Night of too Much Firewiskey Challenge

Harry Potter was a highly unusual man for his age; at twenty-one he was just entering his first actual career, acting as an Auror, after having spent the previous four years earning gold by flying about on a broomstick and trying to catch a small, golden ball.

In addition to this, he bore a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt upon his forehead, stretching from hairline to brow, and only just hidden by his bangs. He'd met his parents after they were dead as a result of that scar, and killed the man who murdered them and gave him the mark through the same blemish in his skin. He was also a wizard.

Furthermore, he was waking up next to his best friend's fiancé in a small muggle hotel room. "I- oh- shit." Harry Potter awoke and shook jet-black hair from his eyes, pushing it back out of his face where it stuck up predominantly. "Shit," he repeated, as though the word would somehow quell the pounding in his head, make the bright sunlight drifting in through the thin, white curtains go away, cause him to wake up alone somehow.

"Shit… Shit..." he whispered the word, now, realizing that the bushy-haired girl lying beside him was still fast asleep. Groping beside him the young adult found his wand lying beside the bed. Still muttering to himself, fervently hoping that he would wake up in a different place alone, Harry touched the holly and Phoenix feather wand to his temple, murmuring, "Oriens secundem," as he did so. Instantly his hangover dissolved, his headache fading to nothing, but he still didn't know what had happened the night before.

As quietly and carefully as he could, he extricated his body from the sheets which, he noted with a certain amount of relief, had not tangled themselves around his legs. The relief faded away when the second his legs were free of the sheets, they instantly flew back up to a position as though they'd just been made, and a thin layer of oils, hairs, and bits of dead skin disentangled themselves from the sheets as they contracted flesh, zooming off into the small plastic waste bin in the corner. Charms had been placed upon the sheets to clean any unwanted substances from the sheets, as well as to prevent them from tangling around the occupants of the bed. Harry wondered briefly who had cast the charm, before realizing that he didn't know any cleaning charms, and was poor with making anything work autonomously, which indicated that it had almost certainly been Hermione who'd charmed the sheets.

"Shit!" the word emerged for a fifth time as he spotted the second bed in the room, this one closer to an old, noisy air conditioning that blasted frigid air into the room along with the sound of internal components clinking about within. Two heads of flaming red hair poked out from beneath sheets that were quite entangled around the owners, and shone transparent in several places.

Backing away slowly and trying as hard as possible not to think about the high probability of incest, Harry backed into a wall and winced as his bare back encountered the cold material that composed it. Glancing down he was relieved to note that a pair of sleep pants still covered his lower half, once more assuring him that he'd not done anything the previous night. Breathing heavily, he searched the ground around him for his clothing before finding a pair of his jeans and a T-shirt resting on the old air conditioning unit to muffle the racket.

Rather than risk walking the length of the room and risk waking someone if the floor should creak, Harry cast a summoning charm, wincing as the leg of one of the jeans smacked the top of one of the redheaded occupants of the bed across the top of the head. They stirred feebly and let out a small moan, then rolled back over, pressing close to the other occupant of the bed as they did so, and making a small contented noise.

Harry grimaced at the thought of what had happened the previous evening as he recognized the small, red-haired woman who rolled over as Ginny Weasley, his girlfriend and, until recently, rival Quidditch player. "Shit!"

He was fairly certain that the red-head lying next to her was his friend, Ron, and Ginny's elder brother. His face was still obscured by the blanket, but after living with his best friend's snores for nearly seven years of his life, Harry was fairly certain he could positively identify his friend.

Backing into the small bathroom, Harry pulled on the shirt, then went about the process of untangling his pajama pants from his legs, the task made no easier by the fact that, he belatedly realized, they were several sizes smaller than he was, and the tag listed them as women's clothing. The roller coaster of relief and nausea at what he might have done the previous eve took another dip along with his stomach as he struggled to pull the constricting fabric from around his thighs.

With a ripping noise that seemed to echo upon itself in the silence, the pants tore along the right leg, leaving him dressed only in a pair of briefs and still attempting to relieve himself of the other unwanted leg of the clothing.

"Harry?"

"Shit!" he said the word quietly once more, to himself as usual, noting that the voice, which sounded concerned on a level greater than friendship, came from Hermione's throat, showing that she was now definitely awake.

He began to hop on his free leg, trying desperately to pull off the other half of the too-small pants in time to place his jeans on. Jumping madly off balance, he fell over backwards into the small shower unit, whacking his head on the nozzle and starting a torrent of frigid water pouring on his face.

"Ow. Shit."

"Harry, I'm coming in! Is- is that okay?"

Aside he muttered, "Shit," then, "No, no, it's not. I'm, uh, I'm in the middle of something, here."

"Harry, it isn't anything I haven't seen before-" Shit! "-I'm coming in anyway."

The locked doorknob rattled for a moment, before the sound of a wand tapping it came through the keyhole, along with Hermione's voice whispering, "Alohamora."

