Wants, Needs, and Fears

Peter

Time was a tricky thing. It always seemed to do the opposite of what I wanted. When I needed it to slow down, it sped up. And when I had to keep a sticky, fuzzy leaf in my mouth for an entire month, it seemed to crawl by three times slower than usual.

Since our first year, James, Sirius, and I had been searching for a way to help Remus with his "furry little problem". By locking himself up in the Shrieking Shack, Remus was able to attend school and be kept hidden whenever he was dangerous. However, as he'd once explained to us, the lack of space and other creatures left the wolf with nothing to do but rage around and attack itself. A new scar seemed to spring up on Remus's thin arms every month. At least twice every school year, he would injure himself so badly that Madam Pomfrey would insist on keeping him in the hospital wing for an extra day. He argued that this was a fine solution to his problem – much better than he deserved – but James and Sirius were determined to find a solution that kept him safe too.

Of course, I was just as worried about Remus as they were...but I had a harder time overlooking the issues with our alternative solution.

Around the end of our second year, we'd learned a piece of interesting information from Remus: that werewolves seemed to become tamer under the influence of other animals. That led us not only to seek out a more spacious area for Remus to transform in, but to find some sort of company for him. Unfortunately, those routes turned out to be somewhat of dead ends, since there weren't a lot of confined areas around Hogwarts that a werewolf could safely roam around in, and since Remus insisted on being alone to keep himself from hurting anyone, humans and animals alike.

One Transfiguration class in the first half of our third year changed everything. Professor McGonagall began her lesson on Animagi – witches and wizards who could transform into animals at will – by morphing into a cat right in front of us. That night, James and Sirius had pulled me aside with the kind of eagerness in their eyes that always made me anxious, because it meant they were up to something. "We're going to become Animagi!" James had told me confidently.

At that point, I'd said something clever and eloquent, like, "Er...what?"

James's enthusiasm had been undimmed. "We'd always wanted to keep Remus company on full moons. As animals, we could transform with him, and he wouldn't hunt us like he would if we were humans! His bites wouldn't even be infectious! It's the perfect plan!"

I still wasn't sure that "perfect" was the right word.

The process of becoming an Animagus turned out to be about as complicated as skipping rope on one foot while singing the alphabet backwards, ten times, without making a single mistake. It didn't make it any easier that we'd decided to hide our true intentions from Remus. We were afraid that he'd try to stop us – and for good reason, I thought, because it would take a miracle for every piece of this plan to fall into place. Not only was the process itself dangerous – a failure at the end could result in horrible mutation, loss of humanity, or death – but if we succeeded in becoming Animagi, we would be spending time with Remus when he had no control over himself. Infectious or not, a bite from a transformed werewolf would not be pleasant. Plus, our animal forms would reflect our spirit, meaning that we wouldn't get to choose if we'd be something as powerful as an elephant or as scrawny as a songbird. And I, for one, did not want to keep a werewolf company as a snack-sized animal.

Still, despite my doubts, we pushed on.

That fateful day when we'd learned about Animagi had unleashed a flurry of scheming and mischief like no other. I was lucky – or Remus was lucky, rather – that James and Sirius were so stubborn and skilled at rule-breaking. We'd run into so many obstacles and had so many close calls with being caught doing something we weren't supposed to, that I might've given up after the first month of mayhem had I been doing it all alone.

"We're in this together," James had declared, right after we'd finished reading the slim leather-bound book titled How to Become an Animagus that we'd liberated from the restricted section of the library. "If one of us gets set back, we all get set back. When one of us finishes a step, we all finish it. In the end, we'll all transform at the same time. That way, we can help each other through it."

The first step of the long and painstaking process was to carry a single Mandrake leaf in each of our mouths for an entire month – more specifically, from full moon to full moon. We ended up sneaking into the greenhouses to snip Mandrake leaves a total of four times (which, by the way, made the humanlike plants throw fits of rage each time). As we'd suspected, carrying a leaf in one's mouth for twenty-eight days without accidentally swallowing or removing it proved to be tricky. We'd each messed up once. First, James lost his during a Quidditch match after only two days. The next time, I'd coughed up mine after a week. Then, when we were only three days away from being able to remove our third set of leaves, Sirius swallowed his in his sleep. Each time, all three of us started the process again – an infuriating and yet powerful form of motivation to get it right the next time.

