Chapter Seven: Percy Weasley and the Unwanted Reporters
Disclaimer: All characters, places, spells and objects that are in JKR's books are hers. I do not own them. I am just having fun playing in her sandbox for a while.
Percy brushed down his robes and straightened his glasses as he stood in his old bedroom at The Burrow. He studied his appearance as he took another look in the mirror; he decided he looked perfectly presentable and, thankfully, even the old talking mirror agreed with him. He looked good enough to see Audrey and acceptable enough to attend his sister's wedding.
More noise broke through the room, several screams and loud shouts followed. Noise was very much part of the Weasley family growing up; it had filled every crevices in The Burrow's walls. It was what had made his time away from his family even harder. He had missed the noise almost as much as he had the love and support that was offered there. His estrangement had been much harder with the lack of noise; the quiet walls of his London flat had never laughed, joked or even yelled. As with many people, he did not miss that noise until it was gone, and loud family occasions like today's had really highlighted just how much he had missed.
And today had really taken the biscuit, in terms of noise. Everyone was running up and down the stairs, the house was in chaos as things were lost, found and lost again and he'd heard his mother's shouts at least a dozen times already that day. She was going to make sure that everything was perfect today and would not accept anyone who was willing to settle for any less.
"GINNY!" the scream came again, "Where did you put that bouquet? ARTHUR, why are things a mess out there? And who's checking the gates and charms on them? BILL, CHARLIE, you two can do that. RON, that better not be you I'm hearing in that kitchen. GINNY, would you stay upstairs, Harry's down in the living room."
The whole house was currently in chaos. His mum had been running up and down the corridors screaming at the top of her voice trying to organise things. Hermione and Luna had been in and out of Ginny's room too many times to count and both Harry and Ron had been banished from the house after Ginny had tried to sneak down to see him.
At times, it was really good to be back in the lovely chaos of the Weasley family. This just showed him how much he'd missed and he realised that he'd really missed it all, too. Even if it was too disorganised for his everyday liking, it was nice to come back to it for a while.
He guessed the chaos was to be expected on a wedding day, but he was very glad to get out the house to start organising the guests with Charlie, George and Bill. His mother had now banished them to the garden to check that everything was in its right place and greet guests and help them enter past the charms that were protecting The Burrow, with the words that everything had to be, and was going to be, perfect. She only got one chance with each of her children's wedding days and she was not going to have any regrets at the end of it.
Percy glanced around the garden. The Burrow was tidier than he could ever remember it being. All the gnomes had been thrown over the hedges, a task that had proved a great deal of fun yesterday as they had made a game of who could throw the gnomes the furthest. Surprisingly, and much to each of her brother's disbelief and amusement, Ginny had won, but then she was a Chaser, so there really should have been no surprise there. Other than that, the marquee filled the garden and streamers hung from each of the trees. He had to hand it to his mother, she really had the garden looking quite magnificent — it even looked like she had polished the chickens' beaks in case anyone looked into their cages.
"You ready for the show?" Charlie asked.
"I rather think so," Percy said briskly with a nod, "the scene definitely looks set."
"Indeed it does, Perce," George said, "but then, who doubted Mum for getting it to look like this?"
"And we should never underestimate Mum," Bill told them, "she's shown us that so often."
"Yes, keeping your mother on your side saves cooking on a Sunday," George laughed.
"And stops her from murdering us," Charlie added as he slapped George on his shoulder.
"Too true," George agreed.
Percy was about to answer but he stopped himself before the words even came out. His eyes fell on the brown-haired witch who had just walked onto The Burrow's grounds. She was wearing delicate purple satin robes and her long, light brown hair was twisted up into an elegant bun. She looked stunning, but then she always looked stunning, even when she was in her work robes, her hair frazzled, her glasses on, biting her bottom lip and with ink smudging her fingers.
Slowly he made his way over to her.
"Percy," Audrey, his girlfriend, called as she came through in the first wave of guests.
He straightened his horn-rimmed glasses, a gesture that many had told him made him look pompous, but Audrey had told him, late one night when they had been working through piles of paperwork, that she found it adorable. Then the conversation had led to a very desirable outcome, all paperwork forgotten. Therefore, he had taken to performing this gesture every time he saw her.
"Audrey," he said as he greeted her with a small kiss, "you remember Bill, Charlie and George."
