Whoooo!
The deafening blast of the train whistle echoing across the countryside jolted Percy violently from his dejected, circling thoughts.
Coming back to his senses, blinking as if waking from a troubled dream, Percy realized with dull surprise that the scenery outside the compartment window had already left far behind the rolling verdant mountains and the, rippling lakes nestled between the peaks.
The Hogwarts Express was now racing at full speed across endless fields and pastoral pastures dotted with grazing cattle and sheep.
The vast expanse stretching to the horizon under the afternoon sunshine did absolutely nothing to improve Percy's steadily deteriorating mood. If anything, the jolly brightness felt like mockery.
His bottom had barely lifted from the compartment's cushioned sofa, he'd been sitting rigidly in the same position for who knew how long—when he twisted awkwardly to gaze back in the direction from which they'd departed.
But the majestic, imposing silhouette of Hogwarts Castle had completely disappeared from view—not even a dark shadow or distant tower remained visible on the horizon. Just empty fields and blue sky.
"Ah—"
A heavy, defeated sigh dissipated weakly into the rhythmic clatter of wheels crushing steadily against the rails, the sound of forward motion that was carrying him back to his failure. Percy bent forward at the waist, his spread hands rising to bury his face completely, hiding from the world.
Professor Watson had not been persuaded. He hadn't even come close.
Percy didn't want to deceive himself—he was done with self-delusion.
If he was being brutally honest, he had anticipated this outcome from the start, had known in his gut how it would end. But what he genuinely hadn't expected was Professor Watson's decisiveness. He had refused without even bothering to explain his reasons.
In Percy's memory and experience, Professor Watson had always been quite considerate toward him, had shown him kindness and patience.
When he had been Barty Crouch Senior's assistant, when he had just begun the overwhelming task of independently managing the daily operations of the Department of International Magical Cooperation after Crouch's supposed sick leave, those early weeks had been absolutely agonizing, even nightmarish.
Countless trivial, seemingly insignificant matters had overwhelmed him totally—he'd been drowning in paperwork and protocols and diplomatic niceties he didn't understand. He'd worked eighteen-hour days and still fallen behind.
But Professor Watson had noticed his struggles and given him practical guidance, kindly advising him to consult his father more often, to swallow his pride and have his father help him visit the heads of various departments.
Percy had followed this advice with considerable skepticism at the time—what could his father, stuck in his dead-end department, possibly teach him?
But he'd been desperate enough to try. And from that point until he was eventually driven out of the Department of International Magical Cooperation in disgrace, blamed for Crouch's disappearance, his work had become far more manageable than before.
"Why won't you help me again now..."
A dejected, almost childish complaint emerged muffled from behind his spread palms, spoken to the empty compartment.
It was merely about letting Madam Umbridge enter Hogwarts as a teacher—just one position, one person! The young witches and wizards desperately needed a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor—wouldn't this be a win-win situation for everyone involved?
The Ministry got its representative, Hogwarts got its teacher, the students got their education. Why couldn't Professor Watson see that?
Percy didn't want to dwell deeply on the real reasons why Professor Watson had refused so flatly, didn't want to examine the political implications or acknowledge what it said about Umbridge and Fudge's true intentions.
It was easier not to think too hard.
But the current reality was that he had fallen into an even more desperate predicament than before.
He had not completed the Minister's test, had failed spectacularly at the one task that might have salvaged his career. And therefore, he could not hope to become the Minister's assistant.
He would still have to continue wasting his time, watching his youth slip away in the Centaur Liaison Office—that miserable place where there was literally nothing to do except wipe tables that didn't need wiping and sweep floors that were already clean—day after endless day, week after soul-crushing week.
Perhaps only when the next Minister for Magic eventually took office, years from now, might his awkward, humiliating circumstances possibly change.
Rubbing his face with his hands several times, wiping his eyes that might have grown somewhat moist from the stinging sensation, Percy once again fixed his dull gaze out the window at the passing countryside.
'What should I do next?'
Not only had he failed miserably to gain Professor Watson's support, but he had also badly angered his father in the process. Ron had been right about that—Dad had indeed strongly opposed his coming to Hogwarts on this. They had even had a terrible row over it.
Thinking of his father now, Percy's bewildered heart suddenly flared with sharp irritation.
He truly couldn't understand what possible benefit there was in stubbornly opposing the powerful Minister for Magic, the most important wizard in Britain's government. If it weren't for all this wasted time—
Knock, knock, knock—
The sudden knocking on the compartment's door made Percy's head snap around, pulling him from his spiral of bitter thoughts. Appearing in his field of vision was a smiling woman. She was standing before a small trolley filled with colorful sweets and treats.
Seeing Percy look at her, registering her presence, the woman cheerfully pushed open the sliding compartment door.
"Dear, would you like to buy anything from the trolley today?"
"Oh, thank you, but no need, I brought my own—"
Long-standing habits forged over seven years of poverty made Percy instinctively give an automatic refusal, the words came without thought. But before he'd even finished speaking the sentence, before the words had fully left his mouth, he realized that he wasn't a Hogwarts student anymore. He wasn't a child being sent back to school with a packed lunch.
He didn't have any pies that his mother had lovingly prepared for him in the Burrow kitchen, and besides, he wasn't as desperately strapped for cash as he had been during his school years. Working at the Ministry of Magic had allowed him to build up some savings, though admittedly not much.
But some. Enough for sweets if he wanted them.
The witch selling snacks showed no displeasure at Percy's initial refusal. She still smiled warmly and nodded at Percy, then prepared to politely close the compartment door and move along to the next car.
"Wait! Wait a moment, please!"
Percy called out.
