The Mother Who Cried Werewolf

Chapter Three

Skiving Snackboxes

"What are these?" Arthur asked. He was gesturing to a box of chocolates on their dressing table. Odd, because Molly was on a perpetual diet. She didn't eat chocolates. He was sure the last time his wife had sugar was in 1978.

When he reached out to pick one up, his wife smacked them out of his hand. "No! Don't do that!"

"Hmm?" Arthur looked confused but put the chocolates down.

"They're expensive chocolates! A gift!" Molly's eyes went wide, and her nostrils were flaring. What had he done wrong this time? It felt like everything he did recently was enough to set his wife off another tangent. "I'll just be taking those," Molly snatched the chocolates off the table and then whizzed them off to the top of one of their dressers.

"Alright?" Arthur felt confused but then he slumped down on the bed. "Molly, what is going on here?"

"Nothing is going on," she huffed as she put her wand down. "I just don't want you to be scoffing off all my chocolates."

Arthur couldn't help the uneasy feeling he had in his stomach. "Since when did you eat chocolate?"

"Am I not allowed to have them every once in a while?" Molly raised an eyebrow at him.

"I suppose not," Arthur could've sworn there was something about them.

He was feeling exhausted after he'd brought Percy and Molly back from the hospital. He looked exactly as he did when he went in and fortunately, no extra tube or feeding solution was being given to them when they were discharged from A&E. Just his regular follow-up appointments which Molly took him diligently to. Arthur was delighted that it wasn't another admission.

"Arthur, we need to talk," Molly said.

"I'm listening," Arthur tried not to scoff. Oh, yes, another talk. Just what the relationship needed!

They always needed 'to talk'. And 'talking' just led to them fighting. Arthur was so bloody sick of talking.

"You know, Arthur, you could at least pretend that Percy is your child," Molly reminded him as she flopped down on the bed beside him. These nightly conversations were taking a toll on him. He was sick of hearing about how Molly thought that he didn't care about his child. "It's like you can't stand to be around him these days."

"That is not true," Arthur knew that they'd be fighting soon. "I love Percy with all my heart, but I can't stand to see him do this to himself. And you encouraging it."

"Do what to himself?" Molly placed a hand on his hips.

"Seeing him the way that he was when he was only so young and ill destroyed me, Molly," Arthur admitted. Having to go into the PICU and see him lying there with that magical machine doing the breathing for him was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to witness. He could still remember how white he looked, how small he was, and how completely powerless Arthur felt. When they took him home with the tracheostomy, for the first year in that house, he had been spoiled. And because he'd been so ill, nobody seemed to mind. "But that was when he was ill. He's not ill anymore. I don't know what's happened, but he's fixated with making himself ill when he's fine."

"He's fine! I can see how you got to this conclusion," she threw her arms in the air. "Why don't I go tell him the good news then?"

"Molly," Arthur said tiredly. No matter what he'd say, she wouldn't believe him. She was just as delusional as ever. "Things just don't add up. I'm sorry, love, but it's the truth."

Arthur didn't think that there was anything wrong with Percy. He didn't think that Percy needed a feeding tube. Just under a year ago, Percy could outeat them all with ease. He was only really ill once and that was ages ago when they'd had to cut open his throat for that tracheostomy. And for someone that never left his bed, he sure had a lot of visits to A&E with fractures after some mysterious falls. If Arthur saw another bottle of Skele-Gro, it would be too soon.

"Things just don't add up," Molly mocked. "Did I miss something here? Have you gotten a shiny healer's degree whilst I wasn't looking?"

"Molly, it's not possible that he suddenly goes from out-eating everyone in the house to needing a feeding tube in less than a year. It's not physically possible," Arthur said. "And how come since he'd gotten that wretched thing that he needs, he's lost three-quarters of his body weight?"

"He can't swallow anymore. I don't know what to tell you," Molly stiffly replied. "When are you going to stop with the inquisition and start treating him like your son instead of someone on trial in the Wizengamot courts?"

