Twinning
Minisinoo

Summary:   Hermione on the twins -- the unique among the unique.
Warnings:  Ménage à  trois implied, for those squicked by the idea, but this is mostly about the twins as people.

Notes:  My best friend has identical twin boys who I watched grow up; all information about twins comes from her (and them). It's also an attempt to explain why the holy heck Fred and George might act the way they do; most twins are not mirror images.

Identical twins appear in the general population in the same statistical proportion no matter what the ethnicity, and the tendency to produce identical twins does not run in families.  That's not true of fraternal twins who are more common in certain families and ethnic groups than in others.  But identical twins are a freak of nature, not a product of a predisposition to superovulation.

Hermione isn't sure where she picked up that little detail, but she's done a lot of research into twins, down the years.

In any case, the reason for that statistical consistency rests on the fact identical twins are natural clones -- exact DNA matches.  For causes still unknown, a single fertilized egg split into two distinct embryos early in the process -- but that doesn't mean they develop exactly the same.  The degree of physical similarity depends on how early the egg splits.  The earlier the split, the less alike; the later, the more alike.  Mirror twins split very late, and conjoined (or Siamese) twins split too late.  If not quite mirror twins -- both are right handed -- Fred and George are enough alike even friends in a hurry have trouble telling them apart.

Hermione has never had that problem.

According to psychology, identical twin girls are often the closest emotionally, followed by identical twin boys, then fraternal girls, fraternal boys, and last, fraternal twins of opposite sexes.  Hermione can't comment on the veracity of the research, but the only other pair of twins she's observed for long were the Patil sisters, identical girls who were so unalike, the Sorting Hat put them in different Houses.  While certainly close, Hermione wouldn't compare their relationship to that of Fred and George.

Nonetheless, Fred and George are less alike than they first appear.  In contrast to the Patil sisters, they've made a life-long study of being bookends, and find it amusing to indulge the illusion.  But when working together on a new spell or product -- unaware they're being observed . . . at those times, Hermione can't imagine how anyone could ever mistake Fred for George, or the reverse.

In private, they do not finish each other's sentences.  In private, they do not stand alike, or gesture the same, and they haven't regularly worn the same shirts and trousers on the same day since they left Hogwarts.  They've outgrown the sport of confusing teachers, and confusing patrons could interfere with business.  They sport name-tags now, and wear differently colored robes and shirts beneath.  Even so, people continue to mix them up.

Yet Hermione can tell them apart even from the back at 100 meters down a street.  George is just a bit taller, or at least less likely to slouch.  Fred scratches the back of his head when he's nervous or confused.  His sideburns are a bit longer and lately, he's taken to letting the stubble grow out on his chin, like a goatee he's not sure he wants to indulge.  George's face is longer and more narrow.  There are differences under the clothes, too.  George has more freckles everywhere, not just where the sun catches him, and he dresses left.  Fred dresses right.

George plays the wild one, the happy-go-lucky one, and it's true he has a hard time keeping still.  Even when thinking, he jiggles a foot or drums fingers.  His mind never shuts off and Hermione has come to appreciate that Uranian brilliance.  It erupts in flashes as bright as his fireworks -- or his temper.  But the truth is, George has greater tenacity.  When foiled by a problem with a particular product, it's George who keeps at it, keeps pushing, keeps puzzling over it long into the night when Fred has given up and is snoring on the sofa.

Fred is the calmer one, the (very occasional) voice of reason, the backbone.  He's the one who keeps the books because he has a head for numbers, who buys groceries so they have food to eat, and who remembers to pay the bills on time.  Yet George acts, and Fred follows.  Unlike George, Fred can sit perfectly still.  There is something soft in his core, something gentle in the best of ways.

Hermione has heard occasional speculation whispered behind hands that if this war should claim one of the brothers, it should be George.  Fred is solid enough to make it on his own, but wild George would be lost without his brother's anchor.

Hermione knows the exact opposite is true.  George is Fred's shield against the dragons of life.

Despite all their differences, however, they are dependent on each other and don't seem to mind it.  Where other twins might struggle to find self-identity in their teen years, points of separation from this Other who is so like them, Fred and George sought to seem even more alike than they actual are.  Hermione asked Fred about this once, if he didn't sometimes want to be just Fred Weasley, not half of "Fred and George."  He smiled and shook his head, speaking with unusual seriousness.  "I am just Fred Weasley.  But I'm lucky enough to have what most people don't -- somebody I can say three words to that make no sense, but he understands me.  I like being half of 'Fred and George.'"

Perhaps, then, it came as no surprise when neither Fred nor George were inclined to part with each other in the pursuit of a 'normal' family.  Fred saw Angelina for a while until she grew tired of George popping up unexpectedly in the middle of dates.  George met a pretty older woman who worked in Madam Malkin's, but they lasted less than six months.  "I want to date one person, not a matched set!" she was heard to declare on the day she told George not to come around any more.

But Fred and George had always been a matched set, and after years of studying twins, Hermione understood their uniqueness even among the unique.  She valued it, and when she finally screwed up her nerve to take them into her bed, she took them both because they didn't come separately.  After all, every bookworm needed a pair of bookends.