DISCLAIMER: No money made. Not JK Rowlings. Everyone rent Gattaca right away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PINS AND NEEDLES
Percy awoke and felt brand new.
His Master had left him alone for days (weeks?) and the feeling seemed to be returning to his body, like a dead leg returning from numbness after so many motionless hours. Pins and needles and all!
He rolled over and put his arm on Penelope's side of the bed, empty as usual. There was a feeling welling within him- something familiar in its unfamiliarity- maybe Voldemort had decided to leave him alone. Maybe it wasn't too late to be a good husband to Penny and a good father to Wendy.
Hope.
Far-fetched, unlikely, dreamy, fabulous Hope.
It was good… god damn was it ever good to feel that.
He leapt from his bed, grabbed his robe and was halfway down the hall before he realized he couldn't see.
His Wendy would be a year old tomorrow, he thought as he went back for his glasses. Soon it would be Wendy's very first birthday. Percy had wondered many a time if his horrible choices would prevent this event from happening. But it hadn't!
His hands did not tremble today. His stomach did not flop and pinch and his knees did not shake beneath him.
Today he was solid. Today he was a man. Today, he felt alive.
On his way to his favorite bathroom he caught sight of something and stopped.
Penelope was asleep on the sofa in the Great Room, in a patch of sunlight that made her glow and she was so beautiful…laying there submerged in black curls, in those modest flowered panties she always wore, and one of his undershirts…
Or the undershirt of the Other Man.
There was an empty wine bottle on the floor next to her, and two plates of half eaten seafood dishes, dotted with cigarette butts...
It was obvious that Penelope had brought her Other Man here, to her husband's house, to drink her husband's wine and food, to fuck this man on her husband's five-thousand-galleon sofa while her husband was upstairs, grinding his teeth in his sleep… and yet Percy stood there in awe of the creature he was married to. She rolled over on back, her hair falling away from her face, and was so lovely that it ached.
Then she was awake and looking at him, her eyes sad and wondering.
He turned abruptly and ascended the way he came, shower forgotten.
Louisa, Wendy's nanny, shooed him out of the room after only a few minutes of getting in the way, and so alone in the hall he stood. He could hear Penny clattering around just a staircase away... it had been so long since they had existed in the same room together; the woman he had taken as his wife, a stranger now. Any other day he might have tip-toed away, creeping across the floorboards like a child out of bed, praying that she wouldn't hear or notice him.
He took a deep breath. Not today.
She was smoking a long, thin cigarette and sat cross-legged at the bar, still in her underpants, absently swirling a swizzle stick in a tumbler of dark liquid. Their eyes met in the mirror on the back wall, in one of those rare places where bottles of liquor did not obstruct the reflection. Percy knew he was twiddling his fingers, felt weak, and hated himself for it. And the way his wife gazed back, so regretfully, brought him no strength.
Without a word he sat next to her, choking on the fumes of her smoke.
She looked at him with those big, hooded eyes, face to face this time. Percy didn't know what else to do but look away.
"Hello, Daddy." She said.
This old endearment was a shock to him.
"Good morning…" Percy whispered.
"We made a baby a year ago," she pointed out solemnly.
"We did."
"Congrats."
"Penn-"
"Does she look pretty in her blue dress?"
"I don't know, I-" He paused to cough, "She's still having her bath. I wish you wouldn't smoke, Mum. At least not in the house."
She snorted. "And I wish you wouldn't entertain that man in our home."
Percy flinched. "He hasn't been here-"
"I can still smell him. Everywhere in this room."
"I told him not to come here. I told him-"
"It's fine. Just pay the elf-driver when the crew comes to clean, Daddy." A tiny smile was hinting at the edges of her lips. "And you tell that monster that if he stinks up my house again, he'll have me to deal with."
"Oh god please don't joke…"
That heavy sense of shame was looming overhead again-
"He broke it off with me."
"What?"
"Last night."
(did she really just tell me that?)
Penny butted her cigarette and smiled sleepily, putting her hand to the side of Percy's face. "You cut your hair."
At first Percy was startled and almost shrank away from the unfamiliar touch, but relaxed and melted into the warmth. "Louisa cut it for me."
"It looks nice."
"Thank you."
She took her hand back and turned away, lighting up again. "Are your parents coming for her birthday?"
Percy said nothing.
Penny shook her head. "You've still not told them. Why haven't you told them?"
He stared down at his lap.
"Your daughter is a year old and her grandparents don't even know she exists!"
"Who is he, Penny?" Percy heard himself say.
"Why? You don't care," she said, "You don't want to know who he is."
"So you knew that I knew."
"You have an eyelash." She lifted his glasses long enough to brush her thumb beneath their rims, showing him a tiny piece of red hair. "Make a wish."
"I'm sorry," Percy said, "I've been-"
"Don't!" was the sharp interruption, "Don't apologize. It's all you do, Percy. You're sorry, you're sorry, you're sorrier!"
The eyelash was forgotten, unwished upon forever.
"I am," Percy mumbled.
He was sticking his toe in the swamps of Guilt, was testing the dank waters for comfort…
Penny's hand was flat and hot and burning against his cheek.
"You slapped me." he observed. Despite the blow, tears fell. "I love you."
"You can't possibly," she spat, "You're too goddamn sorry to love anything but being abused by him."
"I hate him."
Percy wheezed as he was answered with more smoke in his face.
"You love what he does to you!" Penny cried, "You love being belittled and abused because you think you deserve it!"
"I do deserve it," said Percy firmly, "I… I murdered my brother. He showed me… Fred sounded so scared…"
Penny surprised him by slamming her fist on the table. Her cigarette exploded into tiny bursts of radiant powder and faded to bits of gray fleck, dulling the shiny oak surface of the bar. She looked at him with her teeth bared.
"If you'd said 'I love you' half as much as you've said you're sorry-'"she began, but now she was crying, too.
"I love you," Percy said again.
And she was taking him by the ears, pulling him toward her, kissing him roughly...
It had been so long that Percy didn't know what do to with his lips; they fumbled awkwardly around with the fright of being jerked alive again.
He awoke down there; the pins and needles were fiery and desperate.
As quickly as she reeled him in she pushed him away. She didn't let go of Percy's ears, but held him there, inches from her own face, searching him, searching for an ounce of anything not trodden on and pathetic.
"I'm not sorry for anything I've done." She said.
"I love you," he tried again.
"I don't want you to love me! I want you to get angry and- and call me a whore and throw me out in the cold! I- I want you to hunt down Colin and string him up by his testicles!"
"That bastard."
Penny didn't seem surprised by her slip. Her expression softened. "No, I don't mean that. I want you to walk proud and spend two hours polishing your badges before work. I want you to be you."
"The editor of the Daily Prophet," Percy whispered. "That fuck."
"No, he wasn't, Percy. He made me feel like I was enough. Like my wonderfulness and beauty alone would keep him from becoming the manservant of an evil wizard."
"Kiss me again," Percy whispered.
She shook her head; a disgusted no, and shoved him away, rising quickly. He saw her march away in her flowered panties, beautiful and proud, and her voice: "My family will be here tomorrow at noon. Wash your hair."
And though his cheek stung and he ached in unmentionable places for the first time in many impotent months, he smiled.
He smiled and blew his lovely wife Penny a kiss, knowing there were at least two people in the world that still loved him.