Welcome, dear audience, to this Tiny Intermission in your dashboard.
I’m Morita, an ESL writer (English is not my first language, so please forgive any accidental improvisations in my lines! 🇦🇷✨). This space is my personal stage, dedicated to the characters and stories that capture my imagination.
Masterlist here.
Current Acts & Special Appearances
My interests tend to change by seasons and eras, so the playbill updates frequently! Right now, the main stars of the show are:
The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit (with a massive hyperfixation on Kili Durin and Bagginshield)
Avatar (mostly neteyam, loak, jake sully )
My Hero Academia (Katsuki Bakugo being the love of my life and my husband)
Harry Potter! (Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Harry Potter,etc!)
(Plus a rotating cast of Demon Slayer characters, original characters (OCs), and guest stars that will pop up from time to time).
House Rules & Content
18+ / Heavy themes: While this is mostly a cozy place, some acts might include mature themes or angst. I will always put a clear warning (TW/CW) and use a "Read More" link for longer pieces so your dashboard stays safe.
A safe space: No hate, harassment, or discrimination is allowed in this theater. Let's keep it kind and welcoming!
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Program Guide (Navigation Tags)
#the scripts ➔ For my original snippets, fics, and written scenes.
#the cast ➔ To meet my Original Characters (OCs).
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🪼 — bkg. k x reader | fantasy au | fluff | festive spirit
Synopsis: Katsuki as a wanderer, a citizen of the Kingdom of Drakkon— the man who captured your heart through dancing with you beneath the festive lantern lights.
As dusk settles over the Kingdom of Novela, you stroll through its bustling streets with your gaze drifting over the lively crowd whose laughter fills the air before settling on the town square, where music is heard along as both locals and travelers join in the fun of dancing. Beyond them are rows of stalls which display an array of local delicacies and their tempting aromas mingling in with the festive air, enticing everyone into celebration. After all, the kingdom is in its second week of the month-long festival celebrating its 300th anniversary of independence, welcoming not only the neighboring kingdoms, but also the people from far-away lands in the continent.
Curiosity draws you closer to the town square where musicians are playing lively tunes you can dance along. At the center, you can see couples swaying to the music. Some are clearly lovers based on their devoted gazes on each other, while others appear to be strangers who got caught up in the moment— strangers who were swept into the crowd by a charming dancer, like you are about to.
A few dancers notice you watching and they can see your face— brimming with joy, and extending their hands in invitation for you to join them. You then take a step forward before remembering that you have to keep a low profile while roaming the streets, especially with the festival in full swing. You glance at your… friend, Ochako, silently asking if it’s all right for you to indulge.
“Go on.” Ochako says with an encouraging smile before gesturing to the tall man beside her, “Sir— err… Tenya is here.”
With Ochako’s permission, a bright smile spreads across your face before you turn back to the dancers waiting for you. While laughing softly, Ochako gives you a gentle push forward. You reach out for the dancer’s hands, who then pulls you into the lively crowd.
Before you know it, you’re swept into the encircling couples twirling around the town square. Cheerful melodies fill the evening air as the dancer guides your steps with ease, as though she’s done this a hundred times. Little by little, you can feel yourself letting go of your worries and just losing yourself in dancing and music.
You laugh as the dancer spins you around with your joined hands, and the world around you turns into a blurry mess of lantern lights and radiant faces. Just as you regain your footing, she playfully nudges your hand, sending you twirling to another waiting partner. This time, it’s a man— likely a commoner, judging by his simple attire that blends in with the locals of Novela. He catches you by instinct, surprise flickering across his face at the sudden closeness of a woman.
Although, unlike everyone in the crowd, he appears awkward and stiff. With brows furrowing as if he would rather be somewhere else. The noise seems to irritate him, making it obvious he never intended to join in the festivities. He was probably dragged into the crowd or pushed forward by his playful friends. He parts his lips, as if to protest, but the words didn’t leave his tongue the moment his eyes meet yours. The annoyance fades from his face, replaced by a gentle— much softer expression as he simply looks at you.
In front of him, you have the most radiant face he has ever seen, with your eyes sparkling under the lantern lights, laughing so genuinely that it seems to brighten everything around you— including him. You smile so brightly at him, as if you’ve known him for years despite only meeting three minutes ago. Somehow, he doesn’t want to be the one taking that happiness away from you.
You don’t even look at him properly— still swept up in the festive spirit, you lace your fingers through his as you beam up at him, gently pulling him along as you let the melody dictate your moves. For a moment, he was taken aback by how natural you take his hands. And instead of pulling away, he lets you lead him, quietly following your sways. Your movements began to match with each other, as though you’ve danced together countless of times.
After almost ten minutes of dancing, the upbeat melody gradually fades into something softer— more intimate. The lively twirls come to an end as everyone naturally slows their pace to match the music. You and your partner do the same, letting go of each other’s hands, you gently slide your hands to rest around his neck, while his hands settle at your waist.
Only then you are able to look at him properly. Your eyes drift from his spiky ash-blond hair, down to his striking carmine eyes that are already fixed on yours. His gaze is so deep, it feels as if he’s looking straight to your soul, leaving you completely starstruck.
He looks at you for a moment before glancing towards the bustling square behind you. Though the music has softened, the laughter and endless chatter is still there, making it difficult to have a peaceful conversation. When his gaze returns to yours, he leans in and whispers low enough for you to hear.
“Do you… want to get out of here?”
You don’t utter a response, only offering him a warm smile before nodding softly. He then gently slips his hands into yours, guiding you away from the festive lights as you two weave in through the crowd. He doesn’t lead you too far— only to a bench beneath a lantern at the edge of the square. From there, you can still see the couples dancing around the fountain, a crowd you two had been a part of not too long ago. It is close enough to still feel the festive aura, but also far enough for you two to enjoy a quiet conversation.
As both of you settle on a bench overlooking the crowd, neither of you speaks. The waves of cool evening air wash over the two of you, never expecting a moment of silence with a stranger under the moonlight to feel so comfortable.
The comfortable silence lingers for a little while before you turn to him, finally uttering your first words, “So… what do you think of the celebration?”
The man glances towards the busy square before answering, “Not bad.”
“Not bad?” You let out a small laugh. “This is the grandest celebration Novela has held in years.”
He slightly tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, “Is that so?”
“Of course!” You reply to him, looking fondly at the crowd. “This year marks the kingdom’s 300th anniversary of independence. The royal family spared no expense, inviting everyone to celebrate. They opened the festivities to visitors all over the continent.”
“That explains the crowds.”
“It’ll only get busier this weekend.” You say with a grin.
“Hm.”
“You’ll still be here this weekend… right?”
His carmine eyes meet yours once again, “I’ll be here all week.”
For reasons you can’t comprehend, his answer makes you smile. Somehow, the thought of seeing him again sometime this week fills you with excitement.
“What made you dance in the square, anyway? When I first bumped into you, I’d have sworn you’d rather be anywhere else.”
A quiet scoff escapes him, “Some dunce-faced idiot shoved me. Before I could complain, one of the dancers got a hold of me.”
You can’t help but laugh at him, remembering his irritated face with furrowed eyebrows, “That’s unfortunate.”
He folds his arms against his chest, “Remind me to knock his teeth the next time I see him.”
Your laughter only grows louder. “And yet… you still danced with me.”
He glances at you from the corner of his eye before looking back toward the square.
“You looked like you were enjoying it too much.”
“I was.” You admit and let out a small smile, “It’s one of the happiest moments I’ve ever had.”
He looks at you and studies your expression for a while. “Happiest enough to follow a complete stranger out here?”
“You dragged me here.” You reply to him as you quirk your eyebrow.
“...Fair.” He lets out a quiet laugh, “I could have led you somewhere no one could find.”
“But you didn’t.” You gesture towards the people around you, music still drifting through the air, the festive lights surround the fountain square still in view. “We’re still right here.”
His eyes follow the direction of your hand. After a brief moment, he shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “You’re a strange one.”
“Well…” You then turn towards him, tilting your head softly, a playful smile tugging at your lips. “This strange one has asked for your name, kind sir.”
“Katsuki.” He replies, almost amused at the way you refer to yourself.
“Sir Katsuki, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
With those words, you hold up your right hand towards him, your pinky out and raised— a small tradition in the Kingdom of Novela, one meant to symbolize trust between strangers meeting for the first time.
Yet instead of intertwining his pinky with yours as you expect, Katsuki reaches for your whole hand. His fingers gently wrap around yours, his grip is firm yet careful, and guides your hand to place it against his chest, right above where his heart is. He then slightly bows his head before uttering the words.
“May the honor of this meeting be one worth remembering.”
The gesture leaves you completely off guard. Heat rises to your face and the only thing you can focus on is his heartbeat, beating against your hand that still remains on his chest. You look at him and blink, still flustered by the difference in traditions.
“You—” Your voice wavers for a moment, then you clear your throat before trying again, “You’re not from here, are you?”
“Oh?” He tilts his head slightly, a hint of amusement flickers across his face. “What gave it away?”
“Your greeting. It isn’t the Novelan way.”
“You’re right about that.” A quiet chuckle escapes from him before confirming your suspicions. “I’m from Drakkon.”
“...Drakkon?” Your eyes widen slightly. “The land of the dragons?”
“Hm.”
“Then why travel all the way here?” You ask. “That’s quite a distance from Novela.”
One of his brows arches, “I thought everyone was invited to the festival?”
“You’re right, my apologies.”
He watches your reaction with a trace of amusement. “Teach me.”
“Teach you?”
“The Novelan way of greeting.”
“Oh!” A smile slowly forms on your face. “Very well, Sir Katsuki.”
You gently take his hand, guiding his pinky to intertwine with yours— a gesture passed down through generations of Novelans. With your pinkies linked, you meet his gaze.
“May this fortunate encounter be written on the pages of our lives.”
Katsuki’s gaze drifts down from your intertwined hands, back to your eyes, before repeating the phrase. “May this fortunate encounter be written on the pages of our lives.”
Before you can say anything else, a familiar voice screaming your name cuts through the air. You then turn toward the sound, and your eyes widen with a slight fear as you spot Ochako, running in through the crowd, with Tenya following close behind. Their expressions are a mixture of relief and concern.
“There you are!” Ochako calls out, slightly out of breath from the running. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
You let out a sheepish smile, lightly scratching your head.
“Sorry Ochako, I lost track of time.” You barely glance at Katsuki, and only now do you realize how long you’ve been sitting there with him.
Ochako follows your gaze, her eyes moving from you to the unfamiliar man beside you. A curious expression flickers across her face, but she says nothing… yet. Tenya, your other companion, straightens and offers Katsuki a respectful nod, acknowledging his presence.
Meanwhile, Katsuki remains quiet, his carmine eyes drifting towards your friends. His attention lingers on Tenya, who even beneath his cloak, still has an aura of undeniable strength. After his assessing glance, Katsuki comes to his own conclusion— Tenya must be a knight. He wonders, why is there a knight with you?
“Come on, let’s head back.” Ochako says gently before taking your hand. Before you can properly say your goodbyes to Katsuki, Ochako begins dragging you with her.
You then turn your back. Katsuki still remains where you left him, standing below the lantern’s glow. His eyes fix at you, as you walk farther away from him.
You offer him one last smile before your lips form into silent words.
“See you soon.”
Katsuki offers a faint smile, almost too subtle to notice, before giving you a small nod and turns away. His figure slowly disappears through the shadows of the night. Leaving you with hope that your paths might cross again.
On the second day of the week, you wander through the streets of Novela— taking in the surroundings from the colorful flower garlands hanging overhead to the beautifully decorated shops lining the streets. Somewhere along the way, you catch yourself wondering if you’ll ever see that traveler from Drakkon once again. After all, he did say he will be here the whole week.
As you round the corner of a busy street, your footsteps come to an abrupt halt. Standing among the commoners, quietly browsing a merchant’s stall filled with trinkets, is a familiar figure with ash-blond hair. As if sensing your presence, he lifts his head, and his carmine eyes find yours through the crowd.
You make your way toward Katsuki and once you’re close enough, you ask, “What are you getting?”
Katsuki glances down at the assortment of trinkets before looking back at you.
“Nothing.” He replies casually. “Just looking.”
You nod at him before asking, “Actually… Do you happen to know where the bookstore is?”
One of Katsuki’s eyebrows quirk upwards, “Aren’t you the local here?”
“I am.” You reply sheepishly, “But I rarely go out. Not familiar with stores.”
Katsuki just simply looks at you, as though wondering how someone could know so little about their own kingdom. He then clicks his tongue and turns away from the merchant stall.
“I’ll take you there.” Without waiting for your response, Katsuki begins walking. You quickly fall into step behind him, unable to hide the smile tugging at your lips.
After a few minutes of walking through the crowd, the two of you stop in front of a cozy little bookstore with its wooden sign creaking softly in the breeze. Before Katsuki can say a word, you grab his wrists and pull him inside. The familiar scent of parchment greets you, and a gentle smile paints your face.
Katsuki follows without resistance, watching as your eyes light up with excitement. He finds himself quietly observing you instead of the books around him. Amusement flickers across his face as he watches you skim the shelves, your fingers tracing the spines in search of an interesting book title. Before he realizes it, he’s smiling for the nth time since meeting you.
Your eyes wander from shelf to shelf until one title catches your attention. You pull the book out of the shelf and examine the cover. A grin slowly appears on your face.
“Oh? This looks interesting.”
“Hm?” Katsuki steps closer beside you, glancing over your shoulder.
You turn the cover toward him. How to Train Your Dragon.
The moment he reads the title, his eyebrows knit together. “What kind of nonsense is that?”
You let out a small laugh as you flip through the contents of the book. “Looks like a fantasy novel.”
“For children.” He corrects flatly.
“Do they have books like this in Drakkon?”
“We don’t need books on training dragons. We have instincts.”
You blink at him then slowly close the book. “That’s fascinating.”
Without a word, you make your way to the counter and purchase it. The shopkeeper wraps it neatly before handing it over. And instead of slipping it into your own bag, you hold it out towards Katsuki.
“Here.”
He stares first at the book, then at you, as if he is trying to understand what exactly you’re doing.
“What for?”
“Take it. You said Drakkon doesn’t have anything like it.”
“We have books. Educational books.” He lets out a scoff. “And you expect me to read a children’s book?”
“Why not?” You reply, pointing at a small stamp at the book cover. “It says here best seller.”
“Tch.” Katsuki just clicks his tongue but doesn’t argue more. He simply takes the book from your hand.
Watching Katsuki reluctantly accept your gift makes you smile, quietly amused at the thought of travel from the land of the dragons carrying around a children’s story about learning how to train one.
By the third evening of the week, the sun has long since set, leaving Novela bathed in the moonlight and the soft glow of lanterns scattered throughout the capital. Hoping to find a quieter spot away from the festive crowds, you wander slowly along the riverside path, the cool evening air brushing against your skin as you search for a place to light a lantern and send a wish to the stars.
You don’t expect to see anyone familiar. Yet as you make your way to a quieter area, a lone figure comes into view, leaning casually against the wooden railing overlooking the water, where countless lanterns sparkle in its reflection. Even from a distance, his spiky ash-blond hair is unmistakable, leading you to him once again.
“Katsuki?”
He turns around at the sound of his name, his eyes meeting yours immediately.
“You again?”
A smile finds its way onto your face as you walk closer, stopping just beside him and resting your forearms against the railing. Your eyes follow the lanterns floating into the night sky, carried by the wind. The sight never fails to captivate you despite how many times you’ve watched it through the years.
“Already done making your wish?”
His eyes drift from you, to the lantern by your hand, then to the lanterns overhead.
“What tradition is it this time?”
A chuckle escapes your lips. “Every lantern carries a wish.” You explain to Katsuki as you retrieve two blank slips of parchment from your drawstring pouch, offering one to him.
“We write whatever our hearts desire, put it inside the lantern, and let it fly into the night. It is said that a constellation watches over our dreams, reading every wish sent its way— and maybe, it may grant one.”
Katsuki studies the blank slip of parchment between his fingers before letting out a scoff. He looks upward to the sparkling lanterns already floating among the stars, sneering at the idea of this mysterious constellation the people of Novela believe in.
“So your kingdom leaves its wishes to some random thing in the sky?”
You just shake your head at his bluntness. “You don’t have to believe in it. Just hurry and write your wish.”
“How ridiculous.” He mutters under his breath. He then simply stares at the empty parchment, as if deciding if the tradition is worth indulging. Then with a deep and resigned sigh, he scribbles a few words, folds it neatly and places it back into your waiting hand.
You then tuck both wishes inside the lantern. Together, you kneel beside the small brazier and light up the lantern. As warm air slowly fills the paperwalls, the once-folded lantern gradually opens and comes to life between your hands.
For a moment, the two of you hold it together. Then with a shared glance and a gentle push, you release the lantern into the night. The lantern slowly rises in the sky, joining hundreds of others carrying different wishes. The two of you watch in silence as the lantern carrying your dreams drift farther and farther until it becomes impossible to tell which light was yours from the hundreds in the same endless sky.
“You should head home.”
“What?”
Katsuki tilts his head towards a direction. “Your knight’s been staring intensely this way for a while.”
Confusion crosses your face before turning to look at the direction he’s referring to. Not far from the lantern vendor is Tenya, his expression is composed, his eyes quietly following your every movement as if making sure you never leave his sight.
“Knight?” You repeat a little too squeaky. “Oh— he’s not a knight.”
The words come out in a flustered way, followed by an awkward laugh. Katsuki studies your face for a moment, but says nothing else. He isn’t particularly interested in prying, but he has dealt with people enough to recognize when someone is trying just a little too hard to sound convincing.
Whether Tenya is a knight or not— it isn’t really any of his business.
By the fourth evening of the week, the festival below is as lively as ever, but you aren’t there celebrating with the crowd. Instead, you’ve made your way to the observatory, not too far from the center of the town. With the clear view of the stars, it has become your favorite place to escape whenever life becomes too unbearing.
As you climb the final flight of stairs, you’re surprised to see that someone has already claimed your favorite spot. It’s that ash-blond again, looking quietly at the stars above, as if fate itself loves the idea of the two of you meeting.
“Katsuki.”
He glances over his shoulder before returning his attention to the stars.
“You again? I swear you’re following me.”
“Was that your lantern wish?” You let out a soft laugh as you move to stand beside him. “And what are you doing here? The observatory’s closed tonight."
“Yet you’re here.”
The words catch you off guard. “I know the owner.”
Katsuki just hums in acknowledgement, neither questioning nor doubting your answer.
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Katsuki breaks the silence.
“So…” His gaze never leaving the stars, “Is there a Novelan lesson tonight?”
“Novelan lesson?”
“Everytime we meet, you end up teaching me another one of your kingdom’s traditions.”
“That’s true.” You let out a laugh, unable to argue with him. Thinking back, he isn’t wrong. You remember your first meeting— dancing under the moonlight in merriment, exchanging of Novelan and Drakkonian greetings, and the lighting of wish lanterns together.
“Well…” You start your lessons, “I suppose I could teach you about the stars.”
You step closer to the observatory’s terrace, gaze lifting towards the endless artwork of the stars spread across the night sky. You raise your hand to the sky, pointing towards a cluster of stars shaped like an open book.
“Do you see that constellation?” You ask softly, “The one that resembles a book.”
Katsuki follows the direction of your finger, he gives a small nod. “What about it?”
“We believe it was the very first constellation to awaken.” Your eyes never leave the stars as you speak. “We call it the Oldest Dream.”
Katsuki glances at you from the corner of his eye, silently urging you to go on.
“In Novela, we believe every wish entrusted to the stars eventually finds its way to the Oldest Dream. As it was believed that the world began because someone dreamed it into existence.” You continue softly, shuddering slightly as the cool evening breeze brushes past. “Every story in every life— none of it would exist if there’s no one dreaming for it.”
You go on as you tell Katsuki the tale of your favorite constellation. “So whenever we write wishes to the stars, we’re entrusting them to the one who first imagined this world, hoping it will help us achieve our own dreams.”
“And have your dreams ever come true?”
“Sometimes,” You reply to him. “And sometimes… perhaps it simply wasn’t looking my way.” Your eyes lift once more to the constellation above.
“They say the Oldest Dream watches over all of us. It couldn’t possibly keep its eyes on me all the time.”
Katsuki falls silent beside you, his gaze lingering on the constellation. He has never been one for fairy tales or legends, yet hearing you speak of the Oldest Dream leaves him strangely fascinated with it. For the first time that night, he wonders if there truly is someone watching from beyond the stars— someone who can see him standing beside you, then he hopes it hears his dream to remain by your side for many chapters yet to come.
“...Have dinner with me tomorrow.”
You turn to him, momentarily stunned by the sudden invitation. And yet, a smile blooms across your face, similar to that one night the two of you met. “I’d like that.”
As much as you love the idea of having dinner with Katsuki, you can’t help but feel a little bittersweet. Perhaps it’s because, deep down, Katsuki will eventually return to Drakkon, the distant kingdom he calls home. Tomorrow may be the last evening the two of you have together before your paths diverge. If that’s the case, then you’d rather spend it getting to know him a little better.
The fifth evening of the week arrives sooner than you’d hope. As the last rays of sunlight disappear, the town begins to glow in warm lights and lanterns once more— the celebration never seems to end. You are dressed elegantly, though not extravagant enough to draw the attention of the wrong people, just pretty enough for a date.
As you make your way to the heart of the square, your eyes immediately land on a familiar figure waiting by the fountain. Katsuki stands with his hands tucked casually into his pockets, dressed far more neatly than he ever was. Dressed in an attire that blends effortlessly with the people of Novela. Perhaps that is why you mistook him for a local when you first met.
Katsuki spots you through the crowd and immediately makes his way toward you, a hint of impatience evident in his stride. When he finally stops before you, he simply looks at you, his gaze softening as you greet him with a smile. It lingers for a moment longer than he intends, realizing the gaze, he clicks his tongue and looks away.
“You don’t look too bad.”
“Thank you, Katsuki.” Warmth blooms across your cheeks, and your smile grows just a little brighter. “You look rather dashing yourself.”
Katsuki just silently offers you his hand. You slip into it without hesitations, and the two of you leave the lively fountain behind. Together, you walk through the stores until an elegant building comes to view. Quill’s Dining Hall— one of the renowned establishments in Novela, frequented by nobles, merchants, scholars, and wealthy commoners alike.
As you settle into your seats, your eyes wander over the decorations in the hall. “Isn’t it expensive here?”
Katsuki barely glances at the menu before setting it aside, “It’s fine. I can afford it.”
“Are you a merchant?” You ask with an amused smile. “You certainly carry yourself like someone who was born into wealth.”
Katsuki just smirks in your way, “I’ll let you keep imagining.”
Before long, the two of you order dinner. Conversation flows as easily as it always does whenever you’re together, exchanging stories about Novela and Drakkon. And the meal passes far more quickly than either of you realizes, yet neither of you seems ready for the evening to end.
You two leave the warmth of the dining hall and wander towards a nearby park, where festival lights are strung from one post to another. Katsuki spots a bench beneath an ancient tree and leads you there. The two of you watch the night sky in silence, wondering which stars are listening to you tonight. You lean back against the bench, your eyes tracing the familiar constellations, but your thoughts are elsewhere entirely.
A deep sigh escapes your lips and Katsuki turns his head to look at you.
“Something on your mind?”
You hesitate on speaking, nervously pinching the folds of your dress. “I’m…” A small laugh escapes your lips, though it lacks your usual gleam. “I’m not sure if I could say it.”
“Just say it.”
Slowly, you turn to face Katsuki, and when your eyes meet, you can feel the blood rushing to your face. At last, you speak so softly that Katsuki could barely hear your words.
“Do you think it’s possible to fall in love… in only a week’s time?”
Your question catches Katsuki off guard, and he simply stares at you. The usual confidence in expression is replaced by quiet bewilderment. He opens his mouth, only to close it again, seeming to forget the words he was about to say. The silence from Katsuki makes your resolve begin to waver.
You let out a nervous laugh and quickly wave your hand in dismissal. “...Actually, forget I asked.”
Just as you’re about to turn away from him, Katsuki lets out a low chuckle.
“It’s possible.”
You raise a brow at him, silently prompting him to continue.
“It’s a short time… but it’s enough.” A faint smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “At least, that’s what I believe.”
Relief washes over you, and your face gleamed with happiness. The weight on your chest finally begins to lift. You gently take Katsuki’s hand into yours. “Somewhere between the dancing in the square to sharing lantern wishes and exchanging stories…” You pause, drawing in a deep breath. “I fell in love with you.”
“And when I realized it, I knew… I wanted you to lead my story with me.”
The world seems to fall silent as Katsuki studies your expression. Unexpectedly, Katsuki intertwines his fingers with yours, gripping it tightly, as though afraid you’ll slip away.
“I came to Novela for a reason.” His gaze softens in a way you’ve never seen before, “Instead, I found someone I’d rather not leave behind.”
Your eyes glisten beneath the lantern lights, but your breath catches when you hear Katsuki’s next words. “Come with me… Come to Drakkon.”
Your smile falters. Slowly, you slip your hand from his.
“...I can’t.”
A crease forms between Katsuki’s brows.
“Why?”
You lower your gaze to your lap, your fingers absentmindedly fidget the folds of your dress. “It’s not because I don’t want to…” You look at him with a bittersweet smile, “My father would never approve.”
Katsuki remains silent, patiently waiting.
“You’ve only known me as a wandering girl enjoying the festival.” You continue. “But my father expects me to marry someone of noble standing.”
“To him, I can’t marry a commoner… let alone a merchant.”
His carmine eyes narrow by just a fraction.
“Then I’ll give him what he wants.”
An inelegant snort escapes your lips. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is.”
You smile softly at Katsuki, though you still shake your head at his confidence.
“If you want my father’s blessing…” You begin, teasing him by nudging gently, “Then buy yourself a noble title. Though, I doubt my father would settle for a baron or a viscount.”
You mean those words as an impossible joke. Deep down, you know even the wealthiest merchants would struggle to obtain a title higher than a viscount, no matter how much gold they possess.
Katsuki, however, doesn’t laugh. He simply looks at you. He looks at you with a softened gaze, a sight so tender, it makes your heart ache all the more. You meet his eyes, trying your best to return his faint smile. But the longer you look at him, the harder it is to hold yourself.
Before you realize it, warm tears slip down your cheeks and Katsuki’s expression immediately changes.
“Hey—”
He reaches up to cup your face with surprising gentleness. His thumbs brush against your cheeks, wiping away your tears. Despite the callouses earned from years of training, his touch is filled with tenderness.
“Don’t cry.”
His voice wavers slightly.
“It’ll be okay.”
You give him a small nod. The ache in your heart still remains, but the warmth from his hands reminds you that at least, for this moment, he is still here with you.
“Katsuki…”
He hums softly, waiting for you.
“Will you… kiss me?”
The corner of Katsuki’s lips lifts into a familiar smirk.
“Gladly.”
His hand remains against your cheeks as he leans in closer until the distance between you disappears. His soft lips meet yours in a tender kiss, reeling in the warmth of every memory you’ve shared underneath the Novelan skies.
When he finally pulls away, he gazes gently at you. He brushes away the stray strands of hair from your face, before slowly letting his fingers trail down, lightly brushing against your lips.
“Katsuki…”
You wonder if the Oldest Dream you hold so dearly is watching you at this very moment.
“I’ll see you soon.”
You hope the Oldest Dream takes pity on you tonight, because all you can do is dream of a future written beside Katsuki. Because if it’s not him, then you wouldn’t want to dream of anyone at all.
“Until our next chapter is written.”
The month-long celebration comes to its final evening— the night of the Royal Ball. Unlike the festivities held in the streets, this is an occasion reserved for the royals and nobles from different kingdoms across the continent. It is also an occasion where your mother, the queen, insists on parading you across the ballroom floor with eligible bachelors, all in hopes that you might finally agree to marry.
You stand before a full-length mirror, the girl who wandered Novela’s streets in a simple commoner’s outfit is gone. In her place stands the Royal Princess of Novel, dressed in an elegant white-and-gold ball gown— the colors reserved for the royal family. A tiara adorns your head, catching the light with every subtle movement, with jewels shimmering like stars.
A gentle knock interrupts your thoughts. “May I come in?”
The familiar voice brings a smile to your face. The door opens, and the Crown Prince— your brother, enters the room. He’s dressed much like you, in white-and-gold. A proud smile appears on his face as he takes in the sight of you.
“You look beautiful.”
“You look rather handsome as well, brother.”
With a quiet chuckle, he offers you his arm. You gladly take it and you two make your way through the palace corridors. At the top of the grand staircase are the King and Queen of Novela— your parents, patiently waiting for your arrival. As the herald announces the royal family, the four of you descend the staircase into the grand ballroom.
Seated upon the raised platform beside your family, you overlook the elegant ballroom as nobles and royalty from every kingdom continue to arrive. One by one, the herald announces each distinguished guest, with their titles echoing through the grand hall before they step forward to exchange formal greetings with your parents— a ceremony you’ve witnessed countless of times.
The herald strikes his staff against the floor for the nth time, announcing yet another noble.
“His Majesty, Katsuki Bakugou, Dragon King of Drakkon!”
The name Katsuki, followed by the word Drakkon, instantly pulls you from your thoughts. Your breath catches as the grand doors open once more.
A man draped in regal black and crimson ceremonial outfit steps into the ballroom, a cloak trimmed with pale fur resting upon his broad shoulders. An elegant-crafted crown, befitting the Dragon King, adorns his ash-blond hair. With every step he takes carries an unmistakable authority of a sovereign as a small entourage of Drakkon’s royal guards follow close behind, each bearing the kingdom’s dragon crest upon their shoulders.
Your heart pounds loudly against your chest.
Dragon… King?
Katsuki’s gaze finds yours for a brief moment. A faith smirk tugs at his lips, before he turns his attention back to your parents.
“Your Majesties.”
He places a fist over his heart, before inclining his head— a greeting in Drakkonian manner.
“Drakkon appreciates the invitation. I won’t burden you with endless pleasantries, but may the friendship between our kingdoms continue to flourish.”
“The honor is ours,” Your father replies with a gracious smile. “Drakkon has always been an ally of Novela. We are delighted to welcome Your Majesty to our kingdom.”
Your mother offers him a warm smile, “We trust your stay has been pleasant.”
“It has exceeded my expectations,” Katsuki answers.
Your father lets out a hearty laugh. “If there’s anything we can do to make Your Majesty’s visit even more memorable, you need only ask.”
“There is one thing.”
The entire hall falls silent as every eye follows Katsuki while he steps closer to the royal platform, stopping directly before you.
“If Her Royal Highness would honor me with a dance…” Even as he bows slightly, his eyes never leave yours, “...I believe my night will be complete.”
So I've been sitting on this idea for a while and finally decided to just go for it — a mini series where each fic takes a song and treats the lyrics as an actual blueprint for the story. Not just mood, not just a title borrowed for aesthetic — every line has to show up somewhere: the plot, the dialogue, the shape of the whole scene.
(No, it's not all Shawn Mendes — that's just how the first few happened to line up. Any artist, any genre, whatever fits the character.)
Each part is a standalone oneshot (reader-insert, second person), paired with a different Hogwarts character. No need to read in order — nothing carries over except the format itself.
the lineup now!:
🌻 Treat You Better (Shawn Mendes) — George Weasley — up now!
☀️ There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back (Shawn Mendes) — Cedric Diggory — coming soon
🖤 Stitches (Shawn Mendes) — Harry Potter — coming soon
💛 Bad Reputation (Shawn Mendes) — Fred Weasley — coming soon
🕰️ The Way I Loved You (Taylor Swift) — Matheo Riddle — coming soon
More are coming, and here's where you come in: if there's a song + character combo you've been dying to see, send it my way. I can't promise I'll get to every single one, but that's honestly half the fun of this — seeing what people come up with. Drop it in my inbox and it might end up being the next one on shuffle. 🎶
requests open! — check back here for updates as new parts go up
So I've been sitting on this idea for a while and finally decided to just go for it — a mini series where each fic takes a song and treats the lyrics as an actual blueprint for the story. Not just mood, not just a title borrowed for aesthetic — every line has to show up somewhere: the plot, the dialogue, the shape of the whole scene.
(No, it's not all Shawn Mendes — that's just how the first few happened to line up. Any artist, any genre, whatever fits the character.)
Each part is a standalone oneshot (reader-insert, second person), paired with a different Hogwarts character. No need to read in order — nothing carries over except the format itself.
the lineup now!:
🌻 Treat You Better (Shawn Mendes) — George Weasley — up now!
☀️ There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back (Shawn Mendes) — Cedric Diggory — coming soon
🖤 Stitches (Shawn Mendes) — Harry Potter — coming soon
💛 Bad Reputation (Shawn Mendes) — Fred Weasley — coming soon
🕰️ The Way I Loved You (Taylor Swift) — Matheo Riddle — coming soon
More are coming, and here's where you come in: if there's a song + character combo you've been dying to see, send it my way. I can't promise I'll get to every single one, but that's honestly half the fun of this — seeing what people come up with. Drop it in my inbox and it might end up being the next one on shuffle. 🎶
requests open! — check back here for updates as new parts go up
pairing: George Weasley x fem!reader (reader-insert, 2nd person)
word count: ~20,3K
welcome to the first installment!
Here's the concept: each fic in this series takes a song and treats the lyrics as a literal blueprint. Every line becomes something that has to show up in the story somehow, whether it's the plot, the dialogue, or just the mood of a scene.
Each installment is a standalone oneshot, always reader-insert, second person, paired with a different Hogwarts character — so you don't need to read them in order, and nothing carries over between them except the format.
Got a song + character combo you're dying to see? Send it my way! I can't promise I'll get to all of them, but I love a good challenge, and half the fun of this series is seeing what other people's brains come up with. Drop it in my inbox with the song and the character you're picturing, and who knows — it might be the next one on shuffle.
CW: arranged marriage, emotional and physical abuse, possessive/controlling behavior from a side character, one non-graphic on-page fistfight between male characters, one Quidditch-related injury, mild language, brief non-explicit shirtless moment, GEORGE WEASLEY IS A YEARNER😫💗, angst with a happy ending
summary: Everyone thinks you and Marcus Flint started dating in third year. Nobody — not even your closest housemates — knows about the contract your parents signed when you were nine. George Weasley doesn't know it either. All he knows is that the sweetest girl in Hogwarts is dimming herself for a boy who doesn't deserve the smallest piece of her, and it's driving him out of his mind.
More of “On shuffle!” here.
Nobody expected the Sorting Hat to shout "HUFFLEPUFF" for a girl with your bloodline.
George remembers hearing about it before he ever properly met you — the whispers in his first year, the way older purebloods had murmured that it was almost scandalous, a girl from a family like yours ending up anywhere but Slytherin. Blood like yours was supposed to go one way. It never occurred to any of them that a person could be too gentle for a house that prized ambition over kindness.
You were a sunbeam in a castle made of gray stone. The type of girl who carried extra vials of Pepperup Potion in your satchel during exam week just to hand them out to stressed first-years, regardless of their house. You were the one who thanked the house-elves by name whenever a fresh platter of pumpkin pasties appeared on the Great Hall tables.
George thought it made perfect sense. He'd decided that the first time he saw you, years before he ever spoke to you — third year, maybe, when you were just a small girl at the Hufflepuff table sneaking extra treacle tart to a first-year who'd been crying. You had this warmth to you that didn't fit anywhere near a dungeon. You were built for a house that valued loyalty over cunning, for common rooms with fireplaces instead of ambition.
He didn't think much else about it back then. You were just a girl two years below him, a name he half-knew, a face that smiled easily.
That was before Marcus Flint happened to you.
Nobody could say exactly when it started. There was no grand announcement, no obvious beginning — just, sometime around your third year, people started saying you were 'dating the Slytherin Quidditch bloke,' and it stuck, and nobody questioned it, because why would they? George didn't question it either, not at first. He just noticed, slowly, that the girl who used to laugh loud enough to be heard three tables away had gotten quieter. That your smiles had started looking rehearsed instead of real.
He spent more time than he'd ever admit trying to work out why.
I won't lie to you
I know he's just not right for you
You could still remember, if you let yourself, the version of you that had believed it might actually work.
Your parents told you about the arrangement when you were nine, in that cold room with too many candles, and you'd cried about it for exactly one night before deciding — with the particular stubborn optimism only a nine-year-old can manage — that you'd simply make the best of it. You didn't get a choice in whether. You could still, you told yourself, have some say in how.
So when you actually met Marcus properly, the summer before third year, you went looking for reasons to like him. And for a while, you found some. He could be charming when he wanted to be — funny, even, in a sharp-edged way, the kind of confident that felt like safety when you were fourteen and desperate for this to be survivable. He walked you around his family's grounds and pointed out constellations he probably didn't actually know the names of, and you laughed at his jokes, and let yourself believe, quietly, privately, that maybe this was what falling in love was supposed to feel like. Slow. Earned. Something you built together instead of something handed to you.
You told exactly no one about the contract. It was easier to let people believe you'd simply started dating, the way ordinary couples did — easier to pretend, even to yourself, that it was a choice rather than a sentence.
For a while, the pretending almost worked.
Then, slowly, in ways so small you couldn't point to any single moment as the turning point, he started closing doors you hadn't realized were open. He stopped asking what you thought. He started deciding things for you — where you'd sit, who you'd talk to, how long was too long to laugh with someone who wasn't him — and every time you tried to speak up about it, he made it feel like you were the one being difficult, the one making a simple arrangement complicated.
You learned to make yourself smaller. Quieter. You learned which topics led to arguments and avoided them entirely, learned which of your own opinions were safe to have out loud and which needed to stay folded up inside you where they couldn't cause trouble. Somewhere in that slow, patient erosion, the girl who used to laugh loud simply stopped existing in front of other people, replaced by someone careful, someone contained, someone who'd traded her whole self for the smallest possible chance of peace.
You didn't notice how much of yourself you'd given up until George Weasley sat down on a wobbly library bench and made you laugh before you'd even decided to let him.
It wasn't dramatic, the way it came back. It wasn't some single lightning-bolt moment. It was small, at first — a joke that startled a real laugh out of you before you could catch it, a boy who kept showing up in the gaps where you'd learned to expect no one. Piece by piece, without meaning to, George and Fred and the strange, loud, generous group gathering slowly around you began handing you back the parts of yourself you'd quietly packed away years before.
You didn't have a word for it yet, not really. You just knew that around them, you kept forgetting to be careful. And forgetting to be careful, you were starting to realize, felt a great deal like coming back to life.
And you can tell me if I'm off
But I see it on your face
When you say that he's the one that you want
George watched the Slytherin Quidditch trials from the top row of the stands, mostly out of boredom, partly because Fred had dared him to see if he could identify Slytherin’s flying weaknesses before the match against them.
You were there too, a few rows down, wrapped in a scarf that wasn't even green — small rebellion, George thought, and he liked you a little more for it.
He watched Flint didn't offer you a hand to help you up from the frozen wood. He didn't ask if you were cold. He simply unstrapped his heavy, mud-splattered leather arm-guards and dropped them directly into your lap with a dull thud. You flinched slightly at the weight, gathering the filthy leather against your clean yellow cloak as you stood up to follow him. George felt something ugly twist in his stomach that he didn't examine too closely.
If I were her boyfriend, he thought, leaning back against the stand rail, I'd have landed that broom and come straight for her instead of doing a victory lap for people who don't even like me.
If I were her boyfriend, I'd have noticed she brought a book to read because she gets bored watching drills, and I'd have asked her about it instead of assuming she was there just to watch me.
If I were her boyfriend—
"You're doing the thing again," Fred said from beside him, not even looking up from the notes he was scribbling about Flint's blocking technique.
"What thing."
"The thing where you plan out an entire relationship with a girl who doesn't know you exist yet."
"She knows I exist. I sit two tables away from her at every meal."
"Knowing your face and knowing you're constructing an entire fantasy boyfriend future around her are different things, mate."
George didn't argue, because Fred wasn't wrong, and there wasn't much point pretending otherwise with the one person who could always tell.
And you're spending all your time
In this wrong situation
And anytime you want it to stop
The first time George noticed the bruise, he hadn't spoken a single word to you yet.
It was small — the kind of thing most people wouldn't clock at all — a faint shadow along your upper arm, half-hidden by your sleeve, visible only because you'd reached up to return a book to a high shelf in the library and the fabric had shifted. George happened to be two tables away, ostensibly revising for a Charms test he had no intention of passing, and he went very still.
You didn't wince. You didn't even seem to notice him noticing. You just tugged your sleeve back down, automatic, practiced, like covering it was a reflex you'd built a long time ago.
George sat there for a full ten minutes after you'd gone, hands clenched under the table, something cold and furious settling into his chest that didn't fully leave him for weeks.
He hasn't introduced to you properly yet. He didn't know a single true thing about your life; your family, the contract nobody had told him existed. All he knew was a bruise on a girl's arm and the particular, practiced way she'd hidden it, and it was enough to make something in him go quiet and hard in a way it rarely did.
Whatever bloke did that, George thought, isn't a man. Full stop. There's no version of that sentence that ends any other way. A man doesn't put his hands on a girl. Ever. For any reason.
He didn't know yet that it was Flint. He found out three days later, from an offhand comment by one of the Slytherin Chasers in the corridor — something about Flint being "in a mood since his girl mouthed off at him and he take care of it" — and the pieces slid together with a sickening click.
George didn't do anything about it that week. There was nothing yet to do, no opening, no excuse that wouldn't out you both in ways neither of you were ready for. But two weeks later, Gryffindor played Slytherin, and George — who took his job as Beater seriously in a way he rarely admitted out loud — hit a Bludger dead into Marcus Flint's ribs so hard the crack was audible from the top stands.
"Foul!" the Slytherin Captain howled, and Madam Hooch blew her whistle, and George raised both hands in perfectly innocent confusion.
"He flew right into the trajectory," George said, all wide-eyed and reasonable. "I can't help where the man decides to put his own body, you know?”
Nobody could prove otherwise. Flint spent the rest of that match wincing every time he turned too fast, and George, soaring past him at one point, leaned in just close enough to be heard over the wind.
"Careful," George said, pleasant as anything. "I wouldn't want you to put me in a mood by mouthing off at me and having to take care of it"
Flint didn't understand the warning yet — not really, not fully.
It wasn't proportionate. It wasn't even close to proportionate, one bruise for one bludger. But it was the only currency George had access to at the time, and he spent it without a flicker of guilt.
After that, he started watching more closely, and the more closely he watched, the worse it got.
He watched Flint walk straight past you in a crowded corridor without so much as a glance, deep in conversation with a pair of seventh-year Slytherin girls, one of whom laughed at something he'd said with her hand lingering a beat too long on his arm. You'd been three steps behind him the entire time, carrying a stack of books he hadn't offered to help with, and you didn't say a word about any of it — just adjusted your grip and kept walking, like it was simply weather to be endured.
He watched him, another time, at a table near the greenhouses, laughing loudly at some Ravenclaw girl's joke while you sat beside him in total silence, present in body only, your attention drifting somewhere far away from the conversation you'd been excluded from entirely. Nobody at that table addressed you once in twenty minutes. George counted, from where he sat pretending to revise two tables over, too furious to actually read a single word of his own notes.
He watched him forget dates near-miss twice in one week, waving off your gentle reminder about a Hogsmeade plan he'd suggested himself, calling you 'dramatic' when you pointed out he'd forgotten, like remembering things about you was an unreasonable request rather than the bare minimum anyone should expect.
"He didn't even apologize," George told Fred that night, pacing instead of sitting, too wound up to stay still. "Just called her dramatic and walked off to go flirt with someone else. Like she's furniture that occasionally has feelings he finds inconvenient."
"You've got to stop keeping score if it's going to do this to you every time," Fred said, not unkindly.
"I can't stop. That's the problem. I see it and it just — sits in me, all day, every time, and I don't know what to do with it except get angrier." George dropped onto his bed, dragging both hands down his face. "The worst part is she doesn't even react! Like she's stopped expecting anything else. That's what he's done to her — not just the unkindness itself, but training her to expect nothing better, so it doesn't even register as unkindness to her anymore. Just Tuesday."
"So do something about it."
"I am doing something about it," George said. "I will show up for her, It's not dramatic, it's not going to fix it overnight, but it's the only thing I've got that doesn't make it worse. I can't drag her away from him. I can't make the choice for her. All I can do is make sure that when she's ready to notice there's another option—that I can treat her better!, and I'm still standing right there, having not given up."
Fred didn't have a clever response to that. He just nodded, and let his brother sit with his own frustration a while longer, because some things didn't have a joke that fixed them.
I know I can treat you better
Than he can
The first time he actually spoke to you, it wasn't smooth, and it wasn't planned, and he liked to think about that later as proof it was real — not some scheme, not a line, just him showing up in a hallway because he saw you sitting on the floor outside an empty classroom, knees pulled up, staring at nothing.
"You're blocking the good bench," he said, nodding at the bench nobody ever used because it wobbled, sitting down next to you before you could tell him not to.
"There's no one else here."
"I know. It's still the good bench. Principle of the thing."
You almost smiled. Almost.
"You're George," you said. Not a question.
"I'm offended you had to specify. Most people just guess and get it wrong fifty percent of the time."
"Fred's got a scar over his eyebrow. You don't."
"You've been paying attention."
"You're both loud. It's hard not to."
George grinned, delighted despite himself. "So you have noticed me."
"I notice most things," you said, and something in the way you said it made him think you meant it as a small, sad confession rather than a flirtation. "I'm just quiet about what I notice."
He filed that away. He'd learn later how true it was — that you saw everything, everyone, every unkindness and every small cruelty happening around you, and said nothing about any of it, least of all the ones happening to you.
"Well," George said, standing back up, offering you a hand you didn't take. "For the record — whatever you're doing sitting on cold floors outside empty classrooms looking like that — I'd rather be doing something else with you. Just so it's on file."
You blinked at him. "On file for what?"
"For whenever you get tired of the current idiot you're with," he said, easy, light, like it cost him nothing to say, though it very much did. "I'll be around."
He left before you could answer, because he'd learned enough about you in five minutes to know that pushing you into a response you weren't ready for would only make you retreat further.
And any girl like you deserves a gentleman
After that, George made a habit of it — showing up, small and unannounced, in the gaps where you were otherwise alone.
He was, by his own admission, absolutely shameless about it.
"You've got flour on your nose, by the way," he told you once after breakfast, entirely unprompted, when you very much did not have flour on your nose. You touched your face anyway, and he grinned like he'd won something. "Made you check! That's the whole trick."
"That was a lie."
"It was a bit you didn't know you needed."
Another time, passing you in the corridor between classes, he fell into step beside you without asking. "Walk you to Herbology?"
"I'm going the other way."
"I know. I'll walk you the wrong way, then. Very gallant of me."
You laughed — actually laughed, quick and surprised, like it had escaped before you could stop it — and George filed that sound away too, added it to the small, growing collection of things about you he refused to forget.
He wasn't subtle about the flirting, either, not really. It wasn't the kind of flirting designed to trap you or corner you into anything — it was lighter than that, easier, an open hand rather than a closed one.
"You know," he said once, walking you partway to a class neither of them needed him for, "if I ever got the chance, I'd tell you you're the best-looking girl in this castle at least twice a day. Purely as public information. People deserve to be informed."
"George."
"I'm not saying anything you don't already know."
"I don't, actually."
That stopped him for a second — the genuine surprise in your voice, like the idea had never once occurred to you as true. George filed that away too, uglier and more useful than the rest: proof of exactly how little you'd been told, and by exactly whom.
He started turning up in small ways after that, ways that had nothing to do with flirting and everything to do with simply being there.
When Flint stood you up one afternoon — some excuse about practice running long, though you both suspected it was just carelessness — George appeared five minutes later, hands in his pockets, entirely too casual to be a coincidence.
"Fancy seeing you here," he said, like he hadn't clearly been watching the entrance from somewhere out of sight, waiting to see if you'd need someone.
"Were you following me?"
"I was passing. Extremely coincidentally. In the general direction of where I have no classes in." He fell into step beside you anyway. "Walk you back up?"
He carried your books whenever he had half an excuse to, sliding them out from under your arm without asking, grumbling theatrically about the weight of a single textbook like it was a physical trial. He learned your schedule without ever admitting he'd learned it, appearing at the end of corridors at exactly the right moments, always with some flimsy excuse for why he happened to be there.
Tell me why are we wasting time
On all your wasted crying
When you should be with me instead?
He didn't have much to give you, not compared to what your family or Flint's could offer — no expensive trinkets, no grand gestures, no vaults of gold behind the gifts. What he had was attention, and a talent for turning very small things into things that mattered.
One random day, he gave you a single Sneezewort blossom, nicked from Greenhouse Three, wrapped clumsily in a torn page of his own Charms notes.
"I know it's not much," he said, suddenly a little unsure of himself, which was rare enough that you noticed. "Haven't got the kind of money that buys the fancy stuff. Figured you'd rather have something someone actually thought about than something someone just bought, though."
You kept that flower pressed inside a book for the rest of the year, and never told him so, though he probably knew.
I know I can treat you better
Better than he can
He started keeping a private, furious tally — not of Flint's cruelties this time, but of every ordinary kindness he'd give you if he ever got the chance, said mostly to Fred, mostly late at night, mostly with more heat than either of them expected.
"How does that idiot have a girl like that?" George said one night, staring at the dormitory ceiling, voice low and hard in the dark. "She's probably the most beautiful girl in this entire school, Fred, and he just — looks at anyone else! Ravenclaw girls, seventh-year Slytherins, doesn't matter who, so long as it isn't her."
"George—"
"If it were me," George went on, like he hadn't heard him, "I'd make sure she knew she was beautiful every single day. I wouldn't want to look at anyone else. Not once. Not for a second. I don't understand how you have her and just — don't look at her."
Fred didn't say anything for a while.
"You're properly gone on her, aren't you," he said eventually, quiet, no teasing left in it.
"Yeah," George said, to the ceiling, to the dark, to nobody but himself, really. "Yeah, I think I properly am."
He got a fuller measure of exactly what he was up against a week later, in the corridor outside the Charms classroom, when he came around the corner in time to hear Flint's voice, low and cutting, aimed at you while a small cluster of his friends looked on.
"You embarrassed me at breakfast," Flint was saying, close to your ear in that way that looked almost intimate to anyone not paying attention, though George had learned by now exactly what it actually was. "Correcting me in front of people. Do that again and see what happens."
"I only said the date was wrong, Marcus, it wasn't even—"
"I don't care if you were right. You don't correct me. Ever. It makes you look like you think you're clever, and it makes me look like I can't control my own girlfriend, and neither of those things is acceptable." His mouth curled, ugly and dismissive. "Honestly, sometimes I don't know why I bother. You're lucky I bother at all, given what you bring to this."
George's hands had curled into fists before he'd even decided to move, and it took every ounce of restraint he had left not to close the distance between them right there in the corridor. But George forced himself to stay where he was, jaw tight, watching you nod along to something that should never have needed an apology in the first place.
He found you an hour later, alone by the lake, and didn't say anything about what he'd overheard, not directly. He just sat down beside you, close enough to be a presence without crowding you, and waited.
"You heard that," you said eventually, not a question.
"I heard that."
"I'm sorry you had to."
"Don't," George said, quiet but firm. "Don't apologize for what he said. You didn't do anything wrong. You corrected a wrong date. That's not a crime, that's just — being right." He exhaled, some of the tightness easing out of his shoulders now that it was just the two of you. "I hate watching this. I want you to know that. Not because I think less of you for staying — I don't, not for a second — but because every time I see it, I have to fight the urge to do something considerably less clever than talking to you."
"I know."
"I'm not saying it to guilt you. I promise. I just—" He looked out at the water instead of at you, giving the words somewhere else to land. "I just wish, every single day, that you could see yourself the way I see you. Because from where I'm sitting, you're the best person in this whole castle, and it costs me something every time I watch someone treat you like you're lucky to be tolerated."
You didn't answer that right away. But you leaned, just slightly, until your shoulder rested against his, and he let the silence hold both of you for a long while, content just to be near you, even when there was nothing left to say that would fix any of it.
I'll stop time for you
The second you say you'd like me too
He channeled some of that fury into more productive outlets. Flint's Quidditch gloves turned a violent, unremovable shade of pink two days before a match, for reasons the coach never did work out. His broom polish mysteriously stopped working the same week, leaving his Nimbus dull and streaky no matter how hard his teammates scrubbed it. George never claimed responsibility, and never denied it either, and simply wore the smallest, most satisfied smile every time Flint complained loudly about it.
"You didn't," you said to him once, biting back a laugh, having pieced it together same as everyone else eventually did.
"Didn't what?"
"George."
"I have no idea what you're referring to. I'm simply a bystander who happens to find the whole thing very funny."
I just wanna give you the loving that you're missing
Baby, just to wake up with you
Would be everything I need and this could be so different
Tell me what you want to do
The Burrow at Christmas was loud in the particular way it always was — Fred and George's latest invention setting off intermittent small explosions in the shed, Ginny and Ron arguing over the last of the good chocolate, Molly moving through the kitchen like a small, determined hurricane, refusing anyone's help and complaining the entire time that nobody ever helped her.
George found himself, more than once that holiday, standing at the kitchen window doing absolutely nothing useful, staring out at the snow-covered garden without actually seeing it.
Molly noticed. Molly always noticed.
"You've gone quiet on me," she said, on the third day, catching him alone while she peeled potatoes at a pace that made the knife nothing but a blur. "That's not like you. Fred's been complaining you're no fun to prank people with this week. Says your heart's not in it."
"My heart's fine."
"George."
He sighed, dropped into the chair across from her, picked up a potato he had no intention of peeling properly. "There's a girl."
"I gathered that much from the letters. Ginny mentions her these days." Molly didn't look up from her peeling, giving him the kind of space that made it easier to talk, the way she always did. "Tell me about her, then. Properly. Not just that she's pretty, I assume you've covered that part yourself plenty."
George turned the potato over in his hands, trying to find the right place to start.
"She's kind," he said finally. "Properly kind, not the performing kind some people do because it looks good. She remembers the names of house-elves. She used to sit with first-years crying about homesick letters and just — stay, until they felt better, not because anyone was watching. She notices when other people are struggling before they've said a word about it."
"That's a good start."
"She's funny, too, when she lets herself be. Dry, unexpected — the kind of funny that sneaks up on you because she doesn't perform it, she just says the truest thing in the room and it happens to also be hilarious." George found himself smiling without meaning to. "And she's brave in a way she doesn't seem to know about yet. Properly brave. Not the loud kind. The kind where you keep getting back up after something's tried to grind you down for years, and you don't even seem to realize that's what bravery looks like."
Molly set down her knife.
"She sounds like someone worth losing your heart to," she said, gently.
"She's with someone else," George said, and the words came out heavier than he meant them to. "Has been for years.I think something isn’t right with him, though she's never said as much — just something about it doesn't sit right, the way she talks about him, the way she goes quiet whenever his name comes up. He's not good to her, Mum. Not even a little. And she stays anyway, and I don't understand it, and it's driving me half out of my mind watching it happen."
"Have you told her any of this? How you feel?"
"Bits of it. Not all of it. I don't want to be one more person pushing her toward a decision she has to make on her own terms, in her own time. I just—" George exhaled, frustrated with himself. "I just want her to know there's somewhere else to go, if she ever decides she wants to go there. I don't need her to choose me right this second. I just need her to know the door's open."
Molly reached across the table and covered his hand with hers, flour and all.
"That," she said, "is exactly the kind of love worth having, George Weasley. The patient kind. The kind that doesn't demand anything back before it's ready to be given." She squeezed his hand once, then picked her knife back up, businesslike again, though her eyes stayed soft. "You bring her round sometime, if she ever wants to come. This house has room for anyone who needs it. You know that."
"I know."
