Epilogue
He wasn't entirely sure why, but he was drunk. Again. Lavender was singing some crude Muggle drinking song and Hermione was looking appropriately mortified by her behaviour. Ron was egging her on, which was entirely expected on Harry's part. Harry was content to drink at the sweet wheaty beer that was brewed on the premises especially, and continue to cuddle Hermione to his side. She shook her head, supping at her own cocktail.
"Please remind me why we agree to go out with that woman?"
"Hmm, because she's shagging Ron into submission?" he offered.
She eyed him.
"Oh, hang on, we went out with her before that. Hmm, must be the fact that she not only pays for our drinks but makes sure we don't go home from these piss ups without life-altering body art," he said, and bobbed his glass at Hermione.
Hermione's eyes narrowed and a naughty smirk drifted across her lips. "Yes, well, I'll remember that."
He wasn't entirely sure he was secure in her tone.
That day at work had been quite an experience for Harry, for many reasons. Lupin, thank God, did not ask questions when Harry apologised for being late and mumbled with beetroot red cheeks that they'd both slept in (sorry, so sorry, didn't mean to, Sir). Lupin merely lifted his brows with twinkling eyes and muttered that it better not happen again.
Hermione stomped off, blushing as darkly as Harry was, growling curses at a certain werewolf she kept nameless.
It was soon after that moment that Tonks walked into his office, bright as a button, an imp-like smile on her lips, and winked at him. Her near-black eyes seemed to twinkle with some secret knowledge and Harry felt himself blushing all over again. Much to his surprise, Tonks hooted, a sharp bark-like sound that made him jump a foot in his chair.
"I knew it!" she hissed happily. "Ohh, I knew it."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Slept in!" she sniggered.
"Oh, God."
Tonks just wiggled her eyebrows at him, and she reminded him spookily of Sirius. Harry sighed at her.
"Yes, yes, all right. Whatever you're thinking, it probably happened, with bells on. Can we please get on with
our work now?"
"Hhmhehehe!" Tonks nodded. "Promise."
Harry sighed and looked over his glasses at her. "Do you and Lupin *always* tell each other everything?"
To Harry's complete surprise, Tonks' cheeks grew bright red, and she stood up, pushing herself away from his desk.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she mumbled, and strode from the room.
From then on, the day looked up. He'd spent time with Hermione at lunch for once, managing to drag her from the library (but she wasn't too hesitant to leave it).
Thankfully the second half of the day wasn't quite as embarrassing as the first. He could feel people's eyes on him as he went about his daily duties, but he really was starting not to care. So what if people were amused? So what if they said to each other, "I knew it was going to happen!"? He didn't, and now it had, and he was with Hermione and life, for the first time in years, was absolutely wonderful. He felt like he had a balloon inside of his chest, making him float a little all the time. Whenever he saw Hermione, it made him float a little more. It was thoroughly intoxicating and he surrendered himself to it. He was quite simply sick of trying to find reasons not to enjoy it all.
That night at the pub with Ron, Lavender and Hermione would have to have been the best he remembered. It was just the four of them, laughing and drinking and talking together, old friends that had found something in someone and were exploring it bravely. Bravely and drunkenly. Hermione tapped the bar, winking at Tom the Barkeep.
"Harry needs another one, Tom, mate," she said, leaning her cleavage on the bar. "Look, he's not wobbling."
Tom snorted and pulled out a bottle of firewhisky. "Don't mind on his sobriety, as long as the drinks is paid for," said the bar man.
"Always," said Harry dourly, but there was a twinkle of mirth in his eyes.
Tom just nodded at that and put another full-strength butterbeer on the bar.
The night wore on. Like the last time he'd spent there, Lavender plied him with liquor, and worse, Hermione joined in this time. He had to wonder what she was up to, because if she got him any more drunk he doubted he'd be much good in bed later that night. It was around one in the morning when Hermione pulled him from the bar chair and squeezed him sharply on the bottom.
"Come on," she mumbled, "Time to go for a walk."
"Where?" he asked, wishing she'd keep still, and then realising it was him that was wobbling.
"Diagon Alley," said Lavender, tugging on Ron's arm and leading him out the back door of the pub.
Hermione hummed the favoured Gryffindor pride song under her breath, every now and again muttering the lyrics (all wrong because she was drunk). Lavender joined in every now and again, deliberately mangling the lyrics till they were rude.
