"I do not tolerate fools," He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named spat, his voice filling the hall. "You have disappointed me."

Peter felt like he was shrinking, he wished the tiles would fold back and swallow him whole.

"Crucio," You-Know-Who whispered. Peter screamed.

The Dark magic thrummed in the air, almost gleeful. If he'd had the space for it, Peter would have wondered how steeped this place was in curses; it was a rare thing for magic to grow its own sentience.

He wasn't thinking, though. Peter's body throbbed with pain. His heart thrummed in his chest, too fast—too slow.

He let himself lay on the floor, feeling the tears dribble off his face.

"Up. Get up! Now!"

Peter heaved himself to his knees.

"Pathetic," the Dark Lord sneered and turned away.

It wasn't Peter's first time being confronted with those words, with the way people dismissed him, with their cutting disappointment. The reality of it ached worse than a Cruciatus ever could.

Suddenly he could feel fury flaring inside him. "James Potter is part of Dumbledore's group," he called out, proud when his voice barely trembled.

"And?" The word dripped with mockery. You-Know-Who wasn't even looking, his attention having shifted with some new arrival to the chamber.

Peter could hear the click-click-click of boots against tile. He pushed himself to his feet. "I'm a rat animagus."

Lord Voldemort spun, studying him. The man's dark, probing magic surrounded Peter; it felt excited. "Fascinating," the Dark Lord purred. The second his attention was gone, Peter yearned for more. While his bones still ached from the Cruciatus, this sensation of scrutiny was filling him from his toes to his fingertips. The Dark Lord's attention felt like the most intoxicating ambrosia.

"Very well Peter. Leave me now. You will be returning in a fortnight with good news."

Peter hurried away, his head held high. Sirius would bring him the invisibility cloak and he'd deliver it to the Dark Lord. He knew he wouldn't be disappointing the man again.

xoxox

It should have been so simple.

"I'm sorry, Peter," Sirius said, pacing through the shop like a whirlwind. "James loaned his cloak to Dumbledore. You understand." Sirius didn't sound very sorry.

"He promised I could borrow it," Peter repeated for the third time. "I need it!"

"Look, it wasn't my choice, don't shoot the messenger." Sirius shrugged. He picked up a bag and fiddled with the catch. "Hey, can I have this?"

"Twelve Galleons," Peter recited, "Welsh Green, charmed with undetectable extension, feather-light-"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Sirius put it down and turned away. "You'd think, as your friend, I'd be worth a discount."

Anger bloomed hot and uncomfortable in Peter's chest. Sirius had inherited plenty of money from his uncle, whereas Peter was struggling to keep afloat. But no, Sirius was too caught in his own world of infantile drama, marauding, and vigilantism to give a rat's arse. Was this what friendship meant to him?

"Take me to the headmaster," Peter decided, words slipping from him before he could finish forming the thought. "I want to join the Order of the Phoenix."

I want to join the Order of the Phoenix? What?

But Sirius was grinning, had wrapped Peter into a slapping embrace. "Brilliant, brilliant," he crooned. "Oh, we're going to have so much fun, it'll be just the four of us again, like at school when we went after Snivellus."

Peter resigned himself to hours standing guard while James and Sirius set up pranks, to crawling into filthy corners on their behalf, to being hit by stray spells as they pretended heroics and duelled. He could already hear their mocking laughter. Relax, Peter, we're just kidding. Merlin, learn to take a joke.

Perhaps the Dark Lord would be pleased, a small voice in Peter's mind said. Perhaps he would look at Peter with that careful, assessing gaze, and say he was fascinating.

Something in his chest roared eagerly. He'd prove himself worthy. Besides, it wasn't like he was really doing anything harmful. Just a cloak, and a handful of Dumbledore's secrets.

You're betraying your friends, yet another part of him whispered.

But really, hadn't they betrayed him first?

xoxox

Peter convinced Sirius his animagus form should be kept secret too, so the interview with Dumbledore was rather pitiful.

Headmaster 'Call me Albus, my boy' Dumbledore spent the whole half-hour peering over his spectacles at Peter, going "Hmmm" and asking leading questions about the Peter's short experience being incarcerated. There weren't any auror secrets for him to reveal. It resulted in more peering and a lot of judging 'Hmmm's.

At the end of it Peter was certain he'd be shown to the door, pronounced a disappointment yet again. Instead, Albus invited him to the next meeting and offered Peter the chance to learn some healing magicks from Frank Longbottom.

It was a good idea. Peter couldn't stop himself from brightening, finally meeting Albus' eyes. "I'd like that very much," he said. The image of Master Wenzeslas bleeding out in front of him would likely never leave him. 'I thought you were a Gryffindor,' it echoed in his ears.

Albus smiled then, as if some great mystery had just revealed itself to him. "I see," he said. "You are doing the right thing, my boy."

Right and wrong. Black and white. Dark and light.

