Characters: Percy, the Weasleys, Scabbers, Penelope, Dumbledore, others
Summary: Other people were kids once. Not Percy Weasley. That was what made him different from the rest. So unremarkable.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: The "fall" of a Weasley, if you want to put it this way. I didn't really pay much attention to Percy until I read a few oneshots about him, and I have to admit, I'm pretty sympathetic towards him now. Oh and just to tell you (I shouldn't have to be saying this but apparently some people aren't smart enough to realize), Percy is of course an unreliable narrator. I think Percy is one of those people who makes himself out to be a bit of a victim, but he actually has some genuine grievances.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

He could remember everything. That was the problem: You couldn't be a kid during the War if you had even a clue of what was going on beneath the shiny Daily Prophet lies, and you couldn't be a kid afterwards if you could remember.

And Percy Weasley could remember everything.

He could remember the running, of how every house was different and increasingly small and dark. He could remember being passed off to the hands of relatives he had never met, pale strained faces that looked more appropriate to stone statues than to human flesh. There would be long intervals, days—or were they merely hours? Time seemed to run together in the dark—when he would see no familiar face at all.

He could remember his mother breaking down weeping every time Dad came home even five minutes after he said he would, because in the times they lived in that Dad came home was just as likely to mean work was backed up as it was to mean that he was dead. Somehow, Percy would always find himself alone with her when she started to sob. Bill and Charlie would either be in hiding with relatives or in another part of whatever house they were staying in at the time. And Percy resented his father when he came home, because when his voice boomed and he grinned weakly, a crude mockery of that thing people called a smile, he couldn't see how red Mum's eyes were.

He could remember when the news came that Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon were dead. They weren't ever coming over to visit again, and Percy would never see Fabian's smile or hear Gideon's laugh again.

He could remember the radio listing out casualties (the announcer was a man with a dull voice that grew duller with each report), and how when Mum realized that he was in the kitchen with her—Percy always clung to his mother in those days—she would glance nervously at him and switch the station to muggle folk music, as if it would make him forget.

He could remember the sound of childhood shattering on the floor like a dropped glass.

The report had come in just a couple of months after Percy's fifth birthday: Voldemort, the Dark Lord and the Scourge of Britain, was dead. It hadn't occurred to him until five years later that this meant that there was a little boy out there with no parents; he'd just been so happy that it was all over that he never stopped to think of the little Potter boy, the one who'd been left behind. He was only a couple of months younger than Ron, Percy realized.

Percy could remember, just as the frost was beginning to settle over Cornwall, when they came home for the first time in over a year. The windows in the Burrow were all smashed, papers strewn about the floor, the house ransacked.

Bill and Charlie were immediately rushing up the stairs despite Dad's shouts of warning for them to stay downstairs until he had cleared the house, checking to see if anything was missing from their rooms. Fred and George roved about the downstairs, all four eyes huge and curious. They had been here before but couldn't remember. Ron clutched their mother's hand; baby Ginny was asleep in Mum's arms. Neither of the last two had ever been in this house before.

Percy hid himself behind a familiar armchair near the fireplace and tried not to cry.

Eventually a heavy hand settled itself on his shoulder, and when Percy looked up with a start Dad's blue eyes were smiling down at him.

"What are you crying about?" he asked kindly. "Everything's alright again, Percy."

Percy had never hated anyone and has never hated anyone since as much as he did his father in that moment.

But those feelings of loathing were borne out and chased away when Dad leaned down and hefted his five-year-old son into his arms, before trekking upstairs so they could go look for Bill and Charlie.

Because he was five years old when it all stopped, he was expected to treat it as though it had all been one big vacation. As though it wasn't any big deal at all. The adults, the ones who had seen everything and experienced everything, they forgot that their children had ears too.

Their children had eyes too.

Other kids could forget. Other kids could treat the War as though it had never happened, or as though it was just a nightmare that was over in a flash, something they didn't need to worry about after it was over.

Not Percy Weasley.

He remembered everything.

.

His parents didn't know what to do with him, and truth be told Percy didn't know what to do with his parents.

