Before we start, I'd like to address two of the comments I got last week. Thank you for taking the time to telegraph your disappointment in this story. You're right, the girls are technically self insert OC's, or at least they were in the beginning; I like to hope they've grown into their own people. I wrote this story because RM thought it would be fun and I agreed. I kept writing it because I wanted to. Because it's fun and good practice and because some people seem to enjoy it, plus it's good for me to actually finish something I started. So if you don't like it, that's fine, you're entitled to your opinion. Anyway! Here we go, 7th year.

Another Two Inches

Summer before 7th year
-

Fred was floo powdering over to Leilani's house today. She'd chosen a specific time during which her parents would be out to avoid a meet-the-parents situation. They were going out to see a movie that she didn't particularly care about and she had made a reservation at the local climbing gym, besides.

There was a crash and a moan down the hall. Leilani hurried to the fireplace to see Fred sprawled on the hearth. "Ooh, are you ok?"

"Bloody hell!" He gaped, glaring at the fireplace.

Leili began babbling, "It's tempermental, we hardly ever use it but I couldn't think of another way to get you here. Devon is a two hour drive and neither one of us can apparate yet. Sorry," She extended a hand and helped him upright, brushing soot and ash from his shoulders and sticky-uppy hair.

"It's alright, I've been hit by bludgers harder," he gave her a peck on the cheek and she grinned at him.

"Good. Let me just grab my stuff and then we'll go. If you're hungry, there're snacks in the kitchen."

Instead of going looking for the kitchen, he followed her.

Morgan twisted between his ankles as he walked until he picked her up and gave her a scratch. Satisfied, she butted her head against his chest and got down, the bell around her neck announcing her departure.

On Leili's bed was a dirty little dog, one who had obviously been white but now was mostly dust-colored. As he came into the room behind her, the little dog rolled to her feet and started barking.

"Annie, that's enough," Leili scolded.

Annie kept on barking.

"Annie, if you don't stop, I'm going to make you stop."

The terrier went quiet for a moment but then picked right back up where she'd left off.

Leili made a noise that was half sigh, half exasperated groan, "Just… let her sniff your hand, that usually shuts her up. Be careful though, she has been known to nip."

Fred carefully extended a hand and Annie went to town sniffing his fingers. Eventually she lay back down on the bed and heaved a huff.

Leili ruffled the fur between the dog's ears, "She's old and grumpy and doesn't like new people much. I never actually use magic on her, though I threaten and am sorely tempted sometimes."

Fred walked around Leilani's bed, giving the dog a respectful berth. He reached for the stuffed animal leaning against her pillow, "You sleep with a teddy bear?"

"I do," she eyed him warily, god forbid he say anything unsavory about her bear. She'd had that bear since her 8th birthday.

He grinned, "You haven't grown out of sleeping with a bear, that's completely adorable."

Leili gave him a quasi-dirty look as she reached for the purple, leopard print teddy bear. "It's mostly habit by now but I'll admit, she's a comfort."

She didn't mention that she hadn't begun sleeping with the bear until last July. She also didn't mention that the hadn't slept for two weeks after the "unfortunate accident in the grave yard" as the therapist she'd spoken to had called it. The so-called "accident" had left her afraid to close her eyes and with constant nightmares when she finally did crash; making her cranky and unpleasant to be around—hence the shrink that she'd spoken with a grand total of two times before she'd sworn never to go back.

She'd found the teddy bear during a routine closet clean out, tossed her on the bed and woken up curled into a ball around the bear the next afternoon—the first time she'd been nightmare-free in weeks.

"Did you name her?"

She laughed, "Of course I named her, I was eight!" Leili took a stuffed paw in her hand and gently tugged the teddy out of his hand.

"What's her name?"

"Cerberus," she picked up her purse and backpack, "Ready?"

"You named your teddy bear after a three headed gurdian dog of hell?"

"Only technically. I was eight, I could barely pronounce 'Cerberus' so I called her something else."

"What did you call her?"

To avoid answering—since the bear's nickname, literally "Bear", was a bit embarrassing—"Ready? About face."

Fred laughed and spun on his heel, leading the way down the hall with Leilani following, flicking off lights and locking doors as they went. They piled into the car, "I'm impressed you can drive, most wizards our age can't."

"Just don't ask me to navigate; I'll navigate myself right off a cliff. I'm ok here in my neighborhood but if I tried to drive to your house, I'd for sure end up having to be rescued. I can't tell my north from my south or my east from my west, unless it's sunrise or sunset, in which case I have a pretty good idea of at least two cardinal directions."

