TITLE: The Best Thing Be Denial
AUTHOR: Jana Kay
EMAIL: jana_kay17@yahoo.com.au
DISCLAIMER: All characters named below are copyrighted and owned by J.K. Rowling; I'm simply using them for my own enjoyment. No monetary profit is being made from this piece of fiction.
RATING: R for US readers; M15+ for Australian and UK readers.
SPOILERS: All four books, in particular for GoF.
TIMELINE: Year after GoF. Harry and Co are in 5th year, Weasley twins in 7th.
PAIRING: Parvati/Padma, slight Fred/George.
SUMMARY: Learning brings knowledge; knowledge leads to understanding; understanding can lead to denial; sometimes denial leads to truth. The truth is not always what you wish it would be.
WARNING: This story is **SLASH** containing both **F/F and M/M** pairings. Furthermore, it is **TWINCEST** so if you can't handle any of that, do everybody a favour and click on the back button. Don't go crying to your parents about me corrupting you, because you aren't mature enough to heed the warnings and the rating. Stories have ratings for a reason, and I have written my warning in very clear and concise language.
AUTHORS NOTES: I am not stupid. I realise this piece of fiction is prime flaming material, but frankly, I don't care. I don't tell other people what to write, and I certainly don't flame them if I don't like what they *have* written. You want to flame, go ahead. Realise though that you're just making yourself look stupid. Firstly, because flamers can never spell, and secondly, because you're reviewing something you don't even like. If you don't like it, leave it alone and go elsewhere, why waste your time and mine? Review something you enjoy, not something you so obviously dislike. Besides, nobody listens to flames anyway. However, if you want to give comments or constructive criticism, you're most welcome.

***

Parvati Patil had always thought whilst growing up, that being a twin was the best thing in the world. She and her sister Padma would play and giggle together in their own private corner of the primary school playground, each knowing the other's thoughts without even having to ask, and they would draw others into their sacred circle by their charm and kind natures.

Children would flock to them like seagulls to the ocean, and the two identical heads would turn together, chocolate eyes gleaming, as they pretended that the little girls with pink dresses, Mary Jane's and pig tails had actually succeeded in becoming a part of them.

They'd always know the truth though.

One plus one equals one. Parvati and Padma, one person in two identical bodies. They'd sworn an oath in blood like so many other children in the world did, when they'd managed to steal a knife from the kitchen and had run to the furthest part of their garden, crouching hidden inside a small nook that they barely fit in.

At home, they'd play on their swing set and ride on their baby brooms, play hide and seek with the maids and play dress up in their parents wardrobe when their mother's back was turned. They slept in the same room and always insisted on wearing the same clothes, and their father was always delighted at this. "My Angel Twins," he always called them. "You're both exactly like your mother."

When their letters arrived from Hogwarts they'd been so excited, and on the eve of going to Kings Cross Station to catch the Hogwarts Express, they'd clasped each other's arms and solemnly swore that nothing would break them apart. They were the two P's, as identical as peas in a pod.

The Sorting Hat had thought differently though, and while Padma had gone to Ravenclaw like their mother, Parvati had been shipped off to Gryffindor, like their father.

Parvati can still remember the forlorn look in Padma's eyes as they'd stared at each other across the Great Hall. She can imagine that the same look was mirrored on her own face. It was a betrayal of the worst kind that their young child mind's had never even thought possible. To be separated -- to them -- just wasn't possible. It had never happened before, it would never start then. Parvati goes with Padma, Padma goes with Parvati, and they'd never even considered that the Sorting Hat wouldn't agree.

Nothing could have been done though, and Parvati sat at the Gryffindor table next to a wispy haired blonde girl named Lavender Brown, who reminded her of the girls in pig tails from primary school. Nice, but never, ever Padma.

That first night was the hardest, and Parvati remembers sniffling quietly into her fluffy pillow, as the sound of Hermione Granger's and Lavender's even breathing eventually lulled her into sleep. She'd woken early the next morning as the sun was just rising, instinctively patting the spot on the bed next to her where Padma usually lay back home. She'd started crying again when she remembered that that wouldn't be happening anymore.

She was a Gryffindor now, and her father had been lying. If she was so like her mother, she'd be in Ravenclaw now with Padma, and that was that. She didn't write home for several weeks in retaliation, keeping herself stubbornly silent to the requests by her parents for news by return owl.

It was a comfort to see Padma at the Great Hall in the morning, and they caught up to each other in the Entrance Hall to compare timetables. It was a relief to see they had Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts together, though they had their other classes with Slytherin's and Hufflepuff's.

They saw each other whenever possible during those first few months. They sat together in their classes, met in the library after lunch and dinner to gossip and do their homework, and told stories on the grounds around Hogwarts Castle like they had done at their home.

Like all things though, their closeness ended. Gradually, bit by bit, until the only times they really saw each other during the school year were in their classes, and even then they sometimes abandoned long standing seating arrangements to sit closer to their House friends.

Parvati became better friends with Lavender over time -- though Hermione Granger remained something of a stranger -- until the two girls were practically joined at the hip, and Parvati forgot that essentially, Lavender was just one of those girls in pig tails. She was her best friend now, as close as a sister ... as close as a twin even, because it was almost as though Padma was no longer even related to her in many ways.

