Code

“Percy!”

Ginny comes bolting through the door, her four year-old body like a tiny little freight train, and hurtles herself towards Percy’s bed. She is so small that she almost misses, but she manages to scramble up, rumpling the duvet. He looks up at her from his desk, where he is hunched over math exercises.

“Percy!” She is breathless from the stairs and damp and pink from the bath, draped in one of Bill’s old t-shirts. “Ron has a penis, and I have a bagina!”

Percy’s eyes go wide behind his glasses. He stops his work and stares at her for a moment, not sure what to say, before deciding the least embarrassing response is to fix her pronunciation. He stammers, “Vuh… vagina, Ginny. With a v. Vuh. Like… like very. And vegetable.”

Ginny looks back at him very seriously. “Vuh-gina,” she repeats, waiting expectantly for either approval or correction. “I have a vuh-gina.”

“Right,” says Percy, his reddening face turned back to his work. “I know, Ginny.”

“You do?” she asks, but she does not wait for an answer before continuing. “I don’t have a penis. Ron says it fell off.”

Percy looks up again, erasing the wrong answer from his parchment and shaking his head, irritated by her distraction. “It didn’t fall off. You never had one. Girls don’t have them.”

“That’s what Mum said,” Ginny replies, dangling her bare legs over the side of Percy’s bed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Only boys have them. Ron’s dumb. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Oh.” Ginny kicks her legs against the threadbare coverlet. She does not get up.

“Ginny. I’m busy. Go find something to do.”

“Do you have a penis?”

Percy puts down his quill, his face scarlet. “Ginny, go!” Ginny starts to sniffle. Percy immediately feels badly for scolding her. He hates it when she cries. He tries to soften his voice. “I’m doing my maths, Ginny. It’s hard. If I tell you, will you promise to leave me be?”

Ginny gives a great, watery sniff. “Yes.”

“Fine. Yes, I’ve got one. All boys have them. All right?”

“Can I see it?”

“No! Ginny, go on!” Percy points towards the door.

Ginny rises from the bed and lifts Bill’s t-shirt over her tummy. She stares down at herself. “Mine didn’t fall off?”

“No! Go!”

Ginny looks up at her brother, wide-eyed, and scampers out the door.

Percy rests his chin on his hand and mutters to himself -- when is Mum going to stop putting her in the bath with Ron? -- before going back to his work.


_________________________


“Percy!”

Ginny comes flying through the door and flings herself onto Percy’s bed, her sundress fluttering around her legs as she lands squarely on his toes. Her face is streaked with grimy-looking tears.

“What’s wrong, Ginny?” he asks, marking his page neatly and putting down his book.

“I want to go with you!” she wails, tugging on his sock.

“You can’t. You’re not old enough.”

Ginny is crying in earnest now, her arms wrapped around her brother’s legs, tears wetting the knees of his trousers. “I want tooooooooo!”

Percy sits up taller and pats her gingerly on the head, her hair tangling around his fingers despite his efforts to be careful. It has a mind of its own, her hair, he thinks, sometimes. “It’ll be your turn soon,” he says consolingly. “You have to make sure you can read and do your maths and all sorts of stuff before you can go to Hogwarts. Otherwise how are you going to read your spells?”

Ginny hiccoughs and wipes her nose on Percy’s trousers. Percy makes a face but continues to pat her, anyway. She breathes raggedly and starts coughing. “I want to go now! I want to go with you! Fred and George are mean and Ron is stupid and I want to go with youuuuuu!”

She crawls up the bed and buries her wet face in Percy’s shoulder, flinging her arms around his neck. Stiffly, Percy pats her on the back. “Shhhhh. How about… how about if I send you owls? Would you like that?”

Ginny peeks through her hair at him and swallows. “Really?” she whispers. She has never gotten an owl just for her before.

“Yes, really,” Percy says as Ginny untangles herself from him. “And Mum can help you read them.”

At this, Ginny shakes her head ferociously. “No! I’ll read them myself. They’re mine! Just mine and yours! Just a secret!”

Percy laughs. “Secret owls? Should I write them in code?”

Ginny frowns. “What’s code?”

Percy screws up his face, trying to figure out how to explain this to a six year-old. “It’s like… when you write something. Or say something. But it secretly means something else. But only the people who made it up know. Like…” Percy tries to think of an example, pulling a piece of parchment off his desk. “Like if I draw a star,” he says, drawing a perfect, five-pointed star. “And I tell you that star means remember to brush your teeth.” Ginny often needs reminders for this. “So when I send you an owl, and I draw a star on it, only you know it really means remember to brush your teeth. So the star is a secret code.”

