Monday 14th April 1980

Undisclosed Location, 18:00

Peter heaved a sigh of relief as he left. Honestly, they had no right to keep on going on at him like that. He could spend time with whoever he wanted. That didn't mean he deserved an interrogation! Sure, maybe he wasn't doing things that they would necessarily approve of but still! They didn't know that and therefore they had no need to interrogate him. How difficult was that to understand? Apparently very.

Whatever, it didn't matter. They didn't matter right now. Because he was doing something he was actually kind of good right now. With people who appreciated him and didn't interrogate him.

A quick apparition later and he was where he was supposed to be. Where he felt like he belonged. More than what he felt with the Marauders these days, if he was being honest. He didn't even think of where he was, it was a secret and he didn't even want to risk giving it away. Not that it mattered where he was because he had a job to do.

He rushed inside, ignoring everyone else in dark cloaks who were milling about. It wasn't like any of them wanted to talk to him anyway.

The group of people in the room he was heading to, on the other hand, did want to talk womb him. Which was nice.

"What's the point to all of this anyway?" Peter asked as they pulled their cloaks on.

"Chickening out, Pettigrew?" Rowle taunted.

That's all that man did was taunt, taunt, taunt. It was infuriating. Especially the way everyone else seemed to be able to ignore him. Peter just couldn't.

"No way," he said quickly, trying not to frown at him. "I just want to know the point."

"The point," Carrow stressed. "Is that we're teaching these people their place."

"But we don't do anything except scare them a bit," Peter pointed out.

Which was all well and good, it wasn't like any real harm came to them, but that was all that happened. Why waste their time doing that?

"It means they don't try and do anything," Rowle said. "Which is good for us because that means they won't try and interfere with things."

Political things, he meant. Peter knew that much, even if he didn't fully understand it. What he did know was the fewer non purebloods tried to put things through the Wizangamot the more likely the purebloods agenda would be pushed through with less difficulty. Which was good because they were just trying to preserve traditions.

Peter nodded his agreement when he realised that they were all looking for a response from him.

"Right, get a move on," Rowle said, already losing interest in Peter. "We don't have all night. I would actually like to get around to producing an heir at some point this evening."

They all chuckled at his crudeness, even if it did make Peter feel a bit uncomfortable. For all their messing around, James and Sirius and certainly not Remus spoke like that.

So, they did what they were told and allowed themselves to be herded into a corridor which was filled with smaller, cubicle like rooms. Well, not really rooms but still. It was dark, the light kept deliberately low to obscure their faces a bit. Not that the people here would be paying much attention to that.

In each space there was person. A half-blood or a mudblood who had been outspoken against pureblood values. Who wanted reform and change in the completely wrong direction? They also didn't pay any attention to people telling them that it was pointless and inappropriate and they should just stop. So, it was up to them to persuade them of that.

"Did you get that light show of yours working?" Jones asked him quietly.

Peter nodded, raising his wand. It was an adjustment to something the Marauders had done back in school, making things look all shadowy with flashing lights to put on an impressive show. Peter had adjusted it so it was more shadow than light and that the lights illuminated under their faces for the best effect. It should make them look appropriately terrifying.

And it did, if the stutters and gibbering and pale faces of the guy they had been given to persuade of the error of his ways. He definitely hadn't liked that. And it was only some lights and some empty threats Peter couldn't help but scoff to himself. Honestly, no courage whatsoever.

"What are they doing?" Peter asked, nodding towards the people who they'd just intimidated who were now being dragged out of the room.

Him pulling his cloak over his head meant that he missed the look passed between Avery and Rowle.

"Oh, just getting rid of them. No point in them hanging around," Avery said with a shrug.

That was fair enough. You didn't want people like that hanging around here.

"Do you want to go for drinks?" Peter asked.

This sort of work made him thirsty.

Thursday 17th April 1980

Evans Home, 15:00

You know what was nice? Just hanging out at her parents' house with her sister on a day off that she'd forgotten she'd booked. She got to catch up with her mum and dad, do a little bit of shopping with her mother and sister and just sit and chat with her dad out in the garden as he tried to persuade everyone that it was a nice enough day for them to have a barbecue. Which had nothing to do with the chilly spring weather and everything to do womb the fact that he had just bought one at "an amazing price". It was safe to say that they were not having a barbecue this evening but it was still fun. Fa only was fun. And she was feeling an awful lot more grateful for them these days.

Nope. She was not going to be thinking of Fleamont and Euphemia. If she did that she was going to cry and she, did it want to cry. She'd done enough of that. She had.

And now she was crying again. It just wasn't fair, how the left like that. It didn't seem right for their life to be snuffed out of them by Dragon Pox, of all things. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.

She sniffed deeply and dabbed at her eyes in an effort to get herself under control. The Potters wouldn't have wanted her to cry, they always wanted people to be happy, laughing. She needed a distraction. A good one. One she could really sink her teeth into.

