A/N: The Casual Vacancy. Wow. Just – yes.

Anyway, safe in the knowledge that our Queen isn't just a one-trick pony and that she is indeed aware of sex and swearing, I feel a little less guilty about writing her characters naked and using naughty words. I've also decided to leave my comfort zone – first person, people! Let's see what happens.

This is a sort-of sequel to No Reason. You don't have to have read that to understand this though.

Disclaimer: J.K Rowling owns Harry Potter and recently took ownership of some rather foul-mouthed southerners as well.

She's there. Right there. I can feel her hand on my chest and the room sort of smells like her house. It could still be a dream though. This wouldn't be the first time I have dreamt of this happening only to wake up alone with sticky sheets and some new material for the wank bank. This time though I really think I've woken up with Hermione, naked and in my arms.

Well, not in my arms exactly but still close to me. Very close to me. Touching, in fact. Fuck, please be real…

I crack open one eye and see her face, smushed against the pillow with her mouth open. This is, I can safely say, the only time I've ever known her to look stupid. Without that blatant intelligence shining from her eyes and her graceful movements, she kind of looks like everyone else, you know?

Except she doesn't. Her nose is sort of being pushed by her cheek so it's all off-centre but it's still her nose. It's still attached to her. And even though her mouth is all open and making her look a bit gormless, it's still the mouth that spouts all of those complicated words that I swear she has made up. It's still the mouth that, for reasons that I still don't know, she lets me kiss and she uses to kiss me back with.

It's still the mouth that, about an hour ago, was on my cock.

She'd never done that before. It all kind of came out of nowhere. I didn't ask her to – I wouldn't dream of asking her – but she did it. Even though we're together and shagging and all that, I still didn't expect her to ever do that. Not unless it was my birthday or something.

I have got to stop thinking about it. If she wakes up and sees me staring at her with a stiffy she'll think I'm perving on her. Okay, so I am perving on her and have been for years but why does she need to know that?

For some reason the distance between us is kind of bothering me. I swear when we fell asleep she was cuddling up to me. Now she's all the way over there. She's still facing me but only her hand is touching me. Don't get me wrong, I love that her hand is touching me; it's a lovely hand. It's not the same as having her tits pressed against me though.

I remember the first time this happened and how she had hugged me tightly afterwards… That'd been one of the best moments of my life. She was there. She had seen everything – literally – and was still there.

Now I think about it, I'm on the opposite side to last time. Does that mean anything? Aren't we supposed to have a 'side' each? Do we have to discuss which side is ours or does it just happen naturally? There's even more to this relationship business than I thought. Years ago I thought it was just snogging and stuff but then, after Lavender, I realised there was probably more but I didn't know what. I just wanted Hermione too much by that point to care enough to make things better with Lavender.

I sigh at the memory of the shit I caused because I was too fucking stupid and focus on Hermione again. Why is she all the way over there?

Moving unbearably slowly, I start shifting under the cover so that I'm facing her, making sure to hold her hand up and put it down on my side. I wait with bated breath to make sure I haven't woke her up and fucked this moment up but all she does wrinkle her nose a little.

Could she get anymore fucking perfect?

I take a moment just to look at her before moving my hand and gently place it on her hip. Her skin is so soft, even though she's still really thin and I can feel her hipbone. She seems a bit self-conscious of her body but I don't know why. Yeah, she's still a bit underweight but we all are so what's the problem? Even like this, with her scars, she's gorgeous.

She exhales a little heavier than usual and I feel her breath on my face. I have got to get closer.

I slide over the mattress towards her, trying desperately not to disturb the covers too much, and settle right in front of her so my legs are tangled with hers and her arm is now hanging over my side. I'm so close to her now that we're sharing a pillow and our noses are pretty much touching.

