Back in the cottage, Andrei quickly put up an Anti-Apparition ward and sealed all the entrances and exits—not that there were many, just the door and a window. Gaps and cracks had apparently not been tolerated by the first version of Hagrid either. The rat continued to behave as though he were still at the Weasleys'—drank some water, refused food until Hagrid set in front of him a bowl with a couple of spoonfuls of the porridge, at which point he gave in and ate. Then he turned away, lowered his head until his nose touched the bench—the table hadn't seemed appropriate—and began to shake.
Andrei leaned in, barely believing what he was seeing, looked at the tear-streaked rat with its strangely twisted paws, and understood that something was definitively wrong with this world. Or with his understanding of it. Though his understanding had never entirely matched the reality from the beginning. In any case, he no longer felt like killing the rat on the spot—he needed to understand what had actually happened.
"Peter," he said quietly. "Tell me."
Having transformed back into a thoroughly grubby boy—the word young man felt like an overstatement to Andrei—Pettigrew looked not just pitiful but alarming. He was genuinely haggard, and when Andrei saw his hands, he had to swallow something rough in his throat. And the eyes—the look of a cornered creature, one Andrei had seen only once before, walking his hunter friend's trap line. A fox with a nearly-severed paw, watching the hunters approach, knowing it hadn't made it. That it wasn't getting away. That everything had been for nothing.
He needs potions, Andrei decided. Several. Damn—he should have stocked a proper medicine kit here from the start.
"Wait," he said, frowning, and thudded a mug of tea down beside the prisoner. "I'll be right back. No one's coming here—don't be afraid. But if it helps, transform. I won't be long."
* * *
"Painkiller, Skele-Gro, Rowan Bark Draught—and a Calming Solution, Severus, quickly, please. I'll explain when I get back."
Regulus Black opened his mouth to ask a question, but Hagrid barked:
"Ur-gent!"
The windows rattled plaintively. The ancestral portraits on the walls flinched. Snape slammed the laboratory door, and a minute later was back with everything requested.
"The Rowan Bark is past its best," he warned. "Who have you injured?"
"Not me." Hagrid was already bending toward the fireplace to disappear into the Blacks' comfortable hearth.
"Nevertheless," Regulus murmured, but didn't finish the thought.
The flames had already settled as though no one had been there at all.
"Hagrid," Walburga said, almost as a diagnosis, and added thoughtfully: "I find myself curious about how exactly he managed to fall so… fortuitously."
"Knocked a bump of wisdom into his head?" Snape suggested.
"Not a bump. An entire head."
"Mother—do you ask out of general interest, or with practical intent?"
"It wouldn't help you, Regulus. Though your brother could certainly use it."
"I'd enjoy watching that. But to deliver him into your capable hands, my lady, we'd first need to extract him from somewhere," Severus inserted reasonably. "And so far the only ideas we have are bribing prison staff and finding a rat. Though I'd cheerfully Avada Pettigrew—the problem is, do you have any idea how many rats there are in England?"
"You're saying you don't believe in the success of our enterprise?" The lady's furrowed brows suggested a genuine storm was forming.
"Faith is an interesting thing in itself," Snape began.
"Since when do you go in for philosophy?" Regulus asked, looking surprised. "I never noticed that tendency before."
"Not enough porridge growing up." He shrugged. "Difficult childhood. Unicorn milk was entirely out of the question."
"Answer the question instead of deflecting," Walburga instructed—and Snape bowed and returned to his point:
"Hoping for the best outcome is entirely reasonable, as is believing in it—you can't really accomplish anything without that. But personally, I'd plan for the worst." He shrugged again. "Out of habit. It helps in practice."
"One must calculate all possibilities."
"The same thing in different words."
"Very well—alternative options, should we fail to find the rat—"
* * *
When Andrei returned to the cottage, Pettigrew was sitting in exactly the same position he'd left him in. He didn't resist as Andrei administered the Painkiller, the Rowan Bark, and the rest—only moaned when they cleaned and treated his broken fingers.
"The Painkiller didn't work?" Andrei asked.
"Hagrid." Pettigrew finally unsealed his cracked lips. "Can you finish it quickly? Please? Without pain? It was me. I gave the Potters to Voldemort. I did it myself—I couldn't stop it. The rat—it won't let me. It wants to live. And I… don't."
What exactly was one supposed to say to that?
Andrei settled Peter on the bench and sat down across from him.
