Momentary Illusions

Chapter Five

Telling

1988.

It was boiling in Diagon Alley. Arthur's muggle ice-cream cone had turned into a viscous white pool within three minutes. Arthur, who was so sure that he might succumb to a heat stroke, decided to eat it anyway.

"Percy, do want an ice-cream cone?" Arthur asked, a question that had first year Bill and Charlie jumping with joy.

Not Percy. "That's vile!" his twelve-year-old son, Percy, looked repulsed when Arthur shrugged his shoulders and ate it.

Arthur let the icy liquid drip down his mouth. He ate it as noisily as possible, which only unnerved Percy even more who was stood there in a pair of grey trousers that had lost its pinstripes from the amount of washes it had endured. His naturally curly hair was slicked back with more gel than Molly's three-tier rose cake. Bill, with his shiny Weird Sister badge pinned to his weather-beaten dragonhide jacket, let out a snort as Arthur finished his cone. Charlie, who was still scraggy limbs by then, looked up from his chocolate frog collection and then playfully shoved Percy to the side.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Bill shoved Charlie to the side.

"What's wrong?" Charlie looked up at him, his Wasps hat tipped to the side.

Bill's cheeks were ruddy, and not from the sun. He, without thought shrieked out in the middle of Diagon Alley, "You can't do that to him! He's a GIRL!" he waved his arms theatrically at him. Arthur swore in that second, every passing byer, every woman, every man, every child just turned to stare at them. Arthur had paled dramatically and before Percy grabbed the cone from Arthur's hand and flung it straight at Bill with a ferocity that he'd never seen before. Bill's face was smeared with pools of vanilla, his cheeks ruddy from the embarrassment. "Percy, I didn't—I didn't mean what I said."

"Yes, you did," Percy replied back as hotly as possible. "You meant what you said." And before Arthur could say anything, he watched Percy stomp away so that he would join his mother into the robes' shop.

"I really didn't mean it," Bill looked at Arthur with a desperate look on his face, searching for forgiveness.

"I know," Arthur said as carefully as he could. "But he doesn't." Then he paused for a few moments, mulling the situation in his mind. "You have to understand, Bill, that Percy will always be looking for a reason why someone that doesn't think that he is what he is because he's still terrified that nobody believes him." And it was one of the main reasons that he didn't tell the twins. They'd have a field day with that. They'd throw it off like a careless remark just to get a rise out of him. "I don't know how it's like for him, but I can't imagine that it's very pleasant being reminded all the time that you're not like everyone else. And there's always going to be someone that thinks that there's something wrong with him. You're his brother, Bill, and if you said that—even in the heat of the moment, then imagine what other people would think."

Bill just shuddered. "That wouldn't happen," he flatly said. "Nobody's going to ever think that they have a right to judge him because nobody's ever going to know. Not even Ron, Ginny… or-or Fred and George!"

If only it were as easy as that, Arthur thought. "Especially not Fred and George," was all that he said.

2018.

"I can't believe you've gone to work like this," Audrey said in a tut-tut-tut expression when they were supposed to be lovingly mending their marriage. She had stuck a thermometer up his mouth because she didn't know the spell and he obviously wasn't in the state to remember. He couldn't believe that it was still high after downing down more Pepper-Up than Aunt Muriel downed Earl Grey. "How are we supposed to be getting closer to each other if you wouldn't even tell me that you're ill?" she let her hand run down his sweaty neck, which made him shudder in response to how cold her hand was. "You're a bloody child, Percy. You need someone to force you to stay at home so that you don't hurt yourself."

When she reached in to kiss him, he turned his head away. "Oh, I see how it is…well, fine, if that's what you want."

"There's no use in both of us getting sick," Percy replied, wiping a small amount of drool from his mouth. "Who's going to be making the biscuits then?" he gave her a shameless smile, which made her playfully push him on his shoulder.

"You're taking the piss," Audrey so eloquently replied, but then she cupped his face and kissed him anyway. "Like we don't have two very functional young adults." She ran her hand through Percy's hair, and he relaxed into her touch, realising how much he'd really missed having her so physically close to them. "And soon enough, they're going to be making enough money, moving out and then we'll have the whole flat to ourselves to do whatever we want."

"Sleep," Percy decided, and Audrey just wiggled her eyes suggestively. "And do absolutely nothing."

"Of course, what else would I be implying?" Audrey watched Percy climb into his bed and pull the sheets over his head. It was nine at night. He'd just got home, and he was so tired that all he wanted to do was sleep. "But you're not falling asleep until you sent a memo to that secretary of yours—you know, the one that's in love with you—" that earned a roll of an eye from Percy, "that you can't make it tomorrow because your wife might murder you for trying to leave the house."

