Chapter 576: Ch 602 - Harry’s First Kiss

It was half an hour later when Harry finally arrived, leaving just Hermione, Ron, and Lucifer sitting in dimming warmth of the Common Room.

"What kept you?" Ron asked from his sprawling position on the hearthrug, where he was desperately trying to finish his overdue ’Transfiguration’ homework. He didn’t even look up as their messy-haired friend sunk heavily into the nearest armchair.

Harry didn’t answer immediately. The lingering silence caused all three of them to stop what they were doing and look over at him.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Hermione asked softly. She momentarily looked up from the elegant pheasant-feather quill Lucifer had purchased for her at ’Scrivenshaft’s.’ She was currently in the middle of writing a firm, tactical letter to her annoying but good hearted Muggle cousin Caitlin, regarding Lucifer, explicitly telling her under no circumstances to visit their house over the winter holidays.

Harry gave a helpless, half-hearted shrug of his shoulders.

"What’s up?" Lucifer asked, closing his Quidditch tactics book and looking up with a piercing gaze. "What happened down there?"

Harry was still visibly reluctant to say a word. But before he even had the chance to invent a cover story, Hermione efficiently took deduction right out of his hands. "Is it about Cho Chang?" she asked in a crisp, business like way. "Did she corner you in the corridor after meeting concluded?"

Harry gave a slow nod, but it looked like an automatic, stunned gesture. Ron instantly let out a loud snicker from the rug, but noise died abruptly under a lethal, freezing glare from the bushy-haired girl.

"So, er--what did she want?" Ron asked, adjusting his posture into a mock casual tone.

"She--" Harry began, but the words cut off suddenly in his throat. He cleared his hoarse throat and tried his best to start again. "She--er---"

"Did you and her kiss?" Lucifer asked flatly, putting it out there like it was a completely mundane observation.

Ron sat up so incredibly fast that his elbow clipped his ink bottle, flinging black ink all over his parchment grid. But the ruined homework went untouched as he leaned forward, his eyes wide, staring avidly at Harry’s flushed face. "Well?" he demanded loudly. "Did you?!"

Harry looked between all three of them, carefully analyzing each of their unique expressions in firelight, before he gave a tight, reluctant nod.

"Ha!" Ron made a triumphant, aggressive gesture with his fist in the air, bursting into a raucous, mocking peal of laughter. The loud display caused Hermione to let out an annoyed huff, rolling her eyes as she returned to scratching out the ink lines of her letter.

"Well?" Ron pressed eagerly after his laughter finally calmed down to a chuckle. "How was it, mate?"

"Wet..." Harry muttered, staring blankly at his knees, he somehow regretted doing so, it would have been better if they didn’t kiss at all, he felt severely wronged.

Lucifer gave him a concerned, highly judgmental look from his armchair.

"It’s because... it’s because she was crying the entire time..." Harry explained defensively, his face burning.

"Blimey. Is she truly that bad of a kisser, mate?" Ron asked, grinning broadly.

"I dunno..." Harry sighed heavily, seemingly considering Ron’s words with a wave of self-doubt. "Maybe I am the one who’s terrible at it?"

"I don’t think you are bad at it at all, Harry," Hermione said smoothly, her quill still scribbling away perfectly across her parchment sheet.

"And how do you know that!?" Ron asked sharply, his head snapping toward her.

’Don’t go stabbing yourself with jealousy, Weasley,’ Lucifer thought to himself with a dry, bitter cynicism as his eyes tracked the ginger boy’s rigid shoulders. ’Why would you care so much anyway? You haven’t had the balls to say a romantic thing to Hermione over the entire course of this term...’

"Because," Hermione explained, pausing her writing once more to look across the hearth, "Cho spends about half of her available time crying her eyes out these days. She does it at the mealtimes, in the girls’ loos, all over the place inside the castle."

"Well, you’d think a bit of kissing would cheer a girl up then, wouldn’t it?" Ron asked, a mocking grin breaking across his features.

"Ronald," She started, her voice dropping into the most dignified, freezing register she could possibly manage, "You are honestly the most insensitive, pathetic wart I have ever had the profound misfortune to meet in this school."

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Ron asked indignantly, his ears turning red. "What sort of normal person cries while someone is kissing them?"

"Yeah," Harry joined in, his tone sounding slightly desperate for Hermione’s answer. "Who actually does that?"

"Neither of you idiots understand how that poor girl is feeling at moment, do you?" Lucifer asked them, his voice carrying a cold weight.

"No," both Gryffindor boys admitted together, looking completely lost.

