Getting started wioth a Percy post.

~waves~ Hello all! I've just joined up, though I've been lurking in the woodwork watching for a while. Thought I'd better introduce myself

Anyway, I wrote this a few days ago and posted it in my journal, but I thought you might find it interesting here too. It's perhaps a little long-winded, but when I set out to defend a character, I try to do it thorougly...

Ever since the publication of Order of the Phoenix, half the HP fandom seems to have decided that Percy Weasley is the epitome of evil and treachery, a Death Eater in all but name (or in name and in hiding) who has to die horribly to make up for having dared commit the dreadful crime of Going Against the Weasley Party Line. On the ‘Which Weasley Would You Kill?’ thread at FAP, Percy outscores the other Weasleys by dozens of votes. Reasons given include such gems of mature and balanced argument as He is such a git!!! How could he send back his Weasley sweater! he has to go and Percy has to die becoz he made his mother cry & disrespected his father and there’s no way he can be redeemed after that. There are calls for him to apologise, and to die ‘redeeming himself’ (apparently nothing less will do). He has to be a Death Eater, or worse (is there worse?), because--on the surface at least--he made a mistake in judgement, stuck up for his own opinion, didn’t believe Our Hero, and made his mummy cry.

Well, I don’t agree with the general condemnation. I hold that Percy is well on the side of the angels--or at least of the orchestrator, which admittedly isn’t always quite the same thing. Much though I adore Percy, though, this isn’t just blind loyalty. I can argue the case. So here I go, standing up for Percy...

The idea that Percy is or will be a Death Eater is ludicrous, and can actually be disposed of quite swiftly. Becoming a Death Eater means, effectively, supporting anarchy and the destruction of the established order. But ever since Percy was first introduced as a character, he’s been associated with the established order--the first thing we learn about him is that he’s a Weasley; the second is that he’s a Prefect. Prefect, Head Boy, Ministry employee, Triwizard Tournament Judge, Minister’s Assistant…the whole reason he left home was (ostensibly) because he put upholding the established order above keeping his family’s good opinion.

Becoming a Death Eater means rejection of Muggle-borns and Muggles. We have no evidence of Percy’s stance on Muggles, but we have plenty for his stance on Muggle-born wizards and witches. Percy’s the one who takes the trouble to ‘mentor’ Hermione through her first night in a completely new environment (PS 93-4); in fact, of the Trio, she’s the one he gets along best with (GF 126). And Percy has had a Muggle-born girlfriend. Yes, despite all the debate on the subject, Penny is Muggle-born; although it’s a fair bet to say that anyone standing next to Hermione at that point would have been Petrified, just to be on the safe side, Fudge--not knowing about Tom Riddle’s agenda--states that there have been ‘Four attacks on Muggle-borns’ (CS 193). I doubt whether Mrs Norris is included in the category, so that leaves us with Colin, Justin, Hermione and Penny as the Muggle-borns in question.

Becoming a Death Eater means attacking and tormenting Muggles, and wreaking havoc on the wizarding world--but when the Death Eaters put on their little display after the Quidditch World Cup, Percy plunges in along with Arthur, Charlie and Bill to help rescue the Robertses and restore order and calm. He may come out of it with an injury that seems slightly ridiculous compared to Bill’s (GF 126), but he was involved in an outright battle against Voldemort’s supporters, and afterwards he fusses about the aftereffects of the incident on the political climate.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that Percy has attached himself to the Death Eaters in any way, and only a very vague possibility that he has any contact with any Death Eaters at all (hypothetical interaction with Lucius Malfoy at the Ministry, and personally I very much doubt that Lucius Malfoy would give Percy so much as the time of day).

But apparently, a lifetime of being heavily invested in promoting the society Lord Voldemort wants to destroy, having Muggle-born friends, and actively protecting Muggles and wizards from Death Eaters, at some risk to himself, has left Percy absolutely primed for Death-Eater-hood, just because he also happens to want to do well in his work. The logic of that argument makes my head ache...while it is of course hypothetically possible that Percy is or will be a Death Eater, I think that in practical terms we can consider the option no option at all, and move on.