Unconsciously the young Auror backed away from the door, falling deeper into the tub and snagging the still-attached half of sleepwear on the same nozzle he'd smashed his head on as he fell, ripping that leg off as well, and leaving him with no modesty at all as the door finally opened quietly. Hermione's brown hair preceded her entrance, and when her face appeared she was smiling far too broadly for Harry's comfort. She shut the door gently behind her, with a conspiratorial smile blossoming across her face.

"Oh, so this is what you were up to, is it? You didn't worry about showering on your own last night, you know…" Her grin became all the more intimate, and Harry felt himself cringing. He half-hoped she would notice that and recognize that he'd probably been very drunk the previous night, but the other half of him hoped that she would and would cease making advances on him. "Oh, what's the matter? Why the cold shoulder, Harry? It was so much… hotter last night."

"Look, er, Hermione, I'm not sure I was-"

"Shh…" she put a finger to her lips and advanced slowly, baring her legs as she went until only lingerie remained.

"Hermione!" Harry shouted the word this time, and heard the sounds of two people waking up in the sleeping room next door. "Look, I don't know what we might have done last night, but it was only because I was drunk if I did! Look, I'm sorry if you're suddenly under false pretenses, here, but I'm fairly sure I was hammered."

"But… But, last night," she said weakly, a look of pain crossing her face. She advanced slowly, though this time not as though she were trying to enamor him to lust. "The things you said… The things we did. I- I didn't think you were drunk when you said those things. They seemed real… They seemed… They seemed so sincere."

"Yeah, well… Look, I'm really sorry, really, I am, Hermione, but…" But, what? Hermione had always been emotional, always quick to come to tears when emotional problems arose, and now he had to find some way to comfort and repel her at the same time when a man he hoped would some day be his brother-in-law and the woman he loved who, he was afraid, had just slept with her brother-in-blood, were advancing and cold shower water poured over his still-pantsless lower torso.

"But, it was just the sex that you were in for, Harry? Was that it? Was- am- Am I just a sex object for you, is that it?!"

"No, Hermione, just… Listen, it isn't about-"

"Oi, what's going on in there?"

Shit! Ron's voice was drifting through the door behind Hermione, though he suddenly realized that she was now nearly at the tub, her legs level with his own, both of which hung out of the tub from the knees down. Hermione ignored Ron, just leaned in closer.

"Harry, just kiss me one more time like you did last night. That will tell me all I need to know…"

"Hermione, I was drunk- hell, you saw what was going on in the room back there, you were probably the only one who wasn't drunk, I-"

But she had already leaned into the spray of water and cut him off, kissing him passionately across the lips, and when she broke off Harry noticed that just about everything about her had changed. She was shorter, now, with long red hair and a face full of freckles, a totally different body, in fact.

She was now identical to Ginny Weasley. The door burst open and another Ginny Weasley entered, followed at the heels by her brother, Ron. Both looked around for a moment, Ginny looking as though she were trying desperately not to laugh, Ron looking flabbergasted.

"What the hell? What's going on here?" He rounded on the Ginny closest to him. "Who are you? What'd we do last night? Are you really my sister, or-"

But he was cut off as she burst out in peals of laughter, doubling over with the force of the mirth, tears starting to stream from her eyes.

The Ginny by Harry grinned and shook wet hair out of her eyes. "Ah, well, it had to end some time. It just wasn't nice in the first place, I don't suppose. Though it is something of a relief. You can sleep easy tonight, Ron, and I guess I can, too."

"You can- what- the hell is going on here?!" Harry asked, looking from one red-haired figure to the next. "What the hell is going on here?!" he repeated, as though his extra emphasis would bring about an explanation quicker. The Ginny next to Ron just laughed at him, then advanced to the stream of water from the showerhead and stuck her head in.

Instantly she grew in height, her hair exploded into bushy brownness, and she became the real Hermione Granger.

"What?!" Harry asked, just as flabbergasted as he'd been before.

Rather than answering, Ron nearly turned to the newly-revealed Hermione and held out his hand. "Ten Galleons, come on, I got it right."

She grinned ruefully at him. "I don't know how you figured out he'd just say 'what?!' like that, though, I'd have thought he'd swear his back end off after all that he was muttering when he woke up."

Ron beamed. "One of the advantages to knowing your best mate well; you get to win on bets like this when you put him into really awkward positions!"

"Oi!" Harry shouted, drawing everyone's attention back to him. "Will someone just tell me what the hell is going on here?!"

Ginny grinned and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him out of the water, and handed him a towel. "Do you know what today is, Harry?"

"No idea, and I really don't see how it fits in with-"

She handed him his pants. "July…" she said, as though leading a child toward an obvious answer and giving them a hint.

Harry blinked. "My birthday, alright, yippy, that's great. What does this have to do with- Oh." He pulled up short. His birthday. "You mean this was all-"

"A prank, yes," Ron said, smirking at him. "Well, that and a bit of revenge."

