*✧･ﾟ:* DEAD TO ME *:･ﾟ✧*
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INDIANA, ALTHOUGH NEVER being a Prefect, had been in the Prefect's Bathroom many times before. Her sixth year, in an attempt to forget about the inky mark on her arm or the task that Draco had been forced to complete, had been a whirlwind of Indiana gaining every bit of sexual experience a sixteen year old girl could possibly get.
Nancy had begged her to be careful ("There's an epidemic going on in America, you know, an auto-immune disease!"), but even then, she needed something to take her mind off of things. She had been so desperate that she had even taken up Draco on his many offers; she didn't enjoy it as much as she did, that's for sure. Blondes weren't really her type.
But being a Quidditch Captain gave her easy access to the room; no more Draco sneaking her in, or begging Pansy Parkinson to just give her the password for one night and then offer to Obliviate her afterwards. And hey! Indiana had only hooked up with one person this year! That had to be an accomplishment, right? Even if they were a head-pushing, lousy sixth year who didn't care much about getting her off?
Her favorite part of the bathroom had to be the many taps around the perimeter of the pool-sized bathtub. Sweet-smelling soap would pour into the hot water and build up fluffy clouds of bubbles that covered her just enough to make her feel like one of those models in fancy American magazines she found in Nancy's dorm that one time.
"Oooo, Indiana's back! She's back!" came a shrill, annoying voice from the far end of the room, loud over the soft music of the Muggle CD players the girl had snagged from Nancy. Indiana let her head fall back behind her, her elbows resting by her head as the bubbles just barely covered the cups of her breasts. "No boys this time?"
"Get outta here, Myrtle," She replied boredly without looking over. "I'm all sore from practice, I'm not in the mood for gossiping."
"You should bring in that handsome boy," Myrtle let out a shrill giggle. "With the abs —"
"Ugh, I am not getting with Ambrose ever again," Indiana scoffed, shaking her head a bit and re-adjusting her hair so it wasn't dipping in the water. "He was poking my you-know-what like it was a damn button — didn't even listen to a word I said."
"Oh, but he was so cute —!"
"Myrtle!" Indiana lifted her head up to make eye contact with the young ghost. She pursed her transparent lips and did a loop in the air out of frustration. "Outta here!"
Myrtle huffed, but condensed herself inside of one of the pies again, and with a whoosh!, Indiana knew she was gone. Myrtle had always bothered her, but she had helped Draco a ton during the time of his task, so Indiana had to give her some props. Someone had to have been there for him, and god knows she wasn't. She had always felt slightly bad about that.
Second guessing herself, Indiana glanced down at the skin of her inner left forearm — Nancy had helped her out this morning with her Glamour Charm, which had given her the appearance that she had no botched skull and snake tattoo along her inner forearm. Thank god. Being able to look down at her arm and not have to see that cursed thing was a privilege.
Indiana tilted her head back again and closed her eyes, feeling the way the bubbles fizzled along the length of her skin. She sat still for a moment, the only noise the almost-silent drip-drop of the glittering golden faucet, before lifting up her wand and muttering a Summoning Charm. Her box of cigarettes and lighter came sliding over across the tile floors, and she swiftly slipped one out and held the flame to the tip. Thank god Myrtle wasn't still in there, she thought. She didn't like her smoking either. What does she care, anyway? She's already dead.
Indiana almost didn't hear the door open. She had been so preoccupied with making a perfect smoke ring out of her mouth that the soft footsteps of a certain someone entering the room didn't even reach her ears. It wasn't until the silence — deep, deafening silence — that she brought her head forward and widened her eyes.
"Potter," She greeted in surprise. Said boy was standing by the entrance, wearing his robes but only wearing a t-shirt and gray sweats underneath. He was staring at her, eyes wide and unblinking and he hadn't been too slick about it. She wasn't uncomfortable nor was she flustered; thank god for the bubbles, she thought. Composing herself so she didn't seem too taken aback, she smirked at him and said cooly, "Fancy running into you here."
