Egads! My Eyes! by Luvscharlie
Warnings: Boys being boys, poor traumatised children, language, voyeurism (though the boys tried to close their eyes—there are some things so horrible, you just can't turn away, no matter how much you want to), things to do with a doll that might make you want to close your own eyes.
A/N: Originally written for the prompt of "someone catches their parents in bed" at the 2011 hp_crackdealers fest on Live Journal. Thank you to aigooism for the beta work.
Charlie burst into the bedroom he shared with his older brother, where Bill and Percy were bowed over a chess board concentrating. Bill was biting his fingernails and Percy was scratching his chin. The game was obviously close, but Charlie didn't have time to think much about that now. This was serious.
"Scourgify my eyes. Obliviate me. Fucking kill me!" he wailed, flinging himself onto his cot in perfect drama queen fashion.
"I really don't know how you stand sharing a room with him," Percy said calmly, before taking Bill's queen with his castle.
"It's challenging," Bill replied just as calmly and glaring at the castle that had just crushed his lady to bits. "Of course, if Mum hears him talking like that, I won't have to share a room with him for long. She'll squish him like the annoying little bug he is."
"Hello!" Charlie screeched. "I'm fucking traumatised over here! Care, somebody, won't you? I don't think that's too much to ask. You do not want to know what I just witnessed in our parents' room! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod."
"Went looking for your birthday present again, did you?" Bill's voice never changed tone as he continued to study the board.
"Oh, jiminy," Percy retorted. "Are you fifteen or three, for crying out loud? Nobody your age goes snooping for presents." He instructed his knight to move across the board from B-1 to square C-3 and said checkmate.
"Bloody hell! Again?" Bill swore, making Percy smile.
Charlie did the math on his fingers. "I'm four, which means you're not born yet and my life is still good, so bugger off."
"Percy was born when you were four," Bill chimed in, helpfully, still trying to figure out how Percy managed to beat him yet again.
"Okay, then three. I'm three. Now, bugger off, Unborn Boy!"
Percy shook his head. "I'm offended on behalf of three-year-olds everywhere."
Charlie rose up on his elbows, kicking his feet against his cot. "I can't hear you Womb-Boy, 'cause you don't exist. Remember?"
"So childish."
"I know you are, but what am I?" Charlie stuck out his tongue.
Bill interjected before the conversation got violent. When Charlie got to the 'I know you are, but what am I' comeback, he was well out of good insults, and then Percy would say something intelligent that would only piss him off more, and then before Bill knew it, Charlie would be rubbing Percy's face into the carpet. And if he broke Percy's glasses again, Mum would have kittens. They'd seen one too many magical repairs as it was, and she didn't think they'd handle another. This close to Christmas, there was certainly no extra Knuts for new glasses. "So did youfind your birthday present this time?" Bill asked.
"Not even. I swear that woman is an expert hider," Charlie said, pounding his fist into the squeaky mattress. "Childhood trauma and no new Shooting Star racing broom to be found anywhere. I bet nobody ever beat Mum at Hide the Wand—Oh, why did I have to think of it that way?" Charlie flopped back on the mattress again, dramatically.
"She clearly lost to dad at least seven times," Bill said.
Charlie lobbed a pillow at his older brother's head. "Shut up! You're not helping. Oh, why hasn't someone killed me yet?" Bill threw the pillow back and Charlie covered his face with it.
"That's a good question," Percy retorted. "Honestly, I'm shocked every day that someone hasn't murdered you in your sleep. You're dead obnoxious."
Charlie took the pillow away and glared.
"So should we ask him?" Bill asked, looking at Percy.
"Well," Percy said with a sigh, "if we don't, he's just going to prattle on like a Kneazle in heat. Besides he's being terribly loud, what with that squeaky voice of his, and I already have a headache beginning to form."
"It only squeaks sometimes, what with our little Charlie growing up." Bill used the most condescending bit of baby-talk he could muster, as he crossed the room, leaned over the bed and pinched Charlie's chubby cheek. "Mostly, he just sounds like a girl."
