THIS IS IT, GUYS. The sequel to "Ruled by Secrecy"! If you haven't read it, please go and do so forthwith. Much of this will not make sense otherwise. I'll not beat around the bush... I'd just like to let everyone who followed RBS with so much love know that I won't be doing the whole thanking thing this time round - I will be counting on you to know that you are thanked in the utmost because I'm a bit annoyed by the unrealistic word-count that RBS has... about 12k of it is notes and thanks.

THIS IS FOR everyone who read RBS in its heyday; I love each and every one of you.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and characters, nor do I own a fair chunk of this plot. (Isolde and Guillame Bowman are mine, though. As are Jack, Daffyd and Thom - the three other Gryffindor kids.)


1. Forsaken Family, Former Friends and a Fruity Flatmate

As soon as the Sorting Hat fell upon is head, Percy Weasley could feel it pondering his destiny. The feeling that the Hat was talking to him... well, it wasn't exactly something he could describe. It was as though their consciousnesses suddenly meshed. Percy could feel its every thought. He didn't hear - he felt - the Hat's first words. Or thoughts.

"Definitely not a Hufflepuff, then," it said.

Percy's eyes widened the moment he heard those words run through his head. His older brothers, Bill and Charlie, both in Gryffindor, had said very similar things to him on the Hogwarts Express: "You'd better be in Gryffindor, kid" Bill had said. Charlie had laughed, and said "well, he's not likely to be in Hufflepuff, is he?"

He was glad the hat fell over his eyes - the whole hall wouldn't be able to see the astonishment written all over his face.

"You could be in Slytherin," the Hat pondered, "you're certainly ambitious."

But Percy willed with all his might that the Hat wouldn't put him in the house most despised by his whole family, from what he'd heard.

And as though it had heard him, it said "no, that won't do. That just leaves Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. You're a smart boy, highly intelligent. But you're also brave, and strong-willed."

Percy wondered where the Hat was getting all his information from. As far as he was concerned, he was merely a novice in the world he was about to enter - highly intelligent was so presumptuous. And brave? Sitting there, the whole school staring at him, he felt anything but.

"My whole family are Gryffindors," he thought to himself.

"Oh, they are, are they?" said the Hat. Percy tried to restrain himself from jumping. It had answered him! "And I suppose you don't want to upset them, do you?" it continued.

"Family is everything," Percy thought.

The next thing he heard was the word "GRYFFINDOR!" ringing out across the Great Hall in the Hat's unmistakeable voice. It was wrenched off his head, and in a daze he went to sit by his brothers.

"Jolly good, Percy," Charlie said, slapping him on the back, as Professor McGonnagal read out the name "Wood, Oliver".

Percy squirmed. He noticed the three new Gryffindor boys who had been sorted before him talking excitedly amongst themselves. One was short, blonde and almost cherub-like, one was almost as tall as Percy and had lank brown hair around his face, and the other had a pointed face, spikey black hair and a strong Welsh accent.

He thought he might go over and introduce himself, but then they started talking to the new Gryffindor girls, and Percy felt that his moment had passed.

Almost as soon as the Hat had fallen on Oliver Wood's head, it cried "GRYFFINDOR!", and before it's shout had stopped echoing, Oliver had taken a seat at the table, across from Percy.

"Hello," he said brightly as soon as Professor Dumbledore's speech was over, sticking his hand out, "I'm Oliver Wood, future keeper for the English National Quidditch Team. What was your name again? I heard it in the Sorting, but it's just slipped my mind."

Percy was slightly taken aback by Oliver's forwardness and sheer energy. He was rather exhausted after his row across the lake.

"I, uh... Percy. Percy Weasley," he said. He couldn't even think of anything witty to say as a rejoinder to Oliver's quip.

"Nice to meet you, Percy Percy Weasley," Oliver said with a grin, shaking Percy's hand firmly. "You're very tall. Has anyone ever told you that?"

"A few people," Percy mumbled, starting to get annoyed with this exuberant kid. "Has anyone ever told you that you're very talkative?"

Oliver feigned taking offence. "I'm hurt, Percy Percy Weasley. I like talking a lot."

Percy pursed his lips. "I'd really rather you didn't call me that."

"Can I call you 'Perce', then?" Oliver asked.

"No," Percy snapped, "definitely not."

"You're no fun," Oliver said, but he looked very amused. "But since I like you, I'm going to give you another chance."

"Another chance at what?" Percy said grumpily, staring intently at his roast beef and potatoes.

"At being my new best friend, of course," Oliver chirped.

Percy blushed the Weasley red and glared across at Oliver. "What makes you think that I want to be your new best friend?"

Oliver shrugged. "I like your hair."

"That's not a proper reason."

"It is for me," Oliver said. He smiled contentedly, before stuffing his face with what looked like a whole potato.

He was, it seemed, everything that Percy disliked. He was overly chatty, silly, flippant, gluttonous, and he evidently didn't think before he spoke. But when he stuck out his fork and offered Percy a stewed carrot, joking that it matched his hair, Percy couldn't stop himself from laughing. And when Oliver refused to let Percy have the bed next to the window, because he said it would be too comical for someone so tall to use the bed next to the short, blond kid, Jack, Percy found himself giving in.

