Pursuant to the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Digital Millennium Copywrite Act of 1998, this work is copywrited 2007 with all rights expressly reserved by its author unless explicitly granted. No portion may be reproduced in any fashion without the express written and notarized permission of the author.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters. All characters are creations of Joanne K Rowling, 2007, to whom I am deeply indebted.
Standard Disclaimer: This story may contain sexually graphic and explicit material and it is not suitable for minors. If you are a minor, please leave now, as it is illegal for you to be here. If it is illegal for you to read or view sexually explicit material in the community you view such material, please leave now. This story and characters are purely fictional and any resemblance to events or persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental. If you are offended by sexually explicit stories, please read no further. These stories are just that, stories, and may or may not reflect the opinions of the author.
Right, now my own words, not the legalese I've shamelessly copied and pasted above. There are only so many situations and new ideas one could dream within the H.P. universe; almost everything has been written about in fan-fiction, and I couldn't possibly hope to read and know all fan-fics posted on the web.
Therefore, I claim no property over these ideas and adventures, nor have I intentionally copied or appropriated material from other writers. Some concepts incorporated in this story might be property of better writers, and I apologize for not crediting them because I truly couldn't track all of them down...
Master of thy Fate
Chapter 1: Meet thy Enemy
Soft wind carried the scent of fresh cheese, baked bread and ripe fruit through the open door, making his whiskers twitch and his mouth salivate. His white fur shook as the fat rat named Scabbers woke up for his daily hour of activity, mildly stretching and yawning widely.
His cage was left open as was customary, and he peeked around looking for the third eldest son of Arthur and Molly Weasley, the family he'd stumbled upon when running away after framing his former friend Padfoot for murder. He looked down at his disfigured paw and mentally sighed, wondering if he should change his name from Wormtail to Pinkie, given the finger he was missing.
Wormtail was yet another name he answered to, perhaps more appropriate than Scabbers, and both were given names belonging to a wizard long believed to be dead in this world: Peter Pettigrew.
Swinging his hairless tail, Peter took a few steps out of his cage and reached the edge of the painfully tidy desk, snorting at the assembled quills organized by size and the alphabetized books resting on the left corner. A carefully aligned pile of parchment sheets rested slightly off-centre and an unfinished essay on Charms occupied the main work area of the desk.
The white rat who was actually a human wizard looked around the room and choked after seeing the latest addition to a wall of framed awards and certificates of achievement. Between the award for Most Notorious Nitpicker and a First Prize Medal for the 1989-1990 Hogwarts Gobstones Tournament, now proudly hung a stylish certificate for being the All-Time Hogwarts Record of Remembered Rules and Regulations.
"I don't give a rat's arse if Percy Weasley beat my record for highest score in a Gobstones match..." grumbled Wormtail, silently whining to himself because he knew he did care and it annoyed him greatly. "Where's the power and the glory promised by my Dark Lord now? All I got was life in a lousy and smelly cage!"
Agitated by his line of thought and truly regretting his words, he cringed and closed his beady eyes shut, slowly opening one eyelid to look up, expecting Lord Voldemort to fall out of darkened skies riding on a storm of Fiendfyre. It didn't happen, fortunately, and Peter released a deep shaky breath while wiping his whiskers and twitching his pink nose, craving for cheese.
With a lazy stumble he left the desk behind and fell on the bed with a soft thud, waddled over the covers and slid towards the floor, following the scent of food. He felt the tremors of running steps on the wooden floorboards and scurried to the wall just in time to avoid being trampled by the insufferable Weasley twins.
These twins were his worst nightmare, for whenever they caught him out Percy's sight they'd start trying endless incantations or test unsavoury potions of their own creation on him, with the most unexpected and sometimes quite disturbing results. He still shuddered at the memory of his fur evaporating and showing him in all glorious naked pink and bloated flesh.
"It's all Potter's fault!" complained Peter as he dropped one step after another down the crooked staircase. "Always overshadowing me on purpose, always making me look bad in front of everyone!"
