Unexpected (Fred Weasley x Slytherin!Reader series)

Unexpected (Part 8)

Summary: Everyone knew Fred Weasley, the cocky, confident, Gryffindor beater and prank extraordinaire. Everything was pretty damn perfect, until he meets a girl he cant afford to be late for...

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"An' the' he panicked an' he threw it in the fire! An' when he realised wha' he did, he tried to--"

"Ronald, will you stop talking with your mouth full! It's disgusting and I don't want any half-eaten chicken on my plate!" Hermione scolded, pushing her plate away from him. "Can't I just have one meal without you spitting all over the place?"

"Well can't I just tell one story without you cutting me off for something?" Ron fired back, though he did swallow his food first.

"You two really do bicker like an old married couple, don't ya?" Snickered George, sending a look to his little brother, who flushed almost instantly.

"Shut up, no we don't!" Ron whined, obviously embarrassed as he cradled his plate closer, shoving a boiled potato in his mouth with a frown - he didn't even get to finish what he was saying.

The group of Gryffindor boys laughed at his reaction, before breaking off into new conversation. It was dinnertime on a Sunday evening, exactly five days and fifteen hours before Fred's study date (if you could even call it that) with (Y/N) - he'd been counting. He'd woken up the previous morning and sat up with a brilliant bundle of excited nerves in his stomach and had been about to get ready when he realised he would have been a week early for his tutoring session, then crawled back into bed feeling impatient and disappointed. Why did she have to set the date for the next week? It only gave him more time to build up nerves - something he definitely wasn't used to. But maybe that was the point, he considered, to make him anxious and keep him waiting - to keep him overthinking and over-preparing his every planned word. He'd almost gone to the lengths of writing a list of conversation starters and topics to avoid - almost; he soon realised that that might have taken preparedness a little too far. But at least the extra time allowed him to brush up on topics that they'd already covered in class; he didn't want to seem too clueless, did he? Of course, he understood very little of what he was reading, but it was the effort that counted, right? He hoped she thought so...

"It was well funny, right Fred?" George said, patting him on the shoulder. He'd gathered that his twin was explaining something to Lee, since they were both looking his way, and quickly agreed as if he'd been listening the whole time.

He really needed to stop spacing out.

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Time was going incredibly slow. Every tick of the clock on the wall seemed louder than the last, as if it were mocking him, taunting him with each second that passed. Ordinarily, the repetitive tapping noise would have lulled him into a sleep-like daze - but now all it did was make Fred increasingly aware of each second that went, serving as a constant reminder of what he could have been doing with that time. Dear Godric, was this what detention was like for everyone else?

Fred and George had been caught red-handed setting up a prank near the potions classroom, and by none-other than Professor McGonagall. And so now there they were, sitting at opposite ends of the Transfiguration classroom as the professor marked some papers and kept a watchful eye on the pair. They had no idea how long they would be serving their punishment, which made Fred even more nervous; he had an hour until he was due to meet with (Y/N), and he desperately wanted to spend that time going over some things in his divination book, and checking his appearance (mostly the latter), maybe turn up a little early. His knee bounced erratically under the desk, the only outlet for his nerves, and his fingers tapped the wood while he stared at the clock, as if it could speed things along.