The Coming Out of Percy Weasley

The Coming Out of Percy Weasley

Chapter Six

Journal

Percy woke up in the middle of the night, sweating profusely. His neck ached from the position he was sitting in. He felt like he wanted to throw up, and he was sure this had to do with flipping through the magazine that was given to him the day before. He just couldn’t do it. His whole face felt like it was still on fire, and he turned to the side and threw up in the rubbish bin, his whole body shaking. Percy was too frightened to go to a parade. He imagined throwing up everywhere with men circling him, holding his hands. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back to the white room.

Ginny was right. He’d somehow turned the white room, the room of his horror and nightmares, into a safe space. What kind of a person was he? That turned a place where thirty-three people died into a safe space? A place that had nearly killed him. He thought of the nurse touching him. Not another one, she had said, and then she pulled him up to his aching feet.

He had been so close to being dead. He imagined his family, sad for a few months and happy for the next decade. He imagined the hole he was living in, his family being patched up with knitted jumpers and his mother’s homemade shortbread biscuits that he disliked so much that everyone else liked. He thought of his insulin pen and how easy it would be to fall into a hypoglycaemic coma and die within minutes if he wanted to.

“Get out of this house!” he heard his mother shriek, and he instinctively knew his father was outside. He looked at the clock and felt a sense of déjà vu overwhelm him when he noticed the time. 2:04 am, just ten minutes before he’d been taken to the institute for the first time. “You have no right to see him! I’ve already told you that I’ll never forgive you! Do you know what they did to him in that place you took him to? They made him look at these-these horrible photos that nobody should be looking at and drinking those potions that made his heart fail. He’s seventeen years old. Do you think that it’s normal, Arthur, that a seventeen-year-old boy is going to die of heart failure? He has these dialysis sessions he has to go to three times every week. They hook him to a machine for three or four hours. He’s so spaced out I can barely get to him most days. And you want to see him? How selfish can one be to constantly try to assuage their own guilt?”

Percy stepped out of his room and saw that Bill and Charlie were already outside in the hallway, suitable angry expressions on their faces. He wasn’t in his wheelchair, but he was sure he should be because he was already feeling short of breath, and his legs were so swollen despite all the potions that he was taking daily. At that moment, he had a sudden realisation that he was not going to die. Not within five months or five years, but he will surely die too young. He was going to live and die so slowly. He was going to be in pain as he lived and even in more pain when he died. He just knew.

He caught Bill and Charlie’s eyes, who looked concerned that he was still up.

“They woke you up?” Bill asked. Percy shook his head and was surprised at how honest he was being. Bill suddenly smiled an almost sly smile as he asked, “Were you looking at the magazine I got you? You sly bastard, you.”

Percy did not want to think about the magazine. “I looked at it a bit, but it made me sick,” he said.

“Molly, how often do I have to tell you that I tried so hard to get him out of there the second I realised my mistake? I wished I hadn’t done it. All the time, I wished I hadn’t taken him to that place, but I can’t do anything about that now. I think about it all the time, how sick he is and how much I’ve ruined his life. And you’re right. I have done so many awful things. I just want to talk to him and let him know I’m not like that anymore. That’s all that I want. The last thing that boy remembers about me is that I’d just let him in that room, and he probably thinks that I hate him, but I don’t.”

“Godric, Arthur, what are you trying to say? That you love him? You love him so much, so you stuck him into a place that killed thirty-three people?” Molly’s voice was even higher pitched than her usual. “But it was a mistake. You’re acting like you’ve not let that boy be actively tortured for a whole year and a half just because you hated his sexuality. You knew that it was wrong at the time. You knew because you hadn’t even told me before you decided to do what you’d done! And now, I won’t tell you anything about him. I’m going to let you suffer like you made him suffer. And you won’t ever feel a fraction of what he felt in that room. He probably thought that his family had abandoned him. Did you ever think of that?”

“I do think of that, Molly! Every day, I think of that!”

“Oh, don’t try to sell me that.”