"I'll help you. I swear. But first you're going to tell me everything—exactly how it happened. It matters enormously, Peter. Not just for you."
"For the greater good?" he said bitterly.
"For Sirius. For the Potters' memory. For their son."
The Calming Solution wasn't wasted: after the account of how he had been caught by Death Eaters, how everything had been beaten out of him—who he was, where he'd been going, where he was headed, who his friends and acquaintances were—Peter broke into genuine hysterics.
"Why? Why did they do that to me? Why me—why not Dumbledore, no one would have caught him. But me—I'm afraid of pain. Nothing would have happened, nothing, if James had just made me take an Unbreakable Vow—I asked him to! They had Veritaserum, and I—" his voice broke— "I said I'd been coming from the Potters'."
"And they dragged you to their master?"
"Yes. He's a Legilimens. He understood everything immediately—didn't even need to torture me. And then—"
Peter carefully touched his fingers—apparently checking whether they still worked—then rolled up his sleeves. There were Marks on both forearms.
"Both at once? What did you do to earn that particular honour?"
Instead of answering, Peter pulled open his filthy, tattered jacket and shirt to reveal a third Mark—low on his chest, below the heart. Andrei let out a low whistle.
"They were going to tear me apart if I didn't bring him," Peter swallowed and forced himself to continue. "To Godric's Hollow. Straight to the house. And they did something—those snakes, inside. I don't know what exactly, but—I'm not entirely myself anymore."
Then he began talking faster—haltingly, frantically, his voice breaking—about James falling, about the Dark Lord flying up the stairs to the nursery.
"You didn't go up?"
"I stayed with James. I— I loved him. Hagrid. You promised."
"Peter—tell me about the rat. I'm not quite following. Is this to do with your Animagus form?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Precaution. I might need to warn someone."
"Ah. I read later—afterward—why they teach Animagus transformation after you come of age. The animal affects you. The longer you're in the form, the stronger the influence. And the rat became stronger than me, do you understand? And she's terrified of snakes—even more than I am." He shuddered. "And now they're in there. Inside. I'm dangerous. I want to die, Hagrid, I've tried, but she won't let me. I—when the snakes fell dormant, I can't even remember how we ran, or why, or where. Everything's a fog. Just—get as far away as possible. One danger, another—and run."
"Why did you throw a Bombarda at Black?" Andrei asked abruptly.
"At which Black?" Peter looked blank.
"Sirius Black. In London."
"Did I kill him?" Pettigrew grabbed his head in horror.
"Not him—only twelve Muggles. Though I believe one may have survived. And Sirius Black is in Azkaban, as it happens."
"What do you mean, Azkaban? What for?"
"For betraying the Potters and leading the Dark Lord to them."
"But he—he couldn't have done it! He didn't—no. And Dumbledore didn't say anything?"
"Not a word, Peter."
"Will you take me to the Aurors?"
"You can't go yourself? A voluntary confession reduces the sentence, especially if you turn yourself in—might cut your time considerably."
"She won't let me."
"Ah. Right. Well, the Aurors will still be there later. The thing is, you never know whose hands you'll end up in over there. They might Kiss you with a Dementor before sorting out who's who—and no one would ever know about Sirius. The way things are right now—I really don't like the fact that Dumbledore said nothing."
"But you—" Pettigrew's face changed. Something was beginning to dawn on him. "Who are you? You're definitely not Hagrid."
"Hagrid, Hagrid," Andrei sighed. "Just after getting a good knock on the head. A large knock." He rubbed his head.
"No." Peter shook his head slowly. "You're someone under Polyjuice. Are you a Death Eater?"
"And would a Death Eater have treated you, cleaned you up, got you in order?"
"I don't know anything useful anyway," Peter continued stubbornly. "I didn't see what happened to the Dark Lord—just that in one instant it was like being scalded, and the snakes—they went quiet. And I ran."
"But they didn't disappear? How could you tell?"
"I don't know," Peter shrugged. "Something's just there. They moved, and then they stopped. If they were completely gone, the rat wouldn't be going so mad. I was trying to get home, really—I just kept feeling danger, doubling back, again and again."
"Why didn't you stay home, then?"
"Then I'd have been betraying my own mother."
"Was that the rat's reasoning?"
