I Don't Belong Here
since i changed my name
I couldn't sleep last night
My ears were ringing in my head
Best friends with the boogey man
I may be better off here dead
I'm running on empty once again
Too tired for tears I dread
Sink deep into those magic dreams
While I blast off in my bed
And you know I've played it all in here
Where everyone hides their darkest shades of fears
And I threw my whole night down the drain
You know 'cause everyone says that I'm not the same
Since I changed my name...
-Sugarcult, "I Changed My Name"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Early August 1980
Without his friends, Peter feels like he's a boat adrift with no anchor. Especially these days when the paranoia seems to overtake him. This war...it's driving him crazy. He joined the Order out of school because it was what his friends did. And yeah, he believes in the cause. But his friends can't keep their heads down, don't know how to be sly. It's the Gryffindor in them, he supposes. Maybe Pete isn't such a great Gryffindor after all, then, because now that the fight is in full swing, the only thing he can think about is his own life.
His friends tell him the paranoia is natural. It's survival instinct, Pete, don't let it eat you, Remus tells him. But Peter knows it is more than that. He sees shadows everywhere, feels people watching him. They know he's in the Order, they'd be daft not to. They know who his friends are. And one day all his suspicions are proved right. They corner him, threaten him, and no one is around to defend him anymore. What hope does he have of keeping himself safe? The order isn't enough, Dumbledore isn't enough, it seems. Once it starts, it never stops.
"I don't know about all this, Avery," he says, backed into a wall by the taller, stronger, older man. The man who has been cornering him for the past few weeks, trying to manipulate him.
"Listen, Pettigrew: I get it. You don't want to join the so-called 'dark side.' I expect that from you. But let me assure you that's not what everyone says and you'd be unwise to keep turning us away." Peter doesn't say anything, and as the muggle phrase goes, he is quite literally shaking in his boots. Blood purism means nothing to him. He won't betray his friends for that. But his life? He isn't sure anymore. He definitely isn't sure when Avery pulls out his wand and mutters a curse Peter doesn't recognize. All of a sudden he's doubled over in pain and looking down, the skin of his arms is bulging like there is something moving underneath it. He feels like he is going to be sick. It is over as quickly as it started.
"It might even cost you your life someday," Avery remarks casually, twirling his wand as if he just put a cheering charm on Peter, not some dark curse that could get him sent to Azkaban.
"And if I accepted your offer? What then?" Peter asks, breathless and still on his knees.
"Time will tell, won't it?"
Pete doesn't plan for Sirius to confront him. Well he doesn't expect that day, at least, right then. He doesn't want to listen to his friend - well, ex friend - accusations and anger, his violence. It's only out of sheer dumb luck which strikes him like lightning that he comes up with the idea that will save his life. Without a second thought he cuts off his own finger, and damn it hurts but that's life, right? After transforming, he scurries down the nearest drain. Pete lives as a rat for a while, eating garbage and fighting with other rats and all the other things vermin do. It's a lonely life and he starts to miss people, even his miserably clingy mum. His mum who weeps because she thinks her only son is dead but at least she thinks he died a hero. She looks at his posthumously awarded Order of Merlin, First Class with pride (how she never looked at him when he was alive) and keeps it on the mantle like her most prized possession. Sometimes he checks in on her, but he stops after a while. He can't stand looking at that medal because he knows he's not a hero, just a rat, so that's how he stays.
One day he gets tired to the sewers and finds himself wandering a field instead. Suddenly there's this tall, redheaded kid who nearly stomps on his head and starts chasing him around the field like a madman. He squeals and squirms as the kid picks him up, rushing off to his home, screaming "Mum! Look what I found! Can I keep him, please mum? Please?"
Yeah, he's never listening to those lightning-bolt ideas because they suck.
