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riallasheng:
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The whole Percy storyline in GoF really gets me now that I’m older because the kid is 18. He’s…an infant, and he talks like he’s just So Much Older, and he’s DOING things that a kid straight out of school should not be handling.
Which when you’re young, you’re like, “what a tool” but now I feel like…how are Arthur and Molly not having sirens going off in their minds as Percy is like, “oh yeah Mr. Crouch put ME in charge of everything!”
How…is no one?? Concerned??? And if they are concerned, why aren’t they DOING anything?
I don’t think this year gets the credit it deserves in setting the stage for everything else that happens with Percy the whole series. The Ministry lets Percy flounder and fake this whole year, basically–and then tries to throw HIM under the bus for it, if I remember correctly. Because he “should have noticed” (because entry-level assistants are SO trained and paid to like…investigate whether their bosses are having mental breakdowns okay sure sure sure).
He’s already been taken down a peg and kind of saved by Fudge. And THAT’S when his dad wants to tell him something might be up and he has to rethink everything?
It’s too late. The intervention, the discussions…they should have been happening now. Right now, as Percy starts finding himself in WAY over his head for CLEARly suspicious reasons, and he isn’t noticing. Because he’s too excited and too proud and too self-involved…and too YOUNG to have a frame of reference for what’s happening and how utterly abnormal it is.
Someone needed to step in HERE. Not when their feet are to the fire six months from now.
They lose Percy in Goblet of Fire, make no mistake.
They lost Percy before Goblet of Fire.
I don’t have the age spreads in front of me, but since I’ve been on the Percy Weasley Defense Train since GOF was published, Imma just do some handwaving.
Percy is to all intents and purposes, both the middle kid and the oldest kid, with the worse parts of both. During the war, he’s at home. By the time Voldemort’s defeated, the twins and Ron both exist. Percy is old enough to have taken to heart all the stuff they had to do during the war. He was responsible. He was also a child. Everything gets internalized.
Percy the Perfect Prefect is in reaction to everything that happened when he was a kid. And the twins make fun of him for it constantly, but they don’t remember the war, they don’t remember what it’s like, they don’t know.
And nobody takes Percy seriously. He’s the good kid, who gets good grades, so he’s ignored in favor of the twins who suck up all the attention in the room. He gets good grades, but he’s not spectacular, he doesn’t play quidditch, so he can’t distinguish himself when it comes to Bill and Charlie. He doesn’t have charisma. He doesn’t have talent. What he does have is thrumming in his head, the first lesson he had to learn: if you obey the rules, nothing bad will happen. And what are the rules? What your parents tell you. What authority tells you. Do what they tell you. Or bad things happen and it’s your fault.
Also: non-standard cauldron thickness actually is an important thing. It’s basic safety considering potions is a major part of the magical world. But it’s Percy in a nutshell: it’s important, it’s vital, it’s also boring and so is subject to mockery because no one cares.
That Percy is mocked for caring about cauldron bottom regulations is pretty much of a piece with Binns and thus his subject being a useless joke, even as ‘stuff from the past’ drives so much of the plot, and yeah, all this. I hadn’t really thought about how he’d have been just old enough to be directly affected by the first Voldemort War.
Plus, considering the age gaps we’re shown (as opposed to Rowling’s later attempt to claim Charlie’s only three years older than Percy and had just graduated the year before Harry starts, despite that making several Quidditch-related conversations and motivations in book 1 nonsense) Percy was the eldest child at home for most of the year for several years that his (recently bereaved) mother spent coping with two infants and toddler Fred and George.
Two infants and twin toddlers would be bad enough without the toddlers being Born Terrors. Molly absolutely relied on Percy to take on responsibilities above his age and lavished praise on him for it, and had a hard time making time for him otherwise except for necessary homeschooling. His chief positive personality traits were ‘helpful,’ ‘studious,’ and ‘never any trouble.’
