I'm hijacking my own blog to post this story here, because I am so damned proud of it. RyianaT, who has become my wonderful HP/BtVs beta reader, and I worked our asses off on this story yesterday and I am so proud of what we have come up with that I want to post it in as many places on the net as I can, so it's going here!
Here it is:
Title: Wildberries
Author: Arieanna (Arieanna@hotmail.com)
Pairing: Willow/Harry
Genre: Mid Year Fic-A-Thon for Eena Angel
Rating: R
Spoilers: All Harry Potter books and all seven seasons of BtVS, just to be on the safe side.
Disclaimer: Nope, not mine, no way, no how. Ownership goes to JossGod and JKRGoddess. I'm just taking them out for a spin and letting them work off a little steam. I promise that I'll clean them and put them back.
Distribution: TTH, Fanfiction.net, my site, and anyone else that wants it just needs to ask me!
A/N: This is the new and improved beta version. Hugs and puppies and all things lovely for the wonderful RyianaT. I never would have been able to finish this without you. Lime you, doll!
I hope you like this Eena Angel! *crosses fingers*
Wildberries
***********
There was something about her that made him think of wildberries. Wildberries and warm spring breezes, and bright summer sunshine.
Ron had said to him once, as they were leaving the great hall after training and Willow had walked by, that she had the smell of strawberries about her. Xander, who had been right behind them, had overheard the whispered comment. The man had warned them to never, ever let her hear them comparing her to strawberries. The look on her best friend's face had been serious enough that he knew that he, or Ron for that matter, would never even say the word strawberry in front of her unless they were actually in the presence of the fruit itself.
But he thought that word was wrong in any case. The scent of Willow was definitely not strawberries.
No, to Harry James Potter, Willow Anne Rosenberg did not smell like overly domesticated strawberries, but like untamed wildberries.
And therein lie the problem.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, Hogwart's Alumnus, and Auror trainee, was at this moment, the Recruit-that-Couldn’t-Sleep.
He blamed his restlessness on the heat of Gryffindor tower. It was too hot to sleep, he told himself, and that was something that he'd never thought to experience. Overwhelming mugginess in his Hogwarts dormitory. Then again, he had never thought that he would be at the school during the summer. Especially during the summer immediately following his graduation.
But here he was, sleepless on a hot August night not a week after his eighteenth birthday, tossing and turning to the sound of Ron's ever present snores.
He and his best friend had been accepted into the Auror training program before they had even sat down for their leaving feast. They had had but a scant week of vacation before they were to report back to Hogwarts for the commencement of their Auror training. Early July had found the boys once again occupying the beds that had been theirs during their tenure at Hogwarts.
The announcement that the Auror training would now be taking place at Hogwarts was met with surprise by the students known as the "Golden Trio." The fact that Dumbledore and Kingsley Shacklebolt, head of the Auror trainee program, immediately took them aside to explain the reasons for that was, however, no surprise at all. The headmaster had been extremely forthcoming with information about the war with Voldemort since the end of Harry's fifth year and the debacle at the Ministry of Magic.
The ministry, it seemed, had finally realized that it needed to step up their defenses and acknowledge that the battle with Voldemort was an all out war, relocating the training was part of this new attitude. Their government was finally doing its job.
Of course, the fact that they now had a new Minister of Magic was, in Harry's mind, the entire reason behind the new stance of the Ministry. Cornelius Fudge had finally been exposed as the incompetent many people had known him to be since the end of that fateful Tri-Wizard tournament.
There had been a particularly aggressive attack planned on the Ministry building itself just months ago. Fudge had refused to believe the possibility that the Death Eaters could penetrate the Ministry's defenses, and failed to augment the security as a precaution. Only the heroic actions of the Order of the Phoenix members who worked at the Ministry, under the guidance of Arthur Weasley, had saved one of the most important wizardry establishments in Britain from being overtaken by Voldemort's followers.
The public outcry after the incident had forced Fudge to resign his position. Due to his actions during the battle, the community at large had lobbied for Arthur Weasley to fill it. Harry couldn't have been happier when his surrogate father had accepted the post. It was quite a relief to the young man that was destined to end the war to have a minister who not only believed Harry, but knew the real dangers the war would bring upon them all.
