Serpent Feast

There is a parchment-pale body, dead perhaps for days or just sleeping, lying naked and half-buried in ashes. Its eyes never close and they are grasshopper green.

Although the ash should have long since settled from the air, flakes still drift, dull in the cold afternoon light, a wretched snow of simple potent poison for a human to breathe.

An old grey rat darts lightly across the ash. It heads for the body, climbs up onto a leg and then runs to the stomach.

It stops there for a long moment, whiskers trembling in the utterly still air. It lays its head on the cold, dry skin of the corpse's belly, the better to hear (although its hearing is already quite sensitive enough). There isn't a single sound aside from the rat's own breath and pulse, and it doesn't notice that its grip is beginning to tighten, until with a sudden, unforced grace (that is far too easy, giving, almost feels like sex), a tiny silver claw breaks right through.

Horrified, he draws back, which opens up the wound (his little heart beats so quickly that he thinks it might stop) into a layered flower of torn skin. And from the shining silver of his claw, there falls

one

Brilliant red droplet of blood.

It has been days since Wormtail has had a decent meal. Once, when he considered himself human, he would have been sick to his stomach to even think about -

No. He may be a coward, but there is no longer any reason to be afraid or to deny.

Once, Peter would never have dared to think it.

He hears howling, unsure if it is in his thoughts, his memories, or if there is a full moon hanging in the afternoon. He can't remember how it is supposed to be. Doesn't matter. Werewolves are filthy creatures, anyway. What they did to Remus when they caught him, knowing he had spied on them... Well, at least Remus hadn't lasted very long. When is the moon supposed to rise?

This isn't the same thing, not at all. It's natural; it's what rats do. Just a quick bite, just one little mouthful. Harry will never even miss it. It's not as though Wormtail needs a pound of flesh. (Thirty pieces of silver is more his style anyway.)

No one will ever know. No one else can get this close. Nothing that is human can stay in; nothing that is not human can get out.

And Wormtail is the only Animagus left, the last. Harry had killed Minerva McGonagall moments before succumbing to the trap she had set. The Dark Lord chooses his servants well. For many years, Minerva had quietly done her Master's bidding while Snape, the pathetic, greasy man, had served as a distraction. Not even Wormtail had seen it coming.

But it is too late to stop anything now, even if he wishes he could have, which he doesn't. What matters is that he is old and tired and it will take days to return with the antidote that will save his soul-sick Dark Lord. He does not even know yet what the item is that he will have to carry. His information, tortured out of a broken-minded Mudblood female, had only directed him to Harry's corpse.

He needs all the energy he can get, and the blood and the meat smell so very, very good.

He sits up and begins grooming himself carefully. Rats cannot give speeches. Humans can, but they do not eat the grey dead sons of their dead friends. But he will still do what he can to do this with ceremony, Wormtail thinks. He owes that much to James. (Although this too is James' fault. Sirius, Remus, and Peter should have been enough for him. Marauders forever, yeah, baby. And no Lily.)

Then he realizes how mad he is acting, and isn't that supposed to be proof that he is still perfectly sane? Reassured, he gives up the ridiculous efforts at rationalization or sanitation and hunkers down and tastes inevitability.

The flesh of the son of your first and only friend tastes disappointingly like any other piece of roadkill. Which is not at all like chicken, and don't let the label fool you.

Bite after bite, and it's like Wonder!Witch's Salty Crisps (Now with more Iron!) because it's hard to stop munching while the blood is flowing.

The blood is flowing.

The blood is flowing.

And they're fucked, fucked, and the Dark Lord is fucked, because the dead blood is flowing.

Wormtail sits up, and blood flows out of the new wound in Harry's side, trickling down to the ash in a stream. It hits the white powder and sizzles. The floor shakes and Wormtail can see the wake of several creatures swimming toward him through the ash.

One of them rises to the surface - a snake, a long, shining, and green snake. It moves with ruthless and fixed intent, pushing itself forward on its coils so quickly that it is almost dizzying. Wormtail does not have time to climb off his dinner and get to safety before the serpent reaches the place where the blood drips onto the ash. Several drops of crimson land on its green head and it hisses, for all the world sounding as though in unbearable pleasure, before slithering past Wormtail, over the wound, and down Harry's thigh.

Another snake is there to meet it. Wormtail cannot tell exactly where that one has come from; the creature is much too big to have hidden so easily, although the most likely possibility almost sickens even him. It is horrifying, but then so is the third snake, a small one this time, which is sliding out of Harry's nose...and the fourth one, by far the largest yet, emerging from Harry's open mouth. Peter watches, hypnotized, as snakes slide out from every orifice on Harry's corpse - the ears, the nose, even the penis and tear ducts.

Eventually, no new snakes emerge, and the ones that already have are wrapped around each other in a ball, fighting over the mixture of blood and ash.

Emptied, Harry's body takes a huge gasp of air, filling lungs that have not been used in a long time.

Wormtail involuntarily digs his claws in a little deeper, securing his grip on the now-breathing corpse. He is beyond terrified, but his rat's body understands that it would mean certain death to fall into the pit of snakes, and whatever else he may be, Peter is a survivor. He watches, and does not have long to wait.

Green eyes close and then fly open once more. The scar on Harry's forehead changes, suddenly casting itself in a negative.

Harry sits up.

Wormtail clings to his skin, creating new, bloody rifts just barely above the marks left by his small teeth. Before he can decide that he'd rather face the snakes than whatever Harry has become, he is hanging upside down, his tail pinched between two fingers that are much stronger than they should be, being dead and all.

"Neither shall live while the other survives," Harry whispers to him and laughs and laughs. Harry does not laugh like James. Harry laughs like Sirius, the day they'd taken him to Azkaban.

Peter does not know what Harry means, and he cannot ask. If he transforms, he will die.

"Oh, Peter," Harry croons softly.

Wormtail can smell Harry's breath as he speaks, and it still smells like delicious rot.

"I should thank you for setting me free. Unfortunately, I've got a Dark Lord to kill, and it's been far, far too long since I've eaten. I'm sure you won't mind; I'm just so tired, and I've such a distance yet to travel."

The rat is held, engulfed, in Harry's fist, and there is no way out. He bites down on a finger as hard as he can, but if Harry can feel pain, he certainly does not show it.

Finally, trapped and facing death in every direction, Peter gives up and lets it all go. He closes his eyes, and in the comfortable darkness he suddenly feels a dampness that smells of rot and mildew, warmer than the air but not nearly as warm as it should be.

The last thing Wormtail hears is the sound of his own skull cracking.