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Albus Potter and the Deathly Hallows | ||||||
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Category: Post-Hogwarts Characters:Harry/Ginny, Other Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Humor, Romance Warnings: Death, Intimate Sexual Situations, Violence, Violence/Physical Abuse Story is Complete Rating: R Reviews: 77 Summary: Albus has his challenges during his first year. Cleopatra is obviously his soulmate, and has brilliant insights into magic, except she cannot do it like anyone else. Albus has to help her while keeping peace between the two brightest and most competitive students at Hogwarts, Scorpius and Rose. It doesn’t help that people are out to get Albus. Harry is not sure he can keep everyone safe. Then you have Ginny and Cleopatra. Hitcount: Story Total: 79318; Chapter Total: 2226 Awards: View Trophy Room Author's Notes: This chapter is dedicated to Jackie, our youngest, who was born male but is transitioning to female. Chloe has been somewhat masculine from my first writing of her years ago. As always, helpful edits from Arnel and FriendofMolly. |
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The Monday evening after the Quidditch game Cleo went into her dormitory room. The only other person there was Chloe Koizumi, the daughter of Cho Chang. Cleo said, “I have not made any soap and shampoo for you, Chloe. Do you want some?” Chloe said, “All the soap and shampoo makes you smell like a girl.” Cleo said, “We make boy soap and shampoo that makes you smell like a boy.” Chloe said, “I would rather smell like a boy.” Cleo said, “I can examine you, and we can talk, and maybe I can make a scent that you will like.” Chloe said, “I don’t want to smell like a girl because I really don’t want to be a girl. I wish I was Charles instead of Chloe.” Cleo said, “I can make my bed private. I will close the curtains of my four-poster and put a Silencing Spell on them so we can be private.” Cleo and Chloe sat on the bed, and Cleo closed the curtains and did a silent privacy spell. Cleo examined Chloe with her wand, trying to find out something about her, and about her gender. Biologically she was a girl, but mentally there was something more masculine than feminine. So Cleo said, “You really do want to be a boy.” Chloe said, “I always wanted to be masculine. When there were fairy tales of princes and princesses I always want to be the prince rescuing the princess. Even when there were heroines in a story I wanted to be the strong male, the hero, and not the female. I am terrified that my body is going to start changing, and I do not want boobs, or a period. Girls are soft and curvy, and I want to be hard and strong and tough.” Cleo said, “Have you told your parents?” Chloe said, “Yes, and they don’t take me seriously.” Cleo said, “Have you told anyone else?” Chloe said, “No. Who could I tell?” Cleo said, “Madam Swan. Maybe she can stop puberty while you figure this out. Maybe there is some sort of Transfiguration spell that can change you into a man instead of a woman.” Chloe said, “I asked Professor Appleleaf, but he said gender changes were some of the trickiest and hardest. He said we might learn about them seventh year. By that time it will be too late!” Cleo said, “It is half past eight. We have an hour and a half before curfew. We are going up to the hospital.” The two girls went to the hospital. They knocked on the door and peered in. Cleo said, “We want to talk to you.” Madam Swan said, “Come in. What do you want to talk to me about?” Cleo said, “Gender.” Madam Swan said, “Are you worried that you have not started puberty yet, Chloe? It comes at different times for different people. Cleo is a little ahead of schedule.” Cleo looked at Chloe, and when she didn’t speak Cleo said, “When I examine girls or boys to make soap and shampoo I can usually get a strong gender reading. I can also see if a boy is more interested in boys than girls; we have a couple of boys like that at school. But Chloe wants to be a boy, and I can see a feminine biology but a masculine persona. Can you stop puberty so Chloe could figure it out?” Chloe said, “Could you, please! I am terrified that puberty will start and I will be stuck being a girl, and I really do not want to be a girl.” Madam Swan examined Chloe, and then said, “I do have to contact your parents, but I think there may be a case for delaying puberty and figuring this out.” Chloe said, “I must be the only person in the whole school who has ever felt this way.” Madam Swan said, “You are not alone. There is a second year boy who wants to be a girl.” Cleo said, “Patrick Lee from Ravenclaw? He is the other one I have examined, where I could not get a clear gender.” Madam Swan said, “He is very embarrassed to talk about it, but he really wants to be a girl.” Chloe said, “Maybe we can trade bodies.” Madam Swan said, “It is not that simple, but the Transformations do work better if there is a male and a female involved. Come up here tomorrow night, about the same time.” As the girls walked back to the Gryffindor dorm Chloe said, “Thank you, Cleo. I did not think you would be the one to understand. You are so