Peter's flight to Albania

[sunnyskywalker]

Why did Peter go to Albania and restore Voldemort to power instead of, you know, running away? Why not find a distant corner of the globe where no one would recognize him and where the long arm of Dumbledore didn’t reach and live in relative peace?

Well. Remember what Remus said while literally rolling up his sleeves to murder Peter?

“You should have realized, Peter […] If Voldemort didn’t kill you, we would.”

What would Peter be thinking once he got far enough away to catch his breath?

“Uh-oh, Dumbledore might actually believe Moony and Padfoot and the kids when they tell him I’m still alive and the real traitor. What if he clears Padfoot’s name, or at least helps him escape? Won’t that leave Padfoot at liberty to hunt me down? And it’s almost the summer holiday—Moony will be able to join the hunt in a couple of weeks. And no one’s taught DADA two years in a row in my lifetime, and where else is he going to get a job now? I’m going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for those two. If I’m lucky. They might actually find me! What options does that leave me?”

You’d think that working for Voldemort is such a terrible job that living on the run while fearing every shadow is a big black dog doesn’t sound that bad by comparison. There’s no Cruciatus, as long as he doesn’t get caught. On the other hand, Sirius is the guy who tricked a fellow student he didn’t like into entering a tunnel with a werewolf. And none of the Marauders ever actually confirmed that Remus wasn’t a willing participant in that plan. Why was he rolling up his sleeves in the Shrieking Shack if he was only planning a quick, clean death? Maybe Peter sincerely believed that whatever Sirius and Remus would do to him was so terrible, and living in fear of it so unbearable, that Voldemort didn’t automatically look like the worst choice.

And why didn’t Dumbledore send Sirius after Peter? Um. I’m sure we would all like to think that Sirius, unlike Quirrell, would be protected by plot armor if he ended up in Albania and would never return to Britain with a spiffy new turban. Or a motorcycle helmet and a sudden obsession with traffic safety. But…well, would you want a Voldemort with all of Sirius’s cleverness and skill at nasty curses to draw on? Me neither.

How he convinced Sirius not to hunt Peter is another question. Though did Sirius know Voldemort was in Albania? Maybe Dumbledore, ah, neglected to mention that, and Sirius was grimly hunting tropical islands for rats between replying to Harry’s letter and drinking rum.

Comments

[arjanenl]

Really, as regards Peter, the problem with why didn’t he flee happens waaay before. I mean, why did he even hang around Britain to be caught by the Weasleys? Above all given that, if I remember correctly, his reason for staying at the Weasleys in rat form was fear that free Death Eaters would get him otherwise? Given that reasoning, getting the hell out of dodge ought to have been his first order of business after the first war, not loitering in hopes that a Wizarding family would catch him and use him as a pet.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, that is a problem. The idea that he was also that afraid of Remus hunting him down back then is not impossible, I guess. (Remus had nothing better to do, being chronically under- and unemployed and having lost all his friends.) Though Peter could at least have hidden out as a rat in another country. Surely that would be even safer? This scenario would also say something pretty scary about how Peter perceived Remus.

There is the tongue-in-cheek suggestion from Elkins that Peter was obsessed with Lily and stayed with the Weasleys because of his weakness for redheads (Peter doesn't get the girl). But that isn't quite enough of a motive.

So...what was he after? If he was after information, alternating between the Ministry-gossip household of the Weasleys and Dumbledore's stronghold at Hogwarts might offer possibilities, but what kind of information would matter enough to him to make it worth the risk? The puffskein-killing Twins alone would be enough to make most rats want to run away, I should think. So it would have to be something really important. Other than Voldemort's location, which he might have found out was Albania during Ron's first two years of school.

Actually, it's even worse. The other Death Eaters knew that "Wormtail" sent the Dark Lord to Godric's Hollow, where he was defeated by a baby. But the Death Eaters didn't know each other's identities back then because they stayed masked even at meetings, except maybe to members of their own cells. Could any of them even connect "Wormtail" to Peter Pettigrew? And Sirius was the only living person who knew Peter was the real Secret-Keeper. Couldn't Peter have just killed Sirius from behind (and maybe framed someone else for it, since he's so good at it) and gone on with his life, pretending to be shocked and horrified at Sirius's apparent betrayal along with everyone else?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, there is a bit of who knew what when there, and a bit of how aware was *Sirius* of the sources of his information. It is possible that the DEs in Azkaban found out that 'Wormtail' was the double-crosser from Sirius' dementor-induced ramblings. If Sirius was rambling about anything it was most likely 'Oh Wormtail, you traitor!' and the DEs could have caught on from there. And Sirius may not have realized they were repeating his own words because he was not aware of what he had been saying. If that was the case then DEs outside of Azkaban had no idea that anyone known as Wormtail was involved in anything.

