This one is just … I don't know how to explain it. It's just. I had very specific ideas for how I thought this would go, back when I still worked on it regularly. Coming back to it now, so many years later, I find myself with an entirely different set of beliefs.

Or, at least, it feels that way.

Sometimes, I just … I have to address those things.

One.

"You said," Sirius said, "that the key to balancing things, repairing the magic ripping its way through reality and all that, is to finish the job. To do that, Voldemort has to die by the time he does 'normally.'" He held up his hands and made quotation marks; Kafell nodded. "You said that we do succeed at this mission in the old timeline, but that the costs are too great for your liking."

"Correct," said Kafell. "Where is your mind taking you, Professor Black?"

Sirius laughed quietly. "Well, if you know anything about me, Your Highness, and it seems like you do, then you'll know that I'm not exactly a subtle man. I double down a lot. If something doesn't work, I try it again but harder. It's how I got through school . . . somehow."

Kafell laughed in turn. "This is true enough. What is it, then, that you intend to do harder?"

Sirius held out his hands. "You sent me back fifteen years to save a baby boy, the first time you intervened on our behalf. I'm saying we do that again, except instead of fifteen years . . . we try about sixty."

Kafell's eyebrows raised. "I am . . . listening," he said slowly.

Sirius gesticulated randomly. "I'm old money. My family is all but gone. Most of us are dead, and what few aren't have already moved into different families. I've only ever taken as much gold from my vault as necessary to keep Moony and Harry and me comfortable. The last thing I need to do, considering we've been trying to stay under the radar, is put a huge spotlight on myself and my family."

"A reasonable choice to make," Kafell said.

"What if Merope Gaunt had the money to see a doctor? What if Merope Gaunt had a proper home in London after giving birth to her son? What if she had food, and clothes, and milk, and medicine, and all those other things she died without? Don't you think that would have made a difference? Don't you think she would have had a profound impact on Tom Riddle's upbringing, if she'd been permitted to raise him? Don't you think she might have raised him to be better than his grandfather? Than his uncle? I do."

Kafell ran a hand through his wind-wisp hair. He said: "I am listening . . . intently."

"Voldemort went down the route he did because of how damned unsatisfied he was with his life, as he lived it. You said it yourself: Harry saw himself in this kid. Hogwarts was his home, and he resented having to abandon it to go back to an orphanage where nobody understood him, where he wasn't provided for, where nobody cared about him. I can't blame him for that. But I wonder just what kind of man he would have become if he'd never had to stay at that orphanage. What if, after each year at school, he was able to come home to his mother? Just as talented, just as ambitious, just as stubborn, but without the raging hatred of poverty guiding his every decision." Sirius shrugged dramatically. "Harry avoided the issues Riddle did, didn't he? You don't think that might have had something to do with his inheritance making sure he didn't have to fight for every scrap?"

Kafell tilted his head back, appraising Sirius carefully. "You . . . are speaking my language, dear boy."

"I need to talk to Remus and Harry," Sirius said. "Once I do, I'll come back to you, and I'll have another request for you. I think this one's going to change everything." He smirked. "I'm going to do some recruiting for the Order of the Phoenix myself. Who better to face down Voldemort than Voldemort?"

Two.

"I will never understand you, Padfoot," said Remus, running a hand through his hair and barely resisting the urge to start pulling it out. "What possible reason could you have to do something this reckless? Have you not already tempted fate enough, doing this once?"

Sirius hadn't had to fight very hard to convince his closest friend that he'd come back from a future with too many corpses. Time travel was a delicate science, and shouldn't work the way Sirius described it, but Remus knew just enough about the fae to know their machinations had a way of throwing off any calculations or limitations a human might try to make. All the same, the notion of doing it twice was too much for him to swallow.

"It's time," Sirius said. "You won't notice I'm gone. I'll literally be back in the morning."