"Of course," she said politely and with a small, slightly shy smile.
He studied her; she had said she would be here early, before the first wave of guests. Not that it mattered much, but it was not like his girlfriend to be late. "What took you so long?"
She let out a long sigh, "Reporters."
"If only Ginny would learn to ignore Rita Skeeter," he said as he shook his head; he really did despair at his sister's actions sometimes. He knew the press was always following Ginny, but she didn't help matters, and at times she really did do the family name absolutely no good to see her picture plastered across the newspapers the way it was. "Then the press, even Rita Skeeter, would soon lose interest and ignore her. Ginny can be far to rash for her own good."
"Oh come, Perce," George interrupted as he jumped to Ginny's defence automatically, "I'm not sure anyone could deal with Rita if they had daily contact with her. If I was her, Rita would have been hexed a long time ago."
"You want to go and get rid of them then, Perce?" Bill suggested with a small grin, stopping any potential debates on the subject. "You must know some law that will get rid of them; just threaten to bury them in paperwork. You know — Death by Paper Cut."
"I'm sure I can deal with Rita," Percy said. After all, Rita could not be that bad; it was just knowing how to deal with her. He straightened his glasses once more before he gave Audrey another soft kiss on her cheek. "I'll see you in just a little while."
"There are more than a few," Audrey started.
"It will be fine," Percy finished as he approached the boundary to The Burrow.
Percy was aware that his sister was famous. Barely a weekend went by without her photo on either the front or back, sometimes both, pages of one of the wizarding publications. Usually it was the Daily Prophet's sports pull-out on a Monday, which thankfully was at least sports related. However, he had nearly died of shock when the new Holyhead calendar (aimed at their male fans) had came out last December, with the players wearing some very revealing clothing. He also knew that his brother's girlfriend, Angelina Johnson, had pleaded with her in the summer and during Ginny's close season to come to the opening of Angelina's new shop in Diagon Alley which sold Quidditch memorabilia. Even Audrey had made comment about Ginny's fame when she had admitted that it was Ginny and George who were the siblings that she was most nervous to meet because they were the famous ones.
Still, on days like this, it all took him by surprise.
It had been only Ginny's second match for the Holyhead Harpies when her fame had started and her fame increased daily. Since he had not been present at the match, having to work that day, Ginny had had to explain the details over a family dinner; she had told them all very honesty that she hadn't actually played that well as she was still adapting to the physical nature of the professional game, claiming that the league was much much harder than Hogwarts Quidditch. She had learned that day, however, that unlike working at most jobs, slogging away for years and not getting recognised, in the world of sport, fame could come in an instant.
With the score of 410 to 260 to the Tutshill Tornadoes, Ginny had caught the Quaffle and was closing on goal just as both Seekers dived for the Snitch. Ginny had shot at goal and the Quaffle had flown through the hoop just a mere second before the Harpies Seeker had caught the Snitch, giving the Tornadoes no chance to reply. The freak occurrence, apparently the time had never been that close before in Harpies history, or happened in the rest of the league in well over a century, had meant that Ginny's single goal had won the game. The next morning, he woke to Ginny's picture being flashed all over the newspaper and the new phrase 'done a Weasley'. Now anytime anything was pulled off at the last minute, he would still hear the words, 'You've done a Weasley', much to George's amusement as he claimed that that phrase was already his after his exit from Hogwarts. However, as Ginny had later teased, he had only got a generation of Hogwarts students using the phrase, 'you've done a Weasley'; she'd got a whole country using it, so the phrase was now hers.
Yes, he knew his sister was a gifted and famous Quidditch player but it was, after all, just Quidditch. Despite the fact that he liked to watch the occasional game and even put on the odd bet, it was still just a sport, and he had grown up a lot since dancing around after Gryffindor's victory during his seventh year. There were more important things. He struggled to see how just a sport made rational people act completely irrationally at times and how a defeat or victory could change people's moods so drastically. In this respect he agreed completely with his Muggle-born girlfriend: Quidditch was really not that important in the grand scheme of things.
He guessed that was why he struggled to see Ginny as famous.
To him, Ginny would always be just Ginny, his little sister. He didn't suppose that it helped that Ginny really did her growing up, from child to teenager to adult, when he had been estranged from his family.
