Disclaimer: Most of this belongs to Lady Rowling, she of the ridiculous bank account. All extrapolations and alterations are mine, but really that just means I still cant make any money off this. Cry for me, will you?
Chapter two.
by Byakugan789
Harry howled in impotent pain and fury as his mother hurtled upstairs, taking his admittedly eighteen month old female body up towards the nursery. This was not how it was supposed to go! He had struck a bargain! Eyrishon had sent him back and he was to change fate, escape causality! It had made him a girl for Morganna's sake, why was it all happening the same as before?! He had trained damn it!
Closing his eyes as his mother set him down in the crib he began to breath deep calming breaths and watched his mother futilely try to barricade the door. It wasn't going to work, he remembered that, Voldemort had hardly even paused between his wand and his power last time. The evil Hermione probably hadn't even taken the time to think of an incantation before simply wielding his magic as was his will. But there had been one thing that had given the man pause.
Snape.
In Tom's willingness to reward his servant he had taken enough time to lazily offer Lily two entire chances to step aside and give him up, if his mother was as willing to sacrifice herself for her daughter as she had been for her son then he would have time, little, but just enough, to strike. A flashpoint Dumbledore had called it, one moment, one truly pivotal event in which everything could change.
It would have to be enough.
Setting his mind to the ready and drawing upon his magic Harry watched fascinated as Lily rushed around the room, a book in one hand and various boxes or pieces of furniture in the other. The Tome was open and she was chanting feverishly as she moved like a woman possessed. Perhaps this was the magic that had allowed her sacrifice to save him? So, so many had died before without anything like him happening, many mothers had even sacrificed themselves in the protection of others, but only in the old folk stories and his own had such a thing ever actually mattered.
But there wasn't enough time left to think about that, with a crash the door flew open, all of his mother's efforts to impede it for naught. Harry watched as she threw the book aside and turned to face Tom, her arms wide as she sought to shield him with her body.
"Not Ivy," she cried as Harry tensed "not Ivy, please not Ivy!" He had only seconds now, it was time to act!
"Stand aside," came Tom's high cold voice as smoky blue light began to gather in Harry's little fists "you silly girl ... stand aside now."
Harry struck.
Four ribbons of light, shimmering gold, ethereal cyan, vivid violet and a dark angry red; leapt from his tiny body and struck Riddle, simultaneously curving around his mother and pulling her off to the side. Voldemort himself flew backwards, out of the door and into the wall just beyond. The air between them rippled and shuddered under a rainbow stream of raw magic from the fully developed adult core of a powerful wizard. Harry looked into Voldemort's eyes and saw not fear, but surprise. He had not expected 'her' to be of any true threat, had probably not even believed the prophesy till now.
Harry watched as, in those eternal seconds, the dark lord began to resist; pushing against Harry's magic with his own and struggling to point his wand into the room. Damn, the wand! Harry thought viciously, how had he kept it? I never manage to keep my wand when I'm being thrown around! Changing tactics he lowered one hand slightly from their positions pointing palms forward as if pushing Riddle back physically and made a grasping motion before pulling back. His instinctual magic responded in kind but the result was something neither of them had expected.
Voldemort, his right side suddenly free of the awful pressure had swung his arm forward to point his wand at the little savior only for the presence to return before the words could even form on his lips or in his mind, only this time pulling his arm forward. Instead of helping him or relieving Tom of his wand as Harry had intended the sudden reversal of forces caused a shearing force which ripped Tom's whole arm off, wand still in hand, and sent it barreling towards the crib. The lower knuckles, whiter than normal in their death-grip on the yew strip slamming into the Harry's forehead, bowling him over.
Blackness overtook him and the next thing Harry knew he was being cradled by a sobbing Lily Potter. Wriggling in her arms Harry turned his female body so that he could see the rest of the room, a task made slightly easier by the fact that his mother was covered head to toe in warm sticky blood. In Lily's other hand, the one not holding her 'daughter' was the splintered remains of a small, wooden, one shelf book rack which she was still raising up and down feebly before repeatedly dropping it on the beaten, broken and bloody remains of Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Exhausted, disappointed and furious Harry decided he'd have to be content with having saved at least one parent and hope things went better with Sirius this time. Letting his head fall against his mother's chest Harry 'Ivy' Potter went to sleep.
