WISHLISTS: Announcements (Percy/Hermione)

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Author: too_dle_oo
Recipient: gelsey
Title: Announcements
Pairing: Percy/Hermione
Prompt: Percy/Hermione. Hobbies (especially unusual ones) bringing people together.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,860
Summary: Percy has a very nice nib.

Everyone was already calling it the Wedding of the Century.

Everyone but the groom, that is, who was having a difficult time keeping up with all the pomp and circumstance. Puttering about in the library at Grimmauld Place with his soon-to-be brother-in-law, Harry pulled out a crate filled with ink bottles. He squinted, lifting one filled with an orangey red and another that appeared to be a simple black. 'I dunno about colours or anything,'

Percy began unpacking boxes upon boxes of ivory cardstock, embossed with family crests and ready to be handwritten. 'Are you certain that there haven't been designs drawn up already?' That didn't sound very like his baby sister, a woman who had, in part, been planning this event since she was roughly five years old.

Harry smiled sheepishly. 'I know there's a format Molly wanted us to follow for the wording of these, but other than that, I don't really care.' He picked up another bottle, holding it to the light. 'Does Ginny like blue?'

Percy sighed. The things he did for family.

A huge fuss was made over every last detail: selecting the perfect location on the Hogwarts grounds, coordinating the time of the vows with the optimal angle of the sun, designing a menu sure to astonish all the guests. Harry clearly hadn't been kept abreast of all the decisions, so Percy pulled out the book his baby sister had compiled for him.

'Ah, yes,' the redhead said, flipping to the section set aside for all wedding correspondence. He found the mock-up for the announcement in front of those for the invitations and thank-you notes, and by coincidence, they were all to be done in a dee 'It's a fairly simple calligraphic stroke, so it shouldn't take too long for me to complete each announcement. A few minutes at most for each one.'

'Have I thanked you already for volunteering to do this, Perce?'

'Twice, but you needn't. Gin was always my favourite sibling,' he said. Which was true. Bill and Charlie had always run off together when they were younger abandoning their kid brother at home. Fred and George came along next, but they shared half a brain, and Ron was always trying to emulate them. Then Ginny came along, a whipsmart, sharp little sister who adored him. When she was little, she crawled onto his lap and demanded that he read to her. As she grew up, she sought him ought when the rest of his brothers tended to overlook him. She'd also cried miserably when he'd headed off for Hogwarts at eleven, and she was the first one to come barreling into him for a hug when he returned at holidays. Now that she was a grown woman, he would do anything for her, even if it meant learning calligraphy so that she had the wedding of her dreams.

What was dumbfounding was that Ginny was going to be the second Weasley child to marry. Percy always thought that she'd be the last one to go, or that there would never be a man good enough for his kid sister, but then Harry showed up, and the rest all fell into place.

'Here's the guest list,' Harry added, passing over a scroll. 'Your mum is... er... a really, really thorough woman.'

Percy eyed it warily as he began to unroll the thing. He gulped as the names just went on and on. 'How many people did you say were coming?'

*

Eight hundred and forty-nine guests.

Which meant eight hundred and forty-nine announcements. It had taken Percy the better part of the weekend to finish all of them. He had holed up in a leather armchair in the library, flipped the wireless on, and methodically plodded through the entire list.

It was the single most boring weekend of his life, and this was from a man who had once measured and catalogued cauldron bottoms for the hell of it.

*

The next weekend, Percy Flooed over to Grimmauld Place to begin the invitations. Might as well get it over with, he figured. If the announcements had taken two twelve-hour days, the invitations were going to take three or four times that in sheer man-hours. Percy figured that three or four weekends should do it.

'--course he wouldn't refuse! That doesn't mean you should ask it of him, Harry!'

Percy stopped dead in his tracks. Clearly, he was interrupting an argument, but that wasn't Gin ripping into Harry. Percy leaned into the hallway, only to spot a cloud of chestnut curls and a wagging finger aimed at the Boy Who Lived.

'How could you! After all he's done to make it up to the rest of the family, he shouldn't need to do anything else.'

And with that, he knew that they were discussing him.

'He offered,' Harry said, 'and they were so perfect, Hermione, that even you couldn't do it any better. Ginny was--'

Percy cleared his throat. Best to make his appearance known before this got any more awkward.

'Oh!' Hermione whipped around at the sound.

'Er...' Harry mumbled. 'You didn't... didn't...'

'Hermione,' Percy stated, needing to clear this up before she harangued her best friend any further, 'I did offer my services for the invitations, so I assure you, you may let Harry off the hook.'

Her nose wrinkled as she glanced between the two men, and she wrapped her arms across her body under her chest, framing her breasts rather nicely. 'You couldn't have known how long this was going to take then.'

