Peter Pettigrew is marching down the familiar drive like a damned man. He has an air about him, of one resigned to his fate, someone marching to the whipping post with his chin up. Someone who had known him back, well, back then, would have been surprised. Measly Peter Pettigrew, damned, yet dangerous, brave.
Living up to the Gryffindor name at last.
By the pavement, James’s gardening buffer charms spit at the chaotic, magical plants currently brushing the ends of Peter’s robes. He's about to huff, when the man behind him makes a sound. It's just an off step, an irregularity in his smooth cadence, but the jolt it sends through Peter's taut frame may have well been a zap of lightning. He’s used to always being intensely aware of the man. It’s hard not to be, when a wrong look, a snap of his fingertips could mean death.
Perhaps the tiger lillies ( named all too literally, as Peter has discovered and rediscovered many, many times) made a break for Voldemort, and he stumbled. Peter represses a slightly hysterical laugh at the idea of Lord Voldemort, taken down in his prime by James Potter's feral tiger lillies.
Because, ah yes, that is where they are. James's cottage. James and Lily's cottage. It is manilla bricked, with beautiful, cliche roses climbing over the doorway. Pete, even in the midst of this mess he’s rotting in, can still remember that happy day when Remus had gotten that charmwork very ( very) wrong.
Peter can still hear Remus's panicked shriek, as Lily cackled, doubled over.
"He's going blue!"
It had been a light moment, Peter thinks distantly, even despite the slight strangulation. Plus, it was a rare thing to see Remus so flustered. Unless, Peter thinks dryly, of course, it was Sirius as the cause of it. Sirius in dress robes. Sirius tying up his hair. Sirius flicking pages of a book. Sirius breathing.
Sirius.
Imperceptibly to anybody else, Peter shakes his head. Like a wet dog.The thought still draws a smile out of him. The echoes of a dog barking ring out over a dewy forest.
Merlin, What is wrong with him? Now is not the time for random, unhelpful thoughts. Now is the time for revenge. Cold, calculating. Brave.
He’s telling himself that he's finally alright with being the villain, if it means he isn’t nothing at all.
There's a fizzle as they step through the outer shell of the wards. The Dark Lord is gripping onto Peter's right arm with pincers for hands. It’s a desperate grip for somebody so sure of themselves.
Peter can feel his dark mark twisting, contorting under the surface of his skin. A spark of evil kept squashed flat under a pane of glass. It might as well be a mirror.
There's silence now, two shadows paused halfway up the winding lane. The secret of this house presses into Peter's body, like a dog leaning against him, trusting. Like a bruise. They all have plenty of those, but at least the bleeding is contained. Peter is sick of keeping it all contained.
Something in the magic surrounding him speaks to him, even now. It feels like home. He can feel it, pulsing, a living being with no source. The air vibrates, pumping magic through him, around him. He'd learnt when he was eleven, that he was merely a vessel for power to exist within, and now he understands. He’d disliked the concept then, he’d felt used. Peter had wanted to be the one with all that magic, to know that it lived and went away at his wish. But apparently, all his bones were good for, in the end, was being conductors.
Those bones belong to Voldemort, now.
He feels used, again, but in a better way. Peter has adapted to his path. He knows now that there are higher callings than ultimate power. He knows, as he deals with the small child lock on the first gate of James's house, that people grow up. He can’t stay young forever, and the rest of them are fools for believing any differently. There is nothing youthful about this pain, about the death he would have had to face without servitude as an option.
There is nothing youthful about waiting to matter, and Peter is finally done with it. Maybe he had been for a long time.
He walks in the quiet, pretending he can afford to forget the man walking behind. He walks like he can still taste summer lemonade and laughter so bright it made everything hurt. He slows just enough to become nostalgic for the love that lived so happily between them all, often in this very yard.
Gods, but it burned so bright.
“You know what to do, vermin.” Wormtail is a distant memory.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Ah. They’ve reached the proper defences. These wards are the real deal, and Peter knows exactly what to do. They rely on trust, and love. It's a typical James Potter move.
Fools, the lot of them.
It’s the precipice, the final decision, the no turning back. And Peter steps forwards, because he is a blade forged by years of indecision, pity smiles, and the heartbreak of unrequited love. Honestly, he resents the fact that Lily must die, never knowing that he loved James too. At least James knew. Peter think it's worse that he didn't care. Just laughed it off with a ruffle of his hair like the past was in the past, and it was nothing.
The wards are receding, now. But he's been branded, he can feel it. It’s nothing like when he took the dark mark, instead the feeling tastes sweet and metallic, like cold nights in the fringes of the forbidden forest. Hash browns piled high and wounds spelled closed. Something here tells Peter,
pack, pack, pack.
The wards pulse through him, and he knows they are determining whether or not he is trusted to enter. Whether he is trusted to carry their secret in the palm of his hands. Peter sighs deeply. In the loaded silence, he allows himself to feel this, just once more. It's jabbing. It feels like the hook that could unravel everything. It feels like regret. But still, if for a second Peter wishes the wards would not let him in, nobody ever knows it but him. But they do, and they always are, and Peter steps through them in cold blood.
The murderer beside him turns, slightly.
"Admirable work, Pettigrew."
The second murderer replies quietly,
"Thank you, my Lord."
"If you would do the honors." Voldemort extends one arm to gesture at the red front door mere meters away from them. And then, he vanishes, the disillusionment charm so strong Peter has lost all outline of him completely.
He feels alone.
He feels young. Perhaps, in a different life, Peter is merely waltzing up to his best mate's front door, about to snark on about Sirius's truly terrible job he's done of the Halloween pumpkins, or how his skeleton decorations had quite probably scarred children for life. Perhaps he's about to have his annual great arm wrestle with Lily, like back at Hogwarts. Perhaps…
And then Peter pulls himself together. He is no longer the sniveling, indecisive coward his friend all knew and loved. By himself, he has evolved.No, his version of twenty one may not be young at all, but it doesn't matter anyway. Tonight, he's here to preserve other people's youth.
He raises his wand arm, and raps a tightly held fist on the door.
"James, dear, would you mind getting that?" Lily yells, her voice muffled.
"Yup! It's Peter!"
Peter waits in the cold. He can just feel the smirk Lily has on her face right now ('dear').
He hears thundering footsteps on the stairs. The door opens. James grins hugely at him, and his voice is soft. Gods, but his eyes are still kind, the light swimming amongst all the pain of war so young. Pete thinks that James is truly the most foolish soldier he's ever known.
"Hey, Pete. Come on in. Sirius and Lily are in the living room. "
Pete stands there in the doorway. Dread is rising in his throat. It happens every time that he looks at James for too long. Peter knows the guilt is for the first thing he did that ever tore James apart, not that James ever found out. But it still caused him pain, and so the guilt occasionally weighs on Peter, because when you love someone, their pain hurts you too.
Peter stares a second longer and figures it's been long enough, living with the lie. Why not tell James this last secret? Why not unburden his conscience? Or, what’s left of it.
“James,” he says, and it comes out croaky.
He crooks an eyebrow. “Yeah mate? You know you don’t have to stand out here in the cold -”
“I was the one who told Severus how to get past the tree.”
In the distance, Peter can hear children laughing, all dressed up for a world nobody believes in. He wonders vaguely if Harry could have been one of them.
He meets James's eyes. They stare unseeing.
Peter decides that he doesn't feel anything, anymore.
Behind him, Lord Voldemort raises his wand.