Chapter Forty-Seven
"Fred. George, I love you both to death and back, but," Molly had that dangerous tone to her voice as she entered the shop, pointing fingers already. The lightning in the shop brought out the deep golden tones in her dishevelled vibrant red locks. "You better have a proper reason for why you've kept me from seeing my own child from me for a whole month—the longest month in my entire life and that includes that month where Bill was under investigation by the Egyptian Ministry because they thought that my sweet, innocent and FAITHFUL William was sleeping with floozies in tombs! If I don't see Percy within the next ten minutes, I swear to all the Knights of the Round Table that I will somehow find a way of putting you two back into my womb."
Fred winced, probably at the graphic images that were assaulting his mind with Molly's threat. "Mum, you say this now, but from what Dad told us, you wanted us out the minute that you hit seven months!"
"That's because I was bigger than a Ukrainian Ironbelly!" Molly argued; chocolate eyes fiery with fury.
"But mum, you still looked brilliant for someone bigger than a Quidditch pitch!" George insisted, which made Molly shoot an icy look towards him that could have made Inferi crawl back to their graves.
Molly crossed her arms over her chest. She tapped the floor impatiently with her old orange flats.
"I want to let you know that I've kept up my end of the deal. I haven't told the rest of the family about Percy being out of the ward. Oliver hasn't told anyone about Percy being out of the ward. Now, tell me what is it that you had to do that you insisted would be worth the wait, but refused to give any elaborate details rather than," Molly's voice changed into a irritating, high-pitched whine, "'Mum, you didn't trust us to make a proper living out of our joke shop and now, look at how successful we are! We're so successful than in a few years we'll buy the Chudley Canons and have them cater to our every whim like house-elves because underneath this innocuous, dashing exterior, we are sardonic, sadistic and really wish to eradicate all the dragons in the world on the basis that they are so attractive that Charlie's seemed to lost interest in all women!'"
"Aw, mum!" Fred called out with a grin. "You memorised the letter we owled!"
"That's how we know you love us," George added on.
Molly was not fazed by their good humour. "If Percy doesn't come down right this second..."
"That'll be a little difficult, mum," George's lips were now in a bright beam. "Because he's a little—"
"—wrapped up in the moment!" Fred finished off. Both of them laughed loudly.
Molly was about to ask what these two were up to when she saw Audrey Brown (where did she come from? Molly hadn't seen her in years!) walking downstairs, looking just as red as the twins' hair.
Audrey was pulling what looked to be an extremely cross Percy by his stiff arm. He was covered in gaudy-coloured wrapping paper, and had a very large bright red bow to his dull red hair. His whole body seemed inflated and he was so massive that it was actually comical that his face was still so narrow and sunken. This fluffed up appearance was probably due of the extensive amount of cotton and protective material between the wrapping papers, making it harder for Percy to manoeuvre himself.
"What is this?" Audrey hissed towards them, staring at them with a cold expression. "Get him out!"
"Mum, look at what they did to me! It's criminal! I can't seem to unwrap myself out of this mess!" Percy exclaimed, grabbing a piece of white wrapping paper and ripping it off, only for another bit of pink wrapping paper to grow off from out of nowhere. "Oh, mum, hello! It's been... well, it's been roughly a month since I've last seen you. How are—?"
Just before Percy can finish that statement, George seemed to grab a particular silver paper and unravel it.
Percy immediately started to twirl in a haphazard and speedy fashion, circulating around the room and becoming a bright red blur with no speed or direction.
Percy grabbed the stairs to come to a halt and attempted to stand up properly, nearly falling in the process.
She had thought that between the wrapping paper was extra cotton stuffing, but apparently, it was just Percy's stuffing! Molly knew that she'd wanted Percy to put on weight, but this was just ridiculous! He looked like a marshmallow with a weight problem! His fingers now were bigger than the spans of his arms before! His thighs looked dougher than the pizza base that she made yesterday!
"Oh, for Merlin's sake... deflate him!" Audrey exclaimed.
"I thought everyone wanted more of him, not less!" Fred argued.
Percy clenched his teeth tightly. "Fred. George," he spat out coldly. "When people say that they want more of me, they do not generally mean that they want to have so much of me that they are afraid that I might spontaneously develop a massive coronary and die before lunch!"
"Oh, Perce," Fred began; his voice ran smoother than honey. "If you die from a massive coronary, everyone knows that it would've been stress induced!"
"So, mum, Audrey," George began, beaming. "You prefer deflated skeleton Percy?"
"Yes!" they both exclaimed, and then flushed simultaneously, "No!"
Percy moved closer to his mother, only to have him wrapped into an extremely tight embrace. Molly was surprised at just how puffy Percy was. She wasn't used to this feeling at all!
