Peter had been avoiding the Death Eaters since taking on the Potters' secret. With the kind of tracking charms they had laid on him, running would be a death sentence, but he didn't have to seek them out. He had never regularly hung about with them, but he had been avoiding them especially for almost seven weeks now.

Bellatrix had noticed.

Or one of her underlings, maybe.

Either way, it had come to the attention of the Dark Lord's Right Hand that their (reluctant, and they knew it) spy within the Order had missed his last three check-ins. He had gotten lucky: he gave his handler, a wizard only a few years older than himself, an excuse about having some family thing that he couldn't reasonably miss for the first one, and then before Rosier could follow up and force Peter to reschedule their meeting, he was captured in a raid and sent directly to Azkaban. It had taken five weeks before anyone had noticed Peter hadn't been around to give his report (not that many people noticed him around most of the time). And then Selwyn had dropped by the shop to remind him discretely that he'd best not be thinking he was off the hook, and then, almost a week later he had gotten a note saying that if he did not re-appear in the Dark Lord's Court before the Samhain Revel, the First Lieutenant would be extremely displeased.

Extremely displeased could mean anything from considering leaking the initial evidence that he had contracted Death Eaters to cast the binding ritual on his mother to the Aurory to dropping a discrete word in an Order member's ear about their spy problem to a whole ranging scale of torture (for him or his mum) beginning with a muggle beating and ending with death. He waited as long as he dared, but he plucked up his courage the night before All Hallow's Eve, as ordered.

It was difficult for Peter, who had never been Marked (not that he wanted to be – God, no), to access the Court – the Dark Lord's true Headquarters. In order to do so, he had to report to the Parliament (a wizarding gentlemen's club) and wait for one of the 'proper Death Eaters' as Regulus had once called them to side-along apparate him to… he still actually had no idea where. It wasn't enough to know what a place looked like – you had to know where it was actually located to travel there yourself, and he didn't. If he did, he would have run to Dumbledore already and bought his second chance.

On that particular night, the only Death Eater to be found was Nott, a much older wizard who made him beg for the honor of his assistance. Peter was pretty sure it was just adding insult to injury, forcing him to beg to be taken to whatever punishment awaited him for attempting to avoid his 'duties' as a spy. He didn't even have any good information to offer to placate whomever questioned him. He hoped it wasn't Bellatrix. That woman was far too free with the Cruciatus even when he hadn't fucked up.

He did it, though. Things would go far worse for him if he didn't show up at all.

It was worse than Bellatrix.

As soon as he arrived, he had been cruciated, then left in an antechamber which might as well have been a cell for hours and hours before finally being dragged before the Dark Lord and all of the assembled Death Eaters and associated hangers-on. He spotted a few less-than-willing faces in the crowd, too, who, like himself, had probably been blackmailed into providing some service or other for the Dark Court. He was obviously to be made an example of.

The Inner Circle sat (or in Bellatrix's case, sprawled) on the second step of a long dais on twelve conjured stone chairs. The Dark Lord on his throne, one level up, made thirteen. Everyone else lined the walls, leaving an open space before the Dark Lord and his closest lieutenants: Bellatrix, on his right, and Lucius Malfoy, on his left. Fucking Snivellus sat several places down on Malfoy's side – hadn't James always said he was going to end up a Death Eater? And of the Inner Circle, too. Bastard.

"Step forward, Wormtail," the Dark Lord ordered, his voice high, cold and piercing. Peter had no way of knowing for sure how he had found out about that nickname – Peter had certainly never used it in Death Eater circles – but his money was on the greasy potions git – acting all high and mighty because he was already done with his bloody Mastery, the fucking swot.

He stepped forward, still thinking hateful thoughts in Snivellus' general direction. It kept his mind off of other things, like the fact that he was standing before an entire room full of people who would kill him without hesitation for daring to withhold that he was now the Potters' Secret Keeper, and that he was obviously going to be punished regardless, and that he had nothing to tell them that would spare him that punishment.

He met the Dark Lord's glowing red eyes defiantly – it was the most he dared, but the least he felt he owed to his pride, which he had once had, as a Marauder and a Gryffindor and a good son.

The snake-faced bastard smiled. "Is this how you greet your Lord, Wormtail? Has your long absence from our presence allowed you to forget what is properly owed to your betters?"

Peter knelt at once, shuffling forward on his knees and averting his eyes. "No, my Lord, of course not, my Lord, please, sir, forgive my imperte – aaah!"

"Do restrain yourself, Bella, dear," the Dark Lord said lightly, and the Lashing Curse that had interrupted Peter's groveling ended abruptly.

"Apologies, Master."

"After all, ssh'ih, he may yet have something of value to reveal to us, to justify his delay in reporting as ordered."

"Yes, Master."

There was an ominous silence, broken by Peter's yelp as he was hit with a stinging jinx, so juvenile in comparison to the curses generally thrown about the Court that it was akin to a sharp prod in the arm.

