Reunion with Peter Pettigrew

Dark clouds obscured the sky, obscuring the waning moon, yet a faint light still shone into the ancient castle's high-rise buildings. The area around the windows was always brighter than the rest of the corridor.

In the dim light of the night, the rat Scabbers the tapestry depicting Silly Barnaby sleeping with the giants, his head resting on the large wooden club that had beaten him during the day, and he seemed to find a semblance of peace.

For some reason, he suddenly remembered those days when he was in school.

With his Padfoot and Prongs, he attracted the attention of other young wizards wherever he went, and he also experienced that glory... On the Full Moon Night, they went to the Shrieking Shack together, turned into animals and ran around wildly... Although he could only be a follower of those few people, life was still quite easy.

Now, he's trapped in this dangerous Castle, unable to find the Diadem that holds the Magic Power, and all the Secret Passages Castle escape are blocked. Outside the school are Dementor of Dementors, as annoying as flies, who won't even let a rat out. Inside the Castle are annoying House-elf, who have recently started hunting rats too.

He had thought about sneaking into the Gryffindor dormitories. He knew the place well; there were snacks hidden by the young wizards, and warm beds. If he hid well, no one would find him.

Except for that damn big cat!

Thinking of this, Scabbers Mouse cursed the ugly cat again.

This magical house is a great hiding place. It can conjure up clean rooms, warm beds, and soft blankets... but there's no food and it's not very safe. That crazy, drunken woman occasionally comes to hide empty bottles, House-elf come to leave cleaning supplies.

So he could only hide in the sewers and that Chamber of Secrets during the day, sneak a bite to eat in the Kitchen at night, and then come here for a good night's sleep.

He paced back and forth in front of the wall opposite the tapestry until a wooden door appeared. The gray-furred rat stood up, and after a dazzling flash, a very short man appeared in the spot.

"Damn cat, damn Dumbledore, damn Bellatrix ..." Wormtail Peter cursed in a high-pitched voice as he reached for the door to the Room of Requirement.

A slender, crimson magical light struck the door, scattering into scattered fragments.

Then came a cold male voice. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wormtail."

Holding a wand in one hand, Loren approached slowly, his black eyes emitting a dim blue light, his expression unreadable.

When Loren was arrested in his first year, he didn't show his face much. Wormtail Peter's impression of Loren Morgan was limited to him being Ron and Harry's friend, nothing special.

"Lo- Loren Morgan ..." Wormtail Peter was startled. He glanced down the corridor and, seeing no professors following, breathed a slight sigh of relief, though he wasn't entirely at ease.

Peter's tiny, beady eyes darted around, making him look even more like a mouse. Peter grinned, revealing his front teeth, and chuckled twice, as if coaxing a child. "Brave little wizard, tell me, do you have any other companions? Did they send you to hold me off while they went to inform the professors? Listen, what happened back then was complicated; it wasn't as the newspapers described..."

Loren's gaze lingered on the Wormtail. Its skin was loose and wrinkled, like a fat man who had lost a lot of weight in a short time. Its pointed nose and two strange front teeth also had some rat-like features.

It was very dirty, covered in grime from the sewer and dust from who-knows-where.

It was disgusting. Loren, not wanting to listen to his rambling any longer, waved his wand: "[Stupefy]"

A crimson beam of magical energy shot out, heading straight for Wormtail Peter's face. Startled, Wormtail Peter quickly reacted and cast a spell to defend himself.

Surprisingly, the adult wizard's blue Magic Power radiance clashed with the young wizard's red Stunning Spell light, only to crumble instantly upon contact.

The lingering Stunning Spell slammed into Wormtail Peter, instantly knocking him unconscious. The remaining impact slammed into the door of the Room of Requirement with a dull thud.

In a mere exchange of spells, the middle-aged Death Eater was knocked unconscious before he could even put up a fight.

Loren picked up the brown chestnut wand from the ground, pushed open the door of the Room of Requirement, and casually cast a Levitation Charm to lift the unconscious Wormtail Peter inside.

The crisp sound of the door closing rang out, and the corridor on the Seventh Floor of the castle fell into a long silence once again, with only the Silly Barnaby and the trolls on the tapestry remaining.

The sound of shattering glass kept echoing in my ears, a constant, annoying crash.

