A/N: I do not own or profit from Harry Potter.

Chapter 22: WOMBAT

The brown folder in Audrey's hand kept drawing her eyes as she hurried up the stairs. Bubbling anticipation was rising inside her, though she couldn't have said whether it was because of what tonight might bring, or what the papers might reveal. Percy, or the secrets he knew? She raised her hand to knock.

After a moment and a few strange taps from the other side of the door, it swung open.

.

Percy drew himself up to his full height, took a breath, and pulled open the door.

Audrey was on the other side, of course, and he had to remind himself what he'd decided. All of this kissy-nonsense had to stop. Yes, he could try and have a relationship with a muggle, but there were certain things she would need to understand. Tonight, she was coming over so he could help her with her entry into the Wizard World. She'd never be able to handle it if he didn't prepare her.

She needed to be told. At least some things. And it wasn't only for her, he supposed, it was for both their benefit. If she couldn't deal with wizards and their ways, she was wasting his time.

He smiled innocently as he held open the door.

"I sure hope this all makes sense to you," Audrey said, file in hand, "Because I am utterly lost. I can't really make heads or tails of this. What kind of questions are these?"

"The necessary kind. It's just a preliminary form." Percy told her, letting her in. "We want to know if you're competent..." He trailed off in thought as they both moved to sit and he took the papers from her hands. Oh, yes, and tonight was about getting her paperwork ready. Hopefully he could offer a little explanation, a bit of forewarning, as things went on and progressed to the end Audrey seemed to be grasping for; The Wizard World itself.

She settled back. "You do that a lot, you know?"

"Hm?"

"You stop talking so you can think about what you want to say so you don't say something you wouldn't want me to hear."

"I have a lot that I don't want you to hear." He rejoindered, adding, "Yet." Shaking his head, he resumed his thought. "We can't let just anyone into our confidence. You have to prove valid reason, give personal information, specifics, details." He held up the papers. "That's what all this is for. When this is done, if you're deemed acceptable, you'll be given a test to ensure that you can live safely-"

"There's more?" She sounded surprised.

"Oh, yes." He glanced at another folder on the table, this one thicker. "The WOMBATS are more practical knowledge-testing. You'll have to study hard to pass them...if you still want to take the test after you've studied." He knew that it would take her a good while to study enough to pass Wizards Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptitude Test, though he could have instantly answered every question with ease. It would take hours of study to get her even a passing grade. But without a basic knowledge of the Wizard World, there was no way the Ministry would allow her auxiliary status, especially in the current political climate.

"So. How am I supposed to answer these questions?"

"What matters is that you got the most important ones." He thumbed through the pages.

"I didn't." She responded. "There were some that I'm afraid boggled me completely. I don't even understand what they're talking about." She took the sheaf from his hand and turned back to the first page, pointing to a blank space. "Blood Status?"

He glanced down at it with a slight grimace. After a glance at her, he picked up a pencil and scribbled into the spot. Audrey leaned forward to see what he wrote.

Pureblood.

"I'm pureblood?"

"As pure as they come." He said. It was impossible to miss the undertone of bitterness, or was that sarcasm?

"Pureblood what?"

"Well, if you knew what, you wouldn't be doing this paperwork."

She gave him a look. "You really know all the answers, don't you?"

"I do."

"And I don't suppose you could just...tell me any of them?"

"I most certainly could not."

"Of course not." She pointed to another spot. "Mother's name. What do I say for that?"

.

They worked in a companionable manner for some time, filling in the spaces she had missed, correcting answers to questions she had misunderstood. Percy carefully went over each word, occasionally pleasantly surprised to find her leaning against or close to him to read his or her own writing. Each time, though, he had to pull himself back, had to stay focused. Tonight was a night of business. Being hormonal and otherwise physically-driven would not help the shallowness of her knowledge or their relationship. If he wanted one, he'd have to transfer a little more information over to her to ensure she understood just what she was walking into...and to know if he could trust her.

No kissing tonight. He didn't need it.

Yes, the kissing stuff was nice, but it was speedily turning them in a direction devoid of substance. He didn't want a physical relationship; he could get that anywhere if he'd been crude enough. What he wanted was a true relationship, and those could only be based on trust...based on truth. Damned truth, Percy groused inwardly as he returned his mind to more professional matters. He couldn't let his reeling, dependent soul get too attached to a muggle girl who would walk out on him the first time she heard a spell.

Relationships, he chided himself, were not about being silly and feeling-in-love. Even love was controlled by reason, and he'd have to be reasonable about this if he wanted to keep from making a huge blunder. Yes, he wanted Audrey more than he'd expected to. But it would never last as long as he was basically lying to her.

.

Audrey shook her head, bemused as she filled in another blank. "Halls of study...Really, it is like entering another country, isn't it?"

