The Devil Wears Second-Hand Robes
Chapter Thirty-Five: Percy Is Not a Herbologist Part 1
There were things you just didn't see every day, such as a Pixie Puff ice lolly advertisement about how they were bringing back the Bludgeoning Blueberry flavours. Or a Witch Weekly advertisement showing a model that had not been contorted with enough Spellbinding Spandex to give her spontaneous pneumothorax. Or a thirty-six-year-old ex-dragon-tamer now-unlicenced-private-nurse accidentally shoving his thirty-three-year-old disabled brother inside a portable toilet for a laugh but now had spent fifteen minutes attempting to get him unstuck from said toilet.
"Charles," Percy shot Charlie a look that could kill a Hebridean Black. "You're going to give me a third stroke."
Yes, um, Percy had had a second stroke. He almost got fully rehabilitated and then suffered a second stroke a few weeks after. According to the healers, it was purely because the risk of having another stroke increased when you had one. He had still taking his potions during the time of the event. To this day, Percy still maintained the fact that knowing that his Honeydukes-tooth-rottenly-sweet daughter had lost her virginity to an androgynous fifth year had something to do with it. Oh, and of course, the fact that the Ballycastle Bats lost the Quidditch Cup that year even though he knew they were supposed to win. He was, after all, skilled at Tessomancy.
"Um…you don't mean that, Perce," Charlie laughed nervously, sweat dripping off his chiseled frame. "I mean…um…do you really feel strokes coming on? Do you need a hospital—or you know, um…oxygen?"
"No, I'd like to talk to McGonagall about how you managed to pass Hogwarts," Percy muttered in annoyance.
What a splendacious day! One would think that the ex-junior assistant to the Minister of Magic would be able to go to Diagon Alley without his arse becoming one with the toilet bowl. His buttocks were now numb with disbelief.
Charlie tried to heave Percy out from the toilet. "Merlin, Perce, you've really put it on, you know."
"I have not put it on!" Percy hissed coldly. He wished he would've put it on as unfortunately, Charlie regularly mistook his daughter's trousers for his. His eight-stone daughter, mind you. "I had an appendectomy before. I have lost a whole organ. I'm practically withering away right before your very eyes!"
"Perce, I'm fifteen stones. Everyone is withering away right before my very eyes!" Charlie yelled. "Even Lucy."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Percy looked at him with irritation.
"Well, she's a lovely, well-rounded woman, Perce…" Charlie tried to explain softly, only to receive a glare.
"Well-rounded?" Percy echoed incredulously. He couldn't believe the gall of Charlie. There was nothing wrong with how Lucy looked like. How much buttercream she scoffed was none of Charlie's business. "You better pray that I never get unstuck, because if I do, you're going to wish that you paid attention to Flitwick's class on counter curses."
"Okay, okay—Merlin, you're so bloody touchy these days! I don't know how your wife even handles you! AND you're acting like this hasn't happened before…I mean…Godric, do you remember the time that I accidentally made that toilet explode in the Broomstick Inn? Even Fred and George's new self-combusting dungbombs couldn't send that toilet to Canterbury! Canterbury! Can you imagine being smacked in the face by a flying, combusting toilet? Ha ha HA!" Charlie used some disgusting lubricating spell on the toilet and was trying to pull Percy from it, who had almost fallen into the whirring toilet bowl. "Merlin, this lubricating spell is disgusting! Perce, you look like you sprung a leak." Percy looked down at his baggy beige trousers and realised that they were wetter than a crup in rain.
Percy let out a sound that was a cross between a hungry Scabbers and a vocal, orgasming vampire.
"Sprung a leak?" Percy echoed incredulously, looking at his wet trousers. "I am a dignified man! I was almost Ministry of Magic…allegedly!" Percy wondered if he'd permanently lost sensation to his arse. "Do you know what almost Minister of Magics don't do? They don't get stuck into a portable toilet for an hour, feeling sorry for that dead flobberworm they'd flushed down the lavatory when they were seven…and they certainly don't do it with an ex-dragon tamer that has confessed that he has barely passed first-year level Charms to boot!"
"Hey, even though I barely passed Charms, all the women agreed I was very charming," Charlie argued weakly.
He unzipped Percy's pants in haste and was panting so hard that he felt like he was going to pass out in the lavatory. "It's okay, Perce! Um, I'm sure that I've got spare pants!" Charlie nervously laughed. What was this cruel and unusual punishment? Charlie pulled down Percy's pants and then threw them aside in the disgusting, unclean public portable lavatory. Charlie took off Percy's trousers and tossed them aside. He looked down at his rucksack, leafing through all the things that he packed whenever they left the flat. Bottles of Wizarding Ensure fell from the rucksack along with a copy of The Daily Prophet, tissue papers, and a miniature wheelchair repair kit endorsed by Gilderoy Lockhart. Then he pulled out a pair of broomstick pyjama bottoms. "Oh…well…they said that it's casual dress!"
