Peter
Peter twisted his fingers into the folds of the thick, red napkin as he carefully fixed his eyes on the sweating heap of sausages before him. He would not allow himself to scan the air above for the familiar sight of Saoirse, his grandmother's aging barn owl. It had been two weeks since he had left her tiny cottage. He had written her in his first week, to say that he was all right, that he was in his father's house. But she hadn't responded, and despite himself, that stung. Today wouldn't be any different, and he couldn't allow himself to hope for anything otherwise. He chewed resolutely.
On the first morning at Hogwarts, Peter had felt like he was drowning.
That new morning, he had jumped from sleep in sudden shock, instinctively thrusting himself up from the bed, tearing off the heavy quilt and breathing in great, greedy rasps. It was dark. The tightly drawn velvet hangings blocked out the dawn's light, and Peter fumbled blindly for the slit in the fabric. Everything around him felt foreign, wrong, different. This was not home.
As he rubbed the last cobwebs of sleep from his eyes, memories blew into technicolour. The long trip to London, jostling next to Muggles on buses and trains, his grandmother forever mistrustful of organised magic, of the Wizarding world, and even of Hogwarts. Watching the familiar Ardoyne streets recede behind him as he hurtled onwards, leaving behind everything he knew, going forwards to a new future by way of a trip back into his own unremembered past. Keeping his eyes on the pavement as he trembled through London, the great grey beast burning under his feet. The first home he had ever known, the home he had forgotten, the city that buried his parents. He rushed to King's Cross, into Platform 9 3/4, onto the Hogwarts Express, through to an empty carriage that filled noisily around him, as he rode silently, as he watched the world outside blur away. The stinging tears that dripped down his cheeks, that turned his skin mottled red, that trailed the thick bile of shame in their wake, kept him from seeking out James, who wouldn't find him until they disembarked at Hogsmeade Station. James' easy embrace, his welcome chatter, his brightness, his joy to be finally at Hogwarts filled up Peter, buoying him as their horseless carriage swayed towards the immense castle. The Great Hall, the Sorting, the swelling feeling of home that bubbled within him. The exhaustion that had settled in his bones as the Gryffindor first years were led to their beds, that sapped him of his brief sense of belonging. He fell straight into bed, drawing the hangings tightly and sleeping in his robes.
The other boys must have been tired, too, because there was little chatter on that first night. Even James, who Peter knew to be relentlessly curious and quick to poke and prod anything (or anyone) new, even he turned quiet as they trod the stairs to their dormitory. He had grinned at Peter, shed his robes and flopped onto the next bed over, not even bothering to draw the curtains or open his waiting trunk. Even in exhaustion, even in sleep, everything seemed easier for James.
Peter had known James since he was born, although neither of them remembered very much of the years when they had seen each other almost every day. Peter knew the story of those first years by rote, having wheedled it from his grandmother bit by bit, treasuring each precious fact and committing it to memory: Peter had been born in London, where his parents lived in a little flat in Kilburn. His father, Archibald-but-called-Archie, was a Muggle-born wizard who worked for the Ministry of Magic. Mr. Potter had been Archie's boss at the Ministry of Magic. They worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Peter's grandmother refused to speak of the Ministry of Magic, and so this scrap of information had come from Mr. Potter himself. His mother, his grandmother's daughter, was called Treasa. Treasa worked at St. Mungo's as a Healer. When Peter's grandmother spoke her daughter's name, it was always carefully, precisely, as if she was weighing each letter in gold. Archie and Treasa met at Hogwarts, and had started dating in their sixth year. They had married when they were twenty-two. Peter was born when they were both twenty-five. They died five years later in the accident.
Peter's grandmother would never finish the story. No matter how hard Peter begged, she would not tell how her beloved daughter and her husband had died. And she had forbidden Peter from ever asking the Potters about his parents' death. Sometimes, Peter thought about breaking his promise to his grandmother, because he ached to know why and how, but he knew that if his grandmother ever found out, she wouldn't let me visit the Potters during the summer holidays, and he loved the normalness of their house in Godric's Hollow. So he kept quiet, and pretended to be the sort of boy who was untroubled, unhaunted.
When James and Peter were little, Treasa would Floo with Peter to the Potter house before going to work. Mrs. Potter would let the boys play in the sprawling green behind the house, make them sandwiches for lunch and read them stories when it rained. Peter didn't remember any of this, and he didn't think James did, either. But Mrs. Potter would sometimes pet Peter's head absently, fondly, and recall those early days. If Peter tried very, very hard, he could almost feel the warm tingle of traveling by Floo Powder, but the memory was always quick to flit away.