"Quite." Percy agreed. "I'm sure that once you're on the other side, you'll come to realise the necessity of all of this."

"Do you?"

"Absolutely." Percy said. "If I ran the world, it'd be a lot harder...and I ran the world, we wouldn't even be taking applicants to the...I mean, for entry...to the archives."

"You know." She gazed at him as he fumbled. "I can't wait until I know everything and you can just stop stuttering every time you open your mouth."

He gave her a look that was half apologetic and half frustrated. There was a long pause as they both seemed to mutually come to a stopping place in their task.

Audrey stretched her cramped fingers, laying back her head on the lumpy couch. "Is this really worth it?"

"I hope so."

She glanced over at him. "If you were me, would it be worth it?" He hadn't sounded sure.

He paused for contemplation. If he were Audrey, there wouldn't be much point in entering the wizard world. She had no magic, an ugly history, and no opportunities in that world. Except, well, him. "I don't know." He answered vaguely. "I suppose it might be if you wanted it to." He glanced over at her. "Though you should be aware that this won't be pretty."

"I know that." She pushed herself up. "In fact, I was under the impression that it was all ugly. Is there a good side to any of this cloak-and-dagger?"

"Well..." He kept having to remind himself what was in her mind. She thought she was getting secret files from a government cabinet somewhere, not discovering an entire hidden society. He turned towards her.

"Audrey." He began in earnest. "This thing is bigger than just your father and some crazy racial supremacists."

"I know that."

"It's...bigger than me or you, or even..." He searched for the right words. "It's big." He finished at last. "It's going to really change to way you look at things. At everything. History, philosophy, science, everything...it's all changed by this."

She looked blank.

He wanted to slap himself. He was making no sense at all. "Sorry. I guess..."

"That was a bit melodramatic."

"It's true, though."

"Lovely." She laid her head back calmly as if he hadn't just told her one of the greatest secrets known to puzzle and astonish modern man. "And if it's so true and so all-encompassing, why don't I know about it already?"

"Because it's a secret." He explained.

"Hm. Sounds like a conspiracy theory."

"Well, yes, but..."

She turned to him, shifting on the couch. "Look, Percy, I don't know what's coming. I know you know, and it's obviously very important to you. I don't really understand any of this, but all I can do is try to work with what I have. I'm doing that. When the shock comes...it'll come. I'm not panicking yet, though. I'll deal with all of this when I understand it better, and for now all I can do is work toward that coming." She leaned back to study him. "Sort of the 'cross that bridge when I come to it' kind of thing."

"Right." He ran his hand across his eyes. "I suppose that might be wise..."

"Might be?"

"I honestly don't know." He told her, dropping his hand. "I don't know what to tell you anymore." At least he had time. Audrey's application for entry would be submitted and put on a shelf somewhere until the Ministry had time for it. Until they got results, which would be months at the least, Percy could decide what to do.

"But it's big, and it's bad." She surmised, wrapping her arms around herself. "But there are some good things about it."

"There are lots of good things about it." He was quick to defend his world. "I mean, there's..." he thought of Hogwarts, of the huge library. She'd love that. And Flourish and Blotts, with its rows and balconies of books. She'd like that, too. Plus Honeydukes, Madam Malkin's, Diagon Alley, the Burrow...she'd like those things. And his family...well, he could only hope she'd like them and they'd like her. Not to mention, the idea of magic itself... "There's a lot things that make it easy to love." He finished. "But at the same time, there's a dark side."

"Of course." She said. "There's always a dark side."

"Unfortunately." He agreed. "There is."

"And what about this dark side?"

He thought. "It's...dark." It wasn't very eloquent, but it was the first word that came to mind when he remembered the occupation of the ministry, the dementors, Ginny and the diary, the Triwizard Tournament, the whole damn war. "People die. Some of them really horrible deaths." He snuck a glance at her. "Your father was fortunate. He died a quick, painless death. Others died horrible deaths. Starved, or beaten, or raped..." He shook his head to clear the images of Thicknesse's office from his mind. "It was a bad time, and it's passed, and now we're trying to...to clean it all up."

She was studying him, her head leaning against her hand. "And who do you know who died a horrible death?" She pried gently.

He looked away uncomfortably. Now she was pushing it.

"Come on, Percy. You can trust me." Her words were directly pointing at just what he'd been thinking earlier, and she didn't even know it. Yes, he ought to tell her...something. Maybe not about Fred, but about someone. Someone who had died. Mr. Crouch? He would have liked to tell her about Ginny and the diary, but it would have been impossible to put that into muggle terms. He knew that if he could tell her, she would understand so much more about it all...she'd understand about the Dark Lord, and Purebloods, and horcruxes, and Potter. It was really an all-encompassing event. But it wouldn't work to put into muggle terms. It was too deep, and would just have to wait. Fred then, he resigned himself. It was one of the other, most personal things he'd felt during the war, when he'd blocked himself away from all emotion. He'd become just a machine in those days, and now he was working towards emotion again.

