"Escaping Wonderland," DvD Commentary, Part 1
Once again, this is too long with the commentary, so I'll have to chop it in half. Sigh.
ESCAPING WONDERLAND
The story was done for the ithurtsmybrain gen challenge on LJ. My challenge was to put Peter Pettigrew and Alice from Alice in Wonderland together in a single story. The title sounds like a reversal of Finding Neverland, but it's not. It's simply what little Peter wants-to leave a fantastic world that he finds frightening, illogical and dangerous.
***
Peter Pettigrew had been at Hogwarts for a month, and he hated it.
Furthermore, he had a deep dark suspicion that he was always going to hate it.
I was reversing two common motifs from HP fanfic-first, that every student who goes to Hogwarts loves it, and that all Muggleborns take to the wizarding world with ease. Peter hates Hogwarts and, as we're about to see, isn't adapting well.
It isn't that there's anything wrong with Hogwarts, he thought as he lay on his bed in Gryffindor Tower petting Nathan, his grey kitten-familiar who was sleeping on his chest. At least, not as far as anyone else is concerned. I don't know how the other Muggleborn kids do it.
Nathan exists because I promised thistlerose a Marauder-era male kitten as a story character, months before this. I really couldn't picture Peter's janitor-turned-baker mother letting him have a rat or a toad, and I didn't think she'd be over and above fond of an owl, either. A cat, at least, could look like a normal pet.
Peter had had high hopes of Hogwarts at first. The delivery of his Hogwarts letter on his eleventh birthday
19 March 1960, in my personal canon. I originally thought of each member of MWPP being born in a different season: Sirius on January 30, Peter on March 19 (in which I played with duality, because that date would put him on the cusp of Pisces and Aries, and would have him straddling two seasons, winter and spring), James on August 1, and Remus on September 23 (Remus been allowed into the same year as the others after a great deal of arguing by his parents--and after he'd demonstrated that he was clever enough to handle the work). This got a bit Jossed by Rowling making Remus's birthday on March 10. Ah, well.
had been a welcome surprise, at least to him. His mother and his grown-up sisters
Peter has three sisters--Mildred, who's thirty-six in 1971, Rose, who's thirty-four, and Judith, who's thirty-one. Peter's parents were married very young, and had three daughters fairly quickly. Peter was a surprise baby, born to a man in his mid-forties and a woman not far behind him in age.
had felt quite differently, but then witchcraft equalled wickedness in his mother's mind, and always had.
Louise Pettigrew is a devout Anglo-Catholic. Her small son's powers frighten and unnerve her...for good reason, as we'll learn shortly.
As for his sisters...well, Mildred had thought he had sent the letter to himself to show off, and Rose had thought that someone was playing a nasty joke on him. Judith had been the only one who had made a practical suggestion: send the owl back to this "Albus Dumbledore" with a very cold, correct note. "Nine chances out of ten, Mum," Judith had said, "that'll be the end of it, and you'll have at least expressed your displeasure."
Note the progression here. Peter's mother regards the letter as a sign of supernatural evil; Mildred thinks of it as evidence of Peter showing off--a very human kind of evil; Rose believes that it's proof of human evil, but that it's something being done to Peter, rather than something he's doing. Judith is the only one who suggests treating the letter-writer with respect, and this suggestion is going to change everything.
To Peter's everlasting humiliation--it was a nice letter, even if the wizarding school business was completely impossible--his mother had done just that.
Three days later, Albus Dumbledore arrived at their door, to explain a few things.
Once he'd walked in (and Peter still couldn't remember his mother inviting Dumbledore to do so),
Dumbledore used a bit of Legilimency to facilitate his getting in.
he started asking questions. "Well, Peter," he said, looking down on Peter from what seemed to be an immense height, "how old were you when strange things started happening around you?"
Peter had gaped at him. "S-seven," he managed to stammer out at last through nearly paralysed lips. "I was seven."
"Ah," Dumbledore had said, sounding immensely pleased. "And what, precisely, did happen?"
According to JKR, wizarding children start displaying their powers between the ages of six and ten. Seven is fairly young, especially for a child growing up in the Muggle world. Dumbledore, on hearing the age at which Peter's magic first appeared, would think that the little boy had immense potential.
"Fires," snapped Louise Pettigrew, gripping Peter by the shoulders. "Fires flaring up every time he gets angry or upset. Glasses bursting. Windows exploding. For four years now. I couldn't tell you how many times I've had to replace things he's broken. I'm surprised we've even got a lease, considering how much damage he's done!"
What Louise is describing is classic poltergeist activity. Such things happen most often around young girls just entering puberty who are under immense stress, disturbed, etc., but they've been known to happen among younger children as well. Since so much of Potterverse magic is related to emotion, and since anger, fear and unhappiness are such strong emotions, it seemed likely that Peter's first magic would probably be destructive...and unwelcome.
Peter hung his head. "I don't mean to, Mum," he said softly. "It just...happens."
His mother regarded him sternly. "Animals can't control themselves. People can."
"That's not fair!" Peter protested, scowling. "I try to control it. I do."
"Don't pout, Peter. You're far too old for that. Children pout. Very little children."
"Fires and explosions are quite common manifestations of power among wizarding children," Dumbledore interrupted, beaming genially at both of them.
Louise Pettigrew snorted. "Except he's not a wizarding child, then, is he? Peter's just an ordinary boy--with a few powers he shouldn't have. And he'd be much happier without, I can tell you. The priests and nuns at his primary
My Peter went to a Catholic primary school in Birmingham by the name of St Anthony's.
were scared of him--not that I blame them, really. What do you do with a boy who makes the blackboard crack or who starts fires on the ceiling whenever he gets angry?"
I envision the fires starting on the ceiling right above Peter's desk.
"What about his friends?"
"Oh, well. He gets on fine with them--"
"I don't have any friends," said Peter miserably.
"Nonsense!" said Louise Pettigrew. "There are boys you play with, I've seen you!"
Peter looked up at his mother. The expression in his eyes was centuries old. "They aren't my friends," he said quietly. "We play together because they're afraid of what I might do if we didn't. They don't want to end up being turned into toads or something. But they don't like me, and they don't trust me. They think I'm a mutant or an alien or a freak. And I guess they're right, if I'm a wizard. There's no way that being a wizard is normal."
