(no subject)
It felt like George was looking down on himself, even though he knew he occupied his own body. His wand held firmly in his hand, streams of light shot past his face and legs, some aimed at him and some at others. He dodged them in slow motion, and in his disassociated state thought how colourful they were.
An before an explosion wracked the corridor further down, where his three brothers, Harry, and Hermione stood. He ducked, as did several of his surrounding friends and foes. One Death Eater even fled, screaming, her large-knuckled hands held over her head until someone Stupefied her. There was no time to think after the explosion. The surprise and mild panic around him soon turned, and he found himself in the midst of a raging battle once more.
In the thickness of everything, he felt the pit fall out of his stomach. He froze as he heard Percy and Ron's terrible cries, and the colour drained out of his face. They were fine, the three of them, had to be. He'd just seen them over the tumult just a moment ago. It hadn't been that large of an explosion. It had probably just knocked the lot of them on their asses for the moment before they could retaliate.
He began to feel an emptiness seep into him from the edges of his mind inward, and he knew immediately. He knew with a certain, horrifying finality. His Fred was gone.
George (felt? watched?) dropped slowly to his knees in the midst of the battle and closed his eyes. "Just take me too," he whispered, to whatever may have been listening. "Take me where my brother's going."
He opened his eyes, sweat-drenched and panting in his bed, and swore callously under his breath as swung his legs over the side and planted them on the ground. By the look of the outdoors it was early, and George knew he had no chance in hell of going back to sleep. Rather than waste his time trying he walked quietly from the house, grabbing a clean shirt and garish swim trunks from his clothes, and walked until he hit the waterfall. The morning was still cool, and George saw no one (no dwellings nearby this spot, he thought thankfully) as he stripped down to nothing and pulled on his swim shorts. It was just right, and he needed something just right this morning. It had been the third time in a week with the same dream, but always with some variation to it.
What had happened to everyone else after they were whisked away to what should have been tropical bliss? George missed his family. He ducked under the water and swept the water from his face when he resurfaced. They were running on borrowed time, were he and Fred. That much he knew. What about the rest of the family? What about the war? He just didn't know.
----
Fred got up early, perplexed to find the house empty. "Probly what got me up, the bugger," he muttered to himself, knowing it was rare the twins woke up more than an hour apart from each other. He didn't know where George had gone, but he had a decent idea how to find him. Pulling on a clean shirt, he got into his hoverboard munching on a banana, and took off into the sky.
It wasn't more than a quarter hour before he saw the answering glint of reddish-gold from the ground, and then also saw his brother's familiar form cutting the water of the pool at the foot of the big waterfall. "Oi!" he yelled, zooming down to hover a foot or so over the surface of the water. "What the blazes are you doing up? It's barely light out!" And, having nothing to do with the banana peel, threw it down onto his twin's face.
---
George ducked under the water as the banana peel hit him and shook his head, sending it underwater on a diagonal course. He tread water with his feet as he pushed water out of his eyes. "Thanks for that," he said sarcastically, and sent a spray of water shooting towards Fred. "Sorry if I woke you up when I left, just had to get out of the house." He started to swim towards the pebbley shore, then walked along the bottom until he found a particularly flat and seat-worthy rock.
When he sat he wrung the water from his hair (plastered as it was to the side of his head) and hugged his arms around his tucked knees. "Morning, Fred," he said with a grin. "Feel like a swim?"
---
"Possibly," said Fred, crossing his arms over his chest and hanging midair like a genie. "It is morning, as you so cleverly noticed... Well, why not." Shifting his weight, he sent the hoverboard into a wide, fast circle, kicking off at the precise moment so he landed in deep water, the last nudge from his foot sending it towards land where it fell with a thump onto the grass by George's rock. He surfaced with a grin and shook his head like a dog. "Wicked, huh? I practiced that for about three hours yesterday. Tricks on these aren't what they are on a broom, but close!" Flipping onto his back, he sighed. It was a nice morning, there would be breakfast at the compound soon, and yesterday the bookshelf had been so kind as to grant him six months' back issues of Quidditch Weekly. Things were almost perfect.