Peter remembered the day his grandmother came to take him. That day was coldly bright in his mind's eye. She looked as she did now, a small thin woman with wrinkles around her eyes. She never wore robes like James' parents, but dressed in a long black skirt and a shapeless black sweater, every day of the week, every season of the year. She brought Peter to her tiny cottage in Belfast, and he never returned to London, not until it was time to go to Hogwarts.
They lived amongst a small pocket of witches and wizards in Ardoyne, a neighbourhood in West Belfast. Like his grandmother, like Peter himself, these witches and wizards had moved to Belfast from somewhere else, had always intended to move on or to move back, but the years kept passing and no one left. There were a few children Peter's age on their street, but he didn't like them very much. They teased Peter for his accent, which was tinged with the taste of being not from here. Peter was a foreigner amongst exiles, the bright lodestar by which they navigated the tricky dance of belonging. Peter kept quiet, learned to watch, to listen, to mimic. His grandmother called him slow, but he knew that it was better to be slow and last than quick and first when you were different.
Peter's grandmother taught him how to read from her old, mouldy books. He learned to read in English slowly but carefully, always carefully. But when his grandmother tried to teach Peter her tongue, the language of her mother and her mother's mother, the language his own mother had grown up with, Peter balked. Something in his young brain snapped, a wall rose up, and he couldn't get his lips around the words, couldn't hear the music in his grandmother's lilt. She persisted, but he couldn't do it, he just couldn't. She grew bitterer and bitterer as the years passed and she steeped in his not-knowing, his inability, his failure. Peter grew up knowing what it felt like to disappoint people.
Peter's grandmother had first learnt magic at the knee of her own mother, and that was the tradition of their family. It was a green kind of magic, chaotic and expansive, the kind of magic that just brims outward, the sort of magic that heals bruises and grows trees. That gift of healing ran in the family's blood, or so Peter was continually reminded by his grandmother, who had tried to teach Peter some of the old ways, but that had gone the route of the language lessons. Peter couldn't feel it the way his grandmother could, the way his mother must have. At first, he thought he just didn't have it. It was like something in him was broken, or maybe just missing. Peter grew up knowing what it felt like to be incomplete.
By the time Peter had turned eleven, by the time the Hogwarts letter had arrived, Peter's grandmother was resigned to sending her grandson off to school. She did not trust the world of Hogwarts, of the Ministry. To her, it was a world in which magic was governed and restricted and bent to the will of others, and magic was supposed to be something that you kept inside of you, that you knew best of all, that your mother taught you.
Peter's grandmother had not attended Hogwarts. She had grown up in the south, in a green place with lots of hills and a river at the edge of the town, and she had learnt of magic from her mother, and she had played with the other children in the town, some of whom had magic, some of whom did not. Their magic was practiced silently, with thoughts rather than words, and it worked in the natural ways of the world, and it never bothered the other children.
When Peter's grandmother was sixteen, she had gone into the City with her friends to go dancing. At the hall, she met a young man with long fingers and bright blue eyes and quick smile. They danced all night. She spun and spun and spun around the room, turning and turning and always turning back into his arms. At the end of the night, when her friends went home, Peter's grandmother stayed. The young man with the long fingers and the bright blue eyes and that quick, easy smile married her in a week. They were in love.
And for a while, they were happy in the City, but soon came the time when the work dried up and the young man whispered into the dark one night, as they lay in bed next to each other softly, he whispered, "We've got to go north." And so they went north.
The young man grew into a less young man, his long fingers weathered and worried by work at the shipyards in this new City, in the city of Belfast. Peter's grandmother gave birth to Peter's mother in that tiny cottage in Ardoyne. Peter's mother knew her father for a few short weeks, before a beam of wood fell from above and struck him dead.
Peter's grandfather, that young man who never grew old, had not been magical, but he had loved Peter's grandmother's magic, and he had settled his new wife in that pocket of displaced witches and wizards in Ardoyne. Some of the neighbours had gone to Hogwarts, some to other schools, but most were like Peter's grandmother. Most did not trust the kind of magic learnt in schools, governed by ministries.
When Peter's mother was eleven, she received her letter to Hogwarts, and Peter's grandmother was angry. She felt like she had been discovered, like she had been hiding as a fugitive in a foreign land and she had been found out. She refused to let Peter's mother go, she hid the letter from her, but more letters kept coming, flying on owls' talons into open windows and down chimney chutes, clattering and banging and demanding attention.
