Lovely Peter

"So you must have learned a lot of magic?" Harry asked curiously. He noticed that Tierra seemed to be lost in thought, staring blankly into space, so he had no choice but to speak first.

This Weasley family must have been the magical family mentioned by that pale-faced boy he and Tierra had met in Flourish and Blotts.

"I heard you lived with Muggles afterward," Ron said. "What are they like? Dad says Muggles are all very lovely and interesting people."

"They're awful. Well, not all of them. Other people are pretty nice, but my aunt, uncle, and cousin are terrible. I wish I had a few wizard brothers too."

"Five," Ron said, though for some reason he seemed a little unhappy. "I'm the sixth one in my family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I'm supposed to follow their example. Bill and Charlie have already graduated. Bill was Head Boy, and Charlie was captain of the Quidditch team. Percy is a prefect now, and even though Fred and George are always causing trouble, their grades are excellent. Everyone thinks they're brilliant, and they expect me to be just like them. But then again, even if I managed it, it wouldn't be anything special, because they did it before me. When you have five brothers, you never get anything new. I wear Bill's old robes, use Charlie's old wand, and have Percy's discarded rat."

An inferiority complex.

Tierra judged immediately. Though he appeared to be spacing out, he was still taking in everything around him.

The Weasley family was actually a perfect subject for family psychology research.

From Charlie, Bill, Percy, and the twins George and Fred, down to Ron, they were all boys. Their parents were the same, and their upbringing was similar, yet the brothers' personalities were completely different.

He did not know Charlie and Bill very well, but they were probably the gentle older-brother type. Percy had a strong desire for power. George and Fred were creative and exploratory, good at research and development. Ron, meanwhile, was intelligent but rarely had ideas of his own. He had both an inferiority complex and a people-pleasing personality, perhaps because he was the youngest son in the family and had lacked attention since childhood.

Unfortunately, Tierra's field was not psychology. He had only taken a few psychology-related electives in college, and had slept through more than half the classes. Otherwise, he could have published an article in the core journal Acta Psychologica Sinica just by studying the Weasley family.

As Ron spoke, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat that was fast asleep. "His name's Scabbers. He's completely useless now, sleeps all day long. When Percy became a prefect, Dad gave him an owl because they couldn't afford to... I mean, Percy gave the rat to me."

Ron's ears turned red. He seemed to feel that he had said too much, and went back to staring out the window.

The moment Ron took out Scabbers, Tierra's eyes lit up.

Right, how could I have forgotten that adorable little Peter Pettigrew?

When an Animagus transformed, did even their DNA become animal DNA? Or did only their appearance change while their DNA remained human? If Peter Pettigrew, in rat form, exchanged hereditary chromosomes with a female rat, would there be reproductive isolation between them? Would the offspring be rat pups? Human babies? Or simply half-human, half-beast monsters?

And what would the offspring's DNA look like? Would they display entirely human traits? Entirely rat traits? Or traits from both?

Could entirely new traits emerge?

All of this was far too valuable.

Tierra's gaze toward Peter Pettigrew, sprawled across Ron's lap, grew increasingly fervent.

Peter Pettigrew, still asleep, seemed to sense Tierra's gaze brimming with curiosity and the desire to explore. His entire body shuddered.

"C-can I pet your rat?" Tierra asked Ron eagerly.

"I don't really like birds. I've always wanted a pet rat," Tierra said.

"Of course." Though Ron found it strange that anyone would want to touch his fat, balding rat, he generously handed Scabbers over to Tierra.

Scabbers had only just woken up when he found himself held by an unfamiliar child.

Just a little wizard... With that thought, Peter Pettigrew gradually relaxed and allowed Tierra to give him a comfortable massage.

Years of maintaining his rat form had affected Peter Pettigrew's cognition.

Though his old memories and personality remained, as time passed, Wormtail's behavior and mannerisms had become more and more like those of a real rat.

So when Tierra took a soybean-sized, slightly sweet pellet from his trunk and held it to his mouth, he swallowed it without hesitation.

Though it looked like a little candy bean, it carried a pungent fishy stench.

A normal rat would have loved that smell.

But the stench nearly made Wormtail leap into the air.

"What is that?" Seeing Tierra feed something to his rat, Ron naturally had to ask.

"A tonic," Tierra answered casually. "A Muggle invention that lets rats live longer."

"Really?" Ron asked delightedly.

"Really," Tierra said. After all, I can guarantee your rat will live until the seventh book.

When Peter sprang up, Tierra easily pressed him back down.

The original formula for this pill came from a curse recorded on the Hyborian Tablets, one Tierra had created to tame vicious venomous snakes.

By combining his own blood with an incantation and feeding it to snakes, even the most ferocious python could be made as docile as a kitten.

Hybor had not named this medicine, so Tierra called it the Hyborian Pill.

Building upon the Hyborian Pill, Merlin added Snakebone Flower, Sunlight Grass roots ** and mercury, allowing the pill to work broadly on other magical creatures.

This was also the key to Merlin's ability to tame dragons in the legends about him.

The fundamental nature of nearly all dragons was violent and restless. Even the cleverest Swiss Short-Snout could not be tamed like a cat or dog.

Only by using even greater violence to leave these brutal creatures with deep psychological scars could they possibly be put to use.

Soon, Peter Pettigrew stopped struggling in Tierra's hand and instead lay on Tierra's lap as if asleep.

"Tierra!" Ron panicked when he saw Scabbers lying listlessly on Tierra's lap.

"Does your Muggle pill really work?" Ron asked. The rat had been with his family for ten years. Though Ron often disliked the pet, deep down he still felt a strong attachment to it. It was his closest friend after his family.

"Don't worry, it'll definitely work." Tierra was not sure himself. "If anything really happens, I'll buy you an owl."

"Oh, all right." Ron suddenly felt relieved, and even began hoping that something might happen to Scabbers.