Wormtail shivered and pressed his little rat body closer to the wall, squeezing his beady eyes shut as tight as possible. Every time the trains raced by, he felt like gelatin afterward - all wobbly and weak. His nose twitched, and he pressed all the harder into the wall, trembling with fear. As a rat, he was too small to be caught up by the passing trains as they streaked past through the dark, but the sound of scraping metal wheels over the rails and the rush of the humid, dust-filled air that blasted so hard it nearly knocked him over was enough to fear.

Scrambling up a narrow stairwell inset into the wall, he ran down the length of a small metal walk way, created for the service crews who might need to access the deep parts of the tunnels. He scampered carefully, peering into the blurriness ahead of him. Finally, he found the turn off he'd been searching for - a small cleft in the tiled walls of the Underground where there was an itty bitty space, a ladder stretching up to a manhole cover, where just a small round hole of sunlight filtered through the grime.

That manhole cover opened up on an alley a few blocks from the university where Peter was studying his divination, and it was here - in the small space below it, where the heat of the Underground promised comfort from inclement weather - that Peter Pettigrew had been staying for the past several weeks. Whenever he wasn't at the flat in East London, in fact, he'd been there, tucked away and alone in the dark.

It wasn't an entirely terrible situation, really. After all, there was warmth and privacy. As a rat, he had built a nice nest in a little box that he had brought down with him and filled with cotton stuffing. His school books were in his ruck sack, along with a couple changes of clothes, tucked in a dark corner where any workers would overlook it should they come into the tunnel - though he had yet to see anyone else there. Other rats, of course, but they mostly stayed clear of him, sensing he was different than they were. Up above on the street level, there was a pub, a cafe, and a fast food restaurant where he could collect loads of morsels to eat from the rubbish in his rat form. Honestly, it was a rather good situation - for a rat - and a moderately "OK" one for a young man who didn't want to go home.

He transformed into his own form, though it was cramped and a bit uncomfortable in the tiny room at the foot of the ladder, sometimes it was just nice to be himself, rather than a rat.

Peter pressed his back to the wall and hugged his knees to his chest as best he could considering his round little belly, and he rummaged in his rucksack for a moment or two until he'd pulled out the small velvet bag that held his divination tools. He fished about in the bag and with drew his casting stones, letting the cool crystals roll over his palms. A funny feeling was nagging at him, though he couldn't quite place what it was. He absent-mindedly let the stones tumble, thinking about the vague feeling that he ought to be somewhere, ought to be doing something, as though he'd been told of a chore he'd forgotten to do. He closed his eyes.

It struck him suddenly that, aside from that one train that had passed him in the tunnel some time ago, there hadn't been any trains going by since. 

Peter paused in tumbling the stones, dropping them onto the ground beside him, and reached into his velvet bag, pulling out his watch to check the time. It wasn't right, he thought, it was after the time that all of the commuter trains ought to be passing by - there ought to be thousands of people going to work about now, crammed into those cars like sardines. But the rails were silent.

He reached for the stones he'd been holding, about to scoop them up, when he paused and looked at the way they'd been cast, at the runes etched into the sides that were face up. His hand shook slightly. 

Thurisaz, reversed. Raidho, half-reversed. Hagalaz.

Evil. Destruction. Defenselessness. Change - change of heart, change of perspective. An evolution. Uncontrolled forces from within. Pain. Loss. Suffering. Betrayal.

Peter reached down and quickly swiped the stones up from the ground, his heart thumping so hard he could practically hear it in roaring in his ears. He shoved the stones into the velvet bag again, pulling tight the strings that closed it, and pushed it deep into his rucksack again, kicking the sack back into the shadows. 

The sound in his ears seemed to be getting louder.

He rubbed them, stuffing his little finger in and trying at plunging out anything blocking his ear canal. But the sound just kept growing - whistling, thumping... until he realized the sound was not just inside his head.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

The ghostly form of the bright white wolf rushed through the tunnel, illuminating the underground hundreds of times better than the lumos charm on the wands had done. Remus stood before Sirius, who was now crouched on the rail, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he covered his ears and moaned with turmoil.

"Please," he begged, "Go - make them go..."

Remus's patronus skulked around them protectively, following the wave of Remus's wand, leaving trails of vapor as it moved. Remus's eyes scoured the dark outside of the ring of protection that the patronus created, searching the dark for the figures he could feel were there, lurking, waiting for the guard to be lowered.

"It's alright, Sirius, I'll protect you," Remus said, "It's alright. Dementors be damned, my love."

"Achlys," Sirius begged, "Fuck off-fuckoff-fuckoffuckoff!"

Remus couldn't see the dementors, but the air in the otherwise humid tunnel was frigid cold very suddenly, piercing him, and he'd struggled to wrap his mind around a thought preciously good enough to invoke the patronus charm. Everything had seemed utterly hopeless. 

