Chapter Nineteen: Peter Pettigrew, Marauder Traitor
The Valerians and Remus interrogate Peter Pettigrew, as a fragile alliance appears to break down.
There was a silence that followed the statement, not because of what was said, truth as it was, but because of who had said it.
Severus folded his hands into his sleeves as he stepped into the room, circling until he stood just behind Ivory's right shoulder, in full view of Sirius Black as the convict tried to look at the man he'd tormented for years, and nearly killed, and keep his eye contact with the white leopard, who, to Severus' sharp eyes, was looking less white and bit more gray.
Whatever power he was using to pull Black out of the Madness, it was clearly costly.
"Did Potter save you from Walburga Black?" the potions master asked sharply.
Black's eyes were suddenly sharper and fiercer, not unlike what he'd pinned Severus with when they were in school together.
Severus reminded himself that for all the torment the Marauders had put him through, he'd never rolled over and his skillset had only grown since those days.
"I learned family at James' side," Black rasped. "Glimpse at first, but anything at home paled in comparison."
Lupin hesitated a moment before he spoke, "Walburga didn't much care for the fact that Sirius was happy and adjusting well in Gryffindor and tried to physically and magically convince him that he was wrong."
"I always found it amusing that people attributed her hatred to the Madness," Ebony sneered. "Considering the affliction didn't take until well into his Fourth Year, three years after she first laid hands on her son."
"And you didn't tear her apart?" Fallen taunted with a sneer.
There was clearly little love between the Shade and the General.
"I don't believe in a swift death for those that hurt things that belong to me, General," Ebony replied. "An example needs to be set. I started from the inside. Slowly. Painfully. One organ at a time. She bought herself a bit of time, throwing money and magic into surgery after surgery, but it was an inevitable end. Her heart gave out on the operating table. I never needed to so much as dirty my claws."
Black's head rolled to the side a bit and the connection between Ivory and the convict was broken, causing the leopard to sway a bit and Severus moved away from him with a sneer, wanting no part of the Valerian to touch him.
"I promise you," Ebony said, ignoring the others as he met Black's gaze coolly. "She never even saw the edges of the Ether."
"I made sure of that," Ivory told them, righting himself and shaking himself, a bit shakily, and putting more distance between himself and Severus, moving closer to Ebony in the corner. "I've done what I can with the power I'm comfortable giving, but this is a patch job at best. It won't hold you aloft forever and even if I have the time, I don't know if I'll be able to fix all the damage done." The leopard turned his head, for a brief moment, to look at Fallen, but the cold red eyes made his opinion of the unspoken request clear.
It wasn't going to happen.
"The obvious aside," Black said, sounding stronger and more aware by the second, "there might not be much damage. The dementors couldn't pull on my emotions because they kept getting swamped by the effects of the Madness, the wraiths pulled on that to try and dig to what they wanted. They don't work so well on dogs either, so that helped."
Tarana chuckled. "That explains your apparent immunity to the dementors. You've terrorized more than one Ministry official and Azkaban guard with that image."
"And I don't plan to give it up," Black said with a vicious grin.
"This is all well and good, but I feel we've gotten a bit off-topic," Yoko said, half-buried beneath the bed.
When he slipped back out again, he had a cage of vines tucked between his neck and shoulder, and on the bottom of the makeshift prison, was the rat, lying on its side.
Ebony narrowed his eyes on it.
"Did you kill it?" Ivory asked, tilting his head.
"Don't be stupid," Yoko sneered. "I wouldn't need the cage if he was dead." He turned his attention to the others and planted the cage in the center of the room. "How do we plan to prove that this is Peter Pettigrew?"
"An Animagus can be forced out of their animal skin," Severus pointed out, "but the effects of the spell have never been tested on someone who spent twelve years in it. It might break his mind."
Despite his warning, he didn't seem all that broken up about the prospect, eyeing the rat with almost equal distaste to Black.
"I'm not all the worried about his mind," Black sneered as he was released from the bed, rubbing his raw wrists, and glaring at Scabbers. "I was in prison for his murder for twelve years. I want to make that time worth it."
The noose around his neck, which had begun to loosen in preparation of freeing him as his wrist bonds had, abruptly tightened and he cried out in frustration.
