This story contains JK characters that sprung from her fertile, amazing imagination. To Her all credit doth go!
Chapter Notes: Thank you for all the kind words, when you reviewed the last chapter. I'm so glad I decided to relaunch this story! I have really enjoyed rediscovering this story myself. The thing I like most about this story is the way it reveals Percival Weasley in all his complexity. There are so many stories that have him a cardboard cut out. I'm afraid that little view that JK gave us in the Epilogue made it look like he never changed. Far be it from me to in anyway disagree with the queen of all things HP, but he would have had to change drastically! This story is about how George got his groove back, the restoration of Percy to himself and to his family, and how the Weasleys rediscovered being Weasley.
Contrary to my wonderful friends in the Sober Universe, I liked JK's choice of Angelina Johnson as a partner to George. This is their story told from George's point of view.
When Last We Left the Story...
Harry shuddered at the thought. "Any idea why he would steal such a thing?" Harry inquired after steeling himself for the task ahead.
Gerry handed him a faded piece of Parchment. "Here is a manifest of the spells contained within the book. There were only twenty-one and they are extremely complicated, taking hours to complete; that's why I think we have time if you hurry. See if you can see a spell that might give you a clue as to someone with that flawless a record would try something like this."
Harry scanned the list, and stopped at the third one down. Suddenly, it all snapped into place. He sunk in his chair as the disastrous possibilities paraded in his mind.
"Percy, what are you doing?"
A Little Later That Morning...
AfterMagic
Chapter2
Right Hook, Wake Up Call!
P.O.V. George
George was having that dream again. Or was it a memory? These days it might be a bit of both. It didn't matter because Fred was in it, spry and full of life, and so were Fleur Decoleur's cousins. Brother, had that been a good night!
Brother…
The pain was back. It always came back like a phantom limb on an amputee. He could not even escape it here in the confines of his own fantasies. Suddenly, the dream changed. With a strange directness Fred looked at George. "He's where we hid his head boy badge that time, Georgie old boy. You better get there soon."
"George. Wake up!"
"Not now, Percy. Havin' a good dream, go way!" he mumbled
"OK. You asked for it. Aguamenti!" the voice bellowed.
Suddenly, George was being soaked in icy cold water. "What tha! Geroff! What's wrong with you, you nosy git!" he sputtered.
He wiped the ice cold water out of his eyes and looked up from the sofa he had been sleeping on. It was not his interfering older brother standing over him, arms crossed angrily, the wand used to produce the water now sopping into his clothing clutched in her fist.
Looking like a perfect, but angry goddess, was Angelina Johnson.
"George Weasley, you lazy sot, you better get yourself home! Your family needs you!" she said with urgency, stowing her wand back in her robes.
"What do they need me for?" George remarked through a yawn. "Not much good for anything these days, just ask Percy."
A pained look stowed across her face for a split moment, causing George's blood to run like ice in his veins.
'Not another one,' was what flitted across his thoughts.
"I'd like to ask him," she replied with a hitch in her voice. "I'd like that very much. Trouble is, no one knows where he is."
George smirked. He was confident everyone was blowing things out of proportion. "Well, just find somewhere where people need bossing around. I guarantee you'll find that pompous prat!"
Angelina went still. Tears sprung to her eyes.
George didn't care. Percy would never be in trouble. He'd never be caught doing anything risky. It wasn't like he was Fred.
He stood up grateful that he had slept in his robes again. He had a stray thought. Where is Percy? Didn't he come and drag me out of the Nosey Kneazel just the night before? Speaking of which, where's the Firewhiskey, I have some catching up to do.
He was just about to ask, when suddenly he realized he was on his back looking up at Angelina from the floor. The right side of his face felt as though a Bludger hit him during a dive. The realization came into his stunned faculties. Ow! Angelina hit me!
"What was that for?" he asked in a wounded tone.
She pointed a finger in his face; he had to admire that she hadn't even broken a nail, "Your brother is more of a man than you will ever be, George!" He suddenly realized she was crying for real. The tracks of her tears left glistened trails down her perfect cheeks.
He also realized in that moment, in a jolt that connected every bit as hard as her fist had, that she was...beautiful!
She shouted with her fist cocking back for another hit, "Percy has been holding your family together, he has been running your store, fixing your books, helping stock and sale, on top of that he's been using his own pay check from the Ministry to keep these lousy doors open! You will show some respect, George Weasley, or I swear I will hit you again!"
He worked his sore jaw nervously. What a woman! What a right hook! Then again she could always chuck a Quaffle, couldn't she Fred!
He held his hands up in surrender.
