Four Weddings and a Funeral

Where

21 August, 1998

Death. Bill feels it creeping, can feel the edge crumbling away beneath him.

He has faced death a dozen times or more, in dusty tombs and curse-fogged firefights. Even, once, in his own dormitory, when Karen Fawcett stumbled in looking for her boyfriend and found him in Bill's bed. He knows death intimately. Recognizes the symptoms of its approach. The tightening of the gut. The cold sweat. The frightening clarity. The need to pee.

This is different. This is something he feels utterly unequipped to cope with.

Tomorrow, in a field in the south of France, Bill will go to face his doom. In dress robes.

And it will come at him wearing a white dress and a veil.

He shivers, for all that it is August, and the evening is stifling.

How can he be afraid of Fleur? Sweet, beautiful Fleur? Seductive, gorgeous, charmante, silver-eyed...

Well, she is descended from a thing of legend, there is that. And when she is properly hacked off, she can be every bit as scary as his mother. Scarier.

Bill shakes his head. He knows he's suffering from pre-wedding jitters, a rite of passage as old as men and marriage. But it doesn't stop the incipient panic.

There's got to be some place he can go to unload this feeling. Someone he can talk to. Where?

Again he shakes his head.

Dad is out of the question. The "son, marriage is a sacred thing" conversation that they had before the rehearsal dinner was bad enough. Mum? He shudders. Charlie is dealing with a weeping Tonks, George is doing his nightly vigil at Fred's bedside in St. Mungo's.

There's Ginny and Harry.... But it doesn't seem right to go and unburden yourself to a sister and her fiancé who are a full decade younger than you are.

Ron. Talking to Ron about wedding anxiety would be just cruel.

Maybe getting married now is cruel. To everyone. So many ghosts. It had seemed like a good idea at the beginning of the summer--follow through on their plans to get married, to give everyone a cause to celebrate. But now it all seems too soon. Far too soon.

Maybe a change of scenery... Sunrise over the Valley of the Kings, that might settle his mind. Or a quick nip across the pond to New York--that East Village club. It's still early there--he could dance himself into oblivion...

But he doesn't want to go alone. And there is only one person he wants to go with. And she scares the pants off of Bill just at the moment.

A crisp crunch of footsteps on the gravel brings him back to himself.

The footsteps stop. "Good evening, William."

Oh, bloody hell. "Percy."

"Enjoying your last night of freedom?"

"And I thought you were such an advocate of the married state."

Bill's younger brother smiles primly. "I am. But I remember how I felt before Penny and I got married."

"You?" Bill says, less surprised that Percy was nervous than that he is admitting it.

"Yes, well," Percy says, staring down at Bill with his chest puffed out, "at least I managed to get through the rehearsal dinner before running off to be sick."

Bill winces. "Hell. Was it that obvious?"

"Monsieur Delacour was rather amused. Your young sister-in-law-to-be looked more cheerful than she had all evening. Even George smiled for a moment, and I can't say we've seen that in a while."

"Damn." All it had taken was a moment of looking at Fleur, her eyes and hair bright with glamours, thinking that, by the same time the next night, this would be his wife... His wife...

"If it's any consolation," Percy says, "I spent the hour before the ceremony with my head in the toilet. Penny's poor brother Derek had no idea what to do with me."

Bill laughs, then looks up at his own younger brother. "I'm sorry we weren't there, Perce."

Behind his glasses, Percy's eyes darken. "So am I, William. So am I." He breathes grandiloquently. "Nobody's fault but my own."

They remain in silence for a moment, Bill sitting, Percy standing.

"Do you know," Percy continues, his tone exceedingly even, "do you know what I was thinking about when I was kneeling there, vomiting, my fifteen-year-old future brother-in-law the only one to comfort me?"

Bill finds himself peering up at Percy, perplexed. Where is this heading? This doesn't sound like Percy at all. He shakes his head.

"Do you remember," Bill's brother says, staring up into the night sky, "the Halloween Feast my second year?"

Charlie spiked the pumpkin juice to try to get into the pants of Felicia Caruthers; poor, skinny Percy had never had so much as a sip of alcohol to that point, and Bill--acting more as big brother than as Head Boy--spent the night in the toilets as the younger Weasley wretched and wept until he finally fell asleep. To Bill's knowledge, Percy has never gotten drunk again. "Yeah," Bill says. "I remember. Charlie still feels terrible about that." Especially since Felicia took the opportunity to disappear with Kenny Jordan.