The summer between first and second year brought another change though. After less than a day back home, it was as though Parvati and Padma had never been separated. They didn't wear the same clothes anymore, but in every other way it was as though they were five years old again, discovering in a hundred different ways what it truly meant to have a twin. On the eve of catching the Hogwarts Express to start their second year, they'd made another solemn vow to not forget who they were.

It was a month this time before the vow was forgotten.

The older the two girls grew, the clearer it became as to why the Sorting Hat had put them in different Houses in the first place. Padma was intelligent at a level Parvati could never reach, and was always giving out help to others when they had problems with homework. Parvati instead, excelled at Defense Against the Dark Arts, and when Professor Moody had taught them in fourth year, she dreamed of becoming an Auror -- though she had no great love for either him or his magical eye. Padma on the other hand who had always shared the class with her, had trouble with hexes and grew tired of practicing very quickly, preferring to read up on Defense rather than actively practice it like Parvati.

Summers always brought them close, but the school year pulled them apart again. More so than any other time, Parvati never liked having to sit out in the Common Room with Lavender around the beginning of the school term, as the feeling of missing Padma had not yet begun to fade at that time, and Fred and George Weasley were always close by acting much the same as she and her twin had over the summer.

Parvati had always thought that being a twin was the best thing in the world. Then the dreams started, and she became very glad Padma was in a different House.

They snuck up on her in her fifth year, after a summer in which the girls had been especially close. She'd woken in a sweat that first night before classes began, and had curled up into herself in disgust and shame, because the spot between her thighs was wet and puffed up, tense and aching so much, and she knew if she relieved it, the only face she'd see behind her closed eyelids was that of her twin.

The dreams continued whether she had contact with Padma or not; dreams where they lay curled up in each other's arms as they had done as children. But Padma's hand was between her thighs now, trailing over the hot flesh there and garnering moans from Parvati's throat, their dark hair damp with sweat and plastered to their faces and necks, and Padma's mouth was covering her breast, sucking hotly on a pert nipple while Parvati held her close. On other nights, Parvati lay between Padma's long, tanned legs, tongue working over the puffed up flesh of her twin's inner heat as she gripped Padma's hips and held her tight.

The morning after that particular dream, Padma's desperate cries of pleasure had stayed with her all during the day. Parvati had not been able to look at her twin at any time during classes or meals. She had stuck closer to Lavender than usual, and hadn't left the Gryffindor Common Room unless she'd absolutely had to. She'd ignored all her homework that night -- except for that of her Potions class, not wanting a Snape detention -- and had sat alone in a squishy armchair instead, just staring at the licking fingers of the fire.

The only time she'd looked away from the flames, was when the Weasley twins were talking to Hermione, Harry Potter and their brother Ron close by. She'd watched the twins closely out of the corner of her eye, and suddenly, their strange -- almost wild behaviour that nobody else ever seemed to understand, clicked into place. The rumours she'd heard whilst growing up inside Hogwarts walls, the looks she was sometimes given by sixth and seventh year students as she made her way down the corridors, the pictures in the book she'd stumbled across in the Restricted Section of the Library
-- pictures of identical wizards and witches doing things she hadn't yet understood at the time in second year, her dreams -- good god her dreams; they all suddenly made sense.

She'd looked away quickly, her cheeks flushed a dark red and feeling utterly scandalised. The flames had continued to flicker idly in front of her as without wanting to, she'd imagined the Weasley twins curled up together in their dormitory, eyes wicked, mouths wide and smiling, magic crackling in the air around them as their hands caressed each other, safely hidden behind the hangings surrounding their beds in the quiet of the night.

Against her will her mind had turned to her own house, hers and Padma's room the only one on the third floor. Moonlight slanted in through the high window above the beds, bathing their bodies in silver as their sweaty legs tangled together; mouths gasping and meeting feverishly while fingers plucked and rolled erect nipples, and hands fondled flesh and delved between parted thighs.

Though the dreams continued -- sometimes occasionally, sometimes every night -- Parvati knew nothing would ever happen; she was a secretive person by nature. And though the idea of herself and Padma unwillingly excited her in a way she wished she didn't understand -- because then the wetness she awoke with between her thighs wouldn't feel so wrong and dirty to her -- she knew nothing would ever come of it. To know was not to succumb. And to succumb would be ... shameful.

Herself and Padma were no longer the two proverbial peas in a pod. Both had grown and changed in ways their parents would never have suspected. Parvati was Gryffindor. Padma was Ravenclaw. In addition, neither of the two were crazy in the slightest, and they were not around each other 24 hours a day as Fred and George were. Nothing would ever happen.

Parvati was Gryffindor. She was strong.

She would never let anything happen.

Parvati had always thought that being a twin -- especially a magical twin -- was the best thing in the world.

She no longer thought so, and she dreaded the coming summer.

In the black of night though when she woke up panting and drenched in her own sweat, her body pulsing to a rhythm she could never hope to satisfy ...

... dread was the furthest thing from her mind.


T h e E n d.