"That was your cue, Worm," Bellatrix hissed. Malfoy snorted. "What have you to report to my Lord?"

"I – ah, that is, nothing, my Lady, my Lord, that is – I have only been absent because I have nothing worthy to report, my Lord." At least, he thought, as he fell screaming beneath some sort of curse that felt like invisible flames, burning him from the inside out, he had managed to get a full sentence in that time.

"Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Wormtail," the Dark Lord in question advised him before releasing the curse. "Tell us all what you are trying to hide – and be warned, I will know if you are not truthful."

"I – that is – um – th-the P-Potters, they have a new Secret Keeper!" That was safe – he would have had to be re-informed, if he wasn't the Secret Keeper, after all – it gave away nothing.

Glowing red eyes bored into him. "You taste of hesitance, reluctance, and dishonesty, Wormtail. The whole truth, or shall I have Bellatrix extract it from you?"

"N-n-no, m-my Lord. There is no m-more."

"Lies! Bella, show our friends how we deal with traitors, and those who think to neglect their duties to the Dark Lord."

Bellatrix's smirk was a study, Peter thought, in pure evil. At least the Dark Lord looked like a monster. "Gladly, Master."

Wave after wave of pain – the Cruciatus, of course. He writhed and twitched beneath it – for ten seconds or two minutes, he could not have said. After the first few seconds, it was all the same. Time meant nothing. There was a brief pause, and then it returned, worse for the break, and again, and again. After the fourth spell, the Dark Lord interceded.

"Is there still nothing more to report?"

"N-n-n-no m-m-m-m'lrd."

"Triterum demergunt," Bellatrix drawled, and suddenly Peter was drowning, water flooding his lungs, grey creeping in around the corners of his vision. As everything faded to black, it vanished. He gasped for air, trying to roll over, face down, but it didn't help. The cycle repeated itself, and then a third time, leaving him heaving, lungs straining.

"Take this as a lesson," the Dark Lord was announcing when Peter's awareness of the world around him finally returned. "This is what happens to traitors. This is what will become of any who seek to leave my banner. This is what happens to those who think they can lie to me."

Bellatrix, at some point, had left the dais, and was standing before him in her high-heeled boots. A clawed hand reached down and pulled him to his feet relentlessly, with far more strength than he thought a woman of her stature ought to be able to manage. She plucked his wand from loose fingers like a muggle, a silent statement that he was not even worth the expenditure of magic to disarm him, nor dangerous enough to warrant it.

"What would you have me do with him, Master?"

"As his recruitment was your project, ssh'ih, I give you leave to recover what information you can from his worthless carcass. Three days." He added something more in the hissing, spitting language of snakes that only Bellatrix seemed to understand.

She gave her prisoner a demented grin. "It will be so, Master." She bowed politely before she stalked off, half-dragging Peter behind her.

She brought him to a room with a steel table and cabinets on the walls, lashing him to the table with magic. His eyes – the only part of his body able to move – widened in horror as she began to open the cabinets, revealing an extensive collection of muggle torture devices.

"My lord informs me that you have the information we require regarding the Potters. I do not have his gift for Legilimency, but I think my powers adequate to discover whether you are hiding any other useful morsels from us." She grabbed his face, her nails digging painfully into his skin, and stared into his eyes. At once he felt a great pain behind his eyes, carving into him, ripping his memories to the surface. She could not touch the Secret itself, but she dwelt on the memories which pertained to the Fidelius and its casting, and his loyalty to the Potters. She tore the faces of those who knew the secret from him – Sirius, Remus, Dumbledore, all the remaining Order members – painting targets on their backs.

When it finally ended, he found himself crying. He had long-since soiled himself, and he wanted to heave – the only thing stopping him was his complete inability to move. He was going to die. There was no other way this would end. The worst had happened, and even sooner than he expected – he hadn't even made it through one meeting without being found out. And now the Blackheart was going to torture him to death!

That evil, awful, Black family smirk graced her features again as she made what Peter was sure would be her only offer of mercy. "Agree to give up the secret to myself and my Master, or I will spend the next three days torturing you before simply killing you and releasing it. No more games, no more plays or displays for the crowd – simply the maximum amount of pain I can inflict upon you within the next three days, or before you die or go mad. You have three seconds to decide."

He hesitated too long.

Five minutes into a systematic comparison of the effects of a Flaying Curse on one hand and muggle methods on the other (complete with detached narration of the differences, the sick, sick bitch), he caved.

It was the only way, he told himself. If he kept the secret to the death, it would be a matter of days – maybe only hours before a Death Eater tricked one of the new-made Secret Keepers into revealing the Potters, and he would still be dead. At least if he gave them up, he might live.

The decision made him as sick as anything Bellatrix could have done to him.

May God have mercy on my soul, he thought, as he was brought before the Inner Circle again, because no one else will. Not after this.