Chapter 4
Up until their third year at Hogwarts, the Weasley twins had generally been on equal standing when it came to interacting with others. George transitioned when he was eight so they’d been socialized a little differently, but that was very quickly remedied and soon enough people began to mix them up.
This had started as a joke with Bill and Charlie because they knew how good it made George feel, and Fred caught on almost seamlessly. They would switch clothes or places at the table and Molly and Arthur pretended they couldn’t tell who was who, and though at first Molly had worried about whether her two youngest children would be able to identify them at all, it was soon made clear that they would always know which one of their brothers was which.
Outside the Burrow, all hell broke loose immediately. This was the twins’ favorite part of the scheme and something the rest of the family put up with (or contributed to when Molly wasn’t looking) just to humor them. The novelty of pronouns and passing for George may have died down after a while, but the confusion never failed to make them laugh. Teachers in primary school were constantly bewildered and when they went off to Hogwarts none of their professors (save possibly McGonagall) and only Lee Jordan, the members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and a few of Ron and Ginny’s friends could properly differentiate between them.
At the end of second year, things changed in the social department.
Fred hated puberty. So did George, perhaps more than he hated anyone at that point in his life, and it got to him first.
One November day when the corridors were so cold that students ran with their cloak hoods pulled tight around their ears from class to class, Fred had accidentally slipped into the girl’s bathroom on his way to Defence. Waiting in the stall with his feet pulled up, a conversation reached him.
“Bloody hell,” one girl had groaned, turning the tap so that the rush of water filled the room.
Her friend laughed. “Literally.”
“Oh, shut up and consider yourself lucky.”
“Well, it means you’ve become a lady, yeah?”
“Lady, schmady. It means pain, and a damned nuisance, and an acute realization of the lack of strawberry ice cream in this castle. If you look forward to that, you’re mad.”
Fred’s face went warm. They were talking about periods. Oh.
“I reckon boys are lucky not to have ‘em, then.”
“Yes, and so are you, that’s what I’ve been saying! That’s what ‘damned nuisance’ means!”
“Oh alright, well, we’re late for class so let’s go before Snape docks more points. After that poor first year’s fiasco last week, we’d be lucky not to come in fourth this year.” The door creaked and then thudded shut, but Fred didn’t get up right away.
I reckon boys are lucky not to have ‘em, then, she'd said. Fred supposed she was right—it didn’t sound too nice—but he knew a boy who would have one. George.
Blimey. He’d likely be even more unhappy about it than that Hufflepuff, too, ‘cause it would make him feel wretched about himself. Fred remembered the time when they were seven and Mum had cut her sons’ hair short for the summer but left the girls’ to grow out. Ginny hadn’t cared a bit, and Bill (who had kept his hair long since he was fifteen) was French braiding her hair with butterfly clips in the bathroom when George came running in with Fred on his heels, sobbing uncontrollably. He had begged and begged Mrs. Weasley to chop off the red twists, and when she refused hadn’t been able to stop crying for hours. George ended up sitting in the shower in Bill’s lap, while he murmured to him and held his hands to stop him from pulling his hair out strand by strand. Fred took over braiding Ginny’s hair with the butterfly clips, and though it was slightly messier than Bill’s work she didn’t complain; Fred’s dyspraxia wasn’t diagnosed for years after but the family had long since stopped expecting tidiness to trail from his fingertips. Bill eventually convinced his mother to do what George wanted (and he kept his hair that way for more than a decade then) but the whole ordeal was never forgotten. Fred was fairly certain that if his brother’s haircut had affected him that badly getting a period would be a lot worse, and he had no idea how to help him. Mum had sent George back to Hogwarts this year with a chest binder—it looked a little like a tank top that just reached his belly button, made of a slippery and stretchy kind of silver fabric with no seams, and she’d enchanted it so that he could wear it all day, anywhere, as long as he took it off when he slept—but judging by what George told him she had yet to do much broaching of the period subject.
Who was supposed to know about these things? Girls, yeah? But there was no way he’d go up to Angelina, Alicia, or Katie, or even owl Ginny to ask about this. It was too private, and now that he thought about it maybe Ginny wouldn’t know. Madam Pomfrey, then? She’d met with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley before the twins’ first year, and though no one said anything and Mum told them she’d done this with every child because their family was rather accident-prone, Fred knew they’d discussed George being transgender. But Pomfrey had never pulled George aside or even hinted that she knew anything more about him than she did every other student, so George had no reason to trust her. Fred guessed that meant he also had no reason not to trust her (and she was a skilled healer) but in this situation it seemed better to err on the side of caution; he didn’t want to risk his brother being hurt. McGonagall? Absolutely not. She’d do the job, sure, but not without drowning the two of them in awkwardness, and she had surely gone through menopause already and wouldn’t have supplies.