~! #$%^&*()_+
Sirius landed in the front yard of the Potters house with a thump and the roar of his motorcycle cut out abruptly, but he hardly noticed, already vaulting off of the vehicle and speeding towards the house. His mind a whirl with horrible possibilities his heart clenched painfully as he saw the open doorway. Even if the wards hadn't been screaming at him for the last ten minutes that alone would have made him suspicious, the air was far to cold to simply leave the door open like that, especially with how little Ivy reacted to the cold…
Reaching the porch did nothing good to his blood pressure as he saw that the door had been torn apart by some unknown force, possibly a bombarda curse or maybe the wards violently failing to keep out a powerful, hostile wizard. He made it into the sitting room seconds later and saw a sight that crippled him. James Charles Potter lay there in the entry to the sitting room, his eyes wide and glassy with panic but motionless, his chest still and lips turning blue. Dead but unmarked. The killing curse. He and James had been best friends since they had first met on the train ride to Hogwarts seeing him dead felt as if someone had torn off his arm and begun beating him with it.
As the grief of the situation threatened to overwhelm him another thought intruded upon his pain, what of Lily? Was she still in the house? Was she too dead? He'd probably kill himself if he found her body too, lying somewhere nearby like James… but maybe she'd gotten away? He had to know. Waving his wand he concentrated briefly on the words hominum revelio and his mind was suddenly filled with the knowledge of three more humans above and to the right of him. Someone was still in the house, up the stairs. He had to see.
Lurching to his feet he charged for the stairs, supporting himself upon the walls, knees simultaneously weak and incredibly strong in his grief and desperation to know. He passed the landing and turned the corner to see further destruction. There was a body lying in the doorway and a large bloodstain on the wall. His heart clenched at this, but the legs pointing out in the hall were covered in black robes rather than jeans or cashmere. Lurching forward Sirius ran towards the room he vaguely recognized as Ivy's nursery and caught himself on the door frame. Inside lay the bleeding mangled body of the families attacker, swathed in black robes, with paper white skin, stained liberally with blood where Lily sat sobbing and absentmindedly raising what looked like a book end only to drop it weakly on the shattered skull if the insensate, bleeding out and likely very dead wizard.
"Lily!" Sirius let out in a strangled voice. "Oh, Lily, thank Merlin! James is... is..."
Lily looked up at him looking lost for a moment before she latched onto him and began sobbing anew. "He's dead Siri" Lily mumbled through the tears and into his chest as they held each other "James told me to take Ivy and run, but Ivy... Ivy got him in the end! James is dead. V-Vold-Tom is dead... how did he even get here Sirius?" She shook her head and sobbed harder. "No, there's only one way he could have gotten here, Peter's probably dead too." She sniffled. "Or being held under torture."
Sirius nodded, grief over James' death slowly being tempered by the warm weight and words of Lily and Ivy clutched in his arms. James... Peter... Half of the Marauders gone... now there was only him and captain doom and gloom, Mooney. "Lily, do you think you'll be able to get to my safe-house? I need to see if I can find Peter's body." Sirius said, his voice sounding dead even to himself. Lily sniffed and clutched him tighter. "Alright..." he said quietly "alright, we'll go together."
As Sirius and Lily supported each other our of the house and towards Sirius' motorcycle there was a fluttering roar as if fire was passing through the air and Hagrid came in to land on an enormous Thestral, the hooves clopping to the ground. "James! Lily! Are the two of you alright? Dumbledore said his instermens were goin barmy! Wa's goin on?"
Instead of answering though, Lily broke out sobbing again. Sirius helped her over to his bike before letting go and turning toward the old gamekeeper. "James'... James is... dead... Hagrid." Sirius said as the half-giant stumped forward heavily.
"Sirius? No... NO! James can' be dead! What in the blazes 'appened!?"