Chryssie chose that moment to come in from the garden with the most amazing bunch of flowers picked from it.

"Dodd you know mum was actually going to call me 'Gladioli'?" She said in an exasperated tone, putting the flowers - which were gladioli - in an already prepped vase on the windowsill. She tried to arrange them nicely but gave up in disgust as she turned to Lily with her hands on her hips. "Gladioli? Really?"

"You might just have got off lightly, after all," Lily said, trying to hide her smile.

Chryssie never had liked her name, hence the whole refusing to go by anything except for a nickname thing she had going on. Admittedly, Lily knew that she and Petunia had got off lucky.

"Seriously, what was mum smoking when she was pregnant with me?" Chryssie complained. "None of her choices were normal ones. Why did you and Tuney get decent names?"

"Your name's nice," Lily ventured.

"It really isn't."

Okay, Chrysanthemum was a little weird. Very weird, even. But at least it could be shortened into a somewhat normal name.

"I suppose you could have gone by 'Glad'," Lily mused. "Or claimed your name was 'Gladys' or something."

Chryssie gave her a long-suffering look. "Not helping."

"I wasn't trying to."

This was far too funny for her to be helpful. Gladioli. What a name.

"I wonder why she chose the plural form and not Gladiolus?" she wondered.

"That's even worse!" Chryssie said in dismay.

"So, your name is actually good!"

"No. It's just not as bad as that."

Lily couldn't help it, between the name and Chryssie's thoroughly indignant look on her face, she laughed. Much to Chryssie's displeasure.

"Oh, shut up," she grumbled, throwing a cushion at her.

"Hey! Pregnant woman here!"

"And?"

"You can't just go around attacking a pregnant woman."

Chryssie rolled her eyes. "It was a pillow and it went nowhere near you."

Lily stuck her tongue out at that. Yes, she was a married woman and was soon going to have her first child but if she wanted to stick her tongue out at her sister, she was going to stick her tongue out at her sister.

"I'm going to start calling you Gladioli," Lily told her, wiping tears from her eyes.

"Don't you dare!"

"Oh, Gladioli, that's not very nice."

"I have another cushion here I can chuck at you," Chryssie threatened, holding it up.

They both burst into giggles at that. It was so silly but still. She hadn't had a good laugh like that in ages.

"Come on, we better get upstairs and sort our room out," Chryssie said, once they'd calmed down, Lily taking a bit longer due to her being breathless at the best of time these days.

Yeah, pregnancy wasn't all fun and games. She'd be glad when her body started working somewhat normally again.

Lily groaned at the thought of clearing out her childhood bedroom when she was like this. Hopefully it wouldn't involve a lot of bending down.

"I haven't seen much of Severus recently," Lily was saying to Chryssie as they tried to sort through their old bedroom.

Well, the intention had been to sort through it. That hadn't last very long past the pulling boxes out part. Because now both of them were sprawled across their respective old beds, chatting. An out anything and everything except for tidying up.

"I hope he's doing okay," Lily continued absentmindedly, fidgeting with her rings. She was going to have to take them off soon, her fingers were starting to swell a bit and she didn't want them to be stuck. "He better be remembering to eat."

"Oh, he is," Chryssie replied, lazily waving her wand and making little sparkles dance across the room. "He doesn't want me to feed him like a baby again."

Now that got Lily sitting up.

"Excuse me?" She spluttered. "What?"

Chryssie froze like she had just realised what she had said out loud.

"Uh, well, yeah," she stuttered. "Um, I sometimes bring food over to him - you know what mum's like when it come to him."

Lily nodded, she did indeed. Rosemary Evans basically considered Severus a son. And was constantly trying to get him to eat which was fair because he did forget to a lot. He just got so focused and absorbed in his work that he just seemed to ignore any signals his stomach sent him about being hungry. Which was ridiculous but that's how he was.

"It's a good thing you've been doing that."

Lily doubted that he would eat enough meals if Chryssie didn't. Sure, Lily did that too but not nearly as much as she would like to because of everything else going on. Between trying to find her own balance at work, helping James with the sprawling Potter Estate and trying to make sense of how it was run and, you know, being pregnant, sometimes there wasn't enough hours in the day. Which sucked because she liked spending time with Severus. He was still one of her closest friends. She would have to make time for him. Speaking of making time for him...

"So, are you enjoying spending all this alone time with him, bringing him food?" Lily asked slyly.

Chryssie rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut it."

"What?"

That earned her an unamused look. "You know what."

"I really don't."

"Yes. You do. Stop it."

"I'm not the one doing anything."

Chryssie threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "That! Stop doing that! Stop making this into something it's not!"

Lily raised an eyebrow at her. "And what exactly is this?"

"It's nothing! Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Nothing going on."

There were a few beats of silence as Lily absorbed this.

"Do you want there to be something?"

The shriek that came out of Chryssie's mouth was loud enough for their mother to hear downstairs.

