Chapter 4

George had made him go back to the tent. He hated it when George took charge. Hated it when George undermined him. Hated that his brother knew exactly when these people were going to wear away his toughest barriers, exactly when the loss of blood was beginning to make him dizzy. Exactly when his heart went numb, and when he just wanted to give up on that idiot Seamus and his followers.

The tent was filled with the worst kind of silence—the deafening kind. The type that broke Fred in two and killed him inside and almost made him wish that someone would just reincarnate the riot that had just occurred. The silence gave him two options: Think or Shut Down. Thinking brought back memories, places that he did not want to go. Giving up could mean the end for these people. Fred forced his eyes to stay open, forced his mind awake, by humming the last number one hit that the Weird Sisters had produced. That had been two years ago.

Fred was still humming "Boldness Brewing" when his mirror image pushed through the tent flap. "What the bloody hell was that? Do they do that every time? Every bloody time?" George pulled him up by the collar of his robe so that they were looking eye to eye. He felt the top of he feet brush the ground. "You're damn lucky that Whitby came and got me, you know that? They were seconds away from blasting Mandy to get to your tent. Seconds!"

George's hands relaxed, and he dropped Fred unceremoniously onto a chair. "Damn it, Fred. Pride has no place in our lives now, why don't you understand that? This isn't about accepting money, or books, or clothes like it used to be. This is about lives, Fred! The lives of people that count on you every day. Why can't you see that? Even Fleur understands!"

Fred couldn't help it. The laughter started deep down in his belly and made its way into his throat. It came out raspy, and broken, and ill-used. But it was still laughter. He curled his good arm tightly around himself as he contorted in mirth. "It's you who doesn't understand, George." His voice came out much the same way. "If I called you for help, you'd just want to send me more recruits. All you'd do is send more recruits here to be killed!"

George set his mouth into a line. "Then we'll combine camps. We'll each be twice as strong."

Fred's mouth twisted upwards in a humorless smile. "Then twice as many people would die in their guerilla attacks."

George sank down against the counter. "Then we'll move your camp." There was a pause in which neither one said anything, but Fred could easily read George's face. He knew why they couldn't do that just as well as Fred did. Fred waited for him to answer his own question. "Because we need your front." George conceded this with wide eyes.

It was then that Fred continued his cold, solemn laughter. "You see? There's nothing to be done about it except to wait and to go by the plan. So you see? No pride in it at all." He sobered. Standing up, he pushed up the blood-soaked arm of his cloak and examined the gash that ran along his wrist and halfway up to his elbow. The gaping hole in his sleeve more than evident. "More clothes that I've gone and ruined. Mum won't be happy." A wild push backward was all it had taken for Fred to loose his balance—right into a stake that was being used to build another tent.

Two years ago, Fred would have laughed at the efficient way in which he had managed to rip both his cloak and his arm open in one go. He would have drawn his wand out of his back pocket and, without another word in his mirth, he would have healed himself. Madam Pomfrey, Saint Mungos, or no. There were perks to having tested your own joke products.

But now, whether it was the lack of food or energy or hope, Fred could feel his eyes rolling back into his skull. He stumbled backwards into the chair that he had just vacated. His tongue felt heavy and drunk. His head sunk forward.

In three steps, George was crouching in front of him and looking up at him with intensity. "I'm surprised that you bleed at all anymore. Worried about clothes? Are you human anymore, man?" Without waiting for an answer, he pulled Fred's completely passive body out of his cloak and left it in a pile on the floor. He grabbed his brother's arm and gingerly pulled it toward him.

Fred watched through drooping eyelids. He didn't move outside of a cringe when George's grip on the outside of the wound grew too tight. What his brother was doing to hurt him wasn't physical. Even the burning sensation in his arm couldn't match the pain that George had brought down on him. Fred inhaled, shuddering, and asked "Why'd you send her?" His words were very quiet and slightly slurred.

George looked up, confused. Fred repeated the question in much the same way. "Why? Why did you send her?" Finally, George pointed his wand at the injury and muttered the spell under his breath. The skin stitched itself back together. Melded back to normal. Except for his torn, bloody cloak, no one would be able to tell that he had been injured at all. He was Fred the immovable once again, ready for the next attack, next rebellion, next death.

George signed from his crouching position and went back to leaning against the counter. Fred was glaring at him. George looked back, unmoved, then shrugged before answering. "She's a curse breaker. We need one in each camp in case we needed to get in, and Bill told me that your last one was Avada Kedavra'd." Fred watched as George crossed his arms and continued in an almost patronizing manor. "And now that I've been here, I know that I made the right decision. You don't have anything. Nothing, Fred. If this is your idea of leadership, then you've gotten something mixed up along the way."

