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Chapter Text

It turned out not to be so much trouble, after all, to find the child. Peter only had to spend a few days lingering near the Leaky Cauldron in his rat form (the chips were delicious), and Hagrid came in. Sirius had shouted something about Hagrid and James’s son before he confronted Peter, which meant that he had some link. It might be a tenuous one, but Peter was good at following tenuous links.

Nose to the ground, as it were.

Hagrid got drunk and let secrets spill, as usual when he got drunk. However, the people listening to him looked more puzzled than anything. They wouldn’t know what “that horrible woman” and “those horrible Muggles” meant, because, indiscreet as Hagrid could be, he managed to keep from spilling the Potter name.

And, of course, Peter had attended James and Lily’s wedding, and he’d met the horrible Muggles Hagrid was talking about, and he remembered their names. Even their address, which the fat Muggle man had made a point of mentioning, as if he imagined that it was a much neater, cleaner place to live than Godric’s Hollow.

Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.

*

The house was bursting with smells, and Peter indulged himself, once he’d found his way in through an unattended hole in the walls, with sniffing for a few minutes, sitting up on his haunches. The most important smells when he were in his Animagus form were the ones that weren’t there—no scent of cat or dog.

Then again, from what he remembered of Petunia, Peter couldn’t believe that she would keep a dirty animal.

Finally he locked onto the important scent that was present, and followed it to a door under the stairs. Peter let his whiskers tremble with puzzlement. It was strange to him that the Muggles would put the Potter kid here when they seemed to have multiple rooms upstairs, but he had no idea how Muggles lived, not really.

There came a low whimper from behind the door.

Peter flattened himself and crawled underneath the thing. He recoiled when he made it. Before, the scent of some sort of strong cleaning product had kept him from smelling what he did now. The kid had a full nappy, and it hadn’t been changed. And his whimpering had the exhausted sound of a child who had been crying out, again and again, and no longer expected someone to come.

Disturbed, Peter sniffed his way along the boy’s body. The kid never looked at him, just huddled there in misery, sniffling now and then.

Peter edged back and transformed, though it was quite a squeeze to fit inside the cupboard. Immediately, the Dark Mark on his arm began to sting, and he grimaced. Some sort of protections on the house, probably. Not enough to stop him in his Animagus form, where the Mark didn’t really exist, but enough to hurt now.

“Hey, kid,” he said, voice rough and low. He hadn’t been doing a whole lot of talking in the last few days. His hand missing the little finger twinged, and he shifted his balance. He wasn’t used to that yet.

The boy rolled over and stared up at him. He still made no sound other than whimpers. Of course, he hadn’t really known Peter that well. Peter had only visited a few times after the Fidelius went up.

James had lain on the floor with his eyes wide and unseeing—

Peter didn’t want to think about that. So he didn’t.

Peter drew his wand. The stinging in his Mark had grown worse, and he wanted to leave before someone came to investigate. Of course he should kill the kid. That was what his Lord would have wanted.

Then something unexpected happened, especially considering that the boy was so young that he couldn’t really know Peter. At the sight of the wand, his whimpers grew louder, and he sat up and held out his arms to Peter.

Peter stared at him.

The boy leaned forwards and grabbed him. His whimpers trailed off, although the disgusting smell from his full nappy didn’t. And he leaned into Peter and held onto him as if he thought that Peter was going to take him back to his parents or something.

Peter sat there with his wand out and the Dark Mark on his arm and James’s son clinging to him, and made a different decision.

That was when James’s son and the Potter kid became Harry.

*

Peter left the house as quickly and quietly as he could. For one thing, his Dark Mark was stinging fiercely now, and he had never been good with pain. For another, he didn’t know much about Muggles, but he knew that they would probably scream if they found him there, and for all he knew, the screams might summon wizards as well as any Aurors the Muggles had.

And he took Harry with him.

Harry had fallen asleep almost the minute Peter had flicked his wand in the charm he remembered seeing Lily use once that would, sort of, change his nappy. It just vanished the fluid and the mess and made the thing dry, but that seemed to be all Harry wanted. He snuggled close and grabbed Peter and yawned and went to sleep.

Peter walked rapidly through the night, away from the house, searching for a place he could safely Apparate. All the time, his mind raced.

He would have to have a good story for why he’d taken the kid. The Dark Lord despised weakness. And Peter had no doubt he would return. The strange way he’d vanished wasn’t like he’d died. His wand had been left behind, and it had felt like a waiting predator when Peter gathered it to hide it. Peter didn’t think any wand would do that if its owner had been destroyed completely.

So what was he going to tell him about Harry?

Peter looked down at the kid, who was breathing softly. His cheeks had a flush of pink when they walked under Muggle street lights. His lips were parted as if he was about to say something, and his hair was mussed in a way that reminded Peter of James’s.

He didn’t think of that.

But then Peter remembered how desperately his Lord had wanted to kill Harry, and he nearly sagged with relief. That was it, of course. The Dark Lord would probably be enraged if he came back and found that someone else had taken his kill away from him. He had claimed prominent Aurors and the like as his kills, and Peter knew that Dumbledore was always going to be his, if the Dark Lord managed to overcome him when they met on the battlefield.

Peter would just raise Harry until his Lord came back, and then he could give him a safely neutralized kid, who wouldn’t have learned any of the things that Dumbledore might have gone back to the Muggle house to teach him.

And in the meantime, he could give Harry a pretty good childhood. Better than the childhood people who would shove him in a cupboard with a full nappy and ignore his crying would give him, anyway. Probably, when the Dark Lord came back, he would use the Killing Curse on Harry, and that was a pretty painless death as far as Peter knew. Not that he ever planned to experience it himself.

Peter nodded, and reached the place he had been searching for—a small gap between two tall houses where no light reached—and spun on his heel, bearing Harry away with him.

*

“Hungry!”

Kids could be loud when they were hungry, Peter had learned.

He sighed and got up to go to the cupboards in the abandoned Muggle house he had found. Well, abandoned now. He had Confounded the owners into thinking they had sold it to him, and they’d taken a long holiday to India with what was left of their money. Maybe they would come back, maybe not, but in any case, Peter and Harry would have moved on by then.

As he got out the applesauce, he glanced over his shoulder and shook his head at the intent way Harry was staring at him. Harry hadn’t asked any questions about his mum or dad after the first few days they’d spent together, and he certainly hadn’t mentioned his awful relatives at all. He looked at Peter with those eyes like—

He didn’t think of that.

Peter put the applesauce on the table, and Harry stood up and ran determinedly over to him. He still needed help to get up to the table on a regular chair, but he could clamber easily onto the small stool Peter had found two houses ago and carried with them, and then Peter would Levitate the stool until it was level with the table. Harry seized the spoon Peter gave him in one chubby fist and started shoveling food into his mouth.

“Slow bites,” Peter said automatically.

“You.”

That meant Peter didn’t take slow bites. Peter rolled his eyes. He did so. Sure, sometimes they were large ones, but he always ate the Muggle food in such a way that he didn’t have to choke. And anyway, he had a throat and a stomach a lot larger than Harry’s.

“Slow bites, or I take it away.”

Harry huddled protectively over his bowl of applesauce. Peter still wasn’t sure what the Muggles had done to Harry other than leave him in a cupboard with a full nappy, but whatever it was, it had probably involved not feeding him, because he was as protective of his food as a Gryffindor first-year with older siblings.

Peter sat back and waited for Harry to finish, his gaze wandering around. The Muggle house wasn’t overly large, but was a nice enough size, with two bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen large enough that they’d probably been dedicated cooks. There was a large refrigerator, well-kept cupboards that stayed that way with the application of some Cleaning Charms, and shiny baseboards—

With a hole in the nearest one.

As Peter narrowed his eyes, a rat popped its head out and stared at him.

Peter sighed. He had no idea why rats were drawn to him and Harry wherever they went. It certainly wasn’t something that had happened to him at Hogwarts, or when he was serving the Dark Lord, or during the summers at home after he had learned the Animagus transformation. He almost wondered whether transforming in the Dursley house had something to do with it, but he didn’t see how it could.

And if these rats were spies from Dumbledore, then Peter and Harry would have been found already. Instead, during the weekly trips Peter made to Diagon Alley to gather copies of the Daily Prophet, there wasn’t a peep that the Boy-Who-Lived was missing.

So much for protection in obscurity, Peter thought smugly.

“Unca Peter!”

Peter’s gaze snapped back to Harry. It wasn’t often that Harry called him that. Harry was pointing one finger at the rat, which had come out fully into the open and sat grooming its whiskers. The rodents never showed any fear of either him or Harry unless they deliberately made an aggressive move, which Peter had stopped doing when it hadn’t worked.

“Play with the pet!”

“They’re not pets,” Peter muttered, but he held out his wand and Summoned the rat with a little swirling motion. The rat squeaked for a moment as it flew into the air and towards the table, but it relaxed the instant it landed in Peter’s cupped hands. It rose on its haunches and nuzzled his face. This close, Peter’s senses, always in a sharpened state since the first transformation, could tell that it was a female.

“Play!” Harry demanded.

Peter floated the rat towards Harry. He wasn’t going to let one on the table, no matter how much he told himself it probably wouldn’t matter. He had magic to clean up any mess a rat left behind, after all. But there were such things as standards.

And he couldn’t have Harry die of some easily treatable illness before the Dark Lord got to kill him.

It’s going to be a shame when that happens, Peter thought, leaning back in his chair and smiling as he watched the rat leap from Harry’s hand to his shoulder and then down his arm, making Harry giggle and clap. I just hope the Killing Curse really is as painless as everyone talks about.

*

“I want an owl.”

Peter sighed and laid his quill down. He and Harry were in their third Muggle house of the year, and Harry, who was five now, had turned into a stubborn little shit sometime in the last few months. He stood in front of Peter with his arms crossed and his nose wrinkled and his robes fluffed up around his feet from stomping on them. Peter remembered that exact stance when James hadn’t got—

He wasn’t going to think of that.

“I’ve explained to you why we can’t have an owl, Harry.” Peter glanced around the large study of the house they’d taken over. Just from that swift scan, his eyes had found three holes. “It’ll kill the rats.”

“I’ll train her not to kill the rats.”

“You want a female owl?”

Harry’s head nodded fervently. “Then she can have babies!”

Peter had to smile a little. Harry got that oddest little obsessions and whims from nowhere, as far as Peter could tell. He bought magical children’s books for Harry to read and sometimes sneaked him into the Muggle world to watch a telly since any in the Muggle homes stopped working around their magic, but those didn’t account for half the ideas Harry came up with. “Sorry, the answer’s still no. Post-owls are highly-trained, but you can’t train the hunting instinct out of them.”

Harry stomped his foot in the way that had stopped being adorable a year ago. “Why not? I trained the snake not to hunt the rats.”

Peter felt his eyes widen. “What snake?”

“Her name’s Sasha!” When Peter just kept staring at him, Harry spun around and called out the study door in the high, hissing voice that Peter had last heard—

From the Dark Lord. Peter felt faint as he watched a large adder slither into the room. He’s a Parselmouth. Holy Merlin.

Peter kept blinking as he watched Harry kneel down and hug the highly venomous snake, who just flickered her tongue out and looked the way some of the rats did when Harry hugged them too long.

“Sasha does what I want her to,” Harry said. Under Peter’s ongoing stare, he wilted a bit. “Not everything. We have to talk about it a lot. But most of the things! She goes out of the house to hunt. She doesn’t kill the rats. I can train an owl not to kill the rats, either!”

Peter shook his head slowly. He was reeling, but he couldn’t show that. There were too many things Harry didn’t know yet, things he wasn’t old enough to understand. Peter wanted to keep him in the dark a little while longer so he could think of the best way to explain them.

Among those things was the real reason Peter didn’t want a post-owl. It could be easily traced back to them if someone knew what they were doing, and there was no way to explain either Harry’s presence or his own aliveness if someone magical stumbled across them.

“Well, Harry, you have to keep in mind that you can talk to Sasha,” Peter said as calmly as he could. “You can’t talk to owls the same way. Did you really train Sasha, or did you argue her into doing what you wanted?”

“We had a conversation,” Harry said, relishing the sound of the word that he’d only learned last week. “It wasn’t an argument.”

“But it only happened because you could talk to her, right?”

Harry obviously knew where this was going, because he scowled. “Yes.”

“Can you talk to owls?” Honestly, Peter wouldn’t be surprised at this point, even though he’d never heard of any other wizard who wasn’t an owl Animagus doing that. Harry had no reason to be a Parselmouth, either.

“No.”

The scowl deepened. Peter shook his head. “I think Sasha is enough pet for right now. Maybe later we can see about an owl, if we find one that we can put spells on so it doesn’t upset the rats.”

Honestly, he thought as he watched Harry hiss something to Sasha and run out of the room with her slithering after him, the boy had done a good job. The rats hadn’t retreated, which meant they could put up with the snake’s presence somehow.

Or maybe that the rats were just insanely determined little creatures. Peter still hadn’t figured out why so many of them were around all the time.

One was leaning against his leg right now, as a matter of fact. Peter picked him up, put the rat on his shoulder, and went on with his list of notes on the Potions book he’d managed to borrow from a shop while he was under a glamour and would have to return tomorrow, with a sad headshake about how he couldn’t afford to purchase it after all.

The thought of Harry and Sasha had gone on working away in the back of his head, though, and by the time he went down to dinner, he was almost decided. Maybe the Dark Lord wouldn’t want to kill the kid after all. Another Parselmouth, when as far as Peter knew there had never been one in Britain except the Dark Lord? Surely he’d want to examine Harry and figure out how it had happened.

Harry might live.

It probably shouldn’t have cheered Peter up so much, but he’d learned to take happiness where he found it.

*

“Can I have a story before I go to bed, Uncle Peter?”

Peter smoothed Harry’s hair back from his forehead. His scar never seemed to get any less pink with the passing of the years, but Peter was wise enough not to meddle with things he didn’t understand.

He gave Harry a smile he knew was distracted. “What kind of story do you want, Harry? One about Hogwarts and your dad?”

“Yes! And the Marauders!”

Harry bounced up and down in the bed that had been decorated with covers showing Muggle football before Peter had Confounded the young family into giving up their house to him and Harry. Now, the covers had a large snake that Peter had enchanted into them. Sasha was looped around Harry’s head on the pillow, watching Harry and darting out her tongue now and then.

“All right,” Peter said. “Did I tell you about the time that we enchanted the Marauders’ Map?”

“Whass the Marauders’ Map?”

Despite himself, Harry’s voice was slurring. Peter smiled a little. Harry had done his first accidental magic today, Levitating Sasha up into a tree where a bird was singing. Apparently, according to Sasha, the bird was annoying and would make a good meal. And Harry would do almost anything to help his friend.

Peter hoped it was a sign that Harry would do well in Slytherin, his determination and his talent. He would be safest there as a Parselmouth, Merlin knew. Peter shuddered to imagine what Gryffindor House would say about a Parselmouth, how they would turn on him.

And perhaps it would all be moot if the Dark Lord returned before Harry was old enough to start Hogwarts. But Peter saw no reason for Harry to be unhappy until then, especially if the Dark Lord’s absence went on for a long time.

(Privately, Peter hoped it would. His Mark had faded to a dull grey).

“The Marauders’ Map was a map that we created to show us where everyone was in the school,” Peter murmured. “James came up with it, you know. Your dad. He decided that we were getting caught too often at pranks. In our third year, we had eighty-four detentions between us.”

“Thass a lot.”

“I agree.” Peter stroked Harry’s hair again. “But Sirius was the one who came up with the initial enchantments, and Remus was the one who decided that it should be a map instead of just a list of names showing us where people were. And I was the one who scouted out all the corners of the school the others couldn’t reach to see what the rooms should look like.”

It burned his mind like the Mark had once burned his flesh, to think about Sirius and Remus. So Peter didn’t.

“Were you a rat then? Is that how you got into the rooms? You sneaked under the door?”

Those sentences made it sound like Harry was about to wake up, but his head lolled to the side, and his breathing was already slowing. Peter doubted he would make it to the end of the story, but he murmured, “No. None of us finished our Animagus transformations until later. But I was good at enchanting things like buttons and teapots into rats and mice. So I could send them underneath doors to get a good look at the contents of a room, and I could watch through their eyes, as long as I’d linked my magic to them.”

“I want to do it with Sasha.”

Peter shook his head. “I never did it with a living animal.” But then he paused, realizing that Harry was asleep. He sighed and sat back.

Two large grey-and-white rats crept up the side of the bed. One came to sit on Peter’s knee, and one took the side of the pillow opposite Sasha, fur bristling all over as if about to flee. Peter thought he could smell her fear. But the rat didn’t run, and Sasha didn’t lunge for her. Peter shrugged. Maybe they had come to some sort of truce.

“Sweet dreams, Harry,” he whispered, and stood up to leave the room. The rat who had been sitting with him scampered after him.

*

HARRY POTTER MISSING!

Peter’s eyes widened as he caught sight of the Daily Prophet’s headline, on the front page of a paper clutched in the hands of an old witch in the Leaky Cauldron. He had intended to walk through the pub and into Diagon Alley immediately. He and Harry needed food, and his glamour wouldn’t hold up forever, even though he’d become more adept at casting them.

But now he had another errand. He ambled up to the front of the pub, where Tom the barkeep was in a conversation with someone else that seemed to consist mostly of headshaking. Peter did hear mutters about “Potter,” but he forced his face to relax into a smile as Tom glanced at him.

“Excuse me,” Peter said. “I’m not a regular subscriber to the Prophet, but there seems to be exciting news around today. I was wondering if you could tell me what’s going on?”

Tom was more than happy to do so, even though the old man he’d been talking with seemed disgruntled to be abandoned. “Turns out Harry Potter’s been missing from the Muggle house where he was placed, maybe for years.” Headshake. “Apparently the Muggles couldn’t keep him from wandering off.” Another headshake. “Always knew they were careless, Muggles.” A third headshake.

“Wow,” Peter said, and tried to make his face appear concerned instead of terrified. “Do you know how they found out? I thought no one was supposed to know where the Potter boy was.”

“Apparently there was some kind of protection on the Muggle house he was staying in, and it broke.” Headshake. “Whoever was in charge of maintaining the protection felt that, and came at a run. And then they couldn’t find the boy. There was no sign that he’d been there. No sign that he’d been there for years.” A sigh, for variety. “The Muggles said that they’d only had him for a few days, and they had no idea where he’d disappeared to.” Headshake.

Peter relaxed, but only a little. At least the Muggles weren’t going to give anyone a clue as to who had come and taken Harry, since they didn’t know themselves. But he didn’t know if he might have left something behind in the wards that could be used to track him, a trace of his magical signature, perhaps. And he knew that now the hunt for Harry would spread out across magical Britain.

Did we cover our tracks well enough? Staying among Muggles most of the time will have helped, but maybe not enough…

“You okay, mister? You look pretty distressed.”

