With Vengeance

This story is dedicated to Mr. Paise and Miss Pete. I miss you both.

This little bit of psychosis was red-moused by Jilliane. It's not at all the story that I outlined.

Story done in response to two challenges. See the authors notes at the end for details.


With Vengeance

Hermione Weasley née Granger had always made him nervous. Even when she was eleven and he a lofty fourteen, her serious brown eyes had intimidated him as much as her intellect made him feel somehow less than what his pride could let him afford to be. He was a Weasley, one face in a flock of tatty red, undistinguished except in his own mind. That was why he settled for service to the Ministry, why he married a woman who could offer him nothing but position, and ultimately why he failed to thrive when the rest of the clan seemed to flourish. He was simply one Weasley in many, and not a remarkable Weasley at all. He finally recognised this, and all due to his lovely wife Audrey and his brother, Ron.

What he thought had been the hardest lesson to learn during the war, aside from the very frightening lengths he was willing to go to survive, no matter what regime was in office, was that he was truly unremarkable. He had not fought actively at opposing the regime that took over after Scrimgeour was assassinated. He had done nothing but keep his nose down and his head covered. He told himself, on those nights when Audrey was out late doing Merlin knew what, that it wasn’t cowardice that he exhibited his entire life, but extreme practicality.

There was a time when Percy, in his exactitude, would become irritated yet enthralled with Hermione’s willingness to excel, her need for definition in a world that would only grudgingly accept her if she showed proper subservience. It was from that very lowly position that Percy knew he would rise. He knew she would only succeed, if success were measured in callused knees and bruised foreheads, from the feet of the great, behind the scenes, a chamberlain to the high and mighty. Percy knew this because he had already experienced that abased state. Hermione did not know her place, with her keen intelligence, the fire to know that she rarely banked most times, and her absurd kind of Muggle bravery. (She had been the legendary smiter of a dragon named Malfoy and defender of house elves. A legend in her time as much as Percy wasn’t in his.) Sometimes he tried to instill in her the way of the wide world that he had barely partaken of at that point, and he did so with his boring talk of cauldron thickness and need for order in the chaos that had always been the Burrow.

He wanted to scream at her that she needed to be careful in those dark times, and yet she showed bravery and loyalty to her friends (his betraying brother and the dangerous Potter.) Hers was a bravery of the type that Percy dare not show. He was a faceless Weasley and could not hope that he might be noticed for anything other than his willingness to serve greatness, or at least well-placed mediocrity. No, he could never expect greatness on his own merit, but he could dream.

She, on the other hand was the mistress of her own fate, a lone light in the darkness, and a friend to the friendless. Or so she thought, before time showed her that life was not a golden fruit to pluck from the tree so that she could devour it with her plump lips. Life was a heavy meal that was nourishing but otherwise unappetising. It was liver and onions, not nectar and wine.

Percy knew this well.

His first inkling that she had become more to him than just an intimidating friend of his brother’s had come when she was fourteen and he a man of nearly eighteen. She was staying at the Burrow, away from her exotic Muggle parents, running as amuck as her proper, middle-class upbringing would allow. She was sitting in the tree house, a childish bastion long since abandoned by Percy in his lofty pursuit of a life consisting of more than his parents had. He saw her legs, long and coltish, not quite possessing the womanly weight and shape that they promised. Her toenails were painted a pearly pink, a colour in itself alien in the context of the Burrow with its greying wooden exterior and slapdash architecture. He remembered very clearly, even as his life fell apart at the end of the year, how he watched as she read in that arbour cathedral, her frizzy hair a halo in the late afternoon light, her youth-plump cheek caressed by that same sun that burned his. She read and her lips moved, as if the words on the page had to be accompanied by some action to give them breath. It was a flaw, a tiny one, which made his heart lurch as no amount of exacting perfection could. He watched her form the words, her plain face mobile, almost pretty. It was then that he fell in love with her, the girl and the woman she would be.

Percy had one talent that distinguished him from the run of the mill wizard, and gave him an edge over the ginger hoard of the Burrow. Percy Ignatius Weasley could see potential and therefore valued what a person could be. And he valued Hermione above all others.

Of course, she had married his brother and Percy himself existed in the same state of matrimony, until the night the pictures appeared on his doorstep.