Percy wanted nothing more than to have the approval and the recognition of his parents. That pursuit felt more than a little hollow—everything seemed a little hollow in the face of the death that he had seen and heard—but the thought of Dad's smiles and Mum's praises was a short-term balm, something that didn't make Percy feel any better in the long run but for the time being helped, just a little bit.

But he wasn't sure how to get it.

What Percy knew about himself was that he was stunted by the long nights of staying awake, heart thumping wildly every time he heard—or thought he heard—feet creaking on the floorboards outside his room. He didn't have the advantages of his siblings. Percy wasn't the eldest. He wasn't a good Quidditch player. He didn't excel at mayhem or at making things. He didn't have incredible courage or incredible dumb luck—quite the opposite, really. He wasn't the lastborn, or the girl his mother had always wanted.

He was just Percy.

He was just there.

'Unremarkable'. That was a word Percy was beginning to despise. He hated that word more than any other if only because he had it stamped all over his face. How could he be anything but unremarkable, when overshadowed by brilliant, talented siblings?

Percy was just average, medium, middle of the road Percy Weasley.

It was looking into a mirror one night when he was thirteen that did it.

School was out for the summer, and Percy found that he couldn't sleep with the ghoul banging about in the attic—odd, that; he'd once considered the ghoul's presence a comfort, but now he couldn't stand listening to the sound of clanging against the pipes.

He had grown during the year. Mum remarked fondly—but somewhat worriedly; the worry was lodged in her eyes and somehow Percy was far more keenly aware of her worry than of her fondness; she wasn't sure whether they'd be able to afford new robes for him that fit, even if they were secondhand (And though Percy didn't like secondhand clothes all that much, he wouldn't have objected—at least not where anyone could hear—if his robes were a little faded or his shoes a little scuffed when he first got them, so that Ron or Ginny could have a bit of chocolate from Honeydukes when they went on outings to Hogsmeade)—that it was like someone had put a stretching charm on him, but what Percy couldn't understand was that she made that out to be a good thing. The feeling of being stretched didn't sit well on him; it just made him feel gawky and awkward.

At some time between midnight and three in the morning, Percy stared into the scratched, cracked around the edges (the mirror had not been spared by whoever had ransacked the Burrow during the War) mirror, just a little dingy despite Molly Weasley's best efforts. The light was dim and orange-red and his vivid hair seemed to melt into it.

That was when Percy realized that he looked like his father.

In fact, he looked more like Dad than any other member of that family.

And Percy found that he didn't like that.

Even his appearance was something someone else did better than him.

Even in this, he was overshadowed by anyone else.

.

When he was a small child, not very long after they had finally moved back into the Burrow, in fact, Percy found an injured rat hiding amongst the peony bushes in the garden.

It hadn't been a sunny day; if anything, it had been a very overcast day, constantly threatening to rain. Percy wasn't out in the garden for the sake of playing. Fred and George—already pranksters at the tender age of, what was it, three or four? Percy can't remember—were currently dedicated to the venture of making his life Hell, more determinedly so since they weren't old enough to have developed something resembling a conscience yet.

The rat was filthy and bleeding; it was missing a toe. Normally, Percy, fastidious with a horror of getting dirty that was highly unusual for a boy of his age, would have avoided the rat at all costs, but this one was different. It nudged his foot with its nose and looked up at him pitifully with small, beady eyes that seemed to water the way Percy's would if he was about to cry.

The rat was lonely. Percy was intensely lonely.

So Percy took the admittedly very dirty rat—his mother made him take a highly thorough bath that night—inside to the kitchen, and asked his mother if he could keep it.

Molly Weasley shrieked when she saw the rat grasped in her third child's chubby hands, dropping a dish she'd been watching. No guess as to what her opinion on Percy keeping a rat was.

But Arthur Weasley, sitting at the kitchen table reading the Daily Prophet, saw the sort of light in Percy's face that he hadn't seen since before Percy was old enough to understand the War. He'd missed that look on his face, and looking at what seemed to be generating it, he turned a pleading look on his wife's face, stating reasonably that if Percy wanted the rat he could keep it, but that he would have to look after it in all things.

Percy, who had wanted a pet but more than that a friend, jumped at the chance. He didn't care if he had to pick up after the rat.

