The Coming Out of Percy Weasley

The Coming Out of Percy Weasley

Chapter One

Magazines

It was a bristling summer day in Diagon Alley, where the warm sunlight touched Percy’s skin in a just-so-right manner, and the warmth sent shivers down his spine. They talked about that kind of summer day in books. It had the mild temperament of a carefree summer romance and a sun shining so bright that Percy’s father’s hair looked as golden as a Galleon straight out of Gringott’s. As Percy tried to make an important decision (cherry vs raspberry ice cream), he felt beads of sweat run down his neck and form across his hairline. His father turned to confirm his mum was still in the shops.

Arthur had gotten him a scoop of each and told him to hurry and scoff it before she returned. Percy turned away from the shops so his mother wouldn’t see him eating two scoops of ice cream when he was only allowed one.

His small back rounded as he took in the sights before him: laughing, happy children, running crups the colour of snow, talkative couples, and the interlocking hands of parents who loved each other. People walked down long cobblestone roads, shopping bags in their hands as they conversed. Vendors advertised their reduced-price goods. Shops were adorned with rows of tiny white-and-blue flowers. His hands felt sticky and clammy underneath the English heat.

He continued surveying Diagon Alley with his curious eyes when he saw them.

They were in the alleyway across from the shop where his mum was. The alley was dim, but the summer sun made it easy to spot them. It was two men in the alleyway in long black coats that weren’t suitable for the weather. They were both around his father’s age, holding each other and kissing. It was the first time he’d seen anything like that, and Percy was immediately flooded with questions.

Could two men kiss? Why were they in the alley when he’d seen his parents kiss outside? Why hadn’t he seen this before?

He looked up from his ice cream cone and at his father. But before he could say anything, Arthur pulled away from the scene as if he’d witnessed a crime. But Percy had seen people kiss before. He’d seen one couple almost getting undressed outside near a pub. They didn’t have to do it in a dirty alley, that was for sure.

He turned to ask his father his questions, but the disgust on Arthur’s face made him shudder. He had never seen him look like that, not even when he’d found Fred and George’s manky socks or tossed a loaf of mouldy bread in the rubbish bin. His father had his lip curled and a wrinkled nose as he moved away. He had made a face like he’d eaten something sour and wanted to spit it out. He’d even made a sound with it. It was the first time he’d seen that look on his father’s face.

Percy would remember that face every time he fell asleep for the next twenty years.  

Seasons changed as frequently as his mother changed the curtains in the Burrow. The years passed like sand in Percy’s fingers, so fast that he barely had time to see them shine in the sunlight. Six and then sixteen within a fortnight. It was just a few days before the winter holidays, and Percy was trying to wank off to images of Charming Cunts magazine like every other bloke in Gryffindor, but the task was more laborious than a six-inch essay from Snape.

You should be looking at breasts, he told himself. Whenever he looked at a female form, his eyes looked at anything but. Meanwhile, even his fourteen-year-old brothers had difficulty not looking at girls’ chests in their classes. It is a very normal thing for a sixteen-year-old boy to do. Look at women’s breasts all day long. That’s what Bill and Charlie did when they were your age.

He had broken up with Penelope after all the awful sex he’d kept on trying to avoid. The acidic taste in the back of his mouth signified his displeasure at the thought of it. Whenever he imagined their sweaty bodies touching, he felt like upchucking his breakfast of porridge oats and toast. Tea sloshed in his stomach along with his stomach acids. Bad.

Penelope was extremely attractive by his House’s standards—even Ginny thought she had to comment on how pretty she was and how she could do much better than him. Every time they were on prefect duty together, she had her tongue rammed down his throat before he could persuade her to go for a gentle stroll. It was exhausting being a typical teenager in a normal relationship. And he couldn’t imagine why all the blokes he knew wanted to get their willies into their girlfriend’s inkpots. The amount of work! It was exhausting having an active sex life on top of all the homework that he had to do!

Percy leaned back into his bed, sighing deeply. He tried to masturbate often but found the task so futile. Whenever he closed his eyes, he tried to envision Penelope’s soft and pliable E’s in his hands. Gryffindors around him often slapped his arm whenever they caught Penelope giving him a chaste kiss near the hallway, talking about her tits and arse—which he had not even noticed until they’d commented on it. Whenever he heard the boys around him whooping like he’d gotten a prize, he grew ill. He thought that it might be because he did not see women as objects, but he…

He shook his head. Of course, he found his ex-girlfriend attractive. He found his ex-girlfriend extremely attractive!

