[Archiving] Four thousand, four hundred and forty-four words on Percy Weasley

[necessarian]

Full title: Four thousand, four hundred and forty-four words on why Percy Weasley is my favourite character in the Harry Potter series

Originally posted: 17.8.'13

One of the great things about the Harry Potter series is that while it often presents morality in black-and-white terms, it also gives us some fascinating characters who reside in the grey area, notably Severus Snape and Peter Pettigrew. Heck, there’s even a bit of sympathy cultivated for the Big Bad, Lord Voldemort, whose troubled childhood is all too reminiscent of our hero Harry’s in that they both grew up as orphans in unsafe environments. But for my money, there is no character in the grey area more interesting than Percy Weasley. In fact he’s my favourite character in the series, but for a long time he wasn’t, because in the earlier books he’s very easy to pass over as comic relief. Still, I have a bad habit of overanalysing minor characters, and I’ve got so many thoughts on Percy that I thought I’d finally put them into essay form. Percy is one of the most hated characters in the fandom, and my hope is that this essay can help change your mind and see Percy in a whole new way. A lot of this is reading-between-the-lines speculation (and yes, a little bit of headcanon), but all going off canon evidence, to help paint a picture of Percy Weasley so that we as fans can better understand his motivations and personality.

 

I’m working off the Harry Potter Wiki so I can get everything in chronological order, but first I’m going to talk a bit about what Percy’s life may have been like growing up in the Weasley family. This may seem tangential since it is mostly speculation, but Percy’s position in the Weasley family is essential to understand if you want to understand his later actions. I don’t need to mention the stereotypes about the Middle Child, because Percy ticks a lot of those boxes. Before he started at Hogwarts, the interesting thing is that Percy would not have had much with which to set himself apart from his brothers except for his manners, which probably would have made him a butt of jokes, as is evident in book-era interactions with his family. He would have been constantly in the shadow of the high-achieving Bill and Charlie, both of whom we know have distinguished themselves in various fields. As well as that, he would have had to contend with the noisy twins for attention, and Ginny who had a special status as the only girl. Percy’s relationship with Ron is a bit different, but I’ll focus on that in more detail later. The point is, Percy would always have been struggling for attention, which we know is something he craves. Well, not so much attention but recognition - Percy wants people to know that he’s an achiever, presumably in the same vein as his older brothers. From this we can extrapolate that he has pretty low self-esteem, which is why he worked hard to cultivate an image of maturity, or as it’s described by others, his pompousness and stuffiness. He’s also got a sense of entitlement or perhaps a superiority complex, which when combined with low self esteem is basically the recipe for a whole cocktail of personality issues. So is it any wonder that a boy who grew up without the respect that he feels entitled to would turn elsewhere for recognition?
 

 

Now let’s consider his early years at Hogwarts. Think about this: Percy’s birthday is the 22nd of August. That seems like a pretty minor detail, right? Wrong. The Hogwarts year starts on the 1st of September. Percy was born in 1976 and started Hogwarts in 1987, which would have made him eleven years old. In fact, taking into account the probability of birthday distribution, he would almost certainly have been the youngest Wizard in his grade. Do you see where I’m going with this? Percy Weasley, who has always felt slightly more important than everyone else and has the kind of personality that demands respect, is for a year the youngest person in Hogwarts. I’m almost certain he would have been aware of this, and it would have somehow contributed to his development as a student, and maybe fuelled his authority complex once he was a bit older.
 

 

As well as his authority thing, which I will get to later, Percy is definitely an overachiever. It’s easy to forget that he got twelve O.W.L.s, which he would not have been able to do without a Time Turner, so his work ethic is pretty clear. But I don’t think that Percy would have grown up with Bill’s natural intelligence —he’s the kind of person who worked hard for his grades. In relation to his high marks, an interesting fact to note is that while Percy is portrayed as something of a show-off, he seems to only boast when his achievements are mocked or downplayed by others. For example, when he becomes a Perfect it seems the more jokes that Fred and George make about it, the more he attempts to assert his authority. However he barely mentions his outstanding O.W.L. grades, which is put down to his infatuation with Penelope in the books, but also, no-one actually makes fun of his grades, because they’re accepted as an amazing achievement. But, no-one heaps much praise on him either. Perhaps by this stage (headcanon alert) Percy has tried too hard, and has set such a high standard for himself that he cannot exceed it enough to impress. For a guy with self-esteem issues, that’s pretty depressing.
 

