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“Come onnnn,” Ginny trills. “I want to see.”
“You’re really helping my concentration here.”
“D’you think you’ll be ugly,” she asks in a paper-thin parody of sympathy.
Harry wrinkles his nose. Then he stops, ducking his head. “Wait, do you?”
“Probably,” she teases, and Harry huffs.
He closes his eyes and thinks, feeling for that band of energy he’s been taught to recognize since birth and pulling at it.
He can feel it happening at once, his legs changing shape, his bones and body and brain matter shifting and taking shape into something very, very different. When it’s over he opens his eyes and catches his reflection in the mirror, startling himself and stumbling back a step.
He’s –
“I’m – ”
The tongue in his mouth feels strange – oddly shaped and clumsy. He runs it over his teeth, marveling.
“Not bad,” comes Ginny’s voice, unfamiliar, from behind him. She’s perched on the edge of the old wooden table, long pale legs folded primly one over the other. “Not bat at all.”
The image of her is very blurry, which is an enormous shame and something that needs to be rectified right this second. He stalks closer to her, holding out a hand – a hand, this is so weird – to press his fingers into her bare shoulder. It’s so soft he wants to cry. “I think he – I – might need glasses,” he pouts.
“Coming right up!” Ginny tells him brightly, hopping off the table. Harry wonders privately how many times she’s transformed on her own before to have so much natural control over her body. He watches her rummage through a drawer in a dilapidated old hutch tucked away in the corner of the cottage. “These might do,” she says, waving what he can only assume to be a pair of spectacles at him.
Harry takes them, fumbling a bit, and slips them carefully onto his nose. The world comes into much clearer focus.
“Remind me to thank your dad,” Harry mutters. The others might poke fun at Arthur’s penchant for collecting funny little artefacts from the villages, but they certainly do come in handy on occasion.
Ginny’s form is…
Bright hair hanging to her shoulders, freckles spattered over skin the color of the milky pebbles around the forest ponds. Like him, she’s not wearing a lick of clothing. The new pathways in his brain whir up into a welcome storm. A shiver wracks his body.
Ginny laughs. Harry’s never heard it this way, and he drinks in the sound of it.
“Alright now, take a look at yourself,” she encourages, taking him by the arms and turning him back to the dirty mirror hanging on the wall.
Right. He’d nearly forgotten what they came here for.
The face looking back at him is thin and foreign. Wild black hair, striking eyes. The round spectacles, of course. There’s a jagged line carved into the skin at his forehead.
“You’ve kept it!” Ginny chirps, delighted, tracing the mark that has always stood out against his fur. It’s one of Ginny’s favorite things – in both forms, apparently.
Harry shivers again.
“You must be cold.”
Harry doesn’t think that’s it; although, now that she mentions it his newfound hairlessness is stark and discomforting. He takes the cloak she offers him but doesn’t yet make a move to put it on.
He’s staring at Ginny’s lips, an undiscovered world of possibilities opening up before him. They’re so much closer to the same size, now, the same shape. They would…fit together.
The thought is exhilarating, and he feels his face begin to flush.
“No antlers,” Ginny says, following his thoughts, as she always does. She waves a hand in the empty air over his head in demonstration.
“No fluffy tail,” he points out – a bit forlorn – touching the small of her back.
Ginny giggles. “Disappointed about that, are you?”
“It’s a nice tail,” he says defensively.
At that moment, the front door bursts open. “Oh hell,” George groans. “Ginny, will you ever remember to put clothes on in public? The scandal.” He puts an offended hand over where his heart might be.
“I’m not in public.”
“And who’s this, then?” George squints, and spots the scar on Harry’s forehead. “Oh Harry! Blimey, I thought you’d never deign to attempt a homagus form. Thanks, mate, I owe Ron three mice,” he sighs with a touch of drama. “Looking good, though.”
Belatedly, Harry remembers human customs and holds up the folded cloak in his hands to hastily cover his groin.
“Yeah, yeah,” George says, waving a hand. “Was gonna see if Dad still had that stash of the good cheese here, but I can see you two are busy. “ He wiggles his red eyebrows. “Have fun!”
“That’s not – !” Harry calls after him, but George is already gone, closing the door behind him with a snap that is somehow suggestive in its own right. “Ugh,” he says, eloquent.
Ginny laughs again. She puts a hand on his chest. It feels funny, but very nice. “C’mon, buck-boy,” – the epithet doesn’t translate very well into human language, but it sends a thrill of affection up Harry’s spine all the same – “let’s find you some real clothes.”
“Already?” Harry asks, voice low. He runs his fingers up the smooth, smooth skin of Ginny’s arm. “Not even one test run, huh?”
“Oh fine,” Ginny sighs, sounding put-upon. Melodrama runs in the family. She throws her arms around Harry’s neck and grins. “I suppose we’ve got time before your parents are back from the hollow.”
“Loads,” Harry agrees, and kisses her properly for the very first time.