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After the war, despite staying in Ron’s room, Harry made it to exactly one Sunday roast at The Burrow as Ginny’s implicit boyfriend. It went fine, as fine as a meal served with a piping hot side of grief topped with fresh trauma could go. No, the official breakup that came two days later was not about Ginny’s family, Ginny’s life, or really Ginny at all.
“I think I’m gay,” Harry had confessed, squeezed into Ginny’s single bed by her side. Her room was the only place in the cramped house where the two of them could find any privacy. Not that they’d made good use of it - Their physical relationship had never escalated beyond snogging, even before the spellshock had left them mentally distant from their bodily needs. Ginny had felt Harry tense up then, like he anticipated a blow of some sort at his confession.
“Yeah, me too,” Ginny admitted instead with a great exhale. “Or something like it.”
It was a relief for both of them. Molly had been steadily piling them with more and more heteronormative expectations the longer they stayed together - Mentions of weddings, of children, of local homes put up on the market. These were never topics that Harry and Ginny had broached organically together, and their insertion into the relationship by Molly felt strange and uncomfortable to them both. Unfortunately for them, her attachment to the idea of Harry and Ginny as patriarch and matriarch of a nuclear family only grew more load-bearing after the losses of the war. She would frequently bring up theoretical grandchildren like they already existed for her to dote over, like they were already filling the void in her family. So that night, when Harry had gone back to Grimmauld Place and Ginny sat her down to break the news of the breakup, Molly was inconsolable.
“No!” was her immediate reaction. “No, you can’t break up with him, Ginny, he loves you! He takes care of you!” she lowered her voice, seemingly a little embarrassed, ”He’s Harry Potter!”
Ginny scoffed. “Yeah, mum, but he’s also gay, so-”
The look on Molly’s face cut her off mid-sentence. Her teeth barely showing through her taut lips, eyes wide and humourless, she looked as if Ginny had just told her Harry was an axe murderer. “He’s- What now, dear?”
“He’s gay, mum. He told me he’s gay. That’s why we broke up,” Ginny explained. Her mother’s knuckles were white from gripping the stuffed arm of the sofa.
“Harry’s an invert? But he-” She took a deep breath. “He plays quidditch!” Molly exclaimed. “ARTHUR?” she called out, and Ginny heard footsteps from across the house.
“Gay people can play quidditch, mum,” Ginny snorted as her father arrived to the living room.
“What’s going on?” Arthur asked, coming around to sit next to Molly on the couch. Seeing the agitated state she was already in, he put a calming hand on her lower arm.
“Harry- Harry’s inverted!” she repeated in a stage whisper. “Oh, this is like Liberace all over again…” Molly was pale, and Ginny found herself surprised by the actual physiological shock she seemed to be going through. She put her hand above her fluttering heart.
“That can’t be right,” Arthur said, genuinely sounding surprised. He thought about it for a moment. “No, Harry’s not like that at all, really. I mean, at least with Liberace, there were some signs…”
Ginny sighed. “You’re stuck in the past, dad,” she said matter-of-factly, “Not every gay man is a pouf these days-”
“Ginny, language!” Molly chided her.
“You called him an invert!” Ginny protested before continuing to her point. “-So what if Harry’s a little butch for a homosexual? He knows what he thinks about at night better than anyone. I trust him if he says it wasn’t me.”
“Ginny!” Molly gasped, scandalized by her daughter’s crassness. “I don’t need to hear about that!” She paused, looking at Arthur for support. He said nothing, but firmly held onto her shoulder with one hand and arm with the other, bracing her lovingly. “But… Does that mean you never…?”
“Nope,” Ginny said. It wasn’t for her lack of trying. She then added sarcastically, “You raised me better than that, mum.”
The irony went over Molly’s head, she nodded, slightly soothed. Arthur cleared his throat.
“Well, I say, if he needs some time to figure himself out, we give him the time. Harry’s been through a lot. Maybe he’s dealing with some… Confusion, sure, but I’m sure it will sort itself out in time,” he said confidently, with a nod of his head. Ginny wasn’t so convinced by the rhetoric, but it seemed to her that Molly was.
“Yes, let’s just give him the time and support he needs,” Molly agreed with a nod. “Support… Will be important. We’ll be sure to invite him to Sunday Roast. I mean, Ginny, if you don’t mind-”
“It’s fine mum, I’m not bothered at all,” she insisted honestly.
“Well, good. Because if this is a choice he’s making… It’s important to see what he’s choosing to leave behind,” Molly said, a touch of sadness in her voice. She reached over to take her daughter’s hand, then kissed the back of it affectionately. “It’s just that he’s missing out on the most wonderful girl in the world,” she said with a smile.
“Mum!” Ginny exclaimed, blushing, but she smiled too. Her father put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.
“He’ll be crawling back to you before you know it,” Arthur promised. Though Ginny didn’t believe him or their shared delusion, she could see they had no ill intent towards herself or her now ex. So, she allowed the group hug her parents gave her that ended the conversation.