"Good." Molly nodded, satisfied, already moving on to the next potato. "Now go help your brother before that shed catches fire properly. I can hear him plotting something reckless from here."
George left the kitchen lighter than he'd entered it, though the ache of missing you — actually missing you, a whole two weeks of not hearing your laugh or watching you making those little faces of disagreement when Flint or someone else said stupid things you didn't agree with — hadn't gotten any smaller. If anything, saying it all out loud to his mother had only made it more real: that whatever this was, it wasn't some passing thing he'd talk himself out of by. He was properly, hopelessly gone on you, and he didn't especially want to be talked out of it even if he could.
He wrote you a letter that night, longer than he meant it to be, and tore up the first three drafts because they all sounded too much like things he wasn't ready to say yet. The one he finally sent just told you about the exploding shed, and asked if the elves had let you help with the holiday baking of your house, and signed off, simply, 'missing your terrible taste in jokes. — G.’
You wrote back within the week, and George read the letter four times before he let himself put it down.
Cause I know I can treat you better than he can
And any girl like you deserves a gentleman
The Slytherin party that spring was exactly the kind of event you'd learned to dread — too many people to impress, too many careful conversations you had to stand quietly beside without contributing to. Flint had brought you as an accessory, the way he always did, introduced you to exactly two people before abandoning you near the refreshments to go network with a group of seventh-years who could supposedly help his father's business.
You watched him laugh too loud at something a Ravenclaw girl said, one hand braced against the wall beside her in a way that had nothing platonic about it, and you felt the familiar, tired resignation settle over you — the specific exhaustion of being technically accompanied and entirely alone at the same time.
"This seat taken?"
You turned to find George, looking entirely too comfortable for someone who definitely hadn't been invited, holding two glasses of something sparkling and passing you one without asking if you wanted it.
"How did you even get in here?"
"Fred's very convincing when he wants to be. Also I may have told the door it was very important I deliver a message." He dropped into the seat next to you, glancing pointedly toward where Flint still stood far too close to the Ravenclaw girl. "Charming. He does know you're still in the room, doesn't he?"
"He gets caught up," you said, automatic, the excuse worn smooth from years of practice. "It's not personal. He's just—"
"If I were your boyfriend," George said, easy, conversational, like he was commenting on the weather rather than saying something that made your chest go tight, "I wouldn't leave you alone at a party for longer than it takes to get you a drink. I definitely wouldn't leave you alone at a party to go stand two inches from someone else's face."
"George."
"I'm just saying. Purely hypothetically. If I were the one who got to bring you somewhere, I don't think I'd manage to look at anything else in the room the entire night."
You laughed, a little unsteady while your cheeks blushed slightly, and reached for something to say that would put the conversation back on familiar ground. "He's under a lot of pressure. His father expects things from him."
"Doesn't mean he gets to leave you standing by like a coat rack."
You opened your mouth to defend Flint again — the reflex was so old, so automatic, that the words were halfway out before you registered you didn't actually believe them anymore. You closed your mouth instead.
Across the room, Flint had noticed you weren't alone anymore. He didn't come over — didn't want the scene, not here, not in front of people whose opinions mattered to his father — but he caught your eye once, just long enough to mouth something ugly your way: ‘pathetic’, ‘Mudblood’ and then, a beat later, ‘desperate’, like watching you laugh with someone else was proof of some failing in you rather than in him. You looked away first, the old shame rising automatic and fast, before you made yourself look back at George instead.
You didn't want to pay attention to Marcus, not now. You'd deal with the consequences later.
George noticed. He always noticed.
"You don't have to do that," he said, gentler now. "The explaining-him-away thing. Not with me."
"Old habit," you admitted, quiet.
"Well. I'm happy to help you break it." He bumped his shoulder against yours, nodded toward the little band playing somewhere across the room. "Dance with me instead of arguing about him."
"George, I can't, he'll—"
"He's still over there," George said, glancing over, "very invested in whatever he's saying to someone who isn't you. I don't think he'll notice one dance."
You should have said no. You knew, somewhere underneath the part of you that was already standing, already letting him take your hand, that this was exactly the kind of small rebellion that could cost you later. But George was looking at you like you were the only interesting thing in the entire room, and it had been so long since anyone had looked at you like that, and you found you didn't actually want to say no.
You danced badly, both of you, laughing more than you moved with any real rhythm, and for the length of one song, you forgot entirely to watch the door for Flint.
It was somewhere in the middle of that dance, spinning clumsily under George's arm with your own laugh still ringing in your ears, that you understood something you'd been quietly avoiding understanding for weeks.
You liked him. Not the careful, hopeful way you'd once tried to like Marcus, building affection out of nothing because you needed it to be there. This was different — easier, and truer, and entirely involuntary. George made you laugh without trying. George noticed the smallest things about you and remembered them. George looked at you like your presence in a room was a good thing rather than an obligation to be managed.
You realized, with something between panic and relief, that you were falling for him — not because you'd decided to, not because it was convenient or arranged or the sensible thing to do, but because for the first time in years, someone was giving you, freely and without being asked, exactly what you'd always hoped Marcus might eventually give you and never had. It hadn't grown out of desperation this time. It had grown out of nothing but George simply, consistently, showing up.
You didn't say any of that out loud. But you didn't let go of his hand right away either, even after the song ended, and George didn't seem to mind that at all.
Tell me, why are we wasting time on all your wasted cryin'
When you should be with me instead?
I know I can treat you better, better than he can
Fred cornered him about it two days later, in the empty dormitory, with none of his usual joking around the edges of it.
"I need to say something, and I need you to actually hear it instead of making a joke to get out of hearing it."
George, halfway through pulling on a jumper, paused. "That's an ominous opening."
"I'm serious, George." Fred sat down heavily on the end of his own bed, facing him properly. "I watched you at that party. I've watched you all year, actually, going quietly out of your mind over a girl who — and I say this because I love you, and because somebody has to — keeps choosing to go back to him. Every time. Every single time something happens, every time he does something rotten, she goes back. And you keep showing up anyway, keep hoping, keep getting your heart handed back to you in pieces, and I don't understand why you keep doing that to yourself."
George didn't answer right away. He sat down on his own bed, across from his brother, and let the question actually land instead of deflecting it the way he usually would.
"She's not choosing him," George said finally, quiet. "That's the thing you're not seeing, Fred. It's not a choice, not really — not the kind where she's weighing him against me and picking him. There's something underneath all of it I don't fully understand yet, something that isn't about wanting him at all. I don't think she's ever once gotten to choose anything in her whole life. Not really. Not where it counts."
"That doesn't mean it's your job to wait around for her to figure that out."
"Maybe it isn't," George admitted. "Maybe you're right, and I'm an idiot, and I should cut my losses and find some nice girl who's actually available to be chosen. But I don't want to, Fred. That's the honest answer. I don't want to stop, even knowing it might not go anywhere, because the alternative is watching her disappear into whatever that bloke's turning her into and doing nothing about it, and I can't do that. I'd rather love her without getting anything back than not love her at all and pretend that was ever a real option for me."
Fred studied him for a long moment, something shifting in his expression — the confusing anger gone entirely now, replaced with something gentler.
"You really do love her," he said. "Not just fancy her. Actually love her."
"Yeah," George said, and it didn't feel strange to say it out loud anymore, not the way it had months ago in the dark. "Yeah, I do."
"Well." Fred exhaled, dragging a hand through his hair. "Then I suppose I'll stop asking you to give it up. But I'm not going to stop worrying about you either. That's the deal. You get to be a lovesick idiot, and I get to be the brother who worries about the lovesick idiot."
"Fair trade."
"And if it doesn't work out—"
"Fred."
"I'm just saying, if it doesn't—"
"It's going to work out," George said, with more certainty than he probably had any right to. "I don't know when. I don't know how. But I'm not giving up on her just because it's taking longer than I'd like. She's worth the wait. She's worth all of it."
Fred didn't argue with that. He just reached over and shoved George's shoulder, the closest thing to affection either of them ever bothered translating into words, and let the subject drop.
Give me a sign, take my hand, we'll be fine
Promise, I won't let you down
He found you in the kitchens on a Tuesday near midnight, which was not where he expected to find anyone, seeing as he'd only gone down there himself in search of an illicit snack.
You were flour to the elbow, laughing — actually laughing, the loud unguarded kind George hadn't heard from you in the normal days— while a small elf named Tibby directed you on folding something delicate into the morning's pastry batter.
"You're supposed to be asleep," George said, leaning in the doorway.
You startled, then relaxed when you saw it was him. "You're supposed to be asleep too."
"I'm never asleep. Ask anyone. It's part of my mystique." He wandered over, peering at the tray of half-finished pastries. "What's the occasion?"
"No occasion. I just like it down here." You handed him a warm roll without being asked, like it was obvious he'd want one, and something about that small automatic generosity — offering before he could even ask — hit George somewhere soft. "The elves let me help sometimes. Nobody minds if I get flour everywhere down here. Nobody expects anything from me down here."
"I'd expect things from you," George said, mouth full of stolen roll. "I'd expect you to make me one of those every week, for starters."
"That's not the kind of expectation I meant."
"I know," he said, quieter now. "That's sort of the point I was making. Down here, up there, wherever — nobody should be expecting you to be anything other than exactly what you already are."
You looked at him for a long moment, flour on your cheek, something unreadable in your face, and George thought — not for the first time — that he would very much like to be the person who got to see that unguarded version of you every single day, and not just on stolen Tuesday midnights in a kitchen full of elves.
It happened first in Charms, of all places — Professor Flitwick pairing you with Ron for a practical, and somewhere between the two of you failing spectacularly at the same charm four times running, you'd started laughing, properly, helplessly, at Ron's increasingly dramatic hand gestures.
"I'm doing exactly what the book says!"
"You're doing an interpretive dance, is what you're doing."
"It's a technique—"
By the end of the lesson, Harry and Hermione had drifted over too, drawn by the noise, and the four of you left the classroom together still laughing about it, and for one full hour, walking down the corridor surrounded by people who wanted nothing from you except your company, you forgot entirely to feel small.
After that, in the Gryffindor common room Ron was who said out loud what everyone was thinking about you.
"It's mental, is what it is," Ron announced, apropos of nothing, while Ginny looked up from her Charms essay and Harry, and Fred, and Hermione glanced over from the next sofa. "A girl that sweet, and she doesn't have a single proper mate to her name. Just trails around after Flint's lot like she's an accessory."
head. "I've never actually seen her sit with them at meals. She's always at the Slytherin table, or alone."
"I talked to her today," Hermione offered. "She's lovely. Genuinely lovely. I don't understand why she doesn't have more people around her."
"Because she spends every waking hour orbiting a bloke who barely acknowledges she's there," George said, sharper than he meant to.
The room went a little quiet at that. Harry looked between George and Fred with the particular expression he wore when he was piecing something together.
"You fancy her," Harry said. Not a question either — apparently that was just how people talked to George these days.
"I think she deserves better than what she's getting," George said, which wasn't a denial, and everyone in the room knew it wasn't.
"Well," Hermione said, decisive in the way she got about injustices large and small, "From now on we'll help her get out of there, give her more perspective!. It's ridiculous that she doesn't have anyone."
That was how it started properly — not George's doing, not really, though he'd take the credit forever after. It was Hermione, cornering you after a class to ask if you wanted to study together. It was Ron, of all people, offering you his notes—the one that he steal from hermione—when you missed a class. It was small, easy inclusion, offered without conditions, the exact opposite of everything Flint had ever given you.
By the time winter came around, you'd become something like a fixture at the edge of their group — not entirely one of them yet, but no longer entirely alone either. Like a careful habit, avoiding letting Marcus see you happy for too long.
Hermione was seeking you out in the library some evenings, ostensibly to compare Arithmancy notes, though the conversation always drifted somewhere more honest than homework. It was Hermione, in fact, who first noticed the way you apologized for things that weren't your fault, the reflexive sorry that crept into sentences that didn't need one.
"You don't have to do that, you know," Hermione said one evening, gently, after you'd apologized for asking her to repeat something. "Apologize for existing. You're allowed to just — take up the space you're already taking up."
"Old habit," you said, the same phrase you kept reaching for, the one that covered so much you didn't want to examine too closely.
"Well, I'd like to help you break it, if you'll let me." Hermione said it plainly, without any performance of pity, which was somehow what made it land. "You're cleverer than you give yourself credit for. I've seen your work. You talk yourself down constantly, and I don't understand why, because you don't have anything to talk yourself down about.
Ron, unexpectedly, taught you something else entirely — the easy, careless confidence of simply saying what you thought without rehearsing it first. He argued with you about Quidditch strategy one afternoon with the same blunt enthusiasm he argued with everyone, no careful edges, no walking on eggshells, and you found yourself arguing back just as bluntly before you'd even decided to let yourself.
"You're wrong, though," you told him, flatly, about some point regarding Chaser formations, and the words came out before you could soften them the way you'd learned to soften everything.
Ron blinked, then grinned, delighted rather than offended. "See, that's what I like about you. Most people just agree with me to end the discussion . Took you long enough to stop doing that."
It was Harry who said the quietest, truest thing, one time by the fire when the common room had mostly emptied out and it was just the two of you and a fire burning low.
"I used to think I didn't deserve the Weasleys, you know," Harry said, apropos of nothing, watching the flames rather than you. "Growing up the way I did — being told, one way or another, that I was a burden, that I should be grateful for scraps, that wanting more than that made me difficult. Took me a long time to understand that wasn't true. That I was allowed to want an actual family, not just tolerance."
You went very still, hearing something in that you recognized too well.
"I'm not saying I know you or your situation," Harry added, glancing over. "I don't, not really. But I know what it looks like, a person who's convinced themselves that being tolerated is the most they're allowed to want. And I just — I wanted you to know it's not true. Whatever's telling you that, it's lying."
You didn't have an answer for that, not right away. But you thought about it for days afterward, and something in you — something small and stubborn that had been buried a long time — started, very slowly, to believe him.
The first time you actually tested that belief, it was small, almost nothing: Flint, dismissing an opinion you'd offered about which restaurant to visit over a Hogsmeade weekend, waving you off with barely a glance. And instead of letting it go the way you always had, you heard yourself say, quietly but clearly, "I'd still like to go to the one I mentioned, actually.” He looked at you like you'd grown a second head. You didn't take it back.
It wasn't a large moment. Nobody but you would have even noticed it as one. But it was the first time in years you'd said what you wanted out loud and let the sentence stand, unretracted, and something about that small, stubborn insistence felt like the first real crack in a wall you'd spent years building around yourself.
The changing rooms incident was, George would insist for years afterward, not his fault.
You'd gone looking for Harry Potter to return a book, and someone had told you he was in the Gryffindor changing rooms after practice, and you hadn't thought twice before pushing the door open — because it was Harry you were looking for, and Harry you expected, and not, as it turned out, George, mid-way through pulling his shirt back on, very much not finished doing so.
You froze in the doorway. George, to his credit, did not.
He just stood there, shirt still hanging open, and let one corner of his mouth curl up, slow and entirely too pleased with himself.
"Like the view, love?"
"I— sorry, I was looking for Harry, I didn't— I'm so sorry—" You were already backing out, face burning, words tripping over each other in a way George found completely, unfairly charming.
"No need to apologize. I don't mind an audience."
"George!"
"I'm only saying! You're allowed to look, This view is just for y—"
But you'd already gone, the door swinging shut behind you, and George stood there a moment longer, grinning at absolutely nobody, thoroughly delighted with how flustered you'd been, and even more delighted by the fact that you hadn't looked away half as fast as you probably should have.
He brought it up for weeks afterward, at the worst possible moments, purely to watch you go red.
"You know," he'd say, entirely out of nowhere, over breakfast, "if you ever want a repeat viewing, I'm generally in the changing rooms after tuesday practice."
"I will never speak of that again."
"That's fine. I'll keep speaking of it for the both of us."
Your new hapiness didn't last. Flint found out — someone always told him things, eventually, some Slytherin eager to stay in his good books — and he cornered you outside the Great Hall that evening, jaw tight.
"I heard you are wandering the Gryffindor’s, laughing like an idiot with Potter's lot."
"They're nice, Marcus. We are just—"
"It's embarrassing," he cut in. "People talk. I don't need people saying my girlfriend's gone soft, tagging along after Gryffindors like a stray—you seem to have a particular fondness for the Weasleys lately, haven't you?" His hands tightened on your wrists, a sign of his losing patience.
Your heart beat fast, scared; it was dangerous for Marcus to pay too much attention to your affairs, because the few times he did, those people ended up hurt and gone. “"It's not what you think, don't worry about it." You stammered and felt silly for it.
"How curious, darling, because I think that's exactly what I think!" His hand flew quickly to your hair, pulling it and eliciting a sharp groan of pain from you. He brought his mouth close to your ear, murmuring, almost amused, but very annoyed. "Do you want to be a slut for the Weasleys? You're better than that, or you're supposed to be. Try acting like it." I let go of your hair and you staggered backward, rubbing the sore part of your scalp.
"I'm sorry," you said, because that was what you always said, the reflex worn smooth from years of use.
But that night, alone, you thought about Ron's ridiculous hand gestures, and Hermione's exasperated affection, and Harry's easy grin, and some small, private, unshakeable part of you decided: I'd will do it again. Tomorrow, if they'll have me. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Just know that you don't have to do this alone
Promise, I'll never let you down
George noticed the new bruise on a Sunday, catching a glimpse of it when your sleeve rode up as you reached for the teapot at breakfast — a mottled shadow along your forearm, days old already, the kind that had gone from angry purple to sickly yellow-green at the edges,courtesy of giving Marcus explanations about your new friendships.
He didn't say anything in front of everyone. He waited until the Great Hall had mostly emptied, then found you in the corridor outside, and didn't bother pretending he hadn't seen it.
"Come with me a second."
"George, I have class—"
"Two minutes." His voice was quiet, careful, none of his usual teasing lightness in it. "Please."
You followed him into an empty classroom, and he closed the door behind you, and for a moment neither of you said anything.
"Can I see it?" he asked finally.
You hesitated, then pulled your sleeve back without arguing, some tired part of you too worn down to keep hiding it from someone who'd clearly already seen.
George's jaw tightened at the sight of it, but he didn't say any of the furious things you could tell he was thinking. Instead, he reached into his bag and pulled out a small vial of dittany — the kind every student carried for class things, the kind that had absolutely nothing to do with why he'd brought it today.
"I'm not going to ask you to leave him," he said, quiet, uncoiling the cap slowly. "I know that's not mine to ask, not really, not until you're ready to make that decision on your own terms. But I can't just watch this happen to you and do nothing either. So. Can I?"
You nodded, and he took your arm gently, careful in a way that made your breath catch — his fingers barely there at all, like he was afraid of adding even the smallest hurt to a place that already had too much of it. He dabbed the dittany along the bruise with painstaking slowness, watching your face rather than the wound, checking constantly that he wasn't causing you any more pain.
"You don't have to do this," you said, quietly, watching his bent head, the careful concentration in his face.
"I know I don't have to." He didn't look up. "I want to. There's a difference." His thumb brushed, feather-light, over the uninjured skin just beside the bruise, an absent, unconscious gesture that made something in your chest go tight and warm all at once. "I can't fix the rest of it. I know that. I can't make him stop, and I can't make whatever it is that has you tied to that idiot disappear, and I can't make any of it simpler than it actually is. But I can do this much. I can be here for the small things, if you'll let me. Every time. However small they are.”
The classroom was very quiet. You were standing close enough to feel the warmth coming off him, close enough that if either of you leaned even slightly, something would shift between you that neither of you had said out loud yet. George seemed to feel it too — his hand slowed on your arm, lingered a beat longer than the task required, and for a moment his eyes lifted from the bruise to your face, and held there.
"There," he said finally, voice a little rough, capping the vial and stepping back before either of you did something neither of you were ready for yet. "Should fade faster now. Not gone. But faster."
"Thank you," you said, and it came out smaller than you meant it to, weighted with more than just the dittany.
"You don't have to thank me for that." George tucked the vial back into his bag, not quite meeting your eyes now, like he was giving himself a second to steady something in his own chest. "Just — let me keep doing it. Whatever this is. However long it takes you to decide you deserve better than bruises you have to hide. I'll be right here the whole time."
You left that classroom with your sleeve back down and your pulse doing something complicated and unfamiliar, and you spent the rest of the day only half paying attention to anything else, replaying the particular gentleness of his hands, and wondering, not for the first time, what it might feel like to be touched like that by someone who never once made you flinch first.
Cause I know I can treat you better than he can
And any girl like you deserves a gentleman
The Gryffindor-Slytherin match was the one George would replay in his head for years afterward, for more reasons than the scoreline.
Gryffindor won, decisively, and George caught the tail end of it from the air with his broom under him and his blood still running hot from the game, and when he looked down at the stands, scanning without meaning to, he found you exactly where you always sat — a few rows up from the Slytherin end, close enough to Flint's family box to look like you belonged there, far enough to look like you didn't.
He winked at you. Pure instinct, pure victory-high showmanship, the kind of thing he'd have done at anyone in that moment — except it wasn't anyone, it was you, and he meant it the way he meant most things where you were concerned, which was to say: entirely.
Flint saw it.
George didn't clock that until he'd landed, boots hitting the pitch, teammates clapping him on the back, and Flint came stalking over from the Slytherin end with his jaw set.
"Careful, Weasley," Flint said, low, standing too close the way he always did when he wanted to loom over someone. "Wouldn't go eyeing up someone else's girlfriend if I were you."
George raised an eyebrow, unbothered, riding the high of the win. "Didn't realize I needed your permission to enjoy beating your team by ninety points."
"That's not what I—"
"Because that's what just happened, if you missed it. Ninety points. You lot barely got the Quaffle past our Keeper the entire second half."
A few of the Gryffindors around them snorted. Flint's face went a shade darker.
"You think you're clever," Flint said.
"I think I'm the Beater who just won the match, and you're the one who didn't score in the last twenty minutes. Those aren't opinions, mate, those are just facts written on a scoreboard."
George meant every word of that as exactly what it was — a jab about Quidditch, nothing more, because he'd decided a long time ago that he wasn't going to be the kind of person who talked about you like you were a trophy to be defended or fought over. That wasn't the point. You weren't a point to be scored. He wasn't going to make you into one just because Flint had started it.
But Flint wasn't finished, and when his attempts at riling George over the match kept failing to land, he reached for something else instead.
"Whatever," Flint said, and his mouth curled into something ugly. "Doesn't matter who's better at Quidditch. You can wink at her all you want, Weasley — doesn't change who she belongs to. She does what I tell her, when I tell her, and in a little while I'll have her on her knees sucking me off just because I say so; that's what you get with a girl who's learned her place. Wouldn't expect you to understand that — you've never had one."
The words hung there, filthy and casual, said like you were property already claimed rather than a person standing forty feet away who could probably hear at least some of this.
George didn't remember deciding to move. He just remembered his fist connecting with Flint's jaw, the jolt of impact running up his own arm, and the sudden roar of noise around them as half the pitch surged forward.
It wasn't clean. It wasn't heroic in the way stories make these things sound. It was two furious teenage boys throwing badly-aimed punches on churned-up grass, Flint's fist catching George's eyebrow and splitting it, George getting one good hit into Flint's ribs before Oliver Wood and other two Gryffindor's stopt him and one of the Slytherin Beaters hauled Marcus apart bodily.
"Get OFF me," George snarled, still trying to get another swing in even as they held him back by the shoulders.
"That's ENOUGH, both of you!"
Madam Hooch arrived within the minute, furious, docking points from both houses, threatening detentions for the rest of the term. George barely heard any of it. He was looking past her, to where you were standing frozen at the edge of the crowd, one hand pressed over your mouth, eyes wide with something that looked like horror and something else George couldn't quite name yet.
He hadn't done it to be a hero. That was the truth he'd tell you later, when you asked. He hadn't even really done it for you, not in the moment — it had been pure reflex, pure fury at hearing you spoken about like an object with no say in her own life. But looking at your face in that crowd, split lip and all, George couldn't bring himself to regret it.
Tell me, why are we wasting time on all your wasted cryin'
When you should be with me instead?
You found him afterward, in an empty corridor near the changing rooms, still pressing his sleeve to the cut above his eyebrow. You'd meant to check on him quickly and leave before anyone noticed you'd come at all.
You hadn't planned on him seeing your face first.
"What happened to your—" George's voice went hard the second he got a proper look at you, at the split in your lip you'd been trying to angle away from the torchlight. "Who did that."
"It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me. Was it him? Did he do that because of the match, because of—"
"George! please, just—" Your voice cracked, and you hated that it cracked, hated how quickly you'd reverted to managing everyone else's reaction instead of your own. "You need to stay away from him and me for a while. I mean it. I know what he's like when he's like this, and I don't want you anywhere near it."
"I don't care what he's like. I'm not the one who needs protecting here—"
"You don't understand what he's capable of!” you snapped, sharper than you meant to, fear making your voice thin. "I do. I've had years to learn it. So forgive me for not wanting the person I—" You stopped yourself, too late, the word already half out.
George went very still. "The person you what?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It clearly does, since you almost said it."
You pressed your hands over your face for a second, trying to hold something together that had been fraying for months. "Why do you even care this much?! Why does it matter to you what he does, what I put up with — you barely know me, George, not really, not the whole—"
"Because I could make you happier than he ever has!" George said, and it came out rawer than his usual easy charm, stripped of all its jokes. "*I can treat you better!* In about five minutes, probably. That's not me being arrogant, that's just true, and you know it's true, which is exactly why it's driving me out of my mind watching you go back to him after everything I've seen him do! So no — tell me why! Why do you stay? Why won't you just leave, if you know what he is?!"
Something in you broke open, all at once, months of careful containment giving way at once.
"Because I can't just leave, George!" The words came out louder than you intended, echoing down the empty corridor. "There's a contract! There has been since I was nine years old — my parents signed it, his parents signed it, and it isn't about whether I like him or whether he treats me well or whether some other boy could make me happier, because none of that has ever once been the point! I don't get to just decide I'd rather have something else! I never have!"
The silence that followed felt enormous.
George opened his mouth — to say what, you'd never know, not that day, because you were already moving past him, wiping angrily at your eyes, refusing to stay and watch whatever expression was forming on his face. Pity, maybe. Or worse, understanding, which somehow felt harder to survive.
"Don't," you said, when he reached for your arm. "Please don't. I can't do this right now."
You left him standing alone in the corridor, torchlight flickering over a truth he hadn't been meant to hear yet, at least not like that — not shouted, not bleeding out of you in a hallway with your lip still split and your hands still shaking.
It was weeks later, back on the library floor because the good bench was occupied for once, that George finally worked up the nerve to bring it up properly — carefully this time, none of the heat from that corridor left in his voice.
"Can I ask you something? and you don't have to answer if it's too much."
"You can ask."
"I haven't told anyone. What you said, in the corridor. About the…the thing" George kept his eyes on the book he wasn't reading, giving you room not to look at him if you needed it. "I just — I want to understand it properly, if you'll let me. Not the legal part. The rest of it. How you got from a nine-year-old who didn't have a choice to who you are now."
You were quiet for a moment, turning the corner of your book over in your hands.
"I actually thought it would work," you said finally, and the honesty of it surprised even you. "In third year, when it started properly — the being seen together part, not the part my parents arranged years before that — I thought, maybe this doesn't have to be terrible. Maybe if I try hard enough, he'll fall for me the way people are supposed to fall for each other. I really believed that for a while. I wanted it to be true so badly I convinced myself it already was."
"What changed?"
"Nothing changed. That's the thing." Your voice went flatter, more matter-of-fact, like you'd rehearsed the explanation to yourself so many times it had lost its sting. "He never did. I kept waiting for some version of him to show up — kinder, softer, someone who noticed things about me the way I noticed things about him — and it just never came. Every time I let myself hope, he'd do something that proved the hope wrong. A comment in front of his friends. Forgetting something I'd told him mattered. And you can only get your hope proven wrong so many times before you stop bothering to have it at all."
"So you just—"
"Settled," you said, before he could find a gentler word for it. "Decided this was what I got, and there wasn't much point wanting more, because wanting more just meant getting disappointed on a schedule instead of by surprise."
George didn't say anything clever. He didn't reach for the easy charm he used to fill silences. He just sat with that for a moment, letting it be as heavy as it actually was.
"That's not settling," he said eventually. "That's surviving something. Those aren't the same, even if they feel the same from the inside."
You looked up at him.
"I know it probably sounds pathetic. Hoping for that long over nothing."
"It doesn't sound pathetic." George's voice was steady, certain, none of its usual joking in it. "It sounds like you kept trying to love someone properly even when he never once tried to love you back. That's not a flaw in you. That's just proof of what you're capable of, wasted on someone who never deserved a second of it."
Something in your chest loosened, hearing it put that way — like a weight you'd carried alone for years had finally been named out loud by someone else, which somehow made it lighter.
"I'm not saying this to talk you into anything," George added, quieter now. "You don't owe me a single thing for saying it. I just needed you to hear that none of it was your fault. Not one part."
You were quiet for a while, processing that, before something else occurred to you.
"Can I ask you something now?"
"Turnabout's fair play."
"Aren't you afraid," you said, carefully, "of doing all of this — showing up, being patient, saying things like what you just said — and having it not matter in the end? Having me stay anyway, because of the contract, because I don't actually get a choice? Doesn't that scare you, putting this much of yourself into someone who might not ever be able to choose you back?"
George considered that for a long moment, and when he answered, his voice had lost some of its usual confidence, gone rawer and more honest than you were used to hearing from him.
"Terrifies me, if I'm honest," he admitted. "Every single day. I lie awake sometimes running through every version of this where it doesn't work out — where you end up somewhere I can't follow, where all of this turns out to have been for nothing. It's not a comfortable thing to sit with." He picked at a loose thread on his sleeve, not quite meeting your eyes. "But I decided a while ago that the alternative was worse. Not trying at all, just to protect myself from the possibility of losing something I never let myself have in the first place — that felt like a kind of cowardice I didn't want to live with. I'd rather love you and lose than never have loved you at all and called that safety."
"That's a very Gryffindor thing to say."
"I contain multitudes," George said, and the corner of his mouth twitched, some of his usual lightness creeping back in, though his eyes stayed serious. "But I mean it. Whatever happens with the contract, with your choice, with all of it — I'm not going anywhere unless you ask me to. I'm not keeping score of how long this takes. I'm not going to get tired of waiting and give up on you, the way everyone else in your life apparently has. That's not the kind of person I want to be, and it's definitely not the kind of person I want to be where you're concerned."
You looked at him for a long moment, something in your chest aching in a way that wasn't entirely sad.
"Nobody's ever said anything like that to me before," you said, quiet. "Not once. Not in my whole life."
"Well," George said, gentle, reaching over to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers lingering just slightly longer than necessary. "Get used to it. I intend to keep saying things like that for as long as you'll let me."
You didn't say anything back right away. But you leaned your head against his shoulder, there on the library floor, and he let you, and neither of you moved for a long while.
It started raining hard on the walk back from the library that night, sudden and cold, the kind of downpour the castle grounds never gave any warning for. You'd both bolted the last stretch back toward the courtyard, laughing despite yourselves. You two found shelter under the overhang near the greenhouses.
"You're freezing," George said, watching you try and fail to hide the shiver running through you.
"I'm fine."
"You're distinctly not fine. Here." He was already shrugging out of his jumper before you could argue, pulling it over your head without waiting for permission, and you let him, because the wool was warm from his body heat and you were, admittedly, freezing.
"You'll be cold now," you pointed out, voice muffled slightly by the collar.
"I run hot. Perks of being constantly furious at Marcus Flint, apparently. Keeps the blood pumping."
You laughed, and the sound of it in the quiet, rain-heavy dark did something to George's chest that he didn't examine too closely. He reached out, without quite deciding to, and brushed a strand of hair back from your face, his fingers lingering a beat too long at your temple.
Neither of you moved. The rain kept falling in a steady curtain just past the overhang, and the space between you had gone very small, very charged, the kind of quiet that felt like it was waiting for something to happen.
"George," you said, quietly, not quite a warning, not quite an invitation either.
"I know," he said, just as quiet, close enough now that you could feel the warmth radiating off him despite the rain, close enough that his voice had dropped into something lower, rougher than his usual easy cadence. "I'm not going to do anything you don't want. I just — I like standing this close to you. Is that alright?"
"That's alright," you said, and your own voice came out breathless in a way that surprised you.
He didn't kiss you. He wanted to — you could see it, plain as anything, in the way his eyes kept dropping to your mouth and back up, in the careful restraint visible in the line of his shoulders — but he didn't, because he'd meant what he said in before, about waiting, about not being one more person who took something from you before you were ready to give it freely.
Instead he took your hand, laced his fingers loosely through yours, and simply stood there with you under the overhang, watching the rain, saying nothing else for a long while.
"Thank you," you said eventually, "for not pushing."
"I'm not in any rush," George said, and squeezed your hand once, gentle. "I've got nowhere better to be than exactly here, waiting for exactly you, for however long that takes."
By the time the rain let up enough to risk the walk back to the castle, you'd stopped shivering from the cold entirely, though you hadn't quite let go of his jumper, or his hand, and neither of you seemed in any particular hurry to fix that.
He took you up to the Quidditch pitch one night, long after curfew, with nothing but a blanket he'd nicked from his dormitory and a bag of stolen kitchen biscuits by way of explanation.
"This is either very romantic or wildly against about six different school rules," you said, as he spread the blanket out on the grass near the center circle, the stands empty and silent around you, the sky overhead scattered thick with stars.
"Can't it be both?"
You lay back beside him, close enough that your shoulders touched, and looked up at a sky you'd never actually taken the time to properly look at before, not like this, not without somewhere else you were supposed to be or someone else you were supposed to be managing.
"I used to come up here alone sometimes," George admitted, after a while, voice quieter than his usual register. "Before any of this. Before you, I mean. Just to think. Fred doesn't always understand when I need quiet — not because he's not good at reading me, he's better at it than anyone, but because quiet's not really his language. I needed somewhere that was just mine."
"And now you're sharing it."
"Now I'm sharing it," he agreed, and turned his head to look at you instead of the sky. "Didn't think I would, honestly. Didn't think I'd want to. But I like having you in the places that are mine. Doesn't feel like losing something, sharing them with you. Feels like the opposite, actually."
You turned onto your side to face him properly, close enough now that you could see every freckle across his nose in the dim starlight, close enough that the space between you had gone taut with the same charged quiet as the rain-soaked overhang weeks before.
"Can I ask you something?" you said.
"Anything."
"Why me? Properly, I mean. Not the flattering version you shout out loud. The real one."
George considered that for a long moment, like he wanted to get the answer exactly right rather than reach for something easy.
"Because you make hard things look survivable," he said finally. "Because you're the kind of person who notices when someone else is hurting before they've said a word about it, even after everything that's been done to you. Because when you laugh — really laugh, the kind you don't let yourself do enough — it's the best sound I've ever heard, and I've made it my entire personality to try and cause it as often as possible." He reached out, brushed his thumb along your jaw, gentle. "Because I've spent this whole year watching you get smaller and smaller under someone who doesn't deserve the smallest piece of you, and every single time, some part of you kept fighting to stay whole anyway. That's not nothing. That's the bravest thing I've ever watched anyone do."
You didn't trust your voice enough to answer that properly, so instead you just closed the last of the distance between you and rested your forehead against his, breathing the same air for a long, quiet moment, neither of you rushing toward anything neither of you were ready for yet.
"One day," George murmured, barely more than breath, "I'm going to get to kiss you properly, under a sky like this one, and it's going to be because you chose it. Not because I pushed. Not because the moment demanded it. Because you wanted it exactly as much as I do."
"One day," you agreed, quietly, and it didn't feel like a maybe. It felt, for the first time in longer than you could remember, like a promise you actually believed.
You fell asleep like that eventually, tucked against his side under a stolen blanket on a Quidditch pitch you'd both be in serious trouble for if caught, and woke before dawn to sneak back inside, laughing quietly the whole way, already counting down the days until you could come back.
I know I can treat you better, better than he can, oh
Better than he can
Better than he can
The near-kiss happened on a Thursday, in the kitchens again, months into whatever this had quietly become between you.
You were laughing at something George had said — he could never remember what, later, only that it had been stupid, some joke about Peeves and a jar of pickled toads — and he'd reached out to brush flour off your cheek, the same easy gesture he'd made a dozen times before, except this time neither of you moved away.
The kitchen had gone very quiet around you. Somewhere behind you, an elf was humming while it kneaded dough, entirely oblivious. George's hand was still at your jaw, and you were still looking up at him, and for one long, suspended moment, it felt like the whole castle was holding its breath along with the two of you.
He leaned in. You didn't pull back.
It was Tibby the elf, cheerfully announcing that the cinnamon buns were burning, that broke whatever spell had settled over the room, and you both jumped back like you'd been caught doing something far worse than almost kissing in a kitchen at midnight.
"I should— the buns—" you stammered, cheeks burning deep reed, though you made no move toward the oven.
"Right. Buns. Very important. Very time-sensitive crisis," George said, equally useless, his ears gone red too.
You left not long after, flustered in a way George had never seen from you, murmuring something about it being late, and he let you go without pushing, even though every part of him wanted to follow you and ask what you were thinking, what you were feeling, whether the almost had meant to you what it had meant to him.
You spent that whole night, back in your dormitory, staring at your canopy and trying to work out what exactly had just nearly happened, and why some small, guilty part of you had wanted it to.
George didn't sleep much better. He lay awake replaying it in fragments — the warmth of your skin under his fingers, the way your breath had caught, the half-second before Tibby's voice broke the spell where he'd been so close he could have counted your eyelashes. He told himself, firmly, that he'd done the right thing letting you go without pushing. He mostly believed it. The rest of him spent the night wishing, quietly and uselessly, that the elf's timing had been just a little worse.
You avoided the kitchens for four days afterward, not out of regret exactly, but out of not knowing what to do with the size of what you'd felt. George noticed the absence, and didn't chase it, though it cost him something every night he didn't see you there.
It was you, in the end, who broke the silence — finding him in the library on the fifth day, sitting down across from him without quite meeting his eyes.
"I keep thinking about it," you admitted, quiet, fidgeting with the corner of a page. "The kitchens. I don't know what to do with that."
"You don't have to do anything with it," George said, gentle, setting his quill down to give you his full attention. "It happened. It meant something, I think, to both of us. That doesn't mean anything has to change today, or tomorrow, or on any particular schedule. We can just let it have happened."
"That's very reasonable of you."
"I contain reasonable moments, occasionally, against my better instincts." He tilted his head, studying you. "Can I ask you something, though? Not to pressure you. Just because I've been wondering."
"You can ask." You nodd, your heart pounding fast in your chest.
"Did you want me to close the distance? That night. Before Tibby ruined everything with her impeccable timing." He said it lightly, but there was something careful underneath it, some genuine uncertainty he was trying not to let show too much.
You thought about lying, about deflecting the way you'd learned to deflect everything that felt too dangerous to admit out loud. But George had spent over a year and a half being honest with you, patiently, consistently, without ever once demanding the same in return, and you found you didn't want to give him anything less than the truth.
"Yes," you said, simply. "I wanted it. I still want it, if I'm honest. I just don't know how to want something for myself yet, without it costing me something first."
George's expression softened into something you didn't have a word for yet — not quite relief, not quite joy, something gentler than both.
"It won't cost you anything with me," he said. "I promise you that. Whatever you decide, whenever you decide it — there's no bill coming due afterward. That's not how this works. Not with me."
You didn't say anything else. But you reached across the table and took his hand, and he held it like it was something precious, and for the rest of that afternoon, you sat together in the library doing very little actual studying, entirely content just to be near each other, waiting for whatever came next.
It was your birthday, and nobody remembered.
Not your parents, who hadn't sent so much as an owl in months beyond the occasional cold instruction about appearances and duty. Not Flint, who you'd stopped expecting anything from around your fourteenth birthday and hadn't been disappointed since, because you'd learned not to hope. Not even, it seemed, your own house, most of whom you'd drifted from without quite meaning to.
You hadn't told anyone the date on purpose. It felt easier that way — smaller stakes, less to be disappointed about.
Except somehow, Hermione had found out anyway—she would later admit to overhearing you mention it once, months prior, to Tibby in the kitchens, and filing it away for exactly this purpose—and by the time your Hogsmeade weekend rolled around, there was an entire quiet operation in motion that you knew nothing about.
You went to the village with Flint that morning, as arranged, as always — walking a respectful two feet behind him while he talked Quidditch strategy with his teammates and largely forgot you were there.
At one point, waiting outside Zonko's while Flint browsed something inside, you'd mentioned, carefully, lightly, that it was your birthday — a small test, some quiet part of you still hoping, even now, that he might surprise you.
"Is it?" Flint had said, barely glancing over, already turning back toward the window display. "Didn't realize we were doing birthdays. Get yourself something nice, then, if it matters that much to you." He hadn't offered to buy it. He hadn't offered anything at all beyond the barest acknowledgment that the date existed, and even that had come with faint irritation, like you'd inconvenienced him by mentioning it.
You'd resigned yourself to another birthday spent invisible, yes, but a part of you burned with rage, knowing, fervently wishing that you wished to be with your new friends, with George, any of them rather than with this idiot—That surprised you; you didn't just feel resignation, rather, you finally had the guts to feel anger, to know that you no longer wanted him in your life and now HE was your annoyance.
Then, outside Honeydukes, Ron "accidentally" spilled an entire bag of sugar quills directly into Flint's path, sending him into a fifteen-minute argument about whose fault the mess was, and by the time it resolved, you'd been quietly steered away by Ginny, who looped her arm through yours like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"You're supposed to have a birthday that isn't miserable for once. Move faster!, he'll notice the sugar quill thing was a diversion eventually."
The Three Broomsticks had been quietly commandeered. There was a small stack of gifts nobody had needed to buy expensive things for — Hermione's spare copy of a book she knew you'd been wanting to borrow, a bag of sweets from Ron "because everyone deserves sweets on their birthday, that's just science," a ridiculous joke-shop trinket from Fred that immediately started singing when you opened it, Harry giving you a notebook with your name engraved on it and on the back the verse 'you are not small', beautiful and thoughtful gifts.
George's gift was a small, carefully wrapped tin of the same cinnamon buns you always made together in the kitchens, except he'd apparently talked Tibby into teaching him the recipe in secret, and made them himself, badly, slightly burnt at the edges.
"They're not as good as yours," he admitted, sliding into the seat next to you. "But I figured you shouldn't have to make your own birthday treats."
You stared down at the slightly lopsided tin, throat tight, and it took you a long moment to trust your own voice.
"Nobody's ever done this," you said. "Any of this. Remembered. On purpose. Thank you so much, to all of you” You gave thanks, a bright smile on your face, your eyes watering.
"Well," George said, bumping his shoulder against yours, easy and warm. "Get used to it. This is what it's supposed to feel like, having people who notice you. We're not going to stop just because you're not used to it yet."
You spent the rest of the afternoon laughing — really laughing, the loud kind, the kind you'd almost forgotten you had in you — surrounded by five people who'd conspired an entire secret operation just to make sure you didn't spend your birthday invisible, and it was, without question, the best afternoon you'd had in years.
Near the end of it, while Ron and Fred argued loudly over the last of the sugar quills and Hermione and Harry tried, unsuccessfully, to referee, George pulled you aside for a moment, out onto the little corner overlooking the street.
"One more thing," he said, a little sheepish, reaching into his pocket. "It's not much. Wasn't planned, either, if I'm honest — I saw it in the window on the way here and couldn't walk past it."
It was a small enamel pin, shaped like a sunflower, the kind of cheap trinket that cost next to nothing and meant everything anyway.
"You once told me you liked sunflowers," George said, "because they turn toward the light instead of away from it, even on the cloudy days." He turned it over in his fingers before offering it to you properly. "Felt like it suited you. Turning toward the light even when you've had every reason not to."
You took it carefully, throat too tight to manage much of a response.
"Happy birthday," George said, softer now. "I know today's not really about presents. But I wanted you to have something that was just yours — not shared, not managed, not waiting to be taken away. Just a small, stupid flower that's entirely, unconditionally yours."
You pinned it to your collar right there, and wore it for the rest of the day, and long after that afternoon had ended, you kept it fastened somewhere on you nearly every day that followed — a small, quiet reminder that you were allowed to turn toward whatever light you found, however small it started out.
You ended it with Flint in April, in the Entrance Hall, in front of enough people that word reached the furthest corners of the castle within the hour.
George hadn't planned it, hadn't orchestrated it, hadn't even known it was coming — he only happened to be crossing the hall at the exact moment Flint made some careless, cutting remark about your family's and your body "usefulness" being the only reason he'd bothered with you at all, and something in you that had been quietly gathering strength for months finally, completely, snapped.
"You know what?," you said, and your voice didn't shake, not once, "I'm done. I'm done pretending this is anything, and I'm done letting you talk to me like I'm an inconvenience you're stuck tolerating. You've never once treated me like I mattered, Marcus, not for one single day, and I'm not spending one more doing this, You're mean, boring, unfaithful, and completely charmless, by Merlin! Any minute away from you is better!."
Flint's face went through several colors. "You!—you don't get to just—"
"I do, actually," you cut in, and something in your posture had changed, straightened, like you'd finally remembered you were allowed to take up space. "I get to decide I'm done being an arrangement instead of a person. Watch me."
"You'll regret this," Flint said, low, ugly, reaching for the only weapon he had left. "Your parents will hear about it by tonight. You'll lose everything. Nobody's going to want you after this — not with your name attached to a broken contract, not with the scandal that comes with it. You'll have nothing."
"Then I'll have nothing," you said, and the strange thing was, it didn't scare you the way it once would have. "I'd rather have nothing that's actually mine than everything that was never really mine to begin with. You made sure of that a long time ago, Marcus — you made sure there wasn't anything left here worth protecting. So no. I don't think I'll regret it. I think this is the first genuinely good decision I've made in years."
You thought, distantly, of Hermione's voice telling you that you were allowed to take up the space you already occupied. Of Ron's blunt, easy confidence, arguing without apologizing for having an opinion. Of Harry, quiet by the fire, telling you that wanting more than tolerance was never something you needed to earn. Of george telling you that ypu deserved someone better. It was their voices, more than your own, that had taught you how to say all of this without flinching — and yet the words that came out were entirely, finally, yours.
You walked away from him in front of half the school, spine straight, and didn't look back once, and George — who'd stopped dead a few feet away, absolutely transfixed — didn't move to help, didn't step in, didn't do a single thing except watch you fight your own battle and win it entirely on your own terms.
He caught up with you later, once you'd had time to breathe, once the shaking in your hands had mostly stopped.
"You didn't need me for that," he said, quiet, something like awe still in his voice.
"No," you agreed. "I didn't. But I think I needed you, and Fred, and Harry, and Ron, and Hermione, to get me to the person who could do it without you. Does that make sense?"
"Makes perfect sense," George said, softer now. "That's sort of how it's supposed to work, I think. Nobody gets brave entirely alone. They just get brave with enough people behind them that it starts to feel possible."
"Good," You said, and meant it completely.
"I'd have hated for that to be the story. Some bloke swooping in instead of you finally getting to do it yourself."
You looked at him properly then, really looked, and something settled into place that had been slowly building for the better part of a year.
"Buy me lunch, Weasley," you said, and it came out lighter than anything you'd said in years. "Since apparently you've been trying to convince me you'd treat me better this whole time." You teased.
"Only took you a year and a half to notice," George said, grinning like he'd won something far bigger than a Quidditch match, and offered you his arm.
Obviously George will treat you better than the other guy can!
He spent the following weeks in a state of near-insufferable smugness, introducing you to anyone who hadn't already heard, looping an arm around your shoulders at every meal, telling anyone within earshot some variation of "yeah, this is my girlfriend, took her long enough to see sense" with a grin too wide for his own face. You didn't mind the showing off. After years of being nobody's priority, being someone's proud, loud, obvious choice felt like sunlight after a long winter.
He introduced you to a group of bewildered second-years in the corridor one afternoon, entirely unprompted, for no reason other than that they happened to be standing there when the urge struck him.
"This is my girlfriend!" he announced, gesturing at you with the flourish of someone unveiling a prized trophy. "Best-looking girl in this castle. Also cleverer than me, which admittedly isn't saying much, but still, Can you believe she chose ME?."
"George, they don't even know who you are."
"They will now. That's the whole point of an introduction." He turned back to the thoroughly confused second-years, entirely unbothered. "Carry on. Spread the word if you like. I won't stop you."
Fred found the whole thing endlessly entertaining, and made absolutely no effort to let George forget it.
"He's been like this for a weeks," Fred informed you, gravely, at breakfast one morning, while George buttered your toast without being asked, an automatic gesture he no longer seemed to notice himself doing. "Introducing you as his girlfriend to house-elves. To ghosts. I caught him telling Nearly Headless Nick about you yesterday, in full detail, unprompted."
"Nick was very supportive," George said, entirely unrepentant. "He said we make a lovely couple. That's a five-hundred-year-old ghost's opinion, Fred. You don't just dismiss that kind of endorsement."
"I'm not dismissing it. I'm simply pointing out that my brother has become completely unbearable, and it's your fault, and I'd like the old George back at some point, if it's not too much trouble.
"Never," George said, cheerfully, pressing a kiss to your temple in a way that made Fred groan theatrically into his own breakfast. "You're stuck with this version now. Should've said something before you let her fall for me."
"I didn't let you do anything," Fred pointed out. "You did that entirely on your own, over the better part of a year, with alarming dedication."
"Exactly. Alarming dedication! It worked, didn't it?" George grinned at you, unbothered by his brother's exasperation, utterly delighted with how things had turned out. "Best decision I ever made, being embarrassingly persistent about a girl who was worth every bit of it."
You leaned into him, laughing, and found you didn't mind the audience at all — didn't mind being introduced to strangers and ghosts and anyone else George felt like telling, because for the first time in your life, someone wanted the whole world to know you belonged to each other, and there was nothing about that you needed to hide or manage or apologize for.
George, it turned out, had been keeping a mental list for the better part of this time of every small thing he'd do for you, if he ever got the chance, and now that he had it, he worked through that list with the single-minded determination he usually reserved for pranks.
He carried your books without being asked, and made a whole production of it, groaning theatrically about the weight until you laughed and swatted his arm. He pulled out your chair at meals, which made Fred cackle the first time he did it, and which George did anyway, every single time, without fail. He walked you to every class that was even remotely on his way, and several that weren't.
"You know Ancient Runes isn't anywhere near the Quidditch pitch," you pointed out once.
"Isn't it? Huh. Must've gotten turned around." He hadn't gotten turned around. You both knew it.
He kissed you for the first time properly a week after the lunch — slow, and a little uncertain despite all his usual confidence, like he wanted to make absolutely sure it was something you wanted too before he committed to it. When you kissed him back, he made a small, delighted sound against your mouth that he'd deny making for the rest of his life.
He took you on your first proper date that same week, and made no secret of the fact that he'd been planning it since long before you were officially his to plan anything for.
"I should warn you," he said, meeting you outside the Great Hall with an expression somewhere between nervous and pleased with himself, "this isn't going to be fancy. I haven't got Flint's kind of money to throw at impressing you. But I have got about a year's worth of ideas saved up, so hopefully that counts for something."
"If the date includes you, it sounds like a great plan" you replied, calming him down and making him blush.
It didn't need to be fancy. He'd gotten permission — through means he refused to fully explain — to use one of the smaller courtyards after hours, and strung it with fairy lights nicked from a decorations cupboard, and laid out a blanket with food smuggled up from the kitchens with Tibby's enthusiastic help: the good bread, a wheel of cheese, a stack of the cinnamon buns you'd taught him to make, and a bottle of butterbeer he'd saved his allowance to afford.
"George. This is—" You looked around at the small, lopsided magic of it, string lights swaying gently overhead, and found you didn't have a word ready for what it actually was.
"It's not much," he said again, that same nervous refrain he always reached for when he was giving you something that mattered to him.
"It's everything," you said, and meant it entirely. "Nobody's ever done this much thinking about what I'd like. Not once. Not in my whole life."
"Well." George pulled out the makeshift seat he'd arranged — an overturned crate with a cushion on it, absurd and perfect — with the exact same theatrical flourish he'd have used for a proper chair at a proper restaurant. "Get used to it. I intend to keep doing this kind of thing embarrassingly often."
He asked you real questions that night, the kind nobody had bothered asking in years — what you actually wanted to do after Hogwarts, not what your family expected of you; what made you happiest as a child, before any of the contract had touched your life; what you were afraid of, and what you weren't afraid of anymore, now that you'd already survived the worst of it. He listened to every answer like it mattered, like you mattered, without once glancing away to something more interesting happening elsewhere in the room.
"You're staring," you told him, halfway through the second cinnamon bun.
"I'm allowed to. You're my girlfriend now. There's a very short list of rules that come with that title, but staring at you as much as I like is definitely one of the perks."
"Is that in writing somewhere?"
"I'll draft something formal if you'd like. Very official. Ministry-approved stamp and everything."
You laughed, and he watched you do it with the same open, unguarded delight he always did, like your laugh was still the best thing that happened to him on any given day, even now that he got to hear it whenever he wanted.
By the time the fairy lights started to dim and the night grew properly cold, you'd talked for hours about nothing that mattered and everything that did, and George walked you back to the Hufflepuff common room with his jacket around your shoulders and his hand in yours the whole way, and kissed you goodnight slow and unhurried at your door, like he had every intention of doing exactly this again as many nights as you'd let him.
"Any girl deserves this," he told you, quiet, forehead resting against yours. "The being asked real questions. The being looked at like she's the only interesting thing in the room. The gentleman treatment, or whatever you want to call it. You especially deserve it, after everything. I just intend to be the one providing it from now on, if that's alright with you."
"That's more than alright with me," you said, and kissed him again before you let yourself go inside.
After that, he found endless small reasons to touch you — a hand at your waist, fingers laced with yours under tables, a kiss pressed to your temple in passing that he didn't even seem to think about, it just happened, constant and easy, like he'd been saving up months of restraint and had no intention of rationing it now.
The nicknames came almost immediately, and multiplied at an alarming rate.
"Love," he called you, and then "darling," and then, with increasing frequency, ridiculous things invented purely to make you laugh — "my star pupil" after you helped him with an essay, "menace," fondly, after you got him back for a prank with one of your own, "sunshine," said quietly, seriously, on the rare occasions he wasn't trying to be funny at all.
"You don't have to keep making up new ones," you told him once, laughing, after he'd called you three different things in the space of one breakfast.
"I've got a backlog," George said, entirely unrepentant. "Year and a half of nicknames I never got to use. I'm working through it."
"There's no rush."
"There's no rush," he agreed, threading his fingers through yours under the table, "but I've never claimed to be a patient man, love. Get used to that too."
Just like everything good, there were also bad moments; these were the most important to show you how much you had now that you didn't have before.
The letter from your parents arrived in May, cold and clipped as ever, informing you that word of the broken arrangement had reached them, that you had embarrassed the family, that you shouldn't expect their support going forward given your choices.
You read it alone in the owlery, and you cried — not because you regretted anything, but because some small, stubborn part of you had still hoped, right up until that letter, that there might be some version of your parents who would choose you over the contract, the status.
There wasn't. There never had been. But reading the words in ink made the truth of it undeniable in a way it hadn't been before.
George found you there an hour later, because Fred had come looking after you didn't show up to dinner, and George had known, somehow, exactly where to check.
"They're not going to change," you said, before he could ask, holding the letter out to him. "I think some part of me knew that. I just needed it in writing, I suppose."
George read it, jaw tight, and didn't say anything cruel about your parents even though he clearly wanted to.
"You're not losing a family," he said instead, carefully. "You're losing people who were never going to give you one in the first place. That's different."
"It doesn't feel different right now."
"I know," he said. "It will."
