Archive of Our Own

The needle bites into Justin's thigh. Once the initial sting fades, a sense of calm settles throughout his body as he depresses the syringe. He injects himself slowly, steadily, pushing past the whitish liquid's slight, viscous resistance. His eyes fall closed; he breathes in, then blows softly out. This moment is a meditation — a silent, sacred gratitude for the substance that has brought him such peace.

After the plaster is on and the syringe and needle safely disposed of, he hears a tapping on the bathroom window.

The branch of a tree? No, too rhythmic and insistent, and the air outside is still.

Even though he knows, he somehow doesn't quite believe it until the moment when he draws back the curtain and meets the round, yellow gaze of a long-eared owl.

He's never had an owl in his flat before, and when he lets it in, it looks absurdly out of place in the completely mundane, fluorescent-lit bathroom, crouching uncomfortably on the top of the toilet next to the floral patterned box of Kleenex.

Nonetheless persevering in its duty, the owl raises its taloned foot and offers up the letter.

Dear Justin,

I hope this owl is able to find you. I'm sorry I've been out of touch for so long. I've thought of writing many times, but there were so many things to say, it felt overwhelming and I didn't know how to begin. I'm back in England and I'd love to meet and catch up. I hope you're well.

Love,

Hannah

*

When Justin had got his Hogwarts letter at age eleven, it was the first time he'd ever actually been addressed as Justin outside of his own head.

That was how he knew at once that it was true, that magic was real and it wasn't some sort of strange trick. There wasn't any other way that anyone could have known.

He'd sat on the edge of his bed, the fragrant parchment of the letter clutched in his small, trembling hands. He read:

Hogwarts is a coeducational institution with separate dormitories for boys and girls. Should you attend, the choice will be yours whether or not to share your unique circumstances with the other boys in your assigned dormitory.

His mother knocked at his door again — he hadn't heard her the first time.

"Justine? Whatever is the matter, dear? Are you all right in there, Justine?"

*

Holding Hannah's letter, Justin looks at the owl still perched expectantly on top of his toilet. It's clearly waiting for a reply.

"How am I meant to answer this?" he asks.

The owl blinks slowly, first one eye and then the other.

"We haven't spoken since she left school," Justin says.

The owl twists round to preen its shoulder briefly and then gives itself a shake. Its feathers ruffle, then gradually fall back into place.

"At least I won't have to explain myself too much." Justin sits down on the edge of his bathtub with a sigh. He addresses the owl confidentially. "She already knows about me."

*

In fact, Hannah was the first person he ever told.

It wasn't until third year. He'd told everyone at Hogwarts that he was down for Eton, though it was actually Wycombe. That's not something he would have said now; he doesn't like to invent things wholesale just to throw people off the scent. But back then, he did. He'd hoped it would make him feel safer, but it only made him more afraid. An inconvenient followup question might easily have ruined him.

And besides that, there were already too many hidden things. Coming home in the summer had been dreadful. There wasn't anyone with whom he could be his whole self. He had to hide his magic from everyone but his parents, and even from them he had to hide the fact that everyone at Hogwarts knew him as a boy called Justin and not a girl called Justine. (It surprised him how much he cringed inside when his mother, trying so hard to be supportive, referred to him as a witch and not a wizard.)

He'd already been thinking about telling Hannah. Wanting to. But he hadn't planned to do it on the day that it ended up happening. Hannah had run out of Charms class in tears because some boys had laughed at the blood showing through her clothes when she'd stood up from her desk. Justin went looking and found her in the empty Hufflepuff common room, sobbing into her knees. She told Justin that he couldn't possibly understand how embarrassing it was.

So it was that they sat on the floor side by side whilst everyone else was still in class, and he quietly told her about his body, and how afraid he was of anybody seeing his monthly blood.

She sat very still as she listened to him, eyes wide and cheeks tear-stained. And when he was done, she threw her arms round him and cried again into his shoulder. Hannah always cried a lot, whenever struck by any large feeling, so he didn't take it personally.

*

Justin wanders through his flat looking for something to write with, and Hannah's owl follows behind him on foot, waddling along carefully as though trying to avoid getting its claws stuck in the carpet.

"Now don't mess on that," he admonishes the bird. "It's brand new. Ah..." At last he fishes a biro out of a drawer. He decides to write on the back of Hannah's letter, unsure if a sheet of ordinary A4 would survive being buffeted by the wind during the owl's flight. The pen writes awkwardly on the hard surface of the parchment, feeling neither normal nor magical.

