The Coming Out of Percy Weasley

The Coming Out of Percy Weasley

Chapter Four

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There were no frightening things anymore, not in the way that Percy was living, at the very least. He wasn’t frightened of any new potions they would give him. He was even far-removed looking at the decapitated photos of children; he was so withdrawn and tired of being nauseous and sick.

He was a new kind of monster that didn’t even flinch anymore when they looked at horrible photos. He was beyond sexuality, beyond the idea of longing for things. He was so far removed that when they’d started getting consistently violent with him, he barely reacted anymore. Not with the excessive use of the Cruciatus spells or them trying to push him, punch him or break his wrist or his legs. He barely moved, anyway. It didn’t matter so much anymore.

The pain was almost welcome, distracting from how his mind had started to forget things. He didn’t remember spells that first years used, the Burrow's colour, or how his mother’s voice sounded. The fact that he was so far removed from reality was more painful than the pain itself; the fact that his hair was matted, his breathing was irregular, and his body seemed to be unable to control itself was worse than anything else.

He wasn’t even sure if he was human anymore; his body looked so weird for a regular human being. He felt like he belonged in a Care of Magical Creatures manual. His stomach protruded so badly, and it was so painfully tense. He could hardly breathe because of how large his stomach was and how swollen his legs were. He could hardly walk from where he slept to where he shat without feeling like he would collapse. His pants were too tight on him, his band painfully cutting into his abdomen (part of it had even ripped). Even with the parts he’d cut from his pants, it was still too tight, and his shirt was so loose for the top that he felt like a child dressed in his father’s clothing.

He couldn’t lie down flat anymore without feeling like he was drowning. He had to sit up straight all the time and the few hours of sleep he’d gotten was with specific positions. He used to try and pull his knees and place his head on his knees, but it didn’t work anymore because of how huge his stomach was and how swollen his knees were. Instead, he leaned his head back to his shoulder and fell asleep that way, with his hands holding the taut skin of his abdomen.

He could not grasp concepts of things anymore. So much of his time disappeared through his fingers. He never thought he’d miss the overthinking, that there was something so much worse. These days, Percy knew that things could be so much worse, and he was never surprised. He wasn’t surprised when his urine started to smell sickly sweet and when they gave him things to inject into his body because he had become diabetic. He wasn’t surprised when he started to have chest pains, and he was given blood-thinning potions because he’d had a heart attack. The painful feeling in his legs, when he walked, was a combination of his blood sugars being uncontrolled and the fact that he was in an acute state of heart failure.

He could tell that even if he were let out, he would never fix those things again; they’d be there forever. He knew that he had a reduced life expectancy. He knew that he was going to die much younger than he was supposed to. Percy didn’t know the others that were with him, but he’d heard that some of them were dying, too. He had wondered which of them would be the first to go out.

He had hoped that it would be him.

Other than the first letter he had gotten, Percy wasn’t too shocked that there weren’t any others. He wasn’t sure if it was because his family was tired of trying to get him back or the ward wouldn’t let them. He didn’t care which one it was. He wouldn’t be surprised if it had been two weeks, two months, two years, or even twenty because he felt so old. It didn’t matter too much anyway. He was so devoid of any real stimulation that he didn’t mind even being shouted at or hurt anymore as long as something was interacting with him.

He had come to know each person who worked in that unit, even though they had never told him who they were and what they did. He had his favourites even, though he wasn’t sure why because none of them treated him nicely. It was just who treated him the least unpleasantly. Once, one of the nurses called Bethany had snuck him in an extra slice of toast. Bethany didn’t work there anymore, but he was still grateful for it and thought about it often.

Percy often wondered if he was being punished for being so ungrateful in his former life. He had never felt grateful before when he’d been sat at his mother’s breakfast table, angry that his brothers had eaten most of the things before him. Percy would probably murder a cat for the scraps now. He wasn’t beyond that anymore. He was too hungry to care about anything living thing, eating food that belonged to him, and how horrible of a person did that make him? 