Percy was not the one who named the rat Scabbers. Percy had wanted to name the rat something a bit more dignified. Maybe Dexter. But he was not the one who named the rat. That honor fell to George.

He was washing the rat in the bathroom sink when the younger of the twins showed up, exclaiming in a piping voice, "The rat's all scabby!" He started to call him Scabbers, and despite Percy's best efforts, the name stuck.

It was difficult to care, though.

Finally, Percy had something that was his, and his alone.

And on top of that, he was fond of that "something", too.

.

Percy was never entirely sure how it was that Bill and Charlie managed to cope so much better than he did. He cracked and shattered in the dark where no one could see under all the pressure. Living in the days of war where it seemed that no one could hear him crying or screaming, Percy had wilted where Bill and Charlie seemed to endure. They could shrug it all off.

Bill and Charlie were older, of course. That could have something to do with it. In fact, it probably had a lot to do with it: Bill and Charlie could remember a time before dark violence broke the back of Britain.

Bill had his studies, his fascination with old things and history, his pen-pal in Brazil (At least until said pen-pal sent him the infamous cursed hat). Charlie had Quidditch, and dragons; he was the best Seeker the Gryffindor team had had in over twenty years.

Percy labored on in their shadows.

The eldest children, William and Charles Weasley, set the stage and the tone for the Weasley legacy. Everyone who came after would just have to try to live up to their reputations as best they could, and Percy could never manage that. He looked at them with brotherly awe and wonder, looking up to them, but envying them both fiercely too—he found himself envying all of his siblings, one way or another.

It was obvious where the minimum line for achievement could be found.

Now, Percy's problem was how to cross that line.

.

His first taste of it was at Hogwarts, after receiving a rare—and for its rarity highly valuable—word of praise from Professor McGonagall. Her remark, the stern severity of her face softened ever so slightly, that his ability with Transfiguration was exceptional for a first-year student, sent Percy ducking his head to hide the violent shade of red that had overtaken his face. For once, a bit of praise not even remotely related to his family.

Here, at Hogwarts, Percy was still eclipsed by the long shadows his family cast. Bill and Charlie were both still present at Hogwarts during his first year—at times it was comforting to have them there to talk to, but standing next to them only brought to bear in full force the extent of his inadequacy. At the start, Percy Weasley was, despite his good grades, still unremarkable, bland as oatmeal next to his vivid family.

But he was not here completely overwhelmed by the glamour that made every other member of his family seem to glitter in sunlight and in shadow. Here, Percy could outrun the legacies; here, Percy could stand apart from them all.

Here, he didn't have to just be the 'other' Weasley.

Percy worked as hard as was humanly possible at his studies; he wasn't naturally brilliant like Bill but if he worked hard enough, studied hard and long enough, that barrier would be more than easy enough to overcome, he was sure. What he never saw was the way the teachers looked at him when he wasn't watching, partly gratified by his diligence, partly perturbed by his at times fierce indifference to the lure of social activities, and partly worried by the fact that Percy occasionally forgot to eat. They said nothing though, allowed him to live the way that he did, and whatever unformed creature Percy had been before, half-child, half-broken thing, fell away. Even a mockery of the pretense of childhood was gone. He was an adult in miniature.

Both of his older brothers had been prefects before him. The pursuit of status as a prefect and Head Boy after that were slightly tarnished by the knowledge that someone else in the family had been that before him. However, even if Percy would be overshadowed by the accomplishments of his brothers in this area, the Prefect badge held an allure all its own. It meant power, something Percy had never had before even in small quantities—it wasn't like he had any power over the older siblings who were better than him at everything or over the younger siblings who didn't listen to him and barely noticed he was alive except to think of him as a prat. The ability to command a room felt good. To have some control felt good. To be someone who was worthy of respect felt good.

Things changed on another dimension in his fourth year.

Studying for the mid-term exams one winter evening in the library, that was where Percy Weasley met Penelope Clearwater, both carrying ponderous stacks of books with the sort of weary acceptance most expected to find in elderly men and women marching to the grave.

Her long, curling hair was chestnut brown, her eyes the same color. Everyone thought her so ordinary—pretty, of course, but then, Ravenclaw House absorbed a disproportionate number of good-looking witches and wizards and many better-looking than her—but Percy could see nothing ordinary about Penelope as, sleepily, she yawned and let her head fall against his shoulder. There was nothing ordinary, Percy decided, about someone who could love him.

