Chapter 6: "Oranges"

I regret my decisions sorely.

Several weeks into the first term, and the leaves were falling, and probably for like the fourth time since he'd gotten here, Christopher was sitting at the Gryffindor Table for breakfast.

Or, well, what they called breakfast.

He sat there with a fork in his hand poking at whatever was on his plate. And James was gossiping endlessly, and Sirius would snicker or offer a snarky comment. Sometimes they would whisper something to each other and burst into a fit of giggles. Christopher thought it was all very tedious.

"Don't you think so?" James asked all of a sudden.

Christopher didn't answer. He still couldn't believe he had been dragged out of bed, and not even by James, the hyper-puppy. The first few times, James was the one insisting and Sirius was the one trying to walk away. Now, it was the opposite. James, Christopher realized, was willing to beg Christopher, but would eventually leave him be when Christopher truly wanted to be left alone.

Sirius, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. He didn't like to beg and apparently, Christopher's "leave me the fuck alone" meant HIHIHILETMEBOTHERYOU to him. Christopher was starting to think that Sirius was doing it on purpose to annoy him.

Indeed, Sirius was the one that manually dragged Christopher by his socked foot out of bed today. Apparently, Sirius didn't like being ignored. Christopher sighed.

Fucking brat...

"Chris!" James whined.

"What," Christopher said strenuously, mid poke in the chicken-thing. Gross. He felt sick. He kept looking around, kind of feeling like all the people in the tables were getting closer, but knowing they weren't. But checking. To be sure.

"You're not listening!" James pouted. "Chrissssss!" he whined. "We were talking about Lupin."

Christopher paused. Oh right. He had totally forgotten.

Lupin...Just thinking about it made his head pound more. Ugh. The whole thing was a headache. Dumb kids and dumber kids and eleven-year-old drama. See, Christopher was (supposed to be…) the adult in the situation. He felt like a guidance counselor forced to listen to kids ramble about their ridiculous, exaggerated problems, except he wasn't a guidance counselor. And anyway, he wouldn't be good at it (being mentally unstable), and well, he didn't even want to try anyway (being goddamn fucking tired and lazy).

I just want to go back to bed.

Christopher sighed. The good thing to do would be to apologize to Lupin and make the poor kid feel welcome. The bad thing to do would be to go along with James' "Lupin's a Loser" campaign and ostracize him.

Of course, it was a waste of time to even think on it, because in reality, Christopher knew he would do neither the good thing nor the bad thing, but The Christopher Thing. And The Christopher Thing would be the most lazy thing, which would be to shrug, say "Oh well."

A.k.a Nothing.

He was brought back to the present when he saw a blurry arm in front of his face. He flinched; then settled when he saw it was just Sirius stealing a piece of chicken off his plate. And talking with his mouth open.

"You weren't eating it, mate," Sirius said, shrugging.

Christopher said nothing, only pushed his plate towards Sirius. Sirius looked at him questioningly, eyes narrowing slightly, then attacked the food.

"Why do we have to have him in our dorm too?" James burst out suddenly. He pouted.

Christopher sighed. "Why do you dislike him so much anyway," Christopher drawled. He was sure his knuckles were going to leave a red mark on his cheek, he was leaning his head so heavily on his hand.

"Oh wait, you don't know!" James said loudly, spraying food everywhere. "Sorry," he said offhandedly. "I saw him on the train before! That Lupin kid! Me and Sirius ran into him," he said to Christopher, leaning forward on the table. "You know how me and Sirius found your compartment and it was like destiny-like, we saw each other and we just knew it was meant to be, so we declared our indefinite vows of fidelity to each other?"

Christopher choked on the slime he was putting in his mouth. "What," he deadpanned after chugging water that Sirius had so nicely poured for him. On a side note, he was impressed with the boy's vocabulary. Pureblood upbringing, most likely.

"I don't remember that," Sirius said dryly to James.

"So anyway," James said, ignoring them. His eyes got really wide and he said, "before that, Sirius and I were exploring the train and we ran into him, and I said something funny-you mates know how funny I am, right? Well, anyway, it was a wicked funny joke, but he didn't laugh at all, like at all! Can you believe that? And besides he wears weird clothes, and he reads all day and-"

James stopped when he realized Sirius and Christopher were both looking at him like he had three heads and an antler. "What?"

"Uh…" Christopher turned his head slowly, looking at him from the side of his eye.

"Are you sure you aren't talking about him," Sirius said, nudging his head towards Christopher.