The first few minutes of the drive were spent in silence, but then he aksed, "Do you miss him?"

"Miss who?" she was driving, she didn't have the brain power for riddles right now.

"Oliver."

"No," she said flatly, unequivocally. "...If anything, I miss what I thought it was supposed to be. I am a hopeless romantic; what Oliver and I had? It wasn't romantic, it was just hopeless. Most days it wasn't even fun."

He nodded and gave her hand a squeeze where it rested on the gearshift. She shot him an uncomplicated smile as he twined their fingers together.

She had gotten a few blocks from the house when she realized she'd made a wrong turn. "Oops. Wrong way~" she singsonged as she stopped in the middle of the street and made a u-turn. He snorted, shaking his head a little, she grinned guilessly back.

The only time he had driven was technically more flying than driving and that had been to rescue Harry from Privet Drive, but he knew that if there had been anyone behind them, that manuever would have been dangerous. And quite probably ended in being rear-ended.

When silence reigned again and she couldn't stand the slight tinnitus in her ears, she started humming to herself. Eventually the mindless humming became actual lyrics, "…Stooole my cauldron…tooooads from my po-ond…crystal viii'ls of my mem'ries…then flew off like a vampire bat!"

"What're you singing?"

She had to think about it, not being entierly aware of having been singing—at least out loud, "Um. Celestina Warbeck: You Stole my Cauldron."

He raised an eyebrow, "You like Celestina Warbeck?"

"Lemme guess, you don't?"

"No. My mum does though."

"Cauldron is the only song I know well enough to sing solo. I've heard the others but I get Cauldron and Hot, Strong, Love, stuck in my head the most. I can stop singing, if you dislike her that much. I just needed something to fill the silence and, like so many other things in this car, the radio is broken."

"What else is broken?"

She rapped her knuckles on her window, "You can't roll down this window, passenger side back door doesn't lock, you have to slam the back deck lid to get it to shut—my dad lives in constant fear of my accidentally shattering it—the a/c is anemic unless it's on high and about half the lights in the dash have burnt out bulbs. It's all too much hassle to fix for a car that's ultimately not driven enough to be worth it."

"Can you sing in your, ah, borrowed accents?"

"Mm, only a little. A few words here or there." She adopted an exaggerated southern twang she'd learned from too much TV, "Primarily, darlin', if you get me singin', I do so in my own voice, not someone else's."

He laughed at the accent. She made a tock-ing noise with her tounge as she tipped the brim of her imaginary hat and winked exaggeratedly at him. "So how 'bout it? Celestina or no Celestina?"

"Why don't you sing some more and I'll let you know?"

She smiled, embarrassed but pleased, "Sure." So she picked the song up from the beginning and he didn't ask her to stop. Eventually she had to switch to some muggle songs though because she couldn't remember the words—though her singing "Something-something Iiiii've for-gotten the words to this song!" to the tune of Cauldron had made Fred laugh.

Half an hour later, they were at the climbing gym and she was teaching him how to belay so they could make the most of their downtime. She clipped herself to the auto-belay as he tied the double figure-eight. There was an employee overseeing the process who double checked the knot before it was clipped onto Leilani's harness beside the autobelay.

"Ready?" Leili asked.

"Ready. Climb-on?" Fred said.

She'd run through the various phrases the gym used with him while she taught him how to tie the knot. She grinned and moved to the wall, "Climbing," she volleyed back. "I'm gonna go up a couple feet and then fall, so catch me."

She climbed, she "fell" and he caught. He lowered her to the floor and she went up again, this time for real. She got to the top, gently tapped the little bell that hung there and called down, "Take!"

"Take!" he repeated, then, "Lowering!" as he let the rope move through the carabiner bringing her slowly back down.

When both feet touched the floor, the supervising employee congratulated Fred on a well accomplished first belay and released them to climb without supervision or the auto belay safety rope. Leili and Fred traded places, she belayed while he climbed, she clipped herself into a saftey line on the floor so she wouldn't be pulled into the air if Fred fell.

They climbed like this for a while before moving over to what Leili affectionatly referred to as the "hard wall". It was shorter than the ones they had previously climbed and it curved at the top so at one point the climber would most likely be hanging from their fingers and toes like a sloth.

"I'll go first? I'd say 'show you how it's done' but I feel it's only fair to warn you: I have no idea what I'm doing. I almost never finish this wall, but that's what makes me come back: the challenge. Actually, I usually start here because, by now, my hands are pretty shot." She looked down at her hands, fingers curled in and red, she forced them to straighten and bend as she tried to do something other than hurt.

