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"I shouldn't have kissed Ron," Hermione blurted suddenly, causing Harry to fumble the photographs he'd been sifting through. Her confession was utterly unprompted by anything that he said, simply springing out of her as her eyes locked on a picture of the three best friends taken years earlier.
"Oh," he said quietly, clearly at a complete loss for how else he might respond to that.
They were sitting in the drawing room at Grimmauld Place, the ancient house that they had slowly been restoring into a home over the past several days. Harry had invited her to stay with him and she had accepted, grateful for the opportunity to join him in hiding away from the magical community and its white-hot spotlight for a while. She had restored the wards so that only Kreacher was capable of entering the premises without Harry's say-so, and he seemed to have no interest in seeing anyone else for the time being.
He was being exceedingly generous towards her lately, but she knew that it was because he was simply grateful for her help and companionship and still not great at expressing himself through actual words.
"Er..." he began, searching for a way to move past her sudden exclamation.
"Sorry," she muttered. "That really has nothing to do with you."
"It's fine," he replied, not quite looking at her. "You can talk about it if you want to."
Her more impulsive side seized on the invitation before her more rational side could object. "I shouldn't have done it," she repeated. "It was a terrible kiss, and all it will do in the long run is hinder our ability to repair our friendship."
"Is that, er, all you want?"
"Yes." At his look of surprise, she shrugged. "I thought about other possibilities before, of course, but now that I've had the chance to really think about it, he isn't the right person for me in that sense. We spend far too much time bickering and disagreeing about things, and that isn't what I want from a lover." She felt herself blush a bit at her own use of the term.
"Oh... okay. Erm, you might want to give him a bit of time before you tell him that."
"I know. It's best that he's with his family right now."
"Yeah." Harry looked down at the photos that were now scattered on the floor around his feet.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "It's not as if I want to put you in the middle of this."
"It's fine," he repeated.
She felt a fresh burst of gratitude towards him. She always felt very secure and comfortable with him these days, and not at all uneasy about letting him see and hear the parts of her that she kept hidden away from everyone else. She didn't mind him seeing just how embarrassingly fluffy her slippers were or how extremely messy her hair still got when she left it alone or that she was possibly a bit too addicted to denim at the moment. She also wasn't afraid to ramble her way through confessions like these.
"I'm sure he didn't think much of it, anyway," she continued. "It really was a dreadful kiss. I'm quite sure that I'm an awful kisser, so it's not like he's missing out on—"
"What makes you say that?" Harry interjected.
"Oh." She shrugged. "I just can't imagine that I'm any good at it. The only other time I'd done it, I felt so embarrassed that I sort of ran away from Viktor right afterwards, and couldn't speak to him for a week." She shrugged again. "It's just not a skill that I've had any chance to develop, nor do I expect to..."
"I'm sure you'd be excellent at it," said Harry. "You're brilliant at everything, and a very fast learner."
A fresh blush filled her face. "Thanks." Deciding that she needed to move the topic away from her own embarrassment, she nudged him with her shoulder. "At least there's one thing at which you can claim to be better than I am."
He grinned. "Oh? Just the one?"
"Just the one."
He nudged her back, but then his grin faded. "Well, to be honest, I don't know if I'm all that much better at it than you are."
"Oh please, you've got loads more experience than I do."
"I don't, really. Ginny and I were only together for a few weeks."
"Yes, but you spent plenty of that time snogging."
"It was right before her O.W.L.s, remember? You told me that I needed to give her plenty of time to study."
"And since when do you do what I tell you?"
"Since I realized that doing so tends to be imperative for my survival." He looked down for a moment of sobriety, and then quickly moved the conversation back into joking territory. "Still, I did give her plenty of study breaks."
"Exactly."
"But it was only for a few weeks," he repeated.
She cocked her head, studying him. "Are you planning to get back together with her?" she asked seriously.
He looked away. "I dunno. She's, er, dealing with a lot right now."
"Do you want to, once things are more normal again? I mean, once we've all had some time to move on."
He shrugged. "I dunno," he repeated.
It surprised her just how noncommittal and even reluctant he seemed about the possibility. She had thought that there were times when he missed Ginny very much over the past year.
