Part the Fourth, In Which No One Wins But No One Really Loses

A week passed.

It was a week for which Bill remained angry at his twin brothers, still convinced that the loud, impassioned reading of his love letter had been their doing. It was a week in which the final third-floor bedroom got scoured clean, and they all began to start in on the bathrooms, never touching the fourth floor, never touching the drawing room. It was a week in which three more Order of the Phoenix meetings took place, one of which Dumbledore attended, and another of which the younger Weasleys and Hermione overheard a good sixty percent of - because it was a week in which Fred and George decided to switch gears from joke sweets to the brilliant idea he'd had in the kitchen, and they had invented, created, and made a fair bit of progress toward perfecting their Extendable Ears. The older Order members talked in hushed tones - or in the case of the two members of the Black family, not-so-hushed tones - about how the Ministry was bogus ("Tell us something we don't know, why don't they," said Ron), how You-Know-Who was planning...something, and how some of them were being sent out in shifts to guard...something. It was all very vague, and the vagueness wasn't helped by their still slightly unreliable hearing aid, but it was miles better than being kept in the dark.

With their Ears on the Order as a whole, though, Fred and George were instead keeping their eyes on Lupin and Sirius.

This was the week when they were going to catch them at it.

But what Fred was quickly learning was that if Marauders didn't want you to catch them doing something, it was incredibly difficult. During the day, through cleaning and mealtimes and checking the post and relaxing in the downstairs den with a book or the wireless, Sirius and Lupin did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary - as long as other people were watching. Sure, now that he was watching for it, Fred could see little bits of things between them - a more meaningful cast to a look they shared, their slightly excessive casual physicality with one another - but if he thought about it, these were things they had always done, and they had never meant anything before. If Fred thought about it, these were things even less close and emotional than things he did with George, and no one had ever once expected them of -

He shook his head, clearing it of the revulsion that had welled up and brought with it faint, inexplicable traces of something else strange.

"Something amiss?" George hissed through the darkness of their room. Fred smiled a bit to himself. Should have figured that if he was having trouble sleeping, his twin would be too.

"Just stuck on this weird dream I had a couple weeks ago," Fred said vaguely. "Trying not to think about it, but I still can't sleep."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," said George. "Had a funny dream not too long ago myself. Stuff like that shakes you sometimes."

"Yeah," said Fred, and he'd been thinking about saying something more, but a scraping sound from somewhere above them distracted him from his train of thought.

He sat up a bit and turned to look at George, who'd done the same, and then they both turned their heads up to look at the ceiling. The sound came again, as if some piece of furniture in the room above theirs was screeching reluctantly across the floor.

"Speaking of shaking!" George hissed with a wink, but Fred paled. Right on top of their heads, those two couldn't be - no, there really was no way. There was no sort of rhythm to it, and each grinding noise was too long and drawn-out to be the product of the slight movements anything like that would be producing.

And once that nasty thought had cleared from his mind, Fred Weasley had a scathingly brilliant idea.

-xxx-

Sirius's bed had obviously not been moved from its spot in quite some time. It took both men tugging and shoving on it from all sorts of angles for a good five minutes to realize that it probably wasn't going to do much without magic, and even the wave that Remus gave with his wand set it lurching across the floor, digging shallow grooves into the old wood. Finally they managed to get it turned around, to face not the wardrobe but the door to the bathroom he had shared with Regulus, and the pale silvery light from the window streamed harmlessly across the floorboards instead of onto the foot of the bed.

Sirius had sat back down on the bed almost immediately once they'd gotten it into place, and as he beckoned Remus to sit beside him, Remus followed, still wearing a slight frown.

"You're sure?" he said after a moment, staring off at the floor.

"Absolutely sure," said Sirius, taking Remus's hand in his against his thigh. "Place needs a bit of redecorating every once in a while as it is. Never tried it like this before, looks nice."

"It looks horrible," said Remus, "and it will until we move everything else. You can't even open your bathroom door like this, with that chest in the way - "

"All of that can wait until morning, Moony," Sirius assured him. "Stop worrying about everything, and come back to bed."

