Magnolia

Peter has had enough. That fucking smell has been tugging at his brain for ages. The memory creeps up on him when he’s with the boys, when he’s with the girls, when he’s taking notes in Transfiguration and even when he shuffles into the stands before the Quidditch game on Sunday.

It’s not too crowded today, considering it’s Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw, and since it’s one of the first games of the season the stakes aren’t very high. The people that are in the stands today are all huddled in groups. It’s mostly Gryffindors, but a few Ravenclaws are there supporting their friends, standing out in navy blue.

Remus leads the way and Peter follows behind. When they reach the top they immediately run into Lily, Mary, and Marlene. “Hello, everyone,” he greets them politely. Remus immediately sits himself right to Lily and they begin whispering to each other with a ferocity that Peter’s never seen from either of them. Mary does not look chuffed to have her spot taken by Remus, but she just clenches her jaw and waves Peter over.

“Peter!” Mary calls. “Our favourite Marauder!”

“And most handsome Marauder,” Marlene adds with a dramatic wink. She’s just teasing; she is, very firmly, a lesbian. But after he broke up with Sybil, the girls all made it a point to hit on him in public at any opportunity, just in case word got back to her. “Any new girls in your life we should know about?”

“Oh yes, we need to stay aware of our competition,” Mary jokes, squeezing Peter’s bicep faux-flirtatiously. Peter can’t help but notice her glance over at Lily again, as if hoping she’ll pay attention.

Nonetheless, Peter plays along. He sighs, “No girls, unfortunately, but I did have quite the fiery experience with Gilderoy Lockhart last week.”

Marlene snorts. “Gilderoy Lockhart?"

“I lit him on fire.”

Mary bursts into laughter. “Please tell me you got rid of his stupid hair.”

“Unfortunately not. Accidentally shot Bluebell Flames at him. Didn’t even manage to freeze the dumb grin off his face.”

“What a waste."

Marlene chimes in. “You should watch out, Peter. I heard him talking about coming to the afterparty in Gryffindor Tower. Careful he doesn’t try to get his revenge.”

Peter lets out a groan. “Oh, Merlin.”

Suddenly, Mary pokes him in the side. Hard. “Ow!”

“Shh!” She leans in her seat and points. “There!” She ducks her head.

Peter and Marlene follow suit. There he is, in all his irritating glory: golden waves shining in the sunlight, wearing a massive blue banner emblazoned with the Ravenclaw insignia. He strolls by and catches sight of Peter. He shoots him a dirty look. Peter flips him the bird right back.

“Wow, you really set him on fire, didn’t you?” Marlene giggles quietly.

But Peter isn’t paying attention to the girls anymore. It’s back. He hones in on it immediately — yes, his cologne definitely smells like some kind of fruit. What else? Something sweet, but not outrageously so. His fists bunch up against his will. Why won’t that damn scent leave him alone? He doesn’t care what Gilderoy Lockhart smells like!

“He smells so fucking good,” he mutters, glowering at his back. Mary and Marlene shoot him weird looks.

“Um, what?”

“Nothing. Just —”

“His cologne?” Remus and Lily have finally tuned back into the conversation, it seems, and Remus is smirking at him fondly.

“Yes!”

“He hasn’t stopped talking about this for a week,” Remus informs them all.

Lily raises her eyebrows. “What, do you have a thing for him?”

“They did have a fiery encounter last week,” Mary laughs.

“Don’t use my words against me! I lit him on fire! Like, actual cold fire!”

“And you didn’t even manage to freeze off his nose? You disappoint me, Pete,” Lily smiles, shaking her head.

“Don’t worry, Wormtail, you’ll have plenty of time at the afterparty to figure out what cologne he wears and what soap he uses and what his underwear smells of and anything your obsessive little heart desires,” Mary says. The nickname is usually only used by the Marauders, but it’s started to spread to the girls, even if they have no idea how it came about. “If he doesn’t kill you first.”

“This’ll be entertaining, won’t it?” A spark lights in Marlene’s eyes. “I can’t wait to witness your gruesome murder.”

“He won’t murder me! I doubt he’s even capable of it!”

Remus shakes his head morosely. “Nah, Lockhart’s sneaky when he wants to be. Snitched on Sirius and James when they planted those dungbombs in the Great Hall, remember? And when they spent hours Transfiguring all his stationary into chocolate, he turned it all back in a few seconds.”

