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At nine years old, Percilla Weasley’s greatest wish was to swallow the world whole—the sort of childlike wonder that left her wanting more than just the four corners of their fenced backward with her mother’s gnome ridden garden and her father’s pile of junk taking up space in the back—a chance at self-discovery. And at fifteen, Percilla had taken a liking to the idea of fucking off to London at some point after graduation, where she’d flirt with pretty women who dared much as looked her in the eye, hang out with the scholarly Muggles in dingy jazz clubs, tip janky musicians busking on the street. And she would never look back, never ever.
Hell, if Percilla hadn’t realized soon after that wishing to become the youngest Minister for Magic was more up her ally she’d reach the conclusion that going to London would be quite the ambitious pursuit, especially since old Millicent Bagnold had hardly gone out with a bang back in ’90. But magic was all she was. It was all she understood. It was accompanying her father to work for the first time and realizing the Ministry was utter shit-it was an oligarchy teetering on the verge of pureblood fascism. Her existentialist behavior worsened until the teachers at Muggle primary school sent a letter to her parents about her sudden inability to pay attention in school. It was no use bothering anymore, she insisted to Molly Weasley, because of Muggle indifference and their unawares to magic—Percilla even gave up maths, which had always been her favourite subject. She and Ginny were caught up with the idea of playing pretend at that time, and when Ginny had suggested they play princesses, Percilla shook her head. She’d had enough, it had become rather boring once Ginny had stopped falling for the Cinderella trick (if Percy let Ginny be Cinderella and her the evil stepmother, she could make Ginny clean her room with no complaints). So from that afternoon forwards, Percilla told Ginny that they would play wizards and Percilla would be addressed as Madame Minister. She’d been a rather overachieving nine year old, sue her.
It hadn’t stopped there, not even after Percilla arrived at Hogwarts in 1987 and found her brother’s descriptions to be true: Hogwarts was crawling with magic, it made your nostrils sting when you entered a room like shitty perfume—but Percy didn’t have to be good at all the magic bits yet. She could rack up points for knowing the correct answers in class and take notes so arduously that the quill would rip through the parchment and ink would spill everywhere. She chose to ignore every outstretched plea of friendship with a passion, sitting at meals only with her brothers and tucking herself into a library book. That had been when Olive Wood had lent her a biro on the second day of classes and graciously, had not rolled her eyes when Percilla meekly asked her for help uncapping it, cheeks burning in shame, because she had never used a ballpoint before. Olive, whom Percilla then had recognized as one of her chatty roommates in Gryffindor tower, hadn’t called her proud, or cocky, but gave her a shy grin and twisted the cap off, pressing down on the corner of Percilla’s parchment and drawing a crooked star. That had been Percilla’s first bit of real magic at Hogwarts.
From then forwards, Olive was her fierce protector. As they grew closer, their peers expressed curiosity at the seemingly odd friendship between Gryffindor tower’s beloved Olive Wood and the pushover swot, Percilla Weasley, then escalating once Olive reached a point of simply not caring anymore because girls decided to be fourteen and suddenly be catty bitches to one another. To Percilla, there had never been a viable reason she could think of that the two become friends. Roommates, yes. Reliable, but otherwise distally involved roommates who made sure the other wasn’t late for classes or forgot to put on deodorant or whatever junk was on their minds that day—it just never made sense to anyone why Olive, a caring, strong willed girl who fit the caricature of a jock would be thick as thieves with perfect prefect Percilla whom no one else could get a peep out of on a regular Tuesday, not even her siblings. “Triple P”, mumbled the reluctant Gryffindor younger years under their breaths if they so much as exhaled offensively in her direction during the exam season.
In fourth year, Percilla suddenly grew very aware of herself. Her appearance. Her freckles and spindly arms, her limp hair that had seen better days. She’d never cared about those sort of things—it was always a quality people tended to point out. So, she tried. Percilla did her eyeliner big and swoopy like a pitying Alicia Spinnet taught her one day in their shared bathroom, and she rolled her skirt. And when it would hike up her thighs, she’d grab and tug at the hem and it would make no difference at all. It got worse when she discovered that caking on mascara meant that people no longer stopped her to tell her she looked tired or, or worse, after asking her to take off her glasses. Until Olive rushed into their shared bathroom one morning, stopped, and hovered by Percilla’s bleary eyed reflection as she squinted at herself in the mirror. “Perce, I’m no expert…” she had started pitifully, then caught herself. “Don’t put that on just yet.” She went and grabbed something beside her bed. “We went and picked it up for you at that drugstore type shop. It’s a lighter brown, it’ll match your complexion better,” Olive explained, triumphantly placing a shiny brand new tube of mascara on the counter.
Percilla shrugged at first, unsure what to say and ignoring how Olive shortening her name–Perce, made her stomach do cartwheels. She felt like she should have been offended by the gesture. She’d skipped the Hogsmeade trip the day before catching up on schoolwork she insisted was important. She told Olive she would be dragged along over with everyone else when the Great Lake froze over. Except when Percilla untwisted the wand cap from the tube and swiped the spoolie over her eyelashes with flushed cheeks, Olive smiled at Percilla in the mirror, remarking how she had always been so beautiful. As though it was the easiest thing in the world. As if it were simple to understand.
