Fic: A Rose, By Any Other Name
Title: A Rose, By Any Other Name
Rating: R
Pairings: George/Lee, with occasional George/Various
Word Count: About 10,000
Warnings: Drug use and a spot of non-con.
Author's Note: Special thanks to my new beta, secretsolitaire, who is fantastic and whose services I highly recommend. And, as always, thanks to purple_chalk, without whom this fic (and, frankly, most every major project in my life) would have languished in my brain forevermore.
Hogsmeade, 1996
George hisses in pain as he grabs for his mead, and Lee shakes his head, looking annoyed.
“Honestly, George,” he says, crushing lacewings flies into a paste with a mortar and pestle, “I can’t believe you opened that letter.”
George closes his eyes and flexes his fingers painfully. “I thought it was a Howler; I opened it for a laugh. How was I supposed to know that bitch had filled it with Botuber pus?”
Lee raises his eyebrows and points to his fist, displaying the words I must not tell lies still etched in scar tissue. George groans.
“I know, I know. Ugh. Just don’t tell Fred, yeah? He thinks the rash is from a product we’re working on--he’ll take the mickey out of me forever, if he knows what really happened.”
Lee rolls his eyes. “I doubt he’s been paying attention, what with that.” He jerks his head towards the closed door of the bedroom, where Fred and Angelina have been making animal noises for the last several hours. “I sort of thought renting this room would be a chance for the three of us to-ah, nevermind. Can’t blame a bloke for wanting a shag.”
“Or seven,” George remarks, and they share a smile.
Lee glances away quickly, tests the consistency of the lacewing mixture, and declares it passable. He combines it with the essence of murtlap sitting next to him with deft hands, sniffs the mixture once, and moves over to the table where George is sitting.
“Here,” Lee says, “rub this into your hands, it’ll help. The lacewing flies-they’re used in Polyjuice, they help generate the extra skin in transformation, so I think they’ll make the healing process faster. Unless,” he adds, smiling ruefully, “they turn your hands pink like that stuff from third year, but I think I’ve improved a bit since then.”
George grabs for the mixture, desperate for relief, but his fingers can hardly bend. Lee sighs and takes it from him. He scoops a large handful out of the bowl and starts massaging it into George’s left hand.
“Fuck,” George whimpers; for all the essence of murtlap is soothing, each blister burns more on contact. He stares up at the ceiling to halt the tears springing up behind his eyes. “Fucking hell.”
Lee hisses angrily, turning George’s blistered hand over in his callused palms. “Jesus, George-why didn’t you let me look at this before? This isn’t just Botuber pus-that bitch. Christ, you’re lucky you didn’t lose your hands!”
George tries to grin; he imagines it looks more like a grimace, considering. “Maybe I should write her back,” he says, a bit haltingly, pausing every now and again to let out gasps of pain. “Clearly she’s trying to mask her passion for me with rage. I can see it now-‘Dear Dolores, I picture you fondly in pink lace and only pink lace. I have so long dreamed of the day where we could lie together and discuss the hateful behavior of eleven-year-olds everywhere-’”
Lee glares at him. “Shut up, you idiot. What if you’d dropped the parchment, or opened it in the wind? This shit could take your eye out!” He drops George’s left hand and picks up his right, scooping more of the mixture from the bowl. “I have half a mind to come to Diagon with you two tonight.”
George looks away from the ceiling and straight at Lee, suddenly fierce. “The hell you do,” he says. “No fucking way I’m letting you leave school now.”
“Letting me?” Lee says. He’s irritated, a little fire behind his eyes. “What, so you and Fred can do what you want but I have to stay in school like a good little boy? How does that work? And besides,” he adds, looking a little triumphant, “Fred said you lot would find me a place at the shop if I wanted it.”
George rolls his eyes. He can’t remember the last time he was this serious-if he’s ever been this serious. “My brother’s an idiot, Jordan. But yeah-if you were like us, I’d tell you to leave tonight, we’d set you up as partner straightaway.”
“But I’m not like you? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Though angry, Lee is still rubbing the potion into George’s hands, for which he is profoundly grateful.
“Fred and I….it’s kid stuff, what we’re doing. And we’re good at it, and y’know, we really couldn’t do anything else. This is what we want, yeah? But look at you! Look at my skin!” He flexes his left hand, where the burns are already starting to fade. “You can’t be a Healer if you don’t finish your N.E.W.T.s, you moron. You’re going back to school.”
Lee looks at him for a long moment. “Alright then,” he says finally, smiling a little. “But if I grow up to be a boring, lifeless bastard, I will blame you, make no mistake.”
“If you grow up to be a boring, lifeless bastard,” George says, grinning earnestly, “I will come to your house and throw Dungbombs at your window, screaming ‘OLD COOT! DODGY OLD COOT!’ until you loosen up.”
Lee laughs, pleased. Then he looks at the hand he’s holding and frowns. “Oh, hell, I missed a spot-this is going to hurt-sorry-” He digs two paste covered fingers into the largest burn, and George’s world explodes in agony.
“FUCK,” he cries, and doesn’t look up fast enough. He closes his eyes against it, but a few tears spill over, embarrassingly visible. He smiles sheepishly and reaches to wipe them away.
“Don’t you dare,” Lee says, grabbing his wrist with one hand and reaching for his cheek with the other, “go near your eyes with open magical wounds all over your hands. Sometimes I wonder how you are even still alive,” and he catches George’s cheek in his palm, wiping at the tears with his thumb.
There is a split second-it lasts years-when the world shifts, and George is acutely aware of the position of Lee’s hands, the warmth of Lee’s skin. Then they hear the doorknob click, and Lee pulls back at speed. Fred enters, looking shagged out and relaxed, a giggling Angelina behind him.
“Wotcher, boys,” he says, grinning, running a hand through his hair. George can’t help but smile back, even if he is a little-disappointed?-at his timing. “Alright, schoolchildren, we’ve hosted your truant selves for long enough. What would your parents say?”
Angelina hits Fred with her handbag. “Don’t call me ‘schoolchild,’” she says, feigning crossness. Fred laughs and picks her up.
“I thought you liked being my little schoolgirl,” he says, a bit too loud, and George and Lee share a friendly grimace; whatever moment they’d had is gone, lost on the wind. Angelina shrieks and hits Fred again, demanding release, and he lets her go easily enough.
“Seriously, though,” Fred says, his grin slipping a little, “we’d better go, Honeydukes’ll close soon. Unless-Lee, the offer’s still open. We’d have plenty for you to do down the shop, ey, Georgie?”
George inclines his head slightly, looking at Lee, who smiles and says, “Thanks, but no. Some complete shit talked me into finishing my academic career.”
“Shame, that,” Fred says lightly. They walk back to the tunnel chatting amiably, and Lee turns to George as Fred kisses Angelina goodbye.
“Use that paste for a week, mate,” is all he says, and he slips into the tunnel, looking resigned.
March
Resentment curls like a serpent on George’s tongue, flavoring his coffee bitter and his cigarette stale. He stares with narrowed eyes at his own hands, the knotted places where his veins converge, raising the skin into translucent vulnerable mountains. His fingers are trembling slightly, moths on the wind, and he scowls at their impertinence and takes a quick draw from his fag.
It’s a Muggle café in West London, this place he’s found. It is dark and slightly unwashed, mostly empty-George likes it. There’s no one to see here, no spells keeping the coffee warm, so after a few minutes you’re alone and your drink is reduced to swill. George doesn’t like swill, but the rough taste lingers on his lips and in the recesses of his mouth for hours, reminding him to focus, to care. Every cigarette he smokes leaves its taint to mix with the residual coffee, so that by the time George falls asleep each night his teeth are coated with it, this strange flavor of inescapability. It would be a perfect system but for the following morning, by which point his mouth has cleaned itself. He hates the few moments of his day when his world tastes of dreams and cotton, when he can almost forget himself. Almost.
George spends a few hours a day here, before, after and sometimes during work, just to escape. Ten months later, and still everywhere he goes has to be somewhere new-a place he found after-or somewhere painful and prepared for. He’s selling the shop. How could he not sell the shop? He would have had to sell it anyway, after what he did to the particularly thick customer who unwittingly called him by the wrong name. Stories like that will ruin a business.
Oliver Wood comes round his flat sometimes, and tells him not to smoke. Lee comes round too, when he can, with his new short hair and his white coat-he’s quiet, usually, looking haggard from his long days at St. Mungo’s. Angelina Johnson came round once, looking for sex-she never came back. George is quite sure he’ll never forget the way he felt when he chucked the little black box at her, the box his brother had shown him with the ring inside, the ring that was meant for after the war.
After, Fred had said, and George had believed him.
Now George only believes in before.
---
There is a girl who works in the coffee shop. She is 17, 18 maybe, a Muggle who thinks herself worldly. George is bizarrely attracted to her fierce independence, her short hair, the piercing in her nose. He watches her for days, wrapped easily in his coating of aloof regularity. Finally he makes eye contact, a glance laden both with interest and nonchalance. She wanders his way on her break.
“Can I bum a smoke?” she asks, leaning against his chair. She’s wearing too much eye makeup, her lids coated with heavy black liner that doesn’t suit her face, and she’s trying too hard; her foot slips in its dark boot against the floor, exhausted from trying to keep her pose casual. George is endeared despite himself. Her youth and her inexperience, her carefully cultivated air of strength, her clear sense of mischief; these are things he appreciates, remembers. He half-smiles at her, and offers her his pack, wishing with a tight, nostalgic ache that he could catch her freedom, her carelessness, and keep it.
George has a strange instinct and follows it-he says, easily enough, that he’d rather smoke outside, that she’s welcome to join him. She raises her eyebrows and grins at him, infectious, young; he loves her for it in a sharp and brainless instant. Then he shakes his head to clear it (a small voice at the back of his mind whispers his brother’s name) and reclaims the cold monotony that he knows and has become accustomed to.
She says her name is Candace, but he will never remember it-he’ll only recall the way she curls her lips around the cigarette she’s bummed from him, the way each puff of smoke twists, a tendril, into her cropped curls. Her name is negligible, like her face and voice, like the age that makes her too young for such depravity. All of it is negligible, and none of it is, and this does not stop George from taking her, roughly, in the alley behind the shop.
She is eager and willing, pulsing at his touch in a way that is almost macabre, moaning with raw abandon against his chest. He is ripping violently at her skirt, her knickers, catching her hot slick mouth in his, shoving himself into her and begging, begging to feel. He pushes her back, and he hears her shirt tear against the brick wall he has pressed her to. “Oh,” she sighs, and then louder, “oh, oh,” running her slim fingers through George’s hair. She comes in a warm rush as he pounds her, gasping, and he is jealous-obscenely, horribly jealous. He comes too, half-heartedly, feeling no pleasure, only relief.
“Hey-what’s your name?” she asks, an afterthought, smiling strangely at him as she does up the buttons on her shirt. He turns to her, his mouth open around the answer, but he is struck suddenly with the taste of coffee and cigarettes still sharp on his tongue.
“Fred,” he says, and when she nods, believing him, George begins to recall what it feels like, being alive.
April
It is the first of April. George wishes it weren’t, and not only because it reminds him (achingly, horribly) of all he’s lost. It doesn’t make sense, that two people born on the same day, mere minutes apart, should be forced to die in separate hours, let alone days and years. But they were-they are-and in any case George must see the rest of his family, to whom he is merely a strange and pathetic shadow. He hates the pity in their eyes more than the pain-he pities himself enough already. He doesn’t need anyone else to do it for him.
“Hello, Mum,” he says quietly when she opens the door, and tries not to scream in resentment when she hugs him. He stiffens despite his best efforts, and she pulls away quickly, looking sorry and sad.
“I’ve made your favorite,” she says, almost shyly, as though she is frightened of him. As though she is some stranger, some new employee trying to impress him, instead of his mother. He thanks her softly and slips inside, trying not to look at the tick marks on the door frame that had measured his height and Fred’s when they were small. “You’re identical,” Molly had said, exasperated, “you’ll end up the same height eventually,” but they’d insisted, and she’d kept tabs.
She’d been wrong in any case. George had been half an inch taller when Fred died.