Even at the age of eleven, Peter's focus is on being normal and fitting in to the world he knows. Dumbledore, unfortunately, can't conceive of a child who'd sooner be a Muggle than a wizard.
"How would you like to meet some children just like yourself?" asked Dumbledore, his eyes gleaming. "Magically gifted children? A whole school of them?"
"And what's the point of that, then?" demanded Peter's mother as she crossed her arms. "Put all of them together so that they can burn the school down?"
You can't really blame her. The only magic she's ever seen has been completely destructive.
"We teach them how to use their powers responsibly," Dumbledore replied in a forbidding tone. "We cannot ignore their abilities; as you have noted yourself, such powers are dangerous when left alone and uncontrolled. Hogwarts teaches its students how to use their powers in beneficial ways, rather than…well, setting fires and the like. Do you think you'd like that, Peter?"
"Yes," Peter said. "Not the doing-magic part. But learning how not to do magic would be cool." He smiled wistfully. "I'd like to be normal."
They're not really hearing each other at all, are they?
Louise Pettigrew glanced doubtfully at Dumbledore and shook her head. "I don't think they'll teach you that, Peter."
"Why don't you believe it?" said Dumbledore genially.
"Because it's not reasonable! Who'd send children to a school for wizards to make sure that they didn't become wizards? No one sensible, I'll tell you that for nothing. It'd be foolish, and I don't believe you're a fool." She shook her head. "No, Peter. You're not setting a foot in that place."
She's not being cruel. She's trying to protect her son from what she sees as a very real danger. And the hell of it is, she's right. Hogwarts is going to introduce Peter to dangers she can't imagine.
Peter's face fell. "But wouldn't it be better if I knew how not to set fires and blow things up?"
He may be only eleven, but he's old enough to be frightened by how much damage he's doing...and to want to stop it.
"It certainly would be better for the boy to get control of his powers," Dumbledore interposed. "And safer for those around him, too."
Louise Pettigrew looked frightened. "No," she said, her voice trembling. "If you take him off to that school, you'll be teaching him how to use those powers of his, not how not to use them. And that's wrong. He doesn't need powers that'll make him feel stronger and better and finer than those around him."
In addition to her other fears, Louise has the lower-class fear of her son "getting above himself."
Dumbledore's eyebrows escalated almost to his hairline. His face took on the expression of an indulgent father humouring a stubborn child's folly. "You don't want him to be a good wizard?"
"I'd rather he were a good man."
And that illustrates how they see the world. Dumbledore wants Peter to get the training he needs and become good at magic; Louise doesn't think that competence at magic means anything if Peter isn't a good person.
"The two are not mutually exclusive."
She shook her head. "I read stories about wizards and witches when I was little. They were always transforming people into flowers and toads, and cursing whole towns, and placing princesses in enchanted sleep."
A puzzled glance. "Well, yes, that's fairly accurate--"
"Who gave them the right to put people to sleep for hundreds of years, or curse an entire town because they were that mad at one person? Or turn people into things? Yes, they had the power to do that--but it wasn't fair, casting spells on people who couldn't fight back! And what's worse is, they felt as they were entitled to do it."
The last two sentences aren't a bad description of the Death Eaters, in fact.
She shivered. "It's wrong. It's evil. I won't have it, and I won't have my boy taught to think that way."
"Mrs. Pettigrew...don't you trust your son to behave as honourably as you've taught him to do?"
"I wouldn't trust an angel to behave honourably if he were told that he could do anything and no one would tell him no."
She's not just using hyperbole. In fact, she's thinking of the fall of Lucifer.
"Surely some Muggles--non-magical people, pardon me--also believe this."
"That's not the point," she retorted. "Normal people have limits--money, position, influence. And that's bad enough. You're talking about magic. And with magic you can do absolutely anything. Far too much power, and far too much temptation. No. The answer is no."
"Your son's magic will not go away simply because you don't want him to possess it," said Dumbledore, and Peter puzzled over the sympathy in the man's voice. "If he is not taught, it will simply spiral further out of control. He needs the training. Without it..." A deep sigh. "He hasn't a hope of a normal life."
Peter envisioned himself in rags as he picked through rubbish bins in search of something to eat while a black cloud of magic encircled him like a tornado, exploding buildings and slaughtering anyone who came near him. All because he couldn't control what he did.
Peter has a vivid imagination. At times it can be a curse.
"Maybe you could remove the magic with a spell?" he asked.
Dumbledore shook his head gravely. "I fear not. That would involve tampering with your basic metabolic structure. I couldn't do that--not and have you remain human, at least."
Peter shuddered.
I have a feeling Peter's going to remember Dumbledore's words when Voldemort de-evolves Dorcas Meadowes in front of his eyes.
"Well," said his mother, shuddering as well, "I thank you for your time and trouble, Mr Dumbledore, but I don't think we'll take you up on your offer. It'll be much better for Peter if he grows up a normal boy, and learns to control this--this unfortunate magic of his, rather than giving in and letting the power take him over. I daresay it won't be easy, but he'll do it."
Louise Pettigrew sees magic as a birth defect.
"What about you, Peter?" Dumbledore asked, smiling as if it were an effort.
By now, it probably IS an effort.
"Do you want to learn magic?"
Peter shook his head. "No. I already told you, I want to learn how NOT to do it. I want to be like everyone else."
"Not a high ambition," murmured Dumbledore. "There is nothing wrong with being different."
Peter said nothing. This was evidently another lie that grownups liked to tell themselves. Of course there was something wrong with being different from everyone else. His mother didn't want him to be different. His teachers didn't want him to be different. The kids with whom he'd attended primary school hated the difference. He'd never met a single person--well, not a real person, wizards didn't count--who had thought that magic was all right. Even he didn't think so, and it was his magic.
A children's writer, whose name I now forget, called this way of seeing through adult hypocrisy as "recognition of the perfidy of the adult world." Peter is not a child who is easily impressed by adults, who often say one thing but mean another.