Ginny thinks on this for a minute. She takes the parchment and the quill from Percy’s hands and draws a pair of glasses, occasionally checking them against the ones her brother wears, her tongue poking through her lips in concentration. “So when I draw you this on your owl,” she says, “it means I miss you.”

Percy smiles. “There you go, smart girl. That’s a code.”

Every owl Percy receives from Ginny that year has a pair of glasses drawn at the bottom. Eventually, she adds a cloud to mean “Ron is a tosser,” (a word she learned from George that Mum does not like at all) and a curly-looking balloon to mean “I got all of my maths right.” The easiest one to decode, though, is the lopsided heart she adds almost immediately, which, of course, she explains to Percy, means “I love you.” Sometimes he adds a heart of his own, which is slightly better-proportioned.

___________________________


“Percy!”

Ginny comes bolting through the door and bounces onto Percy’s bed, her hair bobbing around her shoulders.

Percy looks up from his homework. He has loads to do over break.

“Percy, come outside and fly with me!” Ginny’s nine year-old eyes are bright with excitement.

“Ask Charlie,” Percy says, turning back to his Potions essay.

Ginny is undeterred. “He’s busy.”

“So am I,” Percy answers. He notices that Ginny’s sandaled feet are on his bed. “Take your feet off. They’re dirty.”

Ginny obeys promptly. “Please? It won’t take long!”

“Ask Charlie, I said. He’s loads better anyway.”

Ginny gets up and leans over Percy, staring at his Potions homework. “That looks hard.”

Percy sighs and nods. “It is.”

“So take a break. Please?  Just for a little while?  I want to fly with you.” She leans her chin down so that it is resting against her brother’s skinny shoulder and nudges his freckled cheek with hers.

Percy thinks that a break might help him clear his head, after all, so he complies.

They retrieve an old broom from the shed, and Ginny stands behind him in the garden, the broomstick between both of their legs. “On three,” he says, then counts, and they take off.

The force of the stick takes Ginny off-guard, and she falls against Percy’s back, clutching him around the waist to stay on. They hover low, making short zig-zagging paths over the yard, and Ginny laughs against his neck the whole time, egging him to go faster. Her breath is warm and sweet, and it tickles, and Percy hunches his shoulders against the shiver. That makes Ginny laugh harder, and she starts to blow on his skin with purpose.

She likes the way he smells, clean like laundry and sort of cool like the air in the winter. Her other brothers always smell like sweat or chocolate or dirt. Percy smells good, and he has a narrow body, like hers, and she likes the way her breath can make it do that shuddery thing. The hair on his neck prickles. She licks a stripe up it, stopping just below his ear, and then blows colder air onto it as they fly.

The sensation makes Percy shudder hard, and it sends them crashing back to earth with a thud, and they both fall off, tumbling into each other and rolling through the grass. Percy stares at Ginny for a moment, and she thinks she might be in trouble, but Percy just shakes his head.

“Don’t do that, Ginny, okay?”

“Sorry,” she says, her voice suddenly small. “I was just playing.”

“I know. Just… just don’t. See? We fell.” Something warm is crawling through Percy’s belly, and it feels wrong that his sister put it there, and even wronger that he sort of liked it.

“Okay. Can we go back up? I won’t blow you.”

Percy balks. “No, it’s almost time for dinner. I’ll…” he pauses and takes a deep breath. “I’ll take you back up tomorrow, if you’d like. If you behave for Mum.” He has this creeping feeling, like he should not ever take her up on a broom again, but he ignores it, because Ginny is his sister and that is ridiculous and she really likes it.  She really likes him.  She wants to fly with him, even though Charlie is bigger and faster and better.

“Promise?” she asks, her face breaking into a smile of relief, revealing her missing front tooth.

“Of course. Just… just behave for Mum. Like I said.”

“I will!” Ginny skips happily toward the house. Percy puts the broom away and makes his way to dinner much more slowly.

________________________________


“Percy!”

Ginny’s whisper is urgent and terrified; her hand small and frenzied on his back. Percy starts awake, bleary-eyed, as Ginny crawls into his four-poster.

“Ginny!” he says, in surprise and far too loud. Then, “Ginny!” and this time it’s a hiss. He yanks her over his body and shuts his bed curtains before anyone else can wake up and see her.

