Chapter 6
Harry had set aside the letters from his father and Regulus with a sick feeling in his chest. Something about the heated and clandestine affair makes his stomach twist and his nose fill with the haunted scent of apples. He rises from the chair to take a walk, being cooped up like this isn’t good.
The air is warm, thick with heat in that way England does so awfully. His shirt quickly sticks to his back as he strides through the park.
“Harry!” He stops so suddenly he nearly falls, twisting behind him Harry finds Dean Thomas with a wide grin jogging after him. “Jesus’ mate, who are you running from?” He asks as he comes to a stop next to Harry, clapping a hand to Harry’s shoulder in greeting. Harry huffs a laugh and runs his hand through his damp hair.
“Didn’t realise how fast I was going, I just wanted to clear my head.” He shrugs and they resume walking at a much slower pace. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“Ah, my mum lives not far, she’s a nurse at the hospital.” at Harry’s nod Dean continues “Well, she’s still pretty pissed at me for vanishing so I’m making it up to her. Met her for lunch today.” Harry doesn’t really know what to say to this so he just smiles softly at Dean and they continue for a moment before Dean speaks again. “Also, actually…” he trails off and Harry looks at him. They come to a stop as Harry studies Dean’s face for a moment. “So, I’ve been talking to Ginny and she asked me to check in on you.” Harry laughs softly;
“Ah, I should’ve checked in with them. I just had a rough week I guess.” He smiles at Dean but it falls off his face as he studies Dean more intently. There’s something in his features that have Harry’s brain screaming at him. Harry’s brows furrow as he studies Dean’s cheekbones and jawline. Dean’s hand comes up to his shoulder again.
“Harry? You okay mate?” Harry blinks and shakes his head.
“Sorry, yeah. I just… You seem really familiar and I can’t work out why” Dean looks at him incredulously, tightening his grip on Harry.
“Mate, you’ve known me for 8 years.” Harry laughs.
“Yeah, no I know. I just mean… I don’t know.” Harry shakes his head and grins. “Ginny doing alright then? All things considered” Dean’s expression shifts to slightly guilty and he looks away from Harry.
“Yeah, she’s… coping, I guess. Says it’s hard there but they all need the time together.” Harry nods.
“I imagine family would help.”
“You are their family too Harry. They’re worried about you too.” Harry exhales heavily.
“Can I tell you something?” Dean nods at him, concern still etched into those haunting features. “You know Professor Lupin; well, he was really close friends with my parents and he named me God father to his son. Then he and his wife died in the battle.”
“Oh shit, I didn’t realise.”
“Yeah well, Andromeda has Teddy. She’s his grandmother but… She asked me if I would take full custody of him.”
“Oh, mate.”
“She also asked me to speak at the Malfoy’s trials. Well… Not Lucius but-”
“You should.” Dean says and he sounds so sure that Harry blanches.
“What?” Dean exhales and takes his hand from Harry’s shoulder to rub his eyes.
“Did you speak with Luna?”
“Well… sort of. I didn’t tell her what Dromida wanted but we sort of talked about…him” Dean eyes Harry with a slight smirk.
“I imagine it’s especially complicated for you and hm, huh?”
“What?” Harry asks but Dean just chuckles.
“Alright. So okay.” He exhales again and looks away from Harry and across the park. “We obviously weren't there that long but I spent time with Luna after and since. She talked with me about what happened. I don’t think Draco or his mother had much choice in what happened and…honestly, I feel bad for the guy I mean, what wouldn’t we do for our mothers. I ran, Hermione made them forget her completely.” Dean looks back at Harry. “You of all people should know what you would do to protect the people who love you”
Harry looks away this time. Dean is right. Luna is right. The letters…. fuck the letters. Harry feels dizzy for a moment and sways. Dean grasps him again.
“Look Harry, It’s your choice mate. No pressure. I shouldn’t have said that I just… shit sorry man.” Harry holds onto Dean’s forearms for a moment, balancing and meets the younger boys’ eyes. Again, that feeling of haunted memories or missing a stair or thinking you hear someone call your name comes over Harry and he has to inhale sharply.
