Twinfic update! The end of "Countdown" is in sight.

[thrihyrne]

I'm plugging away like all of my NaNoWriMo (or something close) friends, and working on finishing things. So... I present updated twinfic. I'll post the last little bit from before since there have been longer gaps than I'd like in my updates, but hey- now I'm back in the swing of things. PG-13/R rating for their potty mouths.


“So.” George lay on his back on the cold tile of the toilets floor, his wand pointed at the ceiling where he made a sparkler write Umbridge sucks eggs.

“So,” Fred replied from the stone window where he sat precariously, one leg outside and one leg inside.

“The time has come to take matters into our own hands.”

“You sound like me.”

“Of course I do.”

Fred hopped down from the ledge to retrieve another sparkler. He lit it then thought for a moment, waving it over in front of the mirrors. He bit down on his lip, then scrawled backwards so it read Umbridge can kiss my arse.

“Wow.” George was impressed. “Do you practise writing backwards when I’m not looking?”

“Nah.” Fred shrugged as he slid to the floor. “Born with the talent, I think.”

They sat in comfortable silence.

“Fred? George?” Lee’s voice sounded in the doorframe.

“Come in,” they said together.

Jordan walked in and joined them, sinking to a sitting position. “What is this school coming to?” he moaned, only then noticing Fred’s enchanted message. “Ooh. Nice one.”

“Dunno,” Fred said, contemplating his wand and tossing it from hand to hand. “But if anything were to make us care less, it would be what happened today.”

“We’ve decided that we don’t give a bit of pixie’s piss about Umbridge’s decrees. Tomorrow Hogwarts gets to see the trial run of our weeks of slaving on the Whiz-Bangs,” George continued. “Apologies about the toilets, but we needed the space.”

Lee made a shooing motion. “Anything to make her miserable,” he said venomously, glancing down at the back of his hand where the ghostly message ‘I must not talk back’ resided.

“Oh, the fun we’ll have,” Fred replied gleefully. “Don’t look so glum, chum.”

Lee looked from Fred to George, smiling. “I can’t wait.”

***

The next evening before they went to bed, Fred sat, legs sprawled out, still shaking his head. “I can’t believe the orders!”

“I’ve got to hand it to you,” Towler said appreciatively. “That was a splendid bit of work. Very creative.”

“Splendid? It was bloody brilliant!” Jordan said, walking over to George, and clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re the most talented blokes I know.”

“And now the most in need of new supplies from the Alley,” George grinned as he closed up the mostly-bare cupboard. “Guess there’s no time like the Easter holidays for a trip, plus it has been a little while since we checked up on the future home of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes.”

“What, all of a week?” Jordan snorted. “Well, I’m in, but this time I swear we are going to get to Piadora’s Palace. Much more exciting than looking at the bare walls in your shop.”

“Jordan! You’ve insulted what is to be the culmination of our life’s work! How could you?” Fred said, feigning hurt. “Your miniscule, uncreative mind is obviously not capable of visualising the splendour and majesty that will make up the Weasley enterprise.”

“Weasley and Weasley,” George corrected.

“You’re off to a good start,” Towler conceded. “George, I think if you pick up some stinksap essence and add a few drops to your basic instant swamp recipe, you’ll get the efficiency in oozing that was lacking last time.”

George nodded. “Worth a try. Reckon that’ll be our next phase in the Anti-Umbridge Attack.”

“So when are we going?” Jordan asked from his bed where he was changing into his usual bright red pyjamas.

“On our birthday, of course!” Fred said matter-of-factly, rolling up the parchment of orders and stowing it in his bedside table.

“Ah yes. The infamous twins’ birthdays. So can we expect the usual barrage of chocolate, gift certificates to Zonkos, and ‘I love you, my special boys, but if you pick on Ron anymore I’ll come there myself to set you straight,’ or Howlers this year?” Towler asked, smirking.

“Hard to say,” George acknowledged, taking off his undershirt, balling it up and tossing it into their overflowing laundry basket. “I don’t know that she’ll ever get over the fact that we did something responsible,” he went on, climbing into his bed and getting under the covers.

“Howlers it is, then,” Towler said, blowing out the candle by his bed.

“Their Mum’d never do that,” Jordan said, defensively.

“No, she wouldn’t. The day after our birthday, though, all bets are off,” Fred snickered, then grew serious. “Anti-Howler charm! Why haven’t we thought of that before?”

“Now that’s something worth learning,” Jordan said, fumbling under his bed for a well-worn magazine. “’Night, all.” He pulled the curtains around his bed closed.