“George!” Ron cries, standing up from the couch where he’d been sitting with Hermione. “Haven’t seen you in ages! Happy birthday, by the way,” he adds, holding out his hand for George to shake. Stepping from behind him, Hermione shakes her head and hugs him, hard, pressing her body into his just long enough to let him know she’s there. He smiles at her. “Thanks, mate,” he says to Ron, and the tone in his voice almost passes for levity.
Harry’s in the corner with Ginny, looking harangued. They are getting married in December, his little sister and the Boy Who Lived, and it’s all a bit surreal from where George stands. “Harry,” he says, cordially enough, and Harry nods at him, smiles a little.
“Happy birthday,” he says.
“Georgie!” and Ginny is in his arms, light and bouncy, seven years old again for a moment. George picks her up and spins her around once, for old time’s sake, and puts her down. She kisses him on the cheek and pulls away, looking at him with all of their mother’s stern reproach in her eyes. “I haven’t seen you in months,” she chides, glaring. George sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
“I know, Gin. I’m sorry. Things have just been so busy-”
“Well, you’d better make it to the wedding,” she interrupts, and then laughs a little, like she can’t help but smile when she mentions it. “Isn’t that right, Harry?”
Harry’s smile looks almost like a grimace to George, but he nods anyway. Ginny beams at Harry and looks back to her brother, who wishes he could turn to Fred and see what he thinks of it all. He hates being in this house.
And there are Bill and Charlie, walking in from the back garden with their father, and Fleur, very pregnant, in an armchair, and Percy coming from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. His mother comes in, wringing her hands, and urges them all to sit before dinner gets cold.
It’s not a bad meal, really. The food is good, at least (though his mother has made Fred’s favorite, not his-he tries not to notice).
“George,” Arthur asks, a bite of potato hanging dangerously from the corner of his mouth, “how’re things going at the shop?”
George chokes a little on his pumpkin juice; he’d forgotten he hadn’t told them. “I’m selling it,” he says, trying to sound casual. There is a moment of stunned silence, and then the table explodes with noise.
“But you were doing so well!” Molly cries, anguished. “What about your flat?”
“His flat?” Bill asks, looking incredulously at his mother. “His flat is the least of his worries. What about the investors, little brother? What are you going to tell them? I know at least three goblins who won’t be happy.”
“And your defense contract at the Ministry?” Arthur asks. “Surely that hasn’t lapsed just because the war-”
“But what will you do, George?” Ginny interrupts, beseechingly. It’s the only question George can’t answer, because he doesn’t know.
Percy coughs quietly from one end of the table. “I’m sure you can do what you want,” he says, primly, “but I must say, Fred, I think you’re making a-oh.”
The silence stretches out for years in front of them, their mother’s face the picture of terror. “How-fuck you,” George snarls finally, pushing his chair away from the table as Percy tries to stammer an apology.
“I-I didn’t mean to-you just, you look just like-and I said it by mistake-“
“Of course I look like him,” George roars, and he’s stepping forward now, hauling Percy out of his chair and slamming him into the wall. “He was my twin brother, you…you…But he’s dead, isn’t he, and that should be enough to fucking remind you-”
“I know he’s dead!” Percy is red in the face now, his horn-rimmed glasses askew. “I made a mistake! I know he’s dead, I was there-”
“It should have been you,” George hisses furiously, and delights somewhere underneath the rage at the hurt and horror that cloud Percy’s eyes. “It should have been you, you sycophantic little worm, it should have been you she killed-”
He feels a hand on his shoulder, gripping rather too hard to be friendly. “That’s enough, George,” Bill says, pulling him away, and George bares his teeth at them all and runs out the back door.
--
The treehouse at the very back of the yard had been their place when they were children. Arthur built it while Molly was pregnant with Bill, enamored of the Muggle idea. Bill hadn’t used it, and Charlie had liked being outside so much that even the idea of a roof between himself and the sky had been oppressive. Fred, on the other hand, had loved it-he’d liked that he and George could have their own place, far from the prying eyes of their mother. George hadn’t been so enthusiastic, but Fred had convinced him. He’d always been good at that.
At first they only used it as place to practice magic, but as they got older, it became the first headquarters of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, Inc. The walls of the wooden structure are scorched and scarred now, odd colors in some places and deep gouges in others. George leans against one of the scorchmarks, smoking a cigarette and tracing the faded footprints on the floor. He can’t tell which are his and which are Fred’s.
He’s not surprised when it’s Charlie who turns up, taking the ladder rungs two at a time. “Hi,” he says, sitting down across from George and raising his eyebrows at the cigarette. “You shouldn’t smoke those,” he adds, taking it out of George’s hand and putting it out on the pad of his thumb. George winces, but then he supposes Charlie’s immune to little burns by now.
“Oh, good,” he says, trying to sound sarcastic but coming off tired, “they sent the dragon-tamer to collect me.” Charlie gives him a half-smile and then lets it drop, running a hand through his hair.
“George-” he starts, and shakes his head. “Perce’s locked himself in a closet. Mum’s crying. Did you really-couldn’t you just come apologize? Please?”
George stares at him incredulously, pulling his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around then like a child. “He should apologize to me,” he says, unrepentant. “How could he-”
“It was a mistake.” Charlie’s voice is quiet and calm; he had always been the level-headed one, even when they were kids. “We all miss him.”
“You don’t,” George says, exhausted, furious, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You don’t miss him like I do. You couldn’t possibly.”
“No,” Charlie replies, after a moment. He’s still on the floor, but he reaches up and grabs George’s hand, squeezing a little too tight. “George,” he says, his voice so soft it’s barely audible, “we miss you too.”
George stares at him, a thousand emotions vying for first ranking. “So do I,” he chokes finally, ripping his hand from Charlie’s grip. “But he took me with him, didn’t he? Or the bits of me that mattered, anyway.”
Charlie opens his mouth, and suddenly George knows he can’t be here-he can’t come back here-Fred is in the walls, in Charlie’s eyes, in the footprints on the floor. Cornered, without options, he Apparates.
--
“You said what to Percy?” Lee asks, two weeks later. He has circles under his eyes-circles developed enough to be visible even against his dark skin-and George feels a bit guilty about being so pitiful. Surely Lee would have left hours ago, gone and gotten some sleep, if he didn’t feel some misguided obligation to be here.
“You should go home,” George slurs, aware that he’s had a bit more to drink than is entirely prudent. “Because-beds are-soft and you need-soft. And I’ma, I’ma sleep here on th’ chouch-couch-‘cuz it’s soft too-”
“What…oh, you prat, you’re trashed.” Lee looks angry. George would be angry too, if it was Lee who was all ginger and awful and boring and sad. “But look-if you’ll even remember this-Percy’s always been a bit of a shit, mate, but that was a bit nasty, wasn’t it?”
“Called me Fred,” George says, twisting so his head hangs upside-down from the couch. Lee’s expression softens instantly.
“Oh,” he says, and twists so his head is hanging next to George’s. “Well, that’s alright, then.”
“’M not Fred,” George insists, staring at the patterns on his ceiling.
“I should have gone with you,” Lee says, mostly to himself. George turns his head to glare at him.
“Why? So you could also call me Fred? Fred, Fred, Fred. ‘M not Fred! ‘M not FRED!” George is horrifyingly aware that he’s making a bit of a scene, but this is important. He rolls off the couch and sits on the floor, his back to Lee. “Wish I were Fred,” he says, softly.
And then Lee is in front of him, holding his shoulders. “George,” he says imploringly, looking him in the eye, “Don’t say shit like that. I know you’re George.”
“You don’t,” George says, miserably. “Fuck, even I don’t know I’m George. Maybe George died and I’m Fred going maaaaaaaaad! Mad, mad, mad-”
“George,” Lee says, and he is so close and he looks so, so serious, “I’d know you anywhere.”
George laughs-or at least, he means to laugh. What comes out instead is a choked, tangled sob, heavy with anguish. Lee swears softly and shifts closer, putting his arms around George’s heaving back. “I know who you are,” he whispers, “I swear I do.”
The last thing George remembers in turning his face into the warm expanse of Lee’s neck. He wakes up tucked into bed with a note pinned to the pillow next to him:
GEORGE,
You’re really fucking heavy.
I destroyed every pack of cigarettes I could find.
STOP SMOKING.
Love, Lee '
May
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Verity asks him, tossing his keys back and forth between her hands. “I mean-really, I can find another place-”
George smiles tightly at her. “I know what I’m doing, I swear,” he promises, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Living here is too hard, after-” He can’t finish, but Verity nods quickly, looking at him with pity.
It makes him want to run.
“Do you…do you want help? Moving, I mean? Because it really wouldn’t be any trouble.” She looks uncomfortable but painfully earnest. Not for the first time, George wonders if she won’t run his store into the ground. Not for the first time, George decides he doesn’t much care.
“I’ve got it,” he tells her, picking up his trunk and shrinking it to fit in his pocket. “Thanks.” He pushes the door to the shop open and glances at her. “You remember, about visitors to the flat?”
Verity nods, looking sad. “I’ll tell them I don’t know where you’ve gone, Mr. Weasley. Unless it’s Lee,” she adds quickly, pulling the envelope from her pocket, “and then I’m to give him this.” George half-smiles at her, satisfied, and turns to go, but she stops him.
“George-you know.” She gestures helplessly at the store behind her. “If you ever want to come back, this place-it’ll always be yours, really.”
He doesn’t look back as he walks away.
--
Lee,
I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do.
It’ll be a year in a few days. Have a beer for him, yeah?
You’re such a good friend it makes me want to vomit.
George
June
The best thing about Muggle clubs, George discovers, is the lighting.
He’s watched himself in the mirror at this particular spot before, and it’s amazing, the way his hair changes. Blue to green to pink and back to red-like he’s everyone but himself, like he’s no one at all. Sometimes, on the slow nights, he watches his face change and then pulls out his doctored driver’s license, the one that says his brother’s name. The Muggles don’t ask questions, don’t know about the war. It’s a nice change.
There are, of course, other benefits to spending time with Muggles, all of which may be easily summarized with a series of grunts, moans and needles. George has never felt so empty.
“Fred,” Jonas, the bartender, calls. George turns slowly, relishing the sound of his twisted anonymity. “We’re going out back for a fag-join us?”
He knows full well that what they are going out back for is anything but a smoke, but he agrees, following them. The second best part of Muggle clubs, in George’s estimation, is the drugs.
The club lets out into an alley. Jonas is there with his girlfriend, Mindy. There are three other girls with them-George has met them more than once, but he can’t for the life of him recall their names. There’s a boy, too, lanky and dark haired, whom George has never met. “Rob,” the boy says, extending a hand.
“Fred,” George replies, taking it.
They shoot up with the deft skill of old hands, and George waits. Slowly, the edges of the universe begin to twist and dim. He can feel the edges of his fingers grow fuzzy with the heroin and he rubs them against the pavement, trying to make them clean.
“Freddddd,” Rob wheedles, grabbing his hands from the ground, “you’re bleeding, that’s disgusting. Why’re you bleeding?”
“I am Fred!” George replies, encouraged by the physical contact. “And-the blood’s, you know. It’s all a little fuzzy, isn’t it? Better on the ground.”
Rob smiles. He has, George thinks, a very nice smile.
--
“Oh fuck, oh god,” Rob gasps, sprawled on the kitchen floor in George’s sparse flat an hour later. George smiles, feral, above him, and pounds him harder. It’s his first time with a guy, but he doesn’t see why that should stop him from going about it in what has become his traditional manner-rough, without much concern for whether the other person is enjoying it.
Like most of the people he’s slept with, however, Rob is enjoying it. “Jesus, Fred, oh god, harder, again, don’t stop don’t stop,” he moans, a litany of praise. George is only interested in one thing.
“Say it again,” he hisses, stopping suddenly. Rob groans with frustration and moves frantically against him, trying to reinstigate the friction. “Say it again,” George demands, unmoved.
Rob looks at him with wild eyes. “Say what, oh god, tell me what and I’ll say it, just please don’t stop, please don’t stop, not now,” and George puts a hand over his mouth to silence his prattling.
“Say my name,” George commands, hoping Rob can see the fire smoldering behind his eyes.
“Fred,” Rob gasps, “Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred.”
He doesn’t stop saying it for hours. George rewards him generously.
