Chapter Twenty-Three
November finished with a heavy sigh. December started with a Flitterby.
Specifically, Percy had a Flitterby rest on top of his nose when he'd opened the window to stare at the Hogwarts landscape that Friday afternoon.
"Close the window, mate. It's freezing," Adrian muttered, shuddering and pulling his cloak to his frame.
"It is not," Percy huffed, but he shut the window anyway.
How could Adrian wear so many layers? Percy felt like he was just about two seconds away from tearing off his uniform and walking around Hogwarts in the nude.
Percy had already finished all of his classes for today, and his mind was reduced to nothing more than a vat of scrambled eggs. He could not do any of his work.
In fact, Adrian Pucey was currently more productive than him, for the black-haired Slytherin was lying on his stomach on Percy's bed, face buried into Percy's well-written, legible and organised Defence Against the Dark Arts notes, whilst humming to the tone of the Weird Sisters' new Christmas single.
Speaking of the Weird Sisters' new single, Percy only heard it about fifty times in the past three days alone.
If he heard it just one more time...
"Guess what, Perce?" Adrian grinned wildly as he produced their recent Potions essay from his haggard-looking school bag that had obviously survived endless turmoil at the hands of the Hogwarts' staircase. "I couldn't wait to show you since we've gotten our essays back from Snape but look! Look at how much I got on my Potions essay!"
Percy remembered the first essay of Adrian's that he'd ever read. It was the awful!
The teacher marked him with a Dreadful, but they'd obviously been too lenient. The only redeeming part of it was that one could vaguely tell that Adrian put just slightly more than a ten minute effort into writing it. For the first month of Percy teaching Adrian, he'd received a Dreadful for all of his essays. Fortunately, Adrian's grades had dramatically improved since then but even that did not prepare Percy for seeing the letter grade scrawled hastily at the top of Adrian's paper.
"My first Outstanding!" Adrian waved around the essay in excitement. "And it's in Potions! I can't wait to write to my mum. She'd be ecstatic to hear about this!"
Percy's cheeks coloured in. He'd received an endless amount of letters from his parents, but he'd thrown them into the fire before even reading them. He was too afraid of confrontation. He was afraid that Charlie had told them and that they might've been taking it the wrong way. In all honesty, Percy was dreading going back home during the holidays. He could barely imagine how disappointed his father would be in him when he'd hear about this. He had one thing to do and he'd mucked that up! Severely!
The last thing that Percy had expected however was that in his excitement, Adrian wrapped his arms around Percy so tightly that the redhead felt like he was going to suffocate.
"You're the best!" Adrian exclaimed, laughing brightly and burying his head into Percy's shoulder.
"Oh Merlin, would you two get married already?" Marcus Flint pulled them out of their reverie.
He shuffled into the room. Percy's heart banged in his chest, because Marcus had actually lost one or two inches of height (yes, he lost that much height in less than a month).
Marcus was still taller than both of them, but he suddenly looked more vulnerable. His robes now made him trip often, and they slid down slightly to show his thick collarbones gawking out of his skin. No matter how many times Percy had a look at Marcus' body, he was still evidently shocked.
Nowadays, it just seemed to get worse somehow. He could see the outlines of his ribs through his uniform, regardless of whatever Marcus was wearing on top.
He was eleven. He shouldn't be shrinking. He should be growing. It didn't help that Percy's heart hammered faster whenever he caught sight of Marcus' essays. It seemed that he could barely spell his own name correctly (yes, Percy was being serious in reporting this small fact). He failed one half of his essays, but more lenient teachers gave him D's and notes to see him after class. The whole of Hogwarts noticed how Marcus was regressing in physique, yet were still intimidated by him.
Marcus sat on his bed, and pulled off his loafers. "It's scalding hot in here, it is," he pulled down his cloak and then threw his tie aside. He turned to his side.
"Don't you have a detention right about now?" Adrian sounded out with a raised eyebrow.
Marcus just shook his head before he turned to one side. "I'm done with it," he snorted, as if it was funny before he ran his hand through his coarse black hair.
"Shouldn't it have started ten minutes ago?" Percy mentioned, raising an eyebrow himself.
Marcus rolled his eyes, and then sighed, flickering his pale eyes towards the duo, whom stood beside each other by the window. "Oh, stop it, you two. I didn't skip detention. Snape dismissed—oh, stop giving me that sodding look. I'm not your frail little house elf. I'm bloody sick and tired of people giving me that look. I can still break both of you with my eyes closed if I wanted to."
