secondhandquills

[secondhandquills]

Percy Weasley putting his job over his family actually seems like a bit of a trend with the Weasley siblings. Percy was very ambitious and hardworking and clearly felt some resentment over being poor. It’s one of the big things that lead to the fight. When he scored a good job, his parents were displeased and wanted him to turn it down because they didn’t believe he’d gotten it on his own merits but in order to spy on his family. That’s when Percy furiously accuses his father of never working harder and being happy in the job he liked when he wasn’t making enough to provide for his family properly. It’s cruel and harsh but all his siblings seem similarly driven. 

Fred and George drop out of school to start their business. We see them working really hard on their ideas and using their time at Hogwarts partly to test out and refine many of their products and before Harry gives them his winnings, they’re trying to think of any way to make money, which is why they gambled all their savings on a bet with Ludo Bagman. Their mother has told them repeatedly that this was a bad idea and has done everything to discourage them and would have been furious at them daring to drop out of school and yet they do it anyway. 

And then both Bill and Charlie left home seemingly as soon as they graduated to live abroad and are happy to spend years away with only visits here and there. Their jobs are both dangerous and keep them occupied and we can only imagine that they similarly might have had fights with their parents about it. 

We only really follow Ron and Ginny during their Hogwarts years and Ron doesn’t express much anger towards his parents though he is very insecure about his poverty and does wish to stand out. And Ginny seems like she’d be happy to fight if her parents were to question her chosen profession of being a Quidditch player.

[secondhandquills]

Its... unlucky, in a way, that the fight became being about Percy not believing in Dumbledore and Harry as it meant that he was eventually proved wrong and that he’d made the wrong choice and needed to make amends in the end. So the true underlying reasons for the fight - his distance etc from his family - never got addressed. They may never question how they treated Percy and why he made the choices he did. Of course he boldly makes amends in the end anyway so there’s an opportunity for them all to really reflect though I expect he would remain respectfully distant afterwards even if they were no longer on bad terms. 

personally, I think portraying the FightTM as being a cover for percy going undercover as a spy for the order is just cheap, lazy writing which ignores the very real emotional stakes.

how do I interpret it? the tensions in the weasley family between percy and the rest of them finally snapped. percy didn’t trust dumbledore, didn’t really have any strong opinions on harry. and yeah, he made mistakes.

but saying he ‘went undercover’ ignores the very real shit ways percy was treated by his family which were at the root of the fight.

tl;dr: the fight was about percy’s isolation from his family and him making the emotional distance physical after years of living in an unsupportive and hostile environment - the war was just a convenient excuse and the fuse.

[secondhandquills]

Percy hearing that his father believes he was promoted so he could spy on his family and choosing to walk out on his family ensuring that he cannot spy on them is certainly a bold choice. 

Its a complicated situation. I don’t think Percy was thinking in a calculating way or anything, the argument was mostly anger and frustration. 

Did Percy fully trust the ministry? Probably not honestly. Like Percy blindly trusted Crouch I imagine but that trust was obviously broken when he learned what happened to him. 

But whatever reservations he had about the ministry and his new job were matched by the reservations he had over his family and their trust in Dumbledore. 

[secondhandquills]

Arthur Weasley: Okay Percy. It’s your career or your family. 

Percy: Alright I choose my career. 

Arthur: How dare you. 

[secondhandquills]

Percy Weasley

Anon who made Ron inspired me. So, I made Percy!

[secondhandquills]

Percy is like the black sheep of the Weasley family because he could never fit in but he does desperately care about them and that means they can work things out and its so fascinating exploring their dynamic for that reason. 

[secondhandquills]

When Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic himself, arrived, Percy bowed so low that his glasses fell off and shattered.

(Goblet of Fire, chapter 8)

This scene is one of many reasons I will never be convinced that Percy Weasley's romantic endgame is some insipid relationship devoid of any kind of prototypical romance, or with a proposal indistinguishable in tone from a job offer. He's so extra. You want me to believe this guy isn't taking a knee if he proposes to someone?

