~ Fred ~
Fred had known that the quidditch world cup was big; he's read articles about it, has even seen pictures of it, but he hadn't expected it to be so. Incredibly. Huge. The stadium is absolutely ginormous, the rows of seats packed with thousands upon thousands of wizards decked out in their favorite team's gear and face paint. It's absolutely magnificent and it's everything he's been waiting for. He should be overjoyed and having the time of his life.
But he's not.
He's not having the time of his life because Evelyn is ignoring him. She'd walked up to their seats with Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, the three of them wearing matching clothes and face paint corresponding with the colors of their favorite quidditch team, and she's stuck to their sides like glue ever since they sat down. She looks magnificent, really, layered up to combat the cold, a striped scarf bundled up around her neck, leaving just her rosy cheeks and pink lips exposed to the cold air. He wants to tell her this, and he tries to, but she always manages to avoid him whenever he tries to approach her, hiding behind one of the girls or straight up walking away from him. He doesn't quite know what to do, but he decides that he'll try to approach her as they all head back to Hogwarts later that day, the school not staying another night at the campground.
He diverts his attention away from Evelyn and to the quidditch game once it begins, successful in his task and immersing himself in the excitement of the game until the winner is announced. Once the game is over, though, his attention is immediately back on Evelyn. He tries to walk with her back to the campground but, of course, she is too fast for him.
He tries to find her while the students pack up their things, hoping to corner her and make her talk to him about the night before, but she isn't inside of her tent when he peeks his head inside. He tries again to talk to her while they wait for the portkeys, but she slips away from him each and every time he tries to walk up to her, even quickly disappearing into thin air one time by latching onto someone else's portkey.
He searches for her when he arrives back at the castle, but according to Ginny, she's already back up at Ravenclaw by the time he's back. It's incredibly frustrating, is what it is, but he tries to keep his cool while he walks back to his bedroom. He knows that he could go chase her down Ravenclaw, as long as they haven't changed the password since he last heard it from Ginny, but cornering her into her bedroom feels wrong after being avoided all day. He'll just have to wait until tomorrow; then he'll seek her out and they can talk about it. Everything.
He sleeps horribly that night, tossing and turning with a head full of thoughts of one particular brunette. He thinks about how she'd looked in his sweater, how her lips had felt against his after so long without getting to feel them, how she'd felt pressed up against him when he woke up that morning. He thinks about everything that the kiss could mean and he thinks about what she must be thinking about right now. He thinks about how she could be thinking of how to avoid Fred some more or how to break up with her boyfriend or how to let Fred down gently or how to drop everything and be single. Maybe she's thinking of switching over to girls for a while. Who knows? She could be thinking anything at the moment, and it's driving him absolutely crazy.
He manages to fall asleep at some point, his eyebrows slowly unfurling as he drops deeper into slumber. He dreams of soft, caramel skin, of deep brown eyes, of long, dark eyelashes, and of that wide, bright smile that could make his stomach flutter even in the worst of times. He still feels giddy with it when he wakes up in the morning, but it only takes all but two seconds for him to realize that it had only been his imagination. He'd do anything to make it a reality.
He gives himself a pep-talk as he walks to breakfast, ready to chase after Evelyn once they finish eating so that they can finally talk, no matter how quickly she tries to run from him. She kissed him. They're going to talk about it.
He chants this mantra as he walks in the dining hall, eyes downcast while he makes his way over to the table, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. It's only when he finally makes it to his seat that he realizes that Evelyn isn't there.
"Where's Evelyn?" he immediately asks.
Ginny doesn't bother swallowing her bite of food before answering. "She went to Beaxbatons," she says loudly through her mouthful of eggs. "Left at an ungodly hour this morning," she says, visibly shuddering at the thought of waking up early.
Fred can feel his stomach drop inside of his body, crashing to the floor with a resounding thud that makes his head spin. "What?" he barely gets out. "She, uh, she did? Why?"
Ginny shrugs and takes another bite of her breakfast, her conversation with her brother be damned. "Went to see Nick."
Fred nods, trying to keep his composure. "Did she say why?"
Ginny gives him an odd look. "Uh, no? Why do you care?"
Fred shrugs. "I dunno, she just didn't mention it before now."
"Maybe she just really missed him," Ginny says with a shrug, not possibly understanding how much the words affect Fred.
