Hermione didn't stop giving Fred dirty looks at dinner that night, so he kept his head down and pretended to be very interested in his steak-and-kidney pie. She stabbed her roast potato and contemplated it. If it hadn't been for Fred, she would have been able to go over and revise her essays, and maybe even get a bit of reading done before bed.

But no, he had to go and get me in trouble, she thought bitterly, stuffing a bit of potato into her mouth. This time she had told Harry and Ron everything (except the parts with Malfoy in them), starting with Fred coming into the library. Ron had laughed his head off at the idea of Fred in the library, but had shut up almost immediately under Hermione's furious stare and instead said he was sorry that she had gotten detention. Harry had been very sympathetic, and told her not to worry because Caldwel had made it back okay. Apparently, just as the three of them entered the Great Hall, Hagrid had waved his arms in their direction and mouthed, "I've got Caldwel back!", beaming. Of course, Hermione had been too preoccupied trying to kill Fred with her eyes that she hadn't noticed.

"At least he's happy," said Hermione wistfully.

"On the bright side, you're not helping anyone answer fan mail," said Harry. Ron sombrely nodded his assent.

"Well, the sooner I finish this detention, the better," said Hermione, putting the rest of her roast potato back onto her plate and setting down her fork. "What time is it, Ron?"

Ron glanced at his watch. "Almost seven."

Hermione pushed back the bench and stood up.

"Might as well get going."

"But aren't you going to wait for Fred?" called Ron as she walked away.

"No," she answered without looking back. "See you later, I suppose."

"You haven't even had dessert yet!"

The torches were blazing bright in the entrance hall, but Hermione shivered as she left the sounds of clattering forks and carefree chatter behind her. She climbed the sweeping marble staircase and rounded a corner, and the delicious smells wafting from within the Great Hall faded away. The castle always was eerily quiet when no one else was around, and there were no windows where she now walked. She wrapped her robes more tightly about herself, her footsteps echoing loudly off the walls. Then she heard someone coming after her; they were rushing up the stairs. She did not turn to see who it was because she already knew.

"I'm not talking to you," she said icily, quickening her pace.

But the torches were suddenly extinguished, and everything became pitch black. Hermione felt her way cautiously forward and found a hulking figure blocking the passage ahead. She stopped in her tracks. Squinting into the darkness, she saw two piggy little eyes glinting at her.

"Who says I want to talk?" said a voice from behind her.

Hermione gave a start — the voice did not belong to Fred.

She whipped her head around just enough to see Malfoy's smug face looming out of the impenetrable blackness, illuminated by the tip of his wand. Crabbe was behind him, which meant that the figure preventing her from moving forward could only be Goyle. They had her completely surrounded.

"You didn't really think you could get away with what you did to me, did you, Granger?" Malfoy asked silkily, his cold grey eyes glinting with malice.

"Go away," said Hermione. She didn't dare turn her back away from Goyle lest he curse her.

"Nice night for a walk, don't you think?" said Malfoy conversationally, as though she hadn't spoken. "Pity, though. The whole thing's kind of spoiled when you run into scum along the way."

A vein pulsed in Hermione's temple. She had sworn not to resort to violence after what had happened last time, so she told herself over and over again to ignore him — but to do such a thing was quite impossible when you were trembling with hatred. She found herself thinking that it would be only too easy to disarm the three of them; she just had to wait for the perfect moment.

"Tell me, Granger," continued Malfoy, his tone still light, "do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be found lying senseless on the floor with a broken nose and blood all over your face? And do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be half-dragged to the hospital wing looking like that?" Crabbe and Goyle both took their wands out of their robes as Malfoy spoke, and still Hermione said nothing.

"Of course, with a face like yours, I imagine you must know how it feels." And then Malfoy said, his snide grin more pronounced than ever, "But I suppose being a Mudblood is humiliating enough as it is."

"You should be lucky it was just your nose," said Hermione, unable to hold back any longer. Her hands were shaking in anger.

"You should be lucky I didn't go telling any teachers," Malfoy snarled. "We wouldn't want to get dirt smeared all over your clean little record."

"The only reason you kept quiet is because you're ashamed to admit I got you," said Hermione defiantly, drawing herself up to her full height. "Your friends won't look up to you so much when they find out you've been had by the same girl twice, will they? And wait until they hear that it was the 'Granger Mudblood.'"

