This chapter is dedicated to Pamela Hutchins for never giving up on this story - your review prompted me to update :)

"You're so funny, seriously. So, so funny." Vicki cackled to her friend Sarah after taking a large swig out of her cheap wine.

"No, WE'RE funny. Both of us. We have the best times ever!" Sarah drunkely slurred to Vicki as a response.

It was now a couple of hours into Vicki's birthday party and it was well into full swing.

As soon as Cedric and Vicki returned from Vicki's primary school they began their preparations. The two penetrated the walls with as many silencing charms as they could cast. Vicki's neighbours weren't too nosey or rude, but Vicki had previously downplayed tonight's plans to her mother. She told her mother it was just a couple of friends over for a sleepover. She never told her mother it was going to be a full blown party. She couldn't risk a neighbour giving her away to her mother when she returned from her cruise.

Cedric then showed off to Vicki his ability to adequately turn vinegar into wine, and ended up teaching Vicki how to do the spell. The two had so much fun transforming heaps of vinegar they lost track of time, but at least had enough wine for the entire party. Vicki had to race to her bedroom and quickly throw on her red spaghetti strap silk stress, and apply makeup as fast as possible before her guests arrived. She didn't even have the time to do her hair the sleek way she wanted with her wand, instead she had to settle for an impromptu messy up-do.

But the guests slowly rolled in one-by-one. Most of the guests were muggles that Vicki had befriended through the years. Ex-neighbours, and a very small handful of people from Vicki's primary school who were nice to her growing up. A few of these people had also invited guests of their own. It wasn't a raging out of control party like you'd see in a muggle teen movie, but the house was quite busy with teenagers mingling everywhere.

After many glasses of vinegar-wine (which didn't taste like vinegar at all so her guests were none the wiser) Vicki was now in a blissfully tipsy state and was chatting to Sarah on the stairs of the townhouse. Sarah also was just as intoxicated as Vicki.

"Your friend Cho is really nice. She's sooooo pretty. Her and her boyfriend make a great couple," Sarah slurred before sighing "A great looking couple!"

"I dunno. They're both a bit rubbish at sport, they're both on each other's house teams. Cedric only wins if star players become incapacitated, Cho only wins by playing dirty." Fred quickly interjected, stepping over Sarah at the top of the stairs and to take a seat next to his girlfriend.

Vicki blinked in confusion at the sudden appearance of her boyfriend.

"Cedric is a good player! But um, Fred? Y-you're here?" Vicki stuttered out. She had had a bit to drink and was in a bit of a state - but she knew she wasn't drunk enough to have visions that weren't there. Even though it would make sense for her to see Fred. She missed him terribly.

"I'm here... I've been standing at the top of the stairs for a good five minutes actually. You were too busy yapping away to notice me." Fred stated in an amused fashion.

"FRED!" Vicki squealed as the news sunk in. Her boyfriend, the one she had been pining over for a week, was sitting right next to her.

She didn't let him respond as she roughly grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss. Fred was so caught by surprise that it took him a few seconds to register what was happening. But then he kissed her back. He kissed her back passionately.

They were kissing for a good while in an attempt to make up for the lost week away from each other. However it was Fred who broke away first as a nagging feeling was chewing away at him.

"This seems...wrong. You seem pretty drunk." Fred guilitly stated as he pulled away.

He expected Vicki to protest or push him to keep kissing her. But instead he was met with his girlfriend sending him a large grin.

"Well then. You'll just need to catch up to me." Vicki stated matter-of-factly as she suddenly got to her feet. Due to her intoxicated state she was a little unsteady so Fred jumped up just as quickly to ensure her safety.

She only giggled - a little out of character for her as normally she would snap at the unsolicited help. But she was tipsy and so glad to see Fred. There was almost nothing he could do right now to upset her.

"I'll catchya soon, Sarah. I gots ta show the boyfie the house. He's never been here before." Vicki announced as she stepped over Sarah to make her way to the upstairs area.

