trigger warnings are extremely applicable. this is extremely heavy material... i've attempted to present it in a less heavy way by not going through these scenes and only mentioning what has happened, but if i do go through these scenes... well, i did warn you about the heaviness of this material.
replies to any inquiries:
Phoenixx Rising: oh, you can say that again! i think the amount of Percy angst, err, torture in this one particular fanfiction has been gauged up as the chapters go on...! i believe it keeps on somehow getting worse. it has its sweet moments though (at least i hope i remember them correctly...)
Chapter Forty-Four
Twenty-one-year-old Percy Weasley pushed a bowl of porridge towards Audrey. She was wearing a pair of frilly pink robes and had her long brown hair done up in a bun, with a bright pink ribbon.
His heart sunk into his chest as visions of a ten-year-old Ginny in pink robes suddenly came to his mind.
"Who told you that you were allowed to operate a stove or a microwave or a wand or whatever it is you used to boil water, Percival?" Audrey said angrily as she stabbed the porridge bowl with a spoon.
Percy raised an eyebrow. "It's criminal to make porridge with water. I used milk."
Audrey was less than amused by this. "And you didn't purposely pour some on yourself like you did with every single hot beverage I've handed you this week? Or maybe you would've grabbed one of my pans and thrashed your head until you were bleeding like you did two days ago? What about—what about yesterday when you wanted me to give you back your wand and I told you that I refused to give it back to you because I feared that you will kill yourself and you told me that you wouldn't dream of soiling my carpet?"
Percy's cheeks coloured in. "Fine," he rubbed his neck in hesitation. "I was less than lucid..."
"You were not 'less than lucid!' You are a self-destructive, suicidal maniac!" Audrey exclaimed. "I was afraid of leaving you alone to shower because you have a tendency to either hit yourself against the wall, burn yourself via hot water or attempt to look for razor blades in my bathroom counter..."
Audrey shook her head and grabbed him by his freckled shoulders. She looked close to tears like she did not only eight hours ago. "I can't do this, Percy. I can't live like this. I have left my daughter alone in my mother's house for a whole week just because I couldn't bring her here what with what you're doing to yourself! Percy, you are not stable. You are not supposed to be out in the community. You are not supposed to be operating a stove and you are certainly not supposed to be wielding a wand!"
"Thank you for your words of endless encouragement," Percy mumbled in annoyance.
Audrey's sternness dissolved. "Percy, this isn't about encouragement!" she waved her arms around frantically. "You scare me to death. One moment you're composed and content with yourself and the next minute you're looking for where I keep my pain potions. You need someone to be with you at all times because if I took my eyes off you for just a second this past week, I might've found myself in a position where I might've had to make a Floo call to the Burrow to tell your mum that her son would like to come home for dinner, but unfortunately, he's killed himself—"
Percy's shoulders slumped. "I realise this but—"
"Percy, stop it," Audrey snapped at him, expression gentle. "I'm apparating you to the Burrow."
Percy's eyes widened. He was not prepared to see them and see how things had changed. He did not want to see said change and most importantly, he was scared that he actually was left forgotten and abandoned in that dingy little cell where he seemed to have lost all his gobstones.
"PERCIVAL, THAT IS ENOUGH!" she exclaimed. "You are supposed to be saving the wizarding world from a Greek God! How are you supposed to do that if you can't even have supper with your family?"
"I thought I was too mentally unstable to sit in a room unsupervised," Percy argued, "much less attempt to save the wizarding world from a Greek God."
"You are too mentally unstable to sit in a room unsupervised," Audrey stated seriously. A few seconds later, she followed this with, "But being around your family will help you cope emotionally with all the things that you've had to go through. Face it, Percival. You only have a year before Ares takes your body as a vessel and it's because you've given him the green light to take over your body in that cell due to some elaborate, hard to understand scheme that I still find hard to digest!"
Percy looked away. "Green light?" he raised an eyebrow. "What does the Killing Curse have to do with this?"
"It's a muggle expression relating to..." Audrey cut herself off. "It's not important!"