---
George raised a brow in amusement as his brother's trick and chuckled, pushing off the rock and swimming lazily back toward the middle of the pool. He began to tread water as he neared where his brother floated. "That's brilliant," he said, though his tone was somewhat lacklustre. As much as he tried to mask his uneasiness following the nightmare, he could only go so far, and no one would be able to tell easier than Fred. "You'll have to show me how to do it." He grinned in earnest. "Then we can start an aerial performance squad." He rolled into a back float near his brother and sighed. It was early, and George hadn't gotten to sleep early enough for the time the nightmare had woken him up.
---
"We'd need three more for it to be really impressive," he sighed. "But a man can dream." He floated in quiet for a while. He wanted to ask what was wrong with George, he did... but at the same time he didn't. He was reluctant to break the pattern of happy carelessness he'd fallen into, and surely discussing anything that had gotten his twin out of bed so early would do just that. Nothing for it, old son, he thought bracingly, and shook his head, slopping water over his eyes in the process. "So you going to tell me what's eating you, or do I have to get Bill to pretend to be Mum for a while?" he said, extra loud in case George's head was under water. "I'm not above doing it, so just say the word and I'll be off - there's probably an ugly jumper I can make him put on if you really want the full effect."
---
He wasn't sure if his brother meant three more people, three more hoverboards, or both, but the visual made George smile. He lay in the water silently for a moment as Fred spoke to him, and even the sound of his brother's voice put him at ease. Happy carelessness indeed, and George had been (still was) overjoyed to play into it. But happy carelessness came to an end, and nearly always with heartbreak. George wiggled his fingers in the water and felt the cool currents he made whirlpool around them. "Don't know that you could get Bill into a jumper of any sort with weather lovely as this," he mused, and tried to picture Eldest Number One sweating about in a bright red Christmas sweater. "I miss home is all," he lied, and closed his eyes.
---
Fred huffed, rolling upright so he was treading water. "Oh come on," he said seriously, giving George a knowing look. "Cut it, yeah? It's weird when you try to hide stuff-- you're just bad at it, especially from me." He swam over to the rock and pushed up onto it, shaking the hair out of his eyes. "Is this about deserting the war? Or about deserting the family?" He knew it had to be one or the other, at the heart of it; not only with his twin's intuition, but simply because that persistent sense of honour was part of being a Weasley. He'd have given the same choices to Ginny or Charlie if they'd been the ones all in a muddle.
---
George floated in silence while he considered Fred's question. The true answer, both, and more, was what he wanted to say. Because those two answers were far too simplistic. He flipped over onto his stomach and swam underwater towards the rock. "I think both," he said tentatively, and because there was no use lying to his brother, he took a breath before he went on. "I've had nightmares," he explained, and shook some of the water from his head as he pulled himself up onto the rock next to Fred. He wanted to say and everyone was crying in every one, because that's what happened when you died, but held back. Saying that wouldn't do anyone any good.
---
Fred could sense the weight behind the simple sentence, and sighed. He knew he couldn't outrun the question forever-- but surely just a little longer wouldn't hurt. He'd escaped almost everything else that had ever happened to him; it made sense that he'd escape death too. "Well, we both deserted, yeah? And it's not like either of us had much of a choice. Anyone else'll tell you the same, George." He paused, and added, "Not to mention apparently while we're here, we're there too-- so it's not like anyone's going to notice we're gone."
---
A dark cloud settled over George's expression. "That's just it," he said, more force to his voice. "You're not there, so somewhere there's a me that's managed to go on living without you, and," he shook his head, "that bothers me more than anything." When they got out -if- they got out of here, he'd go back to what should be "their" life and he'd come up short. Half of him would be missing. George stared intently at the calm surface of the water, hell-bent on keeping his composure. He wasn't sure it would hold out, even though his stiff shoulders and crossed arms made him look as if he had a metal pole up his spine.
---
"You can't be serious," Fred exhaled. "Managed to go on living without me?" He was struck dumb then, trying to find words. There weren't any readily available, but the ones he happened upon finally were not ones he liked the sound of. "You really think I'm dead, don't you? Like... really. You don't just think it was a... a hallucination, or war-induced trauma, or something." He had been of two minds on the subject of what George really thought had happened back at home, and he only believed each choice halfheartedly, being comfortable neither with the thought that he was really dead, nor with the thought that his twin had gone a little mad before they both arrived here. "How can I be dead if I'm here?" It was a rhetorical question, but he thought it might help George rationalize reality if he went up against a question that had no answer.
