A/N: I had to write a bit of fluff to spell myself from all the depressing sludge that has been my recent contributions to –sighs—I'm sure I've made errors in the timing of things like I always do, but if JKR can get away with murder I think you can forgive me for mucking up her timeline just a bit.
Nine-year-olds Fred and George Weasley and Kathryn Bell raced around the Burrow's kitchen at top speed.
"Slow down, you three!" shouted a disgruntled Mrs. Weasley, who was taking something out of the oven.
"I will when she does," yelped Fred as Katie dove for him again and missed. "She's trying to kill me, Mum!"
"Whatever happened, I'm sure you deserved it, Fred," Mrs. Weasley muttered. "And remember that she's just a girl!" She uttered this part louder above the crash that was Katie swinging a pan at the twins' heads.
"I am not!" she shouted, chasing Fred and George up the long and winding staircase.
"Leave it alone, it was all in fun, Katie!" George shouted, tripping and getting up again, darting up to the next floor.
"You two gave my broomstick to a gnome!" Katie shrieked. "And then Fred told them to fly away. And they did!"
"Exactly," George panted. "Which is why you should be trying to kill Fred and not me!"
"Excellent idea!" the small brunette yelled, long hair falling out of its messy ponytail. "Fred Weasley, get back here!"
"Thanks for not being a bloody coward, brother!" Fred shouted as George raced up to the last floor and locked himself inside an empty bedroom.
"Every man for himself, Fred, sorry!" George called from behind the door.
The two remaining children reached the top floor and Katie seethed, pushing up the sleeves of her Pride of Portee tee. Fred's eyes grew large and he stupidly tried to get past her. She grabbed him around his waist and the two tumbled down the stairs, waking six year Ginny old from her nap who began to wail. Whenever she could get good aim, Katie let Fred have it as they half fought, half rolled down the stairs.
At last, they crashed onto the bottom floor at Mrs. Weasley's heels. "Frederick Weasley!" she shouted as her flustered looking son stared guiltily up at her. Katie scrambled to her feet, clutching at a bloody patch on her elbow. Fred's nose ran freely with blood.
"Frederick Weasley!" she repeated. "Why can't you play nicely?! Andromeda will never let Katie come stay with us again after she sees the state her daughter's in! She's just a girl!"
"I am not!" Katie cried angrily for the second time, but it was drown out by the sound of Fred's yelps as his mother chased him out the door with her broomstick.
"You stay off of those stairs!"
Xxx
Four years later, three thirteen-year-olds sat around a table at the same kitchen, munching on cereal and waiting for the post.
"My comic book is supposed to come today," George whined, looking hopefully toward the window.
Katie rolled her eyes. "Not to mention our school letters."
Fred smirked to himself. "But that's not what you're waiting for, is it, Kathryn Bell?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Katie said, annoyed. She aimed a cornflake at him with her fork.
Fred dodged the flying piece of cereal easily and continued to smirk. "Oh, I think you do," he said self-importantly. "I think you're waiting for a love letter from Roger Davies."
Cottoning on, George started to grin. "Yeah, Katie. Because guess why?"
"Why?" Katie said, glaring at George dangerously. He immediately slumped down in his seat and began twiddling his thumbs. "I don't know, ask Fred," he said quickly.
Katie turned her death glare toward the twin who did not quail so easily under her temper.
"Because, look what I have!" he said tauntingly as he pulled a small piece of parchment from his pocket. He unfolded it as Katie shouted indignantly, and began to read.
"Dear Roger," he began. "I really miss you….Ooh, Katie-kins really misses him! How sweet!"
"Fred Weasley, quit being such a moron and give that back!" shouted Katie, who started to dive across the breakfast table.
" 'I can't wait to get back to Hogwarts so we can finally try out for quidditch,'" Fred continued, now calmly standing on his chair, holding the letter out of Katie's reach. She was currently tugging at his button up shirt, bits of egg in her hair, orange juice spilling at her elbow. " 'Then maybe we can see more of each other!' Aww! Katie Kates, why didn't you tell us you wanted to see more of ickle Davie-kins? We could have arranged that splendidly, couldn't we have, George?"
George, who now seemed to gather that he was in the clear as Katie fought with the breakfast things, joined in the fun. "Yes, Fred," he said cheerily. "We could have tied him up and set him under the mistletoe and when he asked why, we would have just said—"
"Ho ho, cheerio! Katie-kins has got a boyfriend!
Who, you ask? You don't know?
Well, Roger, we'll tell you! Oh!
Though you may not like it,
You might just squirm,
You might be wishing you were eating a worm!
The horrid truth is, and we can't deny,
You're that awful, unlucky guy!
Ho ho, cheerio! Katie-kins has got a boyfriend!
Run for the hills while you still can,
You've been brought here by her demand!
