46. it matters
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Percy sighs and the world exhales with her. Fingers of chill that have taken hold of Hogwarts were yet to show up at New York and she intends to enjoy it thoroughly.

It was the usual scene. The glaring sun that was a dot in the vast sky shining down upon the insouciant waves. Rustling leaves and faraway laughter. An unchanged day at camp for her changed self. It didn't quite sit right with her.

All that she has cherished for so long had taken a permanent place in her heart that wasn't the same anymore. A poorly mended heart that was being gouged out to make space for more. More people to care. More people to lose.

"You spend only an hour or two here," the sudden raspy voice makes her smile, "are you gonna spend the little time feeling sorry for yourself?"

Percy's grinning despite the less than friendly tone. "Hey Neeks, yeah I've been great! What about you?"

"Don't call me that," he mutters as he joins her beneath the pine tree that used to be their other cousin. "You don't look great,"

"Yeah thanks,"

"You look like shit,"

She snorts.

"Not like how you did before though," he abandons the pretense of admiring the sky and peers at her. "This is a different shitty look,"

She gives a dry look, letting him that she didn't appreciate the staring but aware that she can't do much about it. "Is that bad? Good?"

Nico continues to gaze with his bottomless eyes. He picks at her soul and she fiddles with the new pins on the jacket she had gotten him. He makes observations of how she's changed and so does she.

Percy's gained some colour, an impossible feat with the weather in her school but she's known for those after all. Impossible things like surviving Hell and almost death four times a week because she might have left the place but that place never left her.

It hasn't left him as well. Memories of the wretched place set in bruises beneath their eyes and tremors in their limbs.

Nico takes her hand and doesn't let go. She squeezes back and recalls the time she's been the one to hold on to him.

There wasn't much worth living after the war. Or at least that's what she thought. Surviving, being alive? That she could do. For the sake of her family, friends, camp depending upon her but the actual part of living was something that she shut away. She barricaded it with never ending work and she didn't have to bother with it when the aftermath of Hell imprisoned her.

She couldn't think about living when she couldn't even remember it.

They say she went completely still. After a war to be told for ages for its glory and gore, she receded into herself. The long, deathlike nap was an indication to her absolute collapse but no one could do anything about it. A twenty or so hour nap is to be expected from someone that forcibly tucks Mother Earth to sleep. Leo Valdez vanished in flames for instance.

She was cradled by the arms of her campers, her odd family that took her to her cabin and tucked her into the sheets that have been waiting for her. She wasn't given much thought later save for occasional cries of 'Percy!' when their friends were found, struggling or unmoving.

Percy was there before dawn, carrying the injured and running towards every cry. She healed what she could. There was an abundance of water to use for it. On her cheeks, on their cheeks and the remnants of the flood and storms she had bought hours ago.

Grover had crushed her in an embrace, warmer and less bloody that their last one when she was fresh out of Hell. Less than two days since she had driven the elevator out, she had her best friend's arms around her and the looming war did not matter but his hug and her panting mumble, 'Annie—I—she—sorr—' She never finished that. He didn't let her.

Percy didn't have a horrible news scorching her throat the second time. She limply accepted the hug until she remembered who she was and where she was. She patted his back then and was off again to help another.

The infirmary's cheery yellow that had been charred greeted her when she was yet again in an embrace. This time it was the whole gang with exceptions. She had collapsed again supposedly, twice in four days.

Another two weeks of tallying deaths and arranging funerals and rebuilding the camps had passed by before she was forcibly put to sleep.

Then the screams began.

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"You're strangely competent with hellebore," Draco remarks in their next Potions class and if she had been a bit more mentally present, she would have definitely been insufferable about it being a compliment.

She isn't though. He frowns. "You're good with moonstone,"

And that gets him to stop his mechanical stirring that could be done with a spell but he refuses to do so. "Are you alright?"

"Mhm?" She hums, blinking at him instead of the hellebore like she has been doing for the past half hour.

"I'm pleased to find your showy sword skills useful in potions," he drawls but he is still frowning, "but I ask you to not overexert yourself needlessly,"

She wanted to argue but she couldn't find it in herself to do so, especially when she looks back to their work station. They had too much of hellebore. "I'm good," she continues before he could do so much as roll his eyes, "have always belonged in Hell,"

That gets his wand to stop abruptly over the cauldron. He stares at her. And he stares more when she takes over the stirring instead. She's good at it of course. She learned beneath notoriously precise Draco who learned beneath notoriously precise Snape.

He sees the right tilt of her wand and her focused gaze and doesn't actually scrutinise it for once. Pansy has been whingeing about Percy's pallor and Millie has noted how her odd dances have become more frequent. Blaise thinks she has to seek out a Mind Healer.

Yet, it is the tremor in her hands that gets him concerned. He has been subjected to her presence whether he had liked it or not for extended periods of time. From Blaise finding her amusing, Pansy worrying and the majority of their House as well as the entirety of the school finding a friend in her. There was also the matter of her poking her nose into his business.

The thing is that she does not shake. At all. Sure, she sees things that aren't there sometimes and is constantly haunted by shit they cannot hope to understand—but she does not shake. She freezes.

