The first night of their week-long detention was set for Argus Filch's office after dinner. Fred and Emily walked, fingers unintentionally intertwined, to the West Towers where Roger was waiting at the door.

"No Filch yet?" Emily asked, though the empty corridor seemed answer enough.

Roger chuckled. "Fashionably late, by the looks of it."

"And the door?"

"C'mon, Princey," Fred answered without even trying the lock. "He might be a pill, but he's not stupid."

Emily let out a resigned sigh and leaned her back against the wall. "Then I guess we just wait."

And so they did while the uncomfortable haze of awkward silence fell over them. Emily found herself glancing between Fred and Roger, weighing the situation and watching for any tell-tale signs of tenseness among them.

So far so good.

There seemed a moment where each of them was tempted to break the silence, but none did. Instead they just stood at the end of the corridor in the West Towers, waiting uncomfortably outside of Filch's door, dreading another two hours of awkwardness.

Filch finally arrived at the end of the hall, Mrs. Norris close in tow. With each step he took, the jingle of his key ring echoed down the corridor. It broke up the silent monotony, and the air quickly filled up with dread.

"You lot have the pleasure of organizing my office," Filch instructed with a toothy, yellowed grin as he opened the door to reveal the hovel that lay behind. There was a stench of damp, musky air that wafted out from the room, and there were messes of papers and cat hair and rubbish scattered across the floor in piles that nearly reached the ceiling. "Everything 'cept for the records and the contraband in the cabinets."

As if completely blind to the mess, Fred eyed the newly off-limits sections of the office with wide-eyed, childlike desire before Emily nudged him back to attention.

Filch laughed at the bewilderment on each of their faces. "I'll be back to let you out once you're done. Have at it."

And he locked the door behind him.

"So..." Emily started and eyed the mess tentatively.

"So..." Fred agreed. "I'll take the pile of... papers?" He sounded unconvinced, like he couldn't be truly sure of the pile's contents as he approached it. "Over in this corner."

Emily pulled her wand from her pocket and aimed at a large mold stain that ran along the wall. "Evanesco!"

"This place is a sty," said Roger as he shuddered. With his wand, he illuminated the darkened corner of the office, casting a warm glow over dozens of cobwebs. "And somehow he sleeps in here?"

They quickly got to work, with Emily focusing on cleaning the various messes in the room and Roger sorting through stacks of rubbish.

"Fred, can you give me a hand with this?" she asked, resting her hands along the edge of the desk. When there was no answer, she asked again, "Fred?"

"Ha!" There was a click, and the file cabinet's door swung open, revealing decades' worth of student files.

"What are you doing?" Roger asked. He didn't move from where he sat, still organizing paperwork by hand. "You're not supposed to touch that."

"Not supposed to touch that," Fred mocked with a huff and disdainfully rolled his eyes. "Bloody prefects…"

"What are you doing?" Emily asked in an echo of Roger's question, though hers was met with less contempt.

"Been meaning to see what ol' Filchy's got on George and me."

"You would go out of your way to get in more trouble when we're already in detention..." Emily mumbled, trying not to smile.

"I can pull yours too, if you want." And before she could protest, he started to pilfer through the folders. "Prince, Prince, Prince. Eileen... Gregory... Julian... Think I'm in the wrong drawer here..."

At the sound of her father's name, Emily's head snapped to attention, and she rushed over to glance inside the cabinet, to check that she had really heard him correctly.

Sure enough, there it was in black and white, his name written in a beautiful cursive, inked along the edge of the folder.

"Oi, who's Julian, then?" Fred asked. "Got you all worked up for —"

"My dad."

From across the room, Roger let out a snort of laughter at Fred's misguided jealousy, but they both ignored him.

Her blunt response seemed to surprise Fred, a feat that wasn't particularly easy. "No shite?"

"No shite," she confirmed and stepped closer to the filing cabinet.

"Let's open it, yeah?" Fred started and pulled the folder to the desk's surface.

"Wait!" Her hand slapped down hard against his, slamming the folder shut beneath it. It was hard to explain her hesitation when that folder contained a full record of her father, his history, her history. What if he fell short of all she'd built him up to be? Or worse: what if she fell short of all he would've expected of her?

