[fic] Rat & Snake
Title: Rat & Snake
Rating: R
Pairing: Peter Pettigrew/Severus Snape
Word Count: 2381
Summary: There are bonds and promises that last a lifetime and some that are broken far too easily.
The Golden Trio: a ragtag group consisting of two of the most notorious mischief makers in the school and one bookworm, as good as they come. He didn’t understand how it was possible that they all seemed to mesh together, but they did. The group of misfits were perfect as it was; it didn’t need another tagalong.
But that didn’t stop one lonely, pudgy boy from trying to join them. They wouldn’t simply let him just like that, he had to go through an initiation, all for their amusement. Although Lupin might have thought it a bit cruel, he wouldn’t voice any of that because even he felt insecure in his position. He needed to feel accepted first, he needed to know that he was in deep with them. So the cruel testing would go on.
Their challenges were made on a whim, ranging from setting an engorged spider in a professor’s desk drawer to running up to a seventh year girl and kissing her (he got more in trouble for that than the former prank).
I can hear ungraceful footsteps pacing behind me and by the time I whip around, my wand is firmly gripped in my hand and he is holding his, although he looks unsure of himself. “Still running trying to impress Potter and Black?” I scowl, unimpressed. “Don’t you know that they’ll never think of you as more than some pet, who can only entertain them when they’re bored? Just some loyal fan?”
His beady eyes look vacant as if he’s not listening but I know he is, he just doesn’t want to accept it or at the very least not think about it. “I need your potions textbook,” he mutters, as if everything I’ve said has gone in one ear and out the other.
“I’d like to see you try and take it from me,” I challenge. I’m confident in my abilities one on one and from what I’ve seen of him in class, I really don’t have anything to worry about.
He frowns, smart enough to figure when he’s outmatched. “Please… it’s the last test. They need to know I’m a true Gryffindor,” he pleads, and I half expect him to get on his knees.
“And yet here you are, making a deal with a Slytherin.”
“Making… a deal?” It’s almost as if he doesn’t understand what I’m implying.
“I’ll give you my textbook for now but you owe me a favour. And because you’re a Gryffindor, I know you’ll keep your word. Just give me back my book when you’re done.”
“Yeah… of course.” He nods quickly, his mouth spread in an ecstatic grin.
I give him my textbook and he scurries off, waving the book around like it’s his golden ticket to getting everything he wants. Perhaps at best the illusion of it.
I don’t exchange words with him for another twenty-four years.
Perhaps if I had then maybe I could have banked on that promise sooner. If I’d kept in touch, maybe I could have foreseen… But in the end, I have no one to blame but myself.
I have been outwitted by a Gryffindor.
I scarcely believe Black’s ramblings on that fateful night because I’ve believed for half of my schooling that he had a nasty, murderous edge and that it should have been plain to everyone he was raving mad. That’s what too much inbreeding leads to, I suppose. It was easy to believe he was and had always been the bane of my existence; and perhaps in my loathing I’d become blind to any other possibility.
Everyone always forgets the sidekick.
I spend eleven months hating him with every fibre of my being, for the fact that he was a spineless, pathetic scum. In those months I hated him more than I’d ever hated Potter or Black, because in their arrogance they at least had the decency to be frank about their flaws. I avoid sweets for this duration, because all I can think of is Peter, rotund teenager as he was, grabbing handfuls of pastries from the dinner table. A fat rat indeed.
I go to visit him a month after the graveyard, after the Dark Lord has returned and appropriately holed him up in some miserable shack. He’s valued enough to be hidden away but not so much as to stay with our Lord himself, but then again, no one is.
If black weren’t the customary colour I wore then as I stood at the doorstep I might have looked like I was in mourning. After three resounding knocks, I can hear pacing footsteps rush to the door, and then stop. There’s a slight swaying on the creaky floorboard before the door is whipped open.
“Severus.” Neither the wonder nor bewilderment in his voice surprises me but I feel insulted nonetheless. He is the last person who deserves to call me by name.
“May I come in?”
“Of course.” He nearly stutters but he manages to catch himself, and as the Dark Lord’s righthand man my whims are not to be refused. He beckons me inside and I follow, and with a paranoid glance he closes the door as quickly as he opened it.
“Would you like some tea?” His hands smooth out the ragged gray jacket he’s wearing, a feeble attempt to stay calm.
“If it’s not too much trouble.” I say coolly, and he scurries off to the kitchen as I take a seat on a shabby plaid couch. As I hear the clanking of metal in the kitchen, I look around at the sad state of affairs this ‘house’ is in, evidently unloved by its previous owner. In some half a dozen minutes he is back with dainty floral teacups on bone white china plates. “Ah, it’s chamomile,” he says, almost apologetically, perhaps out of habit.
“Do you have any biscuits?”
Peter’s face screws up in worry. “Let me go check.” And off he goes, rushing back like the matter of a few shortbreads is life and death.
But in the meantime, I swiftly extract from my pocket a small vial, uncork it and pour the translucent green contents into Peter’s tea, stashing the vial away at the pitter patter of footsteps. Peter holds a plate littered with a few stale-looking biscuits, no doubt plain and tasteless. “What a gracious host you are.” I nod curtly, and indicate for him to sit down beside me.
Like clockwork we both pick up our teacups and sip to ease into to this peculiar situation.
“Did the… Dark Lord send you? Is there something he wants me to do?” The faintest beads of worry appear on Peter’s face.
“I’m not here on anyone’s orders,” I hiss, because I am ruled by no one, not even the Dark Lord. Not even Albus Dumbledore, the selfless saviour; but it’s always easy to play with pawns and collateral damage. “I’m here by my own hand.”
