Disclaimer: Harry Potter was written by the lovely and talented J. K. Rowling and realized on screen by lots of fantastic people at Warner Brothers. I'm just a humble admirer of their work. I don't claim any rights to the Harry Potter franchise, nor am I making any money from this endeavor.

Author's Note: Well…I updated my one fic after a six year absence and then I remembered that I had this one sitting around and one thing led to another and here we are. This is going to be a blend of movie and book canon. I usually prefer to go with the books, but some scenes from the movies happen to work better for what I have in mind for this fic. It may also venture a little into AU territory later in the story, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Please let me know what you think. Flames are silly—give me some constructive criticism instead. That gives me more to work with and learn from as a writer.

Playing With Fire

By Blue Kat

Chapter 1: Demons in the Design

I knew I would have to dance with one of them before the thought even crossed McGonagall's mind. They had not exactly been keeping a low profile, laughing and cracking jokes near the back of the room. Pairing them both with someone unlikely to complement their taste for trouble was the obvious solution. It was merely a question of which one, Fred or George? Not that I could tell them apart. McGonagall's formal use of "Mr. Weasley" only told me what I already knew from the red hair and freckles. Of course, I could not ask my soon-to-be dance partner of his name—to admit such a thing was to extend a personal invitation to be the victim of some sort of identity prank. No, if I wanted to know anything, it would have to be from my own deductions.

"All right, Lewis?" he asked, grinning as though we were participating in something more fun than a supervised dance lesson.

"Just fine."

McGonagall was pushing his twin toward Alicia, who caught my eye, a resigned half-smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. I gave a slight shrug in response, an acknowledgment of the fact that we were expected to both dance with and supervise the two most mischievous students in the entire noble history of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

His hand went to my waist and I felt my face flush with the utter strangeness of being touched rather intimately by someone new. My left hand tentatively went to his shoulder and he took my right in a cool and firm grasp.

"Nervous?"

"I hardly think a waltz is cause for nerves."

"I was referring to your assigned role of supervisor. It might be a bit much, even for a prefect."

"I'm always good for a challenge."

"Famous last words." His grin was devilish.

"Can I trust you to lead or shall I?"

"I wouldn't dream of steering you wrong, love. Not on the dance floor, at any rate."

He stepped forward and I moved with him. The next few moments passed in silence as we both concentrated on the finer points of the waltz.

"I have to admit, Weasley, you're not half bad," I conceded after a few moments of fairly smooth dancing.

"You sound surprised."

"Well, the average boy your age is uncommonly clumsy." I looked rather pointedly at Andrew Marconi, who'd tripped over his robes.

"Lucky for you I'm not average."

I raised an eyebrow skeptically and briefly considered mentioning that I hardly thought that was his dominant quality. He returned my gaze expectantly, as though he hoped I would verbalize something of that nature so he could twist it into some entirely new and unforeseen direction. Well, I wasn't about to play his game, I decided.

"Whatever you say, Weasley."

He grinned. "You sound doubtful."

"Not at all. You are perhaps the least average person in this room, with the exception of your esteemed brother."

"I assume you mean Ron."

I realized with a sinking sensation that I would have to have a guess at his name after all. Being wrong would not be a simple faux pas—it would likely invite some sort of teasing, perhaps a prank if he was in rare form. I allowed myself a split second to study his face and decide if he looked more like a Fred or a George. I quickly realized I couldn't work it out and decided he had to be Fred for purely alphabetical reasons.

"I was referring to George, actually."

"Oh, you think I'm Fred, do you?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow upward with mild amusement.

"Of course you're Fred." Please be Fred.

"What makes you so sure?"

I smiled wryly, mostly to conceal my doubt. "I'm a prefect, aren't I?"

He chuckled. "Your talents are wasted, Lewis. Just think of what you might accomplish with a little more disregard for the rules."

I shrugged. "I rather prefer a plain sort of existence."

Fred—I was certain it was Fred—dipped me quite suddenly and my stomach fairly near dropped to the floor, my breath whooshing along with it.

"Really?" he said, eyebrow quirked. "I reckon that might get boring."

"I like boring," I said, rather unconvincingly.

He grinned and pulled me out of the dip. "You never know, Lewis: you might be surprised."