She cries to her diary every night,
That you'll be able to stand the sight,
Of her puckering lips,
Her disgusting breath,
As she slowly kisses you to your death!
Ho ho, cheerio! Katie-kins has got a boyfr—"
The twins stopped their song abruptly as Katie had managed to get to her feet and practically maul Fred. She threw all her weight against him, toppled from the chair, and fell with a bang to the kitchen floor. Mrs. Weasley's shouts came from somewhere near the living room where she was doing a bit of knitting.
"I'm—I'm going to see what Mum wants!" George yelled, and typically fled the scene.
Somehow, Fred managed to scramble out from underneath Katie and half-crawled across the floor to the stairs where he was finally able to stand up fully and race up them. In a fit of anger, Katie followed him, attempting to step on his heels and force him to fall.
"You always run for the stairs, Weasley!" Katie shouted, taunting her victim. "And I always manage to pummel your arse on them! You never learn!"
"Well, I'm not letting you this time!" snarled Fred, suddenly turning and shoving her backward. Eyes livid as she toppled, girl grabbed boy and brought him down with her, somehow managing to stay on top of him, using him as a toboggan until they hit the ground.
"I told you so!" the young teenager cried, clocking Fred in the jaw. It was lucky that the red-head was so much bigger than the small girl who fancied herself rather tough because the punch did hurt somewhat and he grabbed both of her hands, restraining her.
"Morning, animals," said Percival Weasley, calmly stepping over the pair of them and pouring himself a bowl of cereal. "I see you've yet learned to be civilized. You should set more of an example, Fred. After all, she's just a girl, no matter how animalistic."
"I am not!" Katie snarled, snapping up and glaring at him through a curtain of stick straight dark hair.
"Oh yeah? I see you've started to try and wear makeup…you look like you've got ruddy spider's legs growing out of your eyelids!"
"George!"
The dark haired girl climbed off Fred and dashed after his twin whose face fell into terror in under a nanosecond.
"You stay off those stairs!" Percy yelled importantly.
Xxx
Three years later, Fred, George, and Katie—now sixteen—sat up at the table after all the others had retired to bed. It was two hours after the New Year had arrived and the three were still up talking and lighting crackers at intervals. For some reason, Katie seemed rather subdued.
"It wasn't anything personal, Kates," George tried to explain, slightly quailing under her glare. "I just didn't particularly want to go to the Yule Ball, so I—"
"Spent the night getting sloshed with Lee Jordan, leaving me to be accompanied by Ernie McMillan, some fourth year Hufflepuff ponce who stepped on my toes all night," Katie spat out angrily.
"Would you just get over it?" Fred asked, annoyed. "It's getting on all of our nerves." He lit off a cracker that exploded into a baby's bonnet. He attempted to place it on Katie's head but she fought him off viciously, clutching the feathery layers of her newly cut shoulder length hair and aiming successful kicks at his shins.
"It's your fault!" Katie snarled, returning to her pouting stage as she half-heartedly pulled a cracker with George. "If you hadn't gone and asked out Angelina, Lee wouldn't have thrown such a tissy in the first place and George could have gone with me!"
"Oh come on, Kates, would you really have wanted to go with me anyway?" George placed the turban that had come out of the cracker proudly on his mop of red hair. "I would have been a terrible date."
"You would have been better than Ernie sodding McMillan! And you might've lowered my propensity to vomit from watching your idiot brother flirt with my best friend!"
"Why do you keep bringing that up?" Fred said, rolling his eyes. "I like her."
"Yeah, but why?" Katie almost came off as pouting. George eyed the pair of them carefully.
"You know, he almost didn't ask Ange," he said conversationally. "He was considering asking someone else, but he bowed out."
"George—" Fred said dangerously as Katie perked up.
"Who?" she asked, looking from twin to twin.
"Don't you dare, George…"
"Well, it was you, wasn't it?" George said to Katie, ignoring his brother. "I mean, who else would he have considered?"
"What?!" Katie shrieked as Fred slapped his hand against his forehead. "You were going to ask me?!"
"Yeah, what of it?" Fred said defensively.
"And then you asked her?!"
"You're sharp."
"You bleeding idiot!" Katie yelled, lunging toward him. Fred, caught unaware, stood up and performed a sort of stupid dance to avoid her attack.
Once more, the pair of them raced around the kitchen. Having grown older and much bigger over the years, however, they made much more of a ruckus. Pans and bowls of half-eaten treats were spilled and clanged together as the feuding friends lunged at each other and missed, darting through the obstacle course that was the kitchen.
"Careful not to wake Mum," was all that a clearly bored George bothered to say. He wasn't heard.
"I can't believe you chickened out of asking me and asked her instead!" Katie yelled, cornering him.
"You're bloody scary, you know that?!" Fred said, pushing past her in a sort of idiot like manner and heading for the stairs. "Any bloke with common sense knows to avoid you!"
