Disclaimer: If it looks familiar, it isn't mine.
Peter adapted rapidly to his new life. He was odd, very odd, and no one could quite overlook it. He flinched where he shouldn't have, made comments that no one really understood, and laughed at strange humor. Yet, at the same time, he was remarkably normal, all things considered. He decided, after only brief meditation, that Voldemort no longer wanted him alive. He had escaped, and he had taken refuge with Dumbledore. In short, it did not require a doctorate in astrophysics, or metaphysics for that matter, to figure out that Peter was not about to side with the Dark Lord. And, if he truly was destined to be more powerful than Voldemort, there was no way You-Know-Who was stupid enough to let him live.
This, however, did not phase him. He was actually sort of enjoying himself. But the vacation was ending, and he considered the return of the students with some trepidation. There were far too many children of Death-Eaters. He did not relish the thought of running into some of them.
"So, am I a student or not?" Peter asked Dumbledore one day. He had so far been staying in Dumbledore's office all day, except for a few excursions to the library. (Oh, glorious library!)
Dumbledore didn't answer for a moment. Peter repeated the question. The headmaster asked, "Do you want to be a student? How could you be? You are nearly sixteen, and yet you have never picked up a wand."
"No one has ever asked me what I want before." Peter commented slowly. "I don't really know how to respond, but I know the theory behind everything in the books. I've studied the books, just never put any of it to practice."
"Why?"
"It started out as crazy dreaming. If I ever did, by some chance, get a hold of a wand, I needed to know what to do with it. But you can't just learn the two spells that would be helpful. You have to learn the basics first. That's what I did. I got myself up to a level where I could at least be a mediocre wizard, assuming I was one, of course."
"Didn't you know for sure?"
"Professor, weird things have been happening to me all my life. How could I tell if it was maturing magic or not?"
Dumbledore laughed and agreed. "But you still haven't answered my question. Do you want to be a student?"
"No," Peter said after the longest pause yet, "I couldn't."
"Is there any particular reason that you'll let me know?"
"Yes, I can't sit in the same class as them, the children of the Death- Eaters. My hate for them is different than a school rivalry. I have spent many nights thinking of ways to kill them. I can't face that, never."
"I understand, but someday you will have to be a part of the same world they are a part of."
"No, not if I can help it. Just because their parents escaped justice doesn't mean that it should be the norm. They have their comeuppance to pay. I will give it to them."
"Death is not the answer to stop killing, Peter."
"How true, I am not speaking of death, though. There are shorter ways, safer ways. I have had a long time to think about this, all my life as a matter of fact."
"Hence you call yourself Edmond."
"You are well read in Muggle literature, Professor. All the same, let's change the subject. If I am not to be a student, what am I to be? I can't very well stay in this little Rapunzel's tower for the next three months, lovely as it is. I have a feeling it would get in the way of your work."
They talked in this vein for a quite a while longer, Peter asserting that he didn't care, Dumbledore adamant that he did. Neither could think of what to do with the boy. He was forever a misfit, never belonging, always in the way.
"Tell me, what do you want?" Dumbledore asked again.
"I want.I want to spend the day in the library and not have to worry about who sees me. I want to explore this castle. I want to be free. I guess I want the impossible."
Dumbledore sat for some time, deep in thought. Then he smiled. "Not impossible, there is a way."
* * * *
"You're the boy from my dream!" Harry Potter cried upon seeing Peter, then his voice changed to a much softer tone. "You.you look like.someone I used to know."
"Yes, I am the boy from the dream. I am also permanently indebted to you for noticing I was real, and listening to my message. I am sorry to have disturbed your sleep," Peter returned easily, completely ignoring that other comment.
He knew who he looked like, his father. Sirius Black.
Harry nodded, "You're welcome; it was nothing."
Dumbledore looked approvingly on during the exchange, then said, "Harry, I must ask a rather large favor of you."
Harry looked slightly worried to Peter, but he said nothing.
"This is Peter. His father was a friend to yours. He needs to borrow you father's cloak for a time."
"Why?" Harry asked.
"What good would a cloak do me.oh, that cloak." Peter thought aloud. "Harry, I wouldn't have asked this of you. However, I cannot be around some of the people in this school. I cannot be seen by them, and I seriously doubt I could refrain from killing some of them if I was forced in a social situation with them."
Harry laughed. Peter didn't. Harry figured out that Peter wasn't joking relatively quickly.
"Er.can I have some background information?" asked Harry awkwardly.