Of all the shit, really? Pete doesn't want to be some family's pet, especially when he recognises the mum as the sister of some guys he was in school with. Molly Prewett was her name, or at least, now it was Molly Weasley. But he guesses being a pet isn't too terrible - after all, he gets fed and it might not be as a feast but it sure as hell beats garbage.
Right?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
May 1994
Peter - Wormtail - Scabbers (whatever his name is these days, he really isn't sure) always figured that if anyone could escape Azkaban, it would be Sirius. But he never actually thinks it will happen, or that both Remus and Sirius will be at Hogwarts at the same time, or that Crookshanks, the menace of a cat-devil-Kneazle, will be the end for him. His plans were really to live out the rest of his days as Scabbers, the Weasley pet rat, and when he one day kicked the bucket they'd bury him in the backyard or something. But it all goes awry and he really can't wrap his head around the fact that he will not, in fact, be buried in the backyard of the Burrow or anything even close to it. So much for that plan.
They force him to transform and it's one of the most painful experiences of his life. Maybe it was because of the spell, or maybe because he hasn't assumed human form in twelve, long years, but his bones creak, cracking violently as they rearranged themselves, and his insides burn as they grow and change. And then he is Peter Pettigrew again, in the flesh, and doesn't recgonise the feel of his own body anymore. He wonders, for a minute, what he looks like as a middle-aged man, but figures it can't be very pretty since he hasn't had a proper bath in nearly thirteen years.
"S—Sirius…R—Remus…" Pete croaks out; his tongue feels awkward in his mouth and even his voice sounds different than he remembers."My friends…my old friends…"
But no, they aren't his friends anymore and what follows pretty much confirms it. It doesn't surprise him, of course; it's what he would have expected if he'd expected this to happen at all. The only thing on his mind is how to get the fuck out and stay alive. If that means he has to forfeit his dignity, than so be it. Not that he has much left to lose, if any at all. Being a family pet tends to do that. He doesn't care what he has to do or say, but he is not dying on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, of all the goddamned places, at the hands on his former friends. Pete will be damned before he lets it happen -he hasn't spent the past twelve years eating lettuce and rat food and being terroised by a band of Weasley children to die like this.
"You haven't been hiding from me for twelve years," says Sirius. "You've been hiding from Voldemort's old supporters. I heard things in Azkaban, Peter…They all think you're dead, or you'd have to answer to them…I've heard them screaming all sorts of things in their sleep. Sounds like they think the double-crosser double-crossed them. Voldemort went to the Potters' on your information…and Voldemort met his downfall there. And not all Voldemort's supporters ended up
in Azkaban, did they? There are still plenty out here, biding their time, pretending they've seen the error of their ways. If they ever got wind that you were still alive, Peter —"
These are all the things he hadn't wanted to hear twelve years ago and he sure as hell doesn't want to hear them now. He doesn't want to listen to Sirius rant about things he doesn't - can't ever - understand.
"How dare you," Sirius growls. "I, a spy for Voldemort? When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself? But you, Peter — I'll never understand why I didn't see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who'd look after you, didn't you? It used to be us…me and Remus…and James…"
No, no, no. Sirius doesn't know anything! Anything at all. He can pretend but he is plain wrong. If he really remembers things that way then it is because he's had years in Azkaban to come up with a way to explain the past. People might have seen Pete as the tag-along, the charity case, but that had never been true. They were brothers, damnit, and as much as Sirius wants to dismiss him - say they hadn't ever really liked him, that he hadn't been trustworthy, that he'd only hung around them because he wanted powerful friends, that he hadn't been one of them - it's all a lie. What an easy thing to forget, that he and James were always particular about their friends.
But Peter remembers.
He remembers so clearly the way he couldn't believe guys like James and Sirius were nice to him and how James wanted to be his friend. Pete remembers how lucky he'd felt in the way they'd taken a liking to his shy, awkward, always-getting-picked-on self. Maybe it is easier for Sirius to think of him as a spy from the start, but easier doesn't make it true.