It’s far more likely that Percy would attach himself, in all misguided integrity--or even, let’s be honest, a degree of malice directed against his family--to the entrenched regime at the Ministry. That is the more moderate and reasonable stance taken by some of those who’ve turned on Percy, though even that much seems to be enough to require a redeeming heroic death.

But is even that the case? Let’s look at that evidence again, shall we--and this time, with more of a balanced eye, because in dealing with Percy’s actions in OP, we need to remember two things. Firstly, the vast majority of what we learn about Percy in OP is told, not shown, and told by prejudiced witnesses: Fred, George, and Ron, who is already of the opinion that Percy would, ‘throw any of his family to the Dementors ... If he thought we were standing in the way of his career ... ’ (GF 463). Though the information these witnesses relay may be factually correct, the interpretation they place upon it is open to challenge. And secondly, what we see of Percy is seen under very restricted circumstances. We only ever see him in OP in the company of both Fudge and Umbridge, two people who can be relied upon to make his life a very hell if he doesn’t show himself to be on their side.

Based on the evidence presented to us, I think there is a considerable likelihood that Percy is, yes, you guessed it, an undercover agent of the Order of the Phoenix. He is Dumbledore’s spy on Fudge. This isn't just partisanship, though; it's a conclusion I've drawn based on the general pattern of Percy’s actions throughout the year, and the interpretations it’s possible to place on them.

First, after a back-breaking and very nearly disastrous year in his first job, Percy tells his parents he’s been promoted into the position of Junior Assistant to the Minister for Magic. For all he knows, this is a perfect legitimate promotion, as he did after all keep an important Ministry Department running smoothly for a considerable period of time in his boss’ absence, even if he also failed to realise that the man was less than completely stable. Arthur then informs him that he has only been given the job so that Fudge can use him to spy in his family. This descends into a massive argument in which Percy a) dissociates himself from Dumbledore, b) distances himself from any idea of ‘treachery to the Ministry’ and c) detaches himself from a family Fudge doesn’t trust.

Leaving home functions as an oblique public statement that Percy values the Ministry above his family, and considers the Ministry’s position more valid than theirs. It’s also a downright ostentatious proclamation of the fact that he is Not A Spy, cannot possibly be a spy. It is not so, and it was not so, and God forbid it ever shall be so, and we all know where that one leads...

What are the consequences of this action? Well, as Percy dissociates himself from people that Fudge suspects of undermining him (OP 69), he makes himself more trustworthy in Fudge’s eyes, at a time when Fudge’s Senior Assistant, Dolores Umbridge, is about to be out of the office for long stretches of time. By rejecting his family and leaving home, Percy makes himself into someone that Fudge will let himself trust. In fact, everything we see him do or hear of him doing in OP seems at one level to be aimed at making himself more trustworthy to Fudge; this means that he stays close to Fudge, and may eventually be able to exercise some influence over him.

During Harry’s so-called trial, Percy gives no ‘sign of recognition’ to Harry (OP 127), his father (OP 140) or Dumbledore (OP 131); he confines himself to taking notes and following Fudge’s orders. There’s nothing particularly unusual about Percy’s behaviour in this scene; he behaves with decent professionalism, and his ‘eager’ note-taking (OP 127) really only recalls his enthusiastic devotion to duty in various jobs he’s performed at other times in the series. His pronounced lack of response (either positive or negative) to Harry, Arthur and Dumbledore, however, constitutes another, considerably more overt statement to Fudge that Percy is on his side, and against three people that his background would lead anyone to expect him to owe loyalty to.

Sending back his Christmas jumper, and failing to visit his father in hospital, make for more statements of dissociation, and very convincing ones to anyone who knows the Weasley family. Now, it’s always worth remembering that we have no evidence except hearsay--at a biased third-hand, at best--that Percy didn’t visit his father while he was in hospital. But let’s go with the idea that the Twins’ information is correct, and that Percy didn’t visit Arthur. Even taking hearsay for fact, we still don’t know why. It could be simple ignorance of the fact that Arthur is in hospital at all. It could be Percy putting his integrity above his family again. It could be the result of an insoluble conflict between loyalties and affections. Or it could be the response of a spy who can’t afford to compromise his cover. Whichever it is, it serves as yet another clear statement to Fudge that Percy’s loyalties really do lie with him.

