Peter Pettigrew’s childhood was fine. Normal.
His mother Mrs Pettigrew was a good mum. Not the greatest. But then again, peter was hardly great himself.
Normal. They were normal.
Peter Pettigrew was born on the 31st August 1960 on his mother’s floral bedspread in the same room his father, mister Pettigrew, had hung himself eight months earlier. It was also the place peter said his first words, and the place his mother entertained the occasional nighttime guest after peter went to bed.
Outside the room was the rest of the house, which consisted of a small second bedroom painted in a sickly tangerine colour peter positively loved. A claustrophobic yellow cast room that housed a bath but no shower, a toilet rusted around the handle, and a sink that’s water was either too hot or too cold and never just right. down the white wood steps and peeling pink banister there was the sitting room adorned with mismatched couches and plush chairs, some floral, some leather, and one a garish tartan.
But the final room, the one peter thought he might miss most of all, was the narrow kitchen that held the well-loved and well used wooden table where peter wrote his first letters, messy and uneven as they were, and where he and his mum sat each night to eat one of Peters precariously cooked meals.
Peter loved to cook, perhaps not as much as he might enjoy baking if they had the money for it, but still, peter loved cooking.
It started as a chore, one he neither begrudged nor cared for.
The thing was, peter lived in a small town, a very small town, with under 200 residents. And in this small town there was exactly one clinic that housed one nurse, one doctor, and not a soul more. There was a seldom used ambulance that was really no more than a beat-up van donated by the local church with a sloppily painted red cross on the two back doors.
It was in this clinic that Mrs Pettigrew worked as the soul nurse alongside a weathered Dr Avery who was a severely depressed cynical man of late 50s. Because of this peter had to accept early on that his mother belonged to the people, and as sickness is just as unpredictable as money, she had to work all seven days so that his clothes were warm and belly full.
So naturally, peter had to make do on his own for most of his life. Between the ages of five to nine he remembers long arduous hours spent cooped up in the school house with his 15-person class of mixed ages, trying and failing to learn the basics of maths, reading, and writing.
His teacher had little patience for him he remembers, and after he learnt the alphabet and the bare bones of maths school became a redundant practice.
If you asked him, peter would tell you that yes, he could read. Which was true, but also an oversimplification. Reading wasn’t the problem, the letters were, or more specifically, their habit of shifting and changing on the page. And although he could still make out the words, it seemed to take him much longer than it really ought to and that peter saw fight to spend.
And so, his teacher deemed him slow and as she was a college educated woman, slow was what he was. Nobody disagreed, even when peter himself wanted to point out that he was just fine at plenty of things, like sewing and cleaning and cooking, and cutting just the right size of wood for the fire in winter.
But his mum had to work, and peter was to young back then to be left alone, so to school he went. Or that was, until something rather unprecedented occurred in a shattering blow to peters routine.
His mum got pregnant, how peter was yet to exactly figure out, however he did know it was all Garry’s fault.
Garry, how might peter describe such a man.
He supposed you could call him useful, if you liked fish and chips. Because that is all Garry seemed to do, wake up, go to his chippy, make money, and return home. Only ‘home’ had suddenly, and out of nowhere he might add, become peters home. The house that he and his mum had been living in forever, and according to his mum the only thing of use his dad had left behind besides peter himself.
As you can imagine, having a fish smelling squatter take up residence in your home was distressing for an eight-year-old peter. But, one month and six days after eight-year-old peter became nine-year-old peter, Garry finally earned his keep in the young boy’s eyes. Because as a result of his new found residency, peter gained not one, but two baby sisters. Two new little Pettigrew’s to add to the bunch, and they were Pettigrew’s his mum insisted, much to Garry’s ire.
Peter was thrilled to have gone from having a two-person family, to a four-person family (plus Garry, fucking parasite that he is,) and this joy was only slightly dampened when six months later he heard his mum and Garry amid a blazing “disagreement” over what they should do about his little sisters’ existence when mum went back to work.
Garry wanted to sell the only place peter had ever known and move somewhere smaller where his mum could stay home and look after the babies whilst Garry supported the family (that he was not even a part of, peter thought.)
But thankfully for peter his mum was smart enough to see how silly moving would be, and instead wanted to scrape up the money to pay Miss Grot, the old bat that lived a little ways from them, to look after the girls.
And even though peter liked his mums plan more than stupid Garry’s, he did not like the idea of his little sisters being loomed over by Miss Grot of all people, seven days a week. The last thing he needed was for the prunes nastiness to rub off on his precious little siblings and turn them cruel. No, that just would not do.
Which is how a nine-year-old peter surpassed the irrelevancy of school to become the full-time babysitter to his little siblings. Conditioned by the promise that when it was time, he could work with Garry in his chippy until the leach kicks the bucket and peter can take over his shop.
And so, things went on for the next two years. Mia and Maya grew from babies to toddlers, both of whom peter adored more than anyone else, even his mum, though he still loved her a lot. Garry stayed the same, stinking the same stink and taking up far too much space than his presence warranted.
Peter lived out the same day over and over, he would wake up to his mum and Garry leaving for work. Then he would head down to cook breakfast, as he cooked everything else the family ate as mum was always too busy and Garry was fucking useless at anything that was not fish.
Most days the twins and peter ate the same brown seed toast with butter. However, upon turning one, Mia developed the charming habit of not eating anything unless it was presented in the exact same way every day. Which is how even a year later peter found himself painstakingly cutting the girls toast into eight perfect triangles.
Mum said he was spoiling them, but he didn’t mind taking the extra time if it meant his little sister started the day with a full belly and a smile. Maya was much less fussy, but peter still cut hers the same way so that she would never feel less loved.
