Birthday Preparations
(By Aravis'sSilverQuill)
Angelina placed the clip between her teeth and grabbed a brush from the opposing couch. "Stop squirming." She mumbled, vexed from impending task. She took the back of the comb and knocked Fred in the forehead with it. "How do you expect me to do it if you squirm?"
Fred screwed up his face. "It doesn't need to be done at all!" her son protested "I look fine!"
At this Angelina snorted. "Fine doesn't quite cut it." She commented, and pulled the comb through his hair. It got stuck halfway through. Angelina frowned. She placed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and yanked at the stubborn knot of curls until the comb tore through it.
"Ouch!" Fred cried, his hands covering his face. "Woman, do I look inanimate to you?! I have feelings you know!"
Angelina knocked him in the forehead again and Roxanne snickered from behind her newspaper. She was curled up in the armchair closest to the fire, dressed and ready to go, and her father was sat at the dining room table, sorting out some last minute sums before they went off to visit the Johnson's that afternoon. Angelina's father had turned eighty-nine the previous day and her sister was going to be throwing him a surprise birthday party.
"I only hope the surprise doesn't kill him." Angelina had said to George the preceding night.
George had yawned and turned in bed. He pulled the light switch and drew the covers over himself. "Let's just hope Fred doesn't kill him with some random prank he might have up his sleeve." He laughed to himself, and was lucky not to have seen his wife scowl.
Angelina continued to comb through her son's unruly tangles of ginger-brown curls and Fred persisted to squirm. It was no secret that he didn't like getting his hair combed. Angelina only wished it wouldn't take so long. She was always the last to get dressed – Fred made sure of that.
She took the clip out of her mouth and attempted to pull his hair back into a ponytail, but everything sprung loose from her fingertips. Angelina hung her head back and sighed. "Fred," She moaned "this is going to take all day! Why don't you just let me cut it?"
Fred looked aghast. "Cut my hair?!"
Roxanne peeped over the top of her paper and George grabbed the half empty packet of Gummy Bears she had been eating.
"Mum you can't cut my hair!"
Angelina rolled her eyes. "Well why not? You'd look so handsome! All the girls would want a piece of my little freckled carrot top." She pinched his cheeks and started blowing raspberries over his face. "Please let me cut it!"
Fred laughed and his mother started to tickle him. "Pretty, pretty please!" She smiled but Fred shook his head – the battle was already won.
"Nope, I can't let you do it mum." He got comfortable on the carpet again and handed his mother the fallen hairclip. "If you cut my hair I'll look just like everybody else. Weasley's aren't supposed to be the same. We're special."
"Amen." Said George, and popped the last Gummy Bear into his mouth.
Roxanne seemed upset. "Dad you could have just asked!"
Angelina gazed over to the table and eyed the empty packet. "George stop eating those, you'll spoil your supper. You know how my mother is about you eating her food."
"A lot like mine." He chuckled and got back to his work.
Angelina looked back down at Fred. "Well fine," She said, seeming defeated "but don't complain to me if Auntie brings a shaver to your head when she see's you later."
"I won't." Fred nodded.
"And don't do anything stupid tonight either."
His mouth hung open in mock distress "What do you mean 'don't do anything stupid'?"
"No pranks." Angelina confirmed. Fred attempted to turn to her but she pushed him back down. "Sit still!"
"Well what am I supposed to do all night?" He asked, and his face twisted whenever his mother pulled the comb though his hair.
"You will sing Happy Birthday to Grandpapa and then go and read a book." She ordered.
Fred looked troubled. "But books are for idiots."
"I don't see how that makes any sense" Commented Roxanne.
"Spoken like a true idiot," Said Fred, and the comb met his forehead for the third time that afternoon.
"Ouch!"
"Don't call your sister an idiot."
Roxanne grinned triumphantly behind her newspaper. No one ever thought she was capable of pulling any pranks. No, Roxanne Weasley appeared far too sophisticated for that sort of nonsense. She thought – though there was no real blood connection – that she took most after her Aunt Hermione. Roxanne liked to read and go about things logically - whenever one could. She didn't however; lack the knowledge of pulling a good prank here and there. The only difference between her and her little brother when it came to it, was that she never attacked the opposition without careful planning. There was no denying however, that Roxanne and Fred Weasley worked their best together as a team.
