Written for the Title Exchange on HPFC and Hogwarts' Writing Club: Count Your Buttons - (character) Percy Weasley, the Yule Ball: 19. Catching Two People In Flagrante Delicto - Write about an odd pairing and the 365 Challenge: (233) Quote - "The world is not a wish-granting factory." - John Green, The Fault in Our Stars.

Word count: 756

You Built Me Palaces Out Of Paragraphs

"The world is not a wish-granting factory." - John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

There's an old cardboard box hidden underneath Percy's bed. He had found it when he was nine and trying to hide from his brother — seeking a quiet corner to read had led him to the attic, not yet occupied by its ghoul as it is now, and that was where he'd found the box.

Even now, years later, he's still not sure what made him take it down with him. After all, it was clearly abandoned: so much dust had piled on the thing that touching it had turned Percy's fingertips all grey.

But something about it had called out to him, and he'd opened it, revealing stacks upon stacks of old letters, the parchment starting to crackle at the edges, the dark ink already faded in some places.

He's traced that ink so many times since then that it's found its way beneath his skin, an old itch that can't be scratched.

He knows the letters by heart now, but he still takes them out sometimes and reads them again. It feels oddly voyeuristic, this glimpse into the past, but he feels compelled to keep going. To witness it.

He wonders if his uncle ever got to read them before he died, or if somehow these letters had ended up in his mother's hands anyway — only to end up tucked away in the old attic where no one goes when the memory grew too painful.

He hopes his uncle got the chance though. Percy thinks the man deserved to know someone loved him before he'd died.

Because someone had. Someone had.

Dear Fabian,

Every day spent here without you feels like torture — and yes, I know you would berate me for using that word. I can almost hear your voice in my ears, telling me not to compare my plight to the horrors some people have already suffered in this thankless war.

You are right, of course. But this is not what I am doing; I am not trying to minimize their pain or sacrifice. I can only know what I feel, and what I feel is this: I do not know how to miss you properly. Being without you is like being robbed of my very air. I cannot breathe. My heart is too quiet in my chest, and my nights are haunted by thoughts of you.

I do not know where Dumbledore sent you and your brother. I can only hope that you will succeed and return safely.

Please return safely.

Loving you always,

EB.

.

Dear Fabian,

I miss you. I think I missed you even before I knew you.

Love,

Edgar.

.

Dear Fabian,

Do you think they'll remember us in a decade? Do you think we'll still be there, telling jokes and reminiscing about our youth?

Do you think we'd be those guys? You know the ones: the old fools in love telling the kids 'back in my day things were different'. I think I would like that. We could tell them how we fell in love; how you saved my life and I saved yours right back, how the war was ugly and painful and never, ever glorious.

We could say it all — if we're still there by then.

(A decade. No, not even that.

Another year. Think we can make at least that long?)

Edgar.

There's a half-crossed out smudge underneath that, so bad it's hard to decipher.

PS: Would you marry me in ten years if we survived?

Someone had sketched a quick image of a ring next to that question. Percy sort of likes to think it had been his uncle's answer, because try as he might, he can never find a letter that alludes to an answer.

(He wouldn't — someone else keeps those letters safe. Someone else guards those last remnants of two men long dead.)

Here's what that letter says:

Dearest Edgar,

Of course we'd be the old gossipy kind. You know Gideon and I never could resist a good rumor — not that you're any better when it comes to that — and you know you'd never miss on a chance to 'educate the younger minds'. Merlin knows you've been doing it for years already anyway.

Crossed out so well it's almost illegible: A year? Merlin, I hope so. I hope we can make it that long.

As for your other question…

Ask me again in ten years — but you know my answer already. There's only been a single one I could give you.

Yours,

Fabian Prewett.