A/N: Again with the fail!drabble...
4) Lucy doesn't know how to tell Percy that she doesn't want to be the Perfect one.
For as far back as Lucy could remember, she'd been trained up to be the Perfect one. Perfect student, perfect daughter, perfect child. She'd never really had friends- from about when she learned how to read by herself, she'd chosen books over the company of children her age. They scared her, especially her cousins. Roxanne, Hugo, and Lily were all her age, and they were loud, rambunctious, and terrifying. Whenever they managed to drag her into one of their plots, Dad would be horribly disappointed with her, and she'd revert deeper into her shell.
By the age of twelve, she had more or less separated herself from her family in favor of schoolwork. Hugo said, on her thirteenth birthday, that she might as well have not been a Weasley. He said she wasn't worth their time and that she shouldn't bother even coming to family get-togethers anymore.
Lucy took his words to heart.
Christmas of her second year was the last one she spent at the Burrow.
In fifth year, after managing her Prefect duties and those of the Hufflepuff Prefect's after a tragic accident removed her from school, Lucy still made top marks in her year. Nobody was surprised that it was her, least of all her father.
He had the gall to tell her that her one EE should have been an Outstanding.
Lucy stared at the swinging kitchen door after Percy left through it. She stood there, staring, and against her desperate tries to prevent it, tears pooled in her Weasley blue eyes and ran down her freckled cheeks.
She spent most of the rest of summer avoiding him and scrounging up every book she could on Arithmancy, her one EE.
She actually ran into Lily in Flourish and Blotts, to their mutual surprise.
"What, not busy studying?" Lily quipped, but it didn't hold the barbs it would have if it had come from Hugo. Lucy hefted the heavy tome in her arms up, and let Lily take it to glance over it. "Advanced Arithmancy? Whatever floats your boat, I guess." Lily quirked her lips in a mockery of a smile and she held the book out. Lucy took it back and ducked her head. She didn't see Lily shake her head, but she heard the sigh her cousin heaved before stepping around her and moving on down the length of the shelf.
Summer vacation passed in a blur of parchment, broken quills, and silent crying into her pillow at night.
Sixth year brought an additional stress that Lucy was utterly unprepared for. A boy by the name of Donny Aitkin began to show an interest in her, and took her lack of a vehement no to mean that she wasn't adverse to a relationship.
Before she realized what his smiles and attention meant, it was three months into the new year, and he invited her to Hogsmeade with him.
She accepted on the basis that she needed more parchment and her entire supply of quills was about out. Most of them were broken, in anger, when she was alone and tired and tetchy and didn't want to even think of writing another word. The ones she broke were shoved to the bottom of her trunk, a silent, terrifying reminder of what would happen if she slacked off.
Donny held her hand nearly the entire time, and even went so far as to press soft, wet kisses to her cheek or the top of her head. In public! In the middle of Scrivenshaft's Quills, and even in the Three Broomsticks when he dragged her in to buy her a butterbeer.
Dad disapproved of butterbeer on principle. Lucy stared at her mug of the frothy, foaming, deliciously scented drink, and wondered what he would say if he saw her in here.
When she came to the conclusion that it would likely make her cry, she picked up her mug with both hands, and drained it.
She thunked it down on the counter, determined not to let Dad invade her mind for once.
Lucy caught the Scamander twins staring at her. The Hufflepuff (she, while having been exposed to them virtually every time she found herself being dragged to the Burrow, still couldn't tell which was which) was blatantly staring at her, his eyebrows even with his hair. His absurd knitted cap that he wore day in and day out was in his hand. He looked like he'd just pulled it off and was in the process of ruffling his hair when he had caught sight of her. His brother's eyes widened a touch, before the person behind him jabbed him in the shoulder and he pulled his brother off to a booth in the back.
Lucy turned back to the mirror above the bar, and let out a tiny smile.
Donny let out a guffaw that startled her, and slammed down a few more sickles. "Another butterbeer, Madame?" he asked, as he shifted his stool closer to hers and slipped his arm around her waist. "You've got another believer!"
Lucy leaned into him, and when Roxanne slid onto the stool next to her and gave her a bright grin, Lucy felt herself returning it before she could think to stop it.
It felt…good.