These three incidents set up the version of events that Rowling seems to want us to accept: that, far from being evil incarnate, Percy is just an ambitious and stiff-necked nineteen-year-old with very limited vision, stubbornly doing what he thinks is right in the absence of enough evidence to convince him that he’s wrong.

But consider this. At a time when ‘Fudge has made it clear that anyone who’s in league with Dumbledore can clear out their desks’ (OP 69), Percy does not at any point dob his family in to Fudge--despite knowing for certain that they support Dumbledore absolutely, and despite the fact that doing so would win him a lot of brownie points. At the very least, this contrasts him favorably with a certain SNEAK we all know. It raises the very real possibility that he retains some loyalty and affection for his family. But it also allows for the possibility that, despite appearances, Percy may not actually be interested in undermining Dumbledore’s supporters in the Ministry at all...

The other two Percy incidents in OP give us some real hints that this last possibility is just as valid as the most obvious one.

First, the letter. Percy’s letter to Ron really is vintage Percy-as-seen-through-Ron’s-eyes: pompous, self-righteous, self-interested and obnoxious. But at the same time, it conveys a great deal of information that Harry, Hermione and Ron need to know, right when they most need to know it. And it does so in such a way as to ensure that Ron will pass that information on to Harry, the one who needs it most (OP 266-8). On the surface, the letter looks pretty damning; but because of it, the Trio aren’t blindsided by Umbridge’s ascension to the position of High Inquisitor, and on the whole they become more careful in their dealings with her.

Now, combine the amount of information Percy sends with the manner on which he sends it. He uses a personal owl. He sends the letter at a time and in a place where it is highly unlikely to be intercepted. And he writes the letter in such a manner that if it is intercepted, it can have no possible negative consequences for either himself or Ron (the opening congratulations and the closing passage are explicitly designed to reinforce, both to Ron and to anyone else who happens to read it, the image of Percy established by his argument with Arthur). In the light of all of this, you start to get the sense that there’s a bit more going on than appears at a first glance--which is, unfortunately, all Ron gives the letter.

And then there’s The Clue. The letter contains a thumping great clue that the impression of himself that Percy gives in it, and his true outlook, are not to be considered synonymous. This is his description of Dolores Umbridge as ‘a truly delightful woman who I know will be only too happy to advise you’ (OP 267).

It’s a description that probably accords quite well with Umbridge’s view of herself, and it certainly matches the image she likes to put across. However, it’s immediately, obviously inaccurate to anyone who has spent time under her authority--as the Trio have, as her students, and as Percy has, as Junior Assistant to her Senior. It works, in fact, in exactly the same way as Harry’s comment to Sirius, in his letter earlier in the same chapter, ‘We’ve got a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Umbridge. She’s nearly as nice as your mum’ (OP 252), and just to make the parallel obvious, it even holds precisely the same position in Percy’s letter as Harry’s clue does in his--i.e., dead centre. It’s a statement that would be taken at face value by anyone who didn’t know the person mentioned. However, to anyone who does, it serves as a clear signal that information is being sent in a form of code, that the appearance doesn’t match the reality, and that it’s dangerous to speak directly about the person in question.

This raises a few possibilities. The letter can, of course, be taken at face value, as showing that Percy, despite toeing the Ministry line, still cares enough about his family to try to help Ron out at a difficult point. This is entirely likely--Percy’s affection for his family is well-documented, from his boasting about Ron in PS (221), to his fussing over Ginny in CS (119, 139), and his panicky responses to threats to Ron in PA (197) and GF (437). However, the letter can also be read as suggesting that Percy has come to the realisation that he made a mistake in his choice of loyalties, and is doing his best to support both sides without losing the only security he now has. Or it can be taken as our first real, if oblique, bit of evidence that Percy is in fact not working for Fudge at all, but is loyal to the same agenda that Harry, Hermione and Ron are, and is willing to slip them some covert information when they need it most.

