Communication (Fireworks Series #8)

for Bambu345 who keeps filling my head with ideas for where this series could go faster than I can write them

George's hands felt their way down Hermione's arms until he reached her wrists. Guiding her limbs upward, he moved them until her wrists were so close that he could clasp them both in one hand. His grip was firm but not so tight that Hermione couldn't have broken free with only a little effort.

"You are playing with fire, little girl," he reminded her in a teasing drawl. His free hand slowly glided back over her cotton-draped arm, pausing briefly as she writhed under him when he reached her armpit before continuing downward. His gaze fixed on her face, he lifted his hand slightly as he trailed it inward from her ribcage so that it was only one fingertip and then one fingernail that he used to describe smaller and smaller circles around the peak of her breast.

Hermione clenched her thighs as first her aureole puckered tight and then her nipple stood erect. The physical sensation was breath-stopping, somehow a dozen times more intense than her own experimental fumbling beneath a layer of pristine foam in the prefects' bathroom. Nevertheless, her physical reaction alone didn't account for the rush of warmth she felt at the juncture of her legs. It was the promise in his darkened eyes, a look that spoke of a deep desire, measured and held in check for now, but ultimately as inevitable as the tides.

She let out a long shuddering breath that she hadn't been aware of holding as he leant close so that he could swap hands and repeat the process all over again in mirror image.

"George?" she all but moaned when he finally took his hand away and set her arms free.

"Just making a point," George answered in a voice slightly rougher than the norm, but then his lips twitched and his gaze flicked briefly to his latest handiwork. "Or two," he corrected himself. "If you'd gone any lower with that mouth of yours, then... Let's just say I don't think you'd be ready for the consequences, and I wouldn't be exactly happy if I scared you off."

"I just— I mean, well, I thought we could sort of get comfortable with each other. I mean in stages," Hermione tried to explain.

"Believe me, love," George answered with a rueful grin and a shift of his hips as they rested between her thighs that made his meaning more than clear. "With your head down there and those big brown eyes watching me squirm, comfortable was a couple of galaxies over."

'Just a figure of speech,' Hermione repeated to herself over and over, trying her best to ignore the fact that it was one endearment she couldn't remember George using before.

"You understand, don't you?" George asked, unsettled by Hermione's silence.

"I'm sixteen, not stupid," Hermione answered with a smile, pushing aside thoughts about whether George had even realised what he had called her. "But I guess half-naked George wasn't a great idea," she added, turning her head to one side in embarrassment.

Gentle fingers guided her chin back around until her eyes met his once more. "Half-naked George is fine by me..." he told her, rising briefly into a kneeling position to undo the buttons on his cuffs and shrugging the white cotton free of his shoulders, "especially as a stepping stone on the way to half-naked Hermione." His eyes seemed to try to coax her back into a lighter mood.

Hermione did her best to give a stern glare in return.

"Hey!" George protested as he lifted each of his legs in turn over Hermione's so that he could lie back down at her side and wrap his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. "Isn't this worth at least a button or two?"

Hermione briefly lifted her head, perusing the lines of George's upper body. His pectorals were clearly defined as were the muscles of his upper arms and there was just the faintest hint of muscle ridges across his abdomen. Her lower lip slid slowly from under her teeth as she noted that he had only a dusting of body hair, a shade or two darker and duller than that on his head, but still with a distinct reddish tint. The freckles that were dark and moderately dense on his lower arms became fewer, smaller and paler as you reached his biceps and almost disappeared completely from the milk white skin of his torso.

"Maybe one button," she replied as she dropped her head back to his shoulder and draped an arm around his waist and a leg over his.

"Just one?" He sounded less than impressed.

"Well, you might get more if you at least trimmed the armpit hair," Hermione argued.

"You've got to be joking!" George snorted. "I'm shaved and clean and that's as much as you get, missy. What sort of poser do you think you've got yourself?"

"The sort who gets one button," his girlfriend teased, "and the way I remember it, it was you who got me."

George let his lower lip drop into a pout that tugged a giggle up from Hermione's stomach and brought it sparkling through her lips. The pout melted into an expression of delight and he brushed a skin-tingling kiss to the tip of her nose when her laughter faded away. He reached out with his free arm and tugged gently at the neck of Hermione's blouse, but the fabric was too stiff for the fastening to come free without more emphatic persuasion and Hermione batted his hand aside before opening one more button.

"Happy now?" she asked him, expecting a reply to the effect that he'd be happier if she undid more buttons.

Instead, George responded with a contented sigh. "Pretty much."

"That's good," said Hermione, settling back onto her George-shaped pillow. "I'd hate to think that I've got my mum doing favours for an ingrate."

"Your mum?" George asked.

"Well," answered Hermione, "I was thinking that, rather than you, me and Fred being the last to leave the common room every night, it might be better if we could pass messages the same way Harry used to arrange the DA meetings."

