Dear Reader,
Our acts haunt us for all our lives and the consequences of our decisions can be dire. Of all bad feelings, guilt is, without a shadow of a doubt, the one that haunted me the most through this long journey everyone walks through without knowing their destiny.
But this story isn't mine and it's not worth deepening my thoughts or melancholic, miserable memories. My name is Peter Pettigrew and I was, long ago, an inhabitant of a small town in Romania, even if, in my youth, it was located in the already extinguished Transylvania. Its name is Sighisoara.
My best friends were Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, we met when we were just kids. It was clear to me even then that their friendship was so much more intimate than the one we shared, but that never stopped them from having me around or considering me a part of the group.
Until the day they didn't.
I'll not waste our time with soundless excuses: there isn't and there won't be in the near or afar future, an excuse for what I have done to my dearest friends, although my actions may prove they weren't so dear to me. I'll tell the tale, then, only citing facts and my own thoughts and feelings as they came to me at the times these events occurred.
When Sirius and Remus pushed me away at the end of our teenage years, I was confused and scared: wary I may have done something to accidentally offend them. Therefore, when I discovered they were in love with each other, I felt, in a certain way, betrayed. Angry. So instead of trying to understand them, I told everything I knew to their parents.
Herr Black was furious and sent Sirius away to Munich University, away from Remus. Dear reader, believe me: I indeed thought that was the best option for them both. But time would soon prove me terribly wrong.
So the war came. Today they call it World War I; at the time, it was just another war that had decided to decimate Europe once again whilst our allies and we were sure of victory. But I'm not writing this to tell about the horrors of the war, there are enough stories of that (and I'd imagine it's not very hard to understand them), except to say that we —Sirius, Remus, and I— were sent to fight in it.
As another emotional punch in the lives of my two friends, Sirius got seriously injured after being exposed to a chlorine pump. His lungs were affected and he needed to be sent home. Remus, knowing of that maybe through his mother, who was enough of an ally of her own son's love to warn him, did everything he could to return to Sighisoara.
He managed it after a couple of months but Sirius' parents never let him see his old lover and, as he was bedridden, Sirius wasn't even informed Remus was in town, so he was never able to protest. I didn't know any of that until I went back home for a temporary leave.
Now now, dear reader, I beg you to believe me when I say that the moment I saw Remus under Sirius' window, his face pale in exhaustion, his blue eyes sloshy, the purple bruises under them, and his lips blue with frostbite, but still painting underneath Sirius' window, my heart broke and I came to understand the depth of what I had done, the truth hit me with the weight of a cannonball to the point I wondered whether I was still in war and got hurt without realizing it.
The suffering, so perfectly painted on Remus' face, made me understand what love was. A love so true as the fairytales, even more so. Today, when I think about this, I reach a deliberate conclusion: the worse the situation, the stronger the feelings.
I tried, after so much time, to seek forgiveness. Tried to walk to Remus but the only thing I got back — and deservedly so — was a punch. I didn't give up, however. Because that was my only chance to do some good for them both, even if I didn't know it at the time — and I'm sure my soul and my instincts did. They took me to Herr and Frau Black, who gave me the letter Remus tried to give to Sirius, asking me to return it.
Despite the hardened instructions over a feeling that didn't concern me (if I had just noticed it before!), I ignored them and, after some time, I managed to take the letter to its recipient. At that point, Sirius was too weak to hold it straight, so I offered to read it.
Here is the transcript:
Beloved Sirius,
Your parents don't allow us to see each other. I resort to this letter to write what I was never able to say to you. I want you to know I love you.
Yes, Sirius, I love you.
They've taught us that wasn't love but I realized it is. It is.
What you and I had was the truest love I've ever felt. That's why I don't want to lose you without telling you.
I have loved you since that first day we walked into that institute and got away to smoke a cigarette. I have loved you since the day you heated up my hands with your breath because I'd lost my gloves. I have loved you since our first kiss in the Potter's stable. I love you so much that the idea of seeing you again was the only thing that kept me alive in the Serbian trenches.
It'd be enough if you looked me in the eyes to understand. We don't need words. We'd looked at each other and we'd be kids again, running through the institute's corridor, before death, before bombs, over the old man who turned all of this into hate.
It's the reason why I'm stuck underneath your window for months, to see you again, even if for just a moment. So that your smile can make me believe our love meant everything again and shed some light into this century that was born already dead.
I love you and, whatever happens, I'll always be with you.
Forever yours,
Remus.
If I close my eyes, I can still hear the cracking wood in the fireplace as my voice, low enough so that Herr and Frau Black wouldn't hear me, echoed in Sirius' room under his failing and sound breathing. My own voice choked with the tears that caught in my throat as I read Remus' words, and the thought that the blame for all of that situation was mine kept echoing in my head like a bell.
At the end of the letter, Sirius cried quietly, only tears running through his pale lifeless skin, and he asked me in a murmur to help him get up and take him to the window. Despite his worsening health, I owed them both that, so I did as I was asked and guided my old friend to the window. Remus, as always, was looking in our direction, and when their eyes met, he left his paintings aside, desperate to see the man he loved for the first time in years.
I could be a cliche and say I felt like an intruder there but then I'd be lying. With time, I understood in light of that exact moment of my life that love can be felt, it can embrace you, move you, console you, even when it's not directed at you because the way I felt as I saw Sirius' eyes shining with life as he looked at Remus was so godly it's impossible to explain through the words my pen is drawing in paper at this very moment.
No, I didn't feel like an intruder and maybe then I was taken aback by the strongest certainty I've had in my life: Love doesn't see colors, origins, or genders. Love is just Love and It won't be vanquished or taken away, only lost or given.
And, as every tragic love story, this one was lost. Sirius died that night. Today, four decades and a couple of days after he left, I write this letter in the hope that one day they might inspire someone more courageous than myself to act against those who rebel against Love. All kinds of Love.
With hope,
Pedro Pettigrew.