In A Time Of Uncertainty

Part Four, Chapter Four

When Percy saw Mundungus there was something very different about him, and Percy was unable to figure out what it was. It wasn't that he was wearing the regulation hospital nightshirt, or that there was a cane by the side of his bed. At first Percy thought it was that his hair was very clean and well-combed, but after realizing that fact he still felt as though he had not found the answer. Finally he figured it out. Mundungus had no smell of either alcohol or tobacco around him - a fact he was acutely aware of.

"Dying for a drink," he murmured, his voice uncharacteristically soft from the pain medications. "Anything, even that bloody Old Cottingley gin that no one could stand unless he'd had so much he was about to pass out..."

"We'll have a party when you get out of hospital," Oliver said. "Buy you a bottle of whatever you like."

"Damn healers won't let me do anything," Mundungus said. His eyes were half-closed. "Can't drink, can't have a pipe, can't tell them to go to hell, can't tell them to take their bloody pain medication and stick it up their arse - "

"You don't like the pain medication?" Percy asked.

Mundungus smiled and winked. "Only kind of pain medication I ever needed isn't allowed in."

Percy noticed a large vase of flowers on the table next to the bed. "From my mum," said Mundungus, jerking a thumb in the direction of the vase. "Was here all last night bawling and going on about her darling boy and rubbish like that. Hope she'll remember, the next time I need a few Galleons." He settled back onto the pillows and pulled the blankets up around his chin. "Where's the rest of your lot?"

"Bill and Charlie are visiting Fred," said Percy, "and Mum, Dad, Ron, and Ginny are seeing George. We thought we'd go around and see you all in shifts so that you wouldn't be overwhelmed by too many visitors at once."

"Seen yer brothers yet?"

"No."

Mundungus cleared his throat. "Be prepared fer it. They're pretty bad off."

Oliver and Percy exchanged glances; Percy could tell that Oliver's heart was beating as anxiously quickly as his own was. "Dung," said Oliver, leaning a bit closer to the bed, "can I ask you a question?"

"'Course." He was sounding drowsy; perhaps the medication had kicked in full-force.

"Which one of you killed Chimearan Malfoy?"

Mundungus's eyes flew open. "Blimey, Wood, don't tell me you don't know the answer to that."

"How would I? I wasn't there and no one has told us much of anything."

"Don't need to have been there," said Mundungus, exasperated. "You were on a team with Fred and George for what, three years?"

"Four."

"Right. Then you ought to know that it was George that killed Malfoy. You mess with one o' them, you've got the other to deal with as well."

"How did he do it?" asked Percy quietly.

"Cruciatus," replied Mundungus. His eyes gradually fell shut, his chest rising slightly with each breath. "Never even tried for Avada Kedavra. Don't know if he couldn't bring himself to do it, or if somehow he knew he wasn't strong enough for it, or what have you. Maybe it's because Malfoy was right up next to Fred, and George was afraid he'd somehow hit the wrong one. Not any idea. Have you ever seen a person die by the Cruciatus Curse?"

"No," said Percy. "I've never seen anyone die at all. I saw my uncle Bilius a few minutes after he died, though." As he said it he realized how naïve it sounded.

Mundungus didn't seem to have noticed. "Horrible. I'd rather seen ten go by Avada Kedavra than one by Cruciatus. Because it doesn't just happen and then be done with, you know. Took Malfoy what must've been a full ten minutes. An' his face was all twisted into shapes no one would think were possible - "

"All right, we've got the idea," Percy said. Oliver looked as though he was going to be sick.

In a voice that sounded almost distant, Mundungus began to speak again. Percy realized that he was slipping into delirium. "Know what else is weird about this place? They call me 'sir'. Bloody weird. Wasn't a sir when I did a week in Azkaban."

"You were in Azkaban?"

"Week. Couldn't pay fines. I told you they call me 'sir' here, didn't I?"

"Yeah."

"S'ppose that's what happens when a bloke gets Order of Merlin, second class."

"Dung, we're going to go see Fred now," said Oliver as a Healer came in wheeling a small table. "You going to be all right?"

"He'll be fine," said the Healer; Mundungus nodded dreamily. "He had some medication right before you got here. Are you feeling all right, sir?"

Mundungus turned his head very slowly. "Who?"

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Bill says you're going to be a commander," said Fred to Oliver. "Aerial Branch."

"That's right." Oliver took Percy's hand, as if to say to Fred: I am with your brother, even if you haven't spoken to him yet.

"I'll fly with you," said Fred at once. "Like the old days. Hell, we might even end up fighting some of the same Slytherins we used to play against. If we see Flint, let me at him. I know his way of flying as well as I know how to tie my shoes." He stared at Oliver very intently. "George'll fly with us too."

Percy opened his mouth but it was Oliver who spoke. "Fred, I don't know if that's going to be possible."

Fred snorted. "It will. Moody's got the same part of his leg missing as George does and he still flies."

