Secrets Unknown

Chapter Eight: "You weren't allowed to know"

George and Angelina held each other for a long time, neither of them wanting to let go and face the reality around them. Both of them were content in the comfort they had temporarily found in each other and wanted nothing more than to stay where they were forever. But the bustle of the household had started and people were yelling outside the bedroom door about missing socks and being late for certain agendas and George reluctantly opened his eyes. Light was streaming in through the worn curtains and he was brought violently back to reality when he realised he would have to get up. Not wanting to move because Angelina was still fast asleep, one hand clamped around his wrist, he gently shifted himself backwards away from the sleeping girl but as soon as he shifted his weight, she stirred and opened her eyes.

Angelina was in the very same predicament as George was. No way did she want to get up, go about her business like nothing was wrong. She closed her eyes and remembered the night before. She had gotten back from her outing with Katie and Alicia feeling almost worse than she did before. They chatted about mindless things such as clothes and what they had heard on the Wizarding Wireless trying, Angelina knew, to take her mind off Fred but it didn't work. When she got home she went straight up to the room she was sharing with George and went to sleep only to wake up an hour later, covered in a cold sweat. The nightmare she'd had was cruelly realistic. She had been walking through Hogsmeade with Fred when he had just looked at her suddenly and smiled.

His last words to her before he disappeared were "I have to go now, Angelina. Goodbye." And Angelina had screamed as he just vanished into thin air. She had woken up at that point and, overcome with something she didn't understand, wandered over to George's bed.

As she looked down at him she squinted her eyes to make him look like his twin before climbing on top of him, just wanting to savour the features so much like her own lover's.

"George?" Angelina spoke his name quietly and she felt the arms wrapped around her move as George answered.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about last night," she whispered to him, her cheeks flushing slightly at the memory of the way she had acted,

The arms around her squeezed her gently, "don't be." George told her softly.

She rolled towards him and smiled faintly, "you cried," she remarked boldly. She hadn't meant it to be embarrassing to the boy and he knew it.

George nodded, "thank you."

"Any time," Angelina whispered, her smile widening a little. A crash coming from downstairs sounded and they both cringed as the screaming started after it. It wasn't his mother. Mrs Weasley, although prone to yelling about the slightest thing, had become eerily subdued. She seemed to be walking around in a daze and when something happened such as Ron doing something to Ginny to make her jinx him she merely nodded and wandered off. George was worried about his mother. Like Hermione had said "We all miss Fred." And George was feeling that the most but for Mrs Weasley it must have been heart breaking.

Angelina groaned and pulled back the covers, pulling herself into a sitting position before swinging her legs over the side of the mattress and padding softly across to the door.

"I'm going to the bathroom," she told George who nodded and watched her as she closed the door. Once he knew that she had gone, he clamoured out of bed himself and grabbed the shoebox out from underneath his bed where he had placed it to stop Angelina from stumbling across it while she was looking for her shoe or something.

George had begun to become accustomed to reading about the life of his twin that nobody had known about. While he hated reading what life was like for Fred while George was floating around on a cloud of almost perfection, he needed to know what else caused his twin brother to do what he did. He opened the diary to where he knew he had been reading it the previous day and his eyes were drawn directly to his own name somewhere in the middle of the page. Looking back at the date he saw it was dated March 3rd. George began to read from the top, sickly eager to see what had been written about himself.

3rd March 2004

It seems sadly ironic that while some people will do anything to get rid of pain, I have begun to do anything to inflict it on myself. Does that make me a bad person? To think that I don't have to be in pain and yet I sometimes do anything I could possibly do to make pain shoot through my body. There is a curse that Death Eaters used to use on themselves when they were to punish themselves for displeasing their Lord. It is a little like the unforgivable curse that Professor Moody showed us in sixth year only you can use it on yourself and it doesn't take over your entire body, merely the part you point your wand at. It causes pain, yes, but the satisfaction is so different. I do it the 'muggle way' and use not my wand but other instruments. Scissors and blades George and I use for our little 'experiments'.

George's stomach lurched a little as he realised he was slightly disappointed for the way in which he had been mentioned. Ignoring this feeling of immense guilt, he read on.

Sometimes I am proud of the scars that cover some parts of my body and sometimes when somebody accidentally sees one of them I feel like covering them up, screaming at the person who accidentally saw that it was none of their business and hiding away from everyone forever. But then I am left with a disgusting feeling of being so unbelievably dirty that no amount of showering could ever make it go away.

Why would it ever matter to anyone that I do the things that I do? They would probably laugh. Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what they would do. Laugh long and hard at my little problems as though I do it for attention. Well, maybe I do some of the time. I thought that I did, to get attention for something other than making a large swamp appear in the third floor corridor that nobody could get rid of, but now it seems to be different.

One thing I have to confide only in myself is

George flipped over the page but the entry had stopped and the next page started with a new date. Confused, he turned back to the previous page and looked for any sign of interruption. Sighing, he turned the page and began to read the next entry dated the 5th of March.

5th March 2004

Just then, the door of his bedroom opened and Angelina wandered in, closing the door behind her. George scrambled to hide the diary underneath the coverlet of his bed when Angelina had her back to him and, thankfully, he succeeded in shielding it from view.

"That was quite a line up to the bathroom," Angelina was saying as she turned around. George pulled his hand back from underneath his covers and looked back at Angelina, aware of the guilt all over his freckled face. Angelina looked at him strangely.

"Is everything all right?" she asked him as she bent down next to her bed and searched for something on the floor.

George nodded, "yeah, fine."

Angelina smiled, "you're identical, George." She straightened up with a shoe in her hand and looked at him expectantly.

"Er, what?" George asked eloquently. Angelina narrowed her dark eyes and surveyed him with pursed lips.

"You and Fred," she continued, "you are identical."

George nodded, "yes, Angelina, I know," he told her with a hint of his old sarcastic humour.

Angelina rolled her eyes, "I could tell when there was something up with Fred and I can tell when there's something up with you."

To George's horror, Angelina hoisted herself off the floor and sat next to George on his bed, right on the place where he had just placed the diary.

"I can't believe it's only been a little over a week since….well," Angelina cleared her throat, and George could see that she, much like himself, couldn't find the words to describe what happened. "It feels like it happened years ago," Angelina started a new sentence to replace the one she couldn't finish.

George nodded, "I know what you mean."

Angelina turned towards George, shifting her weight as she did so and in doing so, dislodged the diary from it's hiding place. It slid to the floor with a soft clunk and Angelina bent down to pick it up, just as George lunged forward to grab it as well.

Angelina got to it first and she straightened up, the small black book in her hand.

"Sorry," she apologised, "I didn't see it."

"That's okay," George told her, sheer relief washing over him that she didn't look inside the front cover. Or at any other pages for that matter.

"Is that a diary?" Angelina asked as she stood up and smoothed down her pyjama pants that had become rumpled from sitting down.

"No," George said too quickly. Angelina looked at him strangely and George stupidly tried to fix his mistake.

"I mean, it isn't mine," he rectified. Even as he was saying this he knew it was a stupid thing to say for Angelina frowned slightly and looked at the book George was holding in his hand.

"Whose is it?" she asked slowly, looking from the diary to George.

"It's nobody's," he answered casually, "just a notebook."

"Whose notebook is it?" Angelina's stomach fluttered nauseatingly. She recognised the book from somewhere although she could not remember from where she had seen it.

"It's…" George stalled for time, wanting more than anything not to have to tell Angelina that he had in his possession her dead boyfriend's innermost thoughts.

"It's Fred's," she answered quietly, remembering where she had seen it.

George considered lying but upon seeing the look on Angelina's face, nodded sadly.