"You're joking," Percy shook his head incredulously as Charlie tried to pull over the pyjama bottoms over his legs. "I am not selling ethically sourced quills whilst looking like I've escaped the Hogwarts dormitories past curfew!"
He was not wearing pyjamas to Diagon Alley's Potions for Parents exhibition. He refused to be a laughingstock…again.
Holding the pyjama bottoms in his hands, Charlie tried to pull Percy out of the toilet. By then, he was sure that part of his arse had merged with the toilet, forming a symbiotic relationship. Who made lavatories this size anyway? Was this a disabled toilet for house elves? Was Britain going not going far enough with Primpernelle's Beastly Bodacious Bums campaign?
"Almost out!" Charlie replied happily. "You're doing great, Perce! Just a little—a little bit more and we'll be…"
"If all your other careers don't pan out, Charlie, then maybe you should consider being a birthing coach," Percy was sure that Charlie (and everyone else) preferred him when he hadn't been able to talk. "This is unbecoming of—"
But just as Percy was released from the toilet, the portable toilet door opened. Charlie tumbled backwards and Percy flew with the violence of a hurried Seeker right across the exhibit. A shriek sounded out the second that it happened. Toilet water flooded the whole of Diagon Alley. Excited screams of five-year-olds that thrived off doing things that terrified their good-natured parents echoed. Parents were staring at him with stunned looks of disapproval. It was just another normal day in the life of Percival Ignatius Weasley.
Wonderful. It was two pm and all of Diagon Alley smelled like sewage and wasted hope, not unlike Percy's flat.
Percy remembered seeing stars form in front of his very eyes and decided that maybe he'd need a calming draught or he really might have that third stroke. To his right, there was a display on How to Discipline Your Children Without Stupefying Them, and a food stall that sold red-coloured candy floss that looked suspiciously like his daughter Molly's bright red hair. He was also probably going to die from degenerative brain changes with the amount of concussions that he'd been getting lately.
He tried to sit up but his body was more taxed than it was the day after that one-night stand with Audrey.
"FRED! GEORGE!" fifty-nine-year-old Molly screamed, only for Fred and George to turn his head towards his mum with. Like they didn't know why his mum suspected them of causing The Great Toilet Flood. "WHAT IS THIS?"
"Did you do this?" George asked Fred, looking a little irritated that his brother didn't bring him into the fold.
"NO! Is this what you think of me, Georgie? Is this how marriage changed you?" Fred hissed, crossing his arms over his chest. Little three-year-old Roxanne stared at her uncle with glossy eyes. She still couldn't really tell her father from her uncle apart. "But I wish that I did! This sodding exhibit is about as exciting as giving ole Filch an enema! But I promised your dear wife that I would… behave," he said the word like it was as poisonous as a Venomous Tentacula.
Percy bit the inside of his cheek. He couldn't believe he was in that greasy public toilet. This was it. This was the end. He was going to die of complete public humiliation. Nothing topped this, especially when his mum gave him that pitying look... Godric, he'd been disabled for a bloody decade now! You'd think she'd have gotten used to it.
"Percy!" his mum cried out in desperation. "Baby!" she ran over to him, embarrassing him in front of everyone.
She called him BABY. In the Potions for Parents exhibit. When he was a thirty-something-year-old man that had two grown daughters, and she'd managed to reduce him to a six-year-old drooling on himself with a single word.
"I am not a baby! I am a grown man! I had my own babies!" Percy waved his hands around theatrically, then he realised he had no pants on. Lovely.
"CHARLIE! GET UP! Help him!" his mum overdramatically was waving her wand around everywhere and Percy found himself thrown up int other air and slammed against a pole. As if it wasn't bad enough he couldn't walk.
Oh, and Charlie had managed to knock a stall of Baby's First Robes with his gargantuan, muscular body. Perfect!
"What's gone on?" Arthur walked towards Percy, with a soaked, pregnant Hermione that looked like she was about to faint. Percy did not want to think about how Ron's baby angel Rose faired after being covered in spewage. By the way, Arthur Weasley was still the Minister of Magic. Merlin knew how he'd managed to accomplish that feat. "Percy?"
Well, Arthur didn't ignore the fact that You-Know-Who had returned he supposed but…
Percy was lying on the ground, the Unruly Thing even more askew than usual. He had his Quidditch boxers (a gift form Charlie, who helped him dress up anyway, so he made sure that he was wearing them) there for the world to see. Mind you, these underpants were white and wet, so it didn't leave much to the imagination. He was shaking more violently like a werewolf about to transform. A man standing beside him smiled who was covered in… Merlin knew what he was covered in, but it was putrid! Percy just thought they should toss him back in the Great Lake along with the rest of the slimy, disgusting sea creatures that lived there. He was genuinely traumatised by the experience. Horrible.
