InsaneJournal

History of Magic (Percy/Irwin, PG-13)
Title: History of Magic
Pairing: Percy/Irwin (HP/History Boys crossover)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3707
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine. They belong to J.K. Rowling and to Alan Bennett.
Summary: Percy's done with disappointing people.
Notes: I wrote this quite some time ago and I never posted it because I loved it too much. But now I'm posting it, and I'm dedicating it to celandineb, because.


Percy isn't repulsed when, after the first time (after Tom pushes himself up and slips his specs on before Percy can even, fumbling, find his own), Tom pulls out a crushed box and, from it, two fags. Percy's initial reaction, instead, is one of curiosity. Later, he's surprised at this, but maybe the particular fact that it's Tom has a little—a lot—to do with it.

Percy knows Tom smokes, of course, has seen him going out for a puff in the middle of the day. Percy's desk looks out over the courtyard and it's easy to watch Tom out there, cigarette tight between two fingers, eyes darting about, taking the shaky step or two from his wheelchair to a bench.

It's just that the gesture is unexpected, incongruous in the half-dark bedroom in the unfamiliar house, where Irwin-from-work merges with Tom, and it takes a curious moment for Percy's perceptions to adjust.

Percy declines the offer when Tom pushes one of the fags at him, and just watches, watches Tom's pale chest rise and fall with his slowing inhalations.

Tom's eyes are closed behind his specs, but he must feel Percy's gaze on him, because he smiles that slow, reflexive smile that always seems as though it wants to turn into something more.

"I swear, too, you know. And I fuck men. Might've even told the odd lie or two," he says with an ease that Percy wouldn't have expected—Tom's public self apparent, for a moment, not tentative like their first moments of kissing, of exploration. Balance.

Percy thinks Tom is a lot better at this than he is himself—maybe it comes from being Muggle; Percy is uncertain of the level of acceptance in his new world and would probably have done well to have researched that, since he certainly can't ask now. Maybe it comes from experience, from the years he has on Percy, having ventured further than Percy ever has, having found love and lost love and having had his heart broken and having had to mend it again. Or maybe it just comes from Tom's being Tom, and Percy marvels, not for the first time, at the suddenness of the storm that dropped him where he is now.

***

"Tell me about your life."

It's a simple request, or would be, if Percy didn't have so much to hide. Tom gets contemplative, late at night, and that's something Percy can understand, but he hates it when Tom's musings are directed at him.

He could say There's nothing to tell but that will only lead to insistence, and so Percy settles for a greatly modified version of the truth, leaving out most of what shaped him, leaving out all the magic. And maybe Tom's satisfied with it, but Percy can't ever really tell, not with that fleeting smile forming half-questions that ghost, unasked, across his face. Not the way Tom hides behind his specs, betraying only as much as he must, just as efficiently as Percy ever has.

Percy likes Tom, likes him more than he's ever liked anyone (and love hangs around the back of his mind sometimes, insistent, but Percy refuses to allow it further forward; it's been barely more than a month since they first kissed and that's just ridiculous) and some nights, mostly windy ones, when they're ensconced in bed together, long limbs tangling, Percy wants to sit up and confess:

Tom, I'm a wizard. Magic is real. Let me show you.

But he can't. Of course he can't. Percy hasn't touched his wand in months. He's not even Percy Weasley anymore, but Weatherby. The only magic he experiences is the flood of sparks inside him when Tom kisses him, even when their glasses knock inconveniently together and Tom laughs and breaks contact and lifts Percy's specs off, but not his own.

***

Tom plays records, jazz and pop and classical, and Percy nods with false familiarity at the names: Coltrane and Mingus, Costello and Bowie, Tippett and Bruckner. He'll have to look them up, he thinks, and he makes a mental note to do so. Meanwhile, he enjoys. He didn't expect to like the jazz, and he expected to hate the pop, but (and how much of it is situational?) neither is bad, actually, at all.

And Tom likes poetry, here and there (though there's no illusion of expertise), something Percy's never had much use for, and the discourse of everyday is punctuated with it, flowing. Tom talks in prose, but beautifully so, and clearly, and Percy sometimes can't tell where Tom begins and where life appends, but he flows along and soon it doesn't matter.

Percy's done with disappointing people.

***

Even when intimacy is as common as day and Percy mostly thinks of his life as a life that includes Tom, he still hesitates to ask about Tom's legs. There's just no easy way to bring up something like that—it's not dinner table conversation, nor conversation for bed, when the lights are out. Finally Percy blurts out his question one Sunday morning when they're having eggs and sharing the paper, and Tom lays down the crossword and tells his story.

And it's a simple one. Ride, crash. Chair, therapy. It's nothing like Tom's usual stories.

