A/N: This is a twincest story. Not like hardcore twincest, but a little bit mixed in. Reviews are love, but please, no hate. It reflects badly on everyone involved. R.I.P. Fred.

I might write a sequel, about their escape? But not sure. 3s for everyone.

Fred walked slowly over the freezing cold grounds beside the lake. He had been looking for hours, trying to find George, but his brother was nowhere to be seen. That Umbridge woman had given him detention after the DA was discovered, but for some reason she'd been paying particular attention to the twins, something neither of them could understand, although George had been acting strangely lately, as though he might know something Fred didn't. Fred hadn't pressed it, but now wished he had, as it had been three hours since George's detention was due to be over, and his twin was still missing. The real question now was, what the hell was she doing to George?

While the detentions were now harsher than they used to be, Fred had certainly started to get used to them. The cuts in his hand were painful, but from what he'd heard detention had once been a far more severe experience, something involving the dungeons, he believed. But now he wondered if maybe that evil woman was really as bad as people said she was. He just wished he knew why. It wasn't like she knew. There was no way she could know. Nobody knew about what existed between Fred and George except the two of them. Not even Lee. They had been more careful about that secret than any joke they'd ever had.

While he walked, Fred thought about it. Since they were children, they had done everything together. It was only natural that they would be together in every way; family, friends, lovers. For the two of them it was just one more thing, one more small aspect of their lives that they shared. It wasn't unnatural. It was just how they were.

They both understood that other people wouldn't, couldn't understand them. They may be sheltered in their little world together, but they weren't oblivious. And there was no way that the Umbridge woman could know. At school, they only ever allowed themselves the smallest amount of physical contact. They would walk with their shoulders pressed up against each other, always sit next to each other, occasionally allow their hands to brush while working. At night they shared a bed, but only after making a decoy out of sheets and pillows in Fred's bed, and drawing the curtains on both.

There was no sex. Neither of them had ever had much of a libido, and the relationship remained almost entirely platonic. But there were always George's sweet, butterfly kisses implanted on Fred's memory like a stamp. A wonderful, loving stamp that made Fred's stomach warm.

But now...Now Fred was worried. George had been gone for a long time, and he had to wonder if maybe...something had happened. He had gone every place he could think of that his twin might be hiding, but George was either doing a very good job of not being found, or...or he was still in her office. The thought dawned on Fred for the first time, and he mentally slapped himself. Running full-pelt up the steps into the entrance hall, the red-haired boy's stomach dropped out. He wasn't anywhere...which must mean he was still there.

Fred bounded up the twelve staircases it took to get him to the floor where the headmistresses office was situated. Running down the hallway, he heard the most bone-chilling sound he had ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It was the sound of his own voice, screaming, faintly at first, but becoming less and less quiet as he flew down the hallway toward it. Finally, he stood outside the door to Umbridge's lair, and listened to the sound coming from inside. It sounded like such agony, such pain, that Fred couldn't stand to hear it. He gently tried to open the door, and found it locked. The screaming went on. He tried alohomora. Nothing changed.

"REDUCTO." The door was blasted open, and Fred jumped through the remains, almost falling over a limp, quietly moaning body on the ground. Fred stopped before he stepped on it, and looked around. Umbridge sat behind her desk, in her plush, pink chair. And at his feet, laid...George, his lips parted in the remains of a scream, his eyes shut tight against some terrible onslaught of pain. The fat, toadlike woman sat at her desk, with her wand raised high above her head. It was as though she had frozen in place, her eyes wide wish surprise and anger.

"And what, exactly, are you doing here, Mr. Weasley?" Fred saw nothing but red. He balled his fists, not allowing himself to look down at his twin.

"What the HELL have you done to him?" The squat little woman smiled, a sickeningly sweet, horrifying sight that scared Fred more than he ever thought it could.

"Punishing him, Mr. Weasley." She stood, walking slowly around to stand in front of her desk.

"What-" Fred's voice was livid.

"I have found, in recent days...that the unforgivable curses become more...forgivable, when the crime-"

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BROTHER?: But he knew. He had known in some part of his brain since he came in. The words that came out of her mouth were exactly what he expected them to be.

"I have found that the...cruciatus curse serves a suitable punishment for the severe misdeeds-" Fred cut her off again.

"And what severe misdeeds has he committed, exactly?" He took a step forward, standing just above his twin. His gaze slowly traveled down until it came to rest on his brother, lying limply on the floor. He knelt next to George, and listened to his breathing for a moment, while waiting for Umbridge's reply.