The initial delay with the leaves turned out to be beneficial, though, because it gave us more time to find the other bizarre ingredients for the potion we would be concocting. We borrowed three small crystal phials from the Potions classroom. It took a week of early morning excursions to find a low-hanging tree branch in the Forbidden Forest covered in "silver dew", where "neither sunlight nor human feet have touched". And Hagrid helped us to locate a nest of Death's-Head Hawk Caterpillars – furry brown-and-white creatures the size of my index finger with skull-shaped markings on their heads. The creepy-crawlies were deadly to the touch, and their chrysalises were sometimes used to make potent potions – like the Animagus Potion. Ordinarily, I might've had second thoughts about that ingredient, but at this point, I felt so exhausted that the idea of drinking a poisonous husk full of molten moth hardly fazed me.

At last, by April of our third year, all three of us had succeeded in keeping the Mandrake leaves in our mouths for a full lunar cycle. We'd added the soggy leaves to the crystal phials, along with a strand of our hair. For the next week, we'd stored the phials in a cluster of rocks near Hagrid's hut where they could "absorb the pure rays of the moon". Then, for the past six days, the three of us had woken up well before dawn to add a single spoonful of silvery dew to our concoctions.

Tomorrow, we would need to add the last spoonful of dew and the chrysalises to our phials and then store them in a place where "neither light nor sound can penetrate". After that, we would have to recite an incantation every sunrise and sunset until a natural lightning storm occurred. Only then could we consume the potion and (hopefully) transform into animals for the first time.

We were close – very close – but once again, time was not on our side.

In less than two weeks, we would be returning home for the summer. If a lightning storm didn't happen before then, or if one happened over break when we weren't at Hogwarts to retrieve the potions, we would have to start all over again. Currently, we had no way of storing the phials in a place that we could reach during the summer – and the potion had to be brewed and consumed on a very strict timeframe. So, all we could do was cross our fingers and pray that the weather would cooperate.

Oh, and there was also the fact that we still hadn't found a proper place to store the phials in Hogwarts.

That evening, around sunset, I found myself pacing back and forth along the corridor that led to the Fat Lady's portrait, scrambling for ideas. Sirius had suggested that we each split up and investigate the castle to save time. If tomorrow morning arrived and we still hadn't found an appropriate place – somewhere that wouldn't even be disturbed by Peeves's mischief, or by Filch's intensive summer cleaning – then we would bury the phials deep within our school trunks and hope for the best.

Though it was the most convenient option, I highly doubted that any piece of luggage was lightproof or soundproof enough to store such precious cargo. Given the potentially deadly side effects of an incorrect brew, I wasn't eager to try drinking the potion unless I was sure I'd done it properly. On that, at least, I thought James, Sirius, and I were on the same page. This year, the three of us had used the phrase "better safe than sorry" more times than I ever thought we would; it had become our motto for anything involving the transformation. And James and Sirius had seemed equally reluctant to entrust a suitcase with our many months of hard work.

We need somewhere to store our potions that's lightproof, soundproof, and that nobody but the three of us can get into.

I stopped pacing and rubbed my tired eyes. But where are we supposed to find a place like that in the castle? We could hijack a closet and lock the door, but noise could still penetrate it...unless we used some kind of muffling spell. But would that last all summer? Probably not. There are plenty of dark and quiet corners in the dungeons, but there's no guarantee that the phials wouldn't be found or disturbed. Maybe if we made a hole in a wall somewhere...

"Peter!"

I looked up from my hands. James was walking down the deserted hallway toward me, with a frown that told me he was having just as much luck as I was. "Nothing?" He checked, and I shook my head. He sighed and gestured wearily to his cloak pocket, where he kept his two-way mirror. "Sirius just said the same thing. He's heading back now, but we can keep looking under the cloak later. You know, I was thinking; we could try burying the phials somewhere in the grounds. I'm just not sure if the potion is temperature sensitive. The book didn't say anything about it. I was going to try asking Slughorn again tonight, but he wasn't in his office when I..." He faded off, looking bewildered. "Er, are you okay?"

