And so it continues! I told you I'd be doing more in this series. Be prepared for stop-and-go updates, per the usual.

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Percy Weasley lived in a house with nine people, but had always felt more than a little bit lonely. He was five whole years old and hadn't ever had the chance to make any friends. Though if the other kids his age were anything like his stupid brothers, maybe he wouldn't want to be friends with them anyway.

His two older brothers, Bill and Charlie, were five and a half and three and a half years older than him, and were always complaining about him trying to tag along with them. It wasn't as if he wanted to play quidditch with them or catch frogs or climb trees – none of those things seemed remotely interesting to him – he just wanted to have someone to talk to. But they always left him behind, saying that he was too little and wasn't any fun. It hurt sometimes.

He had thought that when Bill went off to Hogwarts this year that maybe Charlie would be more inclined to spend time with him, but no. Charlie spent as much time as ever flying around on his broom and didn't appreciate a little brother trying to bother him with questions about plants and creatures and other things.

'Ask Mum or Dad,' he would always say. Percy didn't see what the big deal was; Bill at least had always answered his questions before telling him to go away. Maybe Charlie just didn't know anything.

His younger brothers, Fred and George, were no better. They were twins, so they always had someone to play with, and anyone else trying to butt in was simply an intruder. They also made no secret of the fact that they thought Percy was "boring" and "bossy", and didn't want him around any more than Bill or Charlie did.

If Percy were honest, this suited him fine. The twins were constantly causing trouble and thought everything was funny, no matter how stupid or annoying it was. In fact, he had the sneaking suspicion that they thought being annoying was itself funny, which infuriated him. His parents told him they were little and all little children were like that, which he knew wasn't true at all. He hadn't been like that when he was three. Why couldn't those two just grow up already?

His youngest brother, Ron, was barely more than a baby. He was only a year and a half old and could barely even talk yet. There was no sense trying to play with him; he was less interested in story books and playing Ministry than even Fred and George were. And of course his little sister, Ginny, actually was a baby and didn't do much more than cry all the time, unless she was eating or sleeping.

Most of Mum's time was spent chasing after the twins or looking after Ron and Ginny, so she didn't have much to spare for Percy or Charlie. This suited Charlie fine, but Percy would have liked maybe a little bit more attention.

Dad always tried to divide his attention as equally as possible amongst all of them, which Percy appreciated, but he was at work all the time except on weekends and was often really tired when he came home. It was sad that he didn't get to play with his dad as much as he liked, but he didn't want to make things even more difficult for him so always tried not to bother him when he came home in the evenings.

As a result of all this, Percy had learned over the years many different ways to entertain himself. He enjoyed reading; at first he could only enjoy books for their pictures, but with lots of work and practice he was able to read them himself. He was very proud of this because it meant Mum didn't have to read to him anymore, freeing her up to do other things she needed to do. He knew she was very busy, after all, and he thought she must have appreciated his effort, even if it meant he didn't get to spend as much time with her anymore. She did make a point of telling him she was very proud, which was a great feeling and made him feel like it was worth it.

He also liked to play Ministry. He didn't know exactly what the Ministry did, only that Dad worked for them and they were in charge of making all the rules that helped everybody get along. He would gather together what few toys he had and come up with new ways of organizing them, or else make rules that had to be followed for each one. His brothers hated this game, and would often break the rules he made up on purpose simply because they knew it bothered him. He preferred to play Ministry by himself.

None of this stopped him from being lonely, though. Nobody was supposed to be by themselves all the time. So one day when he was reading out behind the house (Charlie and their cousin Henry had run off to play quidditch, leaving him behind as usual) and he saw a little greyish white rat in the garden, instead of running away like a baby, he watched it. It seemed curious, and didn't look scary at all. It was almost like it was watching him.

