Harry watched nervously as Neville came into the library at 12 Grimmauld place, looking quite a bit more fit than Harry had remembered, though of course Harry's perceptions might be coloured by what he was about to propose. "Thanks for coming, Neville," he said, wincing inwardly at his own choice of wording.

"I was really happy when Hermione's owl came, you know I've been wanting to help," said Neville shyly, standing awkwardly in front of Harry, who was leaning back against the heavy table laden with books.

Harry blushed and relaxed a little more. "You're probably the only one who can help, Nev," he said seriously, eyes flicking up and down Neville's body and taking in the solidity of him beneath the lingering puppy fat. Hermione's plan was seeming less harebrained by the minute, and Harry swallowed again before he spoke. "You know how there was the whole thing with the prophecy that had both our names on it?"

Neville nodded and said, "Yeah, I've always wondered, but I figured you'd tell me if it was important."

"Well, it is now," said Harry, glad to not have to backtrack much. He explained the text of the prophecy and what Dumbledore had told him about it, and then ploughed on before Neville could ask any questions. "Well, Hermione thinks that when Voldemort marked me, the way it happened opened up some power in me but locked yours away, and it's been leaking out bit by bit ever since, but especially when you're in close contact with me. She thinks you've got the same power in you, but the only way to use it to kill Voldemort is if it's channelled through me."

Neville nodded again, as he'd done all through Harry's recitation. "All right, that sounds fair. My magic really did improve a lot when we had the DA, and I'd owe you just for that," he said, "even if this wasn't for a good cause."

Harry felt his cheeks grow hot and said wryly, "Well, don't say yes before you know... what's required." Harry gave up on trying to force the words out and stepped to one side, revealing the heavy book that had been hidden behind his back, lying innocuously on the table as though it wasn't about to turn Harry's life upside-down.

Sex Magic From East to West, the cover read, With Over 200 Wizarding Illustrations! Harry tried not to flinch as Neville took in the implications, and then realized what the three wizards on the front cover were getting ready to do. "You... and I... but, I mean, you're not... I've never."

"I haven't either, but I actually am, a little, and I... I kind of want to," said Harry, shuffling forward just a little and shooting Neville a sidelong glance.

"Oh!" said Neville, giving Harry a rather lingering once-over. "Well, that... that's all right, then."

And just like that, it was decided, and they sat down with the book and its moving, inspiring illustrations so Harry could explain how the ritual went. Neville nodded along, making agreeable noises and shifting in his seat right up until Harry turned the page and the picture started moving. "Wait, I... you're... why aren't you on top?" Neville asked, blushing in what Harry thought was a highly adorable fashion.

"I've got to channel you, which means you've got to pour your, er, magic into me," said Harry, shifting in his seat again. "Hermione says it'll help if we're both, er, fairly pure, so we can't practice or anything, but she's promised me a salve to, er, ease the way."

Neville bit his lip and looked pensive for a moment, then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Harry's mouth that was quick, soft and nearly as inspiring as the picture in the book. "Virgins do that," Neville said definitively, turning back to the book with pink working its way up his ears.

Harry licked his lips, and wondered just what else virgins did.

---

Harry had been worried that the ritual had to take place on some lonely, windswept promontory in the dark of the moon or something equally quelling, but Hermione assured him that the optimal time was actually the middle of a particular spring morning, with the warm sun shining down on the somewhat private space that Professor Sprout had created for them in Greenhouse 4. In a way, Harry missed that vision of a cold, dark coupling, if only because it would've been easier to explain away his shaking hands. It wasn't every day he lost his virginity and, hopefully, defeated Voldemort in one rather kinky go, though he and Neville had already agreed, between the sort of kisses virgins definitely did, that they were going to have round two as soon as physically possible after round one, preferably in a bed.

Harry and Neville had gathered all the ingredients together, and were sprinkling white sand over the cleared earth in a much-practiced pattern of concentric circles and runes copied from the book. There was a thin porcelain bowl in the middle full of pure spring water, with the herbs they'd gathered floating on top and the last Horcrux buried in the shallow earth beneath it. Finally the last grains of sand were in place, and there was nothing left but to go ahead with things.

Harry stepped a bit closer to Neville, and Neville reciprocated with a soft brush of fingers over the back of Harry's hand. He felt they were just about to get up to the shy glances that generally presaged a nice round of snogging when Hermione came bustling in from outside, book in one hand and an hourglass in the other.

