Children
They walk to the school together and drop the girls off. Both of the girls hug Oliver in farewell, much to Percy's surprise and Oliver's clear delight. Lucy gives him a longer hug than Molly, lookin gup at the man with large, wide eyes.
"Can we talk about Quidditch again, Oliver?"
Oliver smiles down fondly at Lucy and pats her one the head.
"Of course! Anytime, Lucy. We're on a break right now but we have the first match of the summer in a few weeks. I'll get you some tickets. How's that?"
Lucy just about jumps out of her shoes.
"Really?! Really?!" Her voice goes up an octave or two. Even Molly looks interested at the idea of going to a professional math. Oliver slides his eyes to Percy, giving him a questioning look.
'Oh Oliver, you really don't have to-,"
"Pleaseeeeee, Dad?" the girls whine. Percy smiles and lets out a long, breath.
"If it's no trouble-," Percy starts to say.
"None at all. We all get family tickets and, ah, well I have some extras." Oliver finishes dully. Percy tenses a little, thinking back to what Oliver had shared with him last night. Of course Oliver would have extra tickets- his only immediate family were gone, and most of his friends were already involved in Quidditch themselves.
"Yes!" Lucy exclaims, interrupting Percy mid-lecture as she throws herself at him. He barely manages to catch her in his arms as she squeezes him.
'"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
It takes a few more minutes to get the twins to calm down enough for them to walk into the school, and when they finally do Percy watches them walk inside the doors wistfully. Merlin, they had grown so much. He feels himself getting almost teary-eyed.
"Perce?" Oliver asks gently. Percy shakes his head and sniffs, just once, before turning away.
"They're just so big," he smiles wistfully. "Soon they'll be teenagers. Teenagers, Oliver!"
Oliver smiles and shoves his hands into his pockets, following Percy has he takes off down the street. There's Floo access point around here- Percy take it to get into work.
"With all the boy-crazy, parent-hating that comes with it, huh?"
Percy places a dramatic hand over his hard and pantomimes swooning.
"Stop! I can't handle the idea of them dating. Then they're be dates to Yule Balls and visits to homes over breaks-,"
Oliver laughs, clearly enjoying Percy's exaggerated distress. Percy's half-kidding. His girls are getting taller and older. He swears it was just yesterday he was holding them in his arms. The thought occurs to him that he can't recall the last time he picked one of them up-, it had just happened to be that one day they had just gotten to big for him to carry. He's disheartened to know he can't remember the day that he last carried them.
"I do mean it," Oliver says, drawing Percy from his thoughts.
"Huh?"
"About tickets to the next game. They roll over so I've saved up quite a few over the years."
"Oliver-," Percy starts to say.
"The girls are a delight. I enjoy their company." Oliver says.
Percy raises an eyebrow. "Oh. not mine?"
"Of course not," Oliver says easily, giving Percy a hapless shrug. "The entire time we've been talk I've been thinking about Pygmy Puffs."
Percy burst out laughing. "What?"
Out of all the thing Oliver could have said, Percy certainly wasn't expecting that.
"I can't help it!" Oliver protests. "They're so round and fluffy and soft..."
Percy tilts his head back and laughs joyously.
"Pygmy Puffs?"
"Quite. I Quidditch, and Pygmy Puffs in here." Oliver knocks on on the side of his head lightly with two knuckles. Percy rolls his eyes. It's been a reoccurring them throughout their time at Hogwarts that Oliver had a very one-track mind about Quidditch, He can even recall when they'd lost a match their seventh year and Oliver was dead-set on drowning himself int he showers, the poor bloke. Of course they'd lost due to all that Dementor nonsense, but it was a loss, still.
As they get closer and closer to the Floo, Percy finds himself needing to say something.
“Thank you, Oliver.” Percy says, and he finds that he really means it. ‘The girls adore you. I’ve never seen Lucy eat fruit like that before.” Oliver shrugs and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“One of my teammates kids is a picky eater like that- you learn some tricks after enough babysitting.”
Percy shakes his head in disbelief, huffing. “Yesterday started out as one of the worst days of my life. And you just-, just swooped in and made everything better. I can’t thank you enough.”
They reach the Floo access point. Percy turns on his heels, not quite looking the other man in the eye.
“Thank you, Oliver.”
Oliver nods. He reaches out his hand, hesitating for a moment before placing it gently down on Percy’s shoulder.
“It’s no trouble, Percy. The girls are wonderful. So is-,” he clears his throat. “Right. Well you know where to find me. Have a good day at work.”
