Love is the Child of an Endless War

Percy had precious little time to spend thinking about the implications of George's shrewd question. He had precious little time to think at all. Moments of quiet contemplation had become as rare and unobtainable as a Philosopher's Stone.

"Father, why is the sky much bluer here than it is at home?" Phillipa asked her three hundred and thirty-seventh question of the day as they rambled slowly on donkey back into the recesses of the Grand Canyon.

"I really couldn't say, Phillipa," Percy replied with a weary sigh, adjusting his Wimborn Wasp's Quidditch cap to reduce the effects of the sun's glare on his spectacles. He was dead tired of fielding her endless curious questions. If he wasn't pondering Phillipa's bottomless reservoir of speculation about the mysteries of the universe, he was refereeing the sudden sibling spats that seemed to spring up out of nowhere between her and Jasper.

"It's the lack of cloud cover, Phil." Jasper made up for his father's pathetic ignorance of the natural world. "The sunshine is stronger here because the light waves are refracted with greater intensity in the absence of moisture in the air."

"Do you have the answer to everything?" Percy snapped irritably at his precocious offspring.

"I am a genius," Jasper sniffed, feeling unappreciated.

"Yes, I know," Percy acknowledged. "So you have mentioned at least once a day since we came here. Shut-up about it, already."

"That isn't very civil," Jasper said, now actually wounded. There was the one thing he hadn't known, but he wasn't about to mention it to that controlling crabby parental unit. Come to find out, he realized while riding his soft little gray donkey, he had made Phil into a mule after all.

Phil, scratching the white fuzz between her donkey's elegant long ears, sighed wistfully, "I want to bring my donkey home with me, Father. Lord Voldemort needs a friend."

"Lord Voldemort isn't capable of making friends, Phil," Percy replied. "He's evil and power hungry; he would turn that poor cowardly donkey into a cringing, whining minion forced to submit to his ruthless domination."

"Now there's a happy thought," Jasper muttered quietly, but not quietly enough.

"Jasper, I do believe you'll require an early bedtime tonight," Percy threatened casually.

Huffing indignantly Jasper wisely kept his opinions to himself. He'd already been sent to bed early every night this week.

Aside from the total lack of peace and quiet, and the constant squabbling, it was the perfect holiday. It reminded Percy of the times he'd traveled with his parents and many siblings, causing him to wonder why his parents had never relinquished their sanity on holiday. The times that Molly and Arthur had gone away together leaving him, Bill, or Charlie in charge of the household certainly made perfect sense now.

Visiting with Ron sank Percy deep in the knowledge that his youngest brother, the one he'd always had the highest hopes for, had achieved the very life that he, Percy, had sought for himself. Ron had a good job, with lots of responsibility, earned a decent salary, had married his curly haired boyhood sweetheart, moved to a large house in the country with her and impregnated her regularly. The old farmhouse Ron owned was positively spilling over with bright, mouthy, verbally acute children who were possessed of strong liberal opinions. After a few days Percy couldn't wait to go home. It was like being constantly surrounded with tinier Jaspers. He loved his son, even enjoyed his company most of the time, but was exceptionally grateful that Jasper was an original.

The question he did consider while lying awake alone late at night listening to the even breaths of his sleeping children was what he would do with himself when he did go home. For the first time in his whole life Percy had no responsibilities. A limitless future spread out before him with nobody else to consider. He was a healthy educated young man with no parents who needed emotional, physical, or financial assistance raising younger siblings, no siblings who needed looking after, and no wife who needed to be cared for. His only obligations were to the children, and even then, George did all that needed doing. Percy felt like an extra on the set. He knew everybody's lines, and held all the cue cards, but nobody needed directions.

Briefly he considered taking the children home and returning to the desert, which was every bit as beautiful as he'd been told. The climate suited him. Days burned with fierce intensity. Nights were crisp, clear, and cold. Prickly cactus with soft, nourishing, life-sustaining centers dotted the landscape. The diversity of wildlife amazed him. He and the children were constantly being surprised and delighted with the unexpected appearance of coyote, deer, rabbits, and colorful reptiles and amphibians. Phil developed particular fondness for the bearded lizards. Rattlesnakes fascinated Jasper. The seemingly endless landscape rolled with delicate hills. Desert sands hid deep fissures in the earth. Percy felt strangely at home in the unfamiliar atmosphere but he had begun to doubt over the length of his holiday that he would ever be content to live so far apart from his children. Perhaps they really didn't need him, but he found that he needed them.