"I suppose that'll happen around the time that you decide that Percy isn't the only child we have?" Arthur brought up.

He used to stay quiet and promise to do better, but nowadays, they'd been getting into fights just bringing it up.

"Percy is sick. He needs more attention," she said. Oh yes, because Arthur had somehow forgotten! He was sick of being reminded about how sick Percy was all the time. "But I don't have to remind you that every day, do I?"

"You still do," Arthur replied gruffly. "But the twins have been really acting out lately. I think they need someone to talk to. You've not had a proper chat with Ron and Ginny in months either. You've not even been writing to Bill and Charlie as much. Why don't you take them to Diagon Alley instead of putting Percy on a wheelchair and taking him?"

"Well, I'll have a proper chat with them, and you stay with Percy all day long then!" Molly fought back. Arthur would've agreed to do that, if not for the fact that Molly would never really agree to it. "Do you know how difficult it is for Percy to be stuck in that room all day? I take him out to Diagon Alley once a week for the weekly shops and suddenly, I'm neglecting all our other children!"

"They've told me," Arthur admitted. "They've told me that they don't feel like you pay enough attention to them."

"I'm trying my best," Molly hit him with the deathliest stare possible. "I am just one woman, Arthur. I cannot possibly take care of one sick child and then go around asking everyone how their day has been going."

Arthur was sick of that excuse as well. "It's been ages," he counteracted. "Do you even know how poorly Ron's been doing in school? He was never going to come home with straight O.W.L's but it's still worrying."

"Ron was never a bright one," Molly said, which was not helping. "Not everyone is like Bill or Charlie, Arthur."

"Or even Percy," Arthur told her since she liked to remind him about all the time. But that shut her up real quick.

Percy was indeed getting top marks on his supposed deathbed. He had taken his O.W.L's last month (earlier than fifth years in his class to boot) in a Ministry appointed hall and got a certificate saying that he'd managed to get all 12 O.W.L's! Percy didn't even own a wand. He'd never needed to considering he'd never gone to school. He had to borrow Arthur's wand for the exam.

Currently, Percy was studying for his N.E.W.T's! Arthur could tell that Percy was ridiculously smart. Why would he waste that intelligence away withering on his bed when he could go to Hogwarts and be a normal teenager?

"He should be at Hogwarts," Arthur said now that they were on the subject. "Molly, he needs to be in a real school."

"He's too sick," Molly insisted. "Look at how often we're in and out of all these different hospitals!" Arthur wished he didn't have to. "Who is going to be checking up on him as much as I do? Who is going to be giving him his feeds and making sure that nothing happens to him? And how is he going to be getting his monthly tracheostomy changes?"

He thought it was ridiculous when she said that he probably shouldn't be getting on the train to Hogwarts because of his bad asthma, allergies and Merlin knew what else. Molly had been adamant that he try and stay home for 'a year to sort him out.' Percy had never been to school. And what made it sicker was that Arthur didn't even know if Percy had a genuine disease that ever prevented him from going to school. It always seemed to him that he was in and out of the hospital on a whim.

Arthur had been regretting agreeing to that every day. Having his fifteen-year-old son sat in bed because he'd had a catastrophic life-threatening event happen a decade ago! He was quite literally wasting his life away and Arthur felt too powerless to do anything about it.

"I'm going for a walk," Arthur decided to say, hoping to return and see his wife sleeping.

He noticed that Ron and Ginny were outside his door, and they were just as livid. "Dad, did you have another fight with mum?" Ginny asked, and he hated that his children knew how much they were fighting. "About Percy?"

"Dad, he's faking it," Ron told him, which he did all the time. "He has to be."

"Yeah, we can prove it," Ginny insisted. "Then mum will stop fighting with you and everything can go back to normal." Arthur didn't think it was that simple.

