Title: Good Times
Rating/Warnings: PG13
Length: 748 words
Summary: A party at the Leaky Cauldron carries on at 93 Diagon Alley.
Author Note: Written for Challenge Four at Round Two of fwhg_ldws

Good Times

The Leaky Cauldron is packed for Hannah’s pub-warming party. It’s the best party Hermione has been to in a long time, because it feels like a group of friends who’ve found an excuse to have a good night out, rather than a celebration of the end of the war like most parties since last May have felt like.

Ron and Harry are leaning against the bar, with Ron’s arm around Harry’s shoulders and Harry’s arm around Ron’s waist. Hermione’s not sure if they’re together or if they’re looking for girls together. She doesn’t care either way, but she’s curious. They seem closer since she broke up with Ron and having kissed both of them she wonders what it would be like for them to kiss each other.

She is sure that they’re drunk.

They’re not the only ones.

George hasn’t stopped nattering away about a new product idea for Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes since Lee sat down opposite him, but credit where credit is due: however much alcohol he’s consumed he still manages to make sense. Unless that just means that Hermione is drunker than she thought she was.

“Like the Gespa in an omniocular,” George is saying now.

“Nah,” says Fred. “A variation on a Memory Modification Charm might do it though.”

Despite herself, Hermione is intrigued. “With Radford’s Fifth?”

“Yeah.” Fred finishes his pint and grins.

“Oi!” Everyone turns to look at Hannah, who has climbed on top of the bar. “It was fantastic seeing you all,” she begins.

“But get out!” several voices yell.

Hannah nods and smiles, and Hermione appreciates that Hannah has got to clean up for the proper opening of the renovated Leaky Cauldron tomorrow, but she doesn’t want the night to be over yet.

Apparently neither does Fred.

He stands up on the bench he’s sharing with Hermione, bows to Hannah, then announces, “Party continues at 93 Diagon Alley!”

Almost everyone follows him to the twins’ flat above their shop, where Dean adjusts the wireless until loud music fills the living room and a few others push aside the furniture to make space for dancing. A gaggle of girls take over the kitchen. Ginny, tired after a day of Quidditch trials, crashes out in one bedroom and a giggling Parvati disappears into another with Terry Boot.

Hermione can’t hear herself think, let alone the others talking, so it’s a relief when Fred ushers her into the quiet bathroom, where she grabs a towel, and makes herself comfortable in the bath. Fred copies her, sitting facing her in the tub, George sits on the toilet (with the lid down), and Lee takes the floor by George’s feet.

They’ve not been talking about the possible applications of Radford’s Fifth for ten minutes before George drags Lee out, to show him a demonstration in the workshop downstairs, and Hermione giggles.

“What?” says Fred.

“Nothing. Just. I think George has a thing for Lee.”

“What?” Fred says again, bemused.

“A thing.” She hugs her knees to her chest. “Is George gay? Not that you need to tell me.”

“What?” Fred sits up straight and twists around to look at the half-open door. “George and Lee? Do you think so?”

“Well, lately I’ve been thinking Ron and Harry, so I may have homosexuality on the brain.”

Fred snorts and turns back to face her. “Ron isn’t gay. Bill definitely isn’t, Charlie definitely is, Percy is definitely odd but probably straight, and Ron definitely isn’t.” He leans back. “As for George; we’re twins. If he was, I’d be, and I’m not.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she tells him in a lecturing tone. “You like tea, but George prefers coffee. George loves coming up with ideas, but you love making them work. You’re not the same. So maybe you’re not and George is.”

“He would have told me.”

“Maybe he is and doesn’t know.”

“If he doesn’t know then I doubt he’s getting up to much with Lee right now.”

“Maybe you are and you don’t know,” says Hermione, annoyed because she doesn’t like being wrong.

“Three of us out of seven? What’re the odds?”

Fred sits up, his warm knees pressing against hers, leans forward, and kisses her. His lips move against hers gently at first, as if tasting her to see if girls are for him, then firmly, as if sure now that he likes it.

Hermione definitely likes it.

He pulls away slightly, grinning, and his lips brush against hers as he says, “Definitely not gay.”