Hey, don't own HP…The safe house idea is also not mine, it's something that originated with Cairnsy. ^-^ (A lot of these Percy ideas come from Cairnsy…^-^)

Dedicated to: Zyre, Mireille, Serpensortia, Cairnsy, and Delirieuse. Sorry this is so short guys…someday I'll actually write something really worthy of being read by y'all, but for now, here's this. ^-^;; Thanks for being so supportive! *hugs*

*****

'How's Percy?' Harry asked, as they walked around the greenhouses.

'Not good,' said Bill.

'He's very upset,' said Mrs. Weasley, lowering her voice and glancing around. 'The Ministry want to keep Mr. Crouch's disappearance quiet, but Percy's been hauled in for questioning about the instructions Mr. Crouch has been sending in. They seem to think there's a chance they weren't genuinely written by him. Percy's been under a lot of strain. They're not letting him fill in for Mr. Crouch as the fifth judge tonight. Cornelius Fudge is going to be doing it.'

--GOF

*****

Percy Weasley stood silently in the shower, with the cold water pouring down over his shoulders and soaking his trousers, as he tried to come to terms with what had happened in the last forty-eight hours of his life. Confused comments, questions, accusations—he could hear them all repeating over and over again in his head like some type of memory charm gone horribly awry.

And yet, they'd still released him.

Why?

Shivering, he stuck his head in the cool spray from the showerhead. He'd expected many things when he'd walked into the questioning. Probes about his loyalty to Crouch, perhaps. Or subtle lines of questioning about Crouch's affiliation with Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. Hell, he'd even expected his own loyalties to Hogwarts and to the Ministry to come into question. It wasn't a frequent occurrence, but Percy knew that the occasional Ministry official strayed from the proverbial path when tensions or emotions ran high. And, of course, it was fairly obvious that as a fresh, wet-behind-the-ears, personal assistant who had suddenly found himself in the position Percy had found himself in; he was under a lot of pressure from all corners.

He'd been expecting them to malign his character. And in all honesty, he'd felt quite prepared to defend himself to them. After all, it wasn't the first time anyone had ever questioned his integrity or ethics. His brothers seemed to do it on a daily basis almost.

What he hadn't expected had been the questions concerning the third task. They'd quizzed him on his involvement in helping to design the maze, and his correspondence with Crouch discussing which obstacles to keep and which to leave. They'd asked him questions about Moody—of all people—and how well Percy knew the man, or how well Percy might have gotten to know him over the past year.

They'd asked him how well he'd known Diggory.

Palms flat against the tile, forehead resting on the cool ceramic, he simply let the cold water wash over him. They'd released him in spite of everything he'd confessed. He'd shared plans for the third task, he'd corroborated with the enemy to bring back the one man who still haunted his dreams in childish boogieman fashion.

He'd spent hours under their scrutiny. And in the end, he supposed that they'd delivered the perfect punishment to him by not doing anything to him at all.

He didn't need them to tell him how worthless his attempts were. Percy didn't need an actual physical person before him to tell him how grievously he'd failed to do what was his duty by birth.

He didn't need Fred or George here to tell him how stuffy and arrogant he was. He didn't need Ron here to scoff at his ambitions and his efforts. Their voices had already seeded themselves firmly in his brain, echoing over and over in a sort of mindless monotony.

God, he felt so old. When he was still in school, when he started working—everyone had commented, teased, and tormented him even, about being so serious. As if he'd consciously made the choice to be the responsible one. As if he'd taken it willingly upon himself to be the adult in every situation.

Please. He curled his hands into fists against the faded blue and yellow pattern on the shower wall as he squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in deep and shivering slightly as the cold rained down on him. The water effectively cooled his face, mingling in with whatever few tears he hadn't been able to stop from leaking out. Competent people showed no weaknesses, they harbored few insecurities and they never let their feelings influence what needed to be done or which image needed to be presented to get the best results.