I could see it, by the way, if he's in sort of a cold situation trying to make the wrong relationship work because he thinks it's the one he should be in -- that feels very Percy. But for his HEA? This guy is not lacking in emotion or affectionate feelings -- we're just conditioned from book 1 to see him as a soulless, uptight piece of dry toast because that's how the younger kids see him.

Maybe Percy's not scattering rose petals all over a candlelit room, but he 100% sends flowers to his SO's workplace on occasions like birthdays, and you know what? Part of the reason he does it is because he wants people to see that he's done it. Because he is who he is.

I'm conflating the concepts of emotional attachment and displays of affection(/romanticism/vulnerability/sincerity) here a little, but the point is canonically I think there's more to him in both of those areas than people would like to presume.

Also he's definitely a groomzilla.

Put my tombstone at the top of this hill.

[secondhandquills]

The Flaws of How JKR Wrote Percy Weasley

First things first; Fuck JKR. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s criticize her writing.

I’m writing this as a think piece inspired by some recent conversations I’ve seen in the Percy Weasley tag, as well as some of the points Quinton Reviews made regarding unlikable butt monkey characters in iCarly/Victorious. In essence, he says that the writers just assumed that a character was so instantly unlikable that the audience would be incapable of feeling sympathetic towards them in any situation and just find bad things happening to them to be funny no matter the context. I want to look at why a lot of fans such as myself grew to love Percy from the perspective of the writer. As someone who plans to pursue writing as a major in college and has already studied and researched a lot about how narrative works, this fascinates me because of the aspects I perceive to be at play here.

While I can’t say for sure what JKR was definitively thinking when she was writing for Percy, I can guess that this is at least somewhat close to what happened. I think that when she was outlining the books, she decided she needed a character that was on relatively good terms with Harry to turn against him come OotP and to not give up on this perspective until Harry was proven correct. As a result, she decided to come up with Percy for that exact purpose. So she implanted certain flaws in his character that would make this turn make sense with the personality already established.

This is where the trouble with Percy’s characterization starts. He wasn’t the author’s main focus, and he didn’t have to be given that he was far from the main character. But I think him and his role started to blend in the author’s mind. She didn’t want the characters to like Percy, she didn’t want them to get along. It had to be Harry’s least favorite Weasley. It had to be everyone’s least favorite Weasley, because if not then the betrayal would come from your everyday, agreeable person that anyone could want to befriend and she didn’t want that. She wanted the theme of public perception and scrutiny without admitting that literally anyone could believe the lies and stick with them.

Unlike Seamus, who eventually comes around, she wanted a friendly-ish character who believes the ministry until the truth comes out, but not an actually friendly person. Still assure the reader that only someone who sucks would believe such propaganda so fervently. No one that Harry and the younger Weasleys could have gotten along with. Only a loser and idiot would support the ministry.

And so Percy was pompous! And a prat! And his younger siblings couldn’t stand him! And literally every time they talk about him, there’s some snide remark against him in some way!

But it has this effect where the reader can look at how Percy is being treated and talked about and think, ‘Is this just how they are to him all the time?’

And sure, JKR knows that he’s gonna turn against his family, and maybe even the reader knows, but the characters don’t. So say that Percy screaming at his dad and leaving is unquestionably deserving of the ire that his siblings show him. The dislike that they show him before leaving still has to match his ‘crimes’ before leaving. You can’t just say ‘Percy sucks…. because he’s Percy, and trust me, pretty soon I’ll prove it’. Otherwise you just wonder what he actually did to deserve this disdain prior to OotP and come up short.

Okay, so maybe Percy bragged too much about being Head Boy. Don’t lock him in a fucking tomb, steal his badge, and make it say shit. Light teasing would have been fine. I do think we tend to apply real world consequences to magical stuff though. Like a lot of things are probably really easy to undo with magic. I’ll probably get flack for saying this but if it was ONLY changing the badge to ‘Big Head Boy’, Percy probably could have changed it back super easily and it would have been fine. But that’s not all they did. So I’m not saying that the pranksters pranking their brother makes them inherently bad people, but the fact that they go so hard in retaliation at Percy getting an achievement and being proud of himself really does not make Percy look bad and the twins look good the way JKR seemed to think it would.

