Entry tags:

fanfiction, fanfiction - harry potter, fanfiction - r, fanfiction - slash

Fic: Communion (Harry Potter, George/Fred, George/Charlie, R)
Title: Communion
Date: August 2007
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: George/Fred, George/Charlie
Rating: R
Warning: Slash, incest
Words: 3000
Disclaimer: I don't own. They're over eighteen.
Summary: Things come in pairs; George has been taught this all his life. Trousers. Parents. Ears. Twins.

Communion

Things come in pairs; George has been taught this all his life. Trousers. Parents. Ears. Twins.

Even after more than a year, he cannot get used to the way it feels to hear with only one ear, sound filtering across half his head, twisting as small as a whisper into the solid whorls of his remaining good earlobe. He still has part of his eardrum, the Healers at St. Mungo's have told him, but without the outside of his ear to trap the sound, without the tiny bones to turn it into meaningful sound and speech, he will never hear properly with that side of his head again. Most hours of the day, he feels rather than hears a hollow sort of ringing. The Healers have told him that that is a phantom pain, but he knows better; it is a quiet, constant memorial to the halves that he lost in the war: his ear, his twin.

Even after almost a year, he is still not used to the way it feels to be the one left, the survivor of the two, a new kind of boy -- no longer, and never again, boys -- who lived.

Not that the Weasley family has any shortage of boys who survived the war. There is Bill, still horribly mangled, his face scarred like a patchwork quilt; when he smiles, the quilt folds itself up. There is Percy, who seems to shrink three feet every time he steps into the Burrow, where he finds some little thing to do for Mum and Dad at every visit. There is Ron, who goes everywhere with Hermione on his arm, his grin constantly amazed as he blinks at the witch beside him. There is Charlie, who looks normal on the outside -- two eyes, two arms -- and seems normal enough on the inside as well, except that he refuses to go back to Romania.

Instead, he stays, and when George wakes five, ten, twenty times in the night, straining for the sound of equal breathing in the bed next to him, he can see the outline of Charlie on the mattress.

* * *
In the weeks immediately following the end of the war, Mum and Dad, of course, are thrilled that Charlie wants to stay in Britain. George can tell by the way Dad shakes Charlie's hand and claps him on the back, then comes back for another round of clasped fists and half-hugs every few minutes. Mum is easier to figure out. She reaches high on her toes to hug Charlie and beams and even cries, a mirror of the tears that she sheds every day for Fred.

At first George isn't sure about Charlie staying in the country, and is even less sure about Charlie staying in his flat with him. "Floored" might be a better word. He sits at the supper table with his mouth hanging open in his lopsided head when Charlie says, with struggling casualness, "I thought I might hang around for a while, now. Help Bill get things back on track around Gringotts."

Percy's mouth drops open, too, and he says stiffly, "It's hardly likely that the Gringotts goblins will believe they require the assistance of wizards, you know -- " He stops when he realizes that everyone at the table is looking at him, then closes his mouth. Once, the attention of all the family would have spurred Percy on with a tirade of pompous speech.

Bill shrugs, pressing his flank of steak firmly onto his plate with his fork, and a stream of bright red juice oozes out. "We can use all the help we can get, I'm sure. Harry says that dragon that escaped was blind and pretty old."

"Oh, this is wonderful!" Mum beams. "Wonderful! Our boys -- working together -- "

"I thought I'd stay with you, George," Charlie cuts in, not even bothering to look at him as he sends the potatoes zooming down the table toward Ginny. "That'll put me right there in Diagon Alley, near Gringotts, yeah?"

"Yeah" does not sum up George's feelings, as he sits there staring into the untouched pile of vegetables on his plate, but Mum is practically melting with the joyful thought of three of her boys living together, working together, so he keeps his mouth closed and nods in the direction of his food.

It takes him three or four weeks to understand why, in the bewildering postbellum, as wizards and Muggles and creatures alike struggle to make sense of their new world, his brother puts aside his world and comes back to this one -- London, his family, his brothers and sister.

George is not a blind, aging, angry dragon, but to Charlie, George is someone who needs help.

* * *
In the beginning, it is -- there is no other word for it -- it is awkward.

Charlie has lived alone for years, George knows, since leaving Hogwarts. George is concerned that Charlie will appropriate parts of the flat, the bathroom, the couch. It turns out that it is the opposite. Charlie asks before he hangs his robes in the closet. He asks before he moves a loaf of bread to the other side of the breadbox. He hesitates, then asks the first night as he tucks George into bed like a child.

"There's only one bed," he says, his voice shaking like a teenager's.

George feels his entire chest compress like a used Portkey.

"Yes," he says, knowing that his voice is shaking too.

"It's – I – do you – " Charlie falters, looking to the other side of the room while George pulls the blanket up to his chest defiantly. "Can I get in with you?"

