moritap!

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."

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.

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."

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"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

You had always shared a special relationship with the Olo'eyktan's eldest son. The golden boy. The perfect, brave warrior who never lost his composure in front of anyone.

In front of anyone, except you.

In front of anyone, except you.

You had known him for as long as you could remember. Your births had been so close that only two days separated you—him being the eldest, of course, a fact he used to justify ordering you around since you both learned to walk. While the entire clan saw him as a prodigy, the man who would one day bring glory to the Sullys, you saw a completely different story: an insufferable, arrogant blue menace who never, ever stopped trailing behind you just to ruin your day.

Your mother had died giving birth to you. Norm raised you the best he could, amidst research folders and a clumsy but honest love, and you grew up into a curious scientist wandering Pandora, marveling at everything you found.

The Sullys always welcomed you with open arms, ever since you were just a little girl with an oxygen mask stumbling through the roots of Kelutral. They said your soul wasn't corrupted like the rest of the Sky People. That the Great Mother, inadvertently, had given you a piece of her spirit as well.

And Neteyam... ah. Neteyam was your daily torment.

Human liver can regenerate, what kind of witchcraft is that?

When you were kids, long before you became the disaster you were now, you spent all your time together. Neteyam loved teaching you about his culture, accompanying you, watching over your safety, and simply laughing for hours, and—of course-arguing with you until one of you stormed off.

"That's a lie," Neteyam said, arms crossed and scowling as only an eight-year-old boy can scowl.

"It's not a lie, you silly tawtute," you replied, shoving his shoulder. "The human liver regenerates. If you cut a piece off, it grows back! My dad told me the other day!" you defended, pouting your lips and crossing your arms, offended at the idea of him doubting your words.

"That makes no sense. You humans are so squishy and breakable. If I cut a piece off you, you'd just bleed and cry."

"I would not cry! It's science, Neteyam!"

"Sounds like sky witchcraft," Lo'ak chimed in from the branch above, swinging his legs. "I wouldn't let anyone cut anything off me just to prove it."

"Nobody asked you, Lo'ak! And Neteyam, you're just jealous humans have magic organs and you don't!"

Neteyam looked at you with that mixture of disbelief and fascination that only you managed to pull out of him—a look his brothers never saw because they never stayed still long enough to notice it. It was that day—you at nine years old, spouting random facts about human bodies just to show off what you had learned—that he decided he needed more. That he wanted a new fact every day, without fail, as if your head were a treasure chest he intended to empty completely.

He didn't know yet that this chest would keep him trapped for the rest of his life.

Who's the coolest now, huh?

As you grew up, you developed the terrible—according to Neteyam—habit of rambling and filling the silence with whatever information or conversation topic you could handle.

This habit had grown in you as the distance and feelings between you two began to shift. By age of fifteen, he was already turning into the powerful and promising warrior the clan expected, and that brought a certain halo of... impossibility and annoyance.

He was becoming into the powerful, muscular warrior the clan expected. And with that growth came a suffocating arrogance.

He knew he was good. He knew he was attractive. And he made sure you knew it, constantly invading your space just to watch you fluster. It felt as if he were slipping out of your reach, transforming into a leader while you were just the human girl in the dirt.

It felt as if he were already slipping out of your reach. That bothered you, but assertive communication wasn't your strong suit—not that it was his either; you were both cowardly idiots—so that feeling of him slipping through your fingers was what created these sharp exchanges between you.

As if the more you annoyed each other, the more you could drown out the noise of your own fears and doubts.

Right now, you were with Lo'ak, Kiri, Tuk, and Spider, playing in the river. Rather, they were playing, and you were trying to collect vegetation samples for your dad.

It was a quiet day; the breeze slightly warm, the sun bathing both blue and human skin.

Almost perfect.

Almost, because there was the future chief with his stupid, cocky smile and his bow in hand, watching you trip and get soaked in the river.

According to him, he had gone fishing. His siblings firmly believed it was just another excuse to be in your orbit.

Stupid, obvious Neteyam.

"Wow! Sky girl, do your human feet have no balance?" A petulant smirk plastered on his face.

His arms crossed over his chest, his eyes trailing down your soaked clothes, lingering entirely too long on where the wet fabric clung to your skin as he let out a laugh that —besides when he was with you—was rarely heard. "You humans are clumsy, always tripping in the forest as if you were just taking your first steps," he continued, his feet moving agilely between the rocks.

Damn blue alien, you thought in annoyance, the heat rising up your neck to settle in your cheeks. You were embarrassed.

"Hey bro! Thanks for the compliment," Spider looked at Neteyam with exaggerated, fake offense, splashing a wave of water that the older boy gracefully dodged.

"My bro is right! You guys are clumsy and fragile; we're way more cool," Lo'ak backed up his brother, and Kiri just snorted, muttering something about 'fighting over insignificant things.'

"Actually!" you started, a little smirk forming as you stepped out of the river. "Did I tell you that our skin completely renews itself every month?"

Your tone was arrogant, childish, as Spider stood next to you, throwing an arm over your shoulders in a show of support. Neteyam's smile vanished. He stared at Spider's arm on your shoulder, his jaw ticking, his tail lashing behind him sharply. Years later, he would describe that bitter feeling that sporadically invaded him as having one constant trigger: Spider being too close to you.

"The cells in our skin are constantly changing, that means we're going to have like a thousand different skins in our lifetime, unlike you guys who will only have one!" You stuck your tongue out mockingly, Spider imitating you while an amazed Lo'ak practically tackled you both to examine your skin up close.

"Yeah! Who's cooler now?" your human companion bragged.

Your gaze flicked to Neteyam; his eyes were already on you. For a moment, you thought you had managed to shut him up, your chest swelling with pride.

"At it again with the habit of babbling the mental encyclopedia in your head?" he accused, stepping closer, intentionally using his massive height to shadow both you and Spider. He grabbed your arm, roughly pulling you a step away from the human boy, his large fingers completely engulfing your bicep. "That is disgusting."

He examined your wet skin, though his eyes,his instincts and powers of observation were admirable. He knew the exact effect those words had on you; of course he did, after all, he always studied you.

Like a hunter with his prey.

The effect was immediate: the pride in your chest deflated as you inhaled to fire back a comment good enough to even the score.

"It's biology," you replied flatly.

"It's disgusting and biology," he conceded, and you laughed, though you tried to cover it with a huff. Then a cocky smirk returning in his face as he looked down at your chest, then up to your eyes. "Though I suppose some parts of your biology are... acceptable."

"Pig!" you hissed, shoving him away but laughing with your red cheeks .

To him, that was a victory—one that allowed him to laugh with you.

From the bank, Kiri rolled her eyes so hard they almost got stuck in her head. "Eywa, give me strength so I don't kill my stupid brother for being a pig"

Nobody knew, not even the two of you, that his hand on your arm would be the first of a thousand excuses he would find to touch you.

For having so much attitude, you're still tiny.

As the years went by, your dynamic had completely reversed.

Before, you were the one looking to respond aggressively or sarcastically to his observations, to that particular way he had of addressing you that you didn't know how to handle.

But now uou spent all your time running from him, preferring to hang out with Kiri or, to his absolute violent disgust, Spider. That led to where you were now: him seeking you out, provoking you, cornering you.

And he had studied you well enough to know exactly how to make you look at him.

He needed it.

You were exhausted by his presence; he was like a shadow tracking your every step.

The second you stepped out of the lab, you saw him waiting, leaning against a tree with that smile you hated because he reserved it only for you.

"Sky girl! Finally, you're out. What could possibly take you so long in there?" he asked, amused, leaning down to your eye level.

That was another change as the years passed. As you both grew, well—he grew a lot more than you. His body had formed into that of a fierce warrior: broad, strong shoulders, muscles chiseled from the effort of many moons of hunting and training.

You had developed too, of course, but human height would never compare to a Na'vi's. And you particularly weren't a very tall human to begin with. You had developed curves that completely bypassed the slender frames of the Omaticaya females.

Neteyam, with his hormone-addled brain, was utterly obsessed. He couldn't help but stare at the way your chest pressed against your garments, fuller and heavier than any Na'vi woman's.

"Oh, powerful warrior, son of the Olo'eyktan. To what do I owe the disgrace—I mean, the privilege—of your escort to the village? Don't you have actual royal duties to attend to?" Your voice dripped with the edge and sarcasm he was waiting for.

God, he loved seeing you so annoyed by just his presence. So small, and yet so fierce. Wasn't it just entertaining?

A small laugh escaped his lips as he shook his head. His long arms reached out, poking you, touching you, bothering you however he could: flicking hair into your face, stepping in front of you, gently tugging at one of the braids Tuk had done for you a few nights ago.

He was a nightmare.

Though, at the same time, he cleared the leaves from your path and made sure you didn't trip when you were too busy yelling at him to watch your step.

After a few minutes of silence—one that he read as your final moment before losing your composure—he launched his final attack.

"You're even smaller now; you'd be a snack for any creature out here, don't you think? You're lucky to have such a powerful warrior by your side." The cocky smile on his face was so obvious.

And painfully sexy.

Though you tried not to think about that. Instead, you let out a groan of pure exasperation and pinched the bridge of your nose, glaring at him from the corner of your eye.

"In the morning, I am exactly one centimeter taller than I am at night," you said, your voice laced with weariness, your brain short-circuiting from the battle between thinking how stupidly good he looked being an idiot and wanting to murder him for being an idiot. "The cartilage between the bones compresses during the day."

Neteyam raised an eyebrow curiously and looked you up and down with a smile that was starting to become that smile—the one that years later would make your blood boil for entirely different reasons than anger.

"One centimeter wouldn't save you from me or any creature out here," he pointed out with amusement. His eyes glided over your body; you were wearing the Omaticaya clothes his mother had made for you. The gleam in his golden orbs darkened. Leaning in, he completely blocked your path, his face coming dangerously close to yours. His enormous body cast a heavy shadow over you. "You are completely defenseless to my whims, Tuteite a-fngap. Though... it seems you've grown in other places. Your human clothes look like they're struggling to contain you."

Your breath hitched in your throat for a second, a sudden heat swirling in your stomach. But the stupid, smug smile on his face snapped you out of it, replacing the heat with avid fury.

Your face went completely crimson. "You arrogant, perverted freak!"

And once you started, you couldn't stop.

"Defenseless?! I could blind you with a single rock before your giant, oversized ego even processes what happened!" you snapped roughly, shoving both your hands against his solid chest, though he didn't budge an inch. You let out a frustrated sound, swatting at him with all the force your human frame could muster. "Back off, you giant blue tree-hugger! I don't need you or your inflated sense of superiority!"

Neteyam didn't even try to defend himself; he just stood there, taking your wild hits with a wide, breathtaking grin. "For being so small, you are incredibly fierce," he purred, absolutely eating up your anger.

You were still ranting at him when you reached the village, the people around you watching you bicker once again, entirely accustomed to the spectacle. Though it was mostly you arguing, while Neteyam smiled like he had just hunted down a Thanator.

"I wonder if you're this loud when you're pinned on your back." He casually remarked when you calmed down, stepping back into the lion's den.

You let out a frustrated shriek, storming off toward the village as he followed behind, completly pleased

"He is exactly where he wants to be," Lo'ak declared to Spider, shaking his head. His brother turned into a complete idiot when it came to you.

Does that mean your heart beats for me?

He started following you. Not in a subtle way, not at all—Neteyam Sully didn't know how to do anything subtly—but appearing right when you were trying to have a moment of peace, carrying your sample equipment, offering to hold things you didn't need him to hold.

You had been arguing for exactly twenty minutes about how your body was too noisy to go unnoticed in the forest; your breathing, your footsteps, your heart having a demanding rhythm—that's what Neteyam had said, although it came out with more appreciation than expected.

He had started the argument, and somehow—as always—you matched his stubbornness with your own, claiming there were things that had nothing to do with your ability to go unnoticed.

"Women's hearts beat faster than men's!" you blurted out, trying to justify why you were panting while he wasn't even breaking a sweat.

"Is yours beating fast right now? Because of me?" he asked, stepping closer. He used his bulk to back you against a thick tree trunk, his hands resting on the bark on either side of your head.

You knew that way of moving; that way of cornering something he thought was going to run away. And he wasn't wrong: where you saw an opening, you would flee.

"It's beating fast because I want to kill you! ,but the scientific explanation is that the female heart is smaller and has to beat faster to compensate for blood flow" Your words came out shaky, nerves crackling across your skin under his gaze, which practically screamed trouble.