---
George rolled his eyes. "Come on, Fred. Loads of people who are here died the second before they arrived. I just met one not two weeks ago." Glen Bateman. That was the real reason the man had unnerved him so much. "Besides," he added, "if people can be here and there at the same time, who's to say they can't just be here?" Which would mean that if George were to disappear (as others had) he'd still exist in the form that was now living his twin-less life and picking up the pieces of their broken society, family, and business. But if Fred disappeared that was the end. He'd never have his brother again. "It's only logical." He didn't know how else to convince his brother that he hadn't just imagined everything at the Battle of Hogwarts. It had been very real indeed. He shook his head, eyes still cast down to the water.
---
Following his twin's train of logic the way only a twin could, Fred siezed upon something with an expression so extreme, a Muggle cartoonist would likely have drawn a lightbulb over his head. "But who's to say someone who'd died can't go and come back over and over again?" he cried, throwing his arms out to the sides. "I've met people who've been here a few times-- Bill even said Ron was here twice, Hermione too. And anyway," he went on passionately, "most people who've died before they came here know they died. I haven't met one who didn't! And I didn't know. So maybe it's not true! You don't know," he finished, stabbing his finger at his twin's chest. "And I don't know if you'll ever find out. There's people who've been here almost three years, twin," he said, finally starting to calm down. "We could be here just as long, or forever for all we know. So forget how you're managing to live without me there-- figure out how the hell you're going to manage to live with me here!" And so saying, he stretched out both feet and pushed George back into the water.
---
George was normally the sort not to be pushed around so easily (both in a literal and metaphorical sense), so Fred's push naturally sent him reeling back into the water, arms waving about wildly. He closed his eyes but not his mouth as he went underwater, and coughed a stream of water when he bobbed to the surface. He wasn't sure he liked this feeling in his chest, because he could honestly count on one hand twice the number of times he'd ever been truly angry with Fred. "You just don't bloody get it, do you?" he coughed, and wiped the water from his eyes. "I do know, and I'm not batty like you think I am." His voice, tinged with anger and just enough desperation to be a bit frightening, rose as he continued. "You didn't have to see Mum's face." He tightened his jaw in a most un-twinly manner and shook his head. "I've dreamt it three times in the past week, Fred, and it's not false. It's what happened." He began swimming to shore, aware fully that if they ended the conversation here they would have gotten nowhere at all. Being a twin, however, meant reading each other very well, and George knew that Fred would follow behind him.
---
Which, of course, he did, though slowly. "I don't think you're batty," he called as he shoved himself out of the water. "It's not like that-- I mean it!" he insisted at George's skeptical look. Fred sat on a rock in the sun and pointed to one nearby for his twin to sit on as well, and continued. "I just mean there's so much about this place we don't know, so many stories that prove anything's possible. And if something crazy and insane and impossible can prove I'm not really dead, why wouldn't I take it as a preferable option?" He shrugged, his eyes fixed on an ant making its way across the rock, fighting to beat back a dangerous swell of emotion in his stomach. "I'm not fussed about the how and why-- I just want to think there's something more for me back home besides hanging out with Nearly Headless Nick for the next six hundred years. I don't even have any gruesome injuries to show off," he added, smiling a little, broadening it as he added, "Unlike you!"
---
George rolled his eyes. "There's nothing gruesome about it," he said, and shoved his brother's shoulder. He hastily brushed his hair over the hole where his ear once was, a self-conscious gesture he didn't usually employ. Fred had a point. "It's just that people leave the island all the time and no one seems to know why," he explained, "and I'm afraid that one day I'm going to wake up and you won't be here anymore." He dropped his head as he spoke, until he was speaking at his knees instead of his brother.
---
Fred didn't know what to say. Deep emotional conversation was not their strong suit, and never had been. He understood what his twin was trying to say; in fact, he thought it unnecessary that they talk about it at all. It wasn't as if they needed words to acknowledge the possibility George had just named. "Well you can't control whether I am or not," he said, more roughly than he'd intended. "It's not like I can make myself stay by wishing it. D'you think I'd rather go back?" he asked rhetorically, a healthy dose of scorn in his voice, in case George was confused as to what the right answer to the question was.
