Archive of Our Own

It happens just a little bit after his father is released from St. Mungo's.

Percy goes to sign a form. His quill runs out of ink mid-signature, and he sighs, dipping it in again it before going to complete his name.

Except it isn't the ink. The letters appear on the page just fine, and disappear as he signs.

Percy frowns. Is this a prank? Disappearing ink? But no; his first name is fine, still sitting on the page brand-new and glistening. Some spell on the form? This is not funny. He has work to do.

It takes six tries at the signature for the idea to plant in his mind. And then a seventh still, with a shaking hand, to grapple with it for real.

His name glistens on the page: Percy. Percy.

But every attempt to sign Weasley after it fails.

Slowly, nearly paralyzed with numb disbelief, he reaches for his desk's nameplate.

The name Weasley has vanished.

Fudge has the gall to look ashamed.

"Ah. Well. Well, not to worry, now!" He pushes at his glasses, and suddenly can't quite look Percy in the eye. "That's not an issue. Go on, get yourself down to Accounting, they should have something to handle your paperwork. Not all that uncommon at all, Mr. W-"

He can't say it, either. The Minister of Magic himself can not call him a Weasley. The family magic stops him right in his tracks and leaves nothing but empty air instead.

Percy is-- is numb. He feels empty, carved out and empty, like the pumpkins his mother makes on Halloween.

His... not mother.

His face is burning hot. Fudge, now, seems unable to look at him at all.

"Percy," he amends sheepishly.

That's his name, now.

Percival Ignatius --.

Just Percy.

His fath-

His--

Mr. Weasley. Arthur.

Mr. Weasley comes back into work a few weeks later. More than one person mentions to Percy that his department is holding a welcome back party for him. Fudge, clearly still stewing in his own guilt but not enough to actually do anything about it beyond flush awkwardly and look away whenever the topic gets brought up, says he should go.

"Not every day your own family gets out of the-- well. You know." He claps him on the shoulder uncomfortably. "Why don't you head down, lad? You can leave early, it's no trouble."

Percy looks down at the forms stacked neatly on his desk, one stack, two stacks, three stacks. More organized than any assistant to the Minister has ever had it. More organized than any Weas- any... person... in the Burrow ever had kept their room.

He looks at the official Ministry stamp in his hand, in lieu of a signature he can no longer sign.

"That's quite all right, sir." He stamps one form, and moves onto the next. "I don't think I was invited."

It turns out Voldemort is back after all.

So he was wrong.

He was so very wrong the entire time.

He stamps the form for Fudge's resignation. And for the first time in months, he laughs.

He's alone in the office. Fudge has already cleared out-- for good-- and the rest of the staff with him. Fleeing from reporters, from inquiries, burying themselves in a drink, spending what is sure to be one of their last peaceful nights left with their families. Percy would say he drew the short straw, but he'd volunteered. It's not as if he has anywhere else to be.

So he is alone. And there is nothing at all stopping him from putting his head down in his arms, and cackling until he doesn't have any breath left.

Dumbledore meets with Scrimgeour. Though, when all is said and done, it is a nothing more than a waste of a meeting. It is quite clear that he has very little interest in cooperating with the Ministry now. Too little, it seems, too late. Percy had come armed with seven different proposals from the Aurors, and wound up just standing mutely behind Scrimgeour as Dumbledore informs him, over and over again, that they are on their own.

Scrimgeour's schedule had had a three hour empty block this morning for this meeting. It barely lasts fifteen minutes.

"Well," the new Minister mutters gruffly, at last. "If there is nothing we can say to convince you."

"Certainly not, Minister. I have my own war to fight." He smiles, and it's cold. "May you have luck with your own."

They probably deserve it. After the events of the last year-- Percy's own behavior among them-- it is hardly any surprise that Dumbledore has decided they can not be trusted. Because that's what this is. It's not that Dumbledore is abandoning them to fight Voldemort alone. It's that he is refusing to fight with them. 

Who in their right mind wouldn't do the same? 

Things have come out, now, about Fudge, about the previous administration. Some little things, that Percy had known. Many that he had not. Evidence of Voldemort's return that Fudge had swept under the rug, reporters who had tried to dig into it that had been sacked. One of the only statements Harry has given to the press was that his godfather was innocent all along and Fudge had refused to even listen to his side of the story. 

Percy has lost his family for Cornelius Fudge. Not the man himself, but because he had believed him. He had believed in the Ministry of Magic. He has spent his entire life hearing nothing from Arthur but praise for this place, that the Minister could do no wrong, because how could the Ministry ever allow someone incompetent or corrupt to rise to such power? For his entire life there was no greater honor than to work in these hallowed halls.

For his entire life, working for the Minister was the right thing to do.

Not even six months later, and this is how it's all turned out. 

Almost like it- he-- is some kind of joke.

It is just the two of them and Percy in the room, no one else. And Percy knows exactly how well-warded this room is. There are no listening ears, and Scrimgeour, though clearly no ally of Dumbledore's, is no coward, either. He has spent decades fighting against dark wizards. If there is anyone he can trust to hear what he is about to say, it is Albus Dumbledore, and Rufus Scrimgeour.

"Headmaster," Percy starts, just before Dumbledore has made it out the door. "I have a proposition of my own."

"Are you absolutely sure, Percy?"

"I'm a disowned pureblood blood-traitor, Headmaster. You might as well use me for something."

He meets with Severus Snape three weeks into the school year. It's overcast and grey, the way it has been so chilly and cloudy for months, the weak sunlight and the washed out stone of the castle leaving the man to look like little more than a wraith.

Snape hands over the requisition request forms for an increased Auror guard at the school.

Percy quietly tells him the Minister's schedule for the next week, and that Creswell's Boggart is a rat.

Minister Scrimgeour's attempted speech to reporters ends in complete chaos. Six bystanders wind up in Mungo's, two of them in critical condition, multiple Death Eater attackers on the loose, and an entire wing of the Ministry evacuated. The planned headline splash of the Minister assuring safety and stability to the other wizarding nations already starting to backtrack out of alliances is instead a full page picture of a Death Eater attack. Three countries back out within the week.

The Auror guard, most curiously, had collapsed before any spells had started firing... distracted by one particularly large, transfigured rat.

That is how it starts, and, for a while, how it goes. Tidbits of information passed onto Snape, meeting professionally, meeting in passing, parchment spelled to whisper when one has something to say. A spy that no one trusts is of no use, after all, and one does not simply walk up to Voldemort's inner circle and ask for a job interview. Percy is in the highest levels of government in Wizarding Britain and the lowest levels of trust in Voldemort's forces, and the only way up is the same way he'd earned his job:

Good, hard work... and a family name that no longer belongs to him.

There are three more successful attacks on Scrimgeour's schedule, four completed thefts of dark artifacts from the archive of the Ministry, a continuous assortment of small crimes, and on one occasion, a cursed Muggle car that nearly kills the team sent to defuse it, led by one Arthur Weasley.

Whether or not Percy had known he would understand the inner workings of a car well enough to figure that the curse was not as mundane as it had appeared was no one's business but his own.

There are no direct casualties, at least.

Scrimgeour, by mid-October, is thoroughly convinced that there is a leak in his office. "I don't care how you do it, Percival," he snaps, "find them." He slams his coffee mug down so hard drops slosh over and splash the paperwork on his desk. His face, unlike the boiling red of anger that Percy was once so used to, is white as a ghost.

Yes, sir, Percy promises.

In December, Percy slips to Snape the schedule for the change of guard on Azkaban, and to Aberforth, a murmur that he has a bad feeling about Saturday, and any Unplottable islands that might be of interest to the Order.

Because that had been his one condition, upon taking up this role, for Dumbledore: his point of contact will not, at any point, be a Weasley.

Percy thinks it's a nasty and cruel joke, that the bastard had made his point of contact his brother, instead.

But Aberforth is a quiet, surly man, who doesn't ask questions and doesn't mind business that is not his own. He never asks Percy a thing, not about the Weasleys, and not about the Headmaster. He simply pours the drinks, and does his job.

His job, and Percy's, see to the first mass breakout of Azkaban in history.

Every single prisoner convicted of supporting Voldemort in any capacity escapes. Most of them, monsters, that had been locked up since the end of the first war over a decade ago. And with the Dementors abandoning the prison, they are not alone; dozens apparate out on the arms of Death Eaters, and far too many of them stake their newfound loyalty to the Dark Lord's name. Wizarding Britain had tortured them, and now, they will torture it back.

The Aurors don't arrive in time to stop it. They never could have. The Dementors had abandoned the prison in the same breath as Death Eaters had arrived.

They do arrive in time to fight.

All told, the death toll is three Aurors, and thirteen Death Eaters.

It is little surprise, that wizards who've spent the past fifteen years losing their powers and their minds to Dementors had not been able to put up much of a fight.

Thirty-seven Death Eaters still escape successfully. And the Order has three funerals to plan.

This mission is what finally earns Percy an audience with the Dark Lord.

To lie with Occlumency is a tricky, subtle affair. It is not that it is difficult, necessarily, because it is not: it is simple. The trick is to understand what it is that any particular Legilimens, in their heart, is searching for. Everyone has something in their past that will match it. All he has to do is serve it up on a silver platter.

To Voldemort, he serves the day he first stepped off the train to Hogwarts, and a soon-to-be Slytherin caught his robes by the patch on the elbow. He holds the frayed sleeve up in front of everybody, and laughs.

