Author's Note: I own no person, no place, no thing – outside the plot. If you recognize it, it probably belongs to Ms. Rowling or some other awesome super-human.

Chapter Two: What Do You Want?

George heard the distinctive thump and cursing that could only mean that his twin had arrived, and picked his head up off his pillow to glare at his bedside clock. It was four in the morning. Groaning, he pulled himself out of his warm bed and poked his head out the door. In the flat's living area, his twin was pacing back and forth, whispering curses and generally making entirely too much noise to ignore. Fred was agitated, to be sure. George noticed something different about his brother. Something… earie…

George's laughter exploded down the hallway, and Fred's head whipped around at the sound.

"Gred?"

"Forge?"

"Gred!"

"Forge!"

George pulled his brother into a hug, then stepped back to study his twin. "I must say, you seem rather ear-ritated, brother mine. What's got your knickers in a twist?"

Fred reached up and stroked the twitching white ears, which still hadn't left his head yet. He was starting to wonder just how long Hermione's Easter prank was going to last.

Hermione.

Fred knew it would be a long, long time before he'd be able to erase the mental image of her smooth exposed belly framed by the waistband of his boxer-briefs. He'd spent the entire day watching her bum, and had not failed to notice the absolute perfect heart-shape of it. He'd spent the entire afternoon thinking about Hermione sans pants, and then she went and put her sweet little arse in his underwear.

Helga on a hippogriff, he was in trouble.

"My knickers? Did you talk to Hermione or something?" Fred felt himself flush a deep pink, and hoped desperately his twin wouldn't notice – but of course George noticed. He cocked his head to the side and examined his brother's blushing face.

"What is this? My ear-repressibly ear-resitable twin is blushing like ickle Ronnie at his first school dance as he mentions Hermione and knickers in the same sentence?" George laughed as Fred covered his face with his hands and groaned.

"Go on and have a seat there, and tell me what's been going on with you two while I go make some tea. Go on, Freddie, I want to 'ear everything!" George said as Fred groaned again.

"George, enough with the ear jokes," Fred begged, ears and hands bent towards his brother in supplication.

"Are you kidding? Don't you remember how long it took me to memorize that section of the dictionary? It would be ear-responsible of me to stop now!" George cried as he brought two mugs back to the couch and sat down next to his distraught brother. Fred accepted a mug as George leaned over him to inspect the ears.

"These really are brilliant. Do you move them or are they independent?"

"A little bit of both, I think. I was thinking maybe we could do a whole line of them, really. Elf ears, donkey ears, elephant ears. Bit of a lark, but they would be cheap to make and they don't really have to be holiday dependent," Fred said as his brother nodded.

"She really is bloody brilliant, isn't she?" George said, then watched closely as his twin's cheeks pinked again.

"Oh, she asked me to give these to you," Fred muttered as he drew a small bag out of his pocket. George accepted it, and found half a dozen pairs of WWW colored socks just like she'd made for Fred. George had been wildly jealous of Fred's unicorn socks when they'd last seen each other, and now he sorted through six pairs of magenta and orange socks of his own.

"I see crabs, hippogriffs, two kinds of plain stripes, polka-dots, and some kind of giant fish?" George looked at the last pair. It was a pattern of bent swimming fish, maybe giant porpoises?

"Those are orcas. Killer whales, you know? They're all around the island." Fred said absently.

"Godric, that girl's amazing. Freddie m'boy, if you don't snap her up I will," George quipped as he patted his brother on the shoulder. Then he waited the whole five heartbeats it took Fred to finally spill what was really on his mind.

"She's wearing my underwear!" Fred sputtered, then he told his brother the details of the day, along with his confession of intense lust for one Ms. Granger.

Several hours later, as the brothers were finishing a late breakfast and signing some final documents before they needed to head to Gringott's, Fred's Easter ears finally disappeared as quickly as they'd arrived.

"Oh thank Merlin! I wasn't really looking forward to meeting with the Goblins like that," Fred cried in relief.

"True, that would have been highly ear-regular and ear-rational –" George's whimsy was cut off by his brother as Fred threw a couch pillow at his face.

