Wormy
So, Peter had a tendency to eat his words.
The most noticeable case being when he was seven and declared on a Tuesday at family dinner that no one wanted to wear skirts anyway, and he was just waiting for his voice to drop like Val’s so he wouldn’t have to be a girl anymore. His older brother had raged with all the indignation a fifteen-year-old could muster, wildly offended at the insinuation that he’d once been a girl, but their mother had just silenced Henny’s “but how will I dance ballet? I like skirts!” and pulled Peter out of the room. Two months later, he was switching schools and starting anew as always-a-boy Peter Pettigrew, knowing more about bodies and development than he was really comfortable with and feeling all his naive assumptions about the imagined “perfect world” shoved back down his throat with every hormone potion he swallowed in a desperate battle against biology itself.
There were other occurrences — less dramatic, of course. The numerous times he hadn’t bothered to put in work for a test that ended up tanking his grade; when he was younger, swearing up and down how he’d adore having a sibling to spend time with because Valin was always away; when he was five and Henny was four and he’d told her it was just another argument, their parents would be fine.
Together it carved a noticeable pattern. Whether expecting the best or bracing for the worst, Peter had learned above all not to trust his intuition. He was good at acting in the moment. Planning was not his forte. It honestly might have been why he and James got along so well, because if there’d ever been a definition for the word spontaneous it was James Potter. In any case, he should have known better than to comment on the situation, and the dread-filled apprehension hit the moment the words were out, but he knew it had been a mistake for sure once he’d dragged himself up the stairs and read off the names on the plaque of his dorm room.
Sirius Black
Remus Lupin
Peter Pettigrew
James Potter
And his heart sank low in his chest.
↯
In the end, it was just… awkward.
Their trunks were deposited at the foots of their beds during the feast, so that took care of any negotiations; with four beds in the room, two dressers, a massive window and a bathroom, there was enough space for about seven paces lengthwise before you’d smack into either the creaking door down to the common room or the perpetually jammed one that opened on their cubicle of a toilet and shower. Peter was between the window and the bathroom, which he hoped would let him waft whatever stink came about straight into the outdoors. On the other side of the window was Gangster, with Black across from Peter against the far wall, and James’s bed a meter or so away.
The Black had several ornate trunks piled high beside his bed, but he was currently nowhere to be seen – he’d headed straight for the shower upon their arrival, and was still there an hour later. Not a promising start. Gangster had his curtains shut, but he’d pulled his trunk in there first so presumably he was busy with something. Peter and James had settled with claiming space first in the dressers on their respective walls, and shoving everything else in the drawers under their beds before storing the trunks at the foot. He was just swearing off a stubbed toe when Black exited the bathroom with an air of complete calm, surrounded by the distinctly floral shampoo scent. His face was flushed from the humidity, but he looked so relaxed that Peter snatched his toiletries to slip in the next second, eager to feel that refreshed.
And refreshed wasn’t quite the word, considering his limited hot water and the mess of bottles Black had cluttered the bathroom with, but between washing off the public transportation and sinking into a private bed with no shrieking sister in his ears, Peter let himself drift off in a considerably better mood than earlier that day… after all, he’d been successfully made a Gryffindor. Surely that had to mean some kind of success.
Remember that thing about eating his words? Yeah. Somehow, Peter was never able to.
First years had been given a very general orientation the day before, but in a rather involuntary display of talent, he still managed to be late for every single class. He got separated from James after class with the overeager mustache-man in a completely different area of the castle to their dorms, and by the time lunch rolled around the friends had yet to reunite. He hadn’t even bothered trying to make friends with those around him. They all had either found people or weren’t looking to, and he could see Black across the room laughing boisterously with a group of wide-eyed Hufflepuffs, Gangster in the back rolling his eyes at the redhead James had found to be so infatuating the day before. Peter sighed and put his head down. He was not looking forward.
“Well, this won’t do, now will it?”
Mouths shut mid-sentence with all the speed of intimidated freshmen. Peter picked his head up to ogle the teacher along with everybody else. He was big, broad-shouldered – must’ve been at least six-foot-two because he loomed the same way Val did. His expression was hard, but his brown eyes were kind, and he looked around at them all with a sort of bemusement.
Then he flicked the sleeve of his gray-blue robes and his wand dropped into his hand, the wood so dark it looked almost black. He flourished it, and the board was painted with names – doubled up.
