"I heard you went to live with Muggles," said Ron. "What are they like?"

"Horrible - well, not all of them. My aunt and uncle and cousin are, though. Wish I'd had three witch sisters."

"Five," said Ron. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. "I'm the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I've got a lot to live up to. Billie and Charlotte have already left - Billie was head girl and Charl was captain of Quidditch. Now Persis is a prefect. Gwen and Felix mess

around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they're really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five sisters. I've got Billie's old robes, Charl's old wand, and Persy's old rat."

Three boys entered, and Harry recognized the middle one at once: it was the pale boy from Madam Malkin's robe shop. He was looking at Harry with a lot more interest than he'd shown back in Diagon Alley.

"Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

"Yes," said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards.

"Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle," said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking. "And my name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."

Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. Draco

Malfoy looked at him.

"Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford. I'd heard they'd finally managed to have a boy, I'm surprised they kept all the girls."

He turned back to Harry. "You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

He held out his hand to shake Harry's, but Harry didn't take it.

"I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks," he said coolly.

Draco Malfoy didn't go red, but a pink tinge appeared in his pale cheeks.

"I'd be careful if I were you, Potter," he said slowly. "Unless you're a bit politer you'll go the same way as your parents. They didn't know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riffraff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it'll rub off on you."

Both Harry and Ron stood up.

"Say that again," Ron said, his face as red as his hair.

"Oh, you're going to fight us, are you?" Malfoy sneered.

"Unless you get out now," said Harry, more bravely than he felt, because

Crabbe and Goyle were a lot bigger than him or Ron.

"But we don't feet like leaving, do we, boys? We've eaten all our food and you still seem to have some."

Goyle reached toward the Chocolate Frogs next to Ron - Ron leapt forward, but before he'd so much as touched Goyle, Goyle let out a horrible yell.

Scabbers the rat was hanging off his finger, sharp little teeth sunk deep into Goyle's knuckle - Crabbe and Malfoy backed away as Goyle swung Scabbers round and round, howling, and when Scabbers finally flew off and hit the window, all three of them disappeared at once. Perhaps they

thought there were more rats lurking among the sweets, or perhaps they'd heard footsteps, because a second later, Hermione Granger had come in.

"What has been going on?" she said, looking at the sweets all over the

floor and Ron picking up Scabbers by his tail.

"I think he's been knocked out," Ron said to Harry. He looked closer at Scabbers. "No - I don't believe it - he's gone back to sleep-"

And so he had.

"You've met Malfoy before?"

Harry explained about their meeting in Diagon Alley.

"I've heard of his family," said Ron darkly. "They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side." He turned to

Hermione. "Can we help you with something?"

"You'd better hurry up and put your robes on, I've just been up to the front to ask the conductor, and he says we're nearly there. You haven't been fighting, have you? You'll be in trouble before we even get there!"

"Scabbers has been fighting, not us," said Ron, scowling at her. "Would you mind leaving while we change?"

"All right - I only came in here because people outside are behaving very childishly, racing up and down the corridors," said Hermione in a sniffy voice. "And you've got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?"

Ron glared at her as she left. Harry peered out of the window. It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down.

"Guess we'd better change, then" he said. "Are you really the only boy in your family?"

Strangely enough, Ron turned a dark purple. "Well….um. You see…" he stuttered then sighed.

"Well, I guess I'll have to say it at some point. I'm not a real boy. Gwen and Felix ruined my hair with some kind of potion they made and mum had to cut it all short. I'm supposed to ask Madame Pomphrey for a hair-growing potion tomorrow."

Harry was stunned, and highly embarrassed. He tried stuttering out some apologies, but Ron waved them off.

"Truth is" he muttered, "I rather like being a boy, and I hate being a girl. I wished this whole train ride that I could keep pretending to be a boy and that no one would ever grow my hair again or put me in dresses. You're really lucky Harry, but I'm dreading sharing a dorm with girls. I'm sorry I never corrected you - you probably won't want to be friends with a girl."

"Well" said Harry, still quite embarrassed, "I don't think being a boy or girl changes the way we had fun this train ride. We can still be friends - if you want that is. I've never had a friend before, boy or girl - and all the boys I know beat me up. I reckon being friends with a girl might be better."

Ron's face lit up and he - she, rather, beamed at Harry. Neither of them knew it, but this was the start of a special friendship.

Fortunately, at this point, a voice interrupted the moment, which would have grown even more awkward.

"We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time." it said. "Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately."

There was a hasty scramble while they dug their robes out and tugged them on - the pockets were nice and deep, and they crammed them full with the leftover sweets. Scabbers curled up in one with the practised ease of a pet used to riding inside pockets and started eating a Fudge Fly, while Harry and Ron took a last look around before taking a deep breath each, and joining the crowds in the corridors.

At the Sorting Ceremony Harry found out Ron's actual name was Rhonda. He didn't blame her for going by Ron. Hermione Granger, however, was rather indignant, and seemed to think Ron had deliberately tricked her into thinking she was a boy, and persisted in calling her 'Rhonda' for the rest of the night.

