Previously in the Darklyverse: Peter moved in with Emmeline. The Order took on a more active role in the war when they developed a spell that can identify the use and location of Unforgivable Curses. Without knowing its proper countercurse, Lily just barely saved Emmeline from dying at the hands of Snape's Sectumsempra.

xx

August 28th, 1978: Peter Pettigrew

Peter can safely say that he knew nothing about spell-building before he started working on the Sectumsempra countercurse. He knows Lily and Sirius have never done this before, either, but Dorcas learned some by helping McGonagall to do this very thing with other curses over the past year, and she's willing to hold their hands through it so they can all figure this thing out together.

As it turns out, spell-writing is a lot like computer programming in the Muggle world, something that Peter knows a little bit about: his mum is a computer science teacher at the local high school. Spell-writing, apparently, is all about tapping into the sort of "source code" of magic, identifying language that will evoke the exact magic you want to occur and then tying that language to a word and wand movement that can be used subsequently to anyone wanting to access the source code in the future.

Peter can't say he's very good at it, at least not yet. There's a lot of Latin involved—not all spell-writing requires Latin, Dorcas tells him, but it's the basis of most spells developed in Western Europe, and almost certainly is the basis of Sectumsempra. Lily and Sirius are both taking to it faster than Peter is, but that's no surprise: he got by at school, but he's never really been the best at magic.

Still, he feels like he has to do this to make it up to Emmeline. After all, if it weren't for Peter, she probably never would have been cursed and almost murdered this month.

He told Alecto Carrow about the curse-identification spell. Of course he did. There was no way he could have hidden it, with Order members suddenly showing up without fail to every Death Eater crime committed, not just the meetings planned in advance and intercepted. When the Order started crashing every little Muggle-torturing session the Death Eaters had going, they were bound to figure out what was up, and of course they turned to Peter.

Because it's not just names that they want from Peter now that he's graduated: they want mission details and activity reports, a whole window into the goings-on of the Order of the Phoenix. And because Peter is afraid—not just for his friends anymore but for himself—he does what they tell him.

He's found him starting to make excuses for himself, telling himself that it's never the same with the Marauders anymore because they've all coupled off and left him in the dust, thinking about how rare it is for anyone to ask to swing by his flat on evenings and weekends, how rarely even Remus and Lily reach out considering that they're unemployed and can't have many better things to do. Would he have minded those things so much if he weren't fishing for reasons to feel bitter? After all, at least he still gets invited places, unlike Emmeline, who keeps showing up as Peter's plus-one everywhere he goes.

Emmeline—that's where Peter's excuses fall apart, because Em is one of the least loved people in their circle, and she needs Peter, and he screwed up, letting her get attacked like that. Em deserves better than to bleed out slowly on Lily and Sirius's sofa because of Death Eaters who knew she would be coming.

What were they playing at, leaving Peter alone while they attacked everyone he brought with him? Giving him a message to deliver after leaving Emmeline for dead? The other Death Eaters may not know the identity of the mole, but Peter is sure somehow that choosing him to pass on the message was Alecto Carrow's doing. If she doesn't let other Death Eaters attack him, they're going to blow his cover, and Peter—

—Honestly? Peter can't stand the thought of how his friends would look at him if they knew what he's been up to. They wouldn't care that it started with him trying to protect him, and they would never forgive him for his betrayal, and frankly, they would be right.

What is the point of feeding information to the Death Eaters if it's not protecting his friends anymore? Why should he continue to put everyone he loves in danger if there's not some kind of reciprocal payback?

The truth is cold and unbidden: it's because he's in too deep to get out. He wonders what it will take for him to find a way to forgive himself. Wonders whether he even should.

At least things at home are—good, notwithstanding Em's recent brush with death. Peter misses the camaraderie of living with the Marauders, burning with jealousy when he thinks about James and Sirius and Remus and Lily all together without him, but there's something sweet and refreshing about living with Emmeline, who always comes out of her room to sit with him in the evenings and trades off cooking and dish-doing duties with him on weekends. He knows that nobody else really understands his relationship with Em, whether they're dating or just friends or platonic soulmates or what, but he doesn't mind as long as nobody gives him grief about it, and they don't.

Truthfully, he thinks the answer to everybody's confusion is somewhere in the middle space—she's more than a friend, but he doesn't know what that makes her. He'll admit there's something a little date-y going on, more so even than when he was dating Siobhan Flynn back in sixth year. Emmeline gives Peter a hug goodbye every morning before they both leave for work, and sometimes he presses his lips to her cheek and can feel the skin under his mouth stretching into a smile. He doesn't know what you call that, and he doesn't really care, as long as it's working for them both, and it seems to be.

He got himself a job right out of Hogwarts working for the Ministry Department of Magical Games and Sports, already having had his foot in the door from his sixth year internship. Now that the Quidditch World Cup is over, they're in their slow season, which leaves Peter plenty of downtime at work to think about living with Em, feeling like the Marauders have broken up with him, and, of course, constantly being anxious over being a double agent for the Death Eaters and the Order. If you asked Peter two years ago what his life would look like after Hogwarts, he would not have guessed that any of these things would be true, and yet here he is, drowning in it.

He wishes he had someone, anyone, to confide in about Carrow and the Death Eaters, but he doesn't. Instead, he dumps his friendship problems on Emmeline when they both get home from work one Monday night.