She is shaking, and her face is wet and dirty-looking. She has obviously been crying, and seeing him sends her into new fits. Clutching desperately at his pyjamas, she buries her face in his chest and sobs.

Hastily, Percy casts a silencing charm over his bed and tries to pry her off of him so that he can see her face. “Ginny, what’s wrong?” he whispers, alarmed. “What happened? How did you get in here?”

“I just,” she says, hiccoughing. “I just w-w-walked in. Nobody stopped me.” Fresh sobs wrack her body, and she is in his lap, her limbs wrapped around him with more strength than Percy ever imagined an eleven year-old girl could possess.

Not knowing what else to do, Percy cradles her against him and rocks a little, rubbing circles into her back. Her entire body feels like it is on fire, and her nightdress is sticking to her with sweat. Underneath it, she is trembling fiercely. “Shhhh,” he whispers against her ear, over and over, “Shhhhh,” until he feels her start to relax and slump against him. “Ginny, what happened? Are you hurt? Do you need Madam Pomfrey?” His usually-graceful hands travel awkwardly over her arms and legs and head, feeling for broken things or things out of place.

Ginny shakes her head. “No,” she chokes out. “N-No. I’m o-okay. I just… I had a bad dream.” Her fingers have not yet relaxed, and two of them have slipped through the buttons of Percy’s pyjamas so that her knuckles are against his bare chest. She rubs them back and forth along his skin, her breath sounding jagged and wet.

“Just a nightmare? It must have been an awful one, making you come in here,” he says quietly. Ginny’s fingers stiffen, and one of her nails scrapes his chest.

For a moment, she says nothing, and then she nods her head against him. “Really scary,” she whispers.  There is a look in her eyes that tells Percy that this is not a normal nightmare.  He is about to probe further when she says, “But I feel better now," and her shaking has mostly subsided and her body has cooled, so he thinks that she is probably all right. 

“Do you want me to walk you back down to the common room?  I can’t take you all the way back to bed, but…”

“No,” Ginny gasps, shaking her head hard. “I want you to stay with me.”

“Ginny, I can’t…” But she has her face against his neck, and it is still wet, and her muscles are still jumping a little now and then, and Percy knows that, really, he can, he just has to make sure that they are up before anybody else, which will probably not be difficult, as it is Saturday. “Okay,” he relents.  Percy is not a rule-breaker, except when it comes to Ginny.

He feels her mouth smiling against his collarbone, and she curls up like a puppy in his lap. Percy does not sleep well – he is too anxious about her being caught in his bed – but instead pets Ginny’s hair and adjusts her nightdress when it rides up. Without thinking, he draws a heart on the back of her pale little hand with his finger when she finally drifts off, and she wraps her fist around it like a baby.

Sometime just before dawn, movement wakes Percy out of his half-sleep. He opens his eyes to find Ginny sprawled on top of him, her nightgown hitched up around her waist, straddling his thigh and rocking her hips against him in a sleepy, languid way. His first impulse is to throw her off of him, but he refrains. Instead, he willfully ignores the straining erection that he has just noticed, his bottom lip clamped firmly between his teeth, and watches for the first sign of daylight so he can wake her without her becoming suspicious. When Ginny makes a strangled-sounding noise in the back of her throat and her body jerks and then stills, he gulps for air like he is drowning.

After he returns her to the common room -- a pair of his own pyjama bottoms now on under her nightdress -- and sends her back to her own bed, Percy stands under the shower in the prefects’ bathroom for a long, long, long time. The water is purposefully cold. It does not help. He kneels on the tile and jerks himself anyway, coughing as the spray runs into his mouth and nose and coming with a pathetic-sounding sob.


___________________________


“Percy!”

Ginny throws open Percy’s bedroom door with a clatter and heaves herself onto his bed, her eyes flashing.

“What?” Percy snaps back, slamming his hand against his desk and smearing ink across the report on which he had been working. With an irritated noise, he points his wand at the mess and clears it.

“Why are you being such a prat about it? Dad’s only worried about you! That man… he doesn’t even know your name!” Ginny leaps to her feet again and grabs Percy by his shoulders, spinning him forcefully around in his chair to face her. She leans down until he can feel her hot breath against his nose. “Your name is Percy Weasley,” she hollers, pressing her forehead into his. “It’s Percy. It’s Percy Weasley, and it isn’t Weatherby, and he’s treating you like shite and you don’t even care! And you’re always there. With him! You’re never here. With us!”