And his unlicenced personal nurse, Charlie, was currently seeing Golden Snidgets flying in front of his eyes! He wasn't exactly in the right headspace to help cut this embarrassing experience short now, was he?
"Sir? Sir?" a woman walked towards him, shaking him. What was wrong with this woman? He was bloody conscious all this time! "Are you alright? Do you want me to take you to the hospital? Can you please tell me your name, sir?"
Percy's eyes widened, but he supposed many thirty-three-year-olds did not lie on the grass with wet underpants.
He tried to say his name but what came out sounded like he was actively having a stroke. His voice was so slurred he bet that he'd make seventh years stumbling out of a pub sound like they were sober. The woman looked at him in alert. "Oh dear!" she shrieked, slamming her hand against his back. Percy coughed. "He's…he's CHOKING! Someone help me! This man is choking on-on… um… candy floss! I told everyone how dangerous these are! Diabetes kills all!"
Percy shook his head, sighing deeply. "Madam," his voice showed the tiredness of all he'd been through. "I—"
"He's fine, just lost his dignity probably," twenty-eight-year-old Ginny explained to the woman, walking towards him. Six-year-old James was wearing a S.P.E.W t-shirt that Hermione had given him for his birthday last year. "He's not bloody choking! And he could talk just fine—well now, he could talk just fine…I think," Ginny took off her gaudily pink cardigan and then wrapped him around in it, helping him sit up. Great. Now, he was modelling the Quiberon Quafflepunchers' new collection.
"Are you okay, Perce?" she asked to which Percy just kept shaking his head. He had made a fool of himself…again!
"Yes, I was just testing the soil temperature with my bottom," Percy muttered in annoyance. "It's perfect! Just like this day has been thus far!"
"Dad?" Percy looked up and saw fifteen-year-old Lucy Weasley glaring at him, freckled plump cheeks flushed in red. Lucy was a five-foot-eight redhead with radiant bright blue eyes. She had a short red bob that was silkier than Madam Malkin's new pale robes display. She wore overpriced Quidditch jumpers that looked like they were second-hand. "Why can't you do anything right? Why do you have to go around embarrassing me in front of my friends?"
She gestured to a bunch of sixth year Gryffindors, who looked at him like he was a contagious case of dragon box.
"Watch your tongue," Percy warned her with a hard look on his face. "I was almost Minister of Magic…allegedly!"
"Merlin, Luce, what is wrong with you? All you care about is yourself! And your friends are horrible to Clark! They locked him into the Prefect bathroom for a laugh! You know he's not allowed in there!" fifteen-year-old Molly replied back to her with an angry expression. She was an inch or two taller than Lucy. Her extra-small robes were baggy on her. She pulled out her wand with a sigh. With a snap of her fingers and a wave of her wand, Percy back on his wheelchair, dry and wearing a pair of black trousers that he was sure she must've bought along with her.
"This is the last time I'm leaving any of you by yourselves! Now, where is…" she shrieked. "UNCLE CHARLIE!"
Charlie sat up, looking woozy. "Blast it," he looked at his trousers. "I was the one that needed the toilet after all."
And Percy thought that the only people here that had issues controlling their bladder would be under four.
"Are you alright, love?" fifty-nine-year-old Molly walked towards him, looking a little anxious. She lived in the fear that in the next three minutes, Percy was going to convulse and die. She visited him at least once every three days, just to make sure that he was still breathing oxygen just like everyone else. He supposed after two strokes and an admission in intensive care for a thyroid storm, he couldn't really blame her… much that was. She put up four fingers and asked, "Do you know how many fingers I'm holding up? Can you even see my fingers? Percy, how's your sight?"
"Minus three on one side and four on the other," Percy cynically responded, because he was just fine. Alright, he had the absolute worst headache in the world, but he was lucky he didn't accidentally crack his skull. "I'm fine, mother."
Lucy's friends were laughing, snickering about how her grandmother still babied her son like he was all of twelve years old. Lucy looked at Percy, completely fed up. "It's like you want me to be a social outcast forever," Lucy waved her arms around. "Honestly, dad, you're so embarrassing. Sometimes I feel like I'm gonna die of embarrassment! Can't you like…I don't know…use a dragon to get around or something? Uncle Charlie was a dragon tamer after all."
Percy was sure his brain stopped working. "You want me to ride a dragon so I would look cool?" he echoed in disbelief. "Love, I don't know if you know this, but dragons breathe fire. And they're moodier than your mother."
