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It’s easier after they finish the Animagus spell and she becomes Wormtail. Honestly, she was expecting her transformations to give her even more discomfort in her own body than her human form does. She may feel constantly like certain parts of her body are missing or twisted beyond recognizability, but to inhabit a rat’s body? Sure, the first transformation is uncomfortable, but not because she feels out of place as the rat—more because it’s uncomfortable to have her clothes melded into her skin. But, hey, she’ll take it over the usual crap any day, especially once she gets used to it. At least her rat form is female.
She gets a little obsessed after that with transforming into Wormtail. She tells James, Remus, and Sirius that it’s because she wants to practice, wants to feel more comfortable in her fur (as it were) and learn to do it without a wand. However, the real reason is that it’s just easier to be Wormtail than it is to be human.
It’s not just about the body stuff, although that is part of it. It’s so much a part of it that she starts drawing the hangings on her four-poster earlier and earlier every night so that she can curl up to sleep in Animagus form. It’s also, however, about how much safer she feels lounging around as Wormtail on her friends’ beds and letting them stroke her fur as their words wash over her—not expected to participate, not expected to do anything but just exist with them.
It’s not that Wormtail doesn’t like being with her friends. They’re funny and thoughtful and loyal to a fault, even if that loyalty always feels more like it’s meant for each other than like it’s meant for her. Maybe they’d pay her the same respect if she opened up to them; she doesn’t know. All she knows is that they’re complete and utter boys, from the pranks to the pissing contests to the shit they say about girls’ bodies like they don’t deserve dignity, but they do. Wormtail deserves dignity, too, but she doesn’t have the first clue how to ask for it.
How is she supposed to tell her friends—the most masculine people at Hogwarts—that she’s not one of them? How will she ever, ever fit with them if they realize she’s been one of the others—the objects, the enemies, lesser—all along?
And it’s not just about her trying to fit in with boys: it’s about her trying to fit in with the Marauders. She’s not just not masculine enough; she’s not clever enough, funny enough, or creative enough, not with magic nor pranks nor hexes to aim at Slytherins and first years alongside James and Sirius. Sometimes, it feels like Wormtail’s entire life is a lie, like she’s counting down to the day that they realize she’s not one of them and just—discard her. Throw her away.
So she tries. Wormtail learns to play the role. And, yeah, maybe she overdoes it a little with the hero-worship of James, the clinginess to Remus, or even the overpowering sympathy whenever Sirius bitches about his parents. But it’s the only way she knows how to fit: to mold herself into the perfect mirror of her friends so that they can’t see her peeking out around the edges. It works, for now, even though it sort of makes her want to scream until somebody somewhere, just once, tells her she belongs.
She doesn’t know whether it’s that they tried with her and she was just too different for it to work—or that they felt that difference and didn’t try at all. Either way, they take her for granted. They take Wormtail for granted. And one of these days, she’s going to get tired of waiting for the day she’s enough. She can feel it.