Chapter Text
Customers of all sorts came into the copy shop late at night; Percy was no more surprised to see a man in a suit running copies than he was to see the two students conferring over a class report, the homeless man napping in the back corner, or the three shaven-headed oddly-pierced musicians making flyers for their new band.
And true to form, it was the man in the suit who came to the counter with stacks of copies and the unreasonable request. "Sorry to bug you, but I hit the wrong button on the copier. How much will it cost to collate these?"
Percy looked at the huge stack, then at the six waiting jobs, then at the clock. Quarter to one. "I'm afraid I won't be able to get to it."
"I can pay a rush fee, if that's the problem."
He hated men in suits. Even more since he'd once been the wizarding equivalent. "The problem is that two people called in sick, I've got six other jobs due in the morning, and we're closing in fifteen minutes. You might try the copy shop in the Med Center; they're open all night."
The man brushed a lock of black hair off his forehead. "Thanks, I will."
Percy sighed with relief when the man left. At least he listened to a "no", unlike a lot of customers in fancy suits.
Once I could have collated those papers for him in two minutes....
He turned his attention to the rituals of closing. Warn the customers, wake the homeless man and give him a facecloth, ring out the students and the band. One of the women in the band gave him two free tickets; he probably wouldn't use them, as the bar was in exactly the wrong part of Montrose, but he thanked her anyway.
The homeless man, smelling much better, was the last to leave. "Good night, Mr. Pete."
"Good night, Mr. Fred." That name always gave Percy a twinge, even applied to a skinny grey-haired man who never laughed.
Percy locked the door behind him, then returned to work. Start the first night job. Restock the self-serve copiers. Unjam the big machine. Run the virus checkers on the computers, and delete the games that the students had installed. Finish the first job, and start the second. Clean the bathroom, bagging up Mr. Fred's facecloth to launder later. Fix the original for the third job.
He still missed his wand at least three times a day, and life in the Muggle world still had its frustrations. But his job, to his surprise, had turned out to be highly satisfying. It required patience, and attention to little details, and careful juggling of priorities, all things that he excelled at, and that no one in the wizarding world had ever appreciated. Except Fudge. And he didn't want to remember Fudge, or his family, or Penelope, or magic; after five years of practice, he'd gotten rather good at not remembering. At least, good at stopping once he'd started.
At 3:30 a.m., when Percy finally wheeled his bicycle out the back door of the copy shop, an unfamiliar SUV sat in the back lot, its interior lights blazing. Not Percy's business, at least not while he was standing outside; he'd call the towing company from the safety of his flat, and they'd take care of it.
The SUV's front door opened. "Yo, Peter!"
Percy jumped. Who was that?
The man in the suit got out; his tie was loose, but otherwise he was still as neat as he'd been in the shop. "Sorry, don't mean to be rude, but I don't know your last name."
"Williams." He'd checked a Muggle phone directory when coming up with his alias and had picked a common surname; that it reminded him of Bill, when he let himself be reminded, didn't bother him.
The man held out his hand; Percy shook it. "Mr. Williams, I'm Mr. Gray. The Med Center shop was even more booked. If you aren't in a hurry to get to bed, can you help me finish this? I'll certainly pay you."
He did not feel like helping. On the other hand, it was expected to be a hot summer even for Houston, and he'd need every dollar he could get for the electric bill; already he wished he could afford to turn on the air conditioner, and it was only April. "How much?"
"Thirty bucks sound fair? I'd guess that with two of us it'll take another hour."
"More than fair," Percy admitted. "The shop pays me ten an hour."
Mr. Gray grinned. "Add in your bennies and the payroll taxes, and they're probably paying close to thirty an hour for the privilege of employing you. Why shouldn't I do the same?" He opened the passenger door. "Hop in, and let's proceed with our collating endeavors."
"We'd better go somewhere else to do it. They're quite strict about towing from this lot after hours." Although it was usually because he'd called....
"Understood." Mr. Gray hopped into the back of the SUV. "Give me a minute to stack these up, and then you can park your bike back here. One of my friends has a 24-hour restaurant nearby. Do you like Indian food?"
A takeaway in Muggle London, where he, Bill, Charlie, and their father had shared a curry. "It's been a long time since I've had it, but yes."
"Let me see if Rajit's banquet room is open, then." After boxing the papers, Mr. Gray took out a cell phone and was soon talking in what must be Hindi, while Percy put his bicycle in and closed the hatch. "Perfect," Mr. Gray said, gesturing for Percy to get in the front seat. "He says we can spread out over as many tables as we need, and he'll have my usual and whatever you want waiting when we're done."
He only had three dollars left in his restaurant budget for the month. "I'm not actually that hungry," Percy said. His stomach promptly denied that.
Mr. Gray grinned but pretended to ignore the rumble. "You might be by time we're through. And I'm buying. Consider it the rush fee."
