[app] i am so ashamed of the trouble i have caused.

[rattusinfidus]

[nick / name]: Phoenix
[personal LJ/DW name]: birdburning
[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: birdburning@aol.com
[AIM / messenger]: birdburning

[series]: Harry Potter
[character]: Peter Pettigrew
[character history / background]: Here, up until shortly before betraying James and Lily Potter.
[character abilities]: Here. My rationalization of Peter being a poor student in school but showing skill later is that Peter's classroom performance suffered due to a combination of anxiety and low self-esteem. After school, with the Order of the Phoenix, he had to shape up, and was quite surprised to discover he wasn't quite the weakling he'd always believed he was.
[character personality]:
Why anyone was friends with Peter Pettigrew is possibly the biggest enigma of the Marauders' past.

There are two options. The first is that James, Sirius, and Remus all stayed close friends with a snivelling, cruel, hapless coward simply because he would always do what he was told. The second, much more plausible option, is that there used to be things about Peter to like. He was a Griffindor, after all, and apparently trusted and liked enough to be James and Lily Potter's Secretkeeper, making him a second choice to Sirius Black, of all people.

Peter at twenty isn't brave. He's skittish and easily frightened and constantly in his best friends' shadows. In March of 1981 he's already selling secrets to the Death Eaters, hampering the war effort and betraying the only people who have any faith in him. But he's not completely lost, not yet, and he tells himself that somehow everything is going to work out all right. The war will be lost, but they'll get amnesty, and he'll be able to justify it all somehow if he just stays alive and does his best to keep the others from catching onto what he's doing.

As a chubby, awkward child who had a tendency to get sick and cry often, Peter thought on the train to Hogwarts that he was doomed for sure--this new school was going to be like his old school, and he was going to be bullied and miserable even if he did have magic now. Then all of a sudden, he met three other boys, and Peter's whole life changed. James and Sirius and Remus were smart, funny, and amazing; Peter was entranced, and then he was amazed that these boys seemed willing to be his friend. He suspects Remus had a lot to do with it, at first, but Peter won them over. He wasn't as brilliant as Remus or as casually, arrogantly confidant as Sirius or as talented as James, but Peter could be clever. Peter knew how to get away with things. He told himself he didn't mind, really, being the openly weakest link of the bunch. With his new friends school was fun, and it was good to turn the tables around and being the boy doing the teasing instead of the one being teased.

Of course, as anyone who's ever been a charity case knows, the gratitude that comes along with being always so slightly condescended to ("Good try, Peter" and "Well, it's Peter, of course he bungled it" and "Wormy, honestly, don't be so thick") comes wound through with resentment. Peter is jealous of his charismatic, exceptional friends, who never seem to have any trouble with girls or a tendency to go red-faced in front of crowds. Everything that Peter struggles with seems to come naturally to them: even Remus, with his furry little problem, fits in and adjusts better than Peter ever will. It's hard to live in shadows that long.

But Peter is too insecure to try to step out of those shadows, to see if he could accomplish anything on his own. Especially with the war on, and death facing them at every turn. Peter has trouble asserting himself at the best of times, so under duress he's crumpled.

Maybe that was what made turning him so relatively easy. One night cornered in an alleyway, and Peter was ashamed of how little they'd had to torture him to get him to agree to bring them secrets. At first, he tried to compromise. He tried to restrict what he told them, but every time he did they just hurt him more. Maybe worse than that was that they taunted him: none of this would be happening if he wasn't their friend. He never would have been in the Order otherwise. Peter wasn't important, again, just the people he knew, and the Death Eaters carefully fed that festering little green-eyed monster in him. There was a kind of sick pleasure in outsmarting everyone, hiding his betrayal: fat (not so much anymore, with stress and hiding, but no one even noticed that), stupid little Peter, clumsy and awkward and forgettable Peter, turned out to be smarter than everyone else after all.

