Listen, when the government is actively nerfing sex education and you're this gay... you have to write Harry Potter fanfiction to cope. Additionally, this is just a major gap in Hogwarts' curriculum.
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.
Content warning: As you can probably tell from the description, there's some mentions of sex. If you've had grade 9 health, I think you're good!
Dedication: For my Mama Bird who works super hard and could probably use some extra smiles during
Spring Bingo entry information:
Space Address : 4C
Prompt: Fertility
Word Count: 784
Stacked with: Individual Challenges: Gryffindor MC (x3), In a Flash, Advice from the Mug, Bow Before the Blacks
He Just Needed to Know
The nice thing about having friends in the Auror Department was that if twelve years of your life were ever stolen from you due to a wrongful conviction, they could at least steal back your things that had been confiscated by the ministry.
"Security really has fallen," Mad-Eye grumbled when he saw Tonks come in with a new haul.
"Oh, get off it," Tonks told him. "Do you want to look at these old photos Kingsley and I found or not?"
While most of Grimmauld Place's inhabitants that day had been curious about the pictures, it was Remus and Harry that Sirius spent the most time pouring over the pictures with. Understandably, of course. Harry had only ever seen a small fraction of his parents' lives, despite Hagrid's best efforts.
They'd just found a stack of pictures that had been taken while Lily was pregnant. She was beaming in flowery maternity dresses and eating ice cream in a majority of the shots, James often at her side though sometimes she and Remus were slumped on the couch napping, sometimes she was balancing things on her baby bump and laughing at the photographer…
"They were really young," Harry noticed.
"Yeah," Sirius said. "Well, we were twenty when you were born."
"That's… just twenty? Did they really plan on having me that young and in the middle of a war too?" Harry asked.
He and Remus made eye contact. Remus' face was impassable, but his eyes were wide-open and round. Sirius was pretty sure he was exuding pure panic, at the moment.
"That sounds like something for a godfather to explain," Remus said quietly.
"In what world do you think Lily and James would have wanted that to fall on me?" Sirius scoffed.
He could tell Remus was doing the math in his own head and had reached the conclusion of oh dear God, it will have to be me…
"Harry, I think the key thing to remember is that not all accidents are bad," Remus said.
"Oh my God, I was an accident," Harry said.
"A good accident," Remus said. "Your parents wouldn't have had it any other day, they were so, so happy when they found out Lily was pregnant. They'd both always wanted to have children one day. They called you 'a surprise,' that's all."
"Because I was an accident," Harry said.
Remus shot Sirius a look that conveyed something in the likes of 'mayday, mayday, mayday.'
"Look," Sirius said. "Lily and James were two consenting adults in a committed relationship. It just so happens that both of them were also extremely fertile according to the Healers."
"Oh that wasn't essential information to divulge," Remus noted under his breath.
"Harry deserves to know! Maybe it's genetic and all. At any rate, there's no reason to stigmatize sex. Sex is… Oh Merlin, nobody's told you about sex, have they?" Sirius realized. He could tell by Harry's immediate reaction that the adults previously in Harry's life had, indeed, omitted this important detail.
"I know about…" Harry looked away. "I didn't ask anything, forget it."
"No, no," Sirius said. "Now that we know that nobody's bothered to explain this, one of us should…"
"One of us? Oh I'm sorry, remind me who's godfather?" Remus said.
"You are of no help today," Sirius hissed.
Remus put his hands up in the air.
"I think I'd like to see you handle this one. I'm not the one who opened this can of worms or started using words like 'fertility,'" Remus said.
"I don't want the talk," Harry muttered.
"You know what, maybe you wouldn't be here if your parents hadn't said the same thing," Sirius said. "Listen, sex is normal. I'm not saying you have to have sex, not everybody wants it and that's fine, and you also don't have to be having sex right this minute, but you should know in advance that way..."
"You're saying a lot of words," Harry said, mortified. Sirius wasn't sure how someone could look both pale as a sheet and absolutely scarlet, but Harry was managing it. He ignored his godson's coloration and ploughed on.
"As a matter of principle we can't have the Chosen One running around not knowing about these things..." Sirius said. "We'll start with consent, then go over protection, and you should probably know about the clitoris too. We'll go over how it works with two men too, just in case it comes up."
That's right: he was the godfather. He could and he would handle the talk. This was part of what growing up surrounded by loving adults was like, after all, and it was time Harry learned it even if it meant learning about the circle of life.