Peter started and looked up to meet Tom’s eyes. “I have a boy around that age,” he said with complete honesty. “I’m just imagining what I’d feel if he disappeared without a trace one day.” He managed a snort he hoped was convincing. “I’d tell the Aurors right away. Not wait around for years like those Muggles.”

He tried for a headshake of his own, since that seemed to be the natural language. It got Tom’s eyes off him, at least, and he went back to trading headshakes and conversation with the old man.

Peter walked off into Diagon Alley, keeping his head half-bowed as if considering the news. He watched people from the corners of his eyes and saw the way they whispered behind their hands and watched their neighbors closely and drew their wands at the slightest noise.

Yes. He and Harry would have to be much more careful than they’d been up until this point.

Peter wished that he had ever learned the French that his mother spoke so well. But he hadn’t, and he didn’t know any other languages, either. Or the customs of different magical communities, for that matter. That cut off what would probably have been the best option, going to another country.

Well, at least no one had decided that Peter Pettigrew was alive yet. He would double his caution and see if that helped.

*

“But you said we could go back and play with Lucia today!”

“I’m sorry, Harry. Things have changed.” Peter didn’t look up from where he was sweeping shrunken food packages into a sack. He’d paid more than he could really afford from their store of stolen Galleons to buy it, but it was worth the price. It would hold everything they put into it with close to infinite space, and no one would manage to reach the bottom with a spell, either.

“I want to, I want to, I want to!”

The kitchen counter abruptly split down the center with a lightning-like crack. Peter leaped back from it, drawing his wand before he realized that it wasn’t the first sign that Aurors had found them. It was just Harry’s accidental magic, which had grown stronger and more focused in the days since he had first Levitated Sasha.

Peter spun around. Harry was staring at him with a tear-streaked face, and the adder coiled in front of him, hissing a warning.

“Listen to me, Harry.” Peter knelt down. “I wish that I could take you back to play with Lucia in that park, but I can’t.” That had seemed an innocent enough pastime when Harry was under a glamour, and even though Lucia had obviously been a magical child—one of the few Harry had met—Peter hadn’t worried that she would somehow discover who Harry was. Harry believed his last name to be Pettigrew. But now, the risk was too great. “People are hunting for us. People who want to take you away from me. They might take you back to the bad Muggles I got you from.”

Peter didn’t believe that last bit—although he supposed it was possible Dumbledore might suggest the Dursleys as an option for Harry’s housing and the Ministry might listen to him—but Harry’s eyes widened in fear. “I don’t want to go back to them!”

“I know.” Peter softened his voice and his expression as much as he could when fear pounded in his veins, urging him to run, run, run. “But we might not be able to convince the bad people that you don’t.”

“I want to stay with you!” Harry ran past Sasha and flung his arms around Peter. Peter hugged him and sighed. At least this proved that Harry hadn’t committed to hurting him with accidental magic.

“I know,” Peter whispered into his ear. “And I’m going to fight hard for that to happen. But for it to happen, we have to go, now. No one can know where we are. Not even Lucia.”

“What about Sasha?”

“She can come with us. She’ll be safe. And the rats. But no one human can know where we’re going. Do you understand?”

“Because the Muggles will try and take me back?”

“Yes.” Peter gently patted Harry’s back. “I don’t want to let you go any more than you want to back to them. So let’s pack up and you tell me what you especially want to take, and we’ll go and find another place to live, okay?”

Harry sniffled a little, but then asked, “Can we live near the sea? I always wanted to be by the sea.”

Peter sighed as a plan that he didn’t even have to consider for long popped up in his head like a soap bubble. “Sure, sure, we can do that.” He wrapped his arms around Harry’s body and lifted him up so that he could nestle against his hip. Harry, at six, was getting pretty big for that, but now he clung and buried his head in Peter’s shoulder. “Can you tell Sasha that she has to crawl into my bag?”

“She won’t like it. She won’t fit.”

“The bag is infinite space.” Peter opened the bag so that Harry could stare down into it and realize there was no trace of the food and Harry’s snake blanket and other things that Peter had been packing away in it. “She’ll fit.”

“Wow! Can you carry me in there, too?”

“I’m going to carry you out of the bag,” Peter said firmly. And it was true. He had to make sure that Harry was all right—until the Dark Lord returned.

The thought seared his mind, but he tucked it firmly away. So what? The Dark Lord hadn’t returned yet. Peter would deal with it when he did, and until then, he would give James’s boy the best life possible.

“Okay.” Harry beamed up at Peter, and then hissed what sounded like a long string of complicated nonsense syllables to Sasha. He had to argue with her, or at least Peter thought that was what he was doing, until she crawled into the bag, but ultimately, she did it, and Peter was able to close the bag and sling it from his belt.

Then he wrapped a firm arm around Harry and walked towards the door from the Muggle house. At least the next place they lived would be magical, and even somewhere that Peter already knew how to navigate.

“Uncle Peter? What about the rats?”

Peter shook his head. “They’ll find us, Harry. They always do.” Most of the time, when they moved, new rats would just show up, but some of them were amazingly persistent. The grey-and-white ones, for example, which Harry had taken to calling Pearl and Cloud, had traveled with them between two houses now, no matter how long it took them to get there.

“Can we take Pearl and Cloud with us?”

Peter was about to say that he didn’t know where they were, but the two rats abruptly scampered into the kitchen and sat up, wrinkling their noses at him. Peter sighed and bent down so that they could climb up to his shoulders. It wouldn’t be his fault if they got lost in the Apparition, he thought grumpily.

They clung with all four paws when Peter Apparated to Dover, and he supposed that was an answer of sorts.

Chapter Text

Dover housed a tiny magical community, Dover-by-the-Sea, one of the few other than Hogsmeade left in Britain. Not many people outside it even remembered that it existed, and that was the way its people liked it. Peter knew of it because it was where his mother had grown up.

Peter also knew that his mother had had a cousin who had left the village when he was fifteen and had never been heard from again. Later, after she’d married Percival Pettigrew, Elaine Durant had confessed to Peter that she’d found evidence that made her believe he was dead, but she could never be sure. And she’d told Peter stories about her cousin over and over again, because he had been Elaine’s favorite when she was growing up. She’d even named her son after him.

Peter adjusted the shape of his face with glamours and grew a slight, scraggly beard that would also make his chin look different. His eyes were the same color as vanished Cousin Peter’s, and his hair was probably a darker brown, but Peter doubted that would make much difference, not when Peter Durant had been gone for forty years. Likewise, his lack of a French accent could be attributed to the fact that he’d traveled among the English and lived there, too, probably, what a rebellious young man!

Best of all, it meant that he didn’t have to instruct Harry, who was too young to remember all the time, to call him by a different name.

Most of the people who had known Peter Durant were dead or moved away, but a few older witches and wizards welcomed him with delight, and his mother’s stories of her childhood stood him in good stead when they wanted to reminisce about the old days. Plus, since he was a pureblood, well, of course he wouldn’t have aged that much, and didn’t all wizards born in these recent years look young to the old, anyway?

Peter explained Harry’s presence easily enough by saying that he’d had friends he’d lost in the war, and had decided to raise their son as the best tribute he could make to them. Even here, there had been losses, and no one questioned him. And Harry raised smiles as he ran down the small street, scattering gulls and yelling to Sasha as she followed him.

That had been the one sticking point Peter had worried about. Harry certainly wasn’t going to give up either Sasha or Parseltongue, and he would have been stubborn about keeping them secrets now that they were finally living in a place where they didn’t have to keep their very presence a secret.

But one of Peter’s great-great-aunts stood up from her chair the first time there was a mutter about Harry’s hissing—a real undertaking, given how bent over she was—and said loudly that her mother had been a Parselmouth, thank you very much, during the days when the gifts were revered in France, which was the real country that many of these disgraceful young people had never seen, not that she was naming any names, be it understood, and they would leave the poor boy alone, yes?

And after that, they didn’t have any trouble.

Harry found other magical children to play with, although not many, given that Dover-by-the-Sea was such a small community, only thirty families. But there was a family with three young girls, and another with a boy Harry’s age, and one with twins only a few years older. They ran around shrieking and yelling, playing with Sasha and the rats and the other animals, and teaching Harry how to play Exploding Snap and chess, and climbing cliffs, and splashing in the sea, and having enough fun that part of Peter he hadn’t even realized was there—a part that had been uneasy with keeping Harry in such isolation—began to relax.

Of course, there came the inevitable question about whether Harry was related to Harry Potter in some way, but all Peter had to do was look quiet and sad. “Harry was named after the Potters’ Harry,” he murmured. “His parents knew the Potters, in Hogwarts, I believe. And I certainly didn’t want to change his name after his parents died, even though I almost wondered if I should, in the wake of the notoriety his namesake was going to have…”

“Of course not!” said the great-great-aunt he was talking to, the same one who had defended Harry for being a Parselmouth, although of course she thought she was only Peter’s great-aunt. She banged her cup of tea on the table. Peter cast a spell to move the tea that had slopped onto the saucer back into the cup, and she nodded at him. “Bunch of nonsense, anyway. A child defeated the Darkest Lord of all time? Nonsense, yes?”

Peter nodded and smiled and agreed, although he couldn’t help glancing towards his quiet left arm from the corner of his eye. He never went about with short sleeves, and when he had mentioned scars from the war, everyone had accepted that.

They were very accepting, in Dover-by-the-Sea.

But as Peter’s glance lingered on Harry, where he was sleeping one night in bed after his eighth birthday, he became aware of a stirring in himself. A subtle conviction that just telling Harry stories of Sirius and James and Remus, and Lily where she came into them, wasn’t enough. That he would have to tell Harry the truth.

And what happens then? When he rejects me and yells to everyone as loudly as he can that his parents’ murderer kidnapped him?

Peter paused and leaned back in his chair, watching as Pearl, who was old now, with grey around her whiskers, slept on Harry’s pillow. There was an unexpected benefit to the idea. He would no longer have to make the decision as to whether Harry lived or died when the Dark Lord came back.

Of course, he would have to find Harry a suitable guardian.

Which probably meant that, yes, he would have to see Sirius freed from Azkaban.

*

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Uncle Peter.”

Peter shifted his balance, and took a deep breath. He and Harry were in one of the small sheltered coves near the edge of Dover-by-the-Sea, really just a small patch of sand and pebbles with two larger rocks standing on it. Everything glowed grey and green around them, the water swirling at their feet. It was high tide, and Harry was frowning down into it as though he thought he would prefer to go swimming rather than listen to Peter’s words.

But Peter had already told Harry that he had to listen. It was important.

“You’ve never asked me much about what happened to your parents,” Peter began slowly.

“You said Mum and Dad were dead.”

“They are. But you didn’t ask how.” Peter swung a leg back so that his foot struck the rock, and stared at Harry.

Harry looked at him with eyes that seemed deep and haunted and almost angry. “I didn’t think it mattered that much. I thought you would tell me if it was important.”

“Well. I’m telling you now.” Peter flattened his hands on his legs. “You know about the Dark Lord and the war. You’ve heard people talk about that now?”

Harry gave a tight nod, after a moment so long that Peter wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d got down from the rock and run back to the village.

“The Dark Lord was hunting your parents especially,” Peter said quietly. “They fought him many times, but they ran away from him, too, because you were new and young, and they wanted to protect their baby.” Harry’s shoulders hunched, and Peter went on, a little faster. “In time, they decided that the safest place for them to hide would under the Fidelius Charm. Do you know what that is?” It wasn’t impossible. Harry, like the other village children, went to “primary school” three mornings a week to work on things like reading and writing and simple maths, but magical education mostly came through listening to stories and idle lessons tossed out by any adult with a little time.

“Yes,” Harry said. “I mean—I know that it’s a charm that’s supposed to protect someone. It keeps them secret, and it makes it impossible to tell anyone where they are, right?”

“Not exactly,” Peter said, as gently as he could. “One person knows the secret, called the Secret-Keeper—”

“I could have figured that out, Uncle Peter.”

Harry’s eyes looked like Lily’s in color, yes, but they had a piercing shine that was all his own when he was upset. Peter took a deep breath. “Well, I’m trying to explain to you how it works, Harry. Most people forget about the location under the Fidelius when the charm goes up. The Secret-Keeper can bring other people into the secret by telling them, though. But it has to be willing on the Secret-Keeper’s part.”

“So suddenly other people would remember where the house or whatever was?” Harry asked. He sounded fascinated, but Peter had known he probably would be. The thing Harry seemed most interested in was the theoretical aspect of magic.

Peter nodded. “That’s the way it would work.” He cleared his throat, and it felt as though a coating of sand had blown into it. He coughed.

“Are you okay, Uncle Peter?”

Peter had thought it would work. The quiet cove, with no one else around to hear them (and charms and wards raised, invisibly, to keep anyone else from sneaking near and overhearing, even the rats or Sasha or Harry’s twin friends Adrienne and Aria). But now that the moment had come, he couldn’t make himself say it.

He croaked, and then got back on track. “Someone betrayed your parents, Harry. The Secret-Keeper for both of them. They told—they told the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord came and killed them.”

Harry’s eyes were so wide that Peter wouldn’t have been surprised to find they contained infinite reflections, like a hall of mirrors. He swung his own foot and took a deep breath and blurted, “I’m Harry Potter?”

All those years of never speaking Harry’s name in front of him. But it was smart of him to guess, Peter thought, with oddly-blended pride and despair. Harry was going to be so smart at Hogwarts. He was probably going to Ravenclaw.

“Yes,” Peter whispered. “Do you understand why you can’t tell anyone, Harry? The people who are searching for you would take you away from me, and they might not take you to the Muggles, but—”

“I don’t want to go anywhere!” Harry hurled himself across the gap between their rocks and grabbed Peter around the waist, snuggling up to him and burying his face in Peter’s robes in the way that he rarely did anymore. “I want to stay with you!”

Peter wrapped his arms around Harry, and damned himself for a coward.

On the other hand, he had known that already.

“But I won’t tell anyone.” Harry turned his appealing face up to Peter, biting his lip and widening his eyes in a way that would have been a perfect manipulation if he’d done it on purpose. “I promise, Uncle Peter! I won’t ever say!”

“At least until you go to Hogwarts,” Peter said softly, reaching down to pull on one strand of Harry’s unruly hair and make him smile. “You’ll have to go under the Potter name and reveal yourself, then.”

“Can’t I just call myself Pettigrew?” Harry muttered, snuggling closer.

Peter sighed. Well, all right, he wasn’t going to tell Harry the reasons why that wasn’t possible today, but he did have other, important matters to convey to him. “You should know that someone was blamed for betraying your parents even though he really didn’t. Remember Sirius that I told you about?”

Harry nodded and then sat bolt upright. “People thought he betrayed them? One of my dad’s best friends?”

“They thought he did,” Peter said gravely. “I could have corrected them, but then I would have to had come forwards and say that I’d taken you from those Muggles.” And shown that I was still alive. “I learned a little more by hiding as a rat and listening to people who wouldn’t have spoken so freely if they’d known I was there, and I can see, absolutely, that Sirius is innocent. So that means we should find a way to free him from prison.”

“Yes! Yes, of course we should!”

And when we do, Peter thought, pulling on a strand of Harry’s hair again, then you’ll have someone who can take care of you, and I can leave you and run as fast as I can and never look over my shoulder. Maybe hide in my rat form for the rest of my life.

He felt a pang when he thought of that. Of course he did. But it was really for the best.

*

“Of course, if there is injustice done, then you need to address it, Peter. But how are you going to do that?”

Great-Aunt Helene’s—well, really she was his grandmother, but she didn’t know it—advice was sound. Peter couldn’t walk up to the Ministry and declare that they should free Sirius and he knew that because he’d been the traitor who had revealed the Potters to the Dark Lord. He had to devise a subtler system.

And it had to be one that wouldn’t end with Sirius murdering him the moment he was out of Azkaban, too. Couldn’t forget that stage of the process.

After considering and discarding several plans, including one that involved simply breaking Sirius out of prison and going on the run with him, and one that included revealing Sirius was an Animagus and trying to force a trial for that in the hopes that it would also result in the trial he’d supposedly had but never actually received, Peter hit on what was really the only plan. He wouldn’t even have tried this one, but magical Britain practically worshipped their child savior. It was the only way.

He told Harry about it, and Harry sat there for a long time munching carrots and thinking about it. Then he discussed it with Sasha, in a series of hisses that still unnerved Peter, but that he forced himself to sit patiently through. Finally, Harry looked up at him and nodded.

“Sasha thinks it’s a good idea.”

And finally, all that remained was for Peter to get really good at glamours, and at creating Portkeys.

*

Peter and Harry Flooed into the Atrium of the Ministry on a Wednesday morning in October. Peter had debated coming on Halloween itself, but that might seem too on-point and calculated. This had to look like he’d wanted to keep Harry away, but his caution had finally been worn down in pursuit of justice.

No one noticed at first, partially because Peter had worked until his illusions changing the color of Harry’s hair to red were impenetrable and layered, and of course no one expected Harry Potter to be red-haired. But it wasn’t impossible, given his mother—

Peter wasn’t thinking of Lily, and Harry didn’t remember her. But it would seem natural enough to other people who did think of or remember her.

They walked up to the wizard whose job it was to check wands. He gave them a bored glance and extended his hand for Peter’s wand. “Name and business,” he said.

This was a tricky part of the plan, since Peter had no intention of allowing them to check his wand; it would match up with previous times they’d done so too easily, and it would strain believability that he just happened to be using Peter Pettigrew’s wand. But he made sure to keep his voice calm and his hand on Harry’s shoulder as he said, “Alfred Smith and Harry Potter.”

It worked the way he’d hoped. The Ministry check wizard promptly and immediately lost any interest in Peter as he gaped at Harry. Harry smiled up at him winsomely and pulled his fringe back, revealing the scar. More illusions Peter had practiced exaggerated the mark until it spread down to the bridge of Harry’s nose.

“Potter,” the check wizard whispered.

Some other people waiting in line behind them or who had come through just ahead of them turned around to gape, and in seconds the name “Potter” was running wildly around the Atrium.

Harry flinched under Peter’s hand. He’d never had so many people looking at him before. But he took a deep breath and said, “I want to tell people that I remember Sirius Black not being the Secret-Keeper. He wasn’t there. Only my parents were there. And You-Know-Who.”

That got them taken up to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, quickly.

Harry looked at the Auror assigned to deal with them with big, innocent eyes, and explained that he needed to see Rufus Scrimgeour because he was the Head Auror, and this was really important. That likewise got them passed up the chain. Peter couldn’t help his tension when they were ushered into Scrimgeour’s office, because Scrimgeour was said to be able to ferret out lies.

But Scrimgeour didn’t pay any more attention to Peter than anyone else had. His attention was all on Harry as he leaned forwards over his desk. “Mr. Potter, are you sure that you remember someone else being the Secret-Keeper?”

