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Summary
You are not courageous. Your dreams have always been the bravest parts of you.
[Percy Weasley, post-war, pre-reconciliation. The world is broken and he knows it better than most, but Percy's also broken as well. Fixing one might just mean fixing both.]
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Bookmark Notes:
dawn is coming, open your eyes
DialuxSummary:
You are not courageous. Your dreams have always been the bravest parts of you.
[Percy Weasley, post-war, pre-reconciliation. The world is broken and he knows it better than most, but Percy's also broken as well. Fixing one might just mean fixing both.]
Notes:Alternate titles for this fic included:
1. How Percy Weasley got his groove back
2. The Life and Times of Percy Weasley, Youngest Minister of Magic, Britain
3. on whom can we depend for the/violence we needed yesterday? (part of the poem below, from this wonderful poem). BUT I settled on the Don Quixote quote in the end for the chapter titles bc... it's all too meaningful!!!Re: rest of the fic, no, I do NOT know where it came from. But this is a very, very long story into a Percy Weasley after the war; after his first (and ONLY!) job (LOVE!!) was ruined (BROKE UP W HIM!!!), and how he had to learn to find a life for him when his ambitions turned out to leave him stranded and rudderless.
Warnings for familial issues! Death also features prominently because it’s immediately post-war! And politics, as per the usual, because this is My Brand(TM). Hope y’all enjoy!
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Bookmark Notes:
Done
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Bookmark Notes:
He hunches, and you put your hand gingerly on his shoulder. “I know guilt,” you say softly. He jerks under your palm, but you don’t move away. “I have accepted my share of it, Mr. Gallonge, and begrudged many of those who tried to take it from me.”
“Mister... whatever- I think-”
“But. Do not let that guilt make you turn away from muggleborns now, after all that they’ve faced.” Gallonge pales with his anger, and you continue inexorably: “Don’t let it make you angry. Don’t let it turn you cruel.”
“Who are you, you fucking lily-livered-”
“A guilty man,” you say, hitching your bag higher on your shoulder. The weariness you feel then almost bowls you over- not the kind that comes from sleeplessness; the deeper kind, the despairing kind. “That’s who I am. A guilty man. That’s why I know what I’m telling you when I say, come to this ceremony. Why I know enough to tell you, turning your face won’t make you feel better.”
You snap the clasps of your bag closed and walk away, ignoring Gallonge’s sudden, wracking sobs. You pause at the door, hand on the handle, back taut.
“Come, Mr. Gallonge,” you say gently. “You won’t regret it, I promise you.”
You walk home, back damp with sweat. Your head aches. You regret your words already, but not enough to try to fix any of it. And it’s not anything other than a vague regret; no honest remorse.
No regrets, you think, and close your eyes, and starlight bursts into being behind the darkness.)
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“It burned up.”Something cracking. Something in your chest. Something wooden.
“What?”
“Percy,” she sighs, and reaches forwards, and wraps her arms around your chest.
You don’t know why this is so shattering. But that had been your wand, freshly made, the grain always polished and the handle always shining. You’d curled around it when you slept and your dreams have always had the scent of pine; in the darkest times, in those months at the Ministry under Death Eaters, fearful and angry and hurting and alone, you’d burned pine sticks in your fireplace and let the smoke-sweet scent sooth the tremors out of your palms. You turn those palms up now, and there is a black scar down your left hand: the last scorch of your wand, burnt into your soft skin.
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You swallow. “It’s just that. You know. I’m fine with being without them. Being alone. I am.” Penelope doesn’t look like she believes you, so you elaborate, waving your free hand wildly, “But you know what! I’m not okay with being humiliated for it. I don’t care about having someone next to me when I wake up! I don’t need someone making me breakfast, or caring about my career! But- but I hate people looking at me and feeling sorry for me, as if I’m unhappy or smaller than them for it!”You can’t quite catch your breath, and the flushed edge to your cheeks leaves you a little dizzy.
Penelope loops her fingers around your chin and tilts it up, gentle as moonlight.
“By people,” she says, “you mean your family.”
“I hate them.” You close your eyes. “They want me close, but they don’t want me, do they? They want someone that’s more like them. Someone who’s easier, as if they aren’t Gryffindors, the lot of them. Cowards, Merlin damn them. Cowards and-”
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“What about this- this new... thing, that you’re doing?” Bill asks. “With the- with the politics. Calling Harry out. Pitching yourself against us.”You snort. Take a sip of coffee, long and the perfect warmth to rest on your tongue. “I was taught to trust the Ministry, and the Minister, and if there’s one thing I learned with this war, it’s that I shouldn’t. That I can’t. That our world is- on some very, very deep level, broken. But all of you seem to think this war is over.”
“You’re saying it isn’t,” says Bill. “Percy, that’s- that’s just paranoia. You can’t-”
“This war started for a reason. Grindelwald. You-Know-Who. That’s in the past fifty years. There will be another, if things don’t change, and I’ll fucking burn this country down before I let it happen again, see if I don’t.”
“Merlin, that sounds like a threat.”
“Isn’t it?”
“That’s dangerous talk.”
“We need change,” you say savagely. “Change, bottom-up, top-down. Change. You let Kingsley Shacklebolt take the reins of something broken in our country, and you expect him to have the sole power of fixing things? You expect things to get better and not to paper over the cracks? You expect- you expect things will get better?”
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Bookmark Notes:
this is what i’m fucking talking about folks my god. casually just one of the best hp fics on the site no biggie. fucking incredible work
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Bookmark Notes:
i need to die i think. read this numb today and i don't know what i'm feeling but my chest hurts and my throat feels weird. i want to cry maybe