PART ONE PROLOGUE

Percy Weasley came into his childhood home like a thief in the night.

It was simpler than he had anticipated. The wards were brushed gently aside with a twist of his wand. They had been constructed to keep out the Muggles, the Death Eaters, and Voldemort himself. But they were mere wisps when it came to family. Tears sparked in his eyes. If only he could find a way to warn them. If only he could speak to them. But surely they must hate him.

Percy, who had always prided himself on Doing the Right Thing, had made a mare's nest out of his life. He took a moment on the back stoop of the Burrow to kick himself for choosing the Ministry, for turning his back on his family. It had seemed so right at the time. Of course the Ministry was right to doubt Harry's wild story about Death Eaters in a graveyard. The thought was ludicrous!

"Except it wasn't," Percy breathed. It wasn't ludicrous. But the Ministry kept digging its heels in deeper and deeper, and even when Voldemort was unveiled in the Ministry's own atrium, it still kept trying to spin the propaganda. And Percy was very much afraid that the Ministry was losing control. Its judgments and edicts were getting darker… Percy rather feared that the enemy had already won.

Percy slipped in through the back door. The object he was looking for was exactly where he knew it would be: hanging on the wall, its many hands pointing every which way. It was not a regular clock, of course, but the Weasley family clock. Every member of the family – and as Percy looked closer, he saw Fleur, Hermione, and Harry had been added as well – had their own hand, and it pointed at wherever they were.

Most, Percy noted grimly, were pointed at Mortal Peril.

His own pointed Home.

"Percy," his mother whispered.

Percy whirled around, wand in hand, utter shock pulsing through his veins. There she was. His mother. Standing in a tatty nightgown, her wand shivering with light, illuminating her still-bright hair. She looked beautiful.

"Mother! What are you doing awake?" He hissed.

"You think I wouldn't know the second you came home?" Molly asked simply. She pointed at the clock that was now in Percy's hands.

"Mother, I'm sorry," Percy said, anguished.

His mother never answered. He had already sent her to sleep, catching her on a cushion of air before she could hit the floor. Percy picked her up and carried her into the living room. He laid her gently on the couch, eased her head onto a pillow, brushed the hair out of her face, and held his wand at her temple.

He obliviated her. He took her memory of seeing him. He took her memory of the famous – much too famous – Weasley clock. And then Percy set up a ward of his own, that everyone who crossed the threshold of the Burrow would forget all about that wonderful, enchanted clock.

And then he left.