Chapter Text
The engines settled into a steady, bone-deep hum as the CP Air Boeing 747 levelled off at thirty thousand feet.
Peter tried to sleep - God only knew he needed it - but he couldn't. Not when every time he closed his eyes, he saw a flash of green light dancing along the nursery walls, or worse, coming for him. Sometimes it was even the Grim. Other times, he saw James’s glasses askew on the floor, and the man sprawled out on the steps. Or it was Lily crumpled on the floor of the nursery. Once, most terrifying of all, he saw Albus Dumbledore’s face and the cold, piercing blue stare of the man who had defeated Grindelwald.
Dumbledore would know. Maybe he already did, but eventually, he would piece it together, too brilliant not to realise the Secret Keeper hadn't been Sirius. He’d see the blackened ground where Peter’s loyalty should have been and know. But Dumbledore was also a man who followed what was good and just. He’d spend hours, maybe days, organising a proper search by ensuring the proper channels were handled in what was a rotten system; one that would be in chaos now that He was gone. Dead, Peter wanted to hope, and he tried not to think of the chaos he’d left behind, but it was hard not to. The Ministry itself had been propped up by Death Eaters or supporters, and it was a system Dumbledore would likely get lost in. Or so he hoped, and something about that burned in his throat.
Dumbledore was a good, just man.
Unlike Peter, who’d spent a year learning how to crawl through the sewers of said same system, both for the Order and then later to survive the Death Eaters. He knew it would take time for them to realise, and then more time before they realised they’d been chasing ghosts in Britain. Time he could use to vanish into Canada. Yet all the same, he sat rigid in the wide Business Class seat, one hand braced against the armrest, the other resting lightly on the small rise and fall of the child’s shoulder beneath the airline blanket on the other seat.
A devoted father is what the Muggles saw, not a man fleeing for his very life with a kidnapped child he’d taken for leverage at first and now for - he didn’t know. To save Harry from the machinations of the Ministry? The fame that would come? Or because he was selfish and wanted the boy as a bargaining chip for when they eventually caught up? Or maybe he was sentimental. Or something. He didn’t know and didn’t want to look too closely at things.
Did it even matter now, when Harry Evans né Potter was his responsibility?
Maybe. Maybe not. But Harry was his now, and that’s what mattered.
The seatbelt sign flicked off with a soft chime, and around him, Muggles uncoiled from their seats, stretching and chatting. They were so blissfully, offensively normal, and Peter hated it with a passion. As if anything about this was normal.
Yet to them it was normal. He was a father with a sleeping child, and they were headed to Canada.
It felt like blasphemy. It felt like a lie. It felt like his life was just starting anew.
Peter and Harry Evans.
God must hate him. God must like him.
He was starting a new life with a child that wasn’t his. That was his.
Eventually, he managed some blissful snatches of sleep, and when even that wouldn’t come after some time, he stared out the window at the vast, featureless grey of the Atlantic, trying not to envy Harry as the child slept on. Somewhere down there, ships were crossing, entirely unaware that the most dangerous wizard in a century had just been vanquished by a toddler in a fleece onesie.
"Sir? Would you like a drink? A gin and tonic, perhaps?"
Peter flinched, his hand darting towards the pocket where his wand lay hidden, and then forced his fingers to relax as he turned his head slowly to look at the flight attendant. She was young, maybe his age, her hair sprayed into a rigid, fashionable bob beneath a small, structured hat in a deep, burnt orange that matched the trim of her uniform.
"Just water," Peter rasped with a smile. "And some milk? For the boy, when he wakes."
"Of course." Her smile was practised, easy, the kind meant to soothe nervous travellers somewhere over the Atlantic. "He’s a quiet one, isn't he? How old?"
"Fifteen months," Peter said, the lie, the truth, tasting like copper. He’d have to do the maths later, to make sure he knew how old his toddler was.
"He has his father's hair," she noted, adjusting the cuff of her tailored jacket with a quick, efficient motion before making a neat notation on the small pad in her hand. "I’ll bring the milk warmed."
Peter felt a surge of nausea so violent he had to swallow hard to keep from gagging. Of course the muggles thought him the father. He’d known they would, and the assumption sat there, easy and unquestioned, wrapped up in the polite choreography of business class, of orange uniforms and crystal glasses and soft, attentive voices.
And his hair was messy, he supposed. Messy and dark. But he knew what it really meant.
James’s hair.
Harry’s hair was a mess of dark tufts, even now. It was the hair of a man who had been his brother in everything but blood, a man Peter had led to the slaughter because he was too afraid to die for a lost cause that wasn’t so lost now. He wondered what they’d do with the vault, then decided they couldn’t close it, only lock it. One day, Harry would have to return to claim it, but that was later. Some distant future that Peter could barely conceive of.
