The Mother Who Cried Werewolf

Chapter Eighteen

Trading Places

Percy was in a hospital room that smelled heavily of his mum's perfume. He choked on the smell, his eyes watering, s he tried to forget about the pain in his broken bones. His jaw hurt so bad that even if he could eat, he didn't think he'd be able to. A part of his eyes was a bit dark, bleary.

He'd never been in this hospital before. It smelled of sulphur and urine when the perfume wasn't so empowering. At those times, the scent of those awful things mixed in with the perfume, and it turned into the most pungent odour imaginable. He coughed, the sounds of his tracheostomy tube bubbling with every cough. He wished that he could eat sometimes, just to soothe the pain that he felt. He couldn't pick up a quill long enough to draw anything anymore, not that anyone asked. The books he had around him were ones he'd read so many times that he was tired of the words, of the images, of the plotlines. He mostly slept, trying to inch closer to a promise of death so far away that it ached his soul to think about it.

The hospital he was in seemed to be as dirty as a basement, with lines that had grime on them and nurses that slept in the chairs beside you after they took your vital signs. It had been almost a week, and Percy could feel his will to live slip away.

His moments of lucidity were rare and in between. He was mostly heavy-eyed-and-limbed, with potions pumping sleep into his body at all times. He could feel them poisoning his blood, the stardust never coming out of his eyes. He could barely remember what had been done to him, could hardly recall how he got his bruises, and that terrified him even more if he knew. Percy's body didn't feel like his own. His legs were heavier than ever, oedematous and hard. There were wobbly bits under his skin that felt firm to his touch instead of squishy.

He had not talked to anyone since his stroke. He wondered if anyone asked about him, thought about him. After the stroke, it felt like nobody cared anymore. They were tired of him being sick again in a way where it felt like it didn't matter if he died anymore—and he supposed it didn't. Not really.

He wished he could feel the warmth of something—a blanket, a cup of tea, a hug, something. He felt so cold, abandoned, unloved. They couldn't get any blood out of him no matter how much they poked him, and they'd put needles into his arm, legs, neck, and the bandages were wet and sticky. Percy used to be scared of his mother the most, but once he caught sight of himself, bloated, bandaged and bruised in a passing glance, it was the most terrifying thing he'd seen. He looked like a monster, with bee-stung lips and black eyes. It felt like only a few weeks ago that he'd had a nice haircut, and now his hair was matted and greasy, his pillow stained. Everything hurt so much constantly.

He didn't know how he had come to look like this. He was not awake for most of it. He didn't know if his mum had taken him from his house and thrown him off a balcony. He didn't know if she'd blasted him with an intricate spell that made his jaw break or ones that made his body feel so broken. He felt he'd been run over by something, but he couldn't remember. Percy imagined an Auror coming to ask him how he got his injuries and him being blank-faced. Doesn't look like he's been attacked, can't remember a bloody thing; he could imagine them writing.

Molly's face was mostly of disgust half the time. As if she couldn't imagine how he managed to get himself to this state.

"You sure showed me that you can eat," he heard Molly scoff once, poking at his soft stomach when he was semi-awake. "Your father may be right about you not needing a feeding tube then." Percy had no idea why he was more disgusting looking to people when he was bigger than if he was skeletal. As if he couldn't have possibly been a victim because of it. He couldn't eat, and he still kept this body, and everyone thought he was still stuffing caramel sauce down his throat. Because living in a larger body meant that his trauma wasn't traumatising enough that he hadn't stopped scoffing.

He still dreamed of food mostly, which made him feel ashamed in a way that it hadn't before. He was back to the life he was terrified of living again and trapped because he could barely move.

"You've ruined my life then," Molly said, which wasn't surprising to Percy. He always felt like she thought that he ruined her life, as if he was an immaculate conception that just tore up his poor mother. Percy stared at her, eyes vacant, lips pursed. "And you've fallen off your wheelchair down a hill rather dramatically."

Percy could vaguely remember that he did slip out of the wheelchair, barrelling down the hillside. He did remember that. He remembered vaguely that it was him trying to get away from his mum. The realisation that the reason why he looked the way that he did was that he tried to escape his mother made him almost laugh. It was so ironic.

"Fortunately, I had my loving mother there to rescue me," Percy said. Like she'd leave him alone to die when she had all this control and hold over him, like she'd relinquish that for his piece of mind.

