steady.
Catherine's fingers released the shaft.
Her palm was covered in milky-white liquid, shimmering with a thick, semi-transparent luster in the light.
She held her hand before her face for a second, fingers spread.
The liquid pulled several viscous threads between her fingers, quivering in the air.
The tail uncoiled from his thigh and "whooshed" behind her.
The centrifugal force of the movement sent a few droplets from the ball at the tip flying onto the bedsheets with a patter.
Her chin nuzzled his shoulder, her lips pressing against his earlobe.
The hot air she exhaled made the fine downy hair on his lobe tremble slightly.
Jerry's hand withdrew from Catherine's side.
His fingertips brushed over the skin below her ribs, which was dampened by a film of sweat.
He left a wet finger-trail on her waist dimple.
"What ability do I have!"
Jerry's toes kicked twice beneath the quilt, pushing away the corner of the blanket wrapped around his calves.
He stepped barefoot onto the wooden bedframe.
The heat of his soles left a blurred, wet footprint on the cool wood.
His upper body pushed up from the mattress.
His abdominal muscles tensed into shallow grooves with the movement.
The milky droplets gathered in the grooves began to trickled down with the tilt of his body.
They followed the lines of his abs to form a thin stream, flowing into the depression of his navel.
They pooled into a small puddle in that little pit.
The meat-pillar began to soften from its post-release state.
The shaft was covered in liquid, a mixed film of thick, semi-transparent and milky-white colors coating it from base to tip.
It shimmered with a wet, just-rained-on luster in the morning light.
The shaft hung between his legs, swaying for a beat with his rising motion.
A drop of liquid hanging from the tip was shaken loose and hit the bedsheet with a patter.
He bent to scoop up the heap of black school robes from the carpet.
His fingers flipped open the inner pocket of the robes...
The space propped open by an Undetectable Extension Charm was stuffed with a mess of items.
Rolls of parchment, coin pouches, a small bottle of a potion he'd shoved in at some point...
His fingers rummaged through the clutter for two seconds.
His fingertips touched two neatly folded sheets of paper that felt thicker than ordinary parchment.
He pulled the two sheets out.
Two letters.
The quality of the parchment was the heavy-duty, anti-counterfeit paper exclusive to the Ministry of Magic.
The edges were printed with fine, anti-forgery patterns that glimmered with silver watermark lines in the dawn light.
A red wax seal sat in the bottom right corner of each...
It wasn't Gringotts' seal, but a more complex design consisting of three interlocking gears and a pair of crossed wands.
He spread the two letters out on the quilt.
His finger tapped the cover of the first one.
"This one... is yours."
Catherine's full name was written on the cover in dark green ink.
The handwriting was so neat it clearly wasn't Jerry's work...
He'd likely had someone else write it or used an Auto-Answer Quill.
The seal of the envelope wasn't fully closed, just tucked in loosely.
A corner of the parchment poked out from the opening.
The heading of the recommendation letter was visible... "To the Command Headquarters of the Frontline War Zone."
His finger moved to the second letter.
A different name was written on this cover... Ophena.
Same dark green ink, same neat handwriting, same wax seal, same loosely tucked opening.
Catherine's hand was still held up beside her face, fingers spread.
The viscous threads between her fingers quivered slightly in the morning light.
Catherine rolled her eyes.
Her eyeballs turned upward, the golden irises mostly hidden by her upper lids.
Only the whites and a thin golden arc at the bottom of the iris remained.
Combined with her messy bed-hair, her slightly flushed cheeks, and that large fuzzy tail swaying slowly behind her...
The eye-roll was both fierce and adorable, like a Ragdoll cat caught red-handed after stealing a fish.
Catherine brought her raised hand to her mouth.
Her tongue-tip emerged from her teeth, pressing against the puddle of milky-white liquid in her palm.
The flat of her tongue licked upward from the heel of her hand.
She curled the viscous substance accumulated in the palm's hollow into her mouth...
The thickness and the salty-musky scent spread across the root of her tongue.