"You don't want to get into my family history." This time, it was Peter laughing. But Dumbledore gave a relatively short overview of what Peter had told him, which was an incredibly short summary of what Peter knew. It was sufficient enough to at least double the size of Harry's eyes, though. Peter could see his mind working. Sirius's son, and yet, also, somehow, the son of Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who had killed Sirius. And his namesake was all but the murderer of Harry's parents. As Peter himself had said, there was no history as mixed up as his own. It took an extraordinarily extensive time to convince Harry to give loan of his Invisibility Cloak to this boy.
"I knew I should have kept the name Edmond," Peter muttered under his breath. No one else heard him.
Finally, Harry consented. The Cloak fit wonderfully. "Don't run into anything, or leave it somewhere," Harry advised.
"Understood."
So, when the end of the holidays came, Peter had already been gallivanting around Hogwarts like he owned it for three days. He made himself well acquainted with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, mostly by coming up behind them and starting random conversations with no introductions whatsoever. They did not seem to like it half as well as he did.
"Are you going to continue to do this when everyone's back?" Hermione cried once after Peter had been following them for about an hour and had only decided to enter the conversation at the very end of that point.
"Yes," he answered without hesitation. They all groaned at the news. Peter actually laughed for the fun of it. Life, he thought, is good.
The more rational part of his mind reminded him that if life was good, then something was definitely rotten in the state of Denmark. He knew it, but didn't particularly care. He had even taken to removing the Cloak every once and while to talk to Harry, Ron, and Hermione with the normal expressions attributed to a human. Then the holidays ended.
* * * *
What to think of this boy, Peter, was a mystery to Harry. He seemed to be such a disguise. Even when Harry could see him, which wasn't that often, his true thoughts were more invisible than anyone he had ever known. "It's not my fault," Peter had said in his own defense, "I had to hide my emotions to survive."
As to what exactly the boy had been through, Harry knew even less. But, from what he guessed, it was a lot, and more than anyone should have to experience in a thousand lifetimes. For all that, though, he thought that Peter's aversion to being seen by any of the other students had more to do with a Moody-like paranoia than anything else. He was, he soon found, dead wrong.
They were in the library, a place which Peter and Hermione together managed to drag the others to with increasing frequency, when the first of the returning Slytherins came back. Peter was out of the Cloak, but sitting in a shadowy corner almost imperceptible unless you knew he was there. He wasn't speaking above a whisper.
"You wouldn't believe the dirt I've picked up over the years on every-" his voice broke off suddenly into absolute silence, no gasp, no fading away, just stopped.
Harry, who hadn't really been looking at Peter, turned quickly to see what was wrong. The boy was gone, presumably under the cloak. "What is it?" the three remaining visible children asked in unison.
No one answered. "Hello?" Ron asked, and he waved his hand around the space where Peter should have been. His hand found no purchase. Peter really was gone. The why was answered soon enough. Across the library, who had walked in but Malfoy and his cronies?
"Talking to imaginary friends now, Potter?" his voice simpered. "Must be schizophrenic."
Now did not seem like a good time to explain that he indeed was speaking with an actual person. "Right, Malfoy, welcome back to you too," he muttered as he, Ron, and Hermione took their leave.
"Marauder's Map?" Ron asked as soon as they were out of earshot.
Harry nodded. They made it to the Gryffindor Tower in record time; the map said Peter was in Dumbledore's office.
"Well," Hermione grumbled, panting, "I could have told you that."
"Could have saved us a trip then," Ron commented, also breathless. They went at a more normal rate to the headmaster's office. According to the map, Dumbledore was not there.
"Anyone know the password?" Harry asked. "It's a candy."
Hermione and Ron looked at him doubtfully. "Just accept it," he said, shrugging. And they started shouting out random candies, a veritable deja vú for Harry. Finally, the gargoyle moved, whether it was on Bertie Bott's Every Flavored Beans, Chocolate Frogs, or Pumpkin Pastries was anybody's guess.
They found Peter immediately. He was sitting on the floor staring straight at the wall. His mouth was moving but no sound was coming out.
"Peter," Hermione asked softly, "what's wrong?"
"I told you; I can't be in the same room with those sons of.sons of.Death- Eaters," he spat the word as if it was the dirtiest swear word ever. "I can't.I can't." his voice dwindled to nothingness.
"You mean Malfoy? He's nothing, just a lot of talk and ego," Ron scoffed.
