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hp_goldenageTitle: Until Death Comes
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hiddenhibernian
Characters/Pairings: Fred, George
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,000
Content/Warning(s): *Main character death*
Summary/Prompt: There is a price to pay for second chances, and some decisions can't be unmade...
A/N: I owe my amazing betawilliamsnickers a huge thank you; without your help, this story would have been a lot poorer (and had an awful lot of contractions...). Any remaining mistakes are my own. Thanks also to the lovely mods for their patience and for all the work they've put into running the fest.
I've borrowed Death from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, although the wizarding version is quite not as nice as the original.
Until Death Comes
George never told anyone how Fred survived. Not even Fred.
He shouldn't have, everyone knew that – the blast had been sufficient to kill a Hippogriff, never mind one scrawny ginger bloke. Percy, Harry and even Hermione had been so happy that he had survived that they didn't ask any awkward questions.
It was only Ron, normally not the most observant of little brothers, who challenged him afterwards. They were sitting on the steps in front of the Great Hall at Hogwarts -- Ron, George and Fred, each clutching a Butterbeer and basking in the sunshine.
Victory wasn't bad.
Of course, Ron had to put his foot in it. “I saw it. You shouldn't have stood a chance.”
“Well, I was lucky,” Fred replied.
“No, you weren't. I saw it – you looked like you were a goner.” Ron was stubborn enough for two, one had to give him that. Usually, it just meant he went even further down the garden path. Like the time he remained surgically attached to Lavender Brown when even the gargoyles could see he would have been better off with Hermione. Sometimes, though, he was right.
Like now.
“Turned out I wasn't. I would have thought that would make you happy,” Fred said, knocking back another swig of Butterbeer. If they could bottle and sell the contentment on his face, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes would make them richer than the Malfoys in about half an hour.
“Just because I'm glad you didn't die doesn't mean I'm an idiot. You were mumbling something, and then - “ Ron struggled to describe the moment George would give his good ear never to have to think about again. “Then it was like you came back to life. You were white as a sheet and then you looked normal again.”
“And hexed Yaxley in the back,” Fred reminded him, which was fair enough. If you were about to get an Order of Merlin for knocking a Death Eater out with a Bat-Bogey Hex, you would have wanted everyone to know about it.
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows it was you who brought Yaxley down. What happened before that, Fred?”
“I've no idea, I was knocked out.” Fred eventually managed to persuade Ron to let it go – you could hardly blame someone for being unconscious, after all – and it appeared that George's secret was safe.
For a while.
Unfortunately, for once Ron was right. Something fishy had happened in that seventh floor corridor, and eventually there would be a price to pay.
Eventually wasn't now, however, and George wasn't the type of person who dwelled on that which couldn't be helped. He'd figure something out. Actually, he had probably imagined the whole thing – things like that didn't really happen, did they?
As weeks and months passed after the battle, the easier it got to persuade himself it had all been in his head. Not real. Strange things happened during a war. Hallucinating was hardly even noteworthy, considering everything else that had been going on.
George didn't have a lot of time to wonder if temporary insanity was the best explanation. He had a whole shop to restock, now that Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder wasn't a bestseller anymore. Fortunately, they had been tipped off before the last Ministry raid and been able to scarper with most of their supplies, but the Order had used up most of it.
The weekend after they reopened Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, George and Fred slept for a solid fourteen hours. Then, they had time to find out what was going on beyond Number 93 Diagon Alley.
The wizarding world had exploded since the end of the war. Little kids seemed to have grown up overnight – George kept running into fellow Gryffindors he barely recognised. Most of them tried, and failed, not to stare at his bad ear. Diagon Alley had been pretty grim before they had cut it and run – now, a new club seemed to be opening every week, and witches barely out of Hogwarts stayed up dancing all night.
George and Fred didn't let petty things like house affiliations stand in their way to celebrate the end of the war. As Bill nobly had gone before and showed his younger brothers, not being blessed in the looks department didn't necessarily put a damper on your prospects with the ladies.
Fred drew the line at Pansy Parkinson, but George didn't let the fact that she had been prepared to sell Harry out put him off.
Most of the time, he had himself convinced that he had nothing to worry about. He drew the line at having children, though – somehow, he couldn't convince himself it would be all right in the end, not when there was a child in the mix.
Unfortunately for George, most witches seemed to want a baby eventually. Or two (most of them didn't believe his mother when she told them seven was as easy as two, really). It wasn't until he started seeing Morag MacDougal that he managed to get past the inevitable “Have a sprog”-conversation with the relationship still on.
It wasn't like it was between Fred and Angelina, of course – Morag was her own woman and very much into making sure they were independent people. George didn't complain. It was a good life they had, and the years slipped past so quickly he barely noticed.
Fred and George were still as handsome as ever, but Dad's hair thinned out around the temples and he stooped a little more for every year. Mum wasn't quite as spruce as she once was, either.
His nieces and nephews seemed to go from being wrinkly babies one moment to strapping young lasses and lads in Hogwarts uniforms. They didn't even have the courtesy to stop then – all of a sudden, they had settled down and had children themselves.
At Fred and George's sixtieth birthday party, the little blighters were everywhere – you could barely get to the loo without tripping over a redhead, size extra small. A ball came out of nowhere, and George kicked it at Percy's shins by pure reflex. Not bad for an old bloke – it wasn't that long ago he'd still been able to play Quidditch.
“Ball! Ball!” a small child wailed, dangerously close to a tantrum if the red face was anything to go by.
“Ask your uncle Perce, why don't you?” George suggested and escaped the other way before things got ugly.