"I don't know." Sirius admitted. "The wards told me about dark curses being cast and I turned around and headed back as fast as I could. From what you said I suppose its same for you. But Voldemort's dead. J-james is dead. Peter's either dead or being held by Voldemort's Death-Eaters. I could use your help to collect their bodies."
Hagrid gaped at Sirius and an all too familiar look of loss swept across the behemoths face. Glittering black eyes closed, leaking large tears and he tilted back his head and roared. After he was done the two men came together and began talking, their voices harsh with recent pain. "Wha der ya need me ter do?" The half-giant asked.
"I'm taking Lily to my apartment, It's under the Fidellius and a few nastier curse wards against intruders. I was planning on bringing you, Lily and the Marauders and maybe a few of the order over for keying in the next week, but with this..." Sirius shook his head. "One Marauder dead, a second dead or captured... Jame's house compromised... And Lily needs me. If you could help I still need to collect James and Voldemort's bodies and find out what happened to Peter. I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone knew he'd taken my place a secret keeper."
"L-lil Pettie t-took your place?" Hagrid asked, sounding lost. Dumbledore had told everyone that Sirius had been the secret keeper... so why? "Why?"
Sirius barked out a hollow laugh. "Because we never expected anyone would think of him. Hell, maybe they didn't either... Lily thinks he may be held under torture. Peter's never been a strong person, whoever took him probably didn't even know what a gold mine they had until he'd squeaked."
"Righ" Hagrid nodded sadly, a pained look on his face "Fer his sake, it's probably be'er ifin e's dead then. Dem death eaters kin be nasty. Dumbledore sent me ter evacuate Lily, James and Ivy, bu iffin yer promise ter take Dumbledore inna yer wards soon I can just take him tha bodies. He'll wanna know how Tom died fer certain."
"Thanks Rubes." Sirius said wearily and turned back to his bike. Reaching into his pocket he removed the sidecar but Lily shook her head. Sirius understood, Lily had always been very tactile in her emotions, either fury, compassion, love or grief. Her feeling safe would equate to being able to hold onto him and her daughter throughout the ride, not being huddled into the sidecar, clutching Ivy and crying to herself.
As Hagrid squeezed himself through the Potters front door Sirius took off into the night, the roar of him motorcycle sounding more to his hears like the cry of a wounded beast than its usually soothing mechanical purr.
~! #$%^&*()_+
Tom Marvolo Riddle felt a sense of movement and tried to moan. But everything was too fuzzy to moan. What had he been doing? He remembered a sense of purpose, a bit of excitement, a flash of surprise and rage, brutal rage. But beyond that... all was pain. But that seemed to be numbing some now. Blinding pain was melting away to smothering fog. Was this what it was like to be dead with your soul unable to move on? It wasn't as bad as he had thought it might be... Still, bad enough, if he was dead and still conscious it meant two things. He had been successful in achieving immortality, but he obviously hadn't gone far enough.
There was another flare of pain slightly below and in front of his conscious thoughts... did that mean he was not in fact dead? Or had that priest at the orphanage been right and Lucifer's devils had come for him now that he was no longer strictly on the mortal coil? His existence grew fuzzier and for a moment he thought he could feel a slight breeze... inside of his head? He struggled to hold onto his thoughts, but even they were slowly slipping away as the open wound on his skull and his magically enhance body slowly lead to brain death. The central core of Voldemort would eventually separate from it's body and become a dark shadow haunting the Headmasters office, but that piece of the dark lord would not become a problem for many, many years to come.
~! #$%^&*()_+
Severus Snape gazed at the brand on his arm, open mouthed in shock. It had gone from black as fresh ash, and about as painful, to a slight gray shadow on his left forearm. It... but... he couldn't believe it... the prophesy... it hadn't been... real... had it? His master certainly hadn't believed so, willing to take out the child merely because the disclosure of the mad seer's words had been giving people hope... But his lord was now... weak? Defeated? Severus would dare say dead, but then why would the mark still be there? It had been their lords ultimate tool for keeping track of his followers and it's simple existence was linked to the mans own magic. If he had died then it should have faded entirely.
