#wormtail week

"Crucio." His master cast the curse in a high, dispassionate tone, only a slight curl in his lip betraying his emotion. The boy cowered and writhed against the ropes that bound him to the gravestone, his screams uncontrolled and useless, splitting the night. Peter saw almost nothing in that moment of the parents in the son, none of James’ stupid courage or Lily’s quiet defiance. The sharp smell of urine pierced the cold air and tears shone afterwards below the boy’s green eyes.

A baby.  He’d been a baby once, Peter remembered, plump and soft-faced, reaching with delight towards the silver wisps of a Patronus cast by James to entertain him as he bounced on Lily’s lap.  “He’s teething again and we’re all going mad.” 

If the child had only died then, when he was meant to…. James would not have. Perhaps nothing right now would have to be this way.

Peter pushed back the thought that had been triggered not only by the boy but also by the man before him.  He’d carried his master’s bundled form, before the ritual, into the graveyard—needing to set it down in order to cast the curse that killed the spare. From the day the first potion had worked, he had been repulsed by how feeble the body was that the Dark Lord had been restored to.  Another infant, he’d thought bitterly.  How Sirius would laugh.

His master’s snide voice echoed in his ears. “Why, I am growing quite sentimental….”

At first, it was perfect. They had a darling, delightful prince, and Petunia got to decide what foods to eat, how much to clean, what their garden should look like.

And so she cooked and she cleaned and she gardened and she cared for their son, and when she was done for the day, Vernon would return and she would do half of it over again.

Her parents died, leaving her the keys to a kingdom she’d renounced long ago. As ever, she did what was right, what was expected, and her amazing, absent sister couldn’t be bothered to show.

She kept the keys to the house she didn’t want in a little box in the kitchen, just in case. She didn’t know what it was in case of, especially once Lily had died and left her nothing but another baby to care for, but just in case of something. She knew better than anyone that anything was often well beyond the scope of the expected or the imaginable.

And sure enough, one winter afternoon, she found a rat in her kitchen.

She’d only just put the boys down for a nap (and what a hassle that was with two of them! Each setting the other off crying again when they’d almost fallen asleep, over and over, until she wanted to leave them both alone in the hopes that they’d tire each other out and maybe maybe let it be quiet again) and she had returned downstairs with the intent of starting dinner when she found it— him— sitting cool as you please on Petunia’s sparkling counters, drinking a snifter of Vernon’s most expensive brandy.

She let out a scream before she thought of the boys she’d only just gotten to sleep and swallowed it back. But the rat seemed uninterested, and… did he just raise an eyebrow?

She cast around for a broom or a pan to scare him off but the only thing closer to her than the rat was the teddy she’d planned to mend after Dudley had ripped the head off. It would have to do.

Careful not to get too close— she didn’t want to hit the glass— she swung out with the stuffie, and still the rat looked unimpressed.

“Out,” she cried, with another swing, this one a bit closer, “Get out of my house! I don’t want you here!”

This had never worked on Lily or the Snape boy either, but she knew magic had all sorts of rules to learn, and, well, she could hope that was one. In films, Dracula needed permission to enter, maybe that was true of witches, too.

The rat had put down his drink to face her directly.

“Didn’t you hear me?” she said, as loudly as she dared. “Leave!”

But the rat did not, and when she swung out once more, the snifter wobbled precariously.

“Fine! Fine,” she conceded, slumping back against the refrigerator, beheaded teddy leg still clutched in her hand. “Well? If you’ve got a message for me, or whatever, say it now before my husband gets home.”

Finally, the rat moved. A step away from the brandy, then a running leap at her that made her shriek again and swat it away with her makeshift weapon— except when it made contact it was with a fully grown man, not a rat at all.

He stood before her, wand held casually in one hand— not exactly brandishing it at her, but showing it off. He was short, not quite as tall as she was, with bright, straw blond hair, and he looked like a strong wind would bowl him over, despite having a bit of bulk on her. If it wasn’t for the stupid wooden stick in his hand, she thought she could easily take him.

