"Wormtail!"
The shout jerked him out of his terrified stupor.
"Yes?" he whispered, head bowed, not daring to meet the cold eyes.
"Go check on the prisoners," Lucius Malfoy ordered. The room was silent as he made his way to the cellar door. Peter swallowed and started down the stairs, legs trembling.
"Stand back," he called. "Stand away from the door. I am coming in." He threw open the door and was temporarily blinded by the unexpected brightness of the cellar. Then he realized that it looked rather empty.
Then two bodies were on top of him. His wand was wrestled from his hand; another hand wrapped around his mouth. They struggled soundlessly. A shower of bright sparks caught his eye: His silver hand had found its way around Harry Potter's throat.
"What is it, Wormtail?" Lucius called from above.
"Nothing!" his old owner, the Weasley boy, wheezed back in a passable imitation of his voice. "Everything fine!"
Harry was still thrashing beneath his hand. "You're going to kill me?" he choked out, trying to pry off the metal fingers. "After I saved your life? You owe me, Wormtail!"
Wormtail.
The old nickname stirred something in Peter's heart. He sounded so much like James...
The hand slackened. Harry jerked back, evidently not expecting that. Peter's eyes widened. He was every bit as shocked as Harry. He struggled more powerfully, trying to compensate, to undo that moment of weakness, the small impulse of mercy. It was no use. Peter limply lay there, panting, eyes boring into Harry's face. He looked so much like his father that Peter's chest actually hurt. But his eyes...those were Lily's eyes.
Something was scrabbling towards his neck. A hand, not Ron's or Harry's, but his own.
"No—" Harry was trying to drag back the hand, but Peter knew that it was useless. He had been both disarmed and overpowered, and the hand would not serve such a helpless owner.
He felt the cool metal rods close around his windpipe, crushing it and making him gag with pain. At the same moment, the Muggle-born girl gave a dreadful scream. Peter's eyes rolled up into his head, his face an ashen purple. He was literally paralyzed on the spot. Even the smallest of movements felt like daggers penetrating his bare skin.
Harry and Ron looked at each other, then sprinted up the stairs. They'd tried. But their friend was in danger now. They had to help her.
Broken and wandless, and yet there was still life in Peter's body. The hand Voldemort had forged for his most witless follower would leave its victim on the very brink of death. The Dark Lord knew no mercy, and certainly would not grant any upon a coward like him.
As Peter lay there, feeling life and warmth slowly drain away, something extraordinary happened. He was reliving his life, watching his own existence from another pair of eyes.
He saw his childhood before his mother fell ill and his father took to the drink. His eleventh birthday and the letter than came with it. The train ride, when he had met three other boys and they'd shared a compartment. His excruciating Sorting, and the Hat's ultimate cry of "Gryffindor!"
Peter felt a curious sensation urging him to let go, to leave this world behind and float into the afterlife, but a little part of him held on, determined to see this through, to be the Marauder that he never was. He took a shuddering breath. Just a little longer.
Their first prank together and the weeklong detention that followed. Finding out Remus's secret, through much prodding and plotting. Becoming Animagi, the studying, the frustration, and the sweet taste of victory as the three of them shifted into their shapes for the first time. Making the Map, their legacy for future generations of pranksters to come.
He saw how nervous James was before his first date with Lily. How simply ecstatic he was afterwards. How she gradually became one of them. How he, with the entire school watching, proposed under a single morning lily hung high up in the Great Hall.
Peter's bloodless lips twitched upwards in a weak smile. Those were the happy memories he had of James and Lily. What came next was sheer devastation.
Casting the Fidelus Charm, and Sirius convincing James to make him Secret Keeper. Because Peter's the last person You-Know-Who would suspect, he said. I'm too obvious. Make him Secret Keeper instead. The Dark Lord on his doorstep, whispering twisted things in his ear. He poisoned Peter's mind with his own, bewitching him and turning him against his own best friends.
"What had they ever done for you?" he hissed. "Treated you like scum, never including you in their plans, tossed you aside in favor of more talented friends."
"No," Peter whimpered. "No, you're lying. James and Lily—they're—"
"Good people? Kind? There is no good or evil, Peter. Only power and those too weak to seek it. Which are you?"
Peter gripped his head tightly, nails digging into his scalp. But Voldemort was within it and could not be forced out.
"Join me. I can give you the power that you crave. You will have things your friends would have never given you—respect, admiration. Show them that you are worthy!"
There was a skirmish upstairs. Peter heard what sounded like the chandelier dropping and several high-pitched screams. Several heavy thuds as bodies hit the ground, Stunned. Then, a loud crack and Bellatrix Lestrange's enraged cry. He blocked out all that and continued.
Wearing long sleeves in summer, stammering excuses when his friends noticed. Visiting baby Harry, feeling the sick swoop in his stomach every time as he looked into that innocent sleeping face. Knowing that he, Peter, was helping murder his best friend's family.
Then, Halloween. He had declined going over earlier that day. He couldn't bear seeing their happy, unaware faces. Sirius hunted him down the very next day, eyes murderous and ready to kill. Peter put on a great show, tapping into the talent he never knew he had.
"James and Lily, Sirius, how could you?" he sobbed as he readied his wand behind his back.
"Don't you dare, you hateful little rat—" Sirius growled, advancing towards him. And Peter cast the spell that killed the twelve Muggles, sliced off his index finger, and disappeared down the sewers as the rat that he will remain for the next thirteen years.
A strangled sound escaped him. It was all over now, he knew. His last thought was that it was such a pitiful way to die, curled here in the cold cellar. But then again, perhaps it suited him.
"Sorry," he croaked painfully. "I am sorry..."
And Peter Pettigrew moved no more. He died alone, unloved, friendless, just as he was and will forever be. He died a traitor, hated, unforgivable. No one ever found his body.