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

[oryx_leucoryx]

I like it when characters have motivations that make sense in-universe!

In GOF Sirius is eating rats while he is hiding in the cave. We don't know when he developed the taste for them.

It isn't clear how many people in the 1990s knew Voldemort was in Albania. In COS Dumbledore has mysterious sources telling him that's where he was, but in GOF there is a moment where someone (can't remember who or when....) makes it a big deal that Bagman isn't doing more to find Bertha Jorkins who has disappeared during a visit to Albania when it is known to be Voldemort's location.

In GOF Sirius is pretty well informed about events that happened during his incarceration (or at least the publicly known version of them). Not sure when he did his research.

[sunnyskywalker]

He seems to have gotten to that tropical island relatively quickly after he fled Hogwarts on Buckbeak. So he probably didn't have a lot of contact with Order members or anyone else between PoA and GoF. Which probably leaves correspondence with Remus and Dumbledore as his main sources of information, plus whatever old rumors might be circulating on whichever tropical island he's on (though that might be nothing if there isn't a British expat community there). I think that would work for him to get a truncated, incomplete summary of major events like the Pensieve Four trial mainly through letters from Remus and Dumbledore, to supplement what he learned through the Azkaban grapevine (which he'd be able to actually think about properly now that he's away from the dementors), but not to get information Dumbledore didn't want him to, like Voldemort's preference for Albania. Though I might be missing something!

I can totally see Dumbledore earnestly telling Remus that poor Sirius is in no condition yet to be taking on dangerous missions that might bring him in range of Voldemort himself, so please don't mention Albania yet. (Assuming Remus knows about Albania--he might not, being not exactly plugged into the wizarding gossip network himself.) Remus would probably agree that yes, it's better all around if Sirius rests on that tropical island for a while first.

[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?

[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]

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.

[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.

[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]

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?

[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.

[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.

[chantaldormand]

I like your take on panicked Peter's thinking, but IMHO outside of Jo needing him in right place at right time it makes no sense for Peter to be in 93' in UK.

Hitch ride on a ship as rat to any other country and Peter would be free to live under an assumed name without any problems. In fact, if I was Jo's editor I would try to convince her to introduce Peter in POA as a new character- a muggleborn's pet perhaps?- who did want to get up close and personal with Harry for one or other reason.

Why Albus didn't send Sirius after Peter is pretty easy to answer- because he believed in prophecy and needed someone to put Tom together. Why Sirius didn't go after Peter anyway is slightly harder to answer- I suspect it's guilt. Sirius spent over a decade fermenting in guilt over his actions that lead to his imprisonment. So I suspect that after his interactions with Harry in PoA he remembered he is supposed to be a responsible adult in that relationship who swore to protect Harry. And what with Harry helping him escape I suspect he tried to make a lot of false positive reports- and thus exotic birds which could very well be bewitched birds from private collection.

[sunnyskywalker]

Now I'm having fun imagining Padfoot trotting into the hypothetical Malfoy aviary to "borrow" a tropical bird to send a letter. Probably too much risk even for him. But their estate is in Wiltshire, and the real Longleat in Wiltshire really does have white peacocks (or at least did a few decades ago), and they have a safari park, so it seems like a good place to find all sorts of animals not native to England...

It's really too bad we don't have more characterization for Peter. Like, maybe he could have felt so tremendously guilt about selling out the Potters that he wanted to stick around and protect Harry. And then was just really bad at it. He couldn't figure out how to track down the Muggle Dursleys, so he settled in with a Ministry family who might hear rumors about the kid's whereabouts and had lots of kids of their own so worst case he could end up at Hogwarts when Harry eventually got there. Then his courage utterly failed him when it came to things like going down the trap door (maybe he figured out Quirrell's secret before anyone else?) and the basilisk adventure. But he bit Goyle that one time! Then he got revealed, realized how inadequate he was, and fled back to the Dark Side in shame and despair (but still couldn't bring himself to hurt any of the kids directly on the way out, and felt really bad about poking Harry's arm in the graveyard).

Unfortunately we have no evidence whatsoever of this and it's still pretty thin.

Gah. Why couldn't Arthur's one subordinate have been Rookwood's cousin or something so we might wonder whether Peter was spending those years looking for an opportunity to break in and rifle through the files to see whether Rookwood sold him out, and destroy the files if so? And had just failed and got too depressed to make much effort even to leave eventually, because what's the point, and anyway he hasn't been caught, and he probably deserves life as a rat for being so pathetic... I suppose Perkins could be Rookwood's cousin and no one ever mentioned it, but it's all very unsatisfying.

Hey. "Perkins" means something like "son of little Peter" ("Perkin" is an old diminutive of Peter). Maybe...no, I don't know.

[chantaldormand]

I never managed to finish Lightning on the Wave's Sacrifice Arc series, but from what I recall they made an interesting twist on Peter's involvement with Voldemort. If I remember correctly Peter was original Dumbledore's spy among DEs before Severus switched sides and he betrayed Potters on Albus' orders. I think that later in the series Harry learns Peter felt really guilty over the whole affair but couldn't go against his orders due to binding magic placed on him...? Hmmm something like that.