"Mum, I wouldn't do that if I were you!" Fred stated, and Molly had no idea why until Percy suddenly slid out of her embrace.
A POP sounded like—something like the 'pop' of an apparition and Percy suddenly exploded, like a balloon.
He was whizzing about the joke shop, propelled by some sort of helium-like air as he knocked over multiple displays—including the fireworks display. Fred and George were grinning brightly, watching fireworks erupt into the jokes shop. A blinding amount of colour started to dazzle in front of her eyes, and Fred and George's laughter sounded out. Molly shrieked, because she was sure that it was not safe for Percy to be floating in the air with those Godric-forsaken fireworks!
"PERCY!" Audrey called out, pulling her hand out so that Percy could hold onto it.
Percy attempted to reach for hand—unsuccessfully. "Audrey, I think I might dissolve into a gelatinous—"
Audrey finally managed to grab Percy's legs and push him towards her. He collapsed into her touch and she carried him in a bridal style fashion. They met each other's eyes, with Audrey smirking and Percy looking away, flushing deeply. The blush was probably aimed towards the fact that Audrey could carry him. Though to be perfectly fair, now that Percy was indeed deflated, Molly bet a doxy wouldn't find it hard to carry him.
"I've changed my mind," Audrey said, setting Percy on the ground like he was an infant that was going to crawl away. "I prefer him properly inflated. I forgot that he looked like an Inferius when he's not."
Percy rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Audrey," he mumbled.
He placed his head in his hands. "I feel ill thanks to you lot—and it's not even ten in the morning yet!"
"But Perce, your head cushioned that fall," George supplied as Fred pulled Percy to his feet. Percy unsteadily fell on Fred a few times, before using the twin's shoulder to balance himself.
"George," Molly gave a warning look towards him.
"I'm Fred," George insisted, only for Molly to shake her head in disbelief. "Come on! We've both have hats over our heads! How could you possibly know?"
"I suppose the tea that you've accidentally spilled all over your clothing has nothing to do with it. Fred prefers his coffee in the morning," Percy mumbled, running his hand through his hair, "neither did the fact that George has always had a problem with spots—probably due to the amount of sugar he eats in a day—and currently, he has a very visibly one on his neck that he's been trying to hide but it's completely futile given the fact that it's the size of a Galleon. That, and Fred has a tendency to actually comb his hair in the morning. The difference between comb versus uncombed is very minimal, but I do notice such things."
"My spot is not visible," George mumbled, rubbing his neck.
"None of these things," Molly insisted, and Percy seemed to look at her like he just noticed that she was there. "His hat just doesn't cover his ears properly."
Percy flushed deeply, and then bit down his lower lip. The next thing he did surprised Molly: he limped towards her and wrapped his arms around her, continuing their interrupted hug.
Molly had never had Percy come to her and hug her like this—at least not since he'd started to use words that even she didn't understand. It was an odd experience to say the least. She placed her hand around his frame. She, too, preferred marshmallow Percy. This Percy was so sickeningly thin that she couldn't hug him without being able to identify which vertebrae she was pressing her hands against. And his ribs!
Speaking of sickeningly thin...
Before she left the morning, she'd popped into previously-Percy's-but-now-Oliver's room, which had gotten almost as bad as Ron's room (Ron's room was so orange now that she needed sunglasses just to be able to walk in without risking the bleed vessels in her eyes from rupturing at the traumatising bright lights!), she saw Marcus lying on the bed clad in only his Falmouth Falcons sweatpants and bright pink socks, clutching a wooden picture frame for his dear life and turning around in a fitful, agitated state of sleep. Molly ran her hand through his hair and masses just fell out into her hands. She accidentally woke him up with her yelp of surprise and according to Oliver; he'd only fallen asleep an hour ago. She watched as Marcus stared up with blood-shot eyes and a watery, weak smile. She returned back five minutes later, only to see that he'd already gotten up and was playing Exploding Snap with Oliver, whom was complaining about the fact that the Slytherin was definitely cheating. In response, Marcus only gave a snort.
She leaned back and placed her hand on Percy's chin, staring back at him with despondent eyes.
"You're looking pale. Go wash up your face, love, and get me a cuppa too whilst you're at it!" Molly said, as she watched Percy walk back upstairs. When Percy was gone, she went on to rant. "Fred. George. You two have yet to have told me why precisely did I have to wait a full month to see my own son? You know, I was there when I gave birth to him. I thought that I was the one that made the demands on—"
George cut her off. "Mum, there's something that we have to tell you about Percy."
Fred nodded his head, his face stern. "He's a loony."
Molly glared over at them icily. "What?" her voice was high.
"You know," George began. "Bonkers—"
"—off his rocker—" Fred supplemented.
"—barking mad," George added on.