Harry did accept the invitation, and that Sunday, he was seated between Ron and Hermione at the long Weasley dinner table, which was occupied by seven others of the clan: Arthur and Molly, naturally, Ginny, Percy, Bill, Fleur, and the hollow shell that sometimes responded to the name George. Charlie couldn’t make it, he was helping at Hogwarts. Fred would never make it again. For such a crowded table, his absence made the room feel conspicuously empty. Ginny imagined that it would for a very, very long time.
The family was mostly silent as they passed dishes of buttered turnips, roasted sprouts, cold grain salads, and most importantly, slow-roasted beef brisket around the table. Then, right as everyone began to tuck in, Fleur took the opportunity to speak.
“Soooo,” she began, excitement flitting in her light voice, “I know we all have heard the good news, that we have something to celebrate tonight!” She raised her glass of chilled white wine to eye level, and nudged Bill to do the same. He followed suit, despite being clearly unsure of what she was about to say.
“What’s that, Fleur?” Ron asked, genuinely confused. The rest of the people gathered had equally little of an idea what was going on. Fleur smiled her radiant smile.
“Well, as I understand it, Harry here has discovered something important about himself! It is only too bad you did not discover it while you were still in those dormitories! The stories I could tell of my days at Beauxbatons…” She tittered convivially. “Cheers, Harry, to your blossoming homosexuality!” Smile not faltering, Fleur clinked her glass with Bill’s. “Santé!”
No one else raised their drink. Harry’s complexion was rapidly darkening to a rageful maroon, but when he spoke, his voice was still relatively controlled. “Um, Fleur, who told you that?” he asked, measured.
“Ah, Bill of course!” she said, beginning to realize that she had made a faux pas.
“Bill, who told you?” Harry demanded, voice dark and a little frightening, especially to Ginny. She knew where this game would end up: She had been the one to start the rumour, after all.
“Uh, Charlie,” Bill explained, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “But he’s not here to defend himself, so I guess-”
“Who told Charlie?” Harry cut him off suddenly.
“I did,” Percy admitted, “And Dad told me.”
“Percy!” Arthur exclaimed defensively, then met Harry’s glower and shrunk. “Well, yes, Molly told me, and I was just wondering if Percy knew anything about-”
“Dad!” Percy protested now, but Harry, disinterested, cut him off. Ginny, on the other hand, was quite interested, and made a mental note to probe Percy on the topic another time.
“And Molly, you must have heard it from…” Harry began, sounding much like an auror. The bright warm light in the kitchen suddenly felt cold and clinical shining down on Ginny.
“Ginny of course!” Molly revealed, and Harry scowled, “But she wouldn’t have had to tell me if you hadn’t dumped her over it! Seriously, Harry, if you don’t want people to know you’re a-” she paused, lowering her voice for the word, “homosexual, maybe you shouldn’t act like one!”
“Act like one?” Ginny protested in his defense, “Didn’t you say he wasn’t enough of a flamer to be gay?”
“Mrs. Weasley!” Hermione exclaimed, scandalized. “You-”
“You said what?” Harry asked, catching Ginny’s eye with a look of thanks, of solidarity.
“Language, Ginny! And I certainly didn’t say it like that!” Molly exclaimed. “Harry, dear, listen,” she calmed down her tone as she spoke, leaning forward across Hermione’s personal space to put a hand on his arm. “I’m just not sure you’re making the right choice. I mean, you’re completely masculine. You could live a very happy life with Ginny as a wife, I’m sure,” Molly explained. Ginny’s cringe was so powerful, she nearly wriggled right out of her own skin. “Besides, it’s so difficult to find love when you’re inverted. That kind of man doesn’t want love, Harry, he wants a warm body… He wants… Well, it isn’t all roses and romance, let me just say that… I’m just worried about what might become of you.”
Harry blinked once, twice. Hermione, polite but serious, took Molly’s hand off Harry’s arm and placed it back in her own personal space.
“Well, Mrs. Weasley, I appreciate you worrying about my love life,” Harry said slowly, barely keeping his cool. “But I’ll have you know that I’m actually seeing someone, and I feel quite confident he sees more in me than just a warm body.”
Oh, Ginny thought. Though she hadn’t been particularly broken up about the break up, it did sting a little to know he’d moved on so quickly. Suspiciously quickly.
“Oh!” Molly echoed Ginny’s private thoughts. “Well, uh, in that case, that’s… Lovely. I’m… Glad to hear it.”
Harry paused. Ginny could see the cogs of schemery turning in his eyes.
“Would you like to meet him?” Harry said, with a small, devious smile. “I can bring him next Sunday.” Molly inhaled sharply through her nose.
“I would love to,” she lied.
Harry, however, was not lying.
~
Exactly one week later, when Harry Potter emerged from the floo network in the Burrow’s living room hearth, he dragged with him a soot-dusted, sallow-faced, sharply-dressed Draco Malfoy, in the flesh and everything.
“You all know Draco,” Harry proclaimed in his most melodramatic, heroic delivery. It made Ginny see exactly what Harry thought he was doing, bringing the Death Eater he insisted was redeemable around the war-torn Weasleys. There was a point he was making, here.
