Dumbledore, Please Explain Your Twisted Logic!

Disclaimer: Belongs to J. K.... Warner Bros... no money being... copyright infringement... don't sue... C'mon, you have it memorized by now.

A/N: As if pervasive language and sexual content weren't enough, this chapter also has some grotesquely violent descriptions in it. Just so you're forewarned...

Chapter Six

The Macho Man is Dead

Dearest Susan,

The news you sent us is worrying indeed. Is Dumbledore really forcing you to perform onstage in a role you don't like? I'll have to do something about that, won't I? Tell you what, darling, I'll go and see Dumbledore myself. In fact, if you know any other friends of yours who are forced to be in that play, I can get their parents, too, and we can go as a big group.

I'm curious, by the way: What part is Harry Potter playing? I assume he's managed to make it in--after all, what idiot wouldn't cast The-Boy-Who-Lived in their play? Oh, what a stud charismatic individual that young man is!

Keep in touch, darling--I always want to hear from you!

Endless love,

Mommy

P.S. Daddy says hello.

**********

Ron was depressed--like really depressed. He wanted to eat comfort foods, like yogurt and strawberries and happy-colored ice cream and maybe some eclairs on the side, and he wanted this for breakfast after a long sleep-in. He wanted to traipse around his dormitory naked with the breeze against his genitals. He wanted to be girlfriend-free, and he wanted to have deep, meaningful conversations with people--conversations that addressed the purpose of life and the nature of humanity. And an O on his Transfiguration essay wouldn't go amiss, either.

True, he was girlfriend-free, but he felt pressured into looking, because macho men have to secure their masculinity with a significant other... of the opposite sex, that is. Right? With that sword of doom hanging over him, he woke up after sleeping in until 5:00. He didn't once expose his genitals to the breeze, but put on some track shorts and a tank top and headed out to the lake for a morning run before the temperature had risen above freezing. He couldn't put it off any later or else he'd be late in getting ready for school. And he couldn't wear anything more than he was, because macho men were impervious to the cold. And he had to do this workout schedule (which also included stomach crunches, push-ups, sit-ups, and some weightlifting) so that his muscles were in top form when he punched Harry for breaking up with Ginny.

When he got inside, he didn't have yogurt or strawberries or happy-colored ice cream or eclairs. Instead, he popped down to the kitchen and special-ordered a slab of pork (cooked rare, because only a wuss would dare add the word "medium"). This was to get some meat on his bones. Then he went back up to the Great Hall, eating as he went. There, he met up with Dean, Neville, and Seamus (Harry was still in bed, probably because his alarm clock had broken again). They discussed farts, specifically which one of them had the loudest, smelliest one. It was nowhere near deep or meaningful. And if there was anything about the purpose of life or the nature of humanity, it certainly addressed the most banal parts imaginable.

Oh, and he got a P on his Transfiguration essay.

That was Thursday. Friday was basically a repeat.

By play practice on Friday afternoon, Ron was feeling quite morose. He blamed it all on his machoism--it was making him do everything he didn't want to do, while effectively keeping his away from what he did want to do. Maybe it'd be more appropriate it he called it masochism. It only had one letter extra, and it was a good deal better at describing the state in which it left poor Ronald.

"You seem depressed." This was Hermione. She was rereading Women in Love since Dumbledore was busy staging the whorehouse scene with Gryffindor, Olivier, and the singing whores.

A queer jolt turned Ron's stomach. "Depressed?" he replied, barely managing to maintain his nonchalance. "Pfffft, no!"

"Pfffft, you're lying," Hermione rebutted calmly.

Ron ground his teeth together. Macho men were never depressed! "What are you trying to imply?" he said defensively.

"Sorry, what?" Hermione said, still calm.

"Why would I be depressed?!" Very defensively.

"I have no idea, Ronald. Why do you think I asked you in the first place?"

"I..." Well, duh, he was depressed! He was a macho man who was having trouble keeping up all that macho--"that's to say..."--how could that not depress him? "You... you didn't ask me; you just said: 'You seem depressed.' "

"Sometimes I think your mouth moves before your brain gets the chance to send the signals," Hermione figured. "Now be quiet--I'm getting to the good part. Birkin and Gerald are about to wrestle..."

"Hmm, wrestling. That's sounds interesting." Ron leaned forward in order to read over her shoulder.