"Stop it!" Molly exclaimed. She was not listening to this. She should've done dragged Percy back to the Burrow a month ago. She should've apparated to the shop and dragged him home by his ears. "You two take that back right this instant! Don't you dare talk about him like that. After all he's been through; the last thing he needed was you two ruining his morning like that! That's enough to drive anyone 'barking mad'! Do you know what they did to him in there—?"
"No, mum," Fred's face was completely serious. "You don't know what they did to him in there."
George nodded his head. "Just... let him stay here, mum," he insisted. "We'll take care of him."
Molly's heart fluttered. Percy might need this. He might need the twins. He might need Audrey. He might need this environment. He might not need his mum—especially if she was just going to keep on nagging and prodding at him—and the thought made her feel nauseous. No mother wanted to realise that her child needed to be away from her to thrive, especially when said child had been living in six-year-long solitude.
"Alright," she said in a sad whisper, realising right then that this probably meant that she couldn't let the rest of the family know that Percy was out of the ward. It might overwhelm him after all! Molly was sure that having Charlie, Bill, Ginny or Ron (or Arthur—especially Arthur) wouldn't do Percy a world of good if he really was struggling as bad as the others tried to make it out. "Take care of your brother!"
"Don't worry, mum," Fred noticed the ribbon on the shop floor, "We'll make sure he's stuck in the present!"
FRED walked into Percy's bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He sat down in front of Percy, whom was fast asleep. George had been up from eleven to one, and now, it was his turn to watch Percy and make sure that he didn't randomly wake up in the middle of the night and harm himself. Fred yawned, eyes set at Percy's arm. Godric. It was a mass of semi-healed slashes, bright angry cuts and pale, fading scars. He hoped to Merlin that his mum never caught sight of these or else she was the one that was having the coronary.
Two weeks ago, Fred and George had left him alone with a butter knife so that he could cut Audrey's apple cinnamon muffin (unfortunately, that had been Percy's first meal of the day and it had been four in the afternoon) with—and they'd been gone ten bloody minutes to talk to a customer and he'd turned the bathroom into an Auror's crime scene!
Fred didn't actually know what the ward folk had done to Percy, but they must've done something abhorrent to muck him up this much. It seemed to him that Percy was trying not to harm himself, but the urge to do so got so bad sometimes that he'd do some inane things. Like jamming butter knives into his arteries.
Bloody hell. Percy was supposed to be involved in this whole Greek God escapade bollocks. How was Percy going to fight a Greek ruddy God when all he seemed to want to do was destroy himself the second that he didn't have someone watching him? If Fred had just left let himself fall asleep right now, Percy could wake up any time and slash himself to the point where potions couldn't restore the blood loss.
Getting a psychiatric healer made things worse, because Percy couldn't see someone that was wearing those sparkling ivory robes without having a mental breakdown. And even if they met off in a coffee shop with them wearing common causal robes, Percy insisted that nothing was wrong with him and that was the bloody hard part—Percy was sane ninety percent of the time. He acted like the actual Percy. He made comments nobody cared about like the actual Percy. He rolled his eyes like the actual Percy, and then ten minutes later, they'd find him throwing away forks because the temptation of shoving it into his eyeballs was too much.
"Percy?" Fred was surprised to see that his brother was awake and staring at him with big, bright blue eyes.
"One of the many muggle procedures that they suggest for severe epilepsy is the induction of ketosis to prevent convulsions. One of the ways that you are able to elicit this very quickly is to starve one's self—along with consuming a subpar carbohydrate intake," Percy didn't seem to break eye contact with Fred. "Thus, I starved, and I starved... and I believe at some point, I started whacking rats with loose bricks and eating them. I was then, err, punished for indecent behaviour. That is to say that they belted me until I learned not to consume rodents in moments of utter desperation. At that point, I was extremely good."
Percy's lips turned up into a weak smile. "I ate spiders instead."
Fred hadn't noticed that he'd been holding in his breath until then.
"I wailed like a child," Percy shook his head, frowning in disapproval. "There were thoughts I was going on about that I didn't even know I had in me. I believe I seemed to have plotted our father's imminent murder—however; I do want to argue that I was dragged daily to rooms that triggered my convulsions and thus, I was not in the best mental state when I was thinking of doing my father in. And convulse I did—every day, for five years, I convulsed, and then they threw me back into my, err, room. Bearing in mind that if I had been sick the previous day, they would throw me in it as an act of dispute."
Fred winced, still staying silent.