Harry nodded with his eyes filling with tears. They’d practiced this, too, and Harry was quite proud of his newfound skill that made people in Dover-by-the-Sea give him whatever he wanted. He was probably going to go straight to Slytherin when the Hat sat on his head. “Yes. I’m sure. I remember sitting up when the door banged open and I heard my daddy shouting…”

And on he went, giving details that sounded utterly plausible, because of course they were. Because of course they came from Peter’s memories, although Peter had told Harry he’d learned it by casting a spell on the Godric’s Hollow cottage and reading the memories of the walls.

Peter sat back in his chair, trying to look supportive and strained at the same time when Scrimgeour glanced quickly at him. He knew there would be questions later, specifically about how he’d ended up with Harry. But he had a blend of truth and lies readied for that, as well, and it was the rats who had given him the idea.

“That’s a stunning story, Mr. Potter,” Scrimgeour whispered as he came to the end of it. “And you’re sure that you don’t remember anything after the Killing Curse hit you?”

“No. I’m sorry.” Harry looked down and sniffled a little.

“That’s all right, Mr. Potter. Quite all right.” Scrimgeour turned to Peter with a stiff smile. “We do have some questions for your guardian. Mr. Smith, wasn’t it?”

Peter sighed and said, “Yes, well, I suppose I don’t have much right to bear the name, being a bastard son and all. I usually call myself Alfred Shell so as not to embarrass the family. But I knew I would have to tell the truth when I brought Harry in.”

“And how exactly did you come to have custody of Mr. Potter, Mr. Smith?” The door opened behind them, and Peter glanced back to see another pair of Aurors coming in. “Ah, Mr. Potter, Aurors Dawlish and Brown will escort you to talk to the Minister, and explain in more detail about what you remember, while we question Mr. Smith more in depth.”

As they’d also drilled, Harry burst into hysterical tears and flung himself at Peter, almost the way he had the day Peter had told him the half-truth of his parents’ deaths. He grabbed his waist and howled, “You’re going to take Uncle Alfred away like the bad man took my parents!”

Scrimgeour looked utterly unprepared to deal with this, which was what Peter had hoped for. He folded his arms together over Harry’s shoulders, hoping he looked strong and unsure at the same time. “It’s all right, Harry. They aren’t going to take you anywhere. They’ll just ask me some questions, okay?”

“No! They’ll take me away and put me back with the bad Muggles!”

Good boy, Peter thought, while he bent down and said, “No, Harry, I promise. They’re just going to—”

“What bad Muggles?” demanded Auror Dawlish.

“The bad Muggles Uncle Alfred rescued me from!” Harry wailed, and held onto Peter so hard that he might be using accidental magic.

“I thought he was too young to remember that,” said Dawlish in a hushed voice.

Peter sighed a little and stroked Harry’s forehead. “He doesn’t remember much,” he said quietly. “Just an overwhelming impression of darkness and discomfort and cold. But I still won’t let anyone take him back there.” He looked up, and it was only because he was pretending that he could stare at the Aurors as coolly as he did, but he managed. “I trust that you won’t be taking him back on the advice of whoever put him there?”

“No, of course not,” Scrimgeour said briskly before either of the Aurors could answer. “The Muggles aren’t suitable guardians, we all know that. Well. If Mr. Potter doesn’t want to leave the room, perhaps we could question you under a Privacy Charm, Mr. Smith?”

“That’s all right with me.” Peter glanced at Harry. “What do you think, Harry?”

“I want to stay right here!”

“It’s fine, you can. A Privacy Charm is just like the Muggle-Repelling spell that I showed you the other day, remember? The one that put wards up but didn’t push you out of the room?”

Harry paused, sniffling outrageously, and then nodded. “All right, but I wanna stay.”

“Of course,” Peter said gently, and managed to get Harry out of his lap and to move a bit before he turned to Scrimgeour. “If you can put up a Privacy Charm to exclude Harry from listening but that doesn’t affect him seeing me, we’re ready.”

That was what they did, and they questioned him thoroughly, Peter would give them that. It was just that he had a thorough story.

Peter claimed that he was a bastard son of the Smith family, as he’d already told them, and that his mother was a Muggleborn. She’d gone into deep hiding with him during the war because she was afraid of being targeted by Death Eaters, but in the end, they had got her anyway. Peter had carefully chosen the site and name of a massacre that had killed at least seventeen Muggleborns in such conditions that their bodies could never be conclusively identified.

Peter then described his own flight to France, his grief, his cautious return to Britain when he heard the news of Voldemort’s downfall. And here he swallowed and dropped his eyes and let some real emotion creep into his voice.

“Before Mother and I went into hiding, I got rescued from a Death Eater attack by a half-mad Auror trainee,” he whispered. “A pair of them, really. I didn’t know their names until I saw their pictures in the paper a little later, but…”

“Their names?” Scrimgeour leaned forwards. He had both an enchanted quill and Dawlish taking notes. Dawlish looked sour about it, but that wasn’t Peter’s problem.

“James Potter and Sirius Black.”

Scrimgeour whistled softly, and Dawlish and Brown both stared at him. “That would mean you owed them both a Life-Debt.”

Peter nodded fervently. He had owed them that in truth, and more than that, really. But he didn’t see the point in thinking about that now, as he wouldn’t be able to continue with a convincing lie otherwise.

“And that was why I found it so hard to believe that Black betrayed the Potters.” Peter shook his head. “But it was in all the papers, and what was I to think? And I knew I was too late to repay the Life-Debt I owed to James Potter. But I thought I might at least look in on his son and see how he was doing.”

“Lots of wizards and witches wanted to do that in the immediate aftermath of the war,” Auror Brown interjected, his voice largely neutral. “Why were you the lucky one to find him?”

“I had a Muggleborn mother,” Peter said with a thin smile. “And that means that I thought to look in the Muggle world, in the first place, and I looked up the marriage certificate the Potters had filed with the Ministry. I discovered that Lily Potter’s maiden name was Evans. And when I knew that, I could find the name and marriage certificate of her Muggle sister in their world.”

Scrimgeour and the Aurors exchanged disgusted glances. They probably hadn’t thought of that, and were upset to realize how much of Harry’s “security” had hinged on luck, Peter thought complacently.

Well, really, that kind of luck had been the only sort that had protected the Order of the Phoenix, either. None of them had ever thought to check members’ arms for the Dark Mark.

Peter shoved the thought so far away so fast that he actually hurt his brain as Scrimgeour focused on him once more. “And you found the house? Under wards?”

“I’m actually a Transfiguration master,” Peter “admitted.” “I can create models of animals and send them out to spy through their eyes. I did that with a model of a rat when I realized that the house was under wards but I was also picking up a surge of distinct unhappiness from them. One of my Transfigured rats crept under the door of the cupboard and found Harry with a full nappy.”

“The cupboard?”

But Peter could see, despite the deliberately widened eyes and disbelieving tone, that they did believe him. That was probably the sort of detail they’d discovered when they were investigating the Dursleys and thought no one could know unless they’d actually been to Number Four.

Peter nodded, biting his lip. “I couldn’t leave the poor child there. It was inhumane, what they were doing to him. But I also knew that no one could find out I had Harry, or they would try to take him away from me, probably to return him to those awful Muggles. I couldn’t trust the Ministry, or their custody arrangements—”

“The Ministry had nothing to do with those custody arrangements,” Scrimgeour said stiffly. “Neither would we have returned him to his aunt and uncle.”

Peter raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I didn’t know that, and I didn’t know who had authorized leaving him there in the first place. But I took Harry, yes, and we’ve been living in the Muggle world since. I thought that was a good compromise on safety, since whoever did leave Harry with the Dursleys had obviously thought the Muggle world was safer for him.

“But then Harry began to recall those memories about You-Know-Who’s death, and…” Peter shuddered. “He told me so insistently that his mother and father and You-Know-Who had been the only people in the house that I began to doubt Sirius Black’s guilt. And then when I went and dug back into old papers, I realized there was no record of a trial for him, or a story about a trial. So. I brought Harry to the Ministry.”

Scrimgeour sat up straight behind his desk. “There was a trial. There must have been a trial.” He glanced at Aurors Brown and Dawlish.

“They’re searching the archives now,” Brown said in response to the look. “I let them know to bring up the records right away when they found something. But they must not have yet.”

Scrimgeour’s jaw tightened, and a tic began working near his right eye. He knew as well as the Aurors did—as well as Peter did—that it shouldn’t have been hard to find the records of a trial in the archives, had one taken place. It would have been near the records of every other trial for the Death Eaters.

“Please wait here, Mr. Smith,” he said flatly, and stood up.

He did lower the Privacy Charm, and Peter held his arms out to Harry, who ran to him right away from the corner where he’d been standing near Dawlish. “Could I get some food for Harry? Since it seems like we’ll be here for a while.”

“Of course. Dawlish, see to it.”

*

After that, although they had to stay in the Ministry for several more hours and answer loads of questions, the machine of bureaucracy largely took over. Scrimgeour did discover that there’d never been a trial for Sirius, and came to tell them so (and Harry learned some interesting new words). Messages were sent to Azkaban. More trial records were found to be lacking. Scrimgeour swore some more, and stirred up a hornet’s nest that, by the time they stood to leave, was involving Bartemius Crouch, Millicent Bagnold, and a number of officials who had been in charge of conducting the Death Eater trials, as well as the Aurors who’d arrested Sirius Black.

The only hitch came when Scrimgeour tried to insist that Peter tell them where he and Harry were staying in the Muggle world.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Peter said, his smile becoming thinner and harder. “The last time I trusted the Ministry to handle Harry’s custody arrangements, look what happened. I prefer to hand him over only to his godfather, who has a right to him if he’s innocent.”

“Mr. Smith, I assure you that we don’t want to take him back to the Dursleys.”

“I believe you,” Peter said, because it was hard not to when Scrimgeour’s eyes shone with that much sincerity. “But he might still be taken to another unsuitable guardian by someone who thinks they know better. Or he might be attacked by Death Eaters. No, thank you, I’m going to keep him safe.”

Scrimgeour made some noises about arresting Peter for kidnapping, which made Peter’s heart beat faster than a rat’s. But Harry wailed so loudly at the mere mention, and cracked Scrimgeour’s desk with so much accidental magic, that Scrimgeour had to back down. He was obviously not in favor of the bad publicity that would come to him if he contradicted the child savior.

So Peter and Harry left the Ministry building hand-in-hand, and once they were out of a Floo and in a Muggle alley, Peter handily destroyed all the Tracking Charms that had affixed themselves “innocently” to Harry’s clothing and his. Then he removed the illusions on Harry’s hair and scar. Even if someone tried to find them now, they’d be looking for a red-haired child with a much larger scar than Harry actually had, one that couldn’t hide under his fringe.

And they were spending the night in the Muggle world. Peter had spread a story around Dover-by-the-Sea about a sick friend he had to go and see, and as tended to happen there, his relatives had accepted it without question.

He scooped Harry into his arms and Apparated to the Muggle home that he’d already scouted, its owners gone on holiday. He put Harry down in the kitchen, and Harry scowled at him and said, “Take off the glamours, Uncle Peter.”

Chuckling, Peter did so. He didn’t look all that much different from his usual self as “Alfred Smith,” mostly with a rounder face and lighter hair. But Harry smiled at him in relief after they were gone.

“And we should be seeing Sirius!” Harry said, bouncing back and forth as Peter went over to the box he’d charmed to contain cold food.

“Yes,” Peter said, and focused on the food in front of him. He hadn’t told Harry that he planned to leave him with Sirius.

But really, that was the best thing. Sirius was Harry’s legal guardian, and certainly wouldn’t be compelled to hand Harry over to the Dark Lord. Harry could live. That had become, imperceptibly, a matter of importance to Peter.

And Sirius would certainly recognize Peter at once. If not under the glamours, the first time Harry mentioned his real name. Peter would have to leave in any case, once Sirius had explained to Harry who had really betrayed his parents.

It wasn’t something he liked to think about. But he had thought about it when he planned this, and he knew that Harry would have a much better life with Sirius than he could ever have with a traitor and a fugitive Death Eater.

“What are we having for dinner tonight, Uncle Peter?”

“I thought spaghetti would be a good idea,” Peter said, getting out the cheese and smiling as he watched Harry laugh.

Yes, he would miss this. But in the end, he would have the satisfaction of knowing he had done the right thing for both Harry and Sirius.

Chapter Text

“You were right about Sirius Black never having had a trial, Mr. Smith.” Peter didn’t know Scrimgeour well, but he could see a tension in his shoulders that he thought spoke to the man’s boiling fury. “He’ll have to have one to officially clear his name, but we gave him Veritaserum last night after we took him out of Azkaban. He told us that he hadn’t betrayed the Potters.”

This was something else Peter had been worried about, another risk, that they might talk about Peter being the Secret-Keeper where Harry could hear. Peter didn’t want that to come out until he had to give Harry over to Sirius. But it hadn’t. He relaxed and smiled a little. “Well, it’s good to know that he didn’t betray his friends.”

“Yes, it is.”

From the brooding look on Scrimgeour’s face, he probably knew more than he was saying, probably the whole of Sirius’s accusation against Peter. But he wasn’t going to reveal it, and Peter found that all to the good.

“When can I see him?” Harry demanded, bouncing up and down a little on his chair at Peter’s side, still playing up the part of adorable spoiled precocious child. Slytherin, for sure, Peter thought idly. “I want to see him! My godfather!”

“Ah, well.” Scrimgeour looked unhappy, and Peter felt the first prickling of fear up his spine. “Mr. Black will need a lot of healing before he’s fit to see anyone, Mr. Potter. The Dementors that guard Azkaban…you know about him?”

“Yes, of course. They’re awful!” Harry bit his lip and stared up at Scrimgeour, his eyes still huge. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to rescue my godfather. So he could be away from them. Uncle Pet—I mean, Uncle Alfred said that they were really awful and drove you insane!”

Scrimgeour’s eyes narrowed, no doubt noticing the slip, but luckily, he didn’t pursue it. “Well, they didn’t drive Mr. Black insane, probably because he was innocent. But he’ll need a lot of Mind-Healing before he can take care of you.”

“Oh.” Harry’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know that. I mean, it’s all right. I can live with Uncle Alfred until then, right?” He cast Peter an appealing glance.

Peter reached out and tugged a strand of his hair. “Of course, Harry. I’d never abandon you. But justice really is going to be done?” he asked Scrimgeour. “Mr. Black will have a proper trial and his name will be cleared?”

“If he’s innocent, yes.” Scrimgeour hesitated. “You should know, Mr. Smith, that there have been some questions about your custody of Mr. Potter and if you’re the best person to take care of him.”

“I’m not leaving Uncle Alfred!” Harry wailed, on the edge of tears again.

“No, no, of course not,” Scrimgeour said hastily, probably to avoid another crying scene in his office. “But he isn’t related to you, Mr. Potter, and one could argue that he’s fulfilled the Life-Debt he owed to both Mr. Black and your parents beyond what anyone would have asked of him.”

Harry stomped his foot. “I don’t care! If you try to take me away from Uncle Alfred, I’ll just run back to him! Or disappear back to him! I can do that, sometimes.”

Harry had only ever done it once, but Scrimgeour clearly understood the implications of a child able to use accidental magic to Apparate. His eyes widened, and then he fell into a fit of coughing. “Of course not, Mr. Potter,” he managed to say. “But don’t you want to live with your godfather someday?”

“Yes! But I can live with both Mr. Black and Uncle Alfred! They’ll get along fine!”

Peter took a deep breath and told himself that of course Harry would think that, with all the stories that Peter had told him about the four Marauders. But, well, when the truth came out, then Harry would change his mind. He wouldn’t be able to forgive Peter for betraying his parents or leaving Sirius in prison for seven years.

Scrimgeour sighed and began another round of questioning, which Peter submitted to. It wouldn’t disturb the story he and Harry had built up.

The story that didn’t have to last much longer.

*

Peter watched Harry rush down the beach, laughing and yelling and throwing pebbles ahead of himself with his wandless magic. At least it had proven easy to get him to direct it towards structured exercises after Aunt Helene had spent some time staring at the boy.

He was going to be such a powerful wizard. He was already clever and could make the best use of his gifts. Peter tried to picture what he would look like in a year, and felt his heart twinge with cold pain that he wouldn’t be there to see it.

Well. Maybe Sirius could do controlled interviews with the Prophet or something, and that way, Peter could sometimes find a picture of Harry and read the story.

Harry turned around and tossed his hair, growing long and wild, out of his eyes as he laughed. Peter let a true smile widen across his face. He knew that Harry sensed he was subtly withdrawing and didn’t like it. Harry had taken to following Peter around all hours of the day, skipping most of his lessons, and curling up on the floor in his bedroom at night until Peter woke up and sent him away.

Sasha, lying on a rock in the sun, turned her head and hissed something lazy at Peter. Peter, relieved of the obligation to care since he wasn’t a Parselmouth, ignored it.

It would be hard for Harry when he went away. He knew that. Harry had already lost his parents, and he would be losing his beloved Uncle Peter.

But he would understand when he heard the story. How could he love someone who had been the reason his parents were betrayed and an innocent man was put in prison? How could he love a Death Eater?

Peter stroked his left sleeve, and the Mark that lay beneath it. At this point, he had no intention of returning to the Dark Lord, because he would probably be killed for treachery, real or imagined. But that long-ago decision meant he couldn’t be part of Harry’s life, either.

It was too bad, Peter admitted. It really was. But he couldn’t make up for what he had done, the kidnapping or the betrayal. The only thing he could do was to deliver Harry to Sirius’s loving arms, and then leave.

Harry came hurtling back up the beach and flung his arms around Peter. Peter hugged him. He would give Harry all the hugs he wanted in these last days they’d spend together. It was only fair.

“Can we have spaghetti tonight?” Harry muttered into Peter’s robes, burrowing closer the way he used to when he was much younger.

“We just had it the other night,” Peter thought it was his duty to point out. Sirius would probably let Harry eat whatever he wanted after he became his guardian. Sweets and pasties all the time. Peter hoped that the good toothbrushing habits he’d taught Harry would endure in the face of the onslaught that was coming their way. “You don’t need it twice in a week.”

“I want it, though.”

Harry drew back and stared up at Peter with his lip quivering and tears standing in his eyes, and Peter gave a startled laugh and reached down to tug a strand of his hair. Sirius would probably ruffle it.

“I suppose spaghetti twice in one week can’t hurt,” Peter conceded.

Harry leaned against his leg and beamed up at him.

*

Peter carefully touched the expanded bag on his belt as he and Harry were escorted into St. Mungo’s. He had to remember to drop it behind Harry when Sirius spotted him and started roaring out accusations. It had Sasha in it, Harry’s clothes and toys, and even several of the rats, although they would have preferred to ride in Peter’s pockets.

Harry had looked a little suspicious when Peter had asked if he could coax Sasha into the bag again, but Peter had explained that they should introduce Sirius to her as soon as possible and get Sirius used to the fact that Harry was a Parselmouth, and Harry had nodded and accepted that.

