I have always been the odd one out. If it were not for my hair I might question my parentage, but I am certainly a Weasley - at least by birth. I never quite fitted in, though.

I am the quiet, studious one in the family, though I have never been sure why. It is not necessarily that I am any more intelligent than the others. I think it might have been the twins, not that I'm blaming them; it's just the way things worked out. I wasn't quite two when they were born, you see, so I got rather left in the middle.

Bill and Charlie were old enough by then to occupy themselves, and certainly old enough to not want me tagging along with them. I could hardly walk, let alone keep up when they wanted to run somewhere. They had each other, at least until Bill went to school, and the twins obviously had each other so I found that I had to keep myself company. Books filled the gap.

When Ron, and especially Ginny, turned up I became the oldest brother in effect. Bill first went away to school when Ginny was just a few weeks old - three weeks to the day if you want to be exact - and Charlie followed him just after she turned two. By that stage I was seven and more than capable of reading them stories. I liked that. I have never found little children a nuisance. I liked the way they would listen to me, and I could make them laugh. Mother liked it as well because she normally had her hands full either running the house or trying to stop Fred and George destroying it.

I never quite had the same relationship with them as I did with my youngest siblings. They were not ones for sitting still, or being told stories and I suppose they really did have that link that twins are supposed to have. They thought in the same way and acted in the same way, although Fred was certainly the leader.

Whilst on the subject I suppose I should get Myth Number One out of the way.

I wish I had died instead of Fred.

No, I do not wish that and never have done.

I wish he had lived, but I cannot envision that I would have offered to swap places with him, even if there had been the opportunity. Does that make me a coward, or unworthy? I think not, just a realist.

That leads on to Myth Number Two, which I might as well deal with at the same time. It keeps everything in order and then I can get on with the rest.

I blame myself for his death.

No, I have never done so.

The blast, Expulsio probably, came from nowhere so whether we were talking to each other or on guard would have made no difference. I have, I can assure you, re-run that scenario many times and I cannot see another outcome. You cannot plan for randomness and a thousand things could have been different that night. We could have been standing the other way around, or he could have been in a different corridor or just a few feet away. Or perhaps he could have been out in the grounds. Or, or, or. Nobody was guaranteed to survive, so blaming myself for what happened would be senseless and illogical.

I've answered those questions so many times it has become rote, a barrier to protect me from the sense of loss I feel. The sight of his body, lying broken on the floor, is one that will never leave me. He was my brother, part of my family, and taken from us. I am proud of him. I was proud of every one of them that night and I was proud to be a Weasley. Most of all I was proud of my Mother and Father.

It was probably the first time I had been proud of them and in that lies the root of the difficulties I had with my family; my parents in particular. Deep down, when I really analyse the problem, I was never ashamed of them but I was disappointed in them. I thought they had let themselves down, and us in turn.

It was not purely their support for Albus Dumbledore as opposed to The Ministry. That was simply the catalyst for a situation that had been brewing for many years. It actually went back to before I was born.

My parents met at school and have been together ever since. It seemed to be some kind of fashion at the time to marry very young. Bill was born a month after my mother turned twenty-one; my father is a few months younger than her. They eloped, so the story goes, and got married and had children. Lots of children, but it was not thought out. With children comes responsibility and my father, it seemed to me, never realised that.

Once more I will stop to clarify. In all but one thing he was a good father and I have used many of the lessons he taught me in raising my own children. He is a gentle man and taught us how to behave by example. He never shouted at us, or raised his hand - apart from one occasion with the twins, which was justified. He was always at home, if he was not at work, rather than spending evenings at a pub. Even today it is clear that he loves my mother beyond anything else.

Perhaps he was too young when they married. He was a parent whilst still in childhood himself and it has never left him. He has a keen mind, an investigative mind, yet he has tried to make his hobby his career.

He is fascinated by how things work in the Muggle world; electricity, telephones, aeroplanes. He wants to know how they function and what they are. He spent his entire working life trying to find out and it became more important to him than providing for his family.

He spent almost twenty-five years in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office. That is not a career, it is a dead-end job. It is the position you take when leaving Hogwarts if there is nothing else available, simply to get your foot in door. Then you work hard and make suggestions. Perhaps you write some papers that you know will never be actioned, but that is not the intention. You write them because it gets your name known and eventually you will be offered something better. Do you honestly believe that I care one hoot about the thickness of cauldron bottoms?

My father never did that. He enjoyed his job, and so he stayed. He was offered other things but he always turned them down. He was happy buried away in his little cubby hole and eventually they forgot about him. He vegetated in that room for years, leaving my mother to bring up a family of nine on a salary that would hardly provide for two. That was the only thing I held against him, for what it did to us; particularly my mother. She never complained because she loves him as much as he loves her, but the signs were there.

