"September the first, nineteen eighty-nine was a Friday," Fred began. He had been looking forward to making a best man's speech for ages and was smiling broadly as he stood up and addressed their friends and family.

"Damn!" said Bill, under his breath, handing a five galleon note to Charlie, who pocketed it with a flick of his eyebrows while still holding Lauren's hand in his lap and stroking her ring finger with his thumb. Bill had been convinced that Fred was going to begin his speech with a 'lend me your ears' joke and Charlie was happy to have taken that bet. He was equally certain that Fred had become more sensitive than that since marrying Hermione, and it looked like he was right.

"It was the day that Forge and I first boarded the Hogwarts express," Fred said, "and also the day that I first felt the pangs of romantic love. Not," he touched Hermione's shoulder to illustrate his point, "that these came from my own heart. No, my own poor heart would have to wait another couple of years before the witch of MY dreams would arrive at platform nine and three quarters." He pulled a sad face, making some of the assembled guests laugh.

"You were hardly pining away," came a voice from near the back of the room. "I seem to remember you two had managed to get a detention before you even got off that train. Something to do with using soap from the train toilet to make a Slytherin prefect slip over onto his bottom?"

Fred turned, simultaneously shocked and delighted to see who had spoken. "Why, Professor McGonagall," he said, a look of wonder on his face. "You're heckling me?"

"It makes a nice change, doesn't it, Mr Granger-Weasley?" she said, laughing as she acknowledged the amused and impressed looks of those around her with a small bow. "I'm done now," she said, showing him the palms of her hands in a gesture of surrender. "The bride and groom suggested I might like to turn the tables on you after years of having you heckle me in the classroom and at meals, and it was too good an opportunity to waste."

Fred blew her a kiss and gave her a bow before continuing. "Well yes, and in fact my story will explain why that happened, my dear lady, and it will illustrate why, like on so many other occasions," he raised his eyebrows and gave Molly a meaningful look. "some of our punishments were really rather unjust! But let me get back to the story, so I can tell it in order," he said, pausing to look at a scrappy piece of paper that he was holding in his hand. "Oh yes, so the Hogwarts Express was where I felt the first pangs of romantic love…"

"But no," he paused dramatically, clutching his hand to his chest to illustrate his point, "the pangs were not from my own heart." He took a breath, enjoying creating a bit of suspense among the wedding guests. They had mostly finished their meal, although a few were still nibbling on desserts and the foil-wrapped mint chocolates that Phil had charmed to stay solid even under the warm July sun. His staff were discreetly mingling with bottles of champagne, wine, butterbeer and juice, refilling the guests' glasses so that they would be ready to toast the bride and groom at the end of Fred's speech.

"George and I had found a carriage and were busy swapping chocolate with Lee, who would go on to become our right-hand man." Lee saluted. "We were just getting to know him and talking about where he came from when we saw a tiny girl outside in the corridor in muggle clothes. She was being questioned rather aggressively by a Slytherin prefect about why she wasn't sitting in a carriage. Before we could do anything, another tiny girl came out of the carriage across from ours and began telling the prefect off." He pointed to Angelina, lest anyone not understand who he was referring to.

Fred grinned and launched into his best impression of Angelina. "'You should be nice to her, she's new,' said the newcomer, who then pulled the small muggle-dressed witch into her own carriage. And George Weasley," Fred swept his arm towards his twin, "ever a sucker for a commanding woman who stands up for the weak and the tongue-tied, fell in love." He brought his hand over his heart and pretended to swoon, causing Hermione to laugh under her breath, earning herself a suggestive wink from her husband.

A few of their guests were heard to make 'awwwww' noises under their breath, and that fortified Fred for a slight change in pace. He had been looking forward to making a best man's speech for ages, and he did love having a roomful of people to address. There was nothing like the buzz that came from making a crowd laugh or react in some way, and Fred relished the feeling.

"Not," he continued, rolling his eyes this time, "that young George would actually DO anything about his growing love. For five years," he added, holding up his hand with his fingers and thumb spread and pausing again for effect. "Five. Whole. Years. And a bit more, because it took him til nearly Christmas of our sixth year. Five years of mooning over her. Five years of composing owls in his head that he never sent. Five years of looking at Valentine chocolates in Honeydukes that we all knew he would never buy."