"That won't be necessary!" he replied after he determined that he would not be drinking Skele-Grow through a straw after all. "So tell me, what has Perfec," he stopped after he saw her tensing for another punch, "I mean Percy gotten himself into now?" he stated carefully watching her balled fist warily.
He was attempting to be diplomatic, but the comment he was going to say echoed in his mind anyway. They'll probably find him kipped under some books somewhere; this is Percy after all. The man double starches his under shorts!
To his shock she collapsed into the only chair, not covered by papers he hadn't bothered to read, at the cluttered grimy table less than a foot away. The angry goddess was gone, left behind was one very distressed lady.
Her lips were trembling. "Harry came by just a bit ago, said that Percy took the most powerful dark spell book the Ministry has, out this morning. One of the spells is for resurrection."
"Finally! Percy's done something right!" George crowed, feeling a smile crack his lips into his old grin for the first time in months, "Can he really bring Fred, back?
She glared at him furiously, "Of course not!" she practically screamed at him. "Its Dark Magic, George. The spell uses his soul to power it! His own soul!"
She broke down sobbing, barely managing to utter, "Percy's trading his own soul to bring Fred back. Where did he get the idea that the family wanted him dead? Even if it worked?"
George felt shame. Truly felt shame for the first time in a long time. The answer came like the pointed finger of an accusing prosecutor.
He got the idea from me, actually.
A memory burned his mind of a drunken rage he was in the previous night when he shouted at Percy in this very room.
"Don't you get it? Are you daft? It should have been you! Not Fred. You left the family! You turned your back on us! Why don't you trade yourself in and go get him back! Nobody in this family wants you here anyway! Go sleep at the Ministry, that's only thing you really ever cared about!"
He remembered Percy actually flinched during the tirade, some part of him had felt good to hurt him. George felt a tiny bit of satisfaction that his high and mighty straight-laced brother had actually reacted to something he said. Now, however, through the focusing lens of knowledge, blinders of ignorance no longer a luxury, he remembered how pale Percy was, how thin he had been getting, and how his hands trembled as even after the tirade, he still helped his brother out of his trainers and onto this very sofa. He also remembered something he thought he had dreamed Percy saying.
"You're right you know, but don't worry Georgie, I'll fix it, like I always do."
George stared his hands, listening to Angelina who was at this point inconsolable. All of the pressure of running The Wheezes plus yet another crises with the Weasley family catching up to her, and she was doing all this as a favor to George.
She finally got control, wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She gently lifted on George's chin until he looked up. His cheeks burning with his shame. Her warm caramel brown eyes, still glistening with unshed tears, captured George's.
"I miss Fred too, you know," she said just above a whisper. "We all do. You're not the only one who's feeling the pain that he's not here. You're just the only one that has crawled into a bottle over it. You're the only one who has abandoned your life entirely."
She stood and George flinched, but she was not going to hit him, at least not physically.
Her voice was quietly pleading, "Percy beats himself up everyday that he wasn't the one who died. He's been killing himself slowly trying to atone. And now, brilliant wizard that he is, he thinks he found a way to give everybody what he thinks they want: him gone and Fred back."
Her words pounded into George harder than her fist had. He stared at the floor wishing he could crawl through it. "Your family needs you George, your brother needs you; I'm not talking about Fred. Fred's fine. It's the living that have the problems." Spent, she started out of the apartment to go back down to the store. She called back over her shoulder just before she pulled the door to, "If you find that somewhere deep down you still care, they're all at the Burrow."
George sat in the silence studying a cluttered apartment that had not been tidied since Percy last did it. George shook his head to clear the last cobwebs, she had belted him good, but he thought she had knocked some sense into him. "Good sense, and a mean right hook Freddy, I'm gonna marry that girl someday!" he called to the emptiness, but it felt companionable all of a sudden, like Fred was listening. He could imagine what Fred would have said, "So what are you going to do Gred my boy?" George stood unsteadily to his feet. He finally knew what was next. He was going to do his best to save Percy, or die trying and catch up with Fred. Either way, it was about time he did something.
He kicked an empty Firewhiskey bottle out of his way as he went to wash up. With some floo powder, and a flash of green, he was finally on his way home.
Character Notes: I went back and checked out Angelina Johnson in the HP books. I found a person who was witty, had a sense of humor, but who put the twins in their place. I especially loved the sequence in book four when she accepted Fred's proposal to the dance on the spot then turned back to her conversation like nothing had just happened. So yeah I don't mind JK's choice. While I appreciate and affirm other people's alternatives, (if you haven't read For Bitter or Worse... get your tail over to Kerichi's profile, or look under my favorites and check it out!) but I like to think that being Weasley goes beyond pale skin, freckles and red hair. So enjoy!
Bart