One of Arthur's first acts as Minister was to relocate the Auror training program for security reasons. The Ministry had almost been breached, and it was deemed no longer secure enough to house the trainees of what the community viewed as their front line of defense in the war, the Aurors. They could not afford an attack that might claim the lives of their newest recruits before they were even trained. Harry, however, believed that the motivating factor for Mr. Weasley had been the safety of "his boys."
The program had been moved to Hogwarts until further notice, as it was now the most secure place in the wizarding world. Voldemort, though stronger than he had been for twenty years, was still not confident enough to attempt to capture the school.
There were other factors that made Hogwarts a suitable location for the improved training program. One of them was the fact that it was more than large enough to house the ever-growing number of trainees. With the war, many of the Hogwarts graduates felt it their duty to become an Auror if they met the eligibility requirements. It also allowed Harry to be at the school to continue running the now Ministry approved D.A., something the Order thought of as vital. The D.A. allowed the students an opportunity to learn to protect themselves. The Death Eaters would not hesitate to attack the students, and they needed to be able to defend their lives if they were ever attacked. No one seemed to encourage the students the way Harry did. The D.A. would not have been the same without him.
And then there was the other reason, the reason that had brought her here. Willow. The thing that was really keeping him awake, even if he was trying to make himself believe that the thoughts of how he had arrived at this point were the reason for his wakefulness. Tossing, turning, blaming his restlessness on everything under the sun except its true cause.
She and her people were the deciding factor in the relocation of the Auror program to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The group she belonged to had agreed to become their allies in the war against Voldemort, and Dumbledore thought that these new allies had many useful skills that they could impart to the future Aurors. They could teach the Aurors and help fight the war, but after their last battle they had been left without a place to call home. Dumbledore had opened the school to them, making Hogwarts an even more suitable location for the expanded Auror training program. Hogwarts now had it all. The space to house the ever-growing number of trainees to the program, the ability to protect the future soldiers, and the people who could teach them all the things that they would need to beat Voldemort. Things that the dark wizard would never even consider.
The newest allies of the Order were considered by most wizards to be nothing more than muggles, and for that reason they would not be considered a threat. But they would be one. For they were so much more than muggles. They all belonged to the newly formed Watcher's council. They were the warriors for the Powers That Be.
It was the newly appointed minister's love for all things muggle that led to the discovery of the group. Arthur had maintained wizard-muggle relations with the previous incarnation of the Watcher's council, and when he’d learned of the events that ended with the collapse of Sunnydale, Arthur Weasley had taken it as an opportunity to recruit some very powerful evil fighters to their side of the war.
Now the group that had once referred to themselves as "The Scoobies", along with all of the newly activated slayers that had either fought with them or been discovered since the battle, were firmly ensconced at Hogwarts and doing all that they could to help. The slayers were training to be able to provide the physical muscle for the fight, under the direction of Buffy and Faith. The original slayers were also teaching the Auror trainees something that they had never put much stock in before, physical fighting techniques. Giles and Dawn had been told the prophecy that Voldemort had tried to steal that long ago day in the Ministry, and were currently doing all the research they could into the matter. Prophecies, Dawn had told Harry once, always tended to be more then they appeared, and usually had a loophole in them at some point. Robin Wood had been given the responsibility of the muggle education of the slayers, making preparations to teach the girls the things they would need to know in order to obtain their high school diplomas. Xander, for his part, was busy refurbishing the rooms that were being used to house their group. It could have been done magically, of course, but these people had insisted that it be done the muggle way. Magic, they insisted, had it's time and it's place, and that place was never to use it to do something that could be accomplished in any other way. Willow, it seemed, was the foremost proponent of this philosophy, stating that magic was not the solution for everything, and that it sometimes did more harm then good. Most of the students thought she was mad in her ideas, but Harry, having been raised by muggles, could see where she had a point. And when he had learned she had once lost control of her own magic, her beliefs and the reasons behind them became even clearer.
Even with her strange ideas about magic, it was Willow who was the one aiding the trainees in their magical education. Dumbledore had asked her to teach any student who showed aptitude for it her kind of magic. Wiccan magic. Wandless magic.
Harry sighed and threw his bedcovers aside. No matter what direction his thoughts took lately, they always returned to Willow. Beautiful, wonderful Willow, who smelled, to Harry, like wildberries.
Even thoughts of the new politics of the Ministry of Magic and the preparations they were making for the forthcoming final battle seemed to lead his thoughts back to the redhead witch. It was clear to Harry that he would get no sleep tonight.