He looked once again at the large, yellow envelope on the table. Practicality, not cowardice, made him unable to do what he wanted to do, shove the lot of pictures under Audrey’s nose and wash his hands of her torrid affair with his youngest brother. Practicality caused him to keep his mouth shut when Ronald Bilius Weasley espoused love of Hermione, even though his eyes had drifted hotly over Audrey’s form only moments before, whilst Hermione took care of their baby. Practicality made Percy stay the course, ride the wave of nausea that gripped him when either of them touched him. Practicality made him do what he was going to do just one more time, with a pseudo-Hermione, to get it out of his system once and for all. Then, and only then, would he put aside his vengeance fantasy and endure the life he had chosen for himself.

He had brewed the Polyjuice himself, gathered the bits of Hermione that would make the potion work, and had engaged the services of a discreet brothel. This last time would make it an even half-dozen. He could indulge himself in this fantasy no more. It was not practical for him to do so, and each time with the pseudo-Hermione left him feeling frustrated, dirty, and more than a tad unwholesome. It felt as if he were betraying her, violating her.

That sad state of affairs was how he came to be in a Leprechaun pub with the sidhe sign of Healing, a shillelagh entwined by two snakes, in the middle of the day on one of the high, holy days of that race. It was no coincidence that the Roman St. Patrick’s name-day fell so close to the vernal equinox and the ides of March. Percy met the indifferent gaze of the leprechaun that waited impatiently for his order. It was his first time to meet the pseudo-Hermione in such an establishment and on a Saturday. He deemed the brothel too risky with the Saturday crowds strolling past it. The Earth sidhe dressed in a red coat that had seven rows of buttons, said as if he had bitten a lemon, “Welcome to the Pot o’Gold. M’name’s Patroclus, and I’m here to serve you.”

The last bit of the phrase was said through gritted, pointy teeth, the sour expression on the leprechaun’s face enough to curdle milk. Percy ducked his head, clutched the packet of photos between his hands, and muttered, “I’m waiting for someone.”

The leprechaun sneered, “Fancy that.”

The sidhe turned away shouting, “Oi, Patricius, ‘e’s waitin’ for someone, dontcha know? Not two Knuts to rub together if you ask me. Probably a Scot, though he’s not wearin’ a kilt to confuse us, no doubt.”

The elderly leprechaun named Patricius relayed the message with a menacing air to the rest of the clan, all named some form of Patrick, from the Gaelic Paddraig to the Slovenian Patryk. As their names were pronounced they one and all stood from their varied posts, pipes clamped tight between their teeth, brown-green eyes peering angrily out of dark, leathery-skinned faces, all in the same type of red jacket in various states of repair.

One leprechaun that was less brown and not as menacing emerged from the kitchen. He was dressed in emerald green and had an air of foppishness that went deeper than his clothes. The new leprechaun said, in the flat tones of the Colonies, “Leave t’poor hooman be, Patroclus, you’ve known a wasted heart at one time or another. Remember the Glaistig who gave you all the slip last year, and all. Give him a pint and let him nurse it as he’s nursed his sad, sad heart all these years.”

“Aw, go back ter Boston, Bob, you may be our cousin, but you’re all Yank for your touchy-feely do-good ways.” The less than sympathetic Patroclus wrung his hands in mock servility, pitching his voice higher, “’e’s a hooman, and can’t help himself, slip him a sugared teat and change his nappies whilst we sing for our supper. You Yank do-gooders are a blight upon our once proud race. Might as well be a house elf or a brownie for all that. Next you’ll tell me to slip him a little fairy gold fer luck. Sod off, you Yank wanker and pour up some fuisce. This sad little hooman will pay, woncher?”

The other sidhe nodded sagely and returned to their occupations, puffs of smoke marking the air around them as Percy coloured and gave his wan assent. Patroclus returned to Percy’s table with a jigger of amber liquid and slammed the drink in front of him, sloshing a bit onto the table as he did. “Not even a proper fight out a’that Yank, Bob, don’t you see? ‘E’s me third cousin twice removed. A poncy do-gooder know it all is what I call him. Pay up, coimhthíoch gránna, or ye’ll be wearin’ a kilt and singin’ about Mother Caledonia with a bundle of thistles stuffed up your arse. Demmed Glaistigs and their graspin’ ways. Now pay up, hooman! ”

Percy slipped a few coins out of his pocket and slid them across the grainy table to the leprechaun who bit into a worn Galleon with his sharp, pointed teeth before he retreated behind the bar once again.

Percy downed the drink, coughing on the un-aged liquor even as the door to the pub swung open. He choked on a thick wad of saliva that had formed to coat the raw path that the whiskey burned down his throat. Hermione’s double said in a shocked, school-girl tone that cut through his sputtering, “Oh, Percy...”

