Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot, Mary, and Peter.
"My name is Mary. Don't call me anything else," Peter's dearest friend in the world announced to Harry, Ron, and Hermione by way of greeting.
"Wouldn't dream of it," said Hermione, introducing the three to her.
They were in Dumbledore's office, much to the annoyance of the headmaster who found it nearly impossible to do his work with an increasing number of kids camped out on the floor. (Not, he assured them repeatedly, he was at all unhappy to see both Peter and Mary in the world of the living.)
"You could just let us into the Gryffindor tower and all these troubles would go away!" chorused Peter and Mary as the professor searched for a stack of parchment that Ron was currently using as a cushion.
The simultaneous sentences were an incredibly frequent occurrence between Peter and Mary. It was all due to the fact that they had literally grown up with only each other. They could actually hold entire conversations in only a few words. Harry sighed as they began another again.
"But." Peter began and never finished.
"Never." Mary laughed a bit.
"Stranger things."
Mary glanced at Peter with a strange little gleam in her eye.
"Wormtail," Peter seemed to reply.
The girl's posture said that she agreed, but again only two words. "This place."
"Bend them."
Finally Harry, Ron, and Hermione cried out in exasperation. "What are you talking about?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Mary asked, oblivious to brains on any other wavelength than hers.
Peter who, apparently, had a slightly better grip on reality for who knows what reason, replied, "First I said that we might not belong in Gryffindor, and that if we wanted to get into a common room we should be sorted. Then Mary said that the Sorting Hat would never place us in anything other than Gryffindor. I pointed out that stranger things had happened, but she wanted a specific example. So I told her that Wormtail had been sorted into Gryffindor, although he obviously did not remain on those high standards for long, at any rate. She agreed and changed the subject to the fact that this place is a school, and therefore is occupied by students. It's a rule that only students, and heads of houses, are allowed in the Common Rooms. I said that the rules should be broken in our case."
Then, the boy took a breath. Hermione stared and asked timidly, "All that in under ten words?"
Peter shrugged. "It's not that hard, once you know who you're talking to.I bet that you could do it, if you really tried. Your conversations lose us sometimes."
"But that is mostly because we refer to old events and people that you don't know!" Harry protested. "That's not the same thing as what you're doing. You're reading each other's minds."
"So are you, in a way. You refer to past things and behaviors and assume that the others get the same metaphor out of it as you do. That is a type of thinking on the same wavelength. You just need to trust that your friends can think like you."
"Trust me, we can't," Ron grumbled with a glance at Hermione.
"Yes, you can, but you probably couldn't get down to ten words a conversation for a while. There was a time a few years ago when we could talk in syllables."
"Do you realize you're doing it? I mean, can you talk like normal people?"
Peter laughed. "Of course, we call it Short Speak. We invented it, or practiced it, I suppose, because we needed to be able to talk to each other without anyone else understanding what we were talking about. People thought we were mumbling to ourselves, not plotting and scheming. But it's very difficult because you can't let your mind wander to different subjects or delve away from a conversation, and you have to be sure you aren't assuming the other one knows something she doesn't.We usually speak in long tongue; we're not now because Short Speak annoys you."
Harry smiled a bit at that, if only to humor Peter. The boy really was inscrutable, and they passed the topic of short speak. Then, however, the conversation got rocky. After all, there was very little that all of them had in common, unless you counted Voldemort, and that certainly wasn't what anyone wanted to talk about. Peter and Mary were agreeably silent about their pasts and steered skillfully, although obviously, away from any subject that touched too near hurtful matters.
Peter had changed completely with the coming of Mary. His emotions showed just a little more readily, and he sounded just a little bit more sincere. Those masks that he had donned as easily as Dobby did socks seemed a little more translucent. It was nowhere near normal, but it was a start. If only, Harry thought, he could get rid of that horrible haunting in his eyes.
He awoke from his reverie in time to hear Ron ask Mary, with about as much tact as a charging rhinoceros, "Why did you stay away so long, anyhow?"
Peter and Mary stared at Ron with congruent looks of surprise and disgust. "What do you mean?" the girl asked in a harsh voice.
"I mean, you must have heard about You-Know-Who's return, if you knew that Peter got out. Your source has to be good. Why didn't you come and help?"
