A/N: I’m backtracking a bit in the interests of clarity. A whole year and three months had passed since the battle of Hogwarts at the time of the christening. Hope some of the extra detail in this chapter clears that up. Enjoy!

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Percy knelt on the hard tile floor of the bathroom, retching helplessly. The Scotch had burnt his chest doing down, never mind coming up. Spit hung in strands from his lips, tainted with the bitter tastes of whisky and bile.
It was official, he’d forever be known as that git Uncle Percy, who got drunk at the baptism and harassed one of his sister-in-law’s friends. His eye was starting to bruise where she’d hit him. He hoped no one had seen it happen as he tenderly probed the swollen lid. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said to her after that fourth Scotch. Something about leaving, and where the walls thicker where she was now, and that he missed listening to her… Percy grimaced in pain as he felt around his eye, and deduced that he’d probably worded that last bit quite badly.

It had cut him to the core when he found out she’d moved away. It took a year of distance and bitterness, marked with frequent apologies and strained conversations as they danced around each other, before she took off. Shortly after Victoire was born, Percy had come back from visiting at the hospital to see a young man entering 2B.
“You a friend of Ariel’s?” he had asked the thin, dark man. He had a dour look about him, like he disliked being addressed by Percy.
“No,” had been his curt reply. He put a key in the lock of 2B and turned it. “Just moved in.” It felt like a kick in the gut by a draft horse, and had resulted in a night of self-loathing and personal abuse, the after-effects of which still hung over him like a dark cloud.

All summer Percy had watched the Floo Registry, waiting for her name and address to pop up with a new application for connection. None ever came. She must be relying on apparition, which was impossible to track.

In mid-July he’d had what he thought was a stroke of genius, and sent out Hermes with instructions to find her. But the owl returned a short time later, looking confused at his master’s displeasure.

Percy slouched against the bathroom wall and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. The christening had been the first time he’d seen her all summer. God, he missed her… Her replacement, the gloomy young man who introduced himself simply as Bas, was about as friendly as a fretful porcupine.

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September

Percy reached an arm behind him and clumsily felt around for his alarm. At length the flopping limb knocked the clock to the floor, where it abruptly silenced. Perfect. Still in a lazy haze of sleep, Percy stretched his legs beneath the blankets and snuggled in closer to the soft mass of pillow and displaced blanket before him. He sighed contentedly and brushed a bit of hair out of his face. Hair. Percy woke with a start and a spasm that nearly threw him off the bed.
“Oh, good, you’re up.” Ariel rolled onto her back. What he’d mistook for a pillow had been her. Alarmed that he’d been spooning with her and not noticed, Percy took the liberty of staring open-mouthed, perplexed. “What time do you have to leave for work?” she asked.
“Seven fifty,” he replied automatically, still staring.
“Good, we have time to talk.” The worst four words in the English language are ‘we need to talk.’ Still too stunned to know what to make of this strange development, Percy turned and swung his legs out of bed. He calmly left and walked to the bathroom.

In the privacy of his white-tiled sanctuary, Percy tried very hard to process the events of the last minute and a half. Ariel had come into his flat, into his bed no less, without his knowledge, and spooned with him while waiting for him to wake. She wanted to talk. Percy cursed under his breath at both the logical impossibility of the strange situation and the depth of the opportunity before him. What the hell was he in for now? He picked up his toothbrush decidedly, and set about removing traces of his nightcap from his breath. Damn, he’d left the bottle on the kitchen counter. Had she seen? What kind of sad sot drank alone on a Tuesday night?

Ariel sat up slowly and stretched. She leaned over the edge of the mattress and retrieved Percy’s alarm clock from under the bed. In the other room, she heard the taps running, and called out, “I’ve decided to forgive you.”
Percy poked his head curiously out of the bathroom, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth absurdly.
“Eh?”
“I’ve decided to forgive you. I’ve been talking to George.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, perhaps relate what she‘d heard about his current state, but thought the better of it and forged ahead with the apology. “I can’t continue to hold you personally responsible for such an act in that context, can I?” she said calmly. The toothbrush left his mouth with a soft ‘pop.’ He held it like he’d forgotten that he’d been brushing his teeth at all. “While I’m at it, I might as well apologize for punching you; twice.” Percy turned on his heel and marched back into the bathroom. He quickly rinsed the paste from his mouth and returned to the bedroom. Ariel replaced the clock on his nightstand and picked up his glasses. She handed them to him as she scooted to the foot of the bed. Percy hastily put them on.