With a sigh so small it was almost non-existent, Oliver dropped the subject. "Did Bill and Charlie tell you about Percy's position?"

"The one about the foreign travel or the one with his legs spread? Because I knew about the last one."

Percy was struck by the nearly overwhelming urge to smack him - burns or no burns - but then Fred smiled. "Never tell anything to Dung if you don't want it told to everyone else you know. Ron thought you were with Ol for the sex, after he figured out it wasn't for getting into the Order."

"Oh, that's great," said Percy, rolling his eyes. "For most of his life he thinks I'm a priggish git. Then he thinks I'm still a priggish git, only one that isn't speaking to the family. Now he thinks I'm some sort of lust-driven hedonist who doesn't care who he sleeps with?"

"The first part's right," said Oliver, before Percy stepped on his foot.

"I told him he was off the mark," Fred said. "'Ron,' I told him, 'this is Percy. If he was using some bloke for sex, he'd find one with the most enormous cock in the world, because Percy always has to overachieve. Not that Oliver's small, mind you, but he's nothing out of the ordinary in that department.'"

"Fred," said Percy, after several seconds had passed, "how in the bloody hell do you know that?"

"Quidditch showers," said Fred, shrugging. "I'm not blind, you know."

"If you've finished discussing my nether regions," said Oliver, who was looking very flustered, "how are you feeling?"

"Like hell." Fred crossed his arms over his chest and them removed them hastily; Percy assumed he had forgotten about the burns and pressed on them too hard. "Parts of my skin don't look like skin anymore, George is missing half a leg - which happened just before he killed Chimeran Malfoy, mind you, and might not have ever happened if he hadn't been trying to help me - my shop is completely destroyed, as is all the weaponry and merchandise it contained, and the only good thing about the whole situation is that all the money was in Gringotts and not the shop."

"If it's any consolation," said Percy, "Dad and some other people in the Order rebuilt about three quarters of the artillery last night, and they hope to finish when we go home after visiting you."

"Usually your idea of consolation is crap, Perce, but this time it's actually good news," said Fred, in a voice that sounded more apathetic then relieved. "At least things are only mucked up for George and Dung and me and not the rest of the Order. I kept having nightmares that the Death Eaters attacked and you lot only had wands to defend yourselves."

"They used your plans that you kept in Gringotts," said Oliver, whom Percy suspected, like himself, didn't know what else to say.

"That was George's idea. You saw Dung already, so then you haven't seen George yet?"

"No, not yet."

Fred's face hardened. "Well," he said, bitterness barely contained by stoicism, "no one will ever have trouble telling us apart now."

Percy did not know afterward why he had said it. Perhaps it was a need to relieve the tension of the room, or to assert himself, or to be defiant because Fred had invaded topics that were not his concern, but whatever the reason, Percy said: "Oh, and Fred? Just for the record, sometimes Oliver's the one with the spread legs."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"He's been asleep for all of our visit," said Bill, closing the door to George's room behind himself and Charlie. "I don't know if he was awake for Mum and the rest, but he looks pretty out of it."

"Probably the pain medication," said Percy, remembering Mundungus's lethargic voice.

"Probably."

"Oh, one thing about Dung," said Percy as his brothers began to walk down the corridor. "When we saw him he'd just gotten medication and he's sort of incoherent."

"All right. Thanks."

Once they were gone the corridor was silent. "Are you ready?" Percy asked Oliver.

"No. But then, I never will be. Let's go."

The first impression of George's room that struck Percy was that of absolute stillness. The curtains did not flutter, and the room's only light came from the sunlight that penetrated them. All was silent and it remained that way, never interrupted by George or Healers or any other force known to the earth. And white, everything was white, from the curtains to the walls to the floor. Even George's hair seemed less vibrant than it usually did, as if the whiteness was trying to smother it.

The one sign of life was the blanket draped over George, which steadily undulated with each breath its user took. It was when he noticed this that Percy realized he had forgotten to breathe.

George's face was like that of a statue, very well-formed and striking but forever immobile. Percy was reminded of a story his mother had read him as a child, about a shepherd who became the unwitting beloved of the moon goddess. She asked Zeus to grant the shepherd eternal sleep so that he could stay young and beautiful without end. And so he lived on, always in dreams, never changing, his mind separate from the world though his body remained within its grasp.

Percy thought of courage and looked at the remains of the leg.

It was not horrible, as he had imagined, but a shock, rather like stumbling upon one of the twins' jokes. There had been many times he looked at them and found their noses green, their ears growing curly hair, their lips grotesquely large and red, goat horns protruding from their heads. It was like a new entertainment they would create. Look, Perce, bet you can't figure out what we've done to George's leg! Oh look, he's going red, I bet he'll take house points just because he doesn't know.

Tentatively, Percy reached down to the bed and touched the place just past George's knee. Space. Eternal as the sleep of Endymion.