The Language of Flowers | Fred Weasley

29: P R I M R O S E - inconsistency

Three days of detention went by before the kiss was brought up again. Three days of Fred and I getting along. Three days of Fred and I having normal conversations. Three days of us trying to figure out how to behave in front of our friends.

I knew our relationship would never be like it was, and that didn't bother me. It was the future that scared me. Fred and I treated each other like new acquaintances, trying to get to know each other as friends, not rivals.

It was a precarious friendship. Trying to balance our old rivalry with a new friendship was not an easy thing.

The problem wasn't that we didn't know each other well, because it turned out we both knew a bloody lot about each other, the problem was trying to sort through my emotions. Fred didn't seem to have the same struggle I was having, at least no visible signs, and it only made it worse for me. Fred was the same playful, arrogant arse he always was, while I was struggling to find where I fit in this whole situation, how I fit with Fred.

I glanced over in Fred's direction, letting my eyes scan his face before I looked back down at my plate.

"Ellie, have you finished that essay for Transfiguration?" Adhera asked, waving her hand in front of my face from her seat across the Gryffindor table.

I shook my head, blinking a few times to clear my thoughts. "Yeah, I finished it."

"Good," Maria said with a nod of her head. "We can look over each other's papers tonight for grammatical errors."

"We should probably look for factual errors too, I made up a bunch of stuff." Joanna laughed.

"You gonna eat that?" Ron interrupted, pointing at my plate. I looked down at my completely full plate before turning back to Ron. I shrugged, pushing the plate further in his direction. He grinned, reaching over Joanna to grab my plate, only for the plate to be smacked out of his hand.

Everyone gaped at Fred, looks of surprise on all of our faces. He pulled his hand back into his lap, giving Ron a look. "We all know you're a growing boy, Ron, but you don't just take a woman's plate like that. Seamus and Dean are hogging a whole plate of chicken over there," Fred snapped. Ron's ears turned pink as he narrowed his eyes at his brother. He got up, walked over to Seamus and Dean and stayed over there for the rest of the meal.

I met Fred's eye and he raised his eyebrows slightly at me before turning back to his conversation with George and Lee. I pulled my plate back towards me, staring at it in confusion. That was strange, I thought to myself, and I wasn't the only one who thought that.

Joanna was giving me a weird look, her eyes narrowed at me. I shrugged at her, I was just as clueless as she was.

I guess I should eat some, I skipped lunch and I only had a piece of toast for breakfast. I picked up my fork, nibbling on my green beans. I had been so buried in my thoughts today that I hadn't been eating much. Usually I would've devoured my entire plate by now. I'm sure my appetite would return tomorrow.

As the fifth year girls gathered in our dorm room later, Fred's behavior was immediately brought back up.

"Am I the only one curious about Fred's behavior today?" Adhera smirked at me as she climbed on my bed, tucking her legs elegantly beneath her.

"Oh yes, what was that? I thought he was going to tell Ron that he wanted your plate for himself." Katie laughed as she too climbed onto my bed. Apparently my small bed was the meeting place tonight because Maria and Joanna clambered on too.

We had an effective method for reading each other's papers, one that allowed all of us to get good grades every time. We passed our papers around a few times until we each had someone else's paper. This time, I had Maria's. It didn't take me long to read through it, there were no grammatical or factual errors of any kind.