Plodding after the others, Harry found himself in the back alley of The Leaky Cauldron. With a shaky sort of aim, Hermione jabbed at the bricks of the alleyway, grumbling.
"Oh DO keep... rgg... STILL!"
She finally smacked the last brick with her wand and the bricks shook and folded back to reveal Diagon Alley. Harry had barely realised that the way was clear when Hermione grabbed his arm and dragged him into the alley. All he could do was watch his feet, making sure that one went after the other and that he didn't trip up at all.
"Here, Harry," said Hermione, pulling a bottle out of her bag. "Have some of this. You too, Ron."
Harry looked to the bottle in her hand and choked, waving a wild pointing finger at it.
"Tha's tha' evil green stuff!"
"It's fabulous!" exclaimed Lavender.
"Have some!" Hermione said. "Come on!"
She pulled the stopped and held it to his lips, and with a sigh of supplication, he opened his mouth to sip some. Hermione must have been half mad, he thought, because she was tipping copious amounts of the stuff down his throat. He gulped it down desperately and coughed.
"You tryin' to DROWN me?!"
"Jus' 'ave some more," she said, pushing the bottle to him. "I's very impordant."
"Whah for?"
"You'll see," she said.
Harry took another mouthful of the vile green stuff, and with a toddling, staggering step, was directed down Knockturn Alley, barely noticing where he was going. He may have passed out at that point, he wasn't sure. All he knew was that was where his memories of the night ended.
~~*~~
Harry awoke the next day with a shocking headache. He was very glad that it was the weekend. He doubted very, very much that he would have been able to make it to work if he'd had to have gone. In fact, he was sure he would have splinched himself in the phone booth on the way in. He rolled over with a groan, collecting a face full of bushy brown hair and a soft, warm, round female body. Aah, it wasn't all bad, he thought. Except that his bottom was hurting something fierce. He tried to snooze some more, but his head was pounding far too much for that. He crawled out of bed, promising himself some painkilling charms and a hot cup of coffee when he got downstairs. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he felt like a bundle of needles were prickling into his bottom. He hissed, standing up and checking if he'd accidentally invited a hedgehog into his bed last night.
No, no hedgehog.
But standing in the middle of the room, he saw his reflection in his full-length mirror by the wall, and felt all the blood drain from his face.
He'd been marked.
He sprang over to the mirror, twisting about in it, trying to ignore his head still throbbing painfully, pulling at the round of his bottom and trying to see the little brown something that was fluttering on his skin. His heart drew still as he saw what it was.
A book. Brown, leather-bound, with a gold buckle on it. On the cover it said, "Hogwarts: A History" (of all the things!) and he immediately thought of Hermione. His heart thumped hard in his chest, and the book blew open, the protective leafs fluttering by to reveal the front page, marked thusly:
-Property of-
Hermione Granger
He groaned, rubbing his face in a shaking hand, stomach clenching and then dropping in his chest. That evil, delicious, wonderful woman. He turned about, propping his hands on his hips, tapping his fingers on the curl of them with a heavy sigh. Hermione was stretched out on her back, hair, shoulder and face peeking out of the quilt. He stepped over to her, and stood there patiently. He whistled, tapped his feet, did generally annoying things to stir her from her sleep. It eventually paid off, and her eyes cracked open slowly.
"Hmm," She smiled, rubbing her eyes and looking him up and down. He was absolutely stark naked, standing there with his hands still on his hips. Propping herself on her elbow and leaning on her hand, she sighed happily. "What a wonderful sight to wake up to."
"I'm glad you enjoyed waking up," Harry said, "Because it was quite a different experience for me."
"Was it?"
"Yes!" He nodded. "I woke up and low and behold, not only do I have a cracking headache from a certain green vile liquid you made me consume-"
"I didn't hold my wand to your head, Harry," she said, eyes twinkling.
He eyed her, lips pursed. "No, you just poured it right down my throat."
"You swallowed," she smirked.
He sighed with frustration. Damn her for being sexy.
"-not ONLY do I have a cracking headache, but my poor arse cheek feels like a knarl decided to use it for a pillow!"
A cheeky smirk twisted Hermione's lips. "I wonder whatever's wrong with it?"
"Oh, I can tell you," he said, kneeling in front of her and bringing his face close, eyeing her firmly. "It's all thanks to a tattoo of a book saying 'Property of Hermione Granger'."