Treasa, who had learnt of magic at her mother's knee, found one of the letters on a hot July day, and she burst into furious, sweaty tears. She wanted to go. She loved magic, and she wanted more of it. She wanted to be in a place where everyone knew magic, where there were actual whole books of spells and charms and there were bubbling potions and something called Transfiguration, all of which was at once unfamiliar to her and yet seemed to be calling her home. Peter's grandmother was hit by the force of her daughter's anger, her desire, as if it landed with a fist. Treasa, who had learnt of magic at her mother's knee, wanted to leave. Peter's grandmother felt doubly betrayed, and she begged her daughter to stay, but her daughter was certain. She wanted to learn more than her mother could give her, and so she took buses and trains and hurtled to London, just like her son would years later, and boarded the Hogwarts Express, and began her new life.
Peter's grandmother never forgave that world for taking her daughter not once, but twice: first on a hot day in July, and then again on a cold night in January. Both times, the news came in a letter.
And so, when Peter was eleven, his grandmother knew that another letter would come, and it would take away the last bit of Treasa she had. She did not fight to keep her grandson, and so he left.
Peter had thought that maybe, just maybe, this new world would have a place for him. He thought it would be easy from the start, like slipping into a sweater you've worn a thousand times, misplaced, and just rediscovered. He hoped it would be, and for a moment it was, but then, it crushingly wasn't.
On the first morning at Hogwarts, Peter realised that for the next seven years, he would be swimming against the tide. He was painfully, precisely aware of his roughhewn accent, and he bitterly wished he hadn't worked so hard to learn the casual, curling cadence of the Belfast boys. Now he had another language to learn. He had dressed in silence, early to rise after fighting through the velvet hanging, and slipped down to the Great Hall before James, before the other two boys. He ate in silence, listening to the rising hum of happy chatter. James had appeared, disheveled and blinking, just as Peter scraped up the last of his porridge. Peter had never seen so much food in one place before, and he ate with the kind of guarded speed that all who have been truly hungry know.
"Easy there, mate! How come you didn't wake me up, I would've come along with you - bet you just wanted first crack at the table, I don't know how you manage it, always the first to start and the last to finish - " James chattered, grinning as he casually sloshed jam on his toast. Peter smiled gamely in return, because that's what he was supposed to do when James made a joke, even if it wasn't very funny, even if it was at Peter's expense. James had always teased Peter for his hunger, which James had always written off as gluttony, because in James' world, no boy went hungry. At James' house, that was true, and that's why Peter loved meals with the Potters. James had never visited Peter, and in fact, had never even mentioned it. This, for the most part, didn't bother Peter.
They had received their timetables and trotted off to their very first morning of class at Hogwarts. Peter walked with James to their first class - Transfiguration, with the stern Professor McGonagall from the Sorting - and sat towards the back of the room with him. On the walk to the Transfiguration classroom, James had kept up a steady stream of commentary on the day's classes, on what he was excited to learn, on how he couldn't wait to be able to transfigure his mother's tea cosy into a rat, just to give her a fright. James was fascinated when Professor McGonagall transformed into a cat before the Gryffindors' very eyes, but he was considerably less enthused with the elementary nature of their first lesson, and Peter could watch his eyes glaze over and slip out of focus as Professor McGonagall intoned on the complexities of Transfiguration.
Peter had been nervous about classes, and Professor McGonagall's formality (plus the hefty reading assignment she issued) did little to soothe those worries. This was not the sort of magic he was accustomed to seeing. There were complex incantations and precise wand movements and you had to say all of it out loud, in front of other people, who tended to snicker when you got the words jumbled. He kept an eye on James, who moved with a kind of intuitive grace through the practical exercises at the end of class, even though his parchment was full of nothing but little scribbles and sketches. Peter took careful notes on Professor McGonagall's lecture, but as he scanned the notes before packing up his bag, he felt as if he'd missed half of what she had said.
That feeling stayed with Peter throughout the first week of classes. It was definitely the sharpest in Transfiguration, which Peter just knew would be his worst class. He liked, and maybe even enjoyed, Astronomy and Herbology. Charms was difficult - more wand wiggling and rhyme reciting. Potions reminded him of his grandmother, who he missed with an unexpected twinge, and while the recipes were unfamiliar, he could follow the instructions reasonably well and do passingly. He fell asleep during History of Magic, but so did half the class.
Peter spent most of his time with James, who seemed completely comfortable to have a little shadow at his elbow, a constant audience and a familiar face. They did their homework together, eschewing the Library for the Common Room; they played Exploding Snap after dinner and, at James' insistence, explored the castle during their free time. Peter had been afraid that James would leave him behind at Hogwarts, that he wouldn't be able to keep up with his bright, charming friend. Peter had spent most of the summer holidays with the Potters, as always, but during the fortnight he'd spent at home before heading off to Hogwarts, a tiny voice at the back of Peter's head had whispered that James wouldn't be his friend once his parents weren't there to ensure that Peter came over to visit, that if James had the choice, he wouldn't choose Peter. Peter watched James carefully, and made sure to be perfectly agreeable and appreciative. He knew that he had to fit himself to James, had to be whatever James wanted from a friend, in order to stay. It did not occur to Peter that James might like him for him, or for the comfort of an old friend in a new world.
