Prompt:
Ship: Fred Weasley & Angelina Johnson
Quote: "You know it'll grow back, don't you?".
Scenario: Based in a vegetable garden.
Theme: Underlying sexual innuendo and/or themes.
Length: Around 2000 words.
A Slight Misapprehension
The commonroom was warm and noisy with the thrum of chatting voices and giggling students. It was the perfect level of busyness to allow him safe exit. Sadly, Fred Weasley's natural inclination was not to meld with the crowd, but to stand out - a natural repercussion of his having inherited such orange hair.
Ah well, he thought. It was for a good cause, a brilliant cause actually. With that uplifting thought he scanned the room for her lithe form and rich, dark skin. She was seated by the fire place with Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell, no doubt having cornered the two girls and forced them into a stricture about the importance of practice. She was becoming more like Wood everyday. He shuddered at the thought.
She was distracted though, that was the main point; her distraction was integral to his escaping the confines of the common room alive.
Fred had a very important mission to complete, one that would take him beyond the castle doors to the ripe pleasures of Hagrid's vegetable patch. It was a trip he would make alone. His twin, George, would remain in their dormitory recovering from a more than mildly uncomfortable bout of boils in the nether regions. His seemed to have more longevity than Fred's did, for which he was eternally grateful.
Fred spared a glance down at his trousers and thanked Merlin the family jewels hadn't shrivelled to nonexistence after that last test run on their Fever Fudges.
Glancing up again, he noted that Angelina was still diverted. Excellent, he thought as he shuffled through the throng of over-excited third years. He had good reason for wishing to avoid the Quidditch Captain; not least of which was the fact that both he and George had skived off practice earlier in the evening. It wasn't that the twins didn't love the sport, they did; but frankly he would question the mental sufficiency of a player willing to hop on a broom in the state in which they had been. That level of dedication was, in his opinion, quite unhealthy.
And the prospect of such chaffing caused a shiver of horror to ripple down his spine.
With relief the newly healed Fred reached the common room door, hoping most fervently that the attractive and now highly-strung Quidditch captain wouldn't notice his departure.
He was to be sorely disappointed.
*
Her eyes tracked him in the darkness surrounding and, beneath the hell's-wrath she felt towards him in that moment, she couldn't help but admire him for such excellent subterfuge.
Not excellent enough though, quite clearly, to have allowed him to escape from her line of sight unnoticed. Not, she reflected irritably, that he would have stood much of a chance. For Angelina Johnson spent rather a miserable amount of time watching one Fred Weasley. Not that it did her a whole lot of good; she'd been down that road before and discovered that it didn't lead all that far. But such miserable reflections were not, in fact, the cause of her present desire to transfigure him into a Troll's pinkie toenail. Though, in retrospect, it certainly might have added to the flames.
Just a little. Ok, maybe a lot. But who was measuring?
The point here was that, because her wayward beater had missed a practice citing innumerable diseases, she had been certain neither he nor his partner in crime would venture down to the commonroom from their viral-infected dorms. The mere fact that she was now creeping through darkened corridors chasing after him was testament to how very little faith she had had in his excuses.
Angelina was so caught in her considerations of his death by strangulation that she allowed her foot to collide with a nearby jutting object on the floor. Clearly, Filch hadn't done his job properly, again; too distracted sucking up to the hideous toad, Umbridge. She almost cursed aloud when she saw her quarry stiffen ahead of her in reaction to the sound.
Angelina didn't dare breathe for almost 30 seconds as she watched him decide whether it was safe to venture on.
Wherever he was going, whatever he was doing, she wanted to find out. She had a right to find out.
She stared at him mutinously from her hidden position as she reflected upon all her many reasons. They certainly seemed justified to her. And as clever boys knew, girls were always right.
Angelina had always gotten along well with the Weasley twins; she'd thought them funny and appealing in a scruffy-around-the-edges sort of way. They had happy faces, was what she'd always said. She'd never really made the distinction between liking Fred and liking George, or indeed liking one more than she should, until the previous year when she had been invited to the Yule ball by Fred.
She had known she would be in for a night of laughs with her teammate; she just hadn't counted on liking him so much at the end of it. And she certainly had counted on how mentally unavailable he would be to her.
Nothing much had come of their wonderful evening, though she had been secretly hoping it would. And the annoyance at that had been compounded over the last year as he spent time flirting with her and then pulling back whenever she might have hoped for more.
He was all talk, was Fred Weasley.
At first she had been extremely disheartened and quietly bitter at him about it all, before she realised that there was no way he would deliberately do that to hurt her.
It just wasn't in his nature. Damn that happy face.
The acknowledgement of that had raised a whole host of other questions though, most pointedly after one highly mortifying incident in the Gryffindor commonroom only a few months ago. They had been celebrating a win and Angelina, after one too many butterbeers, had misinterpreted all of his signals and leaned in to kiss him only to have her lips land on his turned cheek instead. The moment had been horrible embarrassing and Fred had seemed quite stunned at the time.
She hadn't realised what it meant then. She knew now though, which was why she hadn't let the horrid moment ruin their friendship. As attracted to him as she was, the poor boy could hardly help it if he swung the other way.