(He didn’t know that one day he’d be part of a school trip to London. That he’d have allies by his side. That was far off, though. A future yet to come, but one he was barrelling towards.)
He looked down at Harry, who was stirring. The Sleeping Charm was wearing off now, and Peter didn't dare recast it. The air on a Muggle plane felt thin, and he was terrified that too much magic in such a confined, pressurised space might leave a 'scent' that a Canadian Auror could pick up upon landing.
He didn’t even know if that was true, or if they even had Aurors at airports, but he couldn't take the chance. And even if he wanted to, the chance was lost as Harry’s eyes opened. They weren't James’s eyes but Lily’s. A sister in all but blood. Bright, startling green, and currently filled with a confused, rising fear. The boy looked around the cabin, his lower lip trembling.
"Pa’foo?" Harry whispered, his voice tiny against the roar of the engines. "Mama?"
Peter’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. Shit.
"Shh," he hissed, leaning close, his shadow falling over the boy. "Shh, Harry. Sleep now. We’re... we’re going on a trip."
Harry’s face crumpled. A tear leaked out, tracking through the dried blood of the lightning-bolt scar. "Dada?"
"Gone," Peter whispered, the word escaping before he could stop it. "They’re gone, Harry. It’s just us."
The boy let out a small, shuddering sob, reaching out for the only familiar face left in his world. He didn't know Peter was the reason for the silence; he only knew that Peter was there. He grabbed Peter’s finger with a surprisingly strong grip, clinging to it as if it were a life raft.
Peter didn't pull away. He couldn't. He wouldn’t, he decided. He would not leave the boy alone in this new world, and for the next eight hours, Peter Pettigrew existed in a vacuum. He fed Harry bits of a roll and sips of milk, changed nappies in the cramped, plastic confines of the aeroplane lavatory with shaking hands as he used Muggle wet-wipes like he’d seen Lily do. He watched the "In-Flight Movie" without the headphones, staring at the flickering colours of a world he didn't understand and hadn’t wanted to until now.
He’d have to understand it now, Peter knew. But he could think about that later.
He thought about the Order, about Remus, who was likely sitting in some lonely flat right now, waiting for a Patronus that would never come. He thought about Sirius, who’d be the first on the scene, who’d see the empty cot and the lack of a body, and who’d know, with the instinct of a hunter, exactly who had been there. Dumbledore would try to find a "right" way to handle this. He’d talk of protection and ancient magic. But Sirius... Sirius would just want blood.
Let him look, Peter thought, a sudden, jagged spark of defiance lighting up against his exhaustion. Let him search every Black-owned property and every Order safehouse. He won't look for a man who flies. He liked Muggles, but he never understood them.
As the sun cast its gaze over the frozen lands of Northern Canada, visible through the window as a jagged, crystalline world of white and blue, Peter felt the first touch of real distance. He was thousands of miles from Godric's Hollow. From London and England and her Magical world. The Atlantic was a wall of water and cold that even a phoenix couldn't cross in a single flight.
He must have drifted off, as he woke with a start to the captain’s voice crackling over the intercom and Harry chewing on his fingers, the Pa’foo dog held tight in the other fist. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our descent into Vancouver International. Local time is 2.15 PM. The weather is a brisk 12 degrees Celsius with light rain..."
Peter began to gather their things. The wooden hippogriff. The black dog plushie - he considered leaving that one behind, throwing it in the seat-back pocket, but Harry was clutching it to his chest like one would a favoured toy.
And he couldn’t rip it from the boy; not now, not ever. Instead, he adjusted his tan coat, checking his reflection in the window. He looked older than he was. Greyer. The glamour he’d placed on his nose and jawline remained steady as a simple, structural change that made him look like a hundred other tired, middle-management Muggles. It wouldn’t last, but it’d last long enough for him to vanish into Canada.
He made sure Harry was buckled in, and then himself.
The wheels hit the tarmac with a definitive, jarring thud. The reverse thrusters roared, pushing Peter back into his seat as he closed his eyes, letting out a long exhale. He was here, on Canadian soil. But he still wasn't a hero or a martyr, just a traitor who had saved the one thing he had no right to keep. But keep Harry he would. It was the least he could do to honour his former friends, and as the plane slowed to a taxi, Peter unbuckled Harry and lifted him up. The boy was heavy, a solid weight of living, breathing consequence that clung to him with a happy burble.
He’d have to learn that, too.
"We're here, Harry," Peter whispered into the boy’s hair.
He stepped off the plane, onto the aerobridge, and then into the terminal. He refused to look back; if he did he'd question everything and he - Harry - he couldn't have that. So, with squared shoulders, Peter walked towards the sign that said baggage claim, blending into the crowd of travellers. He was just another man carrying a child into a new life, leaving the ruins of the old one to burn.
He could and would do this.