Work Text:
The cavernous Atrium of the Ministry of Magic is silent. It is more silent than it should be for a room filled with hundreds of witches and wizards; there is no rustling, no fidgeting, no swishing of robes or jangling of jewellery or rattle of coins. None of them dare to make a sound. None of them dare to even breathe too heavily.
It is never a good sign when they are all called from their offices. In their offices, they can hide, some of them more than others. In the Department of International Magical Cooperation, Percy can hide better than most, because You-Know-Who has not yet started caring about foreign affairs or international trade. In the Department of International Magical Cooperation, there are days when Percy can almost forget the ongoing nightmare that is You-Know-Who’s Ministry.
This was never supposed to happen. The Ministry was never supposed to be taken over, not under Minister Fudge and certainly not under Minister Scrimgeour. All his life, Percy had believed in the rules. Rules were safe—they kept order, they made the world make sense, and most importantly, they kept anything bad from happening.
But all the rules that Percy followed hadn’t prevented the rise of You-Know-Who. They hadn’t stopped the fall of the Ministry, and they don’t tell him how to navigate the Ministry under Voldemort.
He could leave. People have left—many of them, or their families, are then tracked down and murdered. The Death Eaters make a sport of it, call it hunting for pleasure and profit, and the Ministry pays for the heads of any captured defectors. Percy’s family is already in open rebellion, but Percy himself—
If he keeps his head down, he won’t be noticed. He’s only a policy analyst with the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and most of the Death Eaters haven’t noticed he exists. And with his argument with his family last year, he has nowhere to go even if he did defect. The Burrow is locked behind a Fidelius Charm, one that excludes him, and that’s if Percy could tolerate the round of I told you so’s that were due to him.
They told him so. He didn’t listen. And now he is standing at the back of the Atrium, praying not to be noticed as You-Know-Who stalks onto the floor.
The floor tiles are dark, with a sheen of wetness. It doesn’t take a wizard to know why—there’s a man on the floor, silently heaving beside the pool of water that used to be the Fountain of Magical Brethren. You-Know-Who and his lieutenants like to use it in their daily entertainments, purging the Ministry of dissidents.
Percy doesn’t look at the man. He looks in the direction of the floor, the same as everyone else, but he can never look at the poor sod that is the victim du jour. He doesn’t want to know, and even when he looks, he keeps his eyes unfocused and blurry. Taking off his glasses helps.
It doesn’t help here. Here, Percy can see everything in crystal clarity, and that’s wrong. That’s wrong because that’s not how it happened, that isn’t how it happened, but when Percy is dreaming, this is what happens. In his dreams, Percy’s mind makes up all the details that he didn’t see when he was there.
When this happened, Percy didn’t know who was on the floor until You-Know-Who started talking. He is too busy not watching to know anything at all. But here, in his dreams, he can see it all.
Sommersby’s dark hair, dripping cold water on his shell-shocked face. The way his robes move up and down as he sucks in air, too stunned to know that the torture is only about to begin. The haunted, terrified look in his eyes as he looks frantically around, unable to focus on anything at all. There are no bounds on him, nothing tying him up or holding him in his place—but there wouldn’t be any escape, either. Not in this Ministry. Everyone, Percy included, would shove him back into the ring.
Today, Sommersby is the unlucky one, and they are all too grateful that it isn’t them.
Percy starts trying to wake himself up. He’s already been here. This isn’t real. He needs to stop—he needs to wake up, but he’s never, ever been able to wake up from this dream. As if the world is forcing him to face his errors, making him relive them, with absolutely no relief.
“Witches and wizards,” You-Know-Who calls out lazily, almost laconically, as Percy tries to make himself turn away. Turn away, leave, wake up. “I have before me one of your colleagues, Thomas Sommersby of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Mr. Sommersby has confessed to issuing Portkey permits allowing Mudbloods and their families to flee Britain.”
Percy fights even harder. He’s frozen in one spot, his dream echoing real life when Percy’s blood had turned to ice, when all feeling left his hands and face.
“Mr. Sommersby is a blood traitor,” You-Know-Who continues, darkly amused—amused because he knows what comes next, and he is going to enjoy it. “And you all know the cost of being a blood traitor. Bella, please.”
Percy doesn’t hear the spell. He doesn’t want to hear it, and in real life the incantation had been wholly blocked out by his fear of You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters, his sick relief that he is not the one on the floor, and a certain, metallic-tasting guilt.
Because Sommersby wasn’t the one authorizing Portkey permits, those necessary documents to arrange Portkeys to Wizarding France or Germany or Spain, for Muggleborns. It was Percy who did it—Percy who forged his co-worker’s signature on the permits for the names that he could find, and Percy who sent them out. And it’s Percy, in his dream as in real life, standing by while Sommersby pays the price for it.
Percy wakes up, drenched in sweat and heaving. It takes him a minute to remember where he is—his bedsit in Muggle Bristol where he’d moved after arguing with Dad at what was, in hindsight, the opening of the war. It’s a simple place, with only his bed, a table, and a wooden chair. Percy can see almost his entire bedsit from anywhere in the flat, and that’s important because he needs to know where he can run if the worst happens.
When he is takes longer. When he first wakes up, it’s always in fear. You-Know-Who is still in charge, and Percy’s stomach is knotting at the prospect of another day at the Ministry of Magic. And then, a massive weight is lifted when he realizes that You-Know-Who is dead, that they had won the Battle of Hogwarts—but that disappears just as quickly when he realizes exactly how many days it is until he has to testify at the commission.