"Revenge for what? I mean, what'd you even do to pull this off? I mean, I- you- all of you- how- what- I mean, why would you even-"

"Stop spluttering and we'll tell you, mate," Ron said, chuckling as he said the words and clapping Harry on the back. He glanced down. "Oh, yeah, put on some pants while you're at it," he added.

"So, here we go," he said after Harry had covered himself properly with a pair of blue jeans. "You remember Gringotts? When we did the break in, what, four years ago, now?"

Harry nodded. "Give or take."

Hermione, suddenly blushing bright red, pointed at the shower head, which someone had turned off while Harry had been toweling his hair. "The thief's downfall; it removed the Polyjuice Potion we'd drunk to swap each other's places," she said, pointing at herself and then at Ginny, who was still smiling ear-to-ear, completely unabashed.

"And you thought it would be funny to… To just make me think I'd slept with my best friend's fiancé, and my girlfriend had slept with her brother?"

Ron nodded fervently and smirked once more. "You thought it was a riot."

"I'm not laughing, Ron."

"Well, sure you aren't; it happened to you this time around."

"It happened to me this time around?" Harry repeated, utterly bewildered.

"Is there an echo in the room? Yes, it happened to me back when I turned twenty-one. You were one of the main instigators of it."

"I think I'd remember doing something like this, Ron."

Harry's friend smiled back. "You would, wouldn't you, but then, you'd also think Lockhart would remember who he was based on his true love for himself, wouldn't you?"

"Wha-"

"My, you just aren't very quick in the morning, are you? Memory charm, mate. You got drunk last night, partly because it was the night before you turned twenty-one, partly because we three kept buying you drinks, partly because we slipped some more stuff in those drinks."

Harry scowled, and Hermione flushed an even brighter shade of Red, while the two Weasleys just revealed more teeth and laughed harder at him. "You drugged me?"

"Not much," Ginny said, patting him on the back. "You're quite the lightweight when it comes to Firewiskey. Didn't even take a full bottle to knock you out; Uncle Billius would disown me for dating you when you have such a small limit!"

"Anyway, once you were good and drunk, we dragged you up here. Hermione cast a tricky little charm to figure out when you'd get up, she and Ginny downed some Polyjuice Potion, and when you woke up-"

"It looked like incest a desperate witch who didn't want to wind up being a house wife. Oh, well done, bravo, was there any point to this beyond just embarrassing me and being stupid? I mean, hell, the Polyjuice Potion hurts like mad when you drink it, was it really worth it?"

"Oh, definitely!" Ginny said, her beam becoming, impossibly, wider. Harry was afraid she'd tear her skin if she found anything else funny in the next few moments.

"You started eyeing other women when you got drunk, Harry. Really eyeing them, not even trying to be subtle about it. In particular, you were looking-"

"-at me," Hermione said. Her face now closely resembled Ron's hair in coloration. "Look, I'm sorry, Harry, it wasn't funny- well, actually it was, really funny, but not for you, obviously- it's just, I mean, I wanted to make sure that you weren't going to go off and try to harbor false pretences about a relationship between-"

"Didn't I tell you that she was like a sister to me, Ron? Didn't I? Four years ago?"

He nodded. "'Course you did. I never told either of them that, or else they wouldn't participate, now did I? Besides, I'm not sure I'd put incest past you."

"I think you should be thinking more about homicide than incest," Harry growled, glancing around for his wand. Ginny held it in her hand and leaned back as he reached for it. Her grin faltered slightly as his hand came closer. She tossed it to Hermione.

"I think we'll be keeping that away from you for a few minutes. Look, Harry, part of it was Ron's stupid prank, part of it was just me wanting to make sure that you weren't-"

"-After my best mate's soon-to-be-wife? Yeah, there's just so much trust in this relationship, I think it's going to really flourish, don't you?"

Ginny shrugged. "It'll have to."

"And why's that?"

"Well, for starters we all have to be able to look back at this and laugh some day," Ron said, his expression becoming more somber by the second.

"I should forgive you all because I'm supposed to laugh at this some day?"

"That and because I'm pregnant with your child," Ginny said, looking quite serious.

"I-wha- Oh, haha, hilarious. You're all pulling another stupid joke and-"

But even Hermione looked serious, now, and there was pity in her expression. "We checked, Harry. She is. Wizard and muggle tests; you're the father."

"But I haven't even-"

"Like I said, you can't hold your Firewiskey," Ginny said quietly. "I didn't really want to let you know until I had to. I was really hoping that you'd be in good spirits so that I could tell you after this little prank, but now…"

She lowered her face into her hands and sniffed. "Now I'm not really sure!"

"Ginny…" Harry's expression softened, and he reached for her. Her hands fell away, revealing her grinning face, and she grabbed his wrist, yanking him toward her.

"Got you. And now you aren't mad anymore!" She smirked as he collided with her.

Her gave her a mock glare. "This is my birthday. You're supposed to be nice to me and give me presents, not make me think that I've slept with one friend and impregnated another one."

"Ah, well, not all of your birthdays can be your seventeenth, can they?"