Cultivating Pleasure Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Harry’s eyes widened at the sound of Hermione’s voice, though neither Luna or Pandora seemed especially fazed. Luna was happily rocking back and forth on his cock, enjoying the sensation of how full she felt, while Pandora was looking thoroughly amused.

“We’ve got to get dressed,” Harry exclaimed quietly, fearing that his voice would carry through the quiet clearing over to Hermione.

“I suppose,” Luna agreed reluctantly.

There was a squelching sound as Harry’s cock slid out of Luna. Their combined fluids dripped out of her and onto the soft grass between Harry’s legs.

As Harry staggered to his feet, a cool breeze washed over him, cleaning him fully, before his same clothes reappeared on his body. Pandora winked at him as she did the same for Luna. “You should go let Hermione know that you’re fine,” she told Luna.

“I’m much better than fine,” Luna proclaimed cheerily as she started over towards the far side of the clearing.

“She’s going to be insatiable now, you know?” Pandora murmured to Harry as they watched Luna step out through the trees to where Hermione had been.

She’d have to contend with Emma if that was the case, Harry mused. He wondered if she’d be mad that he slept with another woman. It wasn’t as though they were exclusive after all.

“Hopefully she won’t ask me in front of Hermione,” Harry joked lightly.

“Oh?” Pandora raised an eyebrow. “Are the two of you together or—”

“No!” Harry interjected quickly, throwing his hands up to dispel the notion. “We’re just friends is all. It would just be weird to talk about stuff like that with her.”

“Hmm,” Pandora hummed as she looked over Harry. “If you say so.”

Luna came back into the clearing seconds later with a frazzled-looking Hermione in tow. “She ran into your Stinksap Trap, mum!” Luna called out. “I cleaned her up, but it gave her quite a fright.”

“Who just leaves traps like that around?” Hermione asked aloud, still seeming a little dazed.

Pandora had a guilty expression on her face as she came over and looked Hermione over. “Sorry,” she apologised to Hermione. “I’d meant to disarm it, but I guess I just forgot.”

Pandora’s answer didn’t seem to mollify Hermione, who simply grimaced and glanced down at her slightly-damp clothes. “It’s fine,” she sighed.

With a wave of her wand, Pandora dried off the rest of Hermione’s clothes.

“Harry offered to help with some of the gardening,” Luna told Hermione cheerfully. “Maybe we can get rid of the rest of the traps while we’re out there?”

“Other traps?” Hermione asked, her eyes widening slightly in fear.

“There’s only a few more,” Pandora hurriedly assured her. “There was the Fanged Geranium I hid with the Disillusionment Charm so that it wouldn’t scare away the Doxies that I want it to catch.”

“And?” Hermione prompted her. “What were the others?”

“Err,” Pandora smiled in embarrassment. “I forget.”

Harry nearly laughed at the defeated look on Hermione’s face, but he didn’t want to seem like he was being mean. It was just so funny watching someone who had their life so meticulously organised dealing with a family who was almost the complete opposite.

“They won’t be too hard to find,” Luna assured Hermione. “We’ll just need to explore the grove. I’m sure we’ll find them in no time.”

“Have fun!” Pandora waved at them as they set off.

The grove was filled with magical oddities and wonders. Luna helped to cheer Hermione back up by talking about the upcoming school year as Harry stopped at various points and applied bits of his magical concoctions that he’d prepared to help a garden flourish. Specialised fertilisers would let the trees grow healthy and strong and produce far more fruit than normal. Carefully-cast cutting spells would slice away any unwanted weeds or encroaching plants that threatened others. All of it was done in the service of a harmonious and beautiful garden, and Harry happily smiled to himself as he went about his peaceful work.

It didn’t take long for them to find Pandora’s traps. Some, like a woven box suspended above an animal path through the trees, were laughably easy to spot and disarm. Others, like the disillusioned Fanged Geranium, took more time to spot, but with Luna helping them find spots to cast magic where it wouldn’t interfere with the grove’s natural magics and the wards placed on top of it, it wasn’t a particularly difficult problem to resolve.

After half an hour, they’d wandered around to the edge of the grove. There was a thick hedgerow on the opposite side of the grove that separated this section of the Lovegood’s garden from the fields that rested beyond. 

Harry kept his eyes peeled for any stray garden gnomes, knowing that they were attracted to the innate magic of places like the Lovegood’s garden. Luckily, Harry didn’t spot any signs of the little critters, but there was something else that caught his eye: a gaping hole in the base of one of the hedges.

As Harry stopped to look at the hole further, Luna cocked her head to the side and stared at Harry curiously.

“Are you still going to be helping Professor Sprout with the greenhouses this year?” Luna asked Harry as he knelt down to examine the damaged hedgerow.

“Yep,” he confirmed with a slight frown. The hedges looked like they’d been eaten away by a Bundimun, a magical beast that resembled fungus and secreted acids that could rot and damage buildings. Many non-magical plants were vulnerable to a Bundimun’s secretion. One must have passed through the hedge recently. “And I’ll be helping Professor Sinistra too. She’s been asking if I could harvest some magical ingredients for her that offer different effects based on the position of the moon when they are picked.”

“Like Fluxweed,” Hermione chimed in.

Harry nodded. “That’s one of the ones she wanted. It’ll mean I’ll be up late some nights each month, but the extra credit will more than make up for it.”

“Maybe you’ll get a chance to see the Mooncalfs that burrow near the outskirts of the forest,” Luna smiled dreamily. 

“Maybe,” Harry replied as he pulled out his wand. 

Slowly, Harry dragged the tip of his wand along the corroded edges of the branches and shrubbery that made up the hedges. The corroded bits disintegrated into a fine, black dust and fell to the ground below, leaving behind only the healthy parts of the hedges. 