Percy frowned. He felt his heart beating so hard that he could feel his blood rushing to his ears. "Sit here," he placed a hand on the space beside him and Audrey very cautiously sat beside him.

"Any reason you're being cryptic right now?" she placed a hand on his arm and squeezed it loving.

Percy relaxed into her touch. He stared at her very seriously and nodded his head. Audrey somehow missed the urgency of the situation, even when Percy was starting to perspire through his clothing. He could feel his heart drumming into his ears. "Yes, well…there's something I have to tell you…" As he told her about the healer's visit and the diagnosis and the mas, Audrey's face started to morph from mildly amused to downright dismayed. She was biting down her lower lip and rolling her hands together. By the end of his spiel—which took him a grand total of two minutes, small sounds came out of her throat when he said the words cancer and followed it with ovarian cancer. The kind of contortions her face made when he'd said those words truly wrecked him. "Audrey?" he sounded out after she started to make those noises.

Audrey had a hard time not crying. He knew this, and he could see her lip wobbling and her hands shaking like she had an uncontrolled tremor. She moved to grab his hand and squeeze it as hard as she could.

His wife couldn't control herself. She was clinging onto him, crying and sobbing well into the wee hours of the morning. Percy felt like the biggest arsehole because he didn't even bother holding her, didn't console her, didn't say anything in fact. He just let her use him as a human pillow to clutch on, and she was clinging onto him so hard that he felt like his ribs might cave in from her hold. At around three in the morning, after she'd been lulled to sleep, Percy had the uncontrollable need to take a leak. He successfully managed to break out of Audrey's hold and then walk towards their lavatory, which wasn't exactly anything to write home about. It was cramped, small, and had more women's products than Percy was comfortable with keeping. Every time he'd come there late at night, he opened the door just to remind himself that just because it was painted pink and was covered in flowers didn't mean that it had anything to do with him. Percy took a leak, washed his face and then shaved off whatever little facial hair he had left. Seeing as he was about as wide-awake as fifteen-year-old Fred and George were, plotting and scheming their way through Hogwarts, he gave up on the idea of returning to bed. But as he walked out of the bathroom, he found Molly and Lucy sat by the living room, being eerily quiet.

They were in matching sets of pyjamas that they'd outgrown a long time back. Molly's pink-and-purple pyjamas was missing a button around her chest and Lucy's blue-and-green one looked like it was getting tight around the thighs.

Percy pretended he couldn't see them and tried to walk straight back to his bedroom when he heard Lucy say, "Why was mum crying?"

He took a deep breath, feeling his heart race in his chest. "I…" he though of how much it would pain Audrey if she was involved in this conversation. He couldn't deal with anymore of her crying, because he could deal with crying women just about as tactfully as any of his other brothers. He sat down on the couch just across from them. They were staring at him with big, bulging eyes and cheeks that looked a little too ghostly and pale for him to be comfortable with.

"Are you going to get divorced?" Lucy asked all of a sudden, a horrified tone in her voice.

Percy wondered how long they could hear Audrey crying. He wondered how thin the walls were. If they had ever had any fights that they'd heard. If they ever thought that it would come to this. "No," he finally said.

The relief in their faces made even Percy relax. "Then why was mum crying?" came the next question.

"Why was who crying?" Audrey had peered into the living room, all in her nightgown.

"Mum!" Lucy looked almost relaxed to see her. "Mum, why were you crying?" she asked again.

Audrey's face had gone ghostly well. "Well…it was…um…" she stammered. "A sad book I was reading. A…a very sad book. It was…sad." Percy glanced over at the shelf where a cookbook was proudly sat there, one that had proudly announced that it had over five-hundred recipes, including chocolate gateau and treacle tarts from scratch. He supposed that Audrey would consider that a very sad book indeed.

"Mum," Molly and Lucy said in unison, eerily reminding Percy of the twins. They rolled their eyes in disbelief.

"Come here," Percy warmly told Audrey as he tapped on the seat beside him. Audrey cautiously sat beside him. He found himself clasping her hand, which were clammy. The air felt stifling. He realised how dark and dim their flat was, and how much it strangely smelled like the incense that Molly and Lucy often had in their room. That peppery, sweet smell that made him shudder. That he used to smell in Molly's and Lucy's school robes when he hugged them before they left for Hogwarts. A decade of memories just in that light, airy scent. He could've told them any of the times that he'd dropped them off at Hogwarts. He could've told them when they were holding their little dimpled hands, when they were beaming over at him, when they were going to go away for a few months and had time to think about how they felt about the truth.

"I have something to tell you," Percy quietly said.

Audrey squeezed his hand so hard. She stared at him so lovingly, so adoringly, that the thought that she might have wanted to leave him just evapourated from his mind. She's obsessed with you, Bill had said.