Peter shivered despite the warmth of the fire. None of it mattered when everything was really just shades and shades of grey.

xoxox

The Dark Lord seemed pleased upon their next meeting, as if he'd forgotten the cloak entirely. He spent the first minute of their meeting laughing.

It made Peter's hair stand on end.

"Show me," Lord Voldemort hissed, and then the memory of Dumbledore's interview played out in Peter's memories. He could feel the Dark Lord's presence there in his mind watching with him.

It made Peter's stomach turn.

"Do not meet his eyes," Lord Voldemort ordered, then laughed again. "And ask Severus to teach you some Occlumency."

"Yes, my Lord." There was nothing else to be said. Dark magic rolled around him, tingling with the man's perverted glee.

"I am pleased with your initiative," Lord Voldemort rasped.

It made Peter feel warm, like redemption.

"Tell me Peter," he continued, "I wonder what you know about...about prophecies?"

In his third year Peter had chosen Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes because Remus had promised to tutor him. "I never took Divination, my Lord."

The weight of You-Know-Who's gaze was pushing on him, a tangible thing.

What did he know about prophecy? Peter thought desperately. His favourite myths sprang to mind: Heracles, Oedipus, and Cassandra. "Prophecies are Fate's curses. Anything done to avoid them will only make the thing happen sooner."

The magic pulsed around him angrily, though Lord Voldemort had become perfectly still. Peter's gut sank with the heavy feeling of yet another wrong answer. "I'm certain you're much stronger than Oedipus and the old tales, my Lord," he squeaked, his mind scrambling. "After all, you are known to be the greatest wizard of our times."

Silence seemed to echo in the grand hall, lurking in the shadows only to return manyfold. Peter waited quietly, wondering if his heard was beating loud enough that the Dark Lord could hear it too.

"A prophecy was spoken about myself," the man said then, his voice quiet and contemplative.

"Born as the seventh month dies," he recited, teasing the words apart, "the Dark Lord will mark him. As an equal, each holds a power the other knows not. The three will contend until one masters three."

It might as well have been, 'The Dark Lord will kill his father and marry the queen,' for all the sense that it made. "Three will contend until one masters three?" Peter parroted. "I don't understand, my Lord."

The man stood from his throne then, seeming to rise and rise until he loomed impossibly tall. "It means, Peter Pettigrew," Lord Voldemort spat, mood mercurial and threatening, "that you have now twice failed to bring me Potter's cloak. You will find out when Dumbledore returns the cloak and then you will find a way for me to visit the Potter home. And if you fail, Pettigrew…"

Someone else arrived in the hall, announcing their entrance with a crack of apparition. Peter wasn't sure he'd wanted to know the end of the sentence anyway. "Yes, my Lord," he said, bowing low.

But nobody was watching him anymore, nobody cared about the man trembling before the dais. When a conversation began over his head, Peter took it as his queue to leave.

The majestic room seemed to mock him with its gloom. You aren't really welcome here, it crooned. You don't matter, you've never mattered.

Determination welled in Peter's chest. It was only a cloak, Lord Voldemort wasn't asking the world of him. He'd find a day when the family was out and it'd all work out fine.

He'd make it all work out fine.

He didn't have a choice.

xoxox

The guild came the next day to take his shop from him. Master Whittaker's grown children flanked the guild's representative, smirking at their success.

If they'd only asked, Peter would have been glad to share the store with them. Hell, he'd even have given it to them, if only to save himself the pain of watching his own poor leadership drive the thing to ruin.

Peter folded quickly under the list of infractions as they were announced, read out pompously from a scroll as if these same demands hadn't been coming to him in the mail for weeks. He'd paid the Diagon Alley tax and he'd been working on getting his journeyman's papers, but couldn't they see he needed more time?

While the guildmistress droned on about how he was a failure, a disappointment, good for nothing at all, Peter hurried to pack his things before they were seized along with the rest of the shop.

And then the Malfoys showed up.

"Hello Peter dear," Narcissa said kindly. "We heard you got into a spot of trouble."

Meanwhile Lucius was staring down the Whittaker siblings. "I believe you were disinherited by your own father, I can't imagine the shame." The man smiled in a way that was cold and wrong. "Perhaps you should go think about that while the adults sort this out."

Peter watched, wide-eyed, as the two turned wordlessly and left.

"Lady Dagworth, such a pleasure to see you again outside the stuffy formality of the Wizengamot," Lucius simpered, fluttering his eyelashes at a woman fifty years his senior while his wife stood beside him. "This has all been a terrible misunderstanding, I'm sure. Let's sit down to tea and sort it all out."

The entire situation had left Peter feeling confused and oddly winded, but at least he was no stranger to fetching tea.

He felt like a child at one of his mother's gatherings, barely listening to old ladies gossip while he brought them another plate of cucumber sandwiches.

Except this time the conversation happening over his head was about him, his shop, his future.

It would have been nice to have a say. He grasped for words, stumbling shamefully over the right formulation in the privacy of his mind.

