i'm actually a good few chapters ahead. but it's just the editing... anyway, i'll hopefully be posting more frequently these days! xx
Stay A Day in My Coffin
Chapter Nine
The Talk
When Fred had gotten home that evening after a gruesome day, his mum had been on the couch, flipping through old copies of Witch Weekly magazines and knitting at the same time. The house smelled like snake oil and there was a neglected wreath that he hadn't noticed on the wall that looked like it was the better part of the funeral. The white flowers looked like they were crisping up and the petals were grey and uninspired. Fred felt like he'd walked in at a photograph of a pseudo-happy family, where every crack had been held together by spello-tape.
Fred slumped his shoulders, glancing up at the Weasley family clock. The handles were all over the place. His poor lost mum, who was trying to find herself in colourful knits and old magazines that told her that she could be happier about her life if she'd just gone for that fringe-look instead of her usual deep-side part.
"I'm home," Fred said, his heart skipping a beat as he watched his whole family look up from what they were doing to take him in. His mum's face softened. Ginny looked like she was battling between relief and unadulterated fury. Charlie looked like he'd been punched in the face and his father looked about ten times older. Had they all looked like they before he'd left? Blimey, because you know, he hadn't really noticed. George had been such a shock that everyone else seemed to faze into the background of family-members-perfectly-coping-with-grief.
"Where were you?" Molly sounded like she wanted to be angry, but she didn't sound like she could. "Did you notice what time it is, young man? Did you have any idea how worried sick we'd be?"
Fred hadn't exactly noticed the time. He realised that since he'd been back, he hadn't really spent a lot of time with his family, which sounded rather odd. Because if you had a second chance at life, you'd want to spend it with the people that you loved the most. And instead, all Fred had been doing was running away, because he felt confused at the family he'd been dropped into.
"I'm sorry."
"Now, you could just take that attitude of yours and…" Molly looked shocked when Fred had apologised. It wasn't usually something that he'd do, but here he was, apologising because he knew that it was late. He couldn't imagine how it must feel like to bury one of your children a couple of days back, then to have then come back and practically ignore you. His mum must've really been suffering—his whole family must be. "Oh."
"Yeah, mum," Fred confirmed. He was surprised too. "I'm sorry how things have been like without me."
He was surprised at how his voice hadn't cracked, how calm and level-headed that he was when he'd said those things. His mum looked like she was about to cry, as she bunched up the blanket into her hand. It was snow-white and looked like something you could be putting on a baby.
"I was surprised too. I didn't know that I…I died." Fred clasped his hands together. "And we'll bring Percy back too. After we've had a talk. After we've…after you feel like I can go, and things might not be so bad."
"Of course, we will," Molly said it in a way like there was no debate about that. "Bring your brother back."
Fred nodded his head again, and there was a calm, serene stillness. The same one that he felt like when he was really looking at a portrait and was thinking about how the portrait artist was pretty good, you know, for not completely botching it up. "Yeah," he had to believe that too. "Of course, we will."
"We'll never feel like you can go," Ginny finally decided to say. Her voice was a small squeak.
"Well, it's too bad," Fred crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't want to stay in the mortal realms anyway. It's boring. Well, I guess it is." He felt like if he said it enough, maybe he would find this eternal peace inside of him that meant that he could let go of the fact that he died before he could see his shop flourish, before he could marry Angelina, before he could see George and him grow up and be old pranksters like they'd always wanted to.
"You and Percy are not replaceable," Arthur added on. "We don't want to trade each of you for each other."
"But it's not Percy's time," Fred concluded.
There was a well of silence in the room as if everyone was weighing those two options in their mind. As if they were remembering what had happened in this really harrowing week. Fred felt like it would take them a long time to recover from this. Fred felt like he couldn't blame them either, for what they felt. It was like in the last twenty-four hours, he'd matured twenty-four years. It was how it felt like, stood there in the Burrow living room.
"Yeah," Charlie agreed, nodding his head. "It's not. Percy's time that is."
"Yeah," Fred agreed again, almost prompting the rest of them to agree with him.
Fred did feel a stab of pain just thinking that, and this anger. Even though he'd said it, he'd almost wanted someone to tell him that they felt like he should still stay there. Even though he knew that it wasn't possible. That he was gone. That he was lucky for being back, even though it didn't feel that way.