"Mmh." He didn't sound convinced at all. "It's still because of me. If you want to kill me, it's because I provoke a strong emotion in you."

Kiri, who happened to be walking by carrying a basket of fruit, stopped to observe the scene with a raised eyebrow.

"Bothering her again?"

"I'm just learning about the bodies of the Sky People," he said with completely feigned innocence.

"Go learn somewhere else," you retorted, shoving him, even though your heart—damn traitor—was indeed beating incredibly fast just for him.

All for me?

By the time he was seventeen, it wasn't just comments anymore. It was shared training sessions, verbal spars that ended in physical practice fights, and stares he didn't even bother to hide.

You had both grown up. You had developed into something he clearly hadn't anticipated: more curves, more woman, more human in a way that he, with his half-blood veins, noticed with a thinly veiled hunger. You had developed into a human woman, with curves that completely bypassed the slender, lithe frames of the Omaticaya females. Neteyam, with his hormone-addled teenage brain, was fascinated. He couldn't help but stare at the way your chest pressed against your garments, fuller and heavier than any Na'vi woman's. He was mesmerized by your soft skin, its unique colors, and he found himself growing increasingly daring.

He trained you—or at least that's how you two justified the physical aggression—in hand-to-hand combat. And every time, you ended up too close, spending too much time on the ground, his weight over yours, and neither of you in a hurry to get up.

"You're distracted, Pandora. Thinking about me, maybe?" he asked with a lopsided grin. Both of you were circling each other, waiting to see who would attack first.

The nickname had started a while ago. One day, he simply started calling you that and never stopped. You didn't know how to feel about it; he was naming you after the very earth they inhabited. What did that mean? You didn't know, but just in case, you always reacted by baring your teeth in a hiss, acting like a true Na'vi.

To Neteyam, the nickname suited you perfectly: his Pandora.

His father had told him long ago about what the humans warned him when he first arrived on the planet: that it was an incredibly beautiful but dangerous and wild land, and once it caught you, it rarely let you go.

You had never let him go; your ghost haunted his mind constantly, all his impulses directed at you. And of course you were dangerous and wild: you never backed down despite your human fragility, acting as if you weren't even aware you weren't Na'vi.

Plus, he had heard Norm talk about an Earth myth—something about Pandora's box. He didn't remember much, but he knew the essence: a box that, when opened, unleashed irreversible and uncontrollable consequences.

Eywa knew he had no self-control around you.

Wasn't it a perfect nickname?

You lunged at him, aiming a strike at his ribs. He dodged gracefully, using your momentum against you as he swept a leg out. But you used your smaller size to your advantage, ducking beneath his arm and trying to tackle him around the waist. Neteyam was too fast. With a swift pivot, he grabbed you, twisting you around until your back hit the mossy ground. Before you could even blink, his heavy frame was hovering over yours, his large hand easily encircling both of your wrists and pinning them above your head.

He shifted his weight, pressing down just enough to make you hyper-aware of the stark difference in your sizes.

The tension was heavy and thick in the humid air, settling right in your chest.

"You've got pink spots again," his tone was breathless, his eyes fixed on the blush spreading across your cheeks and down your chest; he found it absolutely fascinating, his pupils were blown wide.

"It's because of the accumulated blood flow... Did I tell you that when—when you blush..." your voice was agitated, trembling, your brain making a monumental effort to think of something other than how attractive his body was and how strong his muscles felt pressing against you. "...the stomach turns red too?"

That seemed to distract him.

"Humans blush from their stomachs?" he asked, raising an eyebrow before a slow, deliberate smile took over his features. "Are you blushing for me, Pandora? Are you hot right now?"

"No, it's a physical reaction. The adrenaline from fighting dilates my blood vessels, which causes more blood flow; in some areas, it's more noticeable because of the amount of veins." You reacted fast, too fast for it to be natural. You tried to squirm out from under him, but his grip tightened.

He shifted his hips down, grinding subtly against you, drawing a sharp gasp from your lips.

"Ah, really? That sounds like it is because of me." He shifted closer, entirely too conscious of his own height and the stark difference between your bodies. "Don't worry, Pandora, we have that in common: my blood pumps much harder through my body, especially in certain places, when I have you beneath me."

Your heart skipped a beat and your palms sweated. Your eyes drifted down his body toward his loincloth unconsciously, your brain a chaotic mess wondering what exactly he meant by that.

The smug little smirk on his face answered for itself; once again, he was playing with you.

"If your blood alters for me, it's because you're invading my personal space, you cocky idiot!" you shrieked, trying to break free from his grip.

He let you go, rolling off you with his hands raised in surrender.

"Mmh." You braced yourself for his response. "I can invade more than your personal space if you wish." The daring wink he threw your way made you gasp in shock.

The audacity! By Eywa, this boy had an ego bigger than all of Pandora!

"Neteyam!"

You scrambled away before things advanced to a place you wouldn't be able to escape with your dignity intact. Spider, who was training nearby, let out a loud laugh, immediately earning a death glare from Neteyam. He hated when the human was around when it came to you.

"What, bro?" Spider said, holding his hands up. "You two are always 'aggressively flirting,' it's entertaining to watch!"

"Shut up, skxawng." Neteyam hissed instantly, his playful mood shattering the second Spider spoke. "Keep your eyes to yourself."

You bloomed like the most exotic flower.

For a brief moment—when people saw you two walking through the forest pathways smiling and laughing—everyone thought your hearts had finally opened up and you were at peace.

Little did they know that this happiness was actually the product of a shared goal: making fun of everyone else.

Sitting side by side on a thick branch, you were deep in conversation.

"Did you see Kiri trip over that root yesterday?" you giggled, covering your mouth. "She looked so majestic right up until she ate dirt."

Neteyam chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrated against your shoulder. "That's nothing. Remember when Lo'ak tried to impress a girl by jumping from the ikran, and he belly-flopped so hard then he smacked the vines?"

"He looked like a startled tapirus!" you wheezed, wiping a tear from your eye. "And Spider running for his life from that hexapede last week..."

In that moment, Neteyam thought about how your laugh had become more refreshing over the years. More melodic. More beautiful. Or maybe he was just always so busy making you angry that he rarely had the luxury of hearing you laugh like this. He would love to see you this happy and carefree on his regular basis.

As your laughter died down, you looked at him with a sweet gleam in your eyes, though a slightly wicked smile remained. "Do you remember," you said softly, your legs dangling off the branch, "when you were little and followed me everywhere? Before you turned into... this." You gestured to all of him with your finger.

"Into 'this' what?" he asked, looking back at you, his eyebrows furrowing and his tail flicking like an offended child. "Excuse me, sky girl, but I remember you following me," he accused, giving you a gentle shove, his warm skin pressing against yours.

"Into this cocky disaster of a man, forest boy."

He laughed, low, almost to himself, amazed by your audacity to completely ignore his accusation. For once, he decided to let it go. He was too captivated by how the Pandoran sunset caught the golden light in your hair.

You looked like ethereal, a flower of the sun.

"Children grow faster in the spring, did you know that?" Your voice was soft, your eyes lost on the horizon, entirely oblivious to his intense stare.

"You humans have seasons of the year just to grow?" he questioned in a low tone, knowing that question would unleash your scientific babble. He liked that about you: how much you talked, how your voice filled the silence— Even if he was terrible at showing it, making it seem like the exact opposite.

"No, silly," a nasal laugh escaped your mouth as you shook your head. "A child's growth in spring and summer increases by 50% due to greater exposure to vitamin D, an increase in physical activity, and better rest patterns," you explained, swinging your feet and watching the people walk beneath the great tree. "If you think about it, it's like we bloom just like plants," you added playfully, shrugging.

"Then you bloomed like a tsawksyul," he commented casually, as if his words reached his mouth before his brain could filter them.

The tsawksyul was known as the sun lily; a plant often used in personal decorations, beautiful, delicate, and it stood out wherever it was placed. Neteyam thought that, just like you, the plant looked most beautiful when bathed in sunlight.

You didn't know what to say. When you turned to him, his eyes were already on you. He was always looking at you first.

You cleared your throat, shrugging, your voice dropping an octave, entirely calm. "It's nice sometimes... to be like the old days. When we did more than just be around each other. All day. Without fighting."

"Now we fight all the time," he commented distractedly.

"Now it's different," you conceded, your heart pounding hard against your ribs.

His voice dropped lower, more serious than you expected. "But I don't think it's worse, Pandora."

You had no idea how to respond to that. Luckily—or unfortunately—Tuk came running over screaming something about an escaped direhorse, and the moment shattered before either of you had to admit to anything.

One more of the family, even if you are an alien.

You were eating dinner in the Sully family circle. The atmosphere was lively as everyone laughed and celebrated the great hunt they had brought in today. Neteyam had been the star, bringing down game that the clan hadn't been able to catch in a long time.

At twenty years old, he was already a star warrior; he had achieved everything expected of him and more. Impressive, you admitted, because you knew the effort and sacrifice behind it all.

While Jake tried unsuccessfully to get his kids to stop yelling at each other over stupid things, you decided to deploy your best weapon: curiosity.

"Did I ever tell you that humans are born with around three hundred bones?"

Instantly, three pairs of eyes snapped to you, stopping their fight. Kiri, Lo'ak, and Tuk waited for you to continue.

Jake smiled in relief, shooting you a look of significant gratitude, and even found himself chuckling at how interested his wife suddenly looked.

"As we grow, humans end up fusing our bones together until we only have two hundred and six." You gave the explanation and took a sip of water, refreshing yourself.

"That's ridiculous," Neteyam said, sitting right next to you. Lately, he seemed bolder in seeking you out. He had abandoned his friends and promising prospects to sit down just to bother you.

He was crazy, that was for sure.

Crazy for you.

"Why start with more to end up with less?" he frowned, displeased.

Suddenly, the whole family launched into a debate about it, with you becoming the target of their rapid-fire questions.

Jake crossed his arms, watching his son look at you with a gleam he recognized perfectly well. The exact same gleam he had whenever he looked at Neytiri. To Jake, you were an enormous blessing, as if Eywa had handed his son his mate from birth, giving him the chance to never walk this world alone.

All that was missing was for the two of you to stop wanting to kill each other and tell each other how much you loved each other. Because it was obvious, painfully obvious.

"It's evolution, not intelligent design," you replied to Tuk with a bit more softness than the others.

"You humans are weird," Lo'ak mused, genuinely perplexed. "You melt bones, but you call us aliens. What sense does that make?"

"You guys are aliens! Not us!" Tuk responded brightly, thrilled to be participating in an adult conversation.

"Well, technically we are, sweetie," Jake said, affectionately stroking her braids as the little girl groaned, earning a general laugh from the table.

"But we are on Pandora! The aliens here are them!" Neteyam protested, pointing at you with a piece of meat.

"Your son is pointing at me with food, Jake," you complained with feigned indignation, pouting your lips.

"Neteyam, do not point at the girl with your food," Neytiri said without even looking, as if it were the hundredth time she had to say that exact phrase—it was.

Kiri, sitting next to Spider, whispered, "I bet you some berries that by the next courtship moon, those two will be together."

"Deal," Spider whispered back, amused.

Evolution doesn't work like that!

Sometimes it was impossible not to fall into that fragile, delicate calm that allowed you two to talk without wanting to rip each other's heads off. Apparently, today was one of those days. Neteyam was too interested in what you were saying to look for ways to make you mad.

"Wait. Wait." Neteyam sat up completely straight. "Are you telling me that before you looked like you do now, you were like monkeys?" he asked, trailing a long finger down your bare arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps.

You held back a laugh; his face was... well, distinctly different from that stupid, cocky smile he usually wore. He looked like a curious child.

"Technically, yes. Well, not monkeys exactly, but a common ancest—"

"What is a monkey?" he interrupted with intense interest, his tail flicking restlessly behind him as he leaned toward you.

"It's like... a smaller, hairier primate."

He stared at you, processing the information.

"And does that mean that in many years, my species will look like yours?"

To him, it was a valid question: there were already some similarities. What if they ended up turning into sky demons?

"No, that's not how it work—"

"Because if in a thousand years all Na'vi end up looking like humans, that would mean you guys are the future of us, which is a little disturbing if I think about it—"

"Neteyam, that's not how evolution works!" you burst out laughing, clutching your stomach at the absurdity of the situation.

"Then how does it work?"

You spent the next entire hour trying to explain natural selection to a twenty-year-old man who insisted, every five minutes, on asking if one day he, too, would have 'less height and more squishy skin like yours'.