Maybe it had been a conscious choice to have become like this. Maybe he'd willingly acted with the intent of becoming the mechanical, mature, responsible adult that he had.

Or maybe the role had simply fallen to him by default since no one else had been willing to step up and take accountability.

This wasn't the first time he'd faced these questions, and it probably wouldn't be the last. But god, he was only nineteen. Some days it felt as if he'd already lived lifetimes.

He was tired.

Tired of failing. Tired of being the responsible one. Tired of being the authority figure to be scoffed at. Tired of being the one expected to solve all the problems.

This. This was really what the Ministry's questions and accusations had driven home, he supposed. For everything that he tried to do, for all the times where he tried to fill the role and play the part that everyone had already type cast him in…He hated it. He hated the pressure that was pushing down on him even now when he was supposed to be in the security of his home, regrouping.

He was only nineteen.

But god, he felt like he was older than his own parents.

And really, why not? In a lot of ways, it felt as if he'd been trying to do their job for most of his life. Before Hogwarts: trying to be mature and grown-up, watching the little ones as his mother cried day and night, sunk in her own gray and dismal world as they waited for news of his father. He hadn't really been old enough to understand, but something in her had cracked slightly after Ginny had been born. With the constant moving from safe house to safe house…the unending worry for his father, for Bill and Charlie away at Hogwarts…She didn't laugh or joke, and worry had done nothing but sharpen and shorten her temper. He'd learned to live to ease the tensions, to take care of his brothers and his sister so that she wouldn't have to yell at them, so she wouldn't have to take out the stress of that unbearable worry on them…

Even when his father returned, that weight still hadn't been taken off his shoulders. As much as he loved his father, Arthur was not known for his responsible decision making or sound judgment. If he had, he would have stopped with Charlie since it was obvious that with the salary he earned, he simply couldn't afford to have more children. He would have thought twice about his involvement in the Ministry and in a department about everything Muggle during the height of Voldemort's reign. Percy thought it should have been fairly obvious that the job held potential life-threatening danger since all of Arthur's colleagues had been single, rough-around-the-edges men. Whether it had been intentional or not didn't matter, his father had placed his entire family in the eye of the storm, and the duty to keep everything from disintegrating at the seams had seemed to always fall to him.

Bill or Charlie might have shouldered some of this pressure…Had they not spent most of that earlier, darker time at Hogwarts. Even when they'd come home for the summers, excited about the previous year or the house cup or the final Quidditch game, Percy had felt older than them. Ancient almost by comparison. Being so far removed from most of it for the majority of the year, Percy wondered sometimes if they'd even seen the undercurrents. If it had even occurred to his older brothers how much of a void they'd left for him to fill…

By the time he'd gone off to Hogwarts himself? Things had already slowly begun to change at home…They'd officially come out of hiding during his second year. His father's continuous presence at home had helped to snap his mother out of those darker places she'd wandered into in earlier times…

Only he'd been left behind in the past, it seemed.

The twins and then Ron and Ginny had followed him to Hogwarts, becoming another extension and another weight around his neck. Old responsibilities merging into new ones.

It had been like trying to keep a card house from falling in a tornado. Like trying to keep his fingers from slipping as someone kept adding books to the stack he was already holding. Like trying to stop a bleeding artery with his fingers alone.

It was his responsibility to keep them safe because somebody had to be responsible. It was his duty to be the mature one because no one else had been willing to take that position for him. It fell to him to be the adult because no one else had been able to do it for him.

But god, he was only nineteen.

His experiences were still so limited. His life was still a wide, winding road stretched out in front of him. He'd never taken a vacation to an exotic place, he'd never had to pay mortgage payments or even rent. He'd never lived alone or cooked himself his own meals. Hell, he'd never even had sex. He was still just a kid. A scared, uncertain, walking-around-on-shaky-newly-born-independent-legs kid.

And he knew he shouldn't feel this old.

"Percy?"

