Weasleys' War & Wantings (second half)
First half of this story is here.
Title: "Weasleys' War & Wantings"
Author: anal_cram_ink
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Fred & George Weasley
Rating: overall NC17 for adult themes, language, graphic sexual situations, consensual adult male/male incest.
Disclaimer: Characters and 'verse belong to JKR. I'm only playing in her sandpit.
Notes: Written for the 7dschallenge Seven Deadly Sins Challenge.
Gluttony.
Lee Jordan lay back on his bed and stared up his canopy glumly. Fred and George had finally told him everything - everything they'd been planning for Hogwarts and everything they'd been planning for outside Hogwarts, as well. It was big stuff! They'd certainly got a lot done in a relatively short period of time. He glanced around the quiet dormitory. He'd been sharing this room with the twins since they were all eleven years old - seven years later, Lee didn't exactly relish the prospect of having the place entirely to himself. He looked at their beds and found himself considering how it made sense now, considering how much they'd got done over the past weeks, how much they'd organised and planned and prepared. It made perfect sense that they should have a "war room"…
Years ago, back in First Year, Lee got kind of used to rising in the mornings to find his dorm-mates were waking up in beds that had moved together during the night. Lee had been sworn to secrecy about it, of course. It wasn't like they did it on purpose or anything, was it? It happened in their sleep! And it was understandable, too, when Lee thought about it. They'd shared a bed at home for a long time, and then a small bedroom - hell they'd even shared a womb at one point, right? McGonagall, as their Head of House, had counselled that she'd seen the phenomenon before with twins, and that they would grow out of it as they settled into life at Hogwarts. They had. Six or seven months later, it stopped happening - except, curiously, each year on the eve of their birthday. Fred and George would wake up grinning, tell each other Happy Birthday, then get up and shove the beds apart by hand (never magic). They treated it as no big deal, so Lee didn't either.
The morning after the twins had their lifetime Quidditch ban handed down to them, Lee had found himself wondering if it was somehow April already as, across the room, Fred and George sat up confusedly in beds that had pushed up against each other during the night. Lee knew something must have changed when they shared one of their general mind-meld looks, then resolutely left the beds that way and went about their morning as though nothing were amiss. By the end of that day, the drapery on the pushed-together sides had been securely tied back, and the twins had begun referring to the resulting doubled area within as their War Room.
Lee was too much of a bloke to tell his friends he was going to miss them (not yet, anyhow). He could admit it to himself, though. This room was going to be so deathly quiet, so deathly dull. Imagine it - no one to talk to, no one to spell the bottoms of your pyjama pants together, no one to commiserate with over exams and teachers, no one to sneak down to the kitchens with, no one to wake you up with slimy things, no one to laugh with… Lee sighed and went back to staring glumly at his canopy. He'd just have to make the most of their company while they were still here, he supposed. Just have to get in as much twin-time as possible before it was taken away from him.
~*~*~
These were dark days at Hogwarts. As the Ministry's reign took away more and more rights and freedoms, the atmosphere in the school became increasingly oppressive and claustrophobic. Outside of the pets in Umbridge's privileged Inquisitorial Squad, there seemed to be only two people in the whole of the castle who were coping even scarcely well. But then, coping with claustrophobia HAD been hardwired into them since before birth…
Hermione was shaking her head slowly from the other side of the table as she watched them, heads bent so close together their faces were touching, whispering to each other quietly enough that not even those sitting immediately beside them at Sunday dinner could hear what they said.
'What?' George suddenly asked her. 'What've we done now, Granger?'
'Don't you think you two should act a little more normal?'
'What do you mean?' Fred grinned. 'This IS normal!'
'I mean,' Hermione said in a tone that suggested she was addressing children, 'that you shouldn't look like you're plotting something ALL the time. They'll suspect something! You're already under suspicion for that firework display the other week.'
'Well, of COURSE we are!' the twins said together. 'Work of that quality?' added George. 'We'd be insulted if we weren't!' finished Fred.
'Besides, Granger,' George said a little more evenly, 'if we were to suddenly start acting as though we weren't up to anything, that would be a dead giveaway to the fact that we ARE up to something.'
'Yeah.' Fred began to stand up. 'Don't you know ANYTHING, Hermione?'
The rest of the Gryffindors within earshot had a good laugh at that, as Fred and George left the table. Lee pushed the last of his dessert aside and stood up, too, and the three of them walked up to their dorm.
The twins' War Room was really coming along nicely. Fred was beginning to think that he was actually going to miss it a little bit. He and George had taken to using the canopied "roof" as a noticeboard, magically affixing all manner of lists, notes, recipes and documents (all glamoured to outsider eyes, naturally) to the lush crimson drapery. They could lie in bed and mentally tick off items and ideas, conduct whispered discussions about why that particular formula wasn't working, or stare longingly up at the most cherished document of all - the legal parchment they had signed over the Easter break, the lease for a shop and dwelling at 93 Diagon Alley.
Lee perched himself at the foot of what had always previously been George's bed and smiled up at the War Room's "roof". 'S'all getting downright cosy in here, if you don't mind me saying so, chaps.'
The twins exchanged the merest of glances. Cosy, indeed. Several mornings, they'd awoken to find one or both of them had flung a limb over the other while they slept. And once, in the middle of the night, Fred had sprung wide awake as he felt a hand that wasn't his groping at his cock through his pyjamas; he'd lay there, stunned, for a good fifteen minutes or more until George had woke up, too, and whispered the word "sorry" more times than Fred had heard him say ever before.
Fred clambered into his side of the War Room and grinned at Lee. 'We're thinking of adding an extension,' he joked. 'Upper storey, obviously. Might get a pool table.'
'Or a pool!' George threw in. 'Should get the landscapers in, really…'
'A shrubbery!' Fred laughed, sitting cross-legged in the centre of his mattress.
'How much longer?' Lee asked, suddenly serious.
They didn't have to ask "how much longer to what?". They both knew how Lee was dreading their approaching exit. Sometimes they wondered if they'd actually done the kinder thing in letting him in on the plan. On the one hand, they'd made it so that their last few weeks with their best friend were spent in camaraderie and honesty, but on the other, well, they'd seen the effect on Lee as time went on. It was almost as though he could barely stand to be apart from them at times. And while they didn't mind that - hell, they wanted to spend as much time with Lee as they could before they left, too! - it did inadvertently mean they'd had scant opportunity to work on some of the new developments in their relationship. Then again… maybe that was a good thing?
'Funny you should ask that, mate,' George told Lee quietly.
Lee looked from one to the other slowly. 'Not tonight, surely?'
