it's been a while but i've actually written all this out and edited it today, so i'm just going to post it all. this is going to be 20 chapters, and there is definite character death in this. i'll warn for the chapter where it happens (it's nearing the end of Ch 19 and is talked about in the epilogue.)

The Mother Who Cried Werewolf

Chapter Sixteen

Talk

They gave him twenty-five Galleons for the competition that he won. He always carried them around to look at the first thing he'd earned since he'd been alive. Now, it was the only thing that he had on him. He was in his pyjamas. He was in the middle of the road in Devon with no sense of direction or purpose. He was a minor that couldn't use a wand unless it was to call for an emergency. All around his neighbourhood block were just beautiful gardens and peaceful people who didn't want their lives disrupted by a fifteen-year-old boy that didn't want to sleep in his bed.

The month of January was one he'd primarily spent playing the role of poor sick Percy. The month of February, some semblance of normalcy. It was March, and a mild breeze replaced the crisp air. It was still too cold to walk around in white pyjamas.

He hid outside the Burrow until he saw his father leave. That was when he snuck back inside. They didn't have an emergency wand anymore after Charlie took it, but he knew they had a funny wand that was mostly spello-taped back together that could still work. It was so old and brittle that the Ministry would have a fine time trying to track a few sparks in the wind, he'd bet. Percy could remember all sorts of loopholes.

He could barely recognise the person that he was becoming. No matter what he did, he was wrong. No matter what he did, he was ruining his family. As he changed clothes in his new room, he could hear Ginny sobbing.

Her cries only confirmed that he was the worst person in the world. But all he could think about was if she cried like that because she thought he'd run off, he couldn't bear to think how she'd be if he stayed in the house long enough to die.

Percy took a pinch of Floo powder from the fireplace and Floo-ed himself over to Audrey's flat, knowing that she and Sunflower would likely be at Stakes and Bakes. They would be making their new pumpkin pasties, which they'd shape like Jack-O-Lantern's. Being in their flat when he knew they weren't was a breach of trust, but he ignored the feeling. The adrenaline powered him through to the point where he didn't second-guess his actions.

He sat by Audrey's table and wrote a long-winded letter. He addressed it to her and Oliver. He had to get away. He had to get away.

He made his way to the bristling streets of London after he exited their flat. As he breathed in the air of cigarette smoke and fizzy drinks, all he could think about was that his father would likely be looking for him in the woods nearby.

He sat at a nearby bench to catch his breath; his cheeks flushed, and his head felt light. He had no wheelchair as a safety net, nobody to hold him if he got short of breath. There was a world going by in front of him, people whizzing by in colourful dresses and tops with lightweight jackets just in case it would rain.

Percy had no such precautions. He'd put on the first thing he'd seen in his wardrobe. It was a pair of brown trousers and an oversized olive-green shirt with grey stripes. His pants used to be loose on his frame, but he'd grown to have a soft middle. Audrey poked at it sometimes, and he pushed her off, only to eat more fairy cakes.

You don't understand what it's like, he wanted to say when she asked him if he ever got sick of eating so much.

He knew he was overweight for his frame after a sudden weight gain, but he couldn't bring himself to care. After a year of being starved and fed through a tube, Percy didn't know how to stop eating. He ate all day long, full-on meals and packets of sweets and crisps multiple times a day. Sometimes, he ate until he was sick and then ate some more even when he didn't want to anymore, even when he thought that he would throw up from the ache in his stomach. And being in that stuffy house all day long, he didn't have anything to do but eat and sleep. He knew if he continued to put on more weight, someone in his family would start poking fun at him for that too. As if it mattered when he was going to die.

After gathering his thoughts, Percy got himself to the Ministry of Magic. The route felt familiar, even if he'd only been there once. The whole ride felt exhausting. He wanted to curl up in his bed, angry at himself for his poor stamina. People around him were moving, laughing, living, eating biscuits, talking, and drinking tea from flasks. He watched, alone and confused.