Percy blinked a few times, looking back at Bill and Charlie, who listened intently to the conversation with matching indifferent masks. He wondered if they sometimes missed him. He bet that they did because sometimes Percy did.

“It must have been hard listening to that,” Percy said. “All the time. When I wasn’t here.”

Charlie looked at Percy like he’d seen a ghost. Like he’d forgotten he was there. “No, Perce, it wasn’t hard to let go of Dad after we found out what he’s done to you. The hardest thing was you not being here. And now, the hardest thing is having you stand here listening to him, thinking he can just walk up the stairs and talk to you. Like you owe him that.”

Percy thought about what Charlie had said. “I’m not angry at him,” he admitted.

Colour drained from Charlie’s face. “What?” he looked at Percy like he’d just told him he wanted to move to Australia.

“I’m beyond anger,” Percy said. He was beyond everything—beyond anger, beyond grieving, beyond being upset and alone. Beyond anything but trying to be, he was not the best at being in the universe as it was. Feelings were grounding, and he had lost his sensation of them. He wondered what it would feel like to be happy again.

Maybe in another world.

“Perce, you’re ill,” Bill said, not surprised by Percy’s words. “You’re not yourself.”

“I’m tired of being ill,” Percy said. “And I’m sick of being compared to how I was before I’d been in that room. I might never be that person again, do you understand?”

It seemed like it was the first time that they were.

“Do you want to see him?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t want to see anybody,” Percy said, then he walked into his room and closed the door. Thoughts and feelings were racing through his mind, but nothing could be identified beyond the exhaustion that came with them. All he kept thinking about was that he was going to die one day, but it wouldn’t be this day or the next. He would probably be alive this week, and the next, and this year and the following. A death sentence that was promised to him but never fulfilled.

He imagined the other families that were torn apart. Thirty-three were gone forever, but he was still alive, and what did that mean if he was too tired to be progressive? If all that he wanted to do was sleep until he was properly dead?

Then what was the point of living if all he could think about was how he would rather be dead?

Percy rubbed his neck, surprised by how damp it was. His stomach was carving into him because he was hungry, but he couldn’t will himself to care about that either. How could you care about mundane things like sleeping and waking up and eating and talking if you had just gotten out of a place that tore you apart into pieces that were so small you couldn’t even see them? He was a survivour of something, which should make him feel proud. Instead, it made him feel sicker. And Godric, he was so tired of being sick.

He thought back to his insulin pen. How easy it would be to die. Fifty units of insulin would put him into a coma. He could wait until his whole family were asleep, and it would be so easy, so simple that he might not even feel death coming. They would wake up in the morning, and he would be gone. Then he would be buried, and his body could decompose better in the soil than it was outside into the open air, where he just brought so much sadness around him. The whole house stunk of all the horrible things that had happened to him. He stared at the paint around him and felt himself spiralling. What a tragedy to be locked into the same moment for a year and a half. Forever. He would never get out of this place.

He nearly jumped up when he heard the door open and Charlie standing there. “You should try and sleep.”

“I wish I were dead,” Percy suddenly said, without any prompting.

Charlie winced, though Percy was sure that would be news to nobody.

“I couldn’t remember how to sign that paper. I understood what a DNR was. I wish I could sign one right now. I wish I could’ve died with the rest of them. I wish you would stop looking at me with that expression, that expression of how sorry you are for me because there’s nothing you could do about it, but you know—and I know that you know—that I think of these things when I’m not there,” in the white room where he otherwise always was. “And maybe Ginny was right. Maybe it’s easier to be there because being here in this world is so unbearable.”

“Why is it so unbearable?” Charlie’s voice was so soft that Percy had barely heard him.

“Because look at me… I’m nothing now,” Percy said. “I’m not the same person I was; that person is dead. Everyone’s on guard all the time, and they’re sucked into this pit of always worrying about me and all the things that could happen to me. I can’t remember most of the potions or spells I’m supposed to know.  Sometimes, I feel like I can’t read the names of the potions I’m supposed to take half the time. I’m never going to get a job. I’m never going to be anything.”