"That isn't the part that has me hesitant, Sirius," Remus protested. "Assuming everything goes to plan, yes, I fully imagine you will be back here without any lost time. That is a huge assumption to make, and that's the part that worries me." He crossed his arms over his chest. "Still," he went on, "we aren't dealing with just any problem. This war has taken away too many of us already."

"Remus," Sirius said, "meeting with the prince merged my . . . selves." He gesticulated randomly. "I remember sitting in a cell for thirteen years. Rotting. Waiting. Dying. I remember being stuffed into an old house that hated me. I've been sitting here for so long. This is something I can do. If I can make this work, if I can succeed at this mission . . . it might make up for what I've already done."

Remus sighed. ". . . Right," he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't . . . pretend I don't understand that. Fine. I'll sign off on this, on one condition." He held up a finger. "I realized something, after speaking with Dumbledore earlier. If you're going to do something I don't want, then you're going to do something you don't want. If you're serious enough about bringing an end to the threat of . . . him . . . to do this, then I won't just stay out of your way of this nonsense plan. I'll help you pack."

Sirius frowned, brow furrowing. "I'm listening," he said, remembering Kafell.

"Come with me," he said. "We're going to talk to Peter."

Three.

"I told Dumbledore that I wasn't going to do this," Remus murmured, striding through the halls of Hogwarts like he owned the place. "I think I meant it when I told him. Or, rather, I wanted to mean it."

Sirius snorted laughter. "If I didn't know any better, Moony, I might think you were some kind of delinquent." He heaved a sigh. "I'm pretty sure I said I'd never look at him again. So, it looks like we're both in the business of lying tonight."

"I prefer to think of it as coming to our senses," Remus said. "We can make all the assumptions we like. We can make all the grand proclamations we like. It won't mean anything if we don't hold up our end of this." He stopped, turned, and looked Sirius in the eye. "We called ourselves his friends. His brothers. We were family. We owe it to him to hear him out. What we do after that . . . well, I suppose we'll find out. But unless we let him speak, we're no better than the witless, spineless bullies Severus used to call us."

Sirius flinched. "All right. You always were the clever one. Talk me into a corner, appeal to my better nature, why don't you?" He gestured. "Lead on."

"Whether he was a member, or a victim, of the Death Eaters . . . he's faced a side of them that we haven't. The Sorting Hat named him for our house for a reason, and I don't believe he's too far gone just yet." He clenched his fists at his sides. "I can't believe that. I cannot."

". . . If Wormtail is a monster," Sirius said, "what does that make you? Or us?"

"Pretty much. Yes."

"In the end, none of us were there for them when they died," Sirius went on. "They faced him alone. They died without us beside them. We can think we're better than Peter, we can believe we aren't at fault, but there's no denying that part. We swore to stand by them, and we weren't there when they died. He lied? Sure. But . . . so did we."

Remus turned to look over his shoulder again.

His face was grim.

He turned away again, saying nothing at all in response to Sirius's musings.

Silence fell.

Four.

Sirius was the first to speak, almost like he was punishing himself: "Evening, Peter."

Peter Pettigrew flinched, but it wasn't as violent a reaction as either of his old classmates would have expected. "S-Sirius. Remus. H-Hello."

Sirius stared up at the ceiling. He blew the air out of his lungs and slumped down into a chair. "All right," he said, "there's no way to start this off without bringing up that letter I wrote." He crossed his arms over his chest. "You remember, I'm sure?"

Peter nodded. "I d-do."

"Harry really loves hearing from you, when you send letters his way." Sirius laughed quietly. "I wonder what he'd think, if he knew you were staying here, right here in the castle." He shook his head. "He's always so excited when the post comes, and he waves the envelope around until Remus or I acknowledge it."

"I . . . want to do my part," Peter said. "I want to do what I can for him, but I don't think . . . seeing me is something he needs."

Sirius nodded. "If you really believe that, I get where it's coming from, but let's be honest here. It's not Harry you worry about seeing, is it? It's me. You haven't wanted to face me." Peter didn't answer, but his face screwed up in an unreadable expression. "It's all right, Peter. I understand." He held out his hands. "There's too much to get into, and I don't know if I could explain everything even if I had the time to do it. I don't think I do."

