Title: Milgram
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The characters belong to J.K. Rowling and are used without permission.
Note: You can find out more about the Milgram experiment by doing a Google search. I'd give you a link but FFN's format is making that very difficult. I changed the procedure slightly to make it quicker to explain.
Percy took Advanced Muggle Studies, and for a month they studied psychology. The idea of repressed memories was a popular topic, considering the usage of memory charms in the wizarding world, but what had stuck with Percy was Milgram's study of obedience.
The set-up was as follows. A subject came in and was told they were to give a spelling test to another participant. The subject was to give the other person an electric shock every time a word was spelled wrong, increasing the voltage with every misspelled word.
The professor had asked them all how far they thought they could go with this, and Percy has said he didn't think he could do it at all, that the shocks were barbaric, inhumane.
The professor went on to tell them how the subjects in Milgram's experiments had kept going, how they had disregarded screams coming from the other person, how they had gone on and on to voltages clearly marked as dangerous, only because the experimenters were there, telling them to keep going, keep turning up the power. Percy was horrified. He knew all Muggles couldn't be that way, but he still thought about the Muggle-born students he knew, wondering if they had that capacity within him.
Then, the professor explained the catch; no one had really been shocked, that the other person was an actor, or sometimes even a recording, and the screams were faked. Still, though, Percy was haunted by the idea. How could a person be so cruel?
Years later, as he curls up in bed with the Ministry in shambles around him, as he tries to sleep knowing everything he's held as true for the past two years has been a lie, Percy thinks about Milgram again. He dreams about it, and in his dreams it is his mother, his father, Ron, Ginny, hooked up to the experiment, and this time the screams are real.
He knows he lied that day in class. He would be one to follow the rules, to listen to the experimenters, to keep going even after the screams went silent.
Worse.
He knows that that last year has been one long, drawn-out Milgram's test, and he has kept pushing that button.