And Everything In Between

Part 3 How to emotionally scar your family

It had been an eventful summer for Harry James Potter. His cousin Dudley Dursley had, and it quite frightened him, seemed to have gained a need to be around him constantly. It was one thing to have him bothering him when he was reading in his room and all, but it was a completely different thing to invade his privacy when he was in the shower. Then again, he couldn't exactly tell Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon about it, risking being accused of using magic on Dudley to cause these strange behaviours and asking Sirius for help seemed a bit too... weird.

Either way, he had been very relieved to finally be picked up by the Weasleys. As it turned out Ginny cared much less for him now as she seemed to have grown out of her idol worshipping stage, he was thankful. Ron was thankful. The only one who didn't seem to think that this was a better turn of events was Mr. Weasley who had thought that it was cute.

Glancing on his, former Dudley's, watch Harry realized that they must be close to the Hogwarts station as his watch had stopped. Either that or the batteries had given up by non-magical causes.

Hermione corrected her bushy hair best she could, Ron kept his eyes glued out the window while Ginny kept chattering on and on about how wonderful it would be to start school again, how so and so was probably going to finally see they were meant for each other, how this and that was really important to remember and so on. Hermione was the only one of them who seemed to care enough to participate with a word here and there, Harry was only listening with one ear mostly to be polite enough to say something if anything was directed to him.

"And I don't know about you," continued Ginny. "But Malfoy is getting more attractive."

Ron blinked, apparently catching the Malfoy part, brain processing what he had just heard coming out of no one less but his own sister's mouth.

"What?" he squeaked, voice failing him. Ron wasn't a big fan of puberty's effect on the upper regions of the body.

Harry glanced at Hermione, and found her frozen in movement staring at Ginny.

"He is, actually," Ginny stated, seemingly very pleased to have the full attention of everyone. "Especially now that he's grown so much and..."

"Malfoy?" said Ron, sounding truly offended, heading towards accusing. "The little prat is the most awful..."

"But he's good looking," Ginny interrupted.

Ron twitched.

"I don't know, Ginny," said Hermione in a serious tone. "I mean he's not ugly, but he's not attractive..."

"He is," she insisted.

"His face is narrow and he's too pale," Hermione tried. "And he's quite skinny too..."

Harry had to agree on that, of course the skinny part fit him too but this was Malfoy they were talking about, it was vital to make Ginny understand what she was saying.

"Well, I think he's good looking anyway," Ginny said, getting irritable.

"It's Malfoy!" Ron more or less yelled. "He is not attractive, he's racist and homophobic and awful and plain ugly!"

"Plenty of people would disagree."

The four pair of eyes turned to see Draco Malfoy and his cronies by the door. Ginny grew very silent at the sight of him, which made Harry secretly wish that Draco would stay as long as possible just to save his poor ears. Whereas Draco was attractive, not as attractive as say Dean Thomas (who was gay, much to Ginny's dismay), he was still a jerk and not of any real interest.

A rather androgyn person walked up and in a voice that didn't help you decide whether or not it was male or female said "We're at the stop, we should go."

"Right," Draco said slightly irritable. "Come." He marched away, followed by Crabbe and Goyle somewhat slower in pace, and the androgyn who Harry tried to determine the sex of by looking for breasts. The only problem was that if there was a pair of breasts there somewhere the robes hid them well.

"Does anyone know if Zabini is a guy or not?" he said, looking at Hermione. She shrugged.

"Does it matter?" hissed Ron. "Malfoy?" he said accusingly at Ginny.