Chapter 4
He took a roundabout way to gryffindor tower, not wanting to stop moving too soon, because moving gave him something to do besides think about how shit a friend he was. He wished he wasn’t a bad friend, so he could blow off steam with Ron by practising quidditch or duelling or defence against the dark arts. That was how he’d been planning to help his friend get ready to become an auror, but he hadn’t yet had the courage or space in his brain to bring it up. He'd been so distracted by his own stupid overthinking, and that overthinking kept telling him Ron would ask if Harry’s finally decided to become an auror with him, and Harry didn’t know the answer to that. Because what else could he do? He was good enough at quidditch to go professional like his dad, but the idea of having so many people fan over him and pretend they knew him made his stomach turn. And if he was travelling for matches all the time and his friends were off doing serious jobs, when would he ever get to see them. If Harry couldn’t be a good friend when they lived in the same castle, how would he manage after school if they all went their own separate ways.
And what if he became an auror with Ron. He didn’t want to work for the ministry. Maybe that was his father and Sirius’ influence showing. But he also didn’t want the unpredictable dangerous life that came with the job. He was already worried about Ron having that life, and they hadn’t even gotten to winter break yet. Ron could change his mind before then. Harry almost hoped he would, but there he was being a bad friend again. If he was a good friend, he would have already made good on his idea to help Ron train up to become an auror.
Consumed by these thoughts and a thousand more that told him how bad a person he was, Harry lost track of where he was headed. His eyes on the ground and his head full of noise he didn’t see or hear the people in front of him until he ran smack into someone’s chest, their hands going to his biceps to steady him. They were large warm hands, and the familiar warm musk of the person he’d run into told him who it was before he’d even realised.
“Ron?”He looked up confused, then felt a light hand on his shoulder and heard his name in Hermione’s voice. Turning his head to find her, he gave her a confused look, furrowing his brows. His mind, exhausted and strung out over the pit of anxiety and self-hatred he’d fallen into, went to the first awful scenario it could find, and he grimaced. “You two weren’t making out were you?”
“Ew, no,” They both said, Ron following his words up with a wounded glare towards Hermione like her disgust hurt him even though it seemed nearly identical to his. Hermione didn’t acknowledge the look, her gaze fixed concernedly on Harry. “Are you okay? We’ve been looking for you for half an hour. Did something happen?”
“It felt like way longer than half an hour,” Ron mumbled, the worry in his and Hermione’s voices causing a fresh pang of guilt to shoot Harry through the gut.
Harry could have sworn he’d only left dinner ten minutes ago at most. He looked around the corridor to find he was nowhere close to gryffindor tower and was instead down some obscure passage on what looked, based on the view out the tiny singular window nearby, to be the third floor. “Sorry, guess I got distracted,” He said abashedly, looking down at the floor so he didn’t have to see the concerned looks on his friends faces. Through the fog in his brain, he realised they were waiting for him to say something else. Hermione had asked him a question. Did something happen? Nothing new really, just all the old things building up and up until he couldn’t think of anything else. But now he wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t want to lie to his friends, but he didn’t know what to say. “Nothing happened. I’m- I Just-” He didn’t know where his words were going. He’d meant to leave it at the first two words. They were true enough. Then, he’d been about to say he was fine, which certainly wasn’t true no matter how much he wanted to think saying it meant it was, but he couldn’t even say it, because he felt Ron’s thumbs rubbing comfortingly back and forth against his arms, his friend’s hands strong strong but soft and impossibly warm. Harry’s body shook as if a shiver of cold had run through him. It took him a moment to realise the shake was a sob, and the fogginess clouding his vision were tears.
“Shit, sorry,” He mumbled, ducking his head down even more as if to try and hide from the friends right in front of him, but Ron only pulled him closer, shushing him gently as he hugged his friend tight against his chest, letting Harry cry into the front of his shirt. Off to their side, Hermione patted his shoulder a little awkwardly, never having been all that good at knowing how to comfort people, especially when they cried.
They stood there quietly for Harry didn’t know how long. His distress had clearly messed with his sense of time. It felt somehow like forever and only a few moments. But eventually, he managed to stop the tears. Pulling away from his friend’s embrace he wiped at his eyes. “Sorry,” He apologised again.
“Oh shut it with that,” Said Ron fondly at the same time as Hermione said. “You don’t need to apologise,” The latter reached into the pocket of her robes, producing a tissue and offering it to Harry. He took it, but only crumpled it up in his hand.
“No, I'm being stupid, and letting Malfoy’s bullshit get to me. He’s right, I look like a girl, and now I’m acting like one, bursting into tears out of nowhere” He sniffed.
Hermione gave him a stern look and started. “Don’t feed into his brainless sexism, Harry. There’s nothing stupid about being a girl, and it doesn’t make you any less of a stupid boy to cry or look any particular way,”
“Yeah, Malfoy’s just saying all that shit, because he’s an insecure little brat trying to deal with the fact he has a stupid boy crush on you which he can’t deal with cuz he’s homophobic and stupid and jealous of how sick and hot you are,”
Harry choked out something like a laugh, unable to consider right now that anything his friend said was serious. Hermione scolded Ron by hissing his name, and he shrugged. “It’s true, and it’s nicer than you telling Harry he’s sexist while he tries not to cry, I mean really, not the time for a lecture Mione,”
Harry snorted, though it was a bit forced. Rubbing his eyes, he let out a breath, gearing himself up to tell his friends the real reason Malfoy’s teasing had gotten to him so deeply. “No- I mean- It’s not just that it bothers me cuz they’re calling me a girl. It’s cuz- cuz it makes me feel like I’ve been lying to you guys all these years, and hiding the truth from you- though I didn’t even think it mattered before those twats started calling me Harriet and shit,” His friends looked at him, Hermione with confusion, Ron with quiet patience as Harry fumbled to figure out how to explain himself in a way that made sense.