Adrian moved away from Percy, and sat down beside Marcus. "We'd stop giving you this look if you help yourself. You're so bloody stubborn—but even then, we're going to make sure that your father is not going to hurt you anymore. We've sent letters to Aurors, and last we saw Pomfrey, she's writing a letter to your mum, asking for her statement about the whole situation."
Marcus' eyes widened so now, they were bigger than dinner plates. "You better be bloody joking."
He sat up and stared at them with a vacant expression. Percy was surprised to see Marcus genuinely looking absolutely mortified. "You did what?" he crumbled his hands into fists. "How many times did I tell you not to get involved into this?! It's none of your bloody business and now, now..."
Marcus' shoulders were shaking from a mixture of rage and fear.
"Now..." he shook his head and grabbed his Transfiguration essay from the table.
He grabbed his shoes and his cloak and stormed out of the room. Adrian looked moderately surprised at Marcus' outburst, when he shouldn't have been. Marcus had outbursts like this all the time.
Percy was more surprised at the flash of fear in Marcus' eyes.
"I had to tell him," Adrian reasoned, running his hand through his black hair and then cringing. Recently, his hair had been becoming greasier as a result of him finishing his flobberworm mush. He'd written multiple letters to his mum, asking for more. It only drove home the fact that Adrian looked like a small version of Snape. "He didn't know, and it's not like he could stop us from doing now that we finished doing it, but I didn't expect him to be so—so startled."
Adrian bit down his lower lip.
"Do you think that maybe we shouldn't have meddled into this?" Adrian asked, his voice eerily soft. "I mean—we couldn't let Marcus' dad keep on doing this, but maybe we should've done something else. Maybe we should've just let Snape or McGonagall deal with it."
"It's too late for that now," Percy murmured.
What did this mean for them now? They couldn't exactly undo it, and Percy was sure that he did not want to if he was given the chance. Marcus was fading away in the worst possible way. They couldn't wait until the teachers really decided to intervene by taking more liberal measures than just having a simple after-class chat. It didn't help that Marcus was subsisting on air and whatever Pomfrey could give him to prevent him from collapsing into a heap on the floor.
Adrian suddenly perked up. "Did I tell you? I'm coming to your house for Christmas."
"No," Percy immediately said. The last thing he needed was to owl his mum after months of not communicating with her to tell her that he was bringing one of his Slytherin mates back home.
"Yes, I am," Adrian chirped. "I already told my mum! She couldn't say no, Perce."
Percy glowered over at Adrian. "You are in no circumstances coming to the Burrow for Christmas. I'm not sure if you're going to leave the house with your hair fully intact."
Adrian flinched jokingly, and then smirked, "I can handle myself."
Said the bloke that started to cry because he'd stubbed his toe on Terence's bed at three in the morning on his route to the lavatory—and then blamed Terence for it the following morning because he must've done something to make Adrian toe-stubbing-prone.
"ADRIAN, Percy," Terence Higgs ran towards the tall Slytherins.
His small legs could barely keep up with theirs and it didn't help that it was obviously that Adrian was deliberately walking faster to avoid having to spend even a second with Terence.
He knew he mucked up ages ago, but he wished that people would be able to forget about it. He felt bad enough as it is. His own guilt was eating him up without people acting like he'd shouted out an Unforgiveable towards Marcus instead of giving him a maybe-not-so-harmless-after-all potion. Yes, he knew that Marcus tore out his tooth and cried because of him. He felt awful about it. He could practically hear Marcus screaming out in his sleep. He wished that Marcus would hit him some more, just so the guilt could go away because he could barely deal with this.
Terence was finally able to catch up with them when they'd turned down the corridor. Percy's pace was getting slower, probably because of his leg injury. "Please, stop," he ordered as he panted.
"What do you want, Higgs?" Adrian called out in annoyance, his eyes dark and a Snape-like scowl resting on his face. He turned around and crossed his arms over his chest.
Beside him, Percy stood with a raised eyebrow and a mild irritated expression.
"I'm sorry," Terence called out for what felt like the millionth time that month alone. "I'm sorry. I really am. I just—I wanted to give—"
He looked through his bag which was fully of essays marked back. He nearly always got an A on them, and he supposed that that was acceptable enough. He had a sparse amount of D's and O's, but he was consistently an average. "Just this—I mean I know I put it—" Terence managed to weed through his bag in haste, before he produced a short Slytherin scarf comprised of tweed. Terence preferred his scarves to be tweed.