"Why — Why're you in here?" He croaked, blinking at her once, twice, before he avoided her all together. She blew out a puff of smoke, amused.
"Baking a cake, obviously," She drawled sarcastically, leaving the cigarette in between her lips as she tilted her head back again. She could feel his eyes on her when she removed it from her mouth, blowing a thin stream of smoke up above her. "You?"
"Uhm — I just —" Potter paused, and under her eyelashes she watched him feverishly adjust his glasses. "I just wanted to come in."
"Don't let me stop you," She found herself saying. The words fell out of her mouth before she could even process what she was saying, and when she saw his eyes widen further, she figured there was no turning back. "Just pretend I'm not here."
"Little hard when it smells like cigarettes now," Potter sassed, and she heard his footsteps, making her assume he had walked further into the room. She fluttered her eyes closed and smirked to herself. The twat was stubborn enough not to leave just because she was in here. "You're not... like... naked, are you?"
Indiana found herself lowly laughing, and she only tilted her head upright again and glanced over at the cigarette in between her fingers, watching as the tiny ashes fell on top of a few of the pink-tinted bubbles and disappeared into the water.
"And if I am?" she replied, shifting her eyes coyly to him. He was leaning against one of the walls, his robes in the crook of his elbows, looking uncharacteristically emotionless. His jaw was clenched and his eyes seemed to be struggling to stay glued on her eyes; how hard was he trying to keep his cool? she thought. And then, the fleeting idea came to mind: Potter's probably never seen a girl naked before! Ha! "You scared?"
"No," He said much too quickly, shaking his head. "No."
"Dive in then," Indiana muttered, taking a drag and placing her left palm over her eyes so she couldn't see. For good measure, she closed her eyes too. Placing the cigarette back into her mouth, she said, "I won't look, don't get all fussy."
A prolonged period of tense silence ensued, and Indiana almost thought he had fled from the room. But the almost inaudible sound of clothes dropping onto the marble floor made her think otherwise, followed by the sound of the water sloshing. She felt the water around her move slightly, and she almost smirked to himself. Well, he was a Gryffindor.
When she opened her eyes and took her hand away from her face, she saw that he was across the way from her on the opposite side of the pool, his arms hidden under the water from his mid-bicep down. They locked eyes for a moment, him looking only slightly nervous, and her lips quirking up around her cigarette.
"I heard talking," He said after a very long moment. She hadn't finished looking at him, yet; she had always pictured him to be a lanky, twig-like boy, but it seemed that since the war he had grown into his own skin a hell of a lot more. She pushed away the thought of what he looked like below the waters surface and paid attention to his words rather than his arms. "Were you in here with someone?"
"Jealous?" She cocked up a brow. He only looked at her, jaw still set; she watched as a muscle in his shoulder flex slightly, but she made no comments out loud. "No. Just me. Myrtle popped in, though, know her?"
Potter's brows twitched downwards, but he then let out a breathy chuckle and shook his head a bit. "Yeah, I know her... snuck up on me last time I was in here."
"Merlin," Indiana rolled her eyes and stuck her cigarette back in between her lips. Exhaling a rather loud cloud of smoke, she said, "Girl has game, I'll give her that."
Potter was looking at her cigarette again. She was fiddling with it in between her fingers, the golden ring on her middle finger shining underneath the dim light of the bathroom. The stained-glass mermaid on the far right wall had closed her eyes, fast asleep on her rock. When Indiana glanced back over at Potter, he promptly looked away, down at the bubbles below him.
"D'you wanna smoke?" she offered, gesturing towards him with the cigarette in her hand. He seemed hesitant, more hesitant than last time. Indiana pursed her lips a bit and cocked her head to the side. "I don't bite, Potter."
"You sure?" he said, his voice higher than usual. She only chuckled and took another drag.
