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medusa-rants · 2 years

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Random headcanon: Percy suffers from chronic migrains and chronic pain!

Tension headaches! He gets them all the time.

Before he was claimed and knew what he was, whenever he'd get a migrain, Sally would tell him to go take a shower.

He would sit under the blisteringly hot shower until he felt better, and it always made him feel a bit better. Sally would make sure he drank an astronomically large amount of water, too. And while this wouldn't get rid of the migrain entirely, it would lessen it and make it more bearable.

Percy learned to live with his migraines. He'd drink a lot of water, take showers whenever he felt one coming on, and just kinda cope, yknow?

Once he was claimed though, and learned he was a demigod son of Poseidon, everything started to make a little more sense.

Of course the water helped him feel better!

It wasn't until the first time he was fully submerged in the ocean that he realized just how weird his body was.

And he didn't know for sure until he got back on land. But underwater, he felt more full of energy than ever, entirely pain-free and the world was sharper, his senses heightened. Everything was clear.

When he climbed out of the water and back onto land, though, the world seemed to dull and cloud over, like he was looking at it from inside a bubble or tank of some kind. And immediately his joints started to ache, which he hadn't realized wasn't, yknow, normal, until the pain returned full-force after climbing out of the ocean.

He asked Poseidon about it, once, and the God had winced and given him a pitying look before explaining that Percy's body is built to withstand the immense pressure from being deep in the ocean, and being on land puts a lot of stress on his body so it has to work really hard to keep him functioning like normal.

He explained that his kids often dealt with chronic pain or chronic migraines, but it was unusual that they suffered from both. However, Percy was the strongest child Poseidon had ever sired, having control over the entirety of Poseidon's sphere of influence where most of his kids only had control over part of it (meaning one could only control water and another could only control the earth, and some could only talk to horses and sea creatures. Though they could always breathe underwater).

He also explains that there isn't much to be done about it if Percy wishes to continue spending time on land outside of what he already has in place.

So Percy just continues to drink absurd amounts of water, take a ridiculous number of showers, and whenever possible, just spend a few hours under the ocean to relieve his pain for a while. Being submerged in other bodies of water helps, too, but only the ocean removes his pain completely. Baths and pools give him the least amount of pain relief, but do still help.

After holding up the sky, his wrists get even more fucked, and he takes to wearing braces on them to help lessen the strain somewhat.

And after Tartarus, his body is super out of balance and completely disjointed and discombobulated, but he pushes through it and ignores how out of touch with the world he feels because they have a job to do, the world to save, there's no time for him to wallow in his wacked out senses. (The others, if they knew how fucked up his body and senses and everything were, would have told him they absolutely had time and it would definitely be better to have him at the top of his game, but he didn't tell anyone, so no one told this to him.)

Once they do save the world and end the war and everything has settled down, Percy tells Annabeth he's gonna take a quick dip in the ocean (she knows abt his chronic pain and migraines and stuff but he never told the others) and then, once he's under, it's like the world comes back into hyperfocus, like his body has finally snapped back into place.

He hadn't realized just how, almost disassociated he had felt until then.

He just let himself sink to the ocean floor and settle into the sand, intending on a short nap to give his body some more time to readjust and recover. When he woke up and walked back out onto the beach, however, he was greeted by Annabeth running up and shaking him violently, screaming at him because apparently his 'little nap' had actually been three days long and Annabeth had started to panic that he'd gone missing again. He was quick to apologize and sheepishly explain how fucked up and disoriented he'd been since coming back from Tartarus and how he now finally felt settled in his own skin again.

Annabeth smacked him on the arm and berated him for not telling her about how he was feeling before and consistently beating down his excuses of 'we were busy,' and 'it wasn't important,' and what not.

After that fiasco, he told the rest if the seven abt his chronic pain and migraines and how the only real relief he got from them was being in the ocean (because of course they had all been worried and searching for him too) and they all nodded in understanding and gave him hugs and told him that next time he had better just tell them he was feeling shitty and disjointed instead of fucking off into the ocean for three days with no warning. He promised he'd tell them, but honestly, he hadn't meant to be gone for that long, and it was probably only because he had been so far away from the ocean for so long and then hadn't been in it for even longer and wouldn't disappear for that long again.

Usually, anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours were enough, depending on how bad he felt and how long it had been since he'd last spent some time underwater.