"Watch your mouth."

"Or what are you going to do about it?" Percy asked. Not that anyone at his house knew, he had gotten much better at speaking and articulating. He still had weakness in his right arm and leg and needed help, but he was recovering from his stroke. Not that anyone noticed or cared, but he hoped he wouldn't be in that wheelchair forever.

"You're very mouthy for someone that's an invalid."

"I'm not an invalid."

"You can't do anything by yourself, love. I think that constitutes you as an invalid."

"I could be very mouthy, as you've just said. All by myself."

He could see her becoming furious. His heart was hammering so far into his chest. He could remember all the things that had happened between them, but he was so sick of the memories, of relieving them, sick of being afraid. His chest was pounding, and he was sweating through his hairline, but he refused to let his voice waver.

"I'm not an invalid," Percy said.

"Keep telling yourself that then," Molly said.

That's not how people see me, Percy thought to himself. Is it? He didn't think that he was. He dropped his head to the side, watching his chest rise. He did know that with the recent stroke, it felt like everyone had just given up on him. But if Percy had given up on himself as well, then why should anyone else care? But did they want him gone? Were they too tired of him, of his personality and his constant cynicism, his psychological scars that ran so deep you'd need more than a few lessons just to learn how to swim in them?

When his mum went to the lavatory, Percy eyed his wheelchair in the corner of his room. He'd been slowly working on his legs, lifting them in his sleep. He tried to walk on the edge of the bed a few times, but it hurt so much. He felt like he'd broken something in his legs, in his hip, something. He dragged his right leg when he walked, and he needed help.

Did he have this much conviction for escape? Where would he go with his ancient wheelchair?

There had to be somewhere for him to run to, a shelter. He'd lost faith in the Aurors and the Child Protection Services, which had somehow allowed him to be whisked away underneath his mum's wings. He had no faith in his father, whom he felt might be a bit glad that he was gone now. It wasn't like anyone in that house said it as much but taking care of him was a burden on everyone else. He didn't know where to find shelter. He could hear his mum chatting with one of the nurses. She talked to them a fair bit, telling him about how he'd managed to tumble down the hill.

He felt like his mum was lonely. He didn't care, of course, but he could see how much she'd let herself get into such a state. Her hair was barely combed, and she looked like someone that had just been out of a horrible train accident, her face waxen, her expressions indifferent, her eyes vacant.

"If you hadn't tried to run, you wouldn't be in that bed," his mum said, emerging from the shadows when Percy tried to make his escape. Percy shuddered, his bones and chest aching. "I was just taking you into the house."

"Yes, fine, it's my fault. Everything is my fault," Percy said. He was angrier than he thought he'd be, feeling tears tug at the corner of his eyes. He was scared. He didn't think that he wanted to die, deep down—and if he did, then he didn't want to die in so much pain. He just wanted to be around people that didn't hate him. "It's always something I've done. I know that now," his voice was bitter in a way that surprised him even. He closed his eyes, squeezing them so tightly that he was submerged in an oasis of nothing.

"It is your fault," Molly said. "You broke my family!" Percy shuddered. "You know deep down that you did."

Percy had thought about it often. How his family had separated, how the smiles on everyone's faces had disappeared when he came into the room, how he'd whittled his father down until he was terrified of finding him dead in his bedroom.

"But you don't even care," Molly said. "Because you're too busy thinking yourself the only victim of this."

He did not know how his mum had gotten into his mind, his thoughts, his fears, but she'd laid it out so loudly that every sentence vibrated through his skull. He could still hear it echoing in his mind long after she'd said it. All his plans of escaping had been erased from his mind; his heavy limbs felt even heavier. The world went greyer.

No matter how much he hated her, he knew she was right. He had destroyed his family.

She had not laid a hand on him, but he was coming undone. There were pieces of himself everywhere, torn apart.

Then she asked him a question that had destroyed whatever shred of hope he had in his mind. "Tell me, Percival," she said, "How did you think this was going to end?"

It took Arthur four days to find Percy in that repulsive hospital. He had tried all the hospitals he could in every area of England, making it down to three hospitals within an hour, breathless and sticky-faced. He had told Charlie and Bill about Percy's disappearance, but they didn't seem ready to abandon their jobs—they'd be fired from given all the absences—to help look for their brother. He had taken an emergency leave to look for his son and had spent long hours every day peering into a lead he didn't even know would pan out. He'd let the Aurors know, the Child Protective Services, but he couldn't sit at home and do nothing. It was just Arthur trotting about until he found himself in a small, unmarked hospital smack in the middle of London, wondering how he'd ended up there.