---
George shook his head adamantly, his wet hair slapping the side of his face. "Of course not." George kicked himself off the rock and stood up against it, half in the water. There had to be a medical name for the distress he was feeling inside, this feeling of unrest and disquiet that he just couldn't shake. "I think it's the traumatising event that I'm having trouble getting over," he said, trying to sound logical about everything. He shook his head. "And I guess I wish the island could've taken me from a different time or something, even an hour before we left." He waded back out into the pool and treaded water even though he could still reach the bottom, facing his brother.
---
"Look," said Fred, his expression serious and his hands loose on his knees. "I know this isn't exactly a walk in the bloody park, but the whole point of this place is that everything's in the past. You can't control what happens-- I could come and go six times in the span of a year, you never know, and I've heard it's happened." Or nearabouts, but Fred wasn't going to give up his penchant for exaggeration simply because he wasn't kidding around. "You just have to take this as the second chance it's s'posed to be. We're here, and for the foreseeable future that's not changing. I shouldn't have to tell you to stop walking 'round in terror of what might happen next-- you can't control it, so give it up. I wake up every day and make the conscious choice to forget the fact I've bloody died-- I think you can get past it if I can." He hoped to Merlin that he was right, because if George couldn't reconcile their old life with their new one, he didn't see how he ever could.
---
There was something peculiar about it, but for some reason hearing Fred say that he'd died in their other life made George feel marginally better. He couldn't explain it, but he thought it had something to do with Fred's acceptance of what would have been. He opened his mouth to speak, but found that he didn't really have anything else to say. That had been the lot of it, really. He shrugged. "Look," he said, and looked up at his brother. "I don't want you to think I'm dropping this, because you know that we don't have serious discussions like this, like, ever." He smiled, and pushed the laugh out of his voice, because that much really was true, "I really just don't think we have to bring this up again. I said my piece, you know how I feel, so let's get on with it." Without warning George grabbed Fred by the chest and hauled him into the water.
---
"Waaauuuugh!" Fred bellowed as soon as he came up, spurting water from his nose, mouth, eyes and (it felt like) ears. He immediately swiped a handful of mud from the floor of the pool and jumped on George, rubbing it into his hair. The conversation was dropped, and for Fred out of sight was as good as nonexistant; but as his twin had pointed out, Fred would know better than to think George had forgotten, or that the what if would stop worrying him.
An before an explosion wracked the corridor further down, where his three brothers, Harry, and Hermione stood. He ducked, as did several of his surrounding friends and foes. One Death Eater even fled, screaming, her large-knuckled hands held over her head until someone Stupefied her. There was no time to think after the explosion. The surprise and mild panic around him soon turned, and he found himself in the midst of a raging battle once more.
In the thickness of everything, he felt the pit fall out of his stomach. He froze as he heard Percy and Ron's terrible cries, and the colour drained out of his face. They were fine, the three of them, had to be. He'd just seen them over the tumult just a moment ago. It hadn't been that large of an explosion. It had probably just knocked the lot of them on their asses for the moment before they could retaliate.
He began to feel an emptiness seep into him from the edges of his mind inward, and he knew immediately. He knew with a certain, horrifying finality. His Fred was gone.
George (felt? watched?) dropped slowly to his knees in the midst of the battle and closed his eyes. "Just take me too," he whispered, to whatever may have been listening. "Take me where my brother's going."
He opened his eyes, sweat-drenched and panting in his bed, and swore callously under his breath as swung his legs over the side and planted them on the ground. By the look of the outdoors it was early, and George knew he had no chance in hell of going back to sleep. Rather than waste his time trying he walked quietly from the house, grabbing a clean shirt and garish swim trunks from his clothes, and walked until he hit the waterfall. The morning was still cool, and George saw no one (no dwellings nearby this spot, he thought thankfully) as he stripped down to nothing and pulled on his swim shorts. It was just right, and he needed something just right this morning. It had been the third time in a week with the same dream, but always with some variation to it.
What had happened to everyone else after they were whisked away to what should have been tropical bliss? George missed his family. He ducked under the water and swept the water from his face when he resurfaced. They were running on borrowed time, were he and Fred. That much he knew. What about the rest of the family? What about the war? He just didn't know.
----
Fred got up early, perplexed to find the house empty. "Probly what got me up, the bugger," he muttered to himself, knowing it was rare the twins woke up more than an hour apart from each other. He didn't know where George had gone, but he had a decent idea how to find him. Pulling on a clean shirt, he got into his hoverboard munching on a banana, and took off into the sky.
