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Chapter Text

Percy—

I am afraid that I am writing to you with bad news: you will not be invited to the wedding, or to any of the related celebrations. As much as I had hoped that the wedding would be taking place in brighter times, Fleur and I both agree that if anything, we could all use a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, with the current situation, this also means that you cannot be present. Aside from the seemingly more menial concerns, it is also a matter of the safety of us and our guests.

Though me and Charlie made the decision not to cut you off or chastise you, I also have to be honest with you and say that that decision is becoming more and more difficult to honour, not just emotionally but also practically. Family and politics aside, I’m not sure you realize what you are doing to yourself. Maybe this will be a wake-up call.

Hopefully there will come other opportunities for us all to celebrate together.

Take care,
Bill

The letter is not really a surprise. Percy rests the spoon against his lower lip as he reads it again. “Reads” is not quite accurate, rather his eyes carefully trace the movement of Bill’s hand over the parchment. He looks for where the ink shifts, from refills or because Bill has rested on the quill, tries to look for hidden meanings. There are rarely hidden meanings with Bill, however, a quality he usually appreciates but which now feels stifling. In the beginning of all this he would meet with especially Bill but also Charlie fairly often. They would meet for lunch or dinner or just walks where they would have long conversations about their family or about life after Hogwarts or about the magical world or about politics or about morality. Recently, though, the conversations are shorter. The owls are fewer. He reads the letter once more, measuring the ink as if there could literally be extra length hidden within the potential excess of it on the page. This is when Percy is interrupted.

“Excuse me, are you alright?”

Her accent is a very distinct type of London that he might have been able to pinpoint had he been born and bred in this city. He opens his mouth and realizes he has not the faintest idea of how to replay. “Uh. Sorry?”

London girl hesitates for a moment, during which Percy comes to the realization that the pub is coming to life in the way it only does as Friday evening begins, and that maybe even this quite modest set of robes does not pass for muggle wear. “No, I was- You seemed a bit lost and…” He realizes that she is looking at the parchment and the rust-red ink on it, so he turns it face down on the table. “…My bad, really. I shouldn’t’ve interrupted.”

“No,” he says. “That’s alright. I suppose ‘lost’ isn’t all wrong.” She has one hand fidgeting with her hair and wrapping the tight curls around her fingers. As he speaks, her expression shifts from embarrassment to relief, taking on this gentle curiosity that has him feeling… some sort of way. “I actually-“ he continues, much in the same way as when you haven’t said anything out loud for a day or two and you are unsure if your voice will bear. “I received some bad news. It isn’t anything unexpected, but nonetheless.”

London girl nods slowly. “I’m sorry to hear,” she says. It sounds a lot like an invitation and though maybe he is just imagining it, it is February of 1997 and Percy Weasley has not had anyone ask if he is okay in a long, long while.

“Thank you,” he replies, immediately failing to contain himself. “My brother is getting married and I’m not invited.”

She sits down and looks him over. “I’m sorry,” she says again, before catching herself. “I mean I’m an only child myself, but that sounds really… Are you not getting along?”

Percy pushes the since long empty soup bowl towards the bartender. “You could say that. Rest of the family, mostly. It’s a long story.” She is still observing him. He is not used to people observing him, at least not like this. “I, uh, thank you for asking.”

“Of course. Or actually I saw you and you stood out a little bit from the crowd, and it made me curious, and I guess that’s why I noticed. Audrey.”

Muggle London girl reaches out her hand, so he takes it. “Percy. I worked late so I just stopped by for something to eat.”

“Oh, so it’s a uniform? Are you in law?”

“You know what? My job is the only thing I am talking to anyone about these days and to be frank with you it’s terribly boring.”

“That’s fair. I’m waiting for some friends, she just got dumped so- I suppose that’s why I’m kinda tuned in to people being a bit down? Anyway, if you wanted to come along for a pick-me-up I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”

Audrey is wearing a pale denim jacket, a short dress, and combat boots. It is at this point that Percy realizes that she is very pretty. This is not the kind of thing that usually happens to him. In fact, nothing like it has never happened to him before, so his gut reaction is a resounding “thanks but no thanks”. Percy is not the kind of guy who “goes out”, let alone with strangers, strange muggles at that. Percy is the kind of guy who works late on a Friday evening to not become a suspect actor when his family name becomes yet closer associated to groups which the Ministry of Magic are about to label as “terrorist”. Percy is the kind of guy who works late on a Friday evening because the alternative of cooking dinner for one and spending the whole weekend engrossed in a book is beginning to lose its glamour of independence.

It is this absolute perplexment at even the suggestion of joining this London stranger and her even stranger friends for a non-magical night out in the big city that makes him hesitate. Of course Audrey would not know that about him, she does not know anything about him, or his family.

So why not?

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m not joking!” she says, lighting up into a smile and inexplicably he feels himself mirror it.

“No?”

“No! Who do you take me for, Percy?”

“I don’t know, Audrey, who do you take me for?”

“Someone who needs a distraction? Especially if you’re in law.”

“Bureaucracy.”

“My God, your situation is dire!”

“I guess that leaves me with no choice then, does it?”

“Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, but according to my calculations one option is clearly the better one.”

“What are you, then?”

“An interior designer. Is that a yes?”

Percy hesitates again. He diverts his eyes from hers to linger on the letter before folding it up and slipping it into the inner pocket of his cloak. His brain is all Percy. Painfully predictably Percy, with objections about having to change into something more muggle-appropriate, about how he does not know these people, about how maybe they want to go to a club and he does not like the music they play at clubs or at least the music he thinks they play at clubs and he especially does not like dancing and he especially does not like dancing with the kind of people who go out clubbing. Then he remembers the prefect common room.

1993. Cedric Diggory’s birthday. Roger Davies had smuggled in drinks. With the radio turned up loud and for once they had all gotten along. Cedric had smiled from ear to ear the whole night. When Percy and Oliver left for the Gryffindor dorms, the sun was rising and the couches full of prefects giggling like you only do when about to give in to sleep. Percy ran into Dumbledore a few days later: “I heard that there was a birthday celebration among the prefects for Mr. Diggory?”, he had asked with that knowing look that only he had mastered. Percy had been stunned, flustering as he scrambled for excuses, reasons as to why he had not intervened. “I was happy to hear it. It strengthens me to hear, Mr. Weasley, that you all understand the delight and importance of coming together across the houses, especially among the prefects and Quidditch captains.” Of course, sir. He never told anyone.

“Yeah,” he tells Audrey, strange and pretty London muggle, tasting the words as they leave him and feeling unexpectedly invigorated. “I believe it is.”

Chapter Text

“Audrey speaking.”

“Um, hullo, it’s-“

“Percy?! I was starting to think that rational mind you told me about was getting the better of you.”

Percy clears his throat. “I don’t have a phone.”

Outside the air has that patent British dampness, a rain that hangs fixed in the air rather than falling any particular direction and is thus impossible to guard oneself from. “What?” Audrey laughs at the other end and it comes through with a particular echo-y quality which makes him wonder if that is simply the state of muggle communications or if it is this receiver that has seen better days.

“I don’t have a phone and I didn’t realize- I didn’t get around to finding a phone box until now. But I did always mean to call. It was very kind of you to invite me.”

“Better late than never. It seemed like you had a good time so I was a bit bummed out I didn’t hear from you.”

“Oh, I did. Sorry.”

There is a moment of silence through the wire. Percy turns the coins in his hand, glancing up at the machine, thinking to himself that if there is any fairness in this world he will not have inherited his father’s ironic inability to deal with any sort of muggle technology. He slots another coin in for good measure. “That’s alright,” Audrey says, then: “You seriously don’t have a phone? Is this part of the whole cult-y family thing?”

“What’s wrong with writing a letter?”

“Well, sometimes you think of someone and your brain becomes so engrossed with them you just have to hear their voice.” The static sound sparks in his ear. On the road outside a car horn blows. The windows of the box are fogging up and he understands exactly: as with a friend’s face in the green flames of a floo-fire, or their voice through a howler, it is as if she is right there with him. Only she is right by his face, talking into his ear and only to him, like he remembers standing in the cigarette smoke outside of the club and waiting for her friends to get their jackets. “You know?”

“I do.”

“Have you got any favourite spots in London yet?”

“Nothing worth sharing, I’m afraid.”

“Lucky you I do, then. When are you free?”

Now that he has confirmed the numbers scrawled on his arm was not just residual delusion from a fever dream? Anytime. He slots another coin into the machine. “Thursday?”

“Perfect!”

Audrey is in constant motion. It seems like that to Percy at least. She is meeting people, working, doing things. Little by little, it leaks into his life, making him realize that the time between the end of the working day and the following morning can actually be filled with a lot, only one cares to go out looking for things to do. As much as it embarrasses him that he never has anywhere else to be, she always seems delighted when she calls him up to come join her and her friends for something and he is inevitably available, a joy he sees no reason to deprive her of.

Percy has never seen so much of the world. Between movies and pub quizzes, winter has never been over so quickly. “My friend has two extra tickets to Manic Street Preachers, are you coming?” Of course he is. Audrey introduces him to Walter and Gigi and Marvin (“oh, that’s right, you already met Marvin- that first night, remember?”) and it is like nothing he has ever experienced before. It is the energy that runs through him when finally mastering a difficult spell, feeling the magic rushing from his core and through his arm out into the wand, releasing into the wild. Only in this tightly packed venue the air is electric with it, coming at them from the men on stage through guitars and rhythm, received by the crowd which moves as one being and returned to the band. When she asks him how he liked the band he tells her honestly that he had been expecting to feel like the weird one out but in a way he had managed to disappear into the tumultuous crowd. She nods, licks the salt from a chip off her finger, rests her feet against his shin under the table. Then he tells her just as honestly that he never thought of himself as a music person but that maybe he does not have to be one, maybe he can just go to concerts and enjoy the band and be astonished with the experience. Audrey laughs. “I liked them,” she says. “More than when I’ve heard their records. Nicky Wire is cute, too, we got eye contact for a moment. D’you think I’d have a chance?” He gives her a look so unmaskedly devastated that Marvin erupts into a fit of barking laughter. It is two in the morning and they are in a kebab shop in east London and when Audrey smiles at him, Percy is mortified and elated and completely normal. Walking home she holds him by the elbow. She reaches almost up to his shoulder. They kiss good-bye and her braids fall over the back of his hand when he reaches up to touch her. “I wasn’t serious about Nicky Wire, you know,” she says and it makes her sound as flustered as he feels. “I’m a bit weak for guys in dresses, that’s all.” Percy does not correct her, tell her that what she has seen him in a few times now is a robe and not a dress, instead he leans into the warm space they are creating between them in the cool hours before dawn. Maybe, he makes a mental note to himself, being special is not about what he thought it was.

On Monday morning he dreams of plastering his desk with Audrey. Frozen muggle photos of this one moment in his life which is somehow both his most painful and joyous. He does not, of course, because he is a professional and public face for the Minister of Magic and additionally, the tone used about humans without magical inheritance is becoming exponentially harsher. Rufus Scrimgeour flips through the weekly report Percy has put together for him as usual, about to dismiss him in such routine fashion that Percy has already turned to the door when he is called on. “One moment, Mr. Weasley.”

“Sir?”

Scrimgeour stacks the wad of papers against the desk before putting it down. “I noticed you have been doing less overtime lately,” he says as he tests his quill. “How are things with your family?”

“Well, I haven’t heard anything new so I suppose they would be fine. As for my time I have been spending more of it on… feeling at home here in London. Would you need more hours from me, sir?”

Scrimgeour does not look up from the schedules and reports. “As long as the work gets done, Mr. Weasley. I was just curious.”

Percy gives a short nod. Since their unsuccessful visit at The Burrow over Christmas, the questions from the Minister about the Weasley family have become scarcer. A relief, but what work Percy seems to have these days is the work he makes for himself out of the countless PM’s and letters that go through him and into the Minister’s office. “Anything else, sir?”

“That’s all.”

Chapter Text

Malcolm Barter is a friend of convenience these days. He is at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, a few years older than Percy, with a grit and cynical optimism that at the dawn of his path as a career-oriented adult wizard was inspiring but has since become unpleasant in a manner that is difficult to describe. Outside the window of the restaurant, a few shopkeepers are putting off work to chat and bask in the cool sunshine of early spring making its way down this narrow part of Diagon Alley. “At the end of the day,” he continues, eyes lingering on a wizard who has paused in the street to check things off an improbably long scroll of parchment, “we are responsible to the witches and wizards of this country. We are a wizards' government. Goblins and all the other Beings currently complaining about being excluded have historically refused to allow themselves to be represented by us, so it is quite the bold move to come to us now with these concerns, don’t you think?”

Percy, who just put the glass to his mouth, shrugs at the rhetorical question. Malcolm politely waits to see if he has anything to interject before continuing but Percy cannot bring himself to debate him on the technicalities of his statement: while it might be true that the attempts of negotiating the rights of goblins to work within the Ministry are as old as the Ministry’s direct collaboration with the muggle governments, any offers have inevitably included the demand of goblins permanently giving up their appeal for the lifting of the wand-ban, with the latest propositions declared as “degrading” and “embarrassingly ignorant” by goblin press. Malcolm continues.

“Now, I am not saying that these concerns are pulled from the air, clearly there are unsavoury forces in motion here. Dark forces which the ministry have been very proactive in addressing once reliable information has been in place and which this exact proposition is all about, in fact I think it has some of the most aggressive measures of protection I have ever seen, working in this department. That said, I think it is quite transparent that, for the goblins especially, these concerns are mostly just an opportunity for political gain. It is quite obvious that especially the new regulations which they are so concerned about, really only affects magic users who are actually living part of their lives in the non-magical world…“ Another truth by technicality. Percy scoops up the last of the sauce on his plate onto a potato. “...this playing up the supposed guilt of the Ministry, creating a… victim complex, really. It really is about time we start speaking plain English about the fact that if the goblins wanted it, we could have had a proper collaborative relationship a long time ago, but for the pride and principle of feuds long past. Don’t don’t quote me on any of this, but thanks to naiveté and rushed attempts at atoning for what this time last year was a completely reasonable stance… Well, it really is obscene charity that we are approaching.”

Uncrossing his arms, Malcolm leans back in the chair, weighs on it a little. “Well,” Percy says, measuring his words as he pushes his now empty plate aside, “I don’t think you are wrong that this increased budget to the… is it just the Goblin Rights and Interests League or is it the whole coalition of Beings’ organizations?” Malcolm nods. “I think you are right that it is a matter of optics. Around the time I started working for Fudge he was wringing his hands about cutting into that funding and a lot of the response we got then amounted to ‘money cannot help us if the work we do goes ignored.” He rolls his eyes and Percy in turn ignores it. “That said, you have to admit that now is not the time to make enemies.”

Shaking his head, Malcolm reaches into his outer robe and pulls out a purse, counting out coins in the palm of his hand. “Bought allyship is not worth much, Percy. You have to play the long game. I’m not saying the goblins do not make good allies, they are definitely a force to be reckoned with, not to mention one of the most integrated groups in wizard society. I absolutely think that not re-opening negotiations for political integration sooner was a mistake – hell, if we had, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this position today and the wand-ban wouldn’t be such a holy cow – but there is no use in dwelling on the past and we need to be financially minded if we are serious about fighting another war. Time is running out for playing on the defensive. You have worked with both Fudge and Scrimgeour, you know what a difference a proactive and strong leader makes.”

“If nothing else, he is a much better boss, so I won’t argue with you on that.”

“Glad to hear. Look, I have a meeting to be at, did you make up your mind about chess tonight?”

His mind has been made up for a while now but in true Ministry fashion a hard answer will always be met with suspicion. Malcolm stands up and grabs his cloak. “Sorry, not tonight. Maybe next time.”

“Are you sure? Gavin is bringing some friends from his old job, sounded like he thought you might get along well with at least one of them. Apparently she became a registered animagus at sixteen, he spoke very warmly of her intellect.”

The smirk says it all. Declining it with a genuine smile is somehow the best feeling in the world. Audrey covers the inside walls of his mind to the point where he really does not even care about who Gavin’s friend might be. “I really can’t. Have fun, though.”

