Work Text:
The wind whistles through the trees, trees that had once shielded a game of Quidditch from Muggle eyes, trees that had been climbed up too high and had had branches broken off to become swords or wands or hey-let’s-go-poke-that-with-a-stick. Leaves rustle appealingly, hinting at the coming fall weather, and it mingles with the laughter coming near the house, a pleasant mixture of nature and humanity that does nothing to erase the blank expression of one Percy Weasley. He is sitting under one of the said trees, feeling the wind caress his face – his carefully neutral face, held still even as he lifts a bottle to his lips and tilts his head back, eyes falling closed as he drinks heavily.
“You’ve changed,” comes a low voice and the leaves rustle once more as a figure pushes through low limbs to appear at Percy’s side. It is the only person who would come looking for him at a time like this – at a wedding, that is – and Percy doesn’t even look up as he slowly lowers the bottle to rest on his thigh, blinking a few times as he represses a sigh.
George doesn’t bother and the sigh floats out, almost a groan as he sinks to the ground next to Percy and leans back against the same tree as his brother, his legs spread out before him. “I suppose this is where you point out that we’ve all changed,” he continues, as if Percy had said something in return. Freckled hands float down to grip at the grass and tug lightly, absentmindedly. “Harry’ll miss you, you know.”
“Harry saw I was there,” points out Percy, voice hoarse and fingers momentarily clenching around the neck of the bottle. After a moment, his fingers loosen and he resumes his blasé stare. “Said hello at the beginning. When’re him and Gin leaving?”
“Soon, I s’pose,” says George. “You got any left of that?”
Percy tilts his head back to look at the other redhead, lifting the bottle questioningly. At George’s nod, he passes it over.
“Ah,” says George after taking a sip. He winces and then holds it back for Percy to take. “Sweet Tail Cabernet. That’s…”
Silence falls and then Percy clears his throat: “I know.”
“Ah,” says George again.
It sounds painful when Percy next speaks and it is but he does it anyway because it’s George and if George can find a way to wake up in the morning, well – “You said I changed?”
“Right. Well. Used to be that you would never sneak off from a wedding to go get wasted behind some trees, innit?”
Percy snorts.
“Of course,” continues George thoughtfully. “Used to be you’d never go to a wedding in the first place.”
“Considered them ‘frivolous.’ Too much dancing. Marriages don’t last anymore anyway, it’s all in the statistics. Now they’re… Well. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I really can’t tell if you’ve improved or not, mate.”
George takes another long swig from his bottle, and a pained look crosses Percy’s face; they sit there like that for a moment, listening to the sounds of merriment floating in from beyond their circle of trees. There is the sound of something breaking – a brief sound of silence – and then a burst of laughter, probably at some poor soul’s expense. Percy is almost glad he’s not there.
Finally: “Do you think… he’d think I’m improved?” and it’s so damn clear who they’re talking about, because everyone else seems to have moved on, everyone else can say his name now (Molly still cries), and everyone else can laugh at weddings and not be constantly overwhelmed by the past but Percy and George – Percy and George are the ones sitting in the orchard drinking his favourite wine when they’re supposed to be celebrating, Percy and George are the ones who don’t visit his grave or speak a word on the anniversary of his death or birthday and why is that? George is his twin so that, of course, makes sense, but what’s wrong with Percy? Why can’t –
“Percy, if he saw you right now, he’d be so fucking proud,” says George quietly, and there’s something horribly sad about hearing this from his mouth because, looking at him, for a moment all Percy wants is for it to be his mouth, all he wants is to not see the missing ear because what he wouldn’t give for one day with Fred just to apologize, just to make everything all right –
“So proud,” George repeats and then he pushes himself to his feet, holding onto the tree for a moment and looking down at Percy with a terrible grief permeating throughout his entire being. And then he seems to gather himself together and he nudges Percy with his foot, attempting a smile. “Try not to stay out here too long, all right? At least come out when we’re all saying goodbye. Ginny’d like that. So would Mum.”
And then he’s gone, disappearing into the trees and heading back towards the loud music.
Percy stares down into the bottle of wine, deep into its depths, and then slowly lifts it back up to his mouth, tilting his head back and drinking. The smell fills his nose and he remembers for a moment the day when Charlie had snuck wine from the kitchen on a hot summer’s night and Percy had refused to drink any and George had been sick asleep upstairs and Bill had been away and Percy had watched as Fred and Charlie got drunker and drunker, just the two of them. He’d watched disapprovingly as Charlie had laughed and laughed and Fred had done more and more stupid things – eventually throwing up in a vase and falling asleep under the dining room table, only to be discovered the next day and screamed at endlessly.
He’d watched it all and hadn’t had a sip once. And the next day, when Fred’s lecture had finished, Fred had approached him and asked accusingly why Percy hadn’t helped him out – why Percy hadn’t cleaned the vomit or pulled Fred somewhere more inconspicuously or at least given him a blanket. And Percy had stared at him with narrowed eyes and told him in as stern a voice as he could manage in fourth year – “I am not responsible for your pigheaded decisions.”
