A/N: This is a shorter (but still pretty long!) and AU-centric rewrite of my fic Through A Glass Darkly. If you want 630k words starting in sixth year and spinning off into an AU 137 chapters later, read Darkly instead. If you want fewer words starting at the moment of canon divergence (October 1981), you're in the right place! If you've already read Darkly and want to reread it, but don't want to commit to 630k words, you're also in the right place! (There will be several relevant flashbacks to sixth year, but a LOT of details have been changed in order to condense the pre-AU chapters - there were originally 136 of them, and there are now approximately 9.)

I owe an enormous shoutout to hookedonthesky for beta reading. Thank you so much for all of your help already!

xx

October 24th, 1981: Peter Pettigrew

It's not like the knowledge of who he is and what he's done ever really leaves Peter. Even when he first wakes in the morning, when dreams have supplanted his reality and the two haven't fully reversed yet, there's a pit, a knot, in the bottom of his stomach telling him that he's a faker, a liar, a sinner. Sometimes, it feels like he can't even remember the last time he was able to walk free without that pit inside him—but, of course, Peter can tell you exactly how long it's been there, can pinpoint the exact moment the knot first formed.

It's been a long four years spying on the Order of the Phoenix. He could talk for days about how he didn't want to do it, how no one was ever supposed to get hurt, how Marlene was never supposed to get hurt—but she did.

But he's getting ahead of himself.

The flat he shares with Emmeline has two bedrooms, but, for most of the time they've lived here, they've only used one of them. She's still asleep for the first minute that he studies her: scraggly blonde hair, pockmarked cheeks, bags under her eyes no matter how long she sleeps. As far as Peter is concerned, she couldn't be more beautiful—because she's unapologetically herself and always has been, even when who she was was cutting and dark. She's seemed better, healthier, livelier the last few years, and he hopes that he can claim credit for at least a part of that—that maybe, just maybe, some of the good he's done her outweighs the rest of it.

Her eyes flutter open, the tension returning to the creases in her forehead. "Hey, you," she bleats.

"Hey yourself. How'd you sleep?"

Emmeline shakes her head feebly and rubs crust out of her eyes. "Not great, but that's nothing new."

Peter can relate. He never sleeps so great anymore himself, either.

It's Saturday, which means it's Em's turn to cook breakfast; it'll be Peter's turn tomorrow. He likes that they have routines to fall back on. It makes it easier to believe that this, here, with Emmeline is real life—and easier to know exactly when to fit in his visits to Alecto Carrow without raising Em's suspicions.

She kisses him then, and he doesn't forget, never forgets, but the knot loosens a little, if only for a moment. She has morning breath, but, then again, so does Peter. Emmeline's only just reached for Peter's cheeks when they hear a series of knocks on the front door.

Em groans, breaks the kiss, presses her forehead against Peter's for a long instant. "I'll get that," she tells him, and then she swings her legs off the mattress and is gone.

It's remarkable that Emmeline picked him—shocking, really—but not because she had so many other prospects when they were both at Hogwarts. The only other person she's ever romantically entangled with is Sirius, and that, Peter learned when the story unraveled in sixth year, was over before it even really started. No, the reason it's so remarkable is that, after the mess with Sirius, Emmeline came very close to never letting anybody in like that ever again. Even after Peter figured it out and they became friends, real friends, again—after she started relearning her way around their fellow Gryffindors with his help—the world came so close to losing her, closer than Peter likes to think about, before the two of them ever dated.

Of course, nowadays, Em puts her life on the line for the Order every day. So does Peter, which is bullshit, really. If he has to deal with the guilt and self-hatred that come with being a spy for the Death Eaters, he should at least get to be protected from their Killing Curses when he goes with the Order on raids.

Then again, that would only happen if anybody besides Carrow and You-Know-Who knew Peter's identity, and it's good that they don't, isn't it? If they did, then that would mean Snape knew, and he'd have ratted Peter out the second he became a double agent, and then where would Peter be?

He hears low voices in the living room, and then the bedroom door opens to reveal not Emmeline, but Sirius. Anxiety fills Peter up the way it always does when he and Sirius are alone together these days. With Sirius, Peter's facing more than the usual fear of discovery—because Sirius has a theory about who the spy is, and Peter is the one he turns to whenever he wants to talk it through. If Sirius ever, ever realizes—first of all, that Peter is the spy, but also that Peter has been encouraging him to pin the blame on Remus when, all this time, Peter's known it isn't him—

As Peter sits up a little in bed and un-plasters his hair from his sweaty forehead, Sirius sits down on the edge of the bed next to him and stashes his wand in his pocket. "Hey, man," Sirius says, and his voice sounds scratchy and foreign, like someone has taken a hatchet to his vocal cords and severed his ability to speak like a normal human being.

