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Elkins pauses outside of the door to the lecture hall in the basement of the Canon Museum, biting nervously at her lower lip and toying with the black market time-turner that she wears on a chain around her neck.
"Now this isn't one of those sorry things like the Ministry has on offer," the dubious fellow Elkins had met loitering outside of one of the more disreputable shops in Hypothetic Alley had explained to her. "Not one of those piddling hour-by-hour deals. This is a Yellow Flag Special, this is. This baby can take you back days, you get me? Weeks even, you wanna take that risk."
"Risk?" Elkins had asked. "Um, yeah. So...uh, what kind of, er, risks are we talking about here?"
"Oh, you know." The man had shrugged. "The usual. You interested or not?"
Under ordinary circumstances, Elkins wouldn't have been interested. But these are not ordinary circumstances. Far from it. Ever since the Memory Charm Symposium, something seems to have gone terribly wrong with her ability to remember things clearly. She has been troubled by these terribly disturbing thoughts. Well, more like images, really. Visions, perhaps. In one of them, she is screaming at the top of her lungs, while waving Cindy's Big Paddle about in the air. In another, there are pieces of paper falling about her like snow. Snack foods, flying through the air. Splintering wood. And then there's the one...
But, no. Elkins shakes her head. That one doesn't even bear thinking about. It's just too ludicrous, really. There is just No Way that she actually broke Cindy's Big Paddle. She would never have done a thing like that. For one thing, it would have been utterly out of character. For another...well, if she'd really done such a rash and ridiculous thing, surely Cindy would have killed her. Wouldn't she?
And then there's the one in which she's on some kind of movie set. Elkins just doesn't know what to make of that one.
Elkins does know, of course, that sometimes it is best just to let the past lie dormant. She's said so herself, many a time. But she just can't help herself. She has to find out what really happened that night.
Now, though, reeling and nauseated and dizzy from the experience of jumping all the way back to the night of the Memory Charm Symposium, Elkins is beginning to think that this was probably a really stupid idea. Her vision is blurry, the Yellow Flag Special feels unusually heavy around her neck, and she desperately wishes that she had never noticed the legend "ACME" printed in peeling gold flake across its base.
Oh, stop being such a wuss, she tells herself crossly. It's only time travel, after all. What could possibly go wrong?
As if on cue, Lucius Malfoy stalks through the door to the lecture hall, reaching for his wand.
Elkins, who has spent the past three months or so living in the basement of the Canon Museum specifically in the hopes of avoiding just such a confrontation, gasps and cringes back against the wall, but the man doesn't seem to notice her at all. His cold grey eyes, narrowed in slits of fury, are fixed on the stairs at the end of the corridor. As he sweeps past, Elkins thinks that she hears him muttering something about slanderous accusations.
She sags against the wall, gasping for air.
Okay, she thinks. That was not good. But Malfoy never attended the Memory Charm Symposium, did he? She doesn't remember seeing him there. Could she have overshot somehow? Is this even the right night?
Where's a convenient calendar when you need one? Elkins wonders irritably, right before she remembers that here in the Canon Museum, the header of the post to which one is replying is almost always to be found written on the wall somewhere close at hand. After a moment's scrutiny of the wall, she finds the graffito, scrawled in red ink.
"Message 39000," the byline reads. "Wed May 22, 2002. 3:23 pm. 'Theory Bay -- What is going on? -- I'm leaving LOLLIPOPS.'"
May 22? Was that right? Elkins just can't remember.
Even though she knows that she's not supposed to allow herself to be seen, she risks a peek around the doorframe and into the lecture hall.
The Memory Charm Symposium does indeed seem to be over, but it can't have been over for too long. The place is still a mess: cheese whiz and kool-aid everywhere, chairs and lectern reduced to splinters of wood. At first glance, the room seems to be empty, but then Elkins spots motion. She ducks back out of the doorway and presses herself against the wall.
"Well, Peter," she hears Eileen's voice commenting from somewhere within the empty lecture hall. "We meet again."
Why, it's Eileen! Elkins thinks. And Mr. Pettigrew! My friends. My old friends.