Percy had got even poncier with age; he had even taken to referring to Victoire, Molly, Rose, James and the rest of them as 'the younger generation'. At the moment, they were busy loading the buffet so full with serving dishes that the table was creaking and getting the decorations up. They seemed to think it was their job now. Other than Mum hovering over the food, muttering about there hardly being enough to feed the kids, never mind everyone else, everyone else was happy leaving them to it.
Hermione did look like she was going to say something when Louis strung up the banner saying 'Happy 60th birthday' slightly askew, but Harry distracted her with a question about the latest Centaur legislation. He was tossing a Snitch with one hand, lazily leaning away from Ron whenever he tried to snatch it. They had been playing the same game for almost fifty years, and as far as George knew Ron still hadn't been able to get the Snitch off Harry. Except the time he and Fred had charmed it to bounce away further the more Ron and Harry reached for it. That had been fun. One didn't think Harry could curse like that –
A heavy slap landed on George's back. “The birthday boy himself! Well, one of them.” It was Bill. Age had treated him kindly: his scars went nicely with the wrinkles sprinkled around his eyes. “Don't worry, George – one day you'll be as old and wise as me. Except I'll be even wiser by then, of course.”
George didn't answer. Whatever it was Bill saw in his face, it made him grab George's elbow, steer him around the corner to a quiet alcove and conjure a glass of something that made Bill's eyes water before pushing it into George's hand.
While George spluttered (it was even stronger than he'd expected), Bill assessed the situation. “You look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong?”
How did you tell your brother that you didn't expect to survive your sixtieth birthday, never mind the distinct prospect that you would be taking your twin with you?
“This should hold.” Hermione added the final touches to her wards with a flourish of her wand. “Harry, how are you getting on over there?”
George was reluctantly impressed – they must teach Aurors some truly nasty forms of magic, if the oily, dark smoke from Harry's wand was anything to go by. The birthday banner still hung slightly askew on the wall, but the rest of the decorations had been banished along with the children.
Left were a battle-hardened lot with grim expressions. Harry, Ron and Hermione had sprung into action, warding the place like the war ended yesterday. Ginny, Bill and Fleur had taken control of the crowd, quickly and slickly dispatching most of the guests home, including Mum and Dad. Charlie and Percy were cleaning up to give them more space to work, tactfully leaving George alone with Morag and Fred following his revelations. Angelina hovered on the outside, listening in but leaving well alone for now.
It wasn't exactly what you would call an easy conversation.
“How could you not have told me?” Fred asked for the third time.
“As your wife, I'd have appreciated being told before. Is this real?” Morag's vowels were even more clipped than usual, and she was rolling her r's like she held a grudge against them.
“I - “ George tried to explain, to himself as much as to the others. “I don't know. It's been years since I even thought about it, and then it just hit me when I was talking to Bill. It was such a long time ago... “
That was true in many ways. Despite that, George could still smell the stench of dead bodies and dark magic that lingered over Hogwarts after the battle. He remembered every line in the face of the Death Eater he had killed, and his startled expression when George had landed his final curse.
Death had been close back then.
“You're saying you made a deal with Death? How does that work, exactly?” Morag insisted.
“I think I made a deal,” George corrected her while looking at Fred, who was turning paler by the second. He could have counted each one of Fred’s freckles against the stark white skin. “It's hard to explain to someone who's not a twin. You're tuned into each other. I get this sense of... ”
“A sense of uneasiness,” Fred filled in. “When something is really wrong, you can tell.”
“So when Fred was hit, I could tell even though I wasn't there.” George had almost slipped and fallen down the stairs when the feeling hit the pit of his stomach. Dodging a curse, he jumped to the next staircase, desperately looking around for his twin. Somehow, George had known it would be too late in a few seconds, known that Fred's life was draining away quickly.
“So you made a deal with Death.” Morag had a way of phrasing things that made it clear she didn't believe a word of it. The last time she had used it was when he had tried the latest version of the Self-Frizzing Shampoo when Morag's sister came to stay. She had not been amused.
“Yes.” George remembered thinking he would do anything to save Fred and stop the darkness he felt coming, and then time had slowed down. The memory was a little fuzzy around the edges, but he remembered the main bits.
He had offered his own life against Fred's, only to be told it didn't work that way. “I'd do anything, give you anything as long as you spare him,” he had pleaded, and then the black presence had relented.
“YOU SHARED ONE WOMB.”
George hadn't heard anyone put it that way before, but he nodded.
“I WILL WAIT FOR HIM. ON YOUR SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY, BOTH OF YOU WILL COME WITH ME INSTEAD.”
When you had just turned twenty in the middle of a war, sixty was a lifetime away. “All right, then,” George said, and just like that he felt a huge weight recede. The sounds of battle came flooding back, swiftly followed by a curse only just missing him.
He had thrown himself back into the fighting, looking everywhere for his brothers. Much later, when it was all over, Percy and Ron told him all about Fred's near miss and how he had revived just as they thought he was gone.
And that had been it, until now.
“I never wanted you to sacrifice yourself for me. That was bloody stupid of you.” Fred was angry, which was a bit ungrateful of him.
“I would have thought you'd be happy you didn't die before you even turned twenty-one,” George said, only receive a furious look in return.
“Not if it meant you doing a deal with Death, you pillock. Did you not listen when Mum told us The Tale of the Three Brothers?” Fred asked, his lips white and thin with anger like George had hardly ever seen before.
“That's just a story,” he retorted feebly.
“Like The Deathly Hallows? Surely you couldn't have been that thick?”
“In fairness to George, he wouldn't have known about The Hallows back then.” Ron was just passing by on his way around the room, muttering incantations under his breath. As usual, he managed to make things worse.
“I was that thick,” George admitted. “I – I didn't think it was real. Not for a long time. Even after Harry told us what happened to him.”