“I’ve randomized you all into partners. Defense Against the Dark Arts relies quite heavily upon practical spellwork, so you will all be practicing with each other. Hopefully the random arrangement will minimize any chatter-related disturbances –” a pretentious sniff towards the Hufflepuffs – “so please be advised, if that becomes a problem, I will not hesitate to switch you again. Now, sit beside your partners, please.”
Peter glanced to his roommate, who did not look happy at the pointed look calling out him and his new friends. He bet Sirius Black would charm any randomized partner, though, so their professor surely was fighting an uphill battle there-
“Oi, Pettigrew! Get over here!”
It was with dread that he looked from Sirius Black’s smirking face to his own name on the blackboard, in neat cursive just under the other boy’s. If he had been Gangster, he'd have cut loose a string of profanity so scandalous his mother would hex him from home. As he was just plain Peter, he put his head down and gathered his things to move across the room, towards Sirius Black’s taunting wave.
He didn't return the gesture, nor did he make any effort to mirror the sarcastic smile Black sent his way next. In fact, he learned fairly quickly that it was most irritating to Black when he was ignored, and proceeded to very cheerfully do just that. By the time they had all gotten settled enough for their professor to begin the lesson, Peter had looked over all of zero times, and Black was absolutely seething.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” the professor said loudly, clapping his hands and shaking dark waves of hair from his face. “Now. You may call me Professor Elassandre. This class will focus more on practice than theory, as I have mentioned – that being said, we will always begin with a brief lecture introducing the topic. The more reading you are able to complete prior to the class, the less you need listen to me jabber on, so I advise you to keep up to date on that which I assign.”
Peter groaned inwardly. The spells had better be fun, else this was shaping up to be a very long seven years.
Elassandre smiled around at them all before clapping his hands once more, loudly. Peter jumped, and beside him Sirius did the same. He glanced over. Sirius was sat firmly facing the front. Childish, Peter scorned to himself, rolling his eyes.
“Now. Who can tell me how we define the Dark Arts?”
Across the room, a girl with white hair and pale skin raised her hand instantly. “Magic developed with malicious intent,” she said firmly. Elassandre nodded slowly.
“And how would you define malicious intent?”
“With the goal of harming another living individual.”
With a second nod, he turned back to the class. “Thank you, Miss…?” He turned back, smiling at his oversight. The girl seemed to be fighting the smile that split her face.
“Filia Hemsworth,” she told him. He nodded a third time. Peter, anticipating a pattern, used his quill to scratch out three tallies on the parchment before him.
“Thank you, Miss Hemsworth, you are mostly correct.” Filia’s face fell slightly. “It is true that the Dark Arts describes a certain type of magic, but there is no such thing as a categorization of magic based on whether it was developed with good or evil intentions. You will hear wixen, some of them teachers at this school, tell you that magic is all around us – in everything we do, in everything we are.” As though sensing controversy, the class hung on to his words. “They are mistaking romanticism for fact. Magic is simply a tool used to achieve some purpose. A tool can be directed towards creation or destruction, but it is still in itself but a tool, incapable of carrying any innate intention. Now,” he announced, losing the conspiratory effect his voice had momentarily dipped into, (Peter began another tally count,) “this creates a very blurry distinction between the Light and Dark Arts. In fact, some theorize that the reason ‘Light Arts’ is a term less used than its counterpart as a result of philosophizers’ arguments, since no magic is ever truly right. Then again, is magic ever truly dark?”
“Unforgiveables,” Sirius said firmly, and several of their classmates looked around in shock, Peter among them. Their professor just frowned.
“You are missing the point, Mr Black. I certainly hope it is not on purpose.”
Sirius responded quickly, exasperation clear within the boredom of his tone. “Why am I missing the point?”
Elessandre’s hands found perch on his hips. “All spells are in themselves ambiguous, it is how they are used that dictates their categorization-”
“So you're saying Unforgivables are not always such?”
Around the classroom, kids were whispering, those who were familiar with the concept telling others what they knew. Peter wasn't entirely sure himself. He knew they were really awful spells, and he was fairly certain one of them had to do with killing, but he could never remember the others. Whatever they were, it must have been serious enough to give Elessandre pause.
Nevertheless, he still managed to shake it off, watching Black’s face in the ensuing silence with an intensity that made Peter uncomfortable, sitting beside him. Black looked away first.
