Quicksilver

Quicksilver
(title subject to change)
story rating NC-17
pairing: DM/HG

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, etc. are the sole property and copyright of the lovely J.K. Rowling. This story is for entertainment purposes only and is in no way affiliated with the original Harry Potter novel series or the Warner Bros. films.

This story contains minor violence, some adult language, and overt sexuality.

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Chapter Fifteen
Fifth Wheel Falls Off

Ron woke with a start that morning, after dreaming about veela that turned into spiders when they tempted you to come close enough to them. He shuddered, then happily absorbed his normal surroundings to reassure himself that it had just been a nasty nightmare. He noticed with mild curiosity that Harry\'s four-poster was already abandoned, considering it was fairly early for a Saturday morning.

He ambled lazily over to Harry\'s trunk and opened the dogeared pages of a worn copy of Which Owl? up to the center, where the Marauder\'s Map was folded and tucked into the spine. He spread it before him, then unlocked the magic that kept the old parchment blank. The ornate layout of Hogwarts played before him and he scanned for a sign of his friends\' whereabouts, starting with Harry. To his utter disgust, Harry\'s name was with his sister\'s...in her dormitory bed. With a snort, he immediately turned his mind to searching for Hermione instead.

It took him a minute, but he finally spotted the tiny letters spelling \"H. Granger\" in the Prefects\'hroohroom. While that by itself would have been perfectly acceptable, the name in the room with hers (that\'s not bloody allowed in the first place!) was \"D. Malfoy\". Ron felt a flush creep up into his cheeks and quickly began to see red as well.

It had been obvious for years that Hermione had meant something very special to Ronald Weasley. First, her vulnerability deep underneath all that childhood arrogance had inspired a sort of fierce brotherly protectiveness once they\'d become friends. He\'d always been a little sheepish about showing it directly, though, after having behaved so badly toward her initially.

In their fourth year, it all just got worse. Having Hermione at the Burrow, being doted on by his mother, giggling privately with his sister...that had all felt too natural. Except while that should have reinforced the whole \"brotherly\" stance, his mindset was straying further than ever from it. The mascots for Bulgaria at the Quidditch World Cup had been veela, and Ron was bloody enraptured by one particular creature that had thick, wavy brown hair and a petite frame and... Hermione had no idea that while she scoffed about the male attention to the veela, Ron had singled out the one who\'d looked exactly like her to ogle.

Oh, and that Viktor Krum bastard. Ron couldn\'t believe that he\'d been so starstruck by him. Or that he\'d asked Hermione to the Yuall.all. Before Ron\'d had the sense to do it himself. He\'d made such an arse of himself over the Hermione/Viktor/Yule Ball issue that he\'d been totally robbed of whatever courage he\'d gained for showing Hermione his level of affection.

Had the sodding fool in the Prefects\' bathroom been anyone else besides Malfoy, Ron would have allowed his heart to break silently and hoped for a breakup. That prick, Quicksilver hero or not, was the last person on this earth that Ron would be able to tolerate stealing the bearer of his heart.

After years and years of feeling like an impotent sod...best friend of the Boy Who Lived/Quidditch Captain and soon-to-be Head Girl, brother to two Head Boys, another Quidditch Captain, the reigning comedy kings of Hogwarts and possibly all of the United Kingdom\'s magic community...he felt if he was losing the last of his real pride and joy to others. His sister and his best friend had more interest in each other than him. He still had another best friend, who was also the love of his life...but it now looked as if he was losing her as well.

To someone whom he\'d loathed like the mud under his boots since his first trip on the Hogwarts Express.

This was not bloody happening.

Wand in one hand, Marauder\'s Map in the other, Ron tore out of the Gryffindor common room with a jealous rage burning in his eyes...and behind that a scary sort of desperation. It took him nearly five minutes to reach the pastoral painting in front of the private bathroom. The girl in the painting laughed at the frantic, gangly bugger in front of her, whose face was redder than her barn with hair to match. Knowing this twat probably wouldn\'t let him into the loo regardless of whether or not he knew the password (there was already one too many people in there), he took a deep breath and began to think.

