sekkoon

CHAPTER 6

"This is bad! This is horrible! Fred, this is badly horrible!" Hermione whispered.

She and Fred were now back in the shed, sitting on the floor with a lit candle between them.

"I know, Hermione! This is really bad! But what was I supposed to do? You said you couldn't let Malfoy win! I didn't know what else to say! And besides, if you hadn't told Malfoy we were engaged in the first place, none of this would have happened!" Fred whispered back.

"Well its not like you did anything to stop me from saying it!"

"Like you would have listened to me!"

"Maybe I would have! How do you know?"

"Because your stubborn as ****!"

"I am not! I am a very easy person to get along with!"

"Perhaps when your drunk!"

Gasp.

"You said you'd never bring that up again!

Smack. She'd smacked him.

Grunt. He'd grunted in response.

Squeal. And then he decided to pounce on her.

Meow.

Fred and Hermione looked over at the small kitten, staring at them with it's head cocked to the side slightly. Fred imagined that they were quite the image. He looked down at Hermione, who was laying on the floor underneath him after he jumped on her. Fred let go of her wrists.

"Do you want to tell the entire family and Malfoy that it was all a big joke?" he asked.

"No! No, of course not!" Hermione said, shaking her head quickly.

"Then we just need to pretend to be engaged for a while. Then we can pretend to break up just before school starts. Sound like a good deal?" Fred asked.

Hermione's face hardened as she considered it. Fred knew that she was going through all of the pros and cons of his idea. She always did that. Hermione always had to make sure that there were more good things about it, and she had to think of all of the consequences and be ready to handle them.

"Alright. But we can never, ever tell anyone that it was all fake! Deal?"

"Deal." Fred nodded, pulling himself off of her and letting her sit up.

"Wait, does this mean we have to act like an engaged couple?" Hermione asked.

Fred couldn't see her face because during the ruckus, they'd knocked the candle into a pile of dirt so they were now surrouned by the light of the moon. And the light of moon wasn't enough to illuminate Hermione's pretty features. Wait, what?! Fred rewinded the thoughts in his head. Yep, he'd just called Hermione pretty. Oh well, it was probably just this engaged thing getting to his head. Yeah, thats all it was.

"Well....I suppose so. Since we're out in the open and everything." Fred shrugged and he could feel his cheeks heating up.

Hermione's silouhette nodded slowly.

"Alright." she said. "But no kissing!" she warned.

"What? Of course not! No kissing." Fred agreed, nodding vigorously.

Hermione nodded again and stood up, Fred following suit. Hermione sighed, as if preparing herself for something.

"Well, here goes nothing." she said.

And before Fred could say anything else, Hermione had laced fingers with him and started walking towards the house.

Later that night, as Fred was getting ready for bed, Hermione entered his room unanounced. Fred pulled his blankets up closer to his chin and looked at her, his eyes wide in surprise.

"Ginny says that since we're going to be married, we might as well share a room." Hermione said, tossing her blankets to the floor.

"We can't share a room with George." Fred said, the first excuse to come to his mind being his twin brother.

"Oh no worries, mate." George said as he walked into the room behind Hermione. "I'm bunking in with Harry and Ron." he grinned as he performed a shrinking charm on his bed. "Gotta give you two lovebirds a chance to get to....'know eachother.' " George said, putting finger quotes around 'know eachother'.

Fred and Hermione's cheeks both reddened considerably as George gathered his stuff. Before leaving, he pointed and Fred's bed and whispered,

"Engorgio!"

Fred yelped as his bed doubled in width. George grinned again.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he smirked before walking out the door.

Hermione closed the door behind him and then looked at Fred with her arms crossed in front of her chest and her eyebrows raised. Fred mimicked her gesture. She sighed.

"What?" he asked.

"Fred, this is going way too far. I'm sure your mother doesn't approve of this!" Hermione said, sitting down on the edge of the much bigger bed.

And as if on que, Mrs. Weasley opened the door with a basket of laundry under her arm. She gasped when she saw Hermione and Fred sitting on the bed and she covered her eyes, the laundry basket hitting the floor with a loud thud.

"Oops, so sorry dears! I didn't know that Hermione had moved in here yet! Sorry, I'll be leaving now!" Mrs. Weasley said as she dragged the basket out without removing her left hand from her eyes.

"Wait, mum, we weren't--" but before Fred could tell his mother that he and Hermione weren't doing anything mischevious, Mrs. Weasley had already shut the door and rushed away from her son's bedroom. Fred sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "You can have the bed. I'll sleep on the floor." Fred nodded, kicking his blankets away, not caring if Hermione saw him in just a pair of shorts anymore.

"No, Fred, thats not fair. Its your room, I should sleep on the floor." Hermione objected, standing up and shaking her head.

"I sleep on that bed every night, Hermione. It won't kill me to give it to you for a few days." Fred shrugged, laying a blanket on the floor.

"Well....I suppose we could....share the bed?" Hermione suggested shyly. "I mean, if someone comes in and they find one of us on the floor, they'll think somethings happened and before you know it, the entire house will be questioning us. And I know that if everyone pounces on us at once, one of us is bound to crack." Hermione said quickly.

Fred looked at the bed. There was plenty of room on it for two people, maybe even three. Normally, he would have just told her to sleep on the bed and that he was going to sleep on the floor, no questions asked. But now that everyone thought they were engaged anyways, there was really no point. He shrugged and climbed back into his spot. Hermione smiled softly and climbed down into the blankets on the other side of the bed. The situation was awkward for a few minutes, but as soon as Hermione fell asleep, Fred couldn't help but stare at her. She looked so peacefull, laying there, dreaming about who knows what. Fred found hiimself wanting to lean forward and kiss her. He smiled softly as he watched her brow furrow. She must have been dreaming about something.

"Why haven't you turned the light off yet?" she asked him, popping one eye open.

Fred nearly jumped out of his skin. He thought she'd been sleeping! He nodded and reached over, flicking the light off as his heart rate slowed back down to normal.

Before Fred drifted off to sleep, he remembered the dream he'd had about Hermione, not very long ago. Oh dear, he thought.

# posted by Sek Koon @ 7:23 AM