A/N this chapter is brought to you by insulting words that begin with the letter "I"
"Wipe that disgusting smile off your face Weasley!" Snape snarled as Harry and Ginny walked into the classroom. Her smile instantly dropped.
"I wasn't smiling!" Ron exclaimed from his seat next to Hermione.
"It is no wonder that you are so inept at school work, if you can't ever remember that more than one Weasley goes to this school," the greasy git snarled. "Now your other teachers may have allowed the two of you to sit in the back of class and not participate, but I will not stand for this. Today we are going to have an obstacle course where each of you will have to run through a series of tests."
"Obviously, isn't that the point of an obstacle course?" muttered Ron.
"Twenty points from Gryffindor for back talking Mr. Weasley. If you were smarter you would have figured out that I was explaining the purpose of an obstacle course to those in this class that are incompetent enough to not understand." He looked pointedly at Harry and Ginny who, smartly, did not retort. "Now the first to go will be Potter and Weasley, they will demonstrate why it is important to be quick, even though they are at a disadvantage." He looked at each of the students in turn "you have three minutes to be done. GO!"
The obstacle course proved to be difficult to navigate, regardless of whether or not one was "at a disadvantage" as Snape had put it. Even if Harry had been on his own in the course he would have had a hard time getting through in the three minute time limit, but with Ginny it was nearly impossible. The obstacle course was set up like a maze (in a magically enlarged classroom), and had hurdles to jump, and dead ends, as well as magical problems to face. Overall it reminded Harry of the Triwizard Tournament maze. Harry was surprised to say that it was actually a good lesson, but he suspected it had only been set up to make things more difficult for himself and Ginny.
He and Ginny did not finish in three minutes, but instead ten, after tripping four times, and completely falling once. They did have one advantage though, and that was that Ginny could watch for stray spells and curses one way, while Harry watched the other way.
"Ten points from each of you for not completing the course in time," sneered Snape when they stepped out of the maze. "And another ten points from each of you for disrupting the class with your… unnaturalness."
Ginny glared at him as he strode away to yell at Lavender for accidentally cursing Malfoy instead of the Boggart she was supposed to be fighting.
"He shouldn't have said that." she huffed angrily. "about being unnatural."
"It's Snape, I expect nothing but the best insults." Harry joked.
Ginny frowned at him, "I was serious Harry."
"I know you were," he knew exactly what she'd been thinking about when she'd said it, but he didn't really want to have a conversation about the Dursleys. They'd talked enough about them in the last year. "But it doesn't really bother me."
Her shoulders slumped, she could tell he didn't want to talk about it, and she wasn't going to make him. "We didn't deserve to have all of those points docked though."
Harry laughed. "I'm just glad he didn't dock more!"
Just then their conversation was interrupted "I thought he was the Boggart!" cried Lavender.
"Foolish girl! Your deepest fear is teenage boys? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though, you did date Weasley." Apparently even Snape knew the latest gossip.
"B-but he's covered in gross smelling boils! He looked scary to me!"
The duo didn't think they could contain their laughter much longer.
"Twenty points from Gryffindor for stupidity," the Greasy Bat yelled at Lavender. "Leave!" he addressed the class.
Out in the corridor the two teens burst into laughter, they laughed so hard that they didn't notice when they started sliding apart.
"Oi! I guess you two figured out the counter curse." Ron yelled as he exited the classroom.
Harry and Ginny looked perplexedly at him then at each other and instantly snapped back together.
Hermione saw the whole thing happen and sighed in frustration. "Why don't you just do the counter spell? I know you didn't just forget to look it up."
"It's obviously something embarrassing 'Mione otherwise they'd have already done it." Ron observed.
"What could be more embarrassing than being stuck to the person you fancy, when they don't even know you fancy them?"
"Well there was this one time…" Ron began, but Harry and Ginny never heard Ron's story or Hermione's comment about them fancying each other because they'd already snuck down to the Quidditch pitch for practice.
"How's this going to work?" Ginny asked as she and Harry stared at their brooms, trying to figure out a way to fly while in their current position.
Harry sighed. "If you were either in front or behind me this would be so much easier!"
"Sorry Harry, but I'm glad I'm not, I don't really fancy being stuck to your arse for a whole day." She said cheekily.
"Is that so Weasley? And who was it who suggested we have a race a practice the other night so they could stare at my arse?"
"Hey that doesn't count! I really did want to race though, I can't help that you happen to have a Firebolt, and I'm still riding a Comet 260."
"You made me ride a school broom so it'd be fair!"
"Oh yeah," she sighed dramatically, "fine you caught me I was totally checking you out."
Harry laughed at the memory, what had really happened was that Ginny suggest that the whole team race after practice, but everyone was tired, so it ended up being just Harry and Ginny.
"WHAT?" they heard a yell from behind them.
"Er… Hi Dean." Harry said sheepishly.
Dean ignored him. "What do you mean you were checking him out?" he yelled at Ginny. Harry stood beside Ginny awkwardly, watching the row play out.
"You see Dean, when a witch is attracted to a wizard, said witch tends to look at him," she said like she was explaining it to a five year old.
"I know what it means! What are you doing flirting with him when you're dating me?"
"As I recall you flirted with Parvati just yesterday!"
"Fine so then we're even!" he said in annoyance, "but you're still with Potter."
"Because he's my friend."
"Yeah right, besides, you're still stuck to him, didn't McGonagall say you could do the counter spell after your last class?"
"No, she never said when our punishment was over, but it hasn't really been a punishment has it Harry?"
"Please don't drag me into this Ginny," he pleaded, not wanting Dean to yell at him too. He hoped they would break up.
"If that's how you feel then I guess we're over," Dean said sadly.
"'Kay, now you can flirt with Parvati as much as you want," she said coldly.
Dean left the pitch and went into the changing rooms. The second he disappeared Ron came sprinting onto the pitch with Hermione struggling to keep up. He yelled "Hey! Harry! Ginny! Let's race! I might be able to beat you now."
Harry mustered all his Gryffindor courage and calmly said. "We can't have that now can we?" and he leaned over to kiss Ginny, his partner in crime, best friend, and soon to be girlfriend.
And that's how the sticking spell was reversed, Ron concluded his story.
Your favorite brother, Roonil Wazlib
p.s. these self spelling quills are horrible!
Ron nodded, satisfied with his work. He tied his letter to his owl, Pig, and sent the hyper bird on its way.
The next day at breakfast the reply came.
Roonil Wazlib, we like your new name, but you'll always be ikle Ronnikins to us. As much as it pains us to admit, that was an excellent joke! However, we are sincerely sorry to tell you, the bet was made when we still went to school. It doesn't matter who the best pranksters at school currently are; you were supposed to prank us, (it'll never happen) because we'll always be the best jokesters to ever attend Hogwarts. However, the official wording of our bet was: if you prank the two best pranksters in the history of Hogwarts we will personally give you five galleons. Since you failed to prank us while we still attended Hogwarts the bet is void. We sincerely hope you have a good day, Gred and Forge.
p.s. you owe us five galleons each: Harry and Ginny got together before the Quidditch Cup.
A/N: I just remembered that I didn't put in a disclaimer, so here it is: all characters and aspects of the Harry Potter Universe belong to J. K. Rowling.