Fred said nothing but allowed Vicki to take his hand as she ventured through the top floor of her house. There wasn't much there - it was a fairly small and narrow Victorian-era townhouse. Therefore there was only a small landing with two doors leading into unknown rooms.

"One is my room. The other is the guestroom. It's pretty boring so we won't go in there. It's mainly whi-" Vicki began to explain, but was cut off quickly by Fred.

"-White with some wooden furniture? Yeah, I saw it on my way in. I got here through the floo network."

"Did you bring Lee and George?" Vicki asked him suddenly. She was still tipsy but she was now beginning to wrap her head around the fact that the boy she had been pining over for a week was now in front of her. It was suddenly beginning to feel real.

"No. Do you want to go into your room? I can explain it all to you without the fear of one of your muggle mates overhearing." Fred responded as he nodded his head towards the second door on the landing.

He hoped it didn't sound too sleazy. Under different circumstances he certainly would have liked to spend time in her room with her to get up to no good. But this time it was purely to talk. He knew it wasn't a good idea to talk openly about travelling by magic whilst surrounded by muggles.

Vicki also knew this as she didn't attempt to make any dirty jokes. She led him into her room and shut the door behind her.

Vicki told Fred to 'wait a moment' as she began to dig through her wardrobe. This gave Fred the chance to look around her room without looking nosey. It was similar to the guest room he had entered through. Cream walls and dark carpet, with fairly outdated furniture sitting in the room looking tired. He noticed remnants of sticky residue on the walls which suggested some long-standing posters had recently been removed. He thought her room was a bit boring, but saw no use in divulging this opinion to her.

"Here we go! Cedric got me this for my birthday. I still feel I need to hide it as I'm not sure how mum feels about me drinking alcohol. Magic folk become legal at seventeen, but muggles aren't allowed to drink until they're eighteen so I'm still underage in the muggle world." Vicki said sheepishly as she passed a bottle of Firewhiskey to Fred after pulling it from the top of her wardrobe.

"Firewhiskey. Reminds me of that night we drank it at the top of the Astronomy Tower." Fred grinned madly as he unscrewed the top and took a large swig.

"Our first kiss. Okay, yeah it was to get rid of the Fat Friar. But it really meant something to me, even if I didn't realise at the time," Vick confessed as she matched his grin at the memory "Anyways! Enough being lame. Tell me. How on earth did you manage to sneak out of school to come here? I'm still so confused!"

Even though Fred was completely sober (well, now almost sober after that swig), and more knowledgeable about his mystery appearance at the party, he too was coming off a similar rush that Vicki was going through. He had missed the girl immensely and seeing her in person had given him a huge adrenaline kick. Vicki couldn't believe he was there. But neither could he.

It was hard for him to talk. All he wanted to do was kiss her and hold her. But it was her birthday party and he couldn't be selfish. Her presence was required out in the party and their time alone was limited. He needed to get on with his explanation.

"You know that George and I know about all of the secret passageways within Hogwarts. Well there's one the leads into Honeydukes in Hogsmeade. All I had to do was make a loud declaration in the common room that I was going to bed, but instead I snuck out and hit the passageway." Fred grinned proudly.

"S-so you managed to sneak out of Hogwarts without being detected?" Vicki asked him.

"I guess we won't know until tomorrow when I sneak back in, will we? I had to use the fireplace at the Three Broomsticks to get here. I had a quick chat with Madam Rosmerta who thought it was a bit romantic I was putting my neck on the line just to see you on your birthday. She promised not to dob me into Professor McGonagall." Fred explained.

Vicki swooned upon hearing this explanation as she wrapped her arms around him tightly. She knew it wasn't a big deal for Fred to flout the rules for personal gain. But it still meant the world to her that he did everything he could to see her tonight. She had been feeling down for weeks that she wouldn't see her love on her birthday. But Fred had come through for her. She felt it was the nicest thing someone had ever done for her.