That, and the rat thing.

“First of all, we’ve got to work on your security system. D’you know who I am?”

He didn’t ask like Vernon— or his father— did, full of expectation and impatience. The man-who-was-also-a-rat asked like he expected to have been overlooked, like he was afraid even now that he’d be thrown out for not being recognized. It was a look Petunia had trained away from her own expression when she’d lost her accent.

“I’m afraid I don’t, mister…”

“Pettigrew,” he said cautiously, “Peter Pettigrew.” And then, after a moment of hesitation, “I was— I was friends with your sister and your… brother-in-law.”

“Yes, well, they’re both dead now, and they’ve left me their son, as I’m sure you’re aware, seeing as you’ve let yourself into my kitchen.”

“Like I was saying, better security system. Which brings me to why I’m here.”

He made a sort of gesture to imply he’d like to sit down at the table and discuss it, but when Petunia didn’t budge from her place against the fridge, he stayed standing in the middle of the room.

“We are… concerned, you see, for your family’s safety. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but your nephew made a lot of enemies when he defeated the Dark Lord— our world has only started to recover, and it’s possible that those enemies could enter your home, just like I did.”

He paused, and Petunia caught a flash of a smile before he visibly read her face.

“Sorry,” he said, “I don’t want to scare you, ’s just… I’d hate if something happened to him— or to you— if I could’ve been there.”

“Thank you for your concern,” she said tightly. Petunia wanted to wave him off, but… Lily was dead from these freaks, and she’d had magic to protect herself. She wondered if Harry was supposed to protect her if something did happen, if that was Albus Dumbledore’s grand plan— but then, here was Peter, offering a magical security system. “It won’t be obvious to the neighbors, the… spells or whatever you’re going to do?”

“Not at all,” — this time Peter was definitely smirking— “Hardly anyone ever notices a rat.”

And before Petunia could object, he’d shrunk down and disappeared further into the house.

She went back and forth with herself about what, if anything, to tell Vernon, until he was nearly due home and she hadn’t even started dinner. But Peter didn’t show (either) face again, and she pulled a meal together, and Vernon stayed none the wiser.

Days passed, and weeks, the holidays with them, and the most she’d seen of Peter was the flash of a tail around a doorjamb. Not until the end of January, on a day Petunia was trying very hard not to think about. Vernon either hadn’t known the significance or hadn’t cared, off on a business trip for the next week, and the boys were napping in the nursery with no knowledge of a calendar at all.

Petunia scrubbed angrily at a mark on the stove she wasn’t entirely sure was still there (if it ever had been).

“I miss her too, you know.”

She spun, startled, and sure enough, Peter stood in the middle of the kitchen again, as if she’d only just let him in.

“Well, both of them in my case, not sure you really ever got to know James. But Lily was… kind.”

“Lily was kind?”

Peter smiled sheepishly. “Not to everyone, sure. Bitchy as all hell if you let her get going, and shit choices in friends. But that always seems to be the thing about dead people. Gotta say the nice bits and not the annoyed bits, cause what’s left to be annoyed about?”

“I could give you a list.” She meant it to come out dry, a poor attempt at a bad joke she couldn’t help but tell. It didn’t. It came out weighted, bitter and confiding and too much.

Peter looked intrigued. “We could probably compare them,” he said, slow and quiet. “Complain the way only a sister and a not-quite-brother-in-law can. Honor her real memory and the fact that we don’t have to buy her birthday presents this year.”

She looked back at the spot on the stove and hesitated. When she turned back, she couldn't help the flinch at Peter’s wand held half-aloft, but he didn’t attack or even look particularly threatening. He raised a brow in question, nodding at the stove behind her.

She stepped out of the way, and with a wave of his wand, her kitchen started to clean itself. Old gripes about easier lives rose up in her chest, but they stopped short of her lips. Peter was helping, because her sister was dead and he felt sorry.

With a sigh, she waved him off to the table, grabbing a bottle of wine and two glasses. As long as she could still hear when Dudley cried, there was no shame in a small drink, she told herself. What’s the harm?

