Author's Note: This trope is very bizarre to me, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get the points your team needs, so enjoy! Written for the 31 Days of Soulmate!AU Day 9: When you turn a certain age (or on a certain day each year), you swap bodies with your soulmate for one day of the year.
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.
Warnings: NA
Stacked with: MC4A; Hogwarts; Shipping War; Harmony of Souls Eternal
Bonus challenge(s): Family Game Night; Gryffindor MC (x2); Seeds; Shipmas; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Change); Themes & Things B (Surprise); Themes & Things C (Pillow); Trope it Up C (Bodyswap); Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux
Representation(s): Body switching Soulmate!AU
Bonus challenge(s): NA
Tertiary bonus challenge: Caprice
Word count: 836
Shipping Wars
Ship (Team): Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley (Golden Lion)
List (Prompt): Spring Micro 2 (Worst Possible Timing)
The Timing's Not So Bad
"Oh, fuck," Ginny said when she realized what had happened.
She flipped over and sure enough, she was on the right side of the bed—not the left… the absolute wrong side. Harry's side. She had known from the second she'd woken up feeling strange and heavier in some places than others and, the biggest tell, her vision had been awful.
She reached out blindly and latched onto the glasses he'd folded up and left on the side table, and put them on. The world focused and Ginny swore again, turning back in bed to see… herself, looking at her hands in confusion before looking up. Her hair was in a state of complete bedhead, and her brown eyes looked sleepy as she blinked herself awake. Of course, that wasn't her, though…
"Wow," Harry said from inside her body.
"No," Ginny groaned falling back on her —no, damn it, Harry's— pillow.
Harry sat up and stretched out her limbs tentatively.
"This is… umm…" he scratched the back of her head and it looked so incredibly odd to Ginny to see her own body deployed in such a Harry-like gesture.
Ginny grabbed her pillow and swore into it before throwing it back.
"Today?" she said, looking at the ceiling. "Really, world? Today out of all days!"
"I'm so sorry," Harry said.
"It's not your fault," Ginny sighed. "Really, it's not… this is normal, we've all heard about it happening, but just… could it have been literally any other day? Any day other than my first day as a Harpy?"
Head Trainer Jones was going to kill Ginny, but what was she supposed to do? Go to training in Harry's body? Have him jump on a broomstick and go? Her boyfriend was a fair Quidditch player, of course, but Seekers and Chasers had wildly different roles and used wildly different skills and muscle groups. Not to mention that she wouldn't trust him to fly right now, what with his center of gravity and frame so different now. She wasn't sure that even his Auror training would be enough to help him cope with the daily training exercises that the Harpies went through...
"I'm sorry," Harry said, stretching out next to her. Gosh, it was so weird looking at herself like that… Harry propped himself up and reached out to rub small, comforting circles on her arm. "I know you've been waiting for this day for so long…"
Ginny sighed. "Oh God, what if they kick me off the team?"
"They won't kick you off the team," Harry said. "Body Switching is known to happen, people adapt to it all the time. It's going to be okay. Besides, you're a bloody brilliant player and they know it."
He leaned in to kiss her cheek and then pulled away, frowning.
"Am I really that scratchy all the time?" he asked her.
"Yes," she smiled, reaching up to touch Harry's cheek absent-mindedly. The reminder that their souls had switched bodies suddenly drained her mood again, and the smile dropped off her face.
"I'm sorry, I'll shave more," he said.
"Don't, I like it," Ginny said.
"Really?" Harry asked in surprise.
"Yeah," Ginny said. "I got used to it."
Harry still looked puzzled by this, but gave the subject a rest as he presumably pondered over how to make her feel better. That was the Harry thing to do, and sure enough...
"I wish the timing had been better," Harry said, stretching across the bed and leaning over her for a second. "But do you know what the good news is?"
"What?" she asked, still grumpy.
"I guess we really are soulmates," Harry said. "That's the only way this would happen, right?"
"I… I suppose that is good news," Ginny said. She felt a real smile, a genuinely big smile that wouldn't break, spread across her face. "I would kiss you, but that would be really bizarre."
"So bizarre," Harry agreed, pulling away and sitting up in bed, legs crossed. "You're going to have to help me figure out your bathroom routine, by the way. I also don't know how you decide which bra to wear, so please let me in on that."
Ginny laughed. "Can we start by making coffee and figuring out how to explain this to my coach?"
"Sure," Harry said, throwing her legs off the bed and easing himself up. "Gosh, I feel so weird and uncoordinated…"
"How do you think I feel? You're so big and heavy," she said. "I feel like a troll."
"A troll?" Harry asked, sounding mildly offended. "Really?"
"Oh, calm down. It's not like I said 'mountain troll.'"
"Is there a better kind of troll?" Harry scoffed. Ginny laughed again and stretched out a leg to poke the back of her legs—well, Harry's legs for today.
"Don't you think it's more of a me problem if my soulmate's a troll?" Ginny said.
That shut Harry up about the whole "troll" comment and replaced the grimace on what was temporarily his face with a smile.