It was so easy to trick him. Peter licked sour-tasting lips and fell behind a little as Harry, under red-haired and scar-enhancing glamours again, bounded up the stairs two at a time.

Sirius.

He had been Peter’s friend. Oh, rough and careless and impatient at times, and as prone to playing pranks on his fellow Marauders as anyone else, and there had been that business with Moony and Snape. But he didn’t deserve what Peter had done to him.

No making up for it, no forgiveness, only going forwards, Peter thought, and held open the door to Sirius’s private room for Harry.

Harry bounced in and yelled happily, “Padfoot!”

Sirius was sitting up in bed, staring at Harry. His face was gaunt and pale, his black hair had all the signs of the new cut that Peter should probably have given Harry before he handed him over to Sirius’s tender mercies (because Sirius couldn’t be trusted to be responsible with it), and his eyes were a brighter grey than Peter had thought they would be.

But he could barely see that, because a storm of memories obscured his view of Sirius.

Sirius working patiently with him, again and again, until he mastered the Animagus transformation. Sirius leaping into battle as an Order member, his wand and his eyes alike glowing with deadly magic. Sirius sprawled on the rug in the cottage James and Lily had had before they went under the Fidelius, making excited plans for games he would play with his godson.

You stole all that from him.

Peter stood frozen in the doorway, his hand clenched on the bag, and stared. And then he shook his head, because the guilt would freeze him here if he didn’t get rid of it, and as much as he regretted what he’d done, he wasn’t willing to die for it.

“I didn’t know you remembered that name, Harry.” Sirius reached down and hugged Harry as well as he could from leaning in his awkward position against the pillows, but that was quickly made easier by Harry clambering onto the bed. “I was only a dog a few times when you were that little.”

“Uncle Peter told me all about it!”

The stillness proceeded through every muscle in Sirius’s body, like a Freezing Charm. Slowly, so slowly, he turned his head to look at Peter.

Peter took a deep breath and dropped the bag on the floor. Sirius pointed his hand at it as if his finger was a wand and he thought something deadly might come crawling out of the bag.

Which was pretty fair, considering what he had last known Peter to be doing.

“Sirius?” Harry sounded confused, cautious, upset.

“What the fuck are you doing here, TRAITOR?” Sirius roared the last word, and tried to leap up from the bed. But he was still too weak, and all he did was topple to the side and push Harry to the edge of the sheets.

Peter automatically drew his wand and cast a Cushioning Charm in Harry’s direction as his hands scrabbled. Harry let out a gasp as he landed on the charmed floor, but he didn’t try to thank Peter for the charm. He just blinked at Peter, and then looked back and forth between Peter and Sirius.

“What’s going on, Padfoot?” he whispered. “What did Wormtail do?”

“Betrayed your parents!”

And there was no way that Peter could stay for that, which he’d already known, which was why he’d brought the bag. He could see it thrashing around now, as if Sasha was trying to get out. He hoped she would. She could comfort Harry.

He didn’t look in Harry’s direction, because he would regret it too much if he met his eyes. Instead, he clenched his hand around the button on his robes that he had worked and worked on turning into a Portkey.

He stared steadily at the wall as the swirling colors of Portkey travel consumed him, and didn’t look at either Sirius or Harry at all.

*

Peter landed in their cottage at Dover-by-the-Sea. He collected his own food and clothes, his movements automatic. Part of him thought he should just leave everything here, given that he’d be spending most of his time on the run as a rat.

But another part of him thought that Harry might not understand he was really gone if he came back and found Peter’s things in the cottage. So Peter took them, and shrank them, and packed them in another pouch on his belt that wasn’t as big as the expanded bag, and looked around the cottage for a long while.

His life as Peter Durant was over, and Peter mourned it as he had mourned few other time periods of his life. It had been pleasant. Quiet and peaceful in the way that he’d always sought and never found other than at home with his parents when he was very young, before his father died.

But it was over now. The minute Sirius went to the papers with the announcement that Peter Pettigrew was still alive, it would be gone.

And Peter would run before then. He was a coward. He had always known it. It was only the last few years that had allowed him to pretend otherwise.

He Apparated before he could do something else he would regret, like leaving a note or something. Harry would understand everything after Sirius had explained.

When he reappeared outside Diagon Alley, he shifted into his Animagus form, and ran, and ran.

*

A warm body pressed against his, and whiskers snuffled along his fur. Peter sneezed in irritation. It seemed no matter where he went under magical buildings or Muggle ones, rats found him. He could see why they might have been drawn to him when he was in his human form, but why now? Why did they leave whatever warm and respectable homes they had and come to trouble him?

The rat crowded close to him. With a sigh, Peter rolled over and let it. It was pleasant to have the warmth in this otherwise rather echoing and draughty space under an old hag’s floor off Knockturn Alley.

Peter was almost asleep again when a thunderous bang echoed from above him. Peter leaped to his feet, shivering. That sounded far louder than any stray dropped item or bang of a broom to try and chase rats away, and Peter was sensitive, alive, to the fact that every unexpected noise now could mean danger for him.

He listened, his ears twisting back and forth, and then a familiar smell filtered down from above, and Peter knew he had to leave.

Even as he turned to run, though, an irresistible force seized his body and drew him upwards. Peter fought, twisting. He had done wrong things, he had regrets, and he still didn’t want to die in the jaws of a dog, or by being tortured to death.

It didn’t work. Probably even if he was human it wouldn’t have worked. This wasn’t a Summoning Charm, but some variant that Peter didn’t know, a powerful spell that peeled back the floorboards and whisked him upwards. He heard the rat who had snuggled up to him squeaking in alarm beneath him.

Peter landed on the floor of the hag’s house, a dirty kitchen he had already spent some time foraging in, and found himself staring at Harry’s neat trainers. He glanced up, expecting to see Sirius standing behind Harry. There was no other way that Harry could have come here even if somehow he had tracked Peter down by himself.

But there was just Harry, who was scowling at him. “Why did you leave?” he demanded, with a sound of raw tears in his voice.

Peter squeaked indignantly, and then heard the sound of footsteps from behind Harry. The hag came around the corner holding what looked like an iron stick with thorns coming out of it .

She paused and stared at the sight of them, which gave Harry time to scoop Peter up from the floor and into a pocket on his robe, and then run to the kitchen window and vault through it. Peter braced himself for the crash of glass, but the hag must have been too poor to have it in her window. There was only a scraping snap of wood, and then Harry was pounding down the middle of Knockturn Alley.

Knockturn Alley. No place for a child.

Peter struggled up so that he could hook his claws in the top of the pocket, and glanced out, ready to jump down and run somewhere else so that Harry would chase him and at least leave this place. But at that moment, the world shuddered, and there was another thunderous bang, and Peter found himself tossed back down into the depth of the pocket. He crouched, ready to move when whatever was happening had finished happening. Probably Sirius had caught up with Harry and Apparated them somewhere.

The world went still and quiet. Peter flared his whiskers, but there was no trace of Sirius’s scent. Well, that just meant that the air currents carrying that scent hadn’t filtered to the bottom of Harry’s pocket.

Harry’s hand dipped into his robe pocket and snatched Peter out, and Peter held back the impulse to bite, barely. He didn’t really want to be tossed or dropped.

Harry put Peter on something he recognized a second later as a chair. His chair, in the cottage where he had lived with Harry in Dover-by-the-Sea. Peter stared around, and sniffed. No sign of Sirius.

“Change back to human, Uncle Peter.”

Harry’s voice sounded deep and threatening in a way Peter had never heard before. Then again, he wasn’t usually a rat around Harry. Peter considered it, and then released his tight hold on his Animagus form.

It was the first time in almost a fortnight that he’d been human, except for brief periods when he’d snapped into that form to Apparate. Peter shuddered a little and closed his eyes, trying to get used to the way his skin felt without fur covering it.

“Why did you leave me?”

Harry’s voice was full of actual tears this time. Peter snapped his eyes open and saw Harry standing in front of him with his fists balled, struggling against bursting into full-on weeping. Helplessly, Peter gathered Harry closer, and felt Harry grab onto him in a way that hurt his ribs.

“Why did you leave?” Harry whispered. “You have to tell me.”

“In a minute, Harry. How did you find me?”

“I told my magic to find you and bring me there. And then I told my magic to get you and bring us back here.”

Apparition. That loud bang Peter had heard when he was still beneath the hag’s house had been Apparition. Peter half-shook his head in awe. He hadn’t known Harry was actually capable of directing where he Apparated to, story they’d told Scrimgeour or not; the first time, Harry had appeared on the roof of the school building instead of the rock he’d been aiming for. And given that accidental magic simply did what it wanted half the time instead of fulfilling its owner’s wishes…

No wonder it hadn’t felt like a Summoning Charm when Harry pulled him out of his hiding spot. It hadn’t been. It had been simple, pure will translated into power and doing as Harry told it.

“Sirius must be worried sick about you,” Peter whispered.

“I don’t care about him! I care about you!” Harry drew back and glared at him. The tears were still in his eyes and voice, but they might be tears of anger instead of sadness, Peter thought now. “Why did you leave?”

And here it was, after all, the conversation and revelation he had thought he could avoid by leaving Harry with Sirius. Peter drew a deep and painful breath. Well, somehow Sirius hadn’t explained it in such a way to make Harry understand that Peter had been lying to him all these years, maybe because he was still affected by the Dementors. That meant it was up to Peter to make him understand.

To make him understand why it was unforgivable. Why everything about Peter was unforgivable, from the way he had betrayed James and Lily to the way he had lied to Harry to the way that he had taken the Dark Mark.

And maybe that would be a good place to start. It was a sort of physical proof that Harry wouldn’t be able to reject easily. Peter pulled back his left sleeve.

Harry stared in silence at the faded grey Dark Mark, and then up at him. He showed no signs of letting his hold on Peter go or stumbling back in horror, the way Peter had thought he might. Peter frowned a little. This was going to take more than he’d thought.

“I joined the Dark Lord as a Death Eater,” Peter said. “And I was—I was the Secret-Keeper who betrayed your parents to him, Harry. I’m the reason that Sirius spent all those years in Azkaban. I came and took you from the Dursleys’ house, yes, but not because I was a good person who just wanted to adopt you, or your parents’ last friend who knew where you were and was capable of taking care of you.” That was what he had told Harry all these years. “I took you because I thought I could give you a comfortable childhood until the Dark Lord came back.”

“You didn’t try to hurt me.” Harry’s voice was subdued.

“No. But I thought I was just keeping you safe until someone else could take care of you. That was why I decided to free Sirius. Because he could take care of you, and he had a legal right to you as your godfather. And he was innocent and had been in there long enough,” Peter added. That had been part of it, but he wanted Harry to understand how far down the list it had been. A good man, a really good man, wouldn’t have put Sirius in Azkaban in the first place.

“Why did you betray Mum and Dad?”

Harry still sounded softer than Peter would have thought, but that was probably shock and trying to come to terms with things. “I was afraid,” Peter said simply. “I thought I could get some kind of positive attention by taking the Dark Mark, but I also took it because I was afraid. The Dark Lord was all-powerful. I thought he would win.”

“They made you the Secret-Keeper because you were afraid?”

Harry’s brow was wrinkled. Peter sighed. “No, Harry. They were originally going to make Sirius the Secret-Keeper. However, they thought that would be too obvious, because everyone knew that your father and Sirius were best friends. So they used him as the decoy and gave me the actual job.”

Harry was quiet. Then he asked, “Were you going to go and tell everyone that Sirius was innocent someday?”

“Not until I worked out a way I could disappear and leave you with him. I’m not going to go to prison or die for him.”

“Weren’t you friends?”

Peter didn’t know if he could ever explain this, because he couldn’t explain it to himself. “Yes. We were. And I still betrayed him. And I know that he still wants to kill me, and once he tells people that I’m still alive, people will try to hunt me down. Do you see why I have to leave? I can’t take you along while I’m running from place to place.”

“You’re going to stay.”

“No, Harry. By now, Sirius has probably already told everyone that I’m alive and the Death Eater who betrayed your parents, and—”

“No, he hasn’t.”

Peter stared. Harry lifted his head, and his eyes were free of tears. He looked at Peter, and there was a power in him that shouldn’t have been there in an eight-year-old, and that had nothing to do with magic.

“He hasn’t because I begged him and cried and said I would run away if he told anyone. He didn’t like it, I don’t think. But he promised. And I said that if he did tell people, I would tell everyone that he was just mental because of the Dementors, and they would put him back in Mind-Healing and not let him take care of me.” Harry reached out and touched Peter’s Dark Mark, snatching his hand away for a second, and then letting it rest there. He took a deep breath. “I know you’re afraid. And I know you’re my Uncle Peter. You took me away from the bad Muggles. I want you here.” He glanced up at Peter. “I forgive you. For Mum and Dad. And Sirius.”

Peter stared at him. Harry stared back, not smiling, chewing on his lip.

“You can’t do that,” Peter finally said. He felt as though shock had wiped his mind clean of everything but the next few words he needed to speak.

“Do I need to do something else?” Harry frowned. “I thought I knew the word forgive. Did I not get it right?”

“You can’t forgive me because the betrayal is too deep,” Peter told him. He felt as if he was talking down to Harry, but this was something simple that Harry should have understood. Oh, maybe not from Peter. Peter hadn’t done a good job of raising him. But from Sirius and when Sirius had explained the situation. “You can’t forgive someone who hurt you that badly and let an innocent man go to prison.”

“Yes, I can.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I can.” Harry frowned harder at him. “I don’t know what other people do. I’m just doing things for me. I forgive you, Uncle Peter. And you’ll come back and be with Sirius and me and work out a way to make him forgive you, too.” He smiled as if everything was all settled.

Peter shut his eyes. He knew there was no way in the world that Sirius would ever forgive him, and why should he? And Harry was making this decision out of innocence and not enough experience with the world. He would regret it when he was older.

“Harry.” He swallowed. “I’m a coward. I’m not a good man. I’m not your real father. I’m not even an uncle who’s related to you by blood. You’ll be better off with Sirius than me. He’ll raise you right.”

“They said he was so screwed up we couldn’t even see him for days. Why would he raise me better?”

“Because he hasn’t committed the kind of betrayals I have. He’s kind and he went to prison for what he believed in. He loved your father and mother.” Peter smoothed back Harry’s hair because he couldn’t help it, even though he knew as he did it that it would be the last time he did so.

“Why didn’t he say it wasn’t him?”

Peter braced himself to think of something he’d avoided thinking about even more than James and Lily’s deaths. “Because he was laughing when I blew up the street and—I killed a bunch of Muggle people, too, Harry.” Harry stared at him, not even blinking, as if this information couldn’t penetrate his skull, and Peter sighed and surrendered to his fate. “I think he realized that I was going to get away and he was going to get blamed. He kept saying it was his fault. It doesn’t excuse him not having a trial, but I suppose that he really did consider it his fault, in a way, that he went after me in a Muggle area and I transformed and got away.”

Harry bowed his head as he thought about that. Then he said, “It was terrible, what you did.”

Peter nodded. The words stung, but that part, he actually had been braced for.

“But I don’t want you to be terrible.”

Peter blinked. “What does that mean, Harry?”

“I mean, I want you to stay here with me. So you won’t run away and be more terrible, and Sirius won’t hate you.”

Peter shook his head. “Sirius is going to hate me no matter what, and I know that you have to be raised by him.”

“Why?” Harry glared at him, and he looked like he had when they’d pretended in Scrimgeour’s office, but Peter knew the tears filling his eyes were real. “Don’t you love me?”

Peter’s breath rattled in his throat. He stared at Harry, and his ears crackled and his mind filled with images the way it had when he was looking at Sirius in the hospital bed.

Harry running down the beach, and Harry playing with Sasha, and Harry throwing back his head as he laughed, and Harry listening intently to Peter when he was drilling him in how to react and what to say when they went to the Ministry, and Harry falling asleep as Peter told him stories, and Harry shoveling food into his mouth.

Peter closed his eyes. “Yes. But that’s—why I’ve got to do the right thing for once in my life, Harry. That’s why you deserve someone who can raise you without being on the run. Someone who won’t betray you to the Dark Lord because he’s too afraid.”

“You’re not doing the right thing if you leave.”

Harry hugged him, and he was probably using accidental magic to strengthen his arms again. Peter leaned towards him, but didn’t open his eyes. How could he? He didn’t even know what the right thing was now.

He had done wrong things. He had done half-right things that he could justify to himself. He had done right things, like taking Harry away from the Dursleys, mostly on accident.

But he didn’t know what to do now. He didn’t know what was right and wrong.

“Harry,” he whispered, and he knew he was on the verge of crying, which he hadn’t been in years. “How can you forgive me? How can you want me to stay when I betrayed your parents?”

“You told me about them. The bad Muggles wouldn’t. You told me stories about Sirius and Remus and Dad and you. Maybe Sirius would, too, I don’t know. You have rats and you feed me spaghetti and you teach me magic. Stay with me, Uncle Peter. I love you.”

Peter took a deep, ragged breath. He’d been focused, for so long, on how nothing he did could make up for the past. Raising Harry wouldn’t make him a good person. It just made him someone who was raising Harry.

But if nothing could make up for the past, then maybe he should stop trying. Maybe he should focus on the present, and the fact that someone was here who could forgive him for his crimes, when—

When he couldn’t even forgive himself.

“All right,” he whispered. “But we have to convince Sirius not to kill me.”

Harry screamed and jumped into his arms and hugged him so hard Peter was convinced he had a broken collarbone. But he didn’t move. He just kept his head bowed and his arms clasped around Harry.

He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this. Maybe nothing. Maybe it wasn’t about deserving.

Maybe it was about something else.

Chapter Text

“I hate you, Peter fucking Pettigrew.”

“Language, Sirius.”

They were in Sirius’s hospital room. Peter was wearing his glamours, and Harry had his red hair and large scar charmed on. Harry sat in a chair halfway between Peter’s chair and Sirius’s bed, and beamed at both of them. He hadn’t hesitated at all to walk back into Sirius’s hospital room, even given the way he’d left the man and what he’d told him before he went.

Peter sighed a little. He had thought Harry a fit for Slytherin and Ravenclaw in the past, but given how Harry had managed to forgive him and had come to get him from the hag’s house and faced up to everything, Peter knew, now.

He had raised a bloody Gryffindor, through and through. And it was probably his own bloody fault.

“I hate you,” Sirius whispered, but his voice was already building up to a yell. “I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU—”

“Shut up,” Peter said calmly, and knew it was the calmness of his voice more than anything else that meant Sirius actually obeyed him. “Listen to me. Harry wants us both in his life, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

“But I don’t want to be with you. I hate you.”

“I know,” Peter said. “And you don’t have to forgive me the way Harry did. But you’re going to have to find some way to handle your rage so that we can make a good home for Harry and no one around us will find out the truth.”