“You know the rules, don’t talk,” Percy said tightly as he rose to pull out her seat. This Hermione was good. She had the inflections right, and her look of shocked mystification appeared genuine. He gently placed the seat behind her and then returned to his own. He put his hand back on the packet of photos, splaying his freckled fingers across the surface. He wished that he could do away with this bit of his fetish, the ‘big reveal’ as a writer might call it. He hesitated, but when the pseudo-Hermione moved restively in her chair, he opened the seal and spread the lurid moving photos across the table for her to see.

He knew the disgusting content, could detail which photo revealed just how much his brother liked oral sex, or just how wide and how deeply his wife could gobble the spittle burnished penis before her, and he could detail just how Ronald ploughed his own brother’s wife and for how long. All that from photos that moved and showed exactly what a pathetic loser Percy Weasley had become. The pseudo-Hermione gasped, clawing at the table convincingly as she let a sob escape her own well-stretched throat. Percy rose. “Now that you know, what do you want to do about it?”

It was the only statement the whore was allowed to make, the one phrase that only she could say that would allow Percy to reinstate his manhood, at least for the time it took him to fuck her. He waited, his hand outstretched. She stifled a sob before raising her very convincing, red-rimmed eyes to his dry ones. She stood, her mouth working, as he said, “You’re supposed to tell me to make love to you. Your motivation is vengeance. You seem to be a decent enough actress. Say it.”

Percy winced at his own priggish tone and he moved away from the table toward the private rooms upstairs. He had reserved one so that he could enact his pitiable revenge one last time. The whore did not move and he shook his hand expectantly. “We haven’t all day. My lovely wife is supposed to be home by tea-time, freshly fucked by my brother, and the Polyjuice only lasts an hour or so. Say it.”

Pseudo-Hermione said, with convincingly trembling lips and the posh tones he expected from the real woman, “I want you to fuck me, Percy. I want revenge for all the late nights, all the lies, and especially all the trouble they’ve put you through to exact your own twisted bit of revenge. I want you to fuck me and make me scream your name, Percy, so that he can taste it on my lips when he kisses me tonight. I want you to fuck me and for you to leave your spunk in me so that it drips down the insides of my thighs when I fix his tea.”

The words, though not the ones he had written for the little scenario, sent blood hurtling through his body, singing down his nerves. He took her hand and she followed him up the stairs to a dingy chamber with a smallish bed and an old-fashioned wash stand.

He took her to the room and spread her out like a doll, legs wide, practical cotton knickers pushed to the side. He fell on her and ate her like a starving man. His name soared to the ceiling from her lips. All too soon, she jerked her hips upward as Percy let her ride out her very real feeling orgasm on three of his fingers. His blood thrummed down the length of his cock, filled him to a hardness he had never experienced before in this scenario. He would most definitely leave the girl a tip, if such things were allowed.

Once she lay back in a sweating, chest-heaving, relaxed pose, Percy stood. He meticulously took off each layer of his bland Percy-armour, stripped down to his gloriously flaw-free skin. She watched him, her expression just the right mixture of horror and avarice as he stroked himself to granite hardness, spreading the pre-ejaculate over his glans, pulling on his testicles in tandem to the motion. He watched her back as he stroked himself, aware that his time with her would be running out soon. She moaned, “Percy, please...”

He raised her up, noting the stickiness of her skin and the rapidity of her pulse. When she moved to take off her own clothes, he swatted her hands away, before using the same meticulous care in the removal of her clothing as he had in his own. Only when she was revealed to him fully, did he take note of her imperfections, the lines and scars that came from the life she lived. The curse scar from Doholov had surprised him the first time. He had thought when Ron was speaking of it in rather disgusted tones that he was exaggerating its appearance. On the pseudo-Hermione, as he supposed on the real one, the scar was a twisted violet mass, drawn in spots, ugly. Percy leant over to kiss it and the whore inhaled sharply trying to push her hands over the offending flesh, her stomach muscles becoming tense as Percy laved it with his tongue. He progressed to her lower abdomen, where the signs of pregnancy dimpled her skin in almost knife-like arcs. Her belly had not quite recovered from the birth of her child, and the skin hung loose at the hips. These flaws were what Percy loved the best about the experience with the false Hermione. The stretch marks and loose skin proved she was not perfect, enhancing her frailty as no other sign could. Whilst he was in this room with his false goddess, he could pretend to be a romantic swain, a dashing figure who would sweep her off her feet with his worship of her body, a body that Ron had intimated was neglected in pursuit of a career.