Was this who he was? Was he the horrible person who came out in desperate times? Was that why he was the sick one? Because normal people didn’t think of those things, even when most desperate…

But then a letter did come, which surprised him because he wasn’t expecting any. Percy didn’t even bother reading the first letter anymore. He’d waited until the nurse was gone and slowly peeled away the second letter from the first—this one was more intricately placed, and it took him more than a few tries to get it right. He slowly read the letter, feeling his brain being nourished by things like thoughts and questions, beautiful things.

There were colours with the words he had read, and he was so thirsty for them that he gulped them down. The sharp wittiness of an A, the confused didn’t-know-where-they-were-exactly B, the simple straight lines of a C…

Hey, Perce, it’s Charlie. You’ve not got one of these in a while, huh? We’ve not been able to send anything to you because of the arseholes at the gate telling us off because we’ve tried to sneak in a few times. But I don’t think there will be a problem soon. There’s going to be a reform we think. It’s the new Ministerial elections soon and the bloke, he’s on your side. He doesn’t think that what you’ve got is a disease, Perce, just a preference and that throwing you away into an institute because you like blokes is just as mental as throwing you away because you like strawberry rhubarb (but that stuff is rather disgusting, isn’t it? Don’t get people that like strawberry rhubarb, but I’ve not locked them away in a unit and made any kind of visitation impossible.)  

George said he mentioned in the last letter that Mum and Dad were divorcing. They’re divorced now. Dad lives in a flat somewhere in Devon. We’re not sure where because we’re not allowed to see him—I’m not sure if I want to see him, but I miss him sometimes, even though I think that’s the wrong thing to say given what he’s done to you. Mum’s gotten so unpredictable after you’ve gone. She’s spent your last birthday crying so badly that I felt like she was going to pass out. She just wants you back so badly. She keeps saying every day that she won’t let you spend another birthday in there. I hope she’s right. Your birthday’s only two months away, and it’s hard to wonder if things will change soon.

We all have pictures of you in our wallets and trunks. I think it’s because we’re afraid we’ll forget what you look like. It’s been so long since we’ve heard you speak. I wish I could hear you talk about anything, even if it’s just you telling us about how angry you are about how everything’s turned out or if it’s just about Ministry policies or anything. I don’t think we’d mind if you don’t talk to us because you’re fuming. We just want to see you again.

Before you left, I don’t remember the last time that we hugged or talked to you or any of that. I’m so angry at myself, you know. We all are. I promise, Perce, when we get to see you again, I’m going to talk to you all the time. I’m going to hug you too. I wish we knew then that we didn’t treat you the best. The other day, Mum asked us aloud if we knew your favourite colour so that she could make you a jumper. But none of us knew. Then I realised I can’t tell anything of yours that’s important or a favourite. We probably all have the same base-level things about you as everyone else. That’s not right. We should know everything about each other, which makes me feel like having to tell you something strange about me that nobody else knows, which is that I’m still a virgin (I’ve not told anyone that. They’ve always assumed that me, Charlie, good-looking one and fit body, probably has been together with someone. But I’ve not.)

Yeah, I’ve not written jumper accidentally… Mum’s gone properly mental. I don’t know what kind of jumper she wants to knit you—a summer jumper or something. You know what Mum’s like—and nowadays, she’s even worse because she’s always got to be busy. As if arguing with Dad about money every week, going out to the shops and making about thirty variations of soup for lunch isn’t enough. I said you probably don’t know, but you do because you’re the kind of person that does. But we don’t know.

I’ve mentioned it before, but how little we know about you has shocked me. I don’t know your favourite Quidditch team or if you like scones with clotted cream, jam, or both. I don’t know many things about you because we’re sick of hearing you always talk about school. I think that the reason you’ve not been able to let go of that stuff is because we don’t stick around long enough to let you remember there’s more important stuff.

