[From Litha to Lammas]: Courage Is, gen, Peter Pettigrew and Harry, 5/6
Part Four.
Title: Courage Is (5/6)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing these characters for fun and not profit.
Content Notes: Massive AU, unreliable narrator, violence, Harry is raised by Peter Pettigrew, minor character deaths.
Rated: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 5200
Summary: AU. In the chaos after Sirius is taken to Azkaban, Peter Pettigrew tracks down Harry Potter and snatches the child from the Dursleys’ home. He tells himself that he’s raising Harry so that the Dark Lord may have the honor of killing him when he comes back. So he tells himself.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my Litha to Lammas fics for this year, a series of fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This is very AU, and will likely have three parts.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part Five
“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.
Part Six.