Hesitant Heart

He's looking out the window again. I don't know why he always does; I tell him there's plenty of excitement right here in our room, and that anything that's going on out there can't be as much fun as the two of us in here, concocting new potions and tricks. He always smiles and says he knows, but that sometimes, Fred, sometimes everything that isn't going on outside is just fascinating. Then he looks back towards me and grins that fake little grin of his and goes back to checking and double-checking the amounts of each ingredient. George is the smart one, the one that understands what all these ratios and color differences mean. Not that I'm not smart; I am, but I can't be bothered like he can to throw every inch of myself into adding and subtracting liquids and substances, using a Muggle method he calls Algebra that he absolutely adores.

But even then, even when he's wrapped up in creating the perfect mixture, I see him steal glances out our bedroom window, bare with the absence of anything but blinds crammed at the top to let the dying late-afternoon sunlight faintly light the room.

I suppose that's partly my fault, if anyone's to blame. I'm the sociable, party-going Weasley twin who doesn't consider a year at Hogwarts complete if we haven't had one brush with expulsion from the school and at least two full-blown parties. I dance, I sing, I act like a fool in public; sometimes I think I'm some kind of trained poodle, ready to do what anyone says. On the other hand, my brother's different; he follows in my shadow and laughs along with my jokes, trying to act like he loves everyone. He's considered popular, likeable, fun to be around --- when he's with me. When he's not, I know he's just shy, trembling, vulnerable George Weasley; without me around, he could be hurt, and he's my best friend: I don't want that. So I hide him away. George looks out the window, I think, to catch a glimpse of the world he might miss, if he knew what it was all about.

That's not why he looks out the window now, though. He keeps stealing glances every few minutes, and I pretend not to notice, because I know he'd be embarrassed if I said it was all right that he kept staring at our kid brother's best friend. But I managed to catch a glimpse myself, and I know how pretty she looks under the sparkling sun with her curls and new, short yellow polka-dot summer dress. Mind you, I'm not in love with her, the way I think George might be.

He won't admit it to me; I just know it. We're brothers, and best friends to boot, but we don't share things like that; we don't spill what's going on in the deepest depths of our miserable, tortured souls, and we don't readily tell how much we each wish that the girls we gaze at and long for would look our way once in awhile. Actually, the truth is, I don't need anyone to tell those problems to, because I don't have them. Angelina likes me just fine the way I am, and one day I promise her we'll get married and live in a big house in the countryside --- after I make my millions owning a joke shop and she's secured in a big-time position with the Ministry of Magic, that is. But George ... George is different. I guess I don't know how tough it must be to be in love with a know-it-all two years younger who will never so much as look your way, when she's got two other guys already falling at her feet, one being her best friend, and one being an eighteen-year-old professional Quidditch player. But he acts like I can't even begin to understand it all; he's never even told me how much he fancies her.

I'm not Fred Weasley, practical joker, for nothing. You have to notice everything when you're trying to pull off a colossal prank and I suppose George forgot about that ability I seem to have. I've noticed all the little things that make everything so clear, so obvious; he blushes when she's around, stares after her when she leaves, works her into stupid conversations about our old Hogwarts professors and Ron. Then he daydreams, and picks up the secondhand Muggle guitar dad doesn't know he has, and strums away on it. He's surprisingly good, for having never taken so much as a half a lesson in his life; I think it soothes him, calms him that he can just runs his fingers over something so simple and get an automatic response, when he could try that with her, and she would remain impassive. I don't know if he really sees it that way at all; he insists he just became fascinated with Muggle music. Maybe he still kids himself that something could happen between the two of them; that if he touches her like he runs his fingers over that stupid guitar, she'll just melt at his feet and he could love her and she could love him and that would be the end of it.

George has always had trouble seeing reality.

I guess I'm having trouble seeing it now too because George has to ask about what kind of chocolates I want to bewitch four times before I finally come down-to-earth. It seems a bit funny to think about your own twin brother this much. I heard dad say once that maybe it wasn't healthy for such popular eighteen-year-old boys to hang around with just each other and not have girlfriends, but honestly, it's what keeps me sane; by thinking the way George thinks, I don't always have to be Fred Weasley. I can pretend to be another person entirely, and forget about my problems and myself. Right now, as I look down at the bubbling cauldron full of green gook, I wonder how I'll ever be able to live on just these silly potions that don't make the slightest difference in the world, and I feel worried that I don't have any extraordinary talents to offer the wizarding world in years to come. But it doesn't matter, because I can escape myself and pretend to be George , sitting behind the fizzy pot, considering and reconsidering exactly how many porcupine quills really need to be added to the mixture.