The white rat stopped and sat on its hind legs to sniff the air, mouth watering at the smells coming from the kitchen, and finally reached the first floor, racing under the main table dodging agitated feet and moving chairs. Of course what felt like racing to Peter looked more of a sluggish pace of an ancient rodent to the unsuspecting humans towering above.
"Percy, your furry little friend is about to pass out! You better care for it and carry the poor dear downstairs from now on, you hear me?" said the annoying mother of seven in her carefully schooled half-caring, half-threatening voice. She reminded Peter of his own thankfully departed mother, he'd never been happier than the day she pointed her wand and summoned a broad fir instead of the boar fur she used to wear in the evenings.
The house had been ripped apart by the enormous tree and her smashed body found under the rubble. Such sweet memories!
Eagerly reaching for a cube of cheese the youngest Weasley gave him, Peter began chewing and pondering on his miserable life yet again. He'd grown bored with the wild female rats in the shed as they didn't share much; all they wanted was a quickie and bye-bye bloke. Thankfully he didn't have to worry about siring little rodents of his own. How he missed the human version of intimacy, though, and would sometimes fantasize about Narcissa Black in her glorious school years, or then imagine how voluptuous the only girl spawned by the blood-traitors would be when she reached womanhood, if she could avoid the unflattering proportions of her mother but keep the more ... natural attributes he detected as family traits.
"I'll take a stroll along the shed later," Peter thought and smoothed the fur between his ears, making himself more presentable for whatever little lady-mouse he might fancy today.
When breakfast ended and Percy picked him up, upsetting his plans for a good albeit most likely very brief shag, he sagged in resignation and was soon carried up to his cage, given another lump of cheese and locked in. Peter then slumped and watched the boy gathering a few essentials for an outing: travelling cloak, clear parchment, self-inking quill, Hogwarts Book of Rules and an old leather sack.
Knowing he was locked until further notice, he yawned and fell asleep as soon as Percy left the room.
The weeks of Summer passed by and one morning an owl alighted itself on Percy's window to deposit a letter bearing the Hogwarts Seal. The boy picked it up and, with the practised ease of a seasoned pencil-pusher, extracted its contents.
"Ha! Undoubtedly they have recognized my role as a figure of authority among my peers," voiced Percy out loud. "Best Fifth-Year Prefect Percy Weasley, at your service!"
Peter snorted and rolled his beady eyes inside his cage. The boy's self proclamation had awoken him and he could see clearly the shining badge denoting him as a Hogwarts Prefect, as well as the book list on top of the desk. He watched Percy leave and seconds later a loud shriek followed by hearty applause echoed around the house.
"The blood-traitor is going to get even snottier now," he thought and coiled around himself to lick his privates. With a glance at the calendar on the wall, Peter realized with a start that Potter's child should be going to Hogwarts this term. It brought forth hateful memories he'd rather forget, because he wanted revenge and didn't get it, he wanted power and failed to achieve it, and he wanted protection and it was taken from him.
His musings were interrupted when Percy and his younger brother Ronald entered the room, the first instructing the exact manner in which to care for a pet rat, while the latter whined about Scabbers being a boring, good-for-nothing lazy rat.
"Mother is giving me an owl for my deserved appointment, it's only correct that you should benefit by inheriting Scabbers."
"Bloody rat's worthless! I don't wanna..."
Peter began to grow nervous, if he wasn't taken care of he'd be cut-off from the magical world unless he could find another wizarding family to hide with. Worst of all, he might be released into the wild to fend for himself or the Weasleys might try to put him down!
"Ronald, be a good boy now. You're going to Hogwarts and you should do your best to rectify the horrible stigma our family name has been subjected to because of George and Fred!"
"What's that got to do with the rat?"
"If you care for him, it will show you are a responsible boy," Percy explained while Ronald scrunched his face, clearly trying to understand his older brother's reasoning.
Jolted back and forth when Ronald picked his cage without care, Peter grabbed the bars with his four paws and tried to steady himself, all the while listening to the little boy's grumbling and whining. He was taken to a small room plastered with bright orange everywhere. There were orange coloured bed covers, orange-clad Quidditch players in moving posters on the walls, and even an orange Chudley Cannons bedside alarm clock!
