The Chasm

Percy did not have sweet dreams. In fact, he had no dreams, which was exactly how he liked things. He woke early -- earlier than Luna -- and lay awkwardly under the blankets on her couch for close to half an hour, debating what he ought to do.

He thought it rude to rise and go poking around her home while she was asleep. Besides, the idea of going through his morning rituals and perhaps running into her, quite accidentally, in her nightclothes, made him shake his head with resolve and stay put, even though his bladder was protesting. Briefly, he considered just Apparating home, but that felt uncomfortably (and absurdly, he thought) like morning-after business. And this was not a morning after situation.

So Percy stayed put, adjusting his body here and there to take the pressure off of his bladder, until Luna meandered out of her bedroom at nine-thirty, looking, as always, as though she were still in the midst of a dream. Her hair resembled a cloud around her head, unruly and pale and soft-looking, and her nightdress (which was not entirely too short, and not showing far too much of her legs) was blue with a little ruffle at the hem, like a little girl's. "Good morning," she said brightly. "Did you sleep well?"

Percy took of his glasses on the pretense of cleaning them, making Luna into a blue and white blur across the room. "Yes, thank you."

"How were your dreams?"

"Nonexistent," Percy said, replacing his glasses and averting his eyes.

Luna looked disappointed, but she set off to make breakfast while Percy showered in her bathroom. She had an interesting array of homemade-looking soaps and shampoos and cleansers, and he brought each one to his nose before deciding on something minty for his body (which turned out to also be tingly-feeling and rather pleasant) and something rich and berry-like for his hair.

He remembered suddenly, as he stepped out of the stall, that he had no clean clothes. Then he noticed a neatly-folded pile sitting atop the toilet. They were his clothes from yesterday, fresh-smelling and crisp: white button-down shirt, black trousers, white shorts. Blushing, he realized that Luna must have been in while he was washing (How on earth did he not notice? He blamed it on the tingly soap) and cleaned them. His tie had changed color from black to indigo and now sported white polka-dots. He tucked it into his trouser pocket and left the top button of his shirt undone.

Before setting his plate (which contained some lovely-looking sausage and eggs) in front of him, Luna leaned down to smell him. Percy reddened as her nose swept through his hair and then down his arm, and she smiled. "Excellent choices," she remarked. "I picked the berries for that shampoo while I was out looking for a Crumple-Horned Snorckack. I didn't find one, but they do make a good aphrodisiac, don't you think?"

Percy coughed. "Er... well, no, I hadn't noticed that. I just liked the way it smelled."

"It works better if you use it on all your hair," Luna said, nodding sagely. Percy coughed again and turned his attention back to his breakfast.

They ate together in silence for awhile, Percy growing more unnerved by the moment, as Luna watched him intently from across the table the entire time. Finally, Percy's curiosity -- and a desire to break the strange sort of tension he was feeling -- drove him to speak.

"Did you know what we were going to... er, see last night?"

"Yes."

"How? If they're George's thoughts..."

"He has a bit of a schedule," Luna replied, swirling her knife through the yolk on her plate. "At first, it was random. I'd see all kinds of things, and lots of times, they didn't make any sense. I blamed it on the Ogling Ocs, but now I think it was his brain. It was full of fuzz and chaos and things like that. But then I think he got sort of numb." Her voice lowered. "Numb, and obsessed, and rather strange, really. And he started to think in order. Always the same set of thoughts. Like his brain is stuck. Oh, sometimes he switches it up. He'll start at nine instead of eight, or he'll go to bed before seven, or he'll just be rather drunk and not think anything at all. But usually it's the same. Same thoughts. Same order. He keeps time with it, I think."

Percy suddenly lost his appetite. The George that he knew was the human incarnation of one of he and Fred's ridiculous Whiz-Bangs: spontaneous, color-changing, short-fused, loud, dazzling. He was frustrating and anarchic, also, yes, but that was George. Not numb. Not obsessed. Not scheduled. Not drunk in his flat, turning himself in to bed before the sun did, replaying the same thoughts through his head so consistently that Luna Lovegood and her spyglasses could set a clock by him.