Dear Hannah,

I'm so very glad you wrote. I would love to catch up. Do you use the telephone? That may be simpler than writing back and forth.

Poking his tongue into his cheek, he debates with himself for a minute what closing would be best. She'd closed with Love, but he thinks that comes over softer when a girl writes it. He doesn't want to be presumptuous. Sincerely would be far too formal, of course. At last he writes only his name and his mobile number.

His fingers fumble as he fastens the parchment back onto the owl's leg, feeling the bird's haughty, sceptical gaze upon him. It's been so long since he's done this. He opens the window into the cool, star-speckled night, and in a moment the owl is gone, leaving not even a feather behind.

*

Sleep doesn't come easily. Justin's mind keeps sticking on memories from school that he hasn't thought about in ages. Some that he's tried to bury, like his wand that now lies shrouded in an old white vest at the bottom of one of his dresser drawers.

In fourth year, when he told Ernie about himself, Hannah was with him, squeezing his hand almost too tightly. Ernie's mental gears had seemed to spin for a long time as he absorbed this information, so far outside the bounds of the young wizard's imagination.

"Well," Ernie'd said at last (and Justin never would forget it), "I reckon it's all right if Dumbledore says so."

Then he asked with real concern if Justin had been cursed, and afterward he slapped Justin on the back a bit too heartily and called him "mate" a lot for the next few days.

It could have been a lot worse, but they never spoke of it again. Sometimes Justin wondered if Ernie even remembered the conversation, or if he thought pretending it had never happened was better somehow.

Justin never bothered telling anyone else at Hogwarts after that. The truth was a world where only he and Hannah lived.

*

The ringtone of his mobile wakes him at 7:30 the next morning.

"Hullo?" he mumbles.

Static and a hesitant pause. "Is Justin available, please?"

"Speaking."

"Oh! Of course, I didn't recognise— I'm sorry to call so early," says Hannah's voice, distant and muffled over the rubbish connection, but clearly recognisable. "I've got to go to work soon and I didn't want to wait until after."

"Well, it's only been six years," he says, the haze of sleep taking the edge off what might otherwise have been a terribly anxious moment. "Those last eight hours are where it really starts to get dodgy."

She laughs — and oh how he's missed the notes of easy delight in that laugh. Then she says something that gets eaten by the crackly phone line, and he says, "Pardon?"

"I've missed you," she repeats emphatically, unafraid to tell him again.

*

By sixth year, the other boys were all taller than Justin and starting to have to shave, and their voices were mostly bass and baritone.

"You don't stand out so much," Hannah told him, resting her head on his shoulder as they sat by the lake. The breeze was cool against their bare feet as it came off the water. "You're still taller than most of the girls."

"My voice isn't going to change," he said softly. He was embarrassed by the sound of it and had stopped talking so much because he didn't want anyone to hear. People probably thought he'd developed a shy streak — if they thought about him at all. He hardly spoke to anyone but Hannah anymore.

"It has a little. But I really don't mind it." She was looking at him searchingly, and leaning in closer and closer, and then all of a sudden Justin was having his first kiss.

Neither of them quite knew how to do it, and their teeth clicked together awkwardly. Yet, the softness of her lips against his felt good, better than he'd imagined, as did the softness of her body as he placed his hands on her waist.

She pressed against him, and he flinched away at the sensation of pressure on his bound chest. It didn't hurt his body, but it hurt his heart — being close to someone and thinking of how the flat, unnatural hardness would feel to them.

"It's all right," Hannah said, slightly breathless as they parted. "As I've said... I really don't mind it at all."

In Justin's mind, her words coalesced into a strange and uncomfortable shape. "You— you must like girls, I expect," he said, the words tasting bitter on his tongue.

"I..." She was speechless for a moment, as if she'd been asked a question the premise of which she fundamentally disagreed with, but wasn't sure how to say so. "I like you," she said at last.

At the time, it felt like a kick to the stomach — as though whatever it was Hannah normally liked, Justin would always be an exception. In retrospect, maybe he was just so desperately exhausted and raw-hearted that in that moment nothing she could have said would have sounded right.

She hesitated, then cleared her throat and added, "I wonder if you've ever thought of asking Professor McGonagall if there's anything to be done about it. If it bothers you, I mean."

