Gift for certifieddork: Bedtime Stories, Part 1 (Parvati/Lavender)
Title: Bedtime Stories, or How Parvati Patil Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love a Woman
Author: ozma_katiebell
Recipient: certifieddork
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 14,653
Warnings: None
Summary: When Lavender requests a bedtime story, Parvati spins a tale of war, friendship, yearning and love. Lots and lots of love. (Parvati/Lavender, other het and slash pairings mentioned)
Disclaimers: I wish, I wish, I wish it was mine.
Notes: Thanks to S for the speedy beta work and to others who have let me bounce ideas around and generally pick their brains.


Tell me a story, Pars...

I'm trying to work on something here.

You've been working all night, and I'm bored.

Go read a book.

You sound like Hermione.

A low blow, Lav.

Please? Like you used to when we were little. I loved it best when I climbed into your bed and we closed the curtains, our own little world, and you helped put me to sleep. My very own Scheherazade.

Scheherazade was Persian.

Whatever.

What sort of story do you want, then?

A fairy story, of course. Preferably with a Princess.

And a Prince?

Sure. But I want lots of magic, and battles, and good triumphing evil, and beautiful dresses and castles and monsters and unicorns and quests.

Anything else, your highness?

Yes. Love. Lots and lots of love. Make it a love story.

With a happy ending?

Of course.

~*~*~*~

Once, not far from here and not long ago, there were two little girls who grew up on a typical suburban street, somewhere in the middle of a neat row of brick houses with perfectly symmetrical gardens and white painted trim. Parked in front of most of those houses were bright and shiny sedans, used by the fathers to drive to their perfectly boring jobs and by the mothers to drive to the supermarket, the hair salon, and occasionally to the doctor's office for a bit of Xanax to help them through the day. The children had all grown up together and they played games like dress-up and hide and seek and hopscotch. If they were older they rode sleek bicycles to the mall or the cinema, where they would stand around and pretend to hate members of the opposite sex, who seemed rather fascinatingly different from themselves but in reality were younger versions of their own parents. The children were unaware that they were as good as doomed to repeat the lives that their parents led, working hard and spending money and keeping the economy going so that they could keep buying the newest and the latest version of the same old thing. Magic and fairy tales were discarded along with their dolls and toy trains and baby molars, and if anyone told them that Witches and Wizards would be at war in their very own country, near their own quiet neighborhoods, they'd have written the teller off as mad.

But these particular little girls were different, and in any number of ways. First of all, outside the house they grew up, the door was bright orange. The garden was a bit more tropical and unruly than the norm. And instead of white lace curtains or plantation shutters, the windows were hung with bright pink or orange and in one case mustard silk, with spangles on the edge that caught the sunlight and made the neighbors wrinkle their noses in disapproval. Or perhaps it was the constant noise that came from those wide open windows; (hadn't they ever heard of air-conditioning?) foreign, musical voices and obnoxiously happy music played on strange instruments. And at dinner time, when most houses smelled of casseroles or fried fish, the aromas coming from the kitchen window were rich and spicy, which was all very good when one wanted to go out for a bit of curry, but not what the neighbors wanted on their own street, thank you very much. Besides, there was something different about those people, and not just because they were foreign. It was something in the way they looked at you, the way they dressed, the strange noises that sometimes came from their house if you listened closely enough; bangs and whizzes and the occasional whoosh that had nothing to do with anything on the telly, which they didn't actually have, if you can believe that.

So the neighborhood children had very little to do with the children that lived there, which was all right because they had each other and a fierce bond that any child would have had trouble breaking had he or she wanted to try. The two girls were perfectly content to play alone together. Sometimes family came, too. Maataa's sisters and cousins came with noise and hugs and magic, but Pitaa’s family were quite solemn and studious and required that magic never be spoken of, let alone practiced in front of them. Not that it bothered the girls any--they could speak without words. They sometimes finished each others' sentences, and with one look, they were able to decide what to wear, or to plan adventures together, or to silently laugh at cousin Harish, who thought so much of himself and his family's money, but cried like a baby when he fell off his shiny new bicycle, skinned his knee, and was too afraid to let Maataa heal it.

They went to primary school with the other children, and worked hard, learning what they needed to know about history and science and maths. None of their schoolmates or teachers ever really drew close to them, because something about them screamed 'weird.' And who could tell them apart, anyway? Though some said that if you saw one overloaded with books, it would probably be the clever one.

The not-so-smart one heard all of this, of course, and wondered what it would be like to not be seen as part of a set, and the less intelligent part at that.

So when the owls arrived the summer after they turned eleven, she harbored a secret hope that at her next school she would not only fit in, but have a chance to prove herself, to shine, to escape her identity as one of those 'odd paki twins.'

When the time came, she got her wish, but in such a startling and distressing manner that she felt quite adrift that night at the Opening Feast, separated from her sister by not only a long table, but an entirely different house, meaning they’d be sleeping in a different tower, revising in a different room, attending different classes, having entirely different friends...

Be careful what you wish for, she thought, and looked uncertainly at her new housemates, a disproportionately large amount of whom had bright red hair and most of whom seemed to all have known each other for years. Thankfully, the tentative smile on the face of the girl seated next to her was reassuring, and as she laid in bed that night, crying in silence, (or so she thought) that same little girl crawled into bed with her and demanded a story. Grateful for the distraction and envious of her new friend's self-assurance, our heroine complied, and while spinning a tale of a mermaid, a Prince and an Ogre, her new friend held her hand and listened raptly, and somehow our heroine knew everything would be all right.