/…../

Flipping the sign from Open to Closed, Hermione bid Sunflower goodbye and locked the front door for the evening. Fred had been gone for four days now, and Hermione couldn't believe how much she missed him. Before, when he'd left for his visits back to England, she'd used the time to catch up on her reading, to double-check their accounts, and to inventory the shop and their lab. But this time, she couldn't seem to settle down to anything. She couldn't get the look on his face out of her mind when she'd revealed that she'd found a loophole in his Easter prank. He'd been so shocked! She'd spent that entire day more than mildly titillated that Fred was staring at her bottom, and seeing that shock on his face after a day of being so highly aware of him had rocked her senses. Late that night, she'd taken a very hot, very, erm, pleasurable shower.

That had NOT helped.

Hermione had been having crazy sex dreams every night since Fred had been gone.

When Fred was home – and Hermione felt kind odd still saying that in her head, like they were LIVING TOGETHER, even though they did live together – they were always on the go. Every evening was spent scouring the different restaurants and markets in the Wizarding and Muggle sections of Friday Harbor, and every Sunday was spent touring the islands around them. They'd made quick trips to the different volcanoes that dotted the countryside on the mainland, and spent afternoons hiking in the many national parks looking for new and exotic material they could use for the shop.

And now, all Hermione could think of in her abundant free-time were her crazy dreams. She'd tried to rationalize with herself, to make sense and reason of her sudden hormone surge. It was perfectly natural, of course. Fred was a good looking bloke, and he was tremendous fun to be around. They'd gotten to know each other very well in the past three months, and Hermione found that the little whimsical idiosyncrasies that one inevitably discovers about one's roommate only endeared Fred to her more, not less. For example, Fred always slept with his window open, even on the nights that it rained or was unbelievably cold. Even though Hermione invariably woke in the morning to a freezing cold flat, she never begrudged him the fresh air. She was a witch, after all, and fixing the temperature in her bedroom or their bathroom was no big effort.

And then, Hermione got the biggest kick out of Fred's food habits. Fred adored orange food. Cantaloupes, oranges, yams, carrot cake, pumpkin juice: if it was orange, it was going in Fred Weasley's mouth on a regular basis. Hermione and Fred spent hours scouring the exotic food markets in search of new orange colored foods to sample and bring home. On Monday, Hermione's first day without Fred, she'd found a coffee vendor that had bright orange pumpkin flavor that she immediately bought for his coffee. She hadn't even thought about it twice, she'd just handed over the sickles and congratulated herself on discovering such a brilliant find for her friend.

So, it was really perfectly natural for her to miss him, as well as to find herself attracted to him. He was familiar, having known her since she was just a little bushy-haired eleven year old know-it-all. And Fred was trust-worthy, sweet and kind, but without being soft and weak. He was definitely a – what did Ginny call it? A man's man. Fred could chop firewood and fix roof leaks and protect their home and property like no other man, and Hermione found that incredibly… well, sexy. Sweet Circe, how could she not? The first time she'd seen him splitting logs into kindling on one of the Muggle beaches at a bonfire they'd gone to with Sunny and her husband, Hermione had almost caught herself drooling.

And Sunny had caught her watching Fred. Hermione had blushed, but Sunny had drawn her fingers across her lips in a zippering motion, indicating that her lips were sealed. Hermione had just rolled her eyes then, honestly she was just physically admiring a man, not crushing on her friend and roommate.

And now? Well now, Hermione was in a bit of a pickle.

She climbed up the steps to their flat, and finally settled on having a movie night. She pulled on her oversized purple WWU pajamas that Fred had given her and grabbed the bowl of popcorn she'd made for her solo dinner, and started flipping through her movie selection. Something girly and romantic? Er, no. Her mind was already mush as it was, best not make it worse. Documentary, drama, horror, nothing stood out. What she needed was some action – not THAT kind of action, but a blow-em-up adventure movie. Hermione and Fred couldn't abide Muggle war movies though, and had settled their action movie collection firmly in the realm of Sci-Fi for their entertainment. It was easy to keep up with the non-reality that way, since real goblins and wizards and dragons looked nothing like the one's portrayed by Hollywood.

