"Heroes" DvD Commentary
Yet another DvD commentary. This one turned out to have a lot more symbols and allusions in it than I realized. This also gets the Rent "To Film" icon, because the focus here is on a film--Star Wars. (This is the only way that I could possibly cross HP and SW without involving Milliways.)
For those who want to see the other DvD commentaries, here are the links: Stopped, Part 1 and Stopped, Part 2; Escaping Wonderland, Part 1 and Escaping Wonderland, Part 2; Silver; and Sculptor's Block.
***
"A film?"
The first words tell you what the focus of the story is going to be about-namely a movie. What's not so clear is that the story will focus not only on Star Wars, but on certain aspects of film-the creation of illusion, the power of images to stir the imagination, the way films can stir and inspire the audience, and the ability of films to mirror, and affect reality. You may also notice that just as the first words are "A film?" the last words are "Just like in the pictures." The story is framed by those two sentences.
Louise Pettigrew stared incredulously at her seventeen-year-old son.
We now know not only who said the previous sentence, but the identity of the person she's addressing. You also now know the year this is taking place-1977.
"Absolutely not. Why in the world do you have to go to the pictures in London two days after Christmas? You can certainly wait until the film comes to Birmingham."
Birmingham-Peter's hometown. I'm not sure why I settled on it, save that I wanted one of the Marauders to come from an industrial city in England. James was good at flying and at Quidditch, so I envisioned his parents having a place in the country where he could do both to his heart's content, without having to worry about anyone seeing him on a broom. My Remus, like thistlerose's, comes from Melrose, Scotland. Sirius is from London. That seemed to leave Peter.
Birmingham turned out to be a serendipitous choice. There are a great many poor sections; the accent is deplored throughout the U.K.; and I read article after article in which lower-class Birmingham fashions were mocked. And, in Chapter 36 of Jane Austen's Emma, the snobbish Mrs Elton comments, "They came from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr. Weston. One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound..."
Peter, in other words, lives in a Rodney Dangerfield of a city-one that gets no respect.
"Mum," Peter said, striving to sound adult--or as adult as possible for a teenaged Muggleborn wizard who was also a hopeless science fiction fan. "Mum, it's the British premiere. Star Wars came out in America in May. I've waited seven months already. And if I don't go now, I won't have another chance until Easter--which I'm probably going to spend at school studying for N.E.W.T.s. Come on, please?"
Yes, he's begging-and rather effectively. But he's also providing the audience with a timeline, as well as an explanation of why this film absolutely, positively HAS to be seen now. I had to figure that much of the reading audience would have no memory of a time before cable television and DvDs-that they wouldn't realize automatically that if Peter doesn't see Star Wars in the theatres, he has to assume he'll never see it at all.
James and Sirius would never understand this, he thought. Well, they wouldn't understand his passion to see an American film, any more than they'd ever understood his love of science fiction. But they would just chalk that up to "one of Peter's quirks." No, what they really wouldn't grasp would be the fact that he had to beg his mother for permission. Peter had turned seventeen back in March. He was of age...at least as far as the wizarding world was concerned.
As far as Louise Pettigrew was concerned, Peter was eleven, going on ten.
Not only doesn't she think that he's grown up since entering Hogwarts, she actually feels he's backslid a bit.
"And just how are you going to get from Birmingham to London and back?" she demanded. "We haven't a car, trains are expensive, and you are not going by broomstick." She shuddered at the last word.
Peter, who had been dealing with his mother's conviction that magic was evil, demonic and most likely the creation of Hell since his own powers manifested when he was seven, mentally translated "broomstick" to "any means of wizarding transportation which uses magic in a way impossible to ignore." So Apparating was out...even though he had his licence. And he couldn't use Floo Powder. Quite apart from his mother's prejudices, she lived in a Muggle neighbourhood. The Pettigrew flat not only wasn't hooked up to the Floo Network, it didn't even have a fireplace.
I couldn't resist taking a dig at the Floo Network. It's always struck me as a touch impractical. After all, not every house and flat have a hearth, especially nowadays, when so many homes use forms of heating and cooking that don't include wood.
You'll notice Peter doesn't think in terms of a broom. That's because he doesn't have one. Brooms, in the Potterverse, are very expensive. Even if Peter liked flying (which he doesn't), he's from a family that would best be described as "working poor." He can't afford a broom.
Fortunately, he already had an alternate form of transportation in mind.
"I'll take the Knight Bus." He anticipated her next question. "It's an omnibus for wizards. Perfectly ordinary bus. Well, except that it's purple. It drives on normal roads and everything."
It also Apparated from destination to destination all over the United Kingdom. Not that he was going to mention that particular detail. It wasn't strictly honest, but it wasn't lying...exactly. One of the most important things to remember in conversations with his mother was knowing what bits to leave out.
He's acting very much like a normal teenager trying to get what he wants. Unfortunately, this behavior also underlines a flaw in Peter's personality-his skill at lies of omission.
His mother frowned at the word "wizards" but breathed a sigh of relief at the words "ordinary" and "normal."
"Well, the Knight Bus sounds all right," she said reluctantly. "What's this film about, then?"
Nothing much, Mum. Just the struggle of a handful of ordinary people to defeat an immensely powerful and insanely evil Dark Lord and his equally evil followers. Nothing that has anything to do with the world I live in.
Peter's perceptive enough to have already drawn a parallel or two between the wizarding world and Star Wars. Obviously, he's found a way to find out details about the film-even at Hogwarts.
"Oh, lots of things," he replied aloud. "There's this Galactic Empire, and space ships, and a huge space station, and planets in a distant galaxy, and robots, and..."
As he had expected, his mother motioned him to be silent. Peter privately bet himself that she would let him go now. She loathed science fiction as a waste of time, but at the same time, she was forced to approve of it--especially the "hard" science fiction that Peter loved--because it involved math, science and technology. Muggle things, far removed from the realm of magic.
In Peter's topsy-turvy world, fantasy-the realm of wizards, magic, elves and goblins-is reality. Technology and its inventions are the fantasy.
He knew that she hoped ever more fiercely, as the years wore on, that his love for science fiction would drag him back to the real world, the Muggle world. Magic, she conceded, was real, in the sense that it existed, but it was not real in the way that electricity and typewriters and vaccinations were real. Magic--foolish, trivial, seductive and unholy--was a distraction from reality. Decent people did not crave such a thing, much less practice it.
He continued to gaze at her, trying to do the pleading-puppy-dog-eyed expression that Sirius had down to an art, the lucky bugger.
It's fanon, not canon, that Sirius can do that. But I have to admit that I like the idea.
"Well..." His mother considered. "Are your friends going?"
An innocuous-sounding question, but Peter wasn't fooled. No question that his mother asked about wizards or the wizarding world was ever innocuous, no matter how harmless it sounded. Fortunately, he could answer this honestly.
"No, they're not. Sci-fi isn't really their kind of thing."
His mother relaxed at the words. Peter schooled his face to make it appear as if he hadn't noticed. Inwardly, however, he was seething. Why the hell did she have to be so relieved that he wasn't hanging around other wizards for once? James, Remus and Sirius were his friends, damn it. Most parents considered friends a good thing.
Despite his anger, Peter does two things here to get what he wants: he conceals his rage, and he forces himself to stay calm in order to keep control of the argument. Again, it's something that a teenager (or a person of any age, really) could do to gain something fiercely desired--but at the same time, it's manipulative. And it indicates another potentially dangerous flaw.
"So who are you going with?"
Peter blinked. "No one. I'm going by myself."
She surprised him into honesty with that question.
"Oh, no, you're not!" His mother stared at Peter sternly. "I don't want you going to the pictures all alone."
"Why NOT?" Peter demanded, his voice escalating despite his best efforts. Merlin's manky balls, why does everything have to be so difficult with her?
"Merlin's manky balls" is an expression that thistlerose's Sirius used to use quite a bit. If you asked my Peter, he'd say that he picked up the phrase from Sirius.
Louise Pettigrew fidgeted. "Well, someone could sit down next to you and start...bothering you. It could be unpleasant."
Bother, bother, bother, bother...okay, I'm sorry.
Louise Pettigrew is genuinely worried about her son. She sees him as vulnerable in a way that she can't quite articulate, and she fears for his safety as a member of the magical world. She's afraid he'll be hurt or damaged in some repugnant, unthinkable way...and the hell of it is, she's right. Unfortunately, her concern comes across as baseless and overprotective--exactly what a seventeen-year-old boy doesn't want to deal with.
Peter briefly thought of telling her that he really didn't think he'd get felt up at the pictures by anyone, male or female, and that short plump blond boys of seventeen didn't look, in most peoples' opinions, like sex gods. Then he sighed. It wouldn't do him any good to speak bluntly. She'd be horrified that he even knew the words for what she was talking about, and she would surely view it as a sign of loathsome spiritual corruption. Then he'd spend the rest of Christmas vacation being dragged to various quacks and charlatans for exorcism. And there was no way he was going through that again. He'd had four years of that prior to Hogwarts.
Peter's mother feared his magic, as a lot of it materialized in the form of explosions and fires. She spent years taking him to every person she could think of to destroy or exorcise the magic from him. By the time he was nine, Peter could recite the Latin Rite of Exorcism flawlessly.
"Mum," he said quietly, pulling his poplar wand from the pocket of the trousers she insisted that he wear at home. "See this? Wand. Wizard. If someone starts bothering me, I'll turn him into a toad. And then he won't be bothering me any more. Very simple."
Peter's first wand-the one he had before the Rat Years-was, in my personal fanon, ten and a half inches long, made of poplar wood, and had a dragon heartstring core. According to Sacred Woods and the Lore of Trees, poplar wood was often used to make shields. Magically and symbolically, it's associated with the ability to resist and protect, as well as the strength to endure. It's also connected to the rune Berkano which, according to Jordsvin, is very much connected with women, pregnancy, rulership of the home, and protection of a child.
All of which makes it an appropriate (and ironic) wand for the boy who, in four years, will be the Potters' Secret-Keeper.
"You can't do that in public!"
"It'll be dark, and everyone's eyes will be on the screen, rather than on me," Peter pointed out. "And why are we arguing about something that hasn't happened and that probably isn't going to happen in a million years?"
"We aren't arguing," his mother retorted. "We're...discussing.
Yeah. My parents used to use that line on me, too.
By the way, how are you going to afford this? Films are expensive these days."
"I saved some money over the past four months. Don't worry. I can afford it."
"Real money?" his mother demanded.
Peter sighed. Wizarding money was always going to be play money to her. "Yes, Mum. Real money. Pounds and pence.
The U.K. hasn't changed over to the Euro yet.
I changed Galleons and Sickles for Muggle money at Hogsmeade's branch of Gringotts before I came home for the holidays."