Fred nods and sits down to eat, although he doesn't have much of an appetite. He scoops himself a heaping of eggs and grabs a slice of toast, but he can't bring himself to eat it. He can't bring himself to eat when he's thinking about Evelyn reuniting with her boyfriend, probably telling him all about how much of an idiot Fred is and laughing with him about how in love with her he is. They probably laughed all about it after they had one of those storybook kisses once she got there. They're probably holding hands wherever they walk in that stupidly beautiful castle in France, whispering jokes and quiet 'I love you's into each other's ears. It makes him sick just thinking about it. It has always made him sick to think about, but something about her going straight there after kissing Fred makes his blood boil more than normal.
He doesn't listen to Ginny while she tells whatever new story she's on about, he doesn't listen when George tries to analyze more of the quidditch moves from the game yesterday, and he doesn't even notice when everyone gets up to leave. He's too busy thinking about Evelyn and her romantic Sunday morning with Nick.
He spends the rest of the day brooding. He broods while he unpacks his bags, broods while he tries to do his homework, and even takes a walk around the grounds for the specific purpose of brooding some more.
He lets himself feel sorry for himself. It's the only thing that helps ease the sharp, white-hot pain of rejection. The nauseating, gut-wrenching knowledge that Evelyn is never going to truly love him back, not in the way that he wants. That the painfully large amount of all-consuming love that he feels for her will go to waste.
He lets himself hate her a little bit, silently cursing her and her stupid boyfriend. He curses their stupidly perfect secondary school romance, their stupidly perfect height difference, the way they look stupidly good together. That's the worst part of it, really; how perfect they are for each other.
He spitefully kicks rocks and pebbles around while he walks as if hurting inanimate objects will ease his pain any. He kicks them around and thinks about how much he hates Evelyn; he lets every ounce of anger that he has in his body fester and grow into a hot ball of rage in his stomach, just waiting for something to release it.
He thinks that maybe getting some of his anger out during quidditch practice will help, but he's proven wrong. His frustration only builds throughout practice, growing with each missed quaffle and slow movement on his broom. He's too distracted to play his best, he knows that, but it doesn't stop him from getting unbearably angry each time he makes another mistake, the errors seeming to get worse and worse as practice continues.
By the time practice is over, he's pretty sure that everyone has noticed his sour mood, and he hopes that he's radiating off enough 'don't bother me' energy to keep people away as they all fly down to the ground. He just wants to go back to his room, shower, and climb into bed. He wants to just take a sleeping potion and blackout for a while with no thoughts of Evelyn plaguing his mind anymore.
He isn't unapproachable enough, apparently, going by the way he's called over by a group of some of his friends on his way back to castle along with a few other guys from the team. It's the last thing he wants to do, really, talking to those guys, but he just plasters on a fake, cocky smile and makes his way over to them. They stand just outside the castle doors, tucked behind a corner created by a pillar and the brick wall so that they're partially hidden from plain view.
They're a bunch of assholes, really, the guys he walks over to. They're mostly seventh years like him, some Gryffindors, some Slytherins, and a couple of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. Ginny has always called them the "Magical Douchebags" and has always ragged on him for being friends with them, but Fred has never been able to be anything but nice to them. He always finds himself trying to impress them, putting on his most confident and borderline asshole persona, no matter how much he inwardly cringes each time he's with them.
They're the cool guys. That's all it really is. And Fred is a part of them.
"Weasley!" they cheer in deep voices as he approaches, looking at him with an array of smiles.
He smiles at all of them in return, trying to push down his more unpleasant emotions for the moment. "Hey, what's up?"
Jared, one of the Slytherins, says, "We were just watching your quidditch practice."
Great, he thinks to himself. They saw that.
"What the fuck was that, dude?" Jared asks through a laugh that feels like it's pricking Fred's brain with needles. "You sucked ass, man."
He laughs, despite the bitterness building in his stomach. "Yeah. Having an off day, I guess."
"Bet he's just all lovesick over that new girl," Matthew, a Gryffindor from the year below him, adds on with a sneer.
"Which girl?" someone else asks.
"Evelyn," Jared says, eyes full of mirth and solely trained on Fred, seeming to anticipate the reaction that Fred will have to her name. Matthew just looks back with confusion, revealing that her very much does not know who Evelyn is. "She was wearing a red dress at the party last week? The one with the ass."
This seems to ignite a memory in Matthew, one at which he nods with a smirk at.
Fred clenches his fists at his sides, his fingernails creating indents in his palms. "Nah man, I'm just tired."
"Sure," Jared says, laughing and looking at some of the other guys as if Fred is just so amusing. "You've been chasing after her all year, Fred. It's embarrassing. Don't you bring her flowers all the time and shit? And write her little love notes?"