"It just feels so childish."

"Wanting to turn the bed so that you don't have to see the moon out the window is not childish," said Sirius, rolling his eyes at how grave an assault on his manliness Remus appeared to think this was. "I know you have a hard enough time sleeping as it is, when you're not staring at a big honking reminder like that, and I, for one, want the only thing that keeps you awake at night to be me. Nobody in this house except that deranged old picture of my deranged old mother is bothered by the fact that you're a werewolf, now go to sleep."

Remus's smile crept slowly back onto his face, and Sirius was so glad to see it that his own grew broader, even though he could tell that very, very soon, he was going to have to abandon the smile in favor of doing other things with his mouth. Sure enough, the kiss came gentle and Moony-soft, and Sirius as usual had to take it upon himself to deepen it - not that Remus was protesting. Soon he had managed to coax Remus into lying back on the bed, and Sirius hovered over him, one arm propping him up and the other hand cupping around Remus's jaw in a way that was neither delicate nor overly firm, just the same way it had always done, in a gesture that he didn't even need to think about any more.

A gesture that, unbeknownst to either of them at the time, would be forever immortalized on film.

-xxx-

Even with his lunar irritation mostly taken care of, the streak of Remus that made him a habitually early riser hadn't at all vanished, and he woke to a silent house (Sirius's faint snores notwithstanding). Careful not to wake his bedmate, Remus slipped out of bed and began heading downstairs, tiptoeing past both Hermione and Ginny's room and the portrait of Walburga - the three people his presence was most likely to wake. Tea for himself and coffee for Sirius were definitely in order, he thought, as he descended to the kitchen. Remus hadn't liked giving Sirius too much coffee ever since Azkaban - he needed nothing that would string him even more tightly - but especially with how lovely he had been the night before with the whole bed placement debacle, Sirius deserved to have something nice waiting for him when he woke up.

Instead, what he was going to have waiting for him were two nastily grinning Weasley twins.

"Oh, good morning, you two," Remus said as mildly as he could manage, a bit frightened of what the shared look on their identical faces might foretell. "I didn't think anyone else was awake."

"Yeah, well," said one.

"We are," said the other.

"Excellent, then," he said. "Ah, afraid I didn't make quite enough tea for three..." He crossed to the table, apologetic, but their scathing eyes were no longer on him. They were looking at a spot on the dining room wall next to the door that Remus had just come through, and when Remus turned to look as well, the already tenuous grip he had on the two mugs after the twins' strange behavior slackened entirely, and his tea and Sirius's coffee thunked dully to the ornately carpeted floor.

Attached to the wall in a way that looked awfully permanent, inside a frame that was too elaborate and gaudy to be anything but Fred and George's own conjuration, was a full-color photograph of Sirius and himself, as they had been just after resolving the issue of the bed that they were sharing. Sirius's long hair spilled over his bare shoulders and down toward Remus's face where he leaned overtop; he flashed a quick wink out of the portrait, and both Remuses' faces flushed, and then the Remus and Sirius in the portrait engaged in a very familiar-looking kiss.

"But...how - "

"Extendable Ears," said one twin.

"Quite fond of them."

"Heard you two shoving the furniture about - "

"Then we decided we'd catch you in the act -

"And after that touching conversation about the big scary moonlight - "

"You two were too distracted to notice a measly levitating camera."

Remus couldn't turn away from it. As much as the Remus in the photograph seemed embarrassed that other people could see him, the real and actual Remus was sinking into utter mortification. Other people were going to see this. Other people had already seen this. What were they going to do?

Oh, god, what was Sirius going to do?

After a few more stunned moments of Remus remaining frozen staring the wall and the twins' eyes burning into his back, he found out.

"There you are, thought I smelled coffee, you know my nose has been sharper ever since - oh, bloody hell." Sirius, quite the opposite of Remus, suddenly couldn't figure out where to look - he was flicking back and forth between the photograph, and the twins, and Remus's own horrified face and slack hands.

"What are you two thinking?" Sirius roared at them. "This is mine and Moony's personal business!"

