Hey everyone! This story was brought to you by Ghost Hunting: Facts About Ghosts assignment, Flower Arranging Station, Planting Flowers, Pinata Club, All is Ours Day, Bingo, and Showtime on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Also for Link Maker on Monthly Challenges for All. Also for Truth or Dare on The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition.

Ghost Hunting: Facts About Ghosts assignment: Task 4 - Write about a birth or death (or the immediate time before/after one these events)

Flower Arranging Station: 5. Petunia (character) James Potter

Planting Flowers: Watering Prompts 1. (trait) selfish

Pinata Club: Easy Death Eaters

All is Ours Day: Gryffindors love...(character) Peter Pettigrew (bonus)

Bingo: 1C (character) A Marauder

Showtime: Damned For All Time (character) Peter Pettigrew

Link Maker: Harry Potter characters used, 797 words

Truth or Dare: Dare - Write a minimum of three characters.

Warning for character deaths, and mentions of character deaths. Word count is 797 words. I hope you all enjoy Earn This.

Peter feels his own hand close around his throat as the panic rises in his chest. He'd only done what he had been ordered to do. It wasn't his fault that the house-elf had come and broken the prisoners free. It wasn't his fault at all.

Why does this always happen to me? He thought bitterly as his breathing began to shallow. The pressure of his own hand cutting off the flow of oxygen to his brain.

You brought this on yourself, a voice that sounds hauntingly like James Potter's says, ringing through his head like the loudest bell ever.

I never wanted you and Lily to die, James, he finds himself answering the voice in his head. He can see the black spot floating before his eyes. He can hear the laughter of his fellow Death Eaters none of them coming to his aid. I never wanted to orphan your son.

But you did. The reply was simple and straightforward. Just like Lily Evans had been in life. She never hid anything from James or his friends even if they happened to need things to be hidden from them.

The fingers tighten around his throat causing him to gag and choke. His eyes fill with tears as he tries his best to pry open the fingers of his silver hand. The laughter reaches his ear like the roar of a freight train.

But it wasn't my intention. He has to make at least Lily and James see that he was only doing what was right in the end. He had to make someone see the story from his side of things before he died.

The road to hell is paved in good intentions, Remus's voice says sagely. Leave to Remus to try and give him a motivational type of speech when he was dying.

Remus? Peter though a cold dread coming over him as the blackness started to creep into his vision ever so slowly. He knew the end was going to be soon and he just wanted them to understand.

Peter, you never were one to think things through. Remus reasoned. You always did what you thought was best for you. No regard for anyone else's safety. Including Lily and Harry.

Remus...He tries to think of all the excuses he wanted to tell Remus and Sirius when he'd almost been caught Harry's third year of Hogwarts. He wanted to say that what he'd done was for the best. But with the light fading from the world, he knows now at the end of things that he had been wrong. He'd been selfish. His pride in himself and his selfishness were killing him now, with his own hand. Remus, I'm sorry. I'm sorry James, Lily, Sirius. I'm sorry, Harry. I'm sorry that I will never get to tell you how sorry I am.

It ends with slight pain and an audible popping sound. He knows he's dead by the bright light he's bathed in and he wants to feel sorry for himself but that was the old Peter. This Peter, he's a different man.

"Peter," a voice calls out to him. One he hasn't heard since his own Hogwarts years. "Peter, you're here!"

He sees her standing in front of him much like she had looked when they were both younger. Lily Evans in all her seventeen-year-old glory. She had always been nice to him even when he didn't deserve it.

"Lily," he said warily, in case this was some sort of trick and this was actually some sort demon tormenting him in hell, "is that really you?"

She nodded. Her auburn hair bouncing around her shoulders as she did so. "It is," she confirmed. "I'm so happy to see you."

"The other's won't be," Peter says, hating the fact that he's using the old voice. The voice that just plain cried out for pity. He doesn't want to associate himself with that Peter Pettigrew any more. That man caused the death of his friends, in deed or act. He knows he can't take back what he did. He isn't even going to try.

"I've talked the others into giving you a chance at redemption," Lily said. "Everyone deserves a chance after all."

"She's right," James said, putting his arms around Lily. "I might not be particularly happy about it right now but Lily is right. You do deserve a chance at redemption."

"Thank you," Peter says, moving forward to throw his arms around both Lily and James. He stops himself short because he knows he doesn't deserve to be allowed to hug them. "Thank you so much, Lily, James."

"Earn this," James says before turning and walking off towards the castle. Towards Hogwarts. The Hogwarts of their youth. "Earn this, Peter."

And he would.

I hope you all enjoyed Earn This as much as I enjoyed writing it.