"...Yeah...that," Christopher said, inclined to agree.

"No! Chris is different! Chris is our mate!" James whined. "And besides, why couldn't we just pick who we get in our dorms?" James went on complaining. "And why can't Lupin just be moved somewhere else? Who made that decision?" James demanded, pouting.

The table jolted.

James stopped talking, and realized the Gryffindor table had gone dead silent, and everyone had been listening to James talk. All eyes flew to the scruffy, dirty blond boy that had stood up so violently that all the dishes on the table shook. Without saying anything, the boy, Remus Lupin, kept his head down, and practically ran out of the Great Hall.

As soon as he left, people started to talk again. Christopher drew his eyes away from the door, and poked at the chicken Sirius had left behind on the plate.

"I didn't do anything wrong," James said stubbornly, crossing his arms against his chest.

"No one said anything," Sirius said through a mouthful of a pastry. He reached for another, but couldn't reach across the table. Sirius looked at Christopher with pleading eyes, and Christopher rolled his eyes, picked up the chocolate croissant, and idly, with his head still resting on his hand, tore it into pieces and fed them into Sirius' open mouth.

Definitely a dog, Christopher thought to himself. It was slightly endearing. He probably should not have been imagining Sirius as his puppy, but Christopher missed having a pet. "Good boy," Christopher said contentedly, with an oddly reminiscent smile, watching Sirius chew.

Sirius looked at him a little quizzically, but grinned, apparently in the mood to play along for once.

"I don't feel bad at all," James proceeded to say loudly, mostly to himself. He sat there, frowning heavily for a long while. Then he turned in his seat and opened his mouth.

"What," Christopher said after a long time.

"Feed me too," James tried to say, except his mouth was open and his tongue was dry so it was incomprehensible. Christopher looked at him with That Look, and James shut his mouth and pouted for the rest of the meal.

. . .

It was dark outside, and the dormitory was heavy with silence. Remus had finished his homework hours ago, and crawled quietly under the sheets of his bed, heavy with sleep. The moon had finished yesterday, and he was exhausted, but felt lighter, as though he'd lost ten pounds. This was how he usually felt a few days after the moon, content and sleepy, a little fuzzy on the inside, and relieved that he would have several more weeks before the next bout.

The sound of the shower pouring down on the tile stopped. The scent of lemon soap wafted out as the bathroom door opened. Steam poured out as Christopher Pettigrew, Remus's mysterious and snarky roommate, ducked out of the bathroom.

Christopher rubbed a white towel over his hair as he padded softly across the floor. Remus watched him as he sat down on the floor with his back against his bed, his brown hair damp from the shower, torso skinny beneath his rumpled clothes, towel over his shoulders.

Remus thought it a little odd-Christopher seemed to have very few clothes, and no real pajamas. Christopher appeared to have two sets of second-hand school uniform, and then a pair of shorts, holey socks, and an old, baggy sweatshirt. Remus was pretty sure Christopher didn't even bring a shirt with him to Hogwarts. Christopher lounged around in those shorts and sweatshirt all afternoon, every day, even on the weekends.

Remus wondered exactly how poor Christopher's family was, and thought if they were that poor Christopher couldn't even afford clothes, then how come Christopher seemed so well-educated and how come Christopher didn't even seem to mind? Remus could never tell if Christopher just didn't care to wear other clothes, of it was really because he was dirt poor. Because Christopher was never embarrassed, or shameful, as many other poverty-ridden kids were...including Remus, to a point.

Remus wasn't poor, but his family was also in no way as rich as the Potters and Blacks were, and even though his family was middle-class, Remus felt ashamed sometimes. But Christopher could lounge in his run-down clothes and worn sneakers, and toss things haphazardly in his taped-up suitcase, and it just somehow looked cool, intentional, like Christopher was meaning to have it that way.

As time passed, it occurred to Remus that it was dead silent in the room with James and Sirius gone.

The only sound was that of Remus moving and shifting in his bed, and Christopher breathing softly, running the towel through his hair, and the slop of the wet towel against his shoulders.

Remus Lupin watched, hating himself more and more. "You make a good trio," Remus said quietly, very quietly, hair falling in front of his face.

"What?" Christopher exhaled softly, and paused in his rubbing of the towel. He lifted his eyes toward Remus without lifting his head. "Who?"

Remus wondered if Christopher was trying to make Remus say it. Remus thought that if he did, he might cry, or choke up, or something stupid like that. Remus was bad at talking, and his eyes were already sort of burning. He kept thinking about all the times they had been laughing and talking and becoming deeper friends together, while Remus was lying there in his bed, all alone, just like the loser James Potter always said he was.

