Fourth year was when things first began to change noticeably, to Alex as well as to outsiders.

"Alex! Your hair's gotten so long, I almost didn't recognise you," exclaimed Louis upon first finding Alex at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. "You look like a girl." He laughed.

Alex laughed too, sort of self-consciously. He rather liked having longer hair; it seemed to fit, or at least he thought so.

"Look at this awful sunburn," said Louis, holding out his freckled, pink arm.

"Ouch," Alex agreed.

"There you are," said a voice to Alex's left, and Alex and Louis both turned to see Celeste. She'd changed her hair too; she'd said goodbye to all her little braids in favour of dreadlocks.

"Nice hair," said Alex.

"Thanks!" she said, grinning. "You too. Long hair suits you."

"Let's go grab a compartment before all the good ones are taken," said Louis, and led the way onto the train. When he attempted to shove his trunk onto the shelf above the seat, he dropped it and it fell open, scattering socks, clothes, and textbooks with half-completed summer assignments stuffed between the pages. He leant down to collect his belongings, and Celeste and Alex knelt on the floor to help; in no time they'd consolidated Louis' things back into his trunk, which he then latched properly.

"Thanks guys," said Louis.

"I'm not a guy," said Celeste matter-of-factly, stowing her trunk next to Louis's. "Using that term to describe a group of people is institutionalised sexism. But you're welcome."

"Huh?" asked Louis, his brows knitted. "Celeste, it's too early in the year for rants about issues in society. We've only just got here."

Celeste frowned. "What do you mean it's too early? It's still important!"

"Yeah, but I'm really tired," said Louis. "I did all of the summer's homework this past week and stayed up last night finishing it until half one in the morning."

"Why did you leave it so late?" Alex balked.

"I would have been fine, but I had to rewrite two of my papers because Dom switched my spell-check quill with a joke one from Uncle George's shop and it put a lot of rude words in."

"You'd think she'd be more sympathetic to you because of your dyslexia," Alex mused.

Louis laughed. "Sympathetic? Have you met Dom? You wouldn't understand, you don't have siblings – but all we ever do is annoy each other. I put frogs in her trunk this morning so I don't feel too badly about the quill."

As if on cue, a shriek sounded from a nearby compartment. "Wonder if she found them?" Louis said, stretching his legs out and folding his arms behind his head.

Two Gryffindor girls in their year walked by and waved through the compartment window, and Louis, still lounging in his seat, gave them a nonchalant head nod. Alex snorted in suppressed laughter, as he imagined Louis was probably trying to look cool, but hadn't accounted for the fact that the right trouser leg was sloppily tucked into his sock, rendering his whole image rather comical.

Lying on his bed in the Gryffindor dormitory some time later, after the new first years had been sorted and the feast had ended, Alex felt a strange sensation of disconnect when his roommates began to talk about the girls of their year - how Angela had horrible acne, but Zahra had become so fit over the summer and was now leaving the top buttons on her blouse undone. These sorts of conversations had been happening with more frequency, especially towards the end of last year, and it was the least interesting conversation Alex could think of to start off the year with his mates, because he just didn't care.

While Alex was excited to be back for his fourth year, the present conversation was a bit isolating, as he couldn't really relate; he'd never had much of an attraction to any particular girl. The girl he liked the most was Celeste, because he appreciated her boldness, her intelligence, and steadiness. But these weren't the sorts of things that the other boys noticed about girls. The only person he noticed in a different way was not a girl, rather his roommate Nigel, and Alex wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Maybe he was gay. Maybe not, and there was just something special about Nigel.

"What about you, Alex?" asked Nigel suddenly, rousing Alex from his thoughts, and Alex looked up to see his roommate standing there in pyjama bottoms and shirtless, watching Alex intently as he waited for Alex to answer his question. "You've been quiet - which of the girls have you got your eye on?"

Alex felt his face and ears grow hot, and he looked away from Nigel. "None," he answered honestly.

"Aw, come on, there's got to be someone. Eunice has the best legs I've ever seen; you have to have noticed that."

"I bet it's that chick he spends all his time with," suggested Rahul. "The Ravenclaw. Celeste Cassidy. She's sexy as hell."

Nigel grinned. "You're right," he said, turning to Alex. "How about it? Did we figure it out?"

Alex fidgeted – what he felt for Celeste wasn't the same thing as what his roommates meant, but he didn't want to disappoint Nigel. There was no way Alex could admit who he actually liked, and maybe if he said he liked Celeste, then his telling his false secret might bring Nigel closer in a way, as is the case with sharing secrets.

"Yeah," Alex lied.

The smile on Nigel's face was worth it, but then the conversation devolved into a discussion of Celeste's best physical attributes and why Alex should ask her out, and it made Alex feel uncomfortable; he knew how much Celeste would hate being objectified in such a manner. But even Louis, who was as close with Celeste as Alex was, seemed to have no qualms in talking about Celeste that way. Eventually Alex rolled over on his bed and shut the curtains with a wave of his wand.

Alex had always known the conduits of gossip were numerous and quite rapid at Hogwarts, but he was still surprised when Celeste approached him two days later with a thoughtful expression during the walk to Herbology and asked him, "I heard you've got a thing for me and are thinking of asking me out."

"I… er… who told you that?" Alex stuttered, wondering how much farther he should carry out his lie. Already he was sick of pretending, and he felt even more false trying to lie to someone like Celeste, who was essentially like a sister to him.

"Are you even into girls?" Celeste continued, sizing him up. "I never figured you for a straight bloke."

At this point he could either hold up the falsehood, or admit that she had figured him out. And he only had a second to think about it, but the longer he stood there stalling, the more obvious it was. Eventually, though, he gave up the charade, because despite how his heart raced as he wondered how she would react, he didn't like lying and Celeste was someone he could trust. "How'd you know?" he finally asked.