'Hullo,' he said to it. It didn't answer him, of course; he was old enough to know rats couldn't talk. But it didn't run away either, so he thought maybe he could talk to it. 'My name's Percy' he said. The rat licked its paws and ran them over its ears as if it were cleaning itself. 'I've never seen a white rat before,' he added (even though it wasn'treally white; it sure looked awfully close). The rat sniffed at the air.

'My mum gave me some carrots to eat,' he said. 'Would you like one?' He pulled some sliced up carrot sticks out of his pocket and held one out to the rat. It approached him cautiously, then when it was close enough it snatched the piece of carrot out of his hand and began chewing on it enthusiastically.

'You must be really hungry,' Percy said, watching the rat eat. 'I suppose there's not much food out here this time of year. I bet the gnomes steal all the good bits, too.' Percy had never liked the gnomes. All they did was cause trouble, like Fred and George.

The little rat finished eating the carrot stick and looked up at him almost pleadingly with its little black eyes. He gave it another one, then ate the rest himself.

'Do you live out here?' he asked it after the carrots were all gone. 'I've never seen you before. You'd better be careful of Errol. He's our owl. If he sees you he'll try to eat you.' The rat took a few steps closer to him and put its front paws on his shoe.

'Sorry, I don't have any more,' he said. 'I can bring you some snacks tomorrow if you're still here, though.' The rat continued looking at him, its whiskers twitching. 'Do you want to sit with me?'

It didn't answer, of course. Percy leaned down and put out his hand. It took a minute for the rat to figure out what he wanted it to do, but eventually it crawled onto his open palm. Slowly, he lifted it up and then set it down on the surface of the table where he was sitting with his book. It crawled off and began sniffing around before curling up and lying down. He stroked its back with his finger a couple of times before going back to his book. Every so often he would look over and see the almost-white rat still curled up, apparently sleeping. It was a comforting feeling, having some company. He didn't need to talk, just having someone else there with him was a very nice change.

The rat didn't stir until close to an hour later when he stood up from the table to go inside (it was getting cold out). It rose at almost the same moment he did.

'I'm sorry I can't take you inside where it's warm,' he said, holding out his hand again. The rat crawled into it and allowed Percy to lower it back to the ground. 'Thanks for staying with me today. See you tomorrow, I hope!' He dashed back to the house, eager for a cup of hot chocolate or maybe even some tea. He looked back just before going in to see the rat inspecting a large stone at the edge of the garden near the patio. He guessed that was where its hole was.

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The next day Percy ran outside as soon as the morning drizzle stopped, a pair of biscuits in his pocket. Everything was wet, so there was no place to sit down, but he wasn't interested in reading today. He wanted to find where the rat's hole was. He went over to the rock he'd seen it at the day before and looked around, but he couldn't see any holes at all. There were many holes throughout the garden, he knew, but they were mostly full of gnomes. He went over to the side of the house, thinking maybe the rat lived in a crack in the stone foundation, but his parents had done a good job maintaining the house and everything was sealed up tight.

Expanding his search, he drifted over to the hedge at the edge of the yard. He wanted to crouch down on the ground and look underneath it, but he didn't want to get his knees wet and muddy, so he settled for bending over every few steps to have a peek instead. It was hard work.

Just when he was getting discouraged, he heard a squeak and looked down the hedge about six feet ahead of where he was. The light grey rat was poking its nose out from underneath the branches, twitching its whiskers and sniffing the air.

'So this is where you were!' he exclaimed in delight. The rat looked over at him, seemed to recognize him, and cautiously approached.

'I brought you a snack, just like I promised,' he said, pulling the biscuits out. 'I hope you like shortbread.' He offered one to the rat, who began gnawing on it eagerly, and took the other one for himself. It was like sharing a snack with a friend.

The next several days went by much the same. He would take a small snack out to share with the little whitish rat, who always ate it gratefully. Then they would sit together while Percy read, or else he would tell his new friend about what was going on in his life, and share all the interesting ideas he had.

