It was the night before the wedding of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks. There was a huge party going on at the Burrow, the natural location for such a celebration. Everyone’s spirits were high and the laughter was long and frequent.
“Remember the time I fell down the stairs right on top of you?” Tonks chortled, lifting the hand that held Remus’ and giving his a quick kiss. “I thought for sure you’d broken something, but you kissed it better.” The couple gazed into each other’s eyes while the girls that were listening sighed happily.
The men in the room exchanged slightly horrified glances at the gushiness and Bill Weasley, who had acted like this only a couple years previously, called out, “Hey, Tonks! I have no idea what to call you after you get married! Is it time to break out the old Nympha “ ”
“Don’t even think about it,” Tonks threatened, lifting a fist, to the general amusement of the room.
“We decided to use hyphenation as a solution to that particular problem,” Remus said. “Her married name will be Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin so her preferred name can remain the same.”
“Smart, that,” Ron muttered to Harry.
“Oh, goodness, look at the time!” Mrs Weasley exclaimed; her granddaughter Rose had been sleeping on her lap for the past hour. “It’s an early day tomorrow with the wedding. Everyone ought to head off to bed.”
With that, the party dispersed. The Weasleys (including of course Harry and Hermione) decided to stay up for just one more drink.
“Our little brother and sister are pretty well set in good relationships,” George noted, tilting his head across the room where Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny sat. “Why aren’t we?”
Fred took a sip of his drink. “Business, George. And the war. We just haven’t had time to go out and meet pretty girls what with all the fighting and budgeting we’ve had to do. And think about it, mate. Do you really want to deal with a woman right now?”
“I reckon now’s as good a time as any,” George remarked. “Let’s get dates for the wedding tomorrow.”
“You’re right,” Fred decided after a moment. “We should. At least, we should make an effort before Mum goes ballistic on us.” He paused. “Who should we take?”
“Angelina was dating Oliver “ ”
“Wood?!”
“Yes, but I think they’re just friends right now so you could probably ask her.”
“She was going out with Wood?” Fred repeated. “With “ ”
“Yes, with Wood,” George interrupted, whacking him upside the head. “I’ll ask Alicia; she’s been coming to the store lately, you know, and I think she’d appreciate the invitation.”
“Alicia Spinnet?” Fred queried, caught off guard. “She’s ... well, she’s ...”
“Quite fit considering her injury in the war; yes, I quite agree with you,” George said, smirking. “I knew that was what you were trying to say. You know she’s a shop girl at Quality Quidditch Supplies now.”
“Right,” Fred muttered, his mind clearly elsewhere. “She was going out with Wood...”
George sighed. “You’d better hurry and ask her, Fred “ it’s short notice as it is. Here, borrow Hermes.” He shoved Percy’s owl at him. Fred wandered off to write a short note to Angelina, not noticing that his brother was making no move to invite Alicia at all.
Morning came early for the Weasleys. Mrs. Weasley was up at the crack of dawn, making all sorts of snack delicacies for the wedding and personally overseeing the assembly of the wedding cake. That made it hard for Fred and George to sneak in a harmless new spell they’d been working on, activated by the touch of a knife, but they managed it.
“Think it will work?” Fred muttered to his twin.
“Yeah, it probably will,” George replied carelessly, swiping at the bowl of frosting while his mum’s back was turned. “Besides, people expect it. They really enjoyed when we turned all the flowers into dragonflies at Bill’s wedding, even though they pretended to be mad.”
“I don’t know if Mum can pretend that well,” Fred said, and at that moment the woman in question swooped down on them.
“If you’re not going to help me out in here, you may leave,” she announced, showing them the door with her wand. “I have far too much to do without having to chase you away from the biscuits.”
Their business done, the twins left the kitchen without complaint. George glanced sidelong at Fred and smirked.
“Might as well get ready for the wedding,” he remarked while Fred yawned. “You may use the shower first “ it looks like you could use the wake-up.”
“Didn’t sleep so well,” Fred murmured, rubbing a hand over his eyes.
“Dreaming about Angelina, I expect,” George noted casually, ducking Fred’s hand as it came toward his head. “Hurry, mate “ I’ll de-wrinkle your robes for you while you’re ... clearing your head.”
George wasn’t quite as adept at ducking Fred’s muttered spell and had to fight off a small swarm of midges while Fred headed off to the bathroom.