"I'd always looked up to you, William, you see." Percy removes his glasses and begins to clean them on the sleeve of his robes. "Even if you did do things I couldn't even imagine, you still did all of the things I most wanted to do myself. You were a top student, a prefect, Head Boy. You earned everyone's respect, from the youngest student to Professor Dumbledore himself. I admired that. I envied you that. But that night, what you did, staying with me while I was nauseated and keeping me dry and warm, telling me I'd feel better... I've always wanted to do the right thing, William. Too often I've failed. Occasionally, I've failed quite dismally. But I want you to know that--in spite of anything I've done--I've always carried my memory of that night as a reminder to do not only what's right, but what's good." Percy takes a deep breath. "I wished, that afternoon that Penny and I got married, that it could have been you in the bathroom with me, instead of her insufferably Muggle brother."

"Erm. Thanks, Perce." Bill gazes at his brother, stupefied.

A flight of bats passes overhead. Bill still can't shake the feeling that his brother isn't done. Percy's lips are thin and tight.

"Something on your mind, Perce?" Bill has seen this look before, and it usually bodes ill--Percy's about to spill the beans about some sort of wrong-doing. But what? Are Ron and Harry planning on pranking the honeymoon suite? "Have a seat?"

Percy nods precisely and places himself rigidly beside his eldest brother. "William," he says, "there is something that I feel bound to tell you about... about your fiancée. And myself."

This has got to be a joke, Bill decides. George must have set Percy up to this, or Ginny. Charlie, perhaps, though his style would have run more to Vaseline Charms on the sheets. It definitely has more flair than Ron is capable of at the moment. "You. And Fleur."

Percy snaps off a brisk nod.

Deciding to play along, Bill folds his arms and puts on his most indignant tone. "Going to tell me how you carried on this torrid affair, young Percy?"

The younger Weasley flinches in a way that Bill has a hard time believing that Percy is putting on. "It was never a torrid affair. It was just twice. Once before you met her."

Stunned, Bill gazes at Percy. "And the other time?"

"The night she asked you to marry her."

"Bloody hell." Bill's world constricts; he can only see his brother's pinstriped knees. "Percy... Why are you telling me this?"

"You have to know that there was a reason, the second time."

"A reason?" Bill's stomach is threatening to rebel again. "What possible?... Just tell me. Please. Was this... before or after? She asked me?"

Very quietly, Percy answers, "After."

Damn. "Where?"

"My room."

"You mean... we spend the night making love, she asks me to marry her, I say yes, and then she jumps into bed with you?"

"Well," says Percy, somewhat alarmed, "she was never in my bed. And I want to make it clear that I never reciprocated."

"You never?... How the bloody hell is that possible, Percy, come on?" Bill's circumscribed vision is pulsing red. "Right. Veela. I'm marrying a fucking Veela. Bloody hell." He is aware that the crisp lapel of his brother's robes is creasing in his fist.

Percy's face is white with shock and shame. "I... I'm sorry Bill. I should have told you sooner. I didn't think it would upset you so much..."

Now Bill laughs. "Not upset me? Why the fuck not?"

"I'm so sorry, Bill. I should never have let her kiss me."

"Kiss you? No. Too true. Because what man can resist after that?"

"You," Percy says, and Bill blinks. "That's what she told me. It's one of the reasons she fell in love with you, because her... charms didn't seem to affect you. " The younger Weasley straightens again. "Or myself, for that matter. Which is why she decided to kiss me the second time."

Again, Bill finds himself blinking. "What are you on about, Perce?"

"She kissed me that night because I had withstood her... charms when I was the substitute judge at the Tri-Wizard Tournament. "

Now the blinking stops, is replaced by staring. "She... kissed you."

"Yes." Percy is looking away, his ears darkening in the moonlight. "She wanted to assure herself that your response to her that night when she asked you to marry her wasn't simply a matter of you succumbing to Veela glamours. So she came to me, sat on my bed--on my bed--weeping, told me you were engaged, and then she kissed me, and asked me to tell her what to do."

The blinking resumes. "And?"

Percy blinks back. "I told her to go and find you and tell you that you were the second luckiest man in Europe. Which she very happily went to do, only you were downstairs gallivanting about with Charlie, Ginny and their significant others."

"And Hermione. I remember."

"Yes," sighs Percy, "and Hermione."

For a moment, they sit, listening to the crickets. Each thinking of Ron, alone in his room on the top floor.

"So," Bill says after the moment has deepened just a bit too far, "she kissed you... to test me?"