Harry climbed out of his bed, intent on heading for the meditation room in the slayer wing of the castle. It was a wing that Harry had never seen before, despite his Marauder's Map, but that Dumbledore had insisted had been there all along. The meditation room was a calm and relaxing place that Willow and Xander had worked on together, and Harry found the place very soothing, and very suitable for its intended purpose. He had also discovered that Willow's meditation techniques were far more successful in barring Voldemort from his head than the Occlumency lessons with Snape ever were. He was now hoping that the same techniques could be used to clear his mind of Willow herself.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He'd been finding it increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible, to keep his mind off of Willow since the second he'd clapped eyes on her. No one had been more skeptical than the Boy-Who-Lived when they had been told that those who showed any aptitude for it would be taught wandless magic. He had performed wandless magic more than once, but never on purpose. Wandless magic, to Harry, was an unstable thing that only happened when he let his emotions get the best of him. And he could not afford to lose control of anything in a fight against Voldemort. Dumbledore had assured him that the magic they would be learning from Willow would not be like this. Control was something the witch had worked very hard on, and was, to her, the most important lesson she would be teaching them.
In addition to the magic she would be teaching numerous students, it had been decided that Willow would be working with Harry one on one on meditation and mind clearing techniques. Harry had thought working with Willow would be a waste of time. He was the one who was destined to fight Voldemort. He needed to be working on his dueling skills, not spending time learning an unreliable and esoteric thing such as Wiccan magic.
His skepticism of the validity of the lessons had diminished when he had learned that it was a spell performed by Willow that had upset thousands of years of mystical tradition and had given the power of the Slayer to all those with potential in the world, instead of just confining it to one solitary girl. It had shown the wizard that maybe there was something to her branch of magic, after all.
Then he had met the witch in question, and any objections that he had ever had had been thrown right out the window. He'd been captivated right from the start, and his private lessons with Willow had been his undoing.
She was beautiful. Red flaming hair, sparkling green eyes, soft voice. She was a gentle kind spirit, in spite of her past. It was the fact that she had survived it, Harry thought, that made her so much more remarkable. And remark on it he did. He was shocked that he managed to absorb any knowledge at all that she tried to impart to him during their private lessons.
Even now, she was willing to help them, willing to fight for the good guys. She could have walked away so many times, and never more so then after the spell she had done in Sunnydale had created more warriors than they could have ever dreamed of to work for the Powers That Be she always spoke of. All of the Scoobies could have retired at that point, left the fight to the next generation, but none of them had. She was here, with her friends. She had aligned herself with a world that hadn’t been there to teach her about magic when she could have desperately used the instruction. And she had done it with no resentment in her heart for how the magical community had failed her.
All of this made Willow more than amazing in Harry's eyes, but they still weren't the primary reason that she filled his mind.
The reason that she was now in his every thought was wildberries. To Harry, she was wildberries. It was a fruit that he had always been forbidden as a child. The Dursleys had taken him berry picking once as a child when Mrs. Figg couldn't watch him, and, even then, he was not allowed to eat any of the tempting wildberries, but had to save them for the cooking Aunt Petunia had to do with them. One more thing that he got to watch Dudley do that he never could. Sit in a field and eat his fill of wildberries.
She smelled of the fruit, her magic had the feel of that long remembered day of berry picking, and for at least three weeks Harry had been dying to discover if her lips would taste like wildberries.
There were so many reasons that he shouldn't be having thoughts like these about Willow. Because she was, like the wildberries he associated with her, forbidden fruit. She was his teacher, and he didn't want to do anything that could jeopardize his future as an Auror. She was also at least five years older than him. To her, he was nothing more than a boy.
A boy, that was another reason that he needed to stop obsessing over the captivating redhead. He was a boy, and he'd met the person who had been her last relationship. Kennedy. A slayer, and most definitely not a boy. He wasn't even the right gender to be pursuing Willow, for Merlin's sake.
All of these reasons made perfectly logical sense to Harry, but then he'd think about the wildberries, and he'd be lost again.
The wizard's thoughts had been straying that way more and more often, and he was almost to the breaking point. He couldn't even sleep now.
