Expressions of the Mind

@Expressions of The Mind@

by:GoldenSilence

--------------

He must be so disappointed, to let a thing like her slip through his fingers. A thing, as if she wasn't even a person, as if he had only wanted her an as object to further along his means to an end. It was true, all of it, even the disappointment to some extent. Penelope Clearwater was the perfect girl for him, in more ways than one. She was smart (which Percy was) and funny (which Percy was not) and above all, she knew what he knew with a comfortable sort of understanding that neither his parents nor his siblings had ever possessed. His family was content with the surface, and never put any real effort into seeing what made it the way it was, what made Percy act or be the person he had become.

Penelope knew Percy's motives exactly. They were the same as hers, though taken to a degree far more rigid. Pleasing everyone was a relentless circle that had started and would conclude with pleasing no one. 'Course, Percy couldn't see that. He wasn't shortsighted in just the physical aspect.

Penelope was one of those people that was naturally smart. That didn't mean she always got good grades, but she did love to learn. Knowledge in itself was her cup of tea, whereas for Percy, it was more of the saucer. Everything fundamental about Percy stood upon his knowledge. Penelope didn't worry over grades unduly, but took them as they came, the exceptional and the not so exceptional. Percy's forehead wrinkled with anxiety even in his sleep.

Grades and schoolwork were more of a required chore than a free activity, but he plunged away dutifully at them both anyway. Percy, Penelope thought privately, wouldn't have been nearly half so smart if he hadn't invested with a stalwart diligence into making himself so. Whatever part of Percy that had been naturally smart was now taken over by a robotic sense of accomplishing. But Penelope's sympathy and understanding of Percy had not stopped her from deciding to break up with him. He needed her, yes, but thought Penelope, what he needed was not as particular as just her, but anyone. Anyone who would pull him out of what he had mired himself into.

That was if they could even see what he had mired himself into in the first place. Percy was slightly less self centered than a black hole. And as it was with most self centered people, Percy had no one else that particularly cared if he got hit by a few of life's meteors or not because he didn't particularly care if anyone else had the same happen to them. When you got right down to it, Percy just didn't have any friends that went beyond mere acquaintances far enough.

That was other people's fault. It was also Percy's own. Penelope had known Percy since the first year of Hogwarts, when his face had looked basically exactly as it was now, only stuck on a shorter body. It was disconcerting, like the stolen head from the Hogwarts Teachers, 21st Edition Flitwick figurine screwed on to a muggle Ken doll.

. She hoped she could continue to know Percy still. She hoped that he didn't take it too bad, didn't just fold up on himself like a collapsible cauldron.



Penelope's curls shook back and forth like tiny independent springs as she shook her head and scolded herself. Penelope did this often. She was the sort that had to do a funny impromptu waltz every time she saw a crack in the sidewalk so as not to have to spend every minute of this life and the next berating herself that there was a slim, itsy bitsy chance she had broken some old lady's back. Scolding yourself was a very useful habit, though. It certainly saved multitudes of others the trouble.

Penelope allowed herself one private sigh and straightened up her back. If Percy didn't love her, there was no reason for him to go around moping and she was going to tell him so, loud and clear. The playing of roles could only extend so far before it became ridiculous. Penelope refused to play this kind of charades any longer.

Unless, he's moping over...

Penelope's scheme was suddenly very half baked.

************

It was four in the morning. Percy woke up (or rather, undozed, as he had never really been fully asleep) to a face full of book, a spilled bottle of ink, three pages of parchment written in miniscule handwriting, and very cramped hands. Grabbing the paper, he perused it with a picky eye before crumbling it all into a ball in disgust and throwing it at the trash basket.

It missed. Percy could have cared less...that is, about the bad throw, not the History of Magic paper. It was lucky thing he wasn't bald, what with all the clumps he had torn out trying to write the devil last night. Actually, there hadn't been any writing required on this assignment, only reading and an oral report the following day, but Percy, awkward and shy enough when it came to just one or two people, sure as hell was not about to stand up and recite on the spur of the moment. He had to be sure the words he said were just right.

