But I'd be too busy on working days
Charlie and Bill sat outside the hospital wing. Their parents had gone inside a while ago, along with Ginny. Ron was with Harry and Hermione somewhere, and neither of the twins seemed ready to go in yet. Bill and Charlie understood. It was hard to see their brother like that, even as adults, and Fred and George not only had to see Percy in that hospital bed, but they’d seen him bleeding out in his dorm room. Nobody could blame Fred and George for not being ready to go into the Hospital Wing. Penelope and Oliver hadn’t left since Oliver found the letters.
“So. You’re Percy’s friend,” Charlie said to Penelope, if only to break the silence.
Penelope nodded. “Since my first year. He helped me with Transfiguration, and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Charlie nodded. He hesitated before asking the question he’d been dreading the answer to.
“Penelope, Oliver,” he said, and they both turned to him. “How bad did the bullying get? I knew Percy got teased a lot, but I had no idea how bad it was.”
Anger flashed across Penelope’s expression. “How could you not notice?”
“Penelope,” Oliver said, trying to calm her down. He placed a hand on her arm, but she shrugged him off.
“Marcus Flint was putting Percy in the Hospital Wing every other week!” Penelope exclaimed. “Bruises, cracked ribs, broken bones, a concussion, you name it! The Ravenclaws hated him because he was smarter than a lot of them, and you don’t want to know some of the things they said to him, calling him a waste of space and worthless and telling him he would peak in Hogwarts and go no where in life. Even the Gryffindors insulted him, both behind his back and to his face— teacher’s pet, pompous prat, saying nobody wanted him around. And none of you helped at all!” Penelope said, looking at Bill, Charlie, Fred, and George. “Percy could’ve handled everyone else— he shouldn’t have had to, but he could have. What he couldn’t handle was his own family hating him!”
“We don’t hate him!” Fred said.
“We never hated him,” George agreed, the first words he’d spoken in a while.
“Well, you have a funny way of showing it,” Penelope snapped. “Do you have any idea how much Percy has done for all of you?”
They all exchanged confused glances, wondering what Penelope was talking about.
“How many punishments he got you two out of it,” she said to the twins. “All those times you pulled a prank and didn’t get punished. Did you really think the professor’s did that out of the goodness of their hearts? No, Percy was the one who talked to them, saying he would handle you two, and when he tried to scold you, you called him a prat, perfect Prefect, pompous, goody two shoes, teacher’s pet, asking if he had nothing better to do than sticking his nose in your business. He was trying to help you, and he never told you because he knew you wouldn’t believe him!”
Fred and George were in shock.
“He tried to get us out of punishments? But Percy’s such a stickler for rules,” Fred said.
“He didn’t want some of your worst pranks on your permanent record, didn’t want you to ruin your futures,” Penelope said. “Not that you would’ve listened if he tried to tell you that.”
Fred and George stared at the ground, the guilt gnawing at them.
“You ignored him,” Penelope said to Bill. “Do you know how many times Percy tried to talk to you about the bullying? He didn’t even want to at first, but I talked him into it, and you wouldn’t even listen! Percy needed you, needed all of you, and none of you were there. Did you even think of him as your brother?”
“Of course we—“ Bill started.
“Then why didn’t you act like it?” Penelope said.
Nobody had an answer.
“And you!“ she whirled on Charlie. “Not talking to him for all of his second year for something he didn’t do? Do you know how much that broke him?”
“It was the first time he thought of suicide,” Charlie said dully.
That stopped Penelope in her tracks. “W-What?” She stammered.
All eyes were on Charlie now.
“In his letter… his suicide note,” Charlie said because it wasn’t just a letter, and they all knew it. “He said that was the first time he thought of suicide. He thought I hated him. He thought everyone hated him.”
Charlie looked at Penelope with a haunted gaze in his eyes.
“Trust me, Penelope, we’ve realized our mistakes,” Charlie said. “We want to fix it, all of us. We all pushed Percy away, and now, I wonder how much we even really know him. We screwed up, there’s no denying it, and I would swear an Unbreakable Vow right now if I could that if we get the chance, we’ll do better.”
Penelope was quiet for a moment.
“And nothing you can say about us would be worse than what we’re feeling about ourselves,” Charlie said.
Penelope sighed and slumped in her chair, burying her head in his hands.
“We’re all hurting,” she whispered, pulling her hands away from her face so they could hear her. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I just… I’m really scared.”
“We all are,” Bill said.
“But you heard Madam Pomfrey,” Oliver said. “Percy needs all of us right now. We can’t keep blaming each other.”
“I know,” Penelope said.
“We can’t blame ourselves either,” Oliver added, grabbing Penelope’s hand.