They call it a commission examining the rise of You-Know-Who and his takeover of the Ministry. Sometimes, it’s only an enquiry. They want to know how it happened, and how to prevent a coup from happening ever again. But just as often, the mood of the Wizengamot shifts, and it becomes—
A fault-finding mission. An inquisition. A war tribunal.
And today, he realises, there are zero days left until he testifies.
It takes him long minutes to roll out of his bed, his feet landing on cold wooden floors. The fire in the grate—it was harder than it should have been for him to find a bedsit that had a working fireplace—had burned down low, with only yellow-orange coals left. A wave of his wand and a puff of air has the fire back in working condition, but it doesn’t help with his numbness in his hands.
That has nothing to do with the cold anyway.
He skips breakfast. He couldn’t keep anything down, he thinks, so he opts for a mug of bitter, black coffee made from instant. It’s so acidic that it might as well be Scouring Solution, but he chokes it down anyway. Then, with a hard ball forming in the pit of his stomach, he gets dressed in his best navy-blue dress robes and Floos into the Ministry of Magic.
Six months after the war, the Ministry of Magic is still a shell of its former self. Not physically—the debris of You-Know-Who’s reign has long been cleaned up, the Fountain of Magical Brethren removed and the pool paved over. The grand Atrium has been painted, so new as to be sparkling, while most of the furniture has been completely rearranged.
It’s the mood that’s shifted—or rather, something more esoteric. They’re running away, all the survivors of You-Know-Who’s Ministry, and they’re rewriting every physical memory they can in an effort to forget the mental ones. The weather maintenance wizards keep it noon-bright and sunny no matter the season or hour, never a single hint of darkness or drop of rain; most of the Departments have found room in their drastically cut budgets for renovations. The lift has been painted anew, gilt gold trying to evoke a time from before You-Know-Who.
They’ll never succeed. You-Know-Who was here, and a thousand coats of paint will never erase that.
The hearings are in the basement, the tenth level down—possibly the only part of the Ministry that hasn’t been touched since before the war. Maybe they couldn’t be. The courtrooms are centuries old, carved right into the bedrock under the Ministry, in a deep, bowl-like curve. The benches are stone, like an old Greek amphitheatre, and the desks in front of the interrogators’ desks is old, heavy wood. The room is icy cold, the sort of cold that seeps into Percy’s bones and rests there.
It's already full, people—Ministry workers, journalists, and members of the public—crowding the room to standing room only. They’re talking, whispering amongst themselves, while Percy sits stiff in the wooden chair at the centre of attention and tries just to breathe.
There’s a shock of greying red hair in the crowd. Dad—but it looks like Dad is alone. Small mercies, Percy supposes. He’d rather that none of his family was there for this, but he doesn’t appear to have a choice about it.
A small part of him is glad that his father is there. He’ll never admit that.
“It’s ten after the hour,” Shacklebolt calls out, “And we have a packed agenda. Chang, are you ready?”
“I am,” Chang says, her quill positioned on the parchment in front of her, and Percy recognizes her from Hogwarts. A Ravenclaw, he remembers, and she was the Seeker the year that he was dating Penny. That was another world.
“Good. Interrogators: Kingsley Shacklebolt, Acting Minister for Magic, Annaliese Lentham, Interim Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, and Aloysius Becker, Interim Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Court Scribe, Cho Chang. As a reminder to the audience, this is a general enquiry into the Ministry of Magic’s practices with respect to the so-called Lord Voldemort: both an examination of how the Ministry was taken over, and what was done under Voldemort’s rule. This is a fact-finding mission, and not a criminal prosecution, though some persons may be referred for charges at a later time. As part of the terms of reference for this commission, we recognize that difficult things happened in the Ministry during Voldemort’s administration, and only the worst of offences will be referred to prosecutions.”
No one knew what that meant.
“Mr. Weasley, you are here to provide testimony of your actions and others’ during the Second Wizarding War,” Shacklebolt continues, still in that firm, even tone of voice. “You are not presently being accused of any offences committed during that administration. To begin, would you state and spell your complete name for the record?”
“Percival Ignatius Weasley,” Percy replies, and his voice is dry and gravelly. He coughs. “Sorry. First name Percival, P-E-R-C-I-V-A-L, middle name Ignatius, I-G-N-A-T-I-U-S, and last name Weasley. W-E-A-S-L-E-Y.”
“Your blood status?”
“Pureblood, but my family are often called blood traitors.”
“Blood traitors.” Becker, the Interim Head of Magical Law Enforcement, turns owlish brown eyes on him. “And do you consider yourself a blood traitor, Mr. Weasley?”
“No.” Percy fidgets in his seat, trying to think of how best to phrase it. “I believe that blood traitor is an insult used by—by pureblood supremacists for purebloods who do not believe in pureblood supremacy. I do not believe in pureblood supremacy, and for that reason I may be called a blood traitor, but to see myself as one would… give effect to the underlying sentiment, as it were. I do not see blood equality to be something that betrays my blood.”
“A thorough answer.” Becker leans back in his seat, nodding at Shacklebolt. The room is filled with murmurs, which Percy struggles and fails to block out.
“Mr. Weasley, what is your department and your title?”