“Alright, lunch is on me. See you around, Percy.” Malcolm raises a hand and leaves him behind with the empty china and the pile of coins on the table. He peers out the window to catch a glimpse of the watchmaker’s shop-window, counts the hours, pretends he does not see his dad coming down the street in conversation with a Ministry woman he does not know the name of.

“Tea, sir?”

Mr. Lilaj has crows’ feet to his ears and an Albanian accent that only truly comes to life when he becomes – in his own words – stirred by passion, such as when listening to the Hippogriff races on the radio. “Yes, please. Very nice fish today.”

“I am glad to hear, I have a new chef, see. Brilliant wizard, came to Britain from Romania on his grand tour and wound up staying, very qualified chef.” While Mr. Lilaj chats, the dishes float away towards the kitchen, ducking past a waitress as Percy receives a mug. Mr. Lilaj leans over to fill it for him. “Very qualified, I tell you! I wanted to sell him the restaurant, he was very interested, but refused what I was asking. Madness! It is a prime estate at the centre of the magical world in Britain, I told him! With a good reputation and a good clientele, all a qualified man like himself could wish for to put his name on the map, I told him. He would not have it, very good businessman, lucky him I need the funds! Very well, I said, then I will sell half and you will own half and you will be in charge, then when you see what an embarrassingly good offer I have made you, you will buy the other half from me then.”

Percy wraps his hands around the mug and follows the vivid gesturing of the hand still holding the teapot. “Why are you selling?”

He shrugs. “I am going home for a while. Now I know what you think, you work at the Ministry, of course you have the situation under control. Nothing to be afraid of. However,“ - another swing with the teapot – “when you have lived as long as I have, and when you come from a country like mine, you learn when it is worth it to take chances.”

“It sounds like you are concerned?”

“Concerned? Sir, as long as he-who-must-not-be-named is not in Albania, I have no concerns! They say he was there for a long time and that is something we all knew at home, even if we did not say it loud, so I hope he will not want to return now. I have done my divination, as we all should, and so I have no worries at all for myself as long as he is anywhere but in Albania! But I have my family there.” He finally sends off the teapot in the same direction as the dishes, dropping the coins Malcolm left behind into the pocket of his apron, then gives Percy a warm smile. “England has been good to me, but a man of many fortunes like myself need to see the value even of the things which cannot be measured in gold.”

It is at this moment that Percy realizes that not only is the news of today the history lessons of tomorrow, but that history itself is pressing its nose against the window, breathing heavy down his neck. He reaches out his hand in an attempt to shake the beast off. “Well, I have to wish you the best of luck then, Mr. Lilaj. Diagon Alley won’t be the same without you.”

Mr. Lilaj takes his hand, his grip firm, he is still smiling. “Thank you, sir. Let us hope that I am wrong, so that you may keep that luck for yourself and your home, sir.”

Chapter Text

Percy is alive. Percy is wearing muggle clothes. Percy is one in the crowd. Percy is dancing. Poorly, admittedly, but who cares? Audrey smiles at him as they move to this absurd and kind of awful electronic-based pop music and sometimes it is a popular song and the club sings along and sometimes it is even popular enough that Percy has heard it before and recognizes it. Surrounded by people she is the only one who sees him. Show me how good you are she mouths at him through the noise. Laughing, taking his hand, inviting him to play along. It is bewildering. He has tumbled out of the magical world and into this secret that for his whole life has been hidden in plain sight, this wide expense that for once is not defined by its edges, a space wherein he is not seen by anyone but this one person who matters. He is utterly overcome by it. Perhaps because it was so long since last time he did anything that could be constituted as playful. She hooks her arms around his neck and forces him to lean down to meet her.

It is not magic, but electricity, the same pulse running through not just him but those around him. Magic is a gift, to a family or an individual, a gift which he understands and controls. Though still incomprehensible, he is learning to recognize the spark and jolt of electricity, realizing that it is intuitive and ever-present. Unifying. Shared. A whole different type of mystery. Her fingers brush over his collar. The static bites and pulls him closer. Not magic - electricity.

“What are you so afraid of?” Audrey breaks the kiss. The kiss which he had intended to be tender and romantic, though restrained, but which had quickly gotten out of his hands. Audrey is standing two steps up from him so that their faces are leveled, holding his face in her hands, observing him with great care.

“What?” His voice feels out of breath and it makes him very aware of his blush.

She smiles, but it is sympathetic rather than joyful. “Sorry, I was just thinking-  Percy if you don’t want to…”

Silence. He feels her thumbs brush over the edge of his sideburns. “If I don’t want to…?”

Audrey braces herself before trying again. The night is cool. Down the street there is the sound of the living city. “You have had a very… unusual upbringing.” He nods to urge her to continue. “I don’t understand it. Even if you could tell me what… group or what religion or whatever it is, I don’t think I would, but what I do understand is that for all that I have known you, you seem like you don’t want to dwell on it. I propose something and you say ‘I have never done that, but I want to try it.” Percy nods again, though admittedly it feels like he knows less and less about where she is going. “But you don’t want to follow me home.”

“Oh.”

“And I just want to know what that is about.”

Percy falters. He has no idea. The thought has never even occurred to him. It is as if the muggle world is a dream, an amusement park filled with the most elaborate sets and convincing actors but actors and sets nonetheless, nothing but painted plywood once you go through the door. As he thinks the thought that Audrey’s button nose and clever eyes are so perfectly in his eyes that she might as well be an actor, he realizes that perhaps he has it all the wrong way around, that maybe the assumption that none of this was of any real consequence made it easier to dive headfirst into it.

A police car passes on the street behind him, sirens off but lights on, with the blue flashes lighting up Audrey’s face and catching in her hair. It makes her look vibrant: her dark skin reflects the synthetic lights of the muggle world in a way that makes him wonder if neons and LEDs were not made for her and her alone. He imagines her vibrancy in the warm light of candles, lanterns, and fireplaces. She pulls back to watch it and turns back as Percy realizes he should probably have replied. When she leans in again she rests her forehead against his and the sensation makes his soul ache with the realization that all of this is real. “If you don’t want to… If there are hard limits, I can understand that, but I need to know.” The words fail him. He can write court documents and reports and briefings that not a single diplomat could object to but speaking to a woman he likes is impossible. How does he tell her that London’s streets were always the one place where their worlds intersected by necessity? That just how Diagon Alley was always out of bounds to her, he always assumed that he was physically unable to cross the threshold into her home, that her secrets must be as big and forbidden as his? Even though his voice is locked and bolted at risk of giving up the one secret his whole society has held for millennia, his hands move from her waist to her back, palms and fingers spreading over the small of it and across her shoulders under the jacket. On his cheeks, her hands are cool and tense. “Percy… I want you to come inside with me. If that means we are up all night or if you sleep on the couch or if we have a cuppa and you leave in an hour… but if you do not at least give me a chance to understand what this is, what you want, then I am not sure I can keep doing it.”

In other words, nothing else matters. He tears his eyes away from her lips and embraces her. He pulls their bodies tight together and breathes her in. She was wearing perfume before but he can no longer make it out from the rest of her. There is now only one thing that is both true and uncomplicated: he wants to be the kind of person who follows Audrey home. In fact, there is nothing he wants more than to follow her home. So that is what he tells her.

This is how Percy not only enters the muggle world but also for the first time truly exits the magical one. In Audrey’s flat, whatever magic there is has absolutely nothing to do with the Ministry or the N.E.W.T.s or grindylogs or Gamp’s law. Correction: electricity, not magic. He still has secrets he keeps from her, but they become immaterial in the light of the two of them being part of the same world, a world where he shares her complete indifference to concepts such as wizard or muggle.

It is not until years later that he realizes that the crossing of this threshold, the dismissal of the largest secret in the magical world as “immaterial”, is a tradition honoured by thousands of witches and wizards before him.

Chapter Text

Despite being each others' lone roommates for seven years, Percy Weasley and Oliver Wood had not remained close friends for long. They had briefly discussed doing their grand tour together after graduation and had even spent a solid ten minutes sobbing together on the floor as they finished cleaning out the dormitory, though either of them would sooner proclaim wizard cricket as the peak of magical achievement before admitting it to anyone else. The grand tour fell through, Percy got a job at the Ministry, and the last time the two of them spoke was at the Quidditch World Cup.

That said: Percy would recognize the voice of an enraged Oliver Wood anywhere.

He had heard it after paying a visit to the Office of Magical Propaganda and Public Communication to request a report for the Minister’s office, outlining the potential risks of some of the suggestions that had come from the Auror Office in response to heightening inter-magical tensions, all together making for a confusing contrast to an affect he associated with the announcement that Snape would be judging an important Gryffindor game.

“…four, let me say that again, four unicorns! Vanished! Do you hear me, Hobb?”

“Mr. Wood I implore you-“

“Because I don’t know that I am making myself clear here! Do you know what happens when a beast kills a unicorn? There are remains, because unicorns are massive, Hobb! Even a dragon isn’t gonna eat that whole, no dragon we would not know about, I’ll tell you that much! Maybe you should come with us out into the woods sometime, see the creatures you’re supposed to care for, might be helpful.”

“Mr. Wood-“

“But I suppose you desk wizards are good at budgets and math so maybe you’d care to help me out with this one? Let’s see now, four full grown unicorns, gone without a trace within a six-month period. Hm, that sure is a lot of unicorn blood, I wonder who could have any use for that? Then add two muggle murders and the holiday manor of a notable wizard supremacist just around the corner, both of which the Ministry refuses to investigate, I just cannot get it to add up!”

“Oliver?” He whips right around at the sound of Percy calling on him. Jacob Hobb jumps a little in his chair and looks at Percy with suspicion. Never the subtle one, expressions of confusion, surprise, and finally a subdued resentment plays over Oliver's face. Percy notes the mid-length outer robe in leather, a fresh scar on the side of his face, as well as the dried mud on his boots. Hobb takes the moment to regain his place in the conversation Percy just interrupted.

“Mr. Wood, I understand your frustration, but this behaviour will not be tolerated. You and your colleagues are contractors of the Ministry and as such you represent us-“

“And gee whiz am I glad to, Hobb, maybe then when the death eaters come walking into this place they’ll give me a medal for supplying them with an army’s worth of unicorn blood!”

“Mr. Wood.”

“Mr. Hobb, excuse me-“

“Is this a friend of yours, Mr. Weasley?” Hobb’s face has the shade of a ripe plum, matching his robe and reaching all the way up his bald scalp, his hand having just reached his wand. Presumably with the intent of calling on security.

Percy meets Oliver’s eyes for a moment but does not linger on trying to decipher the expression in the case that Oliver might raise his voice again. “We shared a dorm for seven years. Oliver- Mr. Wood is a Gryffindor through and through and while I was not here to hear the initial exchange I do-“

“I don’t need your help.”

It is said with a composed vitriol that takes Percy out of it for a moment, but quietly enough that Hobb does not catch on to it until Percy pauses. “…What I want to say,” he continues, suddenly entirely unsure of what he is trying to achieve, “is that while I have known him to be of short temper, this is because he is passionate and resilient. While this makes him a skilled wizard and broomsman...” As well as proud. Continuing, he turns his attention to Oliver, speaking through a tight jaw. “I am sure that he is enough of a wizard to recognize that it does not necessarily make for the most compelling rhetoric, such as the one I just heard, as well as sensible enough to make sure he leaves this matter on a dignified note.” Oliver just crosses his arms and tilts his head, his eyes fixed on Percy, who is becoming steadily more aware of the curious glances of passer-byes peering into the office. Hobb drops the wand on his desk with a shake of his head. “Am I wrong, Oliver?”

“I take it you’ve been in touch with my family, then?”

Oliver shrugs in response and tilts his broom against the empty table next to theirs. It is a very early lunch by Percy’s standards and the upper room of Merlin’s Pocket is almost empty. Aside from him and Oliver, there is a young goblin reading by the window, a witch with a small child, and two witches and a wizard in hushed conversation over a proverbial mountain of empty teacups and precariously piled divination books. “Charlie and I have spoken a few times. By pure chance, really. We have business with him on occasion.”

He notes that Oliver’s accent seems to have thickened in general and in the same moment realizes that it has been almost three years. “Oh, because you are with the Department of-“

“Contracted by, but yes, not that a dragon would know the difference.”

A silence follows, mercifully interrupted before becoming all too awkward when the waitress comes to serve them their pies. Oliver looks out the window and down onto the street of Diagon Alley, holding his glass of stout by his lips. “I didn’t know you wanted to work with creatures.”

“I don’t work much with the creatures, really. It’s a ranger job, so I do a lot of flying and walking and generally keeping an eye out.” He shrugs again and gets to work on his pie. “It keeps me out of doors and close to home.”

“And quidditch…?”

This question awards Percy with a quick look which he is incapable of deciphering. Pity, perhaps. “We can’t all be the same people we were at school, Perce.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Am I? Maybe I misunderstood, but lap dog to the top chief and eager to put your nose in other people’s business? Blind trust in the people with the power? Rationalising any idiotic rule for rule’s sake rather than risk losing your position?” Another silence follows. Perhaps Percy’s inability to respond is what softens Oliver’s body language and with a sigh he leans back against the chair before breaking the silence. “Puddlemere didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry to hear.”

“Don’t be. It’s just not the time right now, that’s all. Keepers age well. You?”

“At this rate? I’ll lose my hair before my dad does.”

Oliver snorts. “Yeah? I saw him in the Atrium, you’ll have to put in some serious work for that, but you didn't hear me say it. You didn’t actually believe what you told them, did you?”

The thousand-galleon question. Percy’s jaw tenses up involuntarily. Their relationship was always based on an unabashed openness and a no-questions-barred policy, which may very well just have been a consequence of two boys growing up together in a close shared living space, because it now seems like a distant and foreign notion. “I don’t think it matters. The situation was more complex than that.”

“You politician, you.” He says it with equal parts disdain and humour. “Want to use that diplomatic prowess of yours for a good cause?” Percy raises an eyebrow and Oliver leans in, lowering his voice as he continues. “So, unicorns. The short of it is that we’re having a massive surge in poachers. Our job is to prevent and then gather evidence if, or when, it happens. The Ministry have been ignoring our sounding the bell for months now because…” He blows a raspberry and makes a vague hand gesture. “Working on your PR, I guess. Anyway, we’re already underfunded to begin with but we’ve managed to carry out an investigation on our own, unfortunately we don’t have the mandate to carry it out any further. Hobb’s got the report and request for assistance we put together for him, unless that little roach has tossed it on the fire already, which wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I admit, he is quite conservative, but he is on our side. I would be careful saying things like that.”

“Whose side, Percy?”

“What do you mean ‘whose side’? The right side, of course. The Ministry’s side. Working against he-who-must-not-be-named.”

“The side of mostly old-money, almost exclusively old-magic wizard families, with an internal supermajority opposing the reform or removal of the wand-ban? The side that for years ignored any hint that you-know-who might be planning his return because it was politically inconvenient? The side which has how many people on their payroll for routinely and systematically doing memory wipes on muggles?”

“That is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of-“

“I’m just saying, Percy. You’re a smart guy. Maybe more than one wizard within the Ministry has good reason to not interfere with you-know-who’s minions stockpiling unicorn blood. Maybe the Ministry doesn’t particularly care about the wellbeing and integrity of non-magical people.”

“You’re being conspiratorial, Oliver. That’s why this whole system is set up, to reduce friction between the magical and non-magical world, which you know as well as I do has worked much better than any other system. Many of us in the Ministry have close connections to muggles so to say that we do not care for their wellbeing is simply not true. Especially those of us who live in the muggle parts of London - frankly, most of my friends outside of work are muggles." At this last comment Oliver raises an eyebrow at him. "What, just because I grew up in a magical community?"

"I wasn't expecting you to hang out with people who you couldn't impress with your impeccable never-refill quill charm. Or with being buddy buddy with the minister of magic himself for that matter." Percy feels his ears heat up with blush. While he is keenly aware that "most" is in this case a quite small number, the belief that he is making things up wholesale takes him straight back to the prefects' common room, pretending he is not listening to the gossip and then confessing to Oliver on their way back to the dorms that he and Penelope Clearwater have actually been going together for a few weeks now and please do not tell anyone about it. The memory is so vivid that was it not for Olivers sideburns going all the way down to his chin now he might get lost in it.

"I'll have you know," Percy says through a tight jaw, "that the girl I am seeing likes me perfectly well despite being in complete ignorance of my magical abilities."

