September 18th: Peter Pettigrew
All the time now, Peter feels like he's being pulled in different directions. On the one hand, the other Marauders need him more than he's been there for them lately. From James's mum and now dad both living with spattergroit, to Sirius processing the break (or whatever) that Marlene wants the two of them to take, to Remus struggling to find his footing with Sirius, Peter wants to spend as much time as he can holding them up and being there for them, whether as a good distraction or as someone they can confide in.
But Emmeline is back to hanging around Peter and not really anybody else, if she can help it, and as much as Peter wishes it were as simple as asking her to give him some space to be with the boys—or even to join Peter in spending time with them—he's worried about Em's motivations for isolating herself to this extent. She stayed away from others out of bitterness for a long time, but Peter thinks this is different. This—phase, if you want to call it that, goes beyond Em blaming others for anything. Peter knows she's gotten to a place where she no longer holds Sirius responsible for her parents' deaths and wants, if not to reconcile with him and the other Gryffindors, at least to make amends and live peaceably with them. Using Peter to hide from them doesn't feel like an angry statement; it feels like an—act of desperation, or something.
That morning, after he meets Emmeline in the common room and they once again eat breakfast alone together, he decides enough is enough. He doesn't want to embarrass her by bringing the issue up in public, so he suggests that they head outside to work on homework, and then takes her aside under a broad oak tree on the lake away from anyone else who might be able to overhear them. Emmeline is just flipping open her Ancient Runes textbook when Peter grabs both of her hands with his own.
The textbook slips off Em's lap onto the ground, and she looks over at him with a wild look in her eyes. "What?" she asks, just a little too fast to sound like everything is normal, and he wonders whether she can guess what he's about to say.
"You've been avoiding everybody again," he says. He figures that stating an observation is probably a better way to lead into this conversation than making any accusations about her intentions.
"No, I'm not. I'm talking to you."
"But not anybody else. I'm worried about you, Em. You were trying so hard, and then you just—stopped."
Emmeline doesn't say anything, and in the interest of not driving her away and leaving her with no one, Peter doesn't push it. They don't talk about it all through homework on the lake, or lunch, or Peter's very bad guitar playing in the Gryffindor common room, and he thinks that's the end of it until, just before they're getting ready to go to dinner, Em puts a hand on his strumming hand and clears her throat. "I, um… I guess I just don't feel like myself lately," she says.
It takes Peter a second to place what she's talking about, and when he does, he startles a little. "What's different, then?" he asks.
Emmeline shrugs. "There just doesn't seem like any point in doing anything anymore. There's no point talking to the others because I drove them all away already, and there's no point focusing on school when being in the Order is probably going to get us all killed in a few years' time. I can't do my reading or writing anymore because—I don't know, it's like the color is gone from everything. I'm showing up for classes and working on homework because I'm supposed to be, and it gives me something to do besides sit around and be bored, but—I just don't want to be here. For any of it."
"Okay," says Peter slowly, processing. "Okay, so first of all, can I just give you a hug?"
She laughs a little, and he realizes that it's the first time he's heard Emmeline laugh in a while now. He sets the guitar at his feet, turns to her, and sweeps her up into a hug, rubbing her back in little circles. She doesn't squeeze back at first, but does eventually.
When he lets go, he fixes his face into what he hopes is a supportive sort of frown. "First of all," he repeats, "nobody is gone. If Lily Evans, who had an active animosity going with every member of this house before she and Snape stopped being friends, could end up best friends with Marlene and on good terms with everyone in this house and year within a few months, then I don't see why anybody shouldn't be capable of leaving the past in the past and moving on."
"This is different than what happened with Lily," Em argues. "Lily is—she's funny and charming and—she knows how to make people like her when she wants them to."
"And you don't?"
"I'm just not that happy, friendly person anymore. I don't know how to… how to break back in. And I don't even know if I want to. I mean, I don't enjoy talking to people anymore. I don't enjoy anything. At all."
Peter gives her a long, searching look. He's known for a pretty long while now that Emmeline feels disconnected from other people, but he hadn't realized that that disconnection extends to what sounds like every aspect of her life. Fleetingly, he thinks about being eight years old, getting off the school bus and coming home to find his dad slumped on the ground in a pool of red. Dad made it through, got patched up at the hospital and started taking a pill every day that kept his energy up and his mood lifted, and Peter doesn't even want to think what would have happened to Dad if the doctors hadn't intervened. Is that what's going to happen to Emmeline? Is he going to come through the portrait hole of Gryffindor Tower one day to find her lying—?
"Can you promise me something?" he asks.
"What?" she says, sounding wary.
"If you start feeling like you want to hurt yourself, don't do it. Come find me instead. Or if you can't find me, find someone."
"But why would I—?"
"Just promise me, okay?"
Em looks down again. She's twiddling her thumbs and breathing shallowly. "Okay."
