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A Rodent in the Air Vent


Next day was Halloween and the castle was bustling with energy. Hagrid had rolled four fat pumpkins in from the gardens and spent the night carving them into lanterns that bore the house crests in each up at the front of the Great Hall, flickering with glowing golden light from within. All of Slughorn’s Potions classes for the day brewed a happy potion that turned a festive shade of orange, and even Professor McGonagall got into the mood by having them transfigure bottle caps into bats and spools of thread into mice that scampered off only to pop back into spools a few moments later. Everyone was having a grand time - although Peter was a little put off by all the mice, “I’m not overly fond of rodents,” he complained to Remus under his breath.

“They’re not so bad, rodents,” Remus answered, “They get a bad rap, especially by Muggles, but they’re actually quite intelligent. Everyone underestimates them, you know? They can learn spectacular things. Really, they’re as smart as dogs, just in a smaller package.” He lifted a mouse up and let it run across his knuckles, smiling at it until it turned back into a spool of thread with a pop! He laughed and put the thread down, “They’re rather great, really.”

Peter shuddered.

The feast that night was spectacular, the House Elves had once again outdone themselves, service a delightful pumpkin stew served up in actual small pumpkin shells and succulent kebobs with roasted tomatoes and lamb and peppers. There were sweets a plenty - pepper imps making people’s ears steam and loads of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.

“I hate these things,” Peter complained as he spat out a nasty bogey flavored bean into his napkin. “I always get the shoddy ones.” He glowered at Remus, “How come you haven’t gotten any of the nasty ones?” he demanded.

Remus replied, “I can smell the difference in them.”

Sirius breathed deep over the box they were passing among them, “Actually, come to think of it…” he poured a couple into his palm. “Blimey. I think I can, too.”

James petted his head, “Good, Snuffles. Now point me in the direction of a toffee flavored bean.”

Sirius grinned. “But will I, or will I give you earwax? How evil am I?

James looked at the bean Sirius proffered. “Come to think of it, I reckon I’ll take my chances without your help,” he said, grabbing the box back from Sirius. He got lucky with a pink lemonade flavored bean. Sirius grinned and tossed the bean back into the box, smirking. “I knew I couldn’t trust you,” James pointed at him as he chewed.

Remus chuckled and grabbed the box, grinning and dug about, holding one up to James. “There you are, mate.”

James grabbed the bean and chucked it in his mouth without hesitation. A moment later he was gagging as Sirius and Remus snickered. “You bloody dog,” James gasped, after spitting out the habanero flavored bean and gulping down a large quantity of water.

Remus grinned. “Never underestimate the wolf, mate.”

The evening concluded with a lovely performance by the Hogwarts ghosts, who swooped and dove about the Hall, performing all sorts of spectacular aerial tricks in the rafters of the room before Dumbledore finally stood and clapped his hands together, signaling the end of the feast. It was late and everyone was really tired - especially the first years, who were drooping in sleepiness at their seats around the tables already. They all headed up to their dormitories talking and laughing about the grandeur of the feast.

“That was a great day,” said Sirius, sprawling across his bed after helping Remus get into his.

“Yeah it was,” Peter agreed, neatly folding his school robes, “I had quite a lot of fun today.”

Sirius yawned and stretched and unfurled the Marauder’s Map to check on where Professor Veigler had gone and saw he was safely back in his office before folding the Map back up and tucking it under his pillow. James was folding the frames of his glasses and Peter was curling up under his blankets - Remus already snoring across the room. “A great day,” murmured Sirius sleepily, smiling.

That night, Peter laid in bed, dreaming about the mice in Transfiguration and how they’d scampered and scurried across the desk. He could feel their little feet on his hands, their itty bitty toes, capped in itty bitty nails, and the twitching of their whiskers against his skin.

He shivered, waking up, and looking about. Everything was funny looking, sort of blurry and far off. Remus was eons away, it seemed, a funny shape in a sea of grey-ish looking other shapes. Then he smelled something that smelled rather good and he moved, suddenly quite hungry, crawling across his pillow, climbing up the headboard carefully and onto the window sill. He peered out the window into the darkness of the grounds, his nose twitching as he looked about. Where was that wonderful smell coming from?

Peter turned this way and that, trying to decide, and then jumped from the sill onto James’s nightstand, scurrying around his glasses and down the nightstand to the floor, his little toes sinking into the fibers of James’s discarded school robes. He jumped over James’s wand, laying forgotten in his robe pocket, and under his bed, searching… searching… and then he spotted it. The open box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans had fallen out of James’s pocket when he’d tossed his robes on the floor and skin a ways under, spilling beans everywhere. Their colorful shells gleamed in the moonlight.

