The Rise And Fall Of The Stag And The Doe

all these things that ive done

He wanted to say he had fought it.

There was a large difference between thinking something, deciding on it, and then actually going through with it. And Peter would have loved to have been that person. The one that, in the face of adversity, finds his true self and realizes that his friends and his ethics were more important than his own safety. The minute they snatched him, he prayed, he prayed so hard, that he would have the strength, prayed that something would make him stronger.

Marlene used to tell him stories of real life people, ordinary people who had been nothing their entire lives, and yet in one fleeting moment, they became more than themselves. They stepped past who they were and who they ever could be and were something so powerful it left a mark on the world.

Peter wanted to be that man. Despite every conviction he had that it would easier. Despite every sense of self-preservation that was instilled in him, he couldn't shake the need. The image that had driven him to even consider betraying his friends was Heather, but in those moments before they took from his cell, he saw her face so clearly it unnerved him.

Would she be proud of him?

The thought had never crossed his mind before, but it haunted him then. Her blonde hair, her sixteen-year-old face, forever young. Would she tell him to fight? Would she expect him to fight?

Peter Pettigrew wanted to believe that seeing her face, and remembering her was so powerful that he didn't give in. It would have honored her. It would have made his insufferable life worth remembering. He could finally be a hero and be deserving of having his friends.

But the second the chains were secured around his wrists, the cold rusty restraints rubbing against his bruised skin, he felt any resolve he could have had leave him. It wasn't all at once, it vanished from him in waves. With every rattle of a breath went pieces of himself. His happiness. His hope. His integrity. His honor. His pride. His dignity. His sense of self. All irretrievably; gone, gone, gone.

There wasn't much light left in him when the first Death Eater raised his wand to Peter's chest, but nearly a half hour later, when they began to ask him questions, he was cold, grayish, with a putrid combination of blood, sweat, urine and vomit on his robes. By the time they demanded answers from him, by the time they believed he was broken in enough to be interrogated, his soul was already dead.

It wasn't a particular moment that his soul expired, but a faithful day. A day where a seventeen-year-old boy was no longer and he was replaced by something weaker and crueler. Someone his deceased girlfriend would never recognize.

Now he was in a field, and had to be held up by two men because he had lost all feeling in his legs. The thought terrified him, but not just because of the implications of it. What terrified him the most were the consequences.

He sobbed uncontrollably, his filter forcing him to care how he appeared to others, fractured and tarnished. He was the weaker man his entire life, and in the middle of field, in place he didn't know, with people sworn to slaughter and murder everyone he ever knew or cared about, he gave up and gave into it. Peter couldn't see, his eyes were burning with inconsolable pain, and the only noise he could hear was his own cries of agony.

They would kill him eventually, he figured. And when they did he would be buried in an unmarked grave, remembered and thought of by no one.

But he would remember. He would remember the friends he once had. The laughs that followed him throughout his school days, the memories that had seemed so average and pointless at the time would be the only thing lingering in his shell of a person.

It's incredibly simple to think you're prepared for something. You visualize it, plan out all the consequences and side effects, and proceed regardless. Lily was always prepared. Before she went to Hogwarts, she had gotten her books the instant her parents allowed her to and she memorized it all within the first week. She did so partially because her sister had turned on her and began to insult her at every turn, but it was also because even at age eleven, Lily Evans knew a little something about the world. She had been told that you could have all the knowledge and all the training in something and still not understand or master it. Her father had seen her perfectionist attitude and promptly informed her of it.