“Currently, I am a senior policy analyst with the Department of International Magical Cooperation. My area of focus is the regulation of magical products imported into Wizarding Britain.” Percy pauses, then he takes a deep breath. “But, as I am sure you were about to ask, prior to and during the war I was, variously, the Senior Undersecretary to the Ministry of International Magical Cooperation and the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic before being transferred back to the Department of International Magical Cooperation.”
“It is in those capacities that we have requested your testimony,” Becker says dryly.
“Why don’t you tell us, in your own words, what you recall of the takeover of the Ministry?” Lentham interrupts, shooting Becker a look. “How did it happen?”
Percy doesn’t answer for a very long moment. He’s thought this over, again and again, round and about, since the day the Ministry fell. How didn’t he see it coming? Why didn’t he see it coming? How could he have been so blind—he, who was closest to Crouch, who had seen all the signs when Crouch was Imperiused and died? He, who had even faced his first enquiry over it?
He hadn’t known at the time that Crouch had been Imperiused. Even Minister Fudge had thought that Crouch had merely gone senile, and that Percy ought to have recognized it. But he should have recognized it, and he didn’t.
“It wasn’t—” he starts, and then he cuts himself off and stares at the stone in front of him. “It feels like it should have been obvious, but at the time it was not. We were so far behind You-Know-Who and his plans. I don’t think anyone was prepared, though we should have been.
“I think it starts with Minister Fudge. I—I do not like to speak ill of the dead, but Minister Fudge, in his final year of office, became convinced that Headmaster Dumbledore at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was seeking to destabilize the nation. I should say clearly, if unpopularly, that his beliefs were not baseless.”
There is a murmur through the room. Things are always clearer in hindsight, and Dumbledore is no exception. Percy doesn’t dare look at his father.
“All signs indicated that Headmaster Dumbledore was recruiting people and building a base of support. There was even a club at Hogwarts called Dumbledore’s Army.” Percy pauses, lowering his voice. “In most circumstances, these are very much the signs of an impending revolt. It appeared to Minister Fudge that Headmaster Dumbledore was raising the issue of You-Know-Who to drum up support for a coup. Working in foreign affairs, I have to emphasize that this is one of the primary ways for people to arrange coups: to invent an enemy that must be defeated, and then insist that they and they alone can defeat it.”
Percy can tell that his words are not what the crowd wants to hear. No one wants to hear about how Minister Fudge might have had good reason to think the way he did. It’s easy to say that Dumbledore was a hero, that Harry Potter was a hero, that they foresaw something—but then again, despots always portray themselves as heroes too. Grindelwald too was a hero, until he wasn’t.
“Headmaster Dumbledore was an intensely secretive man,” Percy adds, projecting his voice above the murmurs of the crowd. “Do I think that Minister Fudge would have listened had Headmaster Dumbledore explained his reasons for believing that You-Know-Who had returned? I don’t know. I cannot tell you. But I do know that Headmaster Dumbledore never tried. There was only an ultimatum, either you and the Ministry stand with me or not, and then—then he began recruiting his own army.”
“And he was right!” There is a yell from the gallery, and Percy stiffens in his seat. “Dumbledore was right!”
Percy doesn’t answer. He doesn’t quite know how to put it in words—that yes, Dumbledore was right. Yes, Dumbledore had their best interests in mind all along, that in hindsight they should have trusted him. But how does he explain the centuries of history that show that this isn’t always the case, and that blind trust can be and is often misplaced? A broken watch still reads right twice a day, and even Seers can’t tell the future with any certainty.
“Quiet!” Shacklebolt snaps, shooting a look at the crowd. “Mr. Weasley, go on.”
Percy nods, gathering his thoughts. “Once Minister Fudge was aware of You-Know-Who and his threat, of course he began acting. But it was late—You-Know-Who had time to prepare, to plant people within the Ministry which I believe had a serious impact on our ability to respond to the threat.
“We know more now than we did then. You-Know-Who had people in nearly every department, long before the Ministry fell. At the time, though, we didn’t know who to trust. When Minister Scrimgeour took over, we were aware that some Ministry employees had to have been compromised, but we didn’t know how many and more importantly, we didn’t know who. There were a few cases that were sloppy enough that we caught them, but by and large…”
“What was it like, Mr. Weasley?” Lentham cuts in kindly, as Percy flounders. “What did it feel like?”
Percy doesn’t answer for a moment, then he sucks in a deep breath. “It was the calm before the storm. We knew that things were bad. You-Know-Who had no need for secrecy anymore, and he was wreaking havoc in the Muggle world as well as the wizarding one. It was one emergency after another.
“At the same time, many of us felt that we were in good hands with Minister Scrimgeour. He was dedicated to rooting out spies and You-Know-Who’s plants within the Ministry. Unlike Minister Fudge, anyone with any known allegations, even unproven, of assisting You-Know-Who in the First War was asked to resign as a security precaution. It did, I think, force You-Know-Who into using the Imperius Curse to put more roots in the Ministry over other methods of infiltration.
“I was kept on in the Minister’s office for four months to assist with the transition, then I returned to the Department of International Magical Cooperation because the International Confederation of Wizards was questioning our ability to maintain the Statute of Secrecy and I was—I was one of the most senior analysts from the Crouch administration.”
Percy stops, thinking about what else needs to be said. He doesn’t know—the whole period is a blur. He remembers many hours spent soothing the ICW on the Statute of Secrecy, keeping his fingers crossed behind his back while he waited for the next attack that would prove him a liar. He remembers seeking directions to seek help from abroad, only for Minister Scrimgeour to growl at him that Wizarding Britain took care of their own problems and didn’t need the help of the international magical community. He remembers worrying about his family, not that he was in a place to talk to any of them.