“Silencing charm!” George, Fred and Kenneth shouted in unison.

Towler shook his head. “Eighteen, is it?”

“Yes,” Fred said, sighing happily. “Eighteen blissful years, beginning our second being of-age wizards.”

“All we have to do is survive the next couple of months, then freedom, freedom, freedom,” George said, smiling and putting his hands behind his head. “That’s enough to warrant sweet dreams. G’night.”

“’Night,” Fred and Towler said as George pulled his curtains shut.

***


VIII. April

It was nearly a month later when George and Fred made their way up the stairs to their dormitory from the Common Room, conferring about what Ginny had told them.

“Harry needs a diversion. Well. We have diversions, eh George?” Fred said meaningfully as he opened the door with a force that caused it to swing back and slam into the wall.

“Oh, sorry, Jordan!” George noticed their best friend was lying with his back to them, curled foetally on his bed.

He didn’t move, but there was a muffled snuffling sound in reply.

“You ill, mate?” Fred asked, taking more care in shutting the door than when he had opened it.

George sat down on the edge of Lee’s bed. “Lee? Do we need to take you to Pomfrey?” Lee had only been sick a few times that George could remember, and he wasn’t much of a nap-taker.

“’S Princess. Died.” Jordan said heavily, running a sleeve under his nose.

“Your tarantula?” Fred said, incredulous. “You’re crying over your spider?”

“Piss off!” Jordan sniffed. “It was the gift my dad gave me when I got my Hogwarts letter. You know that he vanished not long after that. She was one of the last ties I had to him. So just bugger off. Leave me alone.”

George looked over at Fred, who shrugged his shoulders while rolling his eyes. It wasn’t that they hadn’t lost pets. In fact, after a particularly unfortunate incident involving marmalade, a then-orange toad with one eye missing and one of Percy’s best shirts, also orange, their mother had specifically forbidden the entry of any further animals into the house. Only Scabbers had ever managed to elude them, obstinately clever in its will to live. The greater issue was that he and Fred weren’t sentimental; it simply wasn’t built into their nature, and it wasn’t fostered at home. Above all else, the need to be practical was drummed into each Weasley child.

Out of nowhere, the image of their dad at St. Mungo’s, ghostly pale and putting up a brave front on the fact that he’d almost been killed leapt to George’s mind. If their father had died, would he have suddenly instilled an irreplaceable value on the few Muggle artifacts their dad had modified for them, now clustered somewhere in the bottom of Fred’s and his closet? He couldn’t imagine it. George’s flights of fancy had to do with pranks, expanding their not-even-opened-yet shop, and the occasional gleeful desire to throttle Percy with his bare hands for turning his back on their family. But Lee had been their best friend for years. If possible, he was more loyal to them than he and Fred were to him.

“I’m really sorry, Jordan,” George said, awkwardly rubbing what he thought were Lee’s calves.

“Thanks,” Lee replied, his response muffled as he’d draped his robe-clad arm over his face. “I just wasn’t expecting it, y’know? Tarantulas are supposed to live longer than that.” He let out a resigned sigh. “Just leave me, okay? I need to do this on my own.”

“Do what?” Fred asked skeptically, having moved over to his own bed and taken out the shop ledger that he kept stowed under his pillow.

“Bury her, of course, you bleeding heartless bastard.”

Fred took the abuse in stride. “You know me so well. You must be-”

“I’m not a relative!” Jordan shouted, the emotion ringing in his voice. “And today I’m fucking glad of it.”

“I’ll go with you,” George offered, continuing to run his hands over what he hoped were Jordan’s legs. “Forbidden forest?”

Lee shuddered in reply.

“Right then,” George went on. “I’ll just get, um, conjure… no…”

“I don’t want her to be in a cage,” Lee moaned. “She’s dead. Let’s just put her in one of my shirts and take her to the Forest. I’ve been thinking about a marker, but I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

George felt Fred’s look of disdain, and met it. “Fred, you coming?”

“No. I’ll skip the dramatics, if you don’t mind.”

“’Course not. Back in a bit.”

Fred had the understood decency to go and ensconce himself in their toilets while Lee went through his trunk and picked out a shirt he was ready to part with. George mindfully kept his distance, pretending to need an inordinate amount of time to stare at the Green Knights as they practised their feints.

“Aw, blimey. Can’t you at least look before you go and do something as daft as trying a Truslow Turnover?” he scowled, as the player in the poster glared back at him, hanging from his broom by his knees and wrestling with the Bludger that was sequestered in his chest.