Jasper, he remembered the hard way, had sensitive feelings like his mother. He wounded easily. Liked to curl up and hide to lick his injuries in privacy, and was not easily consoled. Percy forced himself to swallow his sharp tongue so often with Jasper that his throat grew raw from the effort. One night mid-holiday he was astonished to actually wake-up out of the deep slumber he'd fallen into on the pullout bed in the hotel suite. It was an almost other worldly sensation; it seemed like forever since he'd slept deeply or comfortably anywhere. At some point in another life he'd fallen asleep easily after making love with his wife, but for as real as that time seemed to him now it may as well have actually been another man's life. Somebody small was crying in the other room. He was equally surprised to find that even after years of being trapped in a hell that mercifully held no children he responded on an instinctive level to the sounds of a child in distress.

He felt perfectly wretched finding Jasper in tears. Apologizing again for his sharp words during the day he was somewhat relieved when Jasper admitted he just missed his dog. He missed more than that, Percy was sure, because Jasper mirrored George every day. He was partially annoyed by the fact, and partially relieved. George continued to reassure Jasper that Rufus was fine. Since Penny couldn't sleep at night Rufus had taken over her side of the bed. George said he only seemed to miss Jasper a little. It was small consolation to either one of them, Percy thought. George still wasn't sleeping alone, and Jasper missed Rufus a lot.

Phil, he'd discovered, had the thick hide of a Norwegian Ridgeback, just like Fred and George. He might have scolded her until he'd collapsed from the effort and she'd scarcely take any notice of him. She missed her parents a little, she said, but really Percy tucked her in every bit as well as her Mummy did. Percy had asked her then, "Where do you suppose she learned to do it so well, Phil? From your Nana Sophie?" That was ludicrous a notion enough to make a seven-year-old laugh, and he heard Jasper snicker derisively beneath his blanket cave. Phil had never considered the possibility that in some ways her undead father had been with her this long while, in spirit if not in deed. It was an engaging concept that she pondered on. She had the Weasley nerve and also the Weasley instinct to indulge guilt-free in omissions and half-truths. Phil reminded him quite a lot of his little sister Ginny in that respect.

Percy wasn't ever likely to forget interrogating Ginny during her first year at Hogwarts. "Why are you so tired?" "Aren't you sleeping well?" "Do you feel all right?" "Is something the matter?" "Ginny, why won't you talk to me?" All he got in return was a pack of evasions and lies while his sister covered up for the fact that she'd been possessed by a cursed book and had been taken over by the spirit of a young Lord Voldemort. Percy shuddered at the memory; he hadn't noticed any signs of magic in Phil, and like Penny he found himself strangely hoping she had none.

Understanding Penny's feelings on that particular subject didn't keep him from being completely astounded by her suggestion when he returned from his trip. Phil had gone immediately out to the barn with an apple for Lord Voldemort. Jasper was shrieking giggles in the garden because Rufus was so glad to see him he knocked him backwards into the pond. Penny offered a restorative cup of hot French pressed coffee for Percy's weary benefit. George was curiously quiet while he sat at their table with them to drink it.

"You want me to what?" Percy asked her for the second time clearing out his ear to be sure he'd heard aright.

"Don't be obtuse, Percy," Penny insisted. "It makes perfect sense. Don't you think so?"

Percy impelled a doubtful glance at George, who indicated little about his own feelings based on his expression alone. Thankfully, Percy was given a reprieve for his immediate response when Harry popped in unexpectedly. Considering how poor his Apparation technique had been to begin with Percy acknowledged he had acquired some style with it now. He snapped into place in the midst of the kitchen just behind Penny's elbow and didn't even jolt her serving of the coffee.

"I found it," Harry said with a grin waving his old vacant parchment triumphantly. "Nifflers can be trained to search out just about anything with the right incentive."

"Where was it?" George wanted to know, taking the family heirloom map out of Harry's victorious fingers.