The boy looked down at him and mumbled "stupid rat" before tossing his cage to the floor, at which point he seemed to be thinking; at least he believed that was the case given Ronald was sitting still and looking at a point on the wall without moving. All the while, Peter began weighing his options now that his future hung in the balance. Whether he continued to live his non-existence with the Weasley blood-traitors depended entirely on the boy's decision, but then again he also had a decision to make.
"Do I continue to wait and serve my Master or do I strive to be free?" he wondered. He knew his own magical power was lacking but he had the Dark Mark to prove his allegiance to a greater, darker power few could claim to serve. However his Lord had been gone for so many years that Peter felt purposeless; without him his life seemed ... devoid of meaning, unless he forged a destiny for himself.
But Wormtail had always been a follower, the tiny weak rodent among impressive beasts, much like Peter had been the short, ungraceful little boy among confident purebloods. He even envied the half-breed Lupin for his better grades if nothing else! However now he found himself at a junction, at a point where he could decide his own future while waiting for his Dark Lord to return.
"C'mon Scabbers, let's get you out of this cage," said Ronald and slid the barred door open.
Peter saw the large hand coming for him and made a decision: he was going to follow his nature and commandeer his own freedom. Biting the boy's nearest finger and drawing blood, he jumped out and bit again, before climbing the bed, jumping onto the window sill and, with a loud squeak, took a leap into the void and down to the Weasley's backyard.
"That's going to hurt tomorrow," he complained and limped his way through tall grass and angry gnomes, ignoring the boy's yelling from a window on the second floor.
As he reached the safety of the woods, he concentrated and tried to turn back into wizard, remembering what it felt like and what motivated him to be a human. At first he feared his ten years living as a rat had impaired his human form, but soon he felt the world around him shift and shrink in size, his point of view rise to the skies and almost forgotten senses develop anew.
"I'm Peter Pettigrew!" he exclaimed and then fell on his butt, so unused to standing on two feet like a human.
He stood up again, lifted his nose in the air and sniffed, then ran downhill while fighting the urge to scratch his ears and lick his privates again. Remembering he was a human for the first time since Apparating to Ottery St Catchpole and begging a young red-head for bread or cheese from the ground, Peter looked down and patted his torn robes, finding his Master's wand.
"My Lord! I live to serve you!" he said out loud, reverently holding the blackened magical rod as if it could speak back to him. So much for his desires of freedom, he thought and twitched involuntarily, half expecting to be at the business end of the Cruciatus for his impertinence.
When neither verbal answer nor Unforgivable Curse came, he pocketed the wand and continued to run, turning back into his Animagus form when reaching a road. Peter had learned much from Lily Evans about Muggles, and he knew these simpletons used horseless carriages to travel long distances, as well as trains like the Hogwarts Express. "I wonder what blood-traitor gave the Muggles such knowledge," he thought while climbing on board a lorry whose driver had stepped out to relieve himself behind the bushes.
Soon the man came back and, moving several levers with hands and feet, made the contraption move down the road. The blaring music made it hard for Wormtail to sleep inside the cabin so he began to explore under the seats, finding some crumbs to feast on.
"Next stop, Liverpool," said the driver to no one in particular. The thought of him having a wizard passenger under his seat never ever crossed his mind.
A dark-haired child known to the world of magic as The-Boy-Who-Lived was pulling a window out of its hinges, looking for a way into an old abandoned factory building. He'd left the docks earlier that day after an odd kind of flying chicken had chased him to deliver an envelope addressed to someone he didn't know. Someone else would've just dismissed the event and thrown away the letter, but after doing impossible things and seeing invisible beings so often in his itinerant life, it only made sense that someone with similar abilities had found him. Someone who'd surely want to use him for his own benefit, he feared.
Therefore he'd decided to leave the Liverpool docks and head north, searching for a new place to spend the week within the old warehouses and manufacturing plants lining the river's bank.
The place was easy to leave in a rush and had enough room and visibility to spot people coming and going, and it being a broomstick factory, had endless wood for fire and heaps of dry twigs for bedding. The only drawback was the mice. Hundreds if not thousands of them roamed the warehouse day and night, feeding on the appetizing twigs.