"Did you really think you could postpone this moment forever?" Eileen is demanding. "Did you really think that you could mislead us with stories of Severus's undying passion for Lily? It was you who started that story, wasn't it?"
Elkins' eyes widen. Oh, she thinks. So Eileen's going here, is she?
Well! About time, really. About time.
"Do you want to know, Peter," Eileen purrs lazily. "When I began to be suspicious?"
The congruity of names, Elkins thinks. Certainly the congruity of names was what first started her own mind working down those passages, and given Eileen's passion for LotR, that must have been it for her as well: the congruity of names between JKR's "Wormtail" and JRR's "Wormtongue."
We do know, after all, that JKR is herself vulnerable to the associative power of naming. And it's clear enough that she has been subconsciously influenced by Tolkien. We see it in every hair of Albus Dumbledore's beard, in every twinkle of his eyes, in that "Ware Balrog" sign that Pip once noticed stuck to his back. We see it in the name "Longbottom." And we see it in the name "Wormtail," so desperately reminiscent of "Wormtongue."
Ah, yes. Grima Wormtongue, whose price for betrayal was the woman that he had long secretly desired, long watched furtively with those heavy-lidded eyes -- a physical descriptor which JKR, strangely enough, seems to have subconsciously replicated and yet displaced onto the Ever So Sexy Mrs. Lestrange. Wormtongue, the corrupted advisor. Wormtongue, who confronted with the evidence of his crimes first denies everything and then grovels pitifully. Wormtongue, the archetypical ill-used sycophant. The avatar of the Worm Who Turns Too Late.
Blessed Grima Wormtongue, the Patron Saint of SYCOPHANTS.
"It was the whole tEWWW EWWW tEWW be trEWWW affair," Eileen is explaining. "It seemed out of character for Snape and Voldemort..."
Yes. Elkins nods with satisfaction. Eileen is right. The "TEWWW EWWW" theory had never really worked very well for her back when it had Snape cast in its leading role. Peter, on the other hand...
Well, yes. Yes, that could work. It could work quite well.
If we rework TEWW EWWW To Be TREWWW so that it is Peter, rather than Snape, who was offered Lily as his prize, then everything begins to fit together. It explains why Voldemort hesitated for only that split second before cheerfully slaughtering Lily. After all, if he'd really promised her to some competent Death Eater, one with some genuinely useful skills, then one might think that he would have thought twice before deciding not to follow through on his promise. It's not as if he couldn't have stunned Lily, or bound her, or Imperio'd her -- or in fact done anything at all to her that he liked, as apparently at the time she was either engaged in a fiendishly clever little bit of manipulation to arrange her own maternal sacrifice, or merely doing an excellent impersonation of Hermione's infamous "are you a witch or aren't you?" performance from the end of PS/SS. She wasn't doing anything to protect herself. She wasn't doing very much of anything at all, in fact, other than screaming and begging and carrying on like a Weak Woman. So why wouldn't Voldemort have actually followed through, if he had really promised her to someone with useful talents, like Snape?
Ah, but if he had promised her to Peter? Weak, snivelling, eminently bulliable little Peter Pettigrew? Well, that would be different, wouldn't it?
Pettigrew's usefulness resided solely in his connection with the Potters and their circle. By his act of betrayal, he had already outlived his usefulness, so what would be the point in rewarding him at all? His devotion was no longer required. So it would really be far more entertaining, from Voldemort's point of view, just to kill Lily and have done with it.
Peter does, after all, have this amazing ability to lead others to underestimate just how dangerous his disloyalty can be, does he not?
It also explains why Peter never sought out Voldemort until he felt that he had absolutely no other option. Sirius claims that this was because he never did anything unless there was something in it for him, but it's really rather more complicated than that, isn't it? There's a lot more going on. Voldemort betrayed Peter. He promised him the woman he desired. And then he killed her instead.
Small wonder that Voldemort does not trust Peter's loyalty! And small wonder that Peter himself seems so mistrustful of Voldemort's likelihood of keeping his promises this time around. From Peter's perspective, you see, Voldemort has a really lousy track record when it comes to this kind of thing.
