Beater 1, Tutshill Tornados. Prompts used: "she's such a troglodyte", Levicorpus.
It was night, it was dark, and the water was cold and wet at Peter's ankles, and he regretted absolutely everything.
"Pete, come on!" James called from further ahead, but Peter didn't want to come on; he wanted to turn around and go back to Gryffindor Tower, which was warm and comfortable and, most importantly, dry.
He waded further in.
"When is this supposed to start working again?" he asked, and wasn't surprised this time when no one answered. James and Sirius were up to their necks in the water, judging by their splashing and laughing, and Remus was waist-deep but gaining on them steadily. He had thought to do a Heating Charm, Peter guessed. That was how things worked: Remus did a Heating Charm, James and Sirius charged forward because they were apparently immune to hypothermia, and Peter was knee-deep in freezing February lake water because James "had an idea."
"Are you sure this is going to work?" he said again, a little louder this time, when both of his shoulders were submerged and his toes had begun to go numb.
He could swear he felt Remus shrugging, the same way he felt it when Sirius grinned or James was about to cast Levicorpus on a hapless student. Good, in a way, because he knew them, because they were his friends and his brothers and he trusted them, but just as bitter because he never knew if they felt the same way towards him. And because he was about as capable of stopping them as he was a hurricane. Because when James cursed Snivellus, James was powerful and bright and alive, and Peter was a shadow of someone who might, at some point, have been interesting.
"It should," Remus said. "I mean, James said that it will, which isn't — well, it should work."
Peter sighed. James said that it will. Right. That was all the reassurance that he was going to get.
He took another step, then another. His feet sunk into the bottom of the lake, and — oh, gross, there were weeds down there — just what Peter needed. The water had come up to his nose, and he was a second away from declaring mutiny and abandoning his friends in favor of the common room when he became aware of a movement to his left.
It was a dark shape with several appendages, and it was disturbingly quiet as it cut through the water. Peter stopped moving and held his breath, hoping against hope that one thing in his life would go right and that it wouldn't notice him.
As Peter wondered what it could be, he found himself wishing that he'd spent less time passing notes in Defense Against the Dark Arts and more time taking them. Clearly this was a Dark creature, since he couldn't imagine anything that they'd studied in Care of Magical Creatures looking as ominous as the figure did.
It drifted past him, and Peter prepared to shout that he was done, that he was leaving, but then it doubled back and sunk lower, and at this moment Peter became aware that he could no longer hear James and Sirius's splashing, and he understood what it all meant a moment before there was a tug on his foot, and he might have screamed, but then there were more cold hands and he was being pulled down and his mouth was filling with water and —
His splashing limbs finally hit the bottom of the lake; he surfaced, spluttering, fully resigned to face the ridicule he knew was coming.
James popped back onto the surface a moment after him. He appeared, for a moment, to be having a seizure, and Peter was concerned for a moment, until he realized that James was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe.
"Peter, your — your face —"
He tried to collect himself and clearly failed, continuing to laugh. A moment later, Sirius and Remus emerged from behind him, Sirius grinning for all he was worth and Remus trying and failing to look disapproving rather than highly amused.
"Did you hear how he shrieked?" James asked, and Peter bit down on the rising tide of his anger because he had, in fact, shrieked, and this was how things worked.
He must not have controlled his face well enough, however, because Remus rubbed the back of his neck and floated towards him.
"Sorry if we scared you too badly," he said, and Peter didn't even care about that, he didn't mind the prank, but Remus had said we, a we that didn't include him, and — God, he was such a girl.
Sirius had clearly picked up on his dampening mood as well.
"Aww, does somebody need a hug?" he asked, smirking. "Is our adventure too much for poor little Peter?"
Peter rolled his eyes, trying to salvage whatever remained of his dignity. "I guess the Gillyweed worked, then?"
And just like that, the tone of the conversation shifted. James finally stopped laughing, and Sirius's smile turned proud rather than mocking.
"Yeah!" James said. "I knew it would, obviously, but it worked! Now this can be our own secret place, and we can find a cave and come here whenever we want, and no one will ever be able to find us!"
Remus raised an eyebrow. Peter could tell that James's excitement was no less contagious to Remus than it was to anyone else, but he was still going to pretend. They all pretended, all the time, pretended that they were all equal and pretended that it mattered how Peter did on the Charms test and pretended —
"...And like the tunnel behind the tapestry of those banshees? And like that meadow in the Forbidden Forest where you keep saying you're going to take Lily? And like the Shrieking Shack? And —"
"Yeah, alright, fine," James said, grinning. "We have a lot of secret places. But still!"
No way would he have reacted like that if Peter had been the one to make the comment. And no way would Sirius have laughed and said, "He's got a point, you know."
But it didn't matter what would have happened, because the three of them were pushing past Peter and swimming deeper into the lake, and although he wasn't cold anymore, not really, there was a pit in his stomach that refused to leave.
It didn't matter, in the end, because he turned and swam, as he always had and always would, after the others.
Later, though, Peter would have to admit that he was wrong.
They had indeed found a cave — really more of a hole in the lake floor that the four of them could barely squeeze into, and Sirius was currently in the middle of a dramatic retelling of an encounter with Marlene McKinnon.
"And then she just sashayed right past me!" Sirius finished, laughing. "Which, for one thing, I don't even know what that word means, but I know that she did because she told me that she was going to as a warning."
James and Remus laughed, and Peter did too, because — well, because it was funny. And the hug comment still hurt, sure, but then Remus said —
"She's such a troglodyte, isn't she?" and Peter didn't know what that word meant, and he was relatively sure that neither did Remus, but he was laughing again, and the lake was cold but his heart was warm, and —
Well, what more could he ask for?