There wasn’t time, and Percy had too much pride.
“I do not know in any detail what happened afterwards. I understand that my replacement, Pius Thicknesse, was put under the Imperius Curse and was instrumental in the fall of the Ministry. I could not tell you how that happened.”
Shacklebolt nods slowly, gesturing to Becker. “Acting Head Becker.”
“You were not part of the Order of the Phoenix.”
“I was not.”
“What were your feelings about the Order?”
“I…” Percy glances at the crowd, then he focuses on Becker. “I disapproved of them. I still do. While I appreciate that they were a vital part of the fight against You-Know-Who, they acted as a parallel body and did not support the Ministry’s efforts to fight against You-Know-Who. Bluntly put, they were a paramilitary operation—a private army. In general, private armies are not force for good in the world.”
There’s a roar from the audience, with more than one person calling out to him. He catches words, jealous, Dumbledore was right, the Order of the Phoenix were heroes, and a part of him can’t resist. He looks up at them all, ignoring his father’s sad blue eyes, and raises his voice to be heard over the din.
“The world is, remarkably, not made of good people and evil people. We were not all victims, or we did not want to be. There were more people who fought against Voldemort in the Ministry than those in the Order of the Phoenix, and many of us died for it. The Order did not save as many people as our rampant, quiet insubordination! Do you think that it was in the Order’s hands when the news of the Muggleborn Registration Commission leaked early to the Daily Prophet? Did you even know that it was leaked before they were ready to begin arresting people? Did the Order even know that that had happened? Do you know about the plans that we made sure disappeared before they ever came to fruition?
“People take the Order as the only heroes of the war. They shouldn’t. They were difficult times for all of us. Yes, we carried out You-Know-Who’s orders—but we did it under duress. We had no choice.”
It’s cold comfort. Part of Percy believes in his words—what else could he have done, really? What was he supposed to have done?
Sommersby was the analyst in charge of arranging Portkey permits. Portkey permits were needed to arrange for Portkeys to other countries. It would have looked odd if anyone but Sommersby had signed off on them. And so, Percy had forged his name on some three dozen Portkey permits, getting families out to France, Germany, Spain. Anywhere he could ask a nation to accept the transit, he’d sent someone.
“I am aware.” Shacklebolts cuts in over the new rush of noise that the audience is heaping on him, and a wand in his hand has the room Silenced. “Obviously, things were bad in the Ministry under Voldemort. These hearings are not meant to relive the trauma, and you do not need to speak about incidents of abuse that were committed by Voldemort or his known Death Eaters. We do, however, want to hear about what the Ministry was like during this time. You have mentioned acts of rampant insubordination during Voldemort’s reign—would you elaborate?”
“Yes,” Percy says, slumping back in his chair. “We weaponized incompetence. Work did not get done—in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, for example, You-Know-Who requested that we prepare new directives such that international Portkey permits be signed only by You-Know-Who or his inner circle. We began drafting it, but never finished it and invented new problems to keep it from being done. In the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, clerks repeatedly lost paperwork that prevented charges from proceeding. I—I had a contact in the Muggleborn Registration Commission that slipped me names that I arranged international Portkey permits for.
“It was a careful game—we had to be incompetent without appearing overtly so, because of course if You-Know-Who or any of his inner circle found out, we were dead. Most of us did not know who we could trust, because any of our contacts could give us up at any point—people did give other people up to save themselves. All the time.”
Percy is one of those people. He might not have done it directly, but he had put Sommersby in the crosshairs as surely as if he’d had the man at his own wand point.
“Do you know of any of these incidents yourself? Actions taken by people who are not known Death Eaters causing serious harm or death to others?”
Becker’s voice is devoid of any judgement. Waiting, like a snake.
“In a way we all did,” Percy replies evenly. “To stay in the Ministry at all, we all did things that we are not proud of—we provided You-Know-Who with information that enabled his reign, we drafted policies we disagreed with, we worked for him. Many of us also did things to try to subvert him while he was in power, but you would need to ask a philosopher about whether these cancel each other out.”
“You did not answer the question,” Becker observes leaning forward. “Answer the question, Mr. Weasley.”
There is a pregnant pause, and then Percy lies.
“I do not,” he says.
They keep him on the stand for another two hours, asking the same questions over and over again in different ways. What did Percy witness? Not as much as anyone would think, because he kept his head down and worked. He doesn’t know what other people did—why would he know? Of course, there are rumours, but he isn’t going to testify on rumours alone. The most he can tell the commission is what it was like in You-Know-Who’s administration: from the overwhelming fear that ruled their lives, the secrecy and mistrust they needed to survive, and the small, desperate acts of rebellion that some of them chanced.
Some people think that anyone in the Ministry who didn’t agree with You-Know-Who should have left and resigned. They don’t understand how much worse it would have been if they had all left.
When he’s finally dismissed, he retreats to his cubicle in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and he lingers there. No work gets done—his inbox is piling up, and he has at least three memos past due, but is there even a point? No Minister for International Magical Cooperation has been appointed yet to read his memoranda, so why does he need to write them?
He answers a bit of correspondence. Inquiries about importation of potions ingredients, mainly, where he points idiots to the legislation and shoves the correct forms into an envelope because he is supposed to be helpful. He pens a snarky reply to someone in Bulgaria about dragon eggs. He sorts the rest of this work in priority order, which he knows perfectly well he’s going to ignore tomorrow.
