Chapter Sixteen

Being a Twin is Dangerous

Fred and George had just finished writing a letter to Lee about their sled prank and were trying to attach it to Lee's owl when the door flew open so fast that it slammed into the wall. Fred, George and Charlie looked up in alarm while the owl screeched and flew off to land on George's dresser.

"You," Hermione growled.

Fred took a nervous step back, almost bumping into George. Hermione looked even angrier than she had during their first confrontation outside Snape's classroom. Before he could think of a good plan of escape, Hermione had seized the front of his robes and was glaring up at him.

"You... if you ever... sled..."

"What are you talking about?" Fred said quickly. He had meant to rub the ordeal in her face, but no longer felt such an action was wise.

Hermione shook him so hard he went slightly cross-eyed. "If you ever do anything like that again—"

"Hermione, calm down," Charlie said soothingly. "Fred's very sorry, Hermione, okay?"

Hermione glowered at Charlie but seemed to get some control. She released Fred and turned to go. Fred breathed a sigh of relief and crossed to the other side of the room to try and coax Lee's owl to come down, but couldn't resist one last dig.

"Oh, come on, sweetheart, you know you want me."

Hermione froze, almost to the door, and then spun around, enraged. Her eyes locked on her target and she started forward... unfortunately, she hadn't noticed that Fred had moved over by the dresser, and she was looking at George, not Fred.

George gulped and opened his mouth to say something, but before he'd gotten half a syllable out, Hermione's fist slammed into his left eye so hard that George was knocked sideways and down; he landed hard on his side, too stunned to speak.

"I'll show you what I want!" Hermione snarled.

"George!" Fred shouted.

Somehow, his yell penetrated Hermione's fog of rage and she twisted around and ran at him. Fred drew his wand, but his mind was blank; he couldn't think of a single spell. Luckily, Charlie reacted quickly; he threw his arms around her waist from behind, pinning her arms down to her sides. "Hermione! Hermione, stop!" he ordered as she thrashed in his arms. When she couldn't get loose, she started kicking; Charlie struggled to drag her away from Fred.

"Calm down, Hermione, come on, calm down, it's okay," Charlie kept repeating. Slowly, Hermione came back to her senses. Charlie was a good guy. Not a bad guy. Charlie didn't deserve to die. She needed to kill Fred, though. All she had to do was pretend she wasn't going to kill Fred and then Charlie would let her go and she could kill Fred. Perfect. She forced herself to get a grip, and Charlie finally released her... but before she could charge Fred, the adrenaline left her system enough for her to feel the pain in her hand.

"OW!" she shrieked, clutching her arm to her with her left hand. "Ow, my hand!"

She ran from the room, leaving Fred and Charlie to help George up. "Oh, god, that hurt," George groaned, clutching his face. "You really owe me for this, Fred... and I'm changing my look. It's apparently too dangerous to be your identical twin."

"Ow, ow, ow!"

Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Bill had dragged the sled out of the taxi and just made it into the house when Hermione came shooting down the stairs. "My hand," she whimpered. "OW!"

"What happened?" demanded Mrs. Weasley, who had just come in from the garden. "I heard shouting—"

"My hand," Hermione moaned, holding it out to her.

"Goodness, dear, what did you do to it?" Mrs. Weasley said, taking a look at Hermione's arm with a critical eye.

Hermione shot Harry, Ron, Ginny and Bill a panicked look. "Uh... do you think it's broken, Mum?" Ginny said quickly, in an attempt to distract Mrs. Weasley.

"No, no," Mrs. Weasley said, letting go of Hermione's wrist and Summoning a small potion bottle and a glass of water; she put a few drops of the potion into the water and handed it to Hermione. "Here, this will help with the pain and swelling."

Hermione took a large swallow and let out a sigh as it began to take effect. "Thank you."

"What on earth happened, dear?" Mrs. Weasley asked in concern.

"Er..."

"Mum," Charlie called loudly, coming down the stairs, "do you have anything for pain? George's eye is swelling something awful."

