She had nowhere to go. His body pressed into hers, pinned her solidly to the wall behind her as his hands circled her hips, slid between her and the stone at her back, drawing her insatiably closer to the madness that she'd awakened. She bent one knee to hook her leg around his, her calf and inner leg raking up toward his hip. He let his hand follow the angle of her thigh. He suckled at her neck, the warm haven beneath her hair that called so to him, like siren's song made flesh. Her skin was hot and sweet on his lips. Her sigh in his ear was even sweeter. He pushed against her, wild with the way it made their bodies crush together. Her hands were sliding between them, tugging at his shirt. Then his shirt was gone, and her fingers were leaving white impressions over his back and shoulders. She clung to him hungrily. She moaned when his hands moved. And then her shirt was gone, and it was skin touching skin, heat on heat. He dipped to taste her chest, inebriate himself on her body, and her deft fingers went to his belt.

A soft click tore Harry from the land of dreams and he lay quietly in bed, still in a state from the images that had been dancing in his mind's eye. He listened for what had torn him from his slumber and it was more a sense of another person in the room than any true noise.

He roused the sleeping jaguar just enough to know by smell alone that his visitor was Hermione. Perhaps being jarred from sleep wasn't so terrible after all.

It was edging toward noon judging by how rested he felt. He'd slept in. His bed at the Granger house was sinfully comfortable, so much better than the hand-me-down mattresses he'd always inherited from Dudley with a huge dip in the middle where most of the massive boy's weight had been borne and spotted with multiple food stains and their accompanying funny smells. It was better than the standard beds of Hogwarts that were not supposed to encourage sleeping in, lest a student miss their morning classes.

Harry knew Hermione was padding toward his bed, but he kept his eyes closed and pretended he'd not realized she was there. He was curious to learn what exactly she'd do. The mattress dipped and jostled as she climbed up on it. Harry was having to fight the impulse to smile. Then it was her voice, directly above him.

"I know you're awake," she said at last.

Harry gave in, smiled, and opened his eyes. She was on her hands and knees over him, one hand on either side of him so she was hovering right over him, near enough that he could make out her features without his glasses. She was in her pajamas still as well. Her hair was loose and falling over her shoulders, tickling his cheeks and making him chuckle.

Hermione grinned back at him. "Morning."

Harry batted her hair away, only to have it brush against his nose. "What time is it?"

"About ten-thirty. Mum and Dad are gone."

The devil on Harry's shoulder thought that that was a very important detail… and an exciting one. Harry tried his best to push that thought away. "Morning… you know, I was going to have a lie in. I'd been looking forward to it all week." His intent was playful, even if he pretended to protest her waking him.

Hermione beamed, fully aware that Harry was funning with her. "Thought you might. Got room for one more?"

His eyebrows rose. Then he lifted up one end of the covers in invitation.

Hermione quickly wriggled in beside him and snuggled down at his side. Harry tucked the covers snug around them both and had to bite the inside of his cheek when Hermione slid her arm over his torso, turned on her side to partially drape over him, and moved one of her legs to tangle with his… and in the process came in contact with the evidence of his rather vivid dream. But he didn't have to be embarrassed about that with Hermione, she'd proven remarkably unbothered by Harry's 'physiological responses'. True to form, she didn't pull away or make a disgusted noise… instead he felt her smile into his chest where her face was pressed against him.

It didn't help his problem, in fact it was fair to say it made his problem worse, but there was good and bad with that. Such was the torment that was Hermione Granger. He snaked one arm underneath the curve of her neck and crooked it at the elbow to rest his hand lightly on her back. Absolutely blissful torture.

"Can I ask you something, Harry?" she said without lifting her head to look him in the eye.

"Sure."

"Does that just happen, or do you have to dream… certain things?"

Harry's stomach flipped. They never really talked about that, and he supposed that fact should make him dreadfully uncomfortable, but he found he didn't mind Hermione's curiosity.

