Harry Potter: The Witch of the Red

Peter Pettigrew had been feeling very unwell recently. 

Ever since he got the news that Sirius had escaped, he had been spending his days in terror. He was so terrified that he had lost appetite, which made his current owner - bah, he’s gotten too used to living as a pet rat - his current source of sustenance very worried.

He had hoped. Oh, how he had hoped that the Ministry would simply sentence Sirius to a Dementor’s Kiss and he’d be worry-free. Perhaps he’d return one day, as a hero praised by all.

But noooo, the useless ministry was too scared of the retaliation from the then still alive Orion Black. So they just gave him a lifetime sentence in Azkaban. Just to barely keep whatever little authority they had left.

While it was not as good as he’d hoped, he was still happy. No one had gotten out of Azkaban, after all. So he lived without worries. He was fed, watered, and taken care of at the Weasleys. He was away from Dumbledore and his Order, he was away from the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters; he was perfectly happy. His ambition to prove himself had already worn away long ago under the shadow of the brilliant James and the charming Sirius.

His hope that some of their qualities would rub off on him never really came to fruition. But perhaps they did? After all, he’d lied to Dumbledore’s face! That was something worthy of being in Gryffindor, wasn’t it?

Anyway, the peace in his life was met with a Killing Curse when he heard that Sirius had escaped Azkaban. Others might not know. But he did. He knew. He knew that Black had escaped not to kill Harry, or avenge his master, or whatever bullshit these idiots believed in - the dog was too loyal for that. He knew it was because he was after the rat that had caused the deaths of his best friends.

Ever since then, he lived in constant worry. But since when did worry cause bones to ache? Since when did worry cause one’s blood to feel like lava?

‘It must be that damned cat’s fault!’ Peter cursed Crookshanks. ‘Better get out of the Common Room before that monster finds me.’

Just as he was about to scamper away. A rather familiar girl’s voice sounded, “Ah, there you are Scabbers! Ron’s been raving like a madman over his lost rat!” A pair of soft hands grabbed him. 

‘Ah, oh that’s fine then. That owner of mine - bah - slave of mine should be able to keep that monster away, even if he is useless at all else.’ He let himself be picked up by the slave's sister. 

As they walked down to the fourth floor and went back up to the main castle’s Seventh Floor. Peter started to feel something was off. Why were they here? None of the classes his slave took were around here…

Suddenly, a strange sense of deja vu hit him and everything felt familiar for some reason. Those lonely corridors, the sound of the girl’s steps echoing down them, those hands that held him. All of it felt incredibly familiar. Yet, for the life of him, he could not remember why. 

Now, Peter Pettigrew might be a coward, but he was not stupid. ‘Multiple instances of familiarity, but somehow I can’t recall anything…” He immediately recognised the signs of a Memory Charm. 

Instantly, he squeaked and shrieked, squirmed and writhed, as he tried to get away from the girl’s hands. Yet, the initially soft, warm hands had turned into a cold, vice-like grip he couldn’t escape from no matter what he tried to do. Which triggered a feeling of Deja vu again.

“Stop struggling. You won’t get away,” the girl’s voice almost sounded bored, “It was interesting the first few times, but it got boring really fast.

“Ah, wait you wouldn’t remember. My bad. Sorry ‘bout that.” she would have sounded apologetic if it wasn’t for the mocking undertone. 

Peter struggled and struggled, trying his best to get away, he had a very strong feeling that if this girl got to her destination, it would not bode well for him. It would not bode well at all. So he struggled. He tried to bite her fingers, claw her palms, but his normally sharp teeth and paws found no purchase at all. 

He struggled, yet it was all in vain, as they soon reached the portrait of some idiot teaching trolls to ballet. The girl walked past it thrice, muttering something unintelligible, and with a horrifying sense of familiarity, he saw the wall reshape itself into gates. In helpless terror, he watched as the girl brought him inside and closed the door behind her with a flick of the wand. And the words that came out of her next horrified her even more.

“Now, let’s have some fun, Peter~! I have made some improvements to the amulet from the last time. I’d love it if you helped me out! After all, you would be just perfect for testing it!” The girl let him down. Yet, before he could even turn around to run, he was hit by a spell, forcibly reversing his Animagus Transformation. And with another flick of her wand, she transformed the ground around him into metal manacles that chained him. 

“ARGHH!!!” He screamed in pain as the manacles even had spikes and spurs on the inside and dug into his flesh as they incarcerated him. He screamed before he was hit by another spell that made his mouth disappear. His eyes bulged in unexpressed pain as he writhed on the ground. Another spell hit him that made him completely lose sense of his limbs. He would have sighed in relief if he had a mouth, as the spell also removed the terrible pain that had inundated him.

He recognised the spell as a Healing Spell used by medi-witches when they dealt with particularly dark curses. It cut off all signals to the brain but allowed for the signals from the brain to reach the limbs. As he shakily looked up, he saw the girl fiddling with a necklace made of a single golden ring, through which ran a piece of thread, muttering something to herself.

