Chapter 5
Perhaps the reason no one noticed when Fred stopped talking at the end of second year was that no one could tell the twins apart. If you couldn’t tell the difference you wouldn’t have caught the change; George knew how to fill the space. He could feel in the shift of his brother’s weight behind him or the way he held himself in front that he wasn’t up to finishing the sentence and it wasn’t hard to adjust to the increased frequency of those moments. Besides, it wasn’t as if Fred’d gone completely mute. Of course he talked to George, and Lee or the members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. It was just that he stopped speaking when not spoken to.
But he seemed to continue fine with all the other school activities, so George stopped thinking of it. They propped a bucket of cold, slimy worms on top of the door to the Potions classroom after Snape made a Hufflepuff first year cry during the exam, and his shouts of fury echoed through the dungeons. Their end-of-year prank was to drop sleeping powder in Filch’s coffee, freeing the students of his nagging for the last week of term as it also turned out he was allergic to the stuff, angry red welts crawling up his throat and rendering him blessedly mute.
When Mum and Dad picked the twins, Charlie, and Percy up from Platform 9 ¾ at the beginning of summer, Ron was waiting for them and beaming. “How was everything? There’s only 94 days till I get on that train, you know!”
“Oi, Ronnie,” Charlie leaned over his cart to ruffle his brother’s hair, laughing. “Enjoy that mindset while you’ve got it, it might not last.”
Ron was too busy heaving himself into George’s cart so that he could ride through the barrier to answer.
“Bye! See ya next year!” Lee was yelling while his sister ushered him off the platform, and Fred waved. George decided not to comment on how his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
The first two weeks of summer passed in a blur. Mum made them clean the attic with the resident ghoul still inside, which resulted in Percy nearly breaking his nose, Ginny falling down the ladder, and many exasperated shrieks of “boys! You’d better be cleaning when I get up there!” Fred and George found an enormous dead mouse behind some dusty cabinets and chased Bill around with it for a solid twelve minutes, hooting and hollering, Ron and Ginny cheering them on.
Eager to show off their new skills the twins broke into the broom shed one night after dinner and pulled out the Cleansweeps, swooping over the garden. Since they didn’t have a proper ball set Bill stood under the crooked eaves of the Burrow and lobbed apples at them. Charlie circled their makeshift pitch from overhead to keep everyone safe, but managed to turn a blind eye when Bill tossed an overripe plum instead of an apple at Fred—it smacked into his face and exploded in a shower of sticky-sweet dark juice—and a very small, very angry garden gnome at George—it sent him skidding into the vegetable patch with one of the creature’s knobby legs stuck up his nose.
Fred acted pretty normal, but George knew he slept less than usual—he lay awake staring at the ceiling after George had drifted off, and was sitting quietly in his bed when George opened his eyes in the morning. He no longer asked for second helpings at supper (though he would eat it if someone gave it to him) and when George asked him quietly why, he’d said he was only tired, then throwing himself into a joke about Quidditch. It didn’t occur to George until the next morning that if Fred was only tired, he should be sleeping.
And just as Fred began to decline offers of flying to stay in his room instead, the others were noticing. Mum heaped more potatoes on his plate and gave him the largest piece of pie at supper, Dad sought to interest him with the most recent muggle-related Ministry case. Ginny and Ron made up songs based on the twins’ tales of Hogwarts and sang them whenever they caught someone walking by, Charlie now took one second longer to mess up his hair than he did for George, and even Percy tolerated more of their antics. During lulls in the bustle of the household Bill could be seen quietly engulfing his brother’s small body in a hug. That one seemed to work best; whenever George could catch a glimpse Fred had broken away with a grin.
One afternoon Mum called George in to help set the table for lunch, and brought up the subject when he was folding napkins.
“George, honey, is your brother alright? He’s seemed a little down lately.”
Slowly, George finished with Percy’s napkin, not letting his eyes leave the checkered pattern. Mum hadn’t specified, but he knew exactly which of his brothers she was referring to. That morning, while pulling on his socks, he’d asked. “Freddie, are you okay?”
