Missing Person

Animagi: wizards and witches that can magically transform themselves into animals. The animal form reflects their soul and personality. There are many steps to the Animagus process, including but not limited to: holding a Mandrake leaf in the mouth for one whole month (from full moon to full moon), spitting the leaf into a moon vial, and adding one of their hairs, a teaspoon of dew, and the chrysalis of a Death-Head’s Hawk Moth. The Animagus registry, as held by the Ministry, records each and every Animagus. Being an illegal Animagus is punishable by a year in Azkaban for every year the witch or wizard has been an Animagus.

Percy knew what Animagi were. Professor McGonagall was one, a cat to be specific, and he’d learned about them in his fourth year class. The textbook had gone over the whole process, as well as highlighting the punishment for being an illegal Animagus in case any student was dumb enough to attempt the transformation.

So yes, Percy knew what Animagi were. He did not, however, expect his rat, his pet of eleven years, to be one.

The morning started normally enough, or as normal as mornings at the Burrow ever got. Contrary to popular belief, Percy was not a morning person. He was a resolute night owl, often staying up until two in the morning reading or working on homework. He often arrived at the table disheveled with a bad case of bed head and still in his pajamas.

This was a rare morning he’d managed to get dressed before coming downstairs, but his red hair was still a mess, curls sticking up in all directions. His glasses, slightly lopsided, were perched on his nose as he peered through them with bleary eyes.

He pulled out his usual chair at the end of the table, and without even paying attention, lifted a spoonful of porridge to his mouth and took a bite.

And promptly spit it out.

It tasted foul! The texture was slimy and sticky in his mouth. Looking down, Percy saw a frog staring up at him from his bowl, looking just as confused and disgruntled as Percy.

Percy looked up, his ears steaming, as the twins burst into laughter, nearly falling out of their chairs. Ron and Ginny quickly joined in, and Percy could see even his father was suppressing a smile, trying in vain to hide it behind his newspaper.

The only one not smiling was his mother. She took her wooden spoon and rapped it across Fred’s knuckles and then George’s. They winced but still choked down laughter.

“Fred, George, how dare you treat your brother like that!” Their mother scolded.

“Because it’s funny!” Fred-or was it George?- exclaimed.

“It most certainly is not!” Percy yelled, standing up from his chair in anger.

The twins did something like this everyday! They couldn’t have at least waited until he had his breakfast to pull a ridiculous prank? And they only ever seemed to target Percy at home! He couldn’t catch a break!

“That’s because you’re a buzz kill,” George-or was it Fred?- said.

“Well, excuse me, if I don’t like having a frog in my porridge,” Percy snapped.

He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around the frog, picking it up. He walked to the window and opened it, releasing the frog outside. With that taken care of, he whirled back on the twins.

“You two are so immature! You can’t go one day without pulling a prank!” Percy shouted. “And I’m always the brunt of your jokes! Can’t you get a new pass time other than making my life miserable?”

“Percy, please, it was just a little joke, nothing to get worked up about,” his father said.

“You always take their side!” Percy yelled, and tired of being at the table with his laughing siblings, the insufferable twins, and his complacent father, he stormed out of the kitchen.

“Percy!” His mother called, but Percy didn’t turn around.

Instead, he grabbed his book off the sofa and Scabbers off the armchair where he’d been sleeping and continued outside.

“I just don’t get it, Scabbers,” Percy muttered to the rat. “Why can’t they leave me alone for one day? Their pranks get old after a while.”

Scabbers blinked at him and then laid his head down on Percy’s palm and went back to sleep.

Percy sighed and crossed the yard, stepping over a gnome or two, and walked into the forest lining the edge of the property. Within five minutes, he had reached a small clearing in the trees and settled down to read.

“Finally, some peace and quiet,” he said to himself as he cracked open the book.

The book was on Animagi; Percy was doing additional research on the subject for his summer essay on the process of different metamorphoses. The section he was on now was about reversing the transformation, both how an Animagus would turn themselves back and the spell that would allow others to turn the Animagus back into a human.

Percy took out his wand; he wasn’t actually going to do the spell, not with the Trace- that would be against the rules! But it wouldn’t hurt to practice the wand movement; maybe when he returned to school, he could even impress Professor McGonagall with it.

“Viccism Transmorphatio,” Percy said, flicking his wrist downward.

