"We are all fools in love."

- Jane Austen

oOoOoOo

19 September 1996

"So, you're meeting him in Hogsmeade next month, then?" Ginny asked, walking beside Hermione to dinner.

"Yes, out by the Shrieking Shack."

"See, if it wasn't my brother this would be the perfect juncture at which to make a joke about shrieking." Hermione snorted, lunging over the trick step. "Do you need me to cover for you?"

"No, I reckon I should be able to slip away for a little while."

"Just let me know," Ginny reinforced, nodding eagerly. The youngest and only female among her siblings, Ginny had been routinely excluded by her brothers from a number of surreptitious plots over the course of her sixteen years, and she seemed rather thrilled to be in on this particular secret.

"What about you? Planning to sneak off with Dean? I have a veritable encyclopedia of secluded places in the castle that I can tip you off to."

Ginny just shrugged, looking a little apathetic. "Maybe. I dunno… it hasn't exactly been fireworks, you know?" She made little starburst motions with her hands and then let them fall limply back to her sides.

Hermione, who was intimately familiar with fireworks, did know.

"That's alright though," she reasoned aloud, trying to be chipper for her friend's sake. "It's not like you're in imminent danger of becoming a spinster, after all."

They finally stepped into The Great Hall, spotting Harry and Ron along the bench and taking a seat near them. Hermione had been a little crestfallen when nothing came in the morning mail save for a letter from her parents and a couple new books, but her heart leapt when an unfamiliar owl swooped down from the vaulted ceilings directly for her.

It deposited a large, brown paper package on the setting in front of her and she had to suppress a laugh that Fred elected to use the same enigmatic block letters that he had last year to spell her name out. Though this time, they served to conceal his identity from everyone else rather than attempt to hide if from her.

"What's that?" Ron inquired as the owl took flight again, jabbing his fork in the direction of the parcel.

"I'd wager it's a box, Ronald, but one can't be too sure," she replied dryly, quickly stuffing it in her bag to open privately later.

Ginny choked on the bite of sandwich she'd just taken, hurriedly grabbing a goblet of pumpkin juice and drinking deeply.

"What are you getting mail for?"

Hermione was about to open her mouth when Ginny, still watery-eyed, interjected testily, "It's her birthday, you bloody half-wit."

Harry's head snapped up then, eyes wide and expression thoroughly alarmed.

"No, no," Ron shook his head, as if he knew better than Hermione when she'd been born. "No, Hermione's birthday is… uh… well, it's…"

"Bugger," Harry concluded for him, voice wracked with guilt. His glasses were a little lopsided as he poured over his raggedy second-hand potions book. "It is today, isn't it? We've forgotten."

"To be fair," Hermione hedged, "I'm not sure you can forget something you've never actually recognised in the first place."

He drooped further in his seat, and Hermione had to resist the urge to kick Ginny beneath the table.

"We really are shit friends," Ron said, going so far as to set down his fork. For him, that was pretty much the epitome of emotional upheaval.

"It's not a big deal," Hermione assured them.

"No," Harry shook his head adamantly. "First Hogsmeade visit, I'm taking you to Scrivenshaft's and you can pick out any quill you'd like."

"And I'll buy a round of Butterbeer," Ron offered, his means being a little more limited.

Hermione shot a look at Ginny, who seemed to conclude she'd made an error, and then smiled at the boys.

"I can't wait."

oOoOoOo

Later that evening, after classes, Hermione returned to her dormitory. Lavender and Parvati were nowhere to be found, so she slipped off her shoes, climbed onto the bed, and drew the curtains shut, silencing them for good measure and dragging the lamp in so she could see. Then she reached into her bag and removed the parcel with her name on it.

She slipped a finger under the edge of the paper and tore to reveal a wooden box beneath, dark stain with etching on the top. It was beautiful, but as far as she could tell there wasn't a particular design, just abstract swirls and starbursts. It actually reminded her a bit of fireworks.

There was a small brass latch on the front and when she flicked it open and threw the lid back, she resolved that it was a good idea she'd waited. Had she opened this in The Great Hall, a good deal of explanation would have been required of her.

A plume of red rose petals rose straight upward from the box and then swirled around her as if carried on an invisible breeze, a tiny, gentle tornado that lifted and played with the ends of her curls. A breathless laugh slipped past her lips as she watched the petals dance and drift within the confines of her bed, fresh, sweet perfume permeating the small space.

After a moment they dispersed and then suspended in the air, floating around her like the slowest drifting snow. Hermione finally turned back to the box and saw that Fred had created a care-package of sorts. She began to sift through the contents with a pleased smile; a coffee-scented candle, a small package of chocolate truffles, a bottle of lavender-scented lotion, a phial of high-quality onyx ink that shimmered just a little bit, and… a book.

Hermione reached in and pulled it out, only to discern that it was a copy of Pride and Prejudice. It was one of her absolute favorites, which Fred most definitely knew, but she already had her own, in addition to having it available within her portable library. Furthermore, this one was clearly second-hand and not in the best condition.

Brow furrowing with curiosity, she rested it on her knees and flipped the cover open.

Hermione – I've had some rather unwelcome free time on my hands since you left, and I thought I'd put it to good use. Or, at least, what you would consider good use.

I hope this isn't too sacrilegious. Happy Birthday, love.

Yours always,
Fred

Now even more intrigued, she thumbed several pages further into the first chapter. The curious smile already on her face split into a full grin upon realising what he'd meant by sacrilege. This copy of the book was annotated. Personally, thoroughly, meticulously annotated. Familiar, messy scrawl lined the margins in dark blue ink and every so often there was a passage underlined or circled.

Without thinking, she delved deeper into the novel with rapt attention, laughing and shaking her head as she read; as one might expect, Fred's observations were not only insightful, but humorous. She could practically hear his voice in her head when he made several comparisons between his mother and Mrs. Bennet that, upon noticing, were frighteningly obvious, and his frustration with the general snobbery of the upper-class characters was particularly entertaining.

Why is everyone so bloody pretentious?! — he'd jotted near one specifically garish example involving Caroline Bingley.

Evening slipped into night which slipped into later night as Hermione read along, gradually, almost subconsciously, settling back against the pillows near her headboard. Slowly the charm on the rose petals wore off, and they gently drifted down on to the mattress. She hardly noticed save for occasionally sweeping one off the page in front of her when it obscured her vision.

She knew whole sections of the novel by heart, so she skimmed the text itself, reading only for the sake of making sense of Fred's observations. It took her a little while to figure out why this gift was so meaningful, why her eyes pricked and her throat went tight when she saw that he'd underlined one of her personal favorite quotes, noted the whirls of his fingerprint where he'd accidentally smudged the corner of the page.

Then she finally put it together.

He'd taken time, painstaking interest, in doing something that he knew was important to her. Something that he almost certainly wouldn't do otherwise, something thoroughly and wholly outside of his area of comfort.

This was his rotten fish.

There was a bizarre sense of symmetry to it; her running around after curfew involved throwing caution to the wind and taking a leap, while his doing this for her meant ceasing moving for once, losing himself in the pages the way that she did. It mirrored them, the ways in which they complimented one another.

Her eyelids finally began failing in their valiant attempts to stay open sometime after midnight, and the tattered paperback dropped open against her chest, her fingers still gripping the binding and the smell of aged paper tickling her nose.

And as she thought sleepily of regency-era gowns and dramatic declarations made by dashing, aloof heroes, she loved him all the more for it.