On a funny note, after all this, Percy was explaining how his senses were duller on land, and Jason asked him if he thought he needed glasses too and Percy just kinda stopped because no he had never considered that glasses might be helpful on land so he brought it up to Sally after their reunion and she took him to the eye doctor and he got glasses! And they helped! His prescription wasn't too high, and he could obviously get by just fine without them, but they were nice to have. Eventually, though, he got tired of them constantly slipping and sliding and flying off his face whenever he got in a fight or was practicing ect and went and got contacts! He liked that much better lol

Other random tidbits:

Percy gets really agitated and his chronic pain and migraines get worse the farther he is from large bodies of water, so going inland sucks. In tlt that trip across country was probably the worst he had ever felt (until Tartarus that is). They try to go on vacation or something in a landlocked area of the US and Percy just gets so agitated, and his joints hurt so much and get so stiff and the whole time he has an absolutely awful migraine and not even showers help and feels just so bad but also kind of disconnected and floaty, unable to focus od think clearly at all and when they get back to NY and he heads to camp for a bit he ends up staying underwater in the Sound for a day and a half.

They try not to go anywhere landlocked for any period of time ever again. And if they do have to travel cross-country for any reason (quests, vacations, ect) they make sure their route always takes them past rivers and lakes and ponds and make frequent stops by them so Percy can spend a few minutes underwater.

One time though, Percy gets a quest and takes Annabeth and Piper with him and it leads them to fucking Arizona out in the middle of the desert and it ends up falling mostly to Annabeth and Piper to finish the quest because the lack of water pretty much everywhere really gets to Percy and once it's all taken care of, the girls have to practically drag Percy to nearest hotel and they get a room and fill the bathtub and just let him soak in there until he's cognizant enough for them to get him somewhere better. The closest large body of water is the Rio Grande, so they get over there as fast as they can, then make their way back to camp traveling along the coast or by rivers. Percy doesn't come fully back to himself until they get to the Gulf of Mexico, and then once they leave that behind, until they get back to camp.

Percy refuses to ever go into a desert again.

However, he does love rainforests. He goes to help Grover in the Amazon once and absolutely thrives! It doesn't take away the pain like being in the ocean does, but the air is always humid and everything is always damp and wet so even though he's kinda far from the ocean, he doesn't feel any different than if he were to be hanging out on the coast.

Speaking of, Percy absolutely loves the rain! He's not a fan of thunderstorms, and makes sure to stay inside if there's lightning (because we all know zeus would try to strike him with it) but otherwise, he'll be outside it in running around and just tilting his face up into the rain and enjoying it. Rain always makes him feel calm and eases his joint pain some.

Related: he loves to watch old movies and musicals with his mom and if he's out in the rain, you can usually hear him humming Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain! Sometimes he'll even do the dance

While on land, Percy's movements, to him, always feel a little stiff and clunky, he feels heavy and unwieldy on bad days. But to everyone else, he has all the lithe, effortless grace and power of a big cat stalking it's prey. Underwater, his beauty is indescribable. His grace is unmatched, he moves as one with the water around him, quick as lightning. His movements are easy and sure, in tune with every part of himself and all the movement of the water surrounding him. Few people get to see him move underwater, and fewer still have been able to see him fight underwater, but those who have are always astounded by it.

Okay so this kinda stopped being me talking about Percy having chronic pain and migraines but! Yeah, he does. And he's still badass and while he's bad at recognizing his own limits, he has people that care for him and help him take care of himself when they notice it getting really bad.

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medusa-rants · 2 years

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I agree fully with this post and I am sorry but dumbledore was a terrible character. He constantly acted selfish and raised Harry as a pig to slaughter.

Percy isn't a good character. He should have believed Harry and dumbldore in the 5th book but he was stupid. He knew them and should have trusted them.

*deep sigh*

Alright, let me break this down for you:

Percy had very few reasons to believe Harry & Dumbledore, but he had a lot of reasons not to believe them.

I’ll put this under the cut due to length.

Let's start with Harry, because this aspect is a little simpler to explain.

From Percy’s POV, he’s hasn’t spent nearly as much time with Harry as his siblings have. In the letter he writes to Ron in OOTP, he says:

I know that he can be unbalanced and, for all I know, violent.

The ‘for all I know’ comment shows that Percy even admits to not knowing Harry well enough to be sure.

And Harry is unbalanced - it’s not his fault, but it’s a fact. He consistently breaks rules and is involved in everything bad that has happened to Percy’s younger siblings & friends up to that point (the beginning of OOTP).

In Book 1, Ron was injured when he went with Harry to stop Quirrell. In Book 2, the Chamber of Secrets was opened, Percy's girlfriend was petrified, and Harry was almost always near the scene of the crime. Harry spoke Parseltongue and appeared to encourage a snake to attack another student. Ginny was almost killed by a teenage version of Voldemort specifically because Tom was after Harry:

“Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who’d been strangling roosters? So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin’s heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery — particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue…

“So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn’t much life left in her… She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last… I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you’d come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter.”

