Harsh Reality

After having enough time to think in the hospital bed about it all, Percival can’t actually believe the President’s response is to put him on bed rest. There’s much more he could be doing in half a year than simply lying in his home doing nothing.

“You won’t be doing nothing,” his main healer admonishes, “you’ll be recovering.”

All he hears is, “You’ll be wasting away.”

Nonetheless, when he’s free to go home, he apparates there alone. Goldstein had knocked on his door earlier to accompany him, but after a morning of being told what he will be doing in his time off work, he didn’t want another companion, or another opinion. She’d left his room with her eyes downcast and hands closed in fists. He chose not to think anything of it.

His home, according to Goldstein, had no traces of magic left behind. In her own words before she’d left, “It seems he didn’t use your home at all. There was nothing tampered with, sir.”

Despite her words, as soon as Percival walks through the front door, he begins checking every corner. He doesn’t use his wand as he goes, even though the ache in his hands, his shoulders, his legs, his feet, and somewhere deeper in his body that can only be his soul, persists even after his long treatment in the hospital. He’s spent too long without using magic, though. There’s a bone-deep need in him to practice and recover immediately to gain the once-then familiarity of his own magic again.

Only when he’s checked every single square inch of his home and cast security charms—some of which aren’t meant to be used for something as low-level as a home—does he sink into the plush darkness of his couch and listen. There has only ever been silence to greet him when he came home from work. There’s nothing really different now, except the whirring of his own thoughts louder than ever in his mind.

He sighs. Unlike the hum of constant healing magic in the hospital, the hum of magic within his home is all his own. It makes him feel restless. To be surrounded by his own magic and to be exhausted makes him want to jump up from his seat and do something. Anything.

There are no dishes to clean in his kitchen. There’s not a speck of dust anywhere for him to pull out a duster. Even the entryway is as clean as it was when he’d first moved into the small house. His own bedroom is untouched, only glanced over and secured briefly by his own hands.

He jumps from his position on the couch anyways and heads to the small office within the house. Just as he’d left it not even five minutes ago, there is nothing to do. Books on wizarding law line his shelves, with the occasional paperweight dividing the heavy-bound from each other. Percival never had time for collecting anything other than what was necessary. There were no plants in the windows to water, no pets to feed, not even an abundant collection of books or paperweights to sort or peruse. Picquery had given him no paperwork. Nothing to keep him busy.

As fast as he’d walked in, he was reluctant to leave the room. Closing the door behind him and standing there in his own hallway made him very aware of how stiff he was.

He didn’t want to think about his home when there was an absence of work to be done within it. 

Outside his home was another matter entirely, and before he can divvy his thoughts on the matter further, he finds himself walking almost unconsciously towards the backdoor in his kitchen. He’d never given much thought to the state of his backyard before. Satisfaction came from cutting the grass with only a flick of his wand. However, as he looks upon the untrimmed grass and vacancy of anything to decorate it, he decides he’s been neglecting the yard for too long.

Percival was never one to garden. Even in the old Graves’ estate, there were others who took care of the manner’s appearance, from the overarching trees down to the last weed. He doesn’t know how to plant a shrub, let alone cut one. The knowledge of not knowing how to do something so arbitrary should irritate him, but the only thing he can do with such a thought is think of what he needs instead, and before long, he’s grabbing his coat and heading to the front of the house to leave.

Swinging open the front door, he’s prepared to apparate—maybe even simply walk—to the nearest florist or gardening store when he sets his eyes on Tina Goldstein, staring doe-eyed at him with her fist raised as if to knock on the door.

He only barely pauses short enough from the doorway to not trip over himself, and he only hopes his harried state doesn’t appear on his face, or in his form.

He clears his throat as Goldstein lowers her hand. “Goldstein,” he begins, but pauses when he notices a dish occupying her other hand. He doesn’t know what to say, or what to expect, so all he says is, “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Goldstein, for all her character, looks appropriately bashful for her appearance at his door so late in the evening—

and it’s then that Percival notices exactly just how late it is.