Hogwarts taught Percy many things. The most important lesson there was not in Charms or Potions though. It had nothing to do with magic.

The most important thing he took from Hogwarts was that he didn't have to live his life outshone by his family.

.

The thing Fred and George Weasley needed to learn, more than anything else, more than anything they would be taught at Hogwarts, was that not all of their jokes were funny. What Percy just couldn't understand was that he seemed to be the only one who could see it. He didn't think it was funny to turn Scabbers electric blue (considering that the magic involved could have killed him), he didn't think it was funny to jump out at Ginny wearing fangs and grotesque disguises, and Percy certainly didn't think it was funny that time they poured diluted doxy venom into his teacup or when they put that extra-strength magical itching powder in his school robes.

That the venom was diluted let Percy know that they at least hadn't been trying to kill him, but he'd been sick for days after that little stunt of theirs, and praised the good fortune that allowed Fred and George to have the mercy to wait until after the exams were over. As for the itching powder, it had been strong enough to make sores erupt on his chest and back and even when Madam Pomfrey healed the sores (sniffing "Childish prank!" the whole time; Percy never told her who had done it but she most likely suspected), there were pale pink scars left behind that she told him could potentially last for the rest of his life. Delightful. Wouldn't that be a wonderful story to tell Penelope?

Fred and George were terrors. Fred and George had no empathy. And Fred and George, Percy was deathly afraid, were going to kill someone some day. He wanted so badly for them to realize that not all of their jokes were funny, but he prayed it wouldn't be that way. As irritating as the twins were, they didn't deserve that—to watch a life spill away on the floor and know that they had done it. They didn't deserve to have their innocence shattered that way.

They were so creative though, so carefree, so full of life and energy (So brilliant, too; if they had had any interest at all in learning they doubtless would have been the top of all their classes). Stars exploding into life and burning brightly. Fred and George had both been born in the thick of the War's darkest violence, but for them, it was as though the War had never happened. They were too young to remember the War—they were lucky, Percy asserted. They didn't know, would never know, just how lucky they were.

He… envied them. Envy was an ugly emotion, the green-eyed monster, and to an extent Percy felt it towards all of his siblings for one reason or another, but it burned in him most fiercely towards the twins, as much as it shamed him to admit it.

They were… normal. No one else would have agreed with him, but Percy could see that Fred and George were far more normal than he ever would be, and far happier for it. They knew how to be happy without thought; they knew how to have fun. Percy knew of ways to have fun—he enjoyed wizard's chess and though no one ever wanted to play with him he liked Exploding Snap too—but he didn't know especially well how to execute his ideas of fun. That door had been shut on him, though whether by his own hand or some outside impetus Percy wasn't sure.

Fred and George would always be happy, wherever they were. They would always find a way to be happy. Percy envied them that.

And he resented them both so much (until he felt as though his heart was shriveling), for what their relationship had become. Because Percy knew things should have been better than what they were. Fred and George were the ones closest to Percy in age, just two years younger than he was; he ought to have been able to trust them. He ought to have been able to talk to them, to confide in them. They were brothers; they ought to have been able to see why he behaved the way he did.

They ought to have been able to understand.

But instead, Fred and George's favorite occupation seemed to be making Percy's life a living Hell. They weren't cruel, he insisted to himself, as only a brother could—an exasperated brother, a bloody well irritated brother, but, yes, a brother. They were incredibly thoughtless and quick to judge—then again, that was a trait shared by all the Weasleys, even Percy, though he wished he didn't have it—but they weren't cruel at heart; the extent of their cruelty ran to the fact that they never thought of the way their actions affected others before pulling a prank.

And Percy knew now from bitter experience that he could not trust either of them.

He couldn't talk to either of them.

But then, he couldn't talk to anyone. Not in that family.

.

Percy saw ghosts. Those ghosts weren't dead yet; dead ghosts didn't bother him, not the way living ones did. Ghosts weren't supposed to be living people, not living people with fresh blood and heartbeats.

