Maintenance.

Disclaimer: not mine, don’t shoot.

Warning: het. Sexual, but not really –too- explicit.

Author’s Note: I blame this one on Silvia. Muwahahahah.

...you make me love them.



~~maintenance.



Hermione wasn’t supposed to be baring her neck like that, he felt dimly, watching as she tugged at her stiff collar, loosening her tie with a hooked forefinger. Her hair was wilder than usual, denser and apparently more irritating, because she just kept blowing it out of her eyes every few seconds, her mouth curving together into a pout, although she only managed to make it cloud around her with even greater determination.

Ron stared, his mouth going very, very dry. He was going hot and cold in flashes, and his fingers were trembling just a very little.

She wasn’t supposed to have lips that full, was she? Did they get fuller overnight? Or maybe it was just the bottom lip, which looked red and dented with bite-marks almost everywhere.

The thought that –he- wouldn’t mind biting it came out of nowhere, making his ears burn.

He didn\'t -mean- to watch. She was completely unaware he was doing it, too, and she was just stretching absentmindedly at the moment, after countless hours spent bent over numerous dusty tomes. It was probably something he\'d seen before. Probably.

He had to sit down. Now.

And yet, then he wouldn\'t have the vantage point he did. Ron kept standing, eyes wide open, riveted on the smooth band of pale, slightly olive skin momentarily revealed. He was sure she would pull forward presently, and return to her previous, completely innocuous pose. This torture couldn\'t possibly last long. Most definitely not. This was Hermione, after all. She didn’t pause to stretch or to get a drink, not even when everyone else was falling over with exhaustion. More importantly, she didn’t arch like a cat, displaying her bare midriff to anyone who cared to look. Her smooth, pale, strangely hypnotizing midriff.

Her shirt had ridden up quite a ways, now and she was sighing slightly, stretching out her legs and rolling her shoulders as she squirmed on the rather ordinary chair, on this rather ordinary day.

Ron had just come down to remind her of their scheduled game-- she said she\'d finally join him and Harry, this time. It was getting rather frustrating playing anything with Harry, lately, since he kept spacing out and mumbling something about donuts. Ron wasn\'t even sure what donuts were, but he was almost certain they had nothing to do with wizard chess.

He swallowed. Hermione\'s fingers were curling and uncurling on the tabletop, and she was moving her arms out in front of her, lacing them together and stretching yet further, finally sighing with satisfaction and twisting them behind her head.

Her breasts (she had breasts?) were pushing upwards in a rather new and addictive manner, and her shirt was rather tight across them. Since when had they... ballooned like that? All round and full and... they bounced a little. Just a very little. Ron thought he was going to faint.

She had nipples, too. He couldn\'t quite see for certain from this distance, but he just knew it. He just -knew- it.

Hermione has pale skin-- even paler on her tummy than on her cheeks, and on her neck, and on her wrist. Ron never really looked at Hermione\'s wrists, truth be told. There was a lot of possibilities he\'d missed-- bare ankles and inner thighs and that patch of rounded skin just below the midpoint of her back. He really missed her stomach-- perfectly ordinary though it was. It wasn\'t really that shocking of a sight.

Just a stomach.

Rather creamy-looking, with that unmistakable softness. There was definitely a lot of softness, and roundedness-- though it wasn’t really all that rounded. Kind of concave, really, especially when she was stretched out as she was, spine bent backwards over the low back of her chair.

Ron thought he could discern a bellybutton, small and puckered, tucked neatly into the even slope of her tummy. He had the most irresistible urge to test it with his teeth. It would probably be salty and sweaty and girl-like, but he didn\'t care. Or maybe that would be a good thing, he thought, somewhat incoherently.

A hand unwound from its resting point underneath her head, and drifted down, almost as if unconsciously. It stilled, palm flat on the very spot Ron was fixated on. She rubbed at her stomach in barely perceptible circles, almost meditatively, brows slightly furrowed. Her pinkie finger dipped into some readily available cavity that one would assume had to be her navel, and Ron\'s temperature rose by another degree or two.

He was actually starting to sweat, skin feeling clammy and uncomfortable. He still couldn\'t move, or run away, or cough discreetly as he knew he should. Ron told himself she couldn\'t possibly mean to go any further, so there was no use waiting, was there. And it wasn\'t like he was waiting, anyway.

Hermione was humming. Ron didn\'t know -what- she was humming, but it was something or other, and it was really distracting him from his study of Hermione\'s hand. He couldn\'t study it properly, of course, since he wasn\'t close enough, but nevertheless it was a study with definite results.

As she hummed, her little finger squirmed, dipping in and out of her navel in a sort of rhythm. Her legs were spread just a little wider than before, or maybe that was just his imagination. And maybe she was slumped just a little lower on the chair, but then, she was probably really tired after so many hours studying. They were the only ones left in the library-- and as far as Hermione knew, she was alone. It was a Friday, and everyone had better things to do. Ron couldn\'t imagine what any of those things might entail, at the moment, but he knew they existed, in a sort of vague, distant memory.

Her eyes were closed, and she was smiling a little, her breathing deep and even. Well, at least she was no longer humming. Though truth be told, Ron barely even noticed, because he might be hallucinating (it was always a good time to start, George had said with an air of authority once), but in some rather frantic corner of his mind, he hoped he wasn\'t, if only because he\'d like to think that he wouldn\'t really imagine this of his own free will. It was too much, really.

Hermione was rubbing slowly against her seat, her hips moving in impossibly tight circles. She wasn\'t doing anything else, but it was more than enough. Ron\'s temples were pounding, and he was sure she could hear him panting, unmistakably panting, and unable to stop. He was trying not to think about what else he was doing, because he certainly wasn\'t doing it. One didn\'t just -do- that, even trying to blend in with the shadows in the narrow space between bookshelves where it was still quite clear that anyone could see.