Dumbledore sighed, and adopted another tack. "Suppose you could learn how not to set fires and how not to make things explode. Would you be willing to attend Hogwarts then?"
Peter studied the old man's expression. "Could I go home once I knew those things?"
"Once you have complete control of your powers, you may indeed go home.
Dumbledore is being deliberately disingenuous here...admittedly, for what he believes to be Peter's own good. Peter--who feels his own position and his mother's are quite clear--will be appalled when he learns the truth.
And," he added, turning to Peter's mother, "neither the building nor the students or staff will be at risk. There are any number of protection spells at Hogwarts. Your son's magic will not do any damage."
Her son's magic won't do any damage to property. He didn't say Peter's magic couldn't endanger or corrupt him. And Dumbledore also fails to mention that the wizarding world, in 1971, holds a number of hazards for Muggleborns--life-threatening ones.
Peter's mother hesitated. "Well..."
And that had been when things had become a bit blurry. Peter didn't remember what Dumbledore had said next, but he did recall that the man's words had made complete sense. He also remembered his mother nodding in agreement to virtually everything that Dumbledore said--even things that he could have sworn that she had vehemently disagreed with earlier. Before he knew what had happened, his mother had agreed to send him to Hogwarts--with the proviso that once he had complete control over his magic, he could go home.
Definite use of Legilimency--again, for what Dumbledore sees as Peter's own good. Incidentally, this story was posted on July 15, 2005--before I received my copy of HBP. I'm pleased that it conformed so well to new canon, at least in this respect.
It had been fascinating--at first. He'd liked Diagon Alley, and the Hogwarts Express and the boat ride. It had been a brand-new world that he'd never dreamt existed, and he'd loved it all without reservation.
One month later, he'd come to the grim conclusion that the wizarding world was a great place to visit, but he didn't want to live here. Small, idiotic things--things that didn't bother those who had been raised in the wizarding world--kept turning into enormous stumbling blocks.
Take pens. Peter couldn't understand what the wizarding world had against pens. What was so holy about a quill, anyway? Quills were pretty, of course, and soft, and felt nice. But a plume from the tail feather of a peacock didn't come close to a ballpoint pen. Quills snapped. The nibs of quills broke, and then you had to carve a new nib before you could write with the quill again. And you had to grind the ink you used. God help you if you thinned it too much or not enough, for in that case you had blackish water or a lumpy black fluid, neither of which were legible. A ballpoint pen was easier. It ran better. It didn't leak or break at every opportunity. And they could be ordered wholesale from factories. Heck, the school could probably do a profitable business selling pens--not to mention pencils and rubbers.
"Rubbers" are what the Brits call "erasers." Yes, it made me snicker a bit too. I'm twelve.
The same went for mass-produced paper instead of parchment (which, half the time, still had hairs stuck to it) and notebooks instead of scrolls. Paper and notebooks worked better, and were easier to get hold of than parchment and scrolls. Why did the wizarding world keep clinging to the past?
And light. Peter hated the lighting in the castle. Candles. Torches. Firelight. He had a hard time reading by flickering light, and the light itself was so dim that it made his eyes ache from strain.
Peter's eyes are described as “watery” in canon. I've taken that to mean that his eyes are a pale blue and that they water a great deal. I think that Peter needed glasses by the time he came to Hogwarts, but no one realized it. And the lack of steady lighting only made his eyes worse.
How he missed electric light! Of course, his teachers had told him that nothing electrical worked at Hogwarts. They hadn't been able to explain why Hogwarts didn't use kerosene lamps or gaslight, however.
Logical children can be a real headache for teachers.
The robes were horrible, too. Peter couldn't abide the robes. For his money, they were nothing but long black dresses, and he felt like a sissy wearing them...even though he wasn't the only one wearing the damned things. Girls wore dresses, after all. Not boys. He was supposed to be in long trousers by now,
It wasn't uncommon, even in the early seventies, for an English boy to get his first pair of trousers when he went to secondary school.
not traipsing around in a black bathrobe with sleeves that caught on things and knocked them over, and with a hem that he tripped over fifteen times a day.
Outside of class, he stubbornly wore the three pairs of long trousers that his mother had bought in addition to the robes. He might have to wear the robes for classes, since they were school uniforms, but he wasn't going to wear them any other time, not if he could help it. He was still standing firm on that, despite the fact that every time McGonagall or Azoth or Flitwick caught him wearing trousers instead of robes, Gryffindor House lost points--much to the exasperation of his roommates. Peter told himself he didn't care. There was a principle involved. He wasn't going to pretend that all wizarding stuff was wonderful or that all Muggle ideas were bad. And he wasn't going to forswear where he came from, either.
Very stubborn. And very, very proud, in his own way.
Though, to be honest, that would have been simpler. Certainly a lot of people would have liked him better for it. His roommates, for one.
There were three of them, and only one had a sane, normal name--James Potter. The other two, who were clearly the victims of evil parents, were named Sirius and Remus.
I can just picture what an eleven-year-old boy's sense of humor would make of names pronounced "Serious" and "REAM-us."
However, having an ordinary name was the only thing that James and he had in common. In fact, it was practically the only thing he had in common with any of them. James and Sirius were purebloods--the aristocrats of the wizarding world--while Remus was a halfblood, the son of a pureblood wizard and a Muggleborn witch. All three had grown up thinking of magic as normal and everyday; talking to them was difficult, at least if he wanted to say more than "Hello, how are you, how's the weather?"
Remus seemed to be a nice enough fellow--a bit quiet and sickly, but all right. James was a perpetual motion machine, always running, jumping, flying or fighting with Sirius. Peter knew already that he would never keep up with James, for James was one of those designated by fate to be perfect. James was good at the only sport that mattered at Hogwarts, though, since he was a first year, he wasn't allowed to play for a school team yet. James was brilliant in class. James had scads of charm, and was liked by everyone. He was funny, brave, imaginative. Peter had the feeling that destiny had sent James to Hogwarts to give the rest of the students something to aspire to.
And then, of course, there was Sirius. Who was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a problem.
