Percy's Character Flaw

[blpurdom]

No: HPFGUIDX 37315

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "gwendolyngrace" <lee_hillman at u...> wrote:
> Demeter answered Debbie:
> >
> > That plays off the theory that perhaps Percy was told 
> > endlessly that if he didn't behave, if he didn't follow the 
> > rules, if he didn't follow all the rules, then one of his little 
> > siblings would die.  

> In A'jes' Blue's fic, Arthur and Molly don't traumatize him about
> following the rules at all. He comes to the conclusions about rules
> himself, after the death of an older brother (Erec) born between
> Charlie and Percy.
> 
> Other than Charlie's winning the cup 7 years prior to PoA, and a
> comment Bill makes about coming back to Hogwarts for the first 
> time in 5 years, we don't know anything about their ages. A'jes' 
> Blue decided to pair all the children, so that they broke into 
> groups of two kids no more than a year or two apart. Bill and 
> Charlie. Erec and Percy.  Fred and George. Ron and Ginny. 
> (Interestingly, she did all this because she wanted Ron to be a 
> seventh son, so "Ron is a Seer" fans, take note.)

This also occurs in Cassie Claire's fics.  I don't know for certain, 
but a possible inspiration for this might have been Susan 
Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" sequence, in which the hero, the 
youngest of a large brood (and, he thought, the sixth son) turns out 
to be the seventh son (and he learns that his father is also a 
seventh son) because he was unaware of an older brother who died 
young.  I also inserted "missing" Weasley siblings into my fics, not 
to explain Percy's various neuroses and to make Ron a seer (as a 
joke, I made one of the sisters a "seer"), but partly to explain why 
Bill and Charlie are still not settled down, since they blamed 
themselve for their sisters' disappearance.  (There are other 
reasons I won't go into here.)

But since we're discussing Percy, it seems that one needn't diverge 
from canon and insert another child to pair them off.  Molly and 
Arthur had Bill and then Charlie, who seemed to have been pretty 
tight, and after finally having Percy (whatever the reason for the 
wait) they may also have decided to have a child close in age to him 
so that he, like Bill, would have a sibling who was a close 
companion.  (This is why my husband and I had our children 21 mos. 
apart.  Believe me, this is not easy.)  

However, Percy did not get a close companion out of this birth plan--
he got the twins, who were sufficient unto themselves, effectively 
isolating him.  Plus, by their mischievous nature, they further 
isolated him.  They reportedly don't include him in their pranks, 
they make him the butt of jokes.  When you think about it, the 
Percy/twins relationship is how the Harry/Ron/Hermione relationship 
could have gone if a) they hadn't all faced a troll together and b) 
if Harry and Ron were a bit more callous.  Hermione certainly wasn't 
inspiring their confidence very much at the start.  Hermione, unlike 
Percy, inspired their sympathy when she was clearly hurt by the way 
they treated her.  Chances are that Percy, if he overheard Fred and 
George say, "It's no wonder no one likes him," would not have run 
crying into the bathroom, although he would have been just as hurt 
(and if he HAD run off crying, they probably would have laughed 
about it).  

If the twins HAD included Percy in their fun, he might not have been 
so uptight.  I believe his adherence to the rules is a reaction to 
Fred and George excluding him from their world.  At home, and then 
later, when he's a prefect at school, he's in a position to tattle 
on them and give them comeuppance for their mischief-making, and, at 
the back of his mind, perhaps, for not being his friends as well as 
his brothers.  He now uses his adherence to rules and attempts at 
perfection to differentiate himself from his brothers, trying to 
tell himself that he's happier not getting detentions and not 
getting just a handful of O.W.L.s.  But even when he was Head Boy 
and had a girlfriend, Percy didn't seem all that happy a person.  He 
wasn't said to have a large circle (or even a small circle) of close 
friends.  He had Penelope; that was it.  JKR has created a very 
complex character who seems on the surface to be a simple brown-
nosing ambitious yes-man.  She has also shown, in the Weasley family 
dynamic, the possible reasons for his being this way: the twins.
 
> I think Percy will play an important role in the coming books, but 
> it may be more behind the scenes than in the foreground. Through 
> reports from Molly and articles in the Daily Prophet, we may learn 
> that Percy is working alongside his father to help from within the 
> Ministry, or else, he may become the scapegoat for Crouch and lose 
> his job, freeing him to work in the field. I think he's not an "in 
> the field" type, so if it were my decision, I'd keep him at the 
> Ministry but use him as a coordinator. Or perhaps JK will surprise 
> us again, and reveal that Percy's quite adept at duelling. I 
> somehow doubt it.

I think that Percy may turn out to be quite a red herring.  Many 
people would completely buy him as a turncoat who was attracted to 
Voldemort by his ambition.  However, if JKR did this, I think he 
would turn out to be a double agent, using his not-inconsiderable 
intellect to wreak havoc in the Death Eater ranks.  (Percy may be a 
competent duelist, but I think his braininess is more likely to be 
his greatest strength.)  He's already played clueless patsy and 
dupe, so I hope she doesn't prolong the agony for him and allows him 
to have a wake-up call.  Certainly if the events in GoF didn't 
change Percy for the better, I will be very disappointed.

--Barb