She wasn't sure if he'd realised it yet, because she had never actually caught him in a compromising position, or staring too long at another boy or something. But the idea of his close friendship with Lee Jordan had suddenly started to take on a colourful life of its own.
Her initial justification for following him had been a sketchy scenario involving her yelling at him about the missed practice; but now she realised, quite dismally, that there was much more to it. She had an increasing suspicion that he might be meeting someone for a little rendezvous after hours and truthfully she just wanted some confirmation of her suspicions.
It wasn't like she'd stop and stare or anything, that would be a bit too creepy; but she did need to know without a doubt whether his lack of interest in her was an unfortunate (for her) attraction to the other sex, or whether he just liked another girl. She thought she could handle being only a friend, a good friend at that, if it was boys he liked instead.
They were outside now and she had few places to hide. It wasn't a huge problem though because she now knew where he was headed: Hagrid's beloved vegetable patch. As she approached stealthily, she ducked behind a massive pumpkin at the forefront of the patch.
What he was doing amid all the vegetables she didn't want to begin to imagine. Was someone there with him? Her eyes widened in horror as she realised her suspicions of a late night tryst outside must be true. Poor Hagrid's pumpkins would never be the same.
It was also the only logical explanation for why George hadn't joined him on this little expedition, given how the twins went everywhere together.
She slumped against the pumpkin quite aghast at the direction of her thoughts when a muffled groaning sound in a voice so familiar rose around her and sent her eyes skyward. Oh, Merlin, help her.
'Ungh - that's it. Come on!' She could hear heavy breathing and the creaking sound of roots being pulled up in the wake of what they were doing.
Good grief, embarrassment or not, she simply could not sit behind her pumpkin and pretend not to be there. With her arms held high in surrender and her eyes glued shut, she sprang from her position and cried, 'Stop!! Oh Merlin, please stop! I'm sorry... I didn't mean to... to interrupt. I'll just... go. You keep doing ... what you're..."
She was verbally incontinent and at the worst moment too. With her eyes still firmly closed, she backed away from the torrid scene.
"Angelina?!" The tone sounded incredulous and with just cause, she supposed. She was just getting ready to turn and run at full speed when a firm hand gripped her arm and pulled it from her face.
"No!" She cried, "Are you..." she squinted reluctantly at him and noted with relief that he was fully covered. Thank mercy for that!
He was peering at her as though she had three heads and did not seem at all ashamed of what he'd been doing. She supposed that was a good thing, he shouldn't feel bad about his inclinations even if they were against the wizarding norm. She was a supportive friend if nothing else.
"Am I what?" His face held a bemused expression and he was staring at her, hands on hips in a pose quite far from his ordinary relaxed mode.
"Er... I was going to say clothed actually." He stared at her nonplussed and she noticed a shrub of gurdyroot held tight between his fingertips. Sighing, she decided it was probably best at this point to explain, after all he'd already caught her spying and she didn't want him to think her a total pervert.
"I was annoyed about you missing practice today and when I saw you leaving, I thought... well I thought I should follow. I only planned to have a go at you about it... I didn't realise that you were... you know..." Evidently he didn't because the red-haired boy was still staring at her with brows raised. "With your boyfriend," she finished on a low cough. Merlin, that was awkward to get out.
Fred stared at her for a long second before his face split into a wide, heart-splutter-inducing-grin and he roared with laughter. Oh dear, he was denying it.
"You think I was having a tumble around in Hagrid's veggie patch with a boy?!" He slapped his thigh for emphasis at the hilarity he apparently saw.
"Er... you weren't?" She tried for a covert glance beyond him.
"I'm not bloody gay, Angelina! And anyway..." He slid her glance that reeked of Weasley amusement, "Even if I were... what were you doing sneaking down here for a perv?"
She was horrified and felt her cheeks flush with heat in the cold night air. Before she could spout out repeated denials, Fred called her over to the scene of the perceived crime to point out the absence of a partner. She felt suitably stupid.
She coughed. "Well... if you weren't doing... that, what were you doing?" Her arms crossed over her chest as she assumed an authoritative stance she'd learned from her previous captain, Oliver Wood.
Fred, typically, withstood the imperious stare quite well. He lifted the arm holding the roots and gestured with it toward an area of upturned dirt. "I was pinching ingredients from Hagrid's garden, as you do in a vegetable patch."
She was certain that would have been her next conclusion. After her assumption that he was rolling around with veggies, it seemed perfectly logical.
"We need to tweak the formula for the Fever Fudges... George still has a case of nasty boils - not good for broom riding, you see."
"Oh. Oh." She glanced down at his trousers accidentally and he grinned in response. It was a bit of a lecherous grin, too.
"Don't worry, I'm not broken, care for a test run? I've smoothed out a patch just here." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and put a friendly arm around her shoulders. Those damnable mixed signals, again. She was fairly certain he was joking.
"You're impossible. You really shouldn't be uprooting things from in here; you know how Hagrid gets about it."
"You know it'll grow back, don't you? And in the meantime..." His voice trailed off as he pulled her toward him and they both fell in a tumble of limbs onto the soft, turned earth.
As it happened, Fred wasn't all talk after all.
A/N: Ok that was my first ever twin-related fic courtesy of Kate - it was utterly random but plenty of fun to write. I hope you enjoyed it and keep an eye out for next months!!