I was too busy staring past James's head to process the rest of what he was saying. "Has that door always been there?"

James turned and blinked at the large Gothic door at the end of the corridor, which had evidently appeared just before he'd arrived. "Oh. I dunno."

"I swear, it wasn't here a few seconds ago," I said as I approached the mysterious door. It was a dark mahogany, with a detailed lattice pattern carved into the wood. I was sure that I wouldn't have missed such an impressive door while I was looking for rooms earlier.

James had started to frown. "Now that you mention it, we walk down this hallway all the time, and I've never noticed it before."

There didn't seem to be any hardware on the door, so I gave it a tentative push. The door didn't budge - but as soon as my fingers touched the wood, a metal pull handle appeared at the perfect height. Stunned, I took a step back, and the handle vanished.

"Woah," James murmured. He stepped forward and pressed one hand to the door, and the handle reappeared. With his other hand, he grabbed the handle and pulled. Soundlessly, the heavy door drifted open to reveal...nothing. The space beyond was pitch black and silent.

"Lumos," I said, and bluish wandlight flooded the corridor. I extended my wand hand, but the light couldn't pierce the intense darkness. Even the sunlight couldn't cross the marble threshold.

"Stay here," James instructed me, wearing that intent frown that he reserved for dangerous situations. I watched as he stepped slowly into the room. When he crossed the threshold, the darkness seemed to swallow him whole. He'd barely taken three steps, but I couldn't see him at all. I waited for a few seconds, but James didn't return. I couldn't even hear him breathing.

"James?" I called nervously. "Are you alright?"

There was no response.

With bated breath, I waited for a few more seconds. Then, ignoring every instinct for self-preservation, I took a step toward the room. My wand hand trembled, but I refused to let fear get the best of me. I wasn't about to throw my entire body into the darkness like James had done, but I at least wanted to partially break through the barrier. If James was in danger, then I had no time to get help. What if he was trapped and suffocating on the other side? I couldn't leave him alone in there!

You're good with dark spaces, I told myself in a reassuring voice. You can do this.

The instant my shoe breached the shadowy doorway, a voice made me flinch back. "Pete?" I looked over my shoulder as Sirius hurried down the hallway. He paused to gape at the pitch-black hole in the wall – a huge doorway to nothingness. "What is that?"

I tried not to sound panicked. "I-I dunno, but James went in, and he isn't answering me." Sirius's gray eyes widened, and I turned to the doorway to avoid his gaze, which felt more accusing than fearful to me. "If this is a prank, c-cut it out, James!" I scolded the darkness in a would-be firm voice. He still didn't answer. Sirius rushed to my side and lit his wand too. He looked like he was about to charge through the doorway, so I grabbed his arm. "Wait! I could tie something to you, or...or..."

Sirius frowned at me for a moment. Then something flickered in his eyes, and he pulled a small silver mirror from his pocket. "James Potter," he said to it.

Almost instantly, James appeared in the reflective surface – at least, I assumed it was him, since I knew how the mirrors worked. His face was wreathed in shadows, and wandlight gleamed faintly against his glasses. The image was so dim that I could barely recognize him. His voice sounded distant as he asked, "Sirius? Can you hear me?"

"Barely," Sirius confirmed with furrowed eyebrows, leaning closer to the mirror. "Can you hear me?"

"Clear as crystal. What's wrong?"

"I'm at the doorway. Are you okay? Do you need me to come and get you?"

I could hear James's smile better than I could see it. "I'm fine, Mum. It's just a dark room. You're standing outside? That's odd. I can only hear you through the mirror. I was trying to talk to Peter just now too, before you called. I think the doorway is a sound barrier."

"And a light barrier, apparently," Sirius murmured, lifting his wand to the shadows.

"Is there anything in there?" I asked curiously.

"It looks empty. Oh, wait. There's a shelf here, with a little box on it."

My stomach twisted. This was starting to sound like a horror movie.

"There's nothing in it," James reported at once. "It's kind of soft on the inside. Maybe a jewelry box? I bet it could fit our potions..."

