The twins were sitting in their room, dressed in their pyjamas, staring at the finished wand when their father put his head in.
"Can't sleep?" he asked sympathetically.
"No," yawned George. "But we should. We need to be sharp tomorrow. This is our moment of glory, after all."
Arthur came over to the desk and looked down at the wand as well. It was surrounded by dozens of crystal phials containing amber liquid. A slight scent of caramel hung in the air.
"This is it, then?" he asked softly. "This is the weapon that's going to bring down You-Know-Who once and for all?"
"We hope so."
"Can I - hold it?"
"Sure thing, Dad."
They handed the length of yew to their father, who turned it over in his hands.
"It doesn't look like much," he said skeptically.
"It isn't," said Fred with a grin. "That's the beauty of it, isn't it? They'll never see it coming. I can almost see the Prophet headlines now. 'You-Know-Who Defeated by Joke-Shop Wand'."
Arthur Weasley still looked uncertain. "If you're sure -"
His sons looked up at him. "It'll be all right, Dad. We worked out the plan with Dumbledore. He thinks it's a good one."
Their father sighed and set the wand down again. His hand came to rest on his sons' shoulder.
"You should get some sleep," he said.
"We'll try in a bit."
"Would it help if - I told you a story?"
The twins blinked. Their father had not offered them a bedtime story since before they had started at Hogwarts. They had always enjoyed his enthusiastic retellings of Muggle adventure stories, especially so-called fairy tales of evil, warty witches and mad wizards who all seemed to resemble Dumbledore.
They grinned. "Sure, Dad. That sounds great."
"Into bed, then."
Sometime during their sojourn at Hogwarts, their mother had apparently insisted on transforming their room back into a bedroom. They climbed gratefully into the bed and settled back against the pillows. Their father drew a chair up beside them and adopted his storytelling posture, hands clasped together in his lap.
"Many years ago," he began, "there were two young, brilliant wizards."
"Were they twins, Dad?" George asked eagerly, forgetting his age for a moment and asking one of the many questions the two of them had loved to ask as small boys.
Arthur tweaked their nose. "They were. Just like you. And they were handsome and clever and had any number of fine qualities that made them popular and well-loved by those who knew them. But no one loved them so much as their older sister."
"We don't have an older sister!" joked Fred. "We've got all the rest, though."
"You don't," agreed their father, "but they did.
"Now, these wizards were terrible practical jokers, and when they were younger, they had never been out of trouble. Their sister often had cause to tell them off for their wild behaviour and wicked sense of humour, and they would laugh and kiss her forehead and tell her that she had won them over and swear that they were reformed. Until the next time.
"But these young wizards did more than just craft pranks. They were also very brave. When they were young, a Dark wizard arose in the land, and they swore that when they came of age, they would put all their considerable talents at the disposal of those who wished to defeat him.
"They went to Hogwarts and they learned everything they could, knowing that the answer must be somewhere, and that they would need all their shared wits to find it. But of course they paid special attention in Defence Against the Dark Arts, and there they excelled. Despite their patchy education - for they had a different teacher in that subject every year - they spent their spare time practicing jinxes, hexes, and defensive magic on one another - and on not a few innocent bystanders - honing their reflexes to make themselves the best that they could be.
"But in spite of the seriousness of their studies and the darkness of the world around them, they never lost their wicked sense of humour, nor their passion for finely-crafted pranks. As the day of their seventeenth birthday approached, their sister became more and more worried that her brothers might soon be put in real danger, and she feared losing them.
"When at last the day arrived, even though it was their birthday, the brothers presented their sister with a gift - a magnificent clock whose face showed not the time, but the whereabouts of themselves, her husband and her little sons - for she was already a mother of three. You'll know the kind of clock I mean?"
"Yeah," the twins grinned. "Like Mum has."
Their mother had come to lean against the door frame, listening to her husband's story.
"Exactly like," Arthur Weasley turned to beam at his wife. "Their sister kept that clock by her at all times, for she always worried too much about everyone in her family."
Molly Weasley snorted at that. "Too much! As if you never -"
Arthur put up a quelling hand. "Let me finish my story."
"I already know how it ends," she said, the smile fading from her mouth.
"It's time our boys did, too."
She nodded, silent.
"Where was I?" said Arthur, turning back to his sons.
"The sister and her clock," chorused the twins.
"So I was. Well, most of the time that first year she had it, the clock only showed her that her brothers were at Hogwarts, her husband was at work, and her small sons were at home, usually right where she could see them.
"The months and seasons passed, and the twins left Hogwarts, and went out into the world to employ their skills against the darkness that oppressed it. They joined the Order of the Phoenix, and proved to be a great asset, fighting shoulder to shoulder with such skill that all agreed that it was as if they were one spirit in two bodies.
"Not long after leaving Hogwarts, they learned that their sister was going to have another baby. As her condition progressed, the brothers fought and laughed, begging her to name it after one of them. 'Name him after me,' one would say. 'I'm better looking.' 'No, name him after me,' the second one would reply. 'I'm smarter.' And their sister would laugh and cuff them affectionately and tell them that this time it was sure to be a girl, and that she would never dream of naming her child after such inconsiderate brothers who made their sister worry all the time.