James was right, Remus thought to himself and clutched the pillow tighter. His throat felt heavy. He was never going to have friends and no one would ever like him. And he shouldn't even be here.

"You know," Christopher drawled. "This isn't Naruto or anything. James calls us a ninja trio or pirate crew or whatever, but we've known each other for what, five days?" Christopher shrugged. "No one is that close," he said.

Remus begged to differ. What Christopher called "five days" was more like a month into the term, practically, and it seemed everyone had formed cliques on the very first day. Actually, before the first day. On the train for Hogwarts, or even before that.

"We're like eleven," Christopher said, doing some kind of exercise, like a plank or something. "Who the heck is thinking about making deep soul bonds at age eleven. This is preteen stage, when everyone is a jerk and watches too much Hannah Montana."

"But...aren't you guy's friends?" Remus asked in a tiny voice.

"James calls everyone his best mate," Christopher said.

And Remus kind of hated him a little, because it seemed like for Christopher, everything was so easy. Everything just came to him, just floated right by him on a river. Everything was so natural, so easy, so carefree for his chestnut-haired roommate, and even more, the boy would watch it float right by, lazing around and not even reaching out to take it. Everything Remus would treasure so much- interacting with James and Sirius, becoming friends with someone- Christopher would brush off, like it was all extra weight on his shoulder, and then yawn along with it.

"Really," Remus said, kind of tightly. "Does he really." Because Remus thought James was actually very exclusive, very bossy, and anyone he did not immediately like was immediately ostracized. James did not call everyone his best mate—in fact, despite that a lot of people liked James, James only really liked Sirius and Christopher, and he was very possessive of his "best mates" as well.

"Oh," Christopher said. "Unless he doesn't like you."

"I don't think he likes me," Remus said. James particularly did not like Remus.

"He doesn't," Christopher said very earnestly, very blasé.

Ow, Remus winced.

There was a long silence. Remus was starting to relax, a little. Christopher was not as scary, Remus realized, as most other people. Despite that one time Christopher had burst with apparent rage, that had never happened again, and Remus had stopped tip-toeing around him for the most part. Christopher never brought anything up again, and Remus thought to himself that Christopher must not know anything, then, about his...problem. Because surely, if he knew, Christopher would have run screaming and Remus would be expelled and dead.

Yes, Christopher might not like Remus, but Remus thought being able to talk a little with Christopher Pettigrew was maybe kind of nice.

Most other people, including Remus' parents, always told him to talk more and seemed to expect Remus to be good at conversing, and say all the right things at all the right moments. There was a pressure to say things Remus didn't know to say, and Remus found it stressful.

On the other hand, Christopher was hard to understand, but having a conversation with him wasn't so very stressful. Christopher was, if anything, the most awkward conversationalist Remus had ever encountered, and he didn't even seem to care. It kind of relaxed Remus, because that meant Remus could also be awkward, and Christopher would not care.

It was bad, maybe, but maybe that Christopher didn't care about anything, not even Remus himself probably, made it easier for Remus to relax around him.

"Anyway, you could always try the Hugglepuffs," Christopher said.

Remus almost snorted. "The what?"

"For friends, you know," he said. Christopher was doing one armed pushups now, and switched to the other hand. "Or you could try dying your hair red," Christopher mused. "I've heard Potter men like redheads."

Remus frowned and wondered if Christopher was counting himself as a redhead. Christopher was mostly brown-haired but it was chestnut really, so it was a little red. He really hoped Christopher was not referring to that redhead girl Lily Evans, because if so, Christopher was delusional. James Potter despised Lily Evans even more than he disliked Remus, and that was pretty impressive.

If anything, you're the one who likes redheads, Remus thought wryly, thinking of how Christopher always hung around Lily Evans.

"Personally," Christopher spoke up again, surprising Remus, "I would give it time. James is thick-headed but animalistic. He acts on instinct and he really didn't like you or whatever, but I'm sure he can get over it," he said. "I mean you guys have seven years to get over shit. But if you're that desperate, there's always the girls," Christopher threw out airily. "They're pretty friendly."

To you, Remus thought again, wanting to be bitter, but feeling a little sorry for the girls, because the object of their affections was hopelessly oblivious. Or at least, completely uninterested.

"Or you can eat chocolate," Christopher said. "I've heard that works wonders. Endorphins. Good shit." He said all of this like Remus probably wasn't listening, like he was talking to the air or something.

