[HPforGrownups] Re: What possessed Peter to restore Voldemort? (Was: Trusting Snape)

[Magda Grantwich]

No: HPFGUIDX 149475

> SSSusan:
> Questions I, also, have asked before.  I just don't GET Peter here.
> It does seem to me that it would've made more sense to have RUN
> from a weak & needy Voldy, leaving him to die.  Maybe it really 
> *was* just 
> the fear that Voldy was so strong... that if some other DE came by 
> and saved him... that he knew he'd be killed.  But that possibility
> seems so remote that I just can't figure out why he didn't walk
> away from a Voldy who *couldn't* at that time have killed him!


Because Peter WANTS Voldemort to regain his strength.  He WANTS to
have a powerful leader to follow around again, someone whose
successes he can vicariously enjoy while telling himself (and anyone
else who might ask, like the authorities if they get caught) that
it's not his fault, that he was forced to do it.  Peter WANTS to be a
part of the biggest, baddest gang around and he wants to be able to
do it cost-free.  Even giving up his hand costs him less than
actually taking a stand or going against a more powerful personality.

Peter is a jackal, scavenging the prey brought down by other, more
fierce animals.  He's too lazy to do his own hunting, but is keen
enough to know where the biggest kill has taken place and is a master
of the pre-emptive cringe so that the alpha males don't see him as a
threat.  They scorn him but because he's not a threat they don't run
him off.  

James felt sorry for him and Voldemort scorns him but neither of them
realizes Peter's depths.  And in that way, doesn't Peter actually
have one over on both of them?  Isn't that a kind of power?  Don't
you think Peter doesn't hug himself gleefully thinking about that? 
Peter gets an almost sexual charge out of manipulating those who are
his "superiours".  It's like riding a tiger: dangerous if you lose
your grip but exciting if you can maintain your balance.

When he was a teenager he wanted to hang with the Quidditch star's
cool club; when he became an adult his taste for what constituted
real power changed accordingly.

I wouldn't be surprised if Lily actually disliked him.  His position
sitting between her and James in Moody's photo strikes me as the kind
of passive-aggressive thing he might do, knowing that James would
indulge him out of habitual pity while Lily would be too polite to
ask him to move.  I'll bet her skin crawled at the proximity though.

Magda (who thinks Peter is in a category of evil all on his own that
is in some ways more terrible than Voldemort's)

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