Percy realized only the next day how very wrong his parting statement had been, or at least, the first half. (Hermione had in fact gone on to have a great labor, at least as far as labors went, which Percy really preferred not to think about.)
He'd gone into Hermione's office very early that morning with a great feeling of importance, being Acting Minister for the next month and a half. Indeed, this was better than actually being the Minister of Magic because if anything seriously went wrong, Hermione would step in for him. He instead got all of the perks of power without too much of the responsibility. Even public opinion about the current administration would probably rely less on Percy's performance than on the cuteness of his newest nephew, little Jasper Octavian Weasley-Granger.
Percy congratulated himself at half after ten by stopping for tea, having put in over four hours of work already. He ignored the fact that those four hours of work had been answering press and dignitary inquiries by owl after the status of Hermione's labor... whether or not he was essentially reduced to sending birth announcements, being Acting Minister still felt terribly important and official.
Percy stood up to briskly stretch, his back cracking loudly, and he was very glad there was no one to hear.
He spelled the teapot and Accio'd biscuits from one room over, what had formerly been his office. The heavy oak door slammed open and shut resoundingly, but then Percy heard other slightly muffled noises as well.
They appeared to be emitting from the portrait, which, as long as Percy had worked here, only ever emitted soothing beach sounds: waves and occasionally perhaps the soft hooting of a seagull.
'Oh, right,' he remembered suddenly. Hermione had told him right before she left, something about some portrait from Hogwarts using the painting for a holiday, though she hadn't specified the length of the planned stay. He was a bit disapproving of the fact that whoever it was had clearly been indulgently sleeping in only to be woken by his preparation of elevenses, but the presence of some portrait certainly wouldn't distract someone with such a strong work ethic such as himself. Besides, he thought that the portrait was surely Dumbledore's, and his onetime Headmaster deserved a nice quiet break in his dotage, didn't he?
Twenty minutes later, Percy was definitely distracted. Doors slamming, a toilet flushing and a tea kettle whistling, were all noises Percy's mind could easily filter out thanks to growing up with six siblings, all of whom were very loud. But the usual morning getting-ready noises of someone inhabiting the painted cottage had been replaced by a soft, throaty moaning and the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings, which Percy couldn't help but listen to. Percy squirmed uncomfortably and tried his very best to keep his mind on his work.
As the moans grew louder and more frequent, and became punctuated by gasps and occasional muttered obscenities, Percy's concentration on his work became well and truly lapsed. He began to speculate instead that the portrait was not Dumbledore (at least he really, really hoped it wasn't Dumbledore), and moreover that there might be two portraits inhabiting the painting, together. It was positively indecent!
Percy then had the comforting thought that maybe the sounds were Mr. and Mrs. Potter enjoying their reunion at last in what was probably relative privacy as compared to the Great Hall at Hogwarts. As embarrassing as it might be to have to overhear them, relations between a man and his wife were surely a wonderful thing, not that Percy would know personally, but otherwise, the church wouldn't bestow its blessing upon such things. Besides, surely, this would be a rare, one-time occurrence, and after their love had been consummated, Lily and James Potter would sit on a divan holding hands and taking tea for the rest of their holiday, as was befitting of famous, decorated war heroes.
So Percy grudgingly left the room, since he had to go to the owlery to dispatch his correspondence anyway, and might as well give the Potters privacy, since he supposed it was their right, being married and all. The brisk, cold air would do him good as well.
When he returned, he had about an hour and a half of peace and quiet interrupted only by the noises of breakfast being cooked and eaten (Breakfast! At this hour when the day was half over!), when the moaning started up again.
'Oh, tarnation!' thought Percy, but he looked at the clock and noticed it was time for decent people to be having lunch, so he hastily departed from the office again. It was only when he had already left the Ministry that he realized he'd forgotten his coat, but he didn't dare go back for it.