\"Stupefy!\" he cried suddenly. The country girl--and her cows--took on a dazed manner. She slumped along her picket fence and drooled a bit. \"Portelouvre,\" he said and the painting converted to a regular door. He\'d learned that charm while trying to research a term paper subject. It was an in-case-of-emergency method of unlocking, so to speak, magic doors and their disguises for one-time use.

He placed a silencing charm on himself and turned the knob on the door as slowly as he could to avoid making noise. He realized as soon as the door was opened a few inches that his efforts wouldn\'t matter. Through the lavender-heavy steam, one could barely see two feet in front of their own nose. The two occupants of the room weren\'t likely to be listening, either...Ron\'s stomach immediately lurched when he was greeted with loud, high moans mixed with deep male grunts. He clenched his wand and swallowed hard, walking slowly toward the voices.

He nearly tripped over a heap of glittery purple and had to fight another wave of jealous nausea when he realized that it was Hermione\'s Yule Ball gown. The figures took form through the fog now...

Hermione\'s petite, lithe frame was posed like a bloody tart...bent over the back of a chair. She was standing on her tiptoes with her arse thrust up and back, wearing nothing but a white lace garter belt and thigh-high stockings with the glittery high heels. Her naked torso was draped over the front side of the chair...a pair of round breasts with brown curls splayed over them, glistening with humidity and her beautiful face strained with lust and her eyes rolled up under fluttering lashes. Ron would have paid with his life to see this sight before him under any other circumstance.

Until he fully acknowledged the rest of the scene. A pair of large, sturdy hands grasping the alabaster skin on those full hips, leaving pale marks in their wake. Ron looked up at the lightning-bolt scar over that left shoulder facing him. That slimy git, Malfoy, was the one who\'d inspired Hermione to that racy pose and that lustridden expression. The person he hated most on the planet was fucking the only thing Ron had ever wanted this badly.

Stomach lurching, Ron finally vomited after being able to contain it no more. Before the fraternizing couple could see who\'d made that horrible wretching noise, the redhead had left the room with tears streaming down his face and every single Weasley spark draining from his soul with those tears.

***

Harry stretched luxuriously beside Ginny in her four-poster and smiled at the back of his fireheaded lover. He remembered the places on her body that also had red hair and giggled to himself.

He\'d been dreaming feverishly about sex for about a week before he\'d snuck into Ginny\'s dormitory room with his father\'s invisibility cloak. They\'d always been so chaste with each other...both shy and inexperienced. Ginny had apparently been contemplating whether she would allow Harry to sleep with her because they\'d been snogging so intensely lately...and his dreams had \"suffered\" in turn with his newfound Quicksilver extrasensory abilities.

Until Draco Malfoy\'s revelation had finally outed Harry as a similar creature (confirming many suspicions since his earliest encounter with Lord Voldemort), he\'d chalked all the truly weird things about hif frf from childhood and beyond up to just being a magical person. His parselmouth gift was obviously a wrong choice to assume as commonplace, but the ability to feel his uncle arrive home before he\'d ever walked in the door while locked in the cupboard under the stairs had been satisfactorily explained by his introduction to wizardry at age 11.

So, it was basically as if he knew the night Ginny had finally decided to give herself to him physically...and here he was. He saw the tiny splotches of abusive kissing on her neck and remembered the marks on Hermione. Even us geeks grow up, eh \'Mione?, he thought amusedly.

Suddenly, he felt a sort of zinging in his scar. He reacted quickly, putting his hand over it before it burst into full stinging pain. He winced and grimaced, closing his eyes and sitting up slowly in Ginny\'s bed. His swift bodily jerks had awakened the young witch, who regarded her lover with concern.

\"What is it, love?\" she whispered urgently as he cried out softly in reaction to another stinging wave.

