“Are you positive?” he asked, his dark red eyes full of expectation and hunger. It was an important part of his plan, after all.
After all his searching, all of his planning, Voldemort was going to get what he wanted.
Peter didn’t like this at all. He was betraying one of the only people who had accepted him at school, as well as that man’s family, just so he could live. He wasn’t being forced, at least not directly. No, he was never actually forced into anything; there was no one sticking a wand to his back, there was no curse. It wasn’t in his blood, and he never felt as if he had to follow in anyone’s footsteps. It was all just his decision, based solely on his selfishness; what he wanted. All he wanted was acceptance, and maybe a bit of power. He thought that he had gone a little too far in just for that, the acceptance he thought he never had, but he never thought that his decisions would come to this.
Of course, when he found out that he was going to help with the ‘removal’ of the Dark Lord’s only possible downfall, despite being confused as to why, Peter was ecstatic. He was never trusted with that much responsibility before; he only did the grunt work. Even in the Order, people seemed to look down on him. He barely ever got to go to the meetings. He suspected that they didn’t think him trustworthy enough. Not with that information, at least.
He soon found out why he was picked. He almost wished he hadn’t.
He had been to an Order meeting, which had surprised him until he had gotten to headquarters. Every member was there. Dumbledore had told them that they should start increasing their measures on security, especially on the Potters and Longbottoms. He talked of how the two boys and their parents would have to be protected, just as Peter thought he would. What he didn’t expect was Dumbledore suggesting him as secret keeper for James and Lily after the others had left. He accepted, with James’s permission. This would help the Dark Lord’s plan immensely. Peter would finally gain acceptance…
Peter had told Sirius and Dumbledore the location. Sirius was James’s most trusted friend, and Dumbledore had approved of his knowing. Dumbledore, being the head of the operation, needed to be able to see them and get to their location.
What the old man didn’t know was that they weren’t the only two people told. Peter had told the Dark Lord almost immediately afterwards.
The Dark Lord had acted quickly upon hearing Peter’s words. It took him less than a week to get the plans ready. All they had done then was wait. And now it was time.
Peter had taken the time to think. He knew that he could never turn back. Yes, he knew that well. He had seen what would happen first hand. All of the Death Eaters had. He was there for life, even if it meant helping to kill James and Lily, two of the only people who he believed had truly accepted him. And it all had started because he hadn’t seen what he truly had from others. He hadn’t seen the people around him that really had accepted him.
Peter thought that in his place in the Dark Lord’s plan, he would gain acceptance and power. He had felt power lately, but not acceptance. He was separated from the others; they didn‘t pay him any more attention than they had before, they just gave him the power that automatically came with his part in the plan, only addressing him when necessary. It was then that realization struck him, and he saw his decisions and actions playing out. His friend was going to die, and it would all be because of him. He spent the rest of the time up until the night of James’s death dwelling on that fact.
Tonight was the night. Peter would cause a commotion to get Sirius away from James and Lily, and their boy Harry. He had promised to help Peter if he needed help, though Peter thought it was only because he was the one who was keeping the Potters safe, not out of loyalty to a friend. And Sirius would leave the Potters in the hands of a guard. The Dark Lord would be able to sneak past the guard, but not Sirius, although Peter never understood why. When the boy and his parents were taken care of, Peter would get his reward. He would get power and respect, and he would get the acceptance of those around him. That long awaited respect, and the acceptance he never knew he truly had.
Peter looked up through his mask at those blood red eyes.
“Yes, my Lord, everything is set. We are ready.”
With those words, the Dark Lord turned away. Peter vaguely heard the order for everyone to leave and get to their spots. He vanished away into the air, thoroughly regretting his choices and just wanting to quit. But he never did, and he never could.
He was stuck in his life of regret and betrayal.