Charlie kicked out, catching Bill in the knee and dropping him to the floor. "I'll show you a girl, you fucking bastard. You didn't even get pubes until last year. And don't try to deny it; I share a room with you!"
Bill was on the carpet, rubbing at his knee and glaring at his brother (mostly because Charlie had hit a sore spot with that pubes remark, damn him). "So, did Mum get you another Wendy the Wonder Witch Doll for your birthday?" Fair was fair. One sore spot for another.
"I was fucking eight years old! Besides she had beautiful pink hair that you could wash and braid! And her name is Cindy, not Wendy." Bill never understood anything. Charlie launched himself off the bed and made for Bill's throat. They rolled about on the floor, gouging and kicking, Charlie demanding that Bill take back anything negative he had to say about Cindy, and Bill refusing to do so, until a voice from the other room called out, "Do I have to come in there?"
Bill was lucky that Charlie froze in mid eye-gouge and Charlie whispered, "Oh, Merlin's Balls! Don't let her come in here. I can never ever look at her again. Never! I'm going to have to eat every meal with my eyes closed until we go back to Hogwarts after the New Year."
Percy saved him, which was very un-Percy-like, and made Charlie almost like him. Almost. "Not to worry, Mother. Bill and I were just scooting the table around."
"Okay, dear, but do try to hold it down." Mum's voice called back. "It sounds like trolls are taking down the room."
Percy looked over at his brothers frozen on the floor, with Bill's knee still raised where it had been aiming for Charlie's crotch, then muttered under his breath, "Well, she's not far from the truth."
"Oi!" Charlie said, forgetting his desire to protect Cindy's reputation. "I am far better looking than a troll." He looked over at Bill and smirked. "'course, I do see the resemblance in Bill."
Percy brushed off his brothers' immaturity. "Would you like to play another round, Bill?" Percy nodded at the chess board.
"I think my pieces have suffered enough for one day, thanks. They're going to need a bit of magical repairs before they're ready to go another round." Bill wasn't happy. He was sure his pieces would be berating him throughout the process and reminding him of how many times his baby brother had beaten him over the holidays, and how they had suffered for his being so inept at the game. If he had the Sickles, which he didn't, he'd simply go buy himself a new set.
"So, I guess you're not the best chess player in the family anymore," Charlie taunted.
"And I guess you don't still wrap Cindy the Wonder Witch's hair around your cock when you wank," Bill fired back. "Only, I know you do, 'cause we share a room and the whole time you're pulling on that tiny little prick of yours, you're moaning 'oh, Cindy, you know what I like'.
"I fucking do not!" Charlie shouted and his fist caught Bill square on the chin, and the rolling about, fists swinging, feet kicking and hair pulling was in full swing again, as was the shouting and name calling and denial about all things wank-related.
The door flew open and Molly Weasley marched in, hands on hip, demanding to know who was tearing down her house. Bill and Charlie froze again on the floor, and Charlie pushed Bill in front of him.
"I've had about enough of the two of you today!" Molly stomped her foot and glared her renown glare of doom at her two eldest.
"Thank Merlin, she's got her clothes on," Charlie mumbled to himself. Bill only caught 'she's got' and because of that he had difficulty understanding why his brother's eyes grew wide and his cheeks and ears turned flaming red. It wasn't as if it was their first time drawing their mother's irritation—not even the first time this week.
Their mum noticed Charlie's red face as well. "Charlie, love, are you feeling well? You look flushed and—oh, dear, come here and let me feel of you. I can't have you getting sick, what with school right around the corner and—why are you backing away, dear?"