Years went by, and our heroine-

What shall we call her? You wanted a princess, so Rajkumari. No, Rani, for short--otherwise I will be up all night.

Anyway, our Rani learned and she grew and soon enough everyone knew how to tell her apart from her sister quite well, and not just because of the difference in the colour of their ties. Her sister still was the 'clever one,' but that wasn’t such an issue now, because if anything she was the 'brave one,' and that suited her just perfectly. For there was a war brewing, though nobody knew it at the time. Bits of it were visible at school...at first just the mutterings of bullies and fools who liked to judge people based on things other than their merit. That had always been a sore point with her, so whenever she got the chance, she would speak up and call them on their ignorance, which got her a bit of a reputation as a bitch, but she didn’t mind much.

And still, the friendship between the two girls grew. Rani didn't mind being part of a pair so much, because she adored the differences between herself and her friend as much (or possibly more so) than she did the similarities.

Are we going to give the little girl a name, or not?

Rani, I thought we said.

No, the other girl.

Oh, okay, we can call her 'the bimbo.'

Silly, you can’t be a bimbo at eleven.

Well, you were.

No, I wasn’t!

All right, we’ll make her a princess too.

Good.

Anyway, this is the point in our story where things started to really change because suddenly, hormones started to kick in and our heroines discovered boys, and things were never the same again. Right around this time, a Royal Ball was announced...

Was there Royalty there?

Yes, Prince Charles was there--disguised as Mad-Eye Moody.

I thought it was that mad Crouch person, the one the Dementors got to. Besides, why should it be Charles? William is ever so much fitter.

Well, none of them were there, but it was a Royal Ball because our two Princesses were there, along with an Irish Prince and the Saviour of the Free World. Neither of which was much good as a date, actually.

Hey, he was perfectly fine--just because the other one was a crashing bore...

Yes, well, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?

Do go on.

Anyway, this night was long anticipated by most of the student body, and preparations nearly eclipsed all the other exciting happenings taking place that year. Hours and hours of discussion on escorts and dress robes and hairstyles and jewelry, and our Princesses were a sight to behold in fuchsia and gold and lavender and silver, respectively. You could have cut the excitement--and the pheromones--with a knife. But it became something of a turning point for our girls, because it made one difference between them stick out like a Troll at a House Elf Convention.

For our English Princess came home that night in paroxysms of ecstasy on what an absolute dream it had all been, and how utterly divine it had been to snog the Irish Prince and how beautiful his eyes were and how soft his lips were and how his hands had been truly magical.

Oh, sod off, it wasn’t that bad...

Are you going to let me tell the story, or not?

All right, then, go on.

Whereas our Rani hadn’t had a good night at all. Her escort had been a bit of a disappointment, and her sister was mad at her for a disastrous fix-up. They found more agreeable escorts eventually, but Rani came away from a half hour in what turned out to be the Minister’s carriage feeling...less than thrilled. He wasn’t a bad sort, our Russian Prince, and his eyes had been rather remarkably blue, and his lips surprisingly soft, but his hands on her body made her feel as if her stomach had turned to lead, and his tongue down her throat had made her want to vomit.

But you said...

Yes, well...this ushered in an awkward era for our Princesses, because one of them would go on gushing and giggling and making cow eyes at everyone with a penis, leaving the other one no choice but to go on and join her in it. She kept telling herself that it had to be that one boy--maybe he’d been spectacularly bad at it--or maybe she’d felt so guilty about switching one date for another that she’d sabotaged herself.

At any rate, it was a moot point because for all her halfhearted giggling and batting of eyelashes, her success rate was exactly nil for a very long time. Her friend used to tell her that it was because she was so very pretty that she managed to intimidate all the boys, but she was fairly certain that was a load of rubbish.

It was true, you know--I have it on very good authority that her name was far above her friend’s on the ‘girls I’d most like to get locked in the Astronomy Tower with’ poll--very near the top, and for several years, too.

Yes, but that was along with her sister, wasn’t it? A package deal?

Still...

Whatever. Some time after that, fate ushered in what I like to call the ‘Crimson Period,’ when our English Princess got her very first bona fide boyfriend.

Oh, dear, can we skip this?

I wish we could, but it’s important.

Well, if you must...

She got her very first boyfriend, and nowhere on earth could you find a more enthusiastic girlfriend than our dear English Rose.

Wrong flower altogether.

You know what I mean. She had found her Weasel Prince, and he was the finest man on earth, and for hours on end she waxed rhapsodic about his dreamy eyes, (the colour of a summer sky, no less) his long legs, his large hands, his lush pink lips, his fiery locks, his large hands, his passionate kisses, his wonderfully quirky sense of humor, his large hands...

Oh, shut up. She did not wax rhapsodic about his stupid, clumsy hands.

I said large hands.

Yes, large and clumsy and covered with freckles and nails bitten to the quick. And calluses, from all that...practicing. For Keeping, I mean. Nothing special at all, and certainly not in any way talented.

Now see, one would have assumed that she was just alluding to a big dick.

Why would she do that? She never saw it.