The heat had mostly faded, but a trace of warmth remained.
It mixed with the dry, bitter trace left in her mouth after waking up.
Catherine's tongue turned to the gaps between her fingers.
Starting from the gap between her thumb and index finger.
The flat of her tongue squeezed into the gap, licking clean the liquid stuck to the webbing.
the threads snapped the instant her tongue touched them.
The broken ends stuck to her tongue and her fingertips, only to be curled into her mouth by her tongue.
Then between the index and middle, middle and ring, ring and pinky...
Every gap was meticulously cleaned by Catherine's tongue.
The liquid on the webbing was licked into a thin, salivary sheen.
Catherine's front teeth nipped the tip of her index finger.
She scraped the last residual viscous bit from the pad into her mouth with a skritch.
Her teeth ground over the edge of her nail.
"It seems..."
Catherine's voice squeezed from her finger-biting lips, slurred with a slight nasal tone from her tongue being numbed by the salty-musky stimulation.
She pulled her finger from her mouth; her fingertip was coated with a layer of glistening saliva, drawing a fine thread in the morning light that snapped.
"...You prepared everything long ago, my little pervert master."
Her tail wrapped around from behind her, the ball of fur at the tip brushing against the corners of the two letters on the bed. The fur ground over the dark green "O" above Ophena's name, knocking the corner of the parchment slightly askew.
Catherine's golden eyes moved from the letter addressed to Ophena to Jerry's profile. The corner of her mouth quirked, her front teeth biting the corner of her lower lip, where a trace of milky-white residue still remained unlicked.
"Both letters written... even Ophena's is ready..."
The ball of fur bounced off the envelope and "whooshed" onto Jerry's lower abdomen. The fur brushed through the still-wet puddle of liquid in his navel. The ends of the hair picked up a few drops of milky-white viscous substance, turning from fluffy to a few wet strands.
Catherine shifted her knees on the mattress, moving half an inch closer to Jerry. Her orbs swayed for a beat with the inertia of her movement; the collar of her nightgown was shaken open a section, revealing the ivory skin below her collarbone and the starting curve of her cleavage. The morning light plated a honey-colored warmth onto the curves of her breasts.
The tail retracted from Jerry's abdomen and coiled around his wrist... The fuzzy down wrapped around his wrist bone, and the ball at the tip hung in his palm, rubbing against his palm lines. The wet hair stained with liquid drew several sticky trails in his palm.
Catherine rested her chin on her knees, her golden eyes narrowed into two curved slits. The trace of milky-white at the corner of her mouth was ground thin by the movement of her lips as she spoke, turning into an almost invisible film.
"My little pervert master... you've calculated everything..."
Jerry pounced back.
His body pitched forward, his naked torso slamming into Catherine's embrace. The center of gravity for both of them tumbled backward together. Catherine's back hit the mattress and bounced. Most of her orbs spilled from her nightgown collar with the impact's inertia, their curves swaying into two honey-colored waves in the morning light.
Jerry buried his head into her chest.
His nose propped open the collar of her nightgown; the fabric was pushed to her collarbones by his forehead. Her orbs sprang completely free from the restraint of the material—full, heavy, ivory spheres spread to either side of his face, filling his vision with softness and warmth.
His mouth opened, his front teeth biting into the fullest curve on the outer edge of her left breast. The tips of his teeth pinched into the mound; the skin indented into a shallow pit beneath his bite, the bottom of the pit turning white while the edges flushed red.
"Time for breakfast."
The voice emerged muffled from his lips buried in her breast, as indistinct as if speaking through a layer of quilt. His front teeth intensified their pressure on her orb, the tips of his teeth pinching a fraction deeper from the bottom of the pit. A row of shallow, semi-circular teeth marks was ground into the skin's surface, identical to the row of teeth marks Aurora had bitten into his meat-pillar last night.
Catherine's waist arched, and her tail "whooshed" up from behind her. The ball of fur slapped Jerry on the back of the head, the fur bristling in a ring.
"Ouch! Are you a dog?!"
