The Twins / Weasleys / Percy

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 145149

> >>Alla:
> > I again would like to ask you for canon - no, not Molly's       
> > praising Percy, but ANY sign, hint even that twins were jealous 
> > of it. 
> > <snip>

> >>Magpie:
> To see that I think we'd need the twins to announce they were     
> jealous. Instead we're stuck just watching their dynamics which I 
> think is far more complicated (as it is with most families) than   
> just the bad guy and the good guy.  In CoS Percy and the twins    
> have a playfully antagonistic relationship, but it sours over the 
> years and I don't think it's just a case of Percy being horrid and 
> the twins trying to put him back in line.  There's a lot          
> of...stuff...going on there, imo.  
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Yes, exactly.  Actually, I think JKR did a bang up job of showing a 
normal, realistic, and dysfunctional family.  There are so many 
different tensions bubbling beneath the surface.  And there are 
definitely tensions between the twins and Percy.  We see it first 
thing in PS/SS with the first interchange between the twins, Percy 
and Molly.

"Oh, are you a *prefect* Percy?" [...]
"How come Percy gets new robes, anyway?" said one of the twins.
"Because he's a *prefect*," said their mother fondly. (PS paperback 
p.96)

I'm not saying the tension wasn't of normal size, especially this 
early in the game.  But it was there.  (And there's a hint of 
jealousy there too.) And I'm not saying it wasn't amusing.  I loved 
this little exchange, and it put me in a mood to quite like the 
twins.  It's just, as Magpie points out, that the relationship 
between Percy and the twins turns sour.

Because it *never* stops.  Percy never stops over-achieving, and the 
twins never stop teasing and pranking and finally humiliating him, 
every chance they get.  After a bit, it started to get old, for me.  
Then it started to get ugly.

The twins are two.  Percy is one.  Percy is *always* facing greater 
odds.  The twins are at his home, they're at his school, and they're 
in his house.  Percy goes to Egypt, his brothers are right there 
trying to lock him into a tomb.  Percy becomes headboy, his brothers 
are right there, mocking his achievment.  Percy is desperate to make 
a good impression on his boss, the twins are there to sabotage his 
efforts and rub it in his face when he fails. (No *wonder* Percy was 
so desperate to keep his girlfriend to himself.)

And while Percy *is* a stuffed shirt who could probably easily turn 
insufferable, after someone is hit in the face with a pie so many 
times, it stops being funny.  I reached my limit a couple of books 
ago.  

> >>Magpie:
> <snip>
> I can easily see the twins and Percy as mirrors of each other: the 
> twins know they drive Molly crazy but underneath they know they're 
> loved for who they are.  Percy knows he pleases Molly but 
> underneath he doubts he's loved for who he is.

Betsy Hp:
Exactly!  And I must admit to a bias, because I really dislike 
Molly; she sets my teeth on edge and has since CoS.  But I feel like 
she (unwittingly) adds to the tension between Percy and Fred & 
George.  Because she was *always* yelling at the twins, and she was 
*always* holding up Percy as the "perfect older brother".  I don't 
think we get a single scene (until HBP when the twins are finally 
successful in Molly's eyes -- and they make their, "you really were 
a great laundress", crack <grr>) where the twins and Molly just 
exist peacefully together.  It gives me the impression that Molly 
was always on the lookout for something they were doing wrong, and 
the twins were pretty much happy to oblige.

Whereas Percy had to do everything right, because he was Molly's 
perfect little boy, and that's what he had to do to please his mum.  
Plus, with his less aggressive temperment, it was easier for him to 
do that than try and match the twins rambunctiousness.  And you can 
see in both PS/SS and CoS that Percy really does *want* to look out 
for his younger siblings.  I think that's how he expresses his love 
for them.  But that sort of thing wouldn't work for the twins, and 
so instead he's given the role of "perfect example for you to 
follow" by Molly.  She even *lies* to keep Percy in that role.  In 
OotP (IIRC) she yells at Fred & George to stop apparating all over 
the place and says "Percy never did so".  Except Percy *did*!  The 
twins totally joshed him for it in GoF.  So even if Percy did cut 
loose, Molly covered for him.

And Arthur, who may have seen Percy for Percy, seems to have never 
really been there.  He was either working late at the Ministry (as 
we see him do in book after book) or fiddling with his Muggle stuff 
out in the garden shed.  Where apparently none of his children 
joined him.  (I suspect a Molly rule here, because it's odd that the 
twins, who are hands on themselves, never poked a nose in.)