No, there's no Hogsmeade branch of Gringotts mentioned in the books, but the last wizarding village in England would need some means of disseminating money, just in case the inhabitants couldn't get to the London branch of Gringotts.
"Where did you get extra money?"
"Oh, just odd jobs around school," Peter said, vaguely waving his right hand--and his wand--in the general direction of Scotland.
Again, it wasn't actually a lie. Gryffindor-Ravenclaw poker games were a lot of work. Especially since they were played with the marked deck of Ravenclaw prefect Hans-Otto Krueger. Once Peter had memorised the markings, he'd discovered that it took enormous planning and concentration to lose. And he had to lose sometimes. The other players would get suspicious if he didn't.
Besides lying to his mother, Peter's being dishonest in four different ways: he knows that Krueger is cheating, but hasn't called him on it; he's memorized the markings on the cards himself; he's conning the other players by losing at strategic intervals; and he's cheating his friends, both by not telling them about the marked cards and by conning them into thinking that he's playing honestly. And he's managed to justify all this to himself, because it gives him an advantage. I don't think Peter gets an edge on people very often.
"Peter!" His mother clenched her eyes shut. "Don't--don't wave that thing around. It might go off."
"I can't cast any spells with a wand unless I say the incantation," Peter replied patiently, wondering just how often he was going to have to tell her this. "And even then I have to make the correct motion with the wand before I say the incantation. A generic wave isn't going to do a thing."
Of course, there's always wandless magic, like the Animagus spell, or the fires and explosions of Peter's childhood. You don't need an incantation and a wand for those things-just intent and force of will.
His mother shivered. "Don't, Peter. Please. You might not intend to do anything that would hurt anyone, but that doesn't mean something horrible couldn't happen, even so."
Peter shoved his wand into his right trouser pocket. "It's all right," he said gently. "I put it away."
He tried very hard not to see her panicked expression melt into one of desperate relief.
I wouldn't hurt you, Mum, he thought sadly, wishing he could say it. The trouble was that she'd never believe it. She was devout and, in contravention of all of God's laws, he possessed magic. In her view, magic was dangerous at best and hell-spawned at worst. However much she loved him--and he wanted to believe she did, just a little--they were, fundamentally, enemies. She would feed him, clothe him, pray for him...but she would never quite trust him.
Peter has serious trust issues. This is part of the reason why. He's been told since childhood that his magic makes him inherently untrustworthy.
Not unless he gave up his magic and came back to the Muggle world. And a wizarding education had made that impossible. He didn't have the O-Levels to get a job in the Muggle world, never mind the A-Levels.
O-Levels (which in 1984 became General Certificates for Secondary Education or GCSEs) and A-Levels are the Muggle world's equivalent of OWLs and NEWTs. Because Hogwarts doesn't give wizarding children an education in the things that a Muggle child would learn about-literature, maths, sciences, non-magical history, etc.--a wizarding child wouldn't have the educational background to take O-Levels, which were designed to prove certain levels of competency in required subjects. And without O-Levels, you cannot qualify for higher-level classes that will get you A-Levels, which are required for admission to university. In fact, without O-Levels, you would have a difficult time getting any job.
Peter does not have an educational background that he can put down on a normal resume. Hogwarts has both taught and trapped him. He is qualified to live in the wizarding world--but nowhere else.
As far as Muggle Britain was concerned, the education of Peter Joseph Pettigrew had ended when he was eleven.
Albert and Louise Pettigrew gave Peter the middle name of Joseph because he was born on March 19th-Saint Joseph's Day. St Joseph is the patron of many things, including workers-which must have resonated with Peter's working-class parents. However, two of St Joseph's other titles are "Protector of the Holy Family" and "Foster-Father of the Savior."
Think of that in terms of the Potters. Yeah. Bitterly ironic, much?
It was better to pretend that her fear didn't exist. At least, it hurt less.
"So," he said calmly, as if nothing were wrong, "can I go?"
His mother looked at him, glanced at his now-empty right hand, and nodded. As little as possible.
"Thanks, Mum." He leaned up and forward to kiss her, but she pulled back.
"You're too old for that," she said gruffly, and walked away.
Peter hung his head and tried to reassure himself. He'd got what he wanted for months. That was the important thing. He didn't have what he wanted where his mother was concerned, but then, he never had had that, and he never would. He was old enough to know that by now. Hell, he'd known it for years.
Somehow, though, victory still tasted like ashes.
I do think that Louise loves Peter. She just isn't good at expressing it in a way he can recognize. Sadly, Peter doesn't pick up on her love as much as he does her disapproval-and what makes it worse, she disapproves of something in him which is innate and which he cannot banish, no matter how hard he tries. It's not surprising that Peter, who wants love, trust and approval in the worst way, feels that, in his mother's eyes, he'll never, ever be good enough.
***
Five days later, on the 27th of December, 1977,
Which gives the reader the date for the previous section--December 22nd. In my Peter timeline, this story takes place between Being James (1976, pre-Prank) and Pro Bono Publico (April 1978).
at eight o'clock at night, Peter was sitting in the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road, waiting for the film to start.
My friend, Britpicker and beta underlucius told me about going to the pictures in Britain in the 1970s and about the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road. The members of hp_britglish told me when and where Star Wars premiered in Britain, and who provided suitable links. I owe the deepest of thanks to both.
It had taken a certain amount of luck. He freely admitted that. He'd arrived six hours early, and even so, there had been a huge line ahead of him. It was a good thing that he'd told his mother that he probably wouldn't be back until one or two in the morning. It was also a good thing that she wasn't too upset about this; she had merely clucked her tongue over him wasting his time over such foolishness.
If he hadn't known better, he'd have sworn that she was glad to get him out of the house. But that was impossible. She routinely fussed over him too much for that to be the case.
Ambivalence, thy name is Louise Pettigrew.
He was glad that he'd got in fair and square. He'd been prepared to cast a Duplicating Charm on someone's ticket, of course, but he was relieved that he hadn't had to do so. He had a feeling that Professor McGonagall would have been terribly disappointed if he had. Come to that, he had a feeling that Professor McGonagall would be terribly disappointed if she knew that he'd even considered it.
Again, Peter's prepared to do something mildly dishonest to get what he wants. Note, though, that he knows it's wrong--and that when he thinks of McGonagall, whom he both likes and admires, he's ashamed the idea crossed his mind. At seventeen, Peter has a number of moral weaknesses, but he's not lost yet.
He shook his head as if to clear it. Then he focussed his attention on the Art Deco ceiling, all white carved dogwood blossoms and oak leaves,
That's actually what the ceiling of the Dominion theatre looks like.
and the electric lights spangled across the ceiling that had been positioned and decorated to resemble blazing stars.
That's my description of another Art Deco ceiling--that of the Hartford Bushnell. I simply couldn't find any description of the lights in the Dominion, so I described the ones in the Bushnell and crossed my fingers that the error wouldn't be too glaringly obvious. No one ever said anything, so I guess it wasn't.
He glanced approvingly at the red velvet curtain covering the immense screen.
Yes, that's at the Dominion as well.
He surveyed the audience--most, like him, dressed in their best or coolest clothes, some costume-clad.
Minerva McGonagall's face faded from his mind, eventually.
***
The picture had barely started, but Peter had decided that it deserved two thumbs up.
One reason was Luke. Peter was used to heroes in books and film being tall and dark like James and Sirius, and it was an actual pleasure for once to see a hero who was short--well, short-ISH--blue-eyed, and blond.
He'd known what Luke looked like for months, naturally, but somehow he'd never managed to forget that the person in the white tunic outfit was actor Mark Hamill. Now, in the theatre, he was looking at Luke, not Mark, and that made all the difference.
The other reason, of course, was Leia. The girl might have eccentric taste in hairstyles--Peter couldn't decide if she looked as if she were wearing Muggle headphones or breakfast pastry on her head--but who cared?
Peter, being Muggleborn and a hard science fiction fan, has definitely heard of and seen pictures of headphones. Many wizards, of course, wouldn't have a clue what headphones were.
She was gorgeous. And not only dead gorgeous, but quick and clever. Her ship was about to be boarded by the forces of the Empire, and she didn't cry, act ineffectually brave, or wait for anyone else to save her, the way that film heroines almost always did. She just slipped the rebel plans into a small droid that no one would notice, a droid that couldn't even speak a human language and thus couldn't be questioned, and then tried to avoid being caught herself.
It's hard to explain nowadays just how revolutionary Princess Leia was in the 1970s. She was quite literally the first film heroine I'd ever seen who had the intelligence to outsmart the enemy and the will to fight, instead of simpering around on the screen pointlessly, as film heroines so often did. It was actually mentioned by critics that Leia couldn't be easily classified as mother, daughter, true love, femme fatale or whatever--and that she reacted as a male hero would, by fighting back and taking charge. Women responded overwhelmingly to Leia--which seemed to shock half of the studios in Hollywood.
Peter sighed, gazed at the beautiful, brilliant girl on the screen, and, knowing it was totally idiotic--what was the point of falling in love with a fictional character, after all?--he completely surrendered his heart to the dark-haired senator-princess from Alderaan.
You can't fault Peter for his taste. Heck, even Luke had a crush on Leia in the first movie.
***
It was Darth Vader who convinced Peter that the rumours about this film were true. George Lucas had to be a wizard; he'd got too many details about the war with Voldemort correct. A towering Dark Lord with an inhuman face ruthlessly hunting down those who dared oppose him, surrounded by innumerable anonymous followers, their faces hidden behind white masks…a monster casually planning to torture those with valuable information, and to slaughter those who got in his way…This was far more than mere entertainment. This was a warning, packaged and sugar-coated to make it acceptable for the Muggle masses. Merlin, even the names of the Dark Lords sounded similar.
Rowling and Lucas play around with many of the same archetypes. And as I said, Peter's perceptive. It would be unreasonable for him not to notice certain similarities, so he does. (I have to admit that I like the idea of Lucas as a wizard, though.)
The most disturbing part was how compelling Vader was. The Storm Troopers were no more than nameless, faceless cannon fodder, and seemed willing to be so. The officers were ordinary men in greenish-grey. Put them in robes, and they could have been bureaucrats going to work at the Ministry of Magic.
But Vader...he was repugnant. Even the sound of his breathing chilled Peter to the bone, causing him to shrink against the back of his seat.
Behavior that recurs time again when Peter is in the presence of Voldemort.
And yet there was something magnetic about him, demanding and getting both attention and awe. It was like looking at a train wreck. Vader was ghastly, revolting, terrifying--and Peter absolutely could not look away.
There's some duality going on here, with Vader as both an avatar for Voldemort and as the former Anakin Skywalker. And that's interesting, because there are a lot of parallels between Peter and Anakin:
1. Both are, we can deduce, only sons. Shmi never has any other children, and we never hear of Peter having any brothers save for his closest friends.