“Hermione?” Harry asked without looking away from his work. “Could you reach into my robe’s right pocket and pull out the small, brown pouch please?”

Hermione knelt down beside him and did exactly that.

“And can you open in and pull out a pinch of goop inside?” He continued.

Hermione’s nose crinkled slightly as she opened it and saw the murky swamp water-looking substance within. The liquid bubbled and fizzed around her fingers when she reached in, and when she pulled her hands back, she was amazed to see that the liquid had transformed into a perfectly round sphere of the liquid. It was as though a translucent bubble had formed around it, and her fingers were the only things holding it together.

“What is this?” Hermione asked, looking curiously at the ball.

“Bouncing Bulb syrup,” Harry answered. “It’s the juices of the plant mixed with a few other potion-making ingredients in a thick syrup. It’ll help to fix what’s going on.”

Harry scooted to the side a bit as he continued to weave his magic. He had his arms stuck well inside of this hedge so that he could reach the far side where the Bundimun had entered.

“I need you to put it on the ground right in the middle of the hedge,” Harry explained to her.

“There’s not a lot of space,” Hermione commented, glancing at how Harry was still obstructing much of the gap with his arms and body.

“We’ll just have to bunch up together,” Harry replied. “I need to activate a spell right above the goop as soon as it hits the ground, so I need to be in there too.”

“Okay,” Hermione replied as she lowered herself onto her belly and crawled right up beside Harry. 

The two of them had to get very close to reach the gap in the hedge. There bodies were pressed right up against each other, and Hermione had to overlap her arms with Harry’s in order to fit them in the small gap.

“Just a little further,” Harry told Hermione as he positioned his hands in the right spot. He could feel Hermione’s fingers running along the underside of his forearm, getting closer to the right spot.

“Ugh,” Hermione grunted as she pushed her body forward. Her cheek pressed right up against his and her breast touched his elbow, and Harry was now suddenly very aware of his close proximity with his best friend and how soft she felt against him.

Harry always recognised Hermione’s beauty, but acting on it was another matter. Between their busy schedules and their brief periods of dating other people, the topic of the two of them getting together had never come up. But Emma’s recent teasing of him about Hermione was making him think about it more and more, and with their bodies so close together like this, another part of him was thinking more about it too.

“There!” Hermione exclaimed happily as her hands slid into place right beneath his. She looked at his face out of the corner of her eye. “Are you ready?” She asked, her voice slightly unusual due to how their cheeks were squished against each other.

It took Harry a moment to gather his wits about himself before he could answer. “Yeah,” he replied.

“Dropping it now,” Hermione said. 

Harry was already casting the spell just as Hermione started to pull her hands back. It was an old herbologist incantation designed to trigger the Bouncing Bulb syrup, as well as many other kinds of herbal concoctions. As the ball of syrup struck the ground, it tried to bounce away, but Harry’s spell caught it before it could flee.

Harry yanked his hands back sharply, getting them out of the hedges just in time as the ball of syrup magically expanded and latched onto the trimmed ends of the hedges. Harry peered through the gap, watching as the syrup formed itself into tube-like shapes that matched the roots of the shrubbery. The other end of the tubes jabbed themselves into the dirt below and began to feed the plant nutrients that were now magically enhanced in order to help repair itself.

“Perfect,” Harry beamed, instinctively turning towards Hermione.

At the sound of his voice, Hermione turned to face him too, and in their close proximity, their lips brushed across each other.

Hermione let out a gasp and pulled her head back quickly, her cheeks reddening and her hand covering up to touch her lips.

Even though they had barely touched, Harry had felt a spark there. A rush of endorphins coursed through his body, filling him with an intense desire to grab Hermione and kiss her for real. He could feel his cheeks reddening too. 

“Did you two just kiss?” Luna laughed, ignorant to the effects the moment had on both of them.

“It was just an accident,” Harry and Hermione blurted out simultaneously.

Luna just giggled harder, and Hermione quickly got to her feet in a huff.

Harry wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what. He knew that he wanted to ask her if she had felt the same thing he had when their lips touched, but he couldn’t find the right words to use.  It was awkward enough that he was keeping it a secret that he’d slept with Hermione’s mum. How would she react if he told her about that, especially after this?

Thankfully, or not, Hermione reacted faster than he did.

“We should keep going,” she said as she looked away from him. “We still need to cover the rest of the hedgerow.”

The rest of the trip around the Lovegood Garden was slightly uncomfortable to say the least. While it was easy for Harry or Hermione to hold a conversation with Luna as they walked, they both struggled to say more than a few words to each other at a time. Hermione kept going red and looking away while Harry struggled to find the right thing to say to make the situation more comfortable for the both of them. Thankfully, Luna didn’t seem to notice the awkwardness and made sure to keep both of them involved in conversations with her about the upcoming school year.

When they finally finished, the trio returned back to Luna’s house, where Pandora was waiting for them out back with tall glasses of fresh lemonade.

“I just got off the floo with Lily,” Pandora told the three of them as she handed out the cups. A little smirk playing on her lips made Harry tense up, but she didn’t let him languish in worry for too long. “She invited Luna, Xeno, and I on the summer trip with everyone.”

Luna jumped in excitement. “Ooh, where are we going?”

“A private island in the Maldives,” Harry answered for her. There were a lot of people going on the trip now: him and his mum, Sirius, Remus, and Tonks, Emma and Hermione, and now Luna’s family. It was going to be a great time and the last trip he took before his last year at Hogwarts.

But even knowing that, he knew he wouldn’t be able to have the great time he wanted until he talked to Hermione. One way or another, he needed to end this growing awkwardness between them.