Alright my stir crazy readers, I was going to post this tomorrow but Luna asked very nicely so here, a day early. Hope everyone's doing ok in these crazy doomsday times. I'll increase uploads to 2x/week for anyone who cares.

Pigtails

November
7th year
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"I need to talk to you," Fred said in Leilani's ear as he finally caught up with her.

She plastered a docile smile on her face and said, "Sure."

He took her hand and pulled her out of the crowd and into a secluded part of the courtyard.

"What's up?" she chirped. Too cheerful. Falsely blasé. She'd perfected that tone with Oliver.

"Please don't smile at me like that. We need to talk." He hated the smile plastered on her face, he'd seen her give it to Wood a million times.

Her heart began to pound; she couldn't look him in the face. She hated that phrase; it always made her anxious. "Ok, about what?"

"You. Me. Us. Please stop smiling like that." The smile emptied out her eyes, it freaked him out.

"What about you slash me slash us?" she asked guardedly, dropping the smile.

"You're hiding things from me. You're avoiding me, it seems like every time I see you, you're on your way to somewhere else and you don't want me with you."

"It's nothing."

"It's something."

"I'm telling you, it's no big deal!"

"If it's no big deal, then why won't you tell me?!"

"Please, I don't want to fight about this!" She begged. They were fighting. She and Fred were fighting; she couldn't believe it. She wanted to stop. She tried to walk away.

He took her hand and made her stay. "We need to have this out in the air between us! Need to have it resolve; we can't go on like this, day after day!"

She just wanted it to go away. It was worse than fighting with Oliver.

"…Did we go too fast? Should I not have kissed you on Halloween?"

Heat rose in her cheeks, anger or embarrassment, she couldn't tell, "In case you've forgotten, I kissed you!"

"Then why, Leilani?"

"Am I not allowed to have some secrets? I can't possibly tell you everything about me; there are things about me that I wouldn't even know to tell!" she cried, confused, frustrated and horribly dismayed. There were also things she would never tell; things between her and Oliver that were too private to consider telling. "I don't want you thinking you can control me, as Oliver tried to. I thought you were different than that, better than that."

He blanched, "That's not what I meant," he said quietly.

"Then what, Fred?" Fighting with him hurt, fathoms of agony went lancing through her chest, her stomach, her head. It stung the back of her throat and made her vision swim.

"I just—there's something you're not telling me. Please, just open up to me!" he pleaded.

She sighed and said the first thing that came to mind, "I was just trying to give you some space! I don't want us living in each other's pockets!"

"Maybe I like your pocket! Do I embarrass you?"

"No!"

"Why is it that every time I see you lately, you're stalking Harry?" his hand flew into the air indicating the boy who wasn't actually standing there.

Leili flinched.

Eyes wide, they stopped, frozen in place. He hadn't been about to hit her, he'd just been gesturing. Leilani sat down hard on a bench behind her, burying her face in her hands, mortified.

After a second, Fred sat down beside her.

Leili leaned into his side and he wrapped his arms around her.

"I hate fighting with you. Let's never do it again, ok?" her voice was small and a bit lost, like she couldn't figure out how she got into this mess.

"Never," Fred promised, kissing her hair. "Who hit you?" He was gentle with the question.

"Three guesses and the first two don't count," she snarked.

He didn't need the first two guesses anyway; he'd known the answer before he'd asked. "Oliver."

"Ding-ding-ding! Congratulations! You've won!"

"What'd I win?"

"Me, in all my messed up glory."

"Where did he hit you?" again, the question was gentle.

"Cheek."

Fred leaned in and pressed his lips to the cheek nearest him, "This one?" he whispered against it.

Leilani smiled suddenly, "The other one," she said, turning her face towards Fred.

He smiled back and kissed her other cheek and then the tip of her nose. He leaned his forehead against hers, nose tips touching. "I like your pockets," he said again, gentler this time, no longer shouting.

"And I like yours."

"So what's the problem?"

"That's the problem." One of them anyway, another of course, was Harry.

"I don't follow. I thought you liked me," he was hiding the hurt the thought brought, because he really liked her.

She looked to the cloudless blue sky, like maybe the answer was up there somewhere and sighed. "I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I really don't," she scoffed. "The last time I tried this whole relationship thing was with Oliver and we both know how that ended. It's not like that with you and I'm just… just trying to keep it that way. I was serious when I said I was trying to keep your space, trying to keep us from living in each other's pockets. Oliver would practically cling to me—like a leech—and make it obvious that I was there to suit his wants and his needs, on his timetable, in his choice of location—which, by the way, was more often in public than not. He didn't like it when I didn't just succumb to his every waking whim and when I said 'no'—to anything—he had a tendency to… behave badly." She hoped he understood the connotation because this was about as close as she planned to come to explaining the things that happened with Oliver when no-one was looking. "He behaved badly and I defended him or I didn't say anything when I really should have or I justified it or I took the blame when he did."