And Percilla had never been quite the same.
Because then she started noticing girls. Or more importantly, how boys made her feel nothing. Some were nice to talk to. boring to look at. A group of them leered at her in the library because she discovered she much preferred trousers and not a skirt. And then Olive had gotten on the Gryffindor Quidditch team as a reserve and had to excuse herself more than once from studying with Percilla at the library and doing all the things they used to do, because she had plans.
“Oh, just the girls on the team. My teammates,” was always Olive’s reply to Percy accusatory questioning, “with who?”
“The girls on the team” were all thick thighs and muscled arms, girls who Percilla always imagined herself being friends with, but when they opened their mouths, nothing nice ever came out. According to Olive, the Quidditch girls had a sort of special bond, a “sisterhood,” even if they played for different houses and even if they refused to give Percilla the time of day. And Percilla had nodded because she understood. Her twin brothers always had each other, and as much as Ginny used to idolize her, she looked up to Ron more. But solidarity was important, and this she agreed with Olive on in such a gendered sport like Quidditch.
But it didn’t make her any less jealous and a bit sorry for herself, so Percilla started letting more people in to compensate for the Olive sized hole in her life at that point.
There was Penelope. Penelope who’d started out as a brilliant Potions study partner, who had kissed her in the bathroom at a Ravenclaw party she had been invited to on behalf of Olive. Penelope who tasted like the sweets the house elves snuck under your pillow when they cleaned the dorms, Penelope who held her hand when Percilla cried into her shoulder because Penelope wasn’t Olive.
By fifth year, Percilla was no longer a stranger to Quidditch antics. She and Olive sank back into their regular routine, and now Percilla had another friend in Penelope that didn’t feel like a distraction, but a true friendship she valued just as much as Olive’s.
Quidditch treated Olive kindly, to Percilla’s observation, with her tanned skin and toned arms peeking behind the snugly fitting jumpers she liked to flounce and flit around the castle in and feign innocence to McGonagall’s insistence that she wear her tie correctly. Olive was flamboyant, but never pompous. Flashy, but her confidence in herself just enough that you felt ashamed if she as so much raised a critical eyebrow in your direction, because Olivia Allison Wood was, to put it simply, a radical wolf wearing sheep’s clothing. She’d gladly bat her eyelashes at boys if they were lucky enough to capture her attention, and subdue herself to the cattiness of girls, but grovel beneath anyone’s feet, she would not. She was kind in a way that drew people in. Olive was captain material the moment she had strode onto the field her second year and blocked five Quaffles with a couple of calculated deep breaths and a flick of her wrist even though fifteen minutes before tryouts, she’d sat at the breakfast table with her head in her hands ignoring Percilla’s feeble attempts at shoving toast down her throat without summoning another nervous breakdown.
It wasn’t even about her skill, assured Charlie Weasley one night to Percilla several years later, it was that he could graduate knowing that Olive carried herself with effortless confidence as being the reserve for Keeper her first year, always pushing forward. The day Olive had received her notice of her position as captain, she would very well thank her lucky stars that Percilla Weasley had practically thrown herself on top of Olive to keep her from going back upstairs to miss the tryouts and cry because she thought she wouldn’t be good enough. Whispers of her reliability as a female Quidditch captain had stopped the moment Gryffindor had won their first match under Olive’s captainship, a victory against Ravenclaw after a particularly rough match earlier in the term facing Slytherin. The Ravenclaw captain Roger Davies had commented about Olive’s dainty hands being a quarter of the size before she’d shut him up and squeezed hands so hard she swore to Percilla she heard bones crack beneath her fingers.
After Gryffindor’s victory, there was naturally a raging party in the common room. It had been a brilliant match, and really Percilla was glad she wouldn’t have to fish Olive out of the locker room showers this time, and could instead curl herself into a butterbeer and Olive’s lap as she recounted for the four hundredth time that night about Harry Potter’s “fucking insane” brilliance, the one save she thought she had almost missed, and the haughtiness of the Ravenclaw captain to poke fun at her hand size over the drone of whatever fucking song the upper years had pulled up on the stereo. Percilla told herself the youngest Gryffindors were upstairs in bed and that butterbeer was at least three quarters sugar than alcohol, so she could suck it up for her best friend and take off her Prefect badge for the night, even if Olive’s eyes were getting farther and farther away, callused fingers tracing circles on Percilla’s thighs in her lap, and even if Percilla swayed closer to Olive and pressed her lips tentatively to Olive’s cheek in what she thought, in her drunken state, was a friendly sort of gesture, Olive’s lips crashing into hers was slightly more unexpected. It felt messy, urgent, Percilla’s fingers finding the nape of Olive’s neck and her vague awareness of the wet between her thighs as Olive pulled her closer.
It wasn’t like they didn’t talk about the whole thing afterwards. Olive pressed on until it made Percilla dizzy with confusion, every interaction with Olive making Percilla feel like she was drunk on a twelve pack of firewhiskey, which was ridiculous, she had never tried firewhiskey because she was scared of the choked feeling that made you feel like you couldn't breathe if you had too much that Bill and Charlie always told her about.