It is awkward to bump up against someone who isn't Fred, to mumble an apology every time, to wonder whether he should issue a blanket "I'm sorry" for every shove and poke and whimper throughout the night. Fred would have laughed at his apologies. Fred would have pushed him back. Fred would have pretended that he was moving in his sleep as well, deliberately crowding and nudging George, and said in a too-casual voice, "Oh, 'ear you are!" Charlie, on the other hand, mumbles an increasingly sleepy "S'okay" every time.

For years, sharing the same narrow bed with Fred, George did not remember his dreams. It is awkward, now, to wake screaming from them, to fight his way out of a dream of perfect black emptiness and claw his way back to wakefulness and reach out for Fred, only to find that in fact, even with Charlie in bed beside him and taking up more room than Fred used to, he is still alone.

In the mornings, Charlie's thighs and stomach and back are frequently black and blue from where George kicks him in the middle of the night. George has to ask Hermione what she knows about healing spells.

It takes five weeks, but George's body learns to remember that Charlie is in bed next to him, sleeping on like a boulder, waiting for George to jerk awake from his dreams.

He doesn't stop dreaming about the emptiness, but he does stop kicking his way out of sleep.

* * *
George has never felt more alone, even though he shares a flat with his brother, even though he is surrounded all day by customers and other shopkeepers and owls and Verity and a new, capable young wizard called Aurelio, who has the unfortunate job of testing the very newest Wheezes.

He wishes that he could feel a phantom Fred, like the phantom noises that he hears in his ear. He imagines Fred watching him as he pours doxy venom, interfering as he tosses a Pygmy Puff from hand to hand, laughing as he absentmindedly stuffs a Puking Pastille in his mouth -- he thought it was a piece of Drooble's.

If Fred were here, they, not Aurelio, would be testing their new prototypes themselves. It was always a game, full of bets and dares and cocky confidence that nothing could really go wrong, and if it did, well, it would be a good laugh.

If Fred were here, they would get in fights every day about their newest bestselling project. Fred had been sure that there was a market for an Extendable Eye. ("Lengthening Lips! Mushrooming Mouth! Swelling Sniffer! What do you think?" he'd said. George had raised an eyebrow. "Swelling Sniffer?") George had proposed expanding on the Canary Cream; he already had a great plan for a Parrot Pasty. ("Turns your head into a parrot's, see?" he said, demonstrating bravely on himself, always a risk when you weren't sure how a new product was going to turn out. It was Fred's turn to look skeptical. "You look more like a macaw.")

If Fred were here, he would not go home every night and stare dumbly at his brother for a few seconds before he remembers who Charlie is and why he, who looks so much like Fred, is standing in George's flat above Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.

If Fred were here, he would roll over automatically at night and kiss the strand of freckles that decorate the top of his spine, feel for the jutting bones of his hips, wind his fingers through a hank of ginger-coloured hair. These are things that George has learned over the years. He scrambles now to unlearn the muscle memory of love. The first time he licks the pulsing vein in the corner of Charlie's elbow, he feels his own face turn red-hot with embarrassment.

It takes him six weeks, and a lot of struggling and pinching himself unceremoniously, before he learns to wake himself, so that he never touches Charlie accidentally.

It takes another six weeks for Charlie to kiss the back of his neck and tell him that he doesn’t mind.

* * *
Now George hopes that there is no phantom Fred watching him, following him, sticking to his profile like a shadow. He never wants Fred, real or ghostly or otherwise, to see him with Charlie, doing the same things that he once did with his twin.

The first time with Charlie is nothing like the first time with Fred, when they were twelve or thirteen, fooling around at first, wrestling on one bed or another. They were just starting to learn that although they were identical, they were not the same. "You have a mole here that I don't," George said, pointing to the lowest part of Fred's ribcage.

"Your legs are scrawny," Fred said, eyeing the tapers of George's ankles.

George flushed, yanking at his socks to hide the knobby little bones. "Your stomach looks different from mine," he said, resting the palm of his hand on the hardening muscles, the thin vertical dusting of hair that disappeared into Fred's shorts.

"Nah," Fred said, rolling on top and touching George's smooth skin. George felt an odd little jump at the bottom of his belly, and he began to shift uncomfortably, sure that any moment Fred was going to see his stomach, or something lower, leap out of his skin. "Yours looks different from mine."

George held his breath and tried not to move. He could hear something roaring in his ears -- wind, the ocean, embarrassed horror. He concentrated on making his entire taut abdomen go soft. "Think we can still fool Mum?" he asked, praying that his voice sounded normal.

"Oh yeah," Fred said, and traced the edge of George's thigh with his palm.