"Well…" his voice was stern and authoritative, not unlike the voice that he used in presentations and board meetings.

Molly inched forward, like she was getting gossip from that Valerie girl that he disliked. The one that wore fishnets and no underpants. "Yeah, dad?"

"Cutting a long story short…" Percy was not going to be cutting a long story short. "As part of the neonatal assignment in hospitals, from 1950s onwards, there were numerous assessment spells from during the antenatal period and from the postnatal period to prevent situations from arising in the future."

His children were growing bored already. Audrey was shaking her head in disbelief, but she looked mildly amused.

"These spells are no longer documented into your files as some of the information is very personal, such as your sexuality, true gender assignments, psychological and physically abnormalities that could be detected at present—not indictive of course of things that would occur later in life, such as acquired strokes and burns from dragon fire." He waited for a while just for the knut to drop, but it didn't look like it fully did. "Of course, during the time I was born, the first wizarding war was going on. Access to hospitals were strictly monitored and most births done at the time were home births." Their faces scrunched up in distaste, probably imagining their loving, doting grandmother going through a homebirth and producing a stinky, pink baby. "So, I suppose I was born at home—but then later on taken to the hospital where some of these tests were done. And I was tagged as a male, with a different gender assignment at birth. Which of course means that—"

"Your father is a transgendered man," Audrey cut him off, which he both relieved by and infuriated by. "Of course, we wanted to tell you girls a lot sooner but…well, it's not something that a lot of people know. Besides me, only his parents and oldest brothers know. And we were scared that if we told anymore people, that somehow the secret would get out. And the world is a really awful place. Never accepted anything that they don't understand." She smiled at him weakly. "Do you girls understand?"

"No, what do you-wait, wait, wait," Molly looked stressed, as she always did when Percy refused to speak in English. "So…so does this mean that dad was born a woman?" He winced at the statement, but he nodded his head.

"I suppose you can say that." Percy puffed his cheeks out. "But I—"

"Yeah, we get it," Lucy said stalely. "You're a man. I guess." I guess, she said as if she was unconvinced of this.

"But then…" Molly gestured towards herself and then to Lucy, with worried, massive eyes. "How could you…?" and he realised that this was what he was dreading. "Were we adopted?" she said the last part out rather hysterically, but Percy just shook his head. "No? Then how did you have us?! Did mum really have us? Who's our real dad?"

Percy stiffened. The last part hit him hard in his chest, and he found himself wheezing because he certainly did not buy three cases of that disgustingly pricy body lotion just for his daughters to ask him who their real father was. "Pardon me, young lady, but I am your real father! If your mother and I didn't want to have any children, you two wouldn't even exist!"

"But how did we—"

"Your uncle Charlie wanked into a cup," Audrey eloquently explained. Percy flushed deeply, because whilst that was true, he wouldn't quite want to put it like that. And why was his wife thinking about his brother wanking into a cup in the first place? "Percy and I both wanted to have children, and your uncle Charlie, being supportive of your father, had decided to help us out so that we can have a close genetic match. But I want to remind you two that I carried you both to term with no complications—and no home births may I add on. Plenty of women and men everywhere do this, not just us. And not every man that ever existed has ever produced a sufficient amount of—"

"Yes, well, that's enough, don't you think so, darling?" Percy's ears went red.

He was beginning to wish that he didn't have any children to begin with if this was all they were going to do. But at Percy's response, Audrey just burst into tears, grabbing his arm so tightly that he felt like his breath had been knocked out of his chest. But her laughs soon turned into tears and she was clinging onto him rather unhealthily.

"How could you keep something like this from us?!" Molly moaned in distress.

"We told you that—"

"It's not fair!" Lucy and Molly yelled in unison.

"How come everyone else has a normal family and then we get stuck with this?" Lucy asked, as if the rest of their family was normal. Ron and Hermione helped save the wizarding world. Their aunt Ginny was married to the famous Harry Potter. Bill had managed to settle down with a veela for Merlin's sake! What part of that was all normal?

Audrey let out a strangled cry. "Don't you dare talk like that to your father!"

Percy couldn't tell if they were angry at him for being what he was, or if he was angry at him for not telling them. He supposed he wouldn't know until much later.

"So, why did you tell us now?" Molly asked acerbically. "Now that we got jobs, you can trust us with your big secret?"

"The…the reason we wanted to tell you this now is because…" Percy thought that he might as well get it over with now, with his daughters staring at their mum like they were mental. They didn't look like they could make sense of anything at all. "I have ovarian cancer."

