Pettigrew was taken to the Ministry under three separate containment charms and a full-body bind, which was professionally thorough and ultimately insufficient.
He was questioned under Veritaserum six days later, in the presence of Amelia Bones herself, two senior Aurors, a Wizengamot representative, and a Healer whose presence the legal protocols around truth serum administration required.
His father was there, in his professional capacity.
He came home that evening with the specific exhaustion of someone who had watched something important happen that was also deeply unpleasant, and sat at the kitchen table for a while before he could say much about it.
"He confirmed everything," his father said finally. "The secret-keeping. The betrayal. What happened on the street — what he did to the Muggles, to make it look like Black had killed him." A long pause. "He confirmed that Sirius Black was innocent. Has been innocent. For twelve years."
The kitchen was quiet.
Outside, the summer garden was doing its quiet evening work, Pip moving between the rows with the focused efficiency of someone who had a schedule and intended to keep it.
"The street," his mother said carefully. "The Muggles who died."
"Pettigrew's own spell," his father said. "He cut off his own finger before he transformed. He killed them and framed Black for it and disappeared into a rat." He stopped. "He's been doing that for twelve years. Hiding. Waiting to see which way the wind would blow."
He thought about Peter Pettigrew hiding in his room. Sleeping in the same space where he slept, eating the same food, present at the same table. He thought about what it meant to be that kind of coward — the specific, sustained, active cowardice of someone who had chosen safety over everything else for twelve years and had continued choosing it every day.
He filed the thought away. It was useful to understand. The shape of that kind of person, the specific vulnerabilities it produced. He filed it under things worth knowing and moved on.
"When does the trial happen?" he asked.
"Wizengamot has scheduled it for the end of June," his father said. "Amelia is treating it as the highest priority case she's seen in a decade."
The escape happened on the fifteenth of July.
He found out about it the way most people found out about things that happened at the Ministry — through his father, who came home that evening later than expected with the expression of someone who had spent the day dealing with a significant institutional failure and was still deciding how to feel about it.
He sat down at the table without taking his robes off and accepted the cup of tea his mother put in front of him and said, without preamble: "Pettigrew escaped."
The kitchen went very quiet.
"How," his mother said. It was not quite a question.
"Transport to Azkaban," his father said. "The window between Ministry holding and the prison. We had three Aurors on the detail — qualified, experienced. He waited until they were over the sea and he transformed." He set down his tea. "A rat can go through gaps that one normally doesn't account for. He was gone before they could respond."
He thought about a rat that had spent twelve years in a cage and before that twelve years being carried in pockets and bags and running through walls and pipes and the specific gaps in the physical world that only a very small thing could use. He thought about someone who had been hiding for most of their adult life and who understood concealment the way you understood something you'd been doing for so long it had become instinct.
Pettigrew had been planning the escape from the moment of his capture. Possibly before. The Veritaserum had gotten the truth out of him but it hadn't touched what he was going to do the moment the opportunity arose, because that was a plan, not a memory.
"Is the trial still going ahead?" he asked.
"Yes," his father said. "The Veritaserum testimony is on record. The magical evidence analysis is complete. We don't need Pettigrew present to prove Sirius Black innocent." A pause. "We do need him present to charge him, which is — a problem for another day."
"The Dementors?" he said.
His father looked at him. "Redirected from Azkaban perimeter duty. They're looking for him." He paused. "It's not — I don't entirely agree with using them this way. But it was the ministries decision and I understand the reasoning."
He thought about Dementors hunting a man who had spent most of his life as a rat. He thought about Pettigrew's particular brand of survival instinct and wondered which was faster — the thing that needed to eat and sleep and move through the world with a body, or the mindless cold thing that moved toward despair.
He thought Pettigrew was faster. For now.
He thought Pettigrew would go to Voldemort eventually. Not now — now he was running, focused entirely on survival in the immediate sense, the way small frightened things were focused. But eventually the survival calculus would shift and he would go where the power was gathering, because that was what he had always done.
He filed that away too.