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: This part was composed in a Buffy induced trance. That is why it is obviously so fine. All spelling mistakes can be blamed on my hero-worship of Giles.
Chapter Two: In which we learn that consenting adults can rarely explain themselves adequately and everyone begins to be inarticulate.
The previously unmentioned wonderchild Harry Potter has taken it upon himself to find Hermione, who has disappeared following what is being called an 'incident' with three girls. He feels that her attack was possibly a bit much; she has rendered two of the three completely and possibly irreversibly mute.
Unsurprisingly, she is very easy to find, even without magical help. Hermione does not have the most active imagination, and also, Harry is not afraid of the girls' toilets.
The library is oddly quiet, probably because most students have decided to attend lessons.
"Hey, Fertile Murtle," he calls out. "You in here?"
"Bugger off," Hermione says gruffly from her hiding place in the stacks.
"You did some pretty nice damage back there," he says pleasantly. "I think you rendered a girl blind in one eye."
In hindsight, Hermione thinks her use of the shoulin skills might have been a bit unprecedented. Next time, she will warn her opponent before she delivers a skipping dragonfly.
Harry finds her, finally, atop a bookcase, partially invisible with a pile of books.
"You can't hide forever," he tells her, scanning the literature by her side.
"I don't intend to." Harry notes that Hermione has surrounded herself with what Ron would call feminist propaganda. This, he thinks, might be the start of something dangerous.
"It's a fine mess though," he says. "I mean, you'll be in serious trouble."
"You can't get expelled for being up the duff," Hermione says cheerfully. "I checked. I can challenge the governors, if it comes to it, with a case in 1784 where they let a pixie-goblin hybrid study Charms whist he or she, they never found out, was pregnant."
"You won't rip their eyes out if they refuse you a place though," Harry points out, "and you probably won't try and lay the eggs of your spawn in their children's eyes."
"Do you think a womb minimising spell would work?" she asks. Now, Harry, as a man, does not like questions about wombs as a rule. They are dangerous things to him. He doesn't understand them and really doesn't want to. Therefore, instead of an articulate reply, he just gargles. "Sorry. It was Ginny's idea."
"Ginny should not be trusted on matters of human biology. I love her and she's great with fish but don't let her near your foetus unless it's having trouble swimming upstream. And you should know, I don't care who the father is."
"Oh, you've heard then," Hermione says grimly.
"It'll be pretty," Harry says in consolation. "That's what everyone's saying. That and he might have to marry you so you'll get all his money at least, even if he makes you live in a tower."
"I think we skipped the marriage part," she says, mildly amused by the idea that she might be inciting jealous from some of the Slytherin girls. "And the courting and the love and the meeting the parents and any semblence of dinners together or moonlight dancing or even fucking ice cream. I might make him buy me ice cream to make up for the fact that I am carrying his ferret faced spawn."
"If I thought he was going to be giving out ice cream, I'd have let him knock me up," Harry says assuring, as if friendly promises could breach the barrier of evolution and general biology.
But their cheerful exchange is interrupted by the librarian, who tells Hermione there is a small army of senior teachers looking for her and ordering Harry back to some irrelevant lesson.
The aforementioned preggers sorceress allows herself to be found just outside the library by Flitwick, who looks faintly embarrassed and talks about trees for the entire seven minutes it takes them to walk to McGonagall's office.
In Seventh year Potions, Draco Malfoy is summoned away.
"It was nice knowing you," Blaise Zambini says, offering his condolences for what he and the rest of his house's cliche see as the charming blonde's inevitable demise at the hands of the femininja Head of Gryffindor house.
"Don't touch my stuff," Draco says.
Zambini calls first pick of his brooms, but Millicent Bulstrode wins overall as she calls dibs on his iPod and anything she can find in the back of his draws.
She's a bright one, she is.
Our two protagonists are brought together by the original catwoman, and are seated in front of her desk as she tries awkwardly to bring the matter to hand.
"Is there anything you want to tell me?" she asks them, taking pains to appear likable.
"I'd just like to say," Hermione says amiably, "that the rumour about the grindelow is completely untrue. As is the one about the merpeople and the Womping Willow. I'm not that flexible."