Mary looked absolutely bewildered. "I had to stay away because Voldemort had Peter.I cannot get used to that name.The last thing he needed was me showing up in the neighborhood. The Death-Eaters had to think that I was dead, or they would find me and capture me too."
"Nice friend you got there!" Ron said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Now it was Peter's turn not to understand. "What are you talking about, pray tell?"
"Well, no offense meant, Mary, but shouldn't you have tried to help Peter escape to?" Hermione said quietly.
"No," Peter said. "Not at all, come on, one of you has to understand."
No one seemed to.
The boy shook his head in absolute amazement. "Didn't you learn anything last year? One is always better than two! What did you expect Mary to do? Take on Voldemort single-handedly? That is so pointless I can't even begin to say it."
"She should have done something."
"She did. She got away. I couldn't have survived it; I couldn't have stood up to him if she was there too. You know why the Longbottoms went insane from the Cruciatus curse? It was because they were together. If it had been one of them, then it would only have hurt.a lot, but they would have managed to come out of it sane. I think.If Mary had been screaming there next to me, then Voldemort would have got what he wanted, and you'd all be dead."
Peter had spoken in a perfectly even tone, and his voice was that of a teacher explaining something to slightly slow students. His eyes were glazed as if he were merely bored. Yet, Harry felt as blown away as if he had screamed with anger. The emotion behind the words and the voice was so powerful, so all-consuming that it ate at Harry with a sting. It was actually hurting!
"Peter!" Mary whispered suddenly, urgently, but somehow gave the impression that she was screaming hysterically. "Stop it! Stop it right now! Peter! Peter, it isn't their fault!"
Suddenly, the pain in Harry's chest vanished. Peter's eyes became clear and he sobbed.
"My God!" he said. "I didn't mean to.I didn't mean to.I don't have any control at all.I'm sorry.I'm sorry."
Mary looked shaken, scared even. "How did you.? How could you.? Is it even possible? You're too young!"
Her voice faded into silence. Peter looked as if he had just had a premonition of his own death. He got up hurriedly and left without looking back.
"What happened?" Harry asked Mary as soon as she looked capable of human speech.
"You have to understand that he didn't mean to do it at all, but he really doesn't have any control!" she said earnestly.
"No control over what?"
"His power, of course. It's maturing at too fast a rate. He was supposed to get it all at once, maybe a week before he actually turns sixteen he'll get little sparks on his fingers or something like that. Yet, it hasn't worked like that, not at all. We think it is his body's answer for the.the stuff he's been put through."
"So what did he do?"
"He was angry at you, and his feelings work in weird little ways. It saved his life once or twice, you know. I don't really understand how it works, but basically, he implants his own emotions into you."
"So I was feeling what he was feeling?" Harry asked, thinking about the gnawing that he had felt in his stomach. He had never experienced anything like that before, the pain.
"No, it doesn't work," Mary said. "What happens is the same thing as a Muggle rejection in surgery."
And Hermione took up the sentence where Mary had left off, dawning comprehension on her face. "Our minds tried to get rid of the emotion. I've read about this. The result is a pain that can result in serious damage if it isn't stopped. In order to get rid of the invading sentiments, the body hurts itself to try to infuse any other sense at all."
Mary nodded, completely nonplused at Hermione's knowledge. "If he hadn't stopped when he did, I am willing to be that you'd be dead."
Harry thought back to that gnawing feeling. It felt like his insides were being carved out. He knew that Mary was telling the truth on all accounts. If Peter hadn't managed to stop inflicting his emotion, then all three of them would probably have suffered major damage. But Peter hadn't meant to? That was hard to believe.
"I know the kid's been through bad stuff," Ron said after a moment's pause, "but killing us? He's got to know better than to do that!"
"He does!" Mary cried. "You don't understand at all! He can't himself! It's like when you were younger, before you came to Hogwarts, and the little signs of maturing magic would hit you. He doesn't know he's doing it, and it takes all his power to stop it once he realizes it."
"Why? Why hasn't his magic become manageable? He's old enough. Even an untrained wizard should have stopped by his age," Hermione informed them.
"He's no wizard," Mary replied, relating quickly what was to happen when he turned sixteen.
