Hi all, so I am back to this wonderful fandom with a new story! I am taking a delve into a fandom, an era and a couple that has always fascinated me and it's the James/Lily era.

This is the second part of the story that started in the Beginning of the End and these are the moments in the first Wizarding War and the build up to Harry.

This story will be twenty chapters long and some events/events that do take place might be missed.

Also spelling/grammar...not my best thing. Again keep that in mind when you read...please.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know

I do not receive PMs anymore, if you have a question stick it in a review and I will answer it in the chapter notes.

This chapter does deal with Peter turning traitor. I do not subscribe to the notion that he just turned evil. I think maybe he was just beaten down by loss and the fact that he was surrounded by people who were prepared to die for a cause he did not believe in. Think of Peter as the guy who thought that everything was going to be well in 1939 and we'd have peace by Christmas no matter the cost. God knows it's the only way I could write this. There is still NO excuse for what he has done.

But everyone to their own.

The End Of The Beginning

Chapter 3-Beautiful Little Fool

Peter Pettigrew contemplates loss, love and life as he makes the decision to turn traitor (Peter centric chapter) Potential time jump.

It was getting worse.

The fun part of that truly terrible statement was that it was true on both accounts. The war was getting worse, his mother was getting worse. And what was worse off all was that nobody seemed to care.

It was now Halloween, this time last year the smell of pumpkins had been wafting up the stairs of Hogwarts and the world had seemed warm and bathed in light and look, okay, Pete was not an idiot, he knew that the war had been on the horizon back then, he had known that there was a very good possibility that the world was going to go to hell and back in a hand basket but that was before his friends had decided to fight.

And the problem was Peter didn't want to.

He didn't think that made him a coward. He was a pure-blood he was safe either way and…and what…okay some of the stuff being said was bang out of order but some of it…some of it did make a lot of sense. Peter's mother had retired out as a junior secretary to the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement instead of the main secretary because there was nine time out of ten a younger, less experienced Muggle Born who felt that they needed to be promoted for progress—and yes okay not all of them are like that—Lily for instance—but most of them are and if they need bringing down a peg or two, if they need telling as a whole group that the world is not theirs for the taking then he can live with that.

Try telling that to James or Sirius though.

But seriously sometimes he thinks James and Sirius bring it on themselves. Sirius he understands has something prove. He has to prove that he is not a Black, that he is not the same as the rest of his family who make it a point of pride and principle to prove that they are not the same as Sirius, he can understand Sirius's perspective only too well. He thinks he can at any rate.

He thinks he can understand James too but James…James has always been too big and too good and quite frankly too exhausting for this world that they live in. James who has ideas and who has principles and who has a world view that by his very nature he expects everyone around him to hold up. There was no question of Peter not signing up to fight and still maintaining his friendship with James, no hope of ever having a conversation with James about how the world was not as black and white as good or evil but that with this argument and every other there were shades of grey littered in as well. Because it wasn't all good and evil and power and week and Merlin only knew what else. It was shades of grey and Peter just wasn't prepared to die for those shades of grey when in actual reality he agreed with them.

Again. Bugger you could tell James that, bugger you could sit down with his oldest friend and explain to him that the world was not that simple and everyone was dying for things that Peter Pettigrew thought were not simple.

And people were dying weren't they. Even the Order were not immune. Even the men and woman who flocked to Dumbledore's side were no immune and there was no reaction from the old man other than the sense that they had chosen this path and therefore had chosen the consequences which was not true at all because Peter had not really chosen this path and certainly he had not chosen to die for it.

The big blow to them came when the Prewitt brothers were killed. They had been two young men in their prime and they had by all intense and purposes gone down like motherfucking heroes (to quote Sirius who had come back soot singed, sobbing and bleeding). Peter had been with Remus who had been off doing, well, whatever it was that Remus did for the Order of the Phoenix and he had been trying to get Remus's blood out of the carpet when James and Sirius had returned sending Lily and Marlene (who had not been on this mission) over the small hallway in hysterics. Admittedly Peter could not blame them for that. Sirius and James had both looked as if they'd had a nice little chat with death themselves when they had gotten in and Remus was always on death's door these days as well.

It had started out as not even a mission, that was what was ultimately the most tragic thing about it all, the two brothers both legendary pranksters in their day, their sister pregnant with twins that they claimed were going to carry on the tradition had invited James and Sirius and to some extent Peter out for a drink but Peter had been doing back to back double shifts patrolling various Departments within the Ministry of Magic that might be used for a Death Eater breach (again another mystical plan of Dumbledore's that he showed no interest in sharing any time soon) and he had crawled into bed utterly exhausted and looking forwards to what he had hoped was night of undisturbed sleep when Remus had staggered in knocking over the china set out on the table and then promptly bleeding to death all over the floor and when he had just gotten a hand on that situation James and Sirius had come in and that had been the end of any chance he'd get for a peaceful night.

Ever by the sounds of it.