“Hello,” Draco said, tone more meek than Ginny had ever heard him utter before. Still, it had more self-respect than felt necessarily comfortable for her in the moment. For a moment, nobody said anything.
“Well, that’s Mrs. Weasley, that’s Mr. Weasley - You know Ron and Hermione - Percy, Bill, Fleur, uh, yeah, you know Ginny I guess… Charlie’s not home, and George is upstairs,” Harry pointed to each Weasley one by one as he spoke. As he did, Draco politely made eye contact with the named individual, nodding his head. Ginny had to admit that he knew how to behave himself.
He just hadn’t been doing it. She thought of the year Harry and Ron were gone. Just briefly, barely long enough to make the spark of resentment she still held for Malfoy flicker up in her chest. Then, she looked at Harry and saw the desperation in his eyes.
I can do him a favour, Ginny thought.
“Welcome to the Burrow, Draco,” she said with a small smile. “Mind the step,” Ginny added, pointing to the ledge beneath the hearth that he was just about to fall off of.
“Oh,” said Draco, looking down and catching himself from his soft leather slipper sliding off onto the scuffed wood floor beneath. It saved him a fall. “Thanks,” he said.
“Yeah,” Ginny replied, unable to hold Draco’s wide-eyed, vulnerable gaze for longer than a moment. Luckily, Harry spoke again then, drawing both of their attention.
“Mrs. Weasley, it was so nice of you to invite us to supper tonight. You’ve always made me feel like family here,” he said. The statement was completely honest, but something about the intent came across to Ginny as sinister.
Mrs. Weasley melted a little. “Oh, Harry, you know you’re like one of my own,”she said sappily. Ginny felt a twitch of frustration with Harry for playing her so easily.
“Thank you Mrs. Weasley,” he replied, sounding perfectly affectionate. Ginny knew him well enough to hear the manipulation in his voice. She exchanged a look with Ron, who looked to Hermione, who looked to Ginny.
Then, Harry broke the paralysis that had overwhelmed the room, taking Draco’s hand and leading him towards the dining area. The rest of the family followed, rising from their sofas and stuffed chairs, as if Harry were the patriarch, not Arthur.
“Kids, set the table,” Arthur said as they approached.
“Kids? We’re hardly kids anymore, dad,” Ron objected. His voice had had one last drop of late, and he sounded more manly than ever. “When will you call us… I don’t know, uh…”
“Esteemed family members?” Ginny piped up, earning a small laugh from her brothers.
“Yeah, that,” Ron agreed.
“You’ll always be kids to us, dear,” Molly said, grabbing him by the skull playfully and pulling his tall head down for her to kiss his hair. “Now set the table-” she glanced over to find that Hermione and Draco had already silently completed the task between them. “Oh, thank you,” Molly said in surprise.
“You’re welcome,” Hermione smiled, taking a seat next to Draco, who just nodded. He looked timid, still, afraid to make eye contact with Ginny as she sat across the table from him. Bringing a jug of water to the table, Harry sat down on Draco’s other side. As he did, Ginny didn’t fail to notice him briefly squeeze his boyfriend’s hand in a comforting gesture. It was the kind of thing that had never felt natural between them, when she and Harry had dated. Between him and Draco, it flowed like well-practiced choreography.
“GEORGE, SUPPER’S ON!” Molly called out as she levitated the hot pot roast over towards the trivet on the table. A moment later, the ceiling squeaked, then the stairs groaned, and finally the floorboards strained as George arrived at the dining table, eyes glassy and face impassive.
Ginny watched Draco stare at her brother’s empty shell, his face coming to wear an open expression of horror as he observed the spirit lacking from George. There was nothing about George left in this man in front of them all.
At least, not until his foggy eyes landed on Draco. Suddenly, sounding hauntingly like his former self, George began to laugh.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me - Fred always said there was something faggy about the two of you. I mean, a 12 year old with a nemesis? Seriously!” George cackled, grabbing the back of Harry’s chair and leaning in a little bit too close. “Don’t get me wrong. You chase that bliss, mate, please. I mean, this is the funniest bloody thing I’ve seen since Fred died. Please,” he repeated, clapping Harry on the chest affectionately. “Please. Welcome to the family, Malfoy,” he added, sounding completely genuine.
He sat. Ginny watched, trying to catch George’s eye while he was still mentally present, but it was too late. Arms crossed, leaning back in the rickety wooden chair, his eyes were already glassy.
Portions were served, plates were filled. Chatter went on as usual, at first - Compliments for Molly’s cooking, anecdotes about weekend activities - but it was clear that all anyone really wanted to talk about was Harry’s new boyfriend. But, obviously, they did not want to talk to Harry’s new boyfriend. It took a long time for anyone to break the seal.
Surprisingly, it was Percy.
“So, how did you two… Reconnect?” he said, gesturing between Harry and Draco with a forkful of buttered green beans.
“Oh, well,” Draco said as he cut his potato into very, very small pieces. His hands paused when he noticed Ginny watching. “He paid my bail, actually.”
A mutter passed across the table.
