I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
- from "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath
Mad Penelope's Love Song
It's the War. But he was here before the War, Percy was, only now he's gone, and you're not, and that's how you know it's still the War. You wait for him at home every day. Sometimes it feels as though you've forgotten yourself and forgotten who you're waiting for, and instead of Penelope Clearwater you're that other one, Penelope-wife-of-Odysseus, only it's not Odysseus you're waiting for, it's Percy. Penelope and Percy. P and P. Alliteration Extraordinaire. PenelopePercy. And you wonder, unexpectedly, if he dies whether you'll be able to separate yourself and be just Penelope again, or if you'll be Penelope-blankspace- for the rest of your life.
You're cleaning for him. Percy, that is. You like to keep your small house clean for when he comes home, because he has to come home at some point. He can't just go and leave you here to go mad, which you're thinking is becoming more and more of an option. He's still working for the Ministry, only he's much higher up now, much more secret. You get owls from him, but only once a month usually, and this month's owl appears to have gotten lost. You tell yourself it doesn't mean anything. Idly you wonder if Percy is a contraction of Perseus, that other great Greek hero, or of Percival, which always reminds you of vaguely chivalrous knights twisting their tongues around thee's and thou's and not really doing much of anything. And you think perhaps the latter, because whatever Percy is, steadfast, kind and diligent, it's not heroic. And then you chastise yourself for that thought, because it isn't very kind, is it, to think horrid things about someone who bravely marched off to fight the worst evil in the Wizarding world, while his wife (yes wife) sits at home and doesn't clean and thinks ill of him.
And then you have to sit in the chair, cleaning forgotten, and cry for a while, until you're too exhausted to even remember to be ashamed, and you fall asleep.
You wake in the dark and it takes a minute or two for you to figure out why you're in the dark in the first place. Then you want to know what woke you. It repeats: a thudding on the door, and you're still a bit muddled and suddenly you're surer than sure that Percy's dead and that it's all your fault because in a moment of desperation you unkindly thought him unheroic, and now he's died in some heroic feat, vanquishing Voldemort himself… The knock again interrupts your erratic thoughts, and you stumble out of the chair (not an easy thing) and out of your disjointed thoughts, and onto the hard tile of the entry hallway. The clock on the wall reads "Time for Visitors" as you glance at it, not "DANGER" as it would otherwise, so you open the door and –
"Percy? Percy?" and your voice isn't joyous like it would've been earlier, or angry if he'd come a little after that, instead your voice is disbelieving, and without waiting for an answer you envelop the red-haired pilgrim in a shaky embrace of relief, and uncertainty. Only it's not Percy. It's Ginny. And you're amazed and temporarily convinced of your complete descent into madness, seeing as you've just mistaken your younger sister-in-law for your off-at-war husband.
"Hello Penny," she grins, and she knows you hate that, you've always hated that, and you know she knows you hate that, but you can't concentrate on that, all you can concentrate on is how on earth you could've mistaken her for him. You realise that it's probably just another symptom of your encroaching insanity, but you can't stop obsessing about how you could've gotten confused in the first place. You feel/felt so…crazy.
But now that you're not so crazy, you wonder how you ever thought it was Percy. She's softer and shorter and smells completely different, fresh and clean, unlike the sweaty dust of the Ministry buildings. Ginny smells like outdoors and rain and you're certain she tastes like it as well. And that makes you double take - why on earth would you be wondering what your husband's younger sister tastes like? She looks like war, you know that much, trimmed down, a bit haggard, and she's got that Weasley lankiness to her, the confident way she stands on your doorstep, self-assured but not arrogant, is so reminiscent of Percy that you're afraid you might start bawling right here in front of her.
"Penny?" she repeats herself, beginning to realise that you're maybe not all there, and you take this opportunity to look at her again, and try to figure out why. You know that if you can figure out why you hugged your sister-in-law because you thought she was your husband, that your husband will return and everything will be okay again.
