It's A Girl!

Author's Note: Just a bit of ... something that wanted to be written. Short, and not a drop of porn in it.

"Harry? What do you see when you look at me?"

The question jarred Harry out of his reverie. He'd been contemplating the way that things might turn out since the conversation that Ron and Hermione had undertaken at the beginning of the previous week. For once, they had managed to sit down and discuss, with the arguments never getting terribly loud. They had come to the realisation that their passion for each other had burned quite hot for each other, but like most fires of that sort, burned out quickly, leaving nothing behind. This had led him to question his own brightly burning passion for Ginny, and he realised that she was ... she was beautiful, and athletic, and had one of the nicest arses he'd ever been lucky enough to see in tight clothes, but there was no lasting passion there.

He looked up at Hermione finally. "What was that?"

"I asked what you see when you look at me," she said, her hands around her middle, hugging herself. She looked troubled.

"I see one of the two best friends that I will ever have in my life. I see someone that I know I can trust."

She scowled and opened her arms. "No, I mean physically, Harry. What do you see?"

He looked in her eyes for a long moment before he smiled slightly. "You want the guy who trips over his tongue and is only slightly behind Ron in saying the wrong thing to actually look at your body? I'm a guy, remember. I'm going to look and decide whether or not you'd do well in Playboy kind of thing, you know. That's what you'll get when you ask a guy to look at you like it sounds you want me to."

"I know that," she said sharply, and then frowned again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I just -"

Harry had a flash of insight at that moment. "You want to be assured that you're pretty, don't you?"

"I want to be told that," she said finally, "but I'd rather know the truth. If you think I'm pretty, then tell me, but if you think that I'd be best with a paper bag over my head, then tell me that."

"Well, you've no fear I'll tell you that ," Harry replied with a small laugh. "You'll actually be happiest if I'm dead honest with you, right?" She nodded. "Then can I ask you to do a slow spin for me? You want me to tell you what's right and what's wrong, so I will." Before she could move, he locked eyes on her. "You are my friend, Hermione, and you've told me you want the truth. I don't want to hurt you, you know that."

"That's why I'll trust you over others. My parents would tell me all the nice things, and gloss over the bad. I know that if you tell me something bad, you don't mean it to hurt."

"I still feel bad that I might hurt you anyway," he said.

She smiled and turned around and for the first time, Harry allowed himself to look at Hermione as a woman, and not his best friend who was classified as a not-boy. She was in a tank top that fit nicely — it wasn't so loose as to show off her brassiere when she leaned forward, nor was it so tight that it had no choice but to follow her every curve. She was also in shorts — not too short and not too long — and her legs were nicely tanned.

Her legs — he'd never noticed that they were rather pleasantly muscled. Perhaps it was all those books she carried with her as she walked up and down the stairs of Hogwarts Castle, but they had very nice tone to them.

He followed them up to their ending place, and his eyes stopped for a long moment on the bum that was displayed before him. It was perhaps wider than most of the other girls that he knew at Hogwarts carried, but the form-fitting (but not overly tight) shorts showed that none of it appeared to be flab. He found himself wishing she were in a swimsuit, just to get a better look at it. Wait a second! This is your friend! What are you doing thinking you'd like to see her almost naked?

What almost? he answered himself nervously. "You can turn back around," he said out loud, not noticing that his voice was quavering slightly.

She was now facing him again, and he had to force his eyes to rise above the jointure where her legs met. For the first time in his life, he found himself wondering if she was brunette and bushy everywhere . He swallowed nervously as his eyes travelled upward.

Her stomach was like her legs and bum. He couldn't see the skin, and he wasn't about to ask her to remove her shirt just so that he could see, but her stomach seemed fairly taut. Perhaps a little fat was there, but not enough to give her even the slightest appearance of being overweight.

She surprised him by grabbing the bottom of the shirt and pulling it over her head. "You looked like you wanted to ask, so I did. I'm wearing a sports bra, so it's not like I'm being overly titillating." He heard her whisper, "It's not like I could be titillating."

He looked at the exposed skin and began to feel uncomfortable. The blood in his body seemed to be heading for his cheeks and ... elsewhere. He was glad that he was sitting down. She did not have the six-pack that someone who worked out regularly did, but she was certainly not going to be called fat any time soon. The skin looked taut, and he bit his lower lip as he looked at her and forced his eyes upward.

It was a grey sports bra, and it contained breasts that appeared to be smaller than the average woman's were. He wasn't sure if that was a side effect of the device itself or if her breasts were actually small. Either way, they were certainly there, and they were also ... well, she was proving that she was in fact equipped properly if a baby were in need of nourishment.

He finally got his eyes to her face and was surprised to see her blushing, which he thought made her look rather pretty. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you, Hermione," he said.

"It's just that you stared for so long at my breasts. I didn't think that they were all that attractive."