Hermione looked confused, first catching Ginny’s eye, then Harry’s. “I thought that Draco wasn’t charged in the Death Eater Trials?” The moment the title escaped her lips, Draco shrunk down in his chair like he was trying to disappear. He looked childish, lost, and Ginny couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him.
“He wasn’t,” snapped Harry back quickly, “Those pigs set him up!”
“They got a warrant to raid the Potions chamber at my family’s manor, and claimed they found forty kilograms of hemp flower, far beyond the legal limit for a personal household,” Draco explained dispassionately. “It was planted, of course.”
“But they arrested him, even though it’s usually just a fine!” Harry jumped in, leaning forward over his plate passionately.
“They did. But as it was a minor offence, they were forced to provide me with the opportunity for a cash bail. So they set it to one million Galleons,” Draco explained. “Who would pay a million Galleons to free me?”
There was an awkward pause as everyone looked at Harry. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I was at the right place at the right time, though, because I heard two aurors bragging about it in the lift at the Ministry. So I went straight to Gringotts, then to the Ministry holding jail, and bailed him out!” Harry finished the story. Ginny couldn’t help but laugh.
“And how soon after did you break up with me?” she asked. It was impossible not to.
Draco looked ashamed, minutely squirming and majorly sweating in his seat now. Harry had no sense to look even a little embarrassed. “The next day,” he replied, seemingly honest. For some reason, it bothered her.
“I bloody knew it,” George laughed again, and all of a sudden, it didn’t matter so much.
“I think plenty of us had our suspicions, yes,” Hermione agreed. “But these things happen in their own time. Remember when Ron and I first started dating? Everyone said the same thing. It’s not as obvious when you’re on the inside!”
“Exactly,” Harry accepted the support, taking a sip from a glass of water. It was hot in the Burrow in the summer, with all the bodies and candles and hearths. They were all sweating. “Ginny, I never meant to lead you on,” he confessed as if nearly her entire family wasn’t sitting at the table as well, “I just didn’t know what I wanted until I almost lost the chance.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
Somehow, that made it worse for Ginny. Almost lost the chance implied that it wasn’t just about men, but about Draco specifically. And Draco was someone Harry had had an odd sort of relationship with for a long time, stretching back even to when Ginny had still cared about hers with Harry. Harry may not have been sure that he wanted Draco over Ginny, but the sentence implied he had spent a lot of time wondering about it. It was a little bit of a betrayal.
“It’s cool,” Ginny replied casually, shrugging. “Can we have dessert now?”
Molly, who had been struck completely speechless by this entire exchange, just nodded. She stood up and began clearing the table with her wand.
~
Despite the intense awkwardness of the first Sunday at the Burrow that Draco attended, he kept showing up for supper. It took a few weeks for Molly and Arthur to entertain the idea of actually talking to him. Once they did, they found it difficult to know what to say. Draco, despite the obvious fear and hostility they held towards him, stayed patient with them. Ginny found that interesting. It was hard to believe that Draco had any redeeming characteristics, but slowly, week by week, they were revealed.
Draco, the Weasley family soon found out, was not only patient, but thoughtful, intelligent, and quick on his feet. Though perhaps an uncomfortable one at times, he made a decent dinner guest. What was more important to the Weasleys, though, was how he made his partner act. Harry drank in every one of Draco’s words like a parched man, he hung off them like laundry on the line. When Draco would make a joke, Harry would laugh, then look around the room proudly, like Can’t I pick ‘em?
It was good for Ginny to see Harry that happy, even if it stung that it would not be her to make him feel that way. She didn’t actually want to be, though. Not in the way that Molly had laid out for her - White lacy wedding robes and a house full of children. Frankly, it made Ginny sick to imagine. Only now that she had avoided that fate did she realize how little she had ever wanted it. As she had grown up, she had told herself she would grow into it too one day, that someday her identity as a woman would feel authentic and life-giving as it clearly did to her mother.
As the scorching heat of mid-summer came, Ginny began to realize that might not be the case. She was wandering around the Burrow, overheating in only a pair of hand-me-down boxers and sandals. Her long hair was pulled up into a bun and tucked into a cap to keep it from sticking to her neck.
“Oh, Ron,” came her mother’s voice from over her shoulder. “Can you help me with something?”
Ginny turned around to face her. “Are you talking to me, mum?”
“Oh!” Molly exclaimed, putting her hand on her chest. “Ginny, put on a shirt, I thought you were your brother! No one needs to see that!”
Rage began to build in Ginny’s chest. “See what, mum, my boobs? Like I’ve got any!” she protested, “It’s not a big deal, you let the boys go shirtless!”
“Ginevra,” Molly chided, “You know it’s not appropriate for a woman to be topless!”
“Not even in her own bloody home, mum?” Ginny fumed, crossing her arms over her relatively flat chest defensively. She felt perfectly comfortable with her breasts out around her own loved ones.
“No, not even! What has gotten into you?” Molly asked, agape. “What, are you hoping Harry will come by and see?”
“Mum! It’s not about Harry, it’s not about anything, it’s just comfortable! Merlin’s arse!” Ginny cursed, backing away from her mother across the kitchen. “I’m not like you!”
