Disclaimer: I´m completely broke, therefore I cannot own Harry Potter.
A/n: Wow! It´s chapter 10! I´m very proud of myself right now. The story is nearing an end, but there will definitely be a sequel! Yay! All right, I´m not gonna keep you any longer. Get on with the reading!
George´s PoV:
I was lying on the couch in the common room, playing lazily with a deck of Exploding Snap cards, when Fred flopped down in a chair next to me.
"Hi, Gred!" he greeted me.
"Hi, Forge." I wondered what would happen if you set fire to the cards. Definitely something worth trying out, I decided. Not right now, though.
"So… Did you find out why people were staring at us at breakfast?" my brother said casually after a while. Too casually. I nodded without looking up. I could tell that it was something he wanted to say, but I also knew that he´d say it even if I didn´t ask him what it was.
"I just talked to Leesh," he suddenly blurted out. I looked up.
"You did? What about?" Like I didn´t know.
"Oh, you know… Friends, school, her being in love with me… All the usual stuff."
"Right," I said. "That must´ve been interesting."
"It was." For some reason, he was smirking. I scowled at him. I didn´t want to know any more, but my curiosity was impossible to control.
"What´d she say? Not that I care," I added quickly. "I´m just a bit curious, since she´s an old friend…"
"She said she´s not in love with me," he interrupted my ranting.
I stared at him in surprise. Hope was rising in my chest. The world suddenly seemed like a perfect place. The common room seemed to brighten up and become beautiful. And how come I´d never fully appreciated what a splendid person Fred was?
Just then, Alicia entered the room. She threw one look over at us, blushed furiously, and hurried away towards the girls´ dorm.
"It doesn´t look like she´s over you to me," I commented dryly, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my chest.
Fred grinned. "Oh, really? Cause I don´t think it was me she looked at just there!"
xxxxx
Breakfast the next day was a horrible affair. Alicia kept darting quick glances over at Angelina, who completely ignored her except for the times when she gave her long, ice-cold stares. Katie and Fred, determined not to get caught in the middle of their fight, were having a conversation about Quidditch. I was trying to follow it, but I kept loosing the thread and staring at Alicia instead. When she caught me at it, she blushed and looked away.
To my surprise, Lee leaned over to Alicia and muttered something that made her blush even more. What was going on? I decided that I had to talk to Lee.
Fortunately, our first class that day was Charms, where Lee and I always partnered. All I had to do now was to subtly make him tell me what was going on with Alicia without him noticing that I was wondering. No problem.
"Lee?" I said after a while of trying to master Aguamenti without muttering the incantation. It was really hard, I kept moving my lips and whisper the words. In addition, I had hit Lee about a dozen times with the water from my wand, and he was now soaking.
"Yes?"
"What´s up with you and Leesh?" Smooth, George. Real smooth. Why do I even bother to open my mouth? It´s not like anything worth hearing ever comes out of it.
Lee looked at me with something suspiciously like a smirk on his face. "What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean," I said grumpily. "What´d you say to make her blush like that? D´you know something I don´t know?"
"Maybe."
Yes, it was definitely a smirk. I scowled at him. "What is it?"
"It could be many things…"
"Just tell me!"
"Okay." The smirk widened. "What I said was I knew red hair was your thing´."
I stared at him. Was he talking about her feelings for Fred? Of course he was, there was nothing else he could mean. Then again, I was the one who´d made her blush just by looking at her. Could he really mean...? "And what´s that supposed to mean?"
He laughed. "You´ll have to work that one out for yourself, I´m afraid."
Great. Now even Lee´s become a man of mystery. That´s just what I needed.
Alicia´s PoV:
Potions. The most dreaded subject for all Gryffindors. Now made even worse because all of a sudden, I was unable to say two words to George without starting to blush and stutter.
"Leesh? Can you hand me the unicorn hair?"
"Oh! Um, yeah, sure," I stuttered, feeling my face getting red. "Here you go." When he stretched out his hand to take the hair, we accidentally touched, and I squealed and jumped about a metre.