Percy can only nod before he walks into the Floo.
His day in the office is long- they’re preparing for the delegation from Japan to make a visit, so he spends most of the day running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He doesn’t get another drunken phone call from Audrey, and he doesn’t get a phone call from the school, either, so it’s a bit of a win. He ignores his lunch break, opting to work through it. Ever since Oliver had placed his warm, calloused hand on his shoulder that morning it feels like Percy’s been tied up in knots.
They were friends, sure. In fact, given everything with his family and going no-contact with Penny, Percy would wager Oliver could be considered his closet friend- but there had just been something in the way Oliver had lifted his hand- hesitating just for a hair before touching his shoulder. Like had had wanted to… to ask permission or something. Like Percy wasn’t something to be handled without anything other than reverence.
He pushes the thoughts down and gets back to work.
It does the trick- work goes by quicker when he’s got stuff to do. He can tell that Seamus is a bit worried for him, popping his head into Percy’s office every few hours, but they’re both so busy it feels like an exercise in futility for them both. When the day is over, Percy’s wondering if Audrey had gotten herself together enough to pick up the girls. She hadn’t called, and neither did the school. It was well past school hours at this point. Still, Percy makes it a point to leave as soon as the clock strikes five.
It’s a quick Floo and short walk to the home. He can make out the lights inside, which is a good sign. As he walks up to the front door, he can hear the sound of giggling on the inside. That tight cord that had been tying his stomach into knots all day releases a bit and he walks in.
The twins are home, sitting on the floor of the den. They’ve got a piece of paper between them and some balled of pieces of paper. Percy squints down at it. There’s child-like scribbling all over the paper.
“Hi girls.”
“Hi dad!” they chorus before going back to their paper.
“What are you doing?” Percy asks, setting his bag down.
“We’re playing Monopoly!” Lucy exclaims excitedly. Percy bends down to get a better look. It’s the game, alright. A homemade version of it- drawn on lined paper with colored pencils and names scribbled into each hand-drawn square. It’s impressive they were able to recreate the board from memory, though.
“Lucy cheated!”
“I did not!”
Percy sighs and break up the fight between his daughters. As they’re getting older, they seem to be stepping on each other’s toes. He wonders if it’s time for them to start thinking about having separate rooms. Percy hadn’t enjoyed sharing his space as he got older- when Charlie and Bill had moved out it was like he’s won the lottery.
“Where’s your mother?” Percy asks. The girls shrug, so Percy wanders into the kitchen. There are ingredients taken out for dinner, but nothing prepared yet. Percy sighs and takes out his wand. His talent with kitchen spells was just about the only thing he had in common with his mother. It’s a quick wave of his wand and a few quiet spells, and the chicken is in the oven, vegetables on a pan to roast, rice steaming in its basket. He casts a timer spell and goes to find Audrey.
She’s in their bedroom. She’s holding a set of clothes in one hand, having clearly just changed from her work attire to a casual sweater and trousers. When she spot him, she smiles serenely.
“Hello Percy. How was work?”
Percy’s jaw drops. In a fluid movement, he shuts the door behind him with a wave of his wand.
“Are you serious right now, Audrey?” he demands. His wife tilts her head curiously.
“What do you mean?”
This was ridiculous.
“Are you really going to play dumb, Audrey? Really?”
“Play dumb- what are you going on about?”
“Yesterday, Audrey! You left the girls at school because you’d be drinking? You’re telling me that doesn’t ring any bells?”
He wife looks at him with a blank face, then her eyebrows raise slightly.
“Oh! Well Percy, I told you I had a work event, and I need you to pick them up.” She says casually. She gathers the clothes in her hands and dumps them into the laundry basket.
“No, you didn’t. The school called and told me you’d forgotten them.”
Audrey raises an eyebrow at him. ‘You forgot them, Percy. You were supposed to pick them up. I told you I needed you too.”
She goes back into the closet and pulls out a suitcase. She casually take out her wand and begins to make the clothes float, folding themselves into neat little squares. Right, Percy had forgotten that. She was due to leave for a work trip this weekend. Maybe he could just let this go, and deal with it when she came back.
Still, Percy’s never felt so damn helpless before. He knows what happened yesterday- he knows- but she’s so... calm. She’s so confident. Had he really-
He shakes his head. “Audrey, you called my office. You were plastered. You were so-,” he doesn’t want to say the word ‘enraged’...
“You were so upset; I couldn’t even bring the girls home. You didn’t notice we weren’t here last night?”