“Sorry, sir. My sister Queenie thought I should bring you something just in case you weren’t feeling up to cooking yourself tonight.”

Queenie Goldstein. The name rings a bell immediately in his head, but Goldstein doesn’t give him the time to draw up a face in his mind.

She almost looks like she’s floundering when she waves her hands to placate what she’d said. “I didn’t mean that you couldn’t cook on your own and anything like that! My sister, see, she likes to cook, and she was worried. She didn’t want you cooking after spending so long in the hospital, so I—she—”

“Nothing to worry about, Goldstein,” he says, surprising not only the auror in front of him, but himself as well.

However, the awkwardness in the air after he says it makes him keenly aware that he has no idea what to do. No one’s ever visited him before, besides distant family once in a blue moon. Even then, they always gave some sort of warning before appearing on his doorstep. He’s never had to invite someone from work into his home, let alone after he’s been…

He knows what she’s doing. Goldstein looks as nervous as a lost puppy in a bustling city, shuffling from one foot to the other in the most subtle aversion to embarrassment. He wants to believe she’s here out of pity. He wants to believe that if he turns her away now, she’ll leave him alone, that she won’t ask questions or push and shove when he’s at his most vulnerable.

And, oh, does he feel as vulnerable as a cadaver on the examination table.

He opens the door wider, and against his better wishes, shyly.

When Goldstein looks at him with surprise on her face, he knows he’s out of sorts, but he doesn’t know what else to do. And he, gravely, almost secretively, doesn’t want to turn Goldstein away when she’s the only one coming to him now.

He doesn’t allow the silence to continue. “May as well come in, Goldstein,” he rasps. His throat feels like it’s collapsing in on itself, like an avalanche closing up the entrance to a cave. The hand under his coat trembles.

She studies him then. Her eyes don’t stray from his, and for once, he has to keep himself from looking away from her gaze, but it’s all too much. Goldstein’s eyes have always been expressive. They were the first to show emotion before her face fell in line with them. Right now, her eyes were as wide as saucer plates, staring up at him—still on the last step outside of his home—with an emotion he can’t quite read, or perhaps an emotion too much, too undeserving for him.

He forces his hand to still. He distantly hopes that Goldstein didn’t notice.

“Any day now,” he drawls. Though he knows he’s being rude about it now, Goldstein doesn’t seem to mind. It does, however, startle her into action, and before he or she knows it, she’s walking up the stairs into the entryway of his home.

Only when he’s closing the door behind her does he begin to wonder if this is the right choice. It was only earlier that same day that he was refusing her company. Now here he is inviting her into his home to—to what? Eat?

He doesn’t even know what she brought.

He coughs to catch her attention and she turns, inspecting the interior of his home as she does so. It’s the first time anyone from work has ever seen the inside of his home. Regret begins to pool in his stomach at the thought of Goldstein of all people walking into his home after…

She’s waiting on him.

“So, what exactly did you bring?” he asks, leading them to his dining room, still fairly empty given the…circumstances.

She beams at him. “Queenie made a casserole.” When she uncovers the dish on the table, Percival forgets all about the store and the garden and allows himself to sit at the table.

—

When Goldstein leaves, she leaves the rest of the casserole behind for him. Her movements are awkward as she exits, but her smile reveals something deeper that she hadn’t been brave enough to share during their meal. 

It had been a silent dinner, for all intents and purposes. The only sounds they’d made were the clinking of silverware against plates, and even then, the atmosphere was palpable.

And only when she’d left did he match the face to the name.

Queenie Goldstein was a legilimens working in wand permits, just a few departments below his own, last time he checked.

He’d never met the other woman unless they were walking down the halls and happened to pass each other. He doesn’t even recall seeing her since before his capture, but now she was making him casseroles and sending her sister to deliver it?

Sighing, he opened one of his cabinets in search of Fire Whisky. If Goldstein was right about his home being relatively untouched, then the bottle should be—

There. He sighs with relief as he wraps his fingers around the trusted, familiar bottle. The No-Majs might have banned alcohol across the states, but at least the wizarding world could keep their own little treasures. 