Fred and George had different laughs. That was how Percy could tell them apart from a distance; the two who were so alike in everything else laughed differently.

And Fred, from across a table in the Great Hall, laughed just like Frank Longbottom.

Dimly, Percy could remember Frank Longbottom. During the War, when he had been small—but not young, never young; Percy couldn't remember a time when he'd been young—Percy had once been sent to live with the Longbottoms for about a week. Augusta had been strict and stern, Alice warm and gentle, and Frank had laughed.

Just the same way as Fred Weasley did now.

The next day, Percy realized why eleven-year-old Ron's smile always seemed so reminiscent.

He'd already seen it on Uncle Fabian's face.

.

For a long time, for what seemed nearly an eternity, Scabbers was Percy's only friend. Even after he came to Hogwarts and met Oliver Wood and later Penelope as well Percy took a great deal of comfort from his bedraggled and beloved pet rat.

Percy wasn't sure whether Scabbers was a familiar or if he had simply soaked up some of the Weasley's ambient magic, but he certainly wasn't an ordinary rat. A normal garden rat should have only survived two or three years, even in the care of a human family. Instead, Scabbers had survived for over twelve years with the Weasleys, despite Fred and George's best efforts (or at least so it seemed to Percy) to murder the hapless animal.

It had been difficult to give Scabbers away.

Percy hadn't really wanted to give Scabbers up but now he had Hermes and Ron didn't have any pet at all. It didn't feel right to have two pets if his little brother had none, and though Ron had always gone on and on about how much he wanted an owl Percy hoped a rat would suffice as a decent substitute. He didn't like the way Hermes had been looking at Scabbers, anyway.

Fred and George would never have him; Percy wouldn't trust the twins with a toothbrush, let alone with Scabbers. Ten-year-old Ginny, Percy was sure, wouldn't want a rat for a pet.

Ron scowled a little at him at first (he too resented having so many hand-me-downs and cast-offs) but his face soon rearranged itself to an expression of surprise mingled with gratitude when Percy made it clear that he wanted Scabbers treated as a valued pet. "Take good care of him, and remember to feed him twice a day. And for God's sake, Ron, if you ever sit on him…" Percy trailed off threateningly.

And of course, three years later, Scabbers was dead.

Percy knew he shouldn't have been so upset. Scabbers had lived a far longer and fuller life than any garden rat had a right to, and Hermione's pet cat was quite vicious when it came to the creature.

No one ever bothered to tell Percy that 'Scabbers', his former rat and for a long while his best friend was in fact an unregistered Animagus and a Death Eater. No one ever told Percy anything.

He knew he couldn't blame Ron.

It didn't stop him from being a bit angry though.

He'd told Ron to take care of him.

.

When he was eleven years old and just starting out at Hogwarts, Percy had thought that his headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, was both mad and brilliant.

It was plain to anyone that the years and the strain of those long years had left Dumbledore with a few less hairs of sense than he had once possessed. He was more than a little crazy; not even the staunchest of his supporters would have denied that. Eccentric and right mad. Everyone knew that about Albus Dumbledore.

But he was brilliant, Percy thought once. The most brilliant wizard in all of Britain, if not the world. Look at his accomplishments! He had defeated both Gellert Grindelwald and Voldemort in battle; he had invented the use of Patronuses as methods of long-distance communication; half of the Transfiguration spells taught by Professor McGonagall had been invented by him.

Percy had thought him to be brilliant.

That illusion started to shatter as his school years progressed.

Fifth year. Percy didn't care to remember the number of things that had happened to Ron that year. Nearly bludgeoned to death by a mountain troll. Run-in with a three-headed dog. Bitten on the hand by a baby dragon; Percy thought the swelling would never go down. Nearly strangled by Devil's Snare. Given a nasty concussion by a giant chess queen; Ron had done spectacularly well, but it didn't stop Percy from being furious with whoever it was to blame for this when he saw him in the infirmary, swathed in bandages and grinning up at him drowsily.