“Why the sudden change of heart?” It seemed suspicious that she so suddenly forgave him, after a year of bitter cold-shouldering, hiding, complaints to management and threatening to kidnap and kill Hermes. The last time he saw her, she’d told him to “sod off and die” before punching him in the face.
“It’s September the first today.”
“Point being?”
“Did you kill during the war? Directly, I mean.” Percy was confused.
“Are you high?” he asked with genuine concern. He reached out to widen her eye with his fingertips, and she casually slapped him away.
“No, I am not high,” she was derisively affectionate. He took leave to doubt it.
“Where are you living now?”
“Are you still drunk? I live in 2B.” Percy couldn‘t have looked or felt more confused. He shook his head slowly.
“But…Bass…that git…” he pointed absurdly to the opposite flat, clinging to the notion that his deductions were correct.
“My brother?” she raised an eyebrow. “Sebastian,” she emphasized the middle syllable. “Works for Gringotts in International Development.” Percy took two steps backwards and sank onto his desk chair. She’d been living in 2B all summer? How had he missed her?
“I’ve been avoiding you,” she admitted. Percy buried his face in his hands and counted to ten slowly. If he didn’t calm down, his frustration with himself would only lead to several counter-productive activities.
“We‘re off topic,” Ariel began again calmly. “Did you kill anyone?”
“One,” he answered curtly. He hadn’t regretted it for a moment. Rookwood had deserved it; every ounce of pain.
“It’s not murder if it’s done in large numbers to the sound of trumpets, aye?” she sad sardonically. Percy stared blankly, and she brushed aside Voltaire.
“It’s September the first,” Ariel repeated. Percy gave her a prompting look. Any excuse to look at her. “Audrey’s a Seventh Year today. Sebastian graduated last Spring.” There was a vague note of pride in her voice. Percy had lost track of her train of thought completely. “He finished at Hogwarts, away from his friends, because I did something in France. None of us can go back there on legitimate papers now.” Percy felt his insides turn to ice. He wanted to ask her, but at the same time didn’t because his occupation might obligate him to inform Law Enforcement that he lived next door to a criminal on the lamb. If he didn’t know, he wouldn’t lose her any more than he already had. Ignorance is bliss.
“I hear you pining after me, you know,” she said gently. “You stay in your kitchen long after doing dishes, because the sound is best from there. The whole place smells like cheap Scotch. I saw the list of ingredients on your fridge,” she waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, where he had saved the old lists of his guesses about what she was brewing. Percy went red around the ears at that.
“If you really want me back, and I think you do, I owe you a grand bit of honesty that might influence your decision.” Percy held up a finger to silence her, and raced to collect his thoughts.
“Consider who you’re talking to. I work for the Ministry.”
“Still corrupt?” she ventured.
“No, but I might be obliged to let my superiors know where you are, if the French want you. Do you really want to risk being extradited?”
“I was arrested with Audrey in Paris when the French found out the English government wanted us,” Ariel said with a cynical shrug. Worth the risk. “There’s always Canada, when I run out of European countries to live in. There’s a place for me there, if all else fails.” She looked rather sad at that, but let it show only for the barest instant. She rallied her emotions and fixed an expression of schooled neutrality. “You accept people without hearing their stories,” she said half-reminiscently. “All I’m saying is perhaps you shouldn’t. Can I tell you now?” Percy was still mentally wading through all possible (non)options when Ariel took his thoughtful expression for a ‘yes’ and began to speak.