Pouring the glass itself is almost relaxing and familiar enough to cure him of the day’s stresses. Even before everything, he’d never felt more stressed or tight around the shoulders before. Taking the first sip, even the knots filling his brain seem to unravel into nothingness. And when the glass is empty, he puts the bottle back in its rightful place almost gravely, wondering what the Goldstein sisters would think of him drinking himself into oblivion his first night back.

Maybe they’d think nothing of it, he thinks to himself.

In the end, he can’t bring himself to slip into his bedroom that night. Too many thoughts of what would they think? and what will I do? and what if he slept in my bed? keep him from sleeping peacefully in his own home.

Instead, he walks into his backyard and rolls up the sleeves of the button-up he couldn’t seem to change out of, and begins uprooting the weeds that had overstayed their welcome.

—

He finds himself at the door right as the owner opens shop at six in the morning. The owner himself is a tall, stocky No-Maj with hills of wrinkles at the edges of his eyes, but the hard line his mouth takes on makes Percival think the man hasn’t smiled in a long time. Or, perhaps, he just wasn’t a morning person.

The man invites him in without complaint though, and asks if he’s looking for something specific, then guides him through what he might need.

Percival leaves with a paper bag of shears, a trowel, and gloves. (He’d learned his lesson after waking up with sore, raw hands that morning.) When the owner had asked if he wanted to buy anything to plant, Percival had paused. It seemed to be all the man needed to know.

“Come back once you get everything uprooted. You don’t have a hoe, do ya?” He’d been surprised, but had shaken his head in answer anyways. The man nodded. “It’ll do you good to come and get more supplies as ya go then.”

Percival needed to get all the weeds out of his yard first. He’d think about what he wanted to plant later. Flowers, trees, bushes, vegetables...the owner had an abundance of seeds and plants, but he hadn’t shown Percival any of them. When he’d shown interest, all the man said was, “Don’t worry about those, sonny. You can think about them when you have a clear landscape to actually work with.”

The more he thought about it, the more he believed the man was right on every account. He’d walked into the shop in a hurry to initiate change over something that he wanted to get done, but he needed time. He shouldn’t hurry too much in the face of progress.

On his walk back home, he felt foolish.

A garden? For my backyard? He practically scoffed. The Graves would all have a good laugh if they could see me now.

Walking into his home was another matter entirely. The Graves aren’t here to see me.Or my backyard.

Though he’d woken up early after spending a night of tearing weeds with his bare hands, on the couch no less, he forgot about breakfast. Pulling weeds up throughout the day with gloves to cover his hands, sun on the back of his neck, he must have forgotten about lunch too. He only becomes aware of his hunger when the sun is setting and his stomach groans fiercely in the growing darkness.

He must look a sight: dirt on his arms, across his white button-up, and all over his face surely enough. Only a fourth of the whole yard is de-weeded, but a sense of satisfaction follows him through the backdoor into his home again. He changes, he eats some of the leftover casserole, and then he picks through his small collection of books until he falls asleep on the couch once more.

He repeats the next day, pulling weeds and rocks and anything else up from his yard until his back is loose and sore and his stomach begins to eat itself. The next day, he’s out of casserole, but he’s not exactly hungry. He has a glass from the cabinet and then he falls asleep, and the morning after that, he wakes up from dreams of pulling up weeds, and weeds, and even more weeds, only to go back out and pull the rest of them out. He feels almost akin to a machine up to the point he finishes his first task.

And the owner had been right. Seeing his yard completely barren of anything but patches of grass and dirt is a sight.

Percival had never had a particularly creative imagination, but looking at his own work right before him, he thinks he can see a tree and a small pond, gold and blue flowers lining the edges of the property, maybe even a stone path and a table with some chairs.

For the first time since he’d come back home, he goes out to get something to eat.