Sweet heaven, thought Peter and he scampered quickly over to the beans, grabbing them with his two paws and bringing the bean to his mouth --- and then he stopped, dropping the bean in a shock and looking at his paws with a squeak of surprise. The bean rolled away, forgotten. Oh Merlin. OH MERLIN. Peter panicked and he ran out from under the bed, where there was a bit of moonlight and sat up, turning to see a long, fleshy tail trailing off behind him. His already fast-paced heart sped up and he sprinted across the dormitory floor, skidding on the wood when he tried to stop, his little claws trying to grip onto something but the smoothness of the wood was too smooth and he smacked into the wheel of Remus’s wheelchair rather hard. He squeaked in pain, then recuperated and climbed up the spokes to the arm of the thing and onto the desk it sat before. He climbed a small stack of books and teetered, peering into the mirror.

He was a rat. A fat grey rat with a long wormy tail and long whiskers and a little pink nose. His teeny paws grabbed at his face, pressing into his cheeks, grabbing at the fur of his belly and pulling at his skin. He pinched himself as best he could, but that’s a lot harder to do as a rat than it is as a boy and he struggled with it until finally he broke down and simply grabbed onto his tail and took a snap at it. It hurt - a blinding amount of pain actually - and he teetered, putting too much weight on the edge of the book and the whole stack went tumbling down, the spines hitting the floor with loud, echoing thunks.

“Who’s there? What’s that?” Sirius sat up suddenly, reaching for his wand from the nightstand and aiming it at the door hastily.

Peter squealed, having been struck by one of the books, and ran toward Sirius’s bed, planning to climb up and get Sirius’s attention, but Sirius had snapped the map from beneath his pillow and jumped up. “Lumos,” Sirius said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed quickly. Peter only narrowly missed being stepped on as Sirius stood up, waving the wand over the map. He crossed to James’s bed quickly, shaking his arm, “James, get up. Veigler’s left his office.”

“...I don’t have your hippogriff…” James murmured, rolling away from Sirius’s shaking.

“James! Get up.”

“What do you ruddy want, I’m trying to sleep…” James groaned, waking up a wee bit as Sirius wobbled and shook his shoulder.

“It’s Veigler. He’s gone from his office.”

James sat up, “Where is he?”

“Dunno. I don’t see him on the map. C’mon, help me look for him.”

The springs of James’s bed squealed as he hurried to get up and Peter again only just missed being squashed as the two boys moved quickly toward the dormitory door. He rushed after them, squeaking frantically. He wanted them to notice he was missing from the next bloody bed over and help him turn back into a person! He wanted to go find Professor Veigler, too! GUUUYYYYS, he was shouting, but it only came out as long frantic wheeeeeets from his rat throat.

The two of them hurried out the door of the dormitory quickly, slamming the door before Peter could get to it, making him slam into the wood as he clambered to come to a stop once again. He rubbed his nose and stared at the door, a large and impending obstacle that he wasn’t sure how to surmount. He wished he could remember what the counter spell was to return to human form, but it wasn’t as though he’d ever believed he would actually make the change into his animagus form, and he’d paid very little attention all the times Sirius had said it over the summer and the last couple months. He needed to catch up to James and Sirius and get them to change him back - and quickly. He did not like being a rat and he doubted very much that being a rat would be any help to Remus during the full moon. In fact, a rat would probably make a wolf a tasty little snack, like an hor d'oeuvre or something for that matter.

He looked around the room, trying to decide what the best course of action would be to get down to the common room without the use of his human fingers to turn the knob on the door. There had to be another way out. His eyes landed on the air vent at the corner of the room. Of course! Those went all about the school. He quickly ran over to it and pressed himself very carefully through the holes in the vent, stretching his rat body out with an agility that he had never in his life possessed before. It was rather nice, being able to squash into such a small little space, he thought, and even though it was dark in there inside the wall, it did feel safe, which was a lovely feeling indeed. It’d been some time since Peter Pettigrew had felt entirely safe. There was just so many dangers at a place like Hogwarts, especially with a Dark Lord on the loose about in the country, that Peter had always had this nagging feeling of needing to hide a bit and this was a lovely relief of that.

Perhaps being a rat wasn’t entirely awful, he thought.