“What does that mean, Ginevra?” Molly followed her, hands on her hips, clearly angry too now. “You can get Harry back if you try, you know. I mean, he’s clearly having some sort of personality crisis after the war, you could help him see-”
“Mum, ew, that is so homophobic!” Ginny finally broke. Molly’s face lit up in comprehension.
“Oh, is this what this is about, then?” she asked, quiet in a way that made Ginny afraid. “Are you confused too, Ginny?”
Ginny blinked. It was a fair question, considering what she had just said. She wished she had managed to be a little more evasive. “No, mum, I know exactly who I am, thanks.” She managed to push past her mother’s broad form and stomp away up the stairs to her room. Once the door was locked behind her, Ginny did not put on a shirt.
Though but a minor blip in the day, that moment became a turning point for Ginny. She realized that she was not confused, not anymore. The female gender wasn’t one she wanted to occupy any longer, one that had never fit quite right anyway in the first place. She wanted to be like her brothers - She wanted to walk like them, talk like them, live like them. Not as some miscategorized imitation of them, but wholly, truly, authentically.
Ginny wanted to be a man.
It was the thing he had vaguely gestured at when he and Harry broke up. He hadn’t had the words to articulate it at first, and could only explain it as being gay. But he didn’t mean he wanted to date a woman instead. Rather, Ginny’s sexuality wouldn’t fit right with Harry’s because they both wanted to be the big strong man in their relationship. Ginny still imagined himself with men, now, but slight ones, pretty ones, ones with big doe eyes and meek temperaments.
Really, he could easily wrap his head around Harry’s thing for Draco.
~
One late afternoon, not long after, Ginny dared knock on the door to the room now solely occupied by George. At first, he didn’t answer. “It’s me,” Ginny said after a while, “Please, George, I need to talk…”
A second passed, then he heard his brother heave his body out of bed and unlock the bolt. Then, the door opened, George already walking back to the pit of blankets that surrounded his dent in the mattress. Quickly, Ginny followed, closing the door behind himself. He sat down on the stuffed chair between George’s bed and the empty one. Nobody would sit on the empty one, even though it was still made up like someone might.
Curled back up in his cave, George clearly did his best to ground himself for Ginny’s sake. He looked his little brother in the eye, his tired and red-lined. “What’s going on, Gin? Finally getting to you that your ex is a sod?”
“Why does everyone think that bothers me?” Ginny groaned, and George let out a single chuckle.
“I think it would bother most young ladies, to learn that they attracted a flamer looking for a beard,” George teased lightheartedly. “But you’re not like most young ladies, Gin,” he added warmly.
“No, I’m not, and that’s what I need to talk to you about,” Ginny stated, his heart beginning to beat a little faster in anticipation. No sense in beating around the bush, Ginny thought. “George, I’m a transsexual.” Might as well just spit it out, right?
George cocked his head in confusion. “No you’re not- Gin, I was there the day you were born, I can assure you there was no little twig and berries on you then-”
“You dingus,” Ginny retorted, “I mean in the other direction,” he explained. When George didn’t seem to immediately understand, he spelled it out for him. “I want to be a man.”
That, George seemed to understand. He blinked and recoiled a little in shock, then his expression got thoughtful as he reached for his bedside glass of water. He sipped as he thought.
“There must be a potion for that, yeah? I mean, I’ve never heard of it, but it sounds doable. Like, what happens if you put your own hair in polyjuice? But maybe hair that’s been dosed with something really… Male? Bull urine or something?” George mused, “It sounds doable,” he repeated for emphasis. “Might take some experimentation, but doable.”
Ginny took a shallow breath and blinked. “Are you… Offering?”
George’s gaze scanned his little brother’s entire self before responding, taking him in holistically. “Yeah, I think I am. If it would make you happy, Gin, I am. At least with some kind of temporary potion, you can try it out for a day, a week, and see if it’s what you really want. And if it is, well, maybe you go to St. Mungo’s for something more permanent.” He paused, looking his little brother in the eye. “I always saw you as more of a lad than Ron. Don’t tell him that.”
Ginny cackled the Weasley cackle, leaping off the chair to hug his older brother. “Thank you,” he whispered into the side of George’s head. “Don’t tell mum and dad yet,” he added as he leaned away. “I’m going to tell them at dinner this Sunday.”
“I’ll try to have it ready by then, then, Gin,” George replied. To Ginny’s surprise, George then got out of bed again, crossing the room to his overflowing potions workbench. Immediately, he pulled out the Manual of Polyjuice Modification from the shelf beside it and cracked it open. His finger slid down the page as he mouthed the names of the brews listed. “Transsexual Polyjuice,” he said finally, tapping the page.
“Sounds perfect,” Ginny replied, a little stunned. “I’ll, uh, leave you to it.”
And he did. As he closed the door behind him, he heard the sounds of chatter in the garden coming up to the window. It sounded like Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Draco. Walking over to the opening and peering out, Ginny saw the four of them sitting on a spread-out blanket, a bottle of wine popped open and one more ready to go.
“Hey,” called Ginny out the window. “Can I join you?”