By the time you finished, you didn't know if he genuinely didn't understand or if he just wanted an excuse to mention how 'squishy' he found your skin and keep bothering you.

Knowing Neteyam, it was probably the latter.

"So, if I became like you, would my stomach blush and turn pink too?" he asked again. His eyes dropped lower. "I'd love to study your evolution closer, sky girl."

"Neteyam—no—ugh... forget it," you surrendered hiding your burning face in your hands.

Why did he always bother you and play with you? It wasn't fair. That damn blue alien idiot.

The human female cycle is monthly.

It had been a complicated week for everyone, especially for Neteyam.

Your birthdays were approaching, and since you were born so close together, he always insisted on celebrating it with you. He wanted to make sure nobody ignored that you were taking another trip around the sun too. That his Pandora was also celebrated.

But this time, you were being particularly difficult, far grumpier than usual. And that was saying a lot, considering it was you.

"Should we go to the Cove of the Ancestors?" he had asked two days ago.

"No, the water is too cold right now," you had snapped.

Later, he tried again: "What about a flight to the Hallelujah Mountains?"

"And freeze to death at that altitude? Are you trying to kill me?" you retorted, leaving him rubbing his temples in utter confusion and frustration.

Finally, today, he tried his usual tactic, approaching you with a teasing smirk. "Maybe you're just cranky because you need a powerful warrior like me taking care of you, you can't be without that, right?."

Instead of your usual fiery comeback, your eyes welled up with tears, frustration and something like rage—kind of. The stress of the party, the overwhelming tension of the last few weeks, and the sudden drop in your hormones hit you like a tidal wave. "Jeez-! Just leave me alone, Neteyam!" you cried out, storming off.

Neteyam stood paralyzed, the playful smirk draining from him instantly, replaced by absolute expression of panic. He made you cry. He had broken his own rule.

Jake stepped up behind him, slapping the back of his son's head. "Idiot."

"Dad, I didn't mean to—"

"Go find her. Apologize. And try not to act like a palulukan for five minutes. Ask her what's going on."

Neteyam found you later, apologizing softly. You sniffled, wiping your eyes. "It's not you... well, it is you, but it's also biology. The human female cycle is monthly. My hormones drop, causing severe mood swings, fatigue, and cramping."

Neteyam blinked, processing the concept of this relentless monthly torture, his ears drooping completely flat against his head.

That explained why every month he perceived that on certain days you seemed to want to kill him for real and not as a joke—although you never said that killing him was a joke, he was asking for it.

"Wait... every single month? Your body tortures you every month?"

He looked so genuinely horrified and heartbroken for you that a wet laugh escaped your lips. "Yes, Neteyam. Every month."

He reached out, his large, warm hand gently wiping a tear from your cheek. "Then I am doubly a fool for adding to your pain. I swear to Eywa, I won't do it again."

You leaned your head against his shoulder, he was warm.

A moment of genuine peace settled over you both, a comfortable silence wrapping around you. At least until five minutes later, when you started arguing with him again because his tail kept brushing against your leg. Neteyam sighed in defeat, knowing this year's birthday planning wasn't going to be as easy as the others.

Bonus.

It was the night of your shared birthdays.

The clan had prepared a massive celebration around the fire. Neytiri herself had painted your skin with glowing bioluminescent clay, dressing you in beautiful, delicate Na'vi garments that hugged your curves and exposed your midriff. You looked ethereal, a bridge between two worlds.

When you emerged from the marui, Neteyam stopped breathing. He stood by the fire, a cup of fermented drink halfway to his mouth. You were a vision. His vision.

But instead of walking to him, Spider intercepted you, laughing brightly and spinning you around. "Look at you! You look amazing!" Spider cheered, grabbing your hands to pull you into the circle of dancing teenagers.

You laughed, letting Spider twirl you. It was innocent. It was friendly.

To Neteyam, it was a declaration of war.

The sight of human hands on your waist, the way you smiled at someone who shared your blood, your history, your exact biology—it drove a spike of pure, feral jealousy right through his chest. He was suddenly terrified that despite everything, you would always prefer your own kind.

Neteyam stalked onto the dance floor, his face tense and annoyed. Without a word, he grabbed Spider's shoulder shoved him backward. Spider stumbled, falling hard into the dirt.

"Neteyam!" you reprimanded him, watching your human friend stand up with a confused expression and a half-smile.

"Sorry bro, I didn't know how strong I was." His face went from angry to calm; the mask of the golden boy. His arm crossed over your shoulders, pulling you closer to him. "I just wanted a dance with my birthday-twin girl, would you mind?" His smile was innocent, something relatively normal to you. But in his gaze there was a threat towards Spider, coercing him to accept.

"Yeah bro...don't worry, happy birthday to both of you," he murmured before quickly leaving.

That night Neteyam was able to enjoy celebrating his Pandora, having her all to himself.

Who gave you the right to touch her?

A couple of young warriors you occasionally spoke to had invited you to hang out. They joked that they finally saw you without your 'guardian', referring to Neteyam. They asked if you only trained with him and offered to spar with you.

During the exercise, one of them—an arrogant boy looking to show off— misjudged his Na'vi strength against your much smaller human frame. He twisted your arm entirely too hard, and you cried out as a sharp pain shot through your wrist, immediately spraining it.

Neteyam appeared moments later, furious and completely beside himself. You had never seen him this angry. He was always calm, quiet, always perfect in front of others. But they had touched you. Worse, they had hurt you, and that crossed every single one of his limits.

"Pandora," his voice was a bullet tearing through the air.

"Don't worry!" you said nervously, your eyes darting between him and the young warrior who had hurt you, who was now trembling like a leaf. He needed to start praying to Eywa if he wanted to get out of this alive.

"Don't worry? He hurt you," he barked angrily, though his hands were incredibly delicate as he examined your wrist, which was already starting to swell. When his hand brushed it the wrong way, you whimpered in pain, and his eyes shot up to your face, deeply concerned.

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hurt her, I didn't measure my—" Neteyam hissed into the boy's face, his fangs bared.

His terrifying demeanor returned instantly. He pushed you behind him and took two long strides toward the boy, jabbing a finger hard into his chest. "You shouldn't have even touched her."

How dare they lay a hand on his Pandora? He spent the next minute aggressively scolding and threatening the boy and his fellas, making it abundantly clear that he was reckless and that if he ever touched you again, the consequences would be dire.

Without another word, Neteyam scooped you up and took you to his family marui.

"You know what? It was just my hand, I can walk." You tried to lighten the mood, but he seemed too caught up in his anger to play along.

For Neteyam; he had failed, he hadn't taken proper care of you and he's scolding himself for it

Kiri immediately offered to grab the medical supplies to treat you.

"No," Neteyam said firmly. "I'll do it."

In the heavy silence that followed, he worked with absolute care and dedication, gently wrapping your wrist. Trying to lighten the dense atmosphere, once again, you spoke up.

"Did you know that, ounce for ounce, some human bones are actually as strong as solid steel? It's just that... well, you guys are giant aliens."

Neteyam didn't smile, but his intense eyes met yours and just soften a little.

"That doesn't change the fact that you can be broken, Pandora. My job as future Olo'eyktan is to prevent anything from happening to you." His voice was soft, safe.

"Not just to me. To the clan," you corrected nervously, still processing the sheer intensity of the situation.

"You are my main priority."

At the same beat

By then, the entire clan had an opinion about the two of you, and most had decided, at some point, to stop pretending to be discreet about it.

"I bet ten berries she confesses first," Lo'ak said one night by the fire, entirely shameless, while you and Neteyam argued a few yards away about who was better with a bow.

"I bet twenty it's him," Kiri replied without looking up from her weaving. "He's been in love with her since she was born and still hasn't realized it."

"I bet neither of them ever confesses, and they die of old age being insufferable to each other," Tuk added with the total seriousness of a ten-year-old, earning a general roar of laughter.

"You guys aren't being subtle at all, you know?" Jake said, not looking up from his own work, addressing his kids. "The whole village knows those two drive each other crazy. You should bet with Mo'at; she's got a solid betting pool running on what's going to happen with those two," he announced in amusement, drawing more laughs from his children.

"Jake, your son called me a 'wild menace' five minutes ago! He says I'm not good with a bow!" you yelled from a distance, still indignant. Several Na'vi heads turned in your direction, but quickly went back to their business; everyone was used to this.

"The first part is true. And the second: I said you aren't as good as me with a bow," Neteyam replied with a smirk, maintaining his usual, exasperating calm.

"Arguing again?" Neytiri murmured, watching the glares you and her eldest son were shooting each other. They were quite the case—a difficult one, but very entertaining to watch.

In the end, you stormed off abruptly, muttering insults about the Sully boy's stubbornness in denying your archery skills. According to him, you couldn't be better than your teacher, and well... he had taught you how to use it.

Later that same night, he found you sitting alone by the shore, the stars reflecting perfectly in the water.

"Can I stay, or are you going to insult me some more?" he asked.

Without looking at him, you sighed. You could hear the smile in his voice.

"Since when do you care? You know I'll insult you anyway," you replied playfully, finally turning in his direction.

He sat down, and suddenly you were far too aware of the proximity of his body to yours, of how the water reflected the light on his skin, of how many years had passed since an eight-year-old boy first asked you about regenerating livers.

You looked up at him, gathering your courage. "There's a scientific fact... studies confirm that when two individuals have a strong emotional bond, and they look into each other's eyes, their hearts can actually synchronize. They beat at the exact same rhythm due to physiological tuning."

You turned to look at him properly, and there he was: Neteyam Sully, future Olo'eyktan, the perfect warrior, without any mask on, looking at you as if he had spent his entire life waiting for this exact moment. Because the truth was, he had.

"I've loved you since we were kids, you stupid blue alien," you admitted quietly out of nowhere, your voice trembling slightly. It was a crazy way of treating each other all these years, but it was true. "Every time we fought, it was just... it was the only way I knew how to handle how much I wanted you."

"I've spent years looking for excuses to make you talk," he admitted slowly, as if every word cost him something. "Fun facts, fights, training sessions you didn't even need. Anything that would keep you close without having to state the obvious."

"And what's the obvious?"

"That my heart has been yours since the first breath Eywa granted me. That I don't want anyone who isn't you. That nobody is like my Pandora," his voice grew more urgent with every sentence. "And that every year that passed without you being my mate, I drove myself crazy with the idea that I might lose you to someone else."

Your heart—that monthly, accelerated, entirely human traitor—was beating so fast you were sure he could hear it.

"Took you long enough to say it," you whispered, surprised, a mischievous smile playing on your lips as you tilted your face up to his.

"I was waiting for the right fun fact," he replied with that cocky smile that drove you absolutely insane.

"And this was the one?"

"This one," he murmured, leaning in. One of his large hands found yours—fitting together with the same ease as always, as if he'd been doing it his whole life—and the other gently cradled your face.

You were the only thing that mattered.

"It was the one that mattered most to me: your heart beating at the same time as mine."

And finally, he kissed you.

The rhythm of Awa'atlu was supposed to be a song of absolute peace. For as long as you could remember, the rhythmic crash of waves against the mangrove roots and woven walkways of your village was a lullaby. As the eldest daughter of Tonowari and Ronal, you moved through that world with the grace of a creature born from the ocean. Your tail was thick and powerful, a perfect rudder; your skin a deep teal that vanished into the reef; your hands steady enough to spear a fast-moving silver-fish from thirty paces. You were a warrior of the Metkayina, raised to lead and to protect.

Then the Sully family arrived.

When Toruk Makto himself landed on your shores, bringing the chaos of the sky people's war and a family of forest-dwelling Na'vi with him, your father had demanded your clan show them hospitality. You'd expected greatness. You'd expected the children of a legendary warrior to carry themselves with at least a shred of discipline.

To be fair, some of them did. Lo'ak was reckless and hot-headed, but there was a stubborn tenacity in him you could respect. Kiri was quieter, strange in a way that felt like the ocean had been waiting for her specifically.

Then there was the eldest son. Neteyam.

The whispers carried on the forest wind called him the crown jewel of the Omatikaya — the perfect soldier, the future Olo'eyktan, the boy who never missed a shot and never disobeyed an order. Stoic. Unshakeable.

Yet from the moment his oversized, five-toed feet touched your white sand and his golden eyes found yours, all of that legend seemed to evaporate.

Around your father, Neteyam was a model of military posture. Around his siblings, a tired, capable leader. The moment he stepped within three meters of you, though — the boy completely lost his mind.