"I thought it was the perfect plan…a bluff…Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they'd use a weak, talentless thing like you…It must have been the finest moment of your miserable life, telling Voldemort you could hand him the Potters."
The best moment of his miserable life? He can't help it that he's mumbling words about Sirius' lunacy. As if it had been his plan all along to join the Death Eaters, take the mark! As if he had been born heartless! Pete doesn't have a "finest moment of his miserable life" but he had always done what he had to in order to survive. It used to mean letting the other kids pick on him instead of standing up for himself, and even now Pete can't stand up for himself. He's never been able to do that. He probably never will.
"You never did anything for anyone unless you could see what was in it for you. Voldemort's been in hiding for fifteen years, they say he's half dead. You
weren't about to commit murder right under Albus Dumbledore's nose, for a wreck of a wizard who'd lost all of his power, were you? You'd want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn't you? Why else did you find a wizard family to take you in? Keeping an ear out for news, weren't you, Peter? Just in case your old protector regained strength, and it was safe to rejoin him…"
His mouth opens and closes, so close to speaking the words that are in his head. Maybe they think he's nervous, which he is, but that's not it. It's not that he can't think of anything to say. It's that, in this moment, it takes every ounce of self-control not to just scream. Plain and simple he is angry - no, not angry. He's furious. Furious that Sirius can suggest he's been scheming all this time, as if he was ever a schemer! For someone so 'talentless' and 'weak,' Sirius is sure giving him a lot of credit. Pete didn't go into hiding because of Voldemort's followers, not because of anything like that. He didn't choose the Weasleys or choose to be anyone's family pet. It was never like that. It still isn't about that. It's about the fact that he couldn't look at that stupid Order of Merlin, First Class on his mum's mantle without feeling sick; it's about the fact that he couldn't have sat across from Remus, talking to him and sharing their grief or whatever, knowing that he'd done it all; it is about the fact that he'd blown it in life when he'd been too terrified and sold his friends out to save his own life...and after that, with the Dark Lord gone, there'd been nothing left. He still doesn't have anything left. come to think of it.
So it goes.
"Believe me," Sirius spits out, full of emotion, and Pete can't look anywhere in his direction because it's too terrible and awful. "Believe me, Harry. I never betrayed James and Lily. I would have died before I betrayed them."
Yes, Sirius would never have betrayed James and Lily. Yes, Sirius would have died. But Sirius had never been Peter and Peter had never been Sirius. Sirius didn't and doesn't know what it is like to be the eternal disappointment to himself and everyone he cares about, to have to teach himself to never have dreams, to have everyone pity and laugh at him his entire life. It is nothing for him to say he would have died because they didn't come after him like they did Peter. If Sirius thought something or someone was a threat, then people listened. They always listened to him, right now they are listening to him, and they take him seriously now like everybody always did when they were in school.
Nobody here takes Peter seriously, they look at him like he's a piece of garbage and even the kid whose pocket he's practically lived in for years won't let Pete come near him now. They see him as the villain. They judge him without knowing him, without even trying to understand. But...there is one person that he hopes might and that is Harry. Harry James Potter, who is the best of both of his parents. And James was the only one who ever tried so maybe Harry will too. He ignores the shouting from Sirius, the rage, and hopes that Harry will look at Peter with mercy and compassion in the same way his father once did.
"Harry," he whispers, shuffling towards him. "Harry, James wouldn't have wanted me killed…James would have understood, Harry…he would have shown me mercy…"
When Sirius asks him, straight forward, if he denies what he has done, Peter cannot.
