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It started innocent enough. With him asking a few questions because George and him didn’t understand a book they’d recently bought. Hermione was smart and she’d always been interested in unusual transfigurations. It was just the fastest way to get results so he visited his sister-in-law over lunch.
Ron had been there when he arrived at the little suburb house and clapped good-naturedly Fred’s shoulder before gathering his children and leaving to bring Rose to her ballet lesson.
Hermione had always been fascinating to him. He’d always had a thing for smart women and Hermione was the most brilliant one he knew.
It became wrong, wrong, wrong when they began to lie.
When Hermione faked long office hours to meet Fred and he started to tell George that he needed to go somewhere to research alone.
They were not even smart lies, but George just grinned at him from over a new batch of cough drops and said that Fred should go introduce “Research” to him if they turned out to be a permanent thing. Fred smiled and nodded and felt like kicking himself.
He didn’t plan it but they still kissed.
He didn’t think he’d feel so close to anyone except maybe his twin brother… but that was different.
They made love and his brother’s wedding band was still on her finger.
She cried and both of them lied, but they couldn’t stop.
He knew she was still sleeping with Ron and as much as she told him that she preferred him it felt still wrong and icky...he couldn't stop though.
This woman. This brilliant woman with her sharp wit and snarky humour was the one he’d love ‘til he’d die. Maybe Hermione was the first person he really, truly wanted in a romantic sense.
It stopped with Ron standing at the door. Baby Hugo and Rose each in one arm and staring down on the couple of them. Naked on Hermione’s office couch.
He just stood there and looked at them and Hermione in Fred lap cried silently and stared back at him.
With a soft thud he put Rose on the floor and laid the baby on Fred’s naked chest. He took off the wedding ring and threw it against Hermione’s forehead, then he wordlessly turned, closed the door and left them. Naked in the middle of sex. Both infants started to cry.
Not even ten minutes later, they were luckily clothed at this point, Percy entered the room and collected the children. It was jarring how similar it was to when they kids. Every time Fred and George had teased and pranked their little brother when they were small, Percy was always the first to know it and jump to aid Ron.
“Ron told me what happened.”, he said with his typical dry undertone and gently cradling the baby in his arms. He didn’t looked Fred in the face.
“It not like I really expected much of you, Fred, but I thought you had at least some respect left for your family.”
Things are different now.
He doesn’t have to hide any more it almost intoxicating that Hermione stayed with him and he can now call her openly his girl.
His brothers make it difficult though.
Especially the ones closest to him, Percy and George.
Percy basically adopted Rose and Hugo. Fred knows why Ron asked him to. Ron doesn’t trust them. Not any more. Especially not with his children.
“So, what did you expect, Fred? How should I react?” had George muttered as he found him that evening on the couch in the stash room of their shop hugging a half-drunken bottle of cheap vodka.
“try to imagine what’s like to be married to Hermione… How would you feel if she cheated on you with me?”
“It’s different.”
In his head it is. Because George is his twin, his other half...Ron is his brother but they’re not that close in comparison.
George laughed and it was cold and cut like betrayal.
“It’s not. He’s our brother. You broke us. We’re supposed to be brothers! Family! And you broke him.”
he took another big gulp from the bottle.
“Remember how angry we were when Percy went away?”, he grunted and swayed a bit, Fred should probably take the bottle away.
“What you did was worse.”