I really need to get better at updating more quickly. And thanks to everyone who had added it to their favourites and all that. You should review to show me the love.

If I think about it, before Emily my longest relationship was probably with….well, Angelina. Even then it wasn't dating, more fondling and making out in the quidditch changing rooms. So off the top of my head, our 'relationship', as it were, if I add up all the making out, fondling and other things, Probably adds up to about two weeks. When I told Emily this she started laughing hysterically. I even popped to the bathroom and when I came back she was still laughing, not quite as hard as before, but it was still bad.

When I asked her about previous relationships she just shrugged and said "what's the point of discussing that?" I suppose she was right, but I was still interested. Besides she had asked me so it was only fair. I wanted to know who her mystery first time person was, the one she had 'supposedly' been in love, but she wouldn't talk about it. She always managed to change the conversation or just have me completely forget about it. That's the problem with dating someone who is more attractive and smarter than you, they can distract you easily.

I had heard George complain once his own relationships had hit a couple of months that it went a bit stale. He kept saying to me that Emily and I were in the honeymoon period but I had no bloody idea what that meant, so a few days later, I asked.

"Well, you're in the dreamy stage right now aren't you? Where you want to be with each other ALL the time and have sex non-stop. Don't worry. It will pass."

"Well, what happens then?"

"You'll start arguing again, having less sex, no…sex…. All that stuff. Plus you're jealously will start up again."

"Excuse me?"

"You do get jealous of people she is with rather easily. Remember restaurant guy."

"Different situation." I huffed causing him to roll his eyes.

After out little conversation, this didn't seem like a thing I was fully looking forward to, in fact, I was actually terrified. I didn't mention it to her though, when we were sat on her sofa watching some old muggle film I couldn't concentrate on when I wanted to bring it up, but I was afraid she would get mad, or I would accidently trigger this 'next stage.'

I decided one day after we had closed the shop to go meet Emily from work because that's the nice kind of boyfriend I am. I'll walk her home, she'll be all lovely because I'm such a great guy, and then I'll spend the night at hers. Brilliant.

But when I get there she's talking to a guy, a guy who has his hand on her shoulder and is doing some obnoxious gee-aren't-I-a-hoot laugh, and she's laughing too but not quite as enthusiastically, with, A GUY.

He isn't exactly great looking, but he's not too bad. I guess. I wasn't sure if I had ever seen him before; he was tall and had long blonde floppy hair that I knew my mum would love to have a go at if she ever met this guy. Maybe he worked at the hospital? …where have I see him before?

"Hello." I say in a very mono-tone way gritting my teeth as I do, but she still smiles with pleasant surprise when she hears my voice and turns to me.

"Hey! What are you doing here?"

"Oh you know, it's on the way back from my mistresses, so…"

She doesn't laugh. Just cocks an eyebrow and pouts slightly at my attempt to feel less awkward in front of the guy, I know she wants to laugh though.

"Oh, Fred this is Barry."

Barry? Ha ha ha. I literally can't stop the laughter in my head. Barry…pft.

"You alright, mate?" he asks holding out a hand which I don't want to accept, but if I don't then Emily will know something is wrong. As I do, I make sure it's a rough handshake that leaves him clenching and un-clenching his fist after. Ha.

"Fred, you remember him right? He was in Ravenclaw, Year above me?"

What? "Uh…"

"I went to the yule ball with him." She said, and my brain suddenly jumped to attention. THAT, was Stephens...but he looked so….bloody grown up!

"We also went out for a year." He chuckled in his stupid manly voice. "Or was it so horrid that you're desperately trying to block it out?"

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. SAY YES.

"Some parts." She said a small laugh on the end of it. Barry suddenly looked very nervous, I just felt pleased. "I'm actually finished now, so I'll go get my stuff. Ok?"

I nod and watch her as she disappears though the double doors.

Barry starts talking breaking the lovely silence. "She's smashing isn't she?"

I can only bring myself to grunt in response.

"I thought I would look her up. It's been a while since school and I don't think she's seeing anyone. You don't know if she is, do you?"

Right here I want to say something along the lines of, 'try anything on with my girlfriend or even stand within five feet of her I'll shove a firework so far up your arse it will come out of your throat, mate.' Instead I simple say, "She's my girlfriend."