Of course he'd thought of it, but he didn't know how to explain why that thought made his stomach twist, made his head feel like a tangled skein of yarn that could never be worked out. He didn't want to make waves, to be punished somehow for breaking the silence that had prevailed ever since he'd got his acceptance letter. The silence was like glass: Fragile and unseen. He'd already been given so much — how could he demand even more?

Then of course there was the weight of knowing that there were people in the wizarding world who already hated him for other reasons entirely, and that this was hardly the time to do anything to make himself stand out.

Hannah's permanent departure from school after her mother's murder certainly proved that.

*

They've planned to meet at a cafe after she gets off work. He arrives on time and, finding her not there yet, takes a brisk walk round the block in the long shadows of the summer evening. He doesn't want to sit there too long, winding himself up over what it will be like to see her again. She won't be a sixteen-year-old girl anymore, but a twenty-two-year-old woman. Of course, he's the same age, but the number sounds much larger when applied to anyone else.

What will they talk about? Will she be angry at him for what a prat he'd been? For never trying to contact her? For leaving her world behind? But she's the one who wrote him first. She wouldn't meet up with him just to read him the riot act. That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

So, he's not doing very well at not winding himself up as he rounds the corner back to the cafe, and then he sees her. She's just about made it there too, coming from the other direction and peering up at the signs to see if this is the right place. She's a touch curvier than when he saw her last, and is wearing a short-sleeved blue dress with buttons down the front, and white trainers. He feels like he's had the breath knocked out of him.

Quashing the urge to run like mad, Justin instead manages to keep his feet going the right way, and he's almost to her when she looks down from the signs and meets his gaze.

"Justin," she says, breathless, eyes wide. Her hair is a bit shorter than before, but windswept with blonde strands flying every which way as though she's just been barrelling down the M6 on a motorbike. "Sorry, I'm a mess," she says as she tries to fix it with nervous touches of her fingers, tucking locks behind her ears. "My dad dropped me off on his way to a Ministry do."

Justin lifts his eyes to make a quick scan of the sky, half-expecting to glimpse a broomstick disappearing into the distance. "Beats having to pay for the car park."

Her face splits into a broad grin. He can see her eyes searching all over his face, reading him, getting used to him again. He keeps his chin up and lets her do it. He doesn't mind being looked at anymore.

"You look gorgeous," she says. "I hope that's okay to tell you."

He laughs, his heart filling with light. "Just as long as it's all right to tell you that you do too."

Her cheeks pinken, just like they used to do when she was young. "It's been so long," she says. "I don't know where to start."

"Neither do I," he admits. "Let's start with getting a table."

*

Justin hadn't been allowed back to Hogwarts for what would have been his seventh year. If he's honest, he might not have gone back even if the Death Eaters hadn't come. Without Hannah, Ernie and Justin were like a two-legged chair, and Ernie started hanging out with other blokes.

There came a point, too, where Justin couldn't stop waking up in the morning thinking of Hannah's face, pale and still, when she'd got the news about her mum. It began to seem absurd to sit about transfiguring toothpicks and learning to brew Pepper-Up Potions, waiting politely for the day when the same thing would happen to him.

His quiet return to the Muggle world sometimes felt like waking up from an odd dream. A dream where he'd been a wizard, and where no one ever knew him as anything but a boy. He wrapped his wand up carefully and shut it in a drawer in the flat that he rented not far from the shop where he'd got a job. His parents hadn't a clue why he was working — his allowance would have covered his upkeep — but he didn't want to depend on that. They'd find out why soon enough.

What they didn't yet know was that the Muggle world offered transfigurations more potent than any mere magic spell. Here, too, he would receive secret letters that granted access to highly exclusive sorcery: A potion injected deep into his muscle once a week, producing body alchemy that came slower than the flick of a wand, yet somehow faster than he expected. Even the mysterious words testosterone cypionate sounded curiously like an incantation when he recited them to the chemist, polysyllabic and imbued with power far beyond the mundane.

What surprised Justin most was how quickly he forgot things. His voice broke and settled deep in his chest, where it felt like it ought to have been for ages, and the memory of when it had sounded high and reedy in his throat shortly evaporated. The hair of his face thickened and roughened into a patchy five o'clock shadow, and he could no longer remember what it had felt like to touch his cheek and find it silky and smooth.

He'd wondered what it would be like not to have breasts anymore, not to have to sacrifice half his breath just to be able to leave the house in the morning, but when at last he saw himself for the first time after surgery, it was entirely anticlimactic. It was just what his chest ought to have looked like all along, without that unpleasant little interlude between the ages of thirteen and twenty when it didn't. Indeed, those memories of his life before were dreams, only dreams, melting away into nothing as soon as he woke up and found himself in the real world.