"We're thinking the same thing you must have been thinking when you chose to air our brother's personal business to the entire household!" Fred spat - must have been Fred, the two shouts were far too alike.

"You're still on about that after a whole week?"

"Bill's still cross with us, isn't he?" said George.

"We - we never meant to bring your brother into this," Remus said distantly. "Supposed to be you two."

"What?"

"Yeah, that's right!" said Sirius. "We saw WW and thought it was something for your bloody shop, not William Weasley!"

"Oh, so you were just going to have our orders read themselves out where Mum could hear instead?" snapped Fred. "Ruin the other thing that makes us happiest in this world, then?"

"You know damn well that you're resourceful enough that that wouldn't have ruined anything!" said Sirius. "You'll keep on going!"

"Well then you can keep on going with your relationship out of the bloody closet!"

Their row was waking other people now - though thankfully not the portrait of Sirius's mother yet - and Remus could hear another of the male Weasleys thumping down the stairs (too tall to be anyone else) as well as Tonks (who'd been too tired and tipsy from after their meeting last night to Apparate home and whose heavy-footedness was unmistakable). He tried to imagine their reactions to the photo. Tonks would go mental, surely - probably not be too bothered by the nature of the relationship itself, but the surprise would no doubt spark a reaction just as loud and violent as Sirius's. Ron would be appalled and uncomfortable like any straight teenage boy...what of Arthur, or Bill? Quiet shame? Open-armed acceptance? Confused denial to even broach the subject?

"Sirius," said Remus, faint, but he didn't hear.

"Get that thing off the bloody wall," he growled at the twins.

"No can do," said one.

"Took a page from your mother's book, we did," said the other.

"You did not," said Sirius.

"It's Stuck there, Permanently."

"But not quite forever."

"You won't be able to get it down right now if you try."

"It's staying there until our brother stops being angry with us for something we didn't even do."

"I'm not angry," said a voice, and Remus finally, finally tore his eyes away from Sirius's wink and his own faint blush to see Bill Weasley standing by the table, looking at his twin brothers with a soft sort of adult frustration at their immaturity. "Not about that, any more. Now get that thing down and stop bothering Mr. Lupin."

The shame in Bill's brown eyes compelled Fred and George to rise from their seats and tug the photo down from the wall. The frame promptly vanished, and the picture shrank to the size of a regular Polaroid, which Sirius snatched from them and tucked away in the pockets of his pajama pants.

"Thanks," said Remus, amazed his voice would come at all.

"I'm just doing for you what you ought to have done for me, which is showing some damn respect for private affairs," Bill said harshly. He turned to speak to all of them. "Look, I know you four have been having a bit of an exchange here, but I'm putting an end to it. It's gone too far. This war is over."

Remus, Sirius, Fred and George hung their heads, all for different reasons, but all clearly in defeat.

And Tonks, though for some reason she had gotten a bit teary-eyed, had watched the whole thing happen without saying a single word.

-xxx-

No one that had been there said anything about it. They went through breakfast, cleaning, lunch, more cleaning, a couple rounds of Exploding Snap, and dinner without saying anything. Once Tonks had come perilously close, but even she had managed to play it off into a different context. She'd been awfully quiet for her today anyway, and it was almost as if she compensated for it by becoming twice as clumsy.

George, for one, was almost glad it was all over. They still had those Puking Pastilles to work out - put on hold in favor of Extendable Ears, albeit a worthwhile hiatus - and Wheezes work was hard enough to do without their mum catching on, never mind watching their backs constantly for sticky situations courtesy of Messrs. Moony and Padfoot. And if it meant Bill wasn't angry at them any more, George was willing to go along with just about anything.

But the truth of it was, he actually felt bad. It had mostly been Fred's idea, the photograph, but he'd gone along with it just like always, egging him on, helping him every step of the way, till it became one idea in one mind. And Fred had most certainly done the same with George countless times in the past. But they were grown, of-age wizards now, and even if they were going to make a career out of laughing at other people, they were never going to be taken seriously if they didn't have at least a little scrap of maturity.