“He is top of our year at Charms,” Lily reminded him.

Peter puts his head in his lap. “I’m done for, then.”

“Pretty much,” Mary giggles. “But Marlene’s right. At least it'll be fun to watch.”

-

The Gryffindor Common Room is positively bursting. David Bowie blares from Sirius’s record player in the corner. The girls managed to snag themselves a spot on the sofas before the party began, and the boys naturally got comfortable there too. Everyone is sitting in a loose ring: Mary is tipsy, pulling Lily’s hair into clumsy braids. Remus and Sirius are squashed rather snugly on one sofa and exchanging soppy grins. James is tapping his foot anxiously. He hasn’t drank at all tonight, which is odd.

Peter takes it all in from the ground, nursing a bottle of something strong. Rum, maybe? Who knows? Perhaps it’s the alcohol talking, but he’s surprisingly content. Even in a big group like this one. While he hadn’t been able to call the girls anything more than acquaintances before today, they had spent the rest of the Quidditch match chatting, and he thinks they’re actually quite sweet — even Marlene, who Peter originally thought was a little rough around the edges.

She’s also a great listener. “You…want to break into Gilderoy Lockhart’s dormitory?”

“Yes,” Peter takes another swig from the bottle.

“Why?”

“Because he smells,” he says like that explains anything.

Sirius leans over and snatches the rum right out of his hands. “Alright, I think that’s enough, Wormy,” he snorts. “We always have to cut this one off when his plans start getting too ambitious.”

Peter pouts and looks to the only person who can tell Sirius what to do. “Mooooony! Help me!”

“I’m not enabling this,” Remus simply states. Christ, even while drunk he’s got a vocabulary on him.

“James!” Peter tries. He has to poke him in the face three times before James finally notices.

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong with you today? You look like you’ve just seen a —” Peter finally sees what James had been staring at. “Uh-oh.”

Sirius sees it too and stands up. The rum falls to the floor. “What,” he grits out, “Is my brother doing here?”

Across the room, Regulus is standing with his little Slytherin friends. You can tell even from afar that he is Sirius’s little brother. There are differences, of course. Regulus is shorter; his hair curls around his ears instead of falling to his shoulders; his gaze is sharp and he has a tendency to glare if you get within a meter of him. Yet they share the same elegant pale skin, identical grey eyes, long dark eyelashes.

Peter strictly likes girls. But, you know, he kind of sees what James and Remus see in the Black brothers. The only thing he can see right now, though, is a disaster waiting to happen. Oh, Merlin, he thinks critically, Sirius, his brother, and his brother’s secret boyfriend all in the same room. Count me out.

“I’m going to kill that little creep. What does he think he’s doing, crawling around a Gryffindor party?” Sirius rolls up his sleeves.

Peter steals the rum off the floor. “Well, that’s my cue.” He gives James’s shoulder a sympathetic pat. “Good luck with this one, mate!”

James’s eyes widen in horror. “Peter!” He hisses desperately. “You traitor, come back here!”

But Peter’s already choking down the rest of the bottle. He throws it aside. “Got myself a prat to catch,” he slurs with a wink. And then he totters away through the crowd of people.

-

Someone switches the Bowie record to a Queen one. It stutters as it starts up. To Peter it sounds like it’s playing a million miles away, on a different planet. Pretty fitting for Queen, he thinks. Is that why his name is Freddie Mercury?

Must be. Peter is a genius.

He stumbles through the crowd. Trips over his own feet at one point. That doesn’t deter him from his mission. If he could only catch sight of his hair, or his gleaming white grin…

Peter halts just as We Will Rock You comes on. People start whooping, throwing drinks in the air. The familiar boom, boom, clap beat reverberates through his eardrums. He is only focused on one thing: the faint smell of cologne.

“You’ve quite some nerve showing up here, Pettigrew.” Someone sneers at him.

He looks up. There he is, arms crossed and a scowl taking the place of his usual pompous smirk. Wavy blond hair falls over his glowering eyes, and it shines in the dim light of the common room. He’s rolled up his sleeves — clearly trying to show off his muscular forearms. Gilderoy Lockhart.

“Did you just call my arms muscular?”

Shit. Peter hadn’t meant to say that part out loud. “Listen here, Lockhart,” he musters up. “You smell really — fucking good.”