Throwing his arms out wide and nearly flinging the bottle away, Percy laughs up at the sky, head tilted back and voice loud as he shouts, “Hear that, Freddie boy? I am not fucking responsible!”
Except he is. He so completely fucking is. And there isn’t enough Sweet Tail Cabernet in the world to erase that.
He rests his head back against the tree, about to summon the will to pick himself off the grass and stumble somewhere where no one will be able to find him in his misery, when – two snickering voices are nearing and then two bodies stumble out of the brush, entangled in each other and saying things in low voices that Percy suspects he isn’t supposed to hear and then –
“Oh,” says one of the voices in surprise, spotting Percy. He tugs on the other bloke’s arm, looking both embarrassed and mildly intoxicated. “C’mon, Ol, let’s find somewhere else.”
“I – no, wait, go on, I’ll be there in a minute,” says Oliver Wood, looking distracted as he eyes Percy. He turns quickly to the boy and smiles wickedly, pushing him back the direction they came. “Find someplace we won’t be interrupted, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll find us a place,” says the boy eagerly and then it’s just Percy and Oliver alone and Percy can’t even be bothered to get up at this point.
Oliver steps closer, looking incredibly attractive in tight-fitting robes, cut sharply against his broad shoulders and his dark hair is brushed just the right way, like Percy could so easily push his fingers into it, grab onto it. His eyes are nearly unreadable, mysterious and charming at the same time, and his jaw is cast in a slight scruff, able to pull off a look that Percy never will. He moves like he flies, sinewy and graceful and powerful all at once, just like Percy remembers from Quidditch matches so long ago. He’s never bothered to go to a professional match and now he wonders why the hell that is. Of course, he’s raging drunk, so it’s no wonder this is just now occurring to him.
“Are you okay?” asks Oliver, moving closer still and then suddenly he comes to a halt. “Oh,” he says in surprise. “I thought you were… Shit, sorry, I thought you might have been George. The red hair, you know,” he says, sounding sheepish. He reaches up to scratch the side of his neck and his robes part slightly to reveal a tight white shirt underneath. “Right so – so, you’re not who I thought who you were and uh… oh, whatshisface is waiting, so…”
He turns to go and before he can think, Percy is speaking and it’s, “You’re gay then?” and he still can’t be bothered to get up.
Oliver slowly turns back around, eyebrows lifted. “Er, yeah,” he says, lips twisting in a wry smile. “Don’t you look at the papers? It was all anyone could talk about for a couple of months a while back.”
“Of course I don’t read the papers,” says Percy pompously. He’s very good at being pompous. “They write absolute rubbish. Nothing but complete shit. At least, that’s all it was four years ago. The obituary they wrote for my brother was such bullocks.”
“Yeah,” says Oliver, shifting on the spot and now looking rather uncomfortable. “I read that. It was…”
“They made him sound serious,” says Percy loudly, and he wants to throw something so he rips up a handful of grass and throws the blades everywhere, watching them twist and catch on the wind as they drift towards Oliver. This, of course, is not the effect he is going for, so instead he scowls. “He’s not serious. Never serious a day in his fucking life. Fucking prat.”
“Oi,” says Oliver just as loudly, looking furious. “I liked Fred Weasley, don’t say that about him!”
Percy looks at him as if he’s stupid, and he is, rather, in Percy’s mind, because he plays Quidditch and Percy has never really seen the benefit of playing Quidditch. “He’s not a prat because he was never serious,” he says. “He’s a prat because he died. He wasn’t supposed to die. Not when he could have done so much more with his life than I ever will.”
There’s a moment of silence and then, “Oh.” Now Oliver looks, if possible, even more uncomfortable. And then suddenly that changes and he seems to make a decision with himself, glancing once over his shoulder before striding across the grass and sitting in nearly the exact same spot as George had earlier. “You’ve done stuff with your life,” he says after a moment. “I’ve seen it in the papers.”
“I just told you that those papers spout rubbish,” Percy says. “Don’t trust a thing you’ve seen about me.”
“So you’re not working in the Department of Regulation of Magical Creatures?”
“I’m only a Junior Assistant.”
“To the Head of the department,” points out Oliver. “That seems pretty impressive if you ask me.”
“Oh yeah?” demands Percy, and for some reason it annoys him that Oliver knows this about him. “And what of you? You’re – you’re – on some fancy Quidditch team, I imagine! Getting girls every weekend and winning all sorts of games and giving money to charities!”
“Well first of all,” says Oliver, amused, “I’m on Puddlemere United. And I don’t know how to feel that you don’t know that. And secondly, you already know I’m gay, so getting girls every weekend just sounds completely horrifying – and I only give money to charities when it makes me look good or someone nags me, so please don’t go thinking I’m a saint or something.”
“Fred would find that funny,” says Percy miserably, leaning back against the tree once more and feeling something deep and dark well up in his chest. “Fred would say something funny in return. He could make anything funny.”
