Title: Inside Out
Author: Tsukiyomi
Summary: When the Ministry admitted it was wrong at the end of OoP, Percy Weasley's life was turned inside out. Can anyone help him get it back together?
Warnings: OoP spoilers. Nothing major (yet), but you still probably shouldn't read this unless you've read OoP. Also, implied slash, only because I don't see Percy as a straight guy, and I might have some real slash in future chapters. If you aren't comfortable with Harry Potter characters being portrayed as gay or with gay people generally, don't read any farther. Otherwise, read on.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. All Harry Potter references belong to J.K. Rowling and a lot of companies I don't really feel like mentioning. The Latin is taken from "Ecce Romani I", the high school Latin text I used six years ago, and while I do own a copy of that, the intellectual property therein belongs to Longman Publishing Group, White Plains.
Like everything else in his little Westminster flat, the three pieces of paper that had ruined Percy Ignatius Weasley's life were arranged in the neatest and tidiest possible way, in a stack on his desk. At the bottom of the stack was the now-famous Daily Prophet issue with the headline "HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED RETURNS", detailing the circumstances of Voldemort's return to power and the mutiny of the Azkaban dementors, exonerating Sirius Black, and affirming everything Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter had been saying for the past year, and, in the process, severely criticizing the Ministry of Magic in general and the Minister, Cornelius Fudge, in particular. Percy had sincerely believed Fudge from the beginning, to his great personal disadvantage, as he had completely severed ties with his family over the issue. Now that the Ministry and he, Percy, had been proven wrong—well, the fear, the guilt, and most of all, the humiliation that followed the revelation were overpowering. Percy had only felt so horrible once before, the day his only sister and favorite sibling, Ginny, had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets; but even then he hadn't felt so betrayed, so—violated—by an institution he had admired his whole life.
But things had only gotten worse. The next day, the headline in the Daily Prophet had been "MINISTRY INQUIRY UNDER WAY", and the reports had been full of Ministry employees swearing that Fudge had known about Voldemort the entire year, but had blackmailed them into denying the rumors of his return in, according to the Prophet, "the most massive campaign of disinformation in Ministry history." That day, Percy had called in sick after he saw the Prophet, making it the first day of work or school he'd missed in his life. It didn't exactly surprise him that so many witches and wizards had disassociated themselves from the Minister so quickly, but he knew for a fact that most of them had been just as zealous about quenching the rumors of Voldemort's return as Cornelius Fudge himself. Not that it made any difference anymore.
The third article that had ruined Percy's life was not a newspaper, but a letter, a letter from Cornelius Fudge himself, and this was worst of all. Featured most prominently in the stack on Percy's desk, it read:
Dear Mr. Weasley:
As I am quite sure you have heard, the office of the Minister of Magic is facing a full independent inquiry from a Wizengamot-appointed council regarding alleged false reports made pursuant to the return of the one calling himself Lord Voldemort.
Now, I have not had any kind of vacation in ten years, and I am sure you can understand why right now might be high time for me to take a sabbatical. I am leaving for America today, and I have left it to my press secretary to answer all questions for the inquiry.
Since I shall not be present in London, it seems that I will have no need for a Junior Assistant this summer. You will continue to receive your salary, of course; do not be concerned about the financial aspects of the situation. However, you need not come into the office until further notice, and it will be at least September before I return. Enjoy your summer off. I am sure that you will find plenty to keep yourself busy.
Sincerely,
The Minister of Magic,
Cornelius FudgeAnd it had been this letter that had truly ruined Percy's life.
Now, on the eleventh morning since he had received the letter effectively suspending him from work, Percy Weasley awoke, much later than he ever had in the past: it was nearly 9:00 AM. Before, Percy had loved to wake up, and had had seen sleep only as a brief interval between two lovely days filled with work and the possibility of accomplishing something great. Now, however, he delighted in the semiconsciousness of the awakening process, for it was the only time of day when he could think about commonplace things, not remembering what had happened with the Ministry, not remembering what he had done to his family—
As Percy glanced around the room at the neat stacks of papers on his desk, the bland walls and ceilings, the spotless carpet, his plain brown bedspread (really, there wasn't anything to distinguish his apartment from a Muggle flat) a rather odd thought arose unbidden in his mind: I wonder what Oliver would think about all this.
Percy and Oliver Wood had been roommates for seven years at Hogwarts, and Percy often wondered if two more opposite people had ever cohabited a bedroom. Oliver had been the messy, friendly, entertaining, athletic foil to Percy's tidy, introverted, humorless, studious self. The two had never been friends—they simply didn't do enough of the same things to spend a lot of time together—but seven years of living with each other had really brought Percy and Oliver to understand one another's habits, nuances, and personalities; indeed, Percy felt like he understood Oliver better than he did his so-called 'best friend', Penny Clearwater, or anyone else. Of course, it didn't hurt that Percy had been incredibly attracted to Oliver since his third year, and thus his favorite hobbies had included gazing at Oliver's perfect physical form and listening, enraptured, to his perfectly beautiful voice.
