Reposted.

Disclaimer: Recognizable situations and characters belong to J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This is a non-profit publication.

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Ginny had brought home the flyer; Twinless Twins Support Group. She’d shown it to Mum first, rather than him. If she’d shown him first, he’d have kept it to himself and not gone. But Mum found out first, and had dragged him to the steps of St. Mungos Hospital ignoring all protests and excuses.

The classroom was set up with a circle of chairs, but was otherwise sterile and bare. Someone had written the name of the group on the blackboard in block letters. George could have conceived of a thousand better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon, but Mum was waiting downstairs in the lobby, blocking the obvious escape route, and she had the keys to the car.

He felt like a phony, listening to the others talk about their experiences and pretending he cared. It disgusted him how some people got right into it, pouring their hearts out and choking up constantly. If he’d known it was going to be a weep-a-thon he’d have stayed in bed. He could have accomplished that without the unnecessary trip to St. Mungos. The guy in charge encouraged him to speak up, and assured him he was among friends. Since when is a room full of strangers friends? He declined to speak, and the guy let it slide; first-time jitters.

They broke for coffee and a stretch after an hour, and George began looking for a back exit; if for nothing else than to get some air. He was sick of the talking and hugging and crying, and hoped if he told Mum that it went well, he wouldn’t have to go back.

George followed the signs for the smokers’ area, and found his way to a wide metal door at the rear of the hospital. George pushed the door open and stepped onto the crumbling concrete stairs. A head swiveled to look at him over a shoulder, and he realized he’d interrupted someone.
“Sorry.” He turned to go back inside.
“Now there’s a seeping wound if I ever saw one,” the girl on the steps remarked. George paused, half-in, half-out.
“Excuse me?”
“There.” She stood up and put a finger to his chest with great surety, staring him in the eye. “It’s gaping and seeps relentlessly. Cut to the core, and you never knew your core was so deep. If there’s a soul left inside, it’s certainly rent apart; shredded into a million tiny pieces that scream and burn and never cease their wailing. The voices of those pieces shriek louder than the Damned, not a moment’s peace to you do they give.” She spoke these words intensely with the lyrical rhythm of a declaiming poet, and refused to surrender her hold on his eyes. George could see the famous images of Dante’s Inferno in his mind’s eye, and imagined the cacophony of Hell’s endless hoards. She might just be correct.
“And no matter how much it bleeds, or how long and loud you scream, the wound never even scabs over.” George stared at this unlikely Poet, who had so aptly explained the sensation. The girl let her hand drop from his chest, and raised a cigarette to her lips with the other.
“Aren’t you a little young to be smoking?” George asked. The Poet regarded him calmly.
“How old do you think I am?”
“Twelve,” he replied with confidence. The Poet didn’t answer, but took another puff.
“You were an identical twin,” the Poet said decidedly.
“You’re so certain?” his voice went quiet and frail.
“You walk like a pair, but you’re only one now.” Her words carried the undercurrent of a melody. She exhaled slowly from her nose, and fine trails of grey smoke surrounded the Poet’s face. “You don’t know what you’re doing here; you don’t feel the Group like it feels you.” George stepped out fully onto the concrete stairs and let the metal door fall shut. He put his hands in his pockets and stood calmly. If she was young, she didn’t sound it.
“There’s no such thing as beginner’s luck here, in case you’re wondering.” She lapsed from her poetic chant. She sounded young and cynical without the force of her lyrical tone. “Nobody has an epiphany the first time.”
“And I suppose you have?”
“The healing process is bullshit,” she stated confidently. “Makes no sense, like the ends of rainbows, or zero-calorie Coke.” The Girl took a quick puff from her cigarette. “I’ve been coming here for 5 years,” she confided. She tapped her cigarette, and a large chunk of ash fell to the concrete. “Three months,” the Poet said, peering at him shrewdly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Three months since your twin died.” The Poet’s eyes were intense; calculating; expectant. He nodded, and wondered how she could know such detailed information from looking at his face. “That explains it.”
“What?”
“You haven’t learned to own the death. It happened, you know that well enough,” she inclined her head. “But you’ve got to own it. It wasn’t an event, or something that happened to your twin, or the actions of another.” She crushed the spark of her cigarette under her toe as she spoke with her chanting melody, and reached into her back pocket for another. “It’s something that happened to you. You‘re alive. He‘s dead. It‘s yours now.”

The Poet put another cigarette in her mouth and spoke around it as she fished for her lighter.

“You’re the one who has to carry it around every goddamned day and night, so own it.” The Poet paused to light her cigarette. “It’s yours and has forever changed you. To own it is to accept that you will spend the rest of your days on this earth with blood running down your legs, dark and thick, staining the sidewalk.”
George listened, entranced by her rhythmic words; like she was an African storyteller, calling out words in semi-song to the deep beat of a drum and the rattle of a gourd.
“That when you die,” she didn’t even seem to pause for breath, “it’s a shattered soul that will leave your body a wasted shell, and the mortician won’t see the hole in your chest. But it’s there.” The Poet tapped her cigarette again, and more ash fell.
“So get used to leaving bloody footprints everywhere you go. You’re bleeding for a good cause; let that be some small comfort to you.” The Poet flicked her cigarette away and moved to step inside. The spark rolled away into the alley and out of sight.
“We are the lucky ones,” she looked over her shoulder to tell him.
“How?” he asked, deflated.
“Would you rather he had to bleed like this for you?”
George bowed his head and covered his eyes with his hand. He hadn’t cried during Group, and he had no intention of doing it in front of this twelve year old girl.
“We are the guardians of our twins’ hearts,” she said somberly. He didn’t look up, but heard the metal door shut. She was gone.