Ethereal ✭Fred Weasley✭

59.

"Well she did look ready to pass out anyway," George shrugged at the state of the girl in his brother's arms. Her skin was sickly pale and dark circles were prominent under her eyes, reminding the three that she was a Lupin, as her father had a very similar look for most of his time at Hogwarts. Her hair needed a good wash and overall, she just looked like she could use a week's worth of sleep. Fred sighed down at her with half a mind to leave her to sleep for a full week by not giving the other end of the Fainting Fancy, forcing her to sleep right through to next Monday. But he knew she didn't want that. It was hard enough to convince her to sleep for what she thought would be one night, but Fred was gonna extend that to at least two days.

Once Fred had walked up to his dormitory and snuggled Sophia into his own bed, he descended back down to the common room to sit down with George and Lee. They were meant to be doing their Charms homework but found their plans for the shop much more important.

"Did you ask Sophia about coming with us?" George questioned with a quill in his hand. He was the official scribe of the three as he had the neatest hand writing, and Fred never seemed to be able to get things down quick enough while other people talked around him.

"No I didn't get too," Fred shook his head. "I think she would be too exhausted to even comprehend what I'm asking."

"I don't think she'll do it," Lee spoke up and the twins turned to him at the same time.

"Why do you think that?" Fred asked while puzzled.

"Dude you're her boyfriend, you know her best," Lee scoffed at the still confused look on the Weasley's face. "She has two years left here and she obviously wants to be one of those astronauts-"

"Astronomer," Fred cut in with a correction.

"Whatever," Lee rolled her his eyes before continuing. "She'll definitely need her N.E.W.T's for that. And no offence guys, but running a joke shop doesn't seem like her ideal future to me."

Fred hadn't really thought about what Sophia wanted for her future. It was obvious she had a path in Astronomy but he never thought about the fact that she would have to do extra activities for that. A joke shop was easy in that sense, you had to be inventive, creative and with a good sense of humour. But with Astronomy, Sophia would have to specialise in the subject as well as Divination, Care for Magical Creatures (to accurately understand Centaurs), Defence Against the Dark Arts and maybe even Arithmancy. Fred suddenly felt selfish for not taking Sophia's future into consideration and was glad that he hadn't be able to ask her to leave with them yet.

"Eh don't worry about it Freddie," George noticed his twin's deep thinking session and clapped a hand on to his back. "If she doesn't want to come, then she can always visit during the holidays."

"Yeah..." Fred trailed off and let the other two move on to the more light-hearted subject of what colour should the corner of the Portable Swamps be in the shop.

---

The O.W.L exams had officially started for fifth years and everyone was mentally and physically exhausted. Hermione had been constantly shaking when she was seen walking in the corridors to her exams, frantically reading a book in attempts for a few last bits of revision. Sophia was no better. She had finally started to understand Transfiguration theory but wasn't confident enough to do a whole exam on it. What was bad enough was that it was her first exam, and the night before consisted of her sitting at the table in the Gryffindor common room with her head in her hands.

"I can't do it," she groaned.

"Yes you can," Ginny sat next to her, free from any exams as she was only a fourth year.