Anyway I can dig Peter staying by Harry's side and subtly trying to nudge the trio to either other activities ("the boy is way too much like Sirius and James... And who the hell places powerful artefacts in a school full of teenagers??") or alternatively helping them find answers to mysteries so they won't go stumbling into Forbbiden Forrest to chat with giant spiders.

What always gets me is Peter returning to Voldemort. If Voldemort was already assembled and recalling DEs then yeah, a coward would run to him. But with Peter being officially dead and not a very useful follower, I don't think Tom would go looking for him if Peter hid in let's say New Zealand.

So maybe Peter went to Voldemort in hopes to gain some kind of information to buy back his freedom via spying for Dumbledore? And wouldn't it be so much in Albus' style to keep Sirius GP12 bound, and have ANOTHER spy about whom nobody knew who just happens to be the only person whom Sirius would murder on sight? Hmmm 🤔

[sunnyskywalker]

Ooh, now Peter as a reluctant spy for Dumbledore has dramatic potential. Or even an attempted one? Like, he's at least partly figured out about Severus by now. It doesn't really matter what he thinks about Severus's true, deep-down loyalties; he knows that Dumbledore will apparently accept a penitent Death Eater into the fold, if his information seems good. So after he flees thanks to the distraction of Remus transforming, he decides that it's too risky to go to Dumbledore yet, because he doesn't have any information that Severus hasn't already given him. If he's useless, Dumbledore will probably happily throw him to the dementors to exonerate Sirius and prove to the Ministry that he's right and all that. But suppose he tracked downed the weakened Voldemort, pretended to help him out a bit, and then ran back to Dumbledore with loads of useful information? Yeah, then he'd get real protection!

Unfortunately, Bertha was a much more useful captive than he'd anticipated, and Voldemort not quite as helpless as Peter had hoped, and he now had to worry about Barty Junior too, and things got so far out of hand that he actually resurrected the Dark Lord. Oops. Probably too late to turn at that point...

[arjanenl]

Thinking about it, even for J.K. Rowling’s rationale for having Peter around, having him at the Weasleys might well be the worst choice: having him at the Patils — safely in another country until it’s time acting re. Potter — or at a Muggleborn’s — as far as Pettigrew is concerned, Muggles aren’t going to uncover him — could be easily enough understandable. Staying in British wizarding society, for all that British wizards don’t seem to socialise, seems real risky, above all at associates of the one person alive able to recognise his Animagus form.

[chantaldormand]

Honestly, pretending to be a pet in wizarding family is very risky, no matter if Peter stayed in UK or not. First, in wizarding homes, you can cast spells so even if nobody suspects their pet to be an adult man in disguise accidents happen. Maybe startled child performs accidental magic on Peter and their concerned guardians perform some kind of diagnostic spell to make sure kid's pet is ok. Or maybe Hogwarts-aged child tests out some harmless spells on their pet... Possibilities are infinite.

Second, for all lack of common sense wizards tends to know the differences between magical and mundane animals and objects. Magical rats live slightly longer than normal rats, half-kneazles are smarter than normal cats, etc. The only reason Peter wasn't busted by Molly and Artur is sheer dumb luck and both of them being too busy to take a closer look at what their kids are up to.

What I think would be an interesting scenario is Harry accidentally adopting rat!Peter* after the first year (so it wouldn't be obvious to the reader) and then discovering in PoA that his pet rat was the man who for one reason or another betrayed his parents. It gives slightly more omph to emotional impact and considering how selectively perceptive Harry is, it is very plausible.

*obviously in this scenario Peter was never Weasley's pet rat.

[sunnyskywalker]

I don't think the Patils live abroad? The family just immigrated recently enough to still be giving their kids Indian names and wearing traditional clothing for special occasions. But they might visit grandparents in India during summers, which would give Peter an easy travel option if he wanted.

Probably the safest would be living with a Muggle family, or a series of Muggle families, who live next door to wizards. That way he could listen for or rifle through newspapers and files for information when necessary, but his hosts would have no way of detecting him.

Or he could live as a Pizza Rat and occasionally revert to human form to Imperius Ministry employees into telling him the news (like whether he's suddenly on any "if you see this wizard" lists). That probably wouldn't be any more dangerous than living with Fred and George.

[sunnyskywalker]

That would be a good reason to pick the Weasleys over other families, that the house is too chaotic and everyone too busy to notice minor weird things. On the other hand, Fred and George might try to use him as a test subject. I sure wouldn't want to be a pet in that house.

Harry adopting a "found" Scabbers might have been really interesting. It would fit with a Peter who kind of wants to keep an eye on Harry and help him because he feels guilty, but fails catastrophically because of cowardice at critical moments. And it would give Harry a more meaningful pet than Hedwig, whose functions could have been almost entirely replaced by a series of communal school owls Harry borrows whenever he needs one. (I think it was Dan Hemmens who summarized the Battle of the Seven Potters as "Harry's mail client goes down." Harsh, but true.) But then Harry would have had to care about an apparently weak and helpless pet he actually had to take care of every day, which might have been good for him but apparently wouldn't teach Harry anything Rowling wanted him to learn.