The bell rings. She rushes out into the hall, head down, eyes glued to a small book. She pushes past the tide of students heading in her direction. She bumps into several students, but she doesn’t comment and neither do they. She readjusts the bag slung across her shoulder and move to the side of the hall.
She lifts her head up from the book and spies her locker in the distance. She moves quicker. Ducking between a group of jocks, she slides around their groupies, and reaches her locker.
She opens it in seconds, tosses the book inside, takes another out and puts in her bag. She steps back, ready to close the door, when someone opens the locker on the right.
“Look at that face, those eyes, those lips, that tall lean frame that’s made for a woman to wrap her legs around.”
“His hands. His strong solid hands are slightly callused and rough to the touch.”
“I touched him. I touched them, and it was like feeling a fire licking against my skin. I felt warm, breathless and in dire need of water.”
“It sounds like you needed a shower.”
“I need him. I need all of him.”
“You don’t need him. You want him.”
“He is an oasis, and I am lost in the desert.”
“There is nothing tangible; it’s a mirage.”
“You’re to cynical, Hermione.”
“And you Ginerva, are too blind and delusional to see that there is nothing real about him.”
She closes her locker and almost hits Ginny, who jumps out of the way. Hermione heads back into the current, which has slowed to lazy wave. She looks down at the tile, counting it beneath her feet. She doesn’t turn to look at him, leaning against his locker, surrounded by cronies. But she knows; she knows he’s looking at her. She’s almost past him when he speaks.
She doesn’t look back. She never looks back. But he calls to her, like a siren, his song is pure and beautiful. The timber of his voice makes her knees weak and her thighs clench. She longs to swim to him, to let him sweep her up into his arm, even though she knows there are jagged rocks that would never let her really touch him. He is mirage, tangible, but still a mirage.