She pauses for a moment, and Percy sits, stunned, at the fury issuing from his thirteen year-old sister’s mouth. He opens his own mouth to speak, but she stops him with a slap that sends his entire head flying sideways.

“With ME!” she shrieks. “You fucking idiot; I’m at school all the time and when I’m here you’re not with ME!”

Percy’s hand reaches for his cheek and his fingers travel down it in a stinging line. For a moment, they just stare at each other. Ginny’s chest is heaving, and her face and ears are burning scarlet. Behind her eyes, he recognizes the glitter of imminent tears.

He holds out a hand to her, then pulls it back, clutching at his tie. He takes a deep breath. “I have work, Ginevra. I have responsibilities. I have to behave like an adult.”

(I have to be there while you are here. I have to be where I can’t smell you on everything. I have to be somewhere where I can do respectable things and think respectable thoughts and not have you throwing yourself onto my cursed fucking bed.)

Ginny stares, her wide eyes starting to overflow, and flees from his room.  Percy can no longer focus on his report, so he reads old textbooks that he knows by heart until the words swim in front of his eyes.  He falls asleep in his clothes.

The next day, a piece of parchment is slid under his door. On it, drawn in purple ink, is a pair of glasses.


_______________________________



“Percy!”

Ginny crashes open the door, marches smartly across the room, and sits down on Percy’s bed, at his feet. He is laying there, hands tucked behind his head, staring at the ceiling, breathing hot puffs of air heavily through his nose.

“Stop it,” she commands, with far more authority than any fourteen year-old ought to have, and slaps at his elbow.

Percy looks at her, his mouth tight and thin. “Stop what?” He swings his long legs over the side of the bed, narrowly missing Ginny’s shoulder, and sits up straight. “I get no respect in this house. Not from Mum and Dad. Not from my brothers. Not from you. Not from anyone! And I work harder than anyone under this roof, Ginny. Do you hear me? Harder than anyone. I deserve this promotion. I have earned it.

“Did you hear him? Spying. He thinks that the Ministry is spying Ginny. Using me to spy.  Paranoid! Ridiculous! What would the Ministry want with him? Why would they waste their time spying on Arthur Weasley?”

Percy spits their father’s name out like something sour. He rises to his feet and opens the trunk at the foot of his bed with his wand. With a flick, things start packing themselves neatly inside.

Ginny watches the scene, stunned. “What are you doing?” she whispers, her hands balling up and her heart jumping to her throat. “What are you doing?” Every muscle in her body is taut and searing.

“Leaving,” Percy says shortly, as robes begin folding themselves into easily-manageable size and zipping towards the trunk. “I’m through being treated like a child who doesn’t know better.” His eyes are blazing with an unrecognizable flame. The motions of his wand as he packs are quick and violent. He is looking everywhere but into Ginny’s face; he knows that if anything is going to stop him, it is her. He also knows that if anything is going to push him away faster, it is her. Always this push and pull; always this yes and no.

Ginny advances towards him slowly, fighting back tears. She breathes deeply as she gets closer, steadying herself. When she is near enough to feel the surprising heat emanating from his body, she grabs his hips and jerks him sideways.

Percy is taken off-guard and unbalances, and Ginny is able to wheel him around. Without warning, she rises on her toes and grabs him roughly around his neck, smashing her mouth against his so hard that their teeth connect.

Percy knows to push her away, but he is so taken aback, so inexplicably weakened by her bald desperation, that he just stands there and lets her kiss him, all of his flying possessions clattering to the floor as he drops his wand, stunned.

She is determined to kiss him until he hollers and spits and shoves, or until he kisses back, so his lack of response does not stop her. His lips are motionless under hers, but they are warm and soft and Percy’s, and she runs her tongue over them and between them and opens his mouth, first clumsy with haste but then more slowly, nudging her nose at his (which matches hers exactly, which they both inherited from Mum; the rest of them all got Dad’s) and letting her hands relax around his neck, where the blood is thrumming with such force that Ginny is afraid he might faint.

She kisses him for over a minute, she thinks, before she finally feels him start to stir, and everything slips into a strange, sharp, slow haze, and his tongue is in her mouth, and there are tears sliding down both of their faces, and her fingers are drawing hearts all the way down her big brother’s spine. His arms close around her, close tight, and they feel protective and they feel fragile like bird-wings, and her heart is pounding, and she thinks, now, that he is going to stay, he has to stay, he is kissing her back and he loves her and she loves him and he is going to stay oh please he has to stay.