“We’re worried that you could die at any time… so your solution is to end our worrying by dying,” Charlie said stiffly. “You know, Perce, I think that helps only you.”

“It’ll only be for a little while,” Percy said. “You’ll forget about me.”

“Fuck you, Percival.”

Percy was surprised at the tone in Charlie’s voice.

“Fuck you and your holier-than-thou attitude that you think you know what everyone’s thinking when you’ve not talked about this to anyone. When you think this would be the easiest for all of us—when it’s not. Everything you’re talking about is a consequence of what happens when you care a bit about someone. It’s completely normal always to be worrying about your sick brother who’s been tortured for a year and a half. And I don’t care about everyone else that’s died there; that’s such a travesty, but you’re not a revolutionary, Percy. You’re never going to be. That’s not your personality. You’re not dead inside just because you’re depressed and feel a little poetic. You’re still here. It just feels like shit,” Charlie said.

Percy blinked, trying to digest what Charlie had just told him.

“I understand that you want to die, but if you’re going to kill yourself, it’s not going to be for us. It’s going to be for yourself,” Charlie said. “It’s not going to help anyone else. All this pain that you think that you see—how unbearable it might be for us too—it’s going to be worse if you’re not here. You’re just not going to be able to see it, so you think it’s gone, but it’s never going to be gone. Because we’re not subhuman, Percival, we will never forget about you. You’re going to be everywhere. I can promise you we’re going to be in pain until we die, too. And if you kill yourself, and I die forty years from now because I’ve done something stupid, then I’m going to fucking kill you, is that understood?”

“It’s easier to pretend it’s an option,” Percy said.

“Well, it’s not,” Charlie said. “And don’t tell mum about this. You’re going to make her go mental.”

“You’re not a very good motivational speaker,” Percy said.

“Fuck, Perce, what am I supposed to do? I’m not a psychiatric healer. But maybe you should see one. I can’t believe I told you to fuck yourself after you told me that you want to kill yourself. I just…” Charlie said. Percy blanched at the thought. “Come on, Perce. Do you never want to receive any help? Maybe Gin is right. Maybe it’s easier for you to pretend to be there than in the real world, but Merlin, how is everything so bad in your head that you’d rather be in that room forever?”

“Because in that room, I have to just worry about my survival. In the real world, it’s much more complicated,” Percy said.

“Yeah, you could explore what you like and you have people that want to see you all the time. It’s so horrible,” Charlie said with a raised eyebrow. “The problem with you, Perce, is that you think wanting to be in the Ministry and working hard in school is your only personality trait. You know what I really like about you? It’s that you find spaces in which you feel better even if other people don’t really understand them. Is this room the best that you could do?” Charlie waved off to the walls, which were painted into a bright white. “I’m disappointed.”

Percy scoffed. “Like you can do any better.”

“The paint isn’t even applied evenly.”

“Stop criticising my paint job.”

“What colour do you want it to be?”

“You think that I’m going to get over my post-traumatic stress disorder by repainting this room?” Percy said.

“Well, I think it’s a better option than killing yourself,” Charlie said. Point taken, Percy thought.

After Charlie had left, Percy pressed his head against his pillow and sobbed for a long time, so much so that his lungs were on fire, and his whole body felt heavier by the second.

How could Charlie tell him to talk to a psychiatric healer? If Percy saw another healer on top of his regular dialysis session and ten thousand appointments per week, he’d start eating knives. He could imagine his well-meaning brothers telling him it was just another healer. He saw healers all the time. So what was the big deal if he saw another one? As if his trauma didn’t come from the hospital. As if he could ever leave the white room when he visited the white hospital with its white walls 24/7. Why did he have to be the one that sacrificed everything? Why couldn’t people make the sacrifice themselves and let him die because that was what he wanted?

After he was done crying, he felt like he could just about melt into his bed and become one unit because of how bone-weary he was. He wasn’t awake for long and fell asleep within five minutes of calming down.