His smile drops and I feel a warm satisfaction spread throughout my stomach. "Oh, sorry. She…didn't mention. "

"Why else would I come meet her from work?"

"Well, same reason I did I suppose." He says with a smirk, nudging me with his elbow. I want to nudge my elbow right in his face the smug little cu-.

I think feel a tug on my hand and Emily's fingers entwine with mine. "Barry I completely forgot about Fred coming along today, is it ok if we go for a drink another time?"

I start to speak. "What are you talking," then I feel her hand tightly squeeze mine, enough to cause me pain, and a very obvious signal for me to shut up.

"Yeah sure. That's fine." He replies, though he doesn't seem too happy about it.

"Ok, Bye Barry." She says in a sweet voice pulling me along with her.

"Bye, Barry." I say, my tone a tad more threatening but still, sweet, none the less. I was still pleased when he gulped though.

"My place or yours?" she asks once we're outside and I shrug still digesting what he said. 'Whatever ' seems to be the only answer I can come up with. She doesn't seem to notice my tone when she takes my hand and apparates us to her place. She offers me tea and I grunt a yes slumping on to her sofa. Moments later she hands me a mug and takes a seat next to me. I finish my tea in three very large gulps, even though it's boiling hot and I actually want to cry out when the hot liquid hits my throat.

"You ok?"

I shrug at her question and grunt. That seems to be the only thing I'm good at right now.

"Bad day?"

I grunt no.

"Argument with George?"

Repeat action.

She sighs and moves over so she's as close to me as possible. "Fred… what's wrong?" I look over at her and see the slight worry on her face. "Please tell me?" I can't hold it in any longer, I just can't. Damn George for being so bloody right. "Barry, he seems nice don't he? Bit of a berk's name though."

"He's ok…" she says wearily, I can tell she doesn't like where this is going.

"Tall…'Handsome' in you know, an obvious sort of way." I try to picture what he looked like in my mind, but all I'm getting is Filch…I wish he had looked like that. "Bit of a smug cock..." I add for good measure.

"I knew it."

"What?"

"That you didn't like him?"

Grunt. "Me? I like everyone, you know that. Just not arseholes with boy band haircuts."

She doesn't say anything, just smiles slightly and takes a small sip from her mug.

"He did say something funny though." I add, not wanting this conversation to be over yet.

"Har Har funny or, you're going to be angry at me funny?"

"Second one."

"Brilliant." She sighs. "Well, what did he say?"

"He said that you had never mentioned a boyfriend."

"We were only talking for about...ten minutes? Before you came. I haven't seen him since, well, seventh year. "

"I thought he was lying!"

"Fred I would of mentioned it, but it's not like when I talk to people the first thing I say is, 'Hello, I'm Emily Roth, and I'm dating Fred Weasley. Have a pamphlet."

"But you didn't tell your ex! The backstreet boy!"

"How do you know who the backstreet boys are?" she asked looking extremely confused.

"When you were in the shower there was a programme on your televi…THAT DOESN'T MATTER!"

"Fred, didn't you even notice how quickly I wanted to get out of there? I was so bloody relieved when you showed up."

"Why? I thought you want to see your super awesome ex-boyfriend?"

She sighed and turned away from me. "If he's so awesome why have I never mentioned him?"

I sighed and looked over at her. "When did you two even go out?"

"I don't really want to talk about it." She said.

"Oh come on. I've told you about every girl I've…'gone out' with. And you can't tell me about one guy. It is one guy right? I'm not going to bump into a different guy every week?"

"I'm not you." She says quickly taking a very long gulp from her mug, I know she's only doing it to avoid actually talking to me but she has to run out of tea sometime.

"Sixth year." She finally says placing her mug on the table. "Well, sixth and seventh. We only went out until November, and then…" she went silent for a moment. "Then we broke up." I look at her waiting for her to speak. "Because…." I say and she glares at me. "Because, he found it hard being apart, you know? Me at school and him, not."

"So he broke up with you? That's still a stupid reason to break up with someone especially when you only have 6 months left."