"Draco?" Peter looked up, anger flashing through his eyes before it faded into that weird mask of stoicism, "Draco isn't nothing. He's a murderer."
"What?" they asked simultaneously.
"You heard me perfectly clearly; you just didn't want to hear it. After all, as much as you might hate him, as awful as he might be at school, he is still a fellow student at Hogwarts. You don't want to think about them being capable of that kind of stuff. But they are. Riddle had his first kill before he graduated. Why did you think I couldn't stand to be near them? Because they are annoying? What do you take me for? But it doesn't matter. Just leave me alone."
"No, Peter, you can't stay alone forever," Hermione sat down next to him.
"Yes, I can; don't you get it? I am happy alone. Let me be." His lips started to move silently again.
"What happened? Who did Malfoy kill?" Harry asked.
Peter looked at them as if they were insane to want to know. He shook his head and stared past them, unseeingly. Hermione snapped in front of his face; he didn't so much as blink. "What happened?" Harry repeated.
"Are you certain you want to know? If I had a choice, I wouldn't want to!" Peter cried, responding automatically.
"Yes, we are sure," Harry responded for all of them.
"Then you will hear," Peter consented. He stood up and resumed a seat behind Dumbledore's desk. He looked and acted presumptuous. Another disguise, another act.
"I was twelve, that would make Draco eleven.Look, I can't do this," Peter broke off suddenly, and his blank stare returned.
"Is that how you deal with reality?" Hermione snapped. "Just go away into your own little world of nothingness and forget what is actually happening?"
"Yes! That is how. Give me another way and I'll take it, but I think the fact that I found anyway to fight what I must is impressive. So don't tell me I am doing anything wrong. I am more right than you'll ever be!" Peter became angry quickly. No, Harry thought better of it, It wasn't anger. It was a defense. It was another of those cursed masks.
"And what has happened to you?" Hermione cried. "Harry has had his share of adversity!"
"Yes, you are right. But he has also has his share of goodness. I respect you, Harry, for what you've been through. No one should have to go through that. And yet, he has had balance in his life. And nothing he has been through has been half as bad as my experiences."
"Want to bet?" Harry bristled.
"You'd lose. Trust me. You've felt the Cruciatus curse twice, I believe. Voldemort had to stop using it on me because it got too bloody boring for him, and for me. I don't scream any more. Can you say the same?"
"You don't scream?" Harry asked, half doubtfully, half incredulously.
Peter nodded, his defensive attitude taking control. He started to speak again, "Harry, you have somewhere in you the memory of your mother loving you so much that she would rather die than betray her child. I have in my consciousness the memory of my mother giving me to the Dark Lord. Not in exchange for her life. Not because she had no choice, but because she wanted to.
"I know you respected my father, but I have never been hurt so badly as when I read the article about his escape. No one once speculated that he would be trying to find his son, who may or may not have died in the first rising of Voldemort. Instead, they quoted his delirious rambling. He's at Hogwarts. I, like everyone else, thought it meant you. After all those years he still cared more for the Potters, or their murderer, than he did for his son.
"Is it any wonder I try to leave this world? This world has never offered me anything. Even when I wanted death, it would not give it to me."
He rolled up his right sleeve slowly and shuddered at the criss-cross scars that streaked over his wrist. Hermione gasped aloud. "It didn't work," Peter said remorsefully.
"Why would you try to kill yourself?" Ron said rather than asked.
"Because I didn't know what else to do. I guess I am going to have to tell you after all. I wasn't the only little lost child everyone thought was dead. Apparently, Dumbledore is not very good at keeping track of them. There was at least one other. We called her Mary, after Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. Then there was Lucy, The Chronicles of Narnia, but she might have been a Muggle.
"Lucy was wonderful. She believed in a world of goodness even when she was in that living nightmare. Mary and I were jaded. She kept hoping that someday things would be better. She was the one who kept us all alive. There were times when we thought her an angel. And don't think this is a case of rose-colored memories. She really was like this, one of those Victorian, storybook children; we should have called her Sara, from The Little Princess. But she liked Lucy more."
"Because Lucy Penvensie found the way out, behind the wardrobe," Hermione butted in.
Peter looked startled, as if he had forgotten anyone else was in the room, but he nodded appreciatively. "Exactly, Hermione, Lucy had faith even no one else did. Both Lucies.But the wardrobe was an adventure. It did not take them from reality. They returned at exactly the same moment they had left, only with memories."
