The small bedroom looked like a tornado had swept through a wizard's shop, gotten confused, and decided to redecorate using a method best described as "chaos theory meets interior design." Books lay splayed open like wounded birds with broken spines, their pages fluttering occasionally in the breeze from the open window. Robes draped over every conceivable surface—the desk chair, the lamp, the doorknob, and somehow one had managed to achieve what appeared to be a perfect drape across the ceiling fan. And somewhere in this magnificent disaster, a jar of beetle eyes had apparently exploded, leaving tiny black specks scattered across the hardwood floor like confetti from the world's most disturbing birthday party.
Peter sat cross-legged on his bed, which was currently serving as base camp for what appeared to be an archaeological expedition into his own possessions. He held up a pair of dragon hide gloves, turning them this way and that as if they might suddenly reveal the secrets of the universe, or at the very least, explain why dragon hide was apparently so expensive.
His sandy hair stuck up at odd angles—a genetic gift from his father that had cursed the Pettigrew men for generations—and his expression carried that particular brand of barely-contained panic that only came from realizing you had approximately twelve hours to pack for the most important journey of your life, and you'd somehow managed to spend the first six hours of preparation time successfully achieving nothing except redistributing your possessions in more creative patterns around your room.
"Okay, okay, okay," he muttered to himself, consulting a crumpled piece of parchment that had somehow acquired what appeared to be jam stains despite being nowhere near food. "First year students will require... three sets of plain work robes, black, for everyday wear." He glanced at the mountain of fabric on his bed, which looked less like organized clothing and more like a textile landslide. "Right. How many is three? I can count to three. Three is... one, two, three. I've got this. I'm a master of basic mathematics."
He picked up what he thought was the first robe, shook it out, and immediately became entangled in approximately seven feet of black fabric.
"This is fine," he said, his voice slightly muffled by cloth. "This is totally fine. People get dressed every day. I get dressed every day. Well, most days. There was that Tuesday, but we don't talk about Tuesday."
From somewhere in the depths of his trunk, he pulled out what appeared to be a hat, except it was moving. And making small chittering noises. And had what looked suspiciously like tiny legs.
"AHHHHHHHHH!" Peter scrambled backward so fast he nearly achieved flight, arms windmilling as he fell off the bed with a thump that shook the entire room. "WHAT IS—oh. OH. Oh, it's just... it's just the hat. The pointy hat. That's... that's normal. Totally normal. Completely normal. Magic hats move sometimes, right? Right? That's definitely a thing that happens!"
The pointed hat, which had indeed just been wrinkled into an unfortunate shape that had briefly resembled something with legs, lay perfectly still and definitely not magical on his bedroom floor.
"Right," Peter said, climbing back onto the bed and eyeing the hat suspiciously. "Just a hat. Just a completely normal, non-magical, definitely-not-going-to-eat-me hat. We're good. We're totally good."
From downstairs, his mother's voice rang out with the kind of cheerful authority that could probably organize a military coup if she put her mind to it, and would undoubtedly have color-coded charts and matching binders for the entire operation: "Peter! Sweetie! Have you packed your cauldron? Your scales? What about those lovely brass scales we got from Diagon Alley? The ones that nice shopkeeper said were the finest scales this side of Gringotts? Remember, he said they were practically heirloom quality!"
Peter's eyes darted around the room in pure panic, like a trapped animal searching for escape routes. The brass scales were... somewhere. They had definitely been somewhere when he'd last seen them, which was... when was it? Yesterday? This morning? Last week? Time was a construct, and apparently so was his organizational system.
"YES, MUM!" he hollered back, his voice cracking spectacularly on the word 'yes' in a way that made him sound approximately twelve years old and completely unconvincing. "TOTALLY GOT THE SCALES! THEY'RE... UH... THEY'RE SCALING! SCALILY! IN A... SCALE-LIKE MANNER!"
He dove toward his desk, sending a bottle of ink wobbling dangerously close to the edge like a penguin contemplating suicide. The pewter cauldron sat there like a metallic accusation, currently serving as an impromptu hat stand for his pointed wizard hat and what appeared to be a pair of winter mittens his grandmother had knitted with little golden snitches on them, complete with tiny wings that actually fluttered when you moved them.
