Stay A Day in My Coffin
Chapter Six
The Dinner
In Fred's mind, he was not trying to muster enthusiasm for chips after he'd seen his twin brother have a breakdown that could send him into an asylum. He was not trying to eat dinner. He was not sat casually in the kitchen like it was any other day. In his mind, he was seventeen-year-old Percy Weasley.
"Are the chips good?" Molly asked Fred, who was mindlessly eating his way through his. "I think I've put too much salt into them."
"You haven't," Arthur looked shocked. As if the worst thing that happened that day was oversalting the chips.
"Well, of course, you'd say that!" Molly huffed. "With your blood pressure problems…"
Fred couldn't even taste how they were like. "They're perfect," and as if to prove a point, he put more chips onto his plate, even though Percy would've stopped long before. His stupid body wasn't used to actual meals, and he seemed to have an intense oral fixation for sweets. Even as he was eating the chips, he was eying up the pudding like a vulture.
"Yeah, mum," Ron looked just as detached as Fred. He made George have a complete mental breakdown over a transfigured pillow. It's not fair, Ron had told Fred when he'd come out of the room. I just wanted a laugh at HIS expense for one. Fred had agreed with him, and it was so strange to agree with Ron and disagree with George. "They're great. Could win chip competitions really. You need to send the recipe into Witch Weekly magazine."
Molly frowned. Ron's sarcasm was lost on her. "They're just chips," she'd said. Either she was trying to ignore the tension, or she hadn't noticed it and Fred couldn't decide which one was worse.
Fred continued eating. In his mind, he was seventeen-year-old Percy Weasley. Madam Pince had just passed him by and tsk-tsk-tsked at him because he was still up. He could remember how exhausted he was, how heavy his eyelids felt like and how sick he was of reading the same bloody paragraph again and again. Percy stared at the textbook with about as much interest as he had in having his toes amputated. It was so strange to be inside Percy's body when he was reading. It was so strange to be in his head, period. He wasn't exactly gloating to himself about how smart he was at the dead-end of the night like Fred always thought he would. Instead, he was bored and so exhausted that he thought he might pass out. He'd drunk so much coffee (on an empty stomach of course, which Fred was beginning to realise was Percy's normal) that he was starting to get palpitations. Percy leaned back against the wall; his arse felt numb as his fingers mechanically drifted onto the pages. Wolfsbane. Monkshood. Aconite. The same. Everyone knows. Wolfsbane. Monkshood. Aconite. Wolfsbane Potion. He felt so helpless.
"How's George?" Ginny broke Fred out of his thoughts. It was the first thing that she'd said all night. She hadn't talked to Fred, but she was eying him. She hadn't said much to him since he'd been back—well, it had been like one day but still.
"He's alright, love," Molly answered for Fred.
He was definitely not okay. "But I'm back," he said lamely, when he knew wasn't the reason why George was acting like this. "Shouldn't he feel better at least?" he said the last bit a little tensely.
Arthur winced at Fred's tone. "He's had a hard time as of lately. I don't think we can just expect him to snap out of it."
"You weren't here, Per—Fred," Ron rubbed his neck. "You didn't know how he was like."
Speaking of Percy, it was so strange thinking about how much Percy gloated around him. How highly he always projected himself at but here he was dead-end of the night, exhausted with himself.
"What was he like?" he had an idea, but he wanted to hear it from everyone else.
"He's not really living anymore. It's like he's a ghost of himself," Bill, again, the first thing he'd said in ages. Fred was surprised he hadn't apparated back to Shell Cottage already and Charlie hadn't left to go to Romania, but it wasn't every family reunion that one of your brothers gave your life for another (sort of).
"Yeah," Fred nodded his head. "It's like he died with me, and nobody brought him back too." Nobody. He couldn't even implicate Percy into that because it felt so wrong.
Charlie, who was sitting beside him, looked visibly upset by those words. "Yeah, it is."
"Maybe we should bring him down here," Bill suggested, to which Molly paled.
"He looks like he hasn't slept in ages. I wouldn't…I wouldn't risk waking him up. He's gone into this horrible panic right before I gave him the potion. Just…I think we should just let him sleep." Then she paused. "I'll get him something to eat later." She said the last part as if George was really eating dinner these days. When someone lost visible amounts of weight in less than a week, it wasn't exactly the sign of a normal, healthy lifestyle.