Fred had looked up abruptly from their calendar, the quill frozen in his hand and blotting the paper. “Wha—me? I—yeah. I’m fine. Why?”
“I dunno.” George had shrugged, studying him, but when a blush crept up Fred’s cheeks he dropped it. “No reason… never mind.”
“Okay.” Fred had sounded uncertain, but didn’t press.
So George didn’t press either. In hindsight, maybe he should have.
Now, with his mother’s head tipped gently as she watched him, he said, “I don’t know.”
“Hmmm. I’ll talk to him soon, then.”
“Mum?”
She looked up from the sandwich platter, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “Yes?”
“Do you think I could talk to him first?”
Her face softened and for a moment George thought she might refuse him, a moment during which something hot flared in his chest—something fiercely protective of his twin, something that hardened near his heart.
But then Mrs. Weasley smiled. “Of course you can, George. Why don’t you go and wake him for lunch?”
So up the stairs George went, two at a time and sliding across the landing in his socks to throw open the door to their room. “Rise and shine, brother dear, the time has co—Freddie?”
Because Fred was not, in fact, asleep. He was sitting on the edge of his bed with his knees pulled up to his chin, swiping at his eyes. When he lifted his face to see George the corners of his mouth twitched downward again, and he pressed his lips together until the skin around them paled.
“Freddie?” Tentatively, George eased himself the rest of the way into the room and shut the door. “What’s happened? Are you alright?”
Fred just pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes again. He was trembling, so George hurried to sit beside him and wrap an arm around his shoulders. How long had he been like this? How much had George missed? “Shhh, Freddie… it’s alright, it’ll be okay.”
Fred took a shaky breath and leaned in, pressing his face into George’s shoulder. George rather awkwardly reciprocated, pulling his brother into hug to rub small circles into the base of his neck as the sobs petered out. After a moment Fred pulled away, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.
“Better?”
He nodded, offering up a weak smile.
“What was wrong?”
“I-I don’t know, I—I’m scared.”
George leaned forward to meet his brother’s eyes, confusion coloring his words. “Scared? Of what?”
“I don’t know,” Fred was starting to flounder again, so George settled his fingers around his wrist. “It’s, sort of everything. Or nothing in particular, I’m just, just, scared, and I don’t know why.”
“Like… anxiety?”
“What?” Fred’s eye’s flicked up again, brow furrowed.
“Anxiety, it’s… remember when I saw that healer, the bloke with the spiky hair and the model of the universe on his ceiling?”
Fred nodded.
“Well, he asked me if I had it. Said it’s like feeling a bit scared all the time, uneasy, he said, but you might not know why. There doesn’t really have to be a reason, just your brain thinks there is, I guess. I said no, but he gave me a paper on it anyway, just in case.”
“Is that… it’s not… my brain’s not, broken, then? Am I just…” The pressure on his wrist had not been enough, and George could feel his pulse accelerating beneath his fingers. “George, I don’t think I can live the rest of my life feeling like this.”
“Oi, Freddie,” George threw his arms around his brother again, stroking his back. “Do you really have such little faith in me? I’d quicker be a pureblooded squib than let you go on so miserably!”
That earned him a tiny smile. “Thanks… sorry.”
“What’re you apologizing to me for?”
Blush rose to Fred’s cheeks. “I mean, it’s not… you shouldn’t have to do this for me.”
George pulled back, staring straight at Fred’s downcast eyes until he lifted them. “Freddie, I’m not doing this because I have to! You’re my brother, and I love you, of course I’m going to take care of you!”
“I don’t… it’s a bit of a burden, yeah?” He looked on the verge of saying more, but George cut in with an indignant shriek.
“No! Not to me, it’s not! Not with you, no!” And he softened slightly, leaning back in. “Nothing’s ever a burden with you, Freddie, I swear. It never has been, and it never will be. I’m sure of it.”
Fred smiled, eyes shimmering with tears, and he went in for another hug. As George breathed in the stray wool of his sweater and the scent of cloves, that hot thing in his chest spread to cover his heart.
“Now, let’s go for sandwiches, alright? I’m starved!”