My mother is a rather redoubtable witch. You all know she duelled Bellatrix Lestrange and won. I am capable of laughter and often do so when people talk about that. "Molly Weasley!" they say. "Who'd have thought she had it in her?" They have never seen her when one of us has got on the wrong side of her. Behind the façade of the little housewife and Celestina Warbeck fan is a soul of iron and a look that could turn milk at a hundred yards. I often wonder what her true potential could have been and I probably cannot even get close. She would have made a formidable auror, certainly.

I suspected her rants at us, especially the twins, were her way of letting out her frustrations at life. She had to let go occasionally just to get everything off her chest, or else she would have exploded. She spent nearly thirty years constantly juggling everything to make sure there was enough to go round and if there wasn't she was the one who went without. Every knut had to not only count, but do the work of three. As children we never realised that and it must have hurt her when we complained, or asked for things she could not possibly afford. It made her old before her time. She was so busy looking after us she never had the chance to look after herself. She had to cope with it all whilst my father sat in his cupboard playing his life away and collecting plugs.

That is what drove me when I was younger. I wanted to be successful, and I wanted to be looked up to and well regarded. I was young and I can see I did get it wrong. I tried to cultivate an air of importance about myself to show how important I was going to be. It did make me pompous but I was determined to be the best; to get as far as I could in life so that, when I eventually married, my family could have the life I wanted my mother to have. I wanted my children to have new things when they went to school, my wife to have the trappings that come with a successful family.

That was the real cause of the rift. When choices had to be made I thought my father had made the wrong ones. Then he supported Dumbledore against the Ministry and it was the final straw, another wrong choice that would disadvantage my family further.

I will not pretend I am perfect, or that what happened was only the fault of other people. However, I will say that I did what I believed to be correct - at the time - and that is all we can be judged on. If it were possible to take a NEWT in Hindsight the world would be a much happier place. Perhaps the most damning accusation you can make against me is that I was always certain of my certainties; it was the others who were wrong.

If there is a moment I can point to when it became impossible for me to stay with my parents it would be Cedric Diggory's death. I knew Diggory slightly from school; he was two years below me, and he was a capable wizard. He was more experienced - and certainly more able - than Harry. It seemed inconceivable that Harry had survived something which Cedric could not.

Something in the story did not quite fit. It was all rather too "convenient", the way that Harry announced Voldemort's return and Dumbledore backed him so readily. Of course we knew nothing at the time about the prophecy and old magic that protected him, nor did we know he was telling the truth, and I've already made my views on being wise after the event known.

My honest opinion was that Dumbledore tried to use the tragedy of Cedric's death to make political capital. It is common knowledge that he had been offered the role of Minister on more than one occasion but had always turned it down. It is also known that he did not have a high opinion of Fudge, who had eventually taken the position.

On this I am very clear. If you think you are the best person for the job, you take it. If you do not, then you stand aside. Dumbledore did neither; he refused the position, but wanted the influence. He meddled in things that he had chosen not to be involved in and he did it in the wrong way.

Dumbledore should not have gone public. That he turned out to be right is neither here nor there; his handling of the situation made matters worse. He should have kept his fears to himself and taken them to the Ministry. Instead he announced to his school that Voldemort had returned. That is not something to tell impressionable teenagers, who immediately told their parents, and all hell broke loose. Dumbledore's interjection made the situation very difficult because people wanted answers and they wanted them now. The result was that time and resources were spent managing public reaction, and playing down Dumbledore's unproven accusations, that could have been better used investigating the issues he said existed.

Even today, with a lot more information, I cannot understand Dumbledore's agenda. If I am to be balanced it is possible that he had his suspicions that the Ministry had been infiltrated. He was, after all, familiar with the concept of spying and double agents. Perhaps his own subterfuge with Severus Snape had made him paranoid. Also it is possible, if I dare say it, that his own failings in the past made him suspicious of the motives of others.

However, even after the battle inside the Ministry itself, instead of working with us he seemed to set himself up in opposition and withheld information that could have proved vital. We know now of his researches into the creation of horcruxes and his suspicions of the objects Voldemort may have chosen. We know the importance of Harry. None of that was communicated.

My parents, and my family, chose to take his side and I did not. It was my belief that only the Ministry had the power to withstand Voldemort.

I will admit that mistakes were made. Cornelius Fudge did not prove, on final analysis, to be a suitable Minister given the gravity of the situation. It is not my place to blacken his name further, and I shall not do so. I got on well with him during the time we worked together and I will admit I set out to impress him. However, on balance he proved to be no more than a competent administrator whilst things were going well.