Sirius stared at him, then at Harry. “But he probably didn’t explain everything to you, Harry,” he said in a soft, eager voice that Peter had never heard from him before. “You must know that he—”

“He betrayed my Mum and Dad. I know.” Harry swung his legs. “And he put you in prison. He told me all that. He thought I couldn’t forgive him. But I did.” He looked smug.

“You can’t.”

“Can.”

Sirius at least cut himself off before he got into the kind of argument that Peter had had with Harry yesterday. He turned a look of loathing on Peter. That was actually a calming, steadying thing, Peter thought. Harry had tipped him off-balance, maybe permanently, but he could rely on Sirius taking his past betrayals the way they should be taken.

“He has to pay,” Sirius said, his voice a low hiss that made him sound like the Parselmouth in the room.

“He did. He got you out of prison, and he took me away from the bad Muggles.” Harry turned in his chair to face Sirius, and Sirius blinked. Peter could imagine the kind of expression he was confronting now, since he’d had that from Harry himself last night. “You have to let him live with us and not try to kill him or hurt him. Or he’ll take me away, and we’ll just tell everyone that you’re still mad if you try to claim that Peter Pettigrew is still alive.”

“I can tell people under Veriatserum.”

“Veritaserum just makes you tell the truth as you understand it,” Peter said mildly. “It doesn’t mean your delusions are true, Sirius.”

Sirius clenched his hands in the sheets for a second as if he would spring up and grab Peter, But he was still too weak. With a tremendous sigh, he leaned back in the bed. “Where are we going to live?” he asked.

“Dover-by-the-Sea,” Harry said instantly. “You’ll like it, Sirius. It has lots of good people, and I have friends there, and we have a cottage. There’s even another bedroom, so that you can have your own. Then you and Uncle Peter don’t have to see each other all the time.” He gave the satisfied nod of someone who had solved all the world’s problems.

Sirius stared at Harry for a long time, and then turned and stared at Peter. Finally, he said, “Harry, will you go out of the room and give us a minute?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Are you just going to yell at Uncle Peter?”

“I’m going to talk to him.”

Harry gave him a dubious glance, but hopped down from the chair. “Okay. But I can hear, and I’ll hear if you start yelling at him.” He turned and walked out of the room, and a second later, Peter heard him chattering to the mediwitch who’d been working in the room next door. He almost snorted. Harry made friends everywhere he went, which at least proved that Peter hadn’t damaged him too badly by keeping him isolated from the magical world for years.

Sirius stared at him. “Can you close the door?”

“He’ll still hear,” Peter warned as he drew his wand, and heard Sirius growl the way he had when Moony hit him too hard when they were playing in animal form. But he did use his wand to swing the door shut, although he didn’t lock it as Sirius obviously would have preferred.

“I hate you so much, “ Sirius whispered, shaking with it. “You have no idea. I want to destroy you.”

“That’s not an option open to you,” Peter said, with more courage than he’d known he had. Well, in the end, this was where he’d come, and Harry’s power was behind him—the power of Harry’s fame, and how much attention the papers would pay to this if Sirius did as he’d threatened. “If you kill me now, then you’ll go back to Azkaban, maybe not even after another trial. The Ministry already feels embarrassed that they were forced to free you. Do you want to take your chances with that embarrassment if you do commit murder?”

“You’re a Death Eater!”

“It would still be murder,” Peter said. “And I haven’t been tried and found guilty, and if I was, then the Ministry would imprison me or execute me, not you.” His guts were trembling with fear, but he forced his voice to be as calm as he could. “Tell me one thing.”

“What, Wormtail?”

“Do you hate me more than you love Harry?”

Sirius flinched back and lifted one hand as if to shield his face. Peter sat there and waited. He would try to make this work as hard as he could, for Harry’s sake, and because if he couldn’t make up for what he’d done, this was a thing he could do going forwards. But Sirius would have to act less like a homicidal maniac.

“You corrupted him,” Sirius whispered. “You made him love you, and that’s wrong.”

“And what about you?” Peter snapped, fastening onto what he remembered hearing in the immediate aftermath of Sirius’s attack on him. “Did you take one thought for Harry before you went tearing after me? Was revenge more important to you, even then, than he was? You sure seem to have chosen the dead father over the son pretty consistently so far. It’s not as though you made any effort to tell anyone the truth when it came out that Harry was missing, or break out of prison to find him.”

“It’s Azkaban.”

“They didn’t know you were an Animagus, Sirius. You could have broken out. You just thought mourning your own sorrows was more important than finding Harry.”

Sirius sat there, trembling. Peter assumed some of it was hatred and rage, and some of it was guilt. That was fine. He would exploit all the guilt he could if it meant that Sirius would go along with his plan, and Harry’s, instead of spoiling it with murder.

“You still corrupted him,” Sirius said.

“If you really believe that, I’ll take Harry and tell him this didn’t work, and we’ll go where no one can find us even if they do believe that you’re telling the truth. I won’t have you decide that he’s evil and terrible before he’s even eleven years old.”

Sirius looked at him with huge, wounded eyes. Peter stared back. Yeah, he’d played a large part in the wounding, and he was the reason Sirius hadn’t got to raise Harry. But Sirius had chosen to abandon Harry for revenge before he ever went to prison, and he hadn’t done a thing to clear himself of guilt in all the years that he could have and when the Dementors hadn’t affected him as badly, so Peter was pretty comfortable saying that some of this was just stupidity that had always been part of Sirius, long before he went to prison.

“I could still tell the truth.”

“And then Harry and I will be a united front in saying that it’s so sad you weren’t able to recover, and that we hope you’ll recover comfortably in the Janus Thickey Ward.”

Sirius’s face twisted with loathing. “You’re beyond terrible, Wormtail.”

Peter shrugged. “I’m the reason that Harry knows about the magical world and didn’t spend the last seven years being abused by Muggles who left him in a cupboard without changing his nappy.”

“They wouldn’t have been that bad.”

Peter laughed at him. “Come on, Sirius, you were at that wedding too. You know how much Petunia hated magic. Why would she have changed for no reason, except that you want to believe anyone would have been better than me? Or…” He let his voice trail off, a new thought creeping up on him. “Is this because you think it was probably Dumbledore who left Harry with the Dursleys, and you don’t want to think anything that would make your heroic leader’s reputation less than godly?”

Sirius flinched. Peter smiled. Direct hit.

“He didn’t know I wasn’t guilty.”

“I do believe that,” Peter said. He thought Dumbledore used other people a lot more than Sirius did, but it was totally against the old man’s character to leave someone innocent in prison. “But he still didn’t come for you. Who was the one who chose to take on the Ministry to have you freed? Me. For Harry. I could have lied to Harry, and told him you were guilty. I could have never told the Ministry anything, and they wouldn’t have figured anything out, either. They certainly didn’t realize the records of your trial were nonexistent. You would have stayed in prison for the rest of your life if it wasn’t for me.”

Sirius sat there, visibly seething, and also turning things around and around in his brain. Peter waited. Finally, Sirius looked directly at him, and then said, “What do you want, Wormtail?”

Peter smiled.

*

It certainly wasn’t easy, having Sirius in their cottage at Dover-by-the-Sea. For one thing, there was no concealing that this had been notorious supposed mass murderer Sirius Black, and that Harry was Harry Potter. No one seemed to think that Peter was a criminal for concealing Harry’s identity, or even his own—although they thought he had been lying about being Alfred Smith rather than lying about being Peter Durant—but he got a lot of questions about whether he was sure that Sirius was innocent.

Peter nodded and promised it. And Sirius had an extra pressure to behave like a sane human being. He certainly got a lecture from Great-Aunt Helene the first time he tried to taunt one of her retired nephews who had been Sorted into Slytherin in Hogwarts for being a “slimy snake.”

Peter disapproved of that. On the one hand, it did show that in lots of ways, Sirius’s maturity had frozen when he went to Azkaban, and that was Peter’s fault.

On the other hand, there were much better insults that you could fling at someone whose House was Slytherin.

Sirius also took up more space than just the bedroom he stayed in. His new clothes sprawled everywhere, always. It wasn’t a problem to buy them, given that now Harry had access to the Potter money, but it was a problem to make Sirius clean up after himself. And Sirius had the disconcerting tendency to transform into a big black dog in the middle of arguments and run away barking.

For the most part, he and Peter lived in a brittle peace. They avoided each other as much as possible, except for dinner, which Harry always insisted they eat together. They both taught Harry magic, and they tried to keep their arguments out of his earshot. Peter only stepped into Sirius’s interactions with Harry a few times, namely when Sirius tried to tell Harry stupid things about how bad being a Parselmouth was or tried to get him to learn the Animagus transformation.

Harry could already Apparate. That was all they needed, him learning to transform right now.

And Harry laughed, and learned magic from Sirius, and played with Padfoot, and continued to learn from Peter and hug him, and went back to sleeping in his own room, and their little house glowed with happiness.

*

At least, it did until Peter opened their door one April afternoon and found Albus Dumbledore standing on his doorstep, staring at him sadly.

“Ah. Mr. Alfred Smith, wasn’t it?”

Peter nodded, because of course assuming his real identity in front of Dumbledore wasn’t an option, and said, “Is it Headmaster Dumbledore?”

“Yes.” Dumbledore sighed sadly at him. “I learned that you were guardian of Harry Potter and also living with Sirius Black. Could I come in?”

Saying no wasn’t an option, either. Peter stepped out of the way and let Dumbledore walk past, his mind whirling furiously. Currently, Sirius was a dog, asleep upstairs. Harry was somewhere on the beach with his friends. Well, that at least gave Peter a little time to seek him out.

“Would you mind taking a seat, sir?” Peter asked. “Harry is out and I’ll have to bring him back. Sirius is asleep upstairs, but he might come down when he smells you.”

“Smells…ah, yes, he is an Animagus, isn’t he.” Dumbledore sat down in the overstuffed chair that Sirius usually claimed. “Yes, please, Mr. Smith, go and fetch young Harry. And don’t bother waking Sirius up. I can wait.”

Peter smiled at him as politely as he could and shut the door. Then he walked towards the beach, using a locator spell that he always cast on Harry’s clothes in the morning. They lit up like beacons in his mind, and he broke into a jog, while going over what he would have to do to preserve as much of their mask as possible.

Cast the glamours on Harry, of course. There had been too many pictures in the papers of him with the red hair and the large scar to let them get away with not carrying those physical features in front of Dumbledore. And coach Harry to call him Uncle Alfred instead of Uncle Peter. Peter wouldn’t bother with the glamours on himself, because Dumbledore had already seen his real face—well, the slightly-changed one he wore as Peter Durant, anyway—and there hadn’t been that many photos in the paper of him anyway. Everyone had wanted to focus on Harry and Sirius, understandably.

He found Harry throwing pebbles into the water with Adrienne and Aria, all of them apparently using magic to make the little stones go further. Peter crouched down next to Harry, who immediately focused on him.

“What’s wrong?” Harry demanded.

Peter sighed. He probably shouldn’t be so reassured that Harry could sense something like that. Harry wasn’t supposed to take charge of situations. He was a child.

Then again, his intuitions seemed to land better than Peter’s, given that he had thought Harry would be grateful to be left behind with Sirius.

“Professor Dumbledore has come to see us,” Peter explained quietly. He glanced at the twins, but they were old enough, at ten, to withdraw and stand on the other side of the large boulder nearby, for all that they obviously wanted to listen. “I think that he wants to apologize to Sirius, and also make sure that you’re all right with me and Sirius.”

“He’s dangerous?”

Harry spoke it as a question. Peter sighed. He had presented Dumbledore in the stories he told Harry about Hogwarts, but only where he would naturally come into them. Peter hadn’t attempted to talk about his time in the Order of the Phoenix, and had only lightly touched on his suspicions that Dumbledore was the one who had left Harry with the Dursleys.

“He’s dangerous because he’s powerful, and he could make things unpleasant for us if we disagreed with him.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “How do we help Sirius? How do we make sure he doesn’t make things unpleasant for us?”

Gryffindor, through and fucking through, Peter decided, and patted Harry’s shoulder as he recast the illusions. The twins wouldn’t say anything about that, either, although they were certainly visible. Dover-by-the-Sea had closed ranks around the man they still thought was Peter Durant and decided that anything he had to do to hide Harry and protect him was justifiable.

“We’re going to have to distract him.”

*

Harry marched ahead of Peter into the cottage. Dumbledore turned around and smiled a little when he saw him. “Ah, Harry. My boy, I know you don’t remember me, but I have been so anxious over your safety since—”

“Were you the one who put me with the bad Muggles?”

Dumbledore blinked a little. Then he stared at Harry, and then at Peter. Peter shrugged a little and shut the door behind him. He thought that Dumbledore’s stare seemed inclined to linger on him, and after all, Dumbledore had known Peter Pettigrew well enough to see him behind Peter Durant’s glamours, but Harry reclaimed his attention.

“Did you? Did you know they would put me in a cupboard?”

Dumbledore turned to look at Harry again, and he seemed much older between one breath and the next. He sighed. “I did not, Harry. I am so sorry. I thought that your aunt would cherish the last link to her sister.”

“Well, she didn’t.” Harry folded his arms and glared at Dumbledore. “And you left Sirius in prison, too! You never came and asked him why he did it, if he really betrayed Mum and Dad. You’d want to know that, if you were his friend. Why didn’t you go and ask him?”

Dumbledore shook his head. “I did believe that he was guilty. I was—angry at the loss of your parents and the way that you yourself had become an orphan, Harry. I can only plead my own mistakes. I am sorry.”

“Say you’re sorry to Sirius, not me!”

Sirius had come down from above, wearing the cleanest robe he probably had right now and an apprehensive expression. Dumbledore turned to him, and his expression became much guiltier than it had when he’d looked at Harry. Peter narrowed his eyes.

Is that because he knew Sirius for longer and only saw Harry a few times as a baby? Or is it because he thinks that what he did to Sirius was less forgivable?

Neither possibility really made Peter all that inclined to trust the Headmaster. He moved a few steps closer to Harry and watched Sirius rub his unshaven jaw.

“I won’t say that I’m not disappointed,” Sirius finally said. He sounded as though he was picking his way across a field of slippery rocks. “I really hoped that someone would come visit me in prison and at least ask to hear my side of the story. You or Remus. But no one ever came.” He shot a hard glance at Dumbledore. “And I thought that you at least knew that we switched Secret-Keepers, Headmaster.”

Peter tensed. That was the risk to this situation that couldn’t be mitigated. If Sirius decided to throw Peter to the wolves, or rather, Dumbledore, then Peter would have to pull up stakes and run again.

But Sirius’s eyes went to him and then to Harry as if he’d heard that thought and knew what the consequences would be—namely, losing Harry. He gave a little shake of his head.

“I thought, when the news came that you were laughing and claiming it was your fault after the attack on Peter, that you had decided to switch back, or never made the switch at all, and kept the whole thing secret from me for the sake of security.” Dumbledore settled back into the couch and put a trembling hand on his beard. “Sirius, there are no words for the wrong I did you. I am so sorry.”

“And you never knew that I hadn’t had a trial?”

Dumbledore closed his eyes. “I thought, because you had freely admitted guilt, that one was not needed.”

Sirius gave a dark laugh that made Harry press a little closer to Peter. “Even Bellatrix got a trial, and she freely admitted her bloody guilt, too! When she got to Azkaban and was in a cell next to mine for a while, she told me all about it. How she stood up and proclaimed her loyalty to her Dark Lord in front of half the wizarding world.” Sirius lowered his head and closed his eyes. “No one cared enough about me.”

Dumbledore didn’t say anything else. Perhaps he knew there was no excuse for it, or none that Sirius would accept. That actually surprised Peter a little, because he had thought until now that Sirius worshiped the Headmaster and would forgive him right away.

But seven years in Azkaban would change anyone.

“Where is Remus?” Sirius abruptly demanded, and Peter started. He had thought Sirius knew already, which was why he hadn’t bothered asking Peter. Not that Peter would have known.

Dumbledore sighed. “He spends most of his time out of the country now. Those like him in magical Britain have very rights, to the shame of our community.”

“But he must have heard by now that I’m innocent!”

“Yes. I wrote to him.”

“And?”

“He replied to me.” Dumbledore sneaked a glance at Sirius, and looked away again, as if he couldn’t bother to hold Sirius’s eyes. “He said that he was so ashamed to have thought you were guilty that he couldn’t face you. And he knew that you’re living with Harry now. He didn’t want to be around Harry when…well, when the consequences of his condition caught up with him.”

“Is that because he’s a werewolf?” Harry asked. “We could build him a special room that he could be in when he transformed. Or we could buy him Wolfsbane. I have lots of money now, I could do that.”

Dumbledore stared at Harry. Sirius did the same thing, but his eyes immediately turned to Peter accusingly. Peter just rolled his own eyes in response. No, of course he wasn’t going to keep Remus’s stupid secret, when it would have made half the stories he’d told Harry about their Hogwarts days nonsense.

“That’s a very brave stance to take, Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore said, after a moment of recovery. “But I don’t think that a werewolf who doesn’t have his condition under control should live with you.” His gaze returned to Peter, critical, searching. “In fact, I am far from convinced that your current living conditions are the best choice for you at all.”

“That’s because you left me with the bad Muggles! You think I should live with them!”

That successfully distracted Dumbledore again. He smiled sadly at Harry. “I didn’t mean to leave you with people who would abuse you, Harry. But there were blood wards on that house that would protect you because your mother’s blood lived there. There is no way of replicating those wards in another place. If you returned and I put spells in place that would let me know if they hurt you—”

“So you just want to take a child away from the man who loved and raised him,” Peter said, “because you think you know better. How fascinating, Headmaster Dumbledore.”

“I already apologized for my mistakes, young man.”

Peter shook his head in amazement. Wow. He had done worse things than Dumbledore, sure, but he also hadn’t been so stupid as to think that leaving someone he purported to trust in prison and leaving a child with an abusive house of Muggles were things that he could make up for with just an apology.

“You don’t have any legal right to Harry, Headmaster,” Sirius said suddenly. “I’m the one who does. And the Ministry has confirmed Mr. Smith’s rights to Harry, as well, since they both agreed to live with me, and the Ministry thought that it would be disastrous to remove Harry from an environment where he’s been thriving.”

“I found you here. Someone else could, as well. A Death Eater.”

Harry burst into abrupt giggles. Peter glared at him. Harry glanced up at him with his eyes sparkling, and Peter did find his lips twitching.

“Harry does belong with family,” Dumbledore said, as if it was an iron law.

“And only the family you were born with counts?” Peter asked. “Tell me, Headmaster, I’ve heard rumors that you don’t get along with your brother. Would you choose to live with him over someone that you trust?”

Dumbledore gave him a confused glance. Peter thought he would deny the rumors about his not getting along with Aberforth, but he didn’t. Instead, he just let the moment hang there, and hang.

Peter supposed he was meant to fall on the floor and apologize. But he didn’t. He wasn’t playing someone who was in awe of Albus Dumbledore, after all, the way he had when he was part of the Order of the Phoenix. He was playing the part of a man who had never gone to Hogwarts and didn’t much care about Dumbledore’s reputation. He stared, and Dumbledore looked away after a moment, to Sirius.