In fact, right after Voldemort's rebirth, when maimed Pettigrew gasps out his reminder of some "promise" to his unimpressed master, is he really referring to a current event at all? We have all naturally assumed that Voldemort must have promised Pettigrew some reward in exchange for the sacrifice of his hand. But the words can be read differently. It could be that what Peter was really trying to say there was: "Don't hold my past disloyalty against me. You promised me Lily, and you reneged. Surely you can understand why I might have been a bit faithless, under the circumstances? So come on, be a sport, won't you? I sure have been. Don't make me bleed to death here in this creepy graveyard, okay?"
Lily's death would also explain the depths of Peter's self-hatred, all of his self-destructive tendencies, his apparent fondness for dramatic acts of symbolic self-castration. Oh, yes, he's just a mass of Freudian conflict, Peter is! Just look at what he does in the wake of the Potters' deaths, once he is faced with the truth of what he has done. What does he do when Voldemort has betrayed him by reneging on his side of the bargain and then vanishing, leaving him with no allies at all?
He frames Sirius, that's what! Sirius, Harry's godfather. Sirius, who served as Best Man at James and Lily's wedding. Sirius, who was "inseparable" from James himself. It is a pragmatic act—Sirius is, after all, the person Dumbledore believes to be the Potters' Secret Keeper—but is it not also a highly symbolic one?
And how about that pointer finger, eh? Peter really didn't need to cut off his own finger. Any identifying marker would have done just as well. And even if he did feel that leaving behind a finger was necessary to make the evidence for his own death seem incontrovertible, surely any sane person would still rather lose a pinky, say? Or a ring finger? Not a pointer finger, and certainly not the pointer finger of ones good hand.
It's an insane choice, viewed from any rational perspective. But place it in the context of a grief-crazed Pettigrew who knows the nature of his sin, and it all begins to make sense. For in truth, we all know what a pointer finger represents, don't we? Everybody sniggered back when Nancy Stouffer claimed that Peter's missing finger represented his "inability to make a point," and well they should have! Because we all know what a pointer finger really represents. All good Freudians know that.
If thy right pointer finger offend thee, cut it off.
Eeeee-yup. Peter indulged himself in a little act of symbolic self-emasculation on that street corner, all right. Perhaps he felt that it was an act of atonement. Perhaps he wanted to make the self-punishment fit the crime.
And indeed, ever since then he's been quite the little castrati. We've talked a bit about all the ways in which JKR exempts Pettigrew from the hurt-comfort dynamic—by making his suffering grotesque and repulsive, by showing him as utterly lacking in pride or dignity, and so forth—but really, it goes even deeper than that. No one crushes on Pettigrew. No one. That is because the text goes out of its way to mark him as fundamentally sexless. He is soft and balding, like a palace eunuch. He cowers sobbing on the floor like an "oversized, balding baby," an infantalizing description which is also an inherently degendering one. Pettigrew's behavior codes as neither masculine nor effeminate, but as neuter. Or perhaps we should say as neutered. As Scabbers, his primary descriptors are "fat" and "lazy." These are the words that we use to describe a castrated male animal. It is how we describe a pet who has been fixed.
Elkins nods to herself and returns her attention to the conversation underway in the lecture hall. She's clearly missed some of Eileen's cross-examination while she has been musing: from the sound of his wheezing, Peter seems to be practically on the verge of snivelling now. In spite of herself, Elkins frowns. Although she is certainly all prepared to hop on board with this theory, she can't help but feel a bit put off by Eileen's methodology. Really, she thinks disapprovingly. I mean, honestly! Is it really necessary to extract a confession out of the poor little rat? As if he doesn't already get enough of this sort of treatment in the canon, we're now going to start subjecting him to it here in the Bay, as well?
Eileen's gone all Tough and Steely, Elkins concludes sadly. It must have been all of that CRAB CUSTARD that did it to her.
"Mr. Pettigrew," she is saying, in her new Tough and Steely way. "I've read Prisoner of Azkaban. I've also read Goblet of Fire. I know more of your post-1981 behaviour than Mr. Black does, I assure you. And... well, you couldn't look him in his eyes, could you? You could bind him to the stone, cut him, stand by while Voldemort tormented him, but you just couldn't look into those green eyes."
