Author's note: Thank you again to everyone who has read and especially those who reviewed. You don't know how much it makes my day to know people are enjoying this. And thank you also to those who read and didn't like and did not feel the need to tear me a new one for writing so poorly. Anyway, on with the show:

Disclaimer: see chapter 1

The twins took a break from their pursuit of Hermione the next day, a fact she was quite grateful for after the choosing of the Triwizard Champions that evening. She had enough to deal with, trying to calm Harry down and listening to Ron rant about bad friends who kept secrets and lied. She was still exhausted the next morning at the breakfast table. Ron and Harry weren't speaking to each other, and Hermione was too tired to try and hold up a conversation for three people, so they ate silently, the air around them almost sombre.

"Why the long faces?" Fred and George asked in unison as they sat down on either side of the table. "C'mon, man, you're a Triwizard champion! It can't be as bad as all that," Fred said, giving Harry a congratulatory pat on the back. Harry sighed and stood up, leaving his breakfast as he exited the Great Hall. "What's wrong with him?" Fred asked with a thumb pointed at the back of the departing boy. Hermione shrugged and poked at the eggs on her plate.

"Still wish he'd tell us how he did it," George commented, picking up a piece of toast and munching on it. "Can't have been an aging potion, we knows those won't fool it."

"Well, we know your potion didn't fool it," Hermione pointed out, finding the energy to tease the twins a bit about their disastrous attempt. "Perhaps a good one could."

"It wasn't an aging potion," Fred said in finality. "D'you think Harry could have cast a spell strong enough to confound it?" Ron finally got tired of hearing about the subject, and he too got up from the table and left. George and Fred looked confused, but shrugged at each other, not really caring why their brother left if it gave them a chance for a nice talk with Hermione.

The girl in question was still staring blankly at the dish of hash browns in front of her. George finally waved one of his hands in front of her face to get her attention. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Sorry, was I off in space?" she apologized.

"Yeah, I'll say," Fred remarked. "You feeling okay?"

"Mm hmm," she murmured. "Just tired."

"Well, you could always skive off class just this once and go catch up on your sleep," George suggested. The look Hermione gave him assured him that her answer was in the negative, as he had suspected. "Well then, meet us during your free period this afternoon."

"But I don't have a free period this afternoon," she protested.

"Oh, poor Professor Vector is going to come down with a bad case of forgetting how to count this afternoon, so of course he'll have to cancel class until Madame Pomfrey can sort him out," Fred assured her.

Hermione looked at them suspiciously. "What are you going to do to Professor Vector?" she asked.

"Nothing too bad, just have to try out these new joke candies on someone other than ourselves," George assured her. "It's a good thing we don't take Arithmancy, or we'd have done quite poorly last week."

"You can't think I approve of this kind of thing being done so I can have a free period?" she returned.

"Don't worry, we're not doing it for you," Fred answered. "Lee is in the class before yours, we're doing it for him." The twins wore matching grins, and they looked so eager she didn't have the heart to scold them any more.

"So what exactly is it you want to do during my free period this afternoon?" she queried.

"We were thinking we could have some fun out by the lake," George told her, but the way he said it had her narrowing her gaze at him.

"If you think you can get me out there and do…things with me, then you're sadly mistaken," she told him.

"Why Hermione, I think you have a dirty mind!" Fred admonished her. "We have the most honourable of intentions."