After breakfast peter cleaned the house, most of the mess being Garry’s, which left peter grumbling whilst he worked and the twins played with their toys. Then once that was done all three of them would trek out into the garden for an hour so that peter could spend time playing and tiering his sisters out enough so that they would nap through the afternoon.
Whilst they napped peter was forced via his mother’s instructions to sit down and read at least one chapter of whatever book she had given him that month about whatever boring educational topic she decided he needed to know. She insisted he would get better with practice, but peter did not feel like he was improving all that much. Usually after he had slogged through the mandatory chapter, he was left with a splitting headache just in time for Maya to start screaming.
The late part of the afternoon was spent trying to teach the twins all the things a two-year-old should know, such as colours. However, this proved much easier said than done.
The main trial (trial, not struggle, peter hated that word) when it came to teaching the twins was with Mia. Whilst Maya said her first word shortly after her first birthday and never shut up again, Mia had a bit more trouble mastering the skill.
To put it plainly, peter had never heard her utter a single syllable let alone a word. In fact, he had hardly heard Mia make any kind of sound at all. She rarely cried, even as a newborn most of her tears were silent save for the occasional gurgle. Peter knows she can make noise when she wants to, because on the rare occasions her routine is messed up, or her food changes from what she usually eats, or Maya tries to move the toys her sister is “playing” with (“playing” for Mia, peter has learnt, actually means sitting on the floor arranging a handful of selected toys into a specific order until she is satisfied, and then clapping her hands happily whilst she stares at them for an age, before eventually crawling away once she is ready. Peter has learnt never to start clearing up the toys until she has moved on, even if she stares at them for over an hour.) Mia will have a meltdown, and those, those are deafening.
But for the most part, Mia is silent. Because her sister has learnt not to move Mia’s things. And peter has learnt what foods Mia will eat. At first it scared peter, because one day whilst he was making the twins dinner Mia got hurt, and he had no idea. No idea until Maya stumbled into the kitchen, nearly falling over herself to get to him, and began tugging on his trouser leg to get his attention.
Thinking she was just playing peter tried to shoo her away, not liking her near the hot oven, but upon her persistence he eventually humoured her and allowed himself to be dragged to the sitting room. There, he found Mia, with tear-soaked cheeks and a wobbling lip, holding her extremely bloody left hand. You could have heard a pin drop.
After that peter never let the girls out of his sight longer than five minutes when they were not napping for fear of a repeated injury. The scar etched into Mia’s hand served as a constant reminder to never again take silence as meaning all was well.
But eventually peter adapted to caring for Mia and understanding her needs without the need to hear her. And suddenly, the silence was not scary anymore.
He did his best not to think of Mia’s lack of speech as a fault or something to be fixed, because if her speech was like his reading, then she might never speak and it will just be another thing he loves about her. Besides, Maya makes plenty of noise for the both of them and is very good at letting peter know when her sister needs something. usually by screaming, but that’s okay to.
However as far as his mum or Garry are concerned, Mia started speaking just after Maya. This is because peter told then Mia started speaking after Garry came back home drunk and began trying to get Mia to say Daddy (peter hated the reminder that the fish monger was the father to his baby sisters, who were both too good for him even at only one years old) only to lose his shit at being ignored. He began raving about not wanting “a retarded daughter.”
Peter didn’t know what retarded meant, but it sounded like stupid, and Mia was not stupid. In fact, peter would go as far as to say she was above average for a toddler her age. She knew her colours and could point to the right ones when peter said them. She was very good at organising her toys in all sorts of ways like height and colour and even weight. She was very empathetic and always comforted her sister when she was upset. AND she was even smart enough to let peter know he gave her the wrong food by going on a hunger strike.
However, peter knew telling Garry any of this would not make him less angry, and so he lied. It wasn’t hard to convince him she had begun talking, because by the time he and mum got back from their respective jobs peter was usually putting the girls to bed. So, all he had to say was that Mia was too tired to speak at night. it worked in the short term, but peter knew that if Mia did not start speaking (and he expected she would not) the truth was going to come out.
But that was a future problem, and for a while things went on like always.
So yes, peters childhood was fine. Normal.
Until today.
Today peter is unsure if life will ever be normal again as he sits across from his mum, a letter sat between them, trying to think of something to say.
Today was supposed to be a good day, his mum had taken the day of for his birthday and they were going to bake a cake together. But then, just after the twins had gone down for their nap, that fucking bird flew through the open window and upturned his life in one fail swoop.
So now, a letter sits between them, and nothing is as it was a moment ago. Hogwarts, he was going to Hogwarts, and he has no idea what to make of that information.
Peter knows very little about magic, only that his mum has it and does not like to use it, and that he dosent have it and will not need to use it. This was a fact learnt very early on in his life, and it has never before been of any concern to him because he was squib, which means he dosent need magic.
What magic actually entails remains unclear to him even now as he is faced with his apparent ability to learn it. before now, magic had only been relevant four times in his life. Once when he was four and his mum used it to make the house warm during winter after the heating broke during a snowstorm and there was no wood left for the fire. A second time when he fell down the stairs and broke his back which mum used her magic to fix, a third time when his mum was sick with a strange flue that people without magic do not get, and a last time when his mum needed to fix the fire damage done to the kitchen after a quarter of it set on fire.
All these times seemed normal enough to him, if a bit strange. He never cared to ask his mum about it before, figuring if he needed to know, he would.
But now it seems he might have done well to ask. Because by some strange twist of fate, peter Pettigrew is a wizard, and he has no idea what to do about that.