Keeping up with his mounting homework while also keeping up with James amounted to an exhausting first two weeks at Hogwarts. In his rare moments of solitude, Peter contended with a gnawing feeling in ribs - not homesickness, per se, but a kind of feeling out of place, displaced. Peter ached to belong in that easy way the other first years seemed to.
Of course, while James wore that carefree easiness like a mantle, Peter could see shadows in the faces of other first years. He knew, logically, that not everyone found life at Hogwarts as delightful as James did. The other two boys in their dormitory were even quieter than Peter, who at least talked to James. They spoke to no one, it seemed like. The tall boy - Lupin, something or other - he at least smiled in passing. He seemed fine, and Peter thought that maybe, if he could bring himself to approach the boy, they could be friends. Like Peter, he seemed out of place, but he didn't have a James, and he kept his nose in his books. Peter wondered why he wasn't in Ravenclaw, what the Hat had seen in this boy to let him come to Gryffindor.
The other boy in their dormitory, who had the bed closest to the window, was a walking storm. He bristled at everything and everyone, and his dark mood choked out the air from every room he entered. At first, Peter thought that he had done something to anger the boy, and asked James what he'd done wrong, and James had just laughed coolly. "He's pissed he's stuck in Gryffindor, his whole family's been in Slytherin for ages and he's not used to bunking with us common folk," James had replied in a stage whisper, which carried across the room, where the Black boy's curtains were defensively drawn, but certainly not impenetrable. James did not like Black. He thought Lupin was fine, a bit odd but pleasant and easy enough to forget about, but Black got under James' skin. He was cold, often rude to James, who had spent the first couple days at school trying to draw Black out with invitations to play Exploding Snap, with questions about his life, with friendly jabs at his recalcitrance. At first, Black had just ignored James, but when James persisted in attempting to crack open his hard exterior, Black had snapped back. James wouldn't tell Peter what words had been exchanged - Peter had been in the shower during this early morning exchange - but his face turned stony at the sight of Black, who sneered right back. Peter preferred that James stay away from Black, because then Peter had an excuse to avoid the other boy, who made him feel queasy. And so, while Peter had briefly feared that James would befriend the two boys and move beyond Peter, it seemed that their duo would remain intact, and Peter was relieved at that prospect.
On that Monday morning, two weeks into his first year at Hogwarts, as Peter was trying very hard to not look up for his grandmother's barn owl, he suddenly heard a soft, familiar hoot overhead. His eyes shot up, and then - there, amongst the rest, the slightly crooked wings of Saoirse! She spun downwards haltingly, jerkily - she was old and the journey long - and dropped an envelope onto Peter's lap, and then perched on his shoulder. The envelope was addressed to Peter in his grandmother's sharp, angular hand, and the note began without salutation.
Comhghairdeachas leat, a Peter. You've done a good thing.
Peter turned the piece of parchment in his hands, looking for more, but that was it, that was all. She had congratulated him, and Peter certainly couldn't remember if that had ever occurred before, but the note felt scant, inadequate. He folded it in half, slipped it into his pocket, and habitually checked the envelope, just in case -
And there was something else there, another slip of paper - no, it was slick on his fingers - a photograph. Peter drew the image from the envelope as Saoirse nipped his ear and creakily rose into the air, heading home.
Peter had never seen this photograph before. He only had the one picture of his parents - smiling, in their early twenties, adults but not yet parents - and this photograph was older, his parents were younger. They were laughing and turning towards each other, arms intertwined and breathless. Wind rushed through their hair. They stood on a green expanse, and Peter recognised the dark stone rising behind them as the walls of Hogwarts. This was his parents at Hogwarts. His mother had a spellbook under her arm, his father's red and gold scarf fluttered in the wind. They were young and happy and together, and they were here. Peter realised that in walking these halls, sleeping in the Gryffindor tower, eating at the Great Hall and going to his classes, he was the closest he might ever be to his parents, to the lives they had lived before their death. He had felt out of place his entire life, but maybe this place, maybe here, he could belong.
Peter tucked the photograph back into its envelope and carefully dropped it into his pocket, along with his grandmother's note. He looked around the table. To his right, James munched distractedly on a piece of bacon, his eyes skittering over his own letter from home. Across the table, Peter saw Lupin refolding a letter and placing it between the pages of his book. At the end of the table, Black sat by himself, determinedly keep his eyes down. Peter knew that look.