Previously in the Darklyverse: Peter celebrated his seventeenth birthday. After Remus kissed him, Sirius reacted by trying to regain normalcy by amping up his platonic affectionateness around Remus, who in turn withdrew. Emmeline and Sirius had a years-long falling-out over Sirius's cousin Bellatrix (unbeknownst to him) killing Emmeline's parents, with Emmeline trying and failing to reconnect with Sirius once she no longer blamed him. Remus fought with his parents over his taking the newly developed Wolfsbane Potion without their knowledge or permission. Alecto Carrow threatened Peter in an attempt to blackmail him into sharing information about the Order of the Phoenix.

xx

July 23rd, 1977: Peter Pettigrew

All in all, it was a good birthday, Peter thinks—he got lots of cool stuff and, more importantly, got to spend the whole day long with all eight of his closest friends (and how many people can even count themselves lucky enough to have eight best friends?). He just wishes he knew the right thing to say to Remus—it sucks that his parents are none too happy about him taking the Wolfsbane Potion, and it also sucks that there's been whatever weirdness this is between Remus and Sirius as of late. Even though Sirius and Remus seem more or less to be back to normal, Peter thinks that Sirius is—it's almost to say that Sirius is overacting the part of Remus's normal friend who doesn't have any weirdness with him. All four Marauders are generally casually affectionate with each other, but Sirius has almost been too affectionate with Remus in particular now that he's not avoiding him anymore, which in turn seems to be making Remus nervous.

Remus seems anxious and subdued when he arrives at Peter's house the following morning. He says hello to Peter's parents, and they spend a good ten minutes standing in the kitchen, Mum and Dad asking Remus how he's been, how his family is doing, whether he's excited to go into his last year of schooling at Hogwarts. For most of the summer, Remus has been pointedly avoiding Sirius and Lily's flat, and so has been spending an awful lot of time at Peter's house instead, so it's not like they didn't just see him to catch up a few days ago, but Mum and Dad are both pretty chatty and, Peter assumes, must feel close to Remus after how much they've seen of him on holidays over the last six years.

Peter Side-Along-Apparates with Remus to Diagon Alley—he may finally be of age now, but his next opportunity to get his Apparition license won't be for another month. They hang out in Gambol and Japes for a while, giving each other noogies and messing with the merchandise, and then hit up The Leaky Cauldron for Peter's first legal Firewhiskey.

"It's too bad Padfoot and Prongs aren't here for this," Peter remarks casually. "They'd have liked to be there. We were there to celebrate with them when they came of age."

Remus, who went stiff at the first mention of Sirius, says tightly, "I didn't want to be around Padfoot and Prongs today. Just you."

"Is this about whatever you and Padfoot were fighting over at the end of last term?" asks Peter. When Remus doesn't answer, he takes his silence to mean yes. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Okay. But I'm here if you change your mind."

"Thanks, Wormy." Remus squeezes an arm around Peter's shoulders and ruffles his hair with his free hand. "You're a good friend."

xx

He's in Flourish and Blotts when the thing that he's been dreading happens again, as he's clenching his booklist so hard that it crumples and staring up into the eyes of Alecto Carrow.

"Not so brave when your little friends aren't around, are you?" she sneers. Peter doesn't allow himself the luxury of looking around frantically for Remus. Peter already knows that Remus is over in the Current Events section looking up news on the war, and that's clear across to the other side of the store. Besides, he doesn't want to give the impression that he needs to lean on Remus to take care of him, that he can't fight his own battles.

"I'm plenty brave," he says instead, and he sets his jaw and locks eyes on hers.

"Sure you are. For now. When I'm through with you, your friends won't even recognize the snivelly little bastard you'll become. You'll be a traitor, and a coward, and they'll hate you for it."

"You're confident," says Peter, his voice trembling. "Hold onto that while it lasts, because you won't be for long. You'll see. You can't hurt me, not directly and not through my friends."

Carrow smirks. "174 Grove Road."

"What?"

"Don't you recognize it? That's the address for Samantha Macdonald. It would be a shame for the house to have a gas leak and then catch on fire while she's at work and her daughter is at home, now, wouldn't it?"

Peter's stomach sinks like a stone. "You're threatening Mary's mum?"

"Your words, not mine," says Carrow with a wink.

"You can't," he blurts out. "You're not going to get away with blackmailing me. I'll tell Dumbledore. I'll—"

"Go ahead. Tell him. If they lock me up—and that's assuming that anyone in the Ministry is willing to take your word against mine—Macdonald and the rest of your bratty friends will all be dead within the day. This thing is bigger than just me, you know."

"I know," Peter spits. "It's you and your Death Eater cronies. That's what you want to become, isn't it?"

Again, she says, "Your words," and then she pauses and adds, "We might be inclined to let the filthy Muggles live if you gave me a name."

Peter's first thought is that's all? but he doesn't press his luck. "A name," he repeats dubiously.

"We got glimpses of your moronic band of rebels during the attack you tried to stage last May, but unfortunately for us, most of our elders don't spend their time studying up on the faces of Hogwarts students. Just give me one name of one of your conspirators, and I'll drop the whole thing, I promise. You can trust me."