Just yesterday you'd been teaching the Sully siblings the basics of expanding their lungs to dive deeper. You were floating in the shallows, demonstrating the rhythm of the diaphragm. Neteyam was submerged to his chest, supposedly practicing — except his eyes were locked on you, tracking the way sunlight caught the water on your eyelashes instead of his own breathing.

"You breathe from here, not your chest," you'd said, stepping closer to press a correcting hand flat against his ribs.

The second your cool, webbed palm touched his warm skin, Neteyam forgot he was holding his breath. He surfaced a second later coughing saltwater, ears pinned flat, his dark blue skin flushing an embarrassed shade of purple.

A few hours later, at the docks, it happened again. He held the fishing spear like it was a forest bow.

"Your grip is wrong," you sighed, coming up behind him to adjust his fingers along the bone shaft. "The balance point is further back, or it'll bounce off the water."

Neteyam went rigid. You felt his heart slam against your palm where it rested near his spine. His tail twitched, his grip went stiff and useless, and the spear clattered out of his hands, narrowly missing your foot. His apology came out so garbled you simply walked away, exasperated.

Even the narrow marui walkways weren't safe. One sharp glare from you and his legs forgot how to coordinate. He'd try to lean against a railing like it was nothing, catch his foot on a mooring rope, and go down in a tangle of limbs.

A few yards from the docks, hidden under a woven canopy, Lo'ak and Kiri watched their brother's collapse with unbridled glee.

Lo'ak was practically vibrating, slapping his knee as Neteyam tried to untangle himself from a net he'd tripped into while watching you walk away.

"I don't believe it," Lo'ak choked out. "The Golden Boy. Father's perfect little lieutenant. Completely defective. Someone needs to take him back to the forest and reboot him."

Kiri snorted, braiding a piece of sea grass with a wicked little smile. "He's been like this since we landed. Did you see his face the first time she swam up? I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his skull."

"It's pathetic," Lo'ak laughed. "Back home he could track a viperwolf without snapping a twig. Here, the chief's daughter looks at him and he can't walk straight. Look at his ears — they're glued to his skull."

"Leave him alone," Kiri said, though there wasn't much heat in it. "He's miserable. He prides himself on being the perfect warrior, and right now she thinks he's an idiot. It's eating him alive."

"Good," Lo'ak grinned. "For once I'm not the one getting yelled at for being clumsy. If he keeps wrecking his own reputation, Dad might finally make me clan leader."

"In your dreams," Kiri muttered, throwing a piece of sea grass at his head.

For Neteyam, the whole thing was a slow, living nightmare.

Every night he lay in their marui, staring at the woven ceiling, listening to the unfamiliar hush of the ocean, cursing his own body. He was a trained warrior. He'd survived raids, fought the RDA's armored trains, earned his place under Jake Sully's unyielding eye. He was supposed to be unshakeable.

But you were nothing like anything he'd known.

He'd never forget the exact second he first saw you. When their Ikran touched down on wet sand, surrounded by a wary, murmuring crowd of reef people, his hand had drifted to his knife on instinct. Then the crowd parted and you swam up alongside your brother Ao'ung.

You didn't look like the slender girls of the forest. Your shoulders were broad, your forearms thick from a lifetime fighting the current. Your skin was a pale, mesmerizing turquoise marked with dark stripes like shadows of waves on a sea floor. And your eyes — sharp, green-gold, a hunter's eyes — held no fear when they landed on his family. Just a fierce, territorial readiness to throw all of them back into the sky if they so much as looked wrong at your people.

He'd been completely captivated. The blunt authority in your voice. The terrifying precision of your movements. The way your tail cut the water like a blade.

He wanted you to look at him and see a warrior worth standing beside.

Instead, every time you got close, something in him short-circuited. The salt-and-sea scent of your skin, the proximity of that fierce gaze, the casual way you touched him to correct his form — his reflexes, honed over years in the canopy, simply failed him in the water. He looked, every single time, like a newborn pup.

He knew exactly what you thought of him. He saw it in the dismissive twist of your mouth, the way you rolled your eyes at his every mistake. You thought he was mocking your people. You thought he was a joke. And that cut deeper than any arrow.

The breaking point came on a night thick with cloud cover, the stars blotted out, Pandora lit only by its own restless bioluminescence.

A shortage of deep-sea medicinal plants had forced your father to order a late expedition into the tangled outer mangroves. To your considerable, vocal displeasure, Tonowari paired you with Neteyam.

"He needs to learn the night sea," Tonowari said, leaving no room for argument. "And you need to learn a leader's patience. You go together."

You moved through the dark water like a ghost, your tail cutting silent strokes, every brush of your skin against the microscopic organisms in the water lighting up in brief blooms of blue and green.

Behind you, Neteyam was struggling. His forest tail, built for balance in the canopy, dragged behind him like dead weight. His breathing was too loud, his lungs fighting the thick, humid sea air.

You stopped every few meters to glare at him through the dark. Finally, after he kicked a submerged root and sent a glowing cloud of disturbed organisms swirling into the water, you'd had enough.

You doubled back, breaking the surface just enough to hiss directly in his face.

"If you keep breathing like a dying ilu, you'll scare off every fish before we see them," you snapped. "This is not your forest playground. Be silent, or go home."

Neteyam froze, chest heaving slightly, his golden eyes wide in the dim glow of the mangrove leaves above. He swallowed hard.

"I'm sorry," he said, voice rougher than you expected. "It won't happen again."

You gave him one last skeptical look before sinking back into the glowing dark. A few meters ahead, tucked in the shadow of a root system, you spotted a shimmering school of silver-glow fish — exactly what your mother needed.

Slowly, you raised your spear, calculating the bend of light through water, every muscle coiled for a clean kill.

Then Neteyam moved.

Trying to be useful, he pushed off a submerged log to close the distance — except his eyes weren't on the water. They were on the curve of your back. His foot drove straight into a coiled sea-vine he never saw coming.

He lost his balance instantly. Arms flailing, terrified of crashing into the water and ruining your shot, his hand shot out and clamped down hard on your shoulder.

The full weight of a grown Omatikaya warrior slammed into you. Your spear's alignment shattered. You both went down together into the shallow, sandy bank in an explosion of water and foam.

The silver fish scattered into the dark in an instant. Your spear flew from your hand and buried itself uselessly in the mud, meters away.

The last thread of your patience snapped clean.

You broke the surface dripping and furious, looking — by Neteyam's own private estimation — like something that crawled out of the deep specifically to end him.

"I — the vine caught my foot, the current—" he started, hands up, already backing away.

"Enough! May eywa give me patience to put up with you!" you roared.

You lunged before he could finish the sentence, hands slamming into his chest hard enough that he went down flat on his back in the wet sand, his own tail tangling beneath him.

You didn't give him a second to recover. You were on him in an instant, knees pinning his arms to the sand, your bone knife drawn and pressed flat against the base of his throat before he'd even processed losing his footing.

"I will cut your throat," you hissed through your teeth, the blade just barely kissing skin. "That'll shut you up"

Neteyam didn't flinch.

His body went still beneath you, but his ears didn't drop in fear, and his trapped hands went slack rather than fighting. The chaos of splashing water died into a heavy, electric silence — and the air between you shifted.

His eyes moved off the blade, slow, up your throat, lingering for half a second on your parted lips, before locking onto your eyes.

The bioluminescent light of your skin reflected in his blown-wide pupils like a map of stars. A droplet fell from your hair onto his collarbone. He looked like he'd forgotten how breathing worked.

No fear. No anger. No wounded warrior's pride. Just open, unguarded adoration.

"You're beautiful" he said, voice gone low and steady, all the stammering gone from it.

You went completely still.

For one disorienting second your mind — trained for combat, for reading threats — gave you nothing. You'd braced for him to fight back, to beg, to try some forest trick to flip you. You had not braced for that.

"...What?" The edge dropped clean out of your voice.

"I said you're beautiful," he repeated, steadier now, an unfamiliar confidence threading through it that made something in your chest lurch sideways.

You looked down at him — soaked, grinning despite the knife, golden eyes never leaving yours — and felt the anger curdle into something else. Something you didn't have a name for yet, and weren't entirely sure you wanted one for.

He's not mocking you, a voice in your head said, quiet but very clear. He never was.

You thought about the choking during the breathing drills. The dropped spear. The tripping. Each one rearranged itself in your memory, and the picture that came out the other side wasn't mockery at all.

It made you angrier, somehow, that you hadn't seen it.

"You could have just said something," you muttered, more to yourself than him, "instead of nearly drowning yourself for three months."

"Would you have believed me?" he asked, and the question landed harder than you wanted to admit.

You sat back slightly — knife still in hand, though the threat had gone out of it — and considered him properly for the first time since you'd put him on his back. Considered, and made a choice, rather than simply letting the moment happen to you: you slid the knife back into its sheath at your hip, but you didn't move off him. You stayed exactly where you were, knees braced at his ribs, because some part of you had already decided you weren't finished with this conversation.

"You're an idiot, forest boy," you said, aiming for stern and missing by a wide margin — your tail gave a small, betraying thump against the water.

"An idiot who ruined your hunt," he agreed, hand sliding from your cheek down to rest, tentative, against your waist. "Will you forgive me if I help find your spear? We could wait out here until the fish come back."

"They won't come back tonight. You scared every living thing within a mile of this reef."

"Then we'll wait until morning."

"You want to spend the whole night out here. With me. Pinned to the mud."

"I didn't say pinned. That part was your idea." A flicker of that same low laugh. "Though I'm not arguing with it."

You stared down at him, tracking the rapid pulse still going at his throat, the annoyance curdling slowly into something thick and electric. The first real smile you'd ever given him broke loose before you could stop it.

"You'd better have excellent night vision, boy of the forest," you warned, though the words came out closer to a tease than a threat now. "Because if we don't find that spear, next time I won't use the flat of the blade."

Neteyam laughed — low, easy, vibrating against your chest. His fingers tightened a fraction at your waist, in absolutely no hurry to let you up.

"Worth it," he said.

So the months passed, and with them, that annoyance you felt for the eldest Sully. Now—although he sometimes drove you crazy—he seemed to finally know how to control his own body and find the courage to Courting you properly—and not acting like a fool.

The stumbling mess who couldn't cross a dock without falling had vanished completely. Once the barrier of that night in the mangroves broke, Neteyam's natural confidence came roaring back — except now it was aimed entirely at you, relentlessly, in full view of the village.

He'd learned to swim with real grace. More than that, he'd slid into full Omatikaya courting mode, doing it loudly enough that everyone noticed.

High on the cliffs above the village, Jake and Neytiri sat watching the beach below.

You were down on the sand cleaning a net. Neteyam stood beside you, hauling crates, making absolutely sure his shoulders got some use while he talked. He kept tucking a stray piece of your hair behind your ear, which kept making you look down to hide a smile.

Jake chuckled into his water gourd. "Look at him down there. Haven't seen him work that hard since he was trying to impress the elders at his Iknimaya."

Neytiri raised an eyebrow, fond and deeply amused. "Our son has lost his mind to the ocean, Ma Jake. His tail follows her like a shadow."

"He's got it bad," Jake laughed. "Reminds me of a certain corporate marine who used to trail a clan leader's daughter through the forest, getting hit in the head with bows and eating poisonous bugs."

Neytiri swatted his arm, laughing sharply. "I was teaching you to see, Ma Jake. You were a complete idiot. At least Neteyam can hold a conversation without insulting the Great Mother."

"I was charming."

"You were an idiot who ate a fungus because I said it glowed pretty."

"I was committed," Jake said, grinning, pulling her closer. "Seriously, though — look at him. He hasn't picked up a forest bow since she handed him a spear. I'm just glad he stopped falling off walkways. Thought we'd need to get the kid a life vest."

"He is a warrior of the Omatikaya," Neytiri said softly, watching her son throw his head back laughing at something you'd said. "When we love, we love with everything our spirit holds. He's chosen his mate. Even if she belongs to the water."

"You're saying that like it's a problem."

"I'm saying it like it's a fact you should start preparing your nerves for, Ma Jake."

While Neteyam's parents watched with romantic amusement, your own family had a different reaction entirely.

Ao'ung sat at the edge of the dock, furiously sharpening a knife he didn't need to sharpen, glaring at Neteyam like he was a hexapede that had wandered too close. Tsireya sat beside him weaving a flower crown, sighing dreamily.

"I don't like it," Ao'ung growled, tail slapping the water. "He's always around her. Like a giant blue barnacle. Someone should tell him to back off."