The pure white light was too bright; even with his eyes closed, he could feel it. Wormtail Peter opened his eyes, and the crystal chandelier on the ceiling was so bright that he couldn't help but squint slightly.

Those rattling sounds are from the crystals colliding together, somewhat like the sound of a mirror shattering.

After a while, I could finally see what was in front of me clearly. The door frame was made of square pieces of wood, with smooth grooves carved on the wooden frames on both sides. A steel knife hung above, its blade gleaming coldly, and its spine was exceptionally thick, making it look very heavy.

A sharp pain shot through the back of his neck from the hard wood, and he realized he was lying on his back on this strange contraption. The sharp blades reflected the bright light of the crystal chandelier, shining into Wormtail Peter's eyes and making his thighs tremble.

"To be honest, I hesitated between the guillotine of Louis XVI and that of Mary Antoinette." Loren tugged at the linen rope holding the blade, raising it higher until it hit the wooden beam with a clear click. "In the end, I chose the one of Louis XVI, and made some modifications so that you could face up and see the blade fall."

The ropes suspending the blades were taut, as if they would be severed at any moment. Wormtail Peter felt an unprecedented fear from the ropes and blades, a fear completely different from the one he felt when facing the Dark Lord.

The blade was so thick and so sharp that if it fell, it would definitely not leave any flesh or tendons attached, unlike Nearly Headless Nick. He could almost see his own blood splattering and his head being severed.

Overwhelmed with fear, Wormtail Peter no longer contain himself and screamed in panic, "No, no! No! You can't do this to me! You're a Hogwarts student! You should hand me over to Dumbledore, to the Ministry of Magic!"

The crystal chandelier on the ceiling stopped swaying at some point, and the whole room became quiet, so quiet that you could hear Loren's footsteps.

Loren approached Wormtail Peter, bowed slightly, and his somewhat youthful face appeared sinister in the shadows. "You may have misunderstood, Mr. Peter. I am not carrying out the execution on behalf of wizards and the Ministry of Magic, but on behalf of Muggle."

"Muggle?" Wormtail Peter stared wide-eyed at his beady eyes.

"November 1981, Hampshire, do you remember?" Loren said, stepping back to the rope. "Now, repent for your sins."

As the wand swept across, an invisible blade sliced through the lanyard, snapping the linen rope instantly. Without its tether, the heavy blade, propelled by gravity, plummeted down the chute, its speed increasing rapidly until it was upon Peter in the blink of an eye.

The blade sliced through the short, thick neck without any resistance, a fleeting, icy chill so fast that Peter wondered if it was some kind of illusion; it didn't hurt much.

Warm blood splattered out, and his vision seemed to fly. He saw his body lying there, twitching slightly twice.

The scene before him gradually blurred and darkened... This was the last scene Wormtail Peter saw.

"Perhaps the blade should be made a little duller..." Loren shook his head and lightly stomped his right foot.

With a crash, the whole world began to tremble. The chandelier fell, and the crystal shattered on the ground, as if it had smashed the entire world on a mirror.

There was a stinging pain around my neck, as if something was there, and my hands were a little sore from being tied behind my back... Also, the wooden planks under my feet seemed a bit loose.

These were the thoughts that gradually arose in Wormtail's mind after Peter regained consciousness. When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing on a high platform, with wooden planks extending from the platform under his feet, his hands tightly bound behind his back, and a rope with thorns wrapped around his neck.

"The Gallows!" Wormtail Peter realized instantly and began to struggle violently.

He tried to break free of the ropes binding his hands, but the waterlogged ropes only tightened around his wrists, even cutting his skin. Realizing he couldn't untie the ropes, he started jumping around in place, trying to free his neck from the loops.

The wooden platform made a thumping sound.

"Calm down, Mr. Peter." Loren's voice rang out from the right rear. After a series of footsteps, the little wizard with the devilish face appeared before them. "Don't panic. Please calm down. You've already died once, haven't you?"

Guillotine... thick blade... headless body...

The vivid details and clear colors of the scene flashed through his mind; the fleeting chill and the weightlessness of his head flying off felt like they had just happened. Wormtail Peter's pupils contracted sharply, and he cried out in panic, "Who, who are you? Why are you doing this to me?"