"Not unless you ask," she replied casually, the cigarette hanging from her lips. She watched as the crimson crept up his neck and face and found herself enjoying the effect she had on him. A little voice in her head screeched at her to stop, for her to get out of the damn pool and get back into the Slytherin common room before her father or friends found out that she was naked in a bathtub with Harry fucking Potter — !
"Fine," Potter muttered, pushing himself off of the wall and wading his way over towards her side of the pool, making sure that there was a decent amount of room in between the pair of them. Indiana made sure to pull a rather large pile of bubbles closer to her chest, despite the fact that the water was so soapy that it was as though they were sitting inside large clouds.
She took the cigarette out of her mouth and pinched it between her forefinger and thumb, holding it out in front of him so the filter faced him. Smoke spilled out from in between her lips as she softly breathed, waiting for him to take it. To her internally evident surprise, instead of lifting his hand out of the water and grabbing it, he only leaned his torso forward and allowed her to put it in between his lips for him. His lips just barely grazed her fingers as she did so, and she dared to look up into his eyes only once before glancing away.
When she drew her hand away, she watched with bated breath as he sucked the smoke out of the cigarette, praying that he didn't start coughing. After his first inhalation, he locked eyes with her as though asking what to do next.
"Just breathe like normal," She said in a quiet voice as he lifted his hand from under the water to take it out of his mouth. He complied, taking a deep breath without exhaling the smoke; he winced, one of his eyes squeezing closed, before he turned his head and heaved an exhale as though he couldn't take it.
"Sorry — sorry —" he choked, turning his head completely to the side to cough out the smoke. Indiana only smiled and took the cigarette from his fingers. Swallowing, he readjusted his head so he was facing her, and he stared as she put the cigarette back into her mouth. His stare was not hard; no, it seemed patient. Like he was expecting something to happen but was too nervous to do anything.
"You probably shouldn't smoke," Indiana told him in a whispery voice, blowing a cloud out to the side so it wasn't in his face. It seemed he had unconsciously inched closer towards her after she had given him the cigarette; so close, in fact, that she accidentally bumped knees with him underneath the surface of the water. "Bad for Quidditch, you know."
"You've said," Potter breathed, his stare flickering about her face, continuously dropping to her lips where streams of smoke were slowly pouring out. "And yet you still do it."
"Yes, well..." Indiana shifted only her eyes to the side for a moment, crushing the tip of the cigarette on the side of the pool and twisting before meeting his green eyes again. The air between them was unbearably thick, and she was well aware that it wasn't just because of the cigarette smoke. "I do a lot of things I probably shouldn't."
If this were any another person, Indiana thought, she would have been half on top of their lap by now. But something about him was making her hesitate — perhaps it was the tiny bit of nervousness in his eyes, or maybe it was the fact that he wasn't just some random boy in her year. It was scarily different; this was Potter. It was single-handedly the most annoying person she knew.
He was impossibly close now. The aroma of the sugary-sweet smelling bubbles and cigarette smoke and something that reminded her of broomstick polish filled her senses, and she was suddenly incredibly aware of the way her heart was pounding out of her chest. She prayed the bubbles covering her breasts hadn't fizzled away.
There was no backing away now, she thought. That'd just be cruel, wouldn't it? To turn her head and leave him with his green eyes looking all dark and his tanned shoulders just barely grazing the side of her arm and —
"Jones," She heard him utter quietly, his voice violently soft and his eyes flickering with something she only recognized as inexperience. He was nervous. He'd never make the move.
Throwing all caution to the wind, she moved the extra inch because she knew he probably wouldn't. She wasn't even sure if she would consider this kissing him just yet; her lips were sort of grazing against his, sharing a breath. She could practically hear his heartbeat. His eyes were still open and impossibly wide, and it wasn't until she brought a hand out of the water and used it to cup the side of his jaw that they fluttered half-closed.
In a rush of complete and undeniable boldness that she had never quite experienced before, she pulled back just a bit and brought the pad of her thumb over his lower lip, running it along the skin for a moment and letting it spring back into place. She heard him inhale the smallest of gasps, and it wasn't until then that she moved her thumb out of the way and truly kissed him.