A simple but sincere ‘congratulations’ from one of the younger kids would have gone a long way to show that there is support between this family. And this can be partially to blame on the narration being told specifically from Harry’s limited perspective, so we don’t see the Weasleys immediate reactions to Percy’s success, whether or not they are actually happy for him or if they immediately groan and start brainstorming ways to make Percy less happy. However, it’s the writers job to convey stuff like that. To convey that they do support Percy. But that never happens and we’re just left with the impression that everything he accomplishes goes unappreciated by his family.

Then she put in things like Percy in the Second Task to show why the Weasleys would eventually take him back at the end of the series, but she never bothered to write anything notable as to why Percy should take them back. Because she didn’t think she had to. The Weasleys are the Weasleys! Harry’s loving surrogate family! Percy’s the one who hurt them! Of course Percy is gonna take them back!

All this culminated in a lot of readers taking Percy’s side come OotP, because Rowling wrote the arc backwards. The siblings acted like he hurt them before he did anything to hurt them, so when he leaves there’s no big emotional shift in anyone besides Molly that shows that this family member had a major effect on them. If they had acted loving and supportive before, and then after he leaves they’re pissed, that would have been crucial in showing why it was Percy in this scenario doing the bad thing. Instead it’s just like, Do his siblings care? Are they feeling hurt or do they just have a better excuse to voice a disdain that was already there and wouldn’t have gone away had Percy sided with them?

So, you get an array of reactions varying from the intended, ‘How dare Percy BETRAY his own family like that’, to ‘Eh, he probably would’ve stopped showing up to holidays eventually. Why lose his job over it?’, and ‘Good for him! Boss shit.’

All in all, I am a Percy Weasley stan. I just wanted to analyze how JKR’s writing added to readers wanting to defend him, because I sincerely do not think our interpretations of him are what she had intended. I’m really passionate about writing, so I like thinking about this sort of thing, and where little errors in what you meant to write leads to a wildly different outcome.

[secondhandquills]

Ive just realized Percy calls Molly Mother a lot but with Arthur its Dad, not always but you see that appear more than mum.

I’ve always thought that Percy was never close with Molly. She may have favored him and while I think he wanted to make her proud and be seen as perfect I’d think he find it suffocating with her at times. With constantly being compared to his siblings, even if it was a good light for him I feel like that would add to his stress of having to be perfect.

I’m sure he loves Molly but I think it was far more difficult for Percy to fight with father than hurt his mother

I never noticed this, so of course, I had to go back and search, and you are absolutely right. There is not one instance in the entire series where Percy calls Molly ‘mum’ and yet there are many instances of him calling Arthur 'dad’.

This realization sent me down the rabbit hole, so I went back and analyzed all of Percy’s interactions with Molly, and… there’s literally no textual evidence that Percy was Molly’s favorite.

We, as a fandom, tend to buy into this idea because of how upset Molly was at Percy disowning the family, but now that I’m looking back, I genuinely think she would have reacted the same way if any of the kids had left the way Percy did. In fact, I realized upon rereading that Molly’s “love” of Percy was more like a love of Percy’s prefect and Head Boy status.

Here is every interaction with Percy & Molly.

There is only one in Book 1:

“Can’t stay long, Mother,” he said. “I’m up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves —”“Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?” said one of the twins, with an air of great surprise. “You should have said something, we had no idea.”“Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it,” said the other twin. “Once —”“Or twice —”“A minute —”“All summer —”“Oh, shut up,” said Percy the Prefect.“How come Percy gets new robes, anyway?” said one of the twins.“Because he’s a prefect,” said their mother fondly. “All right, dear, well, have a good term — send me an owl when you get there.”She kissed Percy on the cheek and he left. Then she turned to the twins.