Finishing his cold meal and tossing the drumstick bones away, the child hid his things and the letter under some wooden planks, picked his long dagger and foot knife, and left to hunt for goods and money. As always when he moved, first and most important thing to do was to observe and avoid stepping on anyone's toes, meaning he wouldn't want to steal in somebody else's turf.
An escapee at eight years old, the boy who was by now almost eleven always claimed to be fourteen, however unbelievable given his very small size for a boy that age, and only answered to his chosen name, not that which Children Services and his foster families named him. He didn't even knew his birthday date, but couldn't care less.
Whistling and walking up and down some slightly crowded streets, he noticed some crooks stalking an old man and then stepped up to overtake them, making sure they saw him looking back at them. He crossed the old man's path and, without so much as touching him, pulled the overstuffed wallet out, quickly doubling up and turning into the first narrow alley.
As he'd predicted, the crooks came in after him.
"One quarter's mine, 'n I'd be glad to share 'em monies again t'morrow, aye?" the boy said, throwing the wallet at the older criminals and waving a few twenty quid banknotes.
No sooner had the crooks looked down at the stuffed wallet, he ran out the other end and vanished from sight, stopping nearby to purchase some decent food and a magazine before returning to his current hideout.
To his surprise, the very next day another of those strange birds came by and dropped another letter over him, bearing the same name but a different address. He ignored it and hoped another fat pigeon would come to deliver mail the next morning as well, which of course did happen as predicted.
The brown bird came through the highest windows and dove straight towards him, even though he was actually hidden behind a large crate, bearing yet another envelope. It rested on his makeshift bed for more than half the day, but never one for patience, the black-haired boy huffed and decided to open the damn thing while stoking the fire and turning his meat over to cook evenly.
Although his reading was quite precarious to say the least, he'd managed to read most of it as he enjoyed his chicken wings. It was an acceptance letter to an school dealing with witchcraft and wizardry. It sounded like something to do with magic but he wasn't really sure, and he really wouldn't be able to go there even if he was this H. Potter guy. All he knew was that he needed to move away again soon.
The evening turned into night and he was reading quietly by fire, occasionally throwing some crumbs at the rats when one fat white rodent suddenly turned back to look at him more closely and opened its eyes wide, almost bursting out of its sockets. He was initially amused at the look of recognition the rat had on its face, but almost jumped out of his skin when the animal turned into a chubby blonde man right in front of him.
"Harry Potter!" the rat-man hissed and pointed a black stick at him, strange light coming from its tip.
His survival instinct kicked in and, with a swift kick to the side of the fat, short man's left knee he forced him to stumble and sliced his forearm with his dagger, making him drop the weapon with a scream of pain. Harry then stepped on it intending to break it in half, but the wood felt as rigid as solid steel. He picked it up and threw it among the many piles of broomsticks before using his smaller size to lunge for the man's throat with his knife.
"Wait! Please don't kill me, please!"
"What the fuck are you 'n why'd you call me Harry?"
Peter forced himself to look at Potter's child and noticed the question was as legitimate as it could be. As was the threatening knife already cutting deep into his neck. Meeting the bane of his Dark Lord was the last thing he'd ever imagined himself doing, and yet here he was pleading for his life like a ... grovelling rat in front of James bloody Potter's son.
"Tell me, rat-face! You the one sendin' those bloody letters?"
"Letters? W-what letters?"
He felt the boy remove his weapon from his throat and watched him retreat, looking for something under an old wooden plank, from where he picked three parchment envelopes bearing the Hogwarts Crest which he threw them at him. The first read H. Potter, Under the Garston Docks, Liverpool while the other two read Abandoned Brownhill Broomworks. That explained the enormous amount of flying devices at least. "These are f-for Hogwarts School of Magic..."
Peter couldn't believe his bad luck. He'd followed the scent and trail of the local mice to find this heaven of free food, have some fun with some lady-mouse and then continue searching for a wizard family to settle with, in order to keep an eye and an ear out for his Master's return. The Dark Lord couldn't be dead, he refused to believe such impossibility!
