Peter

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 187723

Geoff wrote:
<snip> I've forgotten which year Percy was in when he became a Prefect but it is obvious that he [Wormtail] was looked after by another of the family prior to Percy. <snip>

> This [the informatopm that Scabbers had been in the Weasley family twelve years as of PoA) raises the interesting question of how he managed it and also gives me some thoughts for when I come to draft the discussion for this chapter in a few weeks' time.
>
Carol responds:

As far as we know, Prefects are always appointed in fifth year, so Percy (who is two years ahead of the twins and four years ahead of Ron) was newly appointed when we first meet him in OoP. That would be ten years after Godric's Hollow, at which time Percy was a little boy of about five. I see no reason why the "rat" could not have been Percy's pet that whole time (from age five to age fifteen) until he became a Prefect, was rewarded with Hermes, and gave scruffy old Scabbers to Ron without a second thought. (I've always assumed that Wormtail found his way in rat form to the Weasleys' house, knowing that they had a lot of children and were too poor to afford pets other than chickens, hoping that one of the children would pick him up and ask a parent if they could keep him. (How he would escape any owls in the family, such as a not-yet-ancient Errol, I don't know, unless it meant revealing his identity by transforming into a man while he was in the owl's claws. A big chance to take, either way.)

At any rate, I suppose it's possible that another Weasley kid (say, Charlie, the animal lover) adopted Scabbers and then passed him on to Percy when he became a Prefect and/or Quidditch captain ("that's everyone in the family" indicates that Bill, Charlie, and Percy were all Prefects, the Twins being momentarily forgotten and Ginny being only fourteen at the time). I don't think it's "obvious," though. We don't know either way, and I'd like to think that lonely little Percy wanted a pet to make him feel like less of an outsider in his own family.

Carol, just speculating