We Don't Live Here Anymore

(A/N: Title from Pablo Neruda's The Question.)

Scent is memory; this, Peter has known for more than a decade. Sometimes he thinks, more than a lifetime. The memory of a rat is small and circumspect, as shadowy and grey as its eyesight, hazy, a maze to get lost in. He used to run that maze all the time, but it was rarely cheese he found at its end. No. This labyrinth is made of threats and eyes that burn red (what he remembers as red, though it might be green or purple, it has been so long since he has seen colours,) curses and screams and the twist of Sirius's damn arrogant mouth as he realized what the pudgy boy he had always scorned had wrought. It had been savory once, in the beginning, but now the flavor of triumph has long faded, and Peter doesn't run the maze anymore. He drifts in a haze of rodent fear and the joy of being fed, the harshness of being passed from hand to hand.

But scent is memory, and a rat's nose is powerful. He ran the halls of Hogwarts in this form so many times, once, on errands for the others, and so the musty-magic smell of the stone is as much a part of his mind as any instinct, and when he enters the halls again in the hands of a young boy, he knows. The memories hit him like a brick to the head. The food-smell of the kitchens that they pass without the boy's knowledge send him to midnight, some April evening, laughing madly as the elves serve up plate after plate for the secret pleasure of four grubby young men. James balancing a glass of pumpkin juice on his head. He moves, it quivers, tips, soaks his hair and glasses. The rat quivers with the laughter that this body cannot express, and Peter is recalled to himself, to now, the twitching of his wormy tail. He remembers a name other than Scabbers, though it isn't the one he was born to.

He was created this, this 'Scabbers.' No, that's not right. Was is to be, is the passive tense. He was created many things, but he created this himself. Scabbers. Active voice. He did this, he chose this, he found his own way out of the bondage he was forced into. Bondage is what he calls it, all of it. Bondage under the Dark Lord, purchased with the currency of pain when a boy was stupid enough to follow a man in a hood for a lark. Bondage under the rule of the Hogwarts Royalty, Potter and Black, reckless and roguish and oh-so-charming in a way that Peter could never imitate. Bondage to his father's portly chuckling, his mother's waspish mouth and need for exact obedience. 'Peter' was a construct of a woman with a scrub-brush and no need to touch her son. Two boys with black hair and too-soon-adult bodies made 'Wormtail.' But Scabbers...Scabbers is his own. Oh, yes, the gawky children of a family even poorer than his own named him, but he chose them. This. Funny that he had to spill his own blood to finally own it.

The dormitory smells of unwashed boy, of dusty corners and melted chocolate frogs. It smells of Sirius's rich prepubescent whisper in the dark while Peter faked snores, "He's just so twitchy, James, and his nose is running all the time." It smells of Sirius, to be honest, though it is an impossibility given the years. Peter is amazed that he still knows that smell, that he knew it at all. He knows now that to him, for him, Sirius was never really there at all.

The girl's bathroom, when he finds the nerve to sneak in with a thrill of illicit man-pleasure that is nearly foreign to his rat-body, is sickening with the scent of perfume, undertones of the powdery soft smell that makeup invariably has. He thinks of Lily and the trail of flowery air that she left behind, a trail which drew James to her inexorably. He thinks of the twist of her lipstick-pink lips at the sight of James. For so many years they twisted down. The transformation to a smile was as shocking as cold water, though it did not have the effect of a cold shower on James. She smiled when she stole Peter's idol. He remembers that.

The harsh black smell of ink and parchment in the Library is Remus with a jumper three sizes too big and baby fat in his cheeks, smiling kindly at Peter over an essay. It is Remus's light eyes as sharp as the scars across his cheeks when Sirius got surly in that aristocratic way of his and mocked Peter's complexion, his build, the speed of his mind. It is Remus with a deep voice staring softly at Sirius across a classroom. It is Remus with the broadened shoulders of a man forgetting to smile at anybody but Sirius. It is Remus gone from Peter. Gone first.

The warm sweat-tang of the broom shed could not be anybody but James. It is James with his hair made mad by Quidditch wind and his own fingers, unconcerned at how his uniform stuck damply to his chest. It is James juggling a snitch while three girls giggle. It is the aching, worshipful envy with which Peter tried to learn to juggle, once. It is the jovial note in James's voice when he assuaged Sirius's irritation, "He's not a bad sort, our Peter. Useful man, and not a bad sort." Peter hung on to 'not a bad sort' for so long. He was still not a bad sort when Lily accepted James and he never looked back at Peter again. He never looked back.

Despite Remus's long-gone attempts to explain, Peter never understands why Scrooge's ghosts were shocking (Ghosts? Ghosts are Nick and the Baron, maybe creepy and certainly annoying, but never a shock,) until the scent of dog hits his nose. For a split second he does not know why, because he's smelled dog any number of times over the years and while it has inspired the fear of any prey species, it has never slammed into him with force. And then he realizes that it is not the scent of dog. It is the scent of Padfoot. Sirius, who was never there for him, is here for him. Coming for him. Yes. Dragging the boy in whose pocket he trembles through a tunnel and oh, yes, he knows it, the heavy earth-smell, the heady taint of werewolf in the air. Suddenly he is not Scabbers but Wormtail, in this place for which Wormtail was created. The shackles of what was clamp on and before Sirius changes back, before Remus charges in, long before even Snivellus joins them in a broken replay of that night when James saved his life, James himself is there for Peter. Prongs. The boy he became a rat for, when what he really wanted to do was change into James. Mad hair and wiry muscles and a smile that, in the end, even Lily Evans could not resist. Instead he got a rat's fur and a rat's limbs and a rat's disgusting tail, and still James left him without a glance for a girl's red hair. But James is back now. They are all there in the Shack. It is just like old times.

And like old times, he begs.

Peter runs. He runs, he scuttles, he darts. He dashes awkwardly on too few toes, and he doesn't trip because he is not human. He isn't sure what he is, now, racing along in the grass, nose to the ground, hidden and frighteningly free. Peter? Wormtail? Scabbers?

Wizard? Animagus?

Freedom Fighter? Death Eater?

Servant? Traitor?

Man?

Mouse?

It comes to him as he runs that what he is, is a pet. Useless man, useful rat, it doesn't matter. He is a pet. Once he was his mother's. Then he was James's. Maybe he was even Ron's.

And now? Well. He remembers one more scent. It is cold, and sharp, and faint, but there. He will follow it like a blood trail. And at the end of it, he knows, will be his Master. The only home he has left, now.