Work Text:
When all was said and done, the Ministry gave out Orders of Merlin like candy. Every Weasley had earned one. At the dinner table, all of them still grieving, they tried to be a family, and asked, to comfort each other, to understand.
About smuggling messages for the Order of the Phoenix, or hiding endangered magical creatures, or surviving the Death Eaters at Hogwarts. Or, if you had Percy’s youngest brother’s sense of reckless disregard for personal safety, apparently one went looking for bits of Voldemort’s soul!
“What about you, Percy?” asked Hermione, earnest.
He must have had something to say in response, perhaps not as smooth and tempered as he might have liked, and made his excuses. He must have had. That, or he had managed to nod, winced, and stood up and left the room entirely without a word.
Shit.
Percy had walked from the dining room into his own childhood bedroom, not entirely of his own volition. His feet picked him up and took him where they wanted. It was just as it was the day he’d left so few years ago, preserved just as that petulant boy had wanted it.
A thin layer of dust covered it all, but otherwise, it was identical. He’d loved this room, thought it made him so very grown up to have a room and study of his own, with his very own writing desk and fancy quill. Before the Ministry, before Crouch and Fudge and Voldemort, when Percy had believed in the power and the righteousness of institutions, before he’d seen it weaponized and his world brought crashing to a halt.
It had been naive, even back then. He had been a willing fool, which hadn’t got him anything but misery, in the end.
Someone’s knock broke through his lingering thoughts. “Come in,” he called out. Immediately he winced at the shakiness of his voice.
Bill entered, his brother that he’d been closest to, the responsible one who’d told him to take care and charge when he was younger, and came to hug him. “Percy,” Bill said, wrapping him up in a warm embrace like he was a child again. After a few moments, he let go, but kept his hands on his shoulders. “What happened?” he asked.
Percy shrugged. The Ministry had been the Ministry. Different and identical in fundamental and superficial ways.
“I stayed at the Ministry,” he said, remembering those long days and longer nights.
The day after the takeover, the word was that You-Know-Who tortured and killed Scrimgeour personally. Looking for Harry, still. It was always Harry, ever since that poor kid was born. Percy and his fellow employees had been left alone, if they hadn’t tried to fight the initial takeover.
Well. Except for some of their Muggleborn coworkers. The ones that were too open about it, displaying Muggle knick-knacks on desks or telling everyone they knew. He was too much of a coward to fight them, but he found the little Gryffindor courage he’d ever had somewhere to step in front of them. The Death Eaters who were watching laughed and Stunned him. The one time in his life he’d chosen to be brave, and he’d done nothing of worth. Story of Percy’s life, really. Never brave, never useful.
Whenever he tried to do something courageous , it backfired and left him mired in issues of his own making. Now the Death Eaters would watch him even closer than they would before, even if he hadn’t been a blood traitor Weasley.
Foolish Percy, pompous Percy, Percy the Prefect who thought he could do something and failed miserably. Even the twins were helping out with their products. All he could do was bring more suspicion on himself and his family .
And like the coward he was, he returned to the Ministry. It wasn’t like he had so many other options, Percy rationalized. His Mum and Dad were definitely being watched, and his brothers wouldn’t want him around right now.
He came to work as he always did, puffed up with pride and his belief in the Ministry . Percy Weasley was a perfect pureblood who’d disowned his blood traitor family to fanatically follow You-Know-Who. If he wasn’t, he would be brutally murdered.
Things hadn’t changed that much. A Death Eater was at the entrance instead of an Auror, and Death Eaters milled around the atrium, but for someone like him, it was business as usual.
Aside from the young man being tortured. But for yet another time in his life, Percy turned and walked away, promising himself he would do better one day.
“I just followed the rules and kept my head down,” he said. “Nothing like you all were doing. I wasn’t brave, and I definitely wasn’t a Gryffindor.” Even once Penelope had recruited him, he still hadn’t done much. Nothing like Ron, or Bill, or their parents. Nothing all that valuable.