As he neared the meditation room, he prayed to Willow's goddess that the relaxation techniques he had been taught would clear his mind of her. Because if they didn't, Harry wasn't sure that he'd be able to stop himself from discovering if her soft pink lips tasted of wildberries the way that her magic did.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Willow let out a frustrated sigh. So much for her attempt at clearing her mind.
She'd been unable to sleep, her room in the slayer wing stiflingly hot. At least, that was the last excuse Willow had tried to use for her insomnia.
But now that she was here, attempting to clear her thoughts, she had to admit the truth to herself. She couldn't sleep, couldn't even meditate because her mind was too full. Full to the brim with unbidden thoughts. Thoughts of him.
Her mind was full of Harry James Potter.
She stood up swiftly, completely abandoning any attempt at meditation. Instead, she began pacing the length of the room, mentally berating herself for the direction that her thoughts had been taking more often that not since meeting the infamous Boy-Who-Lived.
It was utterly ridiculous that she couldn't get him off of her mind. Goddess, what was wrong with her? He was five years younger than her. He'd only just turned eighteen. It was only last week that he'd become a legal adult. 'But a wizard is legal at seventeen' an annoying little voice reminded her, and she tuned it out as fast as she could.
No, she should absolutely not be thinking about the legalities of Harry Potter. She shouldn't be thinking about him at all. He was her student. All thoughts concerning him should be restricted to his progress with his lessons, and which spells she could safely teach him. She should not be thinking about his wonderfully messy dark hair, which she longed to run her fingers through. Nor his deep and soulful eyes, which sparkled like emeralds when he mastered a new spell. Willow ran a hand through her red hair and continued to pace, trying to alleviate her frustration. Willow had no right to be thinking about how strong his hands looked, how they were good hands to have, and how she wanted to feel them caressing less than platonic places on her body. And she should most certainly not be wondering if his lips tasted the same on her tongue as his magic. Wild and untamed, like nature itself.
A groan of frustration issued from her lips as she gave up pacing to approach the window and gaze out at the lake beyond.
It was the fact that she was preparing him for the fight of his life that was keeping him in her thoughts, she told herself. There was really no way she could be attracted to him. He was, for Goddess' sake, a he. Her feelings for him couldn't be romantic. She was, as she had once asserted to her friends, gay now.
Then why did she want to kiss Harry with every fiber of her being whenever he was in the room with her?
Because, she could admit to herself, she wasn't as gay as she liked to insist. For her, love was about the person inside. That was what it had been with Tara. She had loved Tara for the person she was inside, she had loved her for her soul, not because she was a girl. And Kennedy? Kennedy had been a way for Willow to prove to herself that Tara had not been a phase, as her beloved had once worried she was. But she had never felt for the girl as she had felt for Tara. Nor had she loved her as she had Oz, or even Xander. The girl was about companionship in a dark time, and that was why the relationship had ended. She had never ached for the girl as she had ached for the others. As she now ached for Harry.
Because ache for Harry she did. Something inside of him called out to something inside of Willow. Something in his soul spoke to something in hers. It was simply icing on the cake that she found him physically appealing on a primal level as well. But it was Harry the person that kept filling her thoughts. His nobility, his kindness, his strength. After all he had been through, all the darkness he had seen, he was still willing to put his life on the line to save the world. The weight of the world was on his shoulders, and he bore it with a quiet dignity. He was simply amazing.
She got the belly rumblings of the good kind every time she saw him. His voice sent quivers down her spine. The sparkle in his eyes made her smile. And his magic called out to her like nature itself did.
What was she going to do? She sent a small prayer to the Goddess for guidance, and returned to her seated position on the mat on the floor, determined to banish him from her mind.
For if she didn't, she was terrified that she would do something terribly inappropriate the next time she saw her student, like finally succumbing to her irresistible desire to taste his lips.
She had just closed her eyes and taken her first deep breath when she heard the door open behind her.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He'd stepped into the room and shut the door before he saw her, sitting on the meditation mat in front of him, her back to the door. When his mind had finally registered that it was Willow who sat before him, he thought for a panicked moment that his fevered mind was now so full of her that he was seeing her in places where she simply wasn't. The thought only lasted the fraction of a second it took for her to turn towards him with a sharp intake of breath.
"Oh, Harry!" she exclaimed, issuing a soft and rather relieved giggle. "It's just you. You startled me." She turned away under the pretense of standing so that she could hide her burning cheeks from his eyes. For he was not 'just Harry', she had thought as she said the words. To her, he would never be just Harry.