Again, she breaths out and I can still smell the coffee she was drinking earlier. I breathe it in and it hits me that this is the exact same air that was just in Hermione and a thrill goes through me. This is- Well, I don't know what this is but I love it. We're sharing air. She'd be able to phrase this all in a way that makes it sound romantic or sexy or something but I'm just trying to train myself to breathe in when she breaths out.

Is this weird? It's probably not normal. What if she wakes up, sees me this close to her and runs away screaming about how disturbed I am?

She makes a little moaning noise in her sleep and now I'm remembering the not so little moans she was making earlier. Shit. I cannot, under any circumstances, wake her up, stealing her air and saluting her. I mean, this is the first time we've fallen asleep after shagging and she's a girl and she's going to consider this to be huge and I'm going to ruin it by thinking about her boobs and-

Come on, Weasley. Think about something else. Anything else.

It's hard not think about her when all I can smell is her breath. What was it she said she was drinking? Something 'lettuce'? Come one! Think! You moved to sit next to her, you kissed and then… and then…

"You taste like chocolate. You always seem to taste like chocolate."

There was something ridiculously sexy about her analysing what I taste like and then remembering it.

"You taste like coffee and something else."

"Something else?"

"Yeah, I dunno what. What are you drinking?"

"Hazelnut latte."

Yes! That was it! Hazelnut! We were talking in these really quiet voices, like we were in our own little bubble and no one else was there…

"Would like some?"

She offered me her mug and I saw that she hadn't really drunk a lot of it. Whenever there is a serious conversation going she concentrates solely on that and nothing else. It's a miracle she ever ate at Hogwarts. I took a sip and she giggled. It wasn't like she was laughing at me… she was looking up at me all shy, like she kept doing all the time now. There was that look in her eyes, the one I could never see before, that told me that she loved me and I couldn't believe I had ever doubted her.

"You've – hang on."

One of her tiny fingers came towards me and wiped something off my top lip, all the while her eyebrows were contracted in concentration. I was about to give in and kiss her but she pulled away and showed me a blob of white foam that must have been on my face moments before. Before I had chance to apologise, she had sucked her finger into her mouth, her eyes locked with mine.

Okay, this isn't helping. As if it was from a past life, I can remember when Hermione sitting a bit too close to me in Charms was the most erotic thing I had ever experienced and I had to carry my bag in front of me at the end of the lesson but now… Now she is openly flirting with me. Yeah, things have been awkward sometimes but I take every movement she makes as a deliberate attempt to ruin me.

Now she is aware of her flirting and doing it on purpose. I'm done for.

Eventually we had left the coffee shop. It took a while because we kept snogging. Northing too dirty but still – Hermione was snogging me, with a hint of tongues – in public. Like real couples do.

She had decided to give me a tour of where she had grown up so naturally we had ended up walking past the local library. She had told me that she didn't want to go in but I knew she did. Promising she wouldn't take too long or take out any books, we had walked, hand in hand, up the steps towards a slightly run-down looking building.

I knew she was trying to repress her glee but her face was lit up like it always did around gigantic piles of books. I couldn't see why; the whole place smelt funny and the woman behind the desk looked fucking miserable. Oblivious to all of this, she dragged me around, showing me the children's section that she had out-grown at about six and then she took me to the historical biographies. Apparently no one ever used to come here and the chairs at the end of the row were nicer than the others, so she always came here to read.

It wasn't hard to picture a round-faced, buck-toothed and tiny Hermione curling up on the chair with a book while the other kids messed around in the children's section. The thought made me smile as I looked around. Just as my eyes found a picture of someone who was apparently called Mary Queen of Scots, I was shoved down onto the chair, being sat on and then having the life kissed out of me.

My only thought was that I sincerely hoped that it was Hermione.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Have we done anything today that isn't going to turn me on? Only Hermione would dream of kissing me in library someday. She is the only person on Earth who considers libraries sexy. Well, except me but that's only because she does. I think. I was so dazed afterwards I didn't notice that she had checked three books out until we were halfway down the road.

