Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me.
A/N: This first chapter is, by a necessary evil, a lot of exposition. There will be more family interaction in future chapters. Thanks for reading!
This story attempts to follow canon, with two notable changes: Fred survives (but is badly injured) and, of course, Percy misses the final battle after being imprisoned by Death Eaters.
Warnings for language and mentions of torture and assault. Nothing explicit.
Chapter 1: Limn
In the end, it's the same tendencies that turned Percy into an outcast in his own family that keep him alive and clinging—clinging with thin fingers and bloodied, jagged nails—to his sanity.
Percy is neat, and ordered, and organized. He keeps himself as clean as possible, flushing out any cuts and scrapes to prevent infection. He attends to his chamber—his prison cell—as well, scrubbing the floors and walls and the opaque glass of the window with a pair of repurposed socks.
Percy is a know-it-all obsessed the most dull, arcane, pointless information. To keep his mind occupied, he lists Ministers for Magic and chants N.E.W.T.s syllabi and writes the abstruse but impressive-sounding words he learned to puff up his essays on the walls with his finger. He runs through the cauldron thickness regulations for various metals and plots out grades of dragon dung fertilizers.
Percy is fastidious, meticulous, consumed with routine and detail. He plans the long, pointless days the way he used to make sprawling study and work schedules with each minute assiduously planned and faithfully executed.
Percy obeys the rules and bends to authority. Initially, when he was in the underground dungeon with the other prisoners, he tried for defiance. His desire to fight back wilted under the otherworldly pain of the Cruciatus Curse, but the muggle-borns whose papers he had faked, who had he smuggled out of the country, remained safe. He had built in fail-safes at the time, anticipating his own cowardice and ensuring that not even he knew how to find them.
Then when the other Death Eaters realized he was useless and would have killed him, Marcus Flint somehow learned of his imprisonment and called in a favor, and Percy was brought to this chamber instead.
"Flint'll grow out of it," Bill had assured him almost a decade ago as he mended Percy's broken glasses and helped Spell-O Tape his books back together. "Kids can be bullies, but keep your chin up and he'll leave you alone eventually."
Percy enjoys being right, usually, but would have been fine if Bill had been correct in this particular case. Except—
Except Flint's inability to grow out of it, his continuing pleasure gained from bullying Percy, from escalating that bullying into something disturbing, degrading, and endless, that has kept Percy alive through the Second Wizarding War and, as it would turn out, nearly six months beyond its end.
Because, unbeknownst to Percy, polishing the brass frame of the bed in his cell and murmuring Ancient Runes vocabulary, You-Know-You is dead, the war is over, and Aurors are conducting a raid on one of the last Death Eater hideouts, Flint Manor. But in his prison in Flint Manor, all Percy knows is that the sun rises, he conducts his daily schedule of activities, and sometimes Marcus Flint comes to hurt him.
There's a pounding on the door, and Percy freezes. He slides to the floor, presses his back to the wall, and waits. He pulls his knees up to his chest and waits. There's nothing else to do, no other defense to put up, except to pick an inane subject to try to occupy his mind until Flint leaves.
Another pounding on the door. The enchanted wooden surface bows inward. Flint must be having trouble lifting the complex security spells.
And then, for a few moments, silence. Percy doesn't dare to move, or to hope. Could Flint have changed his mind, or been called away to perform some despicable Death Eater errand?
CRACK.
Percy flinches as the door blasts across the room and slams into the opposite wall. A person appears in the doorframe, but it's not Flint's giant build, not his blunt and leering trollish face. A slight man stands there, wand out, panting. His gaze drops down to Percy, and his eyes widen.
Percy is rigid, stuck. He has no plan for this, no routine to launch, no series of movements into which to relax his body.
"Oh," the man says. "Um." He slowly lowers his wand, and suddenly Percy can see past him, into the hallway. The wallpaper is green and white, with patterns like ivy. Flint never left the door open long enough for Percy to see that. Could he run for it, past this man? How badly would he be punished when he was caught?
The man steps forward and Percy feels himself shrink back. "No, it's alright," the man says quickly. "We're Aurors. We're here to help you."