Then he goes to school and that’s what’s chiefly rewarded there, too, and they tell him this makes him ‘very grown up.’ And then he goes into the actual grown-up world, and it looks like it’s rewarded there too, except for the ways it isn’t, and suddenly his parents are withdrawing their support (which as op points out was always moral rather than practical) and it’s not him who changed, it’s them.
And he doesn’t have any tools to manage this, either, because the only skillset he’s ever learned for coping with trouble is Being Good.
Also everything about his interactions with Fred and George should be interpreted through the lens of the fact that when he was five he was probably already responsible for keeping them from escaping the garden and feeding them peas.
The first Voldemort war was also very much comparable to the Blitz, and if you look at other films/books/shows/real life that show children during that time frame you’ll see that Percy (and to be honest Bill and Charlie) are pretty much identical in behavior sets to what we see there.
Percy was a good, straight-laced, studious and BORING kid… who’s parents were far FAR more heavily involved in the war than most… which adds a level of danger and ‘don’t be seen, don’t be heard, don’t be noticed… breaking the rules means horrible things happen to you, your parents and the kids you protect’ to everything about Percy and how he thinks, acts, and so on.
He also was too young (in his parents mind) to be told the truth about the war and the Phoenix stuff and so on (and related to that… Bill and Charlie WERE old enough and in a way that messed them up too. There’s a REASON both went for crazy dangerous and ‘heroic’ careers and the three ‘eldest’ are held to a higher standard than the younger four)
Percy just gets a lot of flak, but to be honest I really like him and I wish he’d gotten more IN BOOK credit and got less hate from the fan base
He was 18 in GOF. For younger people that may seem old but it’s really not. He pretends he has it together but he didn’t. He’s just doing his best. Like he’s always done. First for his parents then school and now his job.
I’m 22 and I still feel like I’m not old enough to handle shit. He’s trying. Try being 18 years old and you don’t know that something could be wrong cause your just a kid and how are you supposed to know what’s normal and not and your eyes are wide with innocent and you just think your old boys is chronically sick. So he’s Crouch’s job and trying so hard. Only to be told by SO MANY PEOPLE that it’s his fault for noticing that his boss was dead. That something is wrong. And I’m assuming even Arthur said something along those lines at one point and they are investigating you. And he’s afraid. He’s just a kid. He was barely 19 if even when Fudge promoted him and again JUST A KID. Why would he want to believe Voldemort is back. He remembers the fear of the end. Of his Uncles deaths and his mothers crying and trying to hold everyone together as his dad and older brothers are barely home cause of school and work and war.
He has no reason to believe it especially if he doesn’t like Dumbledore. The man who built danger rooms that first years can get past or can’t stop the attacks when 12 year olds could or let a werewolf teach his baby brothers and sister and that Ron saw in person as a wolf.
Imagine going home feeling relieved that SOMEONE is saying it’s not your fault. That they still believe in him and having your family call you a traitor and yelling at him. I don’t think Percy meant half the things he said. Cause he didn’t leave cause he believed the ministry. He left cause his family didn’t believe in him. And haven’t for a long time. The pranks from the twins that was left unpunished. Mocked for being smart. It’s not his fault he’s smart or that Molly plays favorites. Everyone thinking he’s stuck up just cause he likes rules. Even his parents would laugh at him or roll their eyes behind his back. His PARENTS. They raised him like this. To be smart and follow rules. They wonder why he spent so long in his room during the summer. He knew he just didn’t want to face being the black sheep.
He got punished for doing what they told him to. The only reason. THE ONLY REASON he was working in the ministry was cause that’s what his parents wanted. Not himself but his parents. Remember Molly always trying to push for it.
And to the people who say he should have died instead of Fred shame on you! FOR SHAME! He is a 23 year old kid who went thru something traumatic! He’s been thru so much and he lived the last few years of the war with the belief that if he died no one would care. A kid. Stop punishing this kid.
Hermione is the same as him and yet she’s not punished for liking rules and learning. Why is he? Cause his family gave up on him?
He’s just a kid, who needs his Mom and Dad to hug him and say everything is gonna be alright
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