Molly Weasley's letter arrived three days later, and George had absolutely nothing to do with it — Ginny had written home about everything, the whole story, without telling George she was doing it, and Molly, predictably, hadn't wasted a single day once she'd heard.
The letter was addressed to you directly, in careful, warm handwriting:
*My dear girl,
Ginny's told me everything, and I want you to know first and foremost that none of what happened to you was your fault, and that you were brave to walk away from it. I know a bit about what it means to feel unwelcome in your own family — not the same as your situation, perhaps, but enough to understand the particular ache of it.
You should know there is a place for you here, at the Burrow, whenever you'd like it — for holidays, for summers, for any ordinary Tuesday you'd like company. Harry's been part of this family for years now without a drop of Weasley blood in him, and as far as I'm concerned, if we can make room for one more at that table, we can always make room for one once more. Our door doesn't check bloodlines before it opens, dear. It only checks whether you need somewhere warm to be.
Come whenever you like. I'll have the kettle on.
With love,
Molly Weasley*
You read it four times before you could speak, and then you cried again — a different kind of crying than the owlery tears, something looser and lighter, like a held breath finally released.
"She didn't have to do that," you told George later, letter still clutched in your hands.
"That's sort of the whole point of my mum," George said, smiling. "She doesn't do things because she has to. She does them because leaving someone out in the cold when there's room at her table would be worse than the extra washing up.".
You arrived at the Burrow for the first time on a warm afternoon in late June, standing nervously at the garden gate with a single trunk—The one you had at Hogwarts, and now being all you had— and a stomach full of nerves you couldn't quite talk yourself out of.
"You can still change your mind," George said, watching you hesitate, his hand warm and steady in yours. "Nobody's going to be offended if you need more time."
"I'm not changing my mind," you said, though you didn't move yet either, taking in the crooked, impossible architecture of the house rising up in front of you, chickens scattering somewhere in the yard, the distant sound of someone — Fred, probably — laughing at something.
"You're allowed to be nervous. It's a lot, showing up somewhere new and hoping it sticks."
"It's not that I don't want to be here," you said, quiet, trying to find the words for something you hadn't fully examined yet. "It's that I don't quite know how to walk into a house and just — belong there. Immediately. Without earning it first. I've never done that before."
George squeezed your hand. "You don't have to earn anything here. I know that's hard to believe, given everything, but I promise you, nobody in that house is keeping score. Mum decided you belonged here the second Ginny told her what happened. That's just how she works. You don't audition for my mother's love. You just show up, and she loves you, and that's the whole process."
The door opened before you'd even reached it, and Molly Weasley came barreling out with the particular unstoppable warmth she brought to everything, pulling you into a hug so immediate and complete that you didn't have time to feel awkward about it before it was already happening.
"There you are!" Molly said, like you were late rather than simply arriving for the first time, like your presence in her garden was the most natural thing in the world rather than something either of you needed to negotiate. "Come in, come in! you must be exhausted from the journey. I've got the kettle on, and Ginny's been talking my ear off about wanting you in her room instead of the spare, if that suits you — she's already cleared half her wardrobe, bless her, though I told her that was entirely unnecessary and she did it anyway."
You found yourself being swept through the door before you'd fully processed any of it, into a kitchen that smelled like fresh bread and something sweet baking, a clock on the wall with hands for each family member instead of numbers, photographs crowding every surface, warm and lived-in and entirely unlike the cold, careful house you'd grown up in.
"This is a lot," you admitted, quietly, to George, once Molly had bustled off to fetch something from the pantry.
"Good lot or bad lot?"
"Good lot," you said, and meant it, watching Fred wander in already mid-argument with Ron about something you couldn't follow, watching Ginny appear at the top of the stairs already calling down about which drawer she'd cleared for you. "I think I just never know houses could feel like this. Loud, and messy, and like everyone actually wants you in it."
"Get used to it," George said, echoing the promise he'd been making you in a dozen small ways for over a year now. "This is just what home's supposed to feel like. Took you long enough to get here. But you're here now."
You spent that first evening at the long kitchen table, meeting the rhythms of a family that had decided to make room for you without a single condition attached, and somewhere between Molly insisting you eat a second helping and Fred attempting to teach you a card game with rules he kept changing mid-hand, you realized you'd stopped bracing for the moment it would all be taken away.
It didn't come. It never came. And slowly, over that long golden summer, you let yourself believe it never would.
a house that never checked bloodlines before it opened its door
By the time winter came, you found yourself, improbably, sitting at the long wobbly table in the Burrow's kitchen, wrapped in a jumper Molly had knitted with your initial on it exactly as George had promised she would, listening to Fred and George argue about whose fault it was that the garden gnomes had gotten into the shed again.
You'd taken to helping Molly in the kitchen most mornings, the two of you falling into an easy rhythm that reminded you, pleasantly, of stolen midnights with Tibby in the Hogwarts kitchens — except here nobody needed to sneak, nobody needed an excuse, and the flour on your hands was simply flour, not evidence of some small rebellion you had to hide.
"You've got a good hand with pastry," Molly told you one morning, watching you fold dough with a confidence you hadn't had a year ago. "George mentioned you used to bake with the house-elves at school. I can see why. You've got the patience for it."
"I liked having somewhere nobody expected anything from me," you admitted once again. "The elves never wanted anything except company."
"Well." Molly bumped her shoulder against yours, warm and easy, exactly as his son. "You've got that here too, dear. Nobody at this table wants anything from you except exactly what you already are. Took George long enough to bring you round to see it for yourself, but I'm glad he finally managed it."
Harry caught your eye across the table and grinned — an easy, knowing grin, the kind between people who'd found their way into the same unlikely family from opposite directions. Ron passed you the potatoes without being asked.
George, for his part, had gone completely soft in a way Fred never let him forget.
He kept finding excuses to sit closer than strictly necessary, kept reaching over to fix a strand of your hair that hadn't actually needed fixing, kept staring at you across the table with an expression so unguarded and besotted that Ginny eventually threw a bread roll at his head just to make it stop.
"You're doing the face again," she informed him.
"What face?"
"The one where you look like someone hexed you with a permanent sticking charm of pure devotion. It's putting me off my dinner."
"I don't have a face!" He pretend to be offended.
"You've absolutely got a face," Fred confirmed, unhelpfully, around a mouthful of potatoes. "Been wearing it since two years ago.Reckon it's stuck for good at this point."
George didn't even bother denying it. He just reached for your hand under the table, laced his fingers through yours, and kept right on wearing whatever face he was apparently wearing, entirely without shame.
Hermione arrived that afternoon too, tumbling out of the Floo in a cloud of soot with a stack of books she swore she'd only brought "just in case," and the second she spotted you, she crossed the kitchen and hugged you properly, the kind of hug that had nothing performative in it.
"You look different this year" Hermione said, holding you back at arm's length to study you properly. "Lighter. It suits you."
"I feel different," you admitted, and meant it. You thought, sometimes, about the girl who used to apologize for asking someone to repeat themselves, who used to swallow her own opinions rather than risk an argument, who used to believe silence was the safest thing she had to offer the world. She felt like someone else now — someone you remembered fondly, almost, the way you might remember an old photograph of yourself, recognizable but no longer quite you.
"We should test that," Ron said, through a mouthful of the biscuits Molly had left cooling on the counter, entirely undeterred by his mother's swat at his hand. "Go on, then. Tell George something you actually think, instead of something nice."
"Ronald," Hermione said, exasperated.
"What? It's a legitimate test!"
You considered George for a moment, who was watching the whole exchange with obvious delight, clearly not remotely worried about what you might say.
"Your hair looks ridiculous today," you told him. "Properly ridiculous. Like you lost an argument with a hedge."
George gasped, mock-wounded, one hand pressed dramatically to his chest. "That's slander. That's actionable!"
"It's the truth, and I'm allowed to say it now, apparently," you said, and the whole table dissolved into laughter, Ron cackling loudest of all, thoroughly satisfied with his experiment.
"Penny for your thoughts," George said later, quiet, just for you, while Fred and Molly's argument rose to a fever pitch behind them over something to do with the gnomes.
"Just thinking," you said, "that I used to believe this was the most I could ever hope for. A seat at someone else's table, if I was useful enough to earn it."
"And now?"
You looked around the table — at Molly threatening bodily harm over the state of the garden, at Harry and Ron laughing too hard at something, at Hermione mid-argument with Ginny about something from a book, at Fred already plotting some new mischief, at George's hand still holding yours like it belonged there, at the ridiculous, devoted, unguarded look on his face that he'd apparently decided he had no interest in hiding anymore.
"Now I know the difference," you said, "between being tolerated and being chosen."
George smiled at that — the real one, the one he saved only for you — and later that evening, once the noise of dinner had settled into the lazy quiet of a full house winding down, he found you alone by the garden gate, watching the last of the light fade gold over the paddock.
"Can I tell you something?" he asked, coming to stand beside you, close enough that his shoulder brushed yours.
"You can tell me anything."
"I used to lie awake trying to work out what it was about you, specifically. Why it was you and not anyone else." He was quiet for a moment, searching for the words. "I think I finally worked it out.It's not just that you're kind, though you are, more than anyone I've ever met. It's that you kept being kind even when nobody was kind back to you. You kept noticing other people even when no one noticed you. That's not an easy thing to keep doing, when you're not getting anything back for it. Most people would've closed themselves off years ago. You didn't. And I think that's the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do, and I fell in love with you somewhere in the middle of watching you do it, long before I ever said a single word to you about it."
You didn't say anything right away. You just leaned into him, let him wrap an arm around your shoulders, and watched the sun finish setting over a garden that had somehow, improbably, become the first place in your whole life that felt entirely, unconditionally like home.
"I love you too," you said, finally, simply, the words landing easy and certain in a way you'd never once managed to feel with anyone before him. "I don't think I said that yet. Properly. Out loud."
"No," George agreed, pressing a kiss to your temple, smiling against your skin. "You didn't. Feel free to make a habit of it, though. I really don't mind hearing it."
Behind you, the noise of the Burrow carried on — Fred and Ron arguing about something ridiculous, Molly's voice rising over all of it, Hermione's laugh cutting through the chaos, Ginny threatening someone with a wooden spoon. It was loud, and messy, and nothing at all like the cold, careful house you'd grown up in.
Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader (Harry Potter's twin sister)
Word Count: ~24,6K
CW: grief (background mention of a character's death, referenced but not shown), a tiny bit of angst(?, a little swearing—nothing explicit, Umbridge-era classroom oppression (canon-typical, non-graphic), mild jealousy, a canon-typical bully/prefect confrontation, a lot of teenage messiness and yearning—a LOT of yearning, fluff, a happy ending.
Summary: You are Harry Potter's twin sister — quiet where he's stubborn, observant where he's reckless, permanently cast as the second, smaller shadow beside the Boy Who Lived. Nobody ever asks about you first. You've made peace with that, mostly. What you haven't made peace with is Fred Weasley, who has been quietly, thoroughly unforgettable to you since you were twelve years old. Every time you've come close to telling him — and sometimes just when you're too full of feeling to hold it in — you write it down instead, and lock it away in an enchanted box. Twenty-two letters, three years, one increasingly ridiculous crush you have never once said out loud. But magic doesn't always stay where you put it, and one clumsy accident is about to send all of it flying straight through a dormitory window to the one person who was never supposed to read a word.
Masterlist here! | Mini tag-list!: @lilians17 @lalunneee
Nobody ever asked about you first.
It wasn't cruelty. It was simply the shape of things — you'd been born four minutes after your brother, and it seemed, some days, that those four minutes had determined the entire architecture of your life. Harry was the Boy Who Lived. You were the girl who'd lived too, technically, in the same house, on the same night, but nobody wrote articles about the scar you didn't have, because you didn't have one, because Voldemort's curse had rebounded off your brother and not off you, and there was no poetry in being the twin who simply survived by proximity.
You'd grown up quiet at the Dursleys' because quiet was safer, and by the time Hogwarts letters arrived — two of them, in the same storm of owls, though only one name ever got shouted about in corridors afterward — you'd already perfected the skill of standing one respectful step behind your brother's shadow, watching everything, saying very little.
The Weasleys were the first family who ever seemed to see you as something other than an appendage. Molly Weasley had folded you into her chaos of a household the same she folded in Harry, no questions asked, an extra plate simply materializing at the table every time you turned up, an extra bed made without being requested. You spent that first time mostly quiet, mostly watching, astonished by the sheer volume of a family that argued and laughed and forgave each other in the same five minutes, astonished most of all by how easily they included you in both.
"You're not just an extra, dear," she told you once, catching you hovering in the kitchen doorway instead of coming in. "You're welcome here because you're you."
It was in that chaos, that first moment, twelve years old and still working out who you were allowed to be outside of Harry's orbit, that you first really saw Fred Weasley — the one who asked you questions about you, not Harry. Small things. What you liked to read. Whether you'd rather have a quiet birthday or a loud one. Nobody else had thought those things mattered enough to ask.
You didn't understand yet, at twelve, what that small, specific kindness was going to cost you.
You started the letters the way most habits start — accidentally, almost embarrassed by your own need for it.
It became a ritual almost without your noticing. Every time you came close — every single time some moment with Fred left you standing somewhere with your heart going too fast — you wrote it down instead of saying it. And then, later, you kept writing even on days when nothing dramatic had happened at all, just to get the feeling out of your chest somewhere it couldn't do any damage.
Hermione helped you charm the box in third year. Small, unremarkable, carved from pale wood, opening only for your touch, sealed against prying eyes and prying magic both.
"Why don't you just tell him?" Ginny asked once, watching you fold another letter into an even smaller square than strictly necessary.
"Because he's Fred Weasley," you said, like that explained everything. Because his mother had all but adopted you into this family already. Because you'd learned a long time ago that the things you wanted quietly, for yourself, had a way of getting lost under the weight of everything everyone else needed from your brother.
Better to write it down. You had no idea, at twelve, how many letters there would be by the time you were fifteen.
Second year.
Letter One: fuck-i think' i like you.
Fred,
I don't know how to write this without sounding ridiculous, so I'm just going to be ridiculous. Today you stopped a fifth-year prefect from making me cry in front of half the corridor, and I don't think you even noticed you did anything extraordinary. You did it the way you do everything — loud, fast, like it cost you nothing — and then you just walked me to class afterward, like that was the obvious next step.
I keep thinking about the way your face changed. One second you were laughing with George, the next you'd gone completely still, watching him corner me, and something in you snapped into motion. I've never seen anyone look genuinely angry on my behalf before.
I'm not going to tell you. You're fourteen and I'm twelve and you probably still think of me as Ron's quiet friend who happens to share a surname with the Chosen One. But I think this is the first time I've felt this, whatever this is, and I don't think it'll be the last.
I like you, I think. Or something dangerously close to it. Merlin help me, I cringed by myself.
It had happened fast, the way most bad things at Hogwarts did. A Slytherin prefect named Higgs had planted himself in the corridor, blocking your path, sensing exactly whose sister you were and deciding that made you fair sport.
"Potter's little shadow," he'd said. "Bet you love it, don't you. Following him around, basking in it."
Fred had arrived like weather — sudden, loud, impossible to ignore, planting himself between you and Higgs without any apparent regard for the four-year age gap or the prefect badge on the other boy's chest.
"You've got something to say to her, you can say it to me instead. Bet it sounds a lot less clever out loud to someone your own size.” Fred had said, all the mischief drained out of his voice.
"This isn't your business, Weasley."
"Everything involving someone being a prat to my friends is my business, funnily enough." Fred's voice had gone flat and cold in a way you hadn't heard from him before, all the usual mischief drained out of it entirely. "You want to dock points off Gryffindor for me hexing you, go ahead and try me. I've got a Filibuster firework in my pocket that goes off if provoked, and I'd say you're doing a fair job of provoking."
Higgs, weighing a prefect's dignity against the very real threat of public humiliation at the hands of a Weasley twin, had backed down, muttering something about not worth the trouble before disappearing back down the corridor.
"You alright?" Fred asked afterward, already falling into step beside you.
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine." He walked you the rest of the way to Charms, entirely out of his path. "For what it's worth, you're not boring. Anyone who thinks that hasn't actually talked to you."
"You don't even know me that well."
"I know you well enough to know you attract trouble like it's a hobby. Corridors, prefects, whatever's next." He grinned, easy and unbothered. "That's what I'm calling you now, by the way. Trouble. Seems accurate."
"That's a terrible nickname."
"It's an excellent nickname. You'll grow into it." He said it like it was already decided, already permanent, and — infuriatingly — it was. You hadn't known what to say to any of it.
You hadn't known what to say. You'd written until your candle burned down to nothing.
Life at Hogwarts kept happening around the feeling, the way ordinary life always does around the enormous things.
You had your own friends by then, though in practice they were mostly the same friends as Harry's — the two of you had shared a dormitory corridor, a timetable, and a best-friend pair since your very first train ride to Hogwarts. Ron and Hermione had folded you into their trio so early and so completely that most of the school simply thought of the four of you as a single unit, even if you were quieter than the other three put together. Hermione, in particular, had taken an immediate, protective liking to you the moment she'd worked out you were twice as observant as your brother and considerably better at keeping your mouth shut about it. You had your own running jokes with Ron about Harry's appalling handwriting, your own quiet corner of the library you claimed as yours whenever the trio's adventures got to be too much, your own life that had nothing to do with Fred Weasley at all, most days.
Except that Fred had a talent for turning up in the corners of your life anyway. He'd started saving you a seat at Gryffindor table on the mornings he got there first — not obviously, not with any fanfare, just a bag dropped on the bench beside him that happened to be exactly where you usually sat, close enough to Ron and Hermione's usual spot that nobody thought twice about it. He'd started asking Ginny, with elaborate, transparent casualness, whether you'd had a good week.
"He's so obvious," Katie Bell told you once, laughing, catching you both mid-conversation across the common room. "You do know that, right? Half of Gryffindor's placing bets on when he's finally going to say something."
"Say something about what?"
Katie had just grinned at you like you were being deliberately dense, and refused to elaborate further.
Letter two: ¿Why are you so charming? UGH
Today you gave your last Chocolate Frog to a crying first-year because he'd lost his own on the train and wouldn't stop sniffling about it. You didn't know I saw Or that anyone could see you, you just wanted that child to stop crying. I like you more now UGGHH, Fred Weasley, you complete charming freckled fool.
Letter tree: It's the little things, you know?
Fred.
You let George take credit for the dungbomb prank today even though it was your idea — I heard you tell him so afterward, quiet, like it didn't matter. You always do that. I don't think you even notice yourself doing it But I notice it, I notice every little detail where you let someone else take the spotlight and enjoy watching them shine. It's the little things, you know? That make me like you more and more. I like you, Fred.
It had been an ordinary, golden sort of afternoon — the kind the Burrow specialized in, warm and slow and full of the specific chaos of six children and one very patient set of parents. Fred had gone up to the shed roof to fix a leak, and you'd followed on instinct, the way you'd started following him around that entire summer without quite admitting to yourself why.
"You're going to fall," he'd said, watching you climb up after him with more determination than grace.
"So will you, eventually, and I want to be there to laugh about it."
He'd grinned at that, made room for you beside him, and for a while neither of you had said much at all, content to watch Arthur wage his ongoing, deeply serious war against the garden gnomes below.
"Can I tell you something?" Fred had asked eventually, quieter than his usual register.
"Always."
"George and I are going to open a joke shop someday. Properly. Our own place, our own name on the door." He'd picked at a loose bit of roofing, not quite meeting your eyes. "Haven't told him the full plan yet. Haven't told anyone, really."
"Why me?"
"Because you're easy to tell things to." He'd shrugged, like it wasn't a significant thing to say, though it had landed in your chest like something considerably heavier than a shrug should carry. "You don't make it weird. You just listen."
You'd wanted, badly, to tell him something back — something true, something that mattered as much as what he'd just handed you. Instead you'd made a joke about the shop's name, and he'd laughed, and the sun had kept setting, and you'd gone to bed that night and written for two hours by candlelight instead.
Summer after second year.
Letter four: I'm a coward and you're a wonderful guy.
Fred,
I nearly said it today. We were sitting on the roof of the shed — you'd climbed up to fix something George had broken, I'd followed because I just wanted to spend time with you— and somehow we ended up sitting there for an hour, watching your dad wage war on the garden gnomes.
You told me about wanting to open a joke shop someday. Your own place, your own name on the door. You told me because, and I'm quoting you directly, "you're easy to tell things to. You don't make it weird."
I almost told you right then. What came out instead was some joke about your shop needing a better name than "Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes," and you laughed, and the moment closed itself back up before I could pry it open again because I'm a coward and I'm afraid you'll laugh at me or something.
I think about that hour on the roof more than I think about anything else that happened this summer.
I like you and I'm going to keep feeling like that for a very long time I suppose.
A few days later, Gryffindor won a scrappy end-of-summer pickup match against a scratch team of Diggory cousins visiting the Burrow's neighboring field, and Fred, high on victory and thoroughly pleased with himself, had swept into Molly's kitchen afterward still in his mud-streaked practice robes, arms thrown wide.
"Did you see that last save?"
"Everyone saw it, Fred, you announced it three times on the way in."
"It deserves announcing three times." He dropped into the chair beside you, breathless, grinning, glowing with the particular happiness that only came after flying well. "Did you see it, though? Properly? From the fence?"
"I was cheering the whole time."
"Yeah?" Something in his voice had gone strangely careful, half joking and half not, watching you with an attention that made your pulse do something unhelpful. "You were cheering for me? Specifically? Not just, you know, generally pleased violence was occurring on a broomstick?"
"Of course I was cheering for you, you enormous idiot. Who else would I be cheering for?"
He'd laughed — really laughed, the kind that came from somewhere lower than his chest — and reached over to muss your hair with a muddy hand before you could dodge, and you'd shrieked and swatted him away, and it had felt, for one unguarded moment, like something a girlfriend might do, and something a boyfriend might do back, before either of you seemed to remember you weren't that at all.
Letter five: Of course I was cheering you on, stupid. Btw, you look so radiant when you laugh.
Fred,
You cried today — actual real tears, laughing so hard at your own joke you couldn't finish telling it. I've never loved anything as much as I loved watching that, And what I loved most was that in the middle of your moment, your celebration, you looked at me with that silly smile and asked me if I was cheering for you. And why not? I love you, you ridiculous person.
As the years went by the whole of Gryffindor tower had, in the vague, half-articulated way houses develop collective knowledge, started to treat you and Fred as something adjacent to inevitable, As if there were some particular quality between you that indicated you were an exception to the rule for each other. Even if you were both too stupid to see it.
"You two are going to end up together, you know," Angelina Johnson told Fred flatly, one evening in the common room, not even looking up from her Charms homework. "Everyone can see it except possibly the two of you."
"We're friends, She's my younger brother's friend. What are those crazy little heads of theirs thinking?" He acted with his casual ease, his jokes masking the strange spark in his chest. As if thinking of you that way were ridiculous, impossible, foolish.
"Sure." Angelina's tone made it very clear she thought this was, at best, a technically true but wildly incomplete description of events. "Friends who he saves seats for. Friends who abandoned an actual date to go talking nonsense with each other, laughing like never before in their lives from a corner at Katie's party last month."
"That was one time."
"It was the third time, actually, I've been keeping count."
Fred hadn't had a response to that, mostly because Angelina wasn't wrong, and he learned by then that there was no good way or good joke to argue with the truth when it was delivered that plainly.
Letter six: I just- I just love you okay? Not much more hereee ugh
Fred,
You always let the house-elves finish talking before you say thank you, even when you're in a hurry. Nobody else does that. I don't think you even know you do it. I noticed months ago and I still think about it more than I should admit. It's totally stupid, but I think it makes me...love you - I finally said it, I love you Fred Weasley, you and the way you treat elves with respect.
Pd: Hermione would be proud of you for that, you know? Long live elf rights!
Sometimes spending time with your friends ended in embarrassing and overly romantic conversations about your feelings for Fred—feelings you hadn't fully admitted to them yet.
‘Why are you avoiding telling him? It's obvious you fancy him” Hermione turned to you afterward, gentler, with the patient, knowing look of someone who'd clocked the whole thing years earlier and was simply waiting for you to catch up to your own feelings. "You know you talk about him in your sleep. Not often. Just enough that Ron's heard it too, through the wall at the burrow."
“Who likes whom?" your brother questioned, jerking his head up and adjusting his glasses, intrigued by the gossip, Hermione just sighed, rolling her eyes at how slow Harry could be sometimes.
"I do not."
"You really do," Ron muttered, still faintly pink, clearly torn between loyalty to his brother's dignity and loyalty to yours. "It's fine. I've decided not to have opinions about it. That's my policy now."
"What do you mean we're not going to have opinions about? I need context ASAP." Harry tried again, leaning over the table and scanning the three of you.
"You idiot! About your sister being in love with Fred!" Hermione exploded in exasperation, glaring at him. Ron just groaned.
“¿Fred Weasley?” He simply asked, completely surprised.
You'd buried your face in your hands and groaned,refusing to discuss it further, though the conversation stayed with you long after the candles in the Great Hall had burned low.
Fred, for his part, seemed to have absolutely no idea any of this was being discussed. He continued flirting easily and often with half the girls in his year, the way he always had — light, weightless, over the second it stopped being fun — and continued, with equal ease, abandoning those conversations the moment you appeared anywhere nearby.
Letter seven: So clever about some things and so foolish about others!
Fred,
You needed help with a charm for one of your prank ideas and, out of everyone you could have asked, you asked me. I spent two hours helping you cross-reference obscure charm theory in the library while you made me laugh so hard Madam Pince nearly threw us both out.
You're actually clever, underneath all the noise. People don't give you enough credit for that.
I almost told you. You looked up at me, delighted, and said "we make a good team, you know," like it was a discovery, and something about how you said it nearly undid every ounce of restraint I've built. I said "yeah, we do" instead of anything true, and you didn't notice the difference, why? Like- omg just notice what im not telling you goood.
I love you. Stupidly, completely, I love you Fred.
“You should be careful," Ginny told you one night, sitting cross-legged on your bed, watching you fold yet another letter into the box with the particular precision you always used when a feeling was too big to write neatly. "Not about him. About how much you're keeping in there, If you don't get it off your chest soon, you'll explode."
"I'm fine."
"You're not, though. You're carrying an entire relationship's worth of feeling in a box under your bed, and he doesn't even know it exists." Ginny wasn't unkind about it, just direct in the specific Weasley way that ran in her family. "One day that thing's going to be too full to hold, and I don't know what happens then."
"Nothing happens. That's the whole point of the box."
Ginny had given you a long, considering look, and hadn't argued further, though you noticed — much later, in hindsight — that she'd never seemed entirely convinced.
Letter eight: "Oh my, look at me, I'm cute and I talk like a fool when I'm with Fred!" Ugh - I hate myself, take that back, I'm just jealous.
Fred,
You danced with Katie Bell in the common room today, three songs in a row;She was hanging on to your arm for an extra minute, laughing at absolutely everything you said—and not everything was funny, it wasn't your best day, you know? and I sat in the corner pretending to read while my whole chest turned into a fist. I hate this. Why do you flirt with them and not with me? Is it the age difference? My friendship with Ron? Although I could fake a fight with him if that's it... maybe we can continue being secret friends until you're my boyfriend…Merlin, what am I thinking?. I hate you a little, for making me feel like this.I love you anyway, idiot and It's very inconvenient.
You told yourself you were only in the stands to wait for Ron and Harry, who'd promised to walk to the library with you the moment practice ended, and Hermione, dragged along under the same excuse, had not once believed you.
"You could just say you're here to watch him," Hermione said, entirely too pleased with herself, watching Fred run drills below.
"I'm here for Ron."
"Ron is currently on the opposite end of the pitch, doing keeper laps. You are watching Fred do loops."
You hadn't had a response to that. When practice ended, you'd gone down anyway, and found Fred flushed and sweaty and grinning, still riding the high of a good session, and handed him — with more nonchalance than you felt — the chocolate bar he'd mentioned craving three days earlier, in passing, at breakfast, the kind you'd walked all the way to Hogsmeade for on your last free weekend without telling anyone why.
"You remembered." He looked, for a moment, genuinely surprised, unwrapping it immediately. "Trouble, you're going to make me fall off my broom one of these days, being this thoughtful."
"It's just chocolate, Fred."
"It's not just chocolate." He'd looked at you like he meant to say something else — something bigger, something that had nothing to do with confectionery — and for a second the whole pitch had gone very quiet around the two of you.
Then George and the rest of the team jogged over, and Fred, visibly startled out of whatever he'd been about to say, straightened up and cleared his throat and did the thing he always did when a moment got too close to something real.
"Oi, everyone — look what Harry's sister brought me. Ron's mate here's got good taste in snacks, if nothing else." He grinned at the team, easy and loud, gesturing at you like a prize on display, and George, catching the exact false note in his brother's voice, shook his head slowly, muttering something under his breath that sounded a great deal like 'you utter, utter idiot'.
You'd gone quite red, and quite still, and said nothing at all, and walked back up to the castle with Hermione a few steps behind you, saying nothing either, which was somehow worse than if she'd said something.
Letter nine: Sometimes you raise my hopes... and then you ruin it, you huge idiot!
Fred,
Today you called me "Harry's sister" in front of your Quidditch team, as a joke, and I wanted to disappear into the floor WHY, YOU HUGE IDIOT? UGH, before the others arrived you were being so...so charming, your freckled cheeks red, your smile so warm...AND YOU HAD TO SCREW IT UP. I know you didn't mean it the way it landed. I'm not going to tell you it landed at all—For the record; I plan to ignore you all through dinner and probably the weekend, you hurt me, you know? But still, much to my regret, I love you, even though sometimes I hate you a little for being such an idiot without realizing it.
The Fourth Year was the year of the Triwizard Tournament. It was the year Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire, and the world became a nightmare of press coverage, dragons, and constant terror. You spent every evening in the common room helping Harry research hexes, your own anxiety making you lose sleep.
And then came the Yule Ball.
You remembered every detail of that night with an intensity that embarrassed you slightly — the particular blue of the dress robes, the way the enchanted ceiling had mirrored the real sky outside, the specific, sinking humiliation of watching Seamus's attention drift toward Lavender Brown within the first hour, leaving you standing alone by the punch table with a smile you were having to actively maintain.
"You know what? If you're going to be staring at her all night, you should just ask her to dance. It's not like her date's going to come back for her," Angelina murmured to Fred with a lopsided smile, not angry at all, as if she understood that this was the normal cycle of things; Fred always coming towards you.
"It's not—it's just—how can you invite her and then leave her? She looks gorgeous today and he just leave her for someone else!" He complained, wrinkling his nose in confusion, his gaze fixed on you.
"Oh, tell me about it, buddy. Ignoring your date because you're staring at another girl? I can't even imagine it." Angelina scoffed harmlessly, arms crossed. She found it hilarious that Fred didn't realize he was doing the same thing as Seamus. "Seriously, Fred, you should just tell her you like her."
“WHAT?" He gasped, looking at his date. "I don't like her, she's just my friend and I'm going to cheer her up!" he said determinedly, walking directly in your direction.
Angelina just shrugged and shook her head amusedly before going to find George and dance for a while.
Fred had crossed the entire dance floor for you, ignoring at least two people trying to catch his attention on the way, and arrived in front of you with his hand already extended.
"Come on,Trouble."
"Fred, you're with Angelina — "
"Angelina's got plenty of other people wanting to dance with her, believe me." He'd tugged you gently onto the floor before you could protest further, spinning you into the fast, chaotic rhythm of the song with an ease that suggested he did this sort of rescue mission often. "Wasn't going to let you stand there sulking all night."
You'd laughed — really laughed, the kind that came from somewhere lower than your chest, the kind Seamus's abandonment hadn't managed to touch at all — and for the length of that song, nothing else in the castle had mattered.
"Better?" he'd asked, when the song finally ended, both of you breathless.
"Better."
He'd squeezed your hand once, quick and easy, and something in his face had gone briefly serious, like he was about to say something that mattered. Then George's voice had cut across the hall — something about an unfortunate incident with the punch — and Fred had let go with a rueful grin, murmuring "later, alright?" before disappearing to deal with whatever chaos his twin had caused.
Later never came, not that night. You'd gone back to your dormitory with your feet aching and your chest full of a feeling you didn't have anywhere safe to put, and you'd written until the candle burned all the way down.
Letter ten: Is it so bad that I keep dreaming about that "later"?
Fred,
Tonight, I wore a dress that made me feel like a real girl instead of just 'the other Potter.' It was pale blue, and Hermione helped me with my hair so it didn't look like a bird's nest for once. For a few minutes, when I walked down the stairs, I thought maybe—just maybe—you’d look at me the way Ron looked at Fleur.
I went to the Ball with Seamus, and he ditched me for Lavender within the first hour, and I stood by the punch table trying to look like I was having a good time alone. You noticed. Of course you noticed.
You left the dance floor — left Angelina mid-conversation — walked straight over, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into the fastest song they played all night, spinning me until I forgot I'd been sad five minutes earlier. "Wasn't going to let you stand there sulking all night," you said, like it was obvious.
I almost told you on the dance floor. The song ended, we were breathless, and for one dizzy second I thought I might actually say it, It was something so fragile, so beautiful that I thought... I thought, why not say it now? I thought you felt the same when I looked into your eyes. Then George called your name about a punch bowl emergency, and you squeezed my hand once before letting go and said "later, alright?" and the moment scattered like it had never happened at all.
You walked away. And I realized that no matter how pretty my dress is, or how much I laugh at your jokes, I will always be the girl you dance with out of pity while you live your real life with someone else.
I love you. Later never came. I hope it comes eventually, I keep dreaming about that "later," what would have happened?
You found your brother the next evening, curled into the far corner of the common room away from the noise, and for once neither of you said anything about danger or dragons or the tournament at all. Just talked — properly talked, the way you rarely got the chance to anymore, about nothing in particular, catching up on the small, ordinary things siblings are supposed to know about each other and so rarely find the time for.
"You looked happy last night," Harry said eventually. "Dancing with Fred."
"I was-."
"You don't have to pretend you weren't, you know. Not with me."
You'd been about to say something honest back — something you weren't sure you were ready to say even to your own twin — when a knot of Hufflepuffs passed close enough to overhear, deep in their own conversation.
"...bound to happen eventually, right? Everyone saw them dancing together for ages. Fred and Angelina, it's obvious."
You'd gone very still. Harry's eyebrows had gone up, watching your face carefully.
"That's not — " You stopped, unsure whether you were more embarrassed or more hollowed out by the sentence. "That's fine. It's fine. It's not like there was ever anything to lose."
Harry hadn't said anything else, but he'd looked, for the rest of the evening, like a boy quietly filing something away for later use.
Letter Eleven: What if I just give up? Technically — how can I give up on something I never even started?
Fred,
Everyone's saying you and Angelina might finally happen and I spent all of dinner smiling like it didn't matter. It mattered. What if I just give up? I want to stop loving you BUT I CAN'T; I'm tired of loving you without action or purpose. I love you, Fred, and it's exhausting and inconvenient and I still wouldn't trade it for anything.
(Postscript, added the following week in slightly different ink: I have never in my life been so relieved to be an idiot. Turns out the Hufflepuffs meant George. GEORGE. Angelina is dating George, and has apparently been dating George for a month, and I have wasted an entire letter's worth of despair on a case of mistaken identical twins. I am never trusting secondhand gossip again.)
Letter twelve: What should I do with you? Kiss you? Hit you? Run away to the ends of the earth, far from you?
Fred,
You remembered to ask about my difficult exams today without me ever mentioning it twice. I said it once, months ago, in passing. You remembered. I don't know what to do with a boy who remembers things like that and still doesn't seem to know what it does to people.
The spring of your fourth year turned dark all at once, the way spring sometimes does, without warning, without mercy. Cedric Diggory didn't come back from the maze, and your brother returned looking like he'd aged a decade in a single night, and the whole castle seemed to hold its breath for weeks afterward.
It was Fred — not Ron, not Hermione, all of them consumed by worry for Harry — who found you crying alone by the lake two days later, overwhelmed by a grief that wasn't entirely your own but had lodged in your chest anyway.
"You don't have to be strong for him tonight," Fred said, sitting down in the grass beside you, not touching you, just present. "Everyone's so busy checking on Harry, I don't think anyone's asked how you're doing."
"I'm not the one who watched someone die." You answered by sniffing, your cheeks flushing from the sudden attention to how YOU felt.
"Doesn't mean you're not carrying something." He was quiet a moment. "You're allowed to be scared too, you know. Being his sister doesn't mean your feelings come second."
Letter thirteen: I feel that I will love you silently all my life.
Fred,
You found me by the lake tonight and didn't try to fix anything. You just stayed. I think I love you a little more every time you refuse to let me be smaller than him. I love you, Fred Weasley.I love you silently, again.
Fifth year arrived grey and heavy, Umbridge's reign settling over the castle like a fog nobody could quite breathe through. The Ministry's presence turned ordinary classes into minefields, turned dissent into a punishable offense, turned the whole of Hogwarts brittle with a fear that had nothing to do with exams.
Fred and George, in their final year, seemed to take it as a personal insult that anyone might try to make Hogwarts less fun on their watch. Their rebellion grew louder as the year went on — small acts of chaos scattered through the corridors, each one a tiny act of defiance nobody quite dared say out loud was defiance.
"He's going to get himself expelled one of these days," Hermione muttered, watching Fred saunter past a portrait he'd clearly just booby-trapped with something involving Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder.
"He's not," Lee Jordan said, entirely unbothered, appearing at your shoulder. "He's too clever for that. Also, he'd never actually risk getting kicked out before he graduates. He's got plans, you know. Big ones. Shop and everything." Lee's eyes had gone briefly sharp, considering. "You'd know more about that than I would, though, wouldn't you."
You hadn't known what to say to that, and Lee, grinning, had wandered off before you could ask what exactly he meant by it.
It happened on an ordinary Tuesday, in a corridor outside the Charms classroom — Umbridge, delighted with some new pretext, had cornered a small, trembling third-year Hufflepuff over an infraction that amounted to nothing at all, quill already raised, and you'd stepped in before you'd fully decided to.
"He didn't do anything, Professor. He was helping me pick up my books."
"And you are?"
"His friend," you said, evenly, though your heart was going far too fast. "You can dock points from me instead, if points need docking. He didn't do anything wrong."
Umbridge's smile had gone thin and unpleasant, the quill catching the light, and you'd genuinely believed, for one long, terrible second, that you were about to find out exactly what that quill could do — until Fred's voice cut across the corridor, loud and cheerful in a way that was, you'd come to learn, precisely how he sounded right before something went badly for whoever he was aiming at.
"Professor Umbridge! Perfect timing, actually — George and I need someone with real authority to settle a dispute." He'd arrived at speed, George a half-step behind, and inserted himself smoothly between you and the quill with the casual, practiced ease of a boy who'd been running interference for people he cared about his entire life. "Purely hypothetical question. If a student were to accidentally, say, detonate a Filibuster firework directly outside your office door at midnight — purely hypothetically — how many points would that cost Gryffindor, do you reckon?"
Umbridge, momentarily derailed, had rounded on him instead, and by the time she'd finished threatening detention for a crime that hadn't technically happened yet, the Hufflepuff third-year had vanished down the corridor to safety, and you along with him, tugged gently but firmly by the sleeve by George while Fred kept Umbridge occupied.
Letter fourteen: Oh my hero, you make me love you more, damn it!
Fred,
You stood between me and Umbridge's detention quill today, took the blame for something I did. I let you. I hate that I let you. I love you, you absolute idiot, I should have stopped you before your hand started bleeding for something that wasn't your fault.
George found his brother alone that evening, hand still faintly scarred from a detention that hadn't, in the end, been entirely hypothetical, and sat down across from him with the specific look he reserved for conversations he intended to win.
"You're going to hurt yourself one of these days, playing hero for Harry's sister."
"She's a friend, George. Friends do things for friends."
"Right. Course." George didn't bother hiding his skepticism. "Just a friend. Just Ron's mate. Just Harry's sister."
"Exactly."
"Do you say that as a fact," George said, quiet now, entirely serious, "or as a reminder for yourself?"
Fred hadn't had an answer for that. He'd gone very still, staring at his own bandaged hand like it might offer some clarity, and George, satisfied he'd landed the point without needing to press further, had simply clapped him on the shoulder and left him to sit with it.
The Hufflepuff boy's name was Marcus Belby, and he was, by any reasonable measure, perfectly pleasant — funny in an easy, low-key way, decent at Potions, entirely undeserving of the reaction his flirting produced in Fred Weasley, standing three feet away in the corridor with his arms crossed like a bad weather system rolling in.
"You should come to the next Hogsmeade weekend," Marcus was saying, leaning against the wall beside you with the relaxed confidence of someone who had no idea he was about to be interrupted. "I know a good place for butterbeer, quieter than the Three Broomsticks."
"That sounds — "
"She's busy that weekend," Fred said, appearing at your shoulder with no warning whatsoever, entirely too loudly for a corridor that hadn't required his input.
"Fred, I didn't say — "
"You're busy. Trust me. Very busy." He'd steered Marcus away with a hand on the boy's shoulder and a smile that didn't reach his eyes at all, murmuring something you couldn't hear, and Marcus had gone slightly pale and mumbled an excuse and left with considerably more speed than he'd arrived.
"What was that?" you demanded, the second Marcus was out of earshot.
"Nothing. Making conversation."
"You told him I was busy without asking me."
"You didn't seem that interested."
"That wasn't your decision to make!" Your voice had risen, drawing a few curious glances. "You don't get to decide who I talk to, Fred, you're not — you're not my — " You'd stopped, furious and flustered in equal measure, unable to finish the sentence with anything that didn't reveal more than you meant to.
"I'm not your what?" Fred had asked, quieter now, something unreadable in his face.
You hadn't answered. You'd simply turned and walked away, leaving him standing in the corridor looking, for once, considerably less pleased with himself than usual.
George, Angelina, and Lee cornered him about it within the hour, the three of them arranged around him in the common room with the specific, coordinated energy of people who'd clearly discussed strategy in advance.
"You do know you were jealous," Angelina said, without preamble.
"I wasn't jealous."
"You physically inserted yourself into a conversation to tell a boy she was busy on a weekend she wasn't busy," Lee pointed out, delighted. "That's not a neutral action, mate."
"I was looking out for her."
"From Marcus Belby? He once apologized to a chair for bumping into it." George folded his arms. "Just admit it. You didn't like watching someone flirt with her."
Fred had opened his mouth to argue, found nothing convincing to say, and shut it again, which the three of them took, correctly, as a confession.
Letter Fifteen: What am I supposed to do with your mixed signals, Fred Weasley? Make up your mind!
Fred,
You chased off a perfectly nice boy today for the crime of asking me to Hogsmeade, and then you looked at me like I'D done something wrong when I got angry about it. What am I supposed to think? You don't want me, you've made that clear, you've had three years to make it clear — but you also apparently can't stand the idea of anyone else having me either, which is, frankly, the single most infuriating thing you have ever done, and you've set off a Filibuster firework in a first-year's cauldron for a laugh, so that is genuinely saying something.
I don't know what you want from me. I don't think you know either. I am going to go to bed extremely annoyed and I am, against every ounce of good judgment I possess, still completely in love with you. Sort yourself out, Fred Weasley. Honestly.
Fred didn't apologize the next day, not properly, not in words — that wasn't really his way, you'd come to understand, when something had gone wrong that he didn't fully know how to name. Instead he turned up at breakfast with a small paper bag, set it down in front of you without comment, and sat down like it was nothing at all.
Inside was the exact brand of sugar quills you'd once mentioned, in passing, months earlier, that you missed from a shop that had since closed near your childhood home.
"Where did you even find these?"
"Trade secret." He shrugged, not quite meeting your eyes, ears faintly pink. "Wasn't trying to make a thing of it. Just — thought you might like them."
You hadn't brought up Marcus. He hadn't brought up the corridor. Neither of you said the word sorry, or the word jealous, or any of the things George and Angelina and Lee had spent an entire evening trying to get him to admit — but something in the quiet, deliberate care of the gesture said all of it anyway, and you'd sat there together over breakfast, easy again, without needing to name what had passed between you.
Letter sixteen: I would love to be in those protections of your future.
Fred,
You've started talking about the shop like it's inevitable instead of a dream. Every time you mention it now, it's "when we open," not "if." I love watching you become certain of something. I want to be half that certain about anything, someday. Maybe about you.
Not every letter came from something dramatic. Some days nothing happened at all, and you wrote anyway, because the feeling didn't seem to need a reason.
Letter sixteen: so jealous I hate my breakfast because of you.
Fred,
I watched you flirt with a Ravenclaw at breakfast for ten straight minutes today and I have never hated eggs so much in my life.
Letter seventeen: such a good brother. Will he be a good father someday? AH, WHAT AM I THINKING?
Fred,
You always save the last bite of pudding for Ron even though you complain about him eating too much. You'd never tell him you do it on purpose. You are very protective, and there is something almost gentle in the way you look after all your siblings, even without boasting about it; Always providing comic relief on the surface, but paying attention to many more details behind the scenes. I only know because I watch you more than is probably healthy.
Seeing you like this with them makes me wonder if you'd be a good father. What would our children be like? I'd have a lot of them with you because—well—it's you, and besides, I wouldn't mind going through the process of doing them several times, OH MY GOD, WHAT AM I THINKING AND WRITING? I'M GOING TO DIE, I WILL DEFINITELY DIE OF SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT.
You had, in fact, been writing that particular letter at the Gryffindor table during dinner, quill moving faster than your good sense, entirely absorbed, right up until the moment you reread the last line you'd written and made a sound somewhere between a cough and a small, dying animal noise, going scarlet from the collar up.
"Are you alright?" Harry asked, alarmed, half out of his seat. "Are you choking? Do you need — "
"I'm fine," you wheezed, slamming the parchment face-down onto the table with more force than strictly necessary, water sloshing from your goblet.
Hermione, seated directly across from you, had gone very still, eyes darting between your mortified face and the corner of parchment still visible beneath your hand, and you watched, with dawning horror, comprehension bloom across her features.
"Did you just — " Hermione's voice had dropped to a delighted whisper. "Were you writing about children? Fred Weasley's children?"
"Hermione — "
"I'm not judging! I think it's sweet! I just need you to know that your ears have gone the exact color of the Gryffindor banner." Hermione had pressed a hand to her mouth, shoulders shaking with barely-contained laughter, and by the time Harry finally wrestled the context out of her — in fragments, punctuated by Hermione's increasingly unhelpful giggling — you'd buried your entire face in your arms on the table and refused to emerge for the rest of dinner, while your brother patted your back with the confused, well-meaning sympathy of someone who understood approximately none of what had just happened but wanted to help anyway.
Letter eighteen: You can rest with me, you know?
Fred,
You made the whole common room laugh tonight, right in the middle of the worst week of the year, and I don't think anyone but me noticed how tired you looked doing it. I wanted to tell you that you don't have to be funny for everyone all the time. And i did it cause you aparently are my problem. Obviously.
You found him afterward, once the common room had thinned out and the performance had visibly drained out of his shoulders, and sat down beside him on the sofa without asking permission.
"Alright, Trouble?" He'd already started reaching for a joke, some easy deflection, mouth opening on the beginning of a bit.
"You don't have to do that. Not with me." You said it gently, no accusation in it. "You looked exhausted up there. You don't have to perform for me."
Fred had gone quiet, the half-formed joke dying on his tongue, something in his face loosening, like a held breath finally let go.
"Thank you," he said, simply, and you'd sat together in comfortable silence for a while after that, no jokes, no performance, just two people resting in the same quiet, and it had felt like one of the most honest things that had ever passed between you.
Letter nineteen: Maybe Ginny was right and this writing-thing was going to become a burden (I'm NEVER going to tell her that)
Fred,
I am so tired of writing these instead of saying them. I am so tired of being the careful one. I love you, I love you, I love you, and I'm so tired of keeping it to myself that I don't know what to do with all of this anymore.
Harry found you crying quietly in an empty classroom two days later, overwhelmed by nothing in particular and everything at once, and sat down across from you with the specific, careful patience your brother had only recently learned how to offer anyone.
"You should just tell him."
"You don't understand."
"I understand that you cry in empty classrooms about a boy who looks at you like you hung the moon and neither of you ever says anything about it." Harry shrugged, uncharacteristically direct. "I think he likes you too, you know. I've watched him. I'm not an idiot, whatever Hermione says."
"And if you're wrong? If I tell him and it ruins everything — not just for me, for you and Ron too, for all of us, for every Christmas at the Burrow for the rest of our lives?" You wiped your face, furious at your own fear for sounding so reasonable out loud. "I can't risk that. I won't."
Harry hadn't argued further, though he'd looked, watching you, entirely unconvinced.
That Christmas at the Burrow, Molly and Arthur stood together by the kitchen window, dishes forgotten in their hands, watching you and Fred sprawled in front of the fire, deep in some private conversation neither of you seemed aware anyone else could see, laughing easily, entirely comfortable in each other's space in the particular way of people who'd stopped noticing the distance between them because there wasn't any left.
"Do you think they know?" Molly murmured.
"Not a clue," Arthur said, fondly. "Reminds me of someone else who used to sit exactly like that, actually, watching a girl across a kitchen and pretending he wasn't."
"Arthur Weasley."
"I'm only saying." He'd bumped her shoulder gently with his own, both of them smiling, entirely unwilling to interrupt whatever was quietly happening by the fire, content to let it happen in its own time.
Letter twenty: What it would be like to be yours
Fred,
I sat by your family's fire tonight and let myself imagine, just for a minute, what it would be like if this were real — if I got to come here every Christmas not as your brother's friend but as yours. If Molly got to call me something other than "dear" and mean daughter-in-law by it. If I got to hold your hand in front of everyone instead of just when nobody's looking.
I know it's not real. I know I'm borrowing a feeling I haven't earned. But I let myself have it for a minute anyway, sitting there by the fire with you, and it was the warmest I have felt in a very long time. I love you. I think I'd be so happy, being yours.
By the middle of fifth year, it had become an open, near-comedic secret that half the castle had opinions about you and Fred that neither of you had ever been formally told about.
Molly's letters home, forwarded and occasionally read aloud by an oblivious Ron, had started including lines like ‘Let me know if I should set up Percy's room for Fred and if Y/N is coming!’ or ‘Don't leave me out of any of the news, any of you! Let me know if any of you are going to give me grandchildren!’ that one made Ginny choke on her pumpkin juice every single time.
Ron, by then, had reached a kind of weary, resigned acceptance about the whole situation. "I don't want details," he told you flatly, one evening, when you'd tried — uncharacteristically — to mention something small Fred had done that week. "I just want you to be happy, and I want to never have to picture my brother's face while you're telling me about it. Those are my only two conditions." Hermione, for her part, had taken to simply raising one eyebrow, wordlessly, every time Fred did something transparently devoted in your direction across the common room — a silent, running commentary the two of you had come to understand perfectly without ever needing to say a thing about it out loud.
"It's not a secret, you know," Lee told Fred one evening, entirely too pleased with himself. "The whole not-saying-anything thing. Pretty sure First Years know at this point."
"There's nothing to know." Fred said, slightly irritated, as if this topic touched a nerve he didn't even know he had.
"Sure," Lee said, in exactly the same tone Angelina always used, and he was beginning to suspect the entire school had collectively agreed on that particular inflection just to torment him.
Letter twenty: At this point, I might just take your face in my hands and kiss you until you understand why I'm doing it.
Fred,
You walked me back from the Order meeting at the Burrow tonight, even though it was perfectly safe ground the whole way and you didn't need to. We didn't talk about anything important. We talked about nothing at all, actually, and it was somehow the best conversation I've had in weeks.
I think I've loved you for three years now, properly, not just as a crush that should have faded by now. I don't know how to keep carrying this quietly. I don't know how much longer I can watch you be brave and kind and funny and only sometimes let myself imagine what it would be like if you looked at me the way I look at you.
I love you. I love you so much. I don't know how else to tell you, maybe kissing you stupid until you realize(?
You'd folded that letter into the box on an ordinary Tuesday evening, twenty-something letters deep into a habit you'd never once told a soul the full extent of, and gone down to the common room afterward without any idea that it would be the last one you'd ever get to keep entirely to yourself.
Romilda Vane had never been particularly known for respecting other people's belongings.
It happened on an unremarkable evening, the dormitory mostly empty, Romilda rummaging through your trunk in search of a borrowed Potions textbook she swore she'd returned. In her haste, elbow catching the shelf above your bed, the small carved box tumbled to the stone floor and cracked open with a sound sharp enough to make her jump backward, startled.
You weren't there to see it. You were down in the common room, laughing at something Ginny had said.
The enchantment, built by a thirteen-year-old's careful but imperfect magic, hadn't been designed to survive impact. It broke instantly, and the letters — no longer sealed, no longer yours alone — caught the residual charm meant to contain them and turned it, in the chaotic way broken magic sometimes does, into precisely the opposite of its original purpose.
They flew. Out the dormitory window, across the grounds, toward the boys' side of the tower, toward a room three floors up where two boys and their best friend were in the middle of an entirely unrelated argument about Chocolate Frog cards.
Romilda, horrified, said nothing to anyone. You wouldn't find out what had happened for several days.
The first letter came in through the window with no warning at all, drifting lazily on some current of half-broken magic, and landed directly on the Chocolate Frog card Lee had been mid-sentence about, which was, in retrospect, an almost comedic amount of precision for something no one had aimed.
"What in Merlin's name — " Lee picked it up before Fred could, turning it over with the delighted curiosity of someone who'd never once in his life resisted an unattended piece of parchment. "Oi, Fred, it's got your name on it."
The second letter arrived thirty seconds later. Then the third, then a fourth and a fifth in quick succession, drifting through the open window one after another like a very slow, very confused flock of owls that had forgotten how to fly in formation, scattering across George's bed, Fred's trunk, the floor, until the dormitory looked less like a bedroom and more like the site of a mild indoor blizzard made entirely of parchment.
"Is this a prank?" George said, delighted, already scooping up two of them. "Did someone finally get us back for the swamp thing?"
"George, wait — " Fred had gone very still, one letter held carefully in both hands, staring down at handwriting he recognized instantly. He'd been receiving small, cheerful notes in that same hand for years, tucked into birthday presents and passed between friends. Fred.
He opened it before he could think better of it.
By the time the tenth letter drifted through the window, Fred had gone almost entirely silent, sitting very still on the edge of his bed, the color slowly draining from his face and then, in patches, returning as something closer to disbelief.
"Fred?" Lee, still holding two of the shorter ones — the "i love you Fred Weasley you complete idiot" variety, which he was currently reading with the barely-contained glee of someone who'd stumbled onto the best gossip of his entire Hogwarts career — looked up, grinning. "Mate, I don't know what's happening but I think this might be the best day of my life — "
"Lee." George's voice had gone abruptly quiet, sharp in a way that cut through the chaos immediately. He'd clocked his brother's face — properly clocked it, the way only a twin could — and was already crossing the room to physically remove the letters from Lee's hands. "Out."
"What? Why? This is incredible, I want to know how this ends — "
"Out, Lee. Now. I mean it." George steered him bodily toward the door, ignoring Lee's protests entirely, and shut it firmly behind him before turning back to his brother, who hadn't moved from the bed, still holding the first letter like it might dissolve if he loosened his grip.
The remaining letters kept arriving over the following hour — fifteen more, twenty, until all twenty-two had drifted in through the window and settled across the room like some strange, patient snowfall. But Fred, overwhelmed, hadn't read them all that night. He'd gathered them carefully instead, sorted by whatever chronology he could piece together from the handwriting and the dates scrawled at the top of a few, and tucked them into the bottom of his own trunk, beneath his spare robes, like something too fragile to rush.
"You're not going to read the rest tonight?" George asked, watching him close the trunk lid.