“No, you’re right it’s just… a lot.” Dean squeezes Harry’s arms and twists them so he has his arm round Harry’s waist and they begin walking again. Harry is so lost in his thoughts he doesn’t realise what’s happening until his front door is In Front of him. “Oh. How did you know I live here?” Dean shifts again and something clicks in Harry’s dull brain. “Oh. You’re talking to Ginny”
They shift and Harry regains his own balance watching as Dean chews his lip before nodding slightly. “Cool.” Dean blinks at him for a second;
“You don’t mind?”
“Na man, I mean. I love her, I always will but… it didn’t work. It’s okay, part of growing up right?” Dean studies him for a moment.
“You should come over for dinner soon, meet my mum, have some home cooked food.” Harry doesn’t bother to correct Dean on Kreacher’s cooking skills, grateful for the invite.
“Yeah, that would be great.” Dean nods, retreating down the stairs and onto the pavement.
“Ace, I’ll owl you. Oh, and Harry? I know you’re young and you’ve been through a lot and probably don’t feel ready but… you would be a brilliant dad to that kid.” Dean waves and walks away, leaving Harry with an ache in his chest.
Mary,
Happy Summer. I have officially not seen you in 4 days. How do I continue to live this way? How on earth will I cope next year when we’re done with school and off in the world. You’ll be so busy at St Mungo’s (Shut up I’m not cursing it you will be the best healer!) how will I learn to function without you? Who will peal my oranges for me? And do not reply to tell me James will. I have told you a thousand times that he and I are just friends. He doesn't see me that way, I’m not near beautiful enough for a boy like him. Besides I think he has someone AND I’m not interested!
I went down to the lake today. Time goes on yet I still yearn to sit here with you, ignore the world and let flowers grow around us. Perfectly content together in time.
Come visit me?
Yours,
Lily
Lily,
I will be in London, studying. You will be interning at the prophet and travelling all over the world to report on scandal galore. I will always make time for you.
James Potter is a fucking idiot. All of them are idiots. But you? You’re such an idiot. You are beautiful Lily. Not just beautiful but a thousand other things. You’re funny and clever and you have this way of reading people that I’m envious of. You always know what to say, the right words at the right time. You’re charming and flirty. Dirty and wicked. Your hair is a work of art and your eyes capture the souls of those who wrong you. You command the attention of a room with your power and grace and I think you sell yourself short. If there was a potion to make you see yourself the way I see you. I would learn to brew it and administer it by force if I had too.
I will come whenever you will have me.
Yours.
Mary.
As always seems to be the case, Harry puts down the communication between Mary and Lily with an ache and a smile. They seem so in love and so stupidly unaware. Harry can’t imagine being so oblivious. Then he remembers Ron and Hermione. Think about them makes him rise from his chair and head to write them a letter, as he moves past the table Harry clips the box and it goes careening off the side and crashing onto the floor
“Oh, fucking shit” Harry cries. The letters are all strewn across the floor haphazardly, all mixed together. Whatever order Remus had put them in is gone now. As Harry scrambles on the floor to put them back into the box he finds two letters in envelopes. He leaves them out while stacking the rest of the unread letters back into the box.
The first is addressed to Sirius in Regulus’ handwriting. The wax seal is still intact and Harry runs his fingers over it. The second though, that one draws his full focus. He puts the one addressed to Sirius to one side and settles back into the chair with the unopened letter.
Peter.
Harry’s morbid curiosity makes this impossible to resist. Wormtail has yet to show up and honestly, Harry assumed Sirius and or Remus had burned the man’s taint from the collection. There is a note attached to the letter but not in Remus’s writing.
Auror Records case 5932
Personal Possessions retrieved from the McKinnon house
Item 256
June 22nd 1981
This one is also sealed with wax and Harry realises it must have been given to Remus at some point after the first war. Remus, clearly, had never felt the need to open a letter from one friend to another that was never delivered. Never even sent. Has Remus not wanted to know Marlene’s unsent words? Had he not felt able to open this last vestige of her? He takes a deep breath before opening it.
Peter,
I know you’re the traitor. I have had my suspicions for so long but I know it now.
You’re coming here tonight for dinner. Like we have done since we were kids, Dinner together on the solstice. I don’t understand how you could go from the kid who had picnics with me in that meadow every solstice to a man who is betraying us all. It’s selfish of me to hoard this information but I cannot quite reconcile you now with the boy I love. My childhood best friend.
I will give myself tonight, and tomorrow I will tell the order. I don't plan to send this letter; you will be dead soon. Sirius won’t let you live.
I don't think he should.