The four of them looked between one another briefly. “Please do!” Harry called out after a second. Ginny grabbed an old broomstick from the hall closet and mounted it as he exited out the window, gracefully flying it down to the earth they were sat upon.
“Show-off,” Ron mumbled.
“It beats the stairs,” Ginny said simply. Everyone else had a little laugh at Ron’s expense, which he took well. Ginny could tell the rest of them were at the very least tipsy at this point. It made it tempting to tell them what he had just told George, especially considering he had taken it so well. “So, I managed to get George out of bed,” Ginny tested the waters. The other four looked at him in shock, his brother especially.
“Really?” Ron asked, “How?”
Ginny’s voice lowered, knowing how sound travelled around the property. “He’s making me a potion,” he began.
“Anything fun?” Harry asked, and Ginny laughed evasively.
“I think it will be fun, actually,” he smiled. “In a manner of speaking.”
“But what will you use it for?” Hermione asked, intrigued now too. She picked up the wine and drank the last of it straight from the lip of the bottle.
“To test a theory, I guess,” Ginny replied, equally cryptic. As Hermione finished the first bottle of wine, Draco went to opening the second and drinking straight from it as well. When he finished taking a long gulp, he spoke up.
“Yes, but what does it do?” Draco asked the question they’d all been aiming for. He looked Ginny in the eye, clearly a little emboldened by the alcohol in his veins, “Why bring it up if you don’t want to tell?” Draco prompted.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell,” Ginny continued to parry, “it’s that you won’t want to hear.”
“Just spit it out, Gin,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “What does the potion George is brewing you do?”
“Turns me into a man,” Ginny dropped oh-so-casually, with a little grin, “Temporarily,” he added.
“I told you that was what she meant!” Draco said, turning to Harry with a smug grin on his smug face. Then, realizing the exact context, Draco turned back to Ginny. “Or, erm, would you prefer he?”
“Please don’t get ahead of me,” Ginny said, putting a hand up in front of him in a slow down gesture. “When I try the potion, you can call me he.”
“Do I have to?” Ron complained, earning him a dirty look from everyone else present.
“Yes,” Hermione said frankly, “If Ginny wants to explore, uh, her sexuality, uh, she has as much of a right as Harry does. Right?”
Ron mumbled something that sounded a little like But that’s my bloody sister, but he didn’t say it with enough conviction to really be heard. It stung, but Ginny did his best to ignore it.
Draco smiled, as if the whole situation was all-too familiar to him. Ginny wondered exactly how. The other three just seemed confused. “But you’ll need a name to be called too, you can’t just be him,” Draco pointed out. “As much as we all want to be.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve picked one,” Ginny explained to Draco, more than the other three. The look he was giving Ginny was indulgent, soft, almost excited. It endeared Draco to him instantly.
~
“You want me to call you what, now?!” Molly howled a few days later, sitting at her usual spot for Sunday roast. “Ginevra, how dare you, how dare you ask me to do that!” she sobbed, real tears falling visibly down her cheeks as she did. “It’s an insult to his memory!”
“In what world, mum, is naming your son after your brother an insult?” Gideon Weasley asked as he sat across the dining room table from his sobbing mother. Though their plates were stacked high with meat, vegetables, and grains, nobody was eating. It was impossible to look at anything except Gideon, really. The potion George had given him just before supper was a raging success. Gideon’s body had transformed just enough to give him a more masculine appearance - Flatter breasts, narrower hips, a scruffy ginger beard leading down his neck into curly chest hairs - without erasing the features that made him recognizable - His inquisitive eyes, his freckled nose, his long hair tied back in a bun and stuffed into a cap. The effect was striking, and Gideon couldn’t have been happier with the results. He wished he wasn’t wasting his time arguing about them with his mother instead of staring at them in the mirror.
“She has a point, my love,” Arthur tried his best to broker some understanding between the two of them. “It is a family name.”
“Yes, which is exactly why she shouldn’t be disgracing it with this wishy-washy transsexual nonsense!” Molly exclaimed, not cowed at all my her husband’s tone. She turned back to Gideon, “You are my daughter, Ginny, you are my only daughter! I saved my wedding robes for you! Do you have any idea how important you are to me?”
“I’m not going anywhere, mum,” Gideon replied in his deeper register. He loved the sound of it, despite the uncomfortable context. “I’m right here.”
“All I see in front of me is a mockery of my family,” Molly hissed. She turned her burning gaze onto George, rotting as he was at his chair at the foot of the table. “George, how dare you brew such a filthy, obscene potion for Ginny! Why would you enable this delusion?”
“Mum, you know Gin’s- Gideon’s been one of the boys since she- Since he was born, right? I mean, you do objectively see that too, right?” George asked sarcastically, only half present. Then, Molly spoke again, and he lost his presence entirely.
“You can’t turn her into another Fred, if that’s what you’re trying to do!” she yelled through tears. George’s face went blank. Quickly, he stood from the table, and like an automaton, wordlessly walked himself up the stairs and back to his room.
“Mum, how could you say that to him?” Ron jumped in, then. “What in the bloody Hell possessed you to do that? S’not like the potion is bloody permanent, Ginny’s just messing around-”
“I’m not just messing around, Ron,” Gideon complained, more confident than ever, “This is who I want to be!”