But now, with Charlie, there is none of that. He is different from Fred, and from George, too. Charlie is quiet. His stomach bulges a little. His legs are strong and sprinkled with hair that is thicker and softer than the hair on his head. The trail of hair that starts below his navel is sparse and dark, almost brown.

It is strange, because Charlie looks like the twins -- like George, George corrects himself. Bill and Percy and Ron look alike, long and lean with large hands and gangling feet, but Charlie and the -- and George have always looked alike.

And yet Charlie is not much like Fred. His hands are gentle on George's shoulders, like George is a baby dragon. His hair is shorter and doesn't flip over his eyes when he bends his head. His mouth is cold every time it first meets George's, like he hasn't spent a lifetime in bed next to his brother.

George lists these things in his head every time, as if to prove to a phantom Fred that his new lover is nothing like him.

But it takes him seven weeks to stop looking over his brother's shoulder every time Charlie's mouth stalls between his legs. It takes another seven weeks to stop wondering whether a Fred, in some form, is watching him.

* * *
He may be transferring, the Healer tells him sternly when George mentions that there is someone new in his life. Who is this new person? the Healer asks, as George waits for Bill to finish his appointment on the First Floor of St. Mungo's. If it's one of his brothers, it's lovely that they're all getting along, but it's too early for him to think about developing the kind of relationship that he had with Fred. If it's a friend, it's too early for him to think about developing the kind of relationship he has with any of his brothers. And if it's a young witch -- the Healer winks -- well, take it slow, and has George got any of those brilliant Muggle handkerchiefs that just grow and grow?

He isn't transferring, George tells himself firmly as he follows Bill out of the hospital -- Bill, who received a clean bill of health, who has been told his condition should not affect the baby that he and Fleur expect in eight months. He knows the difference between Fred and Charlie. There are many differences, in fact, including the things they like to do with their tongues and hands and fingers.

But is he replacing?

He starts watching Charlie when they're alone, watching him when they're in a group. He tries to line up memories of the way Charlie used to treat Fred when Fred was alive, and the way Charlie used to treat George. He compares notes, strings together recollections, remembers his childhood, thinks about his brothers, until they blend together and he's not sure where Fred leaves off and Charlie begins, which doesn't help the situation any.

He has stopped looking for Fred over shoulders and around the corners of mirrors, stopped expecting to see a glimpse of eyes and hair identical to his. Now he looks for him inside Charlie all the time, until finally they're in bed one night, sweaty skin sticking to skin, and Charlie asks him why he's been acting so odd.

"It's … Fred," George says, and the name hangs weightily in their shared silence. They almost never talk about Fred. He is there in everything they do, everything they are -- he is the missing ghost of George -- but they never talk about him. "He was like you."

Charlie shakes his head. "He was like you."

It's a daft thing to say because twins, of course, are alike. But is George still a twin? Is he a twin if he no longer has one?

No matter how similar Charlie is to Fred, he is not Fred, and he is not George's twin.

George can't begin to explain how this came about, why he was talking to the young Healer in the first place, so instead he stammers, "I know you're here -- for me. But why … why are you here?"

Charlie doesn't answer. He kisses George. He touches him until George is sure his bones will grow too big for his body. His hands skim George's skin in ways that Fred's never did.

"He was my brother too," Charlie says at last, his voice gentle, sliding hard against George's hot inside flesh.

It takes eight weeks before George begins to understand what Charlie has lost as well.

* * *
Survivors come in pairs. George has been learning this over the past year, the one in which he is the solitary twin, a distinction that will be his for all the years of his life.

It is not the only true thing; survivors come in trios, in sets of ten, in teams of wizards and Aurors who sweep the country and rebuild the Ministry. Survivors come in threes, in which Ron and Hermione and Harry have been celebrated up and down and around the Wizarding nations. Survivors come in families, in which Mum and Dad beam proudly and tearfully over their brood. Survivors come in ones, in which Percy has admitted he was wrong, in which Kingsley Shacklebolt has emerged as a proud new leader, in which little Teddy Lupin will grow up with the knowledge of a happy world instead of happy parents.

George still can't sleep through the night. His first waking breath is always a gasp, a little hitch as he rushes to catch up to his brother's. He still hesitates when customers chattily ask how many siblings he has (Si-- he always starts out, then cuts himself off and finishes, Five). He still hears ghost hisses and whispers and rushes on one side of his head, and a couple of times a month, bringing his twin home in his heart, he tells himself that those noises are Fred, following and teasing and pushing him back onto his side of the bed and maybe smiling as he keeps watch over the twin who remains.

But when he wakes and Charlie is awake beside him; when he hears his breathing fit into the same pattern as his brother's; when he listens to Charlie say that he has fi-- uh, four brothers; when he feels Charlie kiss the temple above the hole in his head -- when George remembers these things, he remembers that Charlie has lost things too. It's just that they're invisible on the outside.

fin.