Stag Night

Stag Night

~ VII ~

Dark Victory

Peter felt tremendously relieved to get farther from the loathsome peddler in Seven Shoe Alley who was trying to sell something to Sirius. Once he’d moved away from the others, the relief vanished and was replaced by a feeling of nakedness, of being an easy target. He inched over to a shop and adopted a sudden interest in the menacing strips of black leather that dangled in the window and in the leather and iron bracelets that seemed awfully thick and plain to be jewelry. He was just having an argument with himself about the wisdom of leaving James, even briefly, when a thick hand slapped him on the back. He jumped and turned around, nerves raw and jangling, to get away if he could.

“You like doze little toys, no?” The speaker had a gap-toothed grin that split his face and caused an explosion of crinkles around the corners of his eyes when he spoke. All the rest of his features were buried in thick black hair that curled indiscriminately around the man’s head and chin. “We got all dat stuff back home, in da Vieux Caché. Can' say dis English merde is much better.”

Peter gaped at the tall broad-shouldered wizard, dressed in brown robes that were cut a little oddly about the neck and sleeves. The man looked like a foreigner, although Peter couldn’t quite decide where he was from. The accent--and Peter had never been very good with accents--was thick and lisping.

“Buddy Devereaux, from Granbouche Parish, Louisiana, USA,” the man boomed as he stuck out a broad, thick-fingered hand. “Jes flew into town and lookin’ for somebody to show me aroun’. You look like a real swinger, cher,” he went on, heedless of the blank stare that covered Peter’s face. “Dos some cool t’reads you got dere. I ain't seen one of dem Muggle jackets in the States since da sixties, but you English wizards set you own styles, I reckon. This my first trip crossin' the Pond--that's what y'all call it, right?--and I aim to find me a good time, me. How 'bout you--I dint get you name, cher.”

“Paul,” stuttered Peter, too stunned to turn away. “Paul, um, St. Mungo.”

“Well, Paul, I heared tell about that ol' House of Mirrors that you got here. Ever been? No? Hey, dis here's your lucky night," Buddy the American wizard guffawed as he threw a beefy arm around Peter's shoulder. "A swingin' guy like you gonna dig dis.”

“I don’t--my friends will be--“ Peter answered as the big man dragged him away from the shop window. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw Sirius still haggling with the nasty trinket-seller.

“I s’pose I could have a look. No harm in that,” he said with a faint grin.

“You my kind of swinger, T.Paul,” the big man announced proudly, taking him farther away from where he ought to be, while the dull throb of the Dark Mark on his arm reminded him of his desertion.

“Don’ look like much, do she?” Buddy said after they stood in front of a rather nondescript redbrick building. He scratched his beard vigorously, as if hunting for small vermin. “You jes’ wait a minute, though…”

“Oh, no you don’t!” A rough voice, accompanied by an even rougher shove, sent Remus flying. He turned around, momentarily confused, to find that he had wandered into the middle of a group of men queued up in front of a club.

“Watch it!” grumbled a short, burly wizard who folded his thick arms and glared up at Remus. “Bastard’s trying to get ahead of the queue.”

“Look, I’m trying to find a friend who--“

“And I’d like to find an end to this bloody wait,” laughed a tall wizard wearing a pinstriped cloak. He had the easy, imperious manner of one of the Ministry bureaucrats whom Remus had recently been begging for jobs. “Been here for two hours, but they say it’s worth it.”

Remus finally noticed the sign on the outside of the building, partially obscured by a large and trollish bouncer who guarded a solidly closed door. Best Veela Review in Britain! All Veela, All the time! Tiny print underneath read, One-hour limit. The Management reserve the right to refuse entrance to anyone whose behaviour is deemed unacceptable.

“I’ll settle for a peek inside,” said the shorter wizard with a wink. His anger had departed now that his place in the queue was secure once more. He gave an appreciative whistle and went on, “I seen the looks on the faces of the blokes coming out of the last show.”