Now he believed, and so did the rest of them. Maybe the way George had let the memory slip out of his consciousness for so long was due to some magic surrounding the contract. Maybe he had just been the stupidest wizard since Hector the Hapless decided he wanted to know what bubotuber pus tasted like.
As they were waiting, George remembered Mum's clock. He wondered what his hand was pointing at, and if she had noticed yet.
When a black-hooded shape appeared in the middle of the circle Hermione had drawn George stopped wondering, and tried to remember how to breathe instead.
“I HAVE COME TO COLLECT TWO LIVES,” the figure said in syllables that seemed to absorb all the sound around them.
Glimpses of white bones beneath the hood confirmed that Death was indeed a skeleton, just like in old paintings. Not even the fact that he could come up with at least ten bone jokes without thinking could make George feel any better.
“You can't reach us here,” Hermione declared, and only those who knew her very well could tell the bravado was an act.
George looked around him, at his family and friends pointing their wands at Death himself for his sake. Because he had made a stupid decision not to believe his own memories. “Listen, guys, I think I've made a mistake –“
“I think you have, too,” Bill said, not unkindly. “Now let us help you sort it.”
“If we can,” Percy added, wand wobbling slightly but pointing firmly inside the circle.
“Of course we can,” Harry said, making it sound as certain as Puddlemere United ending up last in the Quidditch league this year, too. The effect was ruined by his white knuckles, betraying how tightly he was clutching his wand. Must be a bit worrying, being the Boy-Who-Lived who had cheated Death twice already, just in case Death changed his mind.
It was probably worse to be George, though, seeing as it was for him Death was here in the first place.
“WE HAVE AN AGREEMENT,” Death helpfully reminded him.
“I'm sure we can come to an understanding.” George tried to remember how he'd persuaded McGonagall to lift the ban on their products at Hogwarts after the war. She'd hardly been less implacable than the sceptre in the circle.
“WE ALREADY HAVE. YOU AND YOUR BROTHER WILL COME WITH ME.”
They would see about that. While George had accepted that the game probably was up for himself, he hadn't played his final trick yet.
“My brother isn't coming,” George said, attempting a smile. It felt like it had got stuck on his face the wrong way, and in any case it didn't seem to be helping.
“THAT WAS OUR AGREEMENT. THE TWO OF YOU, AT THE SAME TIME. ONE SOUL DEPARTING.”
Apparently, the old guff about twins having linked souls was true. When they had last spoken, Death had said something about it being untidy for the two of them to die at different times. George remembered it now.
“Well, as you can see Fred isn't here,” George said, desperately trying not to look to his right side. “No great loss. I'm the clever, good-looking one, anyway.”
No one smiled.
“VERY WELL,” Death said. “I WILL TAKE HIS SON INSTEAD.”
Fabian, who looked exactly like Fred and George had at his age, had been shooed away with the other youngsters. Everyone knew Death could find anyone, however – or almost anyone.
“No, you bloody well won't!” Fred tore off Harry's Invisibility Cloak that he had been hiding under, to George's and the others' dismay. It had taken them the better part of the day to persuade Fred to hide under the only item known to have confounded Death before. George argued that he had struck the deal, so he should be the one facing the consequences.
The others agreed with George, and eventually they wore Fred down. Hermione had a knack for repeating the obvious over and over again, no doubt well honed from working in the Ministry (although George suspected his little brother ultimately was responsible for the way she could sound calm and exasperated at the same time).
The plan had been for Fred to stay quietly beneath the cloak – not even Harry had been able to persuade him to wait somewhere else. Like Australia.
On the bright side, Death was still inside the circle, and they were on the outside.
“IT IS TIME.”
The clock struck midnight. Funny, how you never noticed how late it got at parties, George thought, and realised he was starting to lose it. He didn't think he had it in him to become even more afraid, but the shape appearing right next to him did it alright.
“I CAN GO EVERYWHERE.” George hadn't realised skeletons could look smug, but this one did. The bastard.
Normally, Hermione's affront at her wards not holding would have made him laugh, but not now. Not when he was eye to eye with a six-foot four skeleton clad in a black cloak, coming to collect his soul. And Fred's.
“Avada Kedavra!” A flash of green went past him so quickly that George didn't have time to dodge. It was swallowed by the deep folds of Death's robes, where it disappeared without a trace.
An ominous silence followed.
It wasn't that hard to figure out who had cast the curse. Percy was looking unusually sheepish. Combined with the look of unmistakeable dread on his face, he brought an irate goat to mind.
“Sorry about that,” Bill offered when it was clear no one else knew what to say.
“WIZARDS SEEM TO PLACE EXAGERRATED FAITH IN THE POWER OF THEIR MAGIC. CURSES DO NOT AFFECT ME.”
To George's relief, Percy seemed to have got away with it. Death seemed to be a decent sort of bloke. Except he still was looking expectantly in George's direction.
“All right, then, Fair's fair,” he said warily. “Any way you would do a different deal and let Fred live?” Death couldn't blame a bloke for trying, could he? George didn't have a firstborn to offer in exchange, but other than that he would give pretty much anything for this not to be Fred's final moment as well.
“Hang on – if anyone's making deals, it's my turn!” Fred was still furious – he wouldn't even glance in George's direction. It cut to the bone, but it wasn't as bad as the prospect that Fred would sacrifice himself for George.
“No, you're bloody well not – “ he started saying, but was drowned out by their uninvited guest.
It wasn't that Death was loud – his words just seemed to absorb all the available oxygen, leaving no room for anyone else to be heard at the same time.
“THE NEGOTIATIONS HAVE ENDED. PLEASE PREPARE TO COME WITH ME.”