Help you. Something in Percy's mind snags on the concept. Aurors. Aurors work for the Ministry, and the Ministry is Death Eaters and You-Know-Who and—
"It's over."
A woman appears in the doorway. An older woman, with short hair streaked with gray. She's speaking now, in a gentle voice that is somehow both alien and achingly familiar, like hot meals and tight hugs and scratchy homemade sweaters.
"The war is over," the woman says, kneeling in front of him. "You're safe. You can go home."
The war is over, Percy thinks numbly. That's good.
You can go home.
Percy slumps sideways, his body collapsing bonelessly to the floor.
Do I even have a home anymore?
Mum and Dad are having yet another row. Sitting around the Burrow's kitchen table with his brothers and listening to his parents fight is enough to make Charlie feel about ten years old again.
Only he's not with all his brothers, which is the subject of Mum and Dad's row. In the six months Charlie's been hanging around Britain, helping with rebuilding efforts after the war, Percy's disappearance has been coursing in the background of every conversation between the Weasleys. His absence fills any room in the Burrow more completely than the entire surviving Order of the Phoenix.
After the final battle at Hogwarts, when Voldemort was dead and the remaining Death Eaters on the run and Fred clinging to life in St. Mungo's, Charlie had been just as furious as the rest of his family at Percy's failure to fucking show up.
But when he and Ron had stormed Percy's flat, instead of finding their traitorous coward of a brother holed up in hiding, they'd found the place ransacked. There was no sign of Percy. After a frantic search, they learned that no one had seen or heard from Percy since April, when he stopped showing up for work.
Just around the Easter holidays, when the Weasley family had gone into hiding…and hadn't taken Percy with them.
Now, nearly six months later, as the Wizarding World built itself back up again, the Weasleys were struggling to hold themselves together. Fred was badly injured during the final battle, his right side permanently scarred and twisted by curse damage. He had to relearn to do pretty much everything from spellcasting to eating to walking, and even with George's stalwart support, the prospect of starting Weasley's Wizard Wheezes back up felt distant.
Mum was rendered despondent by Percy's disappearance, obsessively checking Percy's hand on the family clock, which remained glued to "Mortal Peril." Ron was consumed by his new responsibilities as a member of the "Golden Trio," Ginny focused on finishing her N.E.W.T.s as soon as possible, Dad on getting the Ministry into some sort of order—but the issue of Percy was always hanging in the background, and sometimes it was dragged to the front. Like now.
"Percy made his own choices, he's an adult—" Dad is saying, and Charlie can hear a quiver in his father's voice.
"He's our son! And he needed us!" Mum's voice is half-scream, half-sob.
"We had no reason to believe he was in danger, working with the Ministry! Or that he'd even come with us if we had tried, or, or—" Dad stammers.
"If it wasn't for you and your ridiculous fight, he would be with us now!"
There it was, what the Percy fight always came back to, the cause of the growing rift between their parents. If Dad hadn't been so stubborn, if he had gone and apologized and brought Percy back, whatever had happened to Percy wouldn't have happened. It might not be fair, it might not be true, but it tortured both of his parents.
The sound of Mum's muffled sobs mingle with the slam of the back door as Dad stomps off to his shed in the backyard. Charlie sees George, sitting across from him at the table, flinch. He tries cover it up with an extra-large bite of sandwich. Ron is scowling furiously down at his own plate. Fred's eyes are glazed over as he picks at his food with his good left hand.
Bill clears his throat. "Well, uh," he says, trying to sound cheerful, or at least purposeful. These family meals at the Burrow are usually his initiatives, with Mum too depressed to make the effort. "What are the plans for the week, then?" A beat of silence passes as no one volunteers.
"I'm meeting with Harry and Hermione at Hogwarts," Ron finally offers. "We're helping the Aurors put up some more protective spells."
Bill nods. "Give Ginny our love." Hogwarts had just opened up for the fall term. So far the ride had been fairly bumpy, with the physical and magical structure of the castle still being rebuilt. Students were still stumbling across nasty surprises left by Death Eaters, but Ginny was determined to finish her N.E.W.T.s on time.
