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TO HIS OWN BLOOD
Days are the easiest for Percy. Although he
works nights, too--days and nights and mornings and every time in between--the
days are the easiest. Light from his window, and plenty of busy people
surrounding him, everyone moving so fast that there is no time for pause, for
reflection; no time to look into anyone's eyes. Its gotten easier to avoid his
father, now, and for once he's thankful for his accidental lessons from the
twins on how to fade into the scenery, to escape notice long enough to get out
of trouble, to become so still and silent as to be unrecognizable even to his
own blood.
Not that Dad would recognize him anyway. Percy doesn't look at mirrors much
anymore, if he has the choice, but when he does, he sees something different in
his features, something altogether un-Weasley-like. He's not the same boy he
was at home. There are shadows beneath his cheekbones, and something
unidentifiable in his eyes. He doesn't recognize himself anymore.
The nights are harder. Candles, then, and lighting spells from his wand which
only serve to remind him of who and what he is, and isn't. Percy is one of the
few at the Ministry dedicated enough to spend all night and all day with nose
to the grindstone, so when he goes from his office to the front door, there are
fewer people. He has to look into their eyes, then, and see what people think
of him.
Not that he needs to see to know, of course. With the revelation of Voldemort's
return, those at the Ministry have gone from seeing Percy as a prodigy, the
lone reasonable mind in a family of nutters, to seeing him as a betrayer. They
keep him on, of course, because he is a prodigy; he works faster and
harder and more ruthlessly than anyone else, and will continue to do so no
matter what they say about him.
Percy is a prodigy. Percy is precocious. Percy is prompt. Percy is a
perfectionist.
Percy betrayed his family for a bigger office, a rise in salary, and the
opportunity to sit at the Minister's heels, like a dog. Not anything that ever
appeared on his school reports, but true nonetheless.
It isn't so much what the others at the Ministry think of him. They're fickle
people, and stupid; he knows that they need someone else to blame for their own
gullibility, and it may as well be him. He doesn't care. The less people like
him, the more time he has to work, and with how much his done for the Ministry,
they'd be suicidal not to keep promoting him.
Still, it grates at him. Nights are the worst, the candlelight making shadows
everywhere, and the look in other people's eyes, and sometimes he'll walk in
front of a mirror by accident, before he can avoid the sight of his own
reflection.
"You should have been a Slytherin." Thats what Ginny'd hissed at him,
snakelike, right before he left home. He'd looked at her, at her Gryffindor-red
hair and her brothers standing firmly behind her, and then he didn't look back
again.
He still hasn't. He knows his family are Gryffindor to a fault, and would
happily accept him back and teach him the error of his ways. The twins would
plant Dungbombs in his bed for a week, which from them would be an apology, and
Ron would offer to carry his luggage back into the house, and drop half of it
on the doorstep.
Ginny would sneak into his bed like she did as a child, and whisper into his
ear, "I didn't mean it, I didn't."
But Percy's mission statement to himself is, "Always forward, never
back." So instead he spends as much time at the office as he can, and when
he goes back to his little flat in London, he avoids looking into the mirror,
avoids seeing his Weasley-red hair and snake-black eyes.
When he finally decides to cover the mirror with an old shawl, bought second
hand in a Muggle shop, he has to stare at his reflection, to note all the
changes that make him unrecognizable, even to his own blood and himself.
"You should have been a Slytherin," he whispers, and the mirror says
jauntily, "Oh yes, m'dear. Thought so all the time."
END