Tuesday 22nd April 1980

Severus' Flat, 18:00

"Are you aware of how annoying your best friend is?" Chryssie asked, storming into his flat when he opened the door to let her in.

She immediately flopped herself onto his sofa, thankfully taking care not to disturb any of his papers. They were in a very specific order and it would be very annoying to try and organise them again.

"What did Lily do now?" Severus asked. "And she's your sister."

"So?"

"Pretty sure that trumps her being my best friend."

"Eh." Chryssie waved her hand dismissively at him. "Details."

Severus snorted and shook his head. Did he really want to know what Lily had allegedly done to Chryssie? Probably not. It was always a bit baffling to him but he pinned it down to being a sister thing.

"Should we eat?" He asked, holding up the bag of Indian take-away Chryssie had brought with her.

It smelled delicious. Tikka masala for him and curry for her. Yum.

"Yeah, sounds good," Chryssie agreed. "I'm starving."

"Same here."

"That's because you don't eat."

"I eat," he said defensively, fetching plates to dish out the food.

Just because they got a takeaway didn't mean that they had to eat out of the cartons like savages.

"Not regularly."

Severus huffed at her but knew he couldn't argue. It wasn't his, fault that he got so involved in his research that he lost track of time.

"Oh, uhhh," he said instead as he took a mouthful of his food. That was so good.

"Still warm?" Chryssie checked, carefully tasting hers. "I didn't think the man wrapped them up enough."

"It's perfect," Severus reassured her, dabbing at his mouth with a bit of kitchen roll.

The sauce always went all around his mouth no matter how careful he was. It was rather embarrassing.

They ate in silver for a bit, both of them enjoying each other's company and their food. Chryssie kept trying to steal bits of his, as usual, and he wasn't letting that happening. It was just so easy to be around Chryssie.

"What was Lily doing to you?" He asked when they had slowed down a bit.

Chryssie coloured a bit at that. "It's more like what she said," she answered, tossing her hair back.

It was getting long again, Chryssie normally preferred hers kept short. Easier to manage, she said.

"Well, what did she say then?"

"Just that she thought the two of us were going out," she said airily. "Can you believe that? Just because we like spending time together?"

Severus stilled at that. Had Lily guessed how he was feeling? Or how he thought he felt? She ways knew him better than he knew himself, frustratingly. Had she said anything to Chryssie?

"Can you believe it?" She demanded.

Severus bit his lip and didn't reply. The silence made her narrow her eyes at him.

"Severus?"

"Yes?"

"Can you believe it?" She repeated slowly, obviously wanting an answer.

The problem was that he didn't know how to answer. Didn't know how she wanted him to answer.

"Do you want there to be something?" He asked carefully.

She looked up sharply at that.

"Excuse you?"

Severus knew he had a strange expression on his face because he was serious and trying not to show it but it probably made him look extremely odd.

Which was fair because he felt incredibly odd saying that. He felt weird and awkward. That wasn't the way he wanted to ask that question but it seemed like too good an opportunity but maybe not.

Chryssie got this impatient look on her face.

"What exactly are you saying, Severus?"

He let his mouth open and close like a fish a few times, trying to gather his thoughts.

"Severus?"

Oh, why was she so impatient? She wasn't helping at all.

"Doyouwanttogooutwithme?"

Chryssie just blinked at him.

Sunday 27th April 1980

Undisclosed Location, 20:00

"Got something else you can do, Pettigrew," Goyle grunted, screwing his face up as he read a piece of parchment - Peter was still surprised he could read. "Instead of what they're all doing."

"What?"

Peter was confused. What else would he be doing? It wasn't like he was any good at the political end of things, like Reginald. He didn't have any clout. That's why he was doing this intimidation thing. And he thought he'd been getting quite good at it.

"Oh, give that here, you idiot," Nott suddenly appeared behind Goyle, an impatient look on his face. "No one has time for you to be stupid," and he snatched the parchment out of his hands.

"Hey..." Goyle said but a glare from Nott quelled him.

"Right," Nott said brusquely, pinning a dark look on Pettigrew who tried not to tremble. "There's another job you can do, since you don't see much point in persuading undesirables not to be undesirable."

"I didn't mean-"

But he was ignored. Just like normal. Some things really didn't change, did they?

The other job," Nott continued in a louder voice, implying that they should all just shut up. "Should be more up your street."

Peter got a vague sense of foreboding. That surely wasn't a good sign? He felt like he wanted to transform into a rat and disappear.

"It's reconnaissance," Nott said before Peter could agree to anything.

He was being talked over a lot today. He didn't like it. Not that he had much of a choice nor was he going to speak up about it.

"Reconnaissance?" Peter repeated blankly.

"Yes," Nott said impatiently. "You know, listening out for things. Spying. So, we always know what's coming."

That made Peter stand up a bit straighter. This sounded like important work. More important than what he had been doing.

"What do I do first?" He asked eagerly.