Is There an Evil Weasley Twin?

An original editorial by Devlina LeStrange

Although Fred and George Weasley are identical, seem to be joined at the hip and usually act and think the same, I believe that the ‘good twin evil twin’ cliché applies to them and that it is Fred who is the evil twin. Through frequent perusing of the Potter books, and the fact that the twins are two of my favourite characters, I have dug up some evidence to support my theory!

Firstly, I’d like to point out that it is Fred drives the Ford Anglia to Little Whinging in order to rescue Harry. This could suggest that it was his idea to steal his father’s car. This isn’t necessarily evil as it was done to help another (Harry) but it was a serious risk and the car was taken without permission. (CoS, p.25) Next is a quote from Ron Weasley: ‘When I was three, Fred turned my – my teddy bear into a dirty great spider…’. This seems particularly mean due to the fact that all Ron did was accidentally break Fred’s toy broomstick. As a result Fred has left mental scars on Ron in the form of an arachnophobia (CoS, p.117).

In The Prisoner of Azkaban, when Ron, Hermione and Harry are in Honeyduke's looking at the different sweets. Ron tells Harry that when he was 7, Fred gave him an Acid Pop and it burnt the roof of his mouth off (PoA, p.149). It is Fred who drops a bag of Ton-Tongue Toffees in the DursleyÂ’s living room with the intention that Dudley would eat one thereby swelling his tongue (GoF, p.46), and it's Fred who wants to blackmail Ludo Bagman after he wonÂ’t pay them their winnings from the Quidditch World Cup.

'-thatÂ’s blackmail, that is, we could get into a lot of trouble for that-' '- weÂ’ve tried being polite, itÂ’s time to play dirty, like him. He wouldnÂ’t like the Ministry of Magic knowing what he did-'
‘I’m telling you, if you put that in writing. it’s blackmail!’
‘Yeah, and you won’t be complaining if we get a nice fat pay-off, will you?’
(page 492)

I am attributing the red lines to Fred, because Ron says “It’s my business if you’re blackmailing someone, George’s right, you could end up in serious trouble for that” (GoF, p.493) . This shows that blackmail is Fred’s idea and George is the one who’s against it. In The Order of the Phoenix, Fred says to Sirius ‘I don’t see you risking your neck!’. Harry notes that ‘Sirius... looked... as though he would quite like to hit Fred’ (OotP, p.42). This is quite a strong reaction to provoke in someone (even though it is in the highly volatile Sirius) but I think it is something that George has never done. It is true that in Book 5 it is George, not Fred, along with Harry who attacks Malfoy on the Quidditch pitch. However, this is only because Fred was being held back by three other players (Spinnet, Bell & Johnson). Fred later expresses the desire he had to beat Malfoy up; ‘I would’ve pounded the little scumbag to a pulp if you three hadn’t been holding me back” (OotP, p.370). In Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them, next to the entry for ‘Puffskein’, Ron has written: ‘I had one of them once, what happened to it? Fred used it for Bludger practice’ (FB&WTFT, p.34). If you actually think about what this entails and how docile Puffskeins are, this is a pretty evil thing to do.

All this shows that Fred has a slight evil streak which has not (yet?) been displayed in George. I think both twins have got potential for some interesting storylines in the next two books. They are both away from the fairly protective confines of Hogwarts, they are extremely eager to help out the Order and they are cunning and have developed a range of magical gadgets some of which could prove useful in the fight against the Death Eaters. Hopefully, with their news storylines their characters will develop. Perhaps they will get separated or one of them will die, and although it will be interesting to see how they cope without one another, I donÂ’t think I could take the loss!

6/11/04