Chapter Text
The muddy rain-wet crawls up his charmed to perfection dress pants and stains his charity shop, scuffed-from-polish Oxfords. A faux man walking a faux path to circumvent suspicion before he apparates to work.
Its humid in London, always is. The people packed together like soaked firewood in a hellpit. Percy always liked it. It was misery, but collective misery.
Nothing says community like the sorry half smiles of two drenched people waiting at a bus stop an hour past its arrival time.
The walk isn’t as short as it could be, Percy likes the tedium of it, the numbing, banal suffering of walking to work. Of being part of something bigger than yourself, of feeling the small moments like theyre a god of ordinary things. It lets you lose yourself in a way Percy thinks every human wants to, deep down.
Percy thinks he’s normal. He doesnt know it, all the evidence is against it. He was a black sheep from the moment he came into the world and he can never truly be sure if his family were the anomalies or if it was just him. He seems average enough, he would say. Smart, yes, but normal, right? He does what a normal person should do. What the shows and movies tell us humans do. He studied hard and now he works and he makes conversation with the people who sit beside him. He rubs cats when they walk by. He watches the birds, he dreams of bigger things. By all means he feels like a totally normal person, he feels like he should feel like a totally normal person.
The work is heavy. It’s not physically demanding by any means, nor is it mentally challenging, but it’s heavy in that way your eyelids are. Begging him to just put the pen down and get some rest, or at least some coffee.
He rathers tea but coffee has become an unavoidable reality of his life. A bitter, punishing drug everyone takes.
He likes his job, he really does. It’s not flashy or dramatic but it doesn’t have to be to be important. Yes doctors, heroes, poets, actors. They save and change lives but so do rules. Cauldron thickness may seem unimportant or even pedantically trivial to the vast majority but its those minute, thankless regulations that affect everyone.
People die. It may seem funny to some but Percy had read about it. Researches having their cauldrons overheat and explode, dangerous potions injuring and killing them. In a small way he can prevent that. He has!! These small things are important to him, and to everyone else even if they don’t know it.
Scrimgeour paces in his office, Percy can hear it. Its common now with tensions rising, Percy feels bad for the man, he wouldn’t want a shot at leading the country in a time like this, he can’t even mellow tensions between himself and the people he loves, nevermind everyone in Britain.
The office is almost empty today. Percy isn’t sure why. Did he miss something again, he’s become very good at the whole work thing and less so the social stuff. Is it some team bonding or ridiculous– oh. Its christmas eve. Thats what it was.
Oliver has been in Scotland for the past few weeks and Penny’s been so busy with work he hadn’t really make plans with anyone.
It wasn’t normal to forget Christmas eve.