Either the boy is making it all up, or this is genuinely how it is, Andrei thought—but he couldn't forget what Peter had looked like when he first transformed back. And now what? Snape and young Black are already working on ways to remove the Mark, of course. But if book-Snape couldn't find a way to block it in ten years, the odds aren't great. Though he didn't have the Black library, the Blacks themselves, or—most importantly—any reason to actually want to find a way. Lily Evans's death hit him hard enough to last a lifetime. Which is also not entirely normal—people recover from worse. Interesting, though—he recovered fairly quickly in practice. So it wasn't just feelings, was it. Something else was at work there. Unlikely I'll ever find out what.
"Right then—sleep for now, morning is wiser than evening." Andrei stood up. "I'll feed the dog, then a couple of things in the forest, back in an hour or two. Can you manage? You won't run?"
"You really are Hagrid," Peter said, as though not quite believing it himself. "I don't feel any danger from you. You're not the same, but—you genuinely want to help me, I think."
Empaths everywhere I turn, Andrei thought.
"Just to be safe—Somnus Maxima!" He waved the pink umbrella, and Pettigrew's eyes, which had widened at the sight of it, obediently closed, and he went limp.
Not putting him on my bed like that, that's for certain.
"Tergeo… Tergeo… Excuro! You've let yourself go even worse than Snape did. Once more— And now Somnus Maxima again. There we go."
Andrei ruffled the ashen hair that had stood on end from all the cleaning, and headed for Grimmauld Place. The evening promised to be a long one.
* * *
After viewing the conversation with Peter in the Pensieve, Andrei let everyone draw their own conclusions—which he was pleased with. No one wanted to dismember, burn, drag into a field, line up against a wall, or Avada Pettigrew through the forehead and back of the skull simultaneously. The boy was pitied—even by Snape, it seemed, though naturally he showed no sign of it. Yes, weak—but who had never been weak? And to end up in that particular situation?
"Well. He really did get the worst of it," Regulus finally gave voice to what everyone was thinking.
"Whether he's telling the truth about the rat—that can be verified," Severus added, nodding in the direction of the library.
"An hour enough?" Hagrid asked, and both young men were practically swept out in that direction.
"In the Auror Office, he might end up in the wrong hands," Walburga said, her eyes sharp. "The delivery needs to be addressed. Specifically."
Andrei smiled.
"Our current addressees are a bit above the ordinary route. I'd suggest something large and loud—a scandal."
Lady Black raised an enquiring eyebrow, and Andrei laid out how he imagined it.
"Better not in front of the Auror Office—right in the Atrium," Lady Black suggested almost immediately.
"Agreed—more people, and journalists ought to be around there in any case. Someone's always on duty. Hard to guarantee, but someone like Skeeter turning up would look more natural."
"More coincidental," Walburga corrected.
"Yes, exactly."
When he finished, Lady Black drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the table.
"That has promise. Yes— Who would have thought. But you're not Hagrid—that much is certain. Though it hardly matters anymore."
"Because a lady could never have sunk so low as to discuss anything with a half-blood half-giant?"
Walburga narrowed her eyes.
"Sometimes, to stay afloat, you have to push off from the bottom."
"Bravo, my lady. Who would have thought," Andrei returned her words. "Like this, you simply astonish me."
"Your thoughts on the matter are of the least possible interest to me," she informed him. "Along with your feelings. But who are you, really?"
"We'll discuss it at leisure. When all this is over." Andrei took her hand and sketched a kiss over it, despite the contemptuous sniff. Though it wasn't quite only a sniff. "You're even welcome to bring in an exorcist, my lady. I'm alone in here."
"Couldn't you have chosen a better body?"
"On the other hand, no one with any sense would think to suspect this particular alliance."
At that moment rapid footsteps approached—Snape and Black appeared to be racing each other—and Andrei met them with the question that mattered most to him right now:
"Was he lying?"
"Exaggerating, at most," Severus said, somewhat disgruntled.
"Barely even that," Regulus added. "If you factor in how young they all were when they became Animagi—probably not at all."
"Then I'll go keep an eye on our guest." Andrei stood and headed for the fireplace room. "Lady Black will explain the plan. We'll go over it again in the morning and get started immediately."
"Should we send a letter to the Prophet in advance?"
"I think Skeeter will be on the scene fast enough."
"Is there something I'm not aware of?"
"We all have gaps in our knowledge, my lady," Andrei said. "May I take my leave?"
Regulus Black coughed quietly and looked at his mother with a questioning expression.