He saw Percy through the spotty windows when he entered the hallways, lying on the bed, looking so horrifically puffer-fish-like. After he'd found him, he took a few deep breaths and alerted the Aurors. He felt like he was waiting forever for them to arrive.

He almost didn't recognise Percy, given that his face was so puffy, his jaw bruised and swollen, and his legs so oedematous and firm that they looked like logs rather than legs. His stomach was massive, probably entrapping litres of fluid in his body. It looked like he had a stone's worth of just water in his stomach and another in his legs. His joints were at all the wrong angles. Every breath looked like an arduous task for him. There were needle marks all over his arms, probably nurses trying to access a line in Percy.

He could not believe that his son had turned into such a state in less than a week. It was so shocking that Arthur didn't know what to say. There were pads underneath his arms that were soaking up all the water seeping out of his bloated arms. Even from the glass window, he could tell how wet they looked. He looked like he hadn't had a diuretic in so long that his body was like a water balloon.

When the Aurors came in, Arthur thought that it would be easy. They called in for an ambulance. It appeared and took Percy down to St Mungo's within seconds, and Molly was taken in by the Aurors for questioning. Arthur didn't even have a chance to look at his former wife. He was too busy feeling all the breath go out of his lungs at the sight of his son on the levitating stretchers, whizzing him into an ambulance that would POP into the hospital at that very second. By the time Arthur had even apparated to St Mungo's, Percy was on a monitor bed, and a nurse was standing by, holding his arm out and trying to look for a vein. Arthur felt relief wash over him amidst the fear curdling in his blood as he ran towards his son and hugged him so tightly that he could feel Percy groan at the intrusion.

Arthur pressed his lips against Percy's head, holding him in just that more tightly, enough that he could smell his distinctive lemon and peppery smell from that fancy second-hand body wash he liked. He still smelled clean, like he'd just taken a shower. He bet that nobody bothered washing him and had used cleaning charms instead.

Percy didn't say anything, not even when they'd poked him so much that even Arthur had turned to one of the nurses and told her to stop doing that. After the eleventh prick, you had to consider other options.

He was admitted, naturally. Arthur did not doubt that, but when he'd come to talk to Percy about it to try and soothe him and calm him down, his son was checked out. He didn't seem to care about that. He asked if he could take a shower and comb his hair and if he could have a different blanket instead.

When Arthur had returned home, he took the twins, Ron and Ginny, with him to the hospital after he'd made Percy a quick bag stuffed with all his things. He wondered if this were the last time he'd pack Percy's things.

Percy watched Arthur's lip twist when the nurse mentioned that they'd had to insert a Foley's catheter for him. Percy, who had already lost all sense of his dignity ages ago, nodded. He barely moved when they'd placed the catheter, whilst Arthur was making faces like he was the one having it inserted. They had given him a quick swallowing assessment and had him drink a few mouthfuls of water, which Percy managed without choking. Arthur let out a sigh of relief, placing a hand on Percy's shoulder. All Percy could think of was what he'd heard the healers say—that they wanted to give him a swallowing assessment as soon as possible and that if he passed it, they'd try to give him some Skele-Gro for his fractures.

And that was what they did. Arthur was there when Percy had been given the vial of Skele-Gro, which followed the feeling of himself being ripped and torn apart, the white-hot pain that Percy could never anticipate or get used to. He felt his jaw being set alight, his arm pulsating, and his hip felt like it was shredded like paper.

"Percy?" Arthur asked. He was standing. Even he looked too tired to be concerned, his shoulders drooping. "Are you alright?" his father's question was a little funny when Percy was holding the sides of his rails, in the throes of pain.

In response, Percy threw up all over the bed.

After throwing up and being in agony for most of the night, the pain started to ebb away and subside. Percy had thrown up at least ten times, his whole body emptying food he'd never even eaten. He went to the bathroom to wash his face and look at himself. He cried when he saw his face, when he realised what he looked like. He was truly vile appearing. He looked like a monster in a children's book, practically disfigured from the bruising and the swelling. His tracheostomy tube hadn't been changed recently, which was also appalling. Yellow and dirty.