He looks blankly into her conniving face and says, "I'll never trust you."

Still, he calls Mary up at her mum's place the second that he makes plans with Remus for tomorrow, says goodbye, and gets home. "What are you up to tomorrow?"

"Not much, just hanging out at home. Mum wants me to clean the bathrooms for her," says Mary, and Peter can hear her scowl through the phone.

"Come over. First thing, as soon as you wake up. Remus will be here, too. We'll make a day of it."

"Um, okay?"

"Good," says Peter, and he hangs up the phone.

Carrow's stunt in Diagon Alley took him by surprise: he'd thought he'd be safe until he went back to Hogwarts, not that anybody would track him down over the summer with details and plans at the ready for how they were going to hurt Peter's loved ones. Choosing Mary as the one to threaten was a surprise as well, although the more Peter thinks about it, the more he realizes that it shouldn't have been. She may be out of the Order now, but she was just as big a part of it as Peter at the ambush, and her parents are both Muggles to boot. Of course she'd be a target.

Remus is already here by the time Mary arrives the next morning. "I'm really glad you're here," Peter says quietly while Mary is giving him a quick one-armed hug.

"Why the urgency? You sounded so serious when you called," she responds. She's grinning; Peter isn't.

"No reason," he says. He hopes she and Remus can't hear the tremble in his voice. "So where are we off to? Sirius and Lily's?"

"I was thinking we could go to Hogsmeade," Remus says quickly.

Mary raises an eyebrow. "That bad, huh?"

"Can we please not talk about it?"

"We don't have to talk about it," Peter assures him with a sad smile, and he takes Remus's hand and braces himself for Apparition.

He feels like he's on tenterhooks all day, and his uneasiness, if anything, only grows as they pass from shop to shop to The Three Broomsticks for a late lunch. He keeps Mary within eyeshot at all times, only letting her slip away when she needs to use the loo at Zonko's, and even then, he keeps anxiously glancing at the restroom door, barely listening to a word Remus is saying.

It takes him a moment to realize that Remus has stopped talking and is giving him a side-eye. "What?" says Peter, and he tries to sound defensive, but it just comes out an anxious squeak.

"What's up with you? You've been acting weird ever since yesterday afternoon."

"I'm fine," says Peter, too quickly. "Everything's fine."

But everything is not fine. He can feel it in his gut, in his bones, in his voice box as he wishes Remus and Mary a good rest of their night and collapses into his bed back home. The minutes tick by, and the phone doesn't ring, and nobody Apparates or Flooes into his house with bad news, but still, Peter can't let his guard down.

He shouldn't have let Mary go home tonight. He should have convinced her to stay the night, bought her some time to figure out what to do. He should have frickin' reported Carrow the second he got home from Diagon Alley yesterday, but who's Peter going to tell? He doesn't exactly have a direct line to Dumbledore, and he's never been to the Ministry of Magic to know where it is or how to get there. And even if he did tell someone, what if Carrow stuck to her word and had more than just Mary killed to retaliate?

He doesn't sleep much that night. The next morning, Remus comes over again, clearly intent on hiding out from Sirius at Peter's house for as long as Peter will let him, and Peter puts his foot down and says, "We're going to Lily and Sirius's flat. You can't avoid him forever, Moony." That, and Sirius and Lily's place is probably the best place to be if he wants to keep tabs on Mary.

Mary isn't there when they Apparate in, but she arrives an hour later looking a little bedraggled. "Hey, guys. Hi, Peter," she says as Peter beelines over to her.

"How are you doing, Mare? How was your night?"

"Well, you know, the house caught on fire yesterday while we were out," she says, sounding stressed, and Peter's stomach just about drops down to his feet.

"You're kidding," says James.

"I wish," says Mary. "Apparently there was a gas leak or something? The fire marshals couldn't figure out what set off the fire, though—nobody was home at the time, so it's not like someone turned on a burner or something—Mum was at work, and I was out, too, so no one got hurt, but we're still stuck staying in a hotel while Mum sorts through the insurance and tries to decide whether to rebuild the house or buy a new one—"

Peter's head is swimming. He barely notices as Remus claims the free armchair instead of the space next to Sirius on the couch. (Was that deliberate? Of course it was deliberate, Peter tells himself. He wonders whether Remus and Sirius are actually fooling anyone into thinking that things are back to normal between them.)

He tries to focus on the fact that Mary is okay, that no one actually got hurt, but he can't help feeling wholly and entirely responsible for everything, and he knows that he should, that he deserves this guilt. The day passes in a blur, like the next, and the next, but Mary keeps showing up every day no worse for wear, and Peter keeps wondering when the other shoe is going to drop.

On Thursday, Peter allows Remus to tag along on his plans to see Emmeline, who doesn't seem to mind the added company. "It's hard," she tells them when Peter asks how she's doing. "I alienated myself from everyone for so long, you know? And I don't think I'm ever going to be as close to Sirius as I used to be, and I miss that a lot—I miss him. Everyone's been welcoming, but—it's hard to be around him and know I'm not his best friend anymore, or, you know, his best friend not including the blokes."