"...Naked."

Ron acted as though Hermione had thrown boiling water in his face, recoiling sharply and racing over to the other side of the room. There may be only a bare few hints that a macho man can take, but this was certainly one of them. He put as much distance between himself and the nude male wrestling as he possibly could. Of course, then he had to stand next to a dozen disgruntled, whore-acting students who looked like they'd rather be in their common rooms.

And yet, though he quashed this thought as quickly as possible, Ron actually wanted to continue reading over Hermione's shoulder... just a little.

"Ah, Master Weasley," Dumbledore said gaily as he spied the red-haired boy lurking behind Susan and Edmund. "I'm so glad you've come over here. I got an urgent message from your mother that I was told to deliver."

Normally an urgent message from his mum would have worried Ron, especially if she saw fit to send it through Dumbledore. That meant she sent it by Patronus, since those went like a dozen times faster than normal owl post, and under these circumstances the news couldn't possibly be good. However, Ron was just too depressed to care all that much--after all, it was just another misery added on to the stack he already faced.

"When did she send it?" He sighed.

"Two days ago," Dumbledore said, hardly sheepish at all. "I sort of forgot to tell you when it came, but that doesn't matter, now that you're here."

"The message, then?" Ron said listlessly. "Let's get it over with."

"It's your Great-aunt Muriel. She was, um, (how did it go again?)... oh yes, she was preparing for Halloween, and she bought some treats. Being the sweet-tooth that she was, she tried one of the treats early, but it turned out to be a good deal more malignant than the average candy, because when your parents dropped by to visit her she was choking on the floor and coughing up liquefied portions of her throat."

Ron cocked his head at Professor Dumbledore and pouted slightly. "Oh," he said emotionlessly. "That's awful."

"Oh, yes, and the St. Mungo's healers also found chunks of her lungs clinging to her sweater," Dumbledore added.

"Ooh," Ron said.

"And when she bit her fingernails, the skin melted to the bone."

"Oh dear."

There was a few seconds of silence. The students behind them didn't quite know what to do, so they stared dumbly at Ron and their headmaster. After this pause, Dumbledore prompted gently, "But the healers are working on her."

Ron shook himself mentally; he was getting too caught up in his own depression and wasn't giving his full attention to the conversation. "She will get better, won't she?" There, he had asked the obligatory question. To be frank, Great-aunt Muriel's death would mean no more slobbery, old-person kisses and no more nagging about his future career. She smelled bad, too. And she wasn't very nice.

No, what really worried him was that Harry and Ginny might break up before he planned, and that he might not be fully built up by then. Worse yet, they might break up without telling him, and he might give the obligatory punching a few days too late!

He suddenly realized that he missed the answer Dumbledore had given to his obligatory question. By the look on the old man's face, however, Ron figured that he had just been told to brace himself for the worst. "Don't worry, if she dies, at least our last words were those of love," he lied solemnly.

"Super-duper," Dumbledore said, grinning. "Now let's get back to the play." He beckoned Loser over to his side and said, "Are you ready to read out your list of swearwords?"

Loser tugged nervously at a lock of his stringy blond hair. "Uh, I dunno."

"Give it a go, then," Dumbledore said soothingly.

Loser complied. In a quivering monotone, he began: "Hell... Damn... Bloody Merlin... Shit... Wanker... Fuck..." Although he paused for neverending lengths of time between words, he didn't stutter once. He had to screw up his whole face and will power, but he managed to squeeze out each and every profanity as it came his way.

The list was endless, so the actors and actresses got bored and started talking to one another. Hermione came over, touching herself in various places after finishing the nude wrestling scene, and Ron tried not to notice this. She was being shockingly indiscreet, however. "If you don't mind, I'm going to pop over to the ladies' room and pull a Portnoy," she told Ron lightly. "I'll be back in a minute."

Ron didn't want to know what she was talking about. He turned around as she sprinted from the room and found himself face-to-face with Goyle. "What're you staring at?" he asked rudely.

"Uh... uh..." Goyle's mouth was half-open with shock. "Did she just say...?"

"I have no idea what she said, stupid idiot," Ron snapped. "And can't you even form a full sentence? Or are you too much of a troll?"

