Say it's been a long six months

And that's how it works
That's how you get the girl

"FIRST STEP: BE REMARKABLE." It was the first thing Fred heard while entering the dormitory.

Fred had not expected to find his dorm room in the state it was in after his last class of the day. When he nudged the door open, he was met with Amalie and George, along with a giant whiteboard covered in inconspicuous scribbles and drawings.

The drawings were George's work, Fred noticed.

"And what is this?" He asked, throwing his backpack on the bed and looking around the dormitory for the other boys who shared the dorm with him and George.

Along with Fred and George, Lee Jordan and James Davis slept. Despite both being quite nice, the twins preferred to talk to Lee, having more in common with him than with Davis.

Amalie alternated her gaze between him and the board, looking at him as if he were dumb.

"You are dumb." She verbalized.

"No?" Fred said, unsure.

"I wasn't asking, Fred." Stone replied to the boy who was looking at her like she had two heads instead of one.

George snorted a laugh, making both of them look at him in confusion. "What's up, man? What does that look like?"

"An attempt to summon a long-lost demon?" He tried to read the writing on the board, tilting his head. "Who wrote that, again? There's no way those are real words—"

Fred was interrupted by a shoe hitting his leg, causing him to groan and turn to the pair.

"I was the one who wrote that, you idiot." Amalie huffed, arching an eyebrow at him.

Fred and George exchanged a glance before they started off, catching Stone off guard.

"I am here and I have feelings, you know?" Amalie threw her hands up in the air, crossing her arms and pouting her pink lips.

Seeing that they wouldn't stop laughing at her, the girl's eyes widened. "My handwriting isn't even that bad!

"Lie... your handwriting... is horrible..." Fred managed to say between laughs.

"No, it's not!" Amalie looked at George. "Stand up for me, Fabian." She tried unsuccessfully, only to see George fall off the bed at her incredulous expression. "It isn't even that funny."

"You're right... But your face... your face is so..." Fred tried to speak, not being able to continue his sentence due to his laugh.

With a groan, she stood up, heading for the dorm door. "Call me when you've lost all that childishness, clowns. Which is to say, never."

.

It took about half an hour for Fred and George to meet Amalie in the common room. During the first ten minutes, they continued laughing at the girl and her offended expression, using the remaining twenty minutes to try to decode what she had written on the board.

Even though George had been with Amalie when she wrote the plan on the board — or what they thought was a plan — he hadn't understood anything she'd said at the time, he admitted. In fact, George had just been doodling pictures on the board of Fred and a mysterious girl.

Amalie suspected that George knew who Fred liked, but because Fred had never told her, she did not insist, wanting to preserve the boy's privacy.

That's because George would undoubtedly tell Fred if she asked him who he liked.

As they went down the stone stairs that led to the common room, Fred and George came across Amalie sitting on the floor, leaning against one of the sofas, even though there was no one else in the space.

Amalie had her head tilted towards the ceiling despite having her eyes closed, resting, and looking like she had been in the same position for quite some time. She was sleeping enough not to hear Fred and George approaching her.

When he got close enough to her to see her face, George put his thumb up facing Fred, encouraging him to move forward. Fred approached calmly, trying not to be heard, and relaxing when he saw that her eyes remained closed.

Watching her from above, having their faces separated by only a few centimeters, Fred went into a trance while watching her.

Amalie had freckles — he'd always known that. It was a fact, like him having red hair and a twin brother and being in love with someone he'd never tell his best friend about. Ever since Fred was little, he'd remembered how Amalie's freckles were more noticeable in the summer, when the sun made them stand out; sometimes Molly and Emily would joke that their families had to be related in some way, because Amalie looked so much like the twins at that time.

Now, in the silence of the communal, listening only to the crackling of the fire and Amalie's soft breath, totally immersed in her thoughts to perceive George's gaze fixed on the back of his neck, Fred let himself be observed the freckles present on Stone's nose, counting them as he had done so many times before, in the days they spent together at the Burrow or at the Stone's house.

His gaze left the girl's freckled nose, passing to her almost red blonde hair. Fred loved it when Amalie braided it at night only to wake up with him wavy, but he would never prefer that to her natural hair, just because it was hers.

Amalie ended up having an ordinary appearance, just like that of many other girls, but it seemed that she stood out in the eyes of Fred and George. In their eyes, she was more than just the 'girl who is friends with the Weasley twins', for them, she was Lie, their best friend and someone with a heart as beautiful as her eyes.

Seeming to feel his gaze on her, Amalie opened her eyes slowly, blinking slowly and stretching.

