The Deserving Weasley

Percy is unappreciated.

This is a known if seldom uttered fact.

Anyone looking at the freckles and the too-fair skin that turns as red as his hair whenever he's agitated could attest to this. Percy will never escape being a Weasley, never break out of the label as that son of the Muggle-loving family; his very face prevents it.

Anyone else born with as staggering a limitation as Percy would have given up before they even began. Become like Bill, holding a respectable, dull, ambitionless job while still trying to hark back to the days of ridiculous adolescence by maintaining an earring and ponytail. If anything, Percy understands the real reason Charlie ran off to the middle of Merlin-forsaken Romania. Really, he does. He thinks if the rest of his family would just pull their Muggle-loving heads out of the sand they would too. But there is a difference between Percy and Charlie.

Percy won't run.

He didn't run when the Slytherin louts dumped him in the lake the first week at Hogwarts for being a Muggle-lover. He didn't run when later he graduated and couldn't get a job at the Ministry for being a Weasley. He didn't run when the Crouch affair wrecked all that he'd worked for so long and so hard, and turned them into so much flotsam. He doesn't run.

Too many times he looks at Ron, Ginny, and Fred and George, and sees how disgustingly carefree they are, as if nothing they do have consequences. Their friends swarm like mayflies, so many do they have and with just as short a life-span. They are popular, it's true. His siblings are some of Hogwarts' most popular students. But what could lone popularity accomplish? Percy knows that neither twin would ever amount to anything but a clown for any stranger wanting a laugh, knows that Ron is always more a follower than a leader, but Percy had held high hopes for Ginny. Until that boy Potter came along.

Harry Potter.

Percy says that name and tastes bile in his throat.

Harry perfect Potter. Harry breathes and the masses proclaim him a miracle.

Percy was also called perfect once. Only, his peers at Hogwarts did not mean it as a compliment. Along with perfect, they also labeled him cold, arrogant, pretentious. Unfit for a Gryffindor. Percy has no existing proof but he's certain the giggles and spiteful retorts that entire second year at Hogwarts were for him. There was even a rumor for a short time that the Sorting Hat had made a mistake, that Percy was actually Slytherin.

The provincial prejudices of Hogwarts are inescapable.

He tried to do away with that as prefect and later as Head Boy. Percy never favored Gryffindor over any house, not even Slytherin, and he always judged according to the strictest of reason.

Prejudice is for Muggles; wizards are above that.

It is unfortunate though that superstition and vulgar rumors are not. The way otherwise self-respecting wizards resort to calling Voldemort You-Know-Who, as though they are Muggle children afraid of the dark. It had taken years for the Ministry of Magic to restore stability to the wizarding world, and all it took to shatter it was the reappearance of a little boy and a few mysterious murders.

Of course, Dumbledore's lies only further confuse the populace. Because of Dumbledore, the weaker-willed in even the Ministry of Magic are falling for the lies. As if any sane reasoning wizard could possibly believe Voldemort is still alive.

There is no doubt that Dumbledore was once a great wizard, but the times are changing and he is not. For how long had the senile old man determined the future of promising young wizards? For how long would he hold back the wizarding world with his archaic views? How long?

It is all going to stop. Percy promises himself that he will see to it personally. He is the youngest Junior Assistant to the Minister ever, Fudge himself appointed him, and this time there will be no Crouch affair to stop him.

There will be no Weasley either.

Percy doesn't need a family so willfully blind to the truth around them; he doesn't need a family so willing to undermine the very foundations of civic stability. It is his father who is the traitor, his father who did not even smile when Percy told him of his promotion in the Ministry, his father who accused him of being a spy. Percy is the only one in his family who proves himself loyal day by day to the wizarding world.

You don't deserve me, Percy had shouted at the very last dinner he'll ever have with his family. You're not worthy of a son like me!

Nowadays Percy is a busy man, a very important man who keeps getting more important each passing hour. He has no time for idle talk or insipid presents, and certainly no time for anyone's injured feelings. He's a true wizard and he doesn't tolerate ineptitude in anyone, least of all himself. All his life he worked to prove himself, and in all of the Ministry of Magic there are few who can be said to work harder than Junior Assistant Percy Weasley.

But sometimes the Ministry work runs out and Percy is left alone with his thoughts. And sometimes then, his thoughts reflect upon themselves until he hears himself say once more, yes, you truly don't deserve me.

The words fall heavily in his silent house.