I'm relieved I left my room tidy

Dear Bill,

I’ve always looked up to you, for as long as I can remember. My earliest memories are of following you and Charlie around, trying to join in on whatever you were doing. You rarely let me, as I recall, and I don’t blame you. I was younger and much different than you and Charlie. I had hoped when I was a bit older and our age gap didn’t seem as great, I would be able to join with you more, but it didn’t work out that way. I was still four years younger and much more studious and boring. I don’t blame you for not letting me hang out with you much.

I’m thankful for the times you did, though. Remember in my first year, when you invited me to sit with you and your friends at lunch? You listened to me as I told you about my classes and my friends friend. It was the most anyone other than Oliver had even bothered to talk to me in months.

In fourth year, I wasn’t even sure if I expected you to write after you moved to Egypt, but I was ecstatic when you did. I never told you- I can’t believe I’m even telling you now, but I suppose the embarrassment wouldn’t matter anymore- but I saved every letter you sent me. You didn’t always hang out with me or talk to me very much, but you still treated me like your brother. Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny didn’t even do that.

That’s probably why it hurt so much when you stopped writing.

I know logically you probably just got busy and forgot. You’re a professional curse breaker. You don’t have time to worry about your little brother, especially the one who was always self-sufficient.

I never wanted to be self-sufficient, if I’m telling the truth, but you always were, and I wanted to be like you.

Just before my first year, you were sent a Prefect badge. Funnily enough, I thought it said Perfect, and it made sense because that’s what you were in my eyes. My big brother who could do no wrong, who excelled at everything he did and was effortlessly cool doing so. I wanted to be like that. I wanted Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny to look up to me like they looked up to you, and I wanted Mum and Dad to look at me with pride, like I was something special, something worth being proud of. I wanted you to be proud of me.

I tried… so hard. I became Prefect and Head Boy. I got straight Os, just like you did, and I hoped it would be enough. But I never received the look of pride or admiration you got. I only got more disdain, and Mum and Dad were focused on our siblings, too focused to spare an ‘I’m proud of you’ speech like they gave you.

I wasn’t special. I was just copying you. Maybe, after you became Prefect and Head Boy, it wasn’t even an accomplishment for me anymore, but an expectation.

Maybe I’m just being selfish. I understand you were too busy to write. I understand Mum and Dad were too busy worrying about the twins and Ron and Ginny to spend more time on me. Maybe I deserved to be hated by all of you for wanting so much.

I’m sorry I didn’t live up to you, Bill, and I’m sorry to put more of a burden on your shoulders now that our siblings have one less older sibling to look after them. But you always did a much better job looking after them than I did. I’m sorry I didn’t do a good enough job. I’m sorry I didn’t live up to you.

Love,

Percy

“Bill!” His boss called, making Bill pause in his spell casting and turn. His boss held up an envelope. “Got a letter for you. Says it’s urgent.”

Bill nodded and faced his coworker, Tommen. Tommen nodded and jerked his head towards their boss in a signal to go, starting to wave his wand to pick up on the spell casting where Bill left off. Bill stood, wincing as his knees creaked (he was only twenty-one. Why did he feel so old already?), and walked over to his boss.

Bill accepted the envelope and noticed the red and gold printed Urgent on the front, under the addressee information. In the top corner was the Burrow’s address and his father’s name.

Bill’s stomach dropped. Why would his father be sending him an urgent letter? Was it Ron? Had he gotten into danger again? Or Ginny? After last year… Or the twins? Had one of their pranks gone wrong? Was it his mother? Was it Charlie?

Bill hurriedly ripped open the envelope and pulled out the letter, unfolding it. It was only a few sentences, written in a hurry, judging by how it scrawled messily across the parchment.

Bill,

I don’t know how to write this, but I need to. Percy tried to kill himself. He’s in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts. Please come as soon as possible.

Love,

Dad

Bill almost dropped the letter.

In all his worrying, Percy hadn’t even crossed his mind. Percy was just so… independent, self-assured, always cautious and safe. Bill never dreamed Percy would ever be in any kind of danger, not like Ron with his best friend Harry Potter or the twins with their endless pranks, some of them dangerous. Not like Ginny with her need to prove herself or Charlie with his dangerous profession, just as dangerous as Bill’s.

Even worse, this wasn’t an accident or even an attack. It was self-inflicted, and that was something- even in his worst nightmares- Bill had never even thought he would have to face. One of his siblings hurting themselves… it seemed unfathomable.

