There is a store at the end of the world.
It sells love potions that turn the user to gold.
The Midas Touch will not be sold
To those unwilling to be bold.
--
Difference
--
Fleur was the only person, Bill felt, that didn't think he was different.
Everyone—his family, the rest of the Order, the people at work—looked at him now like he was about to shatter. When Bill pursed his lips in his telltale signal that he was loosing his patience, his own mother would become quiet, quelled, and would apologize for nothing. If he moved too quickly or tore a bandage off too hastily, people would draw away from him as if he had leprosy or was carrying the plague. People at work avoided him, throwing him—his scars, really, not Bill himself—frightened, unsure stares; there was talk about a petition going around that would force him to quit his job.
Even Ginny, who Bill had always considered very brave, tiptoed around him, casting him sad, furtive looks at the dinner table.
With Lupin, the knowledge that Bill was a werewolf in pretty much every way of the word except for some physical aspects at the full moon didn't matter, but that didn't stop their relationship from changing. It was different with Lupin simply, or, perhaps, not so simply, because Lupin understood things about him—the terrible new things that came with the horrible scars—that no one else did. Strangely, this didn't always make Bill feel any better; Lupin was sometimes surprisingly coarse in the way he presented the truth of their shared condition.
"You'll probably loose your job in a few months," Lupin had told him flat out right after Bill's first transformation had confirmed his condition was pretty much full-fledged, "and I doubt there will ever be anyone willing to hire you soon. I'm going to be frank with you on this. You've essentially got two choices: register with the Ministry and try to continue your life, or abandon your name and existence as a human being."
Neither option had sounded fetched, and Lupin, his wrists, ankles, and neck bearing the damage of straining, scratching,and biting at steel chains throughout an entire night, had made the first option seem just as bad as the second. In the end, Bill had registered grudgingly with the Ministry, had gotten his file stamped with a big ugly seal indicating that he was a part-human, and had come back to the Burrow where no one wished him a good hello but only stared pityingly at him.
He had heard his parents arguing over him a few nights after his registration at the Ministry about his future. His mother wanted his father to get him a job in the Ministry, but his father kept saying that it was impossible; the Ministry never hired part-humans.Fleur had been with him at the time and she had doggedly closed her ears to the row going on down stairs even when Bill could not.
"Zey love you, Bill," she'd whispered, hugging him tightly; "I love you. It'z all zat matters."
And Bill had smiled at his angel through his scarred lips, kissing her beautiful hair.
--
Sentomegami
2005 July 23