the halls of Hogwarts were at night – or well, early morning. For Margaret, it was way too early. Yes, she woke up at the crack of dawn, but this was not the crack of dawn-

"Keep up, keep up! Or we're gonna miss it!"

"You're way too excited at this hour," she groans groggily. "Tell me again, why did I agree to this?"

Fred grinned at her over his shoulder.

"Because I'm incredibly charming and my morning voice is so attractive, you couldn't say no?"

She sighed hopelessly. He wasn't half-wrong, but she wouldn't tell him that. She continued to sluggishly climb up the metal stairs after him.

Fred was, as usual, very energetic. He took two stairs at a time and bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for her. His excitement was childlike, and her initial annoyance at him for waking her up at this ungodly time vanished. Now it just made her smile.

"C'mon, hurry!"

"You could've just told me where we were going and I could've just teleported there," she huffs, realising for the umpteenth time that she was getting really unfit. "Then you'd have had to keep up..."

"And ruin the surprise?" he says incredulously. "Hell no!"

"Honestly, Fred, what's up the Astronomy tower at" – she checks her watch – "six in the bloody morning?"

"Honestly, Margie, have you forgotten what day it is today?" he asks in the same exasperated tone like her.

Margaret blinked in confusion, still feeling the sleep in her eyes. What day was it, again?

In all honesty, her sense of time had gone haywire lately. Her mind, which usually kept up with the prospect of the rapidly approaching future, was falling behind in the streak of events. Whist her conscious suffered because behind her closed eyelids flashed a pair of unrecognisable mismatched eyes, staring right into her soul.

At any rate, she had a terrible habit to ignore things she could not, for the life of her, begin to understand. Hence why the vision she saw the other day after touching that darned book was pushed to the back of her mind. It was not immediately important... or so she hoped.

Moreover, studies took up most of her time anyway. When she was not studying, she was in the D.A. meetings. Harry seemed to be doubling his efforts as of late in his understandable spite against Umbridge who was doing her best to control every aspect of life at Hogwarts.

By the time Margaret went to bed late at night, her mind was filled with the history of the Giant War, diagrams of Jupiter's moons, laws of Transfiguration and wand moments for defence spells.

"Helluuu? Earth to Margie?" Fred calls, having reached the top of the spiral staircase.

He had an incredulous look plastered on his face, and Margaret realised that she had zoned out. She quickly racked her brain for today's date. But Fred was impatient.

"I can't believe you asked me out and forgot about it!"

Oh, right! Valentine's Day!

Yikes, was it today? Hold on, she had asked him to go with her to Hogsmeade. Then why were they-

"MARGIE!"

"Coming!"

Appearing on the top of the tallest tower at Hogwarts, Margaret took a well deserved deep breath. The air was colder and thinner up there. Though when her eyes opened again, the most horrifying sight met her.

She squealed with a start, her powers bursting outwards from her hands and knocking the clown off his feet. He skidded across the length of the floor, collided into the wall and groaned.

Margaret gasped, realising who it really was. Fred, seeing that he was all right, burst out laughing.

"Oh, George, I'm so sorry!"

"Merlin's beard... Didn't expect to be thrown off the Astronomy Tower tonight," George mutters, trying to sit up.

Feeling guilty, she used her powers again. George stiffened but this time they only set him back on his feet.

"Wicked!" he exclaims, wincing and rubbing his head.

"I'm so sorry," she repeats guiltily. "I usually don't mind clowns... But why are you dressed like one?"

"It wasn't by choice," he mumbles as Fred pats him on the back.

"Someone lost a bet," says he, seemingly pleased.

Margaret raised a brow. "What bet?"

"We'll explain later, for now - tat-tat-ta-da!" Fred sings, gesturing towards a two-seater table they had set up just past the large metallic structure in the middle. He beams at her, "Breakfast! And sunrise! Also, juggling, if you're interested."

Margaret decided to amuse him, turning to George who was discretely shaking his head at her. "You can juggle?!"

He gave her a blank look for betraying him, making her stifle a laugh.