But he was saying things. Christopher was talking, to him, Remus Lupin, and even if Christopher was kind of talking to the air and the ceiling, Remus felt a little warmer. It was the first time since he got to Hogwarts that he had had a real conversation with anyone. Remus couldn't help but watch the chestnut-haired boy curiously from his bed.

"Um," Remus said after a long while. "Christopher…?"

Christopher was doing sit ups now. "Ja?"

"Where...where are they?" Remus asked, lying flat on his bed. It was still early, not time to sleep yet.

Christopher didn't answer, and Remus closed his eyes, feeling a hollowness in his chest.

"...Detention, maybe," came the answer, more than five minutes later.

Remus looked over. Here, in the softness of the dorm, Christopher looked like an ordinary boy, with his brown hair and pale skin, like any other English boy. Christopher spread his legs on the floor, revealing pale skinny ankles and started stretching.

"You'll be fine," Christopher said, softly.

Remus laid in bed, and kind of wanted to believe him, but not really able to.

"And there's chocolate under Sirius' bed."

Remus laughed.

"See?" Christopher said, and Remus looked to see that Christopher was standing now, with that towel around his neck, and grinning a little crookedly. Green eyes dancing. "You laughed. Chocolate makes everything better." And flicked a couple chocolate frogs across the room onto Remus's bed.

"Thanks," Remus said softly, sitting up in bed as he unwrapped one tenderly.

"I would tell you to thank Sirius, but then he'd wonder how you got his chocolate," Christopher said as he slipped into his bed. "Night. Sweet chocolate, sweet dreams," he said.

It was such a nice thing to say, to do, that Remus almost blushed. Maybe he did blush- okay, he probably did. His cheeks felt very hot. Remus chewed the chocolate slowly, and settled into his bed.

Remus felt a little naughty, eating what was apparently stolen goods, but he also felt lightheaded with happiness. Okay, so maybe it wasn't much, but it was something.

It'll be okay, he told himself.

It'll be okay.

Christopher closed the curtains of his bed, and thought curiously that Remus's magic was behaving itself today. He could feel Remus, across the room, his magic a soft yellow ball that curled up around Remus like a hedgehog-the very opposite of what it had felt like to him that day he'd come back to the room, and Remus's magic had been all wolfy and ill and invasive.

Interesting, he thought, shifting in the bed. Must be because the moon cycle was over, and the wolf was tired, he guessed. Still, if Christopher was going to be rooming with the kid, he was going to have to get used to the wolf's magic.

"Ay dios mio," he exhaled, crushing his face into his pillow.

. . .

Although Christopher tended not to do anything in class (because he was tired and distracted and he didn't like the way other people's magic rubbed against his, like he could feel it like bare skin against bare skin) he did do magic on his own. Sometimes, Christopher would go outside by the back side of the greenhouse, sit down in the shade of the tree and the stones of Hogwarts behind his back, and practice.

At night, and once it started to get colder, he would go to the library, and weave through the stacks until he was in the back parts, the little niches and crannies and smaller rooms that no one ever entered or thought to go in. There was dust in the corners and books unshelved, and chairs that were old, probably removed from the main area after overuse and stored here for years. But the back of the library was warm and the only light was from the windows streaming through, and there was no one else there. Not even Madame Pince came to check in these areas, busy as she was with tidying the actively open and used stacks, monitoring the study areas, and guarding the Forbidden Books.

After a while, he would have to stop reading and rub his eyes a lot. He realized his eyes hurt, and it was hard to focus on the words. He hadn't had much chance to read at "home" in this life, but he recognized by now from his past sixty-nine lives, that this was his astigmatism manifesting in his left eye. Well, that, and he wasn't sleeping.

One of those was fixable.

By the end of the second week, Christopher had created himself a new pair of reading glasses. He might have stolen a glass from the Great Hall to use as material. He may also have used his knowledge as an eye doctor from a previous life.

In an earlier life, Christopher had been Leon Danielsson, golden boy, pride of his parents, and he was always doted on by his older brother Joel Danielsson, who liked to ruffle Leon's hair and tease Leon about being a playboy. Leon was a lackadaisical teenage boy, sixteen years old, skipping school, and eventually dropping out to score an apprenticeship under Sweden's top optometrist. He started to work in the optometrist's office in a high-end shopping mall, alit with Christmas lights and gold decorations.

And if Leon shot up heroin behind everyone's back- Well. No one needed to know that.

