Team: Wigtown Wanderers
Position: Beater 2
Prompt: American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis (work environment and strict personal regimen)
Additional Prompts: 8. (poem) Give All to Love — Ralph Waldo Emerson (working for and out of love/honoring love), 12. (emotion) shame
Words: 1290
Percy blinked and met his own gaze. He wasn't sure who it was harder to make eye contact with: himself or his mother. Maybe George… he hadn't for months. He blinked again. That was the Gryffindor courage, he thought bitterly: he couldn't avoid making eye contact with himself.
His mother avoided it. George didn't, and… well, Percy already knew that George was by far a better man than he was.
He looked down and rapped a short rhythm on the porcelain sink. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven. Twice. Three times. Enough.
Percy looked up—caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and moved quicker—and opened a cabinet: toothbrush, toothpaste, comb. Lined up on the middle shelf. He needed to dust the top and bottom shelves. Now—after.
He looked at the digital Muggle clock on top of the toilet as he brushed his teeth. One, two, three… three and a half minutes. He briskly washed the brush and raised his comb to his hair several times. No—eight times.
"Are you ready?" his reflection said; it raised an eyebrow at Percy's lack of answer and scoffed. "I know you're not."
"I know that, too," Percy replied.
He nodded once to the mirror and brushed his hand against the wall as he left, knowing that he'd click the light switch off as he passed it. He kept his hand on the wall as he walked—one, two, three the lights turned off as he passed the hallway and kitchen—and took his briefcase in his other hand. He'd put his papers in the night before, no need to disrupt his morning routine.
And then he was out of the building, the angry morning sun shining down through the thin clouds, passerby dodging him as they rushed to their jobs, yelling at him for stopping on the pavement.
He was in the wrong, of course. Stopping on the pavement in the morning.
Percy allowed himself to scoff before he walked into a nearby alley.
Right, left—there was no one on either side of him, but Percy looked again just in case—and then Percy turned on his heel.
He'd been first in his Apparition class at Hogwarts. He'd been first in everything: Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, History of Magic, Charms, Transfiguration, Arithmancy, Ancient Rules, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, abandoning his entire family to pursue a pride- and shame-driven career…
No one ever said that Percy Weasley did anything by halves.
No one ever said anything about Percy Weasley, to be honest. He didn't come to dinner, didn't come to his mother's house with spontaneous presents, didn't write, didn't meet anyone's gaze or exchange smiles.
"He's a damn good Senior Undersecretary," Kingsley Shacklebolt had said the previous week, throwing Percy one of his rare but brilliant smiles over the top of Auror Miranda Stevens's head.
Percy was still trying to figure out why he was the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister.
He was good at it, that was clear. He knew that. He had a knack for numbers, words, names, faces, organization… but not for people. Not for politics, not after what he'd almost lost with the Old Ministry.
(He'd lost it anyway under a collapsed archway at Hogwarts.)
The floor was interesting to look at. Tiles and tiles and tiles of the customary blue and gold of the Ministry—but a lighter blue this time, a more muted gold. No more pride at the Ministry, no more avarice, favoritism, corruption, extremism.
Reforms and diplomacy were the reigning parties—them and Kingsley Shacklebolt, who met with Aurors, politicians, teachers, warriors, criminals, and creatures to form the new Wizarding World; who hardly left his new office and hardly stood from his desk when he wasn't in meetings; who needed to be reminded to eat amongst the rapid and unrecognizable changes he was instilling into society.
Percy tightened his grip on his briefcase and ducked into an alcove. His gaze lowered—his shoes were brown, empty and lifeless against the elegant floor—and he saw his father's feet move slower as he passed. But he did pass.
Percy bit his lip and slipped out, looking in the direction his father had gone: there was his red hair above the crowd. Percy and his own hair continued on his chosen path through empty corridors to the back door of Kingsley's office.
"Use the Floo, Percy," Kingsley had urged him from the moment he'd been offered the post.
But how was Percy to explain that he couldn't? He wasn't worth the Floo—wasn't worth the job! Was it pride or shame that he hadn't refused?—Pride in his own abilities, shame in his past use of them; pride that his family, in his name, had finally gotten somewhere, shame that his first thought had been of their inferiority.
There was a reason, after all, why he hadn't made contact in months. A better reason than his murder of his brother.
"The drafts of the Creature Regulation Reform, Minister," Percy said as he placed the parchment in front of Kingsley, closing his briefcase with his other hand, for Percy Weasley was nothing if not efficient.
(He was nothing, too, though.)
"Thanks, Percy."
Percy's lips twitched up in a cheap imitation of a smile, but he gave it up as a bad job and nodded instead. He'd smiled with Fred, then, had even laughed; he'd laughed with George, once, later… Before he'd realised he shouldn't.
Working, though… working was what he should do. It wasn't like he couldn't bring people harm with his work—Percy knew that all too well—but he trusted Kingsley, trusted his deep and even voice, his honest smiles, his work ethic, his methodical drive.
"You're keeping this job," Kingsley had said mere days after Percy had started work, and Percy had stayed.
"Draft this for me," Kingsley had said, giving him parchment and an outdated law, and Percy had missed two nights of sleep before turning in a finished product.
"Watch the office," Kingsley had said before leaving for two weeks for a confidential meeting with the European Ministries.
Pride and shame colored Percy, second only to his self-loathing; pride at the trust placed in him, shame at the same because… He'd messed up once before, hadn't he? What if Kingsley was wrong?
Kingsley hadn't been wrong yet, however. "That's that," he said weeks after Percy had submitted the final rewritten law to him.
That was that, then. No more Old Ministry, no more Percy—
And what was he to do if he couldn't work for Kingsley anymore? No more office job—no more overworking, no more responsibility, no more trust placed in him. No excuses to see his father from afar in the Ministry corridors. No more penance, though he'd continue it privately, because he wasn't done, war so far from being done even so many months later.
"Let's make a new Ministry," Kingsley said then.
And Percy's heart stopped.
And started again.
Out with the old, in with the new. It was a Muggle saying, one Percy had read in books and one his father had gleefully told at the dinner table. He couldn't help but think of it—was Kingsley thinking of it, too?—and allowed himself to sit across from Kingsley to listen.
Percy straightened his back and raised his gaze. A New Ministry. He could do that. He could be a part of that. He would be a part of that, would make a new, good, better world: for the old generation, for the new, for creatures and Wizards and Muggles, for the Ministry employees he saw every morning in the Atrium, for the Muggles running past him on the pavement outside his flat. For his family.