2. Both appear to have been fatherless for at least some portion of their youth. Anakin never had a father, and at the time of Peter's supposed death, the only parent mentioned is his mother.
3. Both acquired father substitutes who later proved unsatisfactory--Obi-Wan and Dumbledore.
4. Both have the same colouring--fair hair (Anakin's is blond; Peter's is described as "mousy" as a boy, which would seem to be dirty blond/light brown), blue eyes (Anakin's are blue, Peter's are described as "watery," which I take to mean that they both water and are a very light blue) and fair skin.
5. Both came into their power as children. Anakin started building things using Force skill at six. According to JKR, wizarding children begin showing their abilities by the age of ten; in my canon, Peter started manifesting his magical powers at seven.
6. Both had a period during which their abilities were untrained. Anakin had to wait till he was nine to be trained. Peter, depending on when his powers started showing up, would have had to wait a year to five years until he was eleven.
7. Both boys were insanely powerful, and displayed their powers while fairly young. Anakin, at nine, piloted a starship and fought in a space dogfight. Peter, at fifteen, became one of the three youngest wizards in wizarding history to become an Animagus.
8. Both were rebellious by nature. Anakin often fought with his teachers and the Council, while Peter and his group of friends broke and defied the rules as a matter of course.
9. Both had strengths that were overlooked by their teachers and peers.
10. Both fought in war when they were young; Anakin fought a dogfight when he was nine, while Peter--either in the last term at Hogwarts or shortly after leaving Hogwarts--joined an underground resistance movement.
11. Both boys joined "Orders"--Anakin the Order of the Jedi, Peter the Order of the Phoenix.
12. Both fell from grace following a period of intense physical agony. Anakin was burned; Peter's PoA description of why he joined Voldemort hints at torture that Peter can scarcely bear to think about.
13. Both betrayed that which they respected and valued.
14. Both fell as the result of powerful negative emotion--for Anakin, anger; for Peter, fear.
15. Both lost their right hands.
16. Both acquired artificial right hands as substitutes.
17. Both were responsible for the deaths of fellow members of their Order--for Anakin, the massacre at the Jedi temple, and, much later, Obi-Wan; for Peter, James and Lily Potter.
18. Both were responsible for endangering the youths who were the hopes of their respective universes, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter.
19. Both injured these youths with bladed weapons--Anakin cutting off Luke's hand, Peter cutting Harry's arm.
20. Both had hideous Masters--the Emperor and Voldemort.
21. Both argued with their Masters on the subject of unnecessary killing.
22. Both lost these arguments.
23. Both were responsible for the unusual powers possessed by the saviours of their universes. Anakin handed down his Force abilities to his children; Peter's betrayal led to Voldemort's attack on Harry, which imbued Harry with some of Voldemort's powers.
24. Both are pivotal figures in their universes. Without them, their respective sagas wouldn't happen.
I don't think this could all be coincidence. There are too many parallels, universal themes or not.
Lucas did a good job, he thought a trifle defensively. It's not my fault Vader's fascinating.
And deliberately, he steered his mind back to the film, not stopping to remember what Professor Quinn had told his Divination class in third year:
Professor Pythia Quinn. She's an NPC I invented for the Marauder-era RPG I mentioned in the commentary on Sculptor's Block. Before Trelawney was hired in 1980, Quinn taught Divination. "Pythia" was the title of Apollo's oracular priestesses at Delphi. One of the meanings for "Quinn" is “wise.”
that Il Fascinato--"The Fascination"--was another term for the Evil Eye.
***
"Harvest is when I need you the most. Only one more season. This year we'll make enough on the harvest so I'll be able to hire some more hands. And then you can go to the Academy next year."
The quotes from Star Wars (now called Star Wars: A New Hope) come from the revised fourth draft of the script (dated January 15, 1976) from The Journal of the Whills by George Lucas, located here.
Peter emitted a noise somewhere between a snort and a sigh. That sounded painfully familiar--not the words, but the sentiment. His mother had hit him with a variety of it when he'd come home this time.
You'll be eighteen in March. School ends in June, and that'll be that nonsense over with. You'll be needing a job. Now, I think our Mildred's George might be willing to give you a try in his shop--long as you can act normal, mind.
Yeah. Just forget that he was a wizard. Forget everything that he'd been taught for seven years. Forget everything he was naturally good at, and be a shop boy, because that was normal and respectable.
He'd tried to tell his mother that he was working towards getting into the Healer training program at St Mungo's. His mother had found the notion ridiculous. Don't be silly, Peter, she'd said, shaking her head. You know we haven't the money for university, let alone medical school. It's only the rich boys who get to be doctors and surgeons, because they can afford it. And it's not as if you could get a scholarship. They only give those out to geniuses.
There are, of course, scholarships based on need. The problem is, Louise doesn't believe that such scholarships are real--she's certainly never known anyone who got one.
She also told her son flat out that he's not bright enough to get a scholarship. That's got to hurt.
Useless to try to explain to her that a Healing training program wasn't quite the same thing.
And he was bright, even if he wasn't a genius. Becoming an Animagus at fifteen--that made him and James and Sirius the youngest Animagi in four thousand years of wizarding history.
The "four thousand years" is from the Harry Potter Lexicon. Recorded wizarding history goes back four thousand years.
Hell, that was the sort of thing that went down in the history books.
He didn't know how James and Sirius could bear not to tell anyone. How could they not want people fussing about it? How could they not want the praise, the fame?
The problem with being an unregistered Animagus is that no one knows how brilliant you're being. James and Sirius are both excellent students who garner a great deal of praise from teachers, and James is a good athlete on top of that. Peter not only doesn't get that kind of praise, he has to conceal the one thing that could change everyone's opinion about his skill at magic. Fun.
Sometimes he daydreamed about walking into McGonagall's office and just transforming right in front of her. That would show her who wasn't quite in James and Sirius's league magically. He'd heard her say that..a number of times. Professors sometimes forgot that students weren't deaf.
It's canon that she says this once, to a tableful of teachers in a Hogsmeade pub. It's not unreasonable, I think, that McGonagall might have repeated her opinion of the Marauders to other teachers within Hogwarts itself--and that Peter happened to overhear.
It was true that James and Sirius were better at most classes than he was--though he easily outstripped them and Remus in Potions.
Peter's skill at Potions fits canon. Voldemort consistently trusts Peter to take care of him and to make potions restoring his health. Peter, mind you, not Snape. Peter is also the one who makes the resurrection potion, which is said to be very difficult to brew successfully.
I don't see Voldemort trusting his health or his life to an incompetent. He could surely terrify or Imperio Peter into getting him into more able hands, if Peter's skill were inadequate to his needs. Voldemort is, after all, no respecter of persons.
But what McGonagall and the other professors forgot was that James and Sirius had had governesses and tutors teaching them magic since they were three years old.
Since, according to JKR, children of wizarding families either attend Muggle schools or are homeschooled, James and Sirius (and, by extension, Regulus) having governesses and tutors from an early age seemed logical.
He hadn't had that early training. He hadn't learned anything about magic until he was eleven. And still he managed to keep up with--and, in one or two ways, outdo--two people who had been training their powers practically since birth.
In a way, he had to be smarter.
But no one ever saw that. No one even suspected that he was a powerful wizard. Most of the teachers just saw the rather ordinary boy who wasn't the equal of Potter and Black.
I think that Peter would shine in any group other than the one he's in. I doubt if he'd be a leader, but I do think he'd be a star. Unfortunately for him, he's spent seven years in the presence of two supernovas.
And his mother wouldn't be satisfied until he was so ordinary as to be invisible.
He didn't wish his friends any ill--but just once, he wanted to be the extraordinary one, the one in the spotlight.
Which he will be, in only a few years. Alas.
He was tired of being overlooked because James and Sirius made him look ordinary by comparison.
And he was really tired of being held back and forced to be ordinary because that was what his mother wanted him to be.
"It looks like I'm going nowhere," Luke Skywalker said bitterly, his face reflecting disappointment and weariness.
Peter gazed sympathetically at the boy from Tatooine. I know what you mean, Luke, he thought. I know exactly what you mean.
***
Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, might have been fascinating. But Ben Kenobi made an even deeper impression. As Kenobi sat in his hut in the Jundland Wastes and told Luke about himself, Luke's father and the Jedi, Peter stared at the screen and wished with all his heart and soul that he could jump from his seat to Tatooine. I'd join Kenobi in a second. In a nanosecond.
And a lightsabre. Damn. Only about a billion times cooler than a wand. Wands were useful and all, but they didn't have the same cachet as a sword.
I'm branding myself a geek by saying this, but I think that lightsabers are cool. And despite being an alleged adult, I STILL want one. A fully functional one.
But the coolest thing about Kenobi, Luke, Biggs and the Rebels was that they believed they could win.
The Empire was huge. It spanned worlds. It had Storm Troopers and blasters and laser rifles and starships. It had Vader. And still people from different worlds were banding together and fighting the Empire. There were rebel ships and rebel officers. There was some kind of organisation. The Rebellion apparently had backing from people with money, political power and influence; after all, a princess was involved. The Rebellion was winnable.
It was a decided improvement over a handful of idealistic Aurors and Dumbledore.
Peter doesn't know about the Order of the Phoenix yet, of course. However, Dumbledore makes no secret of his opposition to Voldemort during Harry's years at Hogwarts, and I assume that things would have been similar in Peter's time. Likewise, Peter would know that some Aurors, at least, had fought and captured Death Eaters; that surely would have been in the Daily Prophet, which seems fairly easy for Hogwarts students to get.
No one was coming up with new spells for those opposing the Dark Lord. Most of those with money were purebloods, and almost all of them were backing Voldemort. The Ministry's Aurors fought Voldemort while the Ministry of Magic tried to remain semi-neutral.
And there weren't even any battles being won by the good guys in the War with Voldemort. Some Aurors would arrest a handful of Death Eaters, yeah. But that was about it. There was never any decisive military or political reclamation of territory. Meanwhile, Voldemort and his Death Eaters captured Aurors, tortured and killed halfbloods, Muggleborns and Muggles, and terrorised the entire nation.
Peter sensed a certain lack of equity in this.
No one was helping wizarding Britain. Even most British wizards weren't helping wizarding Britain. It was a sad, pathetic little war. And it was all over, really, except for the shouting. Why Voldemort hadn't taken over outright yet, Peter had no idea.
Peter's cursed perceptiveness again. And he's right. The situation, as Rowling describes it-and just as importantly, what she omits-well, it's very bad.
There wasn't anything he could do, either. No Rebel Alliance existed in his world, unless you wanted to count some of the Aurors.
Whom he's counting as rebels because they're bucking the Ministry's policy of neutrality and actually fighting Death Eaters.