He wondered, a thick tremor of fear running through his blood, if Lily had survived. He had seen Lily's little Brat, she looked too much like James and too little like Lily for Severus to give the slightest damn on that count, and would be absolutely gleeful if James had died, but the thought that Lily might not have made it out of the confrontation filled him with dread.
Still though, something had happened to his lord, and from this small nugget of information it wasn't anything good. Perhaps the brat really had been the power needed to destroy Tom...
Getting up, the sallow skinned man made his way from his newly appointed dungeon/spying post and headed for Dumbledore's office. He could weasel information out of the old coot by providing his mark as evidence.
As he reached the stair case leading up to the headmasters office his breath began to come out white and he could feel a palpable sense of dread in the area. A dementor? But what would one of them be doing in Hogwarts, let-alone the Headmasters office? Perhaps this had been a contingency? One of the many plans he was not allowed to know about in case he proved not be be able to keep out the world famous Legillimancer Dumbledore. Deciding it would be entertaining to watch the wrinkled old coot get his soul sucked out he proceeded past the stone gargoyle and up the stone escalator. As he approached though he began to have his doubts, for all the frigid and psychically active atmosphere he was not being forced to remember and relive any of his life's humiliations... something his occlumancy should have dimmed, not erased all together.
Pulling out his wand, so that if Dumbledore was winning it could look like he's rushed in to help, Snape opened the heavy, smooth oak door. The wizened mage stood near his fireplace, a pair of bodies at his feet, Hagrid huddling in a corner and the shadows far thicker than they ever should have had any right to be. Dumbledore was wielding two wands in a manner similar to the muggle cheerleaders he had once spied on not so many years ago. Bolts, arcs and webs of light shot out of both of them in and effort to contain what looked like and amorphous mass of smoke wafting from one of the robed bodies on the ground.
As Albus spared him a quick glance the web of light faltered and the sourceless sense of malice spiked again, making it hard for Snape to breathe and causing Hagrid in the corner to begin shivering even more violently.
Moving over to the headmaster Snape stared in wonder at the ruined body of his first and apparently former, master. His arm had been torn off, his skull caved in and showing torn and weeping brain matter and blood everywhere. The dark lord had long boasted of his immortality, could this evil shadow be somehow connected to that? The only other explanation was that Dumbledore, lemon sucking poof of a leader of the light had cast a curse on the man to tear Tom's soul from his body and, in Snapes mind at least, that would just be plain out of character.
Regardless of HOW, Snape watched on awe as the men before him fought for supremacy, light vs dark, heat vs bone chilling cold, focused fury vs primal mindless malice. Eventually the web of light managed to contain the shadow to a shelf of the headmasters cabinet and doors locked shut with a burst of golden red light and a cry of phoenix song. That done the aged, sweat drenched headmaster turned his wand on Severus and spoke. "Take a seat, why don't you, my dear boy."
Taking in the second body at the old mans feet Snape quickly crushed his nearly hysterical glee behind his occlumancy barriers and took one of the proffered seats. "I'd come to tell you about the fading of my dark mark, Headmaster," Snape offered quickly, "but from your recent display, the point seems moot. He's defeated then? Is Lily OK?"
Dumbledore looked at him, expression unreadable for several minutes before answering. "Tom Riddle underestimated the love of a mother for her daughter." Dumbledore said, his voice grave. "And while I do not entirely approve of her methods, she tore him apart for the offense. You would do well to remember that when next you see her, Severus."
Snape glanced at the ragged nature of the wounds and turned white as parchment. Those weren't spell wounds, even bludgeoner or blasting type. If he were to judge the situation based on the headmasters words and his own machinations, then his master had tried to spare his Lily as promised and the redhead had literally torn the Dark Lords arm off and beaten him to the very edge of death with it... the muggle way. He wasn't sure whether to be smug, or very VERY scared. It was as beautifully ironic as it was terrifying. The dark lords message was one of hate and it was his own love for the muggleborn 'enemy' that had allowed this victory. Furthermore, the greatest dark lord on record, (though Snape personally felt that was debatable having actually studied wizarding history) had been defeated without the use of magic at all, but by the strength of a woman whose love lent her another brand of deep and powerful hate... such a unifying contradiction, such a beautiful irony...