Arthur was a little sick of hearing about Percy. He swore that every waking moment in this house had to be about his poor super-sick child that needed to be in hospital 24/7. It was nearing midnight, and nobody else could sleep, but poor sick Percy was snoring in his bed. He slept like a baby.

"You two should be in bed." Arthur sighed deeply. "I'm so sorry about all of this." He felt like he had to apologise on Molly's behalf, but then he smiled. "We'll play a nice Quidditch match tomorrow."

They beamed at that. Sometimes, he felt like Molly and he had separate children.

"But only if you actually go to bed right now," Arthur said.

They both looked at each other, eerily mimicking Fred and George at that moment. "Deal," they both said and then headed off to their rooms. They were good kids and didn't deserve to be in the situation that they were in.

When he headed to Percy's room to look in, he always felt uncharacteristically ill. He was forever hooked onto wires and a machine that read out his heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and respiratory rate. They never looked like the vital signs of someone that was ill. When he'd gotten the machine in the beginning, he did read up on the normal and abnormal. That was when he had felt bad for how sick Percy was, but now, he knew it was just a big, fat joke.

"Hey, dad," Bill's voice broke Arthur out of his trance. He caught Arthur looking at Percy in his room. "Things have really changed since the last time we were here."

"Yeah, well…" Arthur agreed. "Things have gotten worse."

Things were always uncharacteristically weird, but ever since Percy got that feeding tube in, the whole family dynamic had shifted. The hospital visits had gotten more, Molly's neglect of everyone else more, the fighting about Percy—moremoremore.

"I can see," Bill noticed the weird look on Arthur's face. "Dad?"

"I'm thinking about leaving your mother," Arthur admitted. He wished that he would've warmed up to it but now that he said it, he felt a huge weight off his shoulders. "I can't do this anymore. It's taking everything out of me."

"Dad," Bill paled so much that he matched the hallway wallpaper. "You can't be serious."

"I am," Arthur had never been more serious in his life.

"Is this because of Percy?" Bill asked quietly.

"It's because of what Percy has done to your mother. It's not his fault, Bill. I know that your brothers and sister all think that it's Percy's fault, but he's just a teenager. He can't help what he does. Even if he is faking being ill, we need to help him through it, not encourage him like your mum has been." Arthur had a lot of contempt in his voice. "Him being carted off to a new hospital every week hasn't been the easiest. Your mum has forgotten that this family is more than just taking your brother to his appointments and to Diagon Alley for a quick fresh of breath air whenever he feels like it."

Bill looked stunned. Arthur couldn't blame him. Things had always been bad, but now, they were catastrophic.

"Ron, the twins and Gin was livid too," Bill had noticed that. And it just took him a day! How come Molly hadn't figured that out? Arthur bet that Ginny just chopped her hair off just to get a rise out of her. "You should've said something, dad. I wouldn't have been away for so long if I knew it was this bad."

"It's always been coming to this," Arthur knew the warning signs were there long before. "For years now."

"Does this mean that you'll have us, and Percy will go to mum?" Bill asked.

Arthur had wished that Bill hadn't said it like that. "No," he said. He didn't think that Percy should be anywhere around Molly. If he was making himself ill, then she was only making it worse by reinforcing that behaviour and letting him go to the hospital every time he felt like he needed it. "He's only fifteen, Bill. And it is awful for him too. He needs real help. He's missed out on so much of his life just sitting here at home."

"Dad, he hasn't eaten in a year," Bill told him, and Arthur shuddered just to think that. "If you don't think that he's really sick, then that's…" he had no idea how to describe that. "That's bloody horrible."

"I've tried to talk to your mother," Arthur rubbed his forehead. "She won't let anyone feed him. She says it's too dangerous for him." He doubted that. It just seemed that one day, he was fine and then after one massive hospital stay, he came back with this tube that he didn't need. The first time that Molly told him that Percy couldn't eat at all, he thought that she was joking. But now thinking that it had been a year since he'd even drunk water was gut-wrenching. Especially if you weren't convinced that he needed it to begin with!

