One Degree from Perfect

One Degree from Perfect

I know what they think of me. Straight-laced Percy, uptight and anal. His socks always match, his hair's always perfectly combed, whatever he does is perfect. Perfect Percy. Perfect Prefect Percy.

Personally I think they have too much time on their hands and way too much alliteration. If you'll pardon all the puns.

First of all, perfect is in the eye of the beholder, right? You might like girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. Or boys for that matter. I'm rather fond of brunettes myself. One in particular in case you were wondering.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You should always start at the beginning. Less confusing that way.

So perfection is a myth. Or you could say people have to find their own perfection. Either way there is no one true perfection. And I couldn't have been anyone's the way I was then. I was uptight I know. Prissy. Boring. At least on the outside. But people change. Things change. Like Penelope and I. I know everyone thought we had the china picked out and a down payment on a flat in Diagon Alley but that just wasn't for us. Technically we should have been perfect. Head Boy and Head Girl. Two of a kind. But two wrongs don't make a right and two lefts don't either. We weren't perfect together.

So we graduated, said goodbye and not goodnight and didn't worry about it. Last I heard she was dating someone from the Auror academy. And that's not what you'd expect, is it?

And who would have known that Percy Weasley liked to go clubbing? That he wore those tortoiseshell glasses because they were the only ones his family could afford? That he secretly wanted to grow his hair out for the longest time? No one knew. Six months after I moved out of the Burrow I was scarcely recognizable. My job at the Ministry was going fairly well (aside from that horrible Crouch incident), I lived in a miniscule flat, had barely enough things to fill that flat, and went clubbing every weekend. I was happy enough. But life wasn't perfect.

Perfect isn't something that shines brightly and has no flaws. Perfect is knowing that you have a little of everything. It's a give and take. Decent job, crappy flat, crappy things in flat, friends to party with. And that's not to say I wouldn't like a better flat or better job, but that I was content with the way those things were right now. I could live with that if I just had one more thing. Someone to share it with. So I was one degree from perfect.

Oliver was my one degree.

And it sounds funny, I know. But that one degree accounts for a whole lot. One degree is the difference between waking up in an empty bed and to waking up in someone arms. One degree is what separates being alone from being together. One degree is changing from content to deliriously happy. My one degree came in the shape of one sandy-haired, exuberant man with a cherubic smile and mischievous mind. One degree is what separates perfect from not.

And Oliver and I are perfect. So call me perfect Percy all you like. Perfect, prissy Percy who now has contacts and long hair. Perfect Percy who is joint owner of a club and bar. Perfect Percy who has an alarming tendency to have sex with his husband almost anywhere. I'm now perfectly perfect with my one degree by my side.