Jerry's teeth didn't let go; his tongue-tip emerged from the gap in his teeth, licking a trail through the center of the teeth marks. Saliva smeared over the skin pinched red by his teeth; the chill mixed with the pain, causing Catherine's nipple to snap hard next to his chin, transforming from a soft mound into a rock-hard little pebble prodding his jawbone.
His mouth moved from the outer edge of the breast to the nipple. His lips engulfed the hardened protrusion; the flat of his tongue ground over the texture of the areola, and his front teeth gently nipped the tip of the nipple...
Thump-thump-thump!
A knock on the door.
It came from outside the wooden dormitory door—three times, urgent. The force of knuckles hitting the wood was so great the doorboard shuddered in its frame, the hinges letting out a metallic groan.
"Jerry! Jerry!"
Malfoy's voice.
It pierced through from the other side of the door, pitched high with a sharpness like something was stuck in his throat. The end of his words hooked upward, like a stoat that had its tail stepped on—no, Malfoy didn't have a tail, but his voice right now sounded exactly like a small mammal signaling for help after having a vital part stepped on.
Jerry's lips released Catherine's nipple with a pop; saliva pulled a thin thread from the areola that snapped.
Catherine's tail went vertical, the fur on the ball bristling strand by strand. Her golden eyes glared toward the door.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!
Five times, even more urgent than before. The doorboard shook in its frame as if experiencing a miniature earthquake.
"Jerry, open up! Open the door! Something huge has happened!"
Malfoy's voice upgraded from sharp to cracking, half of it staying in a normal register while the other half leaped into falsetto territory, echoing in a short resonance down the corridor.
Jerry pushed up from Catherine's chest, elbows pressing into the mattress. His naked upper body shimmered with a thin film of sweat in the morning light. That meat-pillar, having just been released, hung limply between his legs, the liquid on the shaft slowly air-drying.
Jerry's eyes swept toward the door. His eyebrows didn't move, the corners of his mouth didn't move; the expression on his entire face was like a pool of dead water that had regained its calm after being struck by a stone.
Jerry tumbled off the bed, bare feet hitting the carpet. He bent to scoop up the heap of black school robes from the floor, throwing them over his shoulders haphazardly. The front wasn't tied; his naked chest and abdomen were revealed in the gap of the robe, and the meat-pillar swayed beneath the hem.
Jerry walked to the door, his hand coming to the doorknob, and twisted it open.
A face squeezed into the crack of the door.
Draco Malfoy's face.
His platinum blonde hair was a mess—not the carefully maintained, every-strand-in-place Malfoy style, but a bird's-nest-like chaos that suggested he'd just bolted out of bed and rushed out after a few frantic hand-scratches.
Malfoy's gray eyes were wide and round, his pupils reflecting the light of the corridor wall lamps. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot from staring too hard.
Because of Jerry's blocking, Malfoy could see nothing but Jerry himself!
The belt of his dressing gown was tied askew, and half the silk fabric had slid off his left shoulder, revealing his collarbone and a patch of pale chest skin.
Malfoy's right hand clutched a piece of parchment. The surface of the paper was wrinkled from his hand-sweat, and the edges were curled.
"The... the points!"
Malfoy's lips trembled. The word "points" popped from between his teeth with a spray of saliva that splashed onto the front of Jerry's school robe.
"The House Cup points... look... look for yourself...!"
He held the wrinkled parchment up in front of Jerry, arm extended straight, fingers clutching the edge of the paper so hard his knuckles were white. The paper sh-sh-sh vibrated with the shaking of his fingers.
Jerry's eyes fell on the parchment.
A real-time transcript of the House Cup leaderboard—a copy hung in every Head of House's office. This one in Malfoy's hand had likely been torn from the Slytherin notice board; a small trace of a torn sticking-charm still remained on the top left corner of the paper.
Four lines of numbers.
Gryffindor: 2,847
Slytherin: 2,563
Ravenclaw: 1,891
Hufflepuff: 1,744
Jerry's gaze paused for a beat between the first two lines.