The kiss on the cheek is not indicative of any close bond, because we also see later on that:

Mrs. Weasley kissed all her children, then Hermione, and finally Harry. He was embarrassed, but really quite pleased, when she gave him an extra hug.

As for her excitement with Percy being a prefect? Here was her reaction to Ron being a prefect:

“His badge,” said Fred, with the air of getting the worst over quickly. “His lovely shiny new prefect’s badge.”  Fred’s words took a moment to penetrate Mrs. Weasley’s preoccupation about pajamas.  “His … but … Ron, you’re not… ?”  Ron held up his badge.  Mrs. Weasley let out a shriek just like Hermione’s.  “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! Oh, Ron, how wonderful! A prefect! That’s everyone in the family!”  “What are Fred and I, next-door neighbors?” said George indignantly, as his mother pushed him aside and flung her arms around her youngest son. 

She’s excited that her child got recognition - and by extension, she got recognition. It had nothing special to do with Percy.

There are no interactions between Percy and Molly in Book 2, but we do have this conversation:

“Beds empty! No note! Car gone — could have crashed — out of my mind with worry — did you care? — never, as long as I’ve lived — you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy —”“Perfect Percy,” muttered Fred.“YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY’S BOOK!” yelled Mrs. Weasley, prodding a finger in Fred’s chest. “You could have died, you could have been seen, you could have lost your father his job —”

She mentions Bill & Charlie first, and she only focuses on Percy after Fred does.

There are two interactions between Percy and Molly in Book 3, one of which was Molly asking Percy to look out for Harry, which doesn’t imply any sort of favoritism, and the other was:

“I said, that’s enough,” said Mrs. Weasley, depositing her shopping in an empty chair. “Hello, Harry, dear. I suppose you’ve heard our exciting news?” She pointed to the brand-new silver badge on Percy’s chest. “Second Head Boy in the family!” she said, swelling with pride.

Yet again, we see Molly more excited about the accomplishment of being Head Boy, and she is quick to point out that Percy is the second one in the Weasley family, because of course that’s a status symbol.

There is only one interaction between Percy and Molly in Book 4, and it’s not a positive one:

“Your father hasn’t had to go into the office on weekends sincethe days of You-Know-Who,” she said. “They’re working him fartoo hard. His dinner’s going to be ruined if he doesn’t come homesoon.”“Well, Father feels he’s got to make up for his mistake at thematch, doesn’t he?” said Percy. “If truth be told, he was a tad unwise to make a public statement without clearing it with his Head of Department first —”“Don’t you dare blame your father for what that wretchedSkeeter woman wrote!” said Mrs. Weasley, flaring up at once.

She’s definitely not showing favoritism here - she doesn’t even let Percy get away with saying a mildly offensive thing about Arthur.

In fact, in Book 4, when the whole Weasley clan returns from the disaster at the Quidditch World Cup, and Molly has been worried sick, she hugs Fred & George first - she doesn’t even address Percy.

It isn’t until Percy leaves the family that Molly focuses on him, and I really do think she would have done that for any of her children.

To summarize, there is no actual evidence to prove that Percy was Molly’s favorite child - in fact, there’s more evidence proving that he wasn’t! 😱

So thank you for this comment, because it seriously made me reevaluate my thoughts and headcanons about their relationship, which was fun! 😊

[secondhandquills]

On the surface, Percy can seem like a very unlikeable character. He’s the fun-loving Weasley’s killjoy of an older brother who’s obsessed with rules and they find great pleasure in making fun of him. 

And then later he runs out on his family, insulting Dumbledore and even suggesting Harry’s a liar in the process. All to take a prestigious job in a corrupt ministry. He doesn’t make any attempts to apologise until three books later long, long after he’s been proven thoroughly wrong.

But that’s the thing. The fight I feel was a long time coming. It was inevitable that Percy was gonna leave at some point, not because of politics but because he fundamentally didn’t get along with his family. They didn’t really understand him and took his presence for granted. 