Yeah, right...anyway, this was the focus of her life for a very long time, and our Rani was left feeling adrift again. She loved her friend and wanted her to be happy, but she didn’t find the Weasel Prince all that special, and what is more, she was forced to spend most of her spare time watching them attempt to suck each other’s faces off. Or trying not to watch, if we’re going to be honest here. The trouble was that it was right there, in her face all the time; her friend’s mouth and hands all over him, his noisy, sloppy kisses, the sound of which followed her around constantly even when she wasn’t looking, even into her dreams. She was jealous, of course she was jealous, in fact she felt as though she’d lost her best friend. But more than anything else, watching his hands move over her body gave her an odd squirmy feeling in her gut and filled her with a sense of impending doom. And the worst part about it was that apart from an occasional gently whispered warning to guard her heart, she couldn’t say a bad thing about it. Yes, they were annoying, and yes, she was jealous in ways she really didn’t want to examine too closely, but there was technically nothing wrong with what they were doing, and she wanted her friend to be happy, didn’t she?

Still, when it fell apart--as it was bound to do, barreling down a hill and knocking aside anything in it’s path--she was relieved. What is more, she found herself more needed than ever before, and she rather liked it, being the one to put her arm around her friend in comfort, glaring at anyone who had the audacity to hurt her.

There were more nights where they huddled together in the privacy of one or another’s beds, talking for hours and falling asleep with their fingers or arms or legs entwined, which felt far more wonderful than it ought to have, all things considered.

Their friendship only grew stronger over the next year; because suddenly the war that had festered around the edges of their world seemed to explode overnight, making things like broken hearts and soured relationships seem shamefully trivial.

But teenagers would be teenagers, and amidst the horror of a year when even teachers couldn’t be trusted not to harm their students, there was still a bit of giggling and batting of the eyelashes going on in the ancient halls.

But there was fighting, too, and camaraderie, and difficult choices made. People far too young to have to think of such things had to decide between keeping silent and speaking out, between being harmed or harming others, between courage and apathy. And this was where our Princesses, long dismissed as mindless bits of fluff, showed what they were made of. And they paid for it too, with fear and dread and even a considerable bit of torture endured. It came to a head when our Rani discovered that her sister was in danger, and together she and the English Princess set out to rescue her, saving another of the brainy crowd in the process, and no small amount of damage to the genitals of a monster who had the audacity to call himself a teacher, but should never have been let within a thousand yards of teenage girls.

They had to go into hiding, then, and that was when things started to get really interesting.

For you see, it is never good idea to leave hormonal teenagers alone for any extended period of time, and when you add the fear of imminent torture and death to the mix, things get positively explosive.

Fortunately, our English Rose...

Princess.

Our Princess was far cleverer than most people realised. She’d spent several months studying up on healing charms in order to help victims whenever possible (with the blessing of the Hogwarts Head Healer, of course) and had read the books she’d been lent all the way to the end. So naturally, she passed along certain normally prohibited information around to her fellow refugees, preventing an almost certain population explosion the following year.

Oh, dear, how terribly un-sexy you’ve managed to make it all sound.

Yes, well...ahem. As I was saying, if you put together unsupervised members of the opposite sex-

And the same sex--don’t forget Ernie and Anthony.

Right. If you put them alone together for weeks at a time, you’ll find yourself with a veritable fertility fest. And our girls were not immune to the urges of teenage lust.

Our English Princess was the first, of course--Rani had watched it all unfolding with a sense of dread, but it wasn’t so bad when her sister was there, making her feel not so...left out. But then her sister fell victim, too, to the Irish Prince of all people, making Rani lie alone in her hammock at night, listening to the rustling and the soft grunts and moans around her with increasing despair and annoyance. Some moments, she hated Neville in spite of admiring him greatly. She hated him for taking her friend away from her. But in other moments, she would wonder what it was like, and secretly vowed to take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself. Which it did, not long after, in the form of Theodore Nott, whom we’ll call the Snake Prince.

Very phallic, m’dear.

I thought so too. So, yes, the Snake Prince. He was really quite an eye-opener for the whole group. But Rani had noticed him years before, thinking that there was something really appealing about his smile (when it made its rare appearances) and she rather liked the way his hair fell over his eyes, and he had a dry sense of humor that had her laughing in Potions class in spite of her hatred for anything that came out of his house. And she was impressed, too, that he’d managed to stand up against his friends--though sometimes she suspected that he’d decided to bet on the underdog, correctly foreseeing that they just might win in the end.

Who’s waxing rhapsodic now, I wonder?

Oh, shut it. Anyway, no one else seemed willing to trust him, or maybe it was because everyone else was paired off, but they got to talking. Eventually, they got to snogging, and she had to admit that it was an improvement on the Russian, or maybe it was that she was just so happy to be distracted from the sound of Prince Longbottom and the English Princess testing the limits of the Sticking Charm on their extra wide hammock.

Now who needs to shut it?

It's my story; I can wax rhapsodic if I want to. If she didn’t feel the same stirrings her friend had described, the same euphoria, the same sense of MustHaveNow that everyone else seemed to be feeling, she chalked it up to the fact that she was a more private person than most, and she would have preferred to have all of this unfold without an audience. Not that anyone was paying that much attention, but still, privacy would have been nice.

In spite of the lack of privacy, things progressed to the point that she thought, ‘Oh, what the hell?’ and found that she rather liked the sensation of lips on her breasts and fingers rubbing at her girly bits and lying in someone’s arms, feeling sheltered from the world. As for the rest--well, it hurt like hell, but she’d been expecting that, and once she got used to it, it was not an altogether unpleasant sensation. Certainly nothing worth singing about, but that would come later, right? Right?

Well, it didn’t take all that long for me.

Slag.

Bitch.

You know you love me.