So Fred would write home to Mum. He’d hoped to avoid this option because going around behind George’s back with his own mother seemed horribly dishonest, plus there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t just owl him directly to ask about the whole thing. That would embarrass George beyond help, and the last thing Fred wanted was for him to feel embarrassed about any of this. So he’d have to write to Mum and tell her not to mention it to anyone, especially George. Maybe he and Lee could figure out a way to charm it into binding her to the promise as soon as she read it. Maybe he could write to Bill instead, ask him if he knew, or ask him to ask Mum or—no. Mum would have to know sooner or later anyway, and the less Fred tangled things up before then the better. This was tricky business, this was, but if he wanted to help his brother not feel bad he’d have to get over himself first.
Tomorrow’s lunch would be cut short by a visit to the Owlery, and he hoped it wasn’t a fruit tart day.
When Fred returned from classes three days later there was a brown paper package sitting at the foot of his bed, and inside it a note lay on top of a box of pads. He shoved the whole thing deep into his trunk and covered it with the History of Magic textbook he hadn’t opened all year before unfolding the little blue paper.
Dear Fred,
I do hope you’re reading this in bed and not at the breakfast table, as I’ve sent along instructions for delivery after hours. Don’t worry, I won’t tell George and you needn’t be shy because all of this is perfectly normal (better to learn now than later). I hope you boys are doing well, and concentrating on your schoolwork. Write home again when he gets it or if you need anything! And Dad wants to know: did that Hufflepuff blowing up half the charms classroom put Gryffindor in the lead for the House Cup?
Many hugs and kisses,
Mum
P.S. learn a good Tergeo, and I won’t tell you what that is because Merlin help us you have got to go to the library sometime. It’ll come in handy, I promise.
Upon further inspection (which did not include a trip to the library but only a skim of the index in his Charms textbook) Fred discovered that Tergeo was “a cleaning charm specifically meant for the removal of blood and/or other bodily fluids, cast through a twisting motion in the wrist and careful siphoning with the wand over the affected area”. Oh… yeah, it was bound to be useful. Fred flopped onto the bed and pulled his wand from his pocket.
“Tergeo.” Nothing happened; he’d neglected to twist his wrist.
“Tergeo.” Still nothing, but he felt some sort of warmth in the wood.
“Tergeo.” He slid his wand against the sheet, siphoning deliberately, and he could feel the warmth in the fabric now.
Encouraged, “Tergeo!” And he burned a small round hole into his bedspread.
“Oh, bollocks!” Fred hissed, clamping his hand over the smoke. He had forgotten about the actual blood, and apparently using the spell dry set things on fire. Well. Now his sheet had pockets.
The rest of that calendar year passed without incident, and Christmas filled the Burrow with cheer. They hosted Charlie’s new friends from Romania for several days (Mum was so eager to meet them and ensure that her son was in good hands that she accidentally invited all six members of his team to stay) and they were remarkably good houseguests. One was missing half the fingers off his hand and his cousin had a metal plate in his knee, but that didn’t stop them from scraping the snow and ice crystals from the porch, engorging them, and using them to build igloos and initiate snowball fights. One was so light and agile that when a terrified Ron pointed out a spider dangling from the kitchen ceiling he jumped straight up in the air, grabbed it without thinking twice, and tossed it out the window; he’d been a Chaser in his school days. The fourth was there to research the current dragon population and write a book about their behaviors, and Percy and Ginny followed her around asking academic questions all week. A woman from Indonesia had joined their company only for the hatching season and had a sense of humor dangerously in sync with the twins’—everyone was stepping on confetti bombs that sang her country’s folk tunes when popped for months. And the last member became Bill’s fast friend, tall and muscular with hair braided in dark green ribbons down to their waist and a passion for cooking that saved Mrs. Weasley hours of exhausting work.
Nothing beat having the whole family together again, but it did mean that the twins were sharing their room with Ron and Percy, Ginny was sharing hers with the two women, that agile bloke was sleeping on the floor of Charlie’s, the cousins bunked in the sitting room, and the one with the green ribbons hunkered down with Bill each night (no one was sure where their sleeping bag and mattress were, but what Mum didn’t know could only hurt her if she went in without knocking first). So despite the happy atmosphere, everyone was quite ready to return to their respective places when the holiday was over.