July
Angelina Johnson’s door is solid oak, intimidating in the growing darkness. George isn’t entirely certain how he ended up here-his vision is thick with heroin, his fingers twitching with it-but he knows better than to waste an opportunity. He runs his shaking fingers through his hair and then pounds indelicately on the door.
“A minute!” Angelina calls. She sounds light, happy, infuriating George more than he’d imagined possible. He puts his hands in his pockets and assumes a jaunty grin. She opens the door.
“Dah-ling,” he lilts, stepping towards her with Fred’s favorite wry expression crossing his face, “You can’t imagine how badly I need a shag.”
The joy is in Angelina’s eyes for only a split second; it’s just long enough for George to enjoy feeling like a terrible person. “Fr-George?” she says, sounding terrified. George steps closer; her wand is her left hand. He takes it and snaps it in two, tossing it carelessly behind him.
“You’re thinking of my brother,” he growls, and pushes her back into her flat.
“Geor-” she starts, but then his hand is over her mouth, silencing her.
“Remember what you said?” he asks her, sotto voce. “Remember what you said, when you came round after he died?”
Angelina’s eyes are wide with terror, and George can feel her lips working against his hand, working to explain. “Mrrph,” she tries, impassioned, “mrrph mrrph mrrph! Gmmrp!”
George laughs mirthlessly. “‘Just one time,’ you said. ‘He’d have wanted me to be happy,’ you said. ‘It won’t be a big deal,’ you said. He loved you!”
Angelina jerks herself backwards, away from the hand keeping her quiet. “I loved him too!” she snaps, vicious as he remembers her being in school. “He had just died, George, I was all fucked up-”
“There’s a good excuse,” George hisses. He shoves her, hard, into the nearest wall and holds her there. “Guess what?” he whispers, and he knows from the way she is looking at him that she knows where things are going, now. “I’m still all fucked up.”
Angelina’s mouth is warm and resistant, and she’s biting at his lips, his tongue, drawing blood. George doesn’t think he’s ever felt so illicit, so out-of-bounds, and he isn’t averse to the sensation. It’s almost like the heady rush of pranking, pulling her struggling body to the floor and pawing at her shirt with eager hands. Almost like it, and not like it at all.
“George,” she pleads, pushing at him-strong, but not strong enough. “Please, George, please don’t-”
“Not my name,” he grunts, unbuttoning her trousers and pulling them down, slipping a hand into her knickers. Her lip curls in disgust, and he’s hard, harder than he’s been in months.
She slaps him across the face. “You can’t possibly expect me to call you-”
“Yes,” he insists, pinning her hands and thrusting into her in one smooth motion. “I can.”
Her eyes are closed and she is making small noises of discontent, but she has stopped struggling. “God, you feel like…”
“Say it,” George hisses, “look at me and say it.”
Angelina’s eyes fly open. “Fred,” she whispers, and he frees her hands. She rakes her nails along his back and arches into him, her eyes never leaving his face. “Fred,” she says again, and he angles his body upward to better please her. “Fred, Fred, Fred,” she chants, and George drinks it in, fucking her with more abandon than he has ever allowed himself.
When they come, they are both saying his brother’s name.
August
George doesn’t know much, anymore. He’s unsure of the month, the day of the week, where he’s going to get his next fix-right now, he isn’t even certain of where he lives. There’s not a lot to know, living in a dream where your edges are blurred and your arms are scored with needle marks. Not a lot to know beyond how to shoot up, anyway.
For all he doesn’t know, though, George is sure of one thing: Lee Jordan should not be in this club, looking all angry and looking for him.
“George Weasley,” he sees Lee snap at the bartender for the third time. Jonas gives him a long look and shakes his head, looking thoughtful.
“Nobody by that name here, friend,” he says with a slow smile. “But if you’re looking for a dealer…”
“No!” Lee yells, smacking his fist on the table. “I am NOT looking for a dealer, and I KNOW this is his club, because I have paid good fucking money to find his sorry ass. Where! Is! He!”
Jonas backs away, groping behind him for the baseball bat he keeps on hand for emergencies. George feels a little bad for him, somewhere under his high; Lee’s no fun in a temper. “Calm down, there,” he says, wrapping his fingers around the bat. “Maybe I’ve got a name wrong. What does he look like?”
Lee sighs and waves his hands, looking exasperated. “He’s not that hard to miss, is he? ‘Bout this tall, million freckles, bright fucking red hair-”
“Oh!” Jonas says, letting go of the bat. “Y’mean Fred? He’s over there.”
“No I don’t mean-Fred?-oh for FUCK’S SAKE,” and suddenly Lee is right in front of George, grabbing his arm and pulling him bodily towards the door.
“What-” George says, trying to pull away, but Lee is stronger than he looks.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Lee warns. They reach the door and walk two blocks, Lee’s grip tight on his arm. They’re silent, though Lee occasionally mutters “Fred” darkly under his breath.
The stop abruptly under a streetlight. Lee wheels around, and George is suddenly, deeply afraid.
“So, Fred,” Lee says, exaggerating the name on purpose, “How’s tricks?”
“I-” George tries, but Lee waves him silent, his eyes narrow with fury.
“What’s happening? How goes it? Where have you been?” Lee is shaking with fury, and George fights to overcome the strange but overwhelming impulse to hug him. “‘Oh, you’re such a good friend, Lee,’” he snaps, doing a decent impression of George’s thicker accent, “‘thanks for understanding about my totally unbalanced self running off without warning anyone I know, including my family who already lost one child! I am sure you will be totally comfortable with this, especially when I go ahead and practically rape my dead brother’s girlfriend and she shows up at your door at four a.m. one night sobbing, especially when you have to pay someone to find me because I don’t answer owls! I’m sure you’ll understand, because you are such a good friend, Lee, you’re such a good fucking friend!’”
“I’m sorry,” George says, looking at the ground. He feels the bile of guilt rise up in his throat, eating at his cheeks like acid, leeching away his taste buds-or maybe it’s the heroin.
Definitely the heroin. Reeling, he throws up all over the sidewalk.
“Fucking hell, George,” Lee says, his eyes wide. Lee-who once, George knows, would have rubbed his back while this happened, would have helped him to his feet with gentle, guiding hands-Lee grabs George’s arm and wrenches it up toward the light. “Are these needle marks?”
Miserable, George nods, wiping his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. “’M sorry,” he says, again.
Lee frowns at him. “No, you’re not,” he says, disgusted, hauling George off the ground, “but you’re going to be.”
--
“It’s a seven day program,” Lee explains, calmer, a few hours later. “Normally I’d take you to St. Mungo’s, but, considering the circumstances-”
“I’d rather not be there right now,” George rasps, his throat raw from hours of throwing up bile. He feels almost sober. It’s disquieting.
Lee nods. “Figured that. I fixed up the spare bedroom while you were in the toilet,” he says, waving a hand towards the back of his flat. “You’ll need to sign the consent forms, though. Will you do that?”
George considers it. On the one hand, the program Lee has detailed sounds…less than enjoyable. On the other, his fingers are already twitching for his next fix, and Lee is right-he needs to stop. He’s needed to stop.
“I’ll do it,” he says quietly, and Lee looks pleased, if a little concerned.
“It-I’ll have to lock you in there,” he says, wringing his hands. George nods; he knows this already. It’s the tenth time Lee has gone over the rules. “I just-I don’t want you to be surprised. It’s…I mean, months of withdrawal in a week and you’ll hallucinate and…”
“I’m just so tired,” George says, letting his forehead drop briefly onto Lee’s shoulder. “I just want to be done, now.”
Lee nods, looking resolved. “Tomorrow morning, then.”
George smiles wryly. “September 1st,” he notes, surprising himself by knowing the date. “Like Hogwarts.”
“Not quite like Hogwarts,” Lee says, choking a little bit on the words. He looks away. George reaches a hand out to touch him, comfort him, anything, but discovers (despite all the times he could have learned) that he doesn’t know how.
September
“LEE!” he bellows, he pounds on the walls but Lee won’t come, and all he wants is a little fix, just one more, just a little more. “LEE,” and Lee won’t come, he doesn’t come and maybe it’s still in him, in his veins and he can have some. He claws at his arms, his wrists until the blood comes, red but clean and he cries, he pulls harder, he rips deeper and wishes for his wand, for a needle, for one more just one more and then Lee is there, callused palms and soft words and the pain is gone.
George sleeps.
--
“I HATE YOU,” he screams, tears streaming down his cheeks and he needs it, he needs it, but there’s Angelina, walking towards him with the needle in her hands. He reaches to take it from her but she’s too fast, she takes it and stabs him and stabs him again, in the heart and in the groin and in the ear and in the eye, so he is blind and deaf and sterile but still she’s there, still he knows she’s saying “You bastard, you bastard,” even if he can’t hear her and she’s right, and George throws himself at where he knows she is, she feels hard like a wall, hard like her hand on his cheek when she slapped him.
And Lee is pulling him away and saying “Stop, stop now, stop that,” so sad, so sad, George is sorry and then he’s tired, his eyes are…drooping and Lee’s fingers are warm and he’s suddenly remembered how to see and hear but he’ll have to do that later.
George sleeps.
--
“Fred,” he says, confused, because Fred died, he knows he did, felt his cold dead body under his warm animate hands and it was like watching yourself die only worse, because when you die you only lose yourself instead of yourself and your other self. But that’s Fred, he knows Fred, even if he is floating in a corner with his lips all pursed together like their mum when she’s angry. “Fred,” he says again, but Fred just looks at him.
George looks back. He was always best at staring contests.
--
“WHY WON’T YOU TALK TO ME,” but Fred is silent, shaking his dead, cold head even though it doesn’t look very dead today. George wishes he wasn’t dead so he could threaten to kill him, kill him and make him talk.
--
“Are you angry with me?” George doesn’t know why his brother bothered to come back if all he’ll do is float, float and drive George mad, madder, and all he wants is one more fix but he wants Fred to talk even more, wants to know why he’s even AROUND if he’s going to be all quiet and SO QUIET like this, and Fred nods and says:
Yes.
And that’s his voice, that’s Fred’s voice and George is so happy that he has to move, and he jumps from his bed and the wall is closer than he thought it would be and Fred doesn’t catch him. When Lee comes in he says Fuck and George’s head feels all warm and sticky and then Lee says something else, something George can’t quite hear, and he falls asleep with Fred watching him.
--
“Why are you angry?” George wants to know, he wants to know, but Fred maddening infuriating horrible brother Fred won’t tell him, looks at him like he’s dirt, his Fred, his Fred who hates him now, and it’s not George’s fault, it’s Percy’s Molly’s Angelina’s Dumbledore’s Bellatrix’s-
“I’m not the one who died!” and still Fred just raises an eyebrow like that’s not the truth and George throws things at him and screams, screams “GET OUT, YOU DIED, YOU DIED” and Fred is sinking now, sinking to George’s level from where he’s been floating on the ceiling and George grabs his shoulders (he feels alive) and says “You died, you bastard, you died.”
Except then Fred is Lee all concerned, worried and saying “I didn’t die, I didn’t die, I’m still here,” and George thinks you’re not Fred with startling clarity as he passes out.
--
“Tell me why,” George says and Fred leans down from the ceiling and holds out a hand and George reaches for it, walks closer, but Fred whips his hand away and smacks George in the forehead.
Figure it out, git, Fred says, and George falls back, hits his pillows, realizes as he slips away that he’s sore and he hurts and everything is wrong, but he hasn’t needed a fix all day.
--
The morning is bright and clear and lucid on the eighth day. It has been so long since George has been lucid-it’s novel, if a little hard to bear. His eyelids hurt, and his fingernails, and his feet, but he doesn’t feel the crushing need to self-medicate, so he supposes that’s something.
Fred’s gone; George remembers his presence vaguely, like a dream slipping away in the sunlight. He supposes he hallucinated his brother floating in the corner-Lee had warned him about that.
Lee, George thinks, and pulls himself out of bed. I have to find Lee, and he wrenches open the door to his room, pleased to find it unlocked. He steps forward with purpose, but is stopped by the presence of a body under his foot.
“Yaaah!” George yelps, jumping backwards. Lee shoots bolt upright from where he’s been sleeping outside the door. He looks battleworn, with cuts on his face he hasn’t had time to heal, circles like ravines under each eye. I did that, George thinks wonderingly, and then I’m sorry with such force it almost knocks him down.