This reading is supported by the evidence of Percy’s final appearance in the book--the scene in Dumbledore’s office after the unmasking of the DA, and its aftermath. In this scene, Percy is in full-blown sycophant mode, laughing at Fudge’s deeply inept mockery of Dumbledore and scribbling notes so eagerly that he ends up with ink splattered on his nose (OP 546). It’s yet another advertisement that Percy is On Fudge’s Side; but at the same time, it’s a parody of Percyness, a version of his GF Crouch-worship so overdone as to be downright ludicrous. It’s quite a contrast to his earlier behaviour. But it goes over unchallenged--perhaps because Fudge is now secure in his belief in Percy’s loyalty, because it echoes Fudge’s own manner, or because it bolsters his self-image and his confidence.

Again, the visible behaviour is open to several possible interpretations--that Percy really does support Fudge to that sycophantic extent, that he’s desperately trying to keep his head above water in a very difficult situation, or that the whole thing is a deliberate performance, to camouflage his real allegiance and even, perhaps, steer Fudge towards making less effective decisions than he otherwise might. There’s nothing that says Percy has to be a good actor, after all, and that would be a situation nerve-racking enough to encourage overacting...

Now, consider this. The raid on the DA is organised at very short notice, and is set up as a pincer movement to trap both Dumbledore and Harry. Umbridge says that Marietta only came to her office ‘shortly after dinner this evening’ (OP 540) to tell her about the DA. Fudge shows up at most a couple of hours later, with a pair of Aurors and an assistant to take notes. He apparently knows all the evidence against the DA and Harry in advance, too--he’s not surprised by the appearance of either Marietta or the list of names, and smoothly starts to use them against Dumbledore the instant Umbridge brings them into play. But one of the Aurors on his crack team is Kingsley Shacklebolt, a member of the Order of the Phoenix. And, partly because of this, Harry and Dumbledore both come out of the confrontation much better than they are meant to.

How does Kingsley happen to be on Fudge’s team, when he has his own, quite time-consuming job to do at the Ministry, and shouldn’t really be babysitting the Minister for Magic at all? Is it coincidence? Well, that’s possible--but not likely. This is Dumbledore we’re talking about, and Dumbledore is the orchestrator of the HP narrative. Coincidence and orchestrators are not often close companions. And while Dumbledore certainly makes mistakes in his orchestration, they’re not mistakes about where the pieces on the game-board are at any given moment; they’re mistakes about character. People are where Dumbledore needs them to be, when he needs them to be there. He makes sure of that in advance.

We can hypothesise about what might have gone on at the Ministry before the raid. The most likely scenario, to me, is that Fudge got a Floo call from Umbridge with the information that she finally had the means to silence Potter and/or Dumbledore for good. And while Fudge talked to her, getting the information he needed to be able to control the situation, he sent his most senior remaining assistant--his apparently enthusiastic yes-man, the one who’s spent the entire year making public and private declarations of loyalty--to organise the backup he needed to take on Dumbledore. While it’s quite possible that Shacklebolt saw the danger and got himself onto the team, it’s equally possible that it was Percy who, behind the scenes, arranged for him to be there. Which means that Percy may well have arranged--either unwittingly, or in full knowledge of what he was doing--for Dumbledore to have at least one covert assistant on the other side.

It’s worth noting, also, that Dumbledore doesn’t seem at all surprised by anything Fudge and Umbridge throw at him in this scene--and worth remembering that ‘members of the Order of the Phoenix have more reliable methods of communicating’ than Floo calls (OP 732). Is Dumbledore warned of Fudge and Umbridge’s pincer movement in advance? If so, by whom? The options are: Shacklebolt, Tonks or Arthur (if we’re prepared to theorise, in the complete absence of evidence, that one or the other was working late that night and happened to find out about what was going on), or Percy, while Fudge thinks he’s off pulling together the support team.