She sighed and then offered him a tiny picture that she had kept stored away at the sleeve of her robes. Percy was about to ask what it was before he actually took a gander over at it. It was an old picture that they took when Percy was fifteen. He recognised those mucky volunteering robes anywhere. Audrey and Percy were sharing an ice-cream and they were caught mid-laughter. The photo was in an odd angle because Tarvos had insisted on taking it. This was further confirmed by the fact that there was a turtle dove feather stuck to the lens, no doubt a leftover from Tarvos' breakfast.
Audrey placed a hand on his cheek, stroking it softly. "I thought that it would help."
Percy only smiled, as he stared down at the picture. It did help, because the fact that she had it on her to give to him made Percy believe that she'd been carrying it on her person all these years.
He noticed how close she was to him and his heart did a bit of a flip. "Audrey. About our relationship—"
"Get better," Audrey said, dropping her hand to his shoulder. "Then we can talk more."
Percy slowly nodded his head and he felt his heart do a bit of a tingle as she leaned up to offer a warm peck to his cheek before she ruffled his red hair. It was then that he happened to remember that his dear Audrey had spent years on a three hundred word documentation and flooded the Ministry with owls so that she could come to see how he was coping in his tiny little cell.
Perhaps, thought Percy tentatively. Some normalcy would be possible in the near future.
"MARCUS!" PENELOPE Flint exclaimed, her voice bouncing off the walls of their small, cramped London flat. Everything smelled like Honeydukes. Penelope knew that she'd asked Merlin for a way to prevent herself from consuming the Tarvos-sized chocolate fudge doughnut she had in her pantry but this was ridiculous! Just the thought of chocolate made her nauseated because the smell of her flat was so pungent!
She walked into their room to find Marcus standing by the baby's rickety, rackety cot.
He tore off a chocolate frog packet, throwing the brightly coloured wrapper into a never-ending pile of other shiny wrappers and glossy collecting cards. Marcus allowed the frog fly away from his grasp—disappearing well out the window into the not-so-starry night. Marcus' wide translucent eyes were glued to the cot, his cheeks rosier than the bouquet of vibrant red roses that he had tossed to their bed, obviously as a peace offering to Penelope for the absolute mess that he'd managed to make in eight hours! He better have done the dishes! Penelope could already tell that he'd attempted a bath. Marcus smelled less troll-like than usual.
Penelope couldn't help but explode. "WHY IS OUR FLAT COVERED IN CHOCOLATE FROG WRAPPERS?"
Marcus grabbed Penelope by her elbow and pulled her up towards Avis' cot. At this point, Penelope was seriously regretting that choice of turning up to work the day after she gave birth (and Marcus did tell her that she was being bloody inane but she wouldn't have it. She was going. It was her choice.) Penelope's mouth hung open and warmth spread across her cheeks and travelled down to her spine and chest.
"Is she smiling? But-but she's a day old! Is this how it's like having a baby with troll blood?" Penelope beamed. "She's looking at you and she's smiling! Oh Godric... do you have any more? Do that again!"
Marcus opened the drawer and unwrapped another chocolate frog packet.
"How do you have so many of these?" Penelope didn't even want to think how much these cost. They were struggling to pay rent on their own—well, rent and the cost of Penelope's new robe collection.
Avis' smile made Penelope's heart go warm as another frog disappeared out into the sweltering weather.
"Mum sent me a box of these per week since I'd been to Hogwarts so I wouldn't starve to death," Marcus explained, rubbing his neck as he tossed Penelope another packet of the chocolate frogs. "As smashing as I am, Clearwater, I can't eat fifty of these a week. I'd have torn out all my bloody teeth in ages ago if I tried. That is... if they hadn't rotten out of my head by the amount of sugar in these buggers alone."
"Flint. I'm Penelope Flint," she corrected. She didn't bother unwrapping the packet just yet. Speaking of teeth, her stomach lurched. "Marcus, why didn't you take Avis down to see your father?"
Marcus stiffened in his position. "What? Socking me when I was a nipper isn't enough of a reason?"