She keeps stirring in her sleep. She is going to wake up, hit me and dump me. Maybe not even in that order. Maybe she'll do all three at the same time? Bollocks. Other stiff – STUFF – other stuff happened that didn't involve her tongue in my mouth. Didn't it?

"That's it."

"That's it?"

"What were you expecting?"

"Dunno. It's not exactly Hogwarts though, is it?"

"It's a Muggle primary school, Ron."

The building was strange. It was all one-story but it seemed to take up a lot of space. It was covered in panels made of white and red plastic and the tarmac around it had multi-coloured lines all over it. It didn't look like a school; it looked like a toy.

"What the fuck is that?"

She had scowled because they were near children after all but I didn't care. There was a herd of goats taking up half the playing field.

"That's the farm area. There were only a few animals there when I left - few chickens, a couple of goats and three pigs. I expect there's more now."

"But what the fu- hell is a farm doing at a school?"

"To teach the children to respect animals and how to look after them. Every week, a different class would be in charge of feeding them."

Mental. Muggles must be off their heads half of the time.

"Funny story about why the school started the whole project actually."

I knew by her slight smirk that this story was the real reason she had brought me here.

"See that pig there? The biggest one?"

"Yeah."

"That was the first animal they had. It just appeared in the playground one day. No one knew where it came from and the school decided to keep it."

"A pig just appeared in the playground?"

"Jason Fellows threw his Action Man at me."

She gave me a sly look and began walking off down the street. All I could do was stare at that the pig and wonder if he was formally Actonan or that Jason kid...

For the rest of the way back to her house, I had my arm wrapped around her shoulders and hers was around my waist. Neither of us could stop smiling. It was how I always wanted it to be – both of us completely at ease, acting stupid and no one else that we knew around to take the piss.

If any of my brothers had seen me… the thought made me sick.

"Hi."

Snapping out of a horror story where Charlie kept throwing me love-sick expressions, I see that Hermione still has her eyes closed but there's a smile dancing around her lips. Her voice is so soft… she could still be asleep.

"Hi."

"How long have I been asleep?" She shuffles a bit so that her face isn't squished anymore and I kind of want her not to have moved.

"Not that long."

She sucks in a long breath, squeezes her eyes together and then blinks a few times. Her eyes find mine, still puffy from sleep and she smiles at me like it's Christmas morning or something.

"Hi," she repeats.

"You already said that."

It's a good point and I think I've got the upper-hand for a change. She may be Hermione Granger but she's only just woke up.

My advantage crashes around me as she closes the tiny gap between us and kisses me. It's a bit sloppy but the whole thing is so fucking adorable that I've forgotten that I'm still sporting a semi and everything I've ever worried about in the past. I'll deal with the fact I just used the word 'adorable' later.

"Well," she says, her breath still smelling like coffee, "it's not every day that I wake up to find you there."

I laugh softly. "What? And you felt I deserved a second 'hi' as a reward for sticking around?"

The stupid grin I get in return feels like more of a reward though.

"Something like that."

"Would I only have got an acknowledging nod if I had got dressed and went downstairs?" I tease.

"Yes, you only get a second 'hi' if you're naked and where I left you."

I supress a groan. If she gets any more attractive than naked, flirting and slightly bossy then I can say goodbye to my sanity. I can't let her know this though so I stick with playful banter and not the rest of the rubbish swirling around my brain.

"Where you left me?"

"Yes."

It's kind of hilarious watching her try and be serious when she can't stop smiling.

"I'm not actually naked," I tell her. I'm not sure why. It proves her wrong but this is one of those times where I want her to be right. Apparently she wants to be right too because her expression is suddenly incredulous.

"What?"

"I've still got a sock on."

"Really?"

I nod as I try a fight off my own grin as Hermione's mouth opens into a wide 'O' of shock. She attempts to speak a few times but eventually gives up and shakes her head in an overly stern manner.

"That won't do."

