From Rat To Vermin

It all went wrong.

It wasn´t meant to, but sometimes, things just happen and then, before you can even think about fighting, it´s too late.

I never thought that it would happen to me. I never thought that I would break as easily as I did. I told myself that as long as I had them, I would be strong. They were as much part of my life as I was theirs and that was why, I told myself, that nothing would ever break us.

I was wrong.

So very, very wrong.

I was weak.

I broke.

And now...

Now, there´s nothing and no one left.

No one left but him and I know he isn´t going to let this lie.

I know I only have one chance at freedom, one chance to escape the wrath of the only one who knew the truth, one chance to avoid being cast into the Hell that would be my home if he catches me first.

Azkaban.

That´s the only place I could go after this.

The crimes I committed...

James...Lily...

Dear God...I deserve nothing less than a lifetime of Hell for my sheer stupidity...

If I had even a tiny amount of courage, I would turn myself in, but I don´t.

I wouldn´t be able to survive and now that I am faced with it, I am afraid. I´m afraid of what people will think of me. I know I have brought it all upon my own head, but that doesn´t make the fear go away.

He´ll come after me

If it had been the other way around, I know I would do the same thing, but it isn´t that way around.

I´m the fugitive and he´s the hunter and, in this hunt, there´s no escape. I have two choices: keep running in the hope that I´ll never be caught, which would be folly since I know he will never give up until he´s had his vengeance, or face him and pull the wool over everyone´s eyes.

After all, no one would ever believe that poor, helpless, weak Peter Pettigrew would be able to fight Sirius Black.

And no one, not even the most assured of people, would be able to swear that I had the cunning and brains to pull it off. Few people knew what I was like and now, those few people are the ones I´m running from.

If I do it...

My God...I can´t believe I´m even thinking about this.

After what I´ve done already, I´m actually willing to have one of my best friends put in Azkaban, just so I can get away. Damning myself even further. Yes, the Dark Lord really knew what he was doing when he picked me.

I never thought I would ever sink as low as I have now.

It has to be one of us, though, one of us to take the blame. I know that I would be dead within days if those walls were closed around me, so there really is no choice in the matter.

He´s stronger than I am and if it´s a choice between him and me, I know I would rather see him in that Hell. He might survive it. He was always the stronger one, physically and mentally. All I know is that I never could survive there.

Yes, I am a coward.

Afraid of him, afraid of what happened, afraid of my own shadow in case the rumours are false. Or true.

Either way, I know that I´m in more trouble than I could ever begin to imagine.

But that doesn´t explain how I came to be here.

That story began many years ago, when I first met the ones who would become my friends. The best friends a boy could have in a cruel world that would always see me as weak and pitiful.

And I was, physically, emotionally, magically, but they didn´t care about that.

I was their friend and they were mine.

The first day we met was when we were steered together by an old hat, of all things, and we stuck, although reluctantly at first.

At least, until the day that someone dared to insult one of our number.

Funny thing was that it was the first time I hadn´t been the one that was picked on and yet, I still felt that I had been dealt a personal blow at the pained look on Remus´ exhausted face.

He was always tired, although, at that point we didn´t know why, and he didn´t have the energy to retort, not that day anyway. He was the one I was closest to at that point and seeing the flash of hurt in his eyes...

So, when one of those smart-mouthed Hufflepuffs took what they thought was a witty verbal swing at Remus, in return for a prank that Sirius had played, I don´t think any of them - or any of my friends - expected me to cut him down like I did.

After all, Remus hadn´t been the perpetrator of that prank, so why should he receive the tongue-lashing?

Fortunately, I got in before James and Sirius grabbed the boy and showed him not to mess with the quiet one´s hot-tempered and bigger friends. They would have given him a slap across the head. I just did it with words.

Not cruelly, of course.

I would never do it cruelly. I´d been on the receiving end of mocking, derisive words myself, as is natural when you´re shorter than average, chubbier than average and generally don´t look as bright as you actually are.

No.

I took the boy´s words, twisting them slightly and politely turning them back on him with a force that made him look blatantly stupid, while I seemed to be doing nothing more than making a polite observation.

Irony is lost on fools.

Sirius, James and Remus, after staring at me in surprise for several minutes, as if they hadn´t realised what I had just done, thought it was hilarious and fell against one another, howling with laughter.

I apparently looked sincere and the Hufflepuff looked like his single brain cell had imploded, his face scarlet with humiliation, more from the laughter than really understanding what had been said about him.

