Your cigarettes were your escape and you tried so hard to keep them a secret. You played it off pretty well. No one would guess that the smell of smoke that they always seemed to associate with Fred Weasley II was not from whatever crazy project or experiment you were working on. No one ever really took the extra time to stare at you a little longer and see the sickly pallor to your skin or the slightly yellowed teeth you flashed around. Your cigarettes were your escape, though. You weren't going to give them up. You didn't care if they wrecked your body-it was about time that the packaging reflected the product.
Frederick Fabian Weasley died in battle, and part of you wondered if maybe that's why you didn't feel alive. Your namesake was dead-does that mean that you could be too? Maybe this was all some sort of whacked out nightmare; living everyday like you're playing the part in some play and hoping beyond all hope that no one can see past your antic disposition. You're not you-you don't really have a clue about who that would really be. You grew up shaped to be Fred II. A troublemaker. A Weasley. A son of war heroes. You grew up to be someone you never knew. Do you even know yourself? You don't answer, but whether it's because you don't know or are just afraid of the answer is carefully not thought on.
The cigarettes, though. Those set you apart. Gran Molly would've killed any child of hers that dared to pick up the tobacco sticks. As far as you could tell, no one else in the family smoked. You were the only one. And you could control it. If you wanted your teeth yellow and black, your lungs full with tar then you could make that decision. It was your body. Maybe it wasn't your life, but it was your body.
The astronomy tower with it's grand view of the stars you could never reach and the long long fall to the ground that you could collide with so gracefully if you wanted. Those were yours too. Those things and those places. They were all you could recognize as parts of you. Maybe that's because you really are just a mirage of broken pieces. Gran Molly's tears and Dad's missing half. The filler for the empty laughter and the one everyone could rely on for a joke. But really, you think, isn't the joke that you've managed to string them all along like this? Managed to convince them that you really are Fred Weasley incarnate? You've put on a grand show. Maybe you should consider becoming an actor-one day, there might be a part to play that allows you to just be yourself. Too bad you can't play that role everyday.
Sometimes you feel like you are the smoke that you push out of the cigarette. Wispy and unattainable. There, but not really there. Just a smokescreen that can be so easily eradicated. That's you. Your true self is buried under layers of smoke and fake smiles and half-hearted attempts. You don't really understand how you managed to convince your family for so long that you were this complete different person than you really are. That's why it shocks you when she notices.
She's small and gentle looking-soft blond hair and sweet smiles-she uses one on you when you walk up to the tower to see her leaning against the wall. "Hello." Her voice is just as twinkly as she seems. Maybe she's some sort of fairy. Your voice is raspy and all grit when you respond, "Hey."
You play her games and let her be that sweet little fairy girl who charms people with her sugary smiles. When you call her out on it, it's like she's done a complete 180. Gone are the shy eyes and blushing cheeks and now you see this hardened girl with tangles in her hair from her hands running through it and a rough voice that screams how hard it is for her to hold back her tears. She's just as broken as you, you realize, and she plays the same game. She's the sweet girl, and you're the funny boy. You find out her name is Katie and she's named after Katie Bell who died in the war. She's tired of playing the game, too.
And that's how you recognize her. This little bolt of lightning on a broomstick, a Gryffindor in the same house as you. You play quidditch the next year together. You're a beater and she's the chaser, of course. That's what the expectation was, right? You slack off in class. Kate excels. You play jokes, and Kate twinkles her laugh. No one knows that the two of you spend your nights in the astronomy tower-you with your cigarettes and her with a bottle of firewhiskey. You aren't imperfect if no one can see the blemishes.
She's in your year, thank Merlin, because if she weren't, then who would keep you company and listen to the silent woes of living your life as a different person. She's the only one who understands the production you put on, and you could kiss her feet for listening to your shit. Everyone thinks that the two of you are the perfect couple. They all want you to date and get married. Fred would've married Katie Bell if they had both lived. He would've married her at the end of the war and you would have had more cousins and the lack of this goddamn pressure that trying to be him puts on you.
And you two do date, but it's so different for the two you than what everyone else sees. In the halls you hold her hand and kiss her cheek. Everyone once in awhile you'll play a small prank on her and her bell of a laugh twinkles all the way down the hall. In the astronomy tower you hold her as she cries and you offer her a cigarette to go along with the bottle of firewhisky that the two of you had long since kicked. Your broken pieces can't fix hers and the best you can do is try and hold them all up while everyone else tries to break you both down.
When you graduate, she and you have decided to run off into the world and never look back, but your families are so lost, so broken when you tell them that you want to go. So you stay, and Kate runs off and lets herself be free. She lives her life for the two of you. You just run the joke shop and miss your friend and welcome the pain that the failed spellwork hits you with every time the prototypes don't work.
When she comes back to you, she's happy. She looks nothing like the Kate that you spent the nights in the tower with. She doesn't wear the light color fabrics and the bows in her hair. She's cut it short and she wears the ripped jeans and black eye makeup that always appealed to her. She looks more like herself than you've ever seen her before and it makes you feel a little better. She's free. She's found herself. But she's letting it go. "My family needs Katie, Freddie. They don't need me."
She went home to her family and she wore the costume that once fit her so well. She was the dead Katie Bell that her family wanted back from Death so badly. It was only a few months after that and she's in a body bag in some morgue. She turned to more than just firewhiskey, it seems. And when you see her dolled up with the light pink lipstick and the rosy cheeks in her coffin, you can't help but wonder if the world is really ever going to know who they lost. The eulogies don't do the real her justice, so you do your own after the event. You climb to a top of a building and you have your whiskey and your cigarettes and you let yourself be that whispy unattainable smoke as you fall off the edge and whisper your goodbyes. Your family never needed Freddie. They needed Fred, and he was just someone you couldn't be.