Chapter Text
"How did you manage to smuggle firewhiskey into the castle, Pans?" Hermione asked as she held out her glass.
Pansy fixed her with a look as she poured. "Tell me that's not a real question." Behind her, Daphne giggled into her palm.
Hermione felt her cheeks heat up as she took a tentative sip. The drink burned down her throat and settled warmly in her belly, chasing away any lingering cold from the chilly dorm room.
Ginny held out her glass next. "There's no need to smuggle it in when it's already in the kitchens."
Hermione whipped her head around to stare wide-eyed at her. "But that's the professors' supply!"
Daphne looked at her twin over her half-full glass. "Sister dearest, are you going to go running to McGonagall?"
Hermione shook her head and took another sip.
They were all gathered in their dorm. Funnily enough, it wasn't an issue to get Ginny inside the Slytherin dorms. There was no Fat Lady guarding the door, and none of the students in the common room were brave enough to question her presence in front of her. Ginny had become quite the threat during her absence last year, it would seem.
Pansy was going around filling glasses, Daphne was seated on her bed with a fashion magazine, Luna was braiding Astoria's hair on Hermione's bed, and Ginny and Hermione were sitting on an empty bed together.
Pillows covered the floor in what Daphne assured her was for 'the comfiest sleepover to grace the castle'.
Ginny nudged her leg with her glass. "Are you going to tell me why you and Harry looked like that in the corridor?"
Hermione swallowed another sip, letting the burn rush through her. "Looked like what?"
"Just...raw, I suppose."
Hermione sighed. She forgot how perceptive Ginny could be. It was easy to miss, especially considering how unobservant Ron is. She felt the eyes in the room trained on her, ears ready for whatever gossip might come out. Luna hummed behind Astoria. "He wanted to apologize to me. A lot ended up coming out, but we're okay."
Pansy scoffed as she settled into a pillow on the floor, the bottle of firewhiskey hovering within arm's reach. "Come on, Mione. Surely you can do better than that."
Daphne nodded. "We're all friends here, no need to be stingy with the details." She faltered for a moment. "Unless, of course, you don't feel comfortable talking about it. We'll drop it if you want."
Hermione smiled at her sister gratefully. "It's okay, Daph. He apologized. We talked about what it felt like for me and how I was always the third wheel in the group. I didn't realize how much I had been holding in until I let it out. He was a good sport about it, though. He promised to do better."
Ganny rolled up her sleeves and flexed. "You let me know if he ever goes back on his promise, okay? I'll get him all sorted out."
Astoria laughed and threw a pillow at her. "Are you going to manhandle your boyfriend with all the strength of a chaser?"
Ginny caught the pillow and hugged it. "As a matter of fact, I am! We chasers are stronger than we look."
Astoria was a beater for the Slytherin Quidditch team, as well as the captain. A lot of her and Ginny's banter was based on their positions. It was usually pretty fun to watch them go back and forth.
Pansy piped up from her spot on the floor. "So you and Potter are ok now? I don't have to keep giving him dirty looks?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "I never told you to do that in the first place, crazy."
"You didn't have to. I'm such a good friend, I did it anyway." Hermione didn't have to look at her to see her nose in the air.
"Hermione, how did you and Ron break up, anyway? I didn't want to ask before, but now that you're seeing Draco, it feels okay to ask." Astoria asked hesitantly. A wad of paper hit her in the nose from across the room.
"Real subtle," Daphne chided. She looked at her twin with the same cautious understanding look as before. "Again, Hermione, if you're not comfortable sharing, then you don't have to."
Hermione giggled at Astoria's whine of complaint and winked at her twin. "Thank's Daph, but it's okay." She hesitantly looked over at Ginny. "Are you okay to hear this?"
Ginny rolled her eyes. "I'm his sister, not his mother. I can handle some light Ron bashing. Besides, I'm well aware how much of a git my brother can be."
Luna hummed behind Astoria. "I like Ron. He's a little complicated, but most boys our age are." Her serene voice floated through the room, causing Pansy to spill a little bit of the drink she was pouring. Hermione gave them the gist of the breakup while Pansy cast cleaning spells on the pillow beneath her.
"He essentially told me that he thought our relationship was built on the idea that we were going to die. We spent our entire time at Hogwarts facing death and danger and just horrible situations. He said he thinks we got together out of convenience, that after we broke up, we could be free." She scoffed at that. "I loved him. It was horrible to find out he was only with me because he didn't think he'd survive long enough to be with anyone else."