female, so happy to be getting breasts and hips and periods and all that growing up female entails.” Cleo said, “I LOVE being female. It is just that I thought gender was simple. Examining people for shampoo and soap, seeing who likes who, which couples are a good fit, is a whole lot more complicated than I thought it would be.” * Tuesday afternoon Cleo was sitting at the Gryffindor table with Chloe and Hanna McGonagall, and Al joined them. Al said “I’m going to see all my family for the twentieth anniversary of The Battle of Hogwarts. Are your parents going to be there?” Hanna said, “I think my parents are going to be here just to see me.” Chloe said “I’ve asked my mother, but she is not sure. She said something about your mother, Al, being a twitchy witch, and she just didn’t want any more conflict. Maybe if your mother asked her she would come. I tried to talk to my mother about your mother over Christmas, but she does not want to talk about it. It’s hard to get her to talk about some things.” Al said, “Maybe I could help more if I knew a little more about you. I mean, you all know about my family. We are in the papers some times, and all the cousins except Fred and Dominique are here at Hogwarts, plus my little sister and Rose’s little brother, but they are going to be here in a couple of years. Fred you probably met at Weasleys Wizard Wheezes.” “My dad’s Japanese,” said Chloe. “He’s a British citizen, born here as were his parents, but both sets of grandparents were born in Japan, and my dad was sent to Japan to boarding school instead of going to Hogwarts. They own property, apartment buildings, and my dad and grandfather maintain them and remodel them, with some magic as well as Muggle materials. We live in a nice size flat in an apartment building the family owns, and my dad has a really big workshop in the cellar of the building. It’s really a magical place, the workshop. I love to build wands and swords and battle stuff. Dad says I should have been a boy, because I like playing rough like boys, but when I told Mum I wanted to be a boy she almost laid a dragon egg. Dad kids me about it, but he doesn’t take me seriously. “Mum’s parents own a Chinese restaurant, and Mum worked there until she became an Auror. I asked how they met, and mum told me. Mum said she had never eaten in the dining room of her parents’ restaurant, always in the kitchen. Once she was an Auror she was sick of cooking, and she didn’t know how to cook for one anyway. So eventually she got into a routine of eating out, breakfast and lunch at the Ministry of Magic, and dinner at a different restaurant each night. One night she was at a Japanese restaurant that was her regular Thursday night dinner and my dad said, “You were not here last week?” “Mum said, “Who are you?” and dad said, “Edward Koizumi. I’ve noticed you here almost every Thursday, roughly the same time but not exactly, like you come after work, and come after it is done not at the same time. But you were missing last week. It’s not easy finding a witch with a responsible job, and I was intrigued.” “How do you know I’m a witch?” asked Mum, and Dad said, “By your wand. If you are a wizard it’s not hard to tell. How about us eating dinner at the same table? If we both pay for our own dinner it’s not like you’re obligated to me or anything.” Dad said he could see Mum was real skittish about getting involved with someone. They ate dinner, and Dad talked a little about what he did, and at the end he said, “I don’t believe I’ve gotten your name.” “And Mum said “Chang, Cho Chang.” Dad asked if they could eat dinner together the next Thursday, and for seven or eight Thursdays they did, and Mum gradually told dad more about herself. “Well, sometime during their conversations Dad learned what restaurant my grandparents own, and he ate dinner there about four times checking it out. Finally he said to Mum, “I would like to take you out on a real date tomorrow night. I will dress in my finest Muggle suit. I would like you dressed up like we really are boyfriend and girlfriend. And then I am going to take you out to Chang’s Chinese, and we are going to eat in the semi-private little corner in the back of the restaurant. I’ll pick you up at your flat, and walk you around the block, and will have reservations for Mr. Edward Koizumi and guest.” “So Mum bought a real pretty dress, I mean she still has it, and it has a slit up the skirt about as high up as, well, I think Cara would be in trouble if she tried to wear something like that to a ball in Hogwarts, and not real low cut in front but low enough, and real pretty, and dad picked her up. I guess there was quite a scene when they showed up at the front. Grandma Lee was at the front desk and she had to run and tell everybody, and I guess it was quite a scene. And then at the end of the meal Dad gave Mum a little, four inch by five inch or so, carving he had made of the two of them sitting cross legged eating in the Japanese restaurant, with her in the wood of her wand and he in the wood of his wand, mother of pearl for the table top, black ebony around the outside. It’s really a spectacular piece, and we still have it, in a place of honour. “Well, Mum says