Once when Fred six and she was eight, Roxanne had found her little brother hiding behind a bush of rosemary. His little brown nose had turned red from all the rubbing and his eyes were puffed and sore. He had with him a tube of one of their father's old inventions; Nosebleed Nougat's, and a lunch box that she didn't recognise. Fred was attempting to grind the Nougat's with his toy wand.
"What's the matter?" Roxanne had asked. She sat opposite her brother and crossed her legs, watching him frantically hammer the sweets until they were completely crushed.
"Doesn't matter – go away." Fred muttered.
Roxanne raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I think it does." She snatched the wand out of his hand and twiddled it between her fingers. "You know we're not supposed to do magic here." Before Hogwarts, they had both attended a school for Muggles between four and eleven years old.
"I'm not doing magic!" Fred had shouted. "Now give me back my wand!"
"Not until you tell me what's the matter with you." There was a twinkle in Roxanne's eye. "I might be able to help."
It was no secret that Fred and Roxanne Weasley had their differences. Fred was a lot like his father (and apparently his uncle), and Roxanne was more like her mother in the sense that she thought things through before she did anything rational. Fred always got into trouble, and Roxanne always wriggled him out of it. Sometimes she even helped him with his mischief, so long as he promised not to do anything stupid again (well at least not without consulting her first). They worked well together, and it made their parents proud.
Fred began to explain. "Tunric Tofleson started making fun of me again."
Roxanne sighed. "The fat kid?"
"Yeah" Fred nodded.
"What did he say?"
Fred screwed up his face. "He kept asking why I had so many ugly spots on my face. And why, if I was half Black that I had red hair. Then for the rest of the day he and Mortimer Mumsby kept calling me an alien."
The Weasley family, if not spotted straight away by their flaming red hair, could be distinguished by the amount of freckles on their faces. It was a trait that ran in the family, and although Fred, Roxanne and their father George were not as freckly as some, they were still a great deal frecklier than others, and this usually put them in the lime light.
Roxanne had stopped being teased about the way she looked by the time she was in her fifth year at St. Johns Primary School, but she didn't like seeing what it was doing to her little brother.
Roxanne smiled and pulled out of her bag a packet of Puking Pastilles, along with something Fred never thought she would have been capable of getting her hands on. It was her father's wand. He looked impressed.
"But how—"
"Never mind that" She stopped him "Now, you're not going to get anywhere crushing them up with that old joke of a toy." She smiled cunningly and Fred beamed from ear to ear.
Later on that day, Tunric Tofleson and Mortimer Mumsby were both sent home with a sever case of vomiting, nose bleeding and a terrible sudden outbreak of the chickenpox, and Fred and Roxanne Weasely had been grounded for a month.
"Done!" Sighed Angelina, and Fred got to his feet. "Now it's my turn." She stood up, stretched and started walking towards the stairs.
"I think I might join you" Said George. He was finally done working out his sums and wanted to go upstairs and brush his teeth (there was a piece of Gummy Bear he just couldn't seem to get at).
Roxanne rolled her paper and sat up. "Mum can I come and see what dress you're wearing?"
"Of course you can dumpling" Said Angelina. "Maybe you can give me a hand with my hair too." Roxanne smiled and started to follow her parents up the stairs.
George turned and looked at his son, who was standing solitary in the now empty living room. "Are you coming or not?" He asked "I'm not sure you care what I've got to wear tonight but I do need a bit of help on planning how I'm going to get your Aunt Felicity to eat my latest invention."
"Oi, I heard that!" Said Angelina from the first floor landing, and Fred chuckled.
"Last person to the top is a smelly ogre!" He shouted, and the sound of hurried footsteps and laughter could be heard from down the street, where a family of Ghosts were making their way to Mr Johnson's eighty-ninth surprise birthday party.
I drew a picture of what I thought Fred might look like and this exploided from my imagination!
I must admit to this being quite rushed, but I really, really wanted to write a fiction with Fred and Roxanne in it. Call this me taking a break from work.
I'm still working hard on all of my other fan fictions, and I've also got an Angelina/George fiction in the making.
I had no BETA or anything so go easy on me!
I hope whoever read this liked it!