With a Whimper

With a Whimper'

Percy had often lived his life according his own judgment, yet he wondered if he had at times paid more attention to his feelings than the facts.

Sometimes he often felt as if his constant strive to learn, to improve, to be better had been in vain when it came to his family. He had always been something of an outsider; often felt he had been singled out and held apart from the vibrant activity of the people around him. To deny that this feeling of isolation had bred some hostility would be a lie, and a naive lie at that. He had often wished he’d been born into a better gene pool, wished that his mother and father had more prosperity, were more respectable. He had often felt these feelings with intense hate. In the aftermath of these intense feelings of hate and anger, he would be assailed with mingled grief and guilt – but not regret.

When he had left the Burrow with his mother’s shouts, screams, and yes, even sobs still lingering in his ears, he had expected those same familiar emotions to come back with a newfound vengeance. They never did. Instead he had found himself in his own tiny flat, and a surge of pride had uplifted him. There he’d been, on the road to restoring the respectability and credibility of his family name. He vividly remembered the burning shame and embarrassment of the too small robes he’d been forced to wear; ill fitting with frayed hems and faded, threadbare fabric. He recalled being made Prefect at school, and the thrill he’d experienced when he’d gotten new robes, and, at last, his own owl. That had been his first taste of just what power could achieve.

Sure his little flat had been terribly basic and had needed some repairing, but he hadn’t minded that; it was so comfortable and silent. No Fred or Gorge appearing at his door like twin devils, eyes and smiles innocent while the hands behind their back held some new trick they planned to test out on him. No Ginny with her loud thoughts and opinions, and no Ron who, it was true, was quite quiet most of the time, yet had loud outbursts when he felt that he, or those to which his loyalty lay, were threatened.

His thoughts traveled back to his school days; no matter how many times he’d heard the Sorting Hat sing, the message was always the same; Gryffindors were the ones who were seen as the heroes, the brave, and the strong. He had always had a large sense of pride in what his House stood for; yet now, reflecting back, it seemed so hollow. How could a child of eleven understand what those qualities really meant? Every House at Hogwarts carried its stigma; Hufflepuffs were seen as idiots, buffoons; yet a great many of their number had fought with great strength in both wars. Slytherin was considered the House of Dark Lords and evil, yet Severus Snape and Blaise Zabini had saved many people with ingenious potions. Ravenclaws were supposed to be the clever ones; Luna Lovegood had brought everyone grief when she had misled them with unreliable information. And Gryffindor - every child dreams of being the hero in the story, yet they had been foolish, reckless and, yes, brave, but those qualities had never been good companions.

Perhaps he deluded himself in lingering so long in these memories of what had gone on before. And yet, the past had a strong grasp on his mind, and he could
not help but slip back into the things that had happened before. Ginny, six or seven at the time, cradled in his arms; tears had turned the whites of her eyes pink and rippled down her round cheeks to dampen the fabric of her dress and his shirt. Her face had been almost as red as her hair. Sobs had shaken her body as she wailed for the loss of her beloved toy. George and Fred had destroyed it in a foolish accident, when Percy had reprimanded them for their actions they had mocked and taunted him with names like ‘stuck up’ and ‘arrogant’.

He remembered, with crystal clarity, the feeling of her hair beneath his fingers as he had stroked her head in a soothing gesture, and the desperation with which she had clung to him in her need to be comforted and reassured. The last time he had held her like that, cradled in his arms as if she was a small child once again, had been the day she died. The same arms that had clung to him in her youth, and had even pushed him away in hatred at times, had wilted lifelessly. Her once vibrant and gleaming hair had seemed to be as limp and dull as her graying skin as her eyes had closed for the last time. Blood had trickled from her mouth and he had wiped it away, uncaring for the stain it left on his sleeve; only wishing he could mourn and feel the sharp stab of anguish, and not this dull, throbbing sorrow in the deepest part of his heart and the ever-growing apathy in his mind.

Each and every one of them had fallen; he was unsure where his youngest brother, Ron, had been finally laid to rest. Yet when this should have torn his mind and heart apart with agony, there was nothing.

He remembered once remarking to Penelope that he thought Voldemort to be a genius. The look of disbelief mingled with disgust she had given him had stuck a deep blow. In an effort to convey what he meant, he had explained to her how Voldemort’s manipulations has been so cunningly laid out and put into action, that surely no one could deny the fact that Voldemort was a great wizard of their time. Shaking her head, she had left him with a murmured excuse; it had been the last time he had seen her. He had been told she had died later in the war.