And he didn't want to be an Auror. He wanted to Heal. He hated fighting.
He's been bullied most of his life. He would hate fighting, even though he knows how to survive it.
It was ludicrous for a Muggleborn boy who hated fighting to want to strike a blow against Voldemort. It was even more ludicrous for a boy who knew damned well that he wasn't even half as brave as his three best friends.
I think that, thanks to his friends, Peter has "bravery" and "recklessness" badly mixed up. As a result, he sees himself as weaker and more cowardly than he is--and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He had a better chance of moving to Tatooine than he did of helping to defeat Lord Voldemort.
Peter gazed up at kindly, wise old Obi-Wan and tried very hard not to hate Luke Skywalker for having the chance to become a Jedi.
***
"Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
"You've never been to Birmingham, have you?" Peter murmured.
Considering all the putdowns of Birmingham that I'd read about...well, how could I resist that?
Whatever Obi-Wan Kenobi's reservations about Mos Eisley, Peter found it wholly satisfactory. Indeed, after the horrific sight of the charred bodies of Luke's uncle and aunt--which conjured up instant images of contorted corpses lying in the burning rubble of houses and apartments as the Dark Mark blazed phosphorescent green overhead--he needed the relief. Leia, screaming in the grip of agonising torture that was Crucio in all but name, hadn't helped matters.
He might as well admit it. Everyone else in the theatre was watching an American science fiction film. He was watching a documentary.
So much for escapism...
Still, the cantina was perfect--crammed full of weird-looking aliens, just as a rough spaceport bar should be. It wouldn't have taken much to turn it into a wizarding pub, either; if the aliens had been replaced by giants, vampires, hags, the odd ifrit and numerous shady characters trying not to be noticed, it would have looked just like the Hog's Head.
Ifrits are elementals made of fire, according to the Koran. In legend, they're a form of djinn, and are not over and above fond of humans, so I could see one hanging out in a sleazy bar like the Hog's Head.
Neil Gaiman writes of an ifrit cab driver in American Gods.
And the bar brawl won by Kenobi and his lightsabre. That was great. Peter flagged down a passing usherette who was selling ice cream sandwiches and Orangina from a refrigerated tray hanging around her neck, purchased an ice cream sandwich and a carton of Orangina, and lifted the carton to Kenobi in a silent toast.
To the Jedi. May you always kick your enemies' arses that way.
Han Solo, however, was another matter.
Han was cool. Peter had to give him that. He was dark and handsome and brave and dashing. He was, in fact, everything that Luke was not.
Peter resented it. He felt as if he had been tricked. Not that there was anything really wrong with Han being the hero. Peter had no doubt that Han would take insane chances, that he would be a perfect shot with a blaster and that he could bewilder any villain with his wit and sarcasm. Luke didn't have any of those qualities, and probably never would.
Which didn't make Peter feel one bit better.
So he slumped down in his seat, drank his Orangina (which tasted like plastic) and ate his ice cream sandwich (which appeared to be made of cardboard-flavoured ice cream stuck between two soggy tasteless yellow wafers)
Descriptions of the food courtesy of underlucius.
and hated Solo for being so goddamned perfect.
"Parsecs measure distance, not time, you idiot," he muttered at one point. And a bit later, a growled, "Where do you expect a farm boy and a hermit to get ten thousand Galleons or credits or whatever to pay you?"
However, he did have to admire the way that Han took care of the bounty hunter Greedo.
There was something reassuring about a hero who knew that sometimes you just had to shoot first.
In 1977, Han shot first. That's what Peter would have seen, despite all later retcons. Sorry, Lucas.
What may not be so obvious is that Peter's pragmatism and survival instinct are very much at odds with the idealistic hero he longs to be.
***
Alderaan was a shock.
Peter stared in horror as a beam of light transformed into a narrow laser aimed at the princess's small green homeworld and exploded it into mere dust.
Everything...gone.
He stared at the screen, not really seeing what was playing across it. Instead, he envisioned the scene on the planet as the air caught fire, as trees and mountains burst apart, as lakes and oceans boiled, as the cities on Alderaan tore themselves into shreds as the earth beneath them quaked. He could hear the howls of agony from the bloodied, burning bodies of animals, the shrieks of people writhing in pain so hideous that there was no word to describe it.
It was nightmarish. It was unholy.
And the audience was laughing.
Not all of them, mercifully. But enough were. They were laughing and applauding, cheering George Lucas for using an excellent special effect.
I've heard audiences reacting this way to gory special effects. You probably have, too. Harlan Ellison wrote about this phenomenon vividly and vituperatively in his essay, "The Thick Red Moment," which I urge you to read.
Potential Death Eaters, thought Peter dizzily. Only Death Eaters at heart would laugh about an entire world dying.
Keep in mind-from Peter's perspective, he just saw a rebel's entire world slaughtered by the technological equivalent of the Killing Curse...and an avatar of Voldemort was there, watching.
Well, he couldn't do anything about what they were. But he could do something about the laughter.
Silently, he blessed the fact that he was no longer an underage wizard. The Ministry would be much less likely to get upset.
Slowly, he put the empty carton of Orangina down on the floor,
Remember the section where he bought the ice cream sandwich and the Orangina? Two kinds of food, two hands. I had to get rid of something Peter was holding before he could do what he's about to do.
withdrew his wand from his right-hand trouser pocket, and waved it in a complex motion in the direction of the largest collection of braying jackasses.
"Silencio."
The laughter cut off abruptly.
***
The rescue was not exactly what Peter had expected.
Oh, he'd expected Luke and Han to go after Leia. That was a given. What he hadn't expected was that they wouldn't have a plan more well thought out than "Save the princess."
Peter, I think, is quite good at planning--when he's not terrified out of his mind.
He was gratified that the princess was quite able to save herself and them. Lily would do that. She'd grab a blaster and start firing at the enemy, tossing sarcastic barbs at James the whole time.
Indicating, I think, that he likes and admires Lily as herself, and not simply because she's James' girl.
And it was both surprising and amusing to see that the Giant Squid had a cameo.
I couldn't resist that, either.
Ben Kenobi's fate, however, was bewildering.
Peter puzzled over that as Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca tried to make their escape. He couldn't be dead, because there wasn't any body. The cantina scene had clearly shown what happened when people were killed by lightsabres; they were left lying in bleeding, bisected heaps on the floor. He honestly didn't think that Kenobi could have been vaporised; using a means similar to Legilimency, he had told Luke to run...and this had been after he had disappeared.
Logically, Kenobi should have Apparated--or used whatever Jedi power was analogous to Apparating--and ended up on the Millennium Falcon with everyone else. But he didn't seem to be there. And Darth Vader didn't seem to know where the old man had got to, either. It was all very confusing.
He watched the Falcon battle its way to the rebel base and listened to one of the rebel leaders describe the one vulnerability of the Death Star without much reaction or comment.
The argument between Luke and Han disturbed him--mostly because Han made so much sense. Peter wanted to side with Luke. He wanted to agree that the right thing to do was to go off on a kamikaze mission to blow up the Death Star. And it was the right thing to do. And it would probably work here, because it would make a fitting climax to the film.
But in real life...
"What good's a reward if you ain't around to use it? Besides, attacking that battle station ain't my idea of courage. It's more like suicide."
In the darkness of the theatre, Peter blushed hotly. Han's words could have been his own. Looking at Luke's expression of pure disgust, he felt as if he'd been judged and found wanting.
And he did want to be a Jedi. He wanted to help defeat evil. He wanted to be brave and noble and heroic.
He just couldn't help but notice that, in real life, heroes often wound up dead.
And dead looked a lot like losing.
This is, as jazzypom said when I first posted this story, the heart of Peter's reasoning. Peter would have a great deal of trouble with the concept of it being sweet to die for one's country, and I don't think he would or could idealise a person or a group who had done so. Perhaps because of his nature as a Healer, he doesn't romanticise battles or death, the way that I think that James and Sirius would. I think that James and Sirius would talk about courageous attacks and daring rescues and last-minute stands--probably with stars in their eyes. For Peter, war's just killing.
And that's not a bad idea in and of itself. But Voldemort will exploit that idea--and the fear of death (both his own and everyone else's) that lies at the core of it.
***
It all ended perfectly, with Luke evading Vader's TIE Interceptor, heeding the advice of Obi-Wan Kenobi (who, Peter admitted reluctantly, had to be dead after all), unexpectedly getting Han's help, and blowing up the Death Star. And there was even a ceremony honouring Luke and Han at the end.
The lights came on, and, silent and thoughtful, he obediently followed the gleeful, chattering crowd out of the theatre. Half of Muggle London was queued up outside of the Dominion; Peter saw none of them. He was still in the audience hall, applauding Luke and Han as he gazed enraptured at the staggeringly beautiful princess.
He walked for a number of blocks before he found a street empty of people. Lifting his wand in his right hand, he signalled the Knight Bus. Automatically, he boarded the bus and stated his destination, handing over enough Sickles for the ride and for a cup of hot chocolate besides.
He sat down on one of the brass bedsteads, leaned against a curtained window, sipped his hot chocolate and closed his eyes.
Maybe it wasn't impossible. Maybe even someone who wasn't a hero could become one. After all, Han had been just as much for self-preservation and practicality as Peter himself, and yet he'd saved Luke's life…and sent Darth Vader's TIE Interceptor spinning off into deep space as well.
Maybe he could fight Voldemort--even if he wasn't an Auror.
After all, when you came right down to it, being the magically gifted only son of a poor widow was just as mythic as being an orphaned farm boy who was the son of a great warrior.
Fairy tale tropes, again. As I've mentioned, I use them a great deal.
Maybe he could be a Jedi. A secret one, of course, because no one would understand if he tried to tell them. It sounded dumb to say he wanted to be a Jedi Knight when he grew up, especially since he was supposed to be grown up.
But that was what he wanted. To be strong and gutsy and brave. To be one of those who made the universe a better place by their very existence. To be like Ben Kenobi. He wanted it so much that it was almost a physical ache.
He could do it. He knew he could.
And maybe, just maybe, if he tried hard enough and long enough, someday he'd turn around and realise that he'd become the hero that he'd always hungered to be.
Just like Luke Skywalker.
Just like in the pictures.
To some extent--for nothing is ever simple with Peter--this yearning to be a hero is going to push Peter toward joining the Order of the Phoenix...where he really doesn't belong. And because he doesn't have anything approaching a moral or spiritual guide, there's no one to point out Peter's flaws weaknesses, or to teach Peter how to rid himself of them. He's pretty much doomed to failure from the start, building on illusions and dreams that have little grounding in reality.
But despite the fact that Peter's desire will lead him into a situation where he'll turn toward evil, what he wants to become is good.
As I said, nothing with Peter is simple.