"Stop it, Ao'ung," Tsireya laughed, nudging him. "They're beautiful together. Have you seen how he looks at her? Like she's the only star in the sky. Also, he's been hauling the heavy nets for her all morning, so maybe ease up."

"He's a forest walker. He doesn't belong here." Ao'ung stood, puffing his chest out. "I'm her brother. It's my job to make sure he's worth it. Watch — I'm putting him in his place."

He stomped down the dock toward you and Neteyam, who was holding a net frame steady while you laughed at something he'd said.

"Hey! Forest boy!" Ao'ung barked, arms crossed, trying very hard to look like his father. "You've been hanging around my sister all day. Don't you have trees to climb somewhere?"

You opened your mouth to tell your brother exactly where he could put his attitude, but Neteyam got there first — lowering the net frame, straightening to his full height, a full head taller than Ao'ung, scarred and calm and entirely unbothered.

He didn't drop his ears. He held them level — the posture of a soldier looking at a green recruit, not a threat.

"Is there a problem, Ao'ung?" he asked, voice smooth, carrying just enough quiet command to make the younger boy stiffen on instinct. "Your sister and I are completing a task your father assigned directly. Unless you've got an order from him that overrides that, I'd suggest you help Tsireya with the canoes."

Ao'ung's jaw worked. He opened his mouth for a comeback that didn't come — the weight of rank, scars, and calm authority pressing down harder than he expected.

"...No problem, Sully," he muttered, looking away.

"Excellent." Neteyam's harsh warrior mask broke into a sudden, easy grin as he turned back to you. "Now — where were we,Paskalin ?"

You bit back a proud smile and watched Ao'ung stalk off toward Tsireya, who was failing badly at hiding her laughter

"That was unnecessary," you told him, tugging the net back into place.

"He started it."

"He's seventeen."

"He started it aggressively."

"You could've just let me handle my own brother."

Neteyam tilted his head, considering. "I could have. I didn't want to."

"Why not?"

"Because watching you get to be annoyed at him instead of me, for once, was extremely satisfying." He winked. "I have no idea what you mean about being terrible, by the way. I was perfectly respectful."

"You called him a recruit with your eyebrows"

"That's a skill, actually. Mountain clan training."

That evening, once the village had gone quiet and the ocean lay flat as glass, Neteyam led you away from the maruis. He had a secret, he said. A gift.

He guided you up the steep cliff paths where the Omatikaya nested their Ikran — somewhere the Metkayinararely had reason to climb. At the top, his Ikran waited, huffing in the cool air.

"Neteyam, what are we doing up here?"

Looking down at the dizzying drop to the dark water below, you felt, for the first time in your life, completely out of your element. In the water you were something close to a god. Up here, in the thin howling air, you felt small.

"Trust me," he said, stepping behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist, his chest solid and warm against the wind. "You spent months showing me your world. Tonight I want to show you mine."

He swung up onto his ikran and pulled you in front of him. Before you could so much as protest, he let out a sharp cry and the Ikran dove off the cliff edge.

Your stomach dropped. You grabbed his forearms on instinct as the wind tore past, the ocean rushing up fast and dark.

He didn't panic. A subtle tilt, a pull through the neural bond, and the beast leveled out just above the water, wings throwing up a glowing spray of bioluminescent foam as you tore across the open sea.

It was magnificent. The reefs below blurred into a river of light.

You tipped your head back to look at him, and something in your chest stopped.

This was the legendary prince of the forest. The stumbling boy from the docks was nowhere in him now. Up here he was something else entirely — hair whipping in the wind, eyes wide and bright with adrenaline, a fierce grin carved across his face, commanding the beast under you like it cost him nothing.

"Look up!" he shouted over the wind.

You did. Pandora's sky opened above you in full, unguarded glory — the gas giant hanging huge and violet-rimmed, stars scattered endlessly into the dark, all of it reflected on the calm water far below. Suspended between two skies.

It was beautiful. It was terrifying. And for the first time, you understood that the sky held just as much magic as the deep.

Neteyam climbed higher, spiraling slowly, until the roar of the ocean faded into a hush. He brought Spitfire to a gentle hover in the still, starlit air.

The quiet up here was different from the sea's silence — lighter. Wide open instead of pressing in.

He leaned forward, chin against your shoulder, breath warm at your neck, arms tightening until you could feel his heartbeat keeping time with yours.

"I always thought my heart belonged to the high trees," he murmured. "Then I came here. Turns out my Pandora was never a place at all."

You turned your head, lips brushing his jaw. Your tail curled back, locking tight around his slimmer one.

"You're still a complete idiot, Neteyam Sully," you whispered, reaching up to pull his face down to yours.

"I know." His eyes had gone dark and certain. "But I'm your idiot. And I'm not planning on letting go anytime soon."

"Good," you said. "Because I wasn't asking."

Lord Elrond of Rivendell watched from the balcony of his study as the autumn leaves fell with their usual melancholic precision, but his mind was far from the pristine aesthetics of Imladris.

His gaze settled on the lower garden, where his daughter—his little girl, his precious jewel—sat beneath the shade of an oak tree. She was not reciting ancient poetry or reading Elven history. No. She held a rough, worn leather volume in her hands, deeply engrossed in a book detailing the customs and runic engravings of the Blue Mountains.

A sigh, heavy with the weight of centuries, escaped the lips of the Lord of Rivendell.

'Again?' he asked himself, though he already knew the answer. History had a cruel, repetitive way of mocking him. The memories of Arwen and her choice, the agonizing mix of pain and pride he had felt watching her leave with that mortal, returned with a piercing intensity. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the echo of the past. He had thought that, in the quiet of this valley, she would be safe from the whims of fate.

But when she looked up from the dwarven book, smiling at absolutely nothing with that bright, dreamy expression on her face, Elrond knew he had already lost her.

She was not only intelligent and kind; she possessed an innate playfulness, a curiosity that made her seek out the forbidden—not out of rebellion, but out of a genuine fascination for the vibrant, burning life the Dwarves offered, so utterly different from the eternal, sometimes cold elegance of the Elves.

It was a perfectly serene autumn afternoon when the wait finally ended, and the peace of the valley was violently shattered.

A deep, resonant, and entirely un-Elven horn blasted through the air, echoing off the stone walls with the subtlety of a collapsing cliff. The birds scattered in a panicked flurry. Lindir, standing nearby, actually dropped his harp.

Elrond pinched the bridge of his nose. Below, marching across the elegant stone bridge with heavy, synchronized, stomping boots, was a royal dwarven delegation. They were no longer the ragged, hungry wanderers who had raided his pantry and destroyed his plumbing a year ago. They wore gleaming, masterfully forged armor of silver and deep blue, carrying the heavy banners of the newly reclaimed Erebor. To make matters worse, Bofur was playing a lively, raucous tavern tune on his flute as they marched.

At the head of the procession walked Kíli.

The youngest prince of the Lonely Mountain looked undeniably regal. The incipient stubble from his traveling days had grown into a neat, sharp beard, and his broad shoulders carried a heavy fur-lined cloak clasping a royal crest. Yet, despite the royal finery, that impossibly cocky, completely shameless Durin swagger remained entirely intact.

And resting proudly over his heart, pinned to his royal armor for the entire world to see, was a small, familiar silver starburst pendant.

"Lord Elrond!" Kíli called out cheerfully, stopping in the center of the pristine courtyard and offering a sweeping, highly theatrical bow. "A pleasure to see your exceptionally tall architecture once again! Don't worry, we brought our own food this time!"

Elrond descended the sweeping staircase, his face a flawless mask of polite suffering. Behind Kíli, Dwalin stood with his arms crossed, glaring suspiciously at a nearby decorative shrub, while Fíli leaned against a pillar with a massive, shit-eating grin, clearly here strictly for the entertainment.

"Prince Kíli," Elrond greeted, his voice incredibly dry. "News of your victory against the dragon reached our valley. I had assumed the reclamation of your kingdom and your new royal duties would keep you... suitably occupied."

"Oh, they have! Tons of gold to count, walls to rebuild, Uncle to keep from starting new wars—very busy work," Kíli agreed brightly, waving a dismissive, armored hand. Then, his dark eyes scanned the upper terraces, his voice dropping into a register of absolute, unyielding sincerity. "But I left something of immense value in this valley, my Lord. And Dwarves never forget a treasure."

You stepped out from the shadows of the archway.

The dwarven flute music cut off with a squeak. The entire courtyard seemed to go completely still. You wore a flowing gown of deep forest green, your ethereal beauty just as flawless and untouched as the day he had left.

Kíli froze. The cocky royal facade crumbled in a fraction of a second. His breath hitched, his jaw practically hitting the stone floor, and he stared up at you as if you had personally hung the stars in the sky.

Fíli sighed heavily and smacked his younger brother sharply on the back of the head to restart his brain.

Kíli blinked, jolting back to reality. He cleared his throat loudly, his cheeks flushing, and hastily fell back on his favorite, panicked defense mechanism.

"Though," Kíli announced loudly, pivoting slightly towards Dwalin but keeping his eyes entirely glued to you as you descended the stairs, "I must say, the Elves are still tragically tall. A safety hazard, really! And terrible at growing proper facial hair. Honestly, Dwalin, it’s a wonder they don't freeze in the winter—"

"You took your time, Master Dwarf."

Your voice, rich with that familiar, spicy amusement, cut through his backtracking perfectly. You reached the bottom of the steps, the significant height difference between you requiring him to tilt his head back as you stopped just inches from his armored chest.

You crossed your arms, sizing him up with a wicked, feisty smirk. "I was beginning to think the dragon got the better of you. Or perhaps you just got lost counting your gold?"

Kíli’s dimpled grin returned with full, devastating force. He stepped effortlessly into your space, entirely unbothered by Lord Elrond’s heavy, disapproving glare boring into the back of his head.

"I told you I liked a challenge, Princess," Kíli murmured, his voice dropping to a low, intimate hum that made your pulse trip. "And for the record, I killed the orcs, helped reclaim the mountain, and didn't even singe my new beard. Do you like it? I grew it just for you."

You laughed, a bright, melodic sound that made Kíli’s chest puff out with pride. "It’s very rugged. Though you're still awfully pretty for a dwarf."

"And you are entirely too stunning for my own good," he shot back without missing a beat. His gaze dropped, his rough, calloused fingers reaching out to gently brush against the silver pendant resting on his chest. "I kept it. Every single day. I told you I’d find my way back."

Days later, as Thorin’s Company fully settled into the valley, Elrond had to prepare for a siege. Not a siege of swords, but of charisma.

Kíli did not ask for permission to enter her life; he carved his way in with a shameless smile and an intensity that made Elrond want to curse Aulë for creating such an obstinate race. Watching the dwarf court her—with his endless stories of the mines, his wildly inappropriate jokes, and the way he looked at her as if she were the only light in the darkness of his tunnels—was an exercise in patience that Elrond was rapidly losing.

Yet, every time she looked back at him with those sparkling, feisty eyes, challenging the ancient norms with an elegance that left Kíli entirely speechless, Elrond felt his "protective father" armor cracking.

'He makes her laugh', Elrond admitted to himself one afternoon, watching from his balcony as Kíli dropped to one knee in the middle of the courtyard—defying all Elven etiquette—just to whisper something that made her laugh with that bright melody he loved so much. 'And she has never been happier.'

"The Lonely Mountain is cold, [Y/N] . It has enough gold, but it is terribly lacking in starlight," Kíli declared, looking up at you with absolute, unwavering certainty. He didn't pull out a ring; instead, he took both of your hands in his. "Come with me. Let me spend the rest of my impossibly long life trying to keep up with you."

Before you could even open your mouth to answer, a loud clinking sound interrupted the romantic moment.

"Pay up, Dwalin!" Nori cheered from the nearby terrace.

Dwalin let out a thunderous groan, aggressively fishing a heavy pouch of coins from his belt and slapping it into Nori's waiting hand. "I said he'd at least make it to dinner before dropping to his knees," Dwalin grumbled. "The boy has the restraint of a lovesick puppy."

"I heard that!" Kíli yelled back over his shoulder, though he didn't drop your hands. He turned back to you, his eyes dancing with mischief. "Ignore them. They're just jealous. Is that a yes?"

You stared down at him, completely disarmed by the chaos, the noise, and the fierce, stubborn dwarf who had marched an army across Middle-earth just to kneel at your feet.

"You're an absolute idiot," you laughed softly, tears of pure joy pricking the corners of your eyes.

"I am," Kíli agreed shamelessly. "But I'm your idiot."