By the time he'd found his voice the Malfoys were already bustling the guildmistress out the door. "What happens now?" he asked quietly.

"Weren't you listening?" Lucius' voice was too loud in the small showroom, all sharp points and hard edges. "How disappointing."

"The Malfoy family is investing in this establishment," Narcissa explained gently. "We will be paying the shop's upkeep for the next two months while you focus on getting your qualifications. Then you will work for us until your debt is paid in full."

"Plus interest," Lucius added. "Furthermore, some of our mutual friends might visit at times and you will assist in passing messages between us. Any questions?"

The way he'd said it made it perfectly clear that Peter was not supposed to have questions. He shook his head no.

Lucius stalked out, his robes billowing behind him, but Narcissa paused. "What is it, Peter dear?"

She was a Slytherin, they were all of them Slytherins and Peter knew he couldn't trust them. They'd use him and trap him before discarding him like rubbish.

Yet Narcissa was acting so sweetly. It had been an age since Peter had been shown kindness. He couldn't help himself, the words were already tumbling from his mouth. "Was that talk really all it took for the guild to back off?" It hadn't even been an hour yet his life had turned a new leaf, once again.

The woman's laugh was beautiful, nothing like her mad sister's. "A bit of money will go a long way if you know the right people. Any pureblood of means could have done it, we're so very lucky nobody else thought to make a deal with you first."

And with those light words she was gone, leaving a terrible sense of betrayal sitting like a lead ball in Peter's gut. He knew several purebloods of means, after all.

Friends who hadn't stepped up to help him.

Peter's friends cared less about him than even the bloody Malfoys did.

He remembered his companions in the stars, the ones from the tales of old that had been with him even before he'd turned eleven, before his father had died, back when it had been just him and the vastness of the night sky with nobody to be disappointed in him.

In History of Magic they'd learnt how the ancient civilisations had driven themselves barmy drinking from lead pipes and painting themselves with lead makeup.

His gut twisted in on itself, and even though he knew his thoughts were poisoning him, knew this was wrong, knew the Malfoys were going to betray him too—

Peter felt like a rabbit with its paw caught in a trap.

He had to get James' cloak. He had to get his journeyman's papers. He didn't have time to feel helpless, and he certainly didn't have time to fall apart.

Peter opened the shop the next morning as if everything was perfectly normal, thank you very much. He went through his day explaining how Ironbelly leather was better than Welsh Green, and no he could not undetectably expand a locket because he wasn't a jeweller, and yes Lord Fawcett the order would be ready as soon as he finished it.

He spent the night formulating letters:

Dear Dark Lord,
I don't know when Dumbledore will give James his cloak back.
It's not the kind of information I'm privy to and asking about it makes me look suspicious.
Yours (wait, am I yours now? I don't know if I want to be yours),
Peter Pettigrew

Dear Prongs,
Please I really need that cloak. For research purposes. Why is my wanting to see it for research less important than Dumbledore wanting to see it for research?
I asked first. Isn't that worth anything?
Yours (am I though? We were friends, at least I thought we were, but actions speak louder than words),
Wormtail

Dear Sirius,
That bag you wanted is on sale at the moment. I haven't seen you in a while, are you so busy playing vigilante you don't have time to visit little old me?
I always looked up to you, from the first day we met, but you seem to have lost some of your shine of late. Or maybe your orbit has changed.
Maybe your orbit is the same as ever but I'm finally seeing things the way they really are.
Yours (or perhaps I belonged to a make-believe version of you that I had built in my head, but I'm beginning to see that it wasn't real. That we were friends only by proximity),
Peter

Dear Remus,
I miss you so much. Things have gone mad since you've been off running werewolf missions for the Order.
I feel so alone. I don't even know who I am any more. Has my whole life been a lie?
Yours (though it would be nice if you'd write or call or send a bloody patronus, it's like you vanished),
Peter

Dear Headmaster Dumbledore,
Your Order is a hub of chaos. What were you thinking? What are you doing?
What's the point?
Sincerely,
Peter Pettigrew

Dear Snivellus,
Our mutual acquaintance told me to ask you to teach me occlumency. But I'm terrified of you and you hate me, so maybe we could not?
Thanks,
Pettigrew

Peter used the lot of them as kindling, feeling an odd catharsis as he watched them curl into ash.

He was alone, but in a way he'd always been alone. At least now he was aware of it.

The next night he apparated to Cornwall and laid out cushioning charms on the beach. He fell asleep watching the stars spin around the sky. Even though they made him feel small they also comforted him, these same stars connecting him through time to the ancients. Peter counted them like sheep: Leo, Lepus, Lupus, Lynx, all winking down at him like long-familiar friends.

xoxox

This story is having a harder time than usual taking off, likely because of my unusual choice of main character.

If you're enjoying what I write, please tell a friend, tell reddit, make a public rec (or, take out an ad in your local paper). Thanks!