A/N: She...she updated it? Surely not...! (looks out window, watches for four ppl on motorcycles or flying Durer horses) XD! I finally decided I should finish everything I start, not just the Sirius thing. Anyway here it is. Chapter 3. Wow, like what 2 months after the first two chapters? Maybe less, maybe only one! ;P! So yeah. This chapter is dedicated to harrypotterfan52! You rock my world! Thanks for making me laugh when you posted this: "one more thing: don't worry so much about grammer and stuff. It is mice when authors double-check their work for erroes andstuff but don't stress so much over it. no ones perfect." LoL! This one's for you! And your cure for writer's block is one of the best out there. I always get my best ideas either in the shower/bath or walking home from school (so if you can't take a shower take a walk). Lots of less than threes to you! (which are hearts for those who don't know) Random fact about showers and writers - The guy who wrote Sparticus (whose name I can't remember) wrote the original screenplay and script entirely in the bathtub with his typewriter on a tray. So yeah, everyone go shower and get ideas. Not those kind of ideas! ;)! Oh and this is also dedicated to wolfwild because that review made me happy. I'm really proud of the descriptions in this story too and well, just thanks:)! This is not dedicated to all the rabidly anti Tonks/Lupin fans. Leave my OTP alone :shakes fist:

Everyone wish me luck! I'm applying to the Iowa Young Writer's Studio summer program! eeee!

-The Evil Duck

Peter Pettigrew

360 Abject Street

Rockglen, England

8:30 AM

An alarm blared in the gray morning light. The clock threw itself back and forth, heaving like a child having a temper tantrum. On the cot a few feet to the right of the wailing clock the large lump in the mothball-smelling blankets stirred and a pale, thick hand snaked groggily forward fumbling with the vibrating bells until it managed to silence them. The blankets were then thrown back and Peter Pettigrew slowly opened his sleep-sealed eyes, shifting uncomfortably into conciousness on the stiff, rarely used cot. The last time he'd woken up in this house was almost five years ago, so it wasn't odd that when Peter fully awoke his tired mind was jogged to full shocked attention. He stared at the bumpy plaster ceiling for a few moments, hands behind his head, pale blue eyes wide, allowing the pieces to fall groggily into place:

It was his mother's house.

It was September 1: the first day of Hogwarts.

At 11 o'clock he'd leave on a train for his first year at the wizarding school.

Peter gave a nervous sort of twinge and rolled out of bed, his heart hammering at a dangerous speed. He looked at his reflection in the mirror hanging above the empty dresser, his round face flushed with excitement. Peter began to drag a plastic comb through his tangled blonde hair when his reflection winked warmly at him and told him in a voice that was not his own, "cheer up!"

Peter dropped the comb and let out a nervous high-pitched squeak. He tried to compose himself quickly, to convince himself that this was ordinary, everything was as it should be. But it took a very long time for his hands to stop shaking and even longer before he could so much as glance at the mirror again.

He just wasn't used to his mother's world...

His world...

Peter never had a great deal of influence from his mother. His parents divorced a few weeks before his sixth birthday. Due to his mother's busy schedule and the fact that she was rarely in the country for longer than a few months Peter spent most of his time with his father in London. It was, in fact, incredibly rare that he would see his mother at all, usually the only contact he'd have with her was the short letters she sent him from her frequent travels around the globe. These would also, occasionally, include her newest (and almost instantaniously best selling) book that she was promoting. These letters and books, delivered by owl, were his only tie to the wizarding world.

That is, until the previous March. He remembered the day vividly, his eleventh birthday. He didn't know it then but his parents each had his future riding on that day in a demented bet. No Hogwarts invitation and his father, Paul Pettigrew, won. Peter was a muggle and his muggle father would be able to send his son to the same business achademies that put him at the top. If the owl flew in through the window (which it did) his mother, Gloria Frost, won. Peter was a wizard and would be attending Hogwarts, and his life would be forever in her world.

This competive nature had led his parents to one another in the first place. Eleven years ago Gloria had been visiting her family in London and Paul was working in one of the huge new buildings towering like a sparkling mountain over the ancient ruins of old London. The pair met by chance and began to date. After a few months of one-uping each other with gifts, dinners, vacations, and other extravigences they got married.

Peter didn't know what made them do it. Maybe Paul thought it was the final step, that he'd won their phycotic love affair. But Gloria gave birth to their son, and Paul lost.

The fighting started soon after Peter was born. His parents both acted like it never happened, hoping that Peter was too young to remember, but somewhere in the deep dark reaches of his counciousness Peter did. He remembered them screaming at one another. He wondered now if it wasn't better that way instead of both pretending the other didn't exist.

He was pondering this question as he got dressed, pulling up and fasening his slightly too-tight pants. Peter's mind was wandering, as were his eyes as they made a slow panaramic circle around the sterile hotelish room. Peter was trying to get used the way the pictures moved, how his minute black and white mother smiled at him while bowing with a sparkling medal around her neck or waving a framed certificate high in the air in the strobe of a hundred camera flashes. Even the magazine covers of her perfect grinning face winked and pulled out copies of her latest book or the playbill form her new smash hit, breaking every record in boxoffice ticket sales.