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. She was over Ron by now, her romantic feelings swaying to another, but her feelings for Draco didn't erase the hurt from being broken up with, especially with someone she shared so much history with.
"That was rather mature of him," Luna said.
Pansy spilled her drink again, curses falling from her lips. "Merlin, will you stop saying ridiculous things while I'm trying to pour? You're making a mess."
Luna smiled at her. "Try not to let your opinion of him blind you to it. He took the time to look inside himself and reevaluate his relationships. Imagine how much worse it would have been if he had kept them both trapped in a loveless relationship. They would have grown to hate one another!"
Hermione considered her words, never having thought of the situation in that way. She could admit that if they continued how they were, with him not really loving her and herself trying to overcompensate for that lack of love, she would have been miserable. Maybe Luna had a point. Another sip of firewhiskey somehow ended up in her mouth.
"Besides," Luna continued. "It ended up being a good thing if it led to Hermione and Draco being together. Their auras are a very nice green color."
Pansy nodded, and a faint tinge of pink was present on her cheeks. "Sage green is one of the best green variants."
Ginny snorted. "Did the sorting hat tell you that?"
Pansy shrugged nonchalantly. "I know color theory."
Astoria cocked her head to the side. "Pansy, is green your favorite color?"
The girl in question had the nerve to look scandalized. "Take me to dinner first before asking me something so personal, you freak." There was no real heat behind the words, but they still earned Pansy a pillow to the head courtesy of one Daphne Greengrass.
"Be nice to my sister, thanks," Daphne said primly from her bed.
"Why? It's not like you don't have a backup sister in Hermione." Another pillow flew at her head, courtesy of Hermione Greengrass. "Stop pelting me with pillows! I'm trying to get sloshed, not fight for my life. Again!"
Hermione chuckled and levitated the half-empty bottle of fire whiskey and filled everyone's glasses again. Daphne had taken to joining Pansy on the pillow-covered floor, clinking their glasses together after she settled. Hermione followed after, feeling the effects of the fire whiskey settling in. Her face was warm, and she had a permanent smile plastered on. "Is this how girls' nights are supposed to be?"
Pansy quirked an eyebrow at her as she swallowed her drink. "Is this your first time? Are we popping your girls' night cherry?"
Hermione laughed and nodded. "I wasn't close to any of the girls in Gryffindor, aside from Ginny. Lavender, Parvati, and I didn't get along, and I spent all my time with the boys. Yes, you're popping my cherry." How Pansy was familiar with the crass Muggle phrase, she wasn't sure, but it was funny nonetheless.
Ginny huffed out a laugh. "We've had sleepovers, but we were never exactly in the mood for firewhiskey and secrets."
Luna's eyes lit up as she finished the plait at the back of Astoria's head. "We should all go around and share a secret!"
Daphne cocked her head to the side. "Why?"
Astoria sighed and slid to the floor. "I think she's under the assumption we'll be best friends by the end of the night if we share secrets with each other."
Hermione considered the group of girls in the room. Ginny, who was her first taste of sisterhood. Daphne, her twin, whom she had met only a few months ago, but loved deeply. Astoria, whom she loved and admired. Luna, whose wisdom Hermione had come to value and rely on. Pansy, whom she had become very close to, and who was always honest with her. If there was anyone she could trust with her secrets, it was these girls.
"I miss my parents," she said. The giggles around the room died down at her admission. "I know I have the Greengrasses now, and I love them, but there's still a part of me that misses my Muggle parents every day. They raised me like their own and always loved and supported me. I haven't seen them since before the war, and I never got to say goodbye or explain myself to them or thank them for making me who I am. I miss them, and then I feel guilty for missing them because I have my biological parents right here, and it feels like a betrayal to them. I miss them, and I'll never be able to tell them, and I'll never be able to thank them."
There was a heavy silence while her words settled around the room. She had been warring with herself a bit. Torn between wanting to fully engage with her biological parents and feeling guilty about embracing them and replacing her Muggle parents. She isn't sure how they would've navigated the situation, and she'll never be able to ask them.
Ginny cleared her throat and spoke next. "During the war, when we were here and you three were off hunting horcruxes, I used sex as a coping mechanism to get me through the days. I had sex with...with a woman."
Hermione felt her jaw drop. Ginny didn't talk much about her year here during the war, nor did any of the other students. There were reports of the Carrows' torturing students, but Hermione wasn't present at their trial, so she never got the specifics.