Malfoy flushed again. He gripped his wand tighter, his knuckles turning white. His pointed face was contorted with fury.

"I'll have you tonight," he hissed. "I swear it."

"You really don't want to do this," said Hermione as she took out her own wand. What she lacked in numbers she could make up for with wit; Crabbe and Goyle were thicker than Hagrid's treacle.

"Oh yeah? WATCH ME! C —"

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

Malfoy's wand flew out of his hand and was expertly caught by another dark figure that had just come pelting towards them.

"What the —"

The figure then shot a couple of Stunning spells at Crabbe and Goyle, and they dropped to the ground like boulders. Malfoy screamed "NO!" and tried to escape, but the figure hit him with a Leg-Locker Curse.

"Glad I'm not too late," panted the figure, flicking his wand and bringing the torches back to life. Fred's shadow stood out sharply on the walls, and his sweaty face and red hair were shining in the flickering firelight. "Saw these three gormless gargoyles follow you out and knew that they were up to no good."

"Oh, look, saved by your boyfriend," Malfoy jeered. Hermione was surprised he still had the gall to taunt them when he was hobbling on the spot, unable to move his legs because they were now stuck together. "Felt bad about her saving your arse the last time, did you?"

"Let's just leave him," said Hermione as she watched Malfoy trying to hold himself steady, giving him a look of deepest loathing. "He's not worth it, Fred."

"Sure, go ahead and leave! I knew you two had a thing going on," said Malfoy, with yet another attempt at his old swagger. But Hermione could see that his arrogance was rapidly depleting: his white-blond hair was dishevelled, and the colour had drained from his face. "Thought of any good names for your spawn yet? What about 'Albus,' since obviously you both worship the ground he walks on? He might even toss a few Galleons your way as a token of his thanks."

Hermione and Fred exchanged a look.

"Would you like to do the honours, or shall I?" Hermione asked pleasantly. Malfoy's eyes widened, and he looked desperately around for Crabbe and Goyle before remembering that they had been knocked out. He now seemed to be contemplating hopping away.

Fred rolled up his sleeves.

"It would be my pleasure."

And with much flourishing of his wand, Fred hit Malfoy with one last Stunner, and he overbalanced and keeled over.

"Pathetic, isn't he?" said Fred disdainfully, nudging Malfoy with his foot.

With Hermione's help, he propped Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle up against the wall, where they stood like grotesque statues. Fred admired their handiwork for a few seconds before they left to do their detention, and as they reached the end of the corridor, Hermione heard Goyle sag, knock into Crabbe, and slide back down to the floor.

"They should be all right by the time everyone's finished eating dinner," said Fred indifferently, as if he had done nothing more exciting than throw glitter at them.

"There goes wanting to lie low," said Hermione with a sad sigh.

They went to get their cleaning supplies from a broom cupboard and headed to the classroom, not talking. Filch was there waiting for them, displaying his horrible yellowed teeth in an ugly, triumphant smile and stroking Mrs. Norris' head. Hermione and Fred each agreed to take one half of the room, and Hermione started buffing out the desks on her side with wood polisher while Fred got started on scraping some mould off the stone walls. Filch watched them, happily recalling a favourite old story of his that was so gruesome Hermione had to put all her concentration into applying a second coat of polish to spare herself.

"Professor Dumbledore thinks that you'll see the 'error of your ways' if you're given enough time to 'reflect on your actions,'" Filch said as he shuffled about restlessly. Over the last two hours, he'd gradually begun to start talking more to himself than to Fred and Hermione (which wasn't something to complain about), only looking to his cat for reaffirmation of his twisted opinions.

"Rubbish!" he spat. "The only way to get a student in line is to give them a proper punishment, isn't it, my sweet? None of these doing lines or writing essays. Oh, you all think you can get away with it because all you'll get for detention is writing on a bloody chalkboard or handing in a grubby piece of parchment! But not in the old days, I tell you, oh no…" He trailed off, another malicious smile playing across his face.

The next moment, however, there came a great crashing noise from the floor above that shook dust and dead spiders from the cobweb-enshrouded chandelier, and Filch gave a mighty howl of rage. Mrs. Norris jumped out of his arms and hissed, her fur standing on end.

