Peter slipped under the counter barely in front of Fred and huddled against the wall, eyeing the small hand grabbing for him. He felt sorry for any real pet those two ended up getting. He could barely defend himself now, and he was really a wizard. Not that he knew what those two intended to do once they caught him again, but he had no intentions of finding out.
The hand withdrew as another pair of small feet ran over, and the toddler twins conversed in whispers for a moment. George ran off again, and Fred laid back down to peer under the cabinet at Peter. He had a bad feeling about this, but with Fred keeping a close eye on him, he had nowhere left to run. From now on, he decided, he should just stay in Charlie’s room.
About then, someone with much heavier footsteps entered the kitchen. The large feet mostly covered by the tattered hem of robes moved over to the kitchen table, and a tired sigh announced that their owner had sat down. The light steps of their mother approached as well. “Evening paper, dear,” she said, pausing briefly at the kitchen table. “Fred,” she hissed, “get off the floor!” Fred looked up, then back at Peter as if considering and stood obediently. He scuffed the ground with his bare foot as he made his way out of the kitchen. Her feet stayed there as Peter supposed she watched to make sure he left.
“George?” she said suddenly, stepping forward. “George, what do you have?” The twins immediately broke into a run. “If that was a wand,” she shouted after them, “you had better put it back where it came from! Do you hear me?”
A wand? Merlin’s beard, saved by the strict mother. Who knew what could’ve happened to Peter if they started poking him with a wand.
Their father sighed to the sound of paper rustling. “All the news is about those trials going on,” he said. “Not that they’re reporting half of what’s really happening.”
“Do you have to read the paper, Arthur?” she asked, her feet stopping right in front of the counter Peter hid under. “You already work overtime with all of that, not to mention that they’re not compensating you for the work, but you have to read about it when you get home?”
“It’s the principle of the thing, Molly.” More paper rustling. “Oh. I hadn’t heard about that one, yet....”
Molly sniffed disapprovingly, but Peter didn’t think it was loud enough for her husband to hear. “At least put it down while you eat your dinner,” she said, joining him at the table.
“Yes, yes,” he said absently. “They gave young Peter Pettigrew an Order of the Merlin. First Class, even.”
Peter, on the point of trying to find a roundabout way of getting out of the kitchen and back upstairs, froze. An Order of the Merlin? For what?
“Peter Pettigrew,” Molly said thoughtfully, as if the name didn’t immediately ring bells. “...Oh.”
“For bravery, it says, in trying to take on Death Eater spy Sirius Black after his betrayal that caused the deaths of James and Lily Potter. I can’t believe so much about that managed to leak out. I thought this was supposed to be secret?”
“Is it? Do eat, dear....”
“Yes, of course. The Ministry doesn’t want anyone to know that they skipped Black’s trial. Everything about this is supposed to be perfectly fair and legal, to encourage Death Eaters to come out of hiding and give themselves up.”
He didn’t even get a trial? All thoughts of trying to get out of the kitchen had fled from Peter. He stood stock still, listening to the pair of them talk about him and his friends. So, they really had thought that Sirius was the spy.... So, Peter was safe. Honoured even, with an Order of the Merlin that he didn’t deserve, but at what cost?
“But I don’t suppose they could keep much of it secret with the scandal of all those Muggle deaths,” he continued. “Made the Muggle news, even”the whole street was torn apart. I even got pulled into clean-up for that one; it was a mess. Bodies everywhere.... Twelve Muggles in all. And all we found of Peter was a finger....”
Peter’s mind buzzed. Bodies...? He hadn’t meant to kill anyone. He was just trying to get away from Sirius! There had been some kind of mistake. The whole street torn apart, he said, and twelve Muggles dead. Twelve.
But everyone thought Sirius had killed them.
No! He couldn’t start doing that. Just because everyone thought Sirius was guilty didn’t change the fact that Peter was the real murderer. A murderer. He was actually a murderer. No better than a Death Eater, now. His last connection to his friends snapped, then. Only excuses were left because Peter could not deny, whatever he had intended, that his wand had been the one that killed those people. His wand, directed by his hand, had blasted a street apart and killed twelve people, twelve Muggles even, who had done nothing at all.
Whatever else they said passed over Peter as inaudible babble. That blast.... That disproportionately large blast.... Why hadn’t he stopped to look back? Would it have made a difference? he thought miserably. They would’ve been dead already by then, and Sirius might’ve gotten me, too, if I had.
An Order of the Merlin for murdering people. He wondered if Sirius had gotten the news of that. Perhaps it would be better if he didn’t. Sirius would hate him enough already without hearing about people honouring the fall of someone who deserved death but had not died. How many lives now had Peter’s cost? At least fourteen. How he longed to be the Peter Pettigrew they were writing about in the papers. Courageous if foolhardy was better than cowardly and selfish. He almost wished he had the courage to die.
Almost.