"That Gandalf's all right, but he's no Dumbledore," Fred had said on more than one occasion.

"True, but Dumbledore never had to battle a giant bloody immortal eyeball. Maybe Dumbledore would have had a hard time in that situation," Hermione had defended Gandalf's honor.

"Nonsense, Mione, if it had been Dumbledore, he'd have just launched Treebeard into Sauron and the War would have ended. Poked out by an Ent. No shame in that," Fred had countered, which had set Hermione to giggling so much she'd fallen off the couch.

Deciding on a Hellboy marathon, she popped in the first DVD and settled herself into the big lonely couch with her popcorn and their weekly packet of mail from back home. By the time she was into the second film she'd already sorted through the bills, read Harry's weekly letter – Ron would be spending some overnight's at St. Mungo's doing some extra study with the Mind Healers – and had finished snorting over some new legislation concerning mer-people that had been written up in the Daily Prophet. She was flipping through the pages of the latest Quibbler just as Liz was showing Manning the Schufftein glasses and explaining how they would reveal to the wearer "the true nature of things". This set off a chain of thoughts in Hermione's head, from the steam-punk goggles on the TV screen to the memory of Luna in her free Spectraspecs looking for wrackspurts on the Hogwarts express, to the set of Omnioculars balanced on a bookshelf across the room…

Hermione jumped up. Where was her notepad? She ran downstairs to the shop and looked under the counter where she and Fred generally kept a large sketchpad for drawing during slow times. She grabbed her bag of colored pencils and a straight-edge, then ran back up the stairs to the sitting room.

"Accio Quick-Quotes Quill!" she shouted as she got started sketching. Over the next few hours she Summoned half a dozen books including one about the engineering of Omnioculars, the history of crystals in glass-making, and Fred's old copy of Advanced Transfiguration from his incomplete seventh year.

By the next night, Hermione had engineered a rough plan to develop a pair of joke-glasses that would reveal the true nature of things – they'd be able to see through anything from transfigured clothing to polyjuice disguises. One night after that she was laying back in the center of the couch wearing her prototype glasses and sorting through a selection of regular and transfigured items.

It worked! The glasses enabled her to see through Fred's transfiguration spell he'd cast on every last pair of her knickers, as well as through a variety of dishes, food items, toys, and even some of their joke store creations.

Hermione hugged herself and laughed out loud. She couldn't wait to show these to Fred! Really the only thing she needed to work out was how to make them cost-effective to mass-produce, as well as maybe work out the aesthetic appeal. They were heavy, large, sparkly black things with psychotic purple and green lenses right now. Not terribly practical. She leaned her head back against the couch and sighed. There was still another week to go before Fred was expected to come home. She'd developed the glasses in three days, surely she could finish everything in the seven more evenings ahead of her. Long, lonely nights alone in her big bed with her crazy sex dreams about a certain red-headed boss of hers…

/…../

"Fred! For Godric's sake, it's four degrees outside! Why do you have your blasted window open?" Fred jerked awake at his twin's annoyed shout. Blimey, it was freezing in here. He sleepily dug out his wand and waved it at his bedroom window, then flicked it towards the ceiling and heated the room before he dared crawl out from under the covers.

"Sorry Georgie, I didn't think you'd mind, being a wizard and all. I like the fresh air when I'm sleeping. Hermione never complains about-" Fred was cut off from his self-defense by George's snort of exasperation.

Fred pulled on a jumper and walked out to the kitchen, where his brother was standing next to the oven, with his arms crossed and a very annoyed look on his face.

"What?" Fred asked.

"Merlin's beard, Fred, do you even realize that all you've done in the past week is talk about Hermione? Hermione this, Hermione that. 'Mione always brings me coffee in the mornings, 'Mione likes this movie best, blah blah blah. Why don't you just go home and declare your undying love for her so I can at least wake up one morning and NOT have to chip ice out of the teapot?"

