Disclaimer: Oops, I forgot to do this last time. I own nothing, don't sue me.

Chapter 2

"Collins, Simon!" called Professor McGonagall.

A nervous looking boy with sandy hair walked towards the hat, and was motioned to sit down on the stool. McGonagall placed the hat on his head and everyone seemed to be waiting for something. After about thirty seconds, the had opened it's mouth again.

"Gryffindor!" it cried.

Simon looked relieved and walked over to the Gryffindor table to loud cheers and clapping. The Sorting continued, taking as little as a few seconds to well over a minute to sort the students.

"Johnson, Angelina" became a Gryffindor, and then it was Lee's turn.

"Jordan, Lee!"

The twins' new friend walked towards the hat, dread locks shaking slightly, but showing no other signs of nervousness. The hat took slightly longer than average, but soon shouted out his fate.

"Gryffindor!"

Both twins breathed a sigh of relief as "Montague, Lance" became a Slytherin. This was pretty much a guarantee that they would stay together. No Weasley had ever been anything except a Gryffindor.

"Weasley, Fred!"

Nodding at Lee and cuffing George lightly on the arm, Fred walked confidently to the stool and sat down. He caught a glimpse of his friends smiling slightly, confident that they would all be in the same place.

"Difficult," said the hat in his ear, "You seem to fit in many places."

"Put me in Gryffindor, then," replied Fred in his head, "I belong there."

"Gryffindor? I don't know. You are smart enough to be a Ravenclaw, but your intelligence is not their type, and you would not do well there. You are loyal enough to your friends to be a Hufflepuff, but you do not enjoy hard work, so you would be held back, there. That leaves Slytherin and Gryffindor."

"Slytherin?" thought Fred, rather shocked, "Put me in Gryffindor. If you put me in Slytherin, I'll turn you into a pair of underpants and give you to Snape!" he finished in a panic.

"Not bad. I've heard far weaker threats." chuckled the hat, "in fact, that was rather…"

"Slytherin!" cried the hat.

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George was starting to worry. His brother was taking quite a while to be sorted. He hadn't seen the hat take that long, yet. Still, his brother couldn't be anything but a Gryffindor.

"Slytherin!"

George stumbled on the spot. He looked and saw his equally shocked looking brother stumbling out from under that hat. He looked for Lee, and found him gaping like a fish out of water. Both Gryffindor Weasleys wore similar expressions. That couldn't be. This was a dream. It was all a bad dream that was fooling him to make him panic. He would wake up, and Mum would yell at him that he was going to be late. The only sad thing was that Lee wasn't real. That was a pity. He quickly pinched himself, wanting to wake up from this bad dream as quickly as possible, but he instead yelped in pain. No dream?

"George Weasley!" called Professor McGonagall, "We're waiting."

George numbly walked to the stool and sat down. He didn't know where he belonged, between his two brothers and his new friend, or his twin and other half.

"Well, what have we here?" said the hat in his ear.

"George Weasley, nice to meet you," he replied dully, "Where do I belong?"

"You are a lot like the last one I sorted. Your twin, was he?" asked the hat. "You're also a lot like the one I sorted earlier, Jordan, but where to put you?"

"Why the hell are you asking me?" asked George, without any real venom. "I have to choose between most of my family and my new friend, and my twin brother. No matter what you do, you split me from someone. Ok, George, breathe."

"Well, you are a lot like your brother in the fact that you could fit almost anywhere, but you would not shine in either Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. But, unlike your brother, you are slightly more bravery and friendship than cunning and ambition. Both of you are very close to the borderline. I don't normally give advice, but you two could be the deciding factor that Godric told me about, so pay attention."

"Wait, do you mean Godric Gryffindor?" asked George, pulled out of his daze by the familiar name.

"The one and only. He was the one who owned me, and then gave me the ability to sort you. He told me that his best friend, Salazar Slytherin, was drifting away and that there was a line between the houses that few dared to cross and that someone would need to bridge them, and I think that you two are the ones. All I can tell you is that both family and friends must stick together, but that the houses are not really so different as they seem. You belong in his house, in…."

"Gryffindor!" cried the hat.

George walked to Lee, not failing to notice the dull, pained look in Fred's eye. How different could his brother be? What did it mean that he was more ambition and cunning than bravery and friendship? Had someone really fooled him for eleven years?