Apply Occam’s razor: the simplest solution is most likely to be the correct one. The simplest solution is that the person who has the best opportunity to both organise help for Dumbledore and warn him before Fudge’s arrival--Percy--is the one who did. The odds are looking better and better all the time that Percy, so far from being an emergent Death Eater, might just be Dumbledore’s mole in the Ministry--a deep-cover spy set to watch Fudge, in preparation for just such an event as this, unknown to any other member of the Order of the Phoenix except for Dumbledore and, possibly, his apparent second-in-command Remus Lupin.

This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Percy has a well-established respect and affection for Dumbledore, acknowledging as far back as PS that Dumbledore is the ‘best wizard in the world’, even if he is ‘a bit mad’ (92), and he’s a bit hurt that Dumbledore has excluded his assistants, the Prefects, from the secret surrounding the third floor Charms corridor (PS 95). In PA we see that Dumbledore and Percy have a good working relationship. Dumbledore trusts Percy, the unnamed Head Girl and the Prefects under their authority to be able to control, and defend if necessary, the students sleeping in the Great Hall after Sirius attacks the Fat Lady. He includes Percy in a sensitive conversation that Snape is trying to push him out of (PA 124). Percy is ‘abashed’ to find that he has made a mistake in judgement in front of Dumbledore regarding the Dementors (PA 125). Percy trusts Dumbledore enough to let him put Ron in a potentially extremely dangerous position in the second Triwizard Task; he works with him closely organising the tournament, and he sits at Dumbledore’s table at the Yule Ball. Dumbledore and Percy have, at the very least, a basic working relationship. It’s not at all improbable that Dumbledore could, and would, call on that relationship and/or exploit that to his own ends. That’s what orchestrators do. And Percy is a Gryffindor. Brave, daring and chivalrous are the qualifications, I believe. Well, undercover work takes a lot of nerve...

It still looks a bit tenuous, I admit; a lot of possibles, but no outright evidence. But there is one final clue that leads me to conclude that this theory is not just me grasping at straws to protect one of my darlings. This is the matter of the rumours.

If you remember, Fudge sends Percy off to the Owlery some considerable time before he commands Dawlish and Shacklebolt to arrest Dumbledore (OP 546-7). This means that Percy is out of the room when Dumbledore knocks out Fudge, Umbridge, Dawlish and Shacklebolt (this might seem a slight point, but to me this acts as a kind of signal that Percy is still entitled to some form of narrative protection; he doesn’t merit the treatment meted out to the wilfully blind). However, afterwards, we find out that rumours have begun to circulate at Hogwarts: ‘every single person within the castle seemed to know that Dumbledore had overcome two Aurors, the High Inquisitor, the Minister for Magic and his Junior Assistant to escape’ (OP 550, my italics).

That is the last we hear of Percy for the entire book--a bit of hearsay evidence, from the most unreliable source in existence (i.e. 'they say'), that lumps him in equally with Umbridge and Fudge, in a way that we know for a fact is simply not true. If that’s not a subtle commentary on Percy’s storyline throughout the entire book, I don’t know what is.

So, no, I don’t think Percy is Evil Incarnate, or a Death Eater in training, or even misguided. I think the Scarlet Pimpernel theory has considerable legitimacy*. I don’t think Percy should die because he upset his mummy and told his daddy things he ought to have heard long since. And no, I don’t think he should have to apologise to his family for anything he did in OP. Quite the opposite—I believe it’s perfectly likely that, at the beginning of the next book (or at least at some point before the end of the series), we will see at least the Twins, and possibly Ron and Harry as well, having to apologise to him.


*Sir Percy Blakeney--note the name--was an English spy who used a false public face to divert attention from the fact that he was the Scarlet Pimpernel, rescuer of French aristocrats from the guilloutine, in Baroness Orczy’s stories; hence the name of the Percy-as-spy theory. Incidentally, in the most recent televersion of the Scarlet Pimpernel stories (the one with Richard E. Grant as Sir Percy), Sir Percy has an offsider by the name of Sir William Weatherby. Coincidence? Very likely, but still...