Previously in the Darklyverse: Before Remus and Sirius started dating, they informed James but not Peter what was going on. Emmeline remained trapped in St. Mungo's, dredging up Peter's memories of his father's own suicide attempt. Alecto Carrow blackmailed Peter into sharing Order of the Phoenix information.

Revised version uploaded 26 January 2022.

xx

January 11th, 1978: Peter Pettigrew

Remus and Sirius getting together—Peter wouldn't say it makes him uncomfortable, but it does make him feel an odd sense of loneliness. Sirius was never single from fourth year forward, and even James was with Lily from last summer onward, but after Siobhan broke up with him, Peter always at least had Remus to keep him company when they were single but their friends weren't. Now, Remus and Sirius are together, and Peter has lost his single buddy.

Plus, they didn't even tell him what was going on until it was done and they had gotten together. Peter knows he's been a little out of the loop, hanging with Emmeline much more than anybody else all the time, but he hadn't realized he was so out of it that nobody was bothering to tell him important details like "Remus kissed Sirius and that's why Marlene dumped him." Peter absolutely isn't going to abandon Em in the hopes of getting back in his friends' good graces—if anything, he should be focusing on her before anybody else, because apparently she's the person who's most loyal in Peter's life—but he does sort of wonder what else he's been missing out on, holed up with her all these months.

That's not to say that Peter feels like the others are excluding him now that Em is in the hospital and he's not hanging out with her all the time anymore. He's been spending lots of time with the Marauders, just the four of them like old times, and the girls are always perfectly friendly to him when they see him around, which is often. But not knowing about Sirius and Remus hurt Peter in a way that he hadn't expected, and them getting together, frankly, sucks.

Almost worse than Sirius and Remus not telling Peter what was going on is the fact that they told James, who has been gossiping to Peter about the whole situation with seemingly no regard whatsoever for how his own foreknowledge has been making Peter feel. "I just don't want to see Padfoot repeat with Moony the same mistakes he made when he was with Marlene," James is saying now. They're in the common room—Remus and Sirius have taken over the dormitory for a while, presumably to snog. "You know, like, letting the person he's dating completely hijack all his attention and burying his problems with them underneath of sex and declarations of love. Things were really bad between Padfoot and Marlene for a long time there before they were suddenly, magically better—I don't believe for a second that things were actually healthy between them the instant they started dating monogamously and spending all their time together."

"Mhm," says Peter, who's half listening and half pissed, but he does his best to bury all of it and concentrate on his Charms essay.

"And for that matter," James continues obliviously, "I don't want to see Padfoot jump into anything while he's still working through what he feels for Marlene. It's only fair to Moony for Padfoot to wait, right? But he's not going to wait."

"Mhm."

"And I know I should probably be telling this to Padfoot himself, but—how am I supposed to bring it up? I don't want to be the bloke who spoils his happiness, and I just—I don't know how to talk to him about boys, Wormtail, like, in that way."

"Right."

"It makes more sense that Moony would end up being gay. It's not like I was expecting it, but Moony never talked about girls sexually ever before now. But I would have sworn on my life that Padfoot was one hundred percent straight and that his relationship with Moony was one hundred percent platonic."

"Yeah."

"Are you listening to me? You seem really…"

Peter closes his eyes, sighs, opens them. "Yeah, mate. I'm listening. Sorry."

He's sort of expecting James to start probing him about why he's not responding, and he's both relieved and annoyed when James doesn't. "Why did Padfoot have to start dating somebody who's another Marauder? This is going to throw off our whole group dynamic, isn't it?"

And more than anything else James has said so far, this pisses Peter off the most of all because—their group dynamic has already been thrown off for what feels like a long time. Peter's been off with Emmeline, away from them, and it's like none of them have even noticed. Of course, part of why Peter has been feeling distanced from everyone lately has nothing to do with Emmeline—and everything to do with Alecto Carrow.

He gave her another name after she poisoned Remus, and once again, she disappeared for long enough that Peter started to feel like things were safe again. And then, last night, she came back.

What she wanted was different this time. She didn't ask for names, but she did ask Peter to share what the Order has the seventh years, Benjy, Eddie, and Frank working on. He admitted that War Stories is coming from the Order, and he briefly touched on their efforts toward inter-house unity, admitting that they've so far been unsuccessful.