 

On the other hand, we’ve got lots of little hints that Percy wasn’t all about study while he was at Hogwarts. We know he’s interested in Quidditch, and I’m going to hazard a guess that this is from looking up to his brother Charlie, who was a skilled Quidditch player. But as interesting as the interplay between Percy and his family is, we can’t negate his friends in all of this, and I’m willing to bet that not only did his girlfriend Penelope engage him in conversations about the sport, but also let’s not forget that Percy spent seven years sharing a room with Oliver Wood. If he didn’t come out of that with some huge secret reserve of Quidditch knowledge then I’ll eat my hat. And we know that despite his reputation for being very rule-oriented and authoritarian, he wasn’t above sneaking into empty classrooms for a snog. There are even — shock horror! — instances of Percy joking! I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Percy is secretly a bigger joker than the twins, but he certainly has a sense of humour, and he certainly has the capability to be a bit more relaxed in breaks between being a paragon of authority. It’s not unheard of for uptight people to be able to crack a smile once in a while, which is why I get so annoyed when people write Percy off as boring. I am pretty sure he’s aware that there’s more to life than studying, even if he might forget that sometimes in favour of overworking himself.
 

 

Now, in Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, it was Percy’s first year as a Prefect. I imagine he would have been pretty delighted at being trusted with such authority, but I think he might also have been a bit nervous about it all. After all, Percy isn’t exactly respected by his siblings at this point, yet he’s in charge of all these young kids all of a sudden? I think (headcanon alert) he’d have a lot of doubts about it. But this is Percy — he works to the best of his abilities and let’s face it, he would have made sure that he was an excellent Prefect. The fact that Fred and George always laughed about it and enchanted his badge wouldn’t have helped his insecurities, though. At this point it’s important to note that Bill and Charlie are no longer at Hogwarts, and Percy is the oldest Weasley there. Quite a change from being the youngest in the school, don’t you think? This would add an extra dimension to his sense of responsibility, and obviously his protectiveness of his younger siblings, which I’ll talk about a bit more as this essay progresses. Also, on a tangent, remember how Percy gets an owl as a present for becoming a Prefect and names it Hermes? That is a reference to Muggle mythology. If you think Percy isn’t down with many aspects of Muggle culture you are wrong. Remember, he got every single O.W.L. possible. He would have aced Muggle Studies. So we can summarise Percy’s 5th year at Hogwarts by saying that, to quote Linkin Park, he tried so hard and got so far, and in the end it didn’t really matter because everyone made fun of him anyway.
 

 

In the second book when he begins to get more of a role beyond Supporting Character, Percy shows a different side of himself. He first shows that he can be a little bit secretive about his activities and less uptight as in the first book — see also: snogging in the dungeons, — but he also shows his severe devotion to his family. The HP Wiki mentions the time he reprimands Ron for being in the girls’ bathroom, and when he scolds Fred and George for joking about Harry being the Heir of Slytherin, but for my money this scolding is his way of looking out for his brothers. And let’s not forget his sister — he frets over Ginny when she so much as looks a little bit off, presumably because it’s her first year at Hogwarts and he cares for her a great deal, and he’s clearly upset by her capture into the Chamber, but not so upset that he can’t write a letter to his parents to inform them of this. This just shows that he’s the kind of person who can keep a cool head in times of trouble. In fact, I can think of precisely two instances when Percy loses his shit (and I don’t just mean being shocked or sad or troubled, I mean actually goes into emotional overdrive followed by intense shut-down, like when he really Loses His Shit, henceforth referred to with due capitalisation), both of which will be mentioned later. For now, let’s just keep it to the fact that he’s a naturally calm person and also a natural leader — the kind of person who’ll step up when everyone else is freaking out. Now we’re starting to get a sense of why he earned his role as a Prefect.
 