And yet it was the very Harry Potter who held his life on the edge of a blade, disarming him in less than the blink of an eye. Could it be true? Could this baby have truly destroyed Lord Voldemort? No, the Dark Mark was still there, it was a faded image of what it once was, for sure, but it was still there.
"Is turnin' into a rat something you learn at this school?" the boy asked, startling him out of his thoughts.
Nodding and crawling back on his elbows, Peter let a shaky breath escape his lips and he wiped the blood from his neck, but the cut in his forearm continued to leak. His initial rage gone, he took a good look at the urchin standing in front of him holding a big black dagger. The boy was dirty and his clothes torn, yet his demeanour exuded confidence and danger, a capacity for violence that he could perhaps take advantage of.
"I'm what's called an Animagus. Wizards who can turn into an animal at will, but only one and not of our choosing either, Harry... Can I call you Harry?"
"So that's what H stands for, huh?"
"You... You didn't know your name?" Peter asked, increasingly puzzled by the situation.
"I chose me a name when I's like five years old. Ever'one that knows me calls me Twitch thou'."
"All right then ... Twitch. Yes, your name's Harry Potter."
"Where d'you know me from?" asked the boy, who was now walking backwards towards the area he'd thrown the Dark Lord's wand away.
Peter had to provoke the child and make him forget about the black wand, make him focus on him long enough for him to grab it and kill Potter's heir. "I knew your parents. They were the filthiest of wizards, opposing my Lord and his glory... I saw them die by my Lord's wand in your own home!"
That made Harry pause, but he continued to search for the wand and found it buried under a pile of broken brooms. The boy dared handle it with his unworthy fingers, but what drained Peter's blood from his face was the look in his eyes.
"I've felt this ... magic thing flowin' through me, 'n I can feel it here too. You say this bloke you call Lord used a stick to kill me parents, huh?"
Harry cast a vengeful scowl on Peter, took the wand by its ends with both hands and, with a spark of green fire dancing in his eyes, forced it down his bent knee, shattering the Dark Lord's instrument of magic in two useless pieces held together by the thinnest of threads.
"No! You'll pay for this Potter! I'm going to--"
Whatever threats he was about to carry forth were cut by the sound of metal drawn from a belt and pressed against his nether regions, which were well within reach of the boy's arms. He gulped and squealed, turning into a white rat in the air and hoping to escape into the dark, unreachable corners of the warehouse.
As he became the rat, however, Harry managed to swing and kick him against the wall, where he landed heavily and slid down to the floor in a heap. "Shite, did I kill it?"
Picking the rat up by the tail, he shook it a while and then flicked its face. He noticed it breathe and Harry began to look for a place to keep the rat-man and ask further questions. "A magic school and people who use sticks as weapons. Can this week get any weirder?"
He found an old and sturdy tool box, put the rat inside and used some loose copper cables to wrap it thoroughly, and then spread the rags he used as a makeshift bed over a dry wooden pallet. Leaning back on his elbows he let his head fall back and sighed, pondering the words coming out of the rat's mouth. "I knew your parents. I saw them die by my Lord's wand," he'd said, and what's more he'd apparently told him his real name: Harry Potter.
Digging for a loaf of bread inside an old bag, Harry stuffed some cold meat inside, munched on it and then turned sideways. "My parents, huh? Screw 'em, they don't mean shite to me," he mumbled and bit another mouthful of his funny fat pigeon sandwich.
The space Wormtail rested in was cold and dark, barely a sliver of light came through and only when the pendulum motion reached its peak. He was already dizzy would be getting sick very soon. He tried to remember how many days he'd been kept inside, not daring to transform back into a wizard lest someone sees him and reports him to the Ministry, and came up with three or four days.
He'd listened to the sounds of railway travel, then some moving around on a Muggle vehicle of sorts and now was being jolted side to side as if running. "Yes, whoever is carrying me is now running," he concluded. Wormtail heard shouting and he felt his prison hit the ground, and a woman approached telling everyone to step aside and turn someone's head to the side.
"He's just a child, has anyone seen his parents?" the female voice asked, before commanding somebody to grab the boy's head firmly. "Hold him tight... Bite this down, dear. That's it, you'll be fine in a minute."