\"My scar, it\'s bloody killing me...\" he said through gritted teeth. \"Send an owl to Malfoy and ask him if he feels anything in his arm...I\'m going to Madam Pomfrey before I beat my head into the wall.\"

Ginny through on a robe and quickly agreed. Harry got sufficiently dressed and they were both headed out into the common room when they were greeted by a frantic Hermione. She was also flushed and half-dressed, but her problems didn\'t appear to be of the romantic sort. She took a deep breath to calm her panting and barely choked out an explanation to her friends.

\"H-heard a noise in the bathroom...Draco\'s scar...hurts him.\" She drew another breath. \"D-don\'t ask. Anyway...um...we were coming here to ask you\" she looked at Harry, \"if yours hurts as well...Ran into McGonagall. Ron\'s run away in a frightful state, she said. They chased him into the forest and lost him.\"

Ginny dropped her quill and parchment and gasped, turning white. Harry, in a great deal of pain, responded with, \"Mine is going on the fritz as well. Wait a minute, did you say that Ron ran into the Dark forest?\" It was almost as if the information had sunk in very slowly.

\"Yes...they said he looked like he\'d gone mad and ran straight into the forest and disappeared.\" Hermione said, still trying to catch her breath. \"Hagrid and Filch were chasing him with the other professors in tow. Dumbledore has owled the Ministry, both for help and to alert his dad.\"

Harry felt a weird twinge and suddenly looked at Hermione and said, \"Malfoy\'s at the portrait hole, let him in.\" She regarded him quizzically for a split second, then turned to open the portrait. The blonde wizard was indeed standing there, rubbing his left shoulder gingerly.

Ginny\'s mouth unfroze at that moment and she blurted out, \"Does anyone know WHY my brother\'d gone mad and run into a place that scares the piss out of him? Because I\'d bloody like to know!\" She was in a state beyond worry, with frustration at the mysteries of the situation bubbling up into her eyes.

Hermione\'s cheeks flared and Draco looked uncomfortably at the floor. \"We erm...\" Draco began

\"No. Not you. Hermione, O She Who Cannot Lie, tell me what you think.\" Ginny said authoritatively. It was second nature to trust a Gryffindor over a Slytherin, no matter what he\'d done to redeem himself.

\"We think he saw Draco and I, uh snogging, in the bathroom.\" She said, but Ginny\'s eyes told her that the one untruth was still noticed. \"Okay, we were doing more than snogging, but the degree of the situation doesn\'t matter!\" the older witch blurted, humiliated beyond words.

\"I can\'t say anything about snogging or more than snogging, but at least I know it\'s true. And why it would freak Ron out. But running off, daft as a loon, into the Dark forest?\" Ginny scratched her head, nearing tears.

\"We don\'t even know if that\'s the case...we just heard some noise which distracted us from our...activities. If it truly isn\'t the case, I have no idea and probably can speak for Draco as well...\" Hermione rattled off, nibbling one of her fingernails. Draco tsked her and the other two Gryffindors thought they heard him whisper brilliant, not nervous in her ear. He obviously had less trouble admitting their relationsho tho the others.

Ginny couldn\'t help but admit to herself that the whole thing was positively adorable if it had excluded the fact that her brother had disappeared. The two of them stood there, fingers idly interlaced, looking intimately into each others\' eyes as he talked only to her. She threw a look at Harry, who despite the pain in his head was fighting the urge to grin. They knew what the others were feeling.

They all shook themselves out of their post-coital bliss after a second or two, though. They parted quickly to get fully dressed for the outdoors, and soon had joined the search parties with the teachers and other students.

Ronald Weasley officially became a missing person in the Ministry two days later, after not even a single red hair was discovered in his wake.

***

Author\'s Note:
Sorry that it took so long to update...my \'net access disappeared for a bit, and stress in my life gave me writer\'s block.
Thank you for all the encouraging reviews, though. I very much appreciate them.

Chapter 16 is being edited and Chapter 17 is in the works. I hope to take this story back to full-swing if I can.