***
(A/N) Warning! Radioactive
and possibly fatal levels of fluff ahead. Proceed at your own risk.
"And then he'll sort of--stick
his tongue in!"
Parvati burst into a gale
of giggles, rolling around the bed. "Lavender! He doesn't!"
"He does!"
"And what else?"
"Wouldn't you like to
know . . ." The sixth-year Gryffindor girls were discussing the various
methods of kissing, and Lavender had just regaled them with a blow-by-blow
description of exactly how Seamus Finnegan kissed. She turned to the one
bed that wasn't pouring forth scandalized laughter, and caroled, "Your
turn, Hermione!"
Hermione looked up from
her homework and gazed at her blankly. "My turn for what?"
"To spill," Parvati announced.
"Come on, now--how does that skinny redhead of yours kiss?"
Predictably, Hermione
pokered up. "I'm not telling you that," she said, "that's very private!"
"Oh, really! You were
listening to us!"
"I was not!"
"Your quill didn't move
once all during the description."
"It's late; we don't have
time."
The shouts came from all
over the dormitory.
"Oh, come on!"
"Surely you can give us
a little hint? Just one?"
"You've been going out
with Ron Weasley for a year, and you haven't shared anything!"
"Don't hold out on us!"
"Enquiring minds want
to know!"
Hermione sat up, carefully
putting away her parchment. "Very well," she said, flicking her hair over
her shoulder. "I'll say one thing."
She didn't say it right
away; instead, she flipped aside her covers and got under them, but didn't
pull them up.
"Come on!" someone shouted.
"Stop making a production of it!"
Hermione smoothed the
covers over her knees. "He kisses," she said, "like he's laughing." She
gave them a mysterious little smile over her shoulder and slid down under
her covers. "Good night."
* * *
For the rest of the week,
puzzled eyes followed Hermione all over the school, and they focused especially
hard when she was with Ron Weasley. Kisses like he's laughing?
the owners of these eyes asked themselves. What the heck is she talking
about?
"She just wanted to drive
us mad," Lavender told Parvati, slouching down deep into her seat in History
of Magic. "She didn't have the foggiest idea of what she was talking about.
She made it all up."
Lavender was miffed because
Hermione's disclosure (which she had never expected to be quite so dramatic,
or mysterious) had completely overshadowed her own. Who cared that Seamus
French-kissed her? All anyone wanted to know was how Ron Weasley could
kiss like he was laughing.
Parvati, the traitor,
was looking thoughtful. "Angelina Johnson told me last year that Fred
Weasley was an absolutely fantastic kisser."
"Did she say anything
about laughing?"
"No."
"There you are then. Hermione
made the entire thing up."
It was the most raging
debate since the Yule Ball who'll-ask-who issue in fourth year. Someone
went so far as to ask Harry Potter about it.
"How would I know?"
said the Gryffindor Seeker, sounding absolutely appalled. "We don't talk
about stuff like that!"
Ginny Weasley, when she
heard about it (the debate spread, ripple-like, backwards and forwards
through Gryffindor Tower) said, "Don't ask me. That's disgusting.
He's my brother! Yech!"
They were so busy arguing
about it in Herbology on Friday afternoon that Professor Sprout made them
all stay behind for a good scolding. Hermione Granger was the only Gryffindor
girl who left on time, hand-in-hand with Ron Weasley.
In posession of a mass
detention, they left a few minutes later, and with Lavender and Parvati
in front, they mooched along back to the castle, still debating.
All of a sudden, Parvati
stopped dead, and Lavender (who had been loudly proclaiming that Hermione
had conjured up the whole thing out of pixie dust) plowed into her back.
There was a minor domino effect as the girls stopped.
"What is it?"
"What's going on?"
"Let's get back; I'm hungry!"
"Look," Parvati
said softly.
Up ahead, in the shadows
of the trees, were a couple of Gryffindors. Their hair--brilliant orange
and bushy brown--made it obvious which couple they were, and it was equally
obvious what they were doing.
Even as they watched,
open-mouthed, he wrapped his arms around her middle and hoisted her up
in the air, spinning them both around a couple of times before letting
her back down again and dipping his head.
"Like . . . like he's
laughing . . ."
He was kissing her like
it was the best fun he'd ever had in his life, and that included
Quidditch (although, as a peevish Lavender said later, he was a Weasley
so you never could quite tell on that score). He kissed her like he could
go on doing it forever quite happily, with only occasional breaks to eat.
He kissed like it was an outpouring of joie de vivre, an impulsive,
joyous moment where you had to do something or you'd just burst--you had
to dance or sing or yell at the top of your lungs, just for the hell of
it.
In short--he kissed like
he was laughing.
Completely deflated, the
Gryffindor girls headed back to the tower. The worst thing about it, all
the single girls (and many of those who weren't) moaned to themselves,
was that Hermione had gotten Ron over a year ago, and she wasn't about
to let him go any time soon.
For that matter, a few
of the more perceptive girls realized, neither would he let her go.
* * *
"You planned that, didn't
you?"
"Planned what? I don't
know what you're talking about."
"You do too--why
else would you have just grabbed me and kissed me out in the open like
this, when you're always making me wait until you're sure nobody's around?"
"If you must know,
they were asking some extremely impertinent questions the other night,
and I felt like taking them down a peg."
"Hunh. You're not going
to tell me what this had to do with anything, are you?"
"No, of course not."
A snort of laughter. "C'mere."
