AUTHOR'S NOTE

HELLO AGAIN PEOPLE! I forgive you for doing a terrible job updating….. But here I am anyway. My writing style just got somewhat awkward when I've tried this chapter before… Here is a brief catch up about what happened in the previous chapter, so that you don't have to go back and look at it. (If you haven't reviewed, I think you still ought to go back and reread it and review) Summary: Scarlett was told by Professor Dumbledore that her step dad and her step family died in a murder. Some random Ravenclaws cheer her up, and she gives one of them a peck on the cheek. Mafalda sees them and tells Fred she's a slut. Fred gets jealous (duh!) even though they aren't boyfriend and girlfriend and they get into a big fight. HOPE YOU LIKE THIS CHAPTER! I know it is short, but give me suggestions on what else to write and I will! Did anyone dress up as a HP character for halloween? I was Luna...so I just wanted to know...

~passes around a gigantic bowl of candy~

Chapter 11: Little know-it-all who is madder than the Mad Hatter

I had gone to the funerals. I had watched the various friends of my brothers and family members I hadn't even heard of shuffle by slowly, looking at me despondently, as if I were the one shot and lying in the coffins that gazed up at us. Family members who hadn't even bother to visit me when I was born. Wrinkled more through laughter than through actual age, a short old lady with thick curly brown hair had looked at me and even asked whether I wanted to live with her, in Sweden. Gesturing frantically to my giggling mum, who was gazing at the flowers as if they had suddenly leaped up and performed a jig, I had declined. Mum was really truly a hopeless case. If she took the anti- depressive drugs the doctor had prescribed to her, she was laughing about very odd things, and if she didn't take them, she was so sad that it pained me to look at her. But still, I would manage. If only Fred had apologized to me.

We had walked past each other countless times, him, surrounded by Mafalda, me, surrounded by heaps of books, and homework I had to make up. A couple times he had even said something, only to be rushed off by Mafalda, gazing at me disgustedly with a large Slytherin style smirk on her lips. If I hadn't known that Dumbledore sorted her into Gryffindor to be with her relatives in her exchange year, I almost would have said he was mad for not putting her in Slytherin.

The day he had actually apologized came much later, around November, when the wintery blasts of cold air had almost entirely taken over from the cool, colorful fall. I was sitting in my room doing my homework; my curly hair was going off into random directions, outside of the messy bun as if defying gravity. Already wearing my pajamas, a pair of boxers that I had borrowed from George ages ago and forgotten to give back, and a Gryffindor Quidditch jersey, I attacked an essay for Potions ferociously. Later, Katie would be winding her blond pigtails around her finger and would be assuring me that the way Fred came was actually rather impossible; up the dormitory stairs that were cursed to let only girls up. Or as I should say, blessed.

"Nice boxers. Who did you nick them from?" Fred said, eyeing me angrily, the way you would a dog that had misbehaved and had bitten the owner.

Don't you wish he had bitten you? Bite me, Freddie-kins.* Bite me. Please!

"George. So what?" I snarled back, taking up the defensive role and looking at him, precautious, madder at my annoying subconscious than him, even though I was pretty pissed at him.

"It really isn't any of my business, even if you sleep with half the school's guy population." Fred snapped, glaring at me, his chocolate brown eyes dark with rage and even something else… doubt? As an afterthought, he muttered, "even if it's not the better half."

"You are really the most cocky arrogant bastard I have ever known!" I yelled at him, looking at him with disappointment, as if I really wasn't sure that this was the guy I had been best friends with since first year. I continued, on a full war rampage, choking out the last part in a sob. "My step family was killed; my mum was in a psych ward at St. Mungo's, and yet still the only thing you give a damn about is yourself, the way others make you look, stupid pranks, making other people look bad, and, oh yeah….who I've slept with….which is really… NONE OF YOUR… DAMN… BUSINESS!"

Fred looked at me, shocked, as if he had actually had believed everything Mafalda had told him till then, and hadn't even the foggiest idea of what I had screamed at him, months ago. Then, in a voice full of spite and malice, he hissed at me. "I never believed that you actually went around snogging other people, like a slut. You know why? Because a little know-it-all who is madder than the Mad Hatter doesn't have a social life."

I slapped him. My hand stung. I looked at his cheek, red and raw.

"I had a life, you know." I gasped out, looking at him, worried about his cheek.

What a goody two shoes! Honestly, you like him…

"Well, forgive me if I don't think that drowning yourself in homework and sitting up there stuffing licorice wands and doing homework into your face is a life." Fred said, slightly unperturbed by my slapping him.

