kaydeefalls | it's, um, a Gred & Forge fic thing.

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Apparently, plotbunnies can be feisty little buggers. This one bit me last night, and I had to get it out of my system. But hey, it's a fic, in the fashion of those twenty-random-facts fics that were going around a while back.

Sixteen ways to tell the Weasley twins apart
by kaydee falls
a (mostly) gen fic featuring, unsurprisingly, Fred and George Weasley
disclaimer: not mine, no profit, don't sue.

1. Fred was born first. This, he claims, has given him innumerable advantages over his twelve-minutes-younger brother: he is ever so slightly taller, handsomer, smarter, wittier, and generally more popular than poor George. George concedes sadly that this is indeed the case, then transfigures Fred's ears into cauliflowers.

2. They play their first prank at the age of four. Fred comes up with the idea, and George figures out how to pull it off. It isn't much of a prank – George just distracts Percy while Fred adds a load of salt to Percy's breakfast cereal – but it's a start. And from then on, Fred is almost always the prankster mastermind and George the enabler.

3. When they're seven, Fred trips George near the stairs in the Burrow. George, caught by surprise, manages to fall down two whole flights of stairs and gash his left shoulder open, which heals into a small starburst of a scar. He pouts about it for days, until Fred, in a pique of exasperation, steals Bill's broomstick (which the twins are expressly forbidden to touch) and deliberately crash-lands into a rock wall such that he earns himself exactly the same scar in more or less exactly the same place as George's. Bill is quite impressed at Fred's flying skill and precise aim; George is just glad that they're identical twins again.

4. Other than his twin, George likes Bill best of all their siblings. Bill is tall and strong and good-looking, he always gets good marks, and he plays a mean game of Quidditch. Deep down, George has always been a bit of a hero-worshipper. But Fred likes Ginny best, because she's always had a sharp tongue and a nose for trouble, and that's what really matters in the end.

They both like Percy the least, because Percy is the only member of the entire Weasley family – including third cousins twice removed – with no sense of humor.

5. When the Hogwarts letters for the twins finally come, they celebrate by sneaking into their parents' liquor cabinet late at night and pilfering several butterbeers apiece. They soon learn that, when drunk, Fred is quick to fall asleep and snores like a Graphorn, and George develops an affinity for setting things on fire.

6. Late in their first year at Hogwarts, Fred is the one who comes up with the prank that lands them in Filch's office, and George is the one who notices the filing cabinet and the drawer marked "Confiscated and Highly Dangerous." But it takes both of them working together for five solid days to figure out how to make the map work.

"Wow," George whispers, watching it unfurl. "Look at that."

Fred doesn't say anything. He's already busy memorizing it.

7. In third year, George fancies a Ravenclaw named Maisie Crotty and asks her to go to Hogsmeade with him. She agrees, but Fred thinks they should test her loyalty. In the crowded confusion of Honeydukes, he and George swap places, and Fred is the one who invites Maisie to take a nice long walk towards the Shrieking Shack with him. Maisie doesn't notice the difference, and George never asks her out again.

8. They absolutely idolize Mssrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. "If only we knew who they were," Fred is known to complain on a fairly regular basis. "I wonder what they did after Hogwarts."

One day, George has a thought. "We could go further, though."

"Further?" Fred asks, raising an eyebrow. "How could we possibly go further? They made the map."

"Yeah," George says, "but they didn't devote their entire lives to the prankster's cause, did they? Or we'd have heard of them. They gave it up eventually."

Fred shakes his head, but there's a glint of curiosity in his eyes. "Well, of course. So will we. We'll have to grow up sooner or later."

"Why?" George is completely serious. "What if we made it into a sort of...business?" And Fred catches on.

9. For years, they celebrate their birthday (April Fool's Day, fittingly enough) by turning Hogwarts upside down and inside out and all sorts of fantastic things like that. But the year they give up the Marauder's Map, Fred suggests they take the day off and get some hard-earned rest. Which makes the birthday even better, really, because the entire school is on edge and thoroughly paranoid, waiting with bated breath for the chaos to begin, and all those nervous, wary faces make up the best sort of birthday present a pair of pranksters could ever hope to receive.

On April 2nd, of course, all hell breaks loose.

10. It's just as well the aging potion didn't work, they decide, because only one of them could have been the Triwizard Champion, and what's the fun of going it alone?

11. At one point during the Yule Ball their sixth year, George decides to test his brother's date's loyalty. He waits until Fred has gone off to get drinks, then grabs a couple of drinks of his own and goes after Angelina. For a minute or so, she seems to be buying it. Then, very abruptly, she yanks him behind a pillar, hoists up her skirts, and pulls her wand out of her garter. "So, George, would you prefer I hex your nose off or just set your trousers on fire?" she asks sweetly. "Or are you and your brother trying to set me up for a threesome?"

When Fred finds his twin a few minutes later, George's trousers are very damp but still smoldering. "You can keep her," George tells him, grinning.

12. They have no regrets about their decision to leave Hogwarts early, but George occasionally wonders if the N.E.W.T.s might have come in handy. Just as a prestige sort of thing, really. But he figures they must be important, or why else would everyone be expected to take them?

Fred thinks that depends on what a wizard plans to do with his life. It's not that school isn't important, it's just that for some people, there are simply better ways to get the most out of their time on Earth than to sit exams.

13. They eventually do try the threesome with Angelina. It's a bit weird. But she's absolutely brilliant at telling them apart now, and has a knack for turning this newfound information to her advantage.

14. He will never admit it, but George sometimes sort of fancies Hermione. He doesn't think about it much, because it makes him feel unclean. It doesn't matter anyway, because she's sure to wind up with Ron in the end.

Fred has no qualms about admitting that he sometimes sort of fancies Fleur, but rests content in the knowledge that Bill will feed him to the Giant Squid if he ever actually does anything about it.

Both are sure they'll stop fancying their brothers' girlfriends eventually. But it's easier this way, to lust after the unattainable, than to admit that neither is willing to abandon his twin for some girl.

15. George claims to remember the night of Voldemort's first defeat. "There was all this tension in the air, prickling my skin, and I couldn't sleep," he tries to explain. "And then there was just this – I don't know. I suddenly felt safe again."

Fred laughs. "We were only three. You don't really remember anything. It's just all the stories we were brought up on, about the Boy Who Lived – you just think you remember it."

But George really does remember.

16. After Dumbledore's funeral, Fred and George swear a solemn oath that if one of them should be killed in the War, the other will do everything in his power to get the bastard who did it – and then live a doubly long and happy life in his fallen twin's memory. They shake on it, faces pale and drawn, eyes identically red with unshed tears.

One of them means it. But the other knows exactly what he'll do if his twin dies first, and can only pray that no one else will ever have to find out.