He practically ran away and I don´t remember ever seeing him anywhere near us for the rest of our time at school. James and Sirius promptly clapped me on the back and called me a genius, while Remus smiled gratefully.

That was the day that sealed the friendship.

Even with the crisis in our second year together, when one of our number revealed his secret, we were still friends, through thick and thin, through hell and high water, through news that one of us was a werewolf.

It´s strange, looking back at it now.

Yes, we were shocked, terrified too, but...

But he had been our friend for so many months that we forced ourselves to go to him and found that, in spite of what was concealed within him he was still the same boy we had always known.

Still, years on, when it truly mattered, when lives - and souls - depended on it, they knew that he still had the beast within him, the beast that might yet have the power to corrupt him, the beast that might betray them.

How foolish my friends were. And I was too.

If any of us was meant to have fallen, we all believed it would have been him, because of what he was, what he could become.

We were all wrong.

The beast is hard to ignore when it´s standing right in front of you, but a rat is a different matter entirely. A rat can always slip into your midst, without being noticed, when you´re not paying attention.

The only difference was that this rat had been in their midst since the beginning.

Not that it was ever meant to be an issue, but when the time came, I was in the right place. I was right in the middle of things. When I took the step that lead from simply being a rat to becoming the vermin I now am...

I didn´t intend for things to develop the way they did.

They were my friends.

No one would ever wish my crimes on their friends.

Least of all me, but now, it has happened and there´s nothing I can do to change it.

Still, then, they were my friends, my trusting, trusted friends.

Yes, I was always the one labelled as the `hanger-oner´ by people who looked at our group, but they didn´t see us, not really. I wasn´t a third wheel. I wasn´t something tacked on the end of this cosy trio. I was one of them.

I may not have been as good at Quidditch as James was. I might not have been as handsome as Sirius was. I might not have been as magically talented as Remus was. I might not have been anything special, but there are some parts of a friendship that go beyond talent and looks.

That was the friendship we had.

We did almost everything together.

That extended to learning to become animagi, Sirius, James and I, just so we could remain with Remus on the nights of the full moon. That was the degree of our closeness. It was difficult and took years, but in the end, we managed.

Even me, thanks to their patience and help.

It´s not that I wasn´t smart. I mean, we all were, each in our own subjects, but the power and focus that was needed was almost beyond my sparse means. I was never very powerful when it came to magic.

Practical abilities were always my downfall and because of that, I was seen as useless by people outside the group.

Even the teachers were guilty of looking at me that way and sometimes, quite a lot actually, I used to wonder if I might have been better at a muggle school, where I could do what I was good at.

Essays involving the background of subjects, like the mechanical processes of why certain charms and potions would work, I could do standing on my head. Or at least, I would have, if I had the capability to stand on my head.

I could write scroll upon scroll and still have time to spare. I could store facts up in my mind, always ready with the facts and figures. I was a quick thinker when it came to written and researched work, but practical magic was that illusive thing I could never quite master.

However, to become an animagi, I eventually learned to channel what little power I had, to perform the change. The most difficult part of becoming an animagi was the change and the larger the creature you became, the more difficult it would be.

That was why I chose the creature that I feel far beneath in status now.

We needed something small and swift, something that would be able to evade the Whomping Willow that trapped our lupine friend and I was happy to volunteer to take that role. I didn't want to be forced to fight Remus, even in his wolfish form.

It took some consideration and then, I saw one of the other students with their pet.

A rat.

It wasn't too obvious and could be furtive and fast enough for our purposes.

So, I became Wormtail.

Sirius chose the great black dog of his name. He became Padfoot, the guard dog, the one who would make sure Remus, Moony, never escaped to harm anyone. The same went for James, assuming the form of a noble stag, Prongs, large enough to control the wolf.

If anything, when we learned that skill together, working so hard to a common goal, we became even closer than we had ever been before. We knew each other inside and out, every flaw, every bruise, every scraped limb, everything.

Where we had our weaknesses, academically or in any way, the others would help us find our strengths. We supported one another, our odd combination of personalities and natures balancing each other out.

From outside the group, it was regarded as an uneven see-saw, with James, Sirius and Remus on one end, with the collection of looks, powers and skills, while I was left high and dry on the other end, as the short, dumpy, apparently useless one.

How wrong the outsiders were.

They never knew that, while they slept, we were Marauding. It wasn´t just the three of them, sneaking around the school, seeking out the hidden passages, dodging the caretakers, playing the... well, regular pranks.