Bill noted that Charlie was doing just that. Charlie was using his elbows to pull himself backward in hopes that their mother wouldn't reach him. He should let her at him. What with the little prick being… well, such a prick. But, he might need Charlie's help the next time he decided to crawl out the window and meet Tonks down in Ottery St. Catchpole or, you know, for someone to open the window when he needed to get back in. So, he stepped up and covered for the prat. "He's fine, Mum. He's just hot where we were wrestling about. Sorry, we got too loud." Bill turned on his most charming of smiles. It worked. He could actually see the anger leave their mum, and a smile come over her.
"Well," Mum began, "I have a lot to get done today. You won't make me come up here again, then?"
"Course not." Bill gouged Charlie with an elbow, thinking that would get him to agree. Charlie mumbled something, but Bill couldn't decipher if it was an agreement or a protest. It didn't matter. Mum left the room anyway.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Bill demanded.
Charlie turned his anger on Bill… again. "I've been trying to tell you, you pillock!"
"Tell us what?" Percy asked in an attempt to neutralise the situation.
"There aren't words to describe the horror!"
"Then how were you going to tell us?" Bill rolled his eyes and Charlie shoved him hard, then crossed the room, opened the cupboard and cursed when Cindy fell onto his head and Bill began to snigger. Of all the times for that happen!
"Shut the fuck up, bald penis boy!" Charlie said, and he gained a modicum of satisfaction at how quickly Bill's smile vanished. Charlie turned and rummaged through the closet until he came up with a Pensieve. It was chipped in many places, but it would serve Charlie's purpose. He set it in the middle of the room and motioned for his brothers to come forth as he used his wand to fill the bowl with his most recent, most traumatising, most horrifying, terrible (you get the picture, right?) memory of all. "I think you have to see this for yourself to fully appreciate the horror I've witnessed."
"Drama queen," Bill mumbled.
Charlie just pointed toward the Pensieve in response, and first Percy conceded to place his head into the bowl and then, Bill followed suit.
Bill found himself in their parents' darkened bedroom, with Percy at his side. The closet door was partially open, and Charlie could be seen rummaging frantically around. "Fuck," he whispered. "No broom anywhere." The room was empty otherwise and Bill saw nothing to have made Charlie react so violently. He must really want that broom.
Then, there were voices outside in the hall.
"In the middle of the day, Arthur? With all of them home? What has got into you? What a bad boy, you are!" Their mother was giggling like a teenager when she and their father burst through the bedroom door.
And then it happened. Oh, the horror! They were only kissing at first, which the boys had observed on numerous occasions, and though it was a bit uncomfortable to watch, it certainly could not have been what had made Charlie act so oddly. But then, the urgency kicked in and their father grabbed their mother's shirt and yanked it over her head and off came the bra. Up came her skirt, her knickers dropped around her ankles, and Bill and Percy both shut their eyes as tight as possible and began to scream. "Let us out! Let us out! Bloody hell, Charlie! Let us the fuck out!"
Charlie wasn't in a mood to be accommodating. He'd been trapped in the closet and forced to stay there throughout the whole ordeal. He'd heard the sound of skin slapping against skin, their father's dirty whispers, their mother's groans of encouragement to please not stop and oh yes, right there and all sorts of other things that no one wanted to remember. And only when it was all over, and Bill and Percy were thoroughly traumatised, did Charlie release them from the Pensieve.
"See, I told you!" were the first words Charlie said to his brothers. Bill and Percy were speechless. All they could do was nod, their mouths hanging open in horror and Percy's glasses askew.
Later that night, at dinner…
Bill, Percy and Charlie were looking straight down, taking great interest in their stew, speaking to no one and not daring to make eye contact with anyone either.
"What has got into you boys?" their mother demanded.
"They look like they've seen a ghost," their father replied.
"I wish," said Charlie to his bowl, and Bill nodded his agreement. Ghosts would have been a great improvement on the terrible spectacle they had been forced to witness. Even a naked Moaning Myrtle (which Bill and Charlie had both seen before, and be assured it was nota pretty sight) would have been an improvement over their mum's saggy tits.
No three boys have ever been so glad to see a Christmas holidays end.