Sometimes I wonder why.

Cause you're mental. It all ended rather abruptly that spring. One minute they were joyously welcoming Prince Harry back from the dead-

No, he was the Saviour of the Free World. Let’s not get him confused with the Yummy Royal Ginger...

All right, Saviour of the Free World. On minute they were welcoming him back and the next minute the world had exploded and the castle was overrun with Evil Wizards-

And Witches.

Evil Wizards and Witches. Not to mention Giants, and Acromantulas, and Trolls and Dementors, and Werewolves--and on the other side, a bunch of too-young-to-know-what-they-had-to-lose teenagers, surprisingly badass House Elves, worried parents, Aurors, teachers, statues, the odd Centaur or two, a couple of decent Giants, paintings and suits of armor.

And a unicorn, too.

Huh?

I was sure I saw a unicorn.

Well, you were on drugs for a bit of it.

And crystal balls exploding in the air.

That did happen, actually.

So did the unicorn.

If you say so. Anyway, they won. Which was brilliant, of course, only now that I sit back and think about it have I realised what a miracle it all was. But that’s a different sort of story, and for the purposes of this story, I want to talk more about what happened after. Because it was a real turning point for our girls. The English Princess was very badly injured, and as she sat at her bedside, our Rani began to fully understand how close she came to losing her. And with that understanding came other understandings. Looking at her best friend freely as she slept in a potion-induced coma, even with her face and neck bandaged up and her hair matted and greasy, with her skin pale and her eyes sunken--was the most wonderful thing in the world. She realised that all those things that people talked about--when you looked at a person and your blood raced and your heart swelled and your stomach went all floppy--had been happening for years already. She just hadn’t wanted to see it, because you weren’t supposed to feel that way about another girl, were you?

Rani waited for endless days for her friend to wake up, but when she did, things seemed to get worse, not better. Whereas Rani saw her friend's lingering scars from the battle as badges of honour, as signs that the girl that everyone dismissed as a bit of mindless fluff had been a true warrior all along--her friend saw them as shameful and ugly. And so she set out to prove that she was still beautiful, and she proved it by hopping from one hapless bloke to another, always leaving them wondering if they’d been used, and if so, did they really mind it all that much?

It wasn’t a completely wasted period--the one other thing that the Princess had taken away from the previous year was that she had a natural gift for Healing. And as the Ministry was pretty much willing to bend over backwards for anyone who claimed membership in Dumbledore’s Army, they were willing to relax the N.E.W.T requirements a bit (with some intensive Potions tutoring, of course) she made it into the program at St. Mungos and was wearing the (rather unflattering) traditional lime green robes within a couple of years.

Let loose on London, our Princess had a fine time, but her friend (who was busy enough struggling to get her designs into places like Malkins and Gladrags) worried about her.
There were some weeks when they hardly saw each other at all. The English Princess was a bit hacked off that Rani refused to share a flat with her (as they had always planned) choosing instead to live with her sister, who was interning at the Department of Mysteries and still had trouble walking long distances on her badly injured foot from time to time. Family loyalty was a convenient excuse, but the truth was that she didn’t want to watch her best friend’s parade of boyfriends, and she certainly didn’t want to hear them in the next room.

Still, they would get together from time to time and catch up, and there were always parties and reunions set up by their friends, and then later weddings and baby showers. Neville and Hannah decided to have a combined hen/stag party that proved to be the highlight of our Princesses’ twenty second year--it was the first time in ages that the entire DA group (sans Colin and Fred, of course) had got together since the war. Dennis had Portkeyed in from Colorado in remarkably improved spirits and having had a small growth spurt since school (he was still shorter than Rani, but not by much) and even Theo (or rather the Snake Prince) came back from Durmstrang where he was the youngest DADA professor since Gellert Grindelwald’s days.

They were up half the night reminiscing and drinking, and someone (Dean, wasn't it?) had found it utterly appalling that none of the wizarding folk had ever played Spin the Bottle, so a game commenced posthaste.

It was all good fun, and our Rani found herself racking up a considerable number of pleasant enough kisses with her former classmates, enough to where she felt she could look back at her school years and think that she hadn’t completely missed the boat. It was only later that she found out that the Snake Prince had jinxed the bottle to fall on her more than anyone, yet another example of his rather twisted sense of humor. It was only when it landed on the Princess that things began to get scary.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time the bottle had landed on someone of the same sex. Ginny and Luna had made such a show of it that both Harry and Ron’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets (for different reasons, of course). And Anthony and Ernie had given it their all, much to their current dates' annoyance. And Theo himself had given Neville a kiss that turned his ears scarlet and had Hannah giggling to the point of tears.

But that was other people, and Rani was nervous, because she highly doubted the others had anything to hide. But she did--and it had everything to do with the fact that one part of her wanted to run as far away as she could and the other part of it was rather desperate to have her suspicions confirmed once and for all--to know, at last.

There was a little whooping and hollering, and more than one of the boys mentioned that the idea had been regular wanking fodder for them. The English Princess was giggly and coy, but everybody could tell that she was rather enjoying the attention. And Rani? She was petrified, though she managed to conceal it. Anybody but her friend and possibly her sister would have thought she was patiently resigned to the idea. Perhaps her friend had seen her shaking, or felt the stiffness in her body as she pulled her into her arms, or the utter lack of response. Because instead of being the Earth-shattering experience Rani had feared, it was something of a letdown. And it was all her fault for panicking. Even though knowing, finally what it was like to be pressed against her, knowing, finally, what she tasted like, and how it felt to feel the object of her affection's breath at her lips and those familiar hands in her hair, Rani hadn't really been an active participant. She had blown it, and she knew that she was never going to get the chance again.