The perfectionism had started when he was little, and had grown over the years. Percy got good grades as a child and was proud of them, as were others. Slowly, he came to realize that once he got good grades, he couldn't simply let them go. Others would be upset, mad, angry, disappointed in him even if he wasn't in himself. And it doesn't really matter what he felt because that won't change what they feel. So he keep on getting good grades because it was at the core of his being, that good grades will bring good things, that there was a promise of peace at the end of it. Besides, if he stopped getting good grades, who was he? There was nothing else that defined him, or more to the point, nothing he liked that defined himself.

His brothers had already conquered even that which he was good at, Bill having been a prefect himself, and so Percy knew the only way to beat them was to be better than they were, to be the very best.

Percy left what had until lately been his History of Magic assignment on the floor and staggered out the Gryffindor seventh year's room and down the drafty corridors that led to the prefect's bathroom, reciting the essay in his head (and unwittingly, mouthing it out loud.)

He walked three times back and forth from the prefect's bathroom and the dormitories before the essay was completed to perfection. The singular problem was, he found in the time that had passed that he had forgotten the beginning. Horrified and conveniently dropping one goal in favor of another, Percy entered back into the dormitories and wrote the whole essay out again from scratch, making sure his memory didn't lapse on any of the other hasty improvements he had made to it.

Two hours later, he was stopped en route to breakfast by Penelope. This in itself wasn't unusual, but the words Penelope was saying certainly were.

**********

He and Penelope had broken up. The couple that had been all but engaged was no more. In spite of this, Percy went through his day just as he always did. So did Penelope. Everyone whispered that they were both in shock and that what they had done would wear in sooner or later like mustard on a white sweater.

Percy was positive he wasn't in shock. His head wasn't spinning, his mind wasn't any number than it usually was in Professor Binn's class, and the most secure proof of all, he was still blinking.

People who had never bothered with Percy before actually came up to him and asked him how he felt. This was, Percy concluded, only because Penelope was the dumper and he the dumpee. Their acts in this play reversed and Percy would have found himself on the receiving end of many a glare. Though that would not have been a wayward stretch from the norm.

Glares would not have bothered Percy nearly as much as sympathy. It made him nervous to the point he actually restarted a habit long dormant and began biting his fingernails. Beyond making him nervous, it annoyed him. Those that felt sympathy for him were attributing him with feelings he didn't feel. His classmates usually did this, saying Percy believes this or Percy would never do that, pushing on him their own viewpoints and opinions about him as if they were filling an empty shell with sand.

Half thought he deserved pity, half thought he deserved the break up. Percy was with the latter half. He had deserved it. He wasn't remorseful about it. Penelope by all appearances, wanted to remain his friend. As he had no other real friends to speak of and Percy had given himself many a migraine by just thinking his opinions to himself due to lack of input, that suited Percy just fine.

Hollow. That was what they thought Percy was. That was, if they thought of Percy at all. The truth was, no one thought or paid attention to Percy much. Everyone obeyed him when it came to rules, yes and the lucky student sitting next to him on a test definitely paid attention to him, but other than that, nada. It wasn't that Percy wasn't conspicuous. He was, but in the way of a pestering fly that people wanted to swat or shoo away. No one said this to him, but Percy could see it in the anger, envy, and/ or boredom that showed on their faces every time he spoke. All this he sparked in them. How stupid. Their emotions were the fault of their own misinformed interpretation of what he was like. Part of it was his doing though, too.

Percy had a never ending streak of having to be right. There is nothing people hate to such an extent as being proven wrong or dumb, particularly by someone that is never thought of as either. Percy corrected people every chance he got. If in the middle of a party, someone asked for the time and another answered three thirty, Percy would be on the double to inform them that no, actually, it was only three twenty nine and fifty eight seconds.