Naturally, there were the public triumphs: being called sir for the first time, being taken for a grown-up and not a fourteen-year-old boy. But there were private glories too, as he lay in bed at night exploring between his legs, feeling himself grow week by week beneath his fingertips. Of course he'd been told this would happen, and it sounded a little odd on the face of it, but once it happened, once his clitoris escaped its hood, peeked out and showed itself, it felt so strangely right. This new sensation of the lengthening body of it filling out when he got aroused, like any man's prick but also simply like himself. Like who he'd been, like who he was becoming.

His clit grew until it stuck out like a thumb even when he wasn't horny, and the orgasms he had playing with it left him laughing in breathless joy, exhilarated with pride, his fingers coated in his ecstasy.

*

He doesn't tell Hannah all of that, of course. Not right away, not here at a tiny little table in the corner of a busy cafe.

But he gives her the broad strokes of it, and explains the bits she doesn't understand. Some days he is so tired of explaining it, he feels he could go his whole life without talking about it ever again. But Hannah is a friend, and he wants her to know.

As she listens to his story, her hands folded under her chin, she wears an expression of true hearing, not merely of hunger to have her curiosity satisfied. At some points, a tear falls from her eye. She doesn't sob anymore like when she was young, but she still cries over strong feelings, good or bad, and the fact that this hasn't changed about her makes Justin feel safe.

"Enough about me, though," he says, stirring a lump of sugar into his tea. He wants to ask her about herself, but he isn't sure how to say it without being too blunt. Eventually he settles on: "I've had my share of bumps, but I imagine it's not been easy for you either."

"Well," she says slowly, seeming to gather herself. "After Mum was gone, it was..." She looks down at the table and gives a little wave of her hand, as if dismissing a waiter trying to refill her glass. She swallows. "I can't even say what it was. Me and Dad hid for a long time, until it was all long past over. We were in Norway until about a year ago."

Justin nods gravely, not wanting to speak of the terror of those days — of not being able to tell another soul that he wasn't just dealing with the same struggles of transition as everybody else at the clinic, but also with the very real possibility of actual evil wizards coming to kill him whether he transitioned or not. Talking about that would have been one way to make certain he didn't pass the psych evaluations.

"But things are better now," Hannah goes on with a weak half-smile. "I've been taking classes and doing after-school tutoring. Helping kids with their reading who've got behind. I think I'd like to be a teacher someday, if I can."

"Not at Hogwarts, surely..."

She lets out a tremulous laugh. "Lord, no. I don't think that's in the cards for me. After the war, they sent letters asking if I wanted to come back and finish school, but..." She shakes her head, clasping her hands tightly round her coffee mug and scrunching up her shoulders. "I remember a few things, since I see Dad using spells. But I think I'd mostly be starting all over. You have put me in mind of something else, though." Her blue eyes narrow keenly. "You might call it a bit of an ulterior motive for wanting to get back in touch."

"An ulterior motive?" he echoes. "You mean just the prospect of renewing your acquaintance with my greatness wasn't enough?"

She rolls her eyes, grinning. "Of course. But that aside... I've been working with kids for a while now, plus one of my cousins is starting Hogwarts this year. It's got me thinking about things. Brought up stuff that never sat right with me about school. And you."

He raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. How you were treated." She turns her cup round idly in her fingers. "I've thought of writing to Professor McGonagall about it. She's Headmistress now, you know."

"What do you want to tell her?"

"Just to see if she's thought about ways to make it easier for students like you. Because, the way I see it, they let you in, but they sort of brushed you under the carpet at the same time." She makes a sweeping-aside gesture across the smooth wood of the table.

"It's a fair criticism," he says. A stiff nervousness straightens his spine as he sips his tea.

"Right, and I want to do something about it. You can't have been the only one."

"Probably not," he concedes, "but you know, even in the Muggle world, it's not exactly easy. The fact is, I was probably better off at Hogwarts than I would have been at most Muggle schools, simply because I was allowed to be myself and otherwise left to my own devices." The horror stories he's heard from other blokes at the clinic flicker across his mind, but he decides against describing them.

Hannah's shoulders drop, deflated, but she manages, "Maybe we should strive to be better than we have been, not just better compared to someone else."