"He walked me down my wedding aisle," Penelope reminded him. "What he had done to you when you were younger didn't seem to bother you then. You believed that it was justified due to the whole Greek God debacle with Percy and him, so I was under the assumption that everything was fine. I didn't think that it was right to accept a child abuser, no matter what his reasons were but I wanted to support you so I—"
"I'd rather he kill me with his own fists than have him touch my child!" Marcus yelled hotly. "There's always a chance that he's going to do her in, and if he does, then who's going to protect her? Me? Come on, Clearwater, I couldn't protect my bloody self, so how am I supposed to help her if he ever..."
Penelope stared at him. Her heart was pounding into her chest. "I... I didn't know that you didn't trust him not to harm you..." her voice was small. "But you see still him! What if he does you in?"
"I can handle it," Marcus coolly insisted. "I get into more intense fights with those bloody muggle paperclips you insist on using to pin our parchment paper together."
"Do you know you have a tendency to do that?" Penelope mumbled, placing her hand on his shoulder and squeezing it softly. His shoulders slumped at her touch. "You don't tend to tell people what your problems are, leading me to think that nothing is wrong, but I know that something is wrong because quite frankly, you're too nice for your own good... that, and you never complain about anything... unless it's about the fact that your Quidditch team has seemed to have lost another game."
Marcus' eyes were just about to bulge out of his sockets. "Did you just say that I was too nice for my own good? For Salazar's sake, do you even know who you married, Clearwater?"
"Flint," Penelope corrected again, running her hand through her golden locks. "Yes, I am very aware of whom I married, and I love him very much. I know that it is a bit odd that we had to sit down and negotiate the amount of 'lovey dovey bollocks' that we can show off in public, but we did come to a fine conclusion. I'm asking for something similar now. I know who I married. I know that you are not the most open and talkative person in the universe—well, about subjects that are not vulgar or Quidditch related. I've been married to you for a year and you still refuse to tell me when your birthday is. This, as you know, lead me to picking a random day for your birthday so I could give you a present so I don't end up feeling like a true bitch but—"
"What are you actually saying, Clearwater?" Marcus cut her off, disinterested. "I didn't know you swear."
"Flint—and I don't swear. It was a slip of the tongue," Penelope said, rolling her eyes. "All I'm saying is that maybe this is a good time for you to share. That is if you value your mother's sanity, because I will tell her that you're afraid of being socked by him... if you don't provide me with the information that I want."
Marcus snorted and then beamed. "You're blackmailing me."
"That's such an aggressive term," Penelope crossed her arms. "I prefer the term... um..."
"Extortion?" Marcus offered, pulling up old but soft yellow blankets over a sleeping Avis only for Penelope to smack his arm away as lightly as she could because she did not think that it was fair to do anything to him than she wouldn't want him to do to her. "Exaction? Bribery?"
"Are you implying our marriage is a business arrangement?" Penelope snapped at him.
Marcus turned to the bouquet of roses, and picked out a lone pink rose in the middle of the bouquet. He snapped one of the petals and then offered the flower back at her.
"Here are the rules," Marcus began in a stern voice. "The one sat with a petal loses. If it's you, you stop talking. If it's me, I start talking. Fair?"
"How uncouth and trivial," Penelope mumbled, grabbing the rose from Marcus. "I just gave birth to a baby not only twenty-four hours ago and instead of being coddled about, I'm forced to ruin a perfect gorgeous flower because my husband refuses to tell me what's wrong with him... and when his birthday is!"
"You're the one that wanted to go to work, Miss I-Want-To-Be-Coddled-About. If you wanted to be coddled, you wouldn't have married me," Marcus watched as Penelope tore off all the petals, leaving one crooked petal in her wake and then offered it back to him.
"There," Penelope mumbled. "I win—"
Marcus tore the petal away, grabbed her hand and placed it on her cheek where a flattened petal laid. "You lose," he leaned up to her six-foot frame to hungrily press their lips together. "My birthday is in February."
Penelope seemed satisfied with this answer as she watched him turn to the cot to watch Avis sleep.
"Wait," she realised. "What day in February, Marcus?" Penelope wanted to kill him when she saw him smirk.
PERCY was not comfortable standing in the Burrow like this. He was in a carroty raincoat that matched the small tuft of hair he still had, boots that were charmed to repel water molecules and a wrecked umbrella that cost enough to feed his family for a month. He had decided he would rather die than have a speck of dirt on him—he believed it was a reasonable side-effect to living with horklumps for the past few years. Just before he'd left Audrey's flat, he'd hit himself with a dozen or so scouring charms. He had actually found himself attempting to wipe away his freckles with soap. All he'd done was nearly scrub his skin off.