When he woke up, his panic rose when he realised he had a fever. He was sweating profusely, and when he headed downstairs with his wheelchair flying over the stairs, he checked his temperature with a thermometer: 39.4. After that, his cough started, and when he checked his oxygenation, he noticed that he required more oxygen. He required two more litres of oxygen just to maintain a normal saturation.

He returned upstairs after taking a Pepper-Up and morning potion. He checked his blood sugar and was confused when it registered a high reading despite not eating anything in hours. He ignored it, pulling sheets up over his broken body and falling asleep well until the afternoon.

Bill tried to shake him awake then, but his eyelids were so heavy that he could barely lift them.

“Perce?” Bill shook him. “Perce, you’ve got to get ready for that parade we talked about yesterday.”

Percy did not want to go to a gay parade. He had more issues with his sexuality than ever before. He did not want to think about what had happened to him. He rubbed his right eye, his left eye-catching sight of Bill in a neon purple t-shirt and horrific patterned trousers with heavy eyeliner. He’d rather walk out in the nude than dress like that. “What are you wearing?” he gawked. He wouldn’t spend a knut buying such an outrageous wardrobe. “Never mind. Forget I asked.”

“I’m very disco,” Bill said.

“I don’t think that disco wants to claim that look either,” Percy said with a raised eyebrow. “I’d rather eat my toenails.”

“So does this mean that I’m being brave and bold?”

“I hope the whole world’s gone colourblind.”

Bill smiled, reaching out to touch his hand. “You feel a little warm. You even look a little….uh… flushed.”

“Yes, well, I’m lying underneath a pile of blankets,” Percy said, raising an eyebrow at him. He was never going to say that he had a fever. He hoped that he would be septic. Then he felt ashamed because he was his biggest problem. Ever since he had gotten out, he had never thought about anyone else—not really. He just couldn’t will himself to. It was too hard to think about everyone else. Too painful. And he couldn’t deal with any more pain. “Mum keeps adding more as if we’re not going through a heatwave. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve not eaten breakfast.”

“You did eat something,” Bill said. “You wake up every morning at five in the bloody morning to take your potions. And because you’re a diabetic, you always eat something when you’re taking your medicine.”

Percy raised an eyebrow. “You mean the three crackers I ate are enough to sustain me for the rest of the day?”

Bill rolled his eyes. “Like you’re going to head downstairs and clear a full English. You eat like a bird. Like a baby one.”

“I have blocked coronaries. I can’t have a full English,” Percy reminded him. “And birds eat twice their body weight.”

“Perce, it’s three in the afternoon. Are we going to talk about the dietary habits of the avian population?”

“You’re the one that started it.”

“And I’m going to finish it.”

“Oh, that’s very mature, William,” Percy rolled his eyes. He was sat up then, and he did feel less like death. He wondered if his temperature reading was a fluke because he felt perfectly fine. He hadn’t even coughed since Bill had woken him up. “And I still have to eat because I have afternoon potions.”

Bill shook a bag in his hands. “I’ve packed your potions, and Mum’s made you flapjacks.”

“There’s a lot of sugar in flapjacks,” Percy said, scrunching his nose. For someone who was so suicidal, he was weirdly particular about his diet of bland, low-fat, low-sugar foods. The only time he ate sugar was if he were hypoglycaemic. He reached out to check his blood sugar and frowned again when he noticed his reading was still high. He blinked. “Or rather, I suppose I don’t have to eat anything. My blood sugar is quite high.”

He also realised he hadn’t eaten his usual snack of crackers and an apple before taking his potions that morning because his blood sugar was already high. He thought he was lucky he wasn’t low then. Why was he still high?

“You take sweet dreams to another level, Perce,” Bill smirked. “Is that normal?”

“Not unless I’ve eaten a pound of sugar in the middle of the night,” Percy frowned.

“Maybe you sleepwalked into the kitchen and ate some of the treacle tart downstairs. It’s gone now.”