Now Fred’s only reminders of the whole period thing came when he found a hole in the corner of his bedspread or any of his roommates commented on one in theirs, and he’d completely forgotten about the box of pads in his trunk by the time George got his first period in March.
Thunk. And then very softly, “ow.”
Fred sat up in bed, fingers sliding over the cold wood of the bedside table before connecting with his wand. “Lumos!”
Again, a sharp inhale. Pained? He shucked off the bedcovers and swung his legs over, pushing slightly off-balance through the curtain, wandlight wavering over the velvety red. “George?”
Because there he stood, one hand against the wall and the other wrapped across his stomach. A white bedsheet was tangled around his legs up to his rib cage, and it was covered in blood.
“George! You’re bleeding, I—oh.” Fred felt his face flush hot, but he forced it back, forced his voice to quiet. Not now. “Are you alright?”
“Freddie…” His mouth was pulled down at the corners, tears welling in his eyes, and red had bloomed up his neck and into his cheeks—shame.
“Here,” Fred hurried forward to duck under his brother’s arm and support him, landing a quick kiss on his temple. This was exactly how he’d been trying to prevent George from feeling, and guilt bubbled in his chest but he forced that down too. There wasn’t anything to do now but try to make it go away, and to be more reassuring than he felt. “C’mon, it’s okay.”
George took a shuddering breath and swiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Ow,” was a murmured hiss that he clamped his lips over before it could turn into a sob.
When they reached the bathroom Fred extinguished his wand light and left his brother leaning on the sink to turn on the shower, testing the water temperature. “Just go on in there, yeah? Leave the sheet here and throw your clothes over, okay? I’ll toss you a towel.”
“Okay,” George nodded, eyes down. Fred bit his lip and swallowed the lump in his throat.
He turned his attention to the sheet then, praying he wouldn’t put another hole in it. The blood wasn’t bright and some spots had already dried a little. Slowly he worked to siphon it clean, dissolving the stains and the yellowish rings they left behind before repeating the process with the pajamas that flopped over the shower door. Muttering, “tergeo!” and listening to the steady rhythm of the water, forcing himself to breathe along with it.
Lee’s snores filtered through the gap in his bed curtains and from what Fred could see of him as he tiptoed past, he was out cold. That was a good sign, and since his bed was closest to the bathroom they were lucky he was the heaviest sleeper. Fred rooted through his own trunk for that box of pads and a new pair of pajamas for George; the two of them had always shared clothing at home and he figured it might make him feel better to do it now too. He stacked those on the bathroom counter along with a towel and quickly returned to his bed. He couldn’t help but want to be out of there by the time his brother finished his shower, yet he also couldn’t help but sit frozen on top of the covers, unwilling to rustle them for fear of missing something George said or did. It would look horribly awkward for him to be found staring off into space like he was waiting for something; he didn’t want to make George feel more like a burden than he already did, but he also obviously wasn’t going to go back to bed—that would make him feel worse. Merlin, Fred, pull it together and just do something, sitting there silent is doing more harm than good. Finally he grabbed his Charms textbook off the bedside table and flopped down facing the bathroom, reading the first paragraph twice before the flow of water was replaced by George’s muffled footsteps, and the door slid open.
His hair was damp and he had his arms wrapped around his chest. Fred closed the book to look up at him but he didn’t return the gaze, lips pressed together, sniffling. He crossed slowly to his bed with his back hunched and curled up in a fetal position, not bothering to crawl under the covers.
Fred abandoned the textbook and sank slowly onto his brother’s bed. “Hey, can I just… sit here?”
Red shame rushed into George’s cheeks again but he nodded, swiping at his eyes and then letting them fall shut. He looked so small, so defeated—there were a million things Fred wanted to tell him, like you’re still my brother, I’ll always think of you as my brother, not once did I think of you as a sister even when we were small, you were just my twin, and I love you more than anything in the world and I’m so so so sorry, and I’ll always be right beside you, and I’ll help you with everything you need, and it’s okay, you don’t need to be ashamed, it’s going to be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like it I’m right here, and I love you, Georgie, I love you. Instead, he put his hand on George’s shoulder and squeezed it, and George seemed to understand everything he hadn’t said, like Fred thought he would. He pulled himself up and pressed his face into Fred’s collarbone, and his shoulders began to shake with sobs. Fred leaned back against the headboard and held him close.