He serves the shame of needing to ask a fifth year Ravenclaw to fix his glasses, because his parents couldn't afford to buy a replacement.

He serves the burning resentment, when Arthur had announced at the dinner table that he'd turned the promotion down, because doing the job that you loved was more important than any paycheck.

He serves the resignation the day his twelve O.W.L.s had come in, and there'd never even been a full we're proud of you, because the twins had set off an explosion before Molly had finished the sentence. By the time the fires had been put out, they'd all forgotten.

He serves every bloody nose, every black eye, every sprained ankle, and how each one came with a little more than long-suffering sigh, and a wave of his former mother's wand.

He serves how could you?! She's your little sister! It was your job to keep her safe!

He serves the day hurt had turned into sick, all-consuming, rage. The day that every single last inch of his hard work and sleepless nights and every endured Weatherby had been turned around and spat on, and Percy had slammed the door, and hadn't come back.

He serves none of them ever believed in me.

I'll show them all.

And the day he was disowned, of course.

That's just the cherry on top.

Percy is on his knees, nearly prostrate before the darkest wizard in the wizarding world. All he can see is black robes and a glint of snake scales, and all he can hear is the disembodied hiss of Voldemort's pet. This is it, then. He lives or he dies by the strength of the secrets in his head.

The thing is-- Occlumency is not so very difficult at all, when one is not afraid.

And Percy is not.

"You will earn a name that you deserve in our ranks." Voldemort's cold footsteps linger behind him, and one long fingernail traces the back of his neck. "Perhaps the new Lord Malfoy? I hear the family is looking, after all."

There's quiet mutters of laughter and disdain, from the other masked shadows around them. Laughter that he is very, very intimately familiar with. Narcissa, standing all and completely alone, purses her lips and is silent.

"And I daresay," Voldemort finishes quietly, "that the Weasleys will regret the day they left you without a name."

Laughter again.

That day, he's given the Dark Mark.

There's good memories, too.

He thinks that is the reason that it's so easy to lie, to Voldemort. He's arrogant-- and oh, Percy knows arrogance-- but it's more than that. There's little that has survived, of Tom Riddle's history, but Percy knows nothing if not how to search a library. And he thinks that Voldemort has never loved anyone. So when confronted with its absence in Percy's mind, and in Snape's, he thinks nothing of it.

He looks for resentment, and betrayal, and ambition, and fury. He finds it in spades. He looks for a small, spiteful little boy with everything to prove and nothing left that he won't sacrifice. But what he doesn't look for is love.

His dad had brought his O.W.L.s to his office at the Ministry and hung them up on the department wall.

His mum makes cake for his birthdays with the good vanilla, the expensive vanilla, because he's never once said so but she knows he's picky about what he eats and can't stand the desserts made with anything else.

The twins had overheard McGonagall reprimanding him for missing something they'd done on his night to patrol-- that she was disappointed in him-- that she'd thought it was on purpose-- and they'd never acted up on his nights again.

Ginny hadn't told anyone about Penny because she'd hadn't wanted anyone to tease him.

Bill had come to see him. After he left, before he was disowned. Said sometimes, he can't be around their parents, either.

He'd slammed the door to his room at seven years old because everybody was fucking screaming at each other, and all he'd wanted was one bloody second of peace and quiet, and then he'd slammed the door to his closet, too, huddling in the dark with a raggedy cloak over his head and his hands over his ears. His dad had found him hours later-- hours, everyone had been looking for hours-- buried in a silent bubble of accidental magic and coats, and sat him on his lap even though he was much too old to be sitting on the floor. He'd taught him what it felt like, magic. So that if he was ever that upset again he could make it stop all on his own without needing to hide.

The only reason his seething hatred can burn is because he still loves them.

Of course there's good memories, too.

Of course he loves his--

His former family.

If he didn't, being disowned never would've mattered.

Snape quietly mutters to Percy that Draco Malfoy has kept him sufficiently out of his plans, whatever they are. He knows that they are something, the boy is doing something, that he sneaks off to the seventh corridor when he thinks that no one is watching, but what it is that he's doing there, not even he knows.

Percival Ignatius -- had once been a brother to Fred and George. There's not a secret in this castle that he doesn't know.

He visits the room where things are hidden himself. And in it, it takes only a cursory spell to follow the path of the one last to visit, to find the broken Vanishing Cabinet.

Percy smashes the thing to bits.

Lucius Malfoy had been one of the Death Eaters killed in the Azkaban breakout. Percy, with his new invitation into Voldemort's inner circle, knows that his head had been on the chopping block anyway, and that Voldemort hadn't really cared, one way or the other. Lucius Malfoy had forfeited his life the day he'd failed to return the prophecy to him. It had been just a question of when the day would come.

Narcissa is next. She will be the next one to die, if her son does not succeed.

It's almost funny, in a cosmic sort of way. Arthur Weasley and his longlasting feud with Lucius Malfoy, all the way back to when Percy was a child, muttering about him over the morning paper and getting into fist fights with him at Diagon Alley. And now Percy is directly responsible for his death and very well might be responsible for his wife's next, and then his son's after that.

It's bitterly fucking hilarious.

What a good Weasley he is!

One day, Narcissa and Draco vanish. Draco can not hide, not with the Dark Mark, but attempting to track the boy only brings the Death Eaters to an empty shoreline with an empty house and no sign of anything or anyone.

"The Fidelius Charm," Bellatrix had purred, skulking about the way she does, like a rabid dog. "The Order does so love that one."

"What do we do now, then?"

"Nothing. There's nothing to do." She cackles, sick smile almost splitting her face in two, and then suddenly she is screaming, the words echoing over the shore. "Do you hear us, Draco? Your Secret-Keeper won't live forever!"

It's true. Whoever their Secret-Keeper is, they won't live forever. The only real question is if they'll live longer than Voldemort.

It's out of Percy's hands now. One way or the other.

Voldemort wants another cursed artifact from the Department of Mysteries.

Percy does not fail like Lucius Malfoy, which is the only reason he isn't killed on the spot. He is not found out. No one even knows there was an attempt to steal anything in the first place. But it's still only an attempt. He fails, all the same.

Voldemort punishes failures.

The first time he uses an Unforgivable Curse, it's the Imperius Curse, and it's in a confrontation with the Order.

It's just the two of them left; just Percy, and one of the Lestranges. Not even a full-fledged Death Eater, because Voldemort prizes competency above all else, and this man is not. It's meant to be a reconnaissance mission, which Percy really truly could have handled alone, and in silence, please, but Richard Lestrange is incapable of being quiet. He rambles on and on about his own little petty grievances, how much he despises his cousin, those bloody Gryffindors, how this is the mission that'll really get him the respect he deserves.

Percy grits his teeth.

"I don't recall our mission description including idle chatter, Lestrange."

"And I don't recall my mission description being grunt work, but here I am, ain't I?" He crosses his legs, arms folded behind his head. "We're taking over Hogwarts next. Maybe I'll get to be stationed there."

"Maybe you will."

"Your sister... she's still there, isn't she? Seventeen, right?" He sneers over at Percy, or perhaps it's closer to something of a leer. "I bet she's a pretty little thing. I always did have a thing for redheads."

Richard Lestrange, known on both sides for being a drunken fool barely capable of keeping his head on straight, bizarrely chose that night to wander out from the protection of Percy's warding spells and get spotted by the Order. He'd been hit with seven stunners at once, and is currently in a locked wing at St. Mungo's. Apparently-- so very oddly-- unable to remember anything at all from the past week.

Percy lives the Cruciatus Curse for the second time.

Albus Dumbledore dies by the hand of Severus Snape. That night, clouds roll in, heavy and full to bursting. And they don't leave for a week straight, whether Percy is at the Ministry or at Malfoy Manor or at Hogwarts. It's as if the very land itself is holding its breath. It knows a storm is coming.

As a high-ranking Ministry official, Percy has the invitation to the funeral. But no one-- not Scrimgeour, not Voldemort-- cares if he goes. And Percy already knows exactly who will be at the damn thing.

So he skips it. And he goes to the Hog's Head instead.

Aberforth also skips it.

"Your brother," Percy says carefully. He's not a big drinker, but too many meetings happen over a pint in a pub for him to have not at least built up a tolerance for it. He passes his whiskey glass back and forth between his hands, watching the reflection of the ceiling. "Everyone knows that things are... were. Fraught between you."

"What? The greatest wizard in the world had a bartender for a brother who lived not files miles away, and no one even knew. And you think things were maybe not just totally peachy keen because us? Impossible!"

He slaps a cloth on the counter, rubbing it back and forth, back and forth. There's nothing to clean.

"It's not just that you two didn't get along," Percy mutters, when the little fit of pique is done. "It's something... serious. Wasn't it."

"What exactly is your point, boy?"

Percy waits, another few moments longer.

"Did you ever wish that you'd... that..."

He can't finish his sentence. And Aberforth, after a long, crushing silence, sighs.

"We made up, Percy. A long time ago." He sits down, elbows on the counter, one hand toying with his own glass. "We were never going to see eye to eye, I think. But he apologized. And I decided that even if I couldn't forgive him, I'd rather have my brother in my life than not."

"I see."

Silence spreads between them again.

They both take another drink.

