Should Have Thought

Peter was swept along with the stream of students leaving the Great Hall. Already the Slytherins and Gryffindors were glaring at each other and exchanging antagonistic remarks, but Peter kept his head down and kept walking, ignoring the jibes they were exchanging. It would be stupid to get involved in an argument, and besides, what was the point? An hour ago they'd all been nervous students waiting to be sorted, all facing the same unknown together. Now, for no reason at all, they'd become enemies with the same people who, yesterday, might have been friends. It was inane. It wasn't as if Houses really mattered all that much.

Peter had been surprised to be in Gryffindor. He wasn't brave, he certainly wasn't chivalrous… but the Sorting Hat must have had it's reasons. He had specifically tried not to hope for any House in particular so that he couldn't be disappointed, but now he was thoroughly bewildered. Everybody seemed to have some kind of strong affinity towards either Gryffindor or Slytherin while the other two Houses were pushed aside, and here he was, not caring either way, and getting into the House so many others had dreamed of.

Peter shrugged it off and looked curiously around for the entrance to the Gryffindor common room. He didn't see any doors lining the high stone walls, and yet Arthur Weasley, the prefect leading them, had just said they were almost there.

"Here," Arthur said, pausing in front of a nondescript portion of the castle. "Peskipiksi Pesternomi," he said to what seemed to be nothing, but then a voluptuous woman clad in a shapeless dress of brilliant silk bowed from her painting and the portrait swung forward to reveal a circular hole in the wall.

"Welcome, first years!" she greeted, and Arthur clambered through the space behind the painting and gestured grandly with his arm around the common room. Peter hurried past the others to reach the door and climbed through with some difficulty, then straightened up and gazed around the room, dazed and in awe. It was a circular room, with a grand fireplace crackling merrily and several inviting armchairs with plump pillows. A pair of staircases curved upward in opposite directions to what must be the dormitories. Peter gazed around at this paradise and thought to himself that, had he known the common room would be like this, he would have hoped desperately for Gryffindor during the Sorting along with all the other hopefuls.

"Who's holding us up?" came a frustrated shout from behind Peter,

"Yeah, c'mon, we need to get in," another impatient voice called out.

Peter whirled around and looked at the two boys behind him who had spoken up. They looked like brothers - both tall and lanky with black hair, cropped short and mussed on the one who wore glasses, and long and shaggy on the other. They stood boldly shoulder-to-shoulder and looked right back into Peter's stare. Peter blushed with embarrassment as he realized that he was still standing transfixed in the portrait hole and scurried out of the way, awkwardly stammering an apology, allowing the stream of Gryffindors to continue into the common room. Feeling idiotic, he shrank back against the wall, while the other students passed to explore and settle in. He was amazed at how quickly the students overran the room and took seats in the plush chairs - for him it was enough just to stand back and watch in amazement.

"So, our common room's pretty great, huh?" said a quiet voice at his side.

Peter jumped at the sound and the first thing he noticed was an ugly scar across the face of the boy who had spoken. Upon further examination he saw that he was faced with a diminutive boy about his age with soft brown hair and light eyes of the same color. Before Peter had time to feel foolish about being startled, he saw that this student looked as nervous as he felt. The stranger twisted the edge of his robes in his hands and bit his lower lip, his eyebrows scrunched together, waiting for a response.

"Oh- yeah- the common room is nice," Peter said quickly, realizing he'd been too busy goggling to answer, and mentally kicking himself for saying something so utterly boring. He'd basically repeated what the other kid had said, no wonder nobody had talked to him up until now…

"So, I'm Remus. You must be a first year, too, right?"

"Yeah, I am. My name's Peter Pettigrew." They both turned their eyes back to the common room, and Peter remarked, "It's a little intimidating, don't you think?" He jerked his head at the rowdy children prancing about the common room. "Especially those two," Peter pointed at the boys who had shouted at him to move. "I wish I was like them. I wish they liked me. But why would they hang out with me when they can hang around with each other?"

"They're nice," Remus said. "That's James Potter, with the glasses, and the other one is Sirius Black. They like Quidditch. We talked, on the train."

Peter looked rather incredulously from James and Sirius to Remus, his eyes roving over Remus's shabby clothes curiously and finally fixating again on the angry red mark that scarred his left cheek. "They talked to you? Really?" Peter said, blurting out his first impression without thinking about how it would sound.

Remus's expression hardened and his caramel eyes darkened. "I see," he said slowly, his voice calm even though he radiated hostility.

Peter froze, surprised by the sudden switch from amicable chitchat to the quiet anger and hurt in the boy's voice. He replayed the conversation in his head, and his eyes widened as he recalled his last words. They hadn't sounded like that in Peter's head! "Wait - Remus - Remus, I didn't mean it like that. I didn't think!" But Remus had started up the staircase to the boys' dormitories.

Remus paused halfway up the stairs and said, low, "Well then maybe you should have."

Peter stared after Remus as he disappeared up the marble staircase, ashamed of himself and furious that he'd crushed what he had with the one person who seemed to want to bother with a small, round, doughy-faced boy. He hadn't meant it the way Remus had taken it, truly he hadn't. It was only that, surrounded by everybody who seemed so at ease with each other and their surroundings, Remus had been someone relatable, someone who seemed to be experiencing the same isolation, and it had been a surprise, was all, to find that it was not the case. How could he have guessed that someone choosing to talk to him would have acquaintances with people like James and Sirius?

Peter looked at the common room again - which appeared even more hostile now that he'd been presented with a friend and had been foolish enough to go and ruin it - and sighed. He would give anything to have the kind of comradeship James and Sirius had, the kind of friendship he and Remus might have had. Well, he wasn't going to give up yet.

A/N: I dreaded writing this chapter. Canon doesn't provide much indication of what Peter was like as a child, and so I found it nearly impossible to make him both in character and still be someone the other Marauders would be best friends with. I rewrote it twice and edited it countless times, and I'm still not sure that it's right. So, you decide: What did you think of the way I portrayed Peter? Review! Also, the next chapter is Remus's POV again, for those of you who like to know ahead of time.