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In this essay-like rant, I’m going to discuss Peter Pettigrew’s canon characterization by examining how the sources we learn about him from are biased in different ways, finding what we can reasonably accept as true, and bringing up questions we’re left with.

Before I start, I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Snape and generally interpret the Marauders in a kinder way than they probably deserve. However, for this I’m going to attempt my best to be as unbiased myself as possible.

I’m going to mostly focus on Peter before he was a spy, however I will touch on his time as Scabbers and his time after.

BIASED SOURCES:

We mostly learn about Peter from Before from 3 different sources: the Three Broomsticks scene in Prisoner of Azkaban (POA), Sirius and Remus also in POA, and in Snape’s flashbacks. I’m going to explain here what we learn from each source, and how they’re biased:

1. In the Three Broomsticks, we learn about him mainly from McGonagall and Fudge. 
   1. McGonagall says that Peter hero-worshipped James and Sirius. She describes him as “stupid” and “foolish” and says he was “hopeless at dueling”, firmly putting him and his skills at a lower level than his friends’s. She knew him personally—she was his Head of House—and therefore this is based on first-hand knowledge, but she’s also looking back at the situation tearfully, regretfully. She perhaps sees him as someone she couldn’t save, someone who didn’t deserve the painful death she believes he went through. In her eyes, he’s a hero who died too soon, too young. 
   2. Fudge, however, did not know Peter personally. His interactions began and ended with Peter’s “death”, which was clearly traumatizing to him (he says he still has nightmares about it). His insights are speculation, based on false beliefs and trauma—he says Peter was “maddened by grief” over the Potters’s deaths. He sees Peter as a brave young man who died heroically, who deserves the Order of Merlin, First Class that he was awarded. I also believe that he looks at Peter with some amount of pity and/or condescension, as he calls him “little Peter Pettigrew”.
      1. It’s worth noting here that his feelings on Sirius are VERY strong, and VERY negative—he fully, truly believes that Sirius is guilty, that Sirius is the one who caused his trauma. He doesn’t entertain the idea, later, that Sirius is innocent for a second. I’m not sure how this speaks to the intensity of his feelings about Peter, but it’s fair to say that Fudge is most likely fully convinced of Peter’s innocence.
2. From Sirius and Remus, we learn…very different things. But the three of them share a very long, emotional history: close friends from age 11 to 21, Remus then spent the next twelve years believing Peter was dead and most likely looking back on him with fondness, grief, and the belief that he was brave and heroic to the end. Meanwhile, Sirius spent that time utterly alone, suffering horribly from Peter’s actions. In this scene, Remus is just learning that Peter was alive the whole time, while Sirius is finally able to confront the man who betrayed him and ruined his life.
   1. Let’s look at Remus first. He describes Peter in conjunction with the other two as: “great friend[s]” who found out his secret and stuck by his side, as well as being “young, thoughtless, [and] clever”. But he singles Peter out to say that Peter “needed all the help he could get from James and Sirius.” He’s calmer in this situation than Sirius is, but definitely not happy with Peter. He clearly looks more positively on the Peter that he knew, and describes the idea of faking his own death “So simple… so brilliant….”
      1. I’m naturally inclined to believe that’s less biased here because I love Remus. But realistically, his views are colored with nostalgia of the good old times (thus making them positively biased), and his calmness in the moment is probably the result of the rest of the situation being so fraught, as well as the fact that he’s not very reactive.
   2. Then we have Sirius. Sirius is VERY angry in this scene—rightfully so—and lashes out at Peter, especially after Peter once again accuses Sirius of being the spy. He claims that Peter “liked [having] big friends who’d look after [him]”, and called Peter a “weak, talentless thing” with a “miserable life”. It’s likely that he’s spent all these years obsessing over his friendship with Peter, having little else to do—and this would be compounded heavily by the Dementors, making everything seem bleak. These words are meant to hurt, and they are obviously negatively biased. 
3. Through Snape’s flashbacks, we learn about how Peter interacted with the Marauders. It’s important to note while analyzing this scene that our two narrators (Snape and Harry) are understandably negatively biased: Snape hated the Marauders, and Harry only knows Peter as the man who got his parents killed and is working for Voldemort. 
   1. I would argue that the memory itself is at least slightly altered due to several factors: it has been some time since the situation happened; bad memories tend to stick out in the mind; and that coupled with the fact that Snape was a teenager when this happened would lead to the emotions being higher, especially considering they were negative ones (embarrassment and loathing). Details, therefore, are possibly exaggerated to one extreme or another.
   2. While these memories are more focused on James and Sirius, Peter is present, and he is shown as being anxious (especially concerning school work), worshipping of James, and not actively participating in the bullying but certainly not taking any steps to stop it—rather, he laughs along with the rest of the crowd. Harry describes the hero worshipping as being embarrassing and annoying, and wonders “why James didn’t tell Wormtail to get a grip on himself”. This scene—and Harry’s thoughts over top of it—doesn't make Peter seem like much.