So maybe it is just that wave of nostalgia that does it, or perhaps they were never quite so estranged from their old friendship as would be convenient, but the expression of surprise and curiosity and subdued glee that lights up Oliver's face immediately tears down any walls between them. "Huh. Haven't been seeing her that long then?"

He cannot help but smile. "Just a few weeks proper. We met in January. February? She is... quite something."

"Figures, if she's managed to get between you and your career, mate."

"She is a welcome distraction from work," Oliver returns Percy's pointed look with a smirk, "it really is quite nice to be with someone who has no idea who you are or what others think of you. Someone to whom my name means nothing. It is liberating. Don't look at me like that, Oliver, you know what I mean."

"Not really. I never had a problem with who I am."

A silence falls between them. Percy reaches for his glass to buy himself some time to choose his words before this moment of rekindled trust between them slips out of his hands. "I made the choices I made," he then says, "with the information I had, with as much good will as I could manage. I am not saying it was the right decision, but I did what I had to do to be able to live with myself and if the response I received had been different then, maybe things would be different today. That said, she has been more generous to me than anyone in my family or any of my magical friends have been in a long, long time."

"What do you mean generous?" He says it quickly and in a way that makes Percy think he is actively steering them away from the implications that were just tossed at him. It is a peace offering which he is eager to accept.

"She is..." This is when he realizes that he has not actually spoken about Audrey with anyone until now. "She assumes the best of me. Of people in general. She knows that to a degree I am not of her world, but she invites me into it nonetheless, tells me why she cares for it and why she hopes I might too. She invites me to meet her friends and to take part of her life and she knows that I would do the same if I could but she has never once demanded more of me than I was able to tell her."

"So what did you tell her?"

Percy pushes his plate aside and glances at the trio at the other end of the room who are now packing up their books. A few more guests have entered the café since they began talking. "Nothing that wasn't true. That I am estranged from my family, that I was mostly home schooled, that my whole life has been spent in a culture outside of the one she knows. She thinks I was in a cult."

Oliver blows a raspberry and leans back against the wall. His arms cross behind his head. "Fuckin' 'ell, mate."

"If this lasts I will talk to her. Eventually." Oliver’s knuckles tap against the wall behind him and his eyes dart from Percy to the other guests to the street below them outside the window. He seems to be chewing on the inside of his cheek. "Will you be seeing Fred and George before going back north?"

"If they're available. We don’t really keep in touch but I heard business is going well. Why?"

"I don't expect it to come up but I would prefer it if you kept this between the two of us." Oliver raises an eyebrow. "We haven't been together for very long and you know I always preferred keeping my privacy when it comes to these things." His words about the Ministry seems to have lodged themselves between Percy's ribs in a way that makes them impossible to ignore and Percy has a feeling that the steady gaze sees straight through him. Maybe the Ministry does not particularly care for the wellbeing and integrity of muggles.

"Of course," he replies with a shrug. Easiest thing in the world. The signs suggest that this meeting is not going to ignite an intense owl-correspondence between the two of them.

"I will ask Hobbs about that report," he adds, feeling flustered again for reasons he does not particularly feel like exploring. "I need to make a visit to the aurors' office anyhow so I am sure I will have the opportunity to ask them to get in touch with you directly if you would prefer that."

The offer is accepted and they sit in companionable silence for a bit as the café begins to fill up with lunch guests. Finally, Oliver breaks the silence: "Also, Perce," he says, reaching for his cloak as they both stand up, "you know I'm not great with words, but... Don't make yourself dumber than you are, alright?"

They part with a firm but somewhat cautious handshake. Percy notes it down in his journal later that night to get it out of his brain: Do not make yourself dumber than you are. Maybe the Ministry does not particularly care for muggles. Whose side, Percy?

Chapter Text

"When do you go from surviving to living?" Percy's voice is a whisper against Audrey's shoulder. Her skin is warm under his fingertips. Outside, the approaching dawn makes the skies pale. "At what point do you stop running away from hunger and fear and start running towards something?"

The only true comfort she has to offer him is the weight in the bed next to him, the radiant heat of another human, a reminder that when he gets caught up in the winding paths of his mind he does not then cease to live in a physical world. There is still work to do and it is dignified and essential. "I think you will always be able to live," she says, eventually. "If we are starving and withering, we still spend our energy on loving others, we will still dream and imagine. Because we say someone will 'live on', right? Even if they do not survive."

Silence. Being with her feels like living. Her smile, the scent on her clothes, the mis-matched coffee mugs in her kitchen, the muggle photos of her parents in her bookshelf, feels like living.

"Maybe," she continues, pausing to yawn though neither of them want to sleep, "it's like you say. It's about whether you're running towards something or not."

Outside a bird is chirping. The London sky is unusually high as dawn begins to break. "What are you running towards?" he asks.

Her fingertips in his hair. "I want to be part of the world," she answers. "Does that make sense? I want to do all that I can. I want to grow old and have memories and friends from long ago and far away and things I tried and failed at but at least I tried. I feel like I never did anything as a teenager because I was so worried... I'm still worried."

"About what?"

Silence again. Pale morning light. "I'm worried that I am faking it. That I don't actually want the things that I want or that there are other people who deserve them more. That I am both annoying and boring. That I'll fuck up and that the work my parents have done for me has all been for nothing. Then I remember that most of all, I worry that one day I will look up and life will already have passed by, with all of my decisions having been made for me.” Her body rises and falls with each steady breath. “Is that pretentious?”

“Not at all.” Pale morning skies. His body is pleasantly heavy with the exhaustion of… living, perhaps. Her hand in his. The covers are halfway down his back. “So what if it is pretentious? Pretension means you care. So what if it is about something other people think doesn’t matter.”

It is a silly thing to say in the context but Percy can feel himself sinking into sleep. Audrey chuckles: a blow of air through her nose and a smile in the still dark room. “It always seems to me that people regret the things they don’t do more than the things they do, that’s all. I don’t want to resent myself for not trying.” He hums to acknowledge her, trying to file her words away in the back of his mind for when he has more presence. “What about you? What are you running towards? Percy?”

He brings himself to wake. Her touch on his forearm. Running towards? "I don't know," he whispers. Her. Anything. Nothing. Home. He had to leave. He has to leave. Maybe he could fake his death and shake the chains of the ministry. Maybe he would not have to worry about his family then. Maybe he could leave together with Audrey. Maybe he could be someone else. Someone who wants something aside from good grades and his name on a placket on a ministry door. Someone who fills their home with the frozen moments of muggle photos and plenty of teacups in case someone comes to visit. Someone who looks not just at ground below them in an effort not to trip but towards the horizon line. Someone who does not resent himself for not trying.

“I want to live too,” he tells her as the sun rises, “but I don’t know how”.

Chapter Text

Percy's rook smashes Malcolm's knight into shards and dust on the board. Malcolm scratches his chin and leans forward. His glass makes a gentle sound as he sets it down on the coffee table. The apartment on Sybil Place was once a grand suite but has since become narrow and snug as the expansion charms have worn off over the past century or so, making it unreasonably affordable for an address on one of the few hidden, magical streets left in central London. Malcolm and his girlfriend Liz have told Percy as much. Liz is in the doorway to the kitchen with another friend of theirs, Douglas, who Percy only remembers out of politeness and sheer force of will.

They are respectable young adults, of liberal politics and strong ambitions and magical culture, who it befits Percy well to have among his relations. Initially he thought of it as them, in a sense, teaching him how to be an adult wizard. He has since come to an uncomfortable realization that this is probably as grown up as it gets. There are no secrets. The primary difference between the common rooms at Hogwarts and the apartments of young magical professionals lies mostly in the contents of their glasses and, indeed, Liz refills his and Malcolm's with dark red wine when she passes. She smiles warmly at Percy when he thanks her. Malcolm tells his king to move. Percy finds his strategy unthreatened and carries on. Malcolm's eyebrows furrow deeply. Liz and Douglas continue chatting and Percy allows himself to listen in while the cogs turn in his opponent's mind.

"...she is absolutely heartbroken."

"I hate to say it but what did she expect?"

"That was what I was thinking, too, but I didn't want to be insensitive. The thing is I sincerely doubt she would react like this if it wasn't also for the fact that Portugal was such an important experience to her, because it really feels like she is projecting all of that onto this one man, you know?"

The rich taste of wine coats his tongue. Malcolm retreats a bishop. Percy counts the turns in his head and advances. Feeling pleasantly confident, perhaps with the slight aid of the wine, he catches more of the conversation: "Poor girl. Was this her first proper boyfriend?" Silence as Liz presumably nods. "Sheesh. I guess at least she won't have to see him around."

Malcolm's other bishop moves and Percy takes his rook. Malcolm retaliates with a well-placed knight and a "check". Wait, really? He takes a beat, reassesses the board, then curses himself.

"...and I was just trying to be a good sister, because at that point I really think that all you need is validation and distraction. I know that's what I needed when I had my first major break up, but like you're saying, at least she doesn't have to see this guy all the time and I really feel like in three years time..."

His plan upended, Percy re-strategizes, re-calculates the turns. Two turns and he take Malcolm's queen. Next turn: "Check." He loses his rook, sacrifices his final bishop, blocks a defence move. "Check."

"...because it's not like she's the first witch to ever have loved a muggle. We've all been there, you know?"

"Oh absolutely. I think my first..."

"Check mate. Well played, Percy." Malcolm smirks at him and offers his hand across the coffee table. "You really had me for a bit there."

Percy shakes it and they raise their glasses to one another as the chess pieces re-materialise from across the board. Douglas and Liz come and sit down by them in the sofa, continuing their conversation as the chessboard rebuilds itself.

"...but good God I just wanted to grab her by the shoulders, really. And I told her, which is what I said to Malcolm, too, that - and obviously there isn't anything wrong with going out with a muggle, but it is just so naïve to think that that will be your end game, especially for her because she is just so young - so I told her all of that, that if you just want to fool around a little, muggle boys are a great way to do that and that even if we don't really talk about it a lot of us have, but, you know..." she pulls her hair behind her ear and takes a thoughtful sip of the wine.

"Exactly," Douglas picks up, pouring the last of the bottle into his own glass. "I was actually talking to your friend- Gavin, right?" He looks towards Percy and furrows his brows a little, "you weren't here that time, I don't think? Anyway, I think he was being a bit drastic and tasteless about it but at the core I think he is correct, there is just always going to be a... a power imbalance in a relationship like that, so anyway, what he said was..." Once more, Percy feels the hot breath of future history down the collar of his robe, of the fact that he will look back at this and feel... something, but he is not yet sure what. It is an experience he seems to be having more and more frequently. He is in the prime of his youth, wearing his favourite robe - an emerald green one he bought for his own money – to a casual dinner and drinks with chess with his friends. People who like and respect him and laugh at his jokes, who work important jobs, who know important people. Yet, as soon as their company is no longer filtered through the veil of only partial focus, he cannot escape the feeling of wanting to crawl out of his own skin. "...that a wizard who turns down any witch for a muggle girl either has a lot which he is trying to compensate for, or has found the prettiest woman on the continent."

Liz nods. "I agree that it's a bit crass," she says, "but I see what you mean, he's got a point." Malcolm chuckles and shakes his head. A brief silence follows. Percy does not notice any of this, instead his eyes are fixed on the chess pieces, small glass sculptures now returned to their original positions. "Who won?"

"I did. It was a close call, though, Percy almost had me but then he got sloppy."

Percy nods. "Hm. Well, as you said, close call. Your turnaround was impeccable."

"You should learn to quit while you are ahead, Percy, then you would be unstoppable."

Chapter Text

Audrey fades into waking as Percy leaves. He is already dressed and when he notices her stir he reaches out to brush his hand over her naked shoulder. He says something. She is not yet awake enough to process it but smiles and receives a kiss to her forehead. She is back asleep before the apartment door closes.

He has folded her clothes for her. Presumably as he got ready for work he folded her clothes and left them in a tidy pile on the dresser. Last night he listened with grave focus as she vented her frustrations about her senior at the agency: a man who sets her up to fail with inadequate briefings and is then angry with her for putting in the work to deliver on deadline. Percy had seemed confounded by this, asked if perhaps it was just insufficient communication and when she explained how she would be berated for her dependency if she asked too many questions, gone quiet with the task of figuring this man out. “Percy,” she eventually told him, “he doesn’t want me to succeed.”

“That’s absurd, you’re brilliant-” She had raised her eyebrows to remind him of the conversations they had had before. A flash of realization crossed Percy’s face. “Oh,” he said with that genuine surprise in his voice, a tone which she finds deeply charming but nonetheless makes her awkwardly aware of the webs spun around them by the motions of the world.

In a text message from a week ago a friend accuses her of letting him off easy: “Sometimes you meet a guy who uses all the right words and knows all the right things,” Audrey’s reply reads through the inevitable spelling errors of a number pad keyboard, “but who just is not doing the work. But not knowing the right words does not mean you are not doing the work.”

“Can you even do the work if you don’t know what needs to be done, though?” her friend had asked her. He is doing the work, she thinks, pulling the crop top over her head and adjusting the straps of her bra under it. Even if it is just the work of making her feel valued and listened to. In the kitchen the coffee is by some miracle still warm. The coffee he makes somehow always seems freshly brewed: she has no idea how he does it. Outside is a misty spring drizzle and she curses her sartorial optimism. The owl is sleeping in its cage. If they were to marry, would he continue folding her clothes for her? Would she still find it cute? Would he still think of it as a gesture of care? When Audrey was a young teen she once asked her mother why she put up with her father leaving open books and crosswords and notepads all over the house. After all, she always got on Audrey’s case about not tidying up, so why was she not sick and tired of telling her husband the same thing?

Her mother had silently contemplated the question for a few moments before replying with her patent grace and patience: “some ideals are worth sacrificing for sharing love, peace and respect with someone. A bit of a mess is a small price to pay for devotion.” Then she had paused and looked Audrey up and down before taking her hands. “There are so many things you will have to compromise on, Audrey, but promise me that you will never compromise on being treated with dignity and fairness. Do not make sacrifices for anyone who would not be willing to do the same for you.”

She returns to the bedroom and to Percy’s dresser in pursuit of a jumper to borrow. At the bottom of the drawer, she finds a bottle green knit one, the letter P large on the front. It is wonderfully soft as she pulls it on and it is only when she looks in the mirror that she feels a slight hesitation: while it is too big for her it is at least a bit smaller than most of his garments, combined with the obvious sentimentality of a personalized jumper. She watches herself in the mirror. Behind her the windows are slightly foggy with condensation.

Eventually she closes the dresser, writes a note for him, and grabs her keys. On her way out she stops by the massive cage and reaches between the bars, gently stroking the feathers of the owl, who peers up at her with large amber eyes before tucking himself in and returning to his rest.

Chapter Text

Whenever Bill and Percy meet in London, Bill does not bother with Muggle clothes. While Percy is the first to admit that his own muggle wardrobe is not as extensive as it ought to be for a wizard living in a muggle community, this was initially an endless well of annoyance for him, what seemed like a lack of trying. Quite soon, however, he saw that the eyes that found their way to Bill were not characterised by the confused curiosity and distaste that he usually associated with wizard dress in muggle settings. Perhaps the long hair and pierced ears means that the attention given to Bill's looks from muggles mostly lie along the spectrum of painfully obvious attraction and fond nostalgia for classic rock and free love.

Bill always was the best looking of the Weasley brothers, Charlie and the twins at least had an untouchable confidence and self-sufficiency to their appearance, leaving Percy as the... what? Not as any serious competitor, at least, with a rather unremarkable build and his father's deep-set eyes and cowlicks.

Bill's brown and pink paisley patterned robes catch more than a few eyes in Victoria Park today. It is lousy with teenagers, families, couples and old people. All of them basking in the glory of springtime and people-watching. The octagonal and green-tinted sunglasses tie the whole look together. Percy tries not to be annoyed with this. Whatever attention is directed their way is far less concerning than what he himself has received whenever he has ventured onto the muggle streets in his work robes. They have not seen each other face to face for months now and some things are simply not worth being pedantic about. Telling himself this he ignores the trio of young women walking past the two of them on the grass, stealing glances and giggling among each other, instead focusing on the ice cream melting on his tongue. Bill does not seem to notice them either, but then again, there is the ring on his finger.