"What happened to George's eye?" Mrs. Weasley demanded suspiciously.

"Oh, he ran into Hermione on the stairs," Charlie said calmly, "and he hit his eye on the banister. Hermione, you all right? I fixed up that hole you accidentally punched in the wall, it's as good as new, don't worry..."

"I'm fine Charlie," Hermione said, feeling weak from relief and the pain-killing potion. "I love you, you know that?"

"Er, yes, sure, whatever," Charlie said, trying not to laugh as he took the potion from Mrs. Weasley and hurried back upstairs.

"I'm serious," George said, gingerly touching the area around his eye, "I'm changing my look. Being a twin is dangerous."

"I'm really sorry about that, George," Fred told him for the thousandth time.

"From now on, I don't want you to even think about moving until she's out of sight," George said. "If we can see her, we stay still, got it? If she's around I want you to think of her as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, okay? Hermione's vision is based on movement: she can't see George if Fred doesn't move."

"I'm so sorry," Fred repeated.

"You're sorry, yes, but damn it, I can't take this any more! This is the second time!"

"She's punched you before?" Charlie said, frowning. "I don't remember you saying—"

"She's mistaken George for me before," Fred explained. "This is just the first time it went bad."

"Oh, shut up," George grumbled. "Fred, you're my brother, and I'd do anything for you, but this isn't cool. I've been publicly humiliated way too often and I just got knocked silly by a girl. I don't know how much more of this I can take." Someone knocked on the door, and all three of them turned to look at the door apprehensively. "Just a second!" George yelled, and promptly walked into the closet and shut the door behind him. "Come in!"

Harry opened the door. "Hey, Fred, Charlie... where's George?"

"It's just Harry," Fred called at the closet. George peeked out around the door and, seeing Harry, emerged from the closet. "What do you want, Harry?" Fred added rather rudely.

Harry held up his hands in a "take it easy" sort of gesture. "I was persuaded to volunteer to come start the peace negotiations," he said.

"Hermione made you say that, didn't she?" Charlie said wisely.

"Yeah, she was the one that 'persuaded me to volunteer,'" Harry said, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, we're prepared to call a truce if you are. Just for the holidays. If Mrs. Weasley finds out about this, we're all going to be in deep trouble, and I'd like to have as few people trying to kill me as possible. So... want to call it quits until we're back at school?"

Fred exchanged a reluctant glance with George, who glared back. "Yes," George said sulkily. "Mum's not stupid enough to believe I fell on the stairs more than once."

Harry grinned. "I'm going to try to avoid insulting you about that. For the time being."

"Oh, ha, ha," George snapped. "Tell her that if she doesn't try anything until we're back in the castle, we won't. Isn't that right, Fred." Fred nodded grudgingly.

"All right," Harry said, "I'll pass it along." He turned to go, then paused. "Fred, why don't you two just sit down like adults and agree that it's not working out? You know, move on?"

"What do you mean, move on?" Fred demanded.

"You know, stop having this petty war and just agree to stay broken up."

"Why would I want to do that?" Fred said, narrowing his eyes.

"You don't want to stop this stupid game?"

"I don't want to stay broken up," Fred said slowly, reminding himself of his game with Hermione and the fact that Harry didn't know what was really going on.

"Well, if you don't want to stay broken up, then why are you carrying on like... you know," Harry said suddenly, "forget I said a word."

Harry turned and left quickly. "What was that all about?" George said suspiciously.

"I don't know," Fred said, frowning, "but it was weird."

True to their word—for once—the twins didn't try anything over the remainder of the holidays; though they insisted it was about avoiding Mrs. Weasley, neither of them wanted what Hermione had done to George's eye to happen again. Though the twins remained removed from the others, all of them managed to enjoy the remainder of the holidays... however, they were too busy having fun to plan what they'd do back at school.

When they boarded the Hogwarts Express to go back to Hogwarts, the twins immediately sought out Lee. "Hey, guys," Lee called. "Tell me everything—how'd it go?"