'No.' George sat down next to Fred. 'Tomorrow though. Just at the end of the day's lessons. Young Harry needs a diversion, and seeing as we'd already got all this sorted - ' he waved one hand at the "roof".
' - we figured we'd sort of, give it to him as a parting gift,' Fred finished.
Nodding, Lee looked down at his own hands. 'Never seen you two get so much done. Refining the Whiz-bangs and this swamp thing - that's gonna be bloody legendary, you realise that, don't you? And finding a place in Diagon Alley and getting the shop all ready to go at the same time. And in amongst all the family stuff you've had to deal with, too! Your dad being in hospital and all that. Well.' He looked up and gave them both a little smile. 'You've really pulled out all the stops this time, fellas. You've been almost… voracious.' His smile turned slightly shy and he glanced down again. 'It's been impressive,' he told them softly, 'watching you get it all done. And done so well, too.' They thought his little speech was finished for a moment, but then he blurted out, in one quick sentence, 'I'mdeadproudofyoubothandI'mreallygonnamisshavingyouaround.'
Smiling, George leaned across and punched Lee lightly in the shoulder. 'All we did was decide to stop stopping going too far, that's all.'
'And we're sorry we're leaving you in the lurch like this, mate,' Fred added. 'At least you haven't got TOO much of the year left to go.'
'You'll keep the flag flying after we're gone, I'm sure,' said George.
'Oh yeah, and on that note,' Fred cut in, waving his wand to levitate a box from under his side of the bed. 'D'you reckon you can find a use for these at some point in the coming weeks?' With a huge grin, he presented Lee with two snuffly, long-snouted Nifflers.
Lust.
Everyone's amusement and excitement was quelled in an instant by that one word, that one order, that one nod of approval from Umbridge. She was going to have Fred and George whipped.
Ginny was sure that was Angelina Johnson's voice she could hear across the packed Entrance Hall, screaming the word "No!".
Hermione grabbed hold of Ginny's nearest hand in shock. 'She can't!' she whispered in outrage. 'Whipping?! That's so barbaric! It's downright medieval! It's against the law to WHIP people in Britain - SURELY Professor Umbridge knows that?!'
Ginny couldn't respond to any of her friend's questions. She was too transfixed by the hollow feeling in her stomach and the sympathetic fear raging in her head. Her heartbeat had stepped up, she could actually feel it. She was so scared for Fred and George, it was as if her body had told her she was the one to be whipped, and was ratchetting up her fight or flight response accordingly.
'This is all Harry's fault!' Hermione whispered again. 'Oh, where IS he? He has to DO something! They did it to cover for him, to buy him some time with Snuffles! He CAN'T let them be whipped!'
Ginny felt her mouth go dry as she gazed, wide-eyed and fearful, at her darling, brave twin brothers. Would she be able to stand to watch it happen? She wanted to turn away already! But shouldn't she stand with them and force herself to watch? Make sure they knew they weren't alone?
And how would Umbridge have it done? Just how many lashes did the horrible, horrible woman think a swamp in Gregory the Smarmy's corridor warranted? And would she divide that number by two, or torture both twin's backs with the full catastrophe? Would she make them strip to the waist for it? Would she have them tied to something?
Some disquieted, disgusted section of Ginny's brain suddenly spat at her to shut the hell up with thoughts like that. It was sick and cruel and morbidly fascinating and sick sick sick SICK! It was… confusing her.
~*~*~
It was alright that they were sprung. Really, it was. They wished there was some way of letting their little sister know that... But even though they knew they were on their way out of here now, even though they knew there was no way they were going to allow Umbridge or Filch to carry out such a thing, that they only had to stall until they knew Harry had done what he had to do, Fred and George both still felt their blood chill through at that word - whipping. She'd actually approved it? She would ACTUALLY allow them both to be ACTUALLY whipped?!
Automatically, and simultaneously, the twins both took a step forward and said, 'I did it!'. They looked at each other with a small frown, then both turned back to the Headmistress and said, more firmly, 'No, it was all me!'. Frowning more now, they each glared at the other. George muttered 'Fred!' at the same time and in the same warning tone that Fred muttered 'George!'.
'For fuck's sake,' George hissed, 'shut up and let me do this!'
'No!' Fred hissed back. 'I won't let you!'
They both rounded on Umbridge and her sickeningly sweet smile. 'He didn't have anything to do with it!' they both tried to insist, each of them quite obviously becoming frustrated with his brother's attempts to foil his sacrifice.
Umbridge was snickering quietly to herself as she watched them inadvertently stepping on each other's nobility. 'Very touching, Misters Weasley,' she cooed at them. 'You are to be commended for your brotherly love. But as everybody knows neither of you seems capable of doing anything on your own, I'm afraid your attempts to save each other are really quite pointless.'
Just then, Fred and George noticed Harry coming down the stairs and they both smiled to themselves. This was it, then; they didn't have to cover for their friend anymore - they were out of here. Let the fun commence!
'So - you think it amusing to turn a school corridor into a swamp, do you?' Umbridge asked them.
Fred and George both stood up a little straighter and Fred looked the bitch square in the eye. 'Pretty amusing, yeah,' he told her fearlessly.
Five minutes later, the Weasley twins had gone from simply being famous among their own peers to being genuine Hogwarts legends.
It was the best feeling in the world - being back in the air again, back on a broom, flying side by side with the wind whipping by and the ground and trees below nothing but a colourful blur. They threw a few loops and dives just because they could, and came to ground again about a quarter mile beyond the school's anti-Apparation perimeter.
'You don't want to fly a bit more?' George enquired, smiling at his brother's smile.
'Hours more!' Fred declared. 'But right now - ' He surprised George by stepping in close and kissing him swiftly on the mouth. ' - right now, I want to get you to our new flat.'
George's eyes widened. 'Oh. Well.' He cleared his throat lightly, then couldn't help the smirk that tugged at his mouth. 'Last one there's a Malfoy!' He Disapparated before he'd even properly finished his sentence, popping into the shop area of 93 Diagon Alley just a fraction of a second later.
'Bastard!' Fred appeared beside him, eyes glittering.
They contemplated each other the merest of moments, before they both made a dash for the back room and the staircase up to the flat above, brooms following them at a more sedate pace. There was some typical me-first-no-me-first jostling on the narrow stair, and then they were crashing into their small and Spartan livingroom, hands already pulling at each other's school robes, mouths already crushing together.
George went at Fred's mouth so hard he tasted blood, and shoved his brother back immediately so as to assess the damage. 'Forget it,' Fred told him, licking up the tiny spot of scarlet on his bottom lip. 'Forget it. Come here.'
