Chapter 53 - Experiments on Peter Pettigrew

"Hello Peter" Harry said without much emotion as he unlocked the first three gates.

"H… Harry." Peter groveled pathetically just like how he did in the movies and Harry wondered if the rat animagus was actually frightened of him or if this was all an act to make himself look weak and pathetic so that Harry would drop his guard around the man at which point he would attack him with a surprise and run away to his freedom.

As if.

If Harry had learned anything from the movies, it was to never underestimate anyone.

His own godfather, Sirius Black would be a shining example of someone who underestimated other people and paid the full price for it.

After all he was stupid enough to underestimate Bellatrix and died for his stupidity.

Oh well…

"Stupify."

A red light and the rotund man fell on the ground, unconscious.

"Stupify."

Another red light. Just to be double sure.

"Bind" a spell he made after extensively studying the 'Petrificus totalus' spell. This one was a tad bit more stronger in exchange for using more magical power.

Just to be triple sure.

He then opened the last lock and levitated the unconscious man out of his cell.

Bitty on the other hand, quickly cleaned the chamber pot kept at the corner of the dark room and filled the rack kept at another corner with a few loafs of bread and a bottle of water.

He took the man to the table he'd set up at the center of another room and put a bind on all of his limbs with tight charmed ropes.

If the man was somehow able to transform to a rat despite all the precautions, the charmed ropes would continue to tighten along with him and by the time he transforms into a rat, he will have no limbs to run away with. One a head and a torso.

He had told about the ropes to the rat the first time he brought him here. Peter was so scared that he pissed himself and after that he never even thought about using his animagus form in his presence.

"Wake up" he said and with another wave, the unconscious man regained his consciousness.

"Hello again Peter." He said without bothering to look at the man who suddenly started whimpering in fear.

"Now now. No need to be like that Peter. We've done this before, remember. There's no need to be afraid." He said in order to soothe the man's nerves. After all, a nervous and fearful test subject was not a good test subject.

Harry kept all the tools on the table beside the one in which the rat animagus was lying down and took out another hawk he'd recently captured.

"Today, we'll once again try and see if we're able to transfigure your eye to that of a hawk." He said and with another wave of his hand, the self writing quill he'd created and another paper started floating in the air and began to follow him as he went around the table.

"Test Subject 001. Do you still have that itch from that experiment from last night?" he asked and the quill wrote his words in the notepad.

"No… doctor." Peter said fearfully. Harry had asked him to call him a doctor and nothing else.

He didn't wanted the rat animagus to call him with his names as that made him seem too familiar, like the rat actually knew anything about him. So he had stopped the man from calling him 'Harry'.

The word 'Potter' seemed to remind him of Snape and the other professors who always called him 'Mr Potter' and that was not a good felling either.

So in the end, he had gone ahead and asked the rat animagus to call him Doctor. He was not a scientist and held no actual Phd. But he was a scientist when he was performing these tests.

He was a scientist when he was researching new methods in human transfiguration.

So that's what he wanted to be called within his lab. Though truth be told, his lab was more of a dungeon at this moment than anything else. But who cared about specifics anyway.

"Influence of putting more magical power behind duplicating the nerves has subsided." He said as he checked the man's eyes and the quill floating behind him noted everything down on the notepad.

He did not really knew if the things he was trying to do would ever work.

Experiment with a live human subject without someone to guide him was like stumbling in the dark with no light in sight.

He was like Vasco da Gama, searching for new land in the vast ocean without knowing whether he'll actually succeed in his endeavors or not.

It was such a pity that no matter how many times he searched, there were no books in human transfiguration that actually taught how to do all the things that he really wanted to do.

So he would have to do all the research on his own.

Find what works and what doesn't with trail and error.

He had a feeling that he would be needing more test subjects pretty soon. But that was a problem for the future.

After all, he could always find a few low level death eaters stumbling around in Knockturn alley.

No one would really care if they actually went missing.

And when one day, Hermione finds out about his experiments, because she will find out, then he could say that none of his test subjects were innocent people and he would be saying the truth.

"Do you know how many nerves are there in the eyes of a rat Peter?" he asked.

"No doctor."

"Do you know how different the organs inside a rat are when compared to that of a human?" he asked again.

"No doctor." the rat animagus whimpered.

"Do you actually even know anything about rats?" He asked curiously.

"A few things doctor."

"Go on then. Tell me."

"Th… They like dark places. That their children are not able to open their eyes until a few days after their birth. They like cheese. That they…"

"Stop… Stop. I was not asking you to recite common things that everyone else already knows." He interrupted and pinched his nose at the ignorance of this guy. How the man could live as a rat for a whole decade and still not know anything about them was beyond his sense of comprehension.

"And for your information rats don't particularly like cheese. Oh they'll eat it if you give it to them but the fact that cheese is their favourite food in just a myth and… and I don't even know why I'm telling you all this." He said and shook his head for a moment before slapping both his cheeks and focusing on the task ahead of him.

"Very well then Peter." He said and took out Voldemort's wand from his sleeves. The Yew, Pheonix feather core wand had taken a liking to him for some reason and seemed to work almost as well for him as his original Holly wand.

He had found Voldemort's wand along with Peter's own wand in his clothes when he had captured the rat and had been using it ever since.

Just for the sake of being cautious and all.

In truth, he would have preferred to perform his research without a wand but controlling magic with a wand gives more precise results and he wanted that precision for what he was about to do.

"Today we'll transfigure your iris and pupil and make it as close to that of a hawk as possible. Then you'll tell me what you're able to see and we'll go forward from there. Alright?"

The rat animagus fearfully nodded his head and he started the surgery.

If the things he was about to do can even be called that.