So now that you're not crazy, and you're not trying to convince yourself that you're not crazy, you realise that they're not that different anymore. While she's shorter, she's not that much shorter (or maybe it's just the way she holds herself) and the war has thinned her out, stretched her more, so where there are soft curves on you, she's bone and muscle, hard and wiry. Of course the infamous shock of red Weasley hair (hers is almost as short as Percy's was. Is. IS.) was enough for you to mistake your sister-in-law for your husband at first glance. You wonder if, when you and Percy have children, they too will have telltale Weasley hair. For some reason the thought saddens you.
"Percy?" you repeat yourself stupidly, unable to remove that mental stumbling block.
"No, it's me, Ginny." She says it slowly in case you got lost between no and me. She continues, enunciating clearly, "Percy's all right though. Mind if I come in?"
"Percy's…all right?"
"Yes, Percy's fine. May I come in?"
"Come in."
She does and you offer tea, and she seems reassured that you're not Crazy Penny anymore, that it was just a shock, and who would marvel, really, cooped up like this all day, cleaning for a husband who might or might come back. But you know that when she says, "all right" she means, "his name hasn't appeared on the lists yet so who knows."
You pass the teacup to her, and your hands brush in the process, leaning against each other momentarily as you disentangle your grip from the handle, and she fits her fingers into place. Her hand is smooth-dry like snake-skin paper, confident and knowing, contrasting on yours, which is shaky and clammy, and it must be because of your odd mythological thoughts earlier because you're suddenly convinced that you're one of Artemis's virgin-sworn maidens; it's been so long since you've been touched by anyone other than yourself. Then hesitantly she reaches and you think, stupidly, for a moment that maybe this is Percy and you've just been momentarily confused and this is your husband. This thought is confusedly confirmed when Ginny, all force and vitality, puts the cup back on the table (no coaster you note absently) and presses her lips to your hand, and then before you can react (after all, let's not forget that you just woke up, thought your husband was dead, and mistook Ginny for Percy, all in the space of twenty minutes) she presses those same lips to yours. Oddly enough, it's not the thought this is a girl that catches you, because you've never really thought about it before, never really a priority. The first thoughts, well, the first thoughts aren't thoughts so much as sensations, things you haven't felt in a while, and even slightly different than it felt back then. You can't tell if it's her or you. You don't really have time for second thoughts because the kiss really is too terribly brief, and it's over and an abashed Ginny is looking at you with a mixture of hope and dread painted across her quickly-reddening face.
"I've liked you since the day I saw Percy with you. I'd never really paid too much attention to Percy before that, but suddenly he consumed my thoughts because somehow, god knows how, he'd gotten you and I couldn't figure out what was so wrong with me until I realised that I liked you and that I was jealous of him and I've tried seeing other people, really, I have. Loads of women, muggles and witches, only nothing works! I'm sorry Penny, I didn't mean to."
And you know she didn't mean any harm, but she did mean the kiss, and you're so very very tired and confused, and you long for Percy in that moment more than you've longed for him the entire time he's been gone because Percy's so clear-cut and nothing is jumbled or uncertain with him. He loves your skin, your lips, your hair, your moans, you. He's a good lover, courteous and undemanding. But for a moment you catch a glance of tempestuous confusion and heat, wet swirling waves of tidal bliss, and it throws you because it is so confusing. And you wish like hell it weren't.
And maybe if you'd known her then, maybe if she'd been a bit older, or in Ravenclaw like you, if Percy hadn't been so kind and so there, maybe you might've seen this sooner, seen Virginia Weasley in some light other than younger sister, or maybe if if if if. What if! The two most horrid words in all the English language! And right then, you loathe them more than you've ever loathed anything in your entire life.
"Let's start again, shall we?"
She nods, disappointment and shame in equal measure, and begins:
"Hello Penny," and she knows you hate that, you've always hated that, and you know she knows you hate that, but somehow instead of being cross and awkward, and instead of yelling at her to get out, or crying because in a way you've been unfaithful, you simply say,
"Hello Virginia, " and she smiles, and then it's all right.