The problem was that Sirius was the eldest son of a rich and powerful wizarding family, and he acted the part. Snobbish, arrogant, proud, far better educated than Peter and infinitely better versed in class issues--he was pure Sloane Ranger, right down to the elitist, prep school attitude.
"Sloane Ranger" is British slang. To quote from Wikipedia: "In the United Kingdom the term "Sloane" is often used to describe a subset of the public school (in the English sense of the word) educated offspring of the wealthy elite of London and the Home Counties. As individuals or particularly in groups, Sloanes usually display high levels of confidence and arrogance. Sticking to expensive fashion brands the British Sloane is typically spawned from a wealthy or successful background whose parents own their own business, hold jobs in the City, or who themselves inherited wealth."
He fought constantly with James--largely because their parents didn't like each other much. Something to do with politics. He treated Remus with an indifference that bordered on contempt. And as for Peter himself...well, Peter had heard every comment known to wizards about the ugliness, ignorance, stupidity, cowardice and general loathsomeness of Mudbloods.
I think that Sirius, at eleven, was a mish-mash of defiance, rebellion and the kind of thinking that his parents had taught him was acceptable. He did drop his parents' way of thinking...but I doubt if he did so the instant he entered Gryffindor. Consequently, all of his roommates are suffering from poor treatment. Peter, however, is getting the worst of it.
"I can't help being a Mudblood," he'd protested at first, before he'd known that "Mudblood" was a racial slur. "I was born that way, same as you were born a pureblood. You didn't pick and neither did I. It's just random."
Sirius had thrashed him for that.
If you can't fight their logic, beat them until they shut up.
Peter had tried a couple of more times before deciding that Sirius was impervious to reason. Nowadays, he just tried to stay out of Sirius's way and kept silent when Sirius started making racist remarks. James and Remus kept looking at him, as if they expected him to say something or do something, the way a bold, brave Gryffindor should. But what would be the point? Protesting just got him beat up. And he couldn't fight Sirius; at least, he couldn't fight Sirius and win. Sirius was bigger--and stronger.
The sad thing is, if Peter fought Sirius--physically or verbally--Sirius might gain some respect for him. Blacks, after all, are proud, arrogant, supremely confident. However, Peter just sees that as setting himself up for more suffering, and is trying to avoid conflict altogether--which is not the way that Blacks behave. Both boys are getting the wrong signals: Peter sees Sirius as a bully, not as a challenger and potential friend, while Sirius sees Peter's reluctance to fight as cowardice. And to some extent, these misread signals won't go away...even after they become friends.
It would have been bad enough if Sirius had been the only one twitting him about his ancestry. But he wasn't. A large gang of Slytherins--the youngest of them an eleven-year-old first year named Severus Snape, and the oldest a fourteen-year-old called Rodolphus Lestrange--had made it their mission to show Peter and all the other Muggleborns in the school just how unwanted they were here.
Peter knew about bullies; he'd suffered taunting at his old school because of his magic. But the Slytherins went beyond normal bullying; they hated Muggleborns with an adult ferocity.
Peter dreaded being caught in the corridors between or after classes, for that was when the Slytherins were likely to attack. He'd been hit with Confundus Curses that addled him for days. They stole his wand as a matter of routine, and constantly threatened to snap it or burn it if he didn't do what they said. He'd been cursed with boils, had his legs locked together, been frozen in the Full-Body Bind while Bellatrix Black set fire to the cuffs and collar of his robes. Once they had nearly drowned him in a toilet. And there were blank spots in his memory now. He suspected they'd been using Memory Charms on him. The fact that they could and would use magic to reshape his mind frightened him most of all.
Given the politics of the families of the children at Hogwarts in the 1970s, Hogwarts must have been a war zone.
He'd become a frequent visitor to the infirmary. Poppy Pomfrey unravelled the curses and healed the burns.
But she never asked him who had done this. Not that he could tell--Peter knew perfectly well that any tattling would have him praying for the mercy of death the next time--but he would have expected a staff member to want to know who was responsible.
And no one--prefect or staff--ever, ever tried to stop it.
In studies, it's been learned that teachers identify far more with bullies than with the children who are bullied. It's not unknown for teachers to encourage taunting or even fighting; it's even more common for teachers to see bullying going on and then carefully turn away, so that they can claim not to know.
They'll kill me one of these days, he thought, and knew that his assessment was completely accurate.
If only he could go home. It wasn't perfect, but it was real. It made sense. He could even understand his mother hating magic. He did, by now.
Now he could see why Dorothy had longed so fiercely to escape from Oz, and return to the dull, grey Kansas she'd always known.
A sudden, startling thought occurred to him: Why not go home?
The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. Why not go home? Dumbledore had said that he could leave once he knew how not to set fires or blow things up, and that hadn't happened for nearly a month now. That was the longest time he'd ever gone without causing a disaster. Well, since he was seven, anyway.
There had to be someone he could ask about this. Not Dumbledore. Dumbledore made him nervous. McGonagall, maybe. After all, she was his head of house. For now, anyway.
Peter sat up, ignoring the squalling of Nathan as he did so. Putting his kitten on his bed, he stood up, grabbed his wand from the night table and headed for the stairs leading to the common room. Better to go and talk to McGonagall now, while his roommates weren't around to ask where he was going and what he was going to do once he got there.
Peter prefers privacy and secrets, even at this age..
He was just about to start down the stairs when a streak of grey leaped from Peter's bed and barrelled to the top of the staircase. Nathan sat down in front of Peter, glaring defiantly, as if to say that Peter had better not try running out on this kitten again.
Peter gazed helplessly at his familiar. "But, Nathan...I can't take you with me. I can't carry you; I've got to keep my wand arm free in case I run into the Slytherins."
Nathan yawned.
"They're nothing to yawn about," Peter snapped. Then he shivered. "They scare me. They scare me a lot."
Nathan ostentatiously began to wash his front paws, as if to express his total indifference to the human race in general and to bullies in particular.
I love Nathan. He has a lot of personality.
Peter heaved a sigh that was at least two sizes too big for him. "Fine," he said, scooping up the kitten. "But you're going to stay in the pocket of my robes, all right? No jumping out or scratching or anything." So saying, he scooped Nathan up, carefully placed the kitten in his pocket and starting searching for the quickest route to McGonagall's office.