He waited for that to sink in. Hermione merely blinked and giggled. The wench giggled.
"You were very insistent on getting it," she said. "You can hardly blame me."
"You're behind it!" he growled, pointing at her. "You made me get it!"
"I merely made a suggestion!" she said, sitting up in bed, the quilt falling down around her hips. "You can't blame me for your strange decisions!"
"It's a decision I probably wouldn't have made if I hadn't been three sheets to the wind!"
Hermione threw back the quilt she was under and pulled her hair behind her shoulders, exposing her breasts and effectively every other part of her anatomy. She flapped a hand impatiently.
"Well, what am I supposed to do? I can't very well get rid of it." She then pouted. "Don't you like it?"
He'd been quite distracted by all the skin that had been exposed, and at her plaintive tone, he opened his mouth, no sound coming out. He blinked, mouth wagging for a moment and he sighed.
"I - I wouldn't say I didn't like it," he said, and he looked over his shoulder. "It's... I'd say it's a shock. I mean... I like the sentiment."
Hermione suddenly brightened and jumped out of bed. "Good!" She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly, and Harry couldn't find his indignant anger anymore. There were too many nice warm soft bits pressed up against him for that.
"Why don't you go downstairs and bring us up some breakfast!" she asked him. "We can sit in bed all morning and misbehave."
A light smile fluttered across Harry's face and he nodded. "All right."
He pulled on a pair of his tracksuit pants and made his way downstairs. As he dug through the fridge, he began to realise that Hermione seemed to take great joy in telling him what to do. Then again - when wasn't she just a little bit bossy? He smiled dreamily, pulling eggs and rashers of bacon from the fridge and putting them on the sideboard.
"Morning."
Harry turned and saw Ron padding into the kitchen, wearing only his pyjama pants, moving very gingerly.
"You look bloody awful," said Harry.
"So do you," Ron said, and pulling out a chair at the table, he sat down. As his bottom made contact with the chair, he hissed.
Harry did a double-take and pointed at Ron.
"Don't tell me... you too?!"
Ron's eyes widened and he pointed back at Harry. "You mean-"
"On my bum!" Harry cried.
"Those evil little-"
"What did they put on you?!"
Ron went bright red and sinking in his chair he hid a little behind his hands. "A Quick-Quotes quill."
"Does it move? What does it do?" asked Harry, brows rising.
"It reports on what I'm feeling," Ron said through gritted teeth. "Word for word, right across my arse cheek!"
~~*~~
When Harry got upstairs, he got naked again as quickly as he could and jumped under the covers with Hermione. They playfully fed each other the breakfast Harry prepared and when they were both quite full, Harry levitated the plate carefully to the floor. He'd barely rolled onto his back when Hermione straddled him, a naughty smirk on her face.
"Hello," he said, raising his arms and laying them on her thighs.
Her smirk turned to a grin. "Hello."
"What are you up to?"
She gave a cheeky sigh, scooting down underneath the covers, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Yes, he decided he would like to know, and oh - he was now finding out exactly what she was up to. He wanted nothing more than to melt into the mattress, enjoy what he was feeling, but something was niggling at him. It was curiosity. He squirmed.
"Mmph!" Hermione burrowed out from under the quilts. "Harry, unless you want me to bite it off, you have to keep still-"
"What did Lavender get?"
Hermione blinked, seemingly affronted at the mention of another woman while they were in bed.
"Well... I got a book. You got a Snitch. Ron got a quill. If he got something, naturally Lavender must have gotten one, because the whole point in Ron and I getting tattoos was revenge, right?"
A dawning look fluttered across Hermione's face and she nodded. "Yes, you're right."
"So... what did she get?"
Smirking, Hermione leant towards his ear, the tips of her breasts brushing his chest rather nicely.
"A weasel."
At that, she disappeared under the blanket, Harry giggling before Hermione stopped him from thinking much else - at least for a little while.
~~*~~
A final AN: Okay everyone. Thank you SO much for reading my story, and reviewing and being utterly wonderful. If you loved this story, do yourselves a favour!! Check out Anne's wonderful companion piece "Scratching the Itch", which is Hermione's point of view of what is going on! Thanks! Oh - and keep an eye out for my next Harry Potter tale - Harriet.
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