Playing With Fire * { Fred Weasley }

Shooting Stars

In the last week of March, the tempests that were plaguing Angelina and Lee seemed to calm. It was a strange sort of thing to observe: it was almost as if they had been struggling to find their natural rhythm and after weeks of bickering and stepping on each other's toes, they realized that they had been in completely different time signatures altogether. Now the squabbles that they had were few and far between and they seemed more at ease with one another and more adept at reading each other's moods and feelings.

Fred seemed unbothered by this development—in fact, I wasn't entirely certain that he'd noticed until I asked him about it.

"Yeah, I noticed." He looked at me with a knowing sort of smirk. "That's why I told you I wasn't putting much stock in one fight."

"Can we please have a conversation about the topic at hand rather than gloating about something you said that turned out to be right?"

"Now where's the fun in that?"

Sometimes, I genuinely wondered if I could get away with hexing him.

Fred had little to add to that particular conversation: simply put, he wasn't worried. His entire approach to this scheme was a unique blend of worry-free optimism and strategic denial that was so baffling to me that it almost felt like a personal insult. There were so many things to worry about in this situation: how could he just carry on like everything was fine? When I asked him this question, he—of course—laughed at me and told me I needed to relax.

In a way, I suppose we balanced each other out—Fred had all the confidence in the world that everything would be fine and I did enough worrying for the both of us.

It seemed, though, that the rule of my life was that every problem that was even temporarily solved required the immediate introduction of a new and entirely unforeseen problem. Angelina and Lee had stopped fighting, which left me free to focus on my new problem: Fred's birthday was the first of April and I had no idea what to get him.

This was partly due to the nature of our relationship. What sort of birthday gift do you get for a fake boyfriend? There weren't any gift-buying guides about this, no helpful articles in Witch Weekly. Initially, I had thought I would choose something utterly benign and traditional—a box of chocolates, maybe a nice quill. But I became less and less convinced of that idea the more I thought about it. The fact was that Fred knew more of my secrets than Bea. Regardless of the fact that our romance was fake, my relationship with him felt close enough to merit a thoughtful gift.

I didn't want to ask Bea about for ideas because I couldn't exactly tell her the whole truth and the whole truth felt like an important component of why I wanted to give him something thoughtful in the first place. But eventually, I realized that the only thing I was coming up with on my own was "how about a really nice sweater?" and it became clear to me that I needed to get out of my own head.

So I asked Bea...and immediately regretted it.

"Well..." she said, waggling her eyebrows, "...a gift doesn't have to be a thing, you know."

I sighed. I ought to have known that she was going to suggest something completely inappropriate, even though we were sitting in the common room where people could theoretically overhear us.

I lowered my voice. "I'm not going to go up to him with a card that says 'unwrap me,' if that's what you're suggesting."

"Why not? That could be fun for both of you."

"We're not at that point yet," I said delicately.

"For the sake of clarity, what point are you referring to precisely? A firm handshake? Sex? A kiss goodnight?"