"Mum is cool," Lucy decided, her attitude changing. "At least she knows I don't have to dress like grandma. No offence, grandma, but like…" she paused, trying to figure out how to tell her that she'd rather die than dress in next week's hippest floral patterns. "Whatever, dad, can you give me a couple of Galleons for fish and chips?"
Percy looked at her as if she was crazy. "What are they made with?" he asked. "Gold?"
"Why are you always like this!" Lucy whined in a high-pitched voice. Percy was sure that the reason he didn't sleep at night was because he could hear Lucy complaining about everything under the sun until three am. Everyone had told him that he spoiled his daughters too much when they were children—well, they were right. "I hate you!"
Percy didn't even bat an eyelid. She told him she hated him about fifty times a day. He didn't even tell her off for it anymore.
Percy pulled out a few Galleons from his pocket. "I don't care how much contempt you have for me, you better have wonderful O.W.L results this year."
"Yeah, who cares?" Lucy mumbled in annoyance as she took his Galleons without as much as a thank you. Typical. He raised the moodiest teenager in the whole planet. "We're all gonna die anyway. So…"
Percy rubbed his temples. "Go buy your fish and chips," he cried out in defeat. He could probably buy a new personality with that many Galleons!
As he was being wheeled back to his stall by his daughter Molly, he felt himself relax a little. Lucy was off doing only Merlin knew what with her friends with a couple of Galleons he so generously gave her. Daphne had just returned back to their stall. She placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it, only for him to look up and weakly smile back at her. For a moment, he was transported to the day that they'd decided to get involved with one another. Well, she practically backed him up in a corner and forced him to give her a verdict, but it was all semantics, he supposed.
"I know that I'm always going to be second to her," was the first thing that Daphne told him that dreary London afternoon after lying in bed, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling because he was still fuzzy from sleeping ten hours last night. She was lying beside him, having not turned up to work that day and smelled eerily like someone from his past with her light scented jasmine perfume. "But it doesn't change the way I feel about you. I am sick of you ignoring me when I said that I like you—hello, Percival, have you seen me? I can get Oliver Wood in bed with me tomorrow. But I don't want a star Quidditch player. I want you. And I want an answer too, because that's what I deserve."
"An answer to what?" twenty-six-year-old Percy lazily asked, because he knew exactly what she meant, and she knew it too.
Daphne's eyes bulged as wide as possible. "Percy!" she shrieked. In his mind, he'd been thinking about how he'd made a big mistake going to the rehabilitation centre. Now that he could talk again, people expected to have conversations with him. What a bore. "An answer to…to…are we ever going to get involved? You know, go out? And don't say we already go out to Diagon Alley every week! I mean as a couple! I mean not to buy toys for your daughters! I mean not to indulge in your sick fascination for exotic half-off quills! I mean as in…as in go out to Madam Puddifoot's!"
Madam Puddifoot's. Percy shuddered. He was not sure if he could make a Madam Puddifoot type commitment…
"Um, yes, well…" was probably not one of Percy's most eloquent responses. He was scratching his neck.
"Well, Miss Greengrass, I never thought about us in that kind of way, even when you told me that you were… considering us before," well, she didn't just 'consider him'. She'd practically professed his love to him! "I understand I have been avoiding the question and heavily avoiding the situation as well. I just…never considered taking you to Madam Puddifoot's before. Or Rosa Lea Teabag. Or Honeyduke's Lovely Couple Chocolate Tastings. Or—"
He couldn't exactly say that she was 'attracted' to him. She was a Witch Weekly model. He was gangly and clumsy.
"Really, Percival? You've never thought about it for one fleeting second? Don't you EVER feel lonely?" Daphne looked at him with a softness to her blue eyes that made his heart beat faster than ever. She placed her hand on his arm. "Don't you ever think about how you've been in love with a ghost for the past eight years?"
"I…well…" Percy looked at the ceiling. He could still remember how warm Daphne's hand was, and how soft her hair was. If this was a beautiful romantic story, he'd say that he'd fallen in love with her then and there, but he didn't. But he just felt cold, and dark and empty and incapable of loving. "And that's why you deserve better."
"And what about what you deserve? Do you want to be miserable and alone forever? And what about me? Don't you think that I should decide what I deserve?" Daphne's voice went higher than ever. He felt a shiver run down his spine, just thinking about it. "I'm not one of your little girls, Percy. And you have to understand that even with Molly and Lucy, there's gonna be a time where you can't control their decisions either. Unfortunately for you, they're going to have their own choices and mistakes." He shuddered. "What are you so scared of? I just don't understand—"
"We are two different people!" Percy pulled his duvet over his body. "We have absolutely nothing in common."
