"This. It’s a terrible idea." Pettigrew shook his nest of hair, and pressed the blade of his dagger on the palm of his hand. "I should have known..." he continued as he cut through his skin without flinching. "I’m a dead man. I should be used to it by now." He ran the bloody palm along the bars of the black iron gates. "It becomes an addiction, you know? The thrill of impending doom..." he waved his wand making complicated movements in the air, mumbling an unintelligible spell. "To be at his mercy. The fact that one wrong move or a single word will make him snap at you." Peter seemed to be thinking out loud by this point, he did that a lot. Hermione had come to realize, it had to be a side effect of spending too many years without a human connection, and he was making up for all the conversations he didn’t have. The gates unlocked and sprang open with a rusty cry. Heavy ice clumps fell, blending in the white blanket of snow covering the grounds. He turned to face her with a defeated sigh, but Hermione was not paying him any attention. Her eyes were fixed ahead, over his shoulder, lost in the background where stood the eerie scenery that was Riddle Mansion. 