James will be devastated, Remus' heart broken. Dorcas will be disappointed and Mary horrified. Lily? Oh, Lily will be livid. She will be right there with Sirius, demanding your head on a stick. The baby will be here soon. Her baby. Mary’s baby too. Your best friends' children and you attended Lily’s baby shower and told her you loved her. You gifted them that beautiful plush deer. James cried.
How can you have done that? Sat there and celebrated their lives, their new beginnings when you put their lives at risk every single day? Merlin, you must be so insecure, so unhappy. What must they have given you to get you to turn on us. On your family.
I keep waking up from dreams, they vary. Sometimes it's you killing the babies in their cribs. Sometimes it’s you watching as Voldemort slaughters us while we beg for your help. Sometimes it’s you, dead and in a casket. I wake weeping from those ones. I am already grieving you. Dorcas knows something is going on but she’s attributing it to losing Gid and Fab.
Was that you? I suppose Moody will get the answers from you.
Grieving someone who is still alive is the weirdest thing. Because I’m watching you laugh, seeing you look at your friends with a false layer of joy. At the pub on Tuesday, I just watched you breathe. I watched your chest rise and fall and knew with every breath you chose to forsake us all.
I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to forsake you too. I’m trying to be brave and trying to cauterise you from me but it’s like a weeping wound. I feel like I’m bleeding out.
I wish you had died. I wish I had attended your funeral instead of Gideon and Fabian’s. I wish when I wept for you, I didn’t feel sick with guilt. I wish you hadn’t put me in this position.
Are you sorry? Do you regret it? Would you take it back? Where did we go wrong Pete? When did you stop loving us?
I look at Dorcas’ friends and I pity them. I see those kids who did not get a choice. Kids who were only ever loved by each other but were obligated to do what they have done and my heart aches for them. For Dorcas.
When it happened, when Regulus took the mark, she was a mess. She felt so guilty and it took me so long to understand, how could she love someone like that. I’m older now, I’ve endured. We have all endured and I find it easier to understand the situation they found themselves in and I pity them. They were nothing but kids without a choice.
But you? You would have been fine. Your mother loves you; we love you. You stand by our side and us by yours. You looked at this, the love and family that someone like Regulus Black would do anything for, and you chose to betray us. To kill us all. You may as well have pulled your wand in the middle of the baby shower and murdered us all. I would have died before I put you at risk and you did it for power.
I know you; I know you; I know you.
I know you and it makes me feel sick. I can understand why, isn’t that so fucking sick. That I can look at my oldest friend and understand his motivations for murdering us all. I know you like a mark on my skin I can't remove.
Tonight, we will have our solstice dinner with my family, in my mother’s home. The one where we learned to make daisy chains and Christmas decorations. You will sit there and I will forget, for one night, who you have become. I will spend one more night allowing myself to love Peter Pettigrew. Tomorrow, I will forsake you. Moody will bring me the answers but I will never get closure on this. I am not strong enough to be in the room when they make you tell them why.
Every day for the rest of my life I will wonder what I could have done to keep you, should I have loved you more? Held you tighter? Baked you a cake on your birthday? Should I have kept making daisy chains with you?
One day my kids will stand in this kitchen and mark their own height alongside ours and ask me who the name on the wall belongs too and I will have to tell them what you did. This will be your legacy. You won’t be Uncle Pete; you will be the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Tonight, we will be Pete and Marls once more and tomorrow you will be Death Eater and I Order Member.
I love you and it burns like acid.
I hope that I never see you again. In this life or the next.
Marls.
Harry is shaking as he folds the letter back into the envelope and his eye catches the Auror note again. June 22nd. Just days after the summer solstice. He must have killed her that night. She gave herself one more night with her oldest friend and he came into her home, with her family and slaughtered them all. He murdered her months before he went after Lily and James. No one opened this letter. At no point in the past 17 years has anyone, auror or order member opened this letter. What if they had. What if Remus or Dorcas or anyone had opened the letter. Would he still have his family? Was Marlene, right? Did Peter cause the deaths of the Prewetts? Who else?
Harry is shaking when he stands, letter still in hand. He’s crying when he stumbles into the floo, weeping when he falls to his knees on the hearth and someone calls for Ron. He’s sobbing when the scent of Hermione’s shampoo engulfs him as arms hold him closely. The letter crumpling in his grip.