"Listen," Aberforth starts quietly. "He was my brother, not my son. So I couldn't have disowned him. But... if I'd been able to, back then. I would've done it."

You're a disgrace to this family!

Me?! I'M the disgrace?! I wish I wasn't a PART of this family!

Then go on, then! Get out!

"I see," Percy says again.

Little pieces of his world start to crack and collapse underneath his feet.

"But--" And his arm is caught, just as he moves to stand up and go. "The thing is. I was wrong, Percy."

In the end, Aberforth Dumbledore had loved his brother.

In the end, Percy -- loves his family.

Rufus Scrimgeour is next to die. He dies because Percy sends the Aurors to the wrong address, and when the Death Eaters come for him, there's no one there to stand between them.

Percy wonders if he ever remembers that day in his office, when his green around the ears assistant had offered his services to Dumbledore. Nothing has been said of the matter since-- that would rather defeat the point of being a spy-- and now over a year has passed. Does he remember that day? Does he look at Percy, and his stacks of paperwork and ears turning red in a blush and flustered smile when his secretary asks him out for drinks, and put two and two together? Does he see his office leaking like a sieve and remember he's the one that hired the man with a hammer?

When the Death Eaters came for him, did he realize that Percy was the one who'd decided his life was a sacrifice?

Scrimgeour was always going to die, one way or the other. When Voldemort himself sets his sight on a target, they do not survive. This way, at least-- his death means something. The same way Percy's disownment means something.

The Aurors live. Percy gains just a smidgen more of Voldemort's trust.

The Ministry falls.

He stands as Pius Thicknesse's right hand man, that morning in the atrium. He holds his head up high, his arms behind his back, his chest puffed out for all to see. Dolores Umbridge stands at Thicknesse's left. He's not asked to say but a single word, and he doesn't have to. The side he has chosen is clear, and what is going to happen next is even clearer.

An Auror's wheezing body is dropped on the floor to bleed over the tiles. Between them-- Thicknesse, Umbridge, and Percy-- and the rest, the entire rest of the Ministry. And in front of them all, Thicknesse raises his wand, and finishes him off for good. Percy does not stop him.

"Would anyone else like to join him?"

There are no volunteers.

Arthur's face is in the crowd, somewhere. Percy doesn't look for him.

Voldemort himself tells him that he is still too young to be the face of the Ministry. Not while he still wants to keep up appearances, for his new order to be properly respected and understood by the rest of the world. But Thicknesse is nothing. Pius Thicknesse is an empty husk of a man. He will give speeches and pose for photographs, but Voldemort has very little use for either.

Percy, meanwhile, has spent the last year proving two things: that he knows the job very, very well... and that just as Snape can be trusted with Dumbledore's death to run Hogwarts, Percy may be trusted with Scrimgeour's.

Voldemort has never been one to not take someone seriously because of age alone.

"It will be much easier for me," he says softly, in that hiss of a voice, "if instead of needing to guide Thicknesse's every whisper-- you are my Minister."

Which is how Percy becomes the shadow Minister of Magic, at the tender age of twenty-one.

Positively ludicrous. Not even Dumbledore could have foreseen it working out as well as it has. The headmaster of Hogwarts, and the shadow Minister of Magic. Both of them Death Eaters. Both of them spies!

It is incredible. It is insane. It is, with blood dripping from Percy's hands, the most hysterical turn of events in wizarding history. There has never been a bigger fool in all of time than Tom Riddle.

Because the thing is--

The Minister of Magic can do quite a lot indeed.

Percy chooses his own staff. Former Gryffindors, because Voldemort actually doesn't give a fig about houses, and Percy is in charge now, so he gets to choose. Former Gryffindors, who look at him like they're deciding when and what and how to poison his morning coffee.

Percy picks those that he knows will defy him.

Percy, with a swipe of his quill, spares the Muggleborns' wands. What a spiteful waste of a decent quality wand, he snaps, and sends a cowed Rookwood off to carry out the order. Voldemort approves.

He splits up the files between assistants. The older Muggleborns, the grandparents, the sick, the ones that might not survive Azkaban. Never giving one too many, never stacking up numbers in a way that'll attract suspicion. And he does not doublecheck where those files end up.

Or any of the others.

He sends whisper after whisper to Aberforth. Not Death Eater business, necessarily, because there are too few actual Death Eaters in Voldemort's ranks for any of them to lie for long, but Ministry business. The Ministry leaks like a sieve, and it's hardly the Minister's business to stop it. It's not his fault that there's no secrecy built into the place.

Shipments go missing. Official missions are sabotaged. A prison transport is destroyed.

He visits Hogwarts, and McGonagall stares at him the entire time, with the coldest look on her face that he has ever seen before. He wastes his time and day with official business, but on his way out the door, Snape spells a distraction for him, and he finds Peeves instead. Peeves, who loves chaos and suffering, but not true malice, never that, and Peeves, he tells to tip off Ginny that Muggleborn children are soon to be next, and the Room of Requirement will keep them safe.

"Is Prissy Percy pulling a fast one? Is Prissy Prefect Percy not a snake after all?"

"Think what you like, Peeves."

Percy sends the giants to Wales. And what a tragedy it is, that the temperamental weather in Wales is just the same as the battle that lost the War of the Mountains in 1521, when wizards discovered that giants had a severe aversion to lightning. This, of course, is not something for Percy to ever to have known-- it's not as if Hogwarts has a serviceable history course. Everyone knows that no Hogwarts student learns history.

The giants are decimated by the resistance. And Percy howls, and bleeds, and screams for his failure.

The giants gone, Percy proposes reassigning the Dementors from Azkaban instead.

He sacks Arthur.

Maybe that'll get it through his thick fucking skull that the Ministry isn't safe for blood-traitors anymore.

He loses his eye, in the Battle of the Seven Potters.

It is, once again, something that is almost of cosmic hilarity. Percy, the one ex-Weasley to never know his way around the broom. Half the bloody others in the skies with him. Is it any wonder that he'd be the one to lose tonight? Is anyone surprised?

It all happens so very quickly. Percy is hurtling through the rain, his hood pulled up and his mask shielding his face, but even if no one can recognize him, he still recognizes all the others. He hunts for red hair, and the second he finds it, the others have found it, too. There's flashes of light and chaos and screams, and in the heartbeat that Rookwood raises his wand, Percy raises his.

Rookwood doesn't survive the fall.

But Percy does survive his, because the universe is funny, like that, has decided that his entire life is a grand joke, and Percy has killed Rookwood to save George, and George's haywire spell had hit him instead.

Just like that, he is blind in one eye. Blind, and scarred, mark twisting from his hairline to his ear, and in the mirror his eye has gone dull and grey like clouded milk.

He's lucky, of course. The injury is the only reason no one questions him any further.

Percy has saved George's life. And George, somehow, has saved his.

The Battle of Seven Potters is another failure.

Voldemort promises that he'll restore his sight, someday. His sight, and Rosier's shattered leg, and Bellatrix's ear, mutilated by a lacerating curse from Moody. Everything else, and all the others. His servants, all quivering and sobbing on the floor before him, will be rewarded for their service. Wormtail and his gleaming hand is proof of it: Wormtail, who cowers at every spoken word like a beaten dog, and has given up everything for Voldemort, to be given nothing in return.

Not yet, though.

Voldemort does not reward failures. And until Harry Potter is at his feet, they have all failed him.

It's such a pity, Voldemort says.

Ron breaks into the Ministry.

For some godforsaken reason.

It is a failure-- an actual, genuine failure. Percy has no idea what the hell he's doing there, or even how'd he'd gotten in in the first place. He's just as stunned as everyone else when the alarm goes out.

And what he should've done was take advantage of the chaos to do something. Anything, really. There's always something more for the Minister to do. He could've destroyed a batch of Muggleborn files. He could've Obliviated Umbridge so hard she didn't even remember her own name. He could've slipped down to the cells and opened them all at once and freed seventeen innocent people in one go.

He tears off down to the lobby instead, to save the life of someone who'd used to be his family.

Another failure, of course. Another success that is a failure. Ron lives, which means that Harry Potter escapes.

His track record as Minister really isn't going so well.

Sometimes, his assistants look at him... and it's not with naked disgust.

Sometimes, one of them hands him his tea, and it's not with such a hard clatter that Percy has to consider whether or not it's safe to drink. And sometimes Percy hands him another stack of Muggleborns to condemn, and finds them accepted without a single word.

Once, Percy falls asleep at his desk, and when he starts awake again at last, it's to find that all of his work for the day has been quietly signed and filed away. The weak sun has already gone down outside, his office cleared out and empty, and on his desk is just a cup of tea enchanted to keep warm all evening long.

He puts his head back down into his arms, and doesn't move for a long, long time.

There's three more battles with the Order. Percy doesn't kill anyone, at least, but there are two captured Order members that are at the very least indirectly his fault.

It is, quite frankly, not a concern of Percy's, if an adult wizard has signed up to fight Voldemort, but can't hold their own in even a fake duel against a twenty-one year old just out of school bureaucrat.

Azakban isn't so bad anymore, with the Dementors gone.

The collapse of one of Voldemort's hideouts, is, once again, not his fault.

It can hardly be considered the Minister's responsibility, after all, that staff hired long before he ever had been, can't manage a decent shield charm. Or perhaps they could after all, and that is simply their way of resistance.

