Not Who He Seems

The Discovery

The Burrow was filled with the sounds of cheerful laughter and delicious smells of the Weasleys usual Sunday dinner. Molly and a very pregnant Fleur were in the kitchen cooking, Bill was in the living room talking to his father about their jobs and the rest of the Weasley children were outside playing Quidditch with Harry Potter, Hermione preferring to sit on the side lines, under the shade of a tree, reading a thick book. The war had ended and they couldn't be happier. Ron and Hermione have finally gotten together, to the relief of Harry. He was getting annoyed watching them frolic around each other, too stubborn and prideful to admit their feelings. Ron was training to be an auror and Hermione was already working her way up the Ministry ladder. No one would be surprised if she became the new Minister Of Magic anytime soon. Harry went out with Ginny for a while, but both came to the conclusion that they weren't made for each other, but agreed to still be friends. Harry was in training to become an auror with Ron and Ginny was getting ready for her last year at Hogwarts before hopefully becoming a professional Quidditch player. Charlie was still single, but he didn't care. He was working on a dragon reserve in Romania and he couldn't have been happier. Fred and George were doing amazingly well, a lot of people had come to their shop to gather supplies to hold parties in celebration of a new world without Voldemort. Bill and Fleur were waiting on a new baby, Victoire. Molly was ecstatic to have a grandchild, after multiple years of trying to convince her children. Charlie was way too interested in his job to even get a girlfriend, she didn't trust the twins with children, and Ron and Ginny were way too young to even be thinking about that kind of stuff. They were only 18 and 17 years old. No one knew what Percy was up to but to be honest, no one really cared. Even after he apologised at the Battle of Hogwarts and everyone had forgiven him, he was still to uptight. Or so they thought.
The moment he arrived at The Burrow, he had gone straight to his old room, warning everybody not to disturb him. He hadn't come downstairs and no one knew what he was doing. As the sun started to set, Molly called everybody in for dinner, and within a second everyone was trampling each other, trying to get to Molly's infamous cooking.
"Bill, would you be a dear and get your brother for me please?" Asked Molly when everyone had settled into their seats. True to her word, there was an empty chair between himself and Charlie and himself, presumably for the third oldest. With a grumble about having to wait to eat his mothers delicious food, he stood up and headed to Percy's room.
He reached the closed door and, without any hesitation, he landed three hard knocks against the wood.
"Perce."
Silence.
"Percy, it's dinner time."
Still nothing.
Bill had had enough of his brother. He just wanted to eat, so he pushed open Percy's door and walked in to find... an empty room with the window wide open.
"Percy?"
Nothing. His stuff was still there so he couldn't have just left. As Bill looked closer he saw that the room wasn't really Percy-like. It looked like a tornado had just waltzed through. Suitcases were thrown on the bed and on the floor, spilling their contents all over the place, the bin was overflowing with trash, but unlike the assumed parchment paper from failed reports, it looked like packages from muggle snacks and drinks and... pages from magazines? The clothes didn't look like Percy's either. Instead of the normal jumpers and button down shirts he always wore, there were ripped jeans, graphic T-shirts, raven some beanies and fingerless gloves. Even some overalls and jumpers and shirts that seemed way to big for him were thrown everywhere. There were jackets that had sewn on patches, similar to the small black bag thrown on the desk chair, and the shoes weren't any better. They were all black or white boots or sneakers, some even having platforms or heels. There was a pile of canvases in the corner, paint smudges all over the wall and the floor, even some on some of his clothes. It was the complete opposite of their normally prissy brother.
Bill returned to the kitchen, where everyone was chatting and joking with each other. Molly looked up from where she was engaging in a conversation about the new baby with Fleur with a bright smile, only for it to turn into a look of confusion when she saw her oldest son alone.
"Bill, where's Percy?"
This got everyone's attention, as they all turned to him to see that Percy was in fact not with him. Before Bill could rely, Ron butt in.
"Probably didn't want to be dragged away from his precious Ministry essays."
The table giggled at the joke, except for Bill who rolled his eyes at his younger brother and Molly who shot a sharp glare at the little redhead, effectively shutting him up.
"Actually, I couldn't find him."
Everybody looked extremely confused.
"What do you mean you couldn't find him?" Asked their father who had paused in stuffing his face with potatoes.
