Intrasexual Charms - H/Hr - PG-13
Title: Intrasexual Charms
Author: shocolate
Pairing: Harry/Hermione
Words: 1235
Rating: PG-13

Written for snegurochka_lee's I’m not at Terminus, Least Favorite Character/Pairing Drabble/Drawble & Ficlet Challenge.

You all know my least favourite pairing is Harry/Hermione – it is physically painful to me.

I tried and tried to drabble this - When it turned out that Ron was imaginary... or The new Get Married in Alphabetic Order Law wasn’t too bad for Harry and Hermione – but Ron didn’t have good memories of being in love with Romilda Vane... or Harry was glad to look after his best mate’s widow and twelve children...

In the end... it’s crack.

But I tried.

No one’s gonna read it, are they?


Intrasexual Charms
****
Harry blames himself, as usual, but it’s more complicated than that.

He doesn’t know what it was like during the first war, and there is so much stuff you just absorb, when you grow up in the Wizarding World. Stuff Harry and Hermione will probably always miss out on.

Take seventh son stuff. Really important, but never... taught. It’s not superstition, no matter what Hermione says; it’s for real, it just isn’t talked about.

So, the thing is, when I was born, with five older brothers and You Know Who everywhere, well, it would have been so much better, for everyone, if I’d been a boy.

So I was.

Mum got so used to doing the weekly Intrasexual Charms – and to bringing up boys – that she soon forgot I’d started off any other way.

“Six boys,” people would say, touching their elbows for luck, “you are going to try one more time, aren’t you?”

And, what with Grandpa Weasley being a seventh son, it gave the family something to hope for.

Ginny was born when I was a toddler with a fake penis and the entire Wizarding World going to shit; Mum had a really hard time with her, and her brothers had just been killed, and Dad wanted to keep a low profile, and this wasn’t the Moment for a seventh son, so they learnt the opposite Intrasexual Charms and tucked her tiny penis away and finally had the daughter they told everyone they had always wanted.

And then the world changed.

Ginny was only a couple of months old when Harry vanquished You Know Who.

Everyone celebrated like mad, of course – Bill and Charlie remember it – but Mum and Dad had seven children at home and no sleep and people to mourn, and they’d told everyone they had six boys and a girl, and they did, and they left things as they were.

Hermione is appalled.

We may have done it for complicated reasons, but it’s not unheard of.

You’re not gonna convince me that Malfoy was born male, or Bulstrode female.

I’m not sure when I first knew; have I always known?

The older boys were taught the Charms, and Percy did me and Ginny every week, when we first started school. By then it just wasn’t an issue – I was Ginny’s big brother.

I don’t know if it’d’ve come out sooner, if I had best friends who were brought up in the Wizarding World; I always thought Seamus guessed, and I’m pretty sure Neville did, when he took Ginny to the Yule Ball. Dean is Muggleborn, of course.

That was when it became an issue; when we were old enough to date.

Mum and Dad sat us down, before I went back to school, sixth year – yeah, they had had no idea Ginny was that far ahead of me...

Mum reckoned that Hermione had a crush on me, which was really embarrassing, and I could honestly say that I had never thought about her that way; Ginny didn’t mention dating Ravenclaws, and tried to convince Mum she’d always had a hero worshipping thing about Harry.

Dad warned us about Muggle attitudes to homosexuality, and that both Harry and Hermione had grown up in the Muggle world.

It was mortifying.

Ginny and I privately agreed we’d let Harry and Hermione make the first move, in these mythical relationships our dotty parents thought they could see happening; Ginny moved on to poor old Dean and I was swallowed up by Lavender.

And, while the kissing was pretty good fun, touching her breasts just made me wonder about my own, and seeing how upset Hermione was was dreadful.

It looked like my Mum was right.

By the end of that year, Ginny had won the Cup and been snogged and then dumped by Harry, I’d got rid of Lavender and started taking things painstakingly slowly with Hermione, to try and wear her out.

It was unlikely the four of us would survive the war, anyway.

A year in a tent taught me two things – that locket saw straight through me, what with that whole least loved by the mother who craved a daughter thing, and that I was nothing to Harry. I thought Hermione had given up, until she clamped her mouth on mine, in the middle of the battle.

Total disaster.

Then Harry was dead, and then he wasn’t, and then we were alive.

The four of us could live happily ever after.

Ginny and I went for a long walk, down by the lake, the morning after the battle. I reckon Harry and Hermione thought we had Fred stuff to talk about, but not so much.

Ginny was willing to make a go of it, with Harry, and didn’t see why he needed to know. She did her own Charms, she wasn’t likely to forget, it was even possible for her to have children, if she was very careful.

I felt awful about deceiving Hermione, and there was some small part of me that thought Harry would want to know about me.

In the end, we decided that we should tell them; if it was Neville and Luna who’d fancied us, then they’d have known about the Charms. So, we decided they should know. Know what we were, and that we'd do whatever they wanted. Stay as is, and make the best of things; change and see what happened.

It didn't go well.

Harry blamed himself.

Ridiculous, I know, especially as I'm older than him, so it had been decided before he was born, but he'll take responsibility for anything You Know who related. And while he was all noble about of course not being the sort of bloke who'd ditch a girl for being a bloke, he didn't offer to get back together.

He gaped at me and I didn't know what to say.

Luckily, I didn’t have to, because Hermione went mental. I've seen her get pretty angry, but she was spitting fire.

Not at me, at my parents.

She just wouldn't understand that it really wasn't that all that odd. She's like that with things that would never happen in the Muggle world. Well, look at her Houseleves thing.

I told her I was still me, and that if she cared about me it shouldn't matter.

I was wrong.

She says it doesn't matter if I'm a bloke or a girl – it's the lying she can't stand. I'm not sure at which point she thinks I should have told her; I spent over a year carefully not quite courting her – what was I supposed to say?

In the end, Ginny and I went home to the Burrow and Hermione went back to Grimmauld Place, with Harry. It took them a while to lick their wounds, and each other's bruised egos, but things are pretty much back to how they were.

The three of us are fast friends, and Ginny and I haven't changed; Ginny plays for the Harpies, and would be in such trouble, if anyone found out – although you'd think they'd check for something like that.

Harry and I are Aurors, like we always wanted, and Hermione is turning the Ministry on its head.

As for dating.

Lesbianism is rife in Holyhead, so Ginny is having a ball.

Harry and Hermione finally admitted they lick pretty much everything else.

And I'm seeing a lot of Terry Boot.