"And yes, now I can walk a few steps at a time, here and there, now and then, et cetera." There's a trace of bitterness in Tom's laugh, but only a trace, and he pats the arm of his wheelchair absently and lets out a breath that's nearly a sigh.

"Right, I've seen you," says Percy, and he's blushing before he gets the sentence out.

"I mean, of course I have, here, but I used to—er, at work—when you go out for a smoke. My desk, it's—"

"Right, of course you—well, not 'of course', but—well, that must be very nice for you," Tom finishes, and laughs again.

"Well—it is," Percy replies, and then they're both blushing a bit, though neither would admit it if asked, and though they really both should be over the blushing stage by now.

"Was it a hobby?" asks Percy, half to bring the subject back round to fact rather than emotion, half because he's genuinely curious. Tom on a motorbike—he can almost picture it, but not quite.

"Was what a—the motorbike, you mean?"

Percy nods, and this time Tom's voice is rueful, this time the bitterness surfaces.

"It wasn't mine," he says, and rests his chin on his hand. It's a moment before he speaks again.

"One ride, Perce. One fucking ride."

***

At work, they're quiet. It started there, furtive glances and half-concealed smiles, nervous and delayed, everything happening between breaths, so Percy supposes it's only fitting that their relationship continue in the same manner. Tom's got an office, at least, with a door, with blinds on the windows. In case of emergency, he's said more than once, and smiled his public smile, the reckless one that Percy sees too little of.

Percy hopes one day he'll be Gryffindor enough—but no, not a wizard anymore, just Weatherby, ordinary bloke, deliberately ignoring essence in favour of performance, careful to have erased the word Muggle from his vocabulary—brave enough, then, to take Tom up on that rakish offer and see what happens.

(Percy's never been a fan of see what happens. But then, Tom used to drink crap tea, so they're both learning, aren't they?)

But quiet's good, better than Nicola from reception and Adler (Shaun, apparently, to Nicola) whom even Percy knows about, because he's walked in on them more than once when they've been standing too close, intimating at something that, while it would be a bit of a scandal and possibly cause for transference, would garner only fleeting attention, the incident of their discovery only to be trotted out at cocktail parties years later to bouts of half-sincere laughter.

Not like Percy and Tom. Quiet is good for them, if frustrating, and Percy knows he'll never march into Tom's office, slam the door shut, and attack Tom, sitting atop his lap in that wheelchair and snogging him stupid in the middle of the workday.

Maybe that's why Tom smiles at him like that when he suggests it.

Tom's too smart sometimes, Percy thinks, and he shakes his head, a smile twitching at a corner of his mouth, and bends over his work once again, his head towards the courtyard. Tom's due for a smoke soon, anyway.

***

Life, Percy reflects, satiated by food and sex and tea and the constant, impossible nearness of Tom, is good.

It's the first time he can remember ever having had this thought.

Simplicity.

And if he lets himself relax just a little more—closing his eyes and exhaling—

—bliss.

***

Inevitably, they find him.

Percy's popped round to the corner store so they'll have eggs for breakfast in the morning (Tom says it's not Sunday morning without eggs, and Percy agrees), and when he returns, Tom's at the table turning an envelope over and over in his hands, his smile gone, creases showing round his eyes.

Tom doesn't smile when Percy comes in and sets the carton of eggs on the counter, but cocks his head to the side, a little too glibly, as it turns out.

"What's your name?" he asks Percy, and the question stuns.

"My—what?"

Tom's lips have all but disappeared and he shoves the envelope across the table at Percy, settling back on the kitchen chair and folding his arms across his chest. Waiting.

Percy Weasley, the envelope reads, 14 Fawley Way, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

No postcode.

No stamp.

And a pockmark at the top that can only have come from an owl's beak.

Percy purses his lips, exhales. His hands are damp and the parchment envelope sticks and crinkles in his grasp.

"What's your name?" Tom repeats, and Percy jerks his head up at the voice as the clouds of memory dissipate.

Percy pulls out the chair across from Tom—not the one next to him, he's not that brave yet—and tears his gaze from the envelope to meet Tom's.

There can't be any more lies.

"Weasley," he manages, and he darts out his tongue to awaken parched lips, and he waits.

"My name's Percy Weasley," he says, when even the barest second of silence is too much.

Tom releases, slumps forward, his still-crossed arms coming to rest on the tabletop.

"All right," Tom says, and he seems to consider, taking too long to push his glasses up on his nose.

Percy understands. New territory. Proceed with caution. There's no poetry to bolster the unbordered path.

"Just—" says Tom, now in the sudden, halting mode of speaking that Percy remembers from not so long ago, "Just what, then, is truth, and what's—" Tom pauses, and Percy needs to speak.

"Lies?"