Percy adjusts his glasses. "It made sense at the time."

Nodding, Bill peers closely at his middle brother. "And that's all that happened? A kiss?"

Percy sits up even more rigidly than before. "William, I will remind you that I was already a married man at the time."

Bill laughs and shakes his head. "Percy, Merlin... Do you realize?... Most men would have turned to stinksap. Turning down a Veela--even a part-Veela--after she's kissed you? They'd have forgotten their own names, let alone their wives'!" He laughs again, freely this time for the first time all night. "And you did it twice? I mean, how old were you when you refereed the Tri-Wizard Tournament? Fleur was still in school, and you're only a year older than she is!"

"I was a judge," Percy answers with some of his usual hauteur. "She was attempting to exert undue influence."

Now Bill is laughing uncontrollably. It starts as relief, but once Percy begins to glare balefully at him, the laughter is wild, manic hysteria. "Percy! HAaaa! Hoooooooo!"

"Really, William," Percy tisks, "I wish you could learn some moderation and decorum."

"HHHHHHHAAAAA!" Bill wails, weeping, onto his brother's shoulder, drunk with joy and amusement. "Percy! HOOOOOOOO!"

Percy cracks a smile. Then he begins to giggle along. "You should have seen her face when I told her to stop, the first time. It was before the second task and she was in this very skimpy bathing costume... Dragged me behind the stands and, uh, you know. When I told her to desist she looked at me as if I were speaking Gobbledygook."

Bill is howling--discomposed Fleur is quite a sight, and he knows it. Percy begins to laugh too, at first stiffly, then with abandon, and this makes Bill laugh all the harder. He hasn't seen Percy laugh like this since Ginny put Caulderon's Fire Gel in the twins' pants the summer before her first year at school.

After some time, the hysteria begins to dissipate.

"Hee!" coughs Bill. "Merlin, I needed that." He smirks. "'No' wasn't a word I think my beloved heard very often. Well done, Perce. Hee!"

"Thank you," Percy says, attempting to reassemble his façade.

This sets Bill laughing again, but only for a bit.

"William?" Percy asks, and there is a young, foreign, timid look on his face. "May I ask you something?"

This sobers Bill somewhat. "Of course, Perce, anything."

"Hem. I know that Fleur knows about Jonathan and the other... boys. I suppose I just wondered... Is it going to be... difficult? Having to, you know, erm, specialize?"

Peering at his least empathetic relative--which, in a family with Fred and George, is saying something--Bill is at a loss what to say. Where has his straight-laced brother gone to, and who is this changeling? Bill can't imagine it ever occurring to Percy to ask such a question. "Do you really want the answer?"

Percy frowns, looking instantly older--himself once again. "Well, I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

Bill grins. "You know, Perce, you're the only one of my siblings who's ever shown any interest at all in my boyfriends. Except Ginny, and she was looking for practical advice." Percy frowns even more deeply, and Bill has to stifle a giggle. "Sure you're not interested in boys yourself?"

This provokes a splutter from Percy, and then an indignant blush, since Bill knows he is too proper and political a creature to say anything negative about Bill's sexuality. "No. I was simply trying to lend a sympathetic ear to my eldest brother. However..."

Bill embraces his brother. "I'm sorry, Percy, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm just winding you up, and you're really helping me out tonight." From the prim pursing of Percy's lips, he can tell that his brother is mollified. Somewhat. "The honest answer? I don't think so. I loved Jon and the others, Merlin knows, but it wasn't the equipment so much as the person that I was attracted to. Never screwed around on a boy with a girl or a girl with a boy. Or a boy with a boy or... You know. Monogamy is kind of the family thing, right?"

Percy nods, trying to look worldly.

Bill can't stand it. "Did have a few occasions with one of each, mind. That was fun. And then there was this time that these two Egyptian birds..." And that sends Percy wincing again, in spite of himself, and Bill is laughing once more.

"So," Bill asks, once he has finished this latest bout of laughter, "do I need to worry about throwing up again tomorrow?"

Percy squints at him through his glasses for a moment and then smiles decorously. "I doubt it, William. I assume you've gotten it out of your system. I did hyperventilate a bit at the altar, but otherwise, I'm sure you will be as fine as I was. Once Derek had pulled me out of the WC." He looks up at the moon. "I would suggest a good night's sleep, however."

"Thanks, Percy."

"You're welcome."

As they stumble into their beds, they hear a muffled pop, as George Apparates home from St. Mungo's for the night.