She and Donny didn't last all that long; she broke up with him right before Christmas break, once she figured out that while it was nice to be kissed and held, she had begun to slip in her work and only a break's-worth of hard work could get it back up to par before the semester grades went out.
Donny said he understood. Lucy felt that he thought she was loony, for choosing her grades over him. He said there were no hard feelings. She felt that he was lying through his shiny white teeth.
And then, after break came and went and she found herself more and more often chewing on the tip of her quill, essay forgotten, as she wondered whether it really was possible to balance a boy and school, that she realized what her problem was.
She swept out of the library, desperate to find one of her cousins. Not Hugo- he had ceased to even acknowledge her existence- but if she could find Lily or Roxanne to speak with, maybe she would be able to figure it out?
Lucy ran into one of the Scamander boys before she could go much beyond the library corridor. She also knocked him to the floor, banged her head against his chin, and landed in a heap on top of him.
"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, barely before they even hit the cold stone floor. "I'm really, really sorry!" She sat up, still straddling his hips, and placed her hand on his cheek when he didn't move. "Are you okay?"
He opened his eyes, and she leaned forward more to peer into his clear blue eyes. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"No," he squeaked, "but it would be helpful if you would move."
Lucy scrambled off of him, and offered her hand. He glanced up at her, apparently looking over her slim form, before climbing to his feet without her help. "Watch where you're going next time. Where're you off to in such a rush anyhow?"
"I- uh…" She debated with herself for only a brief moment. His robes were lined with green, so he was the Slytherin twin; they could keep secrets really well, couldn't they? "I was looking for one of my cousins. I need to talk to somebody. Can I talk to you?"
He raised an eyebrow, but he nodded and turned back down the way he'd come. She hurried along behind his long-legged strides, and she followed him into an unused, dusty classroom.
"So what is it that left you, of all people, charging madly down a corridor?" he inquired, voice mostly devoid of emotion. He leaned against a desk and arranged his robes around him.
Lucy sat down on the bench on the other side of the desk in front of him, and folded her hands in her lap. "I realized something," she said. She brushed back her long, Weasley-red hair, and tucked it behind her unpierced ears. That was another thing Dad had frowned upon- he said they were unnecessary and pointless. "Did you know me and Donny Aitkin were dating?"
"You're not going to cry about how you lost the love of your life, are you? I'm really not who you want to talk to-"
"No, that's not it," she said. He crossed his arms and rested his eyes somewhere above her head. "I realized that I don't want to be perfect. And that I want to have a boyfriend, and that I want to be able to get an Exceeds Expectations instead of an Outstanding and not spend hours crying into my pillow about it. You know?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it, and looked extremely thoughtful. His eyes rolled up the ceiling and stayed there as he thought out his words. "No, I don't know, actually, as that's never been something I've worried about. My parents aren't insane, Lucy, they don't care if I get one EE, or two, or even four, because it's still exceeding the expectations."
Lucy's eyes dropped to the floor, and she was sorely beginning to regret even asking to talk to him.
His robes rustled, and then her sight was invaded by black as he shoved the desk in front of her back and kneeled down. "Lucy, look at me?"
She bit the inside of her cheek, but met his eyes, and he rested his hands on her knees to balance himself. "If you don't want to be perfect, then don't be. It's as simple as that. With your grades, even if you drop, I don't know, Arithmancy or Ancient Runes or something basically useless, you'll still get nearly any job you could possibly want."
"And if I don't want the one my dad's setting up for me?" she whispered, mostly to herself, but he smiled at her and answered with an equally soft "that too."
Lucy took his advice (she later discovered the Slytherin twin was Lorcan, and the one with the silly hat was Lysander) and as soon as the semester finals were over, went to Professor McGonagall and dropped both her Advanced Arithmancy class and her Ancient Runes.
All that was left was breaking the news to Dad.
Lucy wasn't sure how, or when, or even if she would still be allowed to live at home after it. Molly had been forced to stay with Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur after it came out that she was signed to the Harpies. Lucy's lip began to tremble at the very thought of it, and even though her stress in school was remarkably reduced, the reminder that she would have to deal with it sent her into a downward spiral of depression every time it came up.
Lucy was terrified, but she was also learning how to be determined for something other than school, and she would be damned if she would give that newfound freedom up.