 

But — you know what else happens at the end of the second book, right? Ginny reveals her previously secret knowledge of Percy’s girlfriend, Penelope. We know that Ginny walked in on them getting a little bit intimate, but what I find more interesting is that we don’t know why Percy and Penelope wanted to keep their relationship a secret in the first place. Perhaps it was because he didn’t want to be mocked for it, which certainly happened once his brothers found out, or perhaps they thought that for Prefects to be seen dating was undignified. Perhaps there’s some unwritten code about inter-house relationships that we don’t know about. Perhaps they were sneaking around because they didn’t want to abuse their Prefects’ Bathroom privileges, which, let’s face it, would have been the easy option. This last option seems likely, as from the one line of dialogue Penelope gets in the scene where Harry and Ron are polyjuiced up to the hilt and sneaking into the dungeons, she comes off as a little bit prim and pompous. Sounds familiar? Yeah, because she’s probably a bit like Percy, which is presumably why they got on well enough to date. So (headcanon alert) I’m thinking they did their sneaking around due to a very misguided idea of propriety.
 

 

Anyway, that was a bit tangential to the point, but what I’m getting that is that if Percy and Penelope’s relationship survived their precarious secrecy and hazardous reveal well enough that they still wrote to each other all Summer and continued dating throughout their final year at Hogwarts (and perhaps beyond?), then we know that it was a pretty solid relationship. So before you get up in my face and talk about Percy not being good with people because he broke off all ties with his family, just remember that as a teenager he had the emotional range of significantly more than a teaspoon, enough to keep a steady girlfriend for at least two years, which is more than we can say for any of his younger siblings. This shows us that despite his obvious personality flaws, he is still likeable and he knows how to talk to people. I mean, if he was rude to everyone all the time he’d never have been made a Prefect, or Head Boy, or been employed by the Ministry of Magic.
 

 

Speaking of Percy’s career advancements, let’s talk about the fact that Percy found out that he was Head Boy while he was in Egypt. Imagine that — his father’s won a competition and everyone is happy and then all of a sudden he’s Head Boy! Can you imagine how excited he would be? The funniest thing is that the Wiki page I’m using for my chronology says “he was made Head Boy, which he was very pleased about”. This is the understatement of the century. It’s pretty clear that his whole life had been building up to this moment. Pity his siblings ruined it for him by teasing him endlessly. He’s been trusted with this amazing responsibility, and all they can do is laugh and call him “Bighead Boy”. Sigh. Poor Percy just can’t catch a break with his family, can he? You can see how all of this is building up to his abandonment of his family. Still, he definitely doesn’t disappoint as Head Boy — his mother especially is incredibly proud of him, and it’s clear that Dumbledore trusts him, since he is placed in charge of the student body (presumably along with the unidentified Head Girl) when they are forced to sleep in the Great Hall after the Sirius Black fiasco. On top of all this glorious purpose, he does spectacularly in his N.E.W.T.s. At last, it seems like Percy is achieving recognition.
 

 

But wait, there’s more! In the fourth book, Percy’s finally got his dream job at the Ministry, working under the admirable Bartemius Crouch Senior, who knows over two hundred languages and is a workaholic, just like Percy. Barty Crouch is the turning point for Percy, the moment we can see him starting to drift away from his family. Not only does Percy start working harder than ever, but also Crouch refers to him as Weatherby — before he loses the family, he’s already unwillingly lost the family name. We all know JKR is a big fan of symbolism, and for me Weatherby is the biggest bit of Percy-related symbolism she’s put into the story. This is the moment he shakes them off. I realise I’m getting a bit grim here but really, when he first begins to work at the Ministry, Percy is happier than ever. He’s much more enthusiastic than usual, and he just seems in general so pleased with himself for landing this job. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s finally in the thick of the action, as he’s aspired to be all his life, and as things begin to get a bit funny with Crouch, Percy once again demonstrates his leadership abilities by stepping in and taking over some of Crouch’s duties. Of course, this wouldn’t be Harry Potter without a tragic downside to Percy’s happiness in his new job. When it’s revealed that Crouch had been under the Imperius curse for an indeterminate amount of time, Percy gets the short end of the stick because he probably should have noticed that his boss was acting strangely. But can you really blame him? He was new to the job and he was so blinded by his enjoyment of the position that he failed to notice the changes in Crouch’s behaviour. We’re kind of getting a new side to Percy’s personality here — he seems to be actually quite unobservant, and this is the first hint we get of the fact that he’s very easily blinded to what’s going on around him so long as he himself is happy. Selfish? No. Self-centred? Definitely.
 