In what seemed no time at all, the Weasleys were preparing to go. The wedding was to be held at a ballroom in London, because it was too cold outside to take place in the Burrow garden. Mrs. Weasley handed all of her sons a tray of food to take (Fred and George tried not to be too pleased when she handed them the cake so they could check the integrity of the spell they’d placed in it without too much suspicion) and then they were off.
“The girls did know where to meet us, didn’t they?” Fred said to George once they’d been relieved of their burden.
“I think so,” George said, peering around. “Look, there they are.”
Alicia Spinnet caught Angelina Johnson’s arm, pointing out the twins as Fred turned his head. Smiling, they moved toward each other.
“Hey, guys,” Alicia said. “Thanks for the invitation.”
Fred closed his mouth abruptly before George could tease him for gaping. It’s just Angelina, he told himself. “You look “ ” he began, searching for an appropriate word to describe how the girls looked in their complementary shades of blue dress robes.
“Nice,” George finished, offering his arm to Alicia, who smirked at his gentlemanly behavior. Fred followed suit, grinning at Angelina, who grinned back.
“Long time no see,” she remarked. “Business going well, I hear.”
“Yep, we’re keeping in the black,” Fred replied, relaxing now that he could see that Angelina hadn’t changed too terribly much “ it was easy to treat her normally.
There wasn’t much chance for talk during the ceremony, which Fred and George tacitly agreed wasn’t as boring as it might have been, but they didn’t think it merited the many moist eyes it seemed to produce among the females in the audience. Things got more exciting when the band took the stage and the rows of chairs were replaced with little round tables.
Fred had forgotten how fun Angelina was to be around. She somehow knew how to make him feel like just Fred, not one twin of two. The four of them laughed and reminisced about old times until the band started up.
Angelina cast an appraising eye over the gently bopping couples on the dance floor then turned to Fred. “Shall we show them how it’s done?”
They headed off to a relatively empty corner of the floor and started dancing. The couples nearest them began edging away from their exuberance, which only made Angelina laugh and dance all the harder. When the song ended, half the dancers broke into applause, and Fred grinned as he wiped the sweat off his face.
“Whew! Can I get you a drink, Angelina?”
“Oh, wait,” she said, clutching his arm. “This is one of my favorite slow songs. We can catch our breath and keep dancing.”
“All right,” Fred replied, looping her under her arm in a move he’d learned from Bill. From the corner of his eye he saw George and Alicia stand up and start dancing as well.
Angelina had been watching him and saw his face when he realized how close his brother was to Alicia.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked softly, and his eyes snapped straight to hers.
“Not really,” he admitted. They looked at each other for a few moments then he blurted, “Are you really going out with Oliver Wood?”
Her skin was too dark to show a blush, but he blushed enough for both of them. What had possessed him to ask that?
“We did date for a little while,” Angelina replied. “But we both decided that we were better as just friends. I think he and Katie Bell are going out now.” There was no hint of bitterness in her admission.
“Oh,” was all Fred could think of to say in reply. They danced in silence, Fred not knowing where to look “ it was too strange to him to see George and Alicia and he was too mortified to even glance at Angelina for more than a second at a time. Finally the dance ended.
“I’ll take a drink now,” Angelina offered.
“Oh “ okay. Go ahead and sit down and I’ll get us some,” Fred said, glad to get away from her for a minute or two.
When he got back to the table, carefully levitating two cups of punch, Angelina was staring out at the dancing couples, lost in thought. Fred touched her hand and she started.
“Oh, hi. Thanks,” she said, referring to the glass in front of her. “I was just...thinking. Look at them.”
“Who?” Fred asked, his gaze immediately caught by George, who was whispering something in Alicia’s ear.
“The bride and groom,” Angelina replied. “Professor Lupin looks so young.”
Fred wrenched his eyes away from his twin and glanced at Lupin and Tonks then stared, entranced. “Can you imagine ever being so happy?” he whispered. “It’s almost unreal.”
“Yeah,” Angelina agreed softly. “It was sort of like that at Bill and Fleur’s wedding “ remember?”
“They were certainly disgustingly happy,” Fred said. “But it was a very ... tense time, you know. The atmosphere wasn’t nearly as light as it is today.” He stared at the married couple for a few more moments. “Well, would you like to dance some more?”