"Drink up some more of that Firewhiskey and let's go back to the party. I want to show off my amazing boyfriend to all of my friends. But we'll tell people you heroically snuck in through my window after ditching your family in Devon," Vicki mentioned as she paused to see her boyfriend's reaction before she continued "'Cause I can't think of a way we can reasonably say you snuck over from Scotland for the evening. It's do-able, but also could be unbelievable"

After Fred downed a few more Firewhiskey shots the two of them left her room hand-in-hand. Vicki was expecting to see Sarah on the stairs either passed out or keenly demanding to know intimate details about what had happened privately in her bedroom. But instead Vicki was faced with Cedric standing outside her bedroom door with his arm lazily around Cho.

"Your friend Sarah went around the party to blab that your boyfriend had turned up as a surprise. I wanted to come see this for myself." Cedric stated to Vicki with a huge grin.

"As you can see Diggory, I am here." Fred shrugged, too happy to say a smart retort like he normally would.

"It actually is nice to see you Weasley. I'm glad you could make it. Vicki here has been most upset without you. She really misses you." Cedric informed Fred, earning a large prod in the side from Vicki in embarrassment.

Vicki, Cho and Cedric weren't quite sure why Fred was about to go out of character. Perhaps it was out of joy of being reunited with his girlfriend who he missed terribly. Or maybe the shots of Firewhiskey were affecting him very quickly. Potentially it was a way to dig for information.

But for whatever reason, Fred wrapped an arm around Cedric in a friendly way before leading him away.

"Really? Please do tell me more." Fred said as he did so.

Fred Weasley liked to think he had a good grasp on muggle culture, even though he was from a pureblood (albeit 'blood traitor' according to most Slytherins) family. He had learned a little bit from his father's role as Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, but he liked to think he knew a little bit more than his father after mingling with students at school who came from a muggle background, including his now-girlfriend Vicki.

But attending a (mostly) muggle party was a whole different experience for him.

He knew that televisions existed for muggle entertainment, and movies existed. But prior to tonight he had never actually seen one before. When he first entered the room there was a music television show on - Vicki informed him that Sarah had been recording 'Top of the Pops' on VHS over the last few months to have on in the background for Vicki's party, whatever that meant.

Despite his very little knowledge about muggle culture, he managed to get along with Vicki's muggle friends adequately. He was able to mingle with the muggles a lot easier than Cedric and Cho, who retired to a couch to spend the entire party snogging alone.

"Omigosh! I have the BEST idea ever!" Sarah announced to the party loudly after the last of her recorded "Top of the Pops" videos had finished.

Everybody at this point was clearly under the influence of alcohol. Lots of vinegar-wine had been drunk by the party goers, and Vicki had managed to get Fred alone a couple of times for a quick but heavy snog session with a few sneaky swigs of Firewhiskey.

"Please do share." Vicki responded suddenly.

Sarah grabbed the cordless telephone sitting on the kitchen bench leading to the lounge room and passed it to Vicki. Some of the people in the room immediately understood what Sarah was insinuating but Vicki shot her friend a blank stare.

"Let's prank call people! C'mon, it'll be funny." Sarah quickly suggested.

Vicki in her drunken state took a few seconds for Sarah's suggestion to sink it. However when it did a very wicked grin spread across her pretty face. She immediately turned to Fred and didn't even bother to 'muggle-proof' her explanation to him.

"Have you ever heard of prank calls?" Vicki asked him suddenly.

"Of course he has. He's the prank king. He's been dropping all of his classic stories of school pranking all night long. Duh." Sarah stated matter-of-factly to Vicki, as if Vicki was learning about her boyfriend's nature for the first time.

She cast her eyes onto Fred as the gravity of the situation suddenly hit her. He had been thrown into the deep end of the muggle world and she needed to rescue him quickly.