“Don’t mind him,” Jordan said blithely to the two-dimensional player, leaning over the glass container that had held Princess for almost seven years. “Just bitter, he is.”

The Beater flew off, his gaze still shooting daggers as he went off to a far distant corner of the poster.

“Ready?”

George nodded, pulling his thin robe around him. “Should I rescue Fred? He’s far better at speeches.”

“’S’alright.” Jordan shrugged, cradling his very dead, very hairy and very large tarantula. “You’ll do.”

“Thanks. I think.” George said, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the massive spider in Jordan’s arms. “Best take the most discreet route, don’t you think?”

Jordan turned at the door, his long hair falling in napped curls to his chin, his face the description of morose. “Whatever you say, mate.”

George nodded, again, feeling miserable for him. “I’ll lead.”

Lee attempted a smile, and gratefully followed George down the stone stairs. “You’re the best. You and Fred. I know he doesn’t mean to be like that,” Lee continued. “Glad to have at least one of you around, though.”

“Thanks, I think,” George repeated. With stealth that came as second nature to him, George got them to Gregory’s statue, passing only a couple of the castle ghosts on the stairwells, using the tunnel to arrive in the Quidditch changing rooms. From there they crossed the grounds to the Forest. Once they were relatively hidden in the trees, he transfigured a stray branch into a small shovel and spent some time digging a trough while Jordan wandered aimlessly through the woods a short distance away. Upon Jordan’s return, George attempted to be the Master of Ceremonies.

“Here we bury Princess, a loving tarantula, or at least loved by Jordan. She did scare Finlayson’s bat, before he left, anyway, but she was always tidy, and kept our room free of all midges and flies for as long as she lived.”

There was a distinct sniff to George’s right. He plunged on.

“Princess will be sorely missed. Her somewhat creepy but controlled noises she made when she climbed around her cage became familiar to us all, and our nights will be far too silent without her. But mostly her loss is lamented by Jordan,” George was fully in M.C. mode now, his hands clenched fervently at the middle of his chest, not even looking at the shallow grave over which he stood, “because she’d been his constant companion since he came to Hogwarts. He’s almost eighteen now, and one gets a bit melancholy looking back on one’s youth, and while we were never lucky enough to have our own pet, we feel for Jordan now in his time of-”

“That’s… that’s enough.” Lee, all gangly arms and elbows, briefly clasped an arm over George’s shoulder. “Let’s put her to rest.”

“Too right,” George agreed. Together they lowered the t-shirt with the black tarantula into the soil, then George used his transformed shovel to cover it up as quickly as possible.

Around a half hour later, the two sat near the lake in the balmy evening, disinclined to return to the castle.

“You and Fred didn’t have a pet,” Jordan observed, flinging yet another stone into the inky waters.

“No,” George said, his voice more caustic than he’d intended. “Even Percy’s hand-me-down rat went to Ron. Apparently we weren’t to be trusted with an animal. But Fred and I’ve had each other,” he acknowledged. “And honestly, after the two litters of kittens, and at least a dozen goldfish, and the badger, and then the toad…”

“You two had a bloody badger?” Jordan’s brown eyes stared at him.

“Well. For a while. We didn’t mean to harm any of them, really, it’s just that we’ve always been overly curious, see, I mean, you know how it is.” George’s voice trailed off. “Okay. We’re not meant for pets.”

Jordan narrowed his gaze.

“We never touched Princess. Honest. Never liked spiders.”

A heavy breath came out of Jordan’s nostrils.

“Honestly. Did she ever look peaky to you?”

Lee stared at George, then out over the unruffled surface of the lake. “No,” he admitted.

“Now that she’s gone, I’ll level with you. She always gave me the willies,” George muttered.

“Gave you the willies?” Jordan echoed. “And you and Fred’ve been my best mates for seven years? Why didn’t you blokes tell me?”

“Dunno!” George exclaimed, scuttling back vigorously from the lakeshore on palms and feet like a crab. “Wasn’t appropriate. Bloody hell.”

Jordan laughed, sorrow and understanding all rolled into one. He lay on his back, gazing at the pink-smeared sky. “Just don’t you dare leave me, you and Fred. It’s one thing to go through this together. Quite another doing it alone.” He turned his head, his gaze accusatory.

“Wouldn’t dare,” George insisted, hand on his heart. “Then again, there’s always Towler.”

Jordan sighed. “Towler. He means well, but he’s not like you two. He’s too… obligated.”

“And we’re too ‘been gone far too long,’” George pointed out. “I swear that I can smell a most excellent kidney pie even from here. Continue this after dinner?”