 

Peter watched in terror as the normally smiling and happy girl turned to look at him with a sinister smile on her face. And once again he felt a sense of familiarity; only this time, it didn’t elude him. He knew very well that cold, mirthless, cruel smile. He knew that look of disdain and contempt as if looking at a mere worm. Those were the eyes that had haunted him for ages. It was those very eyes that gazed at him in amusement as he spilled the location of his best friends and sold them out to the owner of those very eyes.

‘The Dark Lord.’

“No Peter, I’m not the Dark Lord. Well, not in the conventional sense.” she chuckled. “Though, I am very ‘Dark’, Peter.” She patted him with a gloved hand.

“Now then, let's get to business, shall we?” she clapped.

She brought over the necklace-like thing over and put it around his neck. The Rat Animagus tried his best to escape, tugging at the manacles causing the spikes to tear through his flesh and cause copious amounts of blood to spurt out of the wound and flow and drip down to the floor.

“Don’t struggle Wormtail, or I’ll remove the Pain Inhibitor. Do you really want to feel what I am about to do to you?” her voice was barely above a whisper, yet he heard it clearly like she was directly whispering into his ears. 

The Rat’s struggles stopped.

“That’s what I thought.” he watched as she finished tying the amulet around his neck and walk back a little further away and fumbled around for a bit before she pulled out a box. He watched as she took out a wand from the said box.

“Made of Holly and powered by an unusually rare dual core of Dragon Heartstring and Rougarou hair. 14 inches. Inflexible.” The red-haired girl recited swishing and flicking the wand casually, almost playfully. “Not very compatible with me. Well, not usually.” She chuckled again.

“Holly and Dragon Heartstring make for an unusually potent combination. The protective and humane Holly and the powerful, rebellious, and impetuous dragon Heartstring core. That would make for a great wand for a White Lord or a Revolution Leader or something. Heh.” she shook her head, cringing from disgust. “Thankfully, humans could never produce an actual White Lord. It simply isn’t in our nature.” She paused for a few seconds, during which she causally spun the wand around. She twirled it in her hands some more before a mocking grin stretched her face, warping it in a way that was so familiar to Pettigrew, it sent a chill down his spine.

“Yet, this oh-so-Holy wand changes the moment you add a Rougarou hair… Tsk, tsk, the whole thing is tainted blacker than the night! A fallen hero who turned to the Dark. What a fascinating tale this wand tells.”

“Well that hardly matters.” she shook her head and picked up a piece of parchment. “Let’s see, let’s see… What do we have for today…? We’ve completed the less harmful Dark Curses, the medium Dark Curses, and only a few really nasty ones remain.

“You should rejoice Wormtail! Once this is complete, you’ll be free! No more being a lab rat for you! Not for a while, at least. Or unless I have a new idea. Or if I suddenly find I’ve missed out something. Or if I…”

He watched her list off several ‘Or if’s one after another. Each of them settled on his heart like a stone, weighing it down, pushing it deeper into despair.

“Oh. Well, it sucks to be you, Peter. Um, at least you won’t remember after all of this is done? That’s a plus point, right?” she looked embarrassed, “Yep, it definitely is! The look on your face tells it all!”

If Wormtail could speak right now and actually had courage, he’d definitely question the intelligence of this girl. Which part of my face tells you I’m happy?!

“Well, jokes apart. Let’s get this done with. I don’t like doing this very much either.”

‘Bullshit! You’re clearly enjoying it!’ he would have shouted at her face if he had - again - a mouth and a boatload of courage.

He watched in dread as the girl raised the Dual Core wand and aimed it at him. She muttered some ghastly sounding incantation, causing a sickly yellow light to shoot out of the wand towards him. The moment it hit him, he felt the bones in his body shift, and then they crackled, as tiny spurs grew out of them penetrating his flesh. In his horror, he couldn’t help but think of the unimaginable pain he’d have to bear if the girl hadn’t used the Pain Inhibiting Spell on him. He felt a strange sense of gratitude for the girl, despite all she had put him through.

That disappeared very quickly, though. 

“Tsk, that one still works… What the fuck is this curse?! It’s nonsensically penetrating!” She bit her fingernails, looking frustrated, “Hmm… The amulet will need to go undergo some more modifications…”

She walked over to him, muttered a few strange-sounding incantations, and he felt the bones spurs receding back into his skeleton. Then she chanted a few more times. These spells Wormtail recognised as Diagnosing Charms.

“Dayum. Hemorrhage, internal bleeding, ruptured veins and arteries, and whoops! A damaged aorta! That is going to be a pain to repair… Better treat it quickly before he dies…”

She pointed her wand at his chest.

“Vulnera Sanentur… Vulnera Sanentur…” As she sang the verses, Wormtail felt the strange feeling in his chest slowly recede and disappear. 

“Whew! It’s super hard to use this verse when I’m in this state, y’know? You should be grateful Wormtail! I’m such a nice person, aren’t I? You will never get a scientist that cares so much for one lab rat, y’know?! Those people breeze through them faster than international Quidditch Players do with their broomstick polish! Goodness, the horror!”

Wormtail was too tired to even comment.