George looked around one last time at his family and friends. Bill looked stricken, clutching Fleur's hand like he was drowning. Hermione had a firm grip on Ron's wand arm and was muttering under her breath, heedless of Ron straining to get loose. What did he think he could do, anyway?
Harry was pale, but he didn't let his glare waver from Death. Ginny was looking between Harry, and George and Fred, like she wasn't sure who she would pick if it came to it. Percy nodded to George, like he was just going home after dinner instead of dying. Charlie was crying silently, small round tears falling down his freckled cheeks and landing on his collar like they didn't matter. And Angelina – Angelina was suddenly right next to him, hugging and hanging on to Fred like it would keep him with her forever.
It was only then that George looked at Morag, who promptly slapped him in the face.
“Go then, you bastard – go! I always knew you cared more about him than me!” Morag, who always met the unexpected with the same measured calm, was crying in wild hiccups, tears streaming down her face.
“Morag, don't.” George tried to take her in his arms, only to be met by a sharp elbow.
“You'd give up anything for him, wouldn't you?” she asked between her sobs. “Anything at all.”
“Yes,” he admitted. It was a bit too late in the day to be lying.
There wasn't time for much more than one last look at Fred. They didn't need to say anything to each other. George knew by the tilt of his twin's crooked smile that he would have done the same thing in return, no matter how furious he was not to have been told.
He grabbed Fred's hand. Whatever was coming, they were going to face it together.
It turned out Death hadn't exactly been honest, which shouldn't have come as a surprise. He was a devious bastard in the Tale of the Three Brothers.
George half expected ending up in King's Cross, but there wasn't much of anything when he opened his eyes. Whitish mist drifted in the air, so heavy you almost could touch it, curling around gnarled bushes stripped of their leaves. You didn't get cold or hungry, but neither did you feel warm. It was a bit like the good room in Granny Prewett's house – it wasn't meant to be used, so it was impossible to feel comfortable there.
There was no way to measure time passing, but George reckoned they had been there for a few weeks when he finally had enough. “If this is what being dead is like, I'd rather have been a ghost! At least they have something to do.”
“Yeah, it's like being stuck in History of Magic forever.” Fred kicked at a misshapen bush, but his foot went straight through it.
“Don't think that would be any worse than being here, do you?”
“What I don't get is why? If this is what happens when you die, why is there no one else here?” Fred looked around the wasteland for the five hundred and fifty eighth time.
“We thought you'd never ask,” said a high-pitch, quavering voice right next to his ear. Suddenly, the empty air was full of other people, somewhere between ghosts and real bodies. Fred was still reassuringly solid, though.
“Blimey,” he wheezed, clutching his chest. “If I still had a body, you'd have given me a heart attack.
It fell to George to ask the obvious.”Who in the name of Merlin's sodding underpants are you, then?”
Most of them were Muggles, stuck here because they hadn't been good or bad enough to end up elsewhere. Another soul, Lorenzo, who had been a carpenter in Italy before the Black Death killed him, told them the place was called Limbo.
They looked at each other.
“I'm disappointed, George.”
“Me too, Fred.”
“Not to be bigheaded or anything, but you'd think we'd have made enough of an impression on the world to go up there with Saint Potter and the rest.”
“Or the other place, if the man above doesn't have a sense of humour.”
“Exactly.”
“Mediocrity isn't like us.”
“We should have tried harder. I'll always consider it a missed opportunity not to booby-trap Harry's office before he stepped down.”
There didn't seem to be much else to say. At least they had someone else to talk to, now.
“George!” Fred drifted closer in the strange way you moved here, without moving at all. “Algernon here is a twin as well,” he explained, gesturing to the pale shadow of a boy next to him.
“Yes,” Algernon said. “Although I'm alone now, of course.”
Fred and George had never acknowledged it, but they both knew they should be able to find people they knew here. If only the Limbo hadn't been so big, and some of the souls so weak, only shadows of living things.
“I'm sorry,” Fred said to Algernon, in a way that reminded George he had been a father in the land of the living.
“I don't mind. At least I know Florence has gone to a better place.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just know. It's because of the way my soul and her soul are the same, so I can tell she's happy.”
“Hang on,” George said, remembering some things Death had said eons ago, when he had been far too concerned about Fred dying before he even turned twenty-one to listen properly. “Are you saying you share the same soul?”
“In a way – we were one soul at the beginning, I think, and then we split.”
“The sodding bastard! The devious fucking shit!”
Algernon looked taken aback and drifted away; he must have lived a sheltered life.
“What?” asked Fred.
“I've worked it out,” George muttered, disgusted with himself. “I could never understand it. Even if I – It never made sense for you to be here. Me, yeah. But not you. You should be in the other place, up there.”
“It's all right,” Fred said gently. “I'd rather be here with you.”
“No, it's not all right!” George burst out. “Because I realise what happened now. That first time, Death said something about twin souls to me, and until Algernon explained it didn't make sense.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
George swallowed, or he would have if he still had a throat. “The thing about twin souls. They're actually one and the same soul. That's why Death wanted to make a deal with me in the first place, because to him it's like the soul being dead and alive at the same time. Apparently he doesn't like things being messy. It's only that...”
“Only what?”
“Death didn't tell me he must have taken the bit of our souls that passes on, and left the rest. Left us here. That's why you're not up there.”
“How do you make that out?” Fred was still puzzled.
“Because we can see each other clearly, but the others can't. Because we never went to King's Cross, or whatever our equivalent would have been. Because this place isn't quite real to us. It's not Limbo, it's us!”
That was when Fred punched him. His fist connected with George's jaw in an audible blow, here in this place where everything was made of whispers of shadows. The pain took George by surprise. Of all the things to be real here, being hit by his twin hadn't been what he would have guessed.
He didn't blame Fred. Of all the things not to fuck up in life, eternity was top of the list.
