Work Text:
Harriet was looking at the celling of her four-poster bed. Half-dressed and lost in her thoughts. Well, her thoughts had a name, a mischievous redhead named Fred Weasley. He was the perfect guy for her! Or so Lavender’s muggles magazines had said. There’s was one problem, though, Fred was the older brother of her best friend, Ron, and he never actually showed any signs of Harriet’s crush being mutual.
“You gotta tell him!” Hermione said. She was sitting on the corner of Harriet’s bed. They had just finished dinner and there wasn't much homework for tomorrow, well, at least not for Her. Harriet suspected that at any given moment Hermione was going to take out her parchment paper and her books and do homework from Merlin knows where. But apparently the fact that Harriet froze as if a basilisk had looked her in the eyes because Fred put his hand on her shoulder as he told a joke was more interesting than extra homework.
“Only if was that easy…” Harriet sighed. The very thought of him and her cheeks turned red.
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
Harriet got out of bed quickly and began passing “a lot of things, actually,”
“Like…?”
“Well, let’s start with the fact that he is Ron older brother!” It felt like a betrayal of her loyalty to Ron. It’s like if Hermione started to date Dudley, ew, no. That comparison wasn’t fair. “Besides, Fred older and cool and funny. And in a thousand years would he notice me, and he probably sees me for what I am, his little brother's best friend.”
Harried said the last thing with a touch of sadness and disappointment in her voice, Hermione apparently understood that because she got out of Harriet’s bed and started to undress to put on pajamas. Harriet followed her.
…
“Start working. Now.” Snape slow-witted voice demanded. He turned to the blackboard and began to write down possible answers for the work he had assigned them.
Snape had arranged them in pairs of two, with a cauldron for each. They had to correctly identify the potion and write down the characteristics. Ron was stirring the cauldron slowly, bringing his freckled face closer, trying to smell and identify what potion they got. At the same time, he leaned towards Hermione and Neville’s cauldron, disappointed to see it was a completely different colour.
Harriet grabbed the parchment paper in front on her and began writing. The potion was a light, blue with tiny bubbles in it forming in the air, it didn’t have a characteristic mark and that made things more difficult. She opened her book and began searching for something similar. Harriet also couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Hermione last night, and then that made her start to think in certain troublemaker with blazing eyes, quirky smile, and bright red hair. In truth Fred and Georges jokes could potentially be dangerous and sometimes Ron and others found them annoying, but he was also such a good quidditch player! and the face of concentration Fred had on when he did something! with a little smirk… and the way his hair moved when he was up in the air…
Harriet completely stopped paying attention to the potions book and started scribbling down little hearts with a caption that read “I can't wait for him and me to get married, it's probably going to be on a broomstick in the air. And then we'd buy a house on the hill and have four kids, we’ll never get bored! maybe a set of them can be twins, given the nature of the matter” to finish, Harriet drew a giant heart which had “F+H" inside.
She could've stayed in her daydreams for ages, but Ron shook her shoulder. Snape was in front of them, one hand on his waist and the other on the table, very close on the parchment paper where Harriet had shamefully confessed her love to Fred Weasley.
“Miss Potter, you were so wonderfully concentrated on writing down the characteristics of the potion,” He looked at her directly in the eyes. They both knew that Harriet hadn't been doing that. “Would you share them with the class?”
Behind her she could feel Malfoy laugh cynically. “Well, as you see, is blue,” She was completely making that up. Ron nodded with his head. “And you can drink it, potentially, yeah.”
“And…” Ron said
“Shut. Up. Mrs. Weasley,” Snape was beginning to lose his patience. “Miss Potter, if you weren't doing what I carefully and patiently explained then what. were. you. writing. down? doing homework for other subjects is strictly forbidden.”
As Snape said that he tried to grab the parchment paper, but Harriet didn’t allow it, with that, the paper was torn in two.
“No!” She said, clinging to the piece that had the biggest heart with the “F+H”. She looked down and saw that the twin bit was also on her power.
For the first time in her life, Harriet was scared to death dealing with Snape. her heart was pounding, Snape was reading aloud what she had written, smirking. She looked around, Hermione was biting her nails nervously, Neville dropped his cauldron and Ron had his hand in his mouth, terrified.
“How lovely… a wedding in the clouts! I'm thrilled to know who is the lucky one,” The Slytherins burst out laughing while Snape demanded the missing piece. Harriet didn't think it twice and put the parchment paper in her mouth, chewing it quickly and swallowing it. Snape got angrier when he saw what she did. “How. Smart. Luckily, I always carry veritaserum with me…”
Luckily for her, the bell rang at that exact moment.
…
Harriet was crouched, face in her hands. It was lunch time, and she didn't feel like eating anything, she felt nauseous. Of course, at Hermione's command, she drank a whole glass of pumpkin juice giving the fact that Harriet had ate a piece of parchment paper. Her week was going from bad to worse, her undying love for one of Ron’s older brothers was half out, she didn’t have a broom for the next match against Ravenclaw and there was an actual murderer trying to kill her… well, the last one didn’t look that bad in light of recent events.
The news of Harriet having a crush on someone and wanting to marry them spread quite faster thanks to the Slytherins, in the halls she would hear things like “oh! I hope you invite us to your house in the hill!” she even saw two younger students making bets on who she was in love. Well, some of them even had the courage of straight up asking Harriet who is she in love with! Hermione tried to save her ass multiple times saying it was a nameless muggle celebrity, Harriet didn’t think anyone believed it, except for Ron.
Harriet felt someone sit next to her in the dining hall “Oi, George, there’s a wedding coming soon, and we haven’t been invited,”
“Right, Fred. Mum is already mending our formal robes.”
For the first time in ages, Harriet laughed. She pulled her face out of her arms
If only he knew.
“Well, is up in the air. So, you don’t necessarily need formal robes.” Even though Harriet was answering to George, she was looking directly at Fred. Her cheeks turned red, but she was still laughing.
“Well, Harriet,” Fred started to put potatoes on his plate, leaning close to her. “I’m sure no one would mind a wedding in a broom if you were the bride they get to have.”