The Ministry of Magic felt so much bigger without his father there to take him. He felt his limbs numb when he couldn't find the elevators in the first ten minutes of looking. But when he did, he went in as if he'd done it a hundred times before. He ran his hand through his hair and took in a deep breath. It was going to be alright. It had to be. He wondered if there were a chance his father would come to work when his son was missing. Suppose there was a chance they'd take him back home after he told them that he couldn't go back anymore. He didn't know what they could do for him. He wondered if they'd think he was overdramatic.

Level One Minister for Magic and Support Staff, Level Two Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Level Three…

When the door opened onto Level Two, Percy thought he might collapse. It took all of his energy to propel himself forward. He stopped in the middle of an empty hallway, all of what was happening finally hitting him.

His shoulders dropped down, his breathing becoming shallower. His eyes darted back and forth, looking for a sign, something that he recognised, someone to tell him that what he was doing made sense. His mind swirled with thoughts. The thought of going back to the Burrow left him with dread in the pit of his stomach. A part of him gazed at an open window, where the sky was cloudless but a barely-there blue. The easiest option seemed to be throwing himself off of it. But he didn't want to die. He wanted to feel like his life had a meaning beyond custard creams and The Detective Files of Conebush and Persimmons. Well, he wouldn't mind his detective novels or his biscuits. They were his favourites, but…

Percy slowly made his way to the Auror office, almost as if another force was pulling him in. He registered at the desk. He felt strung out and raw. But he slowed down to calm by the time he sat down. He listened to people being called in and watched them walk away with their hands in their pockets, their shoulders squared, the sound of their whispers echoing.

When he was called, all Percy could hear was his footsteps as he walked into the room. There was a lump in his throat that he couldn't swallow. The room was stuffy and hot. The lady in the office was one he'd never seen before. Percy didn't know if she would take him seriously. She was tight-lipped and had a mug in front of her that said WORLD'S BEST AUROR. It had a chip in the corner, and her coffee looked cold and forgotten, like she'd made it but hadn't had a chance to drink it yet. There was a pad of paper next to her. He tried to read what was on it, but her scrawl was too small. When he adjusted to the stuffy feeling, he could smell burning plastic and rubber in the room. Neither spoke for the first ten minutes as she looked through papers. It was as comforting as it was unsettling.

"I can't go back home," Percy said. He didn't know if they could understand how desperate he was for things to change, if they could see it in his face or hear it in his voice. "I don't know where to go, and I'm frightened." The thought had been swirling around all day in his mind, and now it was all out in the open. He didn't feel relieved saying it. He felt like he was suffocating.

She listened to him talk about his parents, his sickness and how hard it had been. Percy spoke about the other lady who usually saw him and how she'd occasionally come to him at the hospital to take his details.

He felt detached from the world as he told her everything that had happened, unsure of what it all meant or what the right thing to do was. He told her about his mum, his father, the hospital admissions, his tube, and his brothers, who hated him but didn't anymore. His sister was crying when he left.

"She put a tube in me, but I could eat just fine," Percy showed her the tube, which was blocked and yellow around the edges. It hadn't been used or maintained in months. "And she broke my bones and beat me, and everyone in my family thought I was lying. They didn't do anything." He wondered if she thought that he was unhinged. Suppose he sounded like he was lying.

She flicked through his file with her stubby nails, and he felt bile rise in his throat.

When she left the room, Percy looked over her notes. She'd only gone for a minute, but he'd caught sight of one line that had made him wince. 'Claims that he didn't eat for a year. Looks like he eats plenty.' Percy bit his lower lip so hard he could taste blood. His lower lip started to wobble, and his eyes were becoming wet. They didn't believe him.

When she came back, she took him back to the Burrow.

Percy listened to the Auror and his father talk. A few empty laughs and gestures of goodwill as Percy studied his father's face. He saw Arthur's chin jutting out, a vein pulsating in his neck, and his hands wrangled together. Beads of sweat were forming on his father's neck. Percy stared at the lady talking to his father, her voice light and cheerful.

He hoped she couldn't sleep that night, thinking about the vile things she must've written about him.