Oliver had, thankfully, never noticed Percy's crush, nor had anyone else. Of course, only Penny (who had known something was up the first time she tried to kiss him) and Ginny (who had witnessed Penny trying to kiss Percy and also Penny becoming angry and calling him a 'queer', though she hadn't told anyone about that part) knew that Percy was gay, but Percy didn't see how anyone could sleep next to Oliver for seven years without developing a crush on him. Oliver slept in the nude, natch.
Percy was thinking that Oliver would find his bland apartment utterly ridiculous and had a fleeting wish that he was there redecorating it, but, as he returned to consciousness, he realized that it really didn't do to think about Oliver. After all, he hadn't even seen him since graduation. Percy had been just as bad with Penny; though she had sent him a few owls once he got into the Ministry (for her part, she was still in school, training to become a Healer), he had mostly ignored them, and they hadn't spoken in a very long time either. Percy didn't really have any excuse for not keeping in touch with his Hogwarts friends; he had figured that he would enjoy his colleagues at the Ministry more. It hadn't happened; anyway, Percy decided, work was more important than friendship. But he had more important things to think about.
Percy slowly got out of bed, put on his glasses, put on his slippers, walked across to the bathroom, took off his slippers, put toothpaste on his toothbrush, brushed his teeth, flossed, rinsed out his mouth with mouthwash, brushed again, rinsed out his mouth with water, reorganized his bathroom counter, took off his glasses, took off his pajama top, took off his pajama bottom, took off his underwear, got into the shower. Everything was a routine, the same as it had always been, and that in itself was comforting. And in the shower, as always, Percy took his time to think.
Paramount among the things he had to think about was question of What To Do now that, for all intents and purposes, he no longer had a job. At first, he had been at a loss; life without work seemed almost worthless, and for the first few days, he had stayed cooped up in his apartment, rearranging his furniture. Percy felt terribly uncomfortable going into Diagon Alley and the other Wizarding districts in London; everyone knew that he was part of the Minister's Office conspiracy, and being so tall, with his glasses and his flaming red Weasley hair to boot, he always felt like he stood out in crowds. So he had taken to dressing in Muggle clothes—unlike the rest of his family, he did this very well, having learned from Mr. Crouch—and wandering around Muggle London.
On his first day of doing this, he had discovered the bookstores of Charing Cross, which wasn't very far at all from his apartment, and had been absolutely enthralled. He had bought several great pieces of Muggle literature, in addition to some teach-yourself foreign language courses in Latin, German, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese, though he hadn't opened them yet. In any case, he thought as he got out of the shower, how was he ever going to do anything with the Department of International Magical Cooperation if all he spoke was English? Mr. Crouch had spoken nearly two hundred languages; maybe Muggle bookstores didn't sell course books in Gobbledygook, but he could get a start on learning some human languages, and then maybe, one day, if he wanted to apply for a job at the Ministry again, he'd be able to get into International Magical Cooperation a little bit easier. That was all he'd ever wanted to do in the first place; the way the different magical communities in all the different countries worked with each other had fascinated him since he'd been a little boy; he'd only taken the job as Junior Assistant for the money, and for his father to suggest anything else had been simply—
And there was the other thing Percy needed to think about: what to do about his family. He knew he had been wrong to trust Fudge, wrong to accuse his parents of being traitors, wrong to suspect Harry Potter of madness, and he especially regretted refusing his parents' gestures toward reconciliation and not going to see his father in St. Mungo's; but the feelings of anger at his family were still there, and somehow, everything he had done to them felt good in some ways.
It was hard for him to rationalize, but after eighteen years of being overshadowed by Bill and Charlie, taunted by Fred and George, ignored by Ron, overlooked by his father, and condescended to by his mother, he had really gotten sick tired of living with them all; the Ministry/Dumbledore feud was little more than an excuse to get out. All throughout his school years, he had worked so hard to do just as well as Bill and Charlie, and when his grades surpassed even theirs, and he became prefect and then Head Boy, he had expected everyone to be so proud of him, and he was very proud of himself (was that so wrong?); but Fred and George had only mocked him; Bill and Charlie couldn't have cared less (of course, they'd already done it); Ron, rather than admire him, as Percy had hoped, had joined in with Fred and George; his father hadn't paid much attention to him at all; and his mother had certainly acted proud of him, but she did it to such an extent that he didn't feel like she knew him at all as a person, and somehow, her interactions with Fred and George, even when she was yelling at them, seemed a lot more real, more loving, more motherly. Only Ginny had ever treated him with any measure of respect; she had always looked up to him a little more than the others, and the fact that she had found out his secret sixth year and not told anyone made him love her all the more. Percy had felt bad leaving Ginny behind, but he realized that he cared more about her than she did about him, and that she probably hadn't defended him at all anyway.