Either way, it's not his business to mind.

Ron, once-a-fucking-gain, pops up on his fucking radar.

Percy is summoned to Malfoy Manor with all urgency. He's told to drop every last bit of what he is doing and come now, so he does. He's there within five minutes, with no idea what to expect. The Ministry hasn't had anything of dire importance to do this week, and somehow, Percy doubts that Voldemort all of a sudden cares about the paperwork he's routinely slowed for the Muggleborn trials.

He isn't expecting Ron.

Ron is on his knees, a split, swollen lip, his arms held back by two Snatchers. He looks filthy, and hurt, and frightened. But he's a Gryffindor, through and through, and the fear doesn't come out with pleas or tears, but shouting. "You," he gasps, when he sees Percy, and his face transforms. "You fucking cunt! I knew it! YOU TRAITOR! YOU-"

"That," Bellatrix hisses, "is not how we speak to our betters, love."

She's silenced Ron. His mouth is still moving, shouting wordlessly at him, screaming, howling threats of bloody murder and tearing him limb from limb. Hermione is next to him, staring with that the seething, cold rage of one who's about to meet his back with a knife. She's not screaming, but she does look so disgusted with him she could hardly stand to touch him.

Percy is not there to identify the two of them, of course. He's there to identify the boy with the swollen face besides them.

"It'll wear off in a few hours, no?" He stands back, tearing his arm away from Bellatrix's attempted stroking. What a disgusting woman. "I went to school with him for a few years when he was a little boy, that's it. You all have seen him more recently than me! I do not think the Dark Lord rewards impatience."

"But surely you-"

"I am not going to risk taking the fall for your rush to be praised like a good dog, Bellatrix."

Her upper lips curls.

Percy uses the Imperius Curse for the second time on Bellatrix Lestrange.

Hermione barely has time to remember how to be shocked, staring at him with huge, wet eyes and tears tracking down her cheeks. She flinches back from him on the floor, a little whimper in the very back of her throat, but Percy can do nothing but hold out Bellatrix's wand to her.

"Go! The anti-apparition wards are only down for another five minutes! Get your friends and go!"

"Percy..."

It is the first time-- the very first time-- that anyone has ever looked at him like that. Stared at him with disgust and terror, and then, before his very eyes, her wet face morphing into... relief.

It is the first time in years that he hasn't been a monster.

"Does..." She pulls back a step further, clutching the wands in her shaking hand. "Does Ron know?"

"No. And if you care at all about me being able to stay alive, you won't tell him."

Hermione's a smart girl. She knows that Voldemort doesn't need a loose tongue to find secrets.

The escape at Malfoy Manor makes it back to Voldemort.

Not who it was, though.

Percy suspects that no one wants to be held responsible for keeping the escape from Voldemort... just as no one wants to be the one to tell him that it was Harry Potter that they let go.

This, again, is probably the only reason that he survives.

Snape takes him home, after that.

Percy doesn't know what's wrong with him. What it was that's wormed a sledgehammer into his shell and then smashed it from the inside-- but something has. Ron is the obvious culprit, howling at him the way he screams at the bloody gnomes in the garden, the way he screams at everyone, but Percy doesn't think it's him. It's not being tortured, either, it's not another day, another miss with the knife at his neck. He's imagined many times what it's going to be like, to die. He's not scared of death.

He thinks it's that look on Hermione's wet, bloody face.

"I can't," he wheezes. He's actually wheezing, a hand clutching at his chest; it feels like his heart is trying to leap out of his ribcage. He's dying now, he's actually dying, Voldemort has poisoned him, he's going to suffocate alone in his own bloody flat. "I can't do this anymore!"

Snape just looks at him.

"I miss-- I m-miss-- I miss--"

"There are people that I miss too. They're all dead, boy." Snape stares at him hunched over on his bed, wracked with sobs from head to toe and tears streaming down his face, and there is nothing in his black eyes at all. "So count yourself lucky."

Lucky.

Right.

Snape still calls him boy. So do most people. Because his first name is too personal, too strange. And he doesn't have a last name.

When he can speak in complete sentences again, Percy tells Snape about Bellatrix.

"If you ever need anything from her, just tell her." He curls up on his side, looking to the wall instead. The drab, impersonal wall of his flat, with not a single family picture to be seen. Or a picture of anything. "I've told her to listen to you. Don't feel the need to run it by me."

Snape stares at him again. Whatever it is that's on his face then-- whether it be shock or understanding or affection or disgust-- Percy doesn't care to see it.

Snape puts him to sleep, before he leaves.

It's the kindest thing anyone has done for him since the tournament.

Aberforth warns Percy, before it happens.

"Lightning has struck.

Whatever you can do, do it now."

It's his last night as Minister, then.

Time to make it count.

Percy takes all the stolen wands, and goes to Azkaban himself.

And he's the bloody fucking Minister of Magic. No one left in the building doesn't know that, anymore. So when he reaches the prison and reaches it alone, no one dares question him. Not even a single mewl of a complaint as he orders the Death Eater guards out. One by one by one they all go, and there's no Dementors here, either, Dementors that won't listen to his commands. He saw to that months ago.

Which means the Muggleborns here won't be dying. Haggard, yes. Exhausted, and thin, and as grimy and pale as the stones underneath their bare feet. But they haven't spent the last year dying.

"Anyone that can fight, do it! Everyone else, get somewhere safe! Now!"

He opens cell after cell, hands out wand after wand. Grimy, shocked faces stare at him, faces that he knows, faces that he doesn't, Muggleborns that were captured nearly a year ago and don't recognize him, Muggleborns that were arrested later and know exactly who and what he is. It's hundreds of people, hundreds of lives compared to the dozens his assistants have been able to save, and all Percy has been able to do is spare their sanity.

They're alive. They're all still alive. They've lost a year of their lives, but not to Azkaban, not really. They'll survive. They'll make it.

They're not alone, in losing a year of their lives.

It's not long before Muggleborns are freeing each other, tearing off down the halls and smashing open cells, caving in the walls. The rain that pounds every day is soon pouring aside, the floor slick and damp, and Percy meets death glares and hugs in equal measure as apparation claps like thunder all around him.

Percy does not join them.

The Minister still has work to do.

He doesn't kill Umbridge.

He'd considered it.

But in the end, he does not kill her.

Her, or her staff, or her supporters, because Percy is the Minister of Fucking Magic. He knows what goes on in this building. In his building. And every form that escapes his notice happens because he looked at it first. He knows exactly who has fought Voldemort at Percy's side, and who had joined him for real. And Dolores Umbridge had joined him for real. She was not alone, either.

Percy doesn't kill them. He poisons them, instead.

Because they are all such bloody fucking fools. A bigger fool than Percy had ever been, even at eighteen and every single sign screaming at him that something was wrong and yet all he'd been able to do was clutch his promotion in his hands and beam up at Daddy like he'd done something to be proud of. They still think he's on their side, run in like a coward at the triumphant reemergence of Harry Potter to shovel evidence of his crimes into the incinerator.

He makes tea for all of them, tea spiked with something he's long since been immune to. He sits with them and starts sorting the files.

It only takes a few minutes for all of them, one by one, to stop moving.

And the Minister's work is never done, of course. Percy continues to peal through the building at a staggering, mind-numbing pace. He locks the door to Umbridge's office and takes all their wands for himself, he shuts off the Floo access, stopping fleeing Death Eaters in their tracks, he opens all the cells in the Ministry basement without even checking who's in them. It's his Ministry for one more day, and for one last time, he's going to make it do the right thing.

In the end, he doesn't know the war is over, until he turns a corner, and is met face to face with Kingsley Shacklebolt.

"Morning, Minister," he says tightly. He pushes his wand just a centimeter closer, the tip flicking from Percy's chest to the hollow of his neck.

In his smile, there's an edge of glee.

He's right. Aberforth's warning had come at early evening, and now, the sun is rising.

The sun is rising.

"In what direction does the phoenix fly?"

Kingsley stares at him. His face, like so many others, recently, transforms. Not in betrayal or relief or madness, no; this time, it's shock. He stares at Percy, and just like the Muggleborns, just like Umbridge, just like Hermione-- realizes he has never known him before in his whole life.

"To the west, to say goodbye." He covers his sooty face with suddenly shaking hands, letting out a nearly hysterical laugh. "Bloody hell. You're one of Aberforth's?! This whole time?!"

Yes.

And this whole time, at last, is nearly over.

"Your father--" And suddenly Percy is swept up into a back-breaking hug, and Kingsley just keeps on laughing. "The mad bastard! Boy, is he going to be glad to see you!"

It takes Percy more than a few moments to realize what he means by that.

That he thinks the disownment was for show.

"...Yes," Percy coughs. He extricates himself as soon as possible, smoothing his robes down. "Well. We still have work to do. Kingsley, if you'll-"

But Kingsley stops, suddenly, the grip on his arm twisting so tight it hurts. His face transforms again, but this time it's not one of relief. He stares down at Percy with heavy eyes, and his throat suddenly works, like he's not sure what to say.

"What is it?"

"I... think you'd better sit down for this, Percy."

Percy, terror suddenly clenching around his heart, does not want to sit down.

It's Fred.

He didn't make it.

For the first time in three years, Percy cries.

A week after the end of the war, Percy resigns.