For his part, Harry was trying to find a way to simply turn and leave the room that he had just entered without seeming like he was fleeing from her, even if that was exactly what he was doing. The wizard had reached a breaking point, a point where he had to either banish her from his thoughts, which he certainly couldn't do with her in the room, or give in to his overwhelming urge to act on his desires where she was concerned, which Harry was convinced would prove disastrous. He was about to take the very un-Gryffindor third option of simply running from the situation when her soft voice stilled his hand on the door handle.
"Oh, please don’t leave." As he'd been about to do just that, Harry’s back had been towards her. He let go of the doorknob and turned to face the object of all of his recent late-night fantasies. "I’d feel horrible if you left on my account."
She took a couple of steps closer to him and launched into what Harry had come to affectionately call a Willow-babble. "You obviously came here to meditate, right? If you want to meditate you should stay. That's what I built the room for. Well, what Xander and I built the room for, I guess. Not that we actually built the room, because this is a castle, and somebody probably built this room centuries before we were born. But we did renovate the room, so that we could use it for meditation. We filled it with meditate-y things, so that you could come to this room and relax, and clear your mind, and meditate. That's why it's called the meditation room, so you can clear your mind and be at peace with yourself." Willow stopped here, and took a breath. A look of introspection passed over her face, as if she was just now realizing what she had just said.
"Which, I assume, is why you're here. And since it’s obviously not working for me, I should leave you to do the meditation thingy." She stepped around him to leave through the door he was standing in front of, and before Harry could stop himself, he was reaching out and grabbing her shoulder as she tried to slip past him. His brain had known that he should just let her leave, but that did not stop his body from preventing her from doing so.
His hand was warm where it still lay against her skin, and it allowed him to realize that her arm was bared all the way to her shoulder.
He'd been so shocked by her appearance in the very place where he was going to get away from all thought of her, that not much about her presence had sunk in other than the fact that she was real and not a figment of his overwrought imagination.
Now that he had touched her, though, several other things about her were penetrating the fog in his brain. Her shoulder was warm under his hand, alerting him that she was not really wearing much in the way of clothing.
Not that he was either, mind you. He was only wearing the bottom half of a pair of pajamas, as it had been legitimately hot in Gryffindor tower, even if that hadn't been the reason for his wakefulness. But his own state of dress was not the one he was presently concerned with.
Willow was wearing as little as possible while still being dressed; in deference to the heat of the warm August night, Harry supposed. It was as hot here in the Slayer's wing as it had been in his dorm room, and she was dressed for the temperature.
Her legs were mostly bare, as she was wearing loose short shorts. Her upper body was clad in a thin tank top, with only skinny spaghetti straps holding it up. One of the straps had slipped to lie against Harry's hand, and Willow reached with shaking fingers to right it. Her trembling hand caused Harry to wonder if she was nervous, and what was making her so. The minor trembles he had felt when she had touched him, coupled with the babble she had just indulged in had the wizard thinking that she just might be.
A tiny part of him wondered if it was him that was making her nervous, and his heart gave an excited thump at the possibility. The rest of Harry, however, searched for a way to soothe her nerves. It came to him in a burst of inspiration. From what Harry had seen of her, Willow was a natural nurturer, truly at ease when caring for others. With that thought in mind, Harry suddenly had an idea of something that might put her at ease. He would simply ask her to help him with his meditation exercises.
"Willow," he said to her, using her first name as she had asked all of her students to do. The casual nature of their student-teacher relationship was a double-edged blade for Harry. It was far easier to get lost in a fantasy about Willow than it would have been had she remained Miss Rosenberg, and that had become both a gift and a curse to the young man. "Please don't go."
He let his hand slide down her arm to capture her hand in his. He convinced himself that the goose bumps the action had raised on her skin were simply a figment of his overactive imagination. He pulled her towards the mat in the centre of the room, making sure that they were both standing on it before he continued.
"You're right. I did come down here to meditate. I couldn’t sleep, and I tried to empty my mind with the techniques you’ve been teaching me, but I just couldn't manage it." It wasn’t entirely a lie, Harry told himself. He really hadn’t been able to clear his mind when he had been up in his room. "I came down here to try it, because I always seem to have more success with meditation in this room." He dropped her hand and noticed her relax slightly. It made him wonder if it was the words that had done it, of if she was simply more at ease without the physical contact. And if it had been his touch that had put her on edge, he hoped with everything he had that that could be taken as a good sign.