Fred leaned back in the chair, glancing up to meet her eyes. "Oh, c'mon, Em; admit you're curious."

"Of course I'm curious," she said with a breath of defeat. "It's my dad. I hardly know anything about him."

"Well, it's right here," he said and moved his hand off the table's surface. "Just for your reading delight."

Emily hesitated, her eyes unmoving from their gaze at her father's name adorning the folder's edge. More to herself than to anyone else, she asked, "Is it really right to violate the privacy of a dead man?"

"What say you, Davies?" Fred called out to Roger across the room.

Surprised by his sudden involvement, Roger's neck whipped round to look at the two of them, and he shot a somewhat sympathetic glance in Emily's direction. "Be lying if I said I wasn't a bit curious too…"

"Et tu, Roger?" she asked in mock offence.

"That's as much as I'll say," he said and returned to sorting the stacks of papers that laid out on the tabletop in front of him. "And frankly, I've already said too much, I think."

With a sigh, Emily turned to look back at the folder.

Fred did too, and he reached for it. "If you won't, I will."

"All right, give it here," she said with a groan and quickly rushed over to pull the folder from Fred's hands. She held in it her grasp, clenched it tight before setting it down on the desktop to read through.

She opened the folder, and there was a photograph clipped to the first page. It was black and white and showed her father as a young man, likely no older than Fred. He had big, bright eyes like Emily's, the same smile, the same nose. He was grinning in the photograph, wearing a prefect pin just like hers, but of course for Slytherin house, and showing it off to the camera with a laugh.

It was like looking in the mirror at a perfect stranger.

He looked so different than she remembered — not that she was able to remember much, it was so long ago — he lacked the prickly blond whiskers along his jawline that tickled her when he kissed her goodnight, he was missing the crow's feet that hid in the corners of his eyes, the laughter lines that bookended his lips when he smiled. This younger version of Julian Prince was unfamiliar in comparison, the way he puffed out his chest for the camera, the way his shimmering white teeth glimmered with the movement of the photograph, the way his dirty blond hair fell splayed in waves across his forehead…

She tried for a moment to imagine how he might have been as a student. Would he have been popular? Was he smart? Might they have been friends, or might he have been disgusted with the company she kept? He was a Slytherin, after all, and she knew from Severus how deep some of those preconceptions ran.

She turned to the next page and was able to see for herself what a star student he had been in his heyday — a prefect, keeper on the Slytherin Quidditch team, excellent O.W.L.s, spectacular N.E.W.T.s... She found glowing recommendations, several letters signed by a Professor Slughorn that complimented his resourcefulness and ambition, waxing poetic about what a pride of Slytherin Julian Prince was.

"Find any dirt in there?" Fred eyed the pages in the file with a cautious reluctance, like he wasn't sure whether it was okay to call attention to it.

Emily skimmed through the pages. "He was… practically perfect."

"That's boring," he argued and peered over her shoulders. "Even my parents made a mess of trouble back in their day."

She wondered if he would have been disappointed by the trouble she often got into, by her presumably misguided ambition to become an Auror, by the fact that she wasn't a Slytherin legacy...

She continued sifting and came across notes from her father's pre-careers meeting with Professor Slughorn, head of Slytherin house.

Julian Prince is a spectacularly ambitious young man who aspires to be Minister for Magic at the prime of his career. While I recommended that he look into positions at the Department of International Magical Cooperation or the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes as a stepping stone towards this lofty goal because these might pose the fewest practical threats against his success, Mister Prince seems set on a career in Magical Law Enforcement. I was initially concerned about potential conflicts of interest, but Mister Prince seems confident in his abilities, defended them strongly and with sincere conviction, and I have therefore no reason to question his choice. Mister Prince would, in fact, make an incredibly strong Auror candidate and has my most genuine recommendation.

She wondered for a moment what Flitwick had written about her, though she had a feeling that his notes would highlight less confidence in her ability to find success as an Auror.

Emily let out a sigh and leaned back resignedly. "I take it back. He was literally perfect."

By this point even Roger had abandoned his work to read over her shoulder. "Such a shame… like they say: only the good die young, huh?"