But one thing was clear. In spite of the fact that she hadn’t moved through the whole thing, she’d felt more in that badly executed kiss than she had in all the others put together. And the Snake Prince, damn him, had seen it.

When he danced with her at the wedding a few days later, he caught her watching her friend and her latest boyfriend (a trainee healer from Mumbai) trying to be discreet about fondling each other’s arses on the dance floor and failing spectacularly.

“Are you ever going to tell her?” he asked, and Rani's eyes flew back to him, looking horrified.

“Who--tell her what?”

He smirked and shook his head. “You love her. Or at least you desperately want that delectable arse of hers.”

Did he actually say ‘delectable?’

Do you want me to finish the story or not?

You're no fun.

No, no fun at all. Don't know why you put up with me. Anyway... “I don’t-” Rani began, and as her dance partner cocked an eyebrow she frowned, reconsidering. If anybody knew for certain, he did. “Is it that obvious?”

“No," he said, surprising her with the gentleness of his voice and a soft hand stroking her cheek. “But not everyone is as oblivious as you Gryffindors.”

She pretended to raise her knee toward his groin but he only laughed, pulling her closer.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder, suddenly overwhelmed by the strain of holding it in for so long and oddly disoriented by the relief of finally saying it out loud. She had to close her eyes to prevent them from welling up.

“Well...” he said, spinning her in time to the music and turning her away from the view of her best friend over her shoulder. “I could always set you up with my cousin. She’s actually kind of hot, and just recently available.”

Rani snorted and one of the tears she’d been fighting rolled down her cheek. “It’s a lovely offer, but...don’t think I’m quite there yet. I’ll keep it in mind, though.”

She did think about what he’d said for some time after that--not that she ever would have taken him up on his offer, but he had got her thinking. It was clear at this point that being hopelessly in love with her best friend was not the only reason she’d never pursued a man past the fourth date.

Maybe it was worth finding out if it was women in general, or just her friend that she wanted? And how did one go about pursuing a woman, anyway? How would you know who would be interested? She didn’t think she knew any women like that, or if she did, they were keeping silent about it.

Once she got thinking that way, though, she found herself looking at the world in a new light. Whereas before, women were at best a source of competition, and at worst, a previously unacknowledged source of discomfort, now she looked at them as possibilities, as objects of admiration. She found herself talking to women more, meeting them in the eye, even flirting a bit. It wasn’t making her any progress, but it was as if a burden had been lifted off her shoulders. She got a better idea of what she liked and she didn’t, and she discovered when quite alone that (once she'd finally stopped fighting the images coming into her head) she wasn’t so very frigid after all. There were other things that she probably ought to have been thinking about, such as what her parents were going to think about all of it and how her life wasn't going to go at all the way she planned, but those sorts of thoughts tended to get depressing and made her want to give up on the whole thing.

Still, it took six months at least before anything really exciting happened, and that was only because she was so distracted that she hadn’t realised what was going on until she was well into it. She’d always admired the easy confidence of the girl--no, woman, really--behind the bar at the Three Broomsticks, and now that she wasn’t horrified at the idea of getting caught staring at her bosom, she felt a little less embarrassed around her. This particular night, Rani was in a fine temper, having just come from a bad negotiation with the Wizard who ran Gladrags, who blamed the falling economy for his inability to pay for the latest shipment of her gowns and accessories in a timely manner.

She complained about it to Rosmerta, who sniffed and said, "Tosh--failing economy my arse--post-war boom is more like it. It’s more to do with ‘is weekly card game with the likes of Aberforth and Mundungus Fletcher, if you ask me. Stupid man hasn’t paid his bar tab in six months, and the next time he comes in here he’ll find himself kicked head first into the snow."

"Anyway, he’s full of shite, he is, and you can do better than ‘im. Why your things practically walk out of the shop, they do. Anyone'll tell you I'm not above admiring a shapely arse and a 'come shag me' walk. But I'll tell you--nine times out of ten, when I finally get to take a peek at the gown draped over my footboard, your name is on the tag. Makes me wonder if I'm admiring the artist more than the art.” She winked as Rani’s mouth dropped open. "You’ve a gift, love, your frocks lift a girl’s spirits, make her look put together and feel sexy as hell. Like a woman, and not one of those stick insects one sees in Witch Weekly. I’ve got a couple myself, and swear, I always double my tips when I wear them."

“You’re good for the ego,” Rani said, feeling her cheeks burn as she sipped her butterbeer. Rosie smiled and walked off with a tray of drinks, winking over her shoulder as she caught Rani admiring the sway of her hips.

And so, not more than an hour later, she found herself following her teenage crush up the stairs, feeling as if she was walking in a dream.

If that's your way of getting out of sharing the details...

Well, I wouldn’t want you to feel jealous, would I?

Jealous, hell, I'd be as jealous of you having her as I would her having you. She was always near the top of my list of witches I’d switch teams for.

As if. This is just a bit of revisionism. It was always boys, boys, boys with you.

Shows what you know. Anyway, you can stop pouting; she always came second to you.

Right. Good to know. So you want details, eh?

Lots and lots.

Well...As first times go, this was a huge improvement on the last one. At first she was nervous, hardly daring to move-

Well that's a comfort, considering 'Spin-the-Bottle.'