She smirked. "Takes one to know one," she said cryptically, then elaborated. "I've never been attracted to blokes, only girls."

Alex sighed with relief – she understood. "Does anyone else know?"

"Sure they do. I have posters of female Quidditch stars in my dormitory, and I always listen to Athena Vixen's music, and I'm pretty sure loads of people saw me kissing Eunice Chan on the train. I'm probably quite obvious. But I see no reason to hide who I am. And I don't really have to make a big deal of coming out, because everyone already knows."

Well, Nigel would probably be disappointed to find that Eunice was unavailable to him, Alex thought. But thinking of Nigel, a familiar panic gripped Alex again. "What do I do? What if people find out? Should I tell anyone?"

"Just be yourself. There's nothing shameful about it, who cares if people find out? You'll probably be happier that way."

"You don't know the worst part," said Alex. "I like my roommate. And he likes to wander around the room with his shirt off. But if he or any of my other roommates find out I'm gay, I think they'll all be weird about it and act differently around me. Do you ever worry about people not accepting you how you are?"

"Those people aren't worth worrying about," Celeste insisted. "People who matter will just accept that as part of who you are, not shun you because of it."

Alex nodded, taking a deep breath; Celeste's confidence had spilled over onto him and he felt much calmer after talking to her. "I'm so lucky to be friends with you," he finally said, and Celeste grinned. Together they walked into Herbology, and Alex held his head a little higher than usual.

But it wasn't just that. After Alex told his roommates he was gay, not much changed, except Louis and Rahul were a bit weird around him for a while, until they realised Alex was still the same person as before, and time smoothed it all over. No one made a big deal of it anymore, months later. But Alex still couldn't shake the feeling that there was more at play than just his sexual orientation. He still didn't feel like one of the guys.

Individually, the other boys were all great, and Alex had some things in common with them. Louis was Alex's best friend, Harry had similar tastes in music to what Alex liked, and Damien and Alex both grew up in single-parent households. But when all of the fourth year boys got together, it felt like an exclusive club where Alex didn't belong, because he was just too different. Even when the others weren't talking about girls, there just seemed to be something inexplicable that made Alex feel as if he were not like the others, an outsider in some way.

Sometimes he felt more comfortable with Celeste and her Ravenclaw friends, who were mostly all girls. He often found their conversation more friendly and considerate, and he thought he was a lot more similar to them in terms of personality than he was to his own roommates. So much so that he began to wonder if he was actually meant to be a girl instead of a boy.

"Celeste," asked Alex one day in January, "what would you think if… if I changed my name to Alexandra?"

Celeste turned to face Alex, opened her mouth as if to speak, and then closed it again. "You think you might be a girl?" she finally asked.

"I don't know," said Alex. "Maybe. Sometimes I feel like it fits me more, you know?"

"Well, then it doesn't matter what I think, does it?" Celeste asked. "You be you, whatever that means. Do you want me to start calling you Alexandra?"

Alex smiled. "Yeah, I think so." Maybe… she… had found out who she was?

"Well, Alexandra," said Celeste, "you should come with me to a meeting tonight. I know you're not really into meetings or activism or big groups of strangers, but I do think you'd really like the Hogwarts Queer Students Association. A lot of people there are still figuring out who they are, kind of like you are. Maybe it'd be good."

Celeste had told Alex about the group a number of times, but Alex had always been too busy lollygagging around the Gryffindor common room, playing hangman or Gobstones with Louis, or figuring out how to play the musical saw. Maybe this was a time when it made sense to go to a meeting, if it would help Alex feel more comfortable. So together the two of them went to the meeting that evening.

Upon walking through the door and seeing the assembled group, Alex was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face from the fourth year Gryffindor boys' dorm: Harry L. was there, an odd vision of emo gloom lounging on a rainbow striped beanbag chair. Happy to see another familiar face, Alex tugged Celeste's sleeve and together they walked over to sit by Harry, who peered up at them with doleful eyes outlined with eyeliner and half covered by his dark hair. "Hey Alex, welcome to the queer club," was all he said, which was positively loquacious for Harry.

"Thanks," said Alex, and laughed. And now was the moment of truth – it was a safe space here, and certainly it would be scary to come out as female to a bunch of people who were no more than acquaintances, but how else was Alex going to become Alexandra? So Alex took a deep breath, preparing to reveal that new identity – but then just as suddenly, it didn't seem to fit anymore.

Alex wasn't a 'he'. But the alternative was to be a 'she', and that didn't really fit Alex either, who was something in between, if that existed. But that didn't really equate to anything in the magical world, where there were wizards and witches – Alex was more of a 'Which?'

Plagued by self-doubt and questions, Alex had trouble focusing for the first fifteen minutes or so, but finally returned to the present when Celeste began speaking. Alex listened to the discussion, which at the moment was about increasing queer visibility on campus, and things that annoyed Celeste about the current culture at Hogwarts.

"There's something that annoys me, too," said Alex softly when Celeste had finished, and all eyes turned to Alex attentively. "All of the bathrooms. They're either girls or boys ones, but there's nothing that's just… neither."

"That's a great point… Alex, was that your name?" said a Hufflepuff in the opposite corner. "I totally agree. What if someone was genderqueer, then what toilet could they use? It's not fair at all. We should start a petition and submit it to the board of governors and make them change the antiquated binary system for labelling the toilets."

Petitions aside, Alex felt a bubble of excitement as suddenly everything clicked. Genderqueer – that was it; that fit. That was what Alex had been trying to place all these months.

"I bet even Moaning Myrtle would sign it," said the girl next to Celeste. "She'd probably love to have more company in that gloomy toilet of hers."

A/N: the chapter title is from the song of the same name by Nirvana