He doesn’t look at Sommersby’s cubicle.
At some point, someone else will move in, and he won’t be able to do that anymore.
He doesn’t think about that. He can’t, yet.
He’s packing up when Dad sticks his head into his cubicle. The end of the war’s treated him well—Dad is now the Head of the Improper Use of Magic office.
“Dinner, Perce?” he asks, his blue eyes tired but kind. “Your mum would like to see you—and your brothers too. It’s shepherd’s pie tonight, enough for everyone.”
“No, it’s all right,” Percy replies, shaking his head. “I’m—I’m tired, I think I’ll just go home and sleep.”
“Are you sure?” Dad frowns. “It doesn’t need to be a big production or anything—and you know your mum will pack you the leftovers if you come by. It’s been almost six weeks since we’ve seen you.”
“I am aware,” Percy says stiffly, looking down at the piles of work that are yet to be done. “But not tonight. I’m very tired, with the—the testimony and all.”
“It would be good to come and take your mind off of it,” Dad suggests, tilting his head forward. “No need to talk about it if you don’t want to—just come for the food and the company.”
Percy doesn’t know how to say that the company is exactly the problem.
He’s always walked a half-step out of beat with the rest of his family. He isn’t cool, not the way that Bill and Charlie are; he’s staid and stuck-up and boring. He doesn’t enjoy pranks, and he doesn’t like surprises at all. He likes the stability and order provided by rules, and he’s always had a fairly low tolerance for chaos. And then the war—
In so, so many ways, his parents and brothers and Harry had an easy war. They spent most of it hidden, truly hidden, where any discovery could mean death. Percy had spent the war out in the open, at risk of being a target at any time. They had no need for moral ambiguity, no careful balancing act of appearing to conform while covertly sabotaging You-Know-Who’s aims. His parents, his brothers had the luxury of never knowing whether their actions had directly led to the death of anyone—and of never having to grapple with whether it was justified.
“Not tonight,” Percy says finally. “I’ll—I’ll try for Sunday dinner, if that’s all right.”
That night, Percy sits at home, and he cracks open a bottle of Firewhiskey.
A week passes, then two.
One would think that his nightmares go away, what with his testimony in the commission over and done, but they don’t.
They don’t come every night. Two a week, maybe, sometimes three. If they came every night, it would be easier for him to desensitize himself to them, to forget and move on, but they don’t. Sometimes he has a whole spate of days without a dream, and then two nights in a row.
It leaves him perpetually exhausted. He goes to work, pointedly ignoring Sommersby’s cubicle, and struggles to get through routine correspondence. On good days, he takes a stab at a memo, but those pile up over time—not that it matters, because there’s still no one giving him directions.
It’s another week when the Acting Minister for Magic calls him into his office.
“Mr. Weasley,” Shacklebolt says, and distantly Percy realizes that he’s exhausted too. He’s been working on the hearings day in and day out, nearly six months on, shifting through reams of parchment aside from hearing testimonies themselves. “How are you?”
“I am well, Minister,” Percy replies, ramrod straight. He knows that his eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep.
Shacklebolt studies him for a long moment, evidently deciding not to comment on the blatant lie. “Mr. Weasley, you’ve done the Ministry an immeasurable service during the Voldemort years. I am aware that you kept the Department of International Magical Cooperation running and more or less intact during a very difficult time. It is largely owing to your work that the International Confederation of Wizards is not today breathing down our necks.”
“It was nothing, Minister.”
Shacklebolt snorts. “Nothing, my arse. We maintained all our trade relations without incident through Voldemort’s reign, and that is not nothing. That is valuable money pouring in and out of our economy, and that money is what will ultimately let us rebuild.”
“You-Know-Who was not interested in foreign affairs or international trade,” Percy points out, more than a little suspicious. The Minister is laying it on thick—it isn’t that Percy didn’t do the work, but he isn’t the only one to have done it. “Minister, what’s this about?”
Shacklebolt sighs. “I was trying to ease you into it,” he mutters, and then he leans forward over his desk. “In recognition of your good work with our international allies, we’d like to offer you an international assignment in any of our embassies abroad. Country of your choice. You’re young—you should see the world.”
If Percy had ever wanted to go abroad, he would have. He’s no Charlie, who ran off abroad as soon as he graduated from Hogwarts. Percy likes the familiar, and he doesn’t handle change well. Another country, with different food, different stores, different attitudes and customs and culture—that is too much for Percy to handle.
“No, thank you,” Percy replies firmly. “I’m comfortable here, and my family is here.”
“France is just across the Channel—easy enough to come back on weekends.”
“I don’t speak French.”
“You could learn.”
Percy stares at the Minister. “Minister, I ask again—what’s this about?”
Shacklebolt sighs again, this time long and lasting. He folds his hands on his desk.
“It would be best, Mr. Weasley, if you were not around for the next while,” he says quietly. “I was not lying when I said you had done the Ministry an invaluable service—but you, like many of the people in the Ministry, have become somewhat controversial. If you won’t take a foreign assignment, I’m going to have you go on stress leave. Six months, paid.”
“I hardly need—”
“Your work since the end of the war has been largely non-existent,” Shacklebolt points out, not unkindly. “As if during the war, you were running flat out because what else was there to be done, and the end of the war was a finishing line. I’m not saying that we’ve had a lot of assignments that needed doing in that time—trade negotiations haven’t been a priority—but they will be. When you come back, we’ll need you at your best, so go.”