"I suppose that if any one of us would live in the big city it would be you," Bill ponders, licking melted raspberry sorbet off the heel of his palm.

"Not Fred and George?"

"Fred and George always had to be the biggest fish in the pond, they would never leave the magical world."

"I never left the magical world."

"You might as well have," Bill shrugs, "whatever world you are in now is quite unlike the worlds me or the rest of the family live in. You do seem surprisingly comfortable with it, though, I have to say. Much more than when I last came here."

He glances at Percy, in his henley shirt and chinos and canvas jacket, all recent purchases after learning to see what the muggles his own age wore. He will probably never grow used to jeans, or feel entirely himself in short sleeves, but becoming no one in particular is an experience he appreciates. The sun warms his face. "Winter puts a damper on anything, Bill," he says. "I suppose that I have been learning the language of the city. The tone and pace of it. It is about independence, in a way, maybe that is why you think it makes sense for me."

"How do you mean?"

"Even without magic I can easily make my way on my own, the roads and maps are there, the convenience stores are in place. The structures are everywhere, because they have to be, because most muggles also need them."

"Mhm. I was thinking a lot about that when I lived in Berlin."

"But you're settling down out on the coast?"

“Why make it hard for yourself? If you have the gift of magic, then use it, I would rather live by the sea than the Thames.” He wants to ask Bill if he never feels lonely, but can already imagine the response, the confused expression. Why would he feel lonely? His family and friends are only a floo-stop away if he needs them. Percy cannot imagine how to explain the comfort of the downstairs neighbour giving him an awkward good morning when they run into each other in the stairwell, or of the sound of birthday parties or fights from the family across the hall, even (or perhaps especially) when Audrey does not pick up the phone. This town is filled with thousands upon thousands of people who are just as lonely and confused as he is, looking for some semblance of family in the glances they exchange on the tube or in the grocery line. Of course Bill is unable to relate to that.

“It is about life, I think,” he finally says. “Never truly quiet, always work that needs to be done, always people going somewhere.” Bill nods.

“Fleur prefers the silence,” he says. “She says hi, by the way, and sorry about the wedding.”

Percy focuses on the warmth of the sun and the smell of the budding trees, the dogs running back and forth across the fields, the sounds of children playing. “You do what you have to do.”

Again, Bill nods, balling up his napkin between his palms. “Do you have anyone?”

“Sorry?”

“Friends, neighbours, co-workers who aren’t death eaters- it’s a joke, Perce.”

He does not fully retract the glare he just gave Bill. “Work takes priority right now. While I disagree with you about… your conclusions, there is no denying that these are difficult times. I truly believe that Minister Scrimgeour is the man this community needs right now, so the easier it is for him to do his job, the better the job done will be.”

“Perce.”

“…and I do have friends, don’t look at me like that. Outside of work, too.”

“From Hogwarts?”

“Why does it matter to you? If you really want to know I’ve actually gotten to know some people outside of the magical world. They’re very nice people and it is really quite insightful.”

Bill pushes the sunglasses up into his hair and turns to observe him. Even without meeting his eyes, Percy spots the way his eyebrows furrow. “It matters for the same reasons I keep in touch with you, mate. I’d like to see us all get out of this mess, preferably not worse for wear than we got into it.” Before he can reply, Bill continues. “And I’m happy to hear, but…”

“But? I thought members of the Order were supposed to be without prejudice.”

“Without prejudice doesn’t mean without sense or caution. What are you doing to keep you and your friends safe? Do they know about…”

The subtle gesture of flicking a wand makes Percy's stomach knot. He looks out over the park again, only this time Bill is right: he is not part of this world, no matter how much he might try. Even if Dumbledore might be going crazy, that does not mean he is completely without basis and Percy would be fooling himself by outright denying the trends of growing anti-muggle sentiments, even among Ministry officials. He feels his jaw clench. “Don’t be ridiculous. Open magic is a radical fantasy that won’t help protect anyone. Perhaps some of them I would discuss it with eventually.”

With a sigh, Bill takes off the green tinted glasses, inspecting them. “I wasn't the one who said anything about open magic, just for the record.” He continues: “if nothing else, at least it doesn’t seem like you’re being watched.” Bill folds the glasses and hands them to Percy, who accepts them, if only under the guise of curiosity. “For now.”

Percy weighs the glasses in his hands, then holds them up in front of his own glasses to peer through them. “You’re being paranoid,” he replies, “I may be working under the Minister of Magic, but in my current position I am hardly of any unique importance. Unless there are reasons for why I should be concerned about my connections to you?”

The hesitation speaks volumes. Bill stands up. “We should all be concerned, Percy,” he says with another sigh. On his face is a weary expression which Percy recognizes from their father. When offered back the tracking glasses, Bill declines, instead giving Percy a drawstring pouch fitted for them. “I always work under the presumption that I'm followed. Anyway green suits you better.”

“Uh-huh. Are you going?”

“I am.”

“Tell Fleur I said hi.”

“I will.”

“I would love to see the house next time, maybe. It sounds lovely when you describe it.”

Bill weighs his words. “I’m afraid you won’t, Percy. Take care.”

Percy nods. “Take care.”

Then he watches his brother as he leaves.

Chapter Text

There is a ghost at Percy's desk. Someone else wearing his clothes, his person, his name. Be it the briefing meetings with the Aurors’ Office or Thursday chess nights with Malcolm - Percy himself is simply not there. He sees his father ignoring him in the Atrium, his brothers keeping busy in Diagon Alley, but Percy himself is elsewhere. Deep under the earth of London sits Percy's ghost, grateful that there is no natural sun to shine through what must surely by now be a mere spectre. Percy himself is on the tube to meet Audrey's parents for dinner.

"You aren't wearing your robes as often," Audrey comments and pokes Percy's ankle with her sneaker, pulling his hypnotic focus from the interior of the tunnels swishing by outside the window. As little as he wishes to see his father in himself, there are some devices of muggle ingenuity for which the only appropriate response is awe.

"It didn't seem appropriate," he replies, "I still quite enjoy them and I have no shame about my culture, but there is a time and a place, sometimes it is quite nice to…"

"To blend into the crowd?" Audrey smiles at him, her hand in his elbow.

"Am I becoming predictable?"

"It is called getting to know one another, love, people tend to do that when they go together for a while.”

"Oh dear. And no one told me?" She snorts and jabs him in the side.

“Anyway,” she says as the train leaves the tunnel and blue skies become visible through the windows, “you look good like this too.”

Mrs. Tucker does not remind Percy of his mother. The comparison has nothing to do with either the fierce storm of care which is Molly Weasley, nor the quietly observant, impeccable hostess mother of Percy’s girlfriend. It is just difficult not to think about when he had forgotten so many of the ways in which a child and a parent loves one another. Perhaps not forgotten, but pushed out of his mind, folded neatly and hidden at the bottom of his sweater drawer. Mr. Tucker tries to ask about Percy’s background in a way which betrays his well-mannered attempts to not snoop, precisely but… Audrey reprimands him with a silent glare. Mrs. Tucker gracefully redirects the conversation and Percy feels a tinge of shame at the realization that he is involving their daughter in what is probably the best kept secret and largest conspiracy of the United Kingdom. He takes Audrey’s hand in reassurance and offers himself up best he can to her father: Mr. Tucker is a large man with as large a presence, a salt-and-pepper goatee and thick plastic rim glasses, whose questions are not suspicious or intimidating but an enthusiastic come-hither. The what-could-have-been’s scratch and claw at his insides, more frantic as he navigates Mr. Tucker’s curiosity, as the evening passes. Perhaps it would have been easier if they had not gotten along and, rather than unable to return their graces, he had just been unwilling to.

If his and Audrey’s mothers are distinctively different, it is all too easy for Percy to imagine their fathers in exuberant conversation. There is a familiar spark in Mr. Tucker’s eye, an itch to pick the world apart at the seams to try and figure it out, then putting it back together again. Mrs. Tucker asks fewer questions, but they are precise and careful, presenting him with the unforgiving experience of being seen. Sometimes he catches Audrey glancing back and forth between him and her parents with an expression detached from the conversation.

She grew up in this house. As her father takes care of the dishes she shows him around. Everyone breathes out for a moment. “I keep forgetting you are an only child,” he tells her as she shows him her old bedroom, overlooking a small back yard and an equally small football field squeezed in between the suburban houses. “I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself if I had had this much space growing up.” His eyes travel over the ghost-room, some of it used for storage space, but mostly left to marinate in the moment she left it in when moving out. “Your parents are lovely. I wish I could be more…”

When the sentence is left unfinished she offers him her hand. He takes it and moves up next to her to look out the window. “You are plenty,” she says, “they like you more than anyone I- well, technically you’re the first person I’ve brought home to meet them.” It takes the right light for any potential blush to show through on Audrey’s cheeks. Whenever he catches it, it makes Percy beam with silent delight, though this time he knows with just a glance. On the grass past their backyard an old man in a pork-pie hat walks his dog. The shadows are growing long.

“How does it feel being here?”

Audrey ponders the question. “I come here quite often,” she says, “I always loved my parents, but I don’t think I liked them much until after I moved out. But it’s weird. I think it was easier to forgive them than it was to forgive the places. Dad’s given me rides into town from here sometimes and it’s… I guess ‘cause they don’t feel alive to me, the places, that is. They are still the same as when I was a teenager. They haven’t changed much and I haven’t exactly made any new memories around here.” Without hesitation, he accepts her silent invitation, a small gesture which has him bring his arms around her and welcome her to lean back against his frame. The pale blue walls of the room with their sun-bleached marks from posters and photos, residue of tape and blu-tac, is both disarming and discomforting. Soon returning downstairs, they find Mr. Tucker browsing through cases of vinyl LPs, offering them whisky when he spots them on the narrow steps.

Percy has tried whisky and did not much care for it, instead joining Mrs. Tucker for port, which he decides not to pretend to be familiar with. Then he decides not to pretend to have heard of the artists offered up by Mr. Tucker. It is relieving. Mr. Tucker raises an eyebrow and offers the paper sleeve to Percy. “I think Audrey mentioned you are a fan, sir,” he says as he observes the black and white photograph. When the voice fills the room and settles in his ears, he corrects himself: “I have heard this. Audrey played- or on the radio, maybe?”

Mr. Tucker offers up a big smile. Then Percy is introduced not just to Nina Simone but to the rows and rows of records which detail the history of a man as much as a culture and a country. Many cultures and many countries. More than could fit in a wizard home and it makes him feel the cramped hollowness of poverty in new ways. Mr. Tucker becomes animated as he talks about playing the clarinet, about bands and musicians Percy has never heard of, about the great new tradition. Percy drinks it all in. “Time, Percy,” he says, “it is all about time. The time is fixed. You may navigate it as you like but you got to keep up. Everything else is voice. Expression. Conversation.” He gestures as he speaks and Percy nods and nods and nods. The world just extends and extends and extends. He catches Audrey observe him from the couch with the same curious expression he saw in her father earlier.

They chat for a while. Mostly Audrey and her parents, bantering and debating, as Percy leans back next to her and observes. As all families, they have their own language, shorthand and references. Audrey debates her father and Mrs. Tucker drops a terrifyingly precise argument which has them both stop in their tracks. Then Audrey points out her mother’s crush on what Percy figures out is a late-night talk show host and the discussion dissolves back into banter and laughter. “Of course I found it tremendously boring!” Mrs. Tucker exclaims “Not once in my life have I ever even seen a F1 race, I don’t know why I-“

“Because Paul is a handsome looking host who makes all his guests seem absolutely charming?” Audrey chides with a grin.

“Yes!” Mrs. Tucker calls out, “yes! You cannot possibly blame me for this!”

There is a locked door within Percy behind which his memories of his own mother’s crush on Gilderoy Lockhart knocks feverishly in a plea to be let out. Or perhaps he is also behind that door, watching the conversation through a window, pressing his ear against the glass and hoping he can make out all the details. He seeks for ways to respond but his hands rake not through the rich earth from which he has grown, but the dust he has gathered over the last year in a fumbling, desperate effort to find something in which to re-root himself. He finishes his glass of port and decides he likes it significantly better than whisky.

They leave as the tea lights start burning out. All four of them suddenly a bit awkward as they stand at the door, unsure of how the customs for bidding this new potential member of their family constellation adieu for the night, might have changed in the past few hours. “She is a bit of a whirlwind, but I think you-“ Mr. Tucker comments as he takes Percy’s hand between his both to shake it. Audrey interrupts him with a sound of protest.

Percy smiles. “I am the middle of seven,” he says, “so I am not so easily overwhelmed. I mean, it would…” As he takes a step back his eyes meet Audrey’s. His words falter. “I… I like to think we complement each other like that.” She shakes her head through the smile. He imagines he can see the blush in the faint light from the doorway. She takes his arm as they walk through the mild night.

“Seven?”

He nods. The subway thumps. “Two older, four younger, five brothers and a sister.”

“You never told me that,” she says, which is not an accusation but he cannot help but imagine it as one. His thumb brushes over her open palm. The subway speakers call out the next stop. “Seven… is it terrible of me if I am kind of relieved I probably won’t have to meet all of them? That’s a lot of people to impress.” She cuts him off before he can answer. “Actually, that is totally terrible, now that I say it out loud. Sorry.”

“No need. From how your dad looked at me when I said I’d never heard of Miles Davis, I think that makes us about even.”

She laughs. “No. He likes you.”

Thump. Thump. Thump. Please mind the gap…

“Seven?” Her head on his shoulder. Her weight, the scent of her hair, the warmth of her hand in his. The soft ridge of her knuckles under his thumb

Percy nods again. “Seven.”

Chapter Text

“They killed Professor Dumbledore.”

This is the first time Percy recognizes the young secretary as a former Hogwarts prefect: a Hufflepuff witch perhaps a year his junior. It is the “professor” that does it. Her gaze is wide-eyed but steady as she stands in the open office door. Both Percy and the guild representative who has just left Scrimgeour’s office stare back at her in confusion. It is a late evening and the ministry building is quiet and sparsely populated.

Then the world explodes. PMs, owls, the roaring sound of conversational fireplaces all over the building coming to life. The slam of the door as the Minister of Magic exits his office, already halfway into his cape, his voice thunderous and commanding. “Weasley-“

“My brother-“ Percy begins, but the witch is backing out of the doorway to give space to the lion-like man approaching it. “If Hogwarts- my brother is-“

Scrimgeour is already halfway out the doorway. “The aurors are already arriving on the scene. Keep everything running down here. No comments to anyone on anything. Save everything that comes in. I will be in touch but expect to meet me in Hogsmeade by dawn.”

The Minister of Magic vanishes. The guild wizard excuses himself. Percy’s inbox begins to pile up with PMs. The young woman meets his eyes again. “My brother…“ Percy repeats weakly.

“Welcome, Mr. Weasley.”

Percy is not sure what he had expected from the headmaster’s office, but for a curious and magically literate teenager, it is a feast for the eyes. He tries not to appear too wide-eyed and investigative as he steps up to Professor Dumbledore’s desk. The old wizard smiles at him and gestures towards a chair. “I wanted to congratulate you on your position as Head Boy,” he says as Percy sits down, his back straight as he attempts to seem casual in observing the beautiful phoenix, preening itself perched on an intricate looking telescope. Dumbledore follows his gaze for a moment but does not comment on it before continuing: “I have heard that you are taking on the task with much rigor and spirit, both respectable qualities. How are you finding the role so far?”

The tower is filled with the warm light of the fall evening. Dumbledore gestures to a bowl of miniature salt liquorice kettles before taking one and leaning back into his chair. The entire situation strikes Percy as oddly casual. Whatever conversations he had outlined in his head now strike him as unsuitable or awkward or childish. “I am very honoured to be Head Boy, sir,” he begins. Hesitates. Continues. “It was a position I had always hoped to achieve.”

“Would you say it is what you had expected?”