"I was not very cooperative. I tended to steal from them, or I attempted to at the very least. I was unsuccessful in all my attempts. Everything I've ever attempted to salvage always ended up being confiscated and they tended to... well, to be blunt and fair, they cracked limbs when I did such things," Percy said, voice completely apathetic. "I believe my rationale towards my consistent attempted thefts is that I realised that I would be treated lesser than a horklump either way, but there was always a chance I might procure something if I tried hard enough. I wanted to write a letter to mum and they refused to allow me the privilege of doing such a thing—not until recent years, where they'd made me write a letter out on a long bit of parchment paper and then they burned it in front of my eyes. Do you know what the ironic thing is?"
Fred only gave a soundless shake of his head.
"Now that mum is around, I've forgotten everything I've wanted to say to her," Percy explained.
A few minutes of still silence followed, with Percy continuing his monologue. "The hardest thing is not the physical pain, or my evident slow trickle to madness—it's the fact that whilst I was locked into a room, a war happened... that I know nothing about in any shape or form... and I—I cannot even begin to explain why I cannot cope with that thought. I would rather..."
Fred slowly nodded his head, because Percy knew what he would rather do.
Percy sighed deeply. "I bet you've envisioned far worse actually going on in the ward itself and my reasons for my own lack of sanity are... unjustifiable and poor at best," he bit down his lower lip. "Believe it or not, I do actually feel guilt when I attempt to harm myself yet I'm pathetic. If there is anyone in the universe that loathes it more than Audrey or you seem to do, then it's me. It's an uncouth habit that I do because I still feel as trapped as I was in that room. As time passed, I felt as if the only way I was able to escape that ward is death, and I would rather it be by my hands than anyone else. Even when I knew that I was going to leave the ward, I was far too unstable to stop myself from harming or attempting to end myself. That, and I seem to have subdued myself into thinking that I don't have a family. Thus, seeing everyone again is particularly difficult because for the past six years, I have taken to telling endangered birds about how they're my family."
Fred stared at Percy as if he was speaking in Elvish.
"Worse?" Fred echoed, his chest tightening just at the thought that Percy thought that what he went through was not enough to justify the fact that he seemed to lose all his gobstones. "Perce, how could this be worse? And why did you have to 'subdue yourself' into thinking that you don't have a family?"
Percy turned his head aside. "If I don't have a family, I don't have to wonder what they've been doing for six years whilst I've been in this predicament," Fred was starting to feel ill at this point. "At the same time, I cannot help but think that I am the one that should be feeling remorseful because I was the one that had—quite frankly—might as well have slept through the war of the ages. You were living it. You were in isolation yourselves. Thus, I believe I simultaneously feel furious for what has been done to me, and that people have allowed this to happen to me and at the same time, I believe that if it has happened to me and nobody has attempted to do anything to stop it all throughout six years, it is justifiable."
"You should feel angry," Fred honestly said, getting up from his chair and sitting on Percy's bed. "Perce, we let you rot in a cell for six years. Of course, you're supposed to feel angry. You're supposed to hate us! And this is not bloody right! They tortured you because you were sick! It's not bloody 'justifiable'! You don't let blokes that had dragon pox starve to death just so you could say that they didn't die of ruddy dragon pox! You don't snap wrists in blokes that are dying of a heart attack just so they could say that their heart doesn't hurt as much now that they can't move their hand!"
Percy sat up from the bed, sitting down beside Fred.
"And what is this bollocks about the war anyway?" Fred echoed. "You weren't sat sipping tea in Cardiff whilst we were off fighting for our lives! You don't go up to lads that are being tortured in Voldemort's dungeon and tell them that they don't deserve to be battier than a vampire because they didn't wave around a few wands in Hogwarts. You don't shake blokes that are in comas and ask them to get up and fight! You can't blame yourself for not being there and you can't bloody tell me that you can't be mucked in the head because instead of duelling with Death Eaters, you were being belted for being desperate enough to eat rats when you were—quite literally—being starved to death!"
Fred offered a watery smile. He hadn't felt like tears were starting to fill his eyes until he started to blink them away, "Perce?"
"Yes?" Percy arched his eyebrows, looking much more content with this than Fred thought he would. Fred had never been good at emotional situations like this. That was George's suit!
"Why did you decide to stay with us?" Fred very quietly asked, "other than our obvious charm and charisma... which you hate more than you hate broken quills."
"I believe it's because you are the most immature people in the universe and if there was anyone I could depend on not to have changed with the years, it'll be you two," Percy offered a genuine smile—a very rare one. "That being said, if George was sitting here, I doubt I would be telling him any of this."
"Because of his ear?" Fred guessed and Percy gave a nod in Fred's direction. "Perce?"
Percy rolled his eyes. "Yes, Fred?"
That was when Fred attacked Percy, placing his head into the taller male's shoulder. Fred's grip tightened around Percy's waist, as he sobbed relentlessly. It didn't take long for Percy to follow suit, wrapping his long arms around Fred's short, muscular frame. He buried head into Fred's bright red hair and allowed silent tears to cascade down his cheeks.