"Oh, come on," he groaned, grabbing the cauldron and trying to extract the hat without destroying the carefully constructed—and by carefully constructed, he meant completely accidental—pile of everything else on his desk. "Why is packing so complicated? It's just putting things in other things. I put things in other things all the time. I'm great at putting things in things. I put cereal in bowls, I put... put... other things in other things!"
The cauldron came free with a metallic *CLANG* that sounded like Big Ben having an argument with a dinner gong, sending the mittens flying across the room in a perfect arc where they landed with suspicious accuracy directly in his open ink bottle.
*Splash.*
"No, no, NO, NO, NO!" Peter lunged forward like a professional goalkeeper, pulling out the now-black mittens that dripped ink onto his floor. "Gran's going to kill me. She's actually going to kill me. She spent three months knitting these! Three whole months! That's like... that's longer than summer vacation! That's longer than some relationships! She hand-stitched every single snitch wing!"
His father's voice echoed up the stairs, carrying that particular tone of someone trying to negotiate with a small, feathered terrorist who had very strong opinions about personal freedom: "Easy there, Hermes. Easy, buddy. I know you don't like the cage, but tomorrow's a big day for all of us. Think of it as... as a temporary transportation solution. Like a... a luxury owl taxi!"
Dennis appeared in the doorway moments later, looking like he'd just gone three rounds with a particularly aggressive pillow fight and lost spectacularly. His graying hair was disheveled in a way that suggested active combat, his shirt had somehow acquired several small holes that looked suspiciously beak-shaped, and he was holding a cage containing what was possibly the most indignant-looking barn owl in the history of owl-kind, maybe in the history of all birds, possibly in the history of anything that had ever possessed the capacity for righteous fury.
"Son," Dennis said, slightly out of breath and sporting what appeared to be a small scratch on his cheek, "I think Hermes here has some opinions about tomorrow's travel arrangements. Strong opinions. Very strong opinions. Loudly expressed opinions with accompanying physical demonstrations."
The owl—a magnificent barn owl with feathers that looked like they'd been painted by someone with a particularly artistic sense of brown and white and an excellent understanding of aerodynamics—fixed Peter with a stare that could have melted steel, bent it into a pretzel, and then criticized the pretzel's technique. Its beak was slightly open, and it was making a low, continuous sound that was somewhere between a hoot and a growl and a very small diesel engine that was having mechanical difficulties.
"Is... is he supposed to sound like that?" Peter asked nervously, abandoning his packing entirely and taking an unconscious step backward. "Because that doesn't sound like a happy owl sound. That sounds like an 'I'm planning your demise and possibly the demise of everyone you've ever met' owl sound. That sounds like the kind of sound that means I should write my will."
Dennis set the cage down carefully on Peter's desk, causing Hermes to ruffle his feathers in what could only be described as maximum indignation, like a feathered embodiment of aristocratic outrage. "Well, we did just meet him this morning. Perhaps we should have introduced you two sooner, given him time to adjust to the family dynamic. You know how some people need time to warm up to new situations."
"Dad, he's an owl, not a distant relative at a dinner party."
"Your Great Aunt Muriel was basically an owl, and we managed fine with her for thirty years."
"Aunt Muriel didn't have talons!"
"You clearly never saw her at Christmas dinner." Dennis cleared his throat diplomatically. "Hermes, meet Peter. Peter, meet Hermes. You're going to be working together for the next seven years, so... try to find some common ground?"
"Um... hi, Hermes," Peter said weakly, giving a little wave that immediately made him feel ridiculous because who waves at an owl? "I'm... I'm Peter. I like... um... flying? Sometimes? When I'm not terrified of heights?"
Hermes responded by turning his back to Peter with the kind of deliberate, theatrical precision that suggested he'd been taking lessons from offended Victorian ladies, and pointedly staring out the window as if the garden contained far more interesting conversation partners than the humans currently attempting to win his favor.