Peter turned away to look at his trunk behind him, tracing his initials carved like caligraphy into the golden wood. He didn't know how he could be a wizard. He had never made his parents proud, he was never praised. His grades were unremarkable, he didn't have a strong point, he couldn't act, paint, sing, or write. He wasn't even handsome. He was bullied and picked on. He had never turned someone into a toad or made it rain. So what made him a wizard?

The door swung open and Peter jumped. "Mum!"

Gloria Frost stood in the doorway grinning warmly at him, just like all of her photos. She didn't look like she could be a mother, possibly an older sister but never a mother. She was very short and thin, with a soft glowing face, innocent bright blue eyes, long blonde hair that fell about her shoulder blades, and a blinding smile. She put her manicured fingers to her lips to hide it at the moment, "I'm sorry dear, are you alright?"

Peter nodded throwing on his shirt hastily, embaressed by his weight. He remembered how he was teased in PE for his overhanging stomach and chest. (The words "Lardo's got man titties" would echo forever in his head, still burning his cheeks years later) He didn't know whether anyone in that class, including the teacher, knew his actual name or if they thought he'd been christened Lardo or Blubber.

"I wasn't sure what I should have Twiggy make you for breakfast so I figured I should ask you," she gestured behind her where Twiggy, his mother's young House Elf, blinked up at him with a smile on her face. At first he'd found it horribly unnerving to know that his mother had what amounted to be a slave working for her until he found out that a House Elf was not only an honor but one of the highest signs of prestige. Peter found out that very few people, even in some of the oldest families, had House Elves.

He then knew that if worse came to worst he could mention that he had a House Elf. That would at least make him something. He'd be the boy with the House Elf.

That was better than the alternative, anything was better than the alternative of being invisible or constantly picked on.

Well...almost anything.

The worst thing to be known as was someone's son. At St. Hall's Academy the teachers knew him as Paul Pettigrew's boy. Paul had been brilliant, handsome, popular, he graduated head of his class, class president, captain of the football and rugby teams, and head of the Young Business Leaders of The United Kingdom. He was champien of everything he tried and brought great honor to St. Hall's when he became the youngest CEO ever seen in his field. He only stayed at this company for a few years before starting his own highly sucsessful business while earning his PhD in engineering and law degree on the side.

Peter was expected to do similarly and he failed miserably. He wasn't a horrible student, number one hundred fifty-eight out of two hundred and ten. He wasn't interested in big business or the economy; numbers made his head hurt. The teachers hated him simply out of disappointment. His father's favorite professor, a maths teacher named Achmed Badr, first looked at Peter with pride, but soon it became disappointment, then finally quiet loathing and disgust.

"Dear?" his mother asked in a way that made Peter wonder whether she'd forgotten his name. "Breakfast? what do you want for breakfast?"

"Nothing," he said honestly. He was far from hungry and he was sure even looking at food would make him horribly sick.

"Well that isn't very healthy," she frowned. "Breakfast is important...for a growing boy," she smiled lightly. "How about some toast then?" Peter nodded hoping to avoid conflect and she left, closing the door behind her.

"Hell," she muttered, "take care of him, I've got to get ready to break up with John." John was the latest in a long line of boy friends, each relationship lasting the span of a sneeze. "Just wait until eleven and then everything will go back to normal," she inhaled deeply and thoughtfully, "son of a bitch's fault really. We were never meant to be parents. But accidents happen, eh? Right, get him some toast."

He was invisible to her too, he realized. She didn't even notice that he could hear her. That he was a real person behind the white door.

This added dissapointment and the dizzying thoughts of Hogwarts made him feel light headed. Or rather, quite the opposite. His head felt like a weight and he fell backward onto the bed staring up at the ceiling, watching as his future played out like a poorly made home-movie.

Maybe, he thought, maybe at Hogwarts things would be different. Maybe he could be someone. He smiled gently to himself, invisioning trophies and awards with his name on them. He imagined everyone clapping and he wasn't anyone's son. He was Peter Pettigrew, and his pictures grinned and waved at people. He was a prefect, head boy, and every other honor he could think of.

But he couldn't think of any that he would be good at. Even in his dreams he was inept and disappointing. He got heavily to his feet. At eleven o'clock his school would change but he was almost positive everything else would stay the same.

A/N: I don't know why this chapter took me so long to write...or rather, I do. Peter has always been the forgotten Marauder. People usually thing of a triumverate (or in some cases even only a duo) of Magical Mischief Makers which drives me NUTS! The Marauders could NOT exist without all four componants, of all the magic numbers in the world JKR might say 7 is the most important but personally I think 4 is the best balanced. That's what they are. They couldn't exist without Peter! So it was (and is) really important to me that I got it right. Peter in esence to me is just see-through. Not that he has some alterior motive, or weird intention that you can see immediatly, it's just that there's nothing there. Nothing to see. His answer is always "I don't know." ...anyway, I have a whole rant, if you're interested dig through my blog.