Lee gave a snort at that one, clearly remembering how their joke shop time had been reduced by George's unacted-on feelings. "Five years of lagging behind at quidditch because he always wanted to make sure that she was on the pitch OK. Never mind," Fred joked, "that she's fifteen times more capable of looking after herself than he is," he winked at Angelina.

"You'd better believe it," she told him, with a laugh. Fred smiled at her and then looked at Hermione again, who was watching him with a soft look in her eyes. He returned her smile with another wink, just for her, before turning back to his audience.

"If I wasn't bonded to the bugger," Fred continued, "I might have made Lee swap with me and be his twin years ago. But," he touched George's shoulder and shrugged, "he was quite nifty at getting us out of the messes that I got us into, and we're a good team," he looked more serious for a moment, "when we're allowed to work together." George snorted, as they both remembered how, on two key occasions when they had been forcibly separated against their better judgement, George had lost an ear and Fred had nearly been killed by a falling wall.

"So I kept him, despite his inability to make a move on this wonderful woman, and then one day, my opportunity came. Georgie was too nervous to ask Angie to the Yule Ball, but he was terrified that someone else would. So I asked Angie, as many of you know, and used my charm and superlative dancing skills to dance her into the arms of my twin while I went back to an empty bed."

"Oh, you're so noble," Hermione joked from beside him.

"That wasn't quite how it happened though, was it?" Angelina asked.

"Bloody hell!" Fred pulled at a face at his audience, who laughed to see it.

"I love how this speech has been written to highlight your bravery and my inaction," George laughed. "But can I just point something out?" George was laughing as he got to his feet and addressed the crowd. "For those of you who don't know and who didn't get to hear MY best man's speech a few weeks ago, Freddie fell in love with Hermione in his fifth year and he ALSO spent years not acting on it until I pretty much proposed to her for him!"

Fred's laugh was loud and long, and as he held his hands up in a gesture of guilt and surrender, their guests chuckled along with them. The two brothers fell into a hug which warmed the hearts of all of those present.

"How did it happen then?" Bill called.

Fred looked at Angelina, who nodded. "I don't mind," she said.

"OK," he said. "Well, Angelina came rushing up to me at the end of the lesson and said she needed to tell me something. I followed her to the library," he paused pointedly, pulled a face of pretend disgust and then looked at his wife. "The library! I've only ever been to the library for you and Angie, you know!"

Hermione patted his arm reassuringly. "Don't worry," she said, waving her arm at the assembled guests. "Your secret's safe with us! And it doesn't seem to have had any lasting ill-effects!"

Minerva McGonagall turned to the other professors who were sitting with her and muttered. "Perfect. They're absolutely perfect together, the two of them. I'd never have predicted it!"

Filius Flitwick leaned forward. "I've not ruled out retiring the year their eldest turns eleven, though!" and the other teachers nodded, laughing softly together.

"So," Fred was saying, "we get to the library so we can 'talk'," he made scare quotes with his fingers, for emphasis, "and Angie's all worried because she needs to tell me something, and I'm thinking, oh no, please don't let it be that she fancies Roger Davies or somebody, because I really don't want to deal with sad Georgie! And she gathers up all her courage, just like on the train…" He paused for effect, chancing a look at Angelina, who was watching him with a look of amusement, her eyes letting him know that she would be happy to step in if he strayed too far from the truth. "And then tells me she's really sorry, but I'm not the twin she fancies!"

"I was so terrified," Angie added, standing up to help Fred in his explanation. "I thought Fred liked me and that we were going to end up in some horrid weird love triangle thing. And," she turned to smile at Molly, "I was really worried about what you would think if they came home and told you about me!" The younger generation chose not to look at each other when they remembered the howler that Molly had once sent Hermione.

Molly waved away Angelina's words, choosing not to remember the howler herself. "I tried not to think as much when it came to those two and their love lives," she joked. "I'd already had enough school letters about Bill and Charlie kissing witches on remnants of fabric stolen from my rag bag! Thank the gods for Percy's sense of decorum which gave me a few years of respite in between; that's all I can say!"

That just about brought the house down.

"I don't know whether to take a bow or be embarrassed at my failure to kiss as many girls as my brothers did," Percy called out loudly, making the laughter continue. Fred laughed too, happy that his speech was going well overall and perhaps also a little jealous that his mum and his unfunniest brother had both got a bigger laugh than him. Seeing the happy looks on everybody's faces, he decided just to be happy that the whole thing was going so well.