"Go on then: Climb on!" He gave her ponytail a playful swat as she turned.

She did about as well as she always did for the first, vertical half of the wall, but as usual, when she came to the spot where the wall became a cliff, the rock she wanted was just out of her reach.

"Oh, what I wouldn't give to have just another two inches!" she complained as she stretched her arm out. Her fingers grazed the curved surface of the rock.

"Jump and reach!" Fred volleyed up to her. She was almost there!

She called back, "I'd like to see you come up here and try it!" She jumped, reached and missed. She yelped as she entered a short free fall. After letting her swing a moment in the air he brought her down.

"Go on then, you try," she teased, unclipping herself and offering the rope in a trade.

She belayed as he climbed. He had only minor difficulties due to his height. As he approached the place where she had gotten stuck, he, casual as can be, reached out and wrapped his fingers around the rock she couldn't reach.

He shot a satisfied grin at her, "Victorious!"

"I should drop you for that!" She laughed.

"Vicious!"

She laughed again.

"Besides, you like me too much to drop me."

"You're right, I do."

The look of astonshiment he shot her from his sloth-like position made her eyes widen like a deer in the headlights as she realized what she'd said.

Positive she was blushing, she returned his attention to his feet. "Bring your right foot up to that orange rock by your knee… Yeah, like that. Now put all your weight on that foot and stand up. Up-up-up, now reach for that screaming face rock, hook your fingers right in the mouth. Perfect!" He gave the top of the wall a resounding smack in lieu of ringing the bell.

"Take!"

"Taking!"

When his feet touched down, he wrapped an arm around her lower back and pulled her as flush against him as he could with two harnesses and ropes in the way. He smirked at her and said, "Piece of cake. Easy as pie. A walk in the park."

She grinned, gently whacking his shoulder with her fingers, "Oh, shut-up." For a second, the way he was looking at her, she thought he might kiss her.

But he didn't.

At the end of the session, her fingers were red and raw and semi-permanently curved around an imaginary rock. His were worse. They were sprawled together on an un-occupied space of floor.

"If I'm dying, let me eat cake," she moaned dramatically.

He chuckled breathlessly, "You're not dying!" he said, rolling over so his arms held him supported above her.

"Let me eat cake anyway."

He poked her in the ribs.

She yelped and laughed breathlessly. His brown eyes lit up and he started poking and squeezing her sides, earning more breathless hysterics and a lot of wiggling. "Stop! Stopstopstop," she laughed, catching his hand and twining her aching fingers through his.

For the second time that day, she thought he'd kiss her and for the second time, she wished he would. She was smiling so broadly her face hurt as he leaned in. Distantly she wondered if he could feel her heart thumping harder. He stoped scant inches away, she could count the freckles on his nose. Her breaths mingled with his as brown eyes stared into grey and then…

Beebeebeebeep Beebeebeebeep Beebeebeebeep

The mood shattered around them like a borken window, she tore her eyes away from his to frown at her watch. She gasped as she registered the time, "Crud! We gotta go! We gotta go—gotta go, gotta go! C'mon, we gotta go!" She tapped his arm with her free arm

"What's the hurry?" Fred asked, rolling off and hurrying nonetheless.

They were on their feet and heading off the floor as she explained, "My parents movie is ending soon, we gotta get home before they do!"

Fred caught her wrist and forced her to stop, just for a second. "Do they not know we were doing this?"

"We, no. Me, yes. They know where I am, they don't know you're with me. I just don't want to introduce you, yet!"

"You don't want me to meet them?" he asked cautiously.

"Not like this!"

"Like what?"

She floundered for the word, "Unannounced. I haven't told them about you, yet. Can we walk and talk?"

"Why not?" he said as he started walking.

"Why not, what?"

"Why haven't you told them?"

"Because I don't know how," she admitted. "I avoid telling people things when I don't know how to…tell them things." She frowned at the sentence before deciding it didn't matter. She took his hands and swung around to face him as they stopped next to her car. "Tell you what: if you wanna meet my parents, we'll make a date of it. Sometime before school starts, I'll introduce you. And you can introduce me to yours, whenever. Okay?"

His grin dazzled her, "Okay."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Ok—Ok, we gotta stop saying 'ok'!"

His grin widened as he leaned in and whispered, "Okay."

She laughed, "Get in the car! Honestly."

She couldn't stop grinning all the way home.