We must have found every opening, passage and hidey-hole in the castle, through magic and plain common sense.

It combined all our skills and when we started to put together the Marauders map, I was the one who was given the task of drawing the castle as the years went on, based on what we had found, each of us adding a little of our personality to it.

It was just by sheer misfortune that it was lost to us, in our final year. Filch, the new caretaker, caught us off-guard when we were about to trigger the map one night and - being a grumpy old twit - decided it was probably something dodgy.

Of course, he was right about that, but we weren´t stupid enough to admit we knew what it was. Innocent eyes all round. We were all very convincing, but the miserable old git kept it anyway.

Not that we needed it.

After nearly seven full years of gathering all the details contained within it, we knew the castle backwards and inside and out, just as well as we knew each other. Even so I know we were all a little disappointed that we wouldn´t be able to pass it on to the next generation.

That had been the plan.

We would all have a flock of children and would send them to Hogwarts to wreak havoc in our place. They would be as close as we were, we had agreed, cousins in everything but name and blood.

After all, we were a family, there.

I never had a brother, but with James, Sirius and Remus, I honestly believe that my relationship with all of them was as close an experience to actually having a trio of brothers as possible.

And yet, I betrayed them.

My best friends. My brothers. The Marauders.

In a sad way, it´s ironic.

Even though I am the smallest and weakest of the group, I´m the one who broke the strongest bond that we had.

The bond of love.

It was all because of me that the close-knit feeling in the group gave way to a tone of barely-masked suspicion, malice, anger, distrust, unease and all the other emotions that were so very alien to us.

All of us knew that there was a traitor in our midst, but none of us...well, none of us, except me, knew who it was.

Even Dumbledore was suspicious of all of us, not even trusting Sirius, the man who had been James´ best friend from the very beginning.

By the end, though, it was almost as if we had never experienced any emotions but those dark ones, even though we tried to pretend that everything was the same as it had always been.

Maybe that was what made it easier.

And knowing that I was seen as second best, after Sirius.

James always trusted Sirius with his life, so that left Remus or I, in their opinion.

That was when the werewolf issue reared its ugly head.

I´ll never understand how they couldn´t trust Remus after everything we had all gone through together and how they didn´t even notice what I was going through, day after day, pretending to be something I wasn´t.

Maybe because I am so small and insignificant compared to the wild beast.

Perhaps that was why the Dark Lord picked me.

After all, everyone knows that dogs are loyal to death and what is a werewolf, if not a dog in different packaging?

Remus always hated the wolf.

His dark side, he called it

Countless times we found him weeping in his bed from the sheer pain that the transformation caused him. Curled in a ball, he wouldn´t sob or make a sound. He never complained aloud. Just lay there and shivered, tears on his cheeks that were as white as his sheets.

He wouldn´t want to go any darker, I know it. We talked about it once, Remus and I, many years ago, when we were pretending to be interested in Divination just after the Dark Lord had made his first appearance.

"I have enough of it the dark me already," he had said, with that oddly wise look which he always wore. The hurt that the monthly change put him through had aged him before his time and he - while the youngest of the group - was the most mature of all of us. "I don´t want to be completely in the darkness. I´m there often enough as it is. And you´re all in the light.
Where would Moony be if he wasn´t with Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs?"

Where indeed.

I didn´t know why James and Sirius didn´t understand that when I heard them quietly discussing what they were going to do about Remus, but then, I was forced to remember that they still believed I was their trust-worthy friend.

I...I hurt for Remus.

He is the only one who won´t know the full story. He´ll be left, believing that Sirius let James and Lily die, never knowing that it was his funny little confidante that gave up everything to the darkness.

And, if my plan works like I hope, if I succeed in making myself disappear, Remus will have to face the reality that Wormtail - the one he used to talk to in the small hours when James was snoring after Quidditch and Sirius was plotting some manner of mischief - is dead.

Or, at least, he will believe that.

Hopefully everyone will.

I don´t want to be remembered for what I did.

I don´t want to be hated. I never meant for it to happen like this, but if they find me, catch me, I know they won´t listen to my reasons. My excuses. My cowardice. My damned stupidity.

If they had faced the Dark Lord, they...

They´re not me.

They were always braver than I.

I felt braver when they were with me. Safety in numbers.

But, when I faced him, I was alone.