"Can I just say," Fred said, "that Angelina said on that day that she loved me as a friend," he grinned.

"I did," Angelina confirmed.

"She was the first non-mum, non-Ginny woman who ever said she loved me, and she told me she loved me before she told Georgie she loved him," Fred reported happily to his smiling audience, who obliged him with a collective 'awwww'. They were thoroughly enjoying themselves, and Fred's speech. "And," he sniffed and pretended to wipe a tear for effect before clasping a hand to his heart, "I'll always have that!"

"Oh for goodness sake," said Angelina, leaning over to give him a hug. "I could have told this story three times by now. And even if I hadn't fancied Georgie, you were so clearly in love with Hermione anyway. At the Ball, I was purely a cover so you could watch her over my shoulder and make sure that Viktor didn't do anything you didn't approve of…"

"Which wasn't anything," George added with a laugh.

"Are we ALL making this best man's speech?" Fred asked, rolling his eyes when George, Angie, Molly and Hermione all chorused a 'yes' in reply. But Angelina bowed and then retook her seat, indicating with her hand that he had the floor again.

"Well," he said, trying to look petulant but failing, by dint of his massive grin, "I feel my thunder has been taken from me here. Suffice to say that I confessed George's interest, and told Angie that mine lie elsewhere. I explained that I had asked her because I was afraid that he wouldn't, and some slightly awkward teenage conversations took place and in the end we sort of both took Angelina to the ball. Georgie didn't ask anyone, and we all took turns dancing and somewhere in there Georgie found his courage, I don't remember the details, but by the morning, they were a couple, and that's the important thing!"

A round of applause broke out, and Fred smiled.

"OK," he continued, once the noise had died down, "I have lots of other stories that I could tell you about these two. Unfortunately, some of them – like the one about the time that Oliver went back to the quidditch changing room and got more of a surprise than he bargained for – can't really be told in company."

At that, Molly gasped, Angelina and George looked worried, Oliver laughed uncomfortably, and Phil guffawed. "I don't want to know," he said.

"Neither did Oliver," joked Fred, winking at their friend. "We still wonder if that has anything to do with his preference for wizards over witches!" He skipped out of the way of Angelina's hand just in time to see Oliver laugh heartily. "Now, now," Fred warned Angelina, with a glint in his eye. "You should save that for tonight!"

Oliver clapped Fred's comment. He had spent the last week being very outspoken about the rights of gay witches and wizards in relation to the marriage law, and Fred knew that Oliver would be glad that he was reminding others of the importance of difference.

"It's a good job I love him," Angelina said, turning to Hermione.

"I know just what you mean," the younger witch replied with a laugh.

"Here's the really important bit, though," Fred said, looking more serious. "Because as much as Georgie and I love to joke around and cause mayhem, we're both soppy buggers at heart who need the love of strong women to keep us grounded. That's probably Molly Weasley's fault," he joked, giving his mum a loving look. He saw a tear form in her eye. "If you've been chased by a raging woman with an enchanted wooden spoon as often as Georgie and I have been, you're going to need to make sure you have a wife who's going to stand up for you and be in your corner." He touched Hermione's shoulder again, and she reached up to stroke his fingers with her own, as Molly gasped and called his full name, generating another laugh.

Fred basked in the laughter, nodded to his mum and then swallowed, readying himself for the next thing he wanted to say. For all the joking, he was feeling rather emotional himself, although that was probably in part due to feeling George's love through the twin bond. "In all seriousness," he said, watching people begin to reach for their glasses as they sensed that he was nearing the end of his speech and moving towards making a toast. "I couldn't be more delighted to know that Georgie has somehow managed to snag Angelina; the talented, clever witch who he fell in love with on the Hogwarts Express when he realised she was a Gryffindor ever before the sorting hat did. Please join me in raising your glasses and wishing them the happiest of lives together."

Fred paused, as a loud scraping of chairs indicated that everyone was rising to their feet and holding their glasses aloft. "May your lives be filled with love and happiness, with peace and joy, and maybe one day with the pitter patter of tiny, world-class quidditch players, the like of which Gryffindor House has never seen. To Angie and George!" He raised his glass to both of them, drunk deeply and then put it on the table, embracing the both of them as their guests repeated their names and cheered their own toast.