Dedication to Kazo Sakamari for being the first to review my last story and AshNox for giving me a really nice, detailed one. I like details. The next one will be dedicated to the first to review again. Hope you enjoy this one:
After Harry gets the cloak Peter starts to...well he isn't quite sure what he's feeling, only that it hurts. It isn't worry he knows, because as James would say (would have said) 'a cloak does not a marauder make' which right now seemed to mean that Harry wouldn't find him just because he has his father's cloak.
After Harry gets the cloak Peter starts to follow him. He wouldn't except Harry disappears every night and he keeps on waking up. He follows the boy to a room with a mirror in it and ends up staying long after Harry has left.
Peter avoids mirrors normally because he does not want to be reminded that he is a rat. But he looks in this one anyway; just to see why it held Harry for so long.
The mirror, though, does not show a rat.
Instead it shows four boys.
He is there, standing where he is now but human. He looks excited and happy. Remus is on one side of him; he is scruffy and tired but grinning anyway. On Mirror Peter's other side are James and Sirius, arms around each other, Sirius' head thrown back in laughter, a golden snitch flitting about James' head.
As Peter stared at the image presented to him he began to feel wistful and sorrowful. He left.
Peter followed Harry the next night. And the next. And the next.
Depending on how he was feeling each evening Peter told himself different reasons as to why he followed Harry.
When he felt loyalty, or at least fear and burning, to the Dark Lord he pretended he followed so that he could learn the child's habits.
Other days, when he feels regret and hatred at himself, he pretends that he follows Harry because he owes it to James, to Lily, to Sirius and Remus.
He pretends that he doesn't want to see the past reflected. That he doesn't want to relive those happy, happy days.
The last time Harry and Peter visit the mirror Dumbledore explain what it is and what it does.
No.
(Peter does not desire this above all else)
No.
(Really.)
(He doesn't.)