To his shock, Lockhart does something he never thought he was capable of, and shuts his mouth. He just stares at Peter with pink steadily rising in his cheeks. “Well,” he finally says. “I’m glad you noticed!”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s it called?”

Lockhart frowns. “What? Speak up!” Peter thinks he says. The beat pounds through the floorboards as people stomp and clap. YOU’VE GOT BLOOD ON YOUR FACE, YOU BIG DISGRACE! WAVING YOUR BANNER ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Someone elbows Peter forward. He winces and yanks Lockhart in. “Can we go somewhere quieter?” He shouts, pointing at a dark alcove.

Lockhart’s eyes widen and he swallows. Peter takes that as a yes. He drags him through the crowd, finally pulling him into the shadows where the beat is less oppressive.

“What cologne do you wear?”

“My — my what?”

“Your cologne,” Peter repeats impatiently. “What’s it called?”

Gilderoy huffs and gives him a disdainful look. “I don’t know? My mother gets it for me.”

Peter knows he’s properly drunk. This whole thing is stupid, really. He shouldn’t give a damn about what Gilderoy Lockhart smells of. But now that they’re this close, shuffled tight together in this cramped alcove, the scent overwhelms him. The main note is still holding strong — some kind of fruit — but beneath that, there’s something else. A flower, maybe? Like the ones his mother used to grow in her garden, delicate white freesias and dark orchids and sweet jasmine petals.

Peter realizes he’s been gazing right into his pale blue eyes as if they’re going to tell him the answers themselves. He doesn’t think Lockhart noticed, though, because he’s currently throwing a bit of a tantrum.

“Honestly! I don’t know what you think you’re doing, dragging me around and interrogating me! Especially after—”

He tunes him out; he’s moved on. Every time Lockhart closes his mouth (which only happens in brief spurts, to Peter’s dismay) his typically full, pink lips purse up. It’s annoying. What’s he pursing his lips at Peter for, huh? Irritation bubbles in his chest, and he finds he wants to reach out and…well, he doesn’t really know.

That’s not true. Peter does know what he wants to do. And he wants to do it very badly.

And since he’s terribly, wildly, mind-numbingly drunk…he does.

Peter has kissed people before — his ex-girlfriend Sybil Trelawney, of course, but she always seemed to cut it off short with sudden outbursts of “prophetic visions!” He kind of took this to mean that he was so miserable at kissing that even his girlfriend couldn’t stand it for longer than a few seconds. That is, until the night James had ordered him to scope out the Astronomy Tower for a prank they were planning. Peter had donned the Invisibility Cloak and abruptly walked in on Sybil snogging Aurora Sinistra against a telescope. Apparently everyone had known she preferred girls except for him. It had hurt at the time, but at least, he assuaged himself, there was likely a chance he wasn’t actually that bad a kisser.

So he starts out this one quite unsure. His nose bumps against Lockhart’s, he’s too afraid to move his lips. Five seconds in and it’s already lasted longer than any kiss he’s ever had before. He doesn’t have nearly the amount of experience that Sirius or, Christ, Moony has. The couples in the halls always make it look rather slimy and embarrassing. But this…well, it’s not terrible, actually.

To Peter’s shock, Lockhart starts to kiss back. It’s tentative at first. His cologne permeates the alcove, his breaths louder than bombs in Peter’s ears. His lips are hot against his own. The music is still pounding, but the two of them are locked in their own muffled world where the only movement is this gentle push-and-pull.

We Will Rock You fades into Killer Queen. For some reason, it makes Peter want to laugh.

At one point he feels a hand slide into his scruffy brown hair. Somewhere in Peter’s drink-addled brain he must take this as encouragement, because he finds his own hands suddenly gripping Lockhart’s shoulders and pushing him back against the shadowy stone wall. Lockhart breaks off the kiss with a gasp. Peter looks up in alarm and searches his face for signs that this isn’t welcome. That he should stop. He’s satisfied to notice that Lockhart’s obsessively-neat blond locks are falling over his wide blue eyes, brushing his nose.

“Sorry, I’m kind of pissed…”

“I — yes, me as well,” Lockhart mutters. Peter hadn’t seen anything in his hand when he ran into him earlier; he doesn’t seem drunk. But then he pulls Peter back in and he can’t bring himself to care, only to feel grateful.