Frayed

The first time Fred says Voldemort's name out loud, George knows something is wrong.

George chokes briefly on his toast, spraying crumbs onto the worn wooden tabletop. "What did you just say?"

Fred shrugs. "Does it matter?" He turns a page and continues reading the newspaper.

More than you know, George thinks, watching Fred obscure his face with the paper, a photograph of a dementor hovering and fluttering in its place.

---

For all of their seventeen years, Fred and George have moved as one. Gred and Forge, the twins, the Weasley boys - even their own father cannot always tell them apart. Most of the time, they can't even differentiate between themselves, at least not in any significant ways; George has a mole here, Fred blinks a little faster. But they've never been able to clearly mark out where Fred ends and George begins, where lines are drawn and frequencies change. Both (naturally) have caught themselves entertaining the breathless certainty that if one left the room, the other would suddenly be unable to speak. Move to the opposite side of the house, and he would simply wink out of existence.

Until now.

---

They move from the Burrow to their own flat on Diagon Alley in July, their mother simultaneously pushing their nonsense away and pleading with them to rethink. Just before they Apparate out, George catches a glimpse of extra sheets under his mother's arm, and knows that she is already preparing their room for their eventual return.

George turns to Fred, but he is already gone.

---

"Fred, we haven't finished testing that one yet!"

Looking up, Fred laughs with a lightness that seems oddly discordant. "I'm sure it'll be fine." He hands a bag over the counter to a young girl - George guesses that she can't be more than eleven, a first year at Hogwarts.

George's gaze follows her through the haphazard displays and out the door, where his eyes fall upon what must be her parents, looking out of place and unsure. They're probably--

George slowly turns to Fred, and watches a smile spread across Fred's face as he gazes out of the window.

---

George spends a particularly slow evening restocking, filling the shelves with Skiving Snackboxes, Extendable Ears and Portable Swamps.

Making his way across the store, an unfamiliar display catches his eye - Fred must have done some stocking earlier, too, he thinks to himself. But as he bends to read the label, his eyebrows begin to furrow.

LEECHING LOZENGES -
Feed these to an unsuspecting enemy,
and watch as his blood begins to mysteriously drain out!
...11 SICKLES

George knows for certain that he has never created such a product.

He moves down the row and continues to read, his mouth slowly dropping open until he is jerked back to reality by his box slipping out of his fingers.

As he crouches down to pick up the Ears, he realizes that for the first time in his life, he has no idea where his twin is.

---

George always gets to the Prophet after Fred in the morning, so many articles cut out that the paper often wilts in George's hands, the delicate structure compromised. Fred never mentions what he's clipping, and George never asks.

One morning, George wonders why there hasn't been any news on the Death Eaters.

--

"Hey, where's the other guy? The one who looks like you?"

George looks down at the boy from behind the counter and puts his hands in the air, palms up. "I know as much as you do."

The boy raises an eyebrow. "But isn't that supposed to be some twin thing? You always know where the other is, what they're doing?"

The looks on George's face silences him.

---

George jolts awake a split second before Fred starts screaming. Scrambling out of his bed, he grabs his wand off of the nightstand and runs into the short hallway, muttering "Lumos" as he goes. But as he reaches Fred's door, the light suddenly fails.

As Fred looks up at him, his arm glowing green and his face contorting with pain, George feels the severing of a final tie, a gleaming knife screaming down onto the last remaining threads of a rapidly fraying rope.

George has a brief moment of near-scientific fascination at the sensation of being only one person, then falls to the floor in a blind panic.

At least Dad will be able to tell us apart.

---