It wasn't more than a quarter hour before he saw the answering glint of reddish-gold from the ground, and then also saw his brother's familiar form cutting the water of the pool at the foot of the big waterfall. "Oi!" he yelled, zooming down to hover a foot or so over the surface of the water. "What the blazes are you doing up? It's barely light out!" And, having nothing to do with the banana peel, threw it down onto his twin's face.
---
George ducked under the water as the banana peel hit him and shook his head, sending it underwater on a diagonal course. He tread water with his feet as he pushed water out of his eyes. "Thanks for that," he said sarcastically, and sent a spray of water shooting towards Fred. "Sorry if I woke you up when I left, just had to get out of the house." He started to swim towards the pebbley shore, then walked along the bottom until he found a particularly flat and seat-worthy rock.
When he sat he wrung the water from his hair (plastered as it was to the side of his head) and hugged his arms around his tucked knees. "Morning, Fred," he said with a grin. "Feel like a swim?"
---
"Possibly," said Fred, crossing his arms over his chest and hanging midair like a genie. "It is morning, as you so cleverly noticed... Well, why not." Shifting his weight, he sent the hoverboard into a wide, fast circle, kicking off at the precise moment so he landed in deep water, the last nudge from his foot sending it towards land where it fell with a thump onto the grass by George's rock. He surfaced with a grin and shook his head like a dog. "Wicked, huh? I practiced that for about three hours yesterday. Tricks on these aren't what they are on a broom, but close!" Flipping onto his back, he sighed. It was a nice morning, there would be breakfast at the compound soon, and yesterday the bookshelf had been so kind as to grant him six months' back issues of Quidditch Weekly. Things were almost perfect.
---
George raised a brow in amusement as his brother's trick and chuckled, pushing off the rock and swimming lazily back toward the middle of the pool. He began to tread water as he neared where his brother floated. "That's brilliant," he said, though his tone was somewhat lacklustre. As much as he tried to mask his uneasiness following the nightmare, he could only go so far, and no one would be able to tell easier than Fred. "You'll have to show me how to do it." He grinned in earnest. "Then we can start an aerial performance squad." He rolled into a back float near his brother and sighed. It was early, and George hadn't gotten to sleep early enough for the time the nightmare had woken him up.
---
"We'd need three more for it to be really impressive," he sighed. "But a man can dream." He floated in quiet for a while. He wanted to ask what was wrong with George, he did... but at the same time he didn't. He was reluctant to break the pattern of happy carelessness he'd fallen into, and surely discussing anything that had gotten his twin out of bed so early would do just that. Nothing for it, old son, he thought bracingly, and shook his head, slopping water over his eyes in the process. "So you going to tell me what's eating you, or do I have to get Bill to pretend to be Mum for a while?" he said, extra loud in case George's head was under water. "I'm not above doing it, so just say the word and I'll be off - there's probably an ugly jumper I can make him put on if you really want the full effect."
---
He wasn't sure if his brother meant three more people, three more hoverboards, or both, but the visual made George smile. He lay in the water silently for a moment as Fred spoke to him, and even the sound of his brother's voice put him at ease. Happy carelessness indeed, and George had been (still was) overjoyed to play into it. But happy carelessness came to an end, and nearly always with heartbreak. George wiggled his fingers in the water and felt the cool currents he made whirlpool around them. "Don't know that you could get Bill into a jumper of any sort with weather lovely as this," he mused, and tried to picture Eldest Number One sweating about in a bright red Christmas sweater. "I miss home is all," he lied, and closed his eyes.
---
Fred huffed, rolling upright so he was treading water. "Oh come on," he said seriously, giving George a knowing look. "Cut it, yeah? It's weird when you try to hide stuff-- you're just bad at it, especially from me." He swam over to the rock and pushed up onto it, shaking the hair out of his eyes. "Is this about deserting the war? Or about deserting the family?" He knew it had to be one or the other, at the heart of it; not only with his twin's intuition, but simply because that persistent sense of honour was part of being a Weasley. He'd have given the same choices to Ginny or Charlie if they'd been the ones all in a muddle.