Fred rubbed his neck, his mind swarming with memories. They were talking again, but he could barely be a part of the conversation, thinking about Percy studying in the library at the dead-end of the night.
He always thought that Percy liked being a snobby prat, but in his memories, he was studying like someone had forced him to do it. Like someone had told him that he had to, or he'd lose all of his teeth in the next twenty-four hours. And trying to focus on the book made Fred feel rather ill because the words didn't make much sense to him when his mind felt so fuzzy and cloudy. Percy must've spent ages on that paragraph. After the fifth painstaking paragraph of his Potions book, Percy dropped it down onto the ground. He buried his head into his hands and started crying from the sheer exhaustion and the overwhelming emotion that just hit him. From the expectations that he'd had of himself, from the stuff that he'd imagined that everyone else had about him, all swirling into his mind as he fell into this unneeded despair. Fred, for the second time that day, felt himself freeze, even if it was just a memory. He couldn't handle any more people crying. Fred couldn't handle a memory of Percy breaking down over a bloody book.
"…Harry and I are going to see how it goes," Ron was telling a story, but Fred hadn't heard any of it. Most people had mostly cleared their plates and Fred had too. He just didn't realise that he did, but now that he did, he felt uncomfortably full.
Merlin, you'd think if reading were such a nightmare to you, you wouldn't find yourself in a job that required editing and rewriting loads of reports.
"Fred?" Charlie spoke to him directly for the first time in ages. He looked uncertain when he called out for him, like he wasn't sure if it really was him. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah," Fred didn't feel too good. He kept staring back at his empty plate.
"You don't look alright, mate," commented Bill.
Fred shook his head. He was so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emotions that he felt. He didn't know where to keep them. He felt so much but at the same time, he also felt so numb and detached. "It's bloody Percy, isn't it?" he let his clammy hands tighten into fists. "He's just so…"
"What?" Ginny looked a little surprised, frozen in place with a chunky chip in her hand.
Bill looked like he understood what was going on. "Such a bloody downer was your words before if I can remember."
Ron scoffed. "News to you, Fred?"
"All this time I've been mistaking him for a ray of sunshine," Charlie added on.
"Oh, shut up," Fred scolded.
"You're not making much sense, love," Molly looked a little peaked.
"It's just not normal what the prat's like half the time. He's awfully depressed. And I know I'll sound like an arse even saying this, but the kind that probably needs to be locked up so he could—uh…you know, work on his issues. On why he's so bloody sad in the first place," Fred scoffed. Molly and Arthur went so white that Fred felt like he'd personally offended Percy by implying that Percy was mental (well, when he thought about it like that, he supposed that he could understand that.) "He's—"
Arthur's voice was firm when he spoke. "That's enough about that now."
Fred stared at his father, almost like he was seeing him for the first time in ages. There was this new light that was shining on his face, and he could see how tight-lipped and white he were. He'd never looked that way before. "No, it's not," he finally said. "Did you know about this?" the only thing that he could think about that felt right to him. Why else would his parents be acting like this? "That's why mum was quick to jump the bloody broom, say that he's offed himself, isn't it?" Molly started choking onto her burger, her ears turning red, and her eyes looked like they were stinging with tears all over again. But what did he have to lose? He was dead, wasn't he? Or at least he used to be. And he'd died not knowing all of this. Never came up once when they were preparing for a war, never once they've mentioned that their estranged brother had an illness that nobody but them knew about.
Bill grimaced. He looked nauseated and the scars around him made him look rough around the edges. "Merlin, you've gone mental. Spent about half a day in his shoes and here telling me that you think mum and dad have some sort of conspiracy, like they'd known all this time that Percy was a nutter."
"He's not a nutter," Fred found himself saying but he didn't really think that that was him talking.
"Then what is he?"
The uncomfortable tension in the air said everything that Fred couldn't.
Molly and Arthur just looked over at each other with uneasy expressions on their face.
"Mum?" Ginny looked at her with a pointed expression. "What's going on?"
