The Last Week
You are a sleeping lion in your bed
I will not wake you
You're the moment
Love has passed
We all must learn to hate you
You're a memory from before
Day One || October 25, 1981
Peter slumped forward in his cushioned chair, eyes staring blankly at the torn wallpaper several feet in front of him. He pulled his legs up to his chest, and unable to shut off his swirling thoughts he blindly grabbed the bottle of Firewhiskey from the table next to him. He gulped it like it was his first drink of water after being lost in the desert for days, no longer choked by the burn as it plunged down his throat. Rather, he welcomed it.
At times he doubted his choices: his life for others. He only slept with the aid of a specially brewed Dreamless Sleep; otherwise, the two times he had forgotten, he woke up with his mates in the process of hunting him down somewhere, either at Hogwarts, the Forbidden Forest, unknown other places… Each time their voices echoed in his head, "How could you do it, Peter? How?"
How could he indeed?
He cracked his knuckles and staggered up from the chair, holding a hand to his head as his vision blurred. Peter stumbled over to the wall and sank back down to the floor, pulling his wand from its holster. He cradled it in both hands, pondering if he'd rather take another easy way out and kill himself before the Dark Lord could—if he failed—or before his old mates found him—if everything went as planned. Could the Dark Lord protect him—would he?
He had never been fully accepted into the Death Eater's inner circle; after all, he had been a Gryffindor. The others—mainly Slytherins along with a handful of Ravenclaws and less than a few Hufflepuffs (who were treated even better than he was for their unquestionable loyalty, the bloody badgers)—they all looked down on him to some degree. But they all knew he was valuable in some way, so they reserved their callous spit for the victims of their attacks… the Mudbloods, their lovers and sympathizers, and those unfortunate bloody Muggles who happened to get in their way.
Peter rolled his wand across the floor and got back up to his feet, thinking a nice Butterbeer might lift him a bit. He made a small amount from the recipe he and the other Marauders had stolen from The Three Broomsticks years ago it seemed like now. He lifted the glass to his lips and drank, shivering at the sudden warmth buzzing through his veins.
His eyes wandered around the small dingy kitchen, finding a copy of The Daily Prophet lying strewn about on the table. Peter questioned when and how it had gotten there, and settled on the possibility that he'd been asleep when the owl had came. Maybe it had assumed him dead after… oh! With sudden realization, he lifted the sleeve of his robes and touched the previously mysterious cuts on the inside of his wrist. He shrugged, not caring if he healed them at the moment. He doubted that he would be able to, anyway. Any skill of his had diminished within the past month, especially so in the past week. It was as if even his own magic despised him.
Peter ran a couple of fingers down the bridge of his dirty nose (not as if any other place on his body wasclean; he hadn't bathed himself in at least a week or two, though he had told James and Lily that it was because of work for the Order…). He walked over to the table like a dying man and sat down in a seat, pulling the paper over to him when a great shattering of glass made him jump. His heart beat erratically, and he jerked his head around to find his wand and the source of the noise. His eyes landed on a broken window above the kitchen sink; Peter scrambled for his wand.
"Show yourself, will you? Fuckin' coward!" Peter yelled, though his teeth chattered and his eyes brimmed with tears, though he told himself that that was because of the unforgiving gusts of wind that blew through the broken window. This October was worse than any of the previous ones he had been through, and he assumed that some of it was because of this Wizarding war. The Dark Lord didn't seem like a master who enjoyed copious amounts of sunshine, Peter thought.
He fixed the window with a few waves of his wand after poking his head outside, muttering curse words under his breath. He bypassed the newspaper, deciding it best to not worry about the deaths anymore. The only news he was anxious for would come soon enough.
Author's Note: The lyrics quoted are from Editors' song "When Anger Shows." Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any reviews. :)
Disclaimer: I'm not J. K. Rowling; I claim no ownership of Harry Potter or its characters, etc.