"Malfoy's office," Harry replied succinctly. "I'd guess he was following Jasper around and took it out of his hiding spot when Jasper wasn't there. He's been after my secrets ever since I terrified his shorts off outside of the Shrieking Shack that one day in Hogsmeade."

"Abominable git," George said with an uncharacteristically nasty scowl. "Stalking my son about the school at night. Funny how he never mentioned this to me when I was in his office that day offering him a small fortune not to suspend Jasper from Hogwarts for being out of bounds."

"I think I'm lost." Percy experienced a familiar sense of having been done over, while he looked back and forth between Harry and George.

Penny heaved herself into a chair with a relieved sigh and her enormous bulk rose as high as the table edge. "I wish I could have some of that coffee," she said wistfully, "but so much as a sip and these babies won't settle down all night." She absently shoved a foot down from beneath her ribcage. Rubbing her belly sympathetically George removed his hand in a flash. Shaking it ruefully after one of the twins knocked him in the wrist bone with a sharp elbow. Penny only sighed, giving him an "I told you so" look. Percy almost felt relieved that he wasn't the one responsible for Penny's suffering this time.

Harry related the missing map story to Percy, who was horrified that his son had gotten messed up with such dangerous magic, and a much more dangerous man. "Who in their right mind would put Draco Malfoy in charge of Hogwarts?" he asked dumbfounded. "Dumbledore did make him a prefect, but he kept Snape around, too. But everyone knows that Dumbledore was cracked. Me especially."

"Don't forget about the fact that Dumbledore never noticed his old friend, Mad Eye Moody, was actually a murderous escaped Death Eater out for my blood," Harry interjected calmly. "Or about the time he kept the prophecy a secret from me. Even after I started having screaming, barfing, visions of the Dark Lord attacking and brutally torturing people."

"I'm quite glad that he is dead," Penny admitted guiltlessly.

"Penny!" They were shocked.

"Well, none of you seem to understand what it's like!" she spat out, "Look at what I'm going through now to bring a healthy child into the world! And this is only the beginning! There are years ahead of me! Making sure that they're properly nourished, and clothed. Taking care of them when they're ill. There are a lot of sacrifices made in the raising of a child! Then that old goat Dumbledore was always allowing the students to be put into the gravest sorts of danger! Those students are people's children! That school is a virtual death trap for small children! George barely escaped being flogged! I didn't escape being petrified by a giant snake and stuck motionless on a slab for months! That's why," she turned to Percy, "I want you to apply for the job of Headmaster at Hogwarts. I'll tell you right now," this she aimed at George, "Jasper's not going back unless Percy is in charge."

George shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. A glance of understanding passed between he and Harry who had just been through a similar ordeal with his own wife. Penny was doing her pregnancy nut thing again. He made an exceptional effort to humor and soothe her, but she was getting crazier by the day. With nearly two full months to go before she gave birth he pretty much figured her brain was going to explode first. "Well, Penny," he began calmly and deliberately. "There are a few obstacles to that family orientated scenario you have on your mind. Draco Malfoy has been appointed by the Board of Governor's for one thing and..."

"Don't you start patronizing me, George Weasley!" she snapped at him with such force that all three men at the table jumped. "Getting rid of Draco Malfoy is the least of the obstacles that faces that stupid school. If any of you had half the sense of a woman you would know it! You and Fred could rid Hogwarts of Malfoy and have Percy instated into his place with less effort than it would take the two of you to double flick your wands! Are you one of the wealthiest and most influential wizards in the world for nothing?"

She was on a roll. Placating her now was not going to be easy. "Penny, love," he protested reasonably, "maybe Percy isn't even interested in doing something like that. You've just taken this whim into your head. Do you imagine that it will all be done like magic?" He and silent Harry both glanced uneasily at Percy who was still staring at Penny slack-jawed.

Penny whirled on Percy, "Well? Are you going to back me up here, Percy?"

Percy couldn't seem to find his voice. "I---uh--well, that is to say, I--" turning to stare at George speculatively he pondered, "Can you and Fred really do that? Do you really have so much influence now?"

"Money talks," George shrugged humbly with an uneasy glance at his wife. "I don't like to brag about the fact that I've been known to bribe Wizarding officials into doing whatever I tell them to do. It makes me seem like a heavy."

