An: Hello, hello. First the important things: I've written some parts in french and I know my french isn't the best so I tried to use just a small amount of it but I needed to use some. Still bear with me there and I tried explaining everything while writing it.

Next: yay some Drama happens, and don't worry it will get better as it goes, I just needed the last chapters so you could get to know Alices character and her behaviour a bit better. Now the next chapters, including this one are all about plot development :3

Now lean back, read, enjoy, vote and comment. The usual, as you know.

The first task was constantly coming nearer. Alice, Amara and Cedric were using their evenings to ponder on what the first could possibly be. The badges hadn't stopped by now and it had made it only worse that about two weeks before the first task a article in the Daily Prophet had been published by Rita Skeeter. It had only been about Harry, which had made even more furious than before. Cedric hadn't been mentioned at all in this article, even though it should have been about all champions. The students were now quoting the things written about Harry in the article, as they were highly ridiculous. Rita Skeeter was known for her over-the.top kind of writing and that she often left out important things and glossed over it with ridiculous ideas like that Harry had been crying because of his parents during the interview. Now, though, the Task was to be on Tuesday and the Saturday before that would be a Hogsmeade weekend. That was why the trio was busy discussing what they were going to do on that particular day.

"You should go on a date with Cho," suggested Alice, sitting on the floor and leaning back onto the sofa.

"You think so too? I was actually considering that, too," said Cedric, blushing slightly.

"You're way too shy when it comes to that girl, mate," said Amara and grinned. "Like a little girl."

"Hold your tongue, grey, or else I won't be helping you with your charms homework," countered Cedric.

"Okay, okay. I'm not going to say anything," said Amara, pretending to sip her mouth shut.

"Anyway, you should go and ask her. In fact, you should go right now. She's probably in the library or something like that. I think I remember seeing her entering it," said Alice.

"I'll go with Cho if you go and ask Fred. Deal?" said Cedric suddenly.

"Really? Is that necessary?" asked Alice, playing with her fingers nervously.

"Yes it is. You haven't talked much lately, because you always had something different to do. Like meeting up with Hermione, for example. Or learning for lessons or homework or anything like that. So I want you to spend the whole day with him," said Cedric looking at her seriously.

Alice looked at him. She knew what he meant by saying she met with Hermione. Her 'lessons' were doing just fine, even though some of the spells were still quite flamboyant, most were going well. She actually hoped that everything would just be normal, like it should be. No more explosions, no more funny things, just normal.

"Well, if you're going to insist on it..." said Alice and sighed.

"Perfect! Let's go," said Cedric and stood up.

"Are you two gits going to leave me here?" said Amara.

"Well, you could come and ask George if he wants to spend time with you," suggested Alice while looking at her friend. Amara jumped to her feet with a swift motion and stretched.

"What are we waiting for then?" said Amara and stormed out of the Common room. Alice chuckled and left behind her.

They found Cho in the library. The twins were there too, much to Alice's surprise. Normally they didn't hang out in the library. Amara had already gone off to George, while Alice and Cedric were still standing at the entrance.

"You go first," said Alice shooing him off.

"Yes, yes. I'll go. But you have to go too, and woe you if not," said Cedric.

"Woe you? Merlin, Cedric. Where do you get those expressions from?" said Alice and laughed. Then she wished him luck and went off to talk to Fred, who had been watching them anyway.

"Hey," she said. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," said Fred, sounding kind of different than normal.

"Okaaay....if you say so," said Alice, unconsciously starting to play with her hair. "This Saturday is the first Hogsmeade weekend, right?"

"Yep," said Fred and looked at her.

"How about we go there....together?" she said, internally face palming herself for sounding so awkward.

"Sounds good to me. George and I could finally show you Zonko's and Honeyduke's," said Fred.

"Without me, Freddy," chimed George in. "I'm going to spend my day with Ms Grey here." Amara started giggling beside him, which, to Alice, sounded really ridiculous.

Fred looked at Amara and then at his brother. Then he looked at Alice.

"Then it will be just the two of us, I guess. If that's okay for you, I mean," said Fred, going through his hair with one hand.

"It's okay for me if it's okay for you. I mean it's obviously okay for you, otherwise you wouldn't have asked. So yeah it's okay for me and I'm going to stop talking now," said Alice, turning red.