THE END
Author:
hiddenhibernianCharacters/Pairings: Fred, George
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,000
Content/Warning(s): *Main character death*
Summary/Prompt: There is a price to pay for second chances, and some decisions can't be unmade...
A/N: I owe my amazing beta
williamsnickers a huge thank you; without your help, this story would have been a lot poorer (and had an awful lot of contractions...). Any remaining mistakes are my own. Thanks also to the lovely mods for their patience and for all the work they've put into running the fest. I've borrowed Death from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, although the wizarding version is quite not as nice as the original.
George never told anyone how Fred survived. Not even Fred.
He shouldn't have, everyone knew that – the blast had been sufficient to kill a Hippogriff, never mind one scrawny ginger bloke. Percy, Harry and even Hermione had been so happy that he had survived that they didn't ask any awkward questions.
It was only Ron, normally not the most observant of little brothers, who challenged him afterwards. They were sitting on the steps in front of the Great Hall at Hogwarts -- Ron, George and Fred, each clutching a Butterbeer and basking in the sunshine.
Victory wasn't bad.
Of course, Ron had to put his foot in it. “I saw it. You shouldn't have stood a chance.”
“Well, I was lucky,” Fred replied.
“No, you weren't. I saw it – you looked like you were a goner.” Ron was stubborn enough for two, one had to give him that. Usually, it just meant he went even further down the garden path. Like the time he remained surgically attached to Lavender Brown when even the gargoyles could see he would have been better off with Hermione. Sometimes, though, he was right.
Like now.
“Turned out I wasn't. I would have thought that would make you happy,” Fred said, knocking back another swig of Butterbeer. If they could bottle and sell the contentment on his face, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes would make them richer than the Malfoys in about half an hour.
“Just because I'm glad you didn't die doesn't mean I'm an idiot. You were mumbling something, and then - “ Ron struggled to describe the moment George would give his good ear never to have to think about again. “Then it was like you came back to life. You were white as a sheet and then you looked normal again.”
“And hexed Yaxley in the back,” Fred reminded him, which was fair enough. If you were about to get an Order of Merlin for knocking a Death Eater out with a Bat-Bogey Hex, you would have wanted everyone to know about it.
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows it was you who brought Yaxley down. What happened before that, Fred?”
“I've no idea, I was knocked out.” Fred eventually managed to persuade Ron to let it go – you could hardly blame someone for being unconscious, after all – and it appeared that George's secret was safe.
For a while.
Unfortunately, for once Ron was right. Something fishy had happened in that seventh floor corridor, and eventually there would be a price to pay.
Eventually wasn't now, however, and George wasn't the type of person who dwelled on that which couldn't be helped. He'd figure something out. Actually, he had probably imagined the whole thing – things like that didn't really happen, did they?
As weeks and months passed after the battle, the easier it got to persuade himself it had all been in his head. Not real. Strange things happened during a war. Hallucinating was hardly even noteworthy, considering everything else that had been going on.
George didn't have a lot of time to wonder if temporary insanity was the best explanation. He had a whole shop to restock, now that Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder wasn't a bestseller anymore. Fortunately, they had been tipped off before the last Ministry raid and been able to scarper with most of their supplies, but the Order had used up most of it.
The weekend after they reopened Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, George and Fred slept for a solid fourteen hours. Then, they had time to find out what was going on beyond Number 93 Diagon Alley.
The wizarding world had exploded since the end of the war. Little kids seemed to have grown up overnight – George kept running into fellow Gryffindors he barely recognised. Most of them tried, and failed, not to stare at his bad ear. Diagon Alley had been pretty grim before they had cut it and run – now, a new club seemed to be opening every week, and witches barely out of Hogwarts stayed up dancing all night.
George and Fred didn't let petty things like house affiliations stand in their way to celebrate the end of the war. As Bill nobly had gone before and showed his younger brothers, not being blessed in the looks department didn't necessarily put a damper on your prospects with the ladies.
Fred drew the line at Pansy Parkinson, but George didn't let the fact that she had been prepared to sell Harry out put him off.
Most of the time, he had himself convinced that he had nothing to worry about. He drew the line at having children, though – somehow, he couldn't convince himself it would be all right in the end, not when there was a child in the mix.
Unfortunately for George, most witches seemed to want a baby eventually. Or two (most of them didn't believe his mother when she told them seven was as easy as two, really). It wasn't until he started seeing Morag MacDougal that he managed to get past the inevitable “Have a sprog”-conversation with the relationship still on.
It wasn't like it was between Fred and Angelina, of course – Morag was her own woman and very much into making sure they were independent people. George didn't complain. It was a good life they had, and the years slipped past so quickly he barely noticed.
Fred and George were still as handsome as ever, but Dad's hair thinned out around the temples and he stooped a little more for every year. Mum wasn't quite as spruce as she once was, either.
His nieces and nephews seemed to go from being wrinkly babies one moment to strapping young lasses and lads in Hogwarts uniforms. They didn't even have the courtesy to stop then – all of a sudden, they had settled down and had children themselves.
At Fred and George's sixtieth birthday party, the little blighters were everywhere – you could barely get to the loo without tripping over a redhead, size extra small. A ball came out of nowhere, and George kicked it at Percy's shins by pure reflex. Not bad for an old bloke – it wasn't that long ago he'd still been able to play Quidditch.
“Ball! Ball!” a small child wailed, dangerously close to a tantrum if the red face was anything to go by.
“Ask your uncle Perce, why don't you?” George suggested and escaped the other way before things got ugly.