When you come home again, we’ll do things that you like, too. You can finally teach me how to play chess. You’ve always wanted to teach me like you’ve taught Ron (though he says that he’s been working on the chessboard for months. He wants a rematch.)

Percy smiled at the end of the letter, but he didn’t know if he knew the answers to those things anymore. That memory was erased from his mind. He didn’t even know what his favourite colour was. He couldn’t recall what scones tasted like; if he liked them with clotted cream, jam or not, and what those tasted like. He couldn’t care for arbitrary things like numbers and school marks. He no longer thought he’d care if he had an O or a T in his Potions assignment. It didn’t feel like it meant anything.

He wanted to work at the Ministry before, but he didn’t think that he could when the Ministry was the reason that he was there in that ward. He couldn’t remember what Charlie looked like or what he liked, so he supposed that it was the same boat. He couldn’t even remember if his family had mistreated him or not. He realised that a year must’ve passed, maybe a year and a half. Strange. It didn’t feel that long sometimes. 

He wasn’t even angry at his father anymore. He wasn’t angry at anyone. He just wanted to have a long bath and take things that didn’t make him feel like he was on the verge of death all the time.

The second surprise came a few days later. His symptoms of chest pain, shortness of breath and heartburn were worsening. He only ate every few days but couldn’t manage the eggs' smell and the milk's watery taste. He took a few sips because he had not had anything in ages, but he didn’t feel hungry. When he’d returned a full tray, one of the nurses had come to look at him, and he must’ve looked horrific because she was ashen and white. “Not another one,” she’d said, and Percy had wondered what she’d meant by that. She felt for his pulse, and Percy had realised that she’d thought that he was dead. He raised an eyebrow when she said that. Not another one. Some people had died.

The thought of someone else dying so miserably made him want to cry, but his eyes were so dry, and he was so tired. He couldn’t muster up the energy to be sad for someone else. Then, he felt guilty because other people deserved his tears, energy, and respect. But he couldn’t will himself to give those things. Monster, he was a monster.

When she realised that he was awake and not at risk of going into cardiac arrest within the next few minutes, she made him stand up and then led him outside the room. He could hardly believe it as he hobbled behind her. Pain shot up his legs with every step he took, as if he were walking on hot lava. He could barely walk without stopping every few steps, holding the wall and taking deep breaths. His skin was wet with his sweat. His face was so hot, and his eyes cloudy. His eyes had drunk up every single thing that was around him. They were just white walls, but there were scratches on the walls and doors that he had not seen before. He was shaking because he was so frightened of being outside that room and yet so excited that he felt like a little boy who had finally been allowed his turn in Quidditch.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes darting back and forth like she was afraid that he was going to collapse on her.

Percy nodded, but he felt like he’d lost half his body fluid from how much he was sweating. It was unnatural, making all the horrible smells he had accumulated over one and a half years of not showering even worse.

When they’d left the ward without any other nurses or healers looking back at him, Percy knew something bad was happening. He thought of what she’d said about how all the others were dying. He thought of what Charlie had written to him a while back, that there were people on his side, but he wasn’t sure about them. He hadn’t thought about whether he thought he was a bad or good person for a long time because it didn’t seem to have mattered. But he did know that all the things he thought were important before, like Prefect badges and assignments, weren’t nearly as important as he thought.

His knees kept crunching under his weight. On the elevator, she took him down to the A&E. She was holding his hand and sweating but not as badly as he was. Percy glanced at himself through the reflection of the elevator and realised how sick he looked. His face was so gaunt that he looked like an Inferi, his colour underneath all the caked dirt described as somewhere between ashen and tombstone grey. His hair was so matted, entangled, and dark brown with how filthy it was. His clothes had lost their original colour. His lower body looked terrifying, bloated and engorged. He looked like two different people that had been stitched together. His stomach protruded so badly that it was almost comical because even with his shirt, he could see the lines that his ribs were forming. He had thought he had an idea of his appearance, but he looked even worse than he thought.  

