pauraque_bk | Cut With Diamonds: The extended DVD (bonus features) (Reply)

Deleted scene: Ron takes a bath

I dropped this idea during the writing of the first draft, so even caesia390 hasn't seen it yet. Ooh, sekrit. ;)

Pettigrew is sitting on the shut toilet seat. Just watching. His hands are clasped between his knees, thumbs rubbing over each other.

Ron puts one foot into the bathtub and pauses, adjusting to the temperature.

'Too hot?' Pettigrew prompts after a moment.

'No,' Ron says, and gets all the way in before Pettigrew can tell him to hurry up.

The tub is just barely wide enough for him to sit down cross-legged. Every little movement slops water against the sides of the tub; seems too loud in the close, quiet bathroom. He tries to move carefully. Pettigrew's lustreless eyes rest on him, faintly insistent. Ron can feel them no matter which way he looks.

The stark, reflective light makes Ron's skin white, showing every freckle and spot, every crease of new fat. It's always strange to examine his own body in the light, to look at his cock and balls distorted-green and suspended in the water. Strings of white bubbles cling to the hair on his legs. He runs his palms over his shins, releasing the bubbles to float to the surface.

He starts to wash, unsure of himself. This is new, this bathing in front of him, and he isn't sure yet what Pettigrew wants out of it. Pettigrew is still just sitting there watching, his breath heavy but regular in the silence. He isn't touching himself.

Ron lathers his hair and slides down awkwardly -- tiny splashes against the porcelain -- and lets his head sink down. Water fills his ears, pressure and deeper quiet. He closes his eyes. The hum of his own blood, and low clunks from somewhere in the castle's piping. A line of surface tension tickles around the edges of his face.

His body floats higher and lower as his lungs fill and empty with wet air. Time passes, and he imagines that this is the entire world -- humidity, and the orange-black inside his eyelids.

He hears-feels a little bump through the floor, and remembers where he is. He finds himself afraid to open his eyes, afraid to see Pettigrew standing over him, dark and frowning, wanting to make Ron do things--

Ron's eyes snap open-- and there's nothing there. Just too-bright light against the mildewed bathroom ceiling. Ron props himself up on his elbows and sits up. The air hisses in his ears once the water is gone, and he doesn't know how he ever could have thought the room was quiet.

He turns. Pettigrew is still sitting on the closed toilet seat. He looks a little sad.

Peter's appearances in

juxiantang's "Damage Control".

It is quite a surprise for me when Pettigrew puts a claim on him. Weasley isn't especially handsome, and the novelty of cross-dressing him and forcing him to wear make-up has worn off a long time ago. I thought he could end up in a brothel somewhere in London, for the use of the lowest rank Death Eaters.

But Wormtail says he wants him, 'as a memory of being his pet, isn't it ironic that now he's going to be mine', as he puts it in his high, almost feminine voice, his hands twitching nervously, picking invisible specks of dust from his robe. The Dark Lord favors him, so Pettigrew gets what he wants.

...

"Peter, my friend, watch over your slave, or he'll jump over there," the Dark Lord says, and I feel a tiny shiver going through me. He hasn't even looked at Pettigrew for all that time, how has he noticed? Wormtail quacks in exasperation and yanks the leash, dragging Weasley away from the rails.
/
The wards are taken off, but I wait, make myself stay in place to exchange a few words with my leaving colleagues. Some sound disappointed that nothing happened - nothing *else* happened. But the women look flushed, and the men horny. Pettigrew yanks his slave after himself as Weasley stares at the middle of the room, his face distorted.

...

I know what they're going to do almost before they do it. Because I know how their minds work - and Harry knows it as well. I hear a small word fall from his lips, breathlessly tragic.

"Ron."

"We have your friend, Potter." It is Bellatrix Lestrange. "Come out before we start cutting off pieces of him."

Potter's face distorts at Bellatrix's voice. She killed his godfather, I remember, right in front of his eyes.

There is some commotion outside, and then Ron's voice reaches us.

"Don't come out, Harry, I don't care what they'll do!"

Stupid boy; does he still think, after all those years, that they don't mean what they say? I catch Potter's eyes and read the same thought in them. And when, after a pause while Weasley probably mutilates his lips trying not to scream, a scream still breaks through, high-pitched and choking, something in Potter's eyes crumbles.

I look at him through the hanging strands of my hair, wiping blood from my face. I'm sorry. They had gone easy on me, hadn't they? On the other hand, I have no friend one can use against me.

I have no one but him.

Potter shifts, pulling his knees to his chest. His knuckles are white, his face so very pale. He looks trapped.

Maybe, maybe if he comes out, they won't kill him. Him and Longbottom. It's me who killed Lucius, after all. They're just slaves.

"My lord," I hear Pettigrew's ingratiating, soft voice. "He's my property, please..."

"Shut your mouth." The Dark Lord's voice sounds tight with anger. Well, it looks like Wormtail has just got himself in trouble.

...

"Ron says he understands," he adds suddenly. And before I can say anything, he continues. "He said Pettigrew... he wasn't all that bad to him."

Pettigrew was the first of the newly captured Death Eaters who took the Dementor's Kiss.

An excerpt from John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi", Act IV, scene ii. The full text of the scene, with footnotes, can be found here.

DUCHESS: Now what you please: What death?

BOSOLA: Strangling; here are your executioners.

DUCHESS: I forgive them:
The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o'th' lungs,
Would do as much as they do.

BOSOLA: Doth not death fright you?

DUCHESS: Who would be afraid on't,
Knowing to meet such excellent company
In th' other world?

BOSOLA: Yet, methinks,
The manner of your death should much afflict you;
This cord should terrify you?

DUCHESS: Not a whit:
What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered
With cassia[1]? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits; and 'tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven sake,
So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers,
That I perceive death, now I am well awake,
Best gift is they can give, or I can take.
I would fain put off my last woman's fault,
I'd not be tedious to you.

EXECUTIONERS: We are ready.

DUCHESS: Dispose my breath how please you, but my body
Bestow upon my women, will you?

EXECUTIONERS: Yes.

DUCHESS: Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength,
Must pull down heaven upon me:
Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd
As princes' palaces; they that enter there,
Must go upon their knees. Come, violent death,
Serve for mandragora, to make me sleep:
Go, tell my brothers, when I am laid out,
They then may feed in quiet.

[1]"Cassia" is perfume. The Duchess is saying that no matter how you die -- whether you're strangled with a cord or smothered with perfume -- whether your throat is cut with a knife, or with a diamond -- you still end up just as dead. I was trying to draw a parallel with Ron's situation -- you're still just as raped even if the rapist hugs you afterwards. Of course, there's a niggling uncertainty in both situations as to whether the method of abuse actually does make a difference or not.