"Nothing's going on, love," Molly asked with an air of annoyance. But it was plenty obvious to everyone that was not the first time that she'd heard the fact that Percy might have a problem like that, and judging by how his father's face had contorted, he had heard that before too. "But let's just say, Percy's had his fair share of clinic appointments." Clinic appointments? Fred watched as Ron baulked from the table, practically choking on whatever he'd been drinking. Cider? Probably. "Don't you remember, sweetheart? We've taken him to hospital before." Yeah, but Fred always assumed that they were for regular check-ups, making sure that the broomstick in his arse didn't reach his big, fat head. Besides, Percy had a lot of 'health assessments' for a scholarship he never ended up getting (maybe because he was mentally ill now that Fred thought about it).
"Clinic appointments?" Ron echoed incredulously. "What kind of clinic has he been going to?"
"Now, Ronald, you know which clinic that he's been going to," Molly shook her head. The way their mum sounded was a little condescending. "With how this conversation is going. You could assume now, can't you, that—"
"No, mum, he doesn't!" Charlie interjected with a shocked expression. "We can't assume anything! We didn't know anything! He could be going to a programme for potion drinkers and abusers as far as we know. Or he could be—"
Molly flinched at Charlie's tone and cut him off. "He's seen a psychiatric healer," she grumbled. "A few times." How much were a few times? "And you could've assumed that by the conversation so don't start with me."
"A few times!" Bill raised an eyebrow at her. "What's a few times to you, mum? And how could you keep this from us? Do you think that if we knew that Percy had that sort of a problem, we'd be taking the piss out of him so much?" Fred couldn't help but feel offended at the way that Bill was talking about Percy's mental illness. As if he were someone that couldn't be reasoned with, as if he were hysterical and was somehow less than he was because of what he felt like. And Fred was sure that was Percy's feelings and not his own, but it did leave him incongruous towards the situation. Because if he weren't in Percy's body, he'd feel exactly the way that Bill felt, and that left him genuinely dumbfounded.
"Or you'd be making it that much worse!" Arthur challenged and Fred froze, turning white as anything.
"Is that what you think of us?" Fred answered back hotly. "Of me? Of George?"
Ron and Ginny had darted their eyes at their mum, their plates empty but they were sat there, practically watching the show unfold in front of them. The circus, Fred thought sardonically. Charlie and Bill were quiet now, staring at their mum with surprised expressions. Bill was twirling a greasy fork around his hand. Arthur hung his head low, as if he were guilty of something.
It must've stayed that like that for a few seconds, but it was the longest seconds that Fred had ever endured. Every second felt like a whole minute. He could feel his chest rising. He could hear his blood pumping into his ear. He could hear poor ole geriatric Errol ruffling his feathers ages away
"That's...that's not what we think of you, love," Molly said in a way that didn't make Fred feel any better.
Yes, you do, and they both knew it too.
"It's not like he was hiding it very well," Arthur shrugged nonchalantly. "McGonagall has expressed her concerns, including other teachers. They've always thought that he was taking on too much and that he was getting burnt out."
"But Percy's never even told them that he felt like he was a little snowed under. Even when everyone's asked him, he's denied it," Molly added on. "But with a few talks with the teachers, we've decided that he'd feel more normal if we never brought any attention to how he was like. He's been to Madam Pomfrey a few times for check-ups in general. They never marked him down for little errors he's made, and they let him take an exam a little later than everyone else—he's even made quite a fuss about how he doesn't need that and that he was perfectly capable and that there wasn't anything wrong with him. He's never talked to us about it when he was at Hogwarts even when we've brought it up, it just didn't feel like that big of a problem for him."
"Your brother was always a little sensitive," Arthur pointed out. "Liked to keep to himself."
Fred blinked a few times, trying to process the fact that his parents had known all along about what Percy was feeling but never told the rest of them about it. He was in disbelief.
"You're talking about Percy like he's dead, you know," Ginny said with a shiver down her spine. "Like he's…"
"Isn't he?" Fred didn't know what to think about that, but for the time being, he was the one that was gone and they might not even be able to bring him back. Everything was suspended in the air. Someone was dead. "George thinks that he killed him. Because of the stuff that he said at the funeral." He said that with the most detached expression he could keep. He could barely imagine it himself. He was terrified that Percy would start thinking about the funeral, and Fred wasn't ready for that. To recount his own funeral.