Percy had got even poncier with age; he had even taken to referring to Victoire, Molly, Rose, James and the rest of them as 'the younger generation'. At the moment, they were busy loading the buffet so full with serving dishes that the table was creaking and getting the decorations up. They seemed to think it was their job now. Other than Mum hovering over the food, muttering about there hardly being enough to feed the kids, never mind everyone else, everyone else was happy leaving them to it.
Hermione did look like she was going to say something when Louis strung up the banner saying 'Happy 60th birthday' slightly askew, but Harry distracted her with a question about the latest Centaur legislation. He was tossing a Snitch with one hand, lazily leaning away from Ron whenever he tried to snatch it. They had been playing the same game for almost fifty years, and as far as George knew Ron still hadn't been able to get the Snitch off Harry. Except the time he and Fred had charmed it to bounce away further the more Ron and Harry reached for it. That had been fun. One didn't think Harry could curse like that –
A heavy slap landed on George's back. “The birthday boy himself! Well, one of them.” It was Bill. Age had treated him kindly: his scars went nicely with the wrinkles sprinkled around his eyes. “Don't worry, George – one day you'll be as old and wise as me. Except I'll be even wiser by then, of course.”
George didn't answer. Whatever it was Bill saw in his face, it made him grab George's elbow, steer him around the corner to a quiet alcove and conjure a glass of something that made Bill's eyes water before pushing it into George's hand.
While George spluttered (it was even stronger than he'd expected), Bill assessed the situation. “You look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong?”
How did you tell your brother that you didn't expect to survive your sixtieth birthday, never mind the distinct prospect that you would be taking your twin with you?
“This should hold.” Hermione added the final touches to her wards with a flourish of her wand. “Harry, how are you getting on over there?”
George was reluctantly impressed – they must teach Aurors some truly nasty forms of magic, if the oily, dark smoke from Harry's wand was anything to go by. The birthday banner still hung slightly askew on the wall, but the rest of the decorations had been banished along with the children.
Left were a battle-hardened lot with grim expressions. Harry, Ron and Hermione had sprung into action, warding the place like the war ended yesterday. Ginny, Bill and Fleur had taken control of the crowd, quickly and slickly dispatching most of the guests home, including Mum and Dad. Charlie and Percy were cleaning up to give them more space to work, tactfully leaving George alone with Morag and Fred following his revelations. Angelina hovered on the outside, listening in but leaving well alone for now.
It wasn't exactly what you would call an easy conversation.
“How could you not have told me?” Fred asked for the third time.
“As your wife, I'd have appreciated being told before. Is this real?” Morag's vowels were even more clipped than usual, and she was rolling her r's like she held a grudge against them.
“I - “ George tried to explain, to himself as much as to the others. “I don't know. It's been years since I even thought about it, and then it just hit me when I was talking to Bill. It was such a long time ago... “
That was true in many ways. Despite that, George could still smell the stench of dead bodies and dark magic that lingered over Hogwarts after the battle. He remembered every line in the face of the Death Eater he had killed, and his startled expression when George had landed his final curse.
Death had been close back then.
“You're saying you made a deal with Death? How does that work, exactly?” Morag insisted.
“I think I made a deal,” George corrected her while looking at Fred, who was turning paler by the second. He could have counted each one of Fred’s freckles against the stark white skin. “It's hard to explain to someone who's not a twin. You're tuned into each other. I get this sense of... ”
“A sense of uneasiness,” Fred filled in. “When something is really wrong, you can tell.”
“So when Fred was hit, I could tell even though I wasn't there.” George had almost slipped and fallen down the stairs when the feeling hit the pit of his stomach. Dodging a curse, he jumped to the next staircase, desperately looking around for his twin. Somehow, George had known it would be too late in a few seconds, known that Fred's life was draining away quickly.
“So you made a deal with Death.” Morag had a way of phrasing things that made it clear she didn't believe a word of it. The last time she had used it was when he had tried the latest version of the Self-Frizzing Shampoo when Morag's sister came to stay. She had not been amused.
“Yes.” George remembered thinking he would do anything to save Fred and stop the darkness he felt coming, and then time had slowed down. The memory was a little fuzzy around the edges, but he remembered the main bits.
He had offered his own life against Fred's, only to be told it didn't work that way. “I'd do anything, give you anything as long as you spare him,” he had pleaded, and then the black presence had relented.
“YOU SHARED ONE WOMB.”
George hadn't heard anyone put it that way before, but he nodded.
“I WILL WAIT FOR HIM. ON YOUR SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY, BOTH OF YOU WILL COME WITH ME INSTEAD.”
When you had just turned twenty in the middle of a war, sixty was a lifetime away. “All right, then,” George said, and just like that he felt a huge weight recede. The sounds of battle came flooding back, swiftly followed by a curse only just missing him.
He had thrown himself back into the fighting, looking everywhere for his brothers. Much later, when it was all over, Percy and Ron told him all about Fred's near miss and how he had revived just as they thought he was gone.
And that had been it, until now.
“I never wanted you to sacrifice yourself for me. That was bloody stupid of you.” Fred was angry, which was a bit ungrateful of him.
“I would have thought you'd be happy you didn't die before you even turned twenty-one,” George said, only receive a furious look in return.
“Not if it meant you doing a deal with Death, you pillock. Did you not listen when Mum told us The Tale of the Three Brothers?” Fred asked, his lips white and thin with anger like George had hardly ever seen before.
“That's just a story,” he retorted feebly.
“Like The Deathly Hallows? Surely you couldn't have been that thick?”
“In fairness to George, he wouldn't have known about The Hallows back then.” Ron was just passing by on his way around the room, muttering incantations under his breath. As usual, he managed to make things worse.
“I was that thick,” George admitted. “I – I didn't think it was real. Not for a long time. Even after Harry told us what happened to him.”