"We've gotten reports of some rampaging juvenile dragons up north," Charlie says. "I'm putting together a team to check it out."
George shrugs. "You know, the usual." The usual is trying to start up the shop—it had gone to seed during the war and Fred's time at St. Mungo's.
A tapping at the window interrupts the awkward quiet. Bill waves his wand, opening the window, and a large gray owl swoops in and drops a small parcel on the table.
"What's this…?" Clearly eager for a distraction, Bill picks up the parcel and tears and it open. Three identical envelopes spill out onto the table. Blinking in befuddlement, Bill opens one and begins to read.
" 'To whom it may concern,'" Bill mutters under his breath. Charlie watches for a second as his older brother reads, and is about to focus on his food again when he notices Bill's face has gone white beneath his scars.
"Someone get Mum and Dad," Bill says softly.
Ron raises his head, frowning. "What?"
"Get Mum and Dad," Bill hisses.
"Why?" Charlie asks, and Bill doesn't answer. His blood suddenly running cold, Charlie snatches one of the other letters and rips it open, his eyes flashing across the shaky, uneven handwriting.
To Whom It May Concern—
Hello. I hope I am not overstepping any bounds by sending this message. At the suggestion of Healers at the facility in which I am currently receiving treatment, I would like to inform you that I have been recently recovered from a Death Eater prison, in which I had been incarcerated since spring.
I was of course glad to hear that the conflict has reached a positive conclusion, and that everyone in the immediate family has survived. Please give my regards to all. I have included multiple copies of this correspondence for convenience in dispersal.
Sincerely,
Percy Ignatius Weasley
A dozen thoughts burst into Charlie's head. Loudest and brightest is, Percy is alive! And then, what happened to his little brother? Where was he now?
Fred has picked up the third letter in his left hand, tearing it open with his teeth. Charlie leans over, quickly scanning the text. The same as the one he read, the same as Bill's.
Fred begins to shake, muscles spasming, emitting harsh guttural noises, and George stops trying to pry the letter from Bill's hand and turns to his twin. Fred has had seizures before, a terrifying result of the curse damage, and an alarmed George grasps at his brother.
"Fred! What's wrong? What—?"
Fred shoves George's hands away, shaking his head, and then Charlie realizes. Fred's not having a seizure. Fred, unbelievably, inexplicably, is laughing.
"P-P-Percy's alive," Fred gasps, laughter convulsing his body, pointing with a reddened, scarred finger to the three identical copies of Percy's letter. "He just got rescued from Death Eaters, and he let us know in triplicate—"
"Percy's what?" George exclaims sharply. "Death Eaters?"
Charlie, not sure what to make of Fred's reaction, grabs a letter and rises to get their parents.
"PERCY!"
Before he can even leave the kitchen, Mum screams their wayward brother's name, and bursts into the room.
"Percy's hand—on the clock—" Mum gasps. "It's gone from 'Mortal Peril' to 'Hospital'! He's—he's—"
"He sent us a letter, Mum," Charlie says.
Mum snatches the parchment from him before he even holds it out, and somehow manages to read it through the tears flooding down her face. "Oh, Percy—!"
Charlie wraps an arm around her shoulder, unable to think of something reassuring to say. Percy's words are swirling through his mind. Death Eater prison? What would the Death Eaters want with Percy? Incarcerated since spring? That meant Percy had been captive and afraid and at those monsters' mercy for how long?
And then the words Percy has used—At the suggestion of the Healers? Overstepping my bounds? To Whom It May Concern, as though these letters were just as likely to wind up with complete strangers as Percy's family? What has Percy been thinking when he'd written those words?
"I'll get Dad," Bill mumbles, hurrying out.
"I guess…I guess I should go tell Ginny," Ron says quietly.
"Take a letter with you!" Fred gasps through his laughter. George's wide eyes flash between his giggling twin and Percy's handwriting on the parchment before him. "Good thing Percy sent three!"
"Molly…?"
Charlie turns, still embracing Mum. Dad is standing there next to Bill, looking pale and unsure and…old. In his father's uncertain gaze, Charlie sees the question that's no doubt in all their minds.
What happens now?