"In that case Headmaster, I must get back to my... other friends. There will doubtless be quite a bit of chaos over this and you'll need constant updates." Waiting only for the old man's nod he swept out of the room.
He wasn't interested in spying on his friends however, he already knew how most of them would react. The bulk of the dark lords army would scatter to the winds, the funds holding them in line no longer flowing, the upper echelons would be holding the ministry in check to maximize the chaos until they could play it into a means of exoneration, the fanatics would go on pointless and pointlessly violent terror missions trying to figure out what the Light had done to their god and the bulk of the wizarding world would be dropping their guard and partying the moment the dust had settled enough for them to understand what had happened.
All Severus wanted to do was find Lily and collect his reward.
She would be grieving and he would swoop in to comfort her. They had been friends for nearly seven years.., only losing their way when James had driven him to step out of bounds. She would be deep enough in her grief though that she wouldn't push him away until he'd had the chance to become her emotional anchor and then, well... if he couldn't count on emotions... he wasn't one of the youngest potions masters in Europe without reason.
Although, Lily being one of the others would mean he'd need to be careful...
For the rest of the night Snape searched high and Low for Lily Evens, quietly spreading the story of her defeat of the dark lord though subtle use the of the Imperious curse. The celebrations would mask his efforts to find her and in there fervor the mob might even help him, giving him another thing to save his lady love from, further deepening their connection.
He smirked slightly as he forced the weak willed and excitable Daedalus Diggle into the Leaky Cauldron. It would certainly be interesting to see how the wizarding world reacted to having a female and a muggleborn as their champion. Interesting indeed...
~! #$%^&*()_+
"How long?" Lily looked up into Sirius' face, confused.
"What?"
Sirius gestured at the slight bloating of her stomach. "You're pregnant again." Sirius said simply. "I was concerned he might have hurt you before you before you and Ivy... did what you did. So I cast a series of medical charms while you were eating. How far along are you?"
Lily crossed her arms under her breasts, looked over at the crib Ivy had been laid in and lent back into Sirius chest, shivering. "Three months," she whispered "plus or minus one, no longer than four." Then she broke down in sobs again, pressing into Sirius warmth and arms for comfort. "James and I had wanted more kids..." she whispered, hiccuping "and now he'll never get to see them. Never watch Ivy grow up..." she tried to say more, but nothing made any sense even to her ears. The arms around her shoulders tightened and began rocking her slowly Lulling her slowly to sleep.
When she again awoke, near noon on November first she felt cold somehow, as if something terrible had happened while she was out.
Shivering, she looked around, trying to discern what was wrong. Then it hit her in a wave. James was dead, Peter was probably dead or had betrayed them, and Sirius... where was Sirius? Standing up shakily she took in her surroundings. She wasn't in her house, the room was unfamiliar, Sirius' place she remembered, and Ivy was standing in a crib, looking intently at her. She felt another wave of dread foreboding and understood this time it was not her own.
"Dog chase rat!" Ivy said in a high little voice more appropriate to a three year old than one 18 months.
For a moment Lily once again felt pride in her daughter being like her, learning speech and reading at such an early age, even more her magic. Then the babe's words broke through to her and she went cold. "Dog chase rat! Boom!"
"Ivy, what do you mean, dear?" she asked frantically, falling to her knees at the edge of the crib. "Which dog and rat, where? What boom?"
Ivy looked at her for a moment and then Lily felt tiny hands press against the sides of her face and an image forced itself into her mind. Sirius and Peter stood in an alley in London, outside of Peter's flat. Peter was fatter than she remembered but looked unhurt. He shouted to the street that Sirius had betrayed their friend, her husband to Voldemort and then the street blew up. There was blood and smoke and screaming. Then Peter turned into a rat and left his cloths behind, heading for the sewers. Red robed Aurors arrived seconds later and took Sirius away. In the background a blond man smirked and the scene changed, showing Sirius on a boat to Azkaban Prison, Dementors swooping around. As one swept in close Lily pulled back in horror, looking at her daughter. Could Ivy be a seer?