Luna got up and sat next to Ginny, taking her hand in hers. "Out of all the coping mechanisms you could have developed, sex is pretty harmless. And it was quite pleasurable, if I remember correctly."
Ginny's face turned red, and Pansy choked again. Daphne placed a hand on her back. "Are you okay?"
Pansy waved her off, her face a bright red. "Never mind that! You mean to tell me that you," she pointed at Ginny, "and you," she directed her finger to Luna, "had sex together during the war?"
Hermione watched the interaction with interest. Ginny's color was going back to normal, embarrassment at being exposed being replaced with something almost smug. Luna looked as serene as usual, like the topic of her having sex with her friend was nothing out of the ordinary.
Ginny nodded her head. "I discovered that I am bisexual, which means that I'm attracted to men and women. Luna helped me realize my attraction towards women. We spent many sleepless nights together. Sometimes, we would just lie next to each other and talk, or just share the same space and process our days. Other times, we would explore each other's bodies and learn how to please each other."
Astoria lifted a brow in her direction. "Saint Potter is okay with this?" Hermione noticed Pansy was teetering towards a purple color, even though the choking had already subsided. Her brown eyes darted between Ginny and Luna, lingered on Luna, switched between them, and settled on Luna again.
Ginny shrugged. "Not that he has a choice, but more or less. He didn't quite understand how we could sleep together without having romantic feelings for each other, but I explained that I did love Luna, just platonically. He didn't ask too many questions about the sex; he mostly just wanted to make sure that us getting together wasn't breaking up a relationship between Luna and me."
Pansy cleared her throat and took in a shaky-sounding breath. "Were you? Breaking up a relationship, I mean?"
Luna giggled and moved to sit in the empty space next to Pansy, causing the raven-haired girl to blush all over again. Hermione committed the image to memory to ask about when she was sober. "There was no romantic relationship between us. I love Ginny, but we are friends. I don't want anything more than that. I will always value our time sharing a bed, but we knew it was never supposed to be more than that."
Ginny joined Luna on the floor, completing their circle. Astoria's eyes shone with glee. "My turn! I've been in a relationship for a year and a half. Yes, you know him. No, I will not be telling you who he is. I am happy, and I plan on marrying him after we graduate."
Daphne gasped and turned her head at record speed to gape at her younger sister. "Why is this the first I'm hearing about this?" She didn't look angry at all. In fact, she looked almost proud and maybe a little jealous. Hermione didn't know everything about Astoria, but she did know the girl was pretty introverted and mostly kept to herself. The fact that she was in a relationship and seemed happy was enough to make Hermione smile and tug her sister closer.
"Because the whole point of a secret relationship is to keep it a secret." Ginny smiled and clinked her glass with Astoria's and taking a sip.
Daphne cleared her throat. "Well then, I suppose I'll go next. No secret boyfriends, or secret sex life, or secret guilt over here." She looked pointedly at the girls around her and shook her head before taking a deep breath. "I'm in love with Blaise. I have been for years. Sometimes, I think he might even love me back. His eyes are so, so expressive..." She trailed off. The other girls gave her the space and time to think.
"I've read romance novels my whole life, craved that bone-deep love that you can only hope will be granted to you when the time comes. He looks at me, and I feel just like those girls on the pages. I feel like he sees me, the real me. He looks past the pretty pure-blood heiress, and he stares straight into my heart. Sometimes, it looks like he wants nothing more than to kiss me." Daphne took a deep breath, her eyes fluttering closed.
Hermione sighed. "That's beautiful, Daph."
Daphne sniffed, and her face turned bitter. "No, what you and Draco have is beautiful. Old enemies turned lovers after a hard-fought war comes to a close; that's beautiful. What Ginny and Harry Potter have is beautiful. They grew up together and found love after almost losing everything else; that's beautiful. What Blaise and I have is tragic and, quite frankly, old and annoying." Her green eyes turned hard as she took a deep breath. Astoria shifted closer to her sister, resting a hand on her back for support. "I'm not self-centered enough to believe that every man I want wants me back, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to think that beautiful, annoying man is not in love with me, too. I've seen the way he watches me, the way his face softens, and his eyes are glued to me when I speak. He's as down bad for me as I am for him! The problem is, the tosser won't act on it."
She took a long swig of the fire whiskey in her glass, swishing it in her mouth before gulping it down. "I'm in love with him, but if he won't act on it, if he won't do anything about the pretty girl throwing herself at him, then I will look for love elsewhere."