“Good morning to you too,” Lee says, trying and failing to cover a yawn with his hand. “How do you feel?”
“I-better,” George admits, sinking to the floor next to him. “Have you been sleeping here all week?”
Lee rubs his face with his hands, clearly willing himself to wake up. “Well,” he says, sheepishly. “Slept on your floor a few times.”
What’s left of George’s heart breaks a little. If he were someone different, if he were a few years younger, he’d have thought about it, the rules between boys. As it is, he reaches forward, takes Lee’s wand with one hand and his face with the other. “Episkey,” he says, pointing at the deepest cut. “And you call yourself a Healer,” he adds, shakily, pointing his wand at another cut.
Lee slants a smiles at him, tilting his head up to let George remove the fingernail marks on his neck. “Was that a joke?”
George shrugs and hands him back his wand, finished. “Maybe,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Now get in bed.”
Lee’s eyes are really too wide; George will think about it later. “But, I-you just-”
George stands and offers Lee a hand. “Bed,” he commands, meaning it. “You look like a train hit you.”
“You hit me,” Lee mutters, but he lets George steer him into his bedroom, push him onto the sheets, tuck him in.
“When you wake up,” George says, “I’ll make breakfast.” Lee is asleep before he closes the door.
October
Angelina,
I know what I did to you was really fucked up. I wanted to send flowers or come by, but Lee said it would be better this way, and he’s probably right. He usually is.
I want you to know that Fred loved you-really loved you-and he’d beat the shit out of me if he were alive to know what happened. I want to beat the shit out of me, frankly.
I understand if you don’t ever want to see me again, but if there’s anything I can do, anything I can say…I owe you. Forever.
I’m so, so sorry, Angelina.
George
--
George,
I don’t need you to tell me Fred loved me. I know that. I know he’d beat the shit out of you, too, but he’s not around to do that, and I don’t forgive you.
But there might be something you can do, someday.
I’ll let you know.
Angelina
--
For all it’s barely held together with straw and spit, the Burrow looks like a fortress from where George stands. He recalls the last time he felt this apprehensive on his own front porch; it was the summer after third year, and he and Fred had been seen on their brooms by a Muggle girl from town. It hadn’t been that big a deal, really; there’d been some shouting, but their father had taken care of it. “Rascals,” he’d called them, ruffling their hair affectionately while Molly wasn’t watching. “Try to be careful.”
He hears their laughter in the house now, celebrating his mother’s birthday, and for a brief but very real moment he considers turning around and going home. He regrets now turning down Lee’s offered accompaniment, though he knows he was right to do so. This is something he has to do alone.
George takes a deep, steadying breath, plants his feet, and knocks.
He feels rather than hears the silence that falls when Molly opens the door. There is a long moment, painfully quiet, before his mother’s eyes fill with tears and she throws herself forward.
“Oh, George,” she sobs, hugging him. George closes his eyes.
“Hi, Mum,” he whispers, holding her. When they separate he chances a glance around, and there’s his family: Charlie sharing a significant look with Arthur, Bill holding his baby daughter with his hand on Fleur’s shoulder, Ginny with her fingers white on Harry’s arm. Ron’s holding Hermione’s hand, looking uncertain, and there’s Percy, his shoulders squared.
“Perce,” George says, running a hand through his hair, “could I talk to you for a minute? Outside?”
Percy looks at him for a long moment and stands, his face unreadable. Arthur opens his mouth, but Percy waves him off. “It’s fine,” he says, heading towards the back door with George. “Fine,” he repeats to Charlie, and George is reminded forcibly of a night a lifetime ago, when it was Percy who’d been in the wrong, Percy who was the black sheep.
“Thanks,” George says, uncomfortable, when they get out to the back garden. Percy merely raises an eyebrow at him, betraying his own apprehension only with the slight quiver at the edge of his mouth.
“You had something you wished to say?” Percy asks. His tone is achingly polite, and George could hit him for it.
Or he could have, once. He supposes he’s too old for that sort of thing now.
“Look,” he says, finally, staring at the ground. “I just-I shouldn’t have, have said what I did that day, and I didn’t mean it, and it wasn’t true, and I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” Percy says, very quiet, and when George looks up he is appalled to note his brother looks close to tears.
“Oh god-I-please don’t-” he starts, but then Percy, most uncharacteristically, interrupts him.
“You were right!” he says, his eyes fierce and a little afraid. “It should have been me, I ran out on everyone, why should I have gotten to live-”
“Perce,” George says, firmly (because there aren’t many things he knows about, but the guilt of surviving is one of them), “it shouldn’t have been any of us.”
When they reenter the Burrow ten minutes later, they are smiling; Molly beams at both of them and conjures George a chair. There is a moment of strange silence, and then:
“George,” Percy says, a bit too loudly, “don’t you want to meet your niece?”
George smiles at him gratefully as Bill passes baby Victoire to him. Her body is small and soft, and if Fred were alive, he’d-
But Fred isn’t alive, so George reaches under her chin and tickles her gently all by himself. She lets out a shriek of laughter and waves a tiny fist at him, grabbing his finger and pulling it toward her mouth to bite.
“She’s got the Weasley spirit, this one,” George says, trying for levity. He doesn’t quite make it, but his family laughs. It’s a start, George tells himself, tickling his niece again. It’s a start.
--
“How many times do I have to tell you! You don’t have to go,” Lee says, pulling the half-filled duffel out of George’s hands.
George grins at him, realizing all the while it is because of Lee that he can grin at all. “And how many times do I have to tell you,” he replies, tugging the duffel back, “that I’ve taken up your spare bedroom for long enough?”
Lee sighs, defeated, and throws himself across his couch. “You make better eggs than me,” he says, crossly, not looking at George. “I’ll starve.”
George wants to laugh, but he’s not quite sure he can manage it yet. Soon, maybe. “You will not starve,” he mutters instead, sitting next to Lee. “And it’s not like you’ll never see me again.”
Lee still won’t look at him. George knows he’s unhappy; George isn’t pleased with the situation either. He will miss Lee’s easy way in the morning, the clatter of dinner plates and his soft laughter at night. He will miss having someone down the hall, someone to talk to; he will miss Lee’s strange sense of humor, a sense missing from his life for so long. But he won’t be the pathetic layabout who can’t make his own way. He’s been eating Lee’s food and drinking Lee’s beer, and after all Lee did-it’s not right. Lee deserves a life of his own, without worrying about the petty concerns of his fucked-up Hogwarts mate.
“I’ll be around,” George promises. “I just need a few weeks to myself, to think some things through…”
“I’ll help you pack,” Lee says, rolling off the couch. He doesn’t look at George, even when he says goodbye.
November
George’s eyes are crusted with sleep when he wakes to a strange thumping noise and a disgusting smell. “Bathroom,” he mutters, his vision blurry, “fucking pipes,” but he climbs out of bed with a yawn, numerous design drawings crinkling under his feet. The plans for the new shop are going well, even if they are taking up much of his time-outside of business meetings, George hasn’t seen anyone in two weeks. He needs to owl his family. And Lee, he reminds himself as he stumbles into the bathroom, rubbing his eyes. He’s allowed himself long enough; he probably won’t write a driveling plea to move back in now.
However, he’s distracted from this thought when he realizes the noise, and the smell, have faded. The thumping is still faintly audible in the next room; whatever it is, it’s clearly not George’s notably unreliable pipes. “Hmm,” he mumbles, a bit more awake, and heads back into his bedroom.
There is a loud THWACK as George watches something dark and brown hit his window.
“Oy!” he yells, running to it, fully awake now, “what do you think you’re playing at?” and he opens the window only to be smacked in the face by a Dungbomb.
Lee Jordan, standing on the sidewalk three stories below, chucks another one at him. “COOT!” he screams, and he sounds-more upset than anything else. “DODGY OLD COOT!” he yells, throwing another one, and this time George can hear the hurt in his voice, can feel it in the force of his throws.
He makes to turn around, meaning to find some clothes and deal with this, but he forgets the window over his head until it falls on him.
--
The world rotates in wide circles for a moment, momentarily clouding his vision. “Blargh,” says George, dizzy, when it clears. He lets the window fall as it is supposed to and is startled to see his twin brother, floating in the corner. “FUCK!” he shrieks, tripping over a half-constructed case of Babbling Bedsheets and falling flat on the ground.
Fred grins down at him. “Did you figure it out?” he asks, looking far too pleased with himself. George scowls at him, remembering suddenly the last time he saw his brother, tight lipped and furious, hallucinated in Lee’s spare bedroom.
“No,” he snaps, struck with the indignity of talking to the dead in only a pair of pants. “But you fucking tortured me about it, didn’t you? Why are you angry?”
Fred waggles his eyebrows. “Why do you think?”
“I-I figured it was because of what I did to your girlfriend, actually,” George replies after a moment, biting his lip.
Fred glares at him. “No!” he snaps, and then adds severely, “though if I were alive I’d thump you for that, make no mistake.”
“I told her that,” George admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “She said she didn’t need me to tell her.”
Fred smiles reminiscently. “I always did like that girl,” he says approvingly to himself, and then looks back at George. “But! The matter at hand. Why am I angry?”
“I don’t…know?” George says, and ducks as Fred throws a shoe at him. His own shoe! He’d be annoyed if he weren’t so grateful.
“No. Git,” Fred replies, and sinks from the ceiling so he is eye-to-eye with George. “I died,” he says, like it is new information.
“I know,” George snaps back, and Fred hits him.
“Shut up and listen!” Fred yells, sounding serious. “I died. And you stopped living.”
George gapes at him. Fred nods, undeterred. “Yes you did! I saw you do it! And you’re about to keep doing it, you’re about to put trousers on and go talk sense to the guy throwing Dungbombs on the street, when he’s loved you since about fourth year and everyone knew it. And you love him too, and you’re such a git.”
“But you-I-what?” George says.
“You love him,” Fred intones slowly, as though speaking to an idiot. Which maybe he is, George thinks. “You’ve loved him since he sat up with you the night Dad was attacked. Which was fifth year. Which,” Fred adds, smiling a bit, “proves, as I have always tried to tell you, that you are slow on the uptake about this kind of shit.”
“I-” George starts, but he’s hit by the weight of what Fred is saying. He remembers in a sudden sweep the look in Lee’s eyes while he screamed in the club; the feeling of Lee’s cool hands, coated with murtlap and lacewing paste, moving against his own. He realizes how clearly he can picture Lee’s smile, how well he knows the sound of his laugh, his voice, his footsteps. Fred pats him on the back and vanishes. He doesn’t notice.
--
“Oh,” George says out loud, and Apparates.
He lands a little closer than he intended to, and Lee stumbles backwards. He has shit-actual shit-all over his hands, and on his face, and in his hair. “Did you just Apparate after head trauma?” he demands.
George-who has forgotten once too often about Lee’s medical training-takes a measured step back. “No, no,” he lies, waving his hands, “no, that would be bad. I would never. Why would you think that?”
“Because I saw you do it,” Lee grinds out. But then he looks askance at George and adds “Coot,” sounding furious and happy all at once. George smiles, and then he laughs, a real laugh, something he hasn’t done in months. He imagines the picture he must paint, a man in boxers doubled over in mirth, and he laughs harder, gasping with it.
“You know,” he chokes out, when he has regained a bit of breath, “I meant what I said that night. I could be Fred, really. I could be Fred thinking I’m George-”
“And I meant what I said, too,” Lee shoots back, fierce. “I’d know you anywhere.”
George smiles at him with only a trace of bitterness. “How?” he asks, gesturing at his bare chest, his dung-splattered face. “We were exactly the same.”
“No, you idiot,” Lee snaps, “you weren’t.” His voice is a little raw from screaming, but George thinks he can hear warmth there. And then, just when it’s been too long for such things, just when George thinks he will lose his nerve, Lee redirects his glare to the ground. “I never loved Fred,” he offers.
George steps forward. He smells bad and he’s freezing, but he doesn’t have to muster his grin-it comes naturally, like it once did. “I think,” he laughs into Lee’s ear (they are so close George can feel Lee’s breath against his bare chest), “I think he would be very offended.”
“Don’t you dare start with me--” Lee begins, laughing a little himself, but George is done talking now. He leans in and then they are kissing, two shit-covered boys on a cold November morning, the curves of their smiles meeting like old friends.
fin
Rating: R
Pairings: George/Lee, with occasional George/Various
Word Count: About 10,000
Warnings: Drug use and a spot of non-con.