"The two of you...the both of you. Freaks. Disgusting, warped freaks. The things you do..." And then Fred understood. She knew. Somehow, some way, she had found out, and now she was punishing George for it. He stood back up after assuring himself that his brother was very much alive and breathing, if comatose.

"Why him, and not me?" He wished that this pain could have been inflicted on him. He wished he could go back, and take whatever punishment had been dealt on George.

"It was in his mind that I found the memories. The disgusting, unnatural memories." The putrid, unmasked disdain in her voice made Fred's skin crawl. "I told him that I would carve it into the flesh. Both of your flesh. I told him the two of you would be scarred for life, and that everyone would know about what you were." Fred clenched his fists at his sides, his knuckles whitening around his wand. She smiled again. "He begged me not to. He said I could do anything to him, provided you were left unharmed. So I obliged. It took some thought, of course. What could I do to him that would leave him in a pool of his own sorrow and pain, but not alert you, or the teachers as to what I was doing. And so, the cruciatus curse presented a perfect option." She looked down at George's weak, pained form without a glimmer of pity in her eyes. "He fought it, at first. The urge to scream. The woman looked up and smiled at Fred, and he had to resist the temptation to curse her where she stood. "But after an hour or so...well, his resolve did begin to crumble. He began with an onslaught of angered foul language, but eventually, he downgraded to simply...well, your name is Fred, is it not?"

Fred lost it. He raised his wand in one quick motion, intending to disarm this woman and , and his voice rang out loudly.

"Expelliarmus!" Umbridge blocked the spell immediately, and then directed her own wand down toward George in a flash, shrieking the spell before Fred could even formulate a desperate 'NO.'

"Crucio!" George's body was jerked upward abruptly, and Fred paled as an unearthly howl escaped his twin's lips. He charged at Umbridge, knocking the wand out of her hand.

"Stop it! Leave him alone!" The woman stepped back abruptly, and the ginger boy froze. He'd attacked a teacher. Even in this situation, that was generally a 'no'. Fred paused, trying to decide what to do next. If he grabbed George and ran, he might be able to get into the secret passage behind the statue of the old witch. However, if she got her wand in time, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to defend George against a woman working for the ministry.

As it turned out, he didn't have to. The pudgy little woman took another step back, and smiled slightly at Fred. She looked down at George, and the thought flew through the young man's head that she didn't deserve to even look at his brother. She looked back up, and smiled again, a deeply threatening smile.

"You may go, now, Mr. Weasley." She said, in her disgustingly sweet chirp of a voice.

Fred paused to think for about 3/4ths of a second, before dropping in a flash to the floor, and wrapping his long arms around his brother. Fred grunted slightly as he lifted his brother's limp body off the ground, and he didn't look back as he walked through Umbridge's fairly well-broken door and into the hallway. George groaned quietly from Fred's chest.

"It's alright, Georgie. We'll be there soon." Fred began to walk, slowly at first, but growing vastly in speed as he went. He could take George to the hospital wing, but there Umbridge would be able to see him, and Fred didn't want that woman anywhere near his twin.

Fred bolted as fast as he could to the entrance to Gryffindor tower, and uttered a hurried 'Sprouts' to the painting before falling through the opening into the common room. He vaguely noted before dashing upstairs to his dormitory that Harry lay asleep on the couch. Harry couldn't know. Neither could Ron or Hermione. Or anyone, for that matter. George wouldn't want them to, which Fred knew, because he himself didn't want them to.

Reaching the four poster bed that they secretly shared, Fred laid his brother down on it as softly and gently as he could. George groaned again, but his eyes remained fully shut.

"George? Georgie, can you hear me?" Fred remembered somewhere in the back of his mind that after too much time spent under the cruciatus curse, Neville Longbottom's parents had gone mad, and he was suddenly plunged in to a cold, dark pit of fear. What if Geroge was mad now, too? Or, worse, what if he never woke up?

"Georgie, please. Look at me." He wrapped one arm around his brother's midsection, and placed the other lightly on the back of his neck, pulling his head up slightly to rest their foreheads together.

"George…" Fred allowed himself to fall back on the mattress next to George, one arm firmly wrapped around him, the other folded up so as to stroke his twin's perfectly identical cheek. Fred tilted his head, and lightly pressed his chapped lips against George's full ones. When he leaned back, the redhead found a pair of bright blue eyes staring directly back at him.