He thinks for a moment and then nods. His eyes catch on the different magical instruments on the desk. “I think the role holds true to what I had heard, definitely, though perhaps…” The last words slip off his tongue before he has thought them through and he stops himself. Dumbledore tilts his head a little and Percy flusters as he realizes he should at least finish the sentence. “I had perhaps thought people would treat me with more respect if I achieved it.” It sounds silly coming out of his mouth but Dumbledore just nods. “Don’t misunderstand me, sir, taken as a whole the student body seems to have as much respect for me as for any other Head Boy. I hope I will be able to continue the tradition of the Head Boy being a voice of reason and authority, as well as a trustworthy link between the students and the teachers- but I suppose I had hoped that my peers would see the badge and…”

A silence fills the room and Percy’s blush deepens. He looks away from the headmaster behind the desk and up towards the sleeping portraits lining the walls. “I have found,” Dumbledore eventually says, breaking the silence, “that the challenging of authority is a sign of health in the relationship between any two parties. It makes things a bit more complicated but, I dare say, more rewarding for all involved. Of course, as you said, the role of the Head Boy is one of bridging the gap… I believe your brother struggled with balancing those two sides as well.”

“Oh, everyone loved Bill,” he replies, almost instinctively.

“Yes,” a smirk cross Dumbledore’s face, “and yet he also told me that often he did not feel that his authority was respected. It is a common conundrum among Head Boys and Girls. It is not unheard of that prefects who are offered the position reject it because of the difficulty in balancing those loyalties. It is a choice I have a great deal of respect for.”

“May I ask you something personal, Sir?”

“Of course, Mr. Weasley, though I cannot promise a satisfactory answer.”

He hesitates for a moment. “Is that why you rejected the role of Minister of Magic?”

“Oh, that old thing,” Dumbledore chuckles. “No,” he says, “though to be fair it was never a direct offer. No, at least no more than in the sense that one should always consider the effect authority has on one’s relations. At one point it was a position I would have greatly desired, but by the time the question came up I had realized that for me, it would have been a role of power for power’s sake.”

Though he tries to wait until he is absolutely certain Dumbledore has nothing else to add, the question is burning in Percy’s mind, slipping from his lips with urgency as the professor goes quiet: “Would you say that desiring power is a good indicator one should not have it, then, sir?”

Percy’s and Dumbledore’s eyes meet. The old man seems to measure the sincerity of the question, his wrists resting on the edge of the desk, his fingers steepled. “Let me offer you another question in response, Mr. Weasley: what happens with power in the hands of someone who is unwilling to wield it? There is certainly truth to the original question, but perhaps it simplifies matters a bit more than I think is helpful, without providing much guidance to those in positions of either power or disenfranchisement. What do you think yourself?”

“Perhaps that… there is a difference between desiring raw power and desiring the specific power necessary to create a specific impact.” He pauses to see if he can read a response from Dumbledore’s expression but finds nothing. A mild smile through the beard, perhaps, so he continues. “I think you are right that apathy for or distaste towards power might make someone who does not want it treat it irresponsibly- well, I suppose you didn’t say it like that, sir.” Dumbledore nods. “I suppose it is right and important that those of us who are given power are also forced to question whether we should have it. Whether we are able to use it for good.”

There is no rush in the conversation. The room glows with warm light which catches in the metal instrument on the table and the glass beads embroidered on Dumbledore’s hat. He seems to genuinely ponder Percy’s statement, choosing his words with a deliberation that makes Percy feel adult and childlike all the same.

“In my experience,” almost a minute has passed when Dumbledore breaks the silence, “people are able to justify just about anything. It is difficult to possess power without believing on some level that you are uniquely predisposed to and deserving of it. To a degree this may of course be true, especially when it is a role given to you by others, but in most aspects it is not. In this way I agree with you, Mr. Weasley, that power is a tool through which we achieve an outcome, ideally one which has been assigned to us with the expectation of our capacity for goodness. For this reason I am less concerned with power when it comes to me by names such as headmaster or Head Boy, than I am when I find myself with power which I have not knowingly received, or power which I am unable to name.”

The pause which follows is once again long. During this moment, Percy is struck by how old Dumbledore truly is, his age showing not just in the long grey beard but in the invisible weight of many decades of life which he carries with him. He is just about to reply when Dumbledore continues.

“From what I have seen it is this power, the one that we struggle to name or justify by other means, that we imagine as a result of our nature. Soon it becomes unquestionable and innate and when it does, no matter how harmless the issue originating this power might be, we become capable of cruelties and negligence which will make us strangers to any good cause; if you are worried about power, Mr. Weasley, I believe this is the power to be worried about.”

They sit like that for a while. The light takes on a colder hue. Eventually, Percy stands up, still feeling about as awkward as when he came in but with a newfound sense of understanding and curiosity for the old wizard in front of him, as well as respect in return. He gives a light bow and immediately regrets it. “Thank you for your time, sir, I will keep what you have told me in mind.”

“It was a good question,” Dumbledore replies, his expression warm. “Your experiences might bring you to an answer quite different from mine, Mr. Weasley, you will have to let me know.”

“Of course, sir- How about I become Minister of Magic, and I can tell you what you missed?”

The smile in Dumbledore’s beard widens and reaches up to his eyes. “Very well,” he says, “I will be looking forward to that, then. For now, do not hesitate to reach out, it is quite likely that past Head Boys have experienced similar conundrums to any ones you might encounter.”

“Thank you. Good night, sir.”

“Good night, Mr. Weasley.”

It is the first funeral Percy has attended. At least the first one he is old enough to properly understand. The experience is strange and while it does seem appropriate for the greatest wizard who ever lived, at least on a surface level, it has very little to do with his favourite mentor and role model. He leaves with a sense of emptiness but without any particular sadness. Mostly he just feels frustrated and restless after avoiding the gazes of his family. After the ceremony Scrimgeour relieves his entourage from duty for the rest of the day. Many of them leave to share a drink. Percy finds Oliver.

Oliver is there in the company of an old man with a scarred face and clouded eyes. He does not seem terribly surprised to meet Percy and introduces him to the man who Percy learn is his boss, an ex-professor at Hogwarts and, by extension, a past colleague of Dumbledore’s. He firmly shakes Percy’s hand and then removes himself quietly, giving Oliver a rough pat on the shoulder as he leaves. The two of them also take their leave, straying away from the crowd and towards the water, sharing a companionable silence. Oliver wears what looks like work wear, including a dragonskin coat, well-worn but nonetheless a lively and deep shade of pine green. His head is shaved. He is the first to break the silence:

“What’d it take to get through to Hobb?”

Percy shrugs. “Sometimes it isn’t the message, but the messenger. Did you get what you needed?”

Oliver snorts. The pebble beach crunches under his boots and he squats down, turning the rocks between his hands, feeling their weight and shape. “We never do,” he says, “but a team of aurors did show up with a warrant. Came up with absolutely nothing, of course, but… Oh, and we got our terms renegotiated so we could take on another ranger, which was just helpful in general. Seems like the poachers are laying low.”

Percy crouches next to him, scrolling his eyes over the grey, yellow, black rocks. Oliver has a few piled up in his left palm. He weighs them in his hand before standing up and with a sharp toss skips the flat stone over the surface of the lake. Percy counts to four skips. The next stone skips thrice. Then four skips. Then five. “I need an out,” Percy breaks the silence. “You know things,” he continues, “you’re involved.”

“Hey, now,” Oliver replies as he glances back towards the funeral crowd. “I don’t have any agenda but my own. What’s keeping you?” Oliver takes a few steps, then crouches back down, once more testing the pebbles in the palm of his hand.

Audrey. The comfort of knowing the world, while tense, is not in any real danger. Business as usual.

“Whatever. Here’s the thing, mate, that’s all off the beaten path. There’s no roadmap. Was it, those roads wouldn’ae be safe to travel… Oh-” He turns to Percy. “That’s the thing, in’nit?” Percy shrugs.

“The thing is that it’s not time yet. I still have work to do. I’m not ready to leave.”

Oliver turns back to the skipping stones. “Fair enough,” he says, “but the longer you wait the harder it will get. You know, most quislings didn’t exactly care all that much for the cause, they just had friends who did and didn’t see any reason to rock the boat against them.”

“Can you help me or not?”

This rewards him a sharp look. The next stone skips twice. “Maybe. I’ll be frank with you, mate, you haven’t proved to be the kind of guy I want to stick my neck out for.”

“I have a direct line to the minister. There has to be ways I can make this worth your effort when the time comes.”

“You aren’t as important as you think you are and neither am I. And anyway, if this conversation is anything to go by, you’d make a lousy spy. Not that it would help either of us – I already told you, there’s no great, big plot. Just resistance.”

By now the crowd from the funeral has all but vanished. A few stragglers hang around the grave and the shores of the lake but none of them loud or close enough to disturb the sound of the wind or Oliver’s throws hitting the water. “I just need somewhere to go,” Percy finally says, his voice low. “The Burrow? Not likely. Or the road? Doing what? I’m a coward, Oliver, wilfully ignorant at best. More likely, a traitor, a quisling or collaborator. I would be lawful game for every side. What options do I have? Faking my death?”

“So fake your death.” It cuts Percy off, delivered like a dog baring its teeth.

“This isn’t about saving my own skin, Oliver, if that was my concern I could just stick around- Family reputation or no, no one can argue with my blood, I would likely come out of it better off-”

“Boo-fucking-hoo.”

“I didn’t choose that. It is the clockwork of the world. You know this.” Despite being plenty taller than Oliver, he still feels him staring him down, subdued rage carefully reined. That might be what makes him weigh each word, giving it a gravitas which is unusual for how Percy remembers him, making the earth seem to tremble from the weight of the grave just placed on it.

“There never was a coward’s way out.”

Their eyes meet and Percy has nothing to say.

“Fuck your skin, Percy. It will never be about skin for you. If you want to cower, cower, pursue survival and keep your hands clean. The rest of us have work to do.”

He has turned on his heel back towards the grounds before Percy manages to pick himself up from among the pebbles, yelling his name after him, at which he mercifully stops and turns. “Give me a chance not to be a coward.” The wind has his eyes watering. “Please, Oliver. I was wrong.”

Oliver deliberates. He takes the strides back to Percy and press something in his hand. “We use these for long distance work with the rangers. When I am vanished,” Oliver says with low voice, “use this to find me. I will have nothing else to promise you but the knowledge that there is one person out there waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass and live up to the good house name of that old alma mater of ours. Every day for seven years I saw you question your belonging and every day I saw you deliberate that it was still your truth. And that, and only that, is why I chose to believe you now.

“If you are not willing to do that, if you are going to make this about your skin, then at least have the decency to be as cowardly and boring as humanly possible,” his voice lowers yet and his grasp of Percy’s hand is almost painful. The round edge of metal cuts into his palm. “A lot of folks would see this decision and call me a fool for it. They are right. For both our sake I hope you have no proof to give them, or I hope that whatever God you pray to is real fucking benevolent and merciful, because that will be your best hope at that point.”

It is the densest thing Oliver has said to him which was not about Quidditch. For a split second, he is struck with the impulse to leave the item in Oliver’s hand as the two pull away so that he might walk away and back into the wilful and unlit night, not convinced by his own innocence. Instead he observes the object in stunned silence. It is a smooth metal coin about the size of a pocket watch, attached to a chain, with a subtle glass prism in its centre. He hangs it around his neck and slips it below the collar of his robes. It is cold and heavy against his chest. He takes Oliver’s hand again and meet his eyes as they shake. “I won’t let you down.”

Neither of them believes it.

Chapter Text

Audrey breaks one Friday afternoon. Isabella saves her. She would call Percy but he is working even more overtime than she is right now and anyway Isabella knows this experience in ways Percy never could. She helps Audrey pack the set up. They do what is necessary and stuff what they can fit into Bella’s car and Audrey spend thirty minutes, exhausted and glossy-eyed typing up a note to leave at the desk of her boss to explain the situation, immediately regretting it once they are out of the by now locked and empty building.

Then they pick up Marvin and goes out into the suburbs to this warehouse a friend of his has made the temporary residence of a club of dubious legality.

She leans back and watches Marvin and Isabella fall into the debates as they always do. Audrey pretends to keep up with current events but mostly just listens to the radio headlines. Marvin and Isabella knows them back and forth, like two rabbis using the news as their Torah, discussing politics and ideology as if it was a form of prayer. Or perhaps it is more like a rosary: a series of arguments to be recited in pursuit of light and salvation. They rub off on her sometimes, but the practice never really appeals to her in the long term: most debates feel to her not like prayer but sacrifice. A method for filling the blanks of a map or making her way through uncertain or indifferent terrain.

Her father taught her how to do it. Her mother taught her when to do it, or more importantly, when not to engage. The whats and whys she has learned all on her own. Tonight, she drifts in and out of observing their motions and listening to their words, finding them at once comforting and painfully insistent in dragging her to face the cruel and burning skinned flesh of the world.

“I thought there would be four of us,” Isabella says, reining Audrey back to the present. “Is this where your boy’s limit goes?” Marvin goes from raising his hands in dramatic exasperation with her cutting the debate to lifting his glass with a small smirk.

“Oh, please, we haven’t been inseparable.” Marvin huffs theatrically into his glass. Izzy makes an expression of noncommittal agreement. “That said, apparently his job had a crisis of some sort, so he’s been deep in it for a bit. But I mean, this whole thing is… You guys get it. He’s a good guy, he tries to, but he just doesn’t. And anyway, maybe I want this place to stay just ours.”

“See, that’s what I’ve been saying-“

“Don’t be like that, Marv, she’s being cute.”

“No, okay, so it’s not about the boyfriend. He’s fine. Good looking. Whatever. We’re happy for you-“

Audrey cuts in. “Where are you going with this?”

Marvin turns on his words, weighing them in his mouth, reshaping them. He gestures to the dance floor at the other end of the old warehouse. “So it’s not about you, okay? I’m sorry about that. But aren’t you worried? It’s like the wall fell and Thatcher fucked off and now it’s all good and fun times- I guess like, more than ever we actually need folks to listen, you know? Everyone can agree that apartheid is bad but no one wants to look too closely at what their workplaces look like or whatever. Why is this the one place you can’t bring your redhead boyfriend? Why is it just fine with you that your man supposedly just won’t ‘get’ some things?”

Audrey and Isabella exchanges a glance. Isabella speaks: “You know that’s just what women do all the time, Marvin, right? Like that’s just what being a girl is like. You call your girl friends or your sister or your mother because even if your dad or your boyfriend is an intelligent and educated guy you just don’t wanna spend that time making your personal life into a political example for him. You call yourself a feminist, and I respect and appreciate that, but you haven’t lived this. Why would I ask of you to get it anyway? I’d rather you spend that energy advocating or something.”

Marvin scratches his chin. “Maybe,” he says, “but it just makes me think that you- Well, all of us, really. Again, sorry I made it about your boyfriend, Aud.” He sets down his drink to speak with his hands. “That we all keep making these precious spaces where we can pretend like things are all right. I’m not saying don’t do separatism, alright, I’m just saying we all seem so eager to tuck ourselves into these neat little boxes where we can avoid the fact that the world’s never stopped being fucked up. That these things are minor enough that it’s not worth the effort to induce the outsiders into them.”

There is a pause during which Audrey expects Isabella to formulate something clever and thoughtful. Instead, she calls across the table to be heard over the loud music: “Is this about Tony Blair?” Marvin looks a bit startled. Audrey snorts into her glass and feels the tingle of shitty rum and cola in her nose. “This is about Tony Blair, isn’t it?”

“Not everything is about Tony Blair.”

Once Audrey is done coughing she chimes in: “He’s not wrong, though,” she says. “It’s the clockwork of the world, I think, where you ignore things until you can’t ignore them anymore. So if things are shit and you can ignore them for once and the alternative is to feel them be shit and put in all that work that gets you pretty much nowhere, well, why shouldn’t you?” Marvin snaps his fingers as he finishes his beer.

“We got it too good. Or we think we got it too good. That’s what I’m saying.”

Bella furrows her brows. “Too good? Dude. Come on. Who do you think made the tunes that this…” She points up towards the roof. They all take a moment to feel the dancehall back beat. It has been a present pulse since they first got here to the point where Audrey had almost forgotten to think about it as anything but an echo of her own. “…Comes from? You think they had it a good level of good?”

It makes Marvin go quiet. His fingers drumming on his lips. Audrey recognizes it as part of the duo’s unending give and take. Isabella continues: “If I can’t go out dancing every so often then what’s the fucking point? Why would I introduce conflict to something just to prove a point? It’s not like we all don’t know. Difference is just some of us don’t get a lot of opportunities to ignore it.” He nods to concede a point.

