Playing With Fire * { Fred Weasley }

Tangled

I have a bad habit of forgetting my own birthday.

This is partly because of my family. The Lewises are far more invested in Christmas, which is always an elaborate affair that Dad would happily stretch from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day if Mum would let him. Birthdays are much more subdued—we'll have cake and presents, but nothing elaborate or extravagant.

At Hogwarts, there was the added complication of timing. My birthday always fell during the most chaotic and academically challenging time of the year. Final exams were no longer an idea that was tucked away safely in the distant future, but a looming presence that consumed most of my waking thoughts (to say nothing of the homework that I had in addition to final exams). I had no shortage of schoolwork and studying to keep me occupied; the fact that I'd aged another year shrank to something almost inconsequential.

My seventeenth birthday was poised to be particularly forgettable simply owing to the fact that I had a lot more going on in my life than usual: two dastardly plans (one of which involved a fake relationship), homework, studying for exams, prefect responsibilities—there was a lot. And as luck would have it, complications with all of those things happened to converge on the week leading up to my birthday.

The Friday before my birthday saw me grappling with the growing realization that solving the riddle of Bea and George was a lot more complicated than I had originally anticipated, largely owing to the fact that I was tangled up in a web of things I could not say. You might think that I'd be used to that, given the fact that I'd essentially been living a lie since December, but the situation with Bea and George felt decidedly different. Much of my fake relationship with Fred was out of my control—its success largely depended on the actions and reactions of other people. We had rolled a ball at a set of bowling pins: now we had to wait and see where the pins would fall.

In contrast, the situation with Bea and George had a clear solution: either George needed to talk to Bea or someone else needed to give Bea a nudge in the right direction. Both of these things were within my power to bring about: I could tell George to talk to Bea and if he didn't, I could nudge her in the right direction. It was quite simple.

Unfortunately, this simple solution had one rather significant obstacle and his name was Fred Weasley.

After a few weeks of absolutely no progress at all, the Charms lesson is what finally did it for me. I spent most of that lesson watching George practice charms of the non-magical variety on Bea, who reacted to the whole thing with the sort of eye-rolling, sarcastic sort of patience she'd perfected over the last several months, further confirming my suspicion that she had no idea that George was flirting with her.

It was utterly sweet and completely maddening.

As soon as the bell rang, my hand closed around Fred's wrist. "I need to speak with you. Privately."

He wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Privately, eh?"

I rolled my eyes and released his wrist as I began collecting my things. "I'm going to ignore that."

He responded with an exaggerated and swoony sort of look. "No, I imagine you'll go all weak-kneed if you think about it for terribly long. I'm quite dreamy, you know."

I picked up his textbook from his desk and shoved it into his arms. "I'm ignoring it because I'd rather not go on trial for murder and I almost certainly will because I don't have time to put together a proper alibi." I tugged at the sleeve of his jumper. "Come on, let's go."

He sighed. "Have you learned nothing from me? Always have an alibi and an exit strategy."

"Fred, I do not have time to argue with you about my planning failures in your hypothetical murder, which is becoming less hypothetical by the second."