When they got to the triage, the nurses grabbed him and shoved him inside without even checking his vital signs. They connected him to monitors immediately after he’d been put on a bed. A healer had shown up to see him. She asked him questions, and Percy answered.

“What’s your name?”

“Percy.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“I’m in hospital.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

Percy smiled because he didn’t even know what year or month it was. “No,” he said.

“Do you know what medical illnesses you have?”

“I have diabetes and high blood pressure…and I had a heart attack…”

“That’s okay,” she said, but her eyes were focused on his chest. He knew that his breathing was usually quick, but when he looked down, he realised that his breathing was slightly slow. He didn’t even notice that he was breathing so forcefully that his chest was going in so deeply when he breathed. She ran a few quick wand scans on him, her face tinged with worry with every result. “Percy, it looks like you’re in an acute heart failure. Do you know what that means?”

Percy blinked a few times. “Am I going to die?” he said, his voice breaking. “Do I need to write a will? I’ve not written a will.”

He’d saved three hundred and eighteen Galleons over the last few years from birthdays, tutoring and the money he’d saved when his parents had given him a yearly allowance. It was a lot of money for a sixteen-year-old (seventeen? Was he seventeen now?) to have. He was imagining trying to disperse it between his family members…

They put a machine on him so that he could breathe better. It gave him oxygen, and he felt less like dying when they put him on it, even though the mask was so tight around him. The bluish tinges on his hands had disappeared after they’d put him on the oxygen. They took his temperature, which was low, and so was his blood sugar. But since he was on the machine, he couldn’t drink or eat anything, so they gave him sugar through the IV line that they’d put in.

He hadn’t felt so good in so long that he almost wondered if he was dreaming. He wasn’t sweating as much after they’d given him the sugar, and the dizziness he felt all the time was mostly gone. He almost felt good enough to fall asleep; his eyes were so heavy. A male nurse had brought a bucket with them and Percy almost thought he’d faint seeing them wash away his dirty skin and body with the soap. But when he’d started getting closer to his abdomen, he’d asked if he could have a female nurse because the thought of a man touching him made him want to throw up.

Charlie nearly broke the cup he was holding when he had seen the title on the Daily Prophet news. YOUNG NURSE UNCOVERS HORRORS OF THIRD FLOOR OF ST MUNGO’S: CONFIRMED 33 DEATHS, 11 IN HOSPITAL; ALL IN CRITICAL CONDITION. Charlie thought he might collapse reading the news that three-quarters of the people that were in that ward had died, and then he thought of Percy. He thought of the innocuous letter that he’d sent to Percy, talking about fucking chessboards and how his mum missed him on his birthday. He thought of the possibility that Percy hadn’t even read that letter. That Percy was dead. And his father had killed him just because he was playing tonsil tennis with a boy.

His mind was spinning. When Bill had come downstairs wearing yesterday’s clothes, a black t-shirt with a bunch of fluorescent scrolls and camo pants, Charlie thrust the newspaper into his chest as if Bill was the one who had taken Percy to the unit. As if Bill wasn’t as pissed as Charlie was, as pissed as the rest of them were about what happened.

Bill paled so badly that Charlie swore he could see his neck veins stand out against his skin.

“I’m going to wake up Mum,” he said. “You go wake up everyone else. I don’t—fuck. We have to see him. Now.”

Charlie didn’t want to be the one to bring it up. “What if he’s d—”

“No,” Bill said stiffly. “Don’t fucking think like that, okay? It’s Perce. You know what he’s like. He’s so bloody resilient. He’s like a runespoor he’s so resilient. He could lose three-quarters of his limbs, and he’d still be fine, okay? He’ll be fine,” his voice was a little shaky. Charlie and he didn’t even read the rest of the article. The script was so small, and none mattered as much as knowing what Percy was like. “So, just get everyone, okay?”

Charlie shook his head. “Runespoors don’t live for long, you know, because—”

“Charlie, that’s not the fucking point, mate,” Bill told him. “Just get everyone out.”