Do you want to hear this, or not?

Yes, please.

But after an awkward first kiss made easier by Rosmerta-

You really need to give her a better name.

What would you like?

The Pub Queen.

Not a princess?

Well, um...isn't she a bit old for that?

And aren't you a bit catty?

Shut up, you.

Anyway, as I was saying, the first kiss involved a bit of bumping noses, and Rani wasn't quite sure where to put her hands, but the Pub Queen's perfectly lovely and infectious laugh somehow eased a great deal of awkwardness. And as far as what to do with her hands--well, she just followed her teacher's lead, didn't she? And anyway, she wasn't about to miss the opportunity to get her hands over all that lush, fragrant flesh, which was just as amazing as she'd always imagined; soft and firm in all the right places, seemingly lit from within by the warm spirit of the woman it surrounded. Rani had been afraid she wouldn't know what to do and wind up looking foolish, but she knew what she wanted and she particularly liked that the steps to getting there didn't seem to be following any particular instruction book. There didn't seem to be any rush toward a goal, but instead seemingly endless hours of kissing and caressing, pleasure given and received, until finally, she collapsed in the older woman's arms, absolutely boneless and sated, filled with wonder. This was what she'd been missing, apparently, and she began to understand why people made such a fuss about it and did such stupid things to get it.

She rather expected to wake up filled with shame or dread, or at least severely confused, but she woke up smiling, grinning, in fact, and as she kissed her sleepy hostess goodbye, she suspected that not only had she made a lifelong friend, but she was damn near the luckiest girl on earth.

The only drawback was that she had no one to talk to about it, and she hated the fact that she was hiding something so monumental from her best friend. She knew that one day she was going to have to tell her, but she supposed there would be time enough once those feelings she'd been harboring for her were well and truly gone. Much safer that way.

Around this time, our English Princess was finally beginning to emerge from whatever it was that she'd been going through since the battle, or possibly there were no single men left in England.

Oh, hush, you. Couldn't you just say that she finally grew up a bit?

Well, maybe so. But whatever it was, she'd found a boyfriend that Rani actually got on with, and so they started hanging around together a lot more. It meant that Rani sometimes felt like the third wheel, but her confidence was increasing, and she didn't mind so much. And maybe it was her imagination, or maybe it was that newfound self-assurance was coming through, but there seemed to be a note of flirtation in their interactions that hadn't been there before. Or maybe it had been there all along and she hadn't wanted to see it.

You think?

Don't roll your eyes at me like that. It's so third year.

Well, who was the first to kiss, I ask you?

Only because she knew that every boy in the room had his cock in his hand and she liked it.

Don't be crude. You make her sound like it was her mission in life to be the centre of attention.

Hmm, I wonder why?

Whatever. And for that matter, who was it that suggested they get naked and shag in the first place?

Only because her boyfriend was hinting about a threesome.

Still counts, doesn't it? And maybe she was too afraid to bring it up any other way, have you ever thought of that?

Or maybe she never would have admitted that she was interested if there wasn't the safety of a cock in the picture.

Like it was so easy for Rani to work out what it was that she wanted, was it?

True. Well...anyway, Rani was glad to see her friend settled, though with that new comfort level, she had picked up a nasty habit of trying to set up her friend with all the available blokes she knew, some of whom were her old castoffs. Rani managed to get out of those sorts of ploys gracefully for the most part, but there were a few close calls.

Her biggest worry was that someday her friend would show up at her door all starry-eyed, announcing that she was a bride-to-be and asking her to be in her wedding. While Rani knew it was going to happen eventually, she couldn’t help but hope it would be later, rather than sooner. Time enough (she hoped) that she could get over her feelings, and possibly even have moved on to love someone else. And she really was trying to move on, truly. After a couple of disastrous mixed signals and a few unfortunate missed signals, she managed to find a few friends that she could be open with, and from there, the occasional date or two, but no one who kept her heart racing after the clothes were back on.

So, as we have already established, one night at a bar, things took a turn because of a threesome joke. To Rani, it sounded more like a hint, and as her friend got a speculative look in her eyes and let out an annoyingly adolescent giggle, it felt as though Rani had been stabbed in the heart. Could she really be that blind, or was she tying to be cruel?

Then the Princess giggled again and said, "She'd never go for it--I snogged her once and she may as well have been petrified by a Basilisk."

That hurt a bit, too, remembering, but to Rani, it sounded something like a challenge, and there was still just enough of those teenage Gryffindor nerves (or stubbornness) left in her that she couldn't possibly let it go unanswered. It was the look on her friend's face as she'd said it--sort of smug and knowing, and the look that passed between the lovebirds (as if they knew anything about her, really). Or maybe it was the Pub Queen's excellent and deceptively smooth mead. Whatever it was, Rani very slowly and deliberately set down her drink-

Ooh, this is the really sexy part.

Must you keep interrupting me? Would you like me to go on?

Oh, yes, please, but let me refill my drink first.

Now may I continue, your highness? Anyway, she set down her drink, and found herself rising from her stool, drawing herself to her full height (six inches taller that her friend, and she wasn't about to let her forget it) and striding down the bar towards her. She was afraid to blink and lose eye contact, but even more so, she prayed that her quaking knees would not buckle underneath her. Still, sooner than she expected, she was standing in front of the object of her yearnings, reaching out with very little hesitation, letting her fingers curl around the back of her friend's head and pulling her close, stopping just a moment before their lips would have met. Whetting her lips, she very deliberately looked down at her friend’s trembling lower lip. "When I fuck you--if I fuck you--it won’t be to help the boyfriend-of-the-month get his rocks off. No offense, Alistair,” she added, refusing to let her eyes to leave her friend’s suddenly quite enormous ones.