"Hold on! You just opened a random box in a creepy dark room?" I sputtered at the mirror. "Did you at least check for enchantments?"

James's tone turned sheepish. "I probably should've used a Revelio Charm," he admitted.

Sirius snorted. "Should we be concerned about your career choices?"

"I'm not an Auror yet," James argued defensively.

"Clearly," Sirius muttered, smirking. "Would you just get out of there, before you do something else stupid?"

"Can you wave your hand through or something? I can't find the doorway."

Sirius obliged. A second later, a hand lunged from the darkness and grasped his arm. I shrieked in terror, and Sirius lurched back. Then, with a disgruntled growl, he grabbed the hand and twisted his body, pulling James out of the darkness. Our bespectacled friend rolled onto the floor with a triumphant shout of laughter. Sirius attempted to look annoyed. "You absolute prat!"

"That was a prank, Peter," James informed me with a wink. He turned his grin to Sirius. "I had you going for a second, didn't I?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "You had Pete going. He screamed so loud I thought he'd been stabbed."

Blushing, I tried to steer topic back to the matter at hand. "So, this room...do you think it's safe for the potions?"

James beamed at me. "Safe? I think it's perfect!"

The next morning, when we returned to the hallway to store our phials of potion, the strange door had vanished. We traced our wands over the wall and used several different revealing spells, but nothing worked. "What did you do the last time?" James asked me intently.

I frowned at him. "You think I made it appear?"

"Well, I don't see how I would've done it, considering it was already there when I showed up."

I couldn't argue with that. I began to pace down the hall again, reenacting the moment before James had arrived. "I was just thinking," I said slowly, "about the kind of room we needed to find. Then...it was right there, like an answer to my thoughts." I closed my eyes and tried to recall my exact words: Lightproof. Soundproof. Only we can open it. I opened my eyes just in time to see the same impressive wooden door melding into the blank stone wall.

"That's brilliant!" James enthused. "Do you think we could make it any kind of room?"

"Let's figure that out later," Sirius suggested, gently pulling his schoolbag to his chest. He'd volunteered to carry the precious cargo – and though he didn't say it, I suspected it was because he still felt guilty for his most recent mistake with the Mandrake leaf.

This time, all three of us went into the room, and we closed the door behind us. James and I lit our wands, and Sirius carefully opened the little box that would store our potions. But as soon as he removed the lid, pandemonium broke out.

Silvery chains surged from the box like they'd been shot from a cannon, flashing wildly in the wandlight. Sirius yelped and staggered back as the militarized chains wrapped around him. He curled both arms protectively around his schoolbag as the binds pinned his arms to his chest and mummified his legs. As James lunged forward to break his fall, I glimpsed a humanlike figure rising out of the box.

"Lumos maxima!" I gasped.

My wandlight turned blinding, cutting through the thick darkness to illuminate a pale man with short dark hair, clad in pristine black dress robes with green trim. The silvery chains that had sprung at Sirius led back to his wandtip. I shuddered when I took a good look at the man's face. He seemed to be an older version of Sirius, if Sirius dressed or acted like the pureblood Slytherin his family wanted him to be. But the most unnerving part was his eyes; they were solid white, just like a Thestral's. His emotionless gaze reminded me of an Inferi. Just looking at his face made me feel sick to my stomach.

For a split second, the three of us were frozen in shock. Then the man spoke in a low voice that was somehow just like Sirius's, if Sirius gargled with thumbtacks every night. "There is no escape," he hissed, pointing his chained wand at my friends with a metallic clamor. Sirius seemed too petrified to react, but the hostile gesture snapped James out of his trance. He raised his shaky wand hand.

"Ridikkulus!"

Rather than turning into something amusing, the Boggart only changed its focus to James. With a sharp crack, zombie-Sirius vanished, along with the chains encircling the real Sirius. Instead, a bloody corpse materialized – a corpse that looked like yet another older version of one of my friends. I'd met James's father on several occasions, and it was jarring to see the confident and friendly Auror lying blank-eyed on the floor. James grimaced and closed his eyes, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was: How do you make a corpse funny? Then he took a breath and repeated more firmly, "Ridikkulus!"

