Round 13

Mandatory Prompt: Treat Box Hippogriff: Write about someone who is hard to approach but loyal when befriended.

Optional Prompts: (emotion) anger, (phrase) drop of a hat, (sound) explosion

Team: Chudley Cannons

Position: Chaser #3

Lee Jordan spent almost his entire first year thinking that he was friends with his two dorm mates, Fred and George Weasley. It wasn't a ridiculous thing to think about. The twins seemed to befriend everyone they came across. With one conversation they made you feel like you were in on their jokes along with them even if you were on the receiving end of their latest prank.

And Lee loved pranks. He always congratulated them on their genius and told them about the secret passages he found. He never thought anything of not being invited into their planning sessions or their explorations of the castle. They were twins and he figured their bond was just that close.

He never thought they weren't friends. Until the end of first year. It was just before exams so Lee had spent a lot more time in the library. He wasn't a studious student but he wasn't as smart that he didn't have to study or as carefree that he didn't care about what his scores turned out.

When he was walking back to the common room a loud explosion echoed through the corridor. Lee looked around and noticed a door that wasn't completely closed. He inched closer while looking around. It seemed no one else had heard the noise because there were no footsteps coming closer.

Still, Lee's curiosity was raised and he wanted to see what was going on. Was it an illegal duel? Did someone smuggle in a magical creature? Or was it something boring like a relationship spat?

When Lee peered into the unused classroom, he discovered that it was none of those things. Inside were his two dormmates. One twin was picking up a chair and threw it against the wall where it hit with a bang and slid down to land on the first chair he had apparently threw. The other was sitting on top of one of the desks holding a piece of parchment in his hands, appearing to read that with a frown on his face instead of trying to calm his twin down.

Both the frown and the anger shown surprised Lee. He had begun to think the twins only had three modes: happy, mischievous, and sleepy. The thought of leaving entered his mind. This was a private moment obviously, and he thought he should leave them to it. But then the twin throwing chairs spun around to his brother and started talking and Lee stayed rooted to the spot.

"Maybe we should run away," the twin said.

Lee's eyes widened and leaned into closer. Why would the twins need to run away? What was happening with his happy-go-lucky friends?

"Where would we go? How would we get there? We don't have money and everywhere we would go would simply send us back. Then we would be in trouble for running away and for missing exams," the twin sitting on the desk said calmly.

This calm, sensible, serious side was perhaps what really shocked Lee to the core. He didn't think the twins could even be serious if they tried never mind think anything that wasn't pranks through. Lee looked around to make sure that no one was coming down the corridor and then settled down on the floor to listen more intently to this secret discussion. It was a safer bet that Lee wouldn't make noise or that the twins wouldn't accidently look at the door and see part of Lee's body.

"Maybe I'll just go then," the angry twin was saying now. "It wouldn't matter would it? They would think that you were the both of us still. That we were playing a prank. Or maybe they wouldn't even notice that!"

His words ended in a shout and then it sounded as if he hit something.

"I would notice." That was the other twin, Lee realized. Not simply because it was obviously an answer to the angrier one, but because he enunciated his words a bit more clearly.

There was silence for a while. Lee wanted to know what was going on, but didn't dare peek through the cracked door again. That was just asking for discovery. Which was the last thing that Lee wanted. He was discovering a different side to who he thought was his friends, but it wasn't quite enough. He needed to find out more.

There was a bit of shuffling and then, "How hard is it to see that we are two different people? We have two different bodies!"

He sounded sad, Lee realized with a bit of guilt. He was one of those people who didn't know who was who. Even now he wasn't sure if the one with the anger was Fred or George. He always called them the twins and didn't bother to learn who was who.

They were talking again, but Lee had invaded their privacy too much already. Slowly, so as to not get caught, Lee got up and wondered his way back up to his dorm. He had a lot of thinking to do.

Over the last month of school, Lee didn't change his behavior around the twins and they didn't act any differently either. They acted so good, Lee sometimes had to wonder if he made up the whole thing in some weird dream.

But Lee knew better. He was watching them closely, covertly. He wanted to know who was George and who was Fred. He wanted to be a better friend to them.

And slowly, he began to learn. It was Fred with the temper, the one throwing chairs that night. He was louder, rasher, more prone to get into fights with Slytherins. George was slower to act, never one to talk first, more prone to open a book.

They weren't terribly different. There were a reason people confused them so much. They loved to laugh, to play pranks, to explore and to goof off. Telling them apart physically was impossible. It was more in the way George spoke a little clearer, the way Fred used his hands when he was speaking that told anyone who bothered to look who was who.

They wrote that summer. Not much. They didn't meet up, but Lee didn't expect to. Not now.

The beginning of second year was when things changed. Lee addressed them by their names. He asked George to play chess, Fred to play Gobstones, and both to play exploding snap. He stopped saying the twins, or the Weasley twins. He corrected other people when they mixed them up.

Fred and George didn't say anything, but their behavior around Lee changed. He realized that this is when they really became friends. He was included in the behind scenes planning of the pranks. He wondered around the castle after hours with them. It became a game for Lee to find a secret passage that Fred and George hadn't.

At the drop of a hat, they would be by Lee's side if he needed it. They even took the blame for him a couple of times. They knew that Lee was more worried about his school record and his grades, and they respected it. Others in their year, noticed something was different, and asked how they could also be Fred and George's friend like that. It was easy to tell even from the outside that being their friend was special, and they wanted to be a part of it. They wanted to be apart of their secrets, or protected from their pranks.

Lee never told though. He was lucky and he knew it. He wasn't going to mess that up by betraying their trust. And no one who couldn't tell them apart wasn't worthy enough for them anyway.