Being a man of familiarity and routine, he wasn’t exactly one to go out and try new things on a whim, but after pulling weeds for five days straight with nothing to think about but dirt and rocks, he thinks something new won’t hurt. Which is why, after some consideration, he finds himself walking down an unfamiliar road towards a No-Maj populated street. Later, he might think about his aversion to places filled with wizards and witches, but for now, he persists. He’s got a craving for something sweet and filling, and that’s how he finds himself in front of a No-Maj bakery.

One that is selling pastries decidedly not-so No-Maj looking.

Is that—a Niffler?

There is no magic around the shop. Nothing notable, at least. 

He steps into the shop, expecting a wizard or witch to be the owner trying to make a profit off of some imaginative creatures against unaware No-Majs and is surprised to see one Queenie Goldstein talking joyously to a decidedly unmagical baker.

She whips her head around as soon as he enters and knows it’s too late to back out now.

“Mr. Graves!” she exclaims, startling the baker behind the counter. He, too, turns to look at Percival, now standing stiffly in the doorway under the bell. A few patrons also turn to see what the commotion is about but turn around soon enough.

Almost as if this happens too often.

She’s in front of him before he even has time to blink.

“Oh honey! You need to eat something right away.” She grabs his arm and he’s overtaken by the sheer comfortability she has with him already. He’s thinking back to all those days ago when auror Goldstein had brought over the casserole sans her younger sister, and now he begins to understand the possibility of why she hadn’t.

The younger Goldstein giggles, and he has just enough time to realize what he’d been thinking, and enough courtesy to blush, when she pulls him right up to the counter.

“Don’t worry Mr. Graves, I understand what you mean.” The baker, however, looks as if he understands nothing, but he smiles at Percival all the same.

“Uh, Queenie…”

“Oh, right!” She beams at the baker and it begins to dawn on Percival exactly what’s happening, but Queenie just throws him a nervous smile before looking again at her baker. “Jacob, this is Mr. Graves. He’s one of me and Teenie’s bosses. Mr. Graves, this is Jacob Kowalski. He’s the owner of this bakery.”

Percival feels blindsided by the entire situation, but he still has the sense of mind to think This would be highly inappropriate…if I were actually cleared for work to have any say before he turns to address the owner of the shop himself. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Kowalski. I couldn’t help but notice how creative your pastries are.”

Sure enough, the man is smiling without a worry in the world at the mention of his own creations. “I’m glad you think so Mr. Graves! I actually came up with them in my dreams. Go figure, huh?”

The dopey grin rising on his face becomes a smile towards Queenie. Percival looks away, unsure of what to think of the whole event and the clearly inappropriate relationship between No-Maj and witch when his gaze lands on a gnome pastry.

Kowalski catches his line of sight.

“Cream-filled gnomes! They have a light strawberry jam glaze on ‘em if you’re interested.”

Percival thinks if any real gnomes were aware that pastry creations were made of them to be eaten, they’d be spitting mad. He asks for two and receives two happy smiles in return.

As Kowalski bags them up, Queenie looks at him. He tries to fortify his mind, but he’s tired. Instead, he tries to think of nothing. His stomach growls and all he can think about is getting something in his stomach. He doesn’t know what Queenie sees then in him other than his hunger, but she’s giving him a hard, concerned look he didn’t think either of the Goldsteins were even capable of.

She hasn’t let go of his arm the entire time, and now she squeezes it in place of what he believes would have been a hug from the over-comfortable Goldstein sister.

“Mr. Graves…” she starts. He’s relieved when Kowalski hands him his bag and change.

“Thank you Mr. Kowalski.” He bows his head to the woman. “Miss Goldstein.”

She doesn’t call after him. For that, he’s grateful.

Neither of the Goldsteins come to visit him in the following days. He eats one of the two pastries that morning, his appetite tided over by the events of the morning. He saves the second for the next morning and drinks in the evening. He falls asleep on the couch, but wakes up restlessly throughout the night.

As he attempts sleep the night before he plans to go back to the gardening shop, he tries not to feel the emptiness in his home from the absence of anyone other than himself.