Analysis

"I don't see how you can all stand there and say this as if you believe it! You're siding with Dumbledore and everyone knows he's always been a bit mad but now he is quite clearly off his rocker! You're taking the word of a madman and a hallucinating schoolboy against - "

"Oh, so now Harry's a hallucinating madman too, is he?"

" - against the Ministry! Against the State! That's what you're doing, you're turning into traitors against the wizarding world, its government and everything it stands for!"

"So you're willing to take the word of a politician who cares about nothing except his position over the word of every other member in your family, are you? Dumbledore was fine as long as he was the one who was promoting you to Prefect and Head Boy, but now it's Fudge who gives the power so it's his shoes you lick!"

"Does he know your name, or does he call you Weatherby too? Does he take one sugar or two in his tea?"

"What's worse, to be traitor to your family because you can't see the truth, or traitor to the Ministry because they're acting like politicians everywhere? Fudge doesn't give a damn about the people, he just wants them happy so they'll keep voting him in!"

***

Later, much later, after everything had been printed in the papers, it was those last words, coming from Ron, his face twisted into an ugly expression of rage, that Percy remembered. Fred and George and Ginny's words would hurt as well, as would the expressions on his parent's faces, when he recalled them, but it was Ron's words that would cut the deepest. Then, though, all he could see and hear was his brothers and sister condemning him, as they always had, and his parents standing behind them, his mother in the doorway and his father by the fireplace.

Then he had known; they were not his family. Oh, logically, they might appear to be - he had the same red hair and pale skin dotted with freckles that they did - but it was clear to him that they weren't. He would never even consider doing what they were doing, making themselves enemies of the Ministry, of the wizarding world, endangering themselves at the say-so of a lunatic.

And with that realisation, he could leave. They weren't his family, so he didn't owe them anything; it was all so clear, so simple now.

He apparated straight from the living room in the Burrow to his small flat in London. He had prepared for this, of course, shifting his belongings bit by bit into his new home. The little that was left at the Burrow he could do without; he would never set foot there again. So long he had deluded himself into believing that the Burrow was home, but now he knew better. Home was here, in his own flat, all his own. No brothers - no, not brothers, he reminded himself - no-one else running around underfoot, interrupting him.

Except perhaps Oliver. He wouldn't mind Oliver here. Sometimes, on occasion. He'd have to let Oliver know that he'd completed his move and that they really ought to christen the bed.

Tomorrow, though. Right now he needed to sleep, under blankets hadn't been worn threadbare in most places.

***

"You bloody what?!?"

"I wouldn't - "

"I heard you the first time! You're a cold-hearted fucking bastard, you know that? You told your family they were traitors because they've got a different opinion to you!"

"No, they're traitors because they're actively impeding the Ministry in its governing of our world. And they're not my family!"

"So you decided they're not your family because they don't agree with you? And you come around this morning to tell me that you've moved and that you "wouldn't mind if I'm over, sometimes?" So what happens when I do something you don't like? You decide that hey, I'm not your boyfriend because your boyfriend wouldn't ever think something like that?"

"I -"

"You're not the only person allowed to think and draw conclusions. Not everyone thinks the same as you do, not everyone thinks the Ministry's word is as true as they might like us to believe. What would you do if I told you I think that way? That I'm rather inclined to believe Harry and Dumbledore and the family you've exiled yourself from?

"You know what? I don't want to know what you'd do, I think I can make a pretty good guess and I'm not going to stand here and wait for it. Get out, Percy. Get out of my home and don't come back until you've realised that there's more to the world than what your precious Ministry decides is allowed to exist."

***

He remembered that, too, later. When he was finally forced to admit to himself that he was wrong. But at the time he had simply apparated away, maintaining a facade of calm. Oliver would realise he was wrong and would come and apologise. In the meantime Percy would do as he always had, relishing the amount of time he was able to devote to the Ministry, to Fudge and to his own gain in power.

The "meantime" had gone on, and on, and was still going on.

It made him fell sick now. Fudge did know at least know his name, but Percy knew that Fudge took two sugars in his tea. Fred's blow had been half-right; right enough to hit him hard now, almost a year later, when Percy was admitting he cared and learning anew how much caring hurt.

He had been wrong. Incredibly and utterly wrong. Always being right was had made him different from his brothers, had provided him with an identity in a house filled with other people with hair just as red and skin just as pale as his. And now he had lost that individuality, completely. He didn't know who he was anymore. He was just another failure in a world full of failures, of people like him who had done wrong, perpetuated evil, in their arrogant assumption that they were right.

He could answer Ron's question now. Far, far worse to be a traitor to your family. If you sided with your family, at least you had them supporting you. But he couldn't say that now, because they would think he was only saying that because now he knew that his family had been right.

He'd said that they were traitors against the wizarding world and its government. But the Ministry had betrayed its people, the ones it was supposed to care for, and so his family, faced with the choice of betraying the Ministry that both he and his father worked for or betraying the people the Ministry was supposed serve, had chosen the side of the people. Gryffindors to the core, every one of them.

Except him, he wasn't a Gryffindor. If he had been, he would have been there with his family, fighting against Him and His agents.

Percy couldn't even think his name. He was only realising now that the terror he had felt as a child, in the first war against Him, was far too deeply ingrained in him to ever have been truly let go. Every bit of fear and helplessness that he had felt as a child was still there.

He wondered if Oliver felt the same, having lived through the same events as a child.

Oliver. He'd lost Oliver. Oliver had seen what his family had, had seen through the Ministry's curtain of pacifying lies. He'd told him to get out and not come back.

Percy sank to the floor, leaning against the wall all the way.

What had he said to Oliver? He'd told him about moving out and... oh. Percy tipped his head back. He'd wondered why Oliver had been so angry, but now, playing the conversation back to himself as if he'd recorded it, he recognised the coldness and the arrogance in his words.

Oliver had been right. He was a cold-hearted fucking bastard. He'd had everything so set, so planned, that he hadn't considered anyone else, had thought of people as objects, to be there when he wanted them and elsewhere when he didn't.

Analysis had always been a skill of his, but it had never been so painful. He had lost everything - no, everyone, things could be replaced but people couldn't - that truly meant something to him, through his own arrogant actions. And what hurt most was that at the time he hadn't even realised he was losing them.