Chapter Text
Percilla Weasley had always known she was different. From the moment she could form thoughts of her own, it was glaringly obvious she did not fit the mold of her family. Outnumbered as one of only two girls in the Weasley clan, she was already set apart, but what truly made her an outsider was the gray thread of magic that ran through her, something neither light nor dark, but both. Where her six siblings radiated the steady warmth of the light, her own magic shimmered like smoke, untamed, unpredictable, and often misunderstood.
In the wizarding world, every witch and wizard is born with a magical core. An invisible wellspring of power that shapes how their magic flows and manifests. Most cores are strongly aligned with either the Light or the Dark, influenced by heritage, temperament, and the traditions of magic woven into the family line. A Light core thrives on harmony, discipline, and controlled spellwork, often favoring defensive magic, healing, and charms. A Dark core, conversely, draws strength from intensity and raw willpower, its spells burning brighter but sometimes at a cost, often manifesting in curses, hexes, and more aggressive forms of sorcery. Both are powerful in their own ways, but they are expected, familiar, and easily understood by most of magical society.
A Gray core, however, is rare and unsettling to many. Neither fully Light nor Dark, it balances on the razor’s edge between creation and destruction. Those born with Gray cores often experience magic that feels alive, instinctive, and deeply emotional. Their power can bend toward Light or Dark depending on their intent and emotional state, making them unpredictable. This duality grants incredible potential (greater versatility, deeper connection to ancient forms of magic, and resilience where others might falter). It also isolates the witch or wizard who carries it. Society mistrusts what it cannot categorize, and so Gray witches and wizards are often feared, whispered about as unstable or dangerous, when in truth their magic simply does not conform to the binaries the world insists upon.
The first time Percilla realized just how different she was, she was only seven years old. Fred, in one of his infamous fits of mischief, thought it hilarious to slice her braid clean off with a pair of enchanted scissors. “A prank,” he had called it. “Just a laugh.” Everyone else chuckled along with him, even George. But Percilla had not laughed. She had been furious. Her hair was not just hair—it was hers. Something sacred.
And that fury had done something no one expected. Her magic, usually soft and warm like a comforting blanket, erupted like a storm. In an instant, both twins were hurled across the room and slammed into the far wall with bone-rattling force. The laughter stopped. Molly gasped. Arthur paled. The wholesome parents who had built their lives on the foundation of light magic looked at their daughter with an unease that cut deeper than words.
That night, they owled Albus Dumbledore.
Percilla still remembered the sound of the great wizard’s booming laugh when he arrived, remembered the way his hand had pressed a little too firmly atop her head, ruffling her hair as if she were some troublesome Kneazle kitten. “Accidental magic is always worrisome,” he had said, eyes twinkling, “but emotions must be mastered, my dear. Anger, above all else, is the ruler of destruction.”
The words were meant to soothe, but to Percilla they stung. Why was everyone worried about her anger when no one had been upset about the attack that caused it? Why was she expected to endure humiliation with a smile? Why did her brothers’ cruelty count as play, while her retaliation was called dangerous?
Her mother, starry-eyed at the mere presence of Dumbledore, had sent her to bed without another word. Percilla trudged to the small room she shared with baby Ginny, a part of her darkly hoping that maybe she’d frightened her mother enough to spare her the nightly duty of tending to Ginny’s cries. She wasn’t sure whether the thought made her wicked or simply honest.
But as she passed Bill and Charlie’s room, a whisper halted her steps. “Hey, Perc.”
Her eldest brother stood in the doorway, looking uneasy. Bill, nearly twelve, shifted guiltily, while Charlie fidgeted behind him.
“I’m sorry,” Bill said at last, his voice unsteady. “I should’ve been watching the twins. It’s my fault they cut your hair.” He hesitated, then produced a book from behind his back, its green leather cover scuffed with age. “The Eloquent and Enthralling Book of Hair Magic by Arantxa Bagtree.”
Percilla’s eyes widened as her small fingers traced the embossed letters. “How did you get this?” she whispered, astonished.
Bill glanced around, lowering his voice. “I… nicked it from the library at school. You can return it when you go to Hogwarts. I just thought… you’d like it.”
