"How was Quidditch?" Emma muttered as Fred kissed her neck, crawling behind her on the chair she was using in the library while she studied, his legs straddling her lower back. Sure, he wasn't allowed Quidditch anymore, but Fred was still eagerly paying attention to it.

"Terrible," he sighed. "Ron was just horrible. I honestly think we're going to have the worst season in history. Is that possible at this point?"

"I suppose," Emma shrugged. "I don't really know statistics. You'd be better off writing a letter to Wood."

"No," Fred said urgently, and loud enough that Emma had to shush him. "No, I'm not telling him what a disgrace we are this year. I'm not going to be the one to deliver that blow."

"Hmm, guess you'll never know, then," Emma said with a giggle as his lips began tracing the line of her neck that he had become so familiar with. "You know, I'm trying to study, Fred."

"Studying's boring," he whined in her ear. "I want to touch you."

"Not here!" she hissed, almost forgetting what she was protesting as his fingers began tracing up her legs from her bare knees. "Fred."

He didn't stop and he was nearing her panties.

"Fred."

He groaned.

"Whatever," he sighed. "I guess I can wait if this studying thing is so important to you."

She knew he was lying, trying to get her to say that nothing was more important than him. But Emma wasn't really in the mood to play that game. She was drowning in Potions homework as Snape seemed to have made it his personal mission that she didn't have time for any personal life. She couldn't see why he should care. She'd hardly missed a day of his class, and any normal professor wouldn't be holding on to one of the first days of the school year so hardily, but she'd heard that Snape could hold grudges with the best of them.

"Emma," Fred finally whined, "are you done yet? I'm bored."

"Well, that's just too bad, isn't it?" she teased. "Just relax, love. I've got a lot of work to do. If I can't keep you entertained, maybe you ought to go find someone else to entertain you."

"But baby," he whined, "I want to be with you."

"Then keep your mouth shut and let me study," she sighed.

He shifted regularly behind her as the minutes went by. She wondered why he was shifting, at first writing it off as his inability to sit still for longer than about five minutes, but then she felt a bulge in his trousers bumping into her lower back as he shifted.

"Fred," she moaned, "not now!"

"I can't help it," he sighed. "I had a lovely daydream of shagging you on the table here and I... Well, you know."

Emma shook her head, pushing Fred away.

"Out," she snapped softly. "Go. We'll talk about practice later. You're incapable of not distracting me and I'm not dealing with this."

In spite of being forced out of the library, Fred grinned as he was leaving and said, "Glad to know I'm a capable distraction, darling."

Emma just rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help but be amused.

Gryffindor lost that week. Only ten points, which was good, really, but it was a loss nonetheless. As they had said two years prior after the loss to Hufflepuff, there was still a chance, but Ron was no Oliver Wood, and the spirits were not high for the future. Emma didn't care much either way, except that it mattered so much to Fred and George and Katie and Angelina that she couldn't help but care just a bit.

At the beginning of the next week, something happened that Emma never thought would. The whole school was buzzing about the latest edition of The Quibbler.

What Emma was able to piece together was that Harry had given Rita Skeeter an exclusive interview on Valentine's Day (which wasn't exactly what Emma thought of as a great Valentine's Day, but who was she to judge?) about what happened with Voldemort coming back, how Cedric really died, and what was really going on.

It all started at breakfast, where a massive amount of mail came in for Harry, which they began eagerly helping him open. Some people believed him, others wrote to say that he was mad, but he was actually convincing people.

Toady hadn't liked that too much, as she expressed when she came by to figure out exactly why he had a whole flock of owls dropping off mail for Harry Potter. She not only gave that evil smile she gave when she was about to do something horrible, but he was basically told he wouldn't be allowed at Hogsmeade again until further notice, which meant never if she got her way. Emma couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for him.

By lunch, The Quibbler was deemed contraband. Any student found with a copy of the paper in hand would be severely punished. Naturally, as Tien pointed out, that meant that everyone would have it read and passed along by dinner.

"What do you mean?" Emma asked as they sat down for lunch. "If they get caught-"

"You do know how rarely students get caught with contraband compared with how many have it, right?" Fred teased. "Trust me, love, she's right. She's basically ensured that everyone will read it, which is exactly the opposite of what she wanted. She's not very good with kids, obviously."

"I don't think she's particularly good with humans in general," Emma sighed. "I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens. Maybe this could be a massive turning point."

"I don't think so," George said thoughtfully. "I think it will do a lot, but it's not made quite enough of an impact to be a real turning point. The results won't be drastic enough. Pass me the chicken."

"Say please," Emma said, almost out of habit.

"See, Freddie?" George said with a laugh. "She's all ready to be a Weasley matriarch!"