Emily shook her head and closed the folder, wiping a lingering wetness from beneath her eyes. She ran her fingers along the letters of his name hand-written in elegant cursive along the closed folder's edge, the last thing tethering her to him at Hogwarts. She flipped absent-mindedly through the pages in his file again, not really reading the words so much as looking at the shapes they left on the paper. "Sometimes I wonder about what he could've done if..." She let her voice trail off, but they all knew where the sentence would have gone from there. "I think maybe that's why I want to be an Auror too."

"I think you'd make a bang-up Auror, Em," said Roger, still standing behind her. His hand lingered over her shoulder, absent-mindedly rubbing against her skin.

"Quit kissing arse, Davies," Fred said and pushed his hand away from her.

Emily was tempted to acknowledge Roger's compliment, but instead she turned to Fred. "And what about you? What do you think?"

Without any hesitation, he replied, "As I recall, I told you to do it. Never questioned you or nothing."

Her eyes scanned his face. "And you still feel that way?"

A smile pulled at Fred's lips. "Always."

"Then maybe I will."

"You should," he said with a cavalier shrug. "But if you wanted to be an Obliviator instead or a Curse Breaker or even a bloody Bertie Botts taste tester, I think you could do that too. Because, Emily Prince, I might take the mickey with you but I will never deny that you're crazy brilliant."

Emily was left in a sort of stunned silence. It was unusual to see such sincerity from Fred Weasley. Sure, he'd proven himself to have the capacity, but he didn't much have the taste for the vulnerability that often came with it.

With a deep breath, she managed to choke out, "Thanks."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, trying to play it all off. She noticed a pink hue filtering into his cheeks and gently kissed him through her smile.

"Oh, get a room, you two!" Roger joked and let out an uncomfortable chuckle.

Fred kissed her harder, his fingertips dancing along the curve of her back, his other hand tangling in her hair, relishing for a moment in Roger's awkwardness before Emily pulled back.

"C'mon," she said without looking at either of them. "We should finish up before Filch gets back."

As she moved to put the folder back, a stray piece of parchment fell from its hold, floating gently to the floor.

It was a small, torn snippet of an old article from The Daily Prophet, dated back October 26, 1981 — the day her father died.

The text was scribbled over in places with a familiar script and redacted with thick lines of black ink in others, so much so that she could barely make out anything on the page. All she could see was her father's name among a long list of others, no doubt other casualties of the attack on the Ministry, none names that she recognized.

"What's that?" Fred asked as he took the folder from her hand and set it back in its place in the filing cabinet. He bent down to dig through the files under 'W', where his and George's would no doubt be the thickest.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. The darkened space all over the page nagged at her. She knew the most basic details of that day, but there was sure to be a deeper story written in the Prophet... an obituary... anything.

Emily held the paper out in front of her, at arm's length, and eyed the redacted lines with a deep focus.

"Revelio!"

She wasn't sure what she hoped that would do, maybe that it would clear the lines and scribbles and notes, maybe that it would destroy the page altogether and remove any temptation to snoop, or maybe she wasn't so disappointed when the spell did nothing at all.

Emily folded the page and slid it into her back pocket. Maybe she would try again later, maybe she would forget about it, or maybe she might even ask Severus about it, like he'd have remembered every single word. But for now, it was all she could do to try and forget about it, about the article, about the folder, about her father.

"Let's get moving," she said and shook the thoughts from her head; "this pigpen won't clean itself."

So they scrubbed and cleaned and organized until darkness set in and Filch came back, seemingly satisfied with all they had accomplished — and none the wiser about the jimmied lock to the records.

And their first night of detention was finally over.

They left Filch's office in exhausted silence. Emily stopped in front of the door to the stairwell that led to the Ravenclaw common room while Roger continued on inside. She turned to Fred. "Well, this is me."

"The Gryffindor common room is so far," he whined. He took a step closer to the door and leaned over her, craning his neck just so. "What if I just…?"

She could feel his breath hot against her jawline, and it sent gooseflesh across her skin. She closed her eyes and let herself imagine spending the night in his arms, their bodies close and warm. It was so tempting to just give in.

Emily glanced back at the door. "We can't. You know we can't. We've an early start tomorrow in the kitchens."

