Did Peter really kill those Muggles + did he torture Bertha?

[pippin_999 <foxmoth@qnet.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 49433

Angela Evans <sixhoursahead at y...> wrote:

> OK, here is where it gets interesting for me. Black says that the 
reason PP has been hiding all these years is because he fears 
the DEs who blame him for LV's downfall, because LV 
dissapeared while following PP's info. I find this a little weak. 
Black DOES say that he personally heard DEs in Azkaban calling 
PP a traitor, but still. I think PP could have argued his case to the 
DEs. <<


Pettigrew may have believed that killing him was part of  
Voldemort's orginal plan.  Fudge speaks as though there was 
evidence that Sirius planned to declare himself a Voldemort 
supporter at the time of the Potter's deaths. If so, it can only have 
been planted in advance. 

In any case, once the Potters were eliminated, LV would have no 
further use for Peter. And Peter is definitely bright enough to 
figure that out.

If  the site of the showdown between Sirius and Peter was 
chosen in advance, then one or more of Voldemort's supporters 
could  have been there, making sure Peter did what  he was 
supposed to do. But Pettigrew faked his own death before 
his erstwhile co-conspirators could eliminate him. 

It's hard to apply Newtonian physics to magical problems, but if 
the evidence of the blast pointed to a gas explosion as the 
Muggle investigators believed, then I suppose that what Peter  or 
his accomplices did was touch off an explosion in the gas main 
*under* the street. Peter immediately switched to rat form, was 
blown upwards but not killed due to his magical resilience and 
his reduced mass, and then fell back into the sewer with his rat 
friends. It makes the problem much simpler if Peter gave the 
severed finger in advance to someone else to plant on the 
scene. How else could he be sure it would be found? Accio! 
doesn't seem to work  on bodies.


It gets even more interesting if we assume that Peter believes 
that one of his two old friends in the Shrieking Shack is also a 
DE, but doesn't know which one it is. After all, Voldemort could 
have double-crossed Sirius, too. I keep wondering how 
Voldemort learned that Peter was called Wormtail. It doesn't 
seem the sort of alias that Peter would choose for himself, now 
does it? 

Heidi said:

>> Well, in a clinical sense it could be conjecture for sirius to say 
that but if he saw peter put the wand behind his back, or was at 
an angle such that he could still see peter's arm, wand in hand, 
or if he could even see the tip or handle of the wand behind 
peter, it wouldn't be conjecture. It would be something he really 
did see <<

Peter was fat. I don't think it was easy to see around him. But it 
might be that Peter had  *two* wands--his own, which he pointed 
at Sirius, and Voldemort's, which he held behind him and aimed 
at the ground. Of course we know that Voldemort's wand wasn't 
used, because there was no echo, but Sirius wouldn't know that. 

Anakin said: 

>>Who tortured Bertha? According to Voldemort's account, Peter 
made him the fragil body _after_ Bertha was tortured. But if 
Voldemort was vapor, he couldn't have used any magical, or 
presumably physical means to extract information from Bertha. 

Peter, however, does not strike me as an expert torturer. Do you 
think Voldemort's time line is inaccurate? If so, would it be a 
flint, or intentional? Could he have posessed Peter for a short 
time and used Peter's body to torture Bertha? Or did Peter 
actually do the torturing? <<

Good catch! Voldemort says that Peter was "the able-bodied 
servant I needed." That could mean that he had another servant 
who wasn't able-bodied. Perhaps he had a servant who could 
use a wand, but due to his disability was unsuitable for 
possession or donation of flesh, and who would be unable to 
tend to uglybaby!Voldemort. A werewolf, perhaps?

Pippin