Sixth year. Ron flew the family car into the Whomping Willow and broke his wand in the process; he was lucky it hadn't been his neck. He was nearly eaten by a bloody colony of Acromantulas. Went down into the Chamber of Secrets; narrowly avoided being assaulted by their prat of a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher (And that Ron had participated in robbing Lockhart of his memory didn't exactly grieve Percy overmuch). Penelope… Percy swallowed. Penelope… was petrified by a basilisk. And Ginny, Ginny, the little sister he should have been able to protect, was possessed and damn near killed by the bloody teenage reincarnation of Lord Voldemort.

Seventh year. Ron was nearly attacked by Sirius Black in his own dormitory. He got his leg mauled and broken by a possibly rabid dog. He was trapped in the Shrieking Shack with a murderous lunatic for several hours.

Dumbledore… Dumbledore made no attempt to keep his students from falling into harm.

And now this…

The water of the lake was freezing (of course it was freezing; it was February), but Percy didn't care how cold the water was, no more than he cared that the ends of his robes were likely getting unbearably muddy or that running, fully-clothed, into the Black Lake in February was not at all a dignified position for the a proxy judge.

Ron was pale as a sheet, his skin blue-veined from so long being spent under the surface of the icy water.

No one had told Percy that Ron would be one of the people drugged and sent down to the Black Lake. He liked to think he had a right to know; I'm Ron's brother! They ought to at least tell me when they do things like this to him.

As Percy ran out to meet him, he looked at Ron and cold only see how wet, cold, bedraggled, and how very small he seemed. Everything else didn't matter a whit to Percy now.

At the moment of contact he seized him and started dragging him back to shore, one hand under the crook of Ron's right elbow and the other tight around his left shoulder, the closest Percy had come to hugging Ron in years. "Come on," Percy choked out, trying desperately not to stutter. "Let's get you somewhere warm and dry."

Ron didn't seem to hear him, struggling wildly against his grasp like a soaked cat resisting being taken back for another watch. "Geroff, Percy, I'm all right!" he insisted, voice thrumming with frustration.

"No, you're not. You think you are but you're not so stop struggling, Ron!" Percy could his heart pounding, the heartbeat rising in his throat. He reached to squeeze Ron's hand and it was as cold as ice.

Meanwhile, Ron was making it quite clear that he didn't appreciate the attempts on Percy's part to be protective—but he always had been so if Ron hadn't accepted that by now he was just going to have to get used to it because there was no way Percy was going to change his behavior for anyone, not even his family—but Percy wasn't about to let go of him. He wasn't about to let him out of his sight.

But he did take a moment, just a moment, to turn back to the Lake and shoot the most vicious glare he could muster at Dumbledore, who was busying himself attending to Harry Potter (Because apparently precious Harry Potter was far more important than his brother).

Students found themselves in danger a perilously large amount of times at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. And Dumbledore did nothing to stop it. He did nothing to protect his students. That was the one thing Percy couldn't forgive him for. He had failed to protect his students. He didn't even try.

Percy used to think Dumbledore was brilliant. Now, he just thought he was mad.

Dumbledore was a bloody lunatic. He didn't need to be running a school; he needed to be locked up.

Everyone else seemed to think the world of him. Every other member of his family seemed to think the sun rose and set on Albus Dumbledore's command.

Percy knew better.

Why couldn't anyone else see it the way he could?

.

The Ministry taught Percy another lesson and built on the highly vital lesson that he had learned at Hogwarts.

The Ministry of Magic was a very neat, orderly place. Everything was straightforward and without nasty undercurrents beneath; at least that was how it seemed to Percy's admittedly inexperienced eyes. Everything and everyone operated according to a pre-determined purpose, and very little deviation ever occurred. It was all so predictable, so secure, so safe.

In short, Percy could lose himself here even more completely than he could at Hogwarts, and he didn't think he had ever been so happy with where he was in his life.

Here, it didn't matter that Percy was brother to Bill or Charlie or brother to Fred, George, Ron or Ginny. It didn't matter that he looked like his father or that he had two remarkably talented older brothers and four older siblings who showed a great deal of promise. That he was a Weasley meant nothing here.

Here, Percy could become lost in a crowd where no one knew his name or knew who his family was, and lost in that crowd, he could finally taste what he really was.

A creature without a name, waiting to be born.

It just needed to be pushed into the light.

.

