Non nefarious purposes Who: Peter & Lea Where:Lea's house When: Saturday night What: Animagi training. Hopefully.
If you had to choose one word to describe Peter Pettigrew, there was one thing for sure. It would not be 'confidence'. He was almost a hundred percent sure that he had never been confident about anything in his entire life (although of course he wasn't completely confident about that). Being an Animagi though, was one of the few things that gave him that little spark of whatever that feeling was when he needed it - a little boost, a little hint that there was something he could do that only a few select other people could do, that was enough to make him feel not entirely pathetic except on the very worst days.
Lately though...
Since he had lost his hand, he hadn't transformed. He wasn't sure he could, and he didn't want to find out that he couldn't, so he made a concious decision to live in ignorance for the time being. His magic was just as unreliable as it had been since the incident, despite Dumbledore's best efforts to convince him that he just needed to believe in himself a bit more. Peter was convinced that the problem lay either with his wand, or his hand, or both, and each spell he did seemed to get weaker no matter how much he practised.
All this made him, he was sure, the least suitable Animagus teacher there could possibly be. Especially in a village where there were at least two others to pick from, and Peter hadn't met half the people in the village. But he was going to do it anyway, because Lea didn't want to learn from anyone else, and knowing that gave him just the tiniest flicker of the old not-quite-confidence feeling that being Wormtail had always lit up. It was nice to know that he wouldn't be entirely useless. He hated feeling useless. He'd always felt like that in the Order, which was part of the reason why he'd hated it so much.
He spent the week leading up to their first lesson studying, probably almost as hard as Lea was, as many of the texts that he remembered them reading all that time ago in third year. It was incredible to think, now, that three thirteen and fourteen year olds had even thought of managing such a thing. Peter knew now, after reading just the first chapter of the first book, that he would have given up in the first five minutes if James and Sirius hadn't been there to chivvy him along. He had to look up quite a few words. As he read, memories of midnight outings and endless library sessions and dangerous experiments flooded back. On the whole they were good memories, but there were a few terrifying ones, too. Still, he wished more than ever he could be back there. It had been the best time of his life.
The reading made him feel better prepared, but even so, he knocked on Lea's door with a slight sense of apprehension. He didn't visit other people's houses in the village often - or at all, and it felt strange to be doing it now. He half expected someone to jump out and accuse him of nefarious purposes.