Fred looked kind of confused at first but then started laughing.

"Are you seriously laughing at me?" asked Alice offended.

"Not directly...or maybe yes I do," said Fred, but upon seeing her face he added quickly, "Not in a mean way, though. I thought this was rather cute just now."

This made Alice's face only turn even redder than before and an awkward silence developed between them.

"Hey were you able to get an answer from Bagman yet?" asked Alice suddenly, trying to change the subject and get the conversation going.

"Not yet, but we hope to speak to him before or after the first task," said Fred. Alice sat down and looked at him.

"What are we going to do if he does not want to talk to us?"

"I don't know yet, but I hope it will not come to that. He owes us that money, heck he wanted to bet with us. It's just not fair," said Fred and sat down too.

The two kept on talking a long time about the joke shop and anything, until it was way too late and they were shoed out off the library. Then they wished each other goodnight and went to their respective dormitories.

Alice was laying awake for a long time in her bed, just staring at the ceiling and thinking. He had called her cute or rather he had called her awkward behaviour cute. Maybe Saturday would turn out to quite good, up until now she hadn't been so sure about that. After all it wasn't often that she spend some alone time with Fred and when it happened lately, she was always way too flustered to act normal around him.

'This is all Diggory's fault,' she thought to herself.

Had he not encouraged her in the first place, she wouldn't act like that now. After all, it had been Amara and Cedric who had told her that Fred might like her too. Alice sighed and closed her eyes. She just had to wait and see how Hogsmeade was going to be.

It was a nice day for going to Hogsmeade and Alice was really excited to finally see the wizarding village. She heard enough about the shops to look forward to Honeydukes and Zonko's and the three broomsticks. She really wanted to taste some of the Butterbeer, the twins had tried to describe to her. She was waiting in the entrance Hall for Fred, where they had agreed to meet. After several minutes of standing there alone, Fred showed up with an apologetic look.

"Sorry for keeping you waiting."

"It's okay," said Alice. "You're here now, so we can go."

"Yeah, let's not wait any longer," agreed Fred and led her out of the castle.

The walk to Hogsmeade wasn't as long as Alice had expected it to be and Fred was certainly helping with this. He was talking the whole way, making her laugh as he wasn't talking about anything important really. He was talking about old jokes he and his brother had played at other students or made fun of some teachers. It was just the way he was trying to keep her entertained that made Alice's heart nearly flow over with joy. This was already off to a good start and she hoped that it could only get better.

"Where do you want to go first?" asked Fred as they reached the village.

Alice looked around, fascinated by all the magic she could practically feel all around her. The houses were kind of old looking, but to Alice they looked cute. She loved old looking houses; they had a nice flair to them.

"How about Honeydukes? I really want to eat some of the chocolate balls again, you sent me ones," suggested Alice.

"Alright then, Honeydukes it is," said Fred and showed her the way.

Honeydukes was full of students, but the smell was just fantastic. A sweet scent of chocolate and the heavy scent of honey were in the air, together with other scents Alice couldn't quite describe.

"Here are the chocoballs," said Fred from the back of the shop and handed them to her. "I already paid them," he added with a wink.

"Oh you shouldn't...but thank you," said Alice and smiled at him. "What are those?" she asked, pointing at a pakage of sweets that read 'Fizzing Whizzbees'.

"Those are Fizzing Whizzbees. They are kind of sour, but they make you float some inches over the floor for a short amount of time," explained Fred.

"Oh wicked!" said Alice and was already off to pay them.

When they had bought all they wanted they left the shop, their jackets full of sweets.

The next stop was Zonko's, where Fred explained everything Alice needed to know about joking and joke articles to her.

"Everything we have and everything we did, we could do thanks to Zonko's, basically. We owe him, I think," said Fred. Alice laughed at that.

"We can certainly give him some money, if we are here anyway," she suggested and Fred agreed to that happily.

Alice bought some more sugar quills, as she was using them now quite often during the lessons. She was thankful for the twins introducing them to her, as the sugar helped quite a lot to concentrate during a tiring lesson of history of magic. Fred bought some more dungbombs.

"You can never have enough," he said, upon seeing Alice's questioning look.

"I haven't said anything," said the girl and left the shop with him.