No. Elkins nods once more. No, he couldn't force himself to look into those green eyes, could he? Was there really a little bit of life debt troubling his conscience there in the graveyard, as we have been led to conclude? Some nagging bit of scruple, perhaps, imposed by a strange mystical bond?
Well...perhaps. Perhaps. But the graveyard is hardly the only place that Peter has exhibited such reluctance to look Harry in the eyes, is it? In fact, he shows that same reluctance even before he's accumulated any burdensome life debt at all. He never once faces Harry in the Shrieking Shack until the very end, when he has already checked everyone else in the room off on his Supplication List. And even then he is reluctant. He hesitates, he "turned his head slowly." He is far more willing to clasp Harry's knees or to grovel at his feet than he is to look directly into those familiar emerald green eyes...
And when he finally does bring himself to do so...well, just look at the masterpiece of misdirection that he delivers:
"Harry...Harry...you look just like your father...just like him..."
Ah, yes. Well. Snape always harps on Harry's resemblance to his father too, doesn't he? And yet we all know what's really eating away at him, right?
With a thrill of sick horror, Elkins suddenly notices that a lollipop has suddenly appeared in her left hand. She gasps, then tosses the nasty sticky sugary thing off to one side, shuddering uncontrollably.
Oh, she thinks. Oh, that was close. Close call, there. Too close for comfort. 'Waaaaay too close.
But still. Still, still, still. Still and all. If this misdirection ploy is good enough for Snape Loved Lily, then surely it is also good enough for Peter Loved Lily. After all, as we all know, Severus Snape is nothing but Peter Pettigrew, through the looking glass.
Yes, it's clearly misdirection, all of this "your father"ing that Pettigrew gets up to in the Shrieking Shack. He knows full well that if Sirius and Remus come to suspect, even to suspect, even for a split-second, the true nature of his nasty little arrangement with Voldemort, they will blast him into tiny pieces right there on the spot. He's not taking that chance. He's not going to risk using Lily's name at all, not right there, not under the circumstances. Peter knows that he's useless when it comes to hiding his emotions. He knows that if he even once speaks her name, his voice will betray him.
As indeed, his words very nearly do. Consider this line, for example:
'Harry, James wouldn't have wanted me killed...James would have understood, Harry...'
He would? James would have understood? Understood what, for heaven's sake? Cowardice? Self-interest? Betrayal?
No. James would not have understood. That is because James was heroic. In fact, James was so tediously and irritatingly and boringly heroic that not one reader has ever confessed to having a crush on him. James would never have understood such motivations. But one thing that even he, one thing that even the Ever So Infuriatingly Virtuous James Potter might have understood?
Even he might have understood how it must feel to be haunted, obsessed, tormented, consumed by the fires of passion for the lovely young Lily.
After all, he married her.
Ah, yes. Misdirection.
The favored pasttime of so very many notable SYCOPHANTS.
And there's more, too! There's ever so much more!
Just listen to Peter whine, as he tries to justify his behavior in the Shrieking Shack:
"I was scared...I was never brave...He forced me...He would have killed me..."
Uh-huh. Cowardice. It's a feeble defense, but not an altogether unappealing one. It inspires disgust, but it can also inspire pity, even sometimes sympathy. Who among us, after all, has never felt terribly afraid?
But is that really what lay at the heart of Peter's betrayal? Peter, you will note, is a liar. He is a liar in fear for his life. And while cowardice is indeed shameful, there are forms of venality far less likely to inspire pity, far more likely to warrant summary execution at the hands of ones erstwhile friends.
Could Peter's confessions of rank cowardice be merely a cover? A cover for something even less forgivable? Could his true weakness never have been cowardice at all, but rather lust?
Really, how could anyone miss all of the clues we have been given to show us that Peter had a thing for Lily? Just look at his weakness for red-heads! Just look at what he does after Voldemort's fall! He retreats into his animagus form to hide himself away both from his erstwhile DE colleagues and from any of Dumbledore's people who might come to suspect him. He seeks out a wizarding family to adopt so that he might stay abreast of important events in the wizarding world. He somehow manages to ingratiate himself to a young Percy Weasley, and is then taken into the bosom of the family. All well and good.