Either way, she still resembled a skittish doe ready to bolt at any second. He sent a prayer to the Gods that his next words would be the thing that would put her at ease enough to stay here with him, even if it was only for a few moments longer. “I honestly believe, though, that my success in this room had far more to do with the teacher than the room itself.” He studied Willow and saw a tremulous smile begin to form on her lips, and, even though the room was dim, he could see her eyes sparkle with pride at his compliment.
"Will you please stay and help me relax enough to meditate, Willow?" At the request, the witch relaxed fully, and he knew he had won her over completely. "I need to clear my mind enough to sleep. If I don't, I think I might go mad." And it was very much true. However, the part that Harry failed to tell Willow was that sleep would only be able to prevent him from losing his mind if he could find a way to assure that his dreams were not filled with her.
"Pretty please with sugar on top?" Harry dropped his head and looked over his glasses at her. His emerald eyes sparkled with amusement as he partnered the words he'd heard Xander use once with a pout that he'd seen the man favor his best friend with once when he'd been trying to get his own way.
Her giggle let him know that he'd convinced her to stay before her words confirmed it. "All right, I give up. I'll help you focus. Just can the Xander act, ok?"
His eyes followed her progress as she crossed the room to the window. "Overdid it a bit, did I?"
"Oh, just a little." Her giggle made his heart speed up. "Now take a seat on the mat, insomnia boy, while I try to get some cool air in here. Let’s see if we can get those bothersome thoughts out of your mind."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Willow could feel Harry sitting on the mat behind her as she opened the window and appealed to the Guardians of the East for some wind to relieve some of the stifling heat that seemed to fill the room. Though, if she was honest with herself, the heat she was feeling was not coming from the warm night, but from the presence and closeness of Harry Potter. As she turned towards him a breeze from the opening let her know that the Gods had heard at least some of her pleas to them tonight.
Why was she still here? This situation had all of the potential to fully explode in her face. She really didn't know if she could stay here, in this dim, heated room with Harry, and still remain the professional teacher that she was meant to be to this boy. She was very close to her breaking point, very close to throwing all caution to the wind, and acting on every inappropriate fantasy that she'd had about him for the past few weeks. If she did that, she didn't know what the consequences would be, but she imagined that Dumbledore would not be very happy if one of his new allies did something that could be viewed as wholly inappropriate with his very favorite student. And, in the dark heat of the August night, Willow was not entirely sure that she could resist the temptation that Harry presented.
She walked back to the meditation mat to find him already sitting, cross-legged and eyes closed, his glasses placed carefully beside him. Willow wondered why he still had them. It seemed to her that it would put him at a serious disadvantage in a fight if they were knocked off and he was left unable to see. Why wasn't he wearing contact lenses? They seemed to be the more practical choice. That was the way Wesley had gone, she'd assumed, since the former watcher had been without his own spectacles the last time that she'd seen him. Maybe she should mention it to Dumbledore. In fact, she wondered if they didn't have a way to correct his eyesight all together. After all, they had done wonders for Xander concerning his own eye problems.
A heavy sigh issued from Harry, bringing Willow back to the present and the matter at hand.
"I don't understand, Willow. I'm really trying to clear my mind, and I'm usually good at it. But I just can't seem to stop thinking tonight." She looked at him critically, trying to discover the problem. Studying his posture, she found something that might be the root of his troubles. His shoulders were slumped, his posture slouched, as if he was physically feeling the weight of all of the expectations people had of him.
"Well," she started as she approached him, "you're all slouchy, for one thing. All that posture is doing for you is making you more tense." She stepped behind him, intent on correcting his position to facilitate his meditation. As she pressed a hand to the base of his spine to get him to sit with his back straight, her pulse seemed to triple. It had taken the feel of his bare back on her skin for it to fully register that he was sitting here shirtless. The star of her most vivid fantasies was sitting half naked under her hands, and it was all she could do to keep breathing. How was she supposed to ignore her innermost desires enough to help him meditate? Because that was all he expected of her and all that she could allow. Besides, she was quite sure that Harry would not take it well if his teacher, who was a few years older than him, suddenly threw herself at him and begged him to take her.