In Book 3, Sirius Black attacked the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower - where all of Percy’s younger siblings live - supposedly to get to Harry. Ron’s leg was injured because Sirius dragged him under the Whomping Willow in order to get Harry to follow him.

In Book 4, Cedric Diggory was killed while with Harry. I have always believed that Percy was friends with Cedric (see this post), but if nothing else, Percy knew Cedric because he was the Head Boy the year before, and Cedric was one of the prefects (therefore, one of Percy's responsibilities).

Again, this is not to say that any of this is Harry’s fault - I doubt even Percy would say that - but there is a direct correlation between proximity to Harry and danger, and Percy knows this.

However, even with that being said, it’s clear that the root of the problem was more about Dumbledore than Harry.

In fact, when retelling what happened during the argument, Ron said:

He said Dad was an idiot to run around with Dumbledore.

And in the letter Percy wrote to Ron, he said:

I am sorry that I was unable to see more of you over the summer. It pains me to criticize our parents, but I am afraid I can no longer live under their roof while they remain mixed up with the dangerous crowd around Dumbledore.

He’s making it clear that his family’s association with Dumbledore was the main reason for him leaving - not their association with Harry.

Percy likely believed that Dumbledore was manipulating Harry (which he frequently did throughout the series).

Even back in Book 1, Percy thought this about him:

Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.

“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

“Thank you!”

He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

“Is he — a bit mad?” he asked Percy uncertainly.

“Mad?” said Percy airily. “He’s a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?”

Dumbledore is regarded as the “best wizard” in the world - the most powerful and intelligent wizard of his time - and yet many people also comment on the fact that Dumbledore is a bit mental (there are quotes by Fred and Ron about this too).

And Percy’s not wrong to doubt Dumbledore. Dumbledore was a horrible Headmaster - that's just a fact.

In fact, up through Book 4, we see very little evidence of Dumbledore being a great wizard, but we do see evidence of him putting students in danger and making far too many mistakes/bad decisions.

In Book 1, he brought an item inside Hogwarts that he knew was being pursued by Voldemort, which put all the students at risk, and he either had no idea that Voldemort was living inside one of his professors or... he didn’t care? Look at this - frankly, horrifying - conversation from the book:

“Well, I got back all right,” said Hermione. “I brought Ron round — that took a while — and we were dashing up to the owlery to contact Dumbledore when we met him in the entrance hall — he already knew — he just said, ‘Harry’s gone after him, hasn’t he?’ and hurtled off to the third floor.”

“D’you think he meant you to do it?” said Ron. “Sending you your father’s cloak and everything?”

“Well, ” Hermione exploded, “if he did — I mean to say that’s terrible — you could have been killed.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Harry thoughtfully. “He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could…”

“Yeah, Dumbledore’s off his rocker, all right,” said Ron proudly.

I’m sorry - what?! Dumbledore thought a child had the right to face Voldemort, and even pushed Harry in that direction, instead of facing Voldemort himself? I just have no words for how awful that is.

In Book 2, the Chamber of Secrets was opened, students were being petrified - in danger of being killed - and Dumbledore didn't bother to shut down the school (it wasn’t until Ginny was taken into the Chamber that McGonagall said they were sending students home). Moaning Myrtle literally died the last time the Chamber was open, but Dumbledore just allowed the students to stay and keep going to classes, because...?

There’s also this:

“What does this mean, Albus?” Professor McGonagall asked urgently.

“It means,” said Dumbledore, “that the Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again.”

Madam Pomfrey clapped a hand to her mouth. Professor McGonagall stared at Dumbledore.

“But, Albus… surely… who?”

“The question is not who,” said Dumbledore, his eyes on Colin. “The question is, how…” And from what Harry could see of Professor McGonagall’s shadowy face, she didn’t understand this any better than he did.

‘The question is not who’ - In other words, Dumbledore knew exactly who opened the Chamber, and therefore, knew that Voldemort had access to the campus, yet he didn’t figure out that Ginny was being possessed. Ultimately, a 12-year-old is the one that had to journey into the Chamber of Secrets, fight a form of Voldemort and a Basilisk, and save Ginny.

Yeah, I’m not seeing anything overly impressive about Albus here.

In Book 3, we also get a scene that makes me livid.

Professor Dumbledore sent all the Gryffindors back to the Great Hall, where they were joined ten minutes later by the students from Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, who all looked extremely confused.