The tragedy is how it was blown up to an angry fight involving politics and so he is wrong and they’re right in the end. But he’s not wrong to feel angry about how he’s treated, not really. 

[secondhandquills]

Hey so every so often I just get obsessed with Percy Weasley and his storyline and aaah everything about his character honesty. Had to make this blog to rant about it. Also just generally Weasley family dynamics are something I live for. 

I also have some heavy love for Ron, they’re similar in certain ways I think, both feeling rather overlooked and that manifests in different ways for both of them. 

[secondhandquills]

Can you even imagine how stressful Percy’s last year of school was?! 

Along with trying to study and pass 12 NEWTs, he was the Head Boy (a position with a lot of responsibility) during a year where a mass murderer (as far as anyone knew) was on the loose and going straight for his little brother’s best friend (and therefore, was a threat to all the students, but especially Gryffindor House), his mum asked him to keep a close eye on Harry because of this, dementors were all over the castle, the twins were wreaking absolute havoc (like usual), his little sister was recovering from being possessed by Voldemort and almost dying the year before - something that he likely still carried guilt over as her big brother, many students were traumatized by the Chamber of Secrets being opened the previous year and several of them - including his girlfriend - being petrified, McGonagall was yelling at him for things that he had no control over (the students in Gryffindor being out past curfew when Sirius attacked), he was given a job that - frankly - should not have been any students’ responsibility (he had to be in charge of all the students from the entire school overnight as they slept in the Great Hall while all the professors and Dumbledore searched the school for Sirius), and his childhood pet that he had for 9 years and then passed on to Ron (more big brother guilt there) ended up being a murderer in an Animagus form. 

It’s a wonder the poor guy didn’t have a breakdown! 

[secondhandquills]

I’ve always had this idea that Percy was the third parent in the Weasley household, the main parent really.

I feel like Bill and Charlie would only ever be the cool older brothers because they were never really there. (I have thoughts about them doing this on purpose because they don’t want to be parents to their siblings, they just didn’t realize that meant it would go to their younger job when they leave)

Arthur and Molly are the parents but Arthur is so absent and I feel like Molly will only pay attention during the first few months of the child being born and for Ginny. She’ll mostly stick to the cooking and cleaning and yelling but no actual parenting.

Which because of this I feel explains Percy and his broken relationship with his siblings. He’s the brother, he’s the parent, he’s the supervisor, he’s the elder. In school and out of school. But he’s not an adult, he’s still a kid too.

This isn’t necessarily canon but I feel like it is because of what we’ve seen in the books. I find the relationships of the Weasley siblings so interesting because of how unbalanced it is and how they all care for each other but their parents lack of attention and parenting has caused things to be complicated

I agree 100%.

I wrote in this post about how the younger siblings don't seem overly attached to Bill or Charlie, which likely means they didn't take on a parental role. When Bill went to Hogwarts, the twins (the oldest kids after Percy) were only 3 or 4, and they were only 5 or 6 when Charlie started school. That means the younger siblings only saw their two oldest brothers around the holidays for most of their lives, so it's not surprising that they weren't overly close.

I also agree that Bill & Charlie weren't interested in being parents to the younger kids - they both took off to a different country as soon as they graduated, and they rarely visited. I wrote in this post that Percy got left in a bad position, because even though he was close in age to the twins, he somehow got thrown into the role of a third parent, which was going to eventually lead to resentment on both sides.

Arthur was an absent parent - even when he wasn't working, he was focused more on tinkering in his garage than being an actual father. I actually know a women who literally keeps having children and gives all her attention to the newborn while practically ignoring the older ones because she "loves babies", and I can see Molly doing that. Plus, Molly's two brothers were killed the same year that Ginny was born, so I headcanon that she suffered from a lot of depression/postpartum depression after that, which can make it difficult to function.

That likely did leave Percy in the unfair position of being a brother and a father, and that role would have been difficult for him to shed as he grew older. It really was detrimental to Percy & his relationship with his siblings, but I've made my critical thoughts about Molly & Arthur clear in many other posts, so I digress.