Author's Note: Special thanks to my new beta, secretsolitaire, who is fantastic and whose services I highly recommend. And, as always, thanks to purple_chalk, without whom this fic (and, frankly, most every major project in my life) would have languished in my brain forevermore.
Hogsmeade, 1996
George hisses in pain as he grabs for his mead, and Lee shakes his head, looking annoyed.
“Honestly, George,” he says, crushing lacewings flies into a paste with a mortar and pestle, “I can’t believe you opened that letter.”
George closes his eyes and flexes his fingers painfully. “I thought it was a Howler; I opened it for a laugh. How was I supposed to know that bitch had filled it with Botuber pus?”
Lee raises his eyebrows and points to his fist, displaying the words I must not tell lies still etched in scar tissue. George groans.
“I know, I know. Ugh. Just don’t tell Fred, yeah? He thinks the rash is from a product we’re working on--he’ll take the mickey out of me forever, if he knows what really happened.”
Lee rolls his eyes. “I doubt he’s been paying attention, what with that.” He jerks his head towards the closed door of the bedroom, where Fred and Angelina have been making animal noises for the last several hours. “I sort of thought renting this room would be a chance for the three of us to-ah, nevermind. Can’t blame a bloke for wanting a shag.”
“Or seven,” George remarks, and they share a smile.
Lee glances away quickly, tests the consistency of the lacewing mixture, and declares it passable. He combines it with the essence of murtlap sitting next to him with deft hands, sniffs the mixture once, and moves over to the table where George is sitting.
“Here,” Lee says, “rub this into your hands, it’ll help. The lacewing flies-they’re used in Polyjuice, they help generate the extra skin in transformation, so I think they’ll make the healing process faster. Unless,” he adds, smiling ruefully, “they turn your hands pink like that stuff from third year, but I think I’ve improved a bit since then.”
George grabs for the mixture, desperate for relief, but his fingers can hardly bend. Lee sighs and takes it from him. He scoops a large handful out of the bowl and starts massaging it into George’s left hand.
“Fuck,” George whimpers; for all the essence of murtlap is soothing, each blister burns more on contact. He stares up at the ceiling to halt the tears springing up behind his eyes. “Fucking hell.”
Lee hisses angrily, turning George’s blistered hand over in his callused palms. “Jesus, George-why didn’t you let me look at this before? This isn’t just Botuber pus-that bitch. Christ, you’re lucky you didn’t lose your hands!”
George tries to grin; he imagines it looks more like a grimace, considering. “Maybe I should write her back,” he says, a bit haltingly, pausing every now and again to let out gasps of pain. “Clearly she’s trying to mask her passion for me with rage. I can see it now-‘Dear Dolores, I picture you fondly in pink lace and only pink lace. I have so long dreamed of the day where we could lie together and discuss the hateful behavior of eleven-year-olds everywhere-’”
Lee glares at him. “Shut up, you idiot. What if you’d dropped the parchment, or opened it in the wind? This shit could take your eye out!” He drops George’s left hand and picks up his right, scooping more of the mixture from the bowl. “I have half a mind to come to Diagon with you two tonight.”
George looks away from the ceiling and straight at Lee, suddenly fierce. “The hell you do,” he says. “No fucking way I’m letting you leave school now.”
“Letting me?” Lee says. He’s irritated, a little fire behind his eyes. “What, so you and Fred can do what you want but I have to stay in school like a good little boy? How does that work? And besides,” he adds, looking a little triumphant, “Fred said you lot would find me a place at the shop if I wanted it.”
George rolls his eyes. He can’t remember the last time he was this serious-if he’s ever been this serious. “My brother’s an idiot, Jordan. But yeah-if you were like us, I’d tell you to leave tonight, we’d set you up as partner straightaway.”
“But I’m not like you? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Though angry, Lee is still rubbing the potion into George’s hands, for which he is profoundly grateful.
“Fred and I….it’s kid stuff, what we’re doing. And we’re good at it, and y’know, we really couldn’t do anything else. This is what we want, yeah? But look at you! Look at my skin!” He flexes his left hand, where the burns are already starting to fade. “You can’t be a Healer if you don’t finish your N.E.W.T.s, you moron. You’re going back to school.”
Lee looks at him for a long moment. “Alright then,” he says finally, smiling a little. “But if I grow up to be a boring, lifeless bastard, I will blame you, make no mistake.”
“If you grow up to be a boring, lifeless bastard,” George says, grinning earnestly, “I will come to your house and throw Dungbombs at your window, screaming ‘OLD COOT! DODGY OLD COOT!’ until you loosen up.”
Lee laughs, pleased. Then he looks at the hand he’s holding and frowns. “Oh, hell, I missed a spot-this is going to hurt-sorry-” He digs two paste covered fingers into the largest burn, and George’s world explodes in agony.
“FUCK,” he cries, and doesn’t look up fast enough. He closes his eyes against it, but a few tears spill over, embarrassingly visible. He smiles sheepishly and reaches to wipe them away.
“Don’t you dare,” Lee says, grabbing his wrist with one hand and reaching for his cheek with the other, “go near your eyes with open magical wounds all over your hands. Sometimes I wonder how you are even still alive,” and he catches George’s cheek in his palm, wiping at the tears with his thumb.
There is a split second-it lasts years-when the world shifts, and George is acutely aware of the position of Lee’s hands, the warmth of Lee’s skin. Then they hear the doorknob click, and Lee pulls back at speed. Fred enters, looking shagged out and relaxed, a giggling Angelina behind him.
“Wotcher, boys,” he says, grinning, running a hand through his hair. George can’t help but smile back, even if he is a little-disappointed?-at his timing. “Alright, schoolchildren, we’ve hosted your truant selves for long enough. What would your parents say?”
Angelina hits Fred with her handbag. “Don’t call me ‘schoolchild,’” she says, feigning crossness. Fred laughs and picks her up.
“I thought you liked being my little schoolgirl,” he says, a bit too loud, and George and Lee share a friendly grimace; whatever moment they’d had is gone, lost on the wind. Angelina shrieks and hits Fred again, demanding release, and he lets her go easily enough.
“Seriously, though,” Fred says, his grin slipping a little, “we’d better go, Honeydukes’ll close soon. Unless-Lee, the offer’s still open. We’d have plenty for you to do down the shop, ey, Georgie?”
George inclines his head slightly, looking at Lee, who smiles and says, “Thanks, but no. Some complete shit talked me into finishing my academic career.”
“Shame, that,” Fred says lightly. They walk back to the tunnel chatting amiably, and Lee turns to George as Fred kisses Angelina goodbye.
“Use that paste for a week, mate,” is all he says, and he slips into the tunnel, looking resigned.
March
Resentment curls like a serpent on George’s tongue, flavoring his coffee bitter and his cigarette stale. He stares with narrowed eyes at his own hands, the knotted places where his veins converge, raising the skin into translucent vulnerable mountains. His fingers are trembling slightly, moths on the wind, and he scowls at their impertinence and takes a quick draw from his fag.
It’s a Muggle café in West London, this place he’s found. It is dark and slightly unwashed, mostly empty-George likes it. There’s no one to see here, no spells keeping the coffee warm, so after a few minutes you’re alone and your drink is reduced to swill. George doesn’t like swill, but the rough taste lingers on his lips and in the recesses of his mouth for hours, reminding him to focus, to care. Every cigarette he smokes leaves its taint to mix with the residual coffee, so that by the time George falls asleep each night his teeth are coated with it, this strange flavor of inescapability. It would be a perfect system but for the following morning, by which point his mouth has cleaned itself. He hates the few moments of his day when his world tastes of dreams and cotton, when he can almost forget himself. Almost.
George spends a few hours a day here, before, after and sometimes during work, just to escape. Ten months later, and still everywhere he goes has to be somewhere new-a place he found after-or somewhere painful and prepared for. He’s selling the shop. How could he not sell the shop? He would have had to sell it anyway, after what he did to the particularly thick customer who unwittingly called him by the wrong name. Stories like that will ruin a business.
Oliver Wood comes round his flat sometimes, and tells him not to smoke. Lee comes round too, when he can, with his new short hair and his white coat-he’s quiet, usually, looking haggard from his long days at St. Mungo’s. Angelina Johnson came round once, looking for sex-she never came back. George is quite sure he’ll never forget the way he felt when he chucked the little black box at her, the box his brother had shown him with the ring inside, the ring that was meant for after the war.
After, Fred had said, and George had believed him.
Now George only believes in before.
---
There is a girl who works in the coffee shop. She is 17, 18 maybe, a Muggle who thinks herself worldly. George is bizarrely attracted to her fierce independence, her short hair, the piercing in her nose. He watches her for days, wrapped easily in his coating of aloof regularity. Finally he makes eye contact, a glance laden both with interest and nonchalance. She wanders his way on her break.
“Can I bum a smoke?” she asks, leaning against his chair. She’s wearing too much eye makeup, her lids coated with heavy black liner that doesn’t suit her face, and she’s trying too hard; her foot slips in its dark boot against the floor, exhausted from trying to keep her pose casual. George is endeared despite himself. Her youth and her inexperience, her carefully cultivated air of strength, her clear sense of mischief; these are things he appreciates, remembers. He half-smiles at her, and offers her his pack, wishing with a tight, nostalgic ache that he could catch her freedom, her carelessness, and keep it.
George has a strange instinct and follows it-he says, easily enough, that he’d rather smoke outside, that she’s welcome to join him. She raises her eyebrows and grins at him, infectious, young; he loves her for it in a sharp and brainless instant. Then he shakes his head to clear it (a small voice at the back of his mind whispers his brother’s name) and reclaims the cold monotony that he knows and has become accustomed to.
She says her name is Candace, but he will never remember it-he’ll only recall the way she curls her lips around the cigarette she’s bummed from him, the way each puff of smoke twists, a tendril, into her cropped curls. Her name is negligible, like her face and voice, like the age that makes her too young for such depravity. All of it is negligible, and none of it is, and this does not stop George from taking her, roughly, in the alley behind the shop.
She is eager and willing, pulsing at his touch in a way that is almost macabre, moaning with raw abandon against his chest. He is ripping violently at her skirt, her knickers, catching her hot slick mouth in his, shoving himself into her and begging, begging to feel. He pushes her back, and he hears her shirt tear against the brick wall he has pressed her to. “Oh,” she sighs, and then louder, “oh, oh,” running her slim fingers through George’s hair. She comes in a warm rush as he pounds her, gasping, and he is jealous-obscenely, horribly jealous. He comes too, half-heartedly, feeling no pleasure, only relief.
“Hey-what’s your name?” she asks, an afterthought, smiling strangely at him as she does up the buttons on her shirt. He turns to her, his mouth open around the answer, but he is struck suddenly with the taste of coffee and cigarettes still sharp on his tongue.
“Fred,” he says, and when she nods, believing him, George begins to recall what it feels like, being alive.
April
It is the first of April. George wishes it weren’t, and not only because it reminds him (achingly, horribly) of all he’s lost. It doesn’t make sense, that two people born on the same day, mere minutes apart, should be forced to die in separate hours, let alone days and years. But they were-they are-and in any case George must see the rest of his family, to whom he is merely a strange and pathetic shadow. He hates the pity in their eyes more than the pain-he pities himself enough already. He doesn’t need anyone else to do it for him.
“Hello, Mum,” he says quietly when she opens the door, and tries not to scream in resentment when she hugs him. He stiffens despite his best efforts, and she pulls away quickly, looking sorry and sad.
“I’ve made your favorite,” she says, almost shyly, as though she is frightened of him. As though she is some stranger, some new employee trying to impress him, instead of his mother. He thanks her softly and slips inside, trying not to look at the tick marks on the door frame that had measured his height and Fred’s when they were small. “You’re identical,” Molly had said, exasperated, “you’ll end up the same height eventually,” but they’d insisted, and she’d kept tabs.
She’d been wrong in any case. George had been half an inch taller when Fred died.
“George!” Ron cries, standing up from the couch where he’d been sitting with Hermione. “Haven’t seen you in ages! Happy birthday, by the way,” he adds, holding out his hand for George to shake. Stepping from behind him, Hermione shakes her head and hugs him, hard, pressing her body into his just long enough to let him know she’s there. He smiles at her. “Thanks, mate,” he says to Ron, and the tone in his voice almost passes for levity.