"I don't think I can. Not all at once." Fred sat back down, looking faintly stunned, still holding the very first letter — fuck, I think I like you — like it explained something enormous about the last three years of his life. "I think I need to take this slowly. She wrote three years of feelings into these. Feels wrong to swallow it in one sitting like it's gossip."
It didn't happen all at once. That was, perhaps, the strangest part.
Fred read one or two letters a week, whenever he found a private moment — tucked into a corner of the common room after everyone else had gone to bed, in the shop's future site during a Hogsmeade weekend, once, memorably, hiding in a broom cupboard for twenty minutes because he couldn't find anywhere else quiet enough. Each one rearranged something in him a little further. Each one made the boy in the letters — protective, observant, quietly kind, entirely unaware of his own good qualities — feel more and more like someone he recognized, uncomfortably, as himself.
You noticed the change before you understood it, because it came slowly, in fragments, over that entire month.
He started correcting small things about himself, as though testing whether the version of him in the letters was one he could grow into more fully. He stopped letting George take all the credit for their better pranks. He started thanking the house-elves more deliberately, like he'd only just realized someone had been watching him do it all along and wanted to be worth the watching. He got, unmistakably, nervous around you — fumbling sentences he'd never once fumbled before, going faintly pink at compliments he'd have shrugged off a month earlier, watching you with a new, searching carefulness that felt entirely unlike the easy confidence you'd known him for.
He also, without ever quite explaining why, started flirting with you — properly, deliberately, in a way that was new and different from three years of easy teasing. Small things. A compliment that lingered a beat too long to be casual. A hand that found the small of your back guiding you through a doorway and didn't move away as quickly as it used to. Once, memorably, he'd called you "gorgeous" instead of "Trouble" in front of the whole common room, then gone scarlet and covered it with a joke so badly delivered that Angelina had actually laughed out loud at the attempt.
"Is something wrong with Fred?" you asked Ginny, watching him trip over an entirely simple sentence during a perfectly ordinary conversation.
"No idea," Ginny said, though something in her tone suggested otherwise. "Maybe ask him yourself?"
Lee, when you cornered him separately, was significantly less subtle about it, grinning at you like he was one comment away from bursting. "Oh, you don't know yet? This is going to be so good, I can't wait — "
"Know what?"
"Nothing. Nope. Not my story to tell." Lee had practically skipped away, delighted with himself, leaving you more unsettled than before.
Nearly a month after the box had shattered on your dormitory floor, unable to shake the feeling that something had shifted between you without your permission, you did what you always did when a feeling grew too large to carry silently.
You went to write it down.
Your hand met empty air on the shelf.
For one long, disbelieving moment you simply stood there, certain you'd misjudged the shelf, certain the box had merely slipped further back than usual. You checked the whole shelf. You checked your trunk, under the bed, behind every book in every corner of the dormitory the box could conceivably have migrated to on its own.
It wasn't there. It hadn't been there, you realized with mounting, sickening horror, in nearly a month — and you hadn't even noticed, hadn't reached for it, too distracted by Fred's strange, gentle unraveling to register that your own most private confession had gone missing weeks earlier and simply hadn't been needed.
"Hermione." Your voice came out strange, too tight, catching your dorm-mate mid-essay on her own bed. "Have you seen my box? The wooden one, small, carved — it's always on that shelf."
Hermione looked up, and something shifted in her face — not quite guilt, but the particular carefulness of someone who already suspected more than she wanted to say out loud. "I haven't seen it. But Romilda's been acting strange for weeks, actually, now that you mention it, and Ginny's been oddly quiet on the subject of Fred lately." She set down her quill slowly. "I think you should go find Ginny. Now, probably."
You found Ginny in the common room ten minutes later, and one look at her face told you everything you needed to know before either of you said a word.
"Ginny." Your voice came out strange, too tight. "Ginny, have you seen my box?"
"It broke," Ginny said, gently, wincing in anticipation of your reaction. "About a month ago. Romilda knocked it off the shelf, and the charm shattered, and the letters — they flew, love. All of them. Straight to Fred's dormitory window."
The floor seemed to tilt slightly beneath you. "A month ago?"
"He's had them a month. He's been reading them slowly — I only found out myself last week, and I swore to keep it quiet because I didn't know how to tell you without it sounding like an ambush, and I am so, so sorry — "
"He's had them a month, Ginny, and he's just been — " Your voice cracked, mortification crashing over you in waves you couldn't get ahead of. Every strange, flustered, gentle thing Fred had done over the last few weeks rearranged itself instantly into horrifying new context. The compliments. The nervousness. Gorgeous, slipping out in front of the whole common room. He'd known. For weeks, he'd known, and let you keep noticing him fumbling without ever telling you why.
"You should sit down," Ginny said, gently. "And I think you should talk to Fred."
You found him by the lake, at dusk, the very evening you'd learned the truth, having spent the intervening hours in a state of mortified, disbelieving panic that had only sharpened with every reconstructed memory of the last four weeks.
Fred was sitting on the grass, all twenty-two letters stacked carefully beside him, weighted down against the evening breeze with a smooth stone, and when you approached he stood immediately, something anxious and hopeful warring across his face in equal measure.
"You know," you said, before he could speak, because you needed to say it before your nerve failed entirely. "Ginny told me. You've had them a month, Fred. A month."
"I have." He didn't try to soften it, didn't try to pretend otherwise. "I wasn't going to keep it from you forever. I just — I didn't know how to read three years of your feelings in one sitting and then walk up to you the next morning like nothing had changed. I needed time to let it be real before I said anything, and I know that probably made it worse, watching me go strange on you for weeks without explanation, and I'm sorry for that part. Truly."
You stood frozen at the edge of the grass, every carefully constructed wall you'd built over three years suddenly rendered pointless, entirely, uselessly exposed. "How did they even get to you? The box was charmed — "
"I don't know the mechanics of it. I just know they arrived, all twenty-two of them, over about an hour, through my dormitory window, while George and Lee were both sitting right there." He winced slightly, rueful. "Lee got to read two of them before George threw him out. I'm sorry about that part too. I've sworn him to secrecy under threat of considerable bodily harm, though I make no promises about how long that'll last."
You let out something between a laugh and a sob, mortified and relieved in equal, dizzying measure. "This is a disaster."
"It's a bit of a disaster," Fred agreed, gently. "But it's also — " He stopped, visibly gathering himself, and when he spoke again his voice had lost the joking edge entirely. "I need to say this properly, because you deserve properly, and I've had a month to plan it and I'm still going to say it badly, so bear with me."
"Fred — "
"I love you,Trouble." He said it plainly, without performance. "I don't know exactly when it started. I think some part of me has known for a long time and just refused to look directly at it, because you're Harry's sister, and careful in a way that made it easy to convince myself I was imagining things, and because I genuinely believed someone as clever and steady as you would eventually want someone more serious than a bloke who's spent the last five years perfecting how to make an entire classroom explode." He exhaled, unsteady. "Reading those letters didn't create anything that wasn't already there. It just made me stop lying to myself about it. And I know that's not the same as three years, but I need you to know it wasn't nothing before this either. Ask George. Ask literally anyone in this castle, apparently, because it seems everyone but the two of us already knew."
"You never said anything."
"Neither did you," he pointed out, gently, no accusation in it. "Twenty-two letters, love. We've apparently both been standing very close to the same door, too scared to be the one who opened it first."
You crossed the grass before you'd fully decided to, and he met you halfway, and the kiss that followed was nothing like the easy, weightless things you'd watched him give other girls over the years — careful, a little desperate, entirely, unmistakably real, three years of near-misses finally collapsing into something solid.
"For the record," Fred murmured, forehead resting against yours, "you were never boring. Not for a single second, in three years, not once."
"You said that in second year."
"I meant it in second year. I've meant it every year since." He laughed, a little disbelieving. "I can't believe it took my dormitory getting hit by a paper storm to get here."
"I can't believe Lee read two of them."
"He's already been threatened within an inch of his life. George is very thorough."
Molly Weasley cried — properly cried, apron still on, wooden spoon abandoned mid-stir — when Fred brought you to the Burrow that summer and, with considerably more ceremony than either of you had intended, announced that you were together, properly, no longer some slow-motion inevitability the entire family had been quietly waiting on for years.
"Finally," she said, pulling you both into a hug so fierce it nearly knocked the wind out of you. "I have been waiting for this since you were twelve years old."
"Mum," Fred said, laughing, entirely unembarrassed. "Let her breathe."
"I will not let her breathe, I have earned this hug — "
"Everyone did," George put in from the doorway, unhelpfully delighted. "Angelina and I had a running bet. I believe I've technically won, since I always said Fred would break first."
"You knew?" you asked, half-laughing, half-mortified. "All of you knew?"
"Love," Ginny said, with the weary patience of someone who'd been holding her tongue out of loyalty to your privacy for years, "everyone in this family has known since roughly the second summer you and harey spent here, You two were just spectacularly slow catching up to the rest of us."
Ron, sprawled across the nearest armchair with the specific relief of someone whose long ordeal had finally ended, raised his glass of pumpkin juice in your general direction. "Thank Merlin. Do you know how many times I nearly said something and stopped myself? My policy held for three years. I deserve an award."
"Now will you explain that policy to me or...?" Harry asked curiously, still confused, earning laughter from everyone and an exasperated "You're a very slow idiot!" from Hermione.
Hermione, beside him, simply smiled — the quiet, satisfied smile of someone who'd been right the whole time and had the good grace not to say I told you so out loud, though her eyes said it clearly enough.
"You could have just told me" Fred said, half laughing, half exasperated, looking between all of them.
"And ruin twenty-two letters' worth of a perfectly good story?" Ron said, with real feeling. "Absolutely not."
Later that evening, sitting together on the same shed roof where a fourteen-year-old boy had once told a twelve-year-old girl about a joke shop nobody else knew he wanted, Fred pulled the letters — still carefully carried with him since the day they'd arrived, wrapped now in a spare bit of ribbon — from his bag and set them gently between you.
"What do we do with these now?"
"I don't know," you admitted. "They were never supposed to be read by anyone. Least of all you."
"I'm glad they were." He took your hand, lacing his fingers through yours. "I got to watch myself fall in love with you twenty-five different times, from your side of it. Not many people get proof like that. I'd like to keep them, if that's alright. Somewhere sturdier than a coat pocket this time."
"You could get a box," you offered. "Charm it properly. Something that actually stays shut."
"I could." He smiled, slow and certain, nothing performative left in it at all. "Or I could just tell you how I feel out loud from now on, and we could stop needing letters altogether."
"Both," you said, leaning into his shoulder as the sun set over the garden, gold and warm and entirely unhurried. "I'd like both, actually."
"Both it is, then." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, easy as breathing, three years and twenty-five letters and one very well-timed accident finally, finally arriving somewhere solid. "Only took us the better part of a decade to get here. Give or take."
Warnings/Tags: Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Prank wars, Ravenclaw Reader/OC, Smart MC, Fluff, six year, Some slight modifications to the canon or timeline, modern music(?.
Premise: For Fred Weasley, what is out of reach is simply a challenge waiting to be accepted. He lives for chaos, which means he never fell for the school’s biggest illusion: Grace McGonagall. To the rest of Hogwarts, she is the golden student, a saintly legacy who can do no wrong. To Fred, she is a puzzle disguised as a perfect girl, hiding a razor-sharp wit and a dark streak of defiance beneath her Ravenclaw robes. His new theory? Good girls are just bad girls who haven't been caught yet. Fred is ready to tear down her walls to prove it—what he doesn't expect is that Grace doesn't just know how his games work; she plays them better.
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The Gryffindor common room was vibrating at a frequency that threatened to shake the centuries-old mortar directly out of the walls.
Enchanted scarlet and gold streamers zipped through the air above three hundred celebrating students, bursting into harmless showers of golden sparks whenever they collided with the chandelier. The wireless was cranked to an earsplitting volume, blasting out a brassy, high-energy spell-pop track while a newly tapped keg of butterbeer foamed steadily in the corner.
In the center of it all stood Fred Weasley, holding a half-empty tankard in his left hand, feeling an emotion entirely alien to his biological makeup: he was profoundly, uncomfortably distracted.
He was the winning Beater. He was the co-architect of Gryffindor's two-hundred-and-ten-point demolition of Slytherin. By all natural laws of the universe, he should have been standing on the central table alongside George and Lee Jordan, leading the room in an off-key, theatrical rendition of ‘Weasley is our king’ or coordinating the launch of a celebratory indoor swamp.
Instead, his eyes were locked like a homing beacon onto the far left corner of the room.
Grace McGonagall was leaning casually against the arm of a plush crimson sofa, laughing at something Angelina Johnson had just said. She was still wearing his oversized Quidditch jersey over her clothes, the heavy wool hanging down past her thighs, her sleeves rolled up twice to free her wrists. She held a tankard of butterbeer loosely in one hand, her dark curls falling over her shoulders in soft, messy waves.
She didn't look like a Prefect. She didn't look like the untouchable, highly policed daughter of the Deputy Headmistress. Surrounded by Ginny, Alicia, Luna and Hermione, Grace looked entirely, beautifully normal — a girl simply existing inside a circle of friends who didn't care about her last name.
And Fred could not take his eyes off her.
"If you stare any harder, you're going to set her cardigan on fire by ocular combustion alone," George muttered, materializing at Fred's elbow with two fresh tankards.
Fred blinked, tearing his gaze away with deliberate slowness to take a sip of his drink. "I'm not staring, George. I'm assessing the structural integrity of the room. As a Prefect, if she decides to start docking points for indoor pyrotechnics, I need to be prepared to deploy countermeasures."
"Right," Lee Jordan snorted, appearing on George's other side and looking at Fred with blatant disbelief. "Countermeasures. Is that why you just spent the last twenty minutes glaring like a territorial Hungarian Horntail every time Cormac McLaggen walked within five feet of her?"
"McLaggen is a hazard to public health," Fred said smoothly, his jaw tightening slightly. "He spills half his drinks when he talks with his hands. I was protecting my jersey."
George exchanged a long, entirely wordless look with Lee. "Of course you were, Freddie," George said softly, tapping his tankard against Fred's. "Total protection of your knitwear. That's definitely what this is."
Fred ignored them, but his chest felt remarkably tight.
It wasn't just McLaggen. For the past hour, Fred's internal wiring had completely short-circuited. Every time the party shifted, every time the crowd surged around Grace, his instincts overrode his brain before he could even register what he was doing.
When a sixth-year Gryffindor had offered Grace a suspiciously dark glass of smuggled Ogden's Old Firewhisky, Fred had materialized out of nowhere, smoothly stepping between them with a theatrical gasp of mock-horror.
"Davies, mate, have some respect," Fred said, pressing a hand to his chest like a man personally wounded. "You can't offer firewhisky to someone who's never broken a rule in her life. She wouldn't even know what to do with it. She'd probably try to grade it." He plucked the glass from Davies' hand, replacing it smoothly with a fresh butterbeer that he pressed into Grace's instead. "There you go. Completely school-approved. Probably tastes like revision notes."
Grace took the butterbeer with a flat, unimpressed look. "I know what firewhisky is, Weasley."
"Knowing what it is and knowing what to do with it are very different things, Gracie," Fred said cheerfully, already backing away. "Stick to the curriculum."
She hadn't hexed him. That meant she found it at least mildly amusing. Fred counted it as a win.
When Lee had tried to drag Grace into a high-stakes game of exploding snap on the wobbling coffee table, Fred stepped into the path before the invitation was halfway out of Lee's mouth.
"Jordan, please," Fred said, with the pained air of someone explaining basic physics to a very enthusiastic child. "Look at her. She colour-codes her ink by subject. She has literally never broken a nail in six years of Hogwarts. You want to put her on a table with explosive playing cards?" He shook his head mournfully. "She wouldn't survive the first round. She'd try to read the instructions."
"There are no instructions for exploding snap," Lee said.
"Exactly," Fred said. "She'd make some."
Grace, standing two feet away and perfectly capable of speaking for herself, gave Fred a look of exquisite, withering patience. "It can't be that complicated, Weasley."
"Maybe it is for you, darling" Fred said, with complete, sunny disbelief.
It was, objectively, infuriating. Grace recognized the pattern by the third intervention — the jokes landing just soft enough that she couldn't be properly angry, the interference wrapped in enough humor that calling him out felt like overreacting. He was being protective and making her feel ridiculous about it at the same time, which was somehow worse than either thing alone.
Across the room, Grace took a slow sip of her butterbeer, listening to Ginny explain a complicated defensive maneuver she wanted to try during Gryffindor's next practice.
For the first time since she had arrived at Hogwarts at eleven years old, Grace felt a warm, golden sensation settling deep inside her chest that had nothing to do with academic validation. She looked around the circle — Ginny's fierce enthusiasm, Angelina's easy, welcoming laughter, Hermione's comfortable presence — and realized she wasn't performing. Nobody was waiting for her to quote a regulation. Nobody was evaluating her posture to see if it reflected well on Minerva McGonagall. She was just Grace. She belonged to a group.
And every single time she looked up, she found Fred Weasley's sharp, brown eyes tracking her through the crowd.
She had noticed his sudden, bizarre interference immediately. Grace noticed everything; it was an occupational hazard of being a Ravenclaw. She had seen him smooth-talk Davies out of the firewhisky. She had felt his broad hand catch her elbow before Lee could pull her into the exploding snap circle. She had watched him hover at the perimeter of her conversations like a restless shadow, his tall frame tensed whenever someone bumped into her.
It was fascinating. And it was deeply, infuriatingly confusing.
Excusing herself from the girls with a small smile, Grace set her empty tankard down on a side table. She slipped through the dancing crowd until she reached the shadowed alcove near the high stone windows where Fred had retreated.
She stepped into his space without warning, her shoulder lightly clipping his arm.
Fred looked down. "Gracie. Need a refill? Or did McLaggen finally say something stupid enough to warrant a hex? Because if so, I have suggestions—"
"You know," Grace said pleasantly, cutting him off, "for someone who spent the last month desperately trying to drag me out of my mold, you've been remarkably busy tonight making sure I stay exactly inside it."
Fred blinked. "I don't know what you're—"
"Davies and the firewhisky." Grace held up one finger. "Lee and the Exploding Snap." A second finger. "The very detailed commentary on my inability to handle fun without a curriculum." A third. She tilted her head, her hazel eyes glittering with amusement. "Am I missing any? I lost count around intervention number four."
Fred opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Here's what's interesting," Grace continued, her voice dropping into the low, velvet register she usually reserved for corridors. She took one step closer, close enough that he had to look down to maintain eye contact. "Three weeks ago you saw me smoking a cigarette on a tower at one in the morning and told me the midnight smoker was spectacular. Tonight you're telling Gryffindor sixth-years I wouldn't know what to do with firewhisky." She raised an eyebrow. "What's changed now, Freckles?"
Fred swallowed. The alcove was small and she was very close and her eyes were doing that thing where they looked like she already knew the answer to every question she was asking.
"I'm just... maintaining quality control," Fred finally said, his voice coming out rougher, lower than usual. "Can't have you ruining my jersey with cheap firewhisky."
Grace stared at him for three long seconds. Something shifted in her expression — the amusement sharpening into something more deliberate, more dangerous.
"Right," she said softly. "Quality control."
Without another word, Grace reached down to the hem of the heavy scarlet jersey. With a slow, deliberate, entirely calculated motion — aware of every inch of what she was doing — she pulled the thick wool up and over her head.
Fred's breath caught violently in his chest.
Stripped of the oversized jersey, Grace stood before him in her tight clothes. The low-rise dark denim jeans rested low on her hips. The white long-sleeve shirt hugged her arms tightly, layered beneath the snug black short-sleeve baby tee that molded perfectly to her torso. Without the heavy wool drowning her frame, she looked sharp and dangerously, breathtakingly herself.
She gathered the scarlet jersey into a neat bundle and pressed it directly into Fred's chest.
"Thanks for the loan, Weasley," Grace whispered. "I think my back is rested now." She patted the bundled jersey once, like punctuation. "And I don't need a chaperone."
Before Fred could process what was happening, Grace turned on her heel and walked away.
She didn't go toward the portrait hole. She walked straight to the enchanted wireless where Lee Jordan was flipping through records, leaned over the table, and said something into his ear, pointing to a specific vinyl near the bottom of the crate.
Lee blinked. "You sure, corporate? That's heavy Muggle bass."
"Play it, Jordan."
Lee grinned and tapped his wand against the brass horn of the wireless.
The spell-pop cut out. Two seconds of silence. Then a driving, hypnotic, aggressive Muggle beat slammed through the speakers — a pulsing bass line that vibrated straight up through the floorboards and into everyone's bones.
Grace stepped into the center of the common room rug.
She didn't look around to see if anyone was judging her. She raised her hands, ran her fingers through her loose dark curls, and found the beat.
Breaking Dishes. Rihanna.
Then she found Fred.
He was still standing in the alcove, her scarlet jersey clutched in both hands, watching her with the expression of someone who had just realized they'd walked into a very elegant trap. Good. Grace let the opening bars wash over her and tilted her head at him — slow, deliberate — with a smile that said ‘yes, this is exactly what you think it is.’
I don't know who you think I am
"I don't know who you think I am
I don't know who you think I am
The song opened with its first line, all defiant brass and attitude.
Grace pointed at Fred.
I don't know who you think I am”
Not dramatically. Just one finger, lazy and precise, aimed directly at his chest across the crowded room. You. The question is about you.
Fred's eyebrows shot up. His mouth opened slightly.
"He been gone since 3:30
Grace turned away from him on the next beat, moving her hips to the bass like she hadn't just indicted him in front of three hundred people, her curls swinging over her shoulders. Behind her she could hear Ginny make a sound that was half laugh, half shriek.
When the verse came Grace turned back to Fred and mimed checking an imaginary wristwatch on her wrist, her expression a perfect reproduction of polite, patient disappointment. The same face she'd been giving him in corridors for two months.
Been comin' home lately at 3:30"
Fred let out a single, disbelieving laugh. He shook his head.
Grace pressed the back of her hand to her forehead in a theatrical swoon — poor foolish me — then dropped it, her eyes going sharp, her chin lifting. The transition was so fast and so accurate that Ginny grabbed Angelina's arm beside her.
“You go girl! Get it!” One of the girls cheered.
“I'm super cool, I've been a fool
But now I'm hot and, baby, you gon' get it Now, I ain't trippin', I, I ain't twisted,
I I ain't demented, huh, well, just a lil' bit, huh?
I'm kickin' ni—,I'm takin' names I'm on flame, don't come home, babe”
The chorus hit.
Grace pointed at Fred again. Both hands this time, then spread them wide — ‘you, specifically you, this is your fault’ — before raising them above her head and letting the beat take over completely, moving with an effortless, hypnotic confidence that made the crowd around her instinctively step back to give her room.
“I'm breakin' dishes up in here, all night (uh-huh)
Fred stood frozen in the alcove, the jersey now hanging forgotten from one hand, his other hand pressed over his mouth. His ears were the color of his Quidditch uniform.
I ain't gon' stop until I see police lights (uh-huh)
I'ma fight a man tonight, I'ma fight a man tonight”
"She's pointing at him," Lee Jordan breathed reverently, appearing at George's shoulder. "She's literally pointing at him and he's just standing there."
"He's not breathing," George observed. "I don't think he's breathing."
"Should we — "
“I'm still waitin', come through the door
"No," George said firmly. "We leave him."
I'm killin' time, you know, bleachin' your clothes
I'm roastin' marshmallows on the fireAnd what I'm burnin', ah, is your attire
I'm gettin' restless, I'm gettin' tested”
The second verse arrived and Grace, with the calm precision of someone who had been planning this for longer than anyone realized, turned to face Fred directly, crossed her arms over her chest, and gave him the slow, patient, devastating look she usually reserved for students who did something prohibited by the regulations .
She glanced pointedly at the nearest empty tankard on the side table.
Then back at him.
“I'm lookin' 'round for somethin' else to throw”
Fred made a sound that was completely swallowed by the music, but from the shape of his face it was probably something between a laugh and a plea.
The bridge came — louder, more chaotic — and Grace let herself go completely, her dark hair wild around her face, her sneakers shifting across the rug with a loose, unself-conscious freedom that had nothing to do with the prefect badge currently sitting on her bedside table in Ravenclaw tower.
“ I don't know who you think I am
But I really don't give a damn right now
if you don't come, I'ma huff and puff and blow this, blow this, oh
Blow this, blow thisI'ma blow this, blow this, oh
Blow this, blow this
I'ma blow this, blow this, ohBlow this house, house down
Behind her, Ginny and Angelina were dancing alongside her now, Alicia clapping the beat, the four of them making a loose and delighted circle while the rest of the common room pushed closer to watch. Someone wolf-whistled. Several people were laughing.
Dishes, breakin' dishes, breakin' dishes”
Grace didn't look away from Fred.
The song reached its final chorus — all percussion and brass and pure, unapologetic chaos — and Grace let it carry her through one last spin, her curls flying, before she landed facing him again, slightly breathless, one hand pressed to her sternum with an expression of complete, theatrical innocence.
The song ended.
The common room took two seconds to catch up, then erupted.
Grace raised an eyebrow at him across the crowd.
‘Well?’
Fred stood in the alcove with her—his—jersey still hanging from his hand, his face flushed, his hair slightly more disheveled than it had been ten minutes ago as if the whole thing had happened physically to him. He looked like a man who had just had something explained to him very clearly in a language he hadn't known he spoke.
Fred shook his head slowly, and the grin that broke across his face was the kind that happened before you could stop it — wide and bright and completely, helplessly real.
He walked into the center of the room. He didn't think, just dropped the jersey on the nearest armchair and walked straight into the center of the room.
He cut through the crowd with singular purpose, stepping directly into the clearing the girls had formed around Grace. Ginny spotted him first, raised her eyebrows, and immediately stepped back to give him room, already grinning.
Grace spun on the new beat and found Fred standing inches away. The height difference hit her immediately — flat Converse against someone who had several inches on her, having to tilt her head back to look at his face.
Fred didn't give her room to retreat. He moved into her space, his thumbs hooking lightly into the belt loops of her low-rise jeans, pulling her closer until their bodies found the same rhythm.
The air between them ignited.
Grace's hands came up, palms flat against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat — faster than it should have been, faster than he would ever voluntarily admit. Around them, the crowd and the music and the common room compressed into background noise. The heat of his hands on her hips, the height difference that made her feel simultaneously small and entirely unintimidated, the way he was looking at her like she was the only thing in the room that was real.
The tension stretched. A violin string pulled to its absolute limit.
Grace felt his gaze drop to her lips. Felt his hands tighten on the denim. One more second and something was going to snap in a way that neither of them had agreed to yet.
She looked up at him, found his eyes, and let the mischief back in.
"Careful, Freckles," Grace murmured, glancing pointedly down at the narrow space between their feet. She nudged the toe of her Converse against his boot. "Don't step on my Converses. These are imported from London."
The snap became a laugh.
Fred shook his head, a wide, breathless grin breaking across his flushed face. He didn't let go of her hips. The unbearable tension decomposed into their familiar gravity — still close, still warm, still absolutely unresolved, but survivable.
"Wouldn't dream of it, pretty face," Fred murmured, leaning down so his forehead nearly brushed her hair as they kept moving to the beat. "I have exceptional footwork."
A few yards away, standing near the punch bowl, George Weasley leaned against the wall next to Angelina Johnson. The two of them watched Fred in the center of the room, holding the Ravenclaw Prefect by her belt loops like the rest of the castle had evaporated.
Angelina took a slow sip of her drink, shaking her head. "I don't think it was ever about proving a theory; he just wanted Grace."
"Are you only thinking about it now?" Lee materialized on George's other side, shaking his head. "I bet he don't even realizes that he likes her."
George smiled. Just smiled, quietly, and didn't say anything. Some things didn't need commentary.
By two in the morning, the party had finally wound down to a quiet, glowing ember.
The heavy bass had been replaced by a soft acoustic melody floating from the wireless. Most of the students had retired to their dormitories, leaving the common room littered with empty tankards and discarded party hats.
Grace stood near the portrait hole, wrapped tightly once more in Fred's sweater, her heavy satchel slung over her shoulder. Luna stood beside her, dreamily inspecting a discarded gold streamer she had wrapped around her wrist.
Fred stood two paces away, his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his trousers. His red hair was messy, his collar undone at the throat.
Neither of them mentioned the dance. Neither of them mentioned the way his hands had felt on her hips, or the way she had looked at him under the firelight.
"You have your patrol log for Monday?" Fred asked softly, his voice rough from the smoke and the shouting earlier.
"I always have my log, Fred," Grace replied quietly, her hazel eyes steady on his face. She offered him a small, genuine smile. "Thanks for the party. It was... surprisingly good."
"Anytime, Gracie," he murmured.
She turned and stepped through the portrait hole behind Luna, the heavy fat lady painting swinging shut with a soft click.
Fred didn't move. He stood alone near the empty doorway for a long, silent minute, staring at the empty space where she had been.
Fred closed his eyes, leaning the back of his head against the stone archway. He could still feel the phantom warmth of her palms flat against his chest. He could still see the wild, free, beautiful way she had moved to the music, completely stripped of her armor, looking so intensely, breathtakingly alive.
Fred let out a slow, ragged breath in the quiet room. Something fundamental had shifted permanently inside his chest. And he didn't want to fix it.
The next morning, as the sixth-year students shuffled into Charms still smelling faintly of butterbeer and celebration, Professor Flitwick squeaked from his stack of books at the front of the classroom.
"Due to the upcoming N.E.W.T. practical simulations," he announced, unrolling a long scroll, "I have decided to re-assign laboratory pairs for the remainder of the term. Pairs have been determined by combining the theoretical scorers. Mr. Jordan with Miss Clearwater... Mr. Weasley — Fred, that is — with Miss McGonagall."
Across the aisle, George let out a low, highly amused whistle.
Fred didn't even look at his brother. He grabbed his bag, stood up, and slid smoothly into the empty wooden stool directly beside Grace at the front workstation without breaking stride.
Grace neatly aligned her textbook, not looking up as he unpacked his parchment. "That was Flitwick's doing, not mine. I want that on record."
"Noted," Fred said cheerfully, resting his chin in his hand and turning to study her profile instead of the formula on the board. "Right. Let's work."
He did not work.
Three minutes into the practical setup, while Grace was carefully measuring the atmospheric stabilizer with the focused precision of someone who took this personally, Fred leaned his elbow on the desk.
"Why Arithmancy?" he asked.
Grace didn't look up. "We're supposed to be calculating displacement ratios."
"I'm a certified Outstanding student now. I can multitask." He tilted his head. "Why Arithmancy specifically? You could've taken Care of Magical Creatures. Easy O."
Grace's quill kept moving. "Numbers don't change their minds depending on who's looking at them. There's a clean structure to it." A pause. "It's stable."
Fred watched the way she said it — not performing the answer, just giving it, like she'd forgotten for a second that he was the type of person who collected her unguarded moments. He nodded slowly and didn't make a joke.
"What do you do when it's not stable?" he asked.
Grace looked up from her parchment. "What?"
"When you're not studying. When you're up in your blue tower and you're not reviewing charts." He gestured vaguely. "What do you actually do with yourself, Gracie? Don't say tutoring."
"I wasn't going to say tutoring."
"You were absolutely going to say tutoring."
Grace set her quill down with the particular precision of someone buying time. "I read. I walk. I—" She stopped.
"Smoke cigarettes on forbidden towers," Fred supplied helpfully.
"Occasionally." The corner of her mouth twitched. "And I listen to music. Sometimes. When my cousin sends tapes from London."
Fred's eyes lit up. "What do you listen to?"
"I don't have a massive collection."
"Give me one. Just one song."
Grace looked at him with the expression she reserved for when he was being persistent in a way she didn't entirely mind. "I'm not sure you'd know it."
"I know a lot of things. I'm an Outstanding scholar." He spread his hands. "Hit me."
There was a beat. Grace picked her quill back up. "Currently I know most of Hermione's Taylor Swift songs by accident. She plays them very loudly when she's stressed."
Fred made a sound of genuine alarm. "That is a cry for help and you should have told someone sooner. There are resources available."
"I've learned to cope." Grace's mouth was doing the thing where she was trying not to smile. "Now are we doing this formula or not?"
"In a second." Fred reached into his bag, pulled out a clean piece of parchment, and tore off a strip with the cheerful efficiency of someone who had already decided what he was going to do. "Hold on."
He dipped his quill in ink and wrote something down with quick, careless strokes. Then he folded the strip into a tight triangle.
He slid it across the desk until it rested against her knuckles.
"There, you're saved from just knowing the wonderful Taylor Swift, you're welcome." Fred said, picking his own quill back up with an air of great satisfaction. "Now we can do the formula."
Grace looked at the folded triangle. Then at Fred, who was now studying the formula on the board with the focused attention of someone who had definitely not just done something meaningful.
She unfolded the paper.
‘Good Girls — 5SOS ;)’
Grace read the title twice. She didn't recognize it immediately — another muggle group, clearly — but she filed it away without giving him the satisfaction of a reaction. She folded the paper back along its creases and tucked it into the inner pocket of her robes.
"Is that a recommendation or a diagnosis?" she asked.
"Listen to it and decide," Fred said pleasantly, not looking up from the formula.
Grace studied his profile for a moment. Then picked up her own quill, tore a matching strip from her parchment, and wrote something in quick, fluid strokes. She folded it into the same triangle and dropped it into his open palm without ceremony.
Fred flicked it open.
‘In One Ear — Cage the Elephant :)’
He stared at it. Read it again. Looked up at Grace, who was already back to her calculations with the composed expression of someone who had said nothing unusual at all.
"Cage the Elephant," Fred repeated.
"You asked."
"Cage the Elephant," he said again, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Miss pretty-perfect-quiet-girl listens to Cage the Elephant."
"I listen to a variety of things."
"That is a noise complaint waiting to happen. That's not music, that's a public disturbance." He was still grinning, with the expression of someone who had just opened a door and found something entirely better than what they expected. "I love it."
"Focus on the formula, Freckles."
That night, Grace borrowed Hermione's music player, tucked it under her arm, and slipped out of the Ravenclaw common room at half past eleven.
The West Tower corridor was cold and dark and perfectly, reliably empty.
“Yes, my captain!" The redhead replied, feigning a solemn tone, bringing his hand to his temple in a military salute.
She settled onto the stone ledge of the boarded window, pulled her knees to her chest, and retrieved the thin cigarette from the inside pocket of her pajama's alongside the folded triangle of parchment. She lit the cigarette and unfolded the note one more time, and looked at the title.
‘Good Girls — 5SOS. ;)’
She'd tracked down the tape after class —Four boys on the album cover who looked approximately her age and entirely too pleased with themselves. She'd thought, briefly, that this was very on-brand for Fred.
Grace pressed play.
The opening was immediately louder than expected. Bright, driving guitar, the kind of song that didn't apologize for itself.
Then the first verse arrived, and Grace's cigarette stopped halfway to her lips.
"She's a good girl, she's daddy's favourite
He saves for Harvard (he knows she'll make it)
She's good at school, she's never truant
She can speak french (I think she's fluent)"
Grace exhaled slowly.
The verse kept going, cheerful and completely merciless — describing, in ascending order a specific girl. A girl who seemed perfect, and her parents thought they knew what she was doing even though they didn't. He was describing her, in a way.
"‘Cause every night she studies hard in her room
At least, that's what her parents assume
Grace looked at the cigarette in her hand.
But she sneaks out her window to meet with her boyfriend"
Then at the gap in the boarded window, through which the lake was perfectly, silently visible.
Then back at the cigarette.
He actually did his research, she thought. Or — no. He hadn't researched anything. He'd heard her. That was worse, somehow. That was considerably worse.
The chorus hit.
"Here's what she told me the time that I caught them
She said to me: Forget what you thought
'Cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught
So just turn around and forget what you saw
'Cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught"
Grace had known it was coming — she'd seen the title — but hearing it out loud, with that particular guitar and that particular cheerful confidence, landed differently than she'd anticipated.
She sat with that for a moment.
The second verse started. This one was more specific, and Grace found herself listening with the focused attention she usually reserved for just for school stuff — because whoever wrote this had apparently spent time in a Hogwarts common room, or at the very least had observed someone like her from a very close distance. — the girl who everyone assumed was there, who was clever, who acted the square. Who, at the back of the room where nobody looked, was doing something else entirely.
‘Good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught.’
Grace thought Fred standing on the Astronomy Tower with his mouth open, staring at her cigarette like she'd performed some kind of impossible Transfiguration.
She hadn't been caught, technically. Not by anyone who could do anything about it.
But Fred had seen her. And that was a different thing.
Grace took a long drag and thought about all the reasons she'd built the fachada in the first place. Professor Quirrell with his thin, pointed voice ‘What would your mother think?’. The stone feeling in her chest that had lasted months. The decision, made at eleven years old in a Charms corridor, to simply never give anyone that ammunition again.
It had made sense then. It still made sense, technically. The logic was sound. The system worked.
She exhaled and watched the smoke dissolve into the dark.
The thing was — and this was the part she hadn't quite examined yet, the part that lived in the same mental drawer as Fred's-jersey-is-still-on-my-bedpost— the thing was that the system had started feeling less like protection and more like a very well-maintained cage.
She'd been so focused on being uncatchable that she'd stopped noticing she was running.
‘From what, exactly?’ Grace asked herself.
The chorus came back one final time, and she let it play out completely.
She thought about the opera charm in the Great Hall, and how she'd had to press her lips together to keep from laughing when Fred had stormed out wailing about revenge in a soprano register. She thought about the note that she'd slid back across the library table because she couldn't help it, because he was so transparently delighted by her and nobody was ever just delighted by her, and it had felt like a small, ridiculous gift.
She thought about the jersey. About the way he'd said ‘let your back rest’ in a corridor under the Quidditch stands, just — dropped it into the air like it wasn't the most perceptive thing anyone had said to her in years, then immediately made a joke about it because the sincerity had apparently alarmed him too.
She thought about dancing to a Rihanna song in a Gryffindor common room while pointing at a very tall, very flushed, very speechless Fred Weasley, and how that had been the most fun she'd had in a room full of people in longer than she could remember.
The song ended. The click of the player was very loud in the quiet corridor.
Grace sat in the dark for a while.
The question wasn't really why keep the facade. The question—which she hadn't looked at directly until approximately this moment—was whether the facade was doing what she thought it was doing anymore, or whether it had become a habit so old she'd stopped checking if it still fit.
She turned the folded parchment over in her fingers.
The thing about Fred — and this was the part she was going to put away and not examine again until absolutely necessary — was that he already knew. He'd watched the frogs. He'd found her there and stood on the tower at one in the morning and heard the thing about Quirrell and the stone feeling in her chest and he had said ‘spectacular’ without any hesitation at all.
He hadn't caught her. He'd just — seen her. Without the armor. And then continued to show up.
Grace refolded the note very carefully along its original creases and put it back in her pocket.
She looked out at the lake for another minute. The water was perfectly still. The sky was very wide.
‘I have this completely under control’ ,she told herself.
The cigarette had burned to nothing between her fingers several minutes ago, and she was still sitting exactly where she was, which was perhaps relevant information that she elected not to process tonight.
She got up, tucked the player under her arm, and walked back down the dark corridor toward the tower stairs.
‘The jersey was going back to him tomorrow’, she decided.
Probably.
On the other side of the castle, a certain redhead was in his common room with his music player.
Fred pressed play.
The first two seconds were deceptive — a brief, almost gentle guitar note — and then the song detonated directly into his ear like a well-placed Dungbomb. Distorted, abrasive, completely unapologetic. A vocalist who sounded like he'd decided halfway through recording that rules were a personal insult.
Fred had heard ‘Cage the Elephant’ before. He liked them, actually, in the vague way he liked anything that sounded like it was daring someone to complain about it.
What he had not done before was listen to them while thinking about Grace McGonagall.
The song was fundamentally about not caring. About people deciding you were trash and you looking them directly in the eye and continuing to exist loudly anyway. About criticism going in one ear and evaporating before it reached the other side. About being exactly what you were, without adjustment, for an audience of precisely nobody.
Fred stared at the ceiling.
He thought about Grace color-coding her ink. Grace handing essays in two days early. Grace giving Professor Sprout the smile — the one that was technically a smile but was also, if you looked at it from the right angle, a very polished performance of a smile. Grace telling him ‘I have no idea what you're referring to, Weasley’ with a face so clean it should have been framed.
And then Grace, at one in the morning, exhaling smoke into the dark and saying ‘it reminds me I'm still real.’
He thought about her recommending this song. This specific song. She'd handed it to him like it was nothing — torn the paper, written the title, dropped it in his palm, gone back to her Arithmancy — but she'd chosen it. Out of whatever limited collection her cousin sent from London, out of whatever else lived on those tapes, she had chosen the one that was essentially a two-minute argument against giving any weight to what other people decided you were.
Fred pressed the back of his wand against his lip, thinking.
Was it because she liked it? Almost certainly. It was a good song. But Grace didn't do anything without at least two layers of intention, and she'd handed it to him specifically, after he'd handed her ‘Good Girls’ specifically, and the whole thing had the shape of a conversation they were having in a language that didn't require either of them to say anything directly.
He tried to picture her listening to it.
That was where things got complicated, because he could picture it easily — too easily — and what he pictured was not the prefect. Not the color-coded ink and the perfect posture. He pictured her in the West Tower, probably, knees pulled up, cigarette burning, that particular expression she got when she'd dropped the armor and was just thinking. Would she move to it? Probably not — it wasn't the kind of song you danced to in a structured way, it was the kind of song you put on when you needed to feel like the walls had no authority over you.
He thought about her dancing in his common room.
He thought about her pointing at him across a crowded party with the calm precision of someone delivering a verdict.
Fred ran a hand over his face.
The thing was — and this was the part he'd been not-looking-at for approximately three weeks — the thing was that he'd started this to prove a theory. The Good Girl Theory. The idea that underneath the prefect badge and the smile there was something real and contradictory and human, and that he was going to be the one to find it.
He had found it.
And then he had kept showing up, which had not been part of the original plan.
The song played on, loud and entirely indifferent to his crisis, and Fred thought about how Grace had laughed at his jokes in Potions last week — not the polished, deflecting laugh she used in corridors, but the real one, the one that got away from her before she could manage it. He thought about Ginny calling for Grace at lunch two days ago like it was the most natural thing in the world. About George nudging Grace's arm to include her in something, and Grace accepting it without stiffening, without calculating the social cost.
She was appearing in his life in small, incremental ways. At his table. In his common room. In his group, without anyone having formally invited her, the way water finds its level.
Part of him — the part he was going to attribute to strategic thinking and not examine further — felt a cold, uncomfortable pull at that. At Ginny seeing the real Grace. At George, who noticed everything, accumulating observations. At the whole common room watching her dance that night with an attention Fred didn't particularly want shared.
He'd been the only one who knew. For a while, he'd been the only person in the castle who'd seen behind the facade, and there had been something in that — something he didn't have good language for — that felt like it belonged to him specifically.
Which was insane, obviously. She wasn't a secret he owned.
But she'd chosen to show him. On the tower, when she could have played innocent and he never could have proven anything — she'd turned around, cigarette in hand, and decided he was the person she'd let see it. Not Hermione. Not Luna. Him.
‘Why —Fred thought for the hundredth time—me specifically?’
He already half-knew the answer. She'd told him herself — because he couldn't use it against her without implicating himself, because he'd already seen the fury and responded with ‘spectacular’, because he didn't have expectations of her. He was safe precisely because he'd started out as a threat.
The song ended. The player hissed quietly in the dark.
Fred lowered the speaker and stared at the Chimney.
He thought about what George had said under the Quidditch stands.
‘This is starting to look a lot less like a scientific thing.’
The Good Girl Theory had been correct. There was a real person underneath the performance. He had been right about every part of it.
He just hadn't accounted for the part where finding out would make everything else feel considerably less important than her.
Fred closed his eyes.
"You are an absolute disaster, Gracie," he whispered to the dark — but quietly. Quietly, in the tone of someone who had stopped minding about something and hadn't quite admitted it yet.
Word Count: ~19,6K (I know it's quite long, but once I started I couldn't stop.🫦)
Setting: Sixth year, during the Triwizard Tournament
CW: discussion of parental abandonment, anxiety around abandonment/attachment, brief mention of a parent leaving a family, a slut-shaming comment (challenged, not dwelt on), a panic-attack-adjacent moment, angst, a few kisses, one shirtless-adjacent scene (nothing explicit), swearing, emotional hurt/comfort, a misunderstanding trope, a brief argument, happy ending.
Summary: Everyone at Hogwarts knows two things: Fred Weasley is hopelessly, publicly, embarrassingly in love with you, and you don't do relationships — only casual, only temporary, only safe. So when you bet him he can't last a month as your boyfriend without losing his patience, you expect an easy win. You've never lost a bet in your life. You didn't expect this one to cost you your heart.
Masterlist here!
Director's note: Maybe some of the days or timeframes of the bet sound incoherent(? I'm not good with numbers and I got a little confused in the middle, but I think it turned out well. Anyway, please think of it as fiction! I loved how this one-shot turned out, and I'm planning a themed series of one-shots with Harry Potter characters. I hope you like it!
Before any of this was a bet, Fred Weasley had been shameless about it for two full years before the bet ever existed.
He wasn't subtle. He never tried to be. He'd corner you in corridors just to tell you your hair looked good, hand you the last treacle tart at dinner before you'd even reached for it, materialize at your elbow in Hogsmeade with some excuse about ‘just happening to be going the same way’. Half the school had watched him do it so often it had become a kind of background noise to Hogwarts life, like Peeves or the moving staircases — Fred Weasley, hopelessly gone on you, making absolutely no effort to hide it.
"You're doing it again," you told him once, fourth year, when he'd shown up at the library table where you were studying for no reason except that he'd seen you go in.
"Doing what?"
"Following me around like a lost Kneazle."
"I prefer 'devoted.'" He dropped into the chair across from you, propping his chin on his hand, watching you with the kind of open, unembarrassed adoration that should have been unbearable and somehow, infuriatingly, wasn't. "Also I wasn't following you. I was here first."
"You were not."
"Prove it."
You couldn't, because he'd clearly followed you in, and he knew it, and he grinned at you like getting caught was half the fun.
He flirted with other girls, plenty of them, loudly and cheerfully — but it never once looked the same as whatever this was. With other girls it was a performance, easy and weightless, over the second it stopped being fun for either of them. With you it had teeth in it. It meant something, and everyone could see it meant something, including, eventually, the entire castle.
There was an afternoon in fifth year — you never knew about it, not for a long time — when a Slytherin boy named Warrington had made a comment in the corridor outside the Great Hall, loud enough in a malicious tone for a knot of people to hear, about how you'd 'been through half the boys in your year' and ought to charge admission.
Fred had been three feet away, and something in his face went very still and very cold in a way that people who only knew his easy grin rarely saw.
"Say that again," he said, quiet, which was somehow worse than shouting.
Warrington, sensing an audience and stupidly emboldened by it, said something about how he was "just being honest," and Fred stepped in close enough that the corridor went silent around them.
"She can kiss whoever she wants, however many times she wants, and it's worth exactly nothing to you," Fred said. "You don't get a say in what she does with her own life. And if I hear you talk about her again — if I hear you talk about any girl in this castle like that again — you'll wish McGonagall had gotten to you before I did."
He hadn't hexed him o punch him. Hadn't needed to. Warrington had gone pale and muttered something and left, and by the next week the story had made its way quietly through Gryffindor and half of Hufflepuff, and nobody — not once, in all the time since — ever said anything like that about you again where it could be traced back to a source.
You never found out it was Fred. He never told you, never held it over you, never once used it as leverage in all the months that followed. It simply sat there, one more thing he did for you without expecting anything in return, the kind of thing that made George, who had seen it, look at his twin sometimes like he was trying to solve a puzzle he already knew the answer to.
All Hogwarts had opinions about you, and none of them were particularly kind.
It wasn't just that you moved from person to person without apology — that alone might have earned you a raised eyebrow and nothing more. It was that you did it loudly, unapologetically, with a kind of sharp, biting wit that made you genuinely frightening to cross. You'd been known to reduce a seventh-year Slytherin to stammering silence in the middle of the Great Hall over a comment about your skirt length. You'd hexed a boy's eyebrows off in third year for grabbing your wrist too hard on the dance floor, and never once apologized for it, even when a professor docked house points. You picked fights the way other people picked flowers — easily, often, and without much regard for whether it was strategic.
"She's not exactly warm," a Ravenclaw prefect had said once, within earshot of Lee, not realizing — or not caring — that word traveled. "Fun to watch from a distance. Terrifying up close."
It wasn't entirely fair, and it wasn't entirely wrong either. You were sharp. You picked fights with people who deserved it and let the collateral reputation fall where it may, because defending yourself — and, quietly, defending anyone smaller or softer than you — had always felt safer than being soft yourself. Better to be the girl people whispered about than the girl people could hurt.
This was, more or less, why the rest of Gryffindor found Fred's devotion so baffling. It wasn't that you were unlikeable. It was that loving you looked, from the outside, like signing up for a fight you hadn't started.
"You're an idiot, mate," Lee Jordan said, not unkindly, one evening in the common room a few weeks before the bet, watching Fred watch you across the room with an expression Lee had personally seen aimed at nothing but a decent plate of chips before. "She's turned you down, what, four times now? Five?"
"Six," George supplied helpfully, not looking up from his cards. "I'm keeping a tally."
"She called me an insect last week," George added, half delighted, half baffled, "because I asked if she and Fred someday they would go out and she would be my sister-in-law.. An insect, Fred. Unprovoked."
"You deserved it," Fred said, not looking up from his toast. "You'd been needling her for ten minutes."
"That's not the point. The point is most people would be scared off by that. You're just — encouraged."
"She only bites when she's protecting something," Fred said, simply. "Usually herself. Sometimes other people. It's never actually cruelty, George, it just looks like it if you're not paying attention."
"You're never going to wear her down by mooning at her from across a room," Lee tried again.
"I'm not trying to wear her down," Fred said, mildly. "I'm not a bloody millstone."
"Then what are you doing?"
Fred considered the question with more seriousness than either of them expected. "I like her," he said. "Properly like her. Not the version everyone talks about — the reputation, the casual thing. I like that she memorizes people's likes and dislikes and never tells anyone she does it. I like that she reads the same three books over and over because she says knowing how they end is comforting, not boring. I like that she's rude to people who deserve it and unbearably gentle with everyone who doesn't. I like that she pretends she doesn't care what happens to Kettleburn's ridiculous creatures and then sneaks food to the injured ones at two in the morning." He shrugged, entirely unembarrassed. "I'm not chasing an idea of her. I know her. That's the whole point."
Lee and George exchanged a look.
"You've actually got it bad," Lee said.
"Been saying that for two years," George muttered, and dealt another hand.
"Someone should have thought about why she bites first," Fred added, quieter, almost to himself, "since she's spent five years making sure nobody else bothers."
The thing about Fred Weasley was that he never pretended to be subtle about it.
You'd been at the Three Broomsticks for exactly eleven minutes when he abandoned the sixth-year Ravenclaw girl he'd been leaning over — hand braced on the table, grin doing all the work his mouth hadn't gotten around to yet — because you'd walked past the window. Just walked past it. Hadn't even looked in.
He was outside a minute later, coat half-on, cheeks red from the cold or from running, you couldn't tell which.
"You didn't come in," he said, like it was an accusation.
"I wasn't invited."
"You don't need an invitation, you're — " He gestured at you, vaguely, as if the rest of the sentence was self-evident. "You're you."
Behind him, through the frosted window, the Ravenclaw girl was watching with the particular expression of someone recalculating her entire evening.
"Go back inside, Fred."
"Come with me."
"I have somewhere to be."
You didn't. But it was easier than telling him the truth, which was that being anywhere Fred Weasley was for longer than ten minutes had a way of rearranging things in your chest that you'd worked very hard to keep in order.
He caught your wrist — not hard, just enough that you stopped. "One of these days," he said, "you're going to run out of somewhere to be."
"Careful, Weasley. Almost sounded like a threat."
"It was a promise." He let go, stepped back, and the grin came back like it had never left. "See you at the match Saturday? George says Angelina's captaining us to an early grave but I have faith."
"Wouldn't miss it."
You would have missed it, gladly, except that everyone in Hogwarts had come to understand, without ever being told outright, that watching you and Fred Weasley orbit each other without touching was better entertainment than most of what happened on a Quidditch pitch.
It was Angelina who finally said it out loud, three days later, sprawled across your bed with a Chocolate Frog card held up to the candlelight like she was reading tea leaves instead of Dumbledore's face.
"You know he means it. The thing he says. That you're ‘the love of his life’."
"He says that to everyone."
"He says charming things to everyone. He says ‘you're the love of my life’ only to you. There's a difference." She flicked the card onto your blanket. "He turned down Diane Fenwick at the party last week. Mid-flirt. Because you walked by and glanced at him for maybe two seconds."
"I didn't glance."
"You glanced."
"I was looking for the exit."
Angelina gave you a look you'd been on the receiving end of enough times to recognize instantly — patient, a little exasperated, entirely too knowing. "You like him."
"I like a lot of people. Liking people casually is sort of my whole thing."
"Right. Casual." She said the word like she was testing it for weak spots. "Except you've never once been casual about Fred. You've been very deliberately, very determinedly not about Fred, which isn't the same."
You didn't answer that, because there wasn't a good answer that didn't require unpacking things you'd rather leave packed.
It was true, what people said about you — that you didn't do serious. You did fun, you did easy, you did a few weeks of somebody's attention and then a clean, friendly end before anybody got in too deep. It wasn't cruelty. It was maintenance. You'd learned a long time ago that the deeper a thing got, the more of you it could take when it left, and you had exactly one data point on what that looked like, and it had nearly ended your father.
Fred Weasley was not a few-weeks kind of complication. Fred Weasley was the kind of complication that rearranged furniture in a person's life and didn't apologize for the mess.
So you didn't do Fred. You did everyone except Fred, sometimes rather pointedly, and if his ears went a bit red every time he found out about it, that was his business, not yours.
The bet happened almost by accident, the way the worst — or best — decisions usually do.
It was at Katie Bell's birthday, the common room too warm and too loud, and Fred had been telling some story about the twins' latest almost-catastrophe with a swamp-in-a-teabag prototype, gesturing so widely he knocked over someone's drink, and you'd said, half into your own cup, "You'd never survive being someone's boyfriend for longer than a week, you know. You've got the attention span of a niffler."
The common room didn't go silent, exactly. But it definitely leaned in.
Fred set his drink down very deliberately. "I beg your pardon."
"You heard me."
"I could absolutely be someone's boyfriend."
"For a week. Maybe. Before you got bored, or they got bored, or George set something on fire and you forgot the person existed."
"Name a month," Fred said, "and I'll prove you wrong."
"A month?"
"A month. Thirty days. You pick the person, I'll be the perfect, patient, devoted boyfriend, and you'll eat your words."
And this was the part where you should have laughed it off, should have said 'sure, ask Diane, good luck,’ should have done anything except what you actually did, which was look at him — really look, the way you tried very hard not to — and hear yourself say:
"Me. I'm the person."
The common room, this time, actually did go quiet.
Fred blinked. "You?"
"Me. One month. You be my boyfriend, properly, no cheating, and if you make it thirty days without losing your patience with me — " you paused, because some reckless, self-destructive part of you had already decided to make this as impossible as you could — "I'll stand up in the Great Hall and tell all of Hogwarts I've fallen hopelessly in love with you."
Somewhere behind you, George choked on a Butterbeer.
Fred didn't say anything for a long moment. Then: "And if I lose my patience even once?"
"Then I get to say I was right, and you never bring it up again."
"Deal." He held out his hand, and when you shook it, his grip was warm and sure and didn't let go half a second longer than it should have. "Thirty days, starting tomorrow."
"You're going to lose."