"I'm not... I can form..." Goyle started indignantly. But Ron was already gone. Feeling more than put out by the fact that his dumb-lackey-routine was kicking him in arse again, he sighed and scuffed the floor with his toe. And he wondered... had he heard Hermione correctly? If she said what he thought she said, then he was immensely turned on.

~~~~~

"...Cunnilingus kitten... Snowballing arse-chewer... Sphincter-shit cake... Blister-cunny cock frotter... Clitting bloody blasted dick-lick bugger slam... and... Holy-Merlin-on-a-fucking-bike-wanking-a-blue-haired-child-in-a-nude-suit-with-rubber-studded-nipples-and-bushy-pubes. How did I do?" Loser looked up Dumbledore, his face shining with a thin film of sweat.

Dumbledore, not normally swayed by great emotion, raised both eyebrows and grinned widely. "I am... very proud of you, my boy. You didn't stutter even once; you did worlds better than I expected." Clearly he was deeply impressed. "Don't you agree, Master Weasley?"

Ron, who happened to nearby at the time, started when he heard his name. "Huh?" he said. He was still lost in his previous thoughts, and all he had heard was "Master Weasley."

"Don't you feel that the role of our renowned battle hero is in safe hands?"

"Oh..." Ron said. "Yeah... yeah, all those swearwords. You did better than Ginny when she's on her period."

Dumbledore smiled indulgently and said to Loser, "Time for the whorehouse scene, then. You ready, my dear boy?"

"A-as I'll ever be," Loser managed. So Dumbledore gathered up the Draco and the whores, and they began at Olivier's entrance:

GRYFF:

Why, list'! What banging shakes the double doors?

[OLIVER bursts into brothel at downstage right.]

OLI:

Lay down your swords of flesh, you cunt-fucked whores,

And join my army! Let us on to fight

The evil Xaxis and his fucking fiends.

Man-sluts, bitch-sluts: iron, not flesh, makes might!

So join my force--we'll turn the fucked aright!

WHORE #1:

Who is this man that interrupts our bawd?

WHORE #2:

'Tis Mistah Divvil's gen'ral, oh my Lawd!

MANWHORE #1:

No, 'tis an angel messenger, I swear

He's here to help and save our sorry souls

From Xaxis. So I say, forget these poles

And chains and spells--let wands turn them to air!

[MANWHORE #1 summons a breastplate of armor from the Kinky Corner and straps it over his bare chest.]

OLI:

See here, now here's a man to emulate--

A fuckin' good old soldier he will make,

A man of valor, a man who'll no shit take.

For his renown let vict'ries consummate!

[OLIVIER crosses to upstage left, where a group surrounds WHORE #5, who is giving birth.]

You lazy fucks! You smears, have you not heard:

A time for life, and also time for death?

Well, time for life is pretty fucking gone,

So no more fornication, which then leads

To this: the spectacle of bloody birth.

WHORE #5: [moaning]

The pain, sir, ah the awful pain! Lend aid!

OLI: [yelling]

You stupid whore, just yank it by the head!

[He rips the baby from the womb and bashes it against the floor, where its head splits open.]

Slam, BAM! No fear, it was already dead.

"Stop, stop, stop!" Dumbledore cried out. "My dears, this isn't working. We did the read-through over a week ago; now's the time for some actual acting. Miss Quirke!"

Orla Quirke, the slight Third-Year Ravenclaw playing Whore #5, jumped. "Yes, Headmaster?"

"If you were giving birth and someone stormed into the womb--sorry, room--and ripped your baby from the uterus, then bashed its head on the floor, what would you do?"

"Uh..." Orla thought about it for a long, hard moment.

"Come on, dear girl, it's not an essay question on a test."

"Well, I suppose I'd be mad," she said meekly.

"Mad," Dumbledore repeated. He refrained from sighing and leaned conspiratorially towards the nervous actress. "Mad. Is that all you'd feel? Olivier has just ripped your baby from your very body, and he has bashed its tiny little brains against the stone floor at your feet. You've spent nine months carrying that thing around; you got morning sickness, and there was no toilet so you threw up on your blankets; then you got cravings, but you were too poor to buy caviar and chocolate frogs; you lay in bed the last month, unable to do anything; and all the meantime you've been whoring yourself out for money, having men and even a few women sticking themselves into the most unnatural places imaginable, and the whole while you've been worried they might give the baby a black eye, or at least a miscarriage; then your water broke, let's say while you were in the middle of an argument with the head of the whorehouse because she wants to turn you out because you're pregnant. Now, after fifty-three drug-free, pain-filled hours, you are finally about to pop the thing out. Imagine all the tears and frustration, all the arguments, all the worries--all for nothing."

