Sweets, Smoke & Scars | A Fred Weasley Fanfic

Chapter 1

11 years.

They were together when the letters arrived.

Like all their life's pivotal moments: Georgie's first tooth. Fred's first solo prank (that failed fantastically – Mrs. Weasley had spotted the rocks he'd Charmed as sweets a mile away). Iris' multiple wand mishaps – as well as her first successful experiment.

Their letters to Hogwarts would be no exception.

Iris spotted it first, while the twins were plotting yet another scheme to turn Scabbers invisible and send Ron into a frenzy: their loony barn owl Errol, wobbling his way over to the Burrow, and next to him a small, unfamiliar greyish owl. Both had thick envelopes attached to their legs, Errol's being significantly thicker, and Iris knew exactly what they were.

"HOGWARTS LETTERS!" she shrieked, leaping over Fred and George's messy pile of notes – countless hours' worth of scheming, plotting, pranking, inventing. The yellowed pages went flying in the air, but when they heard her yells, so did they.

They had a bet, you see – with Iris being half-witch and the twins being purebloods, it was only a matter of time before the letters arrived, and first to the letters meant a dare was owed: if she got there first, Fred and George would have to buy her favourite ice-cream from Florence Fortescue's parlour. But if they beat her to it, she was going to have to buy them the entire cart of candies from the Hogwarts Express' trolley lady.

She had no intention of wasting all her savings on candies and pastries for the boys to enjoy – she had bigger plans than that. Just like she had already come up with a simple, foolproof idea to get to the letters first.

Iris had nicked their brooms and hidden them underneath one of Mrs. Weasley's many, many cabinets.

So while her partners in crime thundered down the rickety stairs of the Burrow, she ducked away to retrieve one of them, groping through the dust until her fingers closed on a wooden stick.

"What's going on..." Ron's clueless face peeked out from his room door as Iris mounted Fred's Cleansweep Seven. She could hear him shouting triumphantly as he descended floor after floor.

They were fast, but she was going to be much faster.

And the looks on both their faces as Iris zoomed past them on their broom was nothing short of priceless.

"IRIS, that's MY broom!"

"That's RUBBISH!"

One week later, Iris was seated at Florence Fortescue's famous ice-cream parlour in Diagon Alley, smugly licking the chocolate sprinkles off a neat swirl of cinnamon-powdered vanilla ice-cream while the twins looked on sullenly. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were across the street in Flourish and Blotts' getting the necessary first-year textbooks with Iris' mother, Mrs. Blackwood.

The two witches had been the best of friends in Hogwarts. With Mr. Weasley working long hours in the Ministry in the Department of Misuse of Muggle Artefacts and Mrs. Blackwood in the Daily Prophet, both Iris' house and the Burrow had become frequent drop-off points for babysitting; it was perfectly normal for Mr. Weasley to appear in his flying Ford Anglia on our doorstep, or Mrs. Blackwood to Floo powder into the Weasley's fireplace, sleepy daughter in hand.

It was their way of life, and with Iris' keen eye for quirky inventions, she'd gotten along with Fred and George's penchant for mischief just fine.