And soon, Percy found that he didn't mind the idea of being Oliver Wood's best friend so much at all.

xxx

Percy put down his quill with a small flourish. He didn't dare show just how proud he was with himself for getting through that. It was quite a long letter. He read it through again twice, just to make sure that it fit the requirements.

Okay, so maybe calling Dolores Umbridge a "truly delightfuly woman" was a bit of a push. But Fudge had been very clear with his instructions: "your brother is a Prefect, Weasley, you need to give him a push in the right direction by any means possible". Percy had thought that hinting at his interview with the Daily Prophet hadn't been a bad idea, either.

Suddenly, an interdepartmental memo struck Percy in the side of the head and flopped messily down in front of him. It was from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Percy's eyebrows raised. There was only one person in that department who could be writing to the Minister's Junior Assistant, and seeing as he'd just seen her at lunch, he wasn't sure why she would be sending him a memo.

Sure enough, when he unfolded it, he saw the slightly scrawly handwriting of perhaps his only friend at the Ministry, Isolde Bowman. Isolde had been a Prefect with him at Hogwarts, and even though their views differed regularly on various important issues, she still seemed to like him, which was a miracle, considering how few people seemed to like him these days.

"Just got back from my afternoon break to see Gill - he wanted to let you know he'd be going out to meet some friends tonight, and wondered if you wanted to join him. He'll be leaving around six. Please don't send him another owl - you KNOW he hates birds!"

Percy smiled vaguely. He really could do with the night off; he'd been working far to hard for his own good lately. Then again, he did have a lot of work to do. He still hadn't sent his letter to Ron, and it was approaching five-thirty. Was that really a reasonable time to be coming back from an afternoon break?

Making up his mind, he headed to the Ministry Owlery where Hermes had been staying and attached the letter to his leg. Hermes hooted cheerfully, happy to be given a job for once.

"Sorry about keeping you locked up here," Percy mumbled, not entirely sure why he was talking to an owl, "but you know how it is. You'd attract too much attention in the middle of Muggle London. Not to mention my flatmate-"

Hermes hooted again, this time impatiently.

Percy bit his lip in annoyance. Even his owl didn't want to listen to him. "Alright, off you go," he said, "get this to my... to Ron."

Hermes flew off without another sound, and Percy set off slowly back to his office. Almost as soon as he returned, he was accosted by his boss, Cornelius Fudge.

"Ah, Weasley!" Fudge said. "I was hoping you could give me a hand here - I was hoping you could send out these invitations for my cousin Aurelius's wedding."

The pile of un-addressed letters were thrust into Percy's hands. "Actually, sir," he began tentatively, "I was hoping I could leave slightly early tonight. A friend of mine is-"

"Nonsense, nonsense," said Fudge airily, "you can get these done now, surely?"

"But of course, sir," Percy said. He wondered briefly why he had even considered going out with Gill and his friends, before sitting back down at his desk to get to work matching up invitations to names on Aurelius Fudge's guest-list.

xxx

Percy only made it back to his flat at nine. Gill had left a piece of paper with some gluey substance on the back that Muggles called a "sticky note" on Percy's bedroom door.

"Got my message from Isolde? Gone out with friends. Be back late. Hope you miss me, you nutjob."

Percy frowned and pulled the note off, walking it to the wastepaper bin in the kitchen. He would just have vanished it, but Gill, a Muggle, rather disliked it when he used magic.

"Gill's not around," he thought to himself, and with the a glimmer of excitement that usually belongs to a child breaking a rule for the first time, Percy picked the note back out of the bin and, pointing his wand at it, almost yelled the word "evanesco!"

He almost laughed aloud. But not quite.

A month ago, he would have been too scared to use magic in Gill's flat. He had only just moved in then, and still in Hogwarts-mode, he refrained from using magic in view of the Muggle. But now he was starting to think of it less as Gill's flat, and more as his, or at least theirs. He'd only been there once before he'd moved in, with Isolde and Oliver. Isolde had said her Muggle brother was having a party, and she'd love if some of her friends came along with her. Percy had been working late and had only made it at eight-thirty. Oliver was so annoyed by his lateness that Percy stayed the rest of the night, got absolutely shitfaced, and Apparated back to the Burrow well after midnight, splinching all the hairs on his right arm. His mother was furious.

He tensed slightly at the thought of that night. The less he thought about his family - could he still call them his family? - the better. Oliver, on the other hand, he thought about all the time. Which probably explained the constant sense of discomfort that followed him around like a bad smell.

But as he sat rather uncomfortably on the kitchen counter with some Muggle chocolate that always seemed to be in ready supply, he couldn't drive that first night he'd sat on the counter out of his memory. He'd sat there with Oliver. No-one was paying any attention to the kitchen; one of Gill's Muggle friends was putting on a show of drinking copious quantities of a kind of butterbeer (but without the butter) very quickly whilst standing on the couch. So Percy and Oliver had taken advantage of the distraction and done rather inappropriate things on the kitchen counter.