"You mean in the morning? Because I imagine it's fairly obvious how that happens during the day." She would know all too well. Hermione had played with that razor edge of sanity, dangling Harry over the edge countless times once they'd become a couple, and Harry was reasonably sure she did it on purpose. It was the curiosity in her that could not be vanquished. She wanted to see what would make him react to her… which she learned soon enough was just about anything and everything. He was pretty certain she was immensely pleased to discover that she need only make the barest of efforts to play him like a harp. He was just ecstatic that that sort of thing would pleaseHermione, that his responding to her would be seen as a good thing.

"Yeah. I know it happens to guys, but I never knew it if was just a… you know, on its own kind of thing."

"Well, for me, it's usually a certain kind of dream."

Hermione's fingers were tracing the seam of his shirt sleeve absently. "You were dreaming?" There was the slightest hint of the minx in her voice, and he really ought to know to watch himself by now when that particular side of Hermione showed itself.

"Uh huh."

"What were you dreaming about?" Her voice was low, throaty and intoxicating. She was driving him crazy. Positively stark raving mad.

"You."

Hermione squeezed him like a giant teddy bear, she shivered, and Harry groaned when it registered in every nerve ending he possessed.

Hermione drew her head from his chest, propped herself on her elbow to look down at his face. Harry studied her expression. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes looked nearly black. She looked incredible in a ruffled, morning way. "You dream about me?" she asked, sounding honestly moved by the admission.

'Only all the time,' he thought miserably, but as an answer he said, "Yeah."

Hermione smiled, lovely and enchanting, then bent down and kissed him on the jaw line. Then she kissed him again, slow and feather-light. She peppered little kisses toward his ear, where her breath was the softest sound he'd ever known. He reached up, moved her wild hair aside, lifted his head from his pillow, and nipped at her neck. Hermione made a noise, somewhere between a whimper and a chuckle, and her fingers splayed over one side of his chest. She let her supporting elbow slowly slip, settled her upper body at an angle atop his, and he felt the shape of her breasts on his chest through the twin layers of pajamas. She wasn't wearing a bra. Merlin, she'd kill him, he knew it.

But he must have been one suicidal guy, because he drew her closer, one hand still wonderfully tangled in her hair, the other tracing up her arm to her shoulder and back. Hermione trembled as he nibbled and kissed at her throat, and one of her hands smoothed over his waist, so desperately, unbearably close to the flash point of all this insanity.

She had just started to move her hand up under the hem of his shirt, her fingers had only just danced against the tingling skin of his stomach, when there was a pointed "Ahem" from the door.

The two teens broke apart to look and saw Kimmy standing in the doorway of the bedroom, wearing a pair of rose-covered boxers and a very 'tisk tisk' look on her face. Harry had never wished Kimmy ill before that split-second.

"Kimmy!" Hermione breathed a greeting first.

"You knows Missus Granger wouldn't be liking this, Miss Granger and Mister Harry Potter."

Hermione blushed fiery red and moved away from Harry. "Honestly, Kimmy, we were just… we weren't…" she glanced at Harry's face. Harry just watched her to see how she intended to handle Kimmy's intrusion. Hermione seemed to relent to their compromising state and sagged. "Well, perhaps we were getting just a little carried away."

"Best cure for that's to get out of bed!" Kimmy said cheerfully.

Hermione grumbled and extricated herself from Harry's sheets. Kimmy, seeing that her work was done, gave a satisfied nod and trotted off into the depths of the house looking quite untroubled for having spoiled Harry's good time so thoroughly. Hermione was still flushed as she brushed back her hair, still looking quite enticing to all of Harry's overwrought senses.

"Well, um… getting close to lunchtime anyway," Hermione said after a moment. "Would you like to go to the park later today? It's quite lovely at Christmas; they string lights on some of the trees, and if the clouds are in they might even be lit by early afternoon."

"Err… sure… sounds great." Or it might, later, when he wasn't still painfully reminded of what his morning had consisted of so far. Hermione in his dreams and then in his bed, and the activities for both shockingly similar. It was probably the first instance of Harry being cursed for being so lucky.

Hermione moved toward the door to leave the room, paused, and glanced back at him. "You coming, Harry?"