"Hmm, I suppose," Orla sighed. "But she's a whore. Wouldn't this be like her tenth child, since they didn't have the Contraceptive Charm back then? Wouldn't she be sliding them out like BM's?"

"Miss Orla, my dear," Dumbledore said slowly and patiently, "You are thirteen. Do you think you'd be on your tenth child by now?"

Orla's face was a brilliant red by now. She drew slowly into herself as she shook her head. "I guess not. But she's still a whore; wouldn't she be glad she didn't have an extra mouth to feed?"

"Orla Quirke, the bond between a woman and her child is a special bond. It doesn't matter if that child is going to drive her out of house and home, or if it's going to starve her or even kill her--she's going to love that thing more deeply than she had ever imagined love before. Yes, my dear, she is a whore. But first and foremost she is a human being."

Orla Quirke frowned at her headmaster. "I don't get it," she said, as if whores and human beings didn't quite add up.

"She probably didn't want to be a whore in the first place," Dumbledore told her. "Chances are, she was a destitute girl from an impoverished home, and this whorehouse was the only place that would offer her shelter. Sort of like in Fanny Hill, except without the cheerful satire."

"Fanny what?"

"Never mind," Dumbledore said quickly. "Let's try from another angle: what do you love to do the most, Miss Quirke?"

The Ravenclaw chewed gently on her painted fingernails as she thought over the question. The gawping faces of the fifty other cast-and-crew members weren't helping her at all. "I guess... writing on my novel?"

"You don't guess, Miss Quirke. Either you do or you do not do."

Orla nodded nervously and tried again: "The thing I love most to do is... write on my novel."

"Good," Dumbledore said. "Now imagine that you are at the window of your dorm room--you write in your dorm? good--imagine you are in your dorm room, and you are sitting by the window. It's a beautiful spring day--the trees are conflagrant with color, the birds are especially on tune, and the sky is bluer than Master Abercrombie's eyes--" here, Orla blushed-- "And you have your quill and parchment in hand. The words are flowing particularly well; you have just gotten over a horrendous stretch of writer's block, and the sentences flow so fast you can hardly get them on paper in time. After months of self-doubt, you finally see yourself finishing this novel." Orla closed her eyes and sighed contentedly at the images Dumbledore brought forth.

"And now imagine that Master Clifford here suddenly bursts into your room, yelling ragged holes in his throat. He crosses over to the window, tears the stack of paper from your hands, rips them to shreds, then finds the rest of the novel and sets it on fire; he even takes the outline and feeds it to his owl. Now how would you feel about that?"

Orla, so lost in euphoria the moment before, goggled at Dumbledore in horror. "Why, Headmaster!... that's... that's..." She couldn't even finish her sentence, so traumatized was she. It was all she could to do keep from reeling backward into the laps of the other whore-actors.

"Exactly!" Dumbledore said. "I expect that reaction out of you next time we do this scene. No more lying calmly against the floor as your baby's guts paint your legs crimson." Leaving the poor Third-Year gasping for breath, he turned to Loser and said, "What an improvement! You still aren't giving your lines their full conviction, but at least you have them all memorized."

Loser didn't quite know whether to bask in the compliment or quiver under the constructive criticism. "I--I, yes, I actually did it!" he said, a slight grin quavering tremendously on his pasty face. "Me, Olivier... I c-can almost see it now!" He shot an obvious, side-long glance at Susan, as if hoping to impress to her that his name was connected to a battle hero's for the first time in his life. She wasn't listening, though, so it did him no good.

"Your acting will be what gives the role the greatest presence," Dumbledore said critically, "but your appearance must aid you part of the way. Miss Brown, Miss Patil, how are the costumes going?"

"We're working on them now!" Parvati called from the wings, where she and Lavender suffered diligently over a mountain of fabric and measurements.

"How many have you made so far?" Dumbledore called back.

"Four!" Parvati answered.

"Good, my girls, only another 121 to go--do you think you'll have it done by next week?"

"At two costumes a day," Goyle offered up quietly, "they'll likely only finish another fourteen by the deadline you set--ow!" Draco Malfoy kicked him viciously and hissed at him to shut up.