"Sirius, Sirius, what could I have done? The Dark Lord…you have no idea…he has weapons you can't imagine…I was scared, Sirius, I was never brave like you and Remus and James. I never meant it to happen…He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named forced me —"
Maybe it is finally his turn, maybe he can finally explain. Maybe they will finally listen, he thinks, and so Pete finds himself bursting into tears because all these years it has been inside him with no way to get out. Maybe they can forgive him and remember that he was never brave like his friends and he hadn't been left with a choice. But instead his words are met with more accusations. The idea that he'd been a spy all along, for even a whole year prior to that fateful Halloween night...how far-fetched, how crazy! No, that is wrong. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, so painfully and horrifically wrong because it wasn't until August of 1980 that he finally gave in. He'd tried but he was weak, is weak, will probably always be weak and they knew it which was why they'd picked him to single out.
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roars Sirius, so loud it seems like the world is shaking. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"
Sirius is right. Pete should have died, but he hadn't, and there is no changing it now. What is done is done! A sneaking voice in the back of his head whispers that they would not have died for him. They say so now but he always wondered, always doubted. As if he hadn't told them time and time again that the Death Eaters were watching him, following him - as if they, his so-called friends, hadn't dismissed him then as they now dismiss him in this very moment. He accepts that he is going to die, then, when Remus says 'goodbye.' Pete wants to spit in his face, but he doesn't. There's no use now because he has tried to explain but they won't listen.
And in the end he doesn't care that Harry chooses to spare his life this way, not out of compassion, but for justice. It doesn't mean, though, that Pete is about to let himself be taken and given the Dementor's Kiss with so little effort. He is not about to give up, even though he is bound and gagged. Maybe he was ready to die a minute ago but now he isn't. If they take him into custody, Sirius will be free and that is not something Pete is going to let him have so easily. You see, Sirius is not the only one who has been a prisoner since 1980. Pete has been too - a prisoner in body, trapped as a rat; a prisoner to guilt and to fear.
So when the moonlight hits Remus and he begins to transform, Pete sees the chaos as an opportunity and without a thought becomes the rat again, scurrying off into the night and into a semi-freedom. He doesn't decide right away that he will seek out Lord Voldemort, half dead and in hiding, but it is a conclusion he comes to eventually. Where else is there for him to go? Who else will have him?
So it goes...yeah, so it fucking goes.
My ears were ringing in my head
Best friends with the boogey man
I may be better off here dead
I'm running on empty once again
Too tired for tears I dread
Sink deep into those magic dreams
While I blast off in my bed
And you know I've played it all in here
Where everyone hides their darkest shades of fears
And I threw my whole night down the drain
You know 'cause everyone says that I'm not the same
Since I changed my name...
-Sugarcult, "I Changed My Name"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Early August 1980
Without his friends, Peter feels like he's a boat adrift with no anchor. Especially these days when the paranoia seems to overtake him. This war...it's driving him crazy. He joined the Order out of school because it was what his friends did. And yeah, he believes in the cause. But his friends can't keep their heads down, don't know how to be sly. It's the Gryffindor in them, he supposes. Maybe Pete isn't such a great Gryffindor after all, then, because now that the fight is in full swing, the only thing he can think about is his own life.
His friends tell him the paranoia is natural. It's survival instinct, Pete, don't let it eat you, Remus tells him. But Peter knows it is more than that. He sees shadows everywhere, feels people watching him. They know he's in the Order, they'd be daft not to. They know who his friends are. And one day all his suspicions are proved right. They corner him, threaten him, and no one is around to defend him anymore. What hope does he have of keeping himself safe? The order isn't enough, Dumbledore isn't enough, it seems. Once it starts, it never stops.
"I don't know about all this, Avery," he says, backed into a wall by the taller, stronger, older man. The man who has been cornering him for the past few weeks, trying to manipulate him.
"Listen, Pettigrew: I get it. You don't want to join the so-called 'dark side.' I expect that from you. But let me assure you that's not what everyone says and you'd be unwise to keep turning us away." Peter doesn't say anything, and as the muggle phrase goes, he is quite literally shaking in his boots. Blood purism means nothing to him. He won't betray his friends for that. But his life? He isn't sure anymore. He definitely isn't sure when Avery pulls out his wand and mutters a curse Peter doesn't recognize. All of a sudden he's doubled over in pain and looking down, the skin of his arms is bulging like there is something moving underneath it. He feels like he is going to be sick. It is over as quickly as it started.