[arjanenl]

I think Peter didn’t just kill Sirius from behind — and hell, openly take credit for it: as far as everyone knew, Sirius was the traitor who sold the Potters to Voldemort and then killed a dozen Muggles in his botched escape. Why hide that you were the one to kill him? It fits the framing — for similar reasons to why Peter was still in Britain: J.K. Rowling needed Sirius around for the “give hope to Harry that he can escape the Dursleys and then yank it away” sequence in Prisoner of Azkaban so around he was even if it made the confrontation between him and Peter a bit silly, what with the frameup specialist not finishing the job. I think a dash of Stupid Evil was also involved, even if it’s one of the worst scenes to invoke that trope in.

And yes, if Peter feared Remus so much that he went to Albania help Voldemort resurrect after Prisoner of Azkaban, it’s all the more reason he shouldn’t have stayed in Britain in the first place: first, he knew of Remus’s situation just as well during the first war so he knew that after it, with the Order of the Phoenix winding down, Remus would be just as free to hunt him down as after Prisoner of Azkaban. Second, he assumes going abroad with Remus both knowing he’s alive and wanting his head on a pike would at the absolute least buy him time — it’s not like Voldie can shelter him before his resurrection and that happens once back in Britain — so he has no reason to assume slipping away when Remus thinks him dead wouldn’t buy him peace…well, so long as he kept his head down, but big flashy actions always seemed to be James’s and Sirius’s province amongst the Marauders.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Unless Peter really wanted Sirius to be tortured in Azkaban... Terri has a drabble series 'Test to Destruction' from March 2014 (not sure if it is safe to post links to LiveJournal?) where Peter develops a lot of resentment to James and Sirius over the years for using him and never respecting him or liking him so he willingly betrays both to Voldemort in revenge. I find that a plausible scenario in light of how they treat Peter in SWM, and when thinking of the implications of their Animagi forms. (I mean, who got the information that went into the map, including the Slytherin common room? And this in a castle full of owls and cats...)

After the first war he could avoid being hunted down by Remus by faking his death. I don't see why the frame-up was incomplete? Sirius was framed for betraying the Potters and killing Peter (plus a bunch of Muggles) If Remus believed Peter was dead he wouldn't be looking for him. Also, since he believed the frame-up he had no negative feelings about Peter, only Sirius. But once remus found out the truth? Yes, now he had a reason to hunt Peter down.

[arjanenl]

Even then, I don’t think he could know Dumbledore would chose that time to switch from covering Sirius to throwing him under the bus: after all, a trial with the attendant Veritaserum would have revealed immediately that Peter was the traitor and not Sirius.

For me the frameup is incomplete because even after it he still acts as if it didn’t happen and he were still on the run: if Peter really thought the frameup was successful, what the hell was he doing as a rat for so many years?

[sunnyskywalker]

Hm, another thought: is there someone who doesn't know that Peter was the Secret-Keeper but does know he was a Death Eater? Rookwood or Karkaroff, for example. Karkaroff doesn't seem to have known many names, but it's possible he sold out someone else before the hearing we saw. Rookwood's arrest seems to have led to others, such as Ludo Bagman's. Peter wouldn't even need to know for sure that they knew his identity, as long as he thought they might have recognized him at some point. If Peter suspected that someone might shop him, he would have a reason to stay dead even after framing Sirius for the Potters' betrayal. If he killed Sirius and cast himself in the role of hero only to be outed as a DE a few days later, people might start asking questions, and the whole exercise would have been wasted. So make sure Sirius doesn't talk and disappear. Either he hoped to catch Sirius in the blast and screwed up (but Sirius being tortured in Azkaban is a perfectly acceptable alternative), or he prefers not to kill people he actually knows (Sirius, Ron, Harry) and so designed a set-up to let other people do the torturing or killing for him.