He sighed, realising his face had become haggard, and looked down at her. "Well. There was this...Um, fight. Kind of."

"Yes.

"And, um..." How to explain it to her. "There were these Death Eaters—you know what they are—attacking a school."

"Was there anyone inside?" She gasped.

"Yes, it was a boarding school, full of students and teachers." He pushed ahead before she asked why. "And so my family...being in the business of justice, naturally was called on to go."

"You were there?"

"Yes." He let her ask her questions, needing to explain it slowly and coherently. Telling her that Rookwood had chased he, Fred, Ron, and Potter into one of the turrets and then used incendium on the door before striking Fred with a curse would not do. "I was there. And so, we all showed up together and went to go fight for the school." He pushed into the difficult part. "I was with my brother, Fred. He's one of the twins..."

"I remember."

"...And we were going along some of the passage...I mean, hallways, and there was this one Death Eater, name of Rookwood. And he...killed Fred." He blurted out the last part as quickly as possible, realising too late that this was a bad idea, he didn't want to bring her this close or tell her all of this. He didn't want to go over the details again and tell her everything and then get all emotional and end up humiliating himself in the end anyways.

After a long silence following his abrupt end, he dared glance over at her. She looked a mixture of stricken and sad as she stared at him. "Your brother Fred?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me he was dead before?"

"What?"

"I mean...that didn't come out right. I'm sorry, Percy. That must have horrible for you. I can see why you wouldn't want to mention it."

"No." He said, a little miffled. All right, so it was a little odd of him to introduce family members to her and then tell her they were dead weeks afterwards, but what else was he supposed to do? Point to Fred in all of his pictures and say, 'that's the dead one'? He looked at his hands. "Yes, so there's one death I saw."

"You saw it?"

"I had to drag his body to a safe place. Of course I saw it. He was looking right at me."

She shrank from his tone a little. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too."

There was a long pause as he kicked himself for starting with Fred. Mr. Crouch would have been a better way to introduce her to the war.

She picked up his hand and studied it in her own. "Percy, I'm sorry. I must seem like a complete arse to have been whining all this time about my father when you've already lost a brother to the Death Eaters. You really do know what you're doing."

"I do." He agreed grimly.

"When did he die?"

"May 2nd, 1998."

"1998?"

"Yes."

"That's...three months ago."

"Yes, and?"

She fell silent and when he looked at her again her eyes were pitying him.

"Oh, stop it with the puppy eyes." He told her impatiently. "I hate that."

"Sorry."

"And stop saying you're sorry. Everyone is, and it doesn't make anything better."

"I know." She told him. "I've been there. At Dad's funeral and afterwards. But you know, there's really nothing else to say."

"Then just don't say anything." He told her. He'd already discovered this during his own problems.

"That's how you cope, isn't it." She realised slowly.

"What?"

"You pretend it's not happening, or it didn't happen. You just don't talk about it, don't think about it, and you work."

"Well...yes."

"That doesn't work, Percy." She told him seriously, still holding his hand. He felt like a child being given a talking-to. "You know what they say about time bombs."

"No, I don't."

She huffed impatiently. "Do you know what a time bomb is?"

"No."

"Somehow I'm not surprised." She ran her hands through her hair. The conversation had shifted from the uncomfortable pitying mood to a plane on which they were both more comfortable; the practical, coping plane. "The longer a bomb goes without exploding or detonating, the more lethal it becomes. They say there are some landmines buried in the beaches at Normandy from World War II, and the time they've spent dormant makes them a lot more potent when people stumble across them now."

"Oh, really?" He didn't quite know what she was talking about, but he understood the idea she was expressing. "Well, then I pity that man upon whom I explode." His war rage had largely come out on Rookwood and Thicknesse...he'd killed two men, and it had made him feel a great deal better about the whole thing. The post-war rage was still seething, though, he supposed.

"Or," She admonished, "You could try something more effective at dealing with your problems."

"Puppy eyes and 'I'm sorrys'? I'd rather explode on myself, thanks."

She punched his shoulder. "See? I'm trying to help you, and you're being snarky and sarcastic and pretending we're not talking about this."

"Well, what am I supposed to say? Sitting around and talking about my dead relations is awkward, you must admit, Audrey."

"It's supposed to be awkward." She told him. "That's why it's not."

He pondered that for a moment before looking over at her through his glasses. "That makes no sense."

"Have you never put yourself into an awkward situation?"

"Not deliberately. I prefer to remain composed, thank you."

"So you're never vulnerable?" She asked. "You never cry on anyone?"

"No."

"What about your family?"

"What about them?"

"I think I found the problem." She announced.

