Chapter 118: Control!

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Hermione grabs the sides of my face and forces me to look into her shining chocolate eyes, filled with concern.

Though I'm focused on her eyes, I see her lips part as she lets out a small breath. She seems to hesitate for several moments, then she lets her hands fall away and wrap around my abdomen.

She lays her head against my chest, bushy hair pulled back so her ear is pressed against my heart.

I don't know how long she gently holds me there without a word, but it's long enough that I begin thinking more about how good it feels to hug her.

Long enough to stop feeling sorry for myself.

"Thank you, Hermione," I say softly, "and I'm sorry."

I can feel her smile against my chest. "You're allowed to have bad days, you know. In a way it's nice to know you're actually human."

I let out an amused breath. "Nonsense, I'm supposed to be the Gary Stu in this story."

She cranes her neck up at me and furrows her brows. "What?"

"Nothing." I lean down and kiss her forehead. "Thank you."

Her eyes open and remain unfocused for a moment afterward, then she presses her lips together, drops the hug and lets out a sigh. "Let's go see what you can do."

We make our way to the Room of Requirement, which she once again sets up for us. Idly I wonder if I can even set it up anymore.

Certainly not with the deftness and detail she puts into it. This one is mainly the training area except for a small sitting area with a desk.

Surprisingly there are no stacks of books, but rather a simple pair of bookcases...of course Hermione would never create a room completely devoid of books.

She takes a seat behind the desk, which is facing the training area with large dummies hanging from the ceiling.

She instructs me to fire a few spells as part of the control portion of experiments.

The last one she has me do is the Blasting Curse, which she quickly demonstrates with the incantation confringo. I copy her, minus the incantation and the use of a wand, of course.

"Now try, er, I guess a fireball or something," Hermione says haltingly.

"A fireball? Is that the incantation, then?" I smile at her teasingly.

"You know what I mean, you prat," she says, crossing her arms.

"Actually I don't," I say. "How big should I make it? How much magic should I put in it?"

Her eyes widen. "You can control that?"

"What, the amount of magic I put in? I don't know how fine my control over that is, but I think I can do it roughly."

She makes a sound like she just got punched in the stomach. "Why didn't you tell me that?"

"I dunno, it didn't seem relevant," I say with a shrug.

She grumbles a bit as she crumples up a sheet of parchment and stuffs it back in her bag. "Well can you put the same amount of energy into a fireball as you did in that Blasting Curse?"

I hold my arm back out and try to pull the same size stream of magic and let it circle around in front of my hand as heat energy.

When it grows to the size of a baseball, I move it further away since it hurts my hand.

By the time it's the size of a grapefruit, I push it swiftly at the target that Hermione had restored with a thought after my Blasting Curse had taken a solid chunk out of its chest. The fireball does significantly less damage.

She purses her lips and taps them in thought. "How do you feel?"

"Like I just fired off six fairly strong spells," I say sardonically. "How about you?"

"Oh, quit being a baby."

I bark out a laugh. "Thanks for the motivation. Why don't you just beat the crap out of me again; I think that should make me feel even better."

"I only Stunned you, your body did the beating stuff all on its own," she retorts. "And would you like some cheese with that whine?"

"Alright, that's it," I summon her wand, which is lying next to the journal in which she's writing, as I stalk toward her with a mischievous grin.

"W-what are you—eep!" She starts screaming until she can't stop the laughter from my tickling. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"Ha! That'll teach you!" I say, tossing her wand back.

"Teach me?" She asks, eyebrow raised. She picks up her wand and moves around the desk between us. "Teach me? I'll show you how it's done! Rictusempra!"

I wandlessly cast a Finite just as the silver light strikes me, just before the urge to double over in laughter takes over. "I'm not ticklish," I say with a grin.

"That's not..." she says slowly, turning to toss her wand back on the desk, "...fair!" Before I can react she spins back around and launches herself at me, fingers jabbing into my kidneys.

The suddenness of the attack catches me off guard, so it's too late to fight off the urge to squirm. We collapse in a pile of laughter, her chocolate eyes dancing with mirth.

"Not ticklish, huh?" She asks, smirking victoriously. She holds herself up with one arm and flips a pile of bushy brown hair behind her shoulder.

"I'm not, I was just humoring you," I say petulantly.

This is the wrong thing to say, because my left kidney gets another quick jab that makes me yelp.

"Oh?" She purses her lips and lifts an eyebrow as if to dare me to say more, then tucks the last stray wisp of hair behind her ear.

I don't know what happened after that, except suddenly her face is centimeters from mine, pulling away and my lips are tingling from the contact with hers.

Oh, shit.

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