Remus' hand came sharp and hard against the side of his head. "Calm down," the werewolf said sharply. "If you have any chance of walking out of this mess a free man, we need Peter alive and in some type of state to testify."
Ebony slid to his paws like liquid shadow, slinking around the fox and his captive until the rat could see him. "I could always force him to change back." He purred, lowering his head slightly.
Scabbers proceeded to lose his mind, shrieking, twisting, and writhing in the confines of the cage.
"Step back," Yoko snapped, lowering himself further over the cage and protecting it from Ebony's larger bulk. "We need him sane enough to testify!" He looked at Fallen. "There's an alternative."
XX
Fallen and Ebony, for all their hatred of one another, seamlessly slipped through one another's personal space and a silver-white silhouette of a glowing eye appeared on Fallen's forehead and his natural eyes took on a demonic reddish-orange glow.
'I can subject you to your absolute worst nightmares, little rat,' Fallen warned the animal. 'I'll give you a few seconds to think about that.'
The rat shrieked and Ron squirmed, trying to keep as far away from Remus on the end of the bed and get into a position to see his trapped pet. "You were in prison for twelve years and Ebony was off killing people," he protested. "You can't know that Scabbers and Peter are the same person!"
"There was an article in the Prophet," Sirius told them. "Your family went to Egypt and the rat was there, in the picture. It was missing one of its toes."
Hermione frowned. "There's no way you could have seen that, though," she protested. "The picture was only so big!"
Sirius' smile was mirthless and cold. "There was no distance to be had," he told her. "The guards had a habit of showing off my immunity and whatever amounted to sanity at that point. I was practically eye-to-eye with Cornelius Fudge when I first saw that paper."
There was a stunned silence for a moment.
"They…." Arcana closed his eyes and took a breath. "They let you near people? Even when you were clearly sane? Were they?"
It was an opinion that the entire room shared because none of them were idiots.
Regardless of whether he was guilty of it or not, Sirius had been charged with the deaths of twelve people. Why would anyone get that close to him? Why would the guards let one of the most important people in the Ministry get that close to him?
"I was arrested knowing that I had helped Pettigrew gain his Animagus form," Sirius added grimly. "I had given him the tool to escape punishment and to have me framed. I never forgot him. Either of his skins. I held onto those images even as the Madness ate at me."
"There's no evidence, however, that the rat understands the threat Fallen is levying against it," Severus pointed out.
"That," Yoko said with a vicious smile. "Is because the fun hasn't begun yet."
XX
Fallen lowered his body until he was pressed entirely against the ground, all three of his eyes fixed on the rat in the cage.
"Are you going to change?" Fallen asked him.
The rat shrieked at him.
"As you wish," the General replied as though the creature at spoken.
The eye on his forehead went from silver-white to blazing blue and his natural eyes turned to liquid fire.
The rat screamed and twisted from one flesh to the other, shredding the vines containing his smaller form.
Not oblivious to the threat of the rat-Animagus, or to the vulnerability of Fallen's Evil Eye, Ivory stepped forward, lowering his head to meet the terrified gaze of Peter Pettigrew, just as Ebony darted over the prone red wolf, tilting his head.
Ivory grinned unkindly. "Peter," he greeted. "How nice t' see you in the flesh."
The shadows behind the snow leopard came alive and rose up and over him.
Peter screamed as they came down on him, fighting the shadows as they twist in a larger mirror image of the cage that Yoko had fashioned out of his Element.
The size of the cage and the bulk of the Twins as they circled it, forced the Valerians, Severus, and students to the edges of the room and Arcana slipped out entirely to stand beside Tarana, Harry, and Draco still in the doorway.
For Harry's part, he found Peter Pettigrew to be…lacking.
The pictures he had of the man didn't do him justice, as he'd clearly lost weight since then and his large head was balding in the middle, his dark hair having lost much of whatever color it must have had in the years since he had taken a human shape.
"He's-" Harry lost his words.
Tarana rumbled a quiet agreement to his own emotions at his side.
"I can't say I missed that face," Ebony sneered, tail flicking slightly and causing the caged man to whimper. "As ugly as ever, aren't you?"
Harry frowned.