"And since that's going to be absolute bollocks, I'd like to get a little fun in beforehand."

"It's late, Fred. Maybe if it were any other day…"

"You'd be up for it?" He still hung over her, like he was waiting for something.

"Maybe," she repeated, her voice firm.

Fred sighed and set a somewhat settling kiss on her cheek. "Guess tonight I'll just cling to that hope then."

And he turned on his heel, heading resignedly across the way toward Gryffindor tower.

Their second detention was early in the morning down in the kitchens. Under the watchful eye of the house-elves, namely a grouchy older elf named Pitts, it was hard to have any fun at all. Instead, they were left to cook and plate and clean by hand. Emily was just grateful they weren't made to serve the food too.

They were let out at noon, just before the food they helped cook would be on its way out for lunch — but somehow they weren't so hungry.

Violet and George were waiting in the Great Hall with seats set in reserve for Fred and Emily.

"Fred?" George called out mockingly as he ran over to him. He squinted at his brother in deep focus.

"George?" the other twin mirrored. "Is that you, mate? Nearly forgotten what you looked like."

"It's been so long. Thought you were gone forever."

"You'd just have to go on without me." He stopped and set his hands down hard on his brother's shoulders. "Make something of yourself, Georgie. Do it for me."

"I promise, Freddie," George set his hands down on Fred's shoulders to match. "I will."

"Oh, come off it, you two," Emily groaned as she passed them. "It's barely been a day... Blimey..."

"So how was detention?" Violet asked before taking a huge bite of her ham sandwich.

"Exhausting," Emily replied with an exasperated breath as she fell into the open seat. Fred and George sat across from her. "If you can't tell…"

"And frankly, I wouldn't eat that if I were you," Fred started, eyeing the food in Violet's hand. He waited to continue until he was sure she was about to swallow. "You don't know where Davies's hands have been."

Violet nearly choked on the bite she'd taken as she forced it down her throat. She set her sandwich back down on the plate and pushed it away, the implication turning her stomach. "At least this whole experience has been... enlightening so far?"

"More than that!" Fred agreed. "You should see what Em found about her—"

"My file!" Emily quickly cut him off. She didn't have the emotional energy to talk about what they had really found yet… though now she was wishing that maybe she had read her file too. "You should've seen how full it was."

Fred smiled with an understanding glance in her direction and joked, "Still an eighth the size of George's and mine."

"Filled with all the goodies?" George piped in, and Fred nodded. His eyes suddenly widened. "Did you recover any confiscated contraband?"

When Fred shook his head, George groaned.

"Just means we'll need to plan a reconnaissance mission."

Violet rolled her eyes at them. "Detention isn't meant to encourage you to get in more trouble, you know."

"Now you sound like Davies," Fred groaned with George nodding his head in agreement.

When lunch was over, Fred and George shot up from the table and headed out towards the stairs. The Great Hall quickly emptied out behind them in a chatter and commotion of students.

Emily stopped Fred before he could get through the doorway. "Where are you off to so quick?"

"A meeting." He glanced almost anxiously at the stairs to keep an eye on George.

"A meeting?" she repeated and crossed her arms against her chest. "Who with?"

He smiled a big beaming grin that overtook his face. "George and Lee, of course. Who else?"

"What for?"

"You know what for," Fred answered, shaking his head. When her tense look didn't dissipate, he spelled it out for her: "And it would be a conflict of interest for you if I told you outright."

He didn't have to say any more.

"Please just don't test on any first years," she said, more to herself than to him, as she finally let him go.

"I have no clue what you're on about," he said with a shrug of feigned innocence and a playful wink. He planted a quick kiss on her forehead before she could respond.

"I'm serious, Fred!" she yelled after him, but he was already halfway up the stairs by then. "Or at least have them sign a waiver!"

The twins were long gone, up to whatever mischief they had planned for the holiday. Emily and Violet, meanwhile, headed to the library to work on their Potions term papers which Severus so graciously assigned in the last class before the holiday. Happy Christmas to them all…

The library was empty, save for the two Ravenclaws who, true to house, chose to do homework over holiday. They sat in the back at a table just in front of the Restricted Section where their whispers might not carry so far.