A flood of memories hit him as Percy stared over at the house that he used to call his own.
Six-year-old Percy being given the biggest slice of rhubarb and custard pie during Christmas, even if Percy loathed rhubarb. Seven-year-old Percy climbing up in Molly and Arthur's beds when he was feeling frightened and Molly placing a disillusionment charm just so his father wouldn't say that Percy was too old to be afraid of the dark. Eight-year-old Percy sitting with Arthur Weasley, reading a big ole Ministry book that he found boring but Percy found exhilarating. Percy writing his first big adult report for his father, surprising Arthur that morning. Nine-year-old Percy winning his first Quidditch game, even if he knew that Bill, Charlie and the twins purposely let him win. Ten-year-old Percy being hugged first by Molly, even when Bill and Charlie had just come home from Hogwarts...
As the warmth filled his body, a dead coldness overtook, allowing him to shudder.
Sixteen-year-old Percy going on hunger strike when they refused to let him write an owl to his mother. He got to his seventh day before he fainted even though he was in supine position. Seventeen-year-old Percy climbing on the wall of his cell an staying there for forty-eight hours because they refused to let him write an owl to his mother. Eighteen-year-old Percy Weasley attempting to steal parchment paper from a nurse's clipboard so that he could write a letter to his mother. Nineteen-year-old Percy given a deadline of a week to write an owl to his mum and he did write it—in the darkness with a broken wrist. Twenty-year-old Percy's miles long letter to his mother being burned slowly over the candlelight by a discontented nurse...
Percy slowly paddled his way to the front of the Burrow, his shoulders slumped and his stomach in knots.
He was gripping so tightly onto his umbrella that his knuckles had become white.
Percy straightened up his back, stared at his family house and then turned to leave, quickly bumping into a brown-haired figure that had just apparated on the spot. Percy immediately reeled back, mostly because he was in contact with mud for a whole second. Percy was terrified because his raincoat and umbrella were charmed to the point where the smallest contact with anything filthy or muddy or dusty could—
The figure was not only trudged in enough mud to make Percy's stomach twist, but had their shoulders slumped in defeat. Their eyes were rimmed red, obviously from crying. They were in oddly familiar robes; dark blue with two crossed long, thin golden bulrushes as an emblem. In their hand was a broken broom, which looked exceedingly new and expensive. Percy couldn't be able to tell what broom it was if his life depended on it—quite a step down from the nine-year-old Percy that used to sit down with Charlie and read copies of Which Broomstick? in his endless attempts to have Charlie notice him. If Percy recalled correctly, Charlie did notice him. Percy had accidentally sat on his cheese toastie that day.
"What in Godric's great name are you?" the Scot said in irritation, arching his eyebrows.
Percy was about to find it in himself to give a witty reply but instead all he said was, "...Clean."
The buttons on Percy's fastened raincoat was starting to overload with water. Percy realised right then that he probably shouldn't have added the fifty-third scouring charm on his clothing.
"You must hold this to prevent a catastrophe from occurring!" Percy shoved the umbrella to the Scot.
Percy attempted to use his skeletal hands to prevent his raincoat from bursting. No such luck, as at the same time that Percy's raincoat erupted with water, the Scot received a tantalising shower with Percy's orange umbrella. Soap formed in Percy's hands, feet and mouth as his body start to coat with washes and lotions.
Percy was about to slip just when he attempted to catch hold of the brown-haired bloke, whose shoulders was so lathered that Percy couldn't really catch hold of him. Both of them succumbed to the grass (Percy had never been subjected to slippery grass before this particular day) and before Percy could say another word, two other muddy redheads apparated beside them. Percy's big blue eyes widened into dinner plates. Mud near his exceedingly charmed umbrella... this was not a good combination!
They barely managed to scream in terror as a new horrific wave of sterilised water came washing over them, slamming their bodies into Burrow's door... which wouldn't have been a problem if Molly Weasley hadn't decided, in that brimming moment, to open the door to see what the fuss was all about!