Harry slept fitfully in his four-poster the night after the second task.
He'd been uneasy for most of the day.
From what he could tell, it had started in the early afternoon when he noticed a change come over the female population of the school; they seemed to be taunting him--enticing him--teasing him.
It seemed that he couldn't so much as walk down a hallway without girls brushing up against him or walking by him seductively.
But at the same time, he was sure that it was just in his head; even on a day without classes, the students of Hogwarts generally wore their school robes, but he could picture the bodies of the opposite sex moving beneath those uniforms as clearly as if they were wearing skin-tight leotards.
He knew the girls hadn't changed, they weren't any different, it was simply that his perception of them had somehow heightened.
There was no delicate way to say it; Harry was randy.
Finally, at half nine, he'd claimed he was tired from his swim in the lake and retreated up to bed in an effort to escape the array of femininity that, to Harry, saturated the common room.
For more than an hour he had lay there, wishing that he could put the day's events behind him and fall asleep, but whenever he closed his eyes, he would see things that made his heart race: Hogwarts girls in lacy underthings; smooth, toned, tanned, bare flesh; breasts barely concealed by half open robes; long legs disappearing beneath robes much too short to be allowed in the castle--only just long enough to cover their owners most private parts; curtains of long silky hair. . .
It was near eleven when he had decided that the only way he would get any relief would be to, well, rub one out.
Unfortunately, he was just beginning to work up some steam when, from the opposite side of the room, he'd heard Seamus doing the very same thing.
He'd grimaced--all of his momentum was lost.
Throwing up a silencing charm on his curtains didn't help, as now he couldn't get the sounds of Seamus pleasuring himself out of his head.
Frustrated, he'd rolled over and closed his eyes, not even bothering to put his nightclothes back on, and tried to fall asleep, while visions of female flesh, tantalizingly hidden, danced behind his eyelids.
Now having fallen asleep, the relief he'd hoped he would find remained elusive.
His dreams were filled with nameless, faceless, barely-clothed girls touching him, caressing him, trying to undress him.
He settled a bit as the dream shifted and he found himself in an empty classroom with Cho.
She slinked up to him seductively, her hands alternating between caressing various parts of her anatomy and opening the fastenings on her robe as she continued to draw nearer Harry.
He caught tantalizing glimpses of bare flesh underneath the robe as it opened.
She was mere feet from him now and she licked her lips invitingly.
Harry swallowed as his breathing increased in pace.
Suddenly, the dream Cho was in his arms as the robe slid ever so slowly over her shoulders revealing her nakedness.
He pulled her to him and pressed his lips to hers, wrapping his arms around her bare back, one just below her shoulders, the other at her waist.
He closed his eyes and lost himself in the kiss and the armful of naked girl.
"Oh, Harry," she said as her lips broke away from the kiss before moving to kiss up his jaw line.
Her voice sounded younger than normal, but it didn't fail to send shivers down his spine.
"I want you."
Harry couldn't respond other than to kiss every bit of exposed skin that his lips could reach--cheek, jaw, neck, shoulder, arm--as his hands explored various interesting aspects of her form.
Moving back up to kiss her lips again, he noticed that her hair had changed; it was no longer black but a silvery blond.
He knew that Cho's hair wasn't blond, but the change felt right to him and he couldn't explain it.
Nor did he have any desire to do so.
She brought her lips to his and again Harry closed his eyes and revelled in the sensations.
His hands continued their explorations, his right was kneading her bum and his left ventured around and moved up to her chest.
The fact that her chest was flat, with no development whatsoever brought him up short.
"Oh, 'Arry," she said, and this time he knew that the young voice wasn't Cho's.
"Zank you for pulling me out of ze lake."
Harry's eyes shot open as he was forcefully pulled from his troubled sleep.
He found himself in his four-poster, still naked and most definitely not alone.
"Gabrielle?" he breathed.
He was too shocked by the girl's presence in his bed to be surprised that he remembered her name.
She was sitting astride him as he lay on his back.
She wore a nightgown that was really nothing more than a long shirt.
He thought it was pink though it was difficult to tell in the dim light that filtered around and over his drawn curtains and it was bunched up at the bottom but would likely have barely kept her knickers from view had she been standing straight.
She was sitting on his legs just below his crotch with his cock standing very erect directly in front of her.
He gulped.
"What are you. . ."
He trailed off, unsure of what to say or how to extricate himself from this obviously embarrassing situation without either getting himself into serious trouble or becoming the subject of some very humiliating rumours.
His eyes darted to his shorts wistfully; he wanted desperately to cover himself up but images of her running from his bed screaming loud enough to wake the entire tower should he startle her by moving to grab them stayed his hands.
"I 'ad to come to you," she said simply.
Shock and fear played their parts in slowing his thought processes.
He found himself having to force his eyes up to hers to keep them off of the point where her belly contacted the base of his penis.
He silently cursed the fact that it defiantly remained completely hard.
"You. . . had. . ." he managed.
She giggled.
"Surely you felt it."
"Felt. . .?" he repeated dumbly.
"Down by ze lake, silly boy," she said.
She twitched her legs just enough to move her upper body forward and back again by the barest amount as though she wanted to press herself more firmly against his cock.
As she moved, he felt something he hadn't noticed before: the nightgown she was wearing would not have covered her knickers after all, since she clearly didn't have any on.
His cock gave an involuntary throb and he mentally groaned.