Now he believed, and so did the rest of them. Maybe the way George had let the memory slip out of his consciousness for so long was due to some magic surrounding the contract. Maybe he had just been the stupidest wizard since Hector the Hapless decided he wanted to know what bubotuber pus tasted like.
As they were waiting, George remembered Mum's clock. He wondered what his hand was pointing at, and if she had noticed yet.
When a black-hooded shape appeared in the middle of the circle Hermione had drawn George stopped wondering, and tried to remember how to breathe instead.
“I HAVE COME TO COLLECT TWO LIVES,” the figure said in syllables that seemed to absorb all the sound around them.
Glimpses of white bones beneath the hood confirmed that Death was indeed a skeleton, just like in old paintings. Not even the fact that he could come up with at least ten bone jokes without thinking could make George feel any better.
“You can't reach us here,” Hermione declared, and only those who knew her very well could tell the bravado was an act.
George looked around him, at his family and friends pointing their wands at Death himself for his sake. Because he had made a stupid decision not to believe his own memories. “Listen, guys, I think I've made a mistake –“
“I think you have, too,” Bill said, not unkindly. “Now let us help you sort it.”
“If we can,” Percy added, wand wobbling slightly but pointing firmly inside the circle.
“Of course we can,” Harry said, making it sound as certain as Puddlemere United ending up last in the Quidditch league this year, too. The effect was ruined by his white knuckles, betraying how tightly he was clutching his wand. Must be a bit worrying, being the Boy-Who-Lived who had cheated Death twice already, just in case Death changed his mind.
It was probably worse to be George, though, seeing as it was for him Death was here in the first place.
“WE HAVE AN AGREEMENT,” Death helpfully reminded him.
“I'm sure we can come to an understanding.” George tried to remember how he'd persuaded McGonagall to lift the ban on their products at Hogwarts after the war. She'd hardly been less implacable than the sceptre in the circle.
“WE ALREADY HAVE. YOU AND YOUR BROTHER WILL COME WITH ME.”
They would see about that. While George had accepted that the game probably was up for himself, he hadn't played his final trick yet.
“My brother isn't coming,” George said, attempting a smile. It felt like it had got stuck on his face the wrong way, and in any case it didn't seem to be helping.
“THAT WAS OUR AGREEMENT. THE TWO OF YOU, AT THE SAME TIME. ONE SOUL DEPARTING.”
Apparently, the old guff about twins having linked souls was true. When they had last spoken, Death had said something about it being untidy for the two of them to die at different times. George remembered it now.
“Well, as you can see Fred isn't here,” George said, desperately trying not to look to his right side. “No great loss. I'm the clever, good-looking one, anyway.”
No one smiled.
“VERY WELL,” Death said. “I WILL TAKE HIS SON INSTEAD.”
Fabian, who looked exactly like Fred and George had at his age, had been shooed away with the other youngsters. Everyone knew Death could find anyone, however – or almost anyone.
“No, you bloody well won't!” Fred tore off Harry's Invisibility Cloak that he had been hiding under, to George's and the others' dismay. It had taken them the better part of the day to persuade Fred to hide under the only item known to have confounded Death before. George argued that he had struck the deal, so he should be the one facing the consequences.
The others agreed with George, and eventually they wore Fred down. Hermione had a knack for repeating the obvious over and over again, no doubt well honed from working in the Ministry (although George suspected his little brother ultimately was responsible for the way she could sound calm and exasperated at the same time).
The plan had been for Fred to stay quietly beneath the cloak – not even Harry had been able to persuade him to wait somewhere else. Like Australia.
On the bright side, Death was still inside the circle, and they were on the outside.
“IT IS TIME.”
The clock struck midnight. Funny, how you never noticed how late it got at parties, George thought, and realised he was starting to lose it. He didn't think he had it in him to become even more afraid, but the shape appearing right next to him did it alright.
“I CAN GO EVERYWHERE.” George hadn't realised skeletons could look smug, but this one did. The bastard.
Normally, Hermione's affront at her wards not holding would have made him laugh, but not now. Not when he was eye to eye with a six-foot four skeleton clad in a black cloak, coming to collect his soul. And Fred's.
“Avada Kedavra!” A flash of green went past him so quickly that George didn't have time to dodge. It was swallowed by the deep folds of Death's robes, where it disappeared without a trace.
An ominous silence followed.
It wasn't that hard to figure out who had cast the curse. Percy was looking unusually sheepish. Combined with the look of unmistakeable dread on his face, he brought an irate goat to mind.
“Sorry about that,” Bill offered when it was clear no one else knew what to say.
“WIZARDS SEEM TO PLACE EXAGERRATED FAITH IN THE POWER OF THEIR MAGIC. CURSES DO NOT AFFECT ME.”
To George's relief, Percy seemed to have got away with it. Death seemed to be a decent sort of bloke. Except he still was looking expectantly in George's direction.
“All right, then, Fair's fair,” he said warily. “Any way you would do a different deal and let Fred live?” Death couldn't blame a bloke for trying, could he? George didn't have a firstborn to offer in exchange, but other than that he would give pretty much anything for this not to be Fred's final moment as well.
“Hang on – if anyone's making deals, it's my turn!” Fred was still furious – he wouldn't even glance in George's direction. It cut to the bone, but it wasn't as bad as the prospect that Fred would sacrifice himself for George.
“No, you're bloody well not – “ he started saying, but was drowned out by their uninvited guest.
It wasn't that Death was loud – his words just seemed to absorb all the available oxygen, leaving no room for anyone else to be heard at the same time.
“THE NEGOTIATIONS HAVE ENDED. PLEASE PREPARE TO COME WITH ME.”
George looked around one last time at his family and friends. Bill looked stricken, clutching Fleur's hand like he was drowning. Hermione had a firm grip on Ron's wand arm and was muttering under her breath, heedless of Ron straining to get loose. What did he think he could do, anyway?