That doesn't mean Peter doesn't get drunk, curl up in his old bedroom in his mother's flat, and cry himself to sleep from time to time, but he handles it. Peter's always been a good liar, so he can visit his friends and the Order without cracking, he can laugh and joke and accept good try, Peter, you almost had that one. His role even before he was turned was a spy. Rats can get all kinds of places, and no one thinks anything of seeing one except disgust. Peter brings home secrets about the Death Eaters and then he brings them secrets about the Order, and he pretends it almost balances.

When Peter is having a good day, he's quiet and self-deprecating, always ready to laugh at himself as easily as other people laugh at him--he isn't always seething over the things people say to him, even if they often do prick him deeper than he shows. In a clumsy, inoffensive way he can be sweet, more like Remus than James or Sirius when they weren't picking on other children at school. He likes cakes and warm sweaters and the smell of chamomile tea. Sometimes he can be braver than anyone expects, like being willing to keep a werewolf company as something so small and so easily crushed or eaten. Besides the obvious exception, he's loyal to his friends, and on those good days he really is grateful that they saw part of Peter no one else did--a better part than he ever has, if he's honest.

On a bad day, Peter seethes. He's furious at the Marauders for treating him like he's less than they are, furious at them for fighting this hopeless war--and when he's miserably honest with himself he's furious that they weren't there to protect him the time he needed it the most. He's furious that they still don't notice, but he's petrified of telling them, because possibly worse than the definite reprisals is that then he'd lose them, and as jealous of them as he can be they're his best friends. His only friends, if he's honest. He's terrified of dying, of being executed at the end of the war despite bringing the Death Eaters information, and then none of it will matter anyway. He hates himself for being so weak, just like he always thought he was and the Marauders always told him he wasn't, really ("Good try," James had said, after Peter punched another boy in the nose and gotten the shite beaten out of him, Remus holding a compress to his head and Sirius already planning their revenge, "You definitely broke it, bloody brilliant of you--" and Peter had blushed).

On any kind of day, Peter tries not to think about the future. He'll take one step at a time, one day at a time, and he'll stay alive.

Peter Pettigrew, after all, is a rat, and rats are very good survivors.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]:
March of 1981.

[journal post]:

[accidental video]
[Peter is not panicking.]

[Really, he's not, because panic was over about five minutes ago when he Apparated into this strange place and he immediately scrambled to hide. He was supposed to be in a suburb. This is clearly not a suburb. This is--somewhere else, and he can't quite tell what the dominant accent is but if he's managed to accidentally get himself to another country he knows James is going to laugh at him forever.]

[He hopes it isn't Australia. If it has to be anywhere that's not the UK, he hopes it's not Australia. They have deadly jellyfish and dingoes and Australians in Australia.]

[No, Peter isn't panicked. Peter is so horrified he's giddy; he keeps suppressing the insane urge to laugh, because what else could go wrong?]

You are an idiot, Peter.

[He presses his hands over his face and then--curls up in a ball, his wand clutched tightly in his hand as he huddles miserably over his knees. Hello, City. There is a short blond young wizard, by the name of Pettigrew, of twenty years age and an evident unawareness of the camera at his feet.]

[third person / log sample]:
What does Peter remember?

*

They held his head under water one, two, threefourfive--more times than he could hold onto, and he threw up, crying, snot dangling from his nose.

"Don't try lying to us again, dear," the woman said, and she sounded a lot like his mum, he thought, and her hands had smelled like knitting wool.

Lily has him hold a ball of yarn while she knits and Peter smiles and smiles and smiles--

*

At the age of twelve, Peter broke his arm over the summer. Sirius and James had written sporadically, but they'd been busy doing things, while Peter was stuck in his mum's cramped London flat looking out the window and wondering if she'd even let him ride a bike again. Or even go outside. She'd cried the whole way to the hospital and screamed at his doctors and Peter had just wanted to die--

Remus writes every week. Remus, who is even poorer than Peter is, who would have to walk kilometres to get to a bus station, Remus who has a job at the age of twelve just to pay for schoolbooks, appears at their apartment building in the rain one Saturday.

"Did it hurt?" Remus asks, after signing his cast when Peter explained that it was a tradition, and Peter shakes his head.