To Percy’s absolute shock, a bright beam of blue light shot out of the wand and hit Scabbers, who had been sitting on the grass in front of him. Scabbers squeaked and writhed like he was trying to escape the light that encased him.

Percy’s jaw dropped. He almost dropped his wand, but instead, it stayed frozen, fixed on Scabbers. The light continued to encase the rat as, before Percy’s eyes, Scabbers started to grow and morph- fur retreating into skin, claws growing into stubby fingers, greasy blonde hair spouting from his head, beady eyes transforming into human ones, albeit just as beady.

Scabbers grew and grew until he was only a little shorter than Percy. The light from the spell finally faded, and left behind was a paunchy, short man dressed in dirty clothes that stank like they hadn’t been washed in years. He had nails so long, they could’ve been talons, and his teeth were not dissimilar from Scabbers, but eventually more pointy, crooked, and jagged. His beady eyes landed on Percy, and the man seemed just as shocked as Percy did.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other, neither of them quite sure what to do with this situation.

Then, Percy did the only logical thing he could do: he screamed bloody murder.

The man jumped and looked around frantically. Just when Percy was remembering oh yeah, he had a wand and was about to cast a stunning spell, the man picked up a good sized rock and brought it smashing across Percy’s forehead.

Pain exploded over Percy’s eye, and his brain seemed to disconnect from his body, everything going limp. Blackness covered his vision like a curtain falling over his eyes.

Percy dropped like a stone.

Three hours later, Molly Weasley was pacing frantically in the kitchen.

“It’s been a while. Surely, Percy would’ve cooled down by now,” she said nervously, glancing out the window at the tree line.

Arthur shrugged. “He is a Weasley. We do tend to hold our tempers longer than most people.”

“But three hours? Maybe one of us should check on him,” Molly said.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Molly. He’s just being a moody teenager,” Arthur pointed out, coming up behind his wife and wrapping his arms around her. She stopped pacing and sighed heavily.

Arthur could see that his words weren’t easing her concerns. “Tell you what. I’ll go check on him. Would that make you feel better?”

Molly smiled. “Much.”

Arthur kissed her on the cheek and turned around, getting ready to head outside. His eyes drifted to the clock on the wall, as it was in his line of sight, and he stopped in his tracks.

“Arthur?” Molly said, immediately noticing how he stiffened. “What is it?”

She followed his gaze to the clock, and a strangled gasp was torn from her throat as her heart dropped to the floor.

Percy’s clock hand was on mortal peril.

“Arthur,” Molly choked out, but Arthur was already moving, running out the door.

His other children were standing in the yard with their brooms, about to do some flying, and they all turned when their father came bursting out of the house. Their father ran for the tree line like a bat out of hell.

“Dad?!” Fred called, wondering why his father looked so panicked or why he was running faster than Fred had ever seen him run.

Arthur didn’t know where Percy had gone, but he would search the whole damned woods if he had to to find his son. Arthur frantically combed the woods, and after a few minutes, he came to a clearing.

Percy’s book lay open on the grass, open to a page on Animagus or something or other, but Percy was no where in sight.

“Percy?!” Arthur called. “Percy!”

No answer.

Arthur looked around for some clue to where his son had gone, and his eyes landed on a large rock, painted with something red.

Arthur’s blood ran cold.

Footsteps behind him made him whirl around, and he found his children (except Percy) standing there, all of them out of breath.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Ron asked. “Bloody hell, you can run fast!”

They all knew something was very wrong when Arthur didn’t scold Ron for his language.

“Go back to the house,” Arthur said. “Come on!”

“Where’s Percy?” Ginny asked as they started to walk back.

Arthur didn’t answer.

“And you’re sure he didn’t run away?” The Auror drawled, sounding almost bored, as he scribbled some notes on his pad of paper.

“No,” Arthur said. “Percy wouldn’t do that.”

“But you said he was angry because his siblings…” The Auror flipped back a page in his notebook and knit his eyebrows. “Put a frog in his porridge?”

“Yes, he was angry,” Arthur admitted. “But he wouldn’t run away! The twins are just… they’re pranksters, and Percy knows that. He wouldn’t run away over such an insignificant prank!”

“He wouldn’t run away at all!” Molly exclaimed. “Percy’s the most responsible of our children. He would never worry us like this!”