"I think he's giving me the silent treatment," Peter observed, staring at the owl's aggressively positioned back. "I didn't even know owls could give the silent treatment. Is that a thing? Can owls be passive-aggressive? Because if they can, I think this one has a PhD in it."
"Your mother's owl used to hold grudges for weeks," Dennis replied, settling on the edge of Peter's bed with the careful air of a man who had learned to navigate rooms full of randomly distributed objects. The movement sent a carefully folded pile of socks cascading to the floor like a woolly avalanche, each pair landing in a different corner of the room as if they were actively trying to maximize the cleanup effort required. "Once, she forgot to give Athena a treat after a particularly long mail run to Scotland, and that bird ignored her for a month. Wouldn't deliver a single letter. Just sat on her perch and stared accusingly."
"What happened?"
"Your mother had to write an apology letter to an owl. A formal apology letter. With proper stationary and everything."
"Did it work?"
"Athena made her wait three more days before accepting it, just to make a point."
From downstairs, cutting through their conversation like a cheerful knife through butter: "Dennis! Are you helping Peter pack, or are you two up there bonding with that bird? Because if you're bonding, that's wonderful, that's great, bonding is important, but we leave at nine sharp tomorrow morning and I have a very detailed schedule that involves breakfast and proper grooming and a photo session by the front door!"
"We're packing!" Dennis called back with the automatic response of a man who had learned that immediate acknowledgment was key to marital survival, then looked around at the chaos surrounding them with the expression of someone trying to solve a particularly complex puzzle. "Well, we're adjacent to packing. We're in the general vicinity of packing. We're... we're packing-adjacent."
Peter flopped backward onto his bed with the dramatic flair of someone who had just discovered that life was fundamentally unfair, narrowly missing a stack of spellbooks that wobbled ominously. "Dad, this is impossible. Look at this place! It's like a hurricane hit a library and then the library exploded and then someone tried to organize the explosion but gave up halfway through and went to get a sandwich. How am I supposed to fit seven years of magical education into one trunk? It's not physically possible. It defies the laws of physics. I haven't even learned magic yet and I'm already breaking natural laws!"
"Seven years?" Dennis raised an eyebrow with the practiced confusion of a father who had learned that sometimes the best response to teenage drama was gentle logic. "Son, you're packing for your first year, not your entire Hogwarts career. They don't expect you to bring everything you'll ever need."
"But what if I forget something important? What if I need something and I don't have it? What if there's an emergency and I don't have the right textbook?" Peter's voice was rising with each question, achieving pitches that would have made opera singers jealous. "What if they ask me to perform magic and I can't because I packed my wand wrong? What if there's a proper way to pack wands and I don't know it? What if I break it? What if—"
"Peter," Dennis interrupted gently, "breathe."
"What if I forget how to breathe? What if the altitude at Hogwarts is different and—"
"Peter."
"Right. Breathing. I can do breathing. I've been breathing for eleven years. I'm practically an expert at breathing."
Dennis looked around the room thoughtfully, taking in the creative distribution of magical supplies, the ink-stained mittens, and his son's general state of controlled panic. "Speaking of things you've been doing successfully for years... where's your wand, son?"
Peter's face went through several complicated expressions in rapid succession—confusion, realization, horror, and finally the kind of existential dread usually reserved for people who had just realized they'd been walking around with their shirt on backward all day.
"Oh no," he said quietly.
"Peter?"
"Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no."
"Where is it, son?"
"It's..." Peter's voice came out as a squeak. "It's downstairs. On the kitchen table. Next to the fruit bowl. I was practicing wand movements this morning—you know, the swish-and-flick motion Mum showed me—and then I got distracted by breakfast because you made those really good pancakes with the blueberries, and then I came up here to pack, and I got distracted by the beetle eyes exploding, and—"
From downstairs, as if summoned by some mystical parental sixth sense that could detect teenage forgetfulness from three floors away: "Peter! Sweetie! Did you remember your wand? Because I have a very strong maternal intuition that your wand is not currently with you!"
Peter's eyes went wide as dinner plates, then wider, achieving a circumference that seemed to defy basic anatomy. "She knows. How does she always know? It's like she has magical powers! Wait, she does have magical powers. That's cheating! She's using magic to catch me being disorganized!"
