Title: Challenge

Author: Tinuviel Henneth

1) Ron or Harry being naked [only mentioned as a past event]
2) A proposal (from anyone to anyone) [only mentioned in passing]
3) Apple juice has to be mentioned [or present in a lake on the floor]
4) Someone has to choke on home-made cake/pie [and nearly die]
5) Blaise's mum has to make an appearance [however fleeting]

The first thing he noticed was his girlfriend's son, Chester, sitting outside on the stoop, looking very abashed, not that that was anything new. It wasn't that Chester was a bad kid, he just took after his father far too much. In fact, when he and his cousin Misty got together, bad things. When Chester's twin uncles were present, no one was safe. Not even the ghost inhabiting the Zabini house.

"Banished from your own birthday party?" he asked the red-haired boy. When Chester looked up at him dolefully, he winced and added, "What now?"

"You don't want to know," the boy advised him. "Just let me rot out here for a bit."

Blaise nodded slowly, suspiciously, shifting the two packages in his arms. "All right, but I intend to hear all about it tonight."

Chester gave him a miserable look. "Oh, Mum'll fill you in before then. She's in there with Harry and Draco and-- oh, I'm so grounded until I graduate." He slumped back against the step above his and let his head loll on his neck.

"Happy birthday, by the way," Blaise added belatedly. "I've got presents here, but I'm assuming you'll be suffering a bit before you can enjoy them."

"Great guesser, you are," Chester said gloomily. "Now go in before I attack you."

"You're twelve. I'm not scared."

"You should be. You know what my mother's like."

"Point taken." Blaise nodded to the door. "Being that I'm a bit laden with gifts, think you could open it for me?"

Chester shook his head and didn't make any effort to move. "Nope. She's charmed it so that it'll sing showtunes if I touch it. I would rather eat augurey entrails than listen to the chorus of 'As Wide as the Ocean' from The Erkling and I again." He said it so vehemently that Blaise wondered if he hadn't already tried with no success.

"Right then. I'll just have to balance this on my head." Chester held up his hand and Blaise grinned, handing down the smaller of the two parcels. He turned the knob and held his breath in case Hermione's spell had gone awry and would go off it anyone touched the knob. He had found that her spells came out a bit stronger than she intended if she was angry enough. Now that she was pregnant, he couldn't be sure what exactly might happen.

Chester hopped up and handed him the box over the threshold, but made no attempt to enter. Blaise supposed Hermione had somehow put the fear of Merlin in him if he tried.

The second thing he noticed was the state of the kitchen. Hermione, his own mother, Draco Malfoy, and a very pretty dark-haired woman stood around the kitchen table. The former three looked distressedly at the fourth, who seemed relatively calm in spite of whatever was going on. He could hear the sounds of a dozen or so crazed preteens partying in the next room. The cabinets were all standing open, exposing the meticulously arraged plates, tinned goods, and pans. One of the chairs was overturned.

There seemed to be a yellow pool covering a large area of the floor in the corner. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what it was. Seeing what he was looking at, his mother shook her head. "Don't worry, dear, it's just a bit of apple juice."

The third thing he noticed was that the woman, who had very large breasts, looked an awful lot like--

"Harry!"

The woman brightened, then frowned and sank down onto the stool behind her. "So it is obvious," she said. Her voice wasn't remotely feminine, of course, coming out perfectly like Harry's voice. Hermione was still fuming, although her expression softened a touch at Blaise all laden with birthday presents. Draco, who was sitting next to Harry, snickered into his slice of cake. Blaise's mother offered a vague smile and hurried over to relieve him of the packages, which had grown heavier over the course of the broom ride home from Hogsmeade.

"Hello, dear," she said.

"Mum," he replied, hugging her over the packages. She left the room, presumably to put them with the other presents in the room with the screaming twelve-year-olds.

Hermione kissed him on the cheek and began to look at Harry with concern. "The twins never did this to Percy, even. They knew boundaries. Chester has no boundaries, it seems," she said with her lips in a grim line. Blaise and Draco both raised eyebrows; it wasn't often Hermione mentioned her ex-husband. It was even less frequently when she did so in such offhanded context.

Blaise nodded slowly and hooked his hands together behind his back. "So, care to fill me in on why Potter's been feminized?"

Draco choked on his cake. Blaise was close enough to see it was chocolate with a begie icing he was willing to bet was peanut butter. Draco loved peanut butter in all forms, and according to Harry it was a favorite... toy of his. Blaise had turned a bit green and tuned them out at the time, although Hermione had laughed and leaned in to hear more. Blaise seriously wondered if he shouldn't be concerned as to why she was always so interested in her best friend's relationship with Draco.

Harry sighed, those big breasts heaving, and he nervously stroked the end of his now-long softly curling hair. "You don't want to know."

Blaise rolled his eyes. "He's not technically my son, so I won't get like her. In fact, I'll probably leave to go buy him an extra present for his trouble." He grinned evilly. Draco choked on his cake again and this time continued to sputter and wave his arms for someone to smack him on the back.

"What?" said Harry, looking at him like he was crazy. "I'm not breaking a nail just to clear your air passage."

Draco turned blue and Hermione and Blaise shared a look before Hermione herself went around the table. She thumped on the pale wizard's back until he stopped flailing and caught his breath.

Harry seemed to realize what he'd said and he put his head down on the table. Draco patted his shoulder sympathetically, although he continued to glare. He pushed the plate of cake away with a twinge of regret on his face.

"Why don't you just change Harry back?" he asked when nobody volunteered to explain to him what had happened.

Hermione's eyes got big. "We tried once, but we just ended up disrobing her--him, sorry, Har-- and that didn't go over well as none of us are heterosexual males. Your mother said something in French that I didn't catch--"

"'Wish I had breasts like that,' I believe," Draco interjected, grinning. Hermione scowled at him.

"Anyway, we changed him back. We agreed that Chester would wait a few hours to get good and nervous about however I plan to punish him, then I'll call him back in to get it reversed." She smiled serenely, but they all could see the ornery glint in her eyes.

"He's convinced you're going to ground him until he graduates."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Gee, all he did was turn his godfather into a woman and spill an entire bottle of apple juice onto the floor. Speaking of which, someone please clean it up. I don't know how effective my spell will be, especially considering my last one." She grimaced, then she jumped a bit and grinned. "Oh, the baby just kicked. I hate it when it does that at odd moments."

Blaise smiled and hugged her. He didn't touch her belly because she had made it explicitly clear that she didn't want to be touched. "Just ask Percy how much he got to touch me before Chester was born," she had said. He didn't bother to point out the obvious fact that Percy was kind of dead at the moment.

Harry twisted a lock of his hair. "Anyway, back to the fact I have breasts," he said, sharing a smirk with Draco, who then turned his attention back to his cake.

"Oh, yes," said Blaise, "I would have definitely made an indecent proposal a few minutes ago when they mentioned you get naked when they try to reverse the spell if Hermione hadn't revealed her evil intentions for her own son." He smiled and inched away from her. "You really do have astoundingly nice breasts, there, Potter."

Harry blushed. "He'll flash you if you pay him," said Draco.

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