"I'M COMING FOR YOU, PEEVES!" Filch roared, and he loped off as fast as his knobbly legs would take him, Mrs. Norris close behind. When his screams of fury had receded around the corner, Fred hurried over to the door and locked it.

"There!" he said. "At least we can carry on without him breathing down our necks and telling us how much he misses tormenting students. I'm telling you, though, that was George. He's never failed me yet."

"I hope he doesn't get caught too," said Hermione worriedly.

"He can take care of himself. But we weren't too shabby either, were we?" Fred went on. Now that Hermione was speaking again, he seemed to think it was safe to finally bring it up. "Much better than yesterday, even. We make a pretty good team."

"I suppose so."

"But I bet you anything you're first in line to be Head Girl," he said, breaking into a grin, "and I wouldn't want to get you out of Dumbedore's good books."

Hermione smiled. Yes, she did want to be Head Girl, but she had also come to accept that it wasn't so bad to bend a few rules every now and then. Harry and Ron had really rubbed off on her.

"You'd make Mum proud. 'That's everyone in the family!'" Fred said, quoting his mother and doing an impressive imitation of her voice. "'Course, Ginny's the only one who hasn't been made prefect yet, since George and I never seem to count. And though pains me to admit it, I can already see her with the badge."

"And heaven forbid that Ginny become responsible."

"All I'm saying is, it's lucky she takes after Bill. Otherwise she'd go mad with power, too."

Hermione laughed.

"I'm sure she won't." But there was something else she'd been meaning to tell him. "Fred?"

"Hm?"

"I-I... I wanted to thank you," she said quietly, bowing her head so Fred couldn't see her face. "You know, for earlier."

"S'nothing," he answered, waving his hand dismissively. "You could've Stunned all three of them with your hands tied behind your back."

"It's not just that. I mean, for coming after me. You could have just stayed put and let me handle it, but you didn't."

Fred had now turned his back to her, but Hermione saw him dust the shelves lining the walls with slightly more force.

"I couldn't exactly do that knowing I still owed you a favour," he said. "Especially after… y'know, you stood up for my family and everything. And what, was I supposed to just sit there let them attack you?"

"Well, I guess not."

"It was worth it, anyway. The looks on their faces!" Fred gave a shout of laughter.

They continued cleaning in silence for a few minutes, before Hermione said, very softly, "But you didn't need to feel that you owed me anything at all. I was only doing what I thought was right."

"I thought attacking Malfoy 'wasn't a very nice thing for you to do,'" Fred said severely, and Hermione smiled. "I never got to thank you properly for that, either. It was bloody brilliant."

"Not really." But Hermione was furiously scrubbing away at a bit of graffiti off another desk, feeling rather hot around the collar.

After a few more minutes, Fred said, "D'you think they've been found yet?"

"They should have been." Hermione nodded to the clock on the wall. "It's past nine already."

"Wow, we've been here that long?" Fred paused in the middle of wiping the windows and turned around, looking rather uncomfortable. "Er, sorry for getting you into this, by the way. You can leave if you want. Mum's made us do the cleaning loads of times without magic. I'll manage."

"I appreciate it, Fred, really," said Hermione, surprised at how earnest he was, "but a punishment is a punishment. It wouldn't be right to make you do it alone, and we'd only get into even more trouble."

"Thanks, then."

"Don't mention it. And after all, work is always better with two."

"Not what I heard you telling Harry and Ron when they were sharing ideas for their Divination homework," Fred muttered with a smirk.

"Academics are an entirely different thing," Hermione said curtly.

"Yes, ma'am," said Fred, chortling.

As they worked, Fred amused them both by charming the desks into tap-dancing around the classroom. Hermione had told him off at first, saying that someone would definitely come and check on them once they heard the sound of clattering furniture, but when one of desks bent its front leg in a clumsy bow and invited her to dance with it, she laughed and charmed the chairs to join in. Fred started singing along to a song Hermione didn't recognize, hopping onto the teacher's desk and using a mop as a microphone. She sat in the center of the room and clapped along as she watched the show. When it ended, Fred leaned against the mop and smiled down at her. With a wave of his wand, the desks and chairs scuttled back into place.

"Bravo," said Hermione.