"Hurry!" Ivy chirped again. "Dog chase rat!"
Standing jerkily Lily rushed for the door to the bedroom, wrenching it open to see the main room of the Penthouse apartment the white sheep of the blacks had acquired for himself. "Dippy!" she shrieked and with a crack the little elf appeared before her. "Dippy, please, I know I can't order you, but please watch Ivy while I'm gone. You can even use my magic to defend her if anything goes wrong!" She said hurriedly, taking the elf's hand in hers.
"What's is being wrong, mistress friend Lily?" the little creature asked.
"Sirius is in trouble and I need to find him! Please, take care of Ivy for me while I'm gone!"
The elves eyes bulged. "But ifing the great master paddy is being in trouble, Dippy should be helping mistress finds master Paddy! She is being the masters elf afters all!"
Lily's own eyes widened, having forgotten the many powers of house elves in her own panic. She hadn't allowed James to use them, seeing as it was slave labor and thus of the bad, even if they really were just golems. "Could you take me to him?"
Dippy nodded and with a crack they were gone.
~! #$%^&*()_+
Sirius watched as Lily stopped shuddering and her breathing evened out. She really was beautiful, even in her grief. James had chosen well.
He sighed.
But James was dead now, and by Sirius's own actions as well. Not directly of course, he'd scarcely ever imagined hurting his best friend, and then never in such a manner. There had been a fair few jokes the pair played on each that the Grim animagus just thought were plain off color, like when Potter had given him and Remus both droughts of sleep and confusion before tucking them into the same bed naked. Sirius shuddered, both happy and horrified at the memory. His revenge on James had been epic for that one.
No, his fault in this case was his little bit of genius in switching Secret Keepers from himself to Pettigrew. Somehow word had gotten out that he, Sirius Black, was the Potters Secret Keeper and he had been feeling the heat, enough that he had decided to set up his apartment with a Fidellius held by Lily herself. As an extra measure of protection however he had suggested to the couple that they make Peter their secret keeper so that should anything happen to him, Sirius, they wouldn't in fact get the real secret keeper leaving them and his god-daughter safe. It was a perfect plan, after all, who would suspect cowardly, magically weak and, while not untalented, but utterly lazy Peter Pettigrew? No one of course! The idea was just so ludicrous it was genius! Peter could hardly be counted on to brew a potion right because doing so would require effort! So who would honestly go looking to him to keep such an important ward up?
But someone had.
Or, more likely, had simply captured their poor tag-along for a couple coppers of information and ended up torturing entire gold bars out of him by accident.
Given the likely chain of events Sirius had gone to Peters house expecting to find the place broken into and the chupakabra animagus missing, or emblazoned with the dark mark and his body laying there dead in some fashion or another. Maybe, if Peter had been particularly lucky he would be limping around cleaning up his thoroughly messed domicile and applying potions and charms to his wounds. Nobody could really expect Peter to hold out against torture, but that was part of why no one should have ever even expected to come to him to settle the issue.
He had not expected to find his friend, whole and unblemished or even perturbed, sitting at his kitchen table eating waffles with blueberry syrup and humming himself a melancholy tune.
"Peter!? The bloody fucking hell is going on here!?" The rat froze and rather than turning around and trying to explain himself, exploded into motion, throwing his little table at Sirius and running for the door.
Sirius blasted the plasterboard and aluminum table out reflex, earning a squeak from Peter as the pudgy little man scurried out of the house. Black stood there stunned for a minute struggling to understand what he was seeing. Peter was afraid of him. And unharmed. Visibly at least. The only evidence of a fight was what he had already done here with the table. Could... could Peter have given up without much a fight? As that would justifiably be seen as a betrayal Sirius could see how his friend might be fearful of reprisal, Sirius had always been known for his temper... Shaking himself out of his stupor he chased after the fleeing man, who was already halfway down the street by now, if he hadn't apparated away. Getting quickly into his stride he ruthlessly shoved aside thoughts that Peter might have willingly betrayed the Potters to the dark lord. That... couldn't be possible... could it?
