A plot twist, Remus told him once, was when there was a sudden or unexpected change in a story.

He had been upset because of the book that he had borrowed from him – he couldn't understand why any reasonable person would write a story about two people falling in love and everything going horrifically wrong from that point. Remus politely tried to explain that the story wasn't a romance; the story was a 'statement about humanity'. He had had a curious itch to look back at the book and see how Remus could possibly pull that out of it, but then one of them – because it was always Sirius and James, rather than Sirius or James – had asked if there was any shagging in Remus' glorified romance novel and all of the laughter put it far from his mind.

Peter wished now that he had paid more attention to the words and less to the laughter. It was so easy to be overwhelmed by it all – there he was, a mere figure of circumstance back then and somehow a vital part of a friendship that felt immortal. Now, thinking on it with biting defeat, the word immortal was perhaps not the best to use. Times like this he wanted Remus here, always so brilliant with words when his own lips fumbled.

They were supposed to be mates for life. He would have been slapped round the head for saying something like that in a state of sobriety – would have been – but now he supposed there was no one here to gain amusement from his naive assumptions of the world. An optimist, James used to declare, Peter Pettigrew was an optimist. It had been his secret, up to this very moment, that it had never been optimism. That would require hope, which was something he never had. In its place, there was only that desperate need for assurance that, in the end, everything would be okay.

In the end, it all accounted for nothing.

"Stop being so depressing, mate," Peter's voice suddenly rang out. It sounded strange, less like his own and more of a warped attempt to recreate Sirius' nonchalance. He did it often – tried to guess what the others would say – but it was always just a reminder of how he was never them. He was clever, but he was never quite as clever or as quick witted as the others, so the 'conversations' were stunted with his inability to come up with a smooth remark in return.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

He allowed himself a moment of sadness, paying respects that he did not deserve to give, before he prepared himself for the transformation. He tried to tell himself that his survival was the last thing he could do in their memory. Coward.

The story had never been his, after all. It had been theirs – the four of them – and it was the best story that Hogwarts had ever known – all of the laughs, the full moons, exploding snap, exploding Snape, all of it.

A plot twist, Remus told him once, was a sudden or unexpected change in a story. How strange it was to realize that in this story – in their story – he had somehow become the villain.