He barely had to put in any real effort in waking up any of his siblings. The minute they heard they would see Percy, they practically bounced off their beds and put on their going-out clothes. George had come downstairs with one missing sock, Ron unbuttoning his pyjama top, and Ginny with her eye mask still on her head. But the kicker was when he noticed that his mum was trying to put on her floral-going out robes in her very see-through nightgown and frowning when it looked like she was a particularly cultured prostitute. She’d put just about anything on: a peasant top in blinding colours and a pair of black patterned pants that didn’t go with it. It looked like his mother was a palette of pattern vomit. It almost made him forget why they were in such a rush. Charlie had been dressed for ages, and Bill didn’t care about carrying on in yesterday’s clothes as long as he didn’t smell like a passed-out alcoholic on the side of the road. 

St Mungo’s was a bloody disaster. Reporters were everywhere in A&E, and nurses tried to prevent them from entering the emergency room. There were people everywhere, people laughing, sobbing, and people that were just hunched over, vomiting, waiting to be called into the A&E rooms. The waiting room list outside was flashing with colours.

Charlie’s stomach turned when, within the first two minutes of him standing in, a tiny blonde woman standing by the counter collapsed and started sobbing. He realised that her son or daughter must have been found dead. The receptionist looked misty-eyed, like they wanted to cry too, and Charlie swallowed the lump in his throat.

“Bill, look, I don’t know if I want to hear about Perce…maybe being dead like this,” he said.

 He looked back at Bill, who shook his head.

“Perce’s going to be fine,” he said. “Okay? So, just… we just have to find out where he’s at.”

“But Bill, what if…” Ginny’s voice trailed off. She was shaking. “I don’t want to say goodbye to my brother. And I don’t wanna hear about it from some lady behind a desk.”

“William, love—” Bill cut off Molly.

“You’re not going to,” Bill said with a finality that almost made Charlie believe it, too.

He practically pushed through a grieving, disintegrating family to the information desk.

“Hey, I’m looking for my brother, Percy,” Bill said. “He was on the third floor. He might be here now. Can you look?”

“He’s from the third floor?” the receptionist said, looking crestfallen. “Oh, I’ll…I’ll have a look. But I wouldn’t have most of my hopes up. They’ve already identified most of the ones that were brought in from yesterday, and I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t want you to have your expectations up in case—”

“Look, can you just see if he’s here?” Bill cut her off rudely.

“Of-of course. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll have a look at it now,” she said quietly.  

When they asked him about his relationship, he mentioned that he was family and brought out his identification card so they could check it. Memos flew around, and papers whizzed about. The longer it took, the longer Charlie was holding his breath. He felt like he might pass out before he knew the answer.

“He’s in the resuscitation room,” she said. She looked relieved, just as relieved as Charlie had felt when he’d heard the news. “Just go straight down that hallway; it’ll be your last door to the left.”

“I told you,” Bill told Charlie as he breathed out. He had never been gladder to be wrong. “I know where it is. Come on.”

They all followed Bill, who had such long, confident strides that Charlie couldn’t help but think he was overcompensating for how scared he was. He was holding them all together. Charlie didn’t know what would happen if Bill would start freaking out. And then he noticed Bill’s face pale.

“What’s wrong?” Charlie said.

“What’s he fucking doing here?” Bill said so angrily that Charlie flinched.

Charlie wanted to go ballistic when he realised what Bill was looking at. His father was standing outside of the resuscitation room. His father. The man who got his kid brother committed to that place for a year and a half. That place that didn’t let them see him, that didn’t let them bring in any letters or food. Well, after all this time, they’d finally found out why. They weren’t exactly running a clean operation. They were torturing their patients under the guise of ‘treating’ them. He thought of the statistic he’d read in the paper: 33 DEAD, 11 IN CRITICAL CONDITION flashing in his mind. He was so scared reading the tagline that he hadn’t even bothered reading what they did to them when they were 'treating' them. He knew the rumours, but that was about it. If any of them had been in the hospital, Percy would’ve read that paper so thoroughly and would’ve known exactly what to do and where to go. Charlie felt a tug of affection for him. It had been so long since he’d seen him or heard his voice he’d forgotten what he looked like.