Since that strange pre-dawn morning when they'd stashed their fireworks around the castle and found themselves snogging behind a suit of armour, the twins had managed to steal an entirety of three subsequent kisses. Once in their dorm room before almost being sprung by Lee. Once over the Easter break, when they'd come into London to sign the lease on the shop. And once in the showers when they'd lingered longer than all the other Gryffindor boys (and hadn't THAT taken some godlike powers of control and self-denial to stop themselves before things got too far?)
They hadn't had much opportunity to talk about the development, to discuss the fact that they were brothers who had discovered an inexplicable desire to kiss one another as passionately as (or, if truth be told, MORE passionately than) they'd ever wanted to kiss anybody else. And how was a conversation like that supposed to go anyhow? They'd just have to make it all up as they went along, they supposed…
'How long, do you think?'
Fred lifted his face from George's throat, where he'd been sucking a lovely purple bruise into being. 'Until what?'
'Until McGonagall firecalls or owls Mum and Dad to tell them we've left school?'
'She'll tell them the address, I s'pose…'
'Seeing as we told the whole school as we left? Yes.'
Fred looked crestfallen for a short moment. 'Less than an hour before they're pounding on the door, I reckon.'
George nodded sadly, then gave his brother a cheeky grin and reached for Fred's tie. 'We'd better be quick.'
Fred's hands came up to George's tie, too. 'Absolutely.'
They stripped off their school uniforms as swiftly as possible, neither of them sparing a thought for the significant moment of removing that uniform for the last time, and fell onto the old couch in front of the fireplace together. It was as though they'd been created especially for one another. The shapes of their bodies fit so perfectly, the rises and falls of bone and muscle corresponding with beautiful precision. Everything aligned so nicely - nipples could graze against each other, cocks could press together, mouths were never far from one another - they both wondered why they'd never thought of doing this before.
George, because he was on top, set about worshipping his brother's flesh, sucking on earlobe and throat and collarbone and nipple, licking at fingers and chest hair and stomach and thighs. Fred's hands around his head coaxed him toward the hard jut of needy cock and George, never having even contemplated the sucking of another man's dick before, opened his mouth and took his brother in deep, loving the sounds Fred made beneath him, loving the solid, hot flesh thrusting between his lips. Loving, even, the way Fred's hands fisted into his hair and helped guide his head up and down with increasing fervour. Gods, who knew Fred was such a sexy bugger?!
'Fuck, George! Oh fu… bloody hell!'
George glanced up, gaze sweeping over coarse red hair and flat, pale belly, over familiar chest and bruised throat, up to the utterly hot and horny look Fred was giving him.
'Turn around,' Fred ordered.
Bloody excellent idea. George manoeuvred himself around and re-settled over Fred, only to end up on his side as they both toppled a little. A bit of hasty rearranging and quite a bit of swearing and apologising later, they both sighed around a cock identical to their own.
Momentarily, George managed a couple of coherent thoughts about how they must look like that, curled against each other on the couch, their matching naked bodies joined in a perfect circuit, faces buried between each other's thighs as they shared - just like every other experience in their lives - their first attempts at fellatio.
This is beautiful, he found himself thinking.
Fingers slid behind George's bollocks and he swore around Fred's cock. He had no idea being touched there could feel so good! He replicated the action on his twin and felt the cock he was sucking on twitch in his mouth.
Everything devolved into wetness and heat and a mind-blanking hunger for each other that took all their inexperience with homoerotic sex and re-packaged it as beginner's luck. They were getting this right. They were making each other feel the best they'd ever felt. They were making each other squirm and buck and thrust harder and suck better. They were getting each other off.
It was clumsy and rushed and absofuckinglutely perfect.
Fred had worked two fingers far enough inside George that George was seriously pondering what a prick might feel like in there. This prick, he affirmed to himself, flexing his tongue against it. Not any other one. NEVER any other one…. He slid his mouth completely down the shaft of Fred's cock, burying his nose somewhere to the left of his brother's balls, and started to come into Fred's mouth.
A split second later, Fred followed him and, as neither of them had any skill in the area of swallowing spurting spunk, they made quite an amusing little mess on the couch of their new livingroom.
Pride.
'Molly. Molly, please, love. Just calm down for a moment and think about all this. If what Ronald and Ginny have said is true, then Fred and George stood up to a tyrant. A tyrant, Mol! And while every other child in that school appears to have shut down and internalised their pain and their anger and very nearly become complicit in that tyranny by simply not speaking up, our boys refused. I'm sorry, love, but I can't help it - I've never felt so proud of them. What other example did you think we were setting all these years by letting the children know about our work with the Order? And their shop, Molly! It's not like they've dropped out of school to do nothing, is it? They've immediately got down to serious business and set themselves up in a new home and a commercial venture that uses their talents and skills to the absolute fullest! I'm sorry, Mol, but truly - I'm fit to burst, I'm so proud.'
~*~*~
Fred had a gentle side. George was generally the only person who ever got to see it. And the third morning that they woke up together in their new home - their flat, their very own dwelling above their very own shop - Fred's gentle side manifested in a new way that even managed to surprise George a little bit.
Blankets and covers had been kicked off and wands groped for in order to deal with the bed squeaking. Fred gripped hard at the underside of George's left knee and held that leg tight as he ploughed into his brother's body, his balls slapping softly against a delectable curve of arse. And just when George's head began to knock rhythmically against the headboard with the momentum of each of Fred's thrusts, Fred curled his free hand around the top of George's skull and took the assault on his own knuckles. George started to come as soon as he realised what Fred was doing…
'Oh GOD!' Fred grinned down at him, so close that George could not only feel the breath on his face, but almost fancied he could feel the actual rasp in Fred's voice. 'You're looking at me like Angelina used to!'
George felt his body squeeze as he laughed over the top of his orgasm, then laughed more as he watched Fred's eyes roll up in his head in response to the sensation.
'Coming, George… Ohfuuuuck! Coming… !'
George gripped Fred's waist tightly and watched his twin rocking above him, feeling the jerk of Fred's cock against his muscles down there. Muscles he'd never really thought about before three days ago.
'Can you feel it?' Fred's voice was the tiniest, most awed whisper now. 'George? Do you feel me?'
George smoothed Fred's damp ginger fringe back off his forehead. 'Course I do.' He watched Fred close his eyes and nod. Leaning up a little, George pressed his mouth against his brother's and they stayed that way for the next five minutes or more, both of them coming down from their shared high, their bodies still joined, their breathing in perfect tandem.
'Where should this lot go, then?'
George looked up from the box he was unpacking to see Fred standing in the storeroom doorway with an armful of hugging newspapers - currently in their dormant state, of course, or else Fred wouldn't have been standing there looking so unconcerned.