Many of his fellow loiterers chuckled and shuffled their feet involuntarily; the mere mention of the delights waiting inside propelled them forward another inch or two. Remus felt the crowd closing in on him, as if the sluggish glacier of men might engulf him and carry him off the way that boulders are gradually transported from the tops of mountains down into the valleys. He quickly scanned the queue, but could see no sign of Peter. He stepped away from the close-packed ranks, and immediately felt a queer and liberating lightheadedness.

As he peered through other crowds in front of other clubs, Remus tried to picture Peter’s mismatched Muggle clothing: the forest green turtleneck shirt, stretched tight across Peter’s ample belly, and the flowered Nehru jacket that had been Sirius’s idea. He struggled to keep his balance amid the treacherous light and the crush of people that pressed in on him and cut off every opportunity for a clear view.

Where had Wormtail gone? At school, Peter had always been the boy most likely to get beaten up or cursed by Slytherins looking for revenge and he’d stuck to James and Sirius like a leech. Lately, though, he had developed a tendency to wander off or to turn up late for appointments, which caused James to fuss like a mother hen over a lost chick. Were those worries justified? Some of those school bullies were now undoubtedly working for Voldemort, though none would declare so openly.

Peter wasn’t at the fountain, nor was he in any of the shops that Remus tried to search by squinting through the windows with his hand over his eyes to block out the glaring lights behind him. He’d just concluded that a more thorough scouring of out-of-the-way side alleys was in order when he caught a glimpse of the hot pink and yellow flowers that blatantly announced Peter’s jacket. At least, he thought he did, and he moved closer to a group of wizards assembled around the ground floor of a building. The building itself had no eye-catching sign or luridly painted exterior; it was a rather drab two-story brick building, a plain stepsister next to its more showy neighbors. Vague shapes of taller buildings looked down from a distance, but they were indistinct, the result of whatever Charm it was that kept the magical district out of sight of Muggles.

Peter’s brown knob of a head was clearly visible atop the God-awful jacket. Remus gingerly squeezed past a couple of men who put up no resistance; in fact they didn’t appear to notice as they stared slack-jawed and vacant at the windows on the ground floor of the building. Peter didn’t respond when Remus tapped him on the shoulder. He, too, seemed mesmerized.

“Peter?” Remus shook his friend gently by the shoulder. “Can you hear me, Peter?”

“Please. Pleeeease,” Peter moaned, eyes fixed on a large square window not five feet away. He tensed his shoulders suddenly and clutched at his left arm, holding it as if in pain.

Remus glanced from the sweaty face of his friend to the window. Or was it a window? It reflected Peter’s twitching form, but failed to show Remus, whose hand was on Peter’s shoulder, nor any of the carnival-like scenes behind them.

An enchanted mirror, that seemed obvious. But, what did Peter see in it? Remus squinted, and he imagined the dim outlines of a room and of a woman who melted into the shadows, leaving him confused and uncertain as to whether he’d seen anything at all.

“Peter,” Remus called more urgently. He gripped Peter’s shoulders with both hands and spun him around. “Peter, what have you got yourself into?”

“Hey, why’d you--I was just…about to…Remus!” he yelped, his pupils rimmed in white as recognition jolted him like a stray bolt of lightning. “How did you--I mean, how did I--Oh, yeah, I remember…”

Peter forgets the shabbiness of the building and the jabbering of his newfound American friend when a reflection in one of many windows catches his eye. He sees himself, but not exactly… and that makes him stare all the harder.

The other Peter Pettigrew looks different somehow, alone and more peaceful, more confident. For another thing, the reflection is free from the eye-straining lights and dizzying colors of the street. Peter (no, the person in the mirror--but that’s him, too) is standing in a dark room, and he’s not alone.

Unconsciously, he steps closer and aches to see more, to make out the details that he knows are there. Suddenly (and he almost turns to look over his shoulder) there’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. She’s right there behind him, smiling, motioning for him to come closer.