Then he stopped again. His face dropped its mask for a second and contorted with pain. Realizing what he was doing, Peter snapped back to non- expression. "Go on," Hermione urged gently.
"You know what, I probably shouldn't tell you this, on second thought," Peter suddenly looked up, with a foolish sort of smile on his face.
"Oh no you don't!" Ron said. "You started, and so you should finish."
"You'll feel better once you've told anyway," Harry added knowingly.
"Maybe I will feel better, but you won't," Peter corrected, "However, since you seem so intent on hearing it I will continue. Lucy was extremely empathetic. In fact, it was so strong it's the one reason we aren't complete sure she was a Muggle. It was almost supernatural, the way she could sense emotion. But she was young, very young, and she had no idea what the consequences of her ability could be. Neither Mary nor I had it, so we were of no help in that area. She was foolish. She cared far too much about people who she should not have. I have oft wondered if she was wonderful or stupid. I suppose she was a glorious idiot.
"One day, O, Lucy, why? One day, Lucy tried to comfort Draco, from what his ill-tempered manner spawned matters not. All that matters is that Lucy overstepped her boundaries because she saw Draco, and all the other.incubi of Death-Eaters, as children. She once told me that one of the evilest things that the Death-Eaters had done was corrupting their sons and daughters. They were not evil by nature, and they were never given a chance to choose their own calling. I disagreed. I honestly cannot forgive a single one of them. How can anyone watch constant abuse and believe it to be right? Or even acceptable?
"But that is philosophy, nurture versus nature. Lucy had much faith in her creed, and she became a martyr for it. Draco's petulance was due to pent-up anger. She, with her quiet questions, her concerned words, offered an outlet for it. I don't know what truly happened, for I was not there or perhaps I could have stopped it, but he stabbed her through the heart with a letter-opener in the end. He didn't even give her the honor and mercy of a magical death.
"Mary found her body, still oozing out dark blood. May there never again on Earth sound such a horrible scream. It was the tears of a millennium bottled into a single cry. I was at her side before the echo had stopped. I longed, with all of my heart, to kill Draco, to get revenge.
"Mary begged me not to, said that if I did my life would be forfeit. She was right; it would have been. At that moment, I did not care. But Mary pleaded, and her winning card was that she would die too. There was no hope for her with both of us gone. So Lucy's death went un-avenged, as she would have liked it. We grieved in silence for her, the mortal angel that now, we truly wanted to hope, had real wings of shimmering stars.
"Six months later, they separated Mary and me. Where she is now is anyone's guess, but she must be dead. Why else would I not have seen her? Perhaps she escaped, but I doubt it with my whole being. When they took her, that's when I slashed my wrists. Dobby stopped the blood because he had been ordered not to let me die."
Peter fell into mournful silence. No one said anything for a long time. Harry could not get his mind around the story. Malfoy had killed a girl in a fit of rage brought on by something irrelevant. Peter had been right; Harry would have been better off not knowing.
"You knew Dobby?" Ron asked for the sake of having something to say.
"Yes, but he would deny it if you asked him. Even now, with his newfound freedom, he would die to say my name, or any hints about my life, aloud. He offered many times to do so, especially when we tried to figure out how to warn you about the Chamber of Secrets-" Peter began.
"You were the one warning us?"
"I was trying, but Dobby had such strict parameters on what he was doing. He could not, under any circumstances, help Harry Potter. So I found a loophole, try to hurt you, but at the same time give warning. From what I gather, it didn't really work. At that same time, Dobby offered to speak my name, but I would not suffer another death on my soul. He came back several times after his liberation, but he could do nothing for me. I told him never to come again. I like solitude. Please, leave me alone. I need to be alone."
His silent mantra began again. Hermione motioned for them to leave, but she turned back just before they left and asked, "You said that the reason Malfoy was upset did not matter. That's a lie. What was the reason?"
Peter replied softly, "He was angry because you three had outshone him his first year at Hogwarts, and his father took no excuses for it. I told you that you did not want to know." This last was nearly an accusation.
Harry froze. Peter's words rang in his head. Was he the cause of Lucy's death? Was it all his fault? How much had Peter been through on account of himself?
"No, do not feel that way. If you could have prevented it, you would have. It was fated. One of us had to die, and of all people, it was cruelest to take Lucy. Of course it would be her, and of course it would be in a way that would haunt all of our dreams for eternity, wondering if we could have saved her. The answer is no. Never."
Probably, Peter was right, but it did nothing to assuage Harry's feeling of guilt.