Whatever was happening, probably had something to do with Potter's child. Was he injured? Did one of the Dark Lord's faithful find him? If that was the case, no one would be giving him help, so Wormtail reluctantly discarded that cheerful idea.
A few minutes later the woman began questioning Harry and Wormtail could tell the boy was about to slice someone's throat.
"Geroff me! Lemme go, woman!"
"Wait, please don't run away!"
Wormtail banged around the cold metallic walls of his confinement and he could tell they were running, a loud wailing and barking sounds told him they were still in a large Muggle town, and Harry's frantic breathing indicated he was still injured. "Good, soon I'll kill him with his own blade," the rat thought and planned. Murdering the boy in his sleep would be easy.
The boy holding the cage and an old duffel bag on the shoulder continued to run and turn around corners and small alleys, knowing whatever magic he had would throw his pursuers out of his trail. Harry had just suffered another of the sudden attacks that gave him the name Twitch, and he needed a place to rest or else he'd pass out on the streets on London.
A shadowed alley was good enough, he decided and dropped heavily against a garbage container, spreading his legs and resting his head on his hands. "Bloody letter 'n freakin' rat-man with his magic shite," he complained. The reason he'd decided to come to London was to find a way to confirm this whole Hogwarts thing, but everywhere he asked people either ignored him or told him to sod off. He needed the rat-man's help.
"Listen up, rat. I'm lettin' you outta there, you'd better turn into a man or else I'll cut your rat guts open, you hear me?"
Always quick to act under mortal threat, Wormtail squeaked loudly hoping to convey his agreement and waited for the kid to open his prison. A few scraping sounds later and the latches came open to reveal the sharp point of Harry's dagger poking his tender chest.
Turning back into wizard as slowly as possible, Peter raised his arms over his head and looked down at the pale, sweaty boy threatening him. "I'm not going anywhere Twitch..." he said.
"Good rat. What's your name, by the way?"
"P-Peter, Peter Pettigrew."
"Hiya Peter... Behave 'n I won't kill you. All I wanna know is how to get to this school," Harry said and waved the Hogwarts envelope.
"You have to reply to them by owl and then take the Hogwarts Express in London."
"Owl? I dunno what that is but I see no freakin' address here..."
"Well, how did you receive those letters if not by owl?"
"Huh, must be those funny birds then... Yeah, I caught me three o' them big pigeons! Best meal I've had in weeks!"
"Y-you killed the owls?!"
"Er... You gotta kill 'em first, you know. First you snap the neck, then pluck the feathers and burn the skin quickly to get rid o' the stubs. Only then you gut it, savin' the liver, heart 'n stuff for soup," explained Harry as if giving cooking lessons to an audience. "And after you cut the breast and legs, you--"
"All right, all right! I get it!" Peter interrupted and looked around the alley again. He still couldn't believe this was the Harry Potter, living on the run as a filthy Muggle surrounded by ... filth and disease, probably robbing and fighting other Muggles to survive.
"You wanna know why I live like this..." Harry stated while massaging his feet, his black dagger still firmly held in the other hand.
Peter nodded dumbly while his lips twitched at the sight of so much food leaking out of a trash can. He noticed several rats feasting on it and his mouth watered, but he turned to hear Harry's explanation instead.
"All I know is that when Children's Services got me they couldn't find me records, like I'd never been born. So they put me in a couple o' foster homes, but I hated it so I ran away three years ago."
Waiting for more, Peter sat on the floor and tilted his head. "And?"
"And that's all, it's like they forgot I was ever there 'cause nobody came looking," Harry answered and shrugged. "It's like magic, you know? When people try 'n chase me, they stop after a while and just ... turn around as if they've got somewhere else to be."
Harry reached inside his bag for the broken wooden stick the rat-man named Peter had threatened him with last week and plucked a ragged red feather from the inside. The feather danced to an invisible wind and seemed to put itself together when he held it firmly in his fingers, straightening up and filling with redder, fuller barbs and shining as if fire came from inside it.
Once the feather reassembled itself, he looked it over and sharpened the thick point with his knife. Looking for something to dip it in and finding nothing, he sliced his thumb and used his own blood to test his self-made quill on the backside of the invitation letter.