that her parents really wanted her to marry a Chinese boy, and Dad says his parents kept introducing him to all these shy nothings of Japanese girls, and it was real touchy with the grandparents, but by this time both parents were getting a little desperate. Dad says that he probably could have brought in and introduced almost any eligible female and his parents would have found something to like about her, and Mum’s parents were getting the same way, but the grandparents were a little tougher. The conflict is all simmering below the surface, and everybody is polite like Oriental families can be, but it is still there. That’s probably why Mum does not want your mother to get mad at her too. She has enough trouble navigating between the two grandmas.” Al said with the kind of sympathy that he was an expert as showing, “Thank you for sharing this. I think it will make a real difference when I talk to my mother.” He then looked at Chloe to give her the sign to continue. “Well,” said Chloe “they got married in a very small ceremony about six months after they first met, only immediate family there, and I was born less than nine months later, and my little sister Cara about two years after I was born, and after we were a year old we were raised by my two maternal grandmothers. Grandma Lee would get us for two weeks and Grandma Yamaoka would get us for two weeks, and then Grandma Lee would have one of us and Grandma Yamaoka the other, and then we would switch. Grandma Lee taught us mostly in Chinese and Grandma Yamaoka mostly in Japanese, so we know both languages fluently. And I think both Grandmothers wanted to see how much knowledge they could pour into our heads, because we got really high scores on the Muggle tests, even though they were English tests. Oh, we got plenty of English teaching from Mum and Dad when we were not with the Grandmothers. “And Mum says she has enough trouble with the two competitive grandmothers, and she would just as soon not have twitchy Ginny Weasley Potter in the mix as well.” Al said, “I think my mother would not want to have your mother worried about her after all these years. It’s going to be twenty years from the Battle of Hogwarts. I’ll try and talk to her.” * That night Cleo and Chloe went back to the hospital. Madam Swan was there, as was Danny Lee. Cleo said, “Hi, Danny. This is Chloe Koizumi.” Danny said, “You really want to be a boy, Chloe?” Chloe nodded her head, and then said, “Why would you want to be a girl? You can do so much more as a man than as a woman.” Danny said, “You cannot have babies, and nurse babies. Besides, girls are nice and soft and prettier.” Chloe said, “I never wanted to be soft and pretty. I want to be strong and brave and tough and anything but girly.” Danny said, “I always wanted to be roundish and girly. I wanted to be the princess. Princesses can be pretty and not hard, but brave like Mrs. Potter. She is a girl, and a brave one, but she is pretty. Your mother, Chloe, she is a brave Auror, but she is pretty too.” Chloe said, “After she had me and my sister, Mum was not allowed to lead raids for almost four years. I would not mind marrying a girl, I guess, if I was a boy, but I don’t want to be one.” Danny said, “I’ve dreamed of marrying a boy, and having babies. I don’t want to just look like a girl. I want to be one.” Madam Swan said, “It is even hard to take Polyjuice and transform into someone of the opposite sex. You are warned never to try Polyjuice when you might be pregnant. Doing so can easily kill you and is often fatal to the baby. “There are ways to transform into a member of the opposite sex. The easy ways leave you sterile, and often sexually incapable of fully enjoying sexual activities. There is a way to transform totally, but it takes three months, and it works much better if a boy and a girl are doing it at the same time.” “I want that,” Danny said. “So do I,” Chloe said. Madam Swan said, “First, we need to contact your parents. You are both going to need your parents’ permission. Then we need to have psychologists, healers who concentrate on the mind and emotions, to examine you. Once you have had the transformation and have gone through puberty there is no going back. Changing gender is not easy.” “Let’s do it,” Chloe said. Madam Swan said, “Cleo, you may be excused now. I need to work with these two. Please keep this confidential for now.” Cleo said, “I will not tell anyone but Albus, and I will tell him not to tell anyone. We are really good at keeping secrets, but we cannot keep any secrets from each other.” * Cleo and Al already had a lot of orders for shampoo and perfume, and so Friday they asked Professor McGonagall if they could have permission to take the Floo to Al’s house in the afternoon and evening to make the shampoo. They would promise to be back before curfew. Albus had always been so polite and nice, and had always tried to be helpful. Professor McGonagall could even see the change he was beginning to work in the Slytherin students. So she agreed, and after she had wondered again how Al could talk her into giving him permission to do things that she would never allow anyone else to do. When they arrived at Grimmauld Place, Albus