Leon was almost seventeen years old, a slender boy with dyed blonde hair, silver mittens, and a cute Dachshund. And Leon was just on a walk with his dog and his older brother Joel. He was enjoying a free sample of molten chocolate balls, and had taken off his mittens to lick his fingers. Joel teased him about doing that for his girlfriends-licking his fingers, that is.

And then they stopped and were talking and grinning at the elderly lady at the street stall. Joel picked up a bread roll, dropped some coins, patted Leon on the head, laughing about something, and turned and started to walk away, carrying their Dachshund in his arms. Leon was about to follow, but saw a coin drop in the snow, and stooped down to pick it up for the old lady.

A truck barreled through the Christmas market, missing Joel, and slammed into Leon, killing him instantly.

Poor Joel. Joel was probably traumatized for the rest of his life, great older brother that he was. At least their dog lived.

In any case, before he'd been roadkill, he'd studied eyeballs and eyeglasses pretty extensively, and thus, once Christopher had some glass to play with and a bunch of books about Transfiguration and precision and magical control exercises, he was meditating, and then he was practicing. He was warping glass, and then he was making himself some glasses.

They weren't the best glasses, but they worked. Sort of.

Once he had transfigured a pair of glasses, he spent more and more time buried in books. He lived in the library, trailing fingers along the spines of aged books. He would sit in the window sill, curl up in the small space, forehead resting against the hard glass, and the words would float through him like clouds on a ceaseless sky. He was so still and quiet in the hidden section of the library, the librarian often turned off the lights and shut the doors- unaware of the last student's lazy eyes blinking heavily in the haze of white moonlight.

Sometimes he spent nights in the library, and Mrs. Norris, the angry cat, came to snore on his lap, and his eyelids would sag, and the words blurred. But no matter how blurred and messy his mind got, it was never enough to smear the inky splurge of past nightmares into oblivion.

He thought that Dumbledore probably knew there was a student in his library past curfew, just as Dumbledore always knew everything. He also thought that the old geezer probably didn't give a fuck, because well, he wasn't causing any problems, and also, Pettigrew wasn't Harry Potter.

And quite frankly, no one, not the Marauders, not Dumbledore, not "Ma and Pa" and not a single person in the administration had given a shit about the original Peter Pettigrew, or else, Christopher Pettigrew was pretty sure, thumbing the spine of an old book, there was no way the boy would have survived seven years of blatant poverty and abuse under the radar, no matter how sneaky the rat was.

And in these nights of cold and quiet and nightmares hedging at the corners of his vision, he missed people like Joel. He missed some of his warmer lives, lives where he had people that instinctively cared about him, because he was their son, or their brother, or their nephew or something like that. And on bad nights, sometimes he even missed lives where he had absolutely nothing, because at least in those lives he had never been able to think, it was always just fast and blurs and pains. Christopher exhaled, slowly.

Mrs. Norris rubbed against Christopher's socked feet. Soft fur rolled between his toes, and her warm head nuzzled against the arch of his foot. "Thank you," he whispered and his voice was raspy in the silent library. Mrs. Norris settled, curled up on top of his feet, an instant foot warmer that somehow, almost made a thickening in his throat, a wetness behind his eyes.

He put his head down on his knees. Christopher buried himself inside the sweatshirt. He knew he was skinny as hell, and he felt bony and hollow and cold, so pulled his knees up inside the sweatshirt, pulling his arms inside so the sleeves flapped emptily to his sides, and curled up in the window sill, feeling the cold of the glass soothe phantom bruises down his back and aches along his spine.

. . .

Lily Evans and Christopher Pettigrew were a strange pair.

Lily was a curious kid, Christopher came to realize. He had always assumed, somehow, that Lily Evans was similar to Hermione Granger's portrayal in the books. However, Christopher's Lily was extraordinarily…unique.

Lily kind of ran around like Harry Potter did-oblivious. Lily forgot things all over the place, dropped her socks, dropped her quills, even left her textbooks behind in the bathroom. Lily hummed when she walked through the hallways, and ate like a pig during meals, and sometimes talked so excitedly with hand motions that she hit people (Chris) in the face and walked into walls.

Maybe, this was good- because it made Christopher have to be more aware. Usually, he was the one wandering off into space. But when he was with Lily, he would have to throw his arm around her shoulder, or kind of guide her around with his hand on her back. Not trying to be touchy or anything, but otherwise she really would walk into a wall. Lily was all in or all out; if she was talking, she wasn't looking, if she was looking she wasn't talking.

