Wow, this is part five. I really didn't expect this part to go out so soon, but I started writing and just kept going. I hope I get some reviews on this one, I really need some feedback and some criticism (negative is good, positive is better.)

Anyway, I don't own any of Harry Potter. I own Peter's parents, step-father, and half-sister, but that's about it.

A Rat's Tale

Trials

The next morning at breakfast, Dumbledore announced Quidditch trials for the houses had sign-ups posted in the common rooms. I saw James and Sirius look at excitedly at one another, and then quickly start to stuff food into their respective mouths. That night, each of them had pulled a new style of broom out of their trunks and Sirius decided to take his for a "test run" in the bedroom resulting in a broken light and bed post. Needless to say, this was the cause of his second detention. Professor McGonagall had decided that it might be easier for her to just not leave Sirius alone at all, but had decided to instead take away the two broomsticks that had been lying around the bedroom. She'd promised to give them back at the Quidditch trials and not a moment sooner, causing them to stare under my bed, then at me. My broom was still safely hidden in its box. It wasn't half as advanced as either of theirs, but it was a broom and it was still in the room.

            A few days later I walked over to the sign-ups for trials. There were three openings on the team, one for a beater and two for chasers. There were four names already on the list with Sirius and James' the biggest and taking up about four lines more then either of them needed to. The other two names were fifth years. I remembered them from Quidditch trials the year before. The team had only needed two people last year and four had tried out. The two who had been cut weren't bad players, they were actually just as talented as those who had already made the team. Their particular positions hadn't been needed that year though and they'd been asked to try again the next year. This made me extremely hesitant to add my name to the list. If either Sirius or James were as good as they claimed to be, there was no chance that I'd make the team. But Andrew had spent a month teaching me how to ride the broom and although it wasn't particularly good, I liked to fly. Not trying out would probably make him very disappointed and he was the only one who cared at that house. After a few more seconds of pondering the idea, I put my name down on the list. At least I could say that I had tried.

            That night, after an exhausting day of classes, we all sat down in the Great Hall with the girls. The two of them were eyeing a fifth year Ravenclaw and giggling to themselves. Every once in awhile their eyes swept over the room, but they always managed to come back to the same guy. James and Sirius were talking to each other, ignoring me as they so frequently did. After about fifteen minutes of silence, the current captain of the Quidditch team walked over to the two of them.

            "Are you the three second years that signed up for trials?" he asked. He was tall muscular, just about the opposite of me in everyway. Lily and Arabella looked at him, then giggled. He shot them an annoyed look, and turned back to James and Sirius.

            "We signed up, he didn't," James said, pointing at Remus. "Since there's only four second year guys, who else signed up? I don't think Lily or Arabella have ever willingly touched a broom in their lives."

            "So not true," Arabella said. She and Lily glanced at each other, and then started to giggle again. "I like brooms…" Lily exploded again, laughing so hard she almost cried. She grabbed Arabella's hand and the two of them ran out of the Great Hall.

            "Then who signed up?" Sirius asked. At that moment, I couldn't believe how dense the two of them were being.

            "I did," I put in. Sirius and James looked at me. James nodded, but Sirius had to hold his breath to stop himself from laughing. I glared at him. "Sorry, you're just not the Quidditch type. Do you even know how to fly?"

            I nodded my head and turned to the captain. "Is there something you need to tell us?"

            "Yeah, trials have been moved. Instead of having them a week from tomorrow, we're going to have them in three days. We didn't book the field soon enough and the Slytherins got it first. Anyway, good luck to all three of you." He walked away, shaking his head. The moment he was out of sight, James and Sirius turned on me.

            "You're trying out for Quidditch?" Sirius asked.

            "Yes I am." I answered.

            'You're only doing it because we are," he put in again. "Peter, have you ever touched a broom? I mean, besides that one that's hiding under your bed."

            "I flew all summer."

            "Then why didn't you come to visit us?" James asked.

            "I couldn't. My Mom would get mad."

            "Good excuse." That was Sirius.
            "It's no excuse, it's the truth. Look, why don't you just let me do this. I'm not going to make the team and frankly, one of you two aren't going to either. I'm not your competition Sirius, James is."

            The two of them looked at each other. Sirius got out of his seat and started towards the door. James looked at me, swore under his breath, and then ran after him. A few minutes later, Remus followed, leaving me in the Great Hall alone with the first years. They looked towards me, then quickly looked away. Suddenly I was the bad guy.

            Quidditch trials came up sooner then I thought they would. Between everything that had gone on that week, I hadn't had any time to actually get my broom out and practice. I knew I was in far worse condition then any of them. For a few days, I had toyed with the idea of just dropping out and letting Sirius and James face off in front of the whole house. I had asked the captain about reserve players, but he had said that they usually didn't take reserve players because it was boarding school and it was very unlikely that any of them were going to go anywhere. So the day of the trials, I pulled my Shooting Star out from under my bed and walked out to the field about five paces behind James and Sirius, who were trying to psych one another out of the running.