"No you didn't. There is no problem. I deal with my problems alone, rationally, and I don't need anyone else to blubber on."

"Yes, you do, everyone does." She said, sounding annoyingly like Penny. "Ever since the first man experienced pain, humans were meant to blubber on one another about their hurt."

"Well, I'm not like that!"

"Well, that's not rational!" She came back at him. "You're human, are you not?"

"Yes it...it is, it just wouldn't make sense to you."

"Well, if it's rational, it ought not to be relative, and therefore ought to be explicable to me the same as to you. Ergo, if it makes sense to you it ought to make sense to me if you explain it. We're both rational beings."

"I can't explain it."

"Then either A) you don't understand it and therefore need help, or B) it's not rational." She leaned back, her expression triumphant.

"Why do you have to be such a Ravenclaw?" He muttered. Why couldn't he have fallen for Hufflepuff, a nice, innocent Hufflepuff who didn't argue with him...Because, he answered his own question, Hufflepuffs are stupid. Mostly. And now he was on a tangent. He pulled himself back before realising he had no response for her.

"You know I'm right."

"I don't know that, but in favour of peace, I won't argue my point."

"You know I'm right."

He rose to get more tea. "Not arguing."

She sighed victoriously and followed him to the kitchen. "You must break your mother's heart."

"I do, but she's got six...five...no, six others to patch her back together. She's fine." He reassured her.

"Six others?"

"My little brother's friend...he's sort of become one of the family. Especially to my parents. So even without Fred, it's still six of us kids. And Bill's wife. And Hermione." He thought. "And Neville. And Luna, too, kind of."

"Anyone else?"

"Well...No. That's all."

"Ah." She stirred sugar into her tea. "And out of curiosity, how do you play into that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm prying. How are things with your family?"

He shrugged. "I'm grown up, my family doesn't need me there anymore."

"I'm grown up, and I still live with my mother."

"Well, I'm sure your dynamic is very different than mine. You're a girl, and your mother needs you in the aftermath of your father's death."

"And what about your brother?"

Percy shrugged. "I take care of George as best I can. But I'm afraid my ways of comfort really aren't help at all. George is emotional, like most people, and he wants emotion-based comfort. People in mourning don't like being told that logical, coherent thinking is the only answer to their grief. Unless they're me."

"Of course." She agreed. "You're a machine."

He gave her a look.

"No offence." She pushed a thick lock of black hair behind her ear. "So how is George, anyways?"

"Better." Percy shrugged. "He's planning some grand reopening of this shop he and Fred used to own. Work helps; He and his...well, he and Angelina and Lee, his friends, are planning it all."

"Ah." She replied reflectively. In retrospect, Percy and his family really made a lot more sense with one of them dead. The 'sick' brother, the brother who didn't get mentioned in conversation, the tiredness, the stress... Audrey looked down and felt a pang of guilt again. She'd been stressing him out about her father when he'd had his own problems to deal with. And what about his poor brother...how hard it must have been to lose a twin.

"Anyways." Percy said officially, pushing himself off the counter. "We need to finish your paperwork."

"Ugh."

"I know. I feel the same. But the sooner we get it in, the sooner it will get looked at."

"Fine, fine." She returned to the couch.

"And maybe if we come to a stopping place we can break for dinner." He sat and resumed his position as the Ministry official, looking over her papers with a professional eye. She nudged at the waiting file on the coffeetable with her toe. WOMBAT was punched in big letters across the front.

"What's WOMBAT stand for?"

"Wiz...Um." He looked up. "The BAT stands for Basic Aptitude Test."

"And the WOM?"

"I can't tell you."

"Percy! I have to take this test to get into your government. You could at least tell me the name of the test!"

"Can't, sorry. I'll tell you when you pass it."

"That's ridiculous!" She punched his shoulder again as she settled back. "Even my teachers tell me the names of the tests I take."

"I'm not your teacher."

"Shocker."

He glanced over at her and considered laying aside the paperwork and finding something more interesting to do with their evening, but had to concede to his more practical side that this really was more important in the long run. He stretched his fingers and settled back as the night wore on. It hadn't gone quite as he expected, and indeed he was still worried about what she might be thinking or what she might say, but she seemed to be consistently practical in thinking and action; if so, she ought to be able to handle the shock of another world. No, it hadn't gone as he'd expected, and he'd have to keep slowly working at it to bring her into their world, but it was a start. It was definitely a way to begin.

He looked over at her again without realising it. Only when she looked back up at him did he come to with an absent shake of his head.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're lying."

"I do that quite a lot." He promised. "But only when I have to."

"Splendid." She groaned, slapping the papers on her knees. "We have got a long way to go."

He raised his brows and turned back to his work. She was absolutely right, and in more ways than one. "Well. At least we've made it this far. There would really be no point in throwing all of these papers away now."