"It might even cost you your life someday," Avery remarks casually, twirling his wand as if he just put a cheering charm on Peter, not some dark curse that could get him sent to Azkaban.
"And if I accepted your offer? What then?" Peter asks, breathless and still on his knees.
"Time will tell, won't it?"
Pete doesn't plan for Sirius to confront him. Well he doesn't expect that day, at least, right then. He doesn't want to listen to his friend - well, ex friend - accusations and anger, his violence. It's only out of sheer dumb luck which strikes him like lightning that he comes up with the idea that will save his life. Without a second thought he cuts off his own finger, and damn it hurts but that's life, right? After transforming, he scurries down the nearest drain. Pete lives as a rat for a while, eating garbage and fighting with other rats and all the other things vermin do. It's a lonely life and he starts to miss people, even his miserably clingy mum. His mum who weeps because she thinks her only son is dead but at least she thinks he died a hero. She looks at his posthumously awarded Order of Merlin, First Class with pride (how she never looked at him when he was alive) and keeps it on the mantle like her most prized possession. Sometimes he checks in on her, but he stops after a while. He can't stand looking at that medal because he knows he's not a hero, just a rat, so that's how he stays.
One day he gets tired to the sewers and finds himself wandering a field instead. Suddenly there's this tall, redheaded kid who nearly stomps on his head and starts chasing him around the field like a madman. He squeals and squirms as the kid picks him up, rushing off to his home, screaming "Mum! Look what I found! Can I keep him, please mum? Please?"
Yeah, he's never listening to those lightning-bolt ideas because they suck.
Of all the shit, really? Pete doesn't want to be some family's pet, especially when he recognises the mum as the sister of some guys he was in school with. Molly Prewett was her name, or at least, now it was Molly Weasley. But he guesses being a pet isn't too terrible - after all, he gets fed and it might not be as a feast but it sure as hell beats garbage.
Right?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
May 1994
Peter - Wormtail - Scabbers (whatever his name is these days, he really isn't sure) always figured that if anyone could escape Azkaban, it would be Sirius. But he never actually thinks it will happen, or that both Remus and Sirius will be at Hogwarts at the same time, or that Crookshanks, the menace of a cat-devil-Kneazle, will be the end for him. His plans were really to live out the rest of his days as Scabbers, the Weasley pet rat, and when he one day kicked the bucket they'd bury him in the backyard or something. But it all goes awry and he really can't wrap his head around the fact that he will not, in fact, be buried in the backyard of the Burrow or anything even close to it. So much for that plan.
They force him to transform and it's one of the most painful experiences of his life. Maybe it was because of the spell, or maybe because he hasn't assumed human form in twelve, long years, but his bones creak, cracking violently as they rearranged themselves, and his insides burn as they grow and change. And then he is Peter Pettigrew again, in the flesh, and doesn't recgonise the feel of his own body anymore. He wonders, for a minute, what he looks like as a middle-aged man, but figures it can't be very pretty since he hasn't had a proper bath in nearly thirteen years.
"S—Sirius…R—Remus…" Pete croaks out; his tongue feels awkward in his mouth and even his voice sounds different than he remembers."My friends…my old friends…"
But no, they aren't his friends anymore and what follows pretty much confirms it. It doesn't surprise him, of course; it's what he would have expected if he'd expected this to happen at all. The only thing on his mind is how to get the fuck out and stay alive. If that means he has to forfeit his dignity, than so be it. Not that he has much left to lose, if any at all. Being a family pet tends to do that. He doesn't care what he has to do or say, but he is not dying on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, of all the goddamned places, at the hands on his former friends. Pete will be damned before he lets it happen -he hasn't spent the past twelve years eating lettuce and rat food and being terroised by a band of Weasley children to die like this.