"Let's forget the costumes for now. Master Weasley, did you read the books on makeup that I asked you to read?"

"Uh..." Ron hadn't been able to resist a few peeks, but for the most part he had stuck to his machoist creed and kept the books tightly closed.

"Do you at least have them with you?" Dumbledore said, correctly interpreting Ron's reply.

"Er... no," Ron said truthfully, hoping that his lack of preparation would let him off the hook.

"I have them, Headmaster!" Hermione interrupted cheerfullly. "I knew Ron would forget--he has such a bad memory--so I took the liberty of bringing them down myself."

Ron glared at his bushy-haired friend, but Dumbledore smiled specially at her. "Five points to Gryffindor," he said. "Ron, take the books and start doing makeup on our battle hero. Make his features especially striking, to match his attitude."

Hermione pulled the two makeup books from her bag and handed them to Ron with a grin. He snatched them away sourly and slouched off to the backstage area with Loser.

They entered the makeup station, which was nestled between the male and female dressing rooms. The wall opposite the door was one long mirror above a counter covered in trays of makeup. The other walls held three-sided mirrors, a few supply cabinets, and a tottering stack of beanbag couches. Ron Summoned himself a couch and heaved his body into its puce fabric. Loser didn't get himself a seat, but instead crossed over to the counter and began looking at himself in the mirror. For at least a minute-and-a-half they rested in silence, neither of them making a move to do anything. Ron had laid down an unspoken refusal to do any makeup, and Loser was too much of a wuss to get him off his stubborn arse.

Unable to bear the silence any longer, Loser broke it with a stutter. "I-I-I-I'm getting buh-buh-better, right?" he asked Ron.

"You're still stuttering," Ron grunted in reply. He thought that perhaps he should spare Loser's feelings and encourage him, but macho men never encouraged people. However callous that seemed, that's how the rules were, and he couldn't break them.

"Wuh-wuh-wuh--" Loser stopped himself and closed his eyes. He took a few deep, calming breaths and started over. "Well... uh, I forgot what I was g-going to say."

"Something about how you're finally able to say the F-word?" Ron said. He couldn't help it: He just had to replace that scared-shitless look that marred Loser's face. Maybe just a wee, disguised compliment would help.

"T-T-T-True," Loser said, managing a smile that didn't pass his lips. "I s-s-said... I said... s-s-s-s-s-said fuck. And arse... a-a-and bugger."

"Yeah, well. It's a start, I guess."

"Buh-buh-but I still can't act!" Loser wailed suddenly. "I muh-make a horrible Olivier, 'cause I'm nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-not brave, and my muh-muh-muh-muh-mum will kill me when she sees th-th-th-the play!"

"Ah, mums are like that," Ron said, remembering just in time to add a bit of machoistic impatience to his voice. "They kill you all the time, and there's nothing you can really do about it. It's mostly just yelling, anyway."

"Buh-but my mum st-st-st-still..." Loser suddenly stopped talking, obviously not wanting to reveal the kinds of punishments his mum still inflicted upon him. He slumped over the counter and laid his entire sleeve down in thirteen different shades of blush. When he saw his mistake, he dissolved quietly into blubbery tears.

"Hey, now," Ron said, rising from his beanbag. "Oi, don't start the waterworks. Just, like, uh, calm down or something..." Oh holy Merlin, how dearly he wanted to do something to help that pathetic little Loser! Finally, it was his chance to change the nature of humanity for the good of wizardkind, which was a hell of a lot better then merely talking about it as he wished for earlier. Ah, it was such a taboo, but it wasn't too high on the scale of unmacho, was it? It wasn't like he was going to let the guy cry on his shoulder or anything?

Loser turned away from the table and buried his face into Ron's shoulder. Alarm bells immediately rang off in the red-head's brain, but all he did was stand there dumbly as this stringy Sixth-Year Hufflepuff wailed into his robes. He gave the kid a few awkward pats on the back and figured that letting someone cry on your shoulder wasn't too much higher on the scale of unmacho. It wasn't like he was going give Loser some deep, helpful advice, right?

"What should I do?" Loser wailed. "Huh-huh-how can I be a buh-buh-better actor? Huh-how can I buh-buh-be a better person?!"

Poor guy. Poor, poor guy. It was worse than being afraid of your own shadow. This guy, this Loser, was afraid of himself! He must every phobia in the book, Ron figured sadly, including a phobia for phobias! There must be something I can do to fix this.