Then he nods, eyes welling up, and he can't help it, he can't, and he wants to be brave like everyone else but he's not, he doesn't even know why he's a Gryffindor, he's stupid and useless and he hates this flat and being stuck inside with the smell of mildew and steam from the kettle warping the paint above the range, this place where Peter is just Peter and he gets pushed around by bigger kids again and he didn't break his arm on a bike at all and he is horrified to realize all of this is coming out of his mouth. He snaps it shut and stares at Remus, tears still dripping from his chin.

"Oh, Peter," Remus says, and tugs him into the tightest hug Peter's ever had. Peter buries his face in his shoulder and lets himself cry.

Remus tells him that he is brave. That he's not useless or stupid, and there'll be back at school in no time, he'll see, and Peter squeezes his eyes tighter and lets himself believe Remus. Just a little bit.

*

They are at a party after they graduate, except it's not them--not all of them, just Sirius and Peter, after Sirius had rung Peter up (yelling into the phone, and Peter had winced and told Sirius again that he didn't need to do that, Peter could hear him just fine) and told him they were going out.

James is with Lily and Remus is studying. Peter knows otherwise Sirius would have invited them too. But for right now, Sirius' arm draped over his shoulder casually as he knocks back firewhiskey, Peter wants to think that this is especially for him. It's more warming than the firewhiskey Sirius pressed on him, and Peter sneaks a look at Sirius, a smile tugging at his mouth. It feels good, sitting with Sirius at a party.

"So then I tell her I'm got more than a motorcycle for you to ride--pay attention, Peter," Sirius says, imperiously, as if Peter wasn't, as if he could be paying attention to anything else, flushed to the top of his ears, "Anyway, so she says--"

"Will you poufs get off my bloody couch already," the host of the party (which they technically aren't invited to, but that never stopped Padfoot and Wormtail before), and Peter sees the glint in Sirius' eyes that only ever means one thing.

"Sirius, come on, don't--" he says, reaching for Sirius' arm, but it's too late, Sirius on his feet all broad and imposing in his leather jacket.

"What did you say?" Sirius asks, mock-casual, and the host sneers at him, obviously even drunker than Sirius is.

"I said you ought to take your bloody girlfriend and get off my bloody couch and leave--"

Peter watches Sirius' fist snap out, firewhiskey tumbler dropped and forgotten, and thinks oh, bugger before he lunges off the couch to tackle one of the host's friends around the waist.

*

At James and Lily's wedding Peter had to give a speech.

He thinks it went all right, all things considered. He didn't faint or lose his notecards, and everyone toasted politely. It wasn't a very good speech, but it wasn't a very bad speech either. After it's all done Lily floats over to him with her red hair lit up by all the candles everywhere and clasps his hands between her own.

"That was beautiful, Peter. Thank you so much," she says, warmly, and James catches up with her to clasp his shoulder and grin.

"Thanks for not mentioning how many other girls I used to snog like Padfoot did, yeah? I think Lily's sister wants to kill me." He pauses. "Well, more than she already did."

"James."

"It's not my fault your sister's a nutter, love."

"James!"

"You're welcome," Peter says quietly, but they've already forgotten about him.

For once, watching Lily and James smile at each, James sweeping Lily into his arms against her fiercely whispered protests, Peter doesn't mind that he's forgotten.

He sits with Remus most of the rest of the night, and they watch James and Lily dance, and Peter realizes it doesn't matter what kind of speech he gave, or anybody gave, because this isn't about any of them. It's about his best friend and his fiancee-his wife, now, and how perfect they are together.

"I want that someday," Peter says, quietly, and Remus smiles at him with that especially Remus look he gets sometimes, happy but--wistful.

"You will, Peter."

"You too, Moony."

Peter understands how to be kind, sometimes, and Remus doesn't argue with him. For once.

They sit and they watch, until they have to go rescue Sirius from Petunia, and even with everything going on everywhere else Peter thinks--today was pretty brilliant.

*

He has to half-drag Sirius back to his flat--his own flat, because the Order house is too far to walk right now and Sirius is too heavy and Peter is very, very dizzy. It turns out being socked in the jaw on top of drinking does that to a person.