“Who said that,” Audrey breaks in, “that thing about how joy is rebellion?”

“It isn’t,” Marvin responds. “Hope maybe. At most it is resistance.”

“Audrey’s right, though, sometimes you just got to turn the other cheek and be like ‘I’ve decided what I am willing to put up with today and this isn’t it’.”

“Sure. My concern is just that if it all comes back to putting up with what we can until we are unable to, who are we throwing under the bus, just ‘cause we think it ain’t so bad to put up with? There’s always going to be cruelty in the world, sure, fine. But whose exploitation am I signing off on here?”

The table quiets down and the rhythm and noise of the club fills the space.

“I don’t know,” Audrey eventually breaks in, “I don’t even know that I am qualified to make that decision.”

Marvin smiles. Not just a smirk but a bright grin, showing the gap between his front teeth as he leans forward, back into the conversation. The prayer. “Au contraire, Aud, you’re the only one who can.

Chapter Text

It goes two signals before he picks up. “Audrey?”

She takes a moment to respond but he knows it is her. “Did I wake you?” she asks in his ear. Vibrations from her vocal chords, air from her lungs, electricity through the wire as her presence extends across the city.

“No,” Percy replies, “maybe. I am not sleeping well.”

“You’re stressed from work,” she tells him with drunk confidence, “you should quit.”

He can’t help but laugh. Her voice might as well be a whisper against his naked chest and a grasp for anchor around his waist as the edges of her consciousness drifts off. “Maybe. How was your evening?”

“Good. It’s been a shit week. I miss you. Marv and Izzy say hi.”

They need their independence. They both know this. As that truth has become more explicit between the two of them, so has the admittance that there will never be a “too close”. There is no conflict between these two statements. They sit together in comfortable silence. At once all too far away from each other and painfully intimate as the plastic of the phone mock a kiss to either ear and cheek. Audrey twists the phone cord around her fingers. Percy speaks eventually. “I am glad. Do you want me to come over tomorrow morning?”

Silence. Then: “Yes please.”

She does not sound sad drunk, just buzzed, just sincere. “Good.”

“Are you making breakfast?”

“For you? Of course.”

“Good. I love you.”

“I love you too, Audrey.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow. Good night.”

Chapter Text

The summer passes and Percy ceases to believe in the calm before the storm. Or perhaps the storm has been going on for ages now. He imagines that it is coming. That he has this summer at least. That he can savour the bright skies burning his skin, the oppressive heat and restlessness of London in July, every single sun dress he sees Audrey in for these months. She is perhaps the same. They sit in silence sometimes after she tells him how much she hates her boss. How she is leaving, just not yet, but as soon as she can.

Percy amputates himself. He puts a torniquet on the ministry business. He goes in, he works, he leaves. He is the perfect servant, who gives no one a reason to speak to him, least of all his master. He despises them all. He ignores his father. He waits for something to break under the stress of this place as it twists itself into pretzels of unaccountability. He waits for the earth to swallow the ministry whole, for his wand to break, for his magic to dry up. He exits into the dusty sunlight painting London each evening and each time he imagines that behind him is nothing. One day he will try and enter and be faced with gravel. Halls and halls filled with rubble and detritus, irreparable, missed only in the abstract sense that you might recognize something which no longer has any chances of being. A civilization lost forever. The rest of the world none the wiser. There is no tragedy there. Some things are not worth the effort. He reads the muggle news and take Audrey out for picnics and boat rides and fancy rooftop dinners and they even attend a cricket game, just because, that afternoon thinking to himself that if he were to learn this language he might love cricket. He will not, but he could, if he had the time and discipline.

They love each other under the park trees and in the warm light of sunset and the faded music of walking through the mild night. She wears a new perfume and he contemplates throwing his wand in the Thames as he removes it before draping his jacket over her shoulders.

A lot happens. It is all precious. He wishes Bill good luck with the wedding and receives an owl in return which is short, courteous and deeply unpersonal. He knows already that he will remember this as nothing but a final gasp for air.

Chapter Text

Her fingers dig into his shirt. The touch is playful but demanding, with Audrey on her toes as Percy fumbles with the keys to his apartment, trying to not let her distract her. She giggles as the keys drop to the floor with a noise that echoes through the stairwell, letting him detangle himself from her, flustered but grinning from ear to ear as he unlocks the door and she pulls him in with a backwards step. He is two buttons less dressed than when they entered the building.

It is lucky she enters backwards because then he sees Charlie before she does. He is standing in his dress robes in the kitchen doorway, eyebrows raised and locking eyes with Percy, who freezes on the spot. Audrey turns around in confusion and lets out a yelp before covering her mouth with her hand. He takes her other hand in his. “Charlie,” he says, wondering if he ever told her the name of his older brother and if she would remember it.

“A word?” Charlie gives Audrey a curt look. “Between four eyes.”

Percy sustains the eye contact. His immediate surprise is quickly overtaken by anger and insult. Despite Charlie being the shortest among his brothers, Audrey is still a full head shorter than him, standing between the two of them she glances nervously back and forth. Charlie pays her no mind. “I can go,” she murmurs, “if it is important…“

“I am sure Charlie had just misunderstood that I wouldn’t be available,” Percy says and feels the cold rage creep into his voice, “and that he has no intention of keeping me for long.” Charlie shrugs dismissively and breaks the eye contact. Percy immediately turns to look at her. He squeezes her hand lightly. “If you don’t mind waiting for me?”

“How dare you break into my home?”

Charlie leans against the kitchen counter. “Dunno that it counts as breaking in if I just had to unlock the door. Tell me, Perce, are you actually stupid?” Percy is fuming far too much to dignify the question with a response. “It just never occurred to you to put some protective spells over this place? Some magical locks? Some intruder alerts? Anti-tracking charms? For crying out loud, there’s a war going on, have you no sense?”

“Don’t be a radical, there is no war yet,” he spits out with low and tightly controlled voice.

“About eight months ago,” Charlie cuts in, “they put some sort of tracking spell on your flat, sometime before Christmas. I couldn’t tell you what or who, because the thing was pretty much defunct, basically just had to poke a bit at it and it fell apart. Apparently you aren’t interesting enough to warrant the upkeep.”

“You did what?”

“Don’t tell me you are actually surprised. Probably a ministry deployed one, too, because I couldn’t find any failsafe or alarms for disabling it. What’s with the look? You work in the lion’s den, you know these people.”

“The Ministry does not spy on its employees, Charlie! They asked me to divulge information, yes, but it was all-“

“Well, maybe they should spy on their employees more. There’s been a coup.”

A coup? Percy hesitates, unable to determine how literal Charlie is being, unwilling to comprehend the possibility that he is sincere.

“What?” Charlie snorts, “you think I dropped in for a bit of post-wedding after party or something? The Ministry has been taken down, Percy, Scrimgeour has been assassinated. Or murdered. Whichever you prefer.” Percy remains silent. His brother’s expression turns sincere. “We had some uninvited guests,” he says, “the party dissolved.”

At these news Percy finally manages a reply: “are they safe?”

“War, Perce. You have little more reason to worry now than you did before. Now that I think about it, you probably didn’t even hear that George… Well, no matter, no news. Everyone is alive.” A cynical, joyless smile. “I just came to tell you… from here on and out, all ties are cut. If you try and contact anyone in the family or, you know,” he puts his hands together to form a bird, wiggling his fingers. “You will be assumed and treated as hostile.” After a moment of awkward silence, he coldly adds, “nothing personal.”

The kitchen is quiet. The night is young but there are no sounds from TVs or socials echoing through the building’s walls. Percy’s hands are balled into fists. Charlie leans on the countertop and watches him with no effort put towards concealing his distaste. Percy fumbles for words.

“Well then,” Charlie eventually mutters as he stands up straight, “didn’t mean to interrupt anything. She’s the girl?”

“The girl?”

“Bill said he thinks you’re seeing someone.” He runs his hand over the bright buzzcut then seems like he is unable to stop himself from talking: “a muggle girl? Really?”

“I thought you wanted me to be on your side,” Percy mutters through clenched teeth, “you know, the side without the prejudices and anti-muggle sentiments.”

Charlie just stares at him. Percy sees that same fury he was feeling himself just moments ago looking back at him from a face far too like what he knows from the mirror. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Charlie’s jaw clenches shut and he pushes himself past Percy, out into the stairwell, before either of them thinks better of it to start an argument. It does not take long until the unmistakeable crack of a rather clumsy apparition echoes between the apartment buildings. By then, Audrey finds him, awkwardly but desperately reaching out to receive his head and body in her arms, holding him tight as he drops to his knees before her. She fumbles to comfort him as the sobs rock through his body.

Chapter Text

One day, Percy finds an unsuspecting parchment, strayed from its home on a desk somewhere. It is an early Monday morning and the document, lettered by standardized self-writing quill, is the research appendix for a proposition which he had once believed the hopeless campaign of a regressive fringe. Unsettling, absolutely, but laughable to ever consider the implications of it as more than hypotheticals. He eyes it over. It is carefully dictated with all the jargon and rhetoric that bureaucracy dictates and demands. He knows where to look to find its companions and he knows that the hearing on this proposition is taking place in just over three hours. He also knows that if supporting documents are not supplied the proposition cannot be considered.

Percy takes the parchment and carefully rolls it to carry among his own papers and documents. Once back at the Minister’s office, he sets about with his usual morning duties, organizing incoming mail from the weekend and confirming the morning’s schedule. Having put together the day’s stack of priority information for the Minister he slips into the office to leave it on the desk before he arrives. From the top of the pile he then takes the missing appendix. He slips it into the fireplace and watches it crumple up into ashes. Then he goes back to his desk.

Chapter Text

The irony is that they trust Percy more than ever.

His brother breaks into the ministry together with Undesirable No. 1 and all he gets is a customary hearing. He has never been prouder of Ron or happier that he does not hold Percy’s opinion in high regard. During the hearing they ask him the dullest questions and he drags on best he can because on the other side of the door his father is waiting, he has no idea what his father might have to say but the less time to press him for answers the better, in Percy’s book. So he pretends not to see their disinterest and motioning for him to move on. Where was he at such and such date? He recalls the full schedule. Every break and every person present at every meeting. Pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Watches the focus drift. Eventually they cut him off to dismiss him. Percy leaves and his father enters, a man with straight back but who has aged rapidly this past year, he looks right through Percy. Percy drags his feet on the way out.

Less than two weeks later, Arthur Weasley goes on leave, citing health reasons. A woman Percy has never seen before takes the post. She is loud and proud about her family heirloom rings and clocks. She has Grindewald’s rune tattooed large over her neck among clusters of divination- and alchemical runes. She is not the only new hire. This makes it easy for Percy to find important documents to inexplicably vanish. Lists of names, family trees, requests for investigations into family histories and licenses for regulated magical possessions. He imagines that it helps. It fills him with a similar keen awareness of the vivacity of colours, that Audrey bringing him to the movies, or dozing off against him on the late-night subway does. He wants to call her for no reason at all. Cook her dinner. Slow dance in the kitchen. Return some of that life she seems to have planted in him, now beginning to bud, tonight and then every night until their shared garden is rich and luscious all year around.

Once, he gets bold enough to pick up a master transcript from the day’s hearings, only for a junior secretary to approach him in panic outside the minister’s office. No, Percy has no idea where the master record might be, those documents are never presented raw to the minister. Can he keep an eye out? Sure. Extend the deadline? Why, he is not the person to ask, but he will see what he can do.

Audrey has borrowed a book of poetry from Marvin and she reads it to Percy until she gets distracted. For each kiss he silently promises another parchment as kindle for the Minister of Magic’s hearth. She counts his freckles and he counts her braids. She plays Fitzgerald and Holiday and Sinatra and God bless Percy they do dance, barely dressed, in her cramped living room. She sighs against his chest as if she knows it is the last time. She undresses him. He draws it out, creates pause between each button, they swing back and forth between laughter and silent reverence. Until she demands to see him so that she may follow the freckled arms up to his still pale and by the sun untouched torso. He soaks in her gaze and decides to believe every silent word of how it loves him. However she sees him now is how he wishes to be seen. He tells her that. Or tries to. Kisses her stomach. Feels the soft truth of flesh and body hidden under her skin. Spreads his hands over her to commit as much of her as he can to his sensory memory. Touch, scent, sound. The music ends. The room is warm with the summer night. Audrey. Whispering her name. His own called back to him. Over and over and he think he understands prayer now. She must know, he thinks, the way she begs him to stay. Stay the night. Stay with her. Stay forever. Stay like this. On some level she must know.

Before he leaves in the morning, she tells him that her father would like to have dinner with them next week, so if he could see when works for him and call her. He promises. Then he leaves her home for the last time.

Chapter Text

The owl wakes Audrey in a fright. She meets its eyes and it tilts its head, an envelope in its mouth, then it stretches its wings and taps her window with its foot. She stares. The owl stares back. Her heartbeat steadies.

It is five thirty in the morning but once she has lit the bedside lamp, Audrey recognizes Hermes. When she opens the window he steps very politely in on her windowsill and offers her the envelope. She takes it and gives the owl a gentle pet as she turns it in her hand. It has her name on it. She opens the letter and as she does there is the sound of wings and Hermes is already riding the winds up over the rooftops. It is five thirty in the morning and this is her boyfriend’s handwriting.

Dear Audrey:

I want to apologize if Hermes woke or scared you. I had hoped to speak to you face to face but my situation has changed more quickly than I had anticipated.

Before I tell you anything else, let me tell you that I love you and that you have met me at a strange and difficult period in my life, one which I have made it through largely thanks to you. This is also what I need to tell you about.

You have never pressed me about my family and I appreciate that greatly. Here is the truth: I come from a family of wizards, one of many who live throughout Britain in our own hidden society, attending our own schools and working our own jobs. Around the time I was born we fought a civil war, during which a wizard who must not be named attempted to take control in order to further his belief in the right of wizards to reign supreme. He was defeated but in recent years there have been rumours that he survived. The magical authorities have never believed these rumours and neither did I.

He rests the quill against the ink horn. Begins to scratch out the paragraph. Stops himself again. Puts down the quill to rummage through the pile of drafts. There was a perfect letter at one point. One where he did not bring her into this secret but still managed to convey his regrets and fears in a sensitive manner. There was a perfect draft.

It is three in the morning and he looks up at Hermes who squawks. Percy approaches the owl. Pets it. Hermes nibbles at him, impatient for the hunt, unable to understand why Percy cannot just give him this important letter and let him go. Percy hushes the owl and gives it a scritch. Then he paces. Then he sits down. He goes through the drafts. He reads them, crossing out what is useless and circling the helpful parts, tearing off whole chunks and tossing aside. He puzzles the remaining pieces together. The draft is not perfect. He had a perfect draft in him at some point but he seems unable to find it again and this definitely is not it.

It is good enough, however, at least if he accepts that he will bring her into the light of wands and magical fires and everlit lanterns. Can he accept that? He paces again. Burns the discarded drafts. Opens the fridge to make sure he is not leaving anything which will go bad, which is the least of his concerns but he imagines that it will take a while before someone realizes he is well and truly gone, so maybe this could blur the time line? What a useless thought. He picks up the other draft.

Regret to inform that I am unwell. Potion gone bad left me with physical and magical ills. No serious danger but advised to rest and isolate for a week minimum.

Secretaries and junior assistant have access to desk, including schedules, notebooks and addresses. Will be available by owl if necessary. Pre-emptive apologies for any potential delays in communication.

Percy Weasley,

Senior assistant to the Minister of Magic.

Not perfect. Good enough.

He sits down again and makes the decision that if the hypothetical natural end point of wizard supremacy is direct subjugation of all non-magical humans, he owes it to tell her everything, even if she may not believe it and even if it may never come to fruition. It feels good to agree with himself on something. He starts the draft over:

Dear Audrey:

I want to apologize if Hermes woke or scared you. I had hoped to speak to you face to face but my situation has changed more quickly than I had anticipated.

Before I tell you anything else, let me tell you that I love you and that you have met me at a strange and difficult period in my life, one which I have made it through largely thanks to you. This is also what I need to tell you about.