Luna Lovegood, much to Tien's ghoulish delight, went around telling people that the interview had been the best-selling issue ever, and that her father was reprinting it.

"Brilliant," Tien sighed happily. "Now she's going to delusions of grandeur."

"She's already got delusions of grandeur," Emma pointed out tiredly. "What exactly do you expect this to change?"

"I don't know, but it's bound to be brilliant!" Tien squealed happily.

Emma sighed, flipping through the lingerie catalog Katie had loaned her while Tien was taking notes on something for a product she was helping George develop, something she claimed was 'top secret'.

Somehow, Emma didn't know what was so wrong with Luna being proud of her father's success, and she couldn't imagine how it was going to make Luna any stranger than usual, but she wasn't going to argue. She flipped through the lingerie magazine and sighed, marking another outfit she thought Fred would like.

"What are you even doing?" Tien asked. "I never thought I'd catch you with one of those things."

"Fred's birthday's in a month," Emma sighed. "I'm figuring out his present."

"I like the way you think," Tien teased. "I bet Freddie will, too. What did you have in mind?"

"Oh, a few things are interesting," Emma said with a shrug, looking around to make sure no one could overhear them. "Like this one," she said, marking an outfit and handing the magazine over to Tien, who giggled at it.

The outfit was a role-playing outfit. The wearer would be, as the caption to the picture said, a naughty schoolgirl. It was almost a Hogwarts uniform, just missing quite a lot of the typical material. The shirt was far sheerer than her usual shirt, and happened to show the whole of her stomach, and the skirt was hardly able to be called a shirt.

"It's not bad," Tien agreed. "But you can do better."

"I know," Emma sighed. "That's why I'm thinking it over. Can I have the magazine back now?"

"Sure," Tien said with a shrug. "I think you'd be better off just lying in his bed nude with a bunch of chocolates surrounding you or something. That would turn him on."

"You think he's some sort of choco-phile?"

"Yeah, I do," Tien said with a shrug. "And I've heard him telling George how he dreams of you bathing in a tub of chocolate, beckoning him in. Apparently, they're his favorite dreams."

"I'm guessing you didn't acquire this information in an appropriate manner," Emma teased, "but I thank you for the information, all the same!"

It was something to consider, she realized, figuring out his fantasies, and the place she would have to go for that was George. As much as she didn't want to, Emma realized, pushing the thought to the back of her mind for the moment, that she would have to talk with George about what she was going to do for Fred.

A couple of weeks later, a major event occurred that may have had no direct bearing on Emma's life, but had extreme significance in the climate of the future she was going to have to face.

She hadn't been present when it happened, but she'd heard the story from dozens of varied sources, and it seemed that the tale grew taller with each version, until Tien's retelling finally involved death.

"Nobody died," George said, smirking. "Basically, Trelawney got sacked, Emma. That's really all you need to know."

"But there's more," Emma pointed out. "So that's not all there is to know."

"Basically," Fred sighed, "Umbridge makes a public spectacle of the thing, McGonagall goes and publically supports Trelawney, which is the last thing anybody expected considering the fact that McGoangall thinks that Trelawney's a fraud and that Divination is a load of shite, but anyway, Umbridge is all set to kick Trelawney off grounds when Dumbledore comes around and basically says she doesn't have the power to kick Trelawney off the grounds, and not only that but that he's already found her replacement and in walks a centaur, plain as day, and you should have seen the look on Umbridge's face."

Emma shook her head.

"Dumbledore needs to be careful and choose his battles," she whispered, looking up at the head table. "I feel like Trelawney isn't worth the effort."

Fred shrugged.

"Who knows? Dumbledore's got all kinds of secrets and quirks. Maybe they're lovers."

There was a collective groan of disgust and several people pushed their plates into the center of the table. Even Fred was wincing at the thought of his own suggestion.

"All right, that was too far," he admitted, "but you get when I mean."

Emma shifted, wondering what all secrets Dumbledore was keeping, even from the Order. She wondered what sort of danger those secrets could put a person in, especially a person not knowing them. She wondered if Dumbledore's secretive nature could end up hurting Fred, or even Emma, and in that moment, imagining the worst, Emma didn't like Dumbledore all that much.

He had always seemed this amiable old man, caring, omniscient, and even friendly. But when she looked up at the head table in that moment that wasn't what she saw. Instead he seemed crafty, and that knowing sparkle in his eyes that she really couldn't see from her table but knew was there was something almost vicious behind it.

Emma decided in that moment that if Albus Dumbledore was in some way responsible for any harm coming to Fred because of his secrets, she would do something completely out of character for herself, something she knew was probably foolish: Seek her revenge.