Peter adapted rapidly to his new life. He was odd, very odd, and no one could quite overlook it. He flinched where he shouldn't have, made comments that no one really understood, and laughed at strange humor. Yet, at the same time, he was remarkably normal, all things considered. He decided, after only brief meditation, that Voldemort no longer wanted him alive. He had escaped, and he had taken refuge with Dumbledore. In short, it did not require a doctorate in astrophysics, or metaphysics for that matter, to figure out that Peter was not about to side with the Dark Lord. And, if he truly was destined to be more powerful than Voldemort, there was no way You-Know-Who was stupid enough to let him live.
This, however, did not phase him. He was actually sort of enjoying himself. But the vacation was ending, and he considered the return of the students with some trepidation. There were far too many children of Death-Eaters. He did not relish the thought of running into some of them.
"So, am I a student or not?" Peter asked Dumbledore one day. He had so far been staying in Dumbledore's office all day, except for a few excursions to the library. (Oh, glorious library!)
Dumbledore didn't answer for a moment. Peter repeated the question. The headmaster asked, "Do you want to be a student? How could you be? You are nearly sixteen, and yet you have never picked up a wand."
"No one has ever asked me what I want before." Peter commented slowly. "I don't really know how to respond, but I know the theory behind everything in the books. I've studied the books, just never put any of it to practice."
"Why?"
"It started out as crazy dreaming. If I ever did, by some chance, get a hold of a wand, I needed to know what to do with it. But you can't just learn the two spells that would be helpful. You have to learn the basics first. That's what I did. I got myself up to a level where I could at least be a mediocre wizard, assuming I was one, of course."
"Didn't you know for sure?"
"Professor, weird things have been happening to me all my life. How could I tell if it was maturing magic or not?"
Dumbledore laughed and agreed. "But you still haven't answered my question. Do you want to be a student?"
"No," Peter said after the longest pause yet, "I couldn't."
"Is there any particular reason that you'll let me know?"
"Yes, I can't sit in the same class as them, the children of the Death- Eaters. My hate for them is different than a school rivalry. I have spent many nights thinking of ways to kill them. I can't face that, never."
"I understand, but someday you will have to be a part of the same world they are a part of."
"No, not if I can help it. Just because their parents escaped justice doesn't mean that it should be the norm. They have their comeuppance to pay. I will give it to them."
"Death is not the answer to stop killing, Peter."
"How true, I am not speaking of death, though. There are shorter ways, safer ways. I have had a long time to think about this, all my life as a matter of fact."
"Hence you call yourself Edmond."
"You are well read in Muggle literature, Professor. All the same, let's change the subject. If I am not to be a student, what am I to be? I can't very well stay in this little Rapunzel's tower for the next three months, lovely as it is. I have a feeling it would get in the way of your work."
They talked in this vein for a quite a while longer, Peter asserting that he didn't care, Dumbledore adamant that he did. Neither could think of what to do with the boy. He was forever a misfit, never belonging, always in the way.
"Tell me, what do you want?" Dumbledore asked again.
"I want.I want to spend the day in the library and not have to worry about who sees me. I want to explore this castle. I want to be free. I guess I want the impossible."
Dumbledore sat for some time, deep in thought. Then he smiled. "Not impossible, there is a way."
* * * *
"You're the boy from my dream!" Harry Potter cried upon seeing Peter, then his voice changed to a much softer tone. "You.you look like.someone I used to know."
"Yes, I am the boy from the dream. I am also permanently indebted to you for noticing I was real, and listening to my message. I am sorry to have disturbed your sleep," Peter returned easily, completely ignoring that other comment.
He knew who he looked like, his father. Sirius Black.
Harry nodded, "You're welcome; it was nothing."
Dumbledore looked approvingly on during the exchange, then said, "Harry, I must ask a rather large favor of you."
Harry looked slightly worried to Peter, but he said nothing.
"This is Peter. His father was a friend to yours. He needs to borrow you father's cloak for a time."
"Why?" Harry asked.
"What good would a cloak do me.oh, that cloak." Peter thought aloud. "Harry, I wouldn't have asked this of you. However, I cannot be around some of the people in this school. I cannot be seen by them, and I seriously doubt I could refrain from killing some of them if I was forced in a social situation with them."
Harry laughed. Peter didn't. Harry figured out that Peter wasn't joking relatively quickly.
"Er.can I have some background information?" asked Harry awkwardly.