For a moment, the ache in Percilla’s chest eased. No hand-me-down jumper, no patched shoes—this gift was hers, chosen for her, because someone had noticed what she loved. She whispered a trembling “Thank you” before hurrying off to her room to devour its pages.
By morning, her hair had grown back longer than ever, shimmering like molten copper in the dawn light. It was as though the book had awakened something deep within her, something ancient and powerful. From that day forward, braiding her hair became her ritual, her devotion, her secret rebellion. Each braid was a prayer to Mother Magic herself, each broken strand an offering.
Her mother called it nonsense. Molly railed against anything that hinted of dark or ancient practices, dismissing them as dangerous traditions best forgotten. But Percilla’s braids became her armor, a declaration that she would not be molded into a blind follower like the rest. The Weasley family was poor, overlooked, and often mocked, but Percilla wanted more than scraps. She wanted control, power, choice.
Her parents often reminded their children: Weasleys were never given handouts. We worked for what we wanted.
Percilla believed them. Which is why, as her braids grew more intricate and her will stronger, she decided: if she wanted change, she would not wait for it. She would weave it herself.
Bill had taken a job with Gringotts straight out of Hogwarts, chasing freedom and adventure in foreign lands, while Charlie had run off to Romania to work with dragons. Both of them had chosen paths that set them apart from the Weasley name. Bill especially had no intention of claiming the Weasley title or taking up the Wizengamot seat that was his by birthright. He wanted his own way, unbound by old obligations. After the deaths of her uncles, Fabian and Gideon Prewitt, the inheritance of their line had become uncertain. Tradition dictated that only a set of twins could take the Prewitt legacy forward. But the Weasley twins, still young and reckless, showed no signs of interest. In Percilla’s mind, it was up to her. Someone in their family had to make something of themselves, to prove the Weasleys were more than hand-me-down robes and foolish obsessions with Muggle trinkets.
Percilla loved to learn, and she did so with a hunger that often startled even her professors. She devoured every book she could get her hands on, whether borrowed, begged for, or bought with what little coin she could scrape together. When she first arrived at Hogwarts at eleven, she noticed immediately how the other Pureblood girls dressed. Their uniforms were tailored from the finest fabrics. Their gowns were silk and satin, their shoes polished to a shine. Percilla, by contrast, wore her brothers’ old clothes—threadbare, too big for her frame, smelling faintly of mothballs and patchwork charmwork. It was humiliating, being the only girl in boys’ cast-offs, though if anyone in Gryffindor noticed, they didn’t say anything. At least not to her face.
She knew then that if she wanted what they had, she would have to work for it. By winter break of her first year, Percilla had started tutoring. At first, it was just helping a struggling classmate in exchange for a few Sickles, but soon she was quietly doing homework, writing essays, and crafting study guides for anyone willing to pay. She didn’t care what house they were in—knowledge was her currency, and she spent it well. She quickly earned a reputation as one of the most brilliant girls in her year, though not everyone liked her for it. Still, the galleons added up.
That summer, Percilla snuck away from her mother during a trip to Diagon Alley and bought clothes of her own. They weren’t the latest fashions, and most were pulled from sale racks, but they fit her. They were hers. Not Bill’s, not Charlie’s, not Perci’s. Hers. For the first time, she didn’t feel like a shadow of her brothers. She worried Molly might ask questions about how she had gotten them, but her mother was too distracted corralling Fred and George, who seemed determined to sneak into Knockturn Alley, to notice.
Percilla enjoyed the independence money gave her. She could finally buy what she wanted, even if it meant settling for outdated styles or secondhand shoes. To her, the freedom mattered more than the shine. After all, the world knew the Weasleys were poor, but no one outside their family truly understood why. Their father poured money into his obsession with Muggle artifacts, cluttering the shed with enchanted junk and half-broken trinkets. One day, it would bite them in the arse—she was certain of it. If the Ministry ever discovered the illegal flying car Arthur kept hidden, the fines alone would have them eating nothing but stale bread all summer.
Things always seemed to improve when Harry Potter visited the Burrow. Molly Weasley would rush about trying to put on the appearance of a perfect home, but Percilla knew better. She only snorted at her mother’s efforts. The woman couldn’t even tell the twins apart half the time.
