"You're George, and you're Fred." Teagan said as she poked each of their noses in turn with her thin, bony fingers. And the two boys stood in front of her with their mouths gaping wide, they looked at each other simultaneously before looking back at the girl in front of them, shocked.
"H-how do you d-do that?" They stuttered synchronizingly, nobody had been able to differentiate them that quickly, or ever. It had only been four months since the start of school, and the girl was not in half of their classes and house. She smiled at them, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. She’d toy with them too now that she could. She’d lie and none would see false information in her speech, just like when the boys said their names with such fervour that you wouldn’t even think that they were playing with you.
Teagan looked at both of them, a lazy smile on her face and an eyebrow cocked. “You don’t know how?” She asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” They said in sync, “Even our mother doesn’t know who’s who.” She laughed out loud, putting a hand in front of her face, she shouldn’t look like she was laughing at them but at their mother.
"It's easy,” She responded with, drawing her hand out towards them. “You each have one big freckle on your nose, but on opposite sides, and it spells out your name." Even more dumbfounded and dubious, the eleven years old twins looked back at each other, scrutinising their noses, and looking at their freckles for any anomalies or letters. But finding nothing of the sort they looked back at the girl with which they shared broom classes. "If we look at your names, George starts with a curved letter, but doesn't finish with one, and the other way one for you, Fred.” She shrugged her shoulders as if it was obvious. “So if you have the big freckle on the left, where you would start the name, then you’re George.” She poked said boy on the chest before turning to his twin brother, “And if yours is on the right, you would put the 'd' there. You’re Fred." She concluded with a triumphant smile, the girl pecked each of the boys on the forehead and left the breakfast table, leaving the boys shocked to the core, even their mom couldn't tell them apart that easily, and their mother had birthed them, bathed them, fed them and all. It had been four months and the girl could already tell them apart.
"Oh!" She yelled from the double doors, the Weasleys pulled their heads up, jointly looking at her as she waved her hand up, her bangs falling into her eyes. "Fred is more witty and George more outgoing!" She concluded before turning around and making her way up to the library before classes started.
Fred was more dubious on the ‘simple’ differentiation by the girl than George, George just felt defeated by her. But for Fred, what she had said didn’t actually fit with every scenario where she had been able to tell the two boys apart. She would yell out the right names when they were flying close to her during their broom classes, and they often went very fast past her. It was more than the freckles and the ‘witty and outgoing’ comment she had made. You couldn’t tell them apart from far away with that. He was determined to find what made him so different from his brother, even if his twin wasn’t going to help. And his older brothers were useless, Percy wouldn’t even help him on something so trivial and Bill and Charlie didn’t really differentiate them that much, they just guessed and didn’t care who was who.
Fred stood up from his place on the bench, took his school bag and went after Teagan as she walked up to the Library, he followed her until their paths separated, she went up the stairs and he went down the corridor where he could find something that would help him, a gigantic mirror. It was what he needed. He’d drag George with him another time, but right now was looking at his face in detail so when he saw George it would not be like looking at his reflection, he hoped.
It didn’t work, he didn’t see anything different on George’s face, the muscles and freckles that moved when they smiled were the same. It was like looking in the mirror once again. And that went on for months. It was always the same result. It was something more than their physics, but Fred only started to understand that as the years went on and he had better things to do than understand how his classmate could tell him and his brother apart.
-
"But how do you differentiate us when you can't see our freckles? Like when we are on the other side of the corridors." Fred had asked once again as she organised her belongings back in her bag after class had ended. Year four and she still hadn’t given up her secret. “Or when George and I play Quidditch, we even have glasses that obscure our faces and freckles. Don’t tell me you can read in our minds to tell us apart?” He jokingly asked Teagan, it had been a joke between them as the years went on and Fred kept proposing reasons as to how she knew who was who. She just laughed and shook her head.
“I am not a Legilimens, Fred. Think about it more.” A small smile graced her lips, her eyes twinkled with mischief as she raised her head up, her bag well filled and ready to be thrown over her shoulder. She didn't answer him even if he looked at her with those Weasley puppy eyes, she waited until the two were out of the room before she winked at him and left with three words hanging in the air. "Can't tell you!"
She would never say how she does it out loud, she'd never admit it, it was in relation to her. There was one way she could tell them apart and the boys hadn’t changed since their first year. One thing was different for the two boys, the two were different people, so they thought differently. That's the one thing that was different, and because of that, their exterior actions, ones seen by anyone, were different. And the one thing that differed from one twin to another, were their feelings for the girl, it was their smile that showed the difference between the two. So it was obvious that Teagan wouldn’t admit it out loud, she had feelings for one, and it was because she watched him constantly that she could tell that little detail from his brother.
George had actually found the reason why he was so much different from his brother when he caught her off guard as she scrutinised his brother during a dinner. He told her he knew, and that might have been the only secret he kept from his second half.
-
It wasn’t until their sixth year that Fred found out how Teagan Kellet could tell him apart from his twin brother. You could say that it was a total accident on his part. He was finally brave enough to do what needed to be done. He knew that the coming years were going to be harder. First because Voldemort was back, second because that idiot pink toad was teaching, but mostly because he and Teagan had no more classes together, only charms, and Flitwick had specifically made a class plan where the two were on opposite sides. He somehow regretted not taking more NEWT classes than the two he had managed to keep.
It was thanks to this distance between the two that he understood his own feelings, and he confronted her about the week before going back home for the Christmas holidays.