"He thinks what?" Bill looked stunned. "Why would he think something like that?"
"I don't know," answered Fred, when he should've known.
"You could've stopped him," Charlie said, deadpanned. "If you knew that he was like that. Why would you let him plan the bloody funeral if you knew that he was like that? Why would you let him leave the house after George said something like that? And why in hell would you let him leave the house after that fight if he's like that?"
"Like what, Charlie? Don't you think your brother was capable of making his own decisions? Because what he has is not what he is," Molly firmly replied. "Just because he's mentally ill doesn't mean that he wasn't in the capacity to be deciding what to do with his own life. And don't you dare imply that when you didn't even know how he was like. How he was really like."
"That's your fault, mum, not mine," Charlie replied just as stiffly. "He killed himself, mum."
That was when Fred took in a deep breath. "We don't know that—"
"Oh, shut up," Charlie cut Fred off so severely that he found his heart racing. "Do you really believe that? That this is a temporary exchange, mate? That when you feel like you're ready to be laid down to rest, we can reverse this whole fucking thing?" it even sounded unfathomable. "What's death done to you, Fred? Made you all daft, has it?"
"DON'T. TALK. TO. HIM. LIKE. THAT!" Ginny shrieked at Charlie.
Fred's ears turned red. "No, it's just—"
"Just what?" Charlie cut him off. "He's gone, he's really gone and his last couple of days here was bloody shite. We didn't do nothing. We didn't get anything done. I never told him nothing. I never got to tell him that-that I didn't mean that stuff that I said way back when. That I didn't hate him. That we don't think that he's a prissy arsehole for leaving when he really thought it was the right thing to do. He was a fucking kid at that point. And that I've forgotten that—a lot of us probably did—because Percy's always acted like he has everything sorted out in his life. That nobody in his family thought the vile stuff that people said about him and Dad never got to tell him—"
"You don't know that," Bill baulked. "That he's really gone."
"What did Dad want to tell Percy?" Ginny caught on to that last part just as Fred had.
"I don't know what? Percy had a fucking death wish all along, but he didn't want to tell that to anyone," Charlie huffed, continuing his side of the conversation. Fred didn't recognise the black-and-white t-shirt that he was in, or the socks he had on even though Charlie recycled the same five outfits all the time. Fred had almost forgotten that they were around the dinner table, but it was the most that they'd talked about in ages. Really talked instead of commenting about how salty the chips were or how George was fine and all he needed was a little sleep. "If he didn't miraculously come across this spell on his rampage, do you honestly believe he wouldn't have done anything?"
Arthur looked like he'd been slapped in the face. "He just needed some time to himself, to be alone. He'd always been like that. Always had. No matter how upset he was, he wanted to be alone."
"Look at what that did to him," Ron sneered.
"It's not Dad's fault," Bill didn't even sound like he was convinced himself.
"Did you know that Percy was a nutter?" Ron crossed his arms over his chest.
"Stop calling him that," Molly finally said. She sounded tired. She sounded like she'd defended Percy before. Fred felt like there was a host of memories about this that he could dig up at any time. "His mind doesn't work the same way as you. He's not a nutter. He shouldn't be locked up. And don't forget that he's still your brother." Is. Was. Which one was it? And did it matter so much that their conversations kept coming back to that?
Ron looked at Molly, confused. "I never said that—"
Molly stood up from her chair, her hands shaking. "I'll get the pudding."
Fred was starting to get this eerie feeling, like he'd crashed a party that he shouldn't have been invited to. Bill wasn't wearing any earrings. Ginny was in pink for the first time in a decade and it would've been like Ron putting on a dress. He was suddenly increasing aware of how uncomfortable he felt like, in Percy's body, which felt overstuffed with what he'd had. He was terrified he'd remember that night, but he still wondered how it felt like. To come home and just decide that you were going to do something like that and in a split second, everything was different. Maybe forever.
He stayed quiet, as he watched his mum focus on cutting the cake into smaller pieces when she could do it with her wand and it would take about three seconds. He looked at Charlie from across the room, who looked a little pale. Bill was rubbing his neck, looking like he didn't want to be there.
And there was Fred, wondering if he'd really died never really knowing anything about his older brother.
