September 1988
Percy didn't know it, but his rat was missing again.
Scabbers had waited until the boy was asleep and crept across the dormitory floor, his long nails scratching the stone. Instead of taking the stairs, he crawled into a hole where the floor met a wall and scurried through the voids in the masonry. The grout was uneven, and he had to watch where he crawled. There were voids that dropped down ten or twenty feet into crevices where he could be trapped. The only thing worse than living like a rat would be getting trapped like one and starving to death in the walls of the castle.
Scabbers' excursion through the walls sent him downward. He slipped a few times and scratched at the stone and mortar to regain his footing. He came out at an opening where a stone had fallen out of the wall decades ago and never been replaced. Scabbers looked out, his nose twitching, smelling for the cat. When he didn't see her, he hopped down and landed in the hallway. He'd have to scuttle out in the open for a few hundred feet and it made him nervous. But the voice in his head told him to keep moving, so he did.
His nose twitched and his tail moved back and forth behind him. He ran now, hating how exposed he felt. He saw the torch ahead. There was still no sign, or smell, of the cat.
Scabbers climbed up the tapestry next to the torch and pulled himself into the space between the mounting plate and the wall. The next series of inner wall passages would take him halfway down the One-Eyed Witch Passage.
It took him almost another hour to get to the Hog's Head. Being a rat was fucking exhausting.
He made sure no one was in the inn and scurried to the fireplace.
Do it now, the voice said.
Scabbers stood on his hind legs and transformed, ripping out of his rat form and landing on the stone floor as Peter Pettigrew.
"Thank Merlin's sweet mother fucking father," he said, rolling on the floor and feeling his own arms and legs. It didn't bother him that he was naked. He was relieved to see that all of his human parts were still functional.
Get off the floor. Stop wasting time. The way is unguarded tonight. This will prove to be one of the most important missions I have sent you on thus far.
Peter froze. He stood up and grabbed a handful of floo powder from a dish on the top of the mantel.
"Crouch residence," he said, and was pulled into the fireplace.
He tumbled out over a dark hearth, soot stuck to places he rather it hadn't.
Transform back NOW.
"But I just-"
NOW, YOU USELESS FUCKING DOLT.
Peter grabbed his arms one more time, and shrunk back into his rat form.
He's in the kitchen.
Scabbers scurried across the floor. A moldy piece of bread was on the floor beneath the kitchen cabinet. He approached it, sniffed it, and ate it. Then he saw the man standing in the dark, facing a wall. He got closer, staying under the edge of the cabinets.
There were dark circles under the man's eyes. Scabbers shrank back against the cabinet when he realized who it was. But it couldn't be. Barty Crouch Jr. was dead. He had died in Azkaban after he'd tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom into insanity with Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan. He was fucking dead.
I wanted you to see that you weren't the only one. Crouch is alive, as are you.
Scabbers twitched and watched Crouch.
Now isn't the time. I am not strong enough, and neither is he. But he will be.
Scabbers sat under the cabinets for hours, watching Crouch stand motionless, and waiting to hear the voice again. He chewed on his own tail. He didn't hear anything. The voice had abandoned him.
The sun was rising outside the windows when Scabbers crawled back into Percy's bed. He would sleep through the day.
