The Queen of Vipers || Fred Weasley

III.VIII

"FOUR WEEKS I'VE BEEN STUCK IN PRIVET DRIVE, NICKING PAPERS OUT OF BINS TO TRY AND FIND OUT WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON—"

Electra involuntarily winced.

Guess this means Potter's arrived in one piece.

Personally, she thought Harry had every right to be furious, she would be too if it'd been her, but if he kept his fit up, he was going to wake her grandmother's portrait.

"Yeesh," cringed Fred from the end of her bed.

After their afternoon in Diagon Alley, she'd let them relocate their Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes operations into her bedroom for safe keeping (Molly didn't dare go to the fourth floor). Though Electra could do without them testing their Skiving Snackbox candies in her room, she was getting really tired of cleaning the blood out of her rug from their Nosebleed Nougats. And she did have to banish them to the bathroom to test their new batch of Puking Pastilles after their mother chucked all of them.

Thinking of it now, she made a mental note to remind herself to warn Tonks not to mess with any of their stuff. Though Fred and George had been tactful enough to hide all their more fragile or expensive creations in the unused dresser (that was, after they coaxed that puffskein out).

It had seemed an awful shame to let their inventory get tossed by their mother, especially when Electra discovered she wanted them to succeed. More than succeed, she wanted to see Weasley's Wizard Wheezes thrive.

Perhaps it was their simple, yet impactful, gesture earlier that afternoon, or maybe she just wanted to see the look on their mother's face when she sees how ingenious her twins really are (and not ridiculous as she so plainly thinks), but something in her had shifted. It was jarring, really. One moment they were just well, them, and then suddenly, more than that? They weren't just friends, they were her friends. They were still Fred and George but now they were her Fred and George. Was she making sense?

No, she didn't think she was. It was hard to describe her feelings in words, she supposed.

And what was worse was she'd expected them to feel the same. But that was not the case. George felt somewhat familiar. It wasn't quite like Cedric... no one would be like Cedric, but George was on that plain, much like Fleur. Fred was somewhere else entirely.

He felt different. No one, and she meant no one, felt quite like Fred. It was annoying really, when he was around, it only made her more irritated. But she still wanted him there. It must be all this time together that was confusing her. Normally she had a whole castle to distance herself from him, but living under one roof was just doing her head in. Yes, that was it. Once she got back to Hogwarts these weird thoughts of Fred would disappear.

Right?

And not just weird thoughts, but weird reactions as well. Like when he looked at her, her heart stumbled and her stomach flipped. Bizarre, right?

Of course, he was attractive. Yes, she was attracted to him, that much she'd realised a few months ago, but he wasn't the first (nor will he be the last) person she'd been attracted to, and yet...

Against her own will, her eyes slid towards the foot of her bed and over the edge to where the twins sat on the floor by her door, engrossed in trying to get their Extendable Ear to work. Her gaze fell to the wide expanse of Fred's broad shoulders, the muscles of his back peeking through his t-shirt. His arms were exposed, covered in freckles like the rest of him and thick with muscle as well. It seemed such a juxtaposition for such a burly man to be working on such delicate creations like his Extendable Ears. She watched his long fingers twist and bend the wire as George held the end up to his ear and gave reports on feedback.