"What's up? Is everyone okay? Did something happen? It's so early."

"Nothing happened. Well… nothing happened, but I wanted to run something by you."

That doesn't sound good. The last time Sirius wanted to run something by Peter, he was accusing Remus of having had Marlene murdered. But Peter's dug this far in, and he's in too deep now to claw his way back. "Sure," he says, high-pitched and uncertain.

"It's about Lily and James," Sirius says in a rush.

Peter stares blankly back at him. Lily and James? But they're the ones You-Know-Who is targeting; aside from a few of James's recent and frustrated excursions under the Invisibility Cloak, they've been holed up in hiding in Godric's Hollow since February of last year. There's no way Sirius could possibly blame them for any Death Eater activity.

And then Sirius drops the bomb. "I want you to replace me as their Secret-Keeper."

Look, what you have to understand is that Peter never wanted to be a traitor. He just sort of—fell into it. It started in sixth year, when they'd only just begun the Order and the whole school had theories about what exactly nine Gryffindors and a Slytherin had been up to that had gotten two girls killed—and Carrow took notice. Decided Peter was the weakest link. Threw him around a little, threatened him. To be honest, Peter didn't think there was anything much at risk until the first time Carrow demanded a name—and had Mary's house burned down when Peter wouldn't hand one over. Everyone thought it was a gas leak, but Peter knew the truth—knew it would only get worse if he didn't give Carrow what she wanted.

And that's all she had asked for: one name. When Peter gave it to her, Carrow left him alone, at least for a while—but she kept expecting more, and more, and more, until Peter was in so deep that none of his friends would possibly understand how he'd gotten himself there.

Honestly, it's pretty ironic. It was because of what Carrow did to Remus a few months later, the next time she wanted something out of Peter, that Sirius eventually decided Remus was the one who'd been blackmailed into becoming a mole for the Death Eaters. If Sirius only knew…

Sirius is still talking, giving his reasoning, but Peter can't parse a word of it. When he'd told Carrow where Marlene would be that night, he'd had no idea that Carrow was going to use the information to have Marlene and the rest of the McKinnons murdered. He'd told Carrow where everyone would be that week—had been telling Carrow everything for months—and it had never gotten any of his friends killed before. But right now, if he does what Sirius is asking him to do—if Peter takes over as the Potters' Secret-Keeper—

Okay, Peter may tell himself all the time that he's the victim in this, but he knows on some level that he's been going out of his own way for a long time to justify what he's done to himself, and that justification extends to the way he feels about his friends. Yes, he feels utterly isolated in what Carrow has suckered him into, and that's created a disconnect between Peter and the others—but it's more than that. Frankly, it's been more than that for a long time.

He didn't used to be this spiteful, resentful person. Peter didn't used to constantly feel like a fifth wheel—feel bitter that the other Marauders had been more than happy to replace him with Lily, who hadn't even been one of them until sixth year when Marlene took her under her wing. And Emmeline—

Peter's not saying he blames Em for cutting him off from his other friends, and he's not even saying he regrets giving them up to a degree for her. He doesn't. Em is even more a victim in all this as Peter has told himself that he is; she never asked for what happened to her, and Peter will never, ever regret the way he started closing himself off to his other friends to make room for her when he stumbled across her secret. She wasn't ready to be one of the Gryffindors again, not yet, and she deserved all the patience in the world. Wasn't it Emmeline constantly telling Peter how guilty she felt for hogging his attention?

But—the fact remains that she did hog his attention. And, yeah, sure, he let her, but their other friends let her, too. They let her, too, and none of them ever tried all that hard to get Peter back from her—to help him find a balance. They let her, and they let him go, and—

Can you blame Peter for blaming them for that? Can you really blame him for the little piece of him that wants to punish them?

It's just—he never felt that way about any of it until Carrow, until he was in over his head. He knows that. It was one thing when he maybe, maybe inadvertently contributed to Marlene's death, but if he becomes James and Lily's Secret-Keeper, knowing everything You-Know-Who wants to do to them, and just gives them away—

He could try to hide his involvement in their protection from Carrow, but how long would that really last? He's a shit liar, and he's already proven time and time again that he backs right down in the face of torture and blackmail. She'll figure out that he's hiding something, and she'll worm it out of him, and the next thing he knows, Lily and James—and Harry—will be dead. More than that: they'll be dead, and Sirius will get the blame for it.

Maybe Lily did take his place, and maybe James and Sirius did forget all about him, but that doesn't mean they deserve… and what did baby Harry ever do to deserve anything?

He gives himself one second—one shining second—to entertain a fantasy where he does what Sirius is asking him to do, becomes Secret-Keeper, and keeps the lie going. But it can't hold. It can't hold.