He stayed in the hospital for nearly a week, spending most of his time peeing into urine bags after they'd given him diuretics and watching the fluid come out of his body. He watched himself shrink like a balloon as the air came out. He was constantly peeing out all the excess fluid in his body in an almost alarming way. He could breathe better every day, though, and by the time he was discharged, he didn't feel so heavy, and the physiotherapists had him walking around the ward. They commended him for recovering well from his stroke, even though he still dragged his leg. He could eat soft foods, but Percy had no real interest in eating anymore. He was fantasising about what he'd eat for ages, but now, everything he put into his mouth tasted like it was covered with a film of dirt.

Going back home to the Burrow was exhausting, and the minute Percy collapsed on the couch in the living room, he slept for hours. When Percy woke up, he noticed it was the next day, and Ginny, Ron and the twins were sitting on the carpet, playing Exploding Snap. The minute he woke up, a card hit him in the face.

The twins paled. "Shit," George said. "Perce, sorry about that." He had already had half his eyebrow signed off.

"It's alright," Percy said.

He closed his eyes for a few more seconds, but he didn't feel sleepy at all. He woke up and felt a great dread hit him. He had nothing to fill up his days anymore besides sleep. He bit down his lower lip and watched his younger siblings play. Ginny was in the lead, as always, with the twins closely behind and Ron losing dramatically.

"Can I play?" Percy asked.

The twins snapped their heads up. "Um… sure," Ron said, rubbing the nape of his neck.

"Do you know how to play?" Ginny asked.

"Err…" Percy did not. He slowly sunk to the floor, which didn't feel comfortable. He didn't know how his siblings sat there for hours every day. Already, his arse and legs hurt. They threw all their cards in a pile.

"It's easy," Fred said.

It was not easy, as Percy found out soon enough. It took him ages to get into the game, but when he understood all the rules, he was just as good as Fred and George. The twins didn't like that revelation. His younger siblings were competitive, writing down scores and trying to figure out how to outdo one another. Ron had his cards explode onto him a few times more than the rest of them from his horrendous playing.

The twins started laughing on the last play when Ron let out a high-pitched shriek when he slipped down and fell into the pile of cards on the ground. Percy listened, hearing them talk about things he'd never been involved in.

"Your playing is just about as elegant as your turns on your Cleansweep, mate." Fred to Ron.

"Well, at least I've still got more tact than you do when you're trying to get Angelina to shove her tongue down your throat." Ron to Fred, and Percy realising that his little brother had a crush on someone. "I bet that Gin's got a better chance."

"I think I'd do with Katie Bell," Ginny said, probably a joke. But if it wasn't, Percy thought that was interesting. That Gin was gay? Or maybe she wasn't, and she'd meant it as a joke. "I'm not gay, Percy."

He'd said that out loud. "Well, if you were, then there's nothing wrong with that," Percy said.

"If I were gay, I'd be the only one in this house bringing girls back home," Ginny said, laughing.

"That's not true," Percy said. "I dated a girl." Yes, dated. He'd sent her a letter this morning, asking to break up. What kind of dying teenager had a girlfriend? What for?

Fred and George snapped their heads up as if it was the most interesting bit of news they'd heard all year long. "You," Fred said, pointing at Percy, "you had a girlfriend? Where'd you meet her exactly? Between hospital admissions?"

"In a hospital admission," Percy said. "She was an asthmatic vampire."

"Jeez, Perce, you couldn't think up anything better than that," George said.

"I had a girlfriend," Percy said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"And Ron's got an eight-inch wand," Ginny said. Ron turned around and yelled, "Hey!" as the twins laughed.

Percy rolled his eyes but didn't say anything else. If they didn't want to believe him, then let them. It wasn't like they were the ones that had dated Audrey, to begin with, right? So, what if they didn't believe him? But it felt strange that he'd never met Fred and George's close mate Lee, or that he didn't know how Ginny knew about the twins' Quidditch mates or when she'd had a chance to meet Harry Potter, Ron's best friend. He didn't know what it was like for Ron to be mates with someone that was so infamous either. Hearing them talk more about Hogwarts made him realise that soon, Ginny would be getting her wand, and Percy would be stuck in the house doing nothing.

He also realised that they knew intricate details about each other that Percy didn't. Ginny knew that Ron slept with his socks on and that the twins were usually up at four or five in the mornings; throwaway comments made him realise he had no idea who his siblings even were, just as much as they didn't know anything about him.