Percy ran both hands through his hair and stared at his half-eaten breakfast. Without a word, Luna waved her wand and his plate cleared itself and sailed to the sink. Hers followed.

"How long have you been..." Percy couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence.

"Three months. Since the war. He's very sad, Percy."

"Obviously," Percy said, stiffening. "We're all sad. Fred is... was... my brother, as well. And... and my Mum... And I..." Percy stood, brushing imaginary crumbs from his trousers. He shook his head and pulled in a breath. "I apologize. Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Lovegood, but I really ought to be going. I have..."

But Percy didn't get to finish. Luna had stood up and walked around the table, and one of her pale hands came across his mouth. "Stay," she said.

"I can't. There are things I need to take care of at my flat."

"Can I come? I'm good at taking care of things."

"Surely you must have plans for today. I wouldn't want to intrude upon them."

Luna tilted her head and looked at him curiously. "You're my plans for today, Weatherby."

Defeated, Percy sat back down on Luna's sofa and waited, listening to her shower running and wringing his hands into a knot as tangled as the pit of his stomach.

_________________________

Luna turned out to be a rather good distraction, however, and Percy found that he didn't entirely mind her company. She brought things from her own cupboard (nonperishable things, Percy noticed; things that were pickled or canned or candied) in her satchel, and she sang while they went through the things in his refrigerator that had spoiled and threw them into the bin.

At first, Percy was embarrassed by the state of things, but Luna was not at all phased. She even complimented him on the chartreuse tiling in his kitchen (which he hated but hadn't bothered to change) and said that it reminded her of apples. When Percy countered that it reminded him of vomit, she paused and pondered so carefully that he almost laughed again. Her mind remained unchanged, however, and when they went to purchase things to refill his cupboards, Luna insisted on a bushel of bright green apples. They shared one in his small, sparse sitting room, having finished a thorough cleaning of the flat.

"Are you coming back with me?" she asked, taking an exaggerated bite and passing it to Percy, who sat beside her, another two buttons on his shirt undone.

He tossed it between his hands, avoiding the skinless section where her teeth had been. "I don't want to be a bother. We've made it perfectly habitable here, I think. And thank you for it, by the way. It was quite unnecessary, but you were very kind to help. No reason..."

"There's a reason," she interrupted. "There's more you have to see."

"Truthfully, I'm not sure..."

"You want to. You do. And anyway, you have to. There's so much more."

Percy took a bite of his own out of the apple and chewed slowly. The thought of seeing George again made his whole body feel heavy and uncomfortable. But he couldn't help but feel as though there really was some sort of point to this; some end that Luna was edging towards, and frankly, he was curious. Though he had always loved his brothers -- loved them with a sort of ferocity, really, the lot of them; and it had been that ferocity that had, in the end, made him turn his back on them for so long, frustrated that they couldn't see he only wanted what was right and best and safe for them, even if it had turned out to be wrong -- he never really understood them, especially Fred and George. They shared his blood. They shared his white skin and his red hair and his abominable freckles. And he supposed that Luna was right: they shared his stubbornness. But that was really where it ended, and they were, by all accounts, a mystery. And maybe this would help him to solve it.

Percy sighed. "All right, then."

_________________________________________

After dinner, which Luna prepared in Percy's kitchen as Percy hovered nervously, making mental notes to neaten the cupboards she cluttered and rearranged, they clasped hands and Apparated together back to Diagon Alley, back to the roof of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, back to the window of George's flat. Luna Disillusioned them both.

It was difficult for Percy to look at his brother without the Ogling Ocs hiding his current physicalities. He didn't like the way George's ribs stood out, or the way his once-solid body had sharpened at the edges. It was strangely like looking into a mirror, and for the first time, Percy could see a resemblance that went beyond their coloring.

But Luna looked first, not handing over the glasses until she had satisfied herself that the thoughts she wanted were going to be making an appearance. She held the second pair with a kind of possessiveness that Percy hadn't yet seen from her, guarding them between her soft hands like a secret.