She shook herself hard and put her mind back on her task, which was helping Harry to relax. Her hands moved to his shoulders, pulling them back so that he would sit up straight. "Ok, if you sit up straighter, you'll find that the pressure comes off of your spine, and being more comfy should help you to clear your mind." She kneaded his shoulders to relax his muscles, and before she could take another breath to speak, she found herself pulled off of her feet and sprawled across Harry's lap, staring up into his emerald eyes.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It had been her tiny warm hands on his back that had been his undoing. When she'd pressed one of them to the base of his spine to coax him into sitting straighter, his breath had quickened, and his heart had nearly pounded out of his chest. But it had been her hands gently massaging the tense muscles of his shoulders that had caused him to lose all control. He had used his legendary Seeker skills to reach up and pull her into his lap before she even knew he had moved. She had looked deep into his emerald eyes, blinking in surprise, and before she could issue a protest, Harry lowered his head to hers and captured her lips with his, something he'd wanted to do from almost the first second he'd seen her.
The taste of her was light years beyond anything he'd ever imagined even in the best of his fantasies. Her lips were soft, moist, and pliant beneath his. Her hair was silk to the touch, her body a heavy and welcome weight in his lap. It was almost heaven, but there was something missing, something he still needed. He still hadn't tasted her fully. Still hadn't captured the elusive flavor on his tongue that he was convinced she possessed.
Not capable of waiting any longer, Harry's tongue snaked out of his mouth and gently caressed the fullness of her lower lip, entreating the wonderful witch in his arms to open her mouth. Her lips parted as Harry deepened the kiss, and his tongue was granted access. The first taste of the inside of her cheek confirmed what Harry had known all along. Willow was not strawberries, as Ron had once claimed. She was, indeed, Harry's ever-elusive wildberries. And now that Harry had her in his arms, he intended to never let her slip away again.
Willow, for her part, was not content to simply be an idle observer in the kiss she had been dreaming of night after night. At first the feel of Harry's mouth on hers had been a shock, and she had thought that she had somehow managed to fall asleep without noticing, and was once again dreaming of him. But her dreams had never been this real, this fantastic, this mind blowing. When she had finally realized that the kiss was really happening, she had slid her arms around him to touch him as she'd been longing to touch him. One of her hands ran through the messy hair that she'd been longing to touch, while the other caressed the smooth skin of the back that she'd been trying to touch as a detached teacher just moments before. She should have known that it hadn't been possible, and from the first touch of his lips she had known that that was never what the Powers That Be had wanted. She was never meant to simply be Harry's teacher. The Powers had brought her here because this was where she belonged. Every event in her life, every relationship she had had, everything that had resulted from them, including her descent into black magic had led her to this very moment. Because this was where she was born to be, firmly wrapped up in the arms of Harry James Potter.
They broke apart, unable to further deny the need for air. Willow lay panting in his arms as the couple simply stared at each other. This moment had been inevitable from their first meeting, and they both knew it. Their souls were twined together, and something in both of them had known it from the start. Still, he opened his mouth to speak, and Willow knew that his chivalrous nature was compelling him to apologize for his actions. The redhead pulled her hand from his hair to lay a finger across his lips, shaking her head as she did so.
"Don't you dare apologize to me, Mr. Potter. I might think that you were truly sorry for that kiss, and it would crush me. Because I'm right where I want to be. I'm right where I'm meant to be. In your arms."
His lips had captured hers once more before their hearts had even beaten again. This time, he opened his mouth to Willow. As their tongues intertwined, she could taste so many things. She could taste all of the passion, all of the desire, all of the fantasies that he'd been having about her for weeks. She could taste the wildness and the power that she'd always felt in his magic. She could taste his soul.
Suddenly simply kissing him wasn't enough for Willow, and she used the training that she'd been regularly getting from Buffy to perform a move that had her grasping at his shoulders and using them to flip him to his back so that she was now sitting astride his hips. The air in the room was heavy with the heat of the night and the desire that was pouring off of the couple in waves. They were wearing too many clothes, Willow knew, and as if he could read her mind, Harry's hands drifted to the skin of her back that was revealed below her tank top. His caress traveled up her spine, bringing the shirt with it and baring her skin to his touch. They barely broke their kiss as the garment was pulled over her head. His task accomplished, Harry pulled her close to him so that her now bare chest met his own.
