Hey again! Well, to make a long story short, I decided to continue this. Which technically makes a short story long. (awkward laughter) But this will be a relatively short chapter...so yeah. XD

Reasons?

A) This tied for first in the competition. :D I don't want to abandon it to the miserable fate of obscurity just yet.

B) Percy/Audrey's unbelievably underrepresented. I just want to do my bit to help, you know?

C) Why not? I mean, one kind soul accidentally put this on alert before I realized I forgot to mark it as complete. XD

Anyways, happy reading! Do leave a review or two...

Althea Savage had been in the employ of Percy Weasley for precisely one week.

And during that week, she was convinced that her poor darling had developed some kind of cold.

He appeared horrendously ill every time he looked up from his work, and sent her out on constant errands to fetch piping hot coffee and tomato soup from a random Muggle cafe halfway across London.

Of course, the only disease Percy was suffering from was lovesickness. (The proof lay in the fact that he would actually find such a dreadful pun amusing in his current state.)

Just meeting Althea's eyes caused him to turn pale with guilt. Particularly as they were such pretty eyes, sparkling with fervor and sympathy.

Staring at her feet was even worse. Her toes actually went in length order.

Not to mention that she still couldn't walk in her (lavender) heels, but that didn't dissuade her from wearing them. And with them on, she was just a hair taller than him. Literally.

Point being, Althea was an undoubtedly attractive distraction, but still very much a distraction - which was why he was avoiding her and trying to get her out of the office as much as possible. Because ever since that day one week ago, he had placed his heart in ink-stained hands, and judging by the circumstances, he would never see it again.

Percy buried his head in his hands and indulged himself in a melodramatic sigh of misery.

Audrey, on the other hand, had not bothered to leave her heart in the company of that bloody prat.

Of course he didn't fancy her. Who would? Althea was glamorous in that librarian way, which was the sort of thing pompous gits seemed to admire. And honestly, those two would make an ideal match. They could bore each other to sleep and then have twin babies called 'Rules' and 'Regulations.'

So for the past week, Audrey had been pestering Althea with the supposedly sarcastic question of, "So how's your dearest Percy Weasley today?" And the juxtaposition of 'dearest' and 'Percy' most certainly did not make her blush.

Yet Althea's responses (which circulated around oh-so romantic stammerings and stutterings and sighs) somehow made Audrey want to hug a sofa cushion and burst into hysterics.

She consoled herself by answering endless work owls at ridiculous hours of the night, drinking buckets of (heavily caffeinated) peppermint tea, and shooting metaphorical daggers at the back of Althea's head.

The first time Percy and Althea met in the Leaky Cauldron was the day he had hired her. They had managed to spend somewhere from three to five hours debating the magic carpet issue - one of those topics that had the reputation of being 'controversial' despite the fact that a majority of the general public had no opinion on it whatsoever.

This time, they had come directly after an awful workday, and Althea was in an insanely talkative mood. To put it bluntly...he was about to fall asleep. The only thought in his mind was that the consequences would be horrendous if he actually did fall asleep. Besides that, his mind was completely and utterly blank. So he might as well be asleep.

"Mr. Weasley? Um...Mr. Weasley?"

He snapped awake and fixated on a point just past Althea's left ear. "Yes? Yes...I agree...completely...with..."

Althea scrutinized him, her eye stern. "You're sick, aren't you? Feverish, by the looks of it. You should go home."

Percy blinked, rather dazed. "Me? Sick? No, of course I'm not - "

"The man doth protest too much, methinks."

"Hm? What on earth is - "

"Shakespeare. Hamlet, I think..."

"But who's - "

"Oh, never mind. You're too confused to think, let alone Apparate. I'll take you to the flat." She sighed and shook her head with an experienced air.

Circe's ingrown toenail! Why couldn't she just let him leave? "No, it's fine; I'll just - no, wait! Miss Savage! Honestly - "

"What? You think I want you splinched?" She looked desperately, desperately sad for an instant before reverting to her classic businesslike demeanor. "Audrey'll have some ridiculous thing for you...she's not exactly the 'ministering angel' type, but no matter."

Audrey. (Ministering Angel?) Angel.

He grasped Althea's arm weakly and landed on the doorstep of the flat without any further complaints.

When Percy Weasley again met the eyes of the object of his affections, he was conscious of a rather severe...letdown. He had spent the past week building up a perfectly ideal image of Audrey, and the sight that met his eyes was nothing near expectations.

Her hair formed a (disturbingly becoming) tangle around her elfin features, while her robes were stained with a (most un-becoming) lime green substance. Her eyes, the supposed conduit to the soul, were incredibly bleary - possibly due to the late hour, a severe excess of strong tea, or the hazy smog covering her glasses.

"What on earth happened to you?" burst Althea in utter shock. Percy felt a strong desire to ask the same question.

Audrey sighed. "It's Wednesday," she groaned, as if that acted as an explanation.

"And that is...?" asked Althea, gesturing towards Audrey's robes, in an even more revolted tone of voice.

"It's supposed to be an instant cure for snakebites." She leaned against the side of the doorway and rubbed her left eye with a yawn. "But I think we'll abandon the project, see. It exploded on me! And I couldn't get the stain out of your sofa, and - "

Althea shrieked, for probably the first and only time in her life. She pushed past Percy into the flat, wand drawn.

After a considerably lengthy awkward silence, Audrey managed to look him in the eye. And suffice it to say that the aforementioned letdown wasn't one-sided.

He was literally a hair shorter than Althea. (An Althea in metre-long heels, but that was beside the point.) Not to mention the fact that his robes were a vomit-inducing shade of dark puce. And he gave off an impression of patronizing superiority - why? Because his hair was perfect, his glasses were straight and unsmudged, his eyes were alert, and his hair was freshly brushed. Disgusting.

She spoke first. "And you're here because...?"

"Miss Savage believed I was too ill to Apparate home."

"Ill?" She laughed mirthlessly. "Boredom isn't a disease. Though I'm afraid it's catching. I'd advise you to get out."

Ouch. Audrey could pass for a badly-groomed Venomous Tentacula. So Percy told her just that.

"Leave! I'm serious, I've had a horrendous day and I'm covered in green sludge, so you ought to - " She trailed off into a string of insults.

He rolled his eyes and turned on one heel to leave. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

She stopped her tirade, stunned. "Wait! You know Shakespeare?"

"Actually, I was wondering who the hell - "

The dark cloud vanished from her face. "Come in. I have tea...I hope you like peppermint..."

Bemused, he stepped in behind the beaming Audrey and closed the door shut.