***
ESCAPING WONDERLAND
The story was done for the ithurtsmybrain gen challenge on LJ. My challenge was to put Peter Pettigrew and Alice from Alice in Wonderland together in a single story. The title sounds like a reversal of Finding Neverland, but it's not. It's simply what little Peter wants-to leave a fantastic world that he finds frightening, illogical and dangerous.
***
Peter Pettigrew had been at Hogwarts for a month, and he hated it.
Furthermore, he had a deep dark suspicion that he was always going to hate it.
I was reversing two common motifs from HP fanfic-first, that every student who goes to Hogwarts loves it, and that all Muggleborns take to the wizarding world with ease. Peter hates Hogwarts and, as we're about to see, isn't adapting well.
It isn't that there's anything wrong with Hogwarts, he thought as he lay on his bed in Gryffindor Tower petting Nathan, his grey kitten-familiar who was sleeping on his chest. At least, not as far as anyone else is concerned. I don't know how the other Muggleborn kids do it.
Nathan exists because I promised thistlerose a Marauder-era male kitten as a story character, months before this. I really couldn't picture Peter's janitor-turned-baker mother letting him have a rat or a toad, and I didn't think she'd be over and above fond of an owl, either. A cat, at least, could look like a normal pet.
Peter had had high hopes of Hogwarts at first. The delivery of his Hogwarts letter on his eleventh birthday
19 March 1960, in my personal canon. I originally thought of each member of MWPP being born in a different season: Sirius on January 30, Peter on March 19 (in which I played with duality, because that date would put him on the cusp of Pisces and Aries, and would have him straddling two seasons, winter and spring), James on August 1, and Remus on September 23 (Remus been allowed into the same year as the others after a great deal of arguing by his parents--and after he'd demonstrated that he was clever enough to handle the work). This got a bit Jossed by Rowling making Remus's birthday on March 10. Ah, well.
had been a welcome surprise, at least to him. His mother and his grown-up sisters
Peter has three sisters--Mildred, who's thirty-six in 1971, Rose, who's thirty-four, and Judith, who's thirty-one. Peter's parents were married very young, and had three daughters fairly quickly. Peter was a surprise baby, born to a man in his mid-forties and a woman not far behind him in age.
had felt quite differently, but then witchcraft equalled wickedness in his mother's mind, and always had.
Louise Pettigrew is a devout Anglo-Catholic. Her small son's powers frighten and unnerve her...for good reason, as we'll learn shortly.
As for his sisters...well, Mildred had thought he had sent the letter to himself to show off, and Rose had thought that someone was playing a nasty joke on him. Judith had been the only one who had made a practical suggestion: send the owl back to this "Albus Dumbledore" with a very cold, correct note. "Nine chances out of ten, Mum," Judith had said, "that'll be the end of it, and you'll have at least expressed your displeasure."
Note the progression here. Peter's mother regards the letter as a sign of supernatural evil; Mildred thinks of it as evidence of Peter showing off--a very human kind of evil; Rose believes that it's proof of human evil, but that it's something being done to Peter, rather than something he's doing. Judith is the only one who suggests treating the letter-writer with respect, and this suggestion is going to change everything.
To Peter's everlasting humiliation--it was a nice letter, even if the wizarding school business was completely impossible--his mother had done just that.
Three days later, Albus Dumbledore arrived at their door, to explain a few things.
Once he'd walked in (and Peter still couldn't remember his mother inviting Dumbledore to do so),
Dumbledore used a bit of Legilimency to facilitate his getting in.
he started asking questions. "Well, Peter," he said, looking down on Peter from what seemed to be an immense height, "how old were you when strange things started happening around you?"
Peter had gaped at him. "S-seven," he managed to stammer out at last through nearly paralysed lips. "I was seven."
"Ah," Dumbledore had said, sounding immensely pleased. "And what, precisely, did happen?"
According to JKR, wizarding children start displaying their powers between the ages of six and ten. Seven is fairly young, especially for a child growing up in the Muggle world. Dumbledore, on hearing the age at which Peter's magic first appeared, would think that the little boy had immense potential.
"Fires," snapped Louise Pettigrew, gripping Peter by the shoulders. "Fires flaring up every time he gets angry or upset. Glasses bursting. Windows exploding. For four years now. I couldn't tell you how many times I've had to replace things he's broken. I'm surprised we've even got a lease, considering how much damage he's done!"
What Louise is describing is classic poltergeist activity. Such things happen most often around young girls just entering puberty who are under immense stress, disturbed, etc., but they've been known to happen among younger children as well. Since so much of Potterverse magic is related to emotion, and since anger, fear and unhappiness are such strong emotions, it seemed likely that Peter's first magic would probably be destructive...and unwelcome.
Peter hung his head. "I don't mean to, Mum," he said softly. "It just...happens."
His mother regarded him sternly. "Animals can't control themselves. People can."
"That's not fair!" Peter protested, scowling. "I try to control it. I do."
"Don't pout, Peter. You're far too old for that. Children pout. Very little children."
"Fires and explosions are quite common manifestations of power among wizarding children," Dumbledore interrupted, beaming genially at both of them.
Louise Pettigrew snorted. "Except he's not a wizarding child, then, is he? Peter's just an ordinary boy--with a few powers he shouldn't have. And he'd be much happier without, I can tell you. The priests and nuns at his primary
My Peter went to a Catholic primary school in Birmingham by the name of St Anthony's.
were scared of him--not that I blame them, really. What do you do with a boy who makes the blackboard crack or who starts fires on the ceiling whenever he gets angry?"
I envision the fires starting on the ceiling right above Peter's desk.
"What about his friends?"
"Oh, well. He gets on fine with them--"
"I don't have any friends," said Peter miserably.
"Nonsense!" said Louise Pettigrew. "There are boys you play with, I've seen you!"
Peter looked up at his mother. The expression in his eyes was centuries old. "They aren't my friends," he said quietly. "We play together because they're afraid of what I might do if we didn't. They don't want to end up being turned into toads or something. But they don't like me, and they don't trust me. They think I'm a mutant or an alien or a freak. And I guess they're right, if I'm a wizard. There's no way that being a wizard is normal."
