Objects of Desire

Chapter 1 - The Deal

By Azrael Geffen

It was a stupid deal and they all knew it. Well, maybe not Ron, but in retrospect it was Ron who had thought the whole thing up. Hermione could not be completely excused from the stupidity because she had been the idiot who had come up with the idea of writing out a magic contract for them to sign and she had even managed to install a hex if they didn’t do what they said they would. Harry, who up until this point had given no real input, proved his own idiocy by signing the damned thing.

They blamed the demon drink of course. What else could have made three perfectly sane people, heroes of the Wizarding World, do something so utterly stupid as create and sign that particular contract. They had been drunk on a combination of various spirits pilfered from Uncle Vernon’s cabinet on the day that Harry had told his hated relations exactly what he had thought of them. Harry had then set out for London to the house he had legally inherited from his godfather, Sirius Black. Now that the War was over and the Order was no longer using it, Harry could move in, and he planned to do so quickly. He had turned eighteen, he could drink in as many pubs as he chose to frequent and he most certainly planned to do just that. So all three, drunk on who knows what had begun to wax lyrical about the fact that they had spent so very long fighting the forces of evil that they hadn’t really had the kind of adolescence that most Witches and Wizards had enjoyed. It had seemed that Ron’s one great regret was that he had remained a virgin throughout his seven years of Hogwarts. It was a situation he personally planned to rectify as soon as was humanly possible.

Then came the kernel of an ‘idea’ and from that idea a hasty deal which naturally led neatly to the resultant Contract.

“Why don’t we make a deal,” Ron started, “that we all have to lose our virginity this year ?”

They hadn’t argued, as it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but then they had steadily become drunker and Hermione’s ‘bright’ idea for the contract had come into play.

In the cold light of day, when regrets and hangovers were plentiful, they had all desperately tried to destroy the contract, but to no avail, it simply wrote in a new clause every time they tried.

“I have to admit, ‘Mione, you know how to write a contract,” Ron had said impressed.

“I can see that!” she snapped, “but it means that we have to abide by the terms of the contract.”

Her head was aching, and she felt the need to vomit. She really didn’t need this right now.

“And what happens if we don’t?” Harry had asked. He didn’t want to ask, too afraid of the answer, but he knew he had too.

“We’ll, according to what we decided on, we will be disfigured by boils for the remainder of our natural lives,” Hermione stated bluntly.

“Disfigured?”

“Yes, by boils.”

“Oh.”

Ron had frowned, thought about it and finally said, “Well, hey, it isn’t as though abiding by the terms of the contract is going to be such a bad thing.”

Hermione glared at him and then stormed off to the bathroom to throw up.

The Deal was simple. They had one school year in which to lose their respective virginities. As part of a seventh year that had been interrupted by the war, they had not sat their NEWTS and had not officially ‘left’ Hogwarts. The entire year had been invited back to do it all over again. Thirty-three had accepted, and the trio was amongst that number. So they had one school year. The clauses, added as punishment for trying to destroy the contract were as follows; they were not allowed to do it with each other, they were not allowed to pay for sex and finally, they had to be true to their own sexuality. Beside each of their names on the contract was a small painted rose bush with no flowers. As each completed the set task, a full blown rose would appear.

~ ~ ~

Harry downed the potion that Hermione had made in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place and curled into a ball on his bed, waiting for it to take effect and soothe the pounding in his head. Regardless of when the hangover dissipated, Harry had the urge to stay in this position forever. He wondered if that was at all possible. Maybe Dumbledore would allow Dobby to come and look after him and he could just stay here, curled in a ball, forever and ever…covered entirely in boils. He sighed as the shreds of the hangover were starting to fall away from him and his brain began to clear. ‘Snape should be proud’, he thought with some amusement, as he had produced one hell of a potion maker in Hermione Granger. Now if only she was as brilliant at reversing irreversible contracts that she had made whilst drunk. Boils! What on earth had made them come up with boils?

If Harry was honest with himself he would have to say that the very idea of losing his virginity scared him half to death. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do it; of course he did, he was only human after all and he was eighteen years old . He should be rolling around with anyone who crossed his path. His problem was in the third clause. Sexuality. That was a problem, mostly because Harry wasn’t entirely sure exactly what his sexuality was. No, that wasn’t entirely true. He had a terrible sneaking suspicion…no; it wasn’t even that, it was an awful creeping certainty that he been blocking for two and a half years, all the while using the war as an excuse not to think about it. The fact was that he had a line up of Witches leading all the way to Surrey who would have given their right arm for the privilege of being his first and he had absolutely no interest in any of them.

He had been kissed all of three times in his life. The first had been Cho Chang in fifth year and the best he could describe that as was… wet….and a complete disaster to boot. Then in sixth year, Parvati Patil had scared the hell out of him one night when she had grabbed him after Quidditch practice and literally stuck her tongue down his throat and that was kind of suffocating and, well...wet. Finally, and possibly the most heart breaking as well, he had tried to get together with Ginny and it almost destroyed his friendship with Ron and the entire Weasley clan. He had tried, he really had, but then he realized he was only doing it because he had been expected to and in all honesty, he just didn’t want to be with her. So their kiss, when it had come, had been totally passionless and mechanical, and she had noticed it straight away ‘Who knows, maybe I’m just not a good kisser?’ he thought pointlessly.