It was as if she'd managed to get back to the hen party, that moment she’d been reliving for so many months. Only this time, their positions were reversed; she was the aggressor, she knew exactly what she wanted. But instead of closing the scant distance between their lips, she stepped closer, bringing their bodies into an alignment unlike any they’d shared before. It was bloody well brilliant. The face that she knew almost as well as her own was so close that she seemed to be sharing her oxygen, and her heart was pounding so hard that she wondered if everyone around them could hear it. She was feeling dizzy from the heady scent of her perfume (Wanton Witch, she would have bet a thousand Galleons on it)

It seemed she’d been there for ages, but it probably had only been a few seconds. She bent lower, tightening her hand in her friend’s hair. She wanted to devour, but she controlled the urge, instead passing over her lips in the barest whisper of a kiss, then repeating the gesture, then repeating it once more. Each kiss brought a little more pressure, and finally she let her tongue brush across the seam of that long-coveted mouth, coaxing it to open just a little bit. When it did, she dove in, pressing their tongues together in a silken slide, receiving a faint moan of pleasure as a reward.

Remembering that they had an audience, she pulled away, but Lavender-

The Princess.

The Princess seemed unwilling to let her go. Rani felt her girl’s soft caress on her cheek, felt her fingertips sliding past her ear and into her hair, pulling her close, standing on her tiptoes and darting her tongue into her mouth. Rani's muscles seemed to liquefy, she felt her own resolve seem to melt, tempting her to give in, tempting her to abandon whatever ill-advised plan of revenge or challenge or whatever it was that got her to take such a mad step in such a public manner. It was Alastair’s strangled moan that had her pulling away reluctantly, attempting to compose herself.


It took superhuman effort, but she managed it, smiling over at Alastair and sweetly saying, “That’s as much as you’re going to get from me. Wank away, love, wank away.”

Running her fingers down the Princess’s arm, she let go after a (hopefully) reassuring squeeze of her hand. Knowing there wasn’t a chance in hell she could have endured the rest of the night with them, she gathered her cloak and said goodnight in a deceptively calm voice.

The Pub Queen gave her a wink and a sympathetic smile as she left, and Rani thought that perhaps a visit to her friend/one time lover/occasional confessor might be in order in the very near future. She had to talk to someone, and she doubted anyone but the Snake Prince would understand. That night, as she imagined the hot sex that her little stunt had almost certainly triggered between her friend and her boyfriend, she cried herself to sleep. But oh, the dreams she had that night.

She didn't see her friend for two days. Two miserable, worry-filled, hope-filled days.

And then the Princess dropped by and proceeded to act as though nothing had happened.

That's not true.

It is so.

But-

At first. She was going on about patients and hospital administrators and the new shoes she had just bought and what she had had for dinner the night before. And then she brought up that her mother had been hinting around that it was time for her Princess to get married, and Rani had had just about enough. "So why aren't you married, anyway?" she asked.

The Princess pouted prettily.

Say that five times fast...

Will you shut it already?

Sorry, Pars.

"I've hardly been going out with him that long," the Princess protested. "And anyway, what sort of question is that? You're always lecturing me; telling me that I fall too hard, too fast. I'd think you'd be glad we're not rushing into anything."

Rani felt ashamed, but at this point, she was such a mess that she wanted the Princess to leave more than anything. It just hurt, feeling like this and not being able to talk about it. She was quite sick of it, actually.

Which meant that it was the worst possible time for the Princess to turn it around and ask why Rani hadn't ever got married, and hadn't her parents been throwing nice Indian boys in her direction ever since she'd come of age? And for that matter, hadn't she, the Princess, thrown half a dozen perfectly nice English (and Irish, and in two instances, West Indian) boys who all thought Rani was the most gorgeous creature they'd ever seen but they might as well have been talking to a bloody statue for all the encouragement she gave them? What was her problem, anyway?

"Can't marry a girl, can I?" Rani finally replied, and in a very small voice, apparently mesmerised by an ant who was carrying twice its weight in food across the floor. Perhaps it was time to put a Repelling Charm around the flat. Maybe it would keep her friend out, too, and maybe it would be easier if she wasn't dropping by unannounced all the bloody time and getting her all worked up...only to be disappointed in the end.

"What did you say?" the Princess whispered, apparently horror-struck.

"You heard me. Can't. Marry. A. Girl." Rani enunciated every syllable. "That's why I haven't come close. And now that I've told you, I wish you'd get off my back, because I'm perfectly capable of arranging my own dates, thank you. As a matter of fact, I have one tonight." No need to mention that she'd been thinking about canceling because her heart wasn't in it, was there?

"You. Have a date tonight. With a girl?"

"Yes, yes, with a girl, are you actually stupid or just deaf?"

The Princess looked as if she'd just been slapped. "Why are you yelling at me? What did I do wrong?"

"Oh, so you think I did something wrong, do you? Well, that's just rich--the Queen of can't-be-bothered-to-ask-their-last-names is going to lecture me on morality."