“What are you doing here, Arthur?” Molly said immediately upon seeing him.

“I’m on his contact information. I put in all my details when I took him to the ward,” Arthur said, his voice detached. Charlie hadn’t noticed, but his father looked more unkempt and thinner than usual, which was scary considering he was thin. But he couldn’t feel that bad for him. Their mum didn't bother knocking out three square meals daily for him... so what? It wouldn’t change what happened with Percy. “I’m…I’m worried about him too. They said they were just bathing and giving him privacy before anyone saw him. But…but I think he’s doing better.”

“No thanks to you. I don’t care that they had your contact information. I don’t care that you’re worried or feel bad about everything. I don’t want you here,” Molly said before anyone else could say anything. “You’re the one that put him there. He could’ve died. Do you understand that? Do you understand you could’ve killed my child, and now you think you have the right to see him after you’ve-you’ve stuck him in that ward without talking to me? Now that he’s in bloody critical condition, you want to have a look at him just to feel better about what you’ve done?”

“I really do feel terrible about what I’ve done, Mollywobbles,” Arthur said quietly. “I think about it every day. I’m so sorry. And I tried to take it back but I couldn’t. I saw his face every time I fell asleep. I think about him so often. I just want to see him. I won’t do anything, I promise. I won’t even go inside the room. I just want to look at him. He’s my son, too.”

“Your son too?” Molly echoed, voice getting louder. “Your son that you stuck into a ward that’s tortured him near to death just because you couldn’t handle the idea of him kissing a boy? Godric, Arthur, he’s not killed a man. A time ago, there were laws saying that every werewolf had to be killed. I’m sure you’d be handing them into the Ministry left and right just because ‘it’s the right thing’. I feel disgusted. You disgust me. I can’t forgive you for what you’ve done to my baby.”

One of the nurses had come out of the resuscitation rooms.

“You can see Percy now,” she said. “He’s awake, but you might not understand what he’s saying. He has a machine to help him breathe and synchronise his breathing to it so he gets better. He’s already doing better than when he’s come in. I can’t let all of you in with him, but I’ll let you all in for a bit; then, it’s just one person with him. Kids technically aren’t allowed—”

Ron cut her off. “But he’s our brother. We want to see him. We won’t do anything.”

“Yeah,” Fred nodded his head. “We aren’t troublemakers or anything. We won’t even make a sound.”

Charlie wanted to laugh hearing Fred say he wasn’t a troublemaker, but he didn’t think they would be down to any funny business. He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded his head. The nurse led him inside, and Charlie noticed that his father followed, but only after they’d all been in, and he stood farther away from the rest of them. Their mum was too focused on the nurse to pay attention or even care about that too much.

The first thing that Charlie noticed was all the equipment around Percy’s body. He had a tight mask around his face, and his chest was rising and falling at a nearly scarily unnatural rhythm. His hair was matted and dark brown like it hadn’t seen a comb or a wash all the time he’d been in. His skin was blistering red from how harshly they’d had to scrub him. He was so shockingly skeletal that it scared him, but he also looked like he was about to give birth to a baby. His stomach was so large and tense. There was a tube in Percy’s stomach, and it was draining yellowish liquid from it. It looked like two full litres had been out, and they had put some kind of scissors around it. He was so grey he already looked like he was dead.

“Perce,” Charlie wheezed out, though in his mind, he couldn’t assimilate the person lying on that hospital bed as his Percy, the same sixteen-year-old kid that talked incessantly for hours on end about goblin rebellions.

“Oh, sweetheart, look at you,” Molly said, her voice shaking. She was crying. She didn’t expect that he’d look this bad, either. “Oh my…my baby. It’s okay, love. It’s okay. Mum is here for you. I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to do everything that I can for you. You’re never going to feel sad ever again. I promise you.” She squeezed his hand, which was so bony it had no muscle. Charlie could see all his veins. “Do you feel okay, love? Do you feel any better?”