said to his mother, “You know Cho Chang. Her daughter Chloe is roommates with Cleo.” Ginny said, “Chloe Chang?” Albus said, “No, she is Chloe Koizumi. Her father is Japanese, and her mother Ms. Chang is Chinese. I guess the grandparents are not happy that they married.” Ginny asked, “Is that why Cho did not take her husband’s last name?” Albus said, “I don’t know about that. I know that Chloe’s mother says she has had enough trouble with the grandparents, and she doesn’t come to the Battle of Hogwarts Anniversaries because she doesn’t want to be fighting you, too. I do not know what happened, but she seems to think that you are mad at her. She calls you a twitchy witch.” Ginny said, “I was pretty sharp with her twenty years ago, but not anymore. She was your Dad’s first girlfriend, sort of. I had a couple of boyfriends before your father and I started to go together. But all that is way in the past. We are just a couple of middle aged, married witches now.” Albus said, “It would be good to tell Ms. Chang, so she can see Chloe during the Anniversary.” Albus proceeded to tell his mother all about how Ms. Chang met Mr. Koizumi. After she and Albus talked Ginny did remember at least one other very touchy confrontation with Cho, one that she was rather ashamed of later. The next Monday about 11:30 AM a very pregnant Ginny walked up to Cho’s desk. Cho politely said “Hello Mrs. Potter,” as Ginny gingerly sat down, Mitzi helping her. Ginny started in, “This twitchy witch wishes to apologize for making you think I was mad at you or jealous of you for all of the last twenty years. It’s my fault. I am a little twitchy, I guess. I have not been nearly as secure as I should have been, and it’s my fault not yours.” “You don’t have to apologize, Ginny,” said Cho, a little taken back by the start of this conversation. “We’re a couple of old married witches, Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Koizumi,” said Ginny, “and if anything that happened twenty years ago is keeping you from seeing your daughter on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts I want to make sure it’s not me.” “Who have you been talking to?” asked Cho. “Albus, my middle child,” said Ginny. “He has talked to Chloe, and when he gets someone to talk it is amazing what gossip he can get. He got the whole story of how you met your husband and the ongoing simmering conflict between the girls’ Japanese and Chinese grandmothers, and what a marvellous woodworker your husband is. I think Harry and I are going to have to try Chang’s Chinese one of these days.” “I’ve heard a little about Albus Severus Potter,” said Cho. “Is he really as good with magic as she says he is?” “Probably,” said Ginny. “He’s scary some times. Harry’s worried, Al is that good.” “Rose sounds like another Hermione,” said Cho. “Chloe says Scorpius Malfoy is a male Hermione. Is this possible?” Ginny said “I’ve met Scorpius. He flies, and Al is going to try and teach him, have the family teach him, how to be a better Quidditch player this summer. Rose, like Hermione, hates to fly. But otherwise yes, he is sort of a male Hermione.” Cho asked, “Have you met Cleopatra?” a questioning look on her face. “She was at our house over Christmas break, and I took her shopping for clothes,” said Ginny with a smile. Cho grinned and said, “Chloe says she’s big and awkward and not really pretty but sort of sexy and has an amazing huge nose and sense of smell and makes perfume and shampoo for the girls and boys and is sort of a really good magician when she is but sometimes she isn’t.” “It’s not an inaccurate description,” said Ginny. “Come to the Anniversary and meet her! I’ve not hexed anyone in quite a while, and the last time it wasn’t because I was jealous of some witch but because a couple of gits were hassling Albus, and I almost lost my wand over that one.” Ginny was laughing at this point, and Cho had a smile on her face, and had finally sort of relaxed. “Thank you for coming here and talking to me, Ginny,” said Cho. “I guess after twenty years we should not still be worried about …” “If you want to take Harry to the Ravenclaw common room I will not be jealous,” said Ginny with a shy smile. “By this time I know that even if some bitchy witch did try and make a pass at him, Harry is so naive and so faithful that I don’t have a worry. It’s taken me a very long time to get to that point, though, and I am sorry for you and anyone else I may have hurt because of it.” “Harry is a very good man, Ginny,” said Cho. “You are very lucky.” “Thank you, Cho,” said Ginny. “I know I am.” With the aid of Mitzi, Ginny slowly pushed herself up from the chair. Being pregnant when you had a bad sense of balance maybe was not the smartest thing in the world, Ginny though. Getting bigger on top had worked too well, and she was very awkward. Oh, well, she had spells on her body and the wand that could keep her from falling and hurting herself, and of course Mitzi, always, when she was out. Ginny found Harry and had lunch with him before heading back to the New Burrow and another confrontation with Lily about getting her school work done. |
| Reviews 77 |
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