"We're not trading one of you for the other," Arthur repeated. "You both are—"
"Yeah, dad, I think he's got it," Ron finally mentioned, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen. He looked different too. He supposed ending and starting a war would do that to you. "But dad's right, you know."
"Yeah," Fred just kept saying, wondering in his mind how he was going to tell them the truth.
Molly stood up, looking rather stressed about this conversation and like she wanted to get out of the living room. "Why don't we all sit down and have a—"
"Percy tried to kill himself before," Fred said rather tactlessly. He didn't know how to put it in conversation. It wasn't like something you should just be saying, in open conversation but there wasn't a way to ease into that. How did you?
You know how you all think that Percy's killed himself for me? Yeah, he's tried to do that before by the way.
You could see a picture being painted right then. All of his family's faces just gone white. His father looked absolutely distraught and before Fred could even realise what was happening, Arthur grabbed him by his shoulders and brought him so close that he could feel his breath on him.
"What do you mean by that?" the way that his father said in a frenzied manner made Fred shrink. "What do you mean?"
"Dad, it's alright," Ginny looked worried about their father. Fred was too, to be honest. He'd never looked like that.
"I want to know what you mean by that," Arthur reiterated, emphasising every word.
"Arthur, why don't you sit down?" even Molly was starting to look a little distressed as she reached behind her husband and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Better yet, why don't you go for a walk?"
"Yeah, Dad," Ron agreed, looking at Charlie and Bill for support, who were marble white.
"Yeah," Bill grabbed Arthur's trembling hand, afraid his father was going to push himself into a heart attack with the worryingly high blood pressure readings he'd been having recently. "Come on."
"I. Want. To. Know. What. He. Meant. By. That," Arthur said again as if he hadn't heard a single thing anyone else had said.
"Dad!" Charlie looked distressed.
Fred crumbled just stood there. "After the fight," he'd finally whispered. "After…he…"
"After the fight." Arthur looked like he'd been slapped in the face, retreating backwards as if he'd throttled his son himself with his hands just cause he'd had a fight with him at the time. "What's happened after the fight then?"
"I don't think I should tell you." Fred surmised. "If you…"
"Well, you've brought it up, haven't you?"
"Dad," Bill managed to grab Arthur and placed him down onto the closet place, which was a tattered loveseat that they'd barely used. Arthur looked down at his feet. He was sweating profusely. "It's alright," he tightened his hold around his father's shaking hand.
"Alright? Alright?" Arthur looked at Bill as if he were mental. "My dead son just told me that my other dead son tried to kill himself after I've fought with him." His lip trembled. "How do you think that I bloody feel?" then he looked over at Fred as if urging him to go on. "And what about you? What's stopped you from telling you about what's happened? You were just fine telling me about it a couple of minutes back."
"I don't think I should tell you when you're acting like this," Fred corrected himself, his eyes softening.
Then a slew of new memories came in. In his mind, it must've lasted for ages, but he knew in reality, it must've taken less than a minute.
He could very vibrantly remember eleven-year-old Percy coming home from Hogwarts, feeling like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, feeling scared and alone. He could remember walking down to his parents' room late at night. It was late enough that Fred and George were sleeping—snoring actually (hey, Fred totally believed that they'd been talking about George when they've been mentioning the snoring before!). He was in white pyjamas that used to be loose on him but now fit him perfectly. And as he passed by the mirror, he did remember thinking that Percy did look paler than he usually was. It didn't seem weird to Fred and George at the time but looking back in twenty-year-old Fred's eyes, a first-year that was dead scared in the middle of the night like he was didn't exactly scream normal to him.
Percy climbed up onto the bed where his parents were sleeping, half clinging onto his stuffed owl as he soundlessly climbed up in between his parents. His father looked like he was having a bad dream and his mother's hair was an absolute mess. When he'd tucked himself into their duvet, Percy tried to find a position where he felt comfortable, but nothing did.
When he finally did fall asleep an hour afterwards, it was only met with a shriek, "PERCIVAL!"
When Percy arose, he didn't know what was going on until he'd noticed that the bed was wet and there was the acidic, sour smell of… oh. His mother had jumped out of the bed and his father was glaring at him from the side.
"What are you doing here?" Arthur stared at him, and Percy clung onto his stuffed owl a little tighter. "It's three in the morning for Merlin's sake…"
"I couldn't sleep," Percy only clung onto his parents' duvet a little tighter, disappearing underneath it.