'Oh boy,' he thought. "Um… yeah… give me a couple minutes."

It took a second, during which her lips pursed and her brow crinkled. Then Hermione's gaze turned positively… feral. It hit Harry in the stomach… and sank lower. 'Maybe just a minute if this keeps up,' he lamented silently.

She was too damn smart for his good. "Oh," was all she said.

Now she was just teasing him. "Just go already," he waved her away.

Hermione smiled devilishly and left him to it. Ron had the right of it; she was a pistol. Who knew that had been inside Hermione all this time? Innocent, studious, focused Hermione Granger, constant haunt of libraries and top scorer of tests, a wily seductress.

He liked it.

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾❾¾ ❾¾❾¾

Hermione's head was in the clouds, and for someone as grounded as Hermione Granger that did not happen often. Her mother had even commented during lunch that she was looking a bit 'dreamy'. That had warranted a quick look from Miranda, quickly followed by a whispered conference with Kimmy, the 'naughtiness look-out'. Harry had hummed most of the time he was cooking lunch, effected for the better by Hermione's mood.

She was still high on the fact that Harry had dreams about her… those kinds of dreams.

Logically, one might think she would expect him to. She was his girlfriend, after all, and they'd snogged a fair bit. Only made sense that Harry's unconscious mind would take it to the next level, what with him being a teenage boy and all.

But, in fact, Hermione hadn't thought on it. And she hadn't because she knew if she did allow herself to think on it, she would decide that Harry probably dreamed about other girls in those dreams.

She didn't doubt his devotion. He was exclusive to her, she knew him better than to question that. But she also knew she wasn't half as pretty as most girls. Harry couldn't really be held responsible for dreaming about being with someone prettier. It stung to think he would, she privately owned up to that, but she knew it wouldn't be fair to blame him for what he did in dreams.

Of course, she had some rather… intense dreams herself that included him, and her, the two of them together. But then, it wasn't really the same on any level. Hermione didn't have the same problem Harry did; she had a perfectly good-looking, attractive partner to dream about. And she had to take into account that girls' brains were just wired differently… she'd be more apt, even in dreams, to factor in the aspect of emotional attachment. That wouldn't necessarily be true for Harry. Boys were psychologically built to think more in terms of purely physical, visual aspects. For that, she'd sooner expect Harry to have erotic dreams about Cho Chang than her.

She decided it didn't matter, because no matter what Harry might do when he was dreaming, it was her that he woke up and kissed and held and cared about. She was happy for that.

This morning, however… she'd actually been curious about the so-called 'morning wood'. Sometimes, the way it was made out to seem, it was as though boys and girls were from entirely different planets. She felt comfortable enough with Harry to ask. She neverthought she'd hear him say that he dreamt about her the way she always assumed he dreamt about Cho. Her. Plain, nothing-special-to-look-at Hermione. That she was the reason he woke up in an aroused state.

She wouldn't hold Harry's dreamscape philandering against him, but it seemed she was content to give him credit for making her the girl of his dreams, in a manner of speaking. Every time she looked at him she wanted to kiss him breathless.

'It's just as well we're out in the cold,' she thought with a sense of embarrassment. It was helping to combat the heat that kept stealing over her cheeks and coiling in the pit of her stomach.

After Miranda left to return to work, she and Harry had dressed and left for the park, as they previously discussed. They were currently walking side by side, unrushed, hands entwined, not saying a word. Kimmy was weaving around them in a sloppy satellite orbit as they went. Fitting, as Hermione was beyond the atmosphere with how good her mood was today.

Hermione gave Harry's hand a random squeeze. She smiled stupidly when he squeezed back. She used to think so much of Harry when they were just friends, and when she first developed a crush on him of course she thought a great deal more of him. Harry was a very special person, after all, with qualities rare in many other people. But as his girlfriend… it was more than she'd ever imagined. If nothing else in her life ever went right, at least she was lucky enough to have this.