Except they did it again when Vernon was out for golf, and again when he visited his sister, and again when he was off on another business trip. They drank a bit of wine and talked about Lily, and James, and magic, his world and her world and why things were the way they were.

It continued past James’s birthday with a passing mention, and (as she later discovered) past Peter’s without even that. And then, suddenly, it was Petunia’s— the height of springtime following Easter, and another business trip Vernon couldn't possibly miss.

Home alone on her birthday, except she wasn’t. Not really. She had the boys, whether she wanted them or not, easily entertained and easily upset.

And she had Peter.

Peter who somehow knew it was her birthday without being told, who appeared with wine and takeaway and a very small cake— just big enough for two small portions and no leftovers. Her house cleaned itself, and the boys, he promised, would sleep through the night. And when he leaned in to kiss her, it didn’t matter how much she shouldn’t, it only mattered that she wanted to, and she did.

SFW 5. Rats 6. The Marauders’ Map 7. The Dark Mark 8. Hogsmeade 9. Friendship 10. Magical Hand 11. Full Moon

Of course, Scabbers the rat hadn’t always been Scabbers, or, indeed, a rat. He had once been a boy called Peter— though he supposed at some point between that and Scabbers, he might have also been a man.

One more day, Peter had told himself. Then he could go back out and fix his mistakes, make the world right again. But one more day had turned to next week, had turned to once I have a plan, and no plan had materialized. And now he sat, staring at a boy who should have still been a baby.

It was like seeing a ghost, at first. Same hair, same face, different glasses. It only took him a moment to catalogue all the things that weren’t as they should have been, to remember that James was dead and that Peter had had a hand in it.

He’d known it was September the first again, the most obvious of the holidays the Weasleys celebrated that wracked Peter with the kind of grief that hollowed out your bones and filled them with lead, that made even eating and sleeping the kind of chore that was better done without. But he’d lost track of the years, despite knowing that Ron would have been of the same age and having watched him grow to school-aged the way they all should have watched Harry.

Harry, who looked, quite frankly, a mess. The ambiguously happy life Peter might have imagined for him, if he’d given it any thought (and Peter was ashamed to say he hadn’t) obviously couldn’t have been further from the truth.

It showed in his appearance— too thin compared to his parents, with oversized clothes that hung off his body, glasses spellotaped together and sitting crookedly on his nose— but it was the manic excitement to be away from home fueling his every movement that reminded Peter of Sirius, or Remus in the later years.

Kinder than any of them had been at that age though, Peter realized, as Harry reassured Ron that there was nothing wrong with being poor.

“…this summer, and it’s filled with all of Dudley’s broken things, which aren’t mine at all even though they’re in my room. This is the first time I’ve ever had something that was just mine…”

For a moment, Peter entertained the thought that he was storytelling, that he’d made it all up for attention the way James might have, but Harry spoke sincerely and seemed, if not unbothered, then at least resigned to the world he lived in.

Of all the ghosts Peter had seen so far (and it was September first, so he’d been hearing the laughter of boys long gone since before the clocks changed over), this living, breathing ghost of the happy and protected baby Peter had last seen wrapped up in James’s arms was the worst.

And Peter had done this. Maybe not alone, not singlehandedly, but he’d thought he could fix it and had instead cocked it up so badly he’d made more of a mess than they’d started with.

Without Peter’s permission, his grief poured out in a shrill shriek.

“Woah, Scabbers!”

Clumsy children’s hands cupped tighter around his small frame, fingers stroking soothingly against the shivers that wracked him. If they knew— who he was, what he’d done, the pain he’d caused— but they didn’t.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I dunno, I’ve never seen him like that.”

Peter heaved great breaths, searching futilely for the apathetic emptiness that had engulfed him for so long. The ache still sat deep within his chest, weighing down his very soul, but he had stumbled upon something repairable in the shattered remnants that had once been his life.

Nothing would bring Lily and James back, but Peter could be there for Harry when no one else would, closer than he had any right to be.