Daphne rolled her eyes at him. "Do we have to have everything in common under the sun for it to work out?" her voice was icy and acerbic. He shuddered at the thought. "Because it worked out so well with Penelope Clearwater, didn't it? And even Audrey, you had so much in common with her that you didn't know how to talk to her! Are you afraid that we're not going to connect because you read Challenges in Charming and I read Witch Weekly magazine?"
She crossed her arms over her chest and then said, "This is stupid, Percival. We're not in Hogwarts anymore. You can't tell me that…that you don't want to give me a chance because you're afraid we're not going to be compatible!"
"I'm afraid that we are…going to be that is," Percy confessed uneasily. "Err… Miss Greengrass?"
"Here's a novel idea, Percy, but you don't have to be miserable forever," she told him, all glowing blonde hair and blue eyes. Why did she want him?
"I… well, I suppose I don't," Percy was lonely. He really was tired of chasing after a ghost. He didn't even know what Audrey would've wanted for him. For all he knew, she never gave him a second thought. He was tired of being in love with a woman that he'd known for a couple of months, that he knew nothing about. He was tired of the tragedy of it all. He was tired of things being so stagnant. "I do…fancy a table at Puddifoot's. I've thought about it. Not necessarily with you, but I have considered it, especially since…well, Lucy and Molly have been asking about…well—"
"They're wondering why you're so alone and miserable and you can't give them an answer," Daphne summarised, only for him to flush. "Because you're so insistent that they know that you only knew their mum for a total of two months. Because you told them everything," her voice softened. "They're only eight, Percy, but they know that their father was a monster."
Percy's lip twitched. "I was only five when the war happened and I can tell you that I knew so much, but nobody explained anything to me," he answered back. He did not have an unfathomable love with Audrey, so why was it so hard to let go? He supposed it was because what had happened to her was so unfathomable. Percy had wondered for years after why a man would take advantage of an eighteen-year-old with a split lip, and manipulate her into thinking that she was not enough for him? "I make my daughters read scholarly articles to enrich their minds. They read pages of The Daily Prophet that have been carelessly placed on the counter, with avid descriptions of wars and famine. They read about Christopher's trial for Merlin's sake. They grasp more than your average second year! I don't think that it's beneath them to know that their biological father was a self-obsessive murdering psychopath that raped muggleborns because he thought that he could get away with it! Well…in much less descriptive and violent terms, of course."
Percy looked down at his bedsheet. Where had their conversation gone to? "He may be a monster but I'm not."
Christopher Fearn was only a lowly muggleborn himself. According to him, why would the Ministry care about a muggleborn did to other muggleborns when purebloods went around raping and murdering muggleborns all the time? Why did he get a penalty for a crime that many purebloods hadn't yet been charged with?
"You wrote a book about him for her," she placed her hands on his wrist. "But now it's time to let both of them go."
"I'm not sure if I'd be able to," Percy did write a book. It was flying off the shelves in Flourish and Blotts for the past few weeks. His obsession with Christopher Fearn had nearly ended him, but it had been all worth it when they'd not only discovered that he'd raped women, but he had a string of very violent affairs in his youth that was spurred on by decapitating Kneazles at a young age. It made him ill to think that the disappearances of three fifteen-year-old girls had been attributed to him. It shocked him that confession upon confession all came forth because of a lowly muggle girl writing a letter to him, a letter that he knew nothing about for five whole years of his life. "Miss Greengrass?"
"Yes?" she asked, as he looked across the room to his wheelchair. He could've told her a thousand things, about how she deserved someone that would think of her first, about how she didn't understand how mucked up he could be and about how he didn't see a future for them, and all of them would be true but he didn't. Because as much as he hated to admit it, she was right. He was holding onto the past so much that he couldn't even see the future anymore.
"Are…are you lonely too?" Percy asked, only for her to slowly nod her head.
Then he looked at her and saw something in her that was so real and so vulnerable that it made him look at her like something new.
"Well, I never really considered it," Daphne mocked him. "Merlin, you're such a self-centred git," she told him.
"I'm aware," Percy reached over to cup her cheek. He should not be touching his ex-assistant's face like this. But he supposed that his ex-assistant shouldn't be lying in bed with him. Oh, and his ex-assistant's mum shouldn't be sat there across from the kitchen counter in the morning, moaning about his choice of half-off jellies and jams. "Where… where does this leave us?" he remembered asking her that like it was yesterday. He remembered the look on her face when he did.
"It doesn't leave us anywhere," Daphne replied back to him curtly. "I'm not the one with the problem. You are. And I don't want to wait for an answer anymore. I think I deserve a chance just like anyone else. I'm not demanding you to fall in love with me. I'm not forcing you to say yes, but I deserve an answer too."