Thanks for the comment! 😊

[secondhandquills]

People forget Percy was still most likely a teenager in Order of the Phoenix. And like reading it at 11 I was like “oh yea 19 is so adulty” and now at 21 I’m like “that is a CHILD bing manipulated by a powerful system he was told to trust” and now I’m sad

Most of this came from me getting to the letter he sent Ron and damn man.

I completely agree 💯

I see 19-year-olds as children now, and Percy was actually only 18 when he left! 😥 That poor guy was being manipulated by a system that his father encouraged him to believe in (and likely his mother too), and his family literally blamed him - talk about victim shaming. 

It makes me even angrier at the way Arthur acted. It’s my headcanon that Arthur always treated Percy as older than he was, even at a young age, because Percy was so mature, so it was easy for Arthur to forget that he really was just a child. Even so, Percy was young and vulnerable (especially if you’re like me and believe that he and Cedric were close, so he would have recently lost his friend and his boss that he deeply admired), and Arthur should have handled his promotion very differently.

What’s worse is that Molly, Bill, and Charlie all could have stepped up too (by actually talking to him and not just showing up and trying to guilt him into coming home like Molly), but no one did, and Percy was left to fend for himself in a highly dangerous environment (by Book 7). I will forever be bothered by the fact that JKR only made Percy apologize in the books, when it really should have come from both sides. The Weasleys were essentially gaslighting Percy (even if they didn’t realize it), and it makes me so upset. 😭

Thanks for the comment though! 

[secondhandquills]

Percy isn't a good character. He should have believed Harry and dumbldore in the 5th book but he was stupid. He knew them and should have trusted them.

*deep sigh*

Alright, let me break this down for you:

Percy had very few reasons to believe Harry & Dumbledore, but he had a lot of reasons not to believe them.

I’ll put this under the cut due to length. 

Let's start with Harry, because this aspect is a little simpler to explain. 

From Percy’s POV, he’s hasn’t spent nearly as much time with Harry as his siblings have. In the letter he writes to Ron in OOTP, he says:

I know that he can be unbalanced and, for all I know, violent.

The ‘for all I know’ comment shows that Percy even admits to not knowing Harry well enough to be sure. 

And Harry is unbalanced - it’s not his fault, but it’s a fact. He consistently breaks rules and is involved in everything bad that has happened to Percy’s younger siblings & friends up to that point (the beginning of OOTP). 

In Book 1, Ron was injured when he went with Harry to stop Quirrell. In Book 2, the Chamber of Secrets was opened, Percy's girlfriend was petrified, and Harry was almost always near the scene of the crime. Harry spoke Parseltongue and appeared to encourage a snake to attack another student. Ginny was almost killed by a teenage version of Voldemort specifically because Tom was after Harry:

“Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who’d been strangling roosters? So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin’s heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery — particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue… 

“So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn’t much life left in her… She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last… I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you’d come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter.”

In Book 3, Sirius Black attacked the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower - where all of Percy’s younger siblings live - supposedly to get to Harry. Ron’s leg was injured because Sirius dragged him under the Whomping Willow in order to get Harry to follow him. 

In Book 4, Cedric Diggory was killed while with Harry. I have always believed that Percy was friends with Cedric (see this post), but if nothing else, Percy knew Cedric because he was the Head Boy the year before, and Cedric was one of the prefects (therefore, one of Percy's responsibilities). 

Again, this is not to say that any of this is Harry’s fault - I doubt even Percy would say that - but there is a direct correlation between proximity to Harry and danger, and Percy knows this. 

However, even with that being said, it’s clear that the root of the problem was more about Dumbledore than Harry.

In fact, when retelling what happened during the argument, Ron said:

He said Dad was an idiot to run around with Dumbledore.

And in the letter Percy wrote to Ron, he said:

I am sorry that I was unable to see more of you over the summer. It pains me to criticize our parents, but I am afraid I can no longer live under their roof while they remain mixed up with the dangerous crowd around Dumbledore.