He just didn’t want to objectify her. He respected her as a person and would require her consent before he envisioned his ex-girlfriend in such a degrading manner. It made perfect sense. And he would never bring up such a thing to Penelope because he was a perfect gentleman.

Satisfied with that, Percy put away the copy of Charming Cunts, looking down at the limp cock in his hands. As hard as marshmallows. He pulled up his pants and buckled them, ignoring the sound that came when he heard his roommate, Oliver, walk into the room. His eyes were glued to Oliver’s muscular back for a few seconds.

“Sorry,” Oliver said, his ears turning red being caught trudging in mud in their dorm room. “I’ll clean it up after. Good read? Whatever it was you were reading before…”

“A magazine,” Percy said gruffly.

“A magazine?” Oliver looked intrigued. “Didn’t think you were the magazine-reading type. What kind of magazine? I’m subscribed to Broomstick Weekly. Well, you know that, considering the weekly owls.”

Percy didn’t answer that, but he realised Oliver was waiting for an answer. And he was awful at lying.

“Uh…” Percy stammered. “You know what kind. The risqué kind.”

“What does that mean?” Oliver said. He furrowed his eyebrows. “Oooh. That…that kind of magazine. Well—um—that’s not usually how people tell other people that they’re looking at porn, but I suppose you’re not exactly everyone else.”

“It’s not that. It’s…” Percy continued to grow redder. “Alright, maybe it is that. It’s a perfectly normal thing to do.”

“Well, I won’t bother you,” Oliver said. “I was just leaving anyway. I was just picking up my water bottle.”

Droplets of sweat ran down as he trudged mud all over their room. The scent of manly sweat and mud mixed in to create this perfume that Percy came to associate with him. Something earthy, musky and damp. It was so very real that Percy got lost in his thoughts whenever he smelled it.

He was in and out of the room in less than three minutes, but Percy felt a crimson heat find its way to his cheeks.

He paled when he noticed that his cock had hardened. He shivered underneath the duvet, blinking rapidly. His nausea grew faster than flowers from the tip of his wand; an unrelenting sensation in the pit of his stomach. This meant nothing.

This will mean nothing. This will mean nothing forever.

He imagined Oliver’s disgust if he knew what had happened. He wouldn’t want to room in with him any further. Nobody would. Percy felt the sickness rising in his chest and hid himself with another layer of blanket for his shame. He was not that. He was nothing of that kind.

But if Oliver thought he might be, he might feel shy about being in various shades of undress around him in the room. He might suddenly start being awkward whenever Percy would look at him for longer than just a few seconds. He might start hiding himself with layers of blankets and running out of the door whenever Percy entered the room. Worst of all, he might demand to be in a separate dorm room. And if he did, then McGonagall would want to know why. And then he’d say it out loud, his suspicions… and when he did, the whole of Hogwarts would know within the hour. And then the Ministry would know about his preference, not his predilection but his perceived predilection. 

And then every sense of normality he’d been working towards would have disappeared into the ether. He’d heard of the treatments. He’d heard of the camps that they might take him to or the potions they could make him drink that could give him heart failure. Percy’s eyes watered, his throat constricting.

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t that. There was no way.

Maybe he just didn’t like large breasts.

He tried to go to sleep, but the sleep wouldn’t come, no matter how hard he tried. He stayed awake, staring at the ceiling with watery blue eyes, trying not to think about the History of Magic essay due in two weeks. He’d written most of it, but he still would rather have it done than looming over his head all the time.

It was Friday night, and everyone else was anywhere but their dorm rooms. He imagined Hogsmeade was full of students bristling in and out of shops with Galleons their parents had given them. His stayed in a tiny white pouch, saved in case of emergencies. He pressed his head against the pillow, which smelled heavily of the sandalwood cologne Percy put on regularly. His tired flannel-pyjama-clad body felt older than its sixteen years. He blinked and closed his eyes when he heard the sound of the door again.

Percy wasted a few more hours sitting down, his head cottoning as thoughts raced through it. He was thinking a lot—too much—but his thoughts raced too fast for him to latch onto anything meaningful. He was just a body pressing against the bed, a mass of limbs and an overstimulated nervous system. Then he heard the sound of the door being thrown open, and a cold gush of wind came in, letting Percy shiver from where he sat. He heard the clinking of glass bottles.