George looks out the window again, this time walking over to it, almost as if in a trance; he just stares out of the open panes and out onto the sprawling lawn behind our house. It's a good thing for him that our bedroom window overlooks the back lawn, and I follow his gaze out there, because I am George now, a redheaded boy looking out his bedroom window, surrounded by golden sunlight, risking sunburn on my fair skin just to catch another brief glance of my one love before she's gone forever. George -George rests his crossed arms on the windowsill and sighs deeply, taking in the sunshine that he'll never enjoy, the grassy green hill he'll never have a chance to roll on, himself and Hermione, ready to kiss and hold each other when they reach the bottom; I, Fred-George , just stand behind him quietly, not making a sound, gazing out on the scenes below us, not the invisible ones he/we can see in our mind's eye, but the real one unfolding under our window.

Rontakes her hand in his and points out pictures in the clouds that he made up for this moment, and this moment only, and she laughs: our younger brother and George -George 's only true love, together. My Fred-side says this is so sweet it's sickening, as Ron loops an arm around her waist, while the heart in my George -side plummets; I want to cry, and the let the tears fall from both halves: tears from Fred because things really are changing, my family's changing; tears from George because I lost, and I have to watch myself lose and know I can't do anything. It's so true it's sad; the most George could do at this moment is run down the stairs and break the two of them apart and what good would that do? No: my brother's much too tactful and sweet to try anything crazy like that. A home wrecker he'll never be, even when there's no home to wreck.

So while he stares out the window at the world changing and shifting before him, and watches all his hopes and dreams go up in smoke, up in fireworks to the sky, up in the fireworks that are magically created when his true love kisses her true love out in our backyard. I avert my eyes, look away and become my true self, my true Fred self that I've always known I was and wished I wasn't. I can't, won't, watch my brother, my selfless, perfect twin be brought down, become a ruined mess of Weasley, just because no one's looking out for him, not even himself, because he's too busy looking out for her, me, Ron, to look after himself: because I didn't see that by looking out for him and saving him from the world outside I had destroyed him. I took him away from her, selfish me, and I hate myself for it; at the same time, I wouldn't let him be with her, and devastate our lives, as we all know them.

I glance out that window just in time to see Ron pull away from Hermione and then push back again for another kiss. Even without the sound that can't travel up to our third-floor bedroom I know she's giggling, something she hardly ever does. It's obvious she's happy; in fact, it's even more obvious that this is the only place she's ever truly been happy, and ever will be. She belongs in my brother's arms, and Rondeserves to hold her there. Any fool can see that.

Any fool save the one in love with her.

George turns back around and I catch his eye; he looks devastated, and is clearly holding back his tears. It's all right for men to cry, he's always said while we spent the long summer nights cooped up in our room as Hermione and Ron, Harryand Ginny had picnic after picnic under the stars, staying outside for hours under a star-studded sky, curled into each other. It was always said jokingly, like he didn't really believe the day he'd have to cry would ever come; he'd always contented himself with believing that Harry had fallen for Ginny because it was convenient, and that's why Hermione and Ron were together. It was convenient, and nothing more, to have someone to hold hands with, to talk to on stale, boring days with nothing to do; to lay next to under the silvery stars and velvet sky whispering nothing that makes sense into each other's ears. He thought that at the beginning of the summer, and now that August's reached its peak and they still sit out there, night after hot night, doing what I don't imagine in the dark, even George has to admit defeat. Harrydidn't fall for our sister because she was the only one there, and Hermione and Ron aren't going to suddenly forget about each other when they're reintroduced to Hogwarts next month.

George and Hermione: even he has to agree that it doesn't sound right, and that they were never meant to be in the first place. Maybe some would beg to differ that Ronand Hermione weren't meant to end up together either; I knew that they were. From the first day I saw her standing next to him, initial animosity between them buried, but not forgotten, I knew that was the passion, the fire that would light the first spark for their relationship and keep them together despite anything that might happen. George and Hermione, when I first saw the two of them near - but not next to - each other, had no spark. Hermione was bellowing across the room at Ron, and George was looking on, amused by her spunk; he was attracted to her, and she was preoccupied with Ron. I'll never forget that.