Percy couldn't argue with that (trust him, he tried). "Um…" he felt unsure. How could he not be? "Yes."
"Yes, as in you're willing to give this a chance?" Daphne asked, only for him to slowly nod his head.
"Miss Greengrass? I hope you know that I overthink everything under the planet," he paused, only for her to roll her eyes. Merlin, why did she have to be so right? "Err… I will try… um… Daphne?" he remembered saying it out loud like that for the first time and it felt stranger on his tongue than that horrific Acid Pop ice lolly he chanced eating.
"My first given name!" Daphne exclaimed in a mixture of surprise and glee. "I almost thought you'd forgotten!"
"Yes, well, um…that really isn't fair. I've…I've written it when sending letters, you know!" Percy stammered. "I—"
Then she grabbed his face and went in for a kiss, only for her big fat forehead to collide with his big fat glasses.
To add onto the pounding headache, he was so embarrassed. It was the same day that Grace had decided to take Percy out to shop for 'handicapped equipment'. He was so flustered that he asked her if she was taking him to a sex shop.
Well, that was about a decade and forever ago. Now, they'd been married for the past year after an excruciatingly long period of dating and even more excruciatingly long engagement. Unfortunately for him, he had come to discover that his perfect little Daphne Greengrass was not perfect at all. First of all, he had discovered that those beautiful golden locks were faker than Gwenog Jones' breasts. He was shocked. She was about as blonde he was! He had also discovered that she took about two-hour long showers and had frequently plugged his bathroom with her naturally dark locks and crazy curly hair that she hid behind gigantic amounts of Primpernelle products. Even more shockingly, he'd discovered that Daphne wore glasses and carried around copies of The Daily Prophet. He had never been so aroused as he did when he saw her marking the spelling errors in battered red quills at five in the morning.
He supposed that, in essence, Daphne Greengrass turned out to be his type after all.
Right now, he was transported back to reality. Here he was, thirty-three-years-old, sat here in his stall where they were selling his collection of exotic quills because Daphne wanted him to get rid of everything he owned that had no purpose. According to her, the near ten-foot essay he wrote about the importance of exotic quill history did not deter from the fact that it was taking up space that they needed and um, well, he was mildly allergic to the quills so that he couldn't very well use them.
Right now, he was sat there in his wheelchair with the worst headache. He had a drippy nose and started sneezing.
"I can't believe you managed to keep this in the flat for the last decade! What did you need five auguery quills for anyway? They don't even retain ink!" Daphne told him off for the millionth time that day. She also told him off when he was eating jam out of the pot because he couldn't be bothered to wake Charlie up to apparate to the store for bread. Needless to say, the last time he apparated alone, he ended up flat on the ground and with a displaced tibia. "And I'm impressed that you can't even go to the lavatory without flooding Diagon Alley. Congratulations."
His ears reddened dramatically. "There is a defect in the plumbing system! I wrote to the Ministry about it!" he yelled.
Fortunately for Percy, their day was cut short on the back of a horrible humiliating public display. He was back in their flat by five in the afternoon and even though he'd been changed into clean underpants and pyjama bottoms, he could still feel the dapmness around his arse being wet from the disgusting Diagon Alley grass. Lovely. Around the table, they were eating a tomato and prawn pasta bake with enough cheese to make Gerda Curd ill. They were also passing a round of this delicious pesto-garlic bread. Percy had a separate portion than everyone else that didn't have any prawns in it, fortunately for him.
You'd think now that he was thirty-three years old, his life would have more meaning, but he apparently had stopped maturing past his fifth year, which was such a shame. At least he'd finally, finally made peace with Audrey's death (well most of the time that was), which was more than Snape could've said for himself when he'd been alive. Percy had also managed to find peace in himself now that he realised that no matter how bad it got, he was still functioning more aptly than Charlie, who seemed to act like he was always trying to control ten limbs at a time.
"Wow," Charlie shook his head, pouring a cup of water for himself. Percy was already sipping his cup, his humiliation and defeat hanging in the air like their mum's perfume. "What a day! I…I didn't know that these exhibits can get even more boring! I was about to crawl into a pram and take a nap. But I think everything went well up until the portable toilet incident. Well, there was you nearly setting a stall on fire but…" he smiled. "Hey, Perce, how's those mobility classes coming along? I heard last week that you could move your toes! Do you want to try that for me?"
Percy was stunned, staring at Charlie like he was speaking in Elvish. He was a grown man, but he talked to him as if he was all of six years old because he happened to be live his life exclusively in this horrible second-hand wheelchair.
"No, you dim-witted imbecile, I can't wiggle my toes," Percy mumbled under his breath. "I have had two strokes! That is TWO events where parts of my brain tissue has died!"