“You and Mr. Smith could visit on the weekends and holidays,” he said.

“That’s a stupid idea,” Harry said loudly. “I’m not going back to the bad Muggles. And they don’t want me, either. Did you ask them?”

Dumbledore’s face grew pinched. “I haven’t been able to find their new house,” he admitted. “They left their old one after the publicity broke.” He glared at Peter for a moment, and then seemed to realize that trying to make Peter’s conscience troubled about that was a stupid idea, and faced Harry again. “But that only proves how much safer you would be with them, Mr. Potter. You would be in the Muggle world where no one could find you easily, not even me.”

“You just care about me being safe,” Harry said. “You don’t care if I’m happy.”

Peter felt his eyes widen. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Lily had said something once about out of the mouths of babes, and well, there it was.

Dumbledore sat back in his chair. “I—Harry, you must understand that, as the Boy-Who-Lived, and especially with the extra publicity from you freeing your godfather, you’ll be in much more danger than you were before—”

“I can Apparate, Mr. Dumbledore,” Harry said, his voice as stern as it had been the night he came to confront Peter about coming back. “I’ll Apparate away from a Death Eater that tries to grab me. And I’ll Apparate back to Uncle Alfred and Uncle Sirius if you take me away from them. I’ll just go. You can’t stop me.”

Peter didn’t laugh hysterically, but it was really close. He had seen Dumbledore angry, and interested, and guilty, and grieving, and happy, and stern, but he had never seen him flummoxed before.

“That shouldn’t be possible, at your age,” Dumbledore finally said.

Harry shrugged a little, patently not interested in that idea. “It is, though. So you have to leave me with Uncle Sirius and Uncle Alfred.”

“Do you really hate your relatives so much, Harry?” Dumbledore’s voice was soft and grieved.

Sirius had a complicated expression on his face. Peter eyed him sideways and thought he might know why Dumbledore was failing to convince Sirius. After all, Sirius had done exactly as Harry was threatening and run away from his abusive family.

“They put me in a cupboard. I don’t like them. If you want me to go back to them, I don’t like you.”

Dumbledore plainly didn’t know what to do about that. He glanced back and forth between all of them for a while, and then said, “But the blood wards around your family’s home would protect you as no other wards can.”

“That’s not true,” Sirius said, speaking in a hoarse voice that made Dumbledore jump. “There are other wards that would do that, if Alfred and I took oaths that were binding enough. Oaths to always put Harry first, and protect him. We shouldn’t have any trouble doing that. Not when Harry is our first priority all the time anyway.”

He stared at Peter challengingly. Peter stared back, his head buzzing.

An oath like that would set up wards that were binding, yes, and would make his primary allegiance to Harry. Which meant he could never again take up the mantle of a Death Eater. He could never return to the Dark Lord’s side, even if he had considered it.

Of course, Peter had known that since he’d realized that there was no excuse the Dark Lord would accept for Peter raising Harry instead of killing him.

But it was different to know that he would be so committed.

Sirius’s lips were turning up in a little smirk, and Peter knew that this was his delayed revenge. And Harry was looking up at Peter in a way that said he was all-too-pleased with the situation and didn’t see it as revenge at all.

But…

Everything was all settled already, Peter reminded himself. It wasn’t a trap. It was a chance to make sure that Dumbledore stopped trying to take Harry back to the Dursleys and a chance to protect Harry.

And to wipe that smug smirk off Sirius’s face.

Peter drew his wand, and Sirius’s jaw sagged slightly before he hastily grabbed for the ebony wand that they’d gone to purchase in Ollivander’s a few months before. He held it up and locked eyes with Peter.

“I don’t know the exact mechanism of making a binding oath like the one you mentioned,” Peter said. “Can you guide me through it, Sirius?”

“Sure,” Sirius said, visibly about to use his real name, and biting it back only just in time. He never looked away from Peter.

“Gentlemen, I’m not sure—”

Ignoring Dumbledore, Sirius lowered his wand and swept in a huge circle. Peter imitated his movements, and didn’t look away from his old friend.

“I swear on my honor, on my name, on the magic that flows through me, that my primary allegiance is with Harry Potter, with no swerving, no turning, and that I will protect him with body and breath and life and magic until all of these cease.”

Peter repeated what Sirius had said, words only a few beats behind, and felt the heavy magic shift in him until it fell like a cascade on his mind. He shuddered and only just kept from kneeling. This felt—

It felt like the moment the Dark Lord had bound him with the mark, except no visible sign of what he’d sworn to appeared on his skin.

It was worth it, to see Sirius staring at him as if he’d had some kind of revelation, and Dumbledore flummoxed again.

And Harry beaming at him as if he was the center of the kid’s entire universe.

Yeah, Peter thought as he tugged a strand of that currently bright red hair, I’m committed now.

Chapter Text

“I still don’t think this is the best plan we could have possibly come up with.”

Peter sighed and turned away from the mirror where he’d been practicing his new glamour, in case he had to take human form around someone who knew Alfred Smith, Peter Durant, or Peter Pettigrew. “Well, you know that we can’t use you. Your Animagus form is too well-known now. And this is what Harry wants.”

Sirius scowled and stomped out of Peter’s bedroom. He and Harry were a lot alike sometimes, Peter thought, as he added another glamour that altered the shape of his nose. Although he often thought it was Sirius picking things up from Harry instead of the other way around.

“Uncle Sirius, where’s Sasha?”

Peter snorted. They’d acted carefully in the last few years to make sure that word of Harry’s Parselmouth abilities filtered out gradually, and controlled the messaging so that by now, when Harry was ready to go to Hogwarts, most people either thought of him as the one good exception to evil Parselmouths or thought it a pity that he shared an ability in common with his parents’ murderer, poor boy.

It had been necessary because they’d had just one conversation about how Harry would have to leave Sasha behind when he went to Hogwarts, and Peter never wanted to go through that again. He shuddered at the mere memory, and examined the shape of his nose in the mirror again.

His reflection abruptly gained a rat on his shoulder. Peter snorted and reached up to stroke the dark fur of the rat Harry called Coal, Pearl and Cloud’s grandson, as far as Peter could tell. He had accepted that rats were always going to be part of their lives, no matter how much Sirius complained.

And he had accepted that he was the one drawing them. Sirius had laughed himself sick the first time Peter had told him he didn’t know why the rats were appearing.

“But they never did in the past!” Peter had argued.

“And you never needed companionship as badly as you did when you were raising Harry, right? Before, you had—us.”

Sirius’s face had darkened, and he’d had to leave the room for a while. Peter didn’t blame him. Some things were unforgivable.

Coal touched his nose to Peter’s cheek, and Peter cupped his hand around the rat’s back briefly. Then he shooed Coal away, and went to pack his own clothes. He wouldn’t need them that often, but he would sometimes.

He packed some Chocolate Frogs and the like, too. Yes, he would mostly be living off scraps and leftovers, but there was no reason that he had to suffer for lack of his favorite foods.

Finally, everything was ready. Peter nodded to his reflection and stepped out of his bedroom. Harry beamed at him from the bottom of the stairs. He wore the illusions that by now were second nature to all of them when Harry was going to spend time out of the house, the red hair and the enlarged scar.

Sirius had worried what it would do to Harry to never wear his real face in public, but although Peter had offered Harry the choice, Harry had simply thought it was hilarious to go about in disguise. Sometimes Peter felt as if all the Marauder spirit that must have drained into the ether when James had died was concentrated in his son.

He still didn’t think about that.

Peter clattered briskly down the stairs, ignoring the sound of small scampering feet behind him, smiling at Harry. “Did you find Sasha?”

“Yes, I found her. I can’t wait to introduce everyone at Hogwarts to her.”

Peter laughed a little. “Well, Adrienne and Aria will know her already, and so will Etienne.” The twins had gone to Hogwarts two years ago, and Harry’s other friend would be going there with him this one. “But yes, I imagine there are some other people who will be surprised.”

Harry grinned. Then he held open one pocket of his robe.

Peter glanced back at Sirius, who nodded once to him, his face darkened with some memory that Peter wasn’t going to try to guess at. It didn’t matter. The nod said, I agree to this mad plan all of us made. The nod said, Take care of him.

Peter transformed and jumped onto Harry’s leg, then scrambled up until he reached Harry’s robe pocket. It had been made longer and deeper than usual on purpose. Peter tipped over the top and dropped into the bottom, curling up with his tail draped over his nose.

He heard a light scamper and was sure that Coal, and probably a few other rats, had made their way into Harry’s other robe pockets. Peter twitched his nose. They had considered just sending the other rats and Sasha with Harry, and trusting them to protect the boy.

But, in the end, there were too many chances that something could still go wrong, and the animals couldn’t report to them in time. None of them could use a Floo, after all, and Hogwarts was too far away for them to return rapidly.

They would never leave Harry unguarded.

“Let’s go, Uncle Sirius!” Harry shouted. From the sound of it, he had his trunk with him, and Peter felt Harry’s balance shift as Sasha climbed and coiled around his shoulders. From the cage in a corner of the room came a soft hoot. Harry had finally got his long-delayed wish and found a snowy owl—female, of course—who he’d managed to train not to eat rats. Her name was Hedwig, and Peter trusted her as far as he could, but he was glad that she was going to spend most of her time in the Owlery, far enough away from Gryffindor Tower that he wouldn’t have to worry about her talons.

“Yes, pup. Let’s go.”

Sirius seized Harry’s hand, and they walked outside the cottage to Apparate. Peter dug his claws deep into the cloth of Harry’s pocket and hung on. It would be less disconcerting inside his pocket, but Apparition always felt weird when he was an animal.

And sure enough, the world danced and spun dizzily around them, and then settled back into place. Peter twitched his ears towards the sounds of owls, shrieks, bumping trunks, the whistling train, and what sounded like at least six hundred sets of parents fussing over their children. Sirius wasn’t an exception.

“You owl me right away with what House you got into, you hear me? And you be careful. And make sure that you don’t eat too many sweets at the feast tonight, you know how they upset your stomach. And let me know if any children of Death Eaters are bothering you. Or Snape. Or Dumbledore. And if anyone tries to ask you questions about where you were in the last few years, you tell them…”

Peter tuned Sirius out. They had contingency plans for all these things already, and if something went wrong, well, that was why he was there.

Since they had plenty of time before the train left, and Sirius seemed to be going on and on, Peter clambered his way to the top of the pocket to look out. He hung there, watching as a family that must be the Notts strutted past, and then he caught a glimpse of blond hair and tilted his head to more fully take in Lucius Malfoy.

Ah. I forgot that he would have a son Harry’s age coming to the school.

Peter twitched his tail and smoothed his fur with one paw. Lucius Malfoy need not be a problem, and the younger Malfoy needn’t, either. With Harry being Sorted into Gryffindor, it wasn’t as though the boy would bother him much. Malfoy junior—Draco, perhaps?—would be in a different House and held at bay by Harry’s cleverness, fame, and anything Peter needed to do to intervene on his behalf.

Sirius finally finished, and hugged Harry, and stared sternly down at Peter, who looked up at him as a whirl of grey and black from this angle. “You, behave yourself.”

Peter only twitched his nose and did nothing else. Sirius would have been better advised to give that warning to Harry, as far as he was concerned.

*

Peter remained ensconced in Harry’s pocket as he walked through the train, attracting interest and mutters but no direct approaches because of the way that Sasha was coiled around his shoulders. He listened as another boy came into the compartment Harry and Etienne had chosen, and peered out to see his red hair when he introduced himself.

Weasley would probably be fine. His parents had been part of the Order of the Phoenix, and all Gryffindors, as far as Peter knew.

“Wow, you get an owl and a snake?” Ron’s voice shook a little when he named the snake, but he didn’t back down. Not bad courage himself, Peter thought. “That’s brill. I don’t have any pets.”

“An owl and a snake and a rat!” Harry abruptly plunged his hand into his pocket and dragged Peter out. Peter did his best to dangle and appear non-threatening. “His name’s Squeakers.”

Peter squeaked indignantly, since that was certainly not the name he and Harry had agreed on when they began this.

“See? He squeaks!” Harry beamed at Ron and plopped Peter back in his pocket, while Etienne muffled his laughter. Peter tumbled nose-over-tail for a second and then hauled himself towards the top of the pocket where he could watch the goings-on.

“Are you going to get away with that?” Ron looked torn between worried and envious. “The rules said that we could bring a cat or an owl or a toad.”

Harry shrugged, grinning. “Sasha wouldn’t have agreed to stay behind, and I have to have an owl so that I can communicate with my uncles, and I’ve had old Squeakers forever. He would have pined away if he’d been left at home.”

Peter was going to have words with Harry later.

*

Being back at Hogwarts would have blinded his eyes with tears if he was in human form. He hadn’t anticipated how the memories of James and Lily would practically press against his skin while he was here, and how he would glance over once at the table decorated in red and gold and see them as if they were sitting there.

Peter was glad he was in rat form.

Sasha and Hedwig had been taken off the train by house-elves, and Harry’s new friend Ron Weasley was so nervous about his Sorting that he probably thought “Squeakers” had as well. But there was no way that Harry would leave Peter behind. He kept one hand cupped casually down by his side and ignored the people staring at him. He’d had to get used to it in Diagon Alley when they started shopping openly there after Sirius’s trial.

Peter twitched a whisker as he heard people muttering and whispering around them. One of them was the bushy-haired girl who had visited Harry and Ron in the train compartment and been a little flustered when she discovered that Harry already knew all about the books he appeared in. The other was Lucius’s spawn, who had swaggered in, called Harry’s scar ugly and his blood dirty, and been driven away when Harry asked what the Dark Mark on his father’s arm looked like.

Friends. Enemies. Alliances. But not as deep as Peter was thinking about, because they were all still eleven, and Harry didn’t know everything no matter what he liked to think. This was one reason he was here, to look for threats that Harry didn’t recognize.

Peter wriggled a little as the Sorting Hat finished its song. He hoped the Sorting didn’t stretch on forever. He would be glad to be at the table where there was a chance of food, although Harry had given him a few sweets and a corner of one of Ron’s sandwiches on the train.

And then, back to Gryffindor Tower. That was going to be strange, Peter had to admit, and put the thought out of his head.

“Granger, Hermione!”

The bushy-haired girl went to Gryffindor, which made Ron groan. Peter cleaned his paw thoughtfully, and wondered if he should intervene there. The girl seemed smart in a harder, brighter way than Lily, and might make a good friend.

“Malfoy, Draco!” went straight to Slytherin because of course he did. Peter twisted to look down the tables as best he could, and saw the boy smirking as he sat. He probably wasn’t Lucius in miniature, but at the moment, he seemed a lot like him.

“Potter, Harry!”

Because he was still a Marauder, Peter did his best to arrange himself so that he could watch Severus Snape’s face as Harry bounded forwards, clinging to the pocket’s side as it slung him around with the bouncing. The man was staring with wide eyes, his face paler than normal, and then he abruptly seized his goblet of water and took a long drink.

Was it just the sight of Harry, or was it the sight of Harry with red hair? The man had been friends with Lily Evans, after all.

“SLYTHERIN!”

Peter squeaked in shock, although that was covered by Harry’s exuberant shout and the stunned cries from some people at all the tables. What? Harry was the epitome of courage and brashness and getting his own way! There hadn’t even been a discussion before the Hat Sorted him into Slytherin?

Harry didn’t seem dismayed at all, even with the way that people were whispering. He was grinning as he hurried over to the Slytherin table and sat down across from Malfoy’s son.

Peter stuck his head out and stared up, but Harry didn’t glance at him. He held out his right hand to Malfoy and his left hand to the dark-haired witch seated next to him, who Peter thought was somebody Parkinson. “Hi, I’m Harry Potter. I wanted to formally introduce myself, since I didn’t get to earlier.”

Neither child took Harry’s hand. Parkinson stared at him. Malfoy said, “After what you said earlier?”

“You said I had dirty blood and was associating with riffraff. It was a fair strike, Malfoy. Do you want me to say something else right now?”

Malfoy seemed to think about it, and then reached out and shook Harry’s hand. Parkinson did the same after another moment of staring. Harry leaned back on the bench and began to talk about everything from how much he was looking forward to Hogwarts, to the classes that he planned to do the best in.

Malfoy licked his lips and responded in kind, even though he sounded a little dazed to be around someone who talked with as much force and speed as Harry. Peter twisted about just in time to see Etienne, and then Ron Weasley, Sorted into Gryffindor. Weasley blinked at Harry’s back and frowned a little, but in the end, sat down at the Gryffindor table, with a space between him and Granger, and didn’t make a fuss.

Peter sighed. The Gryffindor table, where I really did think we were going to be.

Then he gave into his curiosity, and propped himself on the side of Harry’s robe nearest the professors’ table so that he could look at certain expressions there. Snape wore one of stunned horror that had probably already survived on his face longer than most emotions did. And Dumbledore looked flummoxed again.

Peter was never going to get tired of that look.

*

Being in Slytherin was…different. The common room and the bedrooms alike were cool, both in coloring and in temperature. Peter spent a lot of time near the fire or tucked into the deepest pockets of Harry’s robe.

But he also spent a lot of it roaming around, because now that Harry was in a House that might be full of Death Eaters’ children, Peter had to be especially vigilant. Sirius, after they’d arranged for Peter to sneak to the edge of Hogwarts grounds, transform, and Apparate back to Dover-by-the-Sea for a few hours so that Sirius could get roaring drunk on Firewhisky and Peter could make sure he didn’t do anything stupid, had agreed with him on that.

Harry himself seemed delighted. He frightened people by hissing at Sasha in Parseltongue, and by having a small entourage of rats sleeping on his pillow, and by hinting darkly that he knew all sorts of terrible spells courtesy of his Uncle Sirius the perhaps-not-entirely-innocent mass murderer. Peter had bitten him for that a few times, but Harry thought it was a small price to pay.

The Malfoy boy had obviously expected to be the most important person in his new House, and kept staring at Harry with a counterpart of Dumbledore’s flummoxed look. Blaise Zabini, the one Slytherin Sorted after Harry, had decided it all fell on the side of entertaining and laughed more often than Peter had known Slytherins could. Crabbe and Goyle apparently had no more opinions about Harry than they had about anything that wasn’t food. And Theodore Nott avoided Harry as much as possible. Apparently, he was frightened of both rats and snakes.

Ron Weasley appeared to spend most of his time as befuddled with Malfoy, but he sat next to Harry and Etienne in their shared classes and said loudly that he thought of Harry as an honorary Gryffindor. Harry told him sadly that he had begged the Hat for Gryffindor, but it had put him in Slytherin right away, which was mean of the Hat. Ron had agreed, and he and Harry were hatching a plan to modernize the Sorting because, clearly, it ignored all the students’ dearest wishes. Etienne, who knew Harry better, contributed only sarcastic suggestions and appeared to acquaint his eyes with the ceiling on most occasions.