Fifteen minutes later, Fred and Margaret had had most of their breakfast while George was showing his juggling skills; or lack thereof as the balls bounced off his head more times than he caught them. He tried to sneak some food but failed every time. Fred, on the other hand, continued to make a show of saying how delicious it was.

Margaret was rather surprised at the effort and thought she was sure both Fred and George had put into this. According to them, most of the house-elves working at Hogwarts knew them well after years of sneaking into the kitchens for late-night snacks, so they didn't find it too hard to prepare all of it.

It didn't miss Margaret's eye that there were more than a few Canadian-like breakfast items - cooked eggs, fried pork sausages, fried potatoes, avocado and toast, so on. Little twinkling lights floated above them like stars, providing light as the sky above began to turn a twilight blue.

Margaret had a sneaking suspicion that they hadn't had a blink of sleep last night yet somehow seemed wide-awake. Either way, she was touched by the effort.

She couldn't help it, she had to voice her wonder. "How'd you manage to find out about Canadian breakfast items?"

Fred shrugged modestly, which surprised her even further. Was he trying to act like he didn't actually research about this?

"I believe it should be considered a lifelong achievement that you got my dunderhead of a brother to step a foot into the library," George mutters while pouring only Margaret some water. Yes, apparently he was also forced to be their waiter. A very sarcastic waiter.

Fred opened his mouth to retort but Margaret beat him to it.

"I think that's very sweet..." when Fred looks pleased with her response, Margaret adds, "that you went in there with him, Forge. I really don't like the library these days..."

A grin split onto George's clown face. "Anything for you, Margie dear," says he, winking.

"Why thank you!" she smiles, playing along.

"By the way, avocado and toast is a great choice," he compliments rather loudly over Fred's exclaim of 'Hey!' Fred looked flabbergasted. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Margaret cut him off again.

"It's always been our favourite! Whenever we had avocados at home, we finished them in like a day. Usually, we'd sneak it to our treehouse and hide some there when we didn't want our greedy cousin sisters to grab 'em," she tells him brightly.

"You had a treehouse?!" George asks ecstatically, while Fred throws his hands in the air in exasperation.

"Honestly! It's my date-!"

"YES!" she exclaims over him, unable to stop grinning as neither she nor George looked at poor Fred. "It was in our backyard - which was really like a different part of the property, it was almost a small forest. Anyway, it was on this massive oak tree which was very old but very sturdy. Our parents had a treehouse made off of a silly drawing we sketched when we were seven."

"We?" asks George, slightly perplexed.

"Oh... er, Mark and I," she answers slowly, realising that for the first time in awhile she had spoken about herself and her twin combined, as they did all the time while growing up.

Noticing both George and Fred's gazes turn sympathetic, she kept a smile on her face.

"Hey, it's okay. I wish you both could've come to our treehouse. It was really fun! We had a virtual reality set with several gameplays, and there were bean bags everywhere. We did most of our homework there... Oh, also there were solar panels above so it was entirely this eco-friendly treehouse and we brought our laptops and chargers to watch movies on the weekend-" she breaks off, tuning back into reality. "You both look reasonably confused..."

"We're going to pretend we understood every word you said," they say in sync, chuckling as Margaret covered her blushing face in her hands.

"OKAY!" Fred bursts. "This is MY date! You, Georgie, out of here!"

"Ergh, finally," he sighs, almost relieved, picking up his brother's plate entire plate and making his way to the door. Fred let out a string of colourful words under his breath.

"Fred, be kind to your twin," Margaret scolds playfully.

"Excuse me, are you calling me a clown?" Fred asks, pretending to be hurt.

"You sure act like one," she mutters under her breath, laughing when George quickly turns back to high-five her.

Fred shook his head at them. He would never admit it aloud, but he was sort of glad that his twin and the girl he liked, were getting along (and getting on his nerves at the same time). He would not want to choose...

Once George was gone and they had finished their food, the two of them quickly cleared out everything including the lights glittering above as the sun slowly began to peek above the misty mountain tops around the valley. There were clouds in the sky, which only added to the scene as the first rays of the sun reflected off of them in a panorama of colours.

