A/N:Edited on 18/05/2015. Crossposted to AO3

The Talk

There is a time in everyone's life where your mother or father sits you down and explains the facts of life. It is probably one of the most embarrassing and disturbing of most peoples' childhood memories. The good news is, it only happens once and your parent is as scarred as you are from the experience.

Harry learnt that he wasn't going to be quite as lucky. Before his fourth year, Sirius came and sought him out and decided it was time to make good on his god-fatherly duties.

Summer that year wasn't very enjoyable. It wasn't enjoyable any other year but Harry found this one particularly hard. For a brilliant half of an hour near the end of his school year he thought that he was never going to have to go back to the Dursleys again.

He discovered he had a godfather. Well, he had known that before. What he discovered was that his godfather was not a homicidal maniac who betrayed his parents like he believed. Not only had that happened but Sirius had offered for him to live with him.

He was going to have a home. A real home. Having a godfather was brilliant. Harry was going to have the best summer of his life but Peter Pettigrew had escaped and Sirius went on the run, which lead to the reason why he was in the park, in the middle of the night, whilst the Dursleys were asleep and believed he was too.

Sirius wanted to meet, though he left no reason, only that it was important.

A twig snapped from behind Harry. The teen span, his wand already in his hand, when a large black dog stalked out of the shadows. A second later the dog became a raggedy man

"Sirius."

"Harry," the man beamed.

"What's so important that we had to speak in person?"

Harry should have noticed the slight pinking of the man's face at that question. He didn't. He should have noticed the man shift into an embarrassed posture. He didn't. He did however notice the way that Sirius didn't meet his eyes.

The man cleared his throat. "Well. It's just that, since your dad isn't here, I guess this duty falls to me."

"What duty?"

"Well, it's just, nobody has been around to give you The Talk."

Sirius later told him that if he didn't ask him what he did next then his godfather would have just chickened out and made up some story about needing to bond with his godson.

Harry should have kept his mouth shut.

"What talk?"

"The one... the one about sex."

Harry blushed slightly and so did Sirius, who quickly regained his composure (unlike Harry) and led the boy to a bench.

"We really don't have to do this," Harry began.

"Your father would have wanted someone to. I can't let the Potter reputation be destroyed because you don't know what to do."

The light pink blush turned into a full red face of embarrassment. "I do know what goes where."

Sirius waved his hand. "That's just the basics. You can't go in there blindly. That's what old Wonky did."

"Wonky?"

Later Harry would regret that question more than asking what The Talk was. After twenty minutes of learning about Wonky Pete's bedroom exploits, Harry was thoroughly scarred by the experience and Sirius seemed to be coping by deciding the situation was like one big prank. This meant the man was actually enjoying himself.

The bastard.

"... and that's why he's called Wonky Pete."

"Are we done?"

Sirius looked at his watch. "I suppose."

Harry visibly relaxed.

"Oh, one last thing," Sirius said throwing the boy a small square shaped packet that had his godson looking mortified to be holding, "Don't miss."

Harry decided at that moment having a godfather wasn't as brilliant as he had thought.

Harry would have considered that the most embarrassing experience of his life but at that point he didn't realise that worse was to come. He should have begun to realise it when a week later Remus made his presence known whilst the Dursleys were out for the day.

Harry was doing as much as his homework as he could whilst the Dursleys were out, since they kept him too busy to do anything related to magic whilst they were home.

He was halfway through his charms essay when the bell rang, which was an odd occurrence. Aunt Petunia had been bragging to the neighbours for weeks about the company social that her husband was hosting and so the whole neighbourhood knew that no one, except for Harry (who the neighbours didn't particularly want to be seen speaking to), would be in that day.

Harry of course hadn't been invited to the social.

Carefully he made his way downstairs and opened the door, only to be met with his ex-DADA teacher and friend of his father's Remus Lupin.

"Professor Lupin? What are you doing here?"

The middle-aged werewolf looked suitably embarrassed. "Well I got a letter from Padfoot saying that he gave you The Talk."

The boy's face flushed. "Erm... yes."

"It's just that, while I do trust Sirius, I don't think he's the best at explaining these things."

"He was rather... explicit," agreed Harry.

"That's why I thought, well, it would be better if I explained it."