Percy found it perfect.

His hands roved over her body, to the softened breasts and the incipient signs of middle-age spread in her now womanly thighs. He worshipped all her flaws with his mouth and finally, as he drew himself up her body, he spread her legs wider, seating himself just inside her labia as he gave the short, teasing strokes he loved to bestow on her. It was a measure of his control of the situation.

Usually, at this juncture, the nameless whore would grow tired of his play and buck up against him, her well-used organ taking him in a sluicing, sloppy motion.

This one was different. She met his strokes with soft exhalations and equally teasing squeezes from her ring of vaginal muscles. He almost came when her fingers dipped to her clit and she swirled them around the glistening structure. He watched, fascinated, as the bit of flesh grew under her ministrations, became turgid. When he could no longer stand the give and take of their coupling, he moaned and sunk deeply into her. She hissed her approval as her arms went about his neck and her fingers grasped for purchase on his back. He would bear her marks until they healed naturally. He would not deny himself the evidence one imperfect, yet satisfactory, union even if it was with a whore in Hermione skin, committed above a tawdry leprechaun pub.

He ran his lips over her cheek, near her mouth. He had been instructed when he first began this venture, that the whores did not kiss. It was a rule of the house, and if they did, it would mean a termination of their employment. The madam had ways to tell if they had and Percy did not wish to be the cause of their distress. But, how he longed to taste the sweetness of even a pseudo-Hermione’s kiss...

And then...

He felt her lips on his, her tongue darting shyly into his mouth, and he knew without the question or the answer having to be voiced, that he had made a grave mistake. Even at his crawling horror of discovery and ruin, he felt the pulsing pleasure of the very real Hermione’s cunt around him as she climaxed, he felt his own answering rush spill out of him in a torrent of jerking white spasms. He kissed her back, even if it meant life as he knew it was over.

Once they both finished, Percy rose from the bed and brought back the soft flannel and warmed water he had placed in the bowl. Hermione, the real one, accepted his ministrations as he washed his spunk from her, shamefaced. As he finished the task, he said only, “I’m sorry.”

She looked as if she would answer, but only squeezed his hand before turning away from him. He thought there might be tears in her eyes. He knew there were in his.

He donned his clothes after placing her neatly folded garments on the bed, and left the room. He would keep this experience to himself, never speak to Hermione unless he had to, and not let her know exactly how elated he was at finally cuckholding his brother after years of wearing the horns himself. He would also certainly never let Hermione know how much he loved her. It would destroy him when she did not return his feelings.

As he traversed the pub on his way outside, he thought he saw the American Leprechaun named Bob give him a wink and then point to the elvish sign of Healing that graced the wall of the establishment. He couldn’t fathom what the gesture meant and so he pushed it from his mind.

He left the pub, realising only after he reached the Apparition point that he had forgot the damning packet of pictures.

Oh well, he thought. He would let Ronald deal with that.


One Year Later:

Percy sat in his office, going over the budget for the hundredth time. The end of the fiscal year in April brought all sorts of headaches to the departments he managed, and this year’s batches of problems were not new ones.

He stretched in his chair, trying to ease the ache between his shoulder blades, aware that he had to pick up his daughters, Molly and Lucy, from the new Ministry funded school. It was difficult being a single parent.

Audrey and Ron had escaped the scandal of discovery by eloping and moving to another continent, leaving Hermione and Percy to struggle on in their stead. Hermione had taken baby Rose a scant few weeks after that disastrous assignation in the Pot o’Gold. Percy never asked after her. He could not afford to, lest his desire show through.

He existed in a world of Muggle Barbie dolls and pinafores, sparkly hair ties and patent leather shoes. His life was his children. He could ask for nothing more.

At noon, that day, he ate his lunch of a peanut butter and grape preserve sandwich which his Molly had made for him, and drank the chilled milk that little Lucy had poured for him in a thermos of ancient vintage. He was in the midst of primly wiping his mouth with the paper serviette he had found in the drawer of his desk, when the door opened.

He did not bother to look up. He never did anymore. It was too much of an effort to try to connect with his employees anymore. Their looks of sympathy grated on him. The same way Mum’s sighs and sorrowful looks did; the only reason he returned to the Burrow at all was for the children. Percy would have been just as happy to disappear, as had all the other players.