Harry’s in the corner with Ginny, looking harangued. They are getting married in December, his little sister and the Boy Who Lived, and it’s all a bit surreal from where George stands. “Harry,” he says, cordially enough, and Harry nods at him, smiles a little.
“Happy birthday,” he says.
“Georgie!” and Ginny is in his arms, light and bouncy, seven years old again for a moment. George picks her up and spins her around once, for old time’s sake, and puts her down. She kisses him on the cheek and pulls away, looking at him with all of their mother’s stern reproach in her eyes. “I haven’t seen you in months,” she chides, glaring. George sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
“I know, Gin. I’m sorry. Things have just been so busy-”
“Well, you’d better make it to the wedding,” she interrupts, and then laughs a little, like she can’t help but smile when she mentions it. “Isn’t that right, Harry?”
Harry’s smile looks almost like a grimace to George, but he nods anyway. Ginny beams at Harry and looks back to her brother, who wishes he could turn to Fred and see what he thinks of it all. He hates being in this house.
And there are Bill and Charlie, walking in from the back garden with their father, and Fleur, very pregnant, in an armchair, and Percy coming from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. His mother comes in, wringing her hands, and urges them all to sit before dinner gets cold.
It’s not a bad meal, really. The food is good, at least (though his mother has made Fred’s favorite, not his-he tries not to notice).
“George,” Arthur asks, a bite of potato hanging dangerously from the corner of his mouth, “how’re things going at the shop?”
George chokes a little on his pumpkin juice; he’d forgotten he hadn’t told them. “I’m selling it,” he says, trying to sound casual. There is a moment of stunned silence, and then the table explodes with noise.
“But you were doing so well!” Molly cries, anguished. “What about your flat?”
“His flat?” Bill asks, looking incredulously at his mother. “His flat is the least of his worries. What about the investors, little brother? What are you going to tell them? I know at least three goblins who won’t be happy.”
“And your defense contract at the Ministry?” Arthur asks. “Surely that hasn’t lapsed just because the war-”
“But what will you do, George?” Ginny interrupts, beseechingly. It’s the only question George can’t answer, because he doesn’t know.
Percy coughs quietly from one end of the table. “I’m sure you can do what you want,” he says, primly, “but I must say, Fred, I think you’re making a-oh.”
The silence stretches out for years in front of them, their mother’s face the picture of terror. “How-fuck you,” George snarls finally, pushing his chair away from the table as Percy tries to stammer an apology.
“I-I didn’t mean to-you just, you look just like-and I said it by mistake-“
“Of course I look like him,” George roars, and he’s stepping forward now, hauling Percy out of his chair and slamming him into the wall. “He was my twin brother, you…you…But he’s dead, isn’t he, and that should be enough to fucking remind you-”
“I know he’s dead!” Percy is red in the face now, his horn-rimmed glasses askew. “I made a mistake! I know he’s dead, I was there-”
“It should have been you,” George hisses furiously, and delights somewhere underneath the rage at the hurt and horror that cloud Percy’s eyes. “It should have been you, you sycophantic little worm, it should have been you she killed-”
He feels a hand on his shoulder, gripping rather too hard to be friendly. “That’s enough, George,” Bill says, pulling him away, and George bares his teeth at them all and runs out the back door.
--
The treehouse at the very back of the yard had been their place when they were children. Arthur built it while Molly was pregnant with Bill, enamored of the Muggle idea. Bill hadn’t used it, and Charlie had liked being outside so much that even the idea of a roof between himself and the sky had been oppressive. Fred, on the other hand, had loved it-he’d liked that he and George could have their own place, far from the prying eyes of their mother. George hadn’t been so enthusiastic, but Fred had convinced him. He’d always been good at that.
At first they only used it as place to practice magic, but as they got older, it became the first headquarters of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, Inc. The walls of the wooden structure are scorched and scarred now, odd colors in some places and deep gouges in others. George leans against one of the scorchmarks, smoking a cigarette and tracing the faded footprints on the floor. He can’t tell which are his and which are Fred’s.
He’s not surprised when it’s Charlie who turns up, taking the ladder rungs two at a time. “Hi,” he says, sitting down across from George and raising his eyebrows at the cigarette. “You shouldn’t smoke those,” he adds, taking it out of George’s hand and putting it out on the pad of his thumb. George winces, but then he supposes Charlie’s immune to little burns by now.
“Oh, good,” he says, trying to sound sarcastic but coming off tired, “they sent the dragon-tamer to collect me.” Charlie gives him a half-smile and then lets it drop, running a hand through his hair.
“George-” he starts, and shakes his head. “Perce’s locked himself in a closet. Mum’s crying. Did you really-couldn’t you just come apologize? Please?”
George stares at him incredulously, pulling his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around then like a child. “He should apologize to me,” he says, unrepentant. “How could he-”
“It was a mistake.” Charlie’s voice is quiet and calm; he had always been the level-headed one, even when they were kids. “We all miss him.”
“You don’t,” George says, exhausted, furious, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You don’t miss him like I do. You couldn’t possibly.”
“No,” Charlie replies, after a moment. He’s still on the floor, but he reaches up and grabs George’s hand, squeezing a little too tight. “George,” he says, his voice so soft it’s barely audible, “we miss you too.”
George stares at him, a thousand emotions vying for first ranking. “So do I,” he chokes finally, ripping his hand from Charlie’s grip. “But he took me with him, didn’t he? Or the bits of me that mattered, anyway.”
Charlie opens his mouth, and suddenly George knows he can’t be here-he can’t come back here-Fred is in the walls, in Charlie’s eyes, in the footprints on the floor. Cornered, without options, he Apparates.
--
“You said what to Percy?” Lee asks, two weeks later. He has circles under his eyes-circles developed enough to be visible even against his dark skin-and George feels a bit guilty about being so pitiful. Surely Lee would have left hours ago, gone and gotten some sleep, if he didn’t feel some misguided obligation to be here.
“You should go home,” George slurs, aware that he’s had a bit more to drink than is entirely prudent. “Because-beds are-soft and you need-soft. And I’ma, I’ma sleep here on th’ chouch-couch-‘cuz it’s soft too-”
“What…oh, you prat, you’re trashed.” Lee looks angry. George would be angry too, if it was Lee who was all ginger and awful and boring and sad. “But look-if you’ll even remember this-Percy’s always been a bit of a shit, mate, but that was a bit nasty, wasn’t it?”
“Called me Fred,” George says, twisting so his head hangs upside-down from the couch. Lee’s expression softens instantly.
“Oh,” he says, and twists so his head is hanging next to George’s. “Well, that’s alright, then.”
“’M not Fred,” George insists, staring at the patterns on his ceiling.
“I should have gone with you,” Lee says, mostly to himself. George turns his head to glare at him.
“Why? So you could also call me Fred? Fred, Fred, Fred. ‘M not Fred! ‘M not FRED!” George is horrifyingly aware that he’s making a bit of a scene, but this is important. He rolls off the couch and sits on the floor, his back to Lee. “Wish I were Fred,” he says, softly.
And then Lee is in front of him, holding his shoulders. “George,” he says imploringly, looking him in the eye, “Don’t say shit like that. I know you’re George.”
“You don’t,” George says, miserably. “Fuck, even I don’t know I’m George. Maybe George died and I’m Fred going maaaaaaaaad! Mad, mad, mad-”
“George,” Lee says, and he is so close and he looks so, so serious, “I’d know you anywhere.”
George laughs-or at least, he means to laugh. What comes out instead is a choked, tangled sob, heavy with anguish. Lee swears softly and shifts closer, putting his arms around George’s heaving back. “I know who you are,” he whispers, “I swear I do.”
The last thing George remembers in turning his face into the warm expanse of Lee’s neck. He wakes up tucked into bed with a note pinned to the pillow next to him:
GEORGE,
You’re really fucking heavy.
I destroyed every pack of cigarettes I could find.
STOP SMOKING.
Love, Lee '
May
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Verity asks him, tossing his keys back and forth between her hands. “I mean-really, I can find another place-”
George smiles tightly at her. “I know what I’m doing, I swear,” he promises, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Living here is too hard, after-” He can’t finish, but Verity nods quickly, looking at him with pity.
It makes him want to run.
“Do you…do you want help? Moving, I mean? Because it really wouldn’t be any trouble.” She looks uncomfortable but painfully earnest. Not for the first time, George wonders if she won’t run his store into the ground. Not for the first time, George decides he doesn’t much care.
“I’ve got it,” he tells her, picking up his trunk and shrinking it to fit in his pocket. “Thanks.” He pushes the door to the shop open and glances at her. “You remember, about visitors to the flat?”
Verity nods, looking sad. “I’ll tell them I don’t know where you’ve gone, Mr. Weasley. Unless it’s Lee,” she adds quickly, pulling the envelope from her pocket, “and then I’m to give him this.” George half-smiles at her, satisfied, and turns to go, but she stops him.
“George-you know.” She gestures helplessly at the store behind her. “If you ever want to come back, this place-it’ll always be yours, really.”
He doesn’t look back as he walks away.
--
Lee,
I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do.
It’ll be a year in a few days. Have a beer for him, yeah?
You’re such a good friend it makes me want to vomit.
George
June
The best thing about Muggle clubs, George discovers, is the lighting.
He’s watched himself in the mirror at this particular spot before, and it’s amazing, the way his hair changes. Blue to green to pink and back to red-like he’s everyone but himself, like he’s no one at all. Sometimes, on the slow nights, he watches his face change and then pulls out his doctored driver’s license, the one that says his brother’s name. The Muggles don’t ask questions, don’t know about the war. It’s a nice change.
There are, of course, other benefits to spending time with Muggles, all of which may be easily summarized with a series of grunts, moans and needles. George has never felt so empty.
“Fred,” Jonas, the bartender, calls. George turns slowly, relishing the sound of his twisted anonymity. “We’re going out back for a fag-join us?”
He knows full well that what they are going out back for is anything but a smoke, but he agrees, following them. The second best part of Muggle clubs, in George’s estimation, is the drugs.
The club lets out into an alley. Jonas is there with his girlfriend, Mindy. There are three other girls with them-George has met them more than once, but he can’t for the life of him recall their names. There’s a boy, too, lanky and dark haired, whom George has never met. “Rob,” the boy says, extending a hand.
“Fred,” George replies, taking it.
They shoot up with the deft skill of old hands, and George waits. Slowly, the edges of the universe begin to twist and dim. He can feel the edges of his fingers grow fuzzy with the heroin and he rubs them against the pavement, trying to make them clean.
“Freddddd,” Rob wheedles, grabbing his hands from the ground, “you’re bleeding, that’s disgusting. Why’re you bleeding?”
“I am Fred!” George replies, encouraged by the physical contact. “And-the blood’s, you know. It’s all a little fuzzy, isn’t it? Better on the ground.”
Rob smiles. He has, George thinks, a very nice smile.
--
“Oh fuck, oh god,” Rob gasps, sprawled on the kitchen floor in George’s sparse flat an hour later. George smiles, feral, above him, and pounds him harder. It’s his first time with a guy, but he doesn’t see why that should stop him from going about it in what has become his traditional manner-rough, without much concern for whether the other person is enjoying it.
Like most of the people he’s slept with, however, Rob is enjoying it. “Jesus, Fred, oh god, harder, again, don’t stop don’t stop,” he moans, a litany of praise. George is only interested in one thing.
“Say it again,” he hisses, stopping suddenly. Rob groans with frustration and moves frantically against him, trying to reinstigate the friction. “Say it again,” George demands, unmoved.
Rob looks at him with wild eyes. “Say what, oh god, tell me what and I’ll say it, just please don’t stop, please don’t stop, not now,” and George puts a hand over his mouth to silence his prattling.
“Say my name,” George commands, hoping Rob can see the fire smoldering behind his eyes.
“Fred,” Rob gasps, “Fred, Fred, Fred, Fred.”
He doesn’t stop saying it for hours. George rewards him generously.
July
Angelina Johnson’s door is solid oak, intimidating in the growing darkness. George isn’t entirely certain how he ended up here-his vision is thick with heroin, his fingers twitching with it-but he knows better than to waste an opportunity. He runs his shaking fingers through his hair and then pounds indelicately on the door.