"What else have you worked so hard for, George?" Harry offered up. "Do you think Malfoy, or Fudge, or any of those other evil gits rose up to power and influence without judiciously spreading the wealth around?"

"I'd like to think I'm a better man than Lucius Malfoy was, Harry," George replied.

"That makes at least two of us, George," Percy concurred, a tad bit horrified that George was so powerful. Even if it didn't seem like he enjoyed abusing his power.

"Maybe I'm partial," Harry said. "But I do think you're a better man than Malfoy was. Listen, George, I'm inclined to agree with Penny about this. I've worked under Malfoy for a year. He's always been evil and I don't trust him. Now I've caught him in possession of a student's stolen property. Our student's stolen property. Don't we have a greater obligation to make sure that Jasper and all future Weasleys are safer at Hogwarts than Dumbledore ever had? We're talking about the fates of our own children, here, after all."

"Exactly!" Penny beamed at her unexpected ally. Fatherhood was improving Harry by the minute.

"What you'd be doing," Percy reflected slowly, "is coming around full circle. When we attended Hogwarts our greatest lament was the influence running the school that Malfoy and his ilk had. Bought and paid for with his old wizarding family money. If you do this you'll be buying the same sort of influence with new money."

"But paid for by a better family!" Penny interjected cheerfully. Smiling hopefully at George who had never denied her anything.

"I'll have to talk to Fred first, you know," George told her cautiously. "It would take thousands of galleons to even get the ball rolling in the right direction. And that's provided Percy is even interested. Are you, Percy?"

Penny turned her hopeful glance onto Percy, who also had never denied her anything. "I don't know about this, sweetie," he said reluctant to disappoint her. "What makes you so sure I'm the right person to be Headmaster of Hogwarts?"

"Oh, Percy, for heaven's sake!" Penny burst out, "You were a prefect there! And head-boy! Rule making is your gift! You're positively a pedantic genius! You're obsessively concerned about safety and the well being of your charges. You have a compulsive need to tell others what to do, and you are a completely intellectual stick in the mud! I do believe you graduated at the top of your class, didn't you?"

"Right behind you, sweetheart," he agreed with a twinkle in his eyes.

"That's right," she acknowledged, with a winning nod in George's direction. Reminding him that she might be currently pregnant and a little bit crazy, but she was not stupid. "And that's where I come in, because I want to redesign Hogwarts curriculum. It's ridiculously outdated."

That set back all three of the Wizards sitting at her table. "Er, what do you mean by outdated, exactly, Penny?" Harry ventured. He was beginning to think he might regret encouraging change at the venerable old Wizarding institution. There was something fantastical and romantic about the school, even it was a veritable death trap for students and the curriculum made no sense.

"Harry, do you or do you not have Muggle heritage in your blood? Didn't it ever bother you that Hogwarts treats Muggle studies as an elective course? What sort of progressive education doesn't expose its students to great works of literature, and common human history? Hogwarts never taught us basic human biology! Percy had never heard of the Muggle American Civil War until he came to eat dinner one night at my parent's house and my mother bored him to tears with the story of her great, great, grandfather who was a Confederate soldier." She nodded with literary snobbishness in George's direction, "George has still never read a word of Shakespeare despite the leather bound edition of Romeo and Juliet he gave to me last year for Christmas that's sitting in the library."

"Who's Shakespeare?" Harry queried. "Romeo? Have to pity a bloke who wears a moniker like that."

"It's not as bad as Percy," Percy grumbled.

Penny threw up her hands with a "See, what we're up against, here?" expression tossed in Percy's direction. "Well, what about sex education then?" She confronted the hero of the tale. "Everything I know about sex I would have learned from Percy if my mother didn't have a bit of rational good sense to go along with her mean spirited nastiness!"

Harry blanched. "Sex education? For crying out loud, Penny, it's a young people's story. Discussing sex is hardly appropriate!!"

