Note: Title, quotes and the Borden twins are from The Prestige.
it was the look on their faces
"Making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back."
The funeral's a bit of a bust. He charms his brother's tombstone to read "Here Lies Gred Weasley," which sends his mum into conniptions. After the service, with everyone casting looks ranging from mild disgust to a kind of horrible, annoyed pity his way, he sneaks out to the abandoned hill overlooking Ottery St. Catchpole and... does nothing. Just stares up at the dusky sky. Two identical broomsticks had once flown there so often that they really should have worn grooves into the very air itself.
Hermione finds him there. She sits beside him, carefully, says nothing at first, but she's never been the type of girl who could shut up for very long, so at last her hesitant voice rises above the breeze.
"I suppose you won't be reversing that charm anytime soon."
"I knew him better than anybody," he replies, and it's sad that he has to be the one to state the obvious because his thicker brother is no longer around to do it for him. "It's what he would have wanted."
In History of Magic, they learned about the Borden twins, two Squibs who'd resorted to becoming parlour magicians putting on shows for Muggles. The fact that they were twins had been their greatest, most secret trick, and they'd shared one identity for most of their lives until Alfred Borden's execution.
Under the weight of Professor Binns' drowsy monologue, Lee Jordan leaned over and grinned at the Weasley twins. "Role models of yours?"
"Absolutely not," said Fred.
"Bit daft, really," said George. "One of them died at the end."
"Yeah." Fred surreptitiously passed a dungbomb to George so he could hurl it down the aisle. "Amateurs."
Hermione strolls into Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes, ignoring the "Out To Lunch" sign on the window. "George, I know you're in here, you never go out to- oh, George." She frowns, because he's halfway through a Muggle cigarette behind the counter.
He unfreezes, stubs the evidence out on the ashtray. "It wasn't me!"
She rolls her eyes. "Those things will kill you one day. Here. I brought lunch." A brown paper bag is set in front of him, which he unwraps with hurried glee.
"To what do I owe this honour?" he asks, salivating at the sight of possibly the biggest pastrami sandwich he's ever seen. She'd even remembered the crispy potato chips, bless her.
She shrugs. "I was in the neighbourhood."
There's more to it than that, he can tell, because she's been hanging around a lot. Far more often than being a younger brother's special-friend-whatever would warrant. He figures she'll come clean when she's good and ready, and, besides, the sandwich smells delicious.
He lifts a corner of the top slice. "Horseradish!"
Hermione claps a hand to her mouth, stricken. "George, I'm sorry! How could I possibly have mixed it up? Fred was the one who liked-"
"It's quite all right," he assures her, cutting her off because he can't bear to hear the past tense anymore. He takes a huge bite out of the sandwich. "I can like horseradish, too, I guess."
She blinks. Flashes him a tentative smile, one that is almost a smirk. "Don't force yourself, by all means."
Fred gaped at George. "Angelina kissed you?"
"She came out of nowhere!" George exclaimed. "I turned the corner and- right smack into her lips!"
"Did you tell her you weren't me?"
"That would have been bloody awkward, wouldn't it? I just pulled away and ran."
Fred paced in front of the common room fireplace for a while, before finally shrugging. "Well, can't blame her or you, mate. Our own mum can't tell us apart, anyway."
"Right." George sagged in relief.
"Hell," Fred continued, "even I can't tell us apart sometimes. Who's the one who likes horseradish again?"
"Only you would like something that vile, Gred," George retorted, making a face.
Hermione comes around for lunch again. They eat in the storage room in the back, where he keeps odds and ends, untested products and the bones of new inventions. She roots through one of the boxes, inspecting each half-finished item with interest, and he can't suppress a grin because that's what always got him about her, how she could be so prim and straitlaced but at the same time not-so-secretly fascinated with pranks.
"What the... Is this a nose?" Brow furrowed, she pulls out what looks like a triangular bulb of flesh.
"Yes," he says, and, when she immediately drops it as if it has scalded her, he hurriedly adds, "Not a real one, obviously. Supposed to be a new product line, it was. Weasleys' Add-On Appendages. Fred and I got as far as noses, fingers, ears..."
He trails off, and the expression on her face says it, clear as anything, that she knows, she knows this is about the missing ear and how crummy it had been when everyone joked, no matter how weakly, that at least now they could tell the twins apart. And he's never been good at the whole pity thing, so he stands up and makes to leave the room before she can smother him with it, but what she says next stops him in his tracks.
"I always thought he'd come back, you know." She doesn't quite look at him. "As a ghost, I mean." A smile tugs at the corner of her lips. "I could picture him haunting the blazes out of Percy."
He laughs at the mental image, although it's the kind of laugh that feels like it's breaking your heart.
And then she goes too far. "I thought he would never leave you behind," she murmurs, and the rage comes flooding in.
"And I didn't think that?" he snaps, and he's this close to telling her about the nights when he'd stare at the bedroom wall, hoping that the white spectre of his brother would come floating through. But he bites his lip, managing to control himself, because George Weasley would never mope around and wait for ghosts who never came.
