Thank you to my wonderful beta Eider Down.
You will find no character bashing here. It is inspired by canon but is a no-horcruxes AU.
This follows Peter as he grows through Harry's life. There'll be some normal teenage crushes, but there won't be anything explicit happening.
Peter's mam always said he'd been born under a lucky star.
"Look at them," she'd coo, enchanting fairy lights to hover around him as she tucked him into bed. "As long as the lights are with you, you'll be alright."
The first person he'd met on the train to Hogwarts was named after the brightest star in the night sky. Peter took it as an omen and decided they should be friends.
So he followed Sirius into Gryffindor and hoped it would make him noble and brave—everything that mattered.
He always felt rather slow compared to the rest of them. Sure, he was great at Herbology and he knew the night sky like the back of his own hands—but Charms, Transfiguration, the real magical subjects? He was pants at them.
It was a good thing he shared a dorm with the best minds in his year. They tutored him through the animagus transformation, seven OWLs, and five NEWTs. They let him sit with them in the common room. They let him bask in their light while they shone like stars, strong and brilliant.
Peter counted himself lucky.
xoxox
The war came like a skillet to the back of the head.
It really shouldn't have—they'd all known what had been simmering in the background. But knowing of something and facing the reality of it were vastly different things.
Remus apprenticed with Professor Kettleburn to learn more about the creatures which he had such a knack for. James and Sirius, talented and wealthy as they were, could have done anything. Noble Gryffindors to the core, they decided to train as aurors.
Even Snivellus had a plan for his life, going to study potions in France.
Peter had no grand plans, nor great magical aptitudes, nor wonderful opportunities. Instead he went home to his mother, with her greying hair, and greying memory. He tried to make things easier for her by figuring out how to enchant the sink to do the dishes, the broom to sweep the chaos under the rug, and the duster to knock loose the spiderwebs in the rafters.
His mam thanked him by calling him Benedict, as if his father hadn't been dead for the past decade.
One morning he found her lying at the bottom of the stairs. The fairy lights he'd cast so Mam could better find her way hovered anxiously around her broken form. They winked out one by one as the sun rose on a grey Halloween morning.
Sirius and James took four hours to answer his floo call. They stumbled through the front door laughing about some recent fete, something they'd conveniently forgotten to invite Peter to.
They found him sitting on the cold floor by the cold body.
"Peter, your hands are freezing," Sirius said, pulling him to his feet. "Come on, I'll bring you to James' and we'll figure this out."
It took an entire day of paperwork and interviews. "No, she was dead when I found her. No, I did not bring her to St Mungo's because she was dead when I found her. No, I don't know when she filed her last will. No, I am an only child, there's only me…"
James decided it'd be better if Peter came to live with him and Sirius for a while. "The manor house is too empty anyway," he complained in jest. As if having too many rooms was a common and taxing problem for those with too many Galleons to their names.
Peter wouldn't know. He just inherited his mother's mortgage, forcing him to sell her house and every memory in it to some ponce who wanted to tear it all down. Seeing his life packed neatly into five trunks felt like an anvil on his chest.
He couldn't breathe and he couldn't think and he felt very, very small and unimportant.
A week passed before James and Sirius could convince him to transfigure back from being a rodent.
Time flashed by in moments: blistering hot showers that had him feeling just as cold as before, sitting by the fireplace watching James, Sirius, and Remus horsing around. A full moon came and went.
Yule brought 'good' news. "Lily's pregnant!" James had screamed. "I'm having a baby!"
The others were jubilant, popping open a ridiculously old bottle of wine. They drew up hasty wedding plans, laughing all the while.
Didn't they see how broken the world was? People were dying, the war draining them of...everything. The numbers of dead that came with every Daily Prophet had long become meaningless. How could someone bring a child into this?
"Sirius, you'll be my best man of course," James announced, cheeks already glowing from the second bottle.
Nobody glanced Peter's way.
At the wedding, Lily was radiant. James looked at her like she was something precious and wonderful.
Peter wondered if anyone would ever see him like that.
xoxox
Sometimes he'd catch them talking behind closed doors about Dumbledore's vigilante group, of prophecies and planned raids. But however small the obstacle of a door was for a rat, their hearts seemed to become ever more guarded as Lily's belly swelled with new life.
xoxox
"Our little Prongslet," Sirius jested, acting far too childish to be any kind of parent.
"He'll be named something normal," Lily protested, half her attention still with the law book on her lap. "Harry after my father, or Rosemary if she's a girl."
Peter sat there and quietly marvelled how someone so strong could come from such weak blood. She just told James how things would be! Peter had never had the courage to tell his friends anything.
Watching Lily's studies progress just made him feel smaller. Him, a pureblood wizard, in the shadow of a muggleborn.
He yearned for—something, anything but this purposeless emptiness.
xoxox
Title: Here the stone images are raised, here they receive
Lily was the one to tell him he'd have to find somewhere else to stay. They were moving, and cottage in Godric's Hollow apparently didn't have enough room for a rat.
James found a trunkmaker down Horizont Alley that was willing to take Peter on as an apprentice, so he was packed up and shipped away with the not-so-subtle push to make something of himself.
"Your mother would be proud," Remus said, patting Peter on the back in farewell.
Remus had never even talked to Peter's mother. How dare he.
xoxox
Wenceslas Whittaker let Peter stay in a little room on the shop's ground floor. There were a few discarded trunks bearing expansion charms, so the space was more than enough. Most nights Peter slept curled up on a pillow by the windowsill, whiskers twitching gently as the war raged and the world burned.
