1 Unread Message - A Pansmione tale

War

I woke up, sweating. Another nightmare. Oh god, I really need to do something about this. I looked over at my muggle alarm clock and saw that it was only ten to six. I decided to get up and start making breakfast and had just climbed out of bed when I heard a thump at the door. I looked outside and three house-elves scurried off. I frowned, unhappy that the school was still using them as slaves when I remembered that after the war Professor McGonagall had started paying them a weekly wage and offering them sick days.

I looked at the parcel and was intrigued by its flat, rectangular shape. 

"Oi, Gin! Come look at this!" I called, receiving a muffled groan in response.

I walked into the bedroom and prodded her,  trying to get a cohesive response out of her. Instead, all I got was a loud snore. I walked around the bed and pushed at her sleeping form until she rolled off the bed with a thud. 

"Ow! Mione, why'd ya have ter do tha'," she complained.

"Why do you have an Irish accent? And I would show you why I woke you up if you got off the floor and stopped whinging," I raised my eyebrow at her

"Sorry, It's just tha' whenever I wake op in de murning, I go all Irish on ye, coz of me ancestry ya see?" she got up and followed me outside, her Irish accent slowly fading as she jabbered contentedly away.

"Look!" I said, pointing to the parcel, "We should drag it inside to open it"

"Hermione, are you a witch or what? Wingardium Leviosa!"

***

 Soon enough, the parcel was inside, and Ginny and I sat looking at it for a moment. We then began to tear at the paper like some hungry dogs looking for food. A few minutes later when we finally finished unwrapping, we saw the back of a picture frame. We flipped it over, and I almost burst into tears.

Staring up at his, with his signature smirk on his face, was Fred Weasley.

"Why Hermione, I didn't know I had that effect on you!" His voice said, and that did it. Both Ginny and I broke down into tears and stayed that way until an hour later.

Fred had finally stopped trying to use some of his old jokes to convince us to stop crying (they only made us cry harder) when the bell for the second period rang, leaving us stunned at how long we'd been wallowing in misery for. 

"That was the most exhausting three hours of my life," Fred commented, " and I wasn't even the one crying!"

Suddenly Fred's portrait was the most hilarious thing in the world to us, and it took a good five minutes before we calmed down enough to mount Fred on the wall with a Permanent Sticking Charm. "Now you'll be here forever, Fred! You get to look at Hogwarts all day, and you can roam freely around the portraits."

"I never really pictured being stuck in school for all eternity. Can you put a picture of a quidditch pitch and some brooms somewhere for me?" Ginny and I rolled our eyes; it was good to have Fred back. 

"Now we have to figure out a password to get into the flat," I suggested.

"What if it wasn't a password? What if it was a dance? or a movement or we had to touch the painting somewhere-"

"Hell no!" Fred complained, "I don't want to have to look at you two dance a weird jig in front of me every time you try to get in! Why don't  I at the start of each day, decide on that day's password or passkey. We could do it weekly or something maybe"

"Yeah," agreed Ginny, " but I wanna have some say in it. Hermione, what do you think?"

"What if each day it was a new person's turn to set it, so I could do it today, say, and you could do it tomorrow, Gin, and so on"

"I like it!" Ginny replied enthusiastically, with Fred nodding behind her. 

With that settled, we drew straws to see who would go first. It turned out that it was Ginny's turn today. I groaned.

"Well, Fred will know this one," Ginny said with a smirk, " you have to do a traditional Irish jig to get inside today!"

"Oh, God. Well, I guess you have to show me how to do it," I complained.

***

Two periods later, Ginny and I had taken a walk along the lakeside to calm down, and then thoroughly embarrassed ourselves in front of Fred's newly mounted portrait.

"You know, Ginny, sometimes I really hate you! Now I'm going to have to come up with something evil for tomorrow that YOU have to do. This is war Ginny, war."