Albus Potter, Friends and Foes

Ch 5 Finally Better

Deb caught a significant internal contradiction in this chapter. Good beta readers are a joy. Thank you, Deb and Diane.

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The rest of the girls that shared her dormitory room, Patty Finnigan, Hanna McGonagall, Christy Shook, Rose Weasley, and Olivia Wood, were in the room Friday night, November thirteenth, just before ten, when Cleo came stomping into the room. She threw a small bag containing changes of clothes on her bed, and in a typical Cleo gesture spread her arms out and threw her head back and forth, her plaits flying. "No more sleeping together!" Cleo bitched. "Boggarts, dragon dung, no more sleeping together. I LIKE sleeping with Albus, even when, eventually, they made us sleep in separate beds. I'm NOT happy."

She became a little embarrassed when she noticed the other girls staring at her. "I cannot really complain about getting better. It was not fun being tired all the time, and having a fuzzy head and sore joints and, but I LIKE sleeping with Albus. I miss his body touching mine!"

Patty Finnigan's face became very red, and she shyly wondered, "Were you, like, not just in the same bed, but, like, SEX?"

Cleo smiled an awkward smile. Her complexion was too dark to blush, but you could see that blushing expression on her face. "Albus is not a little boy, and his boy parts are not little boy parts. When we were hugging face to face and, you know, all your body pressed against, all MY body pressed against him, and I could feel it, hard, and, but through our night clothes, but, that is the problem. I so want to take all my clothes off and have him take his clothes off and feel each other body to body, and have him in me, and his baby in me, and everybody including Albus says we are too young, and it is hard. I want to do the right thing, and the right thing is to wait, and Albus knows it and I know Albus is right.

"So it IS sex but it ISN"T and it is HARD to wait!"

Christy Shook's face had become red, and she was obviously thinking of something. Rose, who at times was too eager for information to keep quiet, wondered, "Is it sex when you and Colin Creevey, when you hug and touch?"

"Of course!" Christy exclaimed. "It is hard," and she giggled. "You are right, Cleo. I mean about boy parts. Colin isn't a little boy either, and we do hug some, and he gets excited. I'm not eager to shag, not yet, but I like looking at his body and I like it when he looks at me. When we finally, I'll be ready, eager. We are just too young, but sometimes I wish we were not, and at other times I am very glad we are not."

"I don't have any boy I want to do it with, and I surely don't want to become pregnant until after a long and successful Quidditch career," Olivia Wood mused. "I look at you, Cleo, and hear you talk, and something in me says I ought to want to become a mother, but I really am not eager too, not when I am young. I don't want to be a boy, like Cloe, but ..."

Cleo winced at that. She didn't want to ruin any career plans because she couldn't control her 'powers.' Olivia was quite set on her Quidditch first, and Cleo knew she needed to be careful, and she really was trying, but sometimes it was just hard.

Patty looked right at Rose, wondering, "Do you still think it is gross and unsanitary?"

It was Rose's turn to become embarrassed. "Sometimes I look at my grandmother Weasley, and think that being a wife and mother would be ... that's the problem. I am smart, and it just seems that I should want a career, maybe designing clothes or decorating houses or, I like planning parties and decorating, and it all seems so small and insignificant against what my mother is doing. But I don't want to be a workaholic like my mother either. And I have to think about, and talk about, things before I do it, and everything I read makes it so natural, and not something you talk about. I mean, they talk about falling in love, not talking about it and deciding, so I will probably be horrible at it."