"You don't want to get into my family history." This time, it was Peter laughing. But Dumbledore gave a relatively short overview of what Peter had told him, which was an incredibly short summary of what Peter knew. It was sufficient enough to at least double the size of Harry's eyes, though. Peter could see his mind working. Sirius's son, and yet, also, somehow, the son of Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who had killed Sirius. And his namesake was all but the murderer of Harry's parents. As Peter himself had said, there was no history as mixed up as his own. It took an extraordinarily extensive time to convince Harry to give loan of his Invisibility Cloak to this boy.
"I knew I should have kept the name Edmond," Peter muttered under his breath. No one else heard him.
Finally, Harry consented. The Cloak fit wonderfully. "Don't run into anything, or leave it somewhere," Harry advised.
"Understood."
So, when the end of the holidays came, Peter had already been gallivanting around Hogwarts like he owned it for three days. He made himself well acquainted with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, mostly by coming up behind them and starting random conversations with no introductions whatsoever. They did not seem to like it half as well as he did.
"Are you going to continue to do this when everyone's back?" Hermione cried once after Peter had been following them for about an hour and had only decided to enter the conversation at the very end of that point.
"Yes," he answered without hesitation. They all groaned at the news. Peter actually laughed for the fun of it. Life, he thought, is good.
The more rational part of his mind reminded him that if life was good, then something was definitely rotten in the state of Denmark. He knew it, but didn't particularly care. He had even taken to removing the Cloak every once and while to talk to Harry, Ron, and Hermione with the normal expressions attributed to a human. Then the holidays ended.
* * * *
What to think of this boy, Peter, was a mystery to Harry. He seemed to be such a disguise. Even when Harry could see him, which wasn't that often, his true thoughts were more invisible than anyone he had ever known. "It's not my fault," Peter had said in his own defense, "I had to hide my emotions to survive."
As to what exactly the boy had been through, Harry knew even less. But, from what he guessed, it was a lot, and more than anyone should have to experience in a thousand lifetimes. For all that, though, he thought that Peter's aversion to being seen by any of the other students had more to do with a Moody-like paranoia than anything else. He was, he soon found, dead wrong.
They were in the library, a place which Peter and Hermione together managed to drag the others to with increasing frequency, when the first of the returning Slytherins came back. Peter was out of the Cloak, but sitting in a shadowy corner almost imperceptible unless you knew he was there. He wasn't speaking above a whisper.
"You wouldn't believe the dirt I've picked up over the years on every-" his voice broke off suddenly into absolute silence, no gasp, no fading away, just stopped.
Harry, who hadn't really been looking at Peter, turned quickly to see what was wrong. The boy was gone, presumably under the cloak. "What is it?" the three remaining visible children asked in unison.
No one answered. "Hello?" Ron asked, and he waved his hand around the space where Peter should have been. His hand found no purchase. Peter really was gone. The why was answered soon enough. Across the library, who had walked in but Malfoy and his cronies?
"Talking to imaginary friends now, Potter?" his voice simpered. "Must be schizophrenic."
Now did not seem like a good time to explain that he indeed was speaking with an actual person. "Right, Malfoy, welcome back to you too," he muttered as he, Ron, and Hermione took their leave.
"Marauder's Map?" Ron asked as soon as they were out of earshot.
Harry nodded. They made it to the Gryffindor Tower in record time; the map said Peter was in Dumbledore's office.
"Well," Hermione grumbled, panting, "I could have told you that."
"Could have saved us a trip then," Ron commented, also breathless. They went at a more normal rate to the headmaster's office. According to the map, Dumbledore was not there.
"Anyone know the password?" Harry asked. "It's a candy."
Hermione and Ron looked at him doubtfully. "Just accept it," he said, shrugging. And they started shouting out random candies, a veritable deja vú for Harry. Finally, the gargoyle moved, whether it was on Bertie Bott's Every Flavored Beans, Chocolate Frogs, or Pumpkin Pastries was anybody's guess.
They found Peter immediately. He was sitting on the floor staring straight at the wall. His mouth was moving but no sound was coming out.
"Peter," Hermione asked softly, "what's wrong?"
"I told you; I can't be in the same room with those sons of.sons of.Death- Eaters," he spat the word as if it was the dirtiest swear word ever. "I can't.I can't." his voice dwindled to nothingness.
"You mean Malfoy? He's nothing, just a lot of talk and ego," Ron scoffed.