"It's alright, Sirius."

"It isn't!" Sirius cried, his voice trembled, "It's not. We're all going to die here in these tunnels. Bloody hell, we'll become inferius ourselves. Forced to do the Dark Lord's bidding. Nothing we can do about it, even death can't protect an inferius!"

"Shh," Remus pleaded. His arm was shaking from holding the patronus so long. He struggled to lower himself beside Sirius. "Please, it's alright, Padfoot. I've cast us a patronus. You've got to get up so we can get away from here, though. Please."

Sirius was shaking.

"Sing me a song. Any song you like," Remus suggested. 

Sirius didn't move.

Remus reached out his non-wand hand and pressed it to Sirius's back. He had to get up. He had to. He couldn't lie here on the floor of the underground - Remus couldn't hold the patronus much longer. They had to make a break for it, they had to get out of there. And who knew what would follow after the dementors? Surely the Inferi couldn't be far. If You Know Who had sent the dementors this way... surely the army of the dead were coming, too.

"Please, Sirius," Remus begged. But still Sirius did not move. Remus thought for a moment, then sang quietly: "Wild thing, you make my heart sing... you make everything groovy, wild thing.... Wild thing, I think I love you... but I wanna know for sure... come on, hold me tight.... I love you...." He was midway though the words when he spotted the movement of a cloak through the dark, and he knew they really were there, just beyond the line of the light. The werewolf patronus snapped as though biting at the dementors, and Remus shook Sirius urgently. "We have to go, Padfoot," he said.

Struggling to his feet, Remus grabbed hold of Sirius and pulled him up. It was hard. Sirius was small but it wasn't easy wielding him upward while holding the patronus, and Remus struggled with the motion. Finally, he got Sirius up and Sirius, clinging to Remus, kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Remus couldn't understand the anguish that was coursing through his Padfoot's face, the lines of his frown and closed eyelids severe and making him look much older and weathered than he really was, particularly with the stark relief of the contrasted light in the tunnel. "C'mon, we've got to go back." 

There had to be a lot of the dementors there, Remus realized, to be creating so much pressure in the air around them.

"Wild thing," Remus kept singing quietly as he struggled to guide Sirius back the way they'd come, his voice echoing in the dark, "I think you move me... But I wanna know for sure... So come on, hold me tight... You move me. Wild thing, you make my heart sing... You make everything groovy... Wild thing..." 

Wormtail, in his rat form, quivered but made himself move forward to look over the rail of the service catwalk and down on to the tracks. It was dark, aside from a far off blinking light that indicated where the rail split after Moor Park, not too far from where Peter had made his temporary residence. 

The sound was getting louder, closer. 

His nose twitched. 

Then a form came 'round the bend in the dark - staggering, slow.

Wormtail moved along the metal walk, squinting his tiny rat eyes in the direction of the form. What was it? Was that a person? What was a person doing in the Underground, walking the rails like that? He scrambled down the ladder to the ground beside the rail, pausing, sniffing the air.

Normally the underground doesn't particularly smell like roses, but there was a distinct, horrid smell that permeated the dark and Wormtail recoiled at it. 

Then came a flood of rats.

They came running, squeaking, shrieking, their eyes panicked and their tails dragging along the rails as they went, scrambling one over the other, headed away from the staggering figure. They were screaming in rattish voices as they went, a great exodus of what seemed to Peter was all of the rats in London.

The staggering figure was suddenly followed by others. One or two others at first, then five - ten - thirty - and Peter felt his heart leap into his throat.

Thurisaz, reversed. Raidho, half-reversed. Hagalaz.

Evil. Destruction. Betrayal.

He turned and he ran, as fast as his rat feet would carry him, tripping over the stones and the rails along with the other rats, squeaking and shrieking in panic. He hurried to one side so that he wasn't a part of the main rabble of them that were tumbling over one another and the next ladder up to the service catwalk he found he dove for and scrambled up it. There were far less rats up there on the ledge, which made running easier, and he was able to pull ahead and gain some real distance on the staggering figures. The noise was still coming, but it was getting further and further back, but he did not allow himself to slow. He wasn't going to stop until he'd gotten out of the Underground altogether. His heart thumped.

There was only one thing those figures could be, he realized as he ran. They had to be inferi. He darted along, his only thought to get out of the tube, and then to the flat in East London. He had to get far enough ahead to have the time to switch back and to disapparate out.

Then he heard laughter, nervous laughter, mind, but still laughter, and footsteps. Ahead, there was a glowing light - two glowing lights, he realized as he got closer. He slowed, hearing voices that he recognized - and then - the flood of rats was catching up, their shrieking cries echoing through the tunnel.

"Oh my gods!"

"What the bloody -- watch out Evans!"