Harry Potter Short Stories

Percy Weasley and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

In some other, terrible, tragic world, the Hogwarts school year of 1990-1991 would have been entirely unremarkable. The school year would have concluded without note, students would be sent home with their exam marks (except for the fifth and seventh-years, who would be left hanging on the edge of a metaphorical cliff until about a month later), the professors would head off to Hogsmeade for a few drinks before heading home, the search for a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher would begin, and everything would have been entirely ordinary (for a given value of normal, since this was Hogwarts) until Harry James Potter showed up in September with the new batch of first-years.

But in this world, everything took a drastic left turn that absolutely no one was expecting, and the end of the school year was a lot more exciting than a lot of people had bet it would be. Most people had assumed that the most dramatic thing that would happen was Oliver Wood's much-anticipated and dreaded breakdown at Charlie Weasley's graduation, not that the Aurors would show up.

It started like this:

Percy Weasley, Gryffindor fourth-year and straight-O student, was becoming increasingly frazzled as exams approached. No one was surprised at this, because Percy was a very frazzled person in general and it happened every year, but this year was the most stressful yet by at least twofold. He was extremely frazzled.

While the fourth year exams were hardly as important as the OWLs or the NEWTs in most people's minds, to Percy they were as crucial as the end of the world. These exams could be the deciding factor in him making prefect next year, which Percy was very determined to see happen. After all, if he didn't make prefect, then he wouldn't make Head Boy, and if he didn't make Head Boy, then his entire twenty-year plan for becoming Minister for Magic was absolutely ruined. If he didn't take these exams seriously, he could end up unemployed and living with the ghoul in the attic for the rest of his life!

What made things worse was that Charlie was not around to help and make sure Percy didn't drop into a spiral of stress, as the seventh-year was preoccupied with his approaching NEWTs and a dream job interview coming up. This also meant that Charlie was not around to help curb their twelve-year-old brothers, Fred and George, who had only gotten worse since last year and apparently had no interest whatsoever in getting decent grades and not becoming absolute embarrassments to the family!

((Percy fondly remembered the days when Fred and George were too young to attend Hogwarts. Those had been the days, with Bill, prefect and Head Boy (and so smart and popular and talented at everything!), sharing studying tips and generally watching out for Percy, while simultaneously keeping Charlie from doing anything too idiotic in Care of Magical Creatures or Quidditch. Bill had been so cool and good at stuff.

Percy even sort of missed having Charlie having no exams to worry about and hypocritically smothering Percy with attention, which happened because Charlie was secretly a mother dragon and Percy had been the only younger sibling in the vicinity for Charlie to exert nesting tendencies upon. Ugh. At least Charlie kept his grades up, tried to his best to help, wasn't as silly as the twins, and didn't show any interest in dating.

Unlike Bill on that last thing, who couldn't have been left alone for five minutes without some inane, giggling girl or guy attaching themselves to Percy's too-friendly and too-nice-for-his-own-good elder brother like a leech! Percy worried what his elder brother was doing in Egypt now without any supervision.))

Anyway, Percy was being run ragged! His study plans were being constantly adjusted to cope with all the madness around him! The library closing hours were unreasonably fixed, teachers kept telling him that he maybe ought to take a break, and his roommates kept on dragging him outside and to meals and to go to bed in the middle of study sessions! Whether it was midnight or not was hardly important!