“Go…” Percy’s voice shakes, and he clears his throat. “Go where, Minister?”
“On a holiday in the sun. To see a therapist. To sleep for six months straight in your bedsit. I don’t know, Mr. Weasley—just pack your cubicle and don’t come back to the Ministry until next June. Your paychecks will be deposited right into your Gringotts account.”
“I—” Percy tries, but he can’t find it in himself to argue. He doesn’t even know what he would argue. “Very well, Minister.”
The first day, Percy sleeps. He sleeps most of the second day too, and then a part of the third. He polishes off his bottle of Firewhiskey over the rest of the week.
He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s always worked—even when he was a child, he’d had responsibilities. He’d had younger siblings to look out for, and Mum had always needed help around the house. Then, at Hogwarts, he was always studying, and then he’d been made a prefect and had had all those concomitant duties. And then it had been the Ministry, and work, and You-Know-Who.
He tries to read a little, but the words float on the page and by the time he reaches the end of the paragraph, he’s forgotten the beginning. It’s too quiet in his bedsit, the crackling of the fire barely cutting into the oppressive peace, with nothing to break him from his thoughts.
It’s the second week that he decides to go to the pub. Nothing in the magical world, that’s for certain—even if Percy prefers the magical world as a rule, he can’t bring himself to go. He was a Weasley, he’d be known anywhere he went, and the questions… he doesn’t want to be recognized, he doesn’t want to answer questions. He’s not sure he even wants to talk to anyone.
But he wants the noise of people around him. People who won’t talk to him, who won’t bother him, but who will fill the air with talk.
There’s a pub down the street. It’s small, dimply lit, a little grungy. When Percy walks in, his feet stick on the floor and squeak when he walks. It’s a weekday, but there are still small clusters of people at various tables. There’s a quiet hum in the air, conversations held lowly, and occasionally a laugh cuts across the room. It’s nothing that Percy thinks he should like—he thinks, if anything, he belongs in something cleaner, something more elegant with a little more magic, a little more prestige. This reminds him too much of everything he worked so hard to escape, from an unbalanced house built in the framework of an old pigsty to hand-me-down robes that never fit right.
But at the same time, he walks in, and he feels comfortable. He’s never been here, but he feels like he has—this is a world that he feels like he knows, where he doesn’t have to fight.
He takes a seat at the bar, swinging himself up with his hands on the countertop. He doesn’t recognize any of the beers that are listed on the array of polished, wooden handles in front of him, nor does he recognize the many bottles lined up on the shelves behind the bar.
The bartender is at the other end, her wavy black hair swinging down her back. Percy can hear the clink of glasses, and he settles and studies the labels on the taps.
He doesn’t know these drinks.
“What’ll it be, love?” The bartender asks, wiping her hands on a black tea towel. Seen face on, Percy can see that her eyes are heavily outlined in kohl, the ends swooping up like tiny check marks. Her lips are painted red, and she sports a silver ring through one nostril.
“I’m… not sure,” Percy replies, kicking himself for not just picking one. “A beer.”
She gives him an unimpressed look.
“I’m not… I haven’t had these beers before.” Percy gestures to the taps. “Don’t get out much, I suppose.”
The bartender nods. “Well, what do you like? Something light and fruity, or darker and creamier? Notes of citrus, or coffee and chocolate?”
“Er—the coffee and chocolate?”
“Let’s try a Guinness,” the bartender says, reaching for a glass. As she does, Percy can see the black tattoos marching up both of her arms. A dragon and a koi fish, he makes out, some swirling designs that he doesn’t.
She pours out a small amount of a dark beer and hands it to Percy to taste. “What do you think?”
Surprised, Percy reaches out and accepts.
The Guinness is fizzy on his mouth, the foam tasting soft, mild compared to the dark liquid lying underneath. That tastes bitter on his tongue; a moment later, and he tastes the sweetness.
It’s not Butterbeer. It’s darker than Butterbeer. More bitter, and he can taste that it’s a lot stronger than Butterbeer too.
He likes it. It doesn’t taste like the wizarding world, like the world before the war. It’s new, and it’s different, and it’s right.
“It’s good,” he says, the words coming out of his mouth almost reluctantly.
“I’ll get you a pint, then,” the bartender says, taking the glass back. Once full, she slides it back to him. “Call me over if you need another one. Name’s Audrey.”
The neighbourhood pub is small. Quiet—or rather, not quiet, which is exactly why Percy goes out to the pub. His bedsit is silent, and the pub isn’t. The pub is quiet, but it isn’t silent. There’s movement there, movement and talk and life.
Audrey is usually there. She works the evening shift most nights.
Percy doesn’t go every night. Every few nights, he can’t stop himself. It isn’t like he has anything else to do, and he’d never had many friends. After the war, he’s not sure if he has any at all. It’s always just been family for him, and while he loves his family, he doesn’t know what he would say about this—about the war, about the commission, about his six-month mandatory stress leave. He feels like a failure.
Maybe he was always a failure.
It gets colder.
The wind coming off the river gets brisker, chillier.
Decorations start coming out. Wreaths are hung on the doors along the street, while frosted garlands hang along the edges of rooftops. Inside windows, Percy can see the glitter of Christmas trees covered in ornaments, tinsel, and lights, and sometimes he catches a glimpse of stockings lined up on a fireplace mantel. The Tesco’s that he buys his groceries from starts playing Christmas music at nauseum, while shelves are covered in fancy boxes of chocolate and cookies.