"Maybe." His eyes were bright, delighted, entirely too pleased with himself. "But I've wanted this for two years, love. I'll take losing on these terms over winning on any other."
You went to bed that night with your heart doing something complicated and refused, absolutely refused, to examine it.
You had a plan, and the plan was simple: be exactly difficult enough, exactly often enough, that Fred's patience — which you privately suspected was more myth than fact — would crack within the week.
Day one, you were forty minutes late to meet him at the lake, on purpose, and arrived to find him lying in the grass reading a Quidditch magazine, entirely unbothered.
"You're late," he said, without looking up.
"I got held up."
"Sure you did." He turned a page. "Sit down, I saved you the good spot, the one without the ant hill."
"I didn't say I was staying."
"You didn't say you weren't, either." He patted the grass beside him, and — this was the maddening thing about Fred — he didn't beg, didn't sulk, didn't make you feel guilty for the lateness. He just waited, easy as anything, like your company was worth the wait and the waiting itself wasn't a hardship.
You sat down. You told yourself it was strategic — better to needle him up close.
That first week you noticed, despite yourself, the small things. The way he always split whatever food he had in half without being asked, sliding the bigger portion toward you and pretending he hadn't. The way his handwriting went looping and careless in his own notes but turned neat, almost careful, on the little scraps of parchment he occasionally left folded on your books — a joke, a doodle, once just the words 'you looked tired at breakfast, sleep well tonight’ — as if the difference in penmanship was his way of saying ‘this part is serious, even when I'm not.’
He had a habit, too, of touching the back of his neck when he was nervous, which he almost never was except, you began to realize, around you, in the seconds right after he'd said something that mattered to him and was waiting to see how you'd take it.
You weren't supposed to be cataloguing these things. You did it anyway.
Day four, you flirted, deliberately and obviously, with a Hufflepuff boy in front of him at breakfast, waiting for the flash of jealousy, the crack in his composure. Fred watched for a moment, then turned to George and said, loudly enough for you to hear, "d'you reckon she's trying to make me jealous, or does she actually fancy Wentworth's personality?" and went back to his eggs, apparently unbothered, though you noticed — you always noticed, damn it — that his knuckles had gone white around his fork.
He found you after breakfast anyway. Not angry. Just there, falling into step beside you like nothing had happened, and he'd slipped his own scarf around your neck without asking, because you'd complained about the corridor draft the day before and he'd apparently filed it away like everything else.
"You're not going to ask about Wentworth?"
"Do I need to?"
"Maybe I like him."
"Maybe you do." Fred shrugged, hands in his pockets. "Doesn't change my thirty days. I'm not trying to win you by being the only option, love. I'm trying to win you because I'm the best one."
You had absolutely no response to that, so you didn't give him one, and he seemed content to let the silence sit between you all the way to Transfiguration, his sleeve brushing yours the whole walk, never quite closing the last inch of distance unless you closed it first.
It happened in the middle of the Great Hall, at lunch, with absolutely no warning and no discernible reason, sometime around day ten.
Fred stood up from the Gryffindor table, climbed — actually climbed, one boot on the bench, one on the table itself, ignoring the way plates rattled and pumpkin juice sloshed dangerously close to the edge — and cleared his throat with the exaggerated gravity of a man about to deliver a State of the Union address.
"Fred," you hissed, already feeling your face heat up. "What are you doing."
"Attention, Hogwarts!" he announced, arms spread wide, entirely unbothered by the two hundred faces now turning toward him. "I would like it formally recorded that I am, as of this moment, the luckiest man in this castle, possibly this country, arguably this hemisphere."
"Fred, get down — "
"I am dating," he continued, undeterred, gesturing grandly at you like you were a prize being unveiled at a fair, "the cleverest, funniest, most terrifyingly competent witch in our year, who has, against all odds and several of her own better instincts, agreed to put up with me for thirty days! I would like everyone here to know that I do not, in any way, take this for granted."
Someone at the Hufflepuff table actually started clapping. McGonagall, three seats down at the staff table, had pressed two fingers to her temple in the specific way she did when deciding whether a rule violation was worth the paperwork.
"You're an idiot," you said, hiding your face in your hands, mortified down to your toes, while half the hall laughed and George banged appreciatively on the table.
"A very devoted idiot," Fred corrected, hopping down at last, landing with a flourish, entirely pleased with himself. "Ten points from Gryffindor, probably, but worth it."
He was right. McGonagall docked exactly ten points on his way out of the Hall, muttering something about theatrics under her breath, and Fred didn't look remotely sorry about any of it — grinning at you the whole walk to class, utterly without shame, while you buried your burning face in his shoulder and told him, with zero real conviction, that you were never speaking to him again.
You forgave him by dinner. You suspected he'd known you would would before he even climbed onto the table.
One evening that same week, George cornered his brother by the fire while you were off at something, and asked, half-teasing, half-genuinely baffled, the question that had apparently been bothering both him and Lee for a while now.
"Why do you keep at it? She's said no more times than I can count. Most blokes would've called it after the third."
Fred didn't even look up from the essay he wasn't really writing. "Because she's not actually saying no to me. She's saying no to the version of this that scares her." He tapped his quill against the parchment, thinking. "You know she's got the entire Hogwarts kitchen staff's names memorized? Talks to every one of them like they matter, because to her they do. You know she reorganizes her whole schedule during exam week just to sit with first-years who are panicking, doesn't tell anyone she does it, would be mortified if I brought it up to her face. She picks fights with people who bully smaller kids and never once mentions it afterward like it's something worth being proud of, even though it obviously is."
"That's — a lot of very specific detail, mate."
"I pay attention." Fred finally looked up, and there was nothing performative left in his face at all. "Everyone sees the version of her that flirts and moves on and doesn't stick around. I see the rest of it. The part she doesn't let people see because she thinks it'll get used against her eventually." He shrugged. "I'm not chasing someone who doesn't exist. I know exactly who she is. That's rather the whole problem — once you know, you can't really unknow it."
George didn't have anything to say to that, for once, and simply reached over and clapped his brother on the shoulder instead.
Day twelve, you told him, flatly, over a shared table in the library, that you thought this whole thing was stupid and he should give up now and save you both the trouble.
Fred looked up from his essay, and for once there was no grin, no performance. "Why do you want me to give up?"
"Because you're wasting a month on something that isn't going to end how you want."
"That's my risk to take."
"It's not just your risk. It's mine too, and I don't — " You stopped yourself, aware you'd said more than you meant to.
"You don't what?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
He didn't push. That was the thing about Fred that you hadn't accounted for, hadn't built into your plan at all — you'd expected loudness, persistence that grated, the kind of pressure that would make walking away easy. Instead he gave you room. He noticed when you needed the room and he gave it to you without making a production of it, and somehow that was so much harder to resist than anything else could have been.
It was that same evening, walking back from the library, that he asked, apropos of nothing, "What's your favorite flower?"
"Why do you want to know that?"
"Because I don't know it yet, and I'd like to."
You considered lying, just to be difficult, and then didn't, mostly because the question had caught you off guard enough that the honest answer came out before you'd thought better of it. "Lilies."
"Yeah? Any particular reason?"
"They're the only thing that ever grew properly in the garden at home. My dad planted them the year my mum left, said the garden needed something that would keep coming back even if nobody remembered to look after it. They just do it on their own." You shrugged, embarrassed at how much you'd said. "I don't know. I like that about them."
Fred didn't say anything clever back, for once. He just nodded, filed it away the way he filed everything else, and didn't bring it up again for weeks — not until much later, when he mentioned to Hermione in passing that he wanted to get you lilies for your birthday, and Hermione, delighted and a little smug, informed him that in the old language of flowers, lilies carried a particular meaning: I dare you to love me.
Fred laughed for a solid minute once she told him, half disbelieving, entirely charmed, because of course — of course — the flower you loved without knowing anything about its meaning turned out to be exactly, precisely the dare the two of you were already living inside.
Whatever else you wanted to say about Fred Weasley, this much was true and had always been true, long before the bet: he noticed people. Not in the loud, performative way he flirted — that was for show, mostly, harmless and a little silly — but underneath it, quieter, he actually saw people.
He'd seen you, once, crouched by a first year's trunk in the corridor outside Gryffindor tower, helping a small, frightened boy repack the mess of robes and books he'd spilled everywhere after some older student shoved past him too fast. You hadn't known Fred was there until you stood up and found him leaning against the wall, watching, something unreadable in his face.
He'd seen you with Ginny, too — hadn't said anything at the time, hadn't needed to, but he knew you'd sat with his little sister the night of her first period, scared and embarrassed and not wanting to bother Molly over the holidays, and that you'd talked her through it with the kind of steady, unbothered warmth that made a terrifying thing feel ordinary. Ginny had told him, eventually, in the offhand way siblings share things, and Fred had filed it away like he filed away everything about you — evidence, slowly accumulating, of the person underneath the reputation.
He'd seen you be kind to professors, too, the ones the students mostly ignored or mocked behind their backs — Professor Kettleburn, half-forgotten by the current wave of Care of Magical Creatures students, and you always stayed a few minutes after class to ask him something, anything, because you couldn't stand the idea of someone feeling invisible in their own castle.
None of that was casual. None of it fit the story Hogwarts told about you, the story you told about yourself. Fred had known, for two years, that the girl everyone thought was allergic to seriousness was in fact one of the most quietly serious people he'd ever met — she simply reserved it for everyone except herself.
He didn't say any of this to you. Not yet. But it was why, when you tried to provoke him, tried to be difficult and prickly and impossible, he never quite managed to be as frustrated as you wanted him to be. He wasn't fighting the version of you that you were trying to perform. He was fighting for the version he'd already seen.
What you didn't expect — what genuinely surprised you, somewhere around the second week — was how much you had started noticing about him.
You noticed that he was left-handed but wrote with his right because a teacher had corrected him as a child and he'd never bothered to switch back, and that when he was truly exhausted, past the point of performing anything for anyone, his handwriting would slip back to the left without him seeming to realize it.
You noticed the small scar above his eyebrow that he'd gotten from a garden gnome incident at age nine, which he told you about with such delighted, self-deprecating detail that you'd laughed until your ribs hurt.
You noticed that he hummed under his breath when he was concentrating on something fiddly — usually a prototype for one of the twins' inventions — and that the humming stopped entirely the second he thought someone was watching, like he was embarrassed by a habit that was, in fact, one of the more endearing things about him.
You noticed that he always let George take credit for the funnier of their jokes in front of teachers, quietly stepping back so his twin could have the moment, and that he never once seemed to mind.
You noticed the way his ears went pink before the rest of his face did, every single time, a full half-second warning system for whatever he was about to say.
None of this was information you had gone looking for. It had simply accumulated, the way sand collects in the folds of a coat without anyone noticing they've been to the beach, and by the time you realized how much you knew about Fred Weasley that had nothing to do with his reputation, it was already far, far too late to pretend you hadn't been paying attention.
It happened on day sixteen, in a mostly empty corridor after dinner, torchlight throwing long shadows, and you weren't entirely sure afterward which of you moved first.
You'd been arguing — not seriously, the kind of argument that was mostly banter with teeth — about whether he'd cheated by having George slip you compliments on his behalf—he hadn't, George had done it entirely of his own accord, delighted by the whole arrangement—, and somewhere in the middle of your sentence Fred had simply stepped closer and kissed you.
It was not a gentle, testing kiss. It was two years of 'almost finally’ allowed to happen, and for several long seconds you kissed him back like you meant it, like your hands hadn't fisted in his shirt entirely on their own, like this was easy, like this was nothing.
Then you pulled back, breathing unsteady, and said the cruelest thing you could find fast enough to reach for:
"I've kissed better than you, Weasley. You're not the first, and you won't be the one who makes me fall for anyone."
You watched it land. Watched something flicker across his face — hurt, quick and real, before he shuttered it.
"Alright," he said, quietly.
"Alright?"
"You're allowed to say that. Doesn't mean I believe it." He tucked his hands in his pockets, and there was none of the usual performance in his voice, just something steadier and sadder. "But you don't kiss someone like that if you're trying to convince them you don't feel anything. You might want to work on your delivery."
He walked away before you could answer, and you stood alone in the corridor for a long time, furious at him for being right and furious at yourself for kissing him like you meant it, because you had.
The next Quidditch match fell three days later, Gryffindor against Ravenclaw, and Fred found you at breakfast that morning with a piece of chalk-paint and an expression far too pleased with itself.
"You're coming to watch."
"I always come to watch."
"You're coming to watch as my girlfriend, which means you're required, by ancient and binding tradition, to wear my number." He was already reaching for your cheek before you'd agreed to anything, carefully painting a small, crooked 5 just below your cheekbone, tongue between his teeth in concentration like it was the most important spellwork he'd ever attempted.
"This is ridiculous."
"This is tradition." He leaned back to inspect his work, grinning. "There. Perfect. Now everyone in the stands will know exactly who you're cheering for."
"I could cheer for you without face paint, Fred."
"You could. But this is more fun." He kissed the corner of your mouth, quick, easy, like it cost him nothing at all to be that soft with you in front of half the Gryffindor table, and jogged off toward the pitch before you could tell him to stop grinning like an idiot.
You cheered loudest for him that match, whether you meant to or not, and when he help to scored — showing off, clearly, doing an entirely unnecessary loop before landing — he looked straight up into the stands and found your face in the crowd like he'd known exactly where to look the whole time.
The invitation came two days before the holidays, delivered with the kind of casualness Fred clearly hoped would disguise how much he wanted you to say yes.
"Mum's doing Christmas at ours. Everyone'll be there. You should come."
"Fred, we're in the middle of a bet. I don't think 'meet the family' is part of the terms."
"It's not a term. It's an invitation." He shrugged, but his ears had gone slightly pink, the way they did when he was hoping harder than he wanted to admit. "You don't have to. But I'd like you there. And Ginny's been asking, and Mum already knows about you — "
"Your mum knows about me?"
"Ginny wrote her a very detailed letter. I had no editorial control." He grinned, but it softened almost immediately. "Come. Please."
You went. You told yourself it was for the sake of the bet, optics, keeping up appearances — you did not tell yourself the truth, which was that some small, starved part of you wanted, badly, to know what it felt like to be somewhere a family actually wanted you.
The Burrow was chaos in the best way you'd ever seen it — crooked, warm, impossibly full of noise and love in a way that made your chest ache before you'd even taken your coat off. Molly Weasley hugged you like she'd known you for years, pulled you into the kitchen, put a mug of something hot in your hands before you'd said a full sentence, and asked about your classes with a warmth so unguarded it nearly undid you on the spot.
"Fred talks about you constantly," Molly said, conspiratorially, stirring something on the stove. "Has done for ages. I was starting to think we'd never actually meet you."
"He's — persistent."
"He's smitten, dear, there's a difference, and don't let him tell you otherwise." Molly's eyes crinkled with quiet amusement, and then, gentler: "You look tired. Not sleep-tired. The other kind."
You hadn't expected to be seen that clearly, that fast, by someone you'd known for twenty minutes, and it knocked something loose in you that you weren't prepared for.
"I'm alright."
"You don't have to be, in this house. Whatever you're carrying, you can put it down here a while." Molly patted your hand once, brisk and warm, and went back to her stirring like she hadn't just cracked something open in your chest with a sentence.
The days passed, the afternoon turned bright and cold, and the whole yard behind the Burrow dissolved into an impromptu game — some chaotic Weasley variant of tag crossed with a made-up Quidditch drill, played entirely on foot because Ron insisted his broom needed ‘repairs’ that suspiciously coincided with him being terrible at flying that week. Ginny recruited you onto her team without asking, on the grounds that you ‘looked fast,’ and George immediately declared this an outrage and demanded a trade.
Fred ended up on the opposite team, which meant the entire game rapidly stopped being about the actual rules and became almost exclusively about the two of you trying to tackle each other into the frost-hardened grass, laughing too hard to actually catch anyone properly.
"That's cheating," you shouted, when he scooped you clean off your feet to stop you scoring past him, spinning you half around before setting you down, both of you breathless and pink-cheeked from the cold.
"Everything's fair in love and backyard Quidditch."
"You made that up just now."
"Doesn't make it less true." He was grinning at you in a way that had nothing performative left in it at all, snow-dusted and delighted, and for one unguarded moment you grinned back just as helplessly, forgetting, entirely, that this had ever started as a bet.
From the kitchen window, Molly and Arthur stood side by side, drying dishes that had long since stopped needing drying, watching the two of you chase each other across the yard.
"She's laughing," Molly said, quietly, like it mattered. "Really laughing. Have you seen her do that before?"
Arthur shook his head, smiling. "Not like that." He nudged his wife gently. "Reminds me of someone else I used to watch through a window, actually."
Molly swatted him with the dish towel, but she was still smiling when she turned back to the glass.
Dinner that night was loud and enormous, plates passed hand to hand faster than anyone could track, Fred's knee pressed warm against yours under the table the entire meal, and it was somewhere in the middle of the noise and the warmth and the sheer, overwhelming muchness of the Weasley family that it slipped out of you before you'd caught it.
"Could you pass the potatoes, Mum?"
The table didn't go silent all at once. It went silent in pieces, the way a held breath does, Ron's fork stopping halfway to his mouth, Ginny's eyes going wide, George actually turning to look at you properly for the first time all dinner.
You heard it a half-second after you'd said it, the word sitting in the air long after it left your mouth, and your face went hot with a mortification so total it felt like drowning.
"I — sorry, I didn't — " Your chair scraped back before you'd finished the sentence. "Excuse me."
You were up the stairs before anyone could stop you, into the first empty room you found, door shut, back against it, hands pressed to your burning face, humiliation crashing over you in waves you couldn't seem to get ahead of.
Hermione found you there less than a minute later — she'd been at the table too, had followed without a word, and simply sat down on the floor beside you without asking permission or offering platitudes.
"That was mortifying," you said, voice thick.
"It was an accident. Nobody thought anything of it."
"Everybody thought something of it, Hermione, I just called Molly Weasley ‘Mum’ in front of her entire actual family and Fred and — " Your voice cracked. "I don't even know where that came from. I don't call anyone that. I haven't had anyone to call that in five years."
"Maybe that's exactly where it came from," Hermione said, gently. "You've been sitting in a house that feels like what you didn't get to have. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. It means you noticed something you needed."
You didn't have an answer to that, and Hermione, wisely, didn't push for one, just sat with you on the floor until your breathing evened out.
It was Fred who came up eventually, knocking once before letting himself in, dropping onto the floor across from you with the specific, careful casualness of someone who'd clearly rehearsed several serious speeches on the stairs and decided, at the last second, against every single one of them.
"So," he said. "Word around the house is you've adopted my mother."
You groaned into your hands. "Fred."
"I'm only saying, if this keeps up you'll technically outrank me. Mum's had five sons and a daughter, and you managed it in one dinner. Efficient, really."
"I want to disappear."
"Don't. I like you visible." He nudged your knee with his. "For what it's worth, Mum nearly cried into the gravy boat after you left the table. Good tears. She's been saying for weeks she hoped you'd feel comfortable enough here to slip up exactly like that."
You peeked at him through your fingers. "You're not going to let me be embarrassed about this in peace, are you."
"Not a chance. It's far too good material." But his voice had gone soft underneath the teasing, and he reached over, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear with a gentleness that didn't match the joking at all. "You didn't do anything wrong. You just felt safe somewhere for a second and it came out sideways. That's not something to apologize for, love. That's just a house doing its job."
You let yourself laugh, finally, shaky and real, and let him pull you up off the floor and back down to a dinner that had, mercifully, moved on to arguing about dessert by the time you returned.
Later that night, unable to sleep, you found Fred out by the garden fence, staring up at a sky far too full of stars for anywhere near a city, and settled beside him without a word.
"Can I tell you something nobody outside my family knows?" he asked, after a while, voice quieter than you were used to hearing from him.
"Of course."
"George and I want to open a joke shop. A real one — Diagon Alley, our own name on the door, everything we've ever built and tested finally getting sold properly instead of confiscated by Filch." He picked at the fence post, not quite meeting your eyes. "Mum thinks it's a phase. Dad's supportive but worried, because it's not exactly a stable career, is it, and everyone assumes we'll end up doing something safer eventually because that's what's expected." He exhaled. "We've got savings hidden away. Not much. Enough to start, maybe, someday, if we're careful and lucky. But I don't really tell people that part, the plan, because it's — it's the thing I actually want, underneath all the jokes, and it feels like it'd hurt more than usual if someone laughed at it."
"I'm not going to laugh at it."
"I know. That's rather why I told you." He glanced over, something unguarded and slightly nervous in his face — the same look you'd catalogued weeks ago, right before he said something that mattered. "You're one of maybe four people who know that's real and not just a running joke with George."
"For what it's worth," you said, quietly, "I think it's a brilliant idea. And I think you'll actually do it. You're the most relentlessly clever person I've ever met, when you're not busy being an idiot about girls."
"Only one girl," Fred said, "and she's sitting right here," and you let him take your hand in the dark without pulling away, both of you quiet for a long time after that, comfortable in a way that had nothing to do with a bet at all.
"My mum left," you said, eventually, into the dark. "When I was eleven. Told my dad she couldn't do it anymore — couldn't do me anymore, said living with us would kill her. She wasn't wrong to leave, probably. But she made it sound like I was the reason staying wasn't possible."
Fred didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "That's not love talking. That's her limits talking. Those aren't the same thing, even if it felt like they were."
"You don't know that."
"I know you helped a terrified eleven-year-old with her first period because you didn't want her to feel alone with something scary. I know you sit with Kettleburn because you can't stand the idea of him feeling forgotten. I know you shoved half your dinner at a first year last week because his trunk got trampled and he looked like he hadn't eaten." He looked at you, steady, unflinching. "You are not difficult to love. You're just used to people who weren't equipped to try."
You didn't have an answer for that. You let him keep the silence with you instead, and for the first time in longer than you could remember, the quiet didn't feel like something you had to fill or flee.
You wrote to your father that week, from the Burrow's kitchen table while Molly hummed over the stove, and found yourself telling him more than you'd meant to — about the noise and the warmth of the house, about Fred, about the word that had slipped out at dinner and the shame that had followed it.
His answer came back three days later, his familiar cramped handwriting filling both sides of the parchment.
'You don't have to feel guilty for wanting a full table, love. I've watched you build yourself into someone who doesn't need anyone, these last five years, and I've let you, because I didn't know how to teach you otherwise while I was busy learning it myself. But your mother leaving wasn't a rule about what happens to people who let themselves be loved. It was one woman's limit, not a law of the universe. I've thought that every day since, and I should have said it to you sooner. If this Weasley boy makes you feel like a full table is possible again, don't apologize for it. Let yourself have it. We're a good team, you and I, always have been — but a team of two was never meant to be the whole shape of your life."
You read it twice, sitting very still at the Weasleys' kitchen table, and folded it carefully into your pocket instead of your trunk, where you could find it easily whenever you needed to.
Back at Hogwarts after the holidays, the little things kept accumulating, on both sides, in a way neither of you commented on directly.
Fred gave you his jumper without being asked, the first properly cold morning back, sliding it over your head before you'd finished complaining about the temperature in the corridor, sleeves swallowing your hands entirely. He saved you breakfast on the mornings you slept through your alarm, wrapped in a napkin and left on your usual seat with a scrawled note 'eat something,’ before he'd gone to Quidditch practice. He fixed your hair without thinking about it, tucking a strand behind your ear mid-conversation the way you'd catalogued him doing for weeks, an absent, easy gesture that had nothing showy in it at all.
You, in turn, had started doing things you didn't fully notice yourself doing until Angelina pointed it out over lunch one day.
"You've been carrying an extra quill in your bag for two weeks."
"So?"
"Fred's quills keep exploding because George keeps testing prototypes on them. You've been quietly replacing his without him asking." Angelina raised an eyebrow. "You also started reminding him to eat when he skips lunch because he's too deep in some invention to notice he's hungry."
"I haven't — " You stopped, because you had, actually, done all of those things, without deciding to, the way you'd apparently decided things about Fred a long time before you'd agreed to admit it.
"You're taking care of him," Angelina said, not unkindly. "You've just been doing it so quietly you didn't clock it as anything."
You didn't have a response to that, mostly because it was true, and because some part of you had apparently started treating Fred's wellbeing as something worth quietly managing long before you'd agreed this was anything more than a bet.
There were other things, too, that you only noticed because you were looking for reasons to stop noticing him, and kept finding the opposite.
You once braced for him to say something petty about a boy you'd dated briefly the year before. Instead Fred just shrugged. "He seemed alright. Didn't work out, clearly, but I've no interest in trashing someone just to make myself look better by comparison. Not really my style."
When Angelina needed to talk to you privately during a Hogsmeade trip, Fred didn't sulk about being excluded or ask what it was about. He simply said, "Take your time, I'll get us a table," and did exactly that, without a single pointed question when you returned.
He'd shout compliments across the Great Hall without a shred of embarrassment, but the second you were alone and something had actually gone wrong — a bad grade, an argument, a bad day — his teasing dropped instantly, replaced by something quieter and far more careful, like he understood the difference between performance and the moments that actually mattered.
None of it was dramatic. All of it, taken together, was somehow harder to argue with than any grand gesture could have been.
It hit you at the most ordinary moment — Fred's hand laced through yours at breakfast, nothing dramatic, nothing new — and still your chest went tight and your pulse spiked and some old animal part of your brain screamed this is too much, this is too close, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets taken away.
You excused yourself before anyone noticed, made it to an empty corridor, and stood there with your back against cold stone, breathing hard, furious at your own body for betraying you over something as small as a held hand.
Fred found you five minutes later — you hadn't heard him follow, hadn't wanted him to — and didn't touch you, didn't crowd you, just stood a careful few feet away.
"You don't have to tell me what that was," he said quietly. "But I'm not going anywhere, whatever it was. Take whatever time you need."
"I don't understand why this is so hard," you admitted, voice cracking. "It's just a hand. It's nothing. Why does nothing feel like everything with you?"
"Because it isn't nothing to you," Fred said gently. "It hasn't been nothing in a long time. That's allowed to be frightening. It doesn't mean you're broken for finding it hard."
He didn't bring it up again after that — no careful check-ins over breakfast, no meaningful looks — just quiet, steady normalcy that let you decide, on your own timeline, whenever you wanted to explain it further. You didn't, not for a while. He never once made you feel like you owed him the explanation sooner.
The closer you got to the end of the bet, the less it felt like a bet and the more it felt like something... natural, something that was always meant to be.
It happened on an ordinary Tuesday, late, the common room fire burned down to embers, most of Gryffindor tower gone up to bed. You'd been curled against Fred's side on the sofa, half-listening to him and George argue happily about a Filibuster firework variant, and at some point, without deciding to, you'd simply fallen asleep against his shoulder.
Fred noticed the exact moment it happened — your breathing evening out, the weight of you settling fully against him — and went very, very still, like any movement might undo it.
"Oi, don't wake her," he hissed, when Lee came thundering down the stairs a few minutes later with some story that clearly required a loud audience.
Lee stopped dead, took in the sight of you asleep against Fred, and grinned slowly. "Oh, this is precious."
"Lee, I will hex you."
"Wouldn't dream of waking her." Lee lowered his voice to an exaggerated whisper, which somehow drew more attention than his normal volume would have, and George, delighted, immediately shushed the common room with the enthusiasm of someone orchestrating a very important event.
"Everyone quiet, Fred's got a girl asleep on him and he looks like Christmas came early."
"I hate all of you," Fred whispered, and did not move an inch, one arm curled carefully around you, expression so unguardedly happy that Angelina — arriving from the girls' dormitory, hand in George's the second she reached the bottom step, since the two of them had gotten together earlier that term — actually laughed out loud at the sight of him.
"Someone get a camera," she said. "This is going in a frame."
Someone did, in fact, get a camera — Colin Creevey, roused from his dormitory by the commotion and thrilled beyond measure to be included — and the photograph that resulted, developed and delivered the next morning, showed you fast asleep against Fred's shoulder, his arm around you, his face turned slightly toward you instead of the camera, wearing an expression of such uncomplicated happiness that even you, seeing it for the first time, felt something in your chest go soft and unguarded.
Fred kept that photograph in his trunk for the rest of the year, tucked inside the cover of his Charms textbook where nobody but him would think to look.
You woke an hour later, disoriented, to find the common room mostly empty and Fred still exactly where he'd been, patient, unmoving, one hand resting loosely against your hair.
"You didn't wake me up."
"Didn't want to." He smiled, soft in the low firelight. "You looked like you needed it. Figured Lee's shouting could happen literally anywhere else in the castle."
"How long was I out?"
"Hour, give or take. George took a photo. Fair warning, it's going to end up somewhere embarrassing eventually."
You should have minded that. You found, somewhat alarmingly, that you didn't.
All that new familiarity, this affection, awakened something in you had come loose and frightened, and you did what you always did when things got too real too fast: you reached for the one language you trusted completely.
You sent Fred a note — the password to the prefects' bathroom, a time, nothing else. He arrived to find candles floating over water gone opal-soft with bubbles, and you, waiting, dropping your robe with a steadiness you didn't feel, offering him exactly the kind of easy, physical, uncomplicated thing you knew how to give without breaking.
Fred didn't move toward you. He looked, for one unguarded second, and then very deliberately looked away, reaching for a towel and holding it out instead.
"Put this on."
"Fred — "
"I'm not doing this." His voice was gentle, but there was no give in it. "Not like this. Not because you got scared and this is easier than talking about it."
Something in you flared, humiliated. "I'm offering you exactly what you've wanted for two years and you're turning it down?"
"I've wanted you. All of you. Not the part you hand out easy so the rest stays safe." He kept his eyes carefully, deliberately on your face, patient even now, even with you furious and half-dressed and lashing out. "If we do this — when we do this — it's going to be because you want me, not because you're trying to prove something's still simple between us. That's not a punishment. That's just — that's what I want it to mean, when it happens."
"You're an idiot," you said, voice thick.
"Probably. Ask George." He held the towel a little further out. "Get dressed. I'll wait outside. We can still talk, if you want to."
You didn't talk that night. But you didn't send him away either, and something about the walk back to the common room in silence, his hand loosely, carefully not-quite-touching yours the whole way, felt like the first honest thing that had passed between you in weeks.
It happened on day twenty-four, and it was, in retrospect, almost funny how small the argument actually was.
Fred had made plans — dinner, just the two of you, sneaked down to the kitchens with help from a very smug house-elf — and you'd cancelled at the last minute with a flimsy excuse—Just because your self-destructive side was faster than your new feelings—, then been caught twenty minutes later by George, laughing easily with a Ravenclaw boy in the library, clearly not otherwise occupied at all.
Fred found you afterward, jaw tight, some of the easy warmth gone out of his face entirely.
"You lied to me."
"I didn't lie, I just — didn't feel like dinner."
"You didn't feel like dinner with me, so you made something up instead of just saying so." His voice had an edge to it you'd never heard directed at you before, frustration finally breaking through weeks of careful patience. "Do you know how that looks? I planned something, I told the elves, I was excited, and you couldn't even be bothered to tell me the truth instead of making something up."
"I didn't think it mattered that much — "
"It mattered to me!" It came out louder than he meant it to, echoing slightly in the empty corridor, and you both went still, startled by it. Fred's hands had curled into fists at his sides, and for one long, terrible second you thought, with something like grim vindication, 'there it is. There's the crack. He's finally done’.
Then you watched him catch himself. Watched him take a breath, visibly, deliberately, and unclench his hands one finger at a time.
"I need a minute," he said, quieter now, strained but controlled. "I'm not — I don't want to say something I can't take back. Give me a minute."
He walked a short distance away, back to you, shoulders tight, and you stood there in the sudden quiet feeling something you hadn't expected to feel at all: not triumph, but a strange, unfamiliar guilt.
When he turned back around, a minute or two later, his voice was steadier, though his eyes were still bright with the leftover heat of it.
"That hurt," he said, simply. "I'm not going to pretend it didn't. You lied to me over something small, and it stung more than something small should, because I keep hoping you'll trust me enough not to need to." He exhaled. "But I'm not giving up on you. Not over this, not over one bad night. I got frustrated, and I'm allowed to get frustrated, and I'm telling you honestly instead of swallowing it — but that's different from losing patience with you. I haven't. I'm still here."
"I thought you'd bolt," you admitted, quiet, thrown by your own honesty. "I thought that was it. I thought I'd finally found the thing that would make you stop."
"I'm not your mother," Fred said, gently, echoing Hermione's words from weeks before without knowing it. "Getting annoyed isn't the same as leaving. I'm allowed to be human about this without it meaning I'm done with you."
You reached for his hand, and this time it was you who didn't let go first. "I'm sorry, i-i get scared…again.That wasn't fair, what I did,"
"No," he agreed. "It wasn't. But I forgive you, and I'd still rather have dinner with you tomorrow than not have you at all." He squeezed your hand once. "Next time, just tell me the truth. Even if the truth is you'd rather have a night alone. I can handle that far better than I can handle being lied to."
The habit didn't stay confined to Fred, and it hadn't started with him, either — which was, in its own strange way, some comfort a few days later, when Hermione was the one who felt the edge of it.
You picked the fight with her over something so small you could barely remember it afterward — a comment about a shared essay, a joke that landed wrong — and escalated it far past where it needed to go, voice sharp, words chosen precisely because you knew they'd sting.
Hermione didn't yell back. She just went quiet, hurt clear on her face, and said, "Why are you doing this? I didn't do anything to deserve that."
The question landed like a slap, mostly because you didn't have a good answer. You apologized within the hour, mortified, but the pattern was old enough that Hermione recognized it before you did.
"You do this when you're scared," she said later, gently, no accusation in it. "You did it to Fred a lot of times. You're doing it to me now. It's like you need to test whether people will still want you around after you've been at your worst — and it's exhausting for the people on the other end, even when they understand why."
"I'm not trying to hurt you."
"I know. But you are, a little, and I'd rather you just told me you were scared instead."
It happened again later, worse, with Fred himself, though this time you knew exactly what you were doing even as you did it.
You told him, unprompted, that you thought the entire relationship had been a mistake, that you'd been counting down the days until you could stop pretending.
It wasn't true. You knew it wasn't true the second it left your mouth. But some old, frightened part of you needed to see what his face did when you said it — needed, badly, to catch him in the act of finally, finally giving up on you, so you could point at it and say see, ‘I told you so’ and never have to risk this again.
Fred went very still. Then, quietly: "That's not what you actually think."
"How would you know?"
"Because you've been leaving me notes in my Charms book and you cried actual tears telling me about your mom and your dad and you fell asleep against my shoulder in the common room like it was the safest place you'd been in years. People who think something's a mistake don't do any of that." He wasn't angry, just steady, watching you with something that looked uncomfortably like understanding. "You're trying to make me leave first so it doesn't feel like your fault when it happens. I'm not going to do that for you."
You didn't have an answer. You went to bed that night furious at yourself, and it was Hermione, again, who found you crying about it afterward, who said nothing except I know and let you sit with the shame of it until it passed.
The letter had been sitting under your pillow for eleven days.
It was from your half-brother — a name you'd known about only distantly, a fact more than a person, the son your mother had gone on to have after she left, at a school in the north with a name that sounded cold even to say. He'd written to you out of nowhere, careful, hesitant handwriting, saying he'd like to meet you, if you'd be willing. He didn't mention your mother beyond a single line: ‘she's not really part of my life either, not the way you'd think’.
You hadn't answered. You weren't sure you could.
Hermione was the one who finally asked about it directly, catching sight of the parchment corner poking from your bag. "Are you going to write back?"
"I don't know what I'd even say."
"You don't have to know everything before you start. You could just say hello."
"He's got the same mother who thought staying with us would kill her. What if he's — what if there's something about the way she raised him that means he'll leave too, eventually, the second I'm inconvenient?"
"Or," Hermione said, carefully, "he's a kid who never got a sister and is trying, awkwardly, to have one. That doesn't mean he inherited anything except her handwriting."
You looked at the letter a long time that night before you finally wrote back — three sentences, tentative, an agreement to meet during the Tournament, when the delegations were all at the castle together. It felt like the bravest thing you'd done in years, and also the smallest.
By the last days of the bet, something had settled between you that no longer felt like performance at all.
You'd started sitting together at breakfast without any prompting, your hand finding his under the table as easily as breathing. He walked you to class even when it took him wildly out of his way. You'd started leaving your own notes back, tucked into his books — nothing profound, sometimes just ‘good luck in practice’ or a badly drawn picture of George's face — and he kept every single one.
"Twenty-eight days," Fred said one evening, lying beside you in the grass by the lake, fingers laced loosely through yours. "Two to go."
"Feels strange, doesn't it. Counting down to the end of something."
"Doesn't have to be the end of anything." He turned his head to look at you, something hopeful and a little nervous in his face, the look you'd catalogued weeks ago. "I know how this started. But it doesn't have to stop just because the thirty days run out. I'd rather this kept going. Properly. No bet attached to it at all."
"I know," you said, and found, to your own quiet astonishment, that you meant it entirely. "I'd like that too."
He kissed you then, slow and unhurried, nothing like the first kiss weeks before that you'd tried so hard to undercut with a cruel joke. This one you didn't pull away from. This one you leaned into, both hands fisted gently in his shirt, and when you finally broke apart he rested his forehead against yours, breathing uneven, smiling in the dark.
"Two more days," he murmured.
"Two more days," you agreed, and let yourself, for the first time in five years, imagine what came after without flinching from it.
Your brother's name was Kirill, and he was younger than you by two years, gangly and awkward in his Durmstrang uniform, with your mother's eyes and none of her coldness that you could find, not yet, not in the hour you spent with him in a quiet alcove near the courtyard.
He talked too fast, nervous, told you about his father — not yours, a stepfather who'd never quite warmed to him — about a mother who was, in his words, ‘around, but not really there, not for either of us, I think’. Somewhere in the middle of him showing you a battered photograph of a ship he wanted to sail someday, something in your chest cracked open with a feeling that wasn't grief exactly, more like relief: 'it wasn't just me. It was never just me.’
When he finally, awkwardly, hugged you goodbye — stiff-armed, unpracticed, clearly unused to affection — you were laughing, eyes bright with tears you hadn't let fall, cheeks flushed from the cold courtyard air and the strange, enormous feeling of maybe, possibly, gaining something instead of losing it.
Fred saw you like that. From across the courtyard, half-turned toward the castle doors, he saw you wrapped around a Durmstrang boy, laughing, glowing, happier than he'd seen you in the entire month he'd been trying to earn exactly that look.
He didn't wait to find out who it was. He turned around and walked back inside, something cold and quiet settling into his chest, and told himself, with the particular, practiced ease of someone protecting a heart he'd handed over freely: 'of course. Of course it was never really me’. She was always going to find someone easier to be happy with.
Fred didn't confront you. That was almost worse.
For the last day he was polite — cordial, even, still technically your boyfriend, still technically inside the bounds of the bet — but the warmth had gone out of it, replaced by a careful, controlled distance that felt like watching a fire go out one ember at a time. He didn't seek you out at meals. He didn't find you in corridors. When you spoke, his answers were short, correct, and utterly without the teasing warmth you'd only just let yourself start expecting.
"What's going on with you?" you finally asked, cornering him outside the library.
"Nothing. Everything's fine."
"You're lying."
"I saw you," he said, finally, voice tight, "with him. In the courtyard. Looking happier than you've looked with me all month." He wasn't looking at you, jaw set hard. "I'm not angry. You're allowed to want someone else. I just — I'd rather know now than keep pretending for the sake of a bet you never wanted to lose anyway."
You stared at him, and for a second you almost laughed, except it wasn't funny, it was awful, this entire month reduced to a single misread hug.
"Fred. That was my brother."
He blinked. "Your — what?"
"My half-brother. From Durmstrang. My mother's son." Your voice was shaking now, some mixture of fury and relief and old grief all tangled together. "The letter I've been avoiding — I finally answered it. I met him for the first time today. He hugged me because neither of us have ever had a sibling, and I was crying because for once in my life something about my mother didn't feel like it was going to hurt, and you thought — you actually thought — "
"I didn't know." His voice cracked, just slightly, guilt flooding in fast behind it. "I'm sorry. I should have asked. I should have come and asked instead of just — deciding."
"Yeah," you said, some of the fight going out of you, replaced by something rawer. "You should have."
"I was scared," he admitted, quiet now, all the careful distance gone. "The whole month I've been terrified you'd wake up one day and realize you didn't actually want any of this, that I'd just worn you down instead of actually winning you over, and then I saw you look at someone like that, and every fear I've had for two years just — came true, all at once, before I could stop it."
You let the silence sit a moment, let both of you breathe through it.
"I'm not in love with my brother, Fred."
"I know that now."
"Are you still in love with me?"
"I have been for two years," he said, simply, no performance left in it at all. "That's never been the question. The question's always been whether you'd let yourself believe it."
Day thirty one arrived on a grey, ordinary Tuesday, and you stood at the doors of the Great Hall with your heart going faster than it had any right to, watching four long tables full of people who had, whether you liked it or not, spent a month watching this exact thing unfold.
Fred was at the Gryffindor table, not looking at you, giving you the space to do this on your own terms, which was, you thought, exactly like him.
You didn't need to stand on a table or make a speech dramatic enough for the whole month to deserve. You simply walked to the middle of the hall, waited for enough eyes to land on you that the room quieted on its own, and said, plainly, "I lost the bet."
A ripple went through the hall. Somewhere near the Gryffindor table, George was already grinning like Christmas had come early.
"Fred Weasley did not lose his patience with me once in thirty days, which is either the greatest feat of patience in Hogwarts history or proof I'm not nearly as difficult to love as I've spent the last five years convincing everyone, including myself." Your voice wavered, just slightly, and you let it. "So. I fell for him. Completely, embarrassingly, against every plan I had. I'm in love with Fred Weasley."
The hall erupted — laughter, a few cheers, someone, definitely George, actually applauding — and Fred was already crossing the hall toward you, disbelief and hope and something helplessly fond all fighting for space on his face.
"You didn't have to do the whole hall," he said, when he reached you, voice low, just for you now. "A quiet word would've done."
"You didn't win a quiet bet. You won loudly, in front of everyone. Seemed fair you got your answer the same way."
"I love you," he said, like it was easy, like it had always been easy, like the only hard part had ever been getting you to a place where you could hear it without flinching.
"I know," you said. "I love you too. Try not to let it go to your head."
"Too late," Fred said, and kissed you in the middle of the Great Hall, in front of all of Hogwarts, like he'd been waiting two years for exactly this moment and finally, finally, wasn't waiting anymore.
Later, much later, curled together by the lake with his jacket around your shoulders and his fingers laced loosely through yours, you asked him the question you'd been sitting with since the courtyard.
"What would you have done? If it really had been someone else. If I really had wanted out."
Fred was quiet a moment, thoughtful in a way that had nothing to do with the easy performance he gave the rest of the world. "Let you go," he said, finally. "Badly. Probably pathetically. But I wouldn't have made you stay somewhere you didn't want to be, no matter how much it would've wrecked me." He looked at you, steady. "Wanting you was never about winning, love. It was always just wanting you happy, even in the version where that didn't include me."
You thought of your mother, then, the version of leaving that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with limits she wasn't equipped to hold. And you thought of Fred — thirty days of staying, of noticing, of giving you room instead of pressure, of a hand held out with a towel instead of taken advantage of, of a moment of real frustration met with honesty instead of an exit.
Not everyone who could leave, would. Not everyone who loved you was destined to find you too difficult to keep.
"Good," you said, finally, resting your head against his shoulder. "Because I'm not going anywhere."
"Neither am I," Fred said. "Never was." He reached into his pocket, a little sheepishly, and produced — of all things — a slightly crumpled lily, clearly transfigured rather than grown, given the season. "Hermione told me what these mean. In the old language. Apparently I've been daring you to love me since October without even knowing the word for it."
You laughed, and took the flower, and didn't let go of his hand for the rest of the afternoon.
Pairing: Neteyam Sully x Tayrangi!Reader (Olo'eyktan's Daughter)
Word Count: ~7,4K words
Summary: As the fierce, independent daughter of the Tayrangi clan's Olo'eyktan, being traded away in a political marriage to secure an alliance against the Sky People is your absolute worst nightmare. Neteyam Sully is determined to play the dutiful, perfect husband to unite your people—at least in public. Behind closed doors, your clash of egos erupts into venomous sarcasm, competitive aerial warfare, and a boiling, hate-fueled intimacy neither of you knows how to handle.
CW: Arranged/forced marriage, enemies-to-lovers, intense verbal sparring, extreme public vs. private persona contrast., Heavy sexual tension, hate-fueled physical intimacy, smut! (passionate, rough make-out sessions and suggestive, raw intimacy driven by frustration), cocky/provocative Neteyam, stubborn and aggressive female lead, Mild fantasy violence, strong language, suggestive themes.
Masterlist here!
The winds of the Eastern Cliffs did not sing; they screamed.
Growing up along the sheer, jagged precipices of the Tayrangi territory, you learned to walk on stone that plunged thousands of feet into crashing, violent seas below. You were the eldest daughter of the Olo'eyktan, bred for vertical drops, gale-force updrafts, and the untamed freedom of the Ikran riders. Among your people, status was earned through flight, precision, and unyielding will. You did not bow to anyone. You did not take orders.
So when your mother stood before the gathering of elders alongside Toruk Makto and casually bargained your future away for tactical air support, you felt the air vanish from your lungs.
The ceremonial fire burned high against the grey slate of the council platform, casting flickering shadows over the assembled war leaders. The salty sea breeze whipped your dark hair across your cheeks as you stood rigidly behind your mother, your tail lashing against the stone with visible, murderous fury.
"An alliance of blood," your mother declared, her voice cutting clean through the roaring mountain wind. Her angular cliff-dweller markings seemed to glow in the twilight as she gestured toward the Omatikaya delegation. "The Omatikaya and the Tayrangi will fly as one against the Sky People. My daughter will unite our sky riders with the firstborn of Jake Sully."
Across the flames, Jake Sully bowed his head in solemn agreement. "Our clans share the sky and the trees," the former marine spoke, his voice carrying the heavy cadence of a general. "My eldest son will stand beside your daughter. Their union will seal the perimeter of the eastern ridge."
Your jaw tightened so hard your fangs achingly pressed into your lower lip. You turned your gaze from Toruk Makto to fixate entirely on the heir sitting beside him.
Neteyam Sully sat perfectly still, his posture rigidly straight beneath his warrior beads and leather harness. He looked like an illustration from a military manual: composed, disciplined, and sickeningly stoic. But as you narrowed your eyes, analyzing the structure of the boy you had just been traded to, your resentment deepened into visceral disgust.
He was not built like the slender, whip-thin riders of your cliffs, nor did he possess the sleek, elegant proportions of a pure Omatikaya hunter. He was broad. His chest expanded wider beneath his choker, his shoulders carrying a heavy, dense muscle mass that spoke of foreign gravity. And when his hand moved to rest casually on his thigh, your eyes locked onto his fingers.
Five. Five thick, heavy digits curving against the woven fabric of his loincloth.
He carried the blood of the dreamwalkers. The lineage of the very sky demons who were burning Pandora’s forests.
While your blood boiled, Neteyam met your murderous glare across the fire. His golden eyes were bright and searching, taking in your war paint, your bared fangs, and the aggressive stance of your shoulders. Yet, instead of reacting to the lethal hostility rolling off you, he simply offered a slow, respectful inclination of his head toward your mother.
He accepted it. Just like that. Like you were a freshly carved bow being handed to him from the armory.
That night, hours before the Omatikaya delegation was set to depart for the forest, you tracked him down. You found him standing alone near the royal Ikran perches, checking the thick leather strapping of his saddle under the pale glow of Polyphemus.
You marched across the stone ledge, the beads of your ceremonial belt clicking sharply with every aggressive stride, and cornered him against the wooden railing.
"I will not be your quiet little forest bride, Sully," you spat, stepping directly into his personal space until your chin tilted up to meet his gaze. Up close, his height was infuriating; you had to crane your neck to look him in the eye, acutely aware of the dense, broad build he had inherited from his alien father. "I don't care what our father agreed. You give me a single order in your camp, half-blood, and I will throw you off the nearest ledge."
Neteyam didn't flinch. He didn't step back. Instead, his golden eyes dropped slowly from your eyes to your bared fangs, lingered on the rapid rise and fall of your chest, and then glided back up to your face. A faint, infuriatingly patronizing sigh escaped him.
"Good evening to you too," he murmured, his tone smooth and entirely unbothered. "I don't recall giving you an order. In fact, I was going to suggest we try to make this work. We have a war to fight against the RDA. Our clans need to see a united front."
"A united front?" you scoffed, crossing your arms, your tail whipping sharply against his calf. "You're a hypocrite following your father's script because you don't have the spine to tell him no. You sit there acting like the dutiful little soldier, letting them trade us like supplies just for a pat on the head from Toruk Makto."
For a fraction of a second, the stoic soldier mask slipped. His heavy jaw tightened, the muscles in his neck flexing beneath his braided choker as his golden eyes darkened. But just as quickly, he smoothed the expression over with a faint, cocky smirk that instantly made your skin burn.
"Save your breath for the migration tomorrow,Sweetheart," he said, turning his back on you to adjust the reins on his mount. "The forest canopy is thick, and the wind won't carry you like it does out here. You're going to need all that fire just to keep up with me."
Within three weeks of living beneath the dense, towering roots of the Omatikaya camp, Neteyam Sully realized something undeniable: you were the hardest fight of his entire life.
It seemed you had a dedicated, personal obsession with testing his patience and driving him completely out of his mind.
In public, Neteyam was determined to make the things work, be the absolute embodiment of the perfect, devoted Na'vi suitor—and that way, maybe, you two could really get along.
But you refused to play along for even a second. While he tries with you, you make it your personal mission to humiliate him and challenge his authority in front of the entire clan at every given opportunity.
If he approached you at the communal hearth offering to carry your heavy woven gathering basket, you would yank it out of his reach, snapping that you weren't weak and could carry it yourself, loudly spitting complaints about his ‘freakish demon hands touching your things.’
If he returned from a grueling hunt and bowed his head to present you with the prime cut of hexapede—following strict Na'vi courtship traditions—you would immediately scoff, smirking coldly in front of the elders as you asked if that pathetic scrap of meat was really the best the great Omatikaya heir could bring down.
Neteyam wasn’t just 'performing' for the clan; he genuinely was trying to be a good partner to you, And all your rejections and sharp comments were pushing him more and more to want to hate you too.
The forest heat was stifling, but Neteyam had spent the better part of the morning climbing the treacherous, high-altitude branches near the ridge. His hands were scraped, and his knuckles were bruised from the rough bark, but he didn't mind. He had finally secured a rare, chilled nectar fruit—the kind you’d mentioned missing from your home on the cliffs while you talked with Kiri and he heard you.
He found you near the perches, re-stringing your bow. He didn't approach with fanfare; he just walked over in a casual and relaxed way.
"Hey," he said softly, holding out the fruit. "I know the forest floor is nothing like the cliffs. I thought... maybe you’d want something that tastes like home."
He wasn't doing this for the elders. He was doing this because he was tired of the cold, silent war between you and he honestly wanted to start over.
You didn't even look up, your fingers continuing their rhythmic work on the bowstring. "Oh, look at the Golden Boy, playing the doting husband again. Did you save the forest from a threat, or did you just waste your morning picking fruit so you can act like you're domesticating me?"
Neteyam’s shoulders slumped, just a fraction. The genuine smile he had prepared faded, replaced by a flash of genuine hurt and confusion. "I was just trying to be nice. I thought you'd appreciate it."
"I don't need your charity, Sully," you replied, finally locking eyes with him, your gaze hard and unyielding. "I don't need you to 'fix' my comfort. Go back to being the perfect heir and leave me alone."
Leaning forward just an inch, he dropped his voice so only you could hear, smoothly slipping into the harsh, alien tongue of the Sky People he had learned from his father. "Take the damn fruit, sweetheart."
Your upper lip curled back instantly at the foreign word, a low hiss vibrating in your throat. "Don't use that demon language on me, half-blood. Keep your Sky People words—and your sticky fruit—to yourself."
Shouldering your spear, you turned on your heel and marched toward the Ikran perches without a second glance,lleaving him standing there in the clearing. As he watched you go, his jaw tightened in pure, incredulous frustration. He was trying, and you were treating his sincerity like it was an insult.
A small, wicked part of you relished the way he looked—defeated and annoyed—but beneath that, a flicker of guilt pricked at you. He was annoying, sure, but he was trying, and you were determined to make sure he knew that 'trying' wouldn't change the fact that you weren't here of your own free will.
You made him look like an absolute idiot. He treated you with patience and respect and you just bared your fangs and hissed the second he stepped within arm's reach.
You were impossible. Relentlessly defiant, constantly challenging and provoking him at every turn. But the absolute worst part? That lethal, venomous treatment was reserved exclusively for him.
He would watch from across the clearing as you laughed easily with Kiri, or traded playful punches with Lo'ak. Worse still, he caught you offering a bright, genuine smile to Spider—which drove Neteyam’s territorial instincts insane, considering Spider was literally one of the sky demons you supposedly despised whenever Neteyam offered a helping hand.
Now Neteyam stood in the shadows of a giant tree, watching you. You were showing Tuk how to weave a vine-trap, your voice patient, your expression soft and bright. You were laughing at something Tuk said, and for a moment, you looked so gentle that it made his chest ache. You were the girl he had hoped to find in this forced marriage—the one who could laugh and be kind.
He took a step forward, a hopeful light in his eyes, ready to approach you without the usual armor. "Hey, that’s a good knot, Tuk," he said, his voice quiet.
The change in you was instantaneous. It was like a shutter slamming shut. The softness vanished, replaced by a sharp, defensive glare. You stood up, your posture stiffening immediately.
"What are you doing here, Neteyam?" you asked, the warmth in your voice replaced by ice. "Don't you have a war to manage or a clan to impress? Tuk was busy."
The shift from the girl who was laughing to the girl who was biting his head off hit him like a physical blow. The vulnerability he’d felt just seconds ago hardened into defensive arrogance. If you wanted to play rough, he would play rough too.
"You know what? I think I'm leaving, you look like mom and dad about to fight," the girl murmured, escaping the death grip of the two of you.
He took a step into your space, his height advantage suddenly very apparent. He looked down at you, his smirk sharp and entirely unamused.
"I was just admiring your work, sweetheart," he drawled, using the English word like a weapon. "I didn't realize that being kind to my sister required you to be so miserable the second I walked into the room."
"I'm not miserable, I'm just realistic," you spat back. "And stop calling me that, you annoying, Sky People-obsessed brat."
"What’s the matter, darling?" he teased, dropping his voice into a mocking, intimate register as he stepped even closer. "Is it hard to keep up that 'I hate everyone' act when I’m standing right here? You're so good at being a nightmare for me, I’m starting to think you do it because you don't know how else to get my attention."
He watched your eyes flare with rage—a look he was starting to find incredibly intoxicating. You didn't realize it, but the more you fought him, the more he wanted to break that attitude down, piece by piece, just to see what was underneath.
Why was your venom saved only for him? It wasn't like he had begged to be paired with you either! It had been forced on both of them, and Neteyam was actually trying to make the best of a difficult situation so their people wouldn't burn.
But you? You took every single opportunity, in front of the entire village, at all hours of the day, to broadcast your utter discontent and disgust for him.
'Ironic. Insufferable. Stubborn. Foolish. Cruel. Malicious. Grumpy. Ungrateful. Childish. Bossy. A complete bitch'. Every single one of those words crossed Neteyam’s mind whenever you opened your mouth, and the list only grew longer with each passing day. It felt like every living creature on Pandora had earned the right to your smile and kindness—except him.
Neteyam kicked a rock into the river with enough force to send a spray of water ten feet high.
"She’s a psycho," Neteyam muttered, throwing his head back. "Straight-up mental. I brought her the nectar from the high ridge—the dangerous one—and she acted like I’d just insulted her ancestors."