When he leaned himself towards her, it was clear that he hadn't had much experience before. His arms stayed at his sides for a long moment, and it seemed he was too distracted by focusing on kissing her to allow the rest of his body to loosen up. Smirking through the kiss, she moved her hand down from his face and down the length of his arm until she reached his hand. Without protest, he allowed her to bring his hand (that she could feel shaking slightly with nerves) towards her to rest on her shoulder, and it seemed that was what got him going.
His shoulders relaxed and he leaned closer towards her (if that was possible, Jesus Christ), breathing heavily and ignoring the way his glasses occasionally poked the side of her face. She could taste their shared breath — it was like smoke and something sweet; when her hand ran along his shoulder, she could almost feel how rapid his heart was beating — he wouldn't pass out on her, right?
Her teeth tugged at his bottom lip, her tongue sweeping past his lips as under the water, his hand snaked around to rest on the small of her back, pulling her closer to him. There was an apparent fluttering in the bottom of her stomach, shocking her considering the fact that he wasn't even feeling her up. She had never hooked up with someone who hadn't immediately touched every inch of her; he was moving slowly and carefully, and she couldn't deny the heat building up within her.
His hand was cupping her hip now; after a few seconds of his hand laying still, she felt him grip her skin, kneading his fingers down steadily, his thumb rocking gently on her hip bone. There was an apparent difference, Indiana thought, between kissing someone else and kissing Potter. Unlike the others she'd been with, Potter was slow and diligent, and the idea that she was probably the first person he'd done something like this with was insanely exciting, especially when his hand would touch a part of her skin, twitch backwards reluctantly before diving in entirely.
As she brought one of her hands to the nape of his neck, wrapping the strands of hair around her fingers, she came to the conclusion that Potter was more low-key; he seemed like the kind to closet the fact that he had done these things. She was pleasantly surprised that she preferred this over all the others.
It wasn't until she pulled her mouth away from his to breathe that she heard him; he was gasping and his breath was catching like he had just taken another puff of the cigarette and when her lips attached to a spot right on the corner of his jawline, she could have sworn she heard him curse her name under his breath. When her hand began to tug on the back of his hair, the groan that came from him made her realize he probably had a thing for hair pulling.
"Have you ever done this before?" She muttered against the skin of his neck, quiet enough for him to hear her but not loud enough for her words to echo about the room. She felt him swallow anxiously, and watched him shake his head no. And then, without thinking, she impulsively blurted, "So you're a virgin?"
He didn't answer. She took that as a yes and didn't pry further.
And then, remembering himself, Potter pulled his hand off where it had been resting along her waist and ran his fingers up into the back of her hair; he pulled her lips off of his neck and jutted her chin upwards, exposing the base of her neck and lightly yanking her head back by her scalp. His mouth travelled down her jaw and latched onto her throat, heatedly playing with the soft skin of her neck between his lips. Her chest heaved up and down as her heart beat faster than she thought it could, and she wondered if the bubbles had fizzled away yet. She wasn't sure if she minded yet, but she knew he had noticed.
"Potter," she murmured quietly as he brought his mouth to her collarbone, his messy hair brushing her jaw as his hands smoothed up from her waist up to where his thumbs were pressed along the tops of her ribs.
She could feel his hands, which had that too-long-in-the-water feeling to them, creeping up to the line of her chest, just barely grazing the bottom of breasts as he pressed a kiss to the top of her sternum. A breathy moan drifted from her lips at the sheer fragility of the touch, eliciting him to suddenly remember who he was and who she was and what they were doing and oh my god —
His lips left her body and she felt his hands slowly melt away from her, his eyes widening in full as he sat upright. Indiana figured this was her cue to take her hands away from his arms; his face was so crimson that she thought he might be overheating. Goosebumps spread across her pruned skin at the lack of warmth, and for once in her life, Indiana felt embarrassed.