Percy raised an eyebrow at Bill. “Probably because Ron’s eaten the rest like he always does. And how could I possibly be sleepwalking? I can’t walk from my room to the kitchen without getting out of breath.”

“It was really delicious treacle tart,” Bill said. He didn’t seem too concerned about Percy’s blood sugar readings.

“How did you get all twelve O.W.L’s?” Percy scoffed.

“Easy. I am very smart and charismatic,” Bill said as he opened Percy’s closet. He frowned. “Is everything you own boring and beige? You dress like you’re sixty. Even Dad doesn’t wear ascots anymore. Who does?”

As Bill flipped through Percy’s closet, he smirked and took out a pair of braces. “Perce, seriously, I don’t know how I’ve never figured out you liked men. You even dress like an absolute ponce. Who wears braces like this anymore?”

Percy looked down at his pyjamas, which had little cartoons of flying blue books. He wished he could just leave wearing this but wouldn’t let himself. He got onto his wheelchair, though he found it exceedingly hard. The smallest movement sent his whole chest and legs on fire. He was panting heavily and trying to slow down his heart rate as he wheeled himself to the closet.

He picked a pair of plaid green trousers and a mint-green button-down. He tried to pretend his stomach wasn’t straining against the shirt. When Bill shoved the trousers onto him, they instantly ripped, and Percy found himself flushing. He had never had clothes torn when he’d tried to wear them before.

“Um… Perce, have you put on weight?” Bill said, inspecting his legs as if his stick-like legs could be the problem when his stomach protruded like he was carrying a set of twins. “It’s just your stomach, isn’t it? That’s just water, right?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Bill said, sounding concerned.

“Can you give me my potions?” Percy said.

He took an extra dose of his diuretics. He knew he would have to put on a nappy so he didn’t have to constantly worry about peeing all the time and felt even more embarrassed. His mum had bought him adult nappies just in case he’d need them. By the time they all left an hour afterwards, Percy felt marginally better, albeit a little embarrassed about lying in his own urine-soaked nappy. His clothes fit better, and his stomach had gotten less massive. He had given himself some insulin, but when he checked his blood sugar, it was still high. But he was sure he'd be fine if he didn’t eat for the rest of the day and kept giving himself insulin. He didn’t want to eat anyway.

Bill looked ridiculous, but the rest of his family looked even worse. It looked like a rainbow had vomited all over his family members, and they were wearing party hats that were glowing radioactive colours.

“We’re supporting you, Prissy,” George told him.

“I’m so lucky,” Percy said, sighing as he rubbed his temples. “If I say I have a headache, can I stay indoors?”

Percy knew immediately within the first three minutes of arriving in Diagon Alley, where the parade was happening that it was a big mistake. He hadn’t thought about how badly his body would react, just having people like him brush past him. He could feel his potions coming up in his throat, but he tried to swallow the acidic taste of his medicine. He felt so dizzy and weak, and everywhere he looked, there were dozens of gay people just walking around him, dressed in gaudy clothing.

Ron was pushing him around, and he was so inelegant that Percy was shoved into someone by accident every few minutes. He kept blinking, trying to keep the expression on his face neutral, whilst he saw photographs of children being molested in his mind.

“This is great,” Ron said, sounding so bored that Percy knew it was not great.

“Are there any games?” Fred asked. “Come on, Perce, you benders should know how to have a good time.”

“I think that’s offensive,” Percy said, though he wasn’t sure why because it wasn’t like he was so politically correct.

Percy knew that he was so dreadfully homophobic, but how could he not be? His whole life, he was programmed to think that he was carrying around a disease. His body was programmed to start being sick whenever he was around another man.

“Can you stop ramming into everyone?” Percy asked Ron.

“I’m just helping you find dates,” Ron said.

“I don’t want any dates,” Percy said through gritted teeth. “And if I did, I wouldn’t go for the seventy-year-old man you just knocked down either.” He should feel sad for the elderly man who finally felt like he could be who he was, but he didn’t feel anything other than mild annoyance. That seventy-year-old man was in better shape than he was.