At the time, I didn't attach much importance to that sentiment: it was Fred Weasley, after all. I had gotten into the habit of not taking him seriously. It wasn't until later—when I was in over my head—that those words took on a heavier meaning.

I wasn't about to tell him that, though: he gets insufferable when he turns out to be right.

I suppose that in order to talk about the Yule Ball and the bargain I made, I have to talk about Aidan Kilbourne.

To say that I fancied Aidan Kilbourne felt like an understatement. It was a crush that developed in our third year, over our shared love of murder mysteries by Muggle authors. Somewhere in between Murder on the Orient Express and The Hound of the Baskervilles, I fell in love or like or whatever you want to call it. It was intense and real and absolutely secret. On the surface, I was Charlotte Lewis, the prefect and exemplary student who never got distracted by something silly like a boy. Of the four Lewis sisters who had attended Hogwarts, I was widely regarded as the one who set the example, which I suppose is unusual for the youngest child. "Wise for her age" was a phrase that was used with regularity in my teachers' letters home to my parents.

In reality, I was merely good at keeping my flights of fancy hidden. Perhaps it was a measure of self-preservation; after all, I had seen how my parents had reacted when my eldest sister, Alice, shut herself in her room for a week when Quidditch heartthrob Ramses Llewellyn announced his engagement to a French Witch Weekly model. I had been at the uncomfortable Christmas dinner when Bianca announced her intention to run off to Scotland with a man she had met three weeks prior. And of course, I had been to countless family dinners with Ophelia and her parade of unsuitable boyfriends.

The lesson I learned from my sisters was this: the less said about romance, the better. And so I took on the mien of a very serious student, which seemed to please everyone and bring a certain amount of relief to my parents. But I had a secret: as devoted as I was to my studies, I spent an equal amount of time analyzing whether a smile from a boy was just a smile or more than a smile. In reality, I was perhaps as silly as my sisters, but better at concealing it.

So when I developed my crush on Aidan, I kept it to myself. I told no one—not even Bea and I tell Bea everything. Even Aidan with his Ravenclaw cleverness had no idea that his friend and sometimes study partner harbored a secret crush. I was cool and calm, but friendly; he was charming enough to leave me second guessing his smiles and reading a novel of meaning into the smallest gestures. It was maddening and dizzying; I loved and loathed it.

When the Yule Ball was announced in our sixth year, my thoughts initially went to Aidan. Perhaps this would be it: this would be the year that he confessed his secret feelings for me. I immediately dismissed this thought as impractical: in all likelihood, I would end up going by myself, or paired off with an unattached acquaintance. It would be awkward and unmemorable and I would spend the entire evening trying to catch Aidan's eye while he danced with some other girl—probably a modelesque blonde who was an amalgam of all of my deepest insecurities.

But I still had that little flicker of hope, which I suppose is why I felt so crushed when I overheard Genevieve Carmichael-Jenkins tell Rosalind Hunter that she had asked Aidan herself.

According to Genevieve they were going "as friends," so my little flicker of hope for a date to the Yule Ball turned into a flicker of hope for a dance. One dance. That was enough to cajole a confession out of him, right?

I ended up going with Bea's younger brother, Rodney, a fifth year with the collective maturity of a third year and the overall attention span of a below-average gnat. He abandoned me shortly after dinner ended, hot in pursuit of his pimply Hufflepuff best friend, who I think was called Spencer. I saw McGonagall scolding the pair of them later in the evening; Rodney had spilled what appeared to be pickled herring down the front of his dress robes and his friend had somehow acquired a fat lip. Part of me wanted to know what strange series of events had resulted in such an incident, but this was overruled by the fact that I didn't particularly want to spend any more time speaking to Rodney if I didn't have to.

I wasn't disappointed in Rodney's abandonment—it just left me free to casually be available for Aidan. We had bumped into each other just before dinner and he had smiled widely and said, "Charlotte! You look stunning!"

Stunning. Me. And I had to admit that I did. I had gone with a strapless scarlet number that transformed me from the strait-laced, shirt-tucked-in, uniform-code abiding prefect into someone who might break the rules with you instead of reporting you to your head of house. I'd finished off the look with a heavy eye makeup and a lipstick as red as my dress.