A lot of people said that this story was so sad that it nearly made them cry. I didn't understand why till I started doing this. Then I realized that this is like watching the first act of a tragedy. We know how this will end. Peter doesn't. And his hope and desire for heroism are painful.
For those who want to see the other DvD commentaries, here are the links: Stopped, Part 1 and Stopped, Part 2; Escaping Wonderland, Part 1 and Escaping Wonderland, Part 2; Silver; and Sculptor's Block.
***
"A film?"
The first words tell you what the focus of the story is going to be about-namely a movie. What's not so clear is that the story will focus not only on Star Wars, but on certain aspects of film-the creation of illusion, the power of images to stir the imagination, the way films can stir and inspire the audience, and the ability of films to mirror, and affect reality. You may also notice that just as the first words are "A film?" the last words are "Just like in the pictures." The story is framed by those two sentences.
Louise Pettigrew stared incredulously at her seventeen-year-old son.
We now know not only who said the previous sentence, but the identity of the person she's addressing. You also now know the year this is taking place-1977.
"Absolutely not. Why in the world do you have to go to the pictures in London two days after Christmas? You can certainly wait until the film comes to Birmingham."
Birmingham-Peter's hometown. I'm not sure why I settled on it, save that I wanted one of the Marauders to come from an industrial city in England. James was good at flying and at Quidditch, so I envisioned his parents having a place in the country where he could do both to his heart's content, without having to worry about anyone seeing him on a broom. My Remus, like thistlerose's, comes from Melrose, Scotland. Sirius is from London. That seemed to leave Peter.
Birmingham turned out to be a serendipitous choice. There are a great many poor sections; the accent is deplored throughout the U.K.; and I read article after article in which lower-class Birmingham fashions were mocked. And, in Chapter 36 of Jane Austen's Emma, the snobbish Mrs Elton comments, "They came from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr. Weston. One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound..."
Peter, in other words, lives in a Rodney Dangerfield of a city-one that gets no respect.
"Mum," Peter said, striving to sound adult--or as adult as possible for a teenaged Muggleborn wizard who was also a hopeless science fiction fan. "Mum, it's the British premiere. Star Wars came out in America in May. I've waited seven months already. And if I don't go now, I won't have another chance until Easter--which I'm probably going to spend at school studying for N.E.W.T.s. Come on, please?"
Yes, he's begging-and rather effectively. But he's also providing the audience with a timeline, as well as an explanation of why this film absolutely, positively HAS to be seen now. I had to figure that much of the reading audience would have no memory of a time before cable television and DvDs-that they wouldn't realize automatically that if Peter doesn't see Star Wars in the theatres, he has to assume he'll never see it at all.
James and Sirius would never understand this, he thought. Well, they wouldn't understand his passion to see an American film, any more than they'd ever understood his love of science fiction. But they would just chalk that up to "one of Peter's quirks." No, what they really wouldn't grasp would be the fact that he had to beg his mother for permission. Peter had turned seventeen back in March. He was of age...at least as far as the wizarding world was concerned.
As far as Louise Pettigrew was concerned, Peter was eleven, going on ten.
Not only doesn't she think that he's grown up since entering Hogwarts, she actually feels he's backslid a bit.
"And just how are you going to get from Birmingham to London and back?" she demanded. "We haven't a car, trains are expensive, and you are not going by broomstick." She shuddered at the last word.
Peter, who had been dealing with his mother's conviction that magic was evil, demonic and most likely the creation of Hell since his own powers manifested when he was seven, mentally translated "broomstick" to "any means of wizarding transportation which uses magic in a way impossible to ignore." So Apparating was out...even though he had his licence. And he couldn't use Floo Powder. Quite apart from his mother's prejudices, she lived in a Muggle neighbourhood. The Pettigrew flat not only wasn't hooked up to the Floo Network, it didn't even have a fireplace.
I couldn't resist taking a dig at the Floo Network. It's always struck me as a touch impractical. After all, not every house and flat have a hearth, especially nowadays, when so many homes use forms of heating and cooking that don't include wood.
You'll notice Peter doesn't think in terms of a broom. That's because he doesn't have one. Brooms, in the Potterverse, are very expensive. Even if Peter liked flying (which he doesn't), he's from a family that would best be described as "working poor." He can't afford a broom.
Fortunately, he already had an alternate form of transportation in mind.
"I'll take the Knight Bus." He anticipated her next question. "It's an omnibus for wizards. Perfectly ordinary bus. Well, except that it's purple. It drives on normal roads and everything."
It also Apparated from destination to destination all over the United Kingdom. Not that he was going to mention that particular detail. It wasn't strictly honest, but it wasn't lying...exactly. One of the most important things to remember in conversations with his mother was knowing what bits to leave out.
He's acting very much like a normal teenager trying to get what he wants. Unfortunately, this behavior also underlines a flaw in Peter's personality-his skill at lies of omission.
His mother frowned at the word "wizards" but breathed a sigh of relief at the words "ordinary" and "normal."
"Well, the Knight Bus sounds all right," she said reluctantly. "What's this film about, then?"
Nothing much, Mum. Just the struggle of a handful of ordinary people to defeat an immensely powerful and insanely evil Dark Lord and his equally evil followers. Nothing that has anything to do with the world I live in.
Peter's perceptive enough to have already drawn a parallel or two between the wizarding world and Star Wars. Obviously, he's found a way to find out details about the film-even at Hogwarts.
"Oh, lots of things," he replied aloud. "There's this Galactic Empire, and space ships, and a huge space station, and planets in a distant galaxy, and robots, and..."
As he had expected, his mother motioned him to be silent. Peter privately bet himself that she would let him go now. She loathed science fiction as a waste of time, but at the same time, she was forced to approve of it--especially the "hard" science fiction that Peter loved--because it involved math, science and technology. Muggle things, far removed from the realm of magic.
In Peter's topsy-turvy world, fantasy-the realm of wizards, magic, elves and goblins-is reality. Technology and its inventions are the fantasy.
He knew that she hoped ever more fiercely, as the years wore on, that his love for science fiction would drag him back to the real world, the Muggle world. Magic, she conceded, was real, in the sense that it existed, but it was not real in the way that electricity and typewriters and vaccinations were real. Magic--foolish, trivial, seductive and unholy--was a distraction from reality. Decent people did not crave such a thing, much less practice it.
He continued to gaze at her, trying to do the pleading-puppy-dog-eyed expression that Sirius had down to an art, the lucky bugger.
It's fanon, not canon, that Sirius can do that. But I have to admit that I like the idea.
"Well..." His mother considered. "Are your friends going?"
An innocuous-sounding question, but Peter wasn't fooled. No question that his mother asked about wizards or the wizarding world was ever innocuous, no matter how harmless it sounded. Fortunately, he could answer this honestly.
"No, they're not. Sci-fi isn't really their kind of thing."
His mother relaxed at the words. Peter schooled his face to make it appear as if he hadn't noticed. Inwardly, however, he was seething. Why the hell did she have to be so relieved that he wasn't hanging around other wizards for once? James, Remus and Sirius were his friends, damn it. Most parents considered friends a good thing.
Despite his anger, Peter does two things here to get what he wants: he conceals his rage, and he forces himself to stay calm in order to keep control of the argument. Again, it's something that a teenager (or a person of any age, really) could do to gain something fiercely desired--but at the same time, it's manipulative. And it indicates another potentially dangerous flaw.
"So who are you going with?"
Peter blinked. "No one. I'm going by myself."
She surprised him into honesty with that question.
"Oh, no, you're not!" His mother stared at Peter sternly. "I don't want you going to the pictures all alone."
"Why NOT?" Peter demanded, his voice escalating despite his best efforts. Merlin's manky balls, why does everything have to be so difficult with her?
"Merlin's manky balls" is an expression that thistlerose's Sirius used to use quite a bit. If you asked my Peter, he'd say that he picked up the phrase from Sirius.
Louise Pettigrew fidgeted. "Well, someone could sit down next to you and start...bothering you. It could be unpleasant."
Bother, bother, bother, bother...okay, I'm sorry.
Louise Pettigrew is genuinely worried about her son. She sees him as vulnerable in a way that she can't quite articulate, and she fears for his safety as a member of the magical world. She's afraid he'll be hurt or damaged in some repugnant, unthinkable way...and the hell of it is, she's right. Unfortunately, her concern comes across as baseless and overprotective--exactly what a seventeen-year-old boy doesn't want to deal with.
Peter briefly thought of telling her that he really didn't think he'd get felt up at the pictures by anyone, male or female, and that short plump blond boys of seventeen didn't look, in most peoples' opinions, like sex gods. Then he sighed. It wouldn't do him any good to speak bluntly. She'd be horrified that he even knew the words for what she was talking about, and she would surely view it as a sign of loathsome spiritual corruption. Then he'd spend the rest of Christmas vacation being dragged to various quacks and charlatans for exorcism. And there was no way he was going through that again. He'd had four years of that prior to Hogwarts.
Peter's mother feared his magic, as a lot of it materialized in the form of explosions and fires. She spent years taking him to every person she could think of to destroy or exorcise the magic from him. By the time he was nine, Peter could recite the Latin Rite of Exorcism flawlessly.
"Mum," he said quietly, pulling his poplar wand from the pocket of the trousers she insisted that he wear at home. "See this? Wand. Wizard. If someone starts bothering me, I'll turn him into a toad. And then he won't be bothering me any more. Very simple."
Peter's first wand-the one he had before the Rat Years-was, in my personal fanon, ten and a half inches long, made of poplar wood, and had a dragon heartstring core. According to Sacred Woods and the Lore of Trees, poplar wood was often used to make shields. Magically and symbolically, it's associated with the ability to resist and protect, as well as the strength to endure. It's also connected to the rune Berkano which, according to Jordsvin, is very much connected with women, pregnancy, rulership of the home, and protection of a child.
All of which makes it an appropriate (and ironic) wand for the boy who, in four years, will be the Potters' Secret-Keeper.
"You can't do that in public!"
"It'll be dark, and everyone's eyes will be on the screen, rather than on me," Peter pointed out. "And why are we arguing about something that hasn't happened and that probably isn't going to happen in a million years?"
"We aren't arguing," his mother retorted. "We're...discussing.
Yeah. My parents used to use that line on me, too.
By the way, how are you going to afford this? Films are expensive these days."
"I saved some money over the past four months. Don't worry. I can afford it."
"Real money?" his mother demanded.
Peter sighed. Wizarding money was always going to be play money to her. "Yes, Mum. Real money. Pounds and pence.
The U.K. hasn't changed over to the Euro yet.
I changed Galleons and Sickles for Muggle money at Hogsmeade's branch of Gringotts before I came home for the holidays."
No, there's no Hogsmeade branch of Gringotts mentioned in the books, but the last wizarding village in England would need some means of disseminating money, just in case the inhabitants couldn't get to the London branch of Gringotts.