Which maybe takes care of the "why not take credit for killing Sirius" problem, but not the "why hide as a rat" problem. Doylistically, yeah, Rowling just forgot. But Watsonianly? If he thought Karkaroff or Rookwood might have sold him out but the Ministry was keeping it quiet as long as they thought Peter was dead (and the duel was a case of villains falling out) because "poor hero Peter" makes a better story...could he have wondered whether Dumbledore would know in that case and send Remus after him if he popped up in another country? And stuck around to see whether Arthur, lower-ranking DMLE employee and brother-in-law of Order members, would say something? I'm not sure it works, but it's the best I've got so far.

[sunnyskywalker]

Terri also posted Test to Destruction on Archive of Our Own, incidentally.

[sunnyskywalker]

If only Peter had more characterization! I can imagine that maybe back in 1981, Peter didn't have the stomach for directly killing a friend (no matter how much he might resent Sirius, there's still that familiarity and habit of acting as sorta-friends) and so came up with the faked-death scheme instead. He made it big and flashy because Sirius wouldn't suspect Peter of a big, flashy plan and would probably assume that Peter screwed up and accidentally blew himself up by keeping his wand in his back pocket or something. Then by June 1995, he's lost that compunction and is fine with killing the spare.

Or maybe he was always fine killing strangers and it was only killing a school buddy that he balked at. He also zapped Ron unconscious rather than killing him when he made his escape outside the Shack, which might mean he had too much affection for the kid who at least fed him for several years to kill him directly. And, of course, he hesitates to kill Harry.

We just don't have quite enough evidence to be confident about any of this, though. And it still doesn't explain why he didn't move to Australia after faking his death the first time. Which takes us back to, is there something or some information in Britain he thought he needed for some reason? Did he somehow get on other countries' most-wanted lists without anyone else knowing he'd even made jaunts abroad? Does he just like British food and weather that much?

[aikaterini]

/Peter, the problem with why didn’t he flee happens waaay before/

Because JKR wanted him to be the traitor and then had no idea what to do with him after he helped resurrect Voldemort. Hence why Peter, the actual traitor, in a series where betrayal is a grave sin ("I loathe a traitor" after all) is treated as an insignificant footnote by everyone. Nobody takes him seriously -- not Voldemort, Snape, Harry, or Remus and Sirius after POA -- because the narrative doesn't. For all of the rage that Harry throws Snape's way, both before and after he finds out that Snape leaked the prophecy to Voldemort, he never shows anywhere near the kind of consuming hatred towards Peter. One would think that Severus Snape was the false friend who betrayed James and Lily to their killer, given the level of loathing that he receives from Harry and Sirius.

And for all that JKR didn't tell us about why Snape joined the Death Eaters, she painted a much more vivid picture of him than she did for Peter. Who is Peter? What does he gain by allying with Voldemort, both before and after Voldemort's fall? What is it about Voldemort that is so compelling that instead of fleeing Britain, Peter chooses to stick around and play the humiliated servant? At least Snape got the headmaster position and a seat at the table in DH. What does Peter get? A silver hand that strangles him in a botched attempt to tie up the 'life debt' thread in DH? Peter is so trivial to everyone else that the actual DH movies forgot about him. He's not in the Malfoy Manor scene, so he doesn't die and it's accidentally implied that he got away at the end.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Given Cosmic!Albus' explanation that Harry was able to return from King's Cross to the land of the living thanks to Voldemort's use of his blood in the making of the new Voldie-body, Peter's life-debt was paid when Harry's blood was taken and added to the cauldron. He could have poofed out of existence there and then, except it would take Harry 3 more years to learn how that worked.

[arjanenl]

I agree that the Doylist reason is that, like with many characters J.K. Rowling considers minor, she forgot him once he was used (see also Sally-Anne Perks for that). I was looking for a Watsonian reason why would he stay in Britain after the first war, let alone in the lead-up to the second though. Granted, I wasn’t looking that hard: I don’t think there’s one beyond authorial sloppiness.

[sunnyskywalker]

Harry isn't a very abstract thinker (partly because of his age, granted), so I can sort of understand him hating the guy he sees every day more than a vague blur "out there" somewhere. He hates Snape more than Voldemort, too, maybe because he only sees Voldemort once a year. But that's because Rowling chose to have Peter hanging out in the background! She could have written him out committing active villainy that Harry was at least partly aware of and given Harry enough motive to at least think about him with a scowl occasionally.

Don't remind the movie people that Movie!Peter probably got away. It might give them ideas.