Nothing that deserved an Order of Merlin.
Bill smiled gently in return, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and bringing them both to sit on the floor, leaning up against his old bed. “You’re Percy Weasley, notorious rule follower, and someone I’d always trust to have my back. You’re my brother, Percy. I know you. Of course you were brave.”
“I let it happen for too long,” he disagreed, “I didn’t get involved until Penelope asked.” He’d jumped at the possibility, but that was just wanting to seem heroic. Anyway, all he’d done was do what she asked, without taking any initiative of his own.
Bill frowned back at him. “You acted, Percy. That’s more than a lot of people did. What did you do?”
It genuinely hadn’t been much, to Percy. The odd words to Penelope, the few letters sent the Muggle mail, it had happened when he was asked, and it had never been much. The few family trees he’d forged and the archive records he’d found, those had perhaps saved a dozen people. “I kept working in the Ministry,” Percy replied.
He met Penelope in a Muggle restaurant, like they were teenagers in a relationship again. Candles were set on all the tables, and any onlooker would have thought they were dating. But they were in the Muggle world, where the Death Eaters would never venture.
Percy was disguised, and so was Penelope; their Charms and Transfiguration NEWTs weren’t for nothing. An older Asian woman sat down in front of him, smiling. “It’s been a while, Percy,” she said, smirking in a way that was uniquely Penelope.
“It has,” he agreed, and pushed up his glasses with a finger, even though they were perfectly fine where they were. “They’re coming for the families soon. I was talking to Euphemia Selwyn—you remember Mia—and all the Death Eaters and their families have been told about it.” His gut churned whenever he thought about his new coworkers like Mia, people he’d been friendly with at Hogwarts. People who maybe turned their nose up at Dad, but weren’t anything like the Death Eaters. “And the rest is in the mail, as always.”
She nodded, solemnity strange on her borrowed face, and leaned forward to him. “Thank you. We have other sources, but you have the most archives access. You’re saving lives, Perce,” she said, locking eyes with him, an intensity in her gaze impossible to ignore.
It wasn’t that much information, Percy didn’t think, but if it was valuable, he was grateful. “It’s all I could do,” he said. Then, to keep up appearances, he waved down a waiter.
Bill leaned back from him, something new in his assessment of Percy. He sounded flummoxed when he asked, “You were Clearwater’s main source?”
Percy had about the same reaction. “You knew Penelope’s group?” he said in return.
He nodded, something strange about his face that almost seemed like pride. “I worked with Julius. He brought me into Penelope’s group.” Something shifted in his face again, and his eyebrows tried to jump out of his face. “You must’ve been Herald,” Bill said, realizing something that Percy didn’t understand. “Herald told us that they were coming for the families, and she gave us names, something no one else could,” he explained, easily reading Percy’s emotions, as always.
“She?” he asked halfheartedly. Lying, of course, an obfuscation to keep him safe.
His brother nodded. “To keep you safe, Perce.” He looked Percy up and down again, and hugged him tight, his other arm flung over Percy from his own side. “Herald saved lives. Through sheer nerve and bravery. Tell our family. Tell them what Percy Weasley did in the war,” he said. Bill, to Percy, was always honest. If he thought that was the best choice, Percy didn’t have many objections. All that was holding him back was his own fear of discovery, no longer warranted with Voldemort dead.
Percy smiled, breathless as he stood. He could be a Gryffindor this time. He could be brave now, as he had been in the war. He walked down, back to the dining room he had so hurriedly left, hearing hurried heavy footsteps behind. Still, he opened the door quietly, and entered near silently, but the entire room of his family turned to look at him.
“Mum. Dad. Everyone,” he said, buoyed by a new feeling feeling. When he smiled at everyone, it lifted him up and gave him grace.
Hermione was the one that replied first, “Percy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
He shook his head. “It’s okay. I think I needed it.” He glanced at Bill, who gave him a covert thumbs up. Percy took a deep breath, and he began his own story, the story no one at the table had heard before.