"Me? Just a victim's family member." Loren slowly shook his head. "That's not important. Let me introduce you to the Gallows."

"There are many forms of hanging. The oldest method, from the Middle Ages, involved manually pulling a rope that passed through pulleys or chute to suspend the prisoner. This was quite cumbersome and laborious... Here, I've used a later, improved version of the classic Gallows, which is said to be more humane..."

"It's like this now: a gallows at a fixed height, with a retractable plank. In a moment, I'll pull the plank out, and Mr. Peter's body will fall. Generally speaking, your cervical spine will break, followed by suffocation and cerebral anemia; the death process will likely last several minutes."

Despite having just died once, the threat of death loomed large, and fear prevented him from calming down and thinking.

"No! No!" Wormtail Peter's eyes were bloodshot. "You can't do this to me! I want to see Dumbledore! I want to see Dumbledore!"

"Save your energy, Mr. Peter, this will last for several minutes." Loren laughed and kicked away the wooden plank under his feet.

"Hmm..."

Wormtail Peter's body suddenly fell, with no foothold on the ground. His entire weight pressed down on his neck in an instant, and the rope loops tightened and constricted little by little, but his cervical spine did not break.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Peter." Loren frowned, his words filled with sincere apology. "Hanging should be based on the length of the hanging rope, tailored to the person's height and weight, to ensure a 100% chance of breaking the spine and causing the prisoner's death. But I seem to have overlooked this step. I'll just have to trouble you to suffocate slowly to death."

"You... ha... ha..."

The veins on Wormtail Peter's face gradually bulged, his complexion turned red, and his beady eyes slowly bulged out of their sockets due to the increased blood pressure, making him look particularly ferocious. His fat, short body convulsed, and his limbs swayed stiffly, like a dying pig.

His eyes rolled upwards involuntarily, revealing large patches of white. Wormtail Peter tried to clench his teeth and close his jaw, but gradually lost his strength, and his body was no longer under his control.

A throbbing pain arose on both sides of the temples, and blood supply to the neck and above gradually decreased. Things in front of my eyes began to blur, and colors gradually dimmed until the world was just a grayish white.

His hazy consciousness returned to his body, Wormtail Peter suddenly opened his eyes, only to be met with that devilish face once again.

Loren wore a sly smile, but his words were chilling. "Mr. Wormtail Peter, please allow me to introduce you to the Stake..."

"Mr. Wormtail Peter, please allow me to introduce you to the Electric Chair..."

Beheading, dismemberment, execution by firing squad, poison gas, injection, drowning, crushing, burying alive.

Having experienced twelve different ways of dying, when Wormtail Peter opened his eyes again, his eyes were completely unfocused, filled only with a deathly stillness intertwined with exhaustion and indifference.

Using all his strength, he turned his head slightly and found that he was no longer in any ornately decorated room, but in the storeroom of the Room of Requirement, which was filled with mountains of old items.

Finally back in the real world, a glimmer of hope rose in his heart. If all twelve deaths were hallucinations, then did that mean...?

A glimmer of life appeared in his deathly eyes. He tremblingly looked at the young wizard, his lips moving as he pleaded, "No, please don't kill me, I beg you, I have information about the Dark Lord..."

"Intelligence? I can search through your memories myself." Loren leaned closer, his dark eyes revealing a powerful and penetrating gaze that seemed to seep through the skin and flesh, into the brain and the depths of the soul.

Wormtail Peter had seen that familiar gaze in the Dark Lord's eyes before. His eyes widened in fury, and with his last ounce of strength, he forced out a shrill voice from his throat. "Legilimency!?"

The instant those words were spoken, a dazzling golden light burst forth from Loren's right index finger, followed by Dumbledore's aged voice. "Fountain of Good Fortune..."

Upon hearing the familiar voice, Wormtail 'Peter desperate eyes lit up with joy, and he struggled to shout, "Professor Dumbledore, save me, save me!"

Loren looked at his fingers in surprise upon hearing the sound. He remembered that he had made a pact with Dumbledore before, Legilimency before graduation in exchange for a place at the Fountain of Good Fortune.

Looking at Wormtail Peter, who was struggling desperately and trying to beg Dumbledore for help, Loren's smile remained unchanged, becoming even more sinister. "Not using Legilimency doesn't mean I have to keep you here..."