"I broke up with him." She said with a slight harsh tone. That caught me by surprise. "What?"

"He slept with someone else. Then he told me expecting me to be ok with it because he didn't lie about it and all that nonsense and it was only one time blah blah blah. So I broke up with him ok? The whole sentence came out very quickly and very angrily.

"I knew I should have said the firework thing." I muttered quietly.

"What?"

"Nothing. I can't believe he did that to you."

She shrugged. "Yeah well, what you gonna do?"

My brain was suddenly buzzing. "That's why you didn't want to date me isn't it? Because you thought I would do the same."

"no." she said shaking her head. "Not really. He's a complete moron." she called him a Moron. 1-0 to me. Well, 2-0 if you count the whole he's a wanker thing. "I probably never would of gone out with him if," she went quite suddenly biting her lower lip, she looked like she wished she hadn't said a word.

"What?"

"It doesn't matter. Are you hungry? I could make dinner."

"Well, actually...what? No! No don't change the subject!"

"I'm not!" I just thought you would be hungry and I still have some of the pasta thing my mum gave me."

"Really? That's stuff bloody brill…stop it!"

She smiled slightly. "You're starting to catch on."

"Just a bit, come on tell me. We're opening up! That's what people in relationships do! You always want us to talk more, and see the trouble it gets us in to!"

"I do want us to talk more, but you'll get mad."

"No I won't."

"You will, you say you won't but you will. I know you."

"I promise on Geor…..I promise on Percy's life I won't get mad."

Emily half smiled. "Ok…you promise?"

"Cross my heart."

"Well, it was a couple of weeks after the yule ball. I was in, uh, I think transfiguration. Remember I used to sit behind Angelina and Katie?"

I nodded.

"Well, I heard Angelina talking about…you and her…and I guess I got kind of…upset."

Jealous more like. "What was she saying?"

"I can't remember…exactly." She lied. I could tell because she was playing with the sleeves of her top. "But, I guess right then I decided, what's the point in waiting around for you when you obviously don't like me and, he kept asking if I wanted to go out with him after what a smashing time we had the yule ball. His words, not mine." She added after seeing my face when I heard the word smashing.

"How did I not know you went out with him? I NEVER saw you two together during school."

"He was studying for his newts so we only really spent time together in the common room or the library, and I never saw you in there. And I guess Ravenclaws aren't really, public displays of affection types like you Gryffindors."

"So, you went the whole trail of the quidditch pitch with him, huh?"

"Excuse me?" she laughed.

"You know…"

"Oh, if that's your very odd way of saying did we have sex then, yes we did. Only twice though which you'll probably be happy to hear about."

"Ecstatic."

"Then I went back to school and we wrote but it wasn't the same, according to him. Enter sleeping with someone else, him telling me, and me breaking up with him. I only went out with him because…because I couldn't be with you. So when you think about it, I was really the horrible one."

"You didn't use him to make me jealous did you?"

"No of course not. If I did I would have been snogging him all over the bloody school wouldn't I?"

"That's true. But see, not angry at all, irritated and a bit twitchy but not angry."

"Guess I was wrong then." I assumed that was the end of that conversation when she moved into me, resting her head on my shoulder, but I had two final questions.

"Did you love him?"

"I think I did, I wouldn't have made love with him if I hadn't of."

I didn't like that. 'Made love with him'. I don't why it just suddenly made me feel very depressed. I had to ask the next question though, and I didn't really want to.

"Did you love him…more than me? I mean, the only reason you two broke up was because he acted like a complete asshole."

She went silent for a moment before looking up at me. "And I only really went out with him because I didn't think you wanted me. How I felt for him, well it doesn't even compare to how I feel about you. "

"So do you love me then?" I asked her. The entire time we had been going out she hadn't said it to me once. I knew she didn't need to, but hearing it once couldn't hurt, right?

She moved over and kissed me lightly. I know it was meant to be reassuring. When we finally stopped she looked at me and smiled before saying "Hello my name is Emily Roth, I'm dating Fred Weasley and unfortunately I am very much in love with him."

I probably could have come up with something incredibly witty and funny to say but instead I just kissed her again and pulled her closer. For once I didn't want to spoil the moment.