Percy had a hunch that if he ever ceased to stop getting good grades, stop making people jealous, annoyed, and upset, that he would be erased from his fellow student's recollection altogether. He wondered if that was what he secretly wanted, to hide within an invisibility cloak of his own making and never come back out.

Or so Percy liked to think. His own cloak of illusion came at too heavy a price to be simply discarded. The bell rang for lunch and Percy found himself hurrying back up the stairs to the prefect's bathroom, just to get away from everyone. He knocked first to make sure the place was empty, because he didn't fancy having to deal with his libido in the morning, then headed in.

Percy leaned up in the corner, chin on knees and was content to just sit still for awhile, noticing his reflection in the mirror next to him. After trying to avoid looking at it, he gave in with a stare of curiosity and loathing.



The face that stared him back was in agreement with this. It was nowhere near perfect. Dull reddish hair. Percy never associated red with dull, but there you had it. Other than that, an average face, very pale, thin lips, and a still boyish chin. The only part of his appearance Percy really favored were his eyes. Light blue, they brought character to an otherwise carefully kept apathetic face.

Percy reached for his fallen spectacles and put them back on, clarifying the blurry picture the mirror created. The effect of lovely blue eyes was muddied beneath the severe glasses. Good. If eyes truly were windows to the soul, Percy didn't want any strangers peering in. Unbidden and unwanted as always, thoughts of the Other Boy came to his mind. Oliver didn't need eyes to bring character to his face. Each component of it was a character in itself.

Brown. Oliver's eyes were brown. No, not brown. Brown instantly conjured up images and adjectives of dull, lifeless, boring, like a cow's. Oliver's eyes were the anti-brown. They sparkled, narrowed in determination, laughed, danced. Percy was fascinated with them. Percy was fascinated with Oliver.



Percy walked out of the prefect's bathroom, his mind made up. Percy did not try unless sure of success, but in this case, the not knowing was worse than the trying.

Two years he'd spent in love with Oliver Wood. Two years. That was seven hundred and thirty days, seventeen thousand, five hundred and twenty hours. Each one had dragged out its maximum sentence on Percy.

No more. He was going to get it all over with, bugger it.

Percy strode out with a determination usually reserved for tackling the Unabridged Magical Encyclopedia volume by volume (he had only ten more volumes to go.)

**************

Out of all those hours and days of Oliver Wood, one hour was all it took to throw Percy's world off balance. Funny, when Percy had thought it had been so stable. But then, of all people, Percy understood nothing was ever as simple as it seemed on paper or in the mind. The kiss had been infinitely more and infinitely less than Percy had expected. It hadn't led to solutions or clarity or even so simple an emotion as happiness. Percy's best dreams had been of him wrapped in arms, arms protecting him from what? From himself, perhaps.

It didn't really matter whose arms they were, so long as they were someone that cared, though later, those arms had taken the form of Oliver's. In them, he didn't have to think or plan or strategize. He could just exist and that was enough. He could melt back against them with no fears or expectations or pressure. There was no time, no past, no future. This was the now and it was ageless, stretching across eons of forever.

The kiss had not been like that. It had a beginning and an ending as did the days behind and in front of it. It had a history and a shot at a tomorrow. No matter how Percy wished it, it could not go on with no effect or consequence. It lasted for an instant, a snap of the fingers, a blink of the eye, and then it had vanished.

No one had began the kiss and so no one could feel guilty. Oliver had intended to begin it, his eyes full of mischief, gesturing wildly back to his friends behind the bushes to show them that he, Oliver Wood, never backed down from a dare, thankyouverymuch.

He built brick by brick of success and knew that if he failed, he had a long journey of falling ahead, but Percy too, had intended to begin the kiss, taking a walk in the gardens to clear his head first, to get up the courage of the Gryffindor stereotype he had never quite fit.