But then, anyone could see Hermione too.

Ron wasn\'t really doing anything. It was nothing. Even though his palm may have been pressed against the bulge in his trousers, and the heel of it may or may not have been rubbing back and forth, almost absentmindedly. It could always be worse, though in actuality, he didn\'t know how, because if he watched any longer he had the feeling--

He bit his lip, trembling visibly from the effort it took to not just finish it. He could end his misery with just one stroke, just one good hard squeeze, and he knew it. He was so close, and it would feel so good, and he was throbbing harder than he could remember in his admittedly comparatively limited experience with these things. (Ohgodohgodohgod, he wailed silently, hating his body and loving the way it made him feel. The way Hermione made him feel. `Bloody hell, I\'m such a fucking ninny, I should just--\')

But it would just be wrong. Hermione was in his direct line of sight, and she wasn\'t even doing anything indecent (was she?) and she was -Hermione-, even now, and it was just unthinkable.

He couldn\'t just sink his hand down the front of his trousers and do what came naturally (could he?).

Even more so, he couldn\'t rush her and scoop her out of the chair and press their bodies together, tummy to tummy and thigh to thigh and maybe he could just melt into her and inhale the scent of her hair, and nuzzle at her neck, and maybe rub against untiuntil he forgot his own name. That wasn\'t really on, now was it?

Hermione, meanwhile, was biting ferociously at her lower lip, looking for all the world as if she was in the midst of deciphering a particularly tricky spell. She was now straddling the c in in a more obvious manner, and Ron just couldn\'t look anymore. He pressed his back against the comforting old wood of the bookshelf behind him, trying not to breathe, trying not to move. It didn\'t really help, because that just meant he -heard- her, in the echoing stillness of the library.

Her breath was hitching, fluttering like the edge of her starched white shirt, rising ever upwards. It sounded wet and husky and -intimate-, almost as if she was not alone, as if someone was touching her. Maybe just a hand stroking up her thigh, or someone\'s breath hot against her ear. Anything, just, anything at all.

He was starting to think he would go insane if he didn\'t just stop. He would be quiet as he left, and even if she knew someone was there, she didn\'t have to know it was him, because-- if he stayed any longer, he had a feeling he was going to end up with his hands holding her thighs down as his mouth dove straight between her legs, and was just -not- how he wanted to start things. Was it?

And then it was all rather moot anyway, because Hermione was gasping, an indrawn breath that seemed louder than any moan, and his eyes snapped open.

There she was, with her palm bearing down between her legs, her skirt ridden up almost around her waist. He thought maybe he caught a flash of the pale yellow knickers she still wore, before his eyes rolled back in his head--

`Fuck!’

--and he was locking his knees together since they were buckling, because he was coming harder than he thought possible, his knuckles white as he clutched at the heavy shelf beside him.

Someone cried out softly, a small breathy sound, and lost as he was, he couldn’t be sure if it was him or Hermione or maybe just the orgasmic noise in his head. `Notnownotnownotnow, oh God, not –now-,’ were all the words that formed in his fevered state of mind.

And it was so good, too good: letting go, letting himself want her and almost have her, somehow, letting himself think of everything all at once, doing something right. Even this was right, and wrong, and it didn’t matter, it was just really good, but--

Ron was panicking even as the last shudders took him, his heart still hammering in his chest even as he noticed the sweat thoroughly soaking his shirt in a sort of weak echo of the even worse mess he\'d made in his trousers. He was feeling an almost irresistible urge to wail, and this time it wasn\'t in arousal, though perhaps in retrospect, he should\'ve thanked Merlin for that small favor.

Hermione was sprawled with even less grace than before on her well-used chair, though she\'d remembered to pull her skirt down as far as it would go, and the only real evidence of anything that could be called startling was the rather blissful grin she wore. If Ron could string two thoughts together at the moment, he may have found that it looked almost painfully good on her, but as it was, he was busy wishing for Harry\'s invisibility cloak with perhaps more fervor than he\'d ever wished for anything in his life. Though perhaps that would be an exaggeration.

After a few minutes, she began to straighten, tucking her hair back behind her ear and gathering her parchments and quills and books together with slow, languid motions. Ron was still doing his best impression of a stick of wood (which, all things considered, wasn\'t all that difficult, because he was just fifteen, and Hermione looked disheveled and hazy with an irresistible air of crackly satisfaction). Indecent wasn’t really a word he’d have ever attached to his friend (his friend, yes). One didn’t think such things if one didn’t want to end up thrusting one’s head down under the cold water faucet in a fit of “emergency maintenance”.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to think offessfessor McGonnagal wearing nothing but ostrich feathers, but quickly nipped that line of thought in the bud simply because he was barely restraining himself from a violent fit of giggles, and his erection was as happy as ever.

Shegottgotten up, circling the table and periodically bending to reach for some out of the way item, presenting Ron with a rather indecent view of her imperfectly settled skirt. He thought he saw flashes of inner thigh, but that could\'ve justn hin his imagination. Regardless, what seemed an eternity to a lust-fogged teenage brain was probably only a few minutes, and then she was on her way out, her gaze focused straight ahead of her as usual.

Ron breathed a soft sigh of relief, thinking that this wasn\'t so bad after all, especially now that he\'d--

--\"Ron?\" she called--

--gotten away with it.

He froze, trying to take a deep breath, because this was just Hermione, after all. Just Hermione.

That girl, he thought rather breathlessly, pausing to reconsider once again. That girl is scary.

*****************