Onions at Midnight: submission for @percyprotectionnet

Percy Weasley was downtrodden.

He wasn’t, he reflected as he tapped the fountain pen on his desk, depressed. He was completely fine. Just a bit worse for wear, a bit like a handkerchief crumpled with tears instead of the starched one he’d been before. Yes–downtrodden was the right word. Nothing else. One wash and he’d be good as new.

Why, then, had Audrey Jones given him her card?

It read in simple, bold lettering: AUDREY JONES, THERAPIST. FIRST SESSION FREE. Like he needed a free session; working for the Ministry for eight years with steady promotion had given him galleons to spare, for once in his life. But the latter part of the card bothered him much less than the former.

Why would he need a therapist?

Percy glanced at the sole picture he kept on his desk. Him and Fred, before the war, before death had decided he liked the look of one of them a bit too much. In the photo, one edge of Fred’s mouth was curling into a smirk and Percy’s head was thrown back, laughing. A reflection of the other’s usual expression. They stood in front of the Burrow, and in the corner of the moving photo, a broom and its redheaded, unidentified rider came into view.

That had been the summer Dad got the lottery win and they had wasted the money on something fascinating, yet frivolous. Right before they left for Egypt.

Percy realized he wasn’t breathing and forced himself to. A quick swipe under the eyes told him no tears were there, which was unusual, but he still brought out salad ingredients from beneath his desk. He’d come up with the initiative of “create your own food” for him and his employees, which basically meant that his onions could create a stellar excuse for any tears.

Maybe no one would have blamed him for them, but he certainly blamed himself. Percy Weasley let sadness collect like snot in his handkerchief self instead of buying his own hanky. It was a lot easier, he had found, to pretend that sadness didn’t exist than to find a way to fix it.

He was very good at pretending things didn’t exist. Too good, in fact. If the war had taught him anything, it had taught him that.

Carefully, with practiced fingers, he started to chop an onion. Prewashed and on the cutting board he now kept in his desk, along with an assortment of tea bags. It was habitual. Routine. He hadn’t had a lunch–or, as the time now reflected, a very late dinner–without onions in it in three years.

Maybe he was more than just downtrodden.

The chops were slow and rhythmic against the cutting board. He always took extra long chopping the onions because he was always afraid he might cry.

Maybe he would cry, right now. But he was a well gone empty, and for a moment, he wondered where his tears, as ever present as the dark circles under his eyes, had gone.

Maybe Audrey would help him find the tears. Or himself. Or something better than both. She wouldn’t have leaned over from her stall on an unknown street and asked him, voice soft, if everything was alright if he had looked like everything was.

Onions forgotten, he fingered the card, glanced at the photo of him and Fred, then smiled.

Fred would want him to be happy. Fred would want him to laugh.

Percy wanted to laugh.

He stood up, a handkerchief unwrinkling. He looked at the card, memorized the number.

And then he called it.