Love is the Child of an Endless War

Phillipa tore down the corridor, zipped through the doorway, and flung herself face first onto Jasper's bed. Wincing painfully, he threw her a very dark look. "Oh, I'm sorry, Jasper. Have I jolted your incisors?"

"No, Phil," he grunted out, "my incisors are fine. You've jolted hell out of my in-cis-ion though."

"Can I look at your appendix in the jar?"

"No."

"Will you show me how to play exploding snap?"

"No."

She tossed herself into the pillows, and sighed a sigh of terminal little girl boredom. Look out, Jasper, he grumped silently, the last time you fell for this act you got spanked with the wooden kitchen spoon.

"Go away, Phil," he ordered her. "I thought you were busy kissing up to Father."

"Father is a grump," she declared. "I have decided I don't like him anymore."

Jasper studied his sister. Phil had gone fickle. She was always mooning around Percy. Clambering up him like a monkey to ride on his shoulders and exclaim over the view. Going on about how he smelled nice, and looked just like the handsome prince in her storybook, even if most princes don't wear glasses.

Jasper couldn't argue that Percy wasn't tall. Weasleys mostly were, except for Aunt Ginny and Gran. He was quite tall himself for a boy newly twelve, and he supposed he'd inherited his exceptional height from his exceptionally tall Weasley father. He couldn't deny the fact that Percy smelled good. A good scent was not hereditary. Jasper learned that from reading Nana Sophie's biology lecture notes. Some considerable effort went into smelling nice and girls were especially particular about that sort of thing. Mummy's nose had become extra sensitive lately. She claimed everything smelled terrible, even when Jasper couldn't sniff a thing.

Where he didn't see eye-to-eye with Phillipa was on the handsome prince resemblance. From what Jasper had observed, and he'd observed quite a lot, he thought that he and Percy looked very similar. When Jasper looked into the mirror he didn't think what he saw there was so handsome. His hair never laid flat. It bounced all over his head in a riot of curls. Percy's hair had a bit of wave to it, but it did what he told it to do. He had that kind of hair, Jasper could tell. They both had a narrow sort of face that was too bony in places; very fair skin spattered with loads of freckles and they were both thin. Jasper was too thin. That's because he couldn't eat. All of this chaos and upheaval at home was wreaking havoc on his stomach. Millicent's boyfriend was not thin; he was all burly and beefy. Percy wasn't burly or beefy, but he wasn't scrawny thin like Jasper, either.

Jasper knew there were a few first year girls who did think he was handsome. They were always giggling behind their hands when they saw him, and doing that thing with their eyelashes. There was no accounting for a silly first year's taste. Maybe a couple of the second year girls liked him, too. They were more discreet about showing it. Then there was Millicent. Now she was a woman. He really missed seeing Millicent. She was so pretty, with lots of long soft fawn colored hair, and big warm brown eyes. Her boyfriend, the prefect, Toby Redman, he always smelled nice, too. He'd put on cologne that smelled like vanilla and spices in the common room before he took her out and did it with her.

Jasper didn't really understand that either. The basics had been well covered by his parents. He knew about the mechanics of physical love, he understood that it made babies. What he didn't get is why people liked doing it so much. He'd seen Millicent and Toby doing it in the Shrieking Shack, and it didn't look like that much fun, but Millicent seemed to like it a lot. Mummy and Uncle George liked it a lot, too. So there was definitely something to all of it, he just couldn't figure out what it was. Eyeing Phil speculatively he wondered just how much she knew about the whole, 'Yours' eternally. I've got two husbands now and I've been caught snogging with the wrong one, but I've made a new baby with the right one, love triangle story saga.'

"Why don't you like him? What's he been saying to you?" he asked her suspiciously.

"He says that princesses who won't clean their rooms up are not deserving of a pony. And that doting uncles would be better occupied teaching princesses how to fold and put away their own clothing, if they had ever learned to do it themselves, that is. What does doting mean, Jasper?"

"It means that Uncle George loves you a lot and he gives you everything you ask for," Jasper informed her.

That sat Phillipa back on her heels. "Why, then it's true!" she gasped. "I thought Father was making up bad stories about Uncle George again. Like the one he told us about being locked up in a pyramid by him and Uncle Fred."