You have never pressed me about my family and I appreciate that greatly. Here is the truth: I come from a family of wizards, one of many who live throughout Britain in our own hidden society, attending our own schools and working our own jobs. Around the time I was born we fought a civil war, during which a wizard who must not be named attempted to take control, in order to further his belief in the right of wizards to reign supreme. He was defeated then but in recent years there have been rumours that he survived. The magical authorities have never believed these rumours and neither did I. This has been part of my conflict with my family.

I am writing to you because I am leaving. That is all I can say. For my safety and for yours. The mere fact that I am telling you this could get us both in trouble under the best of circumstances, but as you understand, those are not the current circumstances. I hope that you believe me and are willing to forgive me for not telling you more. I can make no promises for the future, but I suggest you burn this letter, keep your eyes open and make yourself ready to leave if that day comes. Needless to say you can tell no one about this. I wish I had better advice to give you but I have no idea what lies ahead.

Some people would think it was reckless or stupid of me to be with you, but I love you more than I can put into words and all of what you have brought into my life cannot be highly enough valued. I could not regret that no matter how I felt on it being a good idea or not. I am a different person thanks to you and I am better for it.

Thank you for everything. I hope I will be able to do good. I hope you can forgive me.

With devotion,

Percy

Chapter Text

The coin burns in Percy’s hand. When he looks around he finds himself on a rocky shore. Then he sees Oliver. He approaches with wide strides, face stern as he roughly grabs Percy by the arm, immediately pulling Percy into the uncomfortable sensation of blind apparition.

They land roughly. Oliver stops on his feet while Percy is flung to the ground. He crawls up on his elbows. Oliver has his wand raised and pointed towards him. Percy looks around. It is a dark and unidentifiable forest.

“What did Percy Weasley say to me when we graduated?”

Percy catches his breath. Their eyes meet. Oliver’s hand is steady and his jaw is tight. Percy seeks his mind. “I told you,” his voice is breathier than he had expected, “I apologized? I apologized. For being such a boring dormmate.” Steadily he lowers his wand. Percy scrambles to his feet. “What did you respond?”

Something that was once a smile crosses Oliver’s face. “I didn’t. I was crying.”

He makes no allusions to it, but Oliver is exhausted, his eyes dark and his face scruffy with what might in a few years fill in to a full beard. He is vague, refuses to wander away from their exact spot, mentions no names. Percy fills the void. He tries to explain it all. He wants Oliver to understand that he has no idea what to do but that he tried to put some sticks in the ministry machinery. Oliver does not give him any assurance that it was meaningful. Percy elaborates: right before leaving, he sabotaged as many weather systems as he could, fudged with organizational charms and…

“So what are you doing now?”

The air leaves him. “I was… I had hoped that you could… I don’t know.”

Oliver clicks his tongue. “What about the girl?”

“Audrey? I… I sent her an owl, I don’t know, I had to tell her something. I trust her. I told her as little as I could.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I am leaving. That- that there is a… a conflict. That this world exists at all. That I love her.”

Percy feels the force of Oliver’s fist to his jaw. The pain is immediate and he drop to his ass, but not before grabbing Oliver by the collar, dragging both of them down on the damp ground. Percy yells out and Oliver grunts. Then stillness. “You are such a fucking asshole.”

Percy rubs his hand over the place of impact. It hurts but he is fairly certain Oliver intentionally aimed away from his nose and glasses. Nonetheless his eyes water. “And what would you have told her?”

Silence.

“You can’t come with us.”

“What then?”

“I should just leave you to figure it out, really,” Oliver scratches at his jaw. “’S what everyone else’s been doing.”

“Fuck off.” It slips from him with such ease he catches himself surprised by it. Oliver raises his eyebrows. “Just- fuck off with that. You socked me. Are we even? I know. I know I have been- I know. Okay? I want to do better. That is all. I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to do better. I don’t know how. I am not here to be punished. This isn’t about me. I am done with myself. I am so fucking sick of myself. Please, Oliver.”

The woodlands are eerily alive. Birds, the wind rustling through the trees, the soft ground beneath them. Percy feels the strong hands grip him and he expects them to go from a pile to a tussle and is ready to give up, but Oliver just holds him, the two of them still on the ground. Percy weeps.

Chapter Text

Aberforth, the keeper of The Hog’s Head and credible ally of the resistance, has no patience for Percy as he stutters out that he is looking for “A Complete History of Magical Law in England from 1250 to 1780, the Revised Edition.” He accepts the password and begrudgingly agrees to keep Percy informed, aiding him when (“if, boy”) the time comes, as best he can. Percy finishes his pint and leaves in the warm afternoon as the charms to his appearance begins to wear off.

Percy travels through the highlands. He puts all magic aside and lives on the muggle money he has been stowing away for the past months. He does not apparate, wears no robes, keeps his wand tucked away. He dyes his hair brown in a bed-and-breakfast bathroom with the contents of a box he bought at Tesco. He takes the train. He reads The Guardian on the bus. He blends in among the first tourists of the summer as they praise the hills glowing golden with broom shrubs and plan their distillery tours and hill walks. On the rare occasion they ask for his name he calls himself Peter. This world is the snow blowing across the frozen surface of a lake and at any point he expects the ice to shatter underneath his feet. It never does.

He spends a little less than two weeks out on the road. It is both a vast ocean of time and a big old nothing. In the mirror is a brown haired man named Peter, looking for his way in a life suddenly devoid of all it once was, with one foot in each world and wishing nothing to do with either. Some days he considers leaving his bags behind and walking into the hills until the weather takes him. Other days he tries to divinate through the spaces between the print of the paper, paranoid that the magical world has already changed and that he will return to a new order. Yet other days he dreams of the reality in which he took Audrey’s hand in his and ran until they both became someone new, nursing their shared secret like an infant, the past growing distant and abstract. In his pocket he turns the disc Oliver gave him under his fingers. His nails trace the ridges along its outer edge but the object remains cold and dead.

Until that is no longer true.

As he throws his things into his bag and leaves the last muggle paper money from his wallet on the hotel bed, he seeks his wand in his jacket and thinks that had he left London a week later, it would have been too late. He tries and tell himself that had he left early, he would have been able to sabotage less, but whether his efforts even mattered he has no idea. No matter. For all he knows he has no future. If that is the case, then his past does not matter, either.

They are all so young.

Aberforths’ ulcers never really left but they have gone worse since the children behind Ariana’s portrait contacted him. To them, he is a gift and an invaluable ally, but he can only think of what would have happened to them if he had been just a little bit someone else. A little bit more apathetic and opportunistic. A little bit more of a coward. A little bit worse. Since then, a number of faces and names have passed through The Hog’s Head, slipping him codes through small talk.

And they are all so young.

And Albus is gone and so, there is no one left for him to argue with, no one else to grumble at and curse over and swear to about the fact that why is a school the chosen and destined site for the climax of this war? So from now on, every magical child in Britain will live their youth walking the corridors of a battlefield, learning of the very real blood spilled on the sandstone which will frame their journey to becoming not just an adult human being but a person? Blood under the tables in the great hall, memorial plaques on the benches where they rest and miss home and fall in love in the autumn sunlight, memorials of victory in battle next to celebrations of academic excellence and camaraderie. Ghosts the ages of their older siblings, then their own age, then the ages of their younger siblings. Dumbledore’s Army.

Was it not for the fact that Albus is already dead and gone, he would like to strangle him. Albus is dead and gone and there is no one for Aberforth to explode at and so he says nothing. He grumbles and feeds travellers and Death Eaters and locals and knows nothing about nothing unless someone knows the code and that is all there is to it.

Until the day the wind changes and all the rules cease to be. All the young adults – many of them teenagers still – who return or show up, who are eager to fight, making the dust that was once his heart scatter to the wind. He wants to tell them that they know nothing, turn them away with force, beg them to leave the country. You have left this place, his mind bellows, this was temporary. This was never a place to return to. Go home and love your own instead. That is where you really came from. This place has no loyalty for you.

Many years later, in pubs and by fires and in obituaries, stories which Aberforth would have loathed to hear live on. When the Death Eaters demanded to know his secrets, they say, he became a beast. He was fierce. He fought tooth and nail, not just with magic, even blew his pub up to buy time. He was the only one who emerged from the rubble, took out three Death Eaters without mercy, they didn’t see it coming. I have never seen anything like it. You could really see the Dumbledore in him.

The veneer of decorum crumbles and the wands come out. When they were young men, before Albus realized that the line between being impressive and a braggard was a thin veneer of pretending not to try and impress anyone, he once showed Aberforth the Veil in the department of mysteries. Now Aberforth feel the silk of it brush his knuckles as he reaches for his own wand. Not wanting to be something is not the same as being unwilling to become it.

Chapter Text

“Percy? This might be it.”

Across the debris and rubble, Charlie and Percy both approach Ron, hunched down by a crevice where one of the balconies or stairs had come crashing down. It is unremarkable, aside from the smashed shell and strange meat, which has dried into dark stains on the sandstone.

As much as they understand Molly’s need for family mourning, it is only Bill and George who seem to share her ability to sit with it. As for Ginny and Arthur, Percy does not know, but they seem to possess an emotional intelligence and constitution he does not. Or it is the consequence of being the one daughter and matrimonial duty – when the three of them began to look for excuses to leave the great hall, their father was the one who had found them credible reasons to do so. It makes sense to Percy – he and his dad always got the best along when conversation was a consequence of some sort of shared project. As morbid as it is, it is a similar feeling to searching for his body count together with his brothers, silently keeping their eyes down towards the floor.

“How did you even think of that?” Ron breaks the silence as Charlie catches up to them.

“It was part of my transfiguration finals.”

They go quiet again. Charlie and Percy push a large hunk of stone out of the way and the large shards of shell become more visible.

“They say he was under the Imperius Curse” Percy says.

“If I were to believe that then I would have to believe that everyone here to fight was just a puppet of Voldemort himself.” Charlie’s voice is tense and bitter.

“What a brilliant world,” Ron says, “where you kill the bad guy and the spell is broken.”

Percy realizes he has not seen Malcolm. There were other former colleagues, on either side of the spells fired, but no Malcolm. He is unsure what that means. Unsure if he would like to meet his gaze in the Ministry corridors six months from now. Then, the realization of his potential return to the Ministry hits him, like standing up too quickly or laying down when you are just a tad bit too drunk and suddenly the world spins frictionless around you.

Percy gets to work.

By the sweat of their brow, the three of them get the rubble out of the way, gather the larger chunks of what used to be a sea urchin and was once a man into the largest piece of shell left. To Percy’s knowledge, none of his siblings struck a deadly blow during the battle. So just Percy and his mother, then. Another thought to file away for later.

The three boys bring the remains of Pius Thicknesse back to the great hall where the rows of bodies on the side reserved for defenders have spaced out as mourners have come to claim their family members. Among the Death Eater robes, most bodies are still close by, no small crowds tending to them or moving them to make space for grieving. It is somehow worse than those first frenetic hours of activity gathering them all in the great hall, seeing the sheer scope of the carnage, feeling equal parts proud and horrified that one side kills and one side harms and you were on the side with the greatest loss of life.

They leave. Who is there to come claim the smashed pieces of what was once Pius Thicknesse? They go against the agreements of no burials on school ground and dig a shallow grave by the lake in which they pour the strange orange meat and the shards of dark shell. Dirt back over; no marker, no final words. They stand by the dark patch of soil for longer than what feels justifiable, but what else is there to do? Ron is the first to take initiative to leave. Charlie follows. Percy remains.

“Are you coming?”

He looks up at Ron. Sees himself. Sees his dad. Sees his mother. Sees brothers and cousins and old aunts and uncles and his own future children and they all look like funhouse mirror versions of one another. The same face painted by different artists. He is responsible for the death of a man who will be missed by no one.

“I need to go see Audrey,” he says. Ron looks at him with confusion. “Tell dad- I will be back eventually.”

A little too loud a whisper behind him as he turns his back and heads for the gates: “Do you know who he was talking about?”

Chapter Text

Audrey does the thoughtless thing of opening her door without much worry for who may be on the other side. She was never good at caution. Percy is in petrol blue robes and his hair is a blaze in the dark stairwell. Pale dust on his chest and arms, patches of dirt on his hem, a large tear in his sleeve. He seems as lost for words as she is and as she is thrust back in time through the past two weeks which now seem like a lifetime, the world itself falls apart brick by brick, just past the edge of the stairs behind him. Her chest has been an empty cave and now the tide is returning with the terrifying force of something which knows what void is its to fill.

“I had to come see you.”

When Percy speaks, Audrey lets out a squeaking sound, her hands moving up to cover her mouth. Her eyes are wide.

“I am so sorry,” he continues, “but I had to- you deserve to know- I owe you- I am so, so sorry, Audrey. You deserve to know everything and I should have told you but I didn’t- I  couldn’t and- and whatever you may ask me I… I promise I will be an open book.”

The words go on for so long and he thinks he should want to stop himself but he fails to do so. Audrey watches with big eyes and hands pressed over her mouth. Her eyes dart from his face to his hair to his robes and shoes, to the door across the hall, then back to jittering across his face. She speaks and it is a confused voice that strains to reach across the empty space between them. “Are you… alright?”

Familiar London accent and he nods with his jaw tight. “There has been a battle,” he says, “but I made it through.”

She embraces him. It burns something terrible but the relief of her head against his chest is supreme and he holds her like someone who has walked a great distance and finally found a fountain springing from the rocks. She smells like lazy Sunday mornings, Tuesday date nights, holding her jacket in the bar while she’s at the ladies room.

She brings him inside and he is overwhelmed with the fact that she does not seem to hate him. The scent of Audrey hits him with a new force once in her living room. Sitting across from one another on the couch their conversation is full of false starts and pauses. Then silence. His hands in hers, thumbs brushing over joints and knuckles, fingers linking. Then, eventually:

“I didn’t burn your letter.”

“I didn’t expect you to. I didn’t expect you to believe me.”

“It made sense.” Audrey tilts her head. Her gaze is piercing and the darkness of her eyes swallows every word he tells her, every hint his body might reveal, weighing it as she continues. “Perhaps we aren’t as oblivious as you and yours think we are.”

 “I didn’t expect you to forgive me.”

Her expression sharpens slightly. “You act like there are reasons I shouldn’t have. But you never gave me any.”

“This, us, it was… It was a different me. I was ready to leave that world altogether and none of it would have mattered because it might as well not have existed. I wished it hadn’t existed. But of course, it did, even when you helped me forget about it.”

Over the rooftops and through the open window comes the familiar sound of an ambulance. Audrey waits it out. “Why are you back?”

“We won.”

“The war?”

He has no answer. They won a battle, he could tell her that with confidence, but the war? The war against what? From what he had heard from Ron and Ginny the evil which was defeated was scarcely a human anymore. He doubts that the sea urchin that was once the Minister of Magic was ever in contact with this supposed man. There was no great boon in store for his loyalty. As efforts to save just one more life was still ongoing, the ministry had descended like Hogwarts’ house elves post-feast to return everything to the safety of what it once was, making sure the Great Secret was not in jeopardy and every magic inch of the world unsuspect and dependable. The clean-up would go on for years and perhaps a memorial day would be declared and he would continue to love a woman who was, fundamentally, never going to be of the same world as him.

She reads something from his eyes, exactly what, he has no way of knowing. She nods. Their hands clasp. “How do you fight a magic war?”

“If I knew,” he says, slowly, “I would probably have left sooner. But for battles and duels, usually with spells.”

“Two wizards, carrying staffs, blasting beams of energy at one another?”

Percy laughs. “Something like that, I suppose. I was never much of a dueller. In England almost everyone uses a wand, though, I’ve never seen a staff.”

“Do you have a wand?” Percy nods and produces it from his robes, offering it to Audrey, who receives it with much care. She turns it in her hands and observes it. Wraps her fingers around it to try its weight, swings it gently with no effect, then returns it to him. Her expression is sceptical. “Show me.”

“Expecto Patronum.”

It is the first thing that occurs to him and he does not even think about it. Perhaps he should have because it has never come as easily to him as he likes to pretend: now he reaches inside of himself and finds most of his past joys ringing hollow. Days in the city with Audrey produces the silvery mist but feel uncomfortably complex now that she is in front of him again. His family… Merlin, the guilt burns as he even approaches the thought. Audrey’s eyes widen as the silvery fog spreads over the floor and then, as the effects becomes perceivable, her expression relaxes somewhat. He thinks of her scent. Of her hair in braids, running through his fingers or curtaining their faces like a waterfall, framing their shared universe. Real. True. Not a promise, not a guarantee, but once real and forever true.