He didn't know that Ginny listened to music to help her fall asleep and that the twins made fun of her often for it because she listened to heavy metal music at top volume—enough that Fred swore he could 'hear it in his sleep' too.

Percy felt out of touch with his own family. The more they talked, the more he felt excluded in a way. No wonder they didn't care about him. Why should they? They didn't know anything about him, and why should he expect them to care about him too? He didn't know anything about them either. He'd never invested his time in knowing them. All he'd done was take away the good times promised to them. Dinner dates, Quidditch tournaments, trips to Cornwall, days out on events that Percy didn't even know about. He bet they were relieved in Hogwarts, away from him.

The thoughts kept swirling into Percy's mind so much that he felt himself growing weary with them. He was their older brother, and he'd rarely looked after them, seen them, or known them. They knew more about Bill and Charlie, who came in and out of their lives, but they sent detailed letters. They'd never sent him any detailed letters. But neither had Percy.

They went into the kitchen, and Percy followed them. They raided the kitchen cupboards, producing large containers of ice cream. As they ate, the twins looked up from the container. "You can eat now, right?" Fred asked, as if he could turn it on and off. "I think you had a stroke or something last week." It wasn't last week, but the way that Fred said it made Percy realise how…light they took all of this. It was like his stroke was a minor occurrence.

He realised how little they knew about his stroke too. "I'm not hungry," he said.

"That's news to us," George said. After he did, he winced. As if he realised how insensitive that sounded.

Percy couldn't hide the pain that he felt in his chest. They didn't know about what the Aurors had told him when he'd gone to visit him, about what he was, about what they thought of him. Percy bit down his lower lip, his cheeks colouring in.

"I'm just going to go upstairs," Percy said. Would you care if I died? Or would you be happy?

"Yeah, sure," Ron said. They weren't even bothered by him going upstairs. And why should they? No matter how bad they'd felt about everything, they couldn't repair fifteen years of conversations, facts and memories between them. He'd been nothing to them for fifteen years. Why would he mean anything to them right now?

Percy stayed for a while instead of going upstairs, staring at his siblings. They were lively and animated. He stared at their faces, youth, and happiness and wondered what they felt like sometimes. Their whole world had changed within the last year, and they had gone through more hoops than a Keeper in a game of Quidditch (or was that the Chaser? Percy always got those confused, even though they were as plain as day to everyone else). At the last thought in his mind, he moved to grab Ron's shoulder. He looked back at Percy like he was mental for touching him. Percy gave him a quick hug, almost like he did it all the time, and then slowly broke apart.

"What's going on here?" Arthur said, walking into the kitchen. His eyes had gone to the containers of ice cream that were out, even though they'd eaten breakfast (takeaway. Arthur couldn't cook. They ate takeaway three times a day—including takeaway eggs, which Percy thought were disgusting). "And what's happened to you?" he asked Ron.

"Um… nothing," Ron said, scratching his arm. He didn't look back at Percy.

Percy found it sad that he couldn't even hug his brother without Ron looking back at him like Percy had slapped him in the face.

"Nothing," Arthur repeated. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Percy hugged me," Ron said. As if Percy had done something awful to him. "I didn't expect it."

Should he have prepared him for a hug? The way he acted; it was like he'd shoved him when Ron least expected it. Percy looked down at the ground, biting down his lower lip.

Arthur raised an eyebrow but then started to smile. "Are you ready to head off to Diagon Alley?"

"Diagon Alley?" Percy asked. Why were they heading off to Diagon Alley?

"We're going to be buying my stuff for Hogwarts before everyone else does," Ginny explained to Percy. Oh, he thought. Yes, he'd forgotten. He'd forgotten how his parents liked to go at the beginning of summer when the prices of the wands weren't as high as they were before everyone was due to go back to Hogwarts. She was probably getting Ron's books for her first year, and they had to find her a cheap trunk that wouldn't disintegrate by the second month. She'd probably make do with Ron's robes because he was quite thin, and her robes wouldn't be much smaller than his anyway.

"Oh," Percy said. "I suppose I'll be staying at the house then."

"No, you're coming with," Arthur said. "I'm not leaving you alone in this house again."

Percy didn't dare look back at his siblings' faces because he didn't want to imagine how much they probably hated him.