It was clear that being hateful and speaking his mind was just the way Ebony was, not unlike Draco in some ways, but the way Pettigrew flinched….
"You could have disappeared anywhere," Remus said, pushing himself off the bed, though he left a hand on Sirius' shoulder as they both glared at Peter through the shadow-bars. "Why did you stay with the Weasleys?"
"That's no mystery," Fallen snorted, shaking himself to his paws, leaning against Yoko a bit as his world struggled to reoriented itself with the change in position. "There had to be more than a fair few in the immediate aftermath of the war, that knew Pettigrew had changed sides. That he had been the one to send the Dark Lord to the Potters, where he ultimately met a - temporary - end. In their eyes, he had betrayed the Dark Lord, not the Potters."
"And I don't doubt that many did," Severus added. "There was a great deal of finger-pointing," he sneered the words, "after Voldemort's reign of terror ended."
"And the Weasleys had always been close friends with Dumbledore. They'd have remained in his confidence even after the war ended."
"And the moment it was clear, Pettigrew would have been free to search out his master," Yoko sneered.
The words startled Blaise, prompting a memory, but with everything that had happened in the last two hours, he was having trouble bringing it to the forefront of his mind.
"I feel as though I failed you, Peter," she said, stepping into the room, Ebony moving aside with his head low as she approached.
It was the most reverent the shadow leopard had been and Tarana remained, even now, the only one that Ebony had shown the least bit of respect for since their reunion by the Forest.
The caged man quivered as she approached.
"I seem to have done that a great deal, to those in your generation," she flicked a gaze in Severus' direction, who slowly drew his wand and circled the cage. "Though I admit, I am rather curious as to why you didn't search out Quirrell two years ago. By February, the children were all well aware that Voldemort was somewhere in the castle, even if they couldn't agree on who was aiding him, and Dark had been within the castle on more than one occasion all year."
"I didn't-" Peter babbled hoarsely. "I wouldn't-"
"We've already proved that you would," Tarana pointed out. "We've proven that you have." She tilted her head and answered her own question. "You didn't search him out because you who had been free for over a decade, hadn't found the Dark Lord. Quirrell who had never shown any inclination toward the dark arts beyond his study of them, had both found and housed Voldemort. You had nothing to prove that you hadn't sent him to his demise in '81 at Godric's Hollow. You had played your hand and come up dead. A target of both sides."
"If he came forward to Dumbledore, it would reveal that Sirius hadn't killed those people in London, or at least, it would throw doubt on the aforementioned witnesses, forcing an investigation. You'd have waited too long after his arrest by then to come forward and claim you were afraid for your life," Draco shrugged. "What was he going to do to you? Until this year, there had never been a successful escape from Azkaban. It wasn't possible."
Harry's fist clenched. "And if Voldemort," Peter flinched, "ever found out you were alive, you'd have been seen as the reason his attack on my parents failed. You'd be marked for dead."
"I didn't betray them," Peter said, folding his hands together as though praying, scrambling toward the shadow-bars on his knees. "I didn't. I was working for Dumbledore. Always."
Severus raised his wand and pointed it between the bars.
Peter froze.
"Severus?" Tarana murmured, stepping away from the potions master.
"Do you know," the man murmured. "How long I've waited to get my hands on the man who betrayed the Dark Lord? And here I have you. A tormentor of my own and traitor to the Cause. And in one fell swoop, I have Black, already shackled and ready for the dementors and Lupin clearly aiding and abetting a known fugitive."
He rolled his wand in his fingers, clearly thinking.
"But he's innocent," Harry cried. "Sirius didn't do anything!"
"I don't think that matters to him," Draco sneered, fist clenched around his own wand, not quite sure what he wanted to do with it.
Sirius tugged at the noose around his neck, hissing vulgarities under his breath, as Ebony slunk around the cage, eyeing the professor through the bars.
'Put a bit more effort into it, Professor,' the Shade purred.
"Severus, if this is because of what we did in school together," Remus said, stepping forward, hands raised.
Ivory slipped around Tarana, clearly intending to go after the potions master, but found his way impeded by Fallen stepping up behind the professor and Severus neatly pivoted to turn his wand on the leopard.
"Neither of us is at our best right now," Fallen told him. "I'd say we're about even. Want to test your odds?"