The fact of the matter was she had the sudden feeling of being a pawn, and in her limited knowledge of chess from the twins' attempts to teach her, Emma knew that it was exactly the sort of piece she didn't want to be. Those blue eyes didn't meet hers, but maybe that was for the best.

Before Emma really knew what was happening, it was April first, and she was praying that she would be able to pull off her plan, with Katie's help.

Emma was just tapping the side of the tub with her wand to melt the rest of the chocolate and laying towels Angelina had charmed against staining around the foot of the tub and the floor when Katie led Fred into the bathroom they'd put an "Out of Order" sign on, blindfolded. Katie winked as she slipped back out the door, closing it behind her and giggling.

"Katie?" Fred said, frowning. "Are you still there? Where am I? I can smell chocolate. Did you get me a stash or something?"

"You could say that," Emma said in her best teasing voice, stepping into the tub and sinking into the warm, melted chocolate just before flicking her wand to remove the blindfold.

Fred's jaw dropped instantly.

"Please tell me you're not staining any of your pretty clothes in there," he teased with a smirk when he finally found his words again.

"Of course not," Emma sighed, leaning her head back against the edge of the tub, her hair done up so that it didn't get too much chocolate in it.

He moaned, biting his lip a bit as she dipped her finger into the chocolate and lifted it up to her mouth to suck off the sweet, melted goodness.

"Mind if I join you, beautiful?" he finally managed to choke out.

"I was beginning to think you were going to leave me in here alone," she teased, watching how fast Fred went about scrambling out of his clothes with a grin.

It was hardly thirty seconds later when he was sinking into the chocolate beside her, pulling her on top of him, the chocolate between them serving as a sticky barrier for their skin. Fred pressed his lips hungrily to hers, running his chocolate-covered fingers across her face, down her neck, clasping her neck as he kissed her. Emma couldn't help but moan into his mouth, smelling the chocolate all around them, tasting him and the chocolate between their tongues. She was glad Tien had told her about this, told her of his fantasy, because she'd never experienced such a deliciously erotic moment in her life. His other arm wrapped around her waist in the chocolate, pulling her tighter to him as they kissed.

After several minutes kissing languidly like that, Fred positioned her so that she was straddling his lap, her breasts just peeking out over the surface of the molten chocolate, her nipples just resting on the surface. He moaned as he gazed at them.

Fred leaned forward and used his tongue to clean off her chest, from the collarbone down to her cleavage before taking her left nipple in his mouth, sucking away the film of chocolate that covered it before turning and giving the same treatment to the right.

They eventually decided that it wasn't going to be the best place to actually consummate their ever-growing desires, so they climbed out of the tub, licked each other clean on the towel, then making their way to the shower to clean of more conventionally and make love.

Maybe it was Emma's imagination, but she thought he might have been more unrestrained, more desperate in the way he made love to her that day in the shower, pushing her against the wall of the shower and ignoring her moans of mixed pain and pleasure as the faucet handle dug into her back because he was too busy pounding into her.

When they'd finished several times (Emma was in no condition to count, she'd decided early on), Fred and Emma were curled up on the floor of the shower, their bodies somewhat intertwined in a way that a less youthful, exuberant couple might have found uncomfortable, but they were so sated, so delirious with what they'd just accomplished, that they didn't really think about how tired they were.

"That was the most incredible thing," Fred sighed finally, nuzzling his face against her neck, the water still running down on their spent forms. "I don't know how you managed it, but you just guessed my favorite fantasy."

Emma nibbled her lip lightly, getting the last remnants of chocolate off, wondering whether or not she should tell him, but before she really had a chance to decide Fred began nibbling on her neck and she sighed, forgetting there was ever any such dilemma. Her fingers laced into his hair and she gripped tightly, pulling him closer, wishing she could just meld into him, that she could just become a part of him and never have to be without him ever again.

But she couldn't do that.

And Emma knew that no matter how she tried to ignore the fact, she was terrified that they were two separate people, that she couldn't keep him with her all the time. He needed his freedom, he needed to be able to leave when the time came for him and George to leave. There would be nothing left for him at Hogwarts but her, and could she really keep him there, in good faith? No, she couldn't, but she wanted to so badly, and the feel of his mouth on her neck made that ring out in her mind twice as strong as it did through all other parts of her day.

But as Emma ran her fingers through Fred's drenched hair, she knew that no matter what was right and what she wanted, the decision was going to hurt either way.

"I love you," she whispered. "I love you so, so much."

"I love you, too," Fred sighed, kissing her cheek so gently that she barely felt it at all. But the way it made her feel inside, knowing he cared about her, knowing that she at least had the option to ask him to stay, whether or not she chose to use it.