"Where did you get extra money?"
"Oh, just odd jobs around school," Peter said, vaguely waving his right hand--and his wand--in the general direction of Scotland.
Again, it wasn't actually a lie. Gryffindor-Ravenclaw poker games were a lot of work. Especially since they were played with the marked deck of Ravenclaw prefect Hans-Otto Krueger. Once Peter had memorised the markings, he'd discovered that it took enormous planning and concentration to lose. And he had to lose sometimes. The other players would get suspicious if he didn't.
Besides lying to his mother, Peter's being dishonest in four different ways: he knows that Krueger is cheating, but hasn't called him on it; he's memorized the markings on the cards himself; he's conning the other players by losing at strategic intervals; and he's cheating his friends, both by not telling them about the marked cards and by conning them into thinking that he's playing honestly. And he's managed to justify all this to himself, because it gives him an advantage. I don't think Peter gets an edge on people very often.
"Peter!" His mother clenched her eyes shut. "Don't--don't wave that thing around. It might go off."
"I can't cast any spells with a wand unless I say the incantation," Peter replied patiently, wondering just how often he was going to have to tell her this. "And even then I have to make the correct motion with the wand before I say the incantation. A generic wave isn't going to do a thing."
Of course, there's always wandless magic, like the Animagus spell, or the fires and explosions of Peter's childhood. You don't need an incantation and a wand for those things-just intent and force of will.
His mother shivered. "Don't, Peter. Please. You might not intend to do anything that would hurt anyone, but that doesn't mean something horrible couldn't happen, even so."
Peter shoved his wand into his right trouser pocket. "It's all right," he said gently. "I put it away."
He tried very hard not to see her panicked expression melt into one of desperate relief.
I wouldn't hurt you, Mum, he thought sadly, wishing he could say it. The trouble was that she'd never believe it. She was devout and, in contravention of all of God's laws, he possessed magic. In her view, magic was dangerous at best and hell-spawned at worst. However much she loved him--and he wanted to believe she did, just a little--they were, fundamentally, enemies. She would feed him, clothe him, pray for him...but she would never quite trust him.
Peter has serious trust issues. This is part of the reason why. He's been told since childhood that his magic makes him inherently untrustworthy.
Not unless he gave up his magic and came back to the Muggle world. And a wizarding education had made that impossible. He didn't have the O-Levels to get a job in the Muggle world, never mind the A-Levels.
O-Levels (which in 1984 became General Certificates for Secondary Education or GCSEs) and A-Levels are the Muggle world's equivalent of OWLs and NEWTs. Because Hogwarts doesn't give wizarding children an education in the things that a Muggle child would learn about-literature, maths, sciences, non-magical history, etc.--a wizarding child wouldn't have the educational background to take O-Levels, which were designed to prove certain levels of competency in required subjects. And without O-Levels, you cannot qualify for higher-level classes that will get you A-Levels, which are required for admission to university. In fact, without O-Levels, you would have a difficult time getting any job.
Peter does not have an educational background that he can put down on a normal resume. Hogwarts has both taught and trapped him. He is qualified to live in the wizarding world--but nowhere else.
As far as Muggle Britain was concerned, the education of Peter Joseph Pettigrew had ended when he was eleven.
Albert and Louise Pettigrew gave Peter the middle name of Joseph because he was born on March 19th-Saint Joseph's Day. St Joseph is the patron of many things, including workers-which must have resonated with Peter's working-class parents. However, two of St Joseph's other titles are "Protector of the Holy Family" and "Foster-Father of the Savior."
Think of that in terms of the Potters. Yeah. Bitterly ironic, much?
It was better to pretend that her fear didn't exist. At least, it hurt less.
"So," he said calmly, as if nothing were wrong, "can I go?"
His mother looked at him, glanced at his now-empty right hand, and nodded. As little as possible.
"Thanks, Mum." He leaned up and forward to kiss her, but she pulled back.
"You're too old for that," she said gruffly, and walked away.
Peter hung his head and tried to reassure himself. He'd got what he wanted for months. That was the important thing. He didn't have what he wanted where his mother was concerned, but then, he never had had that, and he never would. He was old enough to know that by now. Hell, he'd known it for years.
Somehow, though, victory still tasted like ashes.
I do think that Louise loves Peter. She just isn't good at expressing it in a way he can recognize. Sadly, Peter doesn't pick up on her love as much as he does her disapproval-and what makes it worse, she disapproves of something in him which is innate and which he cannot banish, no matter how hard he tries. It's not surprising that Peter, who wants love, trust and approval in the worst way, feels that, in his mother's eyes, he'll never, ever be good enough.
***
Five days later, on the 27th of December, 1977,
Which gives the reader the date for the previous section--December 22nd. In my Peter timeline, this story takes place between Being James (1976, pre-Prank) and Pro Bono Publico (April 1978).
at eight o'clock at night, Peter was sitting in the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road, waiting for the film to start.
My friend, Britpicker and beta underlucius told me about going to the pictures in Britain in the 1970s and about the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road. The members of hp_britglish told me when and where Star Wars premiered in Britain, and who provided suitable links. I owe the deepest of thanks to both.
It had taken a certain amount of luck. He freely admitted that. He'd arrived six hours early, and even so, there had been a huge line ahead of him. It was a good thing that he'd told his mother that he probably wouldn't be back until one or two in the morning. It was also a good thing that she wasn't too upset about this; she had merely clucked her tongue over him wasting his time over such foolishness.
If he hadn't known better, he'd have sworn that she was glad to get him out of the house. But that was impossible. She routinely fussed over him too much for that to be the case.
Ambivalence, thy name is Louise Pettigrew.
He was glad that he'd got in fair and square. He'd been prepared to cast a Duplicating Charm on someone's ticket, of course, but he was relieved that he hadn't had to do so. He had a feeling that Professor McGonagall would have been terribly disappointed if he had. Come to that, he had a feeling that Professor McGonagall would be terribly disappointed if she knew that he'd even considered it.
Again, Peter's prepared to do something mildly dishonest to get what he wants. Note, though, that he knows it's wrong--and that when he thinks of McGonagall, whom he both likes and admires, he's ashamed the idea crossed his mind. At seventeen, Peter has a number of moral weaknesses, but he's not lost yet.
He shook his head as if to clear it. Then he focussed his attention on the Art Deco ceiling, all white carved dogwood blossoms and oak leaves,
That's actually what the ceiling of the Dominion theatre looks like.
and the electric lights spangled across the ceiling that had been positioned and decorated to resemble blazing stars.
That's my description of another Art Deco ceiling--that of the Hartford Bushnell. I simply couldn't find any description of the lights in the Dominion, so I described the ones in the Bushnell and crossed my fingers that the error wouldn't be too glaringly obvious. No one ever said anything, so I guess it wasn't.
He glanced approvingly at the red velvet curtain covering the immense screen.
Yes, that's at the Dominion as well.
He surveyed the audience--most, like him, dressed in their best or coolest clothes, some costume-clad.
Minerva McGonagall's face faded from his mind, eventually.
***
The picture had barely started, but Peter had decided that it deserved two thumbs up.
One reason was Luke. Peter was used to heroes in books and film being tall and dark like James and Sirius, and it was an actual pleasure for once to see a hero who was short--well, short-ISH--blue-eyed, and blond.
He'd known what Luke looked like for months, naturally, but somehow he'd never managed to forget that the person in the white tunic outfit was actor Mark Hamill. Now, in the theatre, he was looking at Luke, not Mark, and that made all the difference.
The other reason, of course, was Leia. The girl might have eccentric taste in hairstyles--Peter couldn't decide if she looked as if she were wearing Muggle headphones or breakfast pastry on her head--but who cared?
Peter, being Muggleborn and a hard science fiction fan, has definitely heard of and seen pictures of headphones. Many wizards, of course, wouldn't have a clue what headphones were.
She was gorgeous. And not only dead gorgeous, but quick and clever. Her ship was about to be boarded by the forces of the Empire, and she didn't cry, act ineffectually brave, or wait for anyone else to save her, the way that film heroines almost always did. She just slipped the rebel plans into a small droid that no one would notice, a droid that couldn't even speak a human language and thus couldn't be questioned, and then tried to avoid being caught herself.
It's hard to explain nowadays just how revolutionary Princess Leia was in the 1970s. She was quite literally the first film heroine I'd ever seen who had the intelligence to outsmart the enemy and the will to fight, instead of simpering around on the screen pointlessly, as film heroines so often did. It was actually mentioned by critics that Leia couldn't be easily classified as mother, daughter, true love, femme fatale or whatever--and that she reacted as a male hero would, by fighting back and taking charge. Women responded overwhelmingly to Leia--which seemed to shock half of the studios in Hollywood.
Peter sighed, gazed at the beautiful, brilliant girl on the screen, and, knowing it was totally idiotic--what was the point of falling in love with a fictional character, after all?--he completely surrendered his heart to the dark-haired senator-princess from Alderaan.
You can't fault Peter for his taste. Heck, even Luke had a crush on Leia in the first movie.
***
It was Darth Vader who convinced Peter that the rumours about this film were true. George Lucas had to be a wizard; he'd got too many details about the war with Voldemort correct. A towering Dark Lord with an inhuman face ruthlessly hunting down those who dared oppose him, surrounded by innumerable anonymous followers, their faces hidden behind white masks…a monster casually planning to torture those with valuable information, and to slaughter those who got in his way…This was far more than mere entertainment. This was a warning, packaged and sugar-coated to make it acceptable for the Muggle masses. Merlin, even the names of the Dark Lords sounded similar.
Rowling and Lucas play around with many of the same archetypes. And as I said, Peter's perceptive. It would be unreasonable for him not to notice certain similarities, so he does. (I have to admit that I like the idea of Lucas as a wizard, though.)
The most disturbing part was how compelling Vader was. The Storm Troopers were no more than nameless, faceless cannon fodder, and seemed willing to be so. The officers were ordinary men in greenish-grey. Put them in robes, and they could have been bureaucrats going to work at the Ministry of Magic.
But Vader...he was repugnant. Even the sound of his breathing chilled Peter to the bone, causing him to shrink against the back of his seat.
Behavior that recurs time again when Peter is in the presence of Voldemort.
And yet there was something magnetic about him, demanding and getting both attention and awe. It was like looking at a train wreck. Vader was ghastly, revolting, terrifying--and Peter absolutely could not look away.
There's some duality going on here, with Vader as both an avatar for Voldemort and as the former Anakin Skywalker. And that's interesting, because there are a lot of parallels between Peter and Anakin:
1. Both are, we can deduce, only sons. Shmi never has any other children, and we never hear of Peter having any brothers save for his closest friends.
2. Both appear to have been fatherless for at least some portion of their youth. Anakin never had a father, and at the time of Peter's supposed death, the only parent mentioned is his mother.