Ivory growled, lowering his head.
"Stop!"
Harry pushed his way to the center of them.
"Move, Potter," Severus sneered, not taking his eyes off the greater threat behind him.
"I will go through you," Ivory threatened.
"No," Harry said firmly. "No one is going to die."
"Fuck that with a rusty spork," Sirius snapped, thrashing against the noose around his neck. "I didn't risk my very self to let that rat walk out of here!"
There was a rumble of agreement from more than one corner, including Remus – who appeared to have lost any interest in keeping his lycanthropy a secret – and Tarana who until that point had remained pretty firmly in the 'keep Peter alive' category for reasons of her own.
In the next moment, the small room, made smaller by who and what was in it, was chaos.
Arcana, mirroring the very move Tarana had used on him by the Forest, dug his claws into her hindquarters and twisted her, breaking the predatory lock she'd had on the, by now, crying and begging man in Ebony's cage.
At the same moment, greenery exploded from Yoko's fur, the same strange pods from the Hogwarts Express slapping Fallen and Ivory in the side and exploding on contact. The two were abruptly too concerned with trying to get free of the octopus-like vines that tried to constrict around their neck and rib cage respectively to continue with the stand-off.
And Ebony, sitting by the corner of the bed, chuckled.
XX
"Are you idiots through grandstanding?" Ebony asked, almost casually. "Because unless I'm mistaken, and I never am, you're about to have a much bigger problem on your hands."
Everyone followed his gaze to Remus, who was gripping Sirius' shoulder in a death grip and his eyes were glowing an ominous and unholy amber.
The children all scrambled for the doorway with no prompting from their guardians and they clenched their wands tightly, though they weren't sure what use they'd be.
Severus' mind flashed to the goblet sitting, uselessly, on the edge of the man's table in his office, abandoned when they'd watched Sirius, Peter, and Ron slip off the map.
Again, his wand swung around to a new target and a Stunner was on his lips before he'd really thought about it.
"I'm fine," Remus assured them all, raising his free hand. The nails on it had turned jet black. "I'm not feeling the pull of the moon yet."
"That won't last," Ebony smirked knowingly.
"The children need to leave. Immediately," Severus said.
"What?!"
"No!"
Yoko's noose abruptly shriveled and died and Sirius scrambled to his feet, planting his hands on Remus' shoulders.
The werewolf swayed into Sirius' space and dropped his head to the Animagus' shoulder.
"Back to the castle," Arcana said sharply, though he wasn't moving to the doorway and the children, but to the bed where Ron lay.
"The door to the Shack would be faster," Fallen pointed out.
Tarana shook her head. "It's been jammed for decades. The tunnel is the most reliable."
"We can't just leave," Blaise protested.
"He hasn't had the Wolfsbane tonight," Severus said, ignoring the teens, as the Valerians were.
Arcana nodded, bracing himself over Ron with a frown. "You and Sirius should leave as well," he cast the Potions professor a knowing glance. 'It's likely best if you don't mention you were here, yes?'
"I'm not leaving," Sirius said firmly, wrapping an arm around Remus' shoulder to hold the werewolf against him. "I haven't willingly left him alone on the full moon since we finished the Animagus Ritual, I won't break that streak now."
Severus' lips pressed tightly together and he clenched a fist around his wand.
He still had a chance to put Black down and carry him, if none of the others, out to the dementors on Hogwarts grounds.
"You're outnumbered, Professor," Ebony smirked, clearly reading his desire. "Do you really want your vengeance that badly that you'd risk the lives and safety of your students?"
"Fine," Severus sneered, turning sharply and waving his wand-free hand sharply at the children. "Move," he snapped. "If I can't see Black dead and Lupin is still, officially, a professor, there's no more reason for me to remain. And as the only sane professor of Hogwarts, I can't leave you idiots with a convict and a werewolf without serious repercussions to my own standing with the Headmaster. Go."
"Severus!" Tarana called after him, only to be ignored as the professor pushed the group of Gryffindors down the stairs.
'Find the first Head of House you can find," Arcana called after them. 'Have them bring Remus' potion down from his office as swiftly as you can. Do not return to this Shack again!'
Ebony's smirk, if possible, only got wider.