The night had come and gone. James had died in vain, Sirius was in prison, the Dark Lord was gone, and Peter was making his way to an old, rundown pub that he knew could offer him protection, if only for a short time. He would meet a man that could bring him safely to his destination, a pet shop not too far from Diagon Alley. Then he would use his rat form and be sold to someone as a household pet.
Peter arrived at Darkwater, the pub, and ordered a drink. He paid little attention to what he was doing, not noticing what he had ordered or how much he had paid for it. He sat there thinking.
The night had gone wrong in many ways. Peter hadn’t planned on killing anyone. He hadn’t planned on losing his cover. He hadn’t planned on framing Sirius and running off. He only planned on getting what he had always wanted.
Thinking back on the night, he saw his mistakes. The poor quality spells, it was obvious he wasn’t there to help. He might have even let it slip that he had helped cause the chaos, but he doubted that anyone alive would ever know; the only man that could have heard him and gone off to tell anyone was now in Azkaban and thought of as crazy. He would probably die in the same state, and then no one would know.
Peter was surprised at his own quick thinking; he had never thought very well of himself, never noticing his strong spots or the people around him that accepted, and in some cases, respected him. His plan seemed ingenious. The Dark Lord hadn’t thought that anything would go wrong with his plan, but he had granted Peter the wish of having someone to meet if anything did go wrong on his end. Peter would be able to meet a man if need be, and that man would help him. The Dark Lord didn’t know how, or possibly didn’t care, what he would do if he had indeed met the man. Peter wouldn’t confess to anything to Aurors, he was too afraid, and the Dark Lord knew that.
So Peter took advantage of his lifeline, as he called the man, and thought up his plan. He said goodbye to any glory and ran, hoping to find acceptance elsewhere. He might have come back, too, if it weren’t for his final spell. He had overpowered the others, the result being his blast that had killed many of the muggles. In his haste, he tried to think of a plan to make the others think that he had been hurt and ran off.
But now everyone thought him dead, and he had to live with the fact that he had contributed to James’s death for nothing. The boy had lived and the Dark Lord hadn’t. Peter's life was disrupted, and now he was going into hiding, all because he couldn’t think of a way to make it seem like he ran off. He found that, after thinking for a while, people hadn‘t seen him as cowardly as he thought they did. But he thought that they would surely see him as scum, after what he had done. If he cut his finger off and left it for them to find, he could run and they wouldn’t look for him. No one would want to look for little Peter, he had thought. Then he would change into his rat form. Very few people knew he could, and even if anyone remembered, it would be too hard to find one tiny little rat.
He began thinking of his mistakes in more detail, and how he could have done things differently. His regret grew when he thought of the people who had been hurt by his stupidity.
He was slightly surprised by his regret. He had killed others before; it was part of his life by now. Maybe it was thoughts of James and Lily that had sparked this regret; they were his first true cause of regret when it came to murder. He hoped that it would all stop, just this one night was killing him, and he couldn’t figure out why.
He bought another drink when he noticed that the first was gone. He needed time, and he needed to keep his mind off of the newfound regret.
Three and a half drinks later, Peter had convinced himself that hiding would be best. Everyone would quickly forget about Peter Pettigrew, only remembering his life for a short while. He would start a new life later, after the wizarding world was back in tune and everyone had forgotten him.
The man that was to bring him away from his past arrived, and Peter turned from his old life. He turned away from his mistakes, hoping to live the way he had lived again. Little did he know that it wouldn’t be that easy to escape.
Peter thought he had escaped his past. He thought that all those years he had spent disguised had distanced him from what he had done. Now he would have to go back to that life.
All those years ago, a few weeks after getting to the pet shop, he had finally found his temporary home. Peter had managed to be bought by a wizarding family, which had surprised him; he never saw luck on his side. He was able to stay up to date on the wizarding world, and he slowly saw the changes being made. Everyone started to settle down and become more relaxed because of the Dark Lord’s defeat.