Indeed, whenever she stared, she stared. And it was so obvious she was staring, it was almost hysterical.

Lily was also very, very smart. And Lily hated, hated, hated History. She was very bad at it, and found it extremely boring, and Christopher kind of liked that she hated it, because it meant they could pass notes to each other. And Lily was a funny note passer- she made weird faces when she read his notes, and she said the funniest things without even trying to be funny.

She was so straightforward in her writing that she always received poor essay grades. It was clear to Christopher that Lily was extremely mathematical.

The second he'd realized this, he might have, might have, dug around in the Hogwarts Library bookshelves until he found an old, beat up mathematics textbook, filed as a reference for muggle studies. And he might have started to teaching her algebra, and geometry.

("Mathematics is so elegant!" Lily had looked at him with wide puppy eyes and hugged the book with tears in her eyes.)

Christopher kind of liked to watch Lily when she was figuring something out. She would just sit there and think very hard, and her tongue would stick out of the corner of her mouth. It was interesting to him, because Lily could do all sorts of things in her head; she was good at visualizing 3D shapes and mapping things out in her head. She could do complex calculations and all sorts of interesting things.

Lily was going to be very good at Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and probably Curse Breaking too, which, contrary to popular belief, Christopher realized had a lot more to do with weird magical algorithms and logic skills than it had to do with pure, raw magical power.

He wondered, if they were in the muggle world, and a little further ahead in technology, if Lily would have been interested in robotics, or engineering. She would probably be very good at it, he thought.

Christopher let Lily lead him around by the arm, let her huffingly scold him about not doing his work. They went outside sometimes, and Lily wanted to climb trees, and so they ended up climbing trees. Anything Lily wanted, Christopher would do. And everyone who noticed, noticed that unlike the normal Christopher who was blank-faced and bored, Lily's Christopher would do anything she wanted with this contented smile and looking so soft and nice and sweet.

(This infuriated James to no end.)

These were the most favorite parts of his days.

And, on warm Sunday nights in the Gryffindor common room, Christopher liked to curl up on the couch next to Lily. The fire would crackle, and he would draw his hands inside his sweatshirt, and they would sit there, and Lily liked to put her feet on top of his. And he liked this because her socks were better than his, and made his feet warm.

They would sit there, no books, no homework, no nothing except the two of them on the couch. Lily would just talk about her week, and small things about her family at home, and he would ask her little things, like what her favorite color was, and why. He liked to listen to her a lot, and it kind of made him feel better, listening to her be so happy.

Lily liked to ask questions too, usually at the end of the night, when it was starting to get dark outside. By then, her magic had seeped into his tense shoulders and smoothed everything out into soft wavy nothingness, and he would be sleepy and she would be sleepy too, and it was a little like they were drunk, so he would answer anything that she asked.

And sometimes Lily asked him random things like, if he thought Santa was real, and what he thought about TV shows, and those were easy for him to answer. But sometimes Lily asked him heavy things, like what he thought about magic, and if magic was so dangerous and powerful, were they bad for being magical, like Satan and stuff?

And so he told her heavy things, like that he thought magic was a strange and weird thing, and people could do strange and horrible things with it. But even without magic, people would still find weird and horrible ways to hurt and heal and judge each other-so really, that wasn't magic being shitty and pissy and judgy, that was just humanity. And people being people.

And sometimes Lily just wanted advice.

"I really don't think they like me," Lily said about the girls in her dorm.

"Do you want them to be your friends?" Christopher asked.

Lily thought hard. "I like friends," she said finally.

"Well," Christopher said, shifting slightly so he could wiggle his feet. "You can wait for them to like you, or you can try to make them like you."

"That sounds hard," Lily said sadly. "I'm not very good at planning. I'm not very good at waiting either."

Christopher smiled a little. "Hey," he said, nudging her arm. "If you want to be friends with them, just go for it."

Lily just looked at him waiting for him to say something more.

Christopher stared back.

Lily drooped. "I don't get it," she said, discouraged.

Christopher snorted. "Well I was trying to be idealistic and encouraging, but apparently not," he said. "So instead I'll tell you that one of the easiest ways of manipulate people is the old cliché, flattery. Flattery can get you everywhere and anywhere, Lily," Christopher said. "All it is, is a couple things like 'I like your scarf' or a 'Wow, you have a great smile', and," he continued carelessly, "you're cute too, so just do your puppy eye thing-"

Lily was looking at him wide eyes.