Tom nearly smiles, but his gaze drifts and his hands are nervous, each rubbing against the opposite shirtsleeve in an embrace for one.

"Spin," Tom counters, softening the blow. (And why soften it, why, when Percy, who is done disappointing people, has disappointed, has betrayed, has been not spinning but lying, all along?)

"Omissions," says Percy then, and that seems to satisfy Tom, who gestures for him to continue.

"Small things:" says Percy, and there's the proper pause for punctuation, and he lists them. Family first, as they're easiest, in fact if not in number, if not in nature.

Tom's expression of neutrality softens to bemusement, and Percy's uncertain who's causing what, but his story is less and less burdensome as he progresses.

And then there's only one more matter. Only the biggest matter of all, and Tom's still listening, and Percy needs to move into the seat next to him, and he does.

"Percy," Tom begins, his voice precise, even, and Percy wonders if this is how he spoke to his students, the ones he refers to only vaguely, only rarely.

"Percy," he says again, "This isn't that bad, you know. I thought you'd have some sordid past, some secret family, a wife at the spa and children at football practise and—"

"No," Percy says, and he doesn't care that he's interrupting—he can't stop now.

"This letter," he says, and raises it, not looking at it, "How did this arrive?"

Tom doesn't know, and that's the oddest part. It just appeared, he says, just this morning.

Percy glances over at the never-used fireplace (never-used in summer, anyway, and summer is all that Percy's had, three months of sunshine and Tom) and Tom nods, and his eyes narrow, a crease appearing between them, though Percy suspects he doesn't know he's doing it.

The wand (his wand; apparently he'll start having to think of it as such again) is sequestered in his unused flat, hidden well away, and Percy hopes Tom still trusts him just enough to take the journey there.

***

After deliberation, Percy goes alone.

He means to walk, as it's not far from Tom's house to Percy's flat, but, moments gone, Percy ducks into an alleyway, crosses his fingers, and Apparates.

He arrives whole (though he checks to be certain—it's been a while) and goes straight to the bedroom closet, topmost shelf, all the way at the back. And inside a box marked Ollivander's, shrouded in decades-old crinkled paper wrapping, there's ten inches of rosewood, worn at the grip.

A breath, a pause, and the realisation that hesitation means loss, and Percy's casting sparks, red and blue and green and white.

The magic—he'd like to say he feels it rushing back, a dramatic resurgence, because the moment is one that calls for dramatic resurgences, but the truth is that Percy's magic never went anywhere. But he feels it now, regardless of where it's been, and it's pulsing and it's potent and it's there's plenty of it. Percy levitates and Summons and Banishes, elementary spells at first, then on to more complicated ones, and he grins in spite of himself. It's hard to stop. Magic's a part of who Percy is—Weasley again, not Weatherby. Not hiding anymore.

Emboldened by his magic, his wand a comforting presence against his thigh, ignoring the unease that lurks just below the surface of his confidence, Percy Apparates once again.

***

He hasn't planned for this moment, and he can't believe he hasn't. Too secure in my illusion, Percy thinks, and he scowls. Planning ahead is what he does—but maybe that's what Percy Weasley does, careful charting, and he's been Weatherby for too long, believing his own lies, living them—surviving them.

But before he can get too disgusted with himself, Percy finds his hand turning the doorknob, and he lets out a breath he hasn’t realised he's been holding at the sight of Tom, still at the table. Waiting.

"You're here," Percy breathes, and Tom lifts an eyebrow, but his expression remains neutral.

"It is my house, after all."

"It is, that." Steady. Percy's not going to allow nerves to take over. Courage. You're a Gryff—damn. Yes. A Gryffindor after all.

"There's probably some sort of procedure for this," Percy begins, sitting, and he wonders if there actually is, and he wishes he'd chanced upon it in all the time he spent in Ministry libraries and file rooms.

Tom nods, and waits, still, and Percy can't imagine how on earth he's so calm about all this.

***

"This is it, then?" asks Tom when Percy's finally unsheathed his wand—his secret—and lain it on the table between them.

Tom picks up the wand and flicks it in a triangular pattern. Percy winces, and grabs for it, though nothing's happened, not a single spark.

"You're…an orchestral conductor?"

It takes Percy a moment to realise Tom is serious.

"Not quite," he replies, gritting his teeth to keep from laughing. (But whether the suppressed laughter is from nerves or from the absurdity of the situation, Percy can't tell, and he doesn't have time to wonder, anyway.)

Percy turns his gaze to the crowded shelves lining the sitting room.

"Choose a book," he says, and Tom's so patient, bless him, and with half-worried, half-indulgent eyes, he does.

"I don’t know—the dictionary. On the bottom shelf."