"Do you even like her?!" she demanded, putting on more speed as she flew around the corner and missed her attempt to grab the back of his sweater.
"Sometimes I think I do!" he shouted, pounding up the stairs. By now, doors were flying open and several bed-headed red-heads were poking out to see what the commotion was.
"Sometimes you think you do?!" she repeated, flying past her own mum who shouted at her to 'cease and desist'. "Bloody hell, Fred, you do or you don't!"
"Why does it matter?" he cried, dodging past her outstretched hands and running back down again.
"Because!"
Katie launched herself at him. Fred was waiting for this at the bottom of the stairs and caught her, though the force exerted caused them to topple over.
"Here we are again," she seethed. "Seven years later and I still manage to kick your arse." But her eyes were strangely gentle and Fred felt his stomach flip upside down, trying to avoid looking at the sprig of mistletoe that hung above the staircase.
Charlie Weasley poked his head out of his room. "Ah, get to it and get to bed, Fred," he shouted down at them, pointing to the mistletoe. "She's just a girl. You can handle it."
They stared at each other strangely before Katie's face suddenly twisted into its familiar snarl and she stood up, backing away from him quickly. "I am not just a girl!" she shouted and stalked off to bed. George just shrugged at Fred's bewildered identical face.
Xxx
Another three years found the nineteen year old Weasley twins and Kathryn Persephone Bell at the same table in the same kitchen, lounging after a large dinner celebrating the success of the opening of Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes. George was trying to figure out how to best operate Katie's squib cousin's cell phone to contact Alicia Spinnet. When he finally discovered its mysterious secrets, he entered his own world, talking excitedly to his girlfriend. Katie just smiled and Fred stretched out his long legs, yawning.
"That was an excellent dinner," Fred remarked, grinning over at Katie.
"To celebrate two excellent entrepreneurs," she said, giving him the finish she knew he was hinting toward.
"Oh, that's very kind of you to say," he said, failing disastrously in his attempt at modesty. "Mint?"
She rolled her eyes at his extended hand. "What do you take me for, Fred? A bloody drongo? It's probably going to turn me into a bunny or something."
"Bunny? Absolutely not. You could never be that cute." She rolled her eyes. "Mint?"
"No, Fred," she said firmly, annoyed. "I'm not playing victim to one of your stupid pranks."
"I'm surprised at you, Katie Bell," he said, feigning disappointment as he folded his arms, retracting his offer. "You've changed a lot over the past few years. You're taller—not much, mind you, but you are--, you've learned to properly apply your makeup, and every time I see you you've got a new hairstyle—"
Here, Katie unconsciously ran her fingers through her chin length cut that was short in the back and escalated downward toward her face. Her bangs were combed across her face and the sun from the excessively warm summer had brought out natural auburn highlights in the normally dark brown mass.
"But," Fred continued, "you still have not learned to trust me. And because of that, Katie Bell, because of that, I weep."
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, hand me the damn mint."
She fully expected to burst into something with feathers or three horns, but nothing happened. No familiar tingling sensation, no sudden weightless feeling, only a minty freshness now in her mouth. She quirked an eyebrow at him.
"I told you," he said innocently, shrugging his shoulders.
"Oh, you tosser," she said, annoyed. "Now how am I supposed to be angry with you?"
"Who says you have to be angry with me? Why can't we sit here like civilized people?"
"Because I'm always angry with you. It's tradition."
"Well if you must know, I gave you a regular mint because I thought it would drive you nutters trying to figure out what I'd done to it. But either you weren't that intuitive, or you really have learned to trust me—"
"In your dreams, Weasley!"
Fred laughed good-naturedly as he got up from his chair, allowing Katie to once more chase him around his mother's kitchen.
"Not again!" came the wails of Mrs. Weasley as the pair raced through the familiar path. He wiggled his eyebrows at her as he turned the corner and headed for the stairs. Katie could only pretend to be angry as she chased him up the stairs, shoving George out of the way causing the cell phone to shatter on the floor.
This time, as Katie lunged for Fred, she slipped on a piece of cheesecake that was mysteriously sitting on the fifth step and caught Fred's ankle as the two fell, once more, to the ground. This time, however, they were a tangled laughing heap instead of an extremely angry one. Fred had landed on top of Katie and his brown eyes twinkled as she blushed up at him. He hesitated at this, feeling a similar feeling to the one he had at this very spot three years ago. Unsure of what to do, he simply stared at her. George, who was the only other person in the kitchen, cleared his throat to give the familiar line.
"Go on, mate," he said. "After all, she's just a girl."
He looked back at Katie to see her familiar angry reaction to these words, but this time she only laughed. "He's right, Fred," she admitted, biting her bottom lip. "I am just a girl."
Fred grinned. "Yes, you certainly are," he muttered, moments before his lips met hers.