 

So, despite this misstep when he worked under Crouch, Percy is shortly promoted to the post of Minister Fudge’s Junior Assistant. And as we’ve noticed, since Percy is all about self-fulfilment and he’s been longing for some sort of recognition (you know, maybe a boss who actually knew his name or something) he absolutely relishes this promotion. Not so much his family. But can you imagine landing your dream job, only to be told by your father, whom you admire and who also works for the same organisation that promoted you, that your promotion was solely so that the Ministry could keep tabs on your family? This brings me to the first instance of Percy Losing His Shit. The way Ron recounts it, Arthur and Percy had a full-on screaming match, and Percy just up and left. This is an eighteen-year-old, a guy who has been raised in a quite insular family, leaving for the big city. London is huge, and Percy would have had limited experience of the city apart from Kings’ Cross Station. But Percy is determined to be the prodigal son, which in his case he paints as a positive experience, because he feels like he fits in at the Ministry much more than he fits in at the Burrow. He’s around people who have the same attitude to work as he does, and he’s in a job where his skills are recognised. Percy is living the dream, and if his family can’t see that and they just want to be paranoid about the reasons for his promotion, then too bad.
 

 

Now here’s where things get messy for Percy fans. Forget his racism against House Elves, this is the big one. It’s the letter to Ron. Percy is now public in his support for the Ministry and his opposition to Harry’s claims, and he has made the transition fully from conscientious family-oriented obedient son to Ministry hack. And then, when he hears that Ron has become a Prefect, he writes to congratulate him, and also to warn him against keeping company with Harry. So, let’s look at Percy’s probable state of mind when he wrote this letter. He was so caught up in Ministry affairs that he wouldn’t have had any other sources of news, so naturally he believes what he’s told. This is of course also due to his utter devotion to the Ministry, for reasons I discussed previously. But despite being a veritable slave to the Ministry, he would still have harboured a lot of affection for his family, and this is clear in the fact that he bothers to write to Ron at all. I think Percy would have seen a lot of himself in Ron. Ron was another underappreciated Weasley — so many people, including fans, have written him off as “Harry’s friend”. Of course, Ron is so much more than that, but perhaps Percy was thinking that Ron too had grown up as a tall, awkward boy in the shadow of his brothers, and had to work hard to distinguish himself, much as Percy had done. We know that a lot of Ron’s arc is about forging an identity for himself beyond the dutiful best friend, and here is Percy trying to help Ron on this quest. Of course, it’s an entirely misguided attempt. One only has to read the letter to realise that it is totally the wrong thing to say under any circumstances. But as we’ve seen over the course of this essay, Percy is all about trying, and if there’s an opportunity to try and get through to his brother, he’s sure as hell going to take it. So you can imagine that he was probably quite disappointed at receiving no response.
 

 

In fact, Percy was probably so disappointed that he took the next big step in cutting all family ties by returning the Weasley jumper that Molly sent to him for Christmas. This is a Big Deal. Molly was historically the Weasley most supportive of Percy, and he obviously cared for her a lot, so sending back the jumper is a really loaded gesture on his part. Nonetheless, we know that Molly didn’t give up on Percy, which is pretty amazing because especially after Percy avoided visiting Arthur in St. Mungo’s, you’d think that Molly would be suitably disillusioned by her son. But she isn’t. She speaks as though he is still a part of the family, and she embraces him enthusiastically when he returns for Christmas, even though he was coerced into it by Rufus Scrimgeour who was basically using Percy as a distraction so that he could speak to Harry. Incidentally, A Very Frosty Christmas is probably my second-favourite chapter in the entire series (my favourite being The Other Minister) because it is a beautiful glimpse into Percy’s strained relationship with his family, and it shows that even though he has Lost His Shit and tried his very best to estrange himself entirely. Also it’s pretty funny that he is attacked with mashed parsnips.
 