“What about me?”

Percy froze. He was dead still in his chair, the sick feeling in his throat combined with the sudden warmth that had gone from his head to his toes, an electrifying sensation that he didn’t know how to describe. Before turning around to see the namesake, he knew exactly whose voice that was. He was sure he’d pissed himself.

“Hey, Perce,” Oliver Wood stood before him. Instantly, Percy’s eyes caught onto the fact that Oliver had a prosthetic leg. He shouldn’t have been able to tell easily, but he wore shorts. It was a good job, but it was still obviously a prosthesis. His eyes were still warm, untouched by whatever it was that had made him lose his leg. “I was…I was hoping to see you here. I know, I could’ve gone to the Burrow, but…I don’t know. You’ve just been out of hospital and I heard about what happened in St Mungo’s. I…I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Percy said.

They lapsed into silence.

“Can you leave?” Percy said to Ron, the twins and Ginny.

“Rude,” George said, scoffing. Ginny was smiling at him.

“Let’s go into Quality Quidditch Supplies,” Fred said, already bored.

After they left, Oliver shook his head. “Wish I could head into Quality Quidditch Supplies myself.”

“Where’s-where’s your leg?” Percy suddenly said, without even skipping a beat.

“Most people say hello first or ask about how I am,” Oliver said, but he grinned broadly. As if the fact that Percy just straight-up asked him about his leg was endearing to him. “Fuck, Perce, how could I let you be sent away and just go on living my life like nothing’s ever happened? I came clean, too. But it wasn’t as bad of a place. They made us do more physical stuff—run laps for hours and do exercises until one of us passed out. But a nail went through my foot, and they wouldn’t take me to the hospital. They still made me do those things—so it got infected. Then it was gangrene. It was just a few toes, but the infection showed signs of spreading already, and if they didn’t cut off my leg, it would’ve killed me.”

Oliver cleared his throat. “Oh, and my dad is dead. He killed himself…rather be dead than have a son like me,” he said.

“Oh,” Percy said, unsure what he was supposed to say after his school crush told him that despite everything Percy tried to do for him, he still got sent away anyway. What Oliver had told him about his father was a sentence he could probably unpack in therapy for years. He was sure it wasn’t as casual as Oliver pretended it was.

“I wrote to you,” Oliver said.

“Wrote to me?” Percy echoed. What did he even mean by that?

“Yeah, I wrote to you,” Oliver repeated. He then pulled out a file from a rucksack that Percy hadn’t noticed he was carrying. He saw potions compacted in there and felt bile rise in his throat. He tried to imagine a healthy, athletic Oliver taking potions but couldn’t imagine it. He was sure he didn’t even take Pepper-Ups when he was ill. He took a book out and, with shaky hands, had given it to him. “You could where I was at. I called you Priscilla in them. I hope you don’t mind. They kept telling me to write to my girlfriend. It would help me be cured, so I wrote all the time. All the things I wanted to say—I mentioned that you liked girls. You know, you pretended you were a girl sent away because you liked girls. Um…”

After Oliver had given him the journal, he took Percy away from the crowd. He hated the crowd. It kept getting denser and thicker, and the more people brushed past him, the more nauseous Percy felt.

“Did they give you the same potions?” Percy was unsure how he got the question out without projectile vomiting.

“I don’t think so. It’s not as bad,” Oliver said. “They gave me something, but I didn’t die. I think it was like—you know, they gave me potions to castrate me, so I wasn’t so interested in anyone sexually. But it made my blood pressure high, and I also got asthma. So, there’s no more Quidditch for me anyway.” He could hear the bitterness in his voice. “Ever since I’ve been out of there, all I’ve done is eat away my woes. I’ve put on a stone, can you imagine?”

Percy understood that bitterness so well. He felt a sudden warmth resonate through him. Oliver understood him.

“I’ve put on three,” Percy told him.