He turned to the side and pretended to be asleep, hearing the indistinguishable sounds of boyish laughter from what he was sure was his twin brothers, Oliver Wood and two nameless Gryffindors he saw hanging around them.

“Hey, hey, quiet!” Oliver said. Percy imagined him putting his hand up to get the twins’ attention. “Your brother’s asleep.”

“My brother?” George echoed, groaning. “What’s he doing in bed? Even Aunt Muriel doesn’t fall asleep this early. Doesn’t he have—I don’t know—a Transfiguration assignment he needs to be working on or something?”

Percy could distinguish the twins just by hearing them. George’s voice was slightly higher pitched than Fred’s.

Fred scoffed. “Probably finished it,” he said. “It’s so close to the holidays. Even Snape’s not been doling out assignments.”

“Bloody pathetic,” George said. He could imagine his brother shaking his head.

He was pathetic. He didn’t have any worthwhile plans on a Friday night. His brothers and sister wouldn’t want to spend time with him now that they were reunited with their real mates. He was too tired to work at his assignments, and had read all that he found interesting in the library. His mind was riddled with information that he couldn’t share with anyone.

The rest of his time was taken up with nothing. He didn’t have inspiring Quidditch games or intricate hobbies to pursue. He had spent most of his day trying to figure out how to masturbate like every other boy his age.

“He has that bird to shag up, don’t he? I’d be with her,” one of the nameless Gryffindors said. He had a thick accent that Percy knew wasn’t from Devon or London. He was so bad at identifying accents that he might not as well be English for all he knew. The first he’d met Oliver, he’d mistaken his Scottish drawl for a Welsh accent because they were both so thick.

“Aye, that Penny bird,” the other one said. “Fucking hell. If me bird had tits like that, I’d be in ‘er bed e’ry night.”

“Don’t know what a girl wants to do with Perce,” Fred scoffed. “It’s not like he’s exciting or anything.”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Oliver said. He heard the uncorking of the bottle, and Percy was sure that Oliver was drinking from it because there was a pause before he spoke again. “I mean, he’s not over-eager like the rest of you lot. You’d probably have your pants unzipped as soon as your bird tells you that she might be interested in some foreplay. He’s got manners and the like. I don’t know—think girls like that sort of thing more than they like Quidditch.”

“Fucking birds,” one of the Gryffindors said. “What’s more interestin’ than Quidditch?”

“You tell me,” Oliver said. “I mean, I’m better looking than the rest of you sorry arses, and I can’t get me a lass for all it’s worth. They just don’t like to hear about Quidditch strategies for eighteen hours straight. Bet they think that we’re uncouth beasts meant for a Care of Magical Creatures seminar or… fuck. Lost what I was going to say.”

“That’s a’ understatement. Bet you talk about Quidditch when you’re sleepin’,” one of the Gryffindors said.

He was starting to realise that the slurring might not be because of an accent. The stench of liquor hit him. He realised that they’d been drinking. Percy’s throat constricted. He clung to his pillow a little tighter.

“If you lads were wondering,” Fred said, hiccupping. “It probably wasn’t important what Ol was going to say anyway.”

“Extremely unimportant,” Oliver agreed, yawning.

“How’s it like rooming in with our brother for the last four years?” George said. “The topic never came up.”

Percy found that surprising. He half-wondered if his brothers knew he was awake, but he wouldn’t dare move just in case they thought he was asleep. He could feel the sweat pouring down his back. He was lying in a pool of adrenaline.

“It was alright,” Oliver said, which was the most non-committal answer that Percy could think of.

“Alright?” Fred scoffed. “Doesn’t bother you waking up every morning at the crack of arse to write down his daily goals?”

“I wake up round the same time to haul your arses for Quidditch practice,” Oliver reminded him.

George groaned. “Fucking hell,” he said. “Can’t you just wake us up at a normal time? Actually—forget that I said that. I can tell from your face that you’re going to go into your spiel about how this will be our advantage as a Quidditch team and that the Slytherin has the Quidditch field booked at every bloody reasonable time.”

“Good thing you’ve been committing that to memory,” Oliver said.