"You look smashing," Bea had said. "I wouldn't be surprised if you have boys lining up to take Rodney's place by the end of dinner. Seriously, Charlotte, I don't think I've ever seen you look anything like this."

The difference was this: I was dressing like someone who wanted to be noticed.

To a certain extent, it worked: I was not short on dance partners. I caught Lee Jordan giving me the once-over, flashing a cheeky thumbs-up when he noticed that I had seen him looking. Kenneth Toweller's transfixion with my cleavage was such that I contemplated asking him whether he thought he'd lost something. And Montague—the same Montague who only ever spoke with me when I was threatening to write him up—even he asked me if I fancied a dance.

But not Aidan, my friend and sometimes study partner, and object of my longstanding crush. Not Aidan, who had told me I looked stunning (stunning!) before dinner.

Eventually, some hours in to the dancing, I understood why.

The crowd parted for a moment and I saw him and Genevieve Carmichael-Jenkins sitting at a table, laughing. My heart sank, but my stupid little flicker of hope was resolute: friends can talk, can't they?

In that moment, Aidan put his hand over Genevieve's. Her cheeks reddened, but she didn't pull away or do anything to enforce the "just friends" speech she had given to Rosalind Hunter. Instead, she smiled and leaned a little more toward Aidan, who looked as though he didn't want to be anywhere else in the world.

There was nothing to interpret or analyze about that scene. No amount of scarlet satin or red lipstick was going to turn Aidan away from Genevieve's green-eyed gaze.

"All right?" asked my dance partner, a seventh year who'd shown no interest in me until he realized that I had a figure.

"Yeah…" I swallowed and realized my mouth had gone dry. "I just need some air…excuse me…"

"I'll come with you," he offered, likely thinking that "getting some air" was a euphemism for getting some hands-on experience with my newly discovered figure.

"No!" I snapped. "Sorry…no, I just—I need a moment…alone."

I hurried away, shoving my way through the crowd, out the door, and into the garden, hoping that my snappish shutdown was enough of a deterrent that he wouldn't try to follow me.

I looked over my shoulder. He didn't.

I slowed my pace and found myself an unoccupied bench. The garden had been enchanted for the ball so that people could wander outside in their formalwear without coats and jackets. The air still had enough of a wintery bite to cool my flushed cheeks and calm my thrumming heart.

I took some deep breaths—in through my nose, hold of a count of eight, out through my mouth. Bea had taught me that trick on the train to Hogwarts during our first year, when the prospect of leaving home for a school of strangers was so overwhelming that I was already writing the owl to ask my parents to come get me. It was one of the only times Bea had ever seen me upset. As close as we are, Bea had never actually seen me cry, not even on that first awful trainride.

I'm not going to cry now, either.

Initially, I thought I might—the nip in the air and the ache of my heart were almost enough to push me to that point. But those deep breaths calmed me enough that I could collect myself. If anything, I'm disappointed, I told myself. It was an awful lot of time to waste on someone who wasn't going to reciprocate my feelings. Now what was I supposed to do?

Focusing on the practical aspects of the situation—as though I were assessing a business model and not my own emotions—was strangely calming, albeit depressing. I wasn't going to cry, but I also wasn't sure what I was going to do next. I had thought of this night as a turning point, and when things didn't end up changing, I found myself feeling entirely lost. Over a boy, nonetheless.

This is the reason why I don't typically verbalize these thoughts. It gets a bit stupid.

I was lost in my thoughts, staring at nothing and trying not to feel anything, when someone plopped down on the bench next to me.

Fred Weasley. At least, I was pretty sure it was Fred. Fred or George, he was not exactly the person I wanted to see at the moment. I didn't really want to see anyone, to be honest, but it seemed as though I had little choice in the matter. I was not in the mood for jokes or clever conversation, and I had a mind to tell him such as soon as he opened his mouth.

But strangely enough, Fred was silent. When I stole a glance at him, I realized that he looked like he wasn't in the mood for jokes or clever conversation, either. He looked…well, he looked about as happy as I did: slouched and sour. My heart softened just a little and I reckoned I could manage some kindness.

"Can I ask your opinion?" he finally said.

I shrugged.