"Your mother doesn't need magic to detect chaos, son. She has something far more powerful."
"What?"
"Experience. Twenty years of experience with me, and now eleven years of experience with you. She could probably sense a misplaced wand from orbit."
"PETER?" came Megan's voice again, now with that particular edge that suggested she was making her way upstairs to investigate, and that her investigation would be thorough, systematic, and would probably result in a comprehensive report with recommendations for improvement.
"Um! Yes! Wand! I'm... I'm checking on the wand situation!" Peter called back, his voice cracking again in a way that made him sound like a squeaky door in desperate need of oil. He looked at his father with the expression of someone who had just realized they were about to be discovered in a catastrophic lie of epic proportions. "Dad, help me. I'm dead. I'm actually dead. I'm pre-dead. She's going to kill me and then she's going to kill me again for being dead and then she's going to write a strongly worded letter to Death himself complaining about my organizational skills!"
Dennis chuckled with the warm amusement of someone who had been in similar situations many, many times before. "Relax, son. Your mother's bark is worse than her bite."
"Dad, her bark could probably level a small building! Her bark has been known to make grown men cry! Remember what happened to that salesman who tried to overcharge us for school supplies?"
"He did learn some valuable lessons about fair pricing."
"He ran away! He literally ran away!"
The sound of footsteps on the stairs grew louder and more determined, accompanied by what sounded like Megan muttering to herself in the tone of someone conducting a very important internal monologue: "I swear, if that boy has forgotten his wand... Dennis, did you check that he has his wand? Because I have a very strong feeling he doesn't have his wand, and a wand is rather essential for wizarding school, rather like how shoes are essential for walking..."
"She's coming," Peter whispered, as if announcing the approach of an army, or possibly a very organized natural disaster. "Dad, tell Mum I loved her. Tell her I was too young to die. Tell her I wanted to make something of myself. Tell her—"
"Peter, you're being dramatic."
"Tell her I'm sorry about the ink on Gran's mittens!"
Megan appeared in the doorway like a whirlwind with perfect hair and a game plan. Even in the midst of what was clearly a day of intensive child-wrangling and magical crisis management, she managed to look put-together in that effortless way that suggested either actual magic or very good concealer and a morning routine that involved several cups of coffee and sheer determination. Her blonde curls were pulled back in a practical ponytail that had somehow managed to survive what appeared to have been several hours of active parenting, and she was holding what appeared to be a checklist that was longer than Peter was tall and had multiple sections organized by color-coded tabs.
She surveyed the room with the practiced eye of someone who had seen disaster before and had developed systematic approaches to addressing it.
"Good heavens," she said, taking in the creative redistribution of Peter's belongings. "It looks like someone tried to organize a hurricane while riding a roller coaster." She fixed Peter with a look that could have been used to conduct international diplomacy. "Peter Oliver Pettigrew, please tell me your wand is packed safely in your trunk and not sitting on the kitchen table next to the bananas like some sort of extremely important piece of fruit."
Peter opened his mouth to speak, discovered that no sound was coming out, closed it again, opened it once more, and then made a sound that was somewhere between a squeak, a groan, and a deflating balloon.
"It's next to the bananas, isn't it?" Megan said with the weary resignation of someone who had asked this exact type of question many times before and already knew the answer.
"...Maybe?" Peter managed, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Peter."
"Okay, yes, fine, it's next to the bananas. But in my defense, I was practicing the swish-and-flick motion you showed me, and I was being very careful about the wrist movement because you said the wrist movement was crucial, and then I got distracted by Dad's pancakes because they smelled amazing, and then I came up here to pack, and then the beetle eyes exploded, and honestly, the whole morning has been a series of small disasters leading to this moment!"
Megan's expression shifted to the particular look of maternal exasperation that had been perfected over generations of mothers dealing with absent-minded children who somehow managed to lose essential items in their own homes. "It's next to the bananas."
"The bananas were innocent bystanders in this situation!"
She looked at Dennis with the expression of someone seeking backup from a fellow adult. "Your son, ladies and gentlemen. The boy who can remember every Chocolate Frog card he's ever owned but can't remember where he put the most important magical object he'll ever possess."