'Hm. Probably not on any of the lower shelves. Don't want to be responsible for some unsuspecting kiddie getting strangulated by a rogue sports section…'
'Definitely not,' Fred smiled.
George turned his attention back to the box he had half-emptied and pulled out a few more items before realising that Fred was still standing there at the doorway. 'What?' he asked as he looked up again, barely helping a quick glance over one shoulder to check his back. 'There's nothing on me, is there?'
'No,' Fred laughed softly. 'I was just - don't worry. Forget it.' And he hefted the newspapers a bit and walked away.
Odd. George rested his hands on his thighs as he knelt on the floor by the packing box, wondering what all that had been about. Then he clambered to his feet and, dusting the knees of his jeans as he walked out of the storeroom, went in search of Fred.
He leaned against a barrel of fireworks while he watched his brother shove the hugging newspapers onto one of the topmost shelves. It really, really wasn't right for a bloke to be appreciating the sight of his own brother's body like this, surely? But the way Fred was stretching up like that… George firmly told himself to stop wondering if his own arse looked that good. Oh, gods.
'What's up?' Fred turned from the shelf and gave George a quizzical look. 'Were you just staring at my arse?'
'No!'
'You were!'
Damned Weasley blushes.
Fred grinned as George tried to turn his reddening face away. 'You bloody were! I knew it!' He crossed the room to stand in front of George. 'Did it look alright, then? Meet with your approval, brother dearest?'
'Fred!'
'Quit trying to turn away from me!' Fred's strong arms came up around George's shoulders and stopped him from moving. 'It's okay, you know. You're allowed.'
George lifted his gaze to Fred's and felt his embarrassment up and leave in an instant. Fred was right - it WAS okay, George WAS allowed. It was weird that that's how it was, sure, but it made some sort of wacky, outrageous sense somehow. Fred's eyes looked darker than normal in the late afternoon light that reached this part of the shop, and George made a mental note to install a lamp of some description in this corner before the official opening.
'Yours is dead nice, too, you know,' Fred said softly.
There was a distinctly sexy lilt to Fred's voice when he spoke, and George swallowed a little uncomfortably as he recognised it. They'd been sharing a bed since they moved into Diagon Alley, but any fooling around they'd done had occurred strictly after dark or upon waking in the mornings. It hadn't seemed to occur to either of them so far that they were the masters of this new home and they could, in fact, do whatever they liked, whenever they liked, however their moods might take them.
Fred was busily following up his last remark with a firm squeezing of George's behind. It was almost four in the afternoon, George was thinking, and they could decide to down tools for the day if they wanted to and indulge their secret together.
"Their secret." George scoffed quietly to himself.
'What now?'
'I was just thinking about our, er, "our secret". You know.'
'Mm. Biggest one we've ever had, innit?'
'Are we up to the task, you reckon?'
'Never let anything beat us yet, have we?' Fred's smile was bright and confident.
'But this, though, Fred - '
'Is no different to any other secret we've ever had to trust each other with.'
'But it's…' George looked at Fred's mouth. 'You KNOW what it is.'
'We're brothers.'
'Exactly.'
Fred rested his hands lightly on George's hips. 'So that makes some of the things we've been doing…'
George lifted his gaze to Fred's. 'Incest.' He hated even saying it. It seemed such an unfair word for their situation.
'Doesn't seem quite fair, really, does it?' Fred smiled. 'I mean, "incest" would fit if I was fooling around with Ginny or Mum or Percy or something like that. You know - something obviously sordid.'
George couldn't quite decide whether to laugh or baulk at some of the mental images he was getting.
Fred pulled a bit of a face, then smiled again. 'But with you… I dunno. It just doesn't seem like it's anything evil or unnatural or bad, I guess. I can't think of it in that sort of way.'
'Yeah,' George sighed shallowly.
'Can you remember why you kissed me that first time?'
'When we were hiding?' George blinked and tried to recall the exact moment. 'It's gonna sound stupid.'
'No, it won't. Tell me.'
'We'd been working all night - '
'Yeah.'
' - and giving Filch and the Slytherins the slip all night.'
'Heh. Yeah.'
'And, well… we were just so cool.' George laughed at his own choice of words. He watched Fred laughing softly with him and felt his smile grow wider and wider. 'I felt sort of… full of ourselves, you know? Like, it was completely Us Against The Rest Of The World or something, and we could do absolutely anything we wanted and get away with it. Dunno, really. But I felt really proud of you and really proud of being your brother, and just wanted to get closer. Close as I could.' His voice petered out a little as he ran out of ways to try and describe that bizarre train of thought.
Fred was nodding. 'That shouldn't really make sense, I don't think. But it does. To me, at least.' He stepped away from George but grabbed hold of George's right wrist. 'Come and look at this.' And he practically dragged his brother through the shop, toward the front door.
On the footpath outside, Fred put his hands to George's shoulders and turned him around until they were both looking up at the façade of their shop front. The signage for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes had only gone up that morning, and the twins stood quietly for a moment, gazing up at the lettering while their shoulders pushed first lightly, then a little more firmly, together.
'We did it, George,' Fred whispered. 'We've been talking about it for how long? And now we've done it. We've actually bloody done it. I feel sort of… full of ourselves, you know?'
George recognised that sentence from his own attempts to describe their first kiss, and he grinned to hear Fred repeating it.
'We're different to most other people,' Fred continued, sounding like he was thinking out loud, getting his thoughts in order as he was speaking them. 'And I don't mind that at all. I think I actually kind of… revel in it, a bit. Does that make sense? That I want us to be different to the rest of the world?' He turned away from the shop and faced George. 'I can't be ordinary with you. I don't want a relationship with you that's in any way ordinary or normal. I want us to be remarkable, George!'
'And that includes…' George's gaze flickered up to the second storey, up to the general direction of their bedroom.
'Are you gonna tell me that wasn't "remarkable", this morning?'
George looked back to Fred and grinned. 'Gods, listen to you! Proud of yourself, eh?'
'VERY fucking proud!' Fred slung an arm loosely around George's shoulders. 'Of both of us. Of what we've done, and of what we are. Yeah, I'm proud.' His hand squeezed briefly at George's arm. 'Don't you feel that, too?'
George kept looking at their shop for a little while longer, his gaze moving slowly over their name on the sign, and along the lines of brick and mortar that constituted Their Business, Their Home, Their Concern. 'Course I do,' he eventually murmured. 'I'm fit to burst, I'm so proud.'
Fred smirked to hear George come out with one of their Dad's expressions in a conversation like this. 'Sounds serious,' he quipped. 'Better get some champagne into you before that happens.' And he gave George a gentle push forward, back toward the front door, back inside 93 Diagon Alley.
