i know, you wanted to be loved.

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peter pettigrew. born in sheffield, england to a muggle father and a magical mother. he lived in a small brick house with old fashioned furniture. his family has always been catholic so he dressed up and went to church every sunday. he was an only child, and it showed – his parents adored him and coddled him from the moment he was born.

perhaps because of this, or perhaps because he was a wizard, he didn’t really click with the muggle kids in his neighbourhood. he was more a mama’s boy, helping his mother dust and vacuum and fold the laundry and set the table for supper every day. his parents were worried that he wasn’t a very social child, and that he wouldn’t make many friends at hogwarts. they even considered holding him back a year, but ultimately decided against it.

but lo and behold, when he went to hogwarts he made friends! remus, sirius and james to be specific. and it was gr8 and they brought out this whole other side of him that he’d never shown before

this mischievous, snarky boy who’ll “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” your mum to her face but just as soon make a “your mom” joke when she’s out of earshot. his smile is either shy and endearing or the cheekiest lil shit-eating grin you’ve ever seen. he’ll laugh at the worst of jokes. fluent in sarcasm. he’s great at seeming more innocent than he is ( a power used for pranks now, but much darker things later ). and yeah, he’s an enabler - his friends do stupid stuff and he doesn’t stop them. but so what? he’s a teenage boy. 

his room is surprisingly neat. would never admit it but he kind of likes cheesy cliches ( he’s watched gone with the wind with his mum enough times he can quote it off by heart ). he wants to be a dashing hero like in the dog eared comic books he still has in a box under his bed. wants to sweep a girl off her feet. wants to be something more than the sidekick, at least once. sometimes he’s trying just a bit too hard to impress other people because he cares a lot more about what other people think of him than he likes to let on. slightly self conscious because he had a growth spurt over the summer – he used to be really short but now he’s all long limbs and stupid grins and dimples and tousled blond hair and he’s grown quite attractive but doesn’t realize it thank god. and hey – that’s just part of his charm. because he is charming. he just doesn’t realise it compared to james and sirius.

he compares himself to james and sirius a lot. peter has always been prone to insecure thoughts and nervous tics – during exam season his nails are always bitten down to stubs and his skin breaks out. and in the times he’s feeling particularly unhappy with himself he looks to his friends. and this can go either one of two ways – either they make him better and build him up. and really he should be able to do that himself but he’s always been dependent on other people. always. first his parents, then the marauders. or he’s feeling insecure and he looks to his friends and sees how much better they are than him. how unattainable their status is. and he feels like a useless burden, dragging them down. those are his bad days. but they’re relatively infrequent – at least for now.

he has ways to dispel these thoughts. for one, he drinks. not the best coping mechanism, granted, but whiskey burns his throat and the inside of his chest like the fire he always wished he had burning inside of him, and it makes him feel stronger and it makes him feel braver and his friends are drinking with him and soon they’re all laughing and doing stupid shit together and then the alcohol washes away any doubts peter has. and it’s good.

and sometimes he gets into fist fights. he’s gotten better at it over the years, ever since sirius taught him that your thumb isn’t supposed to go inside your fist. he feels strong when he fights, he feels a reckless sort of freedom that’s as close to confidence as he’ll ever get. and sometimes he picks fights he knows he can’t win, but hey, that’s part of the thrill, right? because he also knows that his friends can bail him out, and he also knows that the black eye he’s going to have in the morning will make him look tougher, and people will fuss over him and ask questions. and it’s good.

if you asked peter what the most important thing in the world is to him, he would say his friends. and he would say his family. not once would it ever occur to him to say himself, or his own health or happiness. and i’ll get into this more later, but when the war begins, peter doesn’t betray his friends for himself, at least not at first. in a weird, twisted, misguided way, he does it for them. but again – i’ll get into that later.

he puts a lot of value on interpersonal relationships. and sometimes, that’s a good thing because he values those relationships and cherishes them, and he’s a wonderful friend and very intuitive. he can always tell if someone’s upset, and he’s a great listener. but also sometimes it’s a bad thing how much value he puts on those relationships. because he builds his own personal value off of them, and off how much people like him and support him. like i said – he’s always been dependent. he doesn’t know any way else to be.

and deep down, peter is an optimist. it’s his fatal flaw. how? because no matter how badly things are going, he thinks to himself that it’ll all turn out fine, in the end. something will happen, in the end. someone will save him, in the end. for instance – he has no idea what he wants to do after hogwarts. and sometimes that worries him, but most of the time he pushes it to the back of his mind. he can think about that later. it’ll turn out fine. and when the war starts, and he gets deeper and deeper involved with the death eaters, he refuses to admit how much it scares him and how big of a problem it’s becoming. because in the end, it’ll turn out fine. it always does for the good guys. he never considers that he may not be one of the good guys.

this probably won’t happen in the course of this rp – but he gets involved with the death eaters when it’s looking darkest for the order. and victory is looking certain for the death eaters. so he joins them because he has this stupid, stupid, naive hope that if he joins the death eaters, he can convince them to spare his friends when they inevitably win. he does it for them. and deep down, he knows that that’s not gonna happen, but he pushes it to the back of his mind. because it’ll all turn out fine.

tw: cancer, tw death // this year is the year his insecurity complex starts to come into play – when everything starts to unravel. it’s a slow process, and it begins with peter’s father. see, peter’s father is dying. two months ago, william pettigrew was diagnosed with stage ii pancreatic cancer. peter has hardly told anyone. he won’t make it. he will die before peter graduates from hogwarts.

peter’s mother will not deal with it well. she will retreat into herself, mourning the death of her husband, and peter will be forced to spend most of the summer after his last year caring for her, while struggling with his own grief. suddenly, peter will go from the doting, loving support of both parents to the support of neither.

so he’ll turn to his friends, desperate, seeking validation and support, but they’re each starting their own lives. there’s a war starting, they’re all beginning their own independent lives but peter – remember, peter has always been dependent. and suddenly, his insecurities are making a surprise comeback. the golden years at hogwarts, what peter will later realize were the best years of his life, are gone, and so is the carefree boy peter used to be.

but anyway. that’s in the future. right now, peter is just a teenage boy like any other.