The conversation eased into Quidditch, and Percy heard the same arguments from Oliver and the twins he’d been hearing for the past four years. Oliver defending Puddlemere United whilst the twins had taken a deliberate shit on every play that they’d ever done. The nameless Gryffindor boys seemed to be on the twins’ side, citing numerous plays that Percy knew in detail because he had no reprieve from Quidditch. If he had a Galleon for every time he heard the twins mentioning the first-ever 1437 Quidditch World Cup, Percy would have exactly twelve Galleons, which was a lot.

He thought they’d never leave, but what had to be ages afterwards, they’d all said their goodbyes and Oliver shut the door behind him. The whole dorm room smelled heavily of alcohol and takeaway chips, though Percy was unsure how the four boys had obtained takeaway chips, considering none of them had left the room. He supposed they must have had it with them all this time. Percy’s stomach grumbled at the leftover greasy scent, fondly recalling the sandwich he had eaten just before he tried to go to sleep.

A few minutes into the silence, he heard Oliver clearing his throat. “You’re a shit liar,” he said out loud.

After a few minutes of composing himself and flushing underneath the sheets, Percy cleared his throat, too.

 “I didn’t want to disturb you,” Percy said. “And I don’t appreciate my brothers being lured into my dorm room by my roommate to get sloshed in the middle of the night. They’re fourteen.”

“I sent them away safely. Just a couple of sips,” Oliver said, his tone light. “Not worried about my safety, huh?”

“You’re almost an adult. I don’t get to tell you what to do,” Percy said. He turned around so that he saw him. He wasn’t dressed in his uniform, which was always surprising for Percy. He wore black trousers and a short button-down white shirt with the first few buttons undone. He could see how bronzed his skin was, probably from all the sun he got running around the Quidditch pitch. He wore the same scuffed-up black loafers he’d owned last year.

“I wish you would,” Oliver said, which was the most surprising thing Percy had ever heard. “Nobody ever tells me what to do. Not even the Professors do. They don’t waste their time with the likes of me. They know I’m not going to be a Transfiguration Professor.” He was twirling a bottle of Ogden’s in his hands. “I don’t know why I drank so much tonight, so you know—or really, at all. Nothing for me to do when you take Quidditch out of the picture.”

“That’s a very honest thing you’ve just said,” Percy said. He would not have the courage to do the same. Why?

Oliver seemed to be contemplating something. He opened his mouth to say it but somehow held himself from doing so. Percy didn’t say anything because he wouldn’t try and force him to say anything he didn’t want.

“You remember those magazines you were telling me about?”

Percy froze. Why was he bringing that up? He was so embarrassed.

“What magazine?” he asked, but he knew perfectly well that he meant the copy of Charming Cunts that he kept under his pillow. Did he want to borrow it? Was this the sort of thing that blokes did with each other? It sounded wrong.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Oliver said.

“What do you want with it?” Percy asked.

He met Oliver’s eyes briefly, and under the dim lighting, his eyes seemed sparkling, probably from the drinks.

“Look, can I just show you something?” Oliver said. He sounded irritated, though Percy was unsure why.

“I suppose,” Percy said. “What is it that you want to show me?”

Oliver opened his mouth again to speak, but there was that silence again. He patted to the bed beside him.

There was a feeling of uneasiness in Percy’s stomach that he ignored as he walked over to Oliver’s bed and sat beside him. Sitting so close to another person made Percy feel so nervous. He could feel the heat emanating from his body and smell the acidic, sour taste of the alcohol on his breath. Their bodies looked so different, so close up to each other, in a way that made Percy feel like he couldn’t be human because Oliver looked so normal. His face was so much rounder than his, his eyes much bigger and darker. He could hear him inhale; the warmth added to the air when he exhaled.

“We don’t look very alike, do we?” Percy asked. It wasn’t him putting either of them down. They just did.

Oliver nodded his head. “You fucking giant,” he said, half-snorting at the end. “Think your neck will collapse before you’re forty with all the looking down you do. Not cause you’re an arrogant shit like your brothers think you are.”

“Yes, I understand the sentiment you’re trying to convey. I’m tall,” Percy said, watching Oliver laugh. “What?”

That was the first time the thought entered Percy’s mind that maybe Oliver was too drunk for a conversation with him.

“Do you want any?” Oliver said, gesturing to the mostly empty bottle of Ogden’s.

“What do you think?” Percy asked.

“Hey, you could just say no,” Oliver said. This time, his voice held no irritation.

