Percy looked at the letter on his desk and knew it was not going to convince Ron. In fact, it was likely to enrage him. He knew the letter would likely be read before it got to Ron, and even if that hadn't been the case, he was in the habit of being circumspect these days.

He'd been so proud when he'd heard Ron had made Prefect. He's always been certain that Ron had the potential that the twins lacked, but the twins had always had more influence over the boy than he had. Now that he was finally taking on some responsibility, maybe he'd settle down. Maybe he'd even understand Percy a little bit more. Merlin knew nobody else seemed to. Sometimes Percy thought it would have been better if his younger siblings had been old enough to remember their days in hiding. They lacked the automatic understanding of the way things were that Percy, Charlie, and Bill had.

They all knew about letters that had to be written because the reader needed to hear the contents, whether they wanted to or not.

When first Bill, and then Charlie had been sent to Hogwarts, they'd sent letters to Mum begging to come home; home for Christmas, home for summer vacation, home for even a weekend. Percy remembered his mother crying every time she received one. But nevertheless, each time she'd sat down and wrote out a simple response that came down to one word: no. Oh, Percy had no doubt that she'd written the explanation every time. Bill and Charlie were safer at Hogwarts, leaving could result in consequences ranging from their own deaths, to leading the Deatheaters to the rest of the family.

But he knew, when they finally came home, distant, uncomfortable teenagers, that what they'd taken from those letters was just "no, stay away". They were uncomfortable around their parents, if polite. Their younger siblings were strangers to them, and Percy was old enough to feel hurt by their confusion and hidden disdain for his fanatical following of the rules.

These days he was old enough to understand; they hadn't been there, hadn't lived through the increasingly frequent moves to new safehouses, hadn't been there for the frighteningly hysterical demands Mum had made that he keep the younger kids quiet, hadn't been there to see the fallout of the breaking of seemingly unimportant rules. So of course his behaviour had been inexplicable to them, just as their casual assumption of safety and complete separation from the rest of the family had baffled him.

Sometimes he wondered if the reason both of them spent so much time out of the country was that deeply ingrained injunction that they must stay away from their family, for their own safety and for the safety of their siblings. He'd never asked. Despite his best efforts, they were not close.

Bill had written him a letter, once, when he was in fourth year. He'd been in Hogsmeade to meet up with some of his old school friends, and had run into Percy and Oliver on their way to Zonko's. He'd been polite, and made it clear that he was glad to see Percy, although their conversation lasted all of fifteen minutes before sputtering to a halt. Oliver had been appropriately impressed, and had said that Percy looked a lot like Bill. Percy took that for the compliment that it was; Bill was the cool one, with the respectable job and ability to get away with things Percy would have been punished for.

The letter had shown up a few days later. Bill warned Percy that Oliver was "obviously" queer, and told him he should drop the friendship. He'd never be a Prefect, let alone Head Boy, if he kept hanging around with him. People would think Percy was queer as well, and that would damage his hopes for getting into the Ministry. Percy had been furious. His return letter had been a scathing defense of Oliver, insisting on his friend's heterosexuality and ending with the defense that should Oliver turn out to be queer and interested in Percy, he would simply tell him he wasn't interested.

But he'd taken away the point of the letter: It was unacceptable to be a homosexual. If he were to indulge his feelings for Oliver, he would shame his family, and find himself an outcast in wizarding society. Certainly he'd never get a job in the Ministry, and Percy had wanted to work for the Ministry like Dad since he was a very small boy. So he said nothing to Oliver, and when faced with moments where they held eye contact too long, or they stood too close, he would turn away and begin talking quickly about something neutral. He dated Penny, when she asked, because she was nice, and he was supposed to. Oh, he still drank in every bit of Oliver's attention, and prized the time he spent with him above all else, but he followed the rules. Look, but don't touch. Even now when Oliver was in London they went out to the pub two or three times a week for dinner, and when Oliver was away they exchanged letters, but that was all they would ever share.

Percy was as grateful now, for the letter, as he had been furious at the time. Without the unwelcome warning, he might have simply slid into that seemingly inevitable relationship with Oliver, and found himself the object of ridicule and disdain. He could only hope that someday Ron would feel the same way about this letter.

Percy agreed with Fudge that there could not be two sets of rules in Wizarding society; one for Dumbledore and his friends, and one for the rest of them. Everyone should be accountable to the same degree, in his opinion. Rules were meant to be absolutes, for the protection of society at large. If you felt that the ends justified the means, and you had to break them, you should also have enough honour to accept the punishment for breaking those rules. How many times had Ron, and even Ginny, ended up in danger at Hogwarts because of that very disregard for the rules?

What he didn't agree with Fudge about was Umbridge. If asked to point out a possible Deatheater in the Ministry, Percy would have pointed unerringly towards her. She disturbed him in some instinctual way that he could only associate with his childhood in hiding; He was careful not to show it, but he found their to be something intrinsically wrong about her.

And Harry, with his typical recklessness, was already in full, open rebellion against the woman. Maybe there was more truth in the stories printed over the summer than he'd thought. It didn't matter, really. What mattered was that Ron would follow Harry and wind up on the wrong side of Umbridge, and that was unacceptable. The woman had a sadistic streak, and Ron already had a strike against him by virtue of his last name. Now that he was a Prefect, he'd be doubly visible.

The only solution was for Ron to pull away from Harry, at least in public. Percy didn't really believe Ron would take his advice and do that, but maybe he'd take away the basic message of the letter: Umbridge is dangerous. Maybe he'd even read between the lines and realize that Percy was afraid for him; that he'd be devastated if anything happened to his brother. Bill or Charlie would have read that message between the lines of this letter instantly.

Then again, maybe he wouldn't, because Ron was too young to really remember Mum's letters to Bill and Charlie, and certainly Percy had never told anyone about his letter from Bill. So it was possible that he didn't know about compromises and letters that had to be written.

Percy sighed, tied the letter to Hermes's leg, and instructed her to take it to Ron, at Hogwarts. It would have to be enough.