On their way to the Three Broomsticks, where they would meet up with George, Amara and Ron, who was apparently angry and not talking to him, they met a flustered looking boy. He was obviously from Beauxbatons, as he was wearing those flattery sky blue robes. He had blonde curly hair and big sky blue eyes, which made him look like an angel boy. He seemed kind of lost so Alice approached him smiled.

"Are you okay?" she asked, but the only looked at her confused.

"Uhm...no English?" he said with a rather helpless look. Alice understood right way. The boy seemed too young to be here because of the Tournament, maybe first or second year.

'He could be the brother of someone who wanted to enter,' thought Alice. It was clear though, that he was not fluent in English.

"Ce n'est pas un probléme. Est-ce que tu as perdue?" asked Alice, trying to find out if the boy was lost.

The face of the boy lit up immediately and he nodded.

"Où vas-tu?" asked Alice again, this time asking where he wanted to go.

"Le Three Broomsticks. Mon frère c'est là," said the boy, his eyes now shining with tears.

Alice had been right with her assumption. The boy was looking for his brother, who was probably waiting for him at the three broomsticks. Or they had been going together and he had lost him on the way.

"Common tu t'appele?" asked Alice,wanting to know his name.

"Ciel," said the boy.

"D'accord Ciel. Allons-y ensemble," said Alice, telling him that they would go there together.

The boy nodded again, seemingly relieved that he had found help along the way. Just as they wanted to get going the name of the boy was called from behind them.

"Ciel!" shouted another boy, running to them.

"Où étais-tu?" asked the older looking boy, who was obviously his big brother.

However, he got no answer as he was tackled into a hug by the small Ciel. The older boy looked at Fred and Alice. "What happened?" he asked, with a thick French accent.

"I think he was lost," answered Alice. "We just wanted to go with him to the Three Broomsticks to search you."

"You talked to him? In French?" asked the boy.

"Jup. I learned it some time ago, although it's not the best," said Alice with a smile.

"Doesn't matter. Thank you for wanting to help him," said the boy and told his brother to thank them too.

Ciel looked at Alice and thanked her. Then the two went off together.

"You can speak French?" asked another voice from behind Alice.

She turned around just to see Cedric standing there.

"Yes I do. Where's Cho?" she asked, smiling at her friend.
She wasn't aware of the frown developing on Fred's face, though.

"She met a friend on the way and told me to go on to the Three Broomsticks without her, she would join later. It seemed quite important, so I did what she told me to do. Now back to you. Where did you learn it?"

"In school, that is. It was an extra subject I could take. I wasn't the best in it, though it sure is enough to get a conversation going," explained Alice with a smile.

"You mean a muggle school? Is there a great difference from muggle schools to Hogwarts? I mean you where in one for quite some time," said Cedric interested.

"Yeah it's different, but it's a nice difference. I mean I like it here, so that's the most important thing," said Alice.

Cedric than saw Cho and went on to the Three Broomsticks, but not before noticing Fred's look. Obviously Alice hadn't become aware of it as she just told him goodbye as he went on.

'Oh that didn't look good at all', thought Cedric and hoped for his friend that it looked worse than it was going to be.

"You told Diggory that you became a witch just recently?" said Fred quietly.

Alice turned around and looked at him. "Yes I did. I mean he was going to find out about it sooner or later so I just thought it would be okay to do it sooner," said the girl.

"Alice you don't even know him for that long. And you haven't even told us that you told him. Merlin knows who is aware of that now, maybe Cedric has told the whole school by tomorrow," said Fred getting louder by the second.

"Calm down. He knows it since a while and he hasn't told anyone. Seriously Fred, trust in my ability to judge people, will you? I know I can trust Cedric," said Alice, sounding confused. His sudden outburst didn't sit well with her.

"Well, I trust you but I don't trust Diggory. But go on, do what you want. You should've known better, though. Dumbledore told you to not tell anyone and here you go telling the first person you meet," said Fred through gritted teeth.

"How dare you speak to me like that, Fred Weasley. I know what I'm doing and I know when I can trust people. What I don't know is, what's going on with you know. And I don't want to think about it either. Go to the Three Broomsticks but without me!" said Alice before stalking back to the castle.

Fred looked after her, already face palming himselfinternally.

"Merlin, what have I done?" he mumbled to himself and pushed hishands deep into the pockets of his trousers.