Wormtail's Revenge
AN: Were I interested in writing a series of scenes from Peter Pettigrew's life, this would be the first in that series. I'm not, so here it is.
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"They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment."
Wormtail, who had been beginning to wake up anyway, opened one eye lazily to look first at the pale boy who had spoken, then at the dark-haired, rumpled looking boy he was staring at. Ah, he thought idly, so that's Harry Potter. Part of his brain - the part that was still human - knew that this was a rather important fact, and he should probably care a great deal about it, but being a rat for ten years had dulled his thought processes somewhat. Besides, he was still tired.
He tried to go back to sleep, but the boys insisted on continuing to talk, so he gave up and studied the two boys flanking the silver-haired one, wondering vaguely if they seemed familiar for a reason. Then the blond boy introduced them - himself as Malfoy, and his cronies as Crabbe and Goyle. The names turned themselves over in Scabbers' little rat brain for a few moments. Malfoy, Crabbe, and...Goyle. They'd been Death Eaters, he remembered at last. Followers of...of the Dark Lord. He still couldn't bring himself to even think his Master's name.
Wormtail hadn't known Malfoy well - Lucius had always been very aloof - but Crabbe and Goyle he remembered. They were large and burly, and rather dull, too, if he remembered correctly. They were well suited to service, taking orders largely because they were too stupid to think up plans of their own.
Another memory flickered across his mind. He remembered a time not long after he had been branded with the Dark Mark, when he had been forced to attend Death Eater meetings. The Dark Lord had called him Wormtail, a fact which Crabbe and Goyle seemed to find immensely funny, and had pounced on immediately. They'd called him Wormie for two years. Wormtail opened his eyes just so he could narrow them in disgust.
Just as he opened his eyes, he could see Goyle moving quickly towards a pile of Chocolate Frogs nearby, and could feel his boy moving angrily towards him. In only a second or two, Wormtail was in jumping range.
If anoyone had bothered to ask him later, he wouldn't have been able to say what he had been thinking. He hadn't been thinking, frankly. The memories of all those years of ridicule - not just at Goyle's hands, but at everyone's - just welled up inside of him, and before he knew it, he had leapt from his boy's pocket and latched on to Goyle's thumb with his razor-sharp teeth. There he clung for a few satisfying seconds, before Goyle succeeded in shaking him off. Wormtail flew across the compartment, smashing into a window and eventually landing under one of the purple-upholstered seats.
His whole body ached from his collision with the window, and his mouth was full of the disgusting taste of Goyle, but he still felt strangely pleased with himself. Upon finding he lacked the strength to scuttle back over to his boy, he merely coiled his tail around himself and fell into a contented sleep.