A/N - I know, this is a lot shorter than ususal, but it's majorly setting up Fred's next chapter and is totally necessary, so please forgive me :)
The Time That Fred Made A Plan
She'd been turning up everywhere since that day by the fireplace, this strange, dark girl. Whenever he pulled off a brilliant trick, she'd be there at the sidelines, not laughing like the others but quietly judging with unreadable eyes. But when he got it wrong, and had to quickly disable all his traps before he was found out, she saw him and her amused gaze followed him around, vaguely mocking.
And it infuriated him, like having an older sibling read over your shoulder or a teacher fix you with a patronising gaze when you missed a question in lessons. She just always seemed so right, so exactly on point and so constantly present that he couldn't escape her.
He'd begun to notice her all the time now: in lessons he could hardly concentrate for trying to interpret her every movement, in the corridor he watched her as she passed, almost unable to tear his eyes away from her quick head weaving through the crowds.
He realised that she watched people from under her eyelashes to get the measure of them, that she listened more than she talked, but when she did speak everyone hung on her every word. He learnt that she took some time to smile, and when she bestowed a real grin it was as dazzling as a genuine Filibuster, and he ended up memorising her face almost by accident.
He doesn't know why, but she's in his thoughts all the time (and wouldn't she just thrill to hear that?) and that frustrates him, because he can't think without her creeping in on every plan and beckoning him with her velvet eyes and her dangerous smile.
So he decides with the pig-headedness of a fourteen year old who thinks he knows everything and yet understands almost nothing, that this has to stop, and she needs to be taken down a peg or seven. And Fred holes himself up in his room, all his resources spread around him, and he begins to make a plan. He doesn't really have a set idea other than revenge, even if he's not sure what for, so he uses everything, arranging it all in complex patterns to trap a pretty girl (but she's not really pretty, just…something. Something else. He's decided on that.)
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