It's his last request, to newly minted Minister Shacklebolt. He's already submitted all his testimony in writing. Every last report, every last filing, every last shred of evidence that he'd enchanted and transfigured and packed away neatly in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office down in the forgotten basement. He's already sat for an interrogation himself, under Veritasereum and Legilimency. He's already drawn memory after memory out of his head and given them to a penseive.

He's given them everything he knows, and it is Percy's request, and Kingsley's promise, that the trials can proceed without him.

It takes just a week, all told. Not very long at all. But long enough, somehow. People find him. His former assistants find him. Members of the Order find him. Professor McGonagall-- Headmistress McGonagall-- finds him. His hand gets shaken. Arms get slung around his shoulders. He's told that he is amazing, he is incredible, that they couldn't have done this without him (untrue), that they never doubted him for a second (lies).

Nobody says I'm sorry for your loss.

He might've appreciated it. At least once. From someone.

Anyone.

It doesn't come.

Fred is, after all, not his loss.

And in all the faces that he sees... not once do Molly or Arthur come.

Not once.

Not once.

With one last stamp of a nameless signature, Percy resigns. And that day, a little piece of him dies forever. He can almost physically feel it crack in his chest with the crinkle of paper-- the shattering of something that's been in his core his whole life. A fundamental piece of who he is.

Who he was.

Because he feels it wither.

And then it goes cold.

He leaves the Ministry of Magic for good.

Half a dozen Aurors had seen Percy sobbing his heart out on Kingsley Shacklebolt's lap.

He had been so distraught that he, once again, had needed to be sedated.

The headlines don't mention that. Or him, barely, at all. Just that Kingsley Shacklebolt, with assistance from the spies embedded in the previous regime, has taken charge, and is turning the Ministry around.

Percy cancels his subscription to the Prophet, after that.

Days.

Weeks.

Months.

Apparently he's a pretty good potionmaker.

Months.

He leaves Wizarding Britain.

No one tries to stop him.

Years.

Years.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The next time Percy sees a Weasley, it is 2003.

His home is ensconced away in the middle of nowhere. He has buried himself in a leprechaun forest in Ireland, the warm, tight-knit little cottage hidden so securely that it had taken even the leprechauns a few months to find him. Leprechauns don't like wizards, as a rule, but Percy isn't there to bother them, and certainly has no interest in their gold.

More to the point, the leprechauns keep Muggles, and even other wizards, away.

His home is still warded, though. Warded to the teeth. He knows if anyone gets within five hundred yards of it.

When someone shows up unannounced, just past sunset on a warm summer evening, he knows.

And when Percy slips out to meet the visitor from behind, with a disillusionment charm and a vicious hex--

He sees red hair.

"Percy," George says. He holds his hands up, both of them, up like he's surrendering. He faces Percy, and Percy's wand to his chest, and doesn't so much as flinch. "Long time no see, huh?"

Percy looks a Weasley for the eyes in the first time since he'd lost the name.

And he doesn't know what to say.

"Well? Aren't you going to invite me in?"

George Weasley has changed.

He wears his hair differently, now. It's in a ponytail, like Bill's, but with a long piece dyed black. But what would've once been the look of a rebellious teenager is now, somehow, that of a grown man. This is who he is, and he's secure in it. The gold chain Percy knows he'd only worn to give Molly a heart attack is gone, too. He's wearing purple robes with the Weasley Wizard Wheezes symbol on the shoulder and a vest and tie, all so colorful and busy; there's not even a splash of mourning on him.

Everything except for the black hair.

George does not call him a prat. He doesn't demand an apology. He doesn't ask what he's doing here.

He just sits there, and looks at him.

"I'm not going to make tea, if that's what you're waiting for." Percy folds his arms, and he, for his part, does not sit down. "What do you want?"

"Just to talk. That's it." George pauses, tilting his head a little. "We all talked and guessed we'd only have one chance at this. Figured I'd have the best shot."

There's a new-old scar, there. New to Percy, but old, very clearly, to him. It's just below his temple and vanishes under his hair.

"We," George says again. He suddenly looks a bit uncomfortable and clears his throat. "Just us, I mean. The kids. Mum and Dad don't know."

Percy isn't sure how he's meant to take that.

He doesn't even know how George had found him.

He does know that he doesn't want him here.

But he's not going anywhere, either. And Percy just feels a bit too old, to still be getting into scraps with his... not brother.

If it had been anyone else but George-- just George, for the very first time in his life, alone-- Percy thinks he would've thrown him out.

But it is just George.

And he doesn't.

"Fine." Percy sits down at his battered kitchen table, all marked up with stains from potions, scars from knives, an old sear that he's never quite had the heart to make go away. "Go ahead. Talk. But I'm not making any promises that I'll listen."

Looking at George like that... it's unsettling. Percy has known him since the day he was born. Brother or not, he knows George. But he does not know this newly quiet, too settled creature, who watches Percy with laugh lines around his eyes and a smile that is worn with years of grief. He doesn't know this person that has followed him inside without even a single breathed word of an insult, and instead now just sits politely at his kitchen table. He hasn't even eyed the extremely flammable dragonheart seeds that are settled just within reach of Percy's elbow.

He doesn't know him anymore.

George, slowly, with the air of someone in pain, clears his throat. "Right. Well." He folds his arms, looking about the tiny, cramped space. It's perfectly neat and orderly, not an inch bigger than Percy actually needs. He brews his client's potions in corner by the door, and cooks dinner in the one by his bedroom. Half the space is filled with an indoor garden of ingredients, and outside is just the same. The leprechauns get to raid it once a month, in exchange for doing his meager grocery shopping for him.

It's a life.

It's his life.

One he'd never thought he'd have. But his, all the same.

"First things first, I guess. Percy: none of us knew you'd been disowned. Mum and Dad didn't tell us. They made that call entirely on their own." His jaw tightens. His eyes, no longer boyish, sweep over him again, from head to toe. "And we all agree it was wrong. We wouldn't have agreed, if they'd asked us."

"I figured that, George."

He had.

Because that's how disownment works. A child can disown themselves, or a parent can do it to them, all on their own. No one else in the family need be consulted. And would Molly and Arthur have consulted anyone else? No. Of course not. Only Bill and Charlie would've been adults, then. And Percy has perhaps not seen either of them in a very long time, but he knows neither of them would've wanted anything to do with this. They might not have forgiven him, but they wouldn't have kicked him out of the family, either.

Of course Molly and Arthur had done this on their own.

Of course they had told no one.

And Percy is, still, disowned.

Because... that, too, is how disownment works.

Anyone can initiate it all by themselves. But reversing it is another matter. Being rejected by the family magics takes nothing more than a parent locking a child out, but to be accepted back in-- that takes everyone. Being shut out is not meant to be done lightly, and to be let back in, everyone in the family has to agree. Every single one whose magic once rejected him has to be present and consent to letting him return.

And they can't do that.

Because Fred is dead.

Percy is not a Weasley, and he never will be again.

"Did they finally tell you, then?" he asks at last, when George doesn't go on. He's had a long, long time to accept this, so there's no lump in his throat. "Is that why you're here?"

But George shakes his head. "No, actually." He lowers his eyes to the table, shoulders hunching over, just a little. His voice suddenly drops, something indecipherable thrumming in it."They've never once said a damn word about it. It was Bill that figured it out. He was looking around, at Gringotts. He saw your old accounts and realized what it had to mean, that your name was missing. Which is also how he got the idea that you might still be alive." His fists start to curl on the table, nails digging into the wood. "He tried, Percy. He knows all about this shite, Bill does. We thought it might be different for us, since I'm-- was-- a twin, that we could get around it somehow. We... we can't. I'm sorry."

A little tiny piece of Percy's existence, out here-- his safe, measured, utterly controlled existence-- cracks.

What?

What does he mean he's sorry?

What does he mean they'd tried?

"...what?"

George's voice is still a little thick. Heavy, almost, like it's fought past a weight on his lungs, a sense of mourning that is just as permanent as Percy's loss of a name.

Percy shudders, shaking himself. This time, there is a lump in his throat, but he swallows it down without difficulty. "Nothing."

George looks at him oddly, then. In a way that George has never looked at him before. It's with narrowed eyes, his head tilted to the side, and a glimmer there that makes something in Percy's chest shudder. He does not look at Percy like he's suspicious of him, or annoyed at the obvious lie, or fed up with his cold manner and obvious disinterest in this whole fucking charade.

He looks at him like he's worried about him.

It makes him skin crawl.

Another piece of his foundations cracks.

He should be insulted. He should be offended that the whole pack of them had done all this on their own without even bothering to consult him, just assuming he's been sitting around all this time moping, morose and inconsolable about something that happened nearly ten years ago. They had assumed without even asking that he still wants to be a Weasley.

He doesn't.

Whatever name is stapled onto the end of his, there's not going to be any Christmases at the Burrow or grandchildren to sit on Molly's lap. He's not a Weasley, and for a very long time, that's been mutual. Molly and Arthur were the ones to kick him out, but now, he's the one that doesn't want to go back.

Even if his former brothers had succeeded, Percy might well have just disowned himself again.

But... he'd never even once imagined that they would try.

They'd tried.

Why?

Percy had long figured for himself that this had been their parents' decision, but... that was all. The others wouldn't have cared, not really. He was-- had been-- their brother, and brothers were obligated to love each other. Living together in such close quarters for so long, it'd be impossible, to at least not find some common ground. But with the obligation removed--

Well, of course they hadn't cared, then. And especially not after all this time of what has very clearly been a mutual separation.

