III

She sends a paper airplane to his secretary. Interdepartmental memo. She claims to be the contact witch for the Burmese ambassador, and she requests an appointment with Percy. Forty-five minutes. Burma is a country that doesn't exist anymore, but Percy, being a pureblood, probably doesn't know that. Percy was home-schooled by his mother, and wizard children rarely learn geography. "Burmese ambassador" sounds nice and important, and she is confident she will get an early appointment. She does.

Two days later, at two minutes to eleven, Penelope, smoothing her hair and trembling slightly, strolls into Percy's office. He looks up from the memo he's writing and meets her eyes. An ineffable expression suffuses his face—some confusing mixture of sadness, terror, and delight.

"Penny," he says, and memories gush into her consciousness. "Penny." And then he remembers something, and he rushes into speech. "Penny, I'm sorry, I'm terribly, terribly sorry, I have this ridiculous long appointment with the Burmese ambassador, and I would so like—"

Penelope sits down on the armchair in front of his desk. She says, "That would be me."

Percy blinks. He doesn't know that Burma doesn't exist anymore, but he is reasonably certain that Penelope is not the Burmese ambassador. He says, "I thought you were the Assistant Director of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office."

It is Penelope's turn to blink. "How did you know that?" she asks.

He opens a desk drawer. He removes a file folder and shoves it across the desk. It contains the program from the Hogwarts Prize Day, two years ago ("Derwent Charms Prize—Penelope Clearwater. Dearborn Transfiguration Prize—Penelope Clearwater. Special Award for the Best Essay in Muggle Studies—Penelope Clearwater . . ."), two Ministry newsletter articles that mention her in passing, and a tiny clipping from the Daily Prophet, announcing her appointment to the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office.

There is a small earthquake in Percy's office. Or maybe just in Penelope's chair. Or maybe just in Penelope. She looks at the clippings, and she looks at him. He's lost weight, and he looks like he hasn't slept in a month. His eyes are bloodshot and baggy. He is twenty-one years old—or will be, his birthday is next month—and already she can see strands of grey among the red.

She likes the haggard look. God help her, she likes the grey hair.

But she has a job to do, so she clasps her hands and takes a deep breath and says, "Percy, I've been talking to your father."

"You know Dad?" asks Percy, who never introduced her to his father.

Penelope nods. "We're friends," she says, "we have lunch every week." Percy doesn't know this, because being Rufus Scrimgeour's extremely important special assistant, he gets food sent in everyday and rarely sets foot in the Ministry cafeteria.

Percy takes this in. And then he says—"How's Ginny?"

Penelope blinks. "She's fine," she says. "She was just made Gryffindor Quidditch captain."

"Ron?"

"He's fine."

"Did he get together with Hermione?"

Penelope has no idea how Percy knows enough to ask this. She would not put it past him to clip newspaper articles about his siblings, even though he hasn't spoken to them in two years, but Ron's prolonged and inconclusive teenage relationship with his Muggle-born friend is unlikely matter even for the scandal-starved Daily Prophet.

"No one really seems to know," she says frankly, "but I think they always liked each other."

"What does my dad say?"

"He says he likes Hermione," says Penelope dryly.

Percy lowers his voice and glances around nervously as if he fears his office is bugged. Which is not impossible, come to think of it, now that Rufus Scrimgeour is Minister. He leans across the desk and he whispers, "Penny. Penny, there's a terrible rumor going around that Ron is dropping out of school and going off somewhere with Harry and Hermione to try to take on You-Know-Who, just the three of them, by themselves, it's crazy, I'm worried sick, have you heard, do you know—"

And she thinks, he loves his family. He's been a total git to them for the last three years, he moved out, he cut his ties, he sent back his Christmas jumper, and he still loves them, at heart he's still just Ron and Ginny's big brother, same as when I met him at Hogwarts . . .

"They miss you, Percy," says Penelope aloud. "They want you back."

"They hate me," says Percy. "They threw mashed parsnips in my face."

That's a detail that Tessa Templeton hasn't gotten a hold of yet. Penelope devoutly hopes she does not.

"Your father wants to see you," murmurs Penelope, picking her way through this tangled thicket of familial misunderstanding and hurt. "Two of your brothers were almost killed this year—"

Percy does a double-take. "Who?"

"Bill and Ron."

Percy huffs. "I told Ron. I warned him—"

"He got in the way," says Penelope hastily. "No one was targeting him. They—the murderer was targeting Professor Dumbledore, incompetently, and Ron just got in the way. It happened in the Potions study, and Harry shoved a bezoar down his throat."

Percy is silent. "He's all right, I suppose," he says after a minute. "Harry. I suppose he's all right."

"He saved your father's life, too, you know," says Penelope.

"No," says Percy. "I didn't."

She tells him the story of Arthur Weasley and the serpent, as well as she knows it, which is not very well. She did not, of course, hear this story from Arthur. She heard a garbled version of it from Tessa Templeton, a year and a half ago, and then a bit more from Kingsley Shacklebolt, who's a nodding acquaintance in the Auror Office, and she put the rest together from Arthur's cryptic allusions over coffee and tea.

Percy listens morosely to her recitation. "He's taking risks, isn't he?" he says when she finished. "Dad shouldn't do that. It's rotten for Mum, when he takes risks."

"We're all taking risks," points out Penelope. "Some of us more than others. Your family rather a lot. That's why—"

"He's letting Ron go?" demands Percy.

"He isn't letting Ron do anything," says Penelope. "Ron's of age now. He makes his own decisions." Like you, Percy. Just like you.