Ginny, Ginny was the one he loved the best. Percy didn't want to be accused of favoritism, so he tried not to show it, but it was obvious, and the twins never ceased to tease him about it—he reacted about as well to this branch of "teasing" as he did any of the others. Percy just wasn't all that good at hiding these things, not something that swam so close to the surface of the water.

He didn't love her best because she was the youngest. He didn't love her best because she was the only girl. Percy knew better than to think that.

No. He loved Ginny best because out of all his younger siblings (and there were many), Ginny was the only who would let Percy protect her. When she was a child, it was from the twins' pranks, or from the gnomes in the gardens. They really weren't going hurt her, Percy always insisted, but as a little girl Ginny would hide behind his legs whenever a gnome emerged and peak out from behind with huge eyes. Percy would only laugh and take her by the hand to lead her to a gnome-free area of the garden.

Percy had always protected Ginny when she was little.

So why, why couldn't he protect her when she really needed him to, more than any other time of her life?

Why couldn't he even see what was happening to her, her first year in Hogwarts?

It had been so obvious that something was wrong. The warning signs were all there. Ginny was getting so pale, so withdrawn, so strained. She looked as though she wasn't getting nearly enough sleep, and her behavior had changed. Where Ginny had once been outgoing and talkative she was now quiet nearly to the point of total silence and she jumped at every loud noise.

Percy had just been starting to get really worried when the time came that he couldn't afford to just be worried anymore.

Ginny was gone. Spirited away by the Heir of Slytherin. Probably dead.

Thus started what was without a doubt the worst day of Percy's life.

The letter he'd sent to his parents informing them of what had happened (and in the end he ended up breaking down and begging them to come as fast as they could, knowing they would have done that even if he hadn't asked) was barely legible from how badly his hand had shook, barely legible from the unacceptably pervasive ink blots, barely legible from the salty water stains smudging and distorting the letters of the words he had written.

Mum, Dad,

Ginny's gone. The teachers say she was taken into the Chamber of Secrets. Please come as soon as you get this letter.

Percy forgot to sign his name, but he knew that Dad would recognize his handwriting.

He could only imagine, didn't want to know, how his parents would react when they received such a letter.

After Hermes took it on and Percy got back to his dormitory, the door was slammed and locked. No one could get in or out, though Oliver was rightly angered over that—he needed a quill and Percy was keeping him from it.

Then came the flood.

I should have been able to stop this. She shouldn't be gone.

She shouldn't be dead.

He was never going to see that face again. He was never going to see his little sister, with her long red hair and bright brown eyes and that smile still half-full of baby teeth again. It wasn't fair. Why did it have to be Ginny? Why did it have to be his sister?

Then, came the best night of his life.

Well, more accurately, the best morning.

Percy had woken up to Arthur, Molly, Fred, George and Ron Weasley all standing over him, the latter three shaking him awake (Oliver Wood was standing in the corner—he'd finally forced his way back into the dormitory—and curiously, he was smiling).

Ginny was alive.

But she still looks so pale, Percy thought as he ran—ran, not walked—to the Infirmary, much to Madam Pomfrey's displeasure.

He felt sick as he, stumbling over words like a toddler, demanded to know if Ginny was alright and, upon receiving a silent affirmative, hugged her more tightly than he had anyone in his life. She looked so pale, so small. He knew that look on her face.

Because he'd once seen it on his own face.

Ginny was far too young to remember the War; Percy had always considered it a mercy. She'd been born right at the close of it, almost. She was too young to remember it.

But the War had come for her. Percy learned the full story from a compilation of Ron, Ginny and Arthur—Mum was sobbing her eyes out through the whole thing and the twins were grimly silent (Percy suspected that they judged him)—and he only felt sicker. The War had come for Ginny Weasley in the form of the ghostly soul of Lord Voldemort, the true Heir of Slytherin.

And she couldn't be a child again. Just like him. Ginny would have to navigate the world as an adult in miniature now.

All the while, Percy wondered bitterly why it had to be his sister.

And why he couldn't have stopped all of this.

.

Where just five minutes before the kitchen of the Burrow had been a nexus of shouting, a veritable cyclone of angry shouts and tears, now, it was deathly quiet. Silent, and unoccupied, save for one who leaned, slumping, against the kitchen table.

So it's over.

So it's done.