“To clarify the question,” he addressed the class, turning back to the room, “the three ‘unforgiveable’ curses refer to the Killing Curse, the Torture Curse, and the Control Curse. They are colloquially termed ‘Unforgivables’ due to their ability to instantly send the caster directly to Azkaban, the maximum-security prison.”
Peter snuck a glance at Black, who was frowning at the professor, but Elessandre was no longer focused on the young student. “However, this does not constitute a proper attack to the presented theory- yes, Miss Hemsworth.”
“Because the magic itself still functions as a tool, simply filtered through a Dark spell?”
“Correct, five points to Ravenclaw. Now-”
“But sir, how would that fit into Wagner’s fifth law?”
Elessandre closed his eyes briefly. As one, the class turned their heads to James’s freckled redhead at the back center of the room, sat beside another girl with messy blonde hair and an incredulous expression. “And your name is?”
“Lily Evans,” she said matter-of-factly, cringing down in her seat but enunciating clearly. Her London accent was as posh as Peter had ever heard. It was clearer now in the silent classroom than it had been in the noisy hall, and although she had curled in on herself, her presence held the attention of the room in a chokehold. “I apologize for interrupting, sir, but – wouldn't Mr. Black’s alternative hypothesis be supported by Wagner? He argued for intentionality behind spells-”
“Intentionality behind casting, Miss Evans,” he reprimanded. The blonde girl was rolling her eyes hard. Evans ignored her.
“How is that different?”
“In every significant way. A spell must be cast wholeheartedly, and will act differently depending on who is casting, their affinity for that specific region of magic, etcetera. This is something you will learn only through trial and error, so if we may proceed?”
Evans nodded, her put-out expression at being rebuffed instantly brightening into an eager smile. Peter turned to face the front again in time to flinch at the professor’s brandished wand.
“Expelliarmus!”
A squeak; from the middle of the room, a stubby wand arced up and into Elessandre’s waiting hand. He placed it carefully on his desk. “Name?”
“Um – Genesis Aubery?”
“Thank you, Mr. Aubrey. Not to worry, you will receive your wand in just a moment. Is anyone here familiar with the concept of a summoning charm?”
Oh, his mother used that one all the time. Usually while muttering something about young boys and irresponsibility. Peter raised his hand along with a few other students, including Black, but their professor nodded at him specifically, so Peter spoke. “It – well, it summons anything to you. The word’s accio, I think.”
“And to bring in Miss Evans’s point, what is the intentionality that must be applied to perform the spell correctly?”
“Um. That you… want the item?”
Black snorted a laugh, along with a couple other students around the room. Peter flushed. To his left, Hemsworth’s hand had shot up again. “You need to convince yourself that it is absolutely necessary to have that item immediately.”
“Correct. In addition, as your headmaster will likely inform you should you ever breach the subject with him, emotions play important roles as well. The spell’s efficacy improves if you don't just focus on how much you need it, but instead let yourself feel impatient, and in some cases desperate.”
He turned to smile kindly at Aubrey. “Now. Would you say that was quite enough information thrown at you all at once?”
Aubrey gave a shy grin and shrugged.
“I suppose you have realized what I am going to ask you next?”
Aubrey’s gaze dropped to his wand, perched neatly on the professor’s empty desk. He took a deep breath, glanced nervously to the rest of the room, and spoke.
“Accio!”
The wand didn't budge; it didn't so much as twitch in place. Elessandre was nodding fervently anyway, gesturing to the rest of the class with sudden eagerness. “That's it! Object, intention, emotion! The rest of you, focus as well, support can only help!”
“Accio!” Aubrey cried, with greater enthusiasm this time. The wand didn't budge, but someone shouted “c'mon mate!” from the corner and Aubrey kept on, repeating the spell even as more voices joined the cheering. It seemed to bolster his confidence, and Peter joined the chanting – albeit more quietly – as he leaned forward onto his desk, hoping, willing.
“ACCIO!”
With a little shimmy, the wand wiggled off the edge of the desk. Its clatter against the stone floor echoed through the silenced classroom, and for a moment they all just watched it there, resting contentedly in its new home amid the dust there.
Elessandre began to clap.
A cheer went up from the students, and Peter clapped along with them. Even Black put his hands together a few times, looking duly impressed. His face bright red, Aubrey went forward to pick up his wand, scurrying back to his desk as their professor raised his hands for silence.