Hermione felt her eyes widen. She knew why Blaise wasn't acting on his feelings for her twin. In his own way, he thought he was protecting Daphne from his maybe murderous mother. She told Draco she wouldn't tell Daphne this information, but her sister looked shattered and tired all at the same time. Her heart ached for her.
Should she tell Daphne the truth, even though it was not hers to tell? Would that put her in a bad spot with Blaise or Draco?
She opened her mouth to speak when Pansy cut her off. "I'm a lesbian."
Daphne was broken from her fire whiskey and anger-induced stupor as she turned to look at her best friend. "You're a what?"
Pansy shrugged and picked an invisible piece of lint from her top. "A lesbian. It means I like girls, Daphne," she said. Her eyes flashed briefly to Luna before looking back at Daphne.
Daphne snorted. "Yes, thank you, Pansy. I heard you. I've spent years watching you flounce around with boys, though. I'm almost ninety percent sure you have the virginities of at least thirty classmates in your pocket, not that I'm shaming you, of course." She looked briefly panicked, but visibly relaxed when Pansy waved her hand dismissively.
"Yeah, so apparently those boys were called 'beards'. It means they were a cover-up to conceal my actual sexual identity." Pansy eyed her manicured fingers like she was bored, but her face was beet-red red and Hermione would bet that her heart was racing.
Ginny cleared her throat, getting Pansy's attention. "So, were you bisexual when you were with all those guys then?"
Pansy stiffened, then took another swig of her fire whiskey. "Nope."
"Then how-"
"You don't have to explain it to us if you don't have to, Pansy," said Luna dreamily. Her eyes were locked on Pansy's, her face open and serene.
The girls backtracked, realizing they were prying into a very sensitive subject. Daphne spoke first. "Yeah, you can keep it to yourself if you prefer, Pans. Totally not our business." She had the grace to look a little embarrassed at being so nosy.
Pansy stared into Luna's clear blue eyes for a moment before taking a steadying breath. When she spoke, she kept her eyes on Luna. "Growing up, I didn't have a say in my future. My parents always just told me that I would marry a good man from a good family. I had to make sure I looked good enough to be presented to grown men at all times, even when they were almost my father's age. There was no room for anything else. I had to be perfect. It was suffocating."
She swallowed down another gulp of fire whiskey before continuing, never taking her eyes off Luna. "I thought that if I couldn't control my life, at least I could control the one thing my parents couldn't, and that was who I slept with. So when I came here and saw how the boys here reacted to me, to my body, I felt like I was finally doing something I wanted. I almost exclusively went for boys I knew my parents would never approve of. My parents weren't whispering their plans for me in my ears, and if they were, I was otherwise too occupied to listen."
Her cheeks were still flushed, but she looked like she was more in control the more she spoke. Hermione imagined from the look on Daphne's face, this was all brand new to her.
"Even though I was in control of my body, and for the most part, my partners, I got no satisfaction from it. I still felt...empty. I could appreciate when a boy looked fit, but it didn't turn me on. I have never once gotten stupid butterflies or fantasized about a life with any of them. It wasn't until after the war, after my parents fled the country and went radio silent, that I discovered that girls were even an option for me." Her eyes drifted away from Luna, a blush evident on her cheeks. "An exciting, beautiful, terrifying option."
Luna smiled at Pansy prettily. "I'm glad you found the courage to come to terms with your sexuality."
Pansy smirked and downed the rest of her glass. "Me too."
The room fell into a lapse of silence. Their secrets were out in the open. Their feelings were exposed to be judged. Their glasses were empty.
"Tori, are you still free to fly around the pitch tomorrow morning?" Ginny broke the silence.
Astoria scoffed and lay back on the pillows. "Nope. I plan on nursing the rest of my inevitable hangover and eating food that would make Pansy's mother gag.”
Pansy snorted. “Wouldn’t take much.” Daphne gasped and threw a pillow at her best friend. Pansy looked at her exasperatingly. “What now? She’s my mother, I’m allowed to be rude to my own mother. It’s my Merlin-given right!” She levitated the pillow right back at Daphne, who caught it with a grin.
“Of course, but there are young ladies here, Parkinson. No need to be crass.” Daphne raised her nose in the air and crossed her arms, fighting to keep the grin off her face.
Ginny and Astoria scoffed. Soon, there were pillows flying across the room. Laughter could be heard all around the room as a pillow fight erupted between all the girls. Hermione flung pillow after pillow, feeling light and happy.