"Draco?" Peter looked up, anger flashing through his eyes before it faded into that weird mask of stoicism, "Draco isn't nothing. He's a murderer."
"What?" they asked simultaneously.
"You heard me perfectly clearly; you just didn't want to hear it. After all, as much as you might hate him, as awful as he might be at school, he is still a fellow student at Hogwarts. You don't want to think about them being capable of that kind of stuff. But they are. Riddle had his first kill before he graduated. Why did you think I couldn't stand to be near them? Because they are annoying? What do you take me for? But it doesn't matter. Just leave me alone."
"No, Peter, you can't stay alone forever," Hermione sat down next to him.
"Yes, I can; don't you get it? I am happy alone. Let me be." His lips started to move silently again.
"What happened? Who did Malfoy kill?" Harry asked.
Peter looked at them as if they were insane to want to know. He shook his head and stared past them, unseeingly. Hermione snapped in front of his face; he didn't so much as blink. "What happened?" Harry repeated.
"Are you certain you want to know? If I had a choice, I wouldn't want to!" Peter cried, responding automatically.
"Yes, we are sure," Harry responded for all of them.
"Then you will hear," Peter consented. He stood up and resumed a seat behind Dumbledore's desk. He looked and acted presumptuous. Another disguise, another act.
"I was twelve, that would make Draco eleven.Look, I can't do this," Peter broke off suddenly, and his blank stare returned.
"Is that how you deal with reality?" Hermione snapped. "Just go away into your own little world of nothingness and forget what is actually happening?"
"Yes! That is how. Give me another way and I'll take it, but I think the fact that I found anyway to fight what I must is impressive. So don't tell me I am doing anything wrong. I am more right than you'll ever be!" Peter became angry quickly. No, Harry thought better of it, It wasn't anger. It was a defense. It was another of those cursed masks.
"And what has happened to you?" Hermione cried. "Harry has had his share of adversity!"
"Yes, you are right. But he has also has his share of goodness. I respect you, Harry, for what you've been through. No one should have to go through that. And yet, he has had balance in his life. And nothing he has been through has been half as bad as my experiences."
"Want to bet?" Harry bristled.
"You'd lose. Trust me. You've felt the Cruciatus curse twice, I believe. Voldemort had to stop using it on me because it got too bloody boring for him, and for me. I don't scream any more. Can you say the same?"
"You don't scream?" Harry asked, half doubtfully, half incredulously.
Peter nodded, his defensive attitude taking control. He started to speak again, "Harry, you have somewhere in you the memory of your mother loving you so much that she would rather die than betray her child. I have in my consciousness the memory of my mother giving me to the Dark Lord. Not in exchange for her life. Not because she had no choice, but because she wanted to.
"I know you respected my father, but I have never been hurt so badly as when I read the article about his escape. No one once speculated that he would be trying to find his son, who may or may not have died in the first rising of Voldemort. Instead, they quoted his delirious rambling. He's at Hogwarts. I, like everyone else, thought it meant you. After all those years he still cared more for the Potters, or their murderer, than he did for his son.
"Is it any wonder I try to leave this world? This world has never offered me anything. Even when I wanted death, it would not give it to me."
He rolled up his right sleeve slowly and shuddered at the criss-cross scars that streaked over his wrist. Hermione gasped aloud. "It didn't work," Peter said remorsefully.
"Why would you try to kill yourself?" Ron said rather than asked.
"Because I didn't know what else to do. I guess I am going to have to tell you after all. I wasn't the only little lost child everyone thought was dead. Apparently, Dumbledore is not very good at keeping track of them. There was at least one other. We called her Mary, after Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. Then there was Lucy, The Chronicles of Narnia, but she might have been a Muggle.
"Lucy was wonderful. She believed in a world of goodness even when she was in that living nightmare. Mary and I were jaded. She kept hoping that someday things would be better. She was the one who kept us all alive. There were times when we thought her an angel. And don't think this is a case of rose-colored memories. She really was like this, one of those Victorian, storybook children; we should have called her Sara, from The Little Princess. But she liked Lucy more."
"Because Lucy Penvensie found the way out, behind the wardrobe," Hermione butted in.
Peter looked startled, as if he had forgotten anyone else was in the room, but he nodded appreciatively. "Exactly, Hermione, Lucy had faith even no one else did. Both Lucies.But the wardrobe was an adventure. It did not take them from reality. They returned at exactly the same moment they had left, only with memories."