Remus drew in a deep breath. "We owe you an apology, Peter."

Peter, for his part, looked like—of all the things he'd anticipated hearing from his old friends when they knocked on the door to his room—an apology wasn't the last thing on his list; it hadn't been on his list. He looked like he wasn't sure if he existed in corporeal reality anymore.

"Remus is right," Sirius said. "I'm sorry, Peter. I'm sorry for that sanctimonious, self-righteous letter. I'm sorry for calling myself your friend, for saying I was your brother, for all these years. I'm sorry for treating you like cheap amusement. I'm sorry for pressuring you into situations you clearly never wanted to be involved in. I'm sorry for demanding loyalty and strength and honor, all that shit, like I'm some kind of prize whose attention you had to earn."

Remus stepped lightly over to where Peter sat, on the edge of his cot, and put a hand on his shoulder. "You accepted me when I thought I was a monster. When I was sure that no one would ever look at me and see anything more than a beast. I owed you more than I gave. I'm sorry, Peter. I hope you're doing well."

Peter looked thoroughly flummoxed.

His eyes kept switching from Remus to Sirius to Remus to Sirius, and he kept opening his mouth and closing it, trying to work out what to say in response to any of this. It took him nearly a full minute to land on: "That . . . that means a lot. I don't know if I deserve to hear such things, from either of you, but thank you. Thank you for saying it."

Sirius leaned forward. "I feel like an ass for doing this so soon after apologizing for making demands of you, but . . . can you answer a question for me?"

Peter squared his shoulders. "Yes, Sirius. I . . . I can."

"Working for . . . him." Peter grimaced, but this time he didn't flinch, and he maintained eye contact. "Was I right? Was it fear that drove you to it?"

Peter lowered his gaze to the stone floor. ". . . Yes." He fidgeted, then forced himself to sit still. "I thought . . . maybe, just maybe, if I could . . . ingratiate myself to him. If I could prove myself useful to him, then . . . maybe I could make everything safer. For me, for you, for . . . everyone." Peter shuddered, closing his eyes. "But then I . . . was in the middle of it, and I couldn't work up the courage to do any of the things I told myself I would do."

Sirius turned away and glared at the wall. "I wish I'd been able to do more. To assuage your fear. Prongs and me, we were supposed to be the enforcers. The strong ones. The ones who protected you and Remus both. That was what we told ourselves we were good for; it's what made us worth dealing with. It was the best part of us. I was supposed to be strong enough that you wouldn't ever be scared. Not of anything. Certainly not some dark wizard."

"You're being so kind," Peter said, "but . . . in the end . . . by the time everything happened, I still . . . I still . . ."

"None of us were with them when they died," Remus said. "We all failed them."

"But I'm the one who . . . who . . ."

"People say the Fidelius charm can't be broken," Sirius said, "that the secret-keeper must choose to give up the information they've been entrusted with. I think that's just poetry. That's not how people work. It's never been how people, or magic, work. If I know anything about magic, it's that we understand it only as well as we submit to it."

"Sirius, I . . . I did . . ."

"No." Sirius shook his head. "No, it doesn't matter." He looked at Peter and leaned in closer. "I don't know how it happened. I don't know if you were tortured into it, or if you walked up to him and sang it to him. That doesn't matter anymore."

Peter looked more confused than ever. "It . . . it doesn't?"

"No. It doesn't." Sirius clenched and unclenched his fists. "What matters is this: I have a mission. Something I'm going to do, myself, but that doesn't mean I won't need help. That's why we're here, Peter. You're one of us, you've always been one of us. I'm going to prove myself the man I told you I was, the man I promised you I'd be. I owe you that. What I want to know is if you'll help me."

Peter licked his lips. Then he drew in a breath, squared his shoulders, and stood up.

"What do you need me to do, Sirius?"