Madame Pince, like always, hovered in the shadows around them, ready to pounce with aggressive shushing in the event that they even breathed too loudly.

It was quiet, as it always was, except for turning pages and the scribble of quill on parchment, before Violet finally spoke up. "There's a lot going on with you two, hm?"

Rather than answer the question, Emily just repeated, "Hm?"

Violet shot her a stern, motherly glare, but Emily knew what she meant.

"He hasn't asked me anything yet, if that's what you're implying."

"And you're planning to wait until he does?"

She let a shrug roll off her shoulders and set her quill down. "Seems like it'd be a pretty good litmus test for his interest, yeah?"

"I think at this point it's fair to guess that he's interested, Em," came Violet's repy.

"Can't I just make him put in a little work?"

Violet let out an exasperated sigh. "And things with Roger are…?"

"Uncomfortable," Emily finished, suddenly picking her quill back up. Even a Potions essay was more appealing than trying to answer Violet's questions. "There's just not much I can say or do on the Roger front."

"Three more days, Emmy. You can do it." She reached over the table to take Emily's hand in hers in a show of solidarity.

"Tomorrow's Flitwick's so I'm hoping he'll at least go easy on us." Emily thought for a moment about what a Flitwick detention might entail, then added, "Though it's pretty much the first time he's given anyone detention, so we're treading uncharted waters here."

Violet was a multitasking master. She always had been. It was almost more impressive than any magic Emily had seen. And by the time she was done speaking, Violet set a finishing period on her essay. Then she shut her Potions book and leaned her elbows on the table. "It's a shame you're even involved in all this. It was the boys puffing their chests."

Emily pursed her lips. "I like to think I'm only there as a peacekeeper or something. Makes it bite a little less."

Violet was quiet for a moment, pensive. She opened her mouth hesitantly, then closed it twice as quickly, as if she changed her mind mid-thought. Then she let out a breath and said, "You know, I heard there's going to be some spectacular fireworks on Saturday night, just around nine o'clock or so."

"That would be nice," Emily agreed as she tried to remember where she even was in her essay, but it was surely a lost cause, "except I'll be in detention."

"Just something I've heard," she said with a shrug. "Whole school's been buzzing about how spectacular it will be."

"And so now you're rubbing it in?"

Violet shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. "I'm not trying to; I just —"

"I'm only taking the mickey," Emily said, doing her damnedest to hide the disappointment in her voice. "But you enjoy it for me, 'kay?"

Violet begrudgingly agreed that she would, and they spent the rest of their time before dinner writing perfunctory Potions papers in silence, much to Madame Pince's delight.

The next two days' worth of detention, for Flitwick and McGonagall, went by quickly, and all that was left was the dread of their last day: detention for Severus.

Emily shouldn't have worried about Severus's detention. After all, he'd given her so many this term already that it almost seemed second nature to them both. But it was still Severus and Fred, and she'd seen several times how well that combination worked out.

Their task was a simple one: cleaning the Potions classroom. It was something she'd done a million times before — and Fred twice as often. But the stale air made it seem like a much more looming task.

"It's funny," Fred said, breaking the silence that had befallen the room while they scrubbed old cauldrons.

"What?"

He pushed his cauldron to the side and spun to face her, pulling his legs to his chest. "Do you remember our first detention?"

"Five years ago?" She smiled at the memory of the three of them as little first years – Fred, George, and Emily – sitting cross-legged on the cold floor exactly where she and Fred and Roger sat now. "How could I forget?"

"This is what we were doing," he answered, "toothbrushes and all."

"It's what you and George were doing. I had an essay."

Fred quirked a brow while Emily stuck her toothbrush back into the soapy water. "I distinctly remember you helping us scrub cauldrons."

"And I distinctly remember doing far more of the work than both of you put together."

"Funny enough," came Roger's voice suddenly from across the room, and Emily realized she had nearly forgotten he was there, "I distinctly remember right now being the only one doing much of anything!" He let out an uncomfortable chuckle. "I'm only joking," he said, once they turned to look at him, "but I will note that I am the one working hardest right now."

Emily rolled her eyes and scrubbed at her cauldron again until she could see her reflection in the pewter. Fred used his dirty toothbrush to make half-hearted brushing motions.