The view was absolutely breathtaking, and Margaret did not regret waking up early one bit at that moment. The gentle breeze blew back her hair and she tilted her head back, a small smile growing on her lips.

Behind her, an unmistakable click of a camera went off, and she looked over her shoulder, raising a brow a Fred who was holding the polaroid camera.

"To live in the moment and in retrospect," he says cheekily, repeating the words she had wrote on the note she had given them with the camera. She smiled at this and he quickly took another picture.

"Okay, Mister paparazzi, that's enough memories for now," she laughs, covering her face after he took another photo. "C'mon, Fred... look at the view!"

He grinned. "I already am."

She rolled her eyes at him, facing forward again so that he wouldn't see her blushing. Good lord, since when did Margaret Xenakis start to blush? Also, she did not look entirely flattering for photos. If her posh family saw her like that on a date, they would disown her.

The thought made her snort.

When Ginny had woken her up that morning, telling her that there was something Fred wanted to show her immediately, she had quickly thrown on the first thing she could find which happened to be an oversized black hoodie, ripped jeans and sneakers. Despite the outfit covering most of her skin from head to toe, the air was still frosty and her teeth were beginning to chatter.

As if on cue, Fred hugged her from behind, wrapping them both in a long blanket. She leaned back into his warmth, smiling contently as he rested his chin on her head.

"You're really prepared," she compliments, almost feeling him smirk.

"When am I not?"

Tilting her head, she pressed her lips to his softly, both of them still smiling.

"I had an incredible morning," she says softly once they separate. "Thank you..."

"The day's not over yet, pumpkin," he says, kissing her temple.

She gave him a questioning glance. "Pumpkin?"

Fred shrugged. "I told you I'd make it up to you for missing your birthday," he gives her a pointed look when she goes to interrupt him, "Which got me thinking, you were born on Halloween - hence, you're now pumpkin."

"I am... pumpkin?"

"Yep. The cute kind; not the creepy kind."

Margaret huffed. "So now I'm Margie and I'm pumpkin."

"Yep. You're pumpkin."

"Oh, yay!" she cheers sarcastically before squealing when he suddenly begins to tickle her. "EEK-! Fred! Donticklemee!"

Fred grinned mischievously, continuing to poke her waist as she squirmed, laughing breathlessly.

around than usual, thanks to the magic of Valentine. Fred and Margaret were standing in the queue of Third years and above who were being signed out by Filch. Though Umbridge's rule still applied to them all, on school grounds at least. It stated:

Boy and girls are not permitted to be within 8 inches of each other.

As if on cue, Margaret felt someone's gaze on her. She looked up over her shoulder. Standing there in all her pink glory, looking extremely annoyed at the bubbling chatter of the students, was the toad herself. Impulsively, Margaret reached up and kissed Fred's cheek.

He smirked in return, pleasantly surprised. "Patience, pumpkin," he drawls. She shrugged casually.

"Oh, hey, look! There's Harry and... Cho, I think her name was," Fred points at the said pair a little ahead of them. Margaret cringed slightly, which he noticed. "What is it?"

"Nothing, nothing, it's just... I hope their date goes well," she mutters in reply, averting her eyes from the shy couple and straining her neck to see over the heads. "How long is this line anyway?"

"Not too long," says Fred, his brows furrowed as he looked at her. "Am I too taken by your beauty or are you taller than usual?"

Margaret shot him a cheeky smile, gesturing down at the brown lace-up boots she had got on her shopping trip to London with Tonks. She had worked way too hard to put them, but at least it gave her a few more inches of height.

Fred gasped. "That's not fair!"

"You're still taller, Gred."

"I like you more when you were tiny..." he pouts.

"I'm not tiny!"

"Tiny for me."

"You're a freaking giant!"

"Am not! You're just a teeny tiny pumpkin!" He reached up to pat her head.

She rolled her eyes, dodging his hand. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

"I'd sleep better with you by my side," he teases, mighty pleased when she blushes and pushes him playfully.

The caretaker Filch looked quite suspicious of them, interrogating Fred about where his twin was as he had hardly seen the two of them apart, to which he proceeded to confuse him about whether he was Fred or George. As hilarious as Filch's livid purple face was, Margaret had to pull her date away before the caretaker forbad them both from going.

