AN: I've had the general outline of this for a while, but today the whole thing jumped out at me. I've never been a big fan of Percy, but some situations are just too good to pass up. The characters belongs to Rowling, I have no idea who owns the London buses.
Percy Weasley boarded the Muggle bus with a feeling of relief. The icy rain had pelted down on the ramshackle roof of the bus shelter and the sound had penetrated to the marrow of his bones. The only reason he could see for the month to be called February was that it carried with it a rising danger of fevers and colds.
He slid into a seat and shook himself like a dog to repel the raindrops from his cloak. Really it was more a shudder than a voluntary action, but it felt like the stress of the day was shook off with the water. The stress was the only reason he had chose the bus, it gave him a few minutes to relax before entering his flat, seeing the stack of a few dishes on the kitchen counter that needed to be cleaned and the much bigger stack of papers on his desk. This way, sitting quietly inside the moving vehicle and staring dumbly out on the wet and grey London streets gave him a break from everything, even the magical world.
He turned his head away from the window, stared straight ahead without taking in anything for a moment, then turned to his right to snuggle his spine into the gap between the seat and the wall. He had found it to be an acceptable position to snooze with his arms over his chest the few times he had taken Muggle transportation.
That's when he saw her, sitting by the window on the other side, one red wellington boot swinging gently to and fro. The boots were in fact littered with small white polka-dots, evenly spaced in a square pattern. He couldn't other than smile, the colourful boots were so far from anything he had seen all day at the Ministry. No one there would wear polka-dotted boots, not even if they lost a bet.
His eyes travelled slowly up the woman wearing the boots, past the dark skirt beginning a few inches over where the boots stopped, over the jacket almost matching them, although it was something much more business-like over the jacket, and up to her face. She was staring out the window like he had done a minute before, the same abstract expression telling him she wasn't seeing the dull scenery at all.
Her nose stuck out a bit, a little beacon to the world, and he was instantly reminded of a Cocker Spaniel for some reason he couldn't pick out. Maybe it was the air around her, because it certainly wasn't her face. It had rounded shapes, a healthy colour bordering on a tan even this late in the winter and was maybe just plain, but he liked it nonetheless. The part of hair sticking out from the dark red hood of her jacket was brown and would maybe seem mousy grey if it wasn't for the shine.
He realised he was staring rather rudely at her, but couldn't stop. Instead he kept watching as her pink lips compressed for a moment, then a slender hand was placed on the bag in the seat next to her, but she seemed to abandon whatever thought she had had, the hand relaxed again and slid down in the seat beside her.
His eyes returned to her crossed legs and the boot gently tipping up and down, as if following an inner rhythm. He couldn't imagine any woman he knew wearing that kind of boots. Or, well, maybe the Lovegood-girl that lived not that far from his parents, but he thought they may be too boring for her. As for men who might wear polka-dots, his brother George would fall in that category, but red and white would be too boring for him, too. With this train of thought he concluded Miss Lovegood and George should open some kind of crazy clothes shop where even polka-dots were for sissies.
"Hi," a timid voice said, penetrating Percy's musings slowly. He looked up with arched brows to find the young woman had spoke to him. He froze. Of course she was wondering what he was doing, it must look as if he was trying to sneak a peek under her skirt. Simple physics should make that quest quite impossible, unless light had stopped travelling in a straight line.
"Hello," he answered automatically, hearing his voice could be mistaken for pompous when he was simply scared. Not very, but he had always been a bit socially awkward and he didn't see any way to save himself gracefully out of this situation. What was he to say? 'I was just admiring your boots' didn't seem like it would put him in a much better light.
"Admiring my boots?" She gave him a shy smile and he felt the heat rise in his cheeks.
"Er, well, mostly," he admitted. After the words travelled a few times through his head he realised this simply implied he was admiring other things as well. "I mean, they struck me as inspiring." Inspiring to what? Force her against a brick wall and take his right as a man? He blushed harder and looked down.
"Thank you," she answered and he couldn't see him beaming at him. "My sister almost forced me to buy them, and with the weather we've been having lately maybe it was a good thing." He dared to look up at her again, at the small creases around her nut-brown eyes and the streak of white teeth showing between her lips.
"Been raining a lot, yes," he muttered and swallowed. Honestly he hadn't noticed the weather much before he was shivering in the bus shelter and getting his shoes sodding wet, he had had other things on his mind. Like the fact that it was less than a year since the second Wizard War had ended and he had lost one of his brothers. With so many of them he sometimes figured the loss of one shouldn't make such an impact, but maybe because it affected so many it stung so deep.
"Where are you heading?" she asked, stroking her hands over her bag as if to assure herself it wouldn't disappear. Maybe they were closing in on her destination and she was afraid to loose it. He found his voice again and answered the question, wondering why she took interest in him. Maybe it was because of his cloak, to a Muggle like her it must seem fittingly eccentric to go with her polka-dots. "You wouldn't like to get a cup of hot chocolate or something? I know of a place."
Percy arched his brows again, looking almost accusingly at her. What did they have in common to warrant what his brothers would considerate a date? He had never been much of a dater, in their school days it had been Penelope taking the initiative, which maybe in part was what had made them drift apart. Then again, a cup of hot chocolate seemed just the thing to drive the bone-deep chill out of him.
"I would love to," he heard himself saying, smiling into her eyes and wondering what he was doing. Enjoying a hot beverage with a new friend, a voice told inside his head told him. He didn't know who it belonged to, but at least he knew it was male and Weasley.
They stepped out of the bus a few minutes later, ran for shelter in a small café and made their order. They found a free table by the window and Percy found his tongue loosen up more and more. It was no trouble talking to this woman with polka-dotted wellington boots he learned was named Audrey, and if this was considered a date, he handled that too pretty well.
She didn't usually talk to strangers on the bus, she admitted, she had just plunged into it. He assured her it had been a very grateful plunge as they finished their hot chocolate and agreed to take a small snack as well. Before either of them knew it they had talked for hours, Audrey told him she had stayed far too long, although she didn't regret a minute and after exchanging phone numbers they said farewell for now. Percy even dared himself to give her a quick peck on the cheek, finding her to smell sweet and homely in the few seconds he was close enough to scent her.
When he at long last entered his flat, he didn't noticed the dirty dishes, looked past the stack of letters and smiled at the telephone that came with the rent on the flat. He stayed that way for what felt like a long series of wonderful moments, simply smiling on the black block of Muggle technology.