"No! I mean, no. It's fine. You don't have to. I think we covered everything."

"I really think I should. I mean, some things have changed since he went to Azkaban."

"I don't think that things could be that different," Harry replied, unconsciously backing away. "I mean the thing goes in the other thing. How hard can it be?"

"I still think I should explain. Sirius probably didn't even mention the kind of diseases you can get."

Once again foot in mouth syndrome got the better of the-boy-who-lived. "Diseases?"

An hour later Harry was staring unblinkingly at pictures and photos Remus got out to help him explain the different types of STDs, both magical and muggle varieties.

One particular photograph Harry couldn't stop staring at. It had tentacles. Down there. Horrible puss filled tentacles that moved. It was the first time that Harry realised that magical photographs weren't as wonderful as he thought.

"That could all happen... to me?"

Remus nodded. "It is because of that you always need to use protection and always get ministry approved potions."

"I think I'm going to be sick."

"It's not that bad," commented Remus. "All you need to do is have safe sexual practices."

The tentacles in the picture suddenly released sickly yellow tendrils that buried themselves into the skin, turning it purplish-black.

Harry fulfilled his earlier statement.

It was the night before Harry visited the Quidditch World Cup that Harry began to realise what was happening. Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern.

Harry decided that he really didn't like this pattern.

He and Ron were just about to go to sleep when Mr Weasley entered the room. The nervous behaviour the man gave off instantly sent alarm bells ringing in Harry's head. Just a few weeks before both Sirius and Remus had been acting like that.

"Boys, I think there's something we need to talk about."

"Whatever Ginny said it's a complete and utter lie. She was the one who told me to do it anyway," blurted Ron.

"What? No, I don't want to know. You're about the same age as your brother's when I gave them The Talk."

"I'll wait outside," Harry said, getting up quickly and preparing to make a mad dash to the door to escape, while Ron shot in dark looks.

Mr Weasley blocked him with his arm. "No, no Harry. I think this is important for you too. I doubt that you've had anyone to give you this talk."

Harry paled. This wasn't happening. Not again. He'd already undergone this cruel and unusual torture twice.

"That's not true my–" Harry broke off slightly as he realised that he couldn't mention Sirius because of his status as an wanted criminal and it would be difficult to explain why Remus had been visiting his house. "...uncle explained it all," he finished lamely.

"While your uncle may have had this talk with you, it's still of worth for you to hear. There are many aspects that can... differ from those of muggles."

Harry realised that he wasn't going to get out of it and sighed. Well at least Ron was going to suffer with him this time.

Twenty minutes Arthur left, leaving sheet white Ron and an only slightly embarrassed Harry. He had to admit that it was a lot less mortifying than having The Talk with Sirius or Remus. Then again, Arthur had had four or five tries already to perfect the talk.

"I didn't realise it was so... messy," Ron said at last.

"Think yourself lucky. Sirius and Lupin already got to me."

Harry would have been glad if that was the last of it. They were the only three prominent uncle type figures in his life after all, which meant there wasn't anyone else who thought that it would be in his best interest if they gave him The Talk. It had been a few months since the three adults had each spoken to him and the memories had (mostly) faded.

Then Dumbledore called him to his office.

Harry knocked on the headmaster's office door nervously.

"Come in."

Harry nervously entered and wondered what the headmaster wanted. Surely he hadn't done anything wrong? Well, at least this year. He couldn't have found out about the polyjuice in second year, could he? That was a stupid question. Of course he could. He was Albus Dumbledore. The man knew everything.

"Harry my boy," Albus said with a serene smile, "Don't worry. You're not in trouble or anything."

Harry would later decide that Albus had a very skewed opinion of 'or anything' because what happened was definitely 'something' and that 'something' was a travesty that should never have been allowed to occur.

"What did you want, sir?"

"Well, Harry, with the Yule Ball coming up I thought it would be best if I explained some things to you."

"Professor McGonagall already explained that I have to open the ball with a dance." Harry was dreading that. He was going to completely embarrass himself. The rumours Skeeter was spreading were bad enough without him adding to them.

"It's not that. Take a seat." Harry did. "Lemon drop?"

"No thank you, sir."

