If You've Got the Nerve

“How much longer is he going to mess with that stupid egg?” Ron complained, shoving a pillow over his head to block out the insistent screeching that rushed from the boys’ dorms.

“Until he figures out the clue,” Hermione, sitting at a table with a stack of books, replied without hesitation.

“How is that screaming a clue?” I snapped, the noise starting to get to me worse than it was Ron. Hermione had no answer to this.

Having counted down earlier, I knew that we were days away from the second task. Unless the clue cleared up a little more every time the egg was opened, Harry seemed to be getting absolutely nowhere. Part of me was worried about him failing the second task before it even began and was begging the day to come slower, but the other part of me was tugging relentlessly at that same day, sick with a constant headache and wanting it all to be over. Cedric, Krum, and Fleur seemed confident and calm every time I saw them in the halls. Harry, on the other hand, wasn’t paying attention in classes and seemed to slump with the weight of the coming task wherever he went.

“What do you think it is, anyway?” I asked the room. Hermione paused in her reading to think then shook her head and silently returned to her dusty books. Ron tossed his pillow to the floor once the noise had stopped and glanced around the scarlet walls of the common room.

“Maybe they’ll make him listen to that racket for a whole day. I know I’d duck out of the competition if I was him,”

I silently agreed. There was no way someone could listen to that noise all day without going deaf. I suppose he could always use a spell to muffle it. Or just blow up the source.

My contemplation was interrupted by the return of the “clue.” Ron and I let out a collective groan. I rolled off the couch that I was sitting on and stormed over to the bottom of the stairs. “Harry Potter, if you don’t shut that thing up right now, I swear I will personally add another scar to that thick head of yours!”

One beat.

Two beat.

The noise ceased, leaving an echoing ringing in my ears as a heavy reminder.

“I’m going to the library,” Hermione announced almost immediately following the new blanket of silence, “before it gets too late,” She gathered up her books, dropping a few in the attempt. Ron launched himself off the couch to come to her need. I watched them with an amused smile. Ever since the ball, they had been acting so polite to each other that it almost made me sick to watch. Hermione welcomed the Weasley’s help in carrying her books out of the common room.

It wasn't until the portrait had swung shut that the silence really started to press in on me. No one else was in the common room. They were either running about the castle doing last minute tasks before curfew or sleeping. To my knowledge, there were only a few scattered students upstairs in the dorms doing the latter task.

I dropped back onto my previous spot on the couch and closed my eyes. I wasn’t tired. In fact, I was getting restless. My eyes opened again to search the room for any source of amusement. They landed on the same book that Hermione had been reading. She must have forgotten it.

I was just about to make my own way out to main part of the castle, maybe to return Hermione’s book, when I heard someone’s steps pounding down the stairs. The loud noise startled me. I sat upright, staring at the familiar messy-haired boy speeding across the room, shining egg in hand. He offered no explanation as he exited the common room.

“Who the bloody hell is making all the racket?” the voice was uncharacteristically angry. I turned my attention to the top of the stairs. Fred was leaning over the railing, a frown curving his mouth downwards. There were a few black smudges on his face and he looked like he’d just come from a very hot room. I guessed that he had been working on one of his projects. I knew Fred enough to know that, as inseparable as him and George were, he often liked to spend a few odd days working on things himself. Over the past few summers, when he had developed this habit, I would sit up in his room with him, well out of the way, and watch. When the room got too hot from whatever potion he was mixing, I would leave to get us both water and open the window a little more on my return. He would never let me be the first to try the concoctions, instead preferring to make Percy his guinea pig then allowing me a go if they were deemed safe enough. On several occasions, they were not.

“Harry was just leaving,” I explained, not really knowing how I could supply a reasonable answer when I myself had no clue what had just transpired. Fred still looked irritated.

“Yeah, well he just tipped the balance of an extremely delicate potion,” He growled out.

“I bet I’ve still got time to curse him if I run,” I offered, half joking, hoping he wouldn’t stay angry.