"The days passed, and still the hands of the clock never strayed into 'mortal peril', and as long as they did not, the twins' sister knew than her family was safe, and she did not have to worry quite so much as she would have otherwise.
"But on a cold and wet evening in February, all that changed. The sister was just starting to make dinner with one eye on her young sons and one eye on her magnificent clock - for she must have had three eyes and at least as many hands to do everything she did - when the clock made a clicking, whirring noise, and the hands containing her brothers' named clicked over to 'mortal peril'.
"The sister did not know what to do. Her husband was at work still, and in those days, they were so poor that they had no owl to send messages, and no Floo powder either, and the brooms they owned were old and slow.
"She knew she had to go to her brothers' aid, for although she frequently worried, she was also a very brave woman. Dangerous as it was to Apparate in her condition, and trusting that her husband would be home within the hour, she left the two younger boys in the care of the eldest, turned on her heel, and trusted in the magic to take her where she was needed.
"She arrived in a dark and rainy alley, and found her two brothers cornered by no less than five Death Eaters. The twins were grinning and firing curses left and right, but it was clear to their sister that they were gaining no ground. She drew her wand and began hexing the Death Eaters from behind.
"What happened then, no one knows. Her husband arrived home just in time to see his wife's hand of the clock move from 'mortal peril' to 'hospital'. In a panic, he left his sons with a neighbour and Apparated to St Mungo's.
"When he arrived there, he learned that the brave twins had been killed, and that his wife was unconscious, having been struck by some unknown hex. When the healers examined her, it was discovered that she was carrying two babies, when a week earlier they had told her she was only carrying one.
"No one understood how it had happened, but when two healthy boys were born just over a month later, their mother gave them the names of their uncles. They were to be called Frederick Fabian and George Gideon.
"But as their mother watched them grow, she began to fear for them. For they were smart and reckless, and, it transpired, terrible practical jokers as well. And people often remarked upon how alike they were, commenting that it was as though they were one spirit shared between two bodies."
Arthur sat back in the chair, silently regarding his sons. For a long moment, no one said anything. Then Fred cleared their throat.
"I've - we've never heard that story before."
"You're very like your uncles," their mother said in a low voice. "I hoped that if you didn't know, maybe you wouldn't follow in their footsteps - maybe you wouldn't end as young as they did."
"They were our age, weren't they?" asked George.
"A few years older," their father told them. "This past couple of years, with all your schemes and plans, it's been almost as if you were picking up where they left off. They would have been proud. We are proud, your mother and I."
Their mother came forward then and bent down to take them in her arms, her face pressed wetly against their neck. "Be careful tomorrow, won't you?"
They swallowed. "We'll try," said George. "But Mum - Dad -?"
Their father reached out to clasp their hand.
"If we don't make it tomorrow," George said gently, "try not to be too sad for us."
Both their parents squeezed convulsively at that.
"We've got no regrets," Fred told them firmly. "We want to do this. We need to do this. Voldemort and his followers will keep on destroying lives and families until someone stops them. If that someone is us, then we'll do whatever it takes."
Arthur nodded once, his mouth a grim line, and put his free hand on his wife's back.
"Whatever happens tomorrow," he said, "we will both always be so proud -"
He broke off, listening intently. The sound came again from upstairs: the piercing squeak of an old, brass bed frame. Molly Weasley stood up sharply as the sound settled into a steady rhythm.
"That's Ginny's bed," she said in a flat voice. And then her brain seemed to catch up with what she was hearing. She gasped. "I'm going straight up there and -"
"Don't." Arthur put a restraining hand on her arm. "They're adults now, Molly. Who knows what may happen tomorrow? Let them have this."
The twins tried unsuccessfully to disguise a grin as a stifled yawn. Solemn moments had their place, but there was such a things as too much, and this one had gone on long enough. They took a moment to enjoy the conflicting emotions warring on their mother's face.
"Ginny's not an adult," she said, but the resolve had gone from her voice. "She's only sixteen. She shouldn't -"
Arthur raised a single ginger eyebrow. "And how old were you, Miss Molly?"
"That's - that's different," their mother blustered. "It was - maybe I was too young, too."
"You've never said you regretted it," her husband said with a smile.
She relented at that. "I don't. But - if they're adults now, what am I going to do?"
"You've still got me, Mollywobbles," he grinned. "We've raised good kids. Smart kids. We've taught them responsibility and how to take care of themselves. And now it's time to let them go. They'll be fine."
Molly bowed her head, and then, incredibly, a tiny smile tugged at her mouth. "It feels so odd to be hearing - to know - well, Harry's a good boy. I guess I shouldn't complain. He's not likely to lead her astray."
Arthur gave his wife a fond smile and held out his hand to her. "Come on, Molly. Let's leave our children to their night of dreams and joys and go find some of our own."
After their parents left, the twins cast noise-muffling charms on the walls, floor and ceiling of their room. People deserved their privacy, they felt, and they were never going to get any sleep with all that racket going on.
And that was why they never heard the front door open and close.
Note: The eight-part spinoff story, The Night Before, which takes place during and immediately following this chapter, visits various other characters as they contemplate the coming battle, and seek comfort from one another.