Gryffindor, 2,847. Slytherin, 2,563.
The difference—284 points.
Gryffindor had overtaken Slytherin by nearly three hundred points.
Malfoy's eyeballs were fixed on Jerry's face. The bloodshot veins in his pupils looked like a fine, about-to-break spiderweb in the light of the wall lamps.
Malfoy's lips trembled again. His Adam's apple rolled twice, like he was swallowing a stone stuck in his esophagus that simply wouldn't go down.
"Yesterday... last night... Slytherin was still ahead by four hundred and ninety-three points... I saw it with my own eyes... four hundred and ninety-three!"
Malfoy's voice pulled back slightly from the edge of cracking, but the pitch was still unnaturally high, like a bowstring tightened to its limit that would snap with one more turn.
"Overnight... in a single night, it flipped nearly eight hundred points...!
Who... who did it?!"
Malfoy's grip on the parchment tightened further; his nails pinched two small holes into the paper. Ink soaked out from the edges of the holes, dyeing the final '7' of the Gryffindor line into a blurred inkblot.
Jerry's fingers touched the doorframe, his body leaning forward an inch. The front of his school robe closed slightly with the movement, covering the patch of liquid-dotted skin on his chest.
"I know."
The two words slid from his lips, his tone as flat as a windless lake.
Malfoy's gray eyes stared at him, mouth open, his next sentence already pushing against the root of his tongue...
But Jerry's hand had already come to the edge of the door, five fingers hooking the wood as he pulled it back.
"Wait... I'm not finished...!"
The doorboard rolled through the air two inches in front of the tip of Malfoy's nose, closing with a bang. The hinges shuddered in the doorframe, and Malfoy's voice in the corridor was cut off by the wood into a muffled, cotton-smothered buzz.
"Jerry...! Jerry, you...!"
Fists slammed against the door—thump-thump-thump—three times. The force was less than before—not because Malfoy had calmed down, but because his hands already hurt from the pounding.
"Go back in peace. I have my own arrangements."
Jerry walked back over the carpet barefoot, his toes grinding into the plush pile. The chill of the floorboards on his soles slowly dissipated in the carpet's warmth.
He climbed back onto the edge of the bed, knees pressing into the mattress's hollows. The school robe slid from his shoulders to pile around his waist, exposing his naked torso to the morning light again—those milky-white droplets on his chest and abdomen had begun to air-dry, turning from a wet luster into a slightly tightening semi-transparent film.
Catherine leaned against the headboard, her tail uncoiling from her knees to her side. The ball of fur rested next to the pillow, the down brushing the pillowcase with a soft rustle. Her golden eyes returned from the door to settle on Jerry's movement as he climbed back onto the bed. The trace of interrupted displeasure on her lips remained, but the arc had changed from a frown to a slight upward curve.
"That old man Dumbledore... is certainly generous, isn't he?"
Her voice rolled lazily from her throat, trailing off at the end. Her tongue-tip snapped against her upper palate once, pronouncing the word "generous" as if tasting a piece of sour toffee.
"Seven hundred and eighty points... in one go... at three in the morning..."
The tip of her tail arched up from the pillow, drawing a question mark in the air.
Jerry's knees shifted a step forward on the mattress. He leaned down, burying his head into Catherine's chest once more.
His nose propped open the fabric of the nightgown's collar, which had already slipped below her collarbones. Her orbs sprang free from the restraint of the material, their full curves filling his entire field of vision.
Jerry's mouth opened, his front teeth biting into the upper edge of her right breast... He had bitten the left side before; this time he switched. The tips of his teeth pinched into the fullest part of the orb. The skin indented into a deep pit beneath his bite; the capillaries at the bottom of the pit were squeezed white while the skin at the edges was stretched taut, flushing a pale pink.
Jerry's lips tightened, sucking the small patch of the breast around the teeth marks into his mouth. The flat of his tongue pressed against the skin's surface. The negative pressure inside his mouth caused the skin to bulge out into a small lump, like a piece of meat-candy held between his lips.