Even at the age of eleven, Peter's focus is on being normal and fitting in to the world he knows. Dumbledore, unfortunately, can't conceive of a child who'd sooner be a Muggle than a wizard.
"How would you like to meet some children just like yourself?" asked Dumbledore, his eyes gleaming. "Magically gifted children? A whole school of them?"
"And what's the point of that, then?" demanded Peter's mother as she crossed her arms. "Put all of them together so that they can burn the school down?"
You can't really blame her. The only magic she's ever seen has been completely destructive.
"We teach them how to use their powers responsibly," Dumbledore replied in a forbidding tone. "We cannot ignore their abilities; as you have noted yourself, such powers are dangerous when left alone and uncontrolled. Hogwarts teaches its students how to use their powers in beneficial ways, rather than…well, setting fires and the like. Do you think you'd like that, Peter?"
"Yes," Peter said. "Not the doing-magic part. But learning how not to do magic would be cool." He smiled wistfully. "I'd like to be normal."
They're not really hearing each other at all, are they?
Louise Pettigrew glanced doubtfully at Dumbledore and shook her head. "I don't think they'll teach you that, Peter."
"Why don't you believe it?" said Dumbledore genially.
"Because it's not reasonable! Who'd send children to a school for wizards to make sure that they didn't become wizards? No one sensible, I'll tell you that for nothing. It'd be foolish, and I don't believe you're a fool." She shook her head. "No, Peter. You're not setting a foot in that place."
She's not being cruel. She's trying to protect her son from what she sees as a very real danger. And the hell of it is, she's right. Hogwarts is going to introduce Peter to dangers she can't imagine.
Peter's face fell. "But wouldn't it be better if I knew how not to set fires and blow things up?"
He may be only eleven, but he's old enough to be frightened by how much damage he's doing...and to want to stop it.
"It certainly would be better for the boy to get control of his powers," Dumbledore interposed. "And safer for those around him, too."
Louise Pettigrew looked frightened. "No," she said, her voice trembling. "If you take him off to that school, you'll be teaching him how to use those powers of his, not how not to use them. And that's wrong. He doesn't need powers that'll make him feel stronger and better and finer than those around him."
In addition to her other fears, Louise has the lower-class fear of her son "getting above himself."
Dumbledore's eyebrows escalated almost to his hairline. His face took on the expression of an indulgent father humouring a stubborn child's folly. "You don't want him to be a good wizard?"
"I'd rather he were a good man."
And that illustrates how they see the world. Dumbledore wants Peter to get the training he needs and become good at magic; Louise doesn't think that competence at magic means anything if Peter isn't a good person.
"The two are not mutually exclusive."
She shook her head. "I read stories about wizards and witches when I was little. They were always transforming people into flowers and toads, and cursing whole towns, and placing princesses in enchanted sleep."
A puzzled glance. "Well, yes, that's fairly accurate--"
"Who gave them the right to put people to sleep for hundreds of years, or curse an entire town because they were that mad at one person? Or turn people into things? Yes, they had the power to do that--but it wasn't fair, casting spells on people who couldn't fight back! And what's worse is, they felt as they were entitled to do it."
The last two sentences aren't a bad description of the Death Eaters, in fact.
She shivered. "It's wrong. It's evil. I won't have it, and I won't have my boy taught to think that way."
"Mrs. Pettigrew...don't you trust your son to behave as honourably as you've taught him to do?"
"I wouldn't trust an angel to behave honourably if he were told that he could do anything and no one would tell him no."
She's not just using hyperbole. In fact, she's thinking of the fall of Lucifer.
"Surely some Muggles--non-magical people, pardon me--also believe this."
"That's not the point," she retorted. "Normal people have limits--money, position, influence. And that's bad enough. You're talking about magic. And with magic you can do absolutely anything. Far too much power, and far too much temptation. No. The answer is no."
"Your son's magic will not go away simply because you don't want him to possess it," said Dumbledore, and Peter puzzled over the sympathy in the man's voice. "If he is not taught, it will simply spiral further out of control. He needs the training. Without it..." A deep sigh. "He hasn't a hope of a normal life."
Peter envisioned himself in rags as he picked through rubbish bins in search of something to eat while a black cloud of magic encircled him like a tornado, exploding buildings and slaughtering anyone who came near him. All because he couldn't control what he did.
Peter has a vivid imagination. At times it can be a curse.
"Maybe you could remove the magic with a spell?" he asked.
Dumbledore shook his head gravely. "I fear not. That would involve tampering with your basic metabolic structure. I couldn't do that--not and have you remain human, at least."
Peter shuddered.
I have a feeling Peter's going to remember Dumbledore's words when Voldemort de-evolves Dorcas Meadowes in front of his eyes.
"Well," said his mother, shuddering as well, "I thank you for your time and trouble, Mr Dumbledore, but I don't think we'll take you up on your offer. It'll be much better for Peter if he grows up a normal boy, and learns to control this--this unfortunate magic of his, rather than giving in and letting the power take him over. I daresay it won't be easy, but he'll do it."
Louise Pettigrew sees magic as a birth defect.
"What about you, Peter?" Dumbledore asked, smiling as if it were an effort.
By now, it probably IS an effort.
"Do you want to learn magic?"
Peter shook his head. "No. I already told you, I want to learn how NOT to do it. I want to be like everyone else."
"Not a high ambition," murmured Dumbledore. "There is nothing wrong with being different."
Peter said nothing. This was evidently another lie that grownups liked to tell themselves. Of course there was something wrong with being different from everyone else. His mother didn't want him to be different. His teachers didn't want him to be different. The kids with whom he'd attended primary school hated the difference. He'd never met a single person--well, not a real person, wizards didn't count--who had thought that magic was all right. Even he didn't think so, and it was his magic.
A children's writer, whose name I now forget, called this way of seeing through adult hypocrisy as "recognition of the perfidy of the adult world." Peter is not a child who is easily impressed by adults, who often say one thing but mean another.
Dumbledore sighed, and adopted another tack. "Suppose you could learn how not to set fires and how not to make things explode. Would you be willing to attend Hogwarts then?"
