Haven't written anything in the HP fandom for a while, but it feels so good to be back! This is the first in a five-part series of scenes from Percy Weasley's youth, revolving around his glasses and his relationship with Oliver Wood. Pretty random, but I hope you enjoy. Any feedback is very gratefully received :)

He almost cries, because it's just another excuse for the twins to tease him. He's lived his life in badges and symbols, in his house scarf, his books clamped resolutely under one arm, the frown ruffled across his brow, and now he has another to set him apart.

His mother realises, because she always does, and tells him, how about, he can have one of the really nice cases, maybe the suede one with little owls stamped on it, or the Chudley Cannons one in bright orange metal. Percy chooses a dark crocodile skin case, because he thinks it looks adult, and the novelty Muggle cleaning rag inside is a pleasing shade of navy. It costs three Sickles and he sees his mother scrape together a handful of Knuts to make up the last Sickle.

The frames are another matter. There's an elegant rimless pair that he thinks might not be too bad, and he starts concocting an adapted Vanishing charm in his head that would make the bloody things invisible to bullying eyes. But it turns out they're not covered by St Mungo's bursaries, and the Healer nudges him gently towards a dusty rack of ugly, clumsy frames, all stupid angles and bars.

The shame pooling in his stomach, he points dully at the least offensive pair, a horn-rimmed affair with little golden hinges, and the Healer fits them with a tap of her wand, and sends Percy away with the glasses still uncomfortable on his nose and the world just a little too sharply in focus. Things seem far away and too close all together, and he feels high up, the streets deep and menacing. For the first time it strikes him that in a way he's ill, he has a disease, an incurable and degenerative disease, and he hates his perfect brothers even more, even if Bill does have an ingrown toenail on his right foot.

He sinks into sullen silence at home, and he takes his glasses off at random intervals, puts them down in unexpected places, and perfects his Summoning spells finding the blasted things again. He realises how old his parents are, and how faded.

His father tries to cheer him up, and says, 'well, look, son, I wear glasses too, always have done, and look what a woman I managed to snag,' and Percy loves his parents, he really does, but it's not entirely a comfort. His father, with his absent-minded tinkering and soft belly and mounting debts and utter lack of ambition – Percy realises quickly, that summer, that happiness means different things to different people, and wonders if it was ever on his agenda.

Mercifully, the twins get sick of teasing him fairly quickly (though he suspects slow, steady, understanding Charlie might have something to do with it) and a little pink dent forms on either side of his nose that never quite goes away. His mother won't let him degnome the garden, in case he breaks his glasses, so he sits in his room with the windows open, listening to the hum of summer, and reads the holidays away, pausing occasionally to push his new accessory back up his nose.

The night before fourth year begins, he lies awake and wrestles with the chilling dread in his fingertips. He swings between frustration at his own idiocy, and trembling shame, and in the morning he tucks his glasses into their case and leaps nimbly down the familiar stairs at the Burrow, and tells his mother 'I don't want to break them' when she asks where they are.

He's sitting in a compartment alone on the Hogwarts Express, a headache pooling in his temples as he struggles with The Perfect Woman: Transfiguration, Metamorpmagi and the Feminist Critique, pretending the scenery streaming past the window is not blurred. The door slides noisily open and another boy, still in Muggle clothes, throws himself down opposite Percy.

'Perce, mate! How was your summer?'

Percy squints momentarily, and admits defeat with a downcast look, pulling his glasses out of their case and pushing them onto his face.

'Oh, Oliver,' he says quietly. 'Um. I had a nice summer, thanks. Did quite a bit of reading. You?'

'Oh, yeah, fantastic, actually. Dad took me to see Scotland play the Czech Republic, and we were right behind the goals…literally, I just about wet myself.'

Percy folds his lips in on themselves to stop himself from giggling. He's forgotten how Oliver can be, a little reminiscent of a puppy-dog, with expressive brown eyes and enough energy for the whole Quidditch team.

'Did Scotland win, then?' he asks, looking out of the window. They're speeding through the West Midlands now, high Victorian chimneys rising red and dirty from the smog.

'Course not,' Oliver scoffs. 'But it was class anyway. How about it, then, Perce? You trying out for the team then?'

An uncomfortable lump that could be dread, could be tears, settles in his throat as he thinks of flying, thinks of hours reading different manuals on broom control and effective feints, bewitching a Quaffle to rebound from an invisible wall halfway down the field. He's been getting better – he doesn't have Fred and George's wiry strength or Charlie's speed, but he's nimble enough and he doesn't mind the lurch of the broom when he spirals away to avoid a Bludger. And then his mother decides it's too risky, with his new glasses, which did not come cheap, and the clunky Comet Two Thirty is handed down to Ginny and Percy turns to his other, static love: books.

'No…don't think so. Got to concentrate on my work, you know. OWLs, and all that.'

'We've all got work, Perce. Come on, we need a decent new Chaser…'

Oliver talks like he's an old hand, when he only made the team in the summer of third year, capitalising on the stray Bludger that took out Jackson Blythe's leg in the Ravenclaw match. He always looks a bit uncomfortable out of his scarlet Quidditch robes, his tie always a little untidy and his cheeks usually less than clean. Percy remembers being happy for his friend, finding his niche, and pushes aside the nagging suspicion that he's still searching for his own.

'Well, get you, sorting out the strategy…'

'I could put a word in for you, yeah? You could probably skip the prelims, I know you're good enough.'

Percy blushes. 'Ol, I really can't,' he says miserably. 'My. Well, my mum won't let me, actually.' He hates himself for the little pompous note that wheedles into his speech, distancing himself, daring Oliver to challenge him.

'Your mum? Why the hell not?'

Percy motions silently at his glasses.

'Oh…you got glasses? Mate, I didn't even bloody realise! They're sort of cool, actually. Sort of…distinguished.'

Percy resists sentimentality and the urge to say something tearfully grateful for Oliver's nonchalance, but it wells up in his chest anyway, and he turns back to the window, smiling a little.

Alicia Spinnet gets the gig in the end, and acquits herself well, and Percy enjoys the action well enough from the stands. Oliver helps him find his glasses every morning and never calls him 'four-eyes', apart from the one time when he falls asleep on his desk and wakes up with the rims of his glasses carving neat half-moons beneath his eyes. Even Percy has to laugh.

Next time...bad pop music, an awkward conversation, and a wholly predictable kiss.

Review?