The restaurant was indeed close by, and the prices weren't actually too bad for Indian; Percy decided to keep the place in mind for his birthday, if the food was good. The red-draped banquet room had plenty of long tables, Percy spread out the twenty stacks of pages and started collating, Mr. Gray following along the other side.
He read the pages, of course; you couldn't help reading, when you ran copies. State Legal Resources for Indigent Clients, by Zachary Gray, Esq. "You're a lawyer, then?"
"Better than that, Mr. Williams, I am a criminal defense attorney. I represent robbers, murderers, thugs, and others in this wretched hive of scum and villainy, and I see that they get a fair trial. You may now proceed to despise me, although I hope you'll at least rate me above the ambulance chasers."
The Wizengamot, and the trials of many he'd known. Draco Malfoy's expression on being sentenced to Azbakan, in spite of having helped them against the Death Eaters in the end. "I rather favor fair trials myself. Are you speaking at a conference?"
"A social workers' meeting in Abilene." Mr. Gray shrugged. "Telling folks who are already overloaded how to add one more task to their impossible load. They seem to appreciate the thought, and once in a while it might help someone."
Percy skimmed the biography on the last page. Even he'd heard of UCLA. "What made you leave California for Texas?"
"The overwhelming urge to be different, tempered by the love of big cities. I thought about going somewhere more Southern, like Atlanta or Charleston, but...well, I got stuck in Houston on a long layover, and wouldn't you know it? The middle of summer, 104 degrees, humidity at least two hundred percent, and I fell in love with the place anyway. What about you? You're a long way from, let me guess, the UK?"
Percy had never bothered trying to pick up an American accent, though lately he had found the word "y'all" slipping into his speech. "Yes. Fallout with my family. I wanted an English-speaking place, Canada was too close, and New Zealand was too far."
Mr. Gray nodded sagely, squaring another packet of papers. "Family troubles. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more." He raised an eyebrow at Percy's lack of response. "Don't tell me you're one of those Brits who's never seen Monty Python?"
"Afraid so. We didn't have a television when I was growing up."
"And didn't see many movies either, obviously."
"Not really." That occasion when Dad had brought home the Muggle movie projector was, in Percy's opinion, best forgotten. Just like Dad not to check what the movie actually was; Mum had cast the fastest Incendio when the characters' clothes started coming off....
"Hmmm." Mr. Gray didn't comment further, to Percy's relief.
Within a half hour, they'd finished the collating, by which time a waiter had brought in covered platters of saffron rice, chicken curry, lamb kofta, and saag paneer. It was all delicious. He'd definitely make a line in the budget to save up for a birthday dinner here.
Mr. Gray talked of inconsequential things -- recent exhibits at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Natural Science, the fate of the Astrodome, the weather. Percy found himself telling about weird jobs he'd run; Mr. Gray raised an eyebrow at the Church of Elvis manual, shook his head over "How to Convert Catholics to Christianity", and laughed outright at "Introduction to Theography". "Religion does make people do stupid things, doesn't it? I'm glad I don't have one."
"We were nominally part of an offshoot of the C of E, but we never really went to church." Percy wiped up the remaining curry with his last piece of naan. "Americans are so much more obsessed with religion than we are. If there's a god, I don't think it's that interested in us."
Mr. Gray's expression became sober. "I don't know about that. I was...well, on the receiving end of a miracle once. I know there's more out there than what science can explain."
You don't know the half of it. "Any sufficiently advanced science will look like a miracle?"
"Magic, in the original quote." Mr. Gray set his fork down and leaned back. "They're different. Magic is just stuff you can't explain. A miracle is something you can't explain that has a reason behind it. And you're supposed to figure out why the hell it happened to you and what you're supposed to do about it." His pale cheeks flushed, and he changed the subject. "Can you bike from here, or do you want a ride home?"
The windows showed yellowish-gray rather than black. "I'll bike. Thanks for dinner."
Mr. Gray pulled out his wallet and handed Percy a fifty-dollar bill. "Thanks for the help. Keep the change."
Percy stopped by the bank's night deposit and unloaded the money, then went home to his one-room flat. That hadn't been too bad; he still had a half hour before bed. Before unfolding his secondhand Ikea couch, he logged the $50 in his account books, alloted percentages to taxes and savings, and happily added the rest to the utility budget. Then the bedtime rituals: check his scalp and touch up the brown hair dye, clean the sink and the toilet, wipe the counters, and read another two chapters in his library book. He pulled the heavy curtains over the windows, set the alarm, turned out the lights, and fell asleep.
Unlike most days, the nightmare that woke him ten minutes before the alarm was not of breaking prisoners out of Azkaban and the Dementor that killed Fred. This time he himself was the prisoner, and Mr. Gray was pleading his case before the Wizengamot, and when Percy was sentenced, Mr. Gray grinned at him and said, "That's okay, I never wanted a soul anyway." Percy woke just before a Dementor Kissed Mr. Gray.