Why would anyone… Why would Percy…

Bill had been staring at the letter, and he’d just now realized he’d crumpled it in his hand. He was unsteady on his feet, like the carpet had been yanked from underneath him. His boss was still standing in front of him, concern flashing in his eyes. Bill knew he must look terrible; their boss hadn’t even looked concerned when Lucas’s arms got covered in third degree burns from a curse, simply telling Lucas to “get back to work.”

“M-My brother,” Bill stammered. “He-He…” Bill couldn’t even get it out. There was a lump in his throat, blocking all words, blocking air from entering his lungs.

“Bill,” his boss said, gently, gentler than Bill had ever heard him. “What happened?”

Bill forced the words out, lodging them past the lump in his throat. “My brother tried to kill himself.”

His boss’s expression dropped into one of great sadness. Suicide was rare in the Wizarding World, but it wasn’t unheard of, and regardless of how often it happened, the topic never became less heavy.

“Go,” his boss said.

Bill didn’t even think of arguing or hesitating. His feet came unstuck from the earth, and he turned on his heel and Apparated.

Bill landed outside the Hogwarts grounds and walked straight through the wards. Maybe the wards recognized him as a former student or maybe the wards could sense intentions and knew he meant no ill will. Or maybe Dumbledore had already shifted the magic of the wards to allow him entrance. Bill didn’t care. He just needed to get to the Hospital Wing.

He remembered the way and let muscle memory carry him all the way there, the route programmed into him from seven years at this school. Bill wasn’t in the Hospital Wing often, but Charlie was. His little brother was always getting into scrapes or receiving Quidditch injuries. Then, it had been the twins with their experiments and pranks. Then, Ron with his adventures. Then, Ginny with her bad luck and writing in the wrong journal.

It had never been Percy.

Bill didn’t bother knocking on the Hospital Wing door, swinging it open without preamble. Immediately, every face in the room turned towards him: his parents; his siblings; a teenage boy he recognized as Oliver Wood, Percy’s friend; and a girl he didn’t know.

They were all sitting around a bed, and in the bed was Percy. Percy was paler than he’d ever seen him, paler than a Hogwarts ghost. Even the freckles on his face had seemed to be drained of color, and his lips were as pure white as the rest of his skin. His face was slack, and his eyes were closed. The blankets were pulled up to his chin, including a blue one their parents had given Percy for his birthday years ago. His arms were resting on top of the blankets. His wrists were wrapped in crisp white bandages.

His mother looked at him with watery eyes. “Bill,” she said.

Bill crossed the room in three quick strides to arrive at Percy’s side. The closer he got, his years of curse breaking allowed him to sense the healing and monitoring spells drifting over Percy; he wasn’t a Healer, so he couldn’t have made heads or tails of it if he tried, but he hoped the readings were good. He grabbed Percy’s hand and almost shivered at how cold it was.

“What happened?” Bill asked.

He hoped to Merlin there had been a mistake in the letter. That this had been an accident or some asshole had hexed Percy. Anything but what it was. He knew how to deal with anything else, but he didn’t know how to deal with this. He was out of his depth here.

“He tried to kill himself,” Arthur said, his voice flat and dead as he stared at Percy with eyes so deeply sad, they were almost empty. “He cut his wrists.”

Bill’s eyes drifted to the bandages wrapped around Percy’s arms, and he spotted a small dot of red on the bandages. Now that he knew what they were from, he couldn’t handle it. He sunk into a chair beside Percy’s bed.

“Oliver found him,” Fred continued. For the first time in his life, Fred Weasley was not loud or rambunctious or outgoing. He was quiet and serious and reserved, seeming to shrink into himself when everybody turned to him. “He called for help. George and I came running. We saw…” Fred’s voice broke, and it took him a moment to keep going. “We got Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey, and they brought him here. That was four hours ago.”

“He’s in a coma, something about his magic trying to keep him alive and exhausting itself,” Molly said, and she swallowed a sob, trying to stay strong for her children

“Why would he…” Bill couldn’t say the words. The lump in his throat was back. The word were too horrible to even say out loud.

Suicide. His brother had attempted suicide.

Bill didn’t know much about suicide, but he knew you must be in a great deal of pain to be willing to kill yourself to escape it. He had always thought people who killed themselves had no one to go to and had just gotten tired of carrying the pain on their own. But Percy had people. He had them! So why had he…

“We don’t know,” George whispered. It was the first time he’d spoken in hours, and his voice was gravely.