"George, wake up!" Lee practically yelled in his ear, "What happened back there?"

"I don't know. I thought Fred was the exact same as me, if only slightly different in sense of humor. I don't see what made one of us go one way and one of us go the other. I just don't get it!" replied George in a pained voice, not having the energy for anything more than the truth.

Lee looked sad for a moment, and then tried to put on a cheerful face for his friend.

"Don't worry, things will turn out. Now, though, is the best time for pranks, since nobody knows who we are!" he laughed, but his heart wasn't in it. They planted a balloon in the mashed potatoes, making it explode when someone accidentally punctured it with a fork, but nothing seemed to raise their mood. Neither saw Fred looking wistfully over at the Gryffindor table, wishing more than anything for him to be there, laughing and playing pranks, or even to be able to cheer his brother up. He saw the odd looks that Charlie and Percy threw him, and noted that George and Lee were both laughing, not noticing that their hearts weren't in it. He felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life.

When the plates were cleared away and everyone was following the prefects to the dormitories, Fred finally caught George's eye and read confusion, despair, and hurt in there. Fred knew that George was reading similar things in his on eye. Lee was smiling in a slightly forced manner in an attempt to cheer up George, but his eyes held a mix of sympathy and anger for hurting them for Fred, and general confusion at the whole situation. Watching, their retreating backs, Fred nearly walked into a wall he was so immersed in his own thoughts.

George knew Lee was trying to help cheer him up, but all he wanted was to be left alone, to be able to think. Lee was a good friend, and he was likely to be their friend for life. Wait, why did he keep thinking of himself and Fred as a unit? Well, he thought, it shouldn't be much of a surprise, since they had been considered as such for most of their lives, and he had seen Fred as his other half for as long as he could remember. They were a package deal in anything they got into, and rarely disagreeing on anything. I thought I knew what he was thinking at the same time he thought of it, and vice versa, but apparently I didn't, he though dully. The "Wonder Twins", the "Dynamic Duo" was split. He didn't know Fred, he though as he slumped on his new bed, only stopping to take off his shoes, even before the sorting, he didn't realize what Fred was planning to stick on Lee.

But, unbidden, the sorting hat's words that the had tried to tune out, since they were too much to bear on top of everything else, came to the fore of his mind. No, he and Fred were just a pair of jokers, never to be a catalyst that had been foreseen by Godric Gryffindor himself. Why would anyone want to unite the houses, with all the evil wizards in Slytherin? But, a voice in his head chimed in, what about Fred? He's still the same guy he was before the sorting, so why do you hate him now, it asked. No, he isn't, tried George lamely, but he knew he couldn't win when he was fighting himself, and he tuned the voice out and tried to fall asleep, but the voice asked him one last question, as his mental defenses fell to the call of sleep.

What is really so different about him, despite the fact that he is a Slytherin?

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A few hundred feet down, in the dungeons of the school, Fred Weasley was having a similar argument with himself. Why? Why him? What made him so different that he was made a Slytherin? What had he done wrong? The answer came to him, in the form of the threat he made to the hat.

"Slytherin?" though Fred, "Put me in Gryffindor. If you put me in Slytherin, I'll turn you into a pair of underpants and give you to Snape!" he finished in a panic.

"Not bad. I've heard far weaker threats." Chuckled the hat, "in fact, that was rather…"

"Slytherin!" cried the hat.

Fred groaned. Why couldn't he have just let the hat do its bloody job, and not made that damned threat. It was entirely his fault that George and Lee hated him, and he couldn't do a damn thing to make it right.

"Weasley, you get some sleep!" called a voice from the door leading to the Slytherin boys' dormitories. Fred turned in his chair, trying not to look at the hated green and silver decorations, and saw a boy in his year with dark hair and tanned skin looking out at him.

'Fine, thanks. Pucey, right?" he asked, deciding that he could at least learn some names.

"Yeah, and I've got some advice for you. You don't want to be associating with Gryffindors, no matter if they are your twin, because Slytherin has a reputation to keep, and you don't want to face the wrath of the entire house." Stated Pucey, without any real threat, but with no real softness, either. He was merely stating the facts.

"Ok, thanks." Replied Fred, secretly deciding to read up on hexes.