His own blush intensified. "Um, I ... well ..." He stopped and took a deep breath. "How do you want me to pronounce my verdict?"

"Honestly," she said.

"I meant something like 'scientifically' — or at least as scientifically as I can manage — or do you want my opinions and general thoughts?"

She smiled. "Both, please," she replied as she slipped her tank top back on.

"Okay. Since I was looking at you from the back, I'll start there. Compared to other girls that I've seen, your hips are wider." As her face fell slightly, he added, "However, this doesn't mean that you're fat. In fact, what I could see through your shorts looked fairly muscular, which is probably due to your carrying that heavy book bag through Hogwarts grounds. Your legs and ... uh, bum seem quite muscular."

"Why are you blushing so hard, Harry?" she asked him, curiosity obvious in her voice.

"Because for the first time in my life, after finally paying attention to your legs, there's the standard boy part of me ... um ... never mind," he finished, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"You can say it Harry," she said. With a little laugh in her voice, she added, "Especially if it's complimentary."

He murmured his response before looking up and saying, "You'll probably hate me for this, but ..." He paused and steeled himself before saying, "For the first time, I found myself wondering what it would be like to be between them."

Her eyes shot wide. "You ... from looking at my fat bum?" she asked incredulously.

"It's not fat!" he barked back, startling her.

"You said that it's wider than most girls," she argued weakly.

"I've had a small group to look at, really. Hogwarts girls. We've Ginny and Cho and Parvati, Lavender, that Vane psycho, MacDonald, Padma, even Greengrass. I wasn't really allowed amongst 'normal folk' at the Dursleys. Most of those girls have slim figures. But you've got what I've heard called 'child-bearing hips'." He blushed again as a stray thought went through his head.

"You blush like you want to be the father," she said with a self-deprecating laugh.

"It's not exactly an unpleasant thought," he said somewhat weakly.

Her eyebrow rose. "Harry, please don't lie to me. You've never shown any interest in me before."

"You've never asked me to stare at your body before. You were always my best friend, and seemed to be meant to be with Ron, so I never looked at you as a woman." He put his head down to finish. "In complete honesty, Hermione I can tell you that while you may not be someone that everyone else in the world would consider a raving beauty, I certainly would buy any issue of Playboy you were in."

Her answer to him was a rather unladylike snort. Scowling, he pulled his wand. "I swear by my magic and life that what I have said to Hermione Granger in this conversation is true." She gasped in horror at his words, and then gasped in surprise as a silver pulse burst from him. "Evanesco," he said, pointing at a crumpled piece of paper on the floor. It promptly disappeared.

Their eyes met. "You ... you really think that I'm sexy!" she said in wonder.

"I staked my magic and my life on it," he replied. "Easy oath to make when you know it won't hurt you. Look, I don't know if it's love. Probably not, since I doubt that love really involves some of the thoughts that you rather forcefully placed in my skull. But I do know that even before I finally noticed that my best friend is uncomfortably sexy to me, I didn't ever want to lose you from my life. I want you there through everything. You're my friend, and if I thought that telling you that you're going to be in my fantasies would honestly chase you away, I'd never say it." He smiled. "But I know you too well. You'll get used to the fact that I am now occasionally watching you walk, whether coming or going, and we'll move on with our lives."

"Would you contemplate a relationship with me?" she asked quietly.

"Romantic?" he squeaked, drawing a slight giggle from her. "Let me get used to the fact that my best friend now makes me ... uh -"

"To paraphrase one of my favourite films — 'hard enough to pound a six inch railroad spike through a board with your penis'?" She had a wicked gleam in her eyes.

"Yeah, that about describes it," he strangled out. "Please, Hermione. I'm afraid that ... you're my friend, and I don't want to lose that."

"We'll take anything that happens slowly," she said. After a pause, she asked softly, "The other girls always made fun of my small breasts. You really -"

"I was staring at them," he admitted. "Well, more precisely I was staring at your ... uh -"

"Nipples?" she asked. "They are a bit larger than most girls'. They made fun of me for that, too."

"Hermione, I am not asking for it, but I will tell you that by the time I was done staring at you, I was ... I was imagining you naked. Wondering if you're as bushy, uh ... below , as you are on your head. Wondering whether it was the bra or your breasts that made them look that size. And wanting to check for myself."

"Someday you just might find out the answers to those questions," she replied. "For now, let's just ... let's not ruin it. We have Horcruxes to find and destroy. What happens, happens. If it ends up with us as lovers, then so be it. If we only stay friends for life -"

"-then I'll already have a treasure greater than anything the Malfoys could ever dream of," he replied. A moment later, he grimaced. "Was that as nauseatingly poetic as I think it was?"

She laughed softly and sniffed. "Yes. I wanted to laugh at it, but it was a touching sentiment, Harry. Now let's go collect Ron and get on our way." She crooked her arm and he took it, and they walked off to gather the third member of their trio.