Peter shoved his way through the crowded streets of London, wild-eyed and exhausted to the point of mindlessness after twelve hours on the run. He didn't know where he was running to, who he expected to help him now that Voldemort was gone. Only hours after turning on everyone he'd ever cared about, his entire reason for doing so had vanished, defeated by a baby who just so happened to be James and Lily's son. He had no idea how it had happened, but he knew he was now very much in trouble.
He kept to the Muggle parts of London, the busiest streets where everyone was hurrying along their way, but every once in a while he spotted a group of men and women dressed in cloaks weaving through the masses, cheerily celebrating the defeat of the Dark Lord without a single care for the bemused Muggles that surrounded them. If only Peter hadn't turned on the Order, he could be celebrating with them…. But then again, if he hadn't betrayed the Potters to Voldemort, they would not have anything to celebrate at all….
"Peter!" It was the voice, hissed and furious, that Peter had most dreaded hearing, the voice he'd spent the last night and day running away from. Swallowing, he turned to see Sirius barreling towards him, his eyes filled with a feral anger Peter had never seen before. "Peter, I'm going to kill you for what you did!"
The Muggles around them gasped, scurrying out of Sirius's way as he charged at Peter. He certainly looked like he wanted to kill him—and why wouldn't he? Peter had just gotten his closest friend killed; part of him thought that he deserved to die for that, too.
But Peter's survival instincts always won out, so he found himself doing the only thing he could think of to save himself. "Lily and James!" he wailed at Sirius, the pain in his words real even if their content was not. "How could you? They were your family! Your family, and you got them killed!" He slipped his wand from his pocket and clutched it behind his back.
Sirius stopped short at his words, caught off-guard; a flash of guilt crossed his face before hardening back into anger. "They were yours, too," he growled. "And you're going to die, just like they did, but there'll be no one who cares about you enough to mourn you. I promise you that."
Sirius raised his wand, prepared to curse Peter or to kill him, but Peter was faster. He knew he couldn't beat Sirius in a head-on duel, but he was more powerful than Sirius knew, more powerful than anyone knew…. Giving his wand a tight swish, he muttered the incantation under his breath: "Confringo!"
The street burst open at Peter's feet, creating a massive, yawning chasm between himself and Sirius. The Muggles who'd been too close screamed in horror, several of them falling into the crater, likely to their imminent deaths. Peter couldn't think about that; he'd crossed that line yesterday when he'd turned over the Potters. There was no going back now—he was a Death Eater, and he couldn't have any issues behaving as one.
Amongst the chaos of the explosion, Peter raised his wand shakily to his hand and tapped it against his right index finger. He didn't want to do this, but it had to look believable. It was the only way he could stop running—and Peter was so, so tired of running. "Severen," he whispered.
Pain shot up Peter's hand, tearing through skin and bone and muscle, and his finger detached and fell to his feet, blood gushing from the open wound. The pain was almost too much for Peter to transform through, but his rat self was as familiar to him as his own skin by now, like slipping on a second shirt…. He shrunk down amongst the screaming and shouting and stench of sewage and tunneled his way out of his robes, limping towards the nearest storm drain behind a pack of terrified, ordinary rats. He would have to be one of them now, he knew. Peter found the thought strangely comforting; things were so much simpler as a rat, so much simpler than they were for Peter Pettigrew….
Just before climbing down into the drain, he stopped and turned back to face the damage he had created. Peering through the screaming Muggles and approaching police lights, he saw Sirius's crumpled figure bent over Peter's bloodied, abandoned robes. For a moment Peter thought that he was crying, but then he realized with a jolt that he was laughing, only the sound was so pained and desperate and unhinged that it was somehow even worse. Sirius had lost everything in the past twenty-four hours, and it was all Peter's fault. What kind of terrible, cowardly excuse for a person was he?
Not a person anymore, he told himself. Just a rat. That's all you need to be now.
He turned away and vanished down the storm drain, climbing down through the darkness until the screams and sirens and laughter were nothing more than a memory.