Ron refused to acknowledge her for the rest of the night.

In fact, Ron refused to acknowledge her until Halloween - when, infuriated by Hermione's persistent refusal to call her anything but her full name, she snapped and said some very nasty things to Hermione.

They had a yelling match after Ron dropped the troll's club on it's own head, where Hermione called Ron stuck up, rude, nasty, a tom-boy, and ashamed of being a girl. Ron had yelled back that Hermione was the stuck up rude one, calling her by a name even after she'd been asked not to, and that yes, she was a tom-boy and yes, she hated being a girl.

Harry had interrupted them at this point by bursting into hysterical laughter and collapsing on Ron's shoulder. The girls had looked at him in bewilderment, and then started laughing themselves.

After they'd been found by the teachers and carted off to be treated for shock, Hermione had claimed to the teachers that she'd missed the start of the feast due to stomach pains. For some reason, she and Ron had turned red, Snape had quickly left the room, Professor McGonagall had patted her on the head, and Madame Pomfrey had fetched her another potion. Harry was confused, and it wasn't until his own daughter, years later, reached puberty that he finally realised what Hermione's excuse had been.

Somehow, the three of them had become firm friends after that. It was at this point that Ron confessed to the two of them that she felt like a boy, not a girl. Harry said that he'd never been able to stop thinking of Ron as a boy and as a girl after that short train ride, and if Ron wanted, he could stop correcting himself and just refer to Ron as a him. Hermione was a bit more doubtful but said she'd do some research in case it was a curse or something.

Ron cried.

Ron never told anyone, but when they made Polyjuice Potion to investigate the Chamber of Secrets Mystery, he felt more comfortable in Crabbe's body than in his own. It was his secret for years that he kept a vial of Polyjuice and spent an afternoon in his younger brother's body.

The disgust he felt upon transforming back did it for him. He started researching a way to stop puberty from happening.

Of course, he freaked out and spent an afternoon hiding and crying the day his menses finally started, at age 13. It was then he had one of his biggest arguments with Hermione, who didn't understand, and thought it was dangerous to stop it. Harry was highly embarrassed, but started helping Ron with his research.

When Hermione woke up from her petrification and found out that Ron was taking a contraceptive potion to stop her period, they had a massive argument and didn't talk to each other for the first half of the summer.

It was Hermione's parents who helped her. Together as a family they did a research project into the medical history of transgenderism. While her parents agreed with Hermione that it could be very dangerous, what Ron was doing, they pointed out that Ron still needed the support of her friends, and that Hermione needed to guide Ron towards proper medical supervision.

Hermione reconnected with Ron, and managed to convince her not to try transfiguring her growing bust smaller. Instead, she helped her friend bind her chest flatter, and threw herself into researching transgender wizards and witches, and treatments.

There wasn't much to find. Ron would have less rights than a magical creature, even if technically there was nothing stopping him getting a non-Government job. Usually, transgender wizards would move to another country where no one knew them.

Hermione and Ron had no idea they were carrying out a romance as they argued and fought and cried.

Reginal "Gin" Weasley and Harry Potter watched and shook their heads. Harry was a mess, with Voldemort after him, and Gin was a fiery young man with a hair trigger temper, but comparatively speaking, their romance flowed smoothly compared to the hurricane of feelings between their friends and brother.

Molly found out she had not one, but two sons in the summer of 1995. By that time, it was already accepted that Ron was most likely a lesbian, between her short hair, boyish dress sense, and the fact she'd taken Luna Lovegood to the Yule Ball (no one believed the official story, which was they were going stag, as friends, just so Luna could attend. Luna knew Ron didn't want to go with a boy).

She took it rather well, but was horrified that Ron's 'breasts' were at this point, mostly padded bra and that she'd actually been taking potions to stop them developing further. Potions made by the twins, of all people (who were actually rather talented at Potions, despite their abysmal marks).

Unfortunately, without going to Knockturn Alley, it was impossible to get the gender reassignment treatment done without officially registering as transgender. Neither Ron nor her parents wanted to do that yet, with the backward laws regarding them. Plus, it involved a lot of money.

School years were hard for Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Gin. There were possessions, Horcruxes, Voldemort, closets, prejudice, Basilisks, Dementors, illegal Animaguses, Triwizard Tournaments, Death Eaters, poisons and assassination attempts. But they stood, victorious, at the end of it, Voldemort defeated, and no one was going to shame the Saviours of the Wizarding World for being queer.

Even if technically, Hermione wasn't queer. She was just in love with a man who had had to have some treatment.

A man, whose proudest day was not the day he was accepted into the Aurors - a First. It was not even any of the days his champion of a wife changed so many laws, not just for transgender men, but for House Elves, werewolves, Veela, and many other creatures. It was the day he stood before a woman and she called him 'Husband' for the first time.