But why on earth would he choose the Weasleys?
Now admittedly, Peter probably didn't stand much chance of getting in with some snooty old family like the Malfoys, not with his unprepossessing appearance and all, but surely he could have found a family somewhat more usefully placed than Arthur Weasley's. Arthur Weasley works in Misuse of Muggle Artifacts, for heaven's sake! Wouldn't the family of some lower eschelon worker in one of the more directly active branches of law enforcement have made a somewhat better choice? The family of someone who files away reports on contemporary Dark activities, perhaps? Someone who might know something useful about the at-large Death Eaters, or about Voldemort's current status, or about continuing intelligence into the entire affair? Someone who deals with something slightly more relevant than enchanted tea sets, for heaven's sake?
But the instant that Peter laid eyes on his first Weasley, he just couldn't resist. Of course he couldn't! Not with all of that red hair. That red hair. Just like hers.
No, Harry's eyes aren't the only thing that touches on Pettigrew's weakness. The Weasley hair does it to him as well. Just look at how he treats Ron when he makes his escape at the end of _PoA._ He sends the kid into some kind of magically-induced coma. He could have killed him. He could have hurt him. But he doesn't, in spite of the fact that he has to take Ron out quickly, and in spite of the fact that Ron refused to speak so much as a word in his defense back there in the Shack. There's no life debt there, that's for sure. Ron just won't go to bat at all for poor Peter in the Shack, will he? He recoils in disgust, he all but kicks the man in the face, and this in spite of three years of loyal (if somewhat uninspired) pet duty. Why, Peter even bit Goyle for Ron once, and Goyle was really a whole lot bigger than he was at the time. But is Ron appreciative? Hah! Little ingrate.
And yet Peter treats him gently enough, all things considered. In fact, given that Ron has a broken leg, and that Peter is abandoning the lot of them to the mercies of Werewolf!Lupin, his treatment of Ron is downright merciful. The boy is sure to be eaten no matter what happens, but at least this way, he will be spared the terror and the pain of the experience. It's far more consideration than Ron was willing to show to Peter, that's for sure.
Yup. It's gotta be that red hair. How could Peter bring himself to harm directly a boy with hair so much like hers?
The sound of her own name startles Elkins out of her reverie.
"...Elkins will be applying Cruciatus," Eileen is saying hurredly, a new note of nervousness in her voice, "the rest will be pouring Veritaserum down my throat, and putting me under Imperius. They might even time-travel to revisit our conversation..."
Elkins starts guiltily, one hand reaching up to cover the Yellow Flag Special around her neck.
"Whatever the correct answer to our memory charm speculations..."
Elkins relaxes and tunes out again. Just more memory charms, she thinks. Whatever.
Elkins is sick to death of memory charms.
Instead, she ponders once again that old old question of precisely who was kissing Florence behind the greenhouses.
According to "Peter Gets The Girl," it was Peter, snogging it up with the future Mrs. Lestrange, and it was Peter who hexed Bertha Jorkins as well. Bertha Jorkins' appearance in the Pensieve scene of _GoF_ thus serves as a powerful message from Dumbledore's subconscious mind: "Hey, dummy," it is trying to tell him. "The one responsible for Bertha's disappearance is Peter Pettigrew. Don't you remember how he hexed her, back in his student days? Yeah, well, he's done it again."
All well and good. But what "Peter Gets the Girl" has never quite answered to Elkins' satisfaction is why Peter would have hexed nosy Bertha Jorkins for teasing him about kissing a girl. Wouldn't a chubby little bottom-feeder like Peter kind of like it for everyone to know that he'd actually managed to kiss a real live girl?
Well. Not if he was in love with Lily, he wouldn't. Not if she wasn't yet involved with James. Not if he'd been hoping that might someday have a chance with her. Not if his tete-a-tete with Florence was just his way of passing time while he was carefully laying all the groundwork for getting in good with Lily by playing up that entire hapless "poor Peter never gets a date" schtick for all it was worth. Not if he had based his entire strategy on the premise of his own romantic helplessness.