"-yeah, like that," he said, warily, "and you'll be peachy keen."

"That sounds like flirting!" Lily said, kind of excitedly, eyes lighting up.

"It's like…" Christopher sighed. "Yeah. Yeah. It's like flirting. Seriously, just think about it. Say if you have a crush on someone, what do you do? You compliment them, right, and then maybe they'll come to like you. Well, it's the same with friendships. If you compliment people enough-granted, this only works if they don't have some weird prejudice or irrational hatred for you- then usually they'll come round pretty quickly." He tapped his head. "People are egotistical."

"I like your hair," Lily said grinning at Christopher.

Christopher looked at her flatly, and pushed her face away. "Okay, not on me, no thank you, thanks."

Lily snickered. Then she quieted down, and looked rather thoughtful.

"You know my other friend, Sev," Lily said slowly, looking at Christopher with wide and sad green eyes. "He wanted to be in Slytherin, so I said I also wanted to be in Slytherin, but actually I wanted to be in Hufflepuff because they sound fluffy," Lily said it very mournfully, as though it were a deep, dark confession. She frowned. "Hm…."

Christopher waited.

Lily frowned deeper. "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….."

"What," Christopher said.

Lily said finally, "Chris?"

"Yeah."

She looked dead into his eyes. "Do you think oranges are called orange because they are orange? Or is the color orange called orange because oranges are orange?"

Chris started to laugh into his sleeve.

"What?" Lily blinked innocently.

He finally stopped laughing and exhaled to calm himself. "Do I look like I have all the answers to the world?" Chris said lazily, head falling back on the couch, raising an eyebrow.

Lily looked at him. "Sometimes," she said, sort of guiltily, like she knew she wasn't supposed to say that, but said it anyway because that was how Lily was.

Christopher snorted in amusement. "Okay, well, I don't," he said, hand falling on her head. She looked at him still kind of guiltily, and he looked at her quizzically. "What?"

"I wish that I had more answers for you," Lily said sadly. "One day, you're going to ask me for advice, and I'm going to be able to help you like you always help me," Lily said, looking him right in the eye.

Christopher looked at her curiously. "Okay," he said. "Please, one day, tell me which came first, the orange or the color."

Lily Evans was very odd, and a little strange, but when she nodded and told him "I will", he had a strange idea that Lily Evans, if she didn't die so young, was going to flip the world on its head and hold everyone at wand point, just to find out which came first, the oranges or the color orange.

"I like you," Christopher said, with a grin.

There was a strange choking noise from behind them, and Christopher was unsurprised to see James and Sirius roll down the steps of the stairs and crash into a pile.

"No!" James yelled even as he was coughing and Sirius was cursing. "No! Chris! The contract! The vows! No girls!"

Lily looked at him, blinked, and smiled at them evilly. "You know, I know the perfect spell to make you pee yourself all over the floor right now," and her wand was pointed right at them.

James and Sirius froze.

And apparently, Christopher thought to himself later that night, as James and Sirius whispered furiously in their beds about scary girls and frightening beasts and demonic sirens, Lily Evans was also a secret sadist.

. . .

For Christopher, it was largely the same in every life. There were good days, when he could function and eat and make jokes. There were neutral days, when he could sit through things and shrug and look out the window. Then here were bad days, when he couldn't even get out of bed because there was no point to it and he would just end up getting back in it and he couldn't sleep anyway and nothing else was worth saying or doing anyway, so he would stare at the ceiling.

Unfortunately, it was verging on a bad day for Christopher when McGonagall thought it prudent to approach her Problem Student. Indeed, McGonagall thought him a Problem student, though whether he was more trouble, or troubled, she had yet to decipher. There was always one of them in every year, but she had never had one quite as peculiar as Christopher Pettigrew.

It wasn't that he was-slow, or incapable. It was that…well. It was several weeks into the term, and the first-year had slept through half of McGonagall's classes, and spaced out in the ones he was actually (half) awake for. He simply did not come to a large portion of the classes as well. His seat was ritually left empty, next to one Mr. Potter and one Mr. Black. The Potter heir would glare horrifically at anyone who dared approach the seat.

Additionally, Mr. Pettigrew tended not to hand in assignments, appeared to forget that he had them, or leave them in the dorm, or plainly lose them ("I might have used that as a bookmark at some point yesterday," Christopher said slowly, scratching his head, one time she had asked him where his homework was. "Huh. Maybe Mrs. Norris ate it," he mused. Sadly enough, the boy seemed to care so little about everything that she was fairly certain the boy was telling the truth.)