Lo’ak snorted, picking at a loose piece of bark on the log he was sitting on. "Maybe she just thinks you’re a suck-up, bro. You’re always hovering. It’s pathetic."
"Shut the hell up, Lo'ak," Neteyam snapped, spinning around to face him. "I’m not hovering! I’m trying to make sure we don't kill each other before the war is over!"
"Yeah, sure," Spider chimed in, leaning against a tree with a smirk. "That’s why you spend every night pacing the marui like a caged ikran."
"I am not pacing," Neteyam defended, his voice rising. "I am thinking. And thinking is hard when she’s acting like a total bitch for no reason. She’s stubborn, she’s difficult, and she has this... this way of moving when she’s angry—" He stopped, his face suddenly heating up. "She’s got this lethal way of pinning a target that’s, like, actually pretty impressive. And when she’s pissed off, her eyes turn this shade of yellow that's... whatever. It’s annoying."
Lo’ak let out a loud, mocking laugh. "Oh my god. He’s gone. Look at him, he’s blushing!"
"I am not blushing!" Neteyam shoved Lo'ak’s shoulder hard. "She’s just incredibly talented and it’s frustrating that she wastes it being a total pain in my ass, okay? She’s a menace, she’s hot-headed, and she’s a complete nightmare, but she’s the only person who doesn't treat me like the 'Golden Boy.' She’s actually... I don't know, she's captivating, okay? Happy now?"
Spider howled, clutching his stomach. "Holy shit, Neteyam! 'She’s captivating'? You’re down bad, man. You’re literally pining over a girl who probably wants to throw you off a cliff."
"Eat dirt, Spider," Neteyam growled, though he couldn't hide the faint, involuntary smile that pulled at his lips. He hated that they were right, but he couldn't stop the thought of you from taking over his head.
One evening, by the central fires, Neteyam took his seat beside you. He reached out, his large hand resting over yours on your knee for the benefit of the watching elders. Instantly, your fingernails dug so savagely into the flesh of his palm that you nearly drew blood.
He didn't wince. He leaned in close, brushing his lips against your pointed ear in what looked to the camp like a tender, romantic whisper.
"Keep digging your claws in,sweetheart," Neteyam murmured against your shell, his voice dropping into a register dripping with venomous amusement. "And I'll tell my mother you're getting so impatient you want to speed up the mating ceremony."
"Touch my ear again with those alien fingers and I'll feed them to a viperwolf," you hissed back showing your fangs, your tail twitching impatiently against the ground, noticeably annoyed...or excited.
From across the fire, Neytiri watched you yank your hand away from her son's under the guise of reaching for a fruit bowl. Her ears twitched slightly.
"Look at them," Neytiri murmured to Jake, her tone carrying a blend of concern and exasperation. "He is trying so hard with her. A true protector. But she rejects every gesture. May Eywa hear our prayers and make them get along before she takes his eye out."
Jake chuckled softly, leaning back against a mossy root and taking a sip from his cup. "He's doing better than I expected. Eywa gave him broad shoulders to carry that kind of attitude. Don't worry, baby. What starts badly, ends well. You'll see."
And the moment the heavy woven flaps of your shared marui fell shut for the night, however, they were both on each other's necks, ready to kill each other.
You threw your hunting pack across the floorboards, spinning to face him. "That's the last time you touch me, you damn idiot! I'm not your wife, I'm not your property, I'm nothing to you!" The fury was palpable in your voice, your crouched posture, and your chest rising and falling noticeably fast. Both of you were ready to fight.
Neteyam unbuckled his chest harness, tossing the thick leather straps onto a wooden bench with a sharp thud. The stoic prince vanished, replaced by an arrogant, deeply frustrated young man who was entirely fed up with your disrespect.
"Oh, forgive me, sweetheart! But in case you've forgotten, we're getting married, and whether you like it or not, you'll be my wife! Neteyam snapped, taking two aggressive steps toward you. His tall, heavily muscled frame filled the compact space of the tent. "I didn't ask to be paired with a stubborn, spoiled bitch like you either! Eywa knows how much you drive me crazy every day! You question every word I say, you humiliate me in front of my own warriors, and you treat every attempt I make to keep this alliance alive like an insult"
"Because it is an insult!" You marched right up to him, jabbing your finger hard into his bare, scarred chest. "You act like the doting martyr so your daddy gives you a pat on the head! If you hate breathing the same air as me so much, break this agreement!”
Silence settled between them both; amidst the screams, they had ended up just inches from each other. Their breaths were ragged, their hearts pounding violently.
They both knew they couldn't break the agreement; they needed something strong and certain to unite both clans to manage this war as best as possible. Perhaps that was what bothered you, what caused your hatred and repulsion towards him, because you had fought for your freedom, but he simply accepted his fate.
You came back with another string of insults, shouting in his face while he looked at you in a way you couldn't quite identify.
"You are a complete, arrogant hypocrite playing the saint while you resent every second I breathe your air!" You yelled, preparing to throw another punch at his chest.
Neteyam caught your wrist—firmly locking your arm in place. Instead of pushing you away, he yanked you an inch closer. His chest heaved against yours, his golden eyes blazing with a cocky, dangerous heat in the dim bioluminescent light.
"You think you have me figured out, cliff rider?" he growled, stepping forward until your back hit the central support post of the tent. He towered over you, his gaze dropping to your parted lips with a dark, taunting smirk. "You scream and bite because you're terrified of looking small in a forest that doesn't belong to you. You can throw all the tantrums you want inside these walls. You can call me a demon, insult my blood, and act like a spoiled little brat all night long."
He leaned down until his breath brushed the shell of your ear, his voice dropping to a rough, mocking whisper. "But tomorrow morning, you will walk out that flap, you will stand by my side, and you will remember who actually commands this camp.”
He released your wrist with a deliberate, arrogant toss, turning his back on you to stalk toward his sleeping mat.
Your heart is beating fast, not just from anger, your skin is tingling where he touched you.
"Don't sleep in too late, sweetheart, tomorrow another lovely day awaits us together," Neteyam spoke again, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Two nights later, suffocated by the dense canopy and the rigid rules of the Omatikaya camp, you slipped out of the marui long before midnight. You climbed the high stone perches where the Ikran roosted, waking your dark-scaled coastal mount. You needed open air. You needed vertical drops where no one could tell you how to stand or who to smile at.
Launching off the highest branch of the cliff-edge, you urged your mount into the dark, starlit sky above the floating Hallelujah Mountains. As a Tayrangi, your Ikran was bred for the vicious updrafts and sheer vertical dives of the ocean cliffs. You didn't fly with the cautious, textbook formations of the forest warriors; you flew like a falling stone, tucking your mount's wings and plunging thousands of feet into the misty ravines before pulling up at the absolute last second.
As you banked sharply around a massive floating island, letting the icy gale whip through your hair, a high-pitched screech cut through the night air behind you.
You glanced over your shoulder. Slicing through the cloud cover at breakneck speed was a sleek green forest Ikran, its rider flat against its back, pushing the beast to its absolute limits to intercept your trajectory.
Neteyam pulled up directly alongside your left flank, matching your speed knot for knot. You braced yourself for a lecture via throat-mic—an order to return to camp, a reprimand for breaking nighttime curfew.
Instead, when you looked across the gap between your mounts, what you saw stole the breath right out of your lungs.
Neteyam wasn't frowning. His lips were parted in a wild, adrenaline-fueled grin. His braided hair whipped violently in the wind, and his golden eyes burned with an intense, competitive fire you had never seen on the ground. Up here, away from his father's eyes and the crushing weight of his title, the rigid soldier was gone; he was simply an arrogant boy racing the wind.
"Is that all the eastern cliffs taught you?!" he shouted across the roaring gap between your mounts, his voice ringing with pure challenge.
"Talk less, tree-boy!" you yelled back, a sudden, unfamiliar thrill coursing through your veins. "Try to keep up!"
You pulled hard on your neural bond, sending your Ikran into a brutal, inverted barrel roll that clipped the mist of a passing waterfall before leveling out in a steep vertical climb. To your shock, Neteyam didn't hesitate. He copied the maneuver flawlessly, his heavier, muscular frame shifting balance with surprising agility as his beast sliced through the spray, hovering inches above your wingtip.
For an hour, you danced across the sky. You led him through narrow stone canyons, diving through impossibly tight gaps, testing his reflexes and his nerve. Every time you pushed the envelope, expecting him to back off, he matched you, his laugh echoing across the open canyons.
Eventually, your mounts tired, guiding you down to land on an isolated, wind-scoured plateau overlooking the vast, bioluminescent expanse of the forest valley far below.
As soon as your boots hit the moss, Neteyam slid off his saddle and walked toward you. His chest was heaving, his skin glistening with sweat and mist, but there was no anger in his stride. For the first time, his gaze held genuine, unreserved respect mixed with cocky amusement.
"You're not bad at all, cliff rider" he said, breathing heavily as he stopped two feet away, resting his hand on his belt. "But your recklessness is very careless; in a war, you'd be handing yourself to the enemy on a silver platter."
"And your maneuvers are very tense, they lack emotion; it should look like a dance.," you shot back immediately, wiping a drop of mist from your cheek. "You fly like you're memorizing a manual, Neteyam. You're bracing for impact instead of riding the draft. Loosen your hips."
Neteyam froze. His golden eyes flicked slowly down from your face to the curve of your waist, lingered on the leather strap resting against your hips, and then glided back up to your eyes. A slow, filthy smirk crept across his face.
"Loosen my hips?" he repeated, his voice dropping an octave as he took a slow step forward, trapping you against the side of your Ikran's warm leather saddle. "Is that official instruction from the great Tayrangi flight master?"
Your breath hitched. Up here, alone on the plateau under the violet glow of Polyphemus, the contrast in your sizes was suddenly overwhelming. He towered over you, his broad chest blocking out the stars, smelling of rain, ozone, and clean leather.
"It's the basic theory for flying well." you managed to say, refusing to back away even as your heart hammered against your ribs. "If you fly rigid, you break against the wind."
"I don't break easily, sweetheart," he murmured, leaning down until his forehead nearly brushed yours. His gaze lingered heavily on your parted lips, his breath brushing warm against your skin. "Though watching you fly tonight... I'm starting to think you might enjoy trying to break me."
The truce in the sky did not survive the crushing reality of the ground.
Three days later, a long, grueling scouting mission along the border went disastrously wrong when a torrential Pandoran monsoon slammed into the ridge. Blinding sheets of freezing rain and gale-force winds grounded your mounts, forcing the two of you to seek emergency shelter in an abandoned, decaying RDA metal outpost rusted into the mountainside.
The shelter was cramped, smelling of damp metal, ancient oil, and cold moss. Rain hammered against the corrugated steel roof with a deafening, relentless roar. You were both soaked to the bone, freezing, and completely out of patience.
Neteyam paced the metal floorboards, stripping off his soaked chest harness to dry his bowstrings with a piece of cloth, his broad shoulders tensing with every turn. You sat on a rusted supply crate, shivering slightly as you wrung the freezing rainwater out of your dark hair.
"If you had just followed the ridge line when I signaled instead of scouting that ravine on foot, we would have beaten the storm," Neteyam muttered coldly, not looking up from his bow. "We wouldn't be stuck in this metal box."
"If your tracking skills were half as impressive as your ego, we would have found the trail three hours ago!" you snapped, throwing your wet cloth onto the floor with a sharp slap. "God, you are insufferable! Perfect little Neteyam, never wrong, never making a mistake! You led us into a dead end because you refused to listen to me!"
Neteyam dropped his bow. The clatter of the heavy wood against the metal floor echoed sharply in the small room.
He turned, closing the distance between you in three long strides. Before you could slide off the crate to retreat, his hands slammed against the metal wall on either side of your head, boxing you in completely.
"I am sick of your mouth," he snarled, his chest pressing against yours with every ragged, furious breath. The rain hammered against the roof above you, drowning out the world outside. "I am sick of your insults, I am sick of your pride, and I am sick of pretending that you don't drive me completely insane!"
"Then stop pretending!" you yelled right back into his face, your hands flying up to shove against his hard, broad shoulders. "Fight me! Tell your father you hate me! Tell him you can't stand being bonded to a girl who doesn't worship the ground you walk on! Do something honest for once in your life instead of acting like a saint!”
“Shut up, just close your stupid pretty mouth already!” Neteyam's voice sounds exasperated, as if an impossible limit had been crossed. "You want something honest?!" Neteyam roared. “"Fine, I'll give you something honest, and maybe you'll finally shut up!"
His hands moved from the metal wall, his large, five-fingered hands tangling violently in your damp hair, cupping the back of your skull, His other hand goes over your throat, gently pressing it to make you raise your head towards him. He didn't give you a second to process before he slammed his mouth down onto yours.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't the sweet, performative affection he displayed by the campfires. It was raw, furious, and driven by months of suffocating frustration, territorial jealousy, and repressed desire.
You gasped in shock, but the sound was swallowed instantly by his kiss. For a split second, your brain tried to rebel—this was Neteyam, the hypocrite, the rival, the alien-blooded prince—but your body betrayed you entirely. Your hands, which had been shoving against his chest, slid upward on instinct, your nails digging desperately into the thick braids at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer.
He groaned against your lips, a deep, primal vibration that shook you to your core. His arms wrapped around your waist, gripping you with immense strength as he lifted you effortlessly off the supply crate until your back hit the cold metal wall with a dull thud. You wrapped your legs around his hips, anchoring yourself to the solid, searing heat of his broad body.
"Insufferable," he growled against your mouth, biting down lightly on your lower lip before capturing it again in a deep, bruising kiss. "Stubborn, arrogant brat."
"Cocky... tree-climbing bastard," you breathed between gasps, your nails scratching down the muscled expanse of his back, feeling the heavy muscles shudder under your touch. "Half-blood freak."
“I hate you, I hate you, idiot, half-breed," between kisses you bit her lower lip until it bled, although he didn't seem to care.
"Mhm, says the whore who's wet, pulling me closer to her, ironic, isn't it?" His voice was low and tempting, his hands running all over you, his insults sending heat towards your lower area.
Every insult poured fuel on the inferno. The hostility that had kept you at arm's length shattered, morphing into a heavy, intoxicating need. His hands moved with possessive urgency over your waist, gripping your hips as if he wanted to leave bruises to prove you belonged to him and him alone. He trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses down your jawline to the sensitive expanse of your throat, making you arch your back against the steel wall and cry out his name—not in anger, but in desperate, unadulterated yearning.
He grabbed your hips, shifting your weight until you were fully seated on the edge of the metal desk, his broad frame stepping between your thighs.
"Please, just fuck me, coward." Your tone of voice was a mixture of longing and annoyed, desperate to feel him inside you.
His eyes met yours with an intensity that tightened your chest. "If that's what you want, we'll do it right."
He reached over his shoulder, grasping his kuru and brought it forward, his glowing golden eyes locking onto yours with terrifying determination and security.
"Bring yours out," he commanded, his voice shaking with raw need. "I'm not going to fuck with just anyone, I'm going to do it with my woman.”
The silence stretched between you for a moment, the heat and need on your center becoming unsettling. His hands caressing your thighs created a strange contrast of intentions.
He was sure of this; despite your insults, your anger, your cruel and childish way of behaving towards him, he wanted to be with you.
And after so many months trying to resist the tension and magnetism between the two of you, you could no longer pretend.
Your hands trembled as you reached back, unwrapping your own dark braid. The moment the glowing pink tendrils of your kuru brushed against his, a shockwave rattled through your spine. As the thousands of neural fibers intertwined, locking your nervous systems together in tsahílu, your vision exploded into brilliant white light.
The sensory flood was overwhelming. You didn't just feel his hands on your hips; you felt the roaring, possessive inferno inside his mind. You felt his crushing frustration from the past months, the profound weight of his responsibilities, and beneath it all, a dark, consuming obsession with you that had been burning since the moment you stepped onto his beach.
Neteyam gasped, his forehead dropping against yours as the union struck him with equal, blinding force. A lopsided smile appeared on her face as she tried to catch her breath. "That's it, good girl... Now I'm going to grant your wishes, sweetheart."
His voice was an intoxicating purr as his mouth traveled down your neck, removing your top. His hands cupped your breasts, and he took one into his mouth, licking it with fervor.
You melted under his mouth and hands that now traveled through your belly to your center, moving in slow circles that made you tremble and moan.
After releasing your breasts, with one hand he gripped your waist, driving The five digits of your fingers inside you moving them against you with a raw, dominant rhythm that demanded total surrender. Through the bond,you could feel everything more intensely stripping away your defensive pride, forcing you to feel exactly how deeply he craved you.
"No more insults," he growled against your ear, his breath hot and ragged as his fingers moved with relentless, bruising rhythm against you. "No more hiding behind your pride, sky rider. You feel what I feel for you. You know it's real."
You cried out, your nails sinking into his shoulders as the dual overload of physical pleasure and mental union threatened to break you apart, you were so close. "Neteyam—"
"No," he commanded, biting gently at the shell of your ear, He stopped his movements completely, pulling his fingers out of you. You whimpered. He leaned back just enough to force you to look into his blazing golden eyes. "Now you're my wife, you're going to address me properly if you want to come, no more being a spoiled bitch ."
Tears of overwhelming sensation pricked the corners of your eyes. The bond left no room for lies, no room for sarcasm. You looked up at the broad, beautiful warrior who had entirely consumed your world.
"Ma'Teyam," you sobbed out, your arms wrapping tightly around his neck, pulling him down until your chest pressed flush against his. "Please, Ma'Teyam."
A ragged growl tore from his throat at the sound of his name on your lips.
"That's all, baby." He smiled slightly, taking off his loincloth and entering you at once.
His rhythm was raw and merciless, hitting your G-spot with every thrust, making your eyes roll back in pure pleasure, your voice turning into whimpers and pleas for more.
“Oh look at the powerful warrior, you hated me so much and now you're begging to keep this cock inside you, you're desperate, aren't you, sweetheart?” His voice was muffled as he hid against her neck. Whispering all those filthy words in your ear, sending you to the edge.
That afternoon, amidst the cold metal, the rust, and the damp shadows of the shelter, the war between you burned itself to the ground.
When you returned to the Omatikaya camp the next morning, the rain had cleared, leaving the forest dripping with golden sunlight. But between the two of you, the silence was deafening.
Stubborn pride is a difficult armor to shed permanently. Neither of you explicitly acknowledged what had happened inside the metal shelter. You didn't speak of the faint bruises hidden beneath your leather garments, nor the way your voices had gone hoarse from things that had nothing to do with arguing.
You thought you could go back to the old routine: your cold hostility in public, the bitter distance in private.
But something had shifted fundamentally at the cellular level.
For Neteyam it was official; you were already his and he was completely yours.
For you, it was... you didn't know exactly what it was yet but you were starting to like it.
During the evening meal around the central fire, Neteyam sat beside you as usual. When his large, five-fingered hand reached out to rest on your knee, your muscles didn't tense. You didn't reach down to dig your nails into his palm. Instead, your fingers instinctively shifted, opening up to interlock with his, letting his thumb rest against your pulse point.
Neteyam paused mid-conversation with Lo'ak. His golden eyes dropped slowly to your joined hands, then flicked up to your face. You were staring fixedly at the roasting meat over the fire, refusing to look at him, but a dark, burning flush crept up your neck and tinged your cheeks.
A slow, genuine smile—soft, entirely devoid of his usual arrogance—touched the corners of his mouth. His thumb stroked the back of your hand, gently, reverently, drawing a subtle circle against your skin.
The real shift became undeniable the following afternoon on the training grounds.
You were practicing defensive spear alignments when Neteyam approached. Instead of stepping in with his usual cocky critique, he stood silently watching your form. When you paused to wipe your brow, he walked forward, reaching into the woven pouch at his belt.
Without saying a word, he held out his hand. Resting in his broad palm was a handcrafted chest harness and matching armband. It was meticulously woven from strong Omatikaya forest leather, but reinforced and weighted along the shoulders with polished grey slate stones gathered from the high eastern ridges—a blend of forest durability and Tayrangi balance.
You stared at the gift, your breath catching. "You made this?"
"I noticed your old harness was chafing against your Ikran's saddle during steep dives," Neteyam said quietly, his golden eyes soft, stripped of all defensive armor. "The slate adds counterbalance for vertical drops. Try it on."
Instead of arguing or throwing a sarcastic remark, you unbuckled your old leather strap and let him step behind you. His large, warm hands were incredibly gentle as he draped the new harness over your shoulders, carefully adjusting the straps to fit the broad curve of your collarbones. When his fingers brushed the nape of your neck, you didn't pull away; you leaned your weight slightly back against his chest with a soft sigh.
Later that night, inside the privacy of the marui, you stood by the water basin washing the ceremonial face paint from your cheeks. You heard the rustle of the tent flap closing, followed by the heavy, familiar tread of his footsteps.
You braced yourself for a tease, or a cocky remark.
Instead, large, warm hands slid gently around your waist from behind. Neteyam pulled your back flush against his broad chest, resting his chin comfortably on your shoulder. His tail curled slowly around yours, interlocking with a possessive, intimate weight that sent a shiver through your spine.
"You didn't fight me today during the tactical briefing with the scouts," he murmured quietly into your ear, his voice rumbling soothingly against your back.
"You actually had a decent strategy for the valley ridge," you replied, though your voice completely lacked its usual bite. You turned your head slightly until your nose brushed his cheekbone. "I'm not going to argue just for the sake of it, Sully."
Neteyam chuckled, turning his head to press a soft, lingering kiss against the bare skin of your shoulder. "Could've fooled me. I spent the last three months thinking arguing was your primary language."
"Only when you act like an insufferable know-it-all," you whispered, turning around in his arms until you were facing him. You rested your hands flat against his broad chest, feeling the steady, comforting beat of his heart beneath your palms.
"I am a know-it-all," he admitted softly, wrapping his arms securely around your lower back. His golden eyes shone with a quiet, profound devotion that made your heart swell. "But I finally figured out how to get you to listen to me."
"Oh really?" you raised an eyebrow, a playful smirk teasing your lips. "And what's your great strategy, Mighty warrior?"
Neteyam didn't answer with words. He cupped the side of your face with his large hand, his thumb stroking over your cheekbone, and pulled you down into a kiss that was slow, sweet, and overflowing with unshakeable partnership.
By the time the seasonal migration arrived and your mother visited the Omatikaya camp to formalize the final stage of the military alliance, the entire clan knew the truth.
They didn't need to look at signed treaties or listen to council speeches; they only needed to look up at the sky.
High above the camp, breaking through the mist of the canopy, two Ikran soared in absolute, flawless synchronization. The sleek green mount of the Omatikaya prince did not fly with textbook rigidity; it dived, rolled, and caught the thermal drafts with the wild, breathtaking recklessness of the eastern cliffs. And right beside him, matching him wingtip to wingtip through every inverted turn, flew the Tayrangi princess.
When your mounts landed on the central training grounds, Neteyam leapt smoothly from his saddle and walked straight toward you. In front of your mother, in front of Jake and Neytiri, and in front of the entire assembled warrior ranks, he didn't offer a performative bow. He wrapped his arm firmly around your waist, pulling your body flush against his, and kissed your forehead with fierce, unapologetic pride.
"He has learned the ways of the cliff wind," your mother noted, her sharp eyes softening as she watched Neteyam adjust the straps of your slate-weighted flight harness with careful, protective hands.
Jake smiled, crossing his broad arms as he watched his son look at you like you were the only breathing creature on Pandora. "He learned a lot more than that. I told you, they just needed some time to work things out."
As the elders turned away toward the council fire, Neteyam looked down at you, his golden eyes shining with that familiar, cocky glint that you had somehow fallen completely, hopelessly in love with.
"See, sweetheart ?" Neteyam whispered, leaning in so his lips brushed against yours. "I told you on the first night on the ledge. We make a great team and you learned to love my sky-demon nicknames"
You rolled your eyes, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling his tall frame down for another deep, lingering kiss. "Shut up and kiss me, Sully.”
Warnings/Tags: Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Prank wars, Ravenclaw Reader/OC, Smart MC, Fluff, six year, Some slight modifications to the canon or timeline.
Premise: For Fred Weasley, what is out of reach is simply a challenge waiting to be accepted. He lives for chaos, which means he never fell for the school’s biggest illusion: Grace McGonagall. To the rest of Hogwarts, she is the golden student, a saintly legacy who can do no wrong. To Fred, she is a puzzle disguised as a perfect girl, hiding a razor-sharp wit and a dark streak of defiance beneath her Ravenclaw robes. His new theory? Good girls are just bad girls who haven't been caught yet. Fred is ready to tear down her walls to prove it—what he doesn't expect is that Grace doesn't just know how his games work; she plays them better.
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The theoretical application of spatial-displacement matrices was, as a general rule, not something designed to inspire spontaneous riotous joy within the walls of Hogwarts Castle.
Yet on Friday morning, as Professor Flitwick levitated the graded sixth-year N.E.W.T.-preparation exams back onto the desks of the Charms classroom, the silence was shattered so violently that several glass inkwells on the windowsill rattled in their frames.
Fred Weasley sat staring at the top right corner of his parchment.
He didn't blink. He barely breathed. Written in crisp, shimmering purple ink—Flitwick’s preferred color for top-tier academic recognition—was a bold, undeniable 'Outstanding'. Beneath it, in the diminutive professor's neat hand, sat a note: 'An exceptionally rigorous proof of mass-redirection, Mr. Weasley. Quite astounding'.
"No bloody way," Lee Jordan breathed from two desks away, craning his neck so hard his collar almost ripped. "That’s a forgery. You’ve Confunded the paper."
"A pure, unadulterated O," George murmured, picking up his twin's parchment with the delicate reverence usually reserved for unstable dark artifacts. George looked from the letter grade to Fred’s face, his expression shifting between awe and deep, lingering suspicion. "You actually did it. You sat in that dark corner looking like a possessed ghoul for four days, and you actually beat the system."
Fred let out a long, slow breath that felt as if it had been trapped in his chest since Tuesday. A slow, wicked, and entirely arrogant grin spread across his sharp features. He snatched the parchment back from George, pushed his chair back with a loud screech against the flagstones, and stood up.
Across the room, sitting at her usual immaculate workstation near the front, Grace McGonagall was carefully filing her own exam paper into a leather-bound folder.
Fred didn't walk; he swaggered. He navigated the narrow aisles of desks with the loose, predatory confidence of a chaser who had just scored the winning goal in a championship match. He stopped directly in front of her table, leaned his hip against the edge of her desk, and smoothly dropped his exam paper right over her neatly organized notes.
Grace paused. Her dark eyes dropped to the shimmering purple Outstanding.
"Morning, pretty face," Fred drawled, folding his arms across his chest and leaning down until his face was inches from hers. "Notice anything unusual about the local scenery today? Aside from my devastating charm, of course."
Grace looked at the grade for three long seconds. Fred waited for the shock. He waited for the wide eyes, the stammered disbelief, the sudden realization that she had walked directly into his trap and lost.
Instead, Grace picked up his parchment by the corner, her expression entirely unreadable. She scanned his calculations with a measured, analytical sweep of her eyes, nodded once, and handed it back to him.
"Well done, Weasley," she said smoothly, her voice a calm, velvet purr that carried no trace of panic. "Your proof on the third vanishing coefficient is surprisingly elegant. It appears you do possess an active brain cell when properly motivated."
Fred’s cocky grin faltered by a fraction of an inch. "That’s it? ‘Well done’?"
"What were you expecting?" Grace asked, picking up her satchel and slinging it over her shoulder as Flitwick dismissed the class. She looked up at him through her lashes, her hazel eyes bright with an icy, unshakable confidence. "Did you expect me to beg for mercy? To claim the exam was rigged? I am a Ravenclaw, Fred. I respect data. And the data says you won the wager."
She stepped around him, pausing just long enough for her shoulder to brush against his chest. "I’ll see you at the pitch tomorrow morning. Do try not to fall off your broom while showing off."
Fred stood alone in the aisle as she glided out of the classroom, his parchment clutched in his hand. He frowned, running a hand through his red hair. She hadn't flinched. She hadn't even blinked.
"She took that entirely too well," Fred muttered to George as his twin caught up to him.
"She’s terrifying," George agreed cheerfully. "You’ve won, Freddie, but somehow it feels like you’re the one who just got handed a detention."
Ten minutes later, inside the privacy of the sixth-year girls' washroom near the library annex, Grace McGonagall’s icy composure completely evaporated.
"He passed!" Grace hissed, pacing the stone floor while her hands gripped the edges of her leather satchel so tightly her knuckles turned white. "He didn't just pass, Hermione, he got an Outstanding! On a theoretical vanishing matrix! How is that possible?!"
Hermione Granger sat on the edge of one of the marble sinks, her heavy book bag resting on her lap. She looked at Grace with a mixture of exasperation and profound sympathy. "I told you, Grace. When Fred actually focuses his mind on something, he is dangerously capable. You challenged his pride. What did you think he was going to do?"
"I thought he was going to get an Acceptable!" Grace groaned, leaning her forehead against the cool stone wall. "I thought he would get bored after twenty minutes of reading formulas and go back to inventing exploding sweets! I've never even seen him read anything in his life! Do you have any idea what this means? I have to walk into the Gryffindor stands tomorrow morning with a gold number five painted on my face!"
"And sit next to me," Hermione reminded her gently. "It won't be that bad. Everyone knows the Gryffindor matches are loud."
"It’s not the noise, Hermione," Grace said, turning around, her hazel eyes wide with genuine anxiety. "It’s the declaration. If I walk out there wearing his mark, half the castle is going to assume I’ve lost my mind. My mother is going to be in the staff box looking through her brass binoculars. She will see it!"
From inside one of the cubicles, Luna Lovegood emerged dreamily, drying her hands on a clean linen towel. "I think gold will look very lovely against your skin, Grace. And besides, the Wrackspurts around your head always disappear when you're talking about Fred's bets. You look much more awake when you're arguing with him."
Grace let out a ragged sigh, pressing her palms against her flushed cheeks. She couldn't back out now. A McGonagall didn't break an agreement, even if that agreement involved public execution by Gryffindor Quidditch branding.
By ten o'clock on Saturday morning, Grace found herself effectively kidnapped by the Gryffindor female contingent.
She had intended to wear her standard weekend attire—her neat dark trousers, a crisp Oxford shirt, and her silver Prefect badge securely pinned to the lapel. But Ginny Weasley, backed by the formidable authority of Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet, had intercepted her near the great staircase and dragged her unceremoniously into the Gryffindor wing to one of their rooms.
"You cannot wear a collared shirt to a Quidditch match against Slytherin," Angelina declared firmly, rummaging through a canvas bag of clothes she had. "You look like you're going to a Ministry audit, Grace. If you're sitting in the front row of our cheering section, you need to look like you actually belong there."
"I am a spectator, Johnson, not a Chaser," Grace protested weakly, though she permitted Ginny to pull the hair pins from her dark curls.
"You’re our lucky charm today," Ginny corrected, shaking out Grace's long hair until it tumbled over her shoulders in natural, dark waves. "Fred hasn't shut up about this wager for three days. If you walk out there looking like a strict Prefect, he’ll spend the whole match trying to get your attention instead of watching out for Warrington’s elbows."
Thirty minutes later, Grace looked into the tall mirror and barely recognized the girl staring back at her.
Under the collective styling advice of the Gryffindor girls, she was dressed in a pair of low-rise dark denim jeans that rested comfortably on her hips, paired with battered black Converse sneakers she usually kept hidden under her bed. On top, she wore a white, long-sleeve fitted shirt layered beneath a tight, black short-sleeve baby tee—an effortlessly casual Muggle silhouette that felt completely foreign to her usual structured aesthetic. Over it all, she wore a thick, heavy cream-colored knitted cardigan to ward off the biting November wind.
"Hold still," Ginny instructed, leaning in with a small silver brush dipped in enchanted gold-and-crimson face paint.
With three smooth, practiced strokes, Ginny painted a bold, shimmering number 5 directly onto the crest of Grace’s left cheekbone, framing it with two sharp crimson arcs.
Grace stared at her reflection. Without the robes, without the badge, and with her hair falling loosely around her face, she didn't look like the untouched, intimidating daughter of the Deputy Headmistress. She looked entirely human. She looked... reckless.
"Perfect," Alicia declared, clapping her hands together. "Let’s go. The pitch is already filling up."
As they walked out onto the bustling stone path leading toward the Quidditch stadium, Grace felt her heart rate accelerating with every step. The wind was fierce, carrying the roar of the gathering crowd and the sharp tang of bruised grass. She felt exposed, hypersensitive to the glances of passing students who did double-takes at the sight of the Ravenclaw Prefect dressed like a Muggle rocker with Gryffindor paint on her face.
"Everyone is staring," Grace murmured, her fingers tightening around the edge of her cardigan.
Hermione smoothly fell into step beside her, bumping her shoulder against Grace’s in a reassuring gesture. "Love, look at them," Hermione said quietly, gesturing toward the swarming crowd of green and red scarves. "They aren't looking at your cheek. Half of them are betting on how fast Harry will catch the Snitch, and the other half are arguing about Slytherin's new broomsticks. You aren't on trial here. Nobody actually cares what you're wearing or doing cause they came here for the game, it's 'kay."
Grace paused, scanning the crowd. Hermione was right. A group of Hufflepuffs pushed past them, laughing loudly about a smuggled flask of butterbeer; two sixth-year Slytherins were loudly debating weather conditions. The crushing, invisible spotlight she usually felt bearing down on her was entirely self-manufactured.
For the first time in six years, Grace felt the iron corset around her ribs loosen without her needing to sneak up to the Astronomy Tower at midnight to breathe.
Beneath the towering wooden scaffolding of the stadium, in the shadowed corridor leading toward the Gryffindor changing rooms, the wind howled through the timber supports.
Grace had separated from the girls near the stairwell, intending to find her seat before the teams marched out. She had taken three steps into the gloom when a tall, scarlet-clad figure stepped out from behind a wooden pillar, completely blocking her path.
Fred Weasley stood holding his heavy oak Beater's bat over his shoulder. He was fully padded for the match, his scarlet jersey vibrant in the dim light, his red hair messy from the wind.
He opened his mouth, likely prepared to deliver some theatrical, gloating remark about her arrival. But as his brown eyes dropped from her face to her outfit, his voice simply vanished.
Fred froze. He looked at the loose dark curls framing her face, caught the shimmer of the gold 5 painted across her cheekbone, and slowly took in the casual clothes and the low-rise jeans. It wasn't just that she looked beautiful—he had always known she was beautiful—it was that she looked completely, breathtakingly unguarded.
A sudden, sharp physical jolt hit Fred right in the center of his chest. It felt exactly like taking a Bludger to the ribs at fifty feet in the air. His brain automatically cataloged the moment with terrifying precision: the way the dark hair contrasted against the white cardigan, the sharp scent of vanilla mixed with the cold stadium wind, the precise curve of the painted five on her freckled skin. He filed it away in that quiet, dangerous mental vault where he kept her handwritten notes and the memory of her midnight confessions.
"Freckles," Grace said, raising her chin to mask the sudden flutter in her pulse at his intense, silent stare. "Are you going to block the walkway all morning, or are you actually scheduled to play a match today?"
Fred cleared his throat, his ears turning a brilliant, violent shade of red that matched his hair. He lowered his bat, shifting his weight clumsily. "Right. Playing. Obviously."
He reached behind the wooden pillar and picked up a folded, heavy piece of scarlet wool. Without a word of teasing, he stepped into her personal space, invading her perimeter until she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
He extended the garment toward her. It was his spare match jersey—thick, heavy knitted wool, vibrant scarlet, with bold golden stitching across the chest.
Grace looked down at it, frowning slightly. "What is that? Our bet was the face paint, Fred. I didn't agree to wear your spare wardrobe."
"I know what the bet was," Fred said softly. The cocky, arrogant performer was entirely gone, replaced by a quiet, intense seriousness that made the hairs on the back of Grace's neck stand up. He turned the jersey around so she could see the back.
Embroidered across the shoulders in large, gleaming gold letters was his surname: WEASLEY. Beneath it sat a massive number 5.
"You told me how heavy it is," Fred murmured, leaning down just an inch so his voice wouldn't carry over the whistling wind. "Carrying her name on your back every single day. Making sure you never drop it, making sure you never look messy so she won't be judged."
He pressed the heavy scarlet wool gently against her hands.
"Put it on, Gracie," he whispered, his brown eyes locking into hers with a profound, steady warmth. "Just for a few hours today, let your back rest. You can carry someone else's name for a while. I’m broad enough to handle the weight for both of us."
Grace stopped breathing. The wooden scaffolding, the roaring crowd above, the freezing November wind—everything dissolved into absolute stillness.
He had listened. On that freezing platform at one in the morning, while she smoked her smuggled cigarette and stripped away her armor, he hadn't just been waiting for his turn to speak. He had heard the exact, crushing nature of her loneliness, and he had built a shield out of heavy wool and gold thread just to give her three hours of peace.
"Besides, you shouldn't worry about expectations surrounding the Weasley name; there are too many of us, and nobody has any fixed expectations," he added jokingly, suddenly flustered by the silence of Grace.
A dangerous, overwhelming wave of emotion swelled in Grace’s chest. She wanted to say something meaningful; she wanted to acknowledge the profound intimacy of what he was handing her. But if she did, she knew her voice would crack, and she refused to fall apart in the shadows of the Quidditch stadium.
Grace snatched the jersey from his hands with a practiced, swift motion. She didn't put it on immediately; instead, she draped it over her arm, offering him a sharp, brilliant smile that didn't quite reach her trembling lashes.
A smile he had seen a thousand times on teachers; one that screamed "good girl," sweet and luminous, but now seemed much brighter, more honest.
"A clever tactical maneuver, Freckles ," she purred, her voice steady—and a little bit sweet—by pure force of will. "Attempting to weigh me down with extra wool so I can't escape your cheering section. I suppose I can tolerate it for one afternoon. Do try not to embarrass your surname while I’m wearing it."
Before he could respond, she stepped around him, her shoulder brushing his arm as she hurried toward the stairwell leading up to the stands.
Fred stood alone in the dim corridor, watching her retreat until the dark curls disappeared up the wooden steps. He let out a long, shaky breath, leaning the side of his head against the timber pillar.
"You’re losing your touch, Freddie," a voice remarked lazily from the shadows.
George materialized from around the corner, holding his own Beater's bat across his shoulders. He walked over to his twin, leaning against the opposite post and studying Fred’s flushed, dazed expression with sharp, perceptive eyes.
"That didn't look like proven theory to me," George noted softly, a knowing smirk touching his lips. "That looked remarkably like a bloke who spent four days reading theory just so he could hand his clothes to a pretty girl. Be careful, mate. This is starting to look a lot less like a scientific thing and a whole lot like you falling head over boots in love."
Fred’s jaw tightened. He pushed off the pillar, gripping his bat with white-knuckled intensity. "Shut up, George. It’s psychological warfare. Total dominance of the target."
"Right," George laughed, clapping him hard on the shoulder as they headed toward the pitch entrance. "Keep telling yourself that while you're smashing Bludgers for her honor today."
The front row of the Gryffindor stands was a riot of noise, color, and freezing wind.
Grace sat squeezed directly between Hermione and Ginny, with Luna standing directly behind them wearing a massive, roaring lion hat that occasionally attempted to bite passing Slytherins. True to her word, Grace had pulled the heavy scarlet WEASLEY 5 jersey on, it was massive on her, the sleeves rolled up twice at her wrists, the hem dropping down past her hips, enveloping her entirely in the scent of broom wax, autumn air, and Fred.
"AND THEY'RE OFF!" Lee Jordan’s magically magnified voice boomed across the stadium as fourteen players shot into the sky like fireworks. "Johnson immediately takes possession of the Quaffle—brilliant pass to Spinnet—Slytherin's Pucey trying to intercept—"
Grace had intended to watch the match with detached, analytical interest. She had planned to observe the aerodynamics of the brooms and calculate the velocity of the Bludgers.
Within fifteen minutes, her analytical detachment was completely annihilated.
Quidditch played at pitch-level intensity was brutal, fast, and terrifyingly beautiful. When Slytherin’s Warrington deliberately clipped Alicia Spinnet near the goal posts, sending her spinning dangerously off course, Grace leaped to her feet alongside Ginny, her hands gripping the wooden railing.
"FOUL!" Grace shouted, her voice completely lost in the roar of three hundred angry Gryffindors. "It's an animal! How could he do that? Where are the penalty flags?!"
Ginny turned to look at her, her brown eyes wide with absolute delight. "That’s what I’m talking about! Watch Fred—watch what he does right now!"
High above the center circle, Fred Weasley had already spotted the foul. Swinging his broom around in a vicious, sharp arc, he intercepted a rogue Bludger hurtling toward the southern towers. With a massive, two-handed swing of his oak bat, he sent the iron ball screaming across the pitch like a cannon shot. It rocketed past Warrington’s ear, missing his nose by mere inches and forcing the Slytherin Chaser to dive into a wild, panicked spin that ruined his team's offensive formation.
Fred pulled his broom out of the dive, hovering fifty feet above the Gryffindor stands. He didn't celebrate with George. Instead, he dropped his gaze directly into the front row, found the dark-haired girl wearing his oversized jersey, and snapped his Beater's bat to his forehead in a crisp, cocky military salute.
Grace felt her face burn hotter than the crimson paint on her cheek. She didn't sit down. She leaned over the wooden railing, raising her arm and pointing a stern, authoritative finger toward the upper goal hoops, shouting: "FOCUS ON THE QUAFFLE, WEASLEY!"
Fred threw his head back, laughing visibly in the wind, before banking his broom hard to the left to cover Katie Bell’s scoring run.
In the highest tier of the stadium, seated inside the wind-shielded staff box, Minerva McGonagall slowly lowered her brass binoculars.
She looked down at the front row of the Gryffindor section. She saw her daughter—her quiet, intensely controlled, impeccably disciplined daughter—dressed in a oversized scarlet jersey, her curls whipping wildly in the wind, screaming tactical advice at a Gryffindo Beater with gold paint gleaming on her face.
Beside her, Professor Flitwick chuckled softly. "It appears Miss McGonagall has developed a sudden appreciation for atmospheric sports, Minerva."
Minerva didn't speak for a long moment. She adjusted her square spectacles, watching Grace turn to laugh at something Ginny Weasley had just said, her posture completely free of the rigid tension she usually carried into every room.
A very small, very private smile touched the corners of Minerva’s mouth. "It appears she has, Filius," she murmured, picking her binoculars back up. "Twenty points to Gryffindor for an excellent defensive Bludger."
"GRYFFINDOR WINS! TWO HUNDRED AND TEN TO SEVENTY!"
The stadium erupted into absolute pandemonium as Harry Potter held the fluttering, golden Snitch high above his head. The Gryffindor stands surged forward, students swarming down the wooden stairwells onto the grassy perimeter of the pitch to celebrate with the landing team.
Grace found herself swept along in the current, Ginny keeping a firm grip on her wrist so they wouldn't be separated in the chaos. The grass was muddy and torn, the air thick with steam rising from the sweating players.
Through the milling crowd of screaming students, Fred pushed his way forward. He had tossed his broom to a second-year assistant; his scarlet jersey was streaked with mud at the shoulder, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He wasn't looking at his teammates. His brown eyes were scanning the crowd with a frantic, intense urgency that had nothing to do with winning a bet.
He spotted her standing near the team benches.
As Fred walked toward her, the cocky, swaggering showman who had saluted her from fifty feet in the air suddenly evaporated. Up close, surrounded by the noise of the victory, he suddenly looked entirely clumsy. He stopped two paces away, rubbing the back of his neck with his leather-gloved hand, his breathing heavy.
"So," Fred muttered, shifting his weight awkwardly in the mud. "You... you stayed for the whole thing."
Grace looked at him. She saw the nervous twitch of his fingers, noticed the way his eyes darted to her painted cheek and then quickly away as if he were terrified of staring too long. The great Fred Weasley was completely, undeniably flustered.
And she was going to have fun with that.
"I had to make sure that all that spectacle and bragging your Quidditch skills was real, besides, a bet's a bet, right? ," Grace said softly. Her tone wasn't sharp; it was warm, intimate,a little bit teasing and wrapped in a quiet domesticity that made the surrounding crowd fade into background noise.
She reached for the hem of the oversized scarlet jersey, preparing to pull it over her head. "Here. You should take this back before it gets ruined in the celebrations."
Fred’s hand shot out, his gloved fingers lightly catching her wrist to stop her. "No."
Grace paused, looking down at his hand on her wrist, then up to his face.
"Keep it," Fred whispered, his throat clearing nervously. "It’s... it gets cold in the Ravenclaw tower. The stone drafts are terrible. You should keep it. Just for the weekend."
Grace looked into his eyes. There was no provocation in his expression, no dare, no hidden joke waiting to be sprung. It was just an offer—a quiet, vulnerable request to let his shield stay wrapped around her shoulders for a little while longer.
Slowly, Grace let her hands drop from the hem. "All right," she murmured, a soft smile touching her lips. "For the weekend."
A few yards away, leaning against the wooden frame of the team bench, George Weasley stood beside Angelina Johnson and Lee Jordan. The three of them watched Fred standing in the mud, staring at the Ravenclaw Prefect as if she had personally hung the moon in the sky.
"He’s done for," Lee whispered in awe. "He hasn't made a single joke in five minutes. He’s completely gone."
"I give it two weeks before he starts serenading her outside the library," Angelina agreed solemnly.
George simply smiled, tossing a mud-stained Quaffle from hand to hand. "Two weeks? You're being generous, Angie. He’s already dead and buried.”
By eight o'clock that evening, the Gryffindor common room was shaking on its foundations.
The celebration party was a roaring inferno of scarlet and gold. Butterbeer kegs had been smuggled up from the kitchens, enchanted fireworks zoomed harmlessly near the ceiling, and the radio was blasting at maximum volume while half the Quidditch team danced on the tables.
Grace stood near the portrait hole, still wearing the white cardigan and Fred’s oversized jersey, having been dragged up to the seventh floor by Hermione and Ginny. She felt out of place among the Gryffindor revelry, lingering near the edges of the room while trying to decide if she should slip away back to the quiet of her own tower.
"Come on, Grace! Have a butterbeer! Move around a little" Lee Jordan shouted, pushing his way through the crowd with two overflowing tankards, while playfully shaking his shoulders in her direction . "You’re an official honorary Gryffindor tonight! Now you're the lucky charm, you should stay and celebrate!"
Before Grace could formulate a polite refusal, a tall figure materialized from the dancing crowd and smoothly intercepted Lee.
Fred Weasley stepped between them, taking one of the tankards from Lee's hand and offering his friend a calm but warning look. "Back off, Jordan. Don't crowd her."
Fred turned to Grace, his expression immediately softening. He looked down at her, his voice dropping below the ambient roar of the music. "You don't have to stay, Gracie," he said quietly. "I know it’s loud. I know you’ve got schoolwork to organize for Monday and you like your weekends quiet. If you want to head back to the tower, I’ll walk you down to the fifth floor so the staircases don't mess with you."
Grace froze.
A month ago, Fred’s primary objective would have been to drag her into the center of the room, to make her to drink butterbeer or dance on a table just to prove he could break her composure. He would have treated her desire for quiet as a challenge to be conquered.
Now, he was actively shielding her from his own world. He had recognized the fragile, carefully constructed peace she needed to survive at Hogwarts, and he was offering to leave his own Quidditch victory party just to protect it.
Grace looked at him—at the genuine care written across his freckled face—and felt something fundamental inside her break wide open.
"First of all; the stairs don't play with me, they love me, second; my charts are already outlined, Freckles," Grace said clearly, cutting him off before he could turn toward the portrait hole.
Fred blinked, looking back at her in confusion. "What?"
Grace stepped closer, reaching out to take the overflowing tankard of butterbeer directly from his hand. She took a deliberate, slow sip of the warm, spiced drink, letting the foam touch her lip before looking up at him with a slow, devastatingly wicked smirk.
"I said my charts are finished," Grace purred, leaning her shoulder casually against the crimson wallpaper of the common room. "And I believe I am currently wearing the jersey of the winning Beater. It would be remarkably poor form for me to abandon his celebration before someone sets a table on fire. Don't you agree? Someone has to take care of them, like a good prefect."
Fred stared at her. The concern on his face vanished, replaced instantly by a blinding, ecstatic shock that slowly morphed into his trademark, dangerous, brilliant grin.
"Poor form indeed,Gracie," Fred breathed, his brown eyes flashing with pure heat. He leaned in close, tapping the rim of his own goblet against hers with a soft clink. "Welcome to the lion’s den. Try not to dock points from anyone until after midnight."
Chapter Four: The ‘Weasley’ meteorite collides with the planet ‘Grace’.
Pairing: Fred Weasley x Grace McGonagall (OC!)
Word Count: ~7,7K words
Warnings/Tags: Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Prank wars, Ravenclaw Reader/OC, Smart MC, Fluff, six year, Some slight modifications to the canon or timeline.
Premise: For Fred Weasley, what is out of reach is simply a challenge waiting to be accepted. He lives for chaos, which means he never fell for the school’s biggest illusion: Grace McGonagall. To the rest of Hogwarts, she is the golden student, a saintly legacy who can do no wrong. To Fred, she is a puzzle disguised as a perfect girl, hiding a razor-sharp wit and a dark streak of defiance beneath her Ravenclaw robes. His new theory? Good girls are just bad girls who haven't been caught yet. Fred is ready to tear down her walls to prove it—what he doesn't expect is that Grace doesn't just know how his games work; she plays them better.
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Director's note: We're already on chapter 4! I'm so happy with how this story is turning out, and I wanted to give a special mention to @wanderingwillows Thanks for the lovely comments! I hope you enjoy this new chapter 💗
The phantom scent of peppermint and Muggle tobacco had spent the last forty-eight hours stubbornly refusing to leave the lining of Fred Weasley’s lungs.
It was an entirely inconvenient problem. No matter how many times he sat down at the Gryffindor table, surrounded by the familiar, comforting smells of roasted kidneys, treacle tart, and damp wool, that sharp, bitter-sweet note would catch in the back of his throat the moment he closed his eyes. He could still see the fiery orange ember glowing against the absolute blackness of the night sky; could still feel the warm, deliberate weight of her breath against his jaw just before she blew the smoke directly into his face.
She had utterly ruined his victory. He had spent weeks tracking a hypocrite, expecting to find a scandal he could use to finally shatter her perfect composure. Instead, he had found something infinitely worse: a girl who broke the rules with the same terrifying, flawless precision she used to enforce them. A girl who didn’t just wear an armor of perfection, but who actively suffered inside it.
"I'm just saying, if we don't get A way to get into Snape's potions room without the McGonagall girl If he sees us, we will absolutely lose all of our Gryffindor points.," Lee Jordan muttered, his voice barely audible over the morning clatter of plates and silverware. He was leaning over a piece of parchment, his tie trailing dangerously close to a bowl of marmalade. "She’s been hovering near the fourth-floor corridor like a particularly neat vulture."
Fred didn't even look up from his plate. His hand stopped mid-air, a forkful of scrambled eggs hovering inches from his mouth.
A memory suddenly appeared in his mind.
"Her name is Grace," Fred said.
The words came out before his brain had the chance to intercept them. They weren't delivered with his usual theatrical flair or a mocking grin; it was a flat, sharp, almost defensive snap that cut cleanly through the ambient noise of the Gryffindor table.
Lee blinked, his quill freezing over the parchment. He slowly raised his head, looking at Fred as if the chaser had suddenly started speaking in Gobbledegook. "What?"
Fred caught himself instantly, his knuckles tightening slightly against the handle of his fork before he forced his features into a relaxed, unbothered smirk. He casually popped the eggs into his mouth and chewed, tossing his red hair out of his eyes with practiced ease. "I'm just saying, mate. She’s got a name. Calling her 'the McGonagall girl' makes her sound like a spare piece of furniture or something like that, It’s bad form."
"Since when do you care about proper form regarding prefects?" Alicia Spinnet asked from across the table, her eyebrows knitting together in mild amusement. "Last week you called her 'corporate' to her face in front of the entire sixth-year Ancient Runes class."
"Corporate has style," Fred shot back smoothly, flashing a bright, defensive grin. "It’s a title of professional respect. 'The McGonagall girl' just lacks imagination, Lee. I expect higher literary standards from you."
Lee snorted, shaking his head and returning to his parchment. "Right. Sorry. Grace is going to murder us. Happy now?"
"Immensely," Fred murmured, reaching for the pumpkin juice.
Beside him, George hadn't said a single word.
Normally, George would have turned Fred's slip of the tongue into a three-minute improvisational comedy routine about chivalry, protective instincts, and the tragic downfall of a free spirit. But today, the other twin merely sat in absolute, heavy silence. George didn't laugh. He didn't even look up from his plate, his knife methodically cutting a sausage slices. The silence was louder than any mockery could have been, a heavy, knowing weight that settled between the brothers like an unmapped territory. Fred felt his twin's quiet observation like a sunburn on the back of his neck, but he stubbornly refused to acknowledge it, staring directly ahead at the stained-glass windows of the Great Hall.
Grace McGonagall was a creature of habit, and for the last six years, her sanctuary had been defined by its boundaries. She knew exactly which corridors were quietest at three in the afternoon, which library alcoves received the best light for reading complex arithmancy charts, and precisely how many steps it took to walk from the Ravenclaw common room to her mother’s office without having to engage in unnecessary small talk.
But over the last week, the physical architecture of her life had begun to shift in a way she hadn't authorized.
It started on a rainy Tuesday morning. Grace was walking down the crowded third-floor corridor, her heavy leather satchel balanced against her hip, her mind deeply occupied by the structural limitations of switching a teacup into a gerbil.
"Morning, Grace! Good luck with the Transfiguration presentation later!"
Grace stopped dead in her tracks, her dark curls bouncing over her shoulder as she turned. Angelina Johnson was walking past, her Gryffindor Quidditch robes thrown carelessly over one shoulder, a bright, genuine smile illuminating her face. She didn't pause to wait for a reaction; she simply offered the greeting as if they were old childhood friends who shared a dormitory, before disappearing into the crowd toward the courtyards.
Grace stared after her, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag. They had never spoken. Not once. They shared a few sixth-year classes, but Angelina belonged entirely to Fred’s world—the loud, laughing, chaotic inner circle of the Gryffindor tower. To be addressed so casually, by her first name, without a single mention of her mother or her prefect badge, felt remarkably like an administrative error.
Two days later, the anomaly repeated itself, but with greater permanence.
Grace was sitting in her usual corner of the library, the air thick with the comforting scent of aged parchment and lemon-scented desk polish. She had three separate textbooks open around her, her silver inkpot aligned perfectly with the upper right corner of her parchment.
A heavy, leather bag slammed onto the wooden table directly opposite her.
Grace looked up, her expression flattening into her standard, authoritative mask, ready to deliver a polite but firm lecture on library etiquette. Instead, she found herself looking at Ginny Weasley. The younger girl didn't look intimidated in the slightest; she pulled out the heavy oak chair, sank into it with a dramatic groan, and immediately began pulling out a tangled mess of ink-stained notes.
"If I have to look at my brother Ron's face for one more second while he tries to explain why he shouldn't have to write ten inches on the properties of moonstones, I am going to transfigure his ears into turnips," Ginny stated clearly, not looking up as she began sharpening a quill.
Grace blinked, her wand hand hovering over her essay. "Good afternoon, Ginny, is everything alright? Did something happen? Do you need help or tutoring again?" Grace asked in a softer, sweeter tone; she liked the girl.
"Oh yes! Everything's fine, it's just that- ," Ginny said, finally looking up with a pair of bright, fiercely intelligent brown eyes that looked entirely too much like Fred's for Grace’s peace of mind. "The boys are back there, and they're currently trying to see how many dungbomb pellets they can slide into Neville’s old schoolbooks. It’s loud, it’s stupid, and you’re the only person in this castle who actually understands how to keep a table quiet. Mind if I sit here? I promise I won't breathe loudly."