Bursting out into the ally he saw that Peter was indeed still running? "Peter, please! What happened!? If they tortured you then just say it!" he shouted after the man. "We never expected you to hold under that, it's forgivable even! Just stop RUNNING!"
And Peter did. Standing in the mouth of the ally, his wand drawn and pointed at the ground Peter turned to look at him. Fear and fury were his expressions. Sirius looked on in confusion and mounting horror. "SIRIUS!" the little man screamed in a high rattling tenor "YOU BETRAYED LILY AND JAMES, HOW COULD YOU?"
"What are yo... no. Peter NO!" Then, with skill his friend had never before demonstrated, Peter Petigrew sent a silent motionless blasting curse of incredible power at the ground behind him, somehow shaping the blast so that it detonated away from him rather than taking him with it. Sirius watched in utter shock as the traitor, for he knew that now and how in Merlin's name could he have been so blind, cut off his own finger with a severing charm and transformed into a large gray ratlike creature before escaping into the sewers.
"Huh... heh... ha... hahahahahehehehehahahahahaHAHAHAHA!" Sirius laughed and laughed, just standing there, the sheer incredulity and horror of it all crashing down upon his shoulders. His best friend dead, the dark lord defeated, Lily and Ivy themselves having only escaped by inches and insanity, and his friend. The companion, the minion, James' little fan-boy stooge. The one who had caused the most damage in the end had been the one he had never suspected and yet... and yet when he looked back on it all, knowing what he had learned in the last few minutes... How could he not have known? His laughing grew more hysterical and his back arched, vision blurring as tears filled his eyes and rolled down into his ears. He had been duped. So completely and utterly that he might have given his traitorous friend some well earned worship had the situation not been so horrifying.
He continued to laugh as he felt hands shaking him, a voice calling his name. They jostled him around but he was blind to the world as everything crashed down on him with perfect clarity. Peter had never really been much of a friend to the other Marauders; a stooge, a lackey, a hanger on, James' fan-boy. His use in the marauders had been as that of a thief and information broker, always overlooked by the rest of the school as useless and thus ignored, able to slip in and out of just about anywhere without being taken note of. There had been some skill with runes and charms, but never anything to write home about. He distinctly remembered McGonagall telling Peter he could do so much better on more than one occasion and it was always one of them who had ended up doing the little rat's homework for him. Then there was the part where his animagus form was that of a vamperic rodent. If that hadn't been a telling enough sign Sirius didn't know what was. Known to the Spanish as the goat sucker the magical rat which made Peter's animagus form had magical abilities for being undetected, escaping and leaching the life force of their victims by drinking their blood. Animagus transformations were supposed to be very telling about the person who became them with magical creatures denoting magical strength and mundane creatures weakness along with numerous personally traits and physical markers being shared betwixt the two.
Pettigrew had never been brave either, something that had always struck him as odd for a Gryffindor who while not always heroic, were almost universally brash and confident. He had only become a member of the group after Sirius, James and Remus had become fast friends and become known as preteen terrors. He'd come crawling in looking and acting like a puppy and just never left, becoming their friend by default his presence gained by osmosis more than anything else. After graduation it had nearly been the same, with Peter following the pair of them into the Ministry. Unfortunately for Peter, where James and Sirius had been immediately picked up by the Hit Wizard corp, the magical MI6 cum knights of Avalon, Peter had been offered a lowly position in magical maintenance and little else.
As the war picked up James and Sirius had gone one mission after mission becoming known as heroes while Peter had sunk further and further into obscurity. When the pair of them had been recruited into Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix Peter had joined them once again, along with Remus. But the rat had quickly begun to skip meetings, skive off assignments, and simply become unfindable whenever something important had just happened. When Gideon and Fabian Prewett had gone into hiding Peter had disappeared, the Prewett twins died soon after. Edgar bones had been killed in an ambush in which Peter had survived, he had been the one to inform the order that Dorcas Meadows had been killed by Voldemort personally and so many other small coincidences. How many had he betrayed by the end of it all? Had he been planning this all from the beginning? Did they hold something over him?
What?
Why?
Then there was a flash of red light and Sirius faded mercifully into unconsciousness.
~! #$%^&*()_+
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