"I think you had better just do what he tells you to do." Jasper advised her.

"But I don't want to clean my room. I want to ride my pony," Phil explained as though civil disobedience was the only possible course of reason. She was a real Weasley from the tips of her curly red haired roots to the bottoms of her narrow, skinny, feet.

"Listen to me, Phil, " Jasper warned her ominously. "He's not like Uncle George. If you don't do what he tells you to, you might come off with much worse than just a spanking."

"What is worse than a spanking?" Phil asked incredulously.

"How would you like color-coding your sock drawer? Eh? How about sweeping out the cellar? How about polishing the silver? He might make you clean under your bed." Duly satisfied that he'd warned his sister off to the best of his abilities Jasper returned to organizing his Chocolate Frog card collection.

Phil pondered the possible extent of punishments available and announced, "That would make him evil, Jasper. And I don't think he is. He's far too nice looking to be truly evil."

"Suit yourself," he shrugged.

Jasper had planted an unquiet thought in her head. Phil couldn't let it go. "Why did Mummy and Uncle George leave him here to take care of us if he is evil?"

"Mummy is tired of making the baby, and she needs to rest." Jasper gave her George's explanation.

"All Mummy ever does is rest," Phil scoffed. "I asked her to help me get ready for school the other day and when I was looking under the bed for my tights she fell asleep right on top of it. Wait a minute. Making the baby what? We haven't got a baby."

"We will have one." Jasper spilled the beans. "Before I go back to Hogwarts next year. If I go back to Hogwarts next year," he added desultorily. He hadn't begun to recover from the wretched emotional horror of being supplanted by Ian Og as Keeper. Ian was lucky to keep his head on straight, much less keep from being whacked on it by a soaring Quaffle.

Phil wasn't to be distracted. "Where is Mummy making the baby? Did she go there now? Will it come back home with her?"

Jasper closed his Chocolate Frog card binder book. "Phil, you need to spend more time reading books and less time riding your pony. The baby is in Mummy's stomach. That's where she is making it."

"How do you know all of this?" Phil queried him distrustfully. Jasper had a way of distorting the truth. Was this reasoning anything like 'No, Phil, don't tell Uncle George what I'm doing with the car. It's only going to drive back and forth over the neighbors fencing control panel and then I'll put it right back' because if it was, she wasn't falling for it again.

"Uncle George told me about it," Jasper assured her. "The baby gets inside Mummy when he is loving of her. Then Mummy holds it in her stomach until it's big enough to be born. Don't you know anything, Phil? That's the way we keep getting all of those cousins from Uncle Ron."

"Oh, no! Jasper, I don't want any more cousins! They are just crazy! Christmas at Gran's house is a madhouse every time they come to stay."

"You're not going to have a new cousin," Jasper explained to her patiently. "It will be a brother or a sister. And..um.. well, I guess it will be a cousin, too. Ewww! That's so weird!"

"You say Uncle George told you all of this?" Phil inquired, still doubtful.

"Yes."

"And did he say Mummy is making a baby because he is loving of her?"

"Yes."

"Jasper, did Mummy make us? Does that mean Father is loving of her, too?"

Jasper didn't like him, either. He excused the loving of his mother because she was so soft and beautiful; it was easily understood. Granted she had an abusive hand when it held a wooden spoon, but then likely neither George nor Percy had any reason to appreciate that unfortunate aspect of her. He didn't like Percy because he was strange. He was always picking lint and dog hair off of his clothing whenever he came by. And it's not like he ever wore anything special, he looked like he dressed out of a ragbag. The last few times Jasper had seen him he had perked up his wardrobe a tad. At least his new trousers fit him properly.

Father had a strange way of peering over his new spectacles at people, as though he preferred looking at them with a fuzzy eye. Whenever he looked at Uncle George he always wore an expression of extreme distrust, dislike even, but when Uncle George wasn't looking back sometimes, although not very often, it changed to something else. Something like the way Jasper looked at Rufus, or Phil at her pony. As though George were a favored pet who was still a hassle to care for because you never knew when he might eat your favorite plush toy or give you a nip in the rear end.