The empty silence was welcomed back into the room like an old friend, since it was better than Roger's awkward attempts at chumminess. But without the distraction of conversation, the clock ticked ever slower, and it felt like they would never leave.

Finally after what seemed like hours already, Emily picked up the cleaned cauldrons, one by one, to stack them in the corner.

She glanced out the window at the crescent moon overhead, surrounded by stars in front of a curtain of darkness. "Violet told me there'd be fireworks tonight," she said after a while. She checked her watch: 8:50pm. It had only been fifty minutes that they'd been working, but it felt like so much longer – but not enough time to finish all they had left to do before the hour. "It's a shame we'll miss them."

It was the perfect night for New Year's fireworks, and it was the least perfect night to be stuck in detention.

Roger let out a cough to catch Emily's attention, pulling her from her distracted thought. "You two go. I'll stay here and keep watch."

"What?" came Fred's instinctive reaction.

Emily focused her eyes on Roger beneath a furrowed brow. "Why would you —?"

Roger smiled. "I think after all this time, I owe you", and he turned to Fred, adding, "both of you." There was a moment of hesitation where Emily tried to figure out what to say, but Roger nudged her. "Now go."

Nothing more needed to be said. Fred nodded and Emily grinned, and they sneaked out the side door to freedom.

The walk from the dungeons to the astronomy tower was long and risky, but Fred knew all the secret pathways and passages, knew every turn to make to avoid getting caught, and before too long they were there.

"Alohamora!" he whispered, and the door swung open for them.

"Is this where you take all the girls you snog?" Emily joked.

"Only the pretty ones," he said and waited for her to roll her eyes, like he knew she would. "But, really, where better to see fireworks, eh?"

"Eh," she agreed and took a seat on the cold, stone floor. The room felt so big with just the two of them to fill the space. She tried not to focus too hard on what had happened the last time they found themselves alone up here...

"You all right?" he asked while they sat together, near each other but not too close, just waiting for the fireworks to start. "Seems like it's been a weird week for you."

Emily quirked a brow at him. "It's just detention, Fred; I think I'm fine."

"Meant more with Davies… and me… and the stuff with your dad."

She hadn't forgotten about her dad, about the clipping from the Prophet that still burned a hole in the pocket of her jeans. Nor had she forgotten about the unceasing awkwardness that lingered between Fred and Roger. Nor had she ever stopped trying to figure out exactly where she stood – where she wanted to stand – with Fred.

But there was hardly anything she could do about any one of them.

"You ever figure out that page you found?" When she shook her head, he asked, "You want to figure it out?"

"I dunno." She drove off the thought of it, back deep into the recesses of her mind. "What if it was done up that way for a reason?"

"It looked like serial killer notes, Em. Nothing's meant to be done up like that."

"Why are you so concerned about this?" she snapped, though she didn't mean to. But it was hard to enjoy the peaceful moment with Fred forcing the weight of all these worries back on her shoulders.

"Ain't this what I'm supposed to do? You fret about something, so I have to fret about you fretting about it?"

Emily pressed her fingers so hard against her skull that she thought it might crack under the force. "I actually need you to do anything but that."

"How about this, then?" he offered, pulling her close and leaning down to kiss her. His lips were warm, and she could feel the light scruff of his face rub against her cheek. Then he sat her back up and massaged her shoulders with calloused hands. "Or this?"

"Much better," she said, moaning into the pressure of his touch. She couldn't help herself. "Either one is good. Or both."

"You're getting spoilt," said Fred, but he kept going, his fingers slipping beneath the neckline of her blouse to press directly into skin. The warmth of his skin against her own almost made her forget how cold it got this late at night.

She didn't say anything, just leaned back against his chest, snuggled further into him, and enjoyed the feeling of Fred around her.

They stayed like that until the first fireworks popped off, and Emily jumped at the sound to the window.

The whole sky lit up in a magnificent display of colours and shapes, of pictures that danced against the black backdrop of night. Purples and reds and blues and greens shot through the air, exploding into fits of sparkling, twinkling stars as they descended from each burst.

Emily leaned back on her palms with her legs outstretched in front of her. "This is incredible..."

"Thank you, thank you," Fred replied with a smirk and a showy bow.