She leaves shortly after that. They don't see each other for a while.
"Hermione's a bit of all right, really," Fred commented after the girl in question had chewed them out yet again and stormed away in a huff.
George stared at him like he'd gone mad. "Kittens are 'all right', Gred. She's Hermione. And she doesn't think it's a laugh when we make puppets out of McGonagall's tartan socks."
"I like my coffee the way I like my women," Fred quipped. "Bitter."
"You hate coffee."
Fred waved a dismissive hand. "Muggle saying. But, seriously, Hermione's all right."
That was the day they found out that twins could have secrets. Even from each other.
Ron and Hermione get into a huge row after dinner at the Burrow, which ends in Ron stalking up to his room and Hermione slamming the front door behind her and everyone else looking as if they'd rather be anywhere but there.
"George," says Arthur, massaging his temples, "go after Hermione, won't you?"
He fidgets. "She just needs some time alone, Dad."
"Yes, but it's chilly outside. Bring her coat, please." Arthur's probably thinking of Fred right at this moment, because Fred had been closer to their dad while George was the mama's boy. It's easy to get mixed up when two people look the same, and he wonders, not for the first time, if he's merely paranoid or if his parents really can't bring themselves to look directly at him, because to do so would be to see the son they had lost.
He grabs Hermione's coat from the rack and goes outside, where she's gazing off in to the distance, fists clenched. She shakes her head when he holds the coat out to her, and he steps back, a little awkwardly, not knowing what else to do.
Finally, she blurts out, "Fred was my first kiss."
He doesn't say anything. She continues. "I was shouting at him in the common room. It was just the two of us there that day, and he'd charmed my textbook so that all the words were backwards. And I was ranting and ranting and- he kissed me. To shut me up, he said." She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and his gaze follows the movement, follows the way her slender fingers skim the pale skin of her neck. "It's stupid, but after he- after the- well, these days, I can't help but wonder... If he'd known I'd never been kissed yet... Would he have been more careful about it?" She sighs. "I don't know. I miss him. That's why I've been coming to the shop a lot. I've been hoping to... to see something about him, in a place that he helped build, that would give me a clue. Or I'm being foolish. Either way."
She turns to look at him. "Do you know about this?" she asks. "Did he tell you?"
He gets what she's thinking, that if Fred had told anyone about kissing his younger brother's special-friend-whatever, it hadn't meant anything at all to him. Just another Weasley Wheeze.
"No," he says, with total and complete honesty. "He never told anyone."
After the war, it hurt every time he walked into a crowded room. People would hesitate, the patented "Fred or George?" expression on their faces, a split second before they remembered there was only one left. He couldn't decide if it had been worse when all they had to remember to do was check the ears. Or lack thereof.
On their twenty-first birthday, as he bowed his head at the grave, he realized that he wasn't expecting his brother to jump out from behind the tombstone anymore, yelling "April Fool's!" He also couldn't recall at what exact point in time he'd stopped expecting that, and that felt like a more final goodbye than when the wall had collapsed or when the earth had closed over the coffin.
And now here he was, a year older, while his brother would always be twenty. It was strange. The future spread out in his mind. One twin would have to grow old and- horribly enough- bald and fat, but the other would never change. Ever. The wind rustled the treetops, spattering the grave in dots of sunlight that poked out through the spaces between the leaves, and in that moment he truly did not know which one of them had gotten the rough end of the deal.
He rested his hand on the tombstone, the sharp grain digging into his palm. "Happy birthday, mate."
"Why did Angelina Johnson just run out in tears?" are the first words from Hermione's mouth when she enters the shop.
"I shot her down," he mumbles from his sanctuary behind the counter, his head in his hands.
She settles herself directly in front of him, so he has no choice but to look into her eyes. "Why?"
"She's looking for Fred, not me." He's surprised at the bitterness in his own voice. "Just like you."
Hermione's lips tighten into a straight line. "That's it. I've had it."
He raises an eyebrow at her. "Had it with what?"
"Listen, the mess you're in, that's your own doing, so don't blame me or anyone else!" she yells, colour rising into her cheeks.
"What's gotten into you?" he demands.
"You and your sodding brother always had to have the last laugh, is that right? Only it's not so funny anymore, is it?" She's practically vibrating with fury. "After all this time! Five years with you in the same House at school! All those holidays spent at the Burrow! And you think I wouldn't know?"
"Know what?" he asks, standing up and bracing himself on the counter. "What in blazes are you going on about?"
"The horseradish was a test!" she cries frantically. "I was almost sure, but I had to know for certain! I felt awful for doing it, but you left me no choice!"
"Hermione." He tries his most placating voice. "Don't take this the wrong way, but when are you going to calm down already?"
"That depends," she retorts, pulling her wand out and pointing it directly at him. "When are you going to tell your mother that she's mourning the wrong son? Finite Incantatem!"
"All right," says Fred Weasley at last, into the taut, charged silence, as the Invisibility Spell fades to reveal his undamaged right ear, "what gave me away?"
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because, of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want it to work out. You want to be fooled."