"It's like—I don't want to say they forgot about me, because they haven't, not entirely," he says. "We still see each other a little when we sync up our orb duty shifts, and sometimes the blokes drop by on the weekends, and they're always welcoming when I drop by their places, too. It's just—I don't know. I know they do foursome things with Lily sometimes, and it's like, I used to be there with them, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," says Em quietly. "It was like that when Sirius and I stopped being friends, you know, back in fourth year."

"But that's going better these days, isn't it? I mean, with you and him both working in the shop together and everything?"

"It is, yeah. It's—different from what it used to be, but maybe it doesn't have to be the same to still be good. Maybe people can change and grow and still matter to each other, even if they matter in a different way, and that can be okay."

Peter nods. "I just feel like we're growing apart instead of together, and I don't want that. I miss it when things were simple and it was just the four of us all the time. Not that I don't want—I mean, you and I are—"

Em laughs. "I know what you mean. It's okay."

"Because I really do—love you," says Peter haltingly. He didn't really mean to say it until it was halfway out of his mouth, but they're out there now, and Emmeline doesn't seem to be freaked out; in fact, she's smiling.

"I love you, too, Peter, and I want to be there for you the way you've always been there for me. Not just with little stuff, but with the big stuff. You can tell me anything, okay?"

"Okay," he says, nodding along, hating himself, because he knows he's not going to tell her the one thing he really ought to tell somebody, anybody, especially Emmeline. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she says, and she opens her arms. Peter gets up out of his chair and walks into them, smelling her neck and fidgeting with the fabric of her dressing gown.

He lets go but stays hunched over so that he can drop down beside her on the couch, resting his head on her shoulder. He thinks about kissing her but decides against it: he's content with what they have, and the last thing he wants is to make it weird.

"We're going to get to the root of this spell," he says instead. "We're going to figure out the countercurse so that it won't threaten the life of you or anybody else we care about ever again."

Maybe he just has to start taking more orb shifts, he muses. Maybe, if Alecto Carrow and You-Know-Who are steering the Death Eaters to try to identify him despite the mask and then go easy on him because he's leaking information to their side, he'll be able to get away with more offensive magic than anybody else on the Order can—put more of them behind bars with the Ministry than the Order could have done without him. Maybe the key to being a double agent is putting the thing on his terms.

Is that enough to clear his conscience? Probably not. But maybe it will at least motivate him to get out of bed in the mornings.

xx

The next day, he leaves work and goes straight to Sirius and Lily's flat with Dorcas to work some more on the spell. The language they use for the spell will have to very precisely counteract the exact effects of Sectumsempra, and since they don't really know the details of how it works, they've hit something of a block. Lily's figured out the language for reversing internal bleeding, which counts for something, at least, but they're still not sure exactly what body parts Sectumsempra damages and to what degree, and it wouldn't exactly be safe to use the spell on a volunteer from the Order—even in a controlled setting—and experiment on them to find out.

"I can't do this anymore," Dorcas finally declares when they've been at it for just under four hours. "My eyes are going to start bleeding if I look at one more page of Latin. Besides, Fabian and I are hosting orb duty at our place this week, and it's getting to be around time that attacks might start coming in…"

"Go on. Say hullo to Fabian for us," says Peter. "I'd better be getting back before Em starts to worry."

He Disapparates, but not to his and Emmeline's flat: he goes to the Carrow residence.

Alecto lives with her brother, Amycus, in their family's home in England. They don't appear to have any parents or guardians living there with them, and Peter doesn't ask about it: it's not worth his mild curiosity to try to make small talk with the people making his life a living hell. He appears on the porch outside, and he raps quickly four times on the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot until the door opens.

It's Amycus. "I'll get Alecto," he mutters, stepping back so that Peter can come inside.

He wishes they wouldn't do this inside. He'd feel much better about himself if he could confer with Alecto outside, without entering into her intimate space. It makes Peter feel like he's integrating into her world, and it's not a world that he wants to have anything to do with.

But whether he and Alecto are making pleasantries or not, he's still becoming part of her world, isn't he?—by virtue of spreading information to her at all. Whether he acts on the surface like he hates her or not—whether he really does hate her or not—there's a part of Peter that's Death Eater now, and no amount of distancing himself from the Carrows is going to take that part away from him.

"They're working on a countercurse to the spell that got used on—uh—the spell that makes you bleed everywhere. You know the one," he says when Alecto comes into the room that Amycus directs him to.

She laughs a little. "Yes. Have they been successful?"

"Not yet. We did manage to stop the bleeding last time so that nobody got killed, but it came close. Should be easier once there's a spell in place that we can use."

Alecto nods. "And the Imperiused folks we have in the Ministry?"

"They haven't cracked anyone lately, but they've identified somebody they think is under the influence of the curse. Julius—Pollywog? Something like that. Some bloke in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. They'll be approaching him and trying to break him this week."

"The orb?"

"Still linked to the Unforgivable Curses and nothing else."

All in all, the meeting takes under five minutes, and then Alecto nods curtly at him and he Disapparates for home. Emmeline is in the living room, dressed in her pajamas and writing something on sheafs of parchment, and Peter feels a surge of shame.

He's doing this to protect them, he reminds himself. He's doing this because he has no choice.

Right?

xx

A/N: I have 83 chapters stockpiled and I'm going to keep writing more fast after I finish with Legacy, and I'm getting impatient, so I'm increasing posting frequency again. Updates will come on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.