Finally, she reached for his hand and placed them in his palm, nodding toward the window. Percy put them on and watched the scene blink into focus.

Fred and George were walking through the door of Ollivander's.

Percy nodded his head in recognition. He knew this story.

Ollivander walked out from the back room, and his eyebrow raised knowingly at the two little redheaded boys standing near the counter. He came forward, greeting them, and their Mum watched as Fred and George each held out their hands to Ollivander, following his direction. They cast sidelong glances at one another, their mouths quivering.

Percy recognized this expression very, very well. He could hear their voices, almost as if they were standing next to him. This bloke is mental. In spite of himself, Percy smiled.

Ollivander bent close to the boys, taking, in turn, each of their hands, turning them back and forth in front of his eyes. Behind them, their Mum began to look nervous. Ollivander's huge, silver eyes (which eerily resembled Luna's, Percy thought) glided over their faces, turning them side to side and gazing from every angle. He nodded knowingly, but looked vaguely surprised, and with a quick word to their Mum, retreated into the back room. Moments later, he returned, bearing two identical boxes.

Without thinking too much about it, Percy began to narrate quietly for Luna, who, though transfixed, was surely not able to understand much of what she was seeing without being able to hear what was being said.

"They used to get so frustrated with their wands," he said. "Especially when they were younger. Look, see? They're both the same length, same wood. You can't tell them apart just by looking. But the truly interesting part is the core. They're both dragon heartstring. And the thing about dragon heartstring..."

"... each dragon only has one," Luna whispered back.

Percy nodded. "Very rarely two, Ollivander said. But generally, if there are two, only one is suitable for wandmaking. The other is usually underdeveloped and not appropriately magical. But those wands are unique. They both have heartstring from the same dragon. Ollivander said it was the only dragon he had ever encountered with two usable heartstrings. Fascinating, isn't it?"

"Oh, very." Luna nodded, staring.

"But their wands were funny from the go," Percy said. "Dodgy things. They're completely useless against one another. They could never practice dueling with each other, and it used to aggravate them. One would try to jinx the other, and the spells would go sideways or fizzle out halfway across, or sometimes, they just wouldn't cast at all. Very peculiar. If they did manage to hit the other, it was always some watered-down version of what they were trying to do. I remember," Percy said, laughing slightly, "one day in the kitchen, Fred had gotten all wound up with George about something. And George was giving him cheek about it, and Fred reached right into my pocket, nicked my wand, and Jelly-Legs'd him. Ridiculous, really."

Luna smiled. She nodded as though understanding something for the first time.

"Also," Percy said, still watching Fred and George examining their wands carefully, turning them over and over in their hands, awed, as Ollivander explained something to them, "their wands never behaved quite normally in each other's hands, either. If they got them mixed up and George tried to use Fred's, the spells would be weak and sometimes do the opposite of what they were supposed to be doing, like they were reversed in a mirror or something. Eventually Fred wrapped yellow Spellotape around the handle of his, because they'd constantly be grabbing the wrong one in the mornings."

Luna reached for Percy's hand and squeezed. "Two halves of the same heart," she said dreamily. "Sort of romantic, don't you think?"

Percy stilled, but didn't pull his hand away. "Well. I guess when you put it that way, but..."

"Keep watching," Luna said.

The scene before them faded out, as Fred, George, and their Mum walked out of Ollivander's shop back into Diagon Alley. Another scene quickly took its place.

Fred and George were side-by-side on George's bed at the Burrow. They were wearing the same clothes as they were earlier, and they kept touching the tips of their wands together and watching them pushed back by some unseen force, like polarized magnets. Every time they did that, the twins broke into giggles.

They settled their wands in their laps, side by side, and bent their heads together, whispering, even though there was no one else in the room to overhear. Looking closer, Percy noticed that their hands were clasped together on the bed, nestled between Fred's right thigh and George's left.

The hand-holding took Percy aback a little, and he blinked in surprise. They were eleven, no longer babies, and while Percy could remember them spending a lot of time hand-in-hand as toddlers, it had stopped - or so Percy had thought - once they got older.