She grabs my shoulders and slides herself down the bed a bit as her feet start searching for mine under the duvet. Still half asleep, her actions are sluggish and she ends up kicking me a couple of times.

"What are you doing?" I ask, trying to stop her attacking me. She stops temporarily and stares up at me with this soft look in her eyes that melts me.

"Will you just stay still?"

I don't care what she's doing anymore. It may be my body but she can do what the hell she pleases with it.

Her tongue between her teeth, she traps the end of my sock under one of her feet and nudges my leg back with the other. I take the hint and pull my leg away and feel my sock slip off my foot. Even though it's under the cover, it feels oddly cold and I move it closer to Hermione to warm it up.

She doesn't seem to mind. She's too busy looking triumphant.

"That's better."

"I love it when you're like this"

The words had left my mouth without me thinking about it. She is so utterly disarming sometimes that I'm scared of the things she will make me do.

"What?" she asks, arching a brow. "Without clothes?"

"No. Well, yeah," I smile when she looks at me sceptically, "but I mean, when you're all tired."

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn't that. "Tired?"

"Yeah. You're giggly-"

"I don't giggle," she replies, sounding horrified. All it takes is me quirking my eyebrows at her and she starts giggling again.

"Yes, you do."

"I don't."

More giggling. She is pressing her lips together to make herself stop but her cheeks have turned pink from the strain. I start edging towards her because I can't help myself when she is like this. We're barely talking above a whisper. Our faces are so close together that there's no real need to talk any louder.

"You do."

"Don't."

"But you do."

"I really don't."

This whole exchange is driving me mad. Her gaze keeps flicking to my lips even though she is pulling the duvet up to cover her traitorous mouth.

"You're giggling now," I point out and she sniffs indignantly.

I feel her move her body so that it isn't curled up, but lying straight and she tries again to keep a straight face.

"No. See-" She manages to remain sober for a split second. "Not giggling."

My hand darts out and pokes her in the ribs. For a moment I forgot that she wasn't wearing anything and the feel of her skin on mine shocks me a little but then she starts laughing again and I have to kiss her.

So I do.

It's one of those slow kisses that only seem to happen when we're being like this. It's strange really… I don't think either of us are your classic romance lovers, like Lavender was, but I've had so many of these moments with Hermione where I'm so in love with that I can't think about anything else. It makes me do all this weird stuff like give her stupid grins from across a room or put her jumper under my pillow that time she left it at the Burrow.

Even now I'm doing it. I always thought that if I was ever in bed with Hermione and she was naked, that I'd take full advantage of the situation and try and cop a feel… but I'm not. I've got one hand curled underneath my pillow and the other is lazily stroking her spine.

And now that we've stopped kissing, I'm rubbing my nose against hers.

The girl had driven mental or soft or worse but for some reason I don't care.

Well, no, I do. Even though she's looking at me like she doesn't care that her parents are going to be home in about an hour, with her bottom lip between her teeth and her eyes glazed over, I can't carry on with this fluffy nonsense. It just isn't me.

"Y'know… I didn't think you'd be the type of girl who would put out on a first date."

The resulting look of fury and kick that is then followed by her kissing me soundly and clambering on top of me, tells me that she probably wouldn't want me any other way.

A/N: Well, now the fluff is over how about we deal with some real life?

This is probably going to be my last fic for a while. Life just became super-busy because apparently in your last year of uni you can't spend it writing R/Hr goodness if you want to get a decent degree. Now all we need is for a university to offer a degree in R/Hr goodness and I'll be set. Anyway, I'll still be around, reading, reviewing and generally hanging around like a bad smell but the crazy productiveness will cease.

That being said, I will still be writing. The odd one-shot may show up on occasion and I've started another multi-chapter fic that you'll all hopefully see one day. Basically, I'm not dead or retiring or whatever the correct term is.

Thank you for all the support and the reviewing and the reading and everything else you people have done over the summer. Sorry for leaving you (for the moment) on an experiment of a fic.

- HalfASlug