November 4, 1981
It was an early morning on a lone lane somewhere in southwest England. It was quiet, apart from the occasional chirp from a bird or the movement of gravel. Along the gravel road staggered a rather weak looking fellow, with sunken eyes and a large face.
Dark red blood dripped from his the end of his hand where a finger should have been, where it appeared that it had recently been cut off.
Peter Pettigrew hobbled along, too tired to do much except it. Eventually, as he weakly trudged over a small hill in the road he saw a house. His eyebrows knitted together as he studied it. He rose one hand above his eyes, blocking the suns and squinting out at it.
It was an unusual sort of building, lopsided and with chimneys jutting out haphazardly from the roof. It was with a jolt, a frightened realization that this could only be a house belonging to a wizarding family. (The house was much too unnaturally tilted to not be held up by magic or the will of Merlin himself.) Peter felt his blood run cold as he gaped at the home. He couldn’t- he wouldn’t dare go there. It was much too risky. He was meant to be dead. Although, where else was he meant to go? He was dead, as far as the world believed. It wasn’t like he could go back to the ministry and get his old job back. And he didn’t want to even think about pretending to be a muggle, thank you very much.
Now, Peter Pettigrew was not the brightest. Even he could tell you that (although perhaps more reluctantly than others might), but he knew that he had one of two options. He could turn tail and flee and risk himself being seen by a death eater or auror, or he could enter the home. Peter didn’t particularly fancy either option, but dear Merlin, he was famished. And so, with a reluctant stagger he walked down towards the rickety house.
He could see a several chickens in yard, which each seemed to watch him distainfully as he approached the side of the house. He peered in through a window, seeing nobody inside. Peter drew in a breath and glanced down at the torn sleeve where he knew that damned Mark lay beneath. He swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut.
And suddenly, he was much lower to the ground, no longer being able to see through the window. Faintly, he wondered when the full moon was. That was the sort of thing Sirius— oh, Sirius. Sirius had to have been in Azkaban now, he figured. Things worked rather quickly that way, at the ministry. Would they have even given the supposed right hand man of the Dark Lord himself a trial? Peter wouldn’t know, he hadn’t heard from the wizarding world since Halloween. A ache panged in his heart and he quickly pushed away the thought. The rat scrambled through a small hole in the house, finding himself in the kitchen. It smelled strongly of food, and as Peter turned back to man, he began scrounging around the kitchen for something to eat.
A stair creaked, and Peter turned quickly, squeezing his eyes shut and hoping he wouldn’t end up crashing through the kitchen window. By whatever sort of good fortune Peter still possessed, he shrank down and landed with a thud on the grass, once more a rat.
Slowly, the rat with one missing toe scampered into the garden, avoiding the gnomes and hiding under a small patch of ferns.
Now, Peter thought as he lay there, it was rather ironic his animagus was a rat. Years ago, he recalled that a younger boy with a bright smile and surrounded by the excited chatter of two other boys who he would have considered brothers, had complained about the form, whining that the other two had gotten the better animals. They had laughed and told him that it would work itself out in the end. And Peter supposed it did. After all, he was a rat.