It happened the first time when they were in sixth year.
Empty dorm room.
Lee was off collecting bets for the next Triwizard task.
"We should lock the door."
It sounded wrong. As though they were eager about the imminent horror.
But they were just going to test a product. Like they test every other product of theirs. Who else could they put to risk but themselves?
They joked and laughed before the testing to kid themselves that what they were about to do wasn't disgusting, but ridiculously funny.
The aftermath wasn't all that funny, though.
George spent the next hour knelt before the toilet bowl, eyes screwed shut, dry-heaving.
It was a reflex reaction.
Lee wanted to know why they weren't talking, weren't even looking at each other for the next few days.
Something was wrong with their illegally brewed amortentia, though.
Fred was aware of every second of kissing George into the mattress. The potion hadn't fogged his brain enough to erase that fact.
And so the horror had to repeat one more time.
This time, George was the one who agreed to take it. This time, too, they joked and laughed before taking the plunge, soothing the nerves, kidding themselves.
George was blissfully unaware of the transgression when it was his turn.
The potion was perfect.
Fred hadn't had the urge to retch until his stomach cramped, though. He hadn't even felt disgusted.
He had given in to the sensations that his traitorous body had embraced, and he shivered when George whispered filth into his ear.
He thought he had washed away the sin, the tiny little indiscretion, when he took that long shower.
It was only some heavy making out. Not as if they had gone all the way. Such things, who knows, might even be common among other ridiculously close siblings. A little experimentation didn't kill. Come on, it wasn't even as if they both had been active participants to call it experimentation: one was under the influence of amortentia and the other had only been a somewhat passive-cooperative recipient.
They even joked about the whole thing later.
The aftermath of the second testing was laid-back, even funny.
They had more sense than to dwell on little things and unnecessarily blow them out of proportion.
They had too much going on in their lives to devote their attention to a single thing for more time than what's absolutely necessary.
It wasn't in their nature to brood.
So when Fred had asked Angelina to dance in a spur-of-the-moment decision that his capricious mind had made at the prospect of wounding Ron, George had been cool to sit by his twin's side with a little smile.
Because he knew, he knew that Fred's mind was far away from the topic of girls and dance even as the whole school was in a tizzy over it. He and George were busy worrying over their money and their products and their dreams.
A ludicrous character, Ludo Bagman, who cheated them and walked away with all their hard-earned money, a few dozen owl order forms that their dear mum had burnt to a crisp. We're trying, Fred, we're trying so hard; yet why do we keep failing?
Keep faith, he told him. George wanted to believe his slightly older brother. But then Fred went ahead and switched into his insensitive-mode when he pretended to be lightening the mood as he said:
We're mental, don't you think, Georgie? We'd literally do anything for money and success. We'd go to the lengths of kissing each other to prove everyone a point.
Shut up.
But in the Yule Ball, Fred's mind was blank when he lead Angelina effortlessly through their dance, jerked her close at the least expected moments, and kissed her as though he were in love with her.
George had gone without a date.
He had instead lent his shoulder to Lee that evening so he could cry on it, and his ear, so he could relate his elaborate plans to murder his twin. George had gazed across the hall at Fred and Angelina, elegant even as they were twined together closely, and the wry smile that had tugged at his lips when Lee had drunkenly hiccupped 'I'll kill him' once again was, perhaps, because he knew...
He knew that they both could go to any lengths to prove a point...
Fred jolts awake, soaked in sweat, trembling. His bedroom is dark and quiet, and he pointlessly strains his ears to hear his twin's breaths from his bedroom. He squashes the instinctive reaction at once.
He isn't sure if the flashes of memories and the whirlwind of emotions that tore through him in his sleep just seconds ago, the effects of which still thrum through him and makes the fine hair on his skin stand on end, were just a part of his own dream, or George's too.
He feels a forceful yearning to walk to his twin and curl into his warmth and seek his comfort, but quells it harshly.
He can't give in every time.
This time, he forces himself back onto his bed, and sets out on a familiar, tiring battle with sleeplessness.
Half an hour later, he is forced to retrieve the little vial from his nightstand that says 'dreamless sleep potion', and knock it down, before sinking into merciful oblivion.
Intentionally confusing chapter. Infact I intend this whole story to be confusing.