Father was so plainly in love with Mum that Jasper felt sorry for him. He knew how it felt; he'd experienced that uncomfortable mixture of anger, rejection, hopeless longing and insecurity whenever he saw Millicent going out with the pinhead. It wasn't right to feel sorry for him, though, because that was being disloyal to George. George was Mummy's husband, he was their father, his and Phil's, and that was that.

Jasper had no need for another father. None whatsoever. He got sufficient scolds and spankings from the one he had. To say nothing of how often Mummy got after him. Jasper was quite assured in asserting that he was comfortably parented, and had no need of anyone else telling him what to do all of the time. But Percy couldn't seem to help himself. He was a compulsive teller-to-do. He bossed everybody, Uncle George, Mum, Gran Weasley, Uncle Fred, Rufus, Phil. Everyone. Jasper did not need to be bossed around. So Jasper avoided him. It's not like he didn't have a really good reason to just sit up in his room the whole time Mummy and Uncle George were gone. He still had ten stitches in his abdomen that itched and pulled. Driving him crazy at night. And he still had a sore stomach, and a scratchy throat from that tube they stuck down it. When all had been said and done Jasper had to agree with Gran Weasley that "Accioing" his appendix out might have been much simpler, even if Nana Sophie insisted it was physically impossible to do without killing him, especially given the infection. Magic could only heal so much.

Jasper had plenty to do in his room now that he was ill and Mummy wasn't torturing him. He had his video games, and his books, his Chocolate Frog cards, and Exploding Snap deck. Phil came in periodically to update him on the situation in the house. She was back to liking Father. She snuck out on her pony and he lectured her about it until her brains fell out of the back of her head. Then he helped her to clean up her room, and let her ride the pony again. He'd even found a name for the pony that Phil seemed to like. He called it Lord Voldemort because the Dark Lord had also been a pain in the ass.

Jasper did go downstairs to have meals, and Father always cooked. He sent Aloysious away saying that the day he couldn't outdo a house elf in the kitchen would be the day he hung up his wand. Aloysious was deeply offended, and Jasper had seen him through his bedroom window shuffling out to the barn to fume in the haystacks next to Lord Voldemort. Mummy would not like it that Father had insulted Aloysious, but Uncle George wouldn't mind it very much.

Father was right, in any case. He cooked much better than Aloysious did, and Jasper found himself eating things despite all. Father made fabulous fluffy pancakes. Light as air, and topped them with mounds of spicy apples. It was Mummy's favorite breakfast so Aloysius made them often, but Jasper had certainly never tasted them the way that Father made them before. He baked his own bread, tossed pasta with vegetables and cheese, one night he made pizza, without sauce at Jasper's request, and it was the best pizza Jasper had ever eaten. Father never cooked meat. He said he'd lost the taste for the consumption of flesh after the rats.

That was one thing they had in common anyway. Jasper couldn't eat anything that had once had a face. Jasper liked his sock drawer organized, too. He never tossed his stuff willy-nilly all over the room the way Phil did, or for that matter the way that Mummy and Uncle George always did. They were forever running around the house bumping into one another looking for their things. Mummy would yell, "George, have you seen my cellular biology notes anyplace?" And George would yell back, "I think I saw them on the floor in the Rec. room, Rufus was laying on top of a pile of papers with funny looking marks all over them!" Uncle George would get up in the morning and shout, "Penny, what has happened to all of my clean boxer shorts?" And Mummy would reply, "Well, George, the last time that I wore them..." being facetious of course, a habit she'd picked up leftover from her days with Father. Uncle George said it made her all the more endearing to him.

That's how it was when Jasper was sitting up in bed, very late at night, rubbing his eyes, and reading "Ten Quick Ways to Convince Your Teammates to Quit Quibbling About the Quaffle." Ron had sent it to him from his own private collection when he found out Jasper was in hospital. Jasper hadn't been able to read it before tonight because it made him cry. He was desolate still; he'd had word that Gryffindor won the Slytherin match, even with that reject Og guarding the goal posts.

"Hey, Jasper, isn't it rather late for you to still be up?" Percy asked him, leaning on his shoulder in the doorway to his bedroom.