Peter studied the old man's expression. "Could I go home once I knew those things?"
"Once you have complete control of your powers, you may indeed go home.
Dumbledore is being deliberately disingenuous here...admittedly, for what he believes to be Peter's own good. Peter--who feels his own position and his mother's are quite clear--will be appalled when he learns the truth.
And," he added, turning to Peter's mother, "neither the building nor the students or staff will be at risk. There are any number of protection spells at Hogwarts. Your son's magic will not do any damage."
Her son's magic won't do any damage to property. He didn't say Peter's magic couldn't endanger or corrupt him. And Dumbledore also fails to mention that the wizarding world, in 1971, holds a number of hazards for Muggleborns--life-threatening ones.
Peter's mother hesitated. "Well..."
And that had been when things had become a bit blurry. Peter didn't remember what Dumbledore had said next, but he did recall that the man's words had made complete sense. He also remembered his mother nodding in agreement to virtually everything that Dumbledore said--even things that he could have sworn that she had vehemently disagreed with earlier. Before he knew what had happened, his mother had agreed to send him to Hogwarts--with the proviso that once he had complete control over his magic, he could go home.
Definite use of Legilimency--again, for what Dumbledore sees as Peter's own good. Incidentally, this story was posted on July 15, 2005--before I received my copy of HBP. I'm pleased that it conformed so well to new canon, at least in this respect.
It had been fascinating--at first. He'd liked Diagon Alley, and the Hogwarts Express and the boat ride. It had been a brand-new world that he'd never dreamt existed, and he'd loved it all without reservation.
One month later, he'd come to the grim conclusion that the wizarding world was a great place to visit, but he didn't want to live here. Small, idiotic things--things that didn't bother those who had been raised in the wizarding world--kept turning into enormous stumbling blocks.
Take pens. Peter couldn't understand what the wizarding world had against pens. What was so holy about a quill, anyway? Quills were pretty, of course, and soft, and felt nice. But a plume from the tail feather of a peacock didn't come close to a ballpoint pen. Quills snapped. The nibs of quills broke, and then you had to carve a new nib before you could write with the quill again. And you had to grind the ink you used. God help you if you thinned it too much or not enough, for in that case you had blackish water or a lumpy black fluid, neither of which were legible. A ballpoint pen was easier. It ran better. It didn't leak or break at every opportunity. And they could be ordered wholesale from factories. Heck, the school could probably do a profitable business selling pens--not to mention pencils and rubbers.
"Rubbers" are what the Brits call "erasers." Yes, it made me snicker a bit too. I'm twelve.
The same went for mass-produced paper instead of parchment (which, half the time, still had hairs stuck to it) and notebooks instead of scrolls. Paper and notebooks worked better, and were easier to get hold of than parchment and scrolls. Why did the wizarding world keep clinging to the past?
And light. Peter hated the lighting in the castle. Candles. Torches. Firelight. He had a hard time reading by flickering light, and the light itself was so dim that it made his eyes ache from strain.
Peter's eyes are described as “watery” in canon. I've taken that to mean that his eyes are a pale blue and that they water a great deal. I think that Peter needed glasses by the time he came to Hogwarts, but no one realized it. And the lack of steady lighting only made his eyes worse.
How he missed electric light! Of course, his teachers had told him that nothing electrical worked at Hogwarts. They hadn't been able to explain why Hogwarts didn't use kerosene lamps or gaslight, however.
Logical children can be a real headache for teachers.
The robes were horrible, too. Peter couldn't abide the robes. For his money, they were nothing but long black dresses, and he felt like a sissy wearing them...even though he wasn't the only one wearing the damned things. Girls wore dresses, after all. Not boys. He was supposed to be in long trousers by now,
It wasn't uncommon, even in the early seventies, for an English boy to get his first pair of trousers when he went to secondary school.
not traipsing around in a black bathrobe with sleeves that caught on things and knocked them over, and with a hem that he tripped over fifteen times a day.
Outside of class, he stubbornly wore the three pairs of long trousers that his mother had bought in addition to the robes. He might have to wear the robes for classes, since they were school uniforms, but he wasn't going to wear them any other time, not if he could help it. He was still standing firm on that, despite the fact that every time McGonagall or Azoth or Flitwick caught him wearing trousers instead of robes, Gryffindor House lost points--much to the exasperation of his roommates. Peter told himself he didn't care. There was a principle involved. He wasn't going to pretend that all wizarding stuff was wonderful or that all Muggle ideas were bad. And he wasn't going to forswear where he came from, either.
Very stubborn. And very, very proud, in his own way.
Though, to be honest, that would have been simpler. Certainly a lot of people would have liked him better for it. His roommates, for one.
There were three of them, and only one had a sane, normal name--James Potter. The other two, who were clearly the victims of evil parents, were named Sirius and Remus.
I can just picture what an eleven-year-old boy's sense of humor would make of names pronounced "Serious" and "REAM-us."
However, having an ordinary name was the only thing that James and he had in common. In fact, it was practically the only thing he had in common with any of them. James and Sirius were purebloods--the aristocrats of the wizarding world--while Remus was a halfblood, the son of a pureblood wizard and a Muggleborn witch. All three had grown up thinking of magic as normal and everyday; talking to them was difficult, at least if he wanted to say more than "Hello, how are you, how's the weather?"
Remus seemed to be a nice enough fellow--a bit quiet and sickly, but all right. James was a perpetual motion machine, always running, jumping, flying or fighting with Sirius. Peter knew already that he would never keep up with James, for James was one of those designated by fate to be perfect. James was good at the only sport that mattered at Hogwarts, though, since he was a first year, he wasn't allowed to play for a school team yet. James was brilliant in class. James had scads of charm, and was liked by everyone. He was funny, brave, imaginative. Peter had the feeling that destiny had sent James to Hogwarts to give the rest of the students something to aspire to.
And then, of course, there was Sirius. Who was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a problem.
The problem was that Sirius was the eldest son of a rich and powerful wizarding family, and he acted the part. Snobbish, arrogant, proud, far better educated than Peter and infinitely better versed in class issues--he was pure Sloane Ranger, right down to the elitist, prep school attitude.