'HARY POTTER', he wrote in a very shaky script, more suitable for a seven year old learning to write than a boy old enough to enter Hogwarts. He spoke the name out loud a couple of times and didn't really like it, preferring the name he'd chosen years ago but, if he was to go to school and he really was this Potter bloke, he'd better get used to it.
"You saw me parents get killed, ain't it right? Did they have any money?"
Peter paled, momentarily believing his life had come to an end, but when his throat was still safe and Harry asked about money instead of exacting revenge upon him, he realized this boy in front of him was almost a Muggle. An animal that follows its every instinct regardless of tradition, honour or decency; in a sad way, Harry the Muggle had more freedom than Peter the Wizard would ever have in his life.
"Well, Twitch, I believe a visit to Diagon Alley is order." Unfortunately he couldn't be there as a wizard, but could he tell the boy that he was presumed dead and that he'd framed Harry's Godfather for his own betrayal? Helping Harry would be an opportunity to stay in touch with the magical world and, sooner or later, kill the brat for what he did to the Dark Lord, but was it worth the risk?
"You're comin' with me," Harry commanded, pointing his blade at the chubby wizard.
Realizing he had little choice in the matter, he understood that sooner or later it was his death that would come at the hands of an eleven year old. He could run and be stabbed in the back. He could try to escape as Wormtail and be gutted alive. None of those outcomes pleased Peter in the least, and all he wanted right now was to stay in the world of the living. "Sure, but I'm supposed to be ... dead in the magical world."
Harry thought about that and concluded the rat-man was lying. He couldn't show his face because he was a murderer. Probably murdered his parents and blamed that Lord Thingy of his to save his own hide. "What if there's a reward for this bloke?" he wondered. He could use him to get to this diagonal place and find out if his birth parents left him any money, and then turn the rat in too!
"You'll write how to get there, 'n come with me as a rat. Got it?" asked Harry as he handed Peter the phoenix quill and a Hogwarts envelope.
An hour later Harry strolled down Charing Cross Road and searched for a pub called The Leaky Cauldron while carrying an old toolbox and a duffel bag over his shoulder. He paused to pull a cap even lower on his head and, shrugging, entered the dingy place. Lots of strangely dressed people were chatting, walking and eating inside, and the instructions Peter had written told him to go to the back and wait until this portal opened.
Surely enough, a family of three came in, the adult man tapped the wall with his magical stick and, lo and behold, a portal opened. "Shitty security," mumbled Harry as he followed the family inside, without anyone asking his purpose or looking at him at all.
"Walk towards the bank and turn into the alley," he read from the envelope. Peter had told him he'd be safer by going to a wizard handler instead of walking into the Ministry for Magic and declaring he was Harry Potter. For some reason, many people worshipped the ground he stepped on for surviving that Lord Thingy that Peter called Master.
Cheatham and Roben was the office he had to look for, if it was still there. The alley was dark and smelled of rotten food, nothing new for Harry but certainly not a place he'd feel safe. He shook the toolbox containing Peter, hoping to knock the wizard out in retaliation for directing him into this place.
Next to a boarded-up house a narrow red door had an iron cast plate with the names he was looking for. Wasting no time, he checked his surroundings and pushed the door open, closing it softly behind. Whatever he was expecting, this wasn't it.
The inside was an impossibly large waiting room with arched windows facing the alley, windows that weren't visible from the outside, comfy deep-red sofas around a sparkling coffee table and expensive-looking crystal lamps hanging from the ceiling. To his right, a carved wooden desk shielded an old woman wearing a pitch black hat and pitch black clothes.
"May I help you?" asked the old lady, who grimaced and sniffed.
"Er... Yeah, there's this bloke I met 'n he's told me I can find answers here?"
Sighing and bending forward while leaning on her long-fingered hands, the old woman asked again. "Would you elaborate on the subject of your questions, then perhaps I could be of assistance?"
"Friendly chick, huh?" Harry whispered under his breath, and then in a louder voice answered the lady. "Name's Harry Potter, I wanna go to Hogwarts but I dunno how to get there 'n I need to know if my parents got any monies left for me. That good enough for you?"
