Chapter Text
It started when Percival was a babe. Doors slamming without provocation, coffee cups throwing themselves onto the wide planked wooden floors, and milk curdling in the stasis cupboard. But this was a magical household and these things were given little consideration. House ghosts were restless creatures after all, especially when a new member of the family disrupted their hauntings. Enoch laughed heartily when a particularly ugly painting of an english garden burst into flames in the sitting room while he danced around with a babbling Percy in his arms. It had been a gift from a work acquaintance, and as such he had never been able to throw it away.
Time passed, more food rotted, or inexplicably ended up in strange places. The kitchen drawers rattled out their contents onto the floor, leaving a tutting Gwynevere clean up the mess with a flick of her wand. Sometimes the walls oozed thick black ichor that smelled of rich black cherries and ozone. And sometimes they’d wake up to babe dusted with the bright yellow of pollen, sticky and sweet smelling, while fat fuzzy bumblebees lazily buzzed around the fascinated child.
Not a ghost them. Still, the Graves were hardly perturbed. Given their line of work it was not surprising that one them had brought something back home.
The cellar was always just the wrong side of damp, it smelled of moss and wet stone and even the brightest lumos couldn’t completely penetrate the dark. And there were times when Enoch was certain the trip down the creaking steps took longer than it should have. Gwyn thought the whole thing was delightful and would come back from getting a jar of peaches with bottles of wine, trinkets, and toys covered in dust and grime from years of languishing Merlin knows where.
It was in the quiet hours of dawn or in the fading of twilight that the house seemed to come alive, vibrating with what seemed to be excitement or leading them around in circles until asked politely to stop. They were aware of the way sunlight shimmers strangely and how the shadows were a bit too dark and creep into places they shouldn’t with curious tendrils of inky black. Still, they were hardly perturbed.
They get a dog for Percy’s first birthday.
It would be more accurate to say that the damn thing followed Gwyn home from a mission in the highlands of Scotland. How the Cù-Sìth managed to sneak it’s way across the pond they will never know, but it settles into the house as if it’s always been there, the spots claims as it’s own blossoming with moss, tiny purple flowers, and mushrooms.
Percy has decided Potato is a perfectly acceptable name.
The constant supply of the fungus a plus Enoch muses aloud as he slides an omelet onto his wife's plate. The tea pot slides off the sideboard and crashes to the floor in a tinkering of china. Percy shrieks in delight.