“A minute!” Angelina calls. She sounds light, happy, infuriating George more than he’d imagined possible. He puts his hands in his pockets and assumes a jaunty grin. She opens the door.
“Dah-ling,” he lilts, stepping towards her with Fred’s favorite wry expression crossing his face, “You can’t imagine how badly I need a shag.”
The joy is in Angelina’s eyes for only a split second; it’s just long enough for George to enjoy feeling like a terrible person. “Fr-George?” she says, sounding terrified. George steps closer; her wand is her left hand. He takes it and snaps it in two, tossing it carelessly behind him.
“You’re thinking of my brother,” he growls, and pushes her back into her flat.
“Geor-” she starts, but then his hand is over her mouth, silencing her.
“Remember what you said?” he asks her, sotto voce. “Remember what you said, when you came round after he died?”
Angelina’s eyes are wide with terror, and George can feel her lips working against his hand, working to explain. “Mrrph,” she tries, impassioned, “mrrph mrrph mrrph! Gmmrp!”
George laughs mirthlessly. “‘Just one time,’ you said. ‘He’d have wanted me to be happy,’ you said. ‘It won’t be a big deal,’ you said. He loved you!”
Angelina jerks herself backwards, away from the hand keeping her quiet. “I loved him too!” she snaps, vicious as he remembers her being in school. “He had just died, George, I was all fucked up-”
“There’s a good excuse,” George hisses. He shoves her, hard, into the nearest wall and holds her there. “Guess what?” he whispers, and he knows from the way she is looking at him that she knows where things are going, now. “I’m still all fucked up.”
Angelina’s mouth is warm and resistant, and she’s biting at his lips, his tongue, drawing blood. George doesn’t think he’s ever felt so illicit, so out-of-bounds, and he isn’t averse to the sensation. It’s almost like the heady rush of pranking, pulling her struggling body to the floor and pawing at her shirt with eager hands. Almost like it, and not like it at all.
“George,” she pleads, pushing at him-strong, but not strong enough. “Please, George, please don’t-”
“Not my name,” he grunts, unbuttoning her trousers and pulling them down, slipping a hand into her knickers. Her lip curls in disgust, and he’s hard, harder than he’s been in months.
She slaps him across the face. “You can’t possibly expect me to call you-”
“Yes,” he insists, pinning her hands and thrusting into her in one smooth motion. “I can.”
Her eyes are closed and she is making small noises of discontent, but she has stopped struggling. “God, you feel like…”
“Say it,” George hisses, “look at me and say it.”
Angelina’s eyes fly open. “Fred,” she whispers, and he frees her hands. She rakes her nails along his back and arches into him, her eyes never leaving his face. “Fred,” she says again, and he angles his body upward to better please her. “Fred, Fred, Fred,” she chants, and George drinks it in, fucking her with more abandon than he has ever allowed himself.
When they come, they are both saying his brother’s name.
August
George doesn’t know much, anymore. He’s unsure of the month, the day of the week, where he’s going to get his next fix-right now, he isn’t even certain of where he lives. There’s not a lot to know, living in a dream where your edges are blurred and your arms are scored with needle marks. Not a lot to know beyond how to shoot up, anyway.
For all he doesn’t know, though, George is sure of one thing: Lee Jordan should not be in this club, looking all angry and looking for him.
“George Weasley,” he sees Lee snap at the bartender for the third time. Jonas gives him a long look and shakes his head, looking thoughtful.
“Nobody by that name here, friend,” he says with a slow smile. “But if you’re looking for a dealer…”
“No!” Lee yells, smacking his fist on the table. “I am NOT looking for a dealer, and I KNOW this is his club, because I have paid good fucking money to find his sorry ass. Where! Is! He!”
Jonas backs away, groping behind him for the baseball bat he keeps on hand for emergencies. George feels a little bad for him, somewhere under his high; Lee’s no fun in a temper. “Calm down, there,” he says, wrapping his fingers around the bat. “Maybe I’ve got a name wrong. What does he look like?”
Lee sighs and waves his hands, looking exasperated. “He’s not that hard to miss, is he? ‘Bout this tall, million freckles, bright fucking red hair-”
“Oh!” Jonas says, letting go of the bat. “Y’mean Fred? He’s over there.”
“No I don’t mean-Fred?-oh for FUCK’S SAKE,” and suddenly Lee is right in front of George, grabbing his arm and pulling him bodily towards the door.
“What-” George says, trying to pull away, but Lee is stronger than he looks.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Lee warns. They reach the door and walk two blocks, Lee’s grip tight on his arm. They’re silent, though Lee occasionally mutters “Fred” darkly under his breath.
The stop abruptly under a streetlight. Lee wheels around, and George is suddenly, deeply afraid.
“So, Fred,” Lee says, exaggerating the name on purpose, “How’s tricks?”
“I-” George tries, but Lee waves him silent, his eyes narrow with fury.
“What’s happening? How goes it? Where have you been?” Lee is shaking with fury, and George fights to overcome the strange but overwhelming impulse to hug him. “‘Oh, you’re such a good friend, Lee,’” he snaps, doing a decent impression of George’s thicker accent, “‘thanks for understanding about my totally unbalanced self running off without warning anyone I know, including my family who already lost one child! I am sure you will be totally comfortable with this, especially when I go ahead and practically rape my dead brother’s girlfriend and she shows up at your door at four a.m. one night sobbing, especially when you have to pay someone to find me because I don’t answer owls! I’m sure you’ll understand, because you are such a good friend, Lee, you’re such a good fucking friend!’”
“I’m sorry,” George says, looking at the ground. He feels the bile of guilt rise up in his throat, eating at his cheeks like acid, leeching away his taste buds-or maybe it’s the heroin.
Definitely the heroin. Reeling, he throws up all over the sidewalk.
“Fucking hell, George,” Lee says, his eyes wide. Lee-who once, George knows, would have rubbed his back while this happened, would have helped him to his feet with gentle, guiding hands-Lee grabs George’s arm and wrenches it up toward the light. “Are these needle marks?”
Miserable, George nods, wiping his mouth with the back of his shaking hand. “’M sorry,” he says, again.
Lee frowns at him. “No, you’re not,” he says, disgusted, hauling George off the ground, “but you’re going to be.”
--
“It’s a seven day program,” Lee explains, calmer, a few hours later. “Normally I’d take you to St. Mungo’s, but, considering the circumstances-”
“I’d rather not be there right now,” George rasps, his throat raw from hours of throwing up bile. He feels almost sober. It’s disquieting.
Lee nods. “Figured that. I fixed up the spare bedroom while you were in the toilet,” he says, waving a hand towards the back of his flat. “You’ll need to sign the consent forms, though. Will you do that?”
George considers it. On the one hand, the program Lee has detailed sounds…less than enjoyable. On the other, his fingers are already twitching for his next fix, and Lee is right-he needs to stop. He’s needed to stop.
“I’ll do it,” he says quietly, and Lee looks pleased, if a little concerned.
“It-I’ll have to lock you in there,” he says, wringing his hands. George nods; he knows this already. It’s the tenth time Lee has gone over the rules. “I just-I don’t want you to be surprised. It’s…I mean, months of withdrawal in a week and you’ll hallucinate and…”
“I’m just so tired,” George says, letting his forehead drop briefly onto Lee’s shoulder. “I just want to be done, now.”
Lee nods, looking resolved. “Tomorrow morning, then.”
George smiles wryly. “September 1st,” he notes, surprising himself by knowing the date. “Like Hogwarts.”
“Not quite like Hogwarts,” Lee says, choking a little bit on the words. He looks away. George reaches a hand out to touch him, comfort him, anything, but discovers (despite all the times he could have learned) that he doesn’t know how.
September
“LEE!” he bellows, he pounds on the walls but Lee won’t come, and all he wants is a little fix, just one more, just a little more. “LEE,” and Lee won’t come, he doesn’t come and maybe it’s still in him, in his veins and he can have some. He claws at his arms, his wrists until the blood comes, red but clean and he cries, he pulls harder, he rips deeper and wishes for his wand, for a needle, for one more just one more and then Lee is there, callused palms and soft words and the pain is gone.
George sleeps.
--
“I HATE YOU,” he screams, tears streaming down his cheeks and he needs it, he needs it, but there’s Angelina, walking towards him with the needle in her hands. He reaches to take it from her but she’s too fast, she takes it and stabs him and stabs him again, in the heart and in the groin and in the ear and in the eye, so he is blind and deaf and sterile but still she’s there, still he knows she’s saying “You bastard, you bastard,” even if he can’t hear her and she’s right, and George throws himself at where he knows she is, she feels hard like a wall, hard like her hand on his cheek when she slapped him.
And Lee is pulling him away and saying “Stop, stop now, stop that,” so sad, so sad, George is sorry and then he’s tired, his eyes are…drooping and Lee’s fingers are warm and he’s suddenly remembered how to see and hear but he’ll have to do that later.
George sleeps.
--
“Fred,” he says, confused, because Fred died, he knows he did, felt his cold dead body under his warm animate hands and it was like watching yourself die only worse, because when you die you only lose yourself instead of yourself and your other self. But that’s Fred, he knows Fred, even if he is floating in a corner with his lips all pursed together like their mum when she’s angry. “Fred,” he says again, but Fred just looks at him.
George looks back. He was always best at staring contests.
--
“WHY WON’T YOU TALK TO ME,” but Fred is silent, shaking his dead, cold head even though it doesn’t look very dead today. George wishes he wasn’t dead so he could threaten to kill him, kill him and make him talk.
--
“Are you angry with me?” George doesn’t know why his brother bothered to come back if all he’ll do is float, float and drive George mad, madder, and all he wants is one more fix but he wants Fred to talk even more, wants to know why he’s even AROUND if he’s going to be all quiet and SO QUIET like this, and Fred nods and says:
Yes.
And that’s his voice, that’s Fred’s voice and George is so happy that he has to move, and he jumps from his bed and the wall is closer than he thought it would be and Fred doesn’t catch him. When Lee comes in he says Fuck and George’s head feels all warm and sticky and then Lee says something else, something George can’t quite hear, and he falls asleep with Fred watching him.
--
“Why are you angry?” George wants to know, he wants to know, but Fred maddening infuriating horrible brother Fred won’t tell him, looks at him like he’s dirt, his Fred, his Fred who hates him now, and it’s not George’s fault, it’s Percy’s Molly’s Angelina’s Dumbledore’s Bellatrix’s-
“I’m not the one who died!” and still Fred just raises an eyebrow like that’s not the truth and George throws things at him and screams, screams “GET OUT, YOU DIED, YOU DIED” and Fred is sinking now, sinking to George’s level from where he’s been floating on the ceiling and George grabs his shoulders (he feels alive) and says “You died, you bastard, you died.”
Except then Fred is Lee all concerned, worried and saying “I didn’t die, I didn’t die, I’m still here,” and George thinks you’re not Fred with startling clarity as he passes out.
--
“Tell me why,” George says and Fred leans down from the ceiling and holds out a hand and George reaches for it, walks closer, but Fred whips his hand away and smacks George in the forehead.
Figure it out, git, Fred says, and George falls back, hits his pillows, realizes as he slips away that he’s sore and he hurts and everything is wrong, but he hasn’t needed a fix all day.
--
The morning is bright and clear and lucid on the eighth day. It has been so long since George has been lucid-it’s novel, if a little hard to bear. His eyelids hurt, and his fingernails, and his feet, but he doesn’t feel the crushing need to self-medicate, so he supposes that’s something.
Fred’s gone; George remembers his presence vaguely, like a dream slipping away in the sunlight. He supposes he hallucinated his brother floating in the corner-Lee had warned him about that.
Lee, George thinks, and pulls himself out of bed. I have to find Lee, and he wrenches open the door to his room, pleased to find it unlocked. He steps forward with purpose, but is stopped by the presence of a body under his foot.
“Yaaah!” George yelps, jumping backwards. Lee shoots bolt upright from where he’s been sleeping outside the door. He looks battleworn, with cuts on his face he hasn’t had time to heal, circles like ravines under each eye. I did that, George thinks wonderingly, and then I’m sorry with such force it almost knocks him down.