"So the Death Eaters arrived?" Peter said quietly. "Did you start something?"

Because it was not out of the realm of possibility for James and Sirius to have been the ones who started it.

"No" Sirius said flatly eyebrows drawing together as he looked at Peter with displeasure, as if Peter had the audacity to even ask that question—another Peter was now beginning to hate about his friends (there was getting to be quite a lot come to think of it).

"No we didn't start it Peter though thanks for that. Snape did"

"Snape?"

"Guess who joined" James said grimly. It wasn't even phrased as a question he noticed. James didn't look at Lily who turned suddenly and walked away to the kitchen to the fridge to grab one of her muggle beers in an attempt Peter knew, to hide her face. The relationship between her and Snape was complicated, always complicated, everything so bloody, fucking complicated.

"Snape started on me, I reacted and then it all went to hell and back. They disappeared and the Prewitt brothers were laughing and I didn't think…I didn't think anything off it, I didn't think he couldn't do his own dirty work I don't know why…I mean I knew him at school for crying out loud, I knew he was going to never do his own dirty work and yet…"

James shook his head blinking back tears and Marlene curled her hand around his shoulder her mouth open her blue gaze wide and blown apart prepared to hear the words that she couldn't hear spoken and yet she had to hear spoken.

Peter knew the feeling.

He was not the man for this.

He was really, really not the man for this. He wanted out. He wanted out. He wanted it to stop. One way or another, victory or loss he just wanted everything to be normal again.

"They came back with the usual crowd" James said finally like once he had started he couldn't stop. "The usual crowd that he used to hang around with in school—"

"None of the more seasoned ones?" Lily asked leaning back on the counter her face to the front door determined to hide her expression to the last, James turned to look her in side profile and Peter saw him bite his lip as if he wanted to say something but at the last moment he turned back and he knew the words had died in his throat.

"No" James said finally. "No it was…it was just kids Lily. The ones he used to hang out with. The ones we went to school with. The ones that we used to curse in the corridor, Crabbe, Goyle, Mucliber, Rosier, Avery…they were just kids it was why Gideon and Fabien were so confident that we could take em. It didn't matter that there was more of them than there was of us. All that mattered was that we had two fully grown adult wizards on our hands and…" he shook his head trailing off and the image became suddenly, starkly, painstakingly clear.

And Peter could see where James was coming from. He could see that James had followed Gideon and Fabien's lead, could see why he had. It was Snape…it was always Snape.

"They were good" James said finally. "Sirius saw which way the wind was blowing and managed to get help but so did they and Dolohov turned up and…well…it was over. I don't know which one went down first but then the other one was down and there was nothing that we could do…Dumbledore showed up and he told us to scatter so we did but…but it was all over. They were dead on the floor and, and it's just so fucking pointless"

"Don't you think it's time to stop?" Peter asked finally. He didn't have to turn to know that they were all listening to him.

"Stop what?" James said finally as if he was seeing him for the first time and Peter resented the implication. He was really beginning to hate James he really was, James who walked around with such moral superiority and who saw the world in the perfect way that he did. James who didn't have to worry either way because he was a good pure-blood from a good pure blood family. The world did not revolve around James Potter and his fucking moral high standards Peter Pettigrew thought and he had done nothing to deserve being looked at like that.

"This" he said finally. "I don't want to die Prongs. I don't want to die before my time. He's winning and you know it. He's…fuck he's in the Ministry, he's in the streets, he's in the press…you remember Hogwarts…he's there and—"

"We are not going to die Wormtail" Sirius said quietly. "Were going to be just fine"

"Yeah" James said getting to his feet and that was Prong's way of effectively ending the conversation and Peter watched as he went into the shower.

And he was left alone.

Always fucking alone.

It was not a conscious decision to do it. Years later he would stand in front of a red headed boy, a girl with wild hair, two of his friends and a boy with green eyes and glasses and he wouldn't remember how he had done it or why he had done it. But this was the moment that he had decided that he had, had enough. This was the moment that he had decided that he was going to turn on them.

This was the moment. Sat there in that shitty apartment that was the time he had made a decision. Peter didn't want to die, Peter didn't want to fight, and Peter felt that he was sick of his friends making decisions for them. Nobody had asked him weather or not he had wanted this, nobody had asked him his opinion on this, there had been the sense that as a lion, as a Marauder there had been no other choice but there had been. There had been another choice, there had been a better choice and so he made his decision.

He did not want to die.

That had been the only reason.

But Peter Pettigrew had always been a deluded, beautiful little fool and looking back when green eyes had looked at him and a silver hand had turned on him he knew that had been the end of it because nothing was sacred, nothing was good and nothing was as golden as those last days of school at Hogwarts where they had been young and stupid and had everything to play for and he had not been a rat or a traitor or a Death Eater but had instead had everything to play for.

So yeah, there you go, hope you enjoy and I will see you soon.

Next Chapter-James has an important question to ask of Lily. She has a rather simple answer.