Just then the band stood up; it was clearly time for a break. George and Alicia made their way over back to the table, walking so close they brushed shoulders with every step.
“Come with me,” Alicia told Angelina, who stood up and followed her out of sight. George sat down at the table next to Fred and half-grinned.
“Girls,” he said simply, shaking his head. “She just needs to use the loo.”
Fred tried to smile back, but his mouth wasn’t working quite right. George’s brow furrowed and he sighed. “Does it really bother you?” he said plaintively.
Fred didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. “I’m...not sure,” he admitted. “Alicia’s a great girl and it’s nice that you have someone, but....”
“You wish I’d told you.”
“Yeah.” Fred fingered his glass of punch. “I think that would’ve been good.”
“I’m sorry,” George said. “We’ve never really done anything without each other and I didn’t like having a girlfriend without you either. I thought maybe we’d try things with Angelina “ which was a good idea, if I do say so myself, considering you already liked her.”
“I “ what?” Fred spluttered. “I don’t “ we’re just “ ”
“Alicia was telling me how Angelina and Oliver went to Quality Quidditch Supplies together all the time,” George began with a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth.
Fred blushed even as he scowled. “Wood,” he muttered. “Next time I see him, I’ll...”
George chuckled and Fred trailed off, more embarrassed than ever. “If I hadn’t been there this morning, you would’ve put your dress robes on backwards, you were so nervous. Look, Fred, I’ve hung around you for a while now; you can’t really hide anything from me.”
“No, but apparently you can hide things from me,” Fred said with a touch of wonder. “How did you ever manage...?”
George coughed. “Um, I’ll tell you about it later, the girls are coming back. Just act natural, okay?”
Fred was finding that surprisingly hard, but he did manage to glance up at Angelina as she and Alicia slid back into their seats.
“Have fun?” George asked casually, draping an arm over Alicia’s chair.
“Oodles,” she replied, glancing at him sideways. Angelina snorted and even Fred found it in himself to smirk.
“I bet you had a nice girl talk,” George continued. “I can’t think of any other reason Angelina had to come along...unless Alicia needed help or something.”
Fred snickered and stood up, offering his hand to Angelina. “Let’s dance some more.” He hoped George was impressed by his ‘acting natural’ abilities.
“All right,” Angelina said.
It was perfectly innocent for Fred to stare at his dance partner as they whirled and hopped toward each other and away again, and he was struck, suddenly, with how beautiful Angelina was. Her dark eyes were lit with delight and her body as she whirled in her deep blue robes was lithe and graceful. They were moving too fast for talking, which was well enough for him “ his chat with George had put some indefinable pressure on him and he was worried about messing things up. That didn’t stop him from pulling her into a dangerously low dip as the song ended, though.
Angelina’s eyes widened and she gasped a little bit while Fred grinned evilly. “Scared you, did I?” he murmured, his face about a foot from hers.
“You’re not going to drop me, are you?” she replied, though she didn’t seem overly concerned. She even seemed content to remain leaning back, almost entirely swept off her feet, until Fred felt awkward and gently raised her up again.
It wasn’t quite as natural now for Fred to keep staring at his dance partner, but he couldn’t help himself. She looked back at him, eyebrows raised.
“I,” Fred stuttered. “Um, did I tell you how absolutely gorgeous you look today?”
Angelina looked down shyly. “Not in those exact words,” she admitted. “Do I really?”
Fred couldn’t believe his ears. “Yes, of course you do!” He put out his hand for her to take. “Care to sit out this one? Let me get you some food.”
She put her hand in his. “When do you think Remus and Tonks will cut the cake?” she queried. “They surely don’t want to stay here all night.”
“Oh, it should be soon,” Fred said, hesitating when he saw that George and Alicia had mysteriously disappeared from their table. He didn’t want to think of where they might have gone, so he concentrated on getting Angelina seated then hurried off to see what was left of his mother’s delicacies.
When he returned, his brother was still missing and Angelina had charmed her punch glass to totter around the table. Fred slid a plate in its path and while it tried to change course, falling off its legs and rolling around helplessly, he sat down next to Angelina and put his arm on the back of her chair like George had to Alicia’s earlier. Angelina stiffened slightly, but then relaxed when Fred pretended it was completely natural (Acting natural around a girl isn’t so different than acting natural about a prank, Fred noticed with pleasure).
“Where could George and Alicia have gone?” Angelina said as she nibbled a cracker.