They arrived at the park to find it less populated with children than last time when it was summer. The chill had chased them indoors. There were a few hardy youngsters on the swings, as though the rushing wind couldn't hope to freeze them out of play, and parents at the benches trying to wrestle squirming children into additional layers of clothes. The trees along the paved walkway were strung with lights, as they were every year, and they were turned on as Hermione had predicted, but the day was bright enough that the limply hanging strands of bulb-infested electrical cords looked more an eyesore than magical; they needed the night to unveil their splendor. But it was all magical to Hermione today.

By the time they reached their bench under the naked maple tree, Hermione's nose was red, her cheeks prickly in the winter air, and the only extremity that wasn't partially numb from the cold was the hand holding Harry's.

Rather than sit on the bench, Hermione turned to regard Harry. His breath was an intermittent white cloud in front of his face, and his features were similarly reddened by the nip in the air. But the grey of the sky made his hair all the blacker, and the cold somehow made his eyes impossibly blue. But more than that, there was a calm about him. He looked at ease. The same unconcern that had shined in his eyes when he smiled up at her that morning.

She wished she knew the secret to keeping that untroubled air about him always.

"What?" he finally asked to her unspoken scrutiny.

Hermione untangled her hand from his, stepped into him, and put her arms around him in a hug, without speaking so much as a word. His body was wonderfully warm and smelled so good, like safe harbor and home all in one.

If he was surprised by her action, and it was a really unexpected thing to do on her part, his surprise lasted only a few seconds. Then he brought his arms up and put them around her. Hermione was completely happy.

"You're good at this, you know," she said after a time standing in the park held in his arms.

"At what?" he asked without moving away from her.

"Being a boyfriend."

Harry was quiet a moment. "I think I'm good at being your boyfriend."

Hermione chuckled. He'd proven her point spectacularly. But maybe he was right more than just saying the right thing. Taking into account Harry's upbringing, she'd expected him to be a bit more of a mess when it came to relationships. He might not really nail a 'healthy relationship' as it was widely accepted on his first go at courting, if ever at all. When she discovered she felt things more than friendship for Harry, she concluded that she could be content with a less-than-perfect relationship, were she ever to date him (which she never anticipated happening, anyway) because Harry was worth it. But their relationship had been nearly flawless once they'd made the decision to embark upon it. And maybe it was because it was with her, his best friend for years. They knew each other so well already, it was only a slight shift to take it to being boyfriend and girlfriend. There need not be new, extraordinary demands on Harry; Hermione wouldn't expect anything more than what he'd always been.

Hermione burrowed deeper against his chest, almost fit to purr, and she felt Harry's torso jerk as he silently chuckled at something.

"What?" she asked, still nestled against him.

"Nothing." There was humor in his voice, blessed Harry joy, understated though it was when it made it as far as his lips.

She pulled away from the hug enough to look up into his face. Her arms were still looped around his waist; she wasn't quite ready to let him go. He had a strange amusement glittering in his eyes and toying with the corners of his mouth. "What nothing? Come on, tell me."

Harry gave a lop-sided smile. "It's stupid." And it was doing a fair job of embarrassing him. Now she was dying to know what had crossed his mind.

"Honestly, Harry, I'm sure it's not stupid. And if it is… well, it's me. I won't laugh."

Harry studied her a moment, then he took one arm away from her to bring his hand up and brush back her hair from her face. His fingers ended up tangled in her curly locks. She really liked it when he did that.

"Just… when we're like this, you know, hugging and stuff, my stomach gets all… flip-floppy."

Hermione smiled sweetly. She had the same stomach flutters around him, not to mention the snitch in her chest and the racing of her heart. It was the way her body let her know she was in love. Stood to reason Harry's body would speak a similar language.

"And I know what it means now, but thing is… well, I mean, it just hit me that my stomach's done that around you for a while now. You know, before we decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend it did that."

Hermione grinned. "Mine did, too."

Harry blinked, as though he'd not thought that she could have such a reaction to him as he did to her, then he smiled. And it was beautiful. And then they were kissing. Not passionately, but softly and tenderly.

They may have continued to kiss forever, Hermione wouldn't know, because they were pulled from each other by a growl.