Leaning together, their foreheads touched. Their lips were moving, but Percy couldn't read them, though he could tell that the conversation was quick and excited, as their conversations often were. But then, Fred tilted his face into George's, and their noses bumped. They laughed. George bumped back, and then drew the end of his nose all the way up the bridge of Fred's, coming to rest between Fred's eyes. More laughter. Fred responded with an Eskimo rub, which George returned, and they laughed again.

The laughter stilled, and the twin's body stilled, and Percy could see a pink flush in both of their faces, like they'd been out in the cold -- or in the heat -- too long. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Fred whispered something, and George turned his face, tilting his chin down, like he was embarrassed.

While George's cheek was turned, Fred leaned in towards him and lightly kissed him on the jaw, just below his left ear. George didn't move. Emboldened, Fred did it again, this time in the center of George's cheek. Fred was just leaning in for a third time when George's face suddenly turned, and their lips met, and they both pulled back in surprise, or embarrassment, or both. But then, at the same time, they both leaned in again, and they kissed each other quite squarely, with purpose, on the mouth, their noses bumping again, their eyes closing, their lashes two matching, pale shadows on two matching, pale cheeks.

The scene faded, and Percy, not wanting to see anymore, removed his Ogling Ocs and sat motionless, still staring through the window. Luna did the same.

"Weren't they lovely?" Luna finally whispered. Percy realized that her hand was still wrapped around his, and she was moving her thumb back and forth across his knuckles.

Percy swallowed thickly. "They..."

"They kissed," she said, matter-of-factly, as if these sorts of things happened every day. "They bumped their little noses -- but they don't have little bat-noses like you -- and they kissed." Her voice dropped to an almost reverent whisper. "That thought is my favorite one."

Percy's whisper sounded more like a croak. "Why?"

Luna thought for a moment. "Because. They're small. And they love each other. They love each other even when nobody is watching and telling them to be nice. They just are. And people who love each other kiss each other. And it's innocent. They're innocent. They don't know about the bad things that are going to happen. And they don't think that they're a bad thing that's happening. They think they're just a happy secret."

Percy tossed her words over and over in his head, and she ran her thumb over his knuckles, and they sat, the air thick and humid around them, for a long while before Luna asked Percy if he remembered his first kiss.

Percy nodded. "It was... well, rather like... rather like theirs, actually," he said, the truth of what he had just witnessed only just starting to really sink in.

"Tell me about it."

Percy thought for a minute, then nodded. "I was thirteen. And it was awkward. And silly. And..." he stopped, rethinking his words, but Luna nudged him.

"And what?"

"And there was about as much tongue as... as they used," he finally said, shaking his head as though still in disbelief. "The worst kiss of my life, actually. No idea what I was doing."

Luna giggled. She closed her eyes, and before Percy even realized what she was doing, they had Apparated into Luna's garden, and when his feet hit the ground, his body hit Luna's, and she was on her toes with her mouth pressed against his, her arms wound around his waist, laughing still against his lips.

Startled, he opened his mouth to protest, but she took it as an invitation, and even as he backed away from her, she managed to brush her lips across his in a series of tickling kisses that ended with a quick lick at his lower lip. He pulled back and stared at her, utterly speechless, wide-eyed (verging on bulging out of his skull, really), and she just kept giggling until she finally said, "I think you've improved."

"How..."

And before he could ask her how, exactly, she had come to that conclusion, since the kiss hadn't been a proper one at all, she had stepped toward him again and caught his mouth with hers, and for once, he didn't talk, didn't question, didn't think.

He just felt. He felt human. He felt like a man for the first time in a very, very, very long time. And he kissed her back, the wildness of her garden making the bottoms of his trousers dewy and wet, the tangled nest of her long hair trapping his slender fingers, the now-risen moon making everything look strange and shimmery, like they were moving together in somebody else's thoughts.

But they weren't. They were real. And Percy held on until the breath, quite literally, left him, and then he just borrowed hers, which was warm and content and just bloody fine.