Hermione laid her silver quill down flat against the table, letting out a long, heavy sigh. "Well, obviously, she’s feeling very, very sad because of Cedric Diggory dying last June. Then, I expect she’s feeling confused inside because she genuinely liked Cedric and now she finds herself liking Harry, her brain can’t work out who she likes best... Then, on top of that, she’ll be feeling guilty, thinking it’s a horrible insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she’ll be constantly worrying about what everyone else in the Ravenclaw tower might say about her if she starts going out with Potter... And probably can’t work out what her feelings toward you are anyway, Harry, because you were the person who was with Cedric when he died, so that’s all very mixed up, traumatic, and painful. Oh, and she’s also terrified she’s going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because her flying performance has been so terribly bad lately."

A slightly stunned, silence greeted the end of Hermione’s emotional lecture.

After a long beat, Ron blinked, muttering, "One person can’t possibly feel all of those things at once, Hermione. Their bloody head would explode..."

"Just because you possess the total emotional range of a common teaspoon, Ronald, doesn’t mean the rest of us do!" Hermione said nastily, her eyes glaring as she picked up her quill again. She glanced over at Lucifer, noticing that her boyfriend had been exceptionally quiet, eyes on her with a soft, protective warmth.

"She was the one who started the whole thing," Harry defended himself, his hands waving in a panic, "I wouldn’t have done, she just sort of came straight at me out of nowhere, and the next thing I know, she’s crying all over my collar. I didn’t have a clue what to do..."

"I don’t blame you, mate," Ron said with a genuinely alarmed, terrified look at the mere thought of being stuck in Harry’s physical spot.

"You just had to be gentle and nice to her," Hermione said efficiently, then looked up anxiously from her desk. "You were nice to her, weren’t you?"

"Well," Harry said, his face rapidly starting to heat up to a bright crimson, "I sort of... I sort of patted her on the back a bit while she sobbed."

Hermione inwardly cringed so hard her teeth clicked. "Well... I suppose under the circumstances, the interaction could have gone worse," She said to Harry, trying to be supportive, "Are you planning to see her again outside of class?"

"I’ll have to see her again, won’t I?" Harry asked, looking bewildered. "We’ve got our weekly D.A. meetings scheduled, haven’t we?"

"You know what she means by that, Potter," Lucifer said, leaning back.

"It’s fine either way," Hermione said, getting invested in her letter once more. God, even after she had explicitly shared her past, intense physical experiences with Lucifer to warn him about women, Harry was still clueless about the dynamics. No wonder the boy desperately wanted her advice. "You’ll have plenty of chances to ask her out properly after the holidays."

"What if he doesn’t want to ask her out at all?" Ron asked, his arms crossing.

"Then there will always be other girls available in the castle or guys, if Harry eventually finds out he doesn’t actually like girls," Lucifer said with a dry chuckle, earning a pair of fierce, embarrassed glares from both Harry and Ron.

"Besides, Harry has liked her for ages, haven’t you?" Hermione asked him, ignoring the boys’ posturing.

Harry didn’t offer a direct answer, and she was far too busy finalizing her letter to put any more effort into asking him a second time.

Ron, however, had been watching her ink lines with an increasingly hostile expression, and he finally snapped a question at her. "Who are you writing a bloody novel to, anyway?"

"What is that tone supposed to mean, Ronald? I am writing down useful information for my family," Hermione said, her nose scrunching a bit in deep annoyance; she thoroughly disliked the jealous, aggressive tone being fired at her desk.

"Really? Because I’ve watched you write off and on for the past half hour," Ron asked back hatefully, his jaw clenching as his eyes darted toward Lucifer. "Are you sure it’s not some international wizard boy you know from last yea---"

"Mind your own business, Ronald!" Hermione snapped, her eyes narrowing into thin, lethal slits as she glared at him with vitriol, in her fury, she had almost sprayed the bloody ink on her letter to favourite older cousin, Caitlin.

"Why are you not answering the question?!" Ron asked even more fiercely, standing up from the rug.

Instead of wasting another molecule of her oxygen answering his childish tantrum, she turned her face to Lucifer, voice dropping into a peculiar, soft cadence meant only for him. "I’m going straight up to bed, love. Good night." She tightly rolled up her parchment list, packed her quills, and marched rigidly up the girls’ circular staircase to her dormitory room.

Lucifer watched her figure disappear past the oak landing. He knew miles better than to try and stop her momentum, at least with Ron and Harry still sitting right there by the hearth. He slowly turned his frame to face Ron, his pupils instantly turning a devilish, furious shade of pure crimson as a bone-chilling aura dropped over the rug.

"Way to go, Weasley," he growled, standing up to his full, towering height.

Ron’s breath instantly caught in his throat, and the ginger boy started to genuinely fear for his physical life as the air pressure plummeted.

"Give me one good reason right now why I shouldn’t paint the stone walls of this school with your blood..." Lucifer’s deep voice was completely menacing.

"I—I—I’m sorry, Lucifer! I—I didn’t mean to—to get so angry with her, I swear!" Ron stammered horribly, his knees shaking as he backed away toward the wall.