"Well, then you didn't sleep much at Hogwarts, did you?" Arthur called bluff on that story.
I didn't, Percy wanted to answer back but he didn't know how well that would be received. He'd suffered a lot of ridicule and torment over his dorm mates that found it funny that Percy couldn't control his bladder overnight.
"Love, I thought we were done with last year," Fred was surprised to hear his mum ever say anything a little negative to Percy. Percy was her baby in a way that they—the twins, Ron and Ginny—never were. And you'd think she'd be a little softer to her one daughter in the family, but you'd be sorely mistaken. She reserved that for her little ickle perfect Percy. "Your father is right. You've just been back from your first year at Hogwarts… you're too old to be sleeping in bed next to us! And this wetting the bed issue you seem to have…at this age, love, it's no longer endearing." Percy knew that they were just tired and overworked but their words had hit him hard. And for an eleven-year-old, that kind of disappointment that his parents seemed to have in him felt so powerful, so compelling.
He climbed out of their bed, mumbling "I'm sorry" and then practically stormed out of their room to go to his room.
But before he'd even climbed onto his bed, his mum had grabbed him. "Oh no, you're not. Not when you're wet like that," she said, and before Percy could say anything, she was dragging him to the bathroom. "You're taking a bath."
Percy's face went white. "I can take a bath on my own."
"But you can't sleep without your parents," she told him rather coldly.
"I don't like to be alone," Percy's voice broke.
Molly sighed. "When are you going to grow up, Percival?"
"I am grown up," he responded in the whiniest voice he had. He sounded about three years younger than he was. He looked like he was about to break down and cry. "I can take a bath on my own."
"Not tonight, you can't," she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off of him.
Percy flinched. "Leave me alone," he practically begged.
"Don't talk to me like that, young man."
Young man? Percy snorted. "I thought I was a baby."
"And stop with that attitude."
She had Percy sat in the bathtub where she scrubbed him off rather vigorously. She didn't even bother really opening the lights because it was so late at night. After ten minutes of washing Percy off, she'd instructed him to get out of the bathtub in a rather abrupt tone. She walked with him back into his room where she tossed a pyjama she had in a laundry basket along with a pair of boxer briefs. They still smelled like Mr Jenkin's Cleaning Solution. Fred recognised the pyjamas as one of his and George's with its colourful Zonko's advertisements and shocking purple colour.
As she tucked him into his bed rather hastily, Percy didn't seem to settle. "My owl," he said in a manner of utmost urgency. "I left it at your room—I... I need it."
"Oh, Percival, just sleep without it," she smoothed down a curl out of his hair. "You're too old for that thing anyway."
"No! I need it."
"Oh, come off it, Percy."
Before Percy could protest, his mother left the room. He buried his head into his sheets and started crying into his blankets. His heart felt so heavy into his chest that he felt like he might sink into his bed if he laid there enough. His heart was racing so fast that Percy almost felt like he might have a heart attack and he would die, and his mum would still be upset at him. His cheeks felt hot and flushed and his whole body was wet again in seconds, covered in his sweat. He must've cried for ages before he'd fallen asleep, and when he woke up an hour later, he realised that he'd wet the bed again. Percy picked up the sheets and tried to take them to the laundry room before his mum had noticed that he'd wet the sheets again. But as he got out of his room, Fred and George had too.
"Ew!" Fred's face contorted in disgust. "Did someone wet the bed?"
"What are you?" George added on. "Five?"
Percy practically bolted back inside his room. He climbed back on top of his bed and stared at the ceiling, fuming and humiliated, but mostly very sad. He could hear the twins laughing as Molly walked into Percy's room and found him sat on his bed with his wet duvet on the floor. "Get dressed," she said in a tight-lipped expression. Her eyes were red, she looked really tired. "This is a real problem. We're going to go see someone about this because this can't keep happening. Even your little sister doesn't wet the bed anymore! You're almost twelve years old, Percival. She's six." If she were trying to guilt him, it worked.
His ears went red. She was a little bit more aggressive when she was scrubbing him down the second time, and she was more than a little annoyed when his new trousers were too big on him. She'd used a charm to make them smaller, but then they were digging into his stomach.