He doesn’t think it’s strange, not in the least, when his reflection, the serene and confident Peter, turns to the girl as she opens her arms. He is near her now and he feels her short silk dress sliding against him as she runs her fingers over his chest. She kisses him (the other him, the one in the mirror) while he looks on, yet at the same time he feels her lips, warm and moist, as they melt into his. She tugs his arm, pulling him deeper into…

Oh, and he wants to go with her so badly. She’s waiting for him. Now. He’s got to go now--

--and then someone is shaking him and his arm is on fire, as if the Master’s mark will soon ignite his clothing and burn it all away.

“What on earth happened to you, Peter?”

Peter shivered, unable to find any words to explain the phantom girl, the long free-fall into a promised land of… of a dream (was it a dream?) that had felt more real than real. He turned back toward the ground floor and gestured weakly, one hand still clamped over his left arm, toward a man who shambled up to one of the mirrors like a sleepwalker and pressed his hand against the glass. A door opened inward exactly at the spot where the mirror stood, and the man vanished. The door closed, its mirror gone dark.

“Ah, advertising. So that’s how it is,” Remus said softly. He gave Peter a reassuring pat on the back. “We don’t need to get tangled up in that mess, do we?”

“Please,” Peter pleaded. “You won’t tell the others, will you?”

But, before he could answer, they heard Sirius’s voice, loud but indistinct, through a wall of people as he and James appeared by parting the partying crowd.

“Bloody hell, Peter. You didn’t get sucked into the funhouse, did you?” Sirius’s mirth increased the apparent misery on Peter’s sorry face. “They promise a lot, eh?” He absently rubbed his bruised cheek as he spoke. “I tell you, though, they can get rather nasty in there if it turns out you don’t have enough money on you.”

“The voice of experience, perhaps?” Remus suggested dryly.

Sirius ignored the remark, and instead playfully boxed Peter’s ears, which had swiftly turned the color of boiled lobster. Before he could paint Peter’s shortcomings in an even more humiliating light, James stepped in.

“Alright, alright. Peter’s been found,” he said brusquely, “and doesn’t seem the worse for wear. Now can we--Ow!”

James received a sharp shove from behind as a wizard pushed past him, eager to get a prime spot in front of the alluring mirrors.

“Come on, lads,” Sirius chuckled as James nursed his aching neck. “Let’s get moving. We don’t want to interfere with this here enterprise, and we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

With Sirius leading the way, the four wove through the jostling masses of witches, wizards, and beings of all kinds. Crowds were dense in front of popular pubs like the Cauldron and Broomhandle, but thinner as they passed by the Museum of Abstinence (where admission was always free). After they found the club called the Lion’s Den (“Lions! Tigers! Hippogriffs! Live show every hour!”), Sirius called a halt to the march. They stood in a relatively quiet, dark spot around the corner from the noisy open door of the club (from whence they heard roaring mingled with shouts and jeers).

“Should be around here somewhere,” Sirius drawled casually, as if he actually knew where he was going.

“I believe that’s what we’re looking for,” Remus said. A small brass plate glimmered faintly from eye-level on one corner of the building and bore the same intricate, serpentine design as the key. The gap between two buildings made a small, dark passageway, barely an alley. Nonetheless, it appeared to be the gateway to Tigerseye.

“Aha!” cried Peter and disappeared into the darkness, like a rat vanishing down a hole.

The walls wobbled and Peter wavered, confused about where he was, and about where he was going. He’d been so sure of himself when he started ahead of the others, eager to find Tigerseye, eager to prove to his friends that he was still their loyal Peter.

Now that he was alone, threading a path through a tight little alley that grew darker with every step, each breath took more effort than the one before, as if there might not be enough air to last until the end of the tunnel. But this wasn’t a tunnel. No, he mustn’t think about that other--

Passageway, that’s what this was, just a narrow, unlit passageway in the heart of wizarding London.