"It means," Bill said with heavy sarcasm. "I couldn't find him. He wasn't in his room. And all his stuff is still there so he didn't just leave."
"Well he couldn't have just disappeared." Molly said, jumping up from her seat at the table, almost knocking her chair over in her haste to get to her son's bedroom. Bill and Arthur followed, and everyone else trailed behind, wanting to know what was going to happen. Their mother threw open the door with a shriek of "Percival!" Causing them to slam their hands to their ears to prevent themselves from becoming partly deaf. Everyone peered over Molly, into the utter disaster of a room.
The twins let out a low whistle at the sight, and pushed past their shocked mother to enter the room.
"Damn. You sure this is perfect Percy's room?" George said.
"Yeah, doesn't seem like a room he'd stay in." Fred continued.
Everyone was too shocked to answer. Bill was leaning against the door, watching his family search the room. Fleur stood next to her husband with a look of disbelief on her face. She hadn't known Bill's brother for long, seeing as he wasn't on good terms with his family at the time they got together, he didn't even come to their wedding. But when she met him after the war, he seemed very strict and while he was nice and polite to talk to- even letting her teach him a little bit of French- he did not seem like the type to wear these sorts of clothes and leave his room in such a state. In fact he seemed like the kind of person who would go into cardiac arrest if he ever did have to wear such a thing.
Arthur and Molly were in a similar state, one of Arthur's hands on his wife's shoulder, Molly's eyes wide and mouth gaping like a fish. They'd never believed in all their life their third son would leave his room in such a mess. He'd always be the one to clean up the house and anytime one of his siblings dropped litter on the floor when they were walking he'd always stop to pick it up, then tell them off on their care of the environment. The other Weasleys were looking at the room in a mix of pride and shock. They too were shocked that someone who would always yell at them to clean their rooms would leave his own in such a state, but they were proud that he wasn't so uptight anymore. At last they hoped he wasn't. However, they did wonder how long this kind of behaviour had been going on. They hadn't seen any change in Percy since, well ever. Even after gaining multiple friends and becoming one of the most popular people in school, he still remained as strict and prissy as ever.
Harry and Hermione weren't particularly fond of Percy, seeing as he abandoned his family when they needed him most. Even after he apologised, they did forgive him but they weren't the type to forgive and forget. But this just didn't seem like him. Harry remembered the twins telling him that Percy organised his clothes for what day and Hermione knew that he always kept his writing supplies in perfect condition, but now clothes thrown everywhere without a care in the world and the parchment paper was ripped in multiple places and was soaking up the ink from an upturned pot. It went against everything they'd heard or seen of the curly read-head.
"This is totally unfair." George protested.
"Yeah! He gets on our case for leaving a sock on the floor," Fred followed.
"But he can leave his room looking like this!?"
"This is discrimination!"
"Alright boys that's enough." Molly chastised, seemingly having gotten over her shock. Bill just rolled his eyes at they're antics. Did they honestly not care where they're brother was? He could have been kidnapped and here they were, laughing about a messy room. Okay, even he knew that being kidnapped was a bit far fetched but what else could have happened?
"They've got a point though Molls." She turned around to look at her husband. "Percy was always a major clean-freak. How he let his room become such a disaster is beyond my understanding. It just doesn't seem like him."
It was true, but Molly was more concerned with where her son was then what his room looked like.
"He'd probably got called in to work."
"But that doesn't make sense, Ron." Ginny said holding a shirt up to her chest as if she was trying it on. "Didn't Percy quit the Ministry? Plus, he would have told us he was leaving and none of us saw him leave."
Ron grumbled at his little sister's logic before picking up a weird shaped piece of wood with wheels, out from under the bed. While he put the thing on the floor and rolled it with his foot, Charlie looked out the open window. Under Percy's window was the roof to their porch, which had all sorts of things on top of it. Like Charlie's old football, or the twins frisbee that their father had gotten them to keep them busy, and... footprints? Amongst all the lost toys and rubbish, there were multiple small footprints. They were faded, like they had been there for a while, or smudged by what looked like rain. Why were there even footprints on a place where nobody had ever been? He wasn't even sure anyone could get up there without help. Even Bill could barely reach it, and he was the tallest in the family. He turned around, getting nowhere with the muddy marks on the roof, and back to the occupants of the room. Molly seemed to be cleaning the room, picking up the clothes, looking at them with distaste before folding them neatly in the suitcases. Harry, Hermione and Fleur had gone back downstairs to eat, seemingly not interested in cleaning, while the others were looking through what was apparently Percy's stuff. They found multiple small greenish-brown boxes with the words Marlboro on them, some empty cans and a bunch of stuff they'd never seen before, such as a flat rectangular shaped object with an apple that had a bite taken out of it, and a similar object but you could open it up like a book, and some posters for things like some band called "My Chemical Romance" and multiple others. Why Percy liked a band about multiple pilots, Arthur didn't know.