Charlie had no idea why his mum even bothered asking him that, but he noticed Percy slowly nod and close his eyes. He didn’t notice until he saw that he was squeezing Percy’s hand, probably a little too roughly. Fuck, it just felt like touching a pile of cold bones; there wasn’t any kind of warmth to him at all.

“Mr Weasley,” a healer said as she came in with a clipboard in his hands. “I think my colleague has already talked to you about if you want a DNR status, and I think you’ve said that you’ve agreed to that. But you have to sign this form now so that the system can log it in that if—Merlin forbids, your heart gives out or anything like that, we’d be able to do things as you want them to be.” She reached out to give him the clipboard and the quill.

Percy looked at the paper like he’d never seen words before. He stared at the form from top to bottom, looking for where to put his signature.

“What is a DNR?” Bill said, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s a do-not-resuscitate. This means that if…well, if Percy’s heart just suddenly fails him, he has the option to say that he doesn’t want to be resuscitated and to be allowed to die naturally. We give this as an option to critically ill patients all the time. He’s of age, so it’s why we didn’t need any consent anymore from any legal guardians.”

Charlie was stunned. He didn’t think that they should be offering that sort of stuff to barely legal adults who had been traumatised by the mental institute that they’d been shoved in. “Perce, you do know what they’re saying, right?” Charlie knew he was being a prick. “That means if your heart stops, that they aren’t going to help you. They’re just going to let you die. But if you don’t sign this form, then-then you’ll have a chance, won’t you? You’ll have a chance.”

Percy nodded and dipped the quill into ink, still looking for where he should sign.

“You can sign here,” the healer told him, pointing towards a blank rectangle in the corner.

“Percy, you won’t sign that document, do you hear me?” Molly said. Her voice was still shaky, but there was some anger. She was probably angrier at the healer for bringing up this DNR form than she was at Percy. “There’s no chance I’m just going to be sat there in the corner watching my child die and you-you not do anything for him. I won’t allow it.”

“I’m afraid, ma’am, that’s not your choice. You’re not the patient,” the healer said in a practised tone.

But Percy looked confused afterwards. He kept looking at the page in front of him, and Charlie shivered when he realised that not only did he want to sign that DNR form, but he also wanted to die. He saw a longing in his eyes that reminded him of how starry-eyed Fred and Goerge got after they played a good Quidditch match.

“What about you sign it tomorrow?” George said quietly. “I think that’s fair for mum and for you too.”

Percy nodded his head, but he was blinking tears away. He was crying because the thought of him having to live was too much for him. Charlie felt his heart sink so deeply into his stomach. What had they done to him in there?

He was saying something, but Charlie could barely hear him through the mask. Fred, after leaning in closely, managed to pick up one word.

“Will,” he said, with an equally bleak tone as that word should carry. “I think he wants to write his will.”

“Percival, I won’t have you thinking like this now,” Molly squeezed his shoulder. She then winced, and Charlie imagined it was because she didn’t expect how rail thin and sickly he was until she touched him. “You’re going to be fine, alright? You’ll listen to everything the healers tell you, and then you’ll come home with us, alright? You’re not going to die.”  

Percy’s expressions were vacant. He seemed so far gone, detached from reality.

“Please,” Charlie could hear Percy say, despite the mask and the fogging. He realised he could tell what he was saying if he leaned closer. “Please let me write a will.”

“Mum, tell him he could write a will,” Charlie said, looking at his mother pleadingly.

“But Perce, you know we need to hire a lawyer for a will,” Bill said in an equally calm and collected tone as if he were talking about the weather and not the fact that their seventeen-year-old brother wanted to write up his will. “It’s a legal document. It has to be done in the right way, okay?”

