Marauder's Map, A History; Wasn't Wormtail Worried?

[Bex]

No: HPFGUIDX 113623

Potioncat asked:
> > Does anyone remember when Ron found out about the map? Had 
> > Scabbers already fled?

And Carol replied:
> Ron found out about the map (but didn't actually see it) right 
> after Harry surprised him and Hermione by showing up at Honeydukes 
> just before Christmas (PoA 198). Scabbers was presumably in Ron's 
> pocket and must have overheard the conversation. He would also 
> have heard McGonagall, Fudge, et al. discussing his supposed death 
> in the Three Broomsticks that same day, so he would not want Harry 
> to see his name on the map and realize that he was alive. But it's 
> not until February--just before Sirius Black's second attack--that 
> Scabbers/PP fakes his own death. Ron and Harry hear Neville tell 
> Sir Cadogan that he's lost the passwords (249), and then Ron goes 
> upstairs to give Scabbers his tonic and discovers that Scabbers 
> has been "killed" (250-51). That same night Sirius Black slashes 
> Ron's bedcurtains with a twelve-inch knife. Somehow Scabbers knows 
> that Crookshanks (who, of course, has always known that Scabbers 
> was an animagus and really has been trying to kill him) has given 
> Black the passwords and that his life is in very real danger. The 
> map, Crookshanks' claws, the sneakoscope going off--none of these 
> was enough in itself or even in combination to spur lazy Peter to 
> action. But he must have seen Crookshanks take the passwords from 
> Neville's bedside table and realized that it was time to take 
> action.

Yb's up to bat:
Well, I don't agree with your entire post: I don't think our 
favorite Rat-man was in Hogsmeade with Ron. If he had been, he would 
have certainly heard about the Map, and surely would have 
disappeared over the holidays. Not waiting until February, for sure. 
He would have been concerned with exactly what Carol was thinking 
earlier: someone would have seen the name "Peter Pettigrew" and 
started wondering. So I don't think he knew about the map, unless it 
works differently that we presumed, and we presume that it would 
show Peter as "Peter." Plus, Harry didn't use the map between Dec. 
and Feb., so Rat-man wouldn't have heard about it. Ron was keeping 
him in the dorm room most of the time to keep him safe from 
Crookshanks. 
I do agree that he may have been hiding and seen Crookshanks steal 
the passwords. He would have then given them to Sirius (who needed a 
night when the guard was down to get in), without knowing that Rat-
man had escaped.

And as for why the twins never noticed a Peter Pettigrew? Well, 
there are several reasons:
1) As someone pointed out a few posts ago, when canon says the print 
on the MM is miniscule, it means /miniscule/. There's no way every 
detail of a huge castle could be on the map, and even if it was, the 
name would be written so small and probably so far away from where 
the twins were that they never noticed.

2) It's pretty clear that students (Gryffindors, at least) don't 
associate with other students outside their house and/or year. In 
the off chance that the twins noticed a Peter Pettigrew, they may 
have written it off as a student they don't know. Whether Hogwart's 
has 400 or 1000 students, not even Gred and Forge would know all of 
them by name well enough to recognize one that didn't belong. This 
assumes that on the off-chance they noticed a Peter Pettigrew on the 
map, he wasn't in Ron's dorm room, snoozing. I'm betting that they 
never noticed him.

3) Gred and Forge's main concerns were finding hiding places, secret 
tunnels, secret rooms, and in general doing things they shouldn't 
have been doing, most likely out of bed after hours. Thus their main 
concern would have been who was in the hall they were in, who was 
close enough to hear them, and perhaps which professors were where. 
(If they saw Snape coming, they'd probably run and hide, whereas 
Trelawny on patrol might buy some wild story about why they were out 
of bed at night.) They wouldn't need to look at the dorm rooms 
(where Rat-man usually hung out), because, aside from Poindexter 
Percy, no one in the dorm rooms would give them any trouble.

I think that's enough reasons... what do you think?

~Yb