“Are you drinking that?”
Percy glances over. Squints. Clutches the bottle to his chest possessively. “Go get your own,” he grumbles. “You’re completely ignoring everything I’m saying.”
“I am not,” says Oliver calmly. “I just think I would be able to sympathize more if I were drinking as well.”
“I’m not drunk!” Percy says loudly.
“I never said you were.”
“It was implied.”
“Why are you not at the wedding?”
“I am at the wedding,” says Percy. He frowns. “Well I was at the wedding. I just couldn’t handle the dancing, you know. I’m a rubbish dancer.”
“And that’s it, yeah?”
“Well, why aren’t you at the wedding?”
“I met… well, I met… hmm,” says Oliver, lips turning down in an attractive frown. “What was his name again? I really can’t… well, I met that bloke, you know. You saw him just a few minutes ago. Should probably go and find him, since I told him to go find a place for us to be alone…”
“You gonna shag him?” asks Percy, and he leers. He didn’t know he could leer until this moment, but he finds he’s actually really good at it, leaning in towards Oliver and letting his eyes glitter suggestively.
Oliver looks taken aback. He probably didn’t know Percy could leer either. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s bad that I can’t remember his name, isn’t it?”
Percy gives up on his leering, instead reverting back to his original position and tilting his bottle this way and that, trying to reflect the light from above. It’s not working and that seems far more pressing than any problems of Oliver Wood. “Yeah, maybe. Maybe, maybe. Listen, you lose anyone in the war?”
The Quidditch player hesitates and then in a low voice: “Yes.”
“So you know what it feels like then.” It’s not a question. “You know how fucking terrible it feels. Like this weight is just on your chest all the goddamn time and how are you ever supposed to escape it?”
It’s a shorter hesitation this time when Oliver says, “You don’t.”
“Well, fuck.”
“You know, you never cursed this much when we were at school.”
Percy laughs, sharp and bitter. “Like you paid attention to me at school.”
“Maybe I did,” says Oliver, sounding just as uncomfortable as he had at the start of their strange meeting. Then the corner of his mouth curls up. “Maybe I wondered what had happened to you to put such a giant stick up your arse.”
“Well, I never noticed you,” says Percy stiffly. “Not once.”
“No?” asks Oliver, amused. “Never?”
“Not a single time.”
“Percy, we shared a dormitory.”
“Always prancing around waving your Quidditch Captaincy all over the place.”
“Aha, so you did notice me. And anyways, I seem to recall the same thing happening with you and the Head Boy title.”
“I earned it,” declares Percy loftily.
“So did I!” says Oliver loudly and it’s strange because Percy remembers him being incredibly touchy over anyone ever commenting on his Quidditch skills but he doesn’t sound angry right now, only highly, highly amused. Somehow, that is more infuriating than anything else he could have done. “So are you still going to pretend like you never noticed me?”
“I don’t like you,” says Percy, and he twists and turns and struggles, dropping the bottle and wriggling until he’s on his feet, staring with glasses askew and face red as Oliver gets to his feet in one smooth move. “I really don’t. Stop changing the subject when I’m trying to wallow.”
Oliver’s expression abruptly turns almost tender and he reaches out slowly and fixes Percy’s glasses, straightening them with a small smile. “Wallowing isn’t good for you, Weasley. You wanna move on? That’s how you do it. Figure something else to focus on until there’s less to wallow in.”
Percy wants to crumble. He wants to drop to his knees and curl into a ball and cry endlessly because he hasn’t cried once since Fred died and that doesn’t seem right, does it? He wants to give in to the grief and let it envelope him, but he doesn’t because that’s not what is proper or right or polite and so instead he just stands there, arms held limply at his sides and lips pressed together. “Maybe I don’t want to move on, though. Maybe he wouldn’t want me to.”
“But maybe he would,” says Oliver gently. “You said he wanted to make everything funny. Wanted to make everyone laugh. Are you laughing?”
It gets harder not to cry and Percy hates it – and he hates Oliver for making him feel this way, for coming into his safe circle of trees and disrupting it entirely. “I have to go,” he says sharply. And then – “No, you have to go. This is my house. My circle of trees. Get your own.”
“I just –“
“Wood.”
“Right,” says Oliver. “Must go find that… bloke. The one that’s waiting. He’s been waiting a long time. Oops.”
Percy just stands there.
“I’m going now,” he says. “It was nice seeing you again.”
Percy presses his lips together harder.
“Right,” sighs Oliver. “Have fun then… drinking. Night, Percy.” And he slopes off, hands sliding into his pockets and shoulders hunched just slightly as he disappears. It is then that Percy realizes that the laughter and music has ended and Harry and Ginny must have already left and he feels a sort of hollow ringing in his chest.
“Would you want that, Fred?” he mutters. “Forget you? Forget the war? Fuck.” And he turns to leave, drunk and miserable and wondering just when Oliver Wood actually started to make sense.