Penelope laughed, hollowly, on the verge of tears. “That’s easier said than done,” she said. “You didn’t date him.”
“You didn’t live with him,” Oliver pointed out.
They fell into silence after that, the quiet a heavy cloud pressing down on them. They all felt it, the way it wormed its way into their lungs, suffocating them all. The silence was killing them.
“We don’t know Percy well enough,” Charlie said, facing Penelope and Oliver. “But you two do. Would you tells us about him?”
Nobody missed the way Oliver smiled, his first smile since Percy tried to kill himself, some of the light making its way back into Oliver’s eyes as he began to talk.
“The things is, Percy’s a rule follower, but even he broke the rules sometimes. He just knew how not to get caught. There was this time I convinced Percy to sneak out, and Percy knew where the kitchens were, said he befriended a House Elf that showed him. Well, while we were down there, Filch came looking, something about a portrait snitching about two students out of bed, so the House Elves shoved us into a dumbwaiter, and it shot full speed up to the seventh floor. And that’s not even the best part! The best part was when Mrs. Norris came looking for us. Percy pet her and calmed her down; she even showed us this cool room on the seventh floor. Percy and I call it the Whatever-You-Need-Room. We spent all night there. The next morning, Filch suspected it was us, so he cornered us, and Percy brings out his teachers pet persona, saying something like “Mr. Filch, I’ve literally never even stolen a quill, and you’re suggesting I snuck out of the dorm after curfew? He talked circles around Filch; it was awesome to watch. Filch walked away, feeling kind of stupid. It was epic.“
“Once, Percy and I were in the library when these Ravenclaws came in and started taunting him,” Penny said. “Percy makes eye contact with them and casts augumenti on a book, soaking it. The Ravenclaws are like what the hell, right? Percy yells for Madam Pince, and she runs over. She sees the book, demands to know who did this, and Percy blames it on the Ravenclaws. The Ravenclaws tried to defend themselves, but Madam Pence was not having it. She banned them from the library for a month, and Percy and I actually got to study in peace.”
“I remember the time Percy helped us with a prank. It was only once, but it was a thing of beauty,” Fred said.
“The Slytherins were messing with some Gryffindor first years, so Percy came to us with the idea to prank them,” George continued.
“We couldn’t believe it at first,” Fred said. “But then, Percy hands us some papers. He’d planned out everything. The potion we’d use to change everyone’s appearance, how he’d get it into the Slytherins’ food but not anyone else’s, how we’d blame it on this older Gryffindor who was also bullying first years- even the Hufflepuff first years! Only a monster would do that. He’d thought of everything.”
“He just needed us to make the potion,” George added. “We did, and it was a prank for the ages. Slytherins were stuck as old hags for a few days, and that Gryffindor bully got three months detention! I have a feeling McGonagall knew about the bullying and added a month to his detention because of it. I also have a feeling McGonagall knew it wasn’t him.”
“McGonagall’s a fan of poetic justice,” Fred said, “No matter what she says.”
“I fell off my broom once during a Quidditch game,” Charlie said. “Got hit by a bludger. Percy reacted before any of the professors did. He leaped over people to get to the front of the stands and cast a cushioning charm. Only reason I walked away with only a concussion and not some broken bones. Considering he was a first year, it was an impressive charm. The professors were a little shocked a first year could cast a fourth year charm, and I remember thinking huh, Percy stealing my school books to read them came in handy.”
“So I’m kissing a girl in the fourth floor broom cupboard, right?” Bill starts. “The door opens, and I’m like, just great. It’s Percy, and I’m like even better, right? Percy screamed and covered his eyes, running away yelling my eyes! My eyes! Believe it or not, Percy can have a flare for the dramatic. But he never told anyone. Then, a month later, that girl cheated on me, and Percy cast a spell that turned her into the ugliest person I have ever seen, and she had cheater written across her robes. No matter how many times she changed, it always reappeared. It lasted a whole week. I knew Percy did it because he was the only one who knew we were dating, but Percy refused to admit it, always saying he didn’t know what I was talking about. I got him his favorite candy from Honeydukes for that, and I found a drawing of me in my room with this literal princess and written on it was you deserve better. I never told Percy or anyone I cried a bit, and none of you can either!’ Bill added, pointing to all of them.
They all sat outside the Hospital Wing, exchanging stories about Percy— funny, sweet, heart-felt, good stories that allowed them to forget Percy was lying in a hospital bed, if only for a moment.
Unseen by all of them, Percy sat beside them and listened to all the stories.
He’d always been called a prat, a stick in the mud, nosy, a wet blanket, and he thought that’s how they always saw him. The stories were proving otherwise.
But he didn’t want to dare to hope. He couldn’t bear being hurt and rejected again. He wouldn’t survive it.