> >>Magpie:
> <major snip>
> And I can't help but feel how he must have felt when he came home 
> with an actual promotion, the one kind of thing he seems to be     
> able to count on, and get told by his father (whom I think Percy   
> had already begun to have problematic feelings about regarding     
> work) that he's just a fool promoted as a pawn to spy on Arthur.  
> I think Percy and Barty Crouch, Jr. are some bizarro               
> twins/parallels with their father issues.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
I can see that.  I don't have the same visceral reaction to Arthur 
that I do to Molly, so I probably let Arthur off the hook too much, 
but I think Molly sets up a strange dynamic in how she expects her 
children to view their father.  On the one hand, he's this noble, 
principled man, held back by a bureaucratic Ministry.  But on the 
other he's a rather foolish man with an odd or even unhealthy 
interest in Muggle things.  Oh, and that horrible Ministry is *the* 
place to work.  

There's a certain lack of respect the children have for Arthur.  
They don't seem to listen to him.  And Molly is the reason, I think, 
for that disrespect.  (The scene in the Burrow just after the Dudley 
incident in GoF encapsulates this, to my mind.)  And yet, Molly 
verbally asks the children to respect their father.  It must have 
been very hard for Percy.

And then once he started actually working for the Ministry, I wonder 
what stories he heard about his father?  Is Arthur considered a bit 
of a crackpot?  From comments from colleagues and his rather sudden 
promotion once the war started, I think Ministry members may have 
been frustrated with Arthur sticking to his Muggle office.  Would 
Percy have realised that his father actually *chose* to be in his 
deadend job rather than being trapped in it?  It doesn't surprise me 
that Percy went through (might still be going through, actually) an 
identity crisis that culminated in a screaming match with his 
father.  He must have felt that at some point in time, he was rather 
badly lied to.  May well be why he chose to cling to the Ministry, 
which is as it's ever been, it seems.

> >>kchuplis:
> <snip>
> I just don't see where these boys have been excessively bad       
> people. You make them sound totally evil and I just don't see it. 
> I guess we come from different backgrounds.

Betsy Hp:
For me, it's a cumulative thing with the twins.  As I said, I quite 
liked them in the first few books.  I'm not a huge fan of practical 
jokes, and I thought they were a bit merciless when it came to 
Percy. But they also made sure he sat with them at Christmas 
(CoS?).  So I did feel some love there.  But then it *never* let 
up.  It was pick, pick, pick, pick. All. The. Time.  And poor Percy, 
who is just one boy, and seems so very ill equipped for dealing with 
the twins never, ever, got a hit back.  So my underdog sympathies 
started to kick in.

And their level of violence started to pick up.  They seemed 
perfectly fine with attacking much younger wizards from behind and 
in greater numbers.  There was the bit about the dead puffskien I 
was rather horrified to read about in Fantastic Creatures.  Their 
pranks started drawing blood, and again, the twins seemed less than 
phased by it.  When they note a team-mate apparently bleeding out 
because they gave her the wrong side of a product, they decide to 
play it off.  Only taking her to the hospital wing when the team 
captain notices something is off.

Then there is the very near murder of Montague (by starvation, 
horrifically enough) for which they've shown no remorse.  The fact 
that they vicariously give Hermione a black eye with such a deep 
bruise normal healing methods don't work.  The sadistic treatment of 
a garden gnome foolish enough to behave like, well, a garden gnome 
around them.  And, as Magpie pointed out in a previous post, their 
possibly unhealthy fascination with money.

> >>RM:
> I agree, I don't think the twins are anywhere near as mean as      
> people are seeming to paint them. Yes, they can be cruel,          
> harassing and a handful. Here in the southern US they would be    
> called a couple of "good ol' boys".
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
I *could* be reading too much into it.  The movie twins certainly 
haven't foreshadowed the level of violence I see the book twins as 
having achieved. (The asphyxiation of Dudley, and the Weasley family 
fall out from that, is left out, for example.)  It could be that JKR 
and I have very different views on what is considered funny.  
(Though, hasn't JKR said she quite liked CS Lewis?  And didn't he 
write an essay on practical jokers that did see a rather dark side 
to it all?)  

However, I *don't* like the direction they're going in, *especially* 
since so much of their bad behavior is explained away with a "boys 
being boys" wave of the hand.  So I'd love it if one of the twins 
turned out to have had dealings with a Death Eater or two in order 
to keep their business in operation.  (Bribe money, maybe?  A few 
products here or there?)  That way the other twin can have a wake up 
moment where he's realized things have gone too far.  

I certainly can't and won't argue that this is the direction JKR is 
going.  But, boy I'd love it if she did.  Because, yeah, the twins 
bug me.  A lot.  I worry about the influence they have on Harry.

Betsy Hp