The high walls let in little light from above and the mind-numbing brilliance of Seven Shoe Alley had faded. Sounds had grown fainter, too. He couldn’t tell if the buzzing in his ears was an echo of the jeers and laughter and music or the sound of blood hammering inside him like a swarm of angry hornets trapped in a bottle.

The passageway kept changing direction, each straight leg no more than three or four meters long. Reckless to reach the end of the maze, he kept bumping into walls. The rough bricks and chunks of mortar scraped his hands and tugged at his jacket.

He stopped short, catching his breath and listening. He fancied he heard Sirius’s laughter, and then it was gone.

The passageway must be enchanted. How else could he explain the loss of light and sound? Like all Hogwarts students, he had experienced the frustration (and occasional delight) of the enchanted corridors in the castle, corridors that never went the same place twice, passageways that wouldn’t take you back to where you started.

He whirled around, thrusting his neck forward in one direction and then another to catch a snatch of familiar voices. What if the others weren’t actually behind him? What if this dark little alley had led his friends someplace else?

“…and mind the rats. Wormtail might…”

Sirius’s voice sounded close. They were there after all!

Peter started to run in the direction of the voice, but his foot landed square on a bottle and he lost his balance.

“Augh!” he cried as he skidded face-first into a wall. He flailed blindly and managed to push away before his forehead smashed into a brick. The momentum sent him flying backward across the narrow gap. The back of his head struck a sharp corner. His legs buckled and he slid to the ground, moaning softly as he cradled his bleeding head. He felt dizzy and the burden of the long evening of drinking, from watered-down drinks at the Muggle clubs to the strong beer served at the Leaky Cauldron, came painfully home to roost.

Now he heard nothing, no voices or distant music, nothing except his loud and labored breathing. Warm blood trickled down his cheek and along his jaw.

But he wasn’t alone.

He forced his head up and opened his eyes. A pack of London’s finest rats, faintly outlined in the dim light, stared up at him with shiny black eyes and noses twitching furiously.

“Go ‘way,” he groaned weakly and closed his eyes. Of course, the smell of blood drew them, but he was too big to attack, and yet too interesting to ignore. Peter could almost hear the inner workings of their little rat brains.

Some might think it rather pathetic, consorting with rats in the sewers and alleys of London as he often did, but there were benefits. Peter Pettigrew knew he wasn’t the most talented wizard in Britain. Oh, but he did have his gifts, and one of those was a knack for nosing out other people’s secrets. As a small child he’d learned that the right information revealed at the right moment could get him out of a beating from his older brothers or from the bigger kids in the neighborhood.

Secrets were the coin that Peter used to preserve his hide.

Once at Hogwarts, he had friends who delighted in the things that he found out. James and Sirius loved those secrets that could be turned into a good prank or a spot of revenge. They protected him and he was always the member of their little gang who could come up with juicy information in a pinch.

The shame and disappointment that he’d felt when he finally mastered the Animagus charm--no large and powerful animal for Peter--gradually faded as the increased opportunities for finding things out became apparent.

Hogwarts Castle was not without its dangers for an inquisitive rat. Some of the students owned cats and this made the dormitory risky. In the castle at large there was the caretaker’s sly and crafty feline, which knew a thousand places to hide, and Professor McGonagall occasionally prowled the halls late at night, too.

Cats weren’t the only danger. Other students kept magical rats that were a hundred times more annoying than any of the cats, which merely wanted to eat him. Peter never got on with those large, sleek animals, so quick to look down their twitchy noses at him as a clearly inferior rat. Just because they could appear and disappear at will or change color, they felt superior to their non-magical brethren. Magical rats could always tell that Peter wasn’t an ordinary castle-rat when they met him sneaking into the common room or up the dormitory stairs. If he wasn’t quick enough, they’d pounce and Peter-as-rat might find that his tail had been tied around a table leg or worse. And Sirius complained about dogs being territorial!

