Family
Enid Pettigrew	Possible relative

History

Early Life/h3>

Peter Pettigrew was born in either 1959 or 1960, as indicated by the year he was placed at Hogwarts. His mother was a witch, and his father had unknown blood status. In the 1971-1972 school year, Peter began attending Hogwarts. He was sorted into Gryffindor house after five minutes of deliberation by the Sorting Hat, who was debating sorting him into Slytherin. This made him a Hatstall, a term for a Hogwarts student so difficult to assign to a house that the hat took more than five minutes to decide. At Hogwarts, he quickly became friends with James Potter and Sirius Black, whom he idolized for their popularity and charm, as well as Remus Lupin. The four of them called themselves the Marauders and designed the Marauders Map to navigate Hogwarts. Peter willingly participated in the bullying of Severus Snape, led by James and Sirius, a Slytherin student in the same year as the Marauders.

They soon discovered their friend Remus Lupin to be a werewolf, as he was bitten by Fenrir Greyback when he was a baby. Instead of abandoning him, the three other boys supported Lupin and heavily studied and researched how to become Animagi so that their friend wouldn’t have to be alone. Peter’s animagus took the form of a rat. This is where he gained the nickname “wormtail.” His rat form was particularly helpful when he needed to fit through narrow spaces. An example of this is when he would climb in between the branches of the Whomping Willow to get to the other side of it towards the Shrieking Shack, where Remus Lupin would perform his transformations. Pettigrew was not particularly well-liked by his professors, especially Minerva McGonagall, who thought he was a below-average student and not capable of battling others his own age.

First Wizarding War

After the Marauders graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1978, they joined the Order of the Phoenix, led by Albus Dumbledore, to fight against Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters during the First Wizarding War. By October of 1980, Peter had defected from the Order and was a secret spy for Voldemort, claiming that he saw no benefits in opposing the Dark Lord.

Pettigrew was largely to blame for the many losses the Order experienced, as well as the assault and murders members of the Order experienced because he gave away their information. He was somewhat of a double agent in this period, giving Voldemort and his Death Eaters crucial information about members of the Order, including giving names of specific people and where they were located. At this time, no one suspected him of being a traitor, not even Dumbledore. This may be because of his unassuming nature or just sheer luck. Even though Pettigrew was more of a low-level employee for Voldemort than anything, he was still accepted as a Death Eater and given a Dark Mark, largely because he could provide crucial information about the whereabouts of the Order of the Phoenix, as well as general news about the Wizarding World. Eventually, the Order suspected that someone in their inner circle was a traitor, but even then, Pettigrew was never seriously considered the culprit.

Betrayal

After Sybil Trelawney announced her prophecy that a child born at the end of July whose parents had defied Voldemort three times would defeat him (this only applying to Harry and, of course, Neville Longbottom), the Potter family went into hiding in Godric’s Hollow. Peter Pettigrew was noted to have visited them here at least once. Under the Fidelius Charm, the Potters would be safe from Voldemort with the help of their Secret-Keeper. Sirius Black offered to protect them, but in an effort to throw Voldemort off their scent, they selected Peter Pettigrew because it would be less of an obvious choice. Of course, Peter ended up betraying the Potter family and breaking his secret by informing Lord Voldemort, who murdered Lily and James Potter and failed to take Harry’s life.

When Voldemort’s Killing Curse rebounded from Harry onto himself, destroying his physical form, Pettigrew returned to the house where the massacre had taken place and deduced what had happened. Afraid he would be caught by the Ministry and jailed for his actions, he took Voldemort’s wand left at the scene and hid it in an undisclosed location. He then fled the area. He feared that Sirius Black, the only person who knew Pettigrew was the Potter’s Secret-Keeper, would soon find out what had happened and kill him to avenge the Potter family. Sirius did exactly that and tracked down Pettigrew. Still, before any confrontation could actually take place, Peter screamed that Sirius was the one to betray the Potters. Before Black had time to draw his wand, in a split second, Pettigrew blew up an entire street, most likely using the Blasting Curse, killing twelve innocent Muggles in the process. The surviving Muggles had their memories altered and believed there was a gas leak. He then turned into his rat form, faking his own death, and disappeared, leaving Sirius Black to be arrested and sent to Azkaban without a trial for the various crimes Pettigrew had actually committed. Even those such as Remus Lupin believed that Sirius was responsible for everything, including Peter’s own "death."