Peter interrupts Sirius mid-sentence. He's gone all pink in the face, he can feel it, and it costs him a lot—a lot—to mumble, "I can't."

Sirius, who was obviously expecting something more than this from Peter, is protesting—something about not understanding why Peter wouldn't step up to help their friends—but Peter, once again, isn't listening. If he doesn't want more of his friends to end up dead, he's going to have to come clean.

God, Peter was not ready for today to be the day that he comes clean.

"I can't," says Peter heavily, raising his eyes reluctantly to meet Sirius's, "because it's me, Padfoot. It's me."

Somewhere in the back of Peter's brain, it registers that, after this, he might never be allowed to use that nickname for Sirius again—that he's lost the right to it.

Sirius looks baffled. "What's you? What are you that you can't protect them?" he says, because apparently it's too much for Peter to ask that he not have to put into words exactly what he is.

Then again, Peter can't really blame Sirius for this, can he? Not when, all this time, Peter's been feeding into Sirius's belief that Remus is the mole.

He braces for impact.

"It's because I'm the spy."

There it is—it's out—he can't ever, ever, ever take it back. Sirius is still sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands stuffed in his robe pockets, staring at Peter like Peter's just rocked his whole world, and he has, hasn't he? All this time, he's listened to Sirius accusing Remus of being the spy when really—really—

It occurs to Peter that all Sirius must see right now is someone who's robbed him of the person he loved, or thought he loved, or maybe even still loves. On second thought, that's ridiculous: Sirius probably can't see anything right now but a traitor.

"How?" Sirius breathes.

"Because they threatened me," Peter whispers, turning steadily redder in the face. Now that the words are coming out—now that he's committed—he can't seem to stem the flow of them. "Because they threatened all of you. Because they burned down Mary's house and poisoned Moony and started to cut off my toes. I thought it was harmless, Padfoot, just giving them a couple of details, a couple of names, but then everything started to spiral out of control and I got in too deep. I thought I couldn't tell anyone without making you hate me—"

"As we should," says Sirius.

And Peter—something inside him just snaps. He deserves this from Sirius—he knows he deserves it—he knows Marlene is probably dead because of him—but Peter didn't want this, and, at least in the beginning, he was doing it to save the people he loved, wasn't he? He sold his soul to protect them from harm, at least in the short term, and this is the thanks Sirius gives him now that it's all unraveling?

"Padfoot, we're losing," says Peter. "You get that, right? We're going to lose anyway—we're all going to die anyway—but if I could just—"

"Save yourself?" spits Sirius. His voice is rising. "And throw everyone else who loves you, who is fighting for a better world, under the bus?"

"Oh, so now you love me?" says Peter. His voice is getting louder, too, verging on hysteria. "You spent years shutting me out, replacing me with Lily, and now you say you love me? I'm so sick of being treated like an afterthought! I—"

"You know what I'm sick of, Wormtail? I'm sick of my friends dying. How many of those deaths are you responsible for, huh? How much of it is your fault that the Death Eaters have gone on an Order of the Phoenix killing spree these last few months?"

The door creaks open to reveal—shit—Emmeline, her eyes jumping from Peter to Sirius and crinkled in confusion. It's bad enough that Sirius can't or won't forgive Peter what he's done, but if he loses Emmeline—

But he's already lost her, hasn't he? He's been living on borrowed time. He lost Em, Sirius, everyone the second he gave Carrow that first name.

There's nothing left here for him.

He barely registers it when Emmeline asks in a bemused voice, "What's going on? I heard—"

"I can't believe you," Sirius carries on as if he can't hear her. "I can't believe you. How long—?"

"It was never supposed to go this far," says Peter with a pleading note.

"How long, Peter?"

Well, there's no point trying to make it look any better than it is. "Since—since the end of sixth year."

"This whole time," Sirius mutters. "This whole time, you've been feeding them information."

Em interrupts, "Feeding who information? Peter—"

Peter's eyes leap back to his girlfriend's, and that's his first mistake—because it affords Sirius enough time to pull out his wand without Peter noticing. Peter doesn't hear an incantation, but the next thing he knows, he's bound in ropes on the edge of the bed, breathing hard and squirming.

"Sirius!" Em cries. "Sirius, what—?"

"He's the spy, Em," says Sirius heavily. "Don't let him get away."

And it's not that Peter wants to do it, just like he hasn't wanted to do any of these things, but Sirius is looking at him like he hates him, and Emmeline—the only reason Emmeline isn't doing the same is that Peter doesn't give her the chance. With an almighty wrench, he gets his hand on his wand and transforms; the ropes collapse around him onto the mattress as Wormtail scuttles away. Sirius points his wand and bellows, "Stupefy!" once, then twice, but he misses as Wormtail scurries through the doorway, down the hall, and through the open window in the living room and outdoors.