The old lady jumped on her seat, and two heavy-set doors were wrenched open at the same time on the opposite wall, from where two men stepped out the moment the name Harry Potter echoed through the room. The one to the left was a tall and fat bald man, probably seventy years old wearing striped clothes and a wooden cane, while the one to the right was a skinny small fellow, almost as tall as Harry was, wearing some sort of yellow bathing robe and even older than the first man.
"Mr Potter, we are Hadrian Cheatham..."
"...and Hadrian Roben, at your service!"
Harry lifted an eyebrow and looked at the unlikely pair up and down. "There somewhere we'd be talkin' to sort out my problems?"
"If you are who you say you are, Mr Potter..."
"...we would be delighted to offer you our most..."
"...discrete and opportune help."
"What d'you need for proof? I've got me these letters, 'n there's this bloke who says I'm Potter."
The men looked at each other and then huddled together, discussing something in hushed voices while Harry inspected the room, noticing that the lady behind the desk was still staring at him. He remembered his cap and removed it, raking his long hair up and back.
"Merlin's whiskers, it's him!" shouted the woman.
Cheatham and Roben turned to face Harry and they turned a rather predatory smile at him. "All we need at this point is a sample of your blood. Hadrian will procure the necessary book and be back in a few minutes, while you explain to me the circumstances of your life, Mr Potter."
The smaller Hadrian grabbed a matching yellow hat from a hook in the wall and ran out the door, while the bigger Hadrian motioned for Harry to follow. He entered a very fancy office filled with old books and gold everywhere. There were gold trimmings on the furniture, gold candlesticks, a gold paperweight and even the man's quill had a gold quill-holder! It was a robber's paradise.
Wasting no time, the big man fired away. "Where have you been all these years, Mr Potter? And for that matter, what happened to you?"
"I dunno... All I know's that me name wasn't Potter 'til last week, when owls came by with letters." He didn't want to burn his chance at receiving further help from Peter by ratting him out.
Harry noticed the man hesitated and presented a calculating face, looking him all over. First he looked straight at his forehead and then seemed to scowl at his clothes, until finally coming to some kind of decision. "We shall wait for Hadrian."
A few minutes later, Roben came back panting and clutching a book five times the size of a phone directory to his chest, and then placed it on top of Cheatham's desk. "They asked thirty-three Galleons for it! Bandits they are, I tell you."
The shorter Hadrian flicked through the book's pages and came to an elaborate drawing of a tree, before moving to take Harry's right hand. He wasn't prepared for his quick reaction, though. As the old man moved forward to grab him, Harry pulled his blade from his belt with his left hand and pushed Roben to the floor, making contact with his throat.
"Behave yourself, child! It's only a procedural step to be certain you are who you claim to be," Roben said, ignoring the dagger cutting his skin.
Apparently noticing Harry's perplexed expression at the lack of fear in his partner's face, Cheatham sought to explain. "When one handles Ministry and banking affairs for a broad range of gents as long as we have, one has seen and heard it all. A simple dagger is no threat to Hadrian or me, young man."
Stepping back, Harry was instructed to use his already convenient blade and drop some of his blood on the open page. he did as instructed and slashed his palm, closing his hand in a fist to let the drops fall. As the stream of blood slowed, the wizards told him it was enough and they crowded over the book, watching as the pool of Potter blood hunted for a specific name among the many leaves.
The red droplets circled Harry Potter's name and then jumped up at James Potter and Lily Evans, spreading up and around the family tree until some of it stopped, the rest climbed up to minuscule branches deep into the top of the drawing, and some of the blood leaked over the edge of the page.
"Hadrian quick, turn the pages!"
Cheatham complied and followed the blood drop, opening the page it slipped into and writing down the names as they were highlighted. The process continued for a while and the Hadrians followed Harry's blood into another half a dozen pages, until the droplets finally stopped and disappeared into the old book.
After a minute of silence, the adult wizards looked at each each other and Roben cleared his throat. "Ahem... Mr Potter, welcome back to the wizarding world," both men said and shook hands with Harry.