“-Still, it’s no reason to make it worse for George! I’m worried about him every bloody day, aren’t you? Aren’t you worried enough about him?” Ron continued, fuming at his mother.
“Oh, so George is the only one who can miss him, is that it? Not his mother, who carried him for nine months, then nurtured him for nineteen years? I’m not allowed to mourn him too?” Molly spat back, rising to her feet slowly as she spoke. Ron was beginning to stand, too.
“We all bloody miss him, mum, of course we bloody miss him!” he screamed, louder than any of them had heard him be since he was old enough for temper tantrums. “But that’s not what this is about,” Ron said, quieter.
“It’s about supporting Gideon in his self-exploration,” Hermione chimed in, too much optimism in her voice.
“You mean her confusion,” Molly said, nearly spitting, “You’re confused because Harry left you to chase after this man, of all people. If you can call him that,” she said, gesturing with her chin to Draco. He didn’t look surprised, but Harry sure did. Instantly, he was on his feet.
“You have no bloody right to judge Draco for anything he did during the war,” Harry exclaimed, pointing at Molly aggressively, “He was a child, Molly, we were children! And the Order’s hands aren’t clean either! How about using us all as soldiers, us, children? Should we be judging you for that?”
“Judging me? As if I had any control over what Dumbledore told us to do! To save the world, mind you!” Molly replied, seemingly horrified that even Harry was against her now. She looked to her husband for support.
“Molly is right, Harry, we did as we were told,” Arthur defended, rising to his feet as well.
“Yeah, so did Draco!” Harry spat back. He grabbed Draco’s hand and dragged him to his feet. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“I need a fucking smoke,” Draco replied, his hands going for the pouch he wore beneath his robes.
“You can smoke at the Manor, let’s just, let’s just go,” Harry muttered, rummaging his hands through his muggle jean pockets to make sure he had all his belongings. Gideon watched. No one said anything as Draco and Harry began making their way towards the container of Floo Powder.
Then, Gideon stood up, stumbling over his chair to catch up with them. “Can I come with you?” he asked, aware that it would only serve to escalate his mother’s anger. Right now, he couldn’t help it.
“Of course,” Draco said immediately, before Harry even had time to open his mouth. He pressed a handful of Floo powder into Gideon’s palm. “Malfoy Manor!” Draco declared, tossing his handful in and stepping inside.
“Malfoy Manor!” Harry copied, throwing his powder down and disappearing into the Floo network. Gideon stepped forward, then looked back at the dining area, frozen still as if in a tableau. Percy, Bill, Fleur, and Hermione sat. George, Harry, and Draco were absent. Molly, Ron, and Arthur stood.
Then, Molly began to move, taking long steps towards him. “Ginevra, don’t you dare-”
“Malfoy Manor!” Gideon exclaimed, throwing the powder into the fireplace behind him and back-stepping inside. He was sucked up by the network, and (keeping his elbows tucked), he allowed it to bring him all the way to Wiltshire.
Gideon was spat out of the network and onto a cold black marble floor, landing on his arse. Immediately, he felt uncomfortable in the large, open foyer of the manor. The vibes were rancid, to say the least.
Harry and Draco stood above him, Draco with an unlit cigarette between his fingers, looking around impatiently. Harry held out a hand, helping Gideon to his feet. Without a word, the three of them exited out the grand double doors at the front of the manor. It was dark, now, but still sticky hot, the trees buzzed with insects as they approached the woods around the edge of the property. Draco didn’t lead them far into it, just to a circle of wooden chairs in a small meadowy clearing. Draco sat by a table with an ashtray, and snapped his fingers to light his smoke. Harry sat down on the chair upwind of him. Gideon just laid down in the grass near them.
“Well,” he said after a little while of staring up at the stars above him through the hole in the woods, “That went about as terribly as it could have.”
“Yep,” Harry agreed. “I’m sorry, Gin- Gideon.”
“Don’t call me that, it’s stupid. It’s all stupid. I shouldn’t have even- I shouldn’t have even tried,” Gideon lamented, taking off his cap and using it to cover his humiliated face.
Harry opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it, confused.
“Don’t say that,” Draco chimed in instead. “It’s a good name. It suits you. And I don’t care what Mrs. Weasley says, I think it’s lovely to honour a family member like that.”
“...Thanks,” Gideon replied noncommittally.
“Furthermore,” Draco continued, “Before she had to go and ruin it for you, of course, I could see how happy and confident you were as Gideon. It’s not that Ginny lacks confidence…” he began, exhaling a plume of smoke into the air and stubbing out his cigarette. “It’s that Gideon exudes it.”
“Thanks,” Gideon replied again, a little more honestly.
“It isn’t easy to let your family down,” Draco said softly. “Trust me, I’d know.”
“Thank you,” Gideon whispered, completely earnest.
“But sometimes we have to do it. To do what’s right for us,” Draco advised. “Maybe that’s the Slytherin in me,” he added with a little laugh.
“It absolutely is,” Harry, lovestruck and agreeable, commented. Gideon didn’t pay the comment much attention. They were both, in their own way, hanging off Draco’s every word.