The healer's office was big and spacious and that was somehow more unsettling than if it were small. Because for someplace so big, it was almost empty save for a desk, a couple of chairs, a bed covered in tissue paper and a sink. He'd been weighted by a scale, with a nurse clad in navy blue scrubs telling him that he was too small for his height (which he already knew). At first, his mum was talking rather scathingly about how he had had dry spells at night before, but he'd somehow gone to wetting the bed every night, sometimes twice or thrice in a night. The healer had whizzed him off to the bathroom with a cup. It was rather funny that it was almost impossible for Percy to urinate into that small little cup when he'd been wetting the bed the whole night. They made sure he didn't have an infection or diabetes. Then they asked him questions about if there were any new changes in his life (no) and left him alone. They'd told his mum all about how he shouldn't be drinking so much before bed and to maybe wake him up during the night so that he didn't wet the bed. Percy couldn't believe what the woman was saying, he was so embarrassed.
To Fred, he thought that Percy wetting the bed was funny. But to an eleven-year-old boy that never got into trouble, this seemed to be pretty life-shattering for him. Percy ate less and less at around dinner, barely talked to anyone and kept to himself—well, Fred and George usually found him nicer to prank and play with then because he was so easily irritated. He crumbled into tears in seconds.
Percy had some really horrible graphic nightmares for a child. About people around him suddenly dying. About people being disappointed in him. About him being late to class and being found in the nude. About him dying and nobody caring. And they seemed to play out into a loop. In the middle of the night, Molly would wake him up, tug him a little too uncaringly so that he could go use the lavatory. She was uncannily nice to him the nights where he kept the bed dry without any prompting. He went back to Hogwarts with the same problem and came back with the same problem. On Christmas morning, he felt all the blood drain from his face when he'd realised that he'd wet the bed again. He must've cried in his bed for half an hour before he'd washed his face and let his mum know, who was more than a little cross with him. He'd not eaten breakfast and he didn't enjoy present opening time because when he was trying to unravel the bow on top, Ron had come to him and asked, "You don't think that it's a diaper, do you, Perce?"
Fred remembered laughing at that and—
"Well, how else am I supposed to be acting like?" Arthur answered, pulling Fred out of his—well Percy's—memories.
He knew the kind of things that older Percy thought about. He just never thought that a little kid could feel the same way too. It sounded unreal. It was like Percy was born to be miserable, but that didn't make any sense.
"I…I don't know," Fred stammered, still reeling from all these things that he'd been remembering. Merlin, it was one thing to be inside an older Percy's mind, but it was equally as terrifying being in kid Percy's mind. He had nightmares that kids that age shouldn't have. He understood Harry feeling that way with the stuff that he'd been through. Hell, he'd understand Ginny with the diary, or even Ron because he'd helped Harry through all of that. But he'd never thought that it would be someone like Percy. Did that stuff happen for a reason? Was he really just born miserable?
Maybe it's better for Percy to be gone, a tiny part of him almost thought. He'd never really been happy. But how could he think like that? Was it his thoughts or was it because he was in Percy's body, and he knew exactly how bad he felt all the time?
"He is my son," Arthur reminded him as if Fred had forgotten. As if anyone else had forgotten.
"Dad, maybe you should lie down," Bill suggested. "And then we can talk about this."
"Yeah," Fred's voice was a little lower than it had been. "Maybe you should."
Arthur looked like he gave up and he laid down on the nearest couch. Fred sat across from him, just next to his mother, who had plonked back down onto her seat. Everyone was sitting down in fact, and Fred could feel the tension in the air dissipating already. He felt Arthur grab onto his hand, but he didn't know if he were holding onto him because he was Fred and he was talking to him or if he were holding onto him because he was the last semblance of Percy in the room. They stayed in silence and Fred kept wondering if this-then-when was the correct time.
Then he spoke, "Percy lived a double life." That was exactly what it was.
Fred waited for the silence and the questions, but it didn't come how he thought it would.
"Did he then?" Molly asked, but there was a hint of amusement in her voice. "Going on and wrecking all kinds of havoc I don't know about then." Again, Fred was surprised that their mum knew about it. His father did too.
"Not Percy," Ron snorted.
"Yes, Percy," there was a glint of almost excitement into Arthur's face. "There wasn't anything that different from him than the rest of you lot. He just wanted more." He said that in an almost commendable way, instead of something that had caused such a horrific fight between them. "Percy is a natural troublemaker trying to be strict with himself that's for sure."
Out of the corner of Fred's eye, he saw George walking out of the kitchen. He knew that his twin had heard everything. George had a cup of tea in his hand, which he knew that he ceremoniously put five sugars in.