I clearly remember the first time that he came to me, the night that he made his first move out onto the floor to begin the confrontation, ready to lead me into a dance that would have no end but the irresistible finale I would find myself in.

He knew what he was doing, though, that I can now see. He had every step and counter-step planned intricately. He understood how I thought and felt, something that he knew how to manipulate to his own ends, taking my clumsy footing and turning it to his specifications, with his skills.

It was shortly after James and Lily married.

Amusing, we thought, that the daftest of our number was the first to marry and settle down with a beautiful woman. Yes, James might have been incredibly intelligent, but sometimes, he was silly beyond belief.

Proposing to Lily, wearing nothing but a large wreath of red roses, in the middle of Hogsmeade definitely proved that point.

Of course, kneeling down with a ring of roses around your privates was never going to be the best idea old Prongs had. We had never thought we would hear him singing soprano, but that day proved us wrong.

Yeah, it was just after they got hitched.

The night after the reception, actually, when the happy couple had been whisked off to some exotic climes. Bognor Regis or something thrilling like that. Poor Lily. She had her heart set on Blackpool.

Lily.

Another person caught in the danse macabre.

He had said she would be unharmed. She wasn´t the one he wanted. He had told me that so many times and I, the damn fool that I was believed him.

James was hard enough, but Lily...

And to think that Hell had come to me the very day that James and Lily discovered their personal Heaven.

Cheesy, yes, but painfully true. They were incredibly happy, that brief, fleeting and now-lost emotion, as they drove off together, for just a few days from `those loonies´, as she affectionately called us.

I´d been out for a drink with Remus and Sirius that night, toasting the happy couple and raising several glasses to the hangovers we were still nursing from the reception, the day before.

Probably not the best cure for a hangover, but we didn´t care.

We even celebrated the barman´s dodgy wig.

If I remember rightly, that was why we were actually thrown out and barred from that particular pub.

Anyway, we parted company, all of us attempting to apparate to our various homes.

From the reports in The Daily Prophet the next morning, Sirius had been more tipsy than usual - or he had stranger taste than we gave him credit for - because he had apparated straight into the bedroom of Tom, the old barkeep at the Leaky Cauldron.

He had been oblivious to the fact he was in the wrong place - or so he claimed vehemently for months afterwards - and climbed into the bed, almost giving the startled Tom a heart attack.

The girly shrieks of horror from both men had the unfortunate side-effect of drawing the attention of two reporters, who were staying at the Leaky Cauldron, working on a story on muggle London.

They, fortunately for the rest of the Marauders and embarrassingly for Sirius, had a camera and provided a vast quantity of amusing teasing material with Tom and Sirius sitting in a bed, Sirius staring - bleary-eyed - at the barkeep.

The quote of the night had been, "You know, I´m sure you were female when I got into bed with you..."

Sirius always did have a tendency to celebrate a little too much.

Mind you, I´m one to talk.

I managed to apparate home that night, back to my little flat. I was able to stand, but walking proved a bit of a challenge.

Hanging up my jacket on the row of hooks behind the door, the bareness of them reminded me that I was still alone. It wasn´t that I minded too much then, but it was something I noticed nonetheless.

There was only ever one occupied hook on the wall.

That was when I´d got that odd feeling.

I´m not a psychic, persay, but I do get feelings when something isn´t right and that night, I was more than sure something was very wrong. I felt every hair on the back of my neck rise and a prickle of goosebumps on my skin.

Then, I heard the breathing.

Someone else´s breathing.

Had I been even a little more sober, I probably would have apparated out, but tipsy curiosity got the better of me and I turned to face whoever was breathing behind me, in slow, calm, even breaths.

He had obviously been there for some time, not in any particular hurry.

The living room was dark as I squinted in the doorway. The curtains around the front window were open and a slash of cool, pale-blue moonlight cut in through the glass, highlighting a figure in a chair on the far side of the room.

His head was bowed slightly, the shadows of a dark hood over his head obscuring all of his features, except the lowest part of his face, his thin, nearly non-existent lips curved in a smile that made me shiver.

Wearing dark robes, his elbows were propped on the arms of the chair, thin, white hands interlaced in his lap.

"Good evening, Mr. Pettigrew."

The chill that went through me at that voice...

Anyone else would have fled then, just at the sound of it, the low whisper making me feel like snakes were slithering over me, writhing against my skin and squirming down my spine.

Unfortunately, being slightly inebriated meant that I had more courage that I usually would, thanks to alcohol´s wonderful side-effects kicking in, giving me the nerve to yell at anyone with incoherent indignation.