He finds that hard to argue with, but doesn't answer.

"Of course you're not obligated," she adds. "Whatever goes on, it's not as though it's down to you to fix it all. But I am going to write to her either way, and I did want to tell you that, and let you know that I'd welcome any help you might want to offer."

"Cheers," he says, which is the most noncommittal response he can muster.

"It's just bothered me for a long time, and I... Well, I didn't want to be afraid of that world anymore. I've spent too long afraid."

He nods. The fear of fear itself is something he profoundly understands.

"But I don't want you to feel that I've come here just to recruit you or something. When I think back on school, despite everything that happened..." She hesitates, then places her hand over his. Their hands are the same size, and her touch feels hot from holding her drink. She bows her head for a moment, her eyelashes casting faint little shadows on her cheeks before she looks up and meets his gaze. "...I could never think of going to Hogwarts as a complete mistake, because if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have met you."

This close to her, he can see that all the tiny flecks of green in her blue irises are just the same as they were back then, and the single brown freckle hiding in her golden eyebrow. It takes his mind soaring back to those days, all the ordinary days that he doesn't always remember because there were so many of them. Practising on broomsticks on sunny afternoons... walking to class side by side... procrastinating on homework long into the night, adding jokes upon jokes until they couldn't breathe for laughing, rolling about on the common room sofa.

And here they are again, as though nothing has changed. The table is so small that he's aware of their knees almost touching beneath it. The tip of her pink tongue ventures out to wet her lips, and her head tilts at a slight, querying angle.

"I'd like it if you'd kiss me," he says. "I promise I won't get funny about it this time."

She breathes out a little laugh, but he thinks she realises that he's both joking and serious, as he often is. She nudges her coffee cup aside and she leans in, and he leans in, and then it's happening.

She kisses like a woman now, not like a little girl who doesn't know what she's doing. Her lips are soft and so is her tongue, gently making contact with his. Slow, tender. It wakes up his entire body: His arms suddenly feel the breeze of the ceiling fan, his ears are caressed by the whisper of the violin busker outside, and his mouth is more delicately sensitive than it's ever been. He can feel his clit stiffening, pressing against his pants.

When they part, she reaches up between them and touches the stubble on his cheek with a bright, marvelling smile. "You're a little rough," she says, slightly out of breath.

He can't help smiling back at her; it feels as natural and necessary as breathing. "Well, I'm out of practise."

"Not what I meant," she laughs with a merry roll of her eyes.

"I know."

"So, this is going to sound silly," she says. "Or maybe just childish. But my dad's not going to be back until tomorrow night. So there's nobody at home, you might say." Never breaking eye contact, she brushes the toe of her shoe along the side of his foot beneath the table, sending sparks up through his body. She jerks her head subtly in the direction of the door. "Do you want to get out of here?"

Justin finds that he very much does.

*

As they make their way to Hannah's house on the tube, they turn into one of those annoying couples that snogs in public, but Justin barely feels the silent pressure of frowning disapproval from the other passengers. At least it's not the kind of pressure that would have borne down on them a couple of years ago, when he'd be out with a girl and everyone thought he was a girl too. He feels a strange triumph over the ignorant fools — they think he's one of them now, but it's just that they can't understand what they can't see.

Those types of people can't see Hannah's house, either, hidden by magic in between two others that fancy themselves neighbours. It's been years since he's been inside a wizarding house, cluttered like a toy shop with strange self-working gadgets. As he follows her through, he catches a glimpse of the long-eared owl roosting in a back room that opens onto the garden. It glances at him with what looks like arch recognition.

"Dad?" Hannah calls out. She pauses for a reply that doesn't come. "Just making sure," she explains. "Not that I think he'd disapprove, I just feel like I might be..." She smiles, biting her lower lip as she looks Justin up and down. "...loud."

"Loud is good," he says, his tongue suddenly feeling thick in his mouth. He toes off his shoes as she leads him by the hand into what must be her bedroom. "Absolutely nothing wrong with loud."

Hannah shuts the door and presses him up against it by his shoulders, kissing him firmly. She's an inch taller than him and he happily melts beneath her, his clit twitching and urging him to hump against her. He takes a slow breath and silently orders it to behave when she steps back and begins to unbutton her dress. It's only a day after his last shot, so he's not yet at the dizzying peak of adolescent urgency that will come tomorrow or soon after, but he still doesn't want his brain to fly completely out the window.