"No," Jasper replied shortly. A red aristocratic looking eyebrow curved up a notch, and Jasper amended, "No, sir." The brow went back down. Jasper refrained from rolling his eyes; he sensed that would not go over well. But he was tired and cross, he just wanted to be left alone. "I don't sleep well," he explained, irritated by the necessity.

"Don't you?" Percy asked inviting himself into Jasper's room. "I don't sleep well, either. What are you reading?"

Jasper held up the book and Percy nodded thoughtfully. "I never mastered that ability. Whenever I was Keeper for a team I always got whacked on the head with the Quaffle."

Let me get over the shock, Jasper thought.

"Are you feeling all right?" Percy asked him, eyeing him carefully.

No, Jasper considered that he actually he was not feeling all right. His incision itched like a thousand Hogwarts sized mosquito bites, and he couldn't fall asleep. Since he'd become ill and had been at home he'd grown accustomed again to having his mum tuck him into bed at night, petting him with her cool, soft, hands, and giving him a kiss on the forehead before he tried to go to sleep. However, boys of twelve did not admit that to anyone, except possibly to their Uncle George in the case of dire necessity. He missed playing Quidditch; he missed flying on his brand new state of the art Split Twig 350 that he'd gotten for his birthday and he missed seeing Millicent at school. He missed his Uncle Harry's DADA lessons, and his friend Stubby Woody, he even missed confounding the hell out of Snape because there wasn't a single damn potion he could dish out that Jasper couldn't combine perfectly in his sleep.

"I'm fine," Jasper grumbled tiredly.

"Would it be all right if I felt your forehead just to be sure?" Percy inquired.

"I s'pose," Jasper agreed. Grown-ups were forever feeling his forehead. Whatever. He recoiled from the heat of his father's hand on his face. How would he judge a fever when it felt as if his hand was on fire?

"Are you sure you're feeling all right? You feel over-warm to me," Percy commented seriously. "Is that a tail I see sticking out of your bedcovers?"

Jasper lifted up his blankets to peer beneath them, "It's Rufus. He keeps me warm." Percy leaned over to look too, and was rewarded with a lick that skewed his glasses, making him laugh. Jasper liked his laugh, even though it sounded rusty; it was deep and rang genuinely. "That explains the flush on your face then."

"He likes you." Jasper observed with some surprise. Rufus generally growled at anyone who looked beneath the covers at him, everyone except for himself and Mummy. He'd scared Stubby half to death the one night up at Hogwarts.

"Animals usually do like me," Percy replied simply.

"Even the rats?" Jasper asked intentionally being cheeky. Perhaps if he annoyed Father he'd go away.

Percy wasn't annoyed. The general consensus of the Weasley clan seemed to be that Percy had a limited sense of humor. Mummy told Jasper that Percy had a dry sense of humor, and not everyone understood it. Jasper apparently amused him however because he always had a twinkle in his eye whenever they talked, and right now he was grinning, "There is no point in tempting me, I am strictly forbidden to harrow you with rat consumption stories. I gave George my word."

"He treats me like such a baby sometimes," Jasper sighed. Momentarily forgetting his loyalty to George. It was just silly to keep rat stories from him. Rats weren't scary, not like vampires, or zombies, or crazy mass murderers.

Percy had to consider this carefully. "From what I've seen so far," he said slowly. "George treats you like his well-loved little boy."

"I am not so little!" Jasper objected.

"You are not so big, either," Percy returned. "Although you are much, much bigger than you were when I left. I envy George because he's been here to watch you grow up, and I've missed it."

Jasper shrugged, "I remember you, you know?"

"What do you remember?" Percy asked, relieved and gratified almost to tears but not willing to let it show.

"I used to ride on your shoulders." Jasper appraised his father with a thorough look. "You were taller back then. I thought I could see forever from way up there."

"I might have shrunk in prison," Percy acknowledged trying not to laugh. "They didn't feed me very well in there."

Jasper really wanted to ask him about that, about prison and why he had been gone so long. His father had such a wary expression on his face whenever he mentioned it, as though he was forcing himself to sound casual about what happened to him. Jasper thought it must have been very terrible for him, being gone for so long, and losing so much. Part of him didn't want to ask, though. He didn't think he could sleep ever again if he got all the answers he was looking for, and he didn't want to feel sorrier for Percy than he already did. It was better to not like him; then there was no risk of having to take sides between him and Uncle George.