Albus nodded, used to people declining. "Now as I said with the Yule Ball coming up I thought it would be best if I explained some things to you. You probably didn't know this but as a boarding school at Hogwarts we make it our responsibility to equip orphans with knowledge that they would otherwise have received from their parents when they reach a certain age."

"Professor?"

"Harry my boy, what do you know about The Facts of Life?"

Harry was too mortified to answer. Dumbledore took his silence as a lack of knowledge and began The Talk. What followed was what Harry believed to be the most traumatising experience he would ever have. It involved charmed diagrams and references to previous activities of Dumbledore.

Harry sat stone still through all of it and scarpered at the earliest opportunity, wishing that Lockheart was still around to obliviate him.

Despite the amount of trauma he suffered then, Harry couldn't have predicted how much worse it was going to get.

It was the twenty-fifth of February. He had just completed the second task the day before, bringing the scoring up to being joint first with Cedric. Everything was going well. Not only was he surviving the tasks but he was doing extremely well in them.

Then McGonagall wished to speak to him.

What happened next Harry would claim to be the most horrific experience of his life and hold that opinion even on his death bed. It was something not even his wife could get him to talk about and the exact details of the encounter were rumoured to be the only thing he took with him to the grave.

"You wanted to see me, Professor?" asked Harry.

"Yes, Mr Potter. Take a seat. There was an issue that came to my attention yesterday which I believe has gone unaddressed."

"Huh?"

"Now there is a certain time in a young man's life when –"

Harry cut her off, leaping up from the chair, and almost screaming at her. "Oh no. I'm not doing this again. I've had this talk. Four times! Four! Never again."

Beneath McGonagall's shocked expression there was a hint of amusement. In the coming years it would become a bit of a recurring joke in the staffroom the amount of times Harry had to go through the sex talk.

"I have no doubt of that, Mr Potter, but I do not believe that they could have covered the necessities."

"Everything was covered. Believe me. Not even an obliviate could possibly remove the scarring from my mind."

"I doubt they knew of your preferences."

Harry froze. She wasn't going to go into detail about him liking Cho Chang when the girl was happily in love with Cedric was she? Best, he decided (firmly solidifying the fact he had Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome), to check. "Preferences?"

"I am referring to the feelings you have towards Mr Weasley."

Weasley... he didn't like Ginny. Wait, she said Mr Weasley. It had briefly crossed his mind the consequences of having Ron be the precious person taken from him. Both Cedric and Krum had romantic interests at the bottom of the lake and Harry didn't have the excuse of family like Fleur to use, even if that's what it was like to him.

"I don't–"

"There's no need to be shy Mr Potter. There is nothing wrong with having an interest in your friend."

"But I–"

"However there are certain aspects of a relationship between two men that wouldn't have been covered."

"There's no need, Professor. This is completely–"

"Necessary," completed the woman.

'This is not happening. Not happening,' chanted Harry in his head.

"There are certain spells you need to know if you are going to engage in sexual intercourse with another male, such as Mr Weasley. The first is to..."

Harry sat, protested, paled, grew ill, and all the while McGonagall met his eye. He had nothing against gay people, he just wasn't one himself. And, despite what his head of house believed, did not want to do that with Ron. He certainly didn't want to know how McGonagall knew all the stuff she was telling him or that she was 'quite the wild girl back in the heyday'.

No, he didn't want to know what the woman he almost thought of as grandma got up to when she was younger that enabled her to know certain charms for certain, different types of sex. He didn't want to know at all.

He tried to leave multiple times but the woman wouldn't let him go until she felt that they had covered everything about gay sex. By the end of the hour, Harry decided that if there had been a chance of him going gay in the future, his teacher had promptly crushed that chance and then incinerated anything that remained.

He had nightmares for the rest of the week.

They weren't about Voldemort.

While the McGonagall talk was extremely traumatic and embarrassing, what came next just plain disturbing. It was during the summer after sixth year. He would have said before seventh year but his seventh year was in what would have been his eighth year, which just made things all around confusing for everyone.

Bill had been getting nervous about the upcoming wedding and so Charlie decided to help him take his mind off things. They had heard of Harry getting with and then breaking up with their little sister. They also knew that he and their brother, along with Hermione, were planning some sort of secret trip.