At once, the color returned to the corpse, and the bloody gashes disappeared. James's father sat up and stretched like he was waking up from a long nap. When he looked around, his eyes widened. "Merlin's saggy trousers! Did I fall asleep on the job? Mad-Eye is going to have my head for this!"

James laughed softly, and the Boggart reformed into the corpse of a thin woman with streaks of gray running through her long red hair. To my surprise, James scowled at the dead body of his mother, like he was disappointed in the Boggart's lack of creativity. "Oh, bugger off. Ridikkulus!"

Once again, the corpse was restored into a healthy, living person. James's mother sat up and scanned over us with a suspicious glare. "What are you boys up to now? Dear Merlin, can you never keep yourselves out of trouble?"

James laughed again, and Sirius and I smiled. With several sharp pops, the Boggart of James's mother morphed into a spider, then an eyeball, and then a severed foot. On the fourth attempt, it transformed into James and Sirius – at the appropriate age of fourteen, without modifications. The doppelgängers lounged coolly against the wall with smug smirks on their faces. Feeling less frightened than before, I raised my wand, but I hesitated as they started to talk to each other.

"I can't believe he still thinks he's our friend," said the fake-Sirius haughtily. "He knows we only hang out with him because we're roommates, right?"

The fake-James snickered. "What a loser. I don't know why he ever thought he could become an Animagus with us. He's awful at Transfiguration!"

The fake-Sirius shrugged, still wearing that disturbing smirk. "Maybe he'll mess it up and kill himself," he said hopefully.

My stomach churned with unease, and my face burned with a mix of shame and frustration. I could feel the real James and Sirius staring at me intently, but I couldn't bear to look at them. Focusing on their more obnoxious versions, I yelled, "Ridikkulus!"

A brisk zipping sound sliced the air as fake-James's lips were sealed shut. In the same instant, a pumpkin solidified around fake-Sirius's head. Suddenly, their laughter was all I could hear...but it wasn't mocking or cruel. It was joyful and pure, the kind of laugh that escaped at the moment nobody expected it to. In disbelief, I watched my friends – my real friends – as they cracked up over their duped doppelgängers. When Pumpkinhead Sirius and Zipperface James turned to each other in confusion, I couldn't help but join in.

Clearly distressed, the Boggart transformed into a few more random objects before reverting to zombie-Sirius. The man raised his wand, and chains shot out of it again, but this time Sirius was ready. With a stubborn glare, he shouted, "Ridikkulus!" The chains exploded into red and gold confetti, and zombie-Sirius's outfit morphed into a Gryffindor uniform, embellished with oversized paw-shaped mittens, a childish lion-ear headband, and a fuzzy red-and-gold scarf that doubled as a mane. And that wasn't all. With an appalled expression, zombie-Sirius turned around to gape at the lion's tail that had been pinned to his trousers. All three of us burst out laughing, and the Boggart disappeared with one final POP.

For a long moment, we all beamed at each other, satisfied with our victory. It took us a few seconds to sober up and remember what we were doing. James's proud grin turned into a worried frown as he looked at Sirius, who was gripping his schoolbag like he was afraid another Boggart would jump out when he opened it. Slowly, with the air of someone lowering a casket into the ground, Sirius pulled out and unwrapped the bundle of red-and-gold scarves containing the three small phials, each tied with a different colored string so we wouldn't get them confused. Two of the phials – green and blue – seemed to have survived Sirius's fall, but my heart sunk when I noticed the third. The phial with the red string was cracked, and most of the silvery substance had leaked out.

The mood in the shadowy room deflated even more. We all huddled around the broken phial like we were attending its funeral. That small piece of crystal contained the culmination of nearly five months of diligence...and it had been crushed in the blink of an eye by a Boggart. Sirius looked even more miserable than I felt – but I suppose that made sense, since it was his phial that had been broken. "I tried to keep them safe," he murmured helplessly. "When I fell, I tried..."

"I know, mate," James tried to console him, though he sounded just as defeated. "None of us could've expected a Boggart to move in overnight. It's not your fault."

That phrase only seemed to make Sirius feel worse. Pleadingly, he looked up at James and I. "Keep yours, at least. Don't...don't start over because of me. Not again. Moony...do it for Moony. That's what's best for him. For all of us."

