His Hufflepuff ; Fred Weasley

52

I love my friends.

I truly do. Every single one of them. And I appreciate them. But waking me up at five in the morning even if it's the twenty-fifth of December is just unacceptable.

Being jumped on while I'm sleeping is just plain rude and shouting in my ear that it's Christmas morning while I'm dreaming about Fred... that's just some disgusting behavior.

"Julie!"

I groaned the the sound of Melba, waving her away but she just grabbed my hand and twisted it onto my back instead, making me whine in pain.

"I am not having you sleep until noon when it is Christmas morning! I am not having you ruin my Christmas because you can't get up!"

"You better get up or she'll break you arm." Nate spoke somewhere in the room.

"Melba, get off of me!" I groaned, wriggling around beneath my most violent friend.

"Are you gonna get up and get dressed?" She asked, earning a quiet 'yes' from me. "You won't go back to sleep?"

"No!"

"Cut her some slack." Callie said. "She has to live with a bruised face for weeks. She shouldn't have to get her arm broken either."

Melba let go of my arm and I let out a sigh of relief before quickly getting up once she got off of me. I rubbed my arm, sending her a careful look as I stepped off the mattress I had been sleeping on.

"Merry Christmas to you too." I pouted slightly at her as I continued to back up until I hit a body which made me flinch before I quickly turned around.

Seth stood there, arms folded over his chest and suddenly as we looked at each other, the air in the room for awkward. It was silent until Nate interrupted it by clearing his throat.

"Should we get downstairs?" He asked. I looked at him as he reached for Callie's hand.

"I think that's a wonderful idea!" Nick hurried to say as he pulled himself out of the sofa in the corner of Callie's room.

"We'll be down in a minute!" Seth called out, grabbing around my wrist gently. I looked at him with an eyebrow raised, then looked back to our friends who watched us curiously. I smiled softly and the four of them left Seth and I alone in the room.

"What's up?" I asked, running a hand through my hair to try and untangle it a bit. He nodded towards the sofa and I followed him over to it. Once we both sat down, he let go of my wrist and ran his palms down his thighs. "Seth, are you alright?"

"I'm good." He smiled weakly. "But I have a present for you that I don't want you to open in front of everyone else."

I watched him as he got up again and walked around the sofa before crouching down where his backpack was.

"And I'm really nervous about it because I want you to like it." He told me. "I think it's going to break me if you don't."

Right. No pressure then.

He stood up again, holding a small box square box in his hand. It was too flat to be a ring but it was definitely some type of jewelry.

"Seth—" I muttered as he sat back down next to me and carefully handed me the box.

"I'm sorry it isn't wrapped. I never really got to that part." He said and scratched the back of his neck. "I've been stressing a lot about what to give you and it finally clicked in the last minute."

I glanced at him to see him watch me with careful eyes, his teeth sunk into his lip while he waited for me to open the box.

I could feel my heart beat rapidly against my rib cage. I was terrified and I didn't even know why. It seemed to mean a lot to him which meant it meant a lot to me too. He and I had always had a really close bond, a bond we don't have with the rest of the group. I knew how he saw me, what he thought about me, how he felt and I didn't want to lead him on or give him high hopes only to be disappointed when he finally realizes that I won't fall in love with him.

I love Fred. Fred is the love of my life and the only one I want to be with and that's why I feel so bad and so guilty when I think about Seth. How it must feel like to him, how it must've felt since our fifth year while he's seen me love someone else.

My hands fumbled with opening the box but once I managed to get it open, my breath hitched in my throat and I felt Seth's scan my eyes.

"It's uh— it's made for you specifically. Only one of these exist." He said as I picked up the silver chain from the box. It was a bracelet with multiple pendants. "So this one is your zodiac sign— well, both of our signs. We're both Geminis. This one's a sunflower because they remind me of you—"

My eyes flicked to his face when he said that and he quickly and nervously looked at the pendant that he had picked up with his fingers.

"They're yellowish and you radiate that color because you're a very happy and bright person." He said with a faint and weak smile. "This one over here is a star because that's exactly what you are, even if you don't realize it yourself. Then there's a badger because you know— Hufflepuff."

I chuckled at his 'duh' tone and that made his face soften up from the stress while his smile grew warmer.

"The planet pendant is mercury because that's the planet that rules Gemini. Then I put the number nine on the chain because I know it's your lucky number." He told me. He was pointing at the different pendants and touching some of them to show me while he was talking. "The crown here is my favorite. You might be a star but heck, you're also some of a Queen."

He glanced at my face and I laughed through the tears in my eyes. His face dropped when he saw and his eyebrows knitted together into a frown.

"D-Did I do something wrong?" He asked. "You don't like it. Oh shit, I'm so so—"

"No." I shock my head. "No it's great. It's beautiful. I love it."

"You do?"

"Yeah." I nodded and hugged him. "Thank you, Seth. It means the world to me."

He hugged me back and while I had my arms wrapped around his neck, I looked at the bracelet clutched in my hand and my eyes landed on the two pendants that he didn't get to explain before he saw I was crying.

One was a four-leaf clover and the other was a wand.

"Will you help me put it on?" I asked and pulled back. Seth looked at me face, then nodded while his eyes dropped to the bracelet in my hand. He took it and opened it while I turned my arm over and held it out to him.

A smile was plastered on his face as he moved the chain around my wrist and closed it. His hand then wrapped around my wrist gently while the fingers on his other hand brushed over the old scars on my skin.

"You haven't done this after that last time, have you?" He asked, then looked at my face. I simply shook my head as I chewed on my lip. "Good. Just wanted to make sure."

-
How do we think Fred will react when he sees the bracelet that Seth had made for Julie?