Ron Weasley never spoke to his friends, not about this. How some days he still felt like a girl, like despite his early magical transition that he'd always be a girl. Like maybe not even a permanent potion could change what his mother wished he was.
He saw it in his mom's disappointed eye's, in the quiet whisperings of family gatherings.
They kept it quiet though, too ashamed to be found related by blood to the odd one out in the Wizarding World or maybe it was his mother who had shut them up.
His mother loved him, but she loved the dead girl more.
When he was old enough to know, Fred has cut his hair and they'd spent the day outside playing quidditch. Fred had always been the most accepting, through jokes and witty remarks he kept his brother feeling loved, even coming up with a potion while they were home alone to turn Ron into a boy, a boy like all the others. He knew how his brother craved to look like how he'd always felt inside.
Then Fed was dead and he didn't want to tell Harry or Hermione or anyone. Not when there was always minute chance that they may see him as a girl or worse a woman. He didn't want to be loved as a girlfriend, as a sister. Why had the potion not changed that? Why had it not taken away the dread of them finding out? His mother had misconstrued in the early days that this thing so potent and unmoving was merely a young girls hatred for witches. And so she'd told Ron passionate enthralling stories of witches, war heroes. Never succeeding in turning her son into the dead daughter she claimed to hold so dear. The daughter who had always been out of reach. The daughter who was never real, who had never been real.
I mean for fuck sakes! Why did it matter that he was her son? Ginny was right there! Her lovely fucking hair, and she was everything his mother had always wanted. She was loved. By the family, by his mates and he was there.
Deep in his bones he was wrong, even if he was right. Guilt seeping like the rust on a jaded knife.
Everyone knew it. Knew that he was wrong, that he was odd even if they would never be able to pinpoint why or atleast that's what he believed. Why Ron had always gotten so jealous at Harry in their school years and made himself look like a right prick. He wanted to be a boy the way Harry was, the way his brothers were. He wished for Molly to look at him the way she looked at her other children.
Most things his mind made up weren't true, he knew that but it was hard to stop the thoughts once they came.
The thoughts of his chubby stomach that stuck out of his trousers, one foul comment in fifth year that he could never quite shake. The crippling paranoia that it would get out. That someone would run there mouth and everyone would know that the head auror was a 'fake'.
He could see it now, crying on the bathroom floor feeling like that little boy again whose mother thought he'd gone mad screaming that he was boy, he could see the Daily Prophet articles. 'Ron Weasley Harry Potters freakshow friend'.
Sometimes it didn't feel so bad though. Most times.
Hermione spoke of him so highly, spoke of his hair as if it were a field or daffodils undisturbed and soothingly overgrown. Her hands were the tranquil rains to the flowers of the roots of his hair. She didn't know, and he'd keep it that way.
It was easier to forget to notice prying eyes when her hand ground his with that look in her dark welcoming eye of knowing that he wished he could drown in. Merlin knows how the hell it happened but Hermione had had children, his biological children, none the wiser to his past.
In all truth, between you and me. Not a single thought of Hermione's unacceptance were based in fact. By now nothing could possibly make her love him any less. Ron was a thing to be cherished, the grounding stone in Harry's life, the first one to be told of his homosexuality. For, much to Ron's disapproval, Draco Lucius Malfoy.
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When it eventually did get out in the papers, Ron found that not many others cared. The talks weren't as dreaded as he imagined, Hermione was stunned at how Fred had managed to make such a powerful potion. Harry was rather unbothered, only asking a few clarifying questions making sure show his support.
It was lovely having Hermione's gender affirming words when she'd notice him beginning to drift. Oh it was lovely, to be loved and loved completely.
Molly never really came around so in turn the burrow became a travel destination less and less. Life moved on and he was man enough, a man not only to himself but to everyone despite his past.
Coming to terms with Draco Malfoy dating his best mate took some time and getting along with him took every longer. It turns out that he loved chess too, many nights had been spent filled with intense chess matches that bored the life out of Hermione and Harry.
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Not long after the news of him came out, Harry had helped him in his free time to recreate the potion for any wizards or witches or any in-between to be themselves. With Harry's involvement the potion was legalized.
It was rarely needed as it was a one-time irreversible potion but Ron was just glad that if anyone like him were to come out of the woodworks they'd have an option.