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Fred didn’t know what had changed with Tammy lately but he couldn’t help but be glad that something had. He was proud of her for how she had managed to take control of their rag-tag group of misfits and how she had been attempting to teach them all to be better at protecting themselves. She had been pushed into the role by Hermione but Fred was quietly pleased that she had done that. The girl that he had fallen in love with was slowly coming back to him, despite everything that Snape, Dumbledore, and Umbridge were putting her through.
She was handling Umbridge a lot better than he was as well and he wasn’t sure how she was managing to do that. Neither of them had been allowed to play Quidditch since November and Fred found that while Tammy was coming back to him, he was starting to lose himself. The only reason that he hadn’t completely gone insane was because of the Resistance Army.
He had promised his mother that he would stay in school, mainly to keep the peace at home, but also because as clever as he believed himself to be, he also knew that he had a lot to learn. But Umbridge had begun to put a stopper in any and all learning that was actually going to benefit his survival, much less his future.
When Hermione and Ron had first brought forward the idea of the RA, he had been completely against it and he wasn’t ashamed to admit that. After the summer that Tammy had had, he didn’t think that it was a good idea to put any undue pressure on her. She had enough on her plate and he still believed that, but he also knew that there wasn’t anyone who was better suited to the task. Fred knew just how lucky he and the others were to learn how to fend off the enemy from Tammy, he just wished that it didn’t have to be her that took everything on. But Hermione had talked him around, just like she managed to eventually talk Tammy around and now there they were, in a secret room, learning how to ward off Dementors, something that he should have been learning about this year anyway if it wasn’t for Umbridge and her reign of tyranny. He had, however, firmly put his foot down when Hermione had suggested that they name the group after Dumbledore. Their headmaster might not have been having the best of luck lately but that didn’t mean that he was excused for all of his past behaviour.
Fred was used to not being able to speak to Tammy during RA meetings - she was always so busy helping the others, especially those like Neville who often took just that little bit longer to master the spells that were put to them, but he had sort of hoped that today would be different. It was his birthday, after all, and she was kind of central to the memory that he was focusing on to create his patronus.
He allowed himself to watch her as she moved around the room before he received a jab in the ribs from his twin who was partly trying to make sure that he was being listened to - George had been rambling on and on about the fireworks that they had been creating and how they badly needed to test them out at some point. He heard George mention Tammy’s name but assumed that he was just pointing out that Tammy had made an investment in their business and that she would want to see the results as much as George did. Fred wanted to see the results too, of course, but there was a particular way that he wanted to spend his day and this wasn’t it.
He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to flicker back to his happy place, to when he had been able to sit with Tammy and they had been able to pretend that they didn’t have care in the world. It seemed to be an entire lifetime ago now but Fred could still remember it as if it was yesterday. It was the last time that he had believed that it was possible to be happy when the future was so uncertain.
This was the memory he knew that he needed to produce his patronus and so he let it absorb him, let it completely wrap itself around his brain and drew his wand. He had tried to cast a patronus when Tammy had first told them the incantation but he hadn’t been successful and instead he had somehow managed to get caught up in watching Tammy’s stag as it paraded itself around the room.
He knew that it hadn’t come all that easily to her, that she had spent many, many sessions working alongside Lupin in order to produce a corporeal patronus but he still couldn’t help but be in awe of how effortless she made it look. It did make him feel better when he noticed that no-one else had managed to produce a patronus that looked like anything more than a wispy silver glow.
He opened his eyes as he decided that he was ready to try again, only to see that Tammy was watching him, smiling at him. Her smile warmed him from the inside and he found himself wishing that the meeting was over even more so now so that he could finally get her alone, so that he could wrap his arms around her for real.
“Expecto patronum!” He heard in a voice that sounded very similar to his own to the point that for a moment he had to wonder if it had come from his mouth - the problem with having a twin, he supposed.
He turned his head to see a silver light protruding from George’s wand. He could almost see a face in the silver but he couldn’t make out what exactly the face was meant to be of. It was, however, the closest to corporeal that anyone else in the room had achieved so Fred couldn’t help but be proud of his brother.
It did make him just that little bit more determined now though. He couldn’t risk being shown up by his twin. Okay, George was the best friend of Tamara Potter, but he was her boyfriend. He was the one that she was going to - hopefully - spend his life with. He drew his own wand back and with the words ‘expecto patronum’ finally leaving his own lips, he watched as a fox erupted from the end of his wand.
Fred stared, his eyes widening even more than he thought possible. He hadn’t known what to expect his patronus to be. He hadn’t really ever thought about it. He knew that Tammy’s was a stag because her parents had had a stag and a doe as theirs’ and part of him was a little sad that his patronus hadn’t taken the form of a doe now but he couldn’t dwell on that now, not when his fox was weaving her way around the room.
He then blinked a couple of times as he realised that his fox wasn’t an ordinary fox. He counted her tails - three. Somehow Fred had not only managed to produce a corporeal patronus but he had somehow managed to produce one that resembled a creature that he had never even managed to see in the flesh before.
“Is that a kitsune?” George asked. His eyes were just as wide as Fred’s but as Fred turned to answer him, the kitsune disappeared.
Fred opened his mouth to comment on what he had managed to create but Tammy had wrapped her arms around him instead, taking almost all of his attention back onto her in the next moment.
“I’m so proud of you!” She exclaimed and he couldn’t help but beam because he knew that if anyone else had achieved a corporeal patronus before him then they still wouldn’t have gotten this sort of reward. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and decided that this wasn’t the worst way to spend a birthday after all.