In spite of the dangers from cats and swotty magical rats, a resourceful rat like Peter could learn a lot by creeping about the castle: the password to the Slytherin common room, for example, or where Phileas Garfinkel kept the bottle of Firewhisky he’d smuggled into the dormitory, or where Severus Snape went on Wednesday afternoons.

After leaving school, he’d used his ability as an Animagus to nose about the law firm, to slip under the doors of rooms that he wasn’t supposed to enter and that were protected by Anti-Apparition spells or to eavesdrop on conversations that he wasn’t supposed to hear.

Lately, he’d become all too familiar with sewer rats as he crawled through some of wizarding London’s most secret places--not by choice, not because he wanted to experience the slimy, sunless tunnels half full of the most foul-smelling muck imaginable, not because he enjoyed exploring rubbish heaps and dustbins, but because there were certain requests that he couldn’t refuse.

Click. Click… Click.

The sound of his heels striking the floor echoed sharply in the large empty room. He stopped, waiting for the sound to die away.

That wouldn’t do. The silence made him more nervous and he resumed pacing around the perimeter, passing by without really noticing the tall, bricked-up windows framed with tattered velvet hangings. His boots raised the dust that lay thickest near the walls of the long-abandoned room. He avoided the bloodstained floor in the center. He now knew many ways that those stains might have gotten there. In the past six months since his initial encounter with the Dark Lord, he had twice been in this room when fresh blood had been spilled: once when an Auror had been brought before the Dark Lord already dazed and near death so that it was a wonder he still had so much blood left in him; and once just last month when one of their number, a Death Eater that he didn’t know, had been… made an example to the rest.

The rest. The inner circle of You-Know-Who. The shadowy black-cloaked figures universally feared by wizards. The Death Eaters.

Peter Pettigrew now counted himself as one of that lot. Was it inescapable fate or random chance that had brought him here, had caused him to be pacing the cavernous ex-ballroom off a door that didn’t exist on a street that most sensible wizards avoided? He couldn’t have said--or didn’t want to.

Information. That’s all that had been asked of him, just as the Dark Lord had said at their first meeting. He reported on the comings and goings of this wizard or that witch, not really secrets but merely when Agatha Bones left work at the Ministry every day or who Sebastian Quirke met at the pub.

And there were rewards. In this very room he had learnt the Cruciatus Curse, which proved surprisingly easy. After what they’d told him at school, he thought it would be a difficult spell to master. Dead easy, that one was, even for Peter. And the thrill he’d felt as the power flowed out of him was indescribable.

Peter absently rubbed his left forearm, still tingling slightly from the Dark Lord’s summons. The Master will be pleased with the information, he thought as he took the list from his pocket, turning the parchment over in his fingers.

This assignment had cut a little close to the bone, though. From the start, he’d told himself that he wouldn’t endanger his friends; maybe he could even persuade them to give up their foolhardy ties to Dumbledore, or at least protect them when the inevitable happened. Protect? Peter Pettigrew protect them? That would be quite a turnabout, wouldn’t it?

He pushed aside the unease that he felt about it and tried to concentrate on what reward might be his; perhaps he would finally learn the Imperius Curse, as promised.

“What have you brought me?” hissed a voice behind him.

Peter dropped the piece of parchment, startled by the silent arrival of You-Know-Who. He fell to his knees and scrambled on the dusty floor to retrieve the list.

“This, Master,” he said kneeling before the Dark Lord and holding out the folded piece of parchment. His arm trembled, causing the parchment to flutter and dance like a moth seeking a flame. “The list of guests for Ja--for Potter’s wedding.”

“Ah,” came the reply as the Dark Lord took the parchment and unfolded it. “Most impressive guest list…interesting that so many of our foes will be there,” he murmured as he read. “This is complete?” He refolded the parchment and tucked it away in a pocket, then gave Peter an appraising stare.

“Yes, my Lord.” Peter said, still on his knees. “I volunteered to help write the invitations, you see, and that gave me the opportunity to--”

The Dark Lord called for silence with an impatient wave of his hand. “And where will the wedding take place?”