"Hey guys check this out." Ginny said, pulling a weirdly shaped case out from the closet, covered in stickers and patches like the jackets or bag they had found.
"What's that?" Asked Arthur, intrigued with all the muggle objects they had found. Percy seemed to have no intention of learning about them growing up, but it turned out he had a lot of secrets. Charlie took one look at the case Ginny had and immediately knew what it was, so without a second thought, he grabbed it and laid it down on the bed, pulling open the zipper as the rest of the family crowded him.
"It's Percy's old guitar. He used to put on performances with his friends in the Slytherin common room with it." Bill said, eyes shining with memories.
Charlie nodded. "I never got to see him play, but from what I heard, he's really good."
The guitar was a dark cherry colour, it too was covered in stickers and had notes written on it in what seems to be paint. It looked like something someone in a movie would play. Charlie let his calloused hands ghost over the strings. Seeing nothing else to do with the guitar, he went to go put it away, only to accidentally knock over the case. As the case fell off the bed and onto the floor, a small black book fell out of one of its pockets. Fred was the first to pick it up and he skimmed its contents as Charlie replaced the guitar in its case, now on the floor.
"There's nothing in here except a bunch of weird symbols." Ron said, glaring at the book with scrutinising eyes, like he was trying to make it confess to a murder. Bill snatched the book from Ron's hands, ignoring his annoyed "Hey!" and proceeded to read it, the twins peeking over his shoulder.
"There not symbols Ron, it's sheet music." He said turning the book for everyone to see. Fred and George couldn't help but chuckle at Ron's embarrassment.
"I knew that." He mumbled, glaring at the twins. Bill rolled his eyes for what seemed to be the hundredth time that evening and put the book back in the case and zipped it closed. They looked around the room once more and saw that they had pretty much cleaned the entire room. Without anything else to do, they headed back downstairs to the kitchen, where the food was fortunately still warm, thanks to Fleur.
"This still doesn't explain where Percy went though." Charlie said when they had finished their food and were all cramped into the living room. His hand on the clock just pointed to 'OUT' so he could be anywhere.
"Maybe he went to meet up with some friends?" Harry proposed, only to get a blank stare from Ron and, surprisingly, Hermione. "What?"
"Really, Harry? Percy? Friends?" Hermione questioned with such seriousness it made everyone burst into laughter. Even Molly and Arthur chuckled a little.
It was well into the night when anyone next saw Percy. Everybody had gone upstairs to bed, but Bill had offered to stay downstairs and keep an eye on things, in case he did come back. And he did. Just not how anyone planned. Bill was sitting on an armchair in the living room, almost about to knock out, but before he could, he heard hushed whispers outside. His hand immediately went to his wand in his pocket as he stared long and hard at the door. The knob turned and it seemed whoever was trying to get in was having trouble. He was halfway on his feet when the door swung open with a creak and standing in the doorway was... a giggling Percy? His hair was a mess his clothes were unlike anything he'd ever seen him wear before. He wore a black shirt that had a shield and a pair of blue and white wings (if you get the reference you're amazing), a red undershirt, ripped jeans and black vans. He had glitter all over his face and Bill could see what he thought were tattoos peeking out of the rips of his jeans and the collar of his shirt. And were those piercings!? He had one in his lobe, an industrial and a helix in both ears. Mum was going to kill him for that alone, but he also had a septum piercing and snake bites. Bill could smell him from where he was standing across the room. He smelled so strongly of smoke and stale alcohol that he thought he was going to be sick. He didn't even react when Bill stared at him with such shock, just stood there, with one hand still on the doorknob and his smile still plastered on his face, albeit less. His eyes were glassy and he kept swaying like he was going to pass out any second, which with the large bags under his eyes, Bill would guess won't be too long. They stood there staring into each other's eyes for a minute or two before Bill broke it.
"Percy?"