For beyond the rain's The Rule of Three Challenge: Peter Pettigrew - oneshot
For Felpata_Lupin's Pettigrew Awareness Challenge
Written for The Houses Competition, Year Two, Round Four.
House: Hufflepuff
Year: 5th
Category: Short 500-2000 words
Prompt: [Speech] "I think you meant to say: hey, I know how I want to get us all killed today?"
Wordcount: 1959 (Google Docs)
Title: Soft Around the Edges
Summary: "She wasn't interested in Sirius or James or Remus."
Beta Superheroes:
"I wanna be a superhero!" Aya
"Swoop down and catch 'em typos" Angel
"Staring at my boyfriend again?"
Arlo practically jumped off the couch, internally swearing at herself. Knowing that the intruder wasn't being malicious, Arlo settled back into her spot. Marlene McKinnon peered into her face as she perched on the arm of the couch.
"I don't mind as long as you're only window shopping." Marlene flipped her hair to punctuate her statement.
"No, really. I wasn't," Arlo said, smoothing out the Transfiguration essay on her lap.
She didn't go for the lanky, tough boy like Marlene did. Even if she had a thing for Sirius Black, she'd have no reason to admit to it. Arlo wasn't the kind of girl to issue a challenge. She wasn't confident or sexy like Marlene.
"Yeah, you weren't." The saucy Sixth Year girl rolled off the top of the couch, sauntered over to her boyfriend and slapped a kiss on his check. He laughed at her, pulled her into his lap, and carried on with whatever conversation he and the other boys were having.
Arlo sighed and focused on her Transfiguration homework. She might as well stop staring and get on with her life. Those boys were out of her league and she knew it.
They were the Gryffindor Sixth Years, notorious for being loud, getting into trouble, and then somehow getting off with minor repercussions. Most times, they were an inseparable, tight knit band of brothers. Whoever they drew into their midst was welcomed, loudly and embarrassingly into their wild, happy family. Marlene McKinnon fit right in with them when she'd started dating Sirius. Lily Evans, a Prefect, had started tolerating James, the too handsome for his own good rich kid. The more reserved Remus had some kind of self deprecating complex. Arlo had watched with interest as Mary McDonald wore him down through the better part of last semester. Now it was close to Spring Break, and the four boys were nearly all paired off.
She scanned the other admirers around her. Most of them were younger versions of herself who dreamed of what they couldn't have: the danger... the romance… the envy of the rest of the school...
But she wasn't interested in Sirius or James or Remus.
Shorter and slightly softer than the rest, the fourth boy's face bore a resemblance to a shrew with quiet eyes and an eager laugh. He had the look of belonging, but still with the sense of longing to belong. That was Peter.
He looked the way that Arlo felt most of the time.
Even though most girls talked about Peter because he hung out with the pretty boys, Arlo thought that it would be much easier if he wasn't part of them.
Then at least he would be approachable.
Arlo wished she had Marlene's nerve, Lily's authority or Mary's perseverance. But she didn't have any of that. She also wasn't a Sixth Year.
Because Peter wasn't in any of her classes, she had to go out of her way to pass him in the halls or brush by him in the Common Room, offering a small, voiceless greeting, a smile, anything to have him notice her so she could see what kind of impression she made on him.
Today, she had gotten the rare chance to say 'hello' right after Transfiguration, as the Fifth Years filed out and the Sixth Years shuffled in.
Arlo added another sentence to her essay as those ten seconds played themselves over and over in her mind. In the rush to get to her next lesson, she hadn't been able to gauge Peter's reaction.
Had he been pleased? Bothered? Had he even noticed?
She wished she had an ounce of Marlene McKinnon's confidence. That girl made sure everyone in the school knew how much Sirius Black meant to her. Oh, she'd let other girls ogle all they liked, as long as it was from a respectable distance. Arlo couldn't handle that thing Marlene and Sirius had, all wild and loud and public.
It was another reason why she was reluctant to approach one of Sirius' closest friends.
Peter wasn't as loud, seemed only half as wild, and Arlo could only guess if he ever had a girlfriend because no one ever talked about it.
Still, she didn't think it would hurt to give herself the satisfaction of knowing him as a sort of on-the-fringes friend. She owed it to herself to at least find out if he was the person she thought he might be.
Realistically, that's all she could hope for.
Arlo turned over the Transfiguration homework and doodled little shapes that quickly turned into initials that she was too embarrassed to acknowledge. She picked up her wand and cleared the stray marks off her parchment, trying to ignore the boisterous laughter from the boys across the room. She caught sight of Peter who looked less boisterous and had somehow gotten half-swallowed by the cushions in the couch.
He looked so lonely.
Peter Pettigrew tried to revise his Transfiguration homework, but the constant chatter around him made it hard to concentrate.
"I'm bored. Let's sneak into Slughorn's lab!" Sirius said to the group settled on the couches by the fire. The early spring days were still chilly, evidenced by Marlene draped all over Sirius like a blanket.
