"What does she think she's playing at?" grumbled Ron, looking over at where Hermione was sitting with the twins in the common room. Harry looked up and shrugged.
"Dunno. She can do what she likes, can't she?" All the same, Harry could see why this was strange to Ron. Hermione had been spending more and more time in the twins' company, although he knew she was making a point to not do it too much in front of people other than himself and Ron.
"Yeah but one minute she's telling them off and the next she's best bum chums with them," He paled. "You don't think they've slipped anything into her morning Pumpkin juice or something, do you? Made her like them or whatever? Oh my God, I think they were working on a love potion in the holidays-"
"Ron," Harry stopped him before his ramblings got even more out of hand, "I don't think she's in love with them. I think she's enjoying working with them. And anyway, they stopped testing on the first years, didn't they? That was her main problem."
"They're her main problem, if you ask me," grumbled Ron, but he let it go. "We should probably get ready to leave - Quidditch in ten." Harry nodded and they left to get their kits from the dorm as Fred and George took their leave of Hermione.
In the changing rooms, after practice, the twins were in the middle of hitting a dead snitch between them when Ron stepped in the middle of their game.
"Get out the way, Ronnikins!" George took a mock swing at him with his beater's bat but Ron stayed rooted to the spot, a look of grim determination in his face.
"What have you done to Hermione?" He asked, glaring at George, who raised an eyebrow.
"What are you on about?"
"Her-mi-o-ne," said Ron, like he was talking to a child, "you've done something to her to make her help you, and you need to stop it." He heard a laugh from behind him and turned to Fred.
"Did it ever occur to you that she might just enjoy spending time with us?" He asked, throwing the snitch over Ron's head to neatly land in George's open palm. Ron gave a humorless laugh.
"Hermione? With you?" He asked, voice hard, "have you met her?"
Harry looked up waiting for Fred's witty comeback, or dismissive brush-off, but was surprised to see his best friend's brother with a set jaw, a hint of colour on his cheeks.
"Yeah, Ron, I have actually - and we happen to work well together, so with all due respect - which stands at zero, by the way - you can kindly fuck off and keep your abnormally long nose out of our business." A hush had fallen over the changing room. Ron was standing with his mouth slightly open and even George appeared taken aback by the vehemence with which his twin had responded to Ron's words. Fred looked away from his target long enough to notice the looks on everyone's faces and decided he could change back at the castle. With a glance, he sent a very specific message to his twin before leaving. Don't follow.
Fred swung his kit back over his shoulder as he walked out onto the grass, feeling the anger still burning in his chest and coiling in his joints. He took a swing at a nearby tree as he passed it in an attempt to work out some of his rage. Inexplicable, overdramatic rage. What was he doing? Why had Ron's accusation annoyed him so much? But no, that wasn't when he'd lashed out. It was… Hermione? With you? Have you met her? It was the assumption that she, the perfect prefect with the brains and the beauty, could never hold him in esteem. Of course they could never be together. He'd thought he'd been resigned to it - for months now, really, wasn't it? Hadn't he and George decided, without words, that he could not make a move on the girl they were almost certain had had a crush on their little brother for the best part of three years? But he had some Weasley pride, and the suggestion - to the point where it'd been taken as fact, mind - that Hermione was so out of his league as to make her seeming to enjoy spending time with him ridiculous… it had stung. For the past couple of weeks he'd almost been able to forget the promise he'd made to himself, forget that she was unobtainable. She'd spent time with them both, and he knew he wasn't wrong in thinking she engaged with him more than George, their common love for the science of their work giving them more to discuss than she had with the more big picture twin. He'd almost believed… but he was being stupid. He wouldn't apologise to Ron for snapping at him - he shouldn't have pried - but he'd have to take care not to let himself slip like that in the future. There would be no more even vague entertainment of the idea that Hermione Granger-
Hermione Granger. Damn. Speak of the angel.
"...waiting for your boyfriend are you?" Draco Malfoy was standing outside the tent too, presumably for the Slytherin quidditch practice, judging by the emerald green kit bag he carried over one shoulder.
"Ron is not my boyfriend, Malfoy, not that it's any of your business," Hermione answered in a cool voice but Fred knew her well enough to sense the anger shimmering behind her words.
"No, I don't suppose even a blood traitor family like the Weasleys would take a mudblood," he sneered, "especially one as revolting as you."
There were few days on which Fred would have let this pass, and this day in particular was not one on which it was anywhere near likely.
"Oi, Ferret!" He growled, as he stepped into their view, and Hermione's would-be retort died in her mouth as she saw the scarily dangerous expression on his face as he marched towards her adversary. "I suggest that you look up the word revolting before you use it like that again - or better yet, look in a mirror. That should give you a pretty good idea as to what the word actually means." Malfoy's face twisted into a smirk as he looked from Fred to Hermione.
"What? You're telling me she's got the whole Weasley clan defending her? I'd say she were well connected for a mudblood but-" He cut himself off in surprise as Fred dropped his kit and flexed his fingers around the beater's club that had hung dormant at his side until now.
"And as for that word," He said, in a low voice that put Hermione in mind of the beginnings of an Earthquake, "if I ever hear even a syllable of that fucking word leaving your nasty little rodent mouth again, I'll beat you so hard even Madame Pomfrey won't be able to fix you up."
Under normal circumstances, Hermione would have thought this an empty threat, and Malfoy too seemed halfway to scoffing before his face fell. Fred had taken it upon himself to take another step closer and stand directly between him and Hermione. She saw his stance change and his shoulders seemed to get bigger as he lifted the club to rest on one. She'd never quite appreciated the broad, powerful build that his years of beating had given him, and she could tell by the look on Malfoy's face that he too could feel the menace rolling off him in waves and was surprised by the power and aggression he had suddenly sensed in the person so often written off as a harmless prankster. She couldn't see the expression on Fred's face but she was willing to bet that it was nothing Malfoy had ever seen before, as he clung onto his kitbag.
"Yeah?" He managed, "Well…" With nothing to finish on, he scowled stupidly at them both - failing to mask his terror - and briskly walked away, his pointy little chin in the air.
Fred's posture lost its menace as soon as the boy was out of sight, but Hermione could still see a tension in the way he was holding himself.
"Thanks," she proffered carefully, moving forward to try to see his face, "but you know I could have handled that, right?" Fred's head snapped up and for a second she thought he would snarl at her too, but he instead clenched his jaw, not meeting her eyes.
"You shouldn't have to." He bit out, and she half laughed.
"Aw, Fred, I never knew you cared for me so much!" She said, waiting for him to catch the reference to their conversation in the common room. Instead, he looked as though he was going to be sick.
"Fred?" She asked, alarmed, "are you okay?" Now it was his turn to almost laugh. Not even close. He looked up and saw the soft concern in her eyes, and felt her rest her hand gently on his arm. Merlin, he could almost believe-
"No." He said out loud, and watched those soft eyes widen, creases appearing between her brows. He swallowed and stepped away, shrugging her touch away from him. "No, I'm not okay. I'd better head inside." And he had walked away before she'd even registered the inexplicable pain in his parting look.