He had walked out on the family after that shameful fight when Ginny was still just thirteen. When he had then returned to see her at the Battle of Hogwarts, he was surprised by the fact that although she was underage, she was very opinionated, forceful and very much in love with Harry Potter of all people. She was very different that evening, much older than the thirteen she had been when he had walked out of The Burrow. Actually, she had looked and acted much older than sixteen; she was, and behaved, a hell of a lot older than most sixteen-year-olds he had known when he had been in his sixth year at Hogwarts. He had barely got used to the idea that Ginny really had grown up and actually was an adult, when she had announced her engagement to Harry, just a few days following her eighteenth birthday.
"Just one quote, please," a reporter called out, drawing Percy's attention back to the ever-growing knot of reporters standing on the other side of the charms that had been placed over The Burrow. "How do you feel about having Harry Potter as a brother-in-law?"
"Delighted," Percy replied both curtly and promptly. He wanted to get rid of these reporters as soon as possible and he hoped a few short answers would do that. After all, that tactic always seemed to work with the press conferences at the Ministry of Magic. "However," he said adopting an ever-so-slightly pompous and important tone, as if he was giving one of those press conferences now, "since this is a private function, a fact that we have made clear on many occasions, we would be highly grateful if you understood that and let it remain one."
Despite his reply, the question did have Percy thinking. It was the reply he was expected to give and, as such, he gave it. That was part of who he was and had always been, meeting the expectations that had clearly been set out for him. He was just not sure, given time to think about it, if he really did feel truly delighted about today's events.
He was naturally glad Ginny was happy but there was much more to it than that.
How did he honestly feel about having Harry as a brother-in-law?
Harry was his little brother's best friend, and had been for almost a decade, and he seemed to have a good relationship with the rest of his family. It was a better relationship than he had had and still did at times. His whole family had loved Harry from the second that he had walked into The Burrow. They had even taken his side in that argument. In hindsight, he knew he had been wrong in the fight but, at that time, it had hurt a lot that they had taken Harry's side over his, their son.
They had both, he and Harry, grown up a lot since then. He had come back to his family and been forgiven for his rather narrow-minded views and actions. Harry had gone on to be proven right and became the hero of wizarding Britain, and the Ministry had been found, much to his disbelief at the time, both wanting and highly corrupt. He had also been forgiven by Harry as well, who may have just come of age, but had acted like someone with far superior maturity as he chose not to rub Percy's nose in his mistakes. He had just let bygones be bygones, a fact for which Percy was highly grateful. If Harry had held a grudge, which he guessed he had had every right to do, he doubted that his family would have been as keen to welcome him back into the fold, particularly Ron and Ginny.
Ron had always jumped to Harry's side first. And Ginny, well, he had learnt over the last few years that Ginny would do anything for Harry, just as Harry would do anything for her.
Ginny would have sided with Harry any day over him; she loved Harry far too much.
So that should, without any doubt, make him the right man for her to be marrying. So yes, he loved his sister and if Harry sparked that reaction, then he really was delighted for them. They deserved the happiness that it provided, and they had worked hard enough to achieve it.
When it came to the reporters, Percy knew to expect them. He knew just how famous Harry's heroic deeds had made him.
He worked at the Ministry of Magic, just as Harry did, and knew just how many letters turned up each week. He remembered that first week Harry had turned up to the Auror Department after the war had finished and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named defeated. Reporters blocked entrances, asking anyone and everyone for a quote, making their jobs near-on impossible to do. Kingsley Shacklebolt had actually had to issue an official statement asking the reporters to leave the Ministry workers alone, saying that if the public wanted the Death Eaters that were still at large to be caught, they had to stop tracking, taking photos and asking the Aurors for quotes. Instead, these skilled witches and wizards should be left alone to do the vital work that they needed to do. Since that day, Harry was only generally seen in the tabloid photographs on weekends, particularly when he was kissing Ginny, as had happened last weekend.
They were, whether they liked it or not, the most famous couple in wizarding Britain. Being the hero of wizarding Britain and one of the hottest of Britain's Quidditch talents in a century, according to all reports — it was no wonder the press had a field day with them.
Yes, in hindsight, Percy really should have expected the number of reporters here, considering the high profile nature of many of the guests; there were just too many war heroes in the garden of The Burrow right now for them to resist. Hindsight was a truly wonderful thing and looking back, Percy realised that Harry had been right and he was a truly great match for his little sister.
He was very happy for them.