He’s making it clear that his family’s association with Dumbledore was the main reason for him leaving - not their association with Harry. 

Percy likely believed that Dumbledore was manipulating Harry (which he frequently did throughout the series). 

Even back in Book 1, Percy thought this about him: 

Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.

“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

“Thank you!”

He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

“Is he — a bit mad?” he asked Percy uncertainly.

“Mad?” said Percy airily. “He’s a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?”

Dumbledore is regarded as the “best wizard” in the world - the most powerful and intelligent wizard of his time - and yet many people also comment on the fact that Dumbledore is a bit mental (there are quotes by Fred and Ron about this too).

And Percy’s not wrong to doubt Dumbledore. Dumbledore was a horrible Headmaster - that's just a fact. 

In fact, up through Book 4, we see very little evidence of Dumbledore being a great wizard, but we do see evidence of him putting students in danger and making far too many mistakes/bad decisions. 

In Book 1, he brought an item inside Hogwarts that he knew was being pursued by Voldemort, which put all the students at risk, and he either had no idea that Voldemort was living inside one of his professors or... he didn’t care? Look at this - frankly, horrifying - conversation from the book: 

“Well, I got back all right,” said Hermione. “I brought Ron round — that took a while — and we were dashing up to the owlery to contact Dumbledore when we met him in the entrance hall — he already knew — he just said, ‘Harry’s gone after him, hasn’t he?’ and hurtled off to the third floor.” 

“D’you think he meant you to do it?” said Ron. “Sending you your father’s cloak and everything?” 

“Well, ” Hermione exploded, “if he did — I mean to say that’s terrible — you could have been killed.” 

“No, it isn’t,” said Harry thoughtfully. “He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could…” 

“Yeah, Dumbledore’s off his rocker, all right,” said Ron proudly.

I’m sorry - what?! Dumbledore thought a child had the right to face Voldemort, and even pushed Harry in that direction, instead of facing Voldemort himself? I just have no words for how awful that is. 

In Book 2, the Chamber of Secrets was opened, students were being petrified - in danger of being killed - and Dumbledore didn't bother to shut down the school (it wasn’t until Ginny was taken into the Chamber that McGonagall said they were sending students home). Moaning Myrtle literally died the last time the Chamber was open, but Dumbledore just allowed the students to stay and keep going to classes, because...? 

There’s also this: 

“What does this mean, Albus?” Professor McGonagall asked urgently. 

“It means,” said Dumbledore, “that the Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again.” 

Madam Pomfrey clapped a hand to her mouth. Professor McGonagall stared at Dumbledore. 

“But, Albus… surely… who?” 

“The question is not who,” said Dumbledore, his eyes on Colin. “The question is, how…” And from what Harry could see of Professor McGonagall’s shadowy face, she didn’t understand this any better than he did.

‘The question is not who’ - In other words, Dumbledore knew exactly who opened the Chamber, and therefore, knew that Voldemort had access to the campus, yet he didn’t figure out that Ginny was being possessed. Ultimately, a 12-year-old is the one that had to journey into the Chamber of Secrets, fight a form of Voldemort and a Basilisk, and save Ginny. 

Yeah, I’m not seeing anything overly impressive about Albus here. 

In Book 3, we also get a scene that makes me livid. 

Professor Dumbledore sent all the Gryffindors back to the Great Hall, where they were joined ten minutes later by the students from Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, who all looked extremely confused.

“The teachers and I need to conduct a thorough search of the castle,” Professor Dumbledore told them as Professors McGonagall and Flitwick closed all doors into the hall. “I’m afraid that, for your own safety, you will have to spend the night here. I want the prefects to stand guard over the entrances to the hall and I am leaving the Head Boy and Girl in charge.”

As a child reading this, I didn't think much of it. As an adult, it disgusts me. I get that the teachers wanted to search the school for Sirius, but are you honestly telling me that none of them could stay behind to watch the kids? Instead, you put children in charge of protecting each other? Even if you make the argument that Percy was 17 (and therefore, an adult by wizarding standards), he was still a student, and the other prefects that were told to guard the entrances included 5th and 6th year students who were definitely not adults. 