Did he know Bill? Did he know Charlie? Did he even know George?
Did he want to know?
Now thinking about George, Percy's never sleeping-never eating lifestyle was starting to eerily remind him of George, who was tucked away in his bed. Just the thought of that was pretty nerve-inducing. But Percy was fine—well, as fine as you could be when you've decided to possibly give your life up for your brother. What if he'd gotten better when he was away, when he'd left home? What if he really was fine and did this because he just wanted Fred to be back? Nauseous, Fred gave up halfway through the pudding and left the kitchen.
By the staircase, he was stopped by a rather frantic Arthur. His father's eyes were so blue that it was like looking into a bottomless lake. He had a tremor to his hand that seemed to develop over dinner. "Fred? You're in Percy's mind, aren't you?"
"I guess," was all that Fred could answer. "It's not like he's an open book." More like one with more locking charms than you'd expect a juicy diary from a politician. He'd have an easier time accompanying Bill on a mission.
Arthur was rubbing his hands together. They looked sticky and wet. Sweaty. Even his eyebrows and his temple were slicked with sweat. "Does he know?"
Fred had already gotten up the first few steps, plotting his escape. "Know what?"
"That I don't hate him."
Fred froze in the middle of the stairs and looked down to see his father's face. He was glad he couldn't see it so clearly. He didn't want to imagine how he must've looked. The guilt of carrying that in yourself and never telling anyone.
"That I was proud of him," Arthur continued, as if it was something he'd forgotten to add on. "And that I've always known how he was really like, even if he tried to…"
What in Merlin's name was he talking about?
"I knew," was all that Arthur said.
The fight that they had seemed like ages back. It barely even occurred to Fred. There was probably so much history there that he didn't even know about. He slumped his shoulders in defeat. "I don't know, alright? I can't read his bloody mind," he replied. "Why don't you ask him when he comes back?" and before he could wait for Arthur's reply, he practically bolted up to Percy's room so that he wouldn't have to see his father's reaction. He quickly passed by his old room, trying to forget about how George was like these days.
The second that he stepped inside Percy's room; his head was swarming with so many memories that he didn't know which to focus on. He could remember being carried to his bedroom when he'd fallen asleep on their outdated, velvet blue couch as a child. He could remember being upset that Bill and Charlie didn't want to play Quidditch with him because he was such a bore and writing long-winding diary entries about it and how about they'd be sorry about it. He could remember packing his things excitedly the night before he went to Hogwarts, jamming things in that he didn't even want just in case he'd need them. He could remember leafing through Bill's comic books and hiding them in his textbooks so that anyone that would pass him by would think that he was studying. He could remember the sense of validation that he felt like when he'd gotten his Prefect badge. He could remember reading Penelope's first letter back to him, and the feel of her hand into his own as they walked through Hogsmeade together.
He could remember so much that Fred almost had forgotten that he wasn't Percy for a few seconds, as he watched clips of his life, one after the other so seamlessly, so colourfully that he felt moved with emotions he didn't recognise.
Shaking the feelings off, Fred snuggled up into Percy's bed and pulled his duvet over his body. They felt so familiar, not like the familiarity that he had with George's bed last night. He clutched his blanket together. They smelled like they'd just been out of the laundry, just like the way that he'd always liked them. He could hear his mum knock on the door to his and George's room right across from Percy's. He thought about Audrey back at the flat, wondering how much she knew, and if she'd wished that he was back, even if it was just his body sat there beside her.
"George? Love?" he could hear his mum's warm voice, practically see her fuzzy turquoise slippers from underneath the door. He heard her open and close the door
He felt so bad that he wasn't there for George. He felt stuffed, to the point of almost throwing up. He didn't know what he was thinking, trying to shove down more than he could eat. Fred cupped his stomach, which was uncomfortably distended and felt like all the food was coming up his throat.
The next morning at work, Fred went back to figuring out where Percy had hidden that muggleborn family.