"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

He barely even whispered the words, mouthing them out into the silence that became personified as it lingered ominously in the room around him. The man who had spoken those words many years ago had been a great wizard. In a surprising conversation with Hermione Granger, long ago, he had learned that his works were known - and incredibly famous - in the Muggle world.

There had been many great battles, in which one side had clearly triumphed over the other, but in the climax of the final battle there had been no such 'bang'. Now, neither side had a strong force, but battled in tattered groups where organization, and even morale, had diminished; both sides waited for Death to take them away.

Would the Wizarding world ever recover? Perhaps. It had overcome seemingly insurmountable problems and tragedies in the past; yet how would it be remembered? Would history record the valiant efforts of Kingsley has he had fought to protect Dumbledore from a death even he could not escape? Would it tell of the moment where, when trapped in a difficult situation, a Death Eater and an Auror had actually worked together to escape? Would it herald the sacrifice that his own father had made to save the twins from a Death Eater’s curse? Would it mention the Death Eater who had spared a great number of young Hogwarts children? No. At best, it would briefly record the people who had been in the Order of the Phoenix, and those in the inner circle of the Death Eaters - yet it would skim over the deeds that had been done on both sides, both great and small, and focus on the larger picture; the telling of the story of the Boy Who Lived and He Who Must Not Be Named.

And how would he be remembered? The man who had forsaken his family for prosperity and recognition - or the recorder of the times? Percy had never committed himself to this war; it stank too much of what he cared not to dwell on. Chaos. And when his fellow wizards patted each other on the back and grinned like fools over the defeat of the enemy, Percy had wanted to shake them and tell them to open their eyes to what they had done; the people they had killed. It didn't matter if your victim wore the uniform of a Death Eater, an Auror or even the robes of a Hogwarts student - it still amounted to the same thing; how can a murderer condemn a murderer? These people were killing those whom they had gone to school with - perhaps even people they had shared a room with. There seemed to be no connection to the easy friendship that might have come before. Not when stood on opposite sides of a battlefield.

To some, his side might have appeared to lean toward the darkness; certainly his close association with Fudge would not have helped matters. Percy, for his part, could see no attraction to most of the aims that the Dark Lord had held; he had no quarrel with half bloods or those from Muggle origin. Penelope herself had been from a Muggle background, and that had not hindered his relationship with her at all. Yet there were certain things to which he could agree, security between the Muggle and Wizarding world must be tightened; too many people knew of their connections, and all it would take would be for one bitter relation to speak up loudly enough. Percy could see from a historic standpoint that no good could come of such a revelation. At best, Muggles would seek endlessly for cures and magic tricks to make their own lives better, at the worst...well, Percy knew how Muggles treated their own kind - they seemed to care little for anything outside of what they deemed to be 'normal'. Dumbledore and his followers seemed to be unaware of the dangers of such close association with the Muggle world, or else didn’t believe that such dangers existed.

And so Percy sat now, with clean parchment spread out in front of him. Quills lay in a neat little row and a small bottle of ink sat with its lid perched by its side like a little soldier ready for duty. He was unsure how long he had left, yet he wanted to tell this story before anyone else did. The facts must be told before these events were twisted and turned into a mythological tale for children. Percy had always heard stories of good and evil, where the world was black and white and nothing bridged the divide. He had once thought that way too, that life could be segregated into neat little sections and labeled accordingly. He was now beginning to realise that nothing could be that simple. He didn't want another misguided generation to grow up with such beliefs. No matter how he might go down in history, he wanted people to know and understand the cold, hard and brutal facts of both fighting and loosing a war.

With a deep breath he reached out and picked one of the quills at random, running his finger along the edge, dipping the tip briefly into the bottle he pressed the tip into the parchment and began to write;

In 1981 an era ended. And in 1995 it began again.

At long last when the sound of the scratching of his quill against the parchment had faded Percy allowed himself to stop, staring at the drying ink and his flowing script that had committed the most important events of Wizarding history to parchment. The self-appointed scribe smiled slightly to himself at the sight.

Withdrawing his wand from the pocket of his dark robes he tapped the parchment and whispered the spells to conserve and protect what he had written from destruction - magic or otherwise - then standing up, he turned the wand in his hand. The spell he had used was a powerful one; no doubt someone had detected it and people would already be on their way - friend or foe - Percy was prepared to meet them and accept whatever fate they brought with them.

He had done what he had set out to do. He had proven himself, no matter what had happened or what was to occur; and his place in history was confirmed. He fervently hoped that his words would be read by future generations, and that they would understand, through his account, what war was and what it wrought. He prayed that they would see, as his generation had failed to do, that such events should never be allowed to happen again.