"Perce?" George seemed to be interested in the conversation, which was pretty miraculous. "A natural troublemaker?"
"A natural git more like it," Ron mentioned to Bill and Charlie, who just smirked at him.
"Oh, yes," Molly continued, reminiscing. Ron, Ginny, Bill and Charlie looked at each other almost disturbed by this. As if they were talking about someone else. Fred had felt that way too. "You don't know anything about how your brother can really be like. I swear if he'd stayed the way that he was, you and George would've just been additions to the set." Fred swore that he saw a shadow of a smile on George's face. He looked almost okay. "But he's so much smarter because the teachers don't know half the things that he really can do if he's put his mind to it."
"Percy is not smarter than us," George grumbled from the kitchen. His George. Fred thought with a skipped beat. Is. Us.
"Twelve O.W.L's said otherwise," Bill reminded George. "And I should know how hard it is to get twelve O.W.L's."
"You don't know how your brother is like," Molly wagged a finger at him. "You think that I don't know half the things that you two used to get up to, but really, you should see what your brother can do in an evening. And that's not a compliment." Fred just smirked, thinking about all the things that Percy did do in an evening. "I know he's been tinkering with those joke products of yours for a start. Which I thought was rather obvious. It's not like you two were bringing home twelve O.W.L's now, were you? And with these confusing contraptions that you were marketing…"
George was snorting, full-on laughing like his mum was telling jokes. "Percy did not help with our joke products."
"If he did and if he really is as smart as you say he is, then maybe he should've asked for a cut," Ginny added on.
"Our faulty canary creams," Fred jabbed him at the side like he used to do when he wanted to bring attention to something. George looked at him like he was mental, but he recognised what George was saying. "The first batch of Skiving Snackboxes that never stopped making you ill. The fact that our Weasley's Wet Weather was not…wet. And our pygmy puffs used to suddenly turn into little pygmy puff Inferi editions instead of staying adorable."
"I'd have preferred the Inferi editions," Ginny mentioned.
"That can't be Percy," George mumbled. "I thought it was you."
"Well, I thought it was you," Fred reminded him. "But it was. It was Percy." But George shook his head in disbelief. Fred had a hard time believing it too and he could actually remember everything that had happened!
"Percy," George echoed the name like he didn't even recognise it. "There's just no bloody way."
"I think he had a hard time being comfortable with himself," Molly suddenly mentioned, and it rang true to Fred. He was surprised that his mum really said something like that about him that Fred could resonate with. It sounded like Percy did like those things. He liked swimming in the lake in the winter with warming charms. He liked to help them with their joke products. He liked broomstick racing. He liked things that he normally would resent other people for liking. He sounded like he probably resented himself for those things too. He remembered the self-deprecating talks that he'd have with himself in the library, or after he'd walk back home in the winter from that warm lake. "I think he put a lot of stress on himself. I do think that he liked reading and I know that he liked being prefect and I know he liked those things too. But it felt like in his mind, he couldn't be all those things that he is. And I don't understand why he never…"
"Yeah," Fred didn't understand too. It was like he had a pathological fear of people realising that he could be reckless, that he wasn't always responsible, that he wasn't completely by the book. "I don't know why either."
Then Fred and Arthur met each other's eyes as if they remembered how all of this started.
"Percy was a broomstick racer," Fred mentioned in place of the revelations that Percy had a double life.
"He's a what?" all the colour drained from Molly's face. "No, he's not! I'd have bloody killed him."
Fred half-smiled because she was really too late for that. He rubbed his neck because even Charlie looked at Fred like he was mental for making that connection. "It's a little more than playing a few pranks I'd wager," he turned to George, who even stared at him in a mixture of utmost incredulity and a little bit of fascination too. "But um…that's what he did." He explained to Arthur in soft, docile tones. "After the fight, he took Charlie's old broom—"
"Wait, that little rag? He tried to use that?" Charlie was a little pale himself. "That's a death wish if I've heard of one."
Arthur winced. 'Death wish' wasn't the best way to start the conversation, but Fred saw that broom. He agreed.
"Yeah, he did. And he decided to use it after he'd had more than a few drinks. Percy is a really weepy drunk," Fred explained. He was a little terrified about that actually. Because Percy was depressed. Being a weepy drunk felt like it was just asking for trouble—not to mention on top of that horrendous fight. "He was doing really good actually. In the race. But I think he'd wanted something to happen to him so he…he threw himself off the broom. On purpose."