Then he stopped again. His face dropped its mask for a second and contorted with pain. Realizing what he was doing, Peter snapped back to non- expression. "Go on," Hermione urged gently.
"You know what, I probably shouldn't tell you this, on second thought," Peter suddenly looked up, with a foolish sort of smile on his face.
"Oh no you don't!" Ron said. "You started, and so you should finish."
"You'll feel better once you've told anyway," Harry added knowingly.
"Maybe I will feel better, but you won't," Peter corrected, "However, since you seem so intent on hearing it I will continue. Lucy was extremely empathetic. In fact, it was so strong it's the one reason we aren't complete sure she was a Muggle. It was almost supernatural, the way she could sense emotion. But she was young, very young, and she had no idea what the consequences of her ability could be. Neither Mary nor I had it, so we were of no help in that area. She was foolish. She cared far too much about people who she should not have. I have oft wondered if she was wonderful or stupid. I suppose she was a glorious idiot.
"One day, O, Lucy, why? One day, Lucy tried to comfort Draco, from what his ill-tempered manner spawned matters not. All that matters is that Lucy overstepped her boundaries because she saw Draco, and all the other.incubi of Death-Eaters, as children. She once told me that one of the evilest things that the Death-Eaters had done was corrupting their sons and daughters. They were not evil by nature, and they were never given a chance to choose their own calling. I disagreed. I honestly cannot forgive a single one of them. How can anyone watch constant abuse and believe it to be right? Or even acceptable?
"But that is philosophy, nurture versus nature. Lucy had much faith in her creed, and she became a martyr for it. Draco's petulance was due to pent-up anger. She, with her quiet questions, her concerned words, offered an outlet for it. I don't know what truly happened, for I was not there or perhaps I could have stopped it, but he stabbed her through the heart with a letter-opener in the end. He didn't even give her the honor and mercy of a magical death.
"Mary found her body, still oozing out dark blood. May there never again on Earth sound such a horrible scream. It was the tears of a millennium bottled into a single cry. I was at her side before the echo had stopped. I longed, with all of my heart, to kill Draco, to get revenge.
"Mary begged me not to, said that if I did my life would be forfeit. She was right; it would have been. At that moment, I did not care. But Mary pleaded, and her winning card was that she would die too. There was no hope for her with both of us gone. So Lucy's death went un-avenged, as she would have liked it. We grieved in silence for her, the mortal angel that now, we truly wanted to hope, had real wings of shimmering stars.
"Six months later, they separated Mary and me. Where she is now is anyone's guess, but she must be dead. Why else would I not have seen her? Perhaps she escaped, but I doubt it with my whole being. When they took her, that's when I slashed my wrists. Dobby stopped the blood because he had been ordered not to let me die."
Peter fell into mournful silence. No one said anything for a long time. Harry could not get his mind around the story. Malfoy had killed a girl in a fit of rage brought on by something irrelevant. Peter had been right; Harry would have been better off not knowing.
"You knew Dobby?" Ron asked for the sake of having something to say.
"Yes, but he would deny it if you asked him. Even now, with his newfound freedom, he would die to say my name, or any hints about my life, aloud. He offered many times to do so, especially when we tried to figure out how to warn you about the Chamber of Secrets-" Peter began.
"You were the one warning us?"
"I was trying, but Dobby had such strict parameters on what he was doing. He could not, under any circumstances, help Harry Potter. So I found a loophole, try to hurt you, but at the same time give warning. From what I gather, it didn't really work. At that same time, Dobby offered to speak my name, but I would not suffer another death on my soul. He came back several times after his liberation, but he could do nothing for me. I told him never to come again. I like solitude. Please, leave me alone. I need to be alone."
His silent mantra began again. Hermione motioned for them to leave, but she turned back just before they left and asked, "You said that the reason Malfoy was upset did not matter. That's a lie. What was the reason?"
Peter replied softly, "He was angry because you three had outshone him his first year at Hogwarts, and his father took no excuses for it. I told you that you did not want to know." This last was nearly an accusation.
Harry froze. Peter's words rang in his head. Was he the cause of Lucy's death? Was it all his fault? How much had Peter been through on account of himself?
"No, do not feel that way. If you could have prevented it, you would have. It was fated. One of us had to die, and of all people, it was cruelest to take Lucy. Of course it would be her, and of course it would be in a way that would haunt all of our dreams for eternity, wondering if we could have saved her. The answer is no. Never."
Probably, Peter was right, but it did nothing to assuage Harry's feeling of guilt.