“It doesn’t count if it’s just water trapped in your stomach,” Oliver said. Percy raised an eyebrow at him, unsure how Oliver knew it was just water. “You’re still skinny everywhere else. Plus, your stomach keeps moving around from side to side. Most importantly,  I read their reports on The Daily Prophet. Your lot was the heart failure lot. I read up on the symptoms. Imagine. Me. Cracking up a fucking book. I’ve lost the plot now.”

Percy rolled his eyes. “I’m sure you have.”

I’ve missed you but I don’t want to have missed you, Percy wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Just thinking about it was making his stomach cramp. He wondered if Oliver felt the same way. He looked relatively normal. He couldn’t imagine him holding his nausea in or trying to prevent himself from fainting. He looked… okay.

“I was so stupid,” Percy said, and then, because he caught the smell of Oliver’s aftershave, he started throwing up.

“Shite,” Oliver said, moving closer to Percy to hold his hand. People stopped and stared at him, making him shiver and feel ten times more self-conscious, considering everything. “Perce, are you okay…? Why is your vomit pink?”

“It’s from the potions I drink,” Percy said. He felt unwell. He could see a mixture of colours on his lap and the ground, a puddle of his potions swirling in frothy pink and white colours. His head pounded, and the smell of his vomit just made him retch. He doubled over, but there wasn’t anything to come out because he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything else all day.

Oliver pulled him away from the crowd after using his wand to wipe away the vomit. Percy could still taste it in his mouth, and he kept throwing up stomach acid the more men they passed by. Images kept flashing into his mind: blood on genitals, the purplish hue of a bruise, teeth that had been pulled out, subcutaneous yellow fatty tissue, bone-white snuff.

Even when they headed into a pub, Percy still felt nauseous because Oliver was close to him. His smell made him feel both fluttery and sick. He could practically feel all the blood drain from his face and body.

“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Oliver said, moving slightly away but hand still holding onto the wheelchair.

“It’s my treatment,” Percy said quietly, his voice so low. It was as if he were afraid that people had heard him; they’d throw him back and let him continue because you weren’t supposed to talk about things out in the open. From the pub window, he could see the parade. He hadn’t paid attention to it since they’d come in. He was too nauseous, but right then, he could finally appreciate all the people dressed in shockingly bright colours coalescing together. That was not his scene. He couldn’t imagine walking into a parade like that. It didn’t matter what he identified as. The whole thing was so wildly out of his comfort zone. He didn’t want to identify with anyone or anything. He didn’t want to have a group. He didn’t feel any better knowing that the bloke next door liked kissing blokes. He felt as bad as he always did.

“Can we…can we go around it?” Oliver asked.

We? Percy was surprised at how blunt Oliver’s question was. “Get around what? Me throwing up?”

“I wanted to find you because…” Oliver’s voice trailed off. “I was thinking about you. All this time. Even when they sent me there, I was thinking that—that maybe, in the future, we could still be together somehow. That everything would work out.” He laughed slightly, but it was hollow and empty. Painful. “I thought it was a miracle when they sent that decree that said we were just like everyone else. I thought that… I’ve never been honest with anyone like I was with you. Not ever.”

He couldn’t understand how Oliver still wanted to be with him. It was almost funny.

Percy looked at him with watery eyes. “Ol, I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why?” Oliver’s voice cracked. “Don’t tell me it’s cause of the throwing up. I… think we can do something about that. I don’t know what, but I can ask my healer—and you can ask yours…and maybe all you need to do is be around me more. Or maybe you can take something so you don’t always feel nauseous.”

Take something? Percy tried to imagine adding another potion on top of the ten thousand potions he took daily. And that wasn’t even counting his insulin, which he kept in cartridges instead of potion vials.

He never even thought about it. Percy never envisioned being with anyone after what happened to him.

He hated seeing how all the hope in his eyes disappeared as he broke whatever was left of him. Percy didn’t have a thing to hold onto. He imagined how it would feel if he did, and then it was gone. He swallowed.

“Look at me,” Percy said quietly. “I’m a burden.”