~fin~
Title: "Weasleys' War & Wantings"
Author: anal_cram_ink
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Fred & George Weasley
Rating: overall NC17 for adult themes, language, graphic sexual situations, consensual adult male/male incest.
Disclaimer: Characters and 'verse belong to JKR. I'm only playing in her sandpit.
Notes: Written for the 7dschallenge Seven Deadly Sins Challenge.
Gluttony.
Lee Jordan lay back on his bed and stared up his canopy glumly. Fred and George had finally told him everything - everything they'd been planning for Hogwarts and everything they'd been planning for outside Hogwarts, as well. It was big stuff! They'd certainly got a lot done in a relatively short period of time. He glanced around the quiet dormitory. He'd been sharing this room with the twins since they were all eleven years old - seven years later, Lee didn't exactly relish the prospect of having the place entirely to himself. He looked at their beds and found himself considering how it made sense now, considering how much they'd got done over the past weeks, how much they'd organised and planned and prepared. It made perfect sense that they should have a "war room"…
Years ago, back in First Year, Lee got kind of used to rising in the mornings to find his dorm-mates were waking up in beds that had moved together during the night. Lee had been sworn to secrecy about it, of course. It wasn't like they did it on purpose or anything, was it? It happened in their sleep! And it was understandable, too, when Lee thought about it. They'd shared a bed at home for a long time, and then a small bedroom - hell they'd even shared a womb at one point, right? McGonagall, as their Head of House, had counselled that she'd seen the phenomenon before with twins, and that they would grow out of it as they settled into life at Hogwarts. They had. Six or seven months later, it stopped happening - except, curiously, each year on the eve of their birthday. Fred and George would wake up grinning, tell each other Happy Birthday, then get up and shove the beds apart by hand (never magic). They treated it as no big deal, so Lee didn't either.
The morning after the twins had their lifetime Quidditch ban handed down to them, Lee had found himself wondering if it was somehow April already as, across the room, Fred and George sat up confusedly in beds that had pushed up against each other during the night. Lee knew something must have changed when they shared one of their general mind-meld looks, then resolutely left the beds that way and went about their morning as though nothing were amiss. By the end of that day, the drapery on the pushed-together sides had been securely tied back, and the twins had begun referring to the resulting doubled area within as their War Room.
Lee was too much of a bloke to tell his friends he was going to miss them (not yet, anyhow). He could admit it to himself, though. This room was going to be so deathly quiet, so deathly dull. Imagine it - no one to talk to, no one to spell the bottoms of your pyjama pants together, no one to commiserate with over exams and teachers, no one to sneak down to the kitchens with, no one to wake you up with slimy things, no one to laugh with… Lee sighed and went back to staring glumly at his canopy. He'd just have to make the most of their company while they were still here, he supposed. Just have to get in as much twin-time as possible before it was taken away from him.
~*~*~
These were dark days at Hogwarts. As the Ministry's reign took away more and more rights and freedoms, the atmosphere in the school became increasingly oppressive and claustrophobic. Outside of the pets in Umbridge's privileged Inquisitorial Squad, there seemed to be only two people in the whole of the castle who were coping even scarcely well. But then, coping with claustrophobia HAD been hardwired into them since before birth…
Hermione was shaking her head slowly from the other side of the table as she watched them, heads bent so close together their faces were touching, whispering to each other quietly enough that not even those sitting immediately beside them at Sunday dinner could hear what they said.
'What?' George suddenly asked her. 'What've we done now, Granger?'
'Don't you think you two should act a little more normal?'
'What do you mean?' Fred grinned. 'This IS normal!'
'I mean,' Hermione said in a tone that suggested she was addressing children, 'that you shouldn't look like you're plotting something ALL the time. They'll suspect something! You're already under suspicion for that firework display the other week.'
'Well, of COURSE we are!' the twins said together. 'Work of that quality?' added George. 'We'd be insulted if we weren't!' finished Fred.
'Besides, Granger,' George said a little more evenly, 'if we were to suddenly start acting as though we weren't up to anything, that would be a dead giveaway to the fact that we ARE up to something.'
'Yeah.' Fred began to stand up. 'Don't you know ANYTHING, Hermione?'
The rest of the Gryffindors within earshot had a good laugh at that, as Fred and George left the table. Lee pushed the last of his dessert aside and stood up, too, and the three of them walked up to their dorm.
The twins' War Room was really coming along nicely. Fred was beginning to think that he was actually going to miss it a little bit. He and George had taken to using the canopied "roof" as a noticeboard, magically affixing all manner of lists, notes, recipes and documents (all glamoured to outsider eyes, naturally) to the lush crimson drapery. They could lie in bed and mentally tick off items and ideas, conduct whispered discussions about why that particular formula wasn't working, or stare longingly up at the most cherished document of all - the legal parchment they had signed over the Easter break, the lease for a shop and dwelling at 93 Diagon Alley.
Lee perched himself at the foot of what had always previously been George's bed and smiled up at the War Room's "roof". 'S'all getting downright cosy in here, if you don't mind me saying so, chaps.'
The twins exchanged the merest of glances. Cosy, indeed. Several mornings, they'd awoken to find one or both of them had flung a limb over the other while they slept. And once, in the middle of the night, Fred had sprung wide awake as he felt a hand that wasn't his groping at his cock through his pyjamas; he'd lay there, stunned, for a good fifteen minutes or more until George had woke up, too, and whispered the word "sorry" more times than Fred had heard him say ever before.
Fred clambered into his side of the War Room and grinned at Lee. 'We're thinking of adding an extension,' he joked. 'Upper storey, obviously. Might get a pool table.'
'Or a pool!' George threw in. 'Should get the landscapers in, really…'
'A shrubbery!' Fred laughed, sitting cross-legged in the centre of his mattress.
'How much longer?' Lee asked, suddenly serious.
They didn't have to ask "how much longer to what?". They both knew how Lee was dreading their approaching exit. Sometimes they wondered if they'd actually done the kinder thing in letting him in on the plan. On the one hand, they'd made it so that their last few weeks with their best friend were spent in camaraderie and honesty, but on the other, well, they'd seen the effect on Lee as time went on. It was almost as though he could barely stand to be apart from them at times. And while they didn't mind that - hell, they wanted to spend as much time with Lee as they could before they left, too! - it did inadvertently mean they'd had scant opportunity to work on some of the new developments in their relationship. Then again… maybe that was a good thing?
'Funny you should ask that, mate,' George told Lee quietly.
Lee looked from one to the other slowly. 'Not tonight, surely?'