"Uh, well, first of all," Ron started, "if something goes wrong, it's not the end of the world, okay? You got that?"

Loser nodded tremulously.

"Good. If someone calls you Loser, don't feel like you have to believe them. Heck, don't feel like you have to believe anything that anyone says. Just, like, uh, believe in yourself... or something..."

Okay, he was definitely kicking it up on the unmacho scale. A few more points, and he could seriously ruin his reputation!

But I'll make up for it, I swear! Ron cried inwardly. I'll wear my thinnest tank top tomorrow and run at the coldest, most miserable part of the morning! I'll eat my pork raw and talk with Dean and Seamus about boobies and toilets! I'll be an insensitive crud and hurt Hermione's feelings again! I'll forgo anything meaningful or deep, and I'll wallow in shallow manliness all day long, just to make up for all this! I'm not so far gone yet!

Yes, that sounded about right. At least he wasn't doing Loser's makeup. That was like number two on the scale of unmacho, tied with cross-dressing and bottoming for another guy.

Loser gave a gigantic sniff and pulled out a much-worn handkerchief to wipe his face. "Thanks, Weasley," he said. "Now c-can you help me do my makeup?"

"Sure."

It was so wrong, and he just knew it. It was as bad as his first time masturbating. Ron had been thirteen and locked up in the bathroom, and his parents were in the other room, and he just couldn't stop touching himself! He heard every voice throughout the entire house (funny how sensitive the ears get during jerk-off sessions), but since none of them wandered towards the door, he kept up the pumping, and he just knew there was something inherently wrong about it, and he knew that if anyone else saw then he had earned himself a one-way ticket to hell, and oh!, how awful it was to eke out the final result! How short his pleasure for such endless stretches of guilt!

Had he learned nothing? Here he was, doing makeup--doing makeup!!--when he knew he shouldn't, when he knew that all his machoism would come crashing down, just so he could feel like he did one thing that could count as meaningful. He tried to will himself to put down the open manual, he tried to will his fingers away from the foundation makeup and the eye liner, he tried desperately to keep his hands off the rouge and the greasepaint, and at times he nearly succeeded. But once he started he couldn't stop, and when it was time to give Loser his battle scar, Ron positively melted.

When it was all over, Loser was grinning from ear-to-ear. "G-g-gee, I look like a real actor now!" he cried happily. "Th-thanks a bunch, Weasley!" When Ron saw that loser's smile, he knew what it meant--that he, macho man Weasley, had finally done something meaningful, and oh, it filled him with such a fuzzylicious warmth he could hardly stand straight, his legs were wobbling so! That feeling was like the rewarding orgasm at the end of his masturbatory deed.

Just then, Hermione burst into the room with: "Hey, Dumbledore sent me in here to check on you guys." And that was like being caught in the bathroom with his pants around his ankles and spooj still dripping from his shlong. "Oh, you're just about finished!"

And as Hermione took in the scene--Loser grinning happily in front of the mirror and Ron with his makeup-dusted hands in the air--the redhead finally realized the enormity of his actions. He had forfeited his title of macho man. It was one thing to slip up in front of a half-stranger, especially someone as meek as Loser, because such a slip-up could be easily concealed by his anonymity, then consequently forgotten. Yet he hadn't slipped up in front of a half-stranger, but in front of his best friend! The secret was laid bare and flayed bare, prostrate against the floor for Hermione to see in all its gory shame. Now that she knew, there was no way he could ever, ever fix this. Ron's chest filled with a horrifying panic as he had never felt before.

Dumbledore entered right after this. "Master Weasley, another Patronus arrived from your mother. She says that the healers did everything they could, but that when they finally stopped the effects of the spell, your Great-aunt Muriel's entire insides were eaten out."

"Wha--?" It's like he saw Dumbledore's mouth moving, yet he didn't understand the words. He was caught up in a well of endless tragedy; how could anything Dumbledore told him possibly make it better?

"She is, of course, dead. However, she stated in her will that she does not wish for a funeral service. Neither will there be a cremation, as she will be donating her body to St. Mungo's research center. If you want any closure, you can view her body in the Exhibit of Horrific Household Accidents at St. Mungo's Medical Museum. My deepest condolences go out to you, my boy."