"You mean another Protean Charm?" George surmised.

Hermione nodded but then gave a faintly discontented sigh. "I tried to think of something personal, like matching rings or pendants or something, but it would have had to have been something we could keep hidden or someone would notice, and I could maybe imagine you with a necklace but it'd have to be something that wasn't too showy. Maybe leather thong or a lace rather than a chain... with a little silver charm like a dragon or a fox or a tiger, but that wouldn't really have anywhere you could put the messages and it wouldn't look right on something long enough to hide it when you've got an open-necked shirt on and it would all just end up too... medallion man. With rings you could work an inscription on the inside, but, even if we got ones with identical designs, the fact that they would be different sizes would have made the charm a little more difficult and—"

"Shhhhh," George whispered. He gave her a kiss on the forehead. "We'll have plenty of time for matching rings once our secret isn't a secret any more. There's all the time in the world. Now, why don't you tell me what you did come up with?"

"Well, we've already got the fake Galleons, but we can't use those without altering everyone else's... and, well, it seems to me that you and Fred are collecting so many real ones lately that, even if I made a new pair, it would be too easy for you to spend them... And if you and Fred are going to be living by yourselves then you'll probably end up using Muggle money all the time for food and stuff, so that rules out anything in general circulation, but I remembered Mum saying that she was going to pick up one of the commemorative coins for the Queen's seventieth birthday for me. They're bigger than any of the other Muggle coins, so they're not easily confused with anything else. So I wrote to her this morning to ask if she could get two and send them here rather than keeping it for me at home."

"Sounds like a plan to me," George assured her.

"You're sure?" Hermione asked. "I mean I really did try to think of something more..."

"They're brilliant," George told her. "Just like my beautiful girlfriend." He gave a wicked grin and pulled her into a tight hug so that her arms were pinned so close between them that she couldn't hit him or reach for her wand. "And I'm sure when the grandkids come along they'll make great mementoes of the year we first—"

"Finish that sentence—"

"Snogged," George concluded.

Hermione gave him a look that intimated very clearly that she doubted that was what he'd originally been going to say but when his hold loosened she snuggled in even closer against his side, making the most of the brief moment of calm and watching the way the flickering light from the open fire played over the planes of George's chest. The hand that rested at her back stroked gently over her hair, and her eyelids were beginning to droop when a sudden thought snapped her back into wakefulness, making her spring up into a kneeling position in front of the flames. "George, you know how Umbridge nearly caught Sirius in the fire in the common room? Do you think they'll be watching the fire in here? I mean, this fireplace doesn't even exist a lot of the time... And maybe, you could use it..."

George levered himself up rather more slowly so that he faced her, his knees resting on either side of hers, his body silhouetted in the orange glow. He seemed to consider her idea for a while, but then he shook his head. "It's more likely they're watching the castle as a whole than casting the spell on every individual fireplace," he reasoned. "It might work, but since I'd be the one on the outside and you'd be the one who'd end up getting kicked out of here..."

"Ohhh!" Hermione sighed, almost visibly deflating.

"We'll work something out, love. For a start, I can send owls to Hagrid's cottage instead of the castle, and, once we've got the coins, I'd even be able to let you know when one was on its way."

Hermione mentally filed away the fact that he'd called her love again but she looked only slightly mollified. "It's not the same as being able to talk to you," she replied.

George reached out with both hands, resting his fingers along her jaw line and brushing his lips to hers in a comforting kiss before he let her go. "I'm pretty certain Dumbledore and McGonagall have ways, other than using Fawkes, of getting messages to the Order members outside and, well, we'll be of age and not in school so Mum can't stop them from telling us stuff any more..." He shifted forward, supporting his weight on his arms, until he could rest his forehead against Hermione's as he continued. "If there's some sort of communication spell or some enchanted whatsit that gets around the wards, then between me and Fred, we'll find a way to do it bigger and better... and, if we can't, then I'll just have to go and find myself a phœnix, or get a couple of portraits painted so that you can have one here and I can keep the other."

"You can't afford either of those," Hermione protested in a whisper, placing a hand on each of his shoulders and letting them slide down to just above his elbows before they reversed direction, stroking gently up and down over his biceps.

"Maybe not straight away..." George conceded, "but we've got quite a few orders already and once we—" He stopped suddenly, looking down at where Hermione's soothing caresses had taken on a more probing quality. "Hermione?"

She lifted her head, her expression a blend of amusement and surprise. "Did you realise that your batting arm really is bigger than the other one?"

For the second or two that his libido allowed, George savoured her smile and the laughter that threatened and then he made a lunge for her. Wrapping her close, he tumbled them both back into the mound of cushions. "All the better to hug you with," he told her with a wry grin... before he set about kissing the smile from her lips.