Squelch...
The water sound of the sucking overflowed from his lips buried in her breast. A trace of saliva seeped from the corner of his mouth, trickling down the curve of the orb into the start of her cleavage, pooling into a small puddle in the gap between the two mounds.
Jerry's mouth didn't let go. His voice squeezed muffled from between his teeth while they held her breast. Every word was ground out of shape by the softness of her flesh, sounding as indistinct as if he were speaking through a layer of sticky rice cake.
"As expected..."
Jerry's front teeth gave another pinch to her breast. The tips of his teeth ground over the film of saliva-soaked skin, flattening the small lump he'd just sucked out only to suck up a new one, this time half an inch lower, near the edge of the areola.
"The Hogwarts... Board of Governors... is about to be reorganized..."
He paused for a beat every few words. In the gaps of his silence were the squish of his lips sucking her breast and the wet friction of his tongue grinding against her skin.
Jerry's tongue-tip slid from the upper edge of the breast to the areola. The flat of his tongue ground over the ring of the areola—its color two shades darker than the surrounding skin and its texture slightly rough—licking over every tiny protrusion.
"The pure-blood families... are coming in..."
Jerry's front teeth nipped the tip of the nipple. The rock-hard little protrusion snapped against his teeth. Catherine's waist arched, and her tail "whooshed" up from the pillow to slap him on the back. The fur bristled in a half-circle.
"Dumbledore... needs... Gryffindor to win... even more..."
Jerry's lips engulfed the entire nipple. The flat of his tongue wrapped around the hardened protrusion and ground a circle. Saliva coated every line of the areola, glistening in the morning light with a watery sheen.
Jerry's teeth released the nipple. His lips moved from the areola to the inner side of the breast, that soft area near the cleavage... The skin here was thinner and more tender than at the outer edge. Capillaries were faintly visible beneath the skin, the blue-purple lines forming a delicate web.
His front teeth bit into this thin skin. The instant the tips of his teeth pinched in, the capillaries beneath were deformed by the pressure. A small patch of bruised red diffused outward from the center of the bite marks.
"The reason is simple..."
Jerry's lips released the bite mark. His tongue-tip licked once over the bruised patch of skin. The chill of his saliva mixed with the heat of the bruise, triggering a layer of fine goosebumps on Catherine's breast that spread from the nipple to the base.
"Those who support him... are mostly pure-blood families from Gryffindor..."
His head moved from the right breast to the left. His lips pressed against that first row of teeth marks he'd bitten earlier—the marks had turned from a flush to a pale purple, the skin slightly swollen, like a row of semi-circular little stamps pressed into her breast.
Jerry's tongue-tip licked through the arc of the marks, re-moistening the saliva that had dried at the edges. Then his lips pressed down and gave another suck next to the marks. Squelch. A new lump bulged from her breast, sitting side-by-side with the marks like a string of flesh-colored stamps of various sizes left by his mouth.
Catherine's fingers threaded into his hair. Her fingertips hooked into the stray hairs at the back of his head, her pads kneading his scalp—not to push him away, but to press him down, shoving his face another half-inch deeper into her breasts.
"So... first place in the House Cup..."
Her voice drifted down from above his head. A slightly trembling, breathy tone stimulated by his sucking was added to her lazy magnetism. The end of her words rolled in her throat, creating a vibration between a purr and a hum, like a cat having its chin scratched.
Jerry's lips released the marks for a beat. The flat of his tongue spread across the side of her breast, licking a long wet trail from the cleavage outward. Saliva drew a glistening arc over the curve of her orb.
"House Cup victory... carries massive benefits..."
His voice squeezed from his lips pressed to her breast. His breath sprayed onto the saliva-soaked skin, blowing several tiny ripples into the water film.
"The Head of the winning House... in next year's Faculty Council... gets three extra votes..."
His front teeth bit back into the outer edge of her breast. This time the bite was lower than all the previous ones, almost at the arc where the breast met the chest wall. The flesh was thickest here; as the tips of his teeth pinched in, it felt like biting into a piece of warm, elastic mochi. His teeth sank nearly half an inch before hitting the dense glandular tissue beneath.