“Good morning to you too,” Lee says, trying and failing to cover a yawn with his hand. “How do you feel?”
“I-better,” George admits, sinking to the floor next to him. “Have you been sleeping here all week?”
Lee rubs his face with his hands, clearly willing himself to wake up. “Well,” he says, sheepishly. “Slept on your floor a few times.”
What’s left of George’s heart breaks a little. If he were someone different, if he were a few years younger, he’d have thought about it, the rules between boys. As it is, he reaches forward, takes Lee’s wand with one hand and his face with the other. “Episkey,” he says, pointing at the deepest cut. “And you call yourself a Healer,” he adds, shakily, pointing his wand at another cut.
Lee slants a smiles at him, tilting his head up to let George remove the fingernail marks on his neck. “Was that a joke?”
George shrugs and hands him back his wand, finished. “Maybe,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Now get in bed.”
Lee’s eyes are really too wide; George will think about it later. “But, I-you just-”
George stands and offers Lee a hand. “Bed,” he commands, meaning it. “You look like a train hit you.”
“You hit me,” Lee mutters, but he lets George steer him into his bedroom, push him onto the sheets, tuck him in.
“When you wake up,” George says, “I’ll make breakfast.” Lee is asleep before he closes the door.
October
Angelina,
I know what I did to you was really fucked up. I wanted to send flowers or come by, but Lee said it would be better this way, and he’s probably right. He usually is.
I want you to know that Fred loved you-really loved you-and he’d beat the shit out of me if he were alive to know what happened. I want to beat the shit out of me, frankly.
I understand if you don’t ever want to see me again, but if there’s anything I can do, anything I can say…I owe you. Forever.
I’m so, so sorry, Angelina.
George
--
George,
I don’t need you to tell me Fred loved me. I know that. I know he’d beat the shit out of you, too, but he’s not around to do that, and I don’t forgive you.
But there might be something you can do, someday.
I’ll let you know.
Angelina
--
For all it’s barely held together with straw and spit, the Burrow looks like a fortress from where George stands. He recalls the last time he felt this apprehensive on his own front porch; it was the summer after third year, and he and Fred had been seen on their brooms by a Muggle girl from town. It hadn’t been that big a deal, really; there’d been some shouting, but their father had taken care of it. “Rascals,” he’d called them, ruffling their hair affectionately while Molly wasn’t watching. “Try to be careful.”
He hears their laughter in the house now, celebrating his mother’s birthday, and for a brief but very real moment he considers turning around and going home. He regrets now turning down Lee’s offered accompaniment, though he knows he was right to do so. This is something he has to do alone.
George takes a deep, steadying breath, plants his feet, and knocks.
He feels rather than hears the silence that falls when Molly opens the door. There is a long moment, painfully quiet, before his mother’s eyes fill with tears and she throws herself forward.
“Oh, George,” she sobs, hugging him. George closes his eyes.
“Hi, Mum,” he whispers, holding her. When they separate he chances a glance around, and there’s his family: Charlie sharing a significant look with Arthur, Bill holding his baby daughter with his hand on Fleur’s shoulder, Ginny with her fingers white on Harry’s arm. Ron’s holding Hermione’s hand, looking uncertain, and there’s Percy, his shoulders squared.
“Perce,” George says, running a hand through his hair, “could I talk to you for a minute? Outside?”
Percy looks at him for a long moment and stands, his face unreadable. Arthur opens his mouth, but Percy waves him off. “It’s fine,” he says, heading towards the back door with George. “Fine,” he repeats to Charlie, and George is reminded forcibly of a night a lifetime ago, when it was Percy who’d been in the wrong, Percy who was the black sheep.
“Thanks,” George says, uncomfortable, when they get out to the back garden. Percy merely raises an eyebrow at him, betraying his own apprehension only with the slight quiver at the edge of his mouth.
“You had something you wished to say?” Percy asks. His tone is achingly polite, and George could hit him for it.
Or he could have, once. He supposes he’s too old for that sort of thing now.
“Look,” he says, finally, staring at the ground. “I just-I shouldn’t have, have said what I did that day, and I didn’t mean it, and it wasn’t true, and I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” Percy says, very quiet, and when George looks up he is appalled to note his brother looks close to tears.
“Oh god-I-please don’t-” he starts, but then Percy, most uncharacteristically, interrupts him.
“You were right!” he says, his eyes fierce and a little afraid. “It should have been me, I ran out on everyone, why should I have gotten to live-”
“Perce,” George says, firmly (because there aren’t many things he knows about, but the guilt of surviving is one of them), “it shouldn’t have been any of us.”
When they reenter the Burrow ten minutes later, they are smiling; Molly beams at both of them and conjures George a chair. There is a moment of strange silence, and then:
“George,” Percy says, a bit too loudly, “don’t you want to meet your niece?”
George smiles at him gratefully as Bill passes baby Victoire to him. Her body is small and soft, and if Fred were alive, he’d-
But Fred isn’t alive, so George reaches under her chin and tickles her gently all by himself. She lets out a shriek of laughter and waves a tiny fist at him, grabbing his finger and pulling it toward her mouth to bite.
“She’s got the Weasley spirit, this one,” George says, trying for levity. He doesn’t quite make it, but his family laughs. It’s a start, George tells himself, tickling his niece again. It’s a start.
--
“How many times do I have to tell you! You don’t have to go,” Lee says, pulling the half-filled duffel out of George’s hands.
George grins at him, realizing all the while it is because of Lee that he can grin at all. “And how many times do I have to tell you,” he replies, tugging the duffel back, “that I’ve taken up your spare bedroom for long enough?”
Lee sighs, defeated, and throws himself across his couch. “You make better eggs than me,” he says, crossly, not looking at George. “I’ll starve.”
George wants to laugh, but he’s not quite sure he can manage it yet. Soon, maybe. “You will not starve,” he mutters instead, sitting next to Lee. “And it’s not like you’ll never see me again.”
Lee still won’t look at him. George knows he’s unhappy; George isn’t pleased with the situation either. He will miss Lee’s easy way in the morning, the clatter of dinner plates and his soft laughter at night. He will miss having someone down the hall, someone to talk to; he will miss Lee’s strange sense of humor, a sense missing from his life for so long. But he won’t be the pathetic layabout who can’t make his own way. He’s been eating Lee’s food and drinking Lee’s beer, and after all Lee did-it’s not right. Lee deserves a life of his own, without worrying about the petty concerns of his fucked-up Hogwarts mate.
“I’ll be around,” George promises. “I just need a few weeks to myself, to think some things through…”
“I’ll help you pack,” Lee says, rolling off the couch. He doesn’t look at George, even when he says goodbye.
November
George’s eyes are crusted with sleep when he wakes to a strange thumping noise and a disgusting smell. “Bathroom,” he mutters, his vision blurry, “fucking pipes,” but he climbs out of bed with a yawn, numerous design drawings crinkling under his feet. The plans for the new shop are going well, even if they are taking up much of his time-outside of business meetings, George hasn’t seen anyone in two weeks. He needs to owl his family. And Lee, he reminds himself as he stumbles into the bathroom, rubbing his eyes. He’s allowed himself long enough; he probably won’t write a driveling plea to move back in now.
However, he’s distracted from this thought when he realizes the noise, and the smell, have faded. The thumping is still faintly audible in the next room; whatever it is, it’s clearly not George’s notably unreliable pipes. “Hmm,” he mumbles, a bit more awake, and heads back into his bedroom.
There is a loud THWACK as George watches something dark and brown hit his window.
“Oy!” he yells, running to it, fully awake now, “what do you think you’re playing at?” and he opens the window only to be smacked in the face by a Dungbomb.
Lee Jordan, standing on the sidewalk three stories below, chucks another one at him. “COOT!” he screams, and he sounds-more upset than anything else. “DODGY OLD COOT!” he yells, throwing another one, and this time George can hear the hurt in his voice, can feel it in the force of his throws.
He makes to turn around, meaning to find some clothes and deal with this, but he forgets the window over his head until it falls on him.
--
The world rotates in wide circles for a moment, momentarily clouding his vision. “Blargh,” says George, dizzy, when it clears. He lets the window fall as it is supposed to and is startled to see his twin brother, floating in the corner. “FUCK!” he shrieks, tripping over a half-constructed case of Babbling Bedsheets and falling flat on the ground.
Fred grins down at him. “Did you figure it out?” he asks, looking far too pleased with himself. George scowls at him, remembering suddenly the last time he saw his brother, tight lipped and furious, hallucinated in Lee’s spare bedroom.
“No,” he snaps, struck with the indignity of talking to the dead in only a pair of pants. “But you fucking tortured me about it, didn’t you? Why are you angry?”
Fred waggles his eyebrows. “Why do you think?”
“I-I figured it was because of what I did to your girlfriend, actually,” George replies after a moment, biting his lip.
Fred glares at him. “No!” he snaps, and then adds severely, “though if I were alive I’d thump you for that, make no mistake.”
“I told her that,” George admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “She said she didn’t need me to tell her.”
Fred smiles reminiscently. “I always did like that girl,” he says approvingly to himself, and then looks back at George. “But! The matter at hand. Why am I angry?”
“I don’t…know?” George says, and ducks as Fred throws a shoe at him. His own shoe! He’d be annoyed if he weren’t so grateful.
“No. Git,” Fred replies, and sinks from the ceiling so he is eye-to-eye with George. “I died,” he says, like it is new information.
“I know,” George snaps back, and Fred hits him.
“Shut up and listen!” Fred yells, sounding serious. “I died. And you stopped living.”
George gapes at him. Fred nods, undeterred. “Yes you did! I saw you do it! And you’re about to keep doing it, you’re about to put trousers on and go talk sense to the guy throwing Dungbombs on the street, when he’s loved you since about fourth year and everyone knew it. And you love him too, and you’re such a git.”
“But you-I-what?” George says.
“You love him,” Fred intones slowly, as though speaking to an idiot. Which maybe he is, George thinks. “You’ve loved him since he sat up with you the night Dad was attacked. Which was fifth year. Which,” Fred adds, smiling a bit, “proves, as I have always tried to tell you, that you are slow on the uptake about this kind of shit.”
“I-” George starts, but he’s hit by the weight of what Fred is saying. He remembers in a sudden sweep the look in Lee’s eyes while he screamed in the club; the feeling of Lee’s cool hands, coated with murtlap and lacewing paste, moving against his own. He realizes how clearly he can picture Lee’s smile, how well he knows the sound of his laugh, his voice, his footsteps. Fred pats him on the back and vanishes. He doesn’t notice.
--
“Oh,” George says out loud, and Apparates.
He lands a little closer than he intended to, and Lee stumbles backwards. He has shit-actual shit-all over his hands, and on his face, and in his hair. “Did you just Apparate after head trauma?” he demands.
George-who has forgotten once too often about Lee’s medical training-takes a measured step back. “No, no,” he lies, waving his hands, “no, that would be bad. I would never. Why would you think that?”
“Because I saw you do it,” Lee grinds out. But then he looks askance at George and adds “Coot,” sounding furious and happy all at once. George smiles, and then he laughs, a real laugh, something he hasn’t done in months. He imagines the picture he must paint, a man in boxers doubled over in mirth, and he laughs harder, gasping with it.
“You know,” he chokes out, when he has regained a bit of breath, “I meant what I said that night. I could be Fred, really. I could be Fred thinking I’m George-”
“And I meant what I said, too,” Lee shoots back, fierce. “I’d know you anywhere.”
George smiles at him with only a trace of bitterness. “How?” he asks, gesturing at his bare chest, his dung-splattered face. “We were exactly the same.”
“No, you idiot,” Lee snaps, “you weren’t.” His voice is a little raw from screaming, but George thinks he can hear warmth there. And then, just when it’s been too long for such things, just when George thinks he will lose his nerve, Lee redirects his glare to the ground. “I never loved Fred,” he offers.
George steps forward. He smells bad and he’s freezing, but he doesn’t have to muster his grin-it comes naturally, like it once did. “I think,” he laughs into Lee’s ear (they are so close George can feel Lee’s breath against his bare chest), “I think he would be very offended.”
“Don’t you dare start with me--” Lee begins, laughing a little himself, but George is done talking now. He leans in and then they are kissing, two shit-covered boys on a cold November morning, the curves of their smiles meeting like old friends.
fin