 

Then again, after this luncheon, Percy goes back to being very much as far from his family as he can be. Of course, it’s not all smelling of roses at the Ministry anymore, and it’s probably soon after this time that Percy begins to realise that he has chosen the wrong side of this war. There’s very little information about this period in this life, but I’m going to do some serious extrapolating and assume (headcanon alert) that he was very, very lonely. His family had abandoned him and he had abandoned them, and now the Ministry was abandoning him and, well, he eventually abandoned them by making contact with Aberforth. It’s interesting that Percy’s place in the Ministry was much like his place in his family. He did well for himself, but never well enough that he was properly held in high esteem. And it’s a pity, that, because it would be nice for Percy to get a bit of that recognition. Maybe he does sometime in the future, but since I’m one of those people who aggressively rejects a lot of epilogue canon (I know, I know) we’re going to gently ignore the future and I’m going to return this essay to talking about Percy’s timeline. In fact, we’re nearly there, so let’s skip to the best part.
 

 

Percy’s redemption. I cannot tell you how happy this made me. So instead I will tell you about how amazing this redemption scene is. First up, calling it “redemption” sort of sells it short so I’m going to stop doing that. Let’s call it his reunion with his family instead. It’s a spectacular reunion for several reasons. The first is just how awkward it is. You’ve got everyone hunkering down before this huge battle, and then Suddenly Percy. The whole atmosphere of this scene is so indicative of the way Percy carries himself throughout the whole series. He’s often a little bit inappropriate but he’s generally well-intentioned. Another great thing about this reunion is the remarkable degree of self-awareness Percy shows. I mean, he even refers to himself as a “pompous prat”. Seven years ago, it would have been unthinkable for Percy to categorise his own behaviour as such, but in those seven years it’s clear that he has matured a lot. And there’s also significant change from the eighteen-year-old who ran away from home to the twenty-one-year-old who shows up to fight in the most important battle of the Second Wizarding War.

 

Of course, this battle quickly turns sour for Percy, and that brings me to the second instance of Percy Losing His Shit. I think every single reader was super-distraught when Fred dies, but with the exception of George, I think Percy felt it the worst. After all, Fred was the first character to forgive Percy when he returned, and he laughed with Percy as he joked (remember what I said about Percy having a sense of humour?) about resigning and then… his death was just so sudden, and Percy was so shattered that he didn’t let go of Fred’s body until it was safe. This is a return to the Percy we met at the beginning of the story, the one who is fiercely devoted to his family. And then of course once Fred is safe, another side of Percy that we haven’t seen in a while shines through. He gets up, and he goes back to fight. This is back to overachieving, the Percy who keeps a cool head in a crisis. This is Percy at his best, and that’s why his return to the action is so great, and why he’s one of my favourite characters. And you know, let’s not forget how amazing it is that he’s so adept at human transfiguration — which is, by the way, incredibly difficult — that he quite easily transfigures Pius Thicknesse into a sea urchin. Let’s pretend for a moment that this is symbolic of the intense personality transfiguration Percy has gone through in the last seven books. In a way he’s come full-circle, and returned to Hogwarts, to his family, and become a more self-aware and less self-centred character than he was previously.
 

 

As for after Hogwarts, all we know about Percy is that he becomes a high-ranking Ministry official, talks a bit about broomstick regulations, and marries someone called Audrey and has two daughters. Whatever. To me, it’s what happens in the books that makes Percy the most interesting character in the series. If only the Harry Potter series had been Percy Weasley’s coming of age story instead, we might have learnt a bit more about what led to all of these serious changes in his personality and attitudes, as well as his motivations and proclivities. But since it isn’t, we just have to extrapolate and work off the facts we have, much as I have done in this essay. And hopefully if you’ve read this, you’ll be able to look at this wildly underappreciated character in a different way, or if you were already a Percy fan, maybe I gave you some feels. Either way, if you made it this far, thanks for reading! And more importantly, thank you for appreciating Percy Weasley.