Ron sunk wordlessly into the beanbag couch. Dumbledore turned to Loser and said, "Come, Olivier, let us continue practice and leave our bereaved Hufflepuff-slash-makeup-director to his grief." And he swept from the room with Loser trailing a few feet behind.

The door closed, and Ron and Hermione were alone. It was now him and his friend, but at the moment she felt more like his accuser. She hung hesitantly around him, as if waiting for him to explain his actions or at least react violently towards her. Again and again the immensity of his sins crashed against his skull, sending him reeling even deeper into the beanbag until he could only clutch his head in his hands and curl into the fetal position.

And then, Ron did the most unmacho thing of all:

He cried.

He cried and he cried and he cried. Not just little tears, but huge, wracking sobs that tore his lungs and throbbed in his eyeballs. These were tears that he seemed to pull up from his intestines, the kind that made his stomach feel all melty, the kind that made his abs hurt worse than if had he done a hundred crunches. He couldn't control himself any longer--after seventeen years of holding all the unmacho in, he had to let it out some way!

Hermione gaped at her friend, completely shocked and not at all sure how to react. Yes, Ron yelled, and yes, Ron lost his temper, but crying? Never! She could only bend down awkwardly beside the hideous couch and place her arm clumsily around his shoulder. Even then, she fully expected him to shrink away from her touch.

But he didn't. He threw himself into her arms and wailed into her shoulder. He soaked her blouse with his shame and rumpled her robes with his desperate fists. She stroked his red hair gently and whispered, "I'm so sorry, Ronald. I never knew your Great-aunt Muriel, but I'm sure she--"

"Who cares about Great-aunt Muriel?!" Ron interrupted her hysterically.

"What?" Now Hermione was really confused. What the hell could Ron be crying about besides his Great-aunt Muriel?

"I want comfort foods!" he sobbed. "I want strawberry-banana sherbet and a cup of Earl Gray! I don't want to punch Harry for breaking up with Ginny, and I want to let my sister make her own choices in who she picks as a boyfriend without acting angry every single time she thinks about sex! I want to walk around my dormitory naked without having to worry about looking gay! I want medium-rare steak instead of rare steak, and I want a rosemary garnish with a bit of fresh lemon squeezed over it! I don't want to talk about farts and bowel movements and the reasons why our penises don't dangle from our noses! I want to do something meaningful, and I want to talk about the Wizarding World's greatest philanthropists and why their work means so much to humans everywhere! And I don't want to be such a damned procrastinator!!"

"You want...? But Harry hasn't broken up with Ginny, has...?"

"I'M NOT MACHO!!" It was a heart-rending wail that echoed half-a-dozen times against each wall of the makeup station. Then the words settled with a finality that marked the end of Ron's entire charade. For an endless moment the pair sat in silence as the words fully digested themselves into the situation.

Then Hermione let out a whoosh of breath. "So that's all that's been bothering you!" she said.

Ron wiped his sodden face on his sleeves and frowned. "What do you mean by 'that's all'?"

"I mean to say, why did you ever worry about it?" Hermione explained. "We never thought you were macho in the first place--just confused about the kind of man you wanted to be."

He goggled at her most unflatteringly, and for a long time all he could do was mouth wordlessly as he processed her all-too-casual statement. Did this mean that his seventeen-year effort had been meaningless? Had the macho front been entirely unnecessary?! The thought was so ghastly it was nigh unthinkable! "Strawberry-banana sherbert NOW!!" he cried.

And he dragged her off to the Kitchens so he could drown his defeat (or was he buoying his victory?) in ice cream and chocolate. They missed the rest of play practice, but they were too busy having deep, meaningful conversations about the purpose of life and the nature of humanity to care.

A/N: I made up the phrase "pull a Portnoy", but Portnoy is not mine: He is Philip Roth's, from Portnoy's Complaint. Fanny Hill isn't mine either, but John Cleland's. And Gerald and Birkin, part of the Women in Love package, belong to D. H. Lawrence. You haven't seen the last of them in this fic, wink wink.

Thanks to Lisa725 for being a wonderful beta! Next chapter: "Tampon Lady Starts a Rebellion," in which I introduce a new original character that has fast become near and dear to me.