Audrey shrugs as the last of her clothes floats into the suitcase. She zips it up manually.
“I got back late, and I’d thought you’d have gone to bed. That’s why I slept on the couch. I didn’t want to wake you up.”
Percy feels something like rage bubbling up inside him. His wife had gotten too drunk to pick up their children from school, she’d screamed at him over the phone, and now she was denying anything happened in the first place. Percy knew what happened- he knew that’d she been wasted and he’d had to go to Oliver’s.
“Audrey you can’t-,”
“I think you just wanted to see Oliver Wood last night.” She says suddenly. Percy freezes.
“What?”
His wife turns on her heels and looks at him sternly, crossing her arms.
“I said- I think you just wanted to see Oliver Wood last night. And you took the girls.”
He feels off balance- it didn’t make any sense. First, she was saying she’d thought they were all asleep when she came home, but now she was saying she knew they didn’t? Because he’d wanted to see Oliver? He feels his eye begin to ache- a dull thrumming pain bursting behind them.
“I didn’t have a choice- I couldn’t let the girls see you like that-,”
“So you let them see your ex?” she interrupts sharply.
“M-my ex? Oliver and I never-,” he stammers over his words. “We h-hadn’t even seen each other for more than ten years-, w-what-,”
“Spit it out, Percy! First you forget the girls, and now you can’t even talk?”
Percy feels tears start to prickle in the corners of his eyes. This was fair- this wasn’t right- not for him or the girls.
“Audrey why are you talking to me like this? You don’t have to be so cruel.”
“What? I’m not being cruel. I’m just being honest.” She runs her hand through her hair as she takes her suitcase off the bed and brings up the handle. “And if the truth hurts, then it hurts.”
Percy thinks about Charlie’s face when he said he was going back to Audrey. He thinks about the glazed look in Oliver’s eyes when he talked about his parents. He thinks about the smile on Ginny’s face when she told him she was pregnant and asked him to be the godfather.
“Truth doesn’t hurt. The truth is just that- it’s nothing more than a fact. You what is cruel? You.”
“Percy-,”
“No! You choose you be cruel. You choose to be mean. I just don’t know why.”
Percy’s wand buzzes as the timer he set goes off. He lets out a huff of frustration and opens the bedroom door to stalk to the kitchen. When he’s there, he turns off the oven and stove. He’s surprised to hear footsteps behind him. He turns around, seeing that Audrey had followed him into the kitchen, lugging her suitcase behind her.
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
“Audrey, the truth doesn’t yell at me or swear at me or scream at me. It doesn’t hurt me. That’s you!”
“If you can’t handle honesty then don’t ask for it.”
“I can handle honesty. I might not like the truth, but I can accept it. You’re the one who keeps lying and saying it’s the truth that hurts! You’re a liar, Audrey.”
“Don’t talk to me like that! I’m your wife.”
“So why are you talking to me like this, then? Your husband? I love you, Audrey, but you’re not being honest. The truth never hurt me. It’s always been you. You never even apologized for putting me in the hospital. You just kept saying sorry without a reason why.”
“Well, I’m sorry you have so much anger. I’m sorry since everything is my fault.”
“Audrey, I just-, this isn’t a good relationship.” He says finally.
“You don’t know what makes a good relationship, Percy!”
And then she reaches her arms out and shoves him back into the cabinet door. His back blossoms into pain as the fleshly muscle by his spine slams into the handle.
“Audrey!” Percy exclaims- this was the first time since he’d been in St. Mungo’s that’s she gotten so physical with him. He’s so busy staring at her face in abject horror and fear, he doesn’t notice the creaking of the floorboards by the doorway.
“No! You don’t get to talk to me like that, Percy!” she shoves him again, harder this time. His head hits the back of the wall, and he sees stars. She grips his shirt collar, yanking him toward her.
“Calm down, please-,”
She raises her hand and slaps him across the face so hard he lurches to the side, his glasses flying off his face. They clatter to the floor, skidding across the vinyl until the land at the foot of some tiny feet.
It’s like all the wind has been knocked out of him. He doesn’t have his glasses on, but even he knows those feet. He and Audrey freeze as they look up and see the pale, shocked face of their daughter staring up at them.
"Dad?" asks Molly. Her wide eyes dart from Percy, slammed against the cabinet, to Audrey's hands on Percy's collar and then back up at Audrey's face. Hisw ife goes pale as all the color drains from her face.
"We can explain," Percy offers weakly.
He knows Molly doesn't believe him.