'No.' George sat down next to Fred. 'Tomorrow though. Just at the end of the day's lessons. Young Harry needs a diversion, and seeing as we'd already got all this sorted - ' he waved one hand at the "roof".
' - we figured we'd sort of, give it to him as a parting gift,' Fred finished.
Nodding, Lee looked down at his own hands. 'Never seen you two get so much done. Refining the Whiz-bangs and this swamp thing - that's gonna be bloody legendary, you realise that, don't you? And finding a place in Diagon Alley and getting the shop all ready to go at the same time. And in amongst all the family stuff you've had to deal with, too! Your dad being in hospital and all that. Well.' He looked up and gave them both a little smile. 'You've really pulled out all the stops this time, fellas. You've been almost… voracious.' His smile turned slightly shy and he glanced down again. 'It's been impressive,' he told them softly, 'watching you get it all done. And done so well, too.' They thought his little speech was finished for a moment, but then he blurted out, in one quick sentence, 'I'mdeadproudofyoubothandI'mreallygonnamisshavingyouaround.'
Smiling, George leaned across and punched Lee lightly in the shoulder. 'All we did was decide to stop stopping going too far, that's all.'
'And we're sorry we're leaving you in the lurch like this, mate,' Fred added. 'At least you haven't got TOO much of the year left to go.'
'You'll keep the flag flying after we're gone, I'm sure,' said George.
'Oh yeah, and on that note,' Fred cut in, waving his wand to levitate a box from under his side of the bed. 'D'you reckon you can find a use for these at some point in the coming weeks?' With a huge grin, he presented Lee with two snuffly, long-snouted Nifflers.
Lust.
Everyone's amusement and excitement was quelled in an instant by that one word, that one order, that one nod of approval from Umbridge. She was going to have Fred and George whipped.
Ginny was sure that was Angelina Johnson's voice she could hear across the packed Entrance Hall, screaming the word "No!".
Hermione grabbed hold of Ginny's nearest hand in shock. 'She can't!' she whispered in outrage. 'Whipping?! That's so barbaric! It's downright medieval! It's against the law to WHIP people in Britain - SURELY Professor Umbridge knows that?!'
Ginny couldn't respond to any of her friend's questions. She was too transfixed by the hollow feeling in her stomach and the sympathetic fear raging in her head. Her heartbeat had stepped up, she could actually feel it. She was so scared for Fred and George, it was as if her body had told her she was the one to be whipped, and was ratchetting up her fight or flight response accordingly.
'This is all Harry's fault!' Hermione whispered again. 'Oh, where IS he? He has to DO something! They did it to cover for him, to buy him some time with Snuffles! He CAN'T let them be whipped!'
Ginny felt her mouth go dry as she gazed, wide-eyed and fearful, at her darling, brave twin brothers. Would she be able to stand to watch it happen? She wanted to turn away already! But shouldn't she stand with them and force herself to watch? Make sure they knew they weren't alone?
And how would Umbridge have it done? Just how many lashes did the horrible, horrible woman think a swamp in Gregory the Smarmy's corridor warranted? And would she divide that number by two, or torture both twin's backs with the full catastrophe? Would she make them strip to the waist for it? Would she have them tied to something?
Some disquieted, disgusted section of Ginny's brain suddenly spat at her to shut the hell up with thoughts like that. It was sick and cruel and morbidly fascinating and sick sick sick SICK! It was… confusing her.
~*~*~
It was alright that they were sprung. Really, it was. They wished there was some way of letting their little sister know that... But even though they knew they were on their way out of here now, even though they knew there was no way they were going to allow Umbridge or Filch to carry out such a thing, that they only had to stall until they knew Harry had done what he had to do, Fred and George both still felt their blood chill through at that word - whipping. She'd actually approved it? She would ACTUALLY allow them both to be ACTUALLY whipped?!
Automatically, and simultaneously, the twins both took a step forward and said, 'I did it!'. They looked at each other with a small frown, then both turned back to the Headmistress and said, more firmly, 'No, it was all me!'. Frowning more now, they each glared at the other. George muttered 'Fred!' at the same time and in the same warning tone that Fred muttered 'George!'.
'For fuck's sake,' George hissed, 'shut up and let me do this!'
'No!' Fred hissed back. 'I won't let you!'
They both rounded on Umbridge and her sickeningly sweet smile. 'He didn't have anything to do with it!' they both tried to insist, each of them quite obviously becoming frustrated with his brother's attempts to foil his sacrifice.
Umbridge was snickering quietly to herself as she watched them inadvertently stepping on each other's nobility. 'Very touching, Misters Weasley,' she cooed at them. 'You are to be commended for your brotherly love. But as everybody knows neither of you seems capable of doing anything on your own, I'm afraid your attempts to save each other are really quite pointless.'
Just then, Fred and George noticed Harry coming down the stairs and they both smiled to themselves. This was it, then; they didn't have to cover for their friend anymore - they were out of here. Let the fun commence!
'So - you think it amusing to turn a school corridor into a swamp, do you?' Umbridge asked them.
Fred and George both stood up a little straighter and Fred looked the bitch square in the eye. 'Pretty amusing, yeah,' he told her fearlessly.
Five minutes later, the Weasley twins had gone from simply being famous among their own peers to being genuine Hogwarts legends.
It was the best feeling in the world - being back in the air again, back on a broom, flying side by side with the wind whipping by and the ground and trees below nothing but a colourful blur. They threw a few loops and dives just because they could, and came to ground again about a quarter mile beyond the school's anti-Apparation perimeter.
'You don't want to fly a bit more?' George enquired, smiling at his brother's smile.
'Hours more!' Fred declared. 'But right now - ' He surprised George by stepping in close and kissing him swiftly on the mouth. ' - right now, I want to get you to our new flat.'
George's eyes widened. 'Oh. Well.' He cleared his throat lightly, then couldn't help the smirk that tugged at his mouth. 'Last one there's a Malfoy!' He Disapparated before he'd even properly finished his sentence, popping into the shop area of 93 Diagon Alley just a fraction of a second later.
'Bastard!' Fred appeared beside him, eyes glittering.
They contemplated each other the merest of moments, before they both made a dash for the back room and the staircase up to the flat above, brooms following them at a more sedate pace. There was some typical me-first-no-me-first jostling on the narrow stair, and then they were crashing into their small and Spartan livingroom, hands already pulling at each other's school robes, mouths already crushing together.
George went at Fred's mouth so hard he tasted blood, and shoved his brother back immediately so as to assess the damage. 'Forget it,' Fred told him, licking up the tiny spot of scarlet on his bottom lip. 'Forget it. Come here.'