McGonagall had watched the boy out of the corner of her eye. He wrote his name as Christopher on papers, never Peter, and only sometimes Pettigrew, and other times he just didn't touch the paper or the quill at all. Just stared at it. Sometimes, he dated his assignments with the strangest dates she had ever seen.

She had given him time to adjust, time to get into routine. Sometimes, there were first-years that simply needed to be given time, and she would rather not single out a student in such a delicate transitioning period. But now it was further into the term, and if anything, he only seemed to get more and more lax.

It was long past the time for a confrontation.

McGonagall sighed heavily. Christopher, hands in drooping pockets, settled back leaning his weight on the desk, crossing one sneakered foot over the other. The shoelaces on the left were frayed and coming undone, and he watched them waggle as he wiggled his foot.

McGonagall cleared her throat.

"Mr. Pettigrew," McGonagall said heavily.

"Christopher," Christopher drawled. He rubbed the side of his head.

McGonagall sighed again. "Mr. Christopher."

No response.

"Mr. Christopher, it is considered proper behavior to look your professor in the eye when they address you," she said.

Christopher's foot stilled. Slowly, his eyes dragged up. Something in Mcgonagall gulped as his eyes, like bottomless pits, bore into her. He didn't say anything though. The silence stretched, seemed to stretch through his abyss eyes, the darkness seeping through more and more, tearing into her.

This was odd, even for an odd boy like Christopher Pettigrew. She had never seen him so blatantly unresponsive-not, so...hollow, yet heavy. It left a pit of uncertainty in McGonagall's stomach.

"Mr. Christopher," McGonagall said, "Are you bored in my class?"

He looked to the side, the window. He seemed to sense that his eyes made her discomforted.

McGonagall sighed. "Are you getting enough sleep at night?" She eyed the dark bags marring the undersides of his eyes. They looked tender and aching, nursing the hollow holes for eyes.

"Do you not like it at Hogwarts?" McGonagall found herself asking what she never thought she would have to ask. Of course everyone loved it at Hogwarts. She could see it in the eyes of the children, all of them, from the most popular to the bullied, the rich to poor, pureblood, muggleborn- every single student loved Hogwarts. But she could not see it in the boy before her.

She could not see anything, nothing but nothing, in the peculiar boy.

"It is very different, perhaps, from living at home," McGonagall elaborated. "The adjustment may be difficult, but I would like to assure you that-"

"The same," he said.

"Excuse me?"

He was watching the clouds. "Everywhere is the same. Here...there." He moved his pointer finger lazily, as though there was a map in front of him. "You know...everywhere." The sun was coming in through the window, and he ducked his head, and there was this discontented pressing of his lips together, and McGonagall felt that in that moment the child looked very...tired?

"Mr. Pettigrew, are you feeling ill?" McGonagall said, a frown pulling her brows together. "If you are experiencing difficulties achieving a proper amount of rest, perhaps an appointment with Madame Pomfrey would be most advisable…"

There was quite a long silence. McGonagall almost thought the boy would never speak, and was about to open her mouth, when finally, he shifted, and turned to face her.

"...I've stayed awake too long," he said, eyes empty and full and his pupils like an abyss. "That's all," he said, softly, into his shoulder, defeated.

She was quiet, then sighed and shook her head. She would never understand eleven-year-old children. A silence stretched through the classroom. It did not seem to bother Christopher Pettigrew; the boy was now looking at the ground and his hands were in his pockets and he looked horribly sullen for an eleven-year-old boy. He was very skinny and the circles under his eyes were dark, and she as his Professor and Head of House was not afraid to admit to herself that his heaviness concerned her, the weight of his gaze haunted her.

"I will have to give you a poor participation grade at the very least," she heard herself say. "Please do your homework and try to participate in class."

He didn't say anything, and didn't move.

"Detention tonight," McGonagall said, resisting a sigh. She watched him turn and leave the room, looking like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

Perhaps, she thought, a talk with the Headmaster was needed.

. . .

A/N: Sorry I haven't replied to reviews! College is killing me, but know that everyone's reviews have been AWESOME. I really really appreciate everyone's feedback, and it really helps me think of stuff to write and get motivated to actually write it. And some of your reviews are just really funny :)

So...how about poor Remus? Everyone's been so sad for him! Don't worry, he won't be sad and lonely forever. Thoughts on the characters, anyone?

Happy new year! Thanks for reading and supporting and reviewing :)