George looked at me with a curious expression. "Something wrong, Leesh?"
"Ah, um… Of course not! I just, I… stumbled! Yeah, that´s it! I stumbled!" His face clearly said: Yeah, right! ´, but thankfully Snape started walking over to our table just then, so he couldn´t press the subject.
We worked quietly for a while with Snape hovering around us. I was so nervous I kept trying to put in the wrong ingredients at the wrong time. If George hadn´t been there to stop me from making too many mistakes, the potion would probably have blown up in my face.
After a while Snape moved away from us, and George turned to me again.
"What´s up with you today, Leesh? You seem a bit… odd."
"Um, it´s nothing. Nothing at all," I said quickly.
"Be honest, Leesh!" He made a move as if to grab my arm, and I flinched and jumped backwards. In doing so I managed to knock over our potion, which spilled all over the floor, making a fizzing noise.
Snape turned around and saw the mess I´d created. "I think that´ll be… thirty points from Gryffindor," he said, sneering. "And a detention for you, Miss Spinnet."
Great. Suddenly I had, in addition to all my other problems, a detention with the Greasy-haired Git. Could my life get any worse?
Oh yes, it could.
"Professor!" George said just as Snape was leaving us again. He turned around again, slowly.
"What?" he asked icily.
"Alicia didn´t knock over the potion, professor. I did. So I should have the detention." I stared at him. Had he gone mad, all of a sudden?
"Really?" the professor said. "Well, I guess I should have expected that. After all, a Weasley…"
"He´s lying!" I said loudly. "I spilled the potion! So you can´t punish him, professor."
George frowned. "Just let me handle this, okay?" he said in an undertone, before continuing more loudly: "Don´t listen to her, she´s just trying to help me."
"Enough!" Snape looked at us with an expression of disgust. "You both get detention, and an additional thirty points will be taken from Gryffindor for disturbing the class. Now clear up this mess!"
I got to work at once, throwing George angry glances all the time. I noticed that he looked like he was just as angry with me, though.
"What´d you have to go and do that for?" he hissed at me as soon as Snape was too far away to hear us. "I had the situation completely under control, why´d you have to ruin it?"
"Me!" I was shocked (and quite angry, too). "It´s not like I´m the one who started taking the blame for someone else! You made this happen!"
"I did not! I was just trying to help you! How about a little thankfulness?"
"I didn´t need your help! I´m fully capable of surviving a detention, thank you very much! I don´t need a knight in shining armour to do it for me!" I scowled at him.
"All right, then! See if I´ll be there for you the next time!" He turned his back to me and started cleaning furiously. I did the same.
When the lesson was finished, Snape held us back and told us we had to wash the whole classroom with toothbrushes (and with absolutely no use of magic, of course). We did so in angry silence, ignoring each other except for the occasional glare.
At last Snape told us he was content. Actually, what he said was: "I guess I can´t expect anything better from Gryffindors", but at least he let us go.
As we walked back I was beginning to feel slightly stupid. Now that I had thought it through, I could see that all George had done was trying to help me. I hadn´t needed help, but it had still been a very nice thing to do. A really nice thing. I probably should apologize to him, but then I would feel really stupid for making such a fuss about nothing.
When we reached the common room, I had come to a decision.
"George," I said softly. "I´m sorry."
He turned and looked straight at me for the first time since our fight, but he didn´t say anything.
"I… I overreacted. You were only trying to help me, I shouldn´t have gotten angry at you. I know you did it for a good reason." I watched him intently. "Please don´t be angry, George. I´m really, really sorry."
"It´s okay," he replied. "I know you could´ve handled it yourself, I shouldn´t have gotten into it. I just thought… I don´t really know what I thought."
I smiled at him. "Thanks, George. I appreciate it." I reached out and hugged him.
We stood together for a long time. I didn´t want to let him go. Not now. Not ever.
Then I suddenly realized what I was thinking.
Oh crap.
I had fallen for George Weasley.