"Suppose you had a friend who once told you he fancied you," he said. "And suppose you weren't ready to hear that news, so you told him that you weren't ready for a relationship, but you'd let him know when you were. Then, two years later, suppose that you agree to accompany this friend to an event of some importance. Would you then, in front of this very same friend, accept a dare to snog some other bloke and then keep at it like hippogriffs in heat?"

I hadn't exactly known what to expect, but it certainly wasn't this. I cleared my throat.

"Er, well, no, that seems rather inconsiderate."

"EXACTLY!" he said, raising both of his hands as though I had imparted a revelation.

I paused for a moment. "You went with Angelina, yeah?"

"Yep."

I nodded. "Well, I don't know if it makes you feel any better, but at least you got to go with someone you fancied."

His lip twitched upward. "You mean you aren't weak-in-the-knees for Rodney 'The Tosser' Pierce?"

I groaned. I had forgotten about Rodney's short-lived attempt at starting a Hogwarts radio show with his Hufflepuff sidekick. They hadn't even made it to air—McGonagall put a stop to it once she read the flyers.

"Merlin, no, a thousand times no. Rodney was a last resort. Honestly, I would've preferred to have gone with Bea, but she's got some Beauxbatons boy who's keen to show her his baguette. I never stood a chance."

Fred chuckled and his smile almost met his eyes. "What happened to your dream date, then?"

I shrugged. "I wasn't on his short list, I guess."

"Did he see you tonight?"

"Yeah, what's that have to do with it?"

Fred looked pointedly at my dress. "Lewis, with a dress like that, you're on everyone's short list."

My cheeks burned. "Thanks…I think?"

"No, I mean it suits you," he amended. "You look good. Confident. A woman in charge, or whatever they say in those magazines."

I smiled and shrugged. "Well, I guess it didn't work for him."

"Who was it?"

"It doesn't matter," I said, waving him off.

But there is nothing that is more attractive to Fred Weasley than a secret that you have no intention of telling him. His eyes lit up.

"Oh come on, Lewis, I told you about my romantic woes. It's only fair."

"That was your choice."

"You're betraying the trust of our new-forged friendship." He wagged a finger at me. "Was it Diggory? All the girls love Diggory."

I laughed. "I'm not going to tell you."

"Montague? I saw him lurching your way on the dance floor."

I feigned offense. "Really, do you think I have no standards?"

He shrugged. "Love is complicated."

I snorted. "Not that complicated."

He pressed on. "How about Smith? Potter? Weasley—anyone of us? No? Gibson? Jeffers? Cohen? Hoff? Kilbourne?"

I couldn't help it—as careful as I was, as calm and cool as I felt, I flinched when he said Aidan's name.

"It was Kilbourne, wasn't it?" There was no trace of mockery in his voice—it was oddly gentle, almost sweet. I stared at my fingernails, feeling exposed and somewhat sick.

"Hey." He clasped my hand and I chanced a glance at him. "I meant what I said about trust. I'm not going to tell anyone."

I nodded. "No, it's…I've never told anyone. Not even Bea."

"Charlotte Lewis," he said, all mirth vanished from his expression, "believe me when I say that I would die before I betray a dance partner."

I couldn't help myself: I smiled. "Thanks, Fred."

He squeezed my hand and dropped it. "Not at all."

We sat together in silence for a few minutes. The Yule Ball was still in full swing inside. I knew we probably had an hour or so left.

"So what are we going to do?" he asked suddenly.

"About what?"

"Our mutual heartbreaks, Lewis. We've bared our souls to each other, now we have to do something about it."

I shrugged. "I'm not sure there's much to be done."

"'Course there is," said Fred. "You can always do something."

"Like what? What could possibly improve either one of our situations, apart from a love potion?"

"Well, there's a thought…"

"Could you honestly feel good about any relationship that originated from a love potion?"

"Depends on the sex, I s'pose." The sparkle was back in his eye, though, and I could tell he was trying to get a reaction from me.

"Ignoring that," I said and his grin turned wicked. "The sum of the situation is that there is no solution, other than moving on."

"Or…" He paused for a moment and tilted his head to the side, seemingly lost in thought.

"Or…?"

He smiled. It was the sort of smile that told me that the next thing to come out of his mouth was going to be a really, truly terrible idea.

