Work Text:
The war was hard on everybody.
Once Fred and George were finally acknowledged as old enough to make their own choices in this, as with so many other matters, once they were finally let into enough Order meetings to start feeling useful, it was impossible not to notice. It was such a relief at first, to actually see the shape of what was happening to people out there and what the Order was doing about it, up until the losses started to set in.
They learned enough names of the other Order members to have a face to mourn when their deaths were reported, to notice who stopped showing up to meetings and when and why. They noticed who locked their fears away behind the ruthless pragmatism of an auror, and who was starting to crack under the pressure.
The war started to drag on them all.
As the greatest pranksters of their generation, he and his twin could not let that stand, not for long, and so a plot was hatched. It would be their greatest prank yet, surpassing their efforts to enter their names into the Goblet of Fire, or any of their ideas for the products on their shelves, or even their very own Farewell to Hogwarts, portable swamp and all, for this was a joy that would be shared.
The prank went like this:
On many nights, after many missions gone wrong in many different ways, Fred and George would find themselves in a safe house, waiting for word that it was safe to return home. It was always a different house, always in different company, but the steps from there would be the same.
One twin to distract, all charm and laughter and patching up wounds, big and showy and once even setting off a firework or two to keep all the attention on them.
One twin to scout, to open each door in the cottage or apartment or house and count up the bedrooms. And then, through some ingenious charm work and a little slight of hand, alas, the answer each time was the same.
Only one bed.
They had hours to kill, or once even days, but everyone knew from the moment they entered a safe house that they’d have plenty of time. And so the night would go on, they’d pull out the booze and break out the jokes, and let things play out as they may.
And then, if they were lucky, they’d end the night in the best possible way: one twin on the left, one twin on the right, and a new, dearly close friend held naked between them.
And so, the war passed.
Sirius was always a delight to bunker down with, matching their energy word for word. Hestia and Emmeline and Dedalus were each an amusing enough experience in their own ways to be with trying the once, no matter how stuffy and prudish they were. Alicia and Angelina and their former Captain, Oliver Wood himself, were great fun when their increasingly busy lives aligned. The one night they spent with both Remus and Nymphadora together ranked easily among their top ten.
They never did manage to get Ole Mad-Eye to loosen up enough to join them, not that it stopped them from trying, though he sure had no problem taking their firewhiskey when offered.
But their absolute favorite was their secretly not a Death Eater, double-agent-spy-extraordinaire, none other than Marcus Flint himself.
Yes, they were quite astounded at the news when they heard it, as well.
Unlike the unrefined brute he’d let everyone believe him to be, Fred and George found he could keep up with them for hours, throwing one witty retort after another with devastating precision. He had all the energy and physique of a life-long quidditch player with none of the ego; all the skill with his wand with none of an auror’s uptight personality to work around.
Marcus came through for them again and again in the war, watching their backs in battle, giving them ideas like the wearable shields to flesh out later, and towards the end of the war, he even risked his cover to deliver news in the dead of the night.
He was perfect.
And after the war, well. The twins had made plans.
Which was how George found himself now, alone in a room with too many beds.
Whether in his old childhood bedroom, or in the recently reclaimed Grimmauld Place, it was always the same. Standing in the little apartment that had once been just as much theirs as the joke shop below was, George couldn’t help but see the beds where Fred would never sleep again, where Marcus would never get to sleep at all, where the endless corridor of empty guest rooms that had taken three months to get just right, now felt far less funny than it used to be.
Where even in their one master bedroom with their one enormous bed, the two empty wardrobes were a continuous reminder just as painful as the bed far to large to sleep in alone.
Somehow, simply vanishing the extras as he’d done so many times before just didn’t feel right, and so George did not, letting those extra beds remain and stay empty for yet another night.