Peter clasps her shoulder and gives her a bracing smile. "What can I do to help you start feeling better?"
She doesn't answer right away, pausing for a long moment. "I don't know," she finally says. "I don't know if there's anything. I think I'm just—I think it's all ruined."
"Nothing's ruined," says Peter, but he can tell that she doesn't believe him. "I know it's hard to think about the future." Alecto Carrow's face pops into his head at that moment, and he pushes it away. He'll deal with the consequences when they come, he tells himself. "But do you want to remember how to appreciate your life, or do you want to feel like there's no point to anything?"
"But there is no point to anything."
"Look, if you're here anyway, don't you want to not feel badly about it?" he says, getting maybe a little exasperated—not with Emmeline, but with himself, for not seeming to be able to get through to her. "Wouldn't it be better for everyone for you to feel like you—like your life has a purpose?"
"Does it, though?"
"It could," says Peter fairly. "What we're doing with the Order matters. Even if we do all get ourselves killed in a few years, the difference we make in the meantime isn't for nothing. And our relationships—you matter to me, and I know you matter to everyone else, too. They wouldn't want to see you suffering."
Emmeline just shrugs. "Yeah, maybe."
"I know so," he insists.
"Thanks," she mutters, twisting one corner of her mouth. "Hey, is everything okay with you? Is there anything you, I don't know, wanted to talk about?"
Again, he thinks about Carrow, about the name he gave her in that moment of weakness, and he can't tell whether it would cause more damage to fess up—if that's just going to get his friends killed. "Everything's fine with me," he assures her, his stomach churning. "I'm just worried about you."
Carrow hasn't bothered him once ever since he sent back that owl with Gideon's name. He had figured that Gideon is of age and out of Hogwarts now and is tough enough to be able to defend himself if some Death Eater wannabe comes after him. Peter hasn't heard anything about Gideon being attacked—he was there at their last Order meeting and seemed totally normal—and Peter is hoping that he can just forget about the whole thing and move forward, but that's probably overly optimistic of him when he can't seem to keep the thing with Carrow out of his thoughts.
Increasingly, Peter is starting to feel like no matter what he does, he can't save everybody he wants to save, whether that's Emmeline or Gideon or any of the other Order members whose secrecy he's trying to protect. He plucks off-key at his guitar and tries to forget.
xx
Peter begins to find that it's easier to take his mind off of his own problems if he throws himself into solving Emmeline's. On Monday, he makes a point of seating them with Lily and Marlene at breakfast, and when Emmeline gets out of Charms, Peter is waiting for her outside the classroom door, ready to steer her toward Mary to work together on their homework for Defense. They lose track of each other after lunch—Peter has Care of Magical Creatures without her, and when he gets done, he can't seem to find her anywhere—but she joins him for dinner with Alice, Remus, and Sirius, and then comes up to the boys' dormitory with him afterwards.
James and Remus stay downstairs in the common room, so it's just the two of them and Sirius upstairs. James obviously forgot to turn off his WWN before dinner, so there's quiet rock music playing in the background as Peter pats the space beside him so that Emmeline can join him on his bed.
Emmeline is sitting ramrod straight against the headboard, clearly not at ease with Sirius there in the room with them. Peter sort of wants to rub her back and make it better, but he's positive that she would just be embarrassed by the public contact, so he stops himself. Sirius starts to say, "I could go to the library—? I just wanted some quiet to work on this blasted Muggle Studies essay."
"No, quiet is good," says Em softly. "I've got Ancient Runes stuff to do."
It's amazing how hard it can be to sit with someone you have painful history with, even if you're not expected to say anything. Peter's not in that position, sitting here with Sirius and Em, but he knows that Emmeline feels that way about Sirius, and he wishes he could do something—anything—to lighten that burden.
So he takes it upon himself to get everybody else away from Emmeline and tell them—well, he's not totally sure what to say. He doesn't want to share details about her private life that she shared with him in confidence, but how else can he explain why she needs them? "Em's having a hard time right now," he ends up telling everybody in sequence. "I would really appreciate it if you could just, you know, talk to her—do your best to make her feel included."
"Why? What's going on with her?" asks Mary when Peter is able to get her and Alice alone. She doesn't sound skeptical or sarcastic, just earnest.
"She's just struggling with some things, and I think it's not helping feeling like she's totally isolated herself from all of her friends."
Mary nods, tucking a piece of brown hair behind her ear. "I mean, I'm happy to have her around, but she's going to know something's up if we try to pour sugar down her throat, you know?"
"We can still make a point of inviting her places," Alice reasons. "I don't think anybody wants Emmeline to feel like she has to be alone."
If Peter's being honest with himself, he doesn't want to be alone, either—afraid of what will happen the next time he puts himself in a position to be cornered by Carrow. Will he have to give away more names? Spoil missions that his future self will be tasked with? Should he have stood his ground and told somebody instead?
Is it too late?