Fred, however, did not move.

Shaken by the boy's sudden presence, Lie's eyes widened, suddenly flushed and aware of the situation they were in.

"Fred?" She whispered, almost inaudibly.

"Hey, Lie." He replied in the same tone.

"What... what are you doing?"

"Just looking at you."

Their eyes met and both seemed to burn, trapped in the moment they shared.

Someone cleared their throat with a deep sound.

Quickly looking away from each other, they both turned to George at the same time, seeing him with rosy cheeks and a guilty expression on his face.

"I didn't mean to interrupt, but don't we need to see that plan of Lie's?"

Amalie straightened up quickly, nodding her head with a serious look. "Yes, let's start it"

.

"So I just need to be remarkable?" Fred asked, insecure.

"Basically, yes."

"But how will this work?" It was George's turn to express his uncertainties. "Not to brag, but, man, we are the Weasley twins, we are already remarkable."

The blonde looked at them trying to figure out if she had been too formal in her explanation or if they were just retarded in understanding.

Once again gathered in the twins' dormitory, Amalie had already presented the first step of her plan to the boys. Fred and George were both sitting, George being on Lee's bed and Fred on the floor, at his bed's bottom.

Meanwhile, Amalie walked back and forth, hovering around the board where she had written, barely perceptibly, according to the boys, her plan — or, as she titled it: 'How to Get The Girl', a manual by Amalie Stone.

The first step, as she presented it, was to be remarkable; differentiate yourself and stand out in the life of that secret girl.

"Exactly, Georgie. You're the Weasley twins, but who knows you're Fred and George?" Amalie let the sentence linger in the air, trying to impact the boys enough to understand. "You are two different people with different personalities and ways, not just the twins who like to prank each other and play with everyone."

» Georgie, is it true or not that you love painting but not everyone knows?" She looked away from George to look at Fred. "And who knows that you like playing guitar and prefer to draw in charcoal than color? Boys, you are different people, and almost no one knows that."

"You know that." Fred commented, looking at the small scars on his hands due to the pranks he played with George from an early age.

Fred and George were always together, they were born together and they believed they would die together. Living in a family as big as the Weasleys were, it was difficult to stand out among so many brothers, and Fred and George were always content to be different just to each other.

It was difficult for them to understand that their own mother didn't know which one was Fred and which one was George, but over time, they got used to it.

So what if almost no one could tell them apart? They knew who was who and what each one liked, wasn't that enough?

And then came Amalie, a little Amalie who showed up one day at their house with two of her upper teeth missing. Fred and George laughed at her, and Amalie could see that they were missing the same exact teeth only on the bottom. In a strange and comforting way, they completed each other.

Amalie knew who was who, that little girl, who had arrived so suddenly, took less time to figure out which of them was Fred and which was George than it did for their mother and father, who had never been able to do so.

That was one of the big reasons for the twins to maintain their friendship with the blonde; that and the fact that, once cherished by her friendship, Fred and George found comfort there, just as she found it in them.

"I know that, and who else? Does Ginny know it? Lee, maybe? Not even that." She rolled her eyes with a tense smile. "People need to understand that you two are two different persons, that mysterious girl needs to understand that" she looked directly at Fred, approaching and lowering herself to stay at his level ", even more so if you want to have something with this girl, Gideon."

He scratched his throat. "So that's it, stand out."

Amalie smiled, waved her wand and the painting dematerialized, probably to her room. "I really have to go, I promised I would help Katie studying today." She mentioned the dormitory companion before saying goodbye, passing through the door without knowing that Fred was behind her.

"Lie" he called. ", thank you for helping me out with this, it's really important to me. I just..." He ran a hand through the red hair that had already reached below the ears. "Sometimes I, and I hope George doesn't feel the same way, am afraid to tell you what I truly want. I suppose I am afraid of ruining our friendship."

"I know, Freddie." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it, our friendship would never be ruined, you don't have to be afraid to talk about girls with me, even if I don't know who she is." Amalie remembered that, until their third year, Fred and George always consulted her when they needed advice with girls. Then, in the middle of their fourth year at Hogwarts, Fred stopped; George did not change this posture, and Lie always thought it was because Fred wanted to seek some independence in this matter, unlike George who preferred to treat it more seriously.

❦

FRED APPRECIATED AMALIE'S HELP, but he remained desperate, regardless of the first step of her plan. He understood what she meant by that — of course, how could he not? But applying it was much harder, especially considering the girl they were talking about.

