Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
( January 1996 )
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
GINGER HICCUPED THE LAST BIT OF INTOXICATION SHE HAD LEFT IN HER BODY WHILE RETREATING FROM THE PARTY OF SILVER AND EMERALDS. Her sweater had been pulled back over her arms and she clutched the hems with crossed arms. The night hadn't exactly gone how she wished or imagined it would. The freckled girl would've even preferred to be chased down the echoing corridors at this point if it meant she was with her friends.
Of course, she could have chosen to turn back around and drink her crushing feelings away to the bottom of a Firewhiskey bottle or avoid George for the rest of the night and imagine he had been sick back in his dorm. But Ginger knew better than that. Alcohol could only make her problems worse and being delusional hadn't gotten her anywhere with the return of her parents so it would get her nowhere with the return of her romantic feelings for the red-haired boy.
"And where might you be off to all alone, Lovely?"
Wallowing alone in self-pity didn't exist, did it?
"Just taking a stroll," Ginger spoke with the inside of her teeth between her teeth. "I don't like parties very much," she admitted after a moment.
Fred let out a chuckle at her words as he reached the empty space to her left where he always stood. "I could've told you that, you know?" the redhead said with his neck craned to stare at whatever was so interesting on the intricately designed ceiling. "So why'd you leave? Did something happen?"
The girl with curls opened her mouth and then closed it. She opened it again then closed it again. She felt like a fish━━so stupidly blowing bubbles for a boy who danced with another girl. So many different ways to confess. Too many ways. A lump of air grew in her throat while she shared her quiet with being so close yet so far from the face of freckles whom she appeared to adore.
"I like George."
The confessional bubble finally popped.
"I have feelings for George," she said once more as if it wouldn't make it any less true. Ginger slowly looked at Fred for a reaction. Laugh in her face. Tell her he didn't have feelings for her. Tell her nothing would ever happen between them. Say he liked another person. Break her heart.
But Fred didn't do any of it.
His warm eyes softened and before she knew it a grin slapped its way onto his face stretching ear to ear.
"Is that all?"
Ginger's jaw dropped at his words and she threw her fist into his bicep. "What was that for?!"
"You can't let me spill my deepest secret to you about your brother and respond with is that all!" she rushed her words while pounding her fists into his arm. "What's the matter with you!"
"Ginger, please!" Fred scrunched his body away from the slightly shorter girl before she stopped her punches. "I'm sorry but you're stronger than you look, Missy." She rolled her eyes at his statement. "And here I was thinking that you were going to tell me you had a terminal illness or something, not that you reciprocated feelings for George."
The girl didn't catch every word Fred said, especially the part where he mentioned the word reciprocated. This was made apparent to him when she began walking again. He sighed shaking his head wishing to loudly groan at her obliviousness. "You two are something else," he mumbled catching up to her.
"But yes, I am wallowing in my own self-pity because he was with another girl," she now did not want to look Fred in the eye. "I wouldn't say I am jealous, George can dance with whoever he pleases, I just maybe wished to be in her place," the girl said quietly.
Fred believed Ginger and George to be perfect for each other. To balance each other out just right but also have enough differences to never get bored of each other. He envied his twin for this.
"Lovely," Fred began, his eyes shifting from the end of the hall to the girl beside him, "I can assure you, Georgina doesn't see Dina like that in any way. We've known her since we were first years and see her in the same way as Ginny and Hermione."
Ginger finally gazed up at the twin through her eyelashes. "How can you be so sure?" She squinted her eyes at him quizzically to see if there was even a chance he would lie to her.
Because he hasn't shut up about you since he first set eyes on you.
Fred shrugged his thoughts down. "Because I'm brilliant with intuition."
A sniffle and smile came from this. Ginger's steps leaned into Fred's tall frame with a light nudge and he returned it as they continued to silently stroll down the empty corridors mindlessly ending up at Ravenclaw Tower.
"Thank you, Fred," Lunette gratefully said.
The redhead ducked his torso down into a bow with a hand on his stomach and the other in the air.
"Always a pleasure, Lovely."
She smiled her graceful Lunette smile up at him and he felt victorious to bring her from babbling mindless words to her usual grins. Fred turned on his heel to retreat to the party rubbing his soon-to-be sore bicep before shouting down her her one final time.
"Have you ever thought about trying out for Quidditch?"