Pucey left, and Fred was left alone with his thoughts. George was worth it, he decided, and he would try to make amends. The least he could do was explain. The next day was no good, since he needed it to learn enough spells to defend himself, but the day after was a good choice, even if it meant that they would have to be uncertain for another day. Realizing that he was thinking like a Slytherin, Fred shook his head and headed to bed. Perhaps, he would wake up and find it was all a bad dream. Yeah, when Salazar Slytherin shits out a second Hogwarts just for muggleborns, and teaches them to defend themselves against purebloods, then he might be so lucky, he thought in disgust. Well, it was a hope he could at least hold onto for a few hours, until he fell asleep. He collapsed on his bed, thinking that it was all a dream, and that he was going to wake up in The Burrow, any second, and that George would be throwing a bucket of ice water over him because he slept in. With those happy thoughts, he drifted off to a peaceful sleep.

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Back in the Gryffindor tower, Percy Weasley was cursing Fred for giving the Weasleys a bad name. With a Slytherin in them, they were less likely to be seen as a purely light family, and it was all Fred's fault. He didn't see how Fred could be a Slytherin while George could be a Gryffindor, as they had always hatched their schemes together. Their very Slytherin schemes, he thought, angrily. George must have tricked the hat, he decided, not realizing that much of this was due to the fact that the twins had teased him so much. At thirteen years old, he felt only anger and disdain towards the twins, because they were the black mark on his family's name.

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Elsewhere in the Gryffindor Tower, Charlie Weasley was wondering what went wrong, not with the twins, but with the hat. The twins were good kids, he thought, if a bit crazy, but they certainly weren't evil. He just hoped that the mistake that the hat had made could be corrected, before they were split apart, and before Fred was changed for the worse. Slytherins may be dark, he decided, but Fred isn't. He made a mental note to watch for changes in Fred, and for signs of depression in George, then promptly forgot his mental note as he fell asleep.

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Back in the dungeons, Lance Montague was proudly thinking of how he had upheld his family tradition and honor in getting into Slytherin. The hat had taken barely a second to decide, and it had made the right choice. He was in Slytherin, the house of ambition and cunning, not in any of those weak, foolish houses full of mudbloods and blood traitors. He wasn't a reckless Gryffindor, a plain and stupid Hufflepuff, or a bookish Ravenclaw who lacked the kind of sense that counted, and he was surrounded by good, pureblood families, with the exception of that Weasley fool who didn't properly appreciate the second chance he had been given by being placed in Slytherin. His father would be proud of him, and all he had to worry about was how to bring the rest of the year under his influence in a subtle way.

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Adrian Pucey lay awake, feeling confused. He was a member of a good pureblood family with a long history of Slytherins and powerful members, but the hat had taken longer than it should have. The bloody hat had considered both Ravenclaw and Gryffindor as good choices for him, until he had talked some sense into it. However, the fact that he was considered for Gryffindor was deeply disturbing, more so than Ravenclaw. Ravenclaw was full of intelligent people who were of the book-smart variety instead of the cunning Slytherin variety, but Gryffindor was full of brash, reckless people who had no idea of subtlety. At least he wasn't considered for Hufflepuff, the house of people who worked hard instead of finding the better way, specifically a shortcut. His parents would be glad he was a Slytherin, and he wasn't stupid enough to tell them the rest of the story. They would just berate him for almost getting himself placed amongst all the "mudbloods" and blood traitors. He didn't see how Weasley had managed to be a Slytherin, but he guessed that he had it in him, somehow. The guy was alone in Slytherin, and he needed someone to show him a few ropes, soAdrian had helped him and gained himself an ally, too.Besides, the guy wasn't so bad, considering where he had grown up, right?

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Back at The Burrow, Molly and Arthur Weasley were thinking of all the fun the twins would be having in Gryffindor, and wondering if Percy would ever manage to keep them under control. No, he probably wouldn't, but they had bigger things to worry about. Ginny was outgrowing the age where she would willingly wear dresses, wanting to wear pants, so she needed new clothes that Molly would have to sew. Ron was getting temperamental at the age of nine, and was fighting with his sister. And they were short on cash, having just spent all sorts of money on school supplies for the four kids who were now going to school. The children's sorting was the least of their issues, since no Weasley would ever be anything except a Gryffindor.

End Chapter

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