"If he loses any more weight, it will be dangerous for him," Bill pointed out.

"I know," Arthur said surly.

Arthur thought that too. If there was anything wrong with Percy, it was that tube. Since he'd put that in, he'd lost so much weight. If he had any health problems, it was because of the fact that he had become so underweight. Strangers really thought that he was ill too because of that. The tracheostomy with his wasted body gave that effect.

"I don't know how it got to this," Arthur didn't know why he hadn't stopped it sooner. "But I'm going to make it right. It will not carry on for another day." He didn't care if this meant being so heartless as to boot out his wife of twenty-five years out of the house during the holidays, but this had gone on far enough.

"I hope that this is the right thing, dad," Bill didn't look like he was certain about that.

"I hope so too."

By the time Arthur retreated back to his bed, Molly was already asleep. Fortunately for him, he was a deep sleeper and was passed out seconds from his head hitting the pillow. He intended to sleep right through his rare precious off days, but he was rudely awoken by the sound of a shrieking Molly insisting that Percy needed to go to the hospital.

Not this again! He'd just come home from the hospital, and they'd run all the tests on him and told him he was fine. It was a pointless eight hours that Molly and Percy had spent in A&E.

Arthur dragged himself out of his bed and peeked into Percy's room. He was throwing up violently into a rubbish bin, looking pale and withdrawn. Arthur couldn't help but feel alarmed himself. Molly insisted that Percy couldn't eat or drink anything, so how was he supposed to replace all that stuff that he was losing in heaving chunks?

Molly pushed past him and said something about packing an overnight bag. Meanwhile, Percy was looking pale and speechless. He maybe had a few minutes between him lying flat and losing his dinner—well, metaphorically speaking.

"Hey, Percy," Arthur felt a rare pang of pain seeing his son in such pain. Percy was shivering in his duvet. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," Percy said, covering himself with the blanket. It was things like this that made it so hard for him to believe that Percy was faking being ill. He knew he wasn't really sick most of the time, but he'd have thought that someone that was faking his own illness would be more proactive in trying to get himself to A&E. "I don't need to go to the hospital. I've just got back from the hospital." At the end of that sentence, he turned to the rubbish bin and threw up. Arthur knew that this was one of the rare times that his feeding-tube-dependent child actually did need a hospital.

"We'll be quick," Arthur promised, stroking his sweaty hair. He used to have such nice hair, but now it was dull and brittle. He rarely ever did anything with it, and kind of neglected himself with all of this.

"Dad," Fred had poked his head into his room and gestured for Arthur to come with him.

Arthur walked towards him, looking confused. He walked to the twins' room, which looked like a bloody bomb had gone off in it. There were clothes everywhere, posters that said things about how smart and cool they were, and books scattered everywhere. More proof to him that Molly had no idea what was going on in their lives. How could they live in this rubbish bin?

It looked like everyone was gathered there. The twins, Ginny and Ron were sitting together like they were holding a secret meeting.

"Dad, Perce's faking it," George beamed at him. "We finally—"

"—caught him," Fred was equally sharing a shit-eating smile.

"Boys, this isn't really the time," Arthur sighed deeply. Even if he was faking it, he didn't care. "Your brother really is sick this time."

"But dad, he's not," Ron was in a good mood for the first time in a long time and it was discerning knowing that Percy was in the other room, probably losing a good amount of his body fluids. "Now, mum's going to know he's a bloody liar."

"It'll stop him throwing up so much," Ginny said, and that was the only reason why Arthur hadn't dashed off.

"It would?"

Arthur felt uncomfortable because even from there, he could hear the sound of Percy retching in the background. If he was faking it, then he was very good at making large copious amounts of clear sick appear when he needed it.

"We have a new product we've been making," Fred explained. "We've called them Skiving Snackboxes. We're just making prototypes now, but we have some promising results."

"They're supposed to make you sick," George supplemented. "And one of our boxes went missing."

"We think Percy took it," Ginny explained. "Because who else would be taking them?"