---
George floated in silence while he considered Fred's question. The true answer, both, and more, was what he wanted to say. Because those two answers were far too simplistic. He flipped over onto his stomach and swam underwater towards the rock. "I think both," he said tentatively, and because there was no use lying to his brother, he took a breath before he went on. "I've had nightmares," he explained, and shook some of the water from his head as he pulled himself up onto the rock next to Fred. He wanted to say and everyone was crying in every one, because that's what happened when you died, but held back. Saying that wouldn't do anyone any good.
---
Fred could sense the weight behind the simple sentence, and sighed. He knew he couldn't outrun the question forever-- but surely just a little longer wouldn't hurt. He'd escaped almost everything else that had ever happened to him; it made sense that he'd escape death too. "Well, we both deserted, yeah? And it's not like either of us had much of a choice. Anyone else'll tell you the same, George." He paused, and added, "Not to mention apparently while we're here, we're there too-- so it's not like anyone's going to notice we're gone."
---
A dark cloud settled over George's expression. "That's just it," he said, more force to his voice. "You're not there, so somewhere there's a me that's managed to go on living without you, and," he shook his head, "that bothers me more than anything." When they got out -if- they got out of here, he'd go back to what should be "their" life and he'd come up short. Half of him would be missing. George stared intently at the calm surface of the water, hell-bent on keeping his composure. He wasn't sure it would hold out, even though his stiff shoulders and crossed arms made him look as if he had a metal pole up his spine.
---
"You can't be serious," Fred exhaled. "Managed to go on living without me?" He was struck dumb then, trying to find words. There weren't any readily available, but the ones he happened upon finally were not ones he liked the sound of. "You really think I'm dead, don't you? Like... really. You don't just think it was a... a hallucination, or war-induced trauma, or something." He had been of two minds on the subject of what George really thought had happened back at home, and he only believed each choice halfheartedly, being comfortable neither with the thought that he was really dead, nor with the thought that his twin had gone a little mad before they both arrived here. "How can I be dead if I'm here?" It was a rhetorical question, but he thought it might help George rationalize reality if he went up against a question that had no answer.
---
George rolled his eyes. "Come on, Fred. Loads of people who are here died the second before they arrived. I just met one not two weeks ago." Glen Bateman. That was the real reason the man had unnerved him so much. "Besides," he added, "if people can be here and there at the same time, who's to say they can't just be here?" Which would mean that if George were to disappear (as others had) he'd still exist in the form that was now living his twin-less life and picking up the pieces of their broken society, family, and business. But if Fred disappeared that was the end. He'd never have his brother again. "It's only logical." He didn't know how else to convince his brother that he hadn't just imagined everything at the Battle of Hogwarts. It had been very real indeed. He shook his head, eyes still cast down to the water.
---
Following his twin's train of logic the way only a twin could, Fred siezed upon something with an expression so extreme, a Muggle cartoonist would likely have drawn a lightbulb over his head. "But who's to say someone who'd died can't go and come back over and over again?" he cried, throwing his arms out to the sides. "I've met people who've been here a few times-- Bill even said Ron was here twice, Hermione too. And anyway," he went on passionately, "most people who've died before they came here know they died. I haven't met one who didn't! And I didn't know. So maybe it's not true! You don't know," he finished, stabbing his finger at his twin's chest. "And I don't know if you'll ever find out. There's people who've been here almost three years, twin," he said, finally starting to calm down. "We could be here just as long, or forever for all we know. So forget how you're managing to live without me there-- figure out how the hell you're going to manage to live with me here!" And so saying, he stretched out both feet and pushed George back into the water.
---
George was normally the sort not to be pushed around so easily (both in a literal and metaphorical sense), so Fred's push naturally sent him reeling back into the water, arms waving about wildly. He closed his eyes but not his mouth as he went underwater, and coughed a stream of water when he bobbed to the surface. He wasn't sure he liked this feeling in his chest, because he could honestly count on one hand twice the number of times he'd ever been truly angry with Fred. "You just don't bloody get it, do you?" he coughed, and wiped the water from his eyes. "I do know, and I'm not batty like you think I am." His voice, tinged with anger and just enough desperation to be a bit frightening, rose as he continued. "You didn't have to see Mum's face." He tightened his jaw in a most un-twinly manner and shook his head. "I've dreamt it three times in the past week, Fred, and it's not false. It's what happened." He began swimming to shore, aware fully that if they ended the conversation here they would have gotten nowhere at all. Being a twin, however, meant reading each other very well, and George knew that Fred would follow behind him.
