Unfortunate!Peter

[Sharon]

No: HPFGUIDX 118278



>  > azirona:
> There are as many motivations as there are stars in the sky.
> Blackmail, torture, ransom, cash reward, fear, love, resentment,
> reason (I mean, maybe Peter really did think Voldy was right), or
> even the idea that Peter has been working for DD since the first 
day  
> at school.
>  >
> 
> Kneasy:
> Yes, there are. How many would apply to Peter, particularly if he 
got 
> into DD's clutches while still at school? Only  two that I can 
think of 
> -  idealism and fear. And I don't trust idealists.
> 

Actually, depending on how you look at the situation, I think all of 
those motivations could apply to Peter.  It depends on how you spin 
it:

A quote from PoA, Chapter 19 'The Servant of Lord Voldemort':

"You sold Lily and James to Voldemort," said Black, who was shaking 
too. "Do you deny it?"

"Sirius, Sirius, what could I have done?  The Dark Lord...you have no 
idea...he has weapons you can't imagine...I was scared, Sirius, I was 
never brave like you and Remus and James.  I never meant it to 
happen...He-Who-Must-Be-Named forced me..."

<snip>

"He - he was taking over everywhere!" gasped Pettigrew. "Wh-what was 
there to be gained by refusing him?"

<snip>

"You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew.  "He would have killed me, 
Sirius!"

Okay, let's begin:

Blackmail: 
"He has weapons..."  It's one of Peter's first lines of defense, 
really.  Be quiet, Sirius, he's got weapons, he's got power you don't 
understand.  Implied is that Peter has even seen these weapons at 
work and therefore knows first hand.  Why?  Would he have seen Voldy 
use them on others?  From OoP, Chp 5 "The Order of the Phoenix" -
 "Voldemort doesn't march up to people's houses and bang on their 
front doors, Harry," said Sirius.  "He tricks, jinxes, and blackmails 
them."  It is entirely possible that Voldemort blackmailed Peter into 
working for him.  Why - again, can't tell you.  But it's pretty easy 
to come up with reasons.  (Holding family members hostage.  Holding 
information hostage.  Threatening with a much worse fate for James & 
Lily if Peter doesn't cooperate.)

Torture:
Peter out and out tells Sirius that his life was on the line.  
Voldemort would have killed him for non-compliance.  Now, we're 
talking about a bad guy here from the classic line-up of bad guys, 
who before they deliver the killing blow to their adversaries, 
decides to torture them a bit first.  (I mean, really.  How many 
people actually read the graveyard scene without thinking of every 
bad James Bond movie in existance?)  Voldy couldn't have grabbed 
Peter and said, "Hey, bud, go find out where James & Lily are hiding 
and tell me, or I'll kill you."  Heck no.  There had to be some 
*motivation* in there.  Voldy probably did quite a Cruciatus number 
on Peter first.

Ransom:
Interesting, isn't it, that Sirius actually uses the word "sold" when 
making his official accusation of Peter in the Shrieking Shack.  
*Sold*...not 'betrayed', not 'turned them in', not 'handed over'.  
*Sold*.  As if there was an actual exchange of...something, for that 
information that Peter had as Secret Keeper.

(This could probably play into an ESE!Sirius theory, but I'd rather 
steer clear of that for the moment.)

What possibly could be so important and wonderful to Peter that he 
would be willing to betray his friends and cause the death of their 
son just to get his hands on it?  Power?  Money?  Fame?  The first 
and last are cetainly things that Peter didn't have before - he 
willingly admits that he's not as powerful as the rest of his 
friends, and before the events at GH he certainly wasn't the most 
well-known - at least, not for the right things.  How ironic it would 
be had Peter turned in Lily and James because he wanted fame, because 
it's actually what he ended up getting - except he could hardly enjoy 
it, seeing as the fame was supposed to be posthomous!

Cash Reward:
Which sort of goes in with ransom.  Actually, I do think this one is 
the least likely of the possibilities, and I can find more reasons to 
argue against it than for it.  But think for a moment...here's Peter, 
who has been watching James create a life for himself, barely twenty, 
wife and child and home in the country, and there's Remus, the 
opposite end of the spectrum, poor and alone and probably pretty 
unemployable due to his lycanthropy...Peter, as the impartial 
observer, may have seen the unfairness of it all and thought to play 
a bit of Robin Hood.  Take from Voldy and give to Remus (or keep for 
himself), and here's this lovely piece of information that will not 
only bring James down a notch or two.  

Because of course James is too strong to be killed.  He'd defied the 
Dark Lord three times already, right?  "I never meant for this to 
happen," says Peter.  He didn't think James would have to gall to go 
and *die*.  And what's one baby more or less...right?