Olive liked to talk. This Percilla usually enjoyed about Olive, because it meant if Percilla preferred to be quiet and pick a corner of their room to stare intensely at, Olive never told her she looked pissed off, or like a sad depressed prick. And if Percilla decided to use her nice words and speak to someone other than the tone reserved for teachers and unsuspecting adoring first years, Olive never told her she was being too loud or “an annoying fuckass” declared by a Parvati Patil when Percilla had graciously said too much about a book she’d read that Parvati had clutched in her manicured hands in the library one morning. Olive would chatter on about the similarities between rugby and Quidditch, of which wasn’t in Quidditch Through the Ages, so naturally Percilla didn’t give a shit about it because she didn’t have any lasting contribution to the conversation besides exclaiming, “they throw people in the air?”.
But Olive wouldn’t give up. She would tap Percilla’s shoulder and say Percilla’s name, frowning as though it were sour on her tongue. When Percilla refused to meet her eyes, Olive would rub her finger over the bumpy slope of her nose in frustration. Percilla liked to watch, liked to imagine that a different version of Percilla would get up from her slump of textbooks and crumpled parchment and tuck the stray curl escaping Olive’s plait aside. She would kiss her silly, until neither of them could breathe and the growing itch in her belly was finally satisfied. And she’d kiss that damned curve of Olive’s nose even if it killed her.
She finally snapped after Olive asked her to talk to her for about the fiftieth time. “You know how I feel around you? Like the prehistoric things encased in resin—in amber. Whenever I’m around you. I’m the fucking fifteen thousand year old fruit fly. And you’re the tree that had the audacity to be on your period or whatever the fuck trees did in those days.”
Olive blinked slowly at her. (or maybe everything that week had seemed to appear in slow motion to Percilla. Fuck if she knew.) “That’s the first cohesive thing you’ve said to me in days.”
Percilla shrugged, feeling herself turn red. Then Oliver had looked at her with a cheeky smile. “You’ve been reading my Muggle Studies textbook, haven’t you.” She grinned, then grew serious again. “I’m trying to tell you I like you, fuckwad.”
Percilla would never let her mother call her a genius again. Look at her now—swaying back and forth in her chair and picking at the lint on her sweater, violently blinking back tears l. “I dunno know why—why I’m crying.” She scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. She couldn’t do anything these days without crying. She was like a leaky tap.
Oliver was at Percilla’s side in a flash, sliding next to her so that one thigh was squished against Percilla’s and the other dangling off the chair. Percilla felt an arm wrap tentatively around her shoulder. She found herself leaning in. Oliver spoke up again. “I’m sorry, Perce, it’s just—I don’t normally get kissed like that by someone like you and just forget about it.” Olive pressed her face into Percilla’s neck, striking her as being the mirror image of how their intoxicated selves had found each other the other night, but now instead Percilla found herself drunk on the slight coconut scent of Olive’s shampoo and how Olive’s thigh felt against her own, and drinking in the fuzzy feeling of Olive’s words: someone like you.
Everything Percilla knew about the world afterwards became one big question mark. Because she didn’t know what to do with herself now that Olive hooked their ankles together under the table at breakfast and sometimes in the middle of lessons Percilla would daringly place a hand on Olive’s thigh and but besides that, everything was normal. Or as normal as Percilla had previously thought their friendship to be. Everything besides the creeping feeling convincing herself that Olive simply fulfilled her body’s desires and nothing beyond, but broad shoulders wrapped her in an embrace-she suddenly recognized it to be a heavy, weighted feeling of wanting another person so much, lying skin to skin wasn’t enough. She had tried convincing herself that Olive simply fulfilled her body’s desires and nothing beyond, but she’d been fierce, a little defensive when Olive had asked her if she was gay for the first time. A part of her thought that this would be it, this was the cruel joke, that every kiss had been a hoax. And then she saw how genuine Olive’s expression had been, crestfallen as Percilla had laughed all in her face, albeit nervous. At that point, she now knew a name for it. So she told Olive the truth—that she was queer, a lesbian. She had waited with baited breath for Olive’s response, chin held high, although part of her was panicking. Olive had nodded in understanding, but said that her understanding of herself wasn’t much there.
“You’re the first girl I’ve liked.” And something about that still made Percilla smile to herself in spite of what came out of Olive’s mouth next. “You’re the only girl I’ve liked. The only…”
Person hung unspoken from Olive’s lips. At that point Percilla hadn’t told her about Penelope yet, that they’d kissed but Percilla had told her she really saw her as a good friend. And that she loved her fiercely for it anyway.
“There’s never been anyone else for me but you. Since we were twelve.”
Percilla bobbed her head, tongue thick and her head swimming with things to say “I get it—I understand. I—” She didn’t know how else to put it. She’d lost all of her words. “Same.”
Olive’s eyes crinkled up. Apparently, that had been enough, because she kissed Percilla in such a gentle manner that Percilla could have proposed her on the spot. It didn’t matter that they were sixteen and their world was on the brink of war—after all, Olive was her little bit of magic.