"Come on, Perce, don't give me that," Charlie started sipping his cup. "I mean—I don't mean to make it sound like you're an invalid. I am happy for your accomplishments… I-I just don't know what they are! I mean you've been going to that rehabilitation centre for a bloody decade now, and you're still…I mean…you're not very rehabilitated, are you? I've seen dragon tamers come back to work after getting torched from head to toe and you're still…well, you're doing really well for someone that can't do much but…" he trailed off. "That's just it. You can't really do much, can you? Shouldn't you at least be able to go through your morning without needing my help?"
Percy rolled his eyes. "I would probably be able to, if part of my brain had not died," he reminded him. "Twice."
It was always the same thing. Beyond his closed knit family of Daphne, Molly and Lucy, everyone else believed that he could still be rehabilitated even more than he was now. Percy felt like he had to remember his whole family constantly that a part of his brain had infarcted. Strangely enough, Percy had gotten used to being as active as a rock and didn't remember how it was like to walk, which he supposed was probably not a promising sign.
You'd think people would be pleased now that he stopped gloating about his achievements… but even Ron was bothering him about how he didn't do anything!
Just because he went to a rehabilitation centre didn't mean that he was going to be normal in a year. Or ten in his case.
The healer said that in the muggle world, stroke victims usually rehabilitated in the first one or two years and beyond that, there was little hope for any further rehabilitation. There were some miraculous cases, but they were about as rare as days where Fred and George decided that they smelled a little wiffy and needed a bath. In the magical world, it could take up to thirty years for a rehabilitation course to end. Percy thought that was helpful. THIRTY YEARS! What was he going to do when he started being able to walk at the age of fifty? Would he suddenly have an epiphany and start running marathons at the time? Because he'd done so much of those when he was able to in his Hogwarts years!
"Mum said she made you pureed potato soup to eat with your dinner," Charlie told him, only for Percy to roll his eyes. He had started talking a few years into his rehabilitation and part of it included his swallow assessment being redone. They cleared him for solids, but Molly was still under the impression he could still choke on his food and die anytime. She had knocked out many chocolate frogs out of his hand at Christmas time and sent him horrific pureed soups and Wizarding Ensure bottles every day. "She made sure to puree it until it was softer and silkier than your sweet wife's fake extensions. She said that it should help with your low blood levels and tried to make it as hardy as possible for your poor little baby tum."
He shuddered. Percy felt like a crup that had just been dotted on after he'd gone over a bout of food poisoning.
Daphne glared at him coldly, crossing her arms over her chest. "She does remember that Percy is thirty, right?"
And yes, Charlie did say low blood levels. Low blood levels! He was one decibel away from a perfectly normal blood level and for a bloke that literally survived a few years on purely fluids, that was a feat in itself. It wasn't like he was losing large amounts of blood with every lunar cycle now, was he?
"Besides, forget about pureed bland potato soups, there's been an outbreak of this weird illness in the Ministry," Daphne was picking out the prawns from the dish and adding them to her tomato pasta. She also had three teeny slices of garlic bread on her plate. "Everyone that has contracted it has been quarantined in St Mungo's. People have been vomiting blood! It's putrid…oh, and I suppose it's concerning too. And vomiting blood is not exactly, you know, normal. But why did they have to do it in all my new Primpernelle's Pretty in Pink boots I will never know! Well, I suppose red is the new black…" she sighed deeply. "You know that Harry Potter still makes red look amazing?"
"I read about that," Molly immediately perked up, taking the smallest slice of garlic bread possible."The outbreak that is! In The Daily Prophet!"
Percy was avidly chewing his pasta bake, raising his eyebrow. Did you know what was more disturbing than vomiting blood? The asymmetrical sunflower wallpaper that Daphne bought last week. It wasn't natural, even more so than the artificially flavoured Honeyduke's flavoured wizarding Ensure that he was still forced to drink by the gallon.
"Who cares about some boring old things happening in the Ministry! Today was so embarrassing," Lucy whined. She'd already cleared her plate and was going back for a second huge portion. "When you stumbled out of the portable toilet in your underpants, dad, I really thought I was going to die." She groaned in disbelief, wearing a top that left a little less to the imagination than Percy would've liked. "You so can't do this to me when you meet my new boyfriend. His name is Fernando. He's going to be an amazing Quidditch star and we're going to go to Europe together next year!"
Percy remembered the first time Lucy bought a bloke home, he'd been shocked and hadn't been able to sleep, thinking about the fact that his daughter was growing. Now, he knew that Lucy changed boyfriends like Charlie changed Percy's underpants. There was a time where Percy used to be scared that men would be using his daughter. That was before he found out that Lucy had been convincing her last couple of boyfriends to spend outrageous amount of money on her dress robes.
