The night was still, the moon shone brightly overhead, the air was thick with the remains of rain, and Peter ran.
He'd never been one for athletics, never gave them much of a chance with how bad his asthma was, but he didn't feel quite like himself anymore, anyway - not after tonight. For the past year he'd tiptoed along a dangerous line, waded in the murky shallows of moral ambiguity, and the whole time he'd managed to keep a piece of himself safe. He'd done bad things but he wasn't a bad person, not really. He was desperate, confused, lost, and a myriad of other descriptors he'd recite to himself each night as he willed himself to sleep.
Tonight, he was no longer any of those things (except perhaps desperate, he thought to himself as his feet slapped the ground in an uneven beat). Tonight, the hand he'd been arranging for months had finally been laid on the table. Only life - working in the way it always seemed to - had one more joke to play on him, and the ace he'd had up his sleeve was gone before he'd had a chance to use it.
It was almost poetic, how irony always found a way to seep through life's cracks; Peter'd always been so good at poker. He had the innate ability to bluff his way out of the most terrible hands and still come back for the win. It was almost graceful the way he could string the game along to his advantage, how a purposeful lip twitch or a rapid succession of blinking could come to his aid. Only Remus ever managed beat him, and even then it was anyone's game. Funny how that skill didn't transfer into metaphors.
But there was no skill involved in what he was doing now, no strategy in fleeing. There was only basic instinct - stay alive, don't get caught. And even at that he seemed bound to fail as he rounded a corner and came face to face with the person he was most trying to avoid. (It's not that he feared Sirius the most, but that he felt able to face him the least.)
Quickly, he ducked his wand behind his back, not wanting to provoke Sirius into attacking. For a brief second, he hoped Sirius hadn't found out, that maybe he could get away from this unscathed. It only took a second for that thought to vanish, as he stared into the eyes of one of his best friends. The looked was anguished, so grieved that even the passersby took notice of the pair.
It wasn't a coincidence that the two had run into each other - Sirius had been looking for him. And since Sirius had been looking for him that means he knew what Peter had done, and that meant that the game was over. His fellow Death Eaters were sure to think that Peter had had a hand in the Dark Lord's end, and none of them would come to his aid now. There was no one to back up his claims against Sirius, there was no one left but the two of them…and, of course, the dozen or so muggles surrounding them.
And somewhere in the back of his panic-clouded mind, inspiration shone through (if you could call something so desperate and horrible "inspiration"). This whole time he'd been running because he'd assumed the game was over, he'd lost, but just because he'd had a bad beat didn't mean he couldn't start another round. And so, Peter did what he did best.
He bluffed.
"James and Lily, Sirius?" he yelled at the man across from him, still terrified despite his plan. His voice was shaky, cracking as it rang out - he hoped the witnesses would pass it off as grief. "How could you?" He waited for his words to hit their mark, waiting when he should have been running - he couldn't help himself.
His curiosity didn't go unsated. He saw the slight rise of Sirius' eyebrows, the widening of his eyes; it was subtle enough that most people wouldn't notice it, but Peter knew Sirius as well as anybody. He'd spent years learning everything there was to know about the boy, and behind Sirius' eyes Peter could see the pieces falling into place all too late.
And with that, a trill of vindictive pleasure ran through Peter, something he wasn't accustomed to in the slightest. For a second, it was just another prank - only this time he was the mastermind. Years of being the tag-along, the pity-friend, fourth place in a winners-only club had caused more resentment than even he realized. They were great friends, at the end of the day, but he was still the least of them – until now. He'd gotten one over on Sirius Black, and he was coming out the winner in all this.
But Peter pulled himself from his thoughts as Sirius raised his wand. Acting quickly, he cast a nonverbal spell and caused an explosion - a little bigger than he'd intended, but it didn't matter now. He brought his wand around to his hand, where he cast a slicing charm to one of his fingers (do it quickly, just like a bandage) and transformed into a rat before he'd had a chance to scream from the pain.
Before the dust had a chance to settle, Peter scurried off into the nearest drain. He thought he'd felt Sirius' eyes on him as he did, but he wasn't sure - until he heard the laugh. It was loud and maniac, and with it, somehow, Peter knew that he was safe. But as he traveled down into the sewers, Peter heard less and less, and eventually nothing at all. The silence stilled him, and he stopped for a minute as the past few minutes caught up with him. The adrenaline was gone. The excitement and the victory was gone. Now, Peter was scared again, still hiding from everyone - more so now than before. The world was still and quiet; Peter was alone.
And Peter ran.