Afraid he’d miss James and Sirius if he didn’t hurry, though, he didn’t linger long in this new found safety spot he’d found and he hastened to move along, searching for what he’d imagined to be a slowly sloping tunnel that would lead to the air vents in the common room. He sniffed and wiggled his whiskers, unable to see much in the dark of the vent line, moving along until -- suddenly the floor was no more and he went tumbling - down, down, down - spinning toes over head, his tail whipping through the air, squeals echoing off the metallic walls as he dropped, ironically sounding like a muggle on a rollercoaster. Wheeeeeee!!! he shrieked in horror as he went down into the dark. He was reminded of the day he’d fallen into the pit in the Trophy Room passageway, but he had a feeling this fall would not end in a light landing in a giant basket of blankets…




James yawned as Sirius dragged him downstairs and spread the map out on the coffee table, waving his wand to light a couple torches around the room to illuminate it. “What made you - you even - notice that Veigler -- was missing?” James asked, stretching as Sirius flattened the map.

“I dunno, something woke me up, a dream or something,” Sirius replied, “I had this odd feeling like someone had knocked on the door or something, like someone was moving about the dormitory, but there wasn’t anyone there… and I checked the map to see and there wasn’t anyone who shouldn’t have been, and that’s when I noticed Veigler wasn’t in his office.”

James rubbed his eyes.

“Help me look for him on here…” Sirius said, scanning the map.

James sat forward, leaning over the map, searching for any moving dots that might have been on the pages. Filch was down on the second floor, Mrs. Norris trailing about behind him… but amazingly everyone else seemed to be where they belonged. Except one. “Where’s Peter?”

“What?” Sirius looked up. He’d been sorting through all the folds of the map desperately.

James’s finger pointed to their dormitory. “Look. There’s Remus…” he dragged his finger to the Gryffindor Common Room, “There’s us. Where’s Peter? He should be there, next to Remus, but he’s not.”

Sirius looked closely, then looked about the rest of Gryffindor Tower. “That’s weird. He was up there just now, wasn’t he?”

James shrugged, “Dunno - I don’t make a habit of watching him sleep, you know…”

Sirius flicked through the pages of the map quickly, brow furrowed. “Well, wait, where could he have gone if he’s not upstairs? I don’t see him anywhere on the map here.”

James frowned, “That’s odd.”

“Yeah…” Sirius said. “Quick, let’s kip up and see if he’s in bed and it’s somehow… missed him?”

“He was on the map earlier,” James pointed out. “When Remus made it, too. Remember? All four of us were the first four to show.”

“Well bloody hell, where’s he at, then?” Sirius demanded. “Go check if he’s upstairs.”

James hurried up the steps of the dormitory while Sirius poured over the map, searching for either of the two names - but neither seemed to be on the Marauder’s Map anywhere at all. He scowled. When James returned a moment later, he was shaking his head, “He’s not there,” he reported. “But Remus’s books were spilled all over the floor. Perhaps Peter knocked them over on his way out - that may be the sound you heard when you woke up, you reckon?”

Sirius said, “Then why isn’t he on the bloody map anywhere?”

James shrugged, “I dunno!”

Sirius added, “And neither is Professor Veigler!”

James said, “Not anywhere? You’ve looked everywhere?”

“Everywhere!” Sirius insisted. He shoved the map at James. “Look.”

James spent several moments looking himself, rather desperate, hoping to spot either of the two names, but with no luck at all. “Blimey,” he muttered. “Odd they’d both disappear like that…”

Then a horrible thought crossed Sirius’s mind, “What if Veigler knows we’re on to him?” he asked, looking up at James, “What if he’s taken Peter?”

“Of all of us, why the bloody hell would he take Peter?” James demanded.

Sirius said, “Because he’s - he’s the weakest.”

“But what for?” James asked, “Peter wasn’t there, was he, it was just you and I.”

Sirius answered, “Well the four of us are sort of a package deal usually, maybe he thought if he saw one of us, we’d all be there and --”

“But you were a dog,” James said, “Even if he’d seen you he wouldn’t have known it was you there.”

Sirius looked very concerned, and, ignoring the very good point James had just made, “James, we gotta find Veigler and save Peter,” Sirius blurted out, his voice quivering with fear.

“They can’t be anywhere in the castle, though, can they?” James said, pointing to the map, “Else we’d see them. So what do you reckon we’re going to do?”

“They must be out on the grounds - or - or in the Forest. We gotta go to the Forest and search. Hurry, get your cloak.”

James said, “Oi this is nutters…” but he quickly hastened to go and get the cloak as Sirius had told him to. After all, if Peter needed help then James was certainly not going to sit about and twiddle his thumbs - he was going to find his mate and do some rescuing!