Son of Rage and Love : ficalbum [PG-13: Percy Weasley - #2: Jesus of Suburbia: I]
Title: Son of Rage and Love
Fandom: Harry Potter [Percy Weasley]
Characters: Percy Weasley
CD & Song: American Idiot - Jesus of Suburbia: I. Jesus of Suburbia
Rating: PG-13; Mild Language
Author's Notes: This is part 1/5 of Jesus of Suburbia. It's amazing how long it took me to do just this subsection. >.< Bloody muse. Bloody school. 1186 words. Un-betaed :)
Percy flopped over on the couch, staring at the ceiling, squeezing his eyes shut. The small flat in a rundown burrow of eastern London was the only thing he could find on such short notice. It was grungy. It was dank. It was small. But it suited his needs, as well as his mood, just fine.
He hadn’t been able to work properly the last few days. He’d been working on the same case since he’d left when normally he went through at least two a day. Whenever he’d set down to work all that kept replaying in his head was his father’s screaming... And his mother’s tears and pleading as he’d packed to leave. He’d shut his ears to it when it had first happened, and now it was haunting him.
His father hated him, and frankly, the feeling was mutual. Percy didn’t want anything to do with him. The last few days had been spent coldly ignoring the man who shared his genetic makeup. It wasn’t difficult, since his father seemed to be making every effort to avoid him, as well. After that explosive row, they’d both settled into a pattern of silent rage. All Percy wanted was for his father to be proud of him...but that was a ridiculous hope, as much now as it had ever been. His father had probably always hated him. He just had an excuse to now.
Then there was his mother. He’d screwed up...slamming the door in her face when she’d came to talk to him. All she wanted was to know that he still loved her. With all the affection his mother had given him over the years, how could he not? There was nothing that could keep him from loving her, not even his father’s bullheadedness. But he was angry, bitter. She hadn’t raised a finger to defend him. She had let her husband kick him out. She had told HIM to apologize when it was all his fa -- Arthur’s fault. He loved his mother with his whole heart, just as she loved him, but it would take time for his anger at her to fade away.
I'm the son of rage and love.
Percy had made his share of mistakes. He knew that. Despite what his mother had always tried to claim, he wasn’t perfect. The first mistake her could remember clearly was leaving Ron and the twins unsupervised when his mother had charged him, the oldest boy not yet at Hogwarts, to watch his younger brothers.
When he’d come back downstairs from picking a book out to read to the three of them and found a giant spider crawling all over Ron, him screaming bloody murder, and the twins falling over themselves laughing, Fred with Mum’s wand in his chubby hand. Percy had blamed himself. He’d been able to beat back the odd little animal with the book until his mum had came running at Ron’s screaming and been able to change the spider back into the teddy bear it had been. But the damage was already done. Ron panicked whenever he saw a spider after that. He’d failed his little brother.
He’d never been very supportive of the twins, either, down right cruel sometimes, and they had paid him back in kind. Well... Now that he actually thought about it... They were only cruel to him when he’d given them a reason to be. His and the twins belief’s had been extremely counterpoint to each other. They had done their best to taunt him whenever possible. They had made him do things he hadn’t wanted to do. They had...
Oh, bloody buggering hell!
Percy closed his eyes tightly, gritting his teeth. They had been awful, but they had also tried to include him. They might have had a weird way of doing it, but the majority of their taunting had always come when he’d been making an effort to separate himself from all of them. When he’d...oh, ruddy bloody buggering hell...been acting like he was too good for them. He’d screwed up. No, he’d FUCKED up. Big time.
No one ever died for my sins in hell,
As far as I can tell.
At least the ones I got away with.
And there’s nothing wrong with me.
This is how I’m suppose to be,
In the land of make believe
That don’t believe in me.
Wait... Why was he blaming himself? This wasn’t all his fault. It was his family that had no faith in him, that had pushed him to the breaking point, and then off over the edge. He’d been as patient and as understanding as he possibly could be over the years, even when they had done their best to make him feel worthless. His brothers made certain to degrade each and every one of his achievements. They revered Bill and Charlie for the same things.
He was always the odd man out. Bill had Charlie. Charlie had Bill. The twins had each other. All four of them had always went out of their way to avoid him when they were younger. Nobody wanted the have to drag around Mummy’s little bookworm so he could just stand around and get in the way.
When he was older, Percy occupied his time with entertaining Ron and Ginny so Mum could do her work without having to watch them all the time. But soon enough, both of them were swept out onto the quidditch field, and they ALL left him behind. Bloody game. Just because he didn’t want to fly didn’t mean he couldn’t. Just because...they didn’t believe he could do something didn’t mean he couldn’t.
They didn’t believe in him. They never had.
To fall in love and fall in debt
To alcohol and cigarettes
Percy pushed himself to the feet, pacing the length of his apartment as he dug around in the pockets of his robes, pulling out a crumpled plastic package, drawing one of the long white cylinders out of the pack and depositing it between his lips, just letting it hang there as he searched for the lighter he’d gotten the other day.
His mother would kill him. She’d kill him, and then she’d kill Charlie for getting him hooked on the blasted things. It helped stressed, Charlie had said. He had neglected to mention that the more stress you heaped onto yourself, the more of the things you went through, and the less money you had for other things...like food. He’d been living on coffee, fags, and fish and chips for the last week. Or had it been a month now? Percy had no sense of time anymore. Sleep, work, home. Home, work, sleep. That’s all it was anymore...with the occasional respite because of Penny’s presence. What would he do without his Penny?
“Go effing barking mad. That’s what,” Percy mumbled to himself as he finally located the lighter, igniting the cigarette and starting to pace again.
And there's nothing wrong with me
This is how I'm supposed to be
In a land of make believe
That don't believe in me