3. Both acquired father substitutes who later proved unsatisfactory--Obi-Wan and Dumbledore.
4. Both have the same colouring--fair hair (Anakin's is blond; Peter's is described as "mousy" as a boy, which would seem to be dirty blond/light brown), blue eyes (Anakin's are blue, Peter's are described as "watery," which I take to mean that they both water and are a very light blue) and fair skin.
5. Both came into their power as children. Anakin started building things using Force skill at six. According to JKR, wizarding children begin showing their abilities by the age of ten; in my canon, Peter started manifesting his magical powers at seven.
6. Both had a period during which their abilities were untrained. Anakin had to wait till he was nine to be trained. Peter, depending on when his powers started showing up, would have had to wait a year to five years until he was eleven.
7. Both boys were insanely powerful, and displayed their powers while fairly young. Anakin, at nine, piloted a starship and fought in a space dogfight. Peter, at fifteen, became one of the three youngest wizards in wizarding history to become an Animagus.
8. Both were rebellious by nature. Anakin often fought with his teachers and the Council, while Peter and his group of friends broke and defied the rules as a matter of course.
9. Both had strengths that were overlooked by their teachers and peers.
10. Both fought in war when they were young; Anakin fought a dogfight when he was nine, while Peter--either in the last term at Hogwarts or shortly after leaving Hogwarts--joined an underground resistance movement.
11. Both boys joined "Orders"--Anakin the Order of the Jedi, Peter the Order of the Phoenix.
12. Both fell from grace following a period of intense physical agony. Anakin was burned; Peter's PoA description of why he joined Voldemort hints at torture that Peter can scarcely bear to think about.
13. Both betrayed that which they respected and valued.
14. Both fell as the result of powerful negative emotion--for Anakin, anger; for Peter, fear.
15. Both lost their right hands.
16. Both acquired artificial right hands as substitutes.
17. Both were responsible for the deaths of fellow members of their Order--for Anakin, the massacre at the Jedi temple, and, much later, Obi-Wan; for Peter, James and Lily Potter.
18. Both were responsible for endangering the youths who were the hopes of their respective universes, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter.
19. Both injured these youths with bladed weapons--Anakin cutting off Luke's hand, Peter cutting Harry's arm.
20. Both had hideous Masters--the Emperor and Voldemort.
21. Both argued with their Masters on the subject of unnecessary killing.
22. Both lost these arguments.
23. Both were responsible for the unusual powers possessed by the saviours of their universes. Anakin handed down his Force abilities to his children; Peter's betrayal led to Voldemort's attack on Harry, which imbued Harry with some of Voldemort's powers.
24. Both are pivotal figures in their universes. Without them, their respective sagas wouldn't happen.
I don't think this could all be coincidence. There are too many parallels, universal themes or not.
Lucas did a good job, he thought a trifle defensively. It's not my fault Vader's fascinating.
And deliberately, he steered his mind back to the film, not stopping to remember what Professor Quinn had told his Divination class in third year:
Professor Pythia Quinn. She's an NPC I invented for the Marauder-era RPG I mentioned in the commentary on Sculptor's Block. Before Trelawney was hired in 1980, Quinn taught Divination. "Pythia" was the title of Apollo's oracular priestesses at Delphi. One of the meanings for "Quinn" is “wise.”
that Il Fascinato--"The Fascination"--was another term for the Evil Eye.
***
"Harvest is when I need you the most. Only one more season. This year we'll make enough on the harvest so I'll be able to hire some more hands. And then you can go to the Academy next year."
The quotes from Star Wars (now called Star Wars: A New Hope) come from the revised fourth draft of the script (dated January 15, 1976) from The Journal of the Whills by George Lucas, located here.
Peter emitted a noise somewhere between a snort and a sigh. That sounded painfully familiar--not the words, but the sentiment. His mother had hit him with a variety of it when he'd come home this time.
You'll be eighteen in March. School ends in June, and that'll be that nonsense over with. You'll be needing a job. Now, I think our Mildred's George might be willing to give you a try in his shop--long as you can act normal, mind.
Yeah. Just forget that he was a wizard. Forget everything that he'd been taught for seven years. Forget everything he was naturally good at, and be a shop boy, because that was normal and respectable.
He'd tried to tell his mother that he was working towards getting into the Healer training program at St Mungo's. His mother had found the notion ridiculous. Don't be silly, Peter, she'd said, shaking her head. You know we haven't the money for university, let alone medical school. It's only the rich boys who get to be doctors and surgeons, because they can afford it. And it's not as if you could get a scholarship. They only give those out to geniuses.
There are, of course, scholarships based on need. The problem is, Louise doesn't believe that such scholarships are real--she's certainly never known anyone who got one.
She also told her son flat out that he's not bright enough to get a scholarship. That's got to hurt.
Useless to try to explain to her that a Healing training program wasn't quite the same thing.
And he was bright, even if he wasn't a genius. Becoming an Animagus at fifteen--that made him and James and Sirius the youngest Animagi in four thousand years of wizarding history.
The "four thousand years" is from the Harry Potter Lexicon. Recorded wizarding history goes back four thousand years.
Hell, that was the sort of thing that went down in the history books.
He didn't know how James and Sirius could bear not to tell anyone. How could they not want people fussing about it? How could they not want the praise, the fame?
The problem with being an unregistered Animagus is that no one knows how brilliant you're being. James and Sirius are both excellent students who garner a great deal of praise from teachers, and James is a good athlete on top of that. Peter not only doesn't get that kind of praise, he has to conceal the one thing that could change everyone's opinion about his skill at magic. Fun.
Sometimes he daydreamed about walking into McGonagall's office and just transforming right in front of her. That would show her who wasn't quite in James and Sirius's league magically. He'd heard her say that..a number of times. Professors sometimes forgot that students weren't deaf.
It's canon that she says this once, to a tableful of teachers in a Hogsmeade pub. It's not unreasonable, I think, that McGonagall might have repeated her opinion of the Marauders to other teachers within Hogwarts itself--and that Peter happened to overhear.
It was true that James and Sirius were better at most classes than he was--though he easily outstripped them and Remus in Potions.
Peter's skill at Potions fits canon. Voldemort consistently trusts Peter to take care of him and to make potions restoring his health. Peter, mind you, not Snape. Peter is also the one who makes the resurrection potion, which is said to be very difficult to brew successfully.
I don't see Voldemort trusting his health or his life to an incompetent. He could surely terrify or Imperio Peter into getting him into more able hands, if Peter's skill were inadequate to his needs. Voldemort is, after all, no respecter of persons.
But what McGonagall and the other professors forgot was that James and Sirius had had governesses and tutors teaching them magic since they were three years old.
Since, according to JKR, children of wizarding families either attend Muggle schools or are homeschooled, James and Sirius (and, by extension, Regulus) having governesses and tutors from an early age seemed logical.
He hadn't had that early training. He hadn't learned anything about magic until he was eleven. And still he managed to keep up with--and, in one or two ways, outdo--two people who had been training their powers practically since birth.
In a way, he had to be smarter.
But no one ever saw that. No one even suspected that he was a powerful wizard. Most of the teachers just saw the rather ordinary boy who wasn't the equal of Potter and Black.
I think that Peter would shine in any group other than the one he's in. I doubt if he'd be a leader, but I do think he'd be a star. Unfortunately for him, he's spent seven years in the presence of two supernovas.
And his mother wouldn't be satisfied until he was so ordinary as to be invisible.
He didn't wish his friends any ill--but just once, he wanted to be the extraordinary one, the one in the spotlight.
Which he will be, in only a few years. Alas.
He was tired of being overlooked because James and Sirius made him look ordinary by comparison.
And he was really tired of being held back and forced to be ordinary because that was what his mother wanted him to be.
"It looks like I'm going nowhere," Luke Skywalker said bitterly, his face reflecting disappointment and weariness.
Peter gazed sympathetically at the boy from Tatooine. I know what you mean, Luke, he thought. I know exactly what you mean.
***
Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, might have been fascinating. But Ben Kenobi made an even deeper impression. As Kenobi sat in his hut in the Jundland Wastes and told Luke about himself, Luke's father and the Jedi, Peter stared at the screen and wished with all his heart and soul that he could jump from his seat to Tatooine. I'd join Kenobi in a second. In a nanosecond.
And a lightsabre. Damn. Only about a billion times cooler than a wand. Wands were useful and all, but they didn't have the same cachet as a sword.
I'm branding myself a geek by saying this, but I think that lightsabers are cool. And despite being an alleged adult, I STILL want one. A fully functional one.
But the coolest thing about Kenobi, Luke, Biggs and the Rebels was that they believed they could win.
The Empire was huge. It spanned worlds. It had Storm Troopers and blasters and laser rifles and starships. It had Vader. And still people from different worlds were banding together and fighting the Empire. There were rebel ships and rebel officers. There was some kind of organisation. The Rebellion apparently had backing from people with money, political power and influence; after all, a princess was involved. The Rebellion was winnable.
It was a decided improvement over a handful of idealistic Aurors and Dumbledore.
Peter doesn't know about the Order of the Phoenix yet, of course. However, Dumbledore makes no secret of his opposition to Voldemort during Harry's years at Hogwarts, and I assume that things would have been similar in Peter's time. Likewise, Peter would know that some Aurors, at least, had fought and captured Death Eaters; that surely would have been in the Daily Prophet, which seems fairly easy for Hogwarts students to get.
No one was coming up with new spells for those opposing the Dark Lord. Most of those with money were purebloods, and almost all of them were backing Voldemort. The Ministry's Aurors fought Voldemort while the Ministry of Magic tried to remain semi-neutral.
And there weren't even any battles being won by the good guys in the War with Voldemort. Some Aurors would arrest a handful of Death Eaters, yeah. But that was about it. There was never any decisive military or political reclamation of territory. Meanwhile, Voldemort and his Death Eaters captured Aurors, tortured and killed halfbloods, Muggleborns and Muggles, and terrorised the entire nation.
Peter sensed a certain lack of equity in this.
No one was helping wizarding Britain. Even most British wizards weren't helping wizarding Britain. It was a sad, pathetic little war. And it was all over, really, except for the shouting. Why Voldemort hadn't taken over outright yet, Peter had no idea.
Peter's cursed perceptiveness again. And he's right. The situation, as Rowling describes it-and just as importantly, what she omits-well, it's very bad.
There wasn't anything he could do, either. No Rebel Alliance existed in his world, unless you wanted to count some of the Aurors.
Whom he's counting as rebels because they're bucking the Ministry's policy of neutrality and actually fighting Death Eaters.
And he didn't want to be an Auror. He wanted to Heal. He hated fighting.
He's been bullied most of his life. He would hate fighting, even though he knows how to survive it.