“I was whore to a Customs Officer,” she blurted out. Percy snapped to attention. “They were going to deport us to England. Or that’s what they called it. It was really extradition, but the French have a thing about declaring legitimate treaties with fascists. Anyway, I did whatever he wanted, and he’d sit on the paperwork for another day.” Stung by this revelation, Percy felt tension mingled with nausea knot in his stomach, and forced the taste of bile from the back of his throat. The moment the feeling of sickness passed, jealously replaced it. Someone else had touched the woman he’d been thinking about for upwards of two year. He’d been wishing for her to come home, and some French fucker had been abusing her in a detainee cell.

“Then they got a message from the Ministry; said to hold us for another month or two, until they had the more compliant muggle-borns processed by the Registration Commission. After a week I was already sick of him, so I killed him the next time he came in for his bit of fun, and we escaped underground to Belgium.” Emotionless and curt. She had detached herself from the event. Ariel opened her hands, palm-up, and stared at them as though they belonged to someone else.

“I didn’t have a wand, of course. So I choked him. Took his sweet time dying, too.” Ariel folded her hands uncomfortably and looked up at his face again. The murder didn’t bother him. The thought that occupied every available brain cell was the notion of disgust and anger that someone had touched her in such a manner. He could imagine - against his will - the hands of that corrupt Customs Officer tangled in her thick dark hair; touching her smooth skin; looking at her as Percy had once been privileged to look at her.
“So,” she concluded cordially, “now you know, and you can stop pining for me.”

She stood up, and with all the grace in the world she walked out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and towards the door. Percy watched her leave with the same sense of detachment that people watching infomercials at two in the morning feel. He saw it happening but had no reaction, emotional or otherwise, to the event. Her hair trailed behind her with a slight lag, like a flag in the wind. The tips disappeared around the edge of the door, and she was gone.

It took him all of three seconds to follow her. He marched out of the bedroom with such a single-mindedness of purpose, and caught up with her before she reached the door. He grabbed her by the elbow and spun her around, pressing her back into the wood of the door.

He hadn’t given up on Penelope, waited nearly two years, worried silently for months, and persistently tried to reconcile with her for nothing. He wanted her more than he’d wanted anything in his life. When he had the pleasure of just looking at her, never mind touching her, it went beyond a simple want of her - it was a need to have her and be hers. He was both dying of thirst without her, and drowning in misery for want of her.

He pushed her back against the door and gathered her face in his hands. Without words or ado, he pressed his mouth to hers and tried desperately, as though all the world depended upon it, to convey these things to her through their joined lips. His hands left her face, and his arms went around her back and shoulders possessively, holding her firmly to him. She sank a little, as though deflated, and relaxed into the embrace. Percy wondered how long she’d been waiting to tell someone about her ordeal, and felt a small bit of satisfaction that his acceptance of her story had relieved some of her burden. It comforted him deeply to know that he had comforted her. There was trembling; a slight vibration, and Percy belatedly realized it was him.
They broke for breath, lips swollen and red, yet retained all other contact. Foreheads rested together, they pecked lightly at the corners of each other’s lips. “You’re mine,” he breathed between gulps of air. She nodded. She had a place.

Epilogue

Mrs. Weasley forgot her manners momentarily, and stared at the bizarre woman Percy had brought around for Christmas dinner. “Yes,” Ariel whispered to Mrs. Weasley with an impish grin. “I’m one of those people you warned your children about.” The pair of them stood holding hands, completely at ease, while heads slowly turned in their direction.
Ariel took off her toque and shook out her hair, which extended to mid-thigh now. Percy put an arm around her shoulders, smiling, and began introducing her to the few family members she didn‘t already know. Everyone stared dumbly at their casually intimate pose. Manners fled in droves, and perplexity ruled the moment. Clearly the universe was upside down if Percy of all people brought home an eccentric dresser full of holes and metal with a haircut not seen since the Middle Ages.
Under the table, Bill passed a galleon to Ron. “I like her,” the latter spoke up, and the frieze broke.
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Weasley sputtered. “Wonderful to meet you.” She watched the pair of them move away from the kitchen and into the sitting room, and wrung her hands fretfully beneath her apron. So much for years of praising Percy’s profound normalcy.

A/N: It’s been an adventure. I hope you enjoyed it :) Cheers!