He offered it to Percy, whom looked surprised.
"I haven't charmed it or anything," Terence insisted, still finding himself slightly breathless from trying to track these two down. He swore he must've walked through half of Hogwarts before he found them. "I know most parents send scarves round this time but I thought that maybe yours haven't so-so... I told my parents to get you one. Here. I'll j-just—"
Terence slinked the scarf around Percy's shoulders, smiling a little when he noticed how nice it actually was with his dotted skin. He offered the matching tweed gloves as well, and then pulled a quick blanket of the same material over his shoulders. It was a bit too short on Percy's body, but it wasn't completely useless.
Just as Percy pulled his hands around the blanket, Terence immediately disappeared down the hallway.
"NOT so fast, Mr Flint," Snape said, seeing most of the students leave the last Potions' lesson they would have before their holidays. For the last four months, he'd been seeing Marcus Flint at least three times a day. "Detention for the lewd comments you made in the hallway last night."
Beyond classes, the amount of detentions that Marcus Flint allowed himself to get into seemed infinite. There was one day of the week where Snape had him for five detentions after double Potions. By the end of the thing, Snape felt like throttling Marcus out of the dungeons. It didn't help that Flint seemed to fall asleep into whatever he was doing no matter if he was standing, sitting or lying flat on the ground.
Marcus seemed to deflate at being called out and then groaned before he walked to Snape with a look of disinterest plaguing his face.
"Sit down," Snape instructed, before he turned to rummage for a potion.
Marcus sat down whilst Snape looked through phials of his own potions and then produced a small phial of a cloudy-looking liquid and then offered it to Marcus, "Drink this."
Marcus stared at him with a raised eyebrow. For a few seconds, he opened his mouth, obviously to ask what it was but the question didn't bother leaving his lips before he pulled off the top and downed it down.
Snape watched Marcus stare at him with a vacant expression. "Well?" the Potions Master called out.
"Well, what?" Marcus asked, staring at the empty phial. "Was this supposed to do something?"
"Miles Bletchley had informed me that you were suffering from a persistent toothache that is so severe that you are not able to eat any of your meals and as a result, have lost a sufficient amount of weight this term," Snape muttered, eyes on Marcus' prominent pallid cheekbones. "I was instructed by Pomfrey to remedy this with a potent analgesic."
Said potent analgesic took Snape two months to brew and should have worked—if not for the fact that Marcus' father had either used a blood or dark magic as a mean of enclosing whatever spell he'd used on Marcus' teeth to offer him this terrible pain.
Marcus seemed to flush deeply and fiddle with the sleeve of his robes.
"Your father has been using dark magic, hasn't he?" Snape asked, but Marcus did not seem to answer. Though his lack of response only proved that the man did, in fact, use some kind of dark magic to ensure that Marcus would not be able to get rid of that fumbling toothache.
Marcus looked agitated. "I'm too doltish to know."
"You don't need to protect this man, Mr Flint," was all that Snape said, staring back at the empty phial in Marcus' hands. When Marcus spoke, Snape had his attention focused on his missing middle tooth, which he'd chucked out with his own bare hands months ago.
Marcus placed the phial down onto the desk, and pulled the bag over his shoulder.
"You don't know him," was all that Marcus said before he turned to leave the dungeons.
PENELOPE Clearwater immediately grabbed Percy Weasley's elbow, propelling him slightly backwards. He nearly just about dropped his books because he was surprised despite the fact that Penelope had called out Percy's name about twenty times in the last five minutes. He seemed to have geared his focus elsewhere.
Adrian Pucey seemed to have noticed Penelope approaching and had tried to get Percy to notice it too.
Penelope wondered what he could find so important that he had blocked out the rest of the world, but that was before she'd caught sight of a particular essay pressed against his Defence Against the Dark Arts books. A Transfiguration essay that was due in less than fifteen minutes. He probably had proofread it and added a bit more substance to it. Even though she'd only caught a glimpse of it, she saw a few sentences written with fresh ink. It was obvious that whatever addition Percy had added, he'd done so only five minutes ago.
Percy looked back at Penelope with a confused expression and a raise of his eyebrow.
"Penelope—"
"I won't get a chance to give you these tomorrow morning," Penelope noticed the tweed grey-and-green Slytherin scarf that was wrapped around his shoulders. It was short and somewhat untidy. She also did not fail to notice the small blanket tucked under his arms, or the fact that he was wearing tweed gloves. "I made them myself and I hope you like them."