Ice cold drops were plinking off his sodden bangs as he pulled back from the tile. "Go away." The words came out soft and whispered. This was his time alone. This was his privacy and this was his turn to not have to be what they all expected him to be. Even if it was only for a few short hours, this was when he was allowed to be the frightened, unhappy child.

"Jesus, Percy! Are you trying to give yourself pneumonia!?" Burly arms reached around him to twist the knob, cutting off the flow of water. Charlie then.

Maybe there was an odd sort of humor in that. Charlie stealing his lines and taking that tone. Just the idea of anyone in this family lecturing him about being responsible…

He wanted to laugh. The bubble was there in the base of his throat, trying to force its way up his windpipe. But no, he was too serious for inside jokes.

"C'mon Perce. Let's get you into some dry clothes."

He felt the towel fall around his shoulders as Charlie tried to pull him out of the shower. Calmly, rationally even—because he was nothing if not logical and methodical—he pushed away Charlie's hands and changed out of his soaked trousers and into the pajama pants he'd left by the sink. He didn't need his older brother's help. He'd long since outgrown needing Charlie's help or Bill's or his mum's or his dad's…

He met Charlie's brown eyes if just for a second before walking out of the bathroom and down the hallway to his room and his escape.

"…Mum and Bill are at Hogwarts to support Harry, of course, what with happened and all. The poor chap's had it rough. He's almost like one of the family…" Charlie's voice trailed after him as he opened his door. As if this family really needed one more member. One more person to watch out for and protect. He couldn't even keep Ron safe, how did they expect him to look after the one child who all but had a bull's eye painted on his chest? Hadn't he already proved that he wasn't capable of handling more? Hadn't this last failure in a long line of failures proven to them yet that he was sinking slowly under the weight they kept piling on him?

Mindlessly, he flopped down on his bed. It creaked slightly under his weight, but it creaked even louder as Charlie's weight was added. An elbow in the side convinced him to slide over to give his older brother room, but he'd already leeched the feelings from his face.

Percy could have already written a novel on misguided senses of duty. And if he stayed silent long enough, held out long enough, he was fairly certain Charlie would just give up.

"Bill and I flipped to see who would go with Mum and who would claim that they couldn't get away from work. Whoever won was going to be the one to kidnap you and hold you hostage away from the Ministry for a few well deserved days of vacation…"

"Go away, Charlie." The effort it took to say the words made his throat ache. He could feel the tears, hot against the back of his eyelids, and Percy turned onto his side, away from his older brother's probing eyes.

"You never saw Bill swear as much as he did when he lost. He wanted to be the one to see the look on your face when we apparated you to this hotel we had a reservation for in Florence. God, Percy, you should have seen the itinerary we had set up. We spent the last two months owling each other back and forth trying to figure out which places we thought you'd want to see the most in Italy…"

"Stop it, just stop it. Please…" Percy's voice was quiet and hoarse. He could feel the hot tracks the tears were leaving on his face, but he refused to reach up and brush them away. He was way too old for tears…

"We'll still do it. Just the three of us. Damned if we won't. This whole competition fiasco was just bad timing…"

There was a tiny snap somewhere inside his head, and Percy curled up tightly, unable to stop the tears from flowing freely any longer. Just a fiasco, just bad timing…He wished he could dismiss it so easily. But then again, it hadn't been Charlie's responsibility. It hadn't been Charlie's duty.

It hadn't been Charlie's fault.

"C'mere.." The words were murmured lightly, as Charlie's arms pulled Percy around to face him. A calloused thumb wiped away a few of the wayward tears before pulling the rest of Percy up in a bear hug.

Maybe this was what it was like to be the child for once instead of the grotesque parody of an adult that he played at being every day.

"I'm only nineteen." He managed to choke out in between semi-hysterical sobs.

"I know, Perce, I know." Charlie's hand brushed back his bangs, even as his older brother kept him held tight in the hug. "For what it's worth, happy birthday…"