Sirius is much worse, and Peter feels a pang of guilt at that, because it was because he was looking out for Peter and that's just not fair at all.

"There," he pants, setting Sirius in a chair in his tiny kitchen, and he stumbles off to get a bag of frozen peas and a washcloth. He makes Sirius hold the peas to his head and soaks the cloth, dabbing awkwardly at the blood on Sirius' face. Sirius grins at him, blurrily.

"Did we win?"

"Did we--no, not really, Padfoot." Peter bites his lip. "I'm sorry."

"What're you sorry for?" Sirius frowns, obviously confused, and Peter sighs.

"For sitting so close. I didn't think anyone--would think, you know, I was drunk--"

"Bloody--Wormtail, you idiot, no one gets to call my friends names, it's not your bloody fault." Sirius laughs, splitting his lip open again, and Peter winces and dabs ineffectually at it. "Even if you were snogging another bloke on the couch. You aren't like that."

Peter is too quiet for too long, and Sirius eventually catches that something is wrong.

"Peter?"

"What if I was?" Peter asks, and his throat feels like it's chewing up the words as he speaks, like it's chewing up his heart, and he's so scared.

"But you aren't," Sirius repeats, and Peter thinks that sometimes Sirius Black is really an idiot.

"Forget it," Peter mumbles, turning his eyes down and straightening up, but Sirius catches him by the elbow.

"I guess--you'd have to check, wouldn't you?" Sirius says, slowly at first, and then with the cheer of the blindingly drunk who thinks he just had a good idea when he really, really hasn't. "Go on, then."

"What?" Peter's eyes flicks up to Sirius' in a flash, taking in his broad grin and Peter--realizes he thinks this is a joke, that Peter is joking, and sometimes Peter really hates Sirius Black, who is gorgeous and popular and rich and good with girls and has never felt like Peter has felt about anything--

--sometimes Peter Pettigrew can't breathe, because one of his best friends laughs and says "See, I knew it, you're not--" and eight years, eighteen years of people telling him what he is and he isn't until Peter doesn't really know what he is except right then it's fed up, and when Peter kisses Sirius it's more like he's hitting him than anything and he expects Sirius to hit him back but Sirius is just still and quiet, and when Peter flinches back from the punch he expects Sirius is just wide-eyed and stunned and Peter is instantly, horribly sorry.

"I guess you're right," Peter says, quietly, taking Sirius' hand from his arm, "Didn't do a thing for me."

"Peter--"

"My room is over there. I'm sleeping on the couch. If you need to be sick the toilet is over there."

Peter leaves Sirius Black in his tiny kitchen and does, eventually, fall asleep on the couch, and he hates Sirius and he hates parties and he hates alcohol and he hates this couch and, most of all, Peter hates himself.

*

What does Peter remember?

The next day, Sirius doesn't even remember making it to the party.

Peter remembers when I was eighteen I kissed Sirius Black on the mouth.

*

"Hey, Peter!"

Severus' book flies into his hands and Peter barely fumbles catching it, and James grins at him with sparkles in his bright green eyes, and everyone is laughing and Peter feels like he really could belong here.

(He doesn't look at Severus, but Peter isn't sorry. Severus would do it to him if he could. They know that about each other.)

(Peter isn't sorry until he finds Severus Snape crying in the boys' toilet on the fifth floor and he says, nervously, "Hey--")

("Stay away from me!")

(Peter doesn't tell anyone.)

*

James teaches Peter how to fly.

In class, he always freezes, clutching the broom and closing his eyes, and he falls and falls until he refuses to get on the broom at all, breaking down and crying in front of everyone. James hunts him down and says: "Come on, Peter. You can do this."

They've only sort of been friends for a week. Peter doesn't understand why James is bothering, but he lets James drag him back to the training field. It's just the two of them, and James coaxes Peter on his very own broom. Peter can't afford a broom of his own, but James' family is rich.

James hops on behind him and gently kicks off the ground, and they circle the courtyard with their toes skimming the grass as Peter gasps and squeezes his eyes shut and he feels a whoosh of air and James laughs.