“Do you really think I should do it?” Gideon asked, “Keep taking the potion and all? Live as a man?” He looked up at Draco from the ground beneath him.
Draco laughed. “Honestly?” he asked. “Yes. I do. And not just because you’re so handsome as one.”
“Draco!” Harry exclaimed, pushing him playfully. “You slag, that’s my ex.”
“Well, I bet he wouldn’t have been your ex if he had looked like this,” Draco teased back, touching on a question that had remained in Gideon’s mind. To his surprise, he immediately got an answer.
“Yes he would have, Draco,” Harry corrected him very seriously. “I’m your fag,” he said, and Gideon had the feeling he was witnessing something far too intimate. “No one else’s,” Harry corrected.
Draco hummed, tickling Harry under his chin like a dog, and Gideon had to look away. It was sickeningly sweet. “Get a room,” he quipped, “Or like, 400,” he added, looking back at the huge manor nearby.
“562. But yes, we ought to, Harry” Draco agreed, playing with a curl of Harry’s hair lovingly. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need,” Draco added, turning back to Gideon. “I’ll have an elf make you a bed.”
“Alright,” Gideon replied. He wasn’t necessarily eager to spend more time in the Dark Lord’s former headquarters than he had to. But for one night’s rest, it would do.
~
When Gideon returned to the Burrow the next morning, the potion had worn off.
“I see you’re making sense again,” was the first thing Molly said to him upon his return.
“No, I’m not,” Gideon assured her in return, “Not to you, mum.”
Molly said nothing.
For a long time after, Molly avoided saying much of anything to her youngest son.
He continued to take the potion his older brother brewed for him. Her quiet disapproval made the house uncomfortable, even as everyone else grew used to it. The occasional Oh, you mean Ginevra? made using Gideon’s new name a minefield. Molly’s stubborn insistence that she had lost not only a son that year, but a daughter too now, cheapened the words with which she grieved Fred. Eventually, she and George stopped talking too.
Summer passed, and eventually it was time for Gideon to return to his final year at Hogwarts. It would be the last time he would pass through the barrier to Platform 9¾.
And his mother refused to come along.
“Come on, Molly,” Gideon overheard his father begging her through their home’s paper-thin walls, “Show him a little support. It’s going to be a difficult day, going back.”
“I’m sorry, who are you talking about?” Molly asked, voice thick and emotional.
Arthur sighed. “Show Ginny a little support. She hasn’t been back to Hogwarts since the battle. It’s not going to be easy.”
“She’s made no effort to make it easy on me, either,” Molly retorted. “She knows what she needs to do if she wants my support. She can take the bezoar and look normal when I’m in public with her.”
Arthur sighed again, louder this time, and Gideon could almost hear him rub his face like he always did. “And what if- What if she doesn’t want to do that, Molly, even for your support? What then?”
“Then I don’t have a child anymore, Arthur,” Molly sobbed, “A daughter. Then she died too.”
There was a sound then, a bang, like Arthur hitting his fist down on the table. It was the kind of thing he might do once in a blue moon, if incensed. “How can you say that when that very same person is still alive, and is missing you? You will lose her if you keep this up, Molly.”
In reply, Gideon’s mother just wailed. It broke his heart that he had caused her this much pain and suffering. He had never intended to.
But in the end, it was his life to live. And since he began taking the potion, he felt more connected with himself than he ever had before. It wasn’t something he was prepared to give up, anymore.
So that day, when he brought his bags to Platform 9¾ for the very last time of this generation of Weasleys, the matriarch of the clan was not there.
Draco Malfoy, however, was. And as the rest of the group milled around the station, waiting for Gideon to load up and leave, Gideon found himself chatting with the only other person on the platform carrying more visible stigmata than him.
“I heard her say I’m dead to her,” Gideon lamented quietly to him, watching the other students watch Draco’s every move. If it bothered him, he wasn’t showing it in any way other than his endless fidgety chain-smoking.
“That’s funny,” Draco said flatly, “Because you look so alive to me.”
Gideon caught a glimpse of his reflection in the train window. He was tall, wiry, hairy, with the posture of an athlete. He looked handsome, as Draco had told him once and as his eyes told him now. Draco had too once told him he looked confident, and he saw it in his reflection, in the way he stood straight-backed with head high. And indeed, the picture of Gideon reflected back at him did look alive, a spark in his eyes upon seeing himself as a man that, no matter how hard she tried, not even his mother could extinguish.
“Thank you,” Gideon Weasley said to Draco Malfoy once again. How much could change in a year.
“Don’t thank me,” Draco said with a wink, “Thank yourself.” He pulled a cigarette out of his pack and slipped it up Gideon’s sleeve. “Good luck,” he said, as the rest of the crew arrived to give Gideon their final goodbyes. He was hugged by Harry next, then Ron, Hermione, George, and Arthur, all carrying well wishes and promises of care packages. From them, he felt a great deal of love.
And for today, that would have to be enough.
Gideon boarded the Hogwarts Express one last time, a new person.
And for today, that would have to be enough.