Peter had tried to talk to Harry about the “Squeakers” name, but Harry had smiled at him guilelessly and explained how such a harmless name would make everyone think Peter was harmless, too, and certainly no one would suspect he was a transformed Animagus, in case anyone was inclined to suspect such a thing.

Peter had given up in something that was not despair, but would be very soon.

And then there was Snape.

*

“I think that’s called the Draught of Living Death, sir.”

Snape was glaring at Harry in a way that held outright hatred, none of the surprise that it had at the Sorting Feast. Peter, curled up in a special pocket that Sirius had charmed near Harry’s shoulder, wished he was in a form where it would be easy to prank the git.

Snape cleared his throat and said, “Where would you look if I asked you to find me a bezoar?”

“Probably in Uncle Sirius’s cabinets,” Harry said. “He’s always taking it because he thinks it can cure—”

“In the stomach of a goat,” Snape interrupted with a long sneer that seemed to start on one side of his head and wind up on the front.

“Well, in its original form,” Harry conceded. “But it would be cleaner to use one that’s already been taken out of the goat’s stomach and used at least once, sir.”

Snape gave Harry a long, steady look of utter loathing. Peter knew that he probably wanted to take points, but also knew from the time they’d spent around the other young Slytherins that Snape had a habit of never taking them from his own House. Peter thought for a moment that Snape would turn away and give up the baiting as a bad job.

But the years hadn’t taught Snivellus to be that mature.

“Did you know,” Snape said abruptly, in a tone that made even Hermione Granger’s hand on the Gryffindor side of the room go down, “that your father was a bully? That there were reports he had a used a love potion on your mother? That he bragged constantly about his wealth and position in front of his peers at Hogwarts?”

Harry blinked and stared at him. Peter tensed. He had no idea what would happen next. From the confused murmurs around the room, even other Slytherins were surprised that Snape had stooped this low.

“He loved me enough to die for me.” Harry’s voice was uncertain.

“He probably came back home just in time from visiting some other witch to do so,” Snape said. “I think, by then, that your mother had begun to bore him.” His eyes were burning with vicious brightness. “Did you ever know that, Mr. Potter? Did anyone tell you that you are not special, but the son of a spoiled bully?”

Harry blinked again and said nothing. Peter stared at Snape and wished that his Animagus form was something like a basilisk that could kill with a look. How dare he. No child would know how to respond to this kind of targeted and open hatred from a teacher.

“Nothing to say, Mr. Potter?” Snape peered at him for a long moment, then snorted and turned away. “The first potion you will be brewing…”

Harry said nothing, but he put a trembling hand down near his shoulder. Peter nuzzled Harry’s arm through the cloth of the pocket.

And began planning horrible revenge on Severus Snape.

*

“Why did he say something like that?”

“I honestly think that Harry’s Sorting must have driven him a certain kind of insane.” Peter leaned back and stretched out one leg and then another. He enjoyed being with Harry, he really did, and his Animagus form was more comfortable the longer he stayed in it, but he had to work his human muscles back into usability whenever he returned to Dover-by-the-Sea. “He won’t take points from his own House, and he doesn’t openly give detentions to many of them, either, from what I’ve heard. Harry looks more like Lily with the illusions on his hair. Harry doesn’t cower in front of him or defer to Slytherins the way Snape probably hoped he would, and he has friends who are in Gryffindor. Harry’s a Parselmouth, and some of the older Slytherins like that and defer to him instead. Snape can’t get revenge many other ways, so he went mad and attacked him in the classroom.”

“Should we complain to Albus?”

Peter rolled over on the floor and looked Sirius dead in the eye. “You don’t think that’ll really do anything.”

“No.” Sirius gulped from his cup of Firewhisky. Peter kept a careful eye on him. Sirius wasn’t an alcoholic, exactly, but he drank a lot when he was upset, and the last thing they needed was him deciding that it was a good idea to take his wand out and practice curses. “But I don’t know what else to do. Encouraging Harry to stand up to Snape will probably only make it worse. And Harry pranking Snape might really make him hurt Harry.”

“We have to humiliate him,” Peter said. “Harry can’t prank him, but I can.”

Sirius blinked at him. “But how? I bet he has wards and safeguards over anything that really matters to him.”

“I wasn’t thinking of trying to destroy an object, exactly,” Peter said, although he would have been tempted if he’d known for sure that Snape had a picture of Lily or something like that among his things. “But he values his reputation as a brewer. He’s able to intimidate students by acting like an expert and berating them for not doing ‘simple’ things that he knows how to do. So we attack his potions.”

“How?” Sirius demanded, vibrating with alertness. He’d set aside the mug of Firewhisky, Peter was pleased to note.

Peter smiled. “Leave that to me.”

*

Sure enough, the only rodent-oriented wards Snape had were on his Potions ingredient cupboards and were completely dedicated to making sure that no rat or mouse gnawed on them or tried to make nests among them. Peter had no intention of that, so he slipped easily under the door of Snape’s lab and waited quietly in the shadows under a table.

Snape was brewing, his face serene in a way Peter had never expected it to be. He cracked a glass vial in half and dumped what smelled like doxy eggs into the cauldron with a faint splash, took out a glass stirring rod, and swirled it a few times, his head cocked to the side as if listening. Then he nodded, turned, and walked back towards the storage cupboard.

Now.

Peter’s heart thumped as he raced towards the cauldron, but it was the good kind of risky, the kind he used to feel when he was in the company of his three friends and pulling the biggest Marauder prank ever. He leaped from the floor to the edge of a low table that contained some of Snape’s ingredients, from the edge of the table to a slightly higher base on which the cauldron would probably go when the potion was finished, and from the base to the lip of the cauldron.

He spun around and concentrated, while his ears twitched wildly in time to the sounds of Snape rummaging in the supplies.

And, carefully, he widdled in Snape’s potion.

When he heard Snape coming back, Peter leaped down and ran like a racing broom for the door. He heard a loud burping sound and smelled what might have been a dozen rotten eggs exploding of their rottenness all at once. He heard Snape’s roar, next.

And then he ducked underneath the door, and so avoided the stinking flood of yellow sludge that rolled out of the cauldron.

*

“I know it was Potter! I know it was him!”

Dumbledore’s sigh was faint, but there. Peter, tucked innocently into the front pocket of Harry’s robes while Sasha was tucked around his shoulders, watched as Snape paced wildly back and forth, stabbing his finger in Harry’s direction. Harry was seated in the chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk, watching Snape with wide eyes.

Snape wore long sleeves and high boots and thick robes, but unless he decided to wear a mask the way he had in the Death Eater days, he couldn’t hide his face. And the skin of his face was as yellow as if he had jaundice. He also stank of rotten eggs. The potion had sunk into his pores, which Peter hadn’t anticipated but thought was wonderful.

“Severus, you were brewing late at night, after curfew,” Dumbledore said in a reasonable voice. “There are several witnesses to the fact that Mr. Potter was tucked in his bed at the time.”

“He’s exactly like his father! His fucking father, who—”

“Severus.” Dumbledore’s voice was low, but the throb of power through the room made Peter want to gasp. “I will ask that you watch your language in front of young students.”

Snape paused, struggling with obvious fury. Then he ground his teeth and said, “I apologize, Headmaster. But I know it was him! Ask him.”

Peter wrapped his tail around his haunches. He was looking forward to this. No doubt Snape had wanted to try and force Harry to lie in front of the Headmaster, who was a powerful Legilimens and would be able to sense the deception.

“Harry, my boy,” Dumbledore said, turning to look at Harry, “did you put something in Professor Snape’s potion that disrupted it?”

“No, Headmaster.”

Peter wished he could snicker as he watched the expression on Snape’s face. All he could really do was vibrate in Harry’s pocket. Harry reached down and touched his head with one finger.

“Did you ask someone else to do it for you?” Dumbledore asked, his eyebrows rising a little. “Or did you trick Professor Snape into doing it himself, somehow?” He ignored the way Snape hissed in outrage.

A good thing, Peter thought. If Dumbledore hadn’t asked the question, Snape would have simply demanded he ask it a minute later anyway.

“No, sir. Neither.”

“Well, he sounds to me like he’s telling the truth,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully, glancing at Snape. “And as I said, we do have the testimony of his roommates that he was sleeping at the time your potion was disrupted, Severus. Do you have any evidence of his invovlement other than Mr. Potter’s growing up with someone who did play pranks on you when you were both in school?”

Snape’s nostrils flared, but Harry broke in before he could answer. “Sir, I wanted to ask you something. I knew Uncle Sirius played pranks on Professor Snape, and I’m awfully sorry about that. But did my father slip my mother a love potion?”

“What?” Dumbledore was yet again wearing his flummoxed look, which Peter thought he should probably adopt permanently. It would save time.

“Because that’s what Professor Snape said in my first Potions class. And that there were all sorts of rumors about it.” Harry’s face was solemn. “I just wanted to ask and see what you thought about it. If there was any truth to the rumors at all.”

“No, there were no rumors or truth to that effect.” Dumbledore was staring at Snape as if he had never seen him before. “Thank you, Mr. Potter. You may go. Severus, if you would stay.”

Harry nodded, petted Sasha on the head and hissed something to her in Parseltongue, and strolled out of the room with an innocent air. As soon as they were out of the moving staircase and well on the way to the Slytherin common room, he laughed aloud.

Then he took Peter out of his pocket and petted him. Peter leaned against his palm and rubbed his nose against Harry’s petting fingers.

“You’re the best, Squeakers,” Harry whispered.

And Sirius said almost the same thing when Peter Apparated back home to tell him, only with a lot more laughter and insults thrown in Snape’s direction.

Now if only Sirius didn’t also think “Squeakers” was hilarious, and superior to “Wormtail,” and call Peter that all the fucking time.

Chapter Text

“We have to go find her, Ron!”

Peter clung grimly to Harry’s shoulder as they ran away from the Halloween feast, crouching down and whipping his tail around Harry’s neck when they turned a tight corner. For once, Sasha wasn’t with them.

And of all the times that a venomous snake would be useful…

Peter had hoped that Harry and Ron would get closer to Hermione Granger, who was smart enough to not always be fooled by Harry’s wide eyes and faux-innocent air, and also reminded him of Lily. But he hadn’t anticipated that a wild run through the school to find the girl before the troll (the troll) found her would be the result.

“Hermione!”

They’d arrived at the door of what was evidently the right bathroom; Peter hadn’t listened much when Etienne had first told Harry the Gryffindor gossip. “Hermione?” Harry called, opening the door. “Are you in there?”

There was a loud sniffle, and Peter’s nose twitched as he picked up the scents of water and Hermione. “Yes,” she said, after a long moment. “Why did you come?” She opened a cubicle door and poked her head at, staring at Ron rather than Harry.

Ron flushed red with what Peter hoped was shame and stayed silent, but Harry shook his head a little. “Because we heard that you were crying in a bathroom, and that’s no way to spend Halloween,” he said. “Come on and come to the feast. You need to keep up your strength with some pumpkin pasties, don’t you?”

Hermione gave something that might have been a sniffle and might have been a giggle and came out of the cubicle. “My parents are dentists,” she said. “And I can’t imagine that magical sweets are much better for your teeth.”

Harry laughed and answered, but Peter’s attention had abruptly been distracted. An air current had carried a trace of a foul smell to him that he recognized at once, and he squeaked in alarm.

Mountain troll.

Harry couldn’t speak with rats the way he could with snakes, but he was familiar enough with their behavior to know what it meant when Peter started trembling next to his ear, and there was really only one thing in the school right now that would have caused Peter to do that. “Time to go!” he announced. “I think the troll’s coming.”

“The troll?”

Hermione sounded as if she was going to demand an explanation from them which might take a lot of time, but Ron just said quickly, “Yeah, a troll’s loose in the school, we came to save you and make sure you didn’t get caught by it, now come on!”

For once, Hermione listened to something that wasn’t a lecture. She ran towards them, and they came out of the bathroom and around the corner just in time for the troll to come around the other one, its steps making the walls shake, swinging a huge club.

Peter felt as if he was going to just fall off Harry’s shoulder, dead of fear. He was trembling, and knew that in some distant part of himself, but he also felt frozen. He stared at the troll, a bigger and more fearsome creature than the Marauders had ever taken on, and his vision flickered.

But Harry had drawn his wand, and so had Ron and Hermione, even though they also had wide eyes and hopeless faces. And despite the fact that Harry knew more spells than the average first-year, he didn’t know any that would harm the average troll. Peter should know.

He could only think of one plan. He whipped his tail back and forth against Harry’s neck, and when Harry jerked around to stare at him, Peter flipped his right forepaw up in the gesture for the spell they’d been studying in class that day, the Levitation Charm.

Harry, praise be, understood.

“Wingardium Leviosa!” he yelled, aiming his wand at Peter. Peter felt his paws leave Harry’s shoulder, and scrabbled at the air for a second in pure, instinctive reaction before he reminded himself that Harry had more control over his magic than most people.

“What are you doing, Harry?” Hermione yelled.

“Mate?” Ron edged a step closer as if he thought he could protect Harry from his own stupidity.

Harry was staring at Peter. Peter turned and looked at his target as hard as he could. Harry followed his line of sight and broke into a bright grin that Peter was going to punish him for—did the wretched child have no idea of when it was appropriate to do that and when it wasn’t?—before he flicked his wand and sent Peter hurtling towards his target.

Peter could feel the push of uncoordinated magic behind the spell and knew that he was lucky he was on the right path. But then he had no time to worry about that, because something far bigger and smellier than he had thought it would be was right in front of him. Peter clamped his teeth down and hung on.

It took a moment for the message to penetrate to the troll’s brain that something was biting its genitals. Then it dropped its club and howled and tried to clap its hands to its groin area and crush the menace.

Peter dropped before then, trusting his small size to let him survive the fall without much more than a bruise and shaking, and ran for his life.

The children were running behind him. At one point a hand closed over Peter, and he nearly bit it before he realized it was Harry. He let himself be picked up and shoved into Harry’s pocket, and then they were around the corner and gone.

Peter spent a lot of the night, once they were free from the interrogation of the stunned professors, being petted by Harry and fed pumpkin pasties. But he spent a lot more frantically drinking water to try and get the moldy taste out of his mouth.

*

“I want to hear the story of you biting the troll’s cock again!”

Peter gave Sirius a long, steady stare. “Can you not use that word in front of Harry, please?” he hissed, and glanced at their kid, who was sprawled in the chair by the fire and chatting to Sasha in Parseltongue. He was surrounded by the remnants of patterned paper from over two dozen Christmas gifts, although in fairness to Peter and Sirius, they had only been responsible for about half of those.

“Harry knows that and lots of other words.” Sirius waved an expansive hand and grinned at Harry. “Don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, Uncle Sirius.” Harry just winked at Peter when Peter looked steadily at him, and sat up. “I can tell you all about it. First, Ron told Hermione that she was a nightmare.” Harry frowned a little. “He promised not to do that again, and he hasn’t, but they do argue a lot.”

“Not that! Get to the good part!”

Peter sighed and stood up, shaking his head. He would just go to the kitchen and get another plate of cheese, biscuits, and other treats, since someone had to keep an eye on them and he preferred it when Sirius had something to eat. Drinking Firewhisky on an empty stomach was a bad idea.

He was just placing the tray on the counter and reaching for the cabinet that held the cheese—in front of the interested gaze of several rats—when something brushed against the wards.

Sirius growled from the drawing room at the same moment. Peter leaned around the counter and saw that Sirius had transformed into a dog, still his instinctive response to danger. His head was up, eyebrows and nostrils both wrinkled.

“Uncle Peter? What is it?”

Peter came back out and put an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Something brushed against the wards, but it isn’t trying to break through. That probably means that it’s an owl from someone who we have specific protections up against.”

“Is it a Death Eater?”

Harry glanced sideways at Peter’s left arm as he said it, and Peter held in his sigh. He wished Harry wouldn’t think it was his role to protect Peter from Death Eaters who would be angry about him betraying the Dark Lord, of all the fool things. They’d had a few conversations about that, concerning Malfoy.

“No, I don’t think so,” Peter said quietly. “The wards would respond a lot more strongly if it was.” He listened, but there wasn’t a continuing sense of any intruder. Perhaps the owl had left whatever it had brought and flown away. “Stay here.”

He stepped out of the house with his wand lifted, and Harry stayed where he was. At least he knew when to listen, although it might only be because he thought he would distract Peter when he needed to fight someone instead of because he actually valued his own safety.

A package was lying in the shallow slush where the wards ended. Peter cast all the detection spells he could think of on it, and then turned and called for Sirius. He could have transformed to scent the thing himself, but a dog’s nose was more sensitive than his. And the package was so slim and small that Peter really didn’t know what it could be.

Sirius trotted out of the house, growling, and came up to the package with his nose lowered, nostrils already flaring. Then he abruptly uttered an excited whine and circled the package with his tail wagging.

“Sirius?”

Sirius jumped and came down with his front paws on the package, tearing open the soft silvery wrapping. Peter hissed, but Sirius went on digging and tearing, and then something Peter had thought he would never see again spilled into the light from his wand.

Peter just stared. Yes, that soft fabric that was making some of the grass vanish was James’s Invisibility Cloak.

“Uncle Peter? Uncle Sirius?”

Overconfident as hell, Peter thought, spinning around and glaring at Harry. “Harry. Go back in the house. I told you to wait there!”

“But Sirius came running out here, so it was probably actually more dangerous in the house without anyone to protect me,” Harry said, widening big eyes.

“Except Sasha and the rats and your own wand. Back.”

Sirius transformed in a rush and whirl of color that looked like a reverse Portkey, and all but barked at Peter. “You know who this Cloak belongs to as well as I do, Squeakers! It’s his.” He turned around and swept the Cloak from the ground before Peter could do more than fume about the name, holding it out to Harry over his arms as though presenting a platter of food. “Here. This was the Cloak your father used when he sneaked around and played all the pranks Squeakers has told you about.”

Harry’s mouth dropped open a little, and he took the Cloak with shaking, reverent hands. Peter bit his lip. On the one hand, maybe he’d done a poor job raising Harry with enough mementoes of his parents, if he reacted like this to something Janes had once owned.

On the other hand, maybe he had told the stories about them well enough, because Harry looked both awed and overwhelmed.

“I’ll wear it with pride,” Harry whispered. Then he seemed to snap back into being the cunning Slytherin in the group, and looked around with narrowed eyes. “Where did it come from? Was there anything to say who sent it?”

“There was a card,” Sirius said, and looked around in the distracted kind of daze that was more normal for him than not, since Azkaban. Peter contained his own pity and impatience by stooping down and picking the card up from the ground. He cast detection spells as he did, but only two, because he would have felt anything on the card in the first set, when it had been lying on top of the package.