"Yes," you breathed.

Kíli didn't bother standing up properly. He practically launched himself upward, his armored hands gripping your waist as he pulled you down into a deep, dizzying, desperately overdue kiss. It was messy, it was loud, and it tasted like a promise finally fulfilled.

The courtyard erupted. Fíli burst into a raucous, booming cheer, pumping his fist in the air. Bofur started playing his flute again, a wild tavern jig that completely drowned out the serene waterfalls.

Elrond turned to Lindir with a deeply defeated gesture. "Bring me the wine, Lindir," he murmured, watching the dwarf pull his daughter into a dizzying spin. "And prepare yourself. I believe I will soon have to start reading about how to deal with sons-in-law who insist on taking my daughter to a mountain."

Ten minutes later, Kíli, now significantly more sober than he had been during his grand courtyard proposal, straightened his royal tunic. He strode toward the upper terraces, his boots clanking against the marble with rhythmic defiance.

He found Lord Elrond standing by a stone fountain, his back turned, staring at the water as if he were trying to summon the strength to drown himself in it.

"My Lord Elrond!" Kíli announced, his voice booming with forced formality.

Elrond didn't turn. His shoulders sagged visibly. "Prince Kíli. I was hoping to have at least five minutes of silence before the sun set. A humble request, I thought."

Kíli stopped, bowing so low that his nose nearly touched his own kneecap—a gesture that, while respectful, looked physically painful. "I come to discuss... important matters of state. And alliance. And, uh, structural integrity."

Elrond turned, his brow arched so high it practically vanished into his hairline. "Structural integrity?"

"Yes!" Kíli blurted out, fumbling in his pouch to produce a scroll that was at least four feet long. "The, um, marriage contract. I’ve drafted it. I’ve included clauses for annual visits, a guarantee that she will never have to eat lembas bread again, and a formal agreement that I will learn to appreciate—or at least tolerate—her love of poetry, provided she tolerates my love for the adventure"

Elrond stared at the scroll. He didn't take it. "Kíli," he said, his voice dangerously soft. "She is an Elven Princess. You cannot simply barter for her with trade agreements."

"I am not bartering!" Kíli insisted, completely oblivious to the fact that he was currently digging his own grave. "I am prepared to offer a royal dowry! Three chests of raw mithril, the finest axes in Erebor, and—this is the big one—I will let you keep the plumbing system in the guest wing that my brother destroyed last year."

Elrond closed his eyes. "You are offering me my own plumbing back as part of a marriage dowry?"

"It’s a gesture of good faith!"

At that exact moment, you strolled onto the terrace, stopping beside Kíli. You looked at the massive scroll, then at your father’s pained expression, and finally at Kíli.

"You're offering my father his own pipes for my hand?" you asked, a playful, incredibly wicked lilt in your voice. "Good thing I don't actually belong to him, pretty boy, or you would be failing miserably right now."

Kíli’s charming, dimpled smile faltered for only a second before he decided to abandon the diplomacy and go all-in. He dropped the scroll, turning to Elrond with raw, fierce honesty.

"Look, My Lord. I know what you think of Dwarves. We are loud, we are messy, and we have a tendency to ruin the aesthetic of your pristine valley. But I love her. And I am not asking for your permission to take her, because she makes her own choices. I am asking for your blessing. Because I love her with the kind of ferocity that usually results in us burning down half of a city, and I need her to keep me on the right side of sanity."

You stepped forward, slipping your hand into Kíli's, your fingers intertwining with his rough ones. You looked at your father, your green eyes utterly uncompromising.

"I am going with him, Ada," you said softly, yet with absolute certainty. "With or without the plumbing. I am choosing this."

Elrond looked at Kíli. Then, he looked at you. He saw the genuine, unhidden devotion in the young dwarf’s eyes, and he saw the fierce, unyielding independence in yours. It mirrored his own ancient, lost loves.

He let out a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to carry the weight of three ages.

"If," Elrond began, his voice dry as parchment, "I give you my blessing... will you take the shouting, the drinking, and the incessant flute-playing back to your mountain immediately?"

Kíli beamed. "The absolute second we finish the wedding feast, sir."

Elrond looked at you. You were smiling, that radiant, dangerous smile that had been the light of his life since the dawn of time. He knew he had lost. He had lost the moment he allowed this ridiculous, charming, persistent dwarf into his home.

"Fine," Elrond muttered, turning back to the fountain. "You have my blessing. But if I hear one more tavern song echoing off my walls tonight, I am retracting it."

Kíli practically vibrated with excitement. He turned to you, his face glowing. "He said yes! Well, he grumbled it, but that counts as a yes!"

You laughed, stepping into his space and tangling your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. "You really are a menace, aren't you?"

"I’m a menace who just secured the most beautiful, inteligent woman in Middle-earth," Kíli countered, his voice dropping to that familiar, husky register. "And now that we have the royal blessing, are we going to discuss the wedding dress? Because I have some very strong opinions on leather accents—"

"Absolutely not," you interrupted, pulling him down for a kiss.

Behind you, Elrond picked up a discarded goblet, stared at it, and shook his head.

You and Legolas had been together for centuries. It had been the natural road, the one everyone expected you to walk — two of Thranduil's finest, both quick with a blade, both raised on duty before anything softer. You got along. Of course you did. Centuries teach you how to read someone, how to move around their silences, how to be comfortable.

He was the perfect prince — elegant, sharp-minded, lethally skilled. The kind of elf any maiden in the realm would have given a forest to have.

You were not far behind him. Best fighter in the guard, clever, admired. And yet, underneath all of it, something in you had always sat slightly crooked, slightly wrong for the shape your people expected you to fill. Elves were composed things, patient things. You wanted more. You had always wanted more — more risk, more heat, more reason to feel your own pulse.

You loved Legolas the way you loved a blade you trusted at your back. Familiar. Reliable. Bloodless.

It had never quite been enough. You just hadn't had a name for the hunger yet.

Mai, yo ya perdí la cuenta de cuánto tiempo pasó desde la última vez (mai), ¿Cuánto tiempo perdiste? ¿Cuánto más tenés? (¿Cuánto?)

The dwarves came stumbling out of the spiders' webs filthy, half-starved, and entirely unrepentant, and you noticed the youngest one before you'd even finished disarming him.

He was taller than the rest of his kin, leaner through the shoulder, watching the chaos of his own capture with an expression that should have been fear and was instead something closer to delight. When your eyes met his over the clash of blades, he didn't look away. He grinned.

As you moved forward to confiscate his weapons, your hand brushed against his chest. Kíli didn't flinch; instead, he leaned into your space, his eyes locking onto yours with an audacity that made your breath catch.

"I'd gladly surrender every weapon I own," Kíli murmured, his voice a low, raspy drawl that was entirely too intimate for a prisoner, "if it means getting your hands on me, beautiful."

Before you could process the heat that suddenly flared in your cheeks, a cold, sharp presence materialized right behind you. Legolas stepped forward, his bow half-raised, his hand coming down firmly and possessively on your shoulder. The message was loud and clear: She belongs to the Prince.

"The next thing you'll have upon you is death if you continue to be impertinent, dwarf." Legolas's voice was cold, lethal, but at its edges there was a pulsing threat. Kíli found it amusing.

Kíli’s dark eyes flicked from your shoulder up to Legolas's face. He didn't look intimidated in the least. He just tilted his head, his smirk widening as if he’d just discovered the most interesting game in Middle-earth—a grand prize to snatch from an elf. The fact that you were taken wasn't a deterrent; to a dwarf who coveted hidden treasures, it was an invitation.

Una cosa es amar, y otra es amarrarse por inseguridad y no por interés, Baby, solo decime: Yes, así me ves, Soy un morochito y no sé hablar inglés, But I'm goin' to give you the world, don't expect less.

You marched him toward the cells personally. He didn't resist — he simply walked beside you with his hands loosely bound, glancing sideways at you the entire way like he was working out a puzzle he had every intention of solving.

"Aren't you going to search me?" Kíli asked, the moment you reached for the cell door. "I could be hiding anything down my trousers." He glanced meaningfully toward his own waistband, his eyes flashing with raw, wicked implication.

You shut the door with a soft, satisfied click, a slow smile curving despite yourself. "Or nothing at all."

He laughed — a low, surprised bark of a sound — and you walked away before he could see how long you let yourself smile.

Legolas found you a few paces down the corridor, his expression unreadable in the way only centuries of practiced composure could manage.

"Why does that dwarf keep looking at you?" he asked, in Sindarin, the question polished smooth and casual, though his posture was unusually rigid.

"Who knows,"you said, equally smooth, though something in your chest didn't sit quite right with the lie.

"He's tall," you added a moment later, almost to yourself, your eyes drifting back down the dark hallway. You hesitated. "You don't think so?"

Legolas's gaze sharpened, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.

"Taller than some," he allowed, his tone clipping the edges of the words. "But no less ugly."

Turning on his heel, Legolas cast one final, icy look back toward the cells. Kíli was leaning against the iron bars, arms crossed, matching the Elven Prince's glare with a lazy, challenging half-smile. The silent tension between them was thick enough to cut with a dagger. Prince Legolas, the heir to the Woodland Realm, was openly feeling threatened by a filthy, locked-up dwarf. And worse? You were entirely enthralled by it.

"Don't spend too much time surrounded by them; they're a plague," the elf warned, giving you a look that carried far more emotion than you two had exchanged in millennia.

The next evening, it was your turn to distribute rations to the prisoners. You kept your expression neutral, doing your best to ignore the rowdy complaints of the older dwarves until you reached the cell at the very end.

Kíli was already waiting at the bars, watching you approach like a predator watching its favorite distraction.

"Ah, the lady of the house returns," he purred, his eyes tracing the line of your leather armor before settling on your face. "And here I thought you'd forgotten about me."

"Eat your bread, dwarf," you replied, though your voice lacked any real bite. As you passed the plate through the slot, Kíli purposefully let his fingers glide over yours, his touch warm, rough, and entirely electric. You didn't pull away immediately, and he noticed.

"Tell me something," Kíli whispered, leaning closer, his dark eyes locked onto yours, full of a malicious, playful heat. "The blond one. The prince. What's a fierce, fiery creature like you doing with someone so... frozen?"

"He is my partner. He is the future of this realm," you replied defensively, though the words felt hollow even to your own ears.

"He's a statue," Kíli corrected, his voice dropping an octave, sending a shiver straight down your spine. "He looks at you like you're a pretty ornament on his wall. He doesn't know what to do with that fire inside you. But I do. I bet you taste like sin, Elfling."

Ella me dice que vaya con cautela, Y yo ando prepara'o por si ese bobo se altera, uh, Dice que tengo que bajarle a mi actitud (a mi actitud), Por eso me voy donde estás tú, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh (¿dónde estás, mai? ¿Dónde estás, mai?)

"Big words for someone so short and withdrawn, don't you think?" you teased, observing the dwarf with a smug smile, maintaining a distance between what you said and how his words truly affected you.

"My height and my cell are irrelevant to what I can make you feel, you just have to drop that stuck-up attitude." Kíli clicked his tongue, finding your resistance fascinating. "Although I must admit; it turns me on." Kíli gave you another cheeky wink, sending shivers down your spine.

You always liked the forbidden, but you hated that a stupid dwarf made you feel things that your boyfriend of millennia hadn't even tried to provoke in you.

The raw tension in the air became dizzying. Your heart hammered against your ribs, a dangerous cocktail of adrenaline and desire flooding your veins. He was enticing you to fall, tempting you to step off the ledge of your safe, boring life. You pulled your hand back, clearing your throat sharply.

"Mind your tongue, prisoner," you warned with a growl and an expression of hatred, turning around to leave, but Kíli’s low, rumbling chuckle followed you all the way out, echoing in your mind like a promise.

Mami, si tus ojos son mi luz (son mi luz), Y mis pecados son más grande', Pero voy por todo si es que vas a acompañarme

Later that night, you found yourself standing on the high balconies with Legolas. The starlight filtered through the canopy, illuminating his perfect, porcelain features. He was speaking of border patrols, of spider infestations, of duties and centuries-old protocols.

"We should request another detachment for the southern ridge," Legolas said, his voice level, predictable, completely devoid of passion.

You looked at him, really looked at him, and felt an exhausting wave of boredom wash over you. Centuries of this. Centuries of perfectly calculated conversations.

"Legolas," you interrupted softly, stepping closer. "Do you ever want... more? Do you ever want to just leave these woods? To see the world burning beneath a different sky, to feel something that makes your blood roar?"