He wasn’t used to talking about his feelings to anyone. It had always made his parents upset when Harry got upset as a kid, and he couldn't bare thinking he was the reason they were sad, so he’d hid away anything that bothered him, and even though he felt he could tell Sirius everything and did tell him just about everything whether it was upsetting or not, he only felt comfortable doing that, because he knew SIrius would never react, maybe because he too hid his feelings like Harry or because he’d grown up around so many tumultuous horrid things from his parents that nothing bad really affected him anymore.
“I- um-” He felt like he might go mute before he said it. “I’m- I wasn’t born a boy, y’know?” He only looked up at his friends for a second to see if they understood, though he wasn’t sure he had the words to explain it better. “Like I’ve always known I was a boy. I’ve always felt like one for as long as I can remember, but like- when my mom had me, I was a girl. We all realised pretty young that I was a boy, ad my parents um- took me to healers specialised in transfiguration, and y’know did what they could to make me look how I felt, but I dunno, maybe I'll always be a girl, or just never be a boy, yeah,”
He finished awkwardly, staring at the tissue he’d been twisting in his hands as he spoke. He didn’t want to look up, afraid he’d find disgust on the faces of his former best friend’s or betrayal or shock at Harry having kept something this big from them. They didn’t say anything for a second that seemed to stretch on for hours to Harry. Then they both spoke at once, like they’d been waiting for him to continue.
Hermione spoke soft and kind. “Oh Harry, you don’t have to feel guilty for that, you never lied to us,”
And Ron said in a tone both harsh in its incredulity and relieving in its casualty. “Is that it? You made it sound like some awful secret,”
Harry looked up then to see Hermione glaring at Ron with an expression that did more than enough scolding, none of which seemed to register on the tall boy who said. “What? He did make it sound like that! It was like he thought we were never gonna talk to his dumb ass again after he told us,”
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione murmured in a voice both sad and loving. “You know we love you. You can tell us anything, and we wouldn't just abandon you like you’re nothing. You can tell us anything or nothing, and we’ll stick by you just the same,”
“You should probably lean towards telling us things though, at least before you go wandering off into dark corridors to have breakdowns by yourself,”
Hermione pursed her lips but didn’t give Ron a disapproving look this time. “We want to know when somethings bugging you, so we can try to help,”
“Yeah, even when it’s stuff that doesn’t matter to us like the you being born a girl thing, and when it really matters like when you finally decide to murder Malfoy, because I want to be there for that. Prick deserves a hundred hexes,” Ron grinned at Harry as he spoke, his tone growing less serious, though Harry wasn’t completely sure Ron didn’t want to murder Malfoy.
Harry laughed, though it still sounded a bit weepy. He wiped his eyes and cheeks, though the tears had dried up by now. “Yeah, about murdering Malfoy, I’d really like it if you stopped having a go at him. It’s what he’s looking for, and I hate seeing you get in trouble all on your own,” He smiled, considering keeping what he really meant as an inside thought, but he had already started sharing how he felt with his friends, and this wasn’t too much more. “And I hate you getting in trouble defending me,”
“C’mon Harry. It’s not all about you. Malfoy’s a scourge on society. I’m only doing a public service by shutting him up for a bit,” Ron grinned, and Harry shook his head.
“Well, fine but you don’t needa retaliate when he’s only having a go at me,”
“Or me,” Hermione chimed in, perhaps thinking Ron might actually listen when it was Harry who was telling him to place nice and ignore Malfoy instead of her.
“Fine, fine! If you insist,” Ron said, raising his hands in surrender. “I will only hex Malfoy on behalf of everybody but the two of you from now on,”
Harry snorted, and Hermione scowled thinking ROn had completely missed the point of what Harry was asking of him. But Harry felt confident in his friend’s understanding, in the silent agreement he could see in Ron’s expression which told him Ron would respect his wishes to not get in too much trouble over Malfoy of all people.
“C’mon, let’s go down to the kitchens before we head back to the tower,” Hermione said, perking up now that her two best friends both seemed calmed. “We can work on that transfiguration essay Harry mentioned,”
Ron groaned and protested as the three of them started down the corridor together, Harry bumping shoulders with his friends on either side of him. Nudging Harry, Ron gave him a smirk and a side-long look. “Is ageing magic a sort of transfiguration? Maybe I can stop by the hospital wing and see if the slytherins are still there de-aging, could help em along a bit, eh? See what they all look like as literal babies so the outside can match their attitudes,”
“Ronald- Didn’t we just agree not to cause more unnecessary trouble?”
“We agreed I wouldn't cause trouble without my friends to help, and you two are right here, besides this doesn’t count a s new trouble, because I did it before I said anything about keeping my hexes to myself,”
Harry smiled at the comfort and normalcy of his two friends bickering amiably with each other on either side of him. He felt like a weight had lifted off his chest, and though it seemed like the least pressing of the things he was keeping from his friends right now, it was something, and it showed him that maybe he could admit the other things eventually too, or just the one thing if the crush made nice and left him alone, which he still had a little hope for, despite the warm lightness in his chest and the pleasant little electric shocks that buzzed through him whenever Ron’s arm brushed against his as they walked. He smiled to himself as Hermione answered the question Ron definitely hadn’t wanted her to answer.
“Well, yes in most cases, it would fall under transfiguration magic, but it depends what the magic is actually doing. But it could also be classified as chronomancy, or perhaps necromancy in certain de-ageing magic … Maybe you should write your essay on that, Ron, I mean without further experiments on our classmates … “ Hermione went on talking to her best friends who were hardly paying attention which didn’t seem to matter given she had enough enthusiasm in speculating on the topic for all three of them and then some.