Hi! It's me again. This chapter isn't as long as the previous chapter, but it's longer than normal. I seem to have found my groove again, and I'm getting carried away. Thank you to everyone who reads and is kind enough to leave a review, especially ~flowerinthedistance! Thank you for your comments, I really appreciate it, and it gives me motivation to write. I love you all.

~Phantombookworm

The misfit pair scrambled through the portrait hole just a minute after curfew had gone for the third years. They had managed to traverse the length of the castle without leaving the maze of secret passages at all. George spotted his twin as he entered the common room, and raised an eyebrow as he realised that Fred was carrying Hermione's bag. Will wonders never cease? George thought, shaking his head as he turned back to his Transfiguration work. This is bloody difficult. Rolling up his parchment, he put away his quill and pulled out a pack of exploding snap. "Lee?" He invited.

"Sure man, why not?" Lee stretched languorously, before shuffling his chair closer to the table and reaching for the pile of cards he had just been dealt. George glanced around at Fred, who was sitting at a table in the far corner, explaining something to Hermione. He shrugged and picked up his hand. I hope everything's okay.

In the corner, Fred was explaining how to conjure an object from thin air. "What you're really doing is copying it from the image in your head, so make sure you concentrate. Else you could create a chair with three legs and no seat." He smiled. "George managed to create an ink well- except it had no base, so he ended up covered in blue ink. It was priceless."

Hermione nodded distractedly, her eyes shut as she envisaged the object she was trying to conjure up. Her mouth was screwed up in concentration, just the tip of her tongue peeking out as she frowned. "Inanimatus Conjurus," Hermione whispered, moving the tip of her wand through a graceful circle motion. A small clink sounded, and her eyes flew open.

A bright blue bead edged with silver had appeared from thin air and had fallen softly onto the wooden desk. "I did it!" Hermione cried, exultant. "I did it! I did it!"

Fred couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah, you did." He chuckled. "A hell of a lot faster than I did, too." He was impressed. It was an O.W.L grade spell, and here Hermione had mastered it as fast as you please!

"Can I try again?"

"Of course- try something bigger, if you want."

A smile etched on her face, Hermione shut her eyes again. Fred couldn't help noticing that the silver-edged bead that she had conjured only moments before matched his eye colour exactly. But he was probably over assessing the situation, again. After all, it was the same colour as the ink in the bottle between them.

Thunk. A thin, cylindrical object fell onto the table between the pair.

"What is that?" Fred asked. The mystery object was perhaps six inches long, with silver at each end of it. The main part was patterned with marbled blue, and about an inch and a half from one end, another silver band ran around the cylinder. A sort of clip, again silver, was attached to the shorter part of the object.

Hermione picked it up, smiling. "It's a fountain pen."

"A what?" Confused, Fred reached for it. Hermione held it out to him, now warm with the heat of her hands. Turning it over and over in his hands, he found that the shorter part of the 'fountain pen' was separate to the rest of it. He unscrewed it to reveal a sharp, silver point. "Woah!"

Hermione chuckled and took the pen from Fred. "Look, you write with it. It's like a quill. Without the feather."

"How does it work?"

The young witch unscrewed the grip behind the pointy silver part of the pen to show a small bottle of ink. "It's an ink cartridge," she explained. "You can refill it from a bottle of ink, so you don't have to keep dipping the nib-" she indicated the silver pointed part "-into an inkwell. It's also easier to write with than having a face-full of feathers." She screwed the nib back into place and held out a hand to the redhead. "Lid, please."

Fred glanced down at his hand. He hadn't realised that he had still been holding the piece of metal that had unscrewed from the top of the pen. "Here," he said, passing it over. He couldn't resist another question. "What is that bit for?"

"It's to stop the ink from drying out. Like if you don't put the lid back on your ink bottle or something."

"Oh." Suddenly, he preferred the idea of the pen to a quill. It looked so much more substantial, and his quills were always breaking or twisting in his bag. On a whim, he asked "can I keep it?"

Hermione grinned, and handed the pen to him. "Sure. I prefer using one too." There was a twinkle of mischief in her eye and he realised that he must have voiced his musings out loud, rather than in his head as he thought. His ears burned red.

"Thanks, Hermione." He twirled the metal cylinder between his fingers, marvelling at the colour and the workmanship on the pen, before tucking it safely into his bag.

"No problem. Thanks for teaching me the spell." She glanced up and around the common room. Fred and herself, along with a few studying seventh years, were the only people left in the room. "What time is it?"

"Woah. Uhm, like almost eleven. How did it get that late?" Fred checked his watch, shocked. "I'd best be going to bed."

"Yeah, me too." Hermione glanced up at him as he stood awkwardly, one hand ruffling his ginger hair. Impulsively, she threw her arms around him, and whispered "Thanks."

Fred gently lowered his arms around her, hugging her gently. "It was nothing," he said. He moved his arms, and Hermione ducked away from him, her face burning as she retrieved her satchel.

"Night, Fred."

"Goodnight, Hermione."

Fred collapsed on his four-poster bed, fully robed. In his right hand he held the pen that Hermione had given him earlier, and his left hand was combing through his mop of hair.

His musings were cut short as his twin emerged from the bathroom. "So you finally decided to catch up?" George whispered, his voice slightly mocking, although with a joking tone.

"Sorry, mate. I didn't mean to-"

"That's okay, Freddie. You like her. You probably just got too enthusiastic in something, right?" George shrugged. "Did you do McGonagall's work?"

"Yeah. That's what we were talking about actually. I was in the Library. She helped me with the theory, so I taught her the spell. Seemed like a fair trade."

"Of course," George chuckled under his breath as he sat on the edge of his twins' bed. "How to get a bookworm 101- go to the library together."

"Hey!" Fred whispered back, mock indignant. He wasn't really annoyed with his twin- this gentle ribbing was part and parcel of having any sort of sibling.

"Go to sleep Freddie. She'll still be here in the morning. And we have Snape first thing, so don't oversleep again, okay?"

"Fine."

"Night, Forge."

"Night Gred."

Hermione had just emerged from the bathroom in her pyjamas, and in her hand she held the blue bead she had conjured- one that was the exact shade of blue as Fred's eyes. She didn't know if that was significant. She didn't understand her feelings at the moment. There was too much to do.

Pulling out a necklace from around her neck- not her time turner, that was kept safely tucked under her clothes unless she was about to use it- she undid it. It was a memory necklace, like a charm bracelet. When she was younger, her parents would get her a different bead for each of her birthdays. There was a dark purple one when she had turned ten, and a bronze one when she had received her letter for Hogwarts. Another bead, red and gold, commemorated her being sorted into Gryffindor in her first year. There was another bead, one with a tiny ginger cat charm attached, which she bought when she first got Crookshanks at the start of the summer. It was one bought in Diagon Alley, and so the cat would often wind around the bead it was attached to, and would curl up when it slept at night.

And now, Fred's bead joined those memories.

A/N- Just to say, I have read several opinions that say Fred's eye colour is brown, but I think blue suits him better. Call it artistic licence. Also, do you know how difficult it is to describe a regular, mundane object without actually using it's name? Try it, I challenge you.