Grace looked at the younger girl. A month ago, their relationship had been sporadic, some friendly exchanges and tutoring, not much more. But now, Ginny was sitting here as if she belonged. There was no hesitation. No performance.
"You may stay," Grace said softly, her voice losing its rigid edge. "Provided your brother's chaotic habits haven't rubbed off on your ink maintenance. That parchment looks remarkably damp."
Ginny let out a sharp, bright laugh that caused Madam Pince to hiss from three aisles over. "Deal," she whispered, leaning over her work.
It didn't stop there. The Weasley gravity was immense, and its orbit was expanding. Later that evening during dinner, Grace had been explaining a particularly complex line of ancient runes to Cho Chang, her voice measured and precise. From two tables away, across the Great Hall, George Weasley had suddenly caught her eye. He didn't point, he didn't shout; he simply raised his goblet of pumpkin juice in a slow, deliberate toast, his features shifting into a lazy, deeply appreciative wink before he returned to his conversation with Lee Jordan. It was an acknowledgment—a silent, shared code that told her she was no longer a stranger to them.
Even Harry Potter and Ron Weasley had become part of the shift. The following afternoon, while Grace was standing near the grand staircase reviewing a prefect schedule with Hermione, the two boys had approached. In the past, Ron would usually look at Grace with a mixture of terror and suspicion, clearly viewing her as an extension of Professor McGonagall’s disciplinary hand. But this time, Ron had stopped, cleared his throat, and looked at her with an awkward but entirely genuine expression of curiosity.
"Er... alright, Grace?" Ron muttered, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Hermione said you still had the good notes on the 1612 Goblin Rebellions. The ones with the actual diagrams of the underground tunnels? Harry and I are completely lost, and Binns looks like he’s about to die a second time from boredom while grading our outlines."
Harry had offered a friendly, slightly apologetic grin from behind his glasses. "We'd really appreciate it, Grace. If it’s not too much trouble."
Grace had managed to hand them over the notes with her usual calm elegance, but internally, her mind was spinning. Grace. They were all calling her Grace. They weren't looking at her badge. They weren't looking around to see if her mother was watching. They were treating her like a person who existed independently of the castle’s rules.
And the worst part—the part that kept her awake at night, staring at the blue silk canopy of her four-poster bed—was that her dynamic with Fred had fundamentally mutated.
Their public skirmishes in the corridors were no longer just a calculated game of chess. The words they exchanged were still sharp, still loaded with double meanings and quick-witted barbs, but the underlying hostility was gone, replaced by a strange, intoxicating sort of comfort. When Fred stepped into her space now, leaning down to whisper a mocking comment about her pristine collar, his eyes weren't searching for a crack in her facade anymore. They were looking at her with a quiet, intense clarity, as if they both shared a massive, volatile secret that the rest of the school was too blind to see. They were two actors who had dropped the script, still performing for the audience but speaking an entirely different language between the lines.
And what's most dangerous about this is that she didn't want to stop and apparently neither did he.
That night, the Ravenclaw dormitory was swallowed by a quietness washed in blue starlight filtering through the high, arched windows. Grace sat on the edge of her four-poster bed, running a brush through her dark curls with mechanical, precise strokes, trying in vain to organize the day's chaotic events in her mind.
Across the room, Luna Lovegood sat cross-legged on her own duvet, entirely absorbed as she patiently threaded a series of butterbeer corks onto a length of blue fishing line.
"Your hand lines are changing, Grace," Luna said suddenly. Her voice, always ethereal and floating, broke the silence of the room like a harp note. "Or perhaps it's just the air around you. There's much less room for Wrackspurts lately."
Grace stopped her brush mid-stroke, letting out a soft sigh. She was used to her friend’s peculiar observations; They had known each other for years. Luna was the one person in the entire castle who had never demanded perfection from her.
"I’m just tired, Luna," Grace replied, resuming her brushing with a slightly firmer rhythm. "The term has barely begun and I already feel like my schedules are losing their structure."
"It's not tiredness," Luna insisted, tilting her head in that distinct way of hers, causing her Radish earrings to sway against her neck. "Your world is growing larger. Your orbit used to be very small, like a straight line between the library, Hermione and me, the Ravenclaw tower, and your mother’s office. But now... it’s as if you’re letting the light in. You look brighter. Less... afraid of breaking."
Grace frowned instantly, feeling a sudden, uncomfortable heat rising at the base of her neck. She set the brush down on her nightstand with a click that was a fraction louder than necessary.
"If you mean my personal space is being constantly violated, you are entirely correct," Grace declared, hardening her voice in an attempt to sound purely analytical. "Fred Weasley is an absolute nuisance. He has zero respect for regulations, disrupts my patrols, and seems to have made it his personal mission to disorganize my entire existence. It’s exasperating."
Luna let the line of corks drop into her lap. Her pale, round eyes, entirely devoid of malice, fixed on Grace with infinite calm. A small, gentle smile curved her lips.
"I didn't mention Fred, Grace."
The room fell into a dead silence. Grace froze completely, her hand still resting on the wood of the nightstand. Her own thoughts had betrayed her with terrifying speed. She felt the urge to correct herself, to find a logical justification or a bureaucratic argument as to why the red-headed twin's name had been the first to escape her lips, but Luna’s transparent, knowing gaze stripped away any chance of a facade.
Luna slid off her bed with silent, bare feet, crossing the carpeted floor to sit beside Grace. Without asking, but with a comforting familiarity that only years of closeness allowed, she picked up the brush from the table and began running it through the waves of Grace’s hair with a slow, soothing motion.
"It’s alright for your world to get loud," Luna whispered as the brush slid smoothly through her hair. "You’ve spent a very long time being the sole guardian of your own castle. You deserve to have people around you, even if they are a bit chaotic. I like seeing that you aren't alone when you aren't with me or Mione."
Grace closed her eyes, finally letting her rigid shoulders drop. She leaned her head back slightly, accepting the comforting rhythm of her friend's hands. Luna understood perfectly the invisible weight of being 'the McGonagall girl,' the constant fear of failing or disappointing the only family she had. In the quiet of that blue tower, she didn't have to be the perfect prefect. She could just be Grace.
"He is still an insufferable bother," Grace murmured softly, though the sharpness in her tone had completely evaporated, replaced by a peaceful vulnerability.
"The best changes usually start out as a bother," Luna concluded dreamily, setting the brush aside and giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze before wandering back to her bed.
The shift in the school’s atmosphere reached a boiling point on Thursday evening, when the Great Hall was transformed into a cauldron of absolute chaos.
The long wooden tables were crowded to their absolute limits, the floating candles overhead flickering wildly as a damp, autumn wind rattled the high stained-glass windows. At the staff table, Albus Dumbledore stood at the golden owl podium, his long silver beard gleaming under the enchanted ceiling, which currently reflected a dark, stormy sky filled with rolling purple clouds.
"The Triwizard Tournament," Dumbledore’s voice echoed through the massive room, powerful and resonant, instantly silencing the chatter of hundreds of students, "will be hosted this year within the walls of Hogwarts."
For a single, breathless second, the Great Hall was completely silent. Then, the room exploded.
Students leaped to their feet, benches scraping violently against the stone floor. The Hufflepuffs were cheering, the Slytherins were leaning across their tables with sharp, calculating expressions, and at the Gryffindor table, Fred and George Weasley had simultaneously jumped onto their bench, their arms raised in triumphant celebration.
"No bloody way!" Fred shouted, his face alight with a wild, reckless energy.
"A thousand Galleons!" George bellowed back, grabbing his brother’s shoulders. "Fred, think of the shop! Think of the seed money! We’re entering! We’re absolutely entering!"
"The Ministry has established a strict age restriction," Dumbledore continued, his voice easily cutting through the din, though his blue eyes twinkled with amusement. "Due to the exceptional danger of the tasks, only students who have reached their seventeenth year will be permitted to put their names forward for consideration. An Age Line will be drawn around the Goblet of Fire to ensure compliance."
A collective groan rippled through the underage portion of the hall. Fred and George sank back onto their bench, their expressions shifting instantly from wild celebration to intense, synchronized calculation.
"An Age Line," Fred murmured, his eyes narrowing as he leaned his elbows onto the table, his red head moving closer to George’s. "Dumbledore thinks a bit of golden ink and some old protective runes are going to keep us out? He completely underestimated us."
"We just need to calculate the precise potion" George agreed, his voice dropping into a low, intense whisper as he reached for a napkin to start sketching a potion matrix. "If we brew it with a higher concentration of beetle eyes, it might fool the ward's biological signature."
At the Ravenclaw table, Grace sat perfectly still, her hands folded neatly over her lap. She watched the display with a measured, quiet intensity. Beside her, Hermione Granger —He had already leaned towards Grace to comment on the situation. —was trembling with anxiety, her fingers gripping her fork so hard her knuckles were white.
"It’s madness," Hermione whispered fiercely, leaning across the gap toward Grace. "Absolute madness! People have died in this tournament, Grace! Historical records show the mortality rate in the fourteenth century was horrific! And they're celebrating? They look like they're about to go to a Quidditch match!"
"They see the glory, Mione," Luma said softly, her voice calm as she glanced up at the staff table.
Grace's eyes lingered on her mother. Minerva McGonagall was sitting perfectly rigid in her high-backed chair, her lips pressed into such a thin line they had practically vanished. Her sharp eyes were fixed on the Gryffindor table, specifically on the Weasley twins, her fingers twitching against her golden goblet. Grace knew that look. It was the look her mother wore when she was carrying the weight of a hundred safety regulations, terrified that some foolish boy was going to get himself incinerated before the winter term even began.
"It’s not just about glory, though," Grace participate, her voice dropping into a lower register as Luna leaned in from her left, her wide, unblinking pale eyes fixed on the ceiling. "It’s a political circus. The Ministry wants to prove to Durmstrang and Beauxbatons that we have the situation entirely under control after what happened at the World Cup. But the magic required to bind three separate magical institutions to a single artifact like the Goblet... it’s ancient. It’s highly volatile. My mother hasn't slept properly in three weeks just trying to review the defensive wards for the visiting delegations. It makes you wonder what they're actually trying to prove, and who is going to pay the price when the wards inevitably crack."
"The Nargles are very active around the staff table tonight," Luna noted dreamily, casually buttering a crumpet. "They like the taste of anxiety. But I think the tournament will be quite interesting. The Durmstrang boys are said to wear very thick fur cloaks. I wonder if they keep pets inside them."
Hermione let out a frustrated sigh, but she looked at Grace with a deep expression of gratitude. "At least someone has a proper perspective on this. If Fred and George actually manage to cross that line, I am going to personally turn them both into pocket watches and leave them in the library basement."
Grace offered a small, amused smile, but her eyes involuntarily drifted back across the Great Hall. Fred had stopped talking to George. He was leaning back against the bench, his long legs stretched out under the table, his gaze fixed entirely on her. Through the sea of shouting students, through the chaotic movement and floating plates, his eyes locked onto hers with a sharp, burning intensity. He didn't smile. He just watched her, his jaw set, as if he were trying to read the exact thoughts she had just shared with Hermione.
Grace didn't look away. She raised her chin, her hazel eyes meeting his with a silent, defiant clarity that sent a sharp spike of adrenaline straight through his chest.
The following afternoon, the weather had cleared into a crisp, biting autumn chill. The rain had left the stone courtyard damp and reflective, the ancient trees shedding gold and scarlet leaves that skittered across the flags in the wind.
A large group had gathered near the stone arches of the library annex during a free period. Hermione was sitting on a stone bench, a massive tome on magical law open across her knees, while Ron and Harry were engaged in a low, intense debate about the upcoming Quidditch match against Slytherin. Lee Jordan, Angelina, and Alicia were standing nearby, casually tossing a highly illegal Fanged Frisbee between them whenever Filch wasn't looking.
Grace was standing near the edge of the group quietly leaning against a stone pillar as she reviewed a stack of Arithmancy charts. She had been drawn into their perimeter entirely by default, mostly because Ginny had dragged her out of the library for 'some actual oxygen'.
"Look, all I’m saying," Lee Jordan muttered, catching the Frisbee with a sharp snap of his leather glove, "is that if Gracie over there doesn't dock us twenty points for the prototype testing, you two might actually be able to launch the Skiving Snackboxes by the end of the month. The third-years are practically begging for a way to get out of Snape’s double Potions."
"We already have enough of her mercy for not deducting points for this," Angelina pointed out, as if defending her, waving the frisbee in her hand.
Fred, who had been leaning against the opposite wall, froze completely.
"Don't call her that," Fred said.
The courtyard fell into an instant, dead silence. Lee blinked, the fanged frisbee hovering inches from his chest. Ron stopped mid-sentence, a half-eaten pumpkin pasty frozen near his mouth.
"Call her what?" Lee asked, genuinely bewildered. "Gracie?"
"Yeah," Fred stepped forward, his voice low, sharp, and entirely devoid of its usual easy-going warmth. "Don't call her that. It’s not her name."
Lee looked at Fred, then looked at George, who was currently watching his twin with a deeply amused, highly dangerous smile playing at the corners of his mouth. A slow, wicked grin began to spread across Lee’s face as he realized exactly what had just happened.
"Oh," Lee purred, his voice dripping with sudden, theatrical understanding. "Oh, I see. I’m terribly sorry, mate. I didn't realize we had... boundaries established. I didn't know the nickname had proprietary rights attached to it."
"It doesn't have proprietary rights," Fred grunted, his ears turning a brilliant, violent shade of red that matched his hair. He looked around the group, realizing every single eye was fixed on him with absolute delight. He cleared his throat, trying desperately to salvage his careless authority. "It’s just a ridiculous nickname. It sounds stupid when you say it. And she’s a prefect, Lee. She’ll probably dock you fifty points just for lack of proper institutional respect. I only use it to irritate her. It’s a tactical provocation. You lot don't have the proper clearance for it."
"Tactical provocation," Angelina repeated slowly, exchanging a highly amused look with Alicia. "Right. Is that what we're calling it now, Fred? Because from where I’m standing, it sounds remarkably like you’re trying to build a fence around her."
"I am not building a fence," Fred hissed, his eyes darting toward the stone pillar.
Grace hadn't moved. She was still leaning against the cold stone, her Arithmancy charts held against her chest. Slowly, with a deliberate, agonizing precision, she raised a single, elegant eyebrow. Her clear hazel eyes locked onto Fred’s flushed face, a tiny, incredibly sharp tilt to her lips letting him know that she had registered every single word, every single ounce of his transparent possessiveness, and that he was going to pay for it.
"I didn't know it was exclusively for you, freckles," Grace's voice sounded amused, lacking the usual polite coldness.
"Freckles? So now they have nicknames! I see progress here, Georgie." Lee sneered, looking at Fred's face.
"There's definitely a game we're not playing, buddy," George replied, amused by the torture he'd inflicted on his brother.
Fred swallowed hard, his heart doing a strange, violent flip against his ribs as he forced himself to look down at his boots. Beside him, George let out a soft, delighted chuckle, silently returning to his notebook and murmuring, "Teamwork, Freddie. Absolute teamwork."
Ten minutes later, the group began to move toward the grand staircase to return to the castle before the wind grew too fierce. Grace was walking slightly behind the rest, her heavy satchel weighing down her left shoulder as she navigated the crowded corridor.
Fred smoothly slid into step on her right side. He had recovered his composure, his hands tucked deep into his pockets, his robes swinging loosely around his tall frame. "Afternoon, Gracie," he murmured, leaning down slightly. "Going my way?"
Before Grace could even open her mouth to reply, a second tall, red-haired figure smoothly materialized on her left side. George mirrored his brother's posture perfectly, his hands in his pockets, a lazy, identical grin fixed on his face.
Grace stopped dead in the middle of the hallway. The crowd of younger students parted around them like water around a boulder. She looked to her left, staring at George’s identical freckled face, then looked to her right, staring at Fred’s sharp, attentive gaze.
"Is this a coordinated ambush," Grace asked, her voice cool and entirely unbothered, "or have the Weasley twins simply lost the biological capacity to walk in a single file line like civilized humans?"
George chuckled, leaning in just an inch closer to her left ear. "Neither, Grace. I’m just supporting my brother. Moral support. It’s an essential part of the twin contract. Can't let him do all the heavy lifting of bothering the prettiest prefect in the Ravenclaw tower all by himself. It’s a safety regulation."
Fred puffed out his chest, looking immensely proud of his brother's intervention. "Exactly. See? We're an ensemble act now, Gracie. A double-fronted assault on your peace of mind. You should feel honored."
Grace let out a slow breath, her fingers tightening around the strap of her satchel. She looked between the two of them, her features perfectly rigid, but beneath the stern facade, a tiny, unstoppable spark of genuine amusement flared up in her chest. It was impossible to remain entirely cold around them; they carried a wild, infectious heat that seemed to melt the cold stone of the castle wherever they went.
"You are both completely, utterly insufferable," Grace said, her voice smooth but dangerous. "And if either of your ginger shoulders accidentally clips mine during this walk, I am going to personally transfigure your shoelaces into venomous earthworms before we reach the next landing. Do we understand each other?"
"Crystal clear, Madam Prefect," George gave a polite, sweeping bow.
"Lethal as always," Fred purred, his eyes burning with that intense, private delight that was quickly becoming his favorite thing in the world.
By Sunday afternoon, the autumn chill had transformed into a brilliant, sunlit clearing. The great stone courtyard was packed with students from all four houses, enjoying the rare warmth before the winter storms began to roll in from the mountains. Benches had been dragged out, groups were lounging near the ancient fountain, and the air was alive with the sound of laughter, shouting, and the distant, rhythmic thud of the Gryffindor Beaters practicing out on the pitch.
The entire circle had gathered near the large oak tree at the center of the courtyard. The golden trio were squeezed onto a single wooden bench, Hermione chatting with Harry while Ron methodically demolished a large plate of toast smuggled from the kitchens. Ginny, Lee, Angelina, and Alicia were sitting on the stone wall nearby, their faces flushed from the sun.
Fred was standing at the center of the space, holding a pristine, heavy oak Beater's bat over his shoulder, his Gryffindor practice jersey loosely thrown over his white school shirt. He had been explaining a complex defensive strategy for the upcoming match against Slytherin, his hands moving through the air with passionate, athletic energy.
"Look, if Warrington tries to break through the left flank like he did last term," Fred said, swinging the bat in a short, controlled arc, "I’m going to personally drop a Bludger straight onto his broom tail. But I need the stands full, alright? We need the psychological advantage. The snake-faces are already rattled about the new brooms." He stopped, his eyes sliding past Angelina’s shoulder to lock onto the edge of the courtyard.
Grace had just walked out of the library doors, carrying a neat stack of parchment. She was intending to cross the courtyard toward the Ravenclaw tower, her uniform immaculate, her dark curls pinned back with perfect precision.
"You're coming, aren't you, Gracie?" Fred called out, his voice easily carrying across the open stone courtyard.
The entire group turned to look. Grace froze, her shoes halting an inch from the grass line. She slowly raised her head, her expression flattening into her standard, unbothered mask. "I beg your pardon, Weasley?"
"The match," Fred said, stepping forward, his bat resting casually against his hip. "Gryffindor versus Slytherin. Friday afternoon. First match of the season. I’m personally dedicating a smashed Bludger to your academic honor. You’re going to be there, aren't you?"
"I don't go to matches, Freckles," Grace said smoothly, her voice cool and definitive as she began to walk past the group. "The stadium is far too loud, the seating is remarkably damp, and I have three separate essays to outline before the weekend. My time is far too valuable to watch fourteen people chase a leather ball through a freezing sky."
"Oh, come on, Grace!" George chimed in from the stone wall, a wicked grin lighting up his face. "Even Hermione goes to the matches, and she practically lives under a literal mountain of restricted section references."
"I go to support Harry and Ron, George," Hermione muttered defensively from her bench, her face flushing slightly as she looked up from her book. "It’s a matter of friendship, not athletic investment."
"See?" Fred redoubled his steps, moving directly into Grace’s path until she was forced to stop or collide with his chest. He looked down at her, his hazel eyes flashing with a sudden, brilliant theatrical energy. "It’s a matter of community spirit, corporate! You can't just isolate yourself in the Ravenclaw tower with your charts! The team will wither! My bat will lose its strength! My very soul will crumble into ash if I don't see those dark curls in the stands!"
Before Grace could even process the ridiculousness of the statement, Fred dropped down onto one knee directly on the stone flags of the courtyard. He threw his hand over his heart, looking up at her with a pair of wide, tragically dramatic eyes that would have made a Muggle theater actor weep with envy. "I beg of you, fair maiden of the Raven Tower! Bless us with your presence! Lift the curse of the Gryffindor chasers with a single, polite nod of your perfect head!"
The entire courtyard erupted into hysterical laughter. Lee Jordan started cheering loudly, pounding his fist against the stone wall. Ron choked on his toast, coughing violently as Harry patted him on the back, laughing so hard his glasses slipped down his nose. Ginny groaned loudly, covering her face with her hands. "Fred, you are an absolute embarrassment to our bloodline. Get up."
Grace felt a sudden, violent heat creeping up the back of her neck. Her cheeks flushed, unmistakable shade of pink—a rare, terrifying loss of control that she promptly tried to strangle under an iron layer of discipline. She glared down at the red-headed boy kneeling at her feet, his grin so wide and white it looked positively lethal.
"Get up, you ridiculous, juvenile idiot," Grace whispered fiercely, her eyes darting around the courtyard where dozens of students were now staring and snicker-laughing. "Everyone is looking at us."
"Not until you promise to come," Fred said, completely unbothered by his lack of dignity, leaning forward slightly from his knee.
Grace’s mind spun with rapid, cold efficiency. She couldn't just say yes; that would look like a total surrender, a victory for his ridiculous circus act. But she couldn't leave him kneeling there either, because the attention was suffocating. She needed to turn his own game against him. She needed a condition so utterly impossible that it would salvage her pride and force him back into his place.
Slowly, Grace leaned down just an inch, her stack of parchment held tightly against her chest, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp, quiet purr that was meant only for him.
"Fine. A wager, Freckles," Grace said.
Fred’s eyes sparked with instant, predatory delight. He didn't move from his knee. "An actual wager? From the prefect? I’m listening, Sweetness ."
"You want me at the pitch?" Grace raised her chin, her hazel eyes hardening into cold, brilliant stones. "Professor Flitwick is administering our sixth-year N.E.W.T.-level Charms examination this Friday morning. It covers the theoretical application of advanced vanishing matrices for next year. If you can manage to score a high grade—let's say an 'Exceeds Expectations'—I will consider attending your match."
The group on the bench let out a collective “Oooooh.” "An 'E'?" Ron muttered from the background. "Fred’s never seen an 'E' on a theoretical exam in his life. He barely gets 'Acceptables' unless it involves making something explode."
Fred stood up slowly. He brushed the stone grit off his knee, his smile shifting from theatrical drama to something sharp, dark, and dangerously competitive. He stepped directly into her personal space, his tall frame casting a shadow over her face, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling purr that caused the rest of the group to lean forward just to catch the words.
"An 'Exceeds Expectations'?" Fred chuckled, a dark, breathless sound that went straight to her chest. "Please, Gracie, don't insult my hidden intellectual depths. If I’m going to play, I play for total stakes. Let’s redouble it. If I get an 'Outstanding'—a perfect, flawless top mark on Flitwick’s exam—you don't just attend the match."
Grace’s heart gave a sudden, violent thud against her ribs. She kept her face perfectly still. "Oh? And what else do you think you’re winning, Weasley?"
"You sit in the front row of the Gryffindor stands," Fred whispered, leaning down so his lips were inches from her ear, his scent of woodsmoke and clean linen completely enveloping her senses. "And you paint my Quidditch number right across that pretty, freckled cheek of yours. A big, gold number five. For the entire school to see from the pitch. Deal?"
A collective gasp went through the courtyard.
Hermione’s book slammed shut with a loud crack. "Fred! That’s completely inappropriate! You can't ask her to do that!"
Ginny was grinning wildly, her eyes darting between them like she was watching a dueling match. Ron’s pasty completely slipped from his fingers, hitting the grass.
Internally, Grace’s mind was performing a rapid, brutal evaluation of the damage.
This was a massive, terrifying risk. Wearing a boy’s Quidditch number on your face at Hogwarts wasn't just a casual display of school spirit; it was a public declaration. It was an explicit statement of alignment. It meant you belonged to his camp. If the daughter of the Deputy Headmistress walked into the stadium with a gold number five painted on her skin, the rumor mill wouldn't just spin—it would explode. Everyone would think that Fred Weasley had successfully chased, broken, and won the untouchable Ravenclaw prefect. Her mother would see it from the staff box. The entire facade she had built since she was eleven years old would be dragged off. It would look like a total, defeat.
And God knows that Grace McGonagall hates being defeated.
But... Fred getting an 'Outstanding' on a N.E.W.T.-level Charms theory exam?
It was statistically impossible. Fred was a genius when it came to practical, experimental joke magic, but the written theory? The complex zero-sum matrices of vanishing charms required hours of grueling, tedious memorization and precise mathematical logic—the exact kind of academic discipline Fred despised with every fiber of his being. He had never achieved an 'Outstanding' on a theoretical paper in his entire academic history.
She was completely safe. The condition was a logical dead end for him.
And yet... as she looked up into his intense, burning eyes, seeing the sheer, reckless confidence radiating from his sharp features, a sudden, wild spike of adrenaline shot through her veins. The sheer thrill of their secret war—the dangerous, intoxicating heat of playing a game where the stakes were real—made her blood run hot.
Grace looked him dead in the eye. Her face went entirely out of her usual cold, instead was a fierce wicked intention that suddenly caused the confident grin on Fred’s lips to falter just a fraction.
"Deal," Grace said, her voice clear and ringing through the quiet courtyard.
Fred blinked, his posture stiffening slightly. He hadn't expected her to accept so quickly. He had expected her to argue, to negotiate, to retreat behind her rules. Her newly reaction was more intimidating than any icy-comment that she could have been.
"But," Grace continued, stepping an inch closer, her hazel eyes flashing with a predatory fire that made his lungs feel entirely empty, "when you fail—and you will fail, Fred—the terms of my victory will be equally absolute. For the next three weeks, you will spend every single evening carrying my leather satchel to every one of my classes like a dutiful first-year. And every single time we pass each other in the corridors, in front of any student or professor, you will stop, bow, and publicly address me as 'Madam Prefect.' Do we have an agreement?"
A low 'Merlin’s beard' escaped Ron’s mouth.
Fred swallowed hard, his throat dry, his mind suddenly realizing that he had just stepped into a trap laid by a master strategist. The image of himself—the resident rebel of the Gryffindor tower—carrying a leather bag and bowing like a servant in front of the entire school was a nightmare of epic proportions. It would ruin his reputation completely.
But he couldn't back down now. Not in front of the courtyard. Not in front of her.
He stuck out his hand, his long, freckled fingers steady. "An agreement, Gracie."
Grace reached out, her smaller, pale hand sliding into his palm. The moment their skin connected, a sharp, electric spark seemed to pass between them, a literal jolt of physical tension that caused Fred’s fingers to tighten around hers for a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
The courtyard erupted into excited chatter as the group began to break up, Ron loudly telling Harry that Fred was completely doomed, while Hermione began lecturing Ginny on the absolute absurdity of competitive wagers.
As the crowd dispersed, Fred and Grace lingered for a single, silent second near the stone arches.
Fred leaned down, his voice dropping into that quiet, private register that belonged only to the dark corners of the castle. "You look beautiful when you're calculating my public execution, you know that?"
Grace didn't look away. Slowly, her hand reached up, her fingers automatically reaching out to catch the edge of his loose, crooked collar. She adjusted the fabric with a practiced, elegant movement, her knuckles brushing against the warm skin of his collarbone for a lingering, dangerous moment before she stepped back.
"Study hard, Freckles," Grace whispered, her voice a sweet, devastatingly confident promise. "I look forward to watching you carry my books."
She turned and glided toward the grand staircase, leaving him standing alone in the sunlit courtyard with a racing pulse and a very sudden, very real sense of panic.
The clock in the Gryffindor dormitory struck two in the morning.
The tower was completely silent, the fire in the common room grate having died down to a faint, pulsing mountain of crimson embers that cast long, distorted shadows across the scarlet walls.
Fred sat alone at a corner table near the high glass windows. A single, enchanted candle floated overhead, casting a sharp, cold circle of light over a scene that would have caused the entire historical record of Hogwarts to rewrite itself.
Fred Weasley was studying.
He was surrounded by a literal fortress of academic misery. Three separate, massive volumes of Achievements in Charming were stacked to his left; loose sheets of parchment covered in messy, ink-stained diagrams of vanishing matrices were scattered across the table; and his red hair was a completely chaotic, wild mess from where he had been aggressively running his fingers through it for the last four hours.
He was staring at a complex mathematical formula for the redirection of mass during a space-differential vanishing charm, his eyes bloodshot, his jaw set into a hard, stubborn line.
A soft rustle of fabric made him look up.
George was standing at the base of the dormitory stairs, wearing his flannel pajamas, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at his twin. His expression wasn't one of amusement; he looked at Fred with a deep, quiet bewilderment, as if he were looking at a stranger who had stolen his brother's face.
"Are you... are you actually revising?" George asked, his voice low in the quiet room. "Voluntarily? At two in the morning?"
Fred didn't look up, his quill scratching fiercely down the parchment. "Go away, George. I'm busy."
George walked over slowly. He pulled out the heavy oak chair opposite his twin and sank into it, leaning his elbows on the table, staring at the mountain of notes. "Blimey. It’s real. You’ve actually lost your mind. Fred, it’s a Charms exam. You can do the practical with your eyes shut—you literally invented a vanishing mechanism for the Canary Creams last month! Who cares about the written essay? Flitwick will give you an 'Acceptable' just based on your practical joke history."
"I care," Fred grunted, his teeth grinding together as he crossed out a line of calculations. "I have a reputation to uphold."
"A reputation for what? Being Hermione Granger?" George scoffs, his voice dropping into a more serious, deliberate register. He leaned across the table, his eyes boring into his twin's forehead. "Come on, mate. Talk to me. Is this really about a stupid wager? The theory? Or Is it really about making the McGonagall girl wear your Quidditch number for three hours on Friday?"
Fred snapped his eyes up, his gaze fierce and defensive. "Her name is Grace. And no. It’s about winning, George. You know I don't like losing a bet. Especially not to a Ravenclaw who thinks she’s got the entire world figured out, besides it is part of the theory; making her go to a match is putting her in a non-calm scenario, to take her out of her boring routine."
George looked at Fred for a long, heavy moment. The lazy, mocking smile that usually defined his features didn't appear. He saw the dark circles under his brother's eyes, the absolute, frantic intensity in his posture, and the way his fingers were gripping the quill as if it were a lifeline.
"Right," George said softly, his voice carrying a quiet, complex trace of concern as he stood up from the chair. "Winning. Keep telling yourself that, Freddie. But if you end up passing out on the pitch because you spent the night memorizing vanishing matrices, I’m telling Wood it was your fault."
George turned and walked back toward the dormitory stairs, his footsteps disappearing into the dark.
Fred sat alone in the cold circle of candlelight. He let out a long, ragged sigh, dropping his quill onto the parchment and burying his face in his hands. His head was pounding, the formulas spinning through his brain like a chaotic swarm of pixies.
He reached into his pocket to grab a chocolate frog, but his fingers brushed against a small, crisp scrap of paper instead.
Fred pulled it out. It was the note. The small, folded piece of parchment that Grace had slipped into his upside-down textbook weeks ago in the library.
He unfolded it with slow, careful fingers, staring at her precise, elegant handwriting under the candlelight:
“Five times, actually. You miscounted. Perhaps the upside-down textbook is affecting your vision. — G”
Fred stared at the ink. He had carried this stupid scrap of paper in his pocket for weeks. He had survived three different washings of his robes, two Quidditch practices, and a confrontation with the Deputy Headmistress, and somehow, he had always ensured that this specific note remained safely tucked away close to his skin.
Why hadn't he thrown it away? Why did the sight of her neat, authoritative signature bring that warm, addictive ache back to his chest?
Fred let out a soft, breathless laugh in the quiet common room. He shook his head, a private, entirely obsessed smile breaking across his sharp features in the dark.
He carefully picked up the note, smoothed out the creases, and placed it gently between the pages of Achievements in Charming, using her words as the separator for his study guide. He picked his quill back up, dipped it into the ink, and returned to the calculations.
He had never wanted to pass an exam so badly in his entire life.
Chapter Three: Anger is the best way to break a prefect.
Pairing: Fred Weasley x Grace McGonagall (OC!)
Word Count: ~7,4K words
Warnings/Tags: Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Prank wars, Ravenclaw Reader/OC, Smart MC, Fluff, six year, Some slight modifications to the canon or timeline.
Premise: For Fred Weasley, what is out of reach is simply a challenge waiting to be accepted. He lives for chaos, which means he never fell for the school’s biggest illusion: Grace McGonagall. To the rest of Hogwarts, she is the golden student, a saintly legacy who can do no wrong. To Fred, she is a puzzle disguised as a perfect girl, hiding a razor-sharp wit and a dark streak of defiance beneath her Ravenclaw robes. His new theory? Good girls are just bad girls who haven't been caught yet. Fred is ready to tear down her walls to prove it—what he doesn't expect is that Grace doesn't just know how his games work; she plays them better.
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The secret sat beneath Fred Weasley’s ribs like a smuggled piece of Goldyx Firework—warm, volatile, and entirely his own.
For three straight days, he hadn't told a soul. Not Lee, who was still convinced Fred was suffering from a strange, localized form of academic madness; and not even George, which was a historical precedent. Usually, the twins shared thoughts before those thoughts had even finished forming in their respective brains. But this? The image of that solitary ink dot moving stealthily down the forbidden corridors of the fifth floor at one in the morning belonged exclusively to Fred.
He was triumphant. He had won the first real round of their unspoken war, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that his Good Girl Theory wasn't just the product of a bored mind. Grace McGonagall was a hypocrite of the highest, most magnificent order. She was breaking school rules under the cover of darkness while docking points from him by daylight for having a loosened tie.
But the triumph had quickly morphed into an itch. A burning, relentless question that kept him up long after the rest of the Gryffindor tower had gone silent: Why? What could the pristine, flawless daughter of the Deputy Headmistress possibly be doing out of bed at an hour when even the ghosts were settling down? Was she meeting someone? The thought had caused a strange, ugly twist in his stomach that he promptly ignored. Was she practicing advanced, illegal magic? Was she secretly sabotaging the castle?
He didn't know. But he was going to find out. The next time that dot moved on the Marauder’s Map, Fred would be waiting in the shadows, ready to spring his trap. Until then, he had a reputation to maintain, and a facade to crack.
"If you stare at her any harder, Weasley, your eyeballs are going to drop straight into your porridge."
Fred blinked, tearing his gaze away from the Ravenclaw table, where Grace was elegantly spreading marmalade onto a slice of toast, completely oblivious—or pretending to be—to the entire Great Hall.
He looked across the table at Angelina Johnson, who was watching him with a mixture of amusement and pity. Beside her, Alicia Spinnet was shaking her head.
"I am not staring," Fred said smoothly, reaching for a pitcher of pumpkin juice. "I am observing. There’s a distinct scientific difference, Angie."
"Right, scientific," Lee Jordan snorted from two seats down, leaning over a plate of sausages. "Is that what we're calling it now? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks less like science and more like you’ve been hit over the head with a permanent Confundus Charm. The whole school is talking about it, mate."
"Talking about what?" Fred asked, flashing a bright, entirely unbothered grin.
"About the fact that you’ve turned into her ginger shadow," George said, sliding onto the bench next to his twin and immediately piling scrambled eggs onto his plate. "I had three different third-year Hufflepuffs ask me yesterday if you’d been cursed by a love potion. One of them offered to brew an antidote. I told them to save their ingredients, because my brother has simply lost his mind the old-fashioned way."
Fred laughed, a loud, barking sound that drew a few glances from the neighboring tables. "A love potion? Please. I have far better taste than to let a potion do the work for me. Besides, can you imagine me under a love spell? I’d be much more insufferable. I’d be writing her bad poetry and leaving self-calculating quills on her desk."
"You’re already leaving enchanted paper wasps in her path," Alicia pointed out. "And sitting next to her in every class you share.”
“Fred, she’s the Deputy Headmistress’s daughter. If you’re trying to get expelled before we even launch the shop, this is an incredibly efficient way to do it." George warned with a big grin, shaking his brother's shoulder
"I'm not trying to get expelled," Fred murmured, his eyes drifting back to the Ravenclaw table. Grace had just looked up. Across the sea of chatting students, through the floating candles and the morning light, her hazel eyes locked onto his.
She didn't look angry. She didn't look pleased. She simply raised her teacup in a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture of acknowledgment before returning to her conversation with Cho Chang.
Fred’s blood sang. "I’m just keeping her on her toes," he told the table, his voice dropping into a lower register. "A girl like that needs a bit of excitement in her life. She’s far too neat."
"You're a menace," Angelina sighed, though there was a smile tugging at her lips. "Just don't come crying to us when Mom-McGonagall transfigures you into a pocket watch."
The public banter between Fred and Grace had become a spectator sport for the sixth years. It was an established routine now. Later that morning, as the crowd shuffled through the narrow corridor leading to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Fred smoothly maneuvered himself through the throng of students until he was walking directly beside her.
"Morning, prefect," he lowered his voice, leaning down slightly so his shoulder brushed against hers. "You look exceptionally law-abiding today. Did you sleep with the Rule Book under your pillow again?"
Grace didn't miss a beat, her gaze remaining fixed straight ahead as she carried a heavy leather satchel. "Good morning, Weasley. And no, I prefer to keep the rules in my head, where they can be properly applied to people who lack the intellectual capacity to remember them on their own. How is your tie today? Still struggling with the basic geometry of a knot?"
"I like it loose,Gracie," Fred purred, a wicked, low edge to his voice that made a nearby Ravenclaw boy blush and look away. "Gives a man room to breathe. Some of us don't like being entirely choked by our uniform. Though, if you ever want to tighten it for me... I promise I won't struggle."
Grace stopped dead in her tracks. The crowd of students parted around them like water around a stone. She turned her head slowly, her long, dark curls shifting over her shoulder, her clear eyes narrowing just enough to let him know she had registered the double meaning.
For a second, when they were isolated by the noise of the hallway, she leaned in just an inch closer. Her voice was a bare whisper, sharp and dangerously sweet. "Careful, Fred. If I ever put my hands around your neck, it won't be to fix your uniform. It’ll be to see how long it takes for that ridiculous smirk to fade from your face."
Fred’s lungs suddenly felt entirely empty. The sheer, unadulterated heat of the threat went straight to his head like firewhisky. He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could find the words, Grace had already turned and glided into the classroom, leaving him standing in the middle of the corridor with a racing pulse and a completely derailed train of thought.
The rumors, inevitably, traveled upward.
Minerva McGonagall was not a woman who missed much within the walls of Hogwarts, but when the gossip involved her own flesh and blood, her radar was sharper than a Hungarian Horntail's.
Every now and then, mother and daughter shared a moment together in Minerva's private office — one correcting papers, the other studying, the comfortable silence of two people who didn't need to fill every room with words. It was their time. Small, unhurried, entirely theirs.
Tonight, however, Minerva put her quill down after barely ten minutes.
"Professor Flitwick mentioned something to me during tea yesterday," she began, her tone carefully neutral. "Paper birds. An enchanted suit of armor on the fourth floor. A certain sixth-year Gryffindor who appears to have lost the ability to navigate the castle without ending up in your immediate vicinity."
Grace looked up from her Arithmancy notes. "Fred Weasley is a nuisance," she said smoothly. "He thrives on provoking authority. I'm managing it."
Minerva studied her daughter for a long moment — the immaculate uniform, the Prefect badge catching the firelight, the perfect posture that Grace had maintained since she was eleven years old and had apparently decided, without being asked, to become a monument to propriety.
"You're managing it," Minerva repeated.
"Yes."
"Grace." Minerva's voice was quiet, not sharp. "I am not Flitwick. I am not asking because I'm concerned about house points or school decorum." She set her reading glasses down on the desk and looked at her daughter — really looked, the way she had learned to do over sixteen years of loving someone who worked very hard at being unreadable. "I'm asking because I cannot remember the last time you came from clases with ink on your robes. Or stayed up too late laughing. Or did something completely pointless just because you felt like it."
Grace opened her mouth.
"You tutor," Minerva said gently. "You study. You sit on the Prefect committee. You help first-years with their trunks on the first of September. You are, by every measurable account, an extraordinary young woman." A pause. "But you are also sixteen, and I worry sometimes that you've forgotten that."
The silence between them was soft and careful.
"He's not distressing me," Grace said finally, and her voice was slightly less polished than it had been thirty seconds ago. "Genuinely. He's annoying, and he is absolutely insufferable, but—" She stopped.
Minerva waited.
"He's not distressing me," Grace said again, quieter.
Minerva looked at her daughter's face — the slight color in her cheeks that had nothing to do with embarrassment, the way her eyes had gone briefly, involuntarily bright before she'd schooled them back into composure. She recognized it. She had worn it herself, a very long time ago.
She picked her quill back up, hiding the small, private smile that had nothing to do with Fred Weasley's behavior and everything to do with the fact that her daughter's shoulders had been sitting two inches lower than usual for the past week.
"Very well," Minerva said, returning to her essays. "But you know you can always come to me. About anything. You don't have to carry things alone."
"I know, Mom."
"And Grace?" Minerva added, not looking up, her voice entirely mild. "You're still young. It's allowed to be a little messy sometimes."
Grace groaned. "Please don't."
"I'm simply making an observation—"
"Mom."
"He does have very good reflexes for a Beater, I'll grant him that—"
"I'm leaving," Grace announced, gathering her notes with great dignity, while Minerva laughed behind her quill.
Two hours later, Fred Weasley was walking down the corridor toward the Gryffindor common room, tossing an unactivated Canary Cream from hand to hand, when a tall, emerald-clad figure stepped out from a side hallway, completely blocking his path.
Fred stopped, his grin freezing for a split second before snapping back into place. "Professor McGonagall! Splendid afternoon, isn't it? The weather out on the pitch is—"
"Mr. Weasley," Minerva interrupted, her voice like a sheet of cracked ice. She didn't move an inch. She simply stood there, her arms folded into her deep sleeves, towering over him with the sheer weight of her authority.
"Yes, Professor?" Fred asked, keeping his tone entirely innocent.
"I have been noticing a rather alarming trend in your behavior lately," she said, her sharp eyes boring holes into his forehead. "Specifically, your sudden, inexplicable inability to navigate this castle without ending up within a three-foot radius of my daughter."
Fred swallowed hard, but his charm didn't desert him. "Ah. Well, you see, Professor, Ravenclaws are excellent navigators. I’ve just been... leveraging Grace's superior sense of direction so I don't get lost on my way to History of Magic."
"Mr. Weasley," Minerva’s voice dropped an octave, dangerous and low. "Let me make myself entirely clear. If I discover that your little... hobbies and your fondness for chaos crosses a line that causes her even a moment of genuine grief, I will not merely dock points. I will personally ensure that your transfiguration practical exams involve you being turned into a footstool for the Slytherin common room. Do we understand each other?"
Fred felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck. The threat was magnificent, terrifying, and completely serious. But beneath the fear, a small, reckless spark of amusement flared up.
"Crystal clear, Professor," Fred said, giving a polite, respectful little bow. "I wouldn't dream of causing her grief. I have the utmost respect for the McGonagall family."
Minerva gave him one final, warning glare that could have withered a Mandrake before turning on her heel, her emerald robes billowing behind her as she swept down the hall.
Fred let out a long, slow breath, running a hand through his red hair. 'Blimey,' he thought, a wide, thrilled smile slowly breaking across his face. 'The mother is just as terrifying as the daughter. This family is bloody brilliant.'
But the encounter with the Deputy Headmistress had given Fred an idea.
He was getting tired of the polite skirmishes. The witty banter, the low double-entendres, the lingering looks in the corridors—it was intoxicating, yes, but it wasn't cracking her. Grace was too good at it. She had an answer for everything. She could trade veiled innuendos with him without her voice ever shaking. She had an iron grip on her composure.
If flirting didn't work, Fred decided, then it was time for a change of tactics. Anger was a much faster, much cruder emotion. If he could make her genuinely, completely furious, the perfect prefect facade would have to drop. The polite, maternal mask would shatter, and he would finally see the raw, unedited version of Grace McGonagall.
The plan was executed on a Tuesday afternoon during a free period. Fred knew Grace was working in the ancient, disused classroom on the third floor—which she often used as a quiet study space away from the loud common rooms.
He waited until she stepped out for ten minutes to consult a professor in the library. The moment she was gone, Fred slipped into the room like a ghost.
He didn't destroy anything. That wasn't his style, and it would have crossed the line into actual cruelty. Instead, he targeted her environment with surgical precision. Grace’s study desk was a marvel of neatness: her essays were divided into perfect, leather-bound folders; her inkpots were arranged by color; her quills were sharpened to identical points.
Fred pulled out his wand. With a series of intricate, silent charms, he inverted the gravity of every single object on her desk anchoring them to the ceiling directly above. Then, he applied a specialized, highly stubborn Color-Scrambling Hex to her meticulous Arithmancy charts, turning her neat, black-ink calculations into a blinding, neon-pink, shifting maze of chaotic numbers that danced across the parchment. Finally, he enchanted her favorite silver inkpot to loudly recite Filch’s list of banned items every time someone breathed near it.
He hid behind a heavy tapestry at the back of the classroom and waited.
Ten minutes later, the heavy oak door pushed open. Grace walked in, carrying a large reference book.
She took three steps into the room, stopped, and froze.
Her satchel slowly slipped from her fingers, hitting the stone floor with a dull thud. She stared at her empty desk, then raised her eyes to the ceiling, where her perfectly sorted folders, her quills, and her books were hanging upside down like a colony of leather-bound bats. On the table, her Arithmancy chart—weeks of grueling, precise N.E.W.T.-level work—was currently flashing bright neon pink, the numbers actively doing the waltz.
The silver inkpot gave a loud, metallic rasp: 'Banned item number forty-seven: Fanged Frisbees! Banned item number forty-eight...'
For a long, agonizing minute, Grace didn't move. She just stood there, her back to Fred. Her shoulders were perfectly rigid.
Fred, watching from behind the tapestry, felt a sudden spike of nervous anticipation. 'Come on' he thought. 'Break. Show me.'
Slowly, Grace’s head dropped. Her hands curled into tight, white-knuckled fists at her sides. When she spoke, her voice wasn't the smooth, velvet purr she used in the corridors. It was low, trembling, and vibrating with an absolute, terrifying rage.
"I am going to castrate him," she whispered to the empty room. "I am going to pull his teeth out through his nose, and then I am going to feed his remains to the Giant Squid."
Fred’s eyes widened in the dark.
Grace turned around violently, kicking her fallen satchel across the room. The elegant, polite prefect was entirely gone. Her dark hair was tumbling out of its neat pins, her face was flushed a brilliant, angry red, and her eyes were flashing with a wild, chaotic fire that Fred had never seen before.
"He is a absolute, unmitigated, ginger son of a boggart!" she screamed at the ceiling, entirely losing her mind. "He will have any idea how long that chart took me? Three weeks! Three weeks of calculating planetary alignments for a zero-sum matrix! Ahtg- giant, mindless, childish waste of space!"
She began pacing the room like a caged panther, waving her arms in fury. "I am so sick of it! I am sick of the predictable, juvenile, moronic jokes! I am sick of every single person in this bloody castle thinking they can play games with my life!, and then I have to deal with a towering, arrogant, orange-haired menace who doesn't have the brain capacity to pass a single O.W.L. without his brother's help!"
She stopped, breathing heavily, her chest heaving as she glared at the floating folders. "I hate him. I genuinely, deeply hate him."
From the back of the room, the tapestry rustled. Fred stepped out into the light.
His heart was hammering against his ribs, but not from fear. It was from pure, intoxicating fascination. He was breathless. He was completely, utterly captivated. This version of her—furious, messy, swearing like a sailor, her eyes burning with real, raw emotion—was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life.
"Wow," Fred murmured, a slow, genuine, dazzled smile spreading across his face. "You really do have a mouth on you, don't you, McGonagall?"
Grace spun around, her eyes widening as she realized he had been there the whole time. For a fraction of a second, a flash of horror crossed her face at having been caught so entirely out of character. But the rage quickly overtook it.
"You," she hissed, taking a violent step toward him, her wand drawn and pointed directly at his chest. "You think this is funny? You think my life is just a canvas for your pathetic little circus acts?"
Fred didn't raise his wand. He didn't back away. He just stood there, looking down at her, his voice dropping into a low, dangerously soft register that was entirely devoid of its usual mocking edge.
"I don't think it's funny at all, Grace," he whispered, stepping closer, entirely ignoring the wand pressing into his robes. "Actually, I think it's magnificent. You should get furious more often. It suits you. The good-girl routine is nice, but this? This version of you is bloody brilliant. You look... alive."
Grace stared at him, her breath hitching in her throat. The proximity, the raw honesty in his voice, the way he was looking at her—not with mockery, but with a terrifyingly intense sort of reverence—completely derailed her anger for a split second. The air between them grew thick, heavy, and hot.
But she caught herself. She bit her lip, her jaw tightening as she pulled her wand back, her face hardening into a mask of pure, icy disdain.
"Get out," she said, her voice shaking with a dangerous mixture of anger and something else she refused to name.
"Grace, I can fix the chart, and the N.E.W.T.s are next year ¿Why are you getting so far ahead of yourself in studying them no—"
"I said, get out, Weasley!" she slammed her hand against a nearby desk, her voice cracking. "Before I show you exactly what this McGonagall can do when she stops playing nice."
Fred looked at her for a long second. He saw the tension in her shoulders, the wildness in her eyes, the beautiful, chaotic mess he had finally managed to unleash. He knew if he pushed any further right now, he would cross from a rival into an actual enemy.
"All right," Fred said softly, raising his hands in surrender. "I'm going. The folders will come down if you use a localized Finite Incantatem on the desk studs. And the chart... the ink isn't ruined. It’s just an optical hex. It’ll wear off in an hour."
He turned and walked toward the door. Just before he left, he looked back over his shoulder, a slow, devastatingly charming smirk returning to his lips. "See you around, pretty face."
The door clicked shut behind him. Grace stood alone in the classroom, her heart thumping wildly against her ribs. She looked at the neon-pink chart, then at the door, and let out a long, shaky breath, her fingers trembling as she ran them through her messy hair.
"He’s completely crossed a line this time."
Hermione Granger slammed a massive tome onto the table in the library, her face a mask of righteous indignation.
Grace sat opposite her, quietly using her wand to carefully realign the ink bottles on her desk. She had spent the last two hours restoring her study space to its original, immaculate condition. Her face was calm, her composure entirely rebuilt, but beneath the surface, a cold, calculated desire for vengeance was simmering.
"I warned you, Grace," Hermione said, keeping her voice down but her tone fierce. "I told you Fred doesn't have boundaries. Messing with your N.E.W.T. notes? That isn't a prank, that’s malicious academic sabotage! You should report him to your mom immediately. He deserves a month of detentions."
"Luna, please tell her she's being dramatic and the N.E.W.T.s are next year" Grace sighed, rubbing her temples.
Luna Lovegood, who was currently reading The Quibbler upside down while casually threading a chain of paperclips together, looked up with her wide, unblinking eyes. "Oh, I don't think he was being malicious, Hermione. The Wrackspurts around Fred’s head have been very confused lately. They’re usually quite organized when he’s planning a prank, but now they’re just flying around in frantic little hearts. I think he’s just trying to find a way to breathe the same air as Grace."
Grace’s fingers twitched on her wand. "He's an idiot, Luna. That’s all it is."
"I really am sorry, Grace."
A soft, apologetic voice made them all look up. Ginny Weasley was standing at the end of the table, looking thoroughly embarrassed. She adjusted her Gryffindor robes, stepping forward with an anxious expression.
"Ginny," Grace smiled, her demeanor instantly softening. Grace had tutored Ginny in advanced Transfiguration theory a few times the previous term, and she genuinely liked the fierce younger Weasley girl. "You don't need to apologize for anything."
"I do," Ginny sat down next to Luna, sighing deeply. "I heard what Fred did to your study room. He’s my brother, and I love him, but sometimes he has the emotional intelligence of a concussed Blast-Ended Skrewt. He’s been completely insufferable in the common room, If you want me to bat-bogey hex him during dinner, just say the word. I’ll gladly do it."
Grace let out a genuine, soft laugh. "Thank you, Ginny. But I can handle Fred. He’s my problem."
"Room for two more?"
Grace looked up. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley were hovering at the end of the library aisle with the particular energy of people who had been sent somewhere on a mission and weren't entirely sure they wanted to complete it. Ron had a half-eaten pasty. Harry had the expression of someone who had learned, through extended proximity to Hermione Granger, when it was safer to sit down quietly than to ask questions.
They sat.
"We heard about the study room," Harry said, after a moment. "Fred mentioned it."
"Fred told you?" Hermione said, outraged.
"Fred was bragging about it," Ron clarified, which caused Hermione to make a sound of pure, incandescent fury. "Though he looked a bit — I don't know. Weird about it. Like he'd gotten what he wanted but wasn't sure he actually wanted it."
Grace's quill paused on the parchment.
"He's never done this before," Harry said, looking at her with the direct, uncomplicated honesty that she'd noticed was his default mode. "Like — he pranks everyone. It's ambient, with Fred. It's weather. But this is different. He's focused." He paused. "I'm not saying it to make excuses for him. I'm just — I don't entirely know what he's doing, and I've known him for five years."
"Neither does he," Luna said serenely, from behind The Quibbler.
Ron looked at Luna, then at Grace, then at his pasty, as if it might offer some structural support. "For what it's worth," he said finally, "if you wanted to get him back — and it sounds like you already have, the points you’d take him the other day was—" He stopped. Pressed his lips together. "That was genuinely brilliant, actually. He didn't come out of the dormitory for an hour just to not listen to more complaints of the others."
Grace felt the corner of her mouth twitch against her will.
"The point," Hermione said firmly, "is that you have people. That's all. You don't have to deal with whatever this is by yourself."
Grace looked around the table — Hermione's protective fury, Luna's dreamy certainty, Ginny's offered bat-bogey hex, Ron's barely-suppressed admiration, Harry's straightforward concern. All of them, arranged around a library table on a rainy Thursday afternoon, in various states of investment in a problem that was technically only hers.
It was a strange feeling. Not unwelcome.
"He said I looked alive," Grace said, mostly to herself.
The table went quiet.
"When I was furious," she added, by way of clarification, and then looked back down at her notes as if she hadn't said anything at all.
Under the table, Luna's foot found hers and pressed once, gently.
Grace didn't look up. But she didn't move her foot away, either.
Grace’s retaliation was a masterpiece of Ravenclaw execution. It didn't involve loud explosions, and it didn't disrupt the castle. It was silent, deeply embarrassing, and entirely untraceable to anyone who didn't know the exact codes of their war.
The next morning, Fred walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, flanked by George and Lee. The room was bustling, the owls swooping down with the morning mail.
The moment Fred sat down at the Gryffindor table and reached for a goblet of orange juice, the enchantment activated.
Every time Fred opened his mouth to speak, his voice didn't produce words. Instead, it produced the highly amplified, crystal-clear sound of a very dramatic, very high-pitched operatic soprano singing his thoughts to the tune of Celestina Warbeck’s most tragic love ballads.
‘Morning, George’ ,Fred tried to say.