Since that strange pre-dawn morning when they'd stashed their fireworks around the castle and found themselves snogging behind a suit of armour, the twins had managed to steal an entirety of three subsequent kisses. Once in their dorm room before almost being sprung by Lee. Once over the Easter break, when they'd come into London to sign the lease on the shop. And once in the showers when they'd lingered longer than all the other Gryffindor boys (and hadn't THAT taken some godlike powers of control and self-denial to stop themselves before things got too far?)
They hadn't had much opportunity to talk about the development, to discuss the fact that they were brothers who had discovered an inexplicable desire to kiss one another as passionately as (or, if truth be told, MORE passionately than) they'd ever wanted to kiss anybody else. And how was a conversation like that supposed to go anyhow? They'd just have to make it all up as they went along, they supposed…
'How long, do you think?'
Fred lifted his face from George's throat, where he'd been sucking a lovely purple bruise into being. 'Until what?'
'Until McGonagall firecalls or owls Mum and Dad to tell them we've left school?'
'She'll tell them the address, I s'pose…'
'Seeing as we told the whole school as we left? Yes.'
Fred looked crestfallen for a short moment. 'Less than an hour before they're pounding on the door, I reckon.'
George nodded sadly, then gave his brother a cheeky grin and reached for Fred's tie. 'We'd better be quick.'
Fred's hands came up to George's tie, too. 'Absolutely.'
They stripped off their school uniforms as swiftly as possible, neither of them sparing a thought for the significant moment of removing that uniform for the last time, and fell onto the old couch in front of the fireplace together. It was as though they'd been created especially for one another. The shapes of their bodies fit so perfectly, the rises and falls of bone and muscle corresponding with beautiful precision. Everything aligned so nicely - nipples could graze against each other, cocks could press together, mouths were never far from one another - they both wondered why they'd never thought of doing this before.
George, because he was on top, set about worshipping his brother's flesh, sucking on earlobe and throat and collarbone and nipple, licking at fingers and chest hair and stomach and thighs. Fred's hands around his head coaxed him toward the hard jut of needy cock and George, never having even contemplated the sucking of another man's dick before, opened his mouth and took his brother in deep, loving the sounds Fred made beneath him, loving the solid, hot flesh thrusting between his lips. Loving, even, the way Fred's hands fisted into his hair and helped guide his head up and down with increasing fervour. Gods, who knew Fred was such a sexy bugger?!
'Fuck, George! Oh fu… bloody hell!'
George glanced up, gaze sweeping over coarse red hair and flat, pale belly, over familiar chest and bruised throat, up to the utterly hot and horny look Fred was giving him.
'Turn around,' Fred ordered.
Bloody excellent idea. George manoeuvred himself around and re-settled over Fred, only to end up on his side as they both toppled a little. A bit of hasty rearranging and quite a bit of swearing and apologising later, they both sighed around a cock identical to their own.
Momentarily, George managed a couple of coherent thoughts about how they must look like that, curled against each other on the couch, their matching naked bodies joined in a perfect circuit, faces buried between each other's thighs as they shared - just like every other experience in their lives - their first attempts at fellatio.
This is beautiful, he found himself thinking.
Fingers slid behind George's bollocks and he swore around Fred's cock. He had no idea being touched there could feel so good! He replicated the action on his twin and felt the cock he was sucking on twitch in his mouth.
Everything devolved into wetness and heat and a mind-blanking hunger for each other that took all their inexperience with homoerotic sex and re-packaged it as beginner's luck. They were getting this right. They were making each other feel the best they'd ever felt. They were making each other squirm and buck and thrust harder and suck better. They were getting each other off.
It was clumsy and rushed and absofuckinglutely perfect.
Fred had worked two fingers far enough inside George that George was seriously pondering what a prick might feel like in there. This prick, he affirmed to himself, flexing his tongue against it. Not any other one. NEVER any other one…. He slid his mouth completely down the shaft of Fred's cock, burying his nose somewhere to the left of his brother's balls, and started to come into Fred's mouth.
A split second later, Fred followed him and, as neither of them had any skill in the area of swallowing spurting spunk, they made quite an amusing little mess on the couch of their new livingroom.
Pride.
'Molly. Molly, please, love. Just calm down for a moment and think about all this. If what Ronald and Ginny have said is true, then Fred and George stood up to a tyrant. A tyrant, Mol! And while every other child in that school appears to have shut down and internalised their pain and their anger and very nearly become complicit in that tyranny by simply not speaking up, our boys refused. I'm sorry, love, but I can't help it - I've never felt so proud of them. What other example did you think we were setting all these years by letting the children know about our work with the Order? And their shop, Molly! It's not like they've dropped out of school to do nothing, is it? They've immediately got down to serious business and set themselves up in a new home and a commercial venture that uses their talents and skills to the absolute fullest! I'm sorry, Mol, but truly - I'm fit to burst, I'm so proud.'
~*~*~
Fred had a gentle side. George was generally the only person who ever got to see it. And the third morning that they woke up together in their new home - their flat, their very own dwelling above their very own shop - Fred's gentle side manifested in a new way that even managed to surprise George a little bit.
Blankets and covers had been kicked off and wands groped for in order to deal with the bed squeaking. Fred gripped hard at the underside of George's left knee and held that leg tight as he ploughed into his brother's body, his balls slapping softly against a delectable curve of arse. And just when George's head began to knock rhythmically against the headboard with the momentum of each of Fred's thrusts, Fred curled his free hand around the top of George's skull and took the assault on his own knuckles. George started to come as soon as he realised what Fred was doing…
'Oh GOD!' Fred grinned down at him, so close that George could not only feel the breath on his face, but almost fancied he could feel the actual rasp in Fred's voice. 'You're looking at me like Angelina used to!'
George felt his body squeeze as he laughed over the top of his orgasm, then laughed more as he watched Fred's eyes roll up in his head in response to the sensation.
'Coming, George… Ohfuuuuck! Coming… !'
George gripped Fred's waist tightly and watched his twin rocking above him, feeling the jerk of Fred's cock against his muscles down there. Muscles he'd never really thought about before three days ago.
'Can you feel it?' Fred's voice was the tiniest, most awed whisper now. 'George? Do you feel me?'
George smoothed Fred's damp ginger fringe back off his forehead. 'Course I do.' He watched Fred close his eyes and nod. Leaning up a little, George pressed his mouth against his brother's and they stayed that way for the next five minutes or more, both of them coming down from their shared high, their bodies still joined, their breathing in perfect tandem.
'Where should this lot go, then?'
George looked up from the box he was unpacking to see Fred standing in the storeroom doorway with an armful of hugging newspapers - currently in their dormant state, of course, or else Fred wouldn't have been standing there looking so unconcerned.