Everyone was quiet for a moment, all of them asking the same questions. Why would Percy try to kill himself? Why hadn’t he come to them? And would they ever be able to ask him?

Oliver shifted and reached into his robes, pulling out a stack of envelopes. “I, um, I found these,” he said, and everyone turned to him. Oliver seemed uneasy being the center of attention, which was ironic because he was the Quidditch captain and was used to a lot of attention.”On Percy’s desk,” he added. “They’re letters, addressed to, well, all of us.”

He held up the letters to show them. The one on top said Mum.

“He wrote letters,” Arthur whispered, seemingly in realization. Bill wondered what he had realized.

Strangely enough, it was his youngest sibling who figured it out, but Ginny, even at only twelve years old, had always been smart.

“He took the time,” she said, horrified. “He planned this.”

The girl Bill didn’t know nodded. “Oliver and I think he was planning this for at least a few days.”

The cries Molly had been holding back broke free in a tidal wave, bursting out in heaving sobs. She buried her head in her hands, and her back shook with the force of her crying. Arthur tried to rub her back, but he was somewhere else, his eyes staring distantly at nothing.

An invisible fist punched Bill in the gut. His baby brother… Percy had made a plan. It shouldn’t have surprised Bill; Percy was always a planner. But this wasn’t his study schedule or Prefect rounds or his reading list! It was… Percy had planned his suicide.

How long had he been thinking about it? How long had he gone without telling them?

“Can I have a minute with him?” Bill asked before he even realized he was going to ask.

Arthur nodded. “Of course, Bill. I think we all need a minute.” He was staring at his own letter, at Percy’s neat, practiced, perfect handwriting on the envelope.

They all left the Hospital Wing, and Bill opened his letter carefully, pealing away the seal and pulling out the parchment inside.

He cried when he read the letter, realizing these might be his brother’s last words to him, and they weren’t even spoken.

What were Percy’s last spoken words to him?

In Egypt, over the summer.

Bill had simply said, “See you later,” to Percy when his parents and siblings were about to leave.

Percy had smiled, but it seemed tight, forced. “Of course. I look forward to it,” Percy said, always so formal, even with his own family.

Had Percy been thinking about killing himself even then?

Percy didn’t know what else to do. He hadn’t been able to brave returning to the Hospital Wing after he initially woke up on the floor of it. He didn’t want to face his family and the disappointment they must surely be feeling. So he wandered for a bit and then, with nothing else to do, he followed his usual schedule.

Transfiguration class in the morning. Professor McGonagall was lecturing on Animagi today, and it was very interesting, but Percy couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t stop thinking of his own body up in the Hospital Wing, and he was hyper aware that nobody could see him after a few people walked through him. However, nobody sat in his seat, and Oliver’s seat beside him was also empty. Every now and again, Percy could catch people stealing glimpses at his seemingly empty chair and looking through him.

Next was History of Magic. Even Percy was not immune to the sheer boringness of the class. If he could, he would’ve fallen asleep, but he didn’t seem able to, either because of his rushing thoughts or as a side effect of… whatever this was. Percy was aware he could’ve gone anywhere, that no one was counting his attendance for the day, but there was something comforting in the routine. Like Percy was regaining a minuscule amount of control in an uncontrollable situation.

At lunch time, Percy wandered the halls. Something in him must have been drawing him to the Hospital Wing because when he looked up from the stone floors (which should’ve been cold on his bare feet, but if they were, he didn’t feel it), he found himself at the door to the Hospital Wing.

His family was there now, sitting around outside the Hospital Wing door. Had Madam Pomfrey kicked them out? They were all holding envelopes, and when Percy looked closer, he recognized his own handwriting on the front of each. The letters he’d written. They’d found them.

Now, they could know how sorry Percy was— for everything.

His mother was sobbing, and his father was trying to comfort her. Percy had to look away. When he made the decision, he knew she would be the only one in his family to miss him, and he hated to hurt her so much. But it really was for the best. He couldn’t let her down anymore if he was gone.

Percy couldn’t watch anymore. He turned away and pushed open the door. Nobody seemed to notice, which confused Percy. Penny could notice a chair move, but his family couldn’t notice a door open? Percy marked that question in the For Later category. Percy had enough to worry about without even more of an existential crisis.

His body was still in the same bed, exactly where Percy had left it, but now, Bill was sitting at his bedside.

What was Bill doing here? Shouldn’t he be in Egypt? Percy figured Bill would come back for the funeral, if only out of obligation, but Percy wasn’t dead yet, so why was Bill here?