Rani was certain at that moment that she was the lowest person on earth, because she'd managed to make her best friend burst into tears. She couldn't help it-- she was still feeling mad and defensive and above all hurt, and she wasn't sure if the Princess was crying because she was shocked and disgusted, or if she was crying because Rani had lashed out. So Rani just said nothing for a time; she just watched her friend's tears, trying not to cry herself, wishing she could just throw her arms around her very best girl and make all the pain disappear. She desperately wished she could just leave, but knew she couldn't, not really, because it was her own home, and quite frankly, it was a relief to get it all out in the open.

"You're having me on, aren't you?" the Princess finally asked hopefully.

"No, I'm not," Rani replied, and fought the urge to add, 'I wish I was,' because in spite of her own struggles to work out who she was and what she wanted, she didn't feel she had anything to be ashamed of (apart from hiding, or having felt the need to hide, or maybe for having taken it out on her best friend, who might have seem a little self-absorbed, certainly, but didn't actually deserve to be called a slag. Not to her face, anyway.)

The Princess stared at Rani for a long time, as if maybe she was attempting to read her mind. Indeed, Rani wished she'd studied Legilimency herself because the suspense was killing her. "But what about Theo, and all the times we talked about boys--it was all a fucking lie? Or a game?"

"You talked, mostly," Rani replied. "I just did a lot of listening and nodding."

"You talked, too," The Princess insisted, raising tear-filled eyes toward her.

Rani looked away. "I wanted it to be true. I tried, really I tried, but..."

"Your parents," the Princess said, her eyes widening in sympathetic horror. "They'll never-"

"I know." Rani stopped her, touched that her friend was thinking of anything besides her own feelings and how it was all going to affect her. Which was a relief, actually, because Rani had been terrified that her friend would immediately put her on the spot about any potential attraction to herself. "I can't think about that right now. I know I'll have to deal with it eventually, but so far I haven't told them, haven't told anyone."

"Well, obviously you told someone," the Princess said, an odd note of accusation in her voice. "I mean, if you're dating and everything."

"Obviously," Rani conceded.

The Princess let out a wry laugh. "I just...I just can't believe it. You think you know someone."

Rani, finding her irritation returning, stuck her chin out, straightening her spine, looking down at the Princess with narrowed eyes. "Well, obviously you didn't, so-"

"So, what?" The Princess retorted, standing up as tall as she could. It had always 'secretly' annoyed her that Rani was taller, and Rani wasn't above taking a little satisfaction in the fact that her gesture held a bit more weight. </span></p>

"So...go hang about with your straight friends if you don't like it. I'll be just fine. I ought to have known that I couldn't count on you...not when things got hard, anyway."

"Well if that's what you think, then you completely missed the point," the Princess wailed. "I'm the injured party here. I'm the one that's been lied to. You've probably been laughing at me behind your back for ages. Stupid girl can't even see that her best friend fancies girls...isn't it funny? You never gave me a fucking chance did you? You just assumed that I'd...what did you assume, anyway? That I'd shun you? Or that I'd be a...whatever it is, a bigot? I mean, really, I don't know why you've bothered being my friend all these years, if that's what you think of me. Obviously neither of us has been seeing the other at all, now have we?"

"It's not that, it's just-"

"What?"

"Well, I'm telling you now. And maybe I should have before, but it's really been hard for me, and I was only willing to be honest with myself recently. I've lied to myself ever so much more than I lied to you, and...why does it always have to be about you, anyway? I'm telling you something huge and important, and all you can think about is yourself. This isn't about you, it's about me, and if you can't..." Of course, she knew in a way that it was about her friend, but that was something she kept buried deep in her heart, so she had to divert the focus.

The Princess waited for her to finish, finally saying, "You're right. I mean, I'm still hurt that you couldn't...I'm shocked more than anything. But I only want you to be happy. You know that, right? Doesn't make any difference to me if it's girls you need or boys, or I mean, it shouldn't. It's just…it'll take some getting used to."

"Yeah," Rani said, trying to be discreet as she wiped her eyes. "You and me both."

The smile that she got in response went a long way toward reassuring her, but the hug she got a minute later had her unsettled again. It was hard not to think about the last time they'd been in the same position, and now the game had been completely changed. In fact, Rani suspected that she was going to have to be much more careful, not less, because anything she did or said was now going to be looked at it through a new filter. As oblivious as the Princess could be, Rani knew it wouldn't take long before she started wondering if Rani had ever thought of her that way.

It didn't take two minutes.

"So," the Princess said, lying back against the sofa--crisis averted and apparently ready for some best friend time.

Rani moved away, folding her arms in front of her. "So, what?"

"Last week, what was that, anyway?"

"Last week?"

"Don't pretend you don't remember. At the Broomsticks. With Alastair, I mean. Was that you trying to pull me?"

Rani laughed and rolled her eyes. "That was...that was a joke. Or maybe a way to get Alastair to shut his gob."

"Didn't work."

"No?"

"Well, he hasn't shut up about it since, especially-"

"I don't want to know," Rani said, cutting her off before she could fill her in on Alastair's pillow talk. "It's not going to happen."

"Oh, I know that," The Princess said, though in Rani's eyes, it seemed as though she wasn't entirely convinced. "I just..."

"Yes?"

"I mean, you can't blame me for wondering if you've ever-"

Rani cut her off again. "Don't worry. You're not my type," she said, and tried to deflect the tension with a hard nudge of the shoulder. "Not everyone wants to shag you, you know. Bloody hell, the girl thinks the universe revolves around her."

The Princess laughed. "And why shouldn't it? I'm fabulous."

"You keep telling yourself that."


Continues in Part 2