He buys them for his family, one for his parents and each of his brothers and sister, and then he buys one for Harry and Hermione and Fleur. Then, with a bit of hesitation, he buys three more boxes because he doesn’t know who else will come for Christmas dinner.
Maybe George is seeing someone. Maybe Harry and Ron will bring over another school friend. Maybe any of them will, because Merlin knows there are too many people without families after the war, and the Weasleys have never said no the guests.
For about three minutes, he contemplates not going home for Christmas.
But he can’t not go home. Not after the war, not when this will be the first year that he’s had Christmas dinner with his family since before the war started. He can skip Sunday dinners, he can skip seeing his family for a few weeks and that is one thing, but it is another to skip Christmas dinner.
So, on Christmas, Percy puts on a plain sweater and dark jeans, and he Apparates to the Burrow.
“Percy!” Mum’s voice is clear and carrying, and he’s barely ducked his head into the kitchen before she has him wrapped in a hug. “Dear, you’re so thin, what have you been feeding yourself in your flat—”
“I cook well enough for myself, Mum,” Percy says uncomfortably, returning her hug. “I learned from you.”
“I could swear you’re thinner than I last saw you.” Mum lets him go, looking him over. “But it’s been so long, I couldn’t be sure. Go say hello to your father and brothers, and your presents can go around—mostly they’ve opened theirs, but there’s a big stack for you, and I’m sure they’d love to see you opening your gifts too.”
“Yes, Mum,” Percy replies obediently, though he’s less sure about going into the living room where the rest of his family is already gathered. He can hear the laughter, its warmth and merry cheer echoing into the kitchen.
Still, this is what he’s here for, and so he goes.
“Percy!” Charlie is the first to notice him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Good to see you!”
“You as well,” Percy replies, handing him one of his boxes. “How are you? How are the dragons?”
“Being dragons.” Charlie shrugs, ripping the wrapping paper off the gift. “Got burned a few days ago, but at least I get to extend my vacation for a little bit. How about you? Dad says you’re on stress leave from work?”
“That’s right.” Percy’s smile is mechanical. Charlie says it so easily, as if this were a totally reasonable thing, and not the embarrassment that it is. “I’ve been reading a lot…”
Dinner is hard.
It’s all the little things. It’s the moment when Bill and Charlie set the table, and they’re too busy teasing each other about something or other to realize that they’ve automatically grabbed an extra plate and cutlery for a seat that will never be filled. It’s the moment when Percy realizes that he has four extra gifts, because he’s always bought gifts for his family in eights, and it never occurred to him that it should now be seven. It’s the moment when Ginny is talking about Quidditch, and Fred’s name comes up, and she frowns slightly but barrels on anyway.
Fred looms in the breaths and gasps of their Christmas conversations, always there and never there.
The war looms in the cracks and crannies of their experiences, always there and never there. Percy hasn’t been at Christmas dinner in years, not since before the war, and this Christmas is nothing like the ones he remembers. There are gaps, the war peeking around the corners, and none of them are the quite the same.
Percy isn’t stupid enough to think that he was the only one affected, but he thinks that he was the only one dirtied by the war. His brothers and sister, his parents, Harry, and Hermione had always had the moral high ground. They had always been right. And compared to them, Percy feels more out of place than ever before.
It hurts.
“Do you have anything stronger the Guinness?” Percy asks, as he climbs onto his usual bar stool. Never mind that it’s Christmas—Audrey is still behind the counter, polishing a glass. The bar is less empty than it should be, considering the holiday, and Percy spots clusters of regulars at their usual tables.
Audrey raises a curved eyebrow and waves at the rows of bottles behind her. “We are a pub,” she says dryly. “Rough night?”
“Christmas dinner,” Percy replies. “Anything is fine, I don’t know what most of that is, and you’ve chosen well for me before.”
Audrey tilts her head slightly, thinking about it. “Whiskey? Scotch?”
“I like whiskey.”
“Thought you said you hadn’t had any before.”
“Not with these labels, I meant.”
Audrey shrugs, pouring a shot out in a glass over ice. “Rough Christmas dinner, then?”
“About as hard as I expected.” Percy tosses back half the shot of whiskey in one gulp. “My brother—one of my brothers—he died last year. Two years younger than me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Tough circumstances, I'm guessing?"
“Yes.” Percy searches for a way to explain without mentioning the war, without mentioning You-Know-Who, without mentioning magic. It’s at times like this that he’s grateful that he took Muggle Studies in school. Laughable as so many people found it, he could never have survived in the Muggle world without it. “I come from a family of—of police officers. Fred died in the line of duty. He was only twenty.”
Audrey nods, leaning onto the bar. “That’s too bad. I’m no friend of the bobbies in general—”
Percy barks a laugh. “Neither am I, these days.”
“—but I’m not unsympathetic.” Audrey smiles. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Percy’s moment of humour fades, and he heaves a deep sigh. “No. If I could have another drink, though…”
When Percy wakes up, he’s in his bedsit, and his head is pounding. The too-bright winter sunlight shining through the curtains is burrowing holes into his brain, and his mouth tastes like something died in it. He’s still in his clothes from Christmas day, and with a groan he grabs the pillow from under his head and claps it over his face.
He doesn’t remember the night before. Or rather—he doesn’t want to remember the night before.
It comes to him anyway, in disconnected shards.