When Percy returned for lunch he was already annoyed because he was wet from being rained upon, and he hated looking bedraggled, especially at work when a professional, well-kempt appearance was so important... and on his first day as Minister, to boot.
However, when he gingerly crept back into the office well over an hour later, after a lunch break that was rather longer than he was accustomed to taking, it was not quiet at all. Instead, Percy was extremely aggravated to hear continued prurient shenanigans emerging from the portrait.
"You fucking tease!" pleaded the voice. "Please, Moony! Now!" Apparently whoever "Moony" was obliged, because that same baritone continued, "Fuck, yes, oh Merlin, fuck!" after which there was a rather hearty scream, and then, finally, there was quiet.
Percy was mortified to have heard something so filthy, because married or not, he didn't think it was proper to be having sex for such long periods of time, particularly not so loudly and so enthusiastically, and definitely not with so much swearing and blaspheming.
He was even more mortified to find himself in a bit of a state.
This was not at all how he'd imagined his first day going, and it rankled, but apparently not enough to make his unfortunate condition dissipate. Percy resentfully left again to take care of things in the bathroom, since he had the probity to be discreet and private.
When he returned, he resumed working for a while and succeeded in firmly ignoring the painting, since the inhabitants were probably having some kind of decadent hedonistic post-fornicatory nap. Percy was just putting together a color-coded timetable for tomorrow, consisting mostly of meeting with lobbyists from industry, when he heard crunching sounds coming from the painting. He steadfastly refused to acknowledge this, since he was wet from rain and a bit sticky and sweaty from the après-lunch fiasco, and he was really beginning to resent the visitors Hermione had invited.
But still, decorum and good comportment forced him to look up at an enthusiastically shouted "Hullo there!" emerging from the painting.
Percy was horrified to note that the lanky, black-haired man ambling down the beach, wearing a towel slung low around his hips, was not James Potter after all, but rather, Sirius Black.
Although he knew now that Black was not a dangerous escaped convict, Percy blanched at the quickly-succeeding thought of what woman it might be in the painting keeping Black company... whoever it was, they had not been married!
"Ah, you must be one of Arthur and Molly's brood; you look every inch a Weasley! But you're not one I recognize, so I'd guess you're Percival Ignatius!"
"Why, yes," Percy stammered, slightly offended at the familiar use of his given name, even if it was the complete version. He was the acting Minister of Magic, after all, and it wouldn't do to be addressed so casually, even by a portrait.
"Pleased to meet you at last!" waved Black, in a casual way totally bereft of dignity. "You must know that I'm Sirius Black - a bit infamous what with all that unfortunate, silly incarceration in Azkaban business." He gestured dismissively at the mention of his dark and harrowing past, as though a decade of grueling torture was absolutely trivial, and he really couldn't be arsed to be anything less than maniacally happy in the beautiful summer day of the painting.
Percy mumbled as noncommittally as his good manners allowed, not wanting to encourage the interloper in distracting him. Percy wondered if it was the long term exposure to Azkaban which had addled Sirius' brains, or whether it was that dangerous slothful lifestyle of sex, eating at odd hours and sleeping in past ten that had pushed him over the brink into insanity. Probably the unkempt, long, shaggy hair also contributed to the morally bankrupt state of affairs.
Instead, Sirius gestured at the opening cottage door, and added rather adoringly, "and that there is Remus Lupin, bringing lunch!" He gave an absurdly happy, almost besotted smile that Percy attributed to the bringing of food. Clearly, Black was a hedonist of the worst sort, ruled entirely by his baser instincts for food as well as fornication! "Oi, Moony, look, it's Percy Weasley!"
His former professor at least had the decency to be wearing a shirt and swimming trunks, and wore his towel over his shoulder. As Lupin trudged down the beach lugging a heavy picnic basket, he looked every bit as ridiculously happy as Sirius, albeit in a slightly less deranged, imbalanced way, although that might be attributable to his having had a haircut in recent past. Percy wondered who the two women that must be with them might be, and how the cottage was even big enough to contain two bedrooms. 'Magic,' he supposed.