Then, when Percy had gotten his appointment in the Ministry with Mr. Crouch, no one had ever been at all interested in what he was doing. Sure, they listened to Fred and George talk about all their stupid pranks, with Mrs. Weasley only scolding them very lightly and no one else bothering; they listened to Mr. Weasley, who was almost as bad, telling his stupid Muggle stories about regurgitating toilets and flying motorcycles and the like; but no one ever seemed to care about the goings-on in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Percy had accepted that he, personally, wasn't very interesting, but he found subjects like the flying carpet controversy fascinating (especially compared to Canary Creams and puking toilets), and no one else cared about them. Was he really that boring?
And they had all thought he was an idiot for not noticing that Mr. Crouch was possessed, but he had shown them by getting a promotion—as the Junior Assistant to the Minister, he'd be making more money than Mr. Weasley, Bill, and Charlie put together. But rather than being proud, his father had gotten angry, and that was the last straw. Percy saw now that his father's concerns had been genuine; Mr. Fudge had wanted him to keep tabs on the Weasleys' contacts with Dumbledore; but that his father thought he would ever spy on the family in such a way still infuriated him. And regardless of what Fudge wanted, why couldn't his father just have been proud? Didn't it matter what he, Percy, wanted? Didn't they know it had always been his dream to work in the Ministry and to get farther than his father ever had? Though he knew now that his father hadn't been jealous, at the time it had seemed like a distinct possibility. And the anger hadn't gone away.
Percy didn't want to think about his family anymore. Having dressed himself in casual black robes, he sat down at his desk, pulled out the beginner's level Muggle Latin book he'd bought, and began to read. If he learned Latin, he'd heard it would be easy to do practically any Romance languages, and being in Europe, he figured those languages were more important than the Chinese or the Arabic. The book was divided into stories with vocabulary notes at the bottom, which the student was then supposed to translate, and a grammar lesson was included at the end of each chapter.
Ecce! In pictura est puella, nomine Cornelia, read Percy. He knew he would have to apologize to his parents eventually; now, he was just as angry at Fudge and the Ministry as they were. But how could he do it? Cornelia est puella Romana quae in Italia habitat. Would they forgive him? More importantly, could he forgive them? Probably none of them even minded that he was gone...Etiam in pictura est villa rustica ubi Cornelia aestate habitat. Cornelia est laeta quod iam in villa habitat. But that wasn't true, his mother had come to see him, and had even sent him a Weasley sweater and an invitation to visit his father...right. No, she didn't know him at all, if she thought sending him an ugly sweater would melt his heart and make him apologize...Cornelia iam sub abore sedet et legit. Etiam in pictura est altera puella, nomine Flavia. But did it matter whether or not she knew him? He loved his mother, and he was sure she loved him...for that matter, the whole family did. And he missed them. Flavia est puella Romana quae in villa vicina habitat. Dum Cornelia legit, Flavia scribit. Percy looked at the stationary picture of the two little Roman girls, Cornelia and Flavia, and realized how much he truly wanted to see Ginny again...Laeta est Flavia quod Cornelia iam in villa habitat.
Percy slammed the Latin book shut. He hadn't paid attention to anything the story had said, and the fact that thinking about his family was interfering with his work made up his mind. He was going to go to them, make some gesture of kindness, and if they refused, at least it wouldn't be his fault...he thought of writing a letter, but he knew his writing couldn't possibly convey what he wanted to say to them...he couldn't go to the Burrow, because the Order of the Phoenix could be meeting anywhere, and he'd never tried to find out where for fear Mr. Fudge might try to get the information out of him...after all these days thinking about whether he was going to go see his family, he hadn't really thought about how to do so...
And then it hit him. Of course, the last time he'd been to Diagon Alley, before the Ministry investigation, he'd heard everyone talking about the great new joke shop at #93, "Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes"...he'd go there, talk to Fred and George, and find out where his parents were, simple as that. Sure, he wasn't exactly excited about having to talk to Fred and George first, but he figured that if he could talk to them, the worst part would be over, and everything else would be easy...
So Percy went down the elevator, wearing a smile determined not to become a frown and his nice black robes (prompting somewhat odd glances from the Muggles in the building), and he set off for Diagon Alley, thinking, After all...what do I have to lose?
A/N: In case you were wondering, the Latin at the end is indeed from my first Latin book six years ago. I'm not sure whether or not there would be American high school Latin textbooks in any bookstore ever on Charing Cross, but it's a creative liberty. Anyhow, it translates to:
Look! In the picture is a girl, Cornelia by name. Cornelia is a girl who lives in Italy. Also in the picture is a country house and farm where Cornelia lives in the summer. Cornelia is happy because she is now living in the country house. Now Cornelia is sitting under a tree and reading. Also in the picture is another girl, Flavia by name. Flavia is a Roman girl who lives in a neighboring country house. While Cornelia reads, Flavia writes. Flavia is happy that Cornelia now lives in the country house.
Well, that was kind of fun. I've always felt really, really bad for Percy in all the books, because nothing good ever seems to happen to him and even JKR doesn't seem to view him in a sympathetic light at all, and OoP just made things worse. I really hope he doesn't turn into a Death Eater or anything like that, and I think he needs to be redeemed. Hence, this fic. Please review; flames don't bother me, but real reviews will be more appreciated. Think I should continue?