“The teachers and I need to conduct a thorough search of the castle,” Professor Dumbledore told them as Professors McGonagall and Flitwick closed all doors into the hall. “I’m afraid that, for your own safety, you will have to spend the night here. I want the prefects to stand guard over the entrances to the hall and I am leaving the Head Boy and Girl in charge.”

As a child reading this, I didn't think much of it. As an adult, it disgusts me. I get that the teachers wanted to search the school for Sirius, but are you honestly telling me that none of them could stay behind to watch the kids? Instead, you put children in charge of protecting each other? Even if you make the argument that Percy was 17 (and therefore, an adult by wizarding standards), he was still a student, and the other prefects that were told to guard the entrances included 5th and 6th year students who were definitely not adults.

This is basically like a gunman being loose on a high school campus, and the principal saying, “Okay, anyone on the safety patrol is going to guard the doors while all the teachers leave. Good luck.” NO. Just no. You don't do that. Even if Dumbledore didn’t think Sirius was dangerous (which we have no proof of, especially since Dumbledore admitted later that Sirius wasn’t acting like an innocent man), it would still have been a horrible choice.

And during that same year, he hired a werewolf for a professor. Yes, we all know that Remus is a great guy; however, he forgot to take his Wolfsbane Potion, turned into a werewolf, and almost killed students before the end of the year.

Harry could see Lupin’s silhouette. He had gone rigid. Then his limbs began to shake.

“Oh, my —” Hermione gasped. “He didn’t take his potion tonight! He’s not safe!”

“Run,” Black whispered. “Run. Now.”

But Harry couldn’t run. Ron was chained to Pettigrew and Lupin. He leapt forward but Black caught him around the chest and threw him back.

“Leave it to me — RUN!”

There was a terrible snarling noise. Lupin’s head was lengthening. So was his body. His shoulders were hunching. Hair was sprouting visibly on his face and hands, which were curling into clawed paws. Crookshanks’s hair was on end again; he was backing away — As the werewolf reared, snapping its long jaws, Sirius disappeared from Harry’s side. He had transformed. The enormous, bearlike dog bounded forward.

As the werewolf wrenched itself free of the manacle binding it, the dog seized it about the neck and pulled it backward, away from Ron and Pettigrew. They were locked, jaw to jaw, claws ripping at each other.

He was an unnecessary risk. Readers tend to ignore that because we love Remus, but just because we like someone and have sympathy for them does not mean they should be employed at a school.

In Book 4, Dumbledore failed to notice that his friend - "Moody was a great wizard in his time," said Bill. "He's an old friend of Dumbledore's, isn't he?" said Charlie. - was actually Barty Crouch Jr. using the Polyjuice Potion. Even if you argue that he didn't know Barty Jr. was alive, this powerful and intelligent wizard couldn't tell that his old friend wasn't himself? Seriously?

It’s not like there weren’t any signs - ‘Moody’ turning Draco into a ferret and demonstrating the Unforgivable Curses in class being some of them. At the very least, those acts should have warranted a meeting where Dumbledore spoke with him. If he spent a good deal of time with Moody one-on-one, he should have picked up on the inconsistencies in his personality, since no one can perfectly copy another person for an indefinite amount of time, but he either didn’t spend much time with him or didn’t figure it out. Either way, that’s not overly impressive either.

And Dumbledore allowed a 14-year-old kid to enter a tournament that purposely had an age limit of 17 and over because it was that dangerous. No, Dumbledore didn’t put Harry’s name in the Goblet, and yes, the Goblet was a "binding magical contract", but you're telling me the greatest wizard in the world couldn't figure out a way around that? I mean, an obvious loophole would be that 14-year-olds aren't legally allowed to sign contracts without parental/guardian permission, which Harry did not get from the Dursleys or Sirius, and therefore, the Goblet’s contract was null and void. Even without that, it’s pretty sketchy that Dumbledore couldn’t find any escape route for Harry.

And at the end of the year, one of the students died due to Dumbledore’s negligence in noticing that there was something amiss about one of his teachers.

I can't think of one reason why Percy would trust Dumbledore. I certainly wouldn't!

So Percy - likely grieving the death of a friend - was told to put blind faith into a man who had repeatedly failed his students & a traumatized kid who actually was being manipulated by Dumbledore (in other ways).

I don't know, anon; I think it's realistic that Percy wasn’t so willing to believe them.

And the fact that Percy was the only one in his family to really question the trustworthiness of a problematic, powerful wizard is one of my favorite things about him.

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