            Needless to say, I didn't make the team. I actually came a lot closer then I thought I would have. Sirius, although daring, wasn't half as good a beater as they wanted on the team that year. Like I had suspected, the two from the year before were the first to be chosen. Since one of those two wanted to be a beater, they only needed a chaser. James showed more potential for that position then anybody the captain had seen play in a long time. When his name was announced, James stuck out his hand and shook mine, then Sirius'. Instead of taking it, Sirius slunk back to the castle.

            I started to follow him, but not until I had talked to the team a little. They had some good tips for me and told me that I should practice seeking over the summer and that I had some potential for the position. Unfortunately, the seeker was still a fifth year and wouldn't be leaving Hogwarts for awhile. However, it would give me enough time to get good at what I wanted to be doing. Hopefully by then I would have acquired a slightly better broom as well.

            About twenty minutes after I'd gotten back to the common room, James returned with the team. He walked up to the room where Sirius was sulking and put his new Quidditch robes into his trunk. Sirius asked him about going down to dinner, but James said something about eating with the team. This only made Sirius sulk more.

            It was like that for about a month. Every time that James walked into the room, Sirius would look away. Sirius began to eat with Remus, ignoring not only James, but me as well. Remus had said on numerous occasions that he didn't want to get into a fight between the three of us, but Sirius forced him in the middle without a second thought. James just dismissed it as regular Sirius behavior and started to hang out with Lily and Arabella. After a few days of not speaking to anybody at all, I began to follow James. Isolation wasn't exactly something that I was looking for.

            Lily and Arabella, as I had discovered the year before, were still extremely nice and both were very smart. Even though neither of them had to, they spent nights in the library studying. Actually, Lily spent nights in the library studying. After a few nights of accompanying them, I noticed that Lily studied books and Arabella studied just about everything but books including all the older boys who just happened to be at the table next to theirs. After several more nights, I realized that Arabella didn't really even want to be in the library, she was just there to keep Lily company.

            Every few nights, James would show up at their table. Those nights, things rarely got done. I'd bring my homework along, hoping for the occasional help from Lily. But on those nights, James kept everybody distracted long enough that the minimum got done and not a bit more. Usually we would all end up exploring the castle and finding new and different ways to anger the caretaker. Sometimes we ran into Remus and Sirius, but Sirius would pass us without a second glance and drag an apologetic Remus along with him. James would then huff to himself for a few seconds, then everything would be forgotten.

            On the nights that James had Quidditch practice, I found myself ending up in the library more often. Sirius wasn't talking to me either, but we hadn't been on good terms since the year before. Lily studied books, Arabella studied the guys, and I tried to get my work done, but I did the occasional outside studying of my own. In an isolated childhood like mine, I hadn't really had much exposure to girls. Sitting around and listening to Arabella and Lily talk sometimes made me wonder about them. They were both pretty for twelve year olds and they were fun to watch.

            But those were only on the nights when James wasn't there. When he was, Lily and Arabella were so wrapped up in him, it was like I wasn't even there. I liked the nights when he was gone the best. Those nights they paid more attention to me.

            It was like that until Christmas break. Sometime in between October and November, James and Sirius had made a mutual pact to speak to one another again. They weren't back to the level of friendship they had had before the trials, but they weren't pulling Remus around in the middle anymore either. Things weren't back to our normal level from the year before yet, but they would be in a few months. Gryffindor had won it's first Quidditch game, proving to Sirius that James was better then him on a broom and was the logical choice for the team. The second beater was a seventh year, so he was content to try again the next year and hope that he had a better chance, which he had been informed, he did. Unfortunately, it still didn't help him that his best friend had beaten him to the one thing that he'd been looking forward to all summer. For that reason, he was still bitter.

            Christmas came and went, as did Remus. He was gone almost every month for two or three days at a time. The one thing that kept us slightly united was trying to figure out where he went. He always told us that some relative of his was sick, but his entire family seemed to be dying off one by one and by the end of the term, we were afraid that he was going to be the only Lupin left the world. I still remembered what had happened first year, and was still slightly suspicious of him. A few days before Christmas, Remus announced that he was going to be leaving again. He had told us a month before that his parents were taking the opportunity at Christmas to visit with his grandparents. We were almost positive that they had been deathly ill at some point last year, so we just let it go. When he told us that he was going to go with them, even though he'd informed us he wasn't allowed to go, we were all suspicious. What made it even weirder was when he told us he was only going to be gone for the first three days of vacation. The day after he was supposed to return would have been Christmas day. We didn't quite understand why he'd take the trouble to visit with them, then not stay for the one most important holiday, in our opinion, of the year.

            "Maybe he's hiding something," Sirius said. James and I rolled our eyes.

            "Of course he is. It's obvious," James replied. The two of them were getting better at not biting each others heads off, but somebody always needed to be in the room while they talked.

            "He slipped up last year," I said. James and Sirius both looked at me.

            "What do you mean?" James asked.

            "He told me he was going home to visit with his sick mother when a few days earlier he'd told us that his parents were going away and had already left." I said.

            "Didn't he say his mother had never gotten sick?" Sirius asked.

            "No, I thought that was his father." James responded.

            "I'm almost positive that it was his mother," Sirius insisted.

            "Do you even know what positive means?"

            "I do, but do you?"

            "Stop!" I yelled. "I think we've all come to the same conclusion. Remus is hiding something."

            "Thank you Captain Obvious."

            "Shut up Sirius."