"Blimey," Ron looked a little pale.
"Yeah," Fred nodded his head in agreement. "Bloody hell," he'd added on for good measures.
"He could've broken his bloody skull," Bill said in a look of disgust. "He could've broken his spine. He could've died."
"He did. Break his skull that is," Fred finally said. "He bled into it. But I think he was in a muggle hospital. They labelled him as a John Doe. But his ex-girlfriend—um—Penny, she knew about it. Knew about what he did. Didn't…didn't tell anyone. Said that he was unhinged because of the brain injury." He supposed that Percy was already unhinged before, without needing a brain injury to blur the lines between all of that. "He hid a family during the war and forgot where he'd put them," Fred added on unhelpfully. "I think he walks around, knowing he's forgotten some seriously important things. I don't know how much he remembers and how much he doesn't. Penny said that Percy messes up…past and present and future all the time. That he can't make sense of it anymore."
But it explained why the memories seemed so weirdly far and in between. It explained why he was so grounded in the past. It explained why he remembered some things that had happened ages ago, like being eleven and wetting the bed, so vividly. He could still feel the prickles of humiliation seep through him like it was yesterday. And that was terrifying, because a couple of hours before that, he was remembering the fight like it were just yesterday. And maybe in a few minutes, he'd remember something that sixteen-year-old Percy did, and the flashbacks would be like it happened yesterday. Or today. Or a couple of hours back. It was so fresh and raw and real.
And why in Merlin's name couldn't he remember anything good? Why was it always this traumatising rubbish?
"Well, can you?" Arthur asked as if Fred was a true testament to Percy's mental health. "Make sense of it?"
"I'm…I'm not sure," Fred supposed that that was a no. "Percy was…you know, he was ill before he'd gotten a massive head injury." He cocked his head down, wishing more than anything that they'd known about it. "And he's still ill now. To be honest, being in his head—you want to get out of it." He hated thinking the way Percy thought. He hated overthinking his life so much. He felt like he was trapped into a dark cloud all the time, like he couldn't let go. "He doesn't think right. He has this feeling, this idea, that everyone is against him. He really believes that everyone wants him dead." He watched Arthur stiffen. "He really thinks that he's doing everyone a favour."
"Nobody wants your brother dead," he said a little stiffly; as if Fred was the one he had to convince.
"Yeah, I know, dad," Fred wrapped his arms around his chest. "You can tell Percy." He said. "After."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, as they laid there a little in this somewhat-comfortable-somewhat-uncomfortable silence.
As Fred mentioned the 'after', George grabbed his hand as tight as he could and buried his head into Fred's arm like they used to do when they were little kids and George wanted to go to sleep. Fred used to push him off, telling him that he was making his arm go numb. They laid there a little bit in this strange silence.
With George so close to him, Fred was lulling off to sleep too.
That was when he heard a knock on the door. His mum went to answer it and Audrey walked in, who looked a little bit angry but a little bit worried. She didn't look like she slept much. Fred supposed he probably should've come home to her in the past few days, but she was Percy's wife, and it wasn't like he was going to start that triangle.
Fred looked up from where he was sat but didn't move his body. George and he had made up. He knew it. They didn't have to say much because what was there to say? George had forgiven him for dying and leaving him alone.
"It's been a couple of days," Fred admitted to Audrey, who just nodded her head.
"Yeah," she agreed, as she ran her hand through her hair. She did look pretty nice when she wasn't angry at him for being a total git. She gestured towards a wrinkled plastic bag into her hand. "I bought biscuits." She sat down on the table across from Fred, not caring at all about how unsteady it was and the fact that it would probably break under the weight of two human beings. She grabbed Fred's face and looked at it. "You haven't been going out like this, have you?" she gestured towards the clothes that he was wearing. "And you haven't shaved."
Fred felt his worries kind of float away, almost for a second. There was something about Audrey. Something about Audrey and Percy.
"I guess I haven't," he answered back quietly. She got up from the table, and he found his heart doing weird funny turns that he could probably do on a broom. "And I guess you remind him of a lot of things."
"Would you like to stay over?" Molly looked uncertain as she asked. They weren't exactly best buds.
"I suppose," Audrey sounded just as unsure, but then glanced over at Fred. "And I suppose I do that too."