Percilla’s relationship with her mother was a knot she could never quite untangle. She loved Molly, of course, how could she not? Her mother had given her life, nursed her through childhood fevers, and held her when nightmares had clawed their way into her sleep. But woven through that love was a bitterness Percilla couldn’t ignore. She loathed the way her mother dismissed anything that didn’t fit her narrow idea of “proper” Weasley values, the way Molly praised Percy for his obedience while scolding Percilla for daring to question, to want more. Every lecture about “nonsense magic,” every reminder of what a Weasley girl should be, felt like another thread tightening around her throat.
It was hard to explain the resentment Percilla carried—it wasn’t a fire that consumed her, but a slow, choking weight. She envied Ginny for being young enough to still be her mother’s darling, untouched by Molly’s criticisms, while Percilla herself had become the stubborn, difficult one. Sometimes she wondered if Molly ever truly saw her, or if she only saw the daughter she wished Percilla had been. That was the wound at the center of it all: she wanted her mother’s approval, craved it even, but loathed how impossible it seemed to earn without carving away the parts of herself that mattered most.
Her relationship with Fred and George had never been simple. They had mocked her for years, calling her “Perfect Perci,” a nickname meant to sting. Yet for all their teasing, Percilla cared for them. When Molly tried to force the twins to attend Hogwarts with their late uncles’ wands—cheap, cruel substitutes—Percilla took matters into her own hands. In her third year, she spent nearly all the money she had earned tutoring to buy them proper wands of their own. It meant she had to wear too-small shoes for another term, her toes pinched and blistered, but she endured it. The twins never forgot. Their relationship softened after that. It wasn’t perfect, but there was respect where there hadn’t been before.
They even accepted her choice to follow traditions. Though they didn’t fully understand it. That Christmas, she gifted them a book explaining the responsibilities of lordship. They were still young, only in their fourth year, but they would soon be of age to inherit a ring if no adult wizard stepped forward. Percilla hoped they would read it. She didn’t want her brothers to be trapped in obligations they didn’t want, the way she sometimes felt trapped at home.
While her mother fretted over Ginny in Diagon Alley, making sure her youngest had everything she would ever need for Hogwarts, Percilla slipped away toward Caliadne’s. The jewelry shop sat on the corner where Diagon Alley bled into Knockturn, its windows glittering with necklaces, rings, bracelets, and hair combs that caught the afternoon light like captured stars. Sixteen was an important age for any witch; not yet legal adults, but their magic had fully matured, settled into its permanent shape. Tradition dictated a gift to mark the milestone, a token of pride, often a comb set with house colors, given by doting parents. Many of the girls in her year had received them. Percilla had not. Her birthday had come and gone with little more than a polite slice of cake and Molly’s hurried kiss on the cheek. She had told herself she didn’t mind, that she hadn’t expected her parents to honor a tradition they dismissed as frivolous. But still, a sting lingered, no matter how much she tried to brush it aside.
She had worked hard for this moment. The year before, when every house doubled its Quidditch practices in desperate attempts to outmatch Harry Potter, students barely had time to breathe, let alone study. Percilla’s tutoring had become indispensable. She had helped them scrape passing marks in everything from Charms to Potions, even Snape’s dreaded exams, and she’d saved every coin. Now, with twenty-four Galleons tucked away in her small coin purse, she was determined to buy something of her own, a piece of beauty, dignity, identity.
Inside Caliadne’s, she kept her head down, trying to melt into the crowd. Pureblood families filled the shop: fathers discussing courting arrangements with their sons, mothers guiding daughters toward jewels they would one day wear to announce their worth. Percilla drifted to the cheaper cases, her pulse steady but her chest tight. She had no illusions about marriage alliances or noble proposals; she was a Weasley, poor and unremarkable in the eyes of those who measured worth by vaults and bloodlines. All she wanted was something that was hers.
Her gaze fell on a plain silver comb. Modest, certainly, compared to the jeweled ones Pureblood girls were admiring, but it gleamed softly, elegant in its simplicity. Vermilion-colored cloth flowers adorned its top edge—Weasley vermilion, the long-forgotten shade of her family’s ancestral crest. Her fingers brushed its cool surface, and something inside her ached. Could it be brought back? Could she bring it back? To wear vermilion in her hair was to remember a lineage her parents ignored, a history buried beneath patched robes and Muggle trinkets. The comb was priced just high enough that buying it would empty her purse completely. Still, it called to her.
