AN: Written for the 'those Weasley girls' challenge on HPFC. I got Lucy/FredII. Enjoy. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise.

'But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope'

She finds him sitting under the oak tree next to the lake.

"I drew you a picture, Fred," she tells him, plopping down beside him in the grass. Fred glances up from his book – Quidditch Through The Ages, as usual – and studies Lucy's face. He can't read her expression as she pushes a piece of paper at him.

"Bit old for drawing, aren't you, Luce?" Fred asks, as he accepts the paper from here. The fifteen-year-old girl shrugs, and he realises that's all he's getting.

His eyes scan the drawing. There's a girl sitting on a throne of tarnished silver, with a broken crown sliding off her head of chestnut curls. Her kingdom is falling down around her, and she's alone in the destruction taking place around her. Her freckled face is blank, unreadable, save for faint tear tracks running down her cheeks and water clouding her green eyes.

Fred looks up at Lucy, and she's looking straight back at him expectantly. "Why's she wearing a crown?" he asks.

"She's a princess," Lucy replies simply.

"Not a queen?" Fred quirks an eyebrow.

Lucy doesn't answer.

Trying another tack, Fred says, "Why is she crying?"

Lucy is silent for a few moments, as if contemplating her answer. Her fingers pull absent-mindedly at the grass. "Why shouldn't she?" she responds eventually.

Fred stares at her. She brushes her chestnut curls back over he shoulder, so that they cascade down her back, red highlights catching the sun and lighting up as if they have a life of their own. He has to crane his neck slightly to see her freckled face and the leaf-green eyes which won't quite meet his, whichever way he turns his head. He wonders briefly where the life in those green eyes has gone.

"Well… she's a princess. Shouldn't she be happy?" he asks hesitantly.

Lucy glares at him, and Fred almost flinches at the sudden ferocity in her eyes. "Her castle is falling to pieces and there's nothing she can do about it, what right does she have to be happy?" she snaps. Fred is taken aback by the sudden change in her.

"Castle? I thought it was a kingdom," Fred says softly.

Again, Lucy doesn't answer, and Fred decides he's getting tired of this. "Lucy, who is this?" he asks gently, taking his cousin's chin and tilting her head up so she's looking at him.

"I told you, she's a princess," Lucy replies stubbornly.

"Lily's the only one who still believes that princesses are all good," Fred says. She frowns slightly, confusion clouding her eyes.

"You don't think they're all good?"

"I don't think they're all OK."

His gaze is far too intense for Lucy's liking. She yanks her chin out of his grip and stares ferociously down at the grass in her fingers again. "No, of course they're not all OK. Nobody is."

"Fine, then. Why is she not OK?" Fred is looking at the picture again now.

"Because she's in despair," Lucy answers, plucking two daisies and starting to make a daisy chain.

"Why?"

Lucy sighs in irritation. "Why do you care?"

The redheaded boy shrugs, not taking his eyes off the picture. "Maybe I want to help her."

She snorts. "You can't help her, I drew her. She's as flat and lifeless as the paper I used, she has no feelings," she states bluntly.

"If she doesn't have feelings, how can she be in despair?" He's stumped her with that one. She sighs, rather dramatically.

"She's in despair because she's a princess, and she's always had whatever she wants. But recently, she's noticed something she wants, but she can't have it. She can't have it because it's so – because her father wouldn't approve. Nobody would approve, for that matter. And the thing is, not even the princess approves, not really, because it goes against everything's she's ever known. It's the complete opposite of everything she's ever hoped for, and she's realising that no matter how hard she tries, she can't stop wanting it. And she's scared because it's so unfamiliar and so unaccepted, she doesn't want to be shunned and most of all, she doesn't want to be let down. And that's why her castle is falling down around her, because the castle is where she's stayed, locked inside for her whole life, and it's the only familiar thing she has. Which means it's falling down because she's so unsure of everything familiar now, everything she's ever learnt and heard and everything she's ever been taught is wrong. And she knows it's wrong, but she can't help it. And that's why she's in despair. Because there's this one thing she can't have, and she's hoping so hard for her desire of it to just fade away, but it won't…"

"Because it's not one of those things that can just fade away?" Fred finishes. Lucy nods, apparently breathless after her speech. Or maybe she didn't want Fred to hear the muffled sob in her voice.

"I want to help her." Fred rests a hand on her shoulder, the picture lying discarded on the ground. Lucy flinches at his touch, but relaxes into it (far more than she should).

"Princesses don't need help," she inists, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"No, maybe not," Fred whispers, heart hammering in his chest as he builds up the courage to take this massive gamble. "But you do."

Lucy's breath catches in her throat as Fred's lips brush her own. The ghost of a smile haunts her face, but it's gone as quickly as Fred's hesitant touch is. He rocks back on his heels, studying Lucy, nerves and uncertainty written in his blue eyes.

"I can't," Lucy breathes, never breaking eye contact. Green and blue, locked together in ways that wouldn't normally be allowed. "I'm still hoping."

And then she's gone, chestnut curls bouncing on her shoulders as she holds her head high like nothing's wrong. But before she disappears from sight, Fred sees a single tear slips out of her eye and rolls down her cheek.

She's never looked more like a princess.

But what is a princess without a kingdom?

please review :)