It was ludicrous for a Muggleborn boy who hated fighting to want to strike a blow against Voldemort. It was even more ludicrous for a boy who knew damned well that he wasn't even half as brave as his three best friends.
I think that, thanks to his friends, Peter has "bravery" and "recklessness" badly mixed up. As a result, he sees himself as weaker and more cowardly than he is--and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He had a better chance of moving to Tatooine than he did of helping to defeat Lord Voldemort.
Peter gazed up at kindly, wise old Obi-Wan and tried very hard not to hate Luke Skywalker for having the chance to become a Jedi.
***
"Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
"You've never been to Birmingham, have you?" Peter murmured.
Considering all the putdowns of Birmingham that I'd read about...well, how could I resist that?
Whatever Obi-Wan Kenobi's reservations about Mos Eisley, Peter found it wholly satisfactory. Indeed, after the horrific sight of the charred bodies of Luke's uncle and aunt--which conjured up instant images of contorted corpses lying in the burning rubble of houses and apartments as the Dark Mark blazed phosphorescent green overhead--he needed the relief. Leia, screaming in the grip of agonising torture that was Crucio in all but name, hadn't helped matters.
He might as well admit it. Everyone else in the theatre was watching an American science fiction film. He was watching a documentary.
So much for escapism...
Still, the cantina was perfect--crammed full of weird-looking aliens, just as a rough spaceport bar should be. It wouldn't have taken much to turn it into a wizarding pub, either; if the aliens had been replaced by giants, vampires, hags, the odd ifrit and numerous shady characters trying not to be noticed, it would have looked just like the Hog's Head.
Ifrits are elementals made of fire, according to the Koran. In legend, they're a form of djinn, and are not over and above fond of humans, so I could see one hanging out in a sleazy bar like the Hog's Head.
Neil Gaiman writes of an ifrit cab driver in American Gods.
And the bar brawl won by Kenobi and his lightsabre. That was great. Peter flagged down a passing usherette who was selling ice cream sandwiches and Orangina from a refrigerated tray hanging around her neck, purchased an ice cream sandwich and a carton of Orangina, and lifted the carton to Kenobi in a silent toast.
To the Jedi. May you always kick your enemies' arses that way.
Han Solo, however, was another matter.
Han was cool. Peter had to give him that. He was dark and handsome and brave and dashing. He was, in fact, everything that Luke was not.
Peter resented it. He felt as if he had been tricked. Not that there was anything really wrong with Han being the hero. Peter had no doubt that Han would take insane chances, that he would be a perfect shot with a blaster and that he could bewilder any villain with his wit and sarcasm. Luke didn't have any of those qualities, and probably never would.
Which didn't make Peter feel one bit better.
So he slumped down in his seat, drank his Orangina (which tasted like plastic) and ate his ice cream sandwich (which appeared to be made of cardboard-flavoured ice cream stuck between two soggy tasteless yellow wafers)
Descriptions of the food courtesy of underlucius.
and hated Solo for being so goddamned perfect.
"Parsecs measure distance, not time, you idiot," he muttered at one point. And a bit later, a growled, "Where do you expect a farm boy and a hermit to get ten thousand Galleons or credits or whatever to pay you?"
However, he did have to admire the way that Han took care of the bounty hunter Greedo.
There was something reassuring about a hero who knew that sometimes you just had to shoot first.
In 1977, Han shot first. That's what Peter would have seen, despite all later retcons. Sorry, Lucas.
What may not be so obvious is that Peter's pragmatism and survival instinct are very much at odds with the idealistic hero he longs to be.
***
Alderaan was a shock.
Peter stared in horror as a beam of light transformed into a narrow laser aimed at the princess's small green homeworld and exploded it into mere dust.
Everything...gone.
He stared at the screen, not really seeing what was playing across it. Instead, he envisioned the scene on the planet as the air caught fire, as trees and mountains burst apart, as lakes and oceans boiled, as the cities on Alderaan tore themselves into shreds as the earth beneath them quaked. He could hear the howls of agony from the bloodied, burning bodies of animals, the shrieks of people writhing in pain so hideous that there was no word to describe it.
It was nightmarish. It was unholy.
And the audience was laughing.
Not all of them, mercifully. But enough were. They were laughing and applauding, cheering George Lucas for using an excellent special effect.
I've heard audiences reacting this way to gory special effects. You probably have, too. Harlan Ellison wrote about this phenomenon vividly and vituperatively in his essay, "The Thick Red Moment," which I urge you to read.
Potential Death Eaters, thought Peter dizzily. Only Death Eaters at heart would laugh about an entire world dying.
Keep in mind-from Peter's perspective, he just saw a rebel's entire world slaughtered by the technological equivalent of the Killing Curse...and an avatar of Voldemort was there, watching.
Well, he couldn't do anything about what they were. But he could do something about the laughter.
Silently, he blessed the fact that he was no longer an underage wizard. The Ministry would be much less likely to get upset.
Slowly, he put the empty carton of Orangina down on the floor,
Remember the section where he bought the ice cream sandwich and the Orangina? Two kinds of food, two hands. I had to get rid of something Peter was holding before he could do what he's about to do.
withdrew his wand from his right-hand trouser pocket, and waved it in a complex motion in the direction of the largest collection of braying jackasses.
"Silencio."
The laughter cut off abruptly.
***
The rescue was not exactly what Peter had expected.
Oh, he'd expected Luke and Han to go after Leia. That was a given. What he hadn't expected was that they wouldn't have a plan more well thought out than "Save the princess."
Peter, I think, is quite good at planning--when he's not terrified out of his mind.
He was gratified that the princess was quite able to save herself and them. Lily would do that. She'd grab a blaster and start firing at the enemy, tossing sarcastic barbs at James the whole time.
Indicating, I think, that he likes and admires Lily as herself, and not simply because she's James' girl.
And it was both surprising and amusing to see that the Giant Squid had a cameo.
I couldn't resist that, either.
Ben Kenobi's fate, however, was bewildering.
Peter puzzled over that as Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca tried to make their escape. He couldn't be dead, because there wasn't any body. The cantina scene had clearly shown what happened when people were killed by lightsabres; they were left lying in bleeding, bisected heaps on the floor. He honestly didn't think that Kenobi could have been vaporised; using a means similar to Legilimency, he had told Luke to run...and this had been after he had disappeared.
Logically, Kenobi should have Apparated--or used whatever Jedi power was analogous to Apparating--and ended up on the Millennium Falcon with everyone else. But he didn't seem to be there. And Darth Vader didn't seem to know where the old man had got to, either. It was all very confusing.
He watched the Falcon battle its way to the rebel base and listened to one of the rebel leaders describe the one vulnerability of the Death Star without much reaction or comment.
The argument between Luke and Han disturbed him--mostly because Han made so much sense. Peter wanted to side with Luke. He wanted to agree that the right thing to do was to go off on a kamikaze mission to blow up the Death Star. And it was the right thing to do. And it would probably work here, because it would make a fitting climax to the film.
But in real life...
"What good's a reward if you ain't around to use it? Besides, attacking that battle station ain't my idea of courage. It's more like suicide."
In the darkness of the theatre, Peter blushed hotly. Han's words could have been his own. Looking at Luke's expression of pure disgust, he felt as if he'd been judged and found wanting.
And he did want to be a Jedi. He wanted to help defeat evil. He wanted to be brave and noble and heroic.
He just couldn't help but notice that, in real life, heroes often wound up dead.
And dead looked a lot like losing.
This is, as jazzypom said when I first posted this story, the heart of Peter's reasoning. Peter would have a great deal of trouble with the concept of it being sweet to die for one's country, and I don't think he would or could idealise a person or a group who had done so. Perhaps because of his nature as a Healer, he doesn't romanticise battles or death, the way that I think that James and Sirius would. I think that James and Sirius would talk about courageous attacks and daring rescues and last-minute stands--probably with stars in their eyes. For Peter, war's just killing.
And that's not a bad idea in and of itself. But Voldemort will exploit that idea--and the fear of death (both his own and everyone else's) that lies at the core of it.
***
It all ended perfectly, with Luke evading Vader's TIE Interceptor, heeding the advice of Obi-Wan Kenobi (who, Peter admitted reluctantly, had to be dead after all), unexpectedly getting Han's help, and blowing up the Death Star. And there was even a ceremony honouring Luke and Han at the end.
The lights came on, and, silent and thoughtful, he obediently followed the gleeful, chattering crowd out of the theatre. Half of Muggle London was queued up outside of the Dominion; Peter saw none of them. He was still in the audience hall, applauding Luke and Han as he gazed enraptured at the staggeringly beautiful princess.
He walked for a number of blocks before he found a street empty of people. Lifting his wand in his right hand, he signalled the Knight Bus. Automatically, he boarded the bus and stated his destination, handing over enough Sickles for the ride and for a cup of hot chocolate besides.
He sat down on one of the brass bedsteads, leaned against a curtained window, sipped his hot chocolate and closed his eyes.
Maybe it wasn't impossible. Maybe even someone who wasn't a hero could become one. After all, Han had been just as much for self-preservation and practicality as Peter himself, and yet he'd saved Luke's life…and sent Darth Vader's TIE Interceptor spinning off into deep space as well.
Maybe he could fight Voldemort--even if he wasn't an Auror.
After all, when you came right down to it, being the magically gifted only son of a poor widow was just as mythic as being an orphaned farm boy who was the son of a great warrior.
Fairy tale tropes, again. As I've mentioned, I use them a great deal.
Maybe he could be a Jedi. A secret one, of course, because no one would understand if he tried to tell them. It sounded dumb to say he wanted to be a Jedi Knight when he grew up, especially since he was supposed to be grown up.
But that was what he wanted. To be strong and gutsy and brave. To be one of those who made the universe a better place by their very existence. To be like Ben Kenobi. He wanted it so much that it was almost a physical ache.
He could do it. He knew he could.
And maybe, just maybe, if he tried hard enough and long enough, someday he'd turn around and realise that he'd become the hero that he'd always hungered to be.
Just like Luke Skywalker.
Just like in the pictures.
To some extent--for nothing is ever simple with Peter--this yearning to be a hero is going to push Peter toward joining the Order of the Phoenix...where he really doesn't belong. And because he doesn't have anything approaching a moral or spiritual guide, there's no one to point out Peter's flaws weaknesses, or to teach Peter how to rid himself of them. He's pretty much doomed to failure from the start, building on illusions and dreams that have little grounding in reality.
But despite the fact that Peter's desire will lead him into a situation where he'll turn toward evil, what he wants to become is good.
As I said, nothing with Peter is simple.
A lot of people said that this story was so sad that it nearly made them cry. I didn't understand why till I started doing this. Then I realized that this is like watching the first act of a tragedy. We know how this will end. Peter doesn't. And his hope and desire for heroism are painful.