She goes stock still like that of a soldier or a dead body depending on how you look at it. He's always thought her untouchable by anything and everything. An anomaly that he couldn't decide if he wanted to be her or to be with her.

"Percy,"

She startles like she's been slapped. The wand drops from her grip and he catches it before it is swallowed by the cauldron. It had been nothing but a murmur.

Her hand trembles and her chin quivers. She pockets her hands. "What?"

He continues to look at her even when she turns away. Eventually he turns to their potion as well, breathing out a Warming Spell.

"I'm not cold," she says even though there hasn't been the usual complaint about her not wearing her robes. Pansy nags about it everyday but she continues to parade around in her sweater, shirt and trousers attire.

"I didn't say you were,"

She nods, a jerky motion. She had felt the magic of the spell before it could take effect and that had made her shiver before it's blatantly positive intent had comforted her frayed nerves. She can't complain.

They work in silence, measuring out moonstone powder and hellebore. Vials line up their table, labelled with numbers and their observations recorded on parchment.

"We could take out the porcupine quills," Percy suggests as she stares intently into the cauldron, her hands clasped behind her back.

"It is being used to stabilise the reaction between the other ingredients," he retorts absently, measuring unicorn powder that she refuses to handle. "We'll have to find another way for that before we even think about it,"

"Let's change the ratios. Look," she beckons with her chin to a particular vial that looks empty. "That one's better,"

He raises an eyebrow. "We should test it first,"

Percy promptly takes it in her hand—that is still shaking but not as much—and goes to uncork it.

Draco seizes it with a wordless spell and stares disapprovingly at her. "Do not tell me you were about to gulp it down,"

"I wasn't?" She tries for a smile, "I was just observing it," she curls her fist and peers at the vial through it, "closely,"

"No you weren't,"

"I—"

"Regardless of how desperately you seem to be in need of it, you're not testing it,"

"You need it more," it is not said kindly.

"Perhaps,"

There is a tense silence where another vial is filled. They could be grateful for the secluded spot their previous mishaps had earned them. No one was there to gaze upon their poor attempts at avoiding each other when they were working at the same station.

"I'm worried." Their Giggling Potion that had giggled endlessly at the beginning of their term had compelled Pansy to encase them in a Silencing spell which has become a permanent fixture for them. Percy has that to thank for being able to hear his barely audible confessions.

"About what?" She matches his tone, fervently looking at the herbs just like he did.

He smiles, a bitter tilt that has her wondering again. "Oh this and that."

"Your immediate worry?" She prods at him before he could retreat into his aloof self.

"The DA." To Slytherins' relief, Umbridge's patrols have increased. It has delayed their much dreaded meeting for another two days.

"They can't harm a hair—"

"I know." He organises the vials. Holding up one to the light, he locks eyes with her.

Percy swallows but she doesn't look away. It's a familiar routine. Draco demands a fair exchange, Arithmancy answers for demonstration of complex casting of ad sanadom. It's nothing new except this was. Something they wouldn't tell another soul for another.

Your turn.

She raises to the challenge, holding his gaze. "Everything's getting mixed up." She sways with what it takes her to admit, "I'm not remembering things very well. I'm losing it."

Her eyes dart to her hands. They shake terribly. "I don't know if I'm doing it all right."

She trembles all over now, forgetting herself, him and time. She hasn't got an idea how long it has been when his hoarse voice cuts through to her foggy mind, "Who knows what's right and wrong?"

Her eyes snap to his and time seems to still. Or maybe she freezes the way he's gotten used to.

He is unsure of himself. It is apparent in his own darting eyes. "Who knows really? And what good does it do wondering about it?"

"You don't?"

"I've thought enough," he swallows. "You don't."

She takes a step back and another forward, torn between agreeing and disagreeing with it. "I don't." Her hands clench on their own regard as she stares at him. "I only care about keeping people I love breathing."

He nods. "And they are, aren't they?"

"Yes but—"

"You're not actively committing murder here Jackson," he says it monotonously before his own queries take hold of him. "Actually I don't know what you're doing here other than wrecking relationships,"

That gets her to avert her dark gaze and even makes her lips twitch dangerously for a smile. "I don't know what I'm doing either. That's kinda the problem."

"Don't know why it is," Draco nudges her to switch places with him. He takes hold of the vials and she looks after the cauldron. "You're doing something here. It's strange, ridiculous sure but it's not hurting anyone."

"How can you be sure of that?"

"Because I have a good pair of eyes and ears Jackson."

She wishes she wasn't blessed with the same when he goes on to berate her about her stirring technique.

"Perhaps you do belong there," he says too quietly in the end. The clanging of vials being put away threaten to drown out his voice but the words sharp enough to make her flinch. "But here you are, far away from there," it takes a wistful edge. "and you dare to breathe, do unimaginable things and live. That means something, wouldn't you say?"

His matter of fact tone does nothing to help her dumbfounded self. "Inter-house unity is that impossible?"

He doesn't quite crack a grin but his eyes soften in a way she hasn't seen. "That's one of those unimaginable feats you do."

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a quick update
we gotta speed things up