"Fortunately for you two," she said, without looking up as she carefully placed the hourglass into the appropriate space in the pattern, "this ritual was designed for virgins, so there's very few words and most of them you've got to say at the start and end." She looked up and saw them standing close, very nearly but not quite holding hands, and rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you two. Now, Harry, the goal is to start the, er, proceedings as soon as the sand in the hourglass goes violet," she said, pointing to where currently golden sand was trickling through the device, "and then Neville, you need to finish while it's blue, and Harry, you've got to go as soon as it turns green. Got it?"

Harry nodded. "Shag at purple, come on green, got it," he said, smirking inwardly as colour finally hit Hermione's cheeks.

"Don't forget the words, I won't be here to correct you," she said tartly, turning on her heel and walking off. "Naked, you've both got to be completely naked!" she called out after her, and Harry gave a little shiver as the door clicked shut behind her.

"Naked, right," said Harry, turning to Neville and finding himself tugged forward by his t-shirt into one last kiss the way virgins did it, before they had to start doing it the way the book said.

Neville let him go after a nice, long snog, stepping back and nodding. "Naked," he said, stripping his simple robe off over his head to reveal that he really had gone commando.

Harry'd worn a pair of his old y-fronts, as his arse had developed a distinct squelchy feeling by the time he'd worked three fingers and about half the pot of salve up inside. He stripped off quickly but efficiently, retrieving his wand and leaving his clothes in a pile with Neville's robe, well away from their painstakingly drawn lines.

Neville stepped into the circle first, and held his hand out to Harry. Harry swallowed once and went in after, taking Neville's hand and finding it warm and just as sweaty as his own. They clasped hands over the bowl, shot a glance at the hourglass, which had taken on a distinctly reddish hue, and started to recite the words in unison.

"The circle is pure, our intentions are pure.
The water is pure, our bodies are pure.
The sun brings us life, the season growth.
We give our purity. We gain the power of life."

Harry knelt over the bowl just as he'd practiced, knees wide and body offered to Neville. He thought he'd never been so embarrassed in his life, but he could feel the magic thrumming through him, brought to the surface by the rite. Neville knelt behind him, and Harry felt the slick head of his prick rub against his opening.

They watched the sand in the glass change colours, the last of the red trickling away until it was fully violet. Harry tried to breathe and relax, telling himself that it would hurt if he didn't. Neville ran a hand down his back, and somehow the fine tremor Harry felt in it was comforting enough that he remembered to push back when Neville pushed inward.

It didn't hurt.

Neville's body must have been tingling even more than Harry's, and his prick felt hot and hard and electric and it was so much better than fingers had ever been, especially since it wasn't Harry by himself this time, but Neville with him, in him.

"A sacrifice that is not; love as a birthright," they said together, and Harry felt almost like he was dreaming, floating in a haze of white and gold, "We give our purity. We gain the power of life."

Neville started moving, and Harry was really, really grateful that there weren't any more words for awhile. He braced himself over the bowl, wand gripped in his right hand while his left clawed at the bare earth, hips rocking back into Neville's thrusts. He wanted to cry out, to tell Neville how good it was and call his name loud enough for everyone to hear them, but he'd been warned not to say anything but the ritual words, once it began. Concentration wasn't the key here, not like with Transfiguration or Charms, but you had to have all the elements just exactly right, or no matter how hard you shagged the power wouldn't go where it was supposed to in the end.

Harry was grateful that Neville was shagging him awfully hard anyway, just to be sure.

Harry's eyes were unfocused and he thought he might never take a full, proper breath again without getting interrupted by the wonderful glide of Neville's prick inside him, that little hitching slap at the end when their bollocks collided and pleasure sparked all through Harry's body, starting with something lovely inside him that only Neville could reach. He stared off into the distance, vaguely aware of the sand going blue-violet and then a proper blue, and Neville's wordless moans growing louder and more ragged.

He even managed to mostly not be surprised when Neville's power came pouring into him, the prick in his arse still for the moment except for a bit of a jerking motion, and his breath still gone as he was filled up to the brim with the white noise of Neville's untapped reserves.

Neville's hand came down to stroke him, slick with whatever he'd found for himself -- presumably Hermione's salve, but Harry really didn't want to think about Hermione just now -- and it was all Harry could do to hold on until the sands shifted from the pure blue of a Ravenclaw scarf to the blue-green of deep oceans to the vivid, emerald green of leaves. Harry gasped once, twice, and just managed to choke back Neville's name as he came, spilling everything he was neatly into the bowl. His seed swirled with the water and herbs, glowing a bit disconcertingly and making patterns that he kept thinking ought to mean more than his lost virginity.

Then he remembered, and swallowed enough to find the voice to do the final incantations. Harry touched Neville's hand where it was still on his prick, then sat back and held his wand in both hands, point down. Neville's fingers came to overlay his and he looked into the shining bowl, and called upon his scar and their power and Neville's scars as well, the ones no one could see unless they looked into his eyes.