They're not true, he thought. Or were they?

When he came home, Ginny held him while sitting on the sofa. She hadn't said a word to him, but she refused to let him go, burying her head into his arm and clung a little tighter to him every time he moved away.

After the Auror left, his father made him a cheese toastie and made him eat it with his nightly potions. Percy could barely make it through the first few mouthfuls. The toastie was dry, and the cheese stuck to the roof of his mouth no matter how much water he drank. He could feel it slosh around in his stomach. After a few mouthfuls, he took his nightly potions. They were more than they'd ever been before. He had trouble choking down the last one.

Arthur didn't say a single thing to him. He didn't even meet his eyes, but Percy could still see his eyes narrowing as he let out a sigh now and then. After he finished most of his toastie and drank all of his potions, he followed his father to his room. He sat on the chair he'd always slept on, but it didn't feel comfortable. When he closed his eyes, he saw ghosts wearing floral robes and wagging painted nails at him. He saw them passing him colourful potions that tasted like poison, heard them breaking his bones and stuffing him full of tubes and needles.

He stayed awake the whole night, staring at monsters in the dark. When the sun began to rise, and he could hear Ginny talking to her father as he changed into his work robes, that was the only time he could sleep.

The tight-lipped smiles his father gave him disappeared into slack-jawed and wide-eyed expressions. Percy slept during the day, and when his father woke him up to take potions, he didn't say anything to him. By the fifth day, he shoved Percy into his wheelchair and took him to St Mungo's, where they'd confirmed that he wasn't dying and sent him back home with a shiny new bag of potions. A man from the CPS came by to see him and Percy told him he wanted to leave the house. Percy said to him that he had nightmares. He jolted it down onto a piece of parchment paper, then went. 'Claims that he didn't eat for a year. Looks like he eats plenty,' Percy imagined him writing.

He got a letter back from Audrey, from Oliver, but he could barely bring themselves to read it after his long confession. He told them about how his mum had once placed his hand underneath the stove so that his fingers would catch on fire and when he used to wake up, dreaming of clouds made from frosting and skies streaked with blue food colouring. He had birthdays spent in his room as he heard his older siblings laughing outside, playing in the summer sun.

Thinking back to all the things he'd written, he felt ashamed. Why had he written those things? Why had he told people those things when it wasn't their problem? When they didn't have to deal with the dark things inside of him.

Percy paced around his room until he was too breathless to think, too breathless to feel much. It worked for a while, but then everything came back tenfold. The thinking, the memories, the emptiness in his chest, the heaviness in his stomach.

He headed down to the kitchen. There was a massive hazelnut-chocolate cake, leftover chicken curry and a pot of pasta that smelled like basil and rosemary. For once, he didn't have much appetite. There were days when he'd eat butter out of a container or inhale apples slathered with chocolate spread. He shut the fridge door and noticed his father's letter about him to the transplant board. The urgency, how sick he was, how he didn't have much time. These were the words of a doting father that could barely bear to be around him because he was such a troublesome child.

Percy grabbed the letter and tore it into pieces, throwing it into the rubbish bin. His hands were shaking at the end of it. He ripped it until he could barely see the words, until he'd smudged the ink with his sweat.

He tried to imagine all the options that he had. Submit to the life of being ill until it was all he was, end it there, or run away again. Percy couldn't think of any place where he could go where nobody would find him. What would he do? A fifteen-year-old boy who needed to drink tens of potions every day just to be standing only had twenty-five Galleons to his name. Where would he go? If he did manage to find somewhere, it would be impossible. Every time he'd go in to refill a potion prescription, he'd alert the world that he was there, living, breathing, missing.

Or he could stay there for two more years until he was of age, and then he could do what he wanted, but the prospect seemed even more daunting. But he could study for his N.E.W.T's. He could get a job. But the thought of two extra years having to manouvere around this stifling house terrified him.

He chewed the bottom of his lower lip, willing for an answer that wouldn't come. He could feel the clock ticking.

He was running out of time.