“Hmm... The rest of the wounds can be fixed pretty easily with the Sloventail’s Healing Potion.” She pulled out a vial of bluish-gold glittering potion. “This cost me a fortune to make. I had to sell off some actually precious items from the Room, too! Oh, The misery Wormtail, the misery!” she lamented while shaking her head dramatically.

“Here,” she flicked her wand to cast a Silencio, then undid the spell that sealed his mouth, forced open his mouth and put a few drops before pulling away, and then re-casting the curse that made his mouth disappear. This sequence of actions was carried out so fast and so expertly, that it made Wormtail doubt his life. Apparently, his confused expression was rather obvious. “What? You thought you’d get the whole thing? In your dreams, Wormtail. We’ll just get more severe ones out of the way with this and the rest will be spells and your natural regeneration. It will be painful and you’ll only suffer for a few weeks before you’ll be right as rain!

“Don’t worry, though. The next few will most likely be blocked by the pendant!”

She squatted next to him and chanted Healing Spells one after another. “There! You should be ready to go in about an hour! Aren’t you excited?!

“Oh, of course, you are! Why would you not?”

She took away the pendant and walked to the table, where she sat and started writing down something. Sometimes muttering, sometimes getting lost in thought, sometimes scratching her head in frustration, and sometimes jumping up in happiness. Wormtail watched in resignation as she wrote and cycled through expressions, over and over. He was very aware that he had fallen into the hands of something far worse than Black could ever be.

This girl - no this demon - was completely inhumane. And this ‘inhumaneness’ was so, so very similar to Dark Lord -  similar in their sheer contempt of life. They thought that all life was beneath them and that others should be grateful that they were of use to them at all. Yet, it was also different, the Dark Lord would never be so wordy. He would merely quietly take pleasure in his victim’s pain, occasionally commenting about how he enjoyed torturing them or how they should be grateful the great Dark Lord’s magic even touched them or making jokes, which were all quite morbid, but all of his closest inner circle seemed to find immensely amusing. He had to pretend to laugh as he did his best not to shiver in sheer terror.

‘Is she the Dark Lord’s daughter?’ Such a thought crossed his mind. If he didn’t watch her grow up, this would be his very first logical assumption. He spent his time entertaining himself with such idle thoughts; there was little else he could do. He had gotten so used to being around people like Voldemort and his Death Eaters that he could still think idly while being seized by sheer terror. He had also long since given up on escaping - the demon had clearly taken measures.

“Righto! Next Curse it is! Are you excited, Wormtail? You’d better be! I am taking time out of my busy schedule to cast spells on you. I can hardly think of a greater honor!” she exclaimed.

After placing the pendant on him, she aimed the wand at him, while muttering another odd-sounding incantation, causing a blood-red beam of light to strike him. But strangely enough, he remained completely unaffected.

“Oho! Blocked. Good. Very Good!” She skipped over to him and fished out the pendant which was currently smoking and sparking with blood-red sparks. It continued flashing for a few seconds before it collapsed into tiny pieces.

Then she tossed aside the pieces and brought out another pendant and tested several spells one after another, destroying the pendants one after another, while Wormtail hoped with all his heart that these necklace things did their job.

It was only after she had gone through several spells that she reached the end of the list.

“The list is complete!

“Well, you were very helpful Wormtail. I am quite grateful, really. So I’ll let you have some rest. You don’t have to worry about being a lab rat for a while, too. The Pendant’s material was too shit. I’m running on a budget after all. I can’t pawn off too many things without drawing attention. Even if I have taken multiple measures against being discovered, I’m only one girl. I can make mistakes too, y’know?

“Needless to say, you won’t remember any of this…

“Stupefy!”

And Wormtail lost his consciousness.

-x-x-x-

Peter woke up to his owner - bah - he woke up to his slave’s shouting about how that monstrous cat had driven his pet Scabbers to look like some scrawny street rat. Before Peter could feel irritated, however, he felt a tremendous surge of pain wracked his body. It felt like his blood had been replaced by lava, searing him inside out. This kind of pain was only trumped by the Dark Lord’s Cruciatus. As Wormtail continued to suffer, some part of him listened to the conversation to distract himself from the pain.

“Oh stop it, Ron! Crookshanks was only playing with him! If he had really wanted to eat Scabbers, even the stupid rat’s skeleton would not be found!” The slave’s sister snapped at Ron. Peter looked towards the girl he’d seen grow up with his own two eyes in betrayal.

As if sensing his gaze she turned to him. A strange smile appeared on her face.

The instant he saw that smile, every other emotion disappeared, only leaving behind abject terror. Even his pain seemed to have taken a backseat. Every last inch of him screamed at him to get away from the girl. His pain now forgotten, he got to his feet and darted around the room, only to find that the third-year boy’s dormitory had no remaining places for him to hide. 

“Oh, sorry, Scabbers, we can’t have you run around for a while. You are not very well, after not having taken the tonic for days now. You really should have some rest and medicine now. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” The girl’s soothing and serene voice should have been comforting to him. But, the only thing it did was terrorise him so much that he lost control of his motor functions and lay there paralysed and shivering.

“Now, there’s a good rat. You’re a good rat aren’t you, Scabbers~?”