Between the Wars

Between the two Wizarding Wars, Peter Pettigrew spent a whopping twelve years (remarkably the same amount of time Sirius Black spent in Azkaban for crimes he did not commit) as the Weasley family rat called Scabbers. He was trying to avoid any of Voldemort’s remaining followers, who he feared would kill him for being a double agent and a traitor to the Death Eaters. Specifically, he wanted to avoid followers of Voldemort that had avoided time in Azkaban, such as Lucius Malfoy and Corban Yaxley. He wanted a Wizarding family to take him in not only so that he could stay updated on the Wizarding World and recent events, but also because he would have a better chance at being the one to deliver Harry Potter to Lord Voldemort when he would eventually return to full power. Pettigrew got extremely lucky and spent many months overhearing important conversations between members of the Weasley family, more specifically between Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Harry about Voldemort’s whereabouts. However, Peter took no action against Harry or Ron in his rat form, thinking it would be too risky, since Voldemort had not yet returned to power.

Ron considered Scabbers to be a generally useless pet who just slept and ate all day, but there was one particular moment when the rat had bitten Gregory Goyle, who was trying to steal food from Ron and Harry, that Ron held in high regard. Scabbers, AKA Peter, was also exceptionally old for a rat. Most rats live for two to three years, and the Weasleys had Scabbers for twelve years. In Ron's, Harry's, and Hermione’s third year of Hogwarts, Sirius Black escaped Azkaban after seeing the Weasley family picture in Egypt in an article from the Daily Prophet, featuring the rat. Pettigrew, in his rat form, began to get much thinner and go bald due to the agitation and fear of Sirius Black finding and killing him. Ron thought this change in the rat was because of stress from the long trip, while Harry thought the rat was nearing the end of its life. Again, Peter tried to fake his own death by biting himself, leaving a trail of blood and running away, but later on, Hermione found him hiding in a milk jar in Rubeus Hagrid’s hut.

Coincidentally, the same year Sirius escaped Azkaban, Remus Lupin began working as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts. However, he was still under the impression that Sirius was truly guilty for his alleged crimes. Lupin began to suspect the truth after Peter’s name kept appearing on the Marauders Map, suggesting he was not only alive but also in the vicinity of Hogwarts. Later on, Sirius Black took Ron and Scabbers to the Shrieking Shack, followed by Harry and Hermione. After a big argument and the arrival of Snape and Professor Lupin, Pettigrew was exposed once and for all. The truth was revealed about his crimes, and he was planned to be killed by Lupin and Sirius. They only hesitated when he stated that James wouldn’t have wanted him to die, or his friends to be murderers, and Harry intervened with the killing. However, the plan was still to report the fraud to the Ministry of Magic and have Pettigrew locked up in Azkaban. It was then that Lupin realized he had forgotten to take his Wolfsbane Potion and turned into a raging, uncontrollable werewolf. Sirius had to transform into his Animagus form to defend the trio from Lupin. Taking advantage of the chaos, Pettigrew stole Remus’s wand, used the Stunning Spell on Ron and Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, turned into a rat again, and fled the scene.

Second Wizarding War and Death

Afraid again for his life, Pettigrew found safety in Lord Voldemort and returned to him when he gained his power back in a forest in Albania, where the rats had told him there were areas in the forests even animals were afraid of. On his way, he encountered a witch from the Ministry named Bertha Jorkins and lured her into the forest to give to Voldemort, where she was later murdered and turned into his seventh Horcrux.

During the height of the Second Wizarding War, Peter participated in a battle that took place at Malfoy Manor. With his wand taken from him by Ron, Pettigrew resorted to strangling Harry with his own Silver Hand, a gift from Voldemort. Harry then reminded him of how he had saved his life when Lupin and Sirius Black were going to kill him, and Peter hesitated. The Silver Hand saw this as Pettigrew disobeying Lord Voldemort, and he was subsequently strangled to death by the hand.

Credits/References

---

Written by Simone Winter
Base code by Andrew Sutherland, edited by Iselin Merilä and Desmond Gray.