Don't he and Fred wander into the woods with some Beauxbatons girls during the 94/95 school year?Would love to respond to this in particular, but for the sake of readers who want the plot to be a "surprise," I'll let it go for now. Tee hee hee.Thanks for being a consistent reviewer!

Me, too! This was a fun scene to write.Thanks for being such a consistent reviewer!

"See you next Tuesday" is British slang for a very offensive epithet. Fred was not offering an invitation to a fight. Nor did the Muggle girls interpret it as such.See = CYou = UNext = NTuesday = Well, you can guess the last, I think.   And here is my absolute favorite website for British slang, if anyone's interested: http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/   Hope you enjoy it!

Oh.  (hands on hips)  Well, now I'm almost disappointed.  I was envisioning the Ottery St. Catchpole version of the Sharks vs the Jets.  (From the show/movie West Side Story)LOL on me!I still see an actual fight in Annie's future over this.  I can't imagine those girls will let it go.  Worse yet, without an actual appointment, I fear Annie won't have anyone to help her, or that she'll have the wrong people try to help her and she'll get in a worse jam.

Re: Stephen... very observant of you, my lovely

:)Andy is a sweetie, but I agree with you. Who could compare to George? Sigh.

Thank you! I am posting new chapters as fast as I am able - our wonderful admins are inundated with new stuff to read lately, so I have to sit on my hands and be patient along with you.

It would be nice to see Andy again sometime, wouldn't it? (cackling evilly). With Andy and the bar scene, I wanted to demonstrate that Annie is becoming an attractive young woman in her own right, especially so to people who see her for who she is, not for her history (or rather, her mother's history, like the Ottery residents do). It's not like George is her one and only option, here.A little patience on your part is required to learn about the surprise. When I originally wrote the next section, the following 3 chapters were all one big chapter. But since together they surpass 10,000 words, I've had to split it up (I can't manage to get the file upload thingy to work, so it's cut and paste, baby). Long story short, the surprise will be revealed in Chapter 15.Thanks ever so for your reviews! I love it!

I think it must be genetic as well (I'm assuming you mean gene?). This discussion will be revisted much (much much) later in the story, because I find it fascinating!! Thanks for the review :)

Thank you! And I never meant to imply Fred and George couldn't come up with everything on their own by it - they certainly could have. But I just couldn't resist having Annie plant the seeds for so many of the funny and cool things the twins were responsible for in the canon texts: lock picking, skiving snackboxes, and the WWW to name a few. I like that she contributes so much to their lives, even though she's a Muggle.And George is such a darling! Sigh. :)

Thanks! Throughout the story, I tried to come up with examples of how muggle technology rivals, and even sometimes surpasses, what magic can do. It helps that George seems to share a fascination with gadgets and muggles with his father.

This stands as one of my favorite chapters. I think it really establishes a special connection between Annie and George that isn't there with Fred, much as she cares for him, too.

Annie is a strong girl in many ways, but her Achilles heel is her self esteem, poor thing. When people put you down for so long, it's hard not to give them credence, even when in your rational mind you know it's crap. And imagine if your best friends could do magic, and you couldn't - what a blow!

I couldn't leave Annie completely alone and at the mercy of the Ottery denizens (especially Stephen) without her being warped into a criminal, I figured. She needed Jane to keep her focused and grounded while the twins were away. The plastic wrap was a throwback to my college dorm days. Ha ha ha.I love your phrase, "Even when their penis isn't getting any more than talk." Brilliant! Well put! :)

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. And Stephen's crew are proving to be a poor substitute for Fred and George. Poor, lonesome Annie :(

Tee hee hee. Annie always tries to one-up the twins. The letters were a riot to write - I'm glad you're enjoying them!

Thanks! These early parts were so much fun to write.

Thank you so much for your kind review!Annie's mother had been a heroin addict for several years by the time she abandoned her newborn in search of a fix in 1978. People like that aren't long for this earth. BUT... having said that... the answer to your question is yes, in a manner of speaking.Sorry to be so frustratingly cryptic. You don't have too much longer now before all is revealed. Hang in there!

Thanks!Who knows what makes a Squib a Squib? If you believe (the younger) Fred's  theory, all of us have the "magic" genes within us - only a smaller percentage of the population have them turned on. Genetics is always something of a random crap-shoot, anyway. One of the several stories I'm toying with writing after this is Ben's. Who knows when or if I'll get around to it, but it is something I think about.

Umbridge did force them to put their devious minds to work for them, didn't she? But George and Annie were more than up to the task!And now that George is finally free of Hogwarts... and of age... and fully licensed for apparation... hmmm. (laughing conspiratorially).

It wasn't my fault George and Annie were forced apart for two years... blame JKR  (ha ha ha)I promise the next chapter will be more to your liking!

Thank you for understanding! And I agree. It's a big part of why I chose for them to realize their attraction to each other at a point that coincided with the beginning of Goblet of Fire, ensuring that even if they wanted to, nothing could be done about it for a good long while.That being said, I hope you find the "payoff" is worth it! Coming up: George and Fred's final year at Hogwarts! Yay!

 Actually, I never figured out how to sneak the rest of her parentage into the narrative. So here's a special "extra" for you...Annie's father is a drug dealer of Mediterranean descent, hence her dark, curly hair and golden skin tones. He and Carys had a relationship of convenience - she came to him for an occasional "free" hit - there was no romance involved whatsoever. Both are long since dead, succumbing to the inherent dangers of drug-addiction and criminal lifestyle.Molly has the right of it, in fact. Generations ago, a Welsh witch renounced her magic and married a Muggle. There's been an unbroken line of single girl children ever since, ending with Annie. The twins are the first boys born in the line for a couple hundred years or so.And thanks for the reviews!