"Romeo and Juliet is a young people's story! If you'd ever read it, Harry, you would know that they had sex!" Penny objected to his prudish, narrow-minded reasoning. "More than half of the school's population is older than Romeo and Juliet were! The rooms upstairs at the Hogshead have been filled to capacity with Hogwarts students looking for romance every single Hogsmeade weekend since Gryffindor was a pup! When are people going to wake up and smell the love potion brewing? Why Percy and I...." She trailed off her rant with an uncomfortable look at George who was giving her the evil eye. "What I mean is," she continued forcing her mind off of memory lane, taking a different tack, "I don't think it's very responsible for us, as adults, as parents, to assume that our children know everything, or have learned everything they need to know about sex at home. The students at Hogwarts should have access to current, accurate information about the workings of their own bodies and the prevention of pregnancy and disease. Sex is not a shameful thing, Harry. Refusing to educate our citizens about one of life's most basic urges is what is shameful. The Wizarding world needs to take more responsibility for the health and welfare of its people. I don't understand why so many people are reluctant to discuss sex with children. Why we go on and on about the severing of limbs to bring back the Dark Lord and the grim tales of your abusive childhood. Wanting to have sex is a normal and natural desire. Wanting to murder children and torture people into insanity is not."

Harry held up his hands in self-defense. He'd had enough wrangling with irate pregnant women to last him a good long while, "I admit I'm out of my league here," he said teasing her good-naturedly. "My specialty is the forcible de-braining of large reptiles, enduring torture at the hands of the sadistic evil enemy and overcoming a gruesome physically and emotionally abusive childhood. I don't do physical love. I don't know what Ginny's told you, but we found Nymphadora lying underneath an extremely large pumpkin vine in the garden."

Percy smiled conspiratorially at Penny. He wasn't trying to antagonize George; it's just that he had extremely fond memories of his passionate exploits with Penny at Hogwarts. Some rules were so stupid they needed to be broken. Making love to Penny had always been worth breaking every one he ever had. But making love had never brought them anything but joy and pleasure in one another. He had always been careful and cautious never to do anything that would hurt Penny physically or emotionally. Not all young men were so responsible.

There was no need for him to guess that most young men were not so sensitive, or knowledgeable. Since sex was a taboo subject the majority of boys learned the rites from their mates, even worse sometimes from girlfriends who were too willing to please. Which is why Percy whole-heartedly agreed with Penny about the need for sex education at Hogwarts. If anything, he thought, young people needed more talk about sex, lots more of it. If all young men, Wizards and Muggles alike, were taught that sex was a sacred act of devotion, and that making love meant honoring a woman and her body there would be many fewer problems in the world. A fat lot of good it had done to look away for centuries while telling the students, "Don't talk about it, don't think about it, don't do it, and if you must do it, wait until you're married and don't let on to anyone else that you like it and it's a good thing."

"I agree with Penny," Percy said to George and Harry, who both still looked doubtful. "If we're ever to have any real chance at peace between magical and non-magical peoples it's essential that we understand each other's beliefs and cultures. The best place to start ensuring that we do understand one another is with our children. And it isn't possible to teach human beings to understand one another unless they understand themselves first. Refusing to acknowledge the need that young people have for information about sex and love is a big mistake that has been perpetuated through far too many generations of magical peoples. Do you suppose Peeves would be the powerful poltergeist he is today if some of the surging adolescent urges at Hogwarts had been quelled with some common sense advice a hundred years ago?"

George jumped on the bandwagon. "Well, Penny and I do talk to Jasper about sex and love. I know he feels comfortable talking to me about it. I certainly never felt comfortable talking about it when I was in school. Our parents avoided the topic as much as possible. Most of the time I pretended that all I ever thought about was Quidditch and my inventions."

"I learned a lot from Bill," Percy confessed. "He spent some time patronizing an Egyptian whorehouse in Cairo after he graduated from Hogwarts. He answered a lot of my questions that summer when we visited him there. When I wasn't spending time locked up in a pyramid, that is." He stared in a disgruntled fashion at George who flushed and mumbled, "Bygones."

"There you see!" Penny stated emphatically turning to Harry. "Where did you learn about sex, Harry? I doubt very much that you think it's all right for Hogwarts graduates to have to patronize a whorehouse in the name of educating their younger siblings about sex do you?"

Harry wanted to sink beneath the table. He was fairly certain that Percy was glaring brutally at him whenever he wasn't looking in that direction. He'd been suspicious for years that Percy didn't really approve of him and he wondered briefly if he'd heard any nasty rumors about his tempestuous relationship with Ginny. "I doubt that Bill was being altogether altruistic when he visited that whorehouse, but I'll give him credit for passing on what he learned. Look, like I said, this isn't my thing. But, I will tell you that I think Jasper was using my map to spy on his girl."