“Yeah, he’s a total rule follower,” Fred said.

“Won’t even get out of bed after curfew,” George added.

“Much less-“

“Run away-“

“From home!”

The Auror looked at the twins curiously and then back to Molly and Arthur. “Do they always do that?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter!” Arthur floundered. Why was this Auror asking them all these questions instead of doing his damn job? “Percy is missing! There was a rock with blood on it!”

Molly choked back a sob at the reminder, and Arthur reached for her without looking. Her hand found his, and they gripped each other’s hands tightly.

“Could’ve been staged,” the Auror said. “You said Percy is smart.”

“Very smart but he wouldn’t…” Molly trailed off, unable to finish. Her tears were becoming too much for her, pressing at her eyes like pins, until they started to overflow, even as she tried to hold them back.

“If Percy was going to run away, which he wouldn’t,” Arthur stressed. “He would’ve brought stuff with him. He had nothing but the clothes on his back, and you still think he ran away?”

“I know this is a delicate situation,” the Auror said in such a condescending voice, Arthur almost growled. “Whether Percy ran away or not, we will look for him. We’ve already searched the woods.”

“Then, tell us what you know,” Arthur ordered.

The Auror sighed, like it was such an inconvenience, and flipped back a few pages in his notebook.

“An identifying spell told us the blood on the rock was definitely Percy’s, but it was a small amount.”

“You call that a small amount?” Arthur exclaimed, remembering the red staining the whole side of the rock.

The Auror looked up from his notebook and said, “Mr. Weasley, please, I need you to stay calm.”

Arthur took a deep breath and forced himself to remain quiet, if only to hear what else the Aurors knew about his son’s disappearance.

“The Ministry reported to us that Percy used a spell roughly four hours ago now,” the Auror said. “An Animagus de-transformation spell.”

“Why would he cast that?” Molly asked.

“We’re not sure, but his book was open to a page on Animagi,” the Auror said.

“Percy takes rules very seriously,” Molly said. “And he knows about the Trace. Why would he break the law, especially for that spell?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” the Auror said. “Is Percy trying to become an Animagus?”

Fred and George burst out laughing.

“That would require some serious law-breaking,” Fred said.

“If Percy did that—“ George continued.

“We’d be mighty impressed.”

“He wouldn’t,” Arthur said. “He’s a good kid. He… He wants to be a Prefect this year… and Head Boy in his seventh year. He wouldn’t jeopardize that for anything!” Arthur was getting choked up now, tears filling his eyes and his voice breaking.

The Auror didn’t argue, but it was clear he didn’t believe Arthur. “Okay. Well, according to our magical signature spell, there was apparition in the area recently, by an undiagnosed individual. If Percy was learning to Apparate, his signature wouldn’t appear in the spell because he’s not licensed.”

Arthur looked up in astonishment. “I bet he’s learning how to make portkeys, too! Oh, and maybe he’s a secret Legillimens while we’re at it! He’s fourteen years old!”

“And from what you’ve told us, incredibly advanced for his age,” The Auror said. “It’s just a theory that we’ll be checking out. You understand, we have to check all our boxes.”

Arthur glared. “And is my son another box you have to check?”

“Of course not. We will do everything we can to find him,” The Auror stated. “You just have to trust us.”

Arthur was quiet for a moment. “I wish I could,” he finally said.

The Auror didn’t say anything more, just scrawled down a few notes, and left the Burrow, probably to tend to a case he deemed more important than a missing fourteen year old child.

“Kids, go up to your rooms,” Arthur said. He didn’t want his children to see him cry.

A tiny hand tugged on his sleeve, and Arthur turned to little nine year old Ginny.

“Are they gonna find Percy, Dad?” Ginny asked.

Arthur wasn’t sure how to respond, but he couldn’t bear to tell her he wasn’t sure.

“Sure they will, honey. He’ll be home before you know it.”

Ginny smiled, fully believing him. His other children exchanged skeptical glances. They heard the doubt, the fear, in his voice, but they were wise enough not to push it. They headed upstairs.

“They’ll find him, Arthur. They have to,” Molly said. Her voice wasn’t reassuring but desperate.

Arthur nodded. “I actually hope Percy ran away,” Arthur said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Molly asked, confused.

“It’s better than the alternatives.”