“Knock, knock.”
Percy looked up from the bit of artificial moss that he’d been busy shaping into a medium size in scale shrubbery at the sound of someone - his brother Ron as it turned out - knocked lightly on the doorframe to his room. Ron looked... pensive and quite unlike his usual boisterous self, which had Percy frowning in concern. He quickly put down what he’d been working on and gestured for Ron to come in.
Invitation received, Ron quietly shuffled in and sort of just carefully flopped down on Percy’s bed. Percy’s level of concern went up a notch or two at Ron’s frankly uncharacteristic behavior. Normally, Ron would just come in or ask his question as soon as he had Percy’s attention (and that was if he even bothered to knock in the first place. Sometimes he’d just play up the annoying little brother angle and barge in to say or do whatever fully knowing that in doing so he was going to annoy Percy. Which was kinda the point of it really). Percy got up and sat next to Ron, who kind of just flopped over to lean against his older brother. They sat that way in silence for a while before Ron broke that silence by speaking.
“I talked to Ginny earlier.” he commented in a low voice.
Percy just raised an eyebrow questioningly. On the surface that didn’t seem out of the ordinary or particularly significant; they both kept in contact with the rest of their family on a somewhat regular basis. Percy made a concerted effort to call home at least once a week to say hello and soothe some of his mother’s empty nest syndrome (which was still going strong even years after the youngest Ginny had moved out to give a stab at living on her own)
“Oh, everything’s alright with her. She mentioned something about picking up a new hobby; I think she said that she’s going to be learning to play the guitar...” Ron said in an effort to prevent Percy from thinking that their sister was in the kind of trouble that needed the help (or ‘help’) of somewhere between two and six brothers to sort out, “It’s just... she wasn’t Ginny, you know?”
Percy nodded. He knew exactly what Ron was talking about; how their sister could both be and not be herself.
It wasn’t something that any of them liked talking - or even really thinking - about. It... hurt... in a way that there really weren’t any words for (Plus the whole idea of it was down right crazy; more something that you’d see in a story than something that even could actually happen to people). The long and short of it was that they weren’t from this world; not really.
Oh, they’d been born and grew up here; they had all the proper documentation like birth certificates, school records, and baby photos, and all the proper memories were there (both their own and those of the people they’ve interacted with). But they also had a set of other memories lurking in the back of their heads. Memories of another world. One where heroes and villains only existed in movies, tv shows, and comic books. Where quirks were just funny little things you did like always cutting up your steak before starting to eat it or tapping your foot when you were deep in thought not a unique special ability that you and only you (to a certain extent anyway since there was enough similarity and overlap between the quirks of individuals) had.
Where not only was magic real, but they had the inborn ability to use it.
There was a surprising amount of overlap between their two sets of memories. Ron and Percy still came from a large family, being just two out of a total of seven kids that their parents had had. Draco had grown up in the lap of luxury, being spoon fed a superiority complex in the form of just being around his father’s arrogance without having to deal with the kind of diversity that would give him the first hand examples he would need to know how not to be an arse when out and about in regular society. Neville’s grandmother had gained custody of him after his parents had to be permanently hospitalized. And (poor, poor) Harry. He’d ended up orphaned at an early age and turned over to the (practically nonexistent) care of his maternal aunt and her husband.
But even with all the similarities of the two worlds, there were a number of (often subtle) differences. For one thing (and, ok, this wasn’t exactly a subtle difference), they hadn’t all met each other at school (Percy and Ron being the exception since they were brothers and therefore knew each other for as long as Ron could remember). For another, Ron and Percy hadn’t lost two of their uncles when they’d been younger thanks to terrorist action. Gidian and Fabian were very much alive and kicking despite being horribly injured during a villain attack when Ron was six and Percy was ten.
Everything was the same, but also completely different. Big things like how Ron and Harry had met (in one lifetime, it had been in a train compartment on their way to their first year of magic school. Ron had needed somewhere to sit that wasn’t full and didn’t include a pet tarantula. Harry had conveniently been sitting in an otherwise empty compartment. In other it had been a chance meeting in the hallway of a national hero agency. Ron had been heading off to lunch after a morning of running a bunch of simulations to show where the sidekicks of the top hero needed to better focus on during training. Harry had been brought in for a post action interview and to submit some paperwork pertaining to a villain attack from the week before), or how Neville never had to deal with his extended relatives putting him down and in some cases outright trying to kill him (all apparently with his grandmother's tact approval since she'd never admonished them for it or tried to stop them from doing it. Or at least she hadn't done so wherever Neville could see or hear it) in an effort to get him to perform accidental magic. And small things like what the color the living room rug had been back when they’d started secondary school (a boring but sensible beige in one life, cream in the other. Both had been a bit of a bitch to keep clean the way that Aunt Petunia felt was acceptable especially with the inevitable spills that were a result of Dudley eating and drinking in there while watching the telly despite the fact Aunt Petunia making it clear that one simply Did Not Do That precisely because of the risk of spilling something and staining the carpet. Harry had long since resigned himself to there being two different sets of rules; one for him and one for everybody else), or the way Great Aunt Myrtle's (in)famous ‘homemade’ fruit cake tasted (a bit too much cinnamon and apple brandy instead of too much ginger and dark rum. Either way, it always ended up being too dense and overpowering to really enjoy but since she just so loved making it, you just sucked it up and ate it anyways. Christmas had never been the same since she’d passed; even with following her recipe down to the branding of the ingredients, no one was ever really able to recreate it no matter how hard they tried. And oh they tried).
They’d all remembered it. Hogwarts. The magic. An entire society kept secret with all the wonder and the nastiness that society and the people in it brought with it. They’d remembered and for a long time, they’d all felt alone in their remembering; like they were out of place and didn’t - couldn’t - fit in to the world they’d suddenly found themselves in after fifteen years (nineteen in Percy’s case) of living somewhere else. And then, one by one, they managed to find each other. Someone else who also remembered. Who’d get it when you absentmindedly groped for a wand that wasn’t there because for a moment you forgot that you didn’t have one anymore or when the memories invaded your dreams to the point where you woke up with an terrible ache in your heart and tears you couldn’t shed in your eyes. Because they’d been there, done that, and burned the t-shirt. And they’d banded together in solidarity, deciding to pool their (meger at the time since they were all just getting settled in their respective careers and the pay at the time had somewhat sucked) money together and rent a house together. Because even if maybe you couldn’t always stand the other person but they got you and you got them, it was better than feeling alone and adrift in a world where you just didn’t fit.
“I miss them too.” Percy confessed as he looped a comforting arm around his brother’s shoulder.