---
Which, of course, he did, though slowly. "I don't think you're batty," he called as he shoved himself out of the water. "It's not like that-- I mean it!" he insisted at George's skeptical look. Fred sat on a rock in the sun and pointed to one nearby for his twin to sit on as well, and continued. "I just mean there's so much about this place we don't know, so many stories that prove anything's possible. And if something crazy and insane and impossible can prove I'm not really dead, why wouldn't I take it as a preferable option?" He shrugged, his eyes fixed on an ant making its way across the rock, fighting to beat back a dangerous swell of emotion in his stomach. "I'm not fussed about the how and why-- I just want to think there's something more for me back home besides hanging out with Nearly Headless Nick for the next six hundred years. I don't even have any gruesome injuries to show off," he added, smiling a little, broadening it as he added, "Unlike you!"
---
George rolled his eyes. "There's nothing gruesome about it," he said, and shoved his brother's shoulder. He hastily brushed his hair over the hole where his ear once was, a self-conscious gesture he didn't usually employ. Fred had a point. "It's just that people leave the island all the time and no one seems to know why," he explained, "and I'm afraid that one day I'm going to wake up and you won't be here anymore." He dropped his head as he spoke, until he was speaking at his knees instead of his brother.
---
Fred didn't know what to say. Deep emotional conversation was not their strong suit, and never had been. He understood what his twin was trying to say; in fact, he thought it unnecessary that they talk about it at all. It wasn't as if they needed words to acknowledge the possibility George had just named. "Well you can't control whether I am or not," he said, more roughly than he'd intended. "It's not like I can make myself stay by wishing it. D'you think I'd rather go back?" he asked rhetorically, a healthy dose of scorn in his voice, in case George was confused as to what the right answer to the question was.
---
George shook his head adamantly, his wet hair slapping the side of his face. "Of course not." George kicked himself off the rock and stood up against it, half in the water. There had to be a medical name for the distress he was feeling inside, this feeling of unrest and disquiet that he just couldn't shake. "I think it's the traumatising event that I'm having trouble getting over," he said, trying to sound logical about everything. He shook his head. "And I guess I wish the island could've taken me from a different time or something, even an hour before we left." He waded back out into the pool and treaded water even though he could still reach the bottom, facing his brother.
---
"Look," said Fred, his expression serious and his hands loose on his knees. "I know this isn't exactly a walk in the bloody park, but the whole point of this place is that everything's in the past. You can't control what happens-- I could come and go six times in the span of a year, you never know, and I've heard it's happened." Or nearabouts, but Fred wasn't going to give up his penchant for exaggeration simply because he wasn't kidding around. "You just have to take this as the second chance it's s'posed to be. We're here, and for the foreseeable future that's not changing. I shouldn't have to tell you to stop walking 'round in terror of what might happen next-- you can't control it, so give it up. I wake up every day and make the conscious choice to forget the fact I've bloody died-- I think you can get past it if I can." He hoped to Merlin that he was right, because if George couldn't reconcile their old life with their new one, he didn't see how he ever could.
---
There was something peculiar about it, but for some reason hearing Fred say that he'd died in their other life made George feel marginally better. He couldn't explain it, but he thought it had something to do with Fred's acceptance of what would have been. He opened his mouth to speak, but found that he didn't really have anything else to say. That had been the lot of it, really. He shrugged. "Look," he said, and looked up at his brother. "I don't want you to think I'm dropping this, because you know that we don't have serious discussions like this, like, ever." He smiled, and pushed the laugh out of his voice, because that much really was true, "I really just don't think we have to bring this up again. I said my piece, you know how I feel, so let's get on with it." Without warning George grabbed Fred by the chest and hauled him into the water.
---
"Waaauuuugh!" Fred bellowed as soon as he came up, spurting water from his nose, mouth, eyes and (it felt like) ears. He immediately swiped a handful of mud from the floor of the pool and jumped on George, rubbing it into his hair. The conversation was dropped, and for Fred out of sight was as good as nonexistant; but as his twin had pointed out, Fred would know better than to think George had forgotten, or that the what if would stop worrying him.