“Hey!” He called out to her in the middle of the busy corridor, “Teagan!” He continued screaming when the girl didn’t stop. “Fucking stop!” No movement, “Miss Kellet!” He said much louder than his previous statement, younger years quickly took a step away from him. The surprising call had made everyone in the second floor corridor stop for a second, the only person that didn’t start walking again was Teagan, asking herself about who had called her. “Can you stop when I call you?” A breathless voice muttered from behind her, she turned surprised to see Fred there, using the wall as a support, he seemed to have been running to run with his sweaty forehead and messy hair blown back.
“It depends,” She answered in her own style, using the wall as a fashionable stand, “If you call nicely or not.” She laughed as she heard the boy mutter under his breath about her being a fucking Hufflepuff with good morals.
As the two waited for the corridor to empty, most of the students went down to the great hall to eat the lunch that awaited them. The more time that passed the more Fred was regretting his decision, maybe he should have just sent her a letter once he was back home, maybe he shouldn’t even have thought about telling her of his feelings, maybe she only saw him as a friend, maybe ... Fred stopped his train of thoughts to go into a much darker, uncharted territory. He didn’t have girl problems. None at all. He kept telling himself.
“So,” Teagan called out to him, drawing him out of his reverie, “What is it that you want?” Before he could even tell her, she answered her own question with her usual humour. “No, I am not doing your Charms essay.” Fred chuckled at that, he still hadn’t done it. But that wasn’t what he was going to talk about.
“That’s not it.” He wasn’t acting like his usual self
“Then what is it?”
“Well …” His throat closed on itself.
“Smile a bit more, you look like a dying duck.”
“Thanks, but …” Fred didn’t know how to continue, his whole Griffindor bravery gone the moment he had looked in her eyes. He scowled, pushing his lips to the side, curling the upper lip up in a grimace. Teagan scowled at him in return.
“You look like George when you make that face.” He blanked out for a second before changing to a very awkward smile.
“Better?”
“Your eyes are blank right now.” She was criticising the way he was looking at the moment without even knowing what made him like that. “Did your crush reject you?” She asked, knowing that Fred had had a girl on his mind for the past few years (but not who, of course). Fred gulped at that.
“I feel like she will with the way she is going.”
“So you haven’t told her your feelings?” Even if Teagan was in love with him, she didn’t feel jealous talking about his crush, it would make her happy to see Fred happier than he was currently, but she would also be his shoulder to cry on when George wasn’t aground.
“I’m trying to,”
“Ah.” She interjected dumbly.
“But she keeps cutting me off.” Was she dumb? Fred didn’t know, but she was not making it easy for him to bare her his heart at the moment.
“That’s a shame.” She really seemed sad for him, patting his shoulder as if he was already rejected. He felt like it.
“I like you.”
There, he said it, he didn’t chicken out and he didn’t give Teagan an opportunity to cut him off in the middle of his love declaration.
“Oh.” She said, pointing a finger at herself. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
“I didn’t see that coming.”
“Good.” If she wasn’t going to give him her answer at that moment, then he better leave before he made a fool of himself. In a panicked state Fred left her suddenly, walking past her, round a corner and into a secret passage before she had time to catch up to him.
Teagan felt bad, she was really surprised because she had liked him for a long time too, maybe longer than he liked her, knowing that he had a crush on a girl in third year. It was the same girl for over four years. She felt terrible for not answering him at that moment. She had made his confession harder than it should have been, made him worry about her feelings for him and, most importantly, made him run away thinking that she didn’t like him back. She’d tell him how she felt about him the moment she’d see him in the corridor, she promised herself that she would, more for his sake than hers. Fred was an over-thinker, one thing that was different from George, and he could easily go down the rabbit hole if she didn’t quickly tell him how she felt about him. How much she loved the boy too.
However, she didn’t see him in the corridors that afternoon, catching a glimpse of his young brother Ronald as well as George happily talking to Lee, but no Fred. And that evening the twins were not at dinner because they had detention (again) and the next day nothing. It was as if every member of the Weasley clan had disappeared overnight as well as Harry Potter and his friend Hermione Granger.
Teagan had gone to their head of house to see if she knew where they had gone. The news she received was not the best. The Wealsey father had been gravely injured and now resided in St Mungos for an undetermined amount of time. It was a shame that it had to happen that night, at the time that Teagan had to confess to Fred. He must be doubly worried at that same time, his father who was on the verge of death in the hospital and the girl he liked not answering him. There was not much luck that the Wealseys would come back to Hogwarts for only one day of school, so Teagan started right away.
If Fred won't be back at Hogwarts until the end of the Christmas holidays, then she will send him a letter explaining her feelings. And with a few charms he wouldn’t be able to not read it.
‘Dear Fred,
I like you too.
No, don’t stop reading. I want to apologise for not responding the moment you told me you liked me, my excuses are that I really thought you liked someone else other than me and that I thought that you knew that I liked you too. I want to also apologise for making your confession way harder than it should have been, like I am sure that I ruined it for you. You were already a bit nervous and I made you think that I was not interested in you.
Now that we got that out of the way, I believe that it is time for me to tell you about how I differentiate you from your brother. I believe that I have already told you, but your mind was elsewhere and I am sure that you passed over my words like they were nothing. It’s your smile. You are not like your brother because you don’t smile in the same way, yours is softer (the story with your freckles was my own invention).
You are a lovely boy, and, only if you want to, we can go out and drink some butterbeer once you’re back to Hogwarts.
I wish the best recovery for your father’s health.
I would also like to know where you are currently staying, Professor McGonagall told me that you are not at The Burrow at the moment. I want to send you and your family Christmas presents.
Love,
Teagan.
-
They didn’t wait very long before officially dating, thirty seconds after coming off of the Hogwarts Express Fred had her in his arms and asking her if she wanted to be his girlfriend. He didn’t dare ask her through a letter, he had held himself from doing it for two weeks.