"Sloane Ranger" is British slang. To quote from Wikipedia: "In the United Kingdom the term "Sloane" is often used to describe a subset of the public school (in the English sense of the word) educated offspring of the wealthy elite of London and the Home Counties. As individuals or particularly in groups, Sloanes usually display high levels of confidence and arrogance. Sticking to expensive fashion brands the British Sloane is typically spawned from a wealthy or successful background whose parents own their own business, hold jobs in the City, or who themselves inherited wealth."
He fought constantly with James--largely because their parents didn't like each other much. Something to do with politics. He treated Remus with an indifference that bordered on contempt. And as for Peter himself...well, Peter had heard every comment known to wizards about the ugliness, ignorance, stupidity, cowardice and general loathsomeness of Mudbloods.
I think that Sirius, at eleven, was a mish-mash of defiance, rebellion and the kind of thinking that his parents had taught him was acceptable. He did drop his parents' way of thinking...but I doubt if he did so the instant he entered Gryffindor. Consequently, all of his roommates are suffering from poor treatment. Peter, however, is getting the worst of it.
"I can't help being a Mudblood," he'd protested at first, before he'd known that "Mudblood" was a racial slur. "I was born that way, same as you were born a pureblood. You didn't pick and neither did I. It's just random."
Sirius had thrashed him for that.
If you can't fight their logic, beat them until they shut up.
Peter had tried a couple of more times before deciding that Sirius was impervious to reason. Nowadays, he just tried to stay out of Sirius's way and kept silent when Sirius started making racist remarks. James and Remus kept looking at him, as if they expected him to say something or do something, the way a bold, brave Gryffindor should. But what would be the point? Protesting just got him beat up. And he couldn't fight Sirius; at least, he couldn't fight Sirius and win. Sirius was bigger--and stronger.
The sad thing is, if Peter fought Sirius--physically or verbally--Sirius might gain some respect for him. Blacks, after all, are proud, arrogant, supremely confident. However, Peter just sees that as setting himself up for more suffering, and is trying to avoid conflict altogether--which is not the way that Blacks behave. Both boys are getting the wrong signals: Peter sees Sirius as a bully, not as a challenger and potential friend, while Sirius sees Peter's reluctance to fight as cowardice. And to some extent, these misread signals won't go away...even after they become friends.
It would have been bad enough if Sirius had been the only one twitting him about his ancestry. But he wasn't. A large gang of Slytherins--the youngest of them an eleven-year-old first year named Severus Snape, and the oldest a fourteen-year-old called Rodolphus Lestrange--had made it their mission to show Peter and all the other Muggleborns in the school just how unwanted they were here.
Peter knew about bullies; he'd suffered taunting at his old school because of his magic. But the Slytherins went beyond normal bullying; they hated Muggleborns with an adult ferocity.
Peter dreaded being caught in the corridors between or after classes, for that was when the Slytherins were likely to attack. He'd been hit with Confundus Curses that addled him for days. They stole his wand as a matter of routine, and constantly threatened to snap it or burn it if he didn't do what they said. He'd been cursed with boils, had his legs locked together, been frozen in the Full-Body Bind while Bellatrix Black set fire to the cuffs and collar of his robes. Once they had nearly drowned him in a toilet. And there were blank spots in his memory now. He suspected they'd been using Memory Charms on him. The fact that they could and would use magic to reshape his mind frightened him most of all.
Given the politics of the families of the children at Hogwarts in the 1970s, Hogwarts must have been a war zone.
He'd become a frequent visitor to the infirmary. Poppy Pomfrey unravelled the curses and healed the burns.
But she never asked him who had done this. Not that he could tell--Peter knew perfectly well that any tattling would have him praying for the mercy of death the next time--but he would have expected a staff member to want to know who was responsible.
And no one--prefect or staff--ever, ever tried to stop it.
In studies, it's been learned that teachers identify far more with bullies than with the children who are bullied. It's not unknown for teachers to encourage taunting or even fighting; it's even more common for teachers to see bullying going on and then carefully turn away, so that they can claim not to know.
They'll kill me one of these days, he thought, and knew that his assessment was completely accurate.
If only he could go home. It wasn't perfect, but it was real. It made sense. He could even understand his mother hating magic. He did, by now.
Now he could see why Dorothy had longed so fiercely to escape from Oz, and return to the dull, grey Kansas she'd always known.
A sudden, startling thought occurred to him: Why not go home?
The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. Why not go home? Dumbledore had said that he could leave once he knew how not to set fires or blow things up, and that hadn't happened for nearly a month now. That was the longest time he'd ever gone without causing a disaster. Well, since he was seven, anyway.
There had to be someone he could ask about this. Not Dumbledore. Dumbledore made him nervous. McGonagall, maybe. After all, she was his head of house. For now, anyway.
Peter sat up, ignoring the squalling of Nathan as he did so. Putting his kitten on his bed, he stood up, grabbed his wand from the night table and headed for the stairs leading to the common room. Better to go and talk to McGonagall now, while his roommates weren't around to ask where he was going and what he was going to do once he got there.
Peter prefers privacy and secrets, even at this age..
He was just about to start down the stairs when a streak of grey leaped from Peter's bed and barrelled to the top of the staircase. Nathan sat down in front of Peter, glaring defiantly, as if to say that Peter had better not try running out on this kitten again.
Peter gazed helplessly at his familiar. "But, Nathan...I can't take you with me. I can't carry you; I've got to keep my wand arm free in case I run into the Slytherins."
Nathan yawned.
"They're nothing to yawn about," Peter snapped. Then he shivered. "They scare me. They scare me a lot."
Nathan ostentatiously began to wash his front paws, as if to express his total indifference to the human race in general and to bullies in particular.
I love Nathan. He has a lot of personality.
Peter heaved a sigh that was at least two sizes too big for him. "Fine," he said, scooping up the kitten. "But you're going to stay in the pocket of my robes, all right? No jumping out or scratching or anything." So saying, he scooped Nathan up, carefully placed the kitten in his pocket and starting searching for the quickest route to McGonagall's office.
***