"Hey, he gets his organizational skills from your side of the family," Dennis protested with a grin.
"My side of the family?" Megan's voice rose with indignation. "My side of the family invented organization! My mother could pack for a three-month expedition in under an hour with military precision! She had systems, Dennis. Systems with backup systems!"
"Your mother once forgot to pack pants on a weekend trip to your sister's house."
"That was ONE TIME, and she was distracted by your father's experimental cooking phase when he decided to reinvent traditional British cuisine using only ingredients that started with the letter 'Q'!"
"What did he make?"
"We don't talk about the quinoa quiche incident."
Peter watched this exchange with the fascination of someone witnessing a tennis match played entirely in family history references and good-natured marital banter. His parents had been having variations of this conversation for years, and it always somehow made him feel better about his own organizational challenges.
"Um, guys?" he interrupted tentatively. "Should I go get my wand, or should we continue discussing Great-Grandfather's experimental cooking phase? Because while it's fascinating, I feel like the wand is kind of time-sensitive."
Both parents looked at him, then at each other, then back at him with the synchronized precision of people who had been married for long enough to develop shared facial expressions.
"Right," Megan said, consulting her list with renewed determination and the air of a general preparing for battle. "Peter, go downstairs and get your wand. Carefully. Don't run, don't trip, don't get distracted by anything in the kitchen that looks interesting or edible. Dennis, help me figure out what he's actually packed and what he's just scattered around his room in what appears to be a decorative pattern inspired by abstract expressionism."
"How can you tell the difference?" Dennis asked, looking around at the chaos with genuine curiosity.
"Experience," Megan replied grimly. "Lots and lots of experience, and a very detailed mental catalog of everything this child has ever owned."
Peter scrambled off the bed, stepping carefully over various magical supplies that had somehow arranged themselves into what looked like an obstacle course designed by someone with a very twisted sense of humor. "I'll be right back! Don't pack anything important without me! Don't make any major decisions! Don't—"
"Peter," Megan said gently but firmly, "what, exactly, would you consider 'important'?"
"Um..." Peter paused in the doorway, thinking. "Everything? All of it? The whole room? Maybe the house? Can we just pack the whole house?"
His parents' laughter followed him down the stairs like a warm blanket, where he found his wand exactly where he'd left it—lying innocently next to a bowl of fruit, as if it hadn't just caused a minor family crisis and approximately seventeen different levels of panic.
He picked it up carefully, feeling that same little thrill he'd experienced in Ollivanders when the wand had chosen him. Eleven inches, maple wood, with a phoenix feather core that apparently made it particularly good for charm work. The wandmaker had said it was good for transfiguration too, which Peter hoped meant he'd be decent at turning things into other things, because that seemed like a useful skill to have. Especially if he ever needed to turn his messy room into something that looked organized.
The wand felt warm in his hand, familiar now after weeks of practice swishes and flicks in the garden where he couldn't accidentally break anything important.
When he returned to his room, he found his parents had somehow managed to create order from chaos in a way that seemed to defy several natural laws. There were now three distinct, clearly labeled piles: "Definitely Going to Hogwarts," "Probably Going to Hogwarts," and "Not Going to Hogwarts Unless There's Some Kind of Emergency or Apocalypse."
"How did you do this?" Peter asked in amazement. "It's like magic!"
"It is magic," Dennis said proudly. "It's called 'your mother.'"
"The emergency pile is mostly your collection of Chocolate Frog cards, that rock you found last summer that you insist might be magical, and approximately fourteen different things that you've described as 'possibly useful someday,'" Megan explained, consulting her list.
"That rock might be magical!" Peter protested, rushing to defend his treasure. "It has sparkles! And it was found in a very magical-seeming location!"
"Sweetheart," Megan said with the gentle patience of someone who had heard this argument before, "mica has sparkles. That doesn't make it magical. And you found it in Mrs. Henderson's garden while looking for her lost cat."
"But what if this time it does? What if this is the one rock with sparkles that's actually magical? What if I leave it here and then discover I need it for some crucial magical purpose?"