But when her hands reach for the buttons of his shirt, something snaps in Percy’s head and he wrenches their mouths apart and stands, aghast and red-lipped and tear-streaked, staring at Ginny and not seeing her at all.

He shakes his head and whispers, “You need to go,” and lifts his wand from the floor. Ginny stumbles out the door. Both of them spend the night crying in their beds, alone, and in the morning, Percy is gone. There is no note.

____________________________


“Percy!”

The Howler starts to scream, and Percy turns the wireless in his new London flat up as loud as it will go to block out his Mum’s voice.

Quickly, however, he realizes that it is not from his Mum at all. It is Ginny’s voice, booming and shrill and furious and verging on hysterical, that is swelling to fill every room.

Percy takes his glasses off and hurls them against the wall, where they shatter. He shuts himself in the bathroom and gets into the shower fully dressed, turning the water on full-blast to drown out the sound. It does not work as well as he would like. Ginny’s Howler voice rivals their Mum’s, and he can hear bits and pieces traveling through the walls.

He hears words and phrases, things like how dare you and fuck you and home and please and sorry.

Percy spells himself dry and repairs his broken spectacles.

Two weeks later, an owl comes. There is one word on it: “Percy.” The rest is in pictures. A pair of glasses. A heart. A pair of lips, colored red, in a frowning pucker. That last one is not part of the code, but he does not need to ask Ginny what it means.

Stupidly, he presses his own lips over the drawing, then crumples the parchment and throws it in the bin.


__________________


“Percy!”

Ginny comes through his bedroom door, this time knocking before she comes in, her head cocked almost shyly. It is Christmas. He has come with Minister Scrimgeour to say hello and pick up some of the things he left behind and felt too embarrassed to request his family send.

She walks quietly over to his bed, still made up neatly, and perches on the edge. Percy is standing at the window, staring into the garden where Harry Potter is skulking uncomfortably through the snow at the Minister’s side.

“Ginny,” he says, nodding without turning to look at his sister who, at fifteen, is tall and willowy and more lovely than he remembered her. Dumbly, he adds, “Happy Christmas.”

It is not a happy Christmas. It is, perhaps, the unhappiest Christmas in memory. They both know it. “Happy Christmas,” she says back. Scooting along the bed until she reaches the point nearest the window, she reaches for Percy’s hands, which are clasped behind his back. She tucks both of hers into the space between them, and his fingers, for just a fraction of a second, close around hers, and she shuts her eyes and breathes.

“I’m sorry, Ginny,” he says, so quietly that it is barely audible.

She tugs at him, and he allows himself to be pulled onto the bed beside her. She presses her thigh against his, her hand against his knee. He still cannot meet her eyes, but Ginny does not really care. He is back.

She leans into him and discovers that he smells the same. Her nose travels along the cords of his neck. He sits stock-still, but his knees feel weak and start to tremble under her touch. Soon, his whole body is seized with tremors.

Ginny crawls into his lap, whispering “Shhhhhh.” She presses her body into his, and her lips find the place where his shoulder meets his neck, pushing aside his shirt. She licks a sloppy heart and blows, and it feels like cold fire, and Percy reacts before he can stop himself, tucking her hair behind her ear and tracing the seashell there with his tongue. Now it is Ginny who shivers, and Percy feels her nipples harden through the layers of fabric, and he locks his arms around her waist and pulls her as close as he has ever allowed himself to pull anyone.  Too close to be safe.  Too close to be forgivable.

Again, he does not let her undress him, pushing her hands away from his buttons, away from his zip, again and again and again until she gives up.  But he shuts his eyes as she rocks across his thigh, her knickers pulled aside under her Christmas dress, and lets her hold one of his fingers in place so that he can feel her.  She is slippery and full of heat.  She tries to crook his finger inside of her, and before he realizes what her wriggling means, it's there, and she half-gasps, half-sobs when he pulls it away but does not try to do it again, afraid he might stop all together.   When she comes, she whispers his name, and without warning, he makes a mess in his trousers, the negligible friction they create as she moves sending him off into oblivion.

As he leaves, Fred and George pelt him with cold, leftover dinner, his mother cries, his father wrings his hands, and Ginny watches from the window, feeling torn in half by the promise of owls sent to her at school and the admonishment that the rest of their family is afraid, is ignorant, and it's not their fault, and maybe they will understand before it is too late.