He was the pet of one of the boys, Percy Weasley. Peter had gone to Hogwarts with him until he was passed down to the youngest Weasley boy. With him, Peter traveled to Hogwarts again. On the train, the boy had met Harry Potter, the boy who had saved and ruined Peter’s life all at once. The boys had become fast friends, though Peter suspected that it was because they both saw themselves as misfits to the school, Harry being the misunderstood boy and Weasley as the boy who had hand-me-downs galore, and couldn’t follow in the footsteps of his older brothers.
The boys spent their year together, soon joined by another, a muggle-born girl. They had found out about a plot concerning the Dark Lord, and Peter carefully listened in, even though the words he heard came out of the mouths of three eleven year olds.
Sure enough, at the end of the friends’ first year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter had thwarted the Dark Lord for the second time in his life, and their words were proven to be true. It was then that his attention was brought to the Dark Lord’s existence, though it was only a small existence.
Peter started seeing problems emerge when the girl in the Weasley family had been brought to the Chamber of Secrets in the boys’ second year, by none other than the Dark Lord himself. She had been taken by the Dark Lord‘s 16 year old self, just a mere memory trapped in a fifty year old diary. It was then that he caught on to the plan that was most surely being concocted by the Dark Lord. He was going to return, and he wasn’t going to stop until he did.
The next year, Peter had been pulled back into this mess. It had all started during the summer, when Sirius had escaped from Azkaban. His life was pulled back into the story and into the world. Peter started worrying when he heard the news about Sirius’s ‘plans’. Of course, the Daily Prophet hadn’t written truth when they assumed that Sirius was after Harry Potter. Sirius hadn’t killed anyone, he wasn’t guilty of any crimes that he was sentenced for, and he hadn’t been a Death Eater. It was all Peter’s doing, and Sirius knew this.
Peter didn’t know how Sirius found him, and that worried him almost as much as the thought of being found did. So when the three friends weren’t looking, he would sneak off to try and find out about Sirius. He could only trust the words of three thirteen year-olds so much. They had, thankfully, thought What he ended up finding out worried him even more than what he already knew.
The Dark Lord was still alive, if only a small bit. Peter saw the problems that would come to him if he didn’t return to the service of the Dark Lord. He was afraid, and when he heard of the whereabouts of the Dark Lord, he knew that he would have to return. He wouldn’t last long if he didn’t, and if he did, he would live.
So Peter started planning.
He would escape near the end of the school year, and run off to find the Dark Lord. He would start his life again, and he would escape the humiliation of having to live as a rat. He would be able to live his life, using the Dark Lord’s cover for protection.
His plan had been changed when he tried to run off. As a dog, Sirius had gone after him, as did Ron, the boy who ‘owned’ him. Ron had gotten a hold of him first, and Sirius had gone for him. He was dragged past through the willow’s hole, and brought to the Shrieking Shack, Remus’s old hiding spot for his werewolf self. Memories flew through Peter’s mind as he waited, as Ron held him tightly in his hands. Memories of the four Gryffindor boys that had named themselves the Marauders.
The other two came later, and the whole thing was explained to them, all the while Peter being held on to tightly, stopping him from running again. He was shaking in fear the whole time, and he was reduced to groveling at them to let him go. Harry, being loyal to James, had stopped Peter from being killed, which proved to be a stupid move on his part.
They almost got him to the castle, too. But Peter knew better. Tonight was a full moon, and Remus wasn’t going to be able to stay human for much longer. Peter prepared himself for what was sure to be a work of pure luck, and when everyone’s attention was off of him, he was a rat again. He ran off to follow through with his plan, though in the back of his mind, he had almost convinced himself to stay and get the dementor’s kiss. There would be no more running around, no more hiding, no more killing; he wouldn’t have to deal with his life.
But there was no such thing that would be happening tonight. He ran off into the night, looking back every so often at what he had left behind. He would be going to help the Dark Lord once more, and there was no turning back.
Peter once again looked back before turning to run to a different life. He ran off to his life filled with regret and betrayal. He ran off to a life that he would never be able to leave behind.