Percy sometimes suspected that Christmas was designed specifically with his mother in mind. It was everything she loved, wrapped up into one holly jolly package: sentimental music, soft fairy lights, warm sweaters, good food, and all the hands on the Weasley clock firmly pointed home.
It made him feel better to imagine his father prying Percy’s clock hand away from the rest, maybe slipping it inside one of his junk drawers, lost forever among Muggle odds and ends. At least that way, the remaining hands would point true and his mother wouldn’t have to be reminded of the Weasley son who walked away.
He knew he had to be firm; that was the only way to get anywhere in life. But he hated hurting her.
Earlier that day, Percy had passed his father in the halls of the Ministry. He knew his father’s usual route to his shoebox office, and was usually able to avoid him, but today they’d just so happened to cross paths. Percy had prepared for this (it was inevitable, really). He looked straight-ahead at some imaginary point, because this man who could so readily align himself with liars and anarchists was no father to him. Not anymore.
He wondered, though. Who was going to go Christmas shopping in London with Father this year? Arthur Weasley was not the most organized and johnny-on-the-spot when it came to buying a Christmas present for his wife, and so, for whatever reason, it had always been Percy’s job to go into London with him for a last-minute shopping trip.
“You’re my right-hand man, Perce,” his father would say, as they traversed the crowds and the stores and the many, many Christmas present options. And it was, well, kind of magical. For that one afternoon a year, Percy got to be the only son to share a smile with Father, to be the first and last person turned to for a second opinion.
They always stopped at a particular sandwich place that served the best French onion soup, because they were the only two Weasleys who liked the stuff. Sometimes they got hot chocolate, too. Father made sure he got extra marshmallows. No assistant job, not even Junior Assistant to the Minister, had ever been better.
But his favorite part had been the escalators in one of the Muggle shopping centers. His father always made sure they rode up one and down the other, at least three times. Percy didn’t always get his dad’s love of the trappings of the Muggle world, but this one he understood. Escalators were calm. Orderly. The steps appearing right before your feet, gently ferrying you to your destination, then disappearing again right as you stepped off. Like they were being conjured by some unseen, but very dutiful wizard.
And once it started, you couldn’t just get off. You had to let it take you.
Returning his Weasley Christmas sweater had been like stepping on the escalator. He couldn’t turn back now.
Though sometimes, only for the briefest of moments, he wished that he could.