Jokes needed to be funny.

George and Fred stayed downstairs after dinner long enough to help their mother and their sister wash the dishes, the regular way. They were both a bit subdued now that the prank-off was over. Once that was done, though, they Apparated crisply up into their bedroom, ready to settle in for the night on some honest work. (George had made especially certain to keep from eating anything too vile at dinner, as it was his turn to test out the Pastilles, if they got around to it.)

"Oh, blimey, Georgey..." Fred murmured, his voice a rich mix of confusion and complaint.

On the wall of their bedroom, something awfully similar to the morning's photograph had resurfaced - but this time, inside the grandiose frame stuck soundly to the wall, the picture showed not Sirius and Lupin but Fred and George, their likenesses clearly charmed in overtop of the old image in such a way that they were there carrying out its actions. George flushing. Fred winking. Both of them - for some horrible, horrible reason - kissing.

"Padfoot's got to have the last bloody laugh, doesn't he," said Fred, but his voice had gone funny, and though George couldn't describe how it had, he knew his own voice was going to do just the same when he began to speak.

"That dream you had," he said, funnily, and not at all the words he'd been planning to say. "You're in a great hallway - "

Fred gasped. "With lots of doors - "

"And there's this window - "

"Only it isn't a window, it's a bloody mirror, and - "

"You're not my bloody reflection," they said at once, neither one of them looking at the photo now, just at each other, breath coming strangely heavily, eyes searching, and George didn't even know what for. After a few tense, surreal moments, it finally returned to him: a phrase they'd spoken to one another, right when this daft war had began, one of the truest things their trickster lips had ever let out.

"Only thing we've truly got going for us," he breathed to Fred, "is this."

Then in ways he didn't understand, just as he didn't quite understand the dream they'd both had, or the way their voices had gone all funny, George's hand was tucked tight into the hair by Fred's ear, and they were kissing furiously, with more drive and desperation than the picture on the wall could ever display. They fell back onto the bed they were sharing, George on top, backwards from the charmed photo, and didn't bloody stop, not when they were panting and gasping for air, not when Fred bit George's lip hard enough to draw blood, not when both of them started getting hard and sliding against each other in attempts to relieve it. It didn't seem like romance, or lust, or anything so taboo as that - George almost just felt it as an extension of their relationship as brothers, the deep and loving twinness of them, the FredandGeorginess, the only thing they truly had going for them. They loved each other, they understood each other, they knew how to make each other laugh, and with any luck that knowledge could extend outward to make other people laugh too, and with any luck that laughter could give them a career, and that career could give them a livelihood that would let them be FredandGeorge forever.

It was over almost before it began, and George was quite embarrassed to need to charm his pants and trousers clean until he noticed that Fred was doing the same. Their faces were flushed a good Weasley red, and they grinned ridiculously at each other, and then got back up from the bed, and ten minutes later George was spitting up weakly into their toilet, and Fred was huffing in frustration that they appeared to have done too little instead of too much this time, and though it was clear that neither one of them was going to speak of it, George had the distinct feeling it was going to happen again.

The next morning the photo was gone off the wall, and when George and Fred made their way down for breakfast, Lupin and Sirius were sitting side by side, smiling, but no one said anything out of the ordinary. The war was over - and perhaps everyone had won after all.

Two days after that, Lupin ducked into his own room in search of a book he thought he might have left there, and when he re-emerged his robes were a brilliant violet, courtesy of Gemini & Gemini, Esq. He'd left them all day, bringing a smile to everyone's faces, even Bill's.

"It's a lovely color on you," Fred had choked out before bursting out laughing himself.

"I dunno, Freddie, maybe we should have done him in the pink, instead."

"If you ever want to get your dear younger brother," Lupin said lightly, "might I suggest neon yellow? It'd bring out the gold in his eyes, you see."

George howled, and relished in it, because jokes were supposed to be funny.

Then four days after that, Harry Potter had gotten himself attacked by dementors. And that was a certain sign that everything was back to normal.

-xxx-

fin.