The Marauders: Year Three | #Wattys2016

Searching for Peter Pettigrew

Searching for Peter Pettigrew

Peter landed with a jolt, on all four feet. He stood there, breathing rather hard, heart racing, nose twitching, quite terrified. He'd been so certain he was plunging to his death or else would have landed with at least one or two broken bones that it took his brain a moment to run inventory over all his body parts to find that he was absolutely fine.

His nose twitched at unfamiliar scents then and he took a couple timid steps toward some moonlight that was coming in through another grate a few feet away. Every step he took he felt the floor profusely with his whiskers and a couple of taps of his foot ahead of himself to make sure that the floor didn't simply disappear again as it had before. It took him a couple moments this way to reach the grate and he peered out it, his little nose jutting out the holes in the grate and twitching about before he pulled the rest of himself through.

It was another dormitory that he'd come out in, and he looked around. The general layout of the room was similar to the third year dorm, but it had entirely different scents, since it was home of an entirely different set of boys. He looked around in the dark. Rat vision was terrible, he thought, and he breathed deeply. It seemed he could smell and feel things more than he could see them and he moved slowly forward.

Now to find a way to get to the common room from here... perhaps he could squeeze beneath the dormitory door? He'd have to try it. He wasn't sure he wanted to keep taking his chances with running through the dark, unknowable air vent system, where he could, at any moment, go tumbling multiple floors down as he'd just done. Next time, he might not get so lucky with landing on his feet... and he had to get to James and Sirius in the common room or else back to his own dormitory to wake Remus.

He was under one of the desks, about halfway to the door, when he spotted a bar of chocolate on a nightstand, glowing in the moonlight. Distracted from his mission, Peter hesitated, sitting on his ratty haunches and looking over at the chocolate, tapping his little paw fingers together, contemplating a moment. Then he ran for the night stand, wobbling in his path, weaving along, ducking under one of the beds.

The springs of the mattress squealed as the boy asleep upon it shifted and hummed in his sleep. Peter held still a moment, trembling and looked for a hiding place on instinct. He quickly ducking into an overturned shoe and curled into the toe, trembling for a moment, waiting for something terrible to happen. But nothing did. The boy hadn't woken up, he'd only moved and continued on with his slumber, and Peter soon ventured back out of the shoe and continued on his way to the nightstand.

He stood before it, like a worshipper before a wooden god in a temple, before scrambling up the curtain of the boy's four-poster and leaping nimbly onto the little table. He wove between the stuff on the nightstand - a wind up alarm clock, a wand, a broken quill and -- there it was. A half finished bar of Honeydukes caramel fudge delight. He squeaked in excitement and ran forward, plowing his twitchy little nose into the caramel and taking a gigantic bite.

If it was possible - the candy bar tasted even better as a rat. His senses overloaded, he flailed about in absolute euphoria. Ah the splendor! Oh the wonder! This was positively the most delicious thing he had eaten in all of his life!

"BLOODY HELL, A RAT!"

Peter was halfway through the candy when he heard the voice and looked up to see Andy Woodhouse quickly grab the textbook on the nightstand and raise it above his head - and Peter realized he had the intent of smashing him with it and he bolted as quick as he could as the book came down - hard - on the table right behind him, only just missing his tail. Peter took a flying leap from the edge of the nightstand, soaring through the air toward the hardwood floor. Andy grabbed his wand from the nightstand. "Stupefy!" he shouted, aiming for the rat. The sparks flew and Peter dodged them with a squeal - "Stupefy! Stupefy! Stupefy!"