A/N: Written for Cheeky Slytherin Lass' One Hour Two Drabbles Thingy. I haven't written anything that flowed out of me like this (ew) in a long time. So thank you, Amber, lovely.
Prompts were Percy Weasley and wash. Also, um, warning for overuse of italics.
You will wash your hair of them, you say, wash them from your hands like they are nothing, because they just don't understand you, they don't get you, they don't see where you're going.
Because you're going places. Oh, yes, you are. Of course you are. You're Percy Weasley and you've got potential in buckets by your feet, running right over the edges and trickling down the sides, because you've always tried so hard, haven't you? You've always tried so hard to be more, to be – as much as it hurts – better.
The Ministry can give you that. Definitely. The Ministry, where future leaders start out as errand boys, where the mediocre become the spectacular, where the poor become rich, where the overlooked become powerful.
Oh, the Ministry is perfect for you.
Your mother disagrees. She asks you to come home in her softest voice, her words smothered in honey and worry and love, and she says, "Please."
"Please."
But you're better than this. You're better than the third eldest, ever ignored, endlessly teased, studious brother that nobody ever listens to.
Merlin, the things you could do – the person you could be.
Your father thinks you are a pawn – "Percy, my boy, don't you understand? They want to watch us; they want to keep us near. Keep your friends close..." – but you know you are important to them, to everything.
You are Percy Weathe – er, Weasley, Junior Assistant to the Minister for Magic, and you are there because of who you are, not who you are.
You are better than this. Better than them.
(Bet you'll regret all that when your brother is lying dead at your feet with your name hinging on his lips and his blood running through the cracks in the ground like dirty water running over your skin.
Now tell me, Percy; was it worth it? Was it worth it washing them out of your hair, out of your hands, out of your life?
Look at that blood trickle through your dead brother's fingers and tell me again.
Are you better than this?)