"That's wonderful!" Hermione cried joyfully. "He can defeat Voldemort! We'll all be fine!"
But that was wrong, Harry thought. Peter couldn't be the one to bring down Voldemort. That was his job. The prophecy said so.unless the other possibility was true. He felt a weight sink in him. If Peter would do it, if Peter would kill Voldemort, then that meant he, Harry, would have to be killed.
Mary saw Harry's reaction to the news, and said, "Don't worry, Harry. I think with Peter alive; all bets are off."
"I hope so," Harry said dryly.
* * * *
As for Peter, he was wandering aimlessly around the castle, horrified at what he had almost done. Yes, he had done that sort of thing before, inflicted accidental pain, but it had always been on someone who deserved it. Someone like his mother. But he never had control. It was bound to happen these days, now that his acquaintances included non-Death Eaters. He was surprised he had lasted this long without incident. However, it didn't help the thought that he had just virtually tortured Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley because they had not understood that Mary had acted for the best.
He was a danger to everyone until he got control, especially if his power kept growing meanwhile. He did not know what to do about it. He had to keep his emotions under control, but the fact was that he did. His real emotions almost never bubbled to the top. It didn't matter; his power kicked into gear at the slightest provocation of his mind.
His thoughts went unwillingly to the last time he had lost control and not had Mary there to snap him out of it. He had killed a man, a Death Eater though it was. He still saw, in his nightmares, the man writhing in pain, and the blood starting to bubble inside the corners of his mouth, and he, Peter, not understanding in the least. And then when the man stopped struggling and the blood came dark and slow, Peter remembered how the other Death-Eaters had looked at him in a sort of fear mixed with respect. Voldemort, the one who really should have died, laughed.
Peter had never done it again. There was something in his subconscious that spun away from the possibility of getting angry enough to kill. That pain that he had inflicted on Harry and the others was the worst he had done since. That was not from lack of trying.
A girl rushing to get out of her class ran into Peter head on.
"Sorry," she muttered and brushed by him.
For a moment, Peter didn't realize why that had seemed so strange. The he realized it. He had forgotten his Invisibility Cloak.
"My name is Mary. Don't call me anything else," Peter's dearest friend in the world announced to Harry, Ron, and Hermione by way of greeting.
"Wouldn't dream of it," said Hermione, introducing the three to her.
They were in Dumbledore's office, much to the annoyance of the headmaster who found it nearly impossible to do his work with an increasing number of kids camped out on the floor. (Not, he assured them repeatedly, he was at all unhappy to see both Peter and Mary in the world of the living.)
"You could just let us into the Gryffindor tower and all these troubles would go away!" chorused Peter and Mary as the professor searched for a stack of parchment that Ron was currently using as a cushion.
The simultaneous sentences were an incredibly frequent occurrence between Peter and Mary. It was all due to the fact that they had literally grown up with only each other. They could actually hold entire conversations in only a few words. Harry sighed as they began another again.
"But." Peter began and never finished.
"Never." Mary laughed a bit.
"Stranger things."
Mary glanced at Peter with a strange little gleam in her eye.
"Wormtail," Peter seemed to reply.
The girl's posture said that she agreed, but again only two words. "This place."
"Bend them."
Finally Harry, Ron, and Hermione cried out in exasperation. "What are you talking about?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Mary asked, oblivious to brains on any other wavelength than hers.
Peter who, apparently, had a slightly better grip on reality for who knows what reason, replied, "First I said that we might not belong in Gryffindor, and that if we wanted to get into a common room we should be sorted. Then Mary said that the Sorting Hat would never place us in anything other than Gryffindor. I pointed out that stranger things had happened, but she wanted a specific example. So I told her that Wormtail had been sorted into Gryffindor, although he obviously did not remain on those high standards for long, at any rate. She agreed and changed the subject to the fact that this place is a school, and therefore is occupied by students. It's a rule that only students, and heads of houses, are allowed in the Common Rooms. I said that the rules should be broken in our case."
Then, the boy took a breath. Hermione stared and asked timidly, "All that in under ten words?"
Peter shrugged. "It's not that hard, once you know who you're talking to.I bet that you could do it, if you really tried. Your conversations lose us sometimes."