They wouldn't have gone so far as to cut him out themselves. But neither would they have missed him, once he was gone.

A very, very old grief stings in his chest. He's lived with it for so long he's almost forgotten what it's like, to live without the ache.

George clears his throat again. "Could they not do anything for that?"

Percy stares uncomprehendingly, and George just points, his finger wavering from his arm to his face. "I just thought I'd heard..."

Ah, yes. Right.

Percy still has the Dark Mark. And his blind eye.

The magic had left the tattoo upon Voldemort's death. Mostly. It can't hurt or control or track him, anymore, but neither can it be be removed entirely, either. But there's still things that can be done. The shape can be disfigured, the color faded; for the lucky ones, it can almost even pass for something else entirely. Percy hasn't looked into it very much.

He's left his alone.

It feels like a before and after. Before: Percy Weasley, Head Boy, Gryffindor, career plans laid out bullet point by bullet point at the Ministry. Pompous and arrogant, but also studious and disciplined, not well-liked but not disliked, either. The least liked Weasley, but he's still there, in every family Christmas card picture. He's got his spot next to Bill and behind Ron in every one.

And then, after.

Percy. Death Eater spy. No last name. No family pictures.

He wears short sleeves, unless he's got company. Which is not a thing that he often has. It helps, seeing it; makes the dichotomy crystal clear in his mind. That was before, and this is after.

He doesn't want to see the old him in the mirror. That's not who he is anymore.

He doesn't want to see a Weasley staring back at him.

"It doesn't hurt," he tells George, instead of explaining all of that. He hardly thinks it's anyone else's business besides his own. "And as for my eye, I can see well enough as it is to do my job. I didn't like the look of the implants, so I didn't get one."

"Well... if you're sure." George frowns, a little, his gaze still lingering on the skull on his forearm. "We've got some that look pretty good, if you're ever interested. Normal, I mean."

Somehow, Percy doubts that.

He waits.

George waits.

Percy waits some more.

It is all very unlike the George he remembers. The George he remembers was not ever one for quiet conversation, or allowing for silence. He does not sit patiently and wait for any one or any thing. If he has something to say, he says it.

Percy supposes that if anyone would have a right to be a different person now... it would be him.

Finally, it seems, George accepts that he will have to be the one to speak.

"Percy... Mum and Dad are-"

"No."

"Percy-"

"No." He sets his hands down, forcefully, forcefully enough to make the table shake. His heart thuds, pounding in his ears.

George, to his credit, goes silent.

"I am not going to sit here and listen to anything about them, George. I am not going to apologize to them, or give them the chance to apologize to me, or let you make a case for them." He pushes forward, and it's for the first time in years that his hot temper has drawn a spark. "This is my home. This is my space, George. I'm not welcome in yours anymore, so I made my own. I carved out a place for myself and I'm not going to let any of you take that away from me. If that's what you're here for, then you can leave now. And I will not let you come back."

He expects shock, at that. His foundations are shuddering under his feet, a shell around his heart cracking, and all he knows is that he expects George to fight back. To reel backwards and blink. To be stunned. Percy Weasley, disappointing their parents? Impossible!

Well, the thing is, he's not a Weasley anymore.

That's a part of himself he's had to let go.

But what he'd never expected, was for George to wince.

"I..." He looks away, hunching his shoulders a little. A cloud of something passes across his face, something that hits right in the pit of his stomach. "I wasn't meaning that. Really. I wasn't trying to defend them. I just wanted to explain."

Resentment still burns in his lungs. Old resentment and bitterness, a flare that he'd thought he let go of, too, he'd had to let go of. But here it is all over again.

Seems he can never quite let the Weasleys go after all.

"All right." Percy folds his arms, gritting his teeth until the pounding in his head fades. "Explain, then."

The new black bit of his hair suits him, he thinks. George is not so wild and fiery anymore. The look on his face can only be called grief, and the worn way it sits tells Percy that it is one that George is very, very familiar with. Surely no one has grieved more in the past five years than him.

Except this is not about Fred.

"They think you're dead," George starts hesitantly. He waits a bit, as if expecting another interruption. "They won't say it. They won't even admit to us that they looked for you. If anyone asks they say they're sure you've just gotten a job you like somewhere else and are doing just as well as they always knew you would. Busy at work, too busy to write. But Dad quit the Ministry. Kingsley offered him his job back, but he said he's never going back there again. And... every year on your birthday, Mum goes to the cemetery."

The hiss of rage in his chest isn't going away.

"Tragic," he mutters dryly. He folds his arms even tighter, and the look on George's face is quite nearly unbearable, so he shifts his gaze out the mossy window instead. "Perhaps if it mattered so much to them, they should've considered that before."

He wonders what they even think happened. It's public knowledge that he survived the war, just not what happened to him after it. But if he'd been murdered, by a surviving escaped Death Eater, or a Muggleborn that's never forgiven him, that would've been public, too.

He can only bitterly assume that they think he'd offed himself. That when Fred had died and his disownment became permanent, he'd just... given up.

Self-obsessed arrogant fucking narcissists.

No one has ever said that Percy is a particularly kind man. He is not. He is bitter, and spiteful, and proud. And so for a splitsecond all he can think is: good. Molly and Arthur think he died alone and unloved. They think it is their fault. That he was such a sad, pathetic little man that he had nothing in his life but them, and without Mummy and Daddy there to make everything better, he'd just imploded in on himself like a dying star.

They must be bloody fucking miserable. He has shattered their hearts nearly beyond repair.

All he can think is: good.

George struggles to clear his throat, this time. His own gaze drops to the table, his eyes clouded, and the look on his face can only be described as anguish. "The cemetery, actually. That's the thing. There's no tombstone for you. Which we thought at first was just because there was no body. But that's silly, you don't need a body for a tombstone, and when Bill realized they'd disowned you... Ginny said she thinks that's why. They wouldn't have been able to put your name on it. Your real one. We'd have all found out."

Percy isn't sure what he's supposed to say to that. It means, well, nothing to him.

He shrugs.

But this evidently means quite a lot to George.

"It's a fucking farce." He closes his eyes and presses his hands to his face, breath shuddering, struck somewhere between devastation and anger. "Like-- I'm sure they never meant this. They probably thought kicking you out would just pull the stick out of your arse and make you come back. Some stupid shite in the heat of the moment, and then it just kept going and no one wanted to be the one to fix it. I know they never wanted you dead, Perce. But then you and Fred were both gone, and instead of telling us the truth, they lied to us." He stares at Percy, eyes fierce and gleaming in the low light. "I think Mum was terrified she'd lose us, too. If we knew the truth. Which is a bloody joke, because we all would've been furious with her back then but if she'd just told us we would've listened. What's the point of being a damn family if they can just lie to us about something like this? Might as well have disowned the rest of us too while they were at it! Because it--"

George's voice cracks, then. He's held steady so far, all of this clearly something he has spent a long, long time thinking about, that he's rehearsed in his head, that he knows in his heart. But his voice still cracks. And the icy mask on his face cracks it.

"It's too fucking late to listen anymore," he hisses.

He's never seen George look like this before. He's never seen George be this serious about anything. Not once in his life. And Percy had been there from the day he was born until he was seventeen.

He doesn't just look mad. He looks... done.

For the first time, something uneasy slithers down the back of Percy's throat.

"What... what do you mean? Too late to listen?"

George just shakes his head. He sits back in his own chair, hand tugged through his hair. "Charlie's not speaking to them anymore. Not that he's told them that, or they've noticed yet. Bill is, but he's moved Fleur and Victoire back to France. Uh-- his wife and daughter." He winces a little, as if he hadn't meant to bring that up. "No disownment, but changed her name. Victoire Delaceur, now. He said that until they come clean on their own, he's not letting his daughter get treated like you. Again... still waiting for Mum to notice." He shrugs, but there's coldness, there.

Coldness. Not sadness. Not regret.

He's just done.

"Ron and Ginny don't know what they're going to do; I know Ginny can't bear to cut them out. I don't think I can either. But we're all in agreement that what they did was wrong. Is wrong. And if you want... if you need us to pick a side, for you. Then we're picking yours. End of story, Percy."

Percy sits, stunned.

He, frankly, has no idea what to say.

And George seems done talking, too. He sits back, then. He closes his mouth and just looks at him. Like that's all. Like he has nothing more to say.

It feels like George has punched him in the face and driven all the air from his lungs.

"That's..." he stammers, finally. It takes him a moment longer still to find his voice again, and it comes out rough and hoarse. "That's all a bit extreme, don't you think? As you said, they surely never meant-"

"Disowning you was a bit fucking extreme, Perce. Lying to us about it when they thought you were gone is way more than that."

Percy mentally draws a step back further, huddling behind wall after wall after protective wall. He's built dozens of them, and he is no fool to let George drag him back out now. Even as the very stones underneath his feet are shattering. "I was the one who said I didn't want to be a part of the family anymore."

"Yeah, because you were eighteen, and fucking stupid! And we were seventeen, and fucking stupid! All of us were stupid kids, Percy! Who cares!" His face is turning red and he shoves so hard the table rattles. "Mum and Dad were stupid, but they weren't kids. They don't get the same pass. You were the dammed Minister of Magic, Percy, you stood up for everyone else, it's about time you stood up for yourself."