This does nothing to alleviate the feeling of discomfort that has invaded the room. Draco looks like he might die of mortification.
"A series of possibly very slanderous rumours have come to my attention," McGonagall says, trying to keep the conversation under her control by hinting shamelessly and hoping that either student in front of her will deign what she does not want to say. Hermione beams at her enthusiastically as Draco tries to envision an escape route. "Rumours of a coitus come anticipatory nature?" Both parties in front of her look incredibly confused. "Oh Jesus!" she seethes. "You know what I mean!"
"Yes," Hermione says, saving them from any more uncomfortable, incomprehensible adjectives. "It's true. I am," she wiggles her fingers in the manner of a cramped typist, "with child."
There is a brief, very, very uncomfortable silence.
"Miss Granger," McGonagall says. "I don't think I can quite convey my disappointment, both in your previous behaviour and your blase indifference."
This is highly unfair. Hermione is not indifferent. She is still in shock and prolific vomiting also really takes it out of a girl.
"In my defense," she says, "I have been dry heaving into a toilet for most of this morning. Biliousness isn't as fun as it might seem."
Not knowing what to say next, McGonagall turns her wrath onto the unfortunate father.
"And you Mr Malfoy. I tell you, if there is so much as a mention of consent being an issue in the conceiving of this," she nods and frowns and Hermione so wants her to say 'wee bairn' "thing, there will be dire, dire consequences, you hear me?"
Hermione objects to the word thing. She thinks she would know if it was a crocodile. Her mate of choice isn't the most pleasant of men but he is, as far as she can tell, wholly human.
"You're not a werewolf, are you?" she asks. "Only, I feel I should know in case it tries to claw its way out during the next full moon."
With the subtlety of a brazen moose, Draco shuffles his chair away from her.
"No," he says slowly. "I'm not. And I might not even be the father. Why are we laying this all on me? Slaggus there could be spinning lies to cover her tracks."
Hermione has never been called anything like 'Slaggus' before. She thinks the Classical spin almost negates the insult to her virtue.
"It is definitely yours," she snaps. "I haven't slept with anyone else."
"How do you know? You didn't remember anything until I told you. With the greatest respect, Professor, I think she's just taking us all for a ride."
"Why the fuck would I fabricate something like this?!" Hermione yells. "You repulse me!"
"Still let me shag you."
Before Hermione can inflict any serious and irreversible damage with the stapler she is brandishing, McGonagall disarms her and quietens them both with threats of fire and brimstone, and plagues on both their houses. When Draco expresses the opinion that the fact that they cannot get a paternity test until after the baby is born is a clear feminist conspiracy, she does allow a slight clouding of her better judgement, so Hermione can get one clean thump in before she has to separate the two of them.
"In the light of this news" she says, "I am going to have to appear to negate the damage you two have been seen to do with your fornication. I am reprimanding you both in detention until the child is born," she tells them, "with the intent that you can educate your peers on why fast living is evidently a poor idea."
For Draco, this will be living hell but when it comes to Hermione, McGonagall clearly has no idea what she has unleashed.
And so, just four days later, a selection of posters start to appear around school, offering lunchtime classes for anyone wishing 'to emancipate themselves from the restraints of a masculine society.'
When Ginny asks how she intends to generate a crowd to these classes, Hermione says she trusts in the dignity of the women of Hogwarts.
"But Mione," Ginny says, "the good women of Hogwarts don't possess much dignity and that six years of hardcore learning have turned most students into voracious sexual deviants and that the school would benefit much more from a structured sexual education programme or a free condom giveaway at the very least." Hermione looks at her like she's just bitten a walrus. "But what do I know?" she adds cheerfully, resigning herself to the position already set aside for her in the great scheme of things. "Yes, dignity of women. Hurrah."
Also, I went to see the new HP film yesterday and then wandered around town for two hours grinning like a sexual predator at passers by because I was suddenly reminded of every embarrassing pubescent and pre-pubescent crush I have ever had on the cast. I got to sit next to a lovely middle aged couple who giggled like me all the way through, and didn't mind my inserts of lust or the noises I made or the fact that I made jokes about fish to myself for about five minutes at one point.
Oh HP fans, DON'T EVER CHANGE. I LOVE YOU SO.