Harry was pale, but he didn't let his glare waver from Death. Ginny was looking between Harry, and George and Fred, like she wasn't sure who she would pick if it came to it. Percy nodded to George, like he was just going home after dinner instead of dying. Charlie was crying silently, small round tears falling down his freckled cheeks and landing on his collar like they didn't matter. And Angelina – Angelina was suddenly right next to him, hugging and hanging on to Fred like it would keep him with her forever.
It was only then that George looked at Morag, who promptly slapped him in the face.
“Go then, you bastard – go! I always knew you cared more about him than me!” Morag, who always met the unexpected with the same measured calm, was crying in wild hiccups, tears streaming down her face.
“Morag, don't.” George tried to take her in his arms, only to be met by a sharp elbow.
“You'd give up anything for him, wouldn't you?” she asked between her sobs. “Anything at all.”
“Yes,” he admitted. It was a bit too late in the day to be lying.
There wasn't time for much more than one last look at Fred. They didn't need to say anything to each other. George knew by the tilt of his twin's crooked smile that he would have done the same thing in return, no matter how furious he was not to have been told.
He grabbed Fred's hand. Whatever was coming, they were going to face it together.
It turned out Death hadn't exactly been honest, which shouldn't have come as a surprise. He was a devious bastard in the Tale of the Three Brothers.
George half expected ending up in King's Cross, but there wasn't much of anything when he opened his eyes. Whitish mist drifted in the air, so heavy you almost could touch it, curling around gnarled bushes stripped of their leaves. You didn't get cold or hungry, but neither did you feel warm. It was a bit like the good room in Granny Prewett's house – it wasn't meant to be used, so it was impossible to feel comfortable there.
There was no way to measure time passing, but George reckoned they had been there for a few weeks when he finally had enough. “If this is what being dead is like, I'd rather have been a ghost! At least they have something to do.”
“Yeah, it's like being stuck in History of Magic forever.” Fred kicked at a misshapen bush, but his foot went straight through it.
“Don't think that would be any worse than being here, do you?”
“What I don't get is why? If this is what happens when you die, why is there no one else here?” Fred looked around the wasteland for the five hundred and fifty eighth time.
“We thought you'd never ask,” said a high-pitch, quavering voice right next to his ear. Suddenly, the empty air was full of other people, somewhere between ghosts and real bodies. Fred was still reassuringly solid, though.
“Blimey,” he wheezed, clutching his chest. “If I still had a body, you'd have given me a heart attack.
It fell to George to ask the obvious.”Who in the name of Merlin's sodding underpants are you, then?”
Most of them were Muggles, stuck here because they hadn't been good or bad enough to end up elsewhere. Another soul, Lorenzo, who had been a carpenter in Italy before the Black Death killed him, told them the place was called Limbo.
They looked at each other.
“I'm disappointed, George.”
“Me too, Fred.”
“Not to be bigheaded or anything, but you'd think we'd have made enough of an impression on the world to go up there with Saint Potter and the rest.”
“Or the other place, if the man above doesn't have a sense of humour.”
“Exactly.”
“Mediocrity isn't like us.”
“We should have tried harder. I'll always consider it a missed opportunity not to booby-trap Harry's office before he stepped down.”
There didn't seem to be much else to say. At least they had someone else to talk to, now.
“George!” Fred drifted closer in the strange way you moved here, without moving at all. “Algernon here is a twin as well,” he explained, gesturing to the pale shadow of a boy next to him.
“Yes,” Algernon said. “Although I'm alone now, of course.”
Fred and George had never acknowledged it, but they both knew they should be able to find people they knew here. If only the Limbo hadn't been so big, and some of the souls so weak, only shadows of living things.
“I'm sorry,” Fred said to Algernon, in a way that reminded George he had been a father in the land of the living.
“I don't mind. At least I know Florence has gone to a better place.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just know. It's because of the way my soul and her soul are the same, so I can tell she's happy.”
“Hang on,” George said, remembering some things Death had said eons ago, when he had been far too concerned about Fred dying before he even turned twenty-one to listen properly. “Are you saying you share the same soul?”
“In a way – we were one soul at the beginning, I think, and then we split.”
“The sodding bastard! The devious fucking shit!”
Algernon looked taken aback and drifted away; he must have lived a sheltered life.
“What?” asked Fred.
“I've worked it out,” George muttered, disgusted with himself. “I could never understand it. Even if I – It never made sense for you to be here. Me, yeah. But not you. You should be in the other place, up there.”
“It's all right,” Fred said gently. “I'd rather be here with you.”
“No, it's not all right!” George burst out. “Because I realise what happened now. That first time, Death said something about twin souls to me, and until Algernon explained it didn't make sense.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
George swallowed, or he would have if he still had a throat. “The thing about twin souls. They're actually one and the same soul. That's why Death wanted to make a deal with me in the first place, because to him it's like the soul being dead and alive at the same time. Apparently he doesn't like things being messy. It's only that...”
“Only what?”
“Death didn't tell me he must have taken the bit of our souls that passes on, and left the rest. Left us here. That's why you're not up there.”
“How do you make that out?” Fred was still puzzled.
“Because we can see each other clearly, but the others can't. Because we never went to King's Cross, or whatever our equivalent would have been. Because this place isn't quite real to us. It's not Limbo, it's us!”
That was when Fred punched him. His fist connected with George's jaw in an audible blow, here in this place where everything was made of whispers of shadows. The pain took George by surprise. Of all the things to be real here, being hit by his twin hadn't been what he would have guessed.
He didn't blame Fred. Of all the things not to fuck up in life, eternity was top of the list.