Charlie decided that he could kill three birds with one stone. He could help sort out Bill's nerves, he could give his honorary brother 'The Talk', which he doubted the orphan had received, and lastly, he could warn Harry what would happen if he met a woman and broke his sister's heart while on his little trip.

Harry was carrying a pile of clean bed sheets upstairs for Mrs Weasley when someone yanked at the back of his shirt and pulled him into one of the many side rooms. He readied his wand against an attacker before he realised that it was just Bill and Charlie. He relaxed slightly.

"You shouldn't do that. What if I hexed you?"

"Then it's a good thing I'm a cursebreaker," grinned Bill.

"We need to talk," added Charlie, a strange gleam in his eye. Harry had been expecting this confrontation since when he started dating Ginny and since he broke up with her. He was either very brave or very stupid (his friends would argue both) to date a girl with six older brothers.

"What about?"

"Sex."

"I haven't slept with your sister," Harry replied on instinct. And really, with everything going on, Harry really needed better instinct.

Both brothers tensed and Bill looked at him suspiciously. "You better not have."

"What we need to talk about," Charlie said, "is that you're going to be going on a trip soon – and don't deny it – and we want you to be prepared for everything."

Bill said a spell and suddenly there was a curtain hovering halfway between chest and waist level, with the two brothers ducked behind it.

"Guys."

Suddenly a sock puppet with green circles for eyes, a felt tip lightning bolt scar, and woollen hair was poking over the top of the curtain. "Hello," Charlie said in a high pitched imitation of Harry's voice. "My name is Harry Potter and I'm on a long journey."

On the other side of the curtain stage a second sock puppet with oversized red lips, pinked cheeks, and long blonde hair appeared and started making kissy noises.

"Oh look," sock-Harry said, "It's Briana Big Breasts. The sexual attraction is overwhelming."

"Oh my. It's Harry Potter. Teen Witches Most-Attractive-Teen-Of-The-Year. I must seduce him."

Harry's eyebrows, which had shot up at the beginning, had not come down and watched in morbid curiosity as the two oldest Weasley brothers then proceeded to take the sock puppets through the stages of sex. The sock-Harry disappeared from the stage, only to be replaced by a sock with red wool hair and red lips. It was a sock-Ginny.

Sock-Briana then proceeded to gloat to sock-Ginny about having sex with Harry, causing sock-Ginny to cry. Both sock puppets disappeared from the stage and were replaced by sock-Harry, who calmly walked from one side of the stage to the other, singing, "I got laid. I got laid."

The stage was suddenly filled with six sock-Weasley's (too many for the brothers' combined four hands) with bats and bludgers.

"You hurt our sister," the sock with a miniature dragonfang earring exclaimed.

"You must die," added the puppet Harry was certain represented Charlie.

"Kill the sister-hurter. Kill the sister-hurter," chanted the sock-Weasley's as they attacked sock-Harry. By the end of the brother's performance, Harry had received the message loud and clear. Hurt Ginny and Voldemort would be the least of his problems.

Years later when Harry had his own family, he was sitting in the kitchen when his oldest teenaged son, James, burst into the room looking rather pale and distraught. "Dad, dad, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. It was just there and I was curious. I didn't mean to look at it. I really didn't."

"What are you talking about?" he sighed, putting down his cup of coffee.

"The pensieve. It was on your desk. Everyone always talks about how amazing you were in the war and I wanted to see. I didn't mean to. I was just curious. And then I couldn't get back out. I'm sorry."

Harry rubbed his temples. "What did you see?"

"It was you then Sirius, then Teddy's father, grandpa, Albus Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, then uncle Bill and uncle Charlie."

"Oh," Harry muttered. "You saw those memories. It was about time you knew anyway. Do you ... erm, have any questions?"

"No!" James said quickly, "It was all rather clear."

"Good. You won't tell your brother about this, will you?" Harry asked, "He's still a bit young."

"I won't," James agreed. "You're not angry are you?"

"No. I think you've had punishment enough. Just don't touch anything next time."

James nodded and left and when he did, Harry grinned and sank into his seat. He was glad he didn't have to go through The Talk again, even if it was on the other side. And the fact he had left those specific memories out where his (highly curious and mischievous) son would spot them and go looking was not important.

Now if only Albus was as curious as his brother.

The End