"But that is mostly because we refer to old events and people that you don't know!" Harry protested. "That's not the same thing as what you're doing. You're reading each other's minds."
"So are you, in a way. You refer to past things and behaviors and assume that the others get the same metaphor out of it as you do. That is a type of thinking on the same wavelength. You just need to trust that your friends can think like you."
"Trust me, we can't," Ron grumbled with a glance at Hermione.
"Yes, you can, but you probably couldn't get down to ten words a conversation for a while. There was a time a few years ago when we could talk in syllables."
"Do you realize you're doing it? I mean, can you talk like normal people?"
Peter laughed. "Of course, we call it Short Speak. We invented it, or practiced it, I suppose, because we needed to be able to talk to each other without anyone else understanding what we were talking about. People thought we were mumbling to ourselves, not plotting and scheming. But it's very difficult because you can't let your mind wander to different subjects or delve away from a conversation, and you have to be sure you aren't assuming the other one knows something she doesn't.We usually speak in long tongue; we're not now because Short Speak annoys you."
Harry smiled a bit at that, if only to humor Peter. The boy really was inscrutable, and they passed the topic of short speak. Then, however, the conversation got rocky. After all, there was very little that all of them had in common, unless you counted Voldemort, and that certainly wasn't what anyone wanted to talk about. Peter and Mary were agreeably silent about their pasts and steered skillfully, although obviously, away from any subject that touched too near hurtful matters.
Peter had changed completely with the coming of Mary. His emotions showed just a little more readily, and he sounded just a little bit more sincere. Those masks that he had donned as easily as Dobby did socks seemed a little more translucent. It was nowhere near normal, but it was a start. If only, Harry thought, he could get rid of that horrible haunting in his eyes.
He awoke from his reverie in time to hear Ron ask Mary, with about as much tact as a charging rhinoceros, "Why did you stay away so long, anyhow?"
Peter and Mary stared at Ron with congruent looks of surprise and disgust. "What do you mean?" the girl asked in a harsh voice.
"I mean, you must have heard about You-Know-Who's return, if you knew that Peter got out. Your source has to be good. Why didn't you come and help?"
Mary looked absolutely bewildered. "I had to stay away because Voldemort had Peter.I cannot get used to that name.The last thing he needed was me showing up in the neighborhood. The Death-Eaters had to think that I was dead, or they would find me and capture me too."
"Nice friend you got there!" Ron said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Now it was Peter's turn not to understand. "What are you talking about, pray tell?"
"Well, no offense meant, Mary, but shouldn't you have tried to help Peter escape to?" Hermione said quietly.
"No," Peter said. "Not at all, come on, one of you has to understand."
No one seemed to.
The boy shook his head in absolute amazement. "Didn't you learn anything last year? One is always better than two! What did you expect Mary to do? Take on Voldemort single-handedly? That is so pointless I can't even begin to say it."
"She should have done something."
"She did. She got away. I couldn't have survived it; I couldn't have stood up to him if she was there too. You know why the Longbottoms went insane from the Cruciatus curse? It was because they were together. If it had been one of them, then it would only have hurt.a lot, but they would have managed to come out of it sane. I think.If Mary had been screaming there next to me, then Voldemort would have got what he wanted, and you'd all be dead."
Peter had spoken in a perfectly even tone, and his voice was that of a teacher explaining something to slightly slow students. His eyes were glazed as if he were merely bored. Yet, Harry felt as blown away as if he had screamed with anger. The emotion behind the words and the voice was so powerful, so all-consuming that it ate at Harry with a sting. It was actually hurting!
"Peter!" Mary whispered suddenly, urgently, but somehow gave the impression that she was screaming hysterically. "Stop it! Stop it right now! Peter! Peter, it isn't their fault!"
Suddenly, the pain in Harry's chest vanished. Peter's eyes became clear and he sobbed.
"My God!" he said. "I didn't mean to.I didn't mean to.I don't have any control at all.I'm sorry.I'm sorry."
Mary looked shaken, scared even. "How did you.? How could you.? Is it even possible? You're too young!"
Her voice faded into silence. Peter looked as if he had just had a premonition of his own death. He got up hurriedly and left without looking back.