"WHAT? I'm not in LOVE with Her-" Fred spluttered. George raised up a hand.

"I'm sure in whatever fantasy-world you're living in, you're still a sane and rational human being, but here in the real world, Freddie, you're a goner. Seriously mate, I haven't even seen you smile or heard you laugh in the week you've been here – except for the times you've been talking about Hermione."

"That's not-" Fred protested, heat rising in his face.

"It's entirely true, brother mine. I've never seen you like this before. Honestly, if it wasn't Hermione we were talking about, I'd be a little jealous." George grinned ruefully at his brother, who looked a little green around the gills.

"It's all right, Freddie. You need a girl, mate. And Hermione's a great girl. You already admitted that you're salivating to get in her knickers, no need to be embarrassed about more noble intentions. Godric knows it's only more galleons and glory for us to keep her working for the shop. Like you've said at least half a million times in the past week, she IS bloody brilliant."

"I don't-" Fred tried once more to weakly defend himself, but George crossed the room and grabbed him by the shoulders.

"You remember what I said when you got here? If you don't go after her, I will. Or maybe Ronnie will get better and try for her agai-" Fred cut him off by shoving George's hands off his shoulders.

"You've made your point, George," he growled. "Keep Ron away from Friday Harbor. I don't want his deranged arse anywhere near her."

George raised an eyebrow. "And what about me?"

Fred rolled his eyes. "You're just trying to piss me off. I might be delusional, but I'm not stupid."

"Well then?"

"Well what?"

"Will you please get the Hell out of here and go woo Ms. Granger before some other bloke snatches her up?"

Fred turned around and walked back to his bedroom, making a rude gesture at his brother as he departed.

"I love you too, mate."

/…../

Hermione was still lying on the couch staring at the ceiling. She'd been idly wondering if Luna really hadn't been kidding all those years talking about wrackspurts when she heard a loud thump in the kitchen, and sat up quickly.

"Who's there?" she called quickly. Her wand was already in her hand.

"Hermione?"

It was Fred! Home after only a week! In the time Hermione made the connection in her mind he was already standing in the doorway, bags in hand and staring at her. Oddly.

"What are you wearing?"

Hermione flushed and whipped off her prototype glasses, but Fred was already crossing the room. He dropped his bags and stood right in front of her, so close they were almost touching. Hermione looked up at his face, the one she'd missed far too much in the last week to be healthy, and then all of a sudden his hands were on her cheeks and his lips were on hers and he was kissing her for all he was worth.

Oh.

Oh!

Fred had pressed his body against hers as his hands moved from her face to her shoulders, down her arms and to her waist. Hermione threw herself into the kiss, wrapping her hands around his neck and hoisting herself up as close as possible.

Yes! This was what she wanted, this was what she'd dreamed of! Fred completely overwhelmed her as his warm, smooth lips slid and tugged and tangled with hers, as his hands roamed back up her body and embedded themselves in her hair. She groaned as his tongue begged entry into her mouth, and he slipped in as he tumbled her backwards onto the couch. Fred settled himself between her legs as she wrapped herself around him, rubbing and shuddering and gasping at the all-new, unfamiliar and yet so perfectly pleasurable sensation that was rapidly stripping her self-control.

Fred broke away from her lips for just a second, and she opened her eyes to see his dark blue ones staring back at her in lust and wonder.

"Mione, I have a bit of a confession to make." Fred whispered in a soft, gravelly voice she'd never heard before. Just the pitch of his voice tugged at and heated her sex.

"Wha?" Was all that she could manage to get out. He'd rested his weight on his elbows and was looking down at her with that look of lust and wonder, pressed up against her right there and talking in that voice, and suddenly all of Hermione's considerable intelligence and grasp on the English language went straight out the window.

"I might have a little bit of a crush on you," he said, then pushed his hips forward – OH! – just enough to let her know there was nothing 'little bit' about what he'd just said and done.

"Ohhh. Yes." Think Hermione, come on. "Yea, Freddie, me too, just do that – ye-" And Hermione couldn't think anymore.

To Be Continued.