[1] Lemons into Lemonade ✓ | FRED WEASLEY

Chapter Sixty

"Excuse me, I have had it up to here with you, this is the Gryffindor common room - "

"Fiddlesticks!" Fred and Aubrey said in time. Whilst it was the password, it also felt like a bizarrely appropriate answer too.

"Anyway, it's more complicated than that," Fred grinned, "And she knew the password so..."

The Fat Lady folded her arms, sticking her nose in the air and refusing to look them in the eye yet the picture still swung open. As they dashed in, Aubrey did say a vague 'Thank you!' but was coolly ignored. Surprisingly, only the Fat Lady seemed to have an objection to Aubrey's presence; a few people gave them disapproving scowls but nobody else said anything.

Fred was quiet as the pair manically dashed up the stairs, Aubrey struggling to catch up due to her now shorter legs. She'd truly taken for granted Fred's athleticism when she'd had it and was now regretting not having used it a bit more, gone for runs around the lake when she had the chance. Because they were stealing but not stealing, her mind had immediately jumped to George so she was rather surprised when Fred simply raced up past the dorm onto the next floor. Immediately he already prevalent concern worsened, her pace slowing as her trepidation increased.

"Fred...?" She whispered, gently stepping on the landing to see the door already open, "Who's dorm is this?"

He didn't reply so she followed him in, her brows furrowing as she found him standing in the middle, his hands on his head.

"Are you alright, hon?" She asked, "You look just like I did in Herbology this morning when Sprout asked me a question..."

"No ..." He replied, "It's not here."

Again she repeated herself, "What's not here?"

"I used a summoning spell and everything," He murmured. Despite their differences in athleticism, she thought she'd been pretty close behind him but clearly not.

"For what?" She asked, coming up behind him and resting her hand on his shoulder, "Maybe it will come crashing through a door like last time."

He shook his head, "It can't, it's paper."

"We're stealing paper from a stranger?"

"No, we're not stealing a map from Harry," Fred replied, "I would have given it back right after, I wouldn't take anything from Harry, he's great but ... he doesn't have it either."

"A map? Why do we need a map?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow as Fred tentatively opened one of the drawers before hastily slamming it shut.

"It's not just any map," Fred straightened up to face her, "This map is wicked, helped us Merlin knows how many times ... it lets you track everyone's location every minute of every day. I thought we could use it to bump into Mad-Eye and duplicate his flask."

"That sounds ..." Many words came to mind, including 'deeply unethical' and an 'invasion of privacy'. However, whilst she knew she should have said those words, what came out was, "The best thing I have ever heard of ... so much power... we need to find it."

A grin spread across Fred's face, "There we go! But I still can't find it."

She paced across the room a few times before swivelling towards him, clicking her fingers, "We use the map and find Harry! ... okay, I forgot we didn't have the map, got carried away. But we can still find Harry just by checking the Teacher's timetables and ask him then!"

With that, the two rushed downstairs but they'd barely made it one flight before a minor inconvenience struck. Just as they jumped off the bottom step, out of excitement, the pair almost collided in mid-air. Luckily, they managed to avert this crisis, laughing slightly at how close they were to disaster. Sadly, just as they were celebrating escaping one potential accident, Fred took a few steps back and managed to get thwacked hard on the back as his door dorm slammed opened.