BeanBoozled into Love

"Jesus, Neville, have you got enough Every Flavor Beans there?" Fred Weasley's teasing cadence echoed over the loud thrum of common room chatter, and heads all around the room turned towards the portrait hole.

Neville Longbottom, a Gryffindor fifth year with a penchant for clumsiness, sighed over his armful of Berty Botts boxes. "Why don't you offer to help, instead of being a dick, Weasley?"

"Ho ho! Neville's in a mood!" Fred continued his verbal jabs but made no move to help.

Neville's eyes searched the common room until he spotted the girl he was looking for. After a second, Hermione Granger looked up from her book and caught his eye.

She smiled, and immediately set her book aside and crossed the common room to help him. "These are perfect, thank you Neville!" Hermione grabbed a few of the most precariously placed boxes and gathered her own armful, her arms brushing against the soft wool of Neville's sweater.

"What are all those delicious candies for, Neville?" Fred asked from his seat.

It was Hermione who answered him. "Neville is helping me prepare for a Muggle Studies project. I need a few more volunteers, if you wanna help."

She didn't think Fred would willingly volunteer to help her with her homework, so Hermione was halfway back to her seat when Fred caught up to her.

"Alright then." Fred said, taking two of Hermione's boxes so her load was no longer awkward.

"Oh, her you'll help." Neville snapped under his breath, still carrying a half-dozen large boxes of every flavor beans himself.

"Sorry Neville." Ron jumped up to help, and between the four of them they stacked the dozen striped boxes onto the table before their couches.

"Okay!" Hermione announced to the group she'd gathered. Mostly fifth years, several other Gryffindors had agreed to help Hermione with her Muggle Studies project. "For the purposes of this assignment, I chose a Muggle game I thought could easily be adapted into a Wizarding game; and I'm meant to play the new Wizard/Muggle hybrid game with a group of wizards. You guys just have to fill out a short survey about it when we're done playing! Does that sound alright to everyone?"

Harry, Ron, Neville, Fred, Lily, and Sophie all nodded to Hermione, who smiled a little mischievously and began to explain the rules. "I'm going to teach you a Muggle game called BeanBoozled. I had these Berty Botts Every Flavor Beans ordered especially, so there are two bean flavors for each color bean. One of the flavors will be yummy, and one of the flavors will be nasty. Each round, someone picks another person to duel. Those two players each pick the same color bean, and they'll eat the beans at the same time. The rest of the group has to decide who got the good bean and who got the bad bean. Your goal is to disguise your reaction to the bean. If you're successful and the group guesses wrong, you get a point. If the group guesses right, they each get a point. First to hit twenty points wins!"

"What if you both pick a good bean?" Lily asked, looking a little confused.

"If the group guesses that one of you got a bad bean and you both got good, then you get the points. If you both get bad beans, your goal is to get the group to think you both got good beans, or one good one bad. Does that make sense?"

"So, it's a game of acting and trickery?!" Fred sounded excited.

"Ready to play?"