There was a lot to talk about these days. Everyone was happy and celebrating because a really bad wizard (whose name we weren't supposed to say) had disappeared. Percy didn't know how (he heard something about people called "The Potters" but he didn't know who they were), but he knew it was a really big deal. He'd grown up being told he always had to be careful around strange wizards, and he remembered his parents always having a shadow of fear behind almost everything they did. It was gone now, and Percy was happy about that, even if it did mean Dad had even more work to do than usual.

He told all of this to his new friend, whom he'd decided to call Scabbers, after the sound he made when he scurried around.

About a week after Scabbers first appeared, Percy decided to ask if he could keep the rat as a pet. He waited until his mother was done taking care of the babies and yelling at the twins; he didn't want to bother her, but also she was more likely to say yes after she'd calmed down a bit.

'Mum?' he asked while she stood at the kitchen counter preparing lunch.

'What is it, Percy dear?' she asked without turning around.

'Can I keep Scabbers as a pet?'

'Scabbers? Who's Scabbers?' she asked. Oops. He'd forgotten she didn't know about him yet.

'He's a rat I found in the garden.'

'A rat!' she exclaimed, turning to look, perhaps thinking he had Scabbers there with him in the kitchen. 'Oh, really, Percy.'

'He's not dirty or anything!' Percy said, defending his little friend. 'And he's really smart, too! He'll come out when I go to see him, and he'll sit with me while I read my books and he even rides around on my shoulder!'

'Well...' his mother said, considering, 'that doesn't sound overly terrible. And a rat would be an easy pet to care for, to be certain. Let me see if I can find a potion recipe that we can give him to make sure he's not carrying anything, and then we'll talk.'

It took a further three days, but finally one morning after breakfast she handed Percy a small phial. 'Give this to Scabbers,' she said. 'Make sure he drinks all of it. It's a simple anti-parasite draught for pets; it will make sure he hasn't got any fleas or worms or anything else before you bring him in the house. And when you do bring him in, make sure the very first thing you do is give him a bath. I'll not have a rat that's been living outside dirtying up my house, thank you.'

'Yes, Mum,' he said, trying to contain his excitement. He knew it was important to listen when grown-ups were talking.

'Mind you keep him away from Errol,' Mum added. 'He's your responsibility now.'

'Yes, Mum,' he repeated. 'Thank you!'

She smiled. 'Off you go, then.'

He ran outside with the phial clutched in his hand, and didn't slow down until he came to Scabbers's section of the hedge.

'Scabbers! Hey, Scabbers!'

The little rat poked its nose out from under the hedge. Maybe he'd just heard Percy coming, but he liked to imagine that Scabbers recognized his name now and answered to it.

'I've got something for you,' he said, holding up the phial. 'It's a tonic that makes sure you don't have fleas. Mum says I can bring you in the house and you can be my pet!'

Scabbers started up at him. Whether he knew his name or not, he probably didn't understand any of that. Well, anyway, time to get on with things.

'Come here,' said Percy, laying his hand on the ground. It seemed like Scabbers hesitated more than usual before climbing into it, but eventually he did. Percy lifted him up, unstoppered the phial with his teeth, and brought it to the rat's mouth.

'I don't know if it tastes good or not,' he said. 'Sometimes potions and medicines taste really bad. But it's important that you drink it, okay? Otherwise you can't come inside.'

Scabbers made a minor show of resistance, turning his head this way and that, but eventually Percy was able to tip the contents of the phial down his throat. The white rat shuddered almost violently for a few seconds – it must have tasted really bad – and then relaxed again in Percy's grip.

'Sorry if that was awful,' said Percy. 'But it was Mum's rule so we had to do it. But now you can come inside! I'll make you your own little house from a box and we can put blankets and other things in it for you. Oh! But I have to give you a bath first. Let's go!'

And Percy happily trotted back into the house with his very own new pet.