His other daughter, Molly, rolled her eyes as she looked at her dress robes catalogue. "Just like you were supposed to be going off to Antarctica with Henry Fontwell last week?" she cleared her throat. "Isn't that right, Daphne?"
"Well, this potato soup does look awfully low in calories…" Daphne was inspecting the bowl with renewed interest.
"Clark loves potato soup," Molly mentioned gleefully, and Percy's heart raced more than ever. Now, Molly was not the kind of girl that would throw away her boyfriend in the bin when she found a shinier, prettier one. No, she and Clark had been holding hands since first year. Percy wasn't exactly the most threatening person, sat here in his wheelchair and still not cleared to use a wand (yes, seriously). "I told him that he could talk to you, dad, if he ever wants a job in the Ministry! Well, I offered it to him, but he said that he wants a career with no qualifications."
"Yes, well, love, I haven't worked there for ten years… but it's not like you're not related to the Minister or anything," Percy replied, rolling his eyes. Molly just playfully pushed his shoulder, laughing at him. "You said that Clark wants a job with no qualifications? Well, I doubt there's much of a vacancy in the Auror department these days…"
Percy dropped the spoon in his hand when he heard a pop and turned to see Arthur standing there.
"Miss Greengrass, hello... I need you to run this report for me by tomorrow! URGENTLY!" Arthur hadn't done so much as say a hello, as he slammed a bunch of papers down in front of Daphne, who just rolled her eyes because she was used to this happening every two or three days. "This horrific deadly stomach bug outbreak is stressing me out. Do you know that The Daily Prophet can't stop trying to point their fingers at me for-for not having safe working conditions for employees? And nobody knows where it came from! I've had St Mungo's infection control try to find the source. I have employees resigning left and right, and worst of all…the Ministry Munchies cart shut down because nobody is eating from there! They think that the Ministry Munchies' Mysterious Munchies has something to do with it and I haven't had a pumpkin nut muffin in three weeks now! I'm practically wasting away," he whined, sounding more like a child than the Minister.
Arthur accidentally bumped into Percy's wheelchair, who for all intent and purposes might as well be invisible.
"Everything is falling apart. Astoria is in the hospital. Whole departments are ill," Arthur shook his head, looking like he was the one that was going to start vomiting blood any minute. "My anniversary is in three weeks and I need a gift... and I don't know where Hermione is going to put her new cot in. It's horrific."
"Really? They think it's the Mysterious Munchies?" Daphne ignored the rest of her rant, shuddering because the only mysterious thing she'd buy was a shade of blue eyeshadow. "Well, they do have bagels as solid as Bludgers, Mr Minister. They're not exactly the most credible food source."
"Yes, well but…" Arthur was untying his tie already and fixed it, so it was looser. "Hey, loves," he turned to his granddaughters, who stared at him like he had suddenly grown three heads. "How was your day?"
"I'd never been so embarrassed in my life," Lucy groaned. "And my fish and chips were cold. It was so gross."
Molly just looked back Percy. "Why don't you come visit dad, granddad?" she asked in a sickly-sweet voice. Percy had decided that Lucy was wrong. He had never been so embarrassed in his life. Having his own daughter stick up for him like that!
"Um…I'm very busy," Arthur just glanced over Percy then laughed. "Besides, what would we talk about? The only reason I popped by was because Daphne works for me."
It wasn't like Percy didn't used to do HER job! And it wasn't like they'd done a lot of talking then either!
Percy kept his jaw wired tight. How dare he ignore him? Ten years since the Junior Assistant to the Minister of Magic debacle, and he still couldn't have a single normal interaction with his father. Ten year since Percy had had a job and he was absolutely sick of it. He'd wasted all of his twelve O.W.L's for Merlin's sake. He hadn't seen any actual work for years, stuck in this awful wheelchair…
And it wasn't like Arthur wasn't forcing him to stay in the office for long periods of time now, was he? He swore to Merlin. His family sometimes acted like he wanted to be sat in the Emergency Room after he collapsed because he slept about an hour a day if he was lucky. Percy didn't know why everyone was acting like they were the one that lost something—he was the one sat there acting like a breathing statute. He had to spend most of his twenties learning how to use this charmed wheelchair and they were acting like they were the ones that were suffering now that Percy's only source of legitimate income was related to his disability status.
And pardon him, but he was physically disabled. He was not at all mentally challenged. He understood what was going on just as well as he did when he could verbalise what was on his mind. Percy's good hand shook with fury. He wrote a book. He was more than just a stroke victim!
"Yes, well, we're having dinner, Mr Minister," Percy said coolly. "So now that you're done, why don't you leave?"