"Three votes... doesn't sound like much... but after the Board reorganization—pure-blood representatives will take half the seats on the Council... the number of votes Dumbledore can directly control... won't be much to begin with..."
His lips gave a suck to her breast—squelch—then released, changed position, and sucked again—squelch—released... Like a small mammal feeding earnestly and refusing to waste a single inch of food, he sucked over the entire surface of the orb patch by patch. He left behind a string of hickeys and bite marks of varying shades—from pale pink to bruised purple—plastered densely over the ivory breast like a vibrant, abstract painting made by lips and teeth.
"If Gryffindor wins the House Cup... McGonagall gets three extra votes... Professor McGonagall is naturally on my side, but I expect the next step is for her to be replaced as Head of House by another member of the Order of the Phoenix.
Those three votes plus the ones Dumbledore holds himself... would be just enough to block any proposal put forward by the pure-blood families in the Council..."
Catherine's tail coiled around his waist. The fuzzy down pressed against his waistline skin. The ball at the tip hung over his lower abdomen, brushing over those dried films of liquid, flaking off a few tiny pieces from the edges.
Catherine's fingers tightened around his hair. Her nails lightly scratched his scalp, tracing a line from his crown toward the back of his head.
"So... that old fox..."
Her golden eyes were half-squinted, her pupils reflecting the silhouette of Jerry's head buried in her chest. The corners of her mouth curved into an arc. Her front teeth nipped a corner of her lower lip, and the milky film on her mouth cracked into a fine slit as she spoke.
The tail tightened around Jerry's waist. The fur ground into the recesses of his waist dimples. The ball of fur slid from his abdomen to a lower position, brushing over the down above his pubic bone. The friction between the layers of hair produced a very light rustle.
Jerry's lips lifted an inch from her breast. A mixture of saliva and the sweat film from her breast clung to his lower lip, pulling a thin thread in the morning light that stretched from his lip to the newest hickey on her orb. It quivered and snapped.
"It's fine. Dumbledore and I... there will be a reckoning sooner or later."
At the same moment.
Hogwarts Castle, Fourth Floor, Transfiguration Professor's Office.
McGonagall sat in the high-backed chair behind her desk.
Her sitting posture was different from usual—the usual Minerva McGonagall sat in this chair with a spine like an iron rod, perfectly straight from tailbone to neck as if cast with a permanent Rigidity Curse. Her shoulders were always level, her chin slightly tucked; the woman was a human pendulum, perfectly calibrated and clad in dark green robes.
Right now, her spine had collapsed two inches into the back of the chair.
Her shoulders were not level; the left was slightly lower than the right. The collar of her dark green robes was skewed, revealing a small patch of pale purple bruising on the skin inside her collarbone—it was circular, with the arc of teeth marks at the edges, an unmistakable mark of a recent hickey that had yet to fade.
Her right hand rested on the desk. Her fingers held a quill loosely. The tip was suspended over a blank piece of parchment. A drop of ink congealed at the tip, hanging for a long time before falling with a plop onto the paper, soaking into a black dot.
Her glasses were askew.
The left arm of her square frames had slid down half an inch from her ear. The lenses tilted across the bridge of her nose, cutting her left eye's field of vision into two areas—one clear, one blurred.
She didn't reach out to adjust them—her fingers simply held the quill, her knuckles loose and limp, as if holding a dry twig that could drop at any moment.
Her eyelids were heavy.
This was not the energetic, hawk-like sharp gaze of the Minerva McGonagall the world knew. It was a weariness of someone who had been hollowed out from the inside, the wick of a lamp smoking its last trail of gray after the oil had burned dry.
The sound of footsteps came from the office entrance.
There was no knock—the door hadn't been closed tightly to begin with, just left ajar, the faint light of the corridor wall lamps leaking through the crack. The footsteps pushed open the ajar door. The hinges let out an old, metal-on-metal creak, like an aging cat yawning.