“Ah?” he squeaks, furrowing his eyebrows.
“I thought maybe we could catch up.” It’s too uncharacteristic of me to smile so my lips merely thin out to a more even line.
“Oh, certainly,” he says meekly, picking up the teacup and beginning to drink.
I beckon him to start, explaining that playing the double agent isn’t as interesting as it sounds and that I did, after all, come to see how he’s doing. As if I am the friend he never knew he had.
For someone whom I suspect has an uninteresting life (and as he prattles on my assumption is, proven correct) he certainly has a lot to babble about. At some point it is so infuriating to listen to the traitorous weasel that I decide to take matters into my own hands and silence him with a suffocating kiss. He squirms at first, before he concedes. He doesn’t even pull back, but instead kisses me back with a needy ferocity. I do not doubt he has not been touched in a long time, unless he has paid for such services.
Before I’ve scarcely the chance to get my fringe out of my eyes, his pudgy hand is up my robe. I doubt there’s as much to grope around as he might normally be used to, unfavourable partners or voluptuous prostitutes alike.
He retracts back for air. “S-Severus…” The forlorn gasp is cue enough for me to begin undoing the buttons on his shirt, although they look as if they are one tug away from falling off. The shirt, with minimal amounts of maneuvering, is discarded while his hand is still chiefly up my own, a desperate hand rubbing and patting skin. “It might do you better if you put that hand… elsewhere,” I comment dryly, eliciting only a dry cough of embarrassment from him as that hand appropriately lowers, sneaking into my trousers.
It’s never like I imagine it. And it is only imagination that saves me. I think that the particular hand is thinner and softer than it is, less needy and more… innocent. It seems like folly to think of a mere hand as innocent but to consider the person that is attached to it ruins the entire illusion. I imagine a moan; I can scarcely discern if it is mine or his or merely in my mind. It’s sinful to think that it’s working but it is, and all I have to do is imagine the scent of musty books and magnolias to put me in the right state of mind.
“Take off your clothes,” I bark, as if I’m commanding some belligerent student. His hand snaps back as if it had been touching fire, trying his best to take off his pants without looking like an overexcited teenager. I avert my eyes for my own sanity as the last of his clothes are on the floor, although his ugly mug is no prettier a sight. “Turn around.” It’s as much for my sake as it for his that I don’t wish to face him.
“I don’t have -” A crimson colour spreads across his cheeks and he seems unable to muster the words, but I can nevertheless understand.
I bring my hand close to my face and spit in it, glancing over to see his face expressing a downright pitiful look. “I said turn around.” This time, he obeys.
I scowl as I probe on saliva covered finger in, ignoring what I can only construe as a coarse groan. Perhaps I should be flattered to get a rise out of him but I take no personal pleasure in this, in any of it. He shouldn’t either but he doesn’t know it yet. In time, he will. I push deeper and slip another finger in, and this time the sound isn’t as pleasure filled. Sometimes one sacrifices fun for functionality.
And that’s as nice as I feel for the moment, and so I swiftly retract my fingers.
“Sev -”
“Shut up.” There’s no bark, no bite; I’m too tired for that right now.
It’s a chore of an act, all of the sweating and the noises and having to remember to keep going. That’s always the hardest part, I find. Wanting to go on, the mental will trumps any of the physical nuisances that happen all by themselves. Thrusting and bucking and trying to remember why you’re doing it in the first place, for no other reason than to steal away a few precious hours that could be spent doing…. nothing. Merlin knows there’s not enough peace and quiet left on this decrepit place we call earth.
I succumb to physical exhaustion before I succumb to the mental, because there isn’t a thing that can break me better than I can. I slump on the other arm of the sofa, crossing my legs as if I am some highborn lady of quality. I scarcely cast a glance in the vermin’s direction.
“It’ll be like it should, you and me… catching up on all that lost time. Flatmates, maybe? As if we’re boys out of school,” he squeals. I can see the future flashing before his beady eyes, the relief to have finally achieved a relationship where he is not the third wheel.
“You’ll feel it in a couple weeks,” I say, ignoring his prattle. “Nausea, stomach pains. You’ll think there’s something inside of you, trying to scratch its way out.”
“I don’t -” He blinks, gulping down a lump even though he doesn’t know what it is.
“I poisoned your tea. It’ll kill you in a month and a half without an antidote.” I lean over and get my clothes, extracting a small vial with a colourless liquid and setting it on the table. “This will add another couple of weeks.”
I still don’t look at him, but I imagine his rosy flesh has gone white.
“I’m here to collect on a favour. I want you to protect Harry.” Just as you should have done. “Save him when the time comes, because I know that boy can’t stay out of trouble.”
“The Dark Lord will kill me!” he protests with all his might.
“So be it. Puke your insides out and pray you have the strength to do yourself in.”
“The Dark Lord will kill you!” He spits, but I don’t bother brushing the saliva off my arm.
“You’ll still be dead.” I shrug, finally looking at him. “I don’t ask as from one Slytherin to a Gryffindor, but from one Slytherin to another. And I know that’s a promise you’ll keep.”
I stand up, putting my clothes back on and looking at the wonderfully orchestrated mess I’ve created. He doesn’t know all of this, but he’s paying for more than one person’s sins since they’re not here to repent for the things they’ve done. “We’re the ultimate martyrs, you and I. Bred in hate, born in hate and living only to hate. And we die when all the hate has finally dried up in our body.”
He and I, could have been friends. But fate’s hand would rather have us hate so that there can be someone to put on a pedestal. The men who can be held up as shining examples of people who have only had to endure normalcy, who have had lives of no importance at all.