"George!" Fred breathed in relief, kissing his brother again. This time a small amount of effort was made on the behalf of the other twin to kiss back. George wrapped his arms around his brother's waist. Fred pulled back again, and when he did, George was smiling, just a little bit. Fred smiled, too, drawn in by his twin's intoxicating happiness, but abruptly his face fell again. He looked at his twin with worry in his eyes.

"Georgie, why would you do that?" George raised an eyebrow, and opened his mouth. His voice was a low croak.

"What did you expect me to do?" Fred opened his mouth to reply, a look of indignance on his face, but George sharply cut him off. "No, seriously, Fred. What would you have done, in my place? Because I know you sure as hell wouldn't have let me suffer if you had the choice." Fred closed his mouth, and glared at his brother, tightening his hold on the other man's back. George sighed slightly, and closed his eyes, allowing himself to stew in the feeling of Fred's body against his.

"I'm sorry. Don't be mad at me, Freddie. Please?" He opened his eyes again, and stared into his twin's identical ones. "I did it for you."

"George, you let that woman torture you for how long again?" Fred was stoic, and factual. George hated it when he talked like that. He didn't answer. He didn't want to. "Come on, George. How long?"

George looked at Fred with fear clawing at his stomach.

"I lost track."

Fred nodded, still glaring. "Well, I didn't. Four hours. You were in there for four hours." His hand tightened to grip George harder, and then he abruptly let go, sliding out of his brother's embrace. George felt like some part of his body had just been ripped out. Fred sat up, and turned his body away from George's so that his feet dangled off the side of the bed. The ginger-haired boy put his elbows on his knees and then laid his head into his hands. "Why didn't you just tell me, George?" He asked, with his eyes shut.

"I..." George had imagined thousands of scenarios for what would happen if Fred found out, the most prominent of which was that Fred would never find out. Never had he thought of one wherein Fred was angry with him. That wasn't supposed to happen. For any reason. George knew that Fred would have gone after Umbridge for even just saying that he was in some way wrong, let alone threatening him. He knew, somehow, that Fred would have gotten hurt. He had known for a fact that he would be unable to handle that, and so he had chosen not to tell his twin. "I didn't want you to-"

"To get hurt?" Fred spoke as though he could read George's mind, which they had always wondered if they could. "Is that what you didn't want, George? Because you've done a right foul job of that." Fred looked back at his twin. "George, you have to tell me about things like this! There'll be real, actual things in the rest of the world that will permanently mess you up if we're not honest with each other! You could've gone mad, you could've died!"

"I wouldn't have died!"George shot back indignantly.

"You could have."Fred remained serious, his voice slowly gaining volume "If she'd kept doing that, George..." He trailed off.

"Fred-"

"What do you think I would do without you?" Fred's voice was quiet, and he sounded so scared that George couldn't resist the pull to reach out and touch him. He lifted one hand and spread it over Fred's shoulder, his long spidery fingers drinking in the feeling of Fred's sweater against his skin.

"I'm sorry."

"Because I know you'd be lost without me." Fred continued, just as sadly.

"I'm sorry." George felt as though his heart was breaking.

"I'm nothing without you, Georgie."

"I'm sorry."

George sat us and wrapped his arms fully around Fred's torso, burying his head in his brother's neck. He felt like crying.

"You're right, Freddie, you're right. I would be lost without you. I'd be totally lost without you. That's why I did it. You'd have done the same for me. I know you would've." George nuzzled into his Fred's neck, and Fred leaned his head back to press their cheeks together.

"I love you. You know that, right?" Fred nodded, and truned his body around to hold George, his hand clamping around his twin's back. He mumbled something incoheren, and George leaned back to lift up his brother's head.

"What was that?" He asked softly. Tears were streaking down Fred's face, and when he spoke, his voice was a low, vulnerable croak.

"I love you, too." George smiled,a nd took Fred's face in his hands. He leaned forward, and lightly kissed Fred's warm, wet lips. Fred kissed back tentatively, and when George pulled away, the tear-stained face wore a small smile.

"Come here, Freddie." George leaned back, and Fred laid down with him, snuggling his body into his brother's perfectly identical one.

"Never leave me, George." Came the quiet, scared whimper. George wrapped his long arms around his twin, and inhaled the scent of his hair.

"I never will, Freddie. I promise."