The touch of skin to skin was indescribable and Harry wanted more. He turned his body so that Willow lay underneath him, and her hands immediately found their way to his waist. She pushed his pants past his hips, caressing the skin of his backside, something she’d barely ever let herself look at before. When her hands had pushed his clothing as far as they could reach while she kept her lips fused to his, Harry wriggled his legs to kick the offending garment the rest of the way off and then proceeded to divest her of her last bit of clothing.
Seconds later they were pressed firmly together, as naked as they had been when they were born. Nothing in the world had ever felt so right to Willow, not even lying in Tara's arms, something she had thought of as the most perfect place in the world until the very second Harry had pressed back against her fully unclothed.
She had loved Tara with all her heart, but she now knew that she had been born to love Harry. Her legs parted for him, and as he entered her the feeling of completion confirmed something her heart had been trying to tell her for weeks. He was her soulmate.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
They lay together afterwards, entwined so completely that it was nearly impossible to tell where one of them ended and the other began. Harry's hand lay on her cheek, brushing away the tears that had escaped when they had reached completion. "I'm sorry, Willow. I didn't mean to make you cry."
She pulled him tighter towards her, though that was scarcely possible, and looked intently into his eyes. "Not all tears are tears of sorrow, Harry. The tears that I just cried are tears of pure joy."
A smile began to spread on his face, though it was cautious. "Joy?" he asked her, incredulity in his voice.
"Yes, Harry. Joy. You know, as in pure happiness?" She nuzzled her face into his neck, trying to hide her blushing cheeks from his inquiring gaze.
"You're that happy with me?" His voice was shocked, as if he had never expected to hear those words from anyone.
"I never thought I could be happier or more in love than I had been with Tara. But you, Harry Potter, have just proved me wrong." She gazed lovingly into his eyes, kissing him softly while she ran a hand through his ever-messy hair. It didn't matter that his hair was untamable, or that he was only eighteen and one of her students, or that he was at the top of the hit list of the worst Dark Wizard in the history of his world. All that mattered was the fact that he was in her arms, because this was where he belonged. He was hers as she was his.
"Love? You love me, Willow? This is love?"
Willow knew most women would be offended at these questions, but not Willow. For how could Harry be expected to recognize love when he had never truly been taught what it was. He felt it, and that was enough for her, because his love for her was in his every breath.
"Yes, Harry," she whispered as she kissed him again, "this is love."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Professor Albus Dumbledore knocked softly at the door to the study in the Slayer's wing, and only entered when a faint voice from the other side had told him it was opened. He had not been issued an invitation, he noticed. But he supposed that was to be expected from someone who spent their life fighting vampires.
"I don't mean to intrude on you so late, Rupert. But I noticed that your light was on."
"I'm waiting up for Willow," Giles told the headmaster as he sat up straighter in the chair that he had been drifting off to sleep in. "She couldn't sleep and went out for a walk, but she has yet to return."
"Well, she's in the meditation room with Harry, so I have a feeling they might be awhile." Giles did not bother to ask the wizard how he knew this. Albus just seemed to always know what was going on in his school.
"It's very late for a meditation lesson. She should get back here and get some sleep."
Dumbledore chuckled at his comment. The man sounded so much like her father that Albus honestly wondered if he should impart his next bit of knowledge.
"I do not believe that they are conducting a lesson, Rupert, and I would not bother yourself with waiting up for her. She might be a very long while." Giles looked at the wizard standing before him, seeing the twinkle in the other man’s eyes.
Giles took his glasses off, a small smile gracing his features. "So they've finally admitted what we've all known from the start then."
"Yes Mr. Giles, I believe they have," Dumbledore chuckled softly. "I merely came by to inquire as to what you think Miss Rosenberg would enjoy having for breakfast. I'm planning on sending Dobby with a tray for them, as I imagine they will not be making it to the great hall."
Giles allowed himself a small chuckle at the thought. “Willow has always had a special affinity for pancakes.”
"Ah, pancakes. I do believe that those would go along quite well with some wildberries. Harry does so love the fruit. I think they make for quite a suitable pairing."
Giles knew that the headmaster was no longer speaking of breakfast foods, and tailored his response appropriately. "As do I, Albus, as do I."
~fin~
So, if you've got this far, do leave me a taggy and tell me what you think, k? Thanks! Lime you guys!
Posted by Arieanna at 1:19 PM