He knew that Bill was just biding time. They probably wouldn’t hire a lawyer so he could write a will. Percy didn’t even own anything.

“Okay,” he heard Percy say back. He seemed to have mostly calmed down. But then he continued. Charlie only caught some of the words, “…have three hundred and eight Galleons in my Gringott’s… forty Galleons… my collection of books…Prefect badge… Ron would…Fred and George can have it…they might think it’s stupid, but…” he went on prattling on about all the conditions he wanted for his will. Charlie didn’t think anyone cared about it.

He squeezed Percy’s hand again. “Maybe we can go over it more in detail later, okay?”

He saw how doe-like and innocent his eyes seemed to look, how childish he was as he nodded his head. He also noticed then that Percy was holding Charlie as tightly as Charlie was holding him, but he hadn't even registered it because he was so weak. 

“Did they tell you what you were sick with?” asked Ginny.

“Heart failure. Kidney failure. Most definitely something else—I’m not sure. I have electrolyte imbalances. I’m anaemic as well,” Percy said, his voice still muffled by the oxygen mask but sounded much clearer now that Charlie knew how to pick up the words. It seemed like everyone else could pick it up better, too. Charlie noticed how fast he was breathing, even with the mask on and how half-asleep he looked. The closer he came to his face, the more he realised how sick he was. “And my blood sugar is out of control, so I suppose there’s that to look forward to.”

“That’s all?” George asked.

Percy cocked his head. “Roughly.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad,” Fred said.

“You’re right. I’m just a pansy,” Percy said.

“Did you just use the word pansy?” George asked, raising an eyebrow. “Cor, Perce.”

“Oh, shut up,” Percy said, rolling his eyes. It was probably the most normal interaction he’d had with anyone since he’d been there. Charlie felt grateful for the twins.

“Everyone else is dead, aren’t they?” Percy suddenly asked.

Charlie didn’t think about how Percy did not know everyone else who had been in the unit. “Most of them have, but not everyone. You were one of them. Do you know any of them?”

“No, we were in separate rooms,” Percy said. “I didn’t even know how many we were.”

Charlie wanted to know everything. What had they done in that room with him? How had they treated him? How did his perfectly normal brother turn into such a sickly frail thing that had multiorgan failure? It just didn’t make any sense.

“Are they angry at me?”

The question was so out of left field that he didn’t realise what he’d even said until he had. Charlie looked at Percy, who was staring at him intently. “Who?” Charlie said. Who could be angry at him?

“The other…families,” Percy stammered. “Because I’m alive and their kids are…not. Do you think they’re angry?”

Charlie blinked away tears he didn’t know were forming in his eyes until then. What was he supposed to say to that? How could someone be so far gone as even to think that? “No, Perce,” he said quietly. “I don’t think they’re angry at you. I think they’re angry at the people that did this to their kids... Godric, Perce, what did they do to you in there?”

“They cured me. I’m not sick anymore,” Percy said quietly.

Charlie blinked a few times, looking down at the rest of his body. Percy looked like he was a corpse. What the fuck was he talking about, that he wasn’t sick anymore? Just because he didn’t have fantasies about kissing boys, he wasn’t sick anymore? He reached to place a hand on Percy’s cheek, and he was stone cold. It was hard to believe he had a pulse.

“Perce, you’re dying,” Charlie said, and the minute he said it, he flinched. But it was the truth.

“But I don’t think about boys anymore,” Percy said.

“Perce, that doesn’t matter anymore,” Charlie said. “There was a reform I told you about. Nobody thinks like that as much anymore. So many things have happened in the last year. Last month, it wasn’t even considered criminal anymore. That’s why they’ve started closing off all the institutes that were for curing people like you. They think in a couple of years that, people like you will be able to get married. You’re just a person with a preference now. It’s not weird, okay?”

Percy had paled even more and there was a look of desperation on his face. “Then why did people have to die? Why am I like this, then? What was the point?” 

“I’m sorry, Perce,” Bill said. “There….there wasn’t a point.”