"Well, it's up to you now," he says, and hops off the broom nimbly as it arcs up and Peter opens his eyes in the crisp sunlight and he's terrified and this is awful and he's going to die, he's really going to die--

"--James, I'm flying!"

"Told you!" James calls up, where Peter is, indeed, flying, clutching the broom with sweaty palms but flying all the same, cheeks flushed with the sting of wind as he circles in the air until James is tiny on the ground, and how was he ever scared of this? How could he ever not have wanted to be up here?

*

"You've got ink on you," Remus says, absently pointing, and Peter rubs the tip of his nose. They've been studying all night for their O.W.L.'s. Peter wonders why Remus even bothers to study; James and Sirius don't, and they actually need to, while Remus is going to ace everything like he always does without even trying. Peter, on the other hand, is quite sure he's going to fail the Defense Against the Dark Arts test. He tries, Merlin knows he does, but there's something about a blank piece of paper in front of him that makes him freeze. He does better when he has time, like an essay, but he's always miserable when he has to do it quickly. Then he panics, and before you know it he's gone and failed another examination.

But he has to pass, because otherwise he'll be held back and then the Marauders will go on without him and he'll eventually be too old for school and they'll break his wand and he'll go home in disgrace and no one will even remember him--

In the midst of this nightmare he notices Remus is in the middle of wiping his nose for him, and he flushes, embarrassed.

"Sorry."

"You apologize too much," Remus says, with a tiny, tired smile. "Come on. What are the properties of morrigan feathers?"

Peter knows that, he's sure he does, it's right on the tip of his tongue, but all that comes up is a dead blank. Morrigan feathers? He probably couldn't remember the difference between a morrigan and a merfolk.

"I'm going to fail," he says, glumly, and lets his head fall forward. "I'm going to fail and die alone, is what."

"You're not going to fail," Remus says, gently, and pulls Peter up by the scruff of his neck. "You're going to do perfectly well. You aren't stupid, Peter, no matter what anyone says--"

"Moony! Wormtail!" Sirius swaggers in with a girl, Maybelle Marceline, hanging off his arm, James nowhere to be seen. "James is filling the lake with bubbles! You have to come and see it, it's brilliant--"

"We're studying, Sirius."

Sirius groans at Remus, and the girl, who Peter has never paid attention to before but now thinks has a grating laugh, buries her face in the side of his throat. "You're an utterly boring person sometimes, Lupin. Peter! You'll come, won't you?"

Peter glances between him and Remus, and hesitantly shakes his head. "I really have got to pass this examination. I'm sorry."

"All right," Sirius says, with a flick of his hair and a dismissive huff (no one says no to Sirius Black very often, and Peter knows he'll sulk for a while, but he really does have to study and not be a tagalong on one of Sirius' bloody dates), "Enjoy the books, then. If you two ever want to have some real fun again, let me know."

Sirius strides out of the common room and Peter just--watches.

"He doesn't mean to, you know," Remus says, reading Peter's mood better than Peter can read it himself, "He doesn't know."

"He doesn't know what?" Peter asks, still distracted, and Remus shrugs, looking a little sad.

"That you fancy him."

Peter stares at Remus for one horrified second before he bolts from the room.

*

What does Peter remember?

Remus always knows what Peter is thinking, until he doesn't.

*

Remus finds him huddled in a hallway behind a suit of armour quickly enough, and Peter dully lifts his head.

"How'd you find me?"

"Map, Wormtail." Remus taps him on the head with it, then settles down beside him. "I don't--care, Pete, I'm--well, you know. We've all got our secrets. At least yours couldn't kill anyone."

That's what you think, Peter thinks, desperately, but he doesn't say it. How can he explain that his chest corkscrews every night when they're going to bed, laughing and planning and usually up too late? How can he put this into words when he never lets himself think about it? He hides his face in his knees again, feeling his belly roll like it always does.