Oh, yeah. Bertha just ruined Peter's strategy there, giving the game away that he actually was capable of finding female companionship when he wanted it. Undercutting all of that "Hopelessly Devoted Admirer Who Will NEVER Get A Date With Anyone Else" stuff that he'd been feeding to sympathetic soft-touch "Lily-Was-Nice" Lily. Giving the show away that dear little "Oh, I can talk to you about this, Peter, because you're not like all the other boys, Peter" Pettigrew really was "just like all the other boys" after all. After finding out that Peter had been snogging Florence behind the greenhouses, was Lily ever going to give way to the temptation to let him have just one sympathy...uh, hug?
Nope. Not a chance. Bertha just ruined Peter's entire strategy, she did. And he didn't forget that, either. Not by a long shot.
Canon, Elkins thinks. Is there canon?
Why, yes! There is! _GoF,_ very first chapter:
'A stroke of brilliance I would not have thought possible from you, Wormtail -- though, if truth be told, you were not aware how useful she would be when you caught her, were you?'
'I--I thought she might be useful, My Lord--'
'Liar,' said the second voice again, the cruel amusement more pronounced than ever.
Mmmmmm. A curious question, that? Why on earth did Pettigrew think to bring Bertha Jorkins all the way to Voldemort, rather than just, say, killing her himself to ensure her silence? Why go to all the trouble to drag her into the woods and introduce her to his vaporous Dark Lord?
Can you say, 'Payback?'
Because this isn't precisely 'Peter Gets the Girl.' This is 'Peter DOESN'T Get the Girl,' and the fact that Peter never got the girl ruined his entire life, and as far as he's concerned, Bertha Jorkins was partially to blame for that. If she hadn't ruined his chances with Lily, after all, perhaps then he never would have become so bitter, so twisted, so willing to throw his lot in with Voldemort just to—
"Kill me, and they'll find out eventually!" Eileen's voice has now risen in something that sounds distressingly akin to panic. Elkins blinks, then frowns. "I think Elkins very nearly had it once, and the others are hot on your trail. I promise," gulps Eileen. "I promise. I'll get them not to tell Harry, if you leave me alive."
Elkins winces. So much for the new and improved Tough 'n' Steely Eileen, she thinks. Oh, well. Stands to reason. After all, we SYCOPHANTS can hardly ever maintain that demeanor. Not, at any rate, for any significant length of time.
"Why should you believe me?" asks Eileen. "Well, I'm a Gryffindor."
There is a rather awkward silence.
"Oh," Eileen whispers. "I see. Right. I just didn't see it ending this way. CINDY!" she screams suddenly. "CINDY, THERE'S A DE MURDERING ME IN THE BASEMENT! AND I WANT TO LIVE! I WANT TO LIVE TO RELAX IN OUR NEW CANON SUPPORTED MATCHING ARMCHAIR! HELP!"
Elkins can hear the sound of footsteps pounding their way down the stairs. She glances up and down the corridor, bites her lip, and then reaches up to the Yellow Flag Special around her neck.
"Sorry, Eileen," she whispers, and turns it, five times fast.
Elkins, you see, has never once been in any danger of being sorted Gryffindor.
She finds herself abruptly—far too abruptly—back in June. The museum is quiet and empty. The floors seem to have been polished fairly recently. There is no graffiti on the walls. Elkins staggers weakly up the stairs and out the door, into the nearby Garden of Good and Evil. She stands motionless for a moment, staring blankly at the sundial in the middle of the garden ("It is later than you think"), and then falls to her knees to be violently sick into one of the rosebushes.
As she disentangles her hair from one of the thorns, she hears User Google, musing out loud:
"Will Wormtail Pull A Gollum?"
Elkins coughs and wipes the back of her hand across her mouth.
"A Gollum?" she repeats to herself. "A Gollum?"
She shakes her head.
"Nah," she says. "Way too obvious."
—Elkins, always happy to light a single candle to Grima Wormtongue, the Patron Saint of SYCOPHANTS
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on June 27, 2002 11:05 AM
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