"`Oo the `ell are you?" I remember demanding loudly, slurring and waving my wand unsteadily in his general direction. "An´ what the bleedin´ `ell are you doing in my house?"

The head lifted a little. The light highlighted the flattened planes where a nose had once been, up to the level of the...thing´s cheekbones. Twin slits ran, like tear-tracks, down the smooth patch of skin.

The thing that startled me the most, though, was the reddish gleam I could see, hidden in the shadows of the hood, where the creature´s eyes had to be.

He smiled again. Cold.

"Now, now, Mr. Pettigrew," he had said quietly, unfurling one hand. They were creepy-looking hands, long and bony, but so graceful. He knew how to make an impression, this bloke. "That is hardly what I would call a warm welcome."

"You..." I waved my wand at him again, my voice loud and disbelieving. My brain seemed mired in time, and every confused blink I managed to perform seemed to take an eternity that night. "Broke into me house... me own house... and-and-and you expect a welcome?"

He laughed, high and cool, but genuinely amused. "Why don´t you lower your wand, Mr. Pettigrew," he suggested in a way that was more an order. I hated it then and I still do now, but he is impossible to disobey. "I have a... proposition for you."

"Get outta me house!"

I was almost impressed by how resolute and stubborn I was being.

"Mr. Pettigrew," the voice hardened. "I came here to discuss a proposition with you. I do not partake of these liaisons lightly. If you are not particularly attached to your life, then, by all means, continue to fight me. Otherwise, I would suggest that you sit and hear my proposition."

Sit I did and hear I did.

There was a chilling power in that voice that - even in the state I was in - I couldn´t miss. He was deadly serious. Deadly.

There was no doubt in my mind who this man was and yet, there he had been, in my home and talking to me as if I were a possible business contractor.

"I know what you desire, Mr Pettigrew," he said, leaning back in the chairs, as I shifted uncomfortably on my sofa. "And I have the ability to guarantee that you get it, all in exchange for one thing."

"I´m not interested," I had said, stubborn.

"Noble," the Dark Lord had noted quietly. "Tell me, Peter, have you ever considered what it would be like to be as brave and confident as you are now, without having to resort to imbibing muggle toxins?"

I had, of course.

I mean, even a normal person can´t be friends with Sirius Black, James Potter and Remus Lupin without being a little jealous of how brave they are.

I remember shrugging at the Dark Lord.

"They know you are the weakest of their number," he said, tapping the tips of two long, thin, white fingers together, watching them as the tips whitened further from the pressure. His eyes, beneath that dark cowl, had risen to me, shrewd and knowing. "Do they consider you worth anything as a member of their group?"

"I´m their friend," I said stoutly. "They like me."

Looking back now, that one line was a suggestion of just how drunk I must have been that unfortunate night. Telling the Dark Lord that my friends `like me´ is hardly a sign of a brain in full working order.

It might have been the truth, but even a toddler could come up with something more manly and defiant than that.

"I´m sure they do," he replied in the tone of voice that my father had often used, when I had told him about my friends.

It was the kind of tone that sounded like genuine affection to anyone who didn´t know what he was like, but was condescending and sarcastic.

It was the tone of voice that took what self-esteem you had, carefully slicing open it´s jugular, bleeding you dry of any confidence you might have had at the outset of the conversation and I knew it well. My father had a gift with that tone of voice.

He had never forgiven me for taking after my mother.

He wanted a son like him, tall, broad and proud. Instead, he ended up with me, small, pudgy and - as my mother used to like to tell me, when she smoothed my hair at night when she tucked me in - cherubic in looks.

Honestly, when I was a child, you would have thought I had been hauled out of one of the Botticelli paintings, with the exception of fancy ribbons strategically wrapped around my dimpled bottom.

Father hated me for it. I was never...man enough for him and, in that moment, with those few careful words, the Dark Lord struck a more painful blow than any death threat could.

Even after years of experiencing that kindly patronising tone, it still cut deep.

"Now, to the point of this liaison, Peter," the Dark Lord said. "I wish to propose a... trade if you will. Something that will be of mutual benefit to both of us...you may withdraw from it whenever you will. Will you hear it?"

I was drunk. I was mentally trying to convince myself that my friends didn´t just think of me as a fat and useless idiot. I had lost what coherent line of thought I had and, with no sound of assent or dissent from myself, he started to speak.

And so began my dance with the devil.