"You’re right you didn’t mean to. You are standing on paper-thin ice with my patience already," Lucifer said, his voice a dangerous whisper that made Ron flinch. "I’d tread much more carefully if I were you, or Angelina Johnson is going to have to find new Keeper for the team again before the next match, and I would really hate to put her through that hassle."

With that final threat hanging over the hearth, Lucifer closed his tactics book with a resounding ’thud’ and casually walked up the boys’ stairs to the dormitory as well.

Harry and Ron remained sitting in the quiet common room for another hour, the tension thick, when the stone portrait hole suddenly swung open with a sharp rattle. Through the gap, their eyes caught the clear sight of Ginny Weasley passionately kissing Michael Corner goodbye in the corridor.

When she stepped through the portal into the Common Room, smoothing her hair, Ron exploded angrily at her instead, channeling all of his residual frustration from Lucifer’s threat straight onto his sister. "What the bloody hell do you think you are doing, Ginny?!"

Ginny also exploded with a sudden, anger right back at him, her eyes burning in the firelight. "It is none of your business who I choose to go out with or what to do with them in the corridors, Ron---"

"Yeah, it bloody well is!" Ron’s voice barked back, just as furiously as he stomped across the rug, "Do you honestly think I want the other houses saying my sister is a comm---"

"A what?" shouted Ginny, her tone growing more and more heated as she marched straight up to his face. "A what, Ron?!"

"He doesn’t mean anything by it, Ginny---" Harry’s voice came automatically, stepping off his armchair, though he sounded significantly more anxious than angry as he tried to keep the peace.

"Oh, yes he bloody well does!" Ginny yelled, flaring up at Harry’s intrusion. She turned back to her brother, her lip curling in contempt. "Just because he has never snogged a person in his entire life, just because the best kiss he’s ever had is from our wrinkly Auntie Muriel---"

"Shut your mouth right now!" Ron roared, his face turning an ugly shade of dark red.

He was sending venomous glares at his sister while Ginny had her wand raised high and steady straight toward his chest, and Harry stood between them, shifting uncontrollably on his feet.

"Oh, for goodness’ sake," Ginny sighed angrily, her shoulders shaking, "You are being pathetic, Ron! Maybe if you actually went out of this tower and got a bit of real snogging done yourself for once, you wouldn’t mind so much that everyone else in the school does it!"

Ron had pulled his own wand out of his robes; Harry stepped swiftly and forcefully directly between the siblings.

"You don’t know what you’re talking about!" Ron roared, trying desperately to get a clear spell shot at Ginny around Harry’s shoulders, who was now standing firmly in front of her frame with his arms outstretched. "Just because I don’t choose to do it out in public where everyone can see—!"

Ginny screamed with a sharp, derisive laughter, trying to push Harry’s weight out of her way to look at her brother. "Been kissing your owl Pigwidgeon, have you? Or have you got a moving picture of Auntie Muriel stashed safely under your pillow?!"

A sudden, sharp streak of bright orange light flew right under Harry’s left arm, missing Ginny’s shoulder by mere inches as it hit the stone wall behind her. Harry turned instantly, his hands shoving Ron hard up against the common room wall.

"Oi! Don’t be stupid, Ron—!" Harry yelled, gripping his shoulders.

"So what if I’ve kissed Michael Corner?!" Ginny shouted, her voice breaking as she sounded close to tears of frustration now, "Hermione is dating Lucifer Morningst---"

"WHAT?!" Ron shouted at the top of his lungs, his eyes narrowing as his head snapped toward the ceiling leading to the boys’ dormitory.

"—and she has even shagged Lucifer inside his bed!" Ginny screamed out the truth, her anger blinding her caution. "Meaning it is only ’you’ in this entire house who acts like sharing physical intimacy is something disgusting and wrong, Ron! And that’s because you’ve got about as much real experience as a common twelve-year-old!"

Realizing what dangerous secret had just left her lips, Ginny instantly clapped a trembling hand tightly over her mouth, eyes widening in horror. Turning on her heel, she ran as fast as her boots could carry her straight up stairs toward the girls’ dormitory, the door slamming shut behind her.

Ron was practically fuming with an uncontrollable, shaking rage. He wrenched himself free from Harry’s grip and ran straight towards the fifth-year boys’ room in a desperate, murderous hurry. He banged the door open, intending to confront the betrayal, only to find that Lucifer’s bed curtains were thrown open, and the mattress was empty.

The nearby glass window was wide open, and a cool, freezing December breeze was entering their bedroom.

Ron let out a series of furious, vile curse words that his mother Molly would have never approved of, slamming fists against wooden post before angrily laying down on his own bed, jaw clenching as he waited for when Lucifer would show up.

xxxxxx

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