Peter isn't pretty. He's chubby and awkward, with a sharp, nervous look and dishwater blond hair. His teeth are a little crooked and no amount of magical washes will keep his skin clear. He isn't interesting or attractive or funny, he's just...there. Like a lump. It's like everything that's the opposite of Sirius got put into a shape, and out came dumpy little Peter Pettigrew. It's hopeless. He doesn't need Remus to tell him that, with the obvious aside. Remus puts a comforting arm around him, and Peter is glad he lets them just be quiet.

"You won't tell anyone, will you?" He asks, tremulously.

"Of course not," Remus assures, squeezing his shoulders. "Especially not Sirius."

Peter understands for the first time that yes, sometimes very smart people can be very stupid at the same time.

*

"I'm not really a halfblood," Peter confesses, just after Christmas their first year, and Remus looks at him with calm grey eyes, a book not even for school open in his lap.

Before Peter even got on the train, he listened. His mum held his hand (so tightly, and Peter was mortified, but he'd had worse, and this place was utterly brilliant) but Peter could still watch, pay attention, and he may not be smart but he can be clever. Peter knew if he wanted to make it in this place, if he wanted to even try, he had to know the new rules.

Pureblood. Halfblood. Muggleborn. Hissed: mudblood.

On the train a little girl sneered mudblood at him and he took a deep breath in his lumpy jumper and said actually, my father is an American wizard who died fighting a dragon in Romania--

His father is dimly remembered, in the silhouette of light and shadow Peter could see from the closet, hands clamped on his ears. That was the first place Peter learned to be still. To be quiet. If he didn't make a sound, if he was good, then--that night he would be all right. After, he would climb onto the couch with his mum while she cried and cried, holding frozen vegetables to her face or her stomach.

One day he was there and then he wasn't anymore.

There were no dragons, unless maybe his father was one.

The little girl has already dismissed, and Peter thinks he has been believed, and he hoped terribly that there wasn't a way to tell as a little boy with the greenest possible eyes had leaned out of a compartment and said a dragon, really?

Peter entertained his future friends with an elaborate and fictional account of Patrick Pettigrew, American wizard, who died when Peter was four and was extremely brave, and because Peter is a good liar this is believed. Except--

Calm grey eyes.

"I know, Peter," Remus says.

Peter hesitates, and manages to squeak: "Are you--angry at me?"

"No," Remus shakes his head, finally closing his book, "I'm not angry. You see how they treat anyone who's different around here. You're still my friend, Peter."

My friend, Peter.

They tell James and Sirius eventually. Everyone keeps it a secret. It isn't like anyone else cares enough to hear about Peter's parents. Halfblood. No one guesses.

Remus can be very smart, but Remus can also be very stupid.

*

What does Peter Pettigrew remember about Remus Lupin?

*

Calm grey eyes.

*

They're fighting in a cramped, filthy alley, and Peter is hit by something that feels heavier than a truck, and he hears Peter! like he's underwater, and Remus is crouching next to him with hair all out of place and a tear in the front of his shirt and Peter is trying to tell him it's fine, he just needs a moment, he'll be right back up--

*

--Peter is twelve and Remus is sharing his bed after he let Peter cry himself sick, and Peter, who can't sleep, watches Remus' eyelashes flutter restlessly in the moonlight.

Peter is twelve and something tiny and hopeful is waking up in his chest.

*

People will look back and say, JamesSiriusRemus and Peter. Like that. Like he was a different part of them. He deserves that.

But it was JamesSirius and RemusPeter, at the time. The shining stars and the second string. Always together, but some of them were a little closer than others.

*

James Potter is a streak of light and laughter as he wins the sixth year Quidditch cup, and after the game he tumbles off his broom and they all carry him off the field, singing rude songs about Slytherin of their shared devising. They get very slightly tipsy on butterbeer and then very much more tipsy on the firewhiskey Sirius had smuggled in, and sprawl across two of their beds shoved together. Peter is exhausted and content and basking in this.

Has he ever been this happy?

What was his life like before Hogwarts? Before the Marauders?

"You know, Wormtail," James says, conversationally, "I hear Johanna Gillespie in Hufflepuff has a thing for you."