Legolas stopped, looking at you with a mixture of confusion and mild disapproval. "Why would we leave? The woods are our duty. Our life is here, safe and orderly. Passion is a fleeting emotion of the mortal races, wild and destructive. We are Eldar. We endure." He reached out, his hand patting your cheek in a gesture meant to be comforting but felt entirely sterile. "Do not let your mind wander to inappropriate thoughts."

He went back to talking about patrols. But your mind didn't just wander—it flew straight down to the dark, damp cells beneath the palace. To a dwarf with dirt on his face, fire in his chest, and a mouth that promised a dangerous, exquisite chaos.

Tanto pa' una mujer que me olvidó, Tanto amor pa' una chimba que me engañó y mintió, ¿Cuántas vece' vo'a tener que despedirme?, Seamo' realista', es que no sé cómo irme

The days in Thranduil's halls stretched longer than anyone had planned for, and the boredom of guarding thirteen restless dwarves turned, slowly, into something else entirely.

You tried to stay away from the dungeons, you tried to carry on with your life without wondering what feelings another conversation with that dwarf might awaken in you. But life always had other plans.

You had been assigned to watch over the dwarves, after the previous guard declared that they were a threat to his mental health because a certain slightly taller dwarf was becoming unbearable.

'This has to be the best joke in all of Middle-earth,' you thought as you went down to the cells to start your double shift. Your heart was beating erratically, oblivious to its lifelong, peaceful heartbeat.

The closer you got to the cells, the more you understood that guard; they were singing, banging on the bars in a rhythmic, heavy tone, shouting words in their own language, their voices echoing off the stone walls.

You had to suppress your smile, which—without your permission—had settled on your face.

This defied every elven custom—and rather than making you happy or finding it hilarious—it should have filled you with terrible fury. You had to defend the peace of your people and that poor, traumatized guard.

You sighed in annoyance with yourself, and consequently, with that stupid dwarf who started this scandal.

Your stomping was the first thing that was heard, the dwarves laughing as you passed by the cells, seeing you so upset.

It is true that despite being under arrest, their spirit seemed intact and fierce.

Just like yours when you stood in front of Kíli and gave him a furious look; he was singing, shouting and with a wide smile that turned into a flirtatious one when he saw you.

"Finally I see your face again, sin." His voice was a purr that only fueled your fury.

And what was that nickname? A sin? You hadn't committed any. Although perhaps you would; kill a dwarf prisoner against your king's orders.

There were thirteen of them, surely losing one wouldn't affect things that much, right?

"What part of 'imprisoned' doesn't resonate with you? Shut up or I'll isolate you in the farthest, most inconsolable cells," you grunted, scanning him completely; he had removed some of his layers of clothing—you assumed to use them as sheets or pillows at night—and was now only wearing a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up which showed off his muscular and broad forearms.

Legolas definitely wasn't built like that.

Kíli noticed your gaze and his smile turned smug as he approached the cell bars. You took a step back. "What, do you want to take me far away, sin? If you want me to shake up your world, you just have to come in here." His words were loaded with arrogance and mischief, provoking a latent annoyance in you.

"Stop calling me 'sin' you stupid dwarf," you warned, and quickly grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pressed one of your daggers against his throat through the bars.

Kíli didn't seem scared, rather, completely fascinated by your fire.

"I usually like to be the one giving the orders, but I think it makes me hard when you're bossy, I won't deny it." His voice dropped two octaves and, without any fear or doubt, one of his hands went over yours, his thumb caressing the part of your pulse that was racing. "I call you 'sin' because that's what goes through my head when I see you, elf. Because you're a sin I want to commit and snatch away from that boring elf. Do you understand? I want to see how much fire you can muster before admitting that I provoke the same in you."

Without realizing it, your breathing became ragged. Your grip on your dagger faltered, and he smiled victoriously at it.

"All you do is make me want to kill you, idiot," you answered abruptly with a lopsided, annoyed smile. You withdrew the dagger, leaving a thin cut in his throat; just a crimson line of blood showing from the cut. There you smiled victoriously.

You looked at the thin red line on your dagger and, without taking your eyes off his, you licked it. Kíli's breath caught in his throat, his body tensing as he watched you do it. "Don't keep testing my patience, dwarf, your blood already tells me to kill you."

"I want to test everything about you, sin," he responded quickly, taking two steps back, yet still raising his hands in a gesture of peace.

"Be careful, kili, next time I'll bring them sharpened." You raised your daggers in the air, emphasizing your point, turning your back on him, ready to continue your rounds far away from that troublesome dwarf. Despite everything, on your face there was a lopsided smile, amused by this stupid game.

"I'll be waiting for you, sin!"

Kíli hissed, bringing his hand to his neck and smiling as he watched you walk away. "You will be my death, elf," he whispered to himself, amused, shaking his head.

It seemed you were beginning to find a name for that hunger inside you.

The very next night, the air in the dungeon felt heavier, thick with an unspoken understanding that had crossed a dangerous line. Kíli was sitting on the floor of his cell, but the moment your boots clicked against the stone, he fluidly rose to his feet. He didn't speak immediately; he just leaned heavily against the iron bars, his dark eyes locked onto yours with a terrifyingly sharp intensity.

"You look deep in thought, sin," Kíli murmured, his voice cutting through the damp silence of the cells. "Still thinking about the taste of blood? Or the one who spilled it?"

You leaned your shoulder against the pillar opposite him, crossing your arms defensively, though your racing pulse betrayed you. "I think about my duties, dwarf. Something your kind clearly lacks the capacity to understand."

Kíli let out a rough, breathless chuckle, his hand reaching out to wrap around one of the iron bars. "No, you don't. You're thinking about the fact that your perfect, golden prince has never made you feel alive. Not once in all those tedious centuries." He leaned closer, his chest pressing hard against the iron barrier between you. "He can’t give you this, can he? He doesn't make your blood boil. He doesn't make you want to break every single rule your people gave you. Look at you—you are standing outside my cage, but you are the one who looks trapped. A prince on a throne can't give you what a beggar behind bars can."

You closed the distance between you, stepping so close your breath fanned across his lips. The forbidden nature of it was escalating, an intoxicating poison you couldn't stop drinking. "You think highly of yourself, prisoner."

Kíli’s gaze darkened, drop-dead serious as his voice dropped to a gravelly whisper. "I think accurately. Because you and I both know... forbidden tastes better, Amrälimë"

The words hung in the air, a beautiful, devastating truth that shook you to your core. This was the fire you had been starving for.

Kíli didn't break eye contact as his hands moved down to the hem of his dirty linen shirt. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled it over his head and tossed it into the shadows of the cell. His chest was lean, layered with hard muscle and a dusting of dark hair, heaving slightly in the dim light. His hands moved lower, unbuckling his heavy belt and letting his trousers drop to sit dangerously low on his hips, revealing the sharp, teasing V of his lower stomach.

You froze. You knew you should walk away. You were an Elven Guard of the Woodland Realm, and he was a prisoner. But you were rooted to the cold stone floor, utterly captivated.

His hand slipped over his trousers, his long fingers wrapping around his heavy, semi-aroused length through the fabric.

"If you don't want to watch me come undone for you, sin," Kíli rasped, his voice transforming into a dark, wicked purr that sent a violent shiver down your spine, "you better run up those stairs right now."

You didn't move. You couldn't.

A triumphant, filthy smirk crossed his face. He adjusted his grip, his eyes burning into yours as he began to stroke himself, watching your chest rise and fall in ragged, uneven breaths.

"That's it," he groaned, the wet, heavy sound echoing intimately in the damp cell. "Watch me. Good girl. You're so desperate for it, aren't you?" He rolled his hips forward, a hiss escaping his lips as his knuckles brushed the iron bars. "Touch yourself for me, Amrälimë. Let me see what that perfect, bloodless prince isn't giving you."

Your legs trembled as you backed away, bracing yourself against the column behind you, sliding down until your feet touched the ground. Your heart pounded as you obeyed the command, reaching out to your center.

The command shattered whatever restraint you had left. Your hand dropped between your thighs, pressing over your own leathers, your breath catching as you mirrored his rhythm.

"Fuck, yes," Kíli cursed, his head falling back against the stone wall, his jaw tight with pleasure. "You're so fucking beautiful. Damned elf, so wet and ready for me, to come just to see me touch myself for you "

The dirty, degrading, absolute perfection of the moment consumed you both. The air grew thick with his praises and curses, pushing you higher and higher until you shattered, a stifled, desperate moan leaving your lips as the orgasm wrecked you. Seconds later, Kíli groaned your name, his body snapping taut as he spilled into his own hand, completely ruined by the sight of you.

As the heavy, ragged breathing settled in the dark corridor, the intoxicating haze vanished. The harsh, brutal reality of what you had just done—the cheating, the treason, the sheer madness of it—hit you like a physical blow.

You scrambled backward, fixing your armor with trembling hands, your face flushing with a violent, panicked shame.

After that, you couldn't shake off the fog of the moment; his body in front of you, his voice, the sin you shared and that you didn't want to abandon.

You found yourself walking the cell corridor more often than your shift required. You told yourself it was vigilance.

On the fifth day, you found him turning a small, smooth stone over in his palm, polishing it absently against his sleeve.

"That stone you're hiding," you said, leaning against the bars across from his cell. "What is it?"

Kíli's expression went suddenly, theatrically grave. "A talisman," he said. "A powerful curse rests on it. Any non-dwarf who looks too long upon its runes will be doomed." He held it up toward your face with mock solemnity.

You took a half-step back before you caught yourself, and Kíli burst into laughter at your expression, delighted with himself.

"Or," he said, grinning as you huffed and stepped closer again, unable to help the small smile tugging at your own mouth, "it depends entirely on whether you believe in curses. It's just a gift, really." He turned the stone so the carved runes caught the torchlight. "My mother gave it to me. So I wouldn't forget a promise."

"What promise?" you asked, quieter now.

His grin softened into something gentler. "That I'd come back to her."

You smiled, a genuine, soft expression that entirely transformed your face. For a moment, the walls of the prison seemed to melt away, leaving just the two of you sharing a fragile, beautiful piece of intimacy. Kíli watched your lips curve, his eyes darkening with a sudden, heavy intensity.

"You should smile more often," he murmured, his voice thick with unvoiced desire. "It suits you far better than that cold guard act."

Before you could respond, the sound of footsteps echoed from the top of the stairs. Another elven guard called your name, stating that Prince Legolas required your presence in the armory immediately.

You stepped back, clearing your throat, but Kíli leaned his forehead against the bars, a wicked, knowing smirk returning to his lips.

"Go on then," Kíli teased softly, his eyes locking onto yours with absolute certainty. "Send my regards to your boyfriend. Tell him I said thank you... for letting me be the one to finally make you happy today."

You flushed crimson, turning on your heel and hurrying away, your heart pounding a frantic rhythm against your chest.

An hour later, in the grand, starlit corridors of the upper palace, your closest friend and fellow guard, Galeneth, fell into step beside you. She polished her bow as she walked, but her keen elven eyes were fixed entirely on your face.

"You are glowing," Galeneth noted, a small, knowing smile gracing her lips. "I haven't seen you carry yourself with such light in decades. Did something wonderful occur between you and Legolas in the armory?"

Your breath caught, your mind instantly flashing to the dark cell, to Kíli's rough hands, his rumbled voice, and the breathless adrenaline of his gaze. "I... I am merely feeling a change in the wind, Galeneth. A awakening, perhaps. A reminder of what it means to truly feel the blood rushing through my veins, to crave a dangerous, impossible warmth."

Galeneth sighed softly, her eyes softening with romance. "Ah, the enduring love of the Eldar. It is a beautiful thing, is it not? To know that after all these centuries, Legolas can still make your heart dance as though it were the first day you met."

You forced a nod, your stomach twisting into a guilty knot. Galeneth walked away, leaving you alone under the starlight. Inside, the realization hit you like a physical blow. You weren't feeling this way because of Legolas. Every ounce of this terrifying, radiant joy, this untamable hunger... was entirely because of Kíli.

Ella me dice que vaya con cautela ,Y yo ando prepara'o por si ese bobo se altera, Dice que tengo que bajarle a mi actitud, Por eso me voy donde estás tú, Mami, si tus ojos son mi luz, Y mis pecados son más grande' que la cruz

The illusion of peace shattered entirely later that night when Legolas cornered you in the private tactical rooms. The door closed with a heavy thud, and when you turned around, the Prince’s composure was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, sharp fury.