"I like to take charge a little," she says, half apologetic. Her breasts, still covered by her bra, are moving up and down with her breath as she pulls her dress off her shoulders and lets it pool at her feet. "Just tell me if anything's not right."

At this moment, as she leads him to her bed, the notion of anything not being right seems altogether absurd. She loses her bra, now only in her rose-print knickers, and as they kiss again, as his hands explore her body, she feels so familiar, so comfortable in a way he can't explain. When his palm passes over the inward curve of her waist, the outward curve of her hip, it's as though it's the hundredth time he's done it, not the first.

"Do you want to take this off?" she asks, tugging gently at the hem of his shirt and looking curiously into his eyes. It's a real question, not a politely worded demand.

The fact that she hasn't just blithely expected that he would... He finds it makes him want to.

So he takes it off, feeling the familiar little stomach flutter that comes every time he shows his chest. Not nervousness — at least not entirely. Maybe a hint of nerves in the midst of a broad swath of pride. His scars befit a warrior who's endured a long campaign.

After asking permission with a silent glance, and seeing his nod of affirmation, she runs her fingertip along the narrow pink indentations that curve round his rib cage in mirrored crescents at the bottom of his chest. It doesn't hurt, but the sensation is still strange and zingy there, his displaced nerves confused about where they live on his body. When she reaches the end of each scar, her touch feels like it's up higher, closer to his sternum.

"Muggles did this?" she marvels. "I guess they couldn't help but leave marks."

"I don't mind them," he says. "They tell a story." (He hasn't made that up; it's something he's heard from others many times.)

She nods. "With a happy ending, I think." Her fingers venture up closer to his nipple.

"I haven't got any feeling in those," he admits. "They're just for looks."

"Does that bother you?"

"Not really. There are plenty of other places to feel."

A grin spreads across her face, and she throws her arms round him, pushing him back onto the bed and giving him a squeeze. "Oh, Justin, it's wonderful," she says, her voice muffled by his shoulder and thick with emotion. "I'm so happy for you, I just can't say how much."

He smiles into her clean-smelling hair, embracing her. Her body fits so naturally against his, easy curves soft against lean muscle. He's waited a long time to hold her like this, in a body that feels like his own. The wet touch of teardrops trickles against his collarbone as she draws herself up and presses her smile against his.

They kiss and kiss, and soon she's rubbing rhythmically against him, the fabric of her knickers against the denim of his jeans. "Ohh, my God," she says in a strained moan, low in her throat as though exasperated by the strength her own desire. "I'm sorry, you're just—" She runs her hands firmly over the shape of his arms' musculature, buries her face in his chest. "You smell so good." (He's sometimes thought his body has smelled different since he started on testosterone, but he's never considered that he might smell better.)

"Touch me," she breathes, taking his hand and guiding it down between her legs.

Nudging the soaked gusset of her knickers aside, he reaches her sex. At first it feels surprising and alien to his fingers; he's so used to touching himself that he expects to find a big jutting clit just like his own, and without it, it feels like she's got nothing there. Of course that isn't true, though, and as he finds the sensitive places hidden in her slippery folds, she shoves into his touch with a desperate groan.

It happens quickly — he's still fumbling awkwardly with wet, crumpled fabric that won't get out of the way, but there's no time to fix it, she's already coming, grabbing his wrist and pressing his hand hard into her, trembling through a long, loud, uncontrolled cry.

When she can speak again, she says, "Sorry," sheepishly through ragged breaths. "I guess I was just— ah!—" (He bumps against a tender spot as he disentangles his fingers from her knickers.) "—just a bit too excited."

"It's really all right," he says, feeling a funny warm glow of proud satisfaction as he draws her close and kisses her.

Now that she's not so frantic, they take a long time kissing. Her lips pass over the irregular stubble of his jaw, the ticklish places of his neck. His toes curl at that, and his clit is aching in his pants, crying out to rub against her. He doesn't mind waiting, though. It feels good, this reassurance that she still wants him even after taking the edge off. Every part of him feels alive to her touch — her palm slides against his and their fingers intertwine, and even that sends a deep shiver through his body, coming out as a needy groan.

With a lopsided grin, she strokes down his belly, through the new dusting of fur growing there, and hooks one finger into the waistband of his jeans. "Do you want to take these off too?"

Getting completely naked in front of someone for the first time is always an act of faith, stepping off a cliff with only the promise that they won't let him fall. A scarred chest still looks like a chest. What's in his trousers is something most people haven't seen before.

