Junebug.
Or: The Secret Lives of Frogs. In which Hermione is a scary feminist, Draco's into misogyny and jumping, and pregnancy happens. I've got Bob Dylan, vegetarians and swearing and I still can't believe I'm putting my name to it.

Notes:Oh Jesus, so many. Firstly, yes, it is very AU, and I don't own anything and I'm not serious and I don't have any money but I do know about frogs, or at least I think I do. And no, I will not give you a reasonable explanation as to how Voldie disappeared from the face of the earth and why everything's cool and no one's dead. Sorry, but I'm genetically programmed to fight angst and grief and actual plausible plots and to spread feminist propaganda (AHAH, how I love that phrase) to the masses.
And I swear too much and and am offensive about everyone but in an endearing way and make references to films you won't have seen, or bit to films you will have seen but never paid any attention to. Like my favour bit in Catch 22 is the whole
"Orr?"
"Sweden!"
"Sweden?"
"Orr!"
and no one gets it when I shout it at them OKAY I'LL SHUT UP NOW.

Prologue: Of bad beginnings and the reproduction of small, rasping amphibians.

It takes about two minutes and thirteen seconds of unsatisfactory groping to impregnate Hermione Granger. She is really very drunk, cross and has been rendered temporarily squinty by the alcohol she has consumed. Fucking Hufflepuff and their fucking start of term raves and their fucking brilliant persuasive techniques.

Hermione might come across as a massive geek but she's a British teenager as well, and everyone who reads newpapers or hell, even watches Newsround, knows that all British teenagers spend their weekends getting drunk in fields and vomiting under street lights. It's a fact universally acknowledged. They've done it for centuries. Ask Thomas Hardy.

Once they reach maturity, frogs assemble at a water source, such as a pond or perhaps a stream, to breed, usually around February. The low temperature of the water helps the developing tadpoles because dissolved oxygen concentrations in the water are highest at cold temperatures and it means that appropriate food will probably be available to the developing frogs at the right time.

Hermione and her badly chosen mate do not quite achieve amplexus - far from it, in fact, as she couldn't have achieved that level of gymnasticism sober - but the effect is the same. She wakes up the following day, sticky, still cross, but non the wiser. It takes her another two weeks to realise she's up the spout and that unfortunately, she does have a father for it. She tells this to Ginny Weasley, who, in the manner of all generic Hogwart confidants, offers no practical advice but does come with a tureen of mangos so they sit and eat citric fruit as Hermione winges about the cluster of cells currently mitosing inside her womb. "I can't believe it," she raves. "I'm on the pill and I don't remember anything!"
"He could have magic jiz," Ginny offers helpfully. "Oh, actually, plausible theory! I read somewhere that jet lag buggers up your ovaries a little bit, what with the time zones and all that, so you might have been susceptible to sperm then because this place," she says, smacking Hermione's mattress with her fist, "is magic."
Only much later does Hermione realise Ginny has gotten that amazing piece of science from a Mills and Boon book so it is almost certainly horse crap.

After about eleven more days of secretly harbouring some bastard's bastard, Hermione is jumped in library which surprises her on two levels. Firstly, she does not immediately vomit on the shoes of her ambusher, which she has recently taken to doing. This has led to the staff of Hogwarts thinking that a creature best described as being "like that massive frog in Pan's Labyrinth" has taken up residence in amongst the students but as no one has been consumed so far, the danger is not quite at a critical level. I digress. She thinks she has stopped being violently sick in the mornings because she has taken to consuming fennel and green tea. This is a lie. She has stopped being violently sick because Ginny, the excellent friend that she is, has drugged her. Bored of her roommate's obvious signs of increasing levels of progesterone and chorionic gonadotropin, she has been adding lemons and bananas into Hermione's diet. She also buys the aforementioned impregnated witch a lettuce, to assist with the lactation, which drives Hermione into a panic related to the quickness of magical gestation. However, this is over ridden relatively quickly when she realises that Ginny's enthusiasm far outweighs her actual knowledge of the situation.
Secondly, she is jumped by everybody's favourite adonis-come-fan-of-totalitarian-evil Draco Malfoy, who, for all his pleasant countenance has no idea how to charm the ladies.
"Hey bitch," he says, appearing from behind a bookcase with all the stelth of an aggressive caterpillar.
Oily squit! Vile autocrat! Twatting oligarch! She shrieks internally. Not externally, of course. Being brought up by bourgeois dentists prevents such a thing. Such manners are what hold the majority of secondary edjucation together. That and the implied threat of corporal punishment.
"Yes?" She inquires with curiosity obscured by weariness brought on by cubes of frozen fruit juice and no fucking coffee.
"There was a Hufflemuff rave a few weeks back. You got naked and danced on a table and I was completely rat arsed and we might have-" He tries to convey the motion with interlaced fingers, a curved brow and some jiggling. This impresses nothing on Hermione, who was he lost at Hufflemuff.
"We what?"
"Bitch. I hate you."
"Your professions of malice and hostility are all very well but I have no idea what the fuck you're saying."
"He's trying to say he shagged you!" A disembodied voice from behind a Charms textbook shouts. "And he's too much of a chicken shit to actually say anything so he's resorting to gesticulation and awkward jerks to tell you."
The ethereal voice is Millicent Bulstrode. Draco gives her the finger. There is a chain of thought that says it wouldn't be the first time but we should leave that. "Is this true?" Hermione asks, incredulous to the point to stupidity. Draco looks highly embarrassed and nods. Stupidity is replaced with insensible anger, which manifests itself in senseless violence and at exactly five past nine on the fourth of October, Hermione Granger delivers her first proper punch. It is concise and well aimed. It is conveyed with such velocity and conviction that it shatters Draco's nose quite cleanly. It would both comically misplaced and a lie to say that he took it like a truly virile swain, but it was really not the time for a cocksure stance. Hermione would have found some other way of crushing him.

Germaine Greer once said that the tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough. How, sadly, very true.


And a thank you to the children on my school bus who came up with the Hufflemuff. They are amazing. I will one day buy them a pumpkin for their trouble. Join me in the next installment, once I have written it. It'll be immense, I promise.