'Hm. Probably not on any of the lower shelves. Don't want to be responsible for some unsuspecting kiddie getting strangulated by a rogue sports section…'
'Definitely not,' Fred smiled.
George turned his attention back to the box he had half-emptied and pulled out a few more items before realising that Fred was still standing there at the doorway. 'What?' he asked as he looked up again, barely helping a quick glance over one shoulder to check his back. 'There's nothing on me, is there?'
'No,' Fred laughed softly. 'I was just - don't worry. Forget it.' And he hefted the newspapers a bit and walked away.
Odd. George rested his hands on his thighs as he knelt on the floor by the packing box, wondering what all that had been about. Then he clambered to his feet and, dusting the knees of his jeans as he walked out of the storeroom, went in search of Fred.
He leaned against a barrel of fireworks while he watched his brother shove the hugging newspapers onto one of the topmost shelves. It really, really wasn't right for a bloke to be appreciating the sight of his own brother's body like this, surely? But the way Fred was stretching up like that… George firmly told himself to stop wondering if his own arse looked that good. Oh, gods.
'What's up?' Fred turned from the shelf and gave George a quizzical look. 'Were you just staring at my arse?'
'No!'
'You were!'
Damned Weasley blushes.
Fred grinned as George tried to turn his reddening face away. 'You bloody were! I knew it!' He crossed the room to stand in front of George. 'Did it look alright, then? Meet with your approval, brother dearest?'
'Fred!'
'Quit trying to turn away from me!' Fred's strong arms came up around George's shoulders and stopped him from moving. 'It's okay, you know. You're allowed.'
George lifted his gaze to Fred's and felt his embarrassment up and leave in an instant. Fred was right - it WAS okay, George WAS allowed. It was weird that that's how it was, sure, but it made some sort of wacky, outrageous sense somehow. Fred's eyes looked darker than normal in the late afternoon light that reached this part of the shop, and George made a mental note to install a lamp of some description in this corner before the official opening.
'Yours is dead nice, too, you know,' Fred said softly.
There was a distinctly sexy lilt to Fred's voice when he spoke, and George swallowed a little uncomfortably as he recognised it. They'd been sharing a bed since they moved into Diagon Alley, but any fooling around they'd done had occurred strictly after dark or upon waking in the mornings. It hadn't seemed to occur to either of them so far that they were the masters of this new home and they could, in fact, do whatever they liked, whenever they liked, however their moods might take them.
Fred was busily following up his last remark with a firm squeezing of George's behind. It was almost four in the afternoon, George was thinking, and they could decide to down tools for the day if they wanted to and indulge their secret together.
"Their secret." George scoffed quietly to himself.
'What now?'
'I was just thinking about our, er, "our secret". You know.'
'Mm. Biggest one we've ever had, innit?'
'Are we up to the task, you reckon?'
'Never let anything beat us yet, have we?' Fred's smile was bright and confident.
'But this, though, Fred - '
'Is no different to any other secret we've ever had to trust each other with.'
'But it's…' George looked at Fred's mouth. 'You KNOW what it is.'
'We're brothers.'
'Exactly.'
Fred rested his hands lightly on George's hips. 'So that makes some of the things we've been doing…'
George lifted his gaze to Fred's. 'Incest.' He hated even saying it. It seemed such an unfair word for their situation.
'Doesn't seem quite fair, really, does it?' Fred smiled. 'I mean, "incest" would fit if I was fooling around with Ginny or Mum or Percy or something like that. You know - something obviously sordid.'
George couldn't quite decide whether to laugh or baulk at some of the mental images he was getting.
Fred pulled a bit of a face, then smiled again. 'But with you… I dunno. It just doesn't seem like it's anything evil or unnatural or bad, I guess. I can't think of it in that sort of way.'
'Yeah,' George sighed shallowly.
'Can you remember why you kissed me that first time?'
'When we were hiding?' George blinked and tried to recall the exact moment. 'It's gonna sound stupid.'
'No, it won't. Tell me.'
'We'd been working all night - '
'Yeah.'
' - and giving Filch and the Slytherins the slip all night.'
'Heh. Yeah.'
'And, well… we were just so cool.' George laughed at his own choice of words. He watched Fred laughing softly with him and felt his smile grow wider and wider. 'I felt sort of… full of ourselves, you know? Like, it was completely Us Against The Rest Of The World or something, and we could do absolutely anything we wanted and get away with it. Dunno, really. But I felt really proud of you and really proud of being your brother, and just wanted to get closer. Close as I could.' His voice petered out a little as he ran out of ways to try and describe that bizarre train of thought.
Fred was nodding. 'That shouldn't really make sense, I don't think. But it does. To me, at least.' He stepped away from George but grabbed hold of George's right wrist. 'Come and look at this.' And he practically dragged his brother through the shop, toward the front door.
On the footpath outside, Fred put his hands to George's shoulders and turned him around until they were both looking up at the façade of their shop front. The signage for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes had only gone up that morning, and the twins stood quietly for a moment, gazing up at the lettering while their shoulders pushed first lightly, then a little more firmly, together.
'We did it, George,' Fred whispered. 'We've been talking about it for how long? And now we've done it. We've actually bloody done it. I feel sort of… full of ourselves, you know?'
George recognised that sentence from his own attempts to describe their first kiss, and he grinned to hear Fred repeating it.
'We're different to most other people,' Fred continued, sounding like he was thinking out loud, getting his thoughts in order as he was speaking them. 'And I don't mind that at all. I think I actually kind of… revel in it, a bit. Does that make sense? That I want us to be different to the rest of the world?' He turned away from the shop and faced George. 'I can't be ordinary with you. I don't want a relationship with you that's in any way ordinary or normal. I want us to be remarkable, George!'
'And that includes…' George's gaze flickered up to the second storey, up to the general direction of their bedroom.
'Are you gonna tell me that wasn't "remarkable", this morning?'
George looked back to Fred and grinned. 'Gods, listen to you! Proud of yourself, eh?'
'VERY fucking proud!' Fred slung an arm loosely around George's shoulders. 'Of both of us. Of what we've done, and of what we are. Yeah, I'm proud.' His hand squeezed briefly at George's arm. 'Don't you feel that, too?'
George kept looking at their shop for a little while longer, his gaze moving slowly over their name on the sign, and along the lines of brick and mortar that constituted Their Business, Their Home, Their Concern. 'Course I do,' he eventually murmured. 'I'm fit to burst, I'm so proud.'
Fred smirked to hear George come out with one of their Dad's expressions in a conversation like this. 'Sounds serious,' he quipped. 'Better get some champagne into you before that happens.' And he gave George a gentle push forward, back toward the front door, back inside 93 Diagon Alley.
~fin~