"Hang in there," Peter advises, giving her hand a little squeeze.

Remus asks, "Have you tried talking to Sirius about how you feel and what you want? It might at least help you clear the air and help you figure out where to go next with him."

"God, no," says Emmeline with an anxious laugh. "The last time we really talked one-on-one, we had that blowout fight about everything, and I keep feeling like I'm walking on eggshells, like it's going to go back to that. No, I'd much rather leave everything unspoken just to have a little peace where he's concerned."

Peter is surprised that Em is so frank about her relationships with Sirius and the other Gryffindor seventh years in front of Remus—as far as he knows, Peter is the only person Em's ever really confided in about this—but he's glad to see her doing it, if it could bring her closer to Remus and help her bridge the gap between herself and one more member of their friend group. "You should both come with me to Sirius and Lily's flat tomorrow," Peter says; Emmeline agrees shyly, and so does Remus, after a long pause and some obvious deliberation.

On Saturday night, Peter, Sirius, and James don't accompany Remus at the full moon, leaving him to transform in the care of his parents. They've only ever joined Remus a couple of times for his transformation during the summer, when his parents were out of town and believed that the Marauders were chaining their son up, not cavorting with him in the nearby woods. Peter knows that Remus hugely prefers joining up with the Marauders to being locked up by his parents, but no one can know that they've illegally become Animagi, especially not parents who would probably be terrified for the safety of others around Remus if they knew that he was roaming the grounds every month at the full moon at Hogwarts.

In a lot of ways, it was reckless of them to become Animagi in order to help Remus with his transformations, Peter reflects, but he thinks it was worth it. Even now that Remus doesn't really need them anymore, now that he has the Wolfsbane Potion to help him keep his mind during the transformations, it was worth it for Remus to have some company to help keep him from hurting himself or anyone else for the couple of years that they were able to do that for him.

The next morning, Peter kisses his parents goodbye and Flooes to the Lupins' house, where Remus is locked in his bedroom and only lets Peter in when he ascertains that his parents aren't coming in with him. "They still chained me up," he says shortly, flopping back down again on his bed, "because they didn't trust that the potion would work without seeing it for themselves, so I didn't get a lot of sleep—too uncomfortable."

"I'm sorry," says Peter, squeezing Remus's knee.

"You know, they used to be impressed that you and Prongs and Padfoot were willing to stay with me during transformations so that they could still go away for trips and things? They used to think you were all such great mates for sticking by me and supporting me in spite of my condition. But it's like they've decided you're all negligent for allowing me to take the Wolfsbane Potion—allowing me! Like taking it makes me a reckless teenager, and not interfering makes you all reckless teenagers, too. Like I need to be—like I need to be monitored."

"They're just scared for you," Peter says quietly. "Fear makes people try to control the people they love. I'm not saying they're right; I'm just saying."

"I know," says Remus, and he sounds very, very old in that moment. "I just wish I could make them listen to me."

Peter pats Remus's knee again and sighs. "After the next month, you've got Christmas and Easter breaks, and then you can move out, at least. It won't change them, but it will give you the privacy to better make your own decisions."

Remus seems to sag down deeper into the mattress. "I'm really afraid for what's going to happen to me when we graduate," he confesses. "There's so much anti-werewolf legislation that makes it almost impossible to get a job… I already had to register as one when I turned seventeen, and any employer can check with the Ministry and see my status as one. I'm lucky that word about me hasn't spread at Hogwarts yet, but with Belby's paper on the Wolfsbane Potion coming out, people might start to figure out that I was his test subject, and…"

"Breathe," Peter advises. Remus slumps over further in his seat. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, yeah? It's going to be okay, Moony. I promise. All of us are here to help carry you if you need it. Prongs is, like, a gazillionaire; I'm sure he can help finance you if you need it once he comes into his inheritance when we graduate. Or Padfoot would let you crash with him—he's already letting Lily stay there for free."

Remus smiles weakly. "Yeah. Maybe."

Peter hesitates, then asks, "What's the deal with you and Padfoot lately, anyway? I know you were avoiding each other for a while, and then you seemed okay for a bit, but now it seems like you—well—I feel like you've been hiding out at my place so you can avoid him."

Remus colors. "I'm sorry, Wormtail. I didn't mean to make you feel like—like a replacement."

"No, it's okay, it's just… is everything all right?"

There's a pause, and then Remus answers, "Has Padfoot seemed like he's been—I don't know—affectionate ever since we made up?"

"I guess. I mean, we're all pretty affectionate with each other, compared to most blokes."

"Yeah, but has he seemed extra affectionate?"

Peter mulls it over. "Maybe, yeah. I guess I noticed it, but I just assumed he was happy to have you back as a friend. Why?"

"Oh, nothing," says Remus a little too quickly, and Peter suspects that there's more—a lot more—to the story than Remus is letting on.

When he gets home, there's a letter sitting on his bed tied to the leg of a barn owl. Peter's heart is beating in double time as he opens it.

One name, it says.

Almost automatically, like he couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to, he fetches a quill and scribbles on the back, Gideon Prewett.