And there's a lot of things Percy could say to that statement, first and foremost, that he had not, actually, been Minister of Magic. But suddenly he's nearly thirty and all he can do is snap right back like he's an angry little child again. "I did. I left. I left for good. I did what was best for me, George, and it wasn't picking another fight or begging on my knees that I was sorry when I knew it'd never be enough. That was standing up for myself. Leaving. And not coming back."

All of this means surprisingly nothing to him now. That Molly and Arthur are still grieving him, a whole five years later, that they think he is dead. That there's trips to the cemetery, now, and Arthur has left the job he'd loved so much his kids hadn't had proper wands for school. Perhaps he'll feel a little sting of guilt over that, when George is no longer in his bloody house, in his face, but that doesn't matter. People have found him here. George has found him here. If Molly and Arthur find out he is alive, then either they won't care to look for him... or they'll never stop looking until they find him.

He doesn't want either one.

So he won't tell them at all.

That is standing up for himself. Whether George likes it or not.

Percy has already spent his entire childhood being the responsible one. The youngest to not get a Christmas present, when they couldn't afford it for everyone. The one to have to grit his teeth and just do without when all five of them needed something and what Molly needed was for him to rock Ron to sleep while she changed Ginny. The one time that he had needed something, their forgiveness and their grace, he'd instead found out that firecrackers hidden in Molly's cake on her birthday was nothing more than a good laugh but a returned Christmas present was such an evil act it was permanently unforgivable.

They'd thought he was such an incompetent joke that the only possible reason he could've been picked to be Fudge's mere assistant was his last name. And he's sure shown them, hasn't he? The youngest Minister of Magic in history, and he'd done it during a war, and he'd made a fucking difference. And he had done it on his own. Absolutely no one can ever claim that anything he'd done was thanks to the name he'd used to have.

So Percy does not really care if he is being irresponsible, for once. If they've decided they can forgive him now, maybe they should've thought of that before doing something that was supposed to be permanent. He's not a toy they can toss aside when they're bored with him, then pick up when they want to play with him again and just sew up the torn bits. 

Being irresponsible when there's people under his care is wrong. Being irresponsible by choosing not to fix someone else's goddamn problems?

He's battling a whole childhood of instincts when he says that that's allowed. But it is. It is allowed.

And as for what he wants to do with George--

Percy does not know.

Because George is right, too. There's a difference, between making a mistake at eighteen, and making it in their forties.

It does mean something, that George has not come here today to demand that he return to London. That he and all his other former siblings have been speaking in secret, probably for a while, now, and gone out of their way to find him, not to drag him back, but just to talk to him. It means something that that they've decided together that they are picking his side.

That whatever happened in the past, they're willing to try.

If he is.

Because Percy has not spoken to any of them in almost ten years. He has missed Hogwarts graduations, weddings, funerals. There is a baby-- at least one, perhaps more-- that he has never met. None of them are the same people they were before, and Percy is, by definition, not their brother anymore.

And Percy is not the same person either. Percy is no longer just Percy No-Last-Name with a Ministry stamp in his hand. He has clawed himself back together after the war, the last remaining bloody broken pieces of himself. He has glued the pieces back together like a broken vase and spent years smearing salve over them until the cracks are at last turning into something else. For two years he killed people, and watched others die that he could save, and lied, and was tortured, and lost his eye and his heart, and had the people he'd once loved and prized look at him and see a monster. He spent two years paying for his mistakes. Whatever absolution there is for people like him, he has as much of it as is possible to get.

And for five years after it, he has had to learn how to live again.

For his own bloody sanity, he has had to move on. Molly and Arthur are in that past that he is not, will never, revisit. For a long time, his former siblings were there, too.

He doesn't know if they still are.

George quietly sits forward again. He's gone pale, bright hair putting his face into an almost bracing contrast. Because for all his red and black and purple, the shadows under his eyes for a moment make him look like he's painted in nothing but shades of grey.

"I lost half my soul, Percy. I'm never going to be whole again until the day I die. And I've spent a lot of time doing that. Trying to die." He lifts his chin, as if waiting for a reprimand, but it doesn't come. "I know Fred would forgive me. For anything. He's waiting for me and there's nothing that'll make him stop. But I also know that's not what he wants. He doesn't want me to wait for him while he waits for me, he wants me to bloody live, Percy. He wants me to spend the rest of my life, however long that is, doing what we've always done. Making the people that we love smile. It's why I can't cut out Mum and Dad, no matter what they did to you. But it's also why I had to come here today. Because not a single fucking one of you is getting left behind."

George's eyes are wet. He's not really crying, even; there's no waver in his voice or face. But the tears slide down his face all the same.

Percy is.

It's been a very long time, since he's cried.

The lump in his throat is back. He has to sniff, swallowing again, then again, as hard as he can; it hurts in his chest, throbbing, an old hurt that's scabbed over but never quite healed.

For all that his former family has made him hurt, he's always known that no one has hurt worse than George.

"I'm sorry I missed the funeral."

It suddenly comes out. He just has to say it. It's one of the few apologies he has left in him. But George just smiles sadly, like he knows the old bitterness very well too and has had to learn to let go.

"I think maybe we both needed a few years to be able to have a civil conversation. Fred never would've let it go if we used his funeral as an excuse to fight." He breathes deeply for a moment, shivering, a little, like he's taking all the hurt in the room and just swallowing it back down, smothering it deep. "Whether or not you want to see us again after today... we all agreed you had to know that much. That whatever happened in the past-- we can move on if you will. We had to tell you that no matter if our magic lets us say you're our brother or not you're still ours. There is no magic in the world that could change that. You're ours, Percy. That if we could've made you a Weasley again, we-- w-we--"

"Wood."

George sniffs, his voice cracking. "Well, y-yeah." He wipes his face with trembling hands. "We would've."

Percy sighs. And, like soft cream melting into a simmering hot potion, one of the walls just crumbles down.

"No, George. Wood. Percy Wood." He has to take a deep breath himself, slowly bearing the wave of emotion until it crests back down. "My name is Percy Wood, now."

This, finally, gets him to stop crying.

"You're..." George stares at him dumbly. He looks almost like he's been hit in the head with a block of concrete. "You're married?"

"Do you see any room for a husband around here?"

"But--"

George blinks frantically a few more times, staring around the small space as if Oliver and his broomstick might just pop out of the nearest cauldron. Percy keeps it up for a few more seconds, then finally takes pity on him, allowing himself to smirk. "It was Penelope's idea. She's the one who figured out how it worked... and found me in the first place. But magical adoption doesn't work with a non-magical family. Oliver's a half-blood, though." He shrugs; George continues to gape at him. "We did do it in a church. His parents insisted. Legally mine, now, as well."

He's dropped the Ignatius, now, even. And the Percival. Legally-- magically-- it's just Percy Wood.

Percy Wood.

He thinks he's finally getting used to the sound of it.

Percy still can't quite call Oliver his brother. He knows what a brother is, and it's loving someone every single day of their life, or them loving him every day of his. It's being raised together, and finding a way to fit their lives together when they wouldn't do that for any other person. Percy and the twins are-- were-- incredibly different people, and never for a single moment would Percy have wanted anything to do with them if they hadn't been... his. And he was theirs.

But they had been.

That's what his former brothers are, to him. And Oliver is not that. He and Oliver were not raised together. They have never been five and three years old and hated each other but still had to find a way to love each other. They are family, and Percy isn't sure what the word for them is, but it's not brothers.

He also thinks he would actually die, just die, before calling Mr. and Mrs. Wood Mum and Dad. Even their first names are still a bit much for him.

Perhaps there's not really accurate titles for the family that has adopted him in his twenties. But they are his family, all the same. Oliver and Penny had been determined to give him a name again, and they had. His new name had bloomed into existence on the Wood family tree, he'd watched it happen right there in that church, and for the first time in years, he'd had a place that he belonged.

George finally manages some semblance of recovery. He rubs his face again, and at first he just looks fairly stunned. But then his gaze shifts back to Percy, and the shock fades away. He looks at him with a slow sense of understanding, as if he's a puzzle, and he's putting him together piece by piece.

A bit how Percy has felt this entire time, faced with George: nearly ten years older, a survivor of the Battle of Hogwarts, and... alone.

It makes sense, that both of them would feel like they're missing a few puzzle pieces now.

"We went about this all wrong, didn't we?"

Percy furrows his brow. "How do you mean?"

"When Bill called a kids' meeting and told us about you. We..." He looks away, seeming to find it difficult to swallow. "All any of us could think about was fixing it. That if we could just get around the requirements for the ritual somehow... none of us ever stopped to ask if that would've been what you wanted."

"That's never stopped you before."

The words come out before he's even decided if he actually wanted to say them. George winces, and then Percy winces, too. What is wrong with him? "I'm sorry. I'm being unfair."

George grimaces a little, but underneath is something much worse, like what Percy has said has actually had a real effect on him. "No, you're being a jerk. I'm not sure I can say you're being unfair, though. We did not think about it. We were only thinking about ourselves. Not whether or not you... still wanted to be ours."

Percy, once again, finds he can do nothing but stare at him.

He's-- right. And that's what is so shocking. Fred and George were never right about anything. Certainly not about anyone else's feelings.