Now I think George is remembering that moment too, ruing her spunk, cursing how that was the thing that attracted Ron, also. He won't ever say that to me, even though I know it's true; instead, in one silent moment where all his emotions surge and crash against one another, he turns from that window and just faces me, not saying a word. For several seconds he just draws shaky breaths, one after that before and raggedly lets them out, eyes closed. When he finally opens them, they're glistening with tears.

I didn't know my brother could cry.

Incapable of coherent speech, too moved and taken aback by George 's unshed tears, I just put a hand on his shoulder; in one simple instant I wrap him in my arms and feel him shrink beneath a rare hug; I feel my shoulder wet from his sobbing, I feel his whole body heave slightly when he cries. This is a boy too heartbroken, slapped with harsh reality, to be consoled by mere words. I offer him a simple, 'I'm sorry,' and hold my brother, a boy I've know since before I was born, but at the same time never really known.

I don't want to think about the many nights Ron's held Hermione like this, trying to make her feel better about one thing or another, and what's taken place afterward. I don't want to think about the very thing that'll torment George for the rest of his life; every time he plays the guitar or sits outside at night he'll think of how he'll never have Hermione the way he wants, and how Ronwill. Instead, I think of how I can be there for my twin, my soul mate; how I can just hold him on those nights when he cries and cries for what he can't have, but is too stubborn to ever admit that.

After several seconds he pulls back and lets out another ragged breath; he tries to smile, but can't quite pull it off, and I don't blame him. His worn sleeve, faded grey after so many washings, is dragged across his eyes, and leaves a trail of tears I want to brush away but can't. We just stand still for a moment, him broken, a little boy longing for the candy we can't afford, in one way or another; me, unused to scenes like this between him and I, the pillar of strength I didn't know I could be, the invincible of us two, not afflicted with unrequited love, a disease that shatters the heart. There are no words that can pass through the air around us, heavy with confusion, anxiety, hurt, and the battered dreams of a shadow of the weak.

George touches my shoulder, soaked through; I want to tell him it's okay, I won't mention a word of this to anyone, and moreover, he can come to me anytime at all, and I'll just be there for him. I can't open my mouth, can't form the words, but it doesn't matter because George knows without me having to say anything at all. He just senses things; sometimes it amazes me how much of what hasn't been said he knows, yet he can't percept that the love of his life would never look his way twice. That's George for you.

He reaches out again, and this time manages to smile. With one word, 'Thanks,' and one more simple gesture it's as if he's the older, wiser brother, that he rose above me in my moment of confusion during out awkward, but somehow right, brotherly exchange. 'You understand me.'

You understand me. It's crazy; because I never wanted to understand the way he worked, just protect him from all the harm in the world. I never wanted to be the sole confidante of my troubled sibling, just the funny man who made him laugh. Suddenly, it's as if I'm neither, just an old friend to find solace in, the person to offer a comforting word, but that's just fine with me; I lean over and kiss my brother on the forehead, a way of reassuring him that he'll live. With one swift motion, he closes the curtain, but not before I catch a swift glimpse of Hermione and Ron, their shadows intermingled in the dim twilight by the pond on the edge of our property. I won't tell him that, and I sincerely hope George never sees more than a simple kiss between the two.

The pot he was calculating mixtures into before our exchange is now simmering, a warm brew waiting for someone to add something to so it can become whole, an actual thing, much like George himself. He adds orange powder, humming to himself, and as I stand by the window, amazed at how quickly I can come to understand a corner of my universe, I realize the one difference between George and that pot: while he can add all he likes to the mixture and keeps coming up with something new, different, and better, it can never be the same way for himself.

He's not real inside without her, a robot stuck on autopilot, and you could add any combination of things, people, to him, but that wouldn't matter. The only thing that will truly make him whole is the one thing he can never have, the one thing he clings to every night in his dreams, every time he plays his damn guitar, every time he sets foot outside in the green grass where she's rolled, laughing, with the redheaded, ignorant boy that, no matter how much he hopes, dreams, wishes on a star, will never be him. I realize there's no end for my brother who isn't alive, and therefore can never die; there's only want and need, love and lust, the intangible items every human needs to be a person, all rolled up into a girl his hesitant, pure heart can follow through the years, but never touch.

And no matter how much I wish time could erase itself and we could start over, me not hiding him from the world he secretly desires, I know it can't happen, and we'll have to go on the way we are: me, a person who can get whatever he wants and still never be content because of what I did to him, a shell who needs a soul that's never been in reach, the only thing I can't get him in this world or the next.