"One end of the sweets is supposed to make you ill, but the other one will make you feel better," Fred smirked. Why would you be making something like that when one of your brothers actively tried to make himself sick? Arthur didn't get that. "Come on, dad, he's been throwing up nonstop for an hour. It can't be something he's eaten—well, generally at least," Fred laughed. "I bet if we feed Percy the other end, he's going to be better. He's going to stop throwing up."

Arthur wasn't comfortable with this. "No, no," he shook his head. "He needs to go to a hospital."

"If it really is our sweets, then nothing else is going to make him stop," George bolstered his argument.

"Yeah, dad, and what's the worst that can happen? Mum says he can't swallow but he's already throwing up, so he should just throw it back up if we're wrong then, won't he?" Fred crossed his arms.

"And mum needs to see that there's nothing wrong with him," Ron explained.

"Boys, I don't think that anything will convince your mother," but then he thought about what Fred had said about the sweets. If it was one of the sweets, Percy wouldn't stop throwing up if he didn't have the other end. If Percy didn't stop throwing up, he would dehydrate himself to the point of shock. Arthur couldn't believe that he was giving in. "Where's this sweet then?"

Fred and George lit up as one of the twins handed over the end of a sweet. "We call them Puking Pastilles," Fred said, and Arthur wished he didn't know that bit of information. Only Fred and George could come up with something like this and think that it was witty. "Don't worry, dad, you'll be doing us all a favour."

"Then things can go back to normal," Ginny's words made Arthur feel so guilty.

"I'm going to go call mum so she could see," Ron stood up. "I bet she's gone off to pack Percy's nappies."

Arthur was sure that if he hadn't planned on divorcing Molly, she'd divorce him right after this stunt. If Percy really couldn't swallow and he was forcing him to have this, then he would feel like a right fool.

When he headed over to Percy's room, Charlie and Bill were already there. They both looked like they just woke up and were tired. Bill had Percy sitting up a little. The more he threw up, the sicker he looked. Arthur couldn't imagine that it took too much to seriously dehydrate him.

"Percy?" Arthur called out gently. "Percy, I'm going to give you something to help you, alright?" he said so slowly that he thought that Percy might find it condescending because he wasn't a child.

But Percy must actually feel unwell because he nodded his head.

When Arthur pulled out the sweet, Percy paled a little bit. "Here," Arthur placed that in Percy's palm. "Just have that and you'll feel much better. I promise."

"Dad, are you sure?" Bill looked terrified. They were talking about how they thought Percy didn't need the feeding tube just hours before, but they still didn't feel comfortable with what was going on. It felt like coercion.

Charlie stroked Percy's hair, which was damp with sweat. When Percy threw up again, he looked a little bit lost and desperate.

"What is going on here?" Molly asked by the doorway. Percy grabbed the sweet from his father's hand and ate it. Arthur visibly saw her go white when he had, but as the twins had said, Percy had stopped throwing up. He looked rather relieved and collapsed back into his bed. "What are you doing feeding him?"

"He can eat, Mollywobbles," Arthur said hotly. "So why does he have a feeding tube?" he was furious. The cheek of this woman! It sounded like Percy was a crup at the dining table that was scoffing their dinner when he wasn't allowed.

Then as if to make his point, he turned to Percy and asked, "You can swallow, can't you?"

Percy, who was vacant-eyed and pale, looked conflicted. "Yes."

"Why the hell would you lie about that?" Charlie asked. He looked confused and angry about the situation they were in. Arthur couldn't say he blamed them. Why didn't Percy say anything before? If Percy knew he could swallow, why hadn't he said anything? "You really are mentally ill, you sick prat."

"There's no need to call your brother names," Arthur responded.

Then it had finally clicked into Arthur's mind that box of chocolates that he'd found on Molly's stand last night. The twins mentioned that their Skiving Snackboxes had been stolen.

Was his wife poisoning his son to make him sick on purpose?