"We try the next best thing," he said.

"And that would be…?"

"Jealousy."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Think about it, Lewis," he said with a slightly manic glint in his eyes. "People desperately want what they cannot have. It's nature. The surest way to make something desirable is to make it unavailable."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"You make yourself unavailable to Kilbourne and I make myself unavailable to Angelina and suddenly, they can't resist us."

"You're not serious."

"Serious as Spattergroit."

"Even if that plan worked—which I doubt it will—you're missing a key detail in that neither one of us has any prospects."

"That's where the genius part of this plan comes in."

"Oh, there's a genius part of this plan?"

"Cheeky." He swatted at me. "You've contributed nothing to this brilliance, Lewis, but I'm going to share my plan with you anyway, out of the mountainous respect I have for our budding friendship."

A smile tugged at my lips. "I'm honored."

He paused for effect and lowered his voice to a whisper. "The genius part of this plan is that the relationship that has made the two of us unavailable will be a ruse."

He was clearly expecting some sort of reaction from me.

"Wait…so your brilliant plan to woo Angelina is to trick some other girl into being your fake girlfriend so that Angelina will fall in love with you? Are you mad? Who on earth would agree to that?"

"Perhaps another like-minded individual who is struggling with a similar problem of her own." He looked meaningfully at me.

"Wait…you're not—"

"I am."

"You can't be serious."

"Deadly."

"Fred Weasley, you're asking me to be your fake girlfriend."

"Spot on."

I paused a moment to try and collect my thoughts. "You realize that this is never going to work?"

"Well, not with that attitude," he said, quirking an eyebrow.

"I mean…it's insane. Completely insane."

He shrugged. "Could be. But what other options have we got?"

I hesitated.

"I mean, worst case scenario: it doesn't work," continued Fred. "So what? So we have a fake breakup to end our fake relationship. No harm done."

He was crazy. His plan was crazy. And yet, I hesitated. Why? I really can't say. Maybe it was the thought of just sitting back and doing nothing. Maybe it was the memory of Genevieve's pink cheeks and Aidan's hand over hers. Maybe it was the way Fred's eyes glinted in the half-dark of the garden, hinting at possibility and promising me something I didn't quite understand. Maybe it was all of that. Maybe it was fate.

"What's your plan?" I said finally.

Fred grinned and glanced at his watch. "Come back to the ballroom when the next fast song starts and I'll show you."

"Can you give me more information?" I asked as he stood.

"Now where's the fun in that?"

"But where should I—"

"I'll find you."

My stomach flip-flopped as I watched him go back into the ballroom. I had no idea what I had agreed to and I was fairly certain that this was going to turn into a spectacular disaster.

But at the same time, I was also certain that I was tired of being careful.

And so, when the tempo picked up, I rose from my bench and made my way back to the ballroom. I opened the door and let the noise and the heat wash over me, blocking out my misgivings and the sound of my pounding heart. I made my way back toward the dance floor. Fred had said he'd find me, and venturing into the thick of the noise and the heat seemed like the best way to make that happen. I spotted Bea in the crowd, dancing energetically alongside her Beauxbatons date. I made my way toward her.

"Where have you been?" she shouted over the music.

"Needed some air."

She nodded. "Where's Rodney?"

I shrugged and she rolled her eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Charlotte, he promised me he wasn't going to be a git."

"S'all right, he's—"

I was interrupted by a pair of hands grabbing my shoulders and spinning me around. It was Fred, looking flushed and out of breath, as though he'd been dancing for the last twenty minutes instead of sharing secrets and hatching plots in the garden with me.

"Charlotte Lewis!" he shouted. "Don't tell me you are going to let this ball end without doing me the honor of a dance!"

I laughed. "Really, Weasley? That's the line you're going for?"

He grinned and pulled me into a wicked quick-step without waiting for an answer. I laughed as I tried to keep up, spinning around the other dancers and trying not to think of the precarious height of my heels. At the very end of the song, he swung me into a low dip and again my stomach dropped to the floor and my breath whooshed out of me. But this time, his face seemed a little closer to mine and he was holding me a little longer than was strictly necessary.

We were both out of breath and laughing and neither one of us knew that we were playing with fire.