Peter could feel the sweat trickling down his shoulder blades, pooling at the bottom of his spine. He looked down at his trembling hands, unable to meet the Dark Lord’s gaze.

“I…still don’t know, my Lord,” he whispered.

“You saw the invitations, yet do not know where the wedding will be?” said the Dark Lord sharply.

Peter raised his eyes enough to see that the Master was fingering his wand. Jolts of phantom pain tingled in his arms and legs as he knew that the Dark Lord wasn’t going to like his answer.

“The invitations don’t say. They were going to be Portkeys, you see, charmed to work on the twenty-first of June. And I did volunteer to help write out the invitations, but they haven’t got approval for all the Portkeys yet or something… ” whined Peter.

“Who does know?” the Dark Lord said impatiently.

“Er, James and Lily. Dumbledore, I suppose, as they’ve been talking with him a lot…and Sirius, I think,” Peter said, looking down at his hands again, trying to avoid the terrible red eyes of the Master for as long as possible. “Oh, and Moody, too. He’s been doing something about… about security.”

“Alastor Moody? What a prize. How I should like to catch him after all he has done.”

The Dark Lord was silent for a moment and Peter dared to look up, only to be snared by the scarlet eyes.

“You must find the location!” spat the Dark Lord, the black slits in those terrible eyes widening ominously. “Surely these friends of yours will tell you, Pettigrew.”

“I’ve tried, my Lord, really I have. I even offered to help Lily with the Portkey charm, but she didn’t seem to… and James and Sirius, we’ve hardly had a chance to talk. They seem very busy with all of this and--“

“But you will find out. You will not fail,” hissed the Dark Lord, raising his wand. “Perhaps you need reminding about what awaits those who fail Lord Voldemort?”

“No. No, my Lord,” whispered Peter.

Too late. The Master flicked his wand almost casually in Peter’s direction and intoned, “Crucio!”

Peter gasped as his head hit the floor. The twin tastes of blood and dust mixed on his tongue, becoming a third, indescribably sharp taste. The pain that chewed through him, ravaging his insides and setting every nerve to singing, transformed into something else. Perhaps it could be called pleasure, this white-hot throbbing that had become the focus of his consciousness.

If there was pleasure for the prey in having its flesh ripped out by the victorious predator, tasting in the blood-victory while crying out in helpless agony, then that was close to what Peter felt. The pain bought him a taste of the Dark Lord’s ultimate triumph, which would surely come.

And Peter Pettigrew would be part of that victory.

“No, please,” Peter sobbed, darkness swirling around him. He struggled to get up. Blindly, he threw his arms out. Someone pushed him back.

“What the devil happened to you?” A face swam into focus, hovering overhead.

Peter tasted the bitter metallic tang of his own blood and shivered with cold. Was this some cruel trick of the Dark Lord’s to torture him even further? He forced himself to breathe, forced himself to think.

“Fell down, I guess,” he croaked weakly and clutched the outstretched arm. Peter felt a sharp lance of fear that cleared his head and allowed him to focus on the puzzled face of James Potter, now kneeling beside him. In the alley. He wasn’t in that other place. The alley was real. James was real.

“Hardly showing leadership here, are we?” said James lightly, though his eyes were filled with concern as he appraised Peter critically. “We can’t have you checking out before the main event, eh?”

“No. Sorry, but I guess I got… carried away. I was afraid--I mean, I thought that I’d lost you, all of you, and I got turned around and…” said Peter, aware that he was babbling.

“Can you stand? Here, let me help,” said James as he gripped Peter’s arms and pulled him up gently. “We’ve got to stick together, right? You were the one who said that, I think. Speaking of which, where have Remus and Sirius got to? We can’t seem to keep our little band together for more than a few minutes. P’raps we ought to call it a night after all.”

“No!” cried Peter, louder than he intended. “I’ll be fine, really. I am fine. Let’s carry on, eh? The night is still young and there’s so much to find out…er, I mean, so much to do.”

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