kore-of-myth's madness challenge

percy's POV

I must be mad.

I, Percival Ignatius Weasley, have surely gone utterly insane. I've agreed to meet Penny's parents. Clearly I have lost it.

I'm really not sure how I got from A to B, A being agreeing to this mess and B being me sitting on this pretentiously overstuffed sofa, fidgeting uncomfortably.

Simon and Margaret Clearwater are hopelessly Muggle It's astounding the way Penny can have a conversation with them and not want to fall asleep. Then again, it's not hard to stay awake in this chilly, immaculate house (it certainly isn't a home like the Burrow. It's simply a structure that some people just happen to live in, not someplace that someone would call home).

I answer their questions neatly. I work for the government. I live in London, I used to live in a small village in Devon. My father also works for the government, I have six siblings. Yes, I'd love some tea, thank you.

They don't talk about cauldrons and owls and Hogwarts and all the normal things. They talk about novels and university and someone named Tony Blair. It's all very strange and decidedly mad. I'm not the mad one: they are!

Penny takes me up to her old bedroom, a whitewashed Victorian expanse with bookshelves built into the walls. Of course, they are completely filled.

I pick out a volume at random. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It appears to be a children's book of some sort; the illustration on the cover shows a rabbit in a waistcoat, for Merlin's sake! I can't resist and flip to a random page.

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, but you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat. "Or you wouldn't come here."

I can barely stifle a chuckle.

"What are you laughing at?" Penny says sharply.

"Oh, I don't know. I'm mad, after all."

A/N: This was partially inspired by the song "A Postcard to Nina" by Jens Lekman, which is off the album Night Falls Over Kortedala, which is crazy awesome. Please review!