No, he thought. Not a clue. He held his tongue and kept his eyes on her face, a difficult feat since she had lovely... proportions. Yes, that was it. Her body made mathematical sense.

'If you're still going to suffer through them, I'm going to help,' she called, pushing past both he and Harry as she headed for the library.

Percy wasn't going to argue with that.

*

It turned out that there were things Hermione Granger was bad at.

He'd always heard the rumours about her flying prowess, and he remembered how she'd thrown a fit in the common room over Divination, but Percy had forgotten that Hermione didn't actually excel at everything.

She'd insisted on assiting him with the calligraphy, but it had only taken him a few envelopes to see the problem. Her loops were uneven, her ink globbed up unattractively when she crossed her t's, and her lines often sloped downward to the right.

These would never pass muster.

But Percy was no fool, and had no intention of telling Hermione that she was rubbish. Instead, he lined up all the envelopes he'd prepared next to the ones she'd done. He hoped that she would see the difference herself and simply stop.

She didn't.

After a dozen, Percy spoke up. 'Hermione,' he asked, 'where did you learn how to do all of this?'

Hermione put her pen down and looked over at him. 'What do you mean? I learned how to write when I was three. Cursive penmanship came along when I was six or seven, I suppose. Muggle primary school places a great deal of emphasis on that.'

'Oh,' Percy said, picking up a small knife to sharpen the nib of his pen, 'I didn't mean that. I meant calligraphy. I took a few weeks' worth of classes after Gin started to talk about the invitations, and it took me quite a while to feel comfortable with just how different it is to perform this kind of writing.'

He paused, waiting for the other shoe to drop. His words had been a tad passive aggressive, he knew that, but he didn't want to reprimand Hermione aloud for her shoddy invitations.

After a few moments of staring at the line of invites, Hermione gasped. 'Oh, shite. Bugger all!'

Percy blushed. He'd never actually heard anything like that from her.

Then she whacked him across the bicep closest to her--hard. 'Why didn't you tell me I was doing this all wrong?' Each word was punctuated by another smack. 'Percy Weasley! How could you?'

*

A few hours later, they had fallen into a comfortable routine. Having retired her pen, Hermione just stayed with Percy as he worked, chatting with him about anything and everything to help him pass the time. She also forced him to stop long enough for a picnic lunch they shared on the rooftop balcony. After a full day of writing, Percy felt refreshed rather than drained and bored.

Hermione was a pleasant diversion.

A very pleasant diversion.

*

On Sunday, she showed up again.

He hadn't been expecting her, but there she was, sitting in the kitchen at Grimmauld, munching away on some pastries she'd brought over from the shop around the corner.

She made him tea before they retreated to the library to work on the invitations again. Well, Percy did all of the writing, but Hermione entertained him through the hours. She told him stories of growing up Muggle, of her ballet lessons and of riding horses with her father. Told him about what it had been like when she discovered she was a witch, and asked him about growing up in a huge family. Asked him what he was doing and what he was interested in accomplishing, and really listened to him.

Gods, she was perfect.

She kept her distance when she spoke, allowing his hands free movement when he worked. But sometimes... he just thought she was...

Was she?

No.

A woman like Hermione Granger wouldn't flirt with him, would she?

Because she leaned in close when she spoke to him, and she laughed at his jokes, and she smiled at him. She cooed over the neat, clean hand he employed.

Before he knew it, he had completed all the calligraphy.

He'd thought it was going to take him at least two more weekends, but now, he was finished. Which meant that he wouldn't have the verbose and voluble Miss Granger at his disposal any longer, and that was really a shame.

Maybe he could invent some new forms of wedding correspondance to prolong things.

As he was wrestling with lying to her about his progress, she was already boxing them up. 'You're remarkably efficient, Percy,' she said.

Damn him, but he was.

She sighed. 'I suppose you're finished now?'

He nodded, grim.

He wouldn't be seeing her again. There was no reason for her to meet him and talk to him and share tea with him.

'You know,' she said, tugging a bit at one of her curls. 'I was thinking that I'd like to learn calligraphy.'

He nodded. 'I can give you the location where I took my classes, Hermione.'

'Oh!' she exclaimed, her voice soft. She flushed a delicious shade of pink. 'I was thinking of private lessons.'

Percy looked at her, hope in his eyes. Did she mean what he thought she meant? He distracted himself by taking a long, slow draught of his tea. It was cooled now, but it kept him from saying something stupid in return. He didn't want to read too much into what she was saying, and he'd never been good with double entendres.

She spoke again, laying her hand on his arm as she looked him dead in the eye. 'And you have a very nice nib.'