"I don't reckon I do," he said finally, surprising her even more. "She feels like a part of my past now, like all the rest of it. And, like you said about Ron, I don't think that we're quite right for each other in that sense."
On instinct, she placed her hand on his back and rubbed gently.
He gave an appreciative sigh. "That feels nice."
She moved closer, resting her head on his shoulder as she continued to rub his back. He smelt nice, and the sense of comfort that he radiated into her intensified.
The impulse to move even closer hit her suddenly, making her pause. Her imagination ran with it, however, giving her a vision of her reaching up and turning his face towards her and kissing his lips. She tensed, quickly pushing away the vision.
"What is it?" he asked softly, feeling the change.
"Nothing," she replied too quickly.
He turned towards her, and the abrupt proximity of his face to hers sent the vision hurtling back at her with a vengeance. She was suddenly stuck in a daydream that depicted the sort of wild snogging she'd never before come close to experiencing in her waking life.
Bursting up from the couch, she put several feet of distance between them in a second.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," she repeated. "I need to... I just need to go and... tea."
"You need to go and tea?"
She shut her eyes tightly and shook her head. "I would like some tea," she mumbled, mortified with herself.
"Er... okay."
He stood and left the room, and she got another whiff of his scent as he passed her. She didn't open her eyes again until after he was gone.
"What the heck was that?" she murmured furiously.
Still, the daydream lingered behind her eyes, refusing to be completely vanquished. In his absence, she allowed herself to entertain it for just a moment, imagining herself snogging her best friend with wild abandon and seemingly very intense enjoyment.
Then she took a deep breath, forcing her brain back under her dominion. Kissing Harry would be a very, very bad idea, wouldn't it? She had already risked one of her best friendships with an ill-advised kiss, possibly doing irreparable damage. She certainly couldn't do that with Harry, who was easily the most important person in her entire world right now.
Still, the vision refused to completely fade.
With a sigh, she left the room and descended the stairs to the kitchen, finding him at the stove with the kettle already heating up. He glanced at her with an uncertain grin. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," she replied quickly, gazing at him. God, when had he gotten so... so...
"Snogable," she blurted, and then quickly clamped her hand over her mouth.
"What?"
"Nothing," she mumbled, burying her rapidly reddening face in her hands.
"Hermione?" he asked with obvious concern.
"I'm fine," she insisted. "I'm just... snogging. I mean, I'm not snogging. Not snogging anyone, that is. Probably for a very long time."
"I'm not so sure about that."
She felt the urge to run and fought against it. She didn't need to do that with him. She could embarrass herself with him, and it would all be okay. She could take risks.
Slowly, she lowered her hands, allowing him to see how red her face was.
"You look like you could use some tea," he said with forced levity, clearly trying to minimize her embarrassment.
She gave a small smile and took a deep breath as she voiced the bold idea she couldn't shake. "Would you give me a snogging lesson?"
He froze. "What?"
"You heard me," she mumbled, not feeling up for repeating the question.
"A snogging lesson?"
She nodded.
Before he could give any more of a reaction, the kettle began whistling, and he quickly shut off the stove and poured out the two mugs, setting them on the counter. "Are you sure about this?" he asked when he turned back to her.
"Yes."
He stepped towards her, advancing until he was standing right in front of her and staring down into her eyes. "A snogging lesson?"
She nodded. "I don't mean just snogging," she quickly hedged. "There would have to be some structure, some sort of curriculum to it."
"A curriculum for snogging?"
"Yes."
He blinked at her a few times. "How about this?" And then his lips were on hers, and her head went silent.
It was so much better than she had imagined, and she gave an involuntary little hum into his mouth as she brought her hand up to keep him close.
By the time they broke apart, the water he had just boiled was almost certainly lukewarm. "That was the start of your first lesson," he murmured, his voice in a low and husky pitch to which her ears developed an immediate addiction.
"Oh," was all she could say, and it came out in the midst of a sigh that was embarrassingly heavy with yearning.
"Shall we continue?"
"Yes please."
She suddenly felt confident that she would be getting much, much better at snogging over the next few weeks. She had the perfect professor, after all.