"Now, don't scream," he cautions her as he slides his jeans and his pants off his hips together, both entirely kidding and entirely not.

Nobody's ever actually screamed, of course. But there have been evenings that were cut uncomfortably short when a date's vision of their own open-mindedness did not survive contact with Justin's reality.

There are a lot of things Hannah might say when she sees his clit, but what she actually says, in a tone of delighted awe, defies his expectations:

"It's so big."

He nearly chokes laughing. "That depends on your basis for comparison, I expect."

"I'm not comparing to anything," she says defensively, and he thinks somehow that might be true. Then she says another thing he doesn't expect: "What do you call it?"

"My clit," he says, surprised into blunt honesty, though he's never actually called it anything out loud before. None of the words he's heard other blokes suggest ever sounded right to him, so he's gone through his past liaisons with his private parts nameless, like playing some strange game where you're allowed to say any word but one.

Hannah nods and asks, "What do you call all the rest?"

That stops him. He doesn't know the answer.

They start throwing out possibilities, playful and increasingly ridiculous: Vagina — vulva — pussy — cunt — twat — hole — core — mound — They end up laughing like loons, rolling about on the bed because there are so many words and all of them sound so stupid. And none of them are really made for Justin's body.

But that also means he gets to choose his own.

"What do you call yours?" he asks her.

She blushes. "I like to say 'pussy'. It sounds like something nice, not... hard or harsh, like."

Watching her lips form the word pussy, starting with a sweet closed-mouth kiss and ending in a whisper, Justin finds he can't deny that it's nice.

"Mind if I borrow it?" he asks.

"What, my pussy?"

He bursts out in helpless laughter again, and so does she. It's as though they're back at school again, staying up too long and falling off the edge of late-night hysteria.

"No, the word!" he chuckles.

"I don't think you need to ask me," she says. "Words are for anyone to use."

He's not sure that's always true, but maybe right now it is. For the first time ever, he asks, "Do you want to touch my pussy?"

Her breath catches. "God, please? Can I? Show me how."

She moulds herself comfortably against his side, and he guides her hand in between his legs, grateful now that she's letting him take the lead. This isn't the time for wild overconfidence.

"You're so wet," she breathes when she touches the lips of his— his pussy. The new name still sits fresh and bright in Justin's mind.

"I've been wet since the cafe," he admits, nudging her fingers to press more firmly, to stroke up and down. He gasps at the feeling, his half-softened clit expanding again in the little pocket of skin that has to gently stretch to accommodate its girth. His body may not have expected his clit to get so big, but it's never seemed to mind making room for it.

Hannah draws her fingers a little too high, too soon, and brushes against his clit's pink head — he hisses, jerks away.

"Oh— it's too sensitive?"

"Yeah. Here." He takes her hand again and slides her fingers into the groove between his inner and outer labia. He shows her how to press in deep and rub firmly, pushing and pulling his clit back and forth as it stiffens.

"Is that a bit of a tease?" she asks, half purring naughty-talk and half really asking. "Rubbing off to the side here? I'm making it wiggle."

"Ohh— Hannah—" Words fail him as she finds his spot, the place he puts his own fingers when he touches himself. She doesn't rub as hard as he does, and it's driving him mad, making him arch up into her touch, moving his hips to direct the pressure of her fingers where he needs it most.

Her face is practically glowing with pride and exultation. "God, it's— it's getting so big now. I thought it was big before." She giggles in wondrous delight.

And she's right. His clit is standing out firmly erect now; the part of it that sticks out is a full inch long and half as thick. Her fingers feel like magic as she works the base of it, making it bob up and down. He grasps at her sheets but finds they're too tight and too smooth to fist into, leaving him free-floating in the cloud of pleasure, with only Hannah's teasing fingers to anchor him to the world.

He's just starting to feel the first pulses that threaten an orgasm, deep down in the part of his shaft that's hidden inside, beneath the skin between his pussy lips. But then Hannah's touch slides out and away, leaving him arching upward with need. Her fingers card through his curly hair above.

"I really want to... erm..." Her eyes are bright with joy and desire as she searches for the words, like composing a story even as she's telling it. "I want to rub ourselves together, if it would be comfortable. Can I get on top of you?"

He nods quickly, speechless. His clit is desperate to be rubbed now, way past those first moments of shy hypersensitivity.