It’s sometime around his third drink that he starts weeping. It’s sometime around his fourth that he starts apologizing. It’s sometime around his fifth that he’s saying more than apologies—
He doesn’t remember the things he said. He remembers too many of the things he said. There was You-Know-Who, and the dying, and Merlin, he’d talked a lot about how people didn’t understand, people didn’t understand what it was like on the inside and how bad things really were. He’d talked about slipping papers out, even, and then…
Audrey had taken him home, and he’d let her. She’d helped him into his bedsit, fishing his keys out of his pockets, and then she’d put him in his bed and pulled his blanket over him. She’d even, he realizes when he pulls the pillow off his face, put a glass of water on his nightstand with a battered plastic bottle beside it. A piece of paper is folded beside it.
He sits up, holding down a retch with sheer effort, and reaches for the note with trembling fingers.
Percy, it reads.
Drink the water and have some ibuprofen. Couldn’t find your medicine cabinet (didn’t want to poke around too much), so I left you the bottle I keep in my bag. Cheers.
Audrey
Percy folds the note back up, puts it back on his nightstand, and reaches for the water. The pills he doesn’t recognize, but the faded instructions are simple enough, and he takes two. Then, he puts his head back under his pillow, and tries to sink back through time to Christmas Eve.
It doesn’t work. Of course, it doesn’t work—Percy doesn’t have a Time Turner. Some enterprising soul in the Department of Mysteries had told You-Know-Who that they were all destroyed the night that he and Dumbledore had fought in the Ministry, and then had gone to great efforts to destroy those that were left. There had been no need to add the complications of time to an already losing war.
He’s distracting himself.
The thought comes to him slowly, as he gets up, gets a coffee even though it is well into the afternoon, gets dressed. It’s as though the thought was always there, waiting for him to pull himself together, waiting for him to notice it.
He has to go back to the pub. He has to give Audrey back her medication, and he needs to apologize for creating a spectacle, and more than that he needs to figure out how much of the Statute of Secrecy he broke.
Audrey’s a Muggle, and she isn’t supposed to know anything at all about the wizarding world. Not about You-Know-Who, not about the war, not about anything at all. And he can’t be sure how much he told her, and if she does know anything he’ll have to Obliviate her and then—
He doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t want to do any of that.
The hours tick down. Mid-afternoon slips into twilight slips into evening, and Percy puts on his boots with heavy feet. He walks out the door, locking up behind him, and goes to the pub.
Inside, it’s the same as it ever was. The same regulars, none of whom give him a second glance, the same smell of old wood and spilled beers, and Audrey standing behind the bar hanging up the beer mugs.
He takes his usual seat.
“Guinness, tonight?” Audrey asks, already reaching for a glass, as if yesterday hadn’t happened. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened yesterday, or as if he’d gone back in time.
“Er—” Percy tries, and then he clears his throat. “Yes, please.”
She reaches for the tap, pours him a glass of Guinness, and hands it to him.
“Er—” Percy says, as she starts turning away. “About yesterday…”
“Don’t worry about it, Percy,” she says, shaking her head. “It happens. You’re good—it happened once, not every night, and we all have bad nights.”
“It’s not just that.” Percy winces, ducking his head a little. “Unfortunately, I have to ask you what I said, and what you worked out, and… I appreciate it’s awkward, but I need to know. For—for work reasons.”
Audrey’s expression softens, and she comes back to him. Her arms are folded on the bar, crossed, and Percy reflects distantly that Mum would hate her. Between being a bartender, the tattoos, and makeup… Mum would say that she was a bad influence.
Once, Percy probably would have said the same thing. What does it say now that he doesn’t care, even that he rather likes her? Percy, after all, had done everything right. He’d worked hard, become a prefect, gotten the right job in the Ministry. And yet, he’d still been in the wrong. Audrey feels grounded to him, like all the bad could happen and did happen and it'd be fine.
“You weren’t very clear,” she says quietly. “So, you didn’t let anything about any major, I don’t know, gang raids, prosecutions, anything like that slip. From what you did say, I gather that you’re from a family of bobbies, and you—went another way. Joined a gang, maybe, or maybe you just worked for a gang. Bad things happened, and then you turned witness.”
Percy blinks.
It’s wrong. It’s wrong enough that it’s almost right, in the right light. But it’s also wrong, and it’s not magical, and not once does the word You-Know-Who or any mention of a war at all appear.
“But you know, Percy, I don’t care about what happened in your past.” She reaches over, touches his forearm with her hand.
“You don’t?”
“We all have pasts, and we’ve all done things we regret. For a lot of people, it’s small things, things that can be left behind easily, but for others it’s more complicated.” Audrey pauses, looking upwards and thinking about it. “But generally, I don't think regret is very useful. It’s more useful to atone for what we’ve done wrong, to reflect on it and make sure we don’t do it again, than it is to regret that it happened at all.”
“Is…” Percy coughs. “How does one…”
“I think it depends.” Audrey shrugs. “If reflection and atonement were easy, they wouldn’t be what they are, would they? But it can help to talk about it.”
“I don’t really…” Percy looks away. “I don’t really have anyone to talk about it to. My family loves me, but they were never—they wouldn’t understand. And I don’t have any friends left, after what happened.”
“So, tell me about it.” Audrey reaches up, grabbing another beer glass, and pours herself a beer. Not Guinness, but something pale and amber and lighter. “It’s quiet now, and bartenders are basically therapists anyway.”