Instead, a booming, theatrical operatic voice echoed across the Gryffindor table: "OH, BELOVED TWIN OF MY SOUL, PASS ME THE BACON BEFORE MY HEART WITHERSSS!"
The entire Gryffindor table fell dead silent. George froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. Lee slowly turned his head, his eyes wide.
Fred’s eyes widened. He slapped a hand over his mouth. He tried to speak again, trying to curse.
"COULD THIS TREACHERY BE THE WORK OF THE DEVIL? MY WRATH IS AN INFINITE OCEAN OF FLAMEEE!" the soprano wailed dramatically, vibrating with intense vibrato.
The Great Hall erupted. The Gryffindors burst into hysterical, table-slapping laughter. Even the Slytherins across the room were snickering. George was laughing so hard he fell off his bench, clutching his stomach on the stone floor, while Lee was howling, tears streaming down his face.
Fred, his face flushing a violent, bright red, stood up from the table. He glared across the room at the Ravenclaw table.
Grace was sitting in her usual spot. She was quietly sipping her tea, her posture perfect, her face the picture of absolute, pristine innocence. She didn't look over at him. She didn't laugh. But as Fred stormed out of the Great Hall, his voice operatically wailing, "I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE, YOU FIEND OF THE RAVEN TOWER!", he saw the tiny, triumphant curve of her lips.
Ten minutes later, Fred cornered her in an empty corridor near the Transfiguration courtyard. The opera charm had finally worn off, leaving his throat slightly sore but his pride entirely wounded.
"You think you're very clever, don't you?" Fred hissed, stepping in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest, trying to look imposing despite the fact that he had just sung his way through the ground floor.
Grace stopped, holding her books against her chest. She raised her eyes, looking at him with a serene, entirely unbothered calm that drove him absolutely mad.
"I have no idea what you're referring to, Weasley," she said, her voice smooth and sweet. "Though I must say, your vocal range is truly impressive. Have you considered auditioning for the Hogwarts choir? Professor Flitwick is always looking for new... dramatic talent."
Fred stepped closer, leaning down so his face was inches from hers. The frustration was burning in his veins, but beneath it, that relentless, addictive fascination was flaring up again. She had hit him back. Perfectly.
"It was an elegant piece of spellwork, Gracie," Fred murmured, his voice dropping into that low, private register. "But you left your signature all over it. It was too clean. No one else in this school has that kind of precision."
Grace’s hazel eyes flashed with a sudden, triumphant fire. She didn't back away. She leaned up slightly, her breath brushing his chin. “If it's so obvious, why didn't you tell on me to a teacher, huh? Oh—right, who would believe a troubled redhead over the pretty, good Grace McGonagall?" She chuckled. “Consider it a warning, Fred. The next time you touch my things, the charm won't wear off in ten minutes. And it won't be an opera. I’ll make you speak entirely in the voices of Filch’s cat for a month."
She stepped around him, her shoulder clipping his as she walked past.
Fred stood in the corridor, a slow, wild grin breaking across his face. He rubbed his chest, where his heart was beating like a mad thing. ’Oh, she is playing’, he thought. ‘Absolutely playing with me.’
The clock in the Gryffindor dormitory struck one in the morning.
The room was pitch black, the autumn wind howling fiercely against the high glass windows. Fred sat upright in his bed, the red velvet curtains drawn tightly. The tip of his wand was illuminated, casting a pale, cold light over the Marauder's Map spread across his knees.
For three nights, she hadn't moved. He had watched the map until his eyes ached, but her little dot had remained safely tucked away in the Ravenclaw girls' dormitory.
But tonight, his patience paid off.
There, moving silently down the spiral staircase of the Ravenclaw Tower, was the single, ink-dotted name: Grace McGonagall.
Fred’s heart gave a violent, ecstatic leap. "Finally," he whispered.
He watched her path. She wasn't heading to the third-floor classroom this time. She bypassed the library, ignored the corridors of the fourth floor, and began a steady, deliberate ascent up the western side of the castle. She was heading toward the spiral stairs of the Astronomy Tower—the highest point in Hogwarts, entirely deserted and out of bounds at this hour.
Fred didn't waste a second. He folded the map, slid it into his pocket, gripped his wand, and threw his Invisibility Cloak over his shoulders.
The castle was freezing as he slipped through the portrait hole. He moved like a ghost, his footsteps entirely silent on the stone floors. He didn't need the map now; he knew exactly where she was going. He climbed the steep, narrow spiral stairs of the Astronomy Tower, his lungs burning slightly from the rapid pace, his mind spinning with a frantic, desperate curiosity.
‘What are you doing up here, Gracie?’ He reached the top of the stairs. The heavy wooden door was slightly ajar. Fred stepped through, slipping his cloak off and draping it over a wooden crate near the entrance.
The Astronomy Tower platform was wide open to the night sky. The wind was fierce up here, whipping through the stone arches, bringing the scent of rain and pine from the Forbidden Forest below. The stars were bright, casting a pale, silver illumination over the platform.
Standing by the stone parapet, her back to him, was Grace.
She had thrown a large dark blue sweatshirt from Ravenclaw, the hood pulled down, her long, dark curls blowing wildly in the wind. She was staring out at the black expanse of the Black Lake, her posture relaxed in a way he had never seen before.
Fred took a step forward, the stone grit crunching slightly beneath his boot. "Out past curfew, prefect? That’s at least twenty points from Ravenclaw. And a very awkward conversation with mommy"
Grace didn't jump. She didn't gasp. She turned around slowly, with the unhurried ease of someone who had been expecting company.
Fred's breath caught in his throat. His jaw dropped.
Grace McGonagall was holding a cigarette.
Not a trick. Not an illusion. A real, Muggle cigarette, the tip glowing a bright, lazy orange in the dark. She raised it to her lips, inhaled, and blew a slow, deliberate stream of smoke into the mountain wind, watching him with the most entertained expression he had ever seen on her face.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, Freckles," she said.
Fred stared at her. "Did you just—"
"Yes."
"Is that a—"
"Yes."
"Grace McGonagall is smoking a Muggle cigarette on the Astronomy Tower at one in the morning."
"Correct." She tilted her head. "Want one? I have a few more in my pocket. My cousin in London sends them."
Fred walked forward slowly, as if approaching something that might disappear if he moved too fast. He stopped a few feet away from her, his eyes moving between her face and the cigarette with an expression of pure, baffled reverence.
"Freckles?" he said finally.
Grace shrugged. "You call me ‘Gracie’. Fair is fair. You're covered in freckles."
"I—" Fred rubbed the back of his neck, completely at sea. "You smoke.”
"Casually," Grace shrugged, leaning her lower back against the stone parapet, entirely at ease. "Only on Thursdays and Saturdays. When i want to…loosen up a little" She responded using the same words he had said to her several times.
Apparently, the early morning hours turned Grace into a relaxed and chatty person; Fred was still trying to process that too.
Her eyes were bright, catching the starlight, dancing with something that looked — and this was what unmoored him entirely — like genuine amusement. Not the sharp, weaponized amusement she aimed at him in corridors. Something lighter. Something that was actually just for her. "I believe those were the nights you noticed I was missing from the dormitory."
Fred was quiet for a moment. "How long have you known I was watching?"
"Since the color-coded schedule." She smiled at his expression. "You left it on the table in the common room. Lee Jordan found it and showed half of Gryffindor. I had three separate people tell me about it by Tuesday."
Fred closed his eyes briefly. "Brilliant."
"It was, rather." She took another slow drag. The wind pulled the smoke sideways into the dark. "So. You found me. Congratulations. The great Fred Weasley, investigator extraordinaire, has discovered the crack in the facade." She gestured at herself with the cigarette — the oversized sweatshirt, the unpinned hair, the complete absence of the Prefect badge or the careful posture or any of the other things she maintained with such precision in daylight. "Take a good look. Is it everything you hoped for?"
Fred looked at her. Really looked — not the way he had been looking at her for weeks, cataloguing reactions and probing for weaknesses, but actually looking. At the way the tension she always carried in her shoulders had gone entirely. At the way she was leaning against the parapet with her ankles crossed and her face turned up to the wind like she was specifically here to let it blow through her.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Actually."
She raised an eyebrow.
"You look like yourself," Fred said. "I don't know what else to call it. You just — look like yourself."
Grace studied him for a moment. Then she looked back out at the lake, her expression doing something complicated that she didn't bother to hide, which told him more than anything she might have said.
"You want to know why I do it," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Only if you want to tell me."
She was quiet for long enough that he thought she wouldn't. Then:
"Do you remember the first day? When you asked me if I'd ever been late to class?"
"First year. Lost on the way to Charms."
"Professor Quirrell — before we knew what he was keeping under his turban — looked at me in front of the whole class and said, 'What would your mother think of having such a careless daughter?'" Grace's voice was even, but her jaw tightened slightly. "Five minutes late. That was all. And he said it like it was self-evident — like the worst thing a McGonagall could be was careless. Not cruel, not dishonest. Careless." She exhaled. "It sat in my chest like a stone for months. And I thought — all right. Fine. I'll make sure that's never the answer. I'll be so far beyond reproach that no one can ever say it again."
Fred said nothing. As if even he understood that at that moment, Grace was having a release that didn't need jokes or filler words.
"The thing is," she continued, "it worked. It works brilliantly. Professors love me, students defer to me, I have the cleanest record, and my mother — who, for the record, has never once asked me to be any of this, and would be furious if she knew I started it because of a comment from a man who turned out to be harbouring Voldemort under his hat—" A short, real laugh escaped her, and it caught Fred completely off guard. "My mother is proud of me. Which is everything I wanted." She looked down at the cigarette. "But I've been doing it so long I can't always remember where the performance ends and I begin."
She looked up at him then, and for the first time all evening she was looking at him the way she'd been looking at the lake — without armor, without calculation, without the slight edge of challenge she usually kept in her eyes when he was in the room.
"So twice a week I come up here," she said. "And I do something completely indefensible. Something I cannot justify to a teacher or explain away as a character-building exercise. Something that is just—" She raised the cigarette. "Bad. Purely, stupidly bad. And it reminds me that I'm still in here somewhere, that I’m still real and i can do teenage stuff.”
Fred was quiet for a long moment. The wind moved between them but the space between them felt entirely silent, suspended in time. The mockery, the pranks, the competitive desire to win—it all melted away, replaced by a deep, aching warmth that filled his entire chest.
He didn't see a target anymore. He didn't see a puzzle to crack. He saw her. The real, beautiful, complicated girl who fought so hard just to carry the weight of her world.
Then she spoke again, softly, as if she needed to say it to get it off her chest. "I'm proud to be her daughter,but carrying her name—her legacy—on my back is exhausting. It's not even that she won't let me fail...it's that others can't accept it."
"I know you must have a reason for telling me this," he said. Not an accusation. Just an observation.
Grace smiled, slow and a little wicked. "Because you already saw the fury in that classroom. You watched me lose my mind completely over a colour-scrambling hex, and instead of reporting me or using it or being horrified, you said I looked alive." She tilted her head. "You've been trying to break the facade for weeks. You've seen behind it now. And I know you well enough to know you won't go running to tell anyone, because then you'd have to explain why you were following me through the castle at one in the morning." She raised an eyebrow.
Fred laughed. He couldn't help it.
"Besides," Grace added, her voice dropping into something lighter, almost teasing, "who would believe you? The boy who put a soprano charm on himself—"
"That was absolutely your fault—"
"—telling the school that perfect Grace McGonagall smokes cigarettes on the Astronomy Tower?" She shook her head. "They'd think you'd finally cracked."
"I have absolutely cracked," Fred said. "For the record.”
A few moments passed while Fred processed all before speaking.
"Well," Fred said softly, a slow, incredibly gentle smile breaking across his face. He stepped closer, closing the final distance until he was standing directly beside her, his arm brushing against her shoulder. "For what it's worth... I think this version of you is infinitely better. The perfect prefect is nice, but the badass midnight smoker?" He shook his head slightly, his voice dropping into something quieter, entirely without its usual edge. "She's spectacular."
Grace blinked. She looked at him — really looked, the way she rarely let herself — searching for the mockery, the punchline, the calculated move underneath. She found none. Just Fred, standing too close in the dark, looking at her like she'd done something remarkable simply by existing without permission.
The flush that spread across her cheeks had absolutely nothing to do with anger.
"What do you think the world would say," Fred murmured, his voice shifting back into its lower, teasing register — lightening the air between them with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly when a moment needed rescuing from itself — "if they saw you right now? The golden girl of Ravenclaw, with that sweet, innocent face and those pretty little eyes, holding a Muggle cigarette like a London street urchin?"
Grace laughed. A real one, soft and unguarded, the kind that didn't get an audience.
She raised the cigarette to her lips one final time, then stepped deliberately into his space and looked up at him through her lashes. Fred had exactly one second to register how close she was before she parted her lips and blew a slow, warm cloud of smoke directly into his face.
Fred blinked, coughing, his ears going red.
"They'd never believe you, Freckles," Grace whispered. "As I already told you, who would they trust? The boy who sang his way through breakfast, or me?"
She dropped the cigarette and extinguished it under her slipper.
"Touché, McGonagall." Fred said, breathless.
Something shifted on her face — subtle, quick, barely there. A slight tightening around her eyes, the ghost of something that wasn't quite a flinch but lived in the same neighborhood. It was gone in an instant, replaced by her usual composure, but Fred caught it.
He filed it away without comment.
"Just so you know," he said instead, clearing his throat and feigning the particular casualness of someone who had absolutely not just noticed something important, "I call you Gracie because it suits the face. The good girl face." He raised his eyebrows a few times in rapid succession until she shook her head, fighting a smile. "I'm also available in darling, angel, sweetheart — I'm an inexhaustible machine, really, the range is extraordinary—"
"Gracie is fine," Grace said, laughing despite herself. "It's the most normal and least ridiculous option available from you, which is a low bar, but here we are."
She stepped back, pulling her sweatshirt straight, and walked toward the door. Just before she opened it, she paused, looking back over her shoulder. The starlight caught the gleam in her eyes.
"The truce expires at sunrise," she said. "And I've been thinking about what to do with your Quidditch equipment."
"My Quidditch—" Fred's eyes widened. "Grace—"
"Goodnight, Fred.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Fred stood alone on the platform, the wind in his face, the faint smell of tobacco and vanilla already dissipating into the cold air. He looked at the dark lake below, then at the door, then back at the lake.
The Good Girl Theory had been correct. There was something underneath the performance. He had been right about all of it.
The problem — the one he wasn't going to examine too closely tonight — was that being right had nothing to do with the way his chest felt right now.
He stayed on the tower for another twenty minutes, for no particular reason, before heading back down.
Warnings/Tags: Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Prank wars, Ravenclaw Reader/OC, Smart MC, Fluff, six year, Some slight modifications to the canon or timeline.
Premise: For Fred Weasley, what is out of reach is simply a challenge waiting to be accepted. He lives for chaos, which means he never fell for the school’s biggest illusion: Grace McGonagall. To the rest of Hogwarts, she is the golden student, a saintly legacy who can do no wrong. To Fred, she is a puzzle disguised as a perfect girl, hiding a razor-sharp wit and a dark streak of defiance beneath her Ravenclaw robes. His new theory? Good girls are just bad girls who haven't been caught yet. Fred is ready to tear down her walls to prove it—what he doesn't expect is that Grace doesn't just know how his games work; she plays them better.
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If there was one thing that characterized Fred Weasley, it was his determination to achieve what he set out to do—usually pranks, but now his goal had a name and surname.
Grace Mcgonagall.
There was a distinct difference—he had recently discovered— between playing a prank and launching an investigation.
A prank was a hit-and-run. It was chaotic, loud, and fleeting. You dropped a Dungbomb in a corridor, enchanted a suit of armor to sing Celestina Warbeck at the top of its lungs, and you moved on.
But an investigation? An investigation required patience. It required a level of meticulous, agonizing observation that Fred had never previously applied to anything in his life, including his O.W.L.s.
Ever since the incident with the shrunken shirts, Fred had stopped seeing Grace McGonagall as a mere target. She had become a puzzle box. A beautiful, infuriating, perfectly polished puzzle box that had casually snapped his fingers in half the first time he tried to pry it open. He needed to know how her mind worked. He needed to find the exact pressure point that would make her pristine facade shatter.
The plan was simple:
• Step number one - To provoke some reaction in her, however small.
• Second step- Get to know Grace's mind
Little did he know that getting past part one was going to be extremely difficult — if not impossible.
And so, the haunting began.
It started on a Monday in Advanced Potion-Making. Snape was prowling the dungeons like an overgrown bat, lecturing on the precise nature of Amortentia and its volatile properties. Usually, Fred sat in the back with George, half-asleep and entirely checked out.
Today, however, Fred slid his bag off his shoulder and dropped into the empty stool at the pristine workbench belonging to Grace McGonagall.
Grace didn't flinch. She didn't so much as blink. She merely continued slicing her Valerian roots into perfectly even, millimeter-thick pieces, the silver blade of her knife glinting in the dim dungeon light.
"Is there a reason you've migrated from your usual habitat at the back of the classroom, Weasley?" she asked, her voice low, smooth, and entirely indifferent.
"Just felt like a change of scenery, McGonagall," Fred murmured, leaning his elbows on the dark wood of the table, turning his head so he was entirely focused on her profile. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Besides, I figured if I’m going to be working with volatile, highly dangerous materials today, I should sit next to the expert."
Grace’s knife paused for a fraction of a second. She turned her head slightly, her hazel eyes meeting his. When she spoke, her tone was the epitome of academic innocence, loud enough for Snape to hear if he happened to be passing, yet laced with a razor-sharp undercurrent meant only for him.
"I'm flattered, Fred. If you need a tutor to improve your grades, don't be ashamed to ask; I won't judge you, your lack of attention in class and long naps are no secret."
From the table directly behind them, a distinct snorting sound echoed through the dungeon. Fred glanced over his shoulder to see George covering his mouth with a dragon-hide glove, his shoulders shaking silently, while Lee Jordan had to bury his face in his Potions textbook to muffle his laughter.
Fred turned back to Grace, a slow, dangerous smirk spreading across his face. He leaned in closer, invading her personal space, close enough to catch the faint scent of parchment, vanilla, and the sharp tang of peppermint.
"Oh, I'm not looking for a tutor, Gracie ," he purred, deliberately using her first name in a silly diminutive, to see if it would make her twitch. It didn't. "I'm just curious. Do you always follow the instructions to the letter? Or do you ever get the urge to add something a little... forbidden? Just to see if it explodes?"
Grace finally put her knife down. She turned her body fully toward him. The dungeon was cold, but the air between them suddenly felt suffocatingly warm. Her face was the picture of perfect, unbothered composure, but there was a wicked, knowing gleam in her eyes.
"I find that forbidden additions usually just result in a pathetic mess, Weasley," she whispered, her gaze dropping for a microsecond to his lips before snapping back to his eyes. "Unless, of course, they are handled by someone who actually knows what they are doing. Are you entirely sure you have the stamina for that kind of experiment?"
Fred’s breath hitched in his throat. He had expected her to get flustered. He had expected her to blush, to scold him, to act the part of the good girl horrified by his double entendres. Instead, she had taken his veiled innuendo, sharpened it, and slid it right between his ribs.
Before he could formulate a comeback, she had already turned back to her cauldron, elegantly sweeping her crushed roots into the simmering liquid.
Fred stared at the side of her face, his heart hammering a frantic, unfamiliar rhythm against his ribs. He felt like he just having seen a fraction of the true bite that Grace McGonagall had
His eyes widened with amusement, as if he'd just found the best joke in the world. 'So...good girls are just bad girls pretending? How much longer are you going to pretend, Gracie?'
He spent the rest of the lesson in a strange, restless silence — which George would later call ‘genuinely unsettling, you're never quiet, what's wrong with you’ — staring at his cauldron and not entirely seeing it.
It wasn't the comeback. He'd had worse said to him, funnier, sharper. It wasn't even the way she'd looked at him — that cool, knowing flicker before she'd turned back to her roots like he was a mildly interesting footnote in her afternoon.
It was something else. Something smaller and more annoying.
The scent of parchment and vanilla and peppermint, still faintly in the air where she'd leaned toward him.
Fred gave his Amortentia a vigorous, unnecessary stir and decided very firmly that this was entirely irrelevant to the investigation.
Over the next week, Fred became relentless. He was everywhere she was. He threw enchanted, origami birds at her during History of Magic. When she didn't react, he enchanted them to sing slightly off-key romantic serenades. Grace had merely waved her wand without looking up from her notes, transfiguring his paper bird into a tiny, aggressive paper wasp that chased him out of the classroom, much to the delight of the entire sixth year.
He dropped casually onto the benches next to her in the Great Hall, stealing toast from her plate. He flirted outrageously when professors were out of earshot, calling her 'sweetheart' and 'angel', waiting for the mask of perfection to slip.
But it never did. When the school was watching, she treated him with a maternal, almost pitying politeness that drove him absolutely insane. When they were isolated in the back of a classroom, she met his flirtations with a dark, cynical wit that left him constantly off-balance.
The most infuriating moment of that week, Fred would later decide, happened on a Wednesday in the library.
He had followed her there — not subtly, not even pretending to be subtle anymore, just dropping into the chair directly across from hers with his bag and a copy of Advanced Potion-Making that he had absolutely no intention of reading.
Grace had looked up from her Charms notes.
Looked at him. Looked at the Potions textbook.
"That's upside down," she said.
Fred looked down. It was, in fact, upside down.
"I learn better this way," he said.
"Mhm." She had gone back to her notes.
He'd tried three separate provocations over the next forty minutes — a whispered comment about her handwriting being suspiciously perfect ‘do you practice this, or were you just born insufferable’, an enchanted eraser that kept nudging her inkwell two centimeters to the left, and what he privately considered his finest work: a small note, folded into a precise triangle and slid across the table, that read;
'you blinked four times in the last minute. breaking down already? - F'
Grace had unfolded the note. Read it. Refolded it with the same precise creases. Written something on the back. Slid it back.
Fred unfolded it.
'Five times, actually. You miscounted. Perhaps the upside-down textbook is affecting your vision.- G'
He had stared at that note for a long time.
Then he'd put it in his pocket.
Grace sat in the library on a rainy Thursday afternoon, staring blankly at an intricate Arithmancy chart.
She was exhausted. Not a physical exhaustion, but a deep, bone-weary mental fatigue that came from holding up a shield twenty-four hours a day.
She wasn’t entirely a lie. She loved her mother fiercely. Minerva McGonagall was a titan, a woman who commanded respect from the very stones of Hogwarts. Growing up without a father, Grace had watched her mother carry the weight of the school on her shoulders. Her perfectionism wasn’t born out of Minerva’s demands—her mother would love her even if she failed every class—but out of a desperate, self-imposed need to ensure Minerva never had to worry about her.
If Grace was perfect, if she was easy-going, then her mom could take care of one less thing. If Grace was the ideal student, it reflected perfectly on the Deputy Headmistress.
But carrying that perfection was like wearing a corset made of iron. It restricted her breathing. It suppressed the cynical, chaotic, sharp-edged parts of her soul that desperately wanted to scream at the sheer absurdity of the people around her.
And then, there was Fred Weasley.
Grace traced the edge of her quill, her thoughts drifting to the tall, perpetually grinning Gryffindor. She knew exactly what he was doing. He was probing for weaknesses. He was trying to tear down the pedestal everyone else had put her on.
And, God help her, she was enjoying it entirely too much.
Fred didn’t look at her and see the Deputy Headmistress's daughter. He didn't look at her and see a Prefect badge or a pristine academic record. He looked at her and saw a target. A rival. An equal.
When he threw his stupid jokes at her, when he invaded her personal space and tried to rattle her with his low, raspy double entendres, Grace didn't have to be the perfect daughter. She could let the iron corset loosen just a fraction. She could bite back. She could be ruthless, and calculating, and a little bit wicked, because Fred Weasley could take it. He didn't just take it; he thrived on it.
"You're smiling at a piece of parchment," a soft, dreamy voice said. "It must be a very funny number."
Grace blinked, pulling herself out of her thoughts as Luna Lovegood slid into the seat across from her, wearing a pair of radish earrings that dangled wildly as she tilted her head. Hermione followed closely behind, carrying a stack of books that looked heavy enough to cause structural damage to the table.
"I was just thinking about a... complex problem," Grace said smoothly, schooling her features back into pleasant neutrality.
Hermione dropped her books with a heavy thud, fixing Grace with a sharp, perceptive glare. "Does this complex problem have flaming red hair and an unhealthy obsession with Dungbombs?"
Grace raised an eyebrow, not breaking eye contact. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Herm."
"Grace, please." Hermione leaned across the table, keeping her voice to a fierce whisper so Madam Pince wouldn't hear. "Half the school has noticed. Fred Weasley has been shadowing you all week. He sat next to you in Potions, which he never does. He followed you to the greenhouses. He’s provoking you."
"He's trying to," Grace corrected gently.
"It's a dangerous game," Hermione warned, her brown eyes filled with genuine concern. "Fred and George are brilliant, yes, but they're chaotic. They don't respect boundaries. If you keep engaging with him, if you keep indulging this little war of yours, he's going to drag you down into his mess and maybe destroy everything you carefully made of your life, I don't know if it's worth it to be caught in the crossfire of a Weasley prank gone wrong."
Grace was quiet for a moment. She looked at Hermione, appreciating her friend's protective nature. But Hermione, for all her book smarts, completely misunderstood the dynamic at play.
"You think I'm playing his game?" Grace asked softly, a genuine, chillingly confident smile touching her lips. "You think he’s dragging me into his chaos?"
The griffyndor girl frowned, confused. "Well... yes."
Grace shook her head slowly. "He thinks he's the predator. He thinks he's the one setting the traps. But the danger isn't me getting caught in his mess, love. The danger is him realizing that he is completely, hopelessly outmatched."
Luna, who had been staring dreamily at the ceiling, suddenly looked down at Grace. "Your aura changes color when you talk about him, you know," she said conversationally.
Grace paused, curious. "Does it?"
"Oh, yes," Luna nodded earnestly. "Usually it's a very calm, pale blue. Like a frozen lake. But just now, it turned a rather violent shade of violet. It’s the color of a thunderstorm right before the lightning strikes. I think you're going to shock him very badly, Grace."
Grace looked down at her Arithmancy chart, hiding the smirk that threatened to break across her face. “I certainly hope so, Luna.”
The girls' laughter was immediate.
Later, gathering her Arithmancy notes as Hermione and Luna argued cheerfully about whether the library's restricted section had its own subspecies of Wrackspurt, Grace paused.
'Your aura turned violet. Like a thunderstorm before the lightning strikes.'
She pressed the edge of her quill against her bottom lip, thoughtful.
The thing about Luna was that she said things that sounded like nonsense and then turned out to be the most precise observation in the room. Grace filed it away somewhere careful, somewhere private.
She was in control of this. She had always been in control of this.
She just needed to make sure she remembered that.
The escalation happened on a Friday.
Grace was walking down the fourth-floor corridor, enjoying a rare moment of solitude during a free period. The castle was quiet, the autumn sunlight streaming through the tall stained-glass windows, casting colorful geometric patterns on the stone floor.
Suddenly, the suit of armor she was walking past sprang to life. It didn't attack her; instead, it dropped to one knee, holding out a single, magically preserved red rose.
Grace stopped, staring at the empty helmet.
From the shadows of an adjacent alcove, Fred Weasley stepped out. He was leaning casually against the stone wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his tie loosened around his neck in a way that was strictly against uniform policy but looked infuriatingly good on him.
"A token of my undying affection, Gracie," Fred said, his voice echoing slightly in the empty corridor. "I thought you could use some romance in your tragic, rule-abiding life."
Grace looked from the kneeling suit of armor to Fred. She didn't take the rose. Instead, she took three slow, deliberate steps toward him.
Fred didn't move, but she saw the slight tightening of his jaw as she entered his personal space. Up close, he was remarkably tall. She had to tilt her head back slightly to meet his eyes, which were alight with that familiar, dangerous challenge.
"Are you attempting to woo me, Fred, or is this just another desperate cry for my attention?" Grace asked, her voice a soft, velvet purr.
Fred’s eyes darkened. He pushed off the wall, closing the remaining distance between them so that they were mere inches apart. The air crackled with a sudden, suffocating electricity. Grace could feel the heat radiating from his chest.
"Maybe I just want to see what happens when the perfect prefect actually lets go for five minutes," Fred murmured, his gaze dropping to her mouth. "You put up a great front, Grace. But I know you're hiding something behind all those neat little manners. I just want to know what it takes to make you break."
Grace didn't back down. She held her ground, looking up at him through her lashes. Her heart was beating a little faster, a treacherous thrill racing up her spine at his proximity.
All this silly little game with Fred Weasley was giving her a window, a way to loosen up a bit and play without her being affected.
She kept her expression completely composed. She reached out, her fingers lightly brushing against the lapel of his robes. She felt his breath hitch at the contact.
"You're very persistent Fred," she whispered. "But there's no way you'll get what you want; I won't fall for you, you won't get to experience what you're dying for."
Fred's smile widened and his eyebrows lifted. His hands played with the hem of her tunic, wanting to reach her waist. "And what is it I'm dying to try, darling?" His voice was mischievous, amused by this crack.
“Grace's lips curved into a cruel smile, she stood on tiptoe closer to the redhead, "what you're dying to try..." One of her fingers played with his tie and the index finger of her other hand pricked her chin, lifting it so he looked up at her from slightly higher up. "I'm a fraud, a very bad girl who deceived all of Hogwarts, but I won't give you the satisfaction."
Before he could answer, she smoothly pulled her hand back, her demeanor instantly shifting from sultry to coldly authoritative. She reached into her robes and pulled out a small notepad.
"Ten points from Gryffindor," she stated, her voice returning to its crisp, perfect cadence.
Fred blinked, completely thrown off by the whiplash of her mood change. "What? For what? Being devastatingly handsome?"
"For loitering in the corridors during a free period," Grace replied, writing it down with a flourish. "For improper uniform alignment—fix your tie, Weasley, you look like you dressed in the dark. And," she added, snapping the notebook shut, "another five points for the misuse of magic. A suit of armor offering a rose? Honestly, Fred. I expected better from you."
Fred stared at her, his mouth slightly open. For the first time since she had known him, the great Fred Weasley was completely, utterly speechless.
"Have a lovely afternoon," Grace said brightly. She turned on her heel and walked away, her footsteps echoing sharply in the quiet corridor, leaving Fred alone with a kneeling suit of armor And one absolute certainty: she had managed to see the real Grace McGonagall, but to do so, she had also gotten under his skin.
And I was too excited.
"You're losing it, mate. You have officially lost the plot."
Lee Jordan threw his cards down on the floor of the Gryffindor Common Room in disgust. His Exploding Snap deck gave a small, pathetic pop and sizzled out, protesting being abandoned.
Fred ignored him. He was pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace, a piece of parchment clutched in his hand. His hair was messy from running his hands through it, and his eyes had a manic, feverish glint.
"She is brilliant," Fred muttered, mostly to himself, staring at the piece of parchment which contained a detailed, color-coded breakdown of Grace McGonagall's weekly schedule. "She is absolutely, terrifyingly brilliant. She docked fifteen points from me, George. Fifteen! And she did it while basically telling me my pranks were boring. She insulted my craftsmanship!"
George, who was lounging on one of the plush red armchairs, sighed deeply and caught a Chocolate Frog that was trying to make a run for the portrait hole. "Fred, she’s a Prefect. Docking points is literally in her job description. And she’s Ravenclaw. Insulting our intelligence is their favorite pastime. Why are you acting like she just discovered a new element?"
"Because it wasn't just about the points!" Fred snapped, stopping his pacing to glare at his brother. "You weren't there. You didn't see the way she looked at me. She stepped into my space. She touched my robes. She was *flirting* with me, George,right up until the exact second she decided to execute me. It was calculated. It was a power play."
Lee rubbed his temples. "Fred, I say this with all the love in my heart: you are obsessed. You have spent the last six days acting like a creepy Ministry auror. You haven't invented a new Skiving Snackbox product all week. All you talk about is Grace McGonagall. 'Grace looked at me in Potions. Grace transfigured my bird. Grace took points from me.' It’s tragic."
"It's not an obsession," Fred said defensively, resuming his pacing. "It's an investigation. I am proving a theory and I was finally able to cross off step one"
"Your theory is going to get us killed," George pointed out reasonably. "If her mother finds out you've been stalking her daughter..."
"I'm not stalking her!" Fred insisted, though the color-coded schedule in his hand severely undermined his argument. "I'm observing inconsistencies. Look at this." He shoved the parchment into George's face.
George leaned back, crossing his eyes to look at it. "What am I looking at?"
"Her schedule," Fred said, tapping a violently circled section on Thursday and Saturday nights. "She’s a perfect student, right? Prefect. Top of her classes. She studies in the library until exactly nine o'clock every night. But look at this gap. Every Thursday and Saturday, between eleven at night and two in the morning, she vanishes."
"Vanishes?" Lee asked skeptically. "Fred, she's asleep. In her bed. In Ravenclaw Tower. Like a normal human being."
"No," Fred said, his voice dropping into a dark, triumphant whisper. "I don’t think so. A girl that highly strung doesn't just sleep eight hours perfectly. There's a gap in the armor. A blind spot. I just have to find out where she goes."
George exchanged a worried look with Lee. "Mate, you need to sleep. You're sounding like Percy when he was trying to figure out who was leaving cauldrons in the corridors."
Fred ignored them. The fire crackled in the hearth, casting long, dancing shadows across the common room. His mind was racing, connecting invisible dots, way too committed to this war.
'Your pretty act of being a perfect princess will fall' he thought. 'And I will be the one to bring it down'
It was 1:00 AM on a Saturday.
On the fifth floor, Grace McGonagall walked.
She didn't have a destination, exactly. That was the point. The West Tower corridor was out of bounds since third year — a collapsed staircase, a halfhearted reparo that the castle's staff had never gotten around to finishing — which meant it was also completely, reliably empty.
Nobody came here. Nobody had reason to.
She had found it in second year, by accident, running away from nothing in particular — just the weight of the name on her Ravenclaw badge, the portrait that called her 'Minerva's girl' every time she passed the fourth floor. She'd rounded a corner and found silence.
She came back every week.
Tonight she sat on the wide stone ledge of a boarded window and pulled her knees to her chest, looking out through the gap in the planks at the dark grounds below. The lake was perfectly still. The sky was very wide.
Here, she didn't have to be anything.
She exhaled slowly, and the iron corset loosened, just slightly, and she let herself think about absolutely nothing for a while.
She almost managed it.
Almost, except for a very specific shade of red hair that kept drifting, uninvited, across the nothing.
She pressed her forehead against the cold stone and laughed once, very quietly, to herself.
’Don't you dare’ she told herself, and meant it.
Then she went back to looking at the lake.
At the same time, the Gryffindor dormitory was filled with the rhythmic, heavy breathing of teenage boys. Neville was snoring softly; Ron was muttering something in his sleep about Quidditch tactics.
Fred sat cross-legged in the middle of his four-poster bed, the red velvet hangings drawn tightly shut. The only light came from the lumos charm at the tip of his wand, casting a pale, ghostly glow over the worn, folded parchment spread across his blankets.
“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” Fred whispered into the quiet dark.
Ink bloomed across the parchment like a living thing, spreading out into the intricate, sprawling map of Hogwarts. The Marauder's Map. His most prized possession, his ultimate tool of chaos.
Usually, Fred used the map to avoid Filch, or to find secret passages to Hogsmeade, or to track Peeves for a coordinated attack. Tonight, his eyes ignored the dungeons, ignored the staff quarters, ignored the Gryffindor tower completely.
He dragged his wand across the parchment, his eyes scanning the seventh floor. Ravenclaw Tower.
He found the girls' dormitories. He saw the tiny, ink-dotted names of Padma Patil, Lisa Turpin, Mandy Brocklehurst. They were all clustered together, stationary, fast asleep.
But there was no Grace McGonagall.
Fred’s breath caught. He leaned closer, the tip of his nose almost brushing the parchment.
"Where are you?" he muttered.
He began to systematically sweep the castle. The library? Empty, save for Madam Pince's cat. The Great Hall? Empty. The courtyard? Nothing but ghosts.
He moved his wand to the third floor. The Charms corridor. The Trophy Room.
Nothing.
He traced the hidden passages. The one behind the one-eyed witch. The mirror on the fourth floor.
Suddenly, his wand stopped.
There, on the edge of the fifth floor, far away from any normal student routes, moving down a disused corridor that led toward the West Tower... was a single, solitary dot.
Grace McGonagall.
Fred stared at the name, his heart giving a violent, triumphant leap against his ribs.
She wasn't in bed. She wasn't studying. It was one in the morning, and the perfect prefect, the untouchable daughter of the Deputy Headmistress, was sneaking through the castle entirely alone, heading toward a section of the school that had been out of bounds since their third year.
The rush of adrenaline that hit Fred was intoxicating. It was better than pulling off the perfect prank. It was better than scoring a goal in Quidditch. It was the thrill of validation, the ecstatic realization that he was right.
She wasn't a perfect girl. Beneath the manners, beneath the polite smiles and the flawless essays, Grace McGonagall was breaking the rules. And she was doing it so well that no one in six years had ever noticed.
No one except him.
Fred slowly traced the path of her ink dot with his index finger, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face in the darkness of his bed.
The game had just changed. The polite skirmishes in the corridors and the classrooms were over. He had found her crack. He had found the loose thread of her perfect tapestry, and he was going to pull it until the whole thing unraveled.
"Got you," Fred whispered to the empty room.
He extinguished his wand, plunging the bed into darkness, but he didn't sleep. He lay awake for a long time, staring at the canopy, his mind burning with a chaotic, desperate energy.
He had started this wanting to teach a perfect girl a lesson. He had wanted to prove that no one was untouchable — that the pristine Ravenclaw armor was just a costume, that somewhere underneath the perfect essays and the polite smiles and the ‘good morning, Professor’ there was something messy and real and human.
He had been right.
And somehow, being right had only made everything infinitely more complicated.
He stared at the ceiling in the dark, the Marauder's Map still warm in his hand, Grace McGonagall's ink dot burned into the back of his eyes.
He had expected to feel triumphant. He did feel triumphant — but underneath it, quieter and considerably more inconvenient, was something that felt uncomfortably like the beginning of a question he hadn't thought to ask yet.
What was she doing out there?
Not as a prank. Not as a theory. Just — what was she doing, at one in the morning, alone, in a corridor that led to nowhere?
Fred pressed his eyes shut, jaw tight, and told himself very firmly that it was purely strategic curiosity.
Warnings/Tags: Enemies to lovers, Slow burn, Prank wars, Ravenclaw Reader/OC, Smart MC, Fluff, six year, Some slight modifications to the canon or timeline.
A/N: Inspired by "Desire" by Years & Years / "Good Girls" by 5 Seconds of Summer.
Premise: For Fred Weasley, what is out of reach is simply a challenge waiting to be accepted. He lives for chaos, which means he never fell for the school’s biggest illusion: Grace McGonagall. To the rest of Hogwarts, she is the golden student, a saintly legacy who can do no wrong. To Fred, she is a puzzle disguised as a perfect girl, hiding a razor-sharp wit and a dark streak of defiance beneath her Ravenclaw robes. His new theory? Good girls are just bad girls who haven't been caught yet. Fred is ready to tear down her walls to prove it—what he doesn't expect is that Grace doesn't just know how his games work; she plays them better.
Masterlist | the cast | Next Chapter ➡️
The thing about being Minerva McGonagall's daughter was that everyone had already decided who you were before you opened your mouth.
Grace had stopped minding it years ago. If anything, she'd learned to use it — the way Professor Flitwick beamed at her like she personally restored his faith in the next generation, the way prefects from other houses deferred to her in the corridors without being asked, the way her mother's name worked like a passport through doors that stayed shut for everyone else. It cost nothing to smile, say 'good morning, Professor', hand in essays two days early. It bought her nearly everything.
"Miss McGonagall." Professor Sprout caught her on the way out of Herbology, beaming. "Lovely work on the Fanged Geranium essay. I daresay your mother would be proud."
"Thank you, Professor." Grace adjusted her bag strap, gave the smile that came as naturally as breathing by now — warm, a little shy at the edges, good girl stitched into every corner of it. "I had a good teacher."
Sprout laughed like that was the wittiest thing she'd heard all week. Grace let her.
She found Luna by the lake afterward, lying flat on her back in the grass with her shoes off, watching something in the clouds that only she could see. Hermione was already there too, a fortress of books beside her, though she'd abandoned the pretense of reading them in favor of arguing with Luna about whether Wrackspurts were a documented species or "something your father invented to sell more magazines, Luna, honestly."
"He didn't invent them," Luna said serenely. "He just noticed them first. That's different."
Grace dropped down beside them, tugging off her tie, and felt the muscles in her face loosen the way they only did here. No audience. No mother's reputation hanging over the moment. Just grass and the lake and the particular quiet of people who didn't need anything performed for them.
"You look like you survived Sprout's adoration tour," Hermione said, not looking up from her book.
"Barely." Grace flopped backward into the grass. "She told me my mother would be proud. Of an essay about a plant that bites people."
"She's not wrong, though," Luna offered. "Your mother probably would be."
"My mother is proud of everything I do, which is good but— for this?" Grace said. "It’s just an essay. It is not perfect, it was merely competent, but nobody needs to know that."
Hermione finally glanced over, the corner of her mouth twitching. "You're a menace."
"I'm an excellent student," Grace said primly, and the three of them laughed, and for a few minutes there was nothing complicated about being herself.
Across the courtyard, perched lazily on the stone balustrade, Fred Weasley was leaning back on his elbows, a lopsided grin firmly in place. Every time a group of third-year girls walked past, he threw them a dramatic, exaggerated wink, causing a chorus of high-pitched giggles to erupt in their wake.
George snorted from beside him, tossing an apple in the air. "Careful, Freddie. You'll give yourself a permanent facial twitch if you keep that up."
Fred didn't reply. His eyes had already drifted past the giggling Gryffindors, scanning the crowded courtyard until they locked onto a familiar figure walking up from the lake. Grace McGonagall was just stepping onto the stone path, adjusting her Ravenclaw túnic, her dark hair catching the afternoon sun. Even from a distance, her posture radiated an effortless, unshakeable calm.
"Look at that pretty face," Fred murmured, nodding slightly in her direction.
George followed his brother's gaze, his smirk instantly faltering. He reached out and smacked Fred’s shoulder. "Oh, absolutely not. Pull yourself together, mate. That is completely out of line. McGonagall would literally transfigure us into matching footstools and leave us in the staff room to be stepped on."
"That," Fred said, his grin widening as a dangerous, brilliant spark ignited in his eyes, "is exactly what makes it fun georgie; Where the world tells me 'no,' I just hear a 'yes' that needs a bit more coaxing, she is the ultimate 'no'."
George rolled his eyes, letting out a breathy laugh. "Fred, be real. A girl that good? She doesn't even know what a detention looks like.You'd have better luck getting Harry through a quiet year before she even looks at you. She's immaculate. Untouchable."
Fred swung his legs over the balustrade, his gaze tracking Grace until she vanished through the heavy oak front doors.
"That's where you're wrong, Georgie," Fred said, his voice dropping into a tone of quiet conviction. "See, i have a theory about 'good girls.' I don't believe in perfect people. Humans are inherently chaotic and unpredictable—that’s what makes them fun.. There's no way McGonagall's daughter is just a saint. There has to be something more underneath that pristine Ravenclaw armor, and I am going to be the one to prove it."
That same afternoon, Grace was studying in the library.
She felt Fred Weasley before she saw him. That was the thing about the twins — they had a particular gravity to them, a disturbance in the air that arrived a full three seconds before they did, usually accompanied by some kind of low-grade chaos trailing in their wake like smoke.
"McGonagall." Fred dropped onto the bench across from her in the library that evening, swinging one leg over it backward so he was straddling it, arms crossed over the top. George wasn't with him, which was unusual enough that Grace's eyes flicked up from her Arithmancy notes with mild interest.
"Weasley." She didn't put down her quill. "Library voices, or Madam Pince will have you removed before you've finished whatever it is you came to say."
"I came," Fred said, leaning in like he was sharing a state secret, "to ask you something very important."
"How thrilling."
"Is it true," he said, with the gravity of a man about to ask after a death in the family, "that you've never once been late to a single class in six years?"
Grace considered him for a moment — the easy grin, the way he was watching her like he already knew the answer and just wanted to see what she'd do with the question. This was a test. She'd seen him run this exact play on half the school, fishing for a reaction, a blush because she had his attention on her, the tiny crack that told him he'd gotten under someone's skin.
"I was late once," she said evenly. "First year. I got lost looking for the Charms corridor."
"Lost." Fred looked delighted, like she'd handed him a present. "The one time, and it was a map problem. Not even a moral failing. Tragic."
"Devastating," Grace agreed, and went back to her notes.
She heard him huff out something between a laugh and a sigh of mock-defeat, the chair creaking as he stood. "You're no fun, you know that?"
"So I've been told." She didn't look up. "By people far more interesting than you."
A beat of silence. Then, low, almost to himself, like he hadn't quite meant to say it out loud: "We'll see about that."
Grace kept her eyes on her parchment until she heard his footsteps recede, and only then allowed herself the smallest smile — not the one she wore for professors, not the one she wore for Luna and Hermione. A different one. One that didn't get an audience.
'We'll see about that'. Cute.
The frogs happened on Thursday.
Grace opened her bag in the middle of Charms to find it had, at some point between breakfast and second period, been quietly filled with two dozen conjured frogs — small, bright green, and extremely enthusiastic about their newfound freedom. They erupted out across her desk in a chaotic, croaking spray, knocking over her inkwell, sending parchment flying, and causing Professor Flitwick to actually fall backward off his stack of books in surprise.
The classroom dissolved into noise. Someone shrieked. Seamus Finnigan was laughing so hard he'd put his head down on his desk. And across the room, half-hidden behind his own cauldron, Fred Weasley was doing a spectacularly bad job of looking innocent, his shoulders shaking with the effort of not laughing outright.
Grace looked down at the frog currently sitting on her open Charms textbook, blinking up at her with placid amber eyes. Then she looked up, found Fred's gaze already on her, waiting.
She didn't scream. She didn't panic. She picked the frog up gently in both hands, looked it directly in its small idiotic face, and said, with perfect composure, "Well. Hello."
Flitwick, still recovering his dignity from the floor, declared it 'an inventive, if disruptive, display of Transfiguration' and docked five points from Gryffindor with the weary air of a man who had given up being surprised by the Weasley twins sometime around their second year. Grace spent the rest of the period calmly returning frogs to their original — entirely mundane — quill-and-parchment state, while around her the class settled back into something resembling order.
She caught Fred watching her the whole time. Waiting for the crack—The huff of annoyance, the dramatic complaint, anything.
She gave him nothing but a small, polite nod, as if he'd done her a minor favor.
It was, she would later think, the most fun she'd had in weeks.
"You're not even a little annoyed," Fred said afterward, catching up to her in the corridor outside, his long legs eating up the distance she'd tried to put between them. "I turned your bag into a swamp habitat and you said hello to a frog."
"It was a very polite frog." Grace adjusted the strap of her bag, not breaking stride. "Unlike its creator."
"I'm wounded."
"You'll live."
"You really didn't mind?" There was something underneath the teasing now, something that sounded almost like genuine curiosity, like he was turning her over in his head trying to find the seam, the place where the perfect-girl act split open. "Everyone minds. That's rather the point."
Grace stopped walking. Turned to face him properly for the first time, and let herself look at him — really look, the way she usually didn't bother to with people she'd already filed under amusing distraction, no threat. Tall. Restless. Eyes that missed nothing even while the rest of him performed careless.
"Maybe," she said, "you've just never pranked anyone who already knew how the trick worked."
Something flickered across his face — surprise, quickly smoothed over into that easy grin. "Is that a threat, McGonagall?"
"It's Thursday, Weasley." She turned and started walking again, throwing the words back over her shoulder without looking. "I don't make threats on Thursdays."
She didn't have to look back to know he was watching her go, that particular brand of bewildered interest following her down the corridor like a held breath. 'Good', she thought. 'Let him wonder'.
He didn't notice it happen, exactly, which was the worst part.
It was Saturday morning, two days later, and Fred was halfway through getting dressed when he discovered every single one of his shirts had been altered — not destroyed, not even obviously sabotaged, just altered, each one transfigured so that the moment he pulled it over his head, it shrank instantly to a size suitable for an eleven-year-old, sleeves riding up past his elbows, hem stopping well above his navel.
George, already laughing so hard he'd had to sit down on his own trunk, managed to gasp out, "Is — is that the Sleeping Beauty one?"
"It's the same charm," Fred said slowly, holding the ruined shirt up to the light like it might confess something. "Exactly the same. Down to the colour-shift on the collar."
"Who else even knows that charm? You invented it."
"I didn't invent it, I modified it from—" Fred stopped. Went very still.
From a book in the library. A book he'd been reading at a table. A table he'd been sitting at across from a girl who'd glanced over his shoulder once, mildly, the way you'd glance at someone else's crossword, and said nothing but warn him to return it on time and in the correct manner.
She'd been there. Weeks ago. Long enough that he hadn't thought twice about it at the time — hadn't thought of her at all, really, just a Ravenclaw with her nose in Arithmancy, paying him no attention.
Except she had been. She'd clearly been paying exact attention.
There was no proof. There would never be proof — he checked, obsessively, over the following days. No one had seen her near the dormitory. No witnesses, no slipped charm trace, nothing Filch or any professor could ever pin on her, even if anyone thought to look, which they wouldn't, because why would anyone suspect Grace McGonagall, prefect, perfect, good girl, of anything at all.
He found her at breakfast Monday, sitting between Hermione and Luna, laughing at something — easy, unbothered, golden in the morning light coming through the high windows. She glanced up as he approached the Ravenclaw table, an act of social treason in itself, and her expression didn't so much as flicker.
"Weasley." Polite. Pleasant. Utterly composed. "Can I help you?"
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Every accusation he had sounded insane out loud — 'I think you turned all my shirts into children's clothing using a complicated piece of Transfiguration you saw exactly once, weeks ago, over my shoulder, in the library, and never mentioned again' — and she knew it. That was the genius of it. She'd built something he could never prove and never escape.
"No," he said finally. "Just wanted to say good morning."
"How sweet." Her eyes held his for one beat too long — amused, knowing, daring him to say it outright. Then she turned back to Luna, like he'd already left.
Fred walked back to the Gryffindor table in something like a daze, dropping heavily into the seat across from George, who took one look at his face and said, "What happened to you?"
"Nothing," Fred said, but his voice lacked its usual careless bounce. He stared down the length of the Great Hall at the back of Grace McGonagall's dark head, the careless toss of her hair as she laughed at something Luna said.
George leaned across the table, narrowing his eyes. "Don't give me 'nothing.' You look like you just swallowed a Fanged Geranium. Did you talk to her?"
Fred dragged his eyes away from the Ravenclaw table and lowered his voice, leaning in so close that their foreheads nearly touched. "It was her, George. The shirts."
George blinked, his fork halting halfway to his mouth. "What? No way. Grace McGonagall? You're totally wrong, mate."
"Think about it," Fred whispered urgently, the puzzle pieces violently snapping together in his mind. "The charm on the collars. The color-shift. It’s the exact modification I was playing with in the library weeks ago. She was sitting right across from me. She barely even looked up from her Arithmancy notes, but she caught it. She memorized it, and then she executed it flawlessly without leaving a single trace."
"Blimey," George murmured, a mixture of awe and genuine amusement crossing his face. "That's... bloody brilliant, actually. But you can't prove it."
"I know! That’s the genius of it," Fred said, his chest tight with a bizarre, exhilarating rush of adrenaline. "She knows I know, and she's daring me to say it out loud because I'll look completely mental."
A few seats down, Harry and Ron paused their conversation about Quidditch, noticing the intense, conspiratorial whispering between the twins. Ron leaned forward, chewing on a piece of toast. "What are you two plotting now? If it involves Zonko's, Wood said if either of you gets banned from the next match, he'll use the rest of us for Bludger practice."
"Mind your own business, little bro," George said smoothly, without breaking his gaze from Fred. "Just standard family matters."
Harry looked between the twins, his eyes lingering on Fred's unusually hyper-focused expression. "You're planning something big, aren't you?"
"Always, Harry. Always," Fred replied absently, his mind still entirely occupied by the Ravenclaw table. He turned back to George, his voice dropping to a fierce, quiet declaration. "Everyone thinks she's soo good and perfect, that's what she lets them think. But that joke? She's daring me to expose her and look like a lunatic! She knows what she's doing, but not who she's messing with." Fred's gaze was intense, right on the back of the brunette's neck. "I'm telling you, Georgie, by the end of this year, everyone will know that the perfect prefect Grace McGonagall is just a facade."
He had never wanted anything so much in his life.
As the breakfast rush began to clear and students started gathering their bags for morning classes, Fred and George swung their legs over the Gryffindor bench. Before they could make it three steps toward the double doors, a bushy-haired hurricane intercepted them.
Hermione Granger planted herself firmly in their path, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, a fierce glare directed squarely at Fred.
"Weasley," Hermione said, her voice dropping to a sharp, protective hiss. "I know what you're doing."
Fred immediately slipped back into his mask of easy innocence, flashing her a brilliant, careless smile. "Granger! Always a pleasure. To what do we owe the honor of this lovely morning interrogation?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Fred," Hermione snapped, stepping closer so Ron and Harry — who were trailing behind — wouldn't overhear. "I saw you hovering around the Ravenclaw table and I know the joke you played on him, I'm warning both of you: leave her alone. She has enough pressure maintaining the level for next year's exams and being the Professor's daughter without you two trying to drag her into your mindless chaos."
Fred’s eyes gleamed. He leaned down slightly, matching her intensity. "Pestering? I was merely offering a polite morning greeting to a fellow student, Granger. Tell me, as her dear friend... does she always take morning greetings so seriously? Or does she have a history of, say, shrinking people's wardrobes when she's crossed?"
Hermione’s eyes widened by a fraction — a tiny, telltale sign that she knew exactly what he was talking about, even if she'd never admit it. She quickly recovered, narrowing her eyes. "I have no idea what nonsense you're babbling about. Just stay away from her. Grace is not like you, Fred. She doesn't play your games."
She turned on her heel and marched away, grabbing Ron by the arm to drag him along to Ancient Runes.
Fred watched her go, a slow, triumphant grin spreading across his face. He nudged George with his elbow. "Did you see that? Granger knows. They all know."
George shook his head, a mix of amusement and pity in his eyes. "You're completely mad, you know that?"
"Maybe," Fred whispered, looking back one last time toward the corridor where Grace had vanished. "But I've never been more excited for a class in my life."
occupation: prefect, model student, her mother's daughter
appearance
She looks exactly like what everyone expects her to be. That's the point.
"Maybe you've just never pranked anyone who already knew how the trick worked."
who she actually is
Sharper than she lets on. Funnier than she lets on. The kind of person who will say something devastating with a smile so sweet that it takes you a full ten seconds to realize you've been eviscerated.
She is not performing goodness — she genuinely is kind, genuinely does care, genuinely loves her mother even when the weight of her mother's name feels like something she has to carry everywhere she goes. But kindness and edge are not mutually exclusive, and Grace figured that out earlier than most.
the complication
Fred Weasley has a theory.
"There's no way McGonagall's daughter is just a saint."
He doesn't believe in perfect people. He believes in pressure points, in hairline cracks, in the particular satisfaction of finding the seam in something that looks seamless. And he has decided — with the full, reckless confidence of someone who has never once been outplayed — that Grace McGonagall is his greatest challenge yet.
He is not entirely wrong.
He is also not entirely prepared.
playlist inspo
the good girl theory — out now!
fred weasley x oc (grace mcgonagall) — six year — slow burn — enemies to something more complicated than enemies