She finally gets rid of her knickers, and he holds her by the waist as she gets her leg over him, settling down astride. Her hands fumble in between them for a moment as she tries to fit their bodies together down where she can't see. At last they come together like puzzle pieces, his clit in between her labia.

The sensation is almost electric as he feels himself slide through her slick, open pussy lips, and it sends wild jumpy feelings through his arms and legs that he never wants to end. He's not big enough to get inside her, but that doesn't matter — that's not what this is — it's just him in the place where he fits, where she fits around him.

"Oh my God," she groans, her head falling back, showing her pale throat. "I can feel you. Christ, it's just—" And she can't seem to say quite what it is as she rides him, trembling as she moves her hips back and forth. For a moment she finds contact with her own little clitoris, brushing them together. "Fuck."

"Please, Hannah," he gasps, needing more, needing her to take him over the edge. "Harder, I can't—"

She plants her hands down on the mattress on either side of him, her hair hanging down and brushing against his chest. Flexing her back, she thrusts into him and grinds her hips hard. And God this is what Justin needs, the firm pressure squeezing his clit in between their bodies. It slips a little at a time through her pussy, her friction pitted against her wetness, and each time it does he feels a zing that's almost too intense, scrambling his thoughts.

He grasps at her sweat-slick thighs and begs deliriously, "Fuck me," though he's never said that before in his life. "Please, fuck me, please—"

And it feels right to call it that, feels right to beg her for it. And as she humps and fucks him so gloriously hard, it feels right for his clit to come like mad, pulsing in a frantic dance right in between her pussy lips. She gives him the strong pressure he needs, brings him through it, as her soothing, awestruck voice whispers, "Yes, that's right, that's good... so good..."

When she lifts herself off of him, she's careful, but the slight stickiness pulls uncomfortably at his now-softening clit, making him jump.

She sucks air through her teeth. "Ooh, sorry."

"You're all right," he breathes. "It's just sensitive."

She leans down to kiss his chest, his cheek, his lips. "I know. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it." She's still breathing heavy, a little feral-eyed. "You don't, erm... mind if I have another come, do you?"

He smiles. Silly question. "Not a bit." He walks his fingers to the creases at the tops of her thighs, asking with his eyes if she wants his hands again.

"Tell me if you don't want to, but..." She lets out a shaky laugh, flushing a little on her cheeks and above her breasts. "I can't stop thinking about sitting on your face."

And so in a moment her thighs are round his ears, his tongue buried in her pussy. She fills his senses, the salty-sweet taste of her, and her scent as lush as a hot summer garden. Her bed hasn't got a headboard, and she's kneeling upright, her palms braced against the wall. He licks hard, kisses, sucks, moves with her as she fucks his face, and it's not long until her sharp cries crescendo and a new wave of wetness washes over his lips.

For an instant she is still, frozen in silent anticipation of a steep, steep drop. Then she orgasms with a long, animalistic wail that sounds like it erupts from somewhere deep inside. He holds her legs as they tremble with the effort of not letting her weight fall, and he both hears and feels her fist pounding on the wall behind him as she rolls her hips against his now softly caressing tongue, trailing off into ragged little cries of infinite relief.

"Oh my God." She rolls back onto the bed beside him, her hair damp and sticking to her forehead. "You're incredible."

He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, grinning with pride. "You weren't joking about being loud," he teases. "It's a good job the neighbours can't even see this place, let alone hear what goes on inside."

She laughs in exhaustion, gasping like she's run a marathon. "It's handy sometimes."

They lie together as she catches her breath. He strokes her soft belly until her chest's rise and fall becomes quiet again, finding that touching her that way soothes him as much as it does her.

"I hope I was all right," she says at last, rolling over onto her side towards him. "You can always tell me if I'm mucking it up."

He can't help but chuckle — and finds that the word always settles into his mind with peculiar ease.

"So far, it hasn't come up," he observes. "But if I need to, I will. And you'll do the same, I trust."

"Deal," she murmurs, and leans in to cover his mouth with a kiss.

*

After Hannah falls asleep, Justin lies awake beside her, thinking for a long time.

He slides out of bed as quietly as he can, and she doesn't stir. He walks through the unfamiliar rooms of her house, relying on the light of the full moon through her windows to find the place in the back where her owl roosts.

"Hullo again," he whispers to the bird, who turns its head round and peers at him curiously from its perch. "Don't fly off anywhere. I'm going to have a letter for you. It might take me a bit, though."

He finds where they keep the parchment and ink, and begins to write:

Dear Professor McGonagall,