TW: Violence against a child
In Peter Pettigrew's opinion, rats had an unnecessarily unfavorable reputation. Rats were cunning. Rats were sneaky. Rats were survivors.
And Peter Pettigrew was nothing if not a survivor.
Dying to frame Sirius had been easy. Surviving Sirius's rage in the Bulgarian field had proven much harder, but in the end, all he had to do was rely on his Animagus form once more to save the day. After Sirius had left him to bleed out, he had shrunk down to his rat form and escaped his problems yet again. The first time he'd been escaping scrutiny; the second time he had been escaping death.
But escape he had, using the last of his energy to shrink down and scurry to the nearby forest, where others of his own kind had managed to feed him and protect him until he'd recovered enough to make his way back to humanity. It had taken him longer than he'd preferred, but in the end he'd stood on his own two legs and headed straight to Avery's opulent Bulgarian house, where he'd expected the man to be.
The wizard, one of the most singularly chilling people Peter had ever met, hadn't been there when Peter had arrived. His plans to bring back the Dark Lord using some arcane ritual centred around Morana, the Bulgarian goddess of death, had been, however. Although it was unusually sloppy of Avery to leave such materials out on his desk for someone to potentially see, Peter had found the wizard's mistake helpful, as it told him, very explicitly, the other wizard's plans.
When he'd travelled to Morana's Altar, Peter hadn't been sure what to expect. It certainly hadn't been a space that held all the signs of an interrupted ritual, complete with Mulciber's rotting corpse, a fairly liberal amount of blood, and a fully charged ritual circle.
"And yet I'm somehow not surprised that you became a dead weight after all this time." Peter toed Mulciber's body with his shoe as he examined the thrumming ritual circle for the second time. "At least you finally proved useful by dying and powering the circle with the resulting surge of magic. Makes one less thing for me to worry about."
Carefully, Peter levitated the unconscious body of the young girl he'd taken from Sofia and placed her on the altar. He'd have preferred a boy, of course, but had had to make do after the girl's twin brother had failed the initial test of purity. She'd passed the test, however, her blood turning crystalline clear in the phial.
When Peter had informed her that she would house the beautiful soul of his master and that she should be honoured, she had cried. Peter had smiled.
Not for the first time, Peter wondered at what had interrupted the ritual when Avery and Mulciber had sought to perform it. The original text of the ritual, bound in decaying leather, had been carelessly strewn on the ground next to the altar, and cut ropes and dried blood had been on top of the old, grey rock. Something had interrupted them, and Peter bet he knew what.
Or who.
"But Sirius Black isn't here now, is he?" he murmured as he carefully carved the required sigils on the little girl's torso. "They were fools for believing he'd turn, no matter how many revels he came to or how many muggles he played with. Black may be tempted by the Dark, but his heart won't permit him to embrace it in truth. Sentimental fool he is."
Carefully, he cleaned the girl of any blood and neatened up her clothes, making sure her body was perfectly prepared. His Lord would not be housed in a dirty, injured vessel. No. He deserved nothing less than perfection.
The thought of speaking with his Lord again made him shiver uncontrollably. The Dark Lord would know that he was the one who brought him back, that he was the one who had waited all this time, patient and unswerving in his faith. Not Malfoy. Not Bella. Not Avery or Mulciber. Him. Peter Pettigrew.
A frisson of anticipation ran down his spine at the thought, and Peter finally bent himself to the task of reading out the incantation, strings of Bulgarian spilling off his tongue unfamiliarly as he stood at the head of the altar.
At first, he wasn't sure if it was working, but as he spoke the temperature dropped precipitously and the wind slowly picked up. As a gust of wind tore through him, soft snowflakes began to fall out of nowhere, and Peter felt a weighty presence, invisible and yet somehow tangible, watching him.
As he plunged the dagger into the girl, right through the sigils he had carved on her torso, he chanted, "Vzemete tazi dusha i nastanete novoto!"
Something wrenched his magic out of him as an indigo light shot through the clearing and speared into the girl, who gave a piercing scream before going limp. Around them, snow fell from the clear blue summer sky, and Peter collapsed as the ritual circle flared before going dark.
In the quiet, Peter watched as darkness flowed down the waterfall before crossing the circle and blanketing the girl for a long moment, streaming into her body until nothing remained.
Peter stared at the girl, hardly daring to hope, until—
A strangled inhale, a wheezing breath.
Slowly, the girl moved, her head turning to face him. Her eyelids fluttered open and revealed piercing scarlet eyes that slowly bled to an icy blue.
"Hello, Wormtail."
TO BE CONTINUED IN
Part Two: Hidden Shadows
A/N: I have never felt particularly impressed with my own writing and have often thought it clunky and uninspired. I can't tell you how many times I have almost deleted this story. Countless. Ten, maybe twenty. However, your kind words and encouragement prompted me to continue to take the risk and keep publishing my writing, despite my continued doubts. I am so grateful to you all. Thank you.
I am still working on the second arc. Due to health issues that have put me in the hospital, writing is going slowly. I will begin posting when I can, but it likely won't be for a while. Please be patient with me.