“Hey, Perce,” Bill said, and he wiped at his eyes, smearing water across his cheeks.

Percy was stunned. He’d never seen Bill cry before, not as long as he could remember, anyway.

“Quite a letter there,” Bill said, and Percy noticed he was holding the letter Percy had written him in his hands. “How long have you been planning this?”

How long had Percy been planning this? In technical terms, he guessed, he’d only been planning it for three days, but he’d been thinking about it long before that— how he would do it, what he would write in the letters. Nothing in his plan ever mentioned wandering around like a ghost while still being alive. Nothing in his plan ever mentioned surviving.

“You must’ve been in… so much pain,” Bill whispered. “And you never said anything.”

“I didn’t know how,” Percy said, even though Bill couldn’t hear him.

“Why? I’m sorry I stopped writing, Percy. I just… got busy and forgot. I know that’s a bullshit excuse, but it’s true, and I’m so sorry.” Bill was rambling now, the words gushing out. “But if you had told me you were thinking about… if you had told me you were hurting, I would’ve dropped everything, I swear.”

Somehow, Percy doubted it. If Bill had taken the time to read any of his letters, he would’ve known Percy was being bullied, that their younger siblings were being relentless. Maybe Percy was being stupid, but he had hoped Bill would read between the lines and see that there was something more going on, but Bill hadn’t even bothered to read his letters. They were probably sitting unopened in a drawer somewhere or, even worse, in the rubbish bin.

Bill wiped at his eyes again, but every time he wiped away the tears, more rose to replace them. He seemed to give up and just let them fall.

“Just because I didn’t have time to reply doesn’t mean I don’t care. I was just stupid and got my priorities out of whack,” Bill said. “But I read every letter you sent me, Perce.”

Percy looked up from the floor. He wanted to call Bill a liar, but Bill wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway.

“On my birthday one year,” Bill continued. “You drew a picture of me breaking curses. I promise, it’s not as glamorous and badass as your picture made it seem, but the fact that you saw me that way, like I was so cool and confident—“

Aren’t you? Percy thought.

“It meant the world to me, Perce. I still have it, hanging in my office,” Bill said.

Was Bill just trying to make him feel better? Percy was thirteen when he drew that picture; why would Bill keep a stupid, useless drawing?

“You stopped drawing after that. I always meant to ask you why, but…” Bill trailed off, and frustration flashed across his face. “I was so focused on making a name for myself that I forgot what was really important, and I hate myself for it.”

Percy’s favorite things had been drawing and writing for the longest time, filling notebooks with stories and poems and sketches. When he was thirteen, he realized they were useless hobbies. Percy wasn’t going to make anyone proud by being an artist or a writer. It was better to focus on becoming a Prefect and Head Boy, getting the best grades possible, and someday landing a job at the Ministry (even though he knew he would hate it).

“You didn’t have to be like me for us to be proud of you, Percy. You just had to be you,” Bill said emphatically.

Be himself? Nobody liked stuck-up, prat Percy. Everybody loved Bill; their parents saw him as their pride and joy, and their siblings looked at him like he hung the stars. Percy had always wanted to be like Bill, following in his footsteps at every turn, hoping it would earn him the same pride and admiration Bill received. But it was never enough. Percy was never enough.

“We should’ve told you that. We should’ve made sure you knew how much we care. I’m sorry that we didn’t,” Bill said.

Bill kept saying he was sorry. Guilt gnawed at Percy’s insides. The point of the letters hadn’t been to make everybody feel guilty. It was to explain even a fraction of the reasons for Percy killing himself and to tell them he loved them.

His family was partly the reason, but even if the twins hadn’t been insufferable, even if Ron and Ginny cared, even if Bill and Charlie didn’t ignore him, even if their parents were proud of him… things probably would’ve still ended the same. Percy couldn’t explain the darkness in his mind, the invisible Dementor sucking out his soul every day. He didn’t know why life was so hard for him when it was easy for everyone else, and there was no way he could put any of it into words.

He loved his family more than life itself. He never wanted them to blame themselves because it wasn’t their fault. Percy was the problem. He had wanted to spare them having to deal with him, to keep the burden from falling to them. He hadn’t succeeded. If anything, the letters had placed a greater burden on their shoulders.

Even after his suicide attempt, Percy was still messing up.

Percy was jerked out of his self-loathing by the door opening. He pulled his eyes away from Bill and turned towards the doorway.

“Charlie?” Bill and Percy said at the same time.