This is basically like a gunman being loose on a high school campus, and the principal saying, “Okay, anyone on the safety patrol is going to guard the doors while all the teachers leave. Good luck.” NO. Just no. You don't do that. Even if Dumbledore didn’t think Sirius was dangerous (which we have no proof of, especially since Dumbledore admitted later that Sirius wasn’t acting like an innocent man), it would still have been a horrible choice. 

And during that same year, he hired a werewolf for a professor. Yes, we all know that Remus is a great guy; however, he forgot to take his Wolfsbane Potion, turned into a werewolf, and almost killed students before the end of the year. 

Harry could see Lupin’s silhouette. He had gone rigid. Then his limbs began to shake. 

“Oh, my —” Hermione gasped. “He didn’t take his potion tonight! He’s not safe!”

“Run,” Black whispered. “Run. Now.” 

But Harry couldn’t run. Ron was chained to Pettigrew and Lupin. He leapt forward but Black caught him around the chest and threw him back. 

“Leave it to me — RUN!” 

There was a terrible snarling noise. Lupin’s head was lengthening. So was his body. His shoulders were hunching. Hair was sprouting visibly on his face and hands, which were curling into clawed paws. Crookshanks’s hair was on end again; he was backing away — As the werewolf reared, snapping its long jaws, Sirius disappeared from Harry’s side. He had transformed. The enormous, bearlike dog bounded forward. 

As the werewolf wrenched itself free of the manacle binding it, the dog seized it about the neck and pulled it backward, away from Ron and Pettigrew. They were locked, jaw to jaw, claws ripping at each other.

He was an unnecessary risk. Readers tend to ignore that because we love Remus, but just because we like someone and have sympathy for them does not mean they should be employed at a school.

In Book 4, Dumbledore failed to notice that his friend - "Moody was a great wizard in his time," said Bill. "He's an old friend of Dumbledore's, isn't he?" said Charlie. - was actually Barty Crouch Jr. using the Polyjuice Potion. Even if you argue that he didn't know Barty Jr. was alive, this powerful and intelligent wizard couldn't tell that his old friend wasn't himself? Seriously? 

It’s not like there weren’t any signs - ‘Moody’ turning Draco into a ferret and demonstrating the Unforgivable Curses in class being some of them. At the very least, those acts should have warranted a meeting where Dumbledore spoke with him. If he spent a good deal of time with Moody one-on-one, he should have picked up on the inconsistencies in his personality, since no one can perfectly copy another person for an indefinite amount of time, but he either didn’t spend much time with him or didn’t figure it out. Either way, that’s not overly impressive either. 

And Dumbledore allowed a 14-year-old kid to enter a tournament that purposely had an age limit of 17 and over because it was that dangerous. No, Dumbledore didn’t put Harry’s name in the Goblet, and yes, the Goblet was a "binding magical contract", but you're telling me the greatest wizard in the world couldn't figure out a way around that? I mean, an obvious loophole would be that 14-year-olds aren't legally allowed to sign contracts without parental/guardian permission, which Harry did not get from the Dursleys or Sirius, and therefore, the Goblet’s contract was null and void. Even without that, it’s pretty sketchy that Dumbledore couldn’t find any escape route for Harry. 

And at the end of the year, one of the students died due to Dumbledore’s negligence in noticing that there was something amiss about one of his teachers.

I can't think of one reason why Percy would trust Dumbledore. I certainly wouldn't!

So Percy - likely grieving the death of a friend - was told to put blind faith into a man who had repeatedly failed his students & a traumatized kid who actually was being manipulated by Dumbledore (in other ways). 

I don't know, anon; I think it's realistic that Percy wasn’t so willing to believe them. 

And the fact that Percy was the only one in his family to really question the trustworthiness of a problematic, powerful wizard is one of my favorite things about him.

[secondhandquills]

a different perspective on the fight, or:

arthur kicked out his son, actually, and he kind of lowkey sucks as a father.