It is also true that mistakes continued to be made under Rufus Scrimgeour, a man I admired and who deserves our respect. He eventually came to realise the importance of Harry to Voldemort's defeat, but by then it was too late and he chose to sacrifice his own life to protect him. I believe it would have made a difference if he had had that information to hand before Dumbledore's death. So the Ministry fell and I was estranged from my family.

It took a while for the truth to become apparent. On the 2nd of August we turned up for work, as usual, to find an announcement that Scrimgeour had been taken ill and Pius Thicknesse had assumed his responsibilities. The note finished with "I am sure you will join me in wishing Rufus a speedy recovery".

At first nothing was different and then rumours started to circulate. Rumours were always circulating and so I tended to ignore them. It was certainly not the case that Death Eaters started patrolling the corridors, or that Voldemort took charge. To my knowledge he never entered the Ministry and the first time I saw him was at Hogwarts. It was the classic entrapment.

By the time it was apparent something had happened it was too late. The first signs had been subtle, deliberately planned to allay suspicions. Some people left at very short notice and department heads started to appear who had no background, but it was explained as sweeping away some of the hidebound traditions of the past. The Ministry has always been that in matters of promotion; seniority was more important than ability, something that had caused me frustration. Now I found myself reporting to people I had little knowledge of, which was unsettling, but work continued as normal and I convinced myself that change was for the best. Reports were still written and meetings attended.

The true picture did not emerge until later in August, when the muggleborns started to be removed from their posts and then the announcement of the Muggleborn Registration Committee was made. We were summoned to a presentation, backed by a large bound report that was waved around, and told that Muggles had been stealing magical ability. I did not believe it, nor do I think did anyone else in the room. I asked if copies of the report would be made available and was told they would be. I never saw one.

Shortly after that we were informed that annual assessments would be brought forward and we would be called in as required. Normally the assessment required one to complete a form; achievements in the year, progress against objectives, future aims, etc. That year there was nothing, simply an interview.

After a perfunctory review of my performance the questions regarding my family and their relationship with Harry started. I was amazed at what they knew, compared to me. It was not a case of me lying or thinking on my feet; they asked questions I had no knowledge of. Had Harry been at Bill's wedding? Was he dating Ginny? How was my brother Ron's Splattergroit progressing? They kept coming back to questions regarding my family and Harry and eventually I had to tell them I was no longer in contact. They wanted to know why and I had to be careful. I kept it to problems within the family, the way I had been treated by the twins and so on. They wanted examples and I could give enough of those to deflect suspicion for a while.

I knew it was not over. The following Monday morning I was joined in the lift by a complete stranger. We nodded to each other and he asked a fairly bland opening question as to whether I had had a good weekend. I muttered a platitude in return. His follow up was more direct. "Did you see your family?"

That was when I knew I had to take action for all our sakes. That was the hard part. I had to become the Percy everybody assumed I was to ensure nothing I said or did could be used as evidence of their disloyalty to the new regime. By publicly falling out with them I could keep my distance. I could honestly say I knew nothing of their activities.

There were suspicions some of my family were involved in the resistance, such as it was. Fred and George were broadcasting on Potterwatch but as long as I kept my distance I could be of no use in providing information. I only listened to it a couple of times, to be honest. It seemed a fairly futile gesture so it was better for me to ignore it.

My father was seen as inconsequential and of no real threat so I kept it that way by treating him as such. We had a very public row where I tried to persuade him that he needed to support the Ministry. When he refused it gave me the excuse to say he was a fool and stop talking to him. It protected him; he remained "Good old Arthur", the time server.

My mother, in a rare lapse of judgment, decided she needed to try and bring about a reconciliation. The second hardest thing I have ever done in my life was turning her away from my door. The hardest thing I have ever done was returning my Christmas present unopened.

Of course it hurt them, of course it cut all communication between us; that was the idea.

Can you imagine what would have happened if I had still been in contact with them? The Ministry did not need a Cruciatus curse to obtain information; they had plentiful supplies of Veritaserum. All it would need would be for somebody to doctor my cup of tea on a Monday morning, followed by an obliviate, and the Ministry would have a spy right in the enemy camp.

That winter was an incredibly depressing time. I have never felt so isolated and it probably led to an increasing paranoia. There was nobody I could talk to. Penelope was long gone; our relationship did not survive Hogwarts. She found somebody more interesting than me once we started work. I had few acquaintances at school, even fewer friendships, and they did not survive me remaining a Ministry hack once Thicknessse was in charge and it was obvious to us all he was Voldemort's puppet. As an ex-Gryffindor prefect it was not felt I had made the correct decision to remain there - as a collaborator.