"Thank you, thank you very much!" Fred said as he bowed and leapt off the desk. He helped Hermione up and began mopping the floors.

"That was some really good magic," Hermione commented.

"You think so?"

She nodded. "You're wasting your talent, you know."

"I've never really fancied pursuing a proper career," said Fred. "No, George and I have seen that our duties lie elsewhere, and that is in the bringing of joy to those precious few who, like us, relish in the glory of a good joke and an even better laugh."

"I know," said Hermione. She had known that since she first met them. "But have you ever stopped to think that maybe if you put a little more effort in, the two of you might just have gotten more O.W.L.s than you did?"

"O.W.L.s, N.E.W.T.s, all a load of rubbish," said Fred. "Grades don't really matter to us. What matters is that you learn what you want to learn and do whatever you want with it. None of this exam stuff. No offense, of course," he added with a wink.

"None taken."

"Really?" Fred said with a skeptical smile.

"Yes, really."

And it was true; Hermione didn't find it offensive in the least. As a matter of fact, it sounded exactly like the kind of thing the twins would say. No one who knew them could deny that they were very intelligent, and could easily have topped their year if they wanted to. When their older siblings had passed through the school, they had been hard-working, disciplined students. But the kind of world that awaited Fred and George had they followed in their brothers' footsteps was just not the place they wanted to go. Their parents may not have supported their decisions, but Hermione admired them for their determination. To have gone against the expectations of their teachers and their family so early in life because they knew exactly what they wanted for themselves was a very brave thing to do. Their joke products were actually quite remarkable, and it would have taken two very extraordinary wizards indeed to create such a large line of them at that age.

So Hermione looked at him — really looked at him, as if she were seeing him plainly for the first time: Fred Weasley, ringleader of the infamous Weasley twins; Fred Weasley, who just the other day had crammed one of Snape's cauldrons full of Filibuster's Fireworks and rendered the dungeons unusable for a week afterward, because whenever someone lit a fire underneath the cauldron the fireworks would erupt once more; Fred Weasley, whose O.W.L.s (even when combined with George's) were still less than any one of their other brothers' despite the sheer amount of effort and skilful magic he and his brother put into creating Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. And somehow, the longer Hermione looked, the more she agreed with him — that you should learn what you want to learn and do what you want with it. It was their principle. She respected them more than she was willing to admit, so instead, she beamed at him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" asked Fred apprehensively, eyeing the pail of water next to her and inching away as though he thought she would suddenly throw it at him for fun.

"You're amazing."

"Come again?"

"You're amazing," Hermione repeated.

Fred gaped at her, looking horror-struck.

"If one of those desks hit you on the head earlier, I'm really sorry, I can take you to the hospital wing right now and have Madam Pomfrey set you right."

"I didn't hit my head," she said, laughing at his expression. "I've just never told either of you that before."

Though he still looked a bit confused, Fred braved a grin.

"I don't know what you're trying to pull, but thanks. You're not so bad yourself."

"Thank you too," answered Hermione, smiling.

George had been waiting up for Fred all night, so when he traipsed in at about midnight with wood polisher on his sleeves and soap suds on his sweatshirt, George sat up immediately and began bombarding him with questions. Lee Jordan was by then already fast asleep, his leg dangling off his bed.

"I convinced Peeves to loosen the screws on all the doors right above your floor," George said eagerly. "And I made it so that they'd all fall down at the same time. Did Filch take the bait?"

"Indeed, brother of mine. Couldn't have done it better myself," said Fred, pulling off his scarf and throwing it over the back of a chair. "But you know, you'd think that after all the detentions we've ever served for Filch, he'd have run out of stories. I've never been more wrong. You won't believe what kind of torture-tale I've had to endure this time. I swear, he and Snape love punishment so much they should get married."

"At least you didn't have to suffer any longer than you did," said George.

"He came back eventually," said Fred. "And he wasn't in a good mood, especially since I'd locked him out. He tried using a key, but there were so many of them that I think he gave up halfway and tried knocking it down with his foot instead — wound up spraining his ankle, too."

"And Hermione let you do that?"

"No. She was the one who opened the door for him. And wouldn't you know it, he threw us out quite unceremoniously after that, yelling at us to get out of his sight before he extended our sentence."