He blamed Draco Malfoy for all his problems in this regard. Well, to be fair, not the whole of Malfoy as such, it would be far more accurate to say it was Malfoy’s stomach. It had been the first Quidditch game of sixth year and it had been pissing down with rain. Voldemort was back and the war had begun in earnest and most of the Slytherin team had family or friends who were Death Eaters  although Lucius Malfoy was still in Azkaban (he would escape with his cronies later that month). The Slytherin team were out for blood and the Gryffindor team were still trying to accommodate the fact that they were full of new and inexperienced players. It was turning into a bloody, dirty and nasty game . Players from both sides were dropping like flies. Harry and Draco had seen the Snitch at the same moment and had gone for it, bumping each other in the frenzied chase, whilst the occasional fist made contact with an arm, hip, jaw, or anything Harry or Draco could lash out at. Then, just as they had started a plunge towards the ground after the tiny golden ball, the stands of their brooms hooked around each other, and they lost all control, plummeting to the ground and landing in a wet heap on the pitch. Harry had sat up and looked down at his enemy lying beside him. His robes were open, jumper runched up and a pale expanse of flat stomach was exposed to the pouring rain. Harry had stared as though in a trance at the delicious view that started at the bottom of Malfoy’s ribs to the low slung band of his trousers. His stomach was toned with lean muscle, and there was a light dusting of hair that trailed from his navel down under his waistband. He watched as the stomach contracted with every breath Malfoy took and suddenly, he had become inextricably aroused, getting the first hard on he’d had for another person in as long as he could remember.

“How bad can a lifetime covered in boils be?” He shuddered, and thought it would probably be pretty bad.

~ ~ ~

“You could be very pretty dear,” said the mirror cheerfully, “if you just made a bit of an effort.”

“Oh shut UP!” Mental note to self, get a Muggle mirror. Make an effort indeed. Did the stupid bloody mirror have any idea at all of just how much effort she needed to make to look passable? At the Yule Ball in her third year, Hermione had turned heads and caused many to admire, but it had taken many hours of concentrated effort to achieve that little feat, not to mention an astounding array of products from Hogsmeade. There was no way she could do that on a daily basis, and there was no way she wanted to be a slave to ‘fashion’. She contented herself with plaiting her bushy brown curls each day so that she didn’t resemble a not so cute woodland creature . That was her only concession to daily vanity. Hermione was not and never would be, a ravishing beauty. She was pretty enough, with a face unmarred by any real blemishes, a turned up nose, nice mouth, tolerable teeth and chocolate eyes. She knew she was a plain girl, and she felt no desire to smother her face in make-up or wear butterflies or flowers in her hair. Each day her routine was the same, wash face, plait hair, get dressed, and leave. She had no plans to change that. Hermione was practical . She was far more interested in books and the acquisition of knowledge than her looks…or the pursuit of men.

The pursuit of men. Now what was she going to do about that? She had never really cared overly about the whole ‘losing her virginity’ thing, so why had she agreed to this stupidity? It was simply not in her nature to lie on her back and let some guy have sex with her. Hermione had hoped to fall in love before actually having sex, but now she had to find a mate, and fast. She would at least have to get to know him, even if it was only a little. One night stands were certainly not her thing. But who? She knew almost every boy at Hogwarts and none…absolutely none of them interested her in the slightest. She needed a man who had a similar mind to her, a man who valued knowledge and technical perfection above all else . Looks were not important, the pursuit of knowledge was.

“Oh come on,” she admonished angrily to herself, “you’re looking for a one night stand so that you don’t end up covered from head to toe in boils.” Boils! Bloody boils of all things, and for the rest of their lives! They must have been very drunk to come up with that.

Could she do the one night stand thing? She highly doubted it. Her saving grace was that, at eighteen Hermione would be able to come and go from Hogwarts with greater freedom and maybe, if she was lucky, she might meet someone in Hogsmeade.

~ ~ ~

Ron had no reservations in the slightest about the Deal they had written up. In fact, he thought it was a great idea. One of the greatest tragedies, in his eyes at least, was that every other student in their year seemed to have been shagging like bunnies and Harry, Hermione and himself hadn’t. They were heroes for Merlin’s sake; they should have been getting plenty of action. Ron’s original plan had been to simply rectify it quietly over the next twelve months. The Deal just gave him the added incentive to do what he had wanted to do in the first place.

Ron saw himself in a good position. At eighteen he was tall and had fortunately filled out a lot, which made him more imposing than gangly. He had a good face, looking more like Bill than Percy and his mop of red hair had been cut fashionably on the insistence of his twin brothers who now fancied themselves to be the trend setters of the Wizarding world. The look suited Ron, who had always been in danger of being seen as nothing more than Harry’s second, and it seemed he had a friend in fashion. Harry, who was almost a full head shorter than his friend, did not have the tall leanness to carry off the modern fashions that seemed to be stocked in all of the best stores. Ron quite simply did. He had a decent set of cheek bones, clear blue eyes and a rather long nose that looked just fine on his face. He was looking good, with the childhood awkwardness a thing of the past, and he knew it.

More importantly, Ron had no qualms about who he lost his virginity to, just so long as he did. He was in a good position . He was likable, good looking, old enough to drink in pubs and he was one of the heroes of the Wizarding World. As far as he could see, this year was going to be great.

Chapter 2 >>