By Easter, things had settled into a new kind of normality and work continued as it had always done. The Ministry did not degenerate into anarchy, because that is not the way government runs. Forms still had to filled in and committee meetings attended. All the politics happened separately and out of sight. It had become clear by then that I was of no use to anybody so I was left alone, as much as anyone could be at that stage. We were always being watched for signs of deviation from the party line. However, there were no more interrogations about my family's activities and I did not know they had gone in to hiding until somebody mentioned that the twin's shop had been closed up. That weekend I went home, for the first time since I had accompanied Scrimgeour, to find it empty. The wards had been changed and I was denied entry.

Part of me was pleased that my subterfuge had worked but a much larger part died. I hadn't been told. I was no longer considered one of the family. That evening I returned to my flat and got out the picture of us in Egypt. I considered contacting Charlie, or maybe going to see him. I even thought about getting drunk but then remembered I had no alcohol, being something I seldom partake of. Instead I went to bed and cried myself to sleep. Perfect Percy, the boy who had wanted nothing more than a career, had come to fruition.

Why did I not try to find them? Why did I not attempt to seek out the opposition? Primarily it was because there was no opposition to join. Leaving would mean going in to hiding and by then we all knew about the snatchers. I will not pretend and try to tell you I stayed at my post awaiting the clarion call of freedom to sound. I stayed and kept my head down because I could not find a viable alternative. In terms of career aspirations it was the point at which I gave up any pretensions of one day being Minister. I realised that I was an administrator rather than leader. I could see no option other than trying to get through whatever was going to happen.

The day it all changed I first thought a swarm of bees had managed to get in to the building. A murmuring, buzzing sound filled the corridor outside my office. When I looked out people were milling around, excited, agitated, I'm not sure. Something had happened at Gringotts. There were rumours that it had been attacked and there had been an explosion. Then I heard Harry's name mentioned, along with "the mudblood girl". It did not take me long to work out who the third terrorist must have been. I got my cloak and went home because I felt worried and exposed. I had tried to keep Ron out of all this, even writing to him at one point and warning him away from Harry. That had been when Dumbledore began causing trouble. Now it looked as if my little brother was right in the middle of things. Not knowing what to do was the worst part of it. I plan, that is what I do, and then I add contingencies to plans. I am not a spontaneous person by nature and this situation required me to react rather than be in control. I knew I would struggle, so tried to give myself some thinking space.

That evening the call came to say that Harry was at Hogwarts. Everyone was gathering and preparing to fight so what was I going to do about it? It was Aberforth Dumbledore who contacted me. He'd been one of the few friends I'd had at school, surprisingly. Hogwarts weekends had never held much attraction for me and I had often found myself alone in the Hog's Head. It was preferable to being alone in The Three Broomsticks, surrounded by other people enjoying themselves. I think we recognised each other as kindred spirits, Aberforth and I; outsiders within our respective families and peer groups.

I went. They gave me a medal for going, you know; an Order of Merlin, Second Class. I never bothered telling them I went because I was scared. I think the pressure of the last months finally got to me and I just wanted it to be over, one way or the other. I went to Hogwarts fully expecting to die, but at least it would be finished.

Finding my family there made it easier. Come the end we would be together, a family once more. My opinions, and I realised at that point they were opinions rather than absolute truths, were no longer important. I would be with my family; the prodigal had returned and I was welcomed back. The twins greeted me in their own imitable style, but I knew the sentiments behind their words and they were probably correct in their assessment of me.

This is not the place to record my memories of the battle. We fought. Some lived and some died and those that lived grieved for those who had not.

It was only afterwards that I stood apart from the rest. I was uncertain if this was the time to explain what I had done, or if they wanted to hear it. Then my mother and father hugged me. They did not speak, nor ask me any questions. I tried to tell them I was sorry but they hushed me and held me and stroked my hair and we cried together.

That was when I learnt the most important lesson of my life. A parent's love for their child is unconditional. They never held what I did against me, even before I had explained my actions. They had accepted, if not understood, my decisions because it was my life to do with as I saw fit. They had not judged me, as I had judged them.

I occasionally see Oliver Wood, the Quidditch player with whom I shared the dorm at Hogwarts. We are acquaintances rather than friends, but we chat. Normally, at some point, I will say something which causes him to exclaim "Same old Percy!"

I am Percy Weasley and always will be. My reports are still meticulously planned and researched. I hold absolutely that processes are written to be followed, and I do that to the letter. My brother George, even now, has to explain why his latest gizmo is funny and I tend to spend most of my time at a family gathering talking to my sister-in-law Hermione. She and I are most similar in our thought processes.

What, I believe, has changed about me is my acknowledgement of other views as I strive to separate opinion from fact. Different is neither right nor wrong, merely different. George says I still behave like a Hogwarts prefect but he says that of Hermione, as well, so I tend to disregard him.

I remain Percy Weasley, but perhaps a more human version.