Percy Weasley and "Donnie Brasco"

[ericoppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 106737

Until I hear definitely (as in from Herself herself) that Percy 
turned against his family for base reasons, I shall continue to stick 
to my own theory about his motivations.  My theory is that he was 
working for Dumbledore all the time, as a deep-cover mole, 
like "Donnie Brasco" did infilitrating the Mafia.

The thing about a deep-cover penetration is that you have to _live 
the role_ nearly every waking minute of your life...you _become_ the 
sort of person you're pretending to be, while never losing sight of 
your ultimate, long-term goals.  It's a difficult thing to do, and 
most people probably couldn't carry it off.  

Let us not forget, learned colleagues, that Dumbledore is a very old, 
very Machiavellian man (pausing for a moment, imagining Dumbledore 
meeting the intrigue-happy star-noblemen in the _Dune_ universe) who 
plays his cards very close to the chest, and probably has six or 
seven contingency plans ready to go.  Planting a deep-cover mole in 
the ranks of the Ministry would be one of quite a few things he might 
well do if he anticipated conflict with the Ministry, either due to 
DE infiltration and subversion of the Ministry (cue the ESE!Fudge 
theory here) or due to sheer ineptitude, incompetence and 
unwillingness to look facts in the face.  At least, I can easily 
imagine this as an obvious move to make, and I somehow doubt I'm as 
smart as Dumbledore.

In some ways, Percy's role as Dumbledore's mole would be less 
difficult than most moles.  He doesn't have to adopt a new identity---
he's still Percy "Weatherby" Weasley, bright young upcoming star at 
the Ministry.  However, when the other Weasleys openly sided with 
Dumbledore against the Ministry, Percy would _have to_ have a public, 
noisy falling-out with them, and make it look good, in order to keep 
their confidence.  This would be sufficient to explain his behavior, 
even up to and including his horrible behavior toward his mother.  To 
succeed at this, Percy-the-overachiever would have to _live_ the 
role, as I said above...I don't think that "Donnie Brasco's" new 
friends in the Mafia would have smiled at him if he'd suddenly 
displayed sympathy for the cops, now would they?  

If Percy is a mole, he literally can't talk about it to anybody 
except maybe Dumbledore.  He wouldn't know who else could be trusted--
-and he'd know that if he confided in, say, his mother, and she got 
caught and sufficiently, er, "persuaded" his cover would be blown 
wide open.  Neither he nor Dumbledore could know that Lord Thingy 
would be so incredibly stupidly overconfident to show his face in the 
Ministry itself, so for all they knew, it could go on for _years._  
If Percy really is a mole, though, I expect some very red faces 
around the Weasley household when the truth does come out---not least 
because of all of them, Percy is the only one who could pull this 
sort of trick off.