A chuckle manifested itself in the violet dusk. “Of course. I’m starving. Help a mate up, will you?”

George pushed himself up from the sand and walked the few steps to Lee, leaning over and offering both hands. “Our free meals are coming to a hasty end,” he noted. “Best eat up while he can.”

“Hear, hear!” Jordan rejoined, grasping George’s hands and levering himself up from the lakeside. “But George, there’s no way you can smell what’s coming from the castle.”

“No. But it is spring term, and the fourth Sunday of the fourth month, right?”

Lee turned his head to stare at him as they strode toward the greenhouse where there was yet another hidden tunnel into Hogwarts. “I guess. Why?”

George’s forehead wrinkled in surprise. “That means it’s kidney pie night.”

“There’s a pattern?”

“Of course! I thought everybody had figured it out. Spring term, fourth month. The first Monday is pot roast. The first Tuesday is beef stew. The first Wednesday is lasagne. The first Thursday is-”

“Enough, enough!” Jordan shook his head as they entered the greenhouse. “But that’s far too many meals for there really to be a system to it. You’re pulling that out of your arse.

“Just you wait,” George promised. “It’ll be kidney pie or I’ll eat my robes.”

Jordan snorted.

***

“What’d I tell you?” George said triumphantly through a mouth of kidney pie.

“You’re impossible,” Jordan replied.

“Could you please not talk with your mouth full?” Hermione seethed from across the table.

“No. I may be brilliant, but I have horrible manners, Miss Granger,” George said happily, smacking his lips.

“Augh!” Hermione flounced to the side, turning her attentions to Neville, who was so shocked he knocked over his pumpkin juice.

George tucked into his dinner, quite pleased.

***

Comments

[snottygrrl.livejournal.com]

bugger, all these new icons and no twins pic, that must be rectified...

love the story sweety. a nice but with jordan and his pet. and i adore the fact that the twins are hard on animals, they so would be wouldn't they? and that though they aren't great in class they know the pattern of the food [*giggles*]

lines i loved:

“Silencing charm!” George, Fred and Kenneth shouted in unison.

In fact, after a particularly unfortunate incident involving marmalade, a then-orange toad with one eye missing and one of Percy’s best shirts, also orange, their mother had specifically forbidden the entry of any further animals into the house.

Hermione flounced to the side, turning her attentions to Neville, who was so shocked he knocked over his pumpkin juice.

♥ [*blows kisses*] ♥

[thrihyrne.livejournal.com]

bugger, all these new icons and no twins pic, that must be rectified...

Well… you're not quite the twinaholic that I am, so I'm not *too* surprised. Paid account! Maybe I'll take the plunge. After I get my own effing computer and our phone lines work at home. I'm sick of the crap I'm dealing with there and at the office comp, which has become possessed by demons viruses. Aigh.

Glad you liked the lines you quoted. Once I get in the twinfic groove, their dialogue really comes to me. The quandry now is that I'm at the Infamous Swamp Incident, and like when I was writing "Daughters of Orome," how much of the original to I really want to put in?? So many questions about my fanfic. LOL.

And so glad you enjoyed the food bit. I don't even know that Fred's picked up on the pattern; George's mind works more that way than Fred's, to my own mind. I don't know that Fred cares, but George does. Personally I think they're both hilarious, though definitely a bit narrow-minded in their own ways. I should write an extended character bio on him/them after this. In their defense, of course, though they are quite mean at times.

blahblahblah. I've shifted my Tolkien character overanalysis to HP. Selkies save us. ;)

[snottygrrl.livejournal.com]

well, yes, but i've got 50 spots (yes i bought the extra user pics too. why not, i mean i spend more than 10 bucks on food without blinking, so why not make myself happy with endless pics to chose from?) have been downloading hp pics so i can have at least one ron, hermione, snape, etc. and have just installed photoshop so i am all set (now i just need the time).



and yes, i'll vote for you taking the paid account plunge because lord knows the lj folk can use the money and it really is a minimal fee. [*pokepoke*] i'll have to see what else i can do now that i paid. i know i get more link spaces and i can make a quiz too [*ponders things to quiz about*]

and i love your analysis sweety. (((hugs)))

[llembas.livejournal.com]

"Apparently we weren’t to be trusted with an animal. But Fred and I’ve had each other,”

*dies laughing*

And him knowing the food schedule!!

*laughs some more*

You are the Weasley Writing Queen!

[thrihyrne.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!!

Love me some twinses. :) Need to get back to it. I've been reading a lot, but not writing. Hope you're well!!