NPC Thread (Dumbles) Who: Dumbledore & Peter Where: By the sea again! When: Early Friday morning What: Dumbles gives Pete some tips on fishing and also on life?
Determination was something Peter wasn't, it had to be said, altogether familiar with. He tended to drift through life from one thing to another, only really knuckling down and concentrating on something long enough to master it with the appropriate encouragement. The Animagus transformation was a good example of this. That bloody blasting curse was another.
But he was going to catch something today if it bloody killed him. Anything to take his mind off the newcomers to the village and what it might mean for his near future.
He decided to try the Summoning Charm after all because, he reasoned, there was no way he could do a spell powerful enough to Summon all the fish in the ocean into his boat - leading to almost certain drowning - and also because he'd cast the net out in this area for weeks now and not caught anything but some tiny silvery ones which probably wouldn't hurt him much if they came at him en masse. Probably.
Unfortunately his first attempt did summon a fish, and quite a big one too. It was unfortunate because it missed the net entirely and hit him square in the face, which, because he was standing up, knocked him over the side of the boat and into the water.
Peter was not a good swimmer. The others had done their best to teach him in the Hogwarts lake, but that was flat even on rough days and this was the bloody ocean, which was also deep. He flailed about a bit until he managed to catch the edge of the boat and haul himself back into it. It then took the better part of hour to fish the oars back in and make his way, dripping and cursing, back to shore, by which point he was seriously considering setting the damn thing on fire, if it would even burn. He practically fell out of the boat and dropped to his knees on the sand, panting and coughing.