“Weasley?”
The deep voice startled her, dragging her from her thoughts. Percilla turned sharply, nearly dropping her coin purse. Marcus Flint stood beside her, broad-shouldered and looming, his black eyes sharp. Other girls whispered about how terrifying those eyes were, how cold and merciless. Yet up close, Percilla found them less frightening than intense—like the weight of a storm pressing against her skin.
Remembering her lessons in etiquette, she dipped into a curtsy, low and practiced. “Heir Flint, my apologies. I didn’t notice you.” Her voice came out soft but steady as she rose to meet his gaze. “How may I help you?”
Flint studied her for a moment, unreadable, before speaking. His voice was rough, but not unkind. “Heir Pucey said you’re the one to see if someone wants to pass a difficult class.”
Adrian Pucey. Percilla knew him well; he had nearly failed Herbology until her tutoring saved his grade. She inclined her head. “I am. Let me guess—Transfiguration?”
Something flickered across his face. Surprise, perhaps, though he concealed it as any Pureblood heir should. “McGonagall nitpicks everyone else to death, except her Gryffindors.” His tone dripped with bitterness.
Percilla allowed herself a small smile and nodded. “Very true. She does favor her own.” She had long since accepted her Head of House’s bias, though it still stung. “I should have a free period on Wednesday, but I can work around Quidditch practice or your Head Boy duties if needed.”
She had surprised herself by the offer. Normally, she was rigid with scheduling—if a student couldn’t fit into her open slots, they went elsewhere. She didn’t know why she was being more accommodating now.
Flint gave a curt nod. “Wednesdays are fine. I make the schedule—Quidditch won’t be an issue.” His lips moved with each word, and Percilla found herself oddly transfixed by the rhythm of his voice, rough yet smooth, like gravel rolling in a river.
“And payment?” he asked.
Her fingers tightened around her coin purse as she recited the rates. “One Galleon for a group session. Three for one-on-one. Eleven Sickles for a study guide. Four Galleons if you want homework completed for you.” She bit her lip after the words left her mouth, nerves fluttering.
“Alright,” Flint said simply, disinterest masking his agreement. “One-on-one sessions. Wednesdays.”
Percilla nodded, her mind already running the numbers. That would cover at least part of the comb. Maybe more, if he kept with it.
“Just send an owl with your set ti—”
“Marcus,” a feminine voice called out, cutting Percilla off as an older couple approached the teens. Percilla straightened quickly, her hands falling neatly in front of her skirts.
The woman was elegant, her long black hair woven into the traditional married lady braid, her robes rich with understated refinement. At her side stood a broad-shouldered man with the same piercing black eyes as Marcus, his expression unreadable, though his presence alone commanded the air.
“We are done,” Lady Flint said warmly, her voice carrying the kind of authority softened by grace. “Are you ready to go? Oh, hello, and who might you be?”
Percilla assumed immediately that these were Marcus’s parents. Marcus was the spitting image of his father, from the angular set of his jaw to the steady weight of his gaze. She smiled softly, shyness creeping into her features, before curtsying low in respect.
“Percilla Weasley,” she introduced herself politely, her voice careful but steady. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lord, Lady Flint.”
Lord Flint’s brows arched at her surname, the single word carrying both question and unspoken judgment. “Weasley?” he repeated, his tone mild but edged.
A blush bloomed across Percilla’s freckled cheeks, and she nodded quickly, willing herself not to shrink under the weight of the name. “Yes, sir,” she answered, embarrassment tugging at her pride. She knew well enough the reputation her last name carried in these circles, poverty, scandal, and a lack of refinement whispered from mouth to mouth.
To her relief, Lady Flint’s expression softened, her smile genuine and kind. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too, Percilla. Are you and Marcus friends from school?”
“Mum,” Marcus interjected, his voice pitched lower, but it still carried the petulant note of an embarrassed son. He shot his mother a look that made Percilla bite down hard on her lip to stifle a laugh. Seeing the usually composed Slytherin captain so undone by his own mother was unexpectedly endearing.