As she grew from a lanky, gangly child into a bonny lass with long legs, pert breasts and sweet lips, many among the “beaux” and her fellow young wizards at school might have liked more than the quick kiss she might have been willing to grant to one or the other of them but Minerva was having none of it. She would be married to her true love – whosoever he turned out to be - a maiden and it would be him who would slowly remove the snood from her hair on their wedding night and then –

For quite some time, Minerva had no idea of what “then” might involve apart from maybe kissing, only that she expected it would lead to her life being utterly changed. When she had just turned 17, she discovered her father's stash of Victorian and Edwardian smut and had been in equal measure appalled and shamefully aroused by descriptions and depictions of giant penises rubbed against each other, or of male members pushed into anuses, held by male hands or swallowed by male mouths as well as of various gardening and other implements being put to imaginative uses. There seemed no female role in all of this, except to wield the whip or place the heel of a laced boot against the buttocks of a hapless gentleman. Finding her parents' copy of Married Love with its references to and charts of female sex-tides ebbing and flowing had not been very helpful either. On the contrary, its insistence on the incompatibility of men and women meant that Minerva began to worry that “then” might not be as pleasant as she hoped. It all remained quite a mystery.

Despite a lack of any real knowledge about female sexuality or about how to give and receive sexual gratification when with a partner, Minerva was aware of having sexual impulses. A chance discovery of the pleasures of first gently stroking herself between her legs with one hand, while her other hand played with her hair and her snood, massaged a lucky breast or was put in her mouth and sucked on, and of then rubbing herself with increasing urgency until her underpants were drenched, her private parts swollen and her insides vibrating, led to many an orgasm in many a night. Further discoveries of a more magical nature involving Vibrato and temperature spells followed and were eagerly pursued.

Furthermore there were the ribbons. Ever since she had begged that first satin ribbon off her grandmother, Minerva had had a love for ribbons - lacy, silken, velvety or satin ribbons, preferably in witch colours like black, red or green, or, best of all, tartan. Over the years she had accumulated a large collection in an old Romeo y Julieta cigar box originally owned by a visiting McKittrick Ross relative and rescued by Minerva from being destroyed in the kitchen fire. In addition to everything else, Minerva's nightly routines began involving tying ribbons of varying textures around her chest, her stomach, her legs and her arms before doing anything else. Thus her hands roamed over a body not quite naked but not completely dressed, not quite bound but not completely free, not completely maiden but not completely wanton either. In her imagination she was tied to a post on a mountain top in the hot sun, kept shackled to the wall as a prisoner in an icy and dark prison cell, condemned to stay alone in the chamber of a castle in her underwear by an evil guardian or working as a nude servant girl bedecked with a frilly apron in the middle of a courtly feast to honour Lord Darnley on his arrival in Scotland. A knight in shining armour or a princely gentleman would find and rescue her, marry her and in the privacy of their bedchamber kiss her and explore every inch of her body with his warm hands. Alternative scenarios involved her saving the knight or gentleman, sometimes in her cat form, wearing those high-heeled laced boots that were the only kink that survived in her fantasies, sometimes in the nude sitting astride a horse like Lady Godiva. In those fantasies she got to explore a nearly naked body and a huge erect manhood with her feminine hands. And the potential of “then” became a bit clearer in her mind.

Brilliant passage. You characterize the confusion and excitement and mystery of this adolescent period so well. I laughed at the idea of Minerva's father's smut stash; of course it would be Victorian/Edwardian, and what a revealing insight into the Reverend McGonagall's tastes! And of course "Married Love" would have been no help at all.

I'm particularly fond of this wonderful passage of contrasts, of freedom and restraint, because that's so of a piece with how I understand Minerva: a body not quite naked but not completely dressed, not quite bound but not completely free, not completely maiden but not completely wanton either. I also love that her fantasies involve her doing the rescuing instead of being rescued.

The ending comes nicely full-circle. Really well-done.

Thank you again. It makes me really happy that something I was trying to express actually translated itself into your reading experience. Re passage and ending, that was somewhat determined by the limitations of the reply field. However, I did try to ensure that each part ended up having some structural consistency even if the next part contained another paragraph that also belonged to that section.