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Arthur Weasley returned home very late in the evening for the fourth night in a row. If you had asked him two weeks ago whether the fall of You-Know-Who would have resulted in more work or less for him, his answer definitely would have been wrong. The entire Ministry had been working overtime cleaning up after the fallout. It seemed everyone was picking up slack, though it remained unclear just where all the slack was coming from. He was sure it didn't help that his department head was currently on indefinite unpaid leave pending an official inquiry.

Still, the overall mood of the Ministry was one of exhaustion mixed with jubilation. Everyone was tired, but no one was complaining about the extra work (yet) because of what it all meant. After eleven years of terror and anxiety, they were finally free.

Or were they? There were still a few Death Eaters at large, even though they'd mostly gone to ground. They'd need to be rooted out. And word had come down just that day of another loose end that had yet to be tied up. At first he wondered why it had been kept under wraps for so long, and he still wasn't certain he accepted the reasoning behind it.

'Is that you, Arthur dear?' came his wife's voice from the sitting room.

'Yes, Molly,' he said with as much energy as he could muster.

'Goodness, you look exhausted,' she said, coming into the kitchen and immediately starting to fuss over him.

'Can't be helped, I'm afraid. Though I think we've accomplished more in the last ten days than in the last ten years. Things are finally looking up, Molly. The children won't have to grow up in a world held hostage by a madman.'

'It is wonderful, and I'm so proud you're doing your part, dear, but I do wish you slept a bit more.'

'No rest for the weary, Molly,' he said tiredly. 'In fact just today word came down of an investigation that until now had been eyes only for aurors, MLES, and hit wizards.'

'My goodness! What for?'

'It's just as well you asked; the Ministry is putting together a notice that's going public tomorrow. There's a dangerous criminal on the loose, and all attempts to find him have so far come up empty. They've finally resigned themselves to the fact that they won't be able to keep it secret anymore, and have decided to enlist the help of the general public in finding him.'

'It must be serious if they're going that far,' said Molly, looking shocked. She knew as well as he did the Ministry's penchant for saving face whenever possible.

'It is. In fact, in my opinion, they should have done this from the start given the circumstances. As it is now, it's been so long we might never find him.'

'Who is it?' Molly asked.

'A young man named Peter Pettigrew,' said Arthur.

'I've never heard of him,' said Molly.

'That doesn't surprise me,' Arthur said. 'His name has never come up amongst suspected Death Eaters before. In fact, he was assumed to be on our side, by everyone up to and including Dumbledore himself.'

'No!' Molly gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. 'So he was a spy?'

'So it would seem. From what they told us in the briefing, he revealed himself on Hallowe'en. It was him who betrayed the Potters to You-Know-Who; obviously he was expecting that encounter to go the other way. When the Potters escaped and You-Know-Who vanished, he framed another wizard for his crimes and ran off, but someone caught up to him before he could get away. There was some kind of scuffle, and an explosion in London that killed twelve muggles.'

'I read about that in the paper!' Molly exclaimed, remembering. 'It was just a short piece near the back, but then that was the same day as You-Know-Who's disappearance; everything else was small news in comparison, right?'

'I remembered that, too. It would appear this explosion was yet another piece of his frame-up attempt, as well as a way to fake his own death. Fortunately his former friends – including the Potters themselves – were able to clear up the matter. The aurors have been looking for him ever since.'

'And they still haven't found him?'

'No, and the reason why is what worries me. I fear it may be too late; they should have made his escape public within the first hour.'

'Arthur, you're frightening me,' said Molly. 'What is it about this man that makes him so hard to find?'

'He's an animagus, Molly,' she gasped again, two hands to her face this time. 'Unregistered. Nobody knew except his closest friends, who of course told Dumbledore and the aurors everything once this all happened. And it's not as if he's a leopard or something that would be easy to notice. He turns into a common rat; he could quite literally hide just about anywhere and no one would ever know.'

Molly's face had gone slightly pale.

'Percy has a rat,' she said faintly.

