Disclaimer: Hmm… Nope. I'm not J.K. Rowling. So no, I don't own Harry Potter.
Percy Weasley wanted nothing more than to be looked up to.
He had spent his entire life trying to build someone he thought would be worthy of admiration – he'd worked hard for perfect grades, for the positions of Prefect and Head Boy. He had constantly been working towards being a completely responsible and fair man, and did his best to be ambitious and an achiever.
This meant that Percy had had to ignore the way his younger siblings looked at him differently than the others. Maybe he came off a bit aloof, but weren't all heroes supposed to be? Idols were something to be gazed at from afar, right?
So he trained himself not to think of their odd stares and sometimes total disregard.
He trained himself not to care when he and his family parted ways at the start of the Second Wizarding World. They were the wrong ones, after all - weren't they? And a role model always had to be right to live up to others' expectations.
Only… Percy had never been right. Never. He'd only been fooling himself into what he wanted to believe for his own sake. And he realized his mistake much, much too late. So late that he couldn't save the day. Not for Fred , at least.
Inevitably, he wasn't admired, he wasn't a role model, and right then, he couldn't even keep his younger brother alive.
Between all of these things, Percy had become used to being the outcast, the family member that no one went out of their way for. Besides his mum, that is. She was possibly the only one who tried to act like nothing had changed. Like Percy hadn't betrayed them.
But the rifts still remained, no matter how hard they attempted to forget, pretend that there were no cracks in their families.
That, however, was about as easy as acting like Fred (oh, dear Fred) wasn't gone.
In other words: impossible.
And there were so many things that were impossible for Mr. Percy Ignatius Weasley. Among them: bringing back the dead. Truly healing things between his family and himself. Being someone – anyone's – hero.