"You haven't been hiding from me for twelve years," says Sirius. "You've been hiding from Voldemort's old supporters. I heard things in Azkaban, Peter…They all think you're dead, or you'd have to answer to them…I've heard them screaming all sorts of things in their sleep. Sounds like they think the double-crosser double-crossed them. Voldemort went to the Potters' on your information…and Voldemort met his downfall there. And not all Voldemort's supporters ended up
in Azkaban, did they? There are still plenty out here, biding their time, pretending they've seen the error of their ways. If they ever got wind that you were still alive, Peter —"
These are all the things he hadn't wanted to hear twelve years ago and he sure as hell doesn't want to hear them now. He doesn't want to listen to Sirius rant about things he doesn't - can't ever - understand.
"How dare you," Sirius growls. "I, a spy for Voldemort? When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself? But you, Peter — I'll never understand why I didn't see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who'd look after you, didn't you? It used to be us…me and Remus…and James…"
No, no, no. Sirius doesn't know anything! Anything at all. He can pretend but he is plain wrong. If he really remembers things that way then it is because he's had years in Azkaban to come up with a way to explain the past. People might have seen Pete as the tag-along, the charity case, but that had never been true. They were brothers, damnit, and as much as Sirius wants to dismiss him - say they hadn't ever really liked him, that he hadn't been trustworthy, that he'd only hung around them because he wanted powerful friends, that he hadn't been one of them - it's all a lie. What an easy thing to forget, that he and James were always particular about their friends.
But Peter remembers.
He remembers so clearly the way he couldn't believe guys like James and Sirius were nice to him and how James wanted to be his friend. Pete remembers how lucky he'd felt in the way they'd taken a liking to his shy, awkward, always-getting-picked-on self. Maybe it is easier for Sirius to think of him as a spy from the start, but easier doesn't make it true.
"I thought it was the perfect plan…a bluff…Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they'd use a weak, talentless thing like you…It must have been the finest moment of your miserable life, telling Voldemort you could hand him the Potters."
The best moment of his miserable life? He can't help it that he's mumbling words about Sirius' lunacy. As if it had been his plan all along to join the Death Eaters, take the mark! As if he had been born heartless! Pete doesn't have a "finest moment of his miserable life" but he had always done what he had to in order to survive. It used to mean letting the other kids pick on him instead of standing up for himself, and even now Pete can't stand up for himself. He's never been able to do that. He probably never will.
"You never did anything for anyone unless you could see what was in it for you. Voldemort's been in hiding for fifteen years, they say he's half dead. You
weren't about to commit murder right under Albus Dumbledore's nose, for a wreck of a wizard who'd lost all of his power, were you? You'd want to be quite sure he was the biggest bully in the playground before you went back to him, wouldn't you? Why else did you find a wizard family to take you in? Keeping an ear out for news, weren't you, Peter? Just in case your old protector regained strength, and it was safe to rejoin him…"
His mouth opens and closes, so close to speaking the words that are in his head. Maybe they think he's nervous, which he is, but that's not it. It's not that he can't think of anything to say. It's that, in this moment, it takes every ounce of self-control not to just scream. Plain and simple he is angry - no, not angry. He's furious. Furious that Sirius can suggest he's been scheming all this time, as if he was ever a schemer! For someone so 'talentless' and 'weak,' Sirius is sure giving him a lot of credit. Pete didn't go into hiding because of Voldemort's followers, not because of anything like that. He didn't choose the Weasleys or choose to be anyone's family pet. It was never like that. It still isn't about that. It's about the fact that he couldn't look at that stupid Order of Merlin, First Class on his mum's mantle without feeling sick; it's about the fact that he couldn't have sat across from Remus, talking to him and sharing their grief or whatever, knowing that he'd done it all; it is about the fact that he'd blown it in life when he'd been too terrified and sold his friends out to save his own life...and after that, with the Dark Lord gone, there'd been nothing left. He still doesn't have anything left. come to think of it.