"His girl?" Percy, George and Penny all looked at him as if he'd claimed Jasper had been using the map to collect lunar rocks.

"Yes, you know the girl that he likes, Millicent McGonagall? Don't tell me he's never mentioned her to any of you?"

"The loose-lipped trollop, do you mean?" Penny queried frostily.

Harry laughed at her. "I wouldn't say that about her," he defended Milli, "she's one of my best students and so far as I know her lips are firmly attached to only one boy. She's pretty serious about her boyfriend Toby. I suspect Jasper would rather have it differently, but he is a little too young for her to be taking him seriously just yet."

"Is that what he was doing that night he snuck out of the castle?" George asked. "He was following that girl and her boyfriend?"

"Yes, I think that's exactly what he was doing." Harry professed to know. "I'll bet he wanted to find out what they did when they were alone together. To find out why Milli likes Toby so much."

Penny gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth in horror. "George! He's been watching other people have sex!"

Percy and George both spewed mouthfuls of coffee onto the table.

"Um, well, love," George managed to get out. "It's not sneaking into Zonko's to nick candy and butter beer, but I suppose he could have been doing worse things. Isn't the whole point of this conversation that physical love is not an unacceptable disgrace, whereas child abuse, thieving, torture, and murder are?"

Penny folded her arms and glared at the three men at her table. "My son is not going back to Hogwarts unless his father is there to supervise him every single minute!"

Percy decided he needed to make a quick exit. "I'll think about it," he promised Penny. "Right now I have to go or I'll be late for my date."

"Your date?" Now it was Penny, George, and Harry's turn to respond shocked unison.

"What?" Percy asked them defensively. "I'm technically not married anymore! I can have a date, can't I?"

"Whom are you dating?" Penny asked him her voice positively dripping with icicles.

Percy cast a befuddled glance at George and Harry who both shrugged helplessly at him. "I'm having drinks with Louisa, Fred's old assistant. You don't have a problem with that, do you sweetie?"

"She'd better not have," George answered for her grimly.

Impulsively Penny clasped Percy's hand. "She's not good enough for you, Percy."

George growled. Harry decided he needed to leave as well. "Gotta go!" he said popping out of the kitchen in a flash.

"She's not you, sweetheart," Percy said pressing a kiss to Penny's curly head. "But since you have the moron here, I've decided to check out what Fred is missing out on. I'll ring you tomorrow, okay?" He popped out too, leaving Penny looking bereft and miserable with George glowering evilly at her across the table.

She gave him a defiant glare. "What's so great about Louisa anyway?"

"Aside from the fact that she has great legs, is good in bed, and is smart enough to dump Fred, you mean?" George responded mercilessly.

"How do you know she's any good in bed?" Penny demanded.

The wall between his office and Fred's wasn't quite sound proofed, George reflected. Fred had gotten quite a bit of good use out of his new dragon hide chaise before Louisa wised up and moved on. "Intuition I suppose," he baited her unkindly, prodded on by a green, horned monster with a spear in his side.

"Oh," Penny muttered quietly picking at the cuticles of her well-bitten nails. "That's just great, then, for Percy. I hope he and Louisa have a really nice time. I'll bet she's wearing that tight red leather skirt and those high-heeled black boots tonight. I never did think that outfit was appropriate for the office."

"Why do you even care, Penelope?" George charged her with the full use of her name. Which she recognized as an indicator of extreme irritation on his part. "What difference does it make what reasons he likes her, or what she's going to wear tonight? Percy is moving on. I say it's about time. If you loved him so well as you say you'd be happy for him. Or is it that you'd rather have him mooning around here. Pining after you forever?"

"That is not hardly the case!" Penny snapped at him, feeling unfairly chastened. She heaved herself out of the kitchen chair with as much haughty, outraged dignity as she could manage with squirming twins in her belly. "I wouldn't expect you to understand how I feel though, George!" She approximated what might have been, in a less gravid condition, a flounce out of the kitchen. Leaving George feeling bemused. Wondering how she had become the injured party in that conversation.