The card was made of white parchment, with lacy outlines of snowflakes cut into it. Peter shrugged and held it out to Harry, who opened it and murmured, “Your father loaned this to me. It is time that you had it again. A Merry Christmas to you.” He paused. “It’s not signed.”

“It doesn’t need to be,” Sirius said shortly. “I remember now. James told me that Dumbledore had wanted to borrow the Cloak to go on an Order mission that was especially dangerous. He wouldn’t have had a chance to return it before—”

His face turned ashen, and his eyes rested on Peter. Peter stared steadily back, but then dropped his gaze. They did such a good job of tolerating each other most of the time, it would be a shame to ruin it now, and on Christmas, of all days.

“Huh. I wonder why he didn’t write his name, then?”

Sirius shrugged and seemed to snap out of his mood. “He probably wanted to seem mysterious. I suppose there’s a chance that he thought I wouldn’t remember where it came from. Or he might not have known I knew, that James told me.”

“Like I would have used it if we couldn’t be sure of where it came from,” Harry muttered. He pulled the Invisibility Cloak over himself, vanishing except for his head floating in the air, and grinned maniacally.

Peter rolled his eyes. “Stop planning all the pranks on Malfoy that I can see you planning right now.”

“Uh-huh.”

He doesn’t even bother to try and deny it, Peter thought in exasperation. He was no longer sure why he had ever thought that Harry would be a good fit for Gryffindor, although using the Cloak for pranks was a Gryffindor thing to do.

He herded Harry and Sirius back into the house, although he noticed that Sirius was watching him again. But he didn’t bring up anything, and Peter was relieved. One uncomfortable conversation was enough for a lifetime.

*

It turned out Peter had spoken too soon.

“Come on, Peter. I’ve got to talk to you.”

It was Boxing Day, and Harry was at Etienne’s house visiting. Peter swallowed and put down the book on Charms that Great-Aunt Helene had given him. Sirius stood in the door of his bedroom, staring at him.

“About what?” Peter asked. It was rare that Sirius actually used his name. Most of the time now, he called Peter “Squeakers,” and for all that Peter disliked the name, he also knew that it gave Sirius some kind of distance from—well. From past events.

“You know very well what.” Sirius lounged against the doorway for a minute, and then prowled into the bedroom with restless energy and collapsed on the stool that Peter sat on when he took his boots off. “James and Lily.”

“I can’t bring them back.”

Sirius blinked at him. “What? Of course I know that. It’s not like any magic works to ressurect the dead, and if it did, it would be some Dark shit.”

Peter saw the way Sirius stared off at a wall, and snorted quietly to himself. Yes, it would be Dark, but he could see Sirius deciding that he had no choice but to delve into necromancy, if it worked to bring the dead back to life as they had been.

Sirius turned his head and stared at him a second later. “And you’re deflecting again. We have to talk about what you did.”

Peter set his hands flat on his knees. They were trembling, but he hoped he might be able to hide some of that by holding them like he was. “What do you want me to say, Sirius? I am sorry. And I’m fully committed to protecting Harry. You know that because of the vow I made.”

Sirius winced and shut his eyes. “We have to—I can’t get over this anger with you if we don’t talk about it.”

“But what is there to talk about?” Peter heard the pleading note enter his voice. He hated it, but he was willing to cling to any spar that would get him out of this conversation. “Please, Sirius. Come on. I betrayed James and Lily. I willingly became a Death Eater. You can’t take the Dark Mark unless you’re willing. I’m a piece of shit. You hate me.”

“That last one, you’re wrong about.”

Peter stared at him. Sirius still had his eyes closed, and it occurred, belatedly, to Peter that he wasn’t the only one hiding here. But Sirius was still talking about it. It was baffling.

“But you have to hate me,” Peter said. It sounded entirely reasonable to him. “Of course you do. You hated anyone who attacked James in our schooldays. And that extended to Lily after they got married. Besides, I know that you were closest to James, and then Moony, and then me. That’s the way it worked.”

Sirius gave a shudder that seemed to go all the way to his bones. “But James and Lily aren’t here anymore,” he whispered hoarsely. “And Moony chose not to be here.”

He opened his eyes and stared bleakly at Peter. Peter froze, feeling as though he was caught in the gaze of a predator, and had to fight hard to keep from changing into a rat and fleeing.

“I have to live with things the way they are. That’s what the Healers told me.”

“You said you weren’t going back to that Mind-Healer.”

“I haven’t. I’ve exchanged letters with her sometimes, though, and without you and Harry here, I’ve had a lot of time to think.” Sirius drew a deep and painful breath. “The problem, Peter, is that I don’t know what to do with you. I could go on hating you, sure, but that doesn’t do anything.”

“It makes us both very comfortable,” Peter pointed out. “I wouldn’t count that as nothing.”

“It doesn’t make Harry comfortable.”

Peter flinched.

“And he asked me if I hated you, and said if I did, I should punch you and never be around you again, because that’s what he’d like to do with people he hates.” A flicker of a smile chased itself across Sirius’s lips. “I told him I couldn’t do that, and he asked me why. I said that I hated you, but I couldn’t do it. And he said that it didn’t sound like I hated you, it just sounded like I didn’t want to talk to you.”

Peter shook his head. Frantic fear nibbled at the edges of his consciousness like he was trapped in a cage. “You can’t forgive me, Sirius.”

“It isn’t forgiveness,” Sirius said. “It’s living with things the way they are. And the thing is, I think you’d do anything to save yourself, Peter, but you’d also do anything to save Harry. Sometime in the past ten years, you grew a conscience. And that means you have changed. You’re—” He blew out his breath. “I can’t forgive the man who betrayed James and Lily, but you’re not that man anymore. And if the past version of you is dead, then I can let that go.”

“You’ll never stop mourning James and Lily. You’ll never get over being in Azkaban for seven years.”

Sirius stared at him with a look Peter couldn’t read. “No. But James and Lily aren’t coming back, either, as we’ve already discussed. And they wouldn’t want me to do anything to make Harry unhappy, which he’ll be if I continue placing the dead above the living.

“As for Azkaban…I’m never going back there.” The way Sirius said it, with the heavy, final ring of an iron door shutting, told Peter that Sirius had plans of his own if something ever happened that came close to putting him back in prison. “And I don’t even have nightmares very often anymore, thanks to Harry. And being a dog for so many years there, and being able to change into a dog now when I have to. And you.”

“Sirius—”

“You put me in Azkaban. And you got me out of it.” Sirius tilted his head forwards so that his fringe fell over his eyes. “I can’t reconcile that contradiction, so maybe the best thing to do is stop trying. And live with it.”

“Sirius—”

“And you have to live with being accepted, Peter. I like that word better than forgiven.”

Peter just stared at him. Sirius flipped his head up so that his fringe fell out of his eyes again. He looked tense, but he wasn’t right on the verge of metamorphosis again, the way he had been for so long whenever he’d argued with Peter. Or Harry. He wasn’t turning into a dog to escape being human right now.

He wasn’t running away.

Peter shut his eyes tightly, while blood beat in his ears until he thought it might burst his eardrums.

The way I am.

Peter shuddered, and wrapped his arms around himself. Sirius stood up, and Peter relaxed a little, a very little. He probably meant to go away and leave Peter to deal with this on his own, which was honestly the way Peter preferred it.

And then Sirius did something that he’d never done since he came home more than three years before. He stepped across the distance between them and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder.

Peter stared at him. Sirius gave him the ghost of a smile, and said, “We’re still alive. We’re still Marauders.”

And he turned and walked away, and left Peter to deal with…all of that.

*

The easiest way to deal with it was to go away and leave Sirius at the house after the Christmas holiday ended and Harry and “Squeakers” returned to school. So that was what Peter did.

And anyway, Sirius never brought it up again, although sometimes he looked at Peter sidelong and nodded as if he was thinking about it. Peter was the one who had the whole stupid thing whirling in his brain.

It went on whirling there, during the nights when he lay quietly curled up on the pillow next to Harry’s head or roamed through the corridors of Hogwarts, smelling out any dangers that might be there, listening to more than one conversation people thought they were having in private. It went on whirling while Peter groomed Coal, who groomed him, and while he sat in Harry’s pocket during Potions class and watched a tight-lipped Snape who avoided Harry’s eyes.

(He still had a bit of a yellow tint to his skin).

Peter wasn’t a good person. He knew that. But somehow, good people had come to love him—in Harry’s case—and to want to stay with him—in Sirius’s.

Well, in Harry’s case, that was easy enough. Peter had raised him. He didn’t know any better. Of course he loved Peter, because by the time he learned the truth about Peter’s crimes, he was emotionally invested in him and had got used to the idea that his mum and dad were dead. It was perfectly normal emotional dissociation.

Sirius was more difficult, but Peter felt like biting his own whiskers off when he realized it. Sirius had been emotionally compromised by the Dementors. Of course he wasn’t going to react normally in any way at all. He had probably ceased to remember Lily and James’s corpses so vividly when he was no longer around the wretched soul-sucking creatures, and that meant his mind had to find a new obsession, which was Harry. And he would do anything for Harry.

Like he said, he hadn’t forgiven Peter. He had learned to tolerate him.

It had nothing to do with forgiving Peter, or with Peter being a good person. He had a Mark on his arm, and would all his life, that said he wasn’t a good person. That was the way it was.

Peter felt more at peace once he realized this, and if it wasn’t for Harry using the Invisibility Cloak to terrorize half of Slytherin (including blackmailing some older students he’d found snogging in hidden corners) and the unsettling reek of decomposition that Peter sometimes smelled on his wanderings and which seemed to have no source, he would have been entirely at peace.

*

It came down entirely to chance, really. Peter would have liked to claim he was a better strategist, but he would have had only Sirius and Harry to tell, and they would have known he was full of it.

He bounded swiftly along in the shadow of a wall one night, on his way back to the Slytherin common room. He had been to the kitchens, and that was always rewarding. The house-elves were as happy to feed students’ pets as they were the students themselves. Peter’s stomach bulged with cheese and bacon rind.

He paused abruptly, his ears flattening. There was the reek of decomposition again, and it was close.

Coming from under the door in front of him, in fact. Which happened to be the door to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

Peter felt his fur shiver. Normally, he could never smell something like that in the Defense classroom, but that was because the only thing one could smell in there was garlic. For the first time, he wondered if that might have been deliberate.

And a teacher had to have been the one who’d let the troll into the school at Halloween. A student wouldn’t have that kind of access to the wards, and wouldn’t have managed to herd the creature successfully in any case.

Peter crept to the edge of the door and flattened himself there, staring underneath it. He didn’t want to go inside when he didn’t know what was going on, but a quick look wouldn’t hurt.

Quirrell was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, his face in his hands, weeping. The turban that he normally wore all the time was unraveled at his feet in a pile of purple cloth. Peter couldn’t see the back of his head, which was facing the other way, but it stank. Like an open wound.

Peter shuddered. He thought about going closer, and then decided that he didn’t want to. There was no telling what kind of curse Quirrell was bearing, and no reason Peter could think of that he hadn’t gone to Dumbledore about it, unless the curse or the means he was using to combat it was Dark Arts.

Peter would have to keep a closer eye on him in the future, in case Quirrell hurt Harry, but he didn’t have to become involved now.

He turned to scamper away, and heard the soft, cold, sibilant voice that spoke from the back of Quirrell’s head.

A voice he knew.

Peter bolted.

*

He was halfway to the edge of the grounds before he recovered himself. He crouched and clung to the ground in the shelter of a large stone near the lake. His body throbbed with the rhythm of his heart, blazed with the need to run, and keep running, and keep going.

He’s not dead. I never should have thought he was dead. The wand was too alive and hungry.

Peter closed his eyes and gripped the earth with his claws.

Yes, the Dark Lord was alive. And he was a threat to Harry.

Peter couldn’t go away and leave Harry by himself.

Peter lay there and shook. He wanted to go. Leap and fly—he regretted bitterly for the first time in years that his Animagus form didn’t have wings—and depart and leave and be safe. The Dark Lord would kill him if he had any idea Peter was here. He would kill for knowledge of his wand. He would kill him because Peter had been the one to help Sirius, and Harry. He would kill him because Peter had been the one to come to Godric’s Hollow with him, and the Dark Lord would probably assume Peter had somehow known about the way things would work out and laid a trap.

He had to leave.

He had to stay.

He lay there, and clashing fears swung back and forth in him and raged and battled, until Peter thought his heart would probably just stop beating. That was one way out of the whole mess, anyway. One way to go.

But that would leave Harry alone.

This time, he was halfway back to the school before he was even aware that he’d made a decision.

*

Although it was difficult, Peter didn’t tell Harry. The idiot child would try to confront Quirrell, or spy on him with his Invisibility Cloak. Or, hell, walk into the Defense office after class was done and ask to see Quirrell’s Dark Mark.

(Peter was fairly sure Quirrell didn’t have one, since the man would have been a Hogwarts student during the war, but would that stop Harry from asking? No).

He told Sirius, and Sirius swore for half an hour, proposed murder plans that Peter rejected, proposed capture plans that Peter rejected with prejudice, and proposed telling Dumbledore. Peter asked how they were to reveal the information to Dumbledore when they couldn’t tell him that Squeakers was Peter, and Sirius grinned at him.

“Leave that to me,” he said, the way that Peter had when they were discussing punishing Snape. And, amazingly, Peter trusted him enough to do so.

Sirius came sauntering into the Great Hall as a dog not a week later. Harry leaped up from the Slytherin table, screaming, “Padfoot!”, and ran towards him. Sasha hissed in what sounded like displeasure on his shoulders.

Peter, with more sense than all of them, leaped out of Harry’s pocket and landed on the bench near Malfoy, startling him. But a second later, they were both too intent on watching Harry and Padfoot’s antics to care.

Sirius barked and wagged his tail, and took off in a straight line towards the professors’ table. Harry chased him, whooping with laughter. Sirius stopped, and for a minute Peter thought he was going to let Harry catch him.

He didn’t. Instead, he sprang off the floor and ran down the middle of the table, panting wildly, barking up a storm, scattering dishes in every direction with claps of his enormous paws, and generally enjoying himself in a way Peter thought he hadn’t done since Azkaban. Harry was lying on the floor in front of the table, laughing too hard to speak. Sasha was coiled on the floor in startled offense.

Sirius stopped to wag his tail at a stunned Professor McGonagall, growled at Snape, dodged the Binding Charm that Flitwick fired at him, and then sprang into Quirrell’s lap and shoved him backwards, licking his face nonstop. His scrabbling paws rose and fell, and tore the turban from Quirrell’s head.

Quirrell screamed, a long, low, seemingly endless sound that turned into a moan.

Sirius sprang backwards, mouth wrinkled in a snarl, and a second later, the reek of decay hit Peter’s nostrils. From the expressions on the faces of the other people at the table, they smelled it, too.

“I told you, Albus,” Snape hissed, his hand clenching on the edge of the table.

“What is that?” Professor McGonagall sounded on the verge of transforming herself.

“Quirinus,” Dumbledore said, rising to his feet. The expression on his face wasn’t flummoxed, but stirring towards anger, the way Peter had seen him direct towards Snape when Harry asked about the love potion. “What have you done?”

Sirius jumped to the floor, and went over to lick Harry’s face.

*

Everything moved fast after that, but it didn’t actually involve any of the three of them (or, for that matter, Sasha or Hedwig or the other rats), so Peter didn’t feel obliged to care about it.

Quirrell was Stunned by the other professors and confined. Dumbledore later told Sirius and Peter, who had transformed back to human, Apparated to the cottage, and put on his glamours as Peter Durant, that it had indeed been the Dark Lord on the back of Quirrell’s head.

“It appears Voldemort was a spirit, and Quirinus consented to possession in return for wealth and power.” Dumbledore slumped over his hearth as they spoke through the Floo, his expression old and sad, and didn’t look up at Peter’s flinch. “We attempted to capture the spirit, but it escaped.” He swallowed. “I am afraid someone will have to tell Harry.”

“We’ll do that, sir,” Sirius said, sitting bolt upright in his chair and smiling helpfully. “Since I was the one who exposed him, after all.”

“Why did you come to Hogwarts that day, Sirius? Indulge an old man’s curiosity.”

“Harry missed me and asked me to come,” Sirius said, and his smile deepened. “And honestly, I missed Hogwarts, myself. I thought I would say hello to my old professors and make myself known to the new ones.”

Dumbledore stared at him hard, but he seemed to know Sirius well enough to realize that was all he would get.

He never even thought of asking me, of course, Peter thought, as they watched the green flames for the Floo dim and vanish. I’m not a former Gryffindor or a former Order member or someone who has more than a coincidental connection to Harry, as far as he knows. I’m nobody.

Peter found himself deeply, and profoundly, grateful.

*

They told Harry at the end of the year, after he had studied for exams with Hermione’s help, learned to become a brilliant chess player with Ron’s help, spent time becoming better at Charms with Etienne’s help, and relaxed by playing an invisible ghost with Malfoy’s help.

Harry listened to the whole story, and nodded slowly. Then he said, “So Voldemort could come back any time?”

“We know he’s out there, but he’s difficult to track as a spirit.” Sirius seemed to be afraid that Harry would be upset, kneeling in front of the Apparition point at the edge of Dover-by-the-Sea and speaking to him softly. They’d told him practically the moment they Apparated back from King’s Cross. Peter stood quietly in the background and listened. “But I promise you, we’re going to do everything we can to track him down and bring him to justice. Don’t be afraid.”

Harry blinked at him. “Oh, I’m not.”

Sirius frowned. “What?”

“I have you and Uncle Peter to protect me. And he was near me all school year and didn’t manage to do anything to me. I know he was probably the one who let the troll into the school,” Harry added, because he apparently knew what Sirius was opening his mouth to say. “But he still didn’t manage to do anything. Because Uncle Peter was there.”

He beamed up at Peter, and Peter felt a brief sensation like a wind sweep through him.

Harry—acted like a normal, loved child. A child who knew things couldn’t go wrong, because adults were watching out for him.

He wouldn’t have done that if Peter had left him with the Dursleys. They would probably have turned him into a wary, cautious boy who didn’t trust adults, and who, if he’d discovered something about the Dark Lord, would have tried to handle the whole thing himself, or at least only with the help of his friends.

But he was this way instead. Because Peter had been there.

Peter held out his arms, and Harry ran into them the way he’d run into Sirius’s on the train platform. He leaned against Peter and hugged him the way he’d hugged him so many times over the years, and held on.

Peter met Sirius’s frustrated eyes, and shook his head a little. Of course they would have to make Harry see the extent of the threat. He was going to be You-Know-Who’s primary target. He would have to learn more than he did now, and he would have to be more careful, and he would have to hold back instead of running into things.

But for now, they could let him be a child.

“Besides,” Harry muttered, “I can Apparate. I can get away from him if he tries to corner me.”

Peter laughed aloud, because he couldn’t help it, and hugged Harry back.

And then all three of them—or five if you counted Sasha and Hedwig, or ten if you counted the other rats in Harry’s robe pockets—went home.

The End.