WHAT WE CAN REASONABLY ACCEPT AS TRUE:

Across the board, we see just a few traits stay the same:

1. Peter was anxious, especially about school work and exams. He wasn’t as (generally) talented as James and Sirius, needing their help. 
   1. I would go a step further than this and say that, taking into account how Peter acts from the reveal scene on, he’s pretty emotional as well. While he’s only described as crying once—when confronting Sirius before faking his death—he’s certainly shown crying, weeping, sobbing, and more in just about every single scene he’s in, starting with the reveal in POA.
2. He’s a follower rather a leader. He first follows James and Sirius (but mostly James), and then Voldemort, all of whom are confident and charismatic.
3. The idea of Peter being brave is expounded by his false death, however, he WAS a Gryffindor.
   1. I also find that there’s a bit of a scale here, with some (like McGonagall) truly believing he was brave, then with others like Fudge and Remus doubting it a bit—not that he wasn’t brave at all, but probably that he wasn’t often brave—and then Sirius, Snape, and Harry clearly believing he wasn’t.

QUESTIONS WE’RE LEFT WITH:

From this, I’m left wondering:

1. How talented and clever was Peter actually?
   1. This is a bit contested—while he’s basically always described as less talented and bad at school, it’s also shown that Peter is…definitely not inept. Remus describes him as clever, while Sirius says Peter “got the better of [him]”, which is telling considering how intelligent Sirius is.
   2. It’s also important to note that he successfully faked his own death TWICE, and that his frame job of Sirius worked very well (obviously helped along by the Ministry’s incompetence but the point stands).
   3. Keep in mind: McGonagall says he wasn’t as talented—not that he wasn’t talented at all—and that when Sirius calls him “talentless”, he’s speaking emotionally rather than objectively.
2. Just how good at lying WAS he? How often did he lie?
   1. Clearly, he was able to hide things. While there are different ways he could’ve hid his being the spy—by seeing less of his friends, by having help from the Death Eaters, from simply being able to keep it hidden—he successfully went undercover for a year without anyone knowing. 
   2. He lies to protect himself. We see that in POA when he continues to cling to and push the narrative that he was innocent. He doesn't do well in this scene at making himself seem believable, but he has just been forced to shift back into his human form by his old friends.
3. Was he ever actually, truly friends with James, Sirius, and Remus?
   1. Remus and McGonagall truly believe so, however Sirius and Harry do not.
   2. James did as well—he wouldn’t trust just anyone with the livelihood of not only himself, but his wife and child. I don’t believe Sirius’s word would have been enough to sway him alone. Why would he make Peter Secret Keeper if he didn’t trust him? 
4. Was he actually scared of Voldemort?
   1. He uses this as an excuse for why he switched sides. But it’s worth exploring if it was ever true, and if it ever changed.
5. BONUS QUESTION: Why did he protect Ron?
   1. In Sorcerer’s Stone, Peter-as-Scabbers bites the finger of Goyle in order to protect Ron.
   2. I find it very interesting that he did this. As Scabbers, he was seen as (and expected to be) nothing more than a fat, lazy pet getting up in age. But then he bit that finger. Was it possibly because Ron was another leader figure for him to hold onto?