"Oh--come on, no she doesn't, that's rubbish--" Peter squirms; Johanna Gillespie isn't as pretty as Lily, or the girls Sirius goes for (he never really sees Remus with a girl, but he sees Remus watch James and Sirius with them, quiet and sad and restrained in self-inflicted loneliness, and that's why sometimes Peter wishes they just--would be less obvious about it, but he's trying not to think about that) but she's too pretty for Peter. Wide eyes, a little heavy, with kinky red hair, but those eyes are bright blue and she has a spray of freckles over her cheekbones, a kind, shy smile.

"Why is it rubbish?" James demands, sitting up on his elbows, and Peter rolls his eyes to find Sirius grinning toothily at him and Remus looking slightly dreamier, and Peter rolls his eyes back to James.

"Look at me, Prongs," he says, and because he's happy he can just be self-deprecating, sweeping his hands down at himself. "I'm fat and spotty and I've got a face almost as ugly as Padfoot's--"

"--you git--"

"--and I hang out with the lot of you. No girl is going to fancy me."

"You're not fat," James says, determined, and Peter knows that face--it's a bit like the one he uses on Lily, the look of a boy who is going to get what he wants, and Peter covers his face in his hands. "Bloody hell, Pete, you're not, you're--husky. I mean you used to be quite the little butterball, but you lost the baby fat, yeah? Your spots are clearing up and you're not nearly as ugly as Padfoot."

"I'm right here."

"He's right," Remus says, sitting up with James, "You're actually not bad-looking. Besides. It's true, about Johanna. You have a date tomorrow."

Whatever half-suppressed joy he feels at actually not bad-looking disappears in an icy plunge.

"No."

"Oh, yes," Sirius says, clearly looking for revenge, because then he says, "I'm going to do your hair--"

*

"Iftheysetyouuptodothisjustpleasetellme," is the first thing Peter says, in a whoosh, and Johanna blinks at him in the courtyard.

"I mean--" he almost shoves a hand into his hair, but remembers just in time that Sirius had--done whatever he had to it, cut it shorter and spiky and rubbed some kind of wax in it, and Remus had temporarily zapped his spots, and James had coached him on what to say, and Peter is utterly sure this is a set-up. Because there is simply no way, at all, a girl would notice him next to his friends. "If you don't--if this was their idea. I'd like to know. Because I don't want a pity date or--to be your stepping stone to my friends."

Already, he knows, he has bungled this, because Johanna looks hurt and confused at the same time, biting her little fingernail.

"No," she says, "I do--I asked, um, Lily. To see if--she could set us up."

No one had mentioned Lily. The bastards. Peter swears he's going to have his revenge.

"All right, but--why?" Again, he's a master of sweet talking. She flushes as brightly as her hair and rocks on her feet.

"You're...you know, clever. But you're not a show off. I--don't like that, in boys. And I sit behind you in Charms and--I just--want to get to know you, but - if you don't want to, it's all right--"

He catches her hand before she can turn around. Clever. He's always wanted someone else to notice.

"No--no, I do. I really do."

*

Johanna Gillespie is Peter Pettigrew's first kiss. She shivers and tucks her head against his chest again, after, and Peter thinks that it was--good. Different.

They see each other for almost a year and Peter tries as hard as he can. Johanna is a good person. A good friend. He's comfortable and happy around her. She knits him mittens for Christmas. His mum likes her. His friends all like her.

They kiss and they hold hands and Johanna is soft, soft, wet on his fingers the few times they do go a little further, but he has to close his eyes when she reciprocates and--he tries. So hard. It's not for lack of trying.

"Don't you think I'm pretty?" She's pleading, and he does. He does think she's pretty.

She isn't the one who has something wrong with her.

He lets her go gently, in the end. It's a very amicable split. They promise to stay friends.

Remus looks at him and thinks he knows and Remus is very smart but he is also very stupid.

Johanna Gillespie, Muggleborn, dies when they are both nineteen.

Peter wonders every time there is a headline now was it me? Did I do this? How many now Peter what have you done Peter what is the cost what are you buying with this what will you owe in the end?

*

He tries to make them promise not to hurt his friends.

