Peter's Unfortunate Crisis of Nerves

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 45370

Karie wrote:

> And, anyway, I still see Peter as brave. Not honorable, not moral, 
> but certainly brave. Elkins covered the whole thing very well, and 
> so I won't repeat, but I will say that I actually don't think Peter 
> cowering around in the Shack was at the bottom all that cowardly, 
> because I think that Peter was taking the chance that if he cowered 
> and gibbered, his old friends, his old _protectors_ would balk at 
> killing him. 

Oh, I'd love to agree with you, Karie, because I really do so much 
enjoy Pettigrew's peculiarly anti-stoic brand of pluck, but I think 
that his nerve failed him in the Shack.  If he'd gone for the grovel 
from the very start, then I might agree with you that what we were 
seeing there was manipulation, pure and simple.  

But he didn't.  He panicked.  He played the waiting game far too 
long, for one thing: by the time he was forcibly restored to human 
form, he'd really lost any chance of coming up with a convincing 
explanation for his behavior.  Had he transformed on his own accord 
at some point earlier in the conversation, then he might have stood a 
somewhat better chance.  Instead, though, he waited too long, and in 
doing so, he lost the opportunity to frame the discussion on his own 
terms.  If you ask me, he just plain choked.

Then he compounded his error by continuing to try to hold to his 
(ultimately indefensible) story that Sirius Black was a mad fiend out 
to murder him.  And he was profoundly unconvincing, not only because 
his story just couldn't hold up to any real degree of scrutiny 
(although that was part of it), but also because his nerves were 
already shot from the very start.  It was his sweating and his 
stammering and his darty eye movements to the doors and windows that 
first lead Harry to mistrust him, and I can't imagine that they did 
much to inspire Remus' confidence either.  He made Sirius Black seem 
trustworthy in comparison, which given that Sirius was doing things 
like snarling animalistically and grinning maniacally and trying to 
throttle his own godson at the time is really saying something.

We know that Peter did manage to be quite a successful spy in the 
past.  I can only imagine that he *used* to be more than capable of 
deception.  In the Shack, though, he is not a convincing liar.  I'd 
say that his nerve failed him there.  Big time.

> Peter knew them better than we do, and certainly during their years 
> together they must have protected him--so it seems entirely 
> possible that he was counting on their Gryffindor chivalry on 
> several levels--they wouldn't kill an unarmed, pathetic man, 
> right? They wouldn't kill him if it wasn't his fault, if James 
> wouldn't have liked it...No, all in all, I'd have to say that even 
> if (though) Peter isn't a very strong wizard, his brains were 
> working quite well...

You think?  Oh, I don't know.  I do agree with you that both his 
plays for sympathy and his pleas for mercy are fundamentally 
manipulative.  There's something almost embarrassingly blatant (as 
well as curiously formal) about the way that he supplicates every 
person in the room in turn.  

I also think, though, that he was in a quite genuine state of panic 
in the Shack, and that it had a detrimental effect on his...well, on 
his performance, shall we say?  He wasn't exactly on top grovelling 
*form,* if you ask me.  No one whose brains were really working well, 
for example, would ever have tried that "he was taking over 
everywhere...what was there to be gained by refusing him?" 
justification.  That was a serious tactical error, of the kind that 
only somebody not thinking at all clearly would ever have made.  He 
didn't approach Hermione properly either, in spite of the fact that 
he'd had over two years as Scabbers to observe her.

No, I'd say that he was certainly *trying* to be manipulative in the 
Shack, but that he wasn't capable of doing a very good job of it -- 
largely, I think, because he...well, was suffering a rather serious 
crisis of nerves at the time.


-- Elkins 

(holding up a card reading "6" for Pettigrew's grovelling form in the 
Shack, but willing to raise that to a "7" to account for his having 
successfully completed the program)