Fear:
Oh, the easiest of them all, of course.  Because the one emotion that 
is a constant, every time we see Peter (and even some of the time 
that we see him as Scabbers) is fear.  Fear of death, fear of life, 
fear of Sirius, fear of Voldy, fear of Nagini, fear of dark shadows, 
fear of light shadows.  Peter is probably scared of chocolate 
biscuits, too.  "I was never brave like you and Remus and James," 
says Peter.  Fear is a powerful thing.  Peter obviously never learned 
about FDR.

Love:
Well, it is what the whole series seems to be centered on, if you 
listen to Dumbledore, anyway.  And there is that whole Stockholm 
Syndrome thing (which I will be up front and say I don't quite buy 
myself, so I'll make a very poor argument for it).  But there is 
every possibility that Peter does feel some sort of...(ugh, I hate to 
even type it) obligation, if you will, to Voldemort.  And Voldy 
himself continually tells Peter "You're scared of me, you regret 
coming back to me, you wish I was gone."  If all of that is true - 
why did Peter go back in the first place?  What made Peter return?  
Fear wouldn't have pulled him back - in fact, it should have pushed 
him away.  

And while you may argue that being an accomplished Leglimens, Voldy 
would of course *know* what Peter was thinking...well, being an 
accomplished Leglimens, wouldn't Voldy also attempt to *alter* what 
Peter is thinking as well?  Perhaps Voldy telling Peter how hated he 
is isn't so much reinforcing what Peter already beleives as it is 
trying to convince Peter of the opposite.


Resentment:
Oh, loads of resentment in Peter.  "I was never brave *like you*"... 
It can't feel good to know that you're constantly compared to your 
friends, constantly seen as the tag-a-long.  "That fat little boy," 
Rosmerta calls him (PoA, Chp 10).  "Never quite in their league...I 
was quite sharp with him," says McGonagall (ibid).  

No one is so stupid as not to know when you're being treated 
differently than those close to you.  Peter knew that James and 
Sirius were made much of by teachers and contemporaries alike.  And 
when even your Head of House sees you as the numbskull, while your 
friends are patronized as saints (and are hardly even close to it), 
it can't make you feel good.

Did Peter have reason to resent James and Sirius.  You betcha.  Did 
it turn him to the Death Eaters for confirmation of his abilities?  
Maybe.  

Reason (or Idealism, as you put it):
What's Voldemort's plan here, really?  Is it that he wants to wipe 
out the Muggle from the face of the planet entirely, or just make 
sure that the pureblooded wizards are still taken seriously?

I mean, maybe Voldy isn't so much Adolf Hitler as he is just a rather 
militant branch of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Seriously - you think the DAR is all good and cheerful and stuff, but 
they so much stock in bloodlines and family trees it makes the Black 
Family Tapestry look like a second grade homework assignment.

Is it that Voldemort is really against Muggles and Mudbloods - or is 
he just worried that an important distinction within the wizarding 
world is being lost?  Remember, he himself is a Halfblood.  By 
definition, he's a Mudblood!  And he is not unintelligent (had he 
been so, he would never have gotten as far, nor would he have been a 
prefect at Hogwarts).  He himself must know that after several 
generations, remaining purely with pureblooded families will cause 
serious inbreeding, and that also after a few generations, the new 
blood that marrying Halfbloods and Muggles will create stronger, 
better, more powerful wizards. As well, *those* wizards could 
consider themselves pureblooded wizards, as their parents and 
grandparents and great-grandparents were wizards as well.

Is Voldemort really saying that he wants all Halfbloods and Muggles 
gone - or is he just trying to preserve a world in which wizards and 
Muggles live seperate lives - which isn't all that bad of an idea, 
after all.  The more Muggles who know about wizards, the worse off 
the wizards will be.  Even a few of the "good" wizards have admitted 
as such to Harry.

And perhaps it was this theory that Peter believed in.  The meathod 
of course, was probably a bit too violent for his liking, but the 
ideals remained the same.  Sirius' parents, after all, believed in 
Voldy's cause but did not participate.  Perhaps at one point, Peter 
was the same - and then was roped in before he had a chance to 
say 'no'.


Working for DD from Day One:
All wizards, according to Sirius, are related to each other, if you 
go back far enough.  And we don't know very much about Peter's or 
Dumbledore's ancestry, do we?  (Except that DD is not related to 
Harry.  Thank ye gods, had it turned out that DD was Lily's long lost 
grandfather I would have jumped off a bridge or something.)  There is 
every possibility that Peter and DD go waaaaay back.  Maybe being 
related is a bit of a stretch - but that they would have had some 
sort of knowledge of each other isn't unlikely.  

And this whole theory goes so much hand-in-hand with the DoubleAgent!
Peter theory, I can't go into much without going into *that*, and 
this entry is already horrendously long, so I will stop there, and 
maybe expound on that another day.

--az