The fog materializes and through it leaps the shape of a weasel. Fluent in its motions as it circles them throughout the air. She watches it and then seeks answers in Percy’s face as the room brightens with its light and power. “To protect you,” he says.

“From what?”

“Do you feel it?”

Audrey closes her eyes, then nods, hesitantly. Then: “I don’t like it.”

It catches him off guard. “Usually you use it when there are- there are types of magic which… prey on positive emotions, make you feel, you know. Empty.”

“But that magic is not here.” He shakes his head. “Then turn it off,” she says, “I don’t want you… using magic on me like that.”

That is when he realizes that there is an after to this. The silver weasel fades, the room seems improbably dark, the world outside returns. The warm confidence that, from now on things would be fine, seeps out of him. He had wanted to bring her into his world, give her the chance to conquer it with him, just as she had opened the door to her universe for him. “My apologies,” he whispers through the dark, and she takes his hand in both of hers.

“Empty,” she whispers back, “I’ve been empty. You just left.”

He wants to apologize again. Waits for her instead. Tells himself they have time now.

“Were you ever even here? I didn’t deserve that.”

“I was here then. I know I am- There is so much of me that even I don’t want. I couldn’t give you that. I didn’t want you to have that. You’re right, you deserve better than what I am, I couldn’t be that but I could be… better without it.”

“And what then? What about years from now? Hiding something from me doesn’t mean it’s not part of you.”

“Everyone has stuff to hide. But that is why I am telling you now. I know I’ve been…”

The sentence hangs unfinished in the air between them. He realizes how young they are. How pathetic it is to be 21. Ahead of him materializes the future. Vast, treacherous grounds, misty and unknowable and bleak. Audrey looks so infinitely sad and there is no way for him to shield himself from it. No triumph of victory to cling onto. He wants to tell her that she is what made the future worth imagining, that she still is, that he never sees it as clearly as he does together with her. Audrey shakes her head, lets go of his hand, straightens her back. “I don’t know,” she says, gaze stuck in the middle distance. “I was… I wanted you to come back. I really did. I really do. I don’t know. This isn’t- it makes sense and it doesn’t. It makes sense but I don’t want it to. I don’t want you to be magic. I don’t want you to be something that I cannot- I’ve missed you so much and I was so angry but I don’t know anything. How can I be mad when I don’t know anything?”

“Will you let me show this world to you? You did that for me, you know, even if it was different." Her expression turns back to him, indecipherable. “You don’t have to stay. There are plenty of people in the magical world who come from outside of it, if you’d like to, but you don’t have to stay.”

Her head turned down towards their hands. More sirens outside the window but this time in the distance. “Percy…you said… um, that I had forgiven you.”

“I will show you,” he says, the future shattering into indecipherability. His body takes on the rigidity he associates with duty and the cold clarity of mind that it brings. “I will show you because you deserve to know. You can decide later if you want to forgive me or not.” He places his wand in her upturned palms. She nods. They are both so young.

Chapter Text

They co-apparate to Hogsmeade. Audrey has her arms wrapped tight around Percy’s waist and they land without incidents at the outskirts of the village. She catches her breath. They walk in silence until she asks him about one of the storefronts, and when he begins to tell her about the dull truths of the magical world, the story unravels before them. He picks a thread and begins to pull and it leads them all the way up to the gates of the school. They are open. No dementors. Hogsmeade is calm and quiet but the school has an industrious, if sombre, air.

“Why does a school matter so much?” Audrey asks. He realizes that he had expected an almost reverent tone from her, the same as any young witch or wizard who would find themselves at the gate for the first time, but the castle grounds are torn by the fight and the sunlight robs it of much of its mystery.

“Almost all witches and wizards in Britain come here. And some from abroad. It would be a tough task to find magical communities in Britain which aren’t heavily marked by it.” It is a truth he realizes as he says it out loud for the first time. “Headmaster Dumbledore was also one of few voices critical of the ministry. Hogwarts is an institution older than much of the Ministry. Even if the Boy Who Lived and You-Know-Who hadn’t had personal ties to the school…”

There is a wrinkle between Audrey’s brows. They stand in silence for a bit. On the school grounds a handful of people move about, some idle, some clearly busy. It seems more families have left in the time he was gone. At the prospect of returning to Hogwarts to prove himself in one important battle, he had felt a profound nostalgia, but in the rubble and hazy sunlight, the wonder of it all seems to wash off. In her sun dress and combat boots and jean jacket, it is not Audrey who looks out of place, but the castle. He was not happy here. No more than he was at the Burrow, no less than he would have been elsewhere, the magic of this place is remarkable but it did not save him.

“This is where I come from,” he picks up, continuing with what he immediately recognizes as truth, in spite of speaking it into existence for the first time: “I hope you will understand that that does not mean that I am proud of it.”

They walk the grounds. She asks the occasional question and he answers. They pass the spot where he and his brothers buried the sea urchin that was once a man (Percy does not tell her, at least not right then and there). They hold hands, then they do not, then they once more do. The sun passes in the sky. Her curiosity brings them in under the roofs and ceilings of first the greenhouses and then the castle and hesitantly he lets her, steering her away from the great hall where they are sure to find his family, bodies waiting for attention and questions he cannot answer. Some people look, but thankfully no one asks.

Oliver asks. He and two men Percy cannot confidently name are carrying a body. Dark robes covered in pale dust, a severed arm laid next to it on the stretcher, dark mark visisble. He spots Percy, loads his end of the stretcher over onto the third man, then approaches. “Is this Audrey?”

Audrey looks surprised, as if she until now had thought herself invisible, glancing at Percy who catches himself: “Right- Audrey, this is Oliver, one of my… oldest friends.”

They shake hands and Oliver smiles. It pulls at a still-healing wound on Oliver’s neck but it is genuine: “nice meeting you,” he says and means it fully, “I thought he was just mad crushing when he first told me about you, but honestly he could probably have laid it on even more- or maybe it’s just that the rest of us are wearing tatters and haven’t showered for weeks. He’s not boring you with build dates and recounts of headmasters and whatnot?”

It catches Percy entirely off guard. There is a body just meters away. Audrey takes a beat as well but then lights up into a bright grin. “Oh my. I thought I was a complete secret.”

“We shared a dorm for seven years. He couldn’t keep a secret from me if his life depended on it. See, we hadn’t met in years and the first thing he told me was ‘you should probably try and make less enemies’, the second was ‘by the way I’m seeing this amazing girl and if I don’t tell anyone about her I will spontaneously combust.’”

It is an absurdly normal interaction to have among the rubble. It is also a relief. It also causes Percy to fluster and stumble over words when Audrey begins to ask a whole different set of questions and Oliver is all too happy to indulge. That is also a relief; not having to be the arbiter of what of himself to share. To have someone else tell her about him. Harmless details or teenage crimes, it does not matter, what matters is that Oliver is giving needles for her to prick Percy with. What matters is Percy feeling the wall between his magical self and his muggle self begin to crumble.

Chapter Text

“…owls, I know folks who use all sorts of birds. Probably for the better, too. Less people look twice at a raven than an owl.”

“Well, yeah, it's the paradox of tradition. I know dad talked about this as well at some point, that if being invisible really mattered, there are some really easy legislations to put in place for that. It really is ridiculous how-“

“You know it’s a feature, Perce, not a bug. I overheard Shacklebolt being furious with some of the interim Ministry for pushing to do things the ‘right’ way just the other day. By which they meant the traditional way- Speak of the devil.” As Percy, Oliver and Audrey exit into the main hallway, there is indeed Kingsley Shacklebolt and a small entourage standing at the foot of the stairs. “Anyway,” Oliver continues, “I had an old teammate who insisted on trying out all these tits and whatnot. They were all dumb as bricks, though, so he could only send mail to people within a few blocks of his flat. They couldn’t really carry anything, either-“

“Is that him?” Audrey cuts Oliver off. “What… does he do?”

“Oh,” Oliver says, “he used to be an auror – you know, magic police – and then he got with the order. He’s currently in charge of the interim Ministery-“

Percy leaves the two of them behind, approaching the group within a few strides, slowing down to feel in the conversation. The woman next to Shacklebolt looks up at him and Shacklebolts gaze follows. The three others continue their conversation as Percy approaches. “Mr. Weasley,” Shacklebolt acknowledges him, nods. “Thank you for being here. I heard about your brother; I am very sorry for your loss.” His voice is low. The small group glance towards Percy, greeting him with a nod or a small wave, but does not interrupt their conversation.

“I- uh. Thank you, sir.” Percy has been so unlike what he thought he was recently, or for quite a while, now that he thinks about it. Approaching the leader of the resistance is no weirder than anything else. He speaks on instinct: “I suppose being here wasn’t much of a choice- Of course, all of it is choices. I would love to speak to you about that, actually, if there is ever a good time for it. But mostly I wanted to introduce you to someone-“

Shacklebolt looks over towards Audrey and Oliver, waiting by the stairwell, watching over them. Audrey gives a bit of an awkward smile and raise her hand in a hint of a wave.

“-She’s someone I got to know while I was living in London and… She’s not from here, but she knows, because owed it to her to tell her.” Shacklebolt nods. “I think you two should talk.”

The afternoon passes at a steady pace. Oliver and Percy help clean and restore the great hall; the last bodies are moved off the grounds, word gets around that there will be a meeting that night about the work to be done in the upcoming days, perhaps even the plan after that. A fight breaks out about the future of the kitchen, the house elves who still reside in and are bound to the castle, their work during this aftermath. The two young men sit in the windowsill and watch. Percy is drained but too wound up to relax. Oliver is jittery. Ginny and George join them and they play twenty questions until the conversation falls apart into gossip. The people brought together in the heat of the battle, those who split, the just desserts served during the past few months.

It feels too much like the old days. Too much like Hogwarts. Percy is unable to put his finger on why it makes him so eager to leave when it is the most apparent sign that he is forgiven. Really, as his mother puts it when she and Arthur finds the four of them, he is back where he belongs.

The prodigal.

More Weasleys appear and Oliver too seems to become awkward with the crowd. When Bill and Charlie are close enough, Bill looks towards Percy, speaks directly to him once having greeted the rest of them. “Audrey is waiting for you by the entrance.”

A series of looks are exchanged and Arthur has just cleared his throat as Percy bounce to his feet, embrace his parents quickly, then head off. “Thank you, Bill. I will be back later- Cheers, Oliver.”

He catches Oliver’s smirk before he turns around and, indeed, spots Audrey hiding by the open doors to the entrance. For a moment he had wondered why she had not just approached him directly but the keen awareness of Weasley eyes trying to spot exactly who he is walking towards as he crosses the hall… well.

Audrey shifts her stance as he approaches. She seems to relax a little. “Sorry I was gone so long,” she says with a small sigh, “will you help me get home?”

“Of course I will. How are you feeling?”

“Hm. Alright. Tired.”

“Did you and Shacklebolt speak until just now?”

“Almost,” she says, “he introduced me to the Headmistress as well, but I didn’t spend much time with her. She seemed quite busy… I like him, though, thank you for introducing me.”

“Of course. May I ask what you spoke about?”

They head out onto the grounds. Though evening is approaching the summer sun is still high. There are far fewer people here than it was just when they had arrived and as they head towards the gates, Audrey takes Percy by the arm, making his long steps fall into pace with hers. “Lots of things,” she says, “I didn’t realize how important he must be until we had spoken for a while and was mortified, thinking he just felt obliged to entertain me, but he asked a lot of questions. Some about us,” she says us with an emphasis that feels like lassoing him and gently tugging him back towards safe pastures, “just… what I had known, what I had figured out once you told me, if I felt safe… And he tried to help me understand all of this. But it is a lot.”

“It is.”

“Mhm… He asked me what I thought of the future. Like, of the magical world, what should happen with it.”

“What did you say?”

“I said it didn’t feel like my place to have an opinion and he was like, well, that’s exactly why I’m asking you. But I haven’t had the time to think it through so I don’t know if it was very helpful to him… I think he agreed with me, though. But I think… I don’t like the idea of being lied to is what I said. I think that is what you – your society, I mean – have been doing and I don’t think it is fair. If you had lived on your own little island then maybe it might have been, but you don’t, and I don’t think it is fair that there is a whole political institution making decisions about the place I live in, that have an effect on the economy or the safety or the infrastructure or the culture of that place, that I don’t know about and have no say in. Or that you have to be born into that system and that even that isn’t enough.

“Or that if you grow up a- without magic, and then you get magic, it seems you don’t really have a choice if you want to stick with the life you thought you had or not, and I think you should. I think I would. Or the other way around, really, because if you don’t feel like you belong in the magical world or there are no support systems for you there, it is cruel that it is so difficult to leave. I saw that with you. Or you said it yourself, right? That it was like learning a whole other way of life. You need support for that.”

He nods as he listens, doesn’t have much to say, all the more to digest and process. They walk at a slower pace than before as they approach Hogsmeade. There is smoke from the chimneys and Percy realizes that it is about dinnertime. “Do you want something to eat?”

She shakes her head, holds his arm a bit tighter. “I want you to bring me home and I’m gonna get takeout. Indian, maybe.”

After a while, Percy speaks again: “You’re right,” he says, “I cannot overstate how happy I am that we met, but I wish I knew how to be part of that world even when you’re not around.”

Audrey slows down, which also drags Percy to a halt. “Your family,” she asks without the question mark.

“I don’t know yet. Maybe. But maybe I don’t want to go back to the way it was.”

“You don’t have to.”

“They were right. I was wrong. I don’t know what else there is.”

“You don’t know that I won’t be around.”

“Will you be around?”

“If you need me to make up my mind right here and now, I'll say no, but I- I want to be around you. Or I want you to be around. Wizard or not, you… are the most magical thing in my life.”

He savours the words. Tries to orient himself in this new map she draws up for him. He takes her hands and she squeezes back. His own words come with much difficulty. “So… what’s the hitch?”

“I don’t-“ she blinks, hard. Closes her eyes. “Percy, can I go home?”

He nods, brings her close and soon her arms are wrapped around his waist and her head resting against his chest and the world swivels around them, the ground vanishing and then rematerializing under the soles of their feet. She holds on to him longer than she needs to. He returns the embrace, buries his face in her hair. Her flat is warm but shaded as the sun has turned behind the neighbouring building. “I am sorry,” he whispers, kissing the crown of her head as she squeezes him. “I just wanted to be in love with you. I am sorry I had to bring you into all of this.”

“I’m sorry too,” she whispers back, “I’m sorry you had to- that you had to carry all that. That you couldn’t just love me.”

“Loving you has always been the easy part. It still is.”

She laughs against his chest. A few short breaths. When she pulls back, her hand reach to wipe her face, her eyes red and face flushed. “I could feel that,” she says, “that it was easy. It felt easy. It still feels easy. It’s just the rest that’s tough. When you came back… I had decided that you had never loved me. That I no longer loved you. That that was all. End of story.” She blinks the tears away. “I kind of wish it was true. I wish I was just a woman in love. Or even a heartbroken twenty-something.”

He hollows at the absence of reassurance. Reaches up to wipe another tear from her cheek. Wishes he was crying too but is also elated that he is not making her deal with the boy who hurt her tearing up.

She sniffles a little. “You should go be with your family.”

“Will you be okay?” No reply. “Maybe you should also be with your family,” he says, “you can tell them anything you want. Lie if you’d like. Tell them I am a right arse or something.”

“Oh, God damn it, Percy.” Audrey laughs again. “I’ll lie to them a little. But one day you… They will know everything. I’ll be okay. Will you?”

She brushes her hands down his shirt, the sleeve still tattered, a low priority on the list of things to strike with a repair-charm. Dark eyes meet his. The gallery of fiery red hair (minus one) awaits elsewhere. A new world beyond that. All of it rough enough to sand off his old skin and make him into something new. Her fingers under the edges of the already peeling, shedding shell of what he has been, leaving fingerprints in the soft and still vulnerable thing underneath. He nods. Prays she will be part of that but does not say it out loud. Takes her hands.

“I will be okay, Audrey.”

“Do you promise?”

She closes her hands around his fingers. Her gaze steadies. Percy nods again. “I promise.”