'What's that?' This was the first he was hearing of this.

'He came to me the other day asking if he could keep a rat he found in the garden as a pet. I gave him an anti-parasite draught this morning. It's probably nothing. My imagination running away with me; it's just a rat.'

'Odds are that's true,' said Arthur, his own pulse quickening despite what his reasoning told him. 'What does the rat look like, by chance?'

'I don't know,' she admitted, shaking her head. 'I haven't seen it.'

'Well, it should be very easy to put our fears to rest,' said Arthur. 'Pettigrew's animagus form is supposed to be very distinct if you know what you're looking for. A faint grey that's almost white, and he'll have a toe missing on his right front paw.'

'Percy didn't say anything about a missing toe,' said Molly, her face scrunched up in thought. 'However I wonder if he knows how many toes rats are supposed to have.'

'Let's go and have a look,' said Arthur, his own fears getting the better of him. 'It's just a rat,' he told himself over and over. 'Stop being ridiculous.' 'It'll be in Percy's room?'

'Yes, he's fixed up a little house for it out of a box and some old blankets.'

Even through his anxiety, Arthur couldn't help but smile at his third son's fastidiousness. At just five years old, he was already more industrious than perhaps anyone in the family. He'd go far in life; Arthur had no doubt.

The two young parents made their way to the staircase and began ascending. They hadn't even made it to the first landing when they heard thumping footprints coming toward them. It could only be Percy. He, like his older brothers before him until they'd turned about eight, insisted on sleeping with his door open, so the lack of any creaking hinges ruled out Charlie, and not even the twins could stay awake this late.

'Mum! Mum!' Percy wailed, running down the stairs toward them.

'Percy!' Molly cried, not as sternly as she might have, no doubt in deference to the little boy's tear-stained face. 'What are you doing up so late? What's wrong?' He crashed into her and wrapped his arms around her legs.

'It's Scabbers!' he cried. Arthur could only assume this was the name of the rat.

'What about him?' Molly asked kindly.

'He's gone!'

'Gone?' Molly repeated. She and Arthur shared a look. Arthur's gaze then drifted up to his son's open bedroom door. They hadn't exactly been conversing in whispers downstairs…

'I got up to check on him to see if he liked his new house, and he wasn't there!' Percy said. 'Do you think an owl got him?'

'Errol is upstairs, sweetheart,' Molly said. 'You know he never comes down here unless it's to deliver a letter.'

'But the window was open! What if one flew in from outside and grabbed him!'

'The window was open?' Molly echoed Percy again. 'Why on Earth was your window open this time of year? You'll freeze to death!'

'I thought I closed it,' Percy sniffed, 'but I must have done it wrong because it was open and now Scabbers is gone.'

Arthur felt his stomach drop out from under him. He and his wife shared another ominous look.

'Could it be he just ran off?' Arthur asked, doing his best to calm himself as well as his son. 'Rats like to live outdoors, you know.'

Percy shook his head vehemently. 'No. Scabbers was smart, and he always stayed when I asked him to.'

'He told me that rat will sit with him for hours while he reads his books, always exactly where Percy puts him,' Molly said. 'And he said it's very clever – almost like it understands him. I didn't think anything of it at the time.'

Arthur's heart pounded in his chest like a drum. His earlier irrational fear was seeming more and more rational by the second.

'Son,' he said as gently as he could. 'What does Scabbers look like? Maybe in the morning I can have a look around; if we're lucky, he's just gone exploring.'

'He's all white,' said Percy. 'Well, not quite white. It's a really light grey.' Arthur felt the blood drain from his face. Molly looked the same. 'And he has a long tail that looks like a worm. He has long whiskers that twitch when he's sniffing things, and his ears are pink. And one of his paws only has four toes.'

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Dun dun DUN! I'm sure absolutely nobody saw that coming. Bear in mind that this is just the prologue.

I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions, so please leave a review. Thanks! See you next time.