"Sometimes violently?"

She sucked her teeth and let that be her answer. "I didn't mean to tell you this."

"…Why not?"

"I didn't mean to tell anybody this," she chuckled drily and changed the subject. "I meant what I said when we went climbing: I like you. I like you so much that I don't know what to do with it. I like you so much I feel it down to the ends of my hair! And I tell ya, I didn't know that was possible."

He wasn't quite understanding her, though it thrilled him to know she liked him as much as he liked her.

She sighed, "I'm not explaining this very well. …I don't want you to get tired of me, that was the main point."

Ah. So that's what she was afraid of. He cupped her chin and turned her face so she was looking more directly at him, "I'm not Wood. I would rather jump in front of the Whomping Willow than ever hurt you. I've had some inkling of liking you since we were twelve and you were still wearing pigtails. I think you're sweet and funny and quirky. I think you're pretty and talented and could probably kick my ass if you tried. I'm never going to get tired of you."

She laughed, "Pigtails? Really?" she couldn't actually remember the last time she'd worn her hair in pigtails. It was too long and heavy to do it now, unless they were braids and she could never get those even.

"I call you pretty and you focus on the pigtails—figures." He ran his long fingered, callused Beater's hands through the mass of hair in question, snagging on knots and tangles—somehow her hair was always tangled. His heart fluttered as she sighed and closed her eyes in bliss, tipping her head more into his palms. "Really. It was an Easter snow, you had just come back from Spring Break and you were having a snowball fight with Jo. One of your snowballs missed, it hit me instead. I'd seen you around before, but that was the first time I really noticed you. You waved, called 'Sorry!' and then shrieked like a demon when Jo magicked a snowman to drop on your head."

Leili laughed, "I don't even remember that."

"That's ok. Now, will you tell me what it is you've been hiding? Is it why you and Jo have been stalking my Seeker?"

"Hiding? Oh boy, that's a list… In regards to Harry, he just gets into so much trouble, being the Chosen One slash Boy Who Lived. Jo and I have followed him around for the last five years trying to keep him from getting himself killed. This year, he's been acting funny."

Fred explained what he knew of Harry's situation, "He's been having nightmares, about Voldemort, Cedric, his godfather; he showed up for Quidditch practice so tired one day he could barely stay on his broom. George and I made him tell us what was wrong."

Leili nodded, "There's one other thing," Ideally, she'd talk to Jo before doing this, being as it was half her secret too, but if it meant the two of them never have this fight again… She just wouldn't mention Jo's half. She stood up, "Keep your hands here; don't move." She positioned his hands in front of him, rotating them so the tips of his fingers were touching. "And whatever you do, please don't freak out."

She locked eyes with him, took a deep, steadying breath and focused. And then she shrank. She perched gently on his fingers, folding her wings.

"You're an animagus?"

"Yep!"

Two synapses clicked in his head and he smiled, "You little rule breaker, you! That's how you got up in the Quidditch ring. You flew," he laughed.

She flapped back a few feet, giving herself room to shift back.

Then, frowning, he asked, "You can tell me anything, you know that, right?"

She smiled gently and sat beside him, "There are things that I can't tell you, at least… not directly."

"Like what?"

"Like this," she gestured to her cheek, "when I flinched. That's something deeply embarrassing and personal and not a thing I'd ever be able to just mention. I've got a few things like that, such as his poor behavior."

"Yes, I noticed you came shy of actually telling me what his behavior was."

"If it makes you feel better, the same things I'm keeping from you, I'm keeping from Jo—Not just Jo, everyone: my parents, my sister; everyone. I'm sorry, this can't make much sense," she chuckled, a small and self-deprecating sound.

"Don't be sorry." He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, "You don't have to be embarrassed, either. …You ever seen that smile? The one you used to give Wood?"

"No. Never had the opportunity."

"It's a little like a side-effect of our Day-Dream charm, you get this look like all the thoughts have eddied out of your head."

She winced, "Ooh, sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry for that, either."

"Sorr—," She cut herself off before she could finish the word. "Old habits die hard."

He pressed his lips to her temple, breathing in the cherry and lavender scent of her hair. There were wild cherry trees and lavender bushes on the hills near the Burrow, his mom made wild cherry pies in the spring; her shampoo reminded him of home.

"I love you, Lei," he murmured.