Percy peered into Ginny's room at four in the morning. He watched her sleeping, her chest rising, her lips slightly parted. Her cheeks were so big and made her look two years younger than she was. Her hair was growing back and was lying limp against her; her small hands clenched into fists in her deep sleep. Her pink pyjamas contrasted against her dark blue duvet. Her satin headband and three half-drunken water bottles lay on the dresser beside her.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," his father's voice made Percy jump up. He turned around and faced his father. Arthur's eyes were bloodshot, too, his upper lip curled up, his eyes vacant and unreadable. "Percy, don't you think you should be in bed?"

Percy opened his mouth to speak but couldn't find the words to say what he wanted.

"Shouldn't you?" was Percy's answer to that. He wasn't the one that had to be up at six in the morning.

"I can't sleep."

"Shocking. I have the same problem, but I'm not bothering you."

"Percival."

"No," Percy's voice rose. He then sighed deeply, crossing his arms over his chest as his gaze focused on the floor. He was still in disbelief that he was sometimes allowed outside his room as if he were an animal out of a cage. "Enough."

"Enough?"

"Enough," Percy said. His shoulders dropped, and their impenetrable barrier felt like a flimsy sheet. "Aren't you tired of fighting?" he yawned at the end, his eyelid drooping. He was swaying at his feet, but he knew when he tried to sleep, the sleep wouldn't come. "This is ridiculous."

"Ridiculous," Arthur repeated.

"Ridiculous!" Percy swung his arm over his head, almost tripping over his foot as Arthur caught him before he fell. Percy's ears went red, and a small smile formed on Arthur's lips.

"It is rather—" Arthur used his other hand to mimic Percy's gesture, "ridiculous."

Percy rolled his eyes as Arthur laughed, probably loud enough to wake Ginny up, but he didn't seem to care.

"Would you like a hot chocolate?" Arthur asked, his beverage of choice when he was staying up all night.

Percy went even redder as he looked down at his body, then turned his eyes away to the wall. He felt like there were knots in his stomach, and it was like cream was being poured into him at the mere thought of drinking a hot chocolate. He could feel it solidifying inside him as ropes in his stomach twisted. "No."

"You'd skip a hot chocolate?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Arthur's eyebrows knitted. "Um…nothing?" he scratched the back of his head.

"I've put on some weight," Percy said without skipping a beat.

"Yes. And?"

"Oh."

Percy supposed that wasn't nearly as important to Arthur as all the other stuff they were going through. He closed his eyes, feeling the tension in his body melt away.

Arthur started to talk. "Did you rip apart that letter I was supposed to—"

"Yes."

Percy knew he'd meant the letter he'd been writing about how he desperately needed a transplant.

"Percy—"

"Just leave it alone," Percy said, his voice cracking. "I never want to go to the hospital ever again." His shoulders dropped down, his breathing becoming shallower. "For anything. I still don't know why you took me to the hospital on Christmas. You could've just let me…let me die," he said that last part in a whisper.

Arthur did not flinch. He did not move. The look on his face was impassive, cold.

"You've known all along that's what I want," Percy said, feeling unbalanced, uncertain, unloved. He was waiting for someone to take him home. "That this isn't what I want, but you don't care. As long as I'm breathing, it doesn't matter how much pain I'm in, is it?" He moved to feel the edges of his tracheostomy tube.

"Just let me go, you selfish bastard," Percy said.

Arthur stared at Percy, mouth open, eyes glinting in the light. "Are you sure?" he asked. Percy felt like his father's whole world probably felt it was shattering, dying.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Alright."

"Alright?" Percy snapped his head to look at his father, who was an inch taller than him. "That's it?" that was what he was working so hard for. Something that could've been solved with a three-minute conversation. He didn't even feel relief. He could feel his jaw tighten, his nostrils flaring.

"This is what you've wanted, isn't it?" Percy could hear the defeat in Arthur's tones. He was tired of dealing with him.

"Yeah, it is," Percy said, his hands tightly into fists. "This is what I want." He was angry that it took his father this long to give it to him. A part of him didn't even believe him.