“Right,” Percy cleared his throat. “Well then… no.”

“You’re different than everyone else,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “Different.”

What was that supposed to mean? And how was Percy supposed to respond to that?

“I suppose everyone’s different,” Percy said, frowning.

He expected to spend a few more minutes with a back and forth, with Oliver trying to get him to take a sip from the bottle and Percy refusing, but instead, Oliver just set the bottle next to him on the drawer. He pulled the drawer open and, between Percy’s hands, put in a magazine. When Percy looked down at it, he blanched white.

“What is this?” Percy said, his voice rising loudly.

“That’s mine,” Oliver said. “My porn.”

So many emotions hit him at once. Disgust, anger, hurt, and betrayal. He was holding a magazine in his hands, a magazine of scantily dressed men with much bigger muscles than his own. Their arse cheeks looked like a painter had carved them. Every drop of sweat seemed to be exaggerated. They were in scandalous positions that he knew men should not be in. Heat rose to his cheeks as fast as he could feel a warmth between his thighs. He looked away.

“It’s… well…uh…” Oliver said quietly, and his voice was so soft and low that Percy felt all his feelings suddenly evaporate into shame. When he blinked, he could feel tears burning into his eyes, and when he looked at Oliver, he saw it in his, too.

“Why are you showing me this?” Percy’s voice was louder still.

“You know why,” Oliver said. “You know.”

“No, I don’t,” Percy insisted.

“I lived with you for four years,” Oliver told him. “I know we’ve never talked. Fuck, I don’t know why, because…I think you’re the only other person I’ve meant that’s…that’s like me. The only one I’ve been able to peg, anyway. And then I started to think…well, when I saw you, I felt…”

I’m not like you! I’m nothing like you! Percy wanted to shout back at him, but his throat was on fire.

“You can’t say these things, Oliver!” Percy told him. “They’ll—they’ll… lock you up. They’ll feed you those potions that make you into a corpse. They’ll kill you for it.”

Oliver’s voice cracked. “Why?”

“Because… because it’s unnatural,” Percy told him.

“What you feel…does it feel unnatural?” Oliver asked. “Because we’re not different. We’re not…”

Percy continued shaking his head. “No, what you’re saying it’s madness. It’s—”

“I like you, okay? I mean, in that funny, unnatural way you just said,” Oliver suddenly said. “And maybe I made it all up in my head. Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you do like Penny. Maybe you’re going to tell everyone now and I am going to be locked up tomorrow. It sounded like a good idea when I started, but…fuck… I’m so fucking drunk.”

Percy didn’t realise, but when he looked down, he held Oliver’s large, clammy hands.

“I don’t know what to do,” Percy said. He didn’t realise he was shaking until Oliver held his hands.

“Give me a chance,” Oliver said.

“Do you know what they’d do …if they found out?” Percy reminded him.

“I think you’ve already established that they’ll kill us,” Oliver said with a slight chuckle. But it wasn’t funny. It was so totally real and terrifying. Percy didn’t want them to die just because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. “But what else are we supposed to do, Percy? Are you going to settle down with a nice British girl a couple of years from now? Let her give you a couple of pretty ginger kids, go to work and come back to have dinner together in your perfectly normal and vacant life? Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” Percy said, but as he said it, he could feel the hole inside him grow.

It was what he should want. It was what he wanted to want for himself. Percy stared at him, his eyes locked onto his face. He was born a traditionalist in a traditional family. His father came home every night at around six in the evening. His mother had already had the plates out and had saved the largest serving of the steak and kidney pie for him. They were all so happy.

“It won’t make you happy,” Oliver said as if he could hear Percy’s thoughts.

“You don’t know that,” Percy said.

“But I do,” Oliver said. “And you do, too. Please just… kiss me.”

His resolve broke. His body seemed to cave in on itself; his sobs broke out into the room so loud that he was sure that the whole of Scotland could hear him. He felt Oliver’s warm, calloused hands around him so fast. He held him firmly as if they’d been in that position all along. Percy was so close to him that he could feel his heart beating.

“I can’t kiss you,” Percy said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I am ridiculous. Look at me, Perce. I’m wearing shoes that are too big for me. I look like a clown,” Oliver said.

Percy kept shaking his head. Through the tears and the anger, he reached out to grab Oliver’s face and kiss him. Then he wished he never had because the minute he did, he knew he would fall in love with him.