He keeps thinking he needs to report what Carrow is doing to Dorcas or Dumbledore or—hell, even Remus or somebody. Someone who can help him navigate their encounters and keep everybody safe. The problem is that, after the stunts Carrow pulled with Remus as well as with Mary over the summer, Peter doesn't believe that it will be possible to protect the people he loves if he tattles to the Order about the hold Carrow has over him. He doesn't know who or how many people she's working with, he doesn't know how close to Voldemort or the inner circles of Death Eaters she is, and he definitely doesn't know what other threats she has up her sleeve that she can torment Peter's loved ones with if he doesn't do exactly what she says.

He feels like he's constantly looking over his shoulder to see if Carrow is coming to buy another piece off his soul, and when he is with Carrow, he's still looking over his shoulder waiting for someone from the Order to catch him and hate him forever for what he's given away to the Death Eaters. Peter doesn't like the paranoid, closed off, distrustful person that his arrangement with Carrow (if you can call it that) is making him into, but he doesn't know how to get his old self back, if he even deserves to.

He keeps catching himself justifying giving away Order names and secrets to Carrow. Like Sirius and Remus deserve for Peter to rat them out after telling James but not Peter that they were together. Like he used to hero worship the ground James walked on and the only time James ever treated Peter like his best friend when he and Sirius were fighting back in fifth year. Sometimes he wonders whether this thing with Carrow is going to warp his soul until he has no guilt or reservations left about protecting his friends' safety.

When he Flooes Em that evening, he can tell that she can tell that something's up with him. "Are you sure you're all right?" she asks, and he laughs in a way that he's sure is entirely unconvincing.

"I'm fine. I'm the one who should be asking you that," Peter argues, but his voice sounds thin and strained, and he can't manage to keep a smile on his face.

Not that Peter wants to make it all about himself, but why does this keep happening to him? Em attempting suicide dragged up all Peter's baggage about his dad doing the same thing when he was a kid. He thought he was past it, but every time he closes his eyes, he sees Dad's blood everywhere and imagines what Meredith McKinnon must have seen on the bathroom floor when she found Emmeline there. Did Em have to use even the same method that Dad did? Is everyone Peter loves destined to try to die before their time?

What would have happened if Em had been successful in what she was trying to do? Is she going to try again? Is Dad?

"I'm sick of talking about myself," Emmeline says. "All I do here is talk about myself. I talk about myself to the staffers, I talk about myself to the other patients in group—I'm getting sick of hearing my same old sob stories over and over again, to be honest with you."

"But you are going to groups lately, then? That's awesome."

"Yeah, well," says Em. His best guess is that she's thinking going to groups is one of her best bets for how to get out of there, but she's not going to say that out loud in front of the staffer manning the fireplaces, and neither is Peter. "Your groups are all the same people from your hallway, so you have the same people with you in and out of every group you go to, and we're all getting to know each other pretty well."

"Are there any other students in there with you?"

"I don't think so. There's one person who was enrolled in Beauxbatons before he came here, but that was, like, three years ago; he's probably too old by now for them to take him back."

"Three years ago? But that would mean…"

Em shakes her head. "Don't think about it."

"But you—"

"It's better if we don't think about it," she insists. "I'll get out of here. You're going to get sick of seeing me around so much soon enough here."

"I just wish I could, I don't know, bring you homework or something. You know, so you don't have to play catch-up so much when you get back."

"That's all right. It's not like I can do anything without a wand."

"That's right; you don't have your wand." Personally, Peter can't imagine very many things that would be more crippling than having your wand taken away. He understands where they're coming from—you can't Disapparate out of there if you don't have your wand—but it still feels like a cruel and needless power grab. Quickly, he searches for something else to say—they're delving into territory that it could be dangerous for Em to talk about—and Peter is reminded again of exactly how little privacy Em is afforded here. "So, um, I can tell Moonshine misses you. I took over feeding her, so her dish and her litter box are in my dorm now, and I can hear her yowling sometimes when I'm trying to sleep."

Emmeline winces. "I hope she isn't keeping you up too much."

"Nah, not at all."

"Thanks for taking care of her."

"Yep."

"She do anything funny recently?"

"She's brilliant. She's figured out how to lift teabags out of cups so that she can play with them. She actually saw me put a coaster into my nightstand drawer the other day, and two hours later, she remembered it was in there and figured out how to pull the drawer open to get it out and play with that, too."

Emmeline leans back in her seat and closes her eyes. "Tell me more about everything that's happening. I want to feel like I'm there."

"But… we only have five minutes left," says Peter, hating everything.

"I don't care. Do your best."

"Um… well, mostly we just all sit together in little pockets and do homework."

"Boo. Paint me a picture, Pettigrew."