"What happened?" Harry asked Mary as soon as she looked capable of human speech.
"You have to understand that he didn't mean to do it at all, but he really doesn't have any control!" she said earnestly.
"No control over what?"
"His power, of course. It's maturing at too fast a rate. He was supposed to get it all at once, maybe a week before he actually turns sixteen he'll get little sparks on his fingers or something like that. Yet, it hasn't worked like that, not at all. We think it is his body's answer for the.the stuff he's been put through."
"So what did he do?"
"He was angry at you, and his feelings work in weird little ways. It saved his life once or twice, you know. I don't really understand how it works, but basically, he implants his own emotions into you."
"So I was feeling what he was feeling?" Harry asked, thinking about the gnawing that he had felt in his stomach. He had never experienced anything like that before, the pain.
"No, it doesn't work," Mary said. "What happens is the same thing as a Muggle rejection in surgery."
And Hermione took up the sentence where Mary had left off, dawning comprehension on her face. "Our minds tried to get rid of the emotion. I've read about this. The result is a pain that can result in serious damage if it isn't stopped. In order to get rid of the invading sentiments, the body hurts itself to try to infuse any other sense at all."
Mary nodded, completely nonplused at Hermione's knowledge. "If he hadn't stopped when he did, I am willing to be that you'd be dead."
Harry thought back to that gnawing feeling. It felt like his insides were being carved out. He knew that Mary was telling the truth on all accounts. If Peter hadn't managed to stop inflicting his emotion, then all three of them would probably have suffered major damage. But Peter hadn't meant to? That was hard to believe.
"I know the kid's been through bad stuff," Ron said after a moment's pause, "but killing us? He's got to know better than to do that!"
"He does!" Mary cried. "You don't understand at all! He can't himself! It's like when you were younger, before you came to Hogwarts, and the little signs of maturing magic would hit you. He doesn't know he's doing it, and it takes all his power to stop it once he realizes it."
"Why? Why hasn't his magic become manageable? He's old enough. Even an untrained wizard should have stopped by his age," Hermione informed them.
"He's no wizard," Mary replied, relating quickly what was to happen when he turned sixteen.
"That's wonderful!" Hermione cried joyfully. "He can defeat Voldemort! We'll all be fine!"
But that was wrong, Harry thought. Peter couldn't be the one to bring down Voldemort. That was his job. The prophecy said so.unless the other possibility was true. He felt a weight sink in him. If Peter would do it, if Peter would kill Voldemort, then that meant he, Harry, would have to be killed.
Mary saw Harry's reaction to the news, and said, "Don't worry, Harry. I think with Peter alive; all bets are off."
"I hope so," Harry said dryly.
* * * *
As for Peter, he was wandering aimlessly around the castle, horrified at what he had almost done. Yes, he had done that sort of thing before, inflicted accidental pain, but it had always been on someone who deserved it. Someone like his mother. But he never had control. It was bound to happen these days, now that his acquaintances included non-Death Eaters. He was surprised he had lasted this long without incident. However, it didn't help the thought that he had just virtually tortured Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley because they had not understood that Mary had acted for the best.
He was a danger to everyone until he got control, especially if his power kept growing meanwhile. He did not know what to do about it. He had to keep his emotions under control, but the fact was that he did. His real emotions almost never bubbled to the top. It didn't matter; his power kicked into gear at the slightest provocation of his mind.
His thoughts went unwillingly to the last time he had lost control and not had Mary there to snap him out of it. He had killed a man, a Death Eater though it was. He still saw, in his nightmares, the man writhing in pain, and the blood starting to bubble inside the corners of his mouth, and he, Peter, not understanding in the least. And then when the man stopped struggling and the blood came dark and slow, Peter remembered how the other Death-Eaters had looked at him in a sort of fear mixed with respect. Voldemort, the one who really should have died, laughed.
Peter had never done it again. There was something in his subconscious that spun away from the possibility of getting angry enough to kill. That pain that he had inflicted on Harry and the others was the worst he had done since. That was not from lack of trying.
A girl rushing to get out of her class ran into Peter head on.
"Sorry," she muttered and brushed by him.
For a moment, Peter didn't realize why that had seemed so strange. The he realized it. He had forgotten his Invisibility Cloak.