She pulled out a linen Slytherin scarf and wrapped it over Percy's tweed one. She offered him gloves to put on his other ones, and then a big, thin linen green-and-grey blanket over his shoulders. He looked a little funny with two different types of fabric on top of his body, but he did not look anywhere near cold. Though she supposed that the linen wasn't actually the warmest fabric but it was all that Holly had.
"I also got you these," Penelope pulled out a box of expensive-looking chocolates and a note attached. She had spent days trying to write that note because she wanted a very elegant handwriting and the chocolates were a murder to get. She wanted them to have cute Christmas patterns on top, but had a hidden P in every single one of the patterns. It was hard to communicate that to her father, however, whom obviously suspected her very large crush on Percy Weasley. "Happy holidays."
She leaned forwards to give him a kiss on the cheek. Penelope knew that Percy probably did not get her anything and that didn't annoy her not even one bit. In her opinion, she owed Percy at least this kind gesture as he saved her life, but he did not owe her a thing.
"I now pronounce you both husband and wife," Adrian Pucey joked, only for Penelope to feel like whacking him with a very large textbook.
"We're just friends," Penelope insisted, rolling her eyes before she gave Percy another kiss on his cheek.
Adrian rolled his eyes. "Just friends, my left buttock. I wouldn't be surprised if you tear out your heart and give it as a Valentine's Day present to my lad."
"She would not," Percy huffed but his cheeks were red at the thought. "Thank you, Penelope. This is a very kind gesture and I'm surprised by your ability to knit so well."
"Thank you," Penelope said, blushing just as deeply. Honestly, Penelope probably would tear out her heart for him if she could. She felt so grateful for what he had done for her and she had no means of repaying him. She was the only one that acknowledged the great big deal of something that Percy had done for her and that thought made her feel so low. Percy saved her life. Why did people ignore this? How could they?
She felt oddly good seeing Percy attempt to walk with his excess amount of layers. He was obviously trying to be polite when he looked like he was sweating underneath all the extra padding.
With a smile on her lips, she realised that she, too, needed to turn in that Transfiguration essay right now.
"WHY are you looking at me like this?" Percy said to Adrian Pucey that early December morning.
They were all due to go home for the holidays and all that Percy could think about was his family.
Every now and then, a feeling of paralysing dread found its way to the pitch of his stomach when he remembered that Marcus was supposed to go home to his parents today as well. According to Miles, his father was to intervene soon. They had piled a nice amount of evidence against Marcus' father and did not want to strike without a solid foundation.
Adrian just blushed deeply. "I've already told you that I've told my mum that I'm going to come home with you, and I've told her that your mum doesn't know that you're in Slytherin so..."
Adrian, whom was dressed in complete black attire, pulled a large cashmere Slytherin blanket over Percy's shoulders, before placing a rather large green-and-grey hat on top and a pair of black earmuffs. Percy looked something laughable with his multiple layers, his out-dated shoes, and his uniform. He had tried to find the thinnest pair of robes to wear that morning because he was actually perspiring heavily underneath all these layers.
Adrian offered a sheepish smile before he added on, "Merry Christmas, lad."
Percy only glared back at the black-haired male.
"Come on; let's head out now," Adrian had already shrunken their trunks and put most of the things that he'd needed aside. They were practically all ready, except for a pair of school shoes that Adrian had not bothered to pack yet.
Percy looked like he could barely breathe. "You may have to take to rolling me out of the castle."
"I didn't know you could joke, Perce," Adrian beamed at him as he shrunk his shoes as well before finding a place for them in his large school bag.
Percy's face was completely solemn. "I was not."
CHARLIE tried to stifle his giggles on route from the train to the house. Adrian was walking animatedly alongside Percy, whom was looking close to fainting from the sheer amount of layers that he was wearing.
Charlie was trying to think about what he was going to tell their mum when they got home. He had to explain that Adrian was Percy's friend, that Percy was in Slytherin, that he was a possible epileptic and that he'd gotten sent to the infirmary so many times this past semester that Pomfrey had a bed made just for his accident-prone brother. He also wanted to mention that Percy was possibly getting involved into a dangerous scheme with that arsehole Marcus Flint had for a father. Oh, Merlin, how was he going to do all this?
Just as Charlie opened the door, the first thing that Molly did was pull Percy into a very tight, soul-binding hug before Molly called out, "There's my little Slytherin prince! You must be so cold... but I made you a sweater to warm you right up!"