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Jun. 18th, 2003 04:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
person4Next one. Still Harry/Percy, as they'll all be unless something really hits me for another pairing. Written from 4:18-4:33
Word- Fantasy
When he was a child he’d fantasized about being a prince in a fairy tale, rescuing damsels in distress and protecting them from all that would harm them. He’d never told his brothers, it would just be one more thing for them to tease him about, newest in a list of hundreds. Eventually confided in his sister, long after he’s realised that even if he found a princess he’d have no interest in her, when she herself was saved by the boy she wanted to be her prince.
He wondered in the years following that if she really understood how impossible that would have been. That beautiful man with the wounded eyes could never be someone’s prince, not when years of terror and abuse had left him too shattered inside to even protect himself while at the same time he was expected to protect everyone. Not when Ginny looked at him and only saw the courageous boy he’d been, rather then the broken man he became, who he hid deep beneath the surface.
Percy had seen. When one wears a mask himself, it become easier to recognise others doing the same, and so he’d one day looked into Harry’s smiling eyes and had been shocked to see the tattered look beneath it.
Sometimes he thought that he’d gained his childhood wish, in a way. He was no dashing prince, and Harry no maiden fair, but he protected the younger man with every breath in his body, every beat of his heart. He was no warrior bold, he couldn’t take Harry’s place in the fight against Voldemort, but when every battle ended he could gather up the shreds that remained of the glorious boy he remembered meeting almost thirty years before and do his best to heal the pieces back together, and hide him from a world that demanded he fight no matter what the cost, which refused to see the man underneath the saviour. Then there would be another battle and Harry would leave, and fight, and return just slightly more wounded then ever before, and Percy would clutch him and love him and try to save him.
Percy was no prince. He knew if the war didn’t end soon there would be no hope of saving his would-be princess.
Still, as he clutched Harry’s warm body in the dead of the night he told himself that what he could do was enough.
It had to be.
Word- Fantasy
When he was a child he’d fantasized about being a prince in a fairy tale, rescuing damsels in distress and protecting them from all that would harm them. He’d never told his brothers, it would just be one more thing for them to tease him about, newest in a list of hundreds. Eventually confided in his sister, long after he’s realised that even if he found a princess he’d have no interest in her, when she herself was saved by the boy she wanted to be her prince.
He wondered in the years following that if she really understood how impossible that would have been. That beautiful man with the wounded eyes could never be someone’s prince, not when years of terror and abuse had left him too shattered inside to even protect himself while at the same time he was expected to protect everyone. Not when Ginny looked at him and only saw the courageous boy he’d been, rather then the broken man he became, who he hid deep beneath the surface.
Percy had seen. When one wears a mask himself, it become easier to recognise others doing the same, and so he’d one day looked into Harry’s smiling eyes and had been shocked to see the tattered look beneath it.
Sometimes he thought that he’d gained his childhood wish, in a way. He was no dashing prince, and Harry no maiden fair, but he protected the younger man with every breath in his body, every beat of his heart. He was no warrior bold, he couldn’t take Harry’s place in the fight against Voldemort, but when every battle ended he could gather up the shreds that remained of the glorious boy he remembered meeting almost thirty years before and do his best to heal the pieces back together, and hide him from a world that demanded he fight no matter what the cost, which refused to see the man underneath the saviour. Then there would be another battle and Harry would leave, and fight, and return just slightly more wounded then ever before, and Percy would clutch him and love him and try to save him.
Percy was no prince. He knew if the war didn’t end soon there would be no hope of saving his would-be princess.
Still, as he clutched Harry’s warm body in the dead of the night he told himself that what he could do was enough.
It had to be.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-06-25 11:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-06-25 01:54 pm (UTC)This ficlet's the one that really surprised me the most. I went into it expecting it to be all fluffy and nice, and then suddenly the war's lasted for decades and they're both terribly unhappy and deeply wounded. The part of my brain that works out where I'd go with each of these ficlets if I ever wrote them as a full length fic tells me that this one couldn't have a happy ending and that even if the war ended the next day Harry's too badly broken to ever be fixed no matter how hard Percy tries, and that even if that wasn't true neither of them know how to work in a normal happy relationship anymore because after almost three decades of this love and pain and terror are all ingrained in each other in their minds. And if the war doesn't end it's even worse, because at least here Harry still has some warmth in him, and he'd still try to build some kind of life outside of the battlefield and try to find some sort of happiness, however unfamiliar, for Percy's sake. If he has to keep fighting for much longer that'll be gone.
Since I'm normally a big happy, or at least hopeful, ending person it's a wierd change of pace to have something so bleak sitting around in my head.