Percy smiled thinly. "And when Ron was in school and needed help, you offered him and Harry secrets, help, compliments. You picked on Ginny and then threatened to play endless jokes on whatever pre-pubescent boys might break her heart. You turned it off, sometimes. With them. You never turned it off with me."
He sighed, glad when Fred's voice went lower because it allowed him to grasp for some of that dwindling control of his. "Stress doesn't make an honest man lie, it just makes him say more than he otherwise would. He told me the truth as he saw it. He called me what he thought I was. I had no one in the family to go to afterwards, no one who would have listened to my side. So I left. You all saw what you wanted to see in that. You interpret it how you like, and there's not a bloody thing I can do about that. If I did come back now, you'd say 'oh, well, the traitor's finally saw the light'. And maybe you'd forgive me. But Fred...that's not good enough. I was never a traitor, and I don't deserve to be made to grovel for something I never did."