A/N: This is a snapshot of an AU that popped into my head, so here's what's happening: Voldemort won by slowly turning the Ministry into his tool from within, murdering dissidents along the way. At some point he puts up wards to control his subjects DDR-style, and Percy has the misfortune of being trapped withing the 'Mauer', so to speak.
Percy shifts nervously on the rickety stool. Two minutes to go; two minutes until the wards reset, providing him with just enough time to apparate away. Two minutes, and it'll be life and death. Still two minutes to change his mind. Two minutes, and he could still decide not to go. But then, he can't not do it, can he. Not really.
Because if he's honest, it's death or just the hint of a slim chance of survival. Either he goes now, or never. Tik, tok. One minute.
He's ridiculously lucky to have disavowed his family when he did, otherwise he would have never learned how the anti-apparition wards on Britain work. Or rather, he'd be dead already without a doubt.
He stands abruptly, readies himself to apparate. One hand clamps around his wand, the other around the strap of the leather satchel that now holds his entire life, and he takes a final, steadying breath.
Then the clock strikes twelve. Echoing gongs wash through the silence of the empty house, but Percy doesn't stick around long enough to even hear the first one end.
As he turns on the spot, his head is suddenly ringing as he shreds through layers of wards, the breath is knocked out of him and then his eyes open to a blurry street. The second Percy's feet hit the cobblestones he is running. Running with all his might, running for his life. The anti-apparition wards being down doesn't mean the detection wards are, too.
The air around him is filled with pops and shouts as the Aurors struggle to catch him, but he doesn't hear any of it – Percy's ears are filled with the deafening rushing of blood and wind. His feet beat down on the pavement in growing intervals, he's running, running, running, like it's a fox chase, the hounds after him.
His glasses are knocked askew, but he can't think to straighten them as he whips around corner after corner into progressively narrowing streets, gasping desperately for breath. His lungs are screaming at him as he gulps down air like a dying fish, but he keeps on running, running, for his life, running, with all he is.
He whips around another corner, almost slipping when a person shoots out from an alleyway and grips his arm tightly. To a chorus of shouts behind him, they vanish into thin air.
And Percy is tired, and exhausted, and throwing up, and barely able to breathe at all, but they can't get to him here, he's safe - at least for now - and he's made it, he's made it, that he can tell by the floor he's vomiting on.