I'll Catch You (A Harry Potter Fan Fiction)

Holiday Heartbreak

Authors Note: Hello all! I'm a long-time HP fan fiction writer, who primarily used the HPFF platform to publish my work. Given the instability of that sites future, I figured I'd cross-post in order to allow my current readers, and new readers, an opportunity to complete my stories. I started writing in 2013, when I was a teenager in high-school, and had a not-so brief hiatus when beginning uni. During the course of the madness that has been 2020, I fell back into my work for the sole purpose of completing the stories I'd started. Please have a little patience for my early chapters, as they were written at the very beginning of my writing experience, and I have since grown. I've tried to re-write them, but overall don't really want to change the horrible pacing I might have had. I hope you can appreciate the growth in my work, and overall my love of Harry Potter. Enjoy!

Those two boys had been constantly causing trouble from the time I had arrived at the school. I, too, was in Gryffindor house and without fail, they could always be found scheming in the common room in their signature seats. Their matching armchairs were propped far enough away from the crowd to keep their mutterings unheard, but close enough to spark the interest of some poor first year, who would inevitably be used as a test-dummy for whatever nonsense they were cooking up this time. Forever were they testing practical wizarding prank material on the younger grades, but the kids never seemed to mind. Fred and George Weasley were, by definition, cool.

But I had never in my time seen them this stumped before. They sat closer to the fire tonight, the chill coming off of the stone walls a bit more dank than usual. Cold seeped as wet slush-like snow pelted down on the windows harder than it had all year, but no one's spirits were dampened. The Yule Ball was coming up and anxiousness was in the air.

"Fred, you're doing it all wrong, you git!"George said to his brother, taking a pile of what seemed to be toffee and pulling it towards himself. "We already have plenty of Engorgement toffees; we need something different.... something new."

"Well I don't know what else we can do, mate! We have some for boils, fever, puking, AND engorgement! That's enough to get you out of class, don't you think?"Fred slumped back in his chair, fuming.

George separated the toffees into two groups and gave one of them to Fred. "Sorry Fred, I didn't mean it. Don't you think we need a touch more variety though? Something to keep the hospital wing on their toes? I'm just worried the professors are going to start catching on..."

Fred furrowed his brow and picked up a toffee noncommittally. "I agree with you George, but I don't know what else we can do." He dropped the toffee with a light 'thud' on the table, and gave the signature Weasley half-smirk. "And you're forgiven" he gave a quick wink to his twin, and then turned back to the candy. You could see the gears turning in their minds, and I was beginning to worry that smoke would start pouring out of their ears.

The Weasley twins were unrecognized geniuses. Unlike Percy, resident Weasley git, or Hermione Granger, they didn't bask in the glory of their academic achievements. They didn't earn the role of prefect, and their intelligence didn't fully come across in their grades. Perhaps if they had thought more about schoolwork, and less about pranking, their smarts would be recognized. But you couldn't deny the level of genius, magically or in entrepreneurship, that those two had.

How many sixteen year olds did you know who managed to design a whole line of magical products, and run a successful (and from what I gather, lucrative) business from the comfort of a common room and some unoccupied lavatories?