"What magical purpose could possibly require a sparkly rock?" Dennis asked.
"I don't know! I haven't learned magic yet! Maybe there's a class called 'Essential Sparkly Rock Studies' and I'll be the only student without a rock!"
Dennis and Megan exchanged one of those parental looks that contained entire conversations about childhood, growing up, and the importance of sparkly rocks in the development of young wizards.
"Tell you what," Dennis said finally, his voice warm with understanding. "We'll pack one Chocolate Frog card. Your favorite one. As a good luck charm. And maybe one small sparkly rock."
Peter brightened considerably, his face lighting up like Christmas morning. "Really? Can I pick which card? And which rock? Because I have several rocks with different types of sparkles, and—"
"As long as it's not the Agrippa card you sleep with under your pillow," Megan added with a knowing smile.
Peter's face fell slightly. "...Can I pick a different favorite card?"
"Peter."
"Fine, fine. I'll pack Dumbledore. He seems like he'd be good luck for school. Very wise, very magical, probably approves of proper education. And I'll bring the rock I found by the pond, not the one from Mrs. Henderson's garden."
"The pond rock is acceptable," Megan declared officially.
As they began the actual process of organizing Peter's belongings into his trunk—a process that involved significantly more discussion about the relative merits of different packing strategies than Peter had expected—Hermes continued to watch from his cage with the air of someone supervising a particularly incompetent construction project. Occasionally, he would hoot what sounded suspiciously like commentary, and sometimes it sounded almost... helpful?
"I think he's judging our packing skills," Peter observed, carefully folding a robe with the concentration of someone who had never successfully folded anything in his life but was determined to master the skill in the next five minutes.
"He's an owl, son. Judging things is basically their job description," Dennis replied, wrestling with a set of scales that seemed determined not to fit anywhere sensibly and appeared to have developed opinions about optimal packing arrangements. "They're very organized creatures by nature."
"Plus, he's probably just nervous about tomorrow too," Megan added, consulting her list again and making small checkmarks with the satisfaction of someone who enjoyed crossing items off lists almost as much as making the lists in the first place. "It's a big day for everyone. New job, new responsibilities, new human to work with."
Peter paused in his folding, a half-folded robe draped over his arms like a very confused black banner. The reality of tomorrow—the Hogwarts Express with its scarlet steam engine, the castle with moving staircases and talking portraits, the Sorting Hat that would somehow look into his head and decide his fate, hundreds of new faces and voices and people who already knew how to be magical—suddenly felt enormous again, like a wave about to crash over him and possibly drown him in its magical immensity.
"Dad," he said quietly, his voice smaller than it had been all evening, suddenly sounding very much like the eleven-year-old boy he was rather than the almost-wizard he was trying to become. "What if I'm not... what if I don't belong there? What if everyone else knows more magic than me? What if I'm terrible at it? What if the Hat takes one look at me and says, 'Sorry, there's been a mistake, this one doesn't belong here'?"
The room fell quiet except for the soft rustling of Hermes shifting in his cage and the distant sound of evening settling over their neighborhood, full of families having dinner and watching television and doing perfectly normal, non-magical things.
Dennis abandoned his battle with the rebellious scales and sat down on the bed next to Peter, the mattress creaking under his weight in the familiar way that meant safety and home and bedtime stories. Somewhere in the distance, they could hear Megan moving around downstairs, probably organizing something else with characteristic efficiency, humming softly to herself as she worked.
"Peter," Dennis said, his voice carrying the weight of experience and understanding and twenty years of his own magical adventures, "do you know what I was doing the night before I left for Hogwarts?"
"Packing?" Peter guessed, looking at his father with curious eyes.
"Hiding in my closet, convinced that when I got to school, they'd realize there had been some terrible mistake and send me home on the first train back to London." Dennis smiled at the memory, his eyes getting that distant look they got when he was remembering his own childhood. "I was absolutely certain that everyone else would be better at magic, smarter, braver, more... magical, I guess. More naturally suited to the whole wizarding world thing."