"I had a life, till you went on and became a bum and started acting like a bum." I sobbed out, glaring daggers at him, beneath the curtain of bushy curly hair covering my face.

"That's pretty logical, saying bum twice in the same sentence," he laughed cruelly, sounding completely carefree and arrogant.

"Oh, shut up! I wish you'd never been born. All you've done all my life is make fun of me. Bloody arse." I pointed out, sticking my tongue out at him like a little kid.

"Well, I wish you'd never been born. Go tell someone who gives a damn…"

"You are the most arrogant sod-"

"Shut up. I want to tell you-"

"-that ever walked-"

"Scarlett, just shut up."

"the stupid planet and I hate-"

I was cut off as his lips crashed onto mine and his arms wrapped around my shoulders. His lips were velvety smooth against mine, and very warm, moving slowly until I responded, and then faster, urgently. Goosebumps erupted against my skin, the kiss was the kind described in movies, but it was so unexpected. I stopped kissing him, and stared at him. My tears were dried to my face and I had stopped crying. It didn't mean I was okay with him. Right? Hell, I was so confused.

Girl, you are SO more than okay with him. That was amazing.

Fred looked to the ground, chewing his lip, nervously. I looked down to the floor, contemplating seriously what was wrong with him, or rather, me.

"Is that what you wanted to tell me?"

I give up. You ARE hopeless.

"No, Scarlett, I just spontaneously go around snogging people. It's not like I got into a fight or a misunderstanding with them- or let's see-liked them." Fred commented sarcastically, rolling his eyes at me. The rage and doubt were completely out of his eyes and had been replaced with something more familiar. Laughter.

"You are a bloody arse. You do know that, right?" I said, and continued on in a complete to get rid of the silence. "I mean, we wouldn't want to waste all the totally arrogant charm, just because no one every told you that."

"I do know that. How else would I get the ladies over here?"

"Well, if we're thinking of ladies like Avery Hopkirk? Then, I guess…. Idiocy. An inability to pay attention. A complete and utter dislike for rules-

"- which you have, too-"

"-the ability to get good grades, despite said idiocy and inability to pay attention. Oh and let us not forget, the inability to go a day without laughing or pranking someone."

"Do you want to bet I can't go a day without laughing?"

"I did. Remember second year? You ended up flinging a piece of gum under the desk at Millicent Bulstrode's neck. And burst into giggles randomly while Professor Snape was explaining how the Draught of Living Death worked."

"You talk too much. Do you want to me to kiss you to shut you up?" Fred asked, jokingly. I blushed slightly and hoped he hadn't noticed.

"Honest answer?"

"Yes, please, madam."

"No. Definitely not. I think I'll go without talking…" I replied backing away from him fast and then crashed into a wall. He looked mockingly offended, so I pecked him on the cheek. As we walked down the stairs George came up to us.

"You two okay now?"

"Bloody hell, do you tell everyone when you're going to go up and snog a girl?" I said, rolling my eyes at him and leaning against George's shoulder.

"That depends."

"Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Have you guys finished the Potions essay, yet? " I asked, basically already knowing the answer. Fred and George shrugged, and both seemed completely unconcerned about their lack of homework completion. "Well, if you haven't then could you at least help me figure out whether he wants to know specifically how, when, where, who and why the sixteen essential ingredients in the Wolfsbane potion are so important or whether he also would like to know substitutions for each of the ingredients if you ran out of one of them? And, do you think he'll mind that I went an extra inch or two more than the required length? It's just my writing is so big, so…"

"Does she ever stop talking?"

"That's exactly what I was thinking. Have you even started your essay?" George whispered back to Fred, or Fred whispered back to George or something like that. Well, basically, I can't tell them apart.

Except for when one of them is snogging you. Scarlett and Fred sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes gnomes, then comes pranks then comes snogging in the Great Hall. That doesn't rhyme…oh, brilliant…

"Don't tell her, but no." The twins stage-whispered to each other.

"What am I going to do with you too?" I growled at the twins, and then, rather unceremoniously, slung my arms around them, and dragged them to the library. I knew Fred was right. I was a little know-it-all, and madder than the Mad Hatter.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Questions: What did you like about this chapter? What didn't you like? (be nice) What should I write about next chapter? READ and REVIEW...or else...actually...nothing else...you would probably get me back by telling me I update too little, which is true. So... READ AND REVIEW! Please?

~bluebookbutterfly

*Bite me, Freddie-kins was an unintentional sentence that is derived from the book that is Harry Potter's worst enemy and is very bad. I find the sentence amusing though, so it is staying.

J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter. What a lucky and amazing author!