Fred turned to her as they reached the iron gates. "So what d'you wanna do? I assure you there will be not a single boring moment with yours truly!"

She linked her arm with him, thinking about his question. "Well, let's see... I haven't yet fully seen Hogsmeade. The last time we were there, we were all at the D.A... thing," she lowers her voice.

"Excellent, we'll tour the humble village then," declares Fred eagerly. "You're lucky you've got me; I know things about Hogsmeade even Hogsmeade doesn't know about itself."

"Whatever it is, I'm not doing anything illegal," she tells him, half-stern. Boy oh boy, should she not talk about not doing anything illegal... she was friends with Harry, after all.

Fred smirked wickedly, which probably did not mean anything good, but she ignored it for the time being.

Roaming around Hogsmeade with Fred was honestly delightful. He knew a lot about the small Wizarding village and talked animatedly about the things he and George usually did when they were there. Once in a while, they would stop to take pictures - mostly Fred, who took her pictures when she didn't notice she was smiling.

She had also brought her pocket cassette player and dual earphones, on which they listened to popular 90s songs while walking around. Fred had attempted to twirl her once, which ended up in her getting tangled up in the wires. It only got worse because they couldn't stop laughing for one moment to untangle it.

When they managed to get that sorted, Margaret pocketed the players and earphones as they walked to a small tea shop in the nook of a side street.

"And that's Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop," says Fred with a rather distasteful expression on his face. "Came here in my fourth year with this girl I liked-" he breaks off abruptly, biting his tongue. Good Merlin, Fred, the last thing to talk about on a first date was about old crushes!

Margaret did not seem too bothered by it and only shot him a sideways glance. "Bad date?"

"Horrible!" he exclaims immediately. "All she wanted to do was snog-!" he breaks off again, turning his reddening face away from her as she suppresses her laughter.

Deciding to spare him for now, she scanned Madam Puddifoot's from the display window that they were stood near. The little tea shop was decorated for Valentine's with all the frills and bows and confetti-throwing Cherubs. It reminded Margaret painfully of Umbridge's office.

"P- Please don't make me go in there," she says, lip quivering in mirth.

Fred looked at her sideways as her face turned rosy in her attempt to keep her laughter to herself. She looked cute, in his opinion – wearing another one of her oversized hoodies, jeans and the white beanie she had gotten for Christmas over her untied hair that flowed past her shoulders.

Blinking out of his reverie, realising that he had lost count of how many times he had zoned out while staring at her today, he looked back at the glass window of the small tea shop that seemed to be popular with the couples. It was almost noon now, yet it seemed much later as dark clouds began to gather in the sky, shadowing the sun.

"It's so..." he begins, unable to find a proper word.

"Pink!" she finishes. "Anyway, let's go somewhere else, this is really not our kind of place. Any suggestions?"

"Anywhere and everywhere, malady. We've seen most of the village so far," Fred says as they start walking again. He hesitates a bit before continuing, "Do you- I don't know, I know it's our date but, have you gotten a chance to go into Zonko's yet?"

Margaret shook her head. "I don't mind, let's go there."

"Wait, really?"

She bit back a smile. "You've been wanting to go there, haven't you?"

Fred smiled sheepishly. "Well, George and I have been going to Zonko's every time we come to Hogsmeade. Most of our time was spent there, seeing the products. It's the best place to brainstorm if you want to create something better than what Zonko already has. The lad's not doing so well on off days from what we hear..."

"Why not?" she asks, allowing him to lead the way.

"All this darkness looming over, jokes are not really the first thing on people's minds," Fred explains, his eyes on one of the many wanted posters of the wanted Death Eaters stuck outside nearly all shop windows or walls. "Plus, ol' toad face has banned his products."

"Maybe that's the best reason to need it, or sneak them in," she tells him. "You know, to have some fun in life amidst all the chaos."

"I like the way you think, pumpkin..." Fred gave her a dimpled smile, attractive enough to melt her poor heart. But he was quickly distracted. "Oh look, there are George and Lee. What're they- OI! We said no business today!"