"All good things must come to an end." George reached into his bedside cabinet and pulled out a half-empty box of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans. Offering some to Fred, he snickered. "And how's the ear?"

Fred tugged at his ear, verified the fact that it was still very much attached to the side of his head, and said, "It appears that my anatomy is still in order."

"Did Hermione try telling you exactly how many rules you broke and on which pages, sections, and paragraphs of the hitherto unread and crumbling Hogwarts Handbook they can be found? Or did she tone it down by instead lecturing you on every single thing mentioned in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?"

"Neither, actually," said Fred. "She wasn't as bad as we thought she'd be." He popped a black bean into his mouth, hoping it would be licorice, and pulled a face; he'd gotten ink. "Anyway, enough about me. What's the news on Oliver?"

"None whatsoever," George said happily, raising the sweets box like a wine glass. "I'm pretty sure this is one of my greatest feats yet. Managing to evade his wrath for so long's got to be some sort of record, and that's saying something. He's been exercising his wrathfulness on us since we joined the team."

George then stopped speaking and quietly scrutinized his twin. After a minute or two of watching Fred try to get a stubborn bit of mould out from under one of his fingernails, he seemed to have made his mind up about something. Suppressing a smirk, he reached into the box and rummaged around for another bean.

"You know, Freddie," he said casually, as if he were picking up the threads of a different conversation they'd been having earlier, "I won't think any less of you for it."

Fred frowned, pausing in the act of unbuttoning his shirt.

"You won't think any less of me for what?"

"If you're starting to take a liking to Gryffindor's resident know-it-all, I'll understand completely. All you have to do is come clean about it." George grinned. "I'll think you're a humongous prat, of course, and I can't promise that I won't spend the rest of our natural lives making fun of you, but I respect your choices."

Fred rolled his eyes, now pulling on his pajamas.

"Just go to sleep," he said, flinging a sock into George's face.

"Tosser," said George as he pulled off the sock.

Fred climbed into his four-poster bed and drew the hangings closed.

"Sleep tight. Don't let the Oliver Woods bite."

"I sure hope I can," George chortled. "There'll be a lot of questions in the morning, and I'm not sure the world is ready for our love just yet."

"'Night, then."

Fred heard the springs beneath George's mattress creak as George extinguished his lamp, and he rolled onto his side, thinking. The detention hadn't at all gone the way he'd thought it would. Well, he'd certainly been expecting Malfoy to get back at them for the other day, but he'd never imagined that he'd lay his life bare before anyone, much less Hermione Granger. As a matter of fact, during dinner his only worry had been the idea of spending an unpleasant evening listening to Hermione tell him off for all his horrible life decisions, and the very last thing he'd expected from her was praise. "You're amazing," she'd said. But why, he asked himself?

He lay on his back and frowned into the darkness. Why had she said that even after he'd told her that grades didn't matter? Surely that had been the very worst kind of blasphemy. Why had she said that even after he had gotten her a detention? What had he done to make her say it? Try as he might, Fred couldn't figure it out, no matter how many times he turned it over in his head.

He stayed awake long into the night, so that he was still up when Oliver Wood busted in and shouted them all out of their beds. Of course, his anger had been building up for days by then. George nodded off against the wall, groggily mumbling "sod off," as Oliver went on and on about what George's antics had cost him and, to some extent, Puddlemere United, still painfully oblivious to the fact that no one ever listened to him. It was dawn by the time Oliver seemed to think that he'd said everything he needed to say, and even as he closed the dormitory door and Lee slid onto the floor with his limbs splayed about him at odd angles, snoring loudly, Fred still hadn't closed his eyes.

He saw Hermione on Monday morning in the entrance hall, but all she had time for was a smile before rushing off with her classmates to History of Magic, Harry and Ron in tow. Fred had been spending so much time with her lately that he'd forgotten they never actually talked to each other.

He watched her retreating back for a moment before George reminded him that they had to eat at top speed if they wanted to make it to class on time. It was a shame, really, Fred thought as he looked over his shoulder one last time.

He would have liked to talk to Hermione again.

So it seems that I update the story every Monday and Thursday. At least now you know when to expect the next chapter! ovo Now that the detention is over, are you wondering what's going to happen next?

Reviews and PMs would be greatly appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter!