Chapter Text
He's seven, when he's crowned the oldest in the family.
The oldest not already off at school, that is: seven years old to five year old twins, and a three year old little brother, and a two year old baby sister. He is the oldest, so he is the one in charge. And he does it well.
He's the responsible one. His mother always tells him that, that he is so grown-up, so mature, that she is so very proud. He has always been so grown-up.
Their parents tell him that he was born already grown, and it's a joke, of course, but sometimes Percy thinks it's really the truth. No one else likes to read instead of play, that's just Dad with the morning paper and Percy with a book and no one else. No one else is bothered by the constant mess, that's just Mum cleaning the kitchen and Percy making all the beds and no one else. No one else hates the twins' pranks, that's just his parents, handing down punishment after punishment with red faces and frustration boiling over, and Percy, slamming the door to his room just to get away from all the shouting.
Not-slamming. He's not supposed to slam. Little kids slam things, and he's not a little kid.
He is so very grown-up.
"You're so grown-up," his uncle says, fingers settling in his hair. "Too grown-up to be sitting in my lap anymore?"
"Too grown-up," Percy agrees.
Before he went off to school, Charlie had given him the talk.
"Being the oldest is your responsibility now, okay?" There's no ruffling his hair, not anymore, because that's for little kids, and today is the day he stops being one for good. "And Mum's got toddlers to look after, and Dad's working overtime, so you've got to help out and take care of everything else. That's your job. I know you can do it."
He's got a list. A list surely passed down from Bill to him and now to Percy. A list of bedtime and morning routines, Ron's favorite stuffie that he refuses to even try sleeping without, the accidental magic the twins pull off when they don't want to lie down for naps and how to deal with it, how to tell when Fred has taken two showers instead of him taking one and George taking the other. Ron won't eat breakfast unless the eggs aren't touching the toast. The twins aren't allowed to play in the swamp but they always try to sneak back there anyway. When it's naptime and Ginny is wailing, that gives Ron a headache, and the only thing that helps it is milk. When Fred and George fly higher than the second floor it means that their magic is affecting the brooms and he needs to get Mum right now.
Percy also doesn't like his eggs touching the toast. But Ron is a little boy, and Percy is not. So the plates get swapped.
The thing is-- the thing is, Charlie, and then Bill before him, they were grown-up long before he was. They didn't just live through the war, they remember the war. Percy is too young. Had been too childish. He remembers the curtains always being drawn but he hadn't understood why. He remembers Charlie sitting with him and the twins in the dark and his magic making the candlelight dance while Bill paced with a sleeping baby on his shoulder, and he'd never understood why they couldn't just play outside. Percy hadn't understood what was happening until it was over, but Bill and Charlie had. They'd been grown-up before he ever was, more grown-up than he's ever been.
Percy had been a little boy. He had needed them to look after him even when there'd been just so much else needing to be done.
Not this time. This time, he won't be a burden. Now he's going to help bear that burden.
Charlie never mentions that they all know there'll be no passing this list to the twins. Or to anyone else, for that matter. When Percy goes off to Hogwarts, the twins will not be the next in line to grow up. And when the twins leave, and it'll be just Ron and Ginny, there won't be any need for such things.
He's the last one to grow up, and the last one to need to.
Percy is much, much too grown-up for bathtime.
"Grown-ups take baths together," Bilius explains, patiently, the same way Charlie had with the list. A list of things he needs to learn about getting older. "With someone special. I'm special to you, aren't I, Percy?"
He supposes that's true. Mum pinches his cheeks, still, and Dad won't take any of his questions about the Ministry seriously. But Bilius tells him all about his work. He trusts him. He treats him seriously, man to man. Like someone who's helped raise four little siblings and has the responsibility to watch them every time Mum leaves the house ought to be treated.
"I suppose," he says, and Bilius's answering smile fills him up on the inside.
He hadn't understood the war at the time.
But... on some level, Percy thinks that he actually had.
He hadn't known what was happening. Their parents had never kept the paper inside where he could read it, had never ever talked about what was going on outside their home, whether it was Aunt Muriel's cottage or a "fun new place to play" with thick curtains and lots of dust or "oh it's just for a few days, love" with a whole second floor that they weren't allowed to be in and not a single book to read. But just like everyone always says, Percy had been born older, more grown up, more mature, and had skipped being a child.
He had known something was always wrong.
He'd known their mother was upset, when he and Bill and Charlie took the sleeping bag so the younger ones could have the beds, and he started to say how hard it was to sleep on the floor like that. It hadn't even been a complaint, really. He'd just been stating a fact.
He'd seen her wince, even as Bill suddenly hugged him too close, and Charlie laughed too loudly and changed the subject.
He'd known their father was doing something dangerous, because he'd asked, when one night after the next he still hadn't come home, and Mum had sat in the kitchen looking at the Weasley family clock they all learned to read before they could tell time. And she'd told him not to worry his pretty little head about it, but Bill had heard him and hauled him back to the stupid sleeping bag and told him never ever to ask about Dad like that again.
"It makes Mum sad," he said, "and big boys don't make Mum sad. Do we, Percy?"
He'd shaken his head no. And that was the last time he'd asked about Dad.
He got a cold from all the dust. That was when he learned what a cold was. Charlie explained it to him when he dragged him to their house of the week's rusted bath, and he shoved him in the water and put a cold cloth on his head and sat there next to him biting his fist. "You can't let her know you're sick. She's about to pop and Dad's off work because he's hurt and we can't afford-- just hide with me and Bill. K? Hide with us until we say you're better."
"K," he'd repeated, dazedly. "...pop with what?"
"Another brother, silly. Guess you're too young to really remember the last time."
He'd pouted, drawing his sore arms around himself in the water. "'M not silly."
He'd never quite seen Charlie look so tired.
"Course you're not. You're all grown-up."
He knows that what he and Bilius have needs to be a secret. Bilius has told him that, that he's a big boy who can be trusted to keep secrets. But that'd been a little condescending, honestly, one of the few times he'd felt Bilius had condescended to him, and he'd told him so.
Percy had known it needed to be a secret all on his own. His parents had told them that long ago, the second or fifth or dozenth time the kids had been all alone for the night in a newly unfamiliar house, told they weren't allowed to go outside, and that an Auror was there to keep them safe. All the kids got the same talk when they were old enough to understand the words, that there were places that it's only okay for Mummy and Daddy to touch at bathtime, and no one else should ever touch, no one else should ever ask. That if any of the Aurors ask them to keep a secret from them, that's not a thing an adult should do, and they'll never get in trouble for telling the truth. If any of the Aurors ever make them feel uncomfortable they're to tell Bill right away, and Bill will tell them when they get back, no matter what it is.
Which had led to a near-disaster when Fred had told Bill who'd told Mum that Dawlish had told him to keep a secret, and Mum had turned as white as the plates, and Percy listened at the door and found out the secret was Fred's accidental magic smashing a keepsake of hers that Dawlish had then fixed.
Perhaps it's no wonder that Fred and George ignore rules now.
But Percy knows all of that. And it's not that he thinks his parents were incorrect, or wrong, or... they just didn't mean it like this, is all. They weren't talking about him, because he's different.
He's just different.
He's not like Fred and George, permanently little kids no matter how old they get, or Ron or Ginny, who still get put down for naptime. He's grown-up, like Charlie, already on the Quidditch team, like Bill, taking twelve classes and thriving. Mum and Dad don't get that. He still has a bedtime, and chores, and gets made to play with the twins when all he actually wants to do is read like a grown-up. Mum and Dad think he's just a little kid, but he isn't. Bilius is the only one who doesn't treat him like that.
So he keeps the secret.
It's all right. They just wouldn't understand.
Charlie gets a growth spurt. Percy doesn't.
Charlie comes back for the holidays, grinning wickedly and two heads taller than him, and suddenly he's ruffling his hair like he's tiny again. "I win!" he declares, though just what it is he's winning is unclear, and he very unsubtly sidles up to Bill and stands as straight as he can and tries to not stand on his tip-toes. Bill still wins handily.
"Idiot, Seekers want to be small, what are you celebrating about-"
"What would you know about it, George? What would any of you know about it? I'm the one on the team!"
"That's just because you're the only one old enough! We know just as much about Quidditch as you!"
"I'm the smallest Seeker in the school! The smallest person on the team! I'm still the best one, now I just get to bully you two, too!"
Percy, suddenly so much closer to the tiny, immature, childish twins, and not close at all to off-at-Hogwarts official-Quidditch-player grown-up-Charlie, looks down at his hands. His small hands. Charlie in his professional school uniform and robes, and then Percy himself, wearing the same old sweater as the rest of the little kids.
His face warms up.
After Charlie leaves again, back off to school, with his old too-small uniforms left behind and a sudden Christmas present of new fitting ones in his trunk, Percy digs into his closet and steals the old ones for himself. They don't quite fit either but it's close enough, and he likes the way it looks in the mirror.
"Look at you!" Mum says when he comes down for breakfast the next day, messing with his hair and tugging the cuffs straight. "We've got a little professional in the house now, don't we! You look like you're ready to go off to work with Arthur!"
He's not a little kid. He knows when he's being condescended to. Patronized. Because he is not a little kid. He knows what those words mean.
Bilius will like it. Bilius treats him like an adult. He doesn't just say it, he actually means it.
Bilius will like it.
Bilius doesn't like it.
Percy is nine, and Uncle Bilius thirty-eight, when he storms in from the fireplace and throws himself on the sofa as if it has done him a grave offense indeed. He pulls his knees up and locks his arms around them and kicks a pillow in the way to the floor, which is not a very grown-up way to act at all, but suddenly he wants to do even more of it. He wants to scream and cry and fight, and then not get hugged by Mum when it's over, because a hug doesn't make it all okay whether she wants it to or not.
"That's not a very grown-up way to behave," Bilius says, but it's not a real scold. He sits next to him, kissing the side of his head. "Molly told me you couldn't come over last week because you were grounded. Want to talk about it?"
"It's so unfair," he snarls. And it is. It is unfair. He shuts his eyes, leaning in to the arm around his shoulders.
He does talk about it.
He talks about being left in charge for the day, a day just like any other. And of course it'd barely been an hour before Ron had started screaming bloody murder. But by the time Percy had gotten up there instead of watching Ginny, it'd been too late. His favorite kelpie stuffie was a spider, an actual living gigantic spider, the scariest thing Percy had ever seen in his entire life, except even scarier perhaps was Ron howling and sobbing and thrown himself onto the floor.
Percy had dragged him out the room and locked the door, but the twins had been laughing, laughing, and Percy had still been shaking, and Ron never once stopped crying. He'd smacked both the twins across the face, the way Mum does when they've done something really, really bad, which Percy hadn't had permission to do, but Ron had been wailing and they-- they'd just kept laughing at him, and he hadn't known how else to make them stop. Percy had sat there on the floor holding his little brother and begging him to stop, please stop, don't cry, until there'd been new crying from downstairs, and he'd rushed off to find Ginny had somehow climbed her way onto the table and then she'd fallen. Fallen all the long, long way to the ground, and she'd hit her head--
Molly had come back from Diagon Alley. She'd come home to Ginny wailing, and bleeding. Ron screaming his little heart out. Fred and George in hysterics, actual hysterics, laughing so hard tears were streaming down their faces.
And Percy. Stuttering. Stammering. Like a baby.
He'd barely been able to even get the words out.
She'd screamed at all three of them. Fred and George, who'd deserved it. But then also him. "You were supposed to watch her!" she'd shouted, because Ginny has this awful split lip, it's red and swollen and bleeding, and through it all Ron hasn't once stopped crying, and the very first thing the twins had done was whine that Percy had hit them too.
"She-" Percy stops, his face turning bright, bright red, he can feel it. He hides it in Uncle Bilius' chest. "She spanked all three of us and then sent me to my room and took my books away for days. Like I'm a baby. But I don't have a wand! I couldn't turn the spider back! What was I supposed to do?!"
Bilius coos and strokes his hair. He says how awful that sounds, how very unfair. And he's right. It is unfair.
"Dad got home after that. Arthur. But Molly was in charge before me, and if I messed up so did she, but she didn't get punished. Why is she allowed to mess up but not me?!"
Because she had messed up. She had. She'd even apologized for it.
She'd come to sit next to him on day three of nothing to do but lie face down on his bed and said that she was sorry. She knows he'd done his best. She was just so very scared when she saw Ginny was hurt, and that's how mums get when their children are hurt, but she's sorry for not being more fair with him. How's Fortescue's sound, hmm? His favorite flavor, as much as he wants?
He's still not allowed to babysit for another month. Arthur's going to have to leave work early so she can go shopping. And she messed up, she admits it, but no one spanked her or sent her to her room or took away her knitting.
What's ice cream supposed to do to fix anything? He's not a baby.
Bilius just sits there and lets him rant for a while. Lets him say Molly and Arthur, and use grown-up words that Molly even chides Arthur for, and rubs his shoulders. He lets him go until he's exhausted himself and run out of things to say, but he's still so angry.
"You want me to show you something, Percy? It's something that grown-ups do, to relieve stress." He puts his hand on his leg, his upper thigh, his big hand, big enough to nearly encircle the limb. "It feels very good. And after the week you've had, you deserve it."
Bilius is still the only one who understands him. Mum offers him ice cream, even though he's much too old for ice cream. But Bilius understands he's not a little kid, and he never, ever treats him like one.
"Yes, please," he says.
It does feel good.
It feels very good.
"Yes, just like that. Just like that. There's... there's a good boy, Percy... there's a- ow!"
"Scabbers? Scabbers!"
They both scramble, but Scabbers is diving in and out of the sheets, biting and gnawing only to dive back in the second a hand gets near him. Percy tries again and again to catch him, but he's never seen the rat behave like this before. It's wild and bloody and violent and finally he can't do anything at all but throw himself on top of him. "That's enough, Scabbers!"
"Is that your fucking rat?! What's wrong with it?!"
"I don't know, I've never seen him act l- Scabbers, stop!"
Bilius jerks back from the bed, still half-dressed, his hands and face covered in blood and tiny bite marks. "Leave that runt at home, next time," he growls, but Percy is too busy trying to keep Scabbers where he is to really listen.
Finally he manages to wrestle his pet back into his cage, one hand squeezing around him and the other fumbling for the lock. And it's only when he does that, shoves Scabbers inside and jams the lock back into place, that he realizes that it was just Bilius. Percy's hands are completely unscathed. Meanwhile his uncle looks like he'd just been hit with a lacerating hex.
He's never seen Scabbers be that discerning before. Normally, when he bites, he bites everyone. Percy certainly has garnered no special affection by being the one to feed him.
"Stupid rat," he mutters, sitting on his heels and glaring at him. Scabbers glares right back. "Uncle Bilius is a friend, Scabbers."
He hadn't known rats could snarl, until that moment.
Scabbers doesn't get brought over to Uncle Bilius's anymore, after that.
Sometimes Bilius makes him feel good. Sometimes Percy makes him feel good, and Bilius strokes his hair and calls him an amazing little boy.
Sometimes Bilius doesn't make him feel good. Sometimes it hurts.
But that's normal, he says. That's what grown-ups have to do, like when Mum takes a deep breath when Ginny's been wailing for hours, or just folds her arms instead of shouting when the twins are laughing at a broken window, or when she smiles at Ron's burst of accidental magic that smashed dinner against the wall. Sometimes things hurt, and little boys cry, but big boys learn to grit their teeth and smile.
You're a big boy, aren't you, Percy?
Once it hurts, hurts a lot, and Bilius sits back and looks at his hand and his face goes bone white. "Shite, shite, shite," he mutters, "shite," and suddenly he tears off at a run. Percy is left alone, to try to find a spot that's comfortable, but there's just not one. He grits his teeth and buries his face into the pillow so his uncle can't see he's not smiling and breathes.
"Told your mum you have food poisoning," he says gruffly, and he's already moving to help him out of his clothes. "I'll wash these, and you can sleep over tonight. That okay?"
"Of course." He thinks he wants a shower, a hot shower, but Bilius always wants him to take baths while he's here, so he doesn't say anything. Baths are for little kids anyway. "What's... what's the matter?" Because obviously something is.
"Just... thought you might sleep better here tonight. It's our little secret, you know." He smiles, or tries to, but looks more like he's gritting his teeth too.
Their little secret, yes.
He's ten years old-- just a few weeks before Charlie and Bill come back home from school-- when his mum mentions that he's spending so much time with his Uncle Bilius lately.
It's just that. Just a mention. There's no accusation or question in there. Just an offhanded little aside as she sews up a hole in George's jacket, and that's she glad he gets along so well with his uncle.
For the first time, Percy... doesn't know what to do.
It's his little secret with Bilius, of course. He can't possibly say. He doesn't want to say. Bilius would get in trouble because no one would understand, would ever listen to Percy insisting that he's grown-up, that Bilius has never forced him into anything, he is the one that chooses to go see him.
But.
For the first time, it doesn't feel good.
It's not that he necessarily feels bad about keeping a secret from her, period. He has Bill's old school books in his room stacked-up-pretend-like in a box that she thinks is just for later, when he needs them for his own third year, because she doesn't like him studying so hard now. But he reads them all the time. He likes them. And he doesn't feel bad about that.
But he feels bad about this.
He doesn't want to tell her.
But a little voice in his head says that he should.
Uncle Bilius says that sounds like his conscience.
"When you get older," he explains, "I think we all start to get this little voice in our heads, that speaks up when you know you're doing something wrong. That's just a part of growing up, Percy."
He looks at him oddly, then. Tilts his head a little, looking him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time, the very first time.
"...what?"
"Oh, nothing." He reaches out to touch his face, then stops, ruffling his hair instead. "What was it that Molly was asking about, anyway? She finally find your stash of Bill's books?"
Percy doesn't answer.
Two weeks before Hogwarts, he goes to visit his uncle for what would be the last time.
He's wearing his Hogwarts uniform, Charlie's old one, but Mum has spent weeks tailoring it so it fits him so well that no one can tell. Except for the faded patch on one elbow. There's no house crest yet and the tie is black, black like Dad's, and he just can't get enough of how he looks in the mirror. He's just like Bill and Charlie. He's just like them. Not even eleven yet-- his birthday is next week-- but he looks exactly like the pictures of his older brothers on the mantle.
He's finally going to school. He's even got a wand of his own, a proper wand (well, Charlie's old one, but still.) He's going off to live in a new room with new people, new people his own age and not babies he's meant to look after, and to study and work hard, and he's old enough that the Ministry says he's allowed to learn magic and that his parents trust him to represent the family. No one can call him a little kid any more.
He stands there for Uncle Bilius and he beams. His shirt tucked in perfectly, his glasses polished, Charlie's robes buttoned and even his shoes shined until he'd finally gotten rid of all the annoying grass stains since his brother can't keep a single thing that he owns clean.
"I'm going to be a Ravenclaw," he announces, tugging at his black tie. Weasleys are always in Gryffindor, but no one else in the family studies like he does. He's obviously a Ravenclaw. "Maybe Mum and Dad will disown me and I'll have to come live here with you."
It's just a joke, of course. They've already given him the talk, the same talk they gave Bill and Charlie, that no matter what house he's in they'll love him just the same. Even Slytherin, Dad had said, through a little grimaced twist at the mouth.
But Bilius doesn't laugh.
"Right," he says, slowly. And he does that thing again, that thing he's been doing more often, lately, going to touch his chest or his face, to stroke down his back, but suddenly his hand just sits in his hair instead. "You just look so... grown-up."
"Right? Don't I?"
"...right," he says again.
Bilius kisses him on the mouth before he leaves, that day.
It's for the last time.
When Sorting Hat gets put on his head, it goes very quiet, for a very long time.
"What house," it asks finally, "would you like to be in?"
Well, Ravenclaw, of course.
"Not Gryffindor? Every Weasley before you has been one, you know."
Well.
"Yes?"
I just don't think I am very... brave.
He's not brave. He never has been. Smart? Yes, he knows he's smart. But brave? When has he ever been brave?
He's off to school, now. And Fred and George and Ron and Ginny are not. And Bilius is... he's...
Not that it matters, of course. Bilius isn't a bad man. He is not like that. What he and Percy have is something special. Now that Percy is at school he's not just going to trade him in for a younger model. Obviously. And, well, Fred and George, they don't keep secrets from each other, so it'd be impossible with them anyway-- not that it matters, there's no secret to keep, Bilius wouldn't do that, but Percy... he has said nothing. He has said nothing to his parents, ever, because he can't. He simply can not. And so if he's wrong, if, if...
Bilius had hated him in his school uniform. He always said Percy was so grown-up, but when he'd gone to show off for him, the most grown up he's ever looked in his life... he'd hated it.
The hat, again, is quiet.
Then:
"I think that you are a very normal child. Exactly as normal as the girl who wore me before you, and whoever will wear me after you, and your brothers before you. I also think that bravery is a choice that we all make. And I have a feeling that someday, you are going to chose to be very brave indeed."
Percy gets sorted into Gryffindor.
He thinks he'd have preferred Ravenclaw.
It takes four letters to Uncle Bilius, and four letters that don't get a response, for him to stop writing.
He thinks about Fred and George. Nine years old, not seven, and two peas in a pod. Never alone, not ever. There's no secrets that they keep from each other, not even one.
He thinks about Ron.
Seven years old.
But... Bilius is not--
He isn't--
He can't be.
The first time he wakes up with his face wet, he's alone.
His roommate is probably off watching early-morning Quidditch practice again, he thinks dazedly, which it's so stupid, that that's the first thing he thinks. His stomach hurts and he rolls up into a ball, tucked into the corner of his bed. Then suddenly he doesn't want to be in bed at all and he jerks to the floor, pressing himself back against the wall.
It doesn't even make any sense. Nightmares are supposed to be about bad things. Ron has nightmares about the spider. Bill and Charlie had nightmares about the war that Percy was too young to understand but too old to not remember. The twins have nightmares about when Fred's toy broom had broken in mid-air and he'd fallen twenty feet.
But Percy has nightmares about... Bilius? His own uncle?
Because it was a nightmare. That is unmistakable. He'd been with Bilius, something he's done a dozen times, but the dream had not been a pleasant one. He'd been scared. He'd been in pain.
He hadn't wanted it to happen, and it had anyway.
But that just doesn't make sense. It's not logical at all. How is he having a bad dream about something that he's not scared of?
Bilius loves him, he tells himself over and over. He loves me. Bilius makes him feel good. Feel special. Feel important. That dream, it's like he's a-- a-- he can't even think the word, he's not sure what the word even is. But it's not true. His head is just confused. Bilius hasn't replied to any one of his letters but he's just busy. He has to be. Because if he's not--
Oh, Merlin.
He writes one more letter. One last time.
He writes that he hates Hogwarts. He writes that he is lonely, and scared, that no one likes him, not even his own brothers. That he wants to come home, but even more than that, that he wants to see him. That he really, really wants to see him.
It's a lie. Percy is having an excellent start to Hogwarts. It's manipulative, and he knows that, and he does feel just a little sting of guilt, but... the Bilius that he knows, the Bilius that has said over and over that he loves him, would never ignore that letter. He'll come straight away, and Percy will apologize for lying, and find out why his past letters haven't been answered, and that's that.
All Bilius has to do is read the letter.
Bilius doesn't come.
He starts having more strange dreams.
Not... nightmares, necessarily. Nightmares are bad dreams that make little children wake up screaming or crying, knocking on their parents' door to sleep with them for the night, and that's not what this is. He doesn't bolt awake in a cold sweat, or shouting and waking his roommate, or toss and turn during the night.
But the dreams are still strange.
He dreams about Christmas, not a past holiday, but a future one. Percy is older, as tall as his parents, wearing Ministry robes and with an old Head Boy badge on the mantle. Every single one of the family is there, Mum, Dad, Bill, Charlie, Fred, George, Ron, Ginny. And Uncle Bilius, too. But he doesn't kiss him or stroke him or tug him towards the loo when no one's looking. He's just his uncle. A normal uncle. He gets them all presents and he sits at the table next to Dad, his brother, and it's a normal family dinner, just like the dozen ones before it and the dozen ones after it.
He dreams that he tells his parents, and everything's okay. They love him just the same, and don't think of him any differently at all, and nothing changes except this boulder is gone from his shoulders and he never sees Bilius again.
He dreams of being younger, a child, an actual child, and going over to his uncle's home, and his uncle still gives him books and makes his favorite dinner and nods when he complains about his parents, says yes, it's very unfair, isn't it?, but that's all. He doesn't do a single thing more. Once he takes off his shirt, and it's just to show him how to swim in the lake.
Percy doesn't even know how to swim. None of his family does.
He keeps waking up crying. The dreams don't scare him, they're not frightening; they devastate him. He wakes up sobbing, pressing his pillow to his face so Oliver can't hear, feeling so awful he can barely even go to class and never understands why. They're just dreams about nothing, a meaningless future of a Christmas that'll surely come to pass it won't come to pass so why on earth does it make him feel this way? Why does he care?
He remembers Bill's Divination textbook, his intro one, the one that he'd read last summer. It had said that dreams, especially a wizard's dreams, always mean something. A Seer endured dreams about the future, a concrete warning of things to come, but it was worth it to think about dreams even for those without the gift of prophecy. It was a way for the subconscious mind to speak to the conscious one. His conscience, Bilius had said. Recurring dreams, whatever they are, mean there's something that the subconscious is trying to say.
His conscience is trying to tell him something.
The third time it happens, not a strange dream, but a violent dream, Oliver is there. Sitting hunched over on his bed, quill in his mouth, surrounded by too many textbooks and too many snacks. Percy flinches away with a muted shout, lingering sensations clinging to him like cobwebs, the feeling of someone on top of him. He kicks the sheets off and nearly catapults out of bed.
Oliver stares at him.
"S- sorry," he pants. He's still panting. "Bad... bad dream."
Oliver shrugs, and goes back to his homework.
The Silencing Charm is a second year spell.
But, Percy thinks that that's all right. First year coursework is pretty boring for him anyway (maybe he really should've been a Ravenclaw.) Figuring out how to make it last longer than a few minutes without wearing off is more difficult, but, again, first year coursework is already boring for him. It only takes him a few weeks to manage casting it on himself at night long enough to last until morning.
It usually wears off before his first class.
He writes another letter. Uncle Bilius doesn't reply.
He goes home for Christmas. Him, and Charlie, and Bill. It's the normal holiday break, just Percy now is in his room doing homework instead of helping Mum clean and cook for the big day. Charlie plays Quidditch with the twins, and Bill does his homework, too, five times the amount that Percy has. Once Percy tries to do it with him-- quietly, of course, not asking for help-- but it only lasts for half a day before Bill says it's harder to concentrate when he's not alone and maybe Percy would enjoy playing Quidditch with the twins instead.
He'd used to be closer to Bill. To Charlie. He'd felt it was the three of them and then the four of the others; them three, the oldest, the most grown-up, the ones in charge, and then the other four, the youngest, the ones who still need looking after, and being told what to do. But ever since they'd gone off to Hogwarts without him... he's not sure. It's just not the same.
Bill and Charlie are still close. And the four youngest are their own little band of chaos munchkins, their mother calls them. Percy certainly isn't a member of their group. But he's not really a member of Bill and Charlie's anymore, either. He's just his own little group of one.
As usual, Bilius shows up on Christmas Eve.
Dad is always so glad to see his brother. The squirm of guilt in his stomach when he watches the two hug is brand new, and Percy suddenly finds himself staring at his feet. And then he gets hugged, too, but it's just the same as everyone else. He ruffles his hair, and he jokes about buying Quidditch tickets for him and books for the twins, and doesn't linger as he moves the hugs down the line.
He doesn't linger on Ron, either.
"Did... did you get any of my letters?" he asks, when they're semi-alone. He hangs up Bilius' coat, the expensive dragonhide one. Mum had once grounded the twins for a week when they stained it. "I'm just not sure if they got lost in the post? You didn't reply, so..."
"Hmm? Oh, yes." Bilius pats him on the shoulder, but he's already not really looking at him, instead his attention turned towards the rest of his siblings already gathered in the living room. "Sorry about that, kid. It's been real busy at work this season."
Kid.
Something cold freezes in his stomach.
Bilius had never called him kid.
Christmas morning is the same as usual, too, the too-big too-noise too-rowdy giant family breakfast. Everyone in their pajamas and all excited for gifts, even too-cool Bill, even Percy, if he lets himself admit it, but of course the littlest ones get to go first as they all huddle around the fire, bundled up in blankets and the snow piling up outside.
Bilius had used to sit next to Percy. Every time. He'd never touched him, of course not, not in front of his parents, but he'd always been next to him. My favorite nephew, he'd called him, one arm around his shoulder, his leg pressed up against his.
Today, he sits on the arm of the couch.
Next
to
Ron
That night, he throws up.
The day that Uncle Bilius leaves, Percy very conveniently finds a button of his, dropped underneath the table just when they're cleaning up from breakfast.
"Must've played too rough with Fred and George," his dad sighs. "Go on, Percy, hurry up, before you miss him!"
He hadn't played with Fred and George.
Percy stands out in the cold and the snow, his dressing gown paper-thin and his socks slowly soaking through. He can feel his toes turning blue and the cold biting into his skin all over. Bilius, all dressed up and ready to go, and Percy, in his old ratty pajamas.
He's never felt more like a child in his life.
"If you touch Ron, I'll tell them."
Bilius just looks at him.
"I'll-- I'll t-tell-- I'll tell them everything." He holds his head up high, teeth chattering, but it really is just from the cold. He's not scared at all. "From the start, when I was seven. And you... you-"
"I what?" He folds his arms, and completely ignores the button still in his outstretched hand. "What exactly are you going to tell them, Percy? Did I ever make you come over to my house?"
Percy freezes.
Bilius steps closer. And closer. And closer still, closer all the way, until there's barely even any air between them. His hand slides up, but not to caress him, or take the button.
It settles at the base of his throat.
"Well?" he pushes. The look on his face is not one that he has ever, ever seen before. "Did I ever threaten you? Did I ever do anything without asking you first? What precisely are you going to tell Arthur, Percy? Did I, or did I not, make you feel good?"
He's stock still. He can't move. Shivering, still, but it really is from the cold. It's like Bilius has carved him out of his head and thrown him down the field. He feels disconnected from his body; floating, almost, shivering on the outside but inside there's nothing at all.
Bilius apparates without taking the button.
That night, when everyone else has gone to bed, Percy slips into Ron's room.
Ron is still so small, a bedtime hours before their parents had gone up themselves. He's all swallowed up by the blankets, the bed much too big for him, and for just a heartbeat his breath is taken away by just how tiny he is. Percy is small himself, still awaiting his own growth spurt, and he's always been lanky, but he could pick Ron up and carry him downstairs right now.
He's seven years old.
And he's so young.
Percy locks the door with his wand, and then, he shakes his little brother awake.
"Ron. Ron!"
It takes a minute or two to get him up, actually sufficiently awake instead of just grumbling at him to go away. And he still looks about to nod off, so Percy then yanks him off the bed and makes him sit with him down on the floor.
"You can't ever go over to visit Uncle Bilius alone. Not ever, Ron. Do you understand me?"
Ron just blinks up at him with big, sleepy eyes. His hair is all stuck up and his pajamas are missing a button.
Had Percy looked like that, at seven years old?
Had Bilius sat next to him and looked down and this is what he'd seen?
"Repeat after me, Ron. You can't-"
"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time, Perce." He rubs his eyes with a big, big yawn. "Uh, why?"
"Never you mind why. I'm in charge, Mum always leaves me in charge, and I'm telling you this is what you have to do."
Ron gives him a sleepy scowl. "Maybe I'll go there tomorrow, huh? Or what if-"
"No!" No, no, no, no, no! "Ron-"
He's so sick. He's so sick and ashamed.
His little baby brother is blinking the sleep from his eyes and staring up at him, and he can't even protect him.
Charlie had told him that day he'd given him the list that that was his job, now. It was his job to keep the little siblings safe now that he and Bill were gone. And he can't. He can't do it.
They end up sitting against the wall of his room together, Percy's arm around his shoulders and Ron holding a pillow to his chest. He still likes comfort objects, but not stuffies anymore. Those are a hard no, after the spider incident. Which has apparently turned into a fear for life. Another incident that it had been Percy's job to stop. Another time that he had failed.
Failed him.
But things are different now.
This time, he must be different.
"Uncle Bilius is a very bad man. You don't have a wand yet, you can't get one until you're eleven, so you can't go over there alone. I can't protect you if I'm at school."
"Bad how?"
"He just is."
"If he's so bad why don't Mum and Dad know?"
"We can't tell them."
"But why?"
"It would hurt Dad's feelings."
"But why?"
"Bilius is his brother, Ron. Would you want to know something like that about me?"
Ron stares down at his lap for a bit, considering this.
"Do you understand, Ron?"
Ron hugs the pillow even tighter; blue and green, with an old sauce stain on it. "What about... what about Fred and George? Or Ginny?" He looks up at Percy nervously, chewing on his lower lip. "Are you going to tell them this too?"
Percy doesn't think so. The more people he tells, the more chance that their parents will find out. And he doesn't quite understand why, which should be a problem, he wants cold, hard evidence, not a gut feeling, but... he has a gut feeling all the same that Bilius isn't interested in any of the others. The twins, yes, just because one would never keep a secret from the other, but Ginny...
He just doesn't think Bilius is interested in her.
He'd sat next to Ron. Not her.
"No," he sighs. "But... you're in charge, now, Ron. I don't think you'll have to, but if he does try to invite any of them over, I'm trusting you to tell me, all right? You write to me straight away. You can even send a Howler. Same if he tries to invite you over. Anything he does that you don't like and I want you to tell me. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Repeat after me, Ron. Anything he does that I don't like-"
"Anything he does that I don't like-"
"Write to Percy immediately."
"Write to Percy immediately."
"Yes," Percy says again. Yes. He hugs Ron tight, tighter. He wants to never let him go, to never go back to Hogwarts. "And you can't tell Mum or Dad, remember? I don't want to hurt Dad." It's not as if he has any proof, anyway. It's his word against Bilius's, and-- why would he believe Percy? Believe him about what?
It's true. Bilius never threatened or coerced him in any way. Even if he wanted to say something, there's just nothing to say.
Ron's sleepy head leans against his shoulder. "Our little secret," he promises.
Something nauseating swims in his stomach again. He goes cold, all over.
"Yes," he promises back. He hears his own voice as if it comes from far, far away. "Our little secret."
It feels like the world has dropped out from under him.
He's just as bad as Bilius.
filthy disgusting liar rotten all your fault guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty
GUILTY
In February, Percy winds up in the hospital wing with a bad head cold and persistent fever.
Which is nothing, or so he thinks-- he's certainly not the only one sick this time of year-- but then it happens again in March. And this time, Madam Pomfrey take a closer look at him, and then she frowns.
"Your throat seems to have some long-lasting irritation," she chides. "Are you sure you're drinking enough? No allergies?"
Just dust, he tells her. And he's just as baffled as she is. He's not the only one allergic to dust. He's also frankly a little annoyed, at being dragged out of class to sit in the hospital wing twice in one term.
But Oliver brings him his books, in exchange for Percy telling him Charlie's favorite candy. And Percy has a hunch, so that night, after Madam Pomfrey has given him a calming draught and a glass of water and stood there and watched him drink the whole thing, he digs out his book on second-year charms from the library.
The Silencing Charm, the book explains, works by affecting the nose and throat. The target is still able to breathe unhindered, but their vocal cords are heavily restricted with magical energy.
There's a note at the bottom of the page that says that while the spell is harmless when used for brief periods of time, long-term exposure has been noted to cause health problems, and other alternatives should be considered instead.
Percy touches his own throat thoughtfully, tracing his hands down the outside.
He... he has had sore throats more often, this year. He'd assumed it was nothing. Just colds getting passed around the student body, him being unlucky enough to catch it every time.
His nightmares have gotten worse, ever since getting back from winter break. Just last week if it weren't for his own nightly spell he would've woken Oliver up shouting. And then Oliver would tell Charlie... and Charlie would ask him... and then... and then...
It's not a big deal, he snaps to himself, tossing the book shut. It's nothing serious; the book would've said if it was. He can deal with a few colds.
Doesn't matter.
It's not just strange dreams, anymore.
He dreams of going over to Bilius's house one last time, and going at him with a knife.
He dreams of telling Bill and Charlie, and they go over there first.
He dreams of going over there one of the nights that he's falling down drunk, and setting his house on fire.
He dreams of going at Bilius with a knife, and Bilius, three times his size, just knocks it out of his hands, and brings his own to his throat.
He dreams that there's so much blood, and Percy goes home, and Uncle Bilius' smiling ghost has moved into Ron's room and that there is nothing, nothing, nothing that he can do about it.
He wakes up screeching silently over and over, screaming, kicking at sheets that are strangling him, and his face soaked with hot tears that feels like blood.
It's no question what his subconscious is trying to say this time.
One morning, when it was especially bad, Charlie looks at him too closely, and asks if he's okay.
"You look tired. Doesn't he, Bill?"
"What?"
Charlie throws a wadded up napkin at his face, and Bill blinks, actually looking up from his textbook for the first time. He blinks at Charlie, then at Percy. And now two people are frowning at him. "You're not getting sick again, are you?"
Ron needs help, he could say.
We have to go home. We have to go home now. Ron is in trouble. Uncle Bilius is a terrible man. He hurt me and he's going to hurt Ron too. We have to keep him safe, listen to me, believe me.
Keep me safe. Please.
"Percy?"
They'd kept him away from windows and the outdoors for an entire war when they were younger than he is now but the very second the war had ended, Percy had walked himself straight into a monster's den. And it's just too late for anyone to do anything at all about it.
"I'm fine," he mumbles. "Lots of homework last night."
Charlie ruffles his hair like he hasn't in ages, like he does still to Ron and Ginny, only to little kids. And it should make Percy teeth-grittingly face-burningly mad, but for a split second all he wants is to be small again and for his big brothers to pull him away from the open window.
By the time next Christmas has rolled around, Percy has been ill four more times, ill enough to go to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey has apparently just decided that he has a weak immune system, but it's nothing to worry about, she says; he gets sick often, but not seriously so, so it's just his grades to be concerned with. And he keeps up in class just fine. It's even a little easier to get his work done, when he's not having to wait for everyone else in the room to catch up.
He'd thought he'd hate it more than he does. But Percy is surprised to find that he actually doesn't mind it all that much at all.
It's not a struggle to keep up in his classes, so there's not that to worry about. Sometimes Penelope scores higher on a test than he does, but there's hardly any difference, between being second in his year instead of first. And he'd been dreading Madam Pomfrey smothering him, and she had a bit, that first time, but now that she knows he's going to be somewhat of a frequent visitor, she mostly just leaves him alone. Crisply explains to him whatever bug he's picked up this time, the potions that she's going to give him, what to expect, what she expects of him. It's not like Mum, whenever any one of them are ill. It's not like that at all.
She treats him like a grown-up. A real one. Not like Bilius had, and that's something he's only able to understand now that he has the comparison. She speaks to him frankly and seriously, answering his questions without dancing around the bush or wasting time with platitudes. And, if he's being honest with himself, it feels... nice.
It feels nice to just have a couple days where he doesn't have any responsibilities at all, and someone else takes care of him, and he knows all he has to do is let it happen. Someone is paying attention, to him, and looking after him, the way Ginny always got looked after but no one else ever did. He hasn't been taken care of like that since he was so young he can't even remember it. And it's bloody embarrassing, or it should be, selfish, childish, but for just a few days he can turn off everything happening outside of the hospital wing and just-- feel like a kid. That's the easiest way to put it.
He's not a kid, anymore. Even at Hogwarts, he has responsibilities to Ron, responsibilities that no one else in his year has. He's not a child. He thinks he never even really got to be one. And in his rush to grow up, maybe he'd missed that just because he'd thought he'd wanted to skip childhood didn't mean he'd like it once he had.
Because Percy finds that he appreciates getting to be one.
He appreciates it a lot.
He also appreciates the nightly calming draughts, probably a little more than is healthy.
Then he gets sick a bloody fifth time, two days before they were supposed to go home for Christmas.
Everyone shows up, which is just terrible. Once the panic had worn off about Percy's in the hospital wing again, Bill had been too busy to keep just swinging by, and Charlie hates the place. It's usually only Oliver, and he seems to just enjoy having a quiet place to study with a tutor at his beck and call. But now it's all three of them, Bill and his prefect badge, Charlie still in all his Quidditch gear, Oliver biting his nails and pouring over a Charms essay.
"We're staying," Bill talks over him, his arms folded, the look on his face one that is not open to argument. "Can you imagine what Mum would say if we left you here alone for Christmas? She'd have our hides."
"Not alone," Oliver pipes up. He turns another page.
"She-" He has to stop, holding his breath until the urge to sneeze goes away. "It's fine, Bill, really. What would you even do here all day, help Madam Pomfrey make the beds?"
"Uh, spend time with our little brother?"
It's late, almost curfew. He's already had his calming draught, which is the only reason he can handle this conversation even a little. "At least one of you should go," he insists, he must insist. "There's not even time for a letter to get home, is there? Were you just planning on leaving her waiting alone at King's Cross?"
Bill and Charlie glance at each other uneasily.
"Pretty sure McGonagall could just Floo-call your parents."
Percy throws a tissue at Oliver. "Whose side are you even on?"
"Oh, neither. It's more fun that way."
"And why aren't you going home either, exactly?"
But what none of them understand is: they have to go home. And he can't tell them why.
But they have to.
Last summer, Bilius hadn't done anything. Because Percy had been there all summer long. He couldn't have done anything. It's why he'd gone home for Christmas last year and signed up again to do it this year. Bill and Charlie have to go home if he can't, because if they don't--
Percy on some rational level, understands his thoughts barely make sense. Bilius has all year long to do something if he wants to, all year long when Percy is not there. And what would Bill and Charlie even do? If he asked Ron to come over, why would they say no? Why would they do anything but sit there and smile and go back to Christmas dinner?
But they have to. They have to. They absolutely have to. Ron can't be left alone, he just can't. If he's not there this Christmas and something happens, if it's his fault--
Bill will stay, they decide. Bill will stay, because he can use the library and time alone to get some work done. Charlie will go home.
Oliver will stay, too. He's looking forward to getting in the practice time on the pitch, he says. As if he doesn't spend every waking moment that he isn't doing homework here already out there anyway.
"Remind Ron of our promise," he tells Charlie, just before he's about to leave for the train. He and Bill have both gotten goodbye hugs, but Charlie's frowning at him a little, now, touching his face and feeling his fever. "Please?"
He's already given Charlie the presents he's gotten for the family, though it's not much, it's never much. Ron's, he already has a note slipped inside, with the same reminder. But it can't hurt to be reminded twice.
"What promise was that?"
"Please?
Charlie promises.
That Christmas, Percy in the hospital wing, eating pudding and not much else, Bill with not a single book of his own and instead guiding him and Oliver through all their homework, and their only presents a surprise batch of fresh cookies from the house-elves, is one of the fondest ones in Percy's memory.
He'd thought the nightmares would get better, as Ron got older.
They don't.
They should. Because being afraid for him, that's a logical fear, isn't it? Percy is not... damaged, or traumatized, or broken. He is not that. No, he has a very rational fear. There's nothing more unusual about him having nightmares than Ron being terrified of the spider the twins had turned his stuffed kelpie into.
But, as Ron gets older, that rational fear becomes less and less likely. So it is only natural that the nightmares should stop, then. The nightmares, and the shame in his stomach, and the hot humiliation, the thoughts that he can't get away from that he'd thought Bilius had loved him, and if he'd thought that and been wrong, wrong about his own uncle, his own family, then how can he trust anyone at all? How can he ever exist in a world where Uncle Biliuses exist too and he can't tell them apart from anyone else? He's so naive and humiliated and embarrassed and ashamed but none of it matters, because it's rational, it's a rational fear, so when Ron gets older and Bilius can't hurt anyone anymore the nightmares will stop, and he'll stop feeling like this, that's just what'll happen. It's going to happen. He just has to grow up and be a big boy and so does Ron and then it'll all stop.
They don't stop.
They get worse.
It's in his third year, that Percy first reads about memory charms.
Seventh year charms, apparently. He's above where a third year ought to be, he knows that, but even he is not that good. But... still.
Memory charms.
Huh.
"Memory charms on one's self?" Professor Flitwick asks, and he tsks, shaking his head. "Oh, that's mighty tricky business, Mr. Weasley. Even the slightest slip up, and the spellcaster is likely to find themselves in St. Mungo's for life."
"For life, sir?"
"Yes. The effects of a memory charm can't be reversed, you see, especially one that goes wrong." He waves his wand, wiping the chalkboard clean for their next topic in the lesson. "Which is quite convenient, for us wizards-- no chance that any Muggle who runs into a troll will ever recover that memory, now! But also very unfortunate for anyone that's a victim to an ill-intentioned one. There's just nothing to be done for them."
Memory charms.
Flitwick is right, about the dangers. He has to dig through history books to find examples, not Charms texts, but find examples he does, and none of them are good. There are wizards who have quite literally lost their minds, botching an attempted Obliviation on themselves, not just any wizards but powerful ones, significant enough to be recorded in the history books and all. They lost their minds and never recovered.
Literally every factor is against him here. There's not a single point in his favor.
He has no experience with memory charms at all, and no way to get it.
He's not using a wand that chose him.
He's attempting to remove not one memory, but years of them.
Years of formative childhood memories.
He's attempting to do it on himself.
Oh, right-- and he's a bloody third year.
Every single point is one his Charms book specifically lists out as something that makes the spell more complicated, more tricky, more prone to error. It's quite possibly the stupidest idea anyone has ever had. He knows his own skill level, and this is so far above it it's not even funny. There's no chance of it working.
What is he even thinking? It can't work now, he still has Ron to think about, Ron and Ginny-- perhaps when they're seventeen, perhaps then, but now? Now? He can't do this now!
Percy sits cross-legged in his bed, the curtains drawn, and rolls his wand between his hands.
He rolls his wand between his hands for a very long time.
He can't do this now.
Not... now, no.
He writes a letter to Bill, begging him to come home.
He burns it.
He writes a letter to Mum-- just her-- pleading for her forgiveness.
He burns it.
He curses himself for wasting parchment.
He daydreams about telling Charlie at breakfast.
He never says a word.
He writes on his notes during class, notes that he hardly even needs. So what he writes aren't notes at all. He writes I'm sorry. He writes it's going to be okay, and it's not your fault, and I forgive you. He doesn't know if it's his own voice that he hears those in or his mother's. He doodles flames and chickenscratch knives.
He just wants someone to tell him that it's all going to be okay.
His grades start slipping.
He doodles more flames.
At night, he passes his wand from hand to hand. He never quite works up the courage, because he's a Ravenclaw at heart, not a Gryffindor, so he never actually casts the spell. He doesn't think he ever will.
But he thinks about what it'd be like if he did.
In mid-October, Professor McGonagall calls him into her office.
"I'm concerned about your health," she says, very bluntly. "You are taking quite a lot of classes, and with your condition, I was reluctant, but I decided to approve your schedule based on your past performance. But your grades are starting to slip, Mr. Weasley. Was your course-load more work than you were anticipating?"
Percy is still third in his year. Third, and the only one taking all twelve classes. Penny isn't taking Muggle Studies, and Roger Davies isn't taking Divination. He's also already spent three days in the hospital wing.
Oliver isn't third in their year. Third, or second, or first. She hasn't had any meetings with him about that.
It's not fair.
It's not fair.
"I'm fine," he says curtly.
The same thing he sighs to Charlie. To their parents over summer break. To Bill, before he'd abandoned him left. He's just bloody fine.
She smiles at him, tolerantly. "There's no shame in taking the same number of courses as the rest of your peers. I know your brother took all twelve, but that really is exceptionally rare. I would much rather you continue to excel with eleven or ten than feel that you must follow his example, even if it is to your detriment."
It's not fair.
Why did Bill get to take twelve classes and then saunter off to Egypt without a care in the damn world?
Why did Charlie get to be made Quidditch captain and prefect and king of the school?
Why do they get to both be so-- so bloody grown-up and perfect, and he has to spend what's supposed to be his childhood protecting their brother from their uncle?
That's supposed to be their damn job. Charlie is seventeen. Bill is eighteen. Percy is thirteen.
How on earth is it fair that he's supposed to do this alone?
"Mr. Weasley-"
"I'm concerned about my little brother."
She stops. Slowly, her mouth slips shut. She waits. Waits.
"And why is that, Mr. Weasley?"
He takes a breath.
And, for just a heartbeat, he is brave.
He can tell her. And Ron would be safe.
He can tell her.
And he'd never be able to look her in the eyes again. Or any of his other professors. Because they'd find out, too, wouldn't they? All the way up to the headmaster.
And she'd tell his parents. And his parents would ask how this could have happened, why he'd never said anything, and he'll have to tell them that it's because his uncle never once forced him to do anything. That he'd felt good. That there is something wrong with him, he is sick, disgusting--
That it's all his fault.
The entire family will know. Every single brother and Ginny, too. Every single one will know what's wrong with him.
He'd have to tell Dad. And he still doesn't know if he'll believe him or not.
He can tell her. He can tell her right now.
And...
Percy takes another breath.
For a heartbeat, he is brave. And then, he is not.
"Never mind."
He's let go with a promise to work harder, and another scheduled meeting near the winter holidays, to reassess his class schedule.
Coward.
Coward.
Coward.
That night, he writes one last letter to his mother.
It's more than he's ever written before, and those had been in letters he'd known he wasn't going to send. It is everything. Every single date that he remembers, every visit, the entire timeline. He writes about the first time he'd stayed over and Bilius had said he just needed to check he'd brushed his teeth and put his fingers into his mouth. He writes about the first time he'd been too nervous to relax and been given just a thumb of firewhiskey. He writes about the first time he'd bled onto the sheets.
He writes about Bilius not answering any of his letters, and instead, sitting next to Ron.
He says that he's sorry. Sorry to Dad, especially. If he'd just been better, if he hadn't gone over there when he'd known it was wrong, if he'd only listened to his parents, then this wouldn't have happened and he wouldn't be tearing their family apart. But he is. And he's so sorry that he is.
He writes that he loves them. If something goes wrong with the spell, and he can't say it any more after, or if he can but doesn't remember them to do it. He loves them. He writes little individual notes to them, all of them, maybe the last things he'll ever be able to say to them. Each and every one.
He doesn't know what to say to Dad.
In the end, he just writes: I'm so sorry.
It takes him hours. By the time he's finished, it's five sheets of parchment and almost two in the morning, but he's not tired, not tired at all. Percy doesn't know if the letter will actually matter, if the Aurors will care about nothing more than a letter written by a third year, but it's all he can do. Even if they don't care, his parents will. And that's all that matters, anyway.
He doesn't want Bilius to get in trouble.
He just wants Ron to be safe.
Because for just a moment... Percy doesn't want to do this.
He wants to climb the stairs to Charlie's room and tell him everything. Right now. He wants to crawl into his bed like he hasn't since he was four years old and say he's sorry for taking up space when they've finally just gotten beds of their own and Charlie tells him shh and it's okay and did you have a bad dream? He wants to tell Charlie the truth and bury himself into his arms, and he'll make all of this just go away. It'll all be okay. He wants Charlie to tell him it's all going to be okay.
But this isn't just a bad dream.
Percy wipes his face, rubbing away the childish, stubborn tears. He seals the envelope. And then, there's just one last thing to write.
Percy: remember to send this ASAP. -Percy
He has no idea if he'll remember tomorrow. If he'll even remember that the letter exists, or what's inside. It's pretty likely that he won't, actually.
And if nothing else, this letter must be sent.
And that's that, then. That's everything.
Percy sits back in his bed, his wand in his hand. He crosses his legs. He watches the clock tick on.
He squeezes his eyes shut, and presses the tip of his wand to the side of his head.
"Obli... Oblivi... Obli..."
Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward. Coward.
COWARD.
"Ob-
"Ow! Scabbers!"
Scabbers has launched himself into his lap. Out of nowhere. Percy doesn't even know how he got out of his cage, but suddenly the rat is gnawing at him, at his legs, and then when he reaches down to throw him off his hands, too. "Scabbers, what's wrong with you?! Stop! Scabbers!"
The racket wakes up Oliver, and then the both of them together have to catch the little bastard. They both get bitten but Percy is by the far the worst of it, both his hands bleeding, and by the time they've finally got him they're both panting and sweating and exhausted, and collapsed on Percy's bed.
"You have... the worst pet..."
"At least I have a pet," he wheezes back. Though he's not sure if that really counts as a win right now.
When he finally gets his breath back, Oliver takes a critical look at his bitten hands. "Hang on a sec." He wanders over to his things, then tosses something back to him that thunks on his dresser. "That's my tape for Quidditch. Supposed to be for blisters but it'll do well enough here, just give it back to me when you're done. I'm guessing you don't want to go to the hospital wing again, huh."
Percy sighs. Oliver's right, his hands do need tending to-- and so do Oliver's. "Thanks." He glances over at Scabbers, now back in his cage, and currently glaring daggers at him. If he didn't know any better he'd think the rat had known what he was about to do.
Was about to do.
Maybe.
Magic takes more than just saying the right word. Especially complicated spells, like a memory charm. Even if he'd gotten the incantation out, he's suddenly not so sure that anything would've even happened but a few sparks.
And it's not because he doesn't know how to perform the spell.
"Oliver?"
"Yeah?"
Percy waits another moment for Oliver to finish working on his own fingertips before passing the tape back to him. "Your first match," he starts, looking at his bitten hands instead of at him. "It's soon, right? And... and you're going to go?"
Oliver gapes at him.
"Well, yeah, Percy, I think I am. Sounds better than, I don't know, not showing up, and getting banned for life, and your brother drowning me in the Black Lake, and getting a month of detention. But that's just me."
"That's not what I-"
"Where did that come from?"
Percy grimaces to himself. The fact that he's able to even conceive of this conversation at all after he... after he almost... he shivers. Maybe he's in shock. "I didn't mean that you just wouldn't go. I just thought you might quit before. That... it has to be terrifying. Doesn't it?"
Having to perform in front of the entire school. All hundreds of them, even Dumbledore himself. Volunteering to have seventh years twice his size try to crack open his skull and send him tumbling fifty feet down to earth. It's his lifelong dream but every single match runs the risk of getting hurt so badly he's not allowed to play ever again.
Percy knows it's not the same, but, in some way... can't it be? If Oliver actually commits and goes through with it-- but Percy can't commit to a single spell?
But it's no surprise, then, is it? Oliver is a Gryffindor.
And Percy had never wanted to be.
Oliver seems a little mollified, at least. And Percy thankfully has the excuse of wiping up the blood on his arms, so he doesn't have to look at him as his speaks.
"Your brother said I could quit any day before the match and there'd be no hard feelings. But if I don't quit before then I'm playing, even if he has to glue me to my broom and I don't stop a single goal." He shrugs, his shoulder brushing against Percy's. "He said everyone feels like that their first match. He did, too. And the price for getting to play is being man enough to show up even when you're so scared you want to hurl."
The price for getting to play. So he's doing it for the reward in the end. The reward that he so obviously wants. Getting to play Quidditch, just like Charlie, the sport that he's bloody obsessed with, that he can't get enough of, which sounds like a nightmare to Percy but is clearly the best thing ever to him.
What's Percy's reward supposed to be?
Why is Oliver's something that he loves but Percy is just-- getting to be bloody normal? Something that he's already supposed to have?
Why is his reward for everything to just stop being so unfair?
A reward that Percy know he won't even get. There's a lot of things he'd have, if he managed to just slice out half his life from his head, never to return. But normalcy isn't one of them.
"Why?" Oliver teases. "You thinking of trying out next year?"
For the first time in what feels like an age, Percy laughs.
He burns that letter, too.
The next morning, he sits with Charlie at breakfast. And he doesn't tell him a single thing.
Instead, he pretends. Just... pretends.
He pretends Charlie is telling him to man up, too. Say it. Say it. Say it.
Tell him.
But no matter how hard he tries to pretend otherwise, he knows it's the memory charm his brother is telling him to do.
That night was the last time that he tried.
Almost-tried.
He never gets that close again. Never actually starts to say the spell. Though he's not sure he'd actually been all that close that night anyway.
It's not really casting the spell that matters, he thinks. It's just knowing that he can. That it's an option. That when he wakes up in a cold sweat at three in the morning, screaming silently at nothing, flinched back from a man on top of him-- he knows there's a solution. Even if he doesn't do it now. There's an answer, a logical answer, a magical solution. He can wait it out. He can wait out Ron's adulthood if he just knows there's an end to it.
An end that he damn well knows is never coming to come.
But he can still pretend.
He feels like Scabbers is always glaring at him, nowadays. He takes to dropping his food in his cage so his fingers can't get bitten.
Oliver hugs Percy as tight as a pillow when Gryffindor wins their first match with him on the starting roster. He hugs him so tight he lifts him up into the air, because Oliver is bigger than him and stronger than him and Percy is small and scrawny and thin. He whoops and squeezes and spins around.
He drops him down on his bed, and--
And--
He doesn't remember punching Oliver on the mouth. Or shoving him back so hard he smacked into his own bed and hit his head.
It's what happened, apparently. Oliver has a split lip, when the red haze clears out of his head.
He doesn't remember.
Oliver doesn't come to hang out with him in the hospital wing anymore, after that.
"You really hurt Oliver's feelings, you know."
Percy continues poking at his breakfast, and doesn't answer. Charlie's frown burns into the back of his neck.
"Doesn't that bother you, Percy?"
Percy doesn't care, one way or the other. He has enough to deal with it.
Not that Charlie knows that.
"Did he tell you what... happened?"
But Charlie just shrugs. "Not really. But you know, when you're thirteen, you think you're being subtle. But actually you're just blasting your feelings out with a foghorn to everyone in a twenty mile radius."
Now Percy is totally lost. "Our feelings? What feelings?"
Charlie looks down at him in a way that's almost pitying. And, slowly, Percy's insides turn to ash.
"Did you really not know? What, did you think he spent all that time in the hospital wing with you because he just really liked the decor?"
No.
No.
No.
"He was doing his homework," Percy rasps. "He needed help with-"
"Percy," Charlie sighs.
Percy stares back down at his plate, and feels like he's just been dropped into the middle of the Black Lake.
"He's smitten with you, Percy. Though I'm not sure he entirely knows that, either." Charlie squeezes his shoulder, but the disappointment is still radiating from him, suffocating Percy like he's pulled it overhead like a blanket. "Look, if you don't feel the same way, or you're not ready to start dating yet, you don't have to. But you do need to let him down gently."
Let him down gently?
Percy buries a scoff back into his throat, and stabs his fork at his own plate.
Perfect, happy, normal Oliver. Who just secured his spot on the team and only a third year to boot. Whose biggest worry, his only worry, is detention with Snape. Perfect happy normal Oliver, and Charlie, and his entire gods-damemd family.
And now he needs to coddle Oliver's feelings, too? On top of everything else?
Ice cold resentment suddenly swims through him from head to toe. He's abruptly so angry it's a struggle to stop himself from slamming his things and storming out of the hall. Bu that's what little kids do, isn't it? Little kids slam their things and stomp around and throw little tantrums, but he's not one, is he? He's so grown-up and mature and responsible Percy.
He bitterly stabs another bite instead, and seethes down at the table.
He, again, has enough to fucking deal with.
It is not a question of whether or not he likes Oliver. He doesn't know the answer, because he can't ask the question.
Can he trust Oliver? No.
Can Oliver do anything to earn his trust? No.
Can anyone? No.
That, he knows, is not what Charlie had meant, when he'd said it was okay if he wasn't ready to date yet. He means how other people are. He means how some people in his class hold hands but other boys are still charming paper airplanes to bop girls on the head. He does not mean how Percy is: that he does not want to date, and never will. Not because he does or does not like someone, but because he can't even ask the question.
He can't even fathom wanting to act on that feeling like Oliver does. About anyone. Ever. It's a world full of people like Bilius, and it doesn't matter that he doesn't believe Oliver would hurt him, not for a second, because he'd believed that about Bilius, too. And now it's been three years and he still Silences himself at night, because he'd loved his uncle, and he'd thought his uncle had loved him, when in reality he...
He was a monster.
He is a monster.
It's taken him three years to be able to accept that. But it's true. Their uncle is a monster. He'd done one of the worst things that a person can do to another person.
And Percy had... kept coming back for more. Bilius had made him feel special. Feel good. He's a monster and Percy had loved him.
So. No. No, he's not about to date Oliver.
The very idea is hysterical.
He doesn't apologize. Charlie stays disappointed in him, and Oliver continues to avoid him.
There's two more visits to the hospital wing that term, and with Bill graduated, and Charlie about to, he spends them alone.
One night he wakes up silent and his sheets are wet.
He's so sick with himself he can't even go to class.
This time, he makes it home for Christmas.
This time, for whatever reason, Bilius doesn't come.
It's not as nice as that Christmas at school, with Bill and Oliver. But it's still a pleasant second best. It's a nice white Christmas again, with snowball fights outside, and fresh warm cookies inside, and he even plays Quidditch with everyone else and does okay for once. Mum hasn't just got him a sweater, but a new set of quills, too, expensive ones, the good kind that lasts forever; for studying so very hard, she tells him, and Percy thinks of his book on memory charms and feels just ashamed.
It's nice, and warm, and loving, and... nice.
It's just nice.
He thinks he might just be the nicest he's felt in a long time.
Ron is nine. He'll be off at Hogwarts in just two years' time. The twins already are.
Percy is working on homework one night, sitting cross-legged by the fire and a mug of hot chocolate at his feet. Fred and George are off playing somewhere, ignoring their own assignments, and Charlie is with Ron and Ginny outside, helping them practice Quidditch. His parents are on the couch, sipping tea, Dad reading a book while Mum works on the knitting. They're talking to each other in low voices, something about the Ministry, something simple, something easy, something that doesn't really matter.
Percy scratches down a sentence with his brand new quill.
And then he stops.
Everything feels like whiplash, nowadays. Some days it's the worst he's ever felt in his life, and he wakes up crying and terrified, and even leaving his room to sit through class is unbearable and awful and horrific. Some days he's so bitter and furious and sick at everyone he doesn't even go to his room until midnight because he's so mad he can't think straight.
Other days-- other days are like today. Other days he can sit with his family and feel safe.
Other days, he can actually a little bit believe that it wasn't his fault.
Some days he can't do anything but dream about a memory charm. Other days he doesn't want to dream about a memory charm.
There's nothing special about today. His parents have not done anything in particular, this holiday break. Mum's made his favorite hot chocolate, and Dad's answered his questions about the Ministry patiently and kindly, but they always do that. This nice, cozy night isn't special, it's normal.
He... wants to tell them.
He could tell them.
He could say something.
He wants to say something.
It's not the first time he's wanted to do it. To just close his eyes, and blurt it out, and when he opens them everything will be okay again. Bill will hug him, and tell him it's not his fault. Charlie will rub his knuckles in his hair and give him a piggyback ride like when he was still a little kid, because he is a little kid, he's thirteen, and he has to find an answer all on his own, and it's not fair. His parents will believe him and tell them they love him and won't let Bilius come over to see Ron or Ginny ever, ever again.
It's not the first time he's wanted to do it, but... it is the first time he hasn't also not wanted to do it, in the very same breath. There's no crushing anxiety of what'll happen when it all goes wrong, when, not if, when, because it will. There's no bone-deep certainty that he will not be believed.
There's no lack of an answer to when Dad asks him why on earth he kept going over there if what he's saying is true, and Percy closes his eyes and imagines the look on his face and just wants to curl up and die.
It's not there, this time.
Just Mum knitting on the couch, and Dad turning a page in his book.
He takes a deep breath.
"Mum?"
"Yes, dear?"
He listens to the crackle of the fire. The soft crinkle of pages. The shouting outside. The sounds all so muted because of the snow.
"T-thanks for the quills."
"Oh, hush now." She waves him off and smiles so much it makes his heart ache. "I know how hard you've been working at school to keep up. We're so proud of you, you know that, Percy?"
"Indeed," his dad echoes. "Some day the Ministry is going to be lucky to have you."
Percy wilts back into himself. The truth sits in his stomach like a rock.
He wishes he'd never opened his mouth at all.
That night-- a full hour and change after he knows Bilius will have gone to bed-- Percy sneaks downstairs to the fireplace, and takes the Floo.
The living room, indeed, is dark. All the lights are out. There's no fire in the fireplace, because wizard fireplaces are not for fires, and instead the room is warm, unnaturally so, thanks to magic. His mother is better at that spell. Always has been.
Percy has not been to Bilius' home since he was ten. Two and a half years, now.
It has only been two and a half years.
And yet... it all, somehow, looks just the same. The very, very same. The knickknacks are in the same spots. The blanket is still folded at the end of the sofa. The dragonhide jacket is hanging up by the door. The pictures on the mantle are the same. Every single one of them: Percy's entire family. But it's not the group pictures their parents make them take for the holidays to send out on Christmas cards.
Each one of the kids has a picture to themselves. And it's not Bill at graduation, or Charlie with his captain's badge, or Percy or the twins in their Hogwarts robes.
It's pictures from childhood.
Ginny, slouching and huffing, her arms folded over her brand new holiday dress.
Ron, surrounded by gift-wrapped presents with bows on top and a birthday cake with six candles on it, looking pleased as punch.
Fred and George, rolling their eyes, as Mum begs they stand still for a picture for their first real flight on real brooms.
Percy, with his brand new glasses.
His parents had insisted on that one, too. That they just couldn't miss it, because he just looked
so
very
grown
up.
Percy doesn't have a bag, and doesn't know a shrinking charm. Instead he gathers them all up, one by one, barely even trying to be quiet. He gathers them all up to his chest and he's so angry he sees red, and it's a miracle that he manages to not stalk out of the house or slam the door. Once outside he hurls them all onto the ground but the snow muffles the sound the way it muffles everything, and suddenly he's left just standing there in the cold with a pile of pictures at his feet and nothing at all inside.
He looks back up at Uncle Bilius' home.
His uncle is there. He knows he is. Bilius shuts off Floo access when he's not. But he's there now. Asleep on the second floor, the room with the big window, he can see it from here. Probably drunk. He'd always had a lot to drink, over the holidays.
There's no Scabbers here to stop him this time. No warm, safe bed for him to sit in and agonize back and forth over it. No breakfast with Charlie and Oliver the next morning where he can pretend it's all right.
It's just him, and the biting cold and snow, and Uncle Bilius... and pictures of his family at his feet.
Not just him. Not just Ron.
Every single one.
He looks up at the house.
"Incendio."
The suddenly burst of fire and heat makes him jump, and he stomps the flickers out before they're anything more than a whisper.
Which is so foolish, because that's what he's here to do, isn't it? But all of a sudden he's scared of a little fire?
"Fred and George set fires all the time," he mutters. Fred and George, who are right now rolling their eyes up at him from the pictures on the ground. They'd call him a baby if they saw this. A scaredy-cat little baby. Set the fire!
He does the spell again. Then stomps it out again.
His stomach feels hollow. His eyes are wet and burning, and there's nothing he wants more than to see this awful, terrible house burst into flames, and--
And he's so scared.
He doesn't just want Ron to be safe. He wants to be safe, too. He wants to know that it'll never, ever happen again. He wants the world to be what it used to be, with rules, and order, and if someone didn't follow the rules they got punished, and bad children got grounded and bad adults went to Azkaban, and there's no exceptions. No one will ever hurt him because bad men go to Azkaban and the world is a safe, orderly place from inside the protection of his brothers' arms.
That no matter what is happening outside beyond the curtains in the war he's in here with his family, watching Charlie's magic make the candlelight dance, and that's all there'll ever be.
Percy throws himself back down to the snow, and screams into his arms.
He destroys the pictures.
Bilius, if he knows what's fucking good for him, will know it was him.
Bilius, if he knows what's fucking good for him, won't say anything about it.
He reminds Ron of his promise.
And then, it's back to school.
Oliver still isn't speaking to him.
The weeks go by.
The nightmares get worse again.
Another three days in the hospital wing.
Oliver still isn't speaking to him.
He's been steadily feeling worse, this year. More sore throats. More trips to Madam Pomfrey. More homework done in bed. Percy hasn't even really given it any thought until Charlie brings it up to him with a furrowed brow, asking if he's sure he doesn't want to drop a class or two.
The thing is, Percy doesn't really care about his classes, anymore. Or the fact that he's now fourth in his year instead of third.
It's the nightmares. Obviously. The stress from living with a silent roommate. Worrying about Ron.
And, he grants, the twelve classes aren't exactly helping, if he's being totally honest about it.
It makes him bloody furious, sometimes. It's not fucking fair. It wasn't enough, that his uncle was a monster. Percy has to have a little brother, too, a little brother always getting older but never older enough. Oliver had to be gay. Oliver had to like him. And Percy just had to take every single elective because he had to be the best and he has to prove he can handle it and he had to be exactly as grown-up and mature and adult as Bill, and it's not fair.
It's not fair.
He doesn't want any of this. He just wants the Hogwarts he'd always dreamed of. He wants to study and work hard and look at careers in the Ministry. That's all it was ever supposed to be, and he knows it's out of reach forever, and that fact alone makes him so mad he could scream himself raw.
He doesn't scream himself raw. He puts himself together, and he drinks water instead of juice because juice makes his throat hurt even worse, and he goes to class. Every day. Does his homework. Every day. Ignores Oliver. Every day. Checks for a letter from Ron. Every day.
Every day, every day, every day.
He's fine. It's just the stress, he tells himself. Just the stress.
He's fine.
And then he coughs up blood in Potions class.
Percy stares at the blood on his hand. It's just a little bit, just a few drops. Three or four, splattered onto his palm. It could almost look like he's messed up and spilled what they're working on today, but he hasn't. That's from his throat.
He can taste the iron on his tongue.
He stares at his hand, his heart pounding, and pounding faster, then faster and faster still. But-- no. It's fine, he tells himself. It is fine, he is fine, fine, fine.
It's just a few drops. He's not bleeding, he's not dying, he just needs to take it easy with the Silencing Charms. It's okay. He's fine. He's fine. Uncle Bilius' hand had had blood on it. He's fine. He's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Breathe, think rationally, rational fears, logic. He's not bleeding. He's all right. It's fine.
It's fine.
"Weasley."
The voice comes from behind him. Snape has glided up and appeared out of nowhere, the way he does every fucking thing. He says something else, Percy doesn't hear him, can't hear anything, frozen in his seat.
Everything needs to stop. He needs-- he needs to take a breath, that's all he needs, a breath, just let him have a second. Snape needs to step back and out of his space and let him back into his head, just a second, just give him a bloody second, and then
and then Snape grabs his wrist
and pulls him to his feet
and
The next thing Percy knows, he's pressed back against the wall. His head is pulsing and he's shaking, shaking all over, trembling like never in his life before. The entire room is staring at him, and Snape as well, but he's so shocked out of his own head he can't even be embarrassed. He's done something, obviously, he's said something, but he can't even remember what it was.
Just stop! Stop staring at him! Stop looking at him! Stop making him exist! Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Snape stares at him too. He looks him right in his eyes.
And Percy...
Percy feels...
It's a funny feeling. A strange pressure in his head that he's never felt before. It feels like he's being picked up, his hands running all over him, peeling his clothes back, exposing him in front of the entire classroom. Percy presses back even further away, squirming against the dungeon walls; he wants to sink into them, to disappear, to get away. Whatever this feeling is he wants it to stop.
Then it does. It just... stops.
There's a wretched, terrible silence.
"Class dismissed," Snape says quietly. He clears his throat, and makes a step forward again, like he's going to grab his wrist again, then goes still instead. "Weasley. Come with me."
He gets kicked out of his body again.
He just follows Snape.
He just walks behind him. In the dungeons.
Alone.
He doesn't want to do this. He does not want to follow any adult alone to an unknown location. But that is what he does. That is what happens. Snape walks in front of him, and he tells him to follow, and so Percy does. He doesn't open his mouth to scream. Not even to say no. He doesn't go for his wand.
He just follows Snape.
Rational, he reminds himself. Rational. Logical. Be rational. He is not afraid of Snape. He is afraid of Bilius. He feels this way because it reminds him of Bilius. Something in his head has connected Snape with Bilius. But they aren't connected. They aren't the same person. This fear isn't rational.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Breathe.
B r e a t h e
Snape takes him to a statue that he does not particularly recognize, but it apparently is a passageway to somewhere, because he says a password and a staircase appears. Percy moves to follow him up it but is told to wait, instead, and Snape goes up alone.
He waits.
McGonagall appears, at some point. She asks him something, but he doesn't really hear her.
He wonders why he's not worried, that he doesn't really hear her.
He wonders how much trouble he's in, for yelling at Snape.
He wonders why he's not as worried about that as he should be either. He's never been in trouble before, not ever. Now he probably has detention for the rest of the year and two hundred lost house points and he doesn't even care. What, he's surprised, that this year is going to get even worse now? That he just has more to deal with on top of everything else?
It's not fair.
It's not fair.
He waits. McGonagall waits.
And then, he finds out that this is Dumbledore's office.
"Do you know what Legilimency is, Mr. Weasley?"
He knows a little about it. But only a little. He's not sure what that has to do with him yelling at Professor Snape. Or why his Head of House is here now, standing next to the headmaster, looking down at him with a white face and something unbearably pitying in her eyes that makes him squirm. Or why Professor Dumbledore is looking quietly at him now, and asking him questions about esoteric magic, instead of talking about respect for teachers, and discipline, and how very disappointed he is in him.
"Somewhat," he hedges.
"Legilimency allows one wizard to look into another's mind. I wouldn't call it mind-reading, necessarily. In practice, Legilimency is an art, not a science. Instead of thoughts being listed out as a book to be read, the practitioner will encounter emotions and memories that require deciphering. Sometimes, that can be very difficult to make sense of. And other times... it is not."
It takes Percy a few moments more, to understand what Dumbledore is getting at.
Why McGonagall is looking at him, sadder than he's ever seen her look at anything before.
He stares down at his lap and doesn't speak at all.
He hadn't meant...
It hadn't been rational. It hadn't been rational, he wants to protest. Snape had creeped up behind him out of nowhere, when he'd already been upset, just shown up, and touched him, but-- but Snape hadn't done anything wrong. It wasn't rational. None of this was rational. It was all just a stupid moment of weakness.
It can't come out like this. It's not fair.
"I feel obligated to add," Dumbledore goes on, after a moment. "Memories extracted via Leglilmency are not considered evidence by the standards of the Wizengamot. Leglilmency is quite unreliable at actually accessing the truth, you understand-- it is very difficult to say whether what we saw was a real memory, or perhaps just a nightmare, or something you read about in a book. There is nothing that I or Professor Snape can do about anything that is just in your head."
Well.
Okay then.
Good. Fine?
He lets out a breath. That's all proper good, then. Because he's not going to say anything, so now he might as well just take his detention and then go back to class.
But tension is still coiled in his chest. And he finds he can not look up.
Because if that's that-- if there's just nothing they can do-- then he wouldn't be sitting here in the headmaster's office with Professor Dumbledore and his Head of House. Dumbledore would not be saying this at all.
He stares down and doesn't speak and doesn't move. He watches the two of them out of the corner of his eye. He won't do it. He will not tell them. He'll sit here all night if that's what it takes. He's not going to do it.
Seconds tick by.
Seconds turn into minutes.
One of the portraits coughs.
"Mr. Weasley." It's McGonagall, this time. And he cringes that there's not even a single note of sternness in her voice. "You have nothing to be ashamed of."
Now he feels even worse than before. Professor McGonagall, the strictest teacher in the entire school, called to the headmaster's office in the middle of the day because he'd yelled at a teacher, the professor known for sparing no quarter even for lost first years all the way to seventh years a day from graduating. And she has the audacity to look at him and gently say he has nothing to be ashamed of?
That! That is something to be ashamed of!
He keeps his mouth shut.
He won't do it.
Bill and Charlie never had to get a talk like this. Not ever. Because they were always grown-up and he's always been just pretending. He's never been any older or more mature than a kid called into the headmaster's office and the only one to not see it had been him.
Bilius had called him grown-up. And Percy had been stupid enough to believe him.
He sits.
He waits.
He waits some more.
More, more, more.
"I promised I wouldn't tell," he rasps. McGonagall stiffens out of the corner of his eye and he rushes to keep going. "Not if he didn't do it to anyone else. And he hasn't. So it's fine."
Bilius had never threatened him.
Never forced him.
Never used magic on him.
Never made him do anything.
There's nothing to tell if he doesn't hurt Ron.
And... he'd promised.
Grown-ups keep their promises.
It's Dumbledore, this time. "How do you know he hasn't?"
McGonagall stiffens again. But it's a fair question, fair enough, one that treats him seriously, so he's able to answer it. "I made Ron promise to tell. My youngest brother. I ask him every time I see him and he says no. He's a good kid; he wouldn't keep it a secret from me."
And it goes unspoken, of course, that Percy is keeping a secret. So it is only logical, then, that he is not a good kid. No matter how many rules he follows, no matter how many broken windows and vases from the twins that he cleans up, no matter how many early childhood nightmares he rocked his little siblings to sleep from, no matter how well-behaved, he won't ever be like Bill and Charlie. With their prefect badges, and making sure Mum and Dad didn't have a single worry when the war was on, and doing everything right.
Ron would've never been in danger at all if he just hadn't kept this secret.
"I'm sure Ron is a good kid." Dumbledore clears his throat. "What about anyone else?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Anyone else," he repeats. "How do you know there hasn't been anyone else?"
Percy blinks.
Anyone else?
He'd never actually... thought...
Anyone else. Children outside of his family. Children exist that are not Weasleys. Anyone else.
He'd told Bilius he'd tell if he touched Ron. Ron. Not--
Anyone... else.
He leaves his body again, for a little while.
"I don't have a weak immune system. It's because I've overused the Silencing Charm."
They both stare at him. He's not looking up, so he doesn't see it, but he feels it all the same. And he shrugs. "At night. So I don't wake up my roommate. I... I don't sleep very well."
He doesn't say that he tried to burned Bilius's house down.
He doesn't say that he tried to carve the memories out of his own head.
He doesn't say a lot of things.
"It was my-- my fault. He shouldn't be punished for-"
"I hardly think it is even possible for any of this to be your responsibility, Mr. Weasley."
"Minerva-"
Percy swallows back a scoff. His face is burning again. Right. Professor McGonagall is the one that told them all on day one that no matter how young they are they have the responsibility to behave properly. But now suddenly that's not true anymore? Percy is thirteen, not three. He has known, all along, that what he is doing is wrong. If Ron or anyone else has been hurt then that is unquestionably on him.
He thinks he's missed dinner, by this point.
He wonders what Charlie thinks.
"That's quite advanced magic for someone of your age," Dumbledore starts quietly, when whatever silent conversation he's had with his Head of House is finished. He imagines she is not very impressed. Misuse of magic isn't impressive. "I think that it would be better to try something else, though. Perhaps potions. Your health may be easy to take for granted now, but when you get to my age, you'll wish you hadn't."
Percy looks away.
The Sorting Hat is in Dumbledore's office, he realizes. It's sitting on a shelf alongside a bunch of other artifacts and objects, some of which he recognizes from books, most of which he's never seen or heard of. That stupid old raggedy hat that he'd told to put him in Ravenclaw. But here he is now, with a red and gold tie and supposed to be possessed by the courage of lions.
He wants his trials to be about books and cleverness.
He doesn't want to be a Gryffindor.
Everyone goes silent again.
"I think," Dumbledore says quietly, "that we don't talk about bravery the right way. Everyone tells stories about duels, or winning a fight against a dragon, perhaps. But all bravery is, is doing the right thing. No matter how small it might seem, or how much we might not want to."
He's seen him looking at the Sorting Hat, then.
And he doesn't have to say anything else.
Percy knows what the right thing is. Not for himself, but for Ron. For-- anyone else, and that thought still chills him to the bone. He still can't say what Bilius deserves, if he deserves anything at all, but Dumbledore has made this not about him. It's about everyone else.
That's... rational. Isn't it? He has a rational reason to fear that Bilius will hurt someone else. Bilius hadn't even told him he wouldn't. Percy had tried to make that promise to him, that he'd be quiet if Bilius didn't do it again, but Bilius hadn't even agreed, and it's just logic, here. He is completely justified in worrying it'll happen again, and he has the ability to make sure it doesn't.
He just has to say it.
Out loud.
Right now.
Deep breaths. Logical, remember. It's logical. All logical. It is rational to feel this way. Deep breaths.
Another few minutes.
Close his eyes.
He can do this.