“No,” he mumbled, barely audible, as he made his way down the steps, wiping the sweat and soot that thinly coated his face off on his shirt as he went. It took a hell of a lot of willpower to keep my eyes from traveling to his briefly exposed skin. “Where was he off to this late?” Fred asked, dropping the hem of his shirt back into place and stopping a handful of feet from the couch. He seemed to prefer keeping his distance from the burning fire. I shrugged, focusing my attention back on the ceiling as I fell back into a more comfortable position.

When he made no move to continue the discussion or move any closer, I decided to push forward with my choice conversation starter as of late. “So…are you ever going to tell me?” I asked, referring once again to our unfinished conversation that had begun the night of the Yule Ball. This brought a spark of the usual Fred back.

“Still on about that?” he asked with a smile that I had learned to grow weary of.

For the past few weeks, I had been practically begging Fred to finish what he had begun to ask at the ball. Albeit they were usually surreptitious hints, he was still well aware of my intentions and he gave me a new, outrageous answer every time. He enjoyed toying with me far too much for my liking. I just hoped he wasn’t as fully aware of how much it was tearing at my mind not knowing.

“If you must know,” Fred collapsed backwards onto a chair, staring at me upside down, all joking wiped clean from his face, “I was going to confess my undying love for you,”

Silence.

We stared at each other for a long moment, neither twitching, neither blinking. Then I broke it. Snatching a pillow, I smacked him in the face with it. “You prat!” he rolled off the chair, narrowly missing the table. I threw another pillow at him as he tried to scramble off the floor and make a run for it. His progress was slow as result of the laughter spilling from his mouth. I made a grab for another pillow, launching myself after him. He made a scramble for the steps, but, in his confused hurry, took the wrong set. He was halfway up with me right behind him when the stairs changed into the slick slide that tossed us both down in its effort to keep Fred from getting near the girls’ dorms. Fred cursed loudly and I let out a scream that was brought on more by the fact that Fred was about the barrel straight into me. He was skinny, but I was much more fragile compared to him.

We hit the floor in a jumble. I didn’t hesitate in using the soft ammo that I had managed to cling to during the fall. “Get off me, you oaf!” I yelled through my laughter, punctuating the demand with several solid hits with the pillow that I continued to swing at him. He sat up so he could grab my weapon and toss it aside. “Get off!” I continued to yell, struggling as much as I could under his weight. He only grinned in response to my desperate attempts. I was beginning to regret leaving my wand upstairs. “Come on, Fred! Please? You’re crushing me!”

“Well, since you said please…” he rolled off of me to lie on his back next to me instead. I let out a breath, my laughing slowly coming to an end.

“I hate you sometimes,”

“Oh, please. You couldn’t survive without me,”

A long silence stretched between us, the air weighing down with it more and more with every passing second. Finally, Fred broke the silence. Very slowly, as if he were still deciding if the words were worth it, he said, “At the ball…what I was going to ask you…” my attention was caught immediately. I turned my head on the side so that I could see him clearly. “I was just wondering…” he trailed off, his eyes searching for something on the ceiling. Finding nothing, he dropped his gaze to mine. My heart, already hammering against my chest, sped up at an impossible rate. “It’s completely mental, but…” He rolled over until he was lying on his side, his eyes never leaving mine. I gave him a small smile, unsure of just how nervous I should be.

“Everything about you is mental, Fred, and I’ve put up with you until now. What could you possibly say to mess anything up?” Bolstered by my words, he sat up, supporting his weight with one arm. He was close enough by now that I could already feel the warmth that always came when he touched me.

“Alright, say I suggested something that’s more mental than anything I’ve suggested before?”

“You’ve suggested some pretty out there things in the past, but go on,”

“Well, I want to try something…”

His breath was on my face again, washing over me in waves, giving me the same dizzying sensation I had received at the ball. But this time there was no one to interrupt. I wasn’t with anyone but Fred. The thought made my breathing come in a short, unsteady stream. I could feel my hands trembling the closer he got to me. I thought he would pull away from me at the last second and fall back in laughter. I thought he would do nothing but joke about the look on my face, but I was hit with a jolt of electricity when I felt his soft lips barely brush against mine.

“Fred, what are you – ”

“Hush,” he pushed forward a final centimeter and our lips connected in a solid kiss.