In the middle of the morning, he saw Amalie walking through the corridors with her eyes down, focused on adjusting her books against her chest so that they wouldn't fall.

Fred ran a little to reach her, putting his hand on her shoulder to get her attention.

Amalie looked at him with a smile, making her eyes narrow.

"Where are you going?" Fred questioned.

It was mid-morning, so it would be expected that Stone would be heading to some class.

Amalie looked at him in silence, giving him time to reason. When she saw that he was still waiting, she sighed. "Freddie, we have the same classes."

Fred felt his cheeks heat up, and gave an unstable smile. "Yes, right. I was just wondering if you were going to skip class, you know."

She pursed her lips, shaking her head. "I've never missed a Charms class."

"Of course not."

"Come on, Gideon, I don't want to get my head kicked in by Flitwick." Amalie said before wrapping an arm around Fred's neck.

"You command and I'll obey."

They both walked in a comfortable silence, rarely interrupted. When you spend so much time with the same person as Fred, George and Amalie did, there was always something to talk about since they knew each other so well, but sometimes silence was necessary, a desired calm.

Facing the door to Flitwick's office, Fred stepped forward to open the door for Amalie, who raised an eyebrow.

"Just say thank you, Lie. It's like you don't know I'm a gentleman."

"I learn something new every day then."

It didn't take much analysis to see that there were no more seats available in the room except for a single table at the back of the room. Apart from that, all the remaining tables were occupied by Gryffindors or Ravenclaws, or had signs saying 'Please do not sit'.

As he reached the table at the end of the room, Fred could see a piece of paper facing him. He noticed that it was in George's handwriting.

'Seats willing to be pranked by the W's.'

Fred frowned, thinking. The only two available seats were marked with this paper, but Fred hadn't agreed to anything. Surely if George had said something to Fred about it, he would remember. As such, Fred removed the paper from the surface, folded it and put it in his pocket.

Amalie arrived right behind him, throwing the books on the desk and sitting down immediately, causing Fred to repeat the action.

"George is acting even more weird than usual." She muttered under her breath.

"George is weird, you'll have to explain that better."

In response to Fred, Stone just nodded forward, making Fred meet George's gaze. Just a few desks ahead, facing away from the teacher and next to Lee Jordan, was George, two thumbs up in approval and a giant smile on his face.

Fred blushed abruptly, understanding.

Taking advantage of the fact that Amalie was focused on trying to understand his twin, Fred began to make signs behind her for George to stop.

"Merlin." He complained, exasperated, making Amalie turn to him to see what he was doing. Fred gave a tight smile. "Nothing, just scaring away a mosquito" he lowered his voice so only he could hear. ", called George."

His twin finally turned forward, making Fred relax.

Having no intention of following Flitwick or his class, Fred began to drum his fingers on the wood of the table, catching Amalie's attention. "Some of us need to pay attention to get good grades, carrot head."

"Oh, come on, Lie. This is so boring." He snorted. "Did you know I always wanted to play the guitar? That Muggle instrument. George always preferred the drums, we used to joke that we were going to start a band while we were still at Hogwarts, play at the common parties."

"Yes, Gideon, I knew. In case you don't remember, I was with you guys almost the whole time, including when you tried to convince all your brothers to form a band. Except Percy, of course."

"Except Percy." He agreed. "He would probably play something like... what's that thing Muggles blow into, with holes they use their fingers to plug?" Weasley tried to demonstrate the action, failing miserably and making Amalie laugh, being joined by him.

"A flute, Fred."

"That's it!" He applauded, drawing Flitwick's attention, who stopped the class.

"Stone and... some Weasley, if you don't intend to follow the class at least be quiet, your classmates are interested." He scolded. Looking around the room, Fred and Amalie could see almost all the students sleeping or scribbling in books, not even listening to what he was saying. "Some are." The professor defended. "Silence then, especially Mr. Weasley."

Before Flitwick could turn his back on the pair, Fred stepped forward.

"I am Fred, Professor Flitwick." He said, receiving an intrigued look from Amalie beside him. "George is shorter and quieter, I'm usually the one talking in your classes. And in all the others."

Flitwick looked at him without understanding what was happening. "Ok, Fred Weasley, thank you for the lesson, may I continue?"

Fred smiled broadly, waving. "Of course, Professor." He said, making Flitwick sigh in displeasure.

As he turned to the side, he could see Amalie's gaze burning into him. He looked at her directly, caught off guard when he saw a smile grow on his best friend's features.

"What?"

"Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, is that so?" She smiled, her eyes shining with amusement. "First step done, I suppose."