Fred fumed and leaned forward in his chair, still too weak to move. His expression was cold. "I've been trying to keep the deaths down, like I said, George. I've been trying to calm the riots, do you think that they're all as peaceful as this one? You should see it when more than two people are killed." He took a deep breath, and then redirected his anger. "Why did it have to be her, George?"

George stayed the calm of a man who had nothing to hide. He paused, but only in consideration. "She's already spent time in my camp, and a long time in Bill's camp. She needed a change of scenery, you know how she is, Fred. Once her family was attacked…she just…" George sighed. "She just needed to start over again."

Fred could feel the heat flooding his face as it lit in rage. "You sent her here on a sightseeing holiday? You sent Angelina to the most dangerous camp of the lot of them because she needed a 'change of scenery'?"

George hesitated. He crossed and uncrossed his arms and adjusted his weight on the counter. "I thought that she might…I thought…You two had a relationship before all of this happened. Maybe you both would--"

"You wanted us together so that the same thing would happen as happened between you and Katie?" Fred roared, jumping onto unsteady feet. He swayed a bit, and then his knees became sturdy. "You want me to walk around like you do? Like a kicked dog? My guilt just piling up because I was the one that hurt the person that I loved the most?"

George deflated. He refused to make eye contact, instead looking at the floor to his left. "I didn't hurt her." He mumbled without any hint of a defense. Fred couldn't help himself.

"Yes you did!" He accused, jabbing a finger in his brother's direction. "You knew that the curses weren't fully set on the perimeter yet! You knew!" His voice lowered, and he dropped his hand back to his side. "The curse-setters told you not to let anyone wander far from their tents yet, and you did. You killed three people that day, George." Fred's breath came in short bursts, but he didn't stop. "And God help me if I let anyone die because I'm too besotted with someone to see the war going on around me. Because I know anyone too well, or trust anyone too much. Because I hurt for someone that I lost because I loved them too much."

Fred watched as he broke his best friend, his brother, and some how couldn't feel the pain that he expected. Two years ago, he would have been ashamed of himself; he would have made it up to George in the best way that he knew how: planning a most excellent prank or treating him to a firewhisky. Somewhere in the past two years, he had lost whatever it was that set him on the same mental plane with George. How he wanted it back so desperately. Now he realized that they were once two halves of the same whole.

George cleared his throat, and still wouldn't meet his eyes. When he finally spoke his voice was raw, as if he was speaking around a lump in his throat. "Um." He turned around so that his back was facing Fred. "I ought to go. Susan wants to rearrange the tents tomorrow, and that always takes it all out of me." George took a few steps toward the door, and Fred took one toward his hurting twin, magnetized toward him.

George turned around suddenly, so that they were eye to eye, separated by half the room. "You need to get supplies tomorrow. Take Angelina with you, you need her to break the curses. Bill told me that he set them pretty tight the last time, and we both know that you couldn't break a curse if it was made of glass." With that, George turned on his heel and walked from the room, shoulders stooped, head down, and hands in his pocket.

Fred looked out the flap that his brother just left from. His brother. His twin. He watched the tarp blow slowly in the wind, and his shoulders stooped in a way that matched Gerorge. He stood like that until his body cried out it's protests, and he could feel his eyelids once again drooping and his knees buckling.

His tent suddenly made him sick. His stomach churned as he thought back on what he had said to his brother, what he had done to his brother. He said out loud the things that he had always known. He said them on the icy dregs of blood loss, which was like a hangover to him now, and didn't even flinch. But now he felt sick and sour and his insides curdled.

His body still aching, Fred made his way to his bedroom. Placing two strong hands in the metal groove that ran along the bottom edge of his cot, he pulled. At first the cot resisted, and then slid along after him. It wasn't until he had walked through the tent flap and onto hard dirt that he dropped his cot to the ground. Nature didn't seem as if it was closing in on him and, unlike the remains of the argument inside, didn't cling to him. Outside felt relatively clean.

Lifting the sheet from his bed, Fred climbed into his undersized cot. His body welcomed the small comfort, and a small wave of relief settled over him. Gazing emptily toward the dull yellow moon, Fred Weasley sent a silent plea toward heaven (if there was such a place, Fred wasn't sure), asking someone, somewhere, to lead Death Eaters to him in the middle of the night. His position in the middle of the camp wasn't that hard to find.

It was only then that Fred finally allowed himself to succumb to his body's needs and fell into a shallow and fitful sleep.