"He isn't a saint," mutters Percy, staring into the distance. "I mean—well, he's a nice man. Hard-working. Pretty bright, too, really. But he doesn't think ahead. He's so naïve, so inclined to trust people, to just believe what people tell him. He gravitates to someone like Dumbledore, who's a fine man, of course, I understand the attraction, but then he hero-worships him, follows him in everything. He misses things."

Penelope is silent.

"And then Dumbledore stopped cooperating with the Ministry," says Percy. "He was such a great man. A bit mad, but a genius. Remember how much I admired him at school?"

Yes, she remembers. She remembers a lot of things from school.

"But he stopped cooperating with the Ministry. He always has to strike out on his own, do things his own way. It's dangerous when people don't cooperate with the Ministry."

She thinks he's a little confused about past and present tense. A little confused about whether he's angry with Dumbledore or with his father.

Percy lowers his voice, glancing nervously around his well-appointed office. "He may have been right. Fudge—well, we all missed some things, a year ago, two years ago. He may have been right. That is, I mean, in some respects we know he was right. But it's dangerous, in wartime, if people don't cooperate fully and frankly with the Ministry."

"You think Fudge was a better leader?" asks Penelope.

Reluctantly, Percy shakes his head.

"You think things are better now that Scrimgeour's in office?" asks Penelope.

Percy winces.

Penelope feels a migraine coming on, but she still has a job to do. She says, "Percy, your father—"

"He's lucky he's got Mum to keep him up to snuff," says Percy. "He's really, really lucky. He owes so much to her. I'm not sure he appreciates that—letting the twins go behind her back all the time, pretending he doesn't know what they're up to—he's made things hard for her, I think. I tried to look after all of them—the little ones—before I went to school. It was hard, it was really hard, during the First War, after the war. And he didn't make things easy for her. Most people don't know this, but he went undercover for a year in the First War, just abandoned her, with two babies—that's why she always worries so much—that's why there's a gap—"

Penelope knew there were some things Arthur wasn't telling her. Well, this is one of them.

"I mean, he loves her, I know he loves her, but he didn't really offer her much—"

Penelope is silent.

"You like him, don't you," says Percy. It is not a question.

Penelope nods and swallows and says in a choked voice, "He reminds me so much of you."

Percy reaches out, slowly, with two fingers, and he strokes the back of her hand. He strokes it slowly, and it twists her up inside. It twists her and twists her until she's seventeen again, sprawled on the floor of the Charms classroom amid the dust bunnies and the discarded robes and the cushions that haven't been washed in fifteen years, and Percy is fiddling with the elastic on her knickers, and abruptly she sits up and starts putting her clothes on and announces that dinner is almost over and people will notice if they don't put in at least a perfunctory appearance at dinner. She stands up and she walks out, leaving Percy sitting disconsolately in his underwear on the floor of the Charms classroom.

It wasn't his fault and it wasn't hers. They had a contract, a very precise and explicit contract, so far and no further. They discussed it very thoroughly and rationally, walking around and around the lake. And for a year, the contract worked quite well. But they got older and they stayed together and parts of the contract started to erode. It's not like she tried very hard to stop him. She never thought, I don't want to do this. She only thought, I don't want to do this yet. I don't want to do this now. Not when I have my period. Not when I have a headache. Not when I'm worried about exams. Not on the floor of the Charms classroom, worrying that Professor Flitwick might walk in, because I may be the star Charms student, but he's the Charms professor, and he probably knows how to undo what I did to the door. In another time, in another place, when Percy gets his little flat in Diagon Alley for example . . . but by then he wasn't speaking to her anymore.

He never mentioned it. He never threw it in her face. It played no part in their break-up. He was always happy to see her in the morning, always eager, affectionate, faintly apologetic, but mostly just happy to see her. He got carried away sometimes, and she didn't hold it against him. She needed space sometimes, and he didn't hold it against her. They were as happy as a prince and princess in a fairy tale, until the end came.

And she thinks, it's astounding, fifteen and sixteen, sixteen and seventeen, we had a better relationship than most of the married couples I know. He understood me, he simply got it, and no one else ever has except sometimes Samantha.

She hasn't spoken to him in three years, but he is still the only man she can imagine marrying. She dislikes his politics and she fears his ambition, but he is still the only man she can imagine sleeping with. He is the only path she can see out of the prison of the Ministry, the prison of living in a world where she is needed but has never felt at home.

She too feels a little confused about past and present tense.

And then something impossible happens—something that, Penelope is confident, defies the limitations of the physical world and would defy the laws of Newtonian physics if only the laws of Newtonian physics addressed such things. Percy leans forward and wraps his hand around hers, his right hand over her left, and he struggles into speech.

"Penny," he says, "is it—do we—I wish—is there any way—would you have me back?"

The silence yawns between them.

If it were just about him and her, she would resume exactly where they left off, exactly, today. This minute, now. But it isn't just about him and her anymore. It can't be just about him and her anymore. She can't say, "Percy, your politics are wrong, your ambition is insane, you've been a total git to your parents and your sister and your brothers, but I love you and I'll take you back." Maybe when she was fifteen she could have said it, but not now.

He strokes her fingers. She looks at his grey hair.

"If you make up with your father," she says quietly, groping for words. "If you rein in your ambition. If you make yourself back into the decent man you were at sixteen."

"I still live with my parents," she says quietly. "The house in Hampstead. If you come for me, I'll be there."

Author note: The next installment, "Almost There," was written before the publication of Deathly Hallows and, unfortunately, does not mesh with it. I am working on a new, canon-compliant installment, "Balliol," which will cover the autumn of DH from Samantha's perspective. I expect to post "Balliol" by September.