“Put whatever it is there, I’ll look at it after lunch,” he said in a dull tone. When the figure did not move, he finally glanced upwards in irritation.

Hermione stood before him, a squirming blue bundle in her arms. “Percy, I thought you’d like to meet your son.”

Percy froze, unable to breathe. Hermione moved her arms to reveal an infant with a shock of dark red hair and Percy’s long aquiline nose. She said, “His name is Hugo, after my favourite author... I’m... I’m sorry, I should have given you warning. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’ll leave...”

But she didn’t.

Percy rose from his seat on rubbery legs. “He’s mine? You’re sure?”

“Ron and I... we hadn’t slept together since Rose... yes, he’s most definitely yours,” she said. “Our marriage was over well before the day I found out about you and the Polyjuiced... companions.”

Percy heard the hurt in her voice. He shut the door to his office with a flick of his wand and strode around the desk. He took her in his arms awkwardly. He hadn’t had to comfort a woman in many years, all he knew how to now were little girls. He pressed his lips to her forehead, felt her face tilt upward, her own lips searching for his.

He deepened the kiss and then pulled away, unsure. “Hermione.” The word was a groan, a guttural Neolithic sound of possession. He felt her respond in kind with a grasping hand to his back . She would leave marks, and he would wear them proudly. He said again, “Hermione...”

And somehow, with the child between them, they ended up on his desk, parchments scooted aside, still in an embrace. The infant squirmed and Percy used a simple charm to make a cot out of a chair. Once he placed the boy—his son!—in the cot, he turned to Hermione.

“I should like to....” Percy began in his priggish, prickly voice before he stopped, splaying his hands on a bit of parchment beside her legs. “I... Hermione.” He stopped, deciding for once in his life to give up on practicality and produce at least one heroic statement. “I’ve loved you since I was fourteen. You are everything I ever wanted, and all I need. Please, forgive me...for being so beastly that afternoon.”

She stopped him with a kiss that turned to promise. “There’s nothing to forgive you for. I’m glad.” She put her arms around his neck in an echo of the way she had during that afternoon. “I want you to take me home, Percy, and I want to recreate that afternoon, but without Ron and Audrey between us. I want you to make love to me, and I want to do the same for you. We both deserve at least that. Whatever comes after that... well, we’ll just let it be.”

Percy nodded, remembering how Hermione had always intimidated him as a young man and how she made him feel as if he could conquer the world as a man. He took her hand after he lifted the babe from his cot, and they exited his office, arm in arm. They would deal with tomorrow together.






AN:

coimhthíoch gránna: As close as I could get to saying you ugly foreigner in Irish Gaelic.

Fuisce: As close as I could get to whiskey in Irish Gaelic.

Sidhe: Pronounced “she”. The Irish Gaelic word for fairy/otherworldly beings.

The Glaistig was a solitary supernatural being of the Scottish Highlands, with the upper half of a woman and the lower half of a goat, although she was also believed to appear in hooman and animal form. Her skin was grey, and long golden hair fell about her body. Like many of the fairy races she was often seen clothed in green, in the form of a long flowing robe, which covered her goat half.

Caledonia: The Roman name for Scotland.

Thistles: The national symbol for Scotland.

Why, do you ask, does the leprechaun attempt to insult Percy with Scottish stereotypes when Percy is so obviously not Scottish? Well, the Scots and the Irish are not at all friendly, at least traditionally. Leprechauns have a long racial memory, and so the hatred of Scots goes deep. It doesn’t help that our friend Patroclus was slighted by a Scottish fairy. All that, and Percy has red hair. Poor Percy.


Pitt's Perfectly Pugnacious Proposition In honor of Saint Patrick's Day:

Pitt proposes the following challenge, possiby induced by decongestant abuse, and boredom, for your hopefull participation!
A perilously short piece featuring any pairing that must include only the following things:

1. Pub(s)
2. Pints
3. Penises
4. Penetration
5. And as many "P" words as possible.

Every properly placed "P" word will earn five Points
To plateau the playing field, no more than 5,000 words will be considered.

All submissions to be made on or before March 17, 2010.

Bonuses will be awarded for inclusion and creative use of kilts, rainbows, pots of gold, leprechauns or snakes.

Smile Life Away's The Strange Relationship Challenge on ffn's Harry Potter Challenge Forum: '

Author chooses a character and a number. Mine were:

Percy Weasley, (9) Hermione Granger



Thanks for reading. Please take the time to leave a review.