rarry microfic | just a couple of boys on a summer afternoon
“We - mphf - shouldn’t be doing this - ”
Ron releases Harry’s bottom lip, breath short. “Says who?”
“I - ” Harry doesn’t know, really, but he wouldn’t have been able to answer anyway as Ron uses that moment to sink his teeth into the muscles straining at the base of Harry’s neck.
“Ah!”
Ron quickly muffles Harry’s cry with his palm, warm and calloused, and chuckles breathlessly. The sound vibrates pleasantly along Harry’s skin. “Shhh, mate, you want Mum to come check on us?”
Ron’s mouth is back on Harry’s in an instant, licking into him, and Harry whimpers helplessly. His hands are at Ron’s neck, fisted in the back of his t-shirt, drawing him as close as he possibly can. This is…wrong, somehow, surely, Harry thinks, buzzed on adrenaline and high on the sheer heat of Ron surrounding him, pressing him into the bright orange blankets of his bed.
They’re mates, Harry thinks wildly with Ron’s tongue running over his teeth.
It’s the most alive he’s felt possibly in his whole life, actually, it’s the least wrong thing he’s ever done, and he never wants it to stop.
Ron’s fingers slip under the hem of Harry’s shirt, softly stroking the skin of his belly as though he’s something to be cherished, to be worshiped, and Harry feels like he might cry.
He’s kissing his best mate, and he’s losing his goddamn mind.
The silence is so stone cold Harry wishes he would have worn his jumper. A Weasley one, just to make things that much more awkward. He stifles a snort.
Narcissa takes a sip from her tea cup that probably belonged to Salazar or Merlin, or whatever.
Lucius’s gray expression looks nothing short of painfully constipated.
Draco kicks his father under the table.
The glare Lucius gives his son is deadly, but Draco doesn’t flinch. Only raises one fine eyebrow.
“You are” - Lucius clears his throat, choking so hard on the words Harry rather thinks the man might be sick - “quite…welcome - in our home. Er - Potter.”
Draco barks a laugh and slides his chair back. “That was rubbish.” He bends to slap a loud kiss to his father’s cheek as he grabs Harry’s hand and tugs him along. “Good try, though, just keep practicing. You’ll get it eventually. We’re off then, I’ll probably see you in the morning.”
Narcissa hums and takes another sip of tea, opening the evening paper. “Have a nice time, dear.”
Lucius chokes again.
Harry tries his level best not to burst out laughing and squeezes Draco’s hand. As soon as they’re out of the dining room he whispers from the corner of his mouth, “You were right, definitely wearing that jumper next time.”
mature, drarry, post-war, master of death!harry, word count so far: 7.5k
Summary: Harry's greatest task in life is done, and he's got nothing left but time. Time to spend with the people he loves, to carry on with the career he's always wanted, to enjoy the freedom he was sure he would never get to have.
Only thing is - devils both within and without aren't too keen on staying dormant, and sometimes freedom just feels like a noose around the neck.
It turns out dying and getting your soul ripped apart is a bit hard to get over, in more ways than one.
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Chapter 1
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Voldemort was just as creepy in death.
His red eyes were open, slitted and staring up at the ceiling. Harry leant over the white shell of what had been Tom Riddle and stared into his snake-like face. A morbid, intrusive urge overtook him and he reached out to press a fingertip against one of the waxen cheeks. It felt sick – wrong – to be here in this room. Harry half-expected Voldemort to wake up and grab him, fill his blood with that familiar fire and searing pain.
The body stayed where it was.
Sickness rolled through Harry’s belly, but the reluctant sense of fascination kept his knees glued to the floor. This man – or what little man there had been left in him by the end – had been woven into Harry’s whole life. He was gone, now, and all the scattered pieces of his soul with him. Including the one that had lived inside of Harry.
Harry shivered. He pressed harder with the pad of his finger, feeling the bones and teeth underneath. He wanted to score the flesh away, punish this empty husk for what it had housed, but there was no point. Harry fell back onto his haunches and crawled backwards until his back hit the wall. The image of that deformed, thumping thing at the King’s Cross inside his head sprang to mind; he hated himself for the wave of pity that followed.
Harry dropped his head into his hands, scrubbing his scar.
“Dumbledore told me I might find you here,” Lupin explained, stepping into the room. His eyes fixed on Harry. His face betrayed little, though his throat bobbed. The skin around his eyes grew tight. Lupin cleared his throat. “Hello, Harry. Neville,” he added, nodding.
“Hi, Professor!” Neville said, gardening spade forgotten beside him. There was an instant happiness and ease about him that Harry – he found with a pang – didn’t quite share.
“It’s good to see you again,” Lupin said, shaking Neville’s hand.
Harry offered his own belatedly, shock filling his head with white noise.
“You too,” Neville enthused. To his credit, only a hint of regret bled into his expression as he looked between Harry and Lupin. “I’ll, er – be getting on, then. Thanks for helping me, Harry.”
“Sure, Neville,” said Harry, though he wasn’t convinced he had helped that much at all.
There was a heavy moment of silence after Neville had gone.
“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Lupin told Harry. “I was under the impression Dumbledore had told you I was coming.”
Right. The memory barely brushed the surface of Harry’s mind.
“I forgot,” said Harry stupidly.
“That’s alright,” Lupin assured him. He paused. “What do you say we sit?”
animal magnetism | harry/ginny reverse animagus au
written for shitfest 2025 (no really) in which we had to finish a prompt in less than six hours! mine was: "everyone is an animal with a human animagus form"
“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.
Harry grimaced. His mouth watered unpleasantly at the prospect of forcing more potions into his stomach.
“You’ll have to get used to it, I’m afraid. At least for the next several weeks,” said Pomfrey. “Potter,” she urged again when he didn’t move.
Knowing that refusing would end even more disagreeably for him, Harry screwed his eyes shut, locked down his nausea, and tossed the fizzy green potion to the back of his throat.
“Thank you,” encouraged the matron, and promptly sneezed three times in a row. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said as she dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief. “This usually only happens around cats.”
Harry sat at the table, tracking Lupin’s progress as he moved around the tiny kitchen making breakfast.
“You really don’t have to do this,” Harry said for the third time. He tugged at the quilt around his shoulders, crossing his arms underneath until he was wrapped in a tight cocoon. His nose wrinkled at the smell of frying bacon.
“I know I don’t,” said Lupin patiently, rummaging through the cupboards until he found a stash of tea. “Indulge me?”
He put the kettle on and glanced over his shoulder at Harry with a small smile. He looked nearly as exhausted as Harry felt.
Harry stifled a yawn in his blanket-covered elbow and laid his head down on the smooth surface of the table, too tired to hold it up and too tired to care if Lupin might think him rude for it. He closed his eyes and listened to the water running in the sink, the clink of dishes…
After a while in which his head hummed with the ebb and flow of the soft noises, he sensed Lupin moving closer and opened his eyes just as he set a mug of tea by Harry’s head with a soft clunk.
“Chamomile,” said Lupin. “I added some cinnamon and ginger, too.”