Peter rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the suggestion, but Remus spoke up first. "I think you meant to say: hey, I know how I want to get us all killed today?"
Slughorn had recently put extra charms on his potions cabinets to deter curious students from meddling after hours. Last week, a Ravenclaw had to go to the Hospital Wing for complications after trying to break in and brew a spare batch of Pepperup Potion. He still hadn't completely recovered.
Peter tried not to look back at Sirius, or rather his living blanket of a girlfriend, and it made him wonder many things, all of which were probably untrue and tasteless, and if they were brought to light, would get him hexed into next week by Sirius, and have his balls end up hairless from Marlene, which would be worse.
He abruptly shifted his thoughts from Marlene to the girl in the Transfiguration classroom, Arlo. She'd said hello to him today. The classroom had been virtually empty, so he knew she was talking to him and not anyone else. She'd even called him by name. It was weird, and awkward, and secretly wonderful.
Marlene had undraped herself from around Sirius, and the others had already gotten up by the time Peter looked up from his homework.
"You coming?" James asked.
"Nah," he said, disgusted with himself. "Gotta get this right, or McGonagall's going to hold me back next year.'
"Transfiguration?" Remus asked.
"But you're brilliant at it!" Sirius announced.
"Not the theory part," Peter said, holding up his parchment with all the red circles around it.
"I'll fix that for you," Sirius said, getting out his wand, but before he could do anything, Peter snatched his homework away.
"She put a cheating detector on it," he explained. "It's gotta be my work alone, or I fail this time."
Sirius lowered his wand and shrugged. "Sorry, Pete."
"Let us know if you need anything," James said.
Peter nodded and watched his friends shuffle off to do Merlin knew what with the rest of their afternoon.
"Looks like you've got another fan," Marlene said to Sirius on their way out.
Peter followed Marlene's gaze over to the girl across the common room. She was by herself, and she was indeed looking their way. She noticed them all looking at her and turned away.
Marlene laughed along with Sirius as they left, and Peter was left alone with his half written essay about Transfiguration theory. He tried to read number four's prompt again, pretending that this time, he might get it.
Yet each time his mind drifted back to Arlo, and his spirits sank lower. His friends were great, they really were. But sometimes he got tired of everything being about them. He wished that just one time, something could be about him.
He would like someone who just looked at him, would listen to him, and no one else. He wondered if he would ever find someone who would choose to be around him. Not by default. By choice.
"Hi, Peter."
He looked up at a freckled nose and a bashful smile. "Hi, Arlo," he said and frowned, thinking that he knew what she really wanted.
"You know my name?"
"Um, yeah. We've been at the same school for years." Peter decided not to mention that the boys had made a drinking game out of memorizing all the Gryffindor girls' names.
"If it's all the same to you, I have to finish this Transfiguration essay. So if you're looking for James or Remus or Sirius, they won't be back for a while."
"I'm not," she said, looking relieved for some reason. If she was going to launch into some story about having a crush on Sirius, Peter was going to hang himself right then and there.
"I'm not telling you where they are, so you can just go. Marlene caught you staring at Sirius," Peter said, letting her know that he was onto her.
"Marlene's full of it," she said. "Sirius is so not my type."
Peter looked up sharply in time to see her cheeks tinge with pink. Part of him wanted this to be all about him, and made his gut perform multiple flips inside. But the skeptical part that believed what Marlene had said, squashed all the hopeful feelings down.
He made one last-ditch effort to concentrate on his parchment so maybe she would go away. Instead, she looked over his shoulder.
"I could help you with that," she said.
"Aren't you a year under me?" Peter asked.
There was that tinge of pink again, but surprisingly, she stood her ground. "Do you have something against Fifth Years?"
Peter didn't know why she was still talking to him, and he still couldn't figure out number four. It was remedial Transfiguration theory, so she might know something. He gave in. "All right, if you're so smart. I gave up a while ago anyway."
Arlo sat down to explain number four, which took several rounds of discussion before he started to get it. But even after the red marks had disappeared and number four was finished, she was still there. A rush of students came through the portrait hole, and he half-expected her to get self-conscious and leave so she wouldn't be seen with him, but that didn't happen either.
"They'll be coming back soon," Peter heard himself saying.
"Oh," she said. "Did you want me to leave?"
Confused, Peter mentally scrambled. He didn't want her to leave, but he hadn't been prepared for the possibility that she would want to stay either.
What did he want?
He wanted to ask if Arlo stood for something, or if that was her unabridged name. He wanted to know what she liked to do when she wasn't studying. He seems to recall that she was in the Gobstones club last year. Would she want to play gobstones with him?
Would she want to be friends? Would she want to spend time with him, and only him? Just like they were doing now?
Peter tried to talk, but his voice did that annoying cracked thing, so he cleared it and tried again. "Do you want to go somewhere where we can keep talking? When they get back they're very loud. And I... well, they're just loud."
"I'd like that," she said softly. He liked her softness. She smiled again, just for him, and his heart sang.
Peter smiled back, just for her.