Albus Dumbledore stood in the doorway.
His robes were deep purple, embroidered with silver stars and moons, but the silver stitching looked a bit dim in the morning light, like stars being robbed of their luster by the rising sun. Half-moon spectacles sat on the bridge of his nose. Behind the lenses, his blue eyes lacked their usual sparkle—that candy-wrapper-like shimmer. The glint was still there, but it was weighed down by something, sunken to the bottom of his pupils like a coin pressed into deep water.
His long, silver-white beard hung down his chest, the ends tucked into his belt. Today, this habitual action had been performed more sloppily than usual; several strands of his beard had escaped the edge of the belt to hang among the folds of his robes.
He walked into the office.
His footsteps echoed on the flagstone floor. The interval between each step was a fraction of a second longer than usual, like the pendulum of an old clock gradually losing its momentum.
He didn't sit down—there was only that one high-backed chair behind the desk. The visitor's chair had been moved out by McGonagall last week; she'd said it was in the way, but in reality, she simply didn't like anyone sitting across from her and meeting her at eye level.
Dumbledore stood in front of the desk, separated from McGonagall by the oak surface covered in parchment.
McGonagall's eyes lifted from the blank parchment.
The askew glasses meant her gaze went over the upper rim of the lenses, meeting Dumbledore's blue eyes directly—without the refraction of the glass, her naked vision was more direct and unadorned than usual, like a raw negative revealed after a filter had been stripped away.
"So, do I need to write a letter of resignation?"
When the voice emerged from her throat, the tone was half an octave lower than usual, carrying a trace of uncleaned hoarseness—the marks left by last night's revelry were not just on her collarbone, but on her vocal cords and the overused mucous membranes deep in her throat.
The quill slipped from her fingers. The shaft hit the desktop and rolled half a circle, stopping next to the black dot where the ink had soaked in.
Dumbledore's blue eyes stayed on her face for three seconds.
In those three seconds, the fireplace flames licked the iron bars twice, the morning light in the curtains brightened a fraction, and the edges of the inkblot on the desk spread another few millimeters outward.
His lips parted.
Then they closed again.
His silver-white beard swayed slightly with the movement of his jaw. Those escaped strands from his belt rubbed against the folds of his robes, producing an extremely light rustle of silk against fabric.
His right hand emerged from his robe sleeve. His fingers were old and long, the skin on his knuckles so thin the blue-purple veins were visible beneath.
The fingers didn't touch anything on the desk. They simply hung at his side for a beat before being retracted back into his sleeve.
He turned around.
The hem of his deep purple robes swept across the flagstone floor as he turned. The silver stars and moons flashed once in the morning light like a spinning, dim night sky.
His footsteps headed for the door.
At the entrance, his pace stopped.
The lenses of his half-moon glasses reflected a beam of morning light as he tilted his head. The glint fell on the wood grain of the doorframe like a miniature, blinking firefly.
"I'm sorry."
A single phrase slid from his lips, the voice as light as a feather falling on snow.
"It was the only way."
McGonagall sat in the high-backed chair, her spine still collapsed against the backrest, her shoulders still skewed, her glasses still halfway down the bridge of her nose.
Her fingers found the fallen quill on the desk. Her fingertips paused for a beat when they touched the shaft. Then she picked it up and held it in her hand, the tip pointing down toward the blank parchment.
Another drop of ink congealed at the tip, hanging, hanging.
The fireplace flames licked the iron bars—crack—as a spark popped from a breaking log. It flew through a gap in the bars to land on the flagstone floor; the orange-red point of light glowed for a beat before dying out.
The ink drop fell.
Plop.
It soaked into the paper right next to the previous dot. Two black dots sat side-by-side, like a pair of silent eyes watching something.
McGonagall's fingers gripped the quill. The tip was suspended above those two dots. The skin on her knuckles tightened, then loosened, then tightened again.
"Don't apologize. I've wanted to quit as Head of House for a long time anyway!"
"Furthermore... the Order of the Phoenix... I'm leaving that too!"