So he tells her about Defense Against the Dark Arts, where they've been practicing their nonverbal Shield Charms. He's just getting to the good part of the story, where Mary's anxiety ramps up high enough due to the nonverbal nature of the spell that her Shield Charm accidentally causes a small earthquake in the room, when the staffer patrolling the room tells them that their time is up for Peter's visit.

"Mary's coming in an hour or two," he promises. "Don't tell her I told you about the Shield Charm thing."

Emmeline laughs. "I won't. Bye, Peter."

"Bye," he says quickly, and then he yanks his head out of Em's fireplace and back into the Gryffindor common room.

xx

It's a Hogsmeade weekend this Saturday, but James is going with Lily, and Remus is going with Sirius. Alice is with Dirk Cresswell, Mary with Reg Cattermole—so basically the only two seventh year Gryffindors who don't have a date are Peter and Marlene.

It's Peter's idea for the two of them to go together. He's pretty sure the topic of Sirius is going to come up and he's probably going to say something that makes the day end in disaster, but, well—he's kind of lonely, and he thinks Marlene is probably kind of lonely too, and it just makes sense for them to stick together instead of awkwardly tagging along with the couples. Besides, he's not exactly the biggest fan of Sirius-and-Remus, either, even if Peter's reasons are markedly different from Marlene's.

"This will be the last Hogsmeade trip for a while now, right?" says Peter while they're walking down the hill toward the village.

Marlene pulls her cloak more tightly around herself, yanking her hat down against the wind. "Yup," she confirms, "because of the Quidditch games. Ravenclaw versus Slytherin in two weeks, then Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff in another two, so we probably won't go back to Hogsmeade until late February, maybe March."

"Honestly, I haven't really been following Quidditch season as much as I used to. Blame it on the war, but…"

"I think a lot of people are having a hard time with it this year since, you know, Elisabeth was Hufflepuff Captain and Millie commentated. Not that my brother Mike isn't happy to have his job back commentating, but—you know."

"I know James isn't really looking forward to playing Hufflepuff next month," says Peter. "Liz's team probably would have won last year if they hadn't cancelled the last two matches. If Gryffindor wins, it's going to feel hollow, and if Hufflepuff wins, it's going to feel hollow for them, too."

"Who's winning right now, anyway?"

"Either us or Ravenclaw, since we both won our matches. I think Ravenclaw won by more points, but I couldn't tell you for sure."

Once in the village, they grab a quick butterbeer from The Three Broomsticks before heading up to Zonko's, but Marlene turns right around and stomps out of the store when they see Sirius with Remus around the corner. "Marlene—"

She gives him a withering look, and Peter falls silent at once. They don't speak again until they've reached Honeydukes, when Marlene bursts out, "It's like I can't escape it! There they are everywhere I go. We have an entire goddamn castle to spread out in—Hogsmeade is an entire village—it's just not fair that I can't get away from them."

Peter opts not to point out that Marlene broke up with Sirius and that they'd probably still be together right now if she hadn't done so. Instead, he says calmly, "We've got, what, six months left before school lets out? Then we graduate, and you never have to see him ever again if you don't want to. Either of them."

"We run in the same circles," says Marlene irritably. "I won't even be able to visit my best friend at her flat without seeing him because he's her flatmate. You see my dilemma."

"I know it's hard," Peter says, not sure what else he's supposed to tell her to make her feel better.

"Easy for you to say," Marlene mutters.

"Marlene, I don't know what I'm supposed to do to help you. If I'm just making it worse—"

"No, I'm sorry, it's my fault for being like this," says Marlene, sighing. "I swear I'm not trying to pick a fight. It's just—nobody understands. It's lonely, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. You and I both ended up here together today, remember?"

"That's true. I'm sorry—I didn't even think about how it must feel like to you to lose your best friends to each other. It must be really awkward hanging out with the four of you anymore."

"I'm glad they're happy, but it's a little weird, yeah."

Rubbing her temples, Marlene says, "How did everything get so complicated? I'm in love with someone who wants somebody else. Remus is a—" she drops her voice to a whisper "—werewolf. Emmeline tried to kill herself, and two people are dead because of us. We did that."

Peter feels like the shadow of Elisabeth's and Millie's deaths is cast over everything they do, everywhere they go, and the shadow of Mary's and Remus's near-misses darkens Peter's doorstep, too. In that moment, he would give anything—anything—to go back to a year ago when his friends were safe and mostly happy, when the Death Eaters were a faraway threat that didn't affect their lives yet and Alecto Carrow was just an unpleasant girl that Peter used to take Potions with.