Looking at the trolley filled with colorful food and treats, he suddenly realized with a hollow feeling that he hadn't taken Professor Watson's kind suggestion to have lunch at the school before leaving but had left Hogwarts directly instead.
Now, several hours later, he was indeed feeling somewhat hungry. And what pleased him, was that his money pouch did contain a few Galleons.
"Changed your mind, have you, dear?"
The slightly plump witch looked at Percy with mild, patient anticipation, her expression kind and nonjudgmental.
"Oh, yes…. yes, I have—"
Standing up from his seat, Percy stepped closer to examine the snacks on the trolley properly.
The selection was abundant. The trolley was piled high with familiar treats:
Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Chocolate Frogs, Pumpkin Pasties that smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg, Cauldron Cakes rich with chocolate, Licorice Wands, and numerous other candies from Honeydukes like Fizzing Whizzbees, Sugar Quills, Acid Pops, Pepper Imps...
He couldn't remember whether, during his seven years of education at Hogwarts, riding this train back and forth countless times, he had ever actually made a purchase from this witch vendor's mobile shop.
Even if he had, for reasons he didn't wish to examine or mention, the occasions were probably extremely few and far between.
"Oh, are you quite sure you want to buy this much, dear?"
The witch's surprised voice pulled Percy back to reality from his reverie, snapping him out of his daze. Blinking rapidly, Percy discovered with shock that the food he'd been selecting, apparently on autopilot while his mind wandered had already piled into a small mountain on the seat beside him.
"If I buy all of this, how much do I need to pay?"
Percy bit his lip anxiously, asking with caution, suddenly afraid he'd massively overestimated his funds and was about to humiliate himself.
"Oh, the prices of these things have gone up recently, dear, everything's getting more expensive—"
The plump witch's response made Percy's heart skip a beat. His face hadn't yet had time to flush with embarrassed heat when he heard the witch continue matter-of-factly,
"Sixteen Sickles and nine Knuts total."
"Oh."
Percy breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He pulled a Galleon from his pocket, feeling an odd sense of satisfaction.
"Here you are, keep the change—"
"Oh, thank you very much, generous gentleman sir—"
The plump witch cheerfully accepted the Galleon with a warm smile, and considerately closed the compartment door for Percy with a gentle click, giving him privacy.
'Generous gentleman sir...'
The faint smile that had appeared on Percy's lips slowly faded only after the clatter of the trolley wheels had rolled away down the corridor. His melancholy mood had also dissipated considerably during this brief, pleasant transaction.
With some urgency, Percy returned to his seat and began sampling his food, tearing into packages. He had tasted most of these common treats before, of course.
But perhaps due to hunger, Percy had never found them so absolutely delicious to the point where his eating posture revealed more than a hint of ravenousness.
Though he wasn't particularly fond of these "children's" foods normally, this sense of "affluence," of having enough and to spare, was something he had never truly experienced before. It was intoxicating in its own small way.
During his student years at Hogwarts, most of his things including his spellbooks, his battered cauldron, his tarnished scales, his scratched telescope, and even his faded robes had basically all come second-hand from Bill and Charlie.
When he first set foot in Hogwarts Castle on that long-ago September day, the only completely new thing that belonged solely to him, that no one else had used first, was his wand.
And he'd only received his pet owl in his fifth year after becoming a prefect, when his parents had finally bought it for him as a reward, scraping together the money as a special gift.
In this family, poverty tormented everyone's self-respect constantly, ate away at dignity every day, yet no one dared speak of it openly or honestly—it was undoubtedly a form of cowardice.
Almost greedily now, Percy tore into these snacks, consuming them faster than he could properly taste them, as if trying to fill some void that had nothing to do with hunger.
Their family wasn't inherently incapable of living well, of having nice things. The Weasleys weren't cursed with poverty by fate. And the financial struggles weren't entirely due to having too many siblings to feed and clothe, though that certainly didn't help matters.
The root cause of their poverty, ultimately, came directly from his father. From Arthur Weasley's choices.
His dad's greatest hobby had always been tinkering obsessively with useless, pointless things from the Muggle world—rubber ducks and plugs and batteries and telephones. Worthless junk.
He never bothered to put real effort into his actual work, showed no ambition whatsoever, consistently refused to curry favor with his superiors or play the political games that led to advancement, and was perfectly content to amuse himself in a worthless little department that no one respected, completely ignoring the family's straitened circumstances and his children's embarrassment.
By comparison, what had he done wrong?
Since entering the Ministry of Magic, since graduating and starting his adult life, he had devoted absolutely all his energy to his work, hoping only for good career development and advancement—both to realize his own personal aspirations and ambitions, and to make life more comfortable and respectable for the family... so that Mum wouldn't have to constantly worry about money for school supplies and clothes... so his younger siblings wouldn't have to suffer the same embarrassments he had endured...
To achieve this reasonable goal, he had to win the Minister for Magic's favor and trust. That was simply how the system worked. That was why he had come to Hogwarts today.
A piece of chocolate cake that was eaten too quickly, and swallowed without proper chewing suddenly lodged in his throat. The suffocating, choking pain made Percy curl up, his body was trembling with the effort to breathe.
His hand fumbled desperately, frantically toward the water glass sitting on the small table. After gulping water desperately, his breathing finally eased somewhat.
Percy collapsed limply back into his chair, completely spent. Perhaps due to that recent frightening bout of pain, or perhaps due to everything else, moisture glistened at the corners of the thin young man's eyes.
Gasping, still catching his breath, his eyes glazed without focus at the drifting white clouds drifting past outside the window, peaceful and indifferent to his troubles.
'Why... why did no one understand my difficulties?'
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