Rewriting OotP

[psychic_serpent]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pennylin" <pennylin at s...> 
wrote:
 > ** Percy!!  What has happened to my Percy?  And we don't even get 
a red-herring about him maybe under Imperius or some other 
*reasonable* explanation for his behavior!  As founding member of 
PINE, I am sorely, sorely disappointed by this, and well, I'm just 
not satisfied at all.  I hope there is a very good explanation 
forthcoming!

Oh, Penny!  Don't despair of our Percy!  (::waves the PINE flag::)  
I have an elaborate theory about how the letter Percy wrote to Ron 
AND the quotes from him in the Prophet the next day are a very clear 
indication that Percy is a spy, and that at least one of his parents 
knows it.  I think Molly knows at the very least, based upon one of 
her boggart visions being a dead Percy, although I think Arthur is 
probably also in on it.  They have to do their best not to blow his 
cover, so I doubt that many other people know (apart from 
Dumbledore, who knows everything, after all).  The possibility that 
they were angry with him volunteering to do something so dangerous 
probably accounts for their ability to maintain a believability in 
their anger-toward-Percy acts.  (They might really have been upset 
that he did this, perhaps without first consulting them.)

The letter to Ron was clearly sent at night so that no one else in 
the school would see him getting it, and possibly also because he's 
aware of owls being intercepted when they're timed to come at 
breakfast, the usual owl post time of day.  (Percy may even be 
someone authorized by Fudge to oversee the interception of the owls, 
which is probably why he would know how to avoid this.)  And just in 
case it WAS intercepted, his warnings to Ron about a number of 
things are couched in language that is designed to allow him to keep 
his cover while telling Ron a lot of things the Ministry would 
probably rather he not know.  His quotes in the Prophet also sound 
like things that are properly 'loyal,' but at the same time, he's 
giving away a load of information about inside activities at the 
Ministry.  And Fudge and Umbridge are stupid enough that all they 
see is a bowing and scraping toady, rather than someone blabbing to 
the world about a lot of things that should probably be kept hush-
hush.

Percy is not evil!  He is a brave and daring spy in the Ministry, 
keeping an ear out for signs that his family members or the members 
of the Order may be in danger and leaking information to his family 
and others--and to the general wizarding public, through the 
Prophet.  Whether this role of his will change now that the Ministry 
is acknowledging Voldemort's return remains to be seen, but in my 
book (UK copy of OotP, that is <g>) he was never and will never be 
evil. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

--Barb, who should probably volunteer to do something about this for 
the HPFGU FAQ