James sighed and gently picked up the phial with the green string. "We all promised to do this together. It wouldn't be right to go on without you. Besides, we agreed that no matter what animals we transform into, we'll all be safer if we stay together whenever we visit Moony. It's going to be hard enough to convince him to let us visit him as is. Peter and I can't go without you."

Still sitting on the floor, Sirius hunched over and buried his face in his hands. He seemed too devastated to speak.

"It could've been any of our phials that was broken," I pointed out quietly, "or all of them, even."

"Right," James agreed. "What if it had been mine? Would you and Peter have gone on without me?" Sirius gave James another miserable look, and James shrugged. "I won't blame you if you say yes. Going through the whole process together was my idea."

"It makes sense," Sirius muttered begrudgingly. "It's just shitty. You two don't deserve to pay for this. You got lucky. I didn't. That should be the end of it."

"Yeah, but that's not how this together thing works," James said, and I was surprised that he had the fortitude to smile. "It's like Quidditch. We all have different roles to play, but in the end, we're a team. If we win or lose, we win or lose together, as a unit. We'll score the Cup soon enough. We just need to keep going."

Judging by Sirius's heavy sigh, he was having trouble sharing in James's optimism. "If it makes you feel any better, Sirius, this probably wasn't going to work anyway," I added, grimacing as James furrowed his eyebrows at me. "I mean, redoing the leaf thing so many times put us in a tight spot. The odds of an electric storm happening over the next week weren't exactly high – and if one had happened over the summer, we'd have been starting over just the same, since we can't access the potions then. So, this really doesn't make much of a difference."

James chuckled humorlessly. "That's a good point." Sirius groaned, and James frowned again. "Look, mate, we all knew what we were getting into. The book never said it was easy."

"I know that," Sirius grumbled. "I'm not giving up. It's just..." He sighed again. After a few seconds, he mumbled in a strained voice, "I'm sorry."

James's frowned turned stony. "Oi. This better not turn into the leaf thing all over again. You were moping around for a whole week. None of us blame you for that, you know."

Sirius groaned again. "We were so close!"

"And we'll get close again, together," James tacked on, "and eventually, we'll all transform together. But for now, we'll wait, and enjoy our summer break, and come back as fourth years to start again. Besides, we know how find all the ingredients now, we have the perfect place to store the potions, and we have a lot of practice holding leaves in our mouths. Think of this year as a test run. Someday, when we're finally done with all this, we'll look back on this year and laugh, and feel thankful that we'd had so much practice to prepare us for the real thing."

Sirius grumbled something under his breath, and James smiled. Then he placed his phial on the floor and crushed it under his foot, with a glassy crunch and a cheery declaration of: "Mazal Tov!"

Sirius made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. He gave James a dry look, but his eyes didn't look as pained or guilty as before. "I'm not Jewish, but I think you've just married me."

James grinned. Then he eyed me expectantly, and his smile flickered.

I sighed, picked up the vial with the blue string, and crushed it in the same way. I tried not to wince at the sound, but it was difficult not to think about all the pain and suffering that I'd just made irrelevant. Sirius grimaced at my expression. "You didn't need to do that, Pete," he told me quietly.

I forced a smile for his sake. "Well, I wouldn't want to do this without you," I replied, surprising myself with the sincerity in my voice.

Sirius's face brightened a little, and James beamed proudly at me. "We wouldn't want to do this without you either, Pete," James parried. It was clear by the intensity of his gaze that he was recalling my Boggart's form.

Heat crept into my face. "I know," I mumbled quickly. "I don't actually think that. I'm just nervous about the transformation, I guess."

"Don't be," James said simply. "Sirius and I – the real us – we'll be with you the whole time."

"Pumpkinhead and Zipperface got what was coming to them," Sirius added, scowling. "Those blokes were massive prats." I snickered, and he smirked and went on, "Ugly, too. Well, the one with the long hair wasn't so bad."

"Oi!" James shoved him, failing to hold back a grin.

Even with the shattered phial under my shoe, I couldn't help but smile.

I supposed, in the long run, being a part of a team wasn't so bad after all.