Fred felt his ears turn warm, but said, “I have no idea.”
“I hope they get back soon, they might miss the cake cutting.”
“Probably aren’t too fussed,” Fred muttered, grabbing an eclair and stuffing it into his mouth so Angelina wouldn’t ask what he meant.
She seemed to understand without asking and hurriedly changed the subject. “Dancing with you is so much fun,” she said. “We should do it more often.”
“Definitely,” Fred agreed at once. “I just realized today how much I missed having you around all the time. Why don’t you stop by the shop more?”
“Well, when I was going out with Oliver there never seemed much point...are you all right, Fred?”
Fred hastily released the cracker he’d broken in two at the sound of Oliver’s name. “Yes, quite fine. You really should come by now more that...now that he’s going out with Katie.”
“I think I will,” Angelina said, and their eyes locked and held.
“Angelina, I “ ” Fred swallowed and found his hand reaching toward hers nearly of its own accord. Her eyes smiled and she laced her fingers through his. “I “ did you know that George set us up?”
That was, perhaps, not the smartest thing he had said that day. Worse than asking about Wood. His face flaming, Fred tried to retract his fingers but Angelina held on tight.
“I’m not surprised,” she said softly. “We make a pretty good match, don’t you think?”
Fred’s jaw dropped and he stared at Angelina, who was smiling gently at him. He couldn’t help but smile back after a moment.
“Well, let’s take it slow,” he said, trying to regain his composure. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from pranking, it’s that if you really want it to work, you don’t rush into anything without thinking about it first. And...I don’t know, I really want this to work.”
“I’ve had plenty of time to think about it,” Angelina assured him. “I broke up with Oliver because I could feel that something wasn’t right, and after “ well, after Alicia told me about George “ I thought long and hard and knew that if you hadn’t changed too much, it was you I wanted.”
She leaned up and was about to kiss him when there was a commotion up front. Remus and Tonks were standing in the center of attention, jointly wielding a knife.
“I’m so glad we didn’t miss it!” George said, approaching hand-in-hand with Alicia. “I wouldn’t have skipped out on this cake-cutting for the world,” he added, winking at Fred, who winked back, though at that moment he would have preferred the newlyweds to wait “ oh, about five minutes.
“Why, what did you do?” Alicia said, suspicious. George only winked at her in reply.
“It’s completely harmless,” Fred assured Angelina, squeezing her hand and thrilling that he could do that.
“Yeah, we think you’ll like it,” George said. “We planned this with the ladies’ enjoyment in mind.”
“We’ll see,” Angelina said skeptically, leaning forward to get a better view.
Just at that moment, Tonks lost her grip on the knife and Remus, who had been holding her hand more than the knife, fumbled and dropped it. The knife fell, point first, into the side of the cake. There was a small pop and the cake began leaking chocolate syrup. There was a louder pop and the knife fell out of the cake and marble-sized chocolate balls started shooting out of the hole the knife had left. The chocolate bounced off Tonks, who was clinging to Remus as she laughed uncontrollably, and began spattering around the room.
“Chocolate?” Alicia said, grabbing one of the balls with her Chaser reflexes. “You, the masters of pranks, legends at Hogwarts and beyond, have sunk to shooting chocolate pellets at people and calling it a good laugh?”
“Well, Mum likes chocolate,” George said. “She got really mad at our last prank so we decided that we’d be responsible for once and not do anything to ... inspire her ire.”
“So you decided to ruin the cake.”
“Pretty much, yeah,” George said unrepentantly, picking up a chocolate and popping it into Alicia’s mouth as she opened it to remonstrate him further.
“I’ll admit that it wasn’t our best prank, but it was quite distracting enough,” Fred told Angelina, glancing down at their clasped hands. “Where were we?”
Angelina hastened to remind him. As her lips pressed against his, Fred was far more satisfied than he’d ever been about any old prank. With half a glance at George and Alicia, who were otherwise engaged, Fred reached out to Angelina and kissed her back.
Fred Gets the Girl by Cinderella Angelina
Chapter Notes: This story was written as part of the Secret SPEW exchange this past Christmas for the lovely Starmaiden. Thanks to her for helping me brainstorm a title (we still haven't come up with a great one -- if you think you can do better, review and tell me your suggestion) and to HogwartsDuchess for looking this over for me.
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