"I'm talking about the fireworks," she said and rolled her eyes at him.

He leaned over her, his lips upturned into a grin. "So am I."

"This is you?" And when Fred wiggled his eyebrows as his way of saying 'Of course it's me, who else could have possibly done this?', she asked, "How?"

"It's me we're talking about."

It wasn't much of an answer, but it was just about the only answer she could expect from Fred.

"But Violet said —"

He cut her off. "And where d'you reckon she got that from, eh?"

It took a moment for Emily to put together Fred's whole scheme — dropping hints to Violet, meeting in secret with George and Lee... now it all started to make sense. And he had gotten everyone else in on it too. "That's sneaky."

"I prefer to call it clever," he countered. He beamed with pride at his handiwork as the fireworks lit up his face in reds and greens and blues.

"We can agree that it's both."

Fred's eyes danced across her face. "It was worth sneaking out of detention for, yeah?"

She breathed in the smell of him, a citrusy musk that tickled her nose in the most pleasant way, and she smelt the char of the fireworks as they went off, and she basked in that scent as it exploded around her.

The fireworks show ended with a breath-taking 'bang!' that left the lasting image of a large orange 'W' lingering in the sky until it too fell in a spectacular shower of stars to the ground.

She hadn't noticed at first but at some point Fred had moved closer to her, pulled her close to lean against him, intertwined his fingers with hers. It was so comfortable, so natural that she hardly felt the cold breeze that blew through the empty tower. There was only the silence, the darkness, and them.

When she leaned her head back against his chest, she could hear the rhythmic cadence of his breaths, his steady, calm heartbeat, and she realized it.

"I want to do this, I think," she said finally, turning to him. Then she corrected herself, "No."

"No?"

"No," she repeated, sitting herself up straight; "not I think. I do."

He looked at her from beneath a furrowed brow. "I don't follow."

She let out a deep exhale, the sound of it swan-diving from her lips and crashing into the air between them. "I want to do this."

"Do what?"

"This," she repeated. "You and me." When he stared blankly at her again, she let out a huff. "Don't be thick, Fred."

"It's a little quick, yeah?" he asked and winked.

"Not like that," she quickly clarified. Although she thought he was joking, she couldn't be completely sure. In mock offense, she replied, "What kind of girl do you think I am?"

He chuckled as a sly grin spread across his face. "You sure you want an answer to that?"

"I take it all back," she joked, and Fred caught her in his arms, held her tight against him, and she could feel the muscles in his shoulders, the shallow breaths that rose and fell in his chest. She spun around to face him, and her glance flickered between his eyes and his lips.

She had every intention of waiting him out until he asked. Truly, she did. But in that moment, it seemed like the whole elaborate plan was him asking — or as close as she'd get from him. And for now, it was more than enough.

Without another word, she kissed him with a needy, hungry desperation, and he pulled her on top of his lap where her body fit perfectly in his arms. His hands snaked around her waist, and hers found a home around his neck, pulling them as close together as they could be and still be separate people.

There were a million things she wanted to say, but there was no time between breaths. There was too much and not enough at the same time.

He pulled back from her with a breathy whisper, "So we're in agreement then?"

Emily nodded. "Officially?"

"Hey, if you prefer to sneak off and snog in secret, that's fine with me, but —"

She tried not to smile as she said his name, her voice stern but playful. "Fred."

They stayed that way for a while, for too long. Emily used her fingers to brush Fred's hair from his eyes and kissed him again before she got up.

"C,mon, we have to go back."

"Em…" he whined, drawing out the sound.

"It's late, Fred," she started with a yawn, "and we have to be back before Sev—" She quickly caught herself. "Before Snape realizes we've been gone."

He let out a long, loud groan that echoed through the empty Astronomy Tower before he finally faced her, his features marred by a look of defeat. "Fine, Mum."

Emily rolled her eyes. Somebody had to be the responsible one, after all. And no matter how much she'd also prefer to stay with Fred in the Astronomy Tower, it was time to head back and hope Severus hadn't noticed they'd ever left.

If you're still with me after all this time, dear reader, please know that I love and appreciate you! This wound up being a much longer accidental hiatus than I had anticipated, so thank you all for being so patient!