When it came time to appoint a secret keeper for the Potters' cottage, Peter was surprised they thought of him at all. Baby Harry was already big enough to crawl about, staring intently at the fairy lights Peter conjured.
Then again, Peter was a sensible choice—he lived a dull life, safe from the war. The magic of being secret keeper meant he'd only be able to visit the property once a month, but nobody seemed to mind that.
And of course, nobody would suspect him. After all, who would put their trust in a rat?
I'm terrified of dying, Peter wanted to protest. I faint at the sight of blood, I'll cave before the second Crucio is cast. I'm not made for this.
Even with the weakness in his knees, Peter agreed to keep their secret. They'd done so much for him already, it was only fair to do something for them in return.
Mam had always insisted on things like courage and integrity.
xoxox
Despite his grouchy demeanour and acerbic wit, Master Whittaker was a good teacher. He showed Peter how to stitch the leather together, and what the runes did. Soon he had Peter doing most of the detailwork to spare his failing eyesight. The pay was shite, but Peter thought it was a good arrangement.
He should have known it was too good to last.
xoxox
They broke into the shop at exactly two in the morning.
Peter almost fell off his windowsill in fright as the proximity ward sounded. He used his mirror to alert Sirius, then called for the aurors over the floo.
Transforming back into a rat, he scrambled into the front room to assess the damage.
They were wearing black masks and black robes, their boots massive black leather. The leader was shouting at the other two while he raced up the stairs to Master Whittaker's rooms. The others stayed, overturning the inventory without stealing a thing.
Wormtail slunk into a dark corner to transform back, his heart thundering in his ears as he fired off two stunners before they could notice him.
Up ahead there was the sound of voices. Wormail scrambled up the steps. Then, a CRASH—followed by echoing silence.
Someone was coming his way. He shrank into the shadows, his tail curling tightly against himself as steps pounded past.
He found Master Whittaker lying on the floor, a broken lance pinning him into place. Peter looked around, desperate to stop the bleeding somehow, bitterly regretting he'd never learnt how to side-along someone.
"Look at me, boy," Master Whittaker wheezed at him. "Did you catch him, did you stop him?"
"Help is coming, sir," Peter pleaded. Please don't die, please don't die, please don't—
The disappointment in his master's eyes sawed through him like a jagged blade. "I thought…thought you were a Gryffindor…"
The aurors arrived too late. Sirius came just in time to see Peter being led off, his bloodstained wrists in cuffs. "Suspicious circumstances," the aurors murmured. "Difficult times. No signs of theft."
Peter was questioned again and again until he couldn't remember his own name, let alone his grief. "You stand to inherit the shop, that's motive," they argued.
"I wouldn't know how to run it, I've only been there a year!" The protest fell on deaf ears.
The night before his trial, a woman in dark, hooded robes sauntered up to Peter's cell as though the Dementor couldn't touch her. "We can help you, Peter," she said, voice like a viper. "We can arrange it so you walk free tomorrow. Is that what you want, Peter Pettigrew?" She made his name sound like a coo, sending shivers up his spine.
The Dementor's cold was pressing on him from all sides, leaving him feeling terribly, horribly alone. He licked his lips.
"For what price?"
The woman giggled madly. "Yes or no, itty bitty Petey?"
Peter had never been brilliant like his friends, but he wasn't stupid. He knew no matter which answer he gave, it'd be a monumental mistake.
But his friends hadn't come to help him. It was this, or a life in Azkaban. The aurors didn't have any other suspects to pin this on and he knew they were desperate to be seen closing cases.
"Alright."
The mad cackling echoed in his ears long after the woman left.
xoxox
His trial was a blur. The chair's chains wrapped icy metal around his wrists.
Master Whittaker's brother testified at length against Peter's character, despite them never having met. Peter could already feel the walls closing in on him when a highborn woman stepped forwards.
"Narcissa Malfoy née Black, witness for the defence," she announced herself.
Sirius' cousin? Peter looked around desperately, but he knew his dormmate wasn't here, hadn't made it to the trial that would condemn Peter for life. This had to be her doing. He could still hear the cackling, the mysterious woman crooning, Itty Bitty Petey. The mysterious madwoman, rather.
"I was summoned to Gringotts late that night on business and saw three men loitering before the trunkshop on Horizont Alley. I can identify one of them as Mister Boleslaw Whittaker, brother of the deceased. They put on black masks like the terrorists known as Death Eaters are said to wear, then entered the shop."
The room broke out in muttering. Peter felt something fizzing in his chest, filling him with buoyancy. Letting him off would have reopened the case, but having someone else to blame could overturn this farce of justice. Perhaps, there was hope…
It took an hour's debate before the chains unclasped themselves. Someone handed Peter a foil-wrapped Ministry Issued Bar, 50% Cacao, which tasted better than the label had led him to believe. The warmth that flooded him felt like boulders tumbling off his bowed back.
xoxox
Welcome to my latest publishable plot bunny. It spawned from a few reviews I got for Peter's chapter in To Skin a Cat, when I realised people don't see Peter with anywhere near as much empathy as I do.
I have the next year's worth of updates almost ready for you and am still writing, so this should grow steadily. This is being cross-posting to ao3 but at different rates so you can go read the next bunch of chapters there.