Percy wished the kiss could have gone on and on and he would have made it go on and on, if Oliver had not pulled back, stared at him demurely from underneath those eyes of his, and laughed. Not a laugh of ridicule or contempt as his friends were making from the bushes, but a laugh of genuine friendship. As the kiss had been. There was nothing behind it, Percy concluded with a sinking stomach. It was all a joke. A joke.

And it would have been all a joke if the initiation of it had not been equal. As it was, Oliver found himself for the first time not on solid ground, not sure where he stood. They had both leaned in, as sure as Snape was strict, and kissed. Percy had wanted to be kissed? By him?

All the boys laughing behind him, Oliver felt strangely guilty and exploitative, as if he had done what he should not have. He comforted himself on the fact that even one as studious and focused as Percy would have overheard the team talking zealously about playing truth or dare at the party that night. It was held in honor of the graduating seventh years, who would be out of Hogwarts within a fortnight.

"Sure, and anyone that's awake after curfew better be ready to join the fun, unwilling or no!" Oliver exclaimed.

"Unwilling? More like unknowing." This from one of the seventh year Ravenclaws as she passed by the table.

No, Percy must have known. And even if he didn't, thought Oliver defensively, it was only a silly game. Nothing serious, no harm done. Percy could use a bit of a laugh, anyway.

********

Oliver's was the kind of laugh that made you want to laugh to, for the good humor and nature behind it. Percy did laugh, but it was short and half hearted and there was enough behind that sad echo of a chuckle that Oliver's doubt became bigger even as he gave Percy a jolly pat on the back.

The boys out of the bushes gave Oliver similar pats, telling him what a lark it all was, and to inform him he was all out of dares for the moment, and would be subject to a few truths before he could go back to dares again.

"Oh, and what truths would I have to tell that you lot don't already know? That I sleep with a snitch?"

"Well, that's one truth down, at any rate," snickered a boy. Oliver couldn't be sure which, it was hard telling in the dark.

Oliver rolled his eyes at this information, then turned back towards Percy. For his humiliation, he should at the very least be allowed to join the party. He always was on the fringe of the seventh year's goings on, but really, this was the last occasion he'd have to take part..

But Percy was gone.

He had long since took the chain of events that followed the kiss as his cue to run, run away, to be remembered or forgotten as chance willed.

Why had Oliver kissed him? On a dare. Why had he kissed Oliver? Because he cared.

Percy was sick and tired of there being an answer to every question, a fit to every gap, when he was full of holes. It was immature not to want to suffer the repercussions of his actions, of a trivial little kiss, but Percy wished it had never happened regardless.

Though, maybe it was better this way. There were no more possibilities. He had taken a chance and hadn't succeeded, yet at the same time, in a twisted way, he had. He had gotten a kiss from Oliver, all he had wanted to do. But oh, after that kiss, he wasn't satisfied...

He wanted to know Oliver. It was not what he believed at first. The dare had brought a flood of questions that had no answers. Percy was determined to find them out. If you tried before you fail as opposed to failing before you even try, then you at least glimpsed what you were reaching for. Percy wouldn't give up. Even Oliver's friendship would be worth it.

It hurt, but the hurting of failing was no more than the hurting of succeeding.

************

Oliver shrugged, ill at ease at Percy's leaving, and turned back to the crowd, smiling and waiting for him, for good ol' Oliver, to smile back and be his usual jovial self. No one asked what his job would be when he left Hogwarts. Everyone thought they knew.

They didn't know. He couldn't bring himself to tell them. Tell them his mother was dead, had died today, that he couldn't audition for quidditch after that. That he had no reason to now. False condolences, even heartfelt ones, couldn't change what had happened. He didn't need a reason to be angry or sad, to cry or dwell on the event any more than he had to.

************

It was the loneliest thing in the world, with no one to care when the pieces fit together like jagged bits of glass until you wanted only to pull at them, bleeding, thinking even pain would be better than the reflection you projected.

************