"You have been avoiding me," Legolas stated, his eyes tracking you like a predator. "And your shifts in the dungeons have doubled. Do you think me blind? Do you think I do not see the way you look toward those cells?"

"I am performing my duties, Legolas," you lied smoothly, crossing your arms. "They are rowdy, dangerous prisoners. They require vigilance."

"It is not vigilance that makes your eyes shine like the stars over Nargothrond!" Legolas snarled, stepping into your personal space, his hand gripping your jaw with a desperation you had never felt from him. "You are harboring thoughts of that dwarf. A creature of dirt and stone! You insult our centuries together, you insult our bloodline!"

"You are imagining things because your pride is wounded!" you shouted back, tearing your face from his grip. Your chest heaved, a fierce anger flaring inside you.

Before you could walk away, Legolas suddenly closed the distance. He grabbed your waist and crushed his mouth against yours with a desperate, almost violent possessiveness. He was trying to reclaim you, trying to physically brand his presence over the creeping shadow of the dwarf.

You kissed him back, closing your eyes tight, desperately trying to force yourself to feel the spark, trying to prove that this centuries-old bond wasn't dead.

You let him lead you back to his chambers. You let him unlace your tunic.

The act was mechanically flawless. Legolas moved with the ancient, practiced perfection of the Eldar. It was beautiful, poetic, and utterly devoid of the chaotic, burning passion you craved.

Later, as the starlight poured through the balcony windows, you lay awake next to his sleeping, perfect form. You stared at the ceiling, feeling entirely cold and empty. The contrast was devastating. A single, filthy session of mutual desperation across iron bars with a dwarf had made your soul catch fire, while lying naked in the arms of the Elven Prince left you feeling agonizingly numb.

As you stared at his beautiful, yet utterly distant face, the truth crystallized in your mind. He was right. You were betraying everything you knew, spinning a web of deceit, but you couldn't stop. The sheer, forbidden thrill of what you felt for Kíli was a sin you were entirely willing to commit. You hated the deception, but God, you loved the fire.

"My mom, she worries," Kíli said the next evening, leaning against the cold stone of his cell, the stone still turning idly in his fingers. "Thinks I'm reckless."

"Are you?" you asked, curious despite yourself, a small smile already forming.

Kíli looked at you sideways, a spark of mischief in his dark eyes, and shook his head with theatrical innocence. "Nah."

You both knew it for the lie it was, and neither of you bothered correcting it.

The stone slipped from his fingers a moment later, rolling out between the bars. You caught it under your boot before it could vanish into the shadows, crouching to pick it up, turning it over once in your palm. Kíli leaned into the gap between the bars to take it, closer than strictly necessary.

"You've quite a party going on up there," he said, nodding toward the ceiling, where distant music and laughter drifted down from the halls above.

"The Mereth Nuin Giliath," you said, a small smile finding its way back onto your face. "All light is sacred to the Eldar. But we of the Woodland Realm have always loved starlight best."

"Always thought of it as distant," Kíli said. "Cold. Remote."

You turned to look at him fully then. "It is memory," you said softly. "Precious and pure." You held his gaze a beat longer than you meant to. "Like your promise."

You passed the stone back into his hand, your fingers brushing his for one unhurried second too long.

"I have walked beneath that light," you continued, something wistful slipping into your voice, "leaving the trees behind, rising into the night. I have watched the world fall away beneath me, and white light pouring over everything."

Kíli watched you the entire time, caught somewhere between amusement and something far more unguarded.

"I saw a fire-moon once," he offered, quieter now. "Over the Ettenmoors. Enormous. Red and gold." You turned fully toward him, drawn in despite yourself. He went on, telling you of merchant caravans bound for the Blue Mountains, silver traded for furs, the mountain at their left flank as that impossible burning moon rose over the pass. "I wish I could show you the caves beneath those mountains," he said. "There's nothing like them in all the world."

You sat down on the step across from his cell, settling to his eye level as he kept talking — caravans and roads and storms slept through under open sky, a life entirely unlike the long, unchanging centuries you'd spent guarding the same halls.

Somewhere down the corridor, unseen by either of you, Legolas watched the exchange with his jaw set and something cold and resentful settling behind his eyes.

Later that same night, when the dungeons were mostly quiet, Kíli heard the sharp click of boots on stone. He leaned forward eagerly, a cocky smirk already forming on his lips, expecting to see you.

Instead, the golden-haired Elven Prince stepped into the flickering torchlight.

Legolas stopped just outside the cell, his hands clasped behind his back, staring down at Kíli with a cold, ancient fury that could have frozen the river outside.

"Stay away from her, dwarf," Legolas stated, his voice a lethal, perfectly modulated hum. "Or I will have you thrown into a lightless pit so deep even your kind won't be able to find the bottom."

Kíli didn't flinch. His smirk only widened as he pushed himself off the wall, sauntering right up to the iron bars. He leaned against them, crossing his arms and looking the Prince up and down with profound amusement.

"You're terrified of me, aren't you, your Highness?" Kíli chuckled, the sound echoing mockingly in the dark corridor. "You have eternity with her, and you're threatened by a filthy guy locked in a cage. You already know you've lost her."

Legolas's jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek. Without another word, he spun on his heel and swept away into the dark, unable to mask the furious, bleeding blow to his pride.

You came to him often after that — not out of duty, though you told yourself it still was, every single time, less and less convincingly. Kíli had a way of pulling stories out of you that you hadn't told anyone in decades, a way of making the careful, controlled centuries of your life sound, suddenly, like a cage you'd built yourself and forgotten to question.

By now, there was an undeniable shift between you; the sharp, dangerous edge of a mutual understanding. He had become openly affectionate, his eyes softening whenever you approached, yet his teasing mouth never rested.

"I hate you," you muttered one night, leaning against his bars, a petulant, beautiful pout on your lips.

At this point your words tasted like honey to him; you said them without malice, as a way of reminding him of the well of desire and fire that he was getting you.

Kíli grinned, reaching through to lightly tug at a strand of your hair. "I love you too, baby. Send my greetings to your little prince-boyfriend tonight, yeah?"

You rolled your eyes, stepping closer to mask the flutter in your stomach. "Funny you say that, considering I have to look down on you just to have this conversation."

Kíli’s smirk turned utterly wicked, his eyes flashing with dark, heavy promise as he leaned forward. "My height is the only small thing about me and you know it, Ghivashel. Besides... we're all the same height in bed."

You choked on your own breath, your face flushing completely hot as you slapped his hand away from your hair, though a breathless, thrilled laugh escaped your lips before you could stop it.

And so the days passed amidst laughter, sighs, and forbidden whispers. Each time, it became more impossible to hide the obvious truth.

"You don't talk like the others," you told him once.

"I talk more than the others," Kíli said. "Dwalin's told me as much, frequently, and with considerable volume."

"I meant about yourself. About what you want."

Something flickered across his face — surprised, maybe, that you'd noticed. "Most people don't ask," he said simply. "It's easier to assume the road's all I care for."

"And it isn't?"

"The road's easy," Kíli said. "Easy doesn't mean it's enough." His eyes held yours, steady, unhidden, leaving the rest of the thought unspoken between you with no real subtlety left to it at all.

You didn't answer that. You didn't trust your own voice to stay even if you tried.

Kíli stood up, stepping right to the edge of the bars, his chest almost pressing against the iron. "Leave him," he said suddenly, his voice thick, heavy, completely stripped of its usual playful banter.

You gasped softly, taking a step back. "Kíli..."

"Leave him," he repeated, his eyes burning into yours with an intensity that made your knees weak. "What does he have that I don't? A crown? A kingdom? He doesn't look at you like he wants to burn the world down just to keep you warm. I do." He reached his hand through the bars, his fingers brushing against your jawline, tilting your face down. "Amrälimë," he whispered, the dwarven word heavy with ancient devotion.

"What... what does that mean?" you breathed, unable to pull away from his touch.

"It means my love. My light," Kíli rasped, his thumb sweeping over your lower lip. "I feel things for you that I've never felt for anyone. And I know you feel it too. You're dying of boredom in this perfect palace. Come with me. Run away with me."

"You're a prisoner," you whispered, tears of confusion and sudden realization stinging your eyes. "You are locked in a cage."

Kíli’s smirk returned, dark, dangerous, and utterly thrilling. "We both know I won't be in here for much longer. When the doors open... make your choice."

Overwhelmed by the sheer weight of your own buried desires and the terrifying reality of what you were doing, you tore yourself away from his touch and fled up the stairs, your mind spinning out of control.

Mami, si tus ojo' son mi luz, Y mis pecado' son más grande' ,Pero voy por todo si es que vas a acompañarme

On the night the lock finally gave — Bilbo's small, hurried hands working some unseen magic none of you understood yet — the cells burst open in a flurry of quiet chaos.

As the dwarves scrambled out of their cells, Kíli didn't immediately run for the cellars. He sprinted down the corridor, his eyes frantically scanning the darkness, desperately searching for you. He couldn't leave without knowing if you would follow.

"Kíli, move your fat ass!" Dwalin roared from the stairwell, but Kíli ignored him, his eyes locking onto yours as you emerged from a side corridor, sword drawn.

Our eyes met through the dim torchlight. There was no time for words. He gave you one final, pleading look, a silent 'come with me', before the rushing tide of his kin forced him down toward the wine cellars.

The river took the barrels like a fist, the Company scattering into the current under a hail of orc arrows and elven steel.

You fought like a whirlwind on the riverbanks, your blade flashing through the air, cutting down orcs left and right. Legolas was right beside you, a lethal machine of grace and death, firing arrow after arrow into the incoming horde.

Down in the churning water, Kíli’s barrel spun wildly. He looked up through the chaos, spotting your figure fighting on the rocks above.

"Come with me!" Kíli yelled over the roaring river and the clash of steel, his voice desperate, his hand reaching out toward the bank. "Amrälimë! Jump!"

You froze at the edge of the rocky cliff, looking down at the rushing water, at the dwarf who had brought fire back into your soul. You took a step forward, your weight shifting, completely prepared to throw your entire life away and dive into the roaring current.

Suddenly, a hand clamped down onto your wrist like a vice.

You were yanked back violently. Legolas stood there, his breathing heavy for the first time in centuries, his bow dropped to his side. He was staring at you with an expression you'd never once seen on him in all your centuries together — something close to genuine shock, a raw, bleeding wound breaking through all that perfect, unbreakable elven composure.

"What are you doing?" Legolas's voice cut through the chaos behind you, sharp with disbelief, echoing in Sindarin.

You pulled your wrist firmly out of his grip, taking a step back toward the edge of the water.

"I'm leaving," you said simply, switching to the Common Tongue, so there could be no mistaking it, so the dwarf in the river could hear it too. "I should have told you sooner. I'm sorry I didn't."

"With him?" Legolas's eyes cut down to Kíli, who stood a few feet away in his spinning barrel, dripping, bloodied, and watching the two of you with no smugness in his face at all — only a quiet, careful stillness, like he understood exactly how much this choice was costing you and refused to make it smaller by gloating.

"With myself," you said, your voice steady, a newfound fire burning in your chest. "For once. He just happened to be standing in the direction I wanted to run."

Legolas said nothing further. He simply lowered his arms, the fight completely gone out of him in a way that had nothing to do with the orcs still scattered along the bank. The ancient prince looked small, defeated by a truth he couldn't comprehend, watching you turn your back on eternity.

You didn't look back to see his face again. You didn't need to. Whatever you owed him, you'd paid it the moment you stopped lying to yourself about wanting something he could never give you.

With one fluid motion, you leaped off the rocky ledge, diving straight into the cold, churning waters of the river.

You surfaced a second later, gasping for air, and a strong, warm, rough hand immediately grabbed the collar of your armor, pulling you safely against the side of a wooden barrel. Kíli was soaked, his dark hair plastered to his face, blood dripping from a small cut on his jaw—and he was grinning like he had just conquered the world.

"Last chance to change your mind," Kíli said, his voice raw and full of affection. "I should warn you, the company's loud, the food's terrible, and there's a dragon at the end of this road."

You wrapped your arm securely around his waist, leaning into his heat, a breathless, wild laugh escaping your lips. "Sounds like exactly what I've been missing."

Before the current swept you away, Kíli looked back up at the riverbank one last time. His eyes locked with Legolas's distant, frozen figure. Kíli didn't hide his triumph; he flashed a sharp, victorious grin, a silent declaration of the prize he had won. Legolas stood paralyzed in shock and anger, watching the river carry away the only thing he had ever failed to keep.