Percy had a special glossy-looking white wand at his desk, which apparently scanned and read out his reports, but it looked like it was a little overused and worse for wear. He found a hefty collection of files tucked under his desk and realised that up to the three days extending before the war, his reports had gone from meticulous and pristine to sloppy and even dirty. Sentences were kept short and curt with loopy o's and w's that looked like m's. It was so bad that Fred didn't even know who Percy was trying to hide to begin with. Even the wand couldn't process them as words and gave error readings every time that Fred tried to use it. And to make it worse, these reports were passed over by a senior, stamped and authenticated (who had authentically these reports? You couldn't even read them!).
What did you expect? Fred thought to himself. Three days leading up to one of the biggest wars in wizarding history, and you really think people are out there checking these reports?
"Oh, Percy," Fred shook his head. "You stupid bloody prat."
Where was he supposed to start looking when he didn't know what he was looking for?
When Angelina had turned up, she looked frazzled. She looked like she'd barely gotten out of her pyjamas and put her hair up before she'd apparated there. She'd barely sat down across from him before Fred started to explain everything that had happened that night. He'd gone through the conversation they'd had at the dinner table and went onto what he'd found at Percy's desk that morning. And for the rest of the day, their muggleborn reviews were tossed away for catchups with watery coffee in office chairs that could give you a herniated disc before you're thirty.
"Bloody hell," she looked at him with a kind of sad expression. "That must've been hard. For your parents. For Percy." Fred was beginning to understand why his parents did what they did, but he was still rolling everything around his head that morning. Thinking about if he was okay with it or not. He skipped breakfast and instead, started reflecting and trying to digest yesterday's massive dinner. "Do you blame them for what they did? Your mum and dad?"
"I did, but I was thinking about it this morning. I don't think it's that fucking fair considering that—well—I didn't really know how he was like," Fred admitted, even though he'd practically accused them last night. "But they knew, and we didn't and it's just…I suppose it's easy to think that if you knew about something, you would've done something about it. I'm not sure if I would've—you know, done something. Beyond teasing him that is. Telling him off, asking him if he wants a pillow for every time he starts blubbering over something." Then after a sigh, he admitted. "I'm not exactly known to be the nicest bloke in the room, you know." He knew that they were right. They weren't mature enough before to handle it. They would've teased him until his head exploded. But he knew how real it had been for Percy now. Because he was in his body, in his mind, and he could barely get the visions out of his mind, about how scared and pained he was as he was sobbing in that library all by himself.
"No kidding," Angelina smiled at him, but Fred didn't find it so amusing that he had no sense of compassion. "How is it like being back? If you're not thinking about the fact that you're in Percy's body that is…"
Fred thought about this. "I guess I'm lucky. Black Kneazle and all that."
"You don't look like someone that thinks that they're lucky."
"I guess not." Fred got to see George go mental, his brother sacrifice himself for him, and witness his family fall apart. Bloody lucky he was, but at least he had his life. Except he was in Percy's body, who was depressed all his bloody life. "I've died thinking that…I don't know…things were simpler then. Now, I'm alive—again—and I'm seeing everything falling apart. It's not exactly a reason to start popping corks off champagne bottles, isn't it?"
"You don't drink champagne," Angelina smirked. "And what did you expect, Fred? The fact that you've died changes everything. The fact that Percy's had this problem that you didn't know about changes everything. The fact that how this has all happened isn't exactly a reason to jump for joy. Bloody hell, I'd be so fucking confused."
Fred smiled weakly because he knew that she was right. "Everyone is confused."
He didn't know if they were happy seeing him, or if they'd wished that Percy hadn't done what he did because things were much simpler back when Fred was just a victim of war. And Fred wasn't suicidal by any means, but he kind of wished that he didn't know what he did know. He kind of was happy knowing that he'd died not knowing that George had practically died with him, that his parents had known things about Percy that they hadn't told him about, that there were things that have happened that he'd never thought about—and now, he was forced to. Because what now? Did Charlie have a secret lover they didn't know about? Did Bill really brush off his injuries the way that he was pretending to? Was Ron forever bloody traumatised after helping Harry? He didn't know, and he didn't want to know, but he guessed that he had to.
He'd been brought back from the dead, and he'd never thought that he'd be able to see like this. But the world was much nicer when it was blurry, and all the lines seemed black and white. Because this grey was suffocating.
"I'm pretty confused too," Audrey took a sip of their dishwater coffee. "Why are we drinking coffee that's this bad when there's a coffee shop just down the street?"