“Well done, all of you. Mr. Aubrey, five points to Hufflepuff. I would like all of you to now pull out your wands and place them on my desk, in a neat row. You will spend the rest of class time attempting to draw the wand towards yourself. Any student who succeeds at this task before the end of class will receive a brand new set of Flourish & Blotts’s ink-removing quills. Now, off you go!”
By the end of the class, no one had gotten close – Peter was entertaining the idea that the little movement they'd gotten in the beginning of the lesson had been the work of the professor instead. They left with an assigned reading on wandless magic and exhaustion engraved deep in their bones.
The classroom wasn’t too far from Gryffindor Tower, a lucky thing. Peter grumbled “cotton fluff” at the portrait and, ignoring her indignation, made a beeline for his dorm and collapsed on the unmade bed. Gangster spared him a single sympathetic glance before gathering a small pile of clothing and heading into the bathroom. A moment later, he heard the shower running.
With a sigh, Peter flopped over onto his back on the bed and took stock of the situation. He could stay and fall asleep – but then he'd be up all night with nothing to do. He could get started on the already building workload but did he want to spend the rest of his life labeled as one of the ‘geeks’, camping out in the library on the first day of school?
He pushed himself up, changing quickly into sweats and a T-shirt in between furtive glances cast towards the shut bathroom door. His wand went safely away in the inner pocket of his bag. The shower turned off. Tugging a randomly selected hoodie over his head, Peter rushed from the room.
It was easy enough to get outside. The fading Spring carried a sweet-smelling breeze through the castle hallways, surprisingly warm for Scotland in September. His tracking led him to a small courtyard surrounded by tall, arching windows built into the castle wall. A couple of students wandered through, but no one was using either of the two tables, so Peter chose safety. He tugged his hood up and pulled his textbook out, beginning the first reading with a heavy sigh.
It took about a paragraph for his mind to wander. By the time he’d managed two pages, the clouds had spread across the sky, and the building wind tugged at the parchment he’d laid down to take notes. He regarded it flapping under his hand for a moment, exasperated.
“Fancy seeing you here, Pete.”
His head snapped up. Snape was lounging on the bench across from him, a lazy smile on his face. His companion, Sebastian Derratia, wore a vicious smirk. He felt his stomach tighten. “Alright, mate?”
“Glad to see you cleaned up after class,” Derratia hummed. “You’re lucky Sprout’s such a softie. Anyone else would’ve had you in the dirt picking worms out by hand.”
Peter’s face was on fire. It had been crowded in the greenhouse, and then one of the plants had wound its way around his bicep out of the blue, and he’d bowled over a couple people. There may have been a bucket of flobberworms overturned in the process. But it wasn’t his fault, he’d essentially been attacked! He reflected that this was probably the lamest response he could possibly give just then. Snape was speaking over the silence, anyway.
“D’you reckon Hogwarts has kicked anyone out for being a complete idiot?”
His mouth gaped. “I – it’s the first day!”
Snape rolled his eyes. Derratia was moving, and Peter flinched, but the bigger boy only came around to sit beside him. Uncomfortably close, still. Snape’s cutting tone had his attention snapping back again. “Yeah? Can you do any magic? Where’s your wand?”
“I don’t – shut up, I don’t even have it on me!”
“Bet he doesn’t have one,” Derratia snarked, leaning over and stage-whispering conspiratorially. “Bet he’s just a Squib who snuck his way in.”
“Am not!”
“Are so,” Derratia grinned. He opened his mouth but quickly dropped the cheerful expression, face shifting into disgust. “Aw, I thought you said you cleaned yourself up, Pettigrew!”
“I did – what?”
He followed the line of sight down towards his bag and yelped, shoving away from the bench and toppling himself backwards into the grass. His shin thumped painfully against the edge of the table on the way down, bumping the wood and sending flobberworms everywhere. “What the hell, Derratia!”
“Aw, Wormy’s on the ground with all his friends,” Derratia laughed, and then he was kicking the dirt across Peter as he struggled to sit up, shin smarting, shoving at the worms that had been planted in his lap while he was so focused on Snape. When he was finally sure he’d shaken all of them off, he looked up to see that the other two boys had gone, and the courtyard had emptied, wind bitingly cold by now. He shoved his things into his bag as quickly as possible – chasing down his fleeing parchment – and slunk off for the dorms on his own personal walk of shame.
When he opened his bag the next morning to pack for the day’s classes, the writhing mass of worms waiting patiently within was met by his three very irritated roommates with even less enthusiasm.