They said nothing. It might as well be Percy having have said that 'the sky was blue', 'Madam Malkin's granddaughter had another baby' or 'your grandmother's trying to dress Louis up in jumpers when he's allergic to the yarn.' The silence was one of the most unnerving sounds. Audrey looked so stunned that she looked up at Percy. She was holding his hand so tightly, trying to console herself with the thought of this tragedy that it didn't even percolate through her mind that her daughters wouldn't be collapsing into tears either. Molly and Lucy just stared at Percy, eying him up and down like they were trying to make sense of what he was and how he looked like. All Percy could think of were strangers staring at him as he left the transgender clinic, trying to wonder if he was a boy that wanted to be a girl or a girl that had been successfully transitioned into another gender. When he closed his eyes, he could remember a deranged woman walking up to his parents and shrieking at them about how disgusting this was. Percy remembered cowering behind his mum, and her taking him back home just to soothe him with too much banana bread and Celestina Warbeck's 'Put Me Under Your Spell.'

"Oh," was all that Lucy said after a while. "Well, thanks for telling us then. I guess."

They stayed in that silence for a while before Lucy and Molly walked out of the living room, leaving Audrey and Percy staying there together. Percy was biting down his cheek so hard, realising that this was just the beginning.

After about an hour of lying there, Audrey was about to get up and make him breakfast, but Percy objected to this.

Instead, he got ready for his job. He didn't bother with ironing charms and his morning routine of a steaming shower. He didn't bother with drinking a drop of coffee or eating a slice of toast. He didn't even bother smoothing his hair down with a little gel or wiping down his glasses which looked a little foggy. Percy knew, even before he left the house, that he looked eerily unkempt. He was already imagining the comments that his co-workers would make when he passed them by.

"Percy, they just need a little time," was all that she said as she smoothed over his shirt. She didn't even argue that he shouldn't be going to work. She didn't seem like she wanted to do a single thing against his wishes.

"Of course, they do," Percy said stiffly. He had felt like his heart had been beaten to death by a troll club.

"Oh, Percival, just listen to me," Audrey brushed her lips over at his for a few seconds. "Just this once."

He numbly left there an hour earlier than usual. He was at work by five in the morning and was avidly sorting out his desk. Passing by his office mirrors, he winced. Even though he knew he looked awful, he didn't realise just how revolting he looked with his wrinkled dark green slacks and loose yellow button-down. His satin purple Ministry robes with this colour combination made him look like he belonged as a prop in George's store. He felt even worse.

At around six in the morning, his father had shuffled into his office. It was so quiet that Percy felt like he should've been startled catching sight of Arthur wandering in, but he was just so detached and numbed. Percy was busy looking over requests that should've been finished days ago when he'd spotted his father's ancient wingtips from a mile off. His mind had turned into gloopy custard and he felt sick to his stomach even before he caught sight of his father's face.

"Uh, I've got this for you," Arthur placed a cup of hot tea in front of him, and Percy could smell the spices. He wagered it a chai from the vendor downstairs that charged more money for the cup than the tea. "It's a two-for-one offer and well, I wasn't going to buy it but I… well…I did. Your mother has been awfully suspicious about me so I've left the house before she could get up, put the kettle on and interrogate me." A watery smile tugged at his lips.

Percy missed his mum so much all of a sudden. His throat went dry.

"You look…" Arthur drank up his appearance. "Well, the yellow is very becoming."

Percy supposed that that was true. But he said nothing.

His lip twitched. He realised how terrified he was of the looming doom right around the corner. He could imagine sick leave requests and instruments inside of him that made him feel repulsed and uncomfortable. He didn't want to think about it anymore, but just because he didn't think about it didn't mean that this thing growing inside of him would just go away.

"Are you going to tell everyone else?" he finally asked. The cowardly way out.

"Percy?" Arthur looked at him with a worried expression.

Percy could feel his body shivering, even though it was hot and stuffy in his office. Even though he was wearing far too many layers and should be sweating, but he felt so cold, and he was so absolutely terrified of the thought of having to tell George, or Ron or bloody Ginny about any of this. And just imagining his mum's face contorting when she'd found out that he was ill was more than he could take.

"Do the girls know?" he asked quietly, and Percy nodded his head. "Oh, Percy," his voice broke. "They still love you; you know. They just need time to adjust is all." He could hear Audrey's reassurances ringing into his ears. How did they know? "It must be a shock to them, you having to tell them about that you're a transman, and…the fact that you're ill." He nodded his head quietly. "You raised two perfectly lovely little girls and I wouldn't worry about it. I know that things have been hard, but it doesn't mean that you're going to go through this alone. You're…you're going to be fine."

Percy just stared at him uncertainly. He hadn't been to the healers yet, but he had a sick feeling that he was running out of time. He said none of that, but instead, he asked, "Are you going to tell everyone else?" in a rather irritated drawl.

"Do you want me to?" Arthur asked. Percy looked down at his desk, and he must've been able to read him because Arthur reached out to squeeze Percy's shoulder. "Of course, I will. Of course."