"Our hearts are pure, our magic is pure.
Tom Marvolo Riddle, we will purge thine evil.
We give our purity. We gain the power to abolish thee."

On the final 'thee', their hands went crashing down, breaking the bowl and driving Harry's wand into the ground. The water and the power both flowed down into the earth, into the final Horcrux and back to its creator. There was a burst of light, and Harry's scar flared so painfully he nearly fainted, though Neville was there to hold him steady, behind him and inside him still as well. Harry felt a burst of rage hotter than anything Voldemort had ever sent his way, and then a burst of cold so sharp it was like midnight on the coldest day of the year, a frost that killed as surely as anything man could devise.

Then, suddenly, there was nothing.

"He's gone," said Harry into the silence, feeling weak as a kitten and a bit like he'd want to wait awhile before attempting anything more complicated than sitting here perched on Neville's cock and possibly kissing.

Definitely kissing; Neville very gently turned Harry's head to one side and pressed their mouths together, and Harry let out a soft moan and kissed back, fingers finally unwrapping themselves from his now-broken wand. He slipped his left hand into Neville's right over his stomach, and then threaded his fingers through Neville's hair, thinking how soft it was, and how the brown was just the same brown as the tree they'd gotten the mistletoe from. They sat there just like that for a very long time, just tongues and hands and mouths and Neville rocking him ever so gently until he realized they were making love again and at some point his body had caught up to the plan and started participating without him.

Harry couldn't say he minded, though he did think briefly and longingly of a bed. Still, there was always tomorrow, and right now he was completely comfortable despite being twisted a bit around, and Neville was guiding their hands down over Harry's cock, and the sun was shining brightly through his closed eyelids and everything was really quite all right.

He didn't even mind so much when he heard Hermione's distant voice saying, "They must be done by now, we should really check and... oh, oh dear, they're fine, no, turn around, they're fine and it's done, the bowl's broken and so is Harry's wand, oh, not that wand! Go on, let's give them a bit of privacy," though he was grateful when the stream of nervous chatter was abruptly cut off by the click of the door and he could go back to thinking about how very nice it felt to have Neville's prick inside him without all that power to distract him.

Neville was, Harry thought, exactly the perfect size for this sort of thing, neither so short he couldn't strike that spark inside Harry on nearly every stroke, nor so big that it had hurt going in or would be too hard to fit into his mouth later. His body felt comfortingly warm against Harry's back, but his prick was hotter somehow, though perhaps that was the lingering friction as it slid in and out through the still-tight entrance to Harry's body. Neville's lips were warm and slick against his, and practiced now that they'd got the snogging thing down back a hundred years ago when they'd still been virgins.

It was as if Harry could, now that he wasn't distracted by coloured sand and saving the world, finally see what was really magical about sex. He didn't long for the miracle of babies or anything, but at the same time he knew he'd never quite be the same person he'd been before Neville had made love to him just now, not the ritual but this sweet, slow aftermath that drew him out in an endless line between Neville's undemanding kisses, deft fingers and gently rocking hips. Harry knew, having tasted this side of Neville, both the sweet man holding him now and the forceful lover earlier who'd taken him hard and made them both drunk with power and desire, that he'd no intention whatsoever of giving Neville up, ever.

"You're mine now," Harry murmured, and he felt a grin blossom on Neville's face as they kissed once more, one kiss in an infinity of kisses.

"Good," Neville said, his voice holding a fierceness that Harry hadn't expected, a possessiveness that poured into their next kiss, into the sharper thrusts of his hips, the tightening of his fingers on Harry's prick.

Harry gasped and arched up, head lolling back to rest on one shoulder as the heat in his veins flared up, going from the comfort of a warm blanket to the roar of a bonfire that threatened to consume him. "P-please, god," he panted, and then, "Neville," just as he'd wanted to during the ritual. He liked the way Neville's breath caught so much he said it again, "Neville, Neville!"

The third time was the charm, and Neville growled and bit down on Harry's shoulder, not hard enough to really hurt but just enough to send Harry spiralling down into release with a wordless cry. Neville spilled into him as well, his prick pulsing the same way it had before only this time it was just them and not any sort of mystical force for purity, just two boys who cared for one another and really, really liked having sex.

"Harry," Neville whispered, nuzzling against Harry's cheek and looking ever so slightly sheepish. "All right?"

Harry grinned and pulled Neville down for another kiss, then rubbed noses and said, "Yeah, better than all right."

Neville hugged him tight, and they both started to laugh when Hermione's exasperated voice drifted in through the door.

"Aren't you two done yet?"