#e:hbp

[ x ]

   ❛ i’m not shy, ❜  said garrett flatly, his expression very clearly reading ‘really?’ as he looked over at fred.  not shy, but he still didn’t want a label on it.  they were friends who snogged and fooled around sometimes.   and yet … when he thought about it, garrett was unsure if he felt anything more than the closeness and bond he felt for anyone whom he would call his best friend, anyone he had spent seven and a half years either living with or seeing nearly every day.  and fred was harder to read.  ❛ what, you want that? ❜

“Sure,” Fred said with a shrug, his voice a little rough from his customary closing firewhiskey that now sat half-finished on the till. “Why wouldn’t I? Date’s just a hangout with more snogging and less George.” He wouldn’t be suggesting one if he thought otherwise. Nothing was further from his mind than turning his relationship with Garrett—or with anyone, for that matter—into some vile sappy romance.

He leant back against the counter, head cocked and eyebrows raised in an unmistakable challenge.

[ x ]

It didn’t take a genius to take note that Amelia was taken off guard. She simply stared at the photo in her phone, eyebrows greatly furrowed and green orbs wide, the only source of movement coming from the occasional blinking of her eyes. Amelia Potter - James Potter incarnate, sassy, arrogant and able to produce a quick witted response faster than blinking - was actually lost for words. Nevertheless, Amelia snapped herself out of her state of shock in just the nic of time. She put the phone back to her ear, lips twitching as though she was fighting the urge to smirk.

Oh, who was she kidding? It wasn’t as though anyone was going to see.

                         “I know that you’re a newbie when it comes to this                          mobile ‘thing’ … butt … you might want to double                          check that last text you sent me. –I mean, I doubt                          getting blackmailed is your kinda thing.”

“Pardon? Oh, did I send that to you, Mels? Whoops. You’re right next to Ang in my whatsit.” Still completely nude, Fred laughed and fell back onto his bed, idly stretching his free hand out to watch how the light slanted through his fingers. “Ah, well. Keep and enjoy it, then, with my compliments. Pass it around if you like. Let it never be said that Fred Weasley was stingy with his natural endowments.”

[ x ]

The first punch from Fred was a surprise. It caught Percy right off guard. They had been in a heated argument; Fred and George charged outside when he fled after the parsnips incident. Percy stumbled to the side, seeing blood drip down into the snow. His brothers were stronger than him; he never had been physically strong. He was prepared for George’s punch, taking it, before pushing his younger brother back. “Have you gotten it all out?” He didn’t shout, instead pressed a handkerchief to his bleeding face, shivering in the cold outside [ and inside, this was just reaffirming that it was better to leave]. “Or would you like to hit me some more, you juvenile heathens!”

“Now you mention it, yeah, I would,” Fred replied with a sneer, and lunged forward again.

“Better hadn’t.” George’s arm shot out to stop him. Slamming Percy in the jaw had satisfied his own anger. All he felt now was weariness and an intense desire to not see his older brother’s face for a very long time. “What with all that licking Scrimgeour’s arse, I’ll bet he’s got something contagious.”

Fred reluctantly stepped back, wiping his bloody knuckles on his trousers. The back of his hand was still sore where it was hatched with Ministry-approved scars. 

“Juvenile heathens.” He uttered a scoffing snort of a laugh. “Better that than a traitorous Ministry-loving son of a bitch.”

“You can’t call your own brother a son of a bitch,” George pointed out. He slid an arm around his twin’s shoulders in an attempt to placate him.

Whoever first brought up the word date, it had definitely not been George.

His plan had been perfectly platonic. They hadn’t known Verity well in school, and it’d be good for the business to be familiar and comfortable with her, so perhaps a business lunch was in order, or drinks, or some sort of get-together after closing.

“Fine. On one condition,” Fred had said, wagging a quill at him. George didn’t trust any of Fred’s smiles, but especially not the one that had spread across his face then. “Fair’s fair: I get to bring a snogging partner, too.”

He’d written to Angelina immediately and complicated the entire situation. For him, it was a date. But for George and Verity—Verity had shared his adamance when she’d accepted—this was a professional friendship. No more.

So when Fred, peering out the window of the flat as George made a pot of tea, said, “Ang is here. Better grab your date,” George chucked a sugar cube in the direction of his head and galloped downstairs without deigning to respond.

@averitableangel​: 19 and 31 please.

“S’pose, since you’ve sportingly entertained me all day, I ought to tell you I’ve been using you as a model for Self-Adhesive Loo Paper. Bit on your shoe and the back of your skirt.”

Fred looks up from his bookkeeping as the shop door jingles, his face immediately breaking into a smile.

“Loony,” he says---warmly, as if it’s a compliment. “Was thinking it’s about time you dropped in.”

“'S not Luna, is it?” George’s torso appears, leaning over the bannister of the second floor. “Cor, so it is. How d’you do? School all right? And the DA?”

“I have a few times before, yeah. Not, like, regularly—mostly for disguise purposes. You spot a ginger boy getting up to mischief and you know who it is within two guesses. Ginger girl takes us right out of the running. But then we shot up and that wasn’t so much of an option anymore.

“Our products don’t fail, exactly; sometimes they just—”

“—blow up.”

“Yeah. Lost many a noble Whiz-Bang prototype that way, rest their souls.”

“And our eyebrows.”

“Mostly, though, if we’re stuck on something, we’ll just leave it for a while and come back to it later. We don’t really decide, like, ‘All right, all bets’re off, into the bin with you.’”