So it goes.
"Believe me," Sirius spits out, full of emotion, and Pete can't look anywhere in his direction because it's too terrible and awful. "Believe me, Harry. I never betrayed James and Lily. I would have died before I betrayed them."
Yes, Sirius would never have betrayed James and Lily. Yes, Sirius would have died. But Sirius had never been Peter and Peter had never been Sirius. Sirius didn't and doesn't know what it is like to be the eternal disappointment to himself and everyone he cares about, to have to teach himself to never have dreams, to have everyone pity and laugh at him his entire life. It is nothing for him to say he would have died because they didn't come after him like they did Peter. If Sirius thought something or someone was a threat, then people listened. They always listened to him, right now they are listening to him, and they take him seriously now like everybody always did when they were in school.
Nobody here takes Peter seriously, they look at him like he's a piece of garbage and even the kid whose pocket he's practically lived in for years won't let Pete come near him now. They see him as the villain. They judge him without knowing him, without even trying to understand. But...there is one person that he hopes might and that is Harry. Harry James Potter, who is the best of both of his parents. And James was the only one who ever tried so maybe Harry will too. He ignores the shouting from Sirius, the rage, and hopes that Harry will look at Peter with mercy and compassion in the same way his father once did.
"Harry," he whispers, shuffling towards him. "Harry, James wouldn't have wanted me killed…James would have understood, Harry…he would have shown me mercy…"
When Sirius asks him, straight forward, if he denies what he has done, Peter cannot.
"Sirius, Sirius, what could I have done? The Dark Lord…you have no idea…he has weapons you can't imagine…I was scared, Sirius, I was never brave like you and Remus and James. I never meant it to happen…He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named forced me —"
Maybe it is finally his turn, maybe he can finally explain. Maybe they will finally listen, he thinks, and so Pete finds himself bursting into tears because all these years it has been inside him with no way to get out. Maybe they can forgive him and remember that he was never brave like his friends and he hadn't been left with a choice. But instead his words are met with more accusations. The idea that he'd been a spy all along, for even a whole year prior to that fateful Halloween night...how far-fetched, how crazy! No, that is wrong. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, so painfully and horrifically wrong because it wasn't until August of 1980 that he finally gave in. He'd tried but he was weak, is weak, will probably always be weak and they knew it which was why they'd picked him to single out.
"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roars Sirius, so loud it seems like the world is shaking. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"
Sirius is right. Pete should have died, but he hadn't, and there is no changing it now. What is done is done! A sneaking voice in the back of his head whispers that they would not have died for him. They say so now but he always wondered, always doubted. As if he hadn't told them time and time again that the Death Eaters were watching him, following him - as if they, his so-called friends, hadn't dismissed him then as they now dismiss him in this very moment. He accepts that he is going to die, then, when Remus says 'goodbye.' Pete wants to spit in his face, but he doesn't. There's no use now because he has tried to explain but they won't listen.
And in the end he doesn't care that Harry chooses to spare his life this way, not out of compassion, but for justice. It doesn't mean, though, that Pete is about to let himself be taken and given the Dementor's Kiss with so little effort. He is not about to give up, even though he is bound and gagged. Maybe he was ready to die a minute ago but now he isn't. If they take him into custody, Sirius will be free and that is not something Pete is going to let him have so easily. You see, Sirius is not the only one who has been a prisoner since 1980. Pete has been too - a prisoner in body, trapped as a rat; a prisoner to guilt and to fear.
So when the moonlight hits Remus and he begins to transform, Pete sees the chaos as an opportunity and without a thought becomes the rat again, scurrying off into the night and into a semi-freedom. He doesn't decide right away that he will seek out Lord Voldemort, half dead and in hiding, but it is a conclusion he comes to eventually. Where else is there for him to go? Who else will have him?
So it goes...yeah, so it fucking goes.