Something Else

They’re identical, but they don’t even look exactly alike.

Its true, George thinks, that Fred looks more like him than anyone else in the world, even the rest of his famously similar-looking family, but there are still differences. The dip of Fred’s nose is slightly different, George feels, and the freckles on his cheeks are distributed more evenly than the freckles on George’s, which are scattered like someone had just thrown a handful of orange paint at his face. He also has a small mole above his right hip, where George’s skin is smooth and pale.

Fred also tends to talk more, and come up with most of the meaner practical jokes, and cares more for Potions that he’d like to admit, whereas George tends to leave most of the talking to Fred, and thinks up most of the more complex practical jokes, and despises Potions with a fiery passion.

These differences, which might be small and unimportant to others, are very important to George. They remind him that he and Fred are two different people, with two different bodies and two different minds. This makes several things okay, sort of.

It makes it okay that he thinks he’s in love with Fred. He’s not sure, of course—he doesn’t know many sixteen-year-olds who actually are in love, so he suspects he isn’t, really, but it certainly feels as though he is. While he and Fred may not be the same person, or even as alike as everyone seems to think they are, they’ve been together all of their lives, and intend to be together for the rest of them. No one has ever been important to him as Fred, and, George thinks, anyway, no one has ever been as important to Fred as George is.

It makes it okay that he wants Fred. Wants to touch him, and maybe kiss him, and at least see where else their differences lie. If Fred likes to be stroked in the same way that George strokes himself, and if he makes the same noises, the same faces. At home they both use spells for privacy when they do that sort of thing, and at Hogwarts they have separate beds, so he couldnt’t even have his curiosity in that matter satisfied without making a fool of himself.

They’re not the same person, or even mirror images of each other, which means its not narcissism, but they were almost the same person, which makes it more like masturbation than incest, really. George knows that this is mostly rationalization, but still. Its not quite narcissism and its not quite incest and its not quite masturbation. It’s something else. If something defies classification, it can’t exactly be called wrong, right? It can’t be called anything at all.

It makes it okay that he will never, never tell Fred any of this. Because they may be similar, alike, identical in innumerable ways and different in only a few, but there’s no way of telling to where those differences extend. If Fred likes girls while George likes boys. Or if Fred wants George like George wants Fred. No way to tell but asking, and George is too afraid to ask because he’s more than sure that the answer will be ‘no.’