"Yeah. The whole thing where we use this er, telephone, to make calls to other people to prank call them. We say funny things, like um…" Vicki trailed off, finding it very hard to translate in a way Fred would understand.

"The traditional one is to call someone to ask if their refrigerator is running, and then suggest they go and catch it. But that's really pathetic and really lame, there's way better ones out there." Sarah explained.

"I like the name play ones. Where you ask if Harry Wall is there, then Jason Wall, then Marie Wall. Then you ask if 'any walls are there' and when the person says no you ask what's holding their house up then." A male party guest (who Vicki didn't know the name of, but he was the boyfriend of one of her primary school friends) piped up.

Vicki kept her eyes on Fred as she watched him deep in thought. She had no way of knowing what was going through his head as this was the first time the whole concept of 'prank calling' had been introduced to him. She didn't know what to think of this.

But Fred had a mischievous smile on his face. He was certainly lapping up the idea of 'prank calling'. He didn't need to be a muggle to think of some good ones. This was something he felt he was born to do.

"I think a really funny one would be for all of us to call someone, at random intervals. Asking about a specific item for sale." Fred explained to the group who were listening.

"What's funny about that?" The male party guest piped up.

"Because our target won't know where we're all getting the number. We can pretend it was advertised somewhere, something like The Daily Pr-" Fred began to explain, getting a little too comfortable with his prank. Luckily Vicki caught on to what he was saying.

"That's actually really funny. We can make out like their number was advertised in the Daily Mail. Therefore the target is going to have a melt down after thinking their number is published for some bogus advertisement. They're going to be left wondering how many more annoying calls are coming their way." Vicki cleverly spoke up.

"That's gold. That's absolutely gold. Let's do that." Sarah grinned playfully.

"Fred and I are just going to top up our drinks, and whilst we do this we'll discuss our target." Vicki announced loudly, taking Fred's hand and dragging him to the kitchen. There were two girls sitting at the kitchen benches, but they were so tipsy and immersed in conversation they took no notice of Fred and Vicki.

"How am I doing? Am I blending in?" Fred asked Vicki with a smile as she sloppily poured them both more wine into plastic cups.

She turned to face him as she wanted to study him. She still couldn't believe he was in front of her and attending her birthday. Prior to tonight she also didn't think it was possible for her to feel even more strongly for him. But she did. She tried not to compare her current relationship to her past one with Roger, but she knew she loved Fred a whole lot more than she loved Roger. She may be drunk but she knew that what she had with Roger was puppy love. What she currently had with Fred was the real deal.

"Considering you grew up in the wizarding world, you're doing marvellous." Vicki grinned, tapping his nose with her index finger to show affection.

"Well my dad is the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office. I'm bound to know a thing or two." Fred boasted loudly.

"...in her last letter to me, your mother said your father wanted to ask me how airplanes stay in the sky without falling." Vicki pointed out with a giggle.

"How do they stay in the sky then?" Fred pondered.

"Motors or something, I don't know. It's a good question." Vicki mused.

It was Fred's turn to focus on his girlfriend. He still couldn't believe Victoria Hartwell was his girlfriend. It constantly plagued his thoughts that the girl he was silently obsessed with for nearly two years was now his to hold and show affections. On a daily basis he felt he thanked his lucky stars, and he knew he would do absolutely anything for her. Hence why he was there for her tonight.

But he was also having a fantastic time. He was genuinely enjoying the party, and not only because he got to spend time with her.

"I am so glad I've been introduced to this whole 'prank calling' business. I feel I was born purely for this." Fred chuckled to Vicki.

"I know," She said as she rested her head on his shoulders lovingly, and as if on auto pilot he kissed the side of her head before he let her continue "I really should have told you about this concept before tonight."

Both Vicki Hartwell and Fred Weasley were truly and deeply in love and adoration with each other. They both felt they would do absolutely anything for each other.