Percy jumped suddenly and with a loud thump off the counter. That was an experience he would rather not relive just then.

"Percy? That you?"

Percy jumped again as Gill's voice rang out from the doorway. He said he'd be back late...

"It's me," he called back.

"You're not," Gill began hesitantly, "you're not doing any of your magic, are you?"

"N-no," Percy said rather hopelessly, "I just jumped off the kitchen counter."

"What'd'you do that for?" Gill asked, stepping through into the small kitchen.

Percy shrugged. "Just... I didn't like it up there." He realised he was still holding the chocolate, and put it down hastily on the counter.

Gill smiled sympathtically. "You've got to stop thinking about him."

Percy shook his head. He suddenly had a craving for some very strong firewhiskey. "Can't. Won't."

"You sound like a petulant child," Gill joked. "Honestly, Percy. Act your age."

Percy scoffed slightly. "I'm twenty, Gill, and I'm already Junior Assistant to the Minister. I've got an excuse to act slightly older than I am."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Gill said, stepping closer to Percy, "you need to stop being such a kid about Oliver. I don't care if it was the world's world break-up ever, you've got to get over it eventually."

"I doubt it," Percy said quietly.

"I've offered before. If you ever want to get over him properly, you know where I am."

"Guillame," Percy said sternly, "we've been through this."

"Yeah, I know, all I'm saying is that if you ever want some fantastic consolation sex..."

Huffily, Percy pushed past Gill, walked to his bedroom and shut the door with a clang behind him.

Percy had been hesitant at first about moving in with someone so incredibly gay - he didn't think he would last ten seconds, his sexuality being as it was and the only proper relationship he'd ever been in having ended in a spectacular shouting match, a pair of boots being thrown out of a window, several of his Ministry reports going up in flames and a broomstick jammed in the u-bend of a toilet. But he had been surprisingly restrained, and had managed in the month he'd been living not to even come close to letting his inner rampant homosexual off the leash. He was rather proud of himself.

He lay stewing on his bed, trying to block out the sound of Gill's talking and banging at his door. He snatched up the list on his bedside table, reading down it. So far, he'd learnt fourteen of the two hundred languages he needed to learn to catch up to the record that his former boss had set. There were a few extras that Mr. Crouch hadn't learnt added to the bottom of the list, most of which had been suggested by Penelope Clearwater, Percy's best friend-turned-pen pal, who was spending a year or two in America at the only Wizarding School of Art and Design in the world. Every weeks she'd drege up a Native American language that only about five people spoke, and because he didn't want to let her down, Percy would add them to the list.

Perhaps, he thought, if Gill stopped making such a racket he would make a start on Japanese. He'd been meaning to get to it for a while, but things were very hectic at work.

"Peeercyyy," Gill whined from the other side of the door, "stop suuulkiiiiing! You know I was just joking! Come out, and we can get pissed. I've got some cheap voooodkaaaaa..."

Percy smiled at Gill's choice of words: "come out". He got up and walked to the door, opening it a crack.

"I'm already out," he said, with a straight face, "and I don't like vodka."

Gill spun around dramatically, laughing stupidly. "Stop it, you dick. Get your arse in here; we'll get smashed. Come on."

"What happened to going out with your friends?" Percy asked.

"They were all boring little fucks tonight," Gill slurred. "'Course, I am rather drunk already. But you know. It's not the same as getting wankered with a Wizard."

Percy shrugged to himself. It wasn't like he wasn't essentially entirely on top of all his work. He was a very good Ministry employee. Anyway, it was get drunk or learn Japanese. And Percy didn't have it in him to learn a whole new set of characters so late.

"I've never met anyone with so many synonyms for 'drunk'," he said, leaving his bedroom and following Gill to the kitchen.

"I've never met anyone who works as hard as you," Gill retorted, "so I doubt you know much about getting drunk."

"I know more than you'd think I would," said Sober Percy primly.

Get the vodka flowing already, Drunk Percy called from somewhere inside his head, a relic of a mindset he had left behind the moment he'd stormed out of Oliver's flat.

"I'm going to get you so wasted that you forget how to get to work tomorrow," Gill joked, with only a slight note of seriousness in his voice.

"I hope not," Percy said, wondering just how much he would regret this in the morning. He was, after all, a model employee, and in tough times like these, he needed to perform at his utmost level.

Then again, Gill was holding a glass of vodka tantalisingly in front of him. And it had been so long since Percy had actually properly enjoyed himself...

"Drink up," Gill said, thrusting the drink into his hand.

Percy downed it in one gulp. "I feel better already."


WHAT DID YOU THINK? A promising beginning? Not living up to its tag of "humour" yet? Too much humour, not enough angst? LEAVE ME A REVIEW and let me know, you fabulous people.

Sorry for the slight wait after RBS ended... I was distracted by Remus/Sirius. Fssshhh.

- Legs

NEXT TIME IN "BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE": Percy is NOT thinking about Oliver Wood. At all. Shut up.