“Why?”

“I’m—…” Percy paused when he began his sentence, looking down at himself in his wheelchair and then glancing at Oliver’s prosthetic leg. He couldn’t say that he was disabled, or that he had so many needs. He bet that Oliver had the same needs too. “I need a lot of help,” he finally said.

“I don’t care about that,” Oliver said. “Is that all you’ve got?”

Percy stayed quiet.

“Perce?”

“I don’t deserve you.”

Oliver’s face remained indifferent as if that was what he expected. “When I look at you, I see the person that was okay with saying that he was different, even though he was going to be punished for that—so badly punished for it, just because he wanted to keep me from getting into trouble. Nobody in the world would do what you did for me. Not even my mum.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Percy said, imagining how bad it would be if even his mum didn’t care about him.

“That’s not what’s important,” Oliver said stiffly. “What’s important is that… I want you, Perce. I was treated too, you know? I don’t think sexually about anyone anymore—but it doesn’t matter to me. I guess it’s kind of good for us because I don’t know how that would work out anyway. Me with my leg and you with your…everything. But I still want to be around you. I never thought I could want someone just to want to be around them.”

Percy felt himself being worn down. Even being around Oliver, he didn’t feel as nauseous anymore; he felt tired. Maybe it was already going away. Maybe he was right, and all he had to do was be around him.

“It doesn’t have to be so hard,” Oliver said.

“I don’t understand why it is,” Percy said. “In my head.”

“You’re thinking about it too much.”

And there was Oliver’s characteristic smile again.

“I’m scared, Oliver.” 

“I’m scared, too. But it’s going to be okay.”  

Percy felt like it was just yesterday that he’d left the hospital. Yesterday, they were waiting for him to die. Yesterday, he was on positive airway pressure oxygen. Yesterday, he was almost dying.

“What’s there to lose, Perce?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t know,” Percy said. “But I’m scared to find out.”

He thought that was his cue but couldn’t bring himself to leave.

“I think you’re scared to be happy again,” Oliver said. “Because you’re scared of coming down from that. It’s easier to be stuck in your head the way you are all the time. Thinking about everything that’s happened. But that won’t change what happened. It only makes you more miserable now thinking about it all the time.”

“It’s like you’ve talked to my family,” Percy said, and he found it in him to smile too.

“I think I can make you happy. That’s why you don’t want me around, because, in your mind, your story already doesn’t have a happy ending. You can’t see yourself being happy with anyone when you’ve lost so much,” Oliver said.

“You sound so stupid,” Percy said, not caring how cruel it sounded when he said it. “Talking about happy endings. There are no happy endings for people like us, Ol. You lived your whole life with all these terrible things happening. You had more terrible things happen, and after that, are going to be even more terrible things and then you’re going to die.”

Oliver shook his head, and Percy could see tears in his eyes.

“That’s not true,” Oliver said. “But Perce, you tell yourself whatever you think you need to survive. I just wonder how that’s working out for you. If I thought like you, there’s no point in trying to do anything—no point in living. Do you think the rest of us don’t deserve to be happy, too? Or is it just you that’s meant to be miserable forever?”

“But I…I’m…” Percy’s ears went pink.

“I lost everything too, Perce,” Oliver said. “I can’t play Quidditch anymore. That was my whole personality. It meant everything to me. I don’t have a family. But I still don’t think like you because if I did, I’d be dead in a ditch, and I think that’s a real tragedy. But you don’t see yourself being gone as a tragedy. You’ve always thought you were less than you were. But… I could show you differently, but only if you want to.”

“I want to,” Percy finally admitted in a voice so low that he could barely hear it.

“I want to too,” Oliver said. “Come on,” he said, pulling him further inside the pub, sure that the pub owner was staring at him like he was mental. “Let me buy you a butterbeer.”

“I’m a diabetic,” Percy said.

“I don’t care if your toes are going to fall off from gangrene,” Oliver said. “I’ve waited for this for a long time. I’m buying you a butterbeer.”