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It starts and ends in August.
He will forever be the oldest, even though he was born third, he is the older August sibling.
She’s the baby in every situation, the only girl forever and always, the youngest of seven, the younger of the August siblings.
Percy loved Ginny with his whole heart, even if she was annoying, even if she once followed him from room to room. He was around her whole childhood, while Bill left in the weeks after her birth and Charlie just a little while after. Percy was around, he held her during thunderstorms, and he read her the same story about an old witch that turned into a rabbit. He kissed her knees when she fell and bruised them, he held her hands as she slowly learned to walk in the living room. He remembered her life where she couldn’t, he remembered the details of a childhood she wouldn’t ever recall.
Ginny loved Percy like a house on fire, she loved him with sadness and then anger and then hope. She loved him in shared smiles and matching brown eyes and nights spent sharing a single twin sized bed. She loved him in rain puddles and muddy glasses and little braids that fell out of their hair. She followed after him in a way that none of the others understood, she followed after him as a devoted baby sister did her favorite older brother.
In August, their days felt numbered, she was eleven and he was twenty-two, they were doubles. Ginny the little lion, the Leo, fierce and loud and too brave as a little girl. Percy the fox, the Virgo, dangerous and anxious and alert, the third of seven.
In August, Percy was five years older for all except eleven days, which Ginny called the ‘four days’. It was a time where age didn’t seem to rule anything, a time where she was older and he was still younger.
Percy felt it most when Ginny turned eleven and he stayed fifteen, knowing that she was following after him to school. She would prove herself to be a lion, to be brave and smart and kind, to be Ginny.
Ginny felt like an outcast as Hogwarts seemed to grow bigger and bigger every moment she was within the walls, with Tom whispering in her ear. She dreamt of a warm sunlight and running barefoot through the garden, with her older brother chasing after her with a bucket of water, the pair of them laughing. She dreamt of thunderstorms and a warm bed to turn too, Percy’s arms wrapped around her like a blanket, his nose tucked into her hair.
He noticed when she felt like she was suffocating, he noticed when Tom started to take her soul away. He loved her as she started to disappear.
He wrote the letter to their parents of her disappearance, and rewrote the letter when the ink ran from his tears. He wrote with shaky hands before forcing himself to calm down, to stay calm. Percy then put on a brave face and sat tallest of his younger brothers, trying to be brave for them as his heart slowly grew smaller and smaller.
How could he let his baby sister die? How could he let her be taken away?
Percy knew then that he would do anything to save his family, anything and everything that was needed of him. Dumbledore knew this too, saw it when he spoke to Percy after Ginny was brought back to them.
He was a man with a plan, playing three games of chess at once while Percy was barely following the rules of another.
That August, long after they had come home on the train, Percy held Ginny tightly as the clock turned from eleven to midnight, marking her another year older while he stayed sixteen. He could barely let her out of his sight that summer, and he would barely be able to for the rest of her life, but he managed.
Ginny grew older, she found herself talking and flirting with boys, found herself making friends much older than herself, found herself feeling betrayal over and over again.
Percy graduated from school and fell into Dumbledore’s scheme. He spied as the Ministry fell, he listened to doors and took notes and walked out on his family. He left behind his August sister and cried himself to sleep for eleven days straight. He knew that Harry was right, the kind boy that loved Ron, that made sure that Ginny came out of the chamber alive, that wormed his way into the hearts of his family. He knew that what he was doing could make or break the war brewing in the background.
Percy was the perfect agent, he lied, he stole, and he cheated. He worked himself to the bone and dedicated himself to protecting his family.
Ginny cried herself to sleep for eleven days straight after Percy left, and she woke up on an impossibly hot August day and found herself edgy and sad in memory of her brother. She reread and reread and reread the same story of an old witch that turned into a rabbit every day in the time between birthdays.
Eleven and twenty-two, the minor and the major.
When the war was over and done with, the stories came out, forgiveness was given. Percy felt as if he was on the outside, too afraid to touch, too afraid to speak. But Ginny had the first family birthday after the war, especially because Harry disappeared on his.
She turned seventeen and Percy cried as he watched her blow out candles with tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, wishing for the war to be gone from their memories, for Fred to come back. Percy cried even harder when she knocked on his old bedroom door later that night, an old book that had seen much better days in her hands.
Ginny curled up in his arms, much too big, much too old for this childish thing, and Percy read her their favorite story, laughing and giggling in the same spots as always. Knowing without saying anything, that they still loved one another, that she could forgive him for everything.
It was the first time in three years that neither of them fell asleep crying on either of their birthdays. It was the first time in three years that the August siblings were together on both of their birthdays, feeling very much like the little kids they once were.
They grow older, Ginny finishes school, the first to do so after Percy and he makes sure to be on the platform to hug her when she comes off the train. They find themselves somehow always orbiting each other, always in a strange dance of half-steps, always within arms-reach as they make move after move in their lives.
Ginny finds love first, something that will never surprise Percy, but he gets married first. Percy loves Audrey the same way Ginny loves Harry, in an all-consuming way. Ginny does get a baby first, a little boy with their shared brown eyes and freckles and Percy’s wild curls. Neither of them promise the other the title of godparent for any of their children, they know already where they stand as aunt and uncle in their nieces and nephews lives and are okay with that.
Ginny is the first to offer anything to help save his Molly, followed by George and Charlie in the seconds after. It reminds Percy of when she stood in front of him, five months pregnant with her first baby, ready to curse anyone that asked about Audrey’s miscarriage.
Percy was once the one that held a wand and was ready to curse anyone that spoke ill of his baby sister, age had changed their roles. He felt as if he was once again on the outside, his heart shattering all over again for his never breathing son as it once did for Fred.
Ginny knew what it meant to fight for her life, so spending time with Molly at St. Mungo’s was nothing. She read her the story of an old witch that turned into a rabbit as Percy once had for her, and on long nights when she couldn’t sleep because Tom was keeping her awake still with his nightmares, she read the same story to her daughter.
Percy made sure that his house was a home to his nephews and nieces, but especially Lily who was less than a year younger than his Molly and Lucy. She was the baby of the family, and for some reason it was only fitting to him that Ginny had the baby girl of the family.
They grow older still, they watch their children grow up, make mistakes, and find love for themselves. They watch their children become parents, but somehow age doesn’t seem to matter still in the eleven days between their birthdays.
Their mum still makes Ginny cake for her birthday, and Percy still gets bread pudding…and somehow, the story of an old witch that turns into a rabbit gets told on Ginny’s birthday by Percy, as if he made a promise to himself the day she was born.
He did.