They had never cared to be right about anyone else's feelings in the first place.

It's not just the war. It's not just getting older, or losing Fred.

Somewhere along the way... George has made the active choice to grow up.

"I... thank you." Percy swallows; it's an odd feeling, thanking George, genuinely meaning it. It is an odd feeling to accept the apology in the first place, and not try to find a way to spin it into something else, something that doesn't matter, to pretend there is nothing to apologize for.

But this is too important to let go.

"Yes. I have, in fact, done a little more with the last five years than sit around wishing I was still a Weasley, George. I've-- moved on." There's no grief in his chest when he says this, or lump in his throat to swallow, or tears that burn in his eyes. It's just the truth. He has moved on. "You know being disowned isn't keeping me off the property. I could've shown up at any point these past five years on my own. I didn't, because I'm not looking to move back."

Percy thinks that if his name had changed-- again-- perhaps while drinking coffee with Mr. Wood, or eating Mrs. Wood's shepherd's pie--

Well. He wouldn't have been the one showing back up on the property, at any rate. But he thinks one of them might have. And it would not have been for a friendly hello.

This all was important to say. There can be no more of this if what this is, is a rowdy gang of former siblings scheming and plotting with a family tree and trying to figure out a way to just rewind the clock and slap the Weasley name back on him, like a hand-me-down that no longer fits. But that is the heart of it, then.

Why is George here?

At the end of the day, that's the question. Why is he here?

They had been brothers when they'd had no other choice.

Do they just want to restore the obligation? Family name or not, do they think he needs this, like Molly and Arthur, do they think that without them showing up he's just going to waste away out here because he's nothing without them? Is he a bloody charity project, to them?

Or do they want to be brothers again?

"Oliver quit writing to us around four years ago, you know," George starts suddenly. He gives Percy a weak smile, still looking rather rattled. "Didn't come around the shop anymore, neither. At the time I thought he'd just gotten busy."

Percy merely shrugs. He had not told Oliver to do that, or Penny. He's not going to make his friends choose. But the first thing Penny had said to him when she'd found him was screw your family, and despite the fact that he knows very well that Oliver is-- was-- friends with Charlie, and... George... Oliver had never once tried to push him to reconcile. Oliver had welcomed him into his family with open arms, and left flowers on Fred's grave for him, and all that's ever been said on the matter is asking him if he can bring dessert to the next holiday dinner.

Because Percy does have a lot of rules, for allowing Oliver and Penny to see him here, and that is one of them. He doesn't want to hear anything about the Weasleys at all. Not a wedding, not a funeral-- nothing. He'd needed a clean break, and he'd known if he was always hearing about momentous family events and pregnancies and the family getting bigger and bigger... he wouldn't have it.

Except now George is here.

And Percy, still, has not kicked him out.

Perhaps George was right. Perhaps they had both needed a few years before able to have this conversation.

"So... you see them a lot, then?" George's throat works, gaze almost anxiously meeting his own. "You're not just holed up here like a hermit crab?"

"No, actually. Believe it or not, I've always had friends, George, whether the rest of you noticed or not. We have a weekly game night." He shrugs again, and it's a struggle not to roll his eyes. "Suppose we've all gotten a little boring in our old age."

"You're not even thirty yet, Percy."

"Still a good few years older than I expected to get."

There's another short, decidedly uncomfortable pause.

He had expected to die. It's just not sustainable, to be a spy against one of the most powerful wizards in the world, and live. At a certain point it was just simply easier to stop thinking he'd make it out; he couldn't be terrified or panicking with every meeting with Voldemort if he'd already accepted his end. And somewhere along the way, hadn't it become fitting? He was able to be a spy because he'd been disowned, he was disowned because he didn't visit his father in the hospital or invite his mother in for Christmas-- it was only fitting that being a spy was his punishment. His homemade little prison, his earned suffering.

The thing with that, though, is that it also means that at some point, it would end. Paroled. Let out on probation early for good behavior. Or his sins are so unforgivable that he'd die. Either one. Either way, there was still an end date.

But there's been no end.

Because it was all a lie. It's comforting to believe there's a bigger meaning in it all, a reason these things happen, but there never was. He wasn't a spy because it was his punishment, he was a spy because he decided to be one, and he's not disowned because he deserves to suffer, he's disowned because Fred died and because Molly and Arthur were short-sighted and angry and made a mistake they can never take back. There's no absolution, there's no point, and whether he forgives himself or not is solely up to him.

He's still stuck on that step. The forgiving himself part. Accepting that what happened was wrong, and that just because he's made mistakes doesn't mean that there's something wrong with him. That just because he made mistakes does not mean that Molly and Arthur were right to do what they did. Oliver and his new family and Penny have dragged him a lot of the way there, maybe, but... they can't do it for him.

Percy gets up, and walks to add the moon-root to his waiting potion, right on its demanded schedule. Three counterclockwise stirs, and the color changes to pale silver, just like it's supposed to. He already has an alarm set to wake up and stir it again under the full moon tonight.

It's a good enough living. People pay well, for competently brewed potions. And Percy has found that he is competent at anything he puts his mind to.

It's not the career he'd ever dreamed of. But then, his life isn't that, either.

He leaves his back to George, absently watching the mixture shift and glisten under his hands.

He's supposed to give an answer, now. He is supposed to say whether or not he wants this visit to end. End, and never start again.

He's supposed to say something.

The silence drags on.

George, finally, stands up himself.

"I know this didn't really get off to the best start. So, let me start again." He clears his throat, facing Percy head on.

Percy, his back to him, can't see the look on his face. And he finds he's just a bit too much of a coward to change that.

"We all agreed that if you wanted us to, then we'd leave it here. Mum and Dad don't get to fucking decide who you are to us, to each other. But you do. If you were happy, and healthy, and said to leave you alone, then we would. Well, you're healthy, that's a start. Look a lot better than I have, these past couple years." He waits for a little bit, the only sound between them the fireflies outside. "What about it, then, Perce? Are you happy here?"

He can feel George's stare burning into his left forearm, and the tattoo he's never tried to remove.

"I did a lot of things during the war, George. I think that--" Percy stops, swallowing the words back down into his throat. Happiness may be out of reach, for some of us. But if there's anyone that can be true for now, it's George. No amount of blood on Percy's hands can compare to his loss.

If he says that to George, of all people, he might just hit him for real. And he would deserve it.

"I think that some people don't quite deserve to be happy," is what he must settle for instead.

But this gets the angry scoff just the same. "Yeah, and those people are in Azkaban, you twat." There's another rattle as George pushes back from the table. "Fred would be rolling over in his grave if he heard you say that."

"You sure do talk about him a lot." Then Percy blinks, stiffening at himself. "I-- I apologize. That was--"

Over the line. Surely. Surely no one is allowed to say that but family. And whether George wants to consider him family or a lot, nearly a decade of absence still has to mean something. That was egregiously over the line.

But George just laughs a little, harshly, like Percy has told a very dark joke. "Not you, too. Seriously?"

"What?"

"We spent a while not doing that, you know. Treating his name like it was a taboo. Funny thing, really-- pretending he didn't exist didn't make me stop missing him. Which was a rotten thing to do from the start. What made you all think Fred would've wanted that? He'd already died. You all acted like you wanted him forgotten, too."

There's a lot of old anguish, in those words. That George can say it so easily now can only come at the cost of years where he hadn't been able to at all.

Years that Percy has... missed. That he could've perhaps made just a little bit easier if he hadn't.

That he only now understands he would've been welcome in.

"Guess that's all I'm really trying to say. I've done all this shite before, Percy. Existing as little as possible. Showing off that eye and sick ink of yours to scare people off. Pretending. And that's not living, Perce. The only reason I'm still here is because I quit doing that, and decided to live instead."

Percy folds his arms, pressing the tattoo against his chest. For the first time in a very long while, he feels heat burn in his face. Seems his temper isn't the only thing that only the Weasleys can set off.

George isn't entirely right, but... he's not entirely wrong, either.

Percy is not dying, out here. He has a life. He has friends. He has a family, now. He's not going to hurt himself. That is never something he'd been going to do. Not even in the first bitterly lonely months before Penny and Oliver had tracked him down, and all he had were nightmares and screams in his head and a dead ex-brother that he didn't even have the right to call family. Turns out he can fuel himself quite well on spite alone, and... he'd had quite a lot of spite.

He's not running on spite, anymore.

He's just tired.

But George had had all those things too. And not one of them had been enough for him. Because spite may have kept him breathing, but what George is asking from him is to do more than that.

Just like he's had to make the choice to grow up... he also would've had to make the choice to quit just existing, after Fred's death, and live.

George has already lost one brother. Does Percy really have it in him, to ask him to give up another?

Does he even want to?

"Tomorrow," he stumbles out. He doesn't quite mean to do it, but once he starts talking he suddenly finds that he can not stop. "Oliver and Penny-- that's when they come by. I'm not making any promises, George. But if... if you were..."

If you want to. If you're sure. If you can stand me. If I can stand you. If you want me over your own parents. If you're sure you actually, truly want me. Because I won't survive this if you're not sure.

I won't survive this if you leave me again.

If you...

His throat stings. His back to George again, tears can burn in his eyes.

"...were free. Then..."

"...then?"

Percy closes his eyes until the burn subsides.

At the end of the day--

He has missed his... brother.

"Then," he says, "we'll see."