So it all comes to this.

Percy could not understand what idiocy had possessed him to think that his family, knowing them like he did, would ever be happy with the news he had so proudly brought home to them. They were Dumbledore's men, all of them, so enamored of that lunatic who couldn't even keep the children he was supposed to protect safe that they couldn't see how dangerously careless he was. How wrong he was, about everything.

Dad's recriminations, his accusations, still rang in his ears. Percy had never heard his father shout before. He never thought the first one he shouted at would be him; he'd always thought that that honor would go to the twins, or possibly even Ron if his suicidal idiocy reached great enough heights. Not him.

But it made sense. It all made so much sense.

And Percy could see how different he was than all of them, when he realized just how friendless he was among this family. Dad said he would have to stand apart from them if he wanted to "take the side" (That was ridiculous. Sides? Sides? When had this become an "Us and Them" situation?) of the Ministry, but dad didn't see things the way Percy did. He had always had to stand apart from them. They pushed him aside. No room for an unremarkable boy in such a remarkable family.

Percy knew this day was coming. He hadn't known that there would be a row or that so many ill-thought and piercing dagger words would be passed between them, but he knew a day would come. He had prepared, keeping everything as neat and orderly as he possibly could so that when he left his mother wouldn't have to spend hours upon hours trying to sort through the things he left behind.

He hadn't thought it would still hurt so much.

Percy stared down at his hands. They were shaking. He felt his face with those shaking hands. It wasn't wet yet, but it felt like it might be soon. His throat felt tight and aching, the muscles pulling shut. His eyes burned. This was the closest he had come to crying in years. Other people cried. People who could afford to cry. Not Percy Weasley. He had never been able to afford the price that tears cost.

Shaking hands closed into fists so tight that fingernails bit into skin. Percy squeezed his eyes shut.

This was… He felt… He felt… human. This was the most human he had felt… The most human he had felt since he had seen Penelope immobile on a hospital bed, face as cold and still as marble, caught in a fixed expression of surprise. Her eyes had been open, and Percy hadn't been able to stand looking at them. That was the last time he'd wept, much to the shock and dismay of Oliver and Ginny (The only ones—at least to Percy's knowledge—who had at that time known of what his relationship with Penelope was).

Percy sucked in his breath, breath barely passing to his lungs for such a swollen throat, and looked up, eyes scanning the kitchen for what he knew would be the last time. He might come home some day. Or he might not.

And already, the Burrow wasn't feeling like home.

If Percy was honest with himself, his pride was sorely wounded. He knew what his father implied—that he couldn't get a promotion on his own merits, that he was so consumed by ambition that he would stoop to spying on his own family to advance his career. It was true; Percy didn't approve of Dumbledore, not by a long shot, but really? Did they really think he was that avaricious? That grasping? That disloyal?

The Burrow wasn't home anymore. And if his family thought he was a traitor in the makings, well then Percy had a perfect solution for which to disabuse them of that notion. What better way to prove that I'm not going to spy on Dumbledore via my family then by leaving?

He'd never been accepted here. Not by Bill and Charlie, who had looked on him in bemusement, never understanding. Not by the twins, who had tried to lock him in a pyramid, who had slipped doxy venom in his tea, who had put itching powder down his robes and put scars on his body. Not by Ron, who was convinced that his concern over Ginny's welfare was just posturing, who was convinced that his worry for him was the same. Not by Ginny, it seemed, whom he had loved best (And that was why it hurt so much more keenly when she took up the mantle of mockery too). Not by his father, who seemed to think he couldn't succeed in life without being someone's pawn.

(Percy deliberately left his mother out. He wasn't quite sure about her, not just yet. She'd always let it happen, but she had never had spiteful words for him herself. He just wasn't sure.

He wasn't sure about anything anymore.)

Percy looked down at his hands again. They still shook—he couldn't have held a wand properly if he tried—telling him of the fear he felt, the uncertainty he felt, all that which he wished to deny. There was no avoiding it now.

He didn't feel like a Weasley anymore. He wasn't a Weasley anymore. He was barely even Percy.

He was just that nameless thing, on the verge of being born, and it couldn't stay here any longer.

Two CRACKS in the air later, and Percy was gone.