"You read books to me too, didn't you?" Jasper asked carefully concealing his curiosity.

"I did," Percy acknowledged, "but not so often as I would have liked to. I was very busy back then, too busy for you and your mother."

"War is hell," Jasper murmured the platitude.

"Out of the mouths of babes," Percy muttered one back.

"Would you like to see my incision?" Jasper offered with desultory ease.

"Sure."

"Mummy told me you are squeamish," Jasper said disappointed.

"Not anymore," Percy announced firmly. If they only knew some of the things he had seen. Some of the things he'd had to do to get by. He didn't suffer paralyzing night terrors the way his mother said that Charlie did, but then he had been more accustomed to living with nightmares than Charlie had ever been. One major lifetime goal materialized out of thin air while Percy was staring at his son's eerily familiar malicious smile; he had to ensure somehow that this child never knew war.

Regretful of the fact that he wouldn't get to watch his father squirm, Jasper figured that now he'd offered it he'd have to show. He pulled up his t-shirt and adjusted the bandage to display his wound.

"That is truly gruesome," Percy admired it. "However, I have seen worse."

"On the battlefield?" Jasper asked eagerly, but then frowned. If George had forbidden him rat stories, bloody battle tales were surely to have been forbidden too.

"On the battlefield," Percy agreed, "and a few other places as well."

"Uncle George had one worse." Jasper shared the confidence. "It's on his leg. There were no wands available so his was stitched together by Muggles; like mine. He had twenty. Muggles saved his life that day. I think that's why he feels Muggle medicine might not be all bad."

"Twenty!" Percy was shocked. "What happened to him? Why did he need so many?" In some ways Percy felt like he was picking up right where he left off at home, but for the most part it was like setting a book down at the beginning and coming back to start reading the story again somewhere in the middle. He's missed out on so much of his family's life.

"He was attacked by a crazy Muggle when he went out looking for you, of course." Didn't he know? The whole family had gone looking for him. They'd taken turns scouring the continent for some sign, something besides wand splinters to bring home for a decent burial.

"He was?" Percy asked, clearly skeptical.

"Oh, yes. Uncle George and Uncle Fred went for two months the one time. Uncle Ron and Uncle Harry looked for another. Uncle Bill took off a whole half year and trekked the mountains searching for you. Even Uncle Charlie and Aunt Mo tried to find you. And she's a very good tracker. She's a Slayer. Did you know?"

"She is a what?" Percy remembered Mo, an unusual person certainly. If for no other reason than that she had captured Charlie's undivided attention. Penny had some strange notions about her, but then Penny had some damn strange notions. For example, that George would make her a good husband. It came from her crazy Muggle heritage; there was no other way of explaining it.

"She is a Slayer," Jasper reiterated. "Everyone always wonders about her, but if any of them ever watched television they would know it by now."

"You watch television?" Now Percy was completely shocked. Granted George spoiled the hell out of him, the dog, the video games, a broomstick worth it's weight in gold. But he was not about to tolerate him letting the children watch that Muggle idiot box.

"I am not allowed."

Percy breathed an enormous sigh of relief. His son was brilliant, and it was a proven fact that television destroyed brain cells.

"But, I still watch it when I am visiting Nana Sophie's flat in London. The one she uses for her liaisons. And Uncle Fred has one in his office at W.W. Wheezes; he likes to watch the stock ticker. It doesn't always come in very clearly, but he and Uncle George are working very hard at fixing that." That didn't surprise Percy. Leave it to the morons to make television readily accessible to Wizard children everywhere.

"Uncle Harry bought one for Aunt Ginny because she is in bed, and bored out of her mind. She watches soap operas, the Muggle news network, and the vampire slayer show."

Percy shook his head, "Oh, how very far they've all fallen without me." He'd meant it ironically. Didn't really even realize he'd said it aloud until he read the expression of tight-lipped grim disapproval on his son's stern little face. "Merlin's balls," and he said it deliberately aloud. "Watching the expressions change on your face is exactly like looking into the mirror."