And then, she saw what she had dreaded most of all; his eyes darted down to her left forearm, but his brows furrowed when he saw that it was void of any mark. He met her eyes again, and for once, she could not read him. Had he been expecting it? Was that what this was all about? To find her out and send her off to Azkaban?
"What?" She snapped before he could make a fool of her. Potter's brows lifted in surprise, and he exhaled a breath he had been holding in and broke her gaze, his head shaking just a bit.
"I — I just —" He paused, glancing up at her again. "We shouldn't have done that."
Indiana was purely taken aback by this, but there was no way she would ever let him see it. She swallowed, blinked, and brought her shoulders back and her chin up. Pursing her lips, she brought a hand out of the water and swiped her box of cigarettes, lighter, and wand off of the edge of the bath.
"Okay," she said simply, standing up from the bench and avoiding the way his eyes had popped out of their sockets at the sight of her as she walked up the steps out of the bath. He watched her silently as she waved her wand over top of her, drying her bare skin, before silently slipping on her clothes.
"Look, I didn't —" Potter started. His face and neck were coated with a scarlet flush, and she could just barely make-out a tiny mark on the side of his neck. She could hear the barely-there tremor in his voice. "I didn't mean for that to — for us to —"
She only turned her head to look at him, her brows furrowed just enough to intimidate him. He licked his lips and bowed his head to look at his hands. She continued to dress.
"I — I don't fancy you," Potter blurted, still breathing rather heavily. Her back had been turned to him as she buttoned up the top of her white shirt, but this had made her halt.
Obviously he didn't fancy her. Who was she kidding? He probably had done that loads of times before. Hooked up with the girl, made her feel all special and undeniably horny before stopping and putting on that innocent little face before turning them down. It's not like they held hands or professed their undying love to one another, they just hooked up. So why the fuck did it hurt this time?
"I just...I don't want you to think that that's what that was."
She wasn't going to let him do that. She wasn't some stupid member of his fan-club. She had a fucking Dark Mark on her arm.
"You think I fancy you?" She fired, whipping around, not bothering to finish buttoning up her shirt. The glare she had mastered after so many years returned, her lips curling up into a sneer that only a companion of Draco Malfoy's could sport. Potter blinked, resembling a lost puppy. "That's rich. As if I would never stoop as low as to —"
"Don't start coming at me," Potter interrupted firmly, standing up. Jesus christ, she thought. He obviously had not planned on having someone else in there with him, because he only wore briefs that looked unbelievably tight on him. "I just didn't want to hurt you if that were the case —"
"You didn't want to hurt me?" Indiana scoffed bitterly. "Even better. Since when do you care about how I feel? In any case, you could never hurt my feelings, Potter, I'm not that big of a priss."
"Oh really?" He challenged, stepping fully out of the bath and running a hand through his hair. It was very different to be speaking to him when she was (for the most part) fully clothed and he was half-naked. He was very distracting. "Because I think I just did. And instead of accepting that I'm actually a decent human being, you're closing yourself off and getting all angry —!"
"Don't tell me what I'm feeling or not feeling, Potter, because frankly, when I look at you, all I feel is anger," Indiana spat, stepping forward with a scowl and clutching tightly onto her wand as though refraining herself from hexing him. "I don't need to fucking put up with this. Or you."
She snatched her robes off of the counter and shrugged them over one of her shoulders, stuffing her box of cigarettes and lighter into her skirt pocket and crossing the room towards the door. Potter had grabbed his robes as well, holding them to cover his front as he watched her storm off. Before she exited, she turned to look at him.
"This never happened," She told him in a violently calm manner. He only blinked, looking conflicted. "Just — just fucking forget about it."
And with that, she slammed the door. She hadn't even noticed that her eyes had welled up.
SHE SPEAKS!
uhm... so... 😁 how we feelin?
so after i finish dead to me i have another harry ff (i need to contain myself omfg i need therapy) but after that, i want to write a marauders one because whooowee those men!!
so important question: would you all prefer one for james potter or sirius black?
thank you all for reading!!!
- s <3