He tries, he really does. It's the thing he holds out on the longest and he's sick with hating himself because what about everyone else and their friends and their families what are you doing Peter but it's too late, now, there's no way out. He tries, he really does, to convince himself that this is true.

He sits on the edge of the bed in his mum's flat, in his old room, and he puts his face in his hands and cries.

His mum makes them both chamomile tea.

*

"What do you remember from the Order meeting?"

Peter, who has always had a good memory (to count the stings and the balms of life, to measure, to understand his surroundings--rats survive through being small by being clever, rats survive, rats are not wolves facing extinction or graceful stags or steadfastly stubborn dogs, rats survive), tells them everything.

The mark on his arm is more of a joke than anything else. But a way to force compliance. To show: we own you, now.

*

Peter remembers when he was Wormtail.

The first night in the house they're all exhausted and more scared than anyone will say. Remus is shivering in painful looking spasms on the floor, eyes sealed tightly.

"D--did I h--"

"No, Moony, we're all--we're fine." James, ever first at everything, crawls to Remus' side, Sirius dragging himself after and grumbling something that sounds an awful like 'as if you could've anyway', but Peter stumbles to the wall and tucks a rucksack out of the cranny he hid it in earlier.

"Here," Peter says, and pulls a blanket from it, draping it over Remus' wrung out (and pretty much naked) body. "And--if you can eat--"

He kneels next to him and unwraps a bar of chocolate, offering it to Remus encouragingly: "Chocolate, uh--" he forgets what his reason for bringing it was, then recalls "--my mum says--it always makes you feel better. When you're sick or you're upset."

"I should've thought about a blanket," Sirius mutters, clearly blaming himself for his oversight.

"Chocolate," James shivers a laugh, then coughs, "Pete, you're a peach."

Remus' fingers brush against Peter's as he takes the chocolate, and he opens his eyes to smile ghostly pale and ghostly weak up at him.

"Thank you, Peter."

He remembers when they were friends.

*

What does Peter forget, somewhere, in the midst of shrieking raids in the dark and burning sigils above houses full of corpses and running and fighting and lying and betraying and surviving?

*

"What did I say? Best house. Knew you'd get in." James claps him on the shoulder after all but flying from the stage to join them and Peter blushes, Remus smiling encouragingly over the table at him as Sirius saws into a piece of bread and pointedly ignores the furious looks being thrown from the Slytherin table.

"This is--this is the best day. Of my life," Peter stammers out, and Remus smiles a little at him.

"So what did the Hat say to you lot, anyway?" Sirius lifts his head from eating, eyebrows quirked.

"Not much," James says, shrugging and propping his elbows on the table, "Said I was going to drive the teachers to less stressful professions. Like dragon taming."

Sirius laughs: "Yeah? It must be going senile, it said almost the same thing to me. Remus?"

Remus shakes his head, at first, but needling from the other two boys (Peter doesn't join in, because he doesn't want them to remember to ask him either) before he relents. "It told me I'm...well, that I have a lot of courage already."

"How about you, Peter?" Remus turns softly to him, and Peter is--surprised to be remembered. Surprised that anyone cares to hear what he has to say. But it's not something he's sure he should be proud of, like the other boys. The Sorting Hat rested on him a long time with Peter thinking, desperately, GryffindorGryffindorGryffindor. He wanted to be with these boys, who were friendly and funny and hadn't been mean to him (not really), and not just for safety in numbers. He knew in a little while James and Sirius would forget him for sure, but he thought Remus might...well, Remus seemed like the kind of person who remembered people.

Maybe they could be friends. Maybe all of them could be friends.

"I almost got--" Slytherin "--Hufflepuff, but, um--I talked to it."

James whistles, low and quiet. "Definitely going senile. Hufflepuff? Not a chance."

James can be casually, effortlessly generous. Peter is already jealous of that, a little. He wonders how James grew up, that he can give like it's nothing.

Sirius snorts: "So, what did you say?"

"I promised I'd be brave," he says, shyly.

This seems that here, like under the hat, it's a good answer.

*

What did Peter forget?