"Right." Percy draws a breath and aims, then pauses, again. What is he doing? Maybe explaining first would be best, but—no—no, he's got to show—

Percy compromises.

"Tom, I'm a wizard. Magic is real. Let me show you." And before Tom can move or blink or breathe, Percy's flicked his wand and the Concise OED flings itself into his hands, and Percy passes it to Tom, who takes it automatically.

Tom stares at the heavy book in his hands for a moment, his breath coming in a sudden shudder, then he squeezes shut his eyes.

Percy waits.

Bites his lip.

Hopes.

"Percy—" Tom's eyes are open again, little more than slits, and the crease between his eyebrows is pained.

He drops the book into his lap.

"Percy, what…did you just do?"

"I—magic."

"Magic." It's as if Tom's trying out a new word, one clumsy and foreign on his tongue. (And, in this context, Percy supposes, it is.)

Tom's gone white. He takes off his specs and passes a hand over his eyes, draws in a breath and holds it for a long moment.

When Tom finally speaks with his abrupt exhalation, it's to ask Percy to pass him a cigarette. Tom fumbles with the matches, his hands shaking, and Percy breaches the space between them, takes the fag from Tom's mouth, and lights it (and a second he's taken from the box) with his wand, then passes one back.

The unfamiliar nicotine rushes to Percy's head, and he's reeling a bit when he realises Tom's actually—almost—smiling.

"You're full of surprises today, aren't you?" Tom says, and there's a slight alleviation then of the tension clouding the room, and Percy smiles a little, too, and nods.

"That's all, though," he says, as if sudden magic—books flying across the room, flame appearing from nowhere—could ever be dismissed that easily by someone who's never witnessed the reality of magic before.

The colour starts to return to Tom's face, and Percy takes this as encouragement.

"Would you…like to see something more?" He's not sure why he's asking, really, except that he can't think of anything else to say.

There's an edge to Tom's voice when he speaks, an edge Percy has rarely heard since they've started living in each other's pockets.

"Honestly, Perce? I'm…honestly, I'm scared shitless. Not—not to put too fine a point on it. But—" and Tom's breath catches, though he's his normal colour once again "—yes. I would. Actually. Very much."

Percy wonders if they could both call in sick on Monday.

***

Magic is like a joke, Percy realises—it can't be explained, lest it lose the essential element of its existence. And though a joke might not have been the first thing to which Percy might ever have likened magic (or anything, really), it makes sense. The comparison does. Percy likes things that can be explained, even if it's only in simile.

Or maybe magic's more like dreams.

Maybe he should ask Tom.

***

Percy has been expecting the question. Not consciously, but somewhere behind everything else he's had to explain, it's been a dull jab in the back of his brain.

But when Tom asks, Percy's answer catches in his throat. He swallows hard around it and moves closer.

"I can't—I couldn't. I'm not a Healer—" Percy has to swallow hard again as Tom's expression wilts and he nods resignedly.

"Can't blame a man for asking."

"No—no, of course not." And Percy puts his arms around Tom, pulls him back against his chest, warm and tangled together on the sofa. "Magic's not—there are boundaries. There are rules. And limits. I'm—I'm sorry."

Tom shakes his head, his thinning hair brushing against Percy's throat. Percy presses his chin to the top of Tom's head, then a kiss.

"Just one of those flicker-of-hope things, Perce. That I can even feel anything in my legs is improbable—I've had my run of luck already." Tom curls into Percy almost imperceptibly, and Percy kisses his head again, and they doze, and Percy's only vaguely aware of a fissure opening in his heart, near where another has only recently begun to heal.

***

The content of the letter doesn't matter.

With the Ministry seal on the back, Percy's letter can be only one of a very small handful of things, none of which matter enough to Percy to disrupt the tentative balance he and Tom have found—re-found—after magic invaded so abruptly.

Because nothing, not even magic (not even the Ministry which once meant everything) is worth more than this: day and night, each and every, with Tom, and he's not demanding like Father Ministry (though he is in his own way and that's something Percy can gloss over, sometimes and a bit, particularly when he's rationalising, rationalising) and he's not like anyone Percy's ever known.

And Tom bemoans (quietly, and rarely, and of course cleverly, but he does) his lack of magic and Percy thinks he'll probably always cringe when Tom draws a longing finger down Percy's wand when Percy leaves it on the table, or twitches that half-smile when Percy puts the kettle on without getting out of his seat.

But bemoaning and cringing maybe don't mean anything, because everything's always averaging out and there's a centre, and Percy knows this, and he knows that the closer he draws to it, the closer his decision looms.

And some nights, mostly windy ones, when they're ensconced in bed together, long limbs tangling, Percy is certain he feels it, just there between them, rocking them back and forth on its ever-shifting peak.

***

In the morning, Percy burns the letter.