A few guys laugh at Fred, their judging voices filling his ears. He manages to give a smile, to act like he's laughing at himself along with them, but he can feel the embarrassment of being laughed at trail up his spine. The terrible feeling of being emasculated.
"And the worst part," Jared continues, looking to the other guys like he has a secret that they all want to hear. "Is that she has a boyfriend. He's all wrapped around her finger, does as this shit for her, all while she's giving it up for someone else. Isn't that a bit pathetic, Fred?"
Everyone around him laughs, a few guys patting his back with faux sympathy.
He's "joking", Fred can tell, but he can see the glint of something darker in Jared's eyes. He's always had some kind of problem with Fred, Merlin knows why, and Fred can tell that he's just trying to get a rise out of him. It doesn't make it any easier to brush it off, though, not when there are so many people laughing right at him, agreeing with Jared when he calls him pathetic.
He bites his tongue, though. He can control himself enough to not react. He laughs along with them again, a bit of bitterness slipping into it.
"I mean, c'mon, Fred," Jared continues, because he apparently doesn't know when to stop. "You're doing all of this stuff and not even getting a good lay out of it? Have you really dropped that low? What happened to the player we all used to know?"
A few of the other guys chime in, voicing their agreement and adding their own playful insults, basically just chopping off his balls right in front of him. It makes him dizzy, hearing all these things that are tearing down his carefully crafted image brick by brick. He can't help what he says, really. He needs to get this weak, pitiful image of himself out of their minds.
"Nah, guys. You've got it all wrong," he says with his widest possible grin, channeling every ounce of cockiness that he has. "I just got bored, yeah? I burned through all the hot girls in school and I wanted a challenge. A hot girl with a boyfriend is definitely a challenge, innit? Wanted to see if she was desperate enough for my dick to ditch the guy, maybe get a bit of an ego boost."
He hates the words that fall out of his mouth, but now the guys are laughing with him, looking at him with that familiar, intoxicating respect that only comes when you've got the highest body count in the group (which he does), and it feels amazing. It's not like he can have them looking at him any differently, can he?
"So, did you?" A Ravenclaw boy whose name he doesn't know asks. "Get in her pants?"
Fred grimaces and shakes his head disappointedly. "Sadly, no. Turns out she's just a cocktease who's really good at leading people on and giving blue balls."
They're all really laughing with him now, nodding along and quitting with their insults. It feels good in a way that makes him feel guilty, the respect that he gets solely by acting like an asshole.
He can't help but add a final insult to take it home. To convince them all that he's no pussy. "I mean, she's a waste of time, guys. She's not that hot."
A few of the guys around the circle voice their disagreement, telling him just how hot they think she is, which. He hadn't really known just how agreed-upon Evelyn's hotness apparently is until now.
He shakes his head at them. "No point wasting energy on a bitch who keeps her legs shut."
It's probably the worst thing he's ever said about anybody in his life. He just knows that it will come back to bite him in the ass, he can feel the fear already start to build inside of his body.
It comes back to haunt him sooner than he expected though. That much he knows when the air around him shifts.
He's not sure if it's because the guys aren't laughing anymore, or because a few of them have their eyes trained on something behind him, or because Jared's staring behind him with a look that's far too smug, or just because he can feel it, but he knows that Evelyn is standing right behind him. He knows that she's standing right behind him and has heard some amount of what he's just said, most likely the worst of it.
So it's not really a surprise when he turns around to see Evelyn standing there, but it doesn't make the immediate regret any better.
The look on her face makes everything in his body turn to ice, freezing all of the blood inside of him. Her eyebrows are furrowed and her mouth hangs open with disbelief like she can't believe that the man standing in front of her is in fact Fred. Her entire face screams disappointment, and it's the worst thing that Fred's ever seen before. He wishes more than anything to reverse time, to take back every single word that he's just said. But he can't.
"Ev, please, don't-" he starts, but she's already taken off in the other direction, quickly walking back towards the castle. "Ev! Wait!" he calls and starts to chase after her, the faint sounds of the guys laughing at him fading out behind him. He couldn't care less at the moment.
Evelyn starts to run when he does, not letting Fred get any closer to her than he already is. He's never given her enough credit for how fast she is, for she's quickly slipping inside of a door to the castle when another student walks out of it, disappearing inside of the undoubtedly crowded hallway. He fights his way through the sea of students in hopes to find her when he enters the castle, but he can't find her.
He pauses in the middle of the hall and runs a hand through his hair, knowing that he's just royally fucked absolutely everything up.