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Lighten Up, Weasley.

-x- Percy Weasley & Penelope Clearwater –x-

'She took his hand
And dragged him in a tunnel
He never liked kissing till tonight
He used his best lines
Got rejected 20 times
Until he found the one he was waiting for…'

'Urgh, piss off you loser!'

His head reeling from the almighty slap he'd just received, Percy Weasley staggered backwards away from the girl he'd attempted to chat up. Stumbling into the drinks table, he coughed embarrassedly and straightened himself up, fixing his glasses so that they weren't sitting at a forty-five degree angle on his thin face. He grimaced painfully as he watched his attacker – a pretty sixth-year – move away, whispering with three of her friends, all four of them sending glares and disgusted looks in his direction.

Surely he was just caught in a bad rut; those pick-up lines that Bill and Charlie sent him were pretty clever, at least in his own humble, hopelessly inexperienced opinion. Moving his jaw around tenderly as the stinging in his cheek began to ebb away; he turned, took a butterbeer from the table behind him and gulped at it, wishing, for the first time in his life, that they were made of stronger stuff.

'Pick-up lines not going so well, Perce?'

Choking on his drink, Percy turned to see Oliver Wood standing beside him, reaching out to get himself a butterbeer of his own.

'Uh, well, not quite as well as I'd hoped,' Percy replied stiffly, surveying the room for another target.

'You know, I don't exactly blame the last one,' Oliver continued, grinning at his hopeless friend, 'I mean, "you must be Jamaican, cause baby Jamaican me crazy" is not exactly a masterpiece of a line.'

'Oh yeah?' Percy retorted, embarrassed as he realised the incredible stupidity of the line, 'and how many girls have you picked up tonight?'

'Just the one,' Oliver answered with a shrug, gesturing in the direction of Katie Bell, who smiled at him briefly before going back to chatting animatedly with her fellow chasers Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet.

'Yes, well,' said Percy distractedly, having spotted a shy but very pretty girl in the corner of the room, talking quietly to his brother George, 'excuse me, Wood.'

Leaving a laughing Oliver behind him, Percy ruffled his hair up a bit and walked over to the corner where George had just very conveniently left the pretty girl by herself, sipping a pumpkin juice with an owlish look over her goblet.

'H-hello there,' he said in greeting, shuffling his left foot nervously.

'Um, hi,' she said, raising an eyebrow as she took in his profusely sweating brow and twitchy left foot, 'can I help you with something?'

'C-can I take your picture?' he blurted out, breathing in and out deeply in a slightly alarming manner.

'Uh, um, why exactly?' she asked, looking quite frightened by him and confused by his apparent lack of photographic equipment.

'Because… because I well, I,' he paused, breathed in and out and then flashed an attempt at a cocky smile at her, 'because I want Father Christmas to know exactly what I want this December.'

There was an awkward silence, in which he continued to grin manically at her and she stared at him with disbelief, before she began to laugh.

'You know, you could ask my name before you start using horrible pick-up lines on me,' she said through her giggles, 'my name's Leanne and no, you aren't going to get anywhere with me.'

Stammering, his grin sliding off his face, Percy watched helplessly as she quickly moved away, crying she was laughing so hard, and fell into the small circle that Oliver, Katie and the others were in. He looked on with mortification as she told them all what had happened and felt his cheeks glow an almighty scarlet when Oliver threw him a look that clearly showed that he thought him some kind of idiot, which, he realised now, he was. Obviously, Charlie and Bill had collaborated on this, had played a prank on him to make him look like a complete and total prat, and it looked as if they'd succeeded.

Forlorn, embarrassed and feeling down on himself, Percy flopped down in the nearest lounge, accidentally seating himself in the lap of a fourth-year girl, who screeched as soon as she realised it was him, telling him – as loudly as possible – that his stupid pick-up lines weren't going to work on her and that if he was aiming as low as girls three years younger than him then he was more of an idiot than she'd thought. Her words were reinforced a few seconds later by her burly fifth-year boyfriend, Cormac McLaggen, who grabbed Percy by the collar of his sweater and forcibly lifted him off his girlfriend's lap, marched him over to the portrait hole and dropped him out of it, letting him fall in a squirming heap on the stone floor.

As he lay sprawled out on the cold marble, Percy gave a huge sigh, blinking blearily through his once again mutilated glasses. Rolling over on to his back, he spread himself out and stared at the ceiling, eventually drifting off into a shallow sleep from pure boredom and dejection.

He was only left in peaceful misery for half an hour though, when a small nudge in his ribs startled him and he sat up, blinking blearily, his spine twinging from the cold floor. Straightening up his glasses somewhat, he peered through the smeared lenses to see a distinctly female face looking down at him, her expression torn between annoyance and amusement.

'What're you doing out here Weasley?'

He recognised her clear, musical voice… it was Penelope Clearwater, a prefect from Ravenclaw.

His ears glowing with a heat they'd rarely known, he got to his feet uneasily, pulling his wand out of the pocket of his jeans and tapping the frame of his spectacles so that they repaired themselves and he could see properly at last.

'Erm, hello Miss Clearwater.'

She laughed, rolling her blue eyes in the process.
'Always so stiff and proper, aren't you Weasley?'

'I, well, its – yes,' heaving the sigh of a person who'd been through trials and tribulations unheard of, he faced her with a shameful expression.

'Heard you had a bit of bad luck at the party,' she said conversationally, smiling when his face flushed an even brighter red, 'everyone's talking about it, that Patil girl in your house told her twin in mine, so now two houses at least know what you've been up to Mr. Head Boy.'

'Oh Merlin,' he breathed, sliding down the wall beside the Fat Lady's portrait, 'I'll be the laughing-stock of the school.'

'It's not that bad,' she said, before catching the look on his face, 'well yes it is, but it could be worse.'

'Really?' he said, a note of hysteria in his voice now, 'and how is that?'

'You could have ended the night without even a single date,' she replied, sitting down gracefully, so that she was cross-legged beside him.

'But that's the thing of it,' he said, a tortured expression on his face, 'I did end the night without a single date.'

'The night's not over yet,' she reasoned, punching him lightly on the arm, 'you never know what might happen.'

'I can't even go back inside now; they've locked me out,' he whined.

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before doing something that took him by complete and utter surprise… she leant over and kissed him.

Shocked, he let her kiss him for a moment before pulling away, spluttering indignantly. 'You – I – we can't! I'm Head Boy and you're a Prefect and we – '

'Oh lighten up Weasley,' she said with a wicked grin, before reaching over, taking his jaw in her hand and then pulling him towards her so that she could kiss him again.

Deciding that perhaps he'd best take her advice if he wanted her to keep on kissing him, Percy closed his eyes and gave in, and soon he was so totally engrossed with the feeling of her lips and delicate hands as they snaked their way around his neck, that he didn't even notice Fred and George stick their heads out of the portrait hole, gaping when they saw him.

A/N: lyrics used - "Kiss Chasing" by The Chalets.