Percy greeted his former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher perfunctorily and then excused himself to return to his work as the portraits set down a picnic.
Several minutes later, Percy was contemplating the proper form of address for a thrice-divorced, quintuplicately-widowed, newly single woman whose last marriage had been annulled, when the former husbands had had a goodly share of titles (military, medical and legal alike) between them, and the reason for the latest annulment had been that the husband had turned out to be a vampire, although the happy couple was still cohabitating.
Actually, Percy knew the rules, but he was really working out how said proper form could possibly be made to fit on an Ministry regulation-sized parchment front, given that the woman that he knew for being Blaise Zabini's mother was one of their chief campaign donors, and it certainly wouldn't do to offend her, when something entirely unrelated finally dawned on Percy.
He stared blankly at the large, unsightly inkblot he'd just caused, entirely too preoccupied to use the blotting paper or even a spell.
If Sirius Black had called Professor Lupin "Moony" on the beach, and a very distinctly male voice had been calling someone "Moony" in the throes of passion earlier, then perhaps the most parsimonious explanation was that Sirius had been calling Percy's former professor "Moony" while they were in the throes of passion. Together. Without any accessory women involved.
Percy was horrified, of course, as was only natural. However, he was also strangely fascinated: Percy did so prefer tidy, logical explanations that required the fewest extraneous steps, but in this case he almost hoped that he might be wrong. He stole a cautious glance up at the portrait, willing it against all reason to produce the two women that should by all rights be keeping Lupin and Black company on their depraved little vacation.
Instead, he saw Remus feeding grapes to Sirius, who was sprawled in his lap. They were also touching each other in a way that didn't seem even remotely platonic, except in the sense that Plato possibly had indulged in such naughtiness himself.
Though this confirmation represented a triumph of deductive reasoning, and therefore should be savored as a moment of personal victory, Percy felt quite like someone had just pulled the floor out from underneath him. His stomach lurched somewhere around the level of his knees, and his pulse pounded a manic counterpoint in his temples.
He stared, knowing it was extremely poor manners and also not conducive to getting his work done, but he couldn't seem to look away as the awful business with the biting and the wandering hand continued, until Sirius finished off the last of the grapes. Sirius then sat up and rummaged about in the picnic basket, triumphantly producing a brown jar labeled "Nutella".
In spite of a solidly wizarding upbringing, Percy recognized the container as being the chocolate-hazelnut spread that Muggle-born Hermione had been craving in her second trimester. She'd been terribly embarrassed about the nature of her cravings, something about her parents having been dentists and how Ron would give her a terribly hard time about eating something so sugary and cavity-promoting, so an alarmingly large stock of the jars had been cached at the office away from the prying eyes of spouses and parents.
At the time, Percy had suspected that using Nutella as a dip for kosher dill pickles wasn't the proper usage (even Muggle cuisine wasn't that bizarre), but he knew that the employment as body paint that he was now witnessing was even further from the intended use as a breakfast spread.
Percy watched with mounting horror as Sirius pulled off Remus' shirt, firmly pushed Remus back onto the sandy beach, and then smeared a chocolate trail down his front, following the line of hair that lead down into the swimming trunks. Remus, amusement and arousal flitting over his features as he lay back propped on his elbows, finally grabbed Sirius' hand and licked off the chocolate in what was definitely an indecently suggestive manner.
As Sirius followed the sticky path he'd delineated with his mouth, a teasing hand skirting Remus' last remaining item of clothing, Percy became suddenly, horribly aware of where the business with the misappropriated Nutella was going.
Of course, Percy did the honorable thing, namely grabbing his papers and fleeing to the library to finish the afternoon's correspondence.
There, he congratulated himself on not thinking about Remus, Sirius and the melty chocolate every couple of minutes, because really, some things were too awfully debauched to even contemplate.