Peter looked at his father with genuine surprise, as if the idea that Dennis Pettigrew had ever been uncertain about anything was completely revolutionary. "Really? But you were in Gryffindor! You were brave! You had adventures!"
"Son, being brave doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you do the thing that needs doing even when you are scared, even when your knees are shaking and your voice is cracking and you're pretty sure you're going to embarrass yourself spectacularly." Dennis reached over and squeezed Peter's shoulder with the kind of solid, warm grip that meant everything would be okay. "And you know what I learned my first day at Hogwarts?"
"What?"
"Everyone else was just as nervous as I was. Half the kids in my year had never done magic before either—they came from non-magical families and were just as amazed by moving staircases as I was. And the ones who had grown up in magical families? They were worried about living up to their family legacies, about being sorted into the right Houses, about whether they'd be as good at Quidditch as their older brothers."
"Really?"
"Really. My friend Harlan McLaggen, when I first met him? He was so nervous about making friends that he accidentally turned his hair blue for three days because he was stress-practicing color-change charms."
"He turned his hair blue?"
"Bright blue. Like a robin's egg. He looked like he'd stuck his finger in an electrical socket, if electrical sockets turned your hair blue instead of making you jump around."
Peter giggled despite his nervousness. "What did he do?"
"He pretended it was completely intentional and started a fashion trend. By the end of the week, half of Gryffindor had blue hair. Your mother thought it was hilarious."
"What if the Hat puts me in the wrong House?" Peter asked, voicing the fear that had been gnawing at him for weeks like a persistent worry-monster that lived in his stomach. "What if I ask for Gryffindor and it puts me in Slytherin? What if I'm not brave enough for Gryffindor? What if I'm not smart enough for Ravenclaw? What if—"
"Peter," Dennis interrupted gently. "There is no wrong House. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin—they're all part of Hogwarts. They're all important. They all produce incredible witches and wizards who go on to do amazing things."
"But what if—"
"And besides, I have it on good authority that the Hat takes your preferences into account."
"It does?" Peter's eyes widened with hope.
"Well, I asked to be in Gryffindor, and here we are, twenty years later, still proud members of the red and gold."
"You asked? You can do that? You can just... ask?"
"I told that Hat I wanted to be brave, that I wanted to stand up for what was right, and it said, 'Well then, you'd better be in Gryffindor, hadn't you?'" Dennis chuckled. "Not quite as dramatic as some of the stories make it sound—no booming voice or magical fanfare—but it worked out pretty well."
Peter felt some of the tension in his chest loosen, like a knot being gently untied. "Do you think... do you think I could ask too? Do you think it would listen?"
"I think you can do whatever feels right to you, son. The Hat's pretty good at seeing who people really are, not just who they think they should be or who they're worried they might not be." Dennis paused, then added with a grin, "Plus, you're a Pettigrew. We're known for being loyal, determined, and occasionally stubborn enough to get our way through sheer persistence."
"Is that good?"
"It's very good. Especially when you use it for the right reasons."
From downstairs, cutting through their moment with cheerful authority: "Boys! I've made hot chocolate! With marshmallows! The little ones shaped like snitches that I may have gone slightly overboard ordering from that catalog! Come down before it gets cold!"
Peter's face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Snitch marshmallows?"
"Your mother may have gone slightly overboard with the Hogwarts preparation," Dennis admitted with the fond exasperation of someone who had learned to appreciate his wife's tendency toward themed celebrations.
"I heard that!" Megan called from the kitchen, her voice carrying easily up the stairs. "And I regret nothing! It's a special occasion! Our son is going to wizarding school! There should be themed snacks!"
"How many themed snacks are there?" Peter asked, suddenly